THE most notable fact as to Jowett’s doctrinal position is that he lays very little stress on the Church system, either the system of worship or that of dogma. From this it has been concluded that he held lightly by Christianity itself and was content with a vague theism, in which Plato counted for as much as Christ Himself.
The readers of these Sermons will hardly think that his theism was vague. Metaphysically, they will find that he shrank neither from the assertion of the divine personality, though conscious of the limitations attendant upon the transfer of that expression from man to God, nor from speaking of Christ as ‘our Saviour,’ and as the expression of the divine nature in a human form; and that God and immortality were all in all to him. Morally, they will find that the image of Christ is dominant in the preacher’s thoughts.
It may be admitted that he was naturally of a
His attitude was well indicated in a few words
which I heard from him in 1857, when I was reading
theology in Oxford: ‘The criticisms of the present
day will at first be felt as a blow to faith, but they
will issue in its fuller establishment; all that is important will survive.’ The method of exposition
followed in his book on St. Paul’s Epistles (published
in 1855) also throws light on it. He was never satisfied with such an interpretation as would commit
the Apostle to an exact logical system, but sought
to bring out the ‘streams of tendency’ which combined in each phrase, and to make it point to a truth
larger than any which our theological systems have
expressed. The reception, however, which was given
to this work, the misrepresentation of it as an attack
upon Christian truth, and the personal injustice of
which he was the object, made him shrink into himself.
He published a second edition, in which the Essays
were rehandled, the doctrinal utterances of the first
edition were explained, and a positive statement was
Had Jowett’s early work been received with candour, instead of being treated as an attack upon Christianity, he would in all probability have been a great religious teacher. The positive side of his convictions would have gained strength through sympathy, and he would have put forward his conclusions as the development and extension of received truth, not as a criticism upon its previous expression; for he, no less than others, varied in his tone about such subjects according to his environment. I remember his saying, when I had been appointed Bampton Lecturer, and he was wishing me to come to Balliol as theological tutor: ‘I think we have been too much afraid of system.’ Some casual remarks may, no doubt, be found in his biography which may seem to show a distrust of the records of the life of Christ; but, on the other hand, all through his later years the work which he most longed to write, had health and strength sufficed, was a life of Christ. What he opposed was the dwelling upon each statement in the record as if all alike were unimpeachable, upon each word casually uttered as equal to the most solemn statements of moral and religious truth. But the character and spirit of Christ, which the record alone discloses, were to him supreme. “The perfect man,” he says, “the Lord Jesus Christ, is the only image we are capable of attaining of the perfect God.”
A few of his sayings may perhaps be introduced
here in corroboration of this general statement. ‘We
are not,’ he is constantly saying, ‘to be the slaves of
words; the reality beneath them is alone important.’ “We cannot really understand religious propositions if we are unable to re-word them.” His dislike
of dogmatic statements was due to his feeling that
there is something untruthful in closing over a complex subject by a general and inadequate affirmation.
“The nature of God is inscrutable, and can no more
be expressed in words and figures of speech than in
the graven images of olden times.” On the other hand,
he constantly points to the firm standing-ground for
religion which is presented by nature and morality. “Physical laws are a revelation of God. By knowing
and using them we become safe from the arrow that flieth by day and the pestilence which walketh in
darkness.” “The curtain of the physical world is
closing in upon us. What does this mean but that the
arms of His intelligence are embracing us on every
side?” As regards moral truth he is still more emphatic. “If a man were to
worship truth, justice, and love, would he not be really worshipping God?” “We
may say of God that He is infinite, incorporeal,
and the like. But to say all this of Him is not half
so much as to say that He is just, loving, and true.”
Sayings of this kind, which abound in these sermons,
when taken on their negative side, have made some
men (rather recklessly, I think) speak of him as
There are signs that men’s convictions are moving
in the direction towards which Jowett pointed. It is
possible that he may still be treated among theologians as Thomas Young, the discoverer of the
Undulatory Theory of Light, was treated among
physicists; of whom the great German, Helmholtz,
writes: ‘He was one of the most profound minds that
the world has ever seen; but he had the misfortune
to be too much in advance of his age. . . . His most
important ideas, therefore, lay buried and forgotten
. . . until a new generation gradually and painfully
made the same discoveries, and proved the exactness of his assertions. But we may hope that the
This short appreciation of Jowett’s theological
position will, I believe, be felt to be borne out by
the sermons in this volume. They will be found,
no doubt, to be unsystematic (this is inherent in
their form), and so far incomplete. But it may be
well to bear in mind that the greatest teachers of the
world, whether we take the Central Figure of all, or
whether we take Buddha or Socrates in the East and
West, left no writings: their ideas, which have moved
the heart of mankind, must be gathered from the
reports of their disciples. What was felt by Jowett’s pupils and friends was an influence of a similar kind,
not the binding force of a system, but great thoughts
opening out an aperçu of things not commonly
realized, or a special light which coloured the whole
scene. It is not, therefore, as chapters of a work, of
which each part has been thought out and made to
fit in to the whole, that these sermons should be
read; the estimate formed of them will be various,
and those who most appreciate them will value, some
one part, some another. He himself had no very
high opinion of them, and, but for the strong wish
of his friends
It may not, therefore, be out of place if an attempt
be made, however briefly, to give an outline of the
contents of these sermons. I have placed first a sermon on Evolution, not only as showing the writer’s mode of dealing with the most remarkable
philosophical conception which had appeared during his
lifetime, or as evincing his perfect independence of
thought, but because it meets directly the question
raised by that conception as to the central truth of
theology, the being of God. The teaching is that the
chief source of the knowledge of God is not in the
region affected by physical causes, but in the higher
nature of man. Next comes a series of sermons which
Jowett appears to have intended to place together as
giving his teaching on Natural Religion; but two
sermons to which he alludes, on the ideas of God conveyed by the Oriental religions and the Greek
philosophers, are not among those which have come under
my hand, and if they were ever preached they have
disappeared. I have therefore thought it best to insert
here two sermons which touch upon these subjects in a
more general way. The sermon on the ‘other sheep
not of this fold,’ and that on the growth of the true
The sermon on ‘Feeling after God’ describes the universal elements of religion and their influence on the life of mankind. The idea that God can ever disappear from men’s minds he declares to be chimerical. The contemplation of the ideal of truth and justice is in itself a kind of worship of God; the pursuit of goodness is an incipient Christianity. ‘In Him,’ says the text of another similar sermon, which it has been found impossible to include, ‘we live, and move, and have our being.’ We commune with God through nature, and worship Him by obeying its laws; and in history by honouring each type of goodness. God is within us as well as without us, we are His off spring and have affinity with Him.
To these sermons, which Jowett himself seems to
have selected as typical, are added others in which
these general views are expanded or are looked at
from various sides: that on the ‘Image of the invisible
God,’ the reflexion of the Divine in nature, in the
moral law, in the sense of spiritual things which
The concluding sermon is on Immortality, arguing from God’s nature and His justice to His children, from the hopes which He has excited in us, from the assurance which we feel that what is best is most enduring, that we shall live to Him beyond the grave, and giving a new and striking view of the saying, ‘If in this life only we have hope, we are of all men most miserable.’ I have added, since space permits it, a sermon on Friendship. It is unconnected with the rest, but its publication has been asked for by several of those who heard it, and who lamented its exclusion from a former volume.
It will be felt, no doubt, by many who crave for a
complete theological system, that these sermons are but
fragmentary, and, so far, unsatisfying. But it should
be remembered that the teachings of some of the
greatest of men have not been given in detailed statements, but rather, to use a phrase of Matthew Arnold’s,
‘as language thrown out at an object of consciousness
not fully grasped.’ Another thing which will be
observed in these sermons is the constant recurrence
to a few great ideas. This also is a characteristic of
the greatest religious teachers, especially in old age.
His presentation of this may not embrace the whole
of religion; it certainly will not answer all the questions which men may ask. If it is felt by some of
us that Jowett’s philosophic mind was too readily
satisfied with the idea, and gave too little weight to
the outward form, whether of the Incarnation or of
the Church; yet we may recall to mind that St. John,
who applies to the teachers of his day this test, ‘Every
spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the
flesh, is of God, also records the words in which
Christ bids His followers rejoice that this outward
form should pass from their view, and the Spirit, the
Comforter, should come. To many minds this is the
truth which is specially needed. To those who feel
that the systems in which religion has clothed itself
have become to them, in a certain degree, inadequate
or unreal, Jowett’s teaching will bring strong consolation.
WHEN I CONSIDER THY HEAVENS, THE WORK OF THY FINGERS, THE MOON AND THE STARS, WHICH THOU HAST ORDAINED; WHAT IS MAN, THAT THOU ART MINDFUL OF HIM? AND THE SON OF MAN, THAT THOU VISITEST HIM? FOR THOU HAST MADE HIM A LITTLE LOWER THAN THE ANGELS, AND HAST CROWNED HIM WITH GLORY AND HONOUR. THOU MADEST HIM TO HAVE DOMINION OVER THE WORKS OF THY HANDS; THOU HAST PUT ALL THINGS UNDER HIS FEET: ALL SHEEP AND OXEN, YEA, AND THE BEASTS OF THE FIELD; THE FOWL OF THE AIR, AND THE FISH OF THE SEA, AND WHATSOEVER PASSETH THROUGH THE PATHS OF THE SEAS. O LORD OUR LORD, HOW EXCELLENT IS THY NAME IN ALL THE EARTH!
THE sight of nature affects men differently in
different ages and countries. We ourselves receive
different impressions from natural scenes when the
sun shines upon them and when they are enveloped
If we turn from the Hebrew prophets to the Greek
mythology we seem to find indications of a time before history, before poetry, of which the analysis of
language is the only witness, when the Hellenic gods
were powers of nature which in the course of ages
became individualized and personified. We have
a difficulty in believing this, because in the writings
In our own century, which seems likewise more
than any other to have the power of recalling the
past, the sentiment of nature again revives; recollections of childhood are still lingering about the maturity
or old age of the world, as we may say, speaking
in a figure. The poets of our own age have heard
voices in nature which were silent or uninterpreted in
the days before them. Scientific discoveries, too, to
those who can follow them, give a new interest to ‘the
meanest flower that breathes.’ And a portion of
this spirit extends to the ordinary observer and the
common mind. Every one exults in the fresh air,
Still, there are thoughts about nature which do
from time to time arouse disquietude in our minds.
The Universe is so vast and we are so small. It is not
the language of hyperbole but of fact when we speak
of innumerable stars which exist everywhere in the
infinity of space, compared with which the life of any
individual man is only like a grain of sand, a leaf of
the forest, a drop of water spilt upon the earth. Nor
is the overpowering thought at all lessened, but the
wonder increased, when some one tells us that the
world is infinite in minuteness as well as in vastness.
We say with a meaning which could not have been
equally present to the Psalmist, and perhaps with
a sadder accent: ‘Lord, what is man that Thou art
And now we meet with another downfall and
discouragement. For we are told in books which are
in the hands of every one that man is descended from
the lower animals. The whole vegetable and animal
kingdoms are affirmed to have originated in some
primaeval form, and the different species of plants and
animals to have become diversified in infinite ages
by the ‘survival of the fittest.’ To understand this
theory, I suppose that we must go back in imagination
to a time when there was no distinction of birds,
beasts, and fishes, or even of plants and animals. As
in some ancient Cosmogony (for this is a Cosmogony of a new kind) the forms of life began to move,
and organized structures came into being; and then,
I think we must acknowledge that this theory,
whether true or false, makes a painful impression on
the minds of many of us. It deprives us of our golden
age to which we as well as the Greeks looked back:
it seems to take not only individual men, but the
whole race of mankind, out of the providence of God:
and it touches our pride as well as our higher feelings
to be told that we, who in the language of the
Psalmist seem to be a little lower than the angels, are
really the descendants of the animals. May not man,
if he too is only one of the animals, determine to live
and die like the animals? Or at least may not his
self-respect be impaired and partially lost, as we may
imagine to be the case with some scion of a noble
house, who is suddenly informed that all his life long
he has been mistaken and that he was really of ignoble
birth? Such an announcement might have the effect
of degrading him, or he might, upon the revelation
There are different ways in which theories such as
I have been describing may be met by those who
oppose them. First they may be treated with ridicule; but this, although a natural, is not a good way
of meeting them. ‘Fair creature, do you really suppose, or can I suppose, that you are descended from
an ape?’ ‘And you man, created in the image of
God, which will you have for your ancestor, a monkey
or an angel?’ There is no harm in jests of this sort;
after dinner, or at a public meeting, they are amusing
enough, if not too often repeated. But this is not
I am not going to ridicule or misrepresent the writings of a great naturalist whose genius and character
are deserving of our utmost respect. His speculations
are the honest result of studies in which very few of
us can follow him. It would be almost as impertinent
1. Must we not begin by asking the question:
Whether this theory is the whole explanation of the
origin of man and animals, or a part only? And if
a part, what part—a fifth, a tenth, a twentieth? for
we are obliged to recall our minds by numbers from
the influence of imagination. In the persistence of the
strongest, in the survival of the fittest, we recognize
Again, the terms which are used in these speculations are to a great extent ambiguous. When we
speak of ‘evolution,’ or ‘development,’ or even of the
more familiar terms, force, cause, law, we are insensibly
generalizing in a single word processes which may
be infinitely various and belong to different spheres
of knowledge. The laws of mind are not the same as
the laws of external nature; nor the history of the
human mind the same as the history of external
nature. The evolution of thought is altogether
different from the evolution of the animal creation.
Are we not transferring the language of physics to
metaphysics? Nor is the expression ‘survival of the
fittest’ free from ambiguity. For who are the animals
fittest to survive? Not necessarily those who are
externally most in harmony with their circumstances
or framed on the most symmetrical model. In animals,
as in men, there may have been some hidden force
which would more than compensate for adverse external conditions, like that hidden force in human constitutions which gives longevity, and is partly the
same with health and strength, partly different from
them. Amid varying circumstances and in infinite
Passing on to the condition of man, we are ready to acknowledge that man is an animal, and dependent like other animals in his bodily structure on physiological laws. We seem to trace also in animals the rudiments of many human qualities good and bad. There is jealousy and strife and a natural state of war fare among many of them; there is vanity among the birds of the air, like the vanity of dress or of personal attractions among human beings; there is subtlety and craft, which enables them to get an enemy into their power or to defend themselves against him; there are also vestiges of the higher qualities of gratitude, of family attachment, of devotion to a master; and they seem to be capable of a sense of honour or duty, and of distinguishing between hurt and injury. Their likeness to us doubtless gives them an additional claim on our sympathy: as has been well said, ‘Humanity towards the lower animals is one of the best tests of the civilization of a nation.’ Nor can we deny to them a certain amount of progress, any more than we can affirm that man is always progressing. They too have their polities and a sort of society; they imitate one another and learn of one another; they are not without a limited reason which some times enables them to meet new circumstances; and like mankind they have a latent and apparently inherited experience.
But after making all these allowances, the distance
is not sensibly diminished between man and the lower
animals. Even in his external characteristics the difference is enormous. How in any struggle for existence could the brain of man have been developed,
which is said to be three times as great in proportion
to his size as that of any known animal? How did
he acquire his upright walk, or the divisions of his
fingers, or the smoothness of his skin, all which might
be useful or suitable to him in his human condition,
but could not have tended to preserve him in the
previous struggle? How did he learn to make or use
tools, and especially the greatest of all of them, that
is, fire? Who taught him language, or gave him the
power of reflecting on himself, or imparted to him the
reverence for a superior being, of which there seem
to be no traces among the animals? We look at
pictures in which the bones of men, or, perhaps the
early forms of existence before birth, are shown to be
more alike than we in our ignorance had supposed.
But we always knew that there were real resemblances
between men and the animals, and a few degrees more
or less make no differences worth speaking of. For
we observe that the approximation, though striking to
the eye, is not in what is characteristic of man, but in
what is not characteristic of him. Still the chasm
remains not really lessened between the jabbering
of animals and the language of man, between the
stationariness of animals and the progress of man,
And when we complain that the links are missing
which are required to prove the continuity of human
and animal life, we are told in reply that the record
is fragmentary; that a few pages out of the whole
book, a few lines out of each page are alone preserved
to us. Are we not then being asked to decide the
question having a very small part of the evidence
before us? If the disproof is taken away, is not the
proof also taken away? A writing which is crossed,
which is inverted, which is disguised, may almost
always be deciphered; but that of which the greater
part is lost cannot be deciphered with certainty,
because the part which is lost may probably affect
the meaning of that which has been preserved. If
we had the whole record before us do we suppose
that our conclusions would remain unaltered? No
naturalist has as yet been able to give a satisfactory account of the different species of man, in
which the differences seem to be least: can we
entirely trust them when they speak to us of his
origin? Shall we not rather wait and see whether,
in a few years, when we are no longer under the
dominion of a new idea, this famous theory, though
admitted to be a valuable contribution to natural
history, may no longer be regarded as an exhaustive
account of the origin of men and animals? Hypothesis is a most gracious aid to science, but is there
2. Physical science seems to be making great progress amongst us, and is likely to have considerable effects upon morality and religion. We may welcome this new knowledge, and gratefully acknowledge that many improvements in the physical, and indirectly in the moral, state of mankind are derived from it. But we must acknowledge that there is a risk of one part of knowledge becoming disproportioned to the rest. If, as some dream, we were to attempt to place life on a merely physical basis, the noblest things in the world, the greatest examples of men and the highest fruits of mind, would disappear; for these would be substituted mere physical improvement, and possibly actions which are now regarded as crimes might become virtues. Health and comfort and happiness are good, but there are higher goods, virtue and truth and the service of God; and as rational beings we cannot pursue after the one without seeking for the other.
Turning now to this other aspect of the subject, I shall endeavour to bring to your minds some considerations tending to counteract these materializing influences, which seem to cloud human life as time goes on.
Let us consider that the highest and best things on
earth appertaining to the inner life of man, such as the
These do not cease to be, or to be obligations on
us, because the past history of man is shown to be in
some important respects different from what we once
There is nothing really opposed in religion and
science, though there are many false oppositions as
well as false reconcilements of them. But we must
be content to see in times of transition their paths
diverge when the one goes forward and the other
remains behind, or when the vigour of youth in the
one comes into conflict with the traditions of antiquity
in the other. Meanwhile, let us not be too much the
servants of the hour, falling under the dominion of
this or that theory which happens to be in the air,
but balancing the present with the future and with
the past, and not forgetting the great thoughts of
other ages in the progress of natural knowledge or
And even now we can imagine individuals in whom
no such opposition is found to exist, whose minds
shrink from no investigation, and are not startled by
any real conclusions from facts; who have a sense of
the perfect innocence of critical inquiries into Scripture and speculations about the origin of man, and
yet live in faith and in communion with God, and
are impartial, not because they have no religion, but
because they leave the result with Him. They are
sensible that God has assigned them a work which is
as much His work as the preaching of the Gospel by
ministers of religion. Regarding all truth as a revelation of God, they have no egotism which leads them
to maintain their own ideas or discoveries in preference to those of others. They receive the wonders of
nature like the kingdom of God in the Gospel, knowing that in a few years their powers will begin to fail,
and this will be the only way in which they can receive
AND OTHER SHEEP I HAVE, WHICH ARE NOT OF
THIS FOLD: THEM ALSO I MUST BRING, AND THEY
SHALL HEAR MY VOICE; AND THERE SHALL BE ONE
FOLD, AND ONE SHEPHERD.
THE teaching of our Lord was originally designed
for His own people. It was not a philosophy, but
a life—the life of a private man standing in no relation
to the political differences or to the religious controversies of his age. He was not a formal teacher
who laid down abstract principles, but He went about
doing good, and gracious words dropped from His
lips which drew men’s hearts towards Him. The lesson
was relative to the occasion, called out by some word of
His disciples, by some want of the multitude—‘having
nothing to eat’—by some incident happening in the
temple of Jerusalem, by the changing aspect of His
own life as the Jewish nation accepted or rejected
His message, by the doom which He saw was impending over them. He went up once or oftener to the
national feasts; He sat at meat with Lazarus and his
sisters, with Zacchæus, at the house of Simon; He
Thus we may think of Christ not only as the
founder of the Christian Church, but as the uniter or
reconciler of many churches to Himself and to one
another. We may think of Him also as restoring all
men everywhere, the bad and the good, the just and
the unjust, to the fatherhood of God. The divisions
of Christians have passed into a byword. The
hatreds of those who profess to be followers of Christ
are deeper and more lasting than any others, handed
down from generation to generation like blood-feuds
among barbarous tribes. The same spirit of alienation is observable among nations, and among
different classes in the same nation, even in our own
humane and civilized age. There are not many persons who habitually regard all other men of all ranks,
religions, races, as equally with themselves God’s creatures. Yet there is also an uneasy feeling among
us that all this is not as it should be. The best men
seem to be free from such enmities and narrownesses;
in the hour of death there are few who retain them,
and we sometimes dwell with satisfaction on the hope
that in another world they will have passed away.
There will be no more Jew or Gentile, Protestant or
Catholic, Dissenter or Churchman, master or servant,
but all one in Christ Jesus. We know also that our
I purpose in this sermon to speak to you of the
spirit of unity, which I shall consider in two ways.
First, as it affects our feelings or attitude towards non-Christian races and religions, whether towards the
classical nations of antiquity or to the great religions
of the East. Both these are in fact very near to us;
the literature and history of the classical nations forming the basis of our higher education; the other
constantly crossing our path in foreign travel, in commerce, in the fulfilment of political duties. Secondly,
In former ages the religion of Christ was the
antagonist of every other. Its attitude was necessarily one of hostility to the Gentile world. It waged
an interminable war, not only against the vices of the
heathen, but against their literature and philosophy.
To the first Christians they were ‘knowledge falsely so
called,’ and it was even debated among them whether
any of the great teachers of antiquity had been saved.
Soon the Church began to fight against the world,
not with spiritual weapons, but empire against empire,
the Pagan empire against the Christian, the Athanasian
against the Arian. The struggle was renewed in
what is called the conversion of the barbarians. Once
more the banner of the Cross was unfurled against
the Crescent, and the Moslem was for a time thrust
out of the sacred places of Christians. Then, stimulated by victory, the arms of Christians turned upon
And so with ourselves, when we travel or read the
accounts of travellers in any eastern country; our first
impression is something like that of St. Paul when
he stood upon the Areopagus, that the people are
wholly given to idolatry. We see or read of temples
full of idols, of cruel and barbarous rites still practised,
of licentiousness in the garb of religion, of a shocking
and degrading asceticism. But when we look a little
below the surface we find, at any rate in all the great
religions of the world, a higher witness still present
with them. The conscience of men is not dead; they
are feeling after God if haply they may find Him.
Just as we often remark about individuals from whom
distance or .prejudice has estranged us, that they are
much better and more like ourselves than we anticipated before we knew them, so we may observe about
these strange religions; as we approach them nearer,
we find that they bear the lineaments of a common
human nature. Many forms of organization, many
There is probably no cause now working in the
world, neither criticism nor the progress of natural
The greatest lesson which the religious history
of mankind teaches us is that, laying aside the ceremonial and external, we should cling to the moral
and spiritual. For this is the high and permanent
element of religion; it is also the element to the recognition of which in its fulness very few attain, and from
these few a noble rule of life has been imparted to
mankind, and the thoughts of many hearts have been
reflected in them. Such a view of religion, instead of
dividing the world more and more, is a peacemaker
between nations and races; men more easily approach
those with whose creed they have some degree of
sympathy; they are more readily received by them
when they can present them with a truth, not antagonistic to their own better thoughts, but in harmony
with them. It is hard to transplant our sects and
forms of worship to some Eastern land, to carry thither
customs and usages which are familiar to us but have
no root in other countries, to convey over the sea an
ecclesiastical hierarchy and even the history of the
English Church. But it is not really difficult, or at
Yet higher and more ideal than any outward or
visible Church is the invisible, of which our conception
is more abstract and distant, and therefore more
vacant and shadowy. It is described in the words of
the Bidding Prayer as ‘the congregation of faithful
men dispersed throughout the world.’ But who they
are no eye of man can discern! For the wheat and
the tares grow together in this world, and many are
called but few are chosen, and many are hearers but
not doers of the word, and the first shall be last and
the last first; and there are other sheep not of this
fold, and there are those who have not seen and yet
have believed. There are nominal Christians who
are in no sense real Christians; and, on the other hand,
in distant lands there are those to whom Christ in
His individual person was never known, who, nevertheless, have had the temper of Christ, and in a way
of their own have followed Him: all these are included
in the invisible Church. It is a great fellowship of
those who have lived for others and not for themselves,
But sometimes there has been a confusion in the
minds of men, and they have sought to clothe the
visible Church in the attributes of the invisible, or
to narrow the invisible Church to the visible. The
kingdom of God, which is without, has been lighted
up with the glories of the heavenly kingdom, the
Church of history has been transformed into the
Church of prophecy. For mankind easily perceive
that the true ornaments of a church are not gold and
silver or any such thing, but the lives of believers;
and they fancy that they can infuse into the outward
temple some grace and beauty of another sort. So
the ancient philosophers intentionally, and also unintentionally, confused the actual or possible constitution
GOD FORBID: FOR THEN HOW SHALL GOD JUDGE THE WORLD?
THE simplest truths of religion are also the deepest and most inexhaustible. They are everywhere around us, like the air which we breathe, and yet we are hardly conscious of their presence. They seem to grow up in us naturally by the light of reason and conscience; they are the established beliefs of the age or country in which we live. All men are agreed in holding them, and there is nothing new to be said about them.
They may be summed up in two or three propositions which nobody would deny, as for example:
God is just; God is true; He governs the world by
fixed rule; He is the Author of our being; He knows
and sees all things. And yet these simple propositions seem to be always in danger of being lost.
They become truisms or commonplace. They are laid
on the shelf, and exercise no great influence over life.
I purpose to speak in this sermon of our simplest
conceptions of the divine nature. And first I shall
consider what these are, and how far they can be
said to accord with our experience of the world;
and secondly I shall show how the primary conceptions of God have been violated, not only in the
religions of the Gentiles, but in many ideas of the
divine nature which have been held by Christian
teachers. And thirdly I shall point out how to
these we return as the final result of all our
As I have already remarked, there would be no great difference about the language in which we should describe the Divine Being. We should use words derived from human goodness, because we have no other. But while we should admit that they are applied to God in a transcendent sense, transferred from the finite to the infinite, we should insist that they have essentially the same meaning in both uses of them. For example, when we say that God is just, we do not mean to attribute to Him a quality which is the reverse of human justice, but only more perfect, such as is proper to One who knows all the circumstances of every case, and has therefore a sort of infinite equity in dealing with them. When we ascribe any of these epithets to God, we mean to affirm that at any rate He does not fall short of the quality denoted by them in the ordinary human sense of the words. There is no standard to which we can refer the nature of God but our own moral ideas, and if we cast a doubt upon these then we are altogether at sea.
