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FROM THE LIBRARY

OF

JOHN WHITEHEAD 1850-1930
PRESENTED TO
BY HIS HEIRS

THE KEY TO LIFE.

PREFACE.

r I "'HE following Lectures were delivered in Palace
-*- Gardens Terrace Church, London, during the
winter of 1886-87. They are, as any one may see from
their style, reproductions of extempore speech, and have
no pretensions of a literary sort. Their only merit or
claim to public attention must lie in the exposition of
the various subjects with which they deal ; and if the
largeness of the title be thought to need excuse, I plead
the profundity and width of those Doctrines — the " Key
to Life " — of which these Lectures are but fragmentary
practical exhibitions.
T. C.
May i8th, 1887.

CONTENTS.

i.
Our Substance and Origin, . . . i
II.
The Evil Factor, . . . . 18
III.
The Doubt Period, ..... 38
IV.
Sex and Marriage, ... 58
V.
Business Life, . .... 76
VI.
Home and Social Life, ... -95
VII.
Justice in Life, . .... 116
VIII.
Providence, . . . . . .136
IX.
The Uses of Evil Men, ..... 154

The Outcome, . .171

OUR SUBSTANCE AND ORIGIN.
"God created man in His own image, in the image of God
created He him ; male and female created He them." — Gen. i. 27.
" And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man became a
living soul." — Gen. ii. 7.
AS the general subject of this course of lectures is
the "Facts and Difficulties of Life,'' it seems
necessary that we should begin with man him
self, who is the greatest fact, if not the greatest difficulty
of all. What is man ? Of what substance is he ? What
is his origin ? " Our substance and origin," then, is the
subject of this evening's lecture, and our idea to-night
is definitely to answer two questions : What is man ?
and Where and What does he come from? The
answer to these will lay the foundation, and we shall be
able to go on from it to consider the presence of evil in
man's life, to consider the doubt period of man's life, to
consider some of the various questions — social and other
— which naturally arise for consideration within man's
life; so that, from the whole, a groundwork for after-
thinking may be laid in the minds of those who, perhaps,
are uncertain of belief on fundamental questions, or
even uncertain whether the truth in such matters is
obtainable. What is man, then, and where does he
come from ? A

2 OUR SUBSTANCE AND ORIGIN.
It would hardly be satisfactory, at this time of day,
merely to expound to you a specific idea that one
may oneself hold, without reference at the same time
to the various ideas, or some of them, that are held
by others, and without attempting to adjust one's own
to these. The first general idea bearing on our subject
that naturally arises for consideration is that held now
by so many, — the outcome of the weariness of life that is
over the world's heart, and which, expressed in words,
amounts to this : " I don't know what man is ; I don't
know where he comes from ; and I don't know that I
am concerned to know. I cannot answer your questions.
I may have tried — I have tried to do so ; I cannot tell
you whether they are answerable ; and I don't really
think at heart that it is necessary I should be able to
answer them at all. I simply know nothing about it."
This is the position of modern Agnosticism, that know-
nothingism in regard to fundamental questions which
exists in the minds of so many to-day. Are they right
in the position that the things with which we here con
cern ourselves transcend human intelligence, that man
cannot answer fundamental questions, and should only
address himself to practical questions ? But surely,
since fundamental questions lie back of practical ques
tions, and the one class necessarily arises out of the
other, the practical questions which are the issue can
only be answered in the light of those from which they
spring. And if man may not understand fundamental
questions, how can he understand the practical ques
tions? Such a position stultifies itself; and the com
prehension of Duty and Conduct becomes impossible.
Plainly there must be some hitch here. Since man is

OUR SUBSTANCE AND ORIGIN. 3
brought on this scene of life by some person, or thing,
or force, whatsoever it may be, surely, since he is that
force become conscious, it lies in the idea that he should
understand something of his position — know something
of his parentage.
But the real difficulty of Agnostics is caused by the fact
that they put the problem wrongly. They think that the
question they are called upon to answer is whether this
or the other " thing " or state exists beyond them, — say a
God, or Other World, — and whether there is within them
more than a material organization. But this is not the
first question at issue. The first question is not, Do
these things exist? but, What must I, as a rational
human being, hold in relation to and believe concerning
them ? Not whether my belief is answered or matched
by things that exist ; but, What must I, in the very
nature of the case, believe? What is it that reason
compels me to believe ? What is it that the facts of
human nature declare ? This is the fundamental
point. Now the facts of human nature are the
best interpreters of man himself ; and if our friends the
Agnostics would only come down to these facts of nature,
and let them speak for themselves, they would, in the
nature of things, have a clear and explicit answer. But
men rarely allow reason, as such, to speak, or the facts of
their own nature to declare, as they would with unmistake-
able voice, the things that are true for it, and which that
nature is therefore compelled to believe. Primarily, for
example, I am not concerned with the question whether
God exists, but with whether I must believe that God
exists. Afterwards, there may, or there may not, come
the question as to whether my conception answers to the

4 OUR SUBSTANCE AND ORIGIN.
facts. You may always be sure, however, that what a
man acknowledges himself as bound to believe, he will
equally declare to be an existing fact ; and that as certainly
as night follows day, or morning night.
Man, then, must have a creed, because he has a nature;
he has a right to know the things which his nature can
tell him ; it must tell him something ; and he is bound to
follow its teachings, whatever they be and wherever they
lead him.
The second endeavour to interpret our subject to which
I will call your attention, is that of Materialism. Mate
rialists say : " We do know something. We know that
man is matter. We don't know that he is anything else.
Organization determines mind : mind is the result of
organization." What have we to say to this position?
Now, in point of fact, there never, that man knows of,
was an act begun in this world that began with matter.
From the conception of the race outwards, was there, I
ask you, ever an act in this life that did not, discernibly,
originate in Mind? Nor can we conceive an act that
should not originate with a mental movement first, — with
desire, feeling, emotion, thought, — an act determined by
a human creature, that was not first performed by mind
before it was performed by body. But this position,
though of course fundamental to the question, does not
yet touch everything. These two are side by side in man
— mind and matter. But have we a right to say that,
inasmuch as mind cannot act without matter, therefore
mind is the result of matter? We have no such right.
Why? For the reason, in the first instance, that these
two are simply, so far as we can tell, co-existent, and
being so, scientific inquiry should itself prevent us con-

OUR SUBSTANCE AND ORIGIN. 5
founding things that differ. Nobody knows, as a matter
of fact, that mind comes from matter. Perhaps the
Materialist would say that nobody knows that matter
comes from mind ; but we are concerned here with the
Materialistic position, which is only a begging of the
question, and, as I will show you, an utterly unwarrantable
one, and at variance with what man can learn of himself
These two things, then, are co-existent, they stand side
by side — matter and mind — in this human organism.
How, then, shall we be able to show that mind is not the
result of matter ? What are the results of a thing ? Are
they not on the same plane as the thing, and of the same
or corresponding character with it ? Do not oaks produce
oaks ? and does not wheat produce wheat ? And material
things produce, not necessarily material things, but
material products. Do we not, for example, see that
substances that can be weighed and measured produce, as
substances, what can be weighed and measured, and
never anything else? Can you extend a stone into a
thought? No. Why? Because it is not on the same
plane. Things material are nourished and extended on
the material plane, and their products are necessarily
material products only, and can be nothing else; and
brain may be nourished and grow to any extent, but it
will still be matter, and its products material products.
Consider it as you will, matter and all results of matter
stand in the same kind of relationship to us — they are
materially apprehended.
You will say, perhaps, that I am assuming the point.
No, I am speaking to facts. What is a material product ?
How do we determine it ? That it affects one or more
of the senses ; that it can be seen, smelt, tasted, felt, or

6 OUR SUBSTANCE AND ORIGIN.
heard — this is the text-book definition ; and to this law
there can be no exception. Material products, therefore,
appeal to the senses. But does mind appeal to the senses?
Can thoughts and feelings be seen, smelt, tasted, felt,
or heard ? But don't you also know that thoughts pro
duce thoughts, and feelings, feelings ? These, again, are
on the same plane. An extension of thought is thought
extended or reproduced ; and an extension of feeling is
feeling extended or reproduced ; but neither mind nor
the products of mind are cognisable by the senses, or de
finable as material products. Thoughts and feelings,
therefore — immaterial products — produce thoughts and
feelings — immaterial products. Matter and material
products produce matter and material products ; and the
two are on a different plane of being.
Thus one aspect of the Materialistic position is met :
we see that man is something more than matter. What
that something more is we may discover under the third
position I am now to put to you, viz. That man is an
organized spiritual being, possessing a material body.
This is my own position, and I wish you to understand it
fully and clearly, Man is an organized spiritual being,
possessing a material body. Is there any evidence for
this? What is it that constitutes substance ? " Qualities !
qualities! !" That is what Materialists have always pro
claimed. They say, "Destroy a man's organism — put him
in the fire, for instance — and where is he ? What then are
these things you call soul, immortality ? They are myths.
Don't you see that when you destroy the qualities the
man is gone, and gone for ever ?" I accept the position.
Qualities constitute substance; and the qualities of a

OUR SUBSTANCE AND ORIGIN. 7
material thing constitute a material thing; and the qualities
of an immaterial thing constitute an immaterial thing, and
there's anend of it. Take the principle and followit up,and
where does it lead to ? To spiritual organization. How
is that ? In this way. The qualities of a stone constitute
a stone, of a chair, a chair, and of a tree, a tree. Suppose
you take the qualities from the chair. How can you do
that? Put it in the fire, as the Materialist would the
man. Of course there is a residuum of substance that is
indestructible carried now into other forms ; but the
point is, whether the destruction of the qualities of any
body is the destruction of the body itself. Reason
and fact answer, " Yes.'' In man there are two forms of
•substance. " No," says the Materialist, " I deny that."
Well, look at the facts, so far as reason can show them.
Abstractly speaking, immaterial qualities, if there be such,
constitute immaterial things, just as material qualities
constitute material things. But are there any such qualities
as immaterial qualities ? Is thought a material quality ?
Is feeling a material quality ? Surely neither thoughts
nor feelings are material. They are not subject to the
laws of gravity and extension ; they cannot be weighed
nor measured ; and they do not admit of being seen, smelt,
tasted, heard, or felt. There are, therefore, immaterial
qualities, and they exist in their own substance ; — no,
they constitute their own substance, just as the particles
of the brain, for example, constitute the brain. A series
of particles known as matter constitute material substance ;
and, by parity of reasoning (we must not hesitate), a
series of particles known as mind constitute mental sub
stance, and these two cohere in the one organism as
cause and effect. Mind and matter are the two parts

8 OUR SUBSTANCE AND ORIGIN.
of the man. The mind directs the matter, as directed
matter is the agent of the mind — the means by which the
mind works here in a material sphere. Man is a spiritual
being at work in a material environment.
We see, then, that the Materialistic position is really
undermined, and that another position has decidedly
and fixedly taken its place ; for I hold that the position
I have put to you is simply irrefragable. I do not know
that any reasoning can break it. I have tried it in
Materialistic minds, and I should only like all men who
feel interested in these matters to understand the position
as thus put ; if I am not mistaken they will find them
selves in a grip that they cannot escape.
Assuming, now, that reason is bound to accept this
as true, — that man is a spiritual substance or being,
possessing a material body : how else could the fact be
expressed than just as we find it expressed in the human
creature? If it be true, how can these two forms of
substance cohere or interact, but just as we find them ?
If this is to be the solution of the question, — that man is
an immaterial or spiritual substance possessing a body :
does not the fact, as we find it in man himself, answer
to that solution? Mind is only here known to exist in
a material organism, but we now see that being an
immaterial substance it could not be otherwise known in
a material world and by material senses.
It will, of course, follow from this doctrine, that when
the man lays down the material body, he has only lost
the instrument for use in this world, laid it aside for
ever, since its work is done. It will be like drawing off
a glove (this is not an exact illustration, by any means,
but it will serve to express our meaning), and allowing

OUR SUBSTANCE AND ORIGIN. 9
the hand to become visible. Man lays down his material
organization, and passes into the spiritual world, possess
ing there a spiritual body in a spiritual environment.
As a material environment matches the material man, so
a spiritual environment is needed for the spiritual man.
He is in a spiritual world, with powers and faculties
complete, and ready for whatever life may lie before him
there. I suppose there may be some here who do not believe
the Scriptures ; and therefore I have been compelled
by reason and by charity between man and man to put
positions about which others may care very little or not
at all. Let the doubters, then, bear now with the
believers while I turn to the scriptural argument. In
the first chapter of Genesis we read : " God created man
in His own image, in the image of God created He him ;
male and female created He them." And in the second
chapter we read : " The lord God formed man of the
dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life; and man became a living soul." There
are some who have fastened on the statement of the
second chapter, to the exclusion of that in the first, and
made that the doctrine of the Word of God. They say,
" God formed man of the dust of the ground," therefore
he is material ; " and breathed into his nostrils the breath
of life ; and man became a living soul," that is, a psychical
animal or living creature, — for such is the translation
elsewhere in the Bible for the same expression, — created
an animal like those below him. The doctrine held by
these is the doctrine of the Materialists of the Church,
for such I name them ; and probably they would not
believe at all if they could not believe in this way. They

10 OUR SUBSTANCE AND ORIGIN.
hold that mind is the result of organization, and that
immortality is conditional on belief. If immortality is
conditional on belief, then belief is the determiner of
man's radical constitution ; — and surely nothing more
absurd than this was ever mooted in the name of religion.
Mind, it is not a question of a man's belief modifying his
character, — that is well within the province of belief, —
but of that which is the effect becoming the cause, and
of the constitution of the man himself, from mortal to
immortal, being determined by the man's own will. The
thing is too palpably gross and irrational. These people
find their stronghold in the text I have quoted from the
second chapter of Genesis : " God formed man of the
dust of the ground, and man became a living soul."
But if we go to Genesis at all, it is surely better to take
the whole than the half of its statements; I prefer to
take the first chapter first, and to read the facts in their
scriptural order. From both we shall have the complete
idea. " God created man in His own image," is the
first declaration of the Word. " God created man ; " and
the second chapter runs, " God formed man." Again,
"In His own image and likeness;" and, "Of the dust
of the ground." What is the reason for this difference ?
It is a difference in the original, and the reason is that
two different things are being spoken about. What.
then, is God's own likeness and image in which man is
created ? " God is a spirit," and therefore His image
and likeness are spiritual — a spiritual organization or
spiritual being. Man, then, to be " like " God must be
a spiritual being, a spiritual organism. Spirit is not gas,
or electricity, or vapour, for these are forms of matter.
If God is a definitely organized spiritual substance, man

OUR SUBSTANCE AND ORIGIN. n
is this also, for man is created like Him. The force of
the word " created " now shows itself out to us in contrast
with the "formed" of the second chapter. It defines the
way in which man first came forth from the Divine hand :
he was originally produced from God, as a spiritual
substance or entity, by the Divine efflux, and in the
likeness of the Being who produced him. But this
initial spiritual form was clothed upon with material
organization, and the being so created was thus also
"formed" of the dust of the ground ; and having the
Divine life breathed through his organic spiritual nature,
his physical organism lived thereby, and man became
a living soul. Man was both created in God's likeness
and formed of the dust ; hence the reason of the differ
ence ; and in this explanation you have the whole truth
from Scripture which I previously stated to you from
reason : first, spiritual organization, then material form.
Take all Scripture together, and you will find the truth
of any doctrine ; but base your conception upon scraps
taken from here and there, and you will certainly be led
astray. Thus, also, the Apostle Paul declares plainly,
"There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body;"
not that there will be, but that there is. The Church
has fancied this spiritual body will be given to man
some time in the indefinite future. Paul was speaking to
present fact: "There is a natural body, and there is a
spiritual body." He says, further, that the natural is
sown and the spiritual raised. Here we have a simple
outcome to the otherwise troublesome doctrine of the
Resurrection. Again, Paul says, " I pray God your
whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless unto
the coming of the Lord." In the same way we might

12 OUR SUBSTANCE AND ORIGIN.
add scripture to scripture, showing how clearly, fully,
and strongly this description of man's spiritual organiza
tion comes into sight. Take, for example, the visions
seen time and again in the spiritual world by men in
this world. In this view I could open up page after
page to you of the Word of God ; but I am dealing here
with general principles rather than with detailed exposi
tion. We thus conclude from Scripture and reason that
man is made by God an organized spiritual being, to
live on (after his mere material organization, made for
this world's purposes, has ceased to exist) in a spiritual
environment or world corresponding to the spiritual
organization which he essentially is. What is man as
we know him ? An organized spiritual being, possessing
a material body.
We now turn to the other aspect of the question.
What is his origin ? Where does he come from ? What
does he come from ? He came forth from God and
returns to God. That is the account Jesus Christ gave
of Himself. That is the account man has to give of
himself. " Well, but that is Scripture, and I should like
you to put the reasons of the case, as you did in regard
to our substance."
Is there, then, such a thing in the material world as
cause ? There is sequence, nothing else. One event
follows another, but does not cause it. There is no such
thing as causation in the external world. Causation
begins with man's will, from which, also, is the origin of
his idea of cause. Science teaches, and we accept the
teaching, that the external world is merely a complex
series of sequences. Well, then, how is it — for out of
this has come the dictum that, inasmuch as there is

OUR SUBSTANCE AND ORIGIN. 13
nothing but sequence in the world, we must dispense at
last with cause — how is it that, in spite of this persistent
sequence in the world around us, there is a persistent
declaration in the mind of man for cause ? He takes up
a book, it is a man's work, it was caused by somebody ;
and he can no more get away from the idea of cause than
he can deny his own nature. He looks to the things
around him : they were all caused by something. When
he looks to the world, the stars, the universe, he is bound
equally to believe in a cause. The persistent feeling in
the mind of man, which nothing can eliminate, is that
nature was caused somehow and by something. Here is
a tree. You say, perhaps, that that tree arose from a
complex and orderly series of sequences by which the
particles cohering to make this whole were gathered
together, and that its growth or nourishment is but an
extension of the process. Just so, but what caused this
concatenation and orderly sequence ? " Oh, that is from
law and order, which are the results of the nature of
things." Well, then, and at last, what caused the nature
of things ? Go back as far as you will, and the inexorable
demand for cause will always meet you. The mind
declares for cause, then, and nature manifests sequences
without cause. There is no such thing as cause on the
plane of nature, and yet the mind declares that for it such
a thing is, and must exist. If not on the plane of
nature, where can the mind conceive it but on a plane
above or interior to nature — the plane of spiritual sub
stance, previously verified ? The spiritual world is within
the natural, as the soul is within the body. Here is
the plane of cause. The plane of mind is the plane of
cause. It is from the action of spiritual substance, or

14 OUR SUBSTANCE AND ORIGIN.
mind, that material forms are determined. The cause
and origin of man himself, then, even on the material
side, is something mental or spiritual ; he, like the world
about him, has a spiritual cause and origin.
Further, what is this Cause? It is infinite, for if
that mental or spiritual cause were not infinite, there
would be something not produced by it. It follows
that, by the very supposition, that Cause is infinite ; it
is also on a plane transcending the natural plane ; but
an Infinite Spiritual Cause can only be called by One
Name, and I call it God.
Further still, in what way are we to think of the
Infinite Cause or God ? Our only idea must be anthropo
morphic, and we cannot help ourselves : in the very
nature of the case it is bound to be so. Man is bound
to think (for we are trying to find out what man is bound
to think) that God must be as he is. Don't you know that
if a dog could think of God it would think of Him as a
dog, and that a horse would think of Him as a horse ?
and if you can think (and you can think) of God, — and you
are bound to do so, as we have seen, by the laws of your
nature, — the first declaration that arises is, " What am I,
as a human creature, bound to think and believe concern
ing this Cause but that He is essentially like me — that He
is infinitely that which I am finitely." Yes, and reason
declares that God is like you. You have emotions and
feelings, and God has these, and they express them
selves as will : well, God has that ; is He not Love ?
Are you loyal to reason or no ? To the facts of your
nature or not ? If you are, you will believe this. If you
are not, you will deny it. Again, you have also thoughts
expressed by intellect ; and is not God Wisdom or The

OUR SUBSTANCE AND ORIGIN. 15
Word ? You have will and you have intellect, therefore ;
and God has these, for God is Love and Wisdom. Again,
you have energies proceeding from these two ; and is
there not a Divine Energy or Proceeding ? You are a
threefold being, having nothing more nor less in you
than affections, thoughts, and energy : you are these
three. Well, so is God. God is infinite Will, infinite
Intellect, infinite Energy. There is, therefore, a trinity
in God. A trinity of persons ? Surely no ! Are there
three persons in you, because these three powers con
stitute you ? But, as there is a trinity in you, certain and
sure, and nothing but that, there is a trinity in God, and
you are bound to believe that, if you are true and loyal
to your own nature and reason.
This is the declaration of Scripture also : Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit ; not three manifestations of God, nor
three persons in God, but three powers in God, three
essentials of God's nature; and the one person of
Jehovah is at once Father, Son, and Spirit. God is
love, that is the Father. Father, therefore, is simply the
name for all those affectional powers in God expressed
by the one word Love. But God is Wisdom also, the
Word or Logos, the outcome of that Love : here is the
Son, for was it not the Word that was made flesh ?
God is Energy — that proceeding efflux from Father
through the Son, known in Scripture as the Holy Spirit.
Out of these comes the Spirit. And how do these get
embodied in flesh ? " God is in Christ : " the One
Person of God takes form as Man, and is known as
Jesus Christ, in whom is " the fulness of the Godhead
bodily." Here we have the teaching of Scripture, and
God is, as reason itself has declared before consulting

1 6 OUR SUBSTANCE AND ORIGIN.
Scripture — God is as man is, only infinitely what man is
finitely. The origin of man is God. " God created man
in His own image and likeness.'' It was from an efflux of
the Divine nature passing forth to the external world,
and fitting there to itself a material organism taken from
dust, that man was brought forth. Is this transcendent ?
It is rational. Nothing is more transcendent than the
simplest facts of life.
In regard to these two questions, then, What man is,
and, What is man's origin ? we take it that this is the
answer both of nature and of reason, and, not lastly but
firstly, before all, and round all, and within all, the
answer of Scripture itself, that man is an organized
spiritual being, brought forth from and by the Infinite
God, clothed, for transient purposes in this world, in a
body of flesh which is dust, in order to be prepared
therein to fulfil God's eternal purposes in the world to
come ; and thus we fall back upon the final solution of
man's origin, upon that which alone can give rest to the
human soul, — God.
Well, but He may not exist after all ; it may be ,only
my idea ! Trust the idea which your nature impels you
to hold, and all else will come right. Be loyal to the
facts of reason, and things as they are will not be far
from reason's way.
Oh, but I hear another voice, which cries, " You say
the mind declares for cause, and you lead the mind up to
God as the cause of all. Then what caused God ? Oh,
I am back again in the old slough. Say, Is God caused
t oo ? " No, brother, but you make a mistake in your
reasoning ; you are, though you know it not, breathing
into the word Cause the sequence of nature. Sequence,

OUR SUBSTANCE AND ORIGIN. 17
you know, is simply succession. Cause is the stoppage
of succession, and your idea that God may be caused is
really a denial of Cause and a reintroduction of sequence.
You are taking nature's idea and reading it into Cause.
In Cause there is no such succession ; there is the
beginning of successions. When, therefore, the mind
declares that there is a cause of these successions, the
Last has been reached ; and you cannot now, to be true
to your nature and reason, apply the law of succession to
the Cause, for therein you will be denying that Cause
which the mind affirms.
The mind declares for Cause, and we have reached it ;
and here we rest : here we have the origin of all
sequence and of man. He knows that he must believe
that the Cause is, and he must think it like himself,
because he cannot choose but so think ; but what it is
in the Infinite depth beyond — that he knows not. Every
being has his Highest or Primal whose height he cannot
reach nor know. There is the dog following the man.
Does the dog know all about his master? The dog
knows that the master is; but would he not cease to be
dog if he understood his master through and through
and all about? Neither would you have a human
creature comprehend his God ; to do that he must be
God Himself. But he can understand that God is ; his
nature and reason and Scripture have determined that.
Man cannot get behind God. We have to bow our
reason before this primary Cause and Power — the living
God :— " The Lord, He is the God ; the Lord, He is the
God."

THE EVIL FACTOR.
"And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and
that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make
one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat ; and gave unto
her husband with her, and he did eat. And the eyes of them both
were opened, and they knew that they were naked." — Gen. iii. 6, 7.
OUR subject to-night is the Evil Factor, the evil
agency or principle in the human mind and race.
I want, if possible, to get hold of what this is ; I
want to find its causes ; I want to find its origin ; I want,
with you, to see whether the Scriptural interpretation of it
be the legitimate and reasonable one ; I want to see what
relation God has to it ; I want to know something of the
outcome of it ; and I desire, with you, to investigate this
matter in the spirit of freedom, of rationality, and of
reverence. The presence of evil, then, in the human
mind is what concerns us to-night.
What is this evil ? How is it to be accounted for ?
At the very outset we are met by some who
declare that there is no such thing as evil. You may
well be staggered at such a declaration. You would
naturally say at once, "No such thing? Why, is not
life full of it ? " " Oh no," they say, " life is full of what
you may call evil if you like, but that is only your name
for it. In our judgment it is only a difference here of
feeling, of emotion ; a difference there of action. Why

THE EVIL FACTOR. 19
should you call one particular form of life good, and
another form of life bad or evil, when each is equally
radical and germain to man with the other ? Evil in the
sense of deprivation or want of attainment, we admit ; as
wrong, we cannot." Moreover, the theological idea of
sin is one which, of course, these people cannot
accept. " Want of conformity to anybody's law, or trans
gression of it," they say, "cannot be justly brought
home to man, for the simple reason that in all his actions,
be they good or be they so-called evil, he is carrying out
that which is within himself. The one thing is within
him, and is his as well as the other. Why then do you
class the action or result of one as evil or sin, or both,
and of the other as good ? " In answer to this position
we would ask, Is there no principle in the human mind
which makes it aware of the working of these two factors,
the so-called good and evil ? There are two such things,
this and that, whether you call it good or evil, or no ;
but is not the human mind conscious that there are two
such things working together, or opposedly to each other
in the mental life and action? Are not those people
who hold this position themselves aware that this thing
they do they may legitimately encourage themselves in ;
and that about this other they have a little hesitance or
qualm (of conscience, if you will call it so) as to whether
they should do it or not? What is the cause of the
difference ? Why should there be a complete, a pure,
nay, a sheer approval on the one hand ; and why should
there be, on the other, a hesitant regard, if not a down
right disapproval ? Every man is brought before the bar
of his own mind. You need not go higher than this to
prove evil. Every man is brought before the bar of his

20 THE EVIL FACTOR.
own mind ; and is clear enough upon the subject of its
judgments in some or other aspects of right and wrong,
or where self-justification is not involved. There is, in
fact, to every sane man a conscience of right and wrong,
— if he does not find it, he will even make it. If you
educate a thief to thieving, you will create a conscience
in him in favour of thieving. You have created in him
a principle which enables him to approve of his own ex-
pertness in doing this particular thing, and he thereafter
makes a conscience of doing it well. This shows you
that the human creature is so constituted that it cannot
think or live otherwise than under a law of right and
wrong ; it is bound to make such a distinction in all
feeling and action, and its conscious life is the outcome
of these distinctions. Whether it be right or wrong
towards God and good, — or what the Bible calls such, — •
or whether it be only right or wrong towards man's own
feeling and mind, it is, nevertheless, this perception of a
right and a wrong upon which all his life is based.
Wrong is evil against the man himself in the first
instance, against society or humanity in the second
instance, and (those who believe in the Scriptures and
God say) against God and His Word in the third in
stance. We need not at present carry it so far. All I
am content to do is to point out to you that every man
is conscious, at some point, of a good and an evil
within him, a right and a wrong, a this and a that,
which he approves or disapproves. There is also a
perceptive power in every man, above and beyond both
these two streams of feelings and conduct, which recog
nises and judges them. You may call this third power
what you please, but it is there, and it is not created by

THE EVIL FACTOR. 21
the man. It is in fact the law of Some Power greater
than he, and whose transgression we know as sin. This
will clear out of the way the first point, involving the
principle held by those who deny the existence of evil
and sin, and look upon the facts covered by these names
as only a case of partial development. But the state of
partial development could never admit or recognise a
wrong such as we have seen and know to be recognised
by every man.
Pass now to another phase of the subject. Having
got the notion fairly before us that we may, at the bar of
our own minds, admit the fact of evil, do we not see now
how full human life is of this very thing? Is murder no
wrong ? Is adultery no wrong ? Is stealing no wrong ?
Are not these acts wrongs against Society ? and if they
are wrongs against Society, they are evils in the life of
Society. Surely the man who has his purse stolen, and
who happens to hold the first idea I mentioned, will not
hesitate still to bring the thief before the bar of justice.
What, then, becomes o'f his abstract theories? If steal
ing were not an evil, it would surely be as little of an
evil for the man who lost his purse, as for the man who
stole it. But we see daily how much astray such theories
of life lead men ; yet, in truth (and well it is so), those
who hold them do not too rigorously apply them.
Look at human life ! It is filled full, through and
through, with evils disastrous to human good. There
are physical evils everywhere invading the human body,
oppressions of life, lack of vitality, disorganization,
physical wretchedness, and discord, to say nothing of
poverty and such-like social results of evil as may
come up for discussion in future lectures. Again, there

22 THE EVIL FACTOR.
are similar evils of the mind ; passing by all of that
general sense of wrongness pervading the race, or of
that very special sense of evil-doing that may possess the
mind, look only at that vague, illimitable desire somehow
to adjust ourselves better to life and the sum of things,
that ideal aspiration after something nobler and com
pleter than we have hitherto reached or possessed.
Why should there be this longing after adjustment and
rightness, unobtained and apparently unobtainable? If
the human race was brought on the earth simply by
nature, how do you explain this discord between the
reality and the aspiration ? If men are the creation of
natural evolution, how do you account for it ? For the
members of the vegetable and animal kingdoms are free
to carry out their own purposes and will, and the discord
between the creature and his surroundings begins only
with man. Why should discord begin anywhere at all ?
It would be impossible if nature, as many hold, was the
cause of our being, for she would then produce that
which was kin with herself, and could not supposably do
otherwise. But if she be the cause of our being, she
has produced something else than that which is kin with
herself : she has produced this that men have recognised
as one of the widest and deepest facts of life, going down
to the roots of that life itself, and as manifold and multi
form as the human powers.
What, let us now inquire, is the origin of evil ? Men
have thought to account for it by various schemes.
Some, from the very inscrutableness of the fact and
its universal presence, are driven away from religion
altogether ; for no human heart is without it, and it
makes desolation everywhere; and those who have

THE EVIL FACTOR. 23
accepted religion in spite of these facts have yet said,
" Surely God, who is omnipotent, might have prevented
the incursion of this thing. Why is it not prevented ? "
Others, again, have reasoned that, inasmuch as God is
omnipotent and all-wise, and is the original source of
all things, He must also be the source of evil. And this
idea of the origin of evil in the Divine Nature itself they
have even supported and proved from Scripture.1 Such
notions it does not come in our way to discuss.
We have, then, the factor of evil before us in all forms
and degrees — spiritual, natural, moral, and physical.
How does it come there ? What is its origin ? How is
it possible to imagine an origin for it ? If it does not
lie in the nature of things, how could it come in ? On
the supposition that God had made all things " very
good," as recorded in the Bible, is not the difficulty
really increased ? for how could evil possibly enter or
arise in a being made " very good " ? Evil seems to be
presupposed in the very fact of evil, and the question to
remain insoluble. Yet I think it is possible to state the
matter so simply as to show that evil is not in God, because
that while God made man " very good," evil is from man's
own mind and heart. How then does it arise there?
Even while men, on the Scriptural idea, were good and
happy originally, can you not conceive of circumstances
that would be likely to tend to the introduction of this evil
1 Some, so far as evil in man is concerned, are content to trace it
to an external personal agent called the Devil. Without discussing
the question of the personality of the Devil (which idea may be
shown to be a theological and critical blunder), it is plain that in this
way no solution lies, either as regards man, the supposed Devil, or
God.

