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         Title: Sermons on Faith and Doctrine by the Late Benjamin Jowett, M.A.,
                Master of Balliol College
    Creator(s): Jowett, Benjamin (1817-1893)
   Print Basis: London: John Murray (1901)
 CCEL Subjects: All;
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                                    SERMONS

    ON

                               FAITH AND DOCTRINE

BY THE LATE

BENJAMIN JOWETT, M.A.

MASTER OF BALLIOL COLLEGE

    EDITED BY THE VERY REV. THE HON.

W. H. FREMANTLE, D.D.

    DEAN OF RIPON

LONDON

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET

1901

    OXFORD
    HORACE HART. PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
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PREFACE

   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 sceptical turn of mind.
   But he combated this tendency in all practical matters. No one was more
   decided than he in all that concerned moral character or educational
   discipline; and, though he would criticize a proposal which aimed at
   some good object, yet, when convinced, he would support it steadily. I
   think enthusiasm so much more valuable a quality than criticism,' he
   would say. But there were several causes which increased his natural
   tendency to shrink from sharp definitions on matters of deep
   importance. His love of truth was fastidious, and an over-statement of
   the side of a case with which he sympathized was positively painful to
   him. He was also habitually reticent. His early evangelical
   associations, and the Tractarian controversy in his youth at Oxford,
   had resulted in a strong sense of the evils of much talk about
   religion. He regretted at the close of his life that religion should be
   put aside in conversation; but, only occasionally, and with intimate
   friends, would he speak of it at all freely. I remember, when I was his
   pupil, his closing a discussion in which I had tried to engage him, by
   saying, We are tired in Oxford of talk about such things.' To an
   undergraduate, at a much later time, who had undergone a very sudden
   conversion, and told him that he had found Jesus,' he said, laying his
   hand on his shoulder, I am very glad of it, my dear boy, but don't talk
   about it.' To this fear of exaggeration was added in his early manhood
   a conviction that the statements in which theological opinion was
   commonly expressed were inadequate. I recall a saying of his in the
   beginning of 1853, that, if we could make a tour of the world, getting
   to understand the faith of each country, our religious beliefs would
   probably be very different from what they are. I do not think this
   implied any essential scepticism, but merely the doubt whether
   Christian freedom of thought had as yet been allowed its full scope:
   and this feeling will be found in many of the sermons in this volume.

   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
   substituted for a negative one: for instance, in the Essay on the
   Atonement, where the first edition had not the sacrifice, not the
   satisfaction, but the greatest moral act ever done in the world, the
   second edition explains how the moral act is the true sacrifice and
   satisfaction. But these explanations were not accepted by those who had
   prejudged the case. He published his treatise on the Interpretation of
   Scripture in the Essays and Reviews' in 1860, and had it in
   contemplation as late as 1870 to contribute to a second series of
   essays on the same lines; but, partly, the new duties and
   responsibilities of the Master ship, partly, the growing doubt whether
   the time was come for the profitable discussion of such subjects in
   England, made him feel it undesirable to proceed. In his illness in
   1891, when he thought of asking me to be co-editor with Professor
   Campbell of a new issue of his work on St. Paul's Epistles (a task
   which he afterwards felt it better to entrust to Professor Campbell
   alone), he said to me: The chief interest of the book and the essays
   contained in it is that they came a little before their time.' Some of
   his friends urged him, when the termination of his tenure of the
   Vice-Chancellorship at Oxford in 1886 left him with somewhat more
   leisure, to undertake some definite theological work. But, though not
   absolutely declining, he said that he doubted whether he could then
   write such a work as would live. His energy, which was then exhausted
   by four years of incessant official work, revived to some extent, but
   not sufficiently for the effort required.

   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 a disintegrator.' They are really
   the attempt to disclose the unassailable basis of faith. As our Lord
   said that on love to God and man hung all the law and the prophets, so
   he would say: The great moral ideas implanted within our hearts are the
   foundation; all that we assert in theology must be consistent with
   these; on these we fall back when traditional ideas have become
   untenable. And, as he further contends, these moral principles are
   fruitful: they enable us to harmonize and develop the new revelations
   of Himself which God is giving to this generation through science or
   criticism or the knowledge of other religions. Also, he maintains that
   this teaching is as positive and authoritative as that which is more
   commonly acknowledged, and which only appears more certain because it
   is accepted without inquiry.

   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 recognition of Jowett's services
   in the grander sphere of theology may not be thus delayed.

   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 [1] , would not have desired their
   publication. On the other hand, some of the reasons which made him
   shrink from publicity have passed away; and men are often more ready to
   learn from the dead [2] .

   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 idea of the divine character, indicate
   Jowett's method of treating non-Christian faiths. The sermons on Hebrew
   religion and on the Christian idea of God embrace the field of what is
   commonly called Revealed Religion; while that on the Subjection of the
   Son' (1 Cor. xv. 28) is an attempt to exhibit the modern aspects of
   religion, in which the biblical ideas are modified and enlarged by the
   experience and discoveries of later times.

   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 belong to our higher life, and in the
   communion of saints; that on God just, loving, true,' in which, by
   means of three parables, His justice, truth and love are indicated in
   contrast with certain systems of theology; and in which there is a
   remarkable passage on the subject of eternal punishment; and that on
   God as a Spirit--Neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem shall men
   worship the Father'--(one of the revolutionary sayings of Christ'),
   drawing out the spirituality of the true religion, which is not
   dependent on system. Jowett's biography shows how earnestly in his
   later years he dwelt upon the belief that the main elements of religion
   were not only consonant with, but necessary parts of, human nature, and
   that the fact that they have been revealed or disclosed in the
   Scriptures should not result in a dependence on the letter of
   Scripture, or on systems drawn from it, but should stimulate us to find
   them as they have been enshrined, by the purpose of God, in the very
   structure of the universe, in the life of humanity, and in our own
   better mind. But it would be a mistake to suppose that this attitude
   implied any lack of confidence in the divine character of Christ and
   His religion. The sermons which follow, on the oneness of Christ with
   God, through complete community of nature and allegiance; on the
   authority of Christ, as flowing from His spiritual nature and His union
   with God; the sermon on My Kingdom is not of this world,' which
   exhibits the spirit of Christ and the life flowing from it as always
   above the course of the world, though not necessarily disjoined from
   it; those on the Lord's Prayer and on prayer generally; and that on the
   Lord's Supper, show how heartily he responded to the claims which the
   nature and character of our Lord make upon the conscience.

   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. Richard Baxter, whom Jowett greatly
   admired, says that a single expression from the Lord's Prayer or the
   Decalogue gave him more spiritual sustenance than all the intricate
   theories for which he had once contended. We may admit that Jowett's
   mind was strongly influenced by Plato, and that the contemplation of
   the idea of good' was the medium through which religion most powerfully
   influenced him. But the idea of good' was what theologians have always
   dwelt on as the image of Christ,' not as a model or literal exemplar,
   but as a spirit capable of renewing the world.

   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.
   They will find in it a constant effort to restore the moral and
   spiritual basis of religion, not conflicting with the ancient
   standards, but rather tending to interpret them and make them minister
   more fully to the needs of our day.
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   [1] See their letter, contained in vol. i.

   [2] Should any one desire a fuller and more systematic presentation of
   Jowett's teaching, I would refer him to an article by Mr. C. G.
   Montefiore in the Jewish Quarterly Review for January, 1900.
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                         SERMONS ON FAITH AND DOCTRINE
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I

DARWINISM, AND FAITH IN GOD [3] .

   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!

   PSALM viii. 3-9.

   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 in
   mist and storm; and our perceptions of them also vary with the varying
   moods of our own minds. In the dark December mornings we can hardly
   remember the delighted feeling with which we welcomed the dawn in
   spring amid the singing of innumerable birds. In the Hebrew prophets or
   psalmists likewise may be traced a double feeling about the external
   world; there is the consciousness of active power in nature, and also
   of repose, the sense of rest as well as of motion. It is the glorious
   God who makes the thunder,' and at whose presence the animals cower and
   tremble, who bows the heavens and comes down, and there is darkness
   under His feet'; and then again appears in brightness and light, as in
   the eighteenth and twenty-ninth Psalms. Yet there is also another tone
   heard in the language of the Psalmist: The hills stand about Jerusalem;
   . even so standeth the Lord round about His people'; or He hath set the
   round world so fast that it cannot be moved.' While all over the earth
   and among all nations the heavens declare the glory of God and the
   firmament showeth His handywork.'

   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 or the ages which we know, the traces of such a connexion
   between the gods and heroes and the Sun or the dawn or the air have
   disappeared, and the divinities are only magnified men and women, or in
   a few cases the native gods of the elements. And the Greek or Roman
   poets, although not wholly wanting in feeling for the beauty of
   scenery, have much less consciousness of nature than is to be observed
   in the poetry of most modern European nations. Or perhaps they may have
   felt as much, but they spoke less; their souls may have drunk in the
   impressions derived from the deep blue sea, the clear ether, the forms
   and colours of the landscape, and been moulded by them; but they do not
   seem to have connected them, as we do, with the thoughts and
   aspirations of the human heart, or to have found in them the symbols of
   a world beyond.

   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, in the
   pleasant woodland scene, in the wide prospect, in the illimitable
   ocean. In nature we find that which we all desire--repose: there one of
   the best and purest pleasures of life comes to us, healthier than the
   love of art, which sometimes degenerates into sentimentalism, a
   pleasure of which we can never have too much, and which seems as we
   grow older to have a more soothing power over us; there the heart that
   cannot speak may find the alleviation of a calamity too deep for tears,
   for into that undisturbed region no trouble or sorrow intrudes; there
   is a great calm, and the peace and order which reign around us may be
   transferred to our own erring minds. And through the influence of
   nature we may rise to think of the God of nature and to rest in Him.

   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 mindful of him, or the
   son of man that Thou visitest him? When, again, we consider the
   immeasurable periods of time during which the earth was a desert chaos
   torn by natural convulsions, or the later stages of the world's
   history, in which the animals were struggling for existence, and huge
   behemoths and leviathans moved upon land and water: or, later still,
   when the first traces of man appear in holes of the rocks or lacustrine
   dwellings--do we not feel a sort of discouragement? and the
   consciousness of law in all things which had once comforted us begins
   to terrify us. We are aware that nature, like art, though more
   beautiful and glorious far, is not the true image of God, and that not
   there, not there,' are the foundations of human life to be sought.

   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, slowly and ever more slowly (for there is no need
   of hurry when you have no limit of time), some faded away and
   disappeared, and others persisted and prevailed, at first abnormal in
   some of their parts, but in a succession of generations growing into
   harmony with themselves. Last of all, in countless millions of years,
   passing through many stages of half human, half animal existence, man
   was perfected; his coat of hair fell off, and his brain increased in
   size; his features became nobler and more expressive, and he walked
   upright upon the earth.

   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 being made to him, become
   inspired with a desire to win that honour to which he was no longer
   born. There would be a considerable risk that he might live indulging
   his pleasures, as well as hope that he could choose the better part.
   And this risk besets us at the present moment: while we are discussing
   the descent of man from the animals, and comparing their bodily
   structure with our own, may we not insensibly be losing that which
   distinguishes us from them? That which we see or seem to see, or can
   represent to ourselves under any form of knowledge or figure of speech,
   too easily takes the place of that which we do not see and which cannot
   be similarly represented. All knowledge is good, and all serious
   inquiry and discussion is good, if we are able to follow them. But
   there may be a temporary disproportion in the parts of knowledge which
   has an injurious effect on the characters of individuals and on states
   of society.

   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 the spirit in which a serious man likes to meet the
   observations of scientific inquirers; he will not turn the flood of
   religious prejudices upon them, but try to consider their arguments
   upon their own merits. Ridicule is the test of weakness or of
   affectation, but not of truth. And when we remember that forty years
   ago the same vindications would have been directed against those who
   maintained the existence of the earth during untold millions of years,
   and that less than twenty years ago the same incredulous laugh would
   have been raised at those who affirmed that man had dwelt upon the
   earth for a hundred thousand or for many hundred thousands of years,
   although these two facts are now universally admitted by almost all
   educated men, experience teaches us caution, and we see that we must
   treat serious things seriously, or the laugh may be turned against
   ourselves. Especially when we argue from the pulpit we ought to be
   careful not to supply the chasm in our reasoning by rhetoric, believing
   that no one does more harm to religion or tends more to undermine the
   Christian faith than he who appeals eloquently to our religious
   feelings on behalf of a scientific untruth, or a conclusion not
   warranted by facts.

   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 in me
   to praise him as to attempt to criticize him in his own field. I only
   say these few words lest I should seem to be wanting in respect to one
   of the greatest living Englishmen. But I think that we who are not
   naturalists may be allowed to view this famous theory in the light of
   general considerations. We hear it spoken of everywhere; it seems to
   touch our own lives; we cannot easily shake off the impressions which
   it makes upon our minds. A discoverer is not always the best judge of
   his own discoveries; he is apt to become enamoured of them, and is
   unable to assign them their due proportions. The very intensity of mind
   which inspired him with the thought of them prevents his placing
   himself outside them and calmly reviewing them. He is lost in the light
   of them; he sees them everywhere, and cannot allow himself to
   anticipate the judgement which posterity may pass upon him. The
   absorbing influence of one idea is apt to make us regardless or
   unobservant of facts which lead in an opposite direction. This theory
   has served to draw into light one class of phenomena; the discovery of
   some other general law, of which the nature cannot yet be foreseen, may
   serve to collect facts of another kind. Therefore no true friend of
   science will be jealous of our hesitating, or perhaps delaying a
   little, when implicit assent is demanded to a great generalization. We
   are certainly not wrong in asking to know with some precision what are
   the limits of this generalization, which is threatening to swallow up
   all science. We shall do well to consider what it does not explain, as
   well as what it does. Add to this that general ideas exercise a great
   power over us; they are very fascinating and attractive; the simplest
   account always seems to be the truest--one idea is better than
   two--although there may really be in the working of nature and in the
   causes of historical events a subtlety and complexity far be yond human
   thoughts to reach. The attraction is irresistible when the animal or
   vegetable kingdom is capable or supposed to be capable of being
   explained in two words. We are very much inclined to believe what we so
   easily apprehend. Then again our teacher may be an observer of nature,
   and the general ideas of which I have been speaking may be supported by
   innumerable minute and curious facts, and thus acquire the name and
   authority of inductive science. But we must not therefore infer that
   the minute facts are adequate or sufficient to prove the principle
   assumed. A theory which is true partially will easily claim to be
   universal--the may' soon passes into a must.' In the void of human
   knowledge any account is better than none. And I need hardly observe
   that mere calmness of style, though an admirable quality, is no proof
   of the soundness of an argument; the greatest fallacies may be most
   clearly expressed, and the greatest untruths are sometimes found in the
   most logical and consecutive writings. In what remains of this sermon I
   shall venture to offer some remarks on the famous theory to which I
   have been referring, and which I will consider, first of all, from the
   intellectual side. There are some reasons why we should suspend our
   judgement, and not hastily decide that natural selection or the
   survival of the fittest is the sole or chief cause of the diversities
   of animal life. Secondly, without deter mining whether this theory is
   true or untrue, or in what degree true, of which we can only judge in a
   very general manner, I shall endeavour to lay before you some
   considerations of another kind, which may be placed in the opposite
   scale, tending to show that, whatever may be the origin of man, when we
   regard him as a moral and religious being we are concerned, not with
   what he has been, but with what he is. Whether his history is a
   progress or a decline, whether he has risen from the animals or fallen
   from some other sphere, he remains what he was before, endowed with
   reason and conscience, capable of knowing God and of contemplating His
   works. When the shock of novelty is over, he resumes the even path of a
   Christian life.

   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 a true cause of change in the forms of animal life: the
   question to which we have as yet no distinct answer is--How far has the
   operation of this cause extended? Or, if we are answered that this is
   the only one, and that there is no other, because in infinite ages the
   least cause, like the trickling of a stream, may produce the greatest
   effects--and with due regard to the economy of the world we ought not
   to assume two causes when one is sufficient--we wonder how there can be
   any knowledge of this exhaustive nature. May there not have been an
   adaptation of animals to their circumstances, such as is supposed in
   another famous theory, which in the course of infinite ages--that
   unknown quantity has always to be added--may have also modified them?
   May there not have been latent in the bosom of nature other causes
   which we are unable to calculate--changes of atmosphere, epidemics,
   diseases, currents of air or water, rapid alter nations of heat and
   cold, different proportions of the elements, or perhaps causes the very
   nature of which is unknown to us, as much as electricity was to the
   ancients or to the scientific inquirer of two centuries ago? These are
   the reflections which strike even an unlearned person. The mystery of
   reproduction is the greatest of all the mysteries of animal life, and
   most likely to be affected by subtle influences. And may not the
   instincts of animals, like the reason of man, have had the effect
   sometimes of preserving the weakest as well as the strongest? When we
   think of some of the more wonderful phenomena of animal life, of the
   polities of ants and bees, and of the intelligence of some of the
   larger animals, we can hardly tell how far nature may have developed
   instincts of concert and self-defence, which would prevent them from
   being passive victims of the struggle for existence.

   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 ages can any one say what forces may have acted in the
   regular course of nature?

   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, between the instinct
   or imitative powers of animals and the reason 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 not a danger of the exact
   sciences becoming inexact if they are allowed to entertain conjectures
   so far in advance of facts?