Under the name of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ we are
worshipping an unknown God, of whom we catch occasional glimpses flashing
through the mists and storms which envelop Him. There is a question which the
ancient philosophers were fond of raising—Whether there was one virtue or many?
The mediæval saints would have spoken of what
they termed ‘the enjoyment of God.’ And certainly
there is great comfort in the thought of a divine
perfection—to the good when they are overpowered
by the evil of the world; to the evil, too, as soon as
But there is another reason which lies deeper still.
For the truth is that our minds are partly clouded
by a doubt—the same doubt which pressed upon the
author of the Book of Ecclesiastes—the existence of
evil in the world. How is this divine perfection
reconcilable with the misery of our poor, with the
vice of our criminals, with the disease and death which
we see everywhere around us, with the crushing misfortunes which sometimes oppress the good, with the
tendencies to evil or with the actual evil which we find
in our hearts? That is the difficulty which is pressed
upon us, and which some persons use as an argument
to make us believe everything; which others adduce as a reason why we should
believe nothing. Men will often advance the most monstrous doctrines respecting
the character and actions of God. And, when reason and nature alike seem to
rebel against some of these statements, they reply, ‘How do you account for the
existence of evil?’ Here is a difficulty which cannot be lightly set aside either
in speculation or in practice:
Believing in the existence of God, and comparing
our own happier lot with that of the poor and suffering
whom we see around us, we cannot justify the ways
of God to man without maintaining that there is more
But still, I admit that evil under whatever name is
a reality which cannot be got rid of by any new use
of language. And, though I am afraid of seeming to
carry you too far away from home, there is another
consideration to which I should wish to draw your
attention. It is not the mere existence of evil, but
the amount of evil in the world which really depresses
us and seems like a load too heavy to be lifted up.
And if we could realize to ourselves that the purposes
of God are known to us in part only, not merely as
Well, but some one will say, I would rather not be
deluded with the prospect of an indefinite future, ten,
or twenty, or thirty thousand years hence, when I see
and feel wretchedness at my very door, and in my
own home, when at this hour during which we are
here assembled there are thousands of suffering, hopeless beings to whom life is a burden. How will the
millennium of which you speak profit them? I will
not repeat what I have said before, that this world
would be the most unjust of worlds if there were no
other; but there is another reflection which is nearer
than that. The evil, the misery, the moral and physical degradation you, who are so much moved at the
spectacle, have the power of mitigating, of relieving,
of preventing. This millennium, which is so far off,
may be brought by you into your own neighbour
hood; there may be a kingdom of heaven in a parish
at the present hour, as well as in some remote age or
another. From you may flow an inspiration of goodness; a breath from another land which may drive
away the pestilence. For God has not left us in this
world helpless to contend against the power of evil,
but has also endowed us with the capacity of resisting
It seems to be a harder task to think of God now
than formerly, because we can no longer think of
Him as the God of our Church or nation, but of the
whole earth, nor of the earth merely, but of myriads
of worlds. Yet in all ages, the ages of credulity or
faith as well as those of reason and inquiry, the
minds of men have been struggling after God if haply
they might find Him. The ancient Greek thought
that he saw God, first in the likeness of man, not
better but greater than himself; then as fate, then as
mind; whose providential interference was introduced
to meet a difficulty, and who was not so much the
just governor of men as the occasional avenger of
injustice. Then there came the philosopher who
taught that God was good, and the Author of good;
that He was true, and could have no occasion to
Even in the Scriptures too, if we read them attentively, we shall find a similar progressive revelation of
the divine nature. In the childhood of the world
God walked in the garden and talked with Adam.
But in the New Testament we are plainly told that no
man hath seen God at any time. In the Book of
Exodus we read that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart,
and in the Book of Genesis that He tempted Abraham;
but again in the New Testament that He tempteth no man. And once more in the Old
Testament itself we find both the earlier and the later notion. First He visited
the sins of the fathers upon the children; secondly, in the prophets there
occurs the twice repeated contradiction of this. Henceforth there should
be no more this proverb in the house of Israel, ‘the
fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’; but every soul should bear his
own iniquity. And our Lord Himself twice rebuked
the popular superstition that temporal calamities are
the punishment of sin: first, in the words, ‘Think ye
that those eighteen upon whom the tower of Siloam
Slowly and gradually, whether with or without
Jewish or Christian revelation, have men attained to
that degree of clearness of insight into the ways of
God of which the human mind seems capable. And
again and again they have held the truth in inconsistency, and in the name of
Christianity relapsed into Jewish and Gentile error. They have not placed before
themselves the attributes of God as the conditions under which they must think of His dealings
with man. How, for example, when we speak of
God as true, can we imagine that He will see us other
than we truly are, or interpose a fiction between Himself and us? Or how can we suppose that He who is
a Spirit, and must be worshipped in spirit and in
truth, will make our eternal salvation dependent on
some accident of place or time, or the performance of
some external act? Or how can a just God punish us
for what we never did, for what another did, for the
mere tendency to evil which is inherent in the nature
which He has given us? How can the most sorrowful
spectacle that ever was seen upon earth, at which in
a figure we may say that the world has been mourning
ever since, have given Him pleasure and satisfaction?
Will He remedy one injustice by another? Or again,
can He inflict a disproportionate punishment on any
The changes which have already taken place in the
religious belief of Christians incline us to argue that
there will be other changes by which religion and
morality may be more perfectly reconciled. Many
dark clouds of error and superstition hang about the
early ages of the Church, and some of these are hanging about us still; many opinions were held by the
best of men in the Nicene Church from which the
human mind now shrinks with horror and amazement. Who can believe that the unbaptized infant is
consigned to everlasting torments? Yet this was once
the orthodox faith of the Christian world. Who can
hear without trembling that one mortal sin consciously
committed after baptism, almost, if not altogether,
excluded the sinner from the hope of salvation? No
wonder that men put off baptism until the hour of
death. But what a conception both of the nature of
God and of the religion of Christ does such a practice
imply. Or who is not surprised when he reads that
the satisfaction of Christ for the sins of mankind was
originally understood to be a satisfaction to the devil,
In the ancient Abyssinian Church, which by some
has been thought to have retained the primitive faith
more than any other, there was a solemn form of
words repeated on certain days of the year. The
origin of the custom and the name of the author of
the words were unknown; they were supposed by
some to have been translated out of another language.
The meaning of several of the terms employed in
this ancient document was uncertain; and texts were
quoted from the Abyssinian Scriptures in support of
them which were not found in older and better copies.
Nevertheless, the use of this form of words, admitted
to be of such uncertain interpretation and authority,
was guarded by the most tremendous anathemas,
which were uttered by the whole people; and all who
did not believe what they could not wholly understand
were devoted by them to eternal damnation. And
sometimes the anathemas were rolled forth in a sort
of triumph to the pealing sound of the organ, and
sometimes the innocent voice of a child might be
heard gently repeating them. The patriarch of the
Abyssinian Church had long wished to put an end to
this scandal, for he acknowledged that the words
were not to be taken in their natural sense. But
My brethren, I want to point out to you that, if we insist on retaining all that we have received from antiquity, we must insensibly impair the divine image in the soul. Religion and morality will part company more and more; and we shall either cease to believe in God and a future life at all, or we shall become the victims of every superstition; we cannot draw near to Him if we think of Him only as a being who watches over us in this world, but leaves us to our fate in another.
I am aware that some persons may be displeased
with me for saying this. But they would be equally
displeased if I were to describe to them the terrors of
hell in the language of Tertullian or some other ancient
father, or as they are depicted in the writings of that
Spanish friar which some of us may have read translated in the works of Bishop Jeremy Taylor. And
still more, and more justly, would they be displeased
if I was to apply their own doctrine to some one near
and dear to them who had led a careless life and died
making no sign of repentance. Yet surely it is
a dangerous thing to hold religious truth at a distance
which we refuse to realize when brought home to us;
to begin by violating our first notions of the attributes
of God on some slender ground of tradition or doubtful interpretation of isolated texts of Scripture, and
For indeed the thought of God is awful enough
to us without adding terrific and unmeaning consequences. We do not suppose that God is like some
foolish father who lets off his children from the
punishment which is for their improvement—but
rather that ‘whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.’ We know that the will and purpose of God is that
we should become like Him; that we should put off
the garment of self and put on the Lord Jesus Christ
in righteousness and true holiness. Nor can we
imagine or believe that this is to be accomplished
except by the exertions of our own wills co-operating with His will. And, when we think of our
own selfishness, of our absorption in the things of
this world and our averseness to another, we feel that
this is a great and protracted work which cannot
be accomplished without many a struggle and many
sharp pangs, which might be described in Scripture
language as dividing the body from the spirit, us from
ourselves. For, whether we speak of a state of probation in which mankind or the majority of them are
to have one chance and then to be cast aside for ever,
or of an education which is to begin here and to be
carried on through countless ages (and there may be
those who are saved, so as by fire), yet we are all
agreed in this, that ‘without holiness no man shall see
When we think of another life, which is the second
great truth of religion, in the light of the attributes of
God, we have a feeling of awe and also of comfort.
We know that God will see us as we truly are, and
that in our way we are not too fit to meet His searching eye. But we know also that He will take into
account all the circumstances of our lives. We are
conscious that He is infinitely above us, and that no
thought of ours can comprehend Him. But, as we
would rather be judged by a great and good man
than by one of a meaner sort, we would rather fall,
as was said of old, into the hands of God than man.
We know too that a perfect God can have no other
aim or purpose to accomplish but the perfection of
His creatures, if this be possible. The systems of men
do not terrify us, or their wild denunciations of one
another, whether in this or in former ages; they
scarcely last a thousand years, and we know that in
them is not always to be found the mind of Christ.
And we can rise above them into the clear atmosphere
of the justice and goodness of God. But what must
strike, I do not say with fear, but with awe, the mind
HEAR, O ISRAEL: THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD.
FOLLOWING the plan which was indicated in a former sermon, I shall proceed now to consider the revelation of the divine nature which is made to us in the Old Testament. This we may hereafter compare briefly—first, with Greek and Roman ideas of religion; secondly, with that wider and more universal conception of God which is given us in history, in science, in our own experience, and in the Gospel of Christ.
I am sensible of the difficulty of doing justice to a great subject in the short compass of a sermon. Such a treatment must necessarily appear superficial, inadequate, fragmentary. I would wish you to consider what I am going to say as hints and suggestions only, which you may carry back with you to the study of the Old Testament and make the beginning of thoughts and studies of your own.
The Israelites themselves seem to have been conscious that the revelation of the divine nature had
been gradually imparted to them. There may,
perhaps, have been a time in their early history when
their conception of God did not differ much from
those of the surrounding nations, when they may
have even given ‘the fruit of their body for the sin
of their soul.’ But such a practice, which seems
to be authoritatively repudiated in the narrative of
Abraham and Isaac, certainly had not survived in the
times when the Jews had become a nation. The
truth probably is that, as other nations, for example
the Egyptians, had much more of spiritual religion
than we used to suppose in the days when their
ancient records were unknown to us, so the Jews, if
we examine the Old Testament critically, had much
more of superstition and idolatry than it was once
common to acknowledge. These old superstitions,
which they had inherited from former ages and which
they had in common with other nations, were always
clinging to them and returning upon them; and only
when the world began to pass out of them the Israelites
passed out of them too. What they had peculiar to
themselves was not the higher moral or religious
sentiment of the whole race, but a few great men of
whom other nations have never had the like, who first
taught the true nature of God, who sought first to
awaken in the minds of their fellow-men the moral and
spiritual nature of religion, who stood apart from
Without attempting to recover what may be termed the prehistoric religion of the Israelites we observe traces of great changes, not unacknowledged by themselves in their thoughts about the divine nature. Once God had been only known to them by the name of Elohim, which scarcely distinguished Him from the other gods of the poly theist peoples who surrounded them, afterwards by the solemn and more abstract title of Jahweh or Jehovah, a word which is connected with the verb of existence, and seems to indicate the permanence of the divine nature. There was a time when God had walked with Adam in the garden; when He partook with Abraham of the calf which he had dressed; when He had talked with Moses as a man talketh with his friend; but every Israelite would have felt, as we should do, the incongruity of transferring these ancient representations to the times of David or one of the kings. Men look back upon Paradise or to some golden age as to a time in which, as they believe, there was a nearer approach to God:
But they forget that the nearer vision of God is also
the narrower, and that to comprehend the whole of
the visible world they must ascend to the invisible.
The Israelitish prophets seem also to have been aware that many things said by
them of old times respecting the nature or acts of the Divine Being stood in
need of correction. Thus, while in the histories the bloody and perfidious
destruction of the house of Ahab and of the prophets of Baal by Jehu is attributed to his zeal for .God, who had anointed him by
the hand of His prophet, there was not wanting
a prophet, Hosea, in the next generation, who foretold
that the Lord would ‘avenge the blood of Jezreel on
the house of Jehu.’ Thus again, while we are taught
in the second commandment that ‘God visits the sins
of the fathers upon the children,’ the prophet Ezekiel,
apparently alluding to these words, declares with
authority that henceforward there shall be no more
this proverb in the house of Israel, ‘the fathers have
eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set
upon edge,’ but every soul shall bear his own iniquity.
Thus the arbitrary is exchanged for the moral, even
in spite of the appearances of the surrounding world.
And everywhere the beneficent aspect of the divine
nature is exhibited to us as well as the terrible which
had absorbed the minds of the people in earlier ages:
the religion of love is combined with that of fear.
The terrible Jehovah, who is ready to pour out the
vials of His wrath on the backsliding race, is also the
And here I will notice a difficulty in these inquiries
which has, perhaps, already occurred to you—it is
a difficulty which often applies to similar inquiries.
When we speak of the Old Testament we include
a number of writings of the most various dates, and
the dates of most of them are not exactly known to
us. The history of Israel extends over a period of
a thousand or fifteen hundred years. During this period
the nation is sometimes in the closest connexion with
the Assyrian or Egyptian or Persian or late Greek
Empire, at other times almost isolated from them. It
is natural to ask how we can be sure to what period
the Jewish conception of the divine nature can be
really attributed, and how far they may have been
affected by the ideas of foreign nations. Are the
Books of Genesis or Exodus, or the oldest part of
them, really of the same date with the Book of
Deuteronomy, which has so much in common with
the prophets? Is the minute detail of the Ceremonial
Law really prior to the denunciations of ceremonialism which we read in the words of Micah and
Isaiah? Why do the names of Adam and Eve never
occur except in the first few chapters of the Book of
Genesis? Is the prediction of Cyrus, or the consolation of Israel in the captivity, a foretelling of events
by the prophet Isaiah which were to happen two centuries afterwards, or the expression of religious feeling
The time will no doubt arrive when these and the like questions, which have been often angrily discussed, will be regarded as perfectly unconnected with the interests of religion and theology, as having, in fact, no more to do with them than similar questions raised about the genuineness or authenticity of the Greek or Latin classics. But they will always be of importance in the study of Jewish history and literature. Unless we can form an idea of the chronology we can obtain no adequate conception of the progress of religious ideas among the Jewish people—we shall be in danger of mixing up notions which are really incongruous. In this, as in most inquiries relating to antiquity, we can have no certainty about details or minutiae—we cannot determine accurately whether a particular verse is to be assigned to an earlier or later prophet. But we may still be able to say confidently, that all the prophets of a particular age have a common character and teach a common lesson.
Now the prophets of the sixth and seventh centuries before Christ have such a common character;
in them the spiritual nature of religion is fully taught
and developed. The same spiritual lesson is repeated
to us in the Psalms and in the Book of Deuteronomy.
The dates of the Psalms vary, and for the most part
to writings so short no chronological criterion can
be applied. The Book of Deuteronomy has been
There is yet another confusion which besets the
study of the Israelitish religion—the erroneous opposition between the Old Testament and the New.
They have differences no doubt, great and important,
but differences are often made between them which
have no real existence. When God is said to be
represented in the one as the God of justice, in the
other as the God of love; when the Old Testament is
opposed to the New as the law to the Gospel, the
thunder of Mount Sinai to the meekness and gentleness of Christ; this is really a very inconsiderate
and partial way of viewing the subject. For in the
Old and New Testaments alike God is equally represented to us as a Father as well as a King, as a God
of love and mercy as well as of justice; in both He is
the God of individuals as well as of nations, who is
not far ‘from every one of us.’ The truer distinction,
perhaps the only distinction, which can be consistently
maintained between them is that in the Old Testament
And now we may leave these preliminaries and
return to the general subject. First among the conceptions of God which we find in the Old Testament
is that ‘He is the God of nature.’ The Israelites of
course knew nothing of the fixed laws by which the
world is governed; their heaven was above them,
their place of the departed below; the earth was
a large plain which divided them. The stars were
the hosts of whom Jehovah was the Lord. Just
behind the visible universe He dwelt, sometimes
revealing Himself for a moment to the eye of the
prophet ‘sitting upon a throne, high, and lifted up,’ or ‘having the body of heaven in His clearness.’ His power is shown both in the ordinary working of
nature and in the extraordinary. He makes the field
barren or fruitful; He gives or withholds from Israel
corn, wine and oil, the silver also and the gold and
the wool and the flax with which they adorn themselves are His gifts. For their sakes He makes
a covenant with the wild beasts, for whom He also
provides. He hath set the round world so fast that
it cannot be moved (this is the manner in which the Israelitish prophet expresses that confidence which to
us is given by what we term the uniformity of the
Yet this physical government of the world is also
a moral government, in which God distributes rewards
and punishments to His people. He is not only their
Creator, but their Judge, who gives to every man
according to his works. True, the prophet or
psalmist sometimes finds that the mystery of the world
is too hard for him, as it has been for many a one in
every age, when he sees the wicked in such prosperity and flourishing like a green bay-tree; or when,
like Job, he contrasts the consciousness of his own
rectitude with the misery of his outward circum
stances; or when, like the author of the Book of
Ecclesiastes, after surveying the world, he acknowledges
When we speak of Jehovah being revealed to men
in the Old Testament as the moral governor of the
world, we must remember, however, one important
limitation which narrows this conception. Though
He is the God of the whole earth, ‘who sits upon the
circle of the heavens,’ before whom the nations are as
nothing compared with His greatness, yet He is also
in a special manner the God of the Jewish people.
With them He is in direct relation as their King and
Judge, as their Father and Friend. But the other
nations of the world come within the circle of His
Providence chiefly in so far as their fortunes affect
the Jewish race; they are on the outskirts of His
government, and the furthest vision of the prophet
hardly pierces to a time when there shall be one
religion spread over the whole earth. No ancient
nation ever thought of other nations as equally with
themselves the objects of a divine care. It would
have been hard, almost impossible, for them to have
done so. Nay, my brethren, is it not hard for us as
well as them to realize what we most certainly believe,
or at least declare that we believe, that every other
human being, the poorest, the weakest, those who
dwell in distant climes, or who lived in past ages, are
as much the object of a divine solicitude as we ourselves are? The national religions of the world came
first; and the Jewish religion follows the same order:
It is out of this relation of Jehovah to the Jewish
people that the tender human relation of God to man
was developed by the prophets. They spoke of the
power which nothing could resist, of the justice which
no man could escape; they were never weary of
describing in material imagery the control which was
exercised by Him over the works of nature. Yet
this same mighty God is the gentlest and most loving
of rulers; the Father and the Friend, the Consoler and
Redeemer, even more than the Conqueror and King.
His love as far exceeds human love as His strength
exceeds human strength. He is the Shepherd who
feeds His flock and gathers the lambs in His arms;
He is the Spouse of Israel as well as her Lord, whom
she is constantly deserting, and who is always ready
to receive her again. There is no movement towards
repentance or cry for mercy that does not at once enter
into His ears. The prisoner and the oppressed, all
those who in early and disturbed states of society are
least regarded, are the special objects of His care; He
is the Father of the fatherless, and in Him they find
The first is from the later chapters of Isaiah (
‘Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of Thy holiness and of Thy glory: where is Thy zeal and Thy strength, the sounding of Thy bowels and of Thy mercies toward me? are they restrained?
‘Doubtless Thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not: Thou, O Lord, art our Father, our Redeemer; Thy name is from everlasting.’
Where we may notice, by the way, how the prophet identifies himself with the Jewish people so as to be almost indistinguishable from them.
And again renewing the plea:—
‘We are Thine: Thou never barest rule over them; they were not called by Thy name.’
The other passage is of a much earlier date, and is
taken from the prophet Hosea, who lived in the days
of Uzziah, Jotham and Hezekiah (
‘When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called My son out of Egypt.’
‘I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms; but they knew not that I healed them. I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love.’
And again (
‘I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely, for mine anger is turned away from them.’
In some old-fashioned, may I say wrong-headed, treatises of theology, such as Warburton’s Divine Legation of Moses, the God of Israel is described to us as a sort of king or magistrate who keeps His people in order by rewards and punishments. And there have not been wanting writers in our own days who think that this, whether true or not, is about as high a notion as we can form of the divine nature. This is the old fallacy of might prevailing over right, the theory of the strong man as it is sometimes called, transferred from the sphere of human things to the divine. How unlike this is either to the love of God on which the prophets delighted to dwell, or to the power of God which is ever on the side of righteousness, I need not stop to consider.
Thus far we have been contemplating the divine
There is one word hardly translatable into other
languages, because the Israelitish prophets have themselves infused into it a depth of meaning, under which
all the attributes of God are comprehended. This is ‘holiness;’ and God is called by them
‘the high and
lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is
holy.’ It is difficult for us to comprehend the whole
signification of this word. It means moral goodness,
it means righteousness, it means truth, it means purity—but it means more than these. It means the spirit
which is altogether above the world, and yet has an
affinity with goodness and truth in the world. It
implies separation as well as elevation, dignity as
well as innocence. It is the personification of the
idea of good. It is the light of which the whole
earth is full, which is also the fire which burns up
the ungodly. It has a side of awe as well as of goodness. It suggests the thought, not of direct punishment or suffering to be inflicted on the wicked, but
rather, ‘How can we sinners venture into the presence
of a holy God? What unclean person can behold
But what is necessarily indistinct to us when we
endeavour to carry our thoughts beyond this world
becomes clearer to us when we return to earth and
think, not of God, but of man. The holiness of God
is that image of Himself which He seeks to implant
in all His creatures. ‘Be ye holy even as I am holy,’ are words in which the whole of religion may be
summed up. And though we are not able to look at
the sun in his strength, we may yet see him through
a glass darkly or in human reflections of him. Thus,
for example, if we were to attempt to define or
describe the meaning of the term once more with
reference to man, we should find that there were
very few to whom we could venture to apply it. It
means in the first place perfect disinterestedness,
indifference to earthly and human interests. Again,
it implies a mind one with God, over which no
shadow of uncleanness or untruth ever passes, which
seeks only to know His will, and knowing it, to carry
it out in the world. To purity and truth it adds
peace and a certain dignity derived from independence of all things. It is heaven upon earth—to live
The aim of the prophets is almost wholly a moral
one, and the demands which they make in the name
of Jehovah over the people of Israel are moral
demands. ‘Wash you, make you clean.’ ‘Cease to
do evil, learn to do well, seek judgement, do justice
to the fatherless, defend the cause of the widow.’ Nothing can be simpler than their religious teaching.
This simplicity leads them to denounce, not only the
sins, but the religious observances of the Israelites.
Read carefully the first chapter of Isaiah: ‘Bring no
more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto
Me; your new moons and sabbaths and your appointed
feasts My soul hateth;’ and you see how far they
were from blindly conforming to the religion of their
time. Do we suppose that any one who spoke in
the same spirit to us would be received with favour
amongst us? They came not to increase the outward
splendour of the temple or the synagogue, but to
teach a lesson which should abide for ever. That
lesson may be summed up in the words of Micah,
And this lesson they have bequeathed to us, the simplest of all religious lessons and also the most in danger of being lost; of this they have found for us the expression in words which will never pass away. We do not rashly apply their denunciations to the religious observances of our own day; but they teach us that by being above them only can we have the right use of them. Their mission was to stand apart from their fellow-men, ours to act in concert and communion with them. There is another lesson which may be gathered from their writings, to which also ecclesiastical history bears witness. It is this, that, whereas the permanence of societies and churches is derived from system and organization and authority, their true life flows from individuals acting and thinking freely—from prophets, not from priests; from those who have resisted the popular tide, not from those who are borne along with it.
I promised, at the commencement of this sermon, to make some brief comparison of the Israelitish religion with the Greek religion, and also with our modern Christianity. I shall confine the comparison to two striking points.
(1) When we place side by side the writings of Plato or Epictetus and one of the Jewish prophets, we are struck by the fact that while they both equally insist on the morality or perfection of the divine nature, to the Greek it is comparatively indifferent whether he speaks of God in the singular or in the plural, in the masculine or neuter; whereas the Hebrew teacher begins by proclaiming, ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one God,’ and at every turn attributes to Him the acts and feelings of a person. This difference between the two modes of conception leads us to make the reflection that, while we know of no higher mode of representing the Divine Being to ourselves than under the forms of Unity and Personality, yet that Personality is not like a human personality, nor that Unity like the unity of the world. It seems as if we should not be so careful to define our terms as to vary them, lest we should become the slaves of words in matters which transcend words.
(2) When we compare the prophet’s consciousness
of the Divine Being with our own colder and more
distant conception of Him, we seem almost to be of
a different religion from him. Perhaps we hardly
allow sufficiently for the difference which is necessarily
made in our ideas of God by the progress of human
knowledge. The Israelite, as I was remarking at the
beginning of this sermon, had no conception of laws
of nature. He thought of God as very near to him,—his Father, his King, the Inhabitant, when He was
I have been treating in this sermon of a very solemn subject in the language of criticism.
In these days there are many things which we must criticize, although they are the foundation of our lives, for otherwise they would become mere words, and have no meaning to us. We cannot expect that without any effort of thought we can understand the thoughts of 2,500 years ago. The realities which underlie our criticism, though manifested in different forms, remain the same; though the world grows old they change not; though at times obscured they are again revealed, deriving, as in past so also in future ages, light and meaning from the history and experience of mankind.
GOD, WHO AT SUNDRY TIMES AND IN DIVERS MANNERS SPAKE IN TIMES PAST UNTO THE FATHERS BY THE PROPHETS, HATH IN THESE LAST DAYS SPOKEN UNTO US BY HIS SON.
IN preceding sermons we traced the idea of God in the Greek and Eastern religions and in the Hebrew prophets. We saw how slowly mankind emerged out of local worship and barbarous fancies, and came at length to a higher notion of the divine nature; how they passed from the Homeric gods to the absolute being and good of Aristotle and Plato; from the childlike innocent vision of God walking in the garden in the cool of the day to the God of justice and mercy ‘terrible in righteousness, mighty to save,’ of the prophets and the Psalms. We have now to consider the further revelation of God in the New Testament, which may be summed up almost in a word: ‘The manifestation of God in Jesus Christ.’