24 THE EVIL FACTOR.
factor ? I think we can, and that with no great difficulty,
if we " follow it thither with modesty enough and likeli
hood to lead it." Well, suppose that one of these primi
tive men were lying under a tree, on a beautiful day,
with no desire but that of good, and no thought but of
being good. He has no knowledge of evil, but he is in
the enjoyment of the senses of the body, and the plea
sures arising therefrom, and he assimilates the sky and the
sun, and the air itself seems as heaven to him. There
he is in the pure enjoyment of nature through his sensu
ous life. But is he capable of no other enjoyment?
If he be in good, as we have supposed, he is capable of
yet deeper enjoyment than this. He has thoughts and
feelings that can go forth to the source of all things.
He would do good to men for God's sake, for he loves
God and men, and has all spiritual delights interpenetrat
ing the natural. Here, then, is the spiritual region or
degree of man's mind ; and this region or degree exists
in the man's mind along with or above the natural
region already referred to ; for man can possess no
power unless he has an organ for that power. Surely,
then, these two degrees of power existing in him con
currently, he would have the consciousness of each and
of their relative interaction ; he would from their very
difference, so perceived by comparison, be able to make
choice between them ; in that choice, based on know
ledge, rationality and liberty would alike be involved,
and, in these, the further possibility of following the
dictates of either, or of subjecting either to the other,
and of confirming the lower as against the higher — the
possibility, i.e. of evil and of sin. If he has in him, I
say, these natural powers, affections, and desires, he can

THE EVIL FACTOR. 25
enjoy these if he will. And if he has in him, also,
spiritual promptings and desires to love God and do
good to men, he can enjoy these also if he will. And
the very fact of these two classes of powers, natural and
spiritual, existing in him produces that freedom of choice
which, as a matter of fact, he possesses, and involves the
possibility of electing to follow the one, with knowledge,
as against the other ; for he is not in both at once but in
either alternately.
Now let us see distinctly how and where evil may
come in. The man, as we have imagined, is under the
tree enjoying the beauties of nature and the delights of
the senses. Some one comes hastily towards him and
tells him he is wanted. He gets up at once, goes and
does what he is wanted for, and returns to his place
under the tree ; and as he lies there he begins to
meditate upon his action and himself — on the strange
creature that he is. " It was very sweet and pleasure-
able here," he thinks, "why should I have gone?
Certainly it was a pleasure to go, but need I have
gone? Not unless I had chosen; but need I have
chosen ? Well, I might surely have lain still ? Ah !
but I couldn't have done that with satisfaction — it
would have hurt me to do it. But why would it have
hurt me? Because my neighbour's interest is greater
than my own. There is a higher and a lower in me,
then, and yet both good in their place ? Yes, plainly ;
but may I never yield to the lower at the cost of the
higher! What a curious complex creature I am, and
how little I understand of myself. Two streams of
tendency in me, either of which I can follow as I will,
but only one way to do it with rightness and self-approval !

26 THE EVIL FACTOR.
And what would this disapproval be, and what would it
mean?" As he proceeds with his meditations on this
mental hurt he might, if he would, inflict on himself,
another call is heard, of a like nature to the first. He
lies smiling and listening, but does not get up at once to
go. He pleases himself thus by lying and meditating,
instead of getting up and going ; but on the instant he
begins to observe that he is inclining to the lower love.
From that moment his real, practical knowledge of a
possible evil for him has begun. As yet there is no
actual evil, because he has not hitherto acted with a full
and clear knowledge of the facts. But perceiving, as he
does, a lower and a higher good, — each a good in its
place and degree, at work within him, having some
knowledge of the self-love into which the lower path will
lead him, — if he now should hesitate, he has chosen the
lower good ; and being on the inclined plane, if he
confirms, by reasoning, that lower choice, he has elected
self-love as his ruling principle, and is already on the path
of evil : he has become, voluntarily, a demoralized man.
Observe distinctly here wherein the man's choice
actually lies : it is not, in the first instance, between
a good and an evil, but between a higher good and
a lower. He has two classes of powers from which
he acts — the spiritual and the natural ; but they are both
good in their own degree. His sensuous and all natural
powers were good, just as his spiritual thoughts and feel
ings were good; yet there was, in these two, a higher
good and a lower. If the man chose the higher he
would approve himself, and others would approve him ;
but even if he acted from the lower instead of the higher,
you could not charge him with evil, only with having

THE EVIL FACTOR. 27
chosen the less good. How then does evil come in ?
If he, while in the perception of this less good, as compared
with the higher, chooses now to make that less good a
leading principle for himself, if he confirm it so, by
reasoning and action upon it, that he make it the rule of
his life, the result is the presence of evil in the man.
If man, then, is in freedom — and he is in freedom
between these two powers, spiritual and natural — the
presence of evil can arise from this very condition ; and
there is no inscrutable mystery in its origin. That is
really present in possibility, but not in necessity, by the
possession of such a twofold nature. Only a spiritual-
natural man could be in freedom, and only a being so
constituted could do evil. A merely natural man (if
such a being were supposable) would not have moral
freedom, his action would be automatic like that of the
brute creation, and sin would be impossible for him.1
It is in the very gift of freedom, therefore, that the possi
bility of evil lies.
Then is God to blame ? Assuredly not. " God made
man in His own image and likeness," in freedom, there
fore, because Himself is free. He would have a being that
could will to be good, and he must thus have comparison
of good before choice could be possible ; i.e. he must have
freedom in order alike to rise or fall. There is no com
pulsion whatever here; the whole conditions are based
upon its precise opposite. But with that fact of freedom
of choice and action between two classes of good, there
comes, as I have said, the possibility of listening to the
1 Does this show us why men inclined to be preponderantly natural-
minded are also given to the automatic explanation of human action,
and the denial, equally, of moral freedom and of sin's existence ?

28 THE EVIL FACTOR.
one or to the other; and of following the impulses of
either. Yes, and God would rather have man do wrong
than simply be a machine. You think that is an awful
doctrine ; but is it ? Does God wish men to do wrong ?
No ; but the race has done wrong, and, if God created
men in freedom and sustains them in it even while they
do the wrong He deprecates, there lies in that fact the
evidence that He would rather have wrong done, and
good achieved by means of it, than have men to be simply
automata. He created them to be men. By choos
ing the higher they confirm themselves therein, and
make the lower its instrument ; and this is God's idea,
not only to create man with " the vision and the faculty
divine," but to lift him into the transcendent possession
of their uses. But man failed and chose the lower
course, and the world's condition verifies the statement ;
he has since had to plod on through the slough of
miseries and despairs, with God over all watching to help
and waiting for the outcome.
Here, then, briefly and necessarily imperfectly put, is
the origin of evil ; and the next point that claims our
attention, in pursuing the subject of The Evil Factor, is
God's relation to it. God's relation to evil is a subject
which has been much thought of in the Church, and
much written about, and, as we conceive, just as much
perverted. We have been very far, indeed, even from a
just apprehension of the facts in regard to it, to say
nothing of reasonings thereupon.
Two aspects of the question immediately present them
selves to us. When man had sinned, first, what God did
then and there ; and second, what He was to do in the
future : in other words, what was God's immediate

THE EVIL FACTOR. 29
relation, and what is His ultimate relation, to the wrong
done by man ?
In the first place, then, what was God's immediate
relation to the wrong done? Did God curse man
because he had done wrong ? Certainly not ! But does
it not distinctly say in the Bible, in this very chapter,
that God drove man out of the garden of Eden, and
cursed the ground for His sake ? " In the sweat of thy
face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the
ground ; for out of it thou wast taken : for dust thou art,
and unto dust shalt thou return." And do we not also
read that the serpent was cursed, and condemned to go
on his belly all the days of his life, and that the woman
should bear seed in pain and sorrow? Are these not
curses? No, these are not curses. That notion is
simply the theological statement of the matter which
the Church has seen good to give ; but we read them
as the providential declarations of the outcome of
man's own transgression. Let us read these so-
called curses, beginning with the serpent : " The
serpent beguiled me," says the woman, " and I did eat."
Then we read that " The Lord God said unto the
serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou are cursed
above all cattle, and above every beast of the field." To
say nothing of the erroneous description conveyed in our
translation (and the serpent, of course, is not " cattle "
at all), there is no reason to believe in any curse existing
upon the serpent as a matter of fact. But in what does
the supposed curse consist ? Let us see. " Upon thy
belly shalt thou go," — but the serpent never went upon
anything else. "And dust thou shalt eat all the days of
thy life." Surely the serpent never did eat dust ! The

30 THE EVIL FACTOR.
food of the serpent is birds, mice, fruit, and so on.
These he will eat ; but dust most assuredly he does
not eat. " I will put enmity between thee and the
woman, and between thy seed and her seed." Is there
any peculiar enmity existing between serpents and
women ? " It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt
bruise his heel." This, of course, never happened as a
matter of literal fact. And this is the curse upon the
serpent, not one of the items of which is true ! The
so-called curse upon the serpent, then, simply does not
exist ; it is not answered to by any facts known to us.
Turn now to the other curses pronounced. Unto the
woman he said, " I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and
thy conception." This is not universally true. It is the
fact in regard to the women of Western nations, and is a
result of the unnatural restraints of civilisation ; but it is
not true with regard to naturally developed women —
savage women — or of the vast majority of the women of
the earth. It is man again, and man's civilisation so called,
that has produced this enormity. " In sorrow thou shalt
bring forth children." But this is surely the mother's
greatest joy, and not a cause of sorrow. She may wonder
sometimes how she is going to feed the little one, but she
feels no sorrow when the babe is nestling in her bosom,
but rather "joy that a man is born into the world."
"Thy desire shall be to thy husband." Where should
it be but to her husband ? " And he shall rule over
thee." This word "rule" does not signify absolute
despotic sway, but guidance from reason and prudence.
And can it be held as a curse that the discretion of the
husband should guide the affections of the wife, that the
wife should take the husband's thought into her affections,

THE EVIL FACTOR. 31
and, of course, carry it out in her life so far as she can
understand and assimilate it ? There is no curse but a
blessing in the whole of such mutual relationship — the
relationship of affection and thought. Now turn to the
case of the man. " Because thou hast hearkened unto
the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which
I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it :
cursed is the ground for thy sake ; in sorrow shalt thou
eat of it all the days of thy life : thorns also and thistles
shall it bring forth to thee ; and thou shalt eat the herb
of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat
bread, till thou return unto the ground ; " and so on.
The gist of these statements lies in the idea of a radical
change at this time made in the qualities of the soil. It
is supposed by many that, from that time on, the ground
was cursed ; that before that time it was rich and plen
tiful in produce, but that afterward a chemical change
was produced in it, and it brought forth thorns and
thistles. Can you conceive a time in which nature of her
self, untilled, did not bring forth these things ? Geology
teaches us that such things existed long enough before
man appeared on the earth. Or can you conceive that
God should in anger, or in any other way, change the
constitution of the soil in order to give man extra trouble
and labour ? But these foolish and merely theological
notions do not hold good in any part of them. Pro
vidential prevision of coming evils, and made in love,
not wrath, these declarations are.
Let me tell you in brief what this whole story means.
It is said that God placed man in a garden to dress it ;
that he was to eat of certain trees, but not of others ;
that he was tempted by a serpent ; and that he sinned

32 THE EVIL FACTOR.
and was expelled. All this is plainly symbolic of
spiritual facts in the life of man. The serpent is a
symbol of the sensuous, animal nature of man ; that part
of man which delights in grovelling, sensual things, self-
loves, and self-satisfactions, — in short, man's animal
powers and enjoyments perverted. This is the sensual
or serpent nature; and this is that which tempts the
woman — the symbol of the affections. The sensuous
nature tempts the affectional. If the sensuous nature is
perverted, does it not delight in the external things of the
senses for their own sake ? and do not the senses draw
down the affections after them ? The affections, going
out after the sensuous impressions, come to love things
that look beautiful, that taste sweet, whether to the
inward or outward palate, calling them " pleasant to the
eyes, and to be desired to make one wise," and inevitably
end in becoming the slaves of the delights which tempted
them : the serpent tempts the woman. But the woman
tempts the man. Just as the " serpent " is the symbol
of the sensual,, and the " woman " the symbol of the
affectional nature ; so the " man " here is the symbol of
the reason or rational powers. And just as the sensual
nature tempts the affectional, so the affectional tempts
the rational, as may easily be shown. When, from the
sensuous principle, a man has done a sensual act through
the subjugation of the affections, his next course, if he
proceeds far enough, is to justify his action by reason
either to himself or to others, or to both ; and therein
reason, too, has fallen. " The woman whom thou gavest
to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat."
Any evil may be justified by the plea of the strength of
the affections. With the sensuous nature temptation

THE EVIL FACTOR. 33
begins ; then the affectional nature is drawn down and
immersed in the sensuous ; finally, reason follows and
pleads excuses and justification for the new state ; and
the fall of man is complete. The story in Genesis is a
symbol of every such fall in every day of our latter time,
as it was in the days of the first men who fell.
And the curses ? They are now seen to be God
telling man the immediate and prospective results of
this new state and relation into which he has come.
The sensuous nature will go on to delight in and live
upon sensuous enjoyments, the serpent will grovel on its
belly and eat dust, — till " It (the seed of the woman)
shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."
The head of the serpent must be crushed before the
serpent can be killed, but his bruiser's heel is injured ;
the vital principle of sensuous love must be crushed in
order to a return to spiritual purity; but the lower
nature cannot pass through such conflicts uninjured.
Here, then, is the meaning of the so-called curse on
the serpent. With regard to that pronounced on the
woman, surely the one great struggle of the affections
is to conceive and bring forth purity and goodness ;
and this is the true source of wrestling, of weariness, pain,
and temptation that come to all of us. Here too, then, is
the sorrow and conception ; the conception and bringing
forth in sorrow of good acts from the affections — his
spiritual children — holds as truly of man to-day as of
those men and women who were the subjects of this
story. Who shall adequately depict such sorrow ? But the
human struggle is yet deepened and intensified by
another element, for as surely as this conflict takes
c

34 THE EVIL FACTOR.
place in the affectional nature, so from the same cause
there follows a struggle in the rational mind ; and all
its tillage of the earth, that is, all the reason's diligent
inquiries and search for truth, out of which, in turn,
fruit or good may come, shall be done henceforth in
difficulty, amid abundant falsities, in trouble of mind,
and even in despair.
This the Lord puts before man as the outcome, pro
phetically, of the self-love which has thus been engen
dered, the state of degradation, through it, into which
he has fallen, and that of mere naturalism — the return
ing to the ground — into which he is still to descend.
Man's fall was not accomplished at once, by eating an
apple, or any other fruit ; such eating is pure symbol.
That decline from good came about naturally and gradu
ally (in many men, not merely in one man), by the
choice of a lower good instead of higher, and by God
allowing His own laws to have free play in and by
means of the freedom of man. But God tells him
plainly what the result of all this will be.
Now, let us turn to the other aspect of God's relation
to evil : What we have called the future relation. We
have seen that at the time God did not curse man ;
but how will God stand to the results of man's sin?
Will He punish for the sake of punishing or to vindicate
a broken law ? Has God created hell in order to put
men into for violating that law? My one answer is,
and all is contained within it, that God never does any
thing else but forgive. Has he not, then, made hell?
Just as man creates evil, so man creates hell. Hell is
evil, and is begun here and now. Each man's lusts
make his own hell ; and when wicked men depart from

THE EVIL FACTOR. 35
this world into the other, their multitude there is the
hell of which the Scriptures speak.
But are there no penalties ? There are penalties, too,
but God does not inflict them ; it is quite enough that
men inflict them on each other. Does God send an
arm through the air to inflict punishment on any man
in this world who flagrantly breaks His laws ? Why,
then, should God be supposed to do that in the other
world which he does not do in this — to interfere with the
orderly action of law ? God governs men in this and the
other world by a natural law of development, by which
men follow out the results of their own transgressions,
by which they possess the evils they have created, by
which the consequences of these evils come to each, and
by which retaliation for evil done to others forms the
punishment for themselves.
Some men have thought that if God had liked, He
could have stepped in and prevented this terrible
disaster of the presence of evil. Such men think of
God as Omnipotent, without thinking of Him as All-
wise. Moreover, the supposed vengeful relation of God
to the results of man's evil has something to do with
suggesting this idea. But it is neither in God's nature
to curse nor to be unforgiving ; but God's forgiveness
does not remove the fact of evil. He forgives from
first to last, and provides the very means for man's
returning. He assumed our humanity to bring back, if
possible, the fallen ; and yet somehow men say that
God needs to be pleaded with in order to forgive !
He forgives, but His law remains inviolable. Let man
beware, then, how he acts to so deeply-loving and long-
suffering a Saviour, — how he hugs his sin to him and

36 THE EVIL FACTOR.
loves it ; for by the unalterable law of Divine Love every
sin man does and repeats plunges him deeper into his
own hell of lust and passion ; and this, God's unalter
able law, is as certain and sure in its action, and holds
just as infallibly in the region of our moral nature as in
that of our natural body. Hence hell is created by man,
as certainly as the evil which he first chose, and which
causes it.
And the last thing I have to say to-night is that evil is
the highest attestation God could, through permission,
have given to the nobleness and dignity of man. Instead
of the presence of evil militating against a thought of the
goodness of God and the greatness of man, men ought
to perceive that none but the noble could have fallen as
man has fallen. If he had not possessed that god-like
freedom, there could have been no transgression ; and
there is no alternative between this freedom and the
merest automatic existence — a form of life neither
human nor god-like. It is here that the greatness lies —
in man's likeness to God ; and, if the love of God can
see the weariness, and pain, and toil of this world, and
could bear them in human form (for " He bare our
sins in his own body up to and upon the tree ") the
deeper labour of our life is His, and the greater, more
constant care.
Another aspect of this truth is, that as surely as we
believe that He made us with capabilities of higher and
nobler being, so surely will the true perception of the fact
enable us to declare that He was bound by His own
righteousness and Divine Love and Wisdom to follow us
to the last and see the great conflict through. Did He
not give us these faculties ? And He has followed us

THE EVIL FACTOR. 37
through the fall of these faculties. His revealed desire
for us is that the resplendent temple of the living God,
which man is, may be once more built, that the human
soul may be regenerated, and the heaven of heavens
peopled with a purified ennobled humanity.
And this is the outcome of what is going on at the
present day, what every struggle in you and me helps
on — the result of our temptations ; and out of all the
contest men will come purified as by fire, purified ten
fold, with a grander humanity adorning them than could
ever have been theirs without this grievous decline and
these bitter evils. Do you think that puts a premium
upon wrong-doing ? If you think so, try it, and you will
find you were never so much mistaken. While God is
anxious and willing to save all who come to Him, those
who take the law of life into their own hands will have to
accept its consequences with it.
Evil, then, is man's own self-love, the love of pleasure
as opposed to the love of God, of the sensuous as opposed
to the spiritual, of the lesser as opposed to the higher ;
till even the higher may be trampled under foot by the
lower and degraded in the dust of naturalism from which
man sprang. But let the lower and natural mind take
its own place as the servant of the higher and spiritual
nature, and God and His Divine Order and Law will be
with us, and we shall advance into the fruition of good
intended, through us, both for ourselves and for humanity.

THE DOUBT PERIOD.
" When the son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?"
— Luke xviii. 8.
IT appears, then, that a lack of faith was anticipated,
and that the Lord Himself supposed that a doubt
period would come. We shall see presently what
that doubt period is ; but I cannot pass to it without
making some remarks on the usual way in which any
kind of mental doubt or difficulty is or (in charity let me
say it) has been met. We will suppose it is more a
thing of the past than of the present, although there
might possibly be some little scepticism even as to that.
How have these doubts and difficulties of men been
commonly met? Here is a young man brought up
under evangelical teaching, who has had many ideas
that he has not been able to reconcile with that teaching ;
and the more he has thought the more he has been
thrown back upon himself, and the greater difficulties
have been his. He has wished, and many times tried,
to make up his mind to go to his minister, but somehow
he has had a perception of the hopelessness of that, and
has always put it off. But the stress was upon him, and
he has gone and at length told him his case. And the
minister? He shakes his head, and says, "You must
try to believe." " But I cannot believe," says the young
man. " You must not utter such words as these ; you

THE DOUBT PERIOD. 39
are certainly in a very bad state. To say you cannot
believe is, you must admit, going too far. Greater men
than you have believed, all through the Church's ages.
You must quell your doubts, you must allay them, you
must set your will against them, and compel yourself to
give in. What are you to stand up against the Church,
and against all those who have believed the truth in all
these ages before you? My dear young friend, there
must be something wrong in yourself. Is there no evil,
no secret sin in you that makes you a doubter ? " " No,
sir, I cannot see there is anything in me that could
produce it. I only know I have it, and it seems to me
I have always had it." " My dear young friend, you must
believe. Let us pray together ; I will pray for you that
faith may be given you — it is the gift of God, you know.
It will come if you only really repent and believe. Put
down your doubts and come with me to the throne of
grace, and I will pray that grace may be given you."
" But, sir, I cannot believe : I only wish I could : I would
give anything to be able to do it. And I have prayed
and prayed, but it seems to me that the very essence of
the things you ask me to believe is against my intelli
gence. You tell me that there are three persons in the
Godhead, and yet that there is only one God. I can't
understand it ; and if I can't, what must I do ? Can I
believe a thing I can't understand ? How can I compel
belief? And many of the other things you tell me, all
along the line, are incomprehensible to me, and every
thing seems to end in mystery." " My young friend,
you are in a much worse state than I thought. I cannot
assist you. You must turn to the Bible and read it
diligently — you really must, and pray that God may help

40 THE DOUBT PERIOD.
your unbelief." And so with a passing prayer he bids
his young friend good-bye ; yes, and the young inquirer
may even be shown the door as the fitting sequel of his
impertinence in daring to doubt what he has been told
to believe, or in daring to speak of his doubts.
Well, I can only say to you, one and all, that if this is
the way in which Christianity meets the intellectual
needs of mankind, the less you have of that so-called
Christianity the better. But it is a perversion of the
very spirit of Christianity so to deal with men ; and if
that be the way, the utterly unintelligent way, in which
Christ's professed disciples meet the questions of those
who are in mental difficulties, the spirit of Christ is not
in them, and the less you have of such disciples the
better. Surely, while the Lord rebuked open and secret
evil, He encouraged all souls who came trembling and
doubting before Him, and applied His cures according
to their state and condition ; and even the doubting
Thomas was not left out, for He descended to his level,
and said to the poor materialistic disciple, " Reach
hither thy finger, and behold my hands ; and reach
hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side : and be not
faithless, but believing" — believing, because you have
now the ground for belief. I restore to you the ground
for belief, and with that the possibility of belief itself.
Nor does the New Church treat men in the way we have
described ; but tenderly and lovingly it cares for doubt,
and replies to it by answering its questions and restoring
the grounds of belief. It knows that doubt is often the
symbol of the mind's capacity to reach a higher state
and knowledge than are possible to the majority. For
most men go on hugging to their bosoms just what their

THE DOUBT PERIOD. 41
forefather believed, and they love their traditional faith
as savages love a fetish, or any race a superstition. In
fact a transmitted belief is, in the mind of the believer,
simply a superstition. The doctrine may be true, and
the object of belief may be real, but if these doctrines
are received by the individual, and believed in by him,
merely because transmitted to him, and upon no intelli
gent perception of them, or without a question as to
their genuineness, they are received by him only as a
superstition, and on a level, as to a vital faith, with that
of the Hindoo or of the savage, or of any men, of any
shade or colour, who simply happen to be born of
particular tribes or nations, and possess the particular
creed or belief that that tribe or nation has transmitted
them. But those who have the capacity for doubt are
of a different stamp from this, and should have the law
of their own case applied to them, and not the law of
the superstitious many. This the New Church endea
vours to do, and alone can do effectually.
Doubt, then, need not necessarily be the bad thing it
is sometimes supposed. Nay, it may be the first sign of
nature's nobility in the opening life. It may arise from
the contemplation of the appalling momentousness of
being; from the presence of a young soul before the
universe, before the possibility of eternity, before the
great mysteries of life and death — the inexorable and the
answerless ; and coming thus, it demands our most
careful and gentle consideration and treatment.
In opening our main theme — the Doubt Period — let
us inquire its origin in the race and in the individual.
Is there, then, a doubt period ? Is the doubt period
in the race and in the individual coincident? What is

42 THE DOUBT PERIOD.
the doubt period in the race? When is the doubt
period in the individual ?
As to the race, there have been at least two such
periods in its history : periods of doubt, and of that
which is deeper than doubt, of denial. Such a period of
doubt and denial was over the earth when the Lord
Himself first came to it. Those who know anything of
ancient history, know what a very terrible state of things
prevailed at that time, — the paralysis of belief under which
men lay, the degeneracy, the unspeakable immorality of
that and the immediately succeeding age, the laughter of
the soothsayers in each other's faces over the sacrifices,
or as they passed each other in the street, — that, in
short, until Jesus Christ came to restore the true basis of
belief by presenting Himself as the subject of it, the
conception of belief as necessary or desirable had
vanished except among a few faithful hearts. Some of
these the Lord made His own disciples, and by their
means laid the basis of the Christian Church He was
about to establish. Yet, even at its very establishment,
He said there should come a time when the love of
many would wax cold, because of the prevalent iniquity.
Iniquity again? Yes, even so, and that during the
history of the Church He was then commencing, and in
that Church itself. Nay, he was to come again at the
very time when iniquity should prevail in His Church,
and in that should lie the meaning and need of His
Coming. Has that period of doubt ever recurred? It
has. Some seem to think there never was a deeper period
of doubt than the present; and yet that is hot quite
true. We have been passing through a period of doubt,

THE DOUBT PERIOD. 43
but we are now beginning to revive : we are now arrest
ing and directing thought and feeling at their centres —
arresting and directing them for a new restoration of
belief. There is a distinct turn in the tide of spiritual
feeling among some who are eminent in science ; a new
hearing is being obtained for any re-statement of Chris
tianity, such as even some years ago would not have
been possible, and the outlook is distinctly clearer for
the hope of greater things to be. Witness that book of
Professor Drummond's — though I say nothing here of
its merits — as an index of a clearing atmosphere. I say,
then, that the worst has really passed, in the fact of a fresh
start, a new beginning having been made. That is every
thing — the beginning of light has come.
But if only the beginning of betterness is here, there
was a worst, and that worst is in the past. It can be
found, then ? When was it ? It was during the middle
and end of the last century ; and here again the appeal
is to history. Was there ever a century, called Christian,
more debased and corrupt, more full of debauchery and
evil, and more characterized by uttermost superficiality ?
It is the "charlatan "among centuries, according to Carlyle;
and more sober historians have borne the strongest testi
mony in the same direction. The last century stands
out with this bad name "Denier" written over its face.
But at the worst period of darkness came some streaks
of light, which gradually unfolded themselves, until it is
now manifest that we have at last entered upon a new age ;
for towards the end of last century and the beginning of
this, general and specific signs of revival and of newness
spread, and have since spread rapidly, over the world.
In Science, and in every branch of it, in Philosophy, in

44 THE DOUBT PERIOD.
practical life, in Philanthropy, and in Religion, " all
things have become new.'' A new spirit and life animate
men — they are renewed in thought and feeling and
practical action. The superstitious faith of the past has
been broken up ; and inquiry, and the determination to
know whereof we affirm, may be said to be the leading
agents in this newness. As a fact, we are now in a New
Age, and so steadily, rapidly progressive is it, that retro
gression would only seem possible by the subversion of
Science and the renouncing of inquiry. If, from the
time of the Lord's First Advent to the third century of
the Christian era, there was a gradual widening of belief ;
if, up to that time, the Christian Church was in course
of being established, and at that time it became fully
established; and if, since that time, there has been a
gradual degeneration from the Council of Nice onwards
through the dark " Middle Ages " to that black last
century ; — who will, or can, now that the turn has set in,
arrest the upward progression ? But at what point, then,
is the Son of Man to come? It cannot be after the
renewal of faith, for it was to be when there was none :
not in the future, therefore. At what point can the Son
of Man come, if that Coming is to be when faith is
extinct in the Church, but just at the turning-point of the
New Age ? And His Coming is the reason and meaning
of the New Age. That Coming is, therefore, not some
appearance in the air or the clouds. It is an infilling of
men with His spirit and presence, even as they receive
His truth, and a new and mighty unconscious principle
working from thence in the hearts and lives of men, that
constitutes that Second Coming ; and — let the Newness
since be witness — He came in the darkness of the

THE DOUBT PERIOD. 45
Church's night. He is the root of the New Age and
restorer of the Church's faith ; and if she progresses from
this point, it is because He is in it, at the back of all,
the impelling and moving cause of this upward pro
gression, or New Era in which we live.
There have been doubt periods in the history of the
Christian races, therefore, and we observe that they are
coincident with, and to be explained by, the Comings of
the Lord to men.
Let us now turn to the individual doubt period. Will
the two not coincide ? Yes, they will coincide. Why ?
Because the minds of the young are the true outcome,
and therefore the true reflectors, of their age. It would
not be strange, then, but to be wholly expected, after
what we have said, that the young men and women of
this day should be in a state of perplexity or even of
absolute denial ; such is the well-known fact, and that
fact is their inheritance from that faithless past, from
which the Church, and therefore the world, are beginning
to emerge. But what is the cause of the perpetuation
of doubt in these young minds, and their continued
rejection of the Church's doctrines or perplexity over
them? The root of it I take to be that the Church has
demanded a belief in doctrine as the condition of salva
tion, and at the same time put before men doctrines that
have taxed belief to the utmost. The answer of the
New Age has been unmistakeable, and practically this :
" We don't believe it ; doctrine never yet saved or
damned anybody : men may be saved under any form
of doctrine ; or in spite of it." Look in all the magazines,
in the hundreds of books coming from the press, and
the basis of rejection is the same. Let Christianity or