   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 resolute struggle against evil
   (whether the lesser struggle against the evil of our own hearts, or the
   greater struggle in some public arena), the living or perhaps dying for
   others, the priceless value of innocence, the disinterested heroism of
   affection, the thoughts of great men in other ages, the battles which
   have been fought on behalf of the truth, the example and teaching of
   our Saviour, still remain what they were, though for a time our
   thoughts may have been turned in another direction. There is an
   instinct of a future which is higher than the state in which we live,
   not that kind of instinct which we have in common with the brutes, but
   an instinct of another sort, which seems to grow stronger in us as we
   be come better. There is a faith that when we are no longer the
   servants of our own or other men's prejudices or passions, but are
   seeking to live in purity and truth, God is revealing Himself to us.
   There is a voice within us which is always repeating, in fainter or in
   louder accents, that we must avoid the evil and choose the good; that
   we were placed here not to do our own will, but to follow Christ; that
   we are not to pass our lives in indolence, but to be up and doing in
   the service of God, and not desiring our own honour, but for the sake
   of the work possessing our souls in sincerity and truth.

   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 supposed, or because the action of the mind is proved to
   be connected with the nerves of the brain, or because the Gospel
   narrative is sometimes viewed by the light of a microscopic criticism.
   I know that in the present day we cannot avoid reading books which come
   into conflict with popular views of religion, or, perhaps, with the
   simple teaching of a Christian home, and for a time they make a great
   impression upon us. But we soon recover the balance of our minds; we
   see that there are some things true and some things false in these
   books; and that none of them have overturned the Christian religion,
   though many of them have considerably affected the opinions of
   Christians. For the truth that is in them we are thankful: if they have
   freed us from error and superstition they have done us a service;
   though they may not have guided us into any higher truth they may have
   diminished the differences which separate us from other men and from
   other religions; or they may have taught us not to confound the
   accidents with the sub stance of religion. Still, we may say with St.
   Paul: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ,' or of our
   brethren? If we ever had any, that remains: the more real our religion
   is the less we are liable to be shaken by intellectual convulsions. If
   a man fancies that his faith is failing him, he must try to build up in
   deeds what he is losing in words; he must find meeting places of
   philosophy and religion, such as humility, or the sense of duty, or the
   acknowledgement of the ignorance of man, or the consciousness that he
   is not of the world, or seeking the things of the world, even as Christ
   was not of the world. He must be desirous to live, even in the truth
   which he knows not. He may be asking himself what more he can do for
   others; what more for his own good. He may mean the same thing, or
   nearly the same thing, as Christians in general, and yet hardly venture
   to use any of their expressions. He must consider how he can acquire in
   this floating world some strength or fixedness of character; not merely
   receiving impressions from books, or passing from Christianity to the
   influence of art and back again, but having some short and simple
   principles like those of the Hebrew prophets ingrained in him--to do
   justice, to love truth, and to walk humbly with God.'

   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 of material well-being. Still, we
   know that the advancing tide of natural science cannot be driven back;
   nor is there the least reason to suppose that the sentiment of religion
   will ever be banished from the human heart; and this consideration may
   lead us to expect a time when they may be reconciled, if not perfectly,
   yet more than at present; when religion may be enlightened, extended,
   purified, and philosophy or science inspired and elevated, and both
   allied together in the service of God and man.

   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 them. Already they seem to themselves like
   children playing upon the sands of the ocean. And in the hour of death,
   when their eyes close upon external nature, they know that He is
   mindful of them, and that to Him they will return.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [3] Preached in 1871.
     __________________________________________________________________

II

GREEK AND ORIENTAL RELIGIONS [4] .

   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. JOHN x. l6.

   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 lived habitually among the common
   people. When men gathered to Him, He spoke to them--out of a boat, in a
   synagogue, on a mountain, in the courts of the temple; and His words
   were instinct with a divine love and power; when the eye saw Him it
   blessed Him, when the ear heard Him it gave witness to Him. He sought
   to create in men the feeling which absorbed His own being, that they
   were the sons of God.' So simple and natural is the life of Christ,
   like the life of any other man, only greater and better; and yet
   through this simple and natural life a light is shed which reaches the
   controversies of after ages and the history of the world. There is no
   reason to suppose that our Lord had ever passed beyond the borders of
   Israel or entered into any Gentile city. Hence He did not come across
   that great controversy which agitated the first century of the
   Christian Church, the relation of the Jewish to the Gentile converts.
   He had no occasion to lay down in so many words the general principle
   which thirty years afterwards was affirmed by St. Paul, that God was
   not the God of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles; yet by a sort
   of anticipation or inspiration, under a figure or parable, He implies
   the same when He says: Other sheep I have which are not of this fold;
   them also I must bring, that there may be one fold, and one shepherd';
   or again in a similar spirit, but with a still deeper meaning, carrying
   our thoughts beyond churches and controversies to the eternal relations
   of God and man: Be ye therefore the children of your Father which is in
   heaven, for He maketh His sun to shine upon the evil and upon the good,
   and sendeth His rain upon the just and upon the unjust.'

   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 prayers and aspirations cannot in a
   day change the customs of society; that the deep lines which separate
   ancient forms of religion will outlast our lifetime. Nor can we say how
   far political or ecclesiastical measures may be able to effect the
   union of different religious communions. But one thing is clear that,
   if such hopes are to be realized at all, a Christian or Catholic spirit
   must have prepared the way for their fulfilment; then the walls of
   Jericho may fall down of themselves. And although the prospects of
   unity and peace in the Church and the world may be far off, yet every
   one may cherish them in his own heart; and it makes a great difference
   in our feelings and actions whether we think of a Church one and
   indivisible, embracing all ages and all races and classes of mankind,
   or whether our idea of the Christian Church is confined to that visible
   portion of it in which we worship, and vainly seek amid all varieties
   of circum stances to force upon a reluctant world.

   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, I will consider, but on
   another occasion, the same principle as it touches our relations with
   other Christian Churches or sects who, equally with ourselves,
   acknowledge the Christian rule of faith and duty. These are nearer
   home; their members live among us, often in the same street or house;
   and the peace and political well-being of the community depends greatly
   on the feelings which we entertain towards them, and they towards us.
   But, lest I should weary you by crowding too many important topics into
   the space of a brief half hour, I will defer the second division of the
   subject to another day.

   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 one
   another, and for six centuries and more, in the Albigensian crusade, at
   the time of the Reformation, during the Thirty Years' War, the history
   of Christianity has been an almost continuous tale of strife and
   bloodshed. And, inherited from these conflicts, which are not yet
   ended, there has been a sentiment or feeling of antipathy to those of a
   different faith which has sunk deep into human nature. Men have divided
   the world into heathen and Christian, without considering how much good
   may have been hidden in the one, or how much of evil may have mingled
   with the other. They have compared the best part of themselves with the
   worst of their neighbours, the ideal of Christianity with the
   corruptions of Greece or the East. They have not aimed at impartiality,
   but have been contented to accumulate all that could be said in praise
   of their own, and in dispraise of other forms of religion. At every
   turn such prejudices meet us, and often in this, as well as in former
   ages, have had a certain influence in our conduct towards half
   civilized or barbarous races. To make them Christians might be an
   object worthy of us, but until they become Christians we seem to have
   no duties towards them. The same narrow spirit has perverted our
   notions of education. Persons who had to explain the apparent anomaly
   of the youth of a Christian country being engaged in the study of the
   heathen writers, have maintained that the real advantage of a classical
   education was no more than this, that it teaches us by contrast the
   superiority of Christianity. Even the word heathen, instead of being
   regarded according to its etymology as the equivalent of Gentiles or
   nations, has received what logicians would call a bad connotation. Yet
   how unnatural is all this, and how unlike the true spirit of the
   Gospel. Christ Himself is the first teacher of toleration when He says
   of the prophet who was not numbered among His followers, Forbid him
   not'; or again, looking for ward to the future ministry of His
   disciples, Pray for them that persecute you.' In a similar spirit St.
   Paul says: Bless them that persecute you, bless and curse not'; and,
   instead of confining the grace of God to the elect or to the Jewish
   people, he lays down the broad principle that there is no respect of
   persons with God, but that, as is elsewhere added, in every nation he
   that feareth Him and doeth righteously is accepted of Him.' In the
   Church, too, of after ages there is a better voice heard at intervals;
   the corruptions of Christians are condemned by the virtues of heathens.
   When the truth was forced upon the early Christians that among the
   Gentiles also there was a faith in a divine mind, and a hope of
   immortality, and a desire to live above the world, then they began to
   recognize that here, too, there had been the spirit of God working;
   they found in Greek philosophy, as in the law and the prophets, a
   second witness to the truth of the Gospel and another schoolmaster to
   bring men to Christ. And since there has ceased to be a living
   antagonism between Christianity and the extinct religions of Greece and
   Rome, the two have ever been silently intermingling and marrying, so
   that we can no longer separate them, the old philosophy supplying some
   instrument of thought or some element of politics or ethics to the
   Catholic system, until in a Christian country we can scarcely
   distinguish which portion of the truth has been received by us from a
   Gentile, which from a Jewish or Christian source.

   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 disputes about doctrine which we fancied to be
   peculiar to ourselves, reappear in them. The distinctions of clergy and
   laity, the institution of monasticism, exist in several of them; the
   opposition of faith and works, the doctrine of a sacrifice for the sins
   of men, are not wanting in them. They too have their difficulties about
   necessity and free will, their reconciliation of philosophy and faith,
   their attempts to harmonize new thoughts with old writings handed down
   by tradition, their differences about inspiration; like the East in
   general, a little caricaturing our more sober Western thoughts; and the
   art of interpretation has been carried further by them than any of our
   Western commentators. At every turn the student of Brahmanism or
   Buddhism or Mahometism, or of the ancient records of Assyria and Egypt,
   with a thrill of interest comes across some striking parallelism with
   the language or thoughts of the Old and New Testament, or the practices
   of the Christian Church; and far more interesting than these
   parallelisms of literary style or ceremonial is the fact that in every
   great religion there have been a few who have sought to pierce through
   the outward forms of religion to its true nature, who, like the
   prophets in the Old Testament, have seen the truth of Christ under
   other names, who have cast aside the local and temporal, and rested in
   the invisible and the eternal.

   There is probably no cause now working in the world, neither criticism
   nor the progress of natural science, nor the power of great political
   movements, which will so greatly affect the future history of
   Christianity as our increased acquaintance with other religions.
   Mankind have lived in comparative isolation hitherto; now knowledge
   coming from the ends of the earth, and from the most remote ages, pours
   in upon us like a flood, obscuring some of our ancient landmarks, but
   also creating in us a sense such as we never had before, that we are
   one family, to whom God has spoken at sundry times and in divers
   manners, of whom no one member has been altogether banished or expelled
   from Him. The mere feeling of this leads us to regard the world under a
   different aspect, no longer as lying under the shadow of His wrath, but
   as pitied and accepted of Him; no longer as dwelling in darkness, but
   with a partial light. The basis on which we rest seems to be firmer and
   wider than formerly: there are many more witnesses than we supposed to
   the first principles of religion. And there are other ways in which the
   knowledge of other creeds enlightens us about our own. Who that has his
   mind fixed on the great forms of religion which have endured for ages
   in the East can think much of the petty disputes which sometimes
   agitate the minds of Christians in our own day, and are carried on with
   such extraordinary heat and bitterness, concerning the use of a word, a
   vestment, a posture, a colour? Who can think much of these things, if
   he reflects on the greater differences which have divided the human
   race during so many ages, and remembers that the same trivialities
   which agitate ourselves have been rife in other times and countries?
   For the corruptions of religion, the illusions of religion, the
   external form of religion, seem in different degrees to be common to
   all of them; the true light which lighteth every man coming into the
   world shines only sparingly and at intervals.

   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 least the difficulty is
   of another kind, to appeal from the worse to the better nature of men,
   to quicken the higher thought which lies buried in them, to lead them
   onward through their own feelings of reverence, not in spite of them.
   This is missionary work in which every one may engage, and not the
   ordained minister only, which may be carried on by a private person,
   giving offence to no one, elevating and purifying the circle in which
   he moves. And if some one says that the distinctive character of
   Christianity is thus likely to be lost, and that we are approaching too
   near to the condemned doctrine that every one shall be saved by the
   sect which he professeth, provided he be diligent to form his life
   accordingly,' we may answer that such was in fact the way in which Jews
   and Gentiles both alike received the Gospel, not as a truth wholly new
   or antagonistic to them, but as confirmed by their own religion or
   philosophy. The law was a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ; and to
   Him bore all the prophets witness, and the new commandment was an old
   one. So in other nations there were antecedents of the Christian faith,
   the growing consciousness of the brotherhood of man kind, the
   increasing sense of the unity of God. For ideas must be given through
   something; men cannot in an instant lay aside all their traditions. The
   old and the new must be harmonized for them; the new wine cannot be put
   into old bottles, or the new cloth sewed on to old garments. In the
   second place this wider conception of revelation is forced upon us by a
   wider experience such as neither the first ages nor any other have
   possessed hitherto. Thirdly, in what I have said nothing is implied of
   which the germ is not already contained in many passages of Scripture,
   such as the words, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of
   persons, but that in every nation he that feareth God and doeth
   righteousness is accepted of Him.'

   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, for the truth and not for the opinion of men only, above
   the world and not merely in it. It is a communion of souls and of good
   men everywhere and in all ages, who, if they could have known one
   another and the Lord, would have acknowledged that they were animated
   with a common spirit, and would have loved and delighted in one
   another. And we, too, feel that in the thought of this there is comfort
   and strength; we rejoice in the consciousness that here in this
   congregation, and everywhere to the furthest limits of the world, there
   are those who stand in the same relation towards God which, as we hope,
   it may be granted to us to attain; and that, as many have gone before,
   many are coming after to work out His will in this life and in another.

   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 of the state regulated by law and
   custom with that ideal of the perfect state which existed in a dream
   only, or in the heart of man. So Plato in a well-known passage of the
   Republic [5] , which reminds us of the transitions of the Gospels, may
   be said to pass from the kingdom of God which is without to the kingdom
   of God which is within us. At the end of the ninth book of the Republic
   he says: Then if that be his motive he will not be a statesman?' By the
   dog of Egypt (the strange oath of Socrates), by the dog of Egypt he
   will! in the city which is his own he certainly will, though in the
   land of his birth, perhaps not, unless he have a divine call.' I
   understand,' is the reply, you mean that he will be ruler in that city
   of which we are the founders, and which exists in idea only, for I do
   not believe that there is such an one anywhere on earth.' In heaven,'
   replies Socrates, there is laid up a pattern of it, methinks, which he
   who desires may behold, and, beholding, may set his house in order.'
     __________________________________________________________________

   [4] Preached at Balliol, Nov. 1877.

   [5] Plato, Jowett's Translation, iii. 306.
     __________________________________________________________________

III

GROWTH IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD [6]

   GOD FORBID: FOR THEN HOW SHALL GOD JUDGE THE WORLD?

   ROMANS iii. 6.

   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. The most trifling
   controversy of the day has a deeper interest for us than the great
   question of all religion, the nature and character of God. Few persons
   have ever seriously inquired into the evidence supplied by their own
   nature, and by the course of the world, of the manner of God's dealings
   with them. And while holding the beliefs of the divine perfection in a
   lazy, unmeaning way, they have allowed all sorts of other beliefs to
   spring up in their minds which are practically inconsistent with this.
   They have not said: No that is impossible, because it contradicts the
   divine justice or the divine goodness'; That is impossible, because it
   contradicts the divine truth'; or, in the impetuous language of the
   Apostle, Yea, let God be true, but every man a liar'; or, Shall not the
   Judge of all the earth do right?' These are the tests to which all
   systems of theology must at last be brought, the human, or rather the
   divine, ideas of truth and right and goodness and love.

   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 knowledge of divine things, and that they are the fixed
   principles or anchors of the soul which hold us fast amid the waves of
   time in life and death.

   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? They meant to ask whether all the
   different virtues were derived from a single principle. So we might ask
   whether there is one attribute of God or many, and we might sum up all
   in one word--divine perfection. If we were further to analyse this we
   should attribute to Him, first, knowledge and power, which seem to be
   different aspects of the same quality, for to know all things is to be
   able to do them; secondly, we should attribute to Him truth and
   justice, which are similarly connected, for truth is the foundation of
   justice; thirdly, we should attribute to Him goodness--not that
   easy-going temper or character which sometimes passes under this name
   among men, but the everlasting purpose that all His creatures should be
   good even as He is good. Though He might judge them and punish them in
   this life or another (and this might be the effect of the fixed laws by
   which He governs the world), yet we should feel confident of His having
   provided that His banished ones be not expelled from Him. We should not
   doubt that He who had the power would also have the will to restore men
   to Himself; or, as the Apostle says: So then God concluded all men
   under sin that He might have mercy upon all.'