As I was saying in a former sermon, the relation
of the Old Testament to the New has been often
misunderstood. The New Testament has been read
Yet there is also a real harmony between the Old
Testament and the New, which will more clearly
appear to us when we drop the accidents of time and
place and pierce to the thing contained in them.
There was no necessary connexion between the
Paschal lamb and that other sacrifice which was the
negation of a sacrifice; but the Paschal lamb was
And not only is there this unconscious harmony
between them, but Christ expressly derives a great
part of His doctrine from the laws of the prophets.
In His own mind His teaching seems to have appeared
generally to be a fulfilment of them; though one or
two isolated passages may be cited, such as that
remarkable one in St. John, ‘All who ever came
before Me are thieves and robbers,’ which have an
opposite character. It may be observed that, though
He nowhere speaks of the Ceremonial Law as having
any relation to Himself, He selects passages both from
the Books of Moses and the prophets, and makes
them the text of His discourses. ‘This day is the
Scripture fulfilled in your ears.’ To those who condemn His healing on the Sabbath day He rejoins,
‘Go
ye and learn what that meaneth: I will have mercy
and not sacrifice’; and He quotes examples of what to
the Jews would have appeared the profanation of it,
in the Old Testament. To others who made the
word of God of none effect by their traditions, He
replies, ‘Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of
So again, probably in His own thoughts, and certainly in the earliest reflections of His disciples, Christ
is identified with the suffering servant of God in the
prophecies of the late Isaiah—suffering and also
rejoicing; for in the Old as well as in the New
Testament there is a picture of a suffering as well
as of a triumphant Messiah. Every saviour or helper
of mankind has a time of suffering as well as of glory,
a time in which God seems to have forsaken him, and
the meanness or the indifference or the wickedness
of mankind are too much for him, and a time when
the multitude cry ‘Hosanna’ before him, or he himself in his own inmost soul has a more present vision
Of this spiritual conflict there is no trace in the
prophets. Neither do they ever speak of God taking
up His abode in the hearts of men. Their relation to
Him is an external one like that of subjects to a king.
They see Him sitting on a throne high and lifted up.
They cannot be said to reconcile God to man, or to
The life of Christ comes after the promises and
denunciations of the prophets like the calm after
storm, like the still small voice in the Book of Kings
after the thunder and the earthquake. It is the
life of a private man, unknown to the history of His
own time. Very few Romans within a century of
His birth had ever heard of His name. To a stranger
visiting Palestine about the year 30 He would have
appeared the gentlest and most innocent of mankind.
Suppose that we pause for a moment and ask, first of all, what we mean by the very term ‘the manifestation of God.’
Behold the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him; how, then, can He be manifested to us? He is in one world and we in another: how can we pass from ourselves to Him? We cannot escape from the condition of our own minds. He is in eternity, and we are limited by space and time: what conception or idea can we form of Him? Everything that we think is subject to the laws of our minds: every word that we utter is a part of a human language. But our thoughts are not the thoughts of the universal mind, and language, as we know, is full of defects and imperfections. Are we not, then, seeking to think what cannot be conceived and to express what no words can utter?
So both in ancient and modern times the philosopher has widened the breach between the seen and the unseen, between the human and divine. But the second thoughts of philosophy have always been that from this transcendentalism we must return to the earth, which is the habitation, not of our bodies only, but of our minds, and that through man we must ascend to God. We do not suppose God to be in a form like ourselves; nor are the most wonderful works of art, except so far as they convey a moral idea, in any sensible degree a nearer approximation to the image of God than the rudest. But still He is only known to us, so far as we can conceive Him, under the form of a perfect human nature. The highest which we can imagine in man is not human but divine. Perfect righteousness, perfect holiness, perfect truth, perfect love—these are the elements or attributes, not of a human, but of a divine being.
There are some persons who believe only in what
they see, and God they cannot see; there are some
persons who accept only what is definite, and God
cannot be defined; there are some persons upon
whose minds an impression is only produced by
poetry or painting, and the greatest art of Italian or
any other poet or painter cannot depict or describe
God. There are another class again who would reject
any God whose existence cannot be demonstrated to
them on the principles of inductive science. To all
these, righteousness, holiness, truth, love, instead of
I know that the record in which this divine goodness is presented to us is fragmentary, and that we cannot altogether separate the thoughts of Christ Himself from the impressions which the disciples and evangelists formed of Him. But is this any reason for our not attempting to frame an idea of God, the highest and holiest which we can? If there be any thing in the narrative of the Gospels that is discordant or inconsistent, either with itself or other truths not known in that age of the world, that is not to be insisted upon as a part of our religion. Our duty as Christians is not to inquire whether this or that word of Christ has been preserved with superhuman accuracy, but to seek to form the highest idea of God which we can, and to implant it in our minds and in our lives.
What, then, is this exemplar which God gives us of
His love and of Himself, first manifested in the life
of Christ, and then fashioned anew in our own hearts?
We may begin by regarding it as the opposite of the
world. ‘Ye are not of the world, even as I am not
of the world.’ It is not the image of power, or of
external greatness, or of any quality which men
ordinarily admire; there is no admixture of the
beauty which strikes the sense in it. For ‘His face
was marred more than the sons of man.’ Nor is it
Nor again does the image of Christ lead us to conceive of
pleasure, or of what we term happiness, as specially appropriate to the Divine
Being. ‘My Father worketh hitherto, and I work,’ is the true conception of the divine nature. In this world we some
times make too much of happiness when compared
with noble energy and the struggle to fulfil a great
purpose. It seems to be true also to say that God
wishes for the good rather than for the happiness of
His creatures, as far as these two are separable. He
who would be the follower of Christ cannot promise
himself a life of innocent recreation or enjoyment: he
has a cross to bear which may be the opposition or
persecution of his fellow-men, which may be only
his own weakness in the fulfilment of his task. He
cannot please himself from day to day; he must be
about his Master’s business, he must take a part with
In this expression, ‘Not of the world,’ the character
of Christ may be summed up. He does not share the
prejudices of the world: He is not influenced by the
traditions or opinions of men. He is living among
a people enslaved by ceremonies and ordinances, the
lower classes liable to outbursts of fanatical fury,
the upper seeming to care for little else but the maintenance of social order. He goes on His way immovable, amid the rage of the
zealot, the cynicism of the Sadducees, the ceremonialism of the Pharisees, with
His mind fixed only on the requirements of the divine law. He begins again with
the word of God apart from all the additions and perversions which had overgrown
it. He brings men back to a few simple truths, which He would carry out in
thought as well as in act. He converts the law into a spirit of life. The
classes of men whom He delights to bless are not those whom the world admires, the rich,
the powerful, the intellectual; but blessed are the poor,
Another general form under which we may present to ourselves the life of Christ is that
‘He went
about doing good.’ Men are for the most part content with themselves if they abstain from evil and do
a little good in the world. They never consider, or
hardly ever, how their whole lives might be given up
to the service of God and their fellow creatures. They
are the creatures of habit and repute; they do not
One other type under which we may imagine the
character of Christ is that ‘He lived in God.’ He did
not teach of Himself or act of Himself, but He was
To this simple life Christ invites us; to return to
the beginning of Christianity, now that the world has
got so far onward in its course. He speaks to us
across the ages still, telling us to come back to the
first principles of religion. And of this simple religion we have the assurance in ourselves, and the
better we become the more assured we are of it.
And now some one will ask how the life of Christ,
which has been thus imperfectly treated, is a revelation of the divine nature. I told you before that it
was only through the human we could approach the
divine. The highest and best that we can conceive,
whether revealed to us in the person of Christ or in
any other, that is God. Because this is relative to
our minds, and therefore necessarily imperfect, we
must not cast it away from us, or seek for some other
unknown truth which can be described only by negatives. To such a temper the words of the prophet
may be applied: ‘Say not in thine heart. Who shall
And, yet once more, a person may ask, ‘Do science and philosophy teach us nothing about the divine nature? Must not our knowledge of God increase as our knowledge of the world increases? Must not reflection add something to the meaning of the words of Christ? Must not they be read in the light of experience?’ We all of us know, for example, that the world is governed by fixed laws, and the possibility of our doing any good to our fellow creatures depends on our acquaintance with them. Yet there is no word of this either in the Scriptures of the Old or New Testaments, but only such a general confidence in the uniformity of nature as is expressed in the words ‘He hath set the round world so fast that it cannot be moved’; or, ‘The very hairs of your head are all numbered.’ We cannot, therefore, venture to say that nothing is added to our knowledge of God by increasing experience, or that He does not speak to us in history and in nature as well as in Scripture.
Into this subject I propose to enter more at large
on some future occasion. For the present let me
THEN SHALL THE SON ALSO HIMSELF BE SUBJECT UNTO HIM THAT PUT ALL THINGS UNDER HIM, THAT GOD MAY BE ALL IN ALL.
IT is possible for the student of theology to observe
through many cycles of human history the growth
and development of the idea of God in the heart and
conscience of man, passing from the worship of
many gods to that of One, with whom mankind are
brought into nearer and nearer relation, and of whom
they seem gradually to acquire a truer notion. First
among the successive stages he would note the rudimentary idea of God which existed among primitive
nations, and which still exists in barbarous countries;
the vague terror of stocks and stones, the shrinking
of men from their own shadows, ascending gradually
to a worship of the nobler forms of nature. Secondly,
he would trace the idea of God as it grew up to larger
proportions in the great eastern religions, and began
to be interpenetrated and absorbed by moral elements
in the Jewish prophets, not yet disengaged from
nature, but struggling to be free from it. Thirdly, as
And now the question arises, Is any further enlargement of the idea of God possible? Can we ever expect to know more of Him than we find in the Old and New Testament? Christ has spoken of Him to us as ‘His Father and our Father, as His God and our God.’ Nor was such a relation of God and His people altogether unknown to the prophets. ‘Doubtless Thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us and Israel acknowledge us not.’ Do we want to know more than is implied by these or the like ‘comfortable words’? Or do we suppose that the feeble brain of man can search into the nature of the Most High? Can anything more be required of us than that we should bring the message of Christ home to our own hearts and lives?
This is a mode of speaking which naturally commends itself to our religious feelings. We are apt to
think that we cannot have too much of a good thing
in religion, too much reverence, too much humility,
too much devotion. We forget how easily these may
degenerate into ignorance and superstition, how
nearly allied they are to them. We do not remark,
when we oppose the words of God to the words of
man, that still the word of God is of human interpretation, necessarily changing with the advance of literature
Therefore we do not venture to isolate our knowledge of God: we cannot say that there is no truth
which is not contained in the Bible, as the Caliph
Omar said that all which is not contained in the
Koran is either false or superfluous. More than
eighteen centuries have passed away since Christ
appeared upon the earth. Have they taught mankind
nothing about the government of God and His manner
of dealing with His creatures? Is there no religious
experience to be gathered from history, analogous to
that which individuals derive from observation of
their own lives? Is there no ever-growing witness of
God in nature, but only a vague sense that He is the
It would seem, therefore, that we must go forwards
and endeavour to learn what God has taught us in
history and nature as well as in Scripture about Himself. There cannot be two truths in the world, but one
only; and, if God is everywhere present, and with us
in various degrees and ways, every part of truth must
throw light upon His nature. I shall not endeavour
to combat further the common prejudice that God is
First, from the comparison of other religions of the world, especially the great religions of the East and the influence of Greek philosophy, which have always been mingling with the stream of Christian truth.
Secondly, from the observation of nature, which extends so much further and penetrates so much deeper than in the ancient world.
Thirdly, from ideas and reasonings which present to us in an abstract and universal form what the Scripture for the most part teaches only by precept and example.
1. The study of the religions of the world throws
a flood of light on the true nature of religion. It
teaches us in the first place that we must not look
backward to a primitive revelation, but forward to a
final one. The aspiration of some great teacher has
lifted man above himself; and then for considerable
periods of time he has fallen back again into his old
state. The truths of religion seem to have been
So we are made aware that in their general state
and condition other religions are much more like our
own than we should have previously supposed. But
the parallel does not stop here. For many have had
their sacred books, more or less resembling the Jewish
or Christian Scriptures. And as time went on they
have found the same difficulties in them, and have
practised the same methods of interpreting in two
or more senses. The Brahmins have had disputes
respecting the nature and degree of inspiration which is
There seem to be two ways in which these and similar facts enlarge our idea of the divine nature.
First, they help us to distinguish the important from
the unimportant in religion. We see how many
Secondly, we see that the religions of the world are
not isolated, but are parts of a whole, forming together
the religious education of the human race. God is
These seem to be the principal ways in which our knowledge of God is enlarged by the study of other religions. There is much in our traditional beliefs which is corrected or explained by them; something also is added.
2. And now let us pass on to the second head, ‘The witness of God in nature.’ Is this merely a sentimental feeling aroused in us chiefly by the extraordinary phenomena of nature? or is it a real addition to our knowledge of the divine character, increasing as our knowledge of nature increases, and entering into our daily life? The Scripture speaks to us of ‘the visible things which testify of the invisible’; of the permanence of the world: ‘He hath set the round world so fast that it cannot be moved’; of the infinite or infinitesimal care of Providence: ‘Even the hairs of your head are all numbered.’ These, like many other words of Scripture, we may link to modern thoughts, and find in them a natural figure or expression of some recently discovered truths. But no one will maintain that the uniformity of nature, in the sense in which this term is understood by scientific men of the present day, is taught in the Old or New Testament. The sacred writers knew nothing of the indestructibility of matter, of the correlation of forces, of the interdependence of soul and body, of the antiquity of man, of the still greater, almost unmeasurable antiquity of the world, of the infinity of the heavens. They never considered this earth to be but as a grain or molecule in the ocean of immensity. It remains for us to reflect how, and to what extent, these truths of science affect our knowledge or consciousness of the divine nature.
First, they present to us the merely physical greatness
But the conception of the laws of nature touches
our own lives far more nearly, and teaches us far
more about the manner in which God deals with us
than either the greatness or minuteness of nature.
They show us that He is a God of order, not of disorder. If the infinity of the world seems for a moment
These laws teach us unmistakably how God governs
the world; and, if we would co-operate with Him, we
must know what they are. They do not prove that
happiness is always the reward of virtue, or that
suffering is the punishment of sin. They seem rather
to show us that in endless and complex ways the
spiritual well-being of man is bound up with his
physical, that individuals are greatly influenced by
their circumstances, that all men, although they have
So God teaches us that we must worship Him through His laws and not beside them; not casting one eye upon earth, and lifting the other to heaven, but recognizing His presence at once and immediately in our homes and streets: may we not say, the nearer the duty, the nearer is God present in it? We have no reason to suppose that prayer will alter the fixed laws of this world; but God has shown us how, by the right use of means, we may vary without breaking them, so far at least as to receive all the good of them and to avoid the evil. The power which we have over them is no violation or infringement of them, but is included in them. And thus a new religion of nature springs up, not like the old religion, blind and helpless, but intelligent, recognizing in every addition to our knowledge of physical or social laws the possibility of adding something to the improvement of mankind and to our knowledge of the divine nature.
3. There remains the third division, of which I must
briefly speak; the inferences which we may draw
respecting the nature of God from abstract ideas or
reasonings, or in other words from the divine attributes.
Abstract ideas are apt to have a bad name with us;
they seem to belong to philosophy rather than to
For example, if we attribute to God perfect justice,
we cannot say He will pass over our offences without
punishment; or that, having regard to the frailty of
His creatures, He views with equal favour the righteous
and the wicked. But we can say that nothing accidental,
So again of His love and truth. The Scripture
tells us that God is love, and that He wills all men to
be saved. Or, again, ‘He concluded all in unbelief, that
He might have mercy upon all.’ There is no qualification of this; no exception to it. Can it be limited
to those who have heard the message of Christ and
been saved by believing on Him? The idea of divine
love carries us far beyond this, to think of a love of
God which is inexhaustible, not confined to the good
only, but extended to all, and not resting satisfied
while even a single individual among His creatures
remains estranged from Him. There may be ways
by which ‘He has provided that His banished ones be
Once more, if God is truth, what is the inference?
It is not a particular truth, but all truth, which we must
identify with Him; the truths of science as well as the
truths of religion or morals; the temper of truth
everywhere, even when seemingly antagonistic to
Christianity. Is not this again an enlargement of
our idea of God? To the student, especially in these
days, the thought that any inquiry honestly pursued
cannot be displeasing to the God of truth is a great
source of peace and comfort. He is better able to
meet the attacks of his fellow-men when he is stayed
upon the God of truth, and he feels that his duty
towards knowledge is also a duty towards God. He
These three—justice, love, truth—are the three great attributes of the divine nature, aspects of the one perfection which God is. When they meet in our hearts God may be said to take up His abode within us.
Let us take away with us the thought of a great writer—‘Certainly, it is heaven upon earth to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.’
THAT THEY SHOULD SEEK THE LORD, IF HAPLY THEY MIGHT FEEL AFTER HIM, AND FIND HIM.
IN some previous sermons I endeavoured to trace the growth of
the idea of God in the heart of man; as it existed before the Christian
religion, in Greek philosophy, or in the great religions of the East; in the Old
Testament; as it was revealed to us in Jesus Christ; as it had been perpetually
corrected and enlarged by the reflections of great thinkers, by the experience of common life, by the ever-widening circle of
natural science. The thought of God has formed the
mind of man, and has renewed the face of the world;
it is the element of light and life which has united and
purified the scattered fragments of the human race;
which has moulded wandering tribes into mighty
nations; which, like the sun in the heavens over
powering the morning mist, has slowly infused into
the consciousness of mankind the truth that ‘He hath
made of one blood all nations of the earth’; and not
only all nations, but all churches, all ranks of society,
all forms of religion and of civilization. And, returning
I had intended to complete this short course of five
sermons with a sixth, in which I was going to speak
of the application of the thought of God to our daily
life; for there would be little use in attempting to
trace the workings of a divine power in history or in
nature if we did not recognize the presence of it in
our own hearts. But it seemed to me, in reviewing
the subject once more, that there was still a phase of
religion which remained to be considered, not peculiar
to any one age or country or state of society, but
common to all in which there has been any enlightened knowledge of divine things. There is what may
be called ‘the imperfect or half-belief in God,’ which
is not untrue, but weak; which has a desire for holiness and perfection, but is unable to think of them
as realities. For not only in Gentile but in Christian
times men have been ‘feeling after God if haply they
may find Him.’ Most persons who have seriously
reflected about religion would acknowledge that at
times they have felt depressed and were unable to
recognize the presence of God in the world, or to
justify His ways to men. As the psalmist says: ‘Then sought I to understand this, but it was too
hard for me.’ His difficulty, as you will remember,
was that old one not yet perhaps completely answered: ‘How could the ungodly be in such prosperity and
In the opinion of many we are ourselves passing
into one of these phases of irreligion. Just as we seem
to be arriving at true notions of religion, and long before we have exhausted the great thought of a divine
perfection, we are told by some that the belief in God
is passing away; not to speak of that short and easy
formula in which the history of the human race has
been summed up: ‘first we were polytheists, then we
became monotheists, and now, after a brief interval
of metaphysical confusion, we are atheists.’ Not to
All human things are imperfect, and the good and
evil in them grow together, and are inextricably
entwined with one another. There is greater good,
and perhaps greater evil, in religion than in anything
else, and a more subtle combination of them than in
But have they ever considered the other side of the
Those who talk in the manner which I was describing take a narrow view of themselves and of their fellow men; they do not understand the depth and capabilities of human nature. They do not consider how much energy for good, how much force of character, how much intellectual life would be lost if religion were to disappear among us. They think of men as they appear in public only—in business or at a festival—and forget their private needs. They see them in the mass only; they have not present to their minds the long internal history of sorrows and trials which many of us have passed through; the times of sickness and depression; the often returning thought, ‘I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.’ They have looked at the surface of life only and not seen within. The time has not yet come when they feel themselves that something more than this world is required by them.
There is another tendency of this analytical age
which weakens the hold of religion upon the human
In the third place I would remark that the thought
of God is of necessity much greater and more difficult
to us than to any former age. Primitive nations had
Once more, this disappearance of God from the
thoughts of men, though partly real, is partly also an
illusion arising out of distinctions of language and
artificial divisions of thought, which oppose one truth
or one class of mankind to another when there is no
real opposition, or only a partial one, between them.
We often speak as if religion was one thing and
morality another, as if the conscious recognition of
God was the only good or obligation of human life,
as if the unconscious service of Him, however sincere,
was almost displeasing to Him. Virtue and vice have
a different train of associations from holiness and sin:
among some professors of Christianity there has been
more zeal against good works than against bad ones.
A good man in the phraseology of many persons
means only some one of their own religious opinion or
of their own political party. But is it not true of all
that ‘by their fruits ye shall know them’? And is not
moral virtue, by whatever name described, the greater
part of religion? Again, we oppose God to the laws
of the world, and teachers of religion who speak to us
of Him from within to teachers of natural philosophy
who speak to us of His laws only, and whom we
To illustrate what I am saying, I will make a supposition which may seem bold, or perhaps even start
ling, to those who are unable to rise above words to
things. The word God, etymologists tell us, is not
connected with good or goodness, but is an old
Teutonic word signifying a graven image (so strange
is the history of words, ‘the most despised things, and
the things that are nought,’ become the expressions of ‘the things that most truly are’). Now I will suppose
that the name of God and, shall I add, the word
This is what I will venture to call the doctrine
of Christians in unconsciousness—of those who, not
having seen, yet have believed—of those who say, ‘Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.’ It cannot
but be that in times of transition such as the present
great confusions and misunderstandings should arise.
Many persons are in their wrong places; some who
are called Christians having no higher claim than
success in life, while others who are setting the highest
examples of disinterestedness and integrity are by
some accident placed beyond the Christian pale. The
doctrine which I have been endeavouring to preach is
a very simple one; that we should habitually regard
THE IMAGE OF THE INVISIBLE GOD.
THE first principles of religion often seem to retire
from view and lose their interest, while lesser questions exert an absorbing hold on the mind. They
are put on one side, and when they are wanted can
hardly be found; they are supposed to have been
settled long ago, and every man, or at least every
Christian, is thought to know them by intuition,
whatever may have been the ignorance of them which
prevailed formerly in the Gentile world. This is
especially the case with the truths which relate to the
nature of God. They are buried under ground, and
no one considers whether this foundation of religious
truth is straw or stubble, ingeniously hidden in the
depths of the earth, or the divine rock on which
the temple is to stand for eternal ages. They are
regarded as truisms, about which little remains to be
said, and which are of small importance in comparison
And yet, my brethren, it is quite clear that without
a great effort both of the heart and of the intellect we
can never really attain a knowledge of God. In religion, as in other things, the truths which are simplest
are also the deepest. And in the changes of human
opinion, amid the storms of controversy, we seem to
come back to them as to ‘the shadow of a great rock
in a weary land.’ To say that God is just or true, or
that He is a God of love, is not difficult; these are
familiar expressions to which Christians have been
used almost from infancy. But it is very difficult to
realize what is meant by them, or to live in the
habitual consciousness of them, or to make them
prevail over other notions or expressions which are
apparently at variance with them. The Jews in old
times were constantly relapsing into idolatry because
they could not endure the purely spiritual nature of
God. The solitude of the desert seemed to be too
terrible to them when they were left alone with Him.
Might they not at least worship the sun, or the queen
of heaven, or the star of the god Remphan? That
was the feeling against which the prophets were
vainly striving during all the earlier period of Jewish
Therefore I shall make no apology for bringing
before you this subject, which is at once the first and
simplest, and also the most interesting, and perhaps
In the first place, then, we must acknowledge that
God governs the world by fixed laws, and does not
alter these laws at our wish or request. This is that
great truth of the order of nature which science presents to us in every possible form, and with every
token and evidence which experience teaches us, if
we do but attend to her, in every act of our lives, and
which nevertheless we sometimes seem disposed to
set aside and ignore, or to which we yield only a
forced or reluctant assent. Let us endeavour to put
the thought of this clearly before the mind’s eye; let
This is that law of nature, one and continuous in all times
and places, which may be truly said to be the visible image of God, and ‘her
voice the harmony of the world.’ And in ages to come it is not only possible, but probable, that this reign of law in the world
will become much more visible and intelligible to all
classes, educated as well as uneducated, than at present; and the natural sciences, which in our own day
appeared to sink almost overpowered under the load
of facts and details, may attain to much greater unity
and simplicity; and the relation of the moral to the
physical world be better understood. At present
this conception of law is regarded with suspicion
amongst us, especially by religious men; they seem
to be afraid that the wit of man is devising a plan
They ask why we speak of things which are so
painful to them and so much at variance with their
sense of religion. The answer is because they are
true, and no religion can be lasting which does not
rest on the truth. And no religion can avoid falling
into contradiction and unreality which takes into
account one side of human nature only and ignores
the other. The story of the Brahmin who was shown
through a microscope the detested insects in the water
which he had been drinking, and who broke the
microscope, is in point here. But that is not the sort
of answer which the Christian would like to give to
a man of science who told him of the uniformity of the
laws of nature. Come, then, and let us reason with
Therefore we thankfully look upon the world as a scene of law and order, in which the countless multitudes are marching along the highway of God’s providence, and ‘they do not break their ranks,’ but are obedient, as we may say in a figure, to the will of their Leader. Such a view, instead of shutting out God from the world, seems rather to restore the world to Him, and, instead of taking us away from God, to bring us nearer to Him. And if a person comes to us and says that there may be interruptions in the course of nature, and that we cannot see them because we can affirm nothing certainly, and, therefore, cannot be certain that there are not, to him we reply that, while humbly admitting the ‘existence of more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy,’ we cannot desert the strong ground of experience or give up the very foundations of knowledge for the sake of an imaginary gain to faith.
I know that it may be objected that God’s government of the world by fixed laws is in many cases inconsistent with His justice, or at least that only a sort of rough rudimentary justice is to be discerned in them. The fair infant dying of a cough,
‘Soft silken primrose fading timelessly,’
because some one has neglected the conditions of health, is not an example of divine justice. And if the question which was once put to Christ is asked in such a case, ‘Which did sin, this child or its parents?’ the answer will be in the same spirit: Neither this child nor its parents, but that the laws of health and physical well-being might be vindicated. There is no act of justice in this, but a lesson and a warning. And if the objector again retorts, Yes, but might not the same lesson have been taught without this waste of human life? the answer is: First, at any rate you have the power of saving life and removing the evil; and second, are you quite sure that this or any other evil may not be an imperfect good which will hereafter be perfected?