46 THE DOUBT PERIOD.
any scheme come before men as a system of doctrine in
order to salvation, which at their peril they reject, and
while admitting the use of doctrine, the meaning of the
answer will be that the whole demand is a huge mistake.
And see, practically, how it turns out. If you tell a man
he must hold such and such a doctrine in order to be
saved, he may give you one of two answers. He may
tell you flatly that your doctrine is of such a nature, and
has such an effect on him, as simply to drive him into
scepticism against his wish or will. If you could explain
either your general principle or your specific doctrines,
he might be able to receive them ; but as you can do
neither, scepticism is his only refuge. Or, on the other
hand, a man may think or compel himself to think that
it must be right to accept what everybody else about
him believes, and so crushes down his difficulties and
unbeliefs, and compels himself to the appearance of
acceptance whether he believes or no. One set of men
will renounce the Church, and declare themselves open
sceptics ; while another set will bow down before her
doctrines, remain within her pale, and too often show by
their lives and actions that they are neither true believers
nor true men. For, if the members of the Church at
the present day did believe in their own doctrines, would
it be possible for sceptics to point to them and say,
" The Church is the strongest argument against the
doctrines of the Church " ?
Thus the individual minds, especially the young minds,
of to-day partake of an influence which they cannot
escape. They are hemmed in and pressed down on all
sides ; and, whether they will or no, they are toned to
the level of the surrounding states. However high their

THE DOUBT PERIOD. 47
ideal may have been, scepticism pervades them, and
their spirits are weighted with the oppressive influence.
They would, not unfrequently, give all they possess only
to be able to believe. "Oh," they say, "to have a
whole-hearted belief! That I might be free from all
mental trouble ! Oh, to be strong and sure ! I would
give the whole world for a belief ! but it is hopeless to
think of reaching it."
Some seem to think that the cause of individual
rejection of the Church's doctrine, and of all his conse
quent trouble, is a secret evil committed by the individual
man ; that it arises from some secret sin. It is very
possible. I don't deny that secret evil things are done,
and that they may be the cause of unbelief in some.
A man's actions always will react upon his beliefs ; this
is inevitable : he cannot in the end retain pure beliefs if
his actions are impure. On the other hand, however,
the circumstances themselves declare that, in the majority
of cases, this doubt on the part of the young amongst
us has come because they are part of the age in which
they live ; it is an inheritance of the age in them, and
they cannot help its presence. They know no way out
of it. They have striven and struggled, and still they are
in it. They look to this side and to that, but no help
comes ; and too frequently they drift off into the deeper
depth of downright denial.
Having looked at the origin of this doubt in the race
and in the individual, the next question that comes up
for our consideration is this : Is man responsible for his
belief? If he is not responsible for his belief, he will
not, of course, be responsible for his doubt. What is
the truth in this matter? There will always be some

48 THE DOUBT PERIOD.
who are responsible, and some who are not. We are
not invariably responsible for our beliefs, but we are
invariably responsible for that which produces them.
What is that ? Conduct. It is this which creates
responsibility for belief, and from which, therefore,
responsibility for doubt arises. You may depend upon
it, that so far as the race is concerned, evil conduct
originally lay at the root of unbelief; that evil is the
origin of unbelief ; and that if the individual has perpetu
ated that evil in his own action, something of unbelief
will be its invariable consequence. Such a thing, for
example, as denial of spiritual causes, could never have
been possible if the mind of the race had held true to its
spiritual instincts. We may be sure that it is always right
to do right ; and if a man had no other faith than that, it
alone would easily keep him square with the world and with
human life ; and what is of more consequence, with his
own soul. Doubt, therefore, about certain secondary
forms of belief, need by no means involve negation on
fundamental things. We can fairly control our actions.
But if we do not, and allow passions to come forth and
play about the surface of our life ; and if we allow our
intellect to think and judge in the light of these passions ;
if we neglect duty, and do not take care of the man in
our conduct; — then indirectly and directly, insidiously and
openly, this human abdication reacts upon our whole
character and tone, reduces their vitality, throws over
them a moral mist and darkness, imperils even their very
existence for good, and at last so shrivels up the manhood
in them that there is nothing left upon which a belief
worth calling by the name could be built. Direct responsi
bility lies here with conduct, the cause of the unbelief,

THE DOUBT PERIOD. . 49
But there are cases in which responsibility is not at
all involved. What are these cases ? They are those
of young men and women, who, while striving to keep
themselves pure, have also striven to believe the doctrines
they were taught in youth, but could not do it ; who
have recoiled, by the very force of their nature, from
these doctrines, — been driven from them, in fact, by the
force of the manhood or the womanhood within them.
Is there, then, no responsibility here ? Most assuredly
not ; and to lay responsibility at such a door would be
to invert all justice and order, and paralyse reason itself.
These are the true children of the age that we ought by
all means to assist and care for. They are here in the
world to-day by thousands, and the one thing they want
is just this, — the presentation of truth in the form of a
rational coherent doctrine, a rational and uniform solu
tion of the difficulties by which they are surrounded.
" Let me see that," they practically say, " and I am satis
fied." They have come to see behind phrases and forms,
and they have ceased to care whether a supposed truth
or given idea or system be orthodox or heterodox. They
have come to understand clearly the dictum that ortho
doxy is my doxy and heterodoxy your doxy, and are
tired of mere terms and catchwords, and by no means
afraid of heresy — perhaps, a little, delight in it. If you
can lead from facts, by reasons, to truth and good, then
there are thousands who would gladly, if they knew it,
accept such salvation openly. Clearly the responsibility
of unbelief in the case of these is to be affixed to the
doctrines from which they dissent, and to the Church
which teaches them.
The next position which inevitably comes before us for
D

So THE DOUBT PERIOD.
consideration is, whether we can believe what we don't
understand ; for it is not only salvation by belief in a
doctrine which has been asked for by the Church, but by
belief in a doctrine essentially and avowedly mysterious.
Now, as a matter of fact, all the doctrines that have been
taught by the Church, from the primary doctrine of the
Trinity down to that of Resurrection, if not of hell-fire
itself, have this last characteristic of " mystery '' to dis
close on examination. You ask for an explanation of a
certain doctrine; a little is given, and a specious suggestion
made. But as you proceed with your request, you get
further into difficulties, and explanation diminishes ; at
last your perseverance is rewarded by being told that
beyond that point no explanation is possible, and that,
without further question, the essential doctrine must be
accepted ; and this is true of the whole circle of the
doctrines the Church has taught to men.
We now begin to understand why men have said " No "
to the Church's demand. Plainly, it is not possible to
do otherwise, if acceptance is to be intelligent and not
superstitious. Mind you, I am saying nothing as to the
doctrines themselves, and am not challenging their truth
or falsehood ; I am only stating the fact, and giving the
reason of their current rejection, viz. that at last, when
you press closely for explanation, you are met and re
pelled by the inevitable "mystery."
In opposition to this attitude of the Church, however,
the inquiring young mind says, "Is not this Word of
God a professed Revelation i and what is a Revelation if
not an unveiling, an unfolding of hidden things ? And
yet this book called the Bible, what is it at the last but a
book of mysteries ? Not a single doctrine that I explore

THE DOUBT PERIOD. 51
can I understand. Instead of being a Revealing to me,
it is the source of increasing perplexities." And the
result is, that in many cases, sadly enough, and in pain
at dissenting from supposed established truth, the young
mind falls away from the things most commonly received,
and finding opprobrium in the position, may finally pass
to the ranks of the sceptical.
Is such a mind justified, then, in its more or less con
scious conviction that we cannot believe what we don't
understand ? Unquestionably ; and the opposite position
rests on a fallacy. "But," you say, "you fill me with
astonishment by such an assertion. Can't I believe what
I don't understand ? Why, the whole of life is based on
the fact that I do." Suppose, then, a savage to whom
somebody shows a piece of ice, and who tells him that
the ice is made from water. He cannot believe it. Then
he is shown how the ice is actually made from water ; he
sees it produced from the machine in place of the water
put in, and he now believes that ice may be made from
water — believes it, you say, though heaslittleunderstands it
as before. He has seen that ice can be made out of water,
but he does not know any more than before how it is
done. Is this not a case of belief without understanding?
The case proves exactly the contrary ; but let us examine
it. What is it that the savage now knows ? That ice can
be made from water. What is it he believes ? Exactly
what he knows — that ice can be made from water. What
is it that the savage does w/know? How the ice is made
from water. And what is it he has no belief about?
Exactly that — how ice is made from water. He now
understands, that is, that ice comes from water ; and this
he believes. He no more understands than before how

52 THE DOUBT PERIOD.
ice comes from water ; and about this, consequently, he
has no belief whatever. In this simple illustration you
really have the radical solution of this difficulty, so in
scrutable to many that a fallacy is currently accepted as
truth ; the solution lies in observing the distinction be
tween understanding that the fact is, and understanding
how it is — between the fact and its explanation. When
you say of anything that you believe it, but you don't
understand it, what you mean is, that you believe the
thing to be, but that you don't know how the thing is, or came
to be. In truth, you believe just what you understand.
Now that we have got the principle, let us apply it
reverently to the case of belief in God. A man says,
" I believe in God, but I don't understand God. This
shows that I can believe what I don't understand." But
you can now see that this is a similar case to the other.
Here, as before, your belief is relative to your compre
hension. What is it you understand ? You understand
that God is. What is your belief? You believe that
God is. What is it you do not understand ? How God
is, or came to be. What is it you have no belief about ?
How God is, or came to be. That's all. It becomes
plain, then, here also, that just in so far as you under
stand, just in so far you believe.
Carry this out practically. When a man is presented
to you for the first time, you may say at once that you
don't like him. Why ? You have gathered this emotion
of dislike from certain feelings about him, and these
feelings sum themselves up in that word ; but the basis
of your feelings is some supposed understanding of the
man, and that imagined knowledge of him creates the
belief that he is bad, although your first acquaintance

THE DOUBT PERIOD. 53
with him may have gone no further than that you have
taken note of his features, his height, and his general
appearance. Your belief would be utterly unjustifiable
without the impression of knowledge which you entertain.
In another case in which you are introduced, you may
like the man, but here, again, your feelings indicate some
supposed understanding. So it is with God. If we truly
believe in God, it is because we know or think we know
something about Him ; and the more we know about Him
or understand of Him, the more we believe in Him, as the
more you know of your friend, the more you believe in
him. Thus, all through life, and in regard to all objects
of thought, belief and understanding keep equal pace.
But the Church has divorced these things. The Church
says in effect that knowledge ends where belief begins.
Strange that such an inversion of the facts of human
nature could ever have taken place. But you now see,
putting it in brief, that when you have little knowledge,
you have little belief; when you have much knowledge,
your belief is great ; when you have no knowledge, you
are unable to formulate any belief; and by following the
principle I have pointed out to you, and seeing the differ
ence between the fact that a thing is and the question
how it is, you may easily apply the distinction, and pene
trate the heart of this universal fallacy.
The next point that lies in our way, then, is to consider
what faith is: if faith implies understanding, does it imply
anything else ? Can it exist alone ? What is its genesis ?
Can we be saved by faith? Yes, we can be saved by faith;
but we cannot be saved by faith alone, for the simple
reason that faith never is alone. What is faith ? It is
the expression of the whole relation of the man to the

54 THE DOUBT PERIOD.
thing believed, — the sign of that relationship. Such is
what, in Scripture and human life, is called a man's
faith ; but what does it involve ? It involves, first of all,
knowledge. Take again the case already given. Your
introduction to a man involves at once some knowledge
of him : you note the colour of his hair and eyes, the
configuration of his body; and a certain amount of know
ledge is implied in this. That knowledge creates some
measure of either liking or disliking. Your knowledge
creates liking, and, let us suppose, your liking creates ?
Creates what? Creates belief. Can you like or love
a man and yet not believe in him ? Plainly you can
not. Thus you see that love and liking come after know
ledge, and after liking belief. But does nothing follow ?
Action follows. Will you know and love, and believe in
another, and do nothing for that other? The proper
order is, therefore, knowledge of the man, liking for the
man, belief in the man, and doing something for the man ;
and you cannot have the last without the other three ;
but the last is good works. Don't you see how all these
hang together ? Knowledge must come first of God or
man ; love must follow according to the knowledge of
God or man ; belief must follow the love of God or man;
and last of all, the working must follow the belief in God
or man. Faith is not then alone. You perceive that
for a man to have faith in God, his whole state must be
a state of faith in regard to God ; that when you speak of
his faith you are in one word describing his attitude God-
ward. Here is the Bible faith also ; and the Bible faith,
no more than natural faith, can be alone. The thing is
impossible. And to be saved by faith alone would be
equally impossible, for there never was such a faith.

THE DOUBT PERIOD. 55
The truth is that either faith must be viewed as
an organic fact in the human constitution, or we are
believing in the merest shadow. Faith works, and
must work, in conjunction with all the powers of man's
mind. The Bible, then, my friends, comes asking our faith
for one central object Does it do so without ground?
Does it expect faith to be baseless? No, certainly.
It puts before us the groundwork of knowledge : Jesus
Christ, "God manifest." It puts before us a central
object of love, was there ever a more loveable mortal,
looked at as such, than Jesus ? And it presents us with
the possibility of belief, because belief follows intuitively
where the knowledge and the liking go. And if you
love the Lord Jesus Christ (and surely when you under
stand something of Him you will not be able to help
yourself), you will feel impelled to strive towards the
embodying His law in your life. In effect, thus, the
Bible says, Here is the groundwork for knowledge of
God ; here is the means for loving God ; here is the
possibility of belief in God ; will you not turn your
thought to Him, that knowledge, and love, and belief,
and action may be united in the only object that can
uplift ahd bless ?
Well, then, lastly, what is the issue of doubt at the
present day? There is one occasion of perplexity
to-day in relation to the problems we are discussing
which must not be passed by — that great exciting occa
sion of the mental ills in the race and the Church which
arises from the outside world — I mean, of course, modern
science. What is the relation of Science to the problem
of unbelief in spiritual facts ? What is her plea ? What

56 THE DOUBT PERIOD.
has she to say in the question ? Listen to her voice : — " I
have widened the bounds of the universe for men ; I
have widened them in time and space ; I have
given you conceptions of the universe which your
Bible creation never did, and never could give you. I
have shown you, in addition to that, the method of the
universe, the way in which nature works and must work,
— must work and cannot help itself; I have shown you
the action and interaction of force, of matter, of life.
Who has done this but me?" Well, Science, have you
done? What then? Have you disposed of God,
Science ? It is pitiable that men should think it. What
has Science done, but disclosed the facts ? And will the
facts dislodge the Cause which produced them ? What
has Science done but shown the method ? And will the
knowledge of the method dislodge the Cause which works
by it ? Why, the method tells only of how the Cause
accomplished the work. The question of belief or unbelief,
then, stands just where it stood. Science has not touched
religion, and cannot touch it, if for no other reason than
this, that the ultimate problem is beyond the bounds
of Science. The ultimate problem has to do with
the spiritual, the unseen, the infinite. The problem of
Science is with the things that are seen and temporal ;
and no amplification of the bounds of the seen and
temporal will ever get rid of the great "I AM" that
produced the temporal, of that Power, and Cause, and
Personal God lying back of the things that are seen.
Science, through its last worthy speaker on this great
subject, openly and professedly declares that the things
that are could not be except from a Primal Power,
but declares that Power Unknown. We don't ask

THE DOUBT PERIOD. 57
Science to say anything on the subject : all we ask
of her is to show us what are the facts and methods
of nature, to lead us up to that great Power, and to
leave us there. When Science has done this, she has
done all that she can do, — the Word of the Lord will do
the rest.

SEX AND MARRIAGE.
" So God created man in His own image, in the image of God
created He him ; male and female created He them." — Gen. i. 27.
•' And He brought her unto the man." — Gen. ii. 22.
THERE is no element of our life at the present day
so marked by discord and disagreement with
essential, vital principles, and therefore by cor
responding evil results, as this of the marriage relation.
It may be said, and fairly said, to be corrupt from the
root upwards : it is the great apostasy from truth and
fact. I am not now saying there are no exceptions,
that there are none who marry in purity, and who
desire to live in purity and truth. But I do say that,
take the world broadly, one characteristic of our
circumstances to-day is, that not only is this relation
not looked upon with the eyes of sanctity, but it is
engaged in for almost any reason than for those which
purity and religion would suggest. . And yet surely
of all relationships this is the most vital, the deepest
and broadest, covering all other relations, and at the
root of all. If, therefore, the world is wrong here, it
may be wrong everywhere else ; in fact, must be more or
less wrong universally. But, on the other hand, were
we right here, and could attain in it to reality and truth,
all other relations, springing as they do, from this, must
enter with it into purity and order.

SEX AND MARRIAGE. 59
Not only, however, is corruption at work here, but light
ness and triviality of feeling. There are many who, though
not entering these circumstances with depraved motives,
yet enter them with not a thought of the possibility of their
being profound and holy relationships. Is marriage,
then, profound and holy? Is it not merely a sexual
relation which I choose to enter because it gratifies me ?
Is not that all it is — the beginning and the end of it ?
If, then, some may think, we enter into this relation in
freedom and from our own desire, surely there is no
more to be said. Thus, by the first class we have noticed,
is entrance to this highest of all human relations made
a degradation ; to the second class, it is a frivolity.
Escaping from these low conceptions, whether of those
who hold marriage as a convenience, or of those who
think it time enough to enter it after the best part of
life has been spent in any manner of dissipation, or of
those who have hardly an idea of it at all as a sacred
institution, it will be my object to-night to show you
something of the meaning of the relationship between
the sexes, and of its outcome in marriage ; to realize
their depth and solemnity as the profoundest facts of
life ; to observe their vital laws, coincident as they are with
those of all nature and all natural relationships ; and to
impress upon ourselves the fact that the preservation
of the order and purity of this spiritual relationship, and
of all others as dependent upon that one, is in our own
hands when once its principle is clearly conceived. If
the welfare of Social Life is thus dependent on the
sexual relation as completed in marriage, the whole
question deserves our deepest consideration. It is im
possible that men and women should not be interested

60 SEX AND MARRIAGE.
in it. Your presence here to-night shows that ; and if
we can remove our thoughts from the region of impurity,
and study it together as a deep and vital matter, surely
only good can come to us in thought and feeling, and
thence in action.
Where has sex its origin ? Is it of the body only, or
of the soul ? If sex were of the body only, we should
expect to see a feminine nature in a male body, and vice
versa; yet, however in some cases it may almost look
like it, it is never so. Sex, then, we may take to be of
the soul. But what is this difference of the soul which
constitutes the difference of sex ? and do we find any
universal principle to which we can ally it ? Is there a
universal principle of sex, or types of such a principle ?
The foundation of marriage is something of affinity
supposed to exist in the parties so united — an affinity
which exists because of the difference of sex. Such
affinity could not be between two of the same sex,
because the element which is the basis of the mental
relation in marriage exists only in the opposite sex.
There might be the friendship of a David and a Jonathan,
or a corresponding womanly friendship, though of the
two the manly friendship is more often the enduring.
Girls at school, brimming over with a general affectionate-
ness, may vow eternal friendship and think they can keep
the vow, but the bond is very fragile ; they are too much
alike to keep it. There wants difference to make com
plement ; and in neither case supposed is there the
necessary difference present.
Is there, then, speaking generally, any appearance or
type of affinity in nature? Looking at the mineral
kingdom, and especially at chemical compounds, are

SEX AND MARRIAGE. 61
we not at once met by the fact of affinity ? When
particles or volumes of gases rush together and com
bine, why do they rush together? It is not because
they are alike, but because they are counterparts, and
necessary to each other for the production of some
mixed form of matter distinct from either. There is
such a case of real affinity, for instance, in the com
bination of the gases oxygen and hydrogen to con
stitute water. It is so all through the mineral kingdom ;
nay, this affinity binding particle with particle runs
through all the world, and all through all worlds and
intervening space. For what is it holds world to world ?
You call it Gravitation, but that is only a name for a
something you cannot explain ; but that something is the
universal form of this very affinity of which we speak. If
we call it magnetic affinity (which I should do), we are
yet no nearer to understanding it. I am not speaking of
this affinity, chemical or magnetic, as being of a sexual
character, but only illustrating from it the general fact of
affinity as seen between the sexes. The illustration may
appear to some like a poetic figure, but it is a remarkable
fact that such a binding relation is the very basis of
being, and that without this thing, described by the same
word as the sexual relation, even the universe itself, so
far as we know, would be impossible.
The magnet, however, shows us another and more curious
aspect of the fact. Here is a mineral subject with two
poles, a positive and a negative, and in that fact lies some
thing more to the purpose. Even should you break the
magnet you still have the two poles intact, and they will
hold the same relation to each other as before. The poles
are facts of nature which you cannot destroy. We call

62 SEX AND MARRIAGE.
them positive and negative ; at any rate there are two, but
there are no more : may we not speak of them as symbols
of the male and female elements ? Here is manifestly a
form of that dualism which exists between the sexes.
Pass to the vegetable kingdom. Here we have what
at least some contend for as a sexual relation among
plants. These appearances are found in two forms : are
there not those of the male and female in even the same
plant, as well as existing separately in two different
classes of plants — these two elements being distinctly
and separately marked in each? And that fact is the
basis of union and propagation in plant life ; yet all
plants, whether related independently to each other, or
sexually within themselves, stand in the same relation to
mother earth from which they spring. She is the mother
of all, and they are her children : in this sense, every
individual of the vegetable kingdom is masculine. You
may say that we are still in the region of poetry ; but
the relation is just as true and real as that children are
the offspring of their parents. It is from the earth the
seeds come which produce these plants, and the earth is
truly the nursing mother of them all.
Coming now to man, do we not find in his body
instances of this same relation of affinity based on
a two - fold form — on dualism ? Is not his whole
body bi-fold ? Has he not two eyes, two nostrils ?
Is not his mouth divided by the parting line of the
lips? Has he not two hemispheres of the brain,
divided also by nature ? Has he not two hands ? Two
branches of nerves, springing from either side of the
spine, and clasping the body from head to toe? Has
he not two limbs, and two feet? Is he not dual all

SEX AND MARRIAGE. 63
through his physical constitution? and is not this dualism
a universal fact, true of every human and merely animal
creature, of every plant in its place, of the form of
mineral existence, yes, and of the substance of that exist
ence, back to the Primal Power ?
Now, in what relation do these halves of the human
body stand to each other ? Is it not a relation of affin
ity? Each ear is for hearing, yet how curious is the
fact that with two ears you hear but one sound ; you
look with two eyes at the words of a book, yet you see
but one form of the words : and the meaning is that the
two eyes are affined into one, and the two ears also are
thus affined. The physical powers of man, therefore,
being throughout two-fold, blend, in their unity, into one
great penetrating consciousness.
Passing now to the mind of man, we discover the
same dual division. He has two chief classes of powers,
and really two only. These classes of powers may be
spoken of as those of the affections, desires, emotions,
feelings, constituting the emotive or Will power in man ;
and those of the thoughts, perceptions, imaginations,
reasonings, constituting the Understanding of man. The
affections — speaking of man in general — constitute essen
tially the human personality. According to our feeling so
our thought is. As we are in affection, desire, motive
power, will, so we are also essentially and eventually, in
thought ; for what we love, that we think. And yet these
two classes of powers are distinct and distinguishable,
just as much so as the two halves of the brain are : dis
tinct though mutually dependent. Some of you will
know that each hemisphere of the brain controls the
opposite side of the body: the right side of the brain,

64 SEX AND MARRIAGE.
the left side of the body ; and the left side, the right side
of the body. Here is interpenetration along with mere
juxtaposition. And it is just so with the affection of
man and his thought. These seem to be distinct in
man, and as mental organs they are so, but they are also
mutually dependent, and in action and use interpenetrate
each other. The delight of an affection impels man to
will as he loves and feels, and eventually as he wills he
delights to think — this on the one side ; but there is also
a reaction of thinking upon his willing and feeling. A
thought contrary to some affection presents itself to the
mind, which the man has no wish to listen to, and he
says, in effect, " No, I won't have that, I must carry out
my desire, I will have my fling." Wait a bit. The
thought comes again and again, in some form or other :
disaster, it may be, lights upon him ; and what of con
science or good feeling there may be in him takes up
the word and says continually, Coward, do the right !
Thus, consideration revealing the advantage of the truth
over passion, that truth, little by little, obtains a hearing,
makes its way, and controls feeling, interpenetrating it
by the light of its own principle. His rebellious affec
tions are conquered, and the man becomes sane in this
respect for the first time, through the interaction of
thought and feeling. Because thought and affection act
and react thus on each other all through our nature and
life, regeneration is possible ; and his temptations are
means to that end. The duality and affinity of which
we are speaking is a characteristic of the mind of man
as well as of his body, and we now see plainly what the
elements of that duality are, in their very nature, so far
as man's mind is concerned,

SEX AND MARRIAGE. 65
Let us now carry this thought outward to the sexes
and the relation between them. In each individual of
the race, then, we have the affectional and the intel
lectual powers ; but are not these two, which constitute
the sum of man's mental powers, precisely those which
respectively constitute the female and male mind, and
the difference between them ? Just as in some plants we
had the appearance of sex relations, female and male
conjoined, and as in others these sex relations are separ
ated, and divided between two of the same species ; so
it is in the human race, only with this difference, that
you have the union of the human sexual elements in
each member of the race, and their division as marking
the sexes proper. In the male you have the double
relation of feeling and thought ; in the female you have
the double relation of feeling and thought ; yet each sex
has its separate characteristic in an embodiment of the
one chiefly. Speaking generally, woman has feeling
more than thought to such an extent that affection is
the characteristic element of her sex; and man has
thought in greater degree than feeling : thus they divide
the complete human nature between them ; yet in either
case is there the possession subordinately of that element
which the other has pre-eminently. Woman's mind is
constituted of affection and thought, yet she has affection
as her supreme characteristic ; and man has affection and
thought in union as the mental basis of his life, yet has
thought in greater degree than affection. But in what
ever degree of difference, the same dual relation exists in
the mind of each sex ; how are the sexes related ? This
brings us to the question of Marriage.
The union of two individuals under whatever circum-
E

66 SEX AND MARRIAGE.
stances, and for whatever reason, is supposed to constitute
marriage, — but does it ? Plainly, since sex is of the mind,
and marriage the highest relation of the sexes, if the
union be not of the mind, it is not a marriage in any
sense worthy the name. The mere living together of a
man and woman by their own choice does not constitute
marriage, if what I have said be true. Two persons,
therefore, may come together, and may have gone
through the external ceremony of marriage, yet inter
nally there may be no marriage union.
The distinctive mental power of man, then, as in con
trast with woman, is the intellectual; the dominant
power in woman, as in contrast with man, is the affec
tional : the highest expression, therefore, of the masculine
nature would be wisdom, and of the feminine, love ; and
when these powers preponderate in man and woman
respectively, all others contributing thereto, we have each
nature at its best. Do we look upon effeminate men
with much respect ? and how do we estimate masculine
women? The preservation of the distinctive charac
teristics of either sex becomes, then, the first necessity
for the good of each, and therefore a true basis of union
between them.
And this brings us at last to the question of the basis
of union between them, which intrinsically and interiorly
can only consist in the affinity of the distinctive power
in either for the distinctive power of the other — the
affinity of her love for his wisdom, and of his wisdom for
her love. But what do we mean by a relation between
her love and his wisdom, or her affection and his thought ?
We mean by it this, that she loves, — What ? Herself in
him ? I hope not ! Because then there is no love. He

SEX AND MARRIAGE. 67
loves himself in her ? I hope not ! Because then there
is no love. What then? He admires and loves her
love ; she admires and loves his wisdom : thus do the
two become one.
The basis of this union is love of another — of the
distinctive element which constitutes that other; but
what is this love of another ? It is not the love of one's
self in another, for this is self-love; and how much of
the professed love of to-day, yes, of the marriage love of
to-day, is described by this word self-love ! But how
should we define this love of one's self in another ? It
consists in there being an appendage to our own feeling
— to our personal satisfactions. Whether a man dis
tinctly says it to himself or not, he for the most part
instinctively thinks and unconsciously holds that he
ought to have of the best — sets out from the feeling of
personal satisfaction : he is somebody and something,
and he ought, you know, to have one who is somebody
and something, and has something too — the second-best
is not for him. He has no notion of what love is : he is
simply seeking the delights of his own feeling, and so he
looks out for beauty perhaps, for wealth perhaps, for this
and the other attraction, according to his nature. Who
soever sets out from a point of view like this is never
likely to know what love is, or to rise above the level of
his own self-love in another. You may say that it is
impossible for man to think from any other point of
view. Is it ? Then farewell, love ! Farewell, true
marriage, with its self-giving and purity and happiness !
You ask if I would have a man take the worst ? Cer
tainly not ! Then you ask what you are to do ? My
answer is a root objection to the whole line and tone of

68 SEX AND MARRIAGE.
procedure : you start wrong. Begin, I say, to detect the
self-love in yourself in that first. Suppose that you were
to think a little from the other's point of view? And
you can only do that by considering what you are to
give as well as to take; by exchanging your whole
principle for this — of keeping the demands of self in
abeyance, and of willingness to wait until the one should
come to whom you can give yourself, in lieu of making
demands for your own personal, not to say physical,
satisfaction. And that last is what perhaps nine men
out of every ten marry for to-day. Here is a plain
word, but I believe it to be a true word : they seek, for
the most part, the satisfaction of their physical feelings,
and that is what they call love ! They know nothing of
it : the idea of truly loving another never enters their
minds ; the idea of making themselves fit for an alliance
with another has never visited them. Their love is
simply the love of themselves extended to another.
What, then, is the true love of another? It is not
the loving of self in another, but the love of the other in
one's self. But what does that mean ? It means not
the seeking of self-satisfaction, the satisfaction of one's
own feelings as the first aim ; but it means the free,
delightful willing of one's self, and what is ours, to be
another's, the giving of one's self up for another, the
delighting in their delight, the feeling their pleasure as
our own, and the seeking their good always, — it means
the actual love of another brought into one's self, and
made the basis of one's own love and delight from that
time forth. But how different this from that loving of
one's self in another, that self-love multiplied, which is
the foundation of the world's married life.