   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 they feel any desire to cast
   aside the burden of sin, and become conscious of One who wills that
   they shall be saved. The thought of this perfection might kindle
   raptures in our minds such as find utterance in the hymns of the
   Psalmist: I will love Thee, O Lord my strength; I will praise Thee with
   my whole heart'; or might create in us such a sense of confidence and
   truth as is expressed in the words: The Lord is my light and my
   salvation'; or in that yet deeper strain which is heard in Psalm xc:
   Lord, Thou hast been our refuge from generation to generation; before
   the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were
   formed, Thou art God from everlasting to everlasting'; or might give us
   such a sense of peace as is expressed in those pathetic words of Psalm
   xxiii: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I
   will fear no evil; for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they
   comfort me.' This is the language which the Psalmist uses in all the
   circumstances of his life; he feels that God is ever present with him;
   and in all the higher and nobler thoughts which pass his mind he
   recognizes a divine inspiration. But this is not the language of our
   hearts; we have not this same joyous confidence in God; at least there
   are few persons who would be able to find in these words the natural
   expression of their feelings, partly because we interpose His laws
   between ourselves and Him, and seem to imagine that He is being hidden
   from us when He is really being revealed to us. With how much wider
   knowledge, with how much deeper feeling, can the modern astronomer look
   up at the stars and say, When I consider the heavens, the work of Thy
   fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained; what is man
   that Thou art mindful of him?' We have given up the notion of the human
   personality of God, and we have not yet mastered this other conception
   of a personality clothed in laws.

   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: whether a man thinks or feels, there is a
   dead weight hanging about his neck, darkening his life, which needs to
   be removed. Is our conception of God to be formed according to that
   image which exists within us, or to be derived from our experience of
   evil in the world? That is the question. My brethren, this is an old
   difficulty which is not now broached for the first time, and to which
   we cannot expect to have a full answer in this life, because the
   purposes of God towards us are only revealed in part. But, though
   unable to wholly remove the difficulty, I think that we may see the
   direction in which the answer is to be sought. For, first of all, we
   have no business to say that God either causes or permits evil, but
   only that He governs the world by fixed laws, within the limits of
   which good and evil display themselves. He has made the world to be a
   sort of theatre in which men act their parts. If you say that
   individuals are sacrificed to the working of these laws, are you not
   thinking too much of this life only, and not conscious that there may
   be other states of being in which the meanest creatures here--the
   cripple, the pauper, the criminal--may have another chance given them,
   and strike for another goal, and the last become first and the first
   perhaps last.

   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
   than appears; and for that reason, as well as for other reasons, we
   look forward to a future life. But, secondly, we feel that good is
   inseparable from evil, and that we can form no distinct conception of
   the one apart from the other. Both seem to flow equally from the free
   agency of man, and if we were to deny the existence of evil we should
   be compelled to deny the existence of good. This shows us that we must
   not be too certain of our own ideas on this subject, and that some part
   of the difficulty is due to the use of a word. For if, instead of
   speaking of the existence of evil in the world, we spoke rather of
   degrees of perfection or of degrees of imperfection (and what do we
   mean by evil more than this?), that part of terror which is due to the
   influence of language would be removed. Logic would no longer be able
   to stand over us like a hard taskmaster asserting the omni potence of
   God, and the existence of evil, and requiring us to draw the
   conclusion.

   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 regards another life, but also as
   regards this; if we could imagine that the evil and disorder which we
   see around us is but a step or stage in the progress towards order and
   perfection, then our conception of evil would be greatly changed.
   Geology tells us of remote ages in which animals wandered over the
   earth when as yet man was not,' and of ages longer and more distant
   still in which there was no breath or movement of living creature on
   land or sea. So slowly, and by so many steps, did the earth which we
   inhabit attain to the fulness of life which we see around us. And I
   might go on to speak of this world as a pebble in the ocean of space,
   as no more in relation to the universe than the least things are to the
   greatest, or to the whole earth. But, that we may not become dizzy in
   thinking about this, I will ask you to consider the bearing of such
   reflections, which are simple matters of fact, on our present subject.
   They tend to show us how small a part, not only of the physical, but
   also of the moral world, is really known to us. They suggest to us that
   the evil and suffering which we see around us may be only the beginning
   of another and higher state of being, to be realized during countless
   ages in the history of man. That progress of which we think so much,
   from barbarism to civilization, or from ancient to modern times, may be
   as nothing compared with that which God has destined for the human
   race. And if we were living in those happier times, we should no more
   think seriously of the misery through which many have attained to that
   higher state of being than we should think of some bad dream, or dwell
   on some aberration or perversity of childhood when the character had
   been formed and had grown up to the stature of the perfect man.

   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 evil, and of removing the circumstances
   out of which evil grows. And do not let us say, How can we get rid of
   the difficulty of the existence of the evil? but, How can we get rid of
   evil? How can we fulfil that purpose with a view to which God has
   allowed evil to exist? This is the best speculative answer to the
   difficulty, namely, that we can remove evil; and the best practical
   answer--for, when we are most actively engaged in doing good to others,
   then we most strongly feel that the sad experience of evil in the world
   is really reconcilable with that other image of the divine nature which
   is presented to us by reason and conscience.

   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 deceive. Yet even he had no conception of
   a God who was the God of all nations of the earth. Slowly and partially
   in the decline of Roman and Greek life, when the different streams of
   human thought were beginning to meet and mingle, the wiser part of the
   Gentile world became dimly conscious that God was not the God of the
   Greeks and Romans, but of all mankind.

   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 fell were sinners above all the
   dwellers in Jerusalem?' and again, in the case of the man born blind,
   when the question is asked Him, Master, which did sin, this man or his
   parents?'

   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 of His creatures? The good of
   society, the improvement of the offender, are the purposes of human
   punishment. Shall we attribute to the Most Merciful a darker purpose,
   of which we hardly venture to think or speak? Or shall we not rather
   thankfully acknowledge that His plans for the improvement of mankind
   are more perfect, more continuous, than our human schemes of
   discipline?

   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, and not to
   God? And, strangest of all, perhaps the least error in the use of a
   word seems to have been thought more displeasing to God than the
   greatest perfidy or cruelty of emperors, or the corruption of cities
   and churches.

   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 ecclesiastical customs are very
   tenacious, and are apt to continue long after they are disapproved by
   reason and conscience.

   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 then, as if such doctrines were too dreadful to be
   entertained, seriously to lay them aside when they begin to be applied
   to practice.

   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 the Lord.'
   The impure must become pure, the untrue must become simple and true,
   the thought of God must take the place of the thought of self, there
   must be no more hatred or party spirit: that last infirmity of
   religious minds' must disappear, the tangle of our own character must
   be unwoven and woven again before we can appear in His presence.

   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 of any reflecting being is this, that in that other world
   of which we know so little we have no one on whom we can rely but God
   only. Let us sometimes be alone with Him in this world, for the time
   will come when we shall be alone with Him.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [6] Preached before the University.
     __________________________________________________________________

IV

THE HEBREW CONCEPTION OF GOD [7] .

   HEAR, O ISRAEL: THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD.

   DEUT. vi. 4.

   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 existing institutions, and seem to
   have been not much regarded in their own lifetime or by their own
   nation, yet whose words have lightened every man who cometh into the
   world. The writings of the prophets of the seventh and eighth centuries
   before Christ are the true religion of Israel.

   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:


   Upon the breast of new-created Earth

   Man walked, and angels to his sight appeared,

   Crowning the glorious hills of Paradise.

   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 theGod who loves them freely,' and draws them to Him with
   bonds of love.'

   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 by a great unknown prophet who lived at some later epoch?

   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 thought by
   recent critics, chiefly on grounds of internal evidence, to have been
   written in the reign of King Josiah. Here, then, we have a large
   portion of the Old Testament Scriptures, for the most part contemporary
   or nearly so, to which we may appeal as the source of our knowledge
   respecting the religion of the Israelites in the golden age of
   prophecy, when the outward fortunes of the Jewish people were beginning
   to wane and disappear, and a greater and more abiding glory to shine
   forth.

   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 God is revealed to His people Israel, and through
   them to the world, by the word of Moses, Isaiah, and the prophets; that
   in the New Testament He has spoken not to one nation only, but to the
   whole world by His Son Jesus Christ.

   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 laws of nature). The good and evil
   which come to men, the storm, the drought, the pestilence, equally with
   the beneficial rain or the fertilizing sunshine, are regulated by His
   pleasure. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament
   showeth His handy work.' This is the picture of the world in repose.
   But not less is His presence seen in the earthquake and the storm,
   when, as we read in the 18th Psalm, the earth trembled and quaked, and
   the very foundations of the hills shook and were removed, because He
   was wroth.' He bowed the heavens also, and came down, and it was dark
   under His feet.' Or, as the two aspects are combined in the 50th Psalm,
   Out of Sion hath God appeared in perfect beauty': and yet there shall
   go before Him a consuming fire, and a mighty tempest shall be stirred
   up round about Him.'

   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 that all is vanity, and that
   there is one event to the righteous and the wicked, yet still
   maintains, in spite of all this, that to fear God and keep His
   commandments is the conclusion of the whole matter.' Even to the
   psalmist the ways of God were not cleared up until he went into the
   sanctuary and considered the end of these men.' He, too, reflected with
   gratitude that he had never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed
   begging their bread.' Such were the partial answers, which in those
   ancient times men were able to give to the common difficulties which
   beset us and them in relation to the divine government of the universe.
   But chiefly they looked forward to another kingdom which never was, and
   never was to be, in which the will of God was to be more perfectly
   fulfilled, and the sun of righteousness' was to shine forth, and the
   mountain of the Lord's House was to be exalted in the top of the
   mountains.' Before this there is to be a day of judgement, a day of the
   Lord,' in which He will punish the sins of Israel, and from the remnant
   make a new people. They shall return from all the nations whither He
   has scattered them; Ephraim shall not envy Jacob, nor Judah vex
   Ephraim, Israel shall be a third with Assyria and Egypt, while in Micah
   and Isaiah the vision extends (for he words occur in both of them): And
   many people shall go and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the
   Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us of His
   ways, and we will walk in His paths. For out of Sion shall go forth the
   law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.'

   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: they
   were schoolmasters, as we may say, a little parodying the words of St.
   Paul, to bring men to the universal religion. The later religions of
   the world, whether Christianity or Buddhism or Mahometanism, have all
   claimed to be universal, limited to no favoured race or tribes, however
   imperfectly the disciples of all of them have ever been able to carry
   out this divine inspiration.

   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 mercy. When my father
   and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up.' It is a hasty
   remark which has been sometimes made, that in the Old Testament mankind
   are only regarded as the servants of God, but in the New Testament are
   His sons. For both in the Old and in the New Testaments alike He is
   their Father as well as their God. But instead of summarizing further
   the representation of this aspect of the divine character which is
   given in the prophets, I would ask you to consider the deep tenderness
   and feeling of two passages in their writings.

   The first is from the later chapters of Isaiah (lxiii. 15, 16, 19),
   probably written during the captivity, which combines in a wonderful
   manner the two characteristics of gentleness and sublimity.

   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
   (Hosea xi. i, 3, 4). It presents God to us, not only as the father or
   spouse, but almost as the mother of His people.

   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 (xiv. 4):

   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 nature either in
   relation to the outward world or to the Jewish world. There remains the
   highest and greatest question of all, so far as it can be separated
   from these. What is He in His own innermost being, when separated from
   the accidents of time and place? How shall we describe that God who
   existed before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and
   the world were formed?

   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 His face and
   live?' Like other ideas of perfection it may be called, in the language
   of philosophy, transcendental, that is to say, not wholly capable of
   being expressed in human language. After we have combined all the
   aspects of truth or goodness in one, there remains something more which
   is above us, which we can feel rather than describe.

   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 loving all
   men, disturbed by nothing, fearing nothing. It is a temper of mind
   which is unshaken by changes of religious opinion, which is not
   dependent upon outward observances of religion. Such a character we may
   meet with once or twice in a long life, and derive a sort of
   inspiration from it. And oh! that it were possible that some of us
   might, even in the days of our youth, find the blessedness of leading
   such a life in the light of God's presence always.

   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, called by Bishop Butler, himself a
   great teacher of the morality of religion, the justest description of
   religious life that has ever been given. He hath shown thee, O man,
   what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do
   justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?'

   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 pleased to dwell there, of the land of
   Israel. But any notion of a Divine Being which did not embrace all
   knowledge and all power would be to us unreal. We cannot be satisfied
   with having one God in science and history, another in religion. And
   the reconcilement of these opposite aspects of the divine nature has
   hitherto been beyond our strength. Something we may have done for it,
   but not much. And, while men are seeking after God, if haply they may
   find Him (though He be not far from any one of us), we cannot entirely
   cast out fear and doubt; we have sometimes to turn our eyes back again
   to earth and think of our duties there, which remain as ever plain and
   clear to us. Some of us may find a parallel to our state in the
   language of Job and Ecclesiastes.

   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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [7] Preached at Balliol, April 23, 1876.
     __________________________________________________________________

V

CHRIST'S REVELATION OF GOD [8] .

   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.

   HEBREWS i. 1, 2.

   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 backwards in the Old: an ancient ceremony, a holy place, a number,
   a word, has been made the symbol of a hidden truth. The old is always
   entwining with the new both in philosophy and theology, and out of this
   accidental connexion has been developed a system of interpreting the
   Old Testament by the New. The practice has had in two ways a bad
   result. It has fixed the mind upon what is unimportant in the Old and
   New Testament Scriptures rather than upon what is important; and it has
   tended, if I may use the expression, to confine the Gospel within the
   curtain of the Tabernacle. This is one of those theological questions
   upon which the comparison of other religions has thrown a flood of
   light. What theologians of the last century would have supposed to be a
   proof of the divine origin of Christianity, viz. the adaptation of the
   older form of a religion to its later requirements (which things are an
   allegory,' as is said in the Epistle to the Galatians), is now seen to
   be a phenomenon not peculiar to Christianity, but common to all
   religions in which there are sacred books, if they retain any life or
   power.

   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 a
   natural image under which the disciples, who were Jews at first, spoke
   of the sufferings of Christ. To us it is a mere figure of speech,
   consecrated by the tradition of ages. But there is also a deeper
   harmony between the Old Testament and the New, which is the harmony of
   good and truth everywhere: when the prophet Isaiah says, Your new moons
   and sabbaths are an abomination unto me,' he breathes the same spirit
   as St. Paul, where he insists that no man shall judge another in meat
   or in drink, in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the
   sabbath day.' When again, almost in a strain of passion, he says,
   Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow, though
   they be red like crimson they shall be as wool, if ye be willing and
   obedient,' he anticipates the milder and more authoritative words of
   Christ, Thy sins be forgiven thee; go, and sin no more.' When Isaiah
   says (xix. 24), In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and
   with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land,' in this
   singular form of words he expresses the same thought which is uttered
   by Christ: Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I
   must bring, that there may be one fold and one shepherd.' The
   evangelical prophet and the New Testament, with a greater or less
   degree of clearness, teach the same lesson, that there is one God and
   Father of all, and one Church or Israel of God. Alike they denounce
   evil, especially in the form of hypocrisy; the prophets not sparing the
   kings or priests who were their contemporaries, while Christ, in a
   severer tone than He uses towards other sinners, condemns Pharisaism,
   which had become more systematized now that the world had grown older
   and the religion of Israel had been longer established. Such a common
   basis there is in the Old and New Testaments, and perhaps in the higher
   parts of almost all religions.

   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 you, saying: This people draweth nigh unto Me with their
   mouth and honoureth Me with their lips; but in vain do they worship Me,
   teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.' Or again, speaking of
   the blindness of the whole people: By hearing ye shall hear and shall
   not understand, and seeing ye shall see and not perceive.' There is no
   more gracious description of the Gospel than that which Christ Himself
   read in the synagogue out of the Book of the prophet Esaias: The spirit
   of the Lord God is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the
   Gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the broken hearted, to
   preach deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,
   to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year
   of the Lord.'

   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 a kingdom not of this
   world. This double thread runs alike through the prophets and the
   Gospels. Only what is more outward and visible in the Old Testament
   becomes more inward and spiritual in the New. The kingdom of God is not
   the conversion of surrounding nations or the subjugation of them to the
   God of Israel, but the kingdom of God is within you.' There, in the
   heart of man, its struggle is to be maintained, its victory won. It
   does not seek to incorporate the kingdoms of the world, but is rather
   in antagonism with them. The faithful believer feels the dead weight of
   sin and of the world, but in himself and in relation to God he is free
   and lord of all things. Take as the highest expression of what I am
   saying the remarkable words of St. Paul in 2 Cor. vi: As deceivers and
   yet true, as unknown and yet well known, as dying and behold we live,
   as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as having nothing and yet possessing
   all things.' Or again the description of the spiritual conflict in Rom.
   vii: The good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not,
   that I do. . . . O wretched man that I am. . . . I thank God through
   Jesus Christ our Lord.'

   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 bridge the chasm which separates
   them. He is the Sun of their life, and they seem to fear that when
   their breath passes away the sunshine in which they have lived may be
   withdrawn from them. They utter His commands; occasionally, awake or in
   a dream, they hear His voice; but they do not hold communion with Him.
   He is clothed in the greatness of nature, which like the cherubim veils
   His face from them. He is still the God of the Jewish race, though in
   the distance the prophet sees that other races will begin, or are
   beginning, to partake of the mercies granted to the Israelites. The
   misery and evil of the people are present; and they are already
   experiencing the just judgements of God. But the hope of good is
   future--in those days, in the latter days, at some unknown and distant
   time; whereas in the New Testament the good is present and immediate;
   within the reach of every one, if he will renounce himself and follow
   Christ. For these are the latter days,' and this day is the Scripture
   fulfilled in your ears.'

   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. Such a one might have been
   described in the words of the prophet: He shall not strive nor cry; a
   bruised reed shall He not break, nor quench the smoking flax.' He would
   have seemed like any other man, only calmer and deeper. He would not
   have made that great interval between Himself and other men which we
   sometimes attribute to Him; He would rather have sought to identify
   Himself with them. Why callest thou Me good? there is none good but
   One, that is God.' What, then, do we mean, and what would He Himself
   have meant by declaring that He was the manifestation of God' or the
   Son of God'?