For, indeed, the objector is right if he means to say
that the heart and conscience of man rise above this
state of nature in which we live. There is something
within him which is not satisfied, a sense of right or
a longing desire for the good of other men, which
demands more than he can find in this present world.
Perhaps when gazing upon some pleasant prospect of
This is that moral law which He has implanted in
our hearts, and which tells us not what is, but what
ought to be, and what will be when His purposes are
finally accomplished. This is that witness which tells
of God—first, that He is true (‘Yea, let God be true,
but every man a liar’); second, that He is just (‘Shall
not the Judge of all the earth do right?’); third, that
He is loving, and ‘wills that all men should be saved
and come to a knowledge of the truth.’ This is that
law of which in a distant age and country the Greek
This is that other and higher voice of law in the world whose seat is the bosom of God, to which not only Christ and the prophets witness, but in a measure the ancient legislators and philosophers also, ‘feeling after God, if haply they might find Him’; the teachers and prophets of the East too, and good men everywhere; yea, and our own hearts also. Even those who have not acknowledged a personal God have yet recognized a principle of right higher than nature—a future which is to be preferred to the present, a better self which has the care and control over the worse, a duty to other men as well as to ourselves. Nor did any one ever really doubt the authority of a moral law.
But if this is true, and if there is really this opposition between the world in which we live and the
perfection of which we have the conception in our
minds, then we are led on to think of God as working
out this moral law in the visible universe, first within
and then without us, making right to be also might,
and good to prevail over evil. This is that working
of God in the world of which we see the beginnings
and first impressions in, this life, and of which we
humbly hope to see the fulfilment in another. And
this is what we chiefly mean when we speak of ‘God
And when we think of the natural being subjected
to the spiritual, and of the will of God becoming
more and more manifest, we might go on to speak of
an inspired communion of saints of which we too
may hope to be partakers, in which the work which
is beginning to be evident here will be finally consummated. But such speculations seem to carry us too
far beyond the horizon of our actual knowledge—for
we walk by faith and not by sight—and we wait with
patience for whatever God is preparing in His good
pleasure; and when imagination is sent out on
The first reflection or image of God was the order
of the visible universe. In former ages men have
been like heathens about this revelation of God in
nature; their minds were darkened, and they never
saw or observed what God intended them to see in the
world around them. And even now, as I was saying
before, many persons regard this great truth, this new
source of light and life, not as a part of religion, but
as an alien and enemy; and mankind are divided into
two parties, the scientific and religious. Yet consider:
we are never weary of recapitulating the wonders of
science and art, the endless applications of the powers
of nature, such as steam or electricity, and we are
always reydy to talk of some new marvel of knowledge
or contrivance to which every day may be expected
to give birth. Now, too, we are beginning to be
aware of the causes of life and death, and are not like
helpless children when we Have to meet ‘the pestilence
that walketh in darkness or the destruction that wasteth at noonday.’ Now, for the first time, in the
And has this nothing to do with religion? Is it
not obvious that, as our power over nature increases,
our responsibility towards other men increases also?
Do we not rather seem to want, I will not say a new
religion, but a new application of religion, which shall
teach us that we are answerable for the consequences
of our actions even in things that have hitherto
seemed indifferent—perhaps answerable for the good
which we neglect to do as well as for the evil which
we do? Our fathers lived ‘in the times of that
ignorance,’ when nobody knew or thought about
anything of this sort. But we who know that the life
and health and character of men depend upon their
outward circumstances, are we justified in leaving
these outward circumstances the same? If another
generation grows up in this country like the last,
in the same state of poverty and misery and vice and
disease and decay, who is responsible for this? Now
that we know the causes of these evils and the remedies, are we not all
responsible for them? For a certain form of organization and self-devotion, combined with knowledge and experience, would certainly
remove them. A small portion of the energy and
industry which is shown in the accumulation of wealth
A distinguished physiologist has said, ‘There is scarcely a single page in my three physiological works in which God was not present to my mind. I regard the whole laws of the animal economy and of the universe as the direct dictate of the Deity, and, in urging compliance with them, it is with the earnestness and reverence due to a divine command that I do it. I almost lose the consciousness of self in the anxiety to attain the end; and, when I see clearly a law of God in our own nature, I rely upon its efficiency for good with a faith and peace which no storm can shake.’ Might not we too, my brethren, like this good man, come to regard the promotion of the physical well-being of our fellow-creatures as the direct service of God, and even as a sort of worship of Him, quite as much as that we offer Him in churches? And when we are engaged in directing or executing tasks which are disagreeable or painful to us, and which have no religious or ecclesiastical association, may we not still have God present with us as the habitual thought of our mind?
Once more, from the principle of the order of the
world do we not learn another lesson which is immediately applicable to our own lives? Nature, of which
we are a part, works slowly by a succession of causes
and effects, by an adaptation of means to ends, bearing
the image of a divine repose amid the strife and
The second reflection of God was the moral nature of man. Every man, or almost every man, has in him a principle of right and truth far above his own practice and that of his fellow-men; but few of us make this better self the law of our lives.
He who will not allow his mind to be lowered to
the standard of those around him; who retains his
sense of right and wrong unimpaired amid all temptation; who asks himself, in all his actions, not what men
will say of him, but what is the will of God—he may
be truly said to bear in his life and character the
Divine Image for our example. He may be some one
who has sacrificed his earthly interests for the love of
This is a height of perfection to which a very few
attain, and which will seem to some persons almost to
have passed away from this earth. When our will is
lost in His will, and our thought in His thought, and
no earthly wish intrudes or offends, then, indeed, we
may be said to be one with God, and God with us.
And, even although this perfect image of God can
hardly be formed in most of us, it is good for us to
have such thoughts when receiving the Communion
of the Lord’s Supper, at our prayers, and at other
And oh! that it were possible that this union of truth and
love might be perfected, and that the highest intelligence of nature and of
history might be combined with the highest devotion to His service. There
have been some in this world who seem to have
reached the utmost height of religious passion and
devotion, who may almost be said to have been burnt
up with the fire of divine love. But their conceptions
of the character of God have been narrow and meagre;
they have never thought of asking how He governed
this world, or how they were to co-operate with Him.
Their religion has been a principle of separation quite
as much as of union, and they have tended to imagine
that all which was not contained in the Scripture or
taught by the Church was alien and antagonistic
to them. There have been others, again, who have
been animated by a sincere and disinterested love of
truth, who have calmly surveyed the world and sought
out and known all that could be known of nature and
of man. But to them the Gospel of Christ has been
a dead letter; they have never thought of human
beings as needing to be restored, or of the world as
a realm to be won back to the service of God. The
HE SHALL JUDGE THE WORLD IN RIGHTEOUSNESS.
GOD IS LOVE.
HE THAT COMETH TO GOD MUST BELIEVE THAT HE IS, AND THAT HE IS A REWARDER OF THEM THAT DILIGENTLY SEEK HIM.
THERE are some truths of religion which seem to
retire from view, and others take their place and
become the topics of the day. And the lesser often
prevail over the greater, the uncertain over the
certain, the temporal and accidental over the spiritual
and universal. A curious interest is aroused about
some matters of controversy, and there is hardly any
interest about the first principles of all religion, which
seem to drop out of people’s minds as if they had
nothing to do with revelation. And this neglect of
all proportion in religious truth often leads to consequences quite at variance with the premises from
which we started. Thus a sort of conflict appears
to arise between faith and reason which is really due
to an improper use of reason, drawing out inferences
One great instance will be enough to illustrate this
curious tendency of the human race which has been
the source of so much error in religion. He who
reflects on the history of the Roman Catholic Church
will feel quite amazed at the way in which one doctrine has been piled on another until the baseless
fabric has been in a manner complete. The willingness of men to believe these doctrines, which is like
the willingness of children to believe stories, has been
accepted in the place of any real proof of them.
And thus out of the words ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and thou shalt be saved’ has been developed
the whole apparatus of Catholic theology, including
the priesthood, purgatory, masses for the quick and
dead, the infallibility of the Pope, the worship of the
Virgin and her assumption into heaven, on to the new
and strange dogma of the immaculate conception,
which was first authoritatively sanctioned about twenty-nine years ago; and, once more, taking a new form,
the infallibility of the Pope, not with, but without, a
council, which was a short time ago affirmed by
a great congress of the Catholic world. So the ball
goes on rolling from age to age, like a snowball, and
There is a sense of repose and also of security
in leaving these disputes and antagonisms of theology, about which mankind are often so greatly
excited, and turning to think a little of the greater
first truths of religion, such as the love of God, or the
justice and truth of God. These are anchors of the
soul, sure and steadfast amid the waves of time; they
are also measures and standards of our knowledge
to which other truths may be referred or recalled.
In thinking of them there is something of the feeling
which the Psalmist expresses, ‘Under the shadow
of Thy wings shall be my refuge, until this tyranny
be overpast’; the words and opinions and violences
of men are of little consequence while we have the
Nor can we maintain that these greater and more simple truths
are neglected because all men know them and are convinced of them. On the
contrary, they seem to be the truths which are with the greatest difficulty
realized in the world, by many not realized at all; and which are constantly in
danger of be coming overclouded and obscured. Partly the perversity of the human intellect struggles against the
simple notion of God; it is always returning to sense
and seeking to veil the nature of God in figures of
speech which imperceptibly lead us astray, or in
figures of speech once removed, that is to say in
analogies. And these veils have to be taken away if
we are to see God as He truly is, and not merely as
He is represented in the pictures of our minds. Or,
if figures of speech are necessary (and indeed language
seems to be made up of them), they should be the
highest and purest that we can conceive, such as that
in which God is described by the prophet ‘as having
the body of heaven in His clearness, and not any
chance images taken from the chaos of human sense.
And when we have used such images we should also
Suppose, now, we had a friend who was true and
disinterested, one in whom there was no envy or
jealousy or personal enmity, whose mind was always
full of all noble feelings towards his friends, having
a warmth of affection towards all of them alike, and
ready to receive them as a father or an elder brother,
willing ever to forgive them for wrongs against himself, yet also pained and grieved at them, not because
they really did him any injury, but because of the
ingratitude which they seemed to show; and because
those who were guilty of them did harm, not to him,
but to themselves. Also, I will suppose that this
friend whom I am describing was the most generous
of men, willing to give all that he had to others, to
sacrifice himself for their good, kind even to the
ungrateful and evil, and that he was the least ceremonious of men, requiring no etiquette or introduction, but freely admitting all who came to him. Such
was his real character: but such was not the opinion
which other men had of him; for they were cast in
a meaner mould, and they could not understand his
nobility and freedom of nature. Moreover, they had
formed some strange misconceptions of him, and they
fancied him not loving and gentle, but severe and
precise, easily liable to take offence and not easily
pacified when angry, conferring his favours, as some
of them said, on a chosen few whom he selected without
Hear another parable. In a certain city there was
a judge who was also a king; he was the wisest of
judges and the greatest of kings. But the men of
that city would not understand his greatness or his
wisdom, and they imagined that he was just such an
one as themselves. Now they were fond of legal disputes and artificial rules, and sometimes they decreed
that men should live or die accordingly as they observed these rules of theirs; and if any one remonstrated with them they said no one could challenge their right to make any rules
which they pleased, if they gave due notice of them; and that whether the
criminal was a bad man or a good man that made no difference; the point to be
considered was whether he conformed to their rules, and whether the rules had
been duly announced to him. Also, there were many other things that they held,
such as the distinction between themselves and strangers; and they said that
they were under no engagement to do justice to strangers. The good and wise
judge was grieved at their perverseness and folly, and above all at their attributing
Once more: the kingdom of heaven is like a wise
man seeking for pearls, and especially for one great
and precious pearl, the pearl of truth. But the men
of that country said that this pearl was not to be
sought for everywhere and at all times; there were
certain places, duly pointed out by the officers of the
king who kept a guard, in which pearls might be taken.
The pearls which were found elsewhere were declared
by them not to be true pearls, and those who discovered them were desired to return them to the
king’s treasury, although this king himself had never
given any such command. But his officers required
that they should be issued over again under their
authority—none others would pass current. And the
wise man knew that he would never find the pearl of
truth in this way, and accordingly he went to the
king himself, and the king gave him permission freely
to seek for the pearl of truth in the whole world, and
whatever he found he was to show to his brethren.
I venture to offer these three allegories as an introduction to the consideration of the nature of God
First of all, God is loving. Human affection supplies many images of the love of God which tend to
quicken and elevate our thoughts of Him. For He is
our Father and we are His offspring; we look up to
Him and recognize His authority; we converse and
hold communion with Him in all that is best of
our minds and of our lives; we may make a friend
of Him, and may go to Him as a child would go to
a parent to give him his confidence; even our faults
are only seen by Him in the light of His love. Nor
is our regard for Him any measure of His care for
us: that may be observed in this world also; the love
of the parent cannot be extinguished by the ingratitude of the child, but remains as a sort of pained love
without any tincture of resentment to his life’s end.
How easily can we imagine the father or the mother
coming out to meet their spendthrift son as he returns
from a distant land, putting on him the best robe and
making entertainment for him and his friends. That
is the image by which the Gospel represents the love
of God towards His prodigal ones. Once more, you
may imagine a parent treating his child with great
and deserved severity; commonly sending him to
a schoolmaster to receive discipline and education:
and in some cases he might be willing that the sentence of the law, imprisonment or some other penalty,
might take effect upon him. But you cannot suppose
I have been representing divine love under the likeness of human love. And some one will perhaps say
that ‘His ways are not as our ways, nor His thoughts
as our thoughts.’ There are two senses in which
these words may be applied; the one is very false,
the other quite true. First, I will suppose a person
saying, ‘You use the terms loving and just and true;
but how do you know that these words have any
This is what I venture to think a wrong mode of reasoning about the divine nature, a sort of argument which overleaps itself, involving what has been well termed that terrible fiction of a double morality, one for God and another for man, which throws all our notions about God into confusion. For consider: if a person says, ‘I know indeed and am assured of the existence of God and of His revelation to man; but that He is a wise God or a good God or a loving God, or indeed a moral God at all, of that I am not certain, because I do not know whether these words have any meaning in relation to God’; then he is in effect doing away with religion under the wish to be religious; he is like a person sitting on some main branch or limb of a great tree and sawing off the branch on which he is sitting. But instead of pursuing this controversy any further, I will rather proceed to show how the word ‘love,’ while retaining the same meaning in reference to God and man, may yet have a more perfect significance in reference to divine love than is possible in regard to mere earthly affection.
First, because earthly love is narrow and limited,
But there is also another difference between love divine and
love human, namely, that the love of God towards men is determined by the good
and evil that is in them. People do not, and indeed cannot, choose their friends
upon this principle; the elements of personal liking enter into friendship; and the best of
men are not exempt from this, which seems to belong
to the condition of our earthly state. But with God,
as I was saying before in other words, there are no
likes or dislikes; He is not a man that He should
have a favour to one person rather than to another,
or that His feelings should be confined to one rank
or circle of society, or that He should take a friend
and then give him up again because He found
another more suitable to Him. For the love of God
embraces all men everywhere and at all times, and ‘has no variableness or shadow of turning’: He can
no more cease to be love than He can cease to be
God. And His love extends even to the evil in one
way, ‘for he maketh His sun to rise upon the evil
and the good, and giveth rain upon the just and the
unjust’: this is a part of His general laws which, when
we speak of the divine hatred of evil, we must not
forget. But, remembering this, and remembering
also that His love to man is not in any case a merely
personal feeling, then I say that this love is deter
mined, not like the regard of one man for another, by
individual attachment, but by the good and evil that
is in them. Is a man doing His will in harmony
Secondly, the equal love of God towards all men
comes round to be the justice of God also. For these
are not divided, as human language sometimes leads us
to suppose. God is not loving with one part of His
mind, and just with another, and true with another;
nor loving at one time and just at another and true at
another; nor loving to one person and in some of his
dealings, and just to another person and in other of
his dealings. But He is what He is everywhere and
But the justice of God, though inseparable from the
love of God, has also another aspect. Neither must
we forget that He is just when we speak of Him as
loving, any more than that He is loving when we
speak of Him as just. There is nothing that we do
which is hidden from Him, nor can we suppose that
our secret actions pass unheeded by Him. Like the
inscription on some tablet, they remain; and the trace
of them in our lives and characters is read by Him
long after they are forgotten by us. And therefore
this aspect of justice is full of awe to us. For which
of us can imagine that he lives up to the standard
which God requires of him, and which he himself
also sees dimly and at a distance? Who among us is
perfectly disinterested, regarding only duty and not
interest, the will of God and not the opinions of men?
Who, in the language of St. Paul, is ‘dead to the
world that he may live to God’? Which of us has
made, or is truly making, this life a preparation for
that other state, which, as we believe, is not far from
But would you wish, because you are afraid of a
righteous governor of the world, to be under an
unrighteous one? That be far from us; no rational
being would desire that. Nor would any rational
being seek to avoid that state of trial or discipline
which would most conduce to his improvement, even
though the process of restoration to God might be a ‘piercing to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and
of the joints and marrow.’ Nor would any rational
being wish to continue for ever in his present imperfect state. And therefore, in thinking of another life,
we rejoice with trembling. For we cannot tell how
And here arises a thought which kindles a fire
within us, which at least makes us speak out and
ask the question: Is the justice of God reconcilable
with the everlasting damnation of a portion of His
creatures? Are the lost to suffer never-ending torments as the penalty of carelessness or worldliness, or
even of greater and deeper sins of which they have
been guilty during their short space of three score
years and ten? And is the fixing of their eternal
destiny to depend in some cases on the hazard of
an accident, the overturning of a railway carriage, the
process of a mortal disease, the expression of some
few words on a deathbed? Tell me how all this is
to be reconciled with the notion of a just and perfect
God. My brethren, I am not concerned to answer
Thirdly, as God is just He is also true; His justice
is inseparable from His truth, just as His love is in
separable from His justice. ‘Yea, let God be true,
but every man a liar,’ is the exclamation of the
Apostle. ‘Will ye speak wickedly for God and talk
deceitfully for Him?’ is the reproach of Job against
the professors of religion. And everywhere, both in
the Old and New Testament, the spirit of prophecy
declares to us that God is true. Yet mankind in
general, and especially perhaps religious men, have
not recognized truth as an attribute of God in the
same way that they recognize the justice of God or
the love of God. They show this whenever they
imply a distrust of the truth, or pervert the truth,
or make oppositions of one truth and another, or set
up their own opinions against facts. For if God is
a God of truth, the truth is alone pleasing to Him;
and truth of every kind, the truth of science as well
as the truth of revelation, truths which were for ages
unknown, truths which are at variance with the received opinions of men as much as those which are
in accordance with them. For truth and knowledge
are one even as He is one. Nor can He be pleased
Lastly, my brethren, he who would understand the
love or justice or truth of God must himself be loving
and just and true. He who embraces his fellow creatures in an ever-widening circle of love will begin
to comprehend in a new way the infinite love of God
to man, which embraces at once both him and them:
in thinking of them he will think of God, in thinking
of God he will think of them. He, again, who has
a living sense of justice in his own actions will know
of a certainty that God is just; not in any merely
conventional way—that which is the first principle
of his own life he will realize in the divine nature;
trusting in God because He is just, as throughout his
life, so also at the last hour. He will never fall into
the faithlessness of supposing that God will do anything
THE HOUR COMETH, WHEN YE SHALL NEITHER IN THIS MOUNTAIN, NOR YET AT JERUSALEM, WORSHIP THE FATHER.
THESE words have a revolutionary sound, and are
startling in quiet times and to ordinary minds. Yet
they do not stand alone in the Gospel, nor are they
applicable only to the age in which Christ lived.
There is a great deal more of the same language both
in the Old and New Testament. When Christ says, ‘My kingdom is not of this world, else would My
servants fight for it; but now is My kingdom not
from hence,’ He means substantially the same thing.
He does not mean to say that His disciples were not
to fight now, and that the time would come when they
ought to fight (at the Crusades, for example); but that
the Kingdom of God is spiritual, and founded on
a belief that God is a Spirit. And when He speaks
of His disciples as united with God and separated from
In this sermon I shall draw your attention to the
tremendous import of the words of Christ, ‘The hour
cometh, when neither in this mountain, nor yet at
Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father,’ and of other
like words which occur elsewhere in Scripture. What
is the meaning of them? Are they to be taken
literally, and do they refer only or chiefly to the
destruction of Jerusalem? Do they not rather express
the prophetic feeling in all ages, which is not satisfied
with the world or with the things of the world,
whether secular or religious, and would fain rise
above them and dwell with God only? And this
seems to be the general character of the Gospel
according to St. John. Such a spirit may be a source
of disorder among men, and may also be the higher
element of our lives. For we may abide in our
appointed sphere and use the means which God has
provided for us, and yet we may feel also how different
life ought to be, how different religious and political
institutions; how differently they must be regarded
by God and man. There is some degree of difficulty
And first I shall venture to remark that the words
of the text are not to be taken too literally. For some
one may remind us that the smoke of the Samaritan
Passover still ascends on Mount Gerizim, delighting
the eyes of the English traveller with the living
memorial of a former world, and that in Jerusalem,
though often interrupted, the worship of the God of
Abraham still continues; and, though the hope of the
return of the Jews is never likely to be realized, some
of the truest representatives of the religion and the
race linger in the sacred city. But we need not
perplex ourselves with this sort of literalism. For
Christ is speaking generally, and is not careful to
consider whether the words which He uttered in the
The woman of Samaria to whom the words of the
text are addressed, when she discovers that Christ is
a prophet, is eager to make the most of her opportunity. She wants to have a resolution of the
question, In what place ought men to worship? Was
Jerusalem the accepted spot, or Mount Gerizim?
Which passover was the most pleasing to God? How
was the great dispute between Jews and Samaritans
to be decided? Our Lord answers in words which
there is some difficulty in explaining: ‘Ye worship
ye know not what; we know what we worship, for
salvation is of the Jews.’ He seems to mean that the
Jews were more right than the Samaritans, perhaps
because they had the prophets as well as the law, or
because they had a real relation to those prophecies
and to that history against which the Samaritans were
a sort of rebels; at any rate, because they were as
a fact better instructed in religion. But He at once
leaves this point of view for a higher one, ‘Neither in
Jerusalem nor in this mountain . . . for God is
a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship
Him in spirit and in truth.’ To the question of the
woman of Samaria He neither would nor could give
an answer. For God was no respecter of places any
Let us try to imagine more precisely the feelings
with which the words of the text were uttered by
Christ. He saw the Jewish world everywhere sunk,
not in idolatry, for that phase of religion had passed
away, but in formalism, in ritualism, in ceremonial and
puritanical observances, which were powerless to
touch the heart of man or to purify his life. The
Jewish law was not merely the uniting principle
which bound men together in the worship of one God
(‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord’),
but a dividing principle which separated them from
the Samaritans and from the rest of mankind. The
thought of the nature of God, of His justice, His
truth, His goodness, had almost passed away, over
loaded by a multitude of details, supplanted as the
belief in God always is by men’s belief in themselves,
their Church, or their race. They go on saying, not
in these exact words but in some other form of words
which takes their place in another age, ‘We have
Abraham to our Father,’ never considering that ‘out
of these stones God is able to raise up children unto
Abraham,’ and that ‘many shall come from the East
and from the West,’ of no church or denomination,
And sometimes the history of the past weighs
upon mankind with an undue power. What was
done three hundred or a thousand or sixteen hundred
years ago has an effect upon us now, and often cannot
be undone. A form of government or society or
belief, to which we were not consenting parties, has
been settled for us, and we feel that the individual
mind is powerless to alter them. Our freedom seems
to be impaired by them; in vain we desire something
better and truer and more adapted to our wants.
Then thoughts begin to arise in our minds that such
a world as that in which we live will one day come to
an end, that truth must prevail at last; and that the
Thus the words of Christ find a sort of reflection or
analogy in our own day, and in the thoughts and
lives of a few persons who have a feeling for the
world around them. They should be considered
further in connexion with the general character of
the Gospel according to St. John; for the character
of that narrative is not historical, but spiritual, not
descriptive of the outward forms of the Church, but
of the inner life of the soul. It hardly ever touches
upon the relation of believers to the external world
or to society, but only upon their relations to God
and Christ. They are withdrawn from the world that
Returning, then, to the words of the text, and reading them in the light of other passages in the Gospel,
I think that we are right in regarding chiefly, or
indeed exclusively, their spiritual import. Whether
our Lord, or the recorder of His words, did intend to
allude to the times of trouble and desolation which
were shortly, that is about forty years afterwards,
coming upon Jerusalem, we cannot precisely deter
mine. But what He chiefly meant to express was an
eternal truth and not a particular fact. As when
He says ‘the hour is coming, and now is, when all
they that are in the graves shall hear His voice,’ He
is speaking of a future which is already present, and
anticipated in all ages by the consciences of men
passing judgement on themselves and their own times.
For when we compare our external institutions with
the language of prophecy respecting the Church,
or our own lives with the requirements of a divine
law, we feel that they cannot stand, and we desire
sometimes with a longing past expression to become
other than we are. For we know, as Christ says,
that religion is spiritual, and consists in communion
with the justice and truth and goodness of God. But
we are living the life of all men, worshipping in a
cold and formal manner; repeating words to which
Nor need we hesitate to apply the words of the
text to some of the forms of religion which we see
around us. ‘The hour is coming when neither as
Protestants nor as Catholics, neither as Churchmen
nor Dissenters, shall men worship the Father.’ For
a feeling of dissatisfaction will sometimes steal over
us at the disputes of our Churches, at the unreality
of our preaching, at the unchristian appearance of a
Christian country. When we see religious opinion
moving strongly in one direction during the last
generation, and in entirely different currents among
our own contemporaries, and our forms of worship
are so much changed that our fathers or grandfathers,
if they could return to life again, would view them
with extreme dislike, we feel we cannot trust the
opinions of men; they come and go, and are phases
only, shadows of the past, which revive from time to
time and are followed by reaction. We do not wish
to live and die in them, for they may fail us when
they are most wanted. Neither do we desire to be
like chameleons, changing colour from year to year;
or to catch the epidemic of religion which happens to
be in the air; or to have one half of our lives or of
our minds saying Aye and the other No to the same
truths (‘Aye and No are no good divinity’). But we
desire to have the peaceful and harmonious growth of
When, applying the words of Christ to our own
times, we say, ‘The hour is coming, and now is, when
there shall be neither Catholics nor Protestants,
Churchmen nor Dissenters,’ we do not suppose that
these well-known names will cease among us, or that
the things signified by them will altogether disappear. But they may become unimportant in
comparison with the great truth ‘God is a Spirit.’ For
These may seem to be unsettling thoughts, and I ventured to speak of the text as one of the revolutionary sayings of Christ. For we must provide for the religion of the next generation as well as of this, for our whole lives and not merely for the phase of opinion which prevails at the present moment. It is certainly an unsettling thing to try to live in another world as well as this, to want to fly when we are compelled to walk upon the earth. Yet most of the good which has been accomplished among men is due to aspirations of this sort. We may be in the world and not of it, and we may be in the Church and far from agreeing in the temper and spirit of many Church men. Difficulties may surround our path to some extent. But, if there is no difficulty in ourselves, these may generally be overcome by common prudence. The aspirations after a higher state of life than that in which we live may in a measure fulfil themselves. We may create that which we seek after. And although there will always remain something more to be done, and our thoughts will easily outrun our utmost exertions, yet we may find in such thoughts of the changes which may come over the world and the Church not an unquiet or disturbing element of our lives but a sense of repose; they may enable us to see whither we are going, and we may have a satisfaction in contributing to the work which God intended us to do.