SEX AND MARRIAGE. 69
You see, then, the basis of this interior idea of mar
riage. When men and women come together in this
union, what the woman looks at, respects, and loves, is
the wisdom of the man, and if she does not respect his
wisdom, she will very soon cease to love him ; and the
man loves the affection of the woman (not himself in the
woman), and delights in it, desires to see that enriched
and increased within her, to see her grow in spiritual
beauty and in all mental graces — not that she may be an
adornment for him, or that he may have the best
possible, but that he may give himself to her love, as
she gives herself to his wisdom. The relation is first,
and essentially, a mental one — of mind to mind ; the
after relation of body to body should come as the
inevitable result of this self-giving affinity. Here, and
here alone, is sanctity ; here, and here alone, is virtue ;
here, and here alone, is the wisdom of life; as here
alone is its fulness and happiness. If the relation of the
sexes be other than this, it is not a marriage of the
highest in human nature, but descends to a more or less
broken series of animal sensations. Who desires this
for all ? If this is all, human life need not have been
created ; you can find that lower form in nature, abund-
andy i But human hfe is the exponent of a higher
truth. For what has God given man love and wisdom —
wisdom to the man and affection to the wife — but that
these two distinctive elements might be blended into
one, to create a new and higher form of being ?
A practical caution may be put in here. If a man
marries a strong-minded woman, as the phrase goes,
what may he expect ? He certainly need not expect any
kind of true and peaceable married life, unless on one

70 SEX AND MARRIAGE.
condition — his subjection to her will. And if a woman,
on the other hand, marries a man who is not intellectu
ally respectable, what may she expect ? She may expect
by and by the growth of a subtle disrespect — her instinct
will always pierce his shallowness. For a woman, what
ever she be, instinctively looks out for this leading power
in the man, with the hope, unconsciously to herself, it
may be, of an alliance with something of thought and
wisdom in him. But just as the man may be shallow,
so the woman may be deceptive. Her affections lead
her to this. A woman may appear to a man to be
affectionate, because of her taking ways, while she really
only simulates an affection which she by no means
possesses. This is more often the case than might be
thought; and the tricks of society help her much,
backing and stimulating her propensity; and the poor
young man is taken in and snared. This result, again,
is what might have been expected from his comparative
lack, possibly, of that wisdom of the man which would
have enabled him to look deeper than the surface ; or
from the lack, it may be, of that other essential —
experience. Ah ! but that idea of experience — it suggests so much !
How can you have experience of the marriage state
before marriage? You cannot, it is true, have this
experience, but you may have the experience that leads
up to it ; and here I would say a word to parents. Why
do you keep the sexes as far apart as possible, and look
at the whole question of their relation with such cramped
minds? When a young man has come two or three
times to a house where there are some young women,
the wiseacres, the parents, put their heads together and

SEX AND MARRIAGE. 71
ask each other, " What is he coming for so often ? Do
you think he means — ? Do you ? " Why can't you let
the young man alone ? Let him see your daughters day
by day ; let him get all the knowledge he can of their
domestic character. Why this secret looking after ends,
this haunting anxiety to bind matters to a certain issue ?
Cease from all this, and let them come together freely,
without question or thought of ulterior purposes, and
perhaps that freedom may be the occasion of his not
asking one of your daughters after all ; then so much the
better. Surely it is better that he should find out in
time the thing he dislikes (if such be the case), or that
his heart does not lie that way and go off elsewhere,
than that your daughter should marry him and live in
misery for her after life ; unless, indeed, the thing is to
get married. Women and men meet at a ball, or at this
party or that, but they see each other seldom in the
freedom of home, and know but little of their mutual
fitness or unfitness before something or other — what is
it? the feeling that it is expected? — has created an
engagement, and afterwards it is too late, or is thought
so, and one or the other knows not what to do ; he or
she would fain break it off, but for the eye of the world,
and the fear of bringing disrepute upon themselves and
their family. No ! The only thing for this is the
experience of the home — free and open communication
there between the parents of the future, that they may
know each other personally, truly ; and through free com
munication, but without the dread of what is expected,
come to choose from the heart or not to choose at all.
But there are circumstances in life of a complex and
difficult character springing from the usual marriage

72 SEX AND MARRIAGE.
relationship. There are men married to women whom
they do not love; there are women married to men
whom they do not respect ; and so the wheels of Jugger
naut roll over the mangled hearts and minds of these
generations. Men and women marry for convenience,
for money, for position, for this reason or for that, — for
any reason but that of the sacred alliance of soul to soul,
of affinity with the soul to whom a soul can be given ;
and the result is misery and disaster, or making the best
of a hopeless case. What is to be done, then, when
married partners find out that they are not allied ? Must
they separate ? That does not follow. The Lord says,
" except it be for fornication." Yes, that is all right on
the one side; that is, in the case of one side] claiming
justice. Yet that is not all the law, because it does not
cover all the fact. But in the case of mutual incom
patibility proved and tried, — in the case of men and
women of the world who have no uniting spiritual truth
to guide their disagreements, — does not the Lord's law
leave it freely open for them to separate if they agree to
do so ? The Lord merely indicated the sin and gave the
remedy in the case in which one party was sinned
against ; but what of the case in which men and women,
seeing no higher principle, and finding themselves deter
minedly opposed, cannot live even a semblance, or more
than a semblance, of the marriage relation? Against
separation in such a case, the Lord's law says nothing :
it simply does not apply ; and so far as I can see, mutual
willingness should be law sufficient. You may ask me
whether marriages dissolved on the trivial pleas or various
grounds of dislike adducible by one or another party
would not lead to an extension of the present evil, and

SEX AND MARRIAGE. 73
to the ultimate degeneration of society? This is, no
doubt, a subject which must be very charily touched ;
and it seems to me that the only ground for dissolution
should be that of the fullest, most willing, and open
desire, attested in perfect freedom on the part of both,
to separate ; because hete, on the one hand, is an alliance
formed that should not be lightly broken, and, on the
other, a sacred union which incompatibility does most
surely desecrate.
But in any case such a suggestion could not affect the
man or woman desiring to serve the Lord and lead a
good life : from the shadow of such a law their own wills
should exempt them ; and this leads me to speak of the
only mitigation of incompatibility and the one means of
developing under it the true and real use of the marriage
relation. But can anything mitigate the distress of such
a relation, even to a man and woman desiring true lives ?
I certainly think so. They have mutually undertaken
certain obligations ; would not the dutiful fulfilment of
these, apart from their personal feeling, be not only
higher than any satisfaction of that feeling, but be now
and for them the true and lawful means under God of
securing for each, not only all the good of the mutual
relation which they can secure, but would it not also be
the only way, consistent with duty, in which each, for
him and herself, could work out the true conjugial rela
tion? They would work out, between each other, by
their common experience, the elements of that relation
now, to be perfected with whomsoever hereafter. The
true conjugial alliance is the union of love and wisdom ;
and they may, by bearing and forbearing, through the
temptations incident to their state, endeavour to extirp-

74 SEX AND MARRIAGE.
ate the evils in themselves, and even in each other, and
thus prepare for a true and real conjugial relation with
some other soul either here or hereafter, or, who knows ?
even between themselves eventually.
For soul to soul is God's law, not only in this world but
in the world to come. The Lord says that there they are
like unto the angels, yet does not tell us how the angels
are ; but we see that the sexual relation I have described
to you cannot pass from even the heavens themselves : it
is the relation of minds at their best and in their inmost
But, in our upward thought, can we be content to
reach the heavens only ? Nay, it exists in God Himself.
And here is the last and the first. " God created man
in His own image, in the image of God created He
him." In the image of God ? And is not God this
Love and Wisdom combined, — infinite Love and infinite
Wisdom ? And while He has given both to each of us,
He has yet parted these powers in finite proportion, and
given to one human sex the one as its fundamental
characteristic, and to the other the other. " Now,"
He says, " live in a vital union, and you may be between
each other even as I am in myself."
God is Infinite Love and Wisdom. Love and wisdom
in finite union constitute each individual of the race.
Love and wisdom combined constitute union of sex,
and the perfection of the individual life ; and here is the
true basis of society. In this union of soul is the basis
of all purity. Suppose such a marriage as this ; a man
full of wisdom and desire for the truth, marries a woman
whose soul is love. They live in perfect accord, mind
with mind. From them children are born, reproductions
of their parents ; and virtue is rooted in the generations.

SEX AND MARRIAGE. 75
Oh ! if the men and women of to-day were like that, or
anything like that, in their marriage relations, might we
not hope soon not only for the extirpation of Social
Evils, and all other evils, but for the uplifting of society
to a higher level, for the spread of goodness and truth
therein, for the descent of the Church of the Lord from
heaven, for the time when the Church and Society
should be one in the Bride, the Lamb's wife ?
Thus the marriage of men and women would be what it
was intended to be, an image of the marriage of the Lord
and His Church ; for He is the Bridegroom and she the
Bride ; He is Divine Love of Man, and she is human
love of the Lord ; and thus to all eternity She and He
will form, and ever increasingly form, one living Divine-
Human union, because He shall permeate every soul in
the Church by His Divine Spirit and presence, shall
thrill every heart and power in heaven and on earth by
the touch of His love. God and man love, God and
man are united, and the relation thus formed is man's
haven, his heaven, his true rest, because it involves all
rest, — all spiritual good, true peace, joy, happiness, in
Him, Our Lord, in whom are eternally united all
glories as God and as man. Oh, may He, the Bride
groom and Husband of His Church, lift our thoughts
above degrading conceptions of this highest relation of
human souls ; may we see, as we enter this relation, its
height and sanctity ; and may we purify our minds from
earthly associations therewith ; may we cultivate higher
instincts, and seek more spiritual influences to guide us ;
may we ever strive to attain the image and likeness of
our Lord ; and may we maintain this purest of all rela
tions in truth and peace.

BUSINESS LIFE.
" He delivered unto them his goods." — Matthew xxv. 14.
OUR subject to-night is Business Life; and I am
impelled to give it a special preface. It is
supposed that ministers beyond most people are
ignorant of business. If that be so — and I am sure it is
not the case to anything like the extent supposed — I fear
that Societies have themselves largely to blame. If it be
so to any extent — and I am not here to say that there
are no ministers who know nothing about business — it is
all the more necessary that they should have opportunity of
knowing something about it ; for assuredly business life
forms a great part of our human life ; and, if ministers
know nothing about business, a great part of human life
is left out of their guidance. If it be the function of the
pulpit to cover all the forms of life by principle, and
under that to take in all forms of thought, and faculties
and capacities for action ; to give, as far as possible,
principles of guidance under all circumstances ; then
this business life should come into the observation of
every minister.
The Lord evidently did not leave it out of His
calculations, for the parable before us has trade for its
subject. The man who was about to travel into a far
country " called his own servants, and delivered unto
76

BUSINESS LIFE. 77
hem his goods." He gives to them in different degrees,
goes away, and leaves them to do the trading. " He
that had received the five talents went and traded with
the same, and made them other five talents. And like
wise he that had received two, he also gained other two.
But he that had received one, went and digged in the
earth, and hid his lord's money." The latter alone, who
did nothing, was reproved. Trading was not reproved ;
that was legitimate : it was the non-trading that was
reproved. Whatever spiritual principles may underlie
this parable, or you find there, it is a picture of natural
life. The Lord Himself uses that form of life as a means
of expressing a higher truth ; business relations are here
symbolic of other and more interior relations ; but yet,
by implication, the Lord gives His sanction and approval
to trading as such. And how could He do otherwise ?
Business intercourse must be, in order that men may
live. Men are dependent upon all other men for the
means of subsistence, and these external relations are
covered by this one word, Trade.
But to mention that word, and to touch this subject,
is to encounter difficulty — not only from the nature
of the case, from its complexity, from the multitude
of principles and facts involved, but also from the
evils introduced into the trading system. It is no
use blinking these evils, they are matters of fact, and
nobody knows them better than business people
themselves. 1 There could be no harder task than that
1 Since this lecture was delivered, I have heard a new idea. A
business friend, in whom I have all trust personally, declares his
belief that honour and integrity are the basis of modern trade, and,
in spite of the common declaration of tradesmen, " I must either

78 BUSINESS LIFE.
which is set to business men. There is that terrible
interest behind them which impels them on ; and that
other higher interest before them which warns them
back ; and they are divided between the two. Duty is
not easy ; duty is hard to know, and perhaps as hard to
do when it is known. No, not that I take it that if a
man could clearly see his duty in any given case, it
would be comparatively easy for him to do it ; but the
real difficulty is to know what we ought to do, and
wherein duty lies.
In opening this subject, I would speak first of trade
as illustrating the dishonesty practised; secondly, pass
to consider what I think to be the only possible remedy
in the case.
First of all, we must get hold of some of the facts, and
we can hardly do this better than by following the order
of what we may call the machinery of trade — beginning
with the manufacturer, going on to the buyer, then to the
warehouse — the wholesale people, thence to the retailer,
and from him again to the customer.
I take it to be simply true that the manufacturers are
continually pouring out upon the market goods that are
dishonest ; and that in one of two ways — either as not
being genuine goods, or as being in some manner
deficient in make. Of course this does not mean that
there are no honest manufacturers and no honest goods
made, or that trade is worse now than it used to be : it
means just what it says — that makers are largely makers
of dishonest goods. This is shown plainly enough by
do as my neighbours do, or starve," resents the sympathy with
business men which some would express. But the text must
stand.

BUSINESS LIFE. 79
the numberless dishonest goods current in all depart
ments of trade — goods so dressed as to appear better
than they are, or sold as one thing when they are dis
tinctly another. It would be easy to go the round of
these imposts and adulterations, both in food and cloth
ing. Take the case, for instance, of silk dressed with
isinglass, or that much worse case — worse because played
off upon the poor — of cotton so heavily dressed with
lime as to be ruined almost at the first washing. It was
this imposition that damaged our trade with India and
China — the cotton actually falling to pieces as the bales
were opened on the quay. Or, if it be cards of lace or
fringe we are thinking of, we are bound to note the
dishonesty of putting the best on the outside and the
inferior end nearest the card. I do not say that such
lengths can all be made good alike or without being
pulled at one end, but why is that end always nearest
the card? Surely honesty in the manufacturer would
make him cut off the inferior portion, and sell it at its
proper value. In baskets of fruit you have a similar
dishonesty ; and in mustard you may have almost any
thing. In sweets you have preparations of copper, and
nitric acid in acidulated drops or in white vinegar.
In fact, the chicaneries of trade are endless.
But take, as a systematic case, that of silk, which is
as good as any for our purpose, and let us follow the
process of manufacture. A dealer buys raw, rough silk,
which, for the purpose of being spun into thread, is sent
to the manufactory. Now, it is an understood thing in
the trade that the silk returned in thread shall equal in
weight the raw silk sent. But the manufacturer cannot
comply with that condition without loss, for the simple

80 BUSINESS LIFE.
reason that silk loses about five per cent, in being
" thrown," as it is called, into thread. What, then, must
the " throwster " do ? He must make up the weight
somehow, which he generally does by the addition of
sugar and soap till the desired weight is reached.
The silk has also to be dyed. As it comes from the
worm it has a fine fibrine or varnish coating which keeps
it firm, but upon being put into the vat to be coloured,
all this dissolves off — a loss representing about twenty-
five per cent. That is to say, if silk to the weight of
sixteen ounces is put into the vat, about four ounces in
weight disappear. What does the dyer do to make this
up ? He does, in the same line, a very much worse
thing than the throwster, (who in fact requires a little
soap to make the thread run easily), for he weights the
silk with chemicals. But these chemicals are also
required ? Yes, and they may be required to any
weight you please ! The sixteen ounces of silk', have
been reduced to twelve ; but if the owner wants back
sixteen, he can have them ; or twenty ounces or forty
ounces to the pound, he can have them ; and when you
realize that silk is sold by the weight, you will see the
significance of that original sixteen ounces having twenty-
four ounces of chemicals added to it, and being increased
to forty. And the wearer of the silk is the subject, as well
as the medium for display, of this system of roguery.
Then comes the weaving of the silk. Here the
manufacturer frequently finds it easier and less expensive
to rob his neighbour than to create patterns for himself,
and will bribe workmen to steal the patterns of other
manufacturers. He will also put upon the market
products which he presently deteriorates and affects

BUSINESS LIFE. 81
to consider equal to the original, and sell at a reduced
price. We come now to the " Buyer." Who is he ? The
departmental head of the wholesale House, whose function
it is to "buy" for the House, or for his department, from
the manufacturer. For this purpose he is put in posses
sion of capital from the concern, and with this he trades
— becoming practically an independent dealer. But
there are hosts of manufacturers, and what is to decide
to whom he shall go ? In many cases he is decided by
the percentage or commission he gets, or does not get,
from the manufacturer, and that in absolute money value
put into his hands, it may be, or in presents of wine and
other things at Christmas, and sent either to himself or
his wife — sometimes to the wife in the form of rich
garments for her own wear. And this reception of a
bribe is the quite common principle upon which the
buyer acts.1 You will easily understand that rottenness
so begun is not likely to end where it begins ; he
who is guided in his free actions by bribery is not
likely to be very honest towards his employers : he
may hoodwink the firm, and sometimes does so to a
serious extent. Moreover, this system of things doesn't
end with him ; for since he is the head of a depart
ment, those beneath him are likely enough to catch
his spirit — if he be a man of this stamp ; for of
course all are not. Besides, too, the principle of the
business — the regulation of his value by the amount he
1 The buyer blames the manufacturer, and says that he
forces the bribe upon him while he is young at the business.
I am not concerned with the distribution of blame, but with the
facts. F

82 BUSINESS LIFE.
sells1 — applies equally to these assistants. A word
about them.
One of their ways is to find out the class of trade the
retailer does, and if he deals in an inferior kind of goods,
it is presumed that he is not a judge of goods of superior
quality. Acting on this presumption, they are frequently
able to pass off second quality goods as those of first
quality. In another way, these young men impose on
the retailer who comes to their warehouse : if it is the
cloth or fabric trade, they put before him textures in the
order in which they will most readily deceive his senses.
You know that if you taste strong flavours first and
weaker afterwards, you will be deceived in the taste ot
the weaker flavours ; and this holds in regard to eyesight,
finger-touch, and all the senses. Acting on this knowledge;
these young men put before the retailer materials in the
order which will mislead his senses, especially his sense
of touch. And when he has first fingered a coarse fabric
he fancies the one which they desire to sell him to be
finer and better than it really is. When it is remembered
that their value is in the amount they sell, one easily
understands that these assistants fall naturally into the
manifold means which will best secure that end.
Pass now to the retailer. I heard some time ago of
a thing being said in a certain well-known London
House, which one could hardly believe possible if it did
not point to a fact more common, both in such houses
and in factories, than many are aware of. In this House
the young women (of whom there are a great many
1 For he maintains the retail connection, and his accounts show
at the end of the year the amount cleared on the capital entrusted
to him.

BUSINESS LIFE. 83
employed) are underpaid, and some were told that if
they did not find their salaries enough they could add to
them in any way they pleased. It is common, also, to
hear of such things being said as, "Why, you look as
if you were lying; you should look as if you weren't"
Or, "It is easy enough to sell people what they want; any
fool can do that ; what I want you to do is to sell them
what they don't want ! " Or, again, " If you can't tell a
lie, you are no use to me." If principles like these are
at work in any number (and I only know that they exist)
of large retail establishments, is it wonderful that there
should be a perpetuation of dishonesty in the young men
and women employed in them, and that, in consequence,
they should be guilty of petty pilferings and other mis
demeanours ? It would be a wonder were it otherwise.
But the story would not be finished unless we included
the populace — the customers at retail shops. Here the
tendency is to go to the cheapest place. What is the reason
that so many cheap goods are thrown on the market to-day?
One reason is that small manufacturers, without much
capital, are in the hands of the wholesale merchants, who
buy them up, or sell them up, if you like it better. Another
is that the manufacturers,1 in order to do a trade, turn
out inferior goods upon the market. But at least the
1 But the curiously inverted plea is here put in that they only
meet the demand by supply ; as if it were not palpable that the
supply in the first instance created the demand ! Do the people
devise the goods and make them ? If they did not see them they
would not know that they could be made. But there is a matter of
supply and demand in the case — the demand for customers through
the making of cheap goods, and the supply of them when the goods
are seen. Of course it is upon this public credulity that the manu
facturers depend when they turn out inferior goods.

84 BUSINESS LIFE.
things are there, and people buy them ; and there is a
reason for that behind all your exhortations to the con
trary, the reason, viz. that they need them, and have not
money enough to pay for dearer articles. You may
blame them : I do not. I cannot, because I know the
meaning of it. You may say very wisely that it is im
provident not to buy the best : I reply that you simply
don't understand.1
The tradesman suffers greatly at the hands of cus
tomers. If you stood by and watched some people
purchasing in a shop, you would wonder less, perhaps,
at the retailer's doings. It must be awfully tantalizing.
They finger goods about, they must see this and that,
they get the counter filled with them, they dawdle and
waste time, they cheapen and are discontented, and they
frequently end in buying either a trifle or else nothing.
Their ways must often be supremely trying, and add to
the difficulty of being honest.
This review of the mechanism of trade and its
involved dishonesties may be met perhaps by the state
ment that if traders do not do as others do, and go on
as they are going, they may give up business altogether.
Well, we can only leave that to them. If a man knows
it is roguery to conduct business in a certain way, and
yet does it in spite of the knowledge he possesses, he is
taking the law into his own hands, and must bear the
consequences. I am not now speaking of cases of practical
difficulty in which it seems impossible to say what it is
right to do, and where even bankruptcy may depend on
1 Can a shilling buy two shillings' worth? If food and boots
are both imperative, and there's only money enough to buy the best
of either or the worst of both — what is your wise head to do?

BUSINESS LIFE. 85
acting one way rather than another. Each man must
act for himself under such circumstances : no man can
be the keeper of another's conscience ; but I believe
that things are not so bad but what a genuinely honest
man can make his way through them ; and certainly no
man is justified in dishonesty, at whatever risk to himself.
Men like John Bright have made their fortunes and
position through genuine honesty. Still there are many
things about which one cannot decide at all, — the hundred
and one things which come before business men every
day, and about which it would be impossible for any man
to decide except as circumstances dictated. There are
times when a man, acting not perhaps from the highest'
law that conscience can give, yet thinks he does the best
on the whole, so far as he sees at the time. Let us not
judge men hardly. And if they were to become bank
rupt, possibly they might do more harm to society through
their bankruptcy than by submitting to what they do not
wholly approve. Yet I think that, throughout, conscience
will make its own trade : that is all I have to say on this
point. Passing, then, from the mechanism of trade into the
more general aspects of business, let me take up an
illustration or two here, and then proceed to the question
of the remedy. Take, for example, accommodation-bills.
Two men, equally impecunious, put their heads together,
and the one offers, and the other accepts an accommo
dation bill, say for a couple of thousand pounds, "for
value received." Neither of them has that amount to
bless himself with ; but they have some repute, some
standing, some kind of business : and it is supposed,
quite wrongly, however, that goods to that amount have

86 BUSINESS LIFE.
passed between them. They take the bill to a discounter,
and he advances the money upon it on the supposed
security of goods which don't exist. The bill becomes
due, but neither of them can take it up; yet that hardly
matters, since they can manufacture others with which
to pay that one as well as to meet all other engagements.
Thus the game goes on indefinitely : worthless bills are
multiplied, the organized fraud extends, until at last the
bubble bursts and possibly brings ruin to many. To
call such men rogues is no hard word : they are devils,
vampires. Yet men of seeming standing practically live
on this manufacture of mere paper, who have not a
farthing they can righteously call their own.
Come now to banking business. In banking business
directors will frequently do with the shareholders' money
what they will not do with their own money — they will
end it to men who are known to be speculators, with
the idea of getting in the meantime a large percentage,
but with the known possibility of ultimate loss. Of
course it is the shareholders' money, not theirs, — and
that makes all the difference. Again, with regard to
banking business, suppose you have two thousand
pounds lodged in the bank, for which you hold a deposit
receipt. You lose the receipt, which is merely a small
square of paper, and very easily lost. You wish to with
draw the money, but you cannot ; they will not give you
the two thousand pounds, but they will lend it you, and
at the end of six months (you paying interest) the busi
ness between you and the bank will be closed — which
is, so far, quite right. But how closed? You will, of
course, give them a proper discharge — a receipt stating
that the money lodged with them has been repaid to

BUSINESS LIFE. 87
you. That, again, is quite right; is, then, the matter
settled ? Not by any means, for here the iniquity comes
in — they demand from you a Note of Indemnity, which
means that you must guarantee them against misadven
ture or the misdoing of any of their officers in connec
tion with the lost receipt, by repaying the money should
they have paid it away to any one else. Now, your
account with the bank is closed — nothing stands to your
credit there ; consequently, if, on presentation of that
lost receipt, the money was paid to the one presenting it,
it would be paid with full knowledge of that fact, and
therefore could not be paid honestly. But the bank,
in spite of there being admittedly no assets or deposit
to your credit in their possession, demands from you a
Note of Indemnity, so that they may come down upon
you and be recouped for the amount if they should pay
the money to any one else ; — and this is the kind of
transaction carried on by banks of repute, and is called
honest business !
Pass now to the subject of railways, and this shall form
the last illustration. Of all businesses, possibly it would
be difficult to find a worse for roguery than that of railway
business. The mischief here largely assumes the form
of making branch lines, and especially such as shall lie
between two trunk lines, where competition between
rival companies may come in. There is a great decrease
in the dividends paid to-day over those paid forty years
ago by our leading lines ; 1 and this decrease has been
1 The facts are briefly these : In 1845 tne dividends of our leading
lines stood at from 8 to 10 per cent. ; in ten years they had fallen
one-half; since then they have slightly increased, but the best
paying hardly reach 7 per cent.

88 BUSINESS LIFE.
caused by the establishment of branch lines. The
directors, solicitors, engineers, and land - owners, act
together in their own interest, at the expense of the
ordinary shareholders. When a branch line is projected
and secured, these, being men of capital, take up most of
the Preference Shares in it — shares, that is to say, that
not only may bring a higher percentage, but must be
paid before ordinary shares. Now, branch lines are
worked at a loss ; but, as they are worked in connection
with the main line, these Preference Shares have the
first claim out of the dividends paid by the main line
company, and are therefore paid out of the pockets of
the ordinary shareholders of the company. You see now
how it is done, and why the persistent practice of making
branch lines has been followed in spite of their unre-
munerativeness. The ordinary run of shareholders are
comparatively poor, and are not business people ; are
therefore unable to take up shares in these new ventures;
the directors and those allied with them, being the
wealthier element, have things pretty much in their own
hands, though not now so much as formerly ; and land
owners have even been known to offer their land for
nothing in view of these and other prospective advan
tages. I have felt the necessity of putting these things some
what fully before you, that you may see something of the
actual state of business ; but if you ask me Why trade is
dishonest? I can only answer you, "Because the world
is dishonest;" and therein is the sum of it These men
are, on the average, as honest as you and I are ; but if
we were in their circumstances, who knows what we
should do ? The difference in men's actions is very often

BUSINESS LIFE. 89
a matter of circumstance and opportunity more than
of essential character. At the same time, I am not by
any means impeaching the whole of the traders, manu
facturers, railway men, and others belonging to the classes
I have been specifying. There are honest and dis
honest everywhere ; the trade of the world must there
fore be a reflex of the amount of honesty in the world
at large; and that amount of honesty is certainly not
excessive. Is it less or more than it was formerly ? The amount
of honesty is greater than it was. But, in the face of
these facts and things going on every day, can I say that
honesty in trade is on the increase ? Most decidedly I
say it You have only to look back upon English history,
and see what men did formerly. Years ago, people did
things men would not dare to do to-day.1 I grant you that
the multiplicities of minor dishonesties have increased with
the increase of trade and business ; but the greater ones
have decreased, and are constantly decreasing. Of course,
when we look close at such things, they bulk largely ; but
the case may be paralleled by the drinking customs of
the country, which some think are on the increase. In
reference to this, you have only to remember what men
did in the way of drinking, even in the beginning of this
century, when, to speak Hibernice, they did not think
they ought to rise from the table till they fell under it.
That is not so to-day. What causes the difference, then ?
The difference is in the tone of society — the heightened
moral consciousness, the advance of feeling and thought,
which is a continually progressive upheaval of moral fact
1 What shopkeeper now would dare to keep a bag of spurious coin
from which to give change when he could ?

90 BUSINESS LIFE.
for the whole community ; and I feel sure, I see the
evidences of it now, that we are on the road to better
things in regard to the conduct of business.
Coming at length to the remedy for trade evils, it is
to be observed that there are two aspects of the case —
the trade evils themselves, and the general principle of
trade under which these evils appear — the principle
of buying in the cheapest market and selling in the
dearest. First, then, in regard to the dishonesties, it is manifest
that no scheme you could propose would make men
honest. You cannot make men honest by Act of Parlia
ment, though the incessant clamouring of some for Govern
ment interference in such matters would seem to imply
that they think so. In my judgment we have had quite
too much of Government interference in the past ; it has
done a great deal more harm than it will ever be able to
undo. For Government to take over this line of business
or the other, to interfere with prices, to regulate labour,
etc., must seem to me an utterly abortive external
attempt — as all external attempts must be — to remedy
that which can only be remedied from within. The
remedy for trade evils, and the only remedy, lies in
making men honest. Raising the moral tone of the com
munity is the only radical cure for dishonesty : any such
elevation would tell on trade at once, as, in fact, it has
done and is doing now. But some people are so
impatient, and must be continually applying schemes and
external tinkerings of one sort or other. They have no
faith in the progress of humanity — a progress going on
under their eyes; and, above all, they seem unable to
grasp the fact that communities do not advance by

BUSINESS LIFE. 91
external regulations or acts of Government — do not, in
fact, advance at all except as individuals advance, and
that in that one truth lies the key to the whole position.
External changes are neither progress nor growth — that
depends on the betterment of the individual. But how
are you to raise the individual, and, through him, the
moral tone of the community? By the systematic
teaching of a true morality — a higher code of moral
health than the Church has ever yet taught, or the world
has yet practised — a code equal to the growing needs of
humanity, and on a level with the new era that has
dawned. This leads us to speak of the general trade principle,
and of the remedy there. Can you compel men not to
buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market?
You cannot ; and the Government attempting it would
only be an unsuccessful tyranny. Besides, I hold it to
be impossible for any intellect so to grasp the com
plicated conditions of modern commerce as to legislate
for them on any fresh lines or on other than their
existing conditions. They are a growth, and your
wisdom lies not in foolish external attempts at change,
but in encouraging that growth in new directions, and to
the increasing reception, through the individual, of new
and more human principles. I am aware that this is too
slow a process for some; they want to see dishonesty
swept away, and a better state of things at once brought
in. It is an impossible dream. What we really need is
a new governing principle, and that can be found, and
can alone be found, in the New Church doctrine of
Use. This is the only countervailing principle. And
what is this doctrine? It is that the new govern-

92 BUSINESS LIFE.
ing motive power of the individual's own life must be
the good of others ; 1 that this is the meaning of his
human existence ; and that, in order to a true life
for him, it must become practically embodied in his
motive and conduct. Accept this principle, and the
work is done : no inhuman trade principle could stand
before it. You cannot reform the community, you can
only reform individuals in the community ; and therefore
this principle, as it finds acceptance in individual minds,
will gradually permeate society, work out the beast in
man, and bring in the truly human and godlike. Is it
human that we should buy in the cheapest market and
sell in the dearest ? Is it doing to others as we would
that they should do to us? It is not; it is inhuman, it
is savage to the heart. Could we accept, and we yet
shall, the truer, more human principle, that we are
primarily, as our leading motive, to make our lives a
means of use to others, and to serve self only for others'
sakes, and not as a means of self-aggrandizement ; that
we are to inwork this into our life, as the basis of our
thought and feeling, — that we are to make this our life ;
and could individuals progressively do this, each in-
working it into his own trade relations; — could we do
this — nay, as it is done, will it not guarantee the develop
ment of a higher moral consciousness than that of the
self-love now animating our business life — supplant the
selfish with the human ?
This is the practical side of the work of the New Church
— to introduce into the world this high principle of use.
The first Christian Church, instituted by the Lord at His
'The principle itself will be discussed in the Lecture on "Social
Life."

BUSINESS LIFE.