   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 being
   attributes of God and the most real of all powers in the world, are
   fancies of mystics, or abstractions of philosophers.

   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 the embodiment of genius or intellect, though these may
   be mighty instruments in the government of the world. Nor is it the
   image of a great conqueror who subjugates the nations to a kingdom of
   righteousness. For such a subjugation by external force to good is not
   possible: the kingdom of God is within you.' The victory of good over
   evil had sometimes floated before the mind of the Israelitish prophets
   as a victory of arms. But My kingdom,' says Christ, is not of this
   world; else would My servants fight for it, but now is My kingdom not
   from hence.' In none of these forms has God revealed Himself to us.

   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 God in His government of
   the world. For, as far as the will of God is fulfilled on earth, it is
   through the co-operation of man: We are workers together with Him.'
   This is the greatest to which man can attain. And every man who works
   in the true spirit feels instinctively that he must observe the laws
   which God has laid down for his guidance, whether those higher laws of
   which revelation and conscience speak to us or those which are gained
   from experience and observation.

   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, or the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are
   they which hunger and thirst after righteousness, blessed are the pure
   in heart, blessed are the peace makers. These are the types of
   character which are blessed in the sight of God. The collection of
   sayings which we call the Sermon on the Mount are for the most part a
   correction of the ordinary religion. If thou doest alms, let not thy
   left hand know what thy right hand doeth;' Thou, when thou prayest,
   enter into thy chamber and shut the door;' Love not thy neighbour only,
   but thine enemy'--adding the reason, that ye may be the children of
   your Father which is in heaven, for He maketh His sun to rise upon the
   evil and upon the good, and sendeth rain upon the just and the unjust.'
   So far is Christ from revealing God to us as a God of vengeance. He
   does not mean to say that good and evil are indifferent to God, but
   that the good and evil alike are treated by Him with equity, with
   consideration, with love. It is the spirit in which He Himself says,
   Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.'

   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
   depart from the customary ways of society. Nor can we deny that most of
   us would be unequal to this greater life, nor set any limit to the good
   which may be done by those who sit still in the house, who scarcely
   ever leave the seclusion of their own village or home. But let us not
   be ignorant also that there is a higher and nobler ideal than this--the
   ideal of a life which is passed in doing good to man; in seeking to
   alleviate the miseries and inequalities of his lot, to raise him out of
   the moral and physical de gradation in which he is sunk, and to implant
   in him a higher sense of truth and right. What would have become of the
   world if there had been no such teachers or saviours of mankind? For
   the lower are inspired by the higher, and most of all by the highest of
   all. This is what makes the life of Christ such a precious possession
   to the world, not merely the good that He did when on earth, in
   teaching and consoling the afflicted, but the example which He left
   behind for all time of another and higher sort of character such as had
   never existed before in this world. To live for others only, and only
   in the service of God, to be the mediator between God and man, to
   reconcile the world to itself--this is the idea which Christ is always
   setting before us, and of which those who are His disciples must in
   their measure seek to partake.

   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 taught and inspired of God. His own soul was the mirror or
   reflection of the divine will. He looked inwards (not like the mystic
   seeking to be absorbed in some unreal enthusiasm); and, finding within
   Himself love and right and truth without any alloy of earthly motive,
   felt instinctively that they were the word of God. This man had no
   letters,' said the Jews; but He saw farther and more truly than them
   all. Is not this the carpenter's Son?' Yet He spoke with a divine
   authority. For He spoke not of Himself, but out of a Power which was
   independent of Himself, words which He knew to be the voice of God and
   the true law of the world. The truth never presented itself to Him as a
   matter of opinion or uncertainty or speculation; it was not a thing to
   be reasoned or argued about, but to be felt and known by all men. It
   meant, not a system of doctrines such as the Christian community
   afterwards devised, but a spirit of life--the spirit of peace and love,
   the temper of mind which rests in God and is resigned to His will,
   which seeks also to fulfil His w T ill actively in doing good to man.

   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. Who can doubt that love is better than hatred, truth than
   falsehood, righteousness than unrighteousness, holiness than impurity?
   Whatever uncertainty there may be about the early history of
   Christianity, there is no uncertainty about the Christian life.
   Questions of criticism have been raised concerning the Gospels; there
   have been disputes about rites and ceremonies; whole systems of
   theology have passed away: but that which truly constitutes religion,
   that in which good men are like one another, that in which they chiefly
   resemble Christ, remains the same. And it may be regarded as one of the
   great blessings of the age in which we live that, after so many
   wanderings out of the way, we are at length beginning to distinguish
   the essential from the accidental, and to appreciate more than any
   former age the true meaning of the words of Christ.

   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 ascend into heaven?
   or, Who shall descend into the deep? But the word is very nigh unto
   thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart.' Every good thought in our
   own mind, every good man whom we meet, or of whom we read in former
   ages, every great word or action, is a witness to us of the nature of
   God.

   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 entreat you not to suppose, because
   you hear sacred things discussed and analysed and spoken of perhaps in
   a different way from what would have been common thirty years ago, that
   they are less sacred and authoritative than they once seemed to be. We
   can no more live without religion now than formerly; it is always
   returning upon us; we cannot cast it off without weakening and
   impoverishing the character. We need the support of it in life, the
   comfort of it in death. There is no other principle by which a man can
   be raised above himself into a higher level of thought and action. As
   little can we give up truth without inflicting a wound on our own
   higher nature. To show how these two may be reconciled in education and
   in practical life; how the most fervent love of truth may be consistent
   with the deepest religious feeling; how the spirit of Christ may
   animate historical and scientific researches without being lost in
   them--this is a task which seems to be reserved for the coming
   generation to accomplish.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [8] Preached at Balliol, May 21, 1876.
     __________________________________________________________________

VI

THE SUBJECTION OF THE SON [9] .

   THEN SHALL THE SON ALSO HIMSELF BE SUBJECT UNTO HIM THAT PUT ALL THINGS
   UNDER HIM, THAT GOD MAY BE ALL IN ALL.

   1 COR. xv. 28.

   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 it developed in the light
   and life of the Greek world, attaining to a superficial harmony in the
   Greek poets and artists. Lastly, he would reach the revelation of God
   in Jesus Christ which is contained in the Gospel.

   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 and criticism; or that, when we call upon reason
   to bow before revelation, through reason only revelation can be
   apprehended by us; for, however we may strive to be more or less than
   ourselves, we cannot get rid of our own minds. There is the same
   difficulty in distinguishing between the movements of our minds towards
   good and the Spirit of God working in us. Who can say where one begins
   and the other ends? In like manner we may draw lines of demarcation
   about the Bible which may distinguish it from all other books, or about
   theology which may separate it from philosophy and secular knowledge;
   and such distinctions may help us to define our ideas. But we shall
   soon find them to be unreal. We cannot separate the secular from the
   religious any more than the human from the divine or God from nature.

   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 Creator of all things? Within the
   last two centuries new sciences have come into existence which have
   changed the aspect of the world. Can they have left our religious life
   wholly untouched? The writers of the New Testament were hardly
   acquainted with any religion but the Jewish; nor did they wholly lay
   aside the prevalent traditions or opinions of the age in which they
   lived. But we have learned to compare one religion with another; we see
   how many truths are common to them all, truths which were once thought
   to be derived solely from revelation; how many tendencies to error,
   from which the Christian Church has not escaped. Again, the genuineness
   of sacred writings is tried by a different method from that of a
   century ago; and, as criticism advances, as our knowledge of physical
   science extends, the lines of defence which we draw around Christianity
   are different and wider. One by one its artificial supports seem to
   disappear, and it stands before us having no other witness but its own
   inherent excellence and purity.

   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 only revealed to us in Scripture, but rather proceed to show what it
   is which the experience of ages adds to the knowledge of God which we
   find there. I am not speaking of what God is in His own essence, which
   neither faith nor philosophy can ever penetrate--if indeed the very
   words which I have used can be supposed to have any meaning--but only
   of His manifestation to us. Without attempting to strain our eyes
   beyond the horizon of human vision, it would seem that our conception
   of the divine nature is really enlarged, chiefly from three sources.

   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
   always in process of being received and being lost. There has always
   too been a contrast between the principles of men and their practice,
   between the higher law which the few have imposed upon themselves and
   the customary religion of the majority of mankind. Yet upon the whole
   there has been a progress, often interrupted for a thousand years or
   more; a progress in which we must allow for many steps backward; still
   there has been a progress from the outward and ceremonial in religion
   to the inward and spiritual, from ideas of power and fate to ideas of
   truth and right. If we ask how this progress has been effected, it has
   been, in the Gentile religions as in Christianity, chiefly by the
   influence of individual men, who have broken in upon the darkness with
   new light, who have awakened the dormant elements of truth in the
   ancient faith, who have given new meanings to old words, who by some
   method of their own have reconciled the old with the new.

   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 to be conceded to the Vedas, whether
   they are wholly inspired or in the proportion of nine-tenths, or of
   one-tenth, or perhaps not at all. The Buddhists, again, like ourselves,
   have their controversy respecting faith and works, similar to that
   which occurred at the Reformation. And in all, or almost all, religions
   there seems to be a sense of impurity, sometimes unenlightened, seeking
   to make atonement by gifts and offerings, sometimes, again,
   enlightened, and proclaiming like the Jewish prophets that the true
   atonement or sacrifice was holiness of life. In the religions of the
   East we may trace almost every movement or tendency which is to be
   found in Christian Europe. There is Puritanism, Monasticism,
   Scepticism, Formalism, Mysticism; ancient priestly power and the
   reaction against it, reformation and counter-reformation, ceremonial
   bondage too heavy for men's necks to bear; Gnosticism or Pantheism, and
   Agnosticism or Atheism; only, as the manner of the East is,
   exaggerated, and sometimes wearing the appearance of a caricature of
   what we may observe among ourselves. And often we may note among
   ourselves strange lingering tendencies to Jewish or Gentile fancies or
   opinions which from time to time revive because they have their origin
   deep in human nature.

   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 things there are which mankind have
   falsely attributed to God. The ceremonies of their own ritual even in
   minute detail have again and again been supposed to be a revelation
   from heaven, or they have thought only of the power of God, of His
   right to do as He liked, and not of the justice which He essentially
   is. They have attributed to Him the wayward caprice and passions of
   men, which in Him, because He was a superior being, are consecrated or
   venial. They have magnified in Him the mixed good and evil of human
   nature without passing the judgement upon them which they would have
   passed in the case of their fellow-men. The criticism of a later age
   has some times been that such and such acts would have been wrong if
   they had not been done by the express command of God.' Even in
   Christianity there have been survivals of this mistaken spirit, which
   distinguishes between God and truth, or between God and right, instead
   of viewing them as absolutely identical. And one of the advantages of
   the study of this comparative theology is that it shows us how much of
   human error is inseparable from all the earlier notions of a Divine
   Being; how easily such notions become confirmed by tradition, so that
   even good men often fall under their power, and can with difficulty be
   freed from them.

   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 not the God and Father of the Jews only, but of all
   mankind. The heathen, as we sometimes disparagingly call them, are not
   His enemies but His children, whom, though at a greater distance from
   Him and by a longer path, He is guiding into His truth. They too hear
   His voice and are conscious of His presence. To them may be applied the
   words in which St. Paul speaks, first of the Jew, secondly of the
   Gentile: So then God concluded all under sin that He might have mercy
   upon all.' And indeed they seem to stand to the future of Christianity
   in a relation not unlike that of the Jews to the Gospel of Christ. And
   of them too Christ would have said, as he did of the Gentiles, Other
   sheep I have which are not of this fold.' The fatherhood of God, as has
   been already remarked, is revealed both in the Old Testament and the
   New. But now it takes a wider scope, extending to all time and all the
   world. There is realized to us the great family in heaven and earth of
   which St. Paul speaks. And the principle of religion which might have
   been once thought to be granted by the favour of heaven to a chosen
   race, is now seen to be a part of human nature, and inseparable from
   the mind itself.

   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 of God in a
   manner which would formerly have been inconceivable to us; they give a
   sort of material reality to the words eternity and infinity, which over
   powers and almost oppresses. The boundaries of nature are enlarged, and
   the realm of the God of nature is enlarged also. The heavens declare
   the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handy-work. With how
   much greater wonder must we repeat these words when we look out upon
   the heavens through the telescope, and measure, though imperfectly, the
   incredible distance of the stars and the rapidity of their motions. And
   with how much deeper feeling must we therefore add, Lord, what is man
   that Thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that Thou visitest
   him?' We might have feared that He, who had so vast an empire, in His
   care of the greater would have overlooked the lesser: but we find, in
   looking through the microscope, that science has another wonder in
   store for us, a wonder of minuteness, as well as of vastness, and that
   not only man but the least of all animals invisible to the naked eye
   have their perfectly-formed structures and their place in the economy
   of the world.

   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 to distract us, the thought of these restores
   us to ourselves and Him. The word law' has some disturbing associations
   of external compulsion and the like; it is often opposed to morality,
   as it is in the Scripture to faith. And in applying the conception to
   our own lives we shall do well sometimes not to speak of law, but to
   think rather of harmony, of regularity, of the freedom which is given
   by order, of the communion of ourselves with nature. The Scripture
   tells us that in Him we live and move and have our being. And so we
   find as matter of experience, whatever higher meaning these words have,
   that His laws, as we term them, enter into us and are a part of us, and
   that we cannot escape from them if we would. They are at once the
   limits set to us and the powers by which we act. We are free agents,
   not in spite of them, but in consequence of them: without them we
   should be nowhere--the sport of chance or accident--occasionally, shall
   I say, relieved by the stretching out of a Divine Hand.

   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 freedom of choice about
   good and evil, and are responsible for their actions, yet remain within
   a certain natural limit which they cannot pass. We see that the purely
   spiritual power which we can exercise over ourselves and others is
   narrower than we might at first sight suppose. But on the other hand
   the power which we can exert by the right use of means is very great;
   or rather, I may say, that of the two together is almost unbounded. The
   one leads, the other follows; the one indicates the end, the other the
   active steps which enable us to attain it. If a man would improve his
   own mind he must study the laws of the mind, the effect of habit,
   circumstances, intellectual influence, and the like. He must also
   realize to himself his own internal experience. Mere prayer, or
   devotional exercises, or the making of good resolutions, or the attempt
   to enforce some abstract principle on himself will not impart to him a
   harmonious principle of life or growth. He must understand human
   nature; he must learn to act what he thinks. Or, to take another
   illustration. Suppose a person desirous to reform the inhabitants of
   some neglected parish or district: he will not merely try to impress
   upon them some doctrine or even the greatest truth of the Gospel, but
   he will seek to raise their moral by improving their material
   condition; he will influence them through their natural affections, he
   will draw their children to the school; he will observe many causes
   which affect their health, of which they are wholly unconscious. In
   short, he will strive to apply all that doctrine about habits and
   circumstances, and the laws which affect the physical wellbeing of man,
   to the service of his fellow creatures.

   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 religion, and we sometimes speak of them
   contemptuously as mere abstractions. The Bible is not a book of
   abstractions; it speaks to us heart to heart; it can rarely be said to
   appeal to general motives for a confirmation of the truths which it
   teaches. It tells us indeed that God is just; For how else,' as St.
   Paul says, can He judge the world?' It tells us, again, that God is
   love: For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.'
   Once more, it tells us that God is true: Yea, though every man be a
   liar.' But the Bible does not attempt to draw out the consequences of
   attributing to the divine nature, first, justice; secondly, love;
   thirdly, truth; or, in one word, perfection. It tells us, again, that
   our Father which is in heaven is perfect.' Here, then, is a legitimate
   field in which the Christian theologian may seek to extend our
   knowledge of God: we all speak of God as being a Moral Being; he may
   show us what is inevitably involved in these words. And many erroneous
   inferences drawn sometimes from a partial use of Scripture may be
   corrected, and the supposed antagonism between religion and morality
   removed. And in daily life and practice we may feel how great a thing
   it is to trust ourselves to a perfect God.

   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,
   nothing capricious, enters into His government; He will not inflict
   disproportionate punishment, He will not lay down arbitrary conditions
   which He insists on our fulfilling; He will not fix a time before which
   all may be retrieved, after which all is for ever lost. We are right in
   assuming this about God, because we should infer it about any just or
   good man. To suppose anything else would be to suppose that the justice
   of God falls short even of a moderate degree of human justice. There is
   a great deal of comfort, not without awe, in all this. And we may go a
   step further. For the justice of God is based upon perfect knowledge.
   He sees not only all the evil but all the good which is in us, the
   unexpressed wish to become better, the least sense of sorrow for the
   past; and often He does not judge us as man judges us.

   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 not expelled
   from Him.' We shall do well to think of the state of being in which we
   are here, of that in which we shall be hereafter, as a state of
   education in which He is drawing us nearer to Himself and to the truth.
   Of such things we may meditate although we cannot describe or define
   them. They are hidden from our eyes, like that time of which the
   Apostle speaks in the words of the text, When the Son Himself shall be
   subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in
   all.' But although we are unable to tell in what manner the work of
   love can be accomplished, any more than we can tell how the dead are
   raised up, we do not therefore cease to acknowledge, in the fullness of
   its consequences, the first and greatest of all articles of belief,
   that God is Love.

   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 is
   conscious that his life is innocent though many may condemn him. And
   sometimes he will seem to see the God of truth looking down upon the
   violence and party spirit of the world and of the Church.