And, if at this time, or at any time, great changes may be expected in the opinions of men about the Church, about the Bible, or about political institutions, as some persons tell us, whether truly or not, there is clearly a reason why we should seek other principles which cannot be shaken. A great work it is for a man to build up his own life with all the helps of companionship and common worship under the guidance and authority of the past. But there may also be a more difficult work reserved to some of us, that we should build up our lives looking not to the past but to the future, thinking of the world which will be twenty or thirty years hence, which some of us will not be here to see, when many opinions which are now new will have become old, and some institutions which are now powerful will have passed away. He who lives not hanging on the past but aspiring towards the future may accomplish a great work in his day. For such a life he might find an example in the Jewish prophets, if not in ecclesiastics of a later age. His leaf would not wither when he grew old, for he would be coming near to his goal. And, though he is not likely to have seen all that he desired accomplished, yet at his death he would have the consciousness that he had made the most of his life. He had done his work and was ready to depart.
But, as when we indulge in these distant visions of
the future, whether in religion or politics, we are
always liable to be led away by some Will-o’-the-wisp,
And, if any one says ‘I do not understand these
great aims or grandiloquent thoughts about the next
generation and the like, I wish only to do my duty as
the clergyman of a country parish, to be honest as a
tradesman, or to bring up a family in the fear of God,’ still I would ask him or her sometimes to consider this
world twenty-five or thirty years hence. What would
he have wished to have been doing now if his life is
extended into the next generation? The calm résumé
of a man’s present life in the light of twenty-five
years hence would have a sobering and strengthening
And, lastly, there is of course a sense in which the
words of the text are applicable to all of us: ‘The
hour is coming when neither in this church nor in
any other shall we worship God’; for our short span
of life will be over, and we and our actions and our
worldly or religious interests will have passed out of
the memory of man into the presence of God. Let
JESUS ANSWERED THEM, AND SAID, MY DOCTRINE IS NOT MINE, BUT HIS THAT SENT ME. IF ANY MAN IS WILLING TO DO HIS WILL, HE SHALL KNOW OF THE DOCTRINE, WHETHER IT BE OF GOD, OR WHETHER I SPEAK OF MYSELF. HE THAT SPEAKETH OF HIMSELF SEEKETH HIS OWN GLORY: BUT HE THAT SEEKETH HIS GLORY THAT SENT HIM, THE SAME IS TRUE, AND THERE IS NO UNRIGHTEOUSNESS IN HIM.
IN the Gospel according to St. John the Jews are
constantly asking questions respecting the claim of
Christ to be regarded as the Son of God. They
require of Him a sign from heaven; and sometimes He answers them in enigmatical
language: ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again’: or, ‘I, if I be lifted up from this earth, will draw all men after me’: or,
‘Moses
gave you not that bread from heaven, but My Father giveth you the true bread.’ Sometimes He appeals to the prophets who wrote of Him and foretold the darkness
which would come over the eyes and hearts of the Jewish people;
Even the inner circle of His disciples seem to have
found a difficulty in understanding His language and
character. They knew that some great and mysterious
calamity was hanging over Him and them. But they
could not tell what He meant when He said: ‘Yet
a little while, and ye shall not see Me, and again a
little while, and ye shall see Me, because I go to the
Father.’ They wanted Him to ‘show them the Father,
and they would be satisfied,’ not understanding that in
Him only would they see the Father. They knew
And so in later ages and on many grounds, some
times lighter, sometimes more serious, men have had
their searchings of heart respecting ‘the way, the
truth, and the life.’ For not only in His own day was
Christ misunderstood, but in all ages there have been
those who have put the letter in the place of the
First of all our Lord appeals to Himself. There is
a true witness which a man may give of his own life
and actions, and there is a false witness by which he
deceives first himself and then others; and lastly,
there is a witness, partly true and partly false, by
which he perplexes his fellow men, because they see
the high and lofty aims which animate him, but they
also see that he is the victim of a delusion. The
The true witness which a man bears of himself is not positive, not egotistical, not polemical; it is humble, calm, retiring; not what a man proclaims of himself, but what his life and character say of him. His acts are the witness of his words; he himself is the witness of the spirit in which he acts. If you would test a good religious teacher, try him especially in those points in which he is most likely to fail. Is he disinterested, or seeking for his own glory? Is he a lover of all men everywhere, or only of his own sect? Are his ideas of right and truth in politics and religion dependent on the interests of Church or dissent? Is he as careful of means as he is of ends; or is he apt to think that the end sanctifies the means? Is he really living above the world, in communion with God, in love and harmony with his fellow men? There is no difficulty in distinguishing the religion of such an one from the conventional imitation of it; from the ecclesiastical religion which seeks only to exalt the power of the priesthood; from the puritanical religion which would bind up salvation in a theological formula; from the interested and Pharisaical religion which desires to appear well in the eyes of men; from the political religion which converts the words of Christ into the symbols of a party.
In answer to the questions of the Jews, our Lord appeals to the purity and disinterestedness of His own character—‘No man convinced Him of sin’, and, ‘if He said what they felt in their hearts to be the truth, why did they not believe in Him?’ What motive had He for deceiving them? He came not seeking His own glory, but to reveal the Father in Him and them. He did not want the praise of men, but only that they should come to Him and have life. He had done the works of God; that was the proof that He was one with God. The Scriptures, too, of the Old Testament, whenever they spoke of mercy and judgement, of the Son and Servant of God, of the love of Jehovah to His people, were fulfilled in Him who first felt for Himself, and taught mankind to feel, that God was their Father and His Father, and their God and His God. To Him John the Baptist, to Him the prophets witness, to Him all good men everywhere who have a like spirit in them. Goodness and truth recognize Him who is good and true as naturally as the eye catches the light of the sun. Not only the life of Christ, but the life of His humblest followers, the poor man or woman dying in a cottage or workhouse of a lingering disease, do sometimes, by their humility, by their resignation, by their elevation above the things of this world, give a testimony of the truth of religion which strikes home to our hearts.
But Christ has a greater witness than the witness
of men. He feels that God is His witness. Without
This is the witness which Christ gives us of Himself, the visible embodiment of His righteousness in
a person who is holding communion with God. Some
of us may have felt ourselves at certain times of our
lives falling under the influence of a good man who
has inspired us with thoughts which we never had
before, who has spoken to us of our duty to God
and man, of living for others, of giving up the world,
of disinterestedness, of self-sacrifice. Why did we
believe him or listen to him? Because his character
seemed to witness to his words; what he said, he
was; because the lesson that he taught flowed at
Once more, our Lord implies that the willingness to receive the truth depends upon the disposition of the hearer—‘Whoso willeth to do His will shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God.’ He who hungers and thirsts after goodness and truth shall not be long in doubt about their true nature, for God will reveal them to him. He who is seeking for the light will not be left in the darkness. To him who is saying, ‘Who is the Lord that I may believe on Him?’ Christ will appear, whether in the form of a person or not in the form of a person, whether in a Christian country or not in a Christian country, whether in the words of the Gospel or not in the words of the Gospel. For we are a long way off that revelation of God which Christ made to His disciples; we see Him at a distance only; and there may be some who do not bear His name and yet are partakers of His spirit; and others, again, in so-called heathen countries who speak of truth and righteousness in other language than that of the New Testament; who have known Christ and have not known Him, in the spirit and not in the letter. And the more we enlarge the meaning of His words so as to include those sheep of another fold, those Christians in unconsciousness as they may be termed, the more truly do we enter into the mind of Christ.
Such a rule as that of the text obviously implies
that religion is very simple, not a complicated or
scientific system dependent on criticism or on
And now I will proceed to consider, in the last
place, how the words of the text may be applied to
Is not the answer the same as of old, ‘The things
which are shaken are being removed, that the things
which cannot be shaken may remain’? The law of
duty, the standards of morality, the relations of family
life are unchanged. No one can truly say that he is
uncertain about right and wrong. ‘Wherewithal shall
a young man cleanse his way?’ The answer is the
same as it always was, ‘Even by ruling himself after
Thy word.’ The nature of true religion is not altered
in the latter half of the nineteenth century. ‘To do
And, if there are difficulties which the progress of the
nineteenth century has introduced into religion, we should also remark that of
many things we have a clearer knowledge than our fathers; we have surely a truer
perception of the spirit of Christ than in the days of party and persecution;
the proportions of religious truth are better understood by us, and we see that
the points in which we differ are far less important than those in which all
men, or almost all men, are agreed; we have learned that a Christian life comes
before definitions of Christian truth; if we do not doubt about the one, neither
need we doubt about the other; for the truth is the reflection of the life, as
Christ also implies when He calls Himself ‘the way, and the truth, and the
life.’ There are many ancient misunderstandings between good men of different forms of religion which we now see to be,
partly though not wholly, questions of words. There
are some aspects of the Gospel, some temporary or local
Religion has become simpler than formerly; it is
not so dependent on language; it is not so much disputed about as in the older times. Mankind have
a larger and truer conception of the divine nature;
they have also a wider knowledge of themselves.
They see the various forms of Christianity which
prevail in their own and other countries, they trace
their origin and history, and they rise above them to
Once more. There is a great part of knowledge
which, coming late into the world, by a sort of accident, seems at present to be at war with religion, and
yet can no more be separated from it than the mind
can be parted from the body. It would be a false
superficial religion which tried to ignore or put out
To conclude. In every state of the world, and in
every class of society, there are elements of good and
evil, of weakness and strength; and our character and
disposition may be such that we extract the evil and
reject the good, or extract the good and reject the
evil. In our own age too, and in this place, there are
peculiar difficulties and dangers. There is the temptation of youth to sensuality, and the equal if not greater
danger of sentimentalism; there is the tendency to
extravagance and self-indulgence, to indolence or
irregularity; there is the flood of new ideas coming
into conflict with old beliefs. Happy is he who, by
good sense, by strength of character, and by Christian principles, steers his way amidst these rocks.
Happy is he who has not only the enjoyment of these
years which he passes at the University—to many the
happiest of their whole lives, and of the greatest
opportunity—but who can afterwards look back upon
them as a time of innocence and of self-improvement,
HE TAUGHT THEM AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY, AND NOT AS THE SCRIBES.
WE should like to carry with us in the mind’s eye
the form and features of Christ; we would rather
have looked upon that face than upon any other
among the sons of men. Whether, in the language
of the prophet, His visage was marred more than any
man’s, either from the conflicts of His own spirit or
from His sympathy with the sins and sufferings of
men; or whether we may conceive Him to have been
the image of a heavenly calm, of an authority which
was given from above, of a divine grace and love; we
naturally wish that we could have seen Him as He
was in this world, and could have preserved the recollection of Him as we might of some earthly friend
whom we always remember; and we may imagine
that one look from Him, like that given to Peter,
would have rebuked our sins and changed the course
of our lives. The genius of the fifteenth and sixteenth
The text describes one striking feature of the character of Christ. ‘He spake to them as one that had authority.’
A like impression is derived from several other
passages in the narrative of the Gospel; wherever
He was, He exercised a sort of controlling power over
men; and at last no one ventured to ask Him any
more questions. The evangelists seem to imply that
there was an awe about Him, not supernatural, but
natural, which prevented other men from intruding
upon Him and becoming too familiar with Him,
though He was in the midst of them. He could live
among publicans and harlots, the lowest of the people
as we might deem them, and yet His dignity is not
diminished but enhanced by this. He could defend
Himself against all disputants, like Socrates, though
with other weapons. He had the sort of influence
which is given by the clear and dispassionate knowledge of other men’s characters, for
‘He knew what
was in man.’ When the Pharisees and Sadducees
asked Him their quibbling questions about the tribute
money, about marriage, about the Sabbath Day, He
does not enter into a dispute with them, He rises
above them to a higher principle—‘Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and to God the
things that are God’s’; ‘In the resurrection they
neither marry nor are given in marriage; ‘It is lawful
to do good on the Sabbath Day.’ Or He appealed
from the conventional to the natural, from the rigid
This is the language of authority, more impressive
when deprived of all earthly show of power. And
with this we may further contrast the language of
seeming authority in which there is no intrinsic power
of truth. He spake to them as One having authority,
and not as the scribes. For they too were teachers
of mankind, and they repeated Sabbath after Sabbath in the synagogues their unmeaning interpretations from the Old Testament; their foolish distinctions about the gold and the temple, about the altar
and the gift which was upon the altar; their hollow
evasions of the law which commanded them to maintain their parents; their false assumptions of the
exclusive privileges of the Jewish race. Christ, as we
may say in modern language, goes back to first principles
So, not in our own age only, but in many, has false
authority tended to prevail over the true, the power
of tradition over reason and conscience. Men do not
easily or without an effort shake off what they have
heard a thousand times. They do not easily or at
once recognize how simple the Gospel is: ‘Except
a man receive the Kingdom of God as a little child, he
shall in no wise enter therein.’ There are some to whom this childlike
simplicity only comes when they are quite old. After a long experience they
under stand at last that to know a few things in religion is all that is
necessary or desirable—‘To do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly
before God.’
If we once more ask the question which the Pharisees asked of Christ in another sense, and which at that time He refused to answer, ‘Who gave Thee this authority?’ the reply seems to be twofold: it was His own, and yet it was given Him by God. The acts which He performed, the words which He spoke, were not in a figure only the words and works of God; they came into His mind, they were suggested to His will, in the same way apparently as the words or acts of any other men. But they were inspired by a power different from that which moved other men; they had a divine force in them, flowing out of an irresistible conviction that He was one with God, and that they were the words of God.
And yet they were His own. He was absolutely
one in Himself and had one thought only in His
whole life. He was not like a politician trying expedients to adapt His opinions to the multitudes.
He says to His brethren, ‘My time is not yet, your
time is always ready.’ Whether men accepted His
words or not was a matter of indifference to Him,
and only elicited a sort of cry of pain from Him: ‘Ye
will not come unto Me that ye might have life.’ There are some minds who seem to grow with success; they receive their power from others, and are
And now I shall proceed to inquire how far we can
imitate Christ in this quality of authority. For we all
of us have some duties to perform in which the
control of others is required; and in later life such
duties increase and multiply upon us; in a school, in
a parish, in a household, or perhaps in a public position. How can we exercise authority without seeming
to exercise it; be felt without being heard; gain
influence without noisy disputes, by the silent power
It is almost a truism to say that he who would
control others must control himself. He must have
a quieter and more impartial mind than those whom
he would restore, he must make allowances for this,
and sometimes put himself in their place. He must
not either command or reprove until he is fully
acquainted with all the circumstances of the case. He
must convey the impression that he will listen to the
voice of reason only, and not be moved by entreaties,
that he remembers and does not forget, and that he
observes more than he says. He must know the
characters of those with whom he deals, he must show
that he has a regard for their feelings when he is
correcting or reproving them. The great art is to
mingle authority with kindness; there are a few, but
a very few, who by some happy tact have contrived
so to rebuke another as to make him their friend for
life. Kindness and sympathy have a wonderful power
in this world; they smooth the rough places of life,
they take off the angles, they make the exercise of
authority possible. The mere manner in which a
thing is said or done, say, in speaking to a child or
a servant, makes all the difference. ‘Behold, how
good and how joyful a thing it is, brethren, to dwell
Thus in the exercise of authority there must be
a basis of kindness and good-will, but many other
qualities are also required in those who would influence or control others. Perhaps there must be
a degree of reserve, for the world is governed, not
by many words, but by few; and nothing is more
inconsistent with the real exercise of power than
rash and inconsiderate talking. We are not right
in communicating to others every chance thought that
may arise in our minds about ourselves or about
them. There is a noble reserve which prevents us
from intruding on the feelings of others, and some
times refrain to ask for their sympathy or approbation. Dignity and self-respect are the natural
accompaniments of authority, and the essence of
dignity is simplicity. We must banish the thought
of self, how we look, what effect we produce, what is
the opinion of others about our sayings and doings;
these only paralyze us at the time of action. We want
to be, and not to seem, to think only of the duty
which we have in hand, to be indifferent to the world
around. We want to see things in their proper proportions; not to be fidgety or uneasy about trifles,
nor to be greatly disturbed about any of those evils
Most of us here present are on the threshold of
active life, and in a few years we shall be filling posts
of responsibility in which we, too, have to exercise
authority over others. Then our characters will be
put to the test, perhaps in the management of a
school or of a parish, or in some other position of
command, or subordinate. Shall we be found wanting?
unable to control ourselves, and therefore unable to
control others; without knowledge of mankind, and
therefore incapable of bearing our part among them;
with many good qualities perhaps, but, owing to some
sensitiveness or levity or want of purpose, unequal to
Lastly, let us place before ourselves that image of
which I spoke at the beginning of this sermon—the
image of Him whose gentleness and goodness, whose
MY KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD; IF MY KINGDOM WERE OF THIS WORLD, THEN WOULD MY SERVANTS FIGHT.
How far religion and morality should enter into
politics is a question not easily answered. There are
some who say that ‘what is morally wrong can never
be politically right, but they forget how rarely this
truth or truism is capable of application. Nor can
the question always receive the same answer. For, in
different ages of the world, Church and State, as we
now call them, religion and politics, the outer and the
inner life of man, stand in different relations to one
another. In the beginning of history, and in the
times before history, they are not yet divided. Religion rather than reason, or reason taking the form of
religion, is the light of human existence in the dawn
of the world’s day. The founder of the city is the
god of the city, the temple of Athena crowns the
Acropolis, the forces of nature which are too much
Such was the ordinary progress of the Gentile
religions which are best known to us. The Jewish
theory was of a higher type and attained to a nobler
conception. The Israelites, without losing altogether
the national idea of God, yet thought of Him also,
though confusedly, as the God of the whole earth, ‘sitting upon the circle of the heavens,’ perfect in
justice and holiness and truth. Whether this nobler
conception of God was part of an original revelation
to Moses, or a new life infused into the decaying
nation long afterwards by psalmists and prophets,
is a matter of controversy. For the Hebrew religion
may be regarded in two ways, either as declining
from a more perfect idea, or, like the Greek, progressing towards it. In the latter case the laws of Moses
The change from religion and divine right to the
greatest happiness of the greatest number, though
very real and important, is less important from some
points of view than it appears. The best men, though
they have different theories about the nature of human
actions, and sometimes entertain the greatest dislike
to one another, yet come round in practice to the
same point. When the question is, What is honest?
What is pure? What is true? What is disinterested?
though the effect of these general speculations on the
human mind may be very different, they will not be
found to vary in the answer. For where the sense of
duty is, religion is not far off. When men are serving
their fellows they are serving God also. The protests against the introduction of religion into politics
are really protests against the abuse of it. When
religion became a craft, the most subtle of all crafts,
and the priest stood behind the soldier, when men saw
the best, i. e. the most religious of men, Bossuet and
Massillon, defending the massacres and tortures of the
Huguenots, can we wonder that they should have
wished to banish a religion of which these were the
fruits? Nor can we be surprised at the noblest minds
revolting from religion, or at whole countries like
Italy and France falling into a reaction against it, and
not even now recovering their equilibrium. But
At this time, when our thoughts are turned more
than usually to political events, the question ‘What
has religion and morality to do with politics? has
a peculiar interest. Must we insist that they are
always identical, or shall we admit that they may
diverge? Is an answer to be found to great political
and social problems in Scripture? or can we solve
them by an immediate reference of them to the will of
God, or to the conscience of man? There are obviously false ways in which religion and politics are
pressed into the service of each other. There must
also be a true connexion between them, if we could
only find it. And, first, I will consider some of the
false modes of connecting them which have prevailed
in other ages, and which even in our own day continue to pervert and entangle the natural course of
human progress. For ideas remain in men’s minds,
and affect parties, when they have ceased to be embodied in noble institutions, and may even be most
dangerous when least recognized. Secondly, having
But, supposing the true idea of the divine nature to
be ever present to our minds, it by no means follows
that it would be a sufficient guide to the conduct of
politics or of life. For the greater number of human
actions cannot be immediately tried by the standard
of truth and right. The great end of all this, the
happiness, the elevation of human life, may be clear
and plain to us, but the means by which the end is to
be attained can be only known from experience. Nor
is the end altogether separable from the means: it
will often appear to be the sum of the means, or the
spirit which animates the use of them. To the question, What shall I do? the answer, both in political and
ordinary life, is generally, not ‘what is right’ (this
would in most cases be no answer), but what is best.
Nor is there any rough and ready way of resolving
politics into morals. Take for example the case of
temperance: while all men are agreed in denouncing
the evil of drinking, yet the particular measure by
which the evil may be cured can only be chosen after
patient thought and reflection on the facts. The
means may not always conform to the supposed les
sons of Scripture, they may be even at variance with
them. To take an instance: David, in numbering
the people, is said to have committed a sin which was
punished by a pestilence. In our own day it would
Again, let us illustrate the question which we are
discussing by the case of war. Who would doubt that
Christianity and all true religion is opposed to war?
We do not hold with a recent theologian that the
religion of Christ stands by and is only a looker-on
when the question of war and peace hangs in the
balance, and when men have fought it out there
appears on the battlefield, bending over the dead and
dying, saint-like, the ministering angel, shedding holy
influences in the foul and corrupted atmosphere. For
against many wars, that is to say against all wars of
selfish ambition and aggression, religion and morality
alike lift up their voice. But of other wars, again, we
cannot judge in this decided manner. Peace may be
The attempt to form moral judgements on politics
is a temptation which naturally besets us, for if we
can raise political questions into moral ones we
effectually place ourselves in the right and our opponents in the wrong. We elevate ourselves on a sort
of moral platform; we appeal to the heart against the
head, to the feelings against the reason. We trust to
the force of general principles weighed in the balance
with doubtful or disputed facts. These are arts which
most men unconsciously practise in times of political
But is there, then, no rule of right and wrong by
which the statesman must guide his steps, no true way
in which morality and religion enter into politics?
First of all, he has the rule not to do anything as
a statesman which as a private individual he would
not allow himself to do. A great and good man will
not flatter, will not deceive, will not confuse his
own interests or those of his party with the interests
of his country, will fear no one, will, if he can help
it, offend no one. He will feel, though he will not
say, that he has a trust committed to him by God, and
the greatest of all trusts, for which he must give an
account. And sometimes he will need to steady himself in the thought of immortality and eternity against
the forces which oppose him, whether the frowns of
a sovereign or the dislike of a class or the clamour
of the populace. He will sometimes think of another
kingdom which is not to be found upon earth. But
he will not be fond of arguing merely political questions on moral grounds, because he knows that in this
way he is likely to miss their real drift. He will not
expect to learn from Scripture whether the authority
of princes shall be maintained, whether some tax or
Thus he will have to be on his guard against
religion out of place. He is, as some would say, the
creature of expediency—that is to say, God’s expediency—for he must act according to the laws which
God prescribes for him, and which are known to us
through experience only. He must understand the
world in which he lives. Himself above party and
This, then, is one way in which religion connects
with politics—through the lives of statesmen. And
there are other ways also. For a state or nation is
a living being, not a mere adaptation of means to
ends. To a certain extent it is like one man and has
the feelings of a man, and is subject to common
impulses towards good and evil. No human being
can be governed merely on mechanical principles;
no nation can be administered according to the rules
of profit and loss. The bonds of commerce are but
as green withes if it is expected by them to secure the
blessings of peace. The poorest and humblest have
their attachments and hatreds, their religious belief,
their questionings about this world and another.
They are inwardly conscious of a truth and right far
higher than exists here; they hope, after their long
life of labour, for the promised rest; and by the side
Once more, politics are limited by morality, and
in this sense we may truly say that what is morally
wrong cannot be politically right. If cruelty is wrong
in individuals, it is wrong in nations or churches;
if falsehood is wrong, if injustice is wrong, in individuals, they are wrong also in nations or churches.
If the desire to do good should exist in individuals
towards each other, it should exist also and be felt
in nations towards each other. We ought not to
stand unthinkingly by, happy in our island home,
while half a continent is being wasted and oppressed.
But then at once arises the question how to interfere
so as not to introduce evils greater than those which
we are seeking to remedy. For in all cases we must
consider the imperfect and constrained character of
collective action. A nation, like an army, can never
have the agility or life of a single man; and sometimes
even tyranny may be better than anarchy, and we may
Yet we note also with satisfaction that religion and morality have leavened politics in a very striking manner during the last century. They may have disappeared in words, but they have asserted themselves in the spirit of our legislation. The abolition of slavery and the slave trade, the mitigation of the criminal code, the removal of religious disabilities, are not the result of the utilitarian philosophy, how ever valuable that may have been in its effect on many points of our legislation, but of an increased sense of humanity and justice. Men have felt their common brotherhood more and more; they have been more conscious of their duties to the weak and suffering; the spirit of Christ has had a great hold on their minds; and if there be some who lament a certain appearance of decay in the outward institutions of religion, they should also remember that there is another aspect of religion, under which the nineteenth century will bear comparison with the so-called ages of faith or the traditions of the primitive church. The best fruit of every institution is, not that which is without but that which is within, not the house made with hands, nor the system of doctrine laid down in books, nor the rites of churches, but the spirit which animated them, the better mind, the higher conscience, the sound public opinion, the simplicity of social life: by these they should be judged.
Thus far I have been discussing the question raised by Aristotle in the Politics, whether the good citizen is also the good man, which is his way of stating what in modern language would be called the relation of morals to politics. The converse question may also be asked, ‘whether the good man must also be the good citizen.’ The same question might also be put in another form—whether a religious man, or a patriot, or a philosopher may withdraw from the world. For he may live at a time when circumstances are against him, when by struggling he would do harm to his own cause; he may be before his age, and would at once lose his life if he engaged in the passing conflict: or he may feel some special incapacity for dealing with his fellow men; his mind may not be practical, but speculative or meditative; though full of humanity he may wish to live at peace and not to strive; he may be thinking more of another world than of this. I am not speaking of a man shutting himself up in a monastery, and leaving all active duties towards his fellow men unperformed, but only of his with drawing from agitation and party movement and the bustle of the world, that he may lead a more composed and considered life.