93

First Advent, developed a higher consciousness in the
race than had previously been awakened there ; it is the
New Church's duty and function to introduce a higher
consciousness still than that of the first Christian Church ;
and this little word use expresses all. Don't you think that
if this principle were accepted by every man and woman
here, accepted loyally and truly, and carried out from to
morrow morning onwards, — don't you think there would
be a regenerative element brought into a hundred busi
nesses, a new life stirring in as many shops or counting-
houses ? Only on such practical work as this can a real
progress be based.
Oh, I know what some still hanker after. Don't tell
me ! You cannot reform men by legislation. Legisla
tion is only the index of the state which men have
already reached, — that's all. You can only regenerate
men by making them true and high-minded. Ah, you
say, but it is such a long day's work ! Yes, it is long
and slow, and so is all good work that is meant to last ;
but you cannot make men honest by schemes ; and
until you have done that, you have done nothing ! And
God knows the length of the work perfectly well ; for
you must remember that one day with Him is as a
thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. He
is willing to work and wait. Are we also ?
Let us, then, each carry this principle with us into
our business or trade, or private life. Let us seek to
remedy ourselves first, and our business amelioration
will come. See that life must be lived and trade carried
on for others ; that our whole attitude must be for God
in others ; that the talents and goods we have are from
God for the use of others, for the service of mankind ;

94 BUSINESS LIFE.
— once see and absorb that principle, and you have
already done all the work that is necessary. Honesty
individualized in the form of Use will remove the
evils, reform the manners, and regenerate the life of
Society.

HOME AND SOCIAL LIFE.
You will find a general statement that will cover what will be
said on this subject to-night in Matt. vii. 12 : " Therefore all things
whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to
them : for this is the law and the prophets."
THIS word which I have read to you as the text,
may fittingly be taken as the practical basis of
the Lord's teaching in regard to our dealings with
each other in all departments of life : " Whatsoever ye
would have done to you," that do. It has been said by
some that this injunction of the Lord's is not original, but
borrowed from the teaching of the Rabbis. That is
only the case in appearance, however, for though there
is a certain similarity in the form of expression between
the Rabbis' doctrine and this of the Lord's, the two
precepts themselves are altogether different. Hillel's
precept was, " Don't do that which you would not have
others do to you " — what you wouldn't like done, don't
do. You are to refrain from injuring another, because
you would not like him to injure you. This is a negat
ive principle, and is altogether different from the Lord's
active, positive, and universal standard of conduct.
What you would like done, that do : do that to others
which you can conceive of as best for yourself. Self is
not to be the first thought, but others, and action for
them ; and only self so far as its standard of the best is

96 HOME AND SOCIAL LIFE.
to be applied to others. It is neither to be egoistic nor
merely negative — this standard of social life, it is to be al
truistic ; that is to say, it is to be that of the best self made
active for others as an end. Here is the universal principle
of the highest social life, as well as of all true home life.
It is difficult so to treat these two subjects under one
lecture as to do them justice ; but I have bracketed
them together because they are in a certain sense allied,
and because I did not wish inordinately to extend this
course of lectures. The simplest way will be briefly
to treat of home life first, and afterwards to deal with
the larger question of social life.
First, then, in regard to Home Life ; and here I have
three words only to say. In this course of lectures we
have, without openly intimating it, been taking man at
the different points of his career from his first entrance
into this world onwards into life ; for we have considered
what he substantially is, and where he comes from ; the
evils that have introduced themselves into his life,
creating a progressive bad inheritance ; the doubts which
arise especially in the early portion of man's life ; and the
relation of the sexes to each other. The next natural
step is that of the home life of the sexes, and, with that,
the broadening sphere of the social life which they may
now be supposed to enter. You see there is a continuous
under-current of thought based on the natural progression
of life. We will regard the young man and woman,
then, as passing, or as having passed, the early stages :
they have been looking forward to joining heart and
hand in home life ; perhaps they have done so. And
now I come to address to them the three words of
counsel of which I spoke.

HOME AND SOCIAL LIFE. 97
The first shall be in regard to that terrible question
of servants. This may seem a trivial detail to discuss
here; yet you know very well, my friends, that these
lesser matters of the life are the basis of much of our
satisfaction and comfort, not to say happiness, in the
world. They continuously act on our life for good or
evil, and our life reacts on them ; and therefore some
fixed principle of conduct is desirable, if it can be
attained. In this servant-matter, as in most other things, we are
in a state of transition. You know that the removal of
many from agricultural life has deprived society of that
usual source of servants. The daughters of such families
used to enter service, but are now largely finding their
way into shops, offices, etc. The increase of education,
the desire to escape as much as possible the drudgery of
life, the inclination of each class to rise into the class
above it, have all converged to the same point, with the
result that good servants are difficult to find, the most
incapable, as a rule, being left behind in the race, and
constituting the present supply.
But there is also a reason for this difficulty on the other
side. To-day there is a reaction among servants against
service. Why? Because they are not treated as in times
past, as part of the families in which they serve. We
live fast, and have no time to consider them ; we want
their work only. This has, I am persuaded, much to do
with the tanglement of the question ; and as there is an
aspiration upward in all classes of society, it is not likely
that the servant class will be able to bear the repression
without resentment. They feel that there is no interest
in them as men and women — no thought of their welfare,
G

98 HOME AND SOCIAL LIFE.
or recognition of their humanity ; they are machines for
doing work.
What, then, are you to do ? You are not, of course, to
invert the existing order of things. I have heard of mis
tresses who have taken " turns '' with their servants — who
have been servants one week and mistresses another, and
so on. That is social revolution with a vengeance ! and
I am not going in for anything so absurd. That which
lies at the root of the wrongness with those who employ
servants, is that they have looked upon them as not men
and women ; as not having the same feelings as they
themselves have ; as being somehow humanly different.
Yes, my friends, they are the same, — and some of them
a good deal better. Souls are to be taken at the Lord's
valuation. He regards all impartially, and values them
at their true estimate, but not for the monetary
position they have, not for the silks and satins they
wear, but for their soul-value; and, in considering
that, depend upon it, He abstracts education, social
position, and all the adventitious aids which are given
to some, looking only at the soul's moral worth, at what
it struggles to be, and at the good it acquires. That is
the Lord's vision of our life, and how different from ours !
An immense step in advance would be made, then,
could we so modify our feelings in this relation as to
learn to look upon those below us in station as like with
us. Once that is done, we could not fail to take a human
interest in them and what affects their welfare. And the
greater interest we have in them, the more we shall
consider them— estimate truly their circumstances and
needs, and make allowances for them as we would for
ourselves. In one word, we need to get down to the

HOME AND SOCIAL LIFE.

99

base of human justice here, before any possible rectifica
tion of the relation between masters or mistresses and
servants can be effected. Let us be just, with the
justice which comes of the recognition of essential facts,
animated by kindly human interest and consideration.1
But alternations of humour are useless : alternate frown-
ings and pattings on the back are even possibly worse
than complete class isolation. Let us take up the
highest line of conduct here, and endeavour to carry it
out consistently. The highest, I admit, will be the most
difficult ; but it will be the only fulfilment of the Lord's
home and social law, — Do to others what, if you were in
their place, you would have them do to you.
The second word I have to say is in regard to children.
If those to whom I am addressing myself have children
born to them, how are they to deal with them? Are
they, instead of being a law to the children, to consult
their will and desire, and so put them at once on an
equality with themselves ? to share with them all they
themselves partake of? to let them have, for example,
whatever comes on the table, either with or without the
asking? For me the only rational answer to the posi
tion implied in these questions is, a very decided No.
The whole educational tone of such parents is a vice : it
means the abdication of parental government, and the
substitution for it of the child's self-will. If you follow a
line of conduct like this, you may be prepared to see the
children governing the household, and the family life
converted into a children's tyranny. A gentleman is
1 Some have tried this and found it fail — found that servants
couldn't stand it, and took advantage. All I can say is — Try it
again.

ioo HOME AND SOCIAL LIFE.
standing on his own hearthrug, and one of his children,
company being present, cries out, " Papa, you must not
stand there ; you know mamma does not allow you to
stand on the rug ! " This is a case given from actual
knowledge ; and one can well understand how children
who could govern their father in that way would, in
another way, govern their mother too. Such children
are a rod for the back of the parents who bring them up
in so disorderly and inverted a fashion. The first con
dition of home-order requires that the children shall not
govern. But this is only the negative side of a broader truth,
viz. that the essential relation of children to their
parents is that of obedience — obedience asked in love,
with essential sympathy, with fatherly and motherly
feeling, with a sense of responsibility towards the souls
you are bringing up, from a will kind and gentle always,
but from a will which is ultimate law, a will severe if
necessary, but with the severity of true love. Their
obedience should be the very freedom of love returned,
and the more of love there is the more absolute will be
the obedience. In that obedience to you lies the germ
of the worship and love of God, and of all human
responsibility. And now the third word I have to say is in regard to
yourselves, to the two who have come together as husband
and wife, and who desire to live together in peace. How
can any single word be of use here in so difficult and
intricate a relation ! I know of only one that is : that
word is Love. Whatever comes, whatever trouble arises,
— however tantalizing and aggravating, for instance, the
other may be, — remember that love is greater than all.

HOME AND SOCIAL LIFE. 101
No satisfaction you can reach by any other means is
equal to that which comes from letting love conquer.
But in order to this you must not harbour grudges or
regrets, or petulances or animosities,— you must not
store them up, as goods are placed on a shelf, to be
taken down again and retailed some other day. Let
them go ; be sure they are miserably small compared
with love. Love first, love second, love always — love as
beginning, end, and motive — here is the supreme best !
It has no equal. You will find that no amount of
bringing up or raking over things that are past, no
getting the better of another, no victory by making your
own side right, no amount of vindication in any form, —
that none of these things are worth a fraction compared
with this one thing, — the omnipotent righteousness of
love. And if it is sometimes necessary to square things
between you, let it be done as quickly as possible, and
as much as possible bury differences. If it is necessary
to go over things again to make them plain, go over
them by all means, but only for love's sake, and not as
giving or demanding explanation. If this one panacea
for all troubles — the determination to let nothing stand
before love — is made the ruling and first principle, if
you take it fixedly in your hearts and hands, and go
through life so, every difficulty will vanish from between
you. I am sorry to be so scrappyand fragmentary with regard
to the subject of home life, but I can detain you no
longer in it, as the larger question of Social Life is still
before us. To this, therefore, we now pass. And here
there are again three things I find it desirable to put
before you, — (i) Social Life in what I shall call its

102 HOME AND SOCIAL LIFE.
Principle, (2) Social Life in its Interactions, and (3)
Social Life in its Developments.
First of all, then, Social Life in its Principle. In
this I have a somewhat difficult task, because there is
no more complicated series of facts than that which this
form of life presents ; and yet these complications have
a principle beneath them. Do law or government make
social life ? Certainly not. Social life is a constitution,
so to say ; it is a growth ; it is not produced by external
power, but springs from internal law. What is the law ?
Can we find it ? The law has been long since delivered
by the New Church ; and, later, it has been promulgated
afresh from an altogether different side, — the scientific,
and especially by that penetrating thinker to whom the
Church of the future will feel an immense debt of obliga
tion when she understands the substance of his work,
and is sufficiently advanced to use it, — I mean Herbert
Spencer. Briefly, then, the general law which expresses the
growth and forms of social life is that of Correspond
ence with all other forms of existence and processes of
growth. Let us see just sufficient indications to enable
us to admit the probability of this principle being
universally true.
Suppose that the matter of the universe originally con
sisted of multitudes of spherules or spherical atoms :
this would only be another way of saying that all which
exists came from, or more strictly came through, these.
But it follows at once that all things are, in their
essentials, determined by what these spherules are,
and therefore that we are warranted in attributing to
these supposed spheric atoms, as media at least, all

HOME AND SOCIAL LIFE. 103
essential forms discovered in the matter produced
from them.1 Were we to suppose, then, that these
spherules contained a twofold form of substance
vaguely represented by such terms as the solid and
fluid, the static and dynamic, the mechanical and vital,
the dead and the living, matter and force — we should
be impelled to the conclusion that each atom was so
constituted, and that we had already in vision before us
the essential structure of the universe. But why the
structure of the universe ? Because the universe, by
supposition of this twofold form of primary existence,
has within itself, both throughout its extent and in each
individual spherule, the force which shall determine, and
the law which shall indicate its essential structure :
from the first forms, therefore, to the last developments
in their heterogeneous multiplicity — all are there by
1 This on the manifest principle that as these forms came from
somewhere, and there was nowhere else whence they could have
come, they must have been in the spherules originally. But might
they not have arisen from the subsequent conditions? Essential
forms cannot arise from conditions ; moreover, these conditions
themselves arose with the original spherules : so that all came from
them and their relations among each other. Spencer denies that
the oak (to give a concrete case) comes from the acorn, but from
the acorn plus the conditions; but it is evident (1) that, as a
physical fact, it is out of the acorn that the oak comes, and not out
of anything else whatever ; (2) that therefore in the acorn lies the
cause, and in the conditions the occasion ; and (3) that these con
ditions, like all others, are themselves products of the supposed
original spherules and their inter-relations — whence, therefore,
again, all are derived, either medially or otherwise, and in which
thus all were, either really or formally. Either so, or we are back,
in the name of Science, to the orthodox folly of creation from
nothing.

104 HOME AND SOCIAL LIFE.
implication, and will be developed by the force from
within. Thus would the suns and systems, the solid
earths, the growths on these earths in their unspeakable
minuteness of difference, the individuals (whether animals
or men) that occupy them, — the whole material universe
in its illimitable detail, be, in one sense, but the developed
Correspondent 1 of what lay in its potency within the
atomic spherules, and whatsoever lay behind them. The
universe is thus the material Correspondent of the
Spiritual and Divine. And do we not, as a fact, find this
twofold form of existence running through all Nature ?
But since Nature is the outcome of the primal matter,
our supposition of the twofold attributes of these atoms
is justified, and so likewise is that of their sphericle form.
Moreover, we see the principle of Correspondence made
good in the arena of Nature, if only in its most general
and external sense ; in other words, corresponding
powers and principles to those of the atomic spherules
and their Cause will be found in all structures, in every
form, in all minutias of every form, right through the hetero
geneous creation. The law of the atom in its apparent
simplicity is the law of the most intricate organic struct
ure ; the last, in its development, corresponds to the first,
in its seeming unity ; and the 'whole is a growth in com
plexity. Before the Correspondence with the progress of Social
Life comes to be noticed, let us take an illustration from
the organic side of Nature — from a bit of protoplasm, or
1 It goes without saying that this section illustrates not the strictly
New Church idea of Correspondence, but the current scientific con
ception — except in so far as mind, either Divine or human, may be
supposed involved.

HOME AND SOCIAL LIFE. 105
the first form of every living substance. As seen in plant
or animal (and apparently the same in both), it is a piece
of simple, homogeneous substance ; i.e. it is the same
throughout, having no parts, but being a simple whole.
Observing it closely, you will see that it works from the
centre outwards, forming a crust of denser matter which
eventually proves to be dead. As the dead substance,
thus formed by the living matter continually being
deposited on the circumference and dying, increases in
quantity by the protoplasm pushing forward in line, then
gradually emerges (if the subject be an animal body) a
muscle or a nerve ; or, if a plant be the subject, it is
a piece of vegetable fibre that is gradually being woven ;
or, again, the crust of the protoplasm may crack, and
independent structures be thrown out ; and all from this
simple bit of protoplasm. That first form of living
matter is, as scientific men call it, homogeneous — seem
ingly of one nature throughout ; but it gradually increases
in complexity as its effects are manifest ; and complica
tion succeeds complication, till such a splendid product
as the lily is revealed as its work, or so intricate and
perfect a structure as the nervous system, with a labyrinth
of brain at its head. We now perceive that the law of
organic growth is the same (it could not be otherwise)
with that of the material universe as a whole — from the
simple to the complex ; from the unit to the mutually
dependent, inter-related parts ; and that the complete
organic structure is but the Correspondent of the simple
protoplasm. This principle of development — from the seeming
simple, through interdependence, to the Correspondent
complex — is also true of the human body as a whole,

106 HOME AND SOCIAL LIFE.
and of each of its organs apart; in other words, the
individual, equally with the material universe and with
living matter, is the subject of this law of growth. Here,
also, we take a great stride nearer to Social Life, for it
would almost follow of itself that, if the individual came
under this law, life based on the assemblage of individuals
must. We have only to think, even popularly, of the
gradual development of the individual, from the pre
natal rudimentary state, through the slow acquirement
of parts and organs, functions and uses, by waste and
impoverishment of organs here made good by co-opera
tion of other parts of the structure, to the completion of
the whole, part by part, and the perfected complexity
by which each individual organ has its own speciality
assigned to it, and yet can only perform this as it
remains in unity with all the rest — we have only to
recall these general facts of the animal economy, to see
the most consummate instance in nature of the law
which lies at the basis of social life. In truth, if we
understood the human body, there would no knowledge
be hidden from us. Why? Because, if this doctrine
of Correspondence is true at all — as true, we see, it must
be — the body stands in central Correspondence with all
else, whether it be matter or mind. Is it not an outcome
of the Correspondential law from the material side?
And is it not, by the very nature and law of development,
in Correspondence also with the mind within? And is
not that mind in Correspondence with all mind, in all
degrees, above or below us in the universe, and most
surely, and more nearly than all, with the Causal Mind
from which it springs ? The human body, through Cor
respondence, is the central fact of the universe, and the

HOME AND SOCIAL LIFE. 107
key to life ; well may it be called the temple of the Holy
Ghost. If, now, we turn to Social Life itself, who may not see
the application of this law ? From simplicity to com
plexity, through isolation, wasteful individual effort
and impoverishment, tentative combination, aptness for
individual use, perception of true function, division of
labour, interdependence, co-operation, completeness of
individuality in the service of all — here is but a state
ment, in terms, of the essential facts of Social progress
in entire Correspondence with the facts of matter and
life and individual growth already adduced. Con
sider the simplicity and isolation of primitive life ;
mark the coalescence of wandering tribes, for mutual
aid ; notice how at first, in their simplicity, each indi
vidual does for himself everything he requires — makes
his own spears, his own canoe, his own hut ; observe
how gradually arises division of labour, and with it
economy of time and force — some making boats, others
sails or oars, some sandals, others spears ; with all this,
remember the increase of barter and sale, the uprising
of trade between tribe and tribe, the formation of habits
incident to settled communities, the uprise of govern
ment, the advance of Social order through the functions
proper to each being discharged by each for the good of
the whole — consider thus, humanity's attainment of even
proximate unity as seen to-day in the life of civilised
society, the complexity of form and use and function
implied therein, and the necessary blending of all inde
pendent parts to the perfection and good of the whole,
and say whether we have not in Social life not only the
principle common to universal progressions, but in that

108 HOME AND SOCIAL LIFE.
principle and throughout it, a complete and indeed
inevitable, Correspondence with the processes of material
nature and of individual development ?
But the full extent of this principle of Correspond
ence has not yet been made plain, nor can it until the
idea of Cause comes into view. The twofold First
Cause— the Divine Love and Wisdom, produced the
natural universe, in all its diversified forms from Itself:
that natural universe must therefore, throughout its
extent and in all its forms, be a Correspondent of the
Divine ; for every effect must, in the nature of things,
correspond to its cause. But the human mind is also
an effect of that Primal Cause, and we have seen in
it, likewise, this twofold form of power, manifested as
affection and thought. In man, however, there are
distinct planes of life — the physical, the natural, and the
spiritual ; all these, therefore, must come under this
universal law. When, moreover, the heavenly states in
the interior world come into view, we perceive in them
also the subject of this all-embracing principle ; and
now it is evident that the relations of material things
among themselves are only outshadowings of the great
reality of Correspondence : from the Divine to the
Heavenly and Physical, back through the Natural and
Spiritual and Heavenly to the Divine again, we have
one grand illustration of the law which Science has
begun to perceive in certain of its aspects, and which
the New Church taught in its entirety long before the
least glimmer of it had penetrated Science. This
development, then, is in a cycle, from God, through
all degrees of being, to matter, and from matter back,
through all degrees, to God again. The principle of

HOME AND SOCIAL LIFE. 109
Social development, therefore, is a form of the universal
principle of Correspondence, and is but a manifesta
tion of mind in correspondence, both in itself and in
its movements, with the universal law of being in all its
degrees. Its truth is as inevitable as that things are and
are caused.
We now come to the second point — the Interactions
of Social Life ; and here the principle to be considered
manifests itself in the double form of the Egoistic and
the Altruistic, in one or other of which each man lives,
and from both of which come the motive-powers and
consequent interactions of life. On the one hand you
have the principle of the world — the Egoistic, or the
living for self; on the other, the principle of Christianity
— the Altruistic, or the living for others ; and our
spiritual status is determined by our being under one
or the other of these two laws as our ruling love and
motive. But here a voice is heard which says, " How absurd is
this statement that you must live either for yourself or
for others ! You can no more live wholly for others
than you can live wholly for yourself. Just think for a
moment what the result of the thoroughgoing applica
tion of this principle of Christianity, this Altruism, this
doctrine of living for others, would really mean; not
only would no Communism the world ever imagined
approach the state of affairs thus introduced, but an
inevitable result would be that the world would be
divided into two great classes, — those who give up
everything, and those who take everything so given up !
You have thus practically achieved nothing by your
Altruism, and the world is as bad at the end as it was

no HOME AND SOCIAL LIFE.
at the beginning ! " But this criticism of the Christian
doctrine implies a complete misunderstanding of the
true relation of these two principles. It is plain that
each of them has and must have its place in human
life, and that it is no question of which of the two we
are to choose to the exclusion of the other, or whether
we are to follow one to-day and the other to-morrow ;
but it is equally plain that we cannot obey both con
currently, or in the same sense or degree. When we
consider the matter, it is evident that, as a fact, we do
obey the one or the other as our leading love or motive.
And the true solution of the question lies in that way of
putting it : Which of them is to be our ruling principle ?
Both have their legitimate sphere. I ought to take care
of my body, but for what object ? For use. Not that
I may worship and serve myself, but that I may live for
others. For certain it is that man will live for one of
two things ; if he does not worship something out of
himself, he will and must inevitably worship himself.
One of two ruling principles, then, will be his — self-
love or the love of another. If it be the love of the
neighbour, the love, that is, of God or good in the
neighbour, how, in this case, does the Egoistic principle
work? It then becomes a means to an end. It is
not the end ; but it is the means to an end, and that
end is, use for others, the good of others, the develop
ment of social life. The individual, therefore, exists
for society, and he must be true to himself for this
object. He must develop all the powers within him,
and make the best of such as he possesses, but
for something out of and beyond himself; and the
Lord Jesus taught us this when He taught us the

HOME AND SOCIAL LIFE. in
fundamental principle of life, — love to God and the
neighbour. But if the Egoistic be the ruling principle, then fare
well all happiness ! If the Altruistic make the Egoistic
principle subservient to it, and become the end of home
and social life, then and then only shall we be following
that human law, " Whatsoever ye would that men should
do to you, do you even so to them." Wouldn't you
have them love you, and do you good? Then make
that the ruling principle, and make all within yourself
subservient to that ruling principle, and develop all
within yourself to the utmost for that end. Then
happy will be the Social Life which rests on such a
basis !
We have looked at the principle underlying the fact
and growth of Social Life, — the principle of Correspond
ence with all other forms of existence above and beneath
it ; at the Interactions of Social Life, with the twofold
law of the Self and the not-Self which governs there ;
and we now come to look very briefly at the means of the
development of Social Life. How is it to be developed ?
If what I have said be true, it cannot be developed from
without, but only from within ; but it can be helped from
without. If a man brings me food and I eat it, he does
not cause me to be developed : he is the occasion of my
being developed through the strength my system derives
from the food. The real cause of my development is
the relation of the living powers of my system to the food
absorbed. If, therefore, laws are made for social benefit,
they may be the occasion of good to society or the con
trary ; but create development they will not. That is
caused and given by the inward life of humanity, and the

112 HOME AND SOCIAL LIFE.
harmony of that life with the enactments passed. The
growth of social life being based on the law of Corre
spondence, the means and agencies of that growth derive
their validity from that essential fact ; and anything
opposed thereto is detrimental to society's welfare.
Hence the care that legislators should exercise in law
making ; but all care will go for nothing if these facts are
hidden from them, and if their own relation thereto, or,
in other words, if the functions of government are not
clearly perceived and acted on. Manifestly, if the
primary position of what are the true functions of
government — of what are its true relations to the laws of
social development — are not, in the very first place,
mastered by our legislators, they are not only not fit for
the position they hold, but may at any moment inflict
irretrievable injury on society, and place an embargo on
its growth. No goodwill is of any avail here ; indeed,
legislators acting from goodwill may act the more mis
chievously from that cause. If I, from a mistaken kind
ness, place the limb of a growing boy in a tight bandage,
and keep it there from a conviction that I am strength
ening the limb, improving the boy's health, and by
external support making a man of him, I shall only be
doing something similar to what a foolish legislator, full
of the good of society, and anxious from that motiye to
embody his theories in it, may do, when he passes laws
in ignorance of the true place and functions both of the
law and of lawgivers. How much of law has only been
a foolish bandaging of the limbs of society ! And this
comes by help from without !
This function of government, then, — this means of the
social development, what is it ? In analogy with the

HOME AND SOCIAL LIFE. 113
Correspondent facts in all degrees of being, it can be
essentially but one thing — the removal of obstruction or
impediment to the fullest growth of the individual, that
society, through the individual, may be built up and
benefited. If there be any law of development, that
law can only be embodied in freedom ; otherwise it is
choked and killed, and the panaceas of legislators put in
its place. Room, therefore, governments, for its expres
sion and growth ! Understand your place — the place of
scavenger, of nuisance and obstruction remover, hence
of freedom giver ! But that obstruction may lie in all
fields — from the sweeping of the streets, to the removal
of moral and other filth and impediments. Plainly it is
not the function of government to interfere with the laws
of life's development, or to make the laws of life's
development, but to remove from its path whatsoever
interferes to retard that life's development. But in this
view the history of legislation within the last thirty years
is not encouraging. We have had good motives and
well intended experiments without number. Animated
by the moral desire to put down evils (which is by no
means the same as removing them), philanthropists of
all shades have said in effect, " If we could only get this
law passed, compel this class or that, put down this or the
other evil, what a glorious state society would be in ! " —
Uhmmm! Don't you see that all this is mere external
experiment and bandaging the limb ? they have not
cured the cause, and, after such a fashion, cannot.
Apply your suppressive bandages at one place, and the
evil will appear elsewhere. But if one won't do, apply
another ! Yes, and make mummies of us. That is
really the meaning of much modern legislation, and of
H

ii4 HOME AND SOCIAL LIFE.
many well meant but stupid endeavours to legislate and
to over legislate, where the laws of the case are never
once conceived, not to say understood. No, let us
have individual good, and for this, individual freedom
to the full, but equally applied ; and for this, again,
let government follow that universal law by which
the good of the whole is obtained, and can only be
obtained, by removal of obstruction from individual
development The application of this to ourselves is not far to seek.
Let us take care to remove from our own life whatsoever
retards development. The function of the individual
towards himself, you see, is the same, and must be, as
that we have been applying in a wider field. We need
preparation not merely for the society here, but for the
higher society of heaven. If we think that by shutting
our eyes to our nature and its evils, it does not matter,
or that we are helping ourselves on, we are really stulti
fying progress. If we refuse to listen to the truths men
have to teach for fear we have to give up something of
our own, then we are moral cowards, and deserve our
stilted moral development. As the functions of the
government of a country are to sweep away every im
pediment to the growth of society, and to that of every
individual in it, materially, morally, or physically ; so it
should be essentially the function of every soul to hear
the appeal, "Cease to do evil ; learn to do well. . . . Come
now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord : though
your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow ;
though they be red like crimson, they shall be as
wool." Well, then, there is a way to be reformed, to be

HOME AND SOCIAL LIFE. 115
regenerated, — by following the Lord's law right through
out ; and here is the law — in the Word of God, written
on thevery principle of Correspondence — governing Social
Life. Within the literal word contained in the human
story there is the spiritual truth adapted to the states of
mental development here and in the heavens. Yes, and
within that again there is the clear unfolding of the
glorification of our Lord, who is the Word, who became
man for our sake, that He might show us the one perfect
example of development ; and the laws of His life
should bring our life into correspondence with Him.
Science says there is a principle of correspondence in
nature ; but we carry the correspondence into heaven ;
we carry it up to God, from whence it came. Our whole
thought and feeling, our practical everyday life, is to be
guided by the precepts involved in this relation in which
we stand to Him. The Word of God and the Works of
God are one, — and social life is God's, as the individual
man is His ; and both — the social through the individual
— will one day be purified through and through by these
divine principles descending from the Lord out of
heaven.