   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.'
     __________________________________________________________________

   [9] Preached at Balliol in 186.
     __________________________________________________________________

VII

FEELING AFTER GOD [10] .

   THAT THEY SHOULD SEEK THE LORD, IF HAPLY THEY MIGHT FEEL AFTER HIM, AND
   FIND HIM.

   ACTS xvii. 27.

   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 from the extremity of the heavens, this
   principle of light and life shines also in our own hearts: In His light
   do we see light.'

   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 flourishing like a green bay tree?' The authors of the
   Book of Job and of Ecclesiastes seem hardly and with difficulty, amid
   the appearances of the world around them, to have recognized a light
   beyond. Whole ages and countries, in the language of Scripture, turn
   away from God, and He hides His face from them. There have been periods
   in the world's history, such as the first century before and after the
   Christian era, or the tenth or the fifteenth century after Christ, or
   the eighteenth century terminating in the French Revolution, in which
   the power of religion has visibly declined and the belief in God almost
   disappeared, at least in some countries and among the educated classes;
   and then again there have been renewals and revivals. In some cases
   this alienation from religion has been almost wholly evil; in others it
   has been the assertion of some truth or principle supposed to be at
   variance with religion, or a witness against some religious corruption.

   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 speak, I
   say, of this foolish formula, which is flagrantly at variance with
   facts, there are some signs that religious belief is not in the same
   position as formerly. A large proportion, perhaps the majority, of our
   artisan class are said to be without religion. Our men of science do
   not for the most part acknowledge the miraculous or supernatural, and
   with the belief in these all religious truth is sometimes supposed to
   be bound up. The great additions to our knowledge made in these latter
   days have been gained chiefly by observation and experience: thus the
   seen tends to prevail over the unseen, and the habit of men's minds
   alters accordingly. The extraordinary change in the religious opinion
   which has taken place during the last forty years is not favourable to
   the strength or permanence of religious convictions; for the movement
   in one direction provokes a reaction in another: when a certain amount
   of critical or analysing power is applied to it, the via media easily
   separates into the extremes. Religious bodies, when they become aware
   of their divergence from the world, instead of attempting to find terms
   of reconciliation, generally proceed along their own narrow path
   towards a more extreme dogmatism and a more rigid organization. There
   are times also when old grounds of belief, such as were supplied by the
   unreflecting appeal to Scripture, seem to crumble under our feet. Then
   a great deal of trouble arises in the world, and a great deal of alarm
   is caused both in our minds and in those of others who care for us.
   There is also a real danger that we shall not be strong enough to live
   through these times of transition in which our lot is cast, but may
   make shipwreck of our morals or of our faith. I think it may be of some
   use that we should endeavour to understand the state of the world in
   which we live, for if a man walk in the day he stumbleth not.' I will
   therefore propose this question for our consideration--Why is there so
   much less appearance of God in the world than formerly? and how far is
   this disappearance real, how far illusion?' Two thoughts may be
   silently present to our minds in the attempt to analyse these
   phenomena: first, that whether we like it or not we cannot recall the
   past, past opinions, past usages, and the like; for they are in the
   past, and it is not in the past but in the present that we are living,
   not in the twelfth century but in the nineteenth; secondly, that our
   belief in God has nothing to do with His actual existence. If all men
   were blind the sun would be still shining in the heavens. Truths of all
   sorts have existed from the beginning of time which are either hidden
   from us or of which we are only just beginning to be conscious.

   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 other forms of life
   and action. In a critical age such as our own this blended mass of good
   and evil is easily decomposed. Mankind are always turning out the seamy
   side of religion to the light. They see that the practice of professing
   Christians in daily life scarcely has any relation to the precepts of
   Christ. They reckon up the crimes of churches in former ages; the
   bloody wars, the terrible persecutions, the slavery of the mind, worse
   than the confinement of the body, which fanaticism and superstition
   have brought upon the world. They find even now the spirit of religious
   party clogging the efforts made by statesmen and others for the
   education and improvement of mankind. They observe that those who make
   no profession of religion are often more honour able and upright in
   their dealings than those who are very much under the influence of
   religious beliefs. Considering all these things, they are tempted to
   think with the Roman poet of old that the new negation of religion is
   an emancipation and enlargement of human nature. They are happy in
   having cast under their feet the traditions of priests, the curious
   lore of sacred books, the terrors of the world to come. Their text is
   Tantum relligio potuit suadere malorum.' Without denying the existence
   of God, they believe that nothing is to be known of Him, and that He
   can only be connected with us, if at all, by the laws of external
   nature.

   But have they ever considered the other side of the question? Have they
   ever thought of the influence which religion has exercised in
   consecrating the ties of the family or of the state in primitive times;
   or of the sanction which it has given to law and to morality, or of the
   higher elements which it has introduced into the world? It may be that
   there are many hypocrites or half hypocrites among Christians, that
   many more are indifferent, that society generally wears the aspect of
   business or pleasure, and does not show in any striking manner a regard
   for religion. But have the words of Christ therefore lost their power?
   Is the life of self-sacrifice less real in its effects? We might indeed
   reduce our theory to our practice; but then again our practice would
   always be falling lower and lower. For the words and the example of the
   few are the supports which sustain the many in the path of life. To the
   uneducated especially it is in the language of religion we must speak,
   of the love of God, of the sufferings of Christ; this is the way in
   which we can teach them, not by theories of happiness or the newest
   criticisms on Scripture. As Christians and lovers of truth we do not
   shrink from the examination of these ancient writings, and many
   discoveries are being made about them which would have been startling
   to our forefathers. It is very likely that these inquiries may in the
   end purify and elevate instead of weakening our faith. But meanwhile
   let us not forget that these books have been and are the bread of life
   to the Christian world; the best men have found in them, or derived
   from them, their highest thoughts; the wayfarer has not erred upon the
   whole in gathering from them their true lesson; to the uneducated they
   have been literature and philosophy, their support in life, their
   consolation in death. The habit of reading the Bible has been good both
   for the head and the heart; the neglect of it would sensibly lower both
   the character and the intelligence of a country.

   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 mind. Men remark that all our notions of God
   come to us through what is human, through language, through our own
   faculties, through our own ideas of right and wrong. This they call
   anthropomorphism,' which they would have us cast away, or acknowledge
   that not God but only a perfected humanity is the object of our
   worship. But how otherwise can we know God except through our own
   conceptions of what is holiest and highest? Would they have us get out
   of our own minds and strive to apprehend Him by some new kind of
   intuition? The perfect man, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the only image
   which we are capable of attaining of the perfect God. Human ideas when
   purely abstract are also unmeaning; they can only acquire a meaning
   when they find an expression in the things which we know. We may
   describe the divine nature by negatives; we may say of God that He is
   infinite, that He is without parts or passions, that He is incorporeal
   and the like. But to say all this of Him is not half so much as to say
   that He is just and loving and true. For although these words describe
   human qualities, they are the highest human qualities which we know: we
   can imagine them existing in a far higher degree than they are found in
   this world, and through them we dimly see a perfection beyond them in
   which they rest and unite.

   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 local gods only, gods of the hills and not of the
   valleys; at last they became the gods of nations; and finally, in
   Christianity and in the later Greek philosophy, there is one God of all
   nations of the earth. But we have to think of Him as the God of myriads
   of worlds far beyond what the eye or telescope can reach, infinite in
   the extent of His power, and also in its minuteness, in the furthest
   extremity of heaven, and yet very near to every one of us. The figures
   of the prophets and of the Book of Revelation, which describe the
   unseen world as a place above or below us which God and His angels make
   their habitation, or the powers of evil their stronghold, seem to fade
   away before the facts of natural science. Then, again, the littleness
   of this earth, which we once supposed to be the centre of all things,
   hardly more in the ocean of space than a point or a drop of water, is a
   very overwhelming thought. Whatever people may say to those who reflect
   on these things, there is greater difficulty in realizing the unseen
   than formerly. However we describe or conceive God, whether as the mind
   of the world, or as the law of the world, or as the Father of the
   world, we are led more and more to feel that His nature is inscrutable
   to us, and can be no more expressed in words or figures of speech than
   in the graven images of the olden time. Again, as the notion of a
   perfect God becomes more present to us, so also the contradictions
   which the appearances of the world offer to this perfection strike
   forcibly upon the mind. Mankind place things side by side now which
   formerly were not seen to be inconsistent; objections which used to
   sleep quietly enough now demand a well-considered answer. One perhaps
   asks to have the law of cause and effect reconciled with the
   responsibility of man; another repeats the favourite theological
   paradox, Why, if God is all-powerful and all-wise, does He permit the
   existence of evil?' I can very well imagine that the theory of the
   struggle for existence, of which we have heard so much during the last
   fifteen years, may produce a very painful impression on the minds of
   unthinking persons, because appearing to them so contradictory to the
   love of God towards all His creatures. There is not a sparrow that
   falls to the ground without your Father.' The facts or speculations
   respecting the origin of society, or even of the family, so unlike that
   Garden of Eden of which our fathers dreamed, are very likely to have a
   similar effect. These inquiries I mention, not to refute them (they are
   not to be refuted by the way or in a moment), but simply with one
   object--to show that religious belief is not so easy a matter as it
   once was, and that this generation is not to be accused of greater
   irreligion than their predecessors because they are unable at once to
   adjust all these marvellous discoveries and novel inquiries in their
   true relation to their own traditional belief, or even to see how they
   can be reconciled with very simple truths of religion and morality.
   That is the task which God has assigned to us, and not to us only, but
   to every succeeding generation of Christians, to entwine the old with
   the new, to heal that great breach which seems to have arisen between
   religion and knowledge, and to some extent between religion and
   morality.

   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 sometimes rate as atheists. But is there really any opposition
   between God and His laws, between Scripture and nature, between the
   starry heaven above and the moral law within? Or, again, can a man
   really be an atheist, whether he will or no, who sees the mind working
   in the world, who acknowledges the presence of intelligence in the
   structures of plants and minerals, who reverently meditates on the
   order of the whole? Is not the term materialist' or atheist' a
   misnomer? For even supposing such an one as I have been describing to
   allow of no other kind of knowledge than that which is presented to us
   by the physical world, still he recognizes a part at least of the work
   of God in nature. In religion, as in life gene rally, the various
   occupations of men have an effect on their minds; and it is useless to
   expect that the man of business or the man of science will accept
   religious truth in precisely the same form with the minister of the
   Gospel.

   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 Person, was no longer in use; that in our
   public services and in our private prayers it ceased to be the symbol
   or expression by which we described the holiest and highest; but that,
   instead of using this word, all mankind with one voice worshipped truth
   and justice and goodness united in a divine perfection, not an idea
   only, but a power really existing; and that to this perfection they
   attributed all those qualities which we are in the habit of attributing
   to God--should we be justified in calling them atheists? Ought they not
   rather to be included among Christians, since all that is essential to
   the notion of God they already hold? I might make a further supposition
   that all mankind agreed about the name of God, and yet ascribed to Him
   all that is most repugnant to His true nature, as the old Greek
   philosopher of 600 B.C. said Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods
   all that is detestable in man. Are we to call such worshippers of
   devils theists any more than we are justified in calling the others
   atheists? or shall we reply in irony, a little parodying the famous
   answer of Pascal to the Jesuits, They are Christians who agree in the
   word and disagree about the thing meant by it; they are not Christians
   who disagree about the word and agree about the thing.' It would be
   absurd to carry out the fancy which I have been supposing, or to banish
   altogether the name of God from the world while seeking to retain a
   conception of the divine nature; for words too have a sacredness, and
   we cannot alter them at pleasure. But it is not absurd sometimes to
   discard the ordinary use of language and to seek to form a conception
   of religious truths without employing the technical terms in which
   theologians have described them. Half the controversies in the world
   would have been at an end if this condition had been imposed upon them;
   neither can we really understand religious or any other propositions if
   we are unable to re-word' them. We do not know ourselves, nor can any
   one else know, whether we have pierced beneath the environment of
   language which encloses them to the truth within. See what follows if
   from time to time we discipline our minds by the practice of such a
   method in our judgement of men. We can no longer divide them into
   theists and atheists, religious and irreligious, or consistent
   Christians and non-Christians; we must think, not of the name by which
   they call themselves, or are called, but of the degree in which
   consciously or unconsciously they conform to the will of God and
   imitate the life of Christ. They may be eastern prophets or Greek
   philosophers; they may be men of science of our own day whose minds are
   absorbed in second causes, as they are termed; the question is no
   longer one of names. But whosoever loves righteousness and truth is
   accepted of Him. No principle short of this will reconcile us to
   ourselves, to God, and to the world. Then a new aspect is given both to
   theology and life. There is no longer an opposition between secular and
   religious employments or between secular and religious knowledge, but
   all who in their several ranks are doing their duty are fulfilling the
   will of God; all who are discovering and teaching truth are revealing
   Him. The physician whose pursuits seem naturally to draw his mind to
   material causes in his unpaid ministrations among the poor may be
   thought to bear the image of Him who carried our sorrows and healed our
   infirmities; and so of other classes. The hurry of this world, the
   struggle for their daily bread, the absorption of thought, may lead
   some men not to recognize consciously, so much as they should, the
   Author of their being. Then, in forming a judgement of them, let us
   remember that their relation to God is not to be measured by words or
   other external signs, but by the main tenour of their lives.

   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 ourselves and
   others, not according to the names by which we are called or the
   professions which we make or the party to which we belong, but more and
   more as we and they appear in the sight of God, and as we believe that
   one day we shall appear to ourselves; and that of God Himself we should
   think as existing consciously as well as unconsciously to us in the
   surrounding world, in the lower things of earth as well as in the
   higher, that He is the inspirer of the best thoughts too, and that
   where good is there is God. The times in which we live are said to be
   liable to peculiar changes, and a note of alarm is often sounded about
   them, sometimes on very trifling grounds; or again, from a deeper
   consideration of the tendencies of events men fancy that the world is
   going to pass into a new era, that the ages of faith have departed, and
   that some new age of science or sociology is to take their place. There
   is an excitement in novelty, which gives an attraction to strange forms
   of religion and to strange notions in philosophy. But experience seems
   to show that the great principles of human nature change slowly; there
   is no reason to fear that the heavens are about to descend upon our
   heads or the earth to swallow us up. One by one we shall pass away, and
   all things will remain, if not really the same, yet much more the same
   than we are apt to suppose. Another generation will succeed to our
   fears and hopes, to our sorrows and joys, to our speculations and
   intellectual interests. But, though we may banish idle and alarmist
   terrors, we cannot deny that this age, perhaps more than others, has
   peculiar trials. It seems as if men required more force of character in
   this than in former times. More than ever it is impossible that what is
   wholly or partly conventional should stand. If religion is to be
   lasting it must be real, a religion of deeds and not of words, or it
   will be quickly swept away in the tide of new impressions and
   influences from all sources which daily succeed one another. This is
   the peculiarity of times of transition, that they test the true
   characters of men. Some are carried away by every wind; others take
   hold of deeper principles, and are soon in a safe anchorage. If I were
   asked, How can a man be shielded or shield himself from the dangers
   which surround him? I would not in answer prescribe the books which he
   should read or the opinions which he should hold; but I should say, By
   the innocency of his life and the quiet and patient fulfilment of his
   duties here as a preparation for the service of God in after life.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [10] Preached at Balliol, Feb. 18, 1877.
     __________________________________________________________________

VIII

THE IMAGE OF THE INVISIBLE GOD [11] .

   THE IMAGE OF THE INVISIBLE GOD.

   COLOSSIANS i. 15.

   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 with the religious topics of the
   day, the doctrine of Baptism or Confession, or the manner of Christ's
   Presence in the Sacrament, or the inspiration of Scripture, or the
   authority of the priesthood, or the union of the churches which have
   retained Episcopal ordination, and the like.

   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 history. And do we suppose that human nature has now changed,
   or that this worship of idols has altogether ceased among ourselves?
   The superstitions of all religions--Catholic or Protestant, Christian
   or Pagan, Jew or Gentile--differ more in name than in reality. For
   there are idols of the mind which take the place of visible images;
   idols of tradition, of language, which come between us and God; idols
   of the temple too, in which good and evil seem to be inseparably
   blended, and the good is near and present, and the evil is only
   recognized in some fatal but distant consequences. And this is not the
   only difficulty in preserving clear as a mirror the conception of a
   perfect God. Some adjustment is required of His various attributes; and
   at the same time we must allow for the difference between things human
   and divine. Even many of the expressions of Scripture in which the
   nature of God is described, if isolated from other expressions, and
   from the conscience of man, or not considered in reference to the age
   and country in which they were uttered, may easily mislead us. If in
   the excess of reverence or fear we allow the notion of His power to
   prevail over His justice, we may represent Him as worse than some
   Eastern tyrant, and ourselves, His creatures, as crouching before Him,
   hardly hoping to turn away His anger with gifts and flatteries. Or if
   we think of His justice to the exclusion of His love, then in stead of
   a God who wills that all men should be saved,' we have a Being more
   unpitying, more implacable in His resentments, than the devil himself.
   Or, again, we may so exaggerate the ignorance of man that we seem to
   know nothing of Him, and are ready to accept anything which is told us
   about Him. Hardly, with all our care when addressing Him in prayer, can
   we avoid attaching to Him the shadow of some human infirmity, such as
   change of purpose, or particular likes and dislikes of persons or
   opinions. A good man who lives constantly in communion with God will
   often fail to recognize that all other men in every nation and in every
   rank of life are equally His care. The highest privilege of an
   individual is sometimes supposed to be the right of doing what he will
   with his own, and even this false maxim of an evil state of society has
   been blasphemously transferred to the Most High. There is a similar
   illusion when God is supposed to take a delight in external things, in
   beautiful colours, sounds, forms, scents, ceremonies, because they are
   pleasing to us; or in the building of churches after some ancient
   pattern, and as an end, not as a means, forgetting that the Most High
   dwelleth not in temples made with hands'; and that the least things
   which directly affect a human soul are far more costly and precious in
   His sight than the highest refinements of decoration and art.