The question which I have asked there is not time
to answer; yet the answer to it may be sufficiently
gathered from the example of Christ Himself. The
life of Christ is the life of a private man, which stands
in no relation to the history of the Jewish nation. He
He has a vision, too, of a kingdom not of this world, nor to be realized in ecclesiastical buildings or apostolical succession of bishops, but a kingdom which is to affect all others, and to which as to a standard they are to be compared. It is a kingdom not to be manifested by outward signs, nor to be fought for by earthly weapons, but to be a real power in the hearts of men. He was and He was not a king; not in the ordinary sense, but in a higher one, in a natural one; not a king surrounded by armies, a Messiah or deliverer such as the Jews expected, such as His own disciples hoped that He would proclaim Himself; but a Deliverer from sin and suffering, a Saviour Prince, leading men on to victory over themselves and over the evils of the world.
And if there be any one among the followers
of Christ who feels himself unsuited to the turmoil of
active life, who would fain withdraw from political
strife, who dislikes theological controversy, who is
confused by the conflict of opinions, and seeks only to
possess his soul in peace and to go about doing good,
the example of Christ Himself will be a sufficient
justification for him. The silent life of a poor woman
may be of more account in the sight of God than the
careers of many politicians. ‘Mary hath chosen that
better part which shall not be taken from her.’ There
are times when men are called upon to be patriots
AND IT CAME TO PASS, THAT AS HE WAS PRAYING IN A CERTAIN PLACE, WHEN HE CEASED, ONE OF HIS DISCIPLES SAID UNTO HIM, ‘LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY, AS JOHN ALSO TAUGHT HIS DISCIPLES.’ AND HE SAID UNTO THEM, ‘WHEN YE PRAY, SAY, OUR FATHER WHICH ART IN HEAVEN.’
THE Lord’s Prayer has been the type of prayer among Christians in all ages. For eighteen centuries men have poured forth their hearts to God in these few words, which have probably had a greater influence on the world than all the writings of theologians put together. They are the simplest form of communion with Christ: when we utter them we are one with Him; His thoughts become our thoughts, and we draw near to God through Him. They are also the simplest form of communion with our-fellow men, in which we acknowledge Him to be our common Father and we His children. And the least particulars of our lives admit .of being ranged under one or other of the petitions which we offer up to Him.
It would be an error to suppose that the words of the Lord’s Prayer are altogether new, or that they seemed to the disciples of Christ quite different from anything which they had ever heard before. Truth does not descend from heaven like a sacred stone dropped out of another world, concerning which men vainly dispute what it is or whence it came. But it is the good word, the good thought, the good action, which arises in a man’s mind; as the apostle also says, ‘The word is very nigh unto thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart.’ The great prophet or teacher draws out what is latent in man, he interrogates their consciences, he finds a witness in them to the best. And, therefore, when we are told that parallels to all the petitions contained in the Lord’s Prayer may be found in Rabbinical writers, when we remark that in Seneca and other Gentile philosophers we are exhorted to forgiveness of injuries, when we read in Epictetus the words, ‘We have all sinned, some more, some less grievously,’ there is no reason why we should be shocked or surprised at these parallelisms. Neither is the Lord’s Prayer less fitted to be the medium of our communion with God because ancient holy men have used several of its petitions before the time of Christ, as all Christians have been in the habit of using them since. Are not all true sayings and all good thoughts, in all times and in all places, the anticipation of a truth which is shining more and more unto the perfect day?
The Lord’s Prayer is the simplest of all prayers, and also the deepest. We are children addressing a Father who is also the Lord of heaven and earth. In Him all the families of the earth become one family. The past as well as the present, the dead as well as the living, are embraced by His love. When we draw near to Him we draw nearer also to our fellow men. From the smaller family to which we are bound by ties of relationship we extend our thoughts to that larger family which lives in His presence. When we say ‘Our Father’ we do not mean that God is the Father of us in particular, but of the whole human race, the great family in heaven and earth. The heavenly Father is not like the earthly; yet through this image we attain a nearer notion of God than through any other. We mean that He loves us, that He educates us and all mankind, that He provides laws for us, that He receives us like the prodigal in the parable when we go astray. We mean that His is the nature which we most revere, with a mixed feeling of awe and of love; that He knows what is for our good far better than we know ourselves, and is able to do for us above all that we can ask or think. We mean that in His hands we are children, whose wish and pleasure is to do His will, whose duty is to trust in Him in all the accidents of their lives.
And, before we can pray to God in a worthy
manner, we must still further distinguish between the
A great effort of mind is required of us if we would think of God truly, and also pray to Him. The imagination more easily conceives Him as a king seated on the clouds of heaven, and human creatures bowing before Him like Moses and the elders of Israel at Mount Sinai, hardly able to endure the glory that was revealed. And among the uneducated there are many religious persons who conceive of God as the friend in the next room, or rather in this, by whom they are seen when performing the most trivial actions of their lives, with whom they converse as with an earthly acquaintance, and tell Him garrulously of their sorrows and their joys. And perhaps they may think and speak of Him in a manner suited to them, but not in a manner suitable or natural to us. For we desire to approach that which is highest in the world with that which is highest in us, with our reason, and not with our feelings only—with such a prayer as men (and not children only) may use, living in the light of the nineteenth century, and not in the days when men were ignorant of the fixed laws of nature. Of this higher or true prayer, of this rational or mental service, I propose to speak in the remainder of this sermon. And then I shall go on to consider some of the hindrances or difficulties which most of us find both in private prayer and also in the common or public worship of God.
The beginning of true prayer is resignation to the
divine will. We must not try to make His will our
And this leads me to speak of a second aspect
of prayer, communion or co-operation with God,
For prayer is not the mere utterance of a few words
in public or private at set times, but is the expression
of a life. When we talk with men our words flow
naturally out of our characters; we like to impart
our thoughts to them, and to receive their thoughts
in return. And when we speak with God, our power
of addressing Him or holding communion with Him
This is the spirit of prayer, the spirit of converse or communion with God, which leads us in all our actions silently to think of Him and refer them to Him. Such a spirit also enables us to know Him, as far as our faculties will admit. It is a great step in the knowledge of God to recognize that the laws by which He governs the world are fixed, and that true religion, as well as philosophy, requires that we should submit to them, and not by any freak of imagination seek to escape from them. But it is a still greater step in our knowledge of God when we recognize Him as the Author of good in the world, when we hear in the voice of conscience His voice speaking to us, when we are aware that He is the witness, and also the source, of every good thought in us; and that, when we feel in our hearts the struggle against some lust or evil passion, then God is fighting with us against envy, against selfishness, against impurity, for our better self against our worse self. And, once more, there is a further step, when we think of Him as not only co-operating with us, but going before us or preventing us, when we begin to see that He has an education or plan of salvation prepared, not only for us, but for all mankind, extending through many ages, even to eternity, in which we too may take a part and have a share, and find the true meaning of our lives in His service.
Another aspect of prayer is the confession of our
wrong-doing. There are sins which we have committed,
These are some of the thoughts which may occupy
our minds at public as well as private prayer. And
there are many others which each one can supply for
himself. We desire for a few minutes in each day to
Let me say a few words in conclusion about our worship in this
place. No one is compelled to attend the chapel service; nor will any of us
think worse of those who are absent than of those who come. Prayer is the
offering of the heart to God, and cannot be enforced. College rules might keep
up the appearance of religion among us, but not the reality.
And we must endeavour to avoid the error of dividing
this or any other society into those who think with
us and those who do not. Persons who have strong
religious feelings must be on their guard against the
danger, not exactly of thinking too well of themselves
(for no man consciously does this), but of isolating
themselves, of falling into party spirit, of allowing
devotion insensibly to degenerate into superstition.
If they can do any good to others, they must be like
And, speaking to others, may I be allowed to say
that many or most of us would be better for coming
to chapel on week-days; at least I think so. A
few minutes of calm thought, in which we hear the
best of words read and offer up the day to God, ought
not to be a burden to us. In this ever-increasing
hurry of life, and in this nineteenth century, when we
live so fast, as people sometimes say, do we not
require a breathing time, a moment or two daily,
to think where we are going? In youth especially,
when we are laying the foundation of our after life,
and find such a difficulty in realizing that this gay
time, this sunshine or summer of enjoyment and
health, these few years passed at the University, are
in reality the most important of all. We have been
all of us taught to pray by our parents in the days of
our childhood. Is there not something sad in our
throwing this aside when most required by us, on the
threshold of manhood? Life is a shallow thing with
out religion, and at times the old religious feelings will
come back upon us and assert their natural powers.
As years go on we shall have others to teach, and
may then find that the springs of religion are dried
up within us, and that we have no religious gift or
influence to impart to them such as our parents imparted to us. Then we may feel painfully about
But if a person, not from indolence or levity, says
that he has no inclination to join in our daily public
prayer, and that he is afraid of falling into formalism
or conventionalism, I would not condemn him or regard
him as less a Christian on that account. Every one
must judge for himself, and the end is not to be confounded with the means. But, if he forsakes the
customs of others, he is the more bound to watch
strictly over himself. He has not less, but perhaps
rather more, need of a high standard of duty and of
life. He must make a religion for himself of what he
knows to be right, of whatsoever things are lovely
and of good report. He must teach himself humility
and modesty from a consciousness of his own weakness
and liability to error, and the narrowness of the human
faculties. He must think of sickness and old age and
death as possibilities and realities of life. He must
acknowledge that mere worldly success to any higher
mind is not worth having. He must condemn many
of his own actions when he calmly reviews them. He
LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY, AS JOHN ALSO TAUGHT HIS DISCIPLES.
THIS has been thought to be an age in which the
Christian religion is beset by great dangers and sur
rounded by peculiar difficulties . There is said to be
a conflict going on between experience and faith,
between the old and the new, between the traditions
and doctrines of the Church and the critical spirit of
modern times. People ask, What is to become of us
or of our children in the next generation, or fifty or
a hundred years hence, when the foundations which
are beginning to loosen have altogether given way;
when the doubts which are now whispered in the
closet are proclaimed on the housetop; when, as time
goes on, the Christian world is divided more and more
into two opposing armies of the maintainers of reason
and revelation? Shall we be Christians any longer
when the facts of Scripture history have been subject
This is not the first, and will not be the last, age in
which the Christian faith has seemed to be encircled
with peculiar dangers. There have been many ‘latter
days’ in the history of the Church: in the times of
the Apostles themselves, as we gather from the Epistles
of St. Paul and the Book of Revelation; in the tenth
century, when men began to think that the world, for
its misery, its wickedness, its violence, could no longer
go on (in the description of which the great Catholic
historian uses the remarkable expression, ‘Christ was
still in the ship, but asleep’); at the Reformation too,
that great earthquake of Europe and of Christendom,
the movement of which has hardly yet ceased, and
This is one way of putting the question which may calm excited spirits. Let me suggest also an other point of view which seems to reach deeper: Do we really suppose that the course of religion in the world is a return to darkness, not a progress towards light? Do we imagine that God has been governing the world for eighteen centuries since the giving of Christianity, communing with and inspiring the soul of man, and that during all that time He has given us no increased knowledge of the principles of His government, no wider conception of His purposes towards mankind? Have not history and physical science told us a great deal about Him, which could never have been known to former ages? And is God to be regarded as separable from nature, or the knowledge of Him from the knowledge of His works? Are there not rather clear and manifest instances in which the knowledge of nature has added to our knowledge of God?
For example: That nature is governed by fixed
laws; that effects flow from causes, that the order
of the divine work is visible, not only, as the ancients
might have supposed, in the movements of the heavenly
bodies, but also in the least things and the things
which appear to be the most capricious (‘even the
very hairs of your head are all numbered’). This
is a very great lesson which is being taught us daily
And does this recognition of order in external
nature teach us nothing also of the divine nature,
and of the moral government of the world? Is not
God assuring us in this, by every token which He
can give to man, that He will not interrupt His laws
for our sakes? He will be with us in spirit, and
support us and lead us through the valley and shadow
of death, and take us to Himself. But He will not in
the least degree alter the external conditions in which
He has placed us. He will not change the nature or
functions of the human frame, or the influences of
dead, involuntary matter, to which we may be exposed.
Through those conditions and in them, by the use
of means and not without them, we work out our
life in His service. Neither in what I have called
the invisible corners does He act in any way different
from His action in His greater works, such as the
I have made these remarks as introductory to the subject of prayer, because prayer is sometimes thought to be inconsistent with any recognition of the order of nature. And, first, I shall endeavour to show that this, which I will not call the most philosophical view, but rather a plain matter of fact, really supplies the only basis of spiritual communion with God. And, secondly, I will consider the nature of prayer, either as the general spirit of the Christian life, or again as contained in special acts of the public and private worship of God. And, thirdly, I will try to say something of the hindrances and difficulties of prayer, whether as arising out of the evil of the human heart, or from peculiarities of temperament or character or education.
(1) What is required for any real prayer to God
is not a lower notion of Him, but a higher; first, as
the universal Lawgiver who has ordered all things
once for all according to His wisdom; secondly, as
Well, but some one will say, ‘If you will not allow me to go to God with all my wishes and desires, you take away the nature of prayer.’ What! because I cannot go to God and say to Him, ‘O Lord, give me a fine house and estate; ‘O Lord, make that last venture of mine to succeed; O Lord, give me that preferment or office, which I am so well entitled to, and which I could fill so admirably’—until you come down to the prayer of the beggar, ‘O Lord, please give me eighteenpence’—is that really taking away the nature of prayer? Must I not think a bit before entering the courts of the sovereign, whether the petition is one that I ought to prefer; whether I may not be violating the very laws of the realm in asking that such a petition should be granted? Must I not, when I think of the nature of God, be careful that I ask something which is in accordance with His nature? Instead of lifting up earth to heaven, am I not rather seeking to bring down heaven to earth?
Well, but some one will say, ‘May I not ask of God
the life of some beloved relative who is in danger or
at the point of death? I have a son who is fighting
with the enemies of his country in India or in China;
may I not ask that he shall be shielded, and that
the deadly weapon that is aimed at him may not
come near him?’ Many a one has offered up such
a prayer for an only son, many a father and many a
mother, within the last year or two; and it seems
hard to deny them this privilege of nature. Still,
the voice of reason will be heard saying, ‘Do not ask
for your beloved son that which may be the death
of the beloved of another’; think of your enemies
sometimes as well as of your countrymen, as in the
presence of God, who is the Father of them all, and
will not take advantage of the sudden death of any
of them, or take any of them at a catch, as has been
rudely but truly said. Is He the God of the English
only? Is He not the God of the Hindoo and the
Chinaman? Does His mercy extend to Christians
only, and not also to Jews, Turks, Infidels, Heretics,
and all those for whom we pray in the collect for
Good Friday; of the Soudanese, and of the Egyptian—not like Zeus or Osiris, or some Greek or other
national deity, but the God of all nature and of all
men? And, if the ambition of monarchs or the pride of
nations were again to plunge us into a European war, if
we were on the eve of a great conflict, when the continent of Europe was about to reel with the shock of
Nor, I think, can we pray that a pestilence or epidemic be driven from our shores and not also driven from other lands; for God requires us to think of our neighbours as well as of ourselves. Or better, perhaps, we may trust God, not that He will stay the plague in answer to our prayers on any particular occasion, but that He has so ordered these mysterious epidemics that, although their path is unseen like the wind, yet He has placed them to a certain degree in the power of man to prevent and avoid, and has provided that they shall not utterly exterminate man or beast.
Once more, to take another instance. Some one
will perhaps say, ‘I have a favourite daughter who
is slowly and manifestly sinking into the grave; or,
I have a wife or husband who is all in all to me;
may I not ask God to spare their lives? May I not
batter the gates of heaven with storms of prayer?’ I will not answer this question. For sometimes human
feelings cannot be reasoned with, and there would
be a sort of impropriety in attempting to resist them.
Thus then we seem to arrive at the conclusion that riches, or honour, or victory in war, or the acquirement of any temporal good, or the avoidance of any temporal evils, or any interference with the laws of nature or alteration in their effects, are not the proper or natural objects of prayer. We may take the means which will attain these objects; we may pray that God will enable us to use them aright, but we must not expect that God will overleap these means, not because He cannot, but because experience shows that this is not His way of dealing with His creatures. I am aware that all will not be willing to agree in this statement. But at any rate they will agree that the greater and more important object of prayer is spiritual rather than temporal good, and that the true field of prayer begins in the relation of the soul to God.
Regarding prayer not so much as consisting of
particular acts of devotion, but as the spirit of life,
it seems to be the spirit of harmony with the will of
God. It is the aspiration after all good, the wish,
stronger than any earthly passion or desire, to live
in His service only. It is the temper of mind which
This is the life of prayer, or rather the life which is
itself prayer, which is always raised above this world,
and yet always on a level with this world; the life
which has lost the sense or consciousness of self, and
is devoted to God and to mankind, which may be
I think that we may see this to be the true nature
of prayer, because there can never be any excess of
such prayers, there can never be any doubt about the
answer to them, there can never be any conflict of
interests between one man and another. For the
fulfilment of the will of God in this world is not
a particular thing which may be granted to one man
and not to another, not a private good or benefit, but
a universal good which is inexhaustible, and, like the
ocean, can never be dried up. I do not go on year
And, if I may refer once more to those doubts and
difficulties which were spoken of at the commencement
of this sermon, I think that to a person living in this
spirit they will seem to be hardly of more importance
than questions of secular knowledge. For he knows
that he cannot be robbed of a part who has the whole.
Neither can he ever desire that something should
appear to be the truth which is not the truth; or that
some question of criticism should be decided in this
way rather than in that; or that his own church or
sect or party should prevail to the exclusion of any
other. His soul has too deep a peace to be shaken by
such imaginary terrors. And, even if we could
imagine a time when ‘neither in Jerusalem nor in
There is yet another aspect in which prayer may be
regarded, as the language which the soul uses to God—the mode of expression in which she pours out her
thoughts to Him, just as ordinary language is the
expression of our ordinary thoughts and gives clearness and distinctness to them. Let not our words be
many, but simple and few; not using vain repetitions
or indulging in vague emotions; not allowing ourselves in fantastic practices; but self-collected, firm,
clear; not deeming that mere self-abasement can give
any pleasure to God any more than to an earthly
monarch. And above all let us be truthful, seeking
to view ourselves and our lives as in His presence,
neither better than we are nor worse than we are,
making our prayers the first motive and spring of all
our actions; and sometimes passing before God in
our mind’s eye all those with whom we are in any way
connected, that we may be better able to do our duty
towards them and more ready to think of them all in
their several ranks and stations as the creatures of
God equally with ourselves, each one having a life
and being and affections as valuable to himself and
But some one will say, ‘I do not understand this language of
prayer; I cannot attend when I hear prayers; I never learned to pray when I was
young and I am too old to learn now’; or, ‘I have lost the habit and cannot
recover it; and yet I truly desire to do the will of God and use the powers
which He has given me in His service.’ There are perhaps some in this
congregation who may be fairly described in these words. What shall we say to
them? I think that we must admit that the habit and use of set times of prayer
is partly a Christian duty, but is partly also a matter of temperament and
education. Nor must we be too hard in insisting that a man should order his life
in this or that particular way; or that the means which are right and natural
for most men should be enforced necessarily on all. It is unchristian to judge
of a man by this or that part of his life, instead of judging him on the whole.
And, if a man’s
Still I would say to such a one, ‘Do not live with out God in the world, even in the sense of duty, even in the strength of right.’ Consider how short and dependent life is, how unfit man is to stand alone, how ignorant of the possibilities beyond. Think of your self in sickness, in sorrow, in despair, when the nearest human ties are broken, when you are passing into the unseen world,—are you prepared to stand alone then? Do you not need some bond of union with your fellow-creatures more expansive, more enduring, than the chance association with them in society or in business? Do you not feel that amid all the jarring influences of opinion, amid all the changing and seemingly opposing paths of knowledge, you need the support of a God of truth to keep your mind fixed upon the light of truth? Is not this a higher ideal of life than the stoicism of merely human virtue? Is not this a new power of thought and action which is imparted to you?
I will not attempt further to determine in detail in
what way some one who approaches the religion
of Christ from without shall work out his own life.
And once more, returning to ourselves and summing up what has been said, I would ask you to think of prayer, first, as the spirit of the Christian life; ‘More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of’; but they are not temporal benefits or interruptions of the laws of nature. Secondly, I would ask you to think of prayer as the great means which God has given us; the means which sets in motion all other means that are used for the good of man and for the fulfilment of the divine will. Thirdly, as the highest expression not merely of the feelings but of the reason when exercised in the contemplation of the Divine Being.
O Lord, make not my will to be Thine, but Thy will to be mine, O Lord.
THE SPIRIT OF GOD MOVED UPON THE FACE OF THE WATERS.
THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD GOD IS UPON ME; BECAUSE THE LORD HATH ANOINTED ME TO PREACH GOOD TIDINGS UNTO THE MEEK; HE HATH SENT ME TO BIND UP THE BROKENHEARTED, TO PROCLAIM LIBERTY TO THE CAPTIVES, AND THE OPENING OF THE PRISON TO THEM THAT ARE BOUND.
LOOKING back on the history of the world, we
observe long periods in which mankind appear to
have been stationary. Great empires like Egypt or
China remain the same for two thousand or for
three thousand years; the external framework of their
institutions exercises a paralyzing influence on their
life and spirit; their religions continue merely be
cause they are ancient, their works of art are always
cast in the same form, their laws and customs are like
chains too strong for the puny arm of the individual
to break. Still more true is all this, as far as we can
Yet there have been also times in which the fountains of the deep may be said to have been broken
up; and new lights have dawned upon men, new
truths about politics, about morality, about religion,
But even more striking, because more familiar to
us, has been the influence of the Jewish prophets on
the character of mankind. Living on a narrow spot
of earth between the great empires of Assyria and
And now everywhere in Christian countries their
I propose to speak to you in this sermon of the
Jewish prophets, who are so distant from us and yet
so near to us: whose words carry us back to an ancient
and forgotten world, and also come home to the heart
and conscience of each of us. And, first, I shall consider the character of the prophet regarded as a
teacher of mankind; secondly, I shall inquire how
far in modern times, and even in ordinary life, there
may be anything akin to the spirit of prophecy. For
And now, returning to the Jewish prophet, we may
begin by setting aside a common error in the conception of him, viz. that he was a foreteller of future
events in that lower sense in which a Roman soothsayer would have been supposed to foretell them, or
as in modern times indications of the future are some
times supposed to have been made by ‘second sight.’ Whether in any instance he passed the horizon of
There are some other points belonging to what we
may call the externals of prophecy which may now be
briefly noted. In the first place, the prophets as they
have come down to us form a literature which goes
back to a time when there was no written prophecy.
And now let us endeavour to form an idea of
the prophet in his true character, stripped of the
literary accidents which surround him. He is the
revealer of the will of God to man. And the will of
God is in one word ‘righteousness’—holiness of life in
the individual, the triumph of right in the world. He
is the voice of one crying, sometimes in the wilderness,
sometimes in the city, ‘Prepare ye the way of the
Lord’; he is possessed, inspired, with the word of
God. He does not reason about the truths which he
utters, for they are self-evident to him. He is fulfilled
with the power and goodness of God, with the greatness and with the gentleness of the divine nature.
Take for example the twenty-fifth chapter of Isaiah:
after the judgements of God, as elsewhere, immediately
follow His mercies. ‘Thou hast made of a city a
heap; of a defenced city a ruin, a palace of strangers
to be no city’; and yet in the following verses, ‘Thou
hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the
needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a
shadow from the heat’; and then come the words, ‘He shall swallow up death in victory; the Lord God
will wipe away tears from all faces’: so near do His judgements and loving-kindnesses lie together. This
is the lesson which the prophets are always teaching, that there is no end of His justice, and there is
The justice of God is seen by the prophets in His
judgement on Israel and on the world. The history
of the world is the judgement of the world. ‘The day
of the Lord’ is the burden of prophecy; from Joel the
earliest of the prophets, to Malachi the latest, the prophets are still waiting for
‘the great and terrible day of
the Lord,’ as in the New Testament the first believers
are still waiting for the coming of the Lord. They
watch the great empires of the old world passing
into ruin; in these are anticipations of the greater
So the mercy of God is also shown by the prophet
in His dealings with His people Israel. The Jewish
religion was national; Israel had not arrived at the
point of seeing that all men equally, Gentiles as well
as Jews, were in the hands of God and subject to His
laws. So individuals in modern times have imagined
themselves to be the chosen servants of God, and,
indeed, it is hard for any of us to realize that another
is equally with himself the care of a divine providence.
The vision of the Jewish prophet was limited in like
manner. Though in one or two passages Israel
makes a third with Assyria and Egypt, yet in general
the love of God is concentrated on His chosen people.
They alone say to Him, ‘Doubtless thou art our Father,
though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not; Thou, O Lord, art our Father, our
Redeemer, whose name is from everlasting.’ Yet it is
to be observed also that the relation of God to Israel
is not one of favouritism. When they sin He visits
them with His judgements, when they return to Him
The prophet lives with God rather than with his
fellowmen; and he is confident that the word which
he speaks is the word of God. Suddenly he feels an
irresistible impulse to declare that which he knows.
Naturally we ask the question, how he could be sure
that the voice of God speaking or seeming to speak
within him was not a mere illusion. For we some
times ask ourselves too, how we can be sure that such
and such actions or such and such beliefs are the
truth and will of God. How do we distinguish them
from the fancies of our own minds? And the answer
Once more: the Jewish prophets were the first
teachers of spiritual religion. In all ages and countries the outward has been tending to prevail over
the inward, the Law over the Gospel, the local and
temporal over the spiritual and eternal. The world
takes the place of the Church, or rather the Church
becomes a new world, an earthly kingdom, a system
of discipline and government, in which the old foes
appear under new names, and ambition and avarice
are as rife as in kingdoms of the world. Then comes
an individual conscious of a mission from on high, and
seeks to restore the lost purity of religion, such as
St. Bernard, the reformer of the Monastic Orders,
or John Huss and Savonarola, the forerunners of the
Reformation, or Luther in the century that followed,
or at a later time our own John Wesley. Then a voice
is heard in Europe saying: ‘Let us have no more
penances or indulgences or priestly absolution or
So we might translate into modern language the first chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah.
‘To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?’ saith the Lord, ‘I am full of the burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts. Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination to me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.’ ‘Your hands are full of blood.’ ‘Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgement, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. 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.’ This is the very spirit of prophecy, and the spirit of true religion, that we should cease to do evil and learn to do well, that we should not only repent but bring forth fruits meet for repentance, that we should make clean not that which is without, but that which is within, that is to say the heart and conscience of men.