JUSTICE IN LIFE.
" Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field,
till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst
of the land ! " — Isaiah v. 8.
THIS text strikes at the root of a certain injustice
between man and man, but there is supposed by
some to be more injustice in life than that can
cover. There is alleged injustice there as introduced by
— shall we hesitate? — by God. Natural Law, they name
Him, — which is merely God's vicegerent; but let us
accept their phrase : it will be more seemly to speak of
injustice by Natural Law than of injustice by God. Thus
it would appear that there are two forms of alleged
injustice in human life : from Natural Law, and from
man against man. We take these points, then, simply
in their order.
First, Injustice by Natural Law. What, you may
wonder, can be the form of idea of those who think that
Natural Law can do them injustice? Their reasonings
may be classed under four heads. And should any of
you think their ideas to be trifling, you must remember
that they are things actually held, or at least expressed,
by some who take them for thoughts, and are thus in
a manner sacred. Men may think curiously, in our
estimation ; but we here desire to entertain and consider
all thinking that is honestly, or at any rate openly
no

JUSTICE IN LIFE. 1 1 7
uttered. For you who do not hold such notions, the
second part of the lecture may be of more interest.
Summing up, then, these divers attitudes with respect to
the injustice involved in Natural Law, we may range
them under these four heads : First, That it is an
injustice that we should be born on this earth rather
than on some other ; secondly, That it is an injustice
that we should be born now, at this time, rather than at
some better time in the world's history ; thirdly, That it
is an injustice that we should be born in the class of
society in which we happen to be born, and not in a
more convenient one for us ; and, fourthly, That it is an
injustice that we should have such bodies and minds as
we happen to have, and not better ones. You think, as
I said, that these points are very trifling, and even involve
a certain crookedness of thought, but since we are
treating of the difficulties of life, it is as well not to pass
the ideas of any unheeded by, but rather to lend, if
possible, a helping hand to a brother even in the
perversity of doubt or difficulty.
First, then, it is an injustice that we should be born
on this earth. Why so ? Because this earth is as bad
as any earth could be, is perhaps the worst of all earths,
and being born on it implies a worse condition than
being born on any other. Well, suppose it is so, what
then? Had we any right to be born on any other?
I cannot see where the right comes in ; and is not the
impossibility of maintaining a right sufficient? Cer
tainly ! This is the first question, then, and the essential
question we shall have to ask with reference to all the
four points I have mentioned. Can a right be shown in
regard to any of them ? Can any man formulate a law,

n 8 JUSTICE IN LIFE.
for instance, that shall express such a right in reference
to this first position ? I know of no such law, and if it
be a right it will lie in the nature of things; but the
nature of things has indicated that we should be born
here. The second test by which I would meet this notion of
being born on a better earth, is that it supposes some
disadvantage in being born on this one. I challenge the
disadvantage : I don't see it ! How are we to judge of
advantage and disadvantage in this matter? By the
light of liberty, rationality, and responsibility. Is there
any deprivation of liberty shown ? None whatever.
Any deprivation of rationality? None whatever. Of
responsibility ? No. Or interference with these ? None.
These powers constitute our nature's dignity, and we
could be no more free and rational and responsible, while
remaining the subjects of law, than we now are.
The third test I would apply here and throughout
these points is, Has Natural Law broken any promise
with us in bringing us on to this plane of life, instead of
another ? I never heard that Natural Law had promised
us anything but what it has given us; and, therefore, I
never could hear that Natural Law had broken any
promise in not producing us on another planet.
These three tests of Right, Disadvantage, and Broken
Promise we apply to all the points, and now turn to the
second, which is, That we ought to have been born at a
better time in the world's history, because the world is
getting better. If we had been born, for instance, a
thousand years later, we should have enjoyed greater
comforts, better circumstances, and life would have been
a different affair. Whereas now we pass through dis-

JUSTICE IN LIFE. 1 1 9
agreements, perils, and dangers, spiritual and natural ;
we experience all sorts of difficulties, and we have to
rush and struggle through them. And what of those
who were on the earth before us, and in even less happy
circumstances? Yet you will think that one injustice
does not remove another. Perhaps not; but let us
apply our three questions. Where does the right come
in ? Again, can any human disadvantage be shown ?
I reply that I cannot see it ; for here the question turns
not upon any supposed relative advantage as between
man and man, but upon the possibility of disadvantage
to any in relation to the common Power — God or
Natural Law — -which governs all alike. And such dis
advantage there is not, since no relative matters can ever
subvert the essentially human possession of liberty,
rationality, and responsibility, as derived from Law and
God, and as standing in relation thereto.
The third test — Has Natural Law ever broken any
promise to us? — need not detain us a moment. Our
place in the world's life is here, and our time now : this
is the promise, and it is redeemed.
What, then, in regard to the next point — the class of
society in which we have been born ? Is there not, by
our first test, an interference with, not to say a destruction
of, natural right in some being born rich and others
poor ? There is no natural right of man to one class of
society rather than another ; nay, there is no natural
right to be born at all ; but there is a right, because a
promise, of possession of such things as belong to the
place in life in which we are born, because the being
born is, in the light of absolute justice, itself a guarantee
of such right and the expression of such promise. Do

no JUSTICE IN LIFE.
all men then attain the fulfilment of this right of suffici
ency according to their place ? Most certainly they do
not ; but it is not Natural Law that deprives them of it ;
it is the injustice of man. Natural Law would give them
all that belongs to them in their station, did not the force
of evil Will divert from them the current of their rights.
But the wrongness or otherwise of Will being the
stronger, is not here in question : the fact alone concerns
us, and that fact is that it is not Natural Law that en
croaches on human right.
Again, is it any human disadvantage to be born in
one class of society rather than another ? Birth in the
back slums or in a palace makes . no essential difference
to the humanity of man. He is free, and rational, and
responsible everywhere, yet in all according, and strictly
according, to his privileges. But this subject will come
up for discussion next Sunday evening in the lecture on
" Providence." Once more : Has Natural Law made us any promise
and broken it ? No promise was ever given us that we
should be born under the " purple," or in one condition
rather than in another. But in the fact of being born we
have seen a promise ? Yes, but Natural Law did not
break it — meaning thereby the orderly Providence of the
Lord— and, given the time, will restore the right to whom
it belongs. And now, lastly, the natural injustice of being born
with such minds and bodies as we have, rather than with
better ones ; minds not seeing things clearly enough, or
perverting them, and with tendencies to disease and all
forms of possible and actual corruption in our bodies.
These are matters of fact. But I don't know, seriously

JUSTICE IN LIFE. 121
considering it, that we had any right to be different.
Do you? The question of right must be answered in
the negative. Are we, then, at any human disadvantage
for these things? No; for the simple reason that we
are judged by what we are, and the use we make of
what we are; and those who are neither rational nor
free are not responsible. The promise, too, that is in
us of being each something other than we are is in
course of fulfilment — in the individual, in the progress of
the race, and in immortality. But now, putting to you
practically a different side of it, Do any of you want to
be another? You may speculate about such things, but
you wish to be yourselves all the same. Which of you
will change with any of your neighbours and friends ? Or
will you change your crosses in life, and take somebody
else's ? But would-be wisdom comes to think that bad
as our own lot may be, that of others is worse from our
point of view. Practical life, therefore, answers all such
theories roughly, and dismisses them as the intellectual
excesses of those who have not come to years of ration
ality, or of dreamers who do not or cannot look at
things as they are. And, with one more reflection, we
too will leave them.
Suppose that, after all, Natural Law itself should be
challenged as an injustice ! Suppose that some one
should say, " I challenge the justice itself of our being
what we are. You assume that we have no rights that
Natural Law does not give, but I look behind questions
of Right, or of Disadvantage, or of Broken Promises.
I do not only not assume that whatever Natural Law
does is right, but I wholly deny the righteousness ; I
challenge Natural Law itself, for there the mischief begins ;

1 2 2 JUSTICE IN LIFE.
and as you think that Natural Law is but the expression of
God's nature, I challenge your God Himself, as ex
pressed in Law." Self-assertion of this sort is by no means
so rare as we may think : it occurs in all forms and
degrees. But when a man boldly declares that, whether
he can show a right or not, he challenges the order of
nature and the justice of law towards him in his being
what and where he is — he simply puts himself beyond
hearing through moral insanity. Yet his argumentative
mistake is palpable : it lies in assuming that Law is a
thing, and could be just or unjust. In the nature of
things, Law cannot be either one or the other, for the
simple reason that it is only an expression for the
coherence of events. The coherence of events implies
the substances among which events arise, and the respon
sibility and the blame of injustice begins and ends with
those Wills which create the substance of events, or the
changes there by which disaster springs, and not with the
Power which determines the coherence among events
themselves, of which Law is another name. Therefore, if
you throw evil on human life from any form of wicked
ness, if you lie or steal, or backbite, or act selfishly, you
are creating the only evil facts of life, and introducing
the changes from which alone injustice comes ; and
Law taking up that new element, perpetuates and
endorses it, as it does whatever is thrown into life.
From you comes that injustice which means a change
for evil in the substance of life's events : law is but the
expression of the new sequence you have introduced ;
and without the validity of law, life could never be sus
tained. Just try to imagine a day of it ! If your evil
will could not be effected, and you found you were pre-

JUSTICE IN LIFE. 123
vented doing what you would — if your selfish act were
stopped, and your arm seized with powerlessness as it
was raised to strike ; how could life be lived ? Order
means the working out of consequences, in freedom, for
good and evil alike ; and no other basis of life is conceiv
able. But if this orderly law were abolished, what could
take its place? Fire, some fine morning, takes upon
itself not to burn, and water cannot be drunk, and you
rise into the air instead of walking on the earth ! Give
us fixed order even at the cost of perpetuating evil !
But it is not this order that creates the evil and its con
sequent injustice : law is, as we said, neither just nor
unjust; and if there be injustice in life it springs from
the active element of Will destroying life's balance. But
enough of matters which could never be practical diffi
culties to a sane mind.
We will pass to consider the second aspect of our
subject — the injustice in life that arises from human
agency ; and this the text expresses, " Woe unto them
that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there
be no place left, that they may be placed alone in the
midst of the land." Human agency brings difficulties
into life chiefly by depriving us of those privileges proper
to our place in life. Natural Law, or the Divine order
of events, determines our powers and place : human
agency determines our facilities there. Do we each get
all that belongs to our place and powers, and which
therefore we ought to have ? It is here — in our man
hood and degree — that the pledge is made us : when
Natural Law brings us unto life where and as what we
are, there is in that fact a declaration that we ought to
have the things proper to our manhood and degree. Is

1 2 4 JUSTICE IN LIFE.
the tacit promise kept? It is not. Is it broken by
Natural Law? No, but by human agency. As I have
explained, the laying hold of such things as are brought
within its grasp, the keeping them in sequence and
order, and the bringing out of them the consequences
proper to them, is the function of law, and, looked at in
the light of God as the creator of law, is justice, and the
root of all justice in life. But Law creates nothing, and
therefore cannot create injustice ; and, once having
created us, God is not unjust, nor can He create
injustice, for Law is now His only hold upon us. But
injustice exists in the form of deprivation of necessities :
in one word, poverty is its proof, and there needs no
other. Human poverty is the result of human evil, and
it is a libel on God and life to say that it is a natural
ordinance. Keep clear the things that are distinct :
God's justice through Law — mans injustice through
evil. Before God all men are equal, and are equally
regarded by Him ; but man would destroy this equality,
and so far as the means of subsistence for his fellows is
concerned, he, being the only free power in nature, has
temporarily succeeded. It is man, we repeat, that
upsets this equality, pushing his own supposed claims at
the expense of others, overriding his neighbour, storing
up wealth for himself in spite of the despair which sees
in that its own doom, creating thus poverty and its con
comitant misery, and with that the extremes of sectional
difference, upsetting the natural condition of enough for
each, and introducing practical difficulty, disorder, and
injustice. What is the root of all this ? Can we trace the cause
and course of all this human injustice? I think we can.

JUSTICE IN LIFE. 1 2 5
It is a strange and startling fact that there never was
more wealth, and that there never was more poverty,
than at the present day. Here is a singular conjunc
tion of things : increase of wealth with increase of
poverty. And this means ? That the earth's products
for the subsistence of man — that the means of sub
sistence, in a word — have been collected and held by
some to the exclusion of others from their legitimate
share in the distribution. You think, perhaps, that this
is as right as it is natural — right because natural? I
deny both the rightness and the naturalness ; and those
professed Christian men who uphold this position little
know the unanswerable strength of the argument they
thus place in the hands of the denier. All human, and
all creatures alike needing subsistence, and yet, the
whole to some and the rest without, not unjust ? The
choice of sources of this inequality is plain : it is either
Natural Law (that is, God)i or it is man, which produces
this flagrant, unnatural inequality. Of course we do
not say that it is God, and we deny that it is those who
possess the wealth, so it must be those who are without
it, that are to blame ! and equally, of course, it must be
the improvidence o( the poor which creates poverty ! This
sounds like effect creating cause ; but the one thing we
want explained is quietly dropped — we want to know
the meaning and the justice of the terrible disparity to
begin with. Why are there poor, and who is to blame
for their existence as poor ? God or man — which ? It
is either one or the other : there is no third. If you
say that man is not, and that poverty is natural, the real
meaning of your statement, though you may not see it,
is that it is God who is to blame. You shrink from

i 2 6 JUSTICE IN LIFE.
that ? Very well then, the only alternative is that there
are human agencies at work producing this injustice.
What are those agencies ? Can we discover them ? We
can ; and here begins our catechism.
What, then, is specially the cause of this inequality
at the present day ? While the amassing of the earth's
produce by some in excessive proportion is the common
cause, the inequality is more marked at the present day
because of the general tendency to excess in this amass
ing principle : that more men are rich, and richer than
the few who were rich before, only emphasizes the dis
tinction between these and the poor. Where is this
excess of poverty seen ? Chiefly in certain parts of the
country — in our large towns and in the small villages :
the manufacturing and smaller towns come under their
own form of the law — specially the former. If the
poverty be greater in our large towns and strictly
country districts, how does it express itself? In many
ways, but markedly by continuous efflux from our villages,
hamlets, and country districts of men, women, and child
ren, and their continuous influx into large towns.1
What brings them there ? Work, or the want of it ! A
curious thing — to stop our catechism for a moment — I
will note here. It has been found as the result of
special investigation, that in regard to the lower aspects
of London life, three generations of dwellers in the
slums is a rarity : they die out so quickly under the
stress of poverty, and are supplemented by this influx from
' After a calculation from actual figures, Alfred Russel Wallace
concludes that we have "a total of nearly two millions of people who
in ten years only (from 1871-81) have been forced by the struggle
for existence to leave the country for the towns."

JUSTICE IN LIFE. 127
the country. Well, why cannot they get in the country
the work they seek in the towns ? Because they have
been dismissed from, or have left, the places they held.
What places ? They were agricultural labourers, for the
most part, and they were dismissed, or they left, because
their landlords had other uses for the country than agri
culture. What other uses ? They preferred to turn the
land into pasture, or let it out for coursing, or embody
it in deer forests. Why? Because it brought them
more money with less labour. That some might be
enriched, or hold what they esteem their own, others
came to the slums to — starve ! And these men who have
dismissed them, what about them ? Seventy-five of
them hold among them, for example, half of Scotland ;
five hundred of them hold a third of the land of the United
Kingdom ; while some few thousands practically hold the
whole. And the millions of the rest, what do they get
and do ? What the others please to permit. And thus
ends our catechism.
I am giving you no theories now : this is not the place
for theories. These things plainly mean that the soil of
our country, given us to live by, may be taken from us ;
we may be largely deprived of its use and good through
denial of permission to cultivate ; that it may be
treated as private property, and used as a monopoly by a
certain few who have either inherited these supposed
rights or been permitted to purchase them. There is
the key to the whole question of poverty : wealth accumu
lation and land ownership.
Do you object that the wealth of the country is not
confined to the landlords ? I have not said that, and have
only told half my story; but we have, at least, traced

128 JUSTICE IN LIFE.
out one source of wealth accumulation, and hence of
distress — the claim (rightly or wrongly) to private pro
perty in land. Nor is it that the system of administration
is bad : it is in the claim of right itself that the mischief
rests. The wealth accumulation lies also with another
class — the plutocracy so called — the merchant class,
which produces our merchant princes. I spoke of these
the other Sunday, and I suppose I must not say any
more ; but here is a fact. The papers tell us that the
late Samuel Morley was worth two and a half millions of
money, though after his death his will was proved under
half a million, because he had previously disposed of
the two millions. I have here to put this simple but
searching question : Why should it be possible for any
man to be worth two and a half millions while others are
dying from starvation ? Plainly there is something
radically wrong in the system which produces such con
sequences. I have nothing to say against any man in
particular, or against any special trade ; but it is no
wonder if some should protest against that system of
trade which allows of such vast resources for the benefit
of one man only. Is a just distribution of wealth, or
other than an excess of poverty, possible where trade on
such lines is held as the rule of right ? Why is it that
the men under Samuel Morley,1 and those like him, have
no larger and more equable interest in the business?
Do they not do the work? Is this his just share, and
their two guineas a week theirs ? You may say that he
planned the concern, built it up and held it together ;
but look at the disparity ! They are both God's crea
tures, and both have to stand before God's bar of justice
1 I breathe not a word against Mr. Morley personally.

JUSTICE IN LIFE. 129
— both human beings after all. Whence, then, this
disparity, and the justice before God of the system under
which he could amass such wealth, and his servants
remain practically just as they were ? But we may leave
them to settle that, while we put again the true issue
here : How is it consistent with justice that so great
fortunes should be amassed, or such enormous incomes
obtained, out of the soil or out of trade — that there
should be such an accumulation of the earth's products
in the hands of these men, while others are starving and
even dying in the streets ?
But curious movements are noticeable, and one is that
these two classes, the aristocratic and the plutocratic, are
drawing nearer together. You find merchant princes
giving their daughters to the nobility, and the nobility
more and more entering trade. You have nobility as
tea-merchants, cab-proprietors, and the rest of it ! These
two classes are coalescing, and that is not auspicious.
It means (for they are the monied classes) their keeping
the reins in their own hands through possession of the
land between them ; it means uphill work, further
poverty, and hard fighting before justice can reach the
daylight ; it means that there come straight to the facts
of the case to-day the strong and searching words of
Isaiah : " Woe unto them that join house to house, that
lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be
placed alone in the midst of the land ! " Here is a
simple description of what is taking place around us;
and we Englishmen can bow to the claim of exclusive
possession of the earth as if somehow it were a right, and
our acceptance of the claim a duty ! We are so constitu
tional, so slowly moved, that we hardly dare let ourselves

130 JUSTICE IN LIFE.
recognise the facts as challengeable, much more breathe
a word against them ; but here, from the Word of the
Lord, I denounce this thing as a gross usurpation, and
the most thorough-paced injustice the world has seen.
Has the Word of the Lord nothing here to say against
this fact, and its cause, that some men die in starvation,
and others live in luxuriance? Yet so hampered by
prejudice and prepossession are we that we are fain to
see that somehow the words cannot apply to us. And
what of the interpretor of God's Truth as applied to
life — the pulpit ? Silent : the Lord points out the
injustice, but His messenger proclaims it not. Yet if
the pulpit is to be a power at all to-day, it can only be
so by coming down to the central facts of justice, and
taking its stand there, — speaking the truth in love
between man and man, and man and God.
Nor does the history of the acquisition of the land
mend matters, for it was acquired for the most part by
dishonesty, by having a stronger arm than their fellows,
by marrying a king's mistress, by doing this or the other
service for those in power ; and so they themselves came
into power. The historical truth seems to be that the
title of the English nobility (to speak of these alone now)
to the estates they possess, is as rotten as are equivocal
actions generally. Yet if it were not so, a principle
condemned by the Word of the Lord cannot ultimately
prevail, and wants only its thorough investigation in
order to its final subversion. Judged in this light, the
principle of the private possession of the earth by those
who "lay field to field," — in other and plain words,
the principle of private property in land, — is con
demned already, and to its final sweeping away needs

JUSTICE IN LIFE. 131
but the opening of men's eyes to the nature of the
fact. But would not the subversion of this time-honoured
principle lead to Socialism ? I am not here putting
forward any theories : I am adhering to the facts of life
seen in the light of God's Word. Moreover, it is no
matter what consequences the establishment of Divine
Justice brings; but, so far as I am concerned, I say
unhesitatingly, Let us have no Socialism. We have had
tyrannies enough and to spare without adding to them
the tyranny of the majority — which Socialism inevitably
means. Socialism is the refuge at this day of men with
good hearts but poor heads, who don't see the outcome
of the things they propose. Of all refuges from our
present distress, true Socialism — and I do not mean the
Socialism of the streets — would be the poorest and the
worst. But while I am as strong an anti-Socialist as any
going, I maintain a truth in its demand ; and the only
way to take out its sting and have done with it in the
end, is to satisfy the element of justice in it; for the
element of justice in Socialism is not confined to
Socialism. The root of all its, to me impossible, scheme
is the class of facts already adduced, viz. the concurrent
increase of poverty and wealth, the cultivation or non-
cultivation of the land at the pleasure of the supposed
owner, and the fact of such ownership, to the exclusion
of others, " till there be no place " left. Remove these
evils, and the genuine complaints of Socialism have
virtually ceased.
If, then, this condemnation by Scripture of the per
sonal monopoly of land is to be carried into effect, what
is the basis of the justice of such condemnation The

132 JUSTICE IN LIFE.
ground of the essential justice of the case lies in this,
that every man has by nature the same right as every
other man to those original sources of life and support
which are alike independent of any man's creation, and
are produced for the sustenance of all — these sources
being air, earth, and water. But if each man has the
same right as every other man, none can have greater
and none can have less. We readily see how this
works in regard to air and water : if we are deprived
of our equal rights in these, we can appeal to law,
and law will establish our claim. If a man shuts
out my daylight, or so vitiates the atmosphere as
to compel me to breathe impurity, or for his own
purposes contaminates the water I drink, a court of
justice will recognise the usurpation and restore to me
my rights. Now, we say that the law of equity here is
the equal right of every man to do what he wills with
these and all things, subject, as this implies, to the equal
rights of all others. Plainly, therefore, equity gives to
every man the same right to the earth as it gives to every
other man; and equally plainly, such equity abolishes
private possession. For a man, then, to make private
property of that upon which all alike depend for susten
ance, and to which all have an equal right, is a manifest
and conspicuous injustice. Here is the real social
iniquity, and which we allow to go unchallenged, even
when the Lord Himself has challenged it ages since.
The ground of equity is the essential ground of its con
demnation, and this is also the broad and simple ground
on which the scriptural " woe " is given against it. The
injustice here, then, springs not from Natural Law, but
from the setting aside of the primary Natural Law

JUSTICE IN LIFE. 133
between man and man. It is human injustice. The
only possible remedy, therefore, must begin with the
recognition of the injustice against which the Lord here
denounces a " woe."
And this leads me to observe that no secondary legis
lation can be other than useless. We leave the younger
sons of our great estate-holders, who are cut off with a
mere pittance, to question the justice of Entail and
Primogeniture ; but something more radical than all this
is required : that alone can meet the case which shall be
in some form or other an embodiment of the principle
asserted by justice and the Word of the Lord. What
that embodiment shall be it is not for me here to say : if
I did you might well challenge me for the leaving of
principles and facts, and the teaching of theories and
opinions; and the things that I have said are neither
opinions nor theories, nor will their denial make them
other than facts and principles. But it is not easy to
break away from the power of habitual monopolies ; it is
easier unconsciously to think from them, even while pro
fessedly examining them, than it is clearly to see through
them by the light of equity and reason : those who
may think that I am meddling with politics, or with
things forbidden to the pulpit, may profitably consider
this. The attitude of religion, as exemplified by the Church,
to the great question of human life here laid open cannot,
however, be well passed by. What has she had to say to
the relation of rich and poor, and its causes ? Generation
after generation, as the wretched poor have passed before
her, she has exhorted them to believe that they are in the
Father's House, to "arise and go to their Father," not to

134 JUSTICE IN LIFE.
look to the evils, or supposed evils, of other men, but to
their own, to cry to the Lord for mercy and forgiveness,
and to look to Heaven as their place of reward. All
right and good : not a word would I say against what of
religion there is in such exhorting. The wretch so ap
pealed to has no chance of escaping the curse, and the
best thing he can do is to return to his Father and say,
" Father, I have sinned." Oh, if every one of us could
do that sincerely ! Yes, and even he may do that; but
his descendants? You pass on to them, and again to
their descendants, to all of whom you hear in imagination
the same word said ; and that is all the balm the Church
has to offer for generations of oppression ! but against
the iniquity — never a word. Surely, friends, it is time the
Church was aroused to some sense of her neglected duty
in this thing. Both pulpit and Church may well be
losing powers in the world !
But let us be ever so willing, what can we, as individual
members of the Church, do in the face of the world's
crying evils of poverty, distress, and injustice ? Towards
immediate help you may do much; towards eventual
remedy, comparatively little, and yet that little is some
thing, and imperative upon you. Your first duty is to
seek willingness to look the problem in the face ; your
second is to inquire for such information as will assist
you in understanding it ; and your third is to endeavour
to impart some interest in it to others, to spread a public
opinion on the subject — to assist, in a word, in educating
men and women on the most momentous social problem
of the day, and the one which lies at the root of al
genuine future reform. This is what we all can do, and
what we ought to do as much as in us lies.

JUSTICE IN LIFE. 135
Again, I say, if we have hearts of justice in us, let us
try to understand it ; but to do this effectually we must
cleanse our own hearts of injustice — of the injustices
which we put daily upon others in thought and act : then
may we hope to see more clearly what Justice in Life
requires at the hands of humanity.

PROVIDENCE.
' ' Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing ? and not one of them
shall fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs
of your head are all numbered." — Matthew x. 29, 30.
IT is a great satisfaction to me to-night to announce
such a subject as that of Providence, because to
reach it we must have gone through, as we have
gone through, some of the more difficult subjects con
nected with our human welfare : subjects not pleasant to
touch, that can only be, to me at least, " the burden of
the Lord ; " but subjects which I do not shirk, and would
not shrink from when they come in my way. We need
not court them ; but we cannot evade them, if we would
fairly and honestly fulfil the pulpit's work of considering
the facts and difficulties of the life about us. Yet
spiritual subjects, which are in a manner above debate,
needing only to be seen either to be intuitively received
or rejected, these are those in which the hearts, I think,
of most men and women will truly delight. In this I
am one with you, for surely these deeper things after all
lie nearer to us ; all deep things do, and a right
apprehension and understanding of them are helpful in
ways in which other questions do not help us in the
least. We come then to-night with special pleasure to
the subject of Divine Providence.
"Are not," says the Lord, "two sparrows sold for a
136

PROVIDENCE. 137
farthing?" — a comparatively trifling sum, hardly worth
mentioning, only the tenth of a Roman penny — "and
one of them shall not fall to the ground without your
Father : " even the half of a worthless thing, representing
the lowest degree of life and thought and knowledge,
cannot be passed by, is not to be excluded from the
consideration and care of the Divine Providence. " But
the very hairs of your head are all numbered." We
have a numberless thing now brought into consideration,
and this numberless thing, even in its fractional elements,
like the least of the rational principles of the mind, is
under the Divine Providence and care. This seems,
then, this statement of the Lord's, to go right down into
all life, — to penetrate nature, to penetrate human life, to
be an express and explicit statement of the Divine
Government of the Lord in and over all His creatures, —
and there are no creatures that are not His.
What, then, is Providence ? Providence is the Divine
Love and the Divine Wisdom working in nature and in
human life to produce there the best possible. And the
best possible is the eternal best : the best not for time
but for eternity, the best not for finiteness but for
infinity, the best as God thinks it, and not as we would
have it.
But I cannot speak in such a strain without hearing a
difficulty from this side and from that. There are those
who, on this side, say, "Well, this is a very good faith
of its kind, you know, this of yours, but I cannot take it,
— I cannot take it. I don't see any grounds for it.
Look at nature, for instance, — Is she not intact and self-
contained? Is she not governed everywhere by law?
Where, then, is there place for Providence in nature?

138 PROVIDENCE.
And in regard to human life, is not the fact all? What
of Providence, then, if the fact of human life be the all
of human life ? Where does it come in ? Does it stand
outside of facts ? Does it touch them on the shoulder
and say, Go here or there, do this and that ? " Thus, as
there is no interposition in life by a power from without,
and no interference with its normal action, these men
conclude that the things that are are self-governed, man
included ; in fact, they get the idea of self-government in
nature from the idea of self-government in man. How
are we to meet this radical difficulty ? The answer to it
brings on the first point we have to consider, namely,
That Providence is.
First, then, Providence Is. In considering that Pro
vidence Is, in relation to the notion that things are
self-governed, we are impelled to observe that those who
give utterance to that notion have never thought out
their idea, and don't understand its meaning and
implications ; that they don't understand the facts of
nature, nor trace them to their source; and that they
don't understand the moving principle of human life.
See what I mean ! If we are not believers in a personal
God, there is still for us a something which caused the
things that are, and which Spencer calls the " Primal
Power." Call it what you will, think of it as you will,
there is a something, a power from which things are what
they are. I have the power of thinking and willing and
acting. Whence did I get it? From my father and
mother. And whence did they get it ? Go backwards
through all the race, through the duration of the universe
itself, and you come inevitably at last to that primal
Something. Retrace our steps from that cause down-

PROVIDENCE. 139
ward, down to the point of myself, and I am perceived
to be a product of this primal power ; but every man,
every tree, is its product, every creature in nature at this
moment is its last product, — the universe as we know it
is its last product. Very well, then, all we here do is but
to declare the perception of this primal force descending
by streams of energy through the channels, the forms of
nature, in which we now find it ; we see that primal
power come down to this moment, acting at this present,
and we cannot get away from the perception. And this
shows us a different side of life from that of the self-
governing idea, that everything, viz. is connected with
every other thing, that there is no such thing as isola
tion of existence ; it shows us that whatever exists, exists
by that primal force in it, transmitted to it and acting in
and by it now. Every man and woman is thus the end
of a line of energy from that First Power ; ay, and so is
nature just as much the end of a line of such energy,
down to this moment. And if the same primal force is
in each individual that is in nature, it works in and
governs all things. Whether you like to have it or no, it
is so ; and whatever you like to call that Primal Power
(Oh, it is better, better, better to call it God, and have
done with it), its meaning is simply — for you cannot get
out of it — that that Primal Force lives in us ; it means
therefore that that power is Itself a living power, the
cause of nature and man. Even on natural principles we
find ourselves standing in the presence of the great
governing force, — the Providence of the Universe : we
are thus shown to be but the last outcome of that Living
Power which has the universe in hand, and which is in
the grains of sand, by power and actual presence, as truly

140 PROVIDENCE.
as it is in the sun. We have here, then, the fact that a
Providence is.
But we will pause on this point just a moment, to give
you breathing time, as it were, in which to get it into
your mind. You see, if this primal power, — which I and
all Christian men call God, — if this primal power is
working down through all things, and is itself in all
things, and they could not exist without it, and if it is
working in them, and they are but fractions in it, then it
is producing the things that are, and it is the only govern
ment, — the only government, — the only power ! Talk of
human power after that ! But that word is really a
misnomer, for there is no human power, rightly con
sidered, if this is true, since even the power to be free is
bestowed. If this primal power is in all things, and right
through all things, is there not here a Providence ? We
may not agree about the name we are to call It, but I
claim here the demonstration of the fact, and this is all
that we are now in search of — the radical essential fact of
a Universal Providing Force in and over human life, as
in contrast with the foolish notion of the self-government
of the individual atoms, human or material. Here, then,
is Providence. It is the Divine Love and Wisdom, as
we interpret the facts, acting in and through all things
for a divine result.
There are those who have a difficulty from another
side, and this, again, brings us to another aspect of the
subject. We see that Providence Is ; but those others,
of whom I am going to speak, don't deny the fact of
Providence. What they say is : " My difficulty is that I
don't see how Providence can be universal ; that Provid
ence is I can quite understand, and should not like to

PROVIDENCE. 141
deny ; but how can Providence come into my life and
order the things I myself order ? How can Providence
act in the things in which I myself act ? How can two
act in one thing at the same time ? I can believe in a
superintendence over all things in a general way, but in a
special particular Providence I cannot believe ; I cannot
see my way to it." Well, that is a very plausible argu
ment which people — so far as it is an argument at all —
very often use, who are very good people and believers
in Providence in their own way. And how would you
meet it? I think, simply, and without metaphysical
talk. Did you ever see a house built " in general," apart
from the bricks and mortar which composed it? A
house has to be built of special things which, — which
what ? which constitute it. A general idea has to consist
of the special ideas which,— which what ? which constitute
it. Feelings have to consist of the special minor affec
tions which, — which what? which constitute them.
Nature has to consist of the special parts which, — which
what ? which constitute it. Providence has to consist of
the individual energies, efforts, forces, powers, parts
which, — which what ? which constitute it. That, or there
is no Providence at all. Thus you see the general
Providence of which men talk, and to which they are
ready to accede, is either made up of specific Provid
ences, or there is no general Providence possible.
This, I think, ought to be clear enough ; but let us take
an illustration which is perhaps more near, more germain
to the point. Here is a human body : could life be in
that human body, could life be in any human body " in
general?" If life were only in the human body in
general, it would not be alive ; but life is not in the human