   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 one of the least considered of all subjects of
   theology--the nature of God. I shall begin with God's dealings with us
   in the physical world, and then endeavour to show how we may rise out
   of that to the moral and spiritual; and that these are not antagonistic
   to one other as is sometimes supposed--the physical warring against the
   moral, the moral against the spiritual--but consistent; and the
   different aspects under which God presents Himself to us, as the God of
   nature, of men, and also of the world of spirits. And, lastly, I shall
   endeavour to reflect this argument upon ourselves, and show in what way
   we ought to worship God and hold communion with Him, as being ourselves
   a part of the visible order of nature, as conscious of a moral law, and
   also as having relations to a world of spirits, on the confines of
   which we are, and which we dimly know to be infinite and eternal.

   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 us imagine some one, I will not say a little
   lower than the angels,' but a natural philosopher, who is capable of
   seeing creation, not with our imperfect vision and hazy fancies, but
   with a real scientific insight into the world in which we live. He
   would behold the reign of law everywhere, in the least things as well
   as in the greatest, in the most complex as well as in the simplest, in
   the life of man as well as of the animals, extending to organic as well
   as inorganic substances; in all the sequences, combinations,
   adaptations, motions, intentions of nature, he would recognize the same
   law and order--one and continuous in all the different spheres of
   knowledge, in all the different realms of nature, through all times and
   over all space. Nowhere would the microscope or the telescope reveal to
   him any spring or interval in which, as in some cracked jar, a hand or
   finger might be inserted; nowhere would there be an aperture in nature
   through which the light of another world might come streaming. He would
   trace the most seemingly capricious of earthly things, such as the
   winds and the mists, to their ocean home; to us they are the type of
   human mutability, but he would know that they are really subject to
   laws as fixed as those by which the stone falls to the ground: in the
   processes of birth and death he would also recognize the uniformity of
   causes which could not be set aside. He would confess too that the
   actions of men and the workings of the mind are inseparable from the
   physical antecedents or accompaniments which prepare for them or
   co-operate with them, and that they are ordered and adjusted as parts
   of a whole. Nor will he deny, when he looks up at the heavens, that
   this earth with its endless variety of races and languages and infinity
   of human interests (each one so intense and particular at some time or
   other to some individual man) is only to be regarded as a pebble on the
   sea shore, or as a point in immensity, in comparison with the universe.
   And in this universe, at the utmost limit to which the most powerful
   instruments will carry the eye of man, there is still the same order
   reappearing everywhere, the same uniformity of nature, the same force
   which acts upon the earth.

   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 for shutting God out of the world which He has made.
   They do not, and indeed cannot, wholly deny the order of nature, but
   they wish that there might be exceptions to the rule expressly for
   them. As if God could be seen through chinks and crannies, or might be
   peeped at with a candle and in a corner, and was not visible in the
   light of day and in the face of the wide heavens. And yet these are the
   doubts of good and religious men, and deserve the fairest consideration
   at our hands. Perhaps these objections may in some degree arise .from
   want of explanation, or from some illusion of language; and if they
   could only see that a God was still left them, and that they were not
   bound fast in chains of fate, they would no longer rebel against the
   dominion of law.

   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 this good man who is afraid that the
   theories of philosophers are banishing him from his God. Has he ever
   pursued his thought and asked himself what he means by interruptions
   and interferences in the course of nature? Has he ever considered how
   many misplacements and rearrangements would have to be made before his
   prayers could procure for him the advantage of a favourable wind or the
   desired fall of rain? Has he ever asked himself how the answers to his
   own request would be reconciled with those of others? Let him not
   suppose that he is shut up in a prison, or that the philosopher who
   speaks of fixed laws means to say that the earth is intersected with
   straight lines, and is not full of forms of freedom and beauty. Would
   you rather live, we will say to him, in a house, or carry on an
   employment, in which there is no order, or in which there is order? Or
   would you rather travel through a country in which there are roads, or
   in which there are no roads? Or would you have your own life and that
   of your family conform to certain laws and customs or not? Or, again,
   would you prefer a condition of life in which you can (for the most
   part) foresee and calculate the future and avoid evils, or a condition
   in which you can foresee and avoid nothing? And in which case are you
   the most free and most the master of your own actions? amid order or
   disorder? in a civilized country which has roads and laws, or in an
   uncivilized? in a state of life which is dark and deprived of
   experience, or in one which is lighted up by history and science? Is
   there anything in the controlling power of law which prevents your
   choosing between right and wrong, or which hinders you from holding
   communion with God and Christ? Cease, then, to make this opposition of
   words between religion and science, between God and His works. For if
   there is no reconciliation of them, and if the truths of religion are
   really inconsistent with the order of nature, then Christianity must
   inevitably pale away before the advance of natural knowledge.

   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 hill and woodland, and the sea beyond gleaming
   beneath the setting sun, or when he lifts up his eyes and beholds the
   stars coming out one by one in the azure heaven, he is tempted to think
   that this is the fairest of worlds. But ever and anon, when he recalls
   his own miserable condition and that of his fellowmen, the whole
   creation, which may be described, in the language of the Apostle, as
   groaning together until now,' waiting to be delivered; when he
   remembers the clouds of sin and passion which have darkened his own
   life, the imperfection of his best things, the festering masses of evil
   in our great towns, the heartlessness, the conventionality, the
   irrationality of man kind in general, he is strangely impressed with
   the contrast of the fairness of the world without and the sadness of
   the man within. He feels that he and his fellow-creatures were not
   meant for this, and that God has not left Himself without a witness
   higher than the order of nature or the common life of all men.

   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 poet also spoke when he said,
   Who shall give me purity of word and deed, that I may observe the laws
   whose foundation is on high, and of which heaven is the only sire?' And
   again, For these things are not of to-day or yesterday, but live for
   ever, and no one knows from whence they came.' This is that law of duty
   which the philosopher summed up in his celebrated formula, Act so as to
   approve yourself to every rational intelligence.' This is that law of
   which the psalmists and the prophets speak with an enthusiasm which
   would strike us as wonderful if our ears were not deadened by
   familiarity: Thy testimonies are my delight day and night;' The law of
   the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the statutes of the Lord are
   right, rejoicing the heart.' May not almost the whole Book of Psalms be
   described as a sort of rapture of the love of good and hatred of evil,
   accompanied by an intense consciousness that, amid all appearances to
   the contrary, God is ever on the side of right? Are not the prophecies
   again the revelation of the truth and justice and mercy of God?--not
   the second sight of future events, as some imagine, but a real
   revelation of God, in which the prophet is always rising above the
   visible and temporal, the ordinances and ceremonies of the Jewish law,
   the traditions of the Jewish people, correcting, enlarging, purifying
   them, struggling towards another world which he sees in the distance.
   Lo, O man, He hath shown thee what He requires of thee--to do justly
   and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.' Is not this the sum
   of religion for all men everywhere? Might we not say, in the words of
   Christ, On this hang all the law and the prophets'?

   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 as a spirit'; that His spirit is witnessing with
   our spirit to the good which is in us, to the truth which is in us, to
   the love which is in us, to the justice which is in us, guiding,
   helping, leading us, going before us in the fulfilment of His will. We
   mean to say that in Him only we live and move and have our being; that
   in Him we have our true communion with our fellow men, alive or dead
   (for all live unto Him); and that in Him only are all our hopes when we
   pass out of this world. The ancient philosopher said that God was the
   air, and in this image he seemed to find the symbol or image of a Being
   who was at once the breath of man and the breath of the universe. And
   something in the same way when we speak of God as a spirit we desire to
   express that the Infinite and Eternal is very near to us, who, though
   He reaches to the outermost heaven, is yet working with us in
   whatsoever things are good or true or pure or holy.

   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 a voyage of
   discovery, the actual duties of our homes and employments are apt to be
   forgotten and lost in a sort of golden dream. It is safer to come back
   again and try to turn the light of these truths on our daily life. And
   therefore in what remains of this sermon I shall endeavour to point out
   the practical aspects of religion which flow from these reflections,'
   as I may term them, of the Eternal Being.

   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 nineteenth century, man may be said to have some
   thing like the mastery over the earth, to know where he is, and, as he
   recognizes himself more and more to be the creature of circumstances,
   to have more and more the power of controlling them.

   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 would suffice in a few years to
   change the moral aspect of this nation.

   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 turmoil of men. May not the spirit of
   nature pass into our minds, teaching us order and regularity and
   resignation to the will of God? No efforts of ours can detach us from
   the conditions of our being; but we may submit to them, we may
   acknowledge them; and herein really lies our true peace and strength.
   We cannot recall the past, or be in age what we were in youth; we
   cannot do in sickness what we might have done in health; at death there
   may be something left unfinished which we should have liked to have
   completed. But we may recognize that these and all other states of life
   are the will of God, and to be used in His service; we may cheerfully
   acknowledge them to be our appointed lot, knowing also that this order
   of nature which surrounds us is not all, and that we have a hope of a
   life to come.

   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
   truth; or who, with the world against him, has been compelled by a
   natural nobility of disposition to fight the battle of the alien and
   oppressed; or he may be one who, not knowing God, has sought to live in
   the ideal, that is, in His Image, above the commonplaces of the world,
   whether Christian or unchristian. All men are telling him, This is
   politic, this is expedient, this is what your party requires, this is
   what the Church or the world approves, this is the way to honour and
   preferment; these are the fashions of society, the customs of traders,
   the demands of nature, the received opinions of men, the necessities of
   the situation.' But he with unaverted eye thinks only of the good and
   true, having a faith and peace which no storm can shake'; and in all
   his life sees, like the prophet, the vision of God and his duty, high
   and lifted up above the mists of human error and the dark clouds of
   passion and prejudice, having the body of heaven in his clearness.'

   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 times. For there can never be any danger of our
   loving God too much, if we only think of Him as the God of justice and
   truth: if we seek to know Him first, and understand that all human
   knowledge is a manifestation of Him, there can be no fear of our
   becoming mystics.

   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 progress to which they devoted themselves was the progress of
   knowledge, not the moral or spiritual improvement of their fellow-men.
   Both have done a part of the work of God on earth, and both, probably,
   have lived in a state of mutual dislike and distrust of one another.
   But if ever there was a time when these two, the spirit of perfect love
   and of perfect knowledge, met together in the same person, or in many
   persons, then indeed we might have confidence that the Kingdom of God
   was about to appear amongst us, not coming with observation, but
   working silently, to be seen in the improvement of the conditions of
   the poor and labouring classes, in the greater harmony of different
   ranks of society, and in the renewal of our own lives.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [11] Preached at St. Mary's, Oxford, Oct. 25, 1874.
     __________________________________________________________________

IX

GOD JUST, LOVING, TRUE [12] .

   HE SHALL JUDGE THE WORLD IN RIGHTEOUSNESS.

   PSALM ix. 8.

   GOD IS LOVE. 1 JOHN iv. 8.

   HE THAT COMETH TO GOD MUST BELIEVE THAT HE IS, AND THAT HE IS A
   REWARDER OF THEM THAT DILIGENTLY SEEK HIM.

   HEBREWS xi. 6.

   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 without considering the grounds of them, following not the
   truth but the tendencies of the human mind, turning rhetoric into
   logic, and building up probabilities when the limits of human knowledge
   have been attained, trusting to any fiction or illusion instead of
   looking facts boldly in the face or seeing things as they truly are.

   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 perhaps like that some day to dissolve away.
   And beside this, in the development of these various doctrines
   distinctions have been introduced, and are so minute that the must be
   looked at through a microscope before they can be seen. A man may
   almost miss his salvation through an ignorance of grammar or logic.' I
   do not say this from any desire to attack our Roman Catholic
   brethren--the time for such controversies has passed--but because I
   believe that lessons may be learned from them which are applicable to
   ourselves. For not only Roman Catholics but all men everywhere are
   tending to put the ceremonial in the place of the moral, the word in
   the place of the thing, the local and temporal in the place of what is
   universal and eternal.

   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 living consciousness that we are in the
   hands of a good and wise God. Neither is there any satisfaction in
   raising or ornamenting the superstructure unless we have the
   foundation, nor in believing in God if our conception of the divine
   nature is at variance with the sense of right in our own nature; nor in
   religion at all if religion is at war with morality.

   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 learn to dispense with them and to see
   things as they truly are.

   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
   regard to their characters, and insisting on their complying with
   certain conventional rules before he would receive them into his house.
   Now this misconception of his nature had continued for many years, how
   originating could hardly be determined; only one thing was certain,
   that it was due to no act or word of his, but rather to the stupidity
   or malignity of others.

   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 to him their own corrupt
   notions of justice. For they pretended that his court, which was the
   great court of the realm, was governed by the same rules, although he
   had told them over and over again that he was no respecter of persons,
   and that he would reward every man according to his works,' and that in
   every nation he that did righteousness would be accepted of him.'

   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 under three
   heads--God is loving, God is just, God is true.'

   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 any
   one who has the natural feelings of a parent doing this except with a
   view to the good of his child, and in the hope of his improvement: the
   idea that he should suffer for the sake of suffering, if these words
   have any meaning, would be quite abhorrent to his mind. Even so (in the
   figurative language of Scripture) whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,
   and scourgeth every son in whom He delighteth.' But that He is
   delighted with the sufferings of any man is a doctrine that we had
   better give back to the heathen, or to the devil from whom it came. And
   the good and wise among the heathen also would have rejected such a
   doctrine; the evil, they would have said, of which God is the author
   must in some way issue in good. And when we hear of actions being
   attributed to God which are at variance with our conceptions of His
   goodness or His justice, then, even if it be in some sacred writing,
   the rule which has been laid down by one of the wisest of men might be
   usefully applied: Either these things never really happened, or they
   were not commanded by God.'

   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 meaning
   when you transfer them to God? For what is just to you may be unjust to
   Him, and what is true to you may be untrue to Him, and what is love
   according to your notions may be favouritism and partiality in His
   sight. Think of the ignorance of man and the limitations of human
   faculties, and do not profanely attribute your notions of morality to
   God.'

   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, arising out of
   certain natural relationships or friend ships formed by the accidents
   of time and place. But with God there are no accidents of time and
   place; His love is an equal love for all men in all ages and countries,
   a law of love which communicates with the hearts of men. Some one may
   say, What! am I not the special object of God's care? Am I not His
   favourite child? Will He not do for me what He would not do for
   another--save my life in an accident, or call me to repentance, when He
   allows another to perish?' No; that is not the nature of the divine
   love. Here is a real difference between His ways and our ways. Neither
   can you yourself desire that He shall do for you what He would not do
   for another. You have only to put yourself in the place of one who is
   rejected to see this. Even the human image may teach you a truer notion
   of God; for the father who has the feelings of a father does not select
   one of his children to the detriment of the rest; still less can we
   imagine that when His children are praying to Him that He would save
   them from death He would deliberately spare one and leave others to
   perish. Here is a real confusion of His ways and our ways, or rather
   perhaps a sort of narrowness of vision which makes us concentrate upon
   ourselves the universal care of all, a feebleness of intellect which
   fails to understand that the special providence which watches over each
   one is the general providence which watches over all.

   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 with His laws, carrying on His work in
   the world, seeking to regard other men as He regards them, casting away
   all earthly interests or pursuing them only as the means to that which
   is above them; then a man may indeed feel that he is living in God and
   God in him; he may consider that he has a Friend with him whose
   friendship can never fail; he may have a sort of consciousness of
   inspiration derived from Him in the performance of everything that is
   noble and true and good; he may rest in Him, and often when he is alone
   find himself not alone, because the Spirit of God is with him. And, as
   he feels the love of God diffused in the world around him, his love to
   man will also grow and enlarge--I in them and thou in Me'--and whoso
   dwelleth in love dwelleth in God.' Did you ever hear that strange
   saying of the old mystic: The element of the bird is the air, the
   element of the fish is the sea, the element of the salamander is the
   fire, but the element of Jacob Behmen is the heart of God'?

   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 at all times, and in
   reference to all things and persons whatsoever. These are but the
   imperfections of human language. And in religion as in other things we
   shall sometimes do well to get rid of language, or at least of the
   ordinary use of words, and take their meaning; we may try to express
   the same conception in other words, avoiding terms of controversy: then
   we shall more readily see what is essential and what is accidental in
   our ideas of religious truth.

   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 any one of
   us? Which of us can show that he has made the utmost of the pounds or
   talents entrusted to him? Even though we fully acknowledge that God
   knows all our circumstances, and that His judgement is relative to the
   very condition of our bodily frame, to the place in the world which He
   has given us, and to our means of knowledge and improvement; still
   there is something terrible to us in this truth of the justice of God,
   and our ignorance of the manner in which this rule of divine justice is
   carried out tends to increase this terror: we may be confident that God
   is just, and yet who may abide the day of His coming?" Had we only
   thought of this a little sooner, while there was time! How natural and
   heartfelt is that saying, even to the bad man, Let me die the death of
   the righteous, and let my last end be like his.'