And ever and anon the prophet looks forward to
And now, leaving the Jewish prophets, I will briefly
consider the second head concerning which I proposed
to speak: ‘whether anything akin to the spirit of
prophecy can exist among ourselves. For naturally
we think of the prophet as an extraordinary man,
gifted with strange powers of language and insight.
For in all true religion or philosophy there must be a willingness to resist the evil customs of men, whether in the church or in the world, an insight which enables individuals to see through them, and a courage which will fight against them even though they may be a part of the established order of society in which we live. He who is independent in thought and mind, who knows no other rule but the divine law, who habitually thinks of the world and of himself and other men, of the ranks of society, of the opinions of parties, of the trifles of fashion, as they appear in the sight of God, he who in politics knows no other principles but truth and right, and is confident that amid all appearances to the contrary they must triumph at the last, has in him the spirit of a prophet.
Again, in all true religion there must be a zeal
against hypocrisy and oppression, on behalf of humanity and justice; and if the fire burns within
a man he must at last speak with his tongue. He
who cannot remain silent when any injustice is being
done, who feels irresistibly impelled, perhaps in ordinary conversation, to lift up his voice against some
pernicious or immoral sentiment; who, when other
men are struggling in some cause of justice or
Once more, in all religion, at least in any deeper
kind of religion, there must be isolation from the
world, that we may be alone with God. The religious thinker or teacher is no longer liable to be
persecuted for his opinions, he is not like the olden
prophets wandering about in sheep skins and goat
skins; yet any man who thinks or feels deeply is
always liable to find himself more or less estranged
from his fellow men. They cannot enter into his
thoughts, nor can he join always in their trivial and
passing interests. Like the prophet he has to go
into the wilderness that he may be alone with God.
And through God he is brought back to his fellowmen with higher motives and aspirations for their
good; he feels them to be his brethren, and is bound
to them, not merely by earthly ties of family or friend
ship, but by a Divine love for them because they are
God’s creatures, to whom he is bound to impart the
truth which he knows and every other good gift
which he has received. He who is thus reunited in
Lastly, my brethren, all things in this world are so
imperfect that it sometimes seems as if the promises
of the future were never realized. Many form ideals
in youth—for that is the time of hope and prophecy;
and at forty or fifty, when they see that their ideals
were not attainable, they lose faith and heart, because
they appear to have failed. Even those who have
succeeded to the utmost in the worldly sense of success will sometimes tell us how small the whole result
is—‘Vanity of vanities’: a few years spent in education,
a few years in preparation for a profession, a few
years of disappointment or of brilliant success and
fortune, and then the end: such is the life of man.
But all this is no reason for relinquishing our ideals,
or imagining that we have been mocked by them.
They have been the best, the eternal part of our lives,
and are not to be deemed failures because they have
been only partially realized. For without them human
life would be lowered, and we ourselves and men in
general would be sensibly degraded. They are not
failures, but efforts after perfection, necessarily involving some degree of imperfection. If ever the
HOW CAN THIS MAN GIVE US HIS FLESH TO EAT?
IT IS THE SPIRIT THAT QUICKEN ETH; THE FLESH PROFITETH NOTHING: THE WORDS THAT I SPEAK UNTO YOU, THEY ARE SPIRIT, AND THEY ARE LIFE.
THE sayings of our Lord seem to have been often
misunderstood by those who heard Him. When He
spoke to them of eating His flesh and drinking His
blood, they either scoffingly said, or really imagined,
that He was going to give them His flesh to eat; at
least, such is the impression conveyed in the narrative of St. John. When He told the woman of
Samaria of the water of life, her thought reverted only
to the water of the well of Jacob, which she and others
were drawing for daily use: when He cautioned His
disciples against the leaven of the Pharisees, they supposed that He was referring to the leaven of bread;
when He urged upon Nicodemus the necessity of
being born again, the ‘Master of Israel’ was puzzled
The words originally narrated and figuratively applied in the Gospel of St. John, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again,’ are afterwards repeated again in the other three Gospels at the trial before the chief priests, and are taken by the witnesses in the literal meaning. Many other sayings were evidently misunderstood by those who heard them; and for this reason among others, many, or rather I should say, perhaps the greater part of them, have perished.
And not only during the life of Christ have His sayings been misunderstood, or wilfully misinterpreted,
but in a still greater degree in later ages of the Church.
One age after another has added to them, until they
Two or three words are a little instrument with which to stir
an age, and yet the world has been stirred by them—such words, for example, as
‘Believe on Me,’ or ‘We are justified by faith without the works of the law.’
And then they have soon become a form again, and have no longer found the
answering note in the heart of man; because, instead of interpreting them
naturally, mankind have brought to the interpretation of them their own
impressions or the tendencies of their age or Church or their party in the
Church, or the authority of some Father or favourite teacher; or they have
overlaid the New Testament with the Old, or gone back from the spirit to the
letter. If any tenet has previously taken possession of their minds, they have
found in some oriental figure, some chance coincidence, some remote analogy, the
assurance of that which they had always determined to believe. I propose to
consider in this sermon a subject about which there has been almost more
misrepresentation of these simple words of Scripture than about any other, the
Communion of the Lord’s
In every Christian congregation there are a few to whom the participation in the Communion is the life or centre of their religious being; while the greater number (and there may be among them many who are equally the followers of Christ), either from awe or shyness, or the fear of unreality, or from their sense of the great change which has been made in the nature of the act, appear to be unable or unwilling to fulfil the last request of Christ, ‘Do this in remembrance of Me.’
The words ‘This is My Body,’ ‘This is My Blood,’ have occasioned controversies and speculation such as no metaphysician can ever explain. Who can tell us the difference between transubstantiation and consubstantiation unless he can first analyse the meaning of the words ‘substance’? Who can give the faintest conception of a real presence, or a real spiritual presence of a divine nature in a material object?
Behold! He is present everywhere, and especially
Owing to a corruption, beginning you can hardly say when, in an excess of religious feeling, the moral character of religion is lost; and the Sacrament, instead of being the simple bond which unites Christians to their brethren and to Christ, becomes the bond of a great ecclesiastical power.
Some persons may be inclined to feel angry or aggrieved at the plainness of these statements; and certainly we should do injustice to the maintainers of these views (of whom there seem to be many among the clergy of our own Church) if we did not admit that there was another side to them.
In tracing the decline of good into evil we should
(2) And now I will leave the history of the past and the controversies of the present, and try to consider this Communion of the Lord’s Supper in a simpler manner. If a father on his deathbed had told his sons to meet together on a certain day of the year at a feast, and to remember him, and to think that he was present with them, how strange would their conduct appear if, after a year or two, they fell to disputing about the nature of this feast, or the meaning of their father in desiring that they should remember him and that they should think of him as present with them! Should we not tell them that they ought to interpret his words naturally, the simple words literally, the figure of speech after the manner of figures of speech? Or if a dying person had left us a ring to be a memorial of him, should we ever think of discussing how the ring recalled him to our memory? No more need we discuss at length how the Communion of the Lord’s Supper reminds us of Christ.
And first of all we may note in passing (though a truism) that the Communion is not an end, but a means. ‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.’ And the end of this institution of Christ was not that we should go to the Communion as to some mystic rite, but that in this act we should find the natural expression of our love and remembrance of Him.
There seems to be no better explanation of the
To such a feast we are invited—I will not say to a feast of ideas, but to a feast of Christian thoughts and feelings, in which, if I may use such an expression, we indulge the higher elements of our nature, and seem to have a foretaste of heaven. And in this way the Sacraments adjust themselves to the rest of the Christian life. They are spiritual, and the thing signified by them is not necessarily connected with any external act. They are the parts of a whole from which they cannot safely be separated. They are the points or limits in which the Christian life is gathered up. But they are not the instruments by which any change is wrought in us. That can only be accomplished in rational beings by the Spirit of God working together with our spirits. To think other wise would be to disregard that which seems to lie deepest of all in the teaching of Christ and of St. Paul, deeper far than the institution of any ordinance, or the belief in any fact—the spiritual nature of religion.
And now I will speak of the feelings with which we
approach the Communion; and these I suppose will
vary considerably with the character and circumstances
of each individual. In all devotion there is a common
element, but there is also a private part, in which
the mind of each one wanders over the mazes of time,
and the secret history of his own life, and the thousand
things concerning him which are known to himself
only and to God. And, as we recognize our universal
And, first of all, we seem to feel at the Communion
that we are passing into the presence of God, and
laying before Him our lives and actions. That which
always is a fact we solemnly and distinctly acknowledge. We say to Him and to ourselves,
‘There is
not a word in our tongue or a thought in our hearts,
but Thou, O Lord, knowest it altogether’; or again, ‘Oh cleanse Thou me from secret faults, let them not
have the dominion over me.’ And, knowing that He
sees all things, we try to speak to Him as truly and
simply as we can, not excusing nor yet accusing ourselves more than we ought, nor using the unreal
words of momentary feeling, but beseeching Him to
guide us in the main purpose of our lives, that our
work may also be His work, and that we may fulfil
His will upon earth,—‘Not my will, but Thine, be
done.’ And, although God is at an infinite distance
from us, and we are lost in the contemplation of Him,
yet we know also that, like ourselves, He is a rational
Being, a Divine Reason, in whom all our highest
thoughts and feelings find a response. And the sense
of communion with Him is not to lay us prostrate
before Him, grovelling in the dust as before some
eastern potentate who is only half governed by the
dictates of truth and justice; but to raise us up and
ennoble us, and awaken in us a sense of the higher
A man is not less but more of a man because he rests upon God. And a man is not less but more of a man because he knows himself and can make a true estimate of himself. Even the man of the world will acknowledge this; and true Christian manhood seems to require that we should look ourselves steadily in the face, remembering our sins, not extenuating our faults, nor yet over excited or depressed by them, but making this consciousness of what we truly are the foundation of a higher life in us. This is the sort of consciousness which we desire to carry into the presence of God, beseeching Him to strengthen the good and to purge away the bad in us, that before our life in this world ends we may be fitted for another.
And this, again, is a thought which naturally recurs to us at the Communion, or whenever we think of God, that He alone is able to support us in the hour of death. Over all the accidents of life, and the fears of our hearts, and the difficulties of our own characters, and the remembrances of shame and pain, and the uncertainties of human things shaking like leaves in the wind, there is One who remains immovable, who is our Friend and Father; and in that thought we have peace and strength.
Secondly, there is present with us at the Communion the image of the life of Christ as He appeared
Lastly, we carry to the Communion many private thoughts and
many personal and solemn recollections. There are sins of which we have been
guilty which
we are not bound to confess to others, but which
we are bound to place distinctly before ourselves and
God, lest our moral sense should become impaired
by them, and our nature lowered and degraded. One
of the uses of solemn occasions is that they lead us
to place the requirements of God side by side with
our own actions; they startle us out of sleep; they
make us compare our own life with that of Christ,
our lot with that of our poorer brethren, and they
teach us to feel that for all our blessings and advantages we have to render an account to God. And,
besides the remembrance of our sins, there are many
other thoughts which we may fitly bring with us into
the presence of God. There is the recollection of our
past lives, with their strange tissue of good and evil,
in which we recognize the working of His power.
And once more, there are the dead, of whom we
know so little, and whom we would not have out of
our minds because they are removed from our sight.
We do not wish to indulge any fancies about them,
or imagine that they can be affected by our prayers
for them. But still it is natural to us sometimes to
think of them; we would not have those loved ones
altogether forgotten after many years have rolled
away, or be like strangers among us if they could
come back to earth. There is the fair child who was
taken from us ten, twenty, thirty years ago, the brother
who has left a blank which can never be replaced, the
youth who gave such promise of distinction cut off
before his prime, the mother whose love seemed never
IT DOTH NOT YET APPEAR WHAT WE SHALL BE.
THERE are some parts of religion which we are unable to verify by experience, and which seem to be on the uttermost limits of human knowledge. The deepest thoughts in the soul of a man are often those which he can neither define nor express. And some times we put them away from us lest they should disturb the balance of our lives, or we speak of them in reserved and conventional formulas, or we describe them in figures of speech or texts of Scripture which convey no meaning to our minds, or we allow imagination to wander and attribute a sort of inspiration to every feeling and fancy which plays around them, as matters long settled, proved by a thousand arguments, and laid upon the shelf, but not to be taken down or reconsidered.
In this way some of the first truths of religion, and
especially the two greatest of all, the nature of God
Teachers of religion have often spoken of the
resurrection under imagery derived from external
nature. The various transformations of the vegetable
or animal world, the birth of creatures, the chrysalis
that opens and spreads its wings in the sunlight, the
seed that is not quickened except it die, the sudden
burst of all nature into life in every recurring Spring,
have often been used both as symbols and evidences
of that greater change which, as we believe, will one
day pass over us all. Regarded as figures of speech
they have their use; and yet we must not press them
There is another way in which mankind have been
naturally led to think of another life—through the
influence of their own circumstances—‘I shall go to
him, but he shall not return to me.’ The spirits and
forms of the dead seem to hover around us and to be
about our bed and about our path, sometimes for a
shorter, sometimes for a longer period, after they have
been taken from us. Their kindness, their loveliness,
Nor, again, should I be disposed to rest the belief in
immortality on any past fact, once happening in the
course of the world’s history, for this reason: Some
one may point out to me that all past events necessarily
rest on testimony; he may show me discrepancies in
the narrative of the event; he may ask whether we
And the same persons may go on to ask, ‘Why should we trust to the lower sort of arguments, against which historical criticism and physical science in their present stage seem to combine, when we have other and higher ones? Why should we depend on evidences which are external, and have no connexion with our moral nature, which cannot be the same to all persons and in all ages and countries (for the uneducated, and in the East I may say whole nations, cannot understand the nature of historical evidence), when we have a truer and deeper witness, and nearer home, in our own reason and conscience?
Leaving, then, such associations and figures of speech, as only accidentally connected with our faith in immortality, let us consider the subject anew; first, in reference to the nature of God; secondly, in relation to ourselves; thirdly, in relation to our fellow-men.
1. We cannot think of immortality and not at the same time think of a Supreme Being; without Him we are like children cast forth to swim upon an illimitable ocean. Our strongest reason for believing in another life is our conviction that He is, and that He is perfectly just and true and good and wise. This is not a discovery of our own, revealed to us by any peculiar kind of light, but a truth common to all men, which almost all religions in all ages have been striving after, and which Christ our Lord came to teach us more clearly; to which the human race seems to be tending, with greater difficulties indeed from the very extent of the conception, and yet on deeper grounds, as the thoughts of men widen with the process of the suns. It is a truth towards which the world is growing amid some appearances to the contrary, under many names and in many forms, by revelation, without revelation; through Scripture, through nature, as order begins to appear out of disorder, as the mass of mankind become more agreed about the essentials of religion, as religion begins to be more and more identified with morality and morality with religion, as all nations acknowledge more and more that they are of one brotherhood and kindred.
But, if we believe in a perfect God, we must believe
that He wills all His creatures to participate in that
perfection which He Himself is. He is the centre and
we the outskirts of His kingdom, which He, like the
The answer is that we know in part, and that the
purposes of God towards mankind are as yet only
half revealed, or, in the Apostle’s language, ‘Now we
see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.’ We see the beginning, but not the end; neither can we
form any adequate conception of the manner in which
the divine nature works. Nothing in this world would
lead us to suppose that perfection would be a sudden
or random result; and, if proceeding only in due
course and order, then degrees of perfection necessarily
imply also degrees of imperfection. But, if God is
perfect, all these beginnings of things which we see
around us are one day to be completed. As our Saviour says, ‘The hairs of your
head are all numbered,’ and, ‘Not one sparrow falleth to the ground
but your heavenly Father knoweth it.’ We may
repeat after Him, ‘Not one human soul in the most
remote ages, in the most distant countries, which He
has not still in His hands.’ Not only the great men
of past ages, who are sometimes said metaphorically
to have an immortality of fame, still live; but the
meanest, the weakest, the poorest, and those who
were of no account in this world, are still alive, fulfilling the work which He called them into existence
to perform. This is involved in any conception of
God which represents Him as a moral being at all;
and to deny any part of this is to deny His moral
And, as our belief in another life is chiefly founded on our
belief in the existence of God, so our conception of the nature of that state is derived from our
conception of the divine. The Apostle says that ‘when
He appears we shall be like Him, for we shall see
Him as He is.’ This is that necessary use of metaphors of which I was speaking; for we know that in
outward form we cannot be like Him, who has no
form. But to be like Him is to be just as He is just,
to be true as He is true, to be loving as He is, to know
His will perfectly and to have no other will; to
become a sort of universal nature, if I may use such
a phrase, which has no touch of interest or selfishness,
but in everything regards others equally with self.
This is the highest form in which we can conceive of
another life, and is also the pattern or ideal we place
before ourselves in this—not to be always thinking
about God, for that may overstrain human faculties,
and may sometimes lend a fire to the evil that is in us
as well as to the good; but to be seeking to frame our
lives in His image, that we may bear in some degree
This or something like this is the idea which we are able to form of another state of being in which we shall do the will of God perfectly, and of which we see a trace or reflection in the lives of very few individuals in this world. We know very well, as I was saying at first, that these thoughts when put into words seem poor and meagre; they do not fill our minds with pleasant pictures, or strew the garden of the soul with flowers of paradise. The only way in which we can realize them is to live in them, to waken in ourselves the sense of a divine power which is the embodiment of justice and truth and love, and to think of this power as equally the Lord of this life and another. For as another life is inseparably connected with God, it is inseparably connected with this life also; and He is the source from which they are both derived, and the centre in which they meet.
And, as we speak or think of a perfect state of life
in which we shall be one with God and God with us,
so, guided by the same consideration of the divine
attributes, we may also think of imperfect states of
being—states of discipline and education, of struggle
and suffering, in which we are gradually prepared to
receive a higher nature; for most of us cannot think
ourselves worthy of eternal happiness, and as little,
perhaps, deserving of eternal misery. We see all
sorts of degrees of good and evil among men, and an
I have been speaking of a future state as immediately connected with our belief in God. This must always be the chief ground of our confidence in an invisible world. If we cannot believe that all live unto Him in this world, we shall have a doubtful and precarious hope of an existence beyond the grave.
2. There are two other aspects of the subject, however, which I was going to mention—our own experience, and the contemplation of our fellow-men.
The best things in life speak to us of immortality.
The best thoughts of our hearts, the best persons
whom we have known, especially among the poor,
the struggle against evil, the aspiration after good, the
disinterested desire to live above the world, to devote
ourselves to others, to know more about the truth and
about God, to be like Christ—these are a sort of forecast of a life to come. It is hardly possible to see
how these things could continue if there were no
hopes of another state of being. Human nature would
lose faith so entirely, and would settle down, if we die
as the brutes, into living like the brutes. I do not
mean that we should feel ourselves cheated of a reward,
for the more a man is absorbed in the performance of
duty the more the idea of reward takes the form of
a more perfect performance of his duty. But we
should feel ourselves so deeply discouraged, so broken
hearted, if there were no truth better than the truth of
this world, no justice higher than this justice, no love
purer than the love of this world, no higher state of
being to which we might look forward, if all is illusion
and we are really the playthings of nature and chance.
If we were once convinced of this, then we should feel
that we had better not live. For our highest thoughts
would only seem to mock us with the bitterness of
death. A great poet, who was also a philosopher, has
But there is another voice within us which tells us
not to lose faith in the goodness of God or in the
order of the world, for that these are the things of
which we are most certain, and of which we have the
evidence in ourselves. ‘If a man have the will to do
the works he shall know of the doctrine.’ The better
a man becomes, the less he has of doubt and fear, the
more he is at peace with himself, the more he is convinced of the final victory of good in the world, the
more willing he is, when his time comes, to surrender
himself into the hands of God. There may be a reason
for scepticism when a man is leading a careless, sensual, self-delusive life; then the higher sort of things
become obliterated in his mind, and he is willing to
take his chance. But when a man is day by day and
3. But, once more, there is another point of view
from which we realize a future life, the contemplation of
our fellow-men. It is a rational and right feeling that
we and such as we, who are met here together this
day, have many undeserved blessings—good food and
clothing, good health (at least most of us have), a good
position in life, the greatest of God’s gifts, education; a bright prospect of happiness and usefulness,
if we take the means to them. It is natural that we
should think of these things, sometimes asking ourselves that question of Scripture,
‘Who made thee to
differ from another?’ But what of others who have
not these, who are friendless and poor and have passed
their lives in misery; and some who have had no
opportunity of extricating themselves from vice and
degradation, to whom it is a mere mockery to say
that this life is a state of probation, for they have been
predestined from their birth to pauperism and crime?
Would not this world be the most unjust of worlds if
all is over with them? Go into the wards of a hospital
in which men and women are lying ill of incurable
diseases, or into the cells of a prison, or into a lunatic
And there is another kind of witness, which is borne
by the actions and wrongs of good and great men,
having this hope and faith in them, who have devoted
their whole lives to the good of their fellow-creatures.
When they have died for them, when they have
renounced all that men usually most desire, fame,
wealth, earthly happiness, for the interests of knowledge, for the improvement of mankind, for the love
of Christ, has all that been a mistake? and have the
best of men been after all the most mistaken? There
have been some in past times who have perished at
the stake; there have been those in our own day who
have gone down in a ship to save the lives of others.
Did the waves close over them for ever? If so, (I hardly
like to ask the question) is not the life of Christ,
Like the Apostle, we feel that God has not been deceiving us in all this, and that Christ was not uttering unmeaning words. And, although He has not allowed us to enter within the veil, yet He has given witnesses and assurances enough to guide our footsteps in this world, and to support us in the valley of death. We do not sorrow, when we commit our beloved ones to the tomb, as though we were without hope, knowing that we are giving them back to God from whom they came, and looking forward to the time of our own departure. We say from our inmost souls, ‘Let me die the death of the righteous and let my last end be like his.’ And, when that hour comes, though, considering the imperfect nature of our lives and the darkness that partly encircles us, we may not have such rapturous anticipations as have been ascribed to some of the saints of old, we still pray that we may be able to say in faith, ‘Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.’
IRON SHARPENETH IRON; SO A MAN SHARPENETH THE COUNTENANCE OF HIS FRIEND.
THERE are many things said about friendship in
Scripture, and some touching examples of the fidelity
of friends. ‘A friend loveth at all times,’ and ‘There
is one that sticketh closer than a brother,’ are two
sayings about friendship which occur in the Book of
Proverbs. Another is ‘Faithful are the wounds of
a friend,’ which means that his reproofs are true and
upright, and proceed from the love of his soul; they
are the contrary of those ‘precious balms’ which are
said to break the head. ‘He that repeateth a matter
separateth friends,’ is a maxim of which the proof lies
within the experience of all of us. ‘Sweet language
will multiply friends’ may be compared with the more
familiar proverb, ‘A soft answer turneth away wrath.’ ‘He that hath friends must show himself friendly,’ that is, he must be kindly and sociable, he must
talk to his friends and show them sympathy, or the
springs of friendship will soon be dried up in them. ‘A faithful friend is the medicine of life’; he is the
medicine, and also the physician, who heals the wounds
These are quaint utterances of Eastern wisdom more
than two thousand years old; and yet they have a living
voice, and speak to modern society as much as to the
Israelites of old. Whoever was the author of them
had a profound insight into the nature of man. And
there are not only sayings of this kind, but there are
also striking and typical examples in Scripture of
personal attachments, such as that noble one of David
and Jonathan, the two men who seemed destined
almost necessarily and by the nature of the case to be
enemies of one another; yet at first sight, as we are
told, Jonathan ‘loved him as his own soul.’ No cloud
of envy intercepted his admiration of the great warrior, the sweet singer of Israel, who hereafter was to
supersede him in the kingdom. Many persons can
regard with equanimity the rise of a rival who is still
a little inferior to them. But it is only a generous
mind which can feel admiration of a superior, equal
in years or younger, without any alloy of jealousy.
Jonathan was persuaded that he was not to succeed to
the throne of his father, but he was content to take
the second place—‘Thou shalt be king over Israel, and
I shall be next unto thee.’ And, of all the persons at
Saul’s court, the man whom he was destined to supplant was the only one whom David trusted. There
is no more touching scene than the last farewell of
Remember again the deep and earnest affection of the two women, Ruth and Naomi, though of different country and origin: ‘Whither thou goest I will go, where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried. The Lord do so unto me and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.’
Turning to the New Testament, we find that St. Paul had his younger friend Timotheus, who, ‘like a son with a father, laboured with him in the Gospel’; and that our Saviour Christ, though His thoughts were not as our thoughts, was the friend of Lazarus, and of Martha and Mary, in whose home He sat at meat; that He ‘called His disciples friends,’ adding the reason ‘because He had told them all that He had heard of the Father,’ just as men tell their whole mind to their friends; and that, although He loved all His disciples, yet among them there was one who is called the ‘beloved disciple,’ who also ‘leaned on His breast at supper.’
If, passing from Scripture, we proceed to classical
literature, we see that friendship has a great part
both in the government of States and in the lives of
individuals; it is an aspect of politics, and of human
Our great dramatist again has provided us with several types of friendship. Most of us will remember the parting of the two friends, when the one who had so much need to feel anxiety about his own concerns can think only of his love for his friend:
Or the well-known passage in Hamlet, beginning:
And
Or the adieu of the prating old man of the world, whose maxims seem to be so far above his character:
Or again:
In another great play, ‘Julius Cæsar,’ there is a description of a quarrel between two friends, both of whom are cast in a larger mould than ordinary men, the one so passionate and restless, the other so just and immovable, between whom angry words pass until their deeper love is called forth by the over powering sorrow of one of them. These are types or models, which I venture to cite by way of preface, because they illustrate the subject of which I am about to speak this morning.
In youth, when life is first opening upon us, we
easily form friendships; then, to be with our equals
at school or college, in any new beginning of life,
but let him be ambitious of knowing those who are a little above him, not in worldly position, but in ability, in force of character, in goodness.
The memory of that first opening of life will be
imprinted on our minds as long as we have the recollection of anything; far more (and indeed it is really
more important) than any similar period of life
which is to follow. The pleasant days of youth
Remembering these things as they affect us all, I propose to speak to you to-day of friendship, its nature and value, its dangers and disappointments, its joys and sorrows; and then I shall say a few words of Christian friendship, which, in uniting us to a friend, at the same time unites us to Christ and God.