142 PROVIDENCE.
body in general, but is in- the human body in particular,
and it is a particular life of the lungs, heart, brain,
nerves, muscles, and bones that make up the life of the
whole body : the particulars constitute the sum. As
with the human body, so with the body politic, so with
universal nature. Were it not for the Divine Love and
Wisdom of the Lord in every organism, in every indi
vidual of humanity, in every tree that lives, in every
power and force that commands or draws, these things
could not be. It is in the whole of things, and can
command them. Divine government is the cause of the
supposed qualities of Divine forces. Divine forces, so to
speak, are broken up into finiteness and received into
recipient vessels in men, beasts, and vegetables and
minerals, according to the use destined for each. Provid
ence, therefore, is universal because it is special and
particular. But again, in considering the main point here, the
general doctrine of Providence, we come to a third
matter. We have noticed that Providence is; we have
seen that Providence must be Universal ; but now, what
is Providence ? Beyond the bare definition I have given
you, — the activity of the Divine Love and Wisdom, —
what is Providence concretely in human life ? that is to
say, how does Providence act along with human life ?
this difficulty has been already stated but not met.
The men we first considered tell us that they see no
Power outside of human life. Quite right, they don't,
because it is not there. Where is it then ? In human
life and in nature. But how is it in human life?
Because human life is the recipient vessel for the Divine
Providence. But how does Divine Providence act in

PROVIDENCE. 143
human life ? Divine Providence has given human life
two degrees, the internal and the external, and Divine
Providence acts by means of the internal degree, and ex
pects man to act by means of the external degree. Here
you see is a field in each individual for the deliberate
energies of the Divine Providence, and yet for the
individual energies. Let me state it again. Divine
Providence has given an internal to man's nature as well
as an external ; that Divine Providence acts upon the
internal of man's nature, and expects man to act in and
by as well as upon the external of his nature. Are
there two such divisions in man's nature as these ?
Certainly. Paul speaks of the inner and the outer man.
There you have it ! We know as a fact that every man
possesses an internal or spiritual power, capable of
understanding internal and spiritual things ; and also an
external or natural power, capable of understanding
external or natural things. But they are not the same,
because the functions are different ; and, inasmuch as
these functions are totally different, so the organisms
are different which possess these functions. The internal
or spiritual organism is for spiritual things and purposes;
and the external or natural organism of the mind is for
external or natural things and purposes. And we say
the Divine acts by means of the internal organism, and
man by the external organism. How does the Divine
act, then ? It acts by drawing man in a given way, to a
Divine and eternal end in view. Constantly does the
Divine agency act in this way to draw man to its own
purposes. It has a certain thing it desires man to be
and to do ; it has an eternal purpose in view with that
individual ; and constrainingly does the Divine influx

144 PROVIDENCE.
pour through the internal organism of the man, — his
spiritual nature, — prompting, suggesting, all but impelling
him to go in certain directions. Often he wakes up in
wonder and thinks, Why do I want to do this and not
the other? My friend, it is the Divine Providence in
thee desiring thee to do this, because it is best for thee
at the time, and it is the right thing to do. Well, then,
the Divine influx acts through the internal faculties,
drawing and constraining man towards good and truth,
to produce a conjunction of good and truth in himself.
But the man is in the external of his nature, and he,
having this impulse, this feeling, this drawing, resents it :
it is unpleasant to him, it is an encroachment on his
liberty, and he won't have it, and he shakes it off. He
will have his own way, and he has his own way, his
"fling" he may call it. But the drawing does not cease
for all that ; it does not cease until its possibilities cease.
" While there is life," as we say, " there is hope ; " and
to the uttermost the Lord saves. While there is a shred
of a possibility of good in man, the Lord's drawing in
his internal nature, into action corresponding to it in his
external nature, still goes on. And look at the grand
result the Lord is able to bring about out of this inflow
ing of His life into man's internal nature ! But how
does the Lord act ? See ! In the internal of man abide
our divine possibilities, the " remains " of good, our very
inmost selves, and the Lord acts on these, and draws
this man's lingering regard for good, and tries if it be
possible to get him to bend it in the Divine direction ;
and He does so with that man's inner dormant good,
and that man's, and so on all around continuously in
Christian, in Heathen, in Mohammedan, in all souls

PROVIDENCE. 145
alike, the world over. For what ? That out of all, He
may make great Divine heavens for the blessedness
of men, and for the satisfaction of His own illimitable
Love. All this out of human life ! The Lord creates
heaven by means of the affections of man, drawing
these affections into a great whole by that Divine
magnetism which at last constitutes the heavens
themselves. And thus the Divine Providence is in
life, is in all life, is in every form of life, is working
for and drawing towards eternal ends, is working for
good and truth, working in good and evil alike, working
in all souls towards His great, divine, eternal purpose.
We say, then, that Providence is the Divine Love and
Wisdom working universally for the production by eternal
ends of a glorious blessedness which the Word calls,
and we hope for as, Heaven.
Here is our doctrine of Providence, but out of that
doctrine will come possibly some difficulties ; and the
first that naturally will occur to some at least, I take it,
will be this : " How do you assort such a doctrine as that
with predestination and with free-will ? because this looks
pretty much like predestination all the way through, like
a predestination that will take no ' nay,' and that has
but one result. On the other hand, what about free
will ? If the doctrine be true, it looks as if man is but
a puppet, and will have to go and come as the strings
are pulled." If you have so apprehended my doctrine,
you have made a great mistake indeed. Look at the
matter in another light. We have seen that the internal
is nearest to the Divine, which must act on that which is
nearest first ; and that the external is that from which
man acts. You know that it is from the external that
K

146 PROVIDENCE.
you yourself act. This being so, when the impulse in
the natural man arises, are you compelled to will it,
compelled to obey it? Of course not. You know
very well, you know to your sorrow, that often enough
you don't obey it. What does that mean? This.
You assert that your liberty would be sold, and ask if
your obedience would not be slavery; but if you see
that a certain course consorts with your spiritual and
heavenly life (and, don't you see, Providence knows what
is best), and if that heavenly life is really your own desire
also, the instigation to do that thing is really in the line
of your freedom ; and what more would you have ? You
are acting in freedom and with rationality also, and in
the stream of the Divine Providence. You are acting in
one degree and Providence in another. There is no
collision, and is suggestion coercion ? It is as if some
one said, " I say, John, I want you to do me a favour.
I am in difficulties, and I am sorry to trouble you, but I
wish you to help me with a word of advice." And you
give the word of advice, the best in your power, and the
man turns it over and over in his mind, and he accepts
it and acts on it. Would you say you were constraining
that man, or that you interfered in any way with his
liberty ? Where is the interference of God's Providence
when He gives you good advice? All He gives you,
and all He could give you, is the good advice of His
Divine nature, coming through your internal and striving
to get your external to accept it. What would you have
done if your friend had said he did not care a straw for
your advice. You would say he could follow it or not
as he pleased. He would be equally free to accept your
counsel, or to reject it; nay, his freedom began by

PRO VIDENCE. 147
accepting it, and by acting out the thing he accepted.
Perfectly free such a friend of yours would be, and
perfectly free are you under the action of the Divine
Providence It is a suggestion, it is an influx (not com
pelling) expressing the highest and best to your thought
and feeling, letting you see the ideal side of the thing,
and asking you if you will accept that ideal thing or no.
This is what Providence is over our life, and the security
for victory Providence has is just this, that the human
mind does like the ideal, the best ; and even, if in pain
and sorrow has to seek it, still loves it The poor
wretch in the gutter, bewailing what she has come to, is
evidence of that as striking as you could wish.
But what about Predestination ? Why, it is no more,
it has simply vanished ; because you see if God acts with
men, and tries to get them to act with Him, and if they
freely accept His impulse, and act with Him, they are in
freedom, and there's an end of it, while He is still draw
ing them on into His Divine desires. The fact that
God does not constrain or compel is evidenced in this,
that many men reject His power and government, — this
is real government, but in freedom, — and many men say,
" I will not have Thee to reign over me," and they go
on their own old way, and nourish the natural evil power
within them, and love it and act from it.
But another idea may be worth looking at in
passing. It may be said, " If Providence directs the
affairs of a man's life, and sees that a certain thing will
be done by him at a certain time in his history, and if
Providence, seeing that, having that foreknowledge, works
up towards that result, isn't that really God's predestinat
ing that that thing shall be done ? Is there no sort of

148 PROVIDENCE.
predestination at all ? " Yes, there is. I have the bold
ness to say there is a real, a splendid predestination, —
to heaven, but to nothing else. To heaven all souls
are predestined, and the whole Divine energy is bent
towards this result ; but this can only be brought about
by means of freedom and rationality, — God cares nothing
for it otherwise. There is Predestination if you like !
But to hell ? No, nothing of the kind ; that is a man-
made doctrine, and we may leave it to go to where it
came from. Well, then, following this idea, we have
not yet answered the question as to the particular cir
cumstances that may happen to a man : is there no pre
destination in the particular circumstances that make
for heaven? So that we are in for it just as fast as
before ! Stop a bit ! The Lord foresees what man
will do, and the Lord acts in and by man's affections.
What are man's affections ? Man's affections are man's
world of causes. The Lord is in man's world of causes,
and knows what man will do, and the Lord acts on this
knowledge, and arranges external circumstances accord
ingly. There is no compulsion, no predestination here,
and the outcome I do not doubt for a moment; but
man is free in every part of his action. You see fore
knowledge does not mean predestination, for the simple
reason that foreknowledge is but the knowledge on God's
part of causes. Now, if you know causes you know
results. John Stuart Mill said in effect, " If you tell
me what a man is, I will tell you what he will do."
Of course he could. The Divine acts in man, through
man, and by man, and yet man is free, free from first to
last, and all the way along. The Lord loves to act with
the best affections of man, and man loves to be acted

PROVIDENCE. 149
upon from the best affections of the Lord ; and where
the law of love is there is liberty.
Well, this shows us one aspect of the difficulty of the
doctrine of Providence, that in regard to predestination
and freedom. Let us turn now to a practical difficulty
that may occur to some, the difficulty in regard to the
inequalities of human life, and the supposed result pro
duced by Providence in this kind. Some are born into
luxury, others into unspeakable wretchedness, and men
draw the inference that here is a manifest injustice.
" Here is a man born to ten thousand a year, it may be,
he can do what he likes, spend his life in enjoyment ;
and here is a poor wretch born to nothing, — rather say
to worse than nothing, — and the best thing he can make
of his life is a wreck." What, then, is the fact ? The fact
is, if the Divine Providence as I have stated it to you is
anything like that which acts on nature and man, that
wretch in the slums is just as much under the Divine
care and providence as the man in purple — not a whit
more, not a whit less. But that is assuming the point,
is it ? Well, stop a moment, and consider the thing
quietly ! Remember that we are looking at the question
not from the comparative point of view as between man
and man, but from the absolute point of view as to each
man's relation to Providence. Now, if you think that
here some men are at a disadvantage, just tell me what
you take a real disadvantage in life to be. Certainly not a
natural disadvantage, which is temporary and passing,
but a spiritual disadvantage, through the deprivation of
spiritual powers and the freedom of their use. Speaking
then of responsible men and women, I say bring me a case
in which a man may not reach that spiritual manhood

150 PROVIDENCE.
which he desires to possess. And mind, it isn't a case
of less or more than his fellows : show me a case in which
a man by stress of circumstance is prohibited being his
spiritual best. I venture to say that you will never fine!
him. Every man in his own circumstances is free, —
free to be saved from his evils, and to be the best self in
him, and no man is any more than that. Oh, some
people think that shocking : they seem to hold a
sort of religion in this idea, that the man in purple is
much more easily saved than the man in rags. I can
only say that there can hardly be a grosser misread
ing of human life than this. I cannot understand a
spiritual man having a thought like this — in what spiritual
direction it points, or where it comes from. A man
more easily saved by being born to every comfort than
to the reverse ! What becomes of your doctrine of
temptation, New Churchman, of difficulty, and over
coming, and wrestling, and self-sacrifice? And, Old
Churchman, what becomes of salvation if salvation be
triumph over evils ? In any case, New Churchman or
Old Churchman, I ask you how can these things be ?
The fact is, when you look closely at it, that, if there are
any circumstances worse than others, those who are
born to circumstances of the best, as we call them, are
really in the worst. What is it that conduces to self-
love ? Comfort. What is it that conduces to self-love ?
Luxury. What is it that conduces to self-love ? Indul
gence. What is it that conduces to self-love ? Every
thing coming ready to hand, coming in a " silver spoon,"
coming before being asked for (and I take self-love to be
the very centre of hell) ; and yet these elements of life
that are applauded as the best, — the echoing of which

PROVIDENCE. 151
reaches the heavens, coming up from so many thousands
of human souls, — are the most destructive circumstances
from a spiritual point of view that a man could be borrl -
into, and are just the circumstances to draw him away
from God, from goodness, from self-sacrifice, from all
things but from self — that one thing of which he ought
to be rid. And yet man can be easier taken to heaven
born in purple than in the slums ! Don't talk any
more of it. The man born in the slums, however, is
trodden on every day by his neighbours, metaphorically
and physically. He has to struggle over hindrances,
and often to go in want ; and what does this do for
him? It brings out the worst in him, you think?
Perhaps, and the best too. Look at the women who
have to stay at home all day, in streets not of the
sweetest, with the doors of their houses always open,
and the wash-tub in view perhaps ; or who sit in the
doorstep continually, and are by no means over clean.
Suppose the husband is out of work, and one of these
women is in difficulty, where does the helping hand
come from? From the neighbours. Let one of them
really be in circumstances requiring human sympathy,
where does the sympathy come from? From these
same rough women. They would show a different
side of things to you if you interfered with them, but
to those they are brought up amongst, and who are
like themselves, they are different. The fact seems
to be that there is no class in which human kind
ness is more developed than exactly among the poor,
and even the abject poor ; and the reason is simple
enough, if your doctrine of self-sacrifice be true, and your
doctrine of temptation as a means to good be true.

152 PROVIDENCE.
But the Lord knows what is best for every man and
woman, and this means that just the circumstances • in
which they are, are the best. The Divine Providence,
i.e. the Divine Love and Wisdom, is bound to seek
the best for all souls ; and, in this way, the man that
would be a demon, perhaps, if he had not the means of
wealth for this world's comfort, has them given to him
freely, to prevent the possibility that might otherwise
ensue. It is the noblest nature that can bear the greatest
strain, and the Lord knows every nature, and adapts
every circumstance to the individual's welfare. Here,
then, is a great and perfect truth, and it follows immedi
ately from the doctrine we have laid down. It prompts
all life, is working in all life, and is the meaning of all
life, and it is by it that every soul is in its right place ;
and yet there is no fatalism in it, but the work of an
Infinite and loving Father.
The last point is, Providence in these apparently
unfortunate circumstances of life which we call Accidents.
Possibly this is more largely in the minds of some than
anything else I have said, and you have been thinking,
"When is he going to talk of accidents ? " Well, what
about them ? There are no such things ! You don't
believe that? If this doctrine be true, there are no such
things. There is a ship going to sea with its six hundred
souls on board, drawn from England, Scotland, Ireland,
France, and Germany. It sinks in mid-ocean, and you
say it is an accident. I say, No, it is Divine Providence ;
and these various threads of Divine influx acting on these
different souls, acting with their freedom, produced them
there in this vessel, because that was the best way for
them home, and God took them home that way ; and

PROVIDENCE. 153
have you any better way ? I don't know any better way
than the Lord's. Now then you have this option : take
this doctrine and all its particulars, or throw the whole
thing up and go back to nature, and then you cannot get
to rest. I can pull you back and show you that you are
a puppet in its hands, working out its destinies. Either
there is a Divine Father over all things, working out
everything for the best, or there is blind nature trampling
over all, determining all hearts to go forward, and crush
ing, crushing, crushing them right out without hope
or mercy ! Can you expect any better hereafter out
of nature? Can you expect any other recompense
out of nature than death and destruction? "Away
with you ! " that is nature's cry. But no, my friends,
I know you will have the best, and here it is. Our
Divine Father's house is nature, our Divine Father is
love and wisdom, and He has all hearts in His hand,
and is doing the best in all and through all, even down
to the depths of hell ; for what is hell ? Hell is that
place in which God does the best for those for whom He
can do no better. Providence ! " If I make my bed in
hell, Thou art there." There is no escaping from the
living Father. Better take the comfort it can give, the life
and health it can give, than the reaction of denial which
is the soul-value of material nature. Father, we come to
Thee, we look to Thee, we trust in Thee ; take heart and
life, and let us act with Thee towards the eternal best.

THE USES OF EVIL MEN.
"Joshua called for them, and he spake unto them, saying, Where
fore have ye beguiled us, saying, We are very far from you ; when
ye dwell among us ? Now therefore ye are cursed ; and there
shall none of you be freed from being bondmen, and hewers of
wood, and drawers of water, for the house of my God." — Joshua
IX. 22.
THE Gibeonites deceived Joshua and Israel; and
you may think that the deception was not wholly
discreditable in view of that rational regard for
their safety which you may think necessitated it. But,
I ask, is not that discreditable ? Fear for our own safety
is very often the dictator of human policy, when a
straightforward honesty would lead to a different sort of
action and conclusion. Righteousness is that which
establishes the nation, but policy will never, especially
policy of this sort, will never establish righteousness.
The Gibeonites, then, deceived Joshua and Israel, and
for this deception they were compelled to be slaves
to the Israelites. They were cursed, as Joshua says,
and none of them were to be free from being bondmen,
that is, made slaves, and their lives henceforth were not
to be their own. They were to live for a special service,
for that service only ; to be hewers of wood and drawers
of water for the house of Israel's God.

THE USES OF EVIL MEN. 155
Now, in the interior and spiritual sense, the Gibeon
ites represent those who are in mere external forms of
worship, without any living religion, any living relation
to the worship they profess. They are not bad men in
the ordinary sense of badness ; but we may look upon
the matter either from their point of view, or from the
point of view of the service they are compelled to
render. All men outside the Church are not necessarily
bad men, and yet all serve. Some men inside the
Church, too, are bad men, and they serve the Church.
The same rule applies to both kinds of people ; but the
point in common is that the Lord creates for each a use
in His kingdom, — and for all practical purposes we here
identify Church and kingdom. Men, then, of all
descriptions, inside the Church or outside the Church,
even bad men, have, we think, a use to perform in con
nection with Providence ; and therefore I have chosen
for the subject to-night, "The Uses of Evil Men."
Of course you see how this thought comes up in con
nection with the subject of Providence. Let us state
the case. The Lord has created this world, and has
placed us upon it. If everything had been good and
beautiful, we could have believed, we think, in Divine
Providence, because that would have been sufficient
attestation. Everything being good and beautiful, what
more could we ask ? No perplexity, nothing to entangle
our thought, nothing but simplicity, and order, and
peace, thanks be to God ! — and we call this faith, and
love, and trust in Providence ! Well, I am not going to
deny it. So it is; all good, and true, and beautiful
things should lead us to God from whom they come.
But is that any reason why ugly and bad things should

156 THE USES OF EVIL MEN.
detract from our faith in God ? Ah ! that is another
matter. I say, because things beautiful and good lead
the mind to God, is that any reason why ugly things
should detract from our faith in God ? Why should
they ? You may depend upon it there is some reason
in our own spiritual states, — do you believe in God at
all ? " Ah, but see ! look at the multiplicities and com
plexities of evil in the world ; look how evil men get the
power in society, in politics, in every plane of life. The
men who are unscrupulous are the men who have no
reason for keeping themselves back, so they push them
selves everywhere, and gain place and power. And look
at the results : see how many have their rights taken
from them, how women are degraded, how children are
killed from evil passions, how multitudes of families in
this city, men and women, are degraded, trodden upon
by villains, — the brutes knowing nothing but to
tyrannize over the lives of those entrusted to them.
Can you say that is for the best ? Is there any best
where such things exist ? Is there not something wrong
with ''  stop, you were not going to say with Provid
ence ? That is what your argument means ; cover it
up and cloak it as you like, your argument means that
there is something wrong with Providence, — that is the
ground-tone of all this class of thought. But I don't
mean to disparage that kind of talk, as if such things
shouldn't be spoken. Every man, woman, and child
has a right to put such questions, and get at the truth if
possible ; and we must not say we see things when we
don't. But, on the other hand, let us take care that we
don't impinge upon the holy trust, whatever it amounts
to, that we possess ; and if there be in our hearts any-

THE USES OF EVIL MEN. 157
thing of belief, and trust in Providence, that the Lord is
good, and gracious, and merciful to all His works, — if
we have that faith, let us endeavour to keep the two
things separate, and say this : " I love the Lord, and I
would believe that whatever He does is beautiful and
right ; but there are some things I do not see. would
not wish the dark shadow on life to lead me to denial ;
I would only know what that shadow means, if I may.
I do not wish to deny, but the explanation would confirm
my faith."
The first general point to-night, then, is the difficulties
that overshadow life by the presence of evil. How good
and beautiful the world would be were it not traversed,
the whole action of Providence traversed, by the action
of evil men. This, not the problem of evil, — we have
discussed that already in our lecture on the " Origin of
Evil," — this action of evil men upon good men, this
apparent destruction of life by these means, brings
perplexities that could not otherwise exist.
But the first solution of it is that which I have given you,
viz. that whether we see the explanation or not, there is
one, — that Providence could not be and yet not be over
all, that the Lord's heart is as tender towards those who
are crushed, as pitiful to the child trodden on, or the
woman degraded, as yours can ever be, — nay, more
pitiful than ever heart of man or woman was, or could
imagine, to any suffering one. Oh ! we can guess ; but
could we know what God's heart is, we should know
something of what it was for Him to have on His hands
such a world as ours. Here, then, is one principle that
we are to bear in mind at the outset : that the Providence
of the Lord being over all, in all, through all, is loving

158 THE USES OF EVIL MEN.
at heart, and embraces every fact that the world can
show. For, if the Providence of the Lord exists, it
governs all ; and if it governs all, it governs the dark facts
too. If the universe is governed by the Lord, and that
universe is traversed by black lines, the black lines are
governed by the Lord equally with the lines of light.
There never could be two general or universal wills.
There never could be two Infinite Powers. One Power
must be supreme ; and these dark forces in nature must
therefore be governed by the one and infinite Jehovah.
We thus reach the fact that the Lord knows all about
these dark influences as much as we do. They are in
His hands from first to last, and He governs them, — if
He exists at all. Either that or He does not exist.
Another point to be noticed here is this : that, in dis
cussing these dark facts of life, we start from a wrong
angle, look from a wrong point of view. We start on the
tacit assumption that happiness was intended to be the
outcome and law of this life. Here we are grievously
mistaken; we shall have to revise that, I assure you.
Happiness is nowhere to be observed as the end or
intention with us of either Nature or Providence. I do not
say that happiness is not to be had, but that it is not the
immediate end of this world's action upon us. Have you
ever studied the facts of human life or the relation of man
to nature in this view ? Do you find nature — and nature
is God's providence — acting on you for happiness ? She
has no such object with us, for at all points we have to
defend ourselves against her. But a merciful God
desires the happiness of every creature ? Yes, certainly,
subsidiary to something else — to that creature's good ;
and this leads us to observe that not happiness but the

THE USES OF EVIL MEN. 159
moral good of every creature is the end desired by the
Lord of our life here. This puts the matter at a better
angle. So long as we look at happiness as the end of
life, we shall always see abundance of black things there,
and see them blacker than they are ; but when we know-
that moral good is what the Lord works for, the aspect
of matters is changed for us, the action of evil men bears
a different interpretation, and my own temptations are no
longer the spiritual plagues of the flesh and mind, but
have arisen into moral value. Here, for example, is a
thing I very much want to do, that it would make me
supremely happy to do, but something within me says,
Don't. Well, I keep the desire down. It is' a pain, a
trial, a great bitterness it may be, yet moral good is
attained. But does not moral good involve happiness ?
Not immediately ; in the end it will, and even better than
that, — blessedness itself. Many a man has set moral
good before him in spite of happiness and pleasure, but
has only attained struggle upon struggle as the reply of
nature and God, and he thinks life is more than he can
bear. What is the meaning of such a fact ? The
meaning is that God sees that moral good, reached
through trial upon trial even to the last extreme, is the
thing that man is capable of attaining, and he gives it
him for his crown of life. There are no signs anywhere
that happiness is the object of God with us ; but there
are signs everywhere that the end in view is moral
good. I cannot here pass without recalling one of the
strangest things in the history of the race, and you may
put all your questions about Providence there, and about
the good of evil men. Here is Jesus Christ. I say here

i Co THE USES OF EVIL MEN.
is Jesus Christ, — obedient to His parents as a boy, good
through and through as a man, hedged round about
all the way of His thirty-three years by temptations, and
crucified at the last. Is not that life a failure — the most
complete failure, from the happiness point of view, that
you could conceive ? And yet, yet, were these evil men
not instruments towards higher good ? Was there no
use performed by them ? If you want to see the uses of
evil men, see the Cross of Christ, and you see their uses
there, all there, writ large ; and so long as. life stands, with
its dark and its bright, so long will the life of Jesus stand
over it as a picture of it to the very heart. To the
external sight it means failure, and pain, and death, but
within it means victory and glory for evermore ; for King
of kings and Lord of lords is that Jesus Christ, that man
crucified. Here, then, in this crucifixion is the world,
and the action and uses of evil men in it ; and its
meaning is not happiness — no, not happiness, con
summate misery often, but good, moral good, at the
heart of it. Yea, and the more evil men act, the more
will they hasten the grand triumph of moral life.
But I have detained you long enough with this general
skirmishing. Let us now come closer to the subject,
and see, in the second place, the uses which evil men
actually perform. Discerning this, we may also discern
a law which can guide us through it, the relation of this
to God's foreknowledge, etc.
First of all, then, do evil men perform any use
in the world that we can be visibly sure of? I think
so. Here is a man who has got some capital, and
he desires to make more of it There is nothing wrong
in that, in itself, but it is wrong from his point of view,

THE USES OF EVIL MEN. 161
because he is not particularly scrupulous about how he
makes more, and his animating principle is not the good
of others, or anything of that sort, but self-love, self-
aggrandizement, or the attainment of honours and
position in the world. He is desirous of increasing that
capital in order to gain his ends, and so he puts it in
some sort of manufactory, or other form of work, thereby
giving employment to a considerable number of men
and women. He may know nothing about the people
he employs, and may be acting only from his own self-
love ; but look at the good he does in the world ! He
goes to a village where he sees a stream that can be turned
to account, and before he has done with it he makes
that village a town through the prosperity he has induced
there. He may even go about amongst his work-people
and degrade and debauch them, but all the same he is
feeding and clothing those he has in his employment ;
and that good (which is, of course, only external and
temporal) may actually lead to other goods of which he
has no notion at all ; indeed, the notion of doing good in
any form never may have entered his mind, for he
employs them for his own purposes ; but he is a good
to them, for he has laid the foundation of many a life.
Yes, and these same work-people of his are in the hands
of the Lord, and the work they do is in the Lord's provid
ence and care ; and the motives of that man, and the
life of that man, are in the Lord's providence and care
too, because they are directed to an end, to fill these
hungry mouths, and be the natural sustainer of His poor.
Here is a good use, a simple good (and you may
multiply such a million fold), which God sets evil men
to do in this world. L

1 62 THE USES OF EVIL MEN.
You may here object that it is quite true that
evil men may perform a use, and may do, though
what is not for them, a good action, but that what
you want to see is how the actual evils they do may come
to uses. Evil men may do good that may be of use to
others ; but how does it come about that the evil things
evil men do may turn out for good ? I answer, without
going further (I will go further presently), I answer,—
Jesus Christ. They sought no good, they sought His
death, His murder ; they did only an evil thing, and yet
in and out of that evil came a grander good than they
could ever have conceived, or could have understood
had it been told them. That case answers everything.
Men may do evil, and out of evil good may assuredly
come ; nay, in it good may lie.
We come now to the law or principle underlying the
relation of evil men and Providence. What is the
principle from which the Lord governs His relations
with evil men? Well, expressed in one word, it is
Equilibrium. But what has that to do with it, you ask ?•
What is Equilibrium ? Simply, it is the resultant of two
forces. This seems a peculiar statement to make, but
don't let us be afraid of its physical look. The resultant
of two forces implies action and reaction, does it not ?
But let us take a case. Here is a ball of lead, 7 lbs.
in weight, in the middle of the road. A hundred yards
off is another ball of lead of the same weight with a
propelling machine behind it. Suddenly a bolt is drawn,
and this second ball shoots down the road and sends the
first one flying. The result of the action of the one ball
on the other is Equilibrium. Suppose the first ball in
the middle of the road had been lighter, would not the

THE USES OF EVIL MEN. 163
result have been different ? Certainly. It would have
gone much farther. And if it had weighed 14 lbs.
it would not have gone so far ? Certainly ; and the
result in either case is an equation between the action
and reaction of the balls. You observe that there is a
force or law in the fact of that first ball remaining
stationary on the road ; the weight of the ball indicates
that force. Here, then, is one force striking downwards
through the earth, holding the ball stationary; but
another force coming along the road strikes the
stationary ball and produces a certain result — the
removing of the first ball to a distance. That removal
and its distance is the result of the action and reaction
of these two forces, — is the balance or equilibrium of the
forces. If there had been no ball in the way, the
resultant of the first force and all opposing it would have
been different; but the resultant of the weight and
driving force, in the case given, is that you see both balls
proceeding along the road in particular directions to
given points.
You may carry out this idea into mechanical, physical,
or spiritual things, and it will answer all round. Given
two or any number of forces, acting and reacting, and you
have always a resultant, and that resultant is the equili
brium or balance between the forces. Take this law
into spiritual things at once, then ; and, in order to
apprehend the fact and its universality, let us in thought
begin far away from this world. We cannot begin lower
than hell. Here are evil men in hell, acting and re
acting on each other ; and what is the resultant ?
External reformation. Here is the use their evils per
form : external reformation, — not regeneration, that never

1 64 THE USES OF EVIL MEN.
takes place in hell. An evil man there finds it will be
more comfortable for him, better for his self-love, to
restrain his evil nature and thus not be punished ; and
the result is external reformation, — the balance of mutual
punishments. In heaven, again, the opposite conditions
hold. Here there is love and peace : in hell there is
self-love and no peace. Whatever external reformation
you possess in hell or bring there, self-love is never
eradicated ; it is totally opposed to the love of the Lord
and the love of the neighbour, which constitute heaven.
These loves are opposite ; they are two opposite forces.
But have these two forces no relation to each other?
Yes, a relation of antagonism and mutual repulsion ; and
wherever they find a common field, there equilibrium
obtains : that resultant is produced in us. These forces
in heaven and hell meet here in the human will : the
evils from hell attack our fostered passions, while good
from heaven also flows in to our good affections ; and
what is the result? We are in equilibrium; and you
perceive this primal law in spiritual as well as in
mechanical things. So long as two forces, whether
spiritual or natural, act and react, there will be a corre
sponding resultant; and that resultant is equilibrium,
whether spiritual or natural. And so the action of
heaven on one side, and the action of hell on the other,
keeps us in moral freedom. We are in equilibrium
between evil men in hell and good men in heaven.
And two uses are thereby performed ; for in and by hell
reformation is produced ; and by the very existence of
hell, taken together with heaven, acting on us as we are
now, equilibrium is produced and our freedom is secured.
The point of freedom may perhaps need some further

THE USES OF EVIL MEN. 165
illustration, but I cannot give it here. I hope, however,
you see enough to bring the idea well before you.
I have called this a law, but will that law hold good
as to evil men in all conditions? Yes, it will. The
universal use performed by evil men is the securance of
equilibrium in the man or men upon whom that force
acts, because the other force from heaven is also present,
and that equilibrium educes moral freedom. This is
the basis of moral good, the means of advancement, and
the best that can be done in us under the circumstances.
of evil in which we are.
Take this law, then, and, in the light of its universality,
consider any case in life — the case of, say, the degrada
tion and destruction of what is noblest and best in some
feminine soul. The action of the man is wholly bad.
Can there be anything of a redeeming kind in an action
of that nature? The point does not lie there. It is
always wrong to do wrong, and evil men, from the point
of view of their own action, are to be judged accordingly.
But it does not follow that though they are wrong in
doing wrong no good may follow from their wrong-doing.
What good may come here? In a woman degraded,
trodden upon, the result is misery, disease, death in the
river perhaps. Is that a good? No, it is not; all along
the line it is bad. Where, then, does the good come
in? On the greatest happiness principle, or on the
merely happiness principle, there is no good whatever ;
but on the moral good principle there is. Every
creature, according to its surrounding circumstances, is
in equation with those circumstances ; and every respons
ible creature, whatever the circumstances, has also had
something to do with their production, his own will

1 66 THE USES OF EVIL MEN.
having entered into these in some form or other ; and
in the case considered this is undoubtedly true — the
woman's will was a factor in the case from the first.
Can she be purified otherwise, then, than by a revela
tion of what she has done ? Out of that degradation
and desertion comes the true knowledge of herself,
that, for her, could not have been revealed in any
other way. It was the extremity of the evil and the know
ledge of its horror that produced the moral consequence
of revulsion from it — of which the misery and suicide
may be taken as sufficient evidence : the moral revulsion,
I say, came on from the very degradation into which the
soul was plunged — the extremity of the degradation being
thus the one element necessary for her moral salvation.
Do you say that that soul has thrown away all its hopes
in the other world ? You say vastly more than you
have a right to say. From the point of view of the man
producing the degradation, there is only unmitigated
evil in the case : from the side of the soul degraded
there may be the means of life in the very extremity of
the degradation. The Lord's providence being, for
eternal ends, over all and in all, either by ordinance or
by permission, is over and in the degradation for the
moral result which is possible out of it, sees the original
badness that has to be disowned, and knows that it can
only be revealed to the woman and rejected through her
consciousness of it. Even suicide may be the means of
saving a soul from worse. Indeed, I hold that, for the
moment, suicide is a kind of madness, and, like all mad
ness, the best thing that could come to many, removing
them from the further evil which they have no moral
power to resist. When a soul goes mad we deplore it,

THE USES OF EVIL MEN. 167
but depend upon it the angels don't ; they see in it the
protecting shield of the Lord, covering from further
harm. In the case just considered, then, we see the action
and reaction of the good and evil (the woman being
what she is) as necessary to the result of moral good
attainable or attained; and this action and reaction of
good and evil in her constitutes her moral power by
which she is free to renounce the evil so perceived.
And if we turn to the terrible case of children, we
may see the operation of the same law of equilibrium.
Perhaps ther£ is no worse class of facts under heaven
than the circumstances of degradation into which children
are brought ; and yet we are not afraid to recognise a
good even there. Surely we should be bold to say that
there was no possibility of good even in the poverty, the
misery, and .the degradation of which they are too often
the subjects. In the first place, it would be impossible
to conceive that the Lord of little children, whose very
kingdom is based upon such and their like, has not an
eye to their welfare. The same fundamental principle
holds here to begin with — that of the affinity between
the nature and the circumstances into which the nature
is born, constituting /these circumstances, therefore, the
medium through which the soul can best be led. And
even the more interior and personal principle of equili
brium, and trie acquirement thereby of moral freedom,
has, by means of these circumstances, its roots laid in
childhood. Could children not get this in other circum
stances ? Undoubtedly, with other natures ; but the
whole point is, not that children can receive most good
in evil circumstances, or that there is any good in misery

1 68 THE USES OF EVIL MEN.
as such, but that their natures being an evolution from
their circumstances, these are necessarily the best
medium for their moral development, since they constitute
the appropriate exciting cause of the actual good and
evil in them, and therefore the most appropriate means of
securing their moral development through the equili
brium thus induced and sustained.
But it is so terrible to see the sufferings of children !
Could not God stop them or prevent them ? God has
laws by which He acts, which are the outcome of His
own personality — are, therefore, Himself acting; and
some of these, having to do with free agents, are
necessarily laws of permission — laws based, therefore, on
Free Will, and which in the nature of the case must be
inviolable. Would it not be better to stop Free Will
then? Plainly, for absolute Love and Wisdom, which must
seek the best in the end, the lesser evil will be permitted
and the greater good chosen ; and the only justification
of the permission of the lesser evil would be that the
greater evil is prevented by it. Which, then, is the greater
evil — that some should temporarily suffer, or that the
race should lose the one attribute of its humanity?
There can be but one reply to such a question, and that
even without the reflection that that temporary suffering
is itself the best medium of moral good to the sufferer,
and that such suffering is not unfrequently the speediest
way of removing its victims from it into blessedness.
The nobler and therefore the God-like mode is that'
which seeks the ultimate best for every soul — for the
individual sufferer as well as for the race itself. The
truest sympathy is that which desires the noblest outcome,

THE USES OF EVIL MEN. 169
and which will help us to that end. Eternal ends are
God-like motives. It is on this principle that the freest
permission is given for the full development of human
liberty, that thereby the evil of the world may be revealed
and known, and met and vanquished, and good rendered
ultimately and for ever triumphant. I know of no other
way ; and human wit, I apprehend, could not imagine
a better way. I have tried to point out before the
meaning of interference with human freedom : nothing
less could it be than the arrest of law and order and life.
Better far to maintain humanity in its proper attributes,
and thereby in the end, and effectually, work out all
human ills. That is God's way ; and I for one, looking
broadly at the facts, would say with the Bible that the
Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, plenteous
in mercy, does not always chide, neither keeps His anger
for ever; but, in the face of the evil in the world, is
long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth. It
is good alone that will evoke good, and triumph at last.
God's broad way of rationality and freedom, depend
upon it, is the best in the long run, better than any
tinkering schemes human invention could apply.
Again, it seems to some that if the Lord knows all the
miseries of life before they come to pass, He could
prevent them, and consequently is responsible for their
occurrence. God's foreknowledge is a knowledge olcauses,
and these causes are facts of character. But He does
not create the causes, and hence does not create the
effects proceeding from them : to stop these causes would
be to put a period to human life, and thus to renounce
the work to which He has put His hand. No ; God
will rather hold rigorously to law, see evil work out its

170 THE USES OF EVIL MEN.
legitimate consequences, and so end by being its own
cure. Thus He meets each man on the plane of his own
nature and circumstances, maintains him in them be
they what they may, and works out for him in and through
them, so far as the man will co-operate, the highest life
of which the man is capable. Here is not evil a good,
but evil a means of good.
This, then, is the world's problem, and, as some think,
its perplexity — evil working in our midst, and yet that the
Lord, who is governing all things, must seek only good.
The good the Lord seeks to produce is good for and
from each individual in his or her place, that out of the
two original forces of good and evil, may arise equili
brium, hence moral freedom, and hence ultimate and
entire moral good for this world and for the world to
come. Here is a universal law, whose meaning is not
the allowance of evil, but its destruction — its permission
to proceed towards its own destruction, and that through
the agency of those who have created it, by the rigorous
course of law, and the production of evil's own conse
quences. God teaches us that evil done in freedom is
its own worst enemy; that is to say, its cure. Evil
known as evil is evil cured. It is in the mind what
disease is in the body : it is moral disease, and the
knowledge of it is the means of its cure. This know
ledge the Divine Physician brings as the one necessity
of Human Health.

THE OUTCOME.
" He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things
new." — Rev. xxi. 5.
WE have been presenting, in the course of lectures
which come to a close to-night, some thoughts
applicable to practical life, which, in at least
some of their bearings, are new to the world, but are not
new, of course, to the New Church. They are but the
outcome of more radical doctrines, and are connected
specifically with theological subjects — practical subjects
with us. They are the embodiment of religious life, and
religious life is the embodiment of theological thought :
the theology and the religion go together.
It is worth while just saying here in passing, that the
tendency of the present day is to get rid of theology, and
to claim religion, apart from it, as the root of practical
life. Religion is the root of practical life, but how much
religion will you have, and how long will it last, without
theology? Is not theology the knowledge and science
of God ? But if so, how much practical religion will you
have without that knowledge ? And who is God? What
is God ? Thus we are landed at once in theology. In
fact, those who talk to-day of looking to the moral side
of things, and leading a good moral life, without doctrine,
think as men would who should propose to dispense with
a backbone from the body. Imagine the condition of a
171

172 THE OUTCOME.
man without a backbone ! and such are just as limp in
regard to spiritual things. There must be hard, definite,
essential thought at the bottom of all religion, bearing on
definite organic things; in other words, if there is no
knowledge at the back of religion, there is nothing in it
worth having : sentiment would be an erratic and perish
able basis. And the notion here referred to lands us in
fact in mere sentiment, feeling, fancy, on the one hand,
or, on the other, in practical action without regard to
thought. We would not say a word against the other
half of the current form of religion, viz. benevolent
action ; but we desire to see this philanthropy definitely
connected with theological thought ; for if it be not, it
will either vanish in time or become ultimately merged
in self-loving motives.
Yet there is no need to renounce either theology or
religion, for the New Church comes in between these
two forms of thought, and offers the reconciliation ; and
this cannot but have been present to the minds of some
at least during this course of lectures. But how is it
that the New Church can tell us more about our sub
stance and origin than others can ? How is it the New
Church can explain the terrible fact of evil where others
can show us nothing ? How is it the New Church can
find a place for the doubt period in the world's history
and in the individual, which others cannot, and before
which facts they seem paralysed, except to condemn? How
is it the New Church can go deep down into the sexual
relationship, and explore and unfold it ? How is it that
she can show you the meaning of the wrongness of life,
and the way out of them? — wrongs against which the
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THE OUTCOME. 173
raised her voice. How is it the New Church can step
down into the arena of life, and rightfully enforce the
doctrine of Divine Providence in spite of these facts ;
and even unfold the hearts of wicked men, and show
you their uses and functions here ? If the New Church
can do all this, what is the Outcome, so far as she is
concerned? It is this, that we have here something
new, something not before given to the world, until the
New Church gave it; that, in fact, the New Church's
theological doctrines are the basis of her life, and
that a New Church means a new method of thought
concerning God and man, a revelation anew of the facts
of life from an interior ground, and a new application
thereof to the feeling, thought, and destiny of each
individual receiving them. It involves, moreover, a
completely new idea concerning the Word of God ; and
that is the basis of all. It is a new mode of interpretation
of the Word, and this thought underlies all else. Is it a
new revelation then ? Yes and no ; but it has been as
if a man presented himself to you, and asked you what
you thought of him, and you were to answer by de
scribing his body, but considered it unnecessary to
trouble about his mind ; and it is now as if the mind
were becoming the first consideration. The Church has
dealt with the body of the Word of God long enough,
and the New Church deals now with the mind of the
Word ; and there's the difference. It takes the very life
and soul of the Word, and shows this to men as his new
guide and light in all the affairs of feeling, thought, and
action. We have here, then, the first phase of the Outcome —
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174 THE OUTCOME.
definite relation to some of the practical sides of life, and
throwing light thereon. It shows us there is a something
more to be had in the way of truth than the world knew
before, and hence a possible establishment of righteous
ness in ways not previously conceived by men ; that, in a
word, a new era has opened, a new dispensation is before
men, in the midst of which they themselves are. This
is what the New Church is.
Of course, as all this implies, the New Church is not a
new organization merely. It is not a sect, or a denomina
tion, but a Church. All men who receive one Lord,
as revealed in Jesus, who receive the Divine Humanity,
i.e. as the only object of worship, — all such are members
of the Lord's New Church, whatever they may conceive,
or have not yet conceived. If they look thus to the
Lord alone, and keep His commandments, they are truly
members of the Lord's Church on earth ; so that thus
members of the Lord's New Church may exist universally
and apart from specific organizations. Yes, and they do.
They are scattered up and down the world. Everywhere
there are men inquiring and finding satisfaction in these
things, from out of all shades of opinion, drifting slowly
to the conclusion that there is no other rational doctrine
given at the present time for men to know. They
perceive that it harmonizes things in heaven and earth
as no other statement of them could possibly do. But
the New Church's organization is the centre of this light
to the world, and a manifestation to men of the truth of
the Lord's descent in a new era of our life.
This, of course, is a transcendant, seemingly incredible
statement; not in itself incredible indeed, but because
involving an inversion of thought in regard to so many

THE OUTCOME. 175
things commonly received as truth. Its evidence, how
ever, is just as abundant as the principles of human
nature, and the facts of life and Scripture, and the truths
so revealed.
This, then, is the first aspect of the Outcome, as it
involves, i.e. the source of the thoughts which I have
been presenting to you. The second aspect of it is that
which involves the application of these truths to men in
this life ; and the third, and last, their application to man
in the life to come — the Outcome here and hereafter.
2nd, The Outcome as to this life : " Behold, I make
all things new."
When and where was this newness to be effected ? It
was not to be on earth at all, some would say, but in
heaven, for the New Jerusalem is a heavenly state.
Yes, but surely not in heaven only, for all that ;
heavenly states may also exist on earth, may they not ?
But let us attend to the statements of Scripture, and
work out definitely the thoughts contained in them. We
are met by the following : " I saw a new heaven and a
new earth : for the first heaven and the first earth were
passed away ; and there was no more sea," i.e. in the
place where John saw this. " And I John saw the holy
city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of
heaven," out of this new region, this new heaven which
John was privileged to see. He saw the New Jerusalem
coming down from God, out of heaven ; how ? " Pre
pared as a bride adorned for her husband.'' To do
what ? To dwell amongst men. He heard a great voice
from heaven announcing this fact, — "Behold, the taber
nacle of God is with men," it said, " and He will dwell
with them, and they shall be His people, and God Him-

176 THE OUTCOME.
self shall be with them, and be their God, and God shall
wipe away all tears from their eyes ; and there shall be
no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall
there be any more pain : for the former things are passed
away. And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I
make all things new." New — where and when? New
in heaven. Yes, because there was a new heaven.
New on earth ? Yes, because there was to be a
new condition of things among men on the earth ; and
this new state was to be brought about by the descent
to the earth of the New Jerusalem. But, " Behold,"
says the Lord, He that sittethupon the throne, " I make
all things new." On this earth, then, as we are here
definitely told, " all things," all principles, laws, states,
facts and experiences, are in some way to be renewed —
made to live anew.
But this New Jerusalem, this city 'that comes as a
bride, what may that be? Jerusalem, you know, was
the centre, as it was to the prophets the type, of the
Jewish Church. The Lord Himself used the same form of
expression when He said, " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou
that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent
unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children
together." Here and throughout the prophets it was the
Jewish Church that was addressed ; and when therefore
the New Jerusalem is spoken of, the inevitable conclusion
follows that a New Church is announced to take the
place of the Dispensation passing away. And what the
New Church may be we have already seen ; it is a new
dispensation of Divine truth, the heart of a new and
righteous era, a life renewed in thought and feeling and
practice on the earth. We now see what the Lord means

THE OUTCOME. 177
when He says, " Behold, I make all things new," and we
also see, in essentials at least, how it affects, and has its
outcome in man's life even here.
This city, New Jerusalem, dwells on earth then. But
what sort of city could it be that is also a " bride," and
" the Lamb's wife ? " These different metaphors for the
same fact point to a spiritual idea — an idea deeper than
any single literal expression or material thing could
possibly represent. The "city" and the "bride" are
alike metaphors or comparisons taken from man's natural
life ; but this city was of a four-square figure, again
manifestly representing a spiritual or mental fact. A
literal city like the one described never could be built,
and would be useless if it were. A little common sense,
apart from the rational demands of interpretation, would
be sufficient guaranteee against the mere materialization
of such ideas. For without discussing the point, we have
only to imagine, for one thing, how a city could be a
bride, and, for another, how it could come down from
heaven, — wherever that is. For where is it ? How far
must we go up to get to it ? Let us remember rather that
the " kingdom of heaven is within you." If it be a new
unfolding of truth and power, a new revelation practically
for man's life and of it, from God out of Heaven, and of
both God and heaven ; if it involve, also, a new impetus
to Divine things and a regeneration of practical life, we
may at once perceive ourselves on provable ground — on
ground as rational as firm, for we must inevitably turn to
the inquiry whether there is evidence of such newness
now. Does the life of the world show any facts corre
sponding to the new truths proclaimed, or to the declara-

178 THE OUTCOME.
tion of the text ? Is there an outcome for the world at
all approaching the making of all things new ? I answer,
that that newness itself is now upon us. But what
evidence is there that such a movement is going on ?
Some men think there never before was so much doubt
and infidelity as at the present day. There is a certain
element of truth in this, but it is not quite true. There
is a great deal of infidelity to-day, but it did not begin
to-day, it is largely the result of the false ideas of the
past, and it co-exists with more practical religion than
Christianity has ever before produced. It was so
universal in the middle of last century that there was
hardly a glimmer of religion anywhere. But what has
happened since then ? I ask you first has there not
been a completely new development of all practical,
scientific, and other similar things in the sphere of
external life ? Has the world, strangely enough, what
ever the reason, ever seen such a transformation as that
which is presented by looking on the picture now and
a hundred or more years ago? What is the difference ?
A' hundred years ago how many departments of science
were opened up ? Only one, astronomy and its accom
panying mathematics. Geology was not thought of, and
where was mechanics ? A hundred years ago where
were all the now habitual facts of life — the telegraph, the
telephone, the steam engine, the railway even? Carry
your thought back to the middle of last century, and ask
what was the world then in regard to external, scientific,
mechanical, practical things, compared with what it is
now. It is in very truth a neiu world. But this new
development has itself brought a new practical attitude ;
and in this way. When new inventions have not become

THE OUTCOME. 179
a habit, and are consequently not dreamed of, ways of
life and feeling go on pretty much as from the beginning,
changeless; and people become so accustomed to the
old forms of life that useful inventions may be dreaded
as disturbances and even detested as antagonistic to
human welfare. When Watt sat pondering over his kettle,
full only of his possible invention, his neighbours could
laugh at him for his pains, shrouded in the density of
their ignorance, and their descendants rise and smash
the machinery which was the outcome of his enterprize :
to-day, we look for inventions and hail discoveries — such
is the difference of attitude, and a difference which
means a relation wholly new. And this extends all the
way round the fields of nature and science — not to
mechanics only, but to chemistry, physiology, and every
science and art. There is here a new world of mental
attitude to external fact and truth ; so much so that a
gulph divides us from the pre-scientific period previous
to the middle of last century. Of our attitude in
regard to nature, our developed relation to nature,
our knowledge of nature, our discovery and mastery of
nature, the words may well be spoken, " I make all
things new." Yet such newness touches only external
things. Turning now to the interior realm of the mind, look
at the distinctiveness of the intellectual advance that has
been made, and let us endeavour to characterize it.
What is that element in it which did not exist before,
but has come into existence within the time we have
named, and is its moving force now ? It is a new form
of manhood, a something added to the race, so to speak,
and its meaning is that higher type of mental honesty

180 THE OUTCOME.
and of reverence for human nobility which demands an
individual relation to the truth proposed for acceptance.
The relation between humanity and truth is now too
perilous and sacred to permit us to say that we believe
before we see. No doubt this determination to enter
intellectually into all things that we accept, even the
things of faith, has its perils and its sides of pride and
denial ; but rightly used one basis of manhood is here.
Joined with reverence, the understanding of what we
receive and assent to is the noblest of necessities to
advancement. What is the difference between adoles
cence and manhood? Youth receives law, and acts
under it unthinkingly and without knowledge ; manhood
discovers and applies the law : this is the difference
between the intellectual attitudes of the Old and of the
New Era. And so strikingly is this intellectual inquisi-
tiveness manifested to-day, that even the children of this
generation have risen also into this new intellectual
consciousness : they are by no means disposed, like
their forefathers, to let all things be as they were from
the beginning, and to take what is, for granted. They
will have reasons ; and you do well to give them reasons,
as far as possible. For consider, this need of theirs to
understand means the transmission from you to them of
a new world-attitude, not slowly acquired, but as suddenly
possessing as it is powerful — a new reach of intellectual
consciousness unknown to the world till now. For carry
your thought back to the last and previous centuries,
and you see that beliefs were transmitted, and accepted
because transmitted — that tradition was the unquestioned
law both of daily life and of Church life, except where
denial and repudiation had taken the place of accept-

THE OUTCOME. 181
ance. The creeds and the whole attitude of the Church
of the past were laid on this basis, and that all but
unconsciously — so powerful conservative was the ruling
principle. " Say this — accept the faith thus formulated
for you : " such was the Church's attitude ; and all but
inevitably it was followed by the alternative of excom
munication or death, by her "you shall say yea to this,
or go to perdition." The result was that the human
intellect was practically chained to the wheels of the
Church, which meant, of the past ; and men not only
dared not say they had a thought of their own, but they
had for the most part no thought of their own to alter.
This condition of things was just as true in regard to the
Protestant Church, after its position was defined, as of
the Roman Catholic Church. They did not depart in
this essential from the tradition of their fathers ; except
that the world was burdened with two streams of tradi
tion instead of one. When these streams had run their
course into the arid desert of last century, and universal
doubt and denial spread, then came the great change ;
the new energy now pervading the race sprang into
being; the human intellect, opened apparently by some
interior force, appeared in an altogether new attitude ;
the intellect was new-born ; at a bound it passed
into, and possessed its new sphere of individual appre
hension and knowledge, as the first necessity of believ
ing manhood. So much for the intellectual newness
which has come to man in this life and in this present
age. Turn now to the moral aspect of things. The moral
life of the last century was a degradation, and as to his
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t82 THE OUTCOME.
the world, and vociferous atheism had its birth. The
French may be cited as an example of both these forms
of thought ; but indeed, all Europe through, nay, all the
civilised world through, pretty much one aspect of
things prevailed— moral and religious stagnation and
corruption. Now look at the present century. It has been a time
of the opening up of practical religion as distinct from
theoretic. And here, again, we have to note the uprising
of a new element — a new moral element this time — a
completely new thing in the world of religion — I mean
Philanthropy. The spirit of pity rose. The horrible
facts and accumulated evils of prison life were investigated
and swept away. A new spirit crept into legislation —
the spirit of Reformation instead of revenge ; and man's
care for man and beast is now a conspicuous element of
our life. All this is the outcome of the new spirit which
has risen among men, permeating their moral life and
re-creating it.
Yes, and even the supposed immoveable theology has
been penetrated by this new life. Who believes in the
old creeds now? See how they are let go by the
board ! How does the New Church dare say the
things she says ? Simply because the old things are no
longer believed in ; if they were, persecution would stop
her mouth, as has been its way in the past. But even
ministers of the Gospel are beginning to change, and
they are about the last to move. But they have changed
because the people around them have changed before
them ; and we no longer hear the terrible old Predestina
tion and Elective grace, and material hell. They dare not
say the things now they said a hundred years ago, simply

THE OUTCOME. 183
because men would not hear them. Here, then, within
the Church of God, an internal change has taken place,
such as the Church has never seen the like of, from the
time when the Lord Himself came on the earth till now :
it is a new departure in religious life, and this change is
part of the newness which the Lord indicates when He
says, "Behold, I make all things new." Man's life,
thought, and feeling must be renewed ; and to renew the
feeling and the life there must be a renewal of thought ;
hence the Lord has given us, at the same time with this
renewed impulse towards religious life, what is practically
a new revelation, a new unfolding of Divine Truth,
by means of the Word, and by the descent of the
Lord's New Church out of heaven. This is the
outcome for man's life here — an outcome now in its
beginning, but destined to develop into a perfect
embodiment of truth and good and blessedness in
the earthly life of man. This is the outcome of the
principles already laid down in these lectures, as well
as of the declaration of the text with which we conclude
them. The third aspect of this Outcome regards the future
life. There is no relation of man's life now hidden from
him, not even the life of the heavens ; and this is an out
come of the newness, and so far-reaching, that some will
think it self-condemned even in the statement. Yet
this revelation of heaven is in the Word itself, little of it as
men have ever been able to find there. It is, in truth, a
revelation of men's whole internal spiritual states, and
given now with the object that they may be met as to
all their intellectual as well as moral needs, and so enter

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by their whole humanity into the mysteries of faith, even
as to the heavens hereafter.
Ah, but how do you know that ! If I could only
believe in a hereafter, in a heaven ; if I could only
think that when I lay this body down, I shall pass into
a place where I shall live' on for ever ! Well, you may
believe that. But where is the evidence? See, the
New Church brings before men to-day a new line of
evidence in regard to life hereafter. The evidence,
briefly, for immortality in the Church of the past con
sisted of certain indications of nature, such emergence
from lower to higher forms of life as is represented by
the changes of the butterfly ; and, again, the feeling in
man which leads him to crave immortality ; and further,
of the undeveloped powers of man, which have not found
place for development here. Such evidence is always
inferential, and mere inference does not satisfy men
now. Formerly men had religion after its kind ; and
now men have science after its kind ; but they must
have science and religion. The two must go together,
if there is to be any religion or science worth the name.
The science must be religious, and the religion scien
tific, if man's highest needs are to be satisfied. What
evidence, then, does the scientist demand for the know
ledge any man would confer upon him ? In brief, the
evidence of experience, his own or another's. " It is all
very well for you to say so, but show it to me, let me see
it," he says ; or in another case — exploration of foreign
countries, for example — "Have you seen these things
yourself? do you speak at first hand ? " He wants the evi
dence of the senses — his own or another's. That is also
the evidence which the New Church demands and has to

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present concerning Immortality, — the evidence of the
senses. "What, what? Have you seen into that other
world ? — do you know it from the senses ? — can you let
me see it too ? " No, I have not seen it, and I cannot
let you see it ; but, nevertheless, the evidence the New
Church possesses is the experimental evidence science
demands for all it believes. The Lord, when He would
unfold heaven to earth, unfolded it as He must and
could only do, through a man prepared for that purpose,
through that man revealed these truths of which we are
now speaking, and by his senses made known the
interior country. The man I am speaking of — Emanuel
Swedenborg — says this : " I have for thirty years been
in open communication, by the Lord's mercy, with that
interior world," and what does he tell us ? He tells us
its facts. What then ? — might they not all be phantasies ?
And he gives us its laws; and, curiously enough, the
facts interpret the laws, and the laws the facts; and a
study of these things impresses the mind with the con
viction that here was no crazy enthusiast, but a man of
perfect science, prepared through his science, through
all the knowledge the world could give* him, for this
wider emancipation, this opening of thought and
knowledge into the interior sphere, that he might
bring forth the facts from thence, and make them
known. And now they stand in black and white for
the men of the present day to read, and ponder, and
comprehend. But in what lies the force of this evidence ? It lies in this,
that it is of like kind, nay the same, with that which the
scientific man demands, for all external knowledge ; and
it falls under two heads. If a scientific man has many

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facts before him which he cannot comprehend, he forms
a theory by which he is likely to interpret them. He
tries the theory by means of the facts, and fails : it will
not fit them — as when astronomers conceived the split
disc as representing the form of the universe. He tries
again and again, and at last he finds a theory that will
explain all the facts. The meaning of these experiments
in thought is that the scientific man demands that facts
and theory shall go together. Now, it is precisely thus
with the case before us : the facts are unfolded, the theory
is given. The facts are interpreted in the light of the
theory, and the theory is confirmed by the facts. The two
are in truth one, and they are all brought to the test of the
Word of the Lord : to the law and to the testimony ; " if
they speak not according to this Word, it is because they
have no light in them." Examine the supposed facts in
the light of the truths given, and both in the light of
man's nature and the Word of God, and you have con
firmation and proof not to be evaded.
But a scientific man can verify the fact by repeating
the experiment — as in chemistry, for instance ; how can
we do that in regard to the other life ? I answer, that
that is what we can do here, for the facts to be examined
are the facts of human nature, not hypothetical facts
demanding an abstract hypothesis to explain them. But
astronomy, mathematics, psychology, or sociology, would
be more accurate analogies than a purely physical science
such as chemistry.
The second head of evidence is that of human testi
mony concerning an otherwise unknown country ; and
the evidence in the present case is calmly, rationally
given ; is given by one of the most matter of fact, deli-

THE OUTCOME. 187
berately scientific of men; and given with the utmost
regard to truth and the wellbeing of his fellows.
If, then, you seriously inquire into these things, you
will probably, as many have done before you, rise from
such a study with the conviction that here is just the
greatest fact of this great age, the basis of the life of
man at this present time, and the means of accounting
for its phenomena ; for that here is given the law which
is at the root of all, by which we apprehend the rationale
of human life, and are able to see spiritual causes in the
light of their natural effects as beheld in man's mind and
life at the present day.
I say this not merely concerning this revelation of
immortality, but concerning the descent of these truths
of the New Dispensation. It is these truths that give us
the power to see man's life on an enlarged plain, to know
it as it cannot otherwise be known, and to bring the
human spiritual facts and destiny into living connection
with the natural movements of progress in the world.
And it must always be so, that the spiritual explains the
natural : from God to man, from within to without, is the
law ; and if you do not and cannot interpret man's soul,
you have no interpretation of his outward life worthy the
name. I know the terrible risks I run in making a presentation
of the kind involved in this subject ; for it is impossible
that other than a general statement should be given ; but
the result I would have you carry away with you is this,
that there has, at this day, dawned a new era upon man,
whose cause it is your duty, as it should be your rejoicing,
if possible to discover. The cause of it, however, is just
what you cannot yet perceive. You are not prepared to

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say that the true one is that which I have been alleging,
Be it so. But on the mere supposition that our life
to-day is immediately connected with the descent of
new truth from on high — with the fulfilment of the
Word, the opening of the heavens and the descent of the
New Jerusalem — on the mere supposition of this, I say,
the attention and human interest of every rational man
should be aroused, for is there any one present who dares
say he has no interest in it ? Why, the mere idea that a
new cause is in the mind, to produce a new era in the
world, and the fact that it can be studied, ought to stir
the blood of every man and woman here to make inquiry
if this thing be so, and to determine to themselves no
rest until they either see the truth or perceive the
delusion. Well, the case is before you — take what course
you please ; and, if you examine you will be doing what
many others have done before you ; yes, and those too
who have set out to expose this thing, have not seldom
become its enthusiastic converts.
But what is the religion of the future to be? Evidently
not the religion of the past, for that is going, if it has not
already gone. The world has practically no religion,
organically founded, at the present day, apart from the
religion of the New Church. The future religion, then,
what, to satisfy man, must it be like ? A union of science
and religion ; and a religion, as well, capable of being
scientifically proved, because organically, humanly based,
is the only religion that the future could possibly accept
And it is because this is exactly true of the New Church
throughout her universal grasp of facts and principles,
because she can give a rational reason for all the facts of
life, and all she alleges in regard to them, because she

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meets man wholly and explains him through and through,
that she stands out distinctively as the exponent of this
new era of the* world. May the Lord open our hearts
and thoughts to a pure love of truth, and with that must
come deliverance from doubt and perplexity; He will
set our feet upon a rock, and put a new song in our
mouth, even praise to our God.

MORRISON AND GIBB, EDINBURGH,
PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE.

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