   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 far we are
   fitted for that other state to which God is calling us; nor can we
   easily set any limit to the natural consequences of evil, for they are
   worse, if we had any true notion of them, than those physical images of
   burning and torture which we sometimes see in pictures. Which way I fly
   is hell, myself am hell.' We do not need to place before the mind's eye
   those outward representations of rivers of flame, and vast chasms, and
   murderers calling to their victims, which we find in Plato and other
   Gentile writers. A truer image is supplied by that of St. Paul, the
   soul perpetually crying to herself, and saying, O wretched--who shall
   deliver me from the body of this death?'

   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 these sort of objections. There is nothing wrong in such
   feelings, so far as they express not any laxity about sin and evil, but
   a jealous desire to vindicate above all things the justice of God. I
   think, however, that another way of stating this subject might perhaps
   satisfy these natural feelings. Let us not speak of an infinite
   punishment for a finite sin. Neither, on the other hand, let us assume
   that a time will come in the course of ages when every man will be
   restored to the grace and favour of God. For, although God may have
   provided ways of which we are ignorant that His banished ones be not
   expelled from Him,' yet this lies beyond the horizon of our vision, and
   may give rise to a great misconception. But let us rather say that God
   will reward every man according to his works,' and that the punishment
   of mankind in another world will be perfectly just because inflicted by
   God; the least evil that we do shall not be without consequences, the
   least good not wholly unrewarded. That may lead us to feel comfort, and
   also terror and awe. For if, on the one hand, we feel that none can
   abide the severity of God's judgement, we feel also that it is good for
   us to fall into the hands of God: when we consider how little we know
   of another world, there would be no truth in attempting altogether to
   banish fear. Neither need any one apprehend that the strong sense of
   the justice of God will tend to any laxity of morals. It is a maxim of
   human law that the most effectual punishment is that which is most duly
   proportioned to the crime. This is illustrated by the difficulty of
   obtaining a conviction or executing a penalty when the punishment is
   too great for the offence. Human nature revolts at it. Neither is the
   divine penalty really more terrible because supposed to be infinite.
   For this is only vague and unreal, a penalty which no one applies to
   himself, and to which the heart and conscience bear no witness. But
   still there is a comfort in feeling that we are in the hands of God; we
   do not seek to avoid just punishment, and He will not suffer us to be
   punished above what we deserve. For shall not the Judge of all the
   earth do right?' will His judgement fall short of the simple rules of
   human justice? Nay, surely, He will not fall short of this; He will
   exceed it. Neither will His justice depend upon accidents; neither will
   He take me at a catch,' as has been roughly but truly said; nor will He
   divide men into two classes only where there are many classes, or
   rather infinite degrees of them. Nor will He judge them by any narrow
   or technical rules, but by the broad principles of right and wrong.
   Slowly in the course of ages mankind have shaken off superstitions
   about God, and learned the simple truth that God is just, which seems
   to be the beginning of religion, and yet is hardly understood even now
   in all its fullness. There is probably no one in this church, father,
   mother, or any one else, who could for a moment tolerate the idea that
   an unbaptized infant would suffer everlasting torments. Remember that
   this was once the faith of nearly the whole Christian world, and ask
   yourself whether, in these latter days, which are some times supposed
   to be rife with unbelief, Christians have not made some progress
   towards a truer conception of the ways of God to man.

   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 at forced
   explanations or pious frauds, or any other shifts or evasions which are
   designed for His glory, nor at any oppositions of nature and revelation
   or of His laws and Himself. These are the ways in which men sometimes
   fancy they can do Him a ser vice, not considering that He has no need
   of their falsehoods to support His truth, not considering, again, that
   there is no greater unfaithfulness than want of faith in the truth. Let
   them rather think that all truth and all inquiry is innocent to him who
   pursues them with an exact and humble mind, and that the Christian has
   a higher reason than other men for the conscientious pursuit of truth,
   for he knows that the God of truth is watching over his inquiries.

   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 to him or any other of His creatures at which
   human justice would revolt. Once more, he who has the love of truth in
   him will have a deeper knowledge of God and His laws, having God
   present with him in all his inquiries, and submitting to Him and
   acknowledging Him; rejoicing in all truth as of God, and learning to
   know Him, not according to the fancies of men, but as He is actually
   seen governing the world in a fixed order, and punishing His creatures
   for their good as the consequence of their actions, as He is revealed
   in history and science; and yet also recognizing Him as the light of
   the human heart, which is beyond history and science, which lights
   those who are ignorant of the very meaning of their words, and which
   can never be put out or extinguished either in this world or in
   another.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [12] Preached at Balliol, April 20, 1884.
     __________________________________________________________________

X

SPIRITUAL RELIGION NOT DEPENDENT ON SYSTEM [13] .

   THE HOUR COMETH, WHEN YE SHALL NEITHER IN THIS MOUNTAIN, NOR YET AT
   JERUSALEM, WORSHIP THE FATHER.

   JOHN iv. 21.

   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
   the world (I in them, and thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in
   one'), He is certainly not thinking of them as established in a church
   or united by a priest hood and common form of worship. He is taking
   another and a higher point of view: Where two or three are gathered
   together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them,' and Forbid him
   not; for there is no man that shall cast out devils in My Name that can
   lightly speak evil of Me.' And when men, as their manner is, are
   putting the outward in the place of the inward, the carnal body in the
   place of the spiritual body, like one grieved at their stupidity and
   hardness of heart, He says to them, It is the spirit that quickeneth;
   the flesh profiteth nothing.' These are some of the revolutionary
   sayings of Christ. There are many others, such as those about the rich
   and the poor; about the Sabbath Day; about the temple; about the
   immediate coming of the Spirit. And if we pass from the New Testament
   to the Old we shall hear a similar voice speaking to us in the
   prophets. We have only to turn to the first chapter of the prophet
   Isaiah, there to read other words, unlike in form but like in meaning:
   Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto Me; the
   new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with;
   it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. . . . 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.' Here indeed is a war against
   existing institutions, some of which were believed to have been
   sanctioned by God Himself. Here is a repetition of that lesson which,
   however old, is always needed in all ages and in all countries, the
   danger of putting the outward in the place of the inward, the local and
   temporal in the place of the spiritual and moral.

   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 in reconciling these thoughts if they impress the mind
   strongly with the fulfilment of our daily duties. How unreal,' as
   people say, is all this!' And sometimes the thought works in our minds
   that this order of things cannot last; it is too hollow, too much under
   mined.' And yet the old order does not change, or changes very little,
   and, when the desired reform has been made, we are disappointed and
   find that the result has been less than we expected. The want, whether
   in politics or religion, lies deeper and cannot easily be satisfied.
   And long after we are in our graves, yea, perhaps to the end of time,
   another generation will feel as we do, as the prophets of old did, that
   our solemn things are unsatisfactory and unreal.

   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 spirit of prophecy may not be
   contradicted at a future time by some isolated fact. In St. John's
   Gospel there occurs another passage breathing a similar spirit, not
   about the future but about the past, which has often troubled
   commentators and sometimes led them to a mistranslation of the
   original. Christ says, All that ever came before Me are thieves and
   robbers;' yet surely neither He nor the recorder of His words (for I do
   not think we can clearly distinguish them) meant to imply that Isaiah
   and Jeremiah and the great prophets of old were thieves and robbers;
   nor can we maintain with some interpreters of the passage that before'
   means instead of,' and that All who ever came before Me' means All who
   ever came instead of Me.' Christ is not thinking of this application of
   His words and the past history of the Jews, but of false teachers and
   false prophets generally, and more especially of those who were living
   about His own time. The comparison of the passage which I have just
   quoted with the text throws some degree of light on both of them. And
   we may assume as a principle of all interpretation, and therefore of
   Scripture, that we must not introduce logic or require too literal an
   adherence to fact where the whole style and character of a writing
   shows that they have not been thought of. And the prophecies both of
   the Old and the New Testaments are to be taken in the spirit rather
   than in the letter; not as predictions of facts which may or may not
   have been verified at a particular time, but as visions of nations
   appearing in the presence of God; as the revelation of the words and
   works of men in the light of a higher word; as a history of the world
   which is the judgement of the world.

   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 more than of persons. Men were not
   to say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for the Kingdom of God is within you.'
   And in a similar spirit, as you will remember, when they ask Him on
   another occasion, Where, Lord?' He only answers, Wheresoever the
   carcase is, there shall the eagles be gathered together.'

   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, some heathen
   philosopher, perhaps, or opponent of their own most cherished opinions,
   and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven,
   while the children of the kingdom may possibly be cast out. This word,
   We have Abraham to our father,' has excluded the sense or feeling of
   the Universal Father. And the temple made with hands, the consecrated
   church, the traditional spot to which pilgrimages were wont to be made,
   has obscured and narrowed the thought of Him who dwells not in houses
   made with hands, and is not contained in the furthest heaven, yet is
   pleased to take up His abode with us. That which was once a shadow of
   good things to come is not even a shadow of them now, but a veil, a
   mist, an impenetrable cloud, coming between us and God.

   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 fire which has hitherto slumbered in the
   earth will burst forth and burn up the chaff. Such volcanoes have
   really burst forth in the German Reformation or in the French
   Revolution. But for the most part they burn only in the hearts of men
   who say to themselves, O Lord, how long?' or The hour is coming,' at
   times seeming to think that the dawn is at hand. They turn away from
   the signs of decay and corruption which to their eye appears around
   them, and try to work out their individual life hidden with God and
   Christ. Many prophets have died unknown; they have desired to see
   things that they have not seen; they have closed their eyes on a world
   which was receding from them; they have found that the vision of the
   Kingdom of God was to be realized, perhaps on earth in the course of
   ages, but chiefly in themselves, and in another state of being.

   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
   they may be one with the Father and with the Son; they eat the bread of
   life; they drink the water of life; they receive another spirit which
   is to guide them into all truth. They are not, as in the parable, like
   the wheat growing together with the tares; nor do they become a great
   tree under the shadow of which the birds of the air take shelter: they
   are the branches indeed of which Christ is the Vine, but no outward
   glory or power is attributed to them. Nor are they bound together by a
   common external symbol; for, as you will remember, the institution of
   the Sacrament is not recorded in the Gospel of St. John. Many reasons
   have been given for the omission; the author of the fourth Gospel has
   been sometimes supposed to have avoided subjects which were mentioned
   in the three first. But there is no proof that he was acquainted with
   them; the more probable reason is, if any is needed, that he is putting
   forward another aspect of the life of Christ, and that the outward
   fades away before his mind in comparison with the inward. Christ is not
   described in the Gospel of St. John as instituting the Sacrament of
   Baptism or the Lord's Supper, but as teaching men that He is the Bread
   of Life. And, if we look closely at the external events recorded, we
   shall see that they are told for the sake of some lesson or discourse
   which is appended to them, rather than for the sake of the events
   themselves. The miracles are very few; one class of them, that of
   healing the demoniacs, is omitted. For example, the miracle of the five
   thousand is narrated in the three first Gospels chiefly as a wonder,
   but in the fourth Gospel with a manifest reference to the lesson which
   follows concerning the bread of life.'

   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 we hardly attend; instead of making
   our whole lives a worship of Him, and seeking to enter into His mind
   and to do His work.

   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 religion in the soul, which
   becomes a part of our being, and is not shaken by the accidents of
   public opinion or the discoveries of science, or the satire of society
   and the world; which is the same in all ages, and is inseparably bound
   up with goodness and truth everywhere. For when we find that the world
   is changing around us, and some things that were once most certain to
   us are becoming doubtful, then is the time to go back to the simple
   principles of religion, and not allow them to be interfered with or
   dethroned by the externals which are always taking their place. To do
   justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with God'; When the wicked
   man turneth away from his wickedness'; Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
   with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself'; Without holiness no
   man shall see the Lord': these are the primary principles of religion
   which can never alter or be superseded; and they are so simple that
   they can hardly fail to be understood. But, when I proceed to think of
   churches, of forms of worship, of systems of theology, these vary with
   the philosophy of different ages, or the characters of individuals;
   they are not ends but means in religion, and they have given occasion
   to endless disputes. Yet not because I see that many things which I
   once deemed to be revealed truths are relative and transient, and that
   many things which I once deemed characteristic of Christianity are
   common to other religions, will I give up the faith in God and
   immortality, or the desire to be a follower of Christ. Hence the
   importance of not putting the lesser before the greater, the changing
   before the unchanging, the duty of worshipping at Jerusalem once a year
   before the great truth that God is a Spirit. I worship God in this
   consecrated building where there are sounds of music and stained
   windows, and the architecture of a former age is pleasingly imitated;
   but if I were on a desert island could I not worship Him still, and
   perhaps more truly, for there He would be my only hope? And if of the
   temple of Jerusalem not one stone were left upon another, or if the
   Churches of Christ in this and other countries were overthrown, should
   I therefore renounce my belief in Him? Yes, perhaps so, if my belief
   had been in houses made with hands; but not if I had considered that
   churches too partook of human infirmity even more than political
   institutions, and that the truth or word of God, and not the vessel
   which contained the truth, is the foundation upon which human life must
   be reared.

   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 the more the
   spiritual character of religion is under stood the more external
   differences will disappear. Can we think of a good man as other than a
   good man because he belongs to another sect, because he does not
   believe in the same doctrines which we believe in? Hardly, if we know
   him; but ignorance is the parent of dislike and estrangement. When we
   read history we see that these differences have originated in feelings
   which we no longer share, and which are maintained chiefly by external
   barriers. And, when we turn from the ecclesiastical history of our own
   country and of Europe to the larger book of the religions of the world,
   we perceive that the disputes which have occasioned them are infinitely
   small in comparison with the greater interests of religion, and we
   wonder how the human mind can have been absorbed by them. Or again,
   when we look out on the heavens, the work of Thy hands, the moon and
   the stars which Thou hast ordained,' are not these religious disputes
   calmed and silenced in the thought, What is man that Thou art mindful
   of him?' And when we think of God as a Spirit, must not this great
   truth absorb the lesser antagonisms or parties which divide us? Just as
   in politics we have seen towns or districts of the same country which
   seemed to bear an external enmity to one another, the heritage of
   former ages, yet contrary to all expectations have been fused or
   moulded into a single nation and become instinct with a common life.
   There is Italy, for example, and Germany. And are the divisions of
   churches to be more lasting than the divisions of nations?

   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, propounding to ourselves some distant ends, and never
   thinking of the means, I will add in conclusion a very few remarks
   touching the manner in which these great ambitions or aspirations may
   be made effectual or practical. The way to the future lies along the
   present: and we can only act upon another generation by thoroughly
   understanding our own; what we can do for others depending upon what we
   are or make ourselves. We cannot assume a force of character which we
   have not; we cannot have the results of education or preparation if we
   have not educated or prepared ourselves. Dreams of Christian or social
   improvement are easy, but if we do not try to realize them they will be
   positive hindrances in the way of our own improvement. And therefore
   with all such aspirations I would inseparably link the maxim Whatever
   thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might.'

   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 influence on him. He would make a plan for
   many years instead of living from year to year. He would be able to
   deal with life in a larger and more liberal spirit. He would think more
   of its permanent and less of its transient element. He could not be
   very much the slave of party or prejudices, for he would acknowledge
   that the same parties and prejudices would hardly exist twenty-five
   years hence. There are some possibilities for which he would allow, and
   one of these would be the uncertainty of his own life. And he would not
   walk the less by faith because he carefully considered what one year
   might add to another, how difficulties which could not be overcome in a
   short time might be surmounted in a long time. There is no higher faith
   in this world than to live for posterity, and to think sometimes of the
   good which we may do to a generation whom we shall never know and who
   can do nothing for us. The believer in Christ should cherish in himself
   and impart to others the hope and promise of the future, not only in
   the life which is to come, but also in that which now is.

   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 us try to think of men and things as they will then be
   regarded by us, when the outward and visible will have faded away, and
   theological controversies have no longer any meaning to us. Let us try
   to think of our own lives as they will appear before Him when the
   fashions and opinions of this world are nothing to us, and we measure
   ourselves, not by the opinions of men, but by the just judgement of
   God.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [13] Preached at Balliol.
     __________________________________________________________________

XI

CHRIST'S UNITY WITH THE FATHER [14] .

   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.

   ST. JOHN vii. 16-18.

   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; or again, to the witness
   of John the Baptist, who had himself been asked similar questions by
   the priests and Levites sent from Jerusalem. They have strong reasons
   for doubting the truth of His mission: Search and look, for out of
   Galilee ariseth no prophet'; or, Howbeit we know this Man whence He
   is.' Some times in a more natural strain they argue: Is not this the
   carpenter's Son, whose father and mother we know?' For mankind are slow
   to recognize the greatness of those with whom they have been long
   familiar; as Jesus Himself testified, A prophet is not without honour
   except in his own country.' Then, again, they are puzzled by His words,
   they do not understand in what sense He bears record of Himself; and
   they seem to taunt Him with a forgetfulness of His own profession, that
   His Father bore witness of Him. They do not comprehend how He can be
   the judge of the world, and yet not the judge of the world; or how they
   should seek Him and not find Him, and whither I go ye cannot come'; any
   more than Pilate under stood the word of Christ that He was a king'; or
   that He came into the world to bear witness unto the truth.' His inmost
   and deepest thoughts, Before Abraham was I am,' and I and the Father
   are One,' appeared to them to be blasphemy. They were offended at His
   breaking the law about the Sabbath day, according to their narrow
   interpretation of it. They failed altogether to see His meaning when He
   told them that they must be made free,' or must be born again,' or must
   eat His flesh and drink His blood.' Some of them wondered, How He could
   know letters, not having learned.' Some said, He is a good man,' and
   others, Nay, but He deceiveth the people.' And neither did His brethren
   believe in Him.' They wanted Him to show forth His claims to the world,
   saying, shrewdly enough, There is no man that doeth anything in secret,
   and he himself seeketh to be known openly.' If He would only make a
   speech, or assert Himself in some way, then the world would acknowledge
   Him. And they also reminded Him that He was running a risk of being
   stoned if He went up to Jerusalem. To whom Christ, in the deep
   stillness of His convictions, only replies, My time is not yet; your
   time is always ready'; and, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If
   any man walk in the day he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of
   this world': how much more he who sees always the light of the divine
   presence!

   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 not whither He went, and how could they know the way?
   They had no conception of a kingdom not of this world; they had rather
   hoped that He should restore to the Jewish people their own kingdom,
   and even that some of themselves might be sitting on His right hand and
   His left, judging the tribes of Israel. They were the personal friends
   of Christ who were ready to follow Him whithersoever He went, and like
   friends they were anxious about His safety; they were comforted by His
   presence, they were conscious that He had the words of eternal life.
   But of His inner mind, of His real nature, of His relation to the
   Father, of the purely spiritual mission which He came into the world to
   accomplish, they seem hardly to have had a conception. They were
   ordinary men who had no outlook into the world or into history, and who
   had not yet been transfigured by the power of His character. So the
   author of the fourth Gospel, which of all the Gospels and of all the
   books of Scripture is by far the most dramatic, in his own lively
   manner has pictured to us the feelings which filled the minds, not of
   the Jews only, but of the first disciples.

   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 spirit, and have perverted what was inward
   and moral into what was local and outward. Either they have found
   difficulties in the ancient narrative of the Gospels, which they have
   vainly endeavoured to meet by pretended reconcilements; or they have
   wanted to see with their own eyes the miracles of which they have heard
   by distant report; or they have hoped against hope to witness the Son
   of Man appearing in the clouds of heaven; or they have formed within
   the bosom of the Christian Church narrow sects more nearly resembling
   in externals the congregations of the first believers, until the very
   conception of the Gospel has vanished into a many-coloured dream, and
   the truth which was to be the life of man has taken the form of an
   answer to objections, an apology, a defence, a book of evidences; not
   the highest and the holiest which the human mind could conceive, a
   self-evident truth or light, but a full-blown system of theology, and a
   vigorous polemic against opponents. For the religion of Christ is
   always being recovered and being lost; and errors, falsehoods,
   superstitious practices, which He came into the world to destroy, are
   constantly being reasserted in His name. The men of our own day are not
   so unlike as we imagine to the contemporaries of Christ; and the
   difficulties of our own age resemble, in a measure, those difficulties
   which the Evangelist has put into the mouths of the Jews. Slowly, if at
   all, do men realize that Christianity is not a church, or a
   congregation, or a history, or a book, but a blessed and divine life,
   or communion of men with God, of which he who wills may be a partaker.
   They have never applied to their own case the passionate exclamation of
   Christ, It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing;
   the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.' If
   we allow for differences of times and countries, and also for the
   length of time during which the objections to the Gospels and the
   answers to them have been accumulating (for the evidences of
   Christianity have become a great literature), we may fairly argue from
   one age to the other, or at any rate find in the one the germs of true
   and useful thoughts which are applicable to the other. Following on the
   lines indicated by the words of the text, I propose to consider more
   particularly--(1) the nature of Christ's answer to the Jews; (2) what
   did He mean when He said If any man is willing to do His will, he shall
   know of the doctrine'? (3) what application of these and similar words
   we may make to ourselves and to our own day.

   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 record
   which is true appeals irresistibly to our highest sense of right and
   truth; there are a few whose goodness we could hardly doubt without at
   the same time doubting the existence of goodness itself. The false
   record is that of an impostor, who is also a fanatic, who can offer no
   reasonable ground why men should believe him to be sent of God, but yet
   by a certain positiveness and egotism, by an intense belief in himself,
   gains an ascendency over the minds of others. And there have been
   leaders of religious thought, who have been deceived as well as
   deceivers, who with good intentions have not been aware how much of
   their own teaching was derived, not from God, but from themselves.
   Characters of this type are common among men, and they often gain an
   undue power over their fellows; they insensibly undermine the truth and
   purity of religion, and create a distrust of it in the world. There
   have been even saints and righteous men whose witness of themselves was
   not to be believed; they thought they saw, and perhaps really saw, the
   true light at times; and at other times they supplemented by
   self-delusion the faith which was beginning to fail them; and yet they
   have been good men still in the main, if all the circumstances of their
   lives be considered. Nevertheless it is obvious that their testimony of
   themselves must be received with suspicion; for they and their beliefs
   were what they made them by fastings and religious exercises, by a
   study of one side of the truth only, by indulging the natural tendency
   of their minds; or, what they had become by the opposition and
   antagonism of their age, by the cruelty and persecution of their
   enemies.

   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 God He could not have lived such a life, or
   died such a death. To those who say, Show us the Father and it
   sufficeth us,' He only replies, I am the manifestation of the Father.'
   Righteousness witnesses to itself, but it has also the witness of God.
   The Jews said, This is blasphemy'; and so it was for Simon Magus, or
   any other false prophet who had no truth in him, to declare that he was
   the great power of God.' But it was not blasphemy for Christ, feeling
   in His whole soul the love of God, the truth of God, the righteousness
   of God, feeling that in all His words, works, thoughts, He was
   reflecting the will of God, to declare Himself one with God. The creed
   tells us that He was equal to the Father as touching His Godhead,
   inferior to the Father as touching His manhood.' But is it not more
   intelligible to us, and more instructive, to think of Him as one with
   God, because Christ and God are one with righteousness and truth?
   Christ does not so much assume to be God as He naturally loses Himself
   in God. Other leaders and teachers of mankind have been remarkable for
   confidence in themselves, and this quality is sometimes thought to be
   characteristic of great men. The confidence of Christ is of another
   sort, not confidence in self, but absolute dependence on the will of
   God. He has no fear, except once and for a moment, lest He should be
   forsaken of God; He has no wish or desire except that which is inspired
   in Him from above. He is not making an effort, or striving to produce
   an impression on His own disciples or the Jewish people, but simply
   appearing as He was, and showing men the truth which He had received
   from God. The depth and calmness of His nature are not ruffled by the
   violence of the multitude; He still pleads for them, Father, forgive
   them, for they know not what they do.' To the Roman governor and in the
   face of death He continued to announce His mission: For this cause was
   I born, and to this end came I into the world, that I might bear
   witness to the truth.' He has nothing to do with the world, or the
   kingdoms of the world, or the policy of Caiaphas, or the rival sects of
   the Jews. The scene which sur rounds Him, whether of the feast in the
   temple or before the judgement seat or on the cross, passes unheeded
   before His eyes. In the midst of the crowd He is alone with God.

   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 and
   immediately out of his own nature. We might have a doubt whether we
   could make the sacrifice which he demanded of us, whether we could
   resist temptation, whether having begun to lead a new life we should
   not after a time fall away. But we should have no doubt that he was
   speaking the truth, that he was calling upon us to fulfil the work of
   God, that if we would receive his words we should be happier than if we
   neglected them. Even if the impression faded away we should acknowledge
   that he was right, and we should perhaps feel grateful to him in after
   life for having sought to save us from sin and evil. This, which may
   have come within the experience of many of us, is an illustration of
   the manner in which Christ spoke and taught, Himself His own witness.
   And the persons whom I have been describing are like Christ in their
   own spheres, showing the nature of God in themselves, reflecting the
   life of Christ in their own lives; they are witnesses who need no other
   witness of the truth of their words. And, if in remote ages, amid new
   forms of society and new interests of knowledge, the image of Christ
   begins to wax dim, it can only be renewed by the lives of men like Him,
   devoting themselves to the cause of God and to the good of their fellow
   men, in an altered world, after another manner perhaps (for we cannot
   anticipate religious any more than political changes), yet in the same
   spirit of holiness and disinterestedness and truth.

   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 examination of evidence, or adapted to the latest discoveries in
   philosophy. Christ does not say that he who wills to do the will of God
   shall know what is the true reading, or what is the interpretation of a
   passage of the New Testament, or whether the facts of His own life have
   been accurately narrated in the Gospels, or whether this or that
   doctrine has been rightly defined by the councils of the Church. Of
   such matters there is no spiritual intuition; the Scriptures must be
   interpreted like any other book, according to the same laws of language
   and the same rules of criticism and evidence. Neither does He seem to
   say Be humble and believe what you are told by the ministers of the
   Gospel'; nor again, Follow some religious practice until you are
   convinced of the belief on which your practice rests'; nor Admit the
   claims of some religious teacher, and you will soon know him to be
   inspired.' These are erroneous ways of applying the meaning of the
   text. But He means to say that, if you have a real desire after truth
   and holiness and righteousness, you shall know what they are, and shall
   be in no danger of being deceived about them. If you begin by seeking
   to do the will of God, more and more of His will shall be revealed to
   you. You shall see Him as He is, not disfigured by the traditions of
   men; and His grace shall be perfected in you.

   And now I will proceed to consider, in the last place, how the words of
   the text may be applied to ourselves, and to our own times. There
   appears to be in the minds of many persons a good deal of apprehension
   about the future of religion. These alarms which have been always felt
   in all ages of the Church seem in our own day to have increased, and
   perhaps with some reason. We see powerful influences at work and rapid
   changes taking place, and we cannot pretend to foretell what will be
   the course of religious opinion in this or other countries fifty or
   even twenty years hence. Not only the speculative reconcilement of
   science and religion appears to be distant, but the practical
   reconcilement of them in our own life and conduct is not free from
   difficulty. For we are subject to opposite and discordant influences;
   we hear one voice speaking to us in the churches and another in the
   newspapers or the lecture-room. And some persons have thought that they
   would be quit of the difficulty by being quit of religion; they have
   gone further and further away from the faith of their fathers, putting
   the world in the place of God, the laws of nature in the place of moral
   and spiritual truths. Yet, perhaps, we should not attach too much
   importance to such changes; for there are some who, in the days of
   their youth, have lightly laid aside all regard to religion, and have
   died in the bosom of an infallible church. And there are others who
   have gone to the opposite pole, and then in middle life they have found
   the articles of belief which they had eagerly embraced in youth
   slipping from under them, and their life has set in darkness and doubt.
   There have been times in the history of the Church when the true
   meaning of the Gospel seemed to be almost lost; when, in the beautiful
   words of the great Catholic historian, Christ was in the ship, but
   asleep'; and to these times of lethargy and vacancy have succeeded
   other times of revival, awakening, reformation, counterreformation.
   Therefore we should look forward in faith to the future, and not be too
   much influenced by the accidents of the age in which we live--the state
   of knowledge, the progress of criticism, the conflict of ideas and
   modes of thinking. Human nature has been so created by God as to be
   sufficient for itself under all its trials. The world is moving on
   fast; ideas which are in the air trouble our minds; at times they seem
   quite to overpower us; and we want to know where, amid the floating
   sands of opinion, we may find some rock or anchor of the soul.

   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 justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with
   God'; to visit the fatherless and widow, to keep himself unspotted from
   the world'; to live always as unto the Lord, and not unto men'; to be
   kindly affectioned one to another'; to take up the cross and follow
   Christ' (if we are capable of it): which of these precepts is changed
   by the inquiries of criticism? Which of them does not come home to us,
   not only as a word of the New Testament, but as a self-evident duty or
   truth?

   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 beliefs, which fade away in the distance (as we
   might expect after 1800 years); but there are others which were never
   realized before in the same manner. For example, we can understand
   better than ever before what Christ meant when He said of the teacher
   who was not of His own followers, Forbid him not'; or what He meant
   when He replied to those who charged Him with profaning the Sabbath
   Day, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath'; or the
   meaning of the Apostles when they said, Of a truth God is no respecter
   of persons,' and There is neither Greek nor Jew, bond nor free, but all
   are one in Christ Jesus'; or the final result of St. Paul's high
   argument' in the Epistle to the Romans, when he says, So then God
   concluded all under sin that He might have mercy upon all.' Or, again,
   we can better realize the depth and fulness of those other words of
   Christ, My kingdom is not of this world,' than in the days when the
   visible greatness of the Church seemed to overshadow the earth.

   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 that higher
   part of Christian belief which they have in common. Their vision
   extends yet further, to the great religions of the East, and the
   controversies and phases of faith which have absorbed them. They set
   aside lesser perplexing questions, whether of criticism or of
   philosophy, which are neither important nor capable of being
   satisfactorily answered. They turn from theology to life, from disputes
   about the person of Christ to the imitation of Him who went about doing
   good.' He who begins by asking, What is the evidence of miracles? How
   are the discrepancies of the Gospels to be accounted for? How can the
   physical and spiritual qualities of man be harmonized?' is losing
   himself in questions which may continue to be in dispute long after he
   is in his grave. But to him who asks: How can I become better? How can
   I do the will of God? How can I serve my fellow men? How can I serve
   Christ?' the answer is in a manner contained in the question. He has
   the witness in himself of what is holy and just and true. He knows that
   righteousness and truth are the will of God; and he has the witness of
   life and history to the consequences of human actions.

   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 of sight these new branches of knowledge, so
   vast, so minute, which speak to us of the physical universe. Rather
   they are to be regarded as a new revelation which is added to the old,
   and is in some ways the interpretation of it. This is that part of
   knowledge which confirms, what daily experience also teaches, that we
   live under fixed laws. And sometimes we imagine them to be a prison
   which encloses us, or a high wall over which we cannot climb. But the
   truth is that they are a mode in which God manifests Himself, and that
   the knowledge of them is power and freedom. Not by being ignorant of
   them, but by knowing them, do we escape from the accidents of life; the
   arrow that flieth by night and the pestilence that walketh in the noon
   day.' And for the application of this knowledge to our own lives, just
   as much as for the application of any other kind of knowledge, we are
   responsible to God. Have we ever considered that the care of our health
   is a religious duty? and that to provide others with the conditions of
   health (upon which to them and us so much depends) is a religious act?
   Have we ever thought of the innumerable ways in which the state of the
   body affects the mind? If God has revealed to us in Scripture that we
   have the power to turn to Him and do His will, He has revealed to us in
   science that the mind is dependent upon the body, and that we can alter
   the circumstances of which we are some times called the creatures. And
   therefore the laws which regulate our bodily frames are to be
   reverentially observed by us no less than the spiritual laws which
   Scripture and reason reveal to us. They have the witness of God Himself
   in the penalties which He has annexed to the violation of them. And
   they too require of us a certain degree of faith, because the
   consequences of breaking them are distant and unseen, and our immediate
   interests may often seem to be opposed to them, or our passions may
   rise in rebellion against them.

   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, a time of natural growth, in which
   he unlearned some prejudices and acquired a true love of knowledge and
   a real experience of life. Happy is he too who, in the evening of his
   years, instead of regretting the days of his youth or the ages of faith
   which are gone, feels his heart still beating in sympathy with the
   young and with the world around him; who has cheerfully met the mental
   trials which to a reflecting mind are in separable from a state of
   progress or transition, and been renewed and invigorated by them; who
   has taken the good and rejected the evil of the age in which he has
   lived, and has learned the lesson which God intended that it should
   teach him.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [14] Preached at St. Mary's, Oxford, Oct. 22, 1882.
     __________________________________________________________________

XII

CHRIST'S AUTHORITY [15] .

   HE TAUGHT THEM AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY, AND NOT AS THE SCRIBES.

   MATT. vii. 29.

   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 centuries had many imaginary visions and
   likenesses of Christ. After a while the artist breaks through the
   traditional forms in which an earlier generation had hardly dared to
   give expression to the sacred features; and finally seeks to embody in
   the face of the Saviour all the attributes of perfected humanity. We
   see Him full of sadness and dignity as He sits among His disciples at
   the Last Supper, when He makes the discovery to them that there is one
   here who shall betray Me,' and the eager inquiry Who is it?' passes
   from one to the other of them; or as He appears in another picture
   answering those who asked Him of the tribute money, and seeming by His
   gentle wisdom to reprove the hardness and fanaticism which are depicted
   in the faces of His questioners; or as He is seen among the doctors,
   the image of ingenuous youth, yet having in His mind thoughts to which
   they were strangers; or as He is painted again and again bearing the
   likeness of suffering innocence in the judgement hall of Pilate, bound,
   helpless, scourged, yet having a majesty which shows that He is raised
   above this world. These are lessons which the painter's art is able to
   teach, pictures with which we may fill and people our minds; and
   thoughts too deep for words are to be found in many of them. For there
   is a noble use of art which by the help of colour and form raises us to
   the contemplation of the mind within, as there is also a degraded use
   of art which aims only at a false ideal of sense and sensuality; and
   the change which we observe in the art of painting in the fifteenth and
   sixteenth centuries, as we pass from the old Byzantine types to the
   free and noble representations of Albert Durer and Leonardo da Vinci,
   is parallel to another change which has taken place later in the
   history of religious thought. For gradually as time has gone on we have
   learned to think of the character of Christ more simply and truly, more
   as if He were one of ourselves, but above us; no longer defined by hard
   dogmatical lines, but speaking to us naturally, heart to heart; whereas
   formerly men would have hardly ventured to conceive His character at
   all; they regarded Him rather as