In speaking of the opportunity of forming friend
ships which youth possesses, I do not mean to say that
we can acquire friends exactly as we please. Friend
ships are not made, but grow out of similarity of
tastes, out of mutual respect, from the discovery of
some hitherto unsuspected vein of sympathy: they
depend also on our powers of inspiring friendship in
others. Two men meet and talk together, and at
once they seem to understand one another: they may
differ in character, but they have also something in
common which gives them an extraordinary regard
And, first, let me speak of the character of true
friendship. It should be simple, manly, unreserved,
not weak, or fond, or extravagant, nor yet exacting
more than human nature can fairly give (for there are
other ties which bind men to one another besides
friendship); nor again intrusive into the secrets of
another’s soul, or curious about his circumstances;
rejoicing in the presence of a friend, and not forgetting
him in his absence. It should be easy too and cheerful, careful of little things, but having also a sort of
The ancients spoke of three kinds of friendship:
one for the sake of the useful, another for the sake of
the pleasant, a third for the sake of the good and
noble. The first is a contradiction in terms, for no
man can be the friend of another with a view to his
own interests; this is a partnership and not a friend
ship. A sensitive and honourable mind will rather
fear lest some indirect advantage may impair the
But let us now consider further, whether, in ancient
phraseology, there may not be a friendship for the
sake of the noble and the good. Men are dependent
beings, and we cannot fail to see how much more,
when acting together, they may do for the elevation
of one another’s characters, and for the improvement
of mankind. Thus friendship becomes fellow service
in daily work; perhaps in the management of a
school, or a college, or an office; and, when there is
no such connexion, at any rate a sympathy about all
the higher objects in which the friends take an interest. They seek to impart to one another the best
which they have; they inspire one another with high
and noble thoughts; they may sometimes rejoice
But this is an ideal of friendship which is rarely
attained in this world. Like the other goods of life,
friendship is commonly mixed and imperfect, and
liable to be interrupted by the changing circumstances
or tempers of men. Few, comparatively, have the
same friends in youth and age, unless bound to them
by the tie of relationship. Some of our youthful
friendships are too violent to last; they have in them
Lastly, I proposed to speak to you of Christian
friendship, which is another aspect of the ideal
friendship, though in some respects different. For
the spirit of a man’s life may be more or less consciously Christian. That which others regard as the
service of man, he may recognize to be the service of
But in some respects Christian friendship is not
merely the religious aspect of the ideal of the ancients:
it is also different. For it is not merely the friend
ship of equals, but of unequals; the love of the weak
and of those who can make no return, like the love of
God towards the unthankful and the evil. Perhaps
for this reason it is less personal and individual, and
more diffused towards all men. It is not a friendship
of one or two, but of many. Again, it proceeds
from a different rule—‘Love your enemies.’ It is
founded upon that charity which ‘beareth all things,
believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all
things.’ Such a friendship we may be hardly able to
reconcile with our own character, or with common
prudence. Yet nothing short of this is the Christian
ideal which is set before us in the Gospel. And here
and there may be found a person who has been
inspired to carry it out in practice. I will tell you
an anecdote which has lately come within my own
knowledge. Two friends had been warmly attached
to one another for many years, when one of them
began to lose his reason. The malady, as is not uncommonly the case in these singular visitations, showed
itself in extreme hatred and abuse of his former
friend. The other took him into his family, and
succeeded in restoring him to the world, after a few
Lastly, some among us have known what it is to
lose a friend. There are many reflections suggested
to our minds by such a recollection. Death is a great
teacher; the death of others, as well as the thought of
our own, teaches us many things which we have imperfectly realized in life. Who that has lost a friend
would not wish to have done more for him now that
he is taken from us? How little should we have
regarded any cause of offence which he had given us,
if we had known that he was so soon to leave us!
We recall the scenes in which we were accustomed to
meet him; we remember the books which he loved;
we treasure up the words which we shall hear no more.
And where is he? Most of us have in our mind’s eye some one no longer living, about whom we feel
a peculiar interest. It may be an elder friend, who
first drew us out, and taught us to have confidence in
ourselves; or a youth of our own age who set us an
example of a higher kind of life; or some sweet face
may be recalled to us upon which parents and loving
friends were accustomed to gaze ‘as upon the face of
an angel’; of one whose gentle ways we knew, and
who still seems to linger among us. Or we may be
reminded of the venerable presence of some aged
man, with whom we used to sit and talk of times
past, whose kindness and charitable judgement of his
NOT SLOTHFUL IN BUSINESS, FERVENT INSPIRIT. SERVING THE LORD.—τῇ σπουδῇ μὴ ὀκνηροί, τῷ πνεύματι, ζέοντες, τῷ Κυρίῳ δουλεύοντες·
THE latter clause of this verse is remarkable for a various reading older than any of our ancient Greek MSS., and widely spread in the oldest Latin copies. Instead of “serving the Lord,” there were some in the time of Jerome, and probably even of Cyprian, who read “serving the time,” not κυριῷ but καιρῷ. I may remark in passing that the difference of writing would be very slight, for both words would be contracted, and the first, κυριῷ, would be spelt in the ancient MSS. with two letters, having a line written over them, and the second, καιρῷ, with three.
The first of these two readings, that which is
followed in the English Version, is supported by nine-tenths of the most ancient authorities, the second by
not more than one-tenth. Yet this preponderance of
authorities is not wholly decisive, for there are
passages of the New Testament in which an almost
universal consensus of MSS., Fathers and versions is
certainly mistaken, as in the well-known words of
Let us repeat the text once more in its connection, and ask of ourselves the question, Which is the more natural reading? “Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love, in honour preferring one another.
“Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.
“Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing instant in prayer.”
Which agrees best with the general sense, “serving the time” or “serving the Lord”?
The first appears at first sight not to be a precept
So ancient an error, however, is not to be hastily set
aside like the chance miswriting of a copyist. It is
interesting and instructive to trace its probable origin
in the writings of the Fathers who have preserved it.
They stumbled, as we do, at the words, “serving the
Lord.” “Why,” they asked themselves, “amid so many particular precepts should
this general one, which includes them all, be inserted?” “Diligence,” “Hope,” “Patience,” are Christian virtues, but why
add to these the whole sum of Christian duty—“Serving the Lord”? It is like adding an eleventh
And there is another reason why this objection, though a very natural one, is not well founded: for in many passages of the Epistles the particular is inter mingled with the general; and when there appears to be logical order and arrangement, out of place, according to our ideas of style, there comes in some sacred but familiar thought, such as the love of Christ, or the service of God, which seem to the Apostle as though they could never be inopportune, because his mind is filled with them.
I have dwelt thus far upon the letter of the text
because several principles both of textual criticism
and of interpretation may be illustrated from it. First,
there is the great principle of all, that the text of the
New Testament must be based on the earliest MS.
and versions, and on citations of the oldest Fathers; a
principle in which critics of every school of theology
may be said to be now agreed. Secondly, where
these external authorities all err, as they very rarely
do, or when they are divided, as is not unfrequently
And now, leaving this question of the text, let us
proceed to the general subject. I will not stop to
inquire whether the first words, “Diligent in business,”
are quite correctly translated—they are more intelligible, at any rate, than the Revised Version,
“In
diligence not slothful,” and are a fair equivalent for
the Greek. Even if there be a slight inaccuracy, the
same meaning is to be found in many other passages
of which the translation is undisputed. On this
familiar expression, “Not slothful in business,” then
I propose to hang the consideration of our future lives.
What profession or calling in life are we thinking
of? Which are best suited to our own characters?
The days of our youth are pleasant they pass
unheeded by—and our University career comes to an
end before we are well aware. At its conclusion we
should not be helpless and feeble, now entertaining
one fancy, now another, with a good deal of pain and
anxiety to ourselves. But we should have a definite
plan of life based upon the best knowledge and advice
which we can obtain, as well as upon our own
experience. It is a great step which we shall one day
make from the University, which is a kind of home to
us, into the outer world, and it should be firm and
decisive, long considered by us; it is the final step
from youth to manhood; we should see the way clearly
before us, and there should be no looking back; we
should have courage and energy. We should not
stand shivering in the cold before we take the plunge.
The text speaks of diligence in business. I will begin
by asking, What are the qualities which make a good
man of business? We may divide them into the
qualities which are concerned with things, and the
qualities which are concerned with persons. There
is the clear and faultless handwriting, the neat and
Most young men are desirous of achieving independence or distinction, of not being a burden to their families, of accomplishing some good work in the day and generation. But few comparatively are aware of the qualities upon which success depends; of the defects of character which render it impossible. There are some faults which pass unnoticed in youth, for affection is not very critical, and there is no one to tell us of them in later life. Some men are always wondering why others succeed, why they are doomed to failure and disappointment. They complain of the times, of the want of opportunities, of the indifference of friends, of the overcrowding of professions, of the injustice of the world, not seeing that the manly and courageous spirit makes opportunities for itself, and asks for no help but its own. If they are married they drag down others with them; their life is not the less a tragedy because it is so very commonplace; until in the final scene the pathetic words of the poet are realised:—
Now, one of the principal causes of these miserable
failures in life is the want of habits of business. A
Some qualifications such as I have described are
First, then, let me speak to you of the law, which seems to
require the greatest effort and ability, and is generally supposed to offer the
highest rewards. No one should choose such a profession who has not considerable vigour both of body and mind; who has not
the gift of accuracy and the power of mastering facts;
who cannot see his way clearly through an argument.
These qualities must either be implanted in us by
nature, or we must acquire them. Nothing is more
adverse to legal study than what may be called the
slovenly habit of mind which is sometimes found even
in intelligent people—the habit of mind which knows
nothing correctly, which remembers nothing distinctly,
which cannot be depended on to state a fact truly, or
He must not dissolve the law in dreams of his own imagination, nor can he always reduce its necessary technicalities to the rules of common sense. He can not succeed by any mere trick of speech, nor can he ever be a lawyer worthy the name without very great and continuous labour. His first principles are not general ideas of morality or of politics; they are based on a profound study of his own subject. Ignorant persons often scoff at him just because they do not understand this unavoidable complexity of human affairs; he is striving, as far as it is possible, to reduce them to rules; that in this labyrinth of the world man kind may with some degree of certainty be able to know and apply the law under which they live. He has to dwell in the “dry light” of absolute impartiality, to be on his guard against any motive or mental tendency which may interfere with his judgment the love of paradox, his own ingenuity, the habit of anticipating a conclusion. He will wait until all the facts are sifted, and all the provisions of the law clearly present to his mind.
We can easily perceive that in such a profession
there are many noble elements of intellectual
training. The refinements of art, the attractions of
poetry, are wanting, but there is a manly lesson to be
learned in it. The lawyer passes his days and nights
in the search after truth and fact. And there are
moral qualities which are drawn out by it, such as
courage and perseverance. Probably most persons
who deserve to succeed do in the long run attain
success, but there are often many years of waiting and
discouragement. He who enters on such a profession
must expect trials of this sort, and must resolve not to
give way under them. If he has a real interest in his
study, and his mind does not lose its energy, he will
not regret that time has been allowed him for deeper
study. Nothing shows the character of a man more
than the right use of opportunities when he is left to
himself and is his own master. And his first care will
be to employ to the utmost the period of his student
life; for in law, as in other things, what is not learned
at the right time is rarely learned afterwards. Next,
those long years of waiting will be matter of thought
and consideration—how can he turn them to the best
account, not losing heart or allowing himself to be
diverted into flowery paths, but laying in them the
foundations of future eminence. These are the
thoughts with which a man should enter upon the
profession of the law; hopeful with the kind of hope
which a man has who is commencing a long and
As success begins to shine upon his path he will
seek to show in his career the virtues which are, or
ought to be, characteristic of his profession—independence, fairness of mind, dignity, honesty of
purpose, loyalty in the cause of his client He knows
that there is a higher as well as a lower spirit in which
a cause may be conducted. He will feel that litigation is one of the greatest of
evils, and will seek by every means in his power to prevent it. Here, as in many
other ways there is abundant opportunity for proving that he can set other
things above his own interests. And as he gains influence, he may, perhaps, be
able to aid in improvements of the law, which must be known first before it can
be reformed. There is no greater blessing to a country than clear and simple
laws, but this is a blessing which can never be attained unless great lawyers
are prepared to devote their minds and lives to such a task. This is the ideal
which those who are apt to think the profession of the law worldly or selfish
may be invited to lay before themselves, and which another generation may
possibly see realised. It is a strange story of the philosopher-lawyer about a
hundred years ago, who was so profoundly struck by the injustice of the law in
the cause which was his first brief that he renounced, once and for ever, the
practice of his profession. To that act and to that life—certainly not
Once more let me come back to the young student
of law, and ask him whether he, too, amid the diligent
study of his profession, may not find some other
interest which he can embrace with it? In all large
cities there are duties to be performed which are best
It has become a commonplace of English political writers to lament the want of local self-government. What does this mean but the want of that public spirit in educated men which is willing to spend time and take pains about small and disagreeable matters?
Side by side with the life of the lawyer we will now
place that of the clergyman, which has its trials, too,
especially in the present age, and its blessings, and its
temptations, and its effects on the mind and character.
Two College friends parting company when they
leave the University, the one taking holy orders, the
other going to the Bar, will have very different
experiences of life. If we could suppose them meeting again after an absence of thirty years, how deeply
marked each would see in the other the lineaments of
their respective professions. They would go back to
the days of their youth—the days which they passed
at the University—the old stories and other recollections would have a never-dying charm for them; but
still, for the most part, they would find that they were
living in worlds apart. In many respects the
Its motto should be like the motto of Christ
Himself, “He went about doing good.” In this one
Such is, or ought to be, the life of a Christian
minister—the life to which those of us who desire to
be clergymen should aspire. Do we doubt that in a
generation any parish, even the roughest, would yield
to the influence of such a character, or that in a few
years it might become civilised, humanised,
Christianised? Great original powers might find a
work in accomplishing this result; it might also be
effected by a person of, very moderate intellectual
gifts. The genuine love of mankind, and the pity
which is engendered by love and the natural pain
One of the chief sources of a minister’s influence,
and one of his chief means of usefulness, is preaching.
Yet many a man is averse to taking upon himself the
clerical office because he is, or fancies he is, ill-adapted
for the performance of this duty. He is not literary,
he is not eloquent; how can he be qualified to teach
And this leads me to touch upon another
characteristic of the clergyman’s profession which may
be a great good and may be a great evil to him; he is
required to maintain the appearance of goodness and
virtue. It may be a great good to him, for the necessity of maintaining the appearance may lead him also
to the reality, and the standard which he preaches
may become the rule of his own feeling. We can
easily imagine a person shocked at the thought day
after day of saying one thing and doing another; or,
unconsciously to himself, his words and actions may
diverge. With the language of religion on his lips he
may have been leading a worldly or immoral life Not
even upon his death-bed, perhaps, does he wake up to
a recognition of his true state. This, I think, must be
admitted to be the great temptation to which the
There are some other points in which the minister of the Gospel would do well to hear what the world has to say of him. First, I may mention that minor, but still very serious, fault of which I spoke at the commencement of this sermon, the want of habits of business. The management of a parish is a great business, which requires method and order; the clergyman or minister of a congregation ought to be an example to his flock of the manner in which business should be conducted. And it is not always easy to reconcile a zeal for the moral improvement of mankind with a punctual attention to detail. The charities of a parish, if they are to do good and not harm, require a very precise and strict administration. To the kindness which wins the hearts of men he should add the strong good sense which is not afraid to say “No” where the relief of physical evil is likely to create moral degradation.
Another error is of a deeper sort, having a natural
root in the history and traditions of a great institution
In conclusion, let me return once more to the words
of the text, taking them in connection with the
IF THEY HEAR NOT MOSES AND THE PROPHETS, NEITHER WILL THEY BE PERSUADED THOUGH ONE ROSE FROM THE DEAD.
THE teaching of Christ is always recalling us from
the letter to the spirit, from the outward to the
inward, from the narrower to the wider view of the
Divine nature. He reveals to us what everybody in
their secret soul acknowledges to be the truth; He
reminds us of what we are always forgetting; He appeals to principles which are old as well as new; He
seeks to restore us to ourselves and to God What
can be more simple, or of more universal application,
than the words, “Believe,” “Repent,” “Do as ye
would that men should do unto you,” “Love your
enemies,” “Be pure in thought as well as in act,”
which is the high argument of the Sermon on the
Mount? “Not that which goeth into a man defileth a
man.” “God is a spirit, and they that worship Him
must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” “The hour
is coming when neither in Jerusalem nor yet in this
This is the religion of Christ; not the religion consistently taught by any section of the Christian
Church, nor practised by any considerable number of
Christians. But it is the religion in which Christ lived
and died—the religion of a person whom we believe
to be Divine. No one will say that the words just
quoted contain only a vague Deism, or that any other
words of Christ or of His disciples more truly represent the character of His teaching. They make no
claim to literary excellence; some of them are taken
from the Jewish prophets; a few probably may be
detected in contemporary Rabbinical writings. Yet
they have a power of touching the heart which is
possessed by no other words. They seem to begin
As men are always tending to put the letter of
religion in the place of the spirit, so they are always
tending to put the outward evidences of religion in
the place of the inward In the last century it was
generally maintained by English theologians that the
Christian religion rested on the evidence of miracles.
This is the argument which Paley has summed up in
two famous propositions. But is this the teaching of
Christ Himself? Does He not rather lead us back
from the extraordinary to the ordinary, from the
supernatural to the common? “Except ye see signs
and wonders ye will not believe.” This is a proof not
of their faith, but of their want of faith. The lessons
which He draws from nature are of another sort. “Behold the lilies of the field: they toil not, neither
do they spin”; and “He maketh His sun to rise upon
the evil and upon the good, and giveth rain upon the
So simple is the religion of Christ: it might be
summed up in the saying, “He went about doing
good,” and bidding us be like Him. He does not
place Himself at a distance from us; He rather seeks
to create in us the feeling that, equally with Himself,
we are the sons of God. He speaks to us of His
faith and our faith, of His God and our God. If we
would confine the Christian faith to the spirit and
words of Christ, there would be an almost universal
agreement about it. We should have no need of
apologies and defences; for the words of Christ would
be their own witness, and the witness of the human
heart would confirm them. The difficulties which present themselves to our minds seem never to have
occurred to the writers of the Gospel; they are not
perplexed about the truth of the accounts, or the
The essentials of Christianity remain the same, “Yesterday, to-day, and for ever.” Yet, from
another point of view, the Christian religion appears
to have been always changing, not merely in forms of
worship and government, but in spirit and doctrine.
The Nicene Church is not the same as the Church of
the Apostles; nor the Catholic as the Nicene, nor the
Protestant as the Catholic. So that if we could
imagine a single individual living from the Christian
era until now, he would have been, not of one religion,
but of several, and several times over would have anathematised and excommunicated himself. Already
within three centuries after the death of Christ there
were pages of Christian history written in crime and
in blood. So quickly had the Christian world de
parted from the simple faith of Christ. And the
contrast between the teaching of Christ and the
development of it is not less startling when regarded
from within than from without. What connection is
there between the religion of Him who said, “Suffer
little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not,”
and of those who maintained that unbaptised infants,
without doubt, perish everlastingly? or between Him
who said of one who was not His follower, “Forbid
him not,” and those who would confine salvation to
Between the fourth and the sixteenth century the
Christian Church underwent greater and greater
changes. New ideas arose, new powers were claimed,
new battles were fought between the Church and the
world, in which the right was not all on one side, but
the Church, too, might be found struggling in the
name of Christ against Himself. There were wonderful lives of saints and kings, who, by their faith and
power, changed the face of countries, and may be
truly reckoned among the benefactors of mankind.
Yet even in the lives of these men we seem to trace
something not in harmony with the spirit of Christ.
Their zeal and courage could hardly be exceeded, but
they lack the reasonableness, the charity, the moderation of our blessed Lord. Then came the great moral
earthquake of the Reformation, which threatened
utterly to destroy the ancient faith. In one generation
And yet we know that before the close of that
century which gave birth to the Reformation, the tide
had already turned and was sweeping in the opposite
direction. The slumbering past of mediævalism in
alliance with a sort of spurious classicalism again
awoke, and nearly half the ground gained by the Re
formers was recovered by the Roman Catholic
Church. Education passed into the hands of their
opponents; churches in a new style of architecture
covered the land; in all the cities of Europe to this
day are found the traces of that remarkable order,
And we ourselves, who have been watching the progress of events during the last thirty or forty years,
have had experience of changes of opinion which
would have been thought incredible a century ago.
Many of us can remember the evangelical homes in
which we were brought up, and still retain a feeling
of gratitude and reverence towards good and simple
persons, who first taught us the elements of religious
truth. And we can remember, too, how these first
impressions of religion came into collision with the
beginnings of the movement which has since over
spread the English Church; how we were told that we
ought to believe much more or much less; and how,
in obedience to this illogical logic, some of us went
forward and some backwards; and some may be said
to have passed a lifetime in going to and fro. Those
who have lived long in Oxford can remember a day
more than thirty years ago, when a small band of distinguished men, after much inward conflict, throwing
aside the traditions in which they had been brought
up, knocked at the door of a small despised chapel in
the suburbs of this city, and humbly asked for admission into the bosom of the universal Church They
were separated from us by a strange fate, and we
And still the conflict continues, though fought in a
broader manner and with different weapons. And
many persons are busy in decomposing the world; or
rather, perhaps, the world may be said to be decomposing itself (as in foreign countries, so also in this)
into two extremes, the one preaching to us the authority of the priesthood, the necessity of the sacraments,
the duty of uninquiring faith; the other speaking of
evolution, development, the reign of law, the sequence
Having in view this succession of beliefs in the
history of the Christian Church, and this distraction
and division which affects our own contemporaries,
among whom all opinions, the oldest as well as the
newest, seem to co-exist, we are led very seriously to
ask, “What is the permanent element in religion?” Is there any rock upon which we can stand while these
shadows of the clouds fly around us—any foundation
upon which we can rest in life and death, any truth
about which good men are agreed? Especially as we
advance in years and begin to see the end, the disputes and controversies of Churches grow increasingly
wearisome to us. We think to ourselves, “O that it had been possible from the
days of our youth until now for us to have had a few simple principles of truth
and right, and that we had kept them apart from controversy and criticism, and
simply fought a good fight against evil and falsehood to our life’s end.”
This is the subject which I proposed to introduce by the brief sketch which I have given of ecclesiastical history. What is that which contrasts with all this movement, and turmoil, and change of opinion? Of course, we see that it is likely to be more akin to practice than to speculation. It may be something which is very near to us, which we all know or seem to know, and of which every man may be his own teacher. It may be a kind of truth in which good men of all religions are more nearly agreed than they are apt to suppose. It may be contained in one or two of those short sentences with which I began this sermon. And, first of all, I shall consider what it is not, and, secondly, what it is.
In the first place, it is not any political or ecclesiastical organisation. For these are relative to the age
and state of society which gives birth to them, and
there are few greater evils in the world than are
caused by the perpetuation of the old forms of them
under altered circumstances. They are the body, and
not the soul; they supply the mechanical means by
which we act together and co-operate with one
another, but the first spring of life and motion is not
contained in them. We are always disappointed in
them when we compare them with any high standard
of holiness, or truth, or right. We may imagine “the
new Jerusalem descending from Heaven, like a bride
But neither is the permanent element of religion to
be sought in the internal certainty which good men
have of the truth which has been vouchsafed to them.
For these internal convictions may often contradict
one another; nor can we be sure that the faith of one
man is stronger than that of another; the faith of a
Christian more intense than that of a Mahometan or
Hindoo. If another says to me, “I have an inward
light or evidence,” and I reply to him, “I have an
Neither can the permanent element in religion be
supposed to consist in historical facts. For they soon
fade into the distance; even if the record of them is
preserved, in a thousand or in two thousand years
they are apt to be seen in new lights; add another
thousand, and we can hardly imagine how they will
And if this degree of uncertainty which affects all
These, then, are the negatives, which, looking to the future
as well as to the present, we cannot venture to regard as the groundwork of our
belief. What, then, are the foundations which cannot be shaken? I may remind you
in passing that in confining religion to essentials we are only imitating the
Spirit of Him who said, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets”; and “This
is the first and great commandment, and the second is like unto it.” Not a word
which I have spoken is inconsistent with the practice of those precepts with which this sermon began. If Jesus Christ
were to come again upon earth, can we imagine Him
The first of these unchangeable truths is the perfection of the Divine nature. Mankind are always
disputing about the precise form in which doctrines are
to be stated, but they do not really differ about the
nature of holiness, or right, or love, or truth; there is
no party spirit about it. This is a very significant fact
which we shall do well often to consider. Nor, again,
can these graces or virtues ever be in excess; that is
another point to be carefully noted. A man may
have too much attachment to a person, or a sect, or a
Church; but he cannot have too much holiness, or
justice, or truth; too much of the love of God and man
possessing his soul. These are the great and simple
forms of faith which survive all others in which good
men of all religions agree, and which connect this life
as far as it can be connected with another. They are
the true links which bind us to one another, which
bring together in one communion different bodies of
Christians, different countries and ages. They are
the mirrors in which we behold the nature of God
Himself; the highest and best which we can conceive,
and which we, therefore, believe, and, in the Apostle’s language, seek to fashion them anew in ourselves. We
may sum them up in a word, “Divine perfection,” to
“The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the
word of our God shall abide for ever.” The world
changes, the Churches of Christ differ from one
another—they are in a state of transition, but the
truth, the justice, the goodness of God, and His will
that all mankind should be. saved, remain for ever.
The opinions of men vary, but the moral truths upon
which human life rests are unchangeable. And from
Secondly, among the fixed points of religion is the
life of Christ Himself, in whose person the Divine
justice, and wisdom, and love are embodied to us. It
may be true that the record contained in the Gospels
is fragmentary; and that the life of Christ itself far
surpassed the memorials of it which remain to us. But
there is enough in the words which have come down
to us to be the rule of our lives; and they would not
be the less true if we knew not whence they came, or
who was the author of them. They appear to run
counter to the maxims both of the Church and the
world; and yet the Church and the world equally
acknowledge them. To some who have rejected the
profession of Christianity, they have seemed equally
true and equally Divine—may we not say of these,
too, that they have been “Christians in unconsciousness,” if, not knowing Christ, like Him they have lived
for others, infusing into every moral and political
question a higher tone by their greater regard for
truth, and more disinterested love of mankind? For
this is what gives permanence to the religion of
Christ as taught by Himself alone—its comprehensiveness; it leaves no sort of good or truth outside of
itself to be its enemy and antagonist. “He that is
not against us is for us.” Or, to put the same
Thirdly, among the fixed points of religion, we
must admit all well-ascertained facts of history, or
science. For these, too, are the revelation of God to
us, and they seem to be gaining and accumulating
every day. And they do not change like mere
This, then, is what we believe to be the sum of
religion: To be like God—to be like Christ—to live
in every true idea and fact. This is the threefold
principle which we seek to fashion in ourselves, to be
our guide amid the temptations of the world, amid the
changes of opinion which go on around us, or the
doubts which beset us from within. The time is
For he is not a Christian who is one outwardly; neither is that Christianity which is in the letter only.
But he is a Christian who is one inwardly, and walks, as far as human error and infirmity will allow, in the footsteps of Christ.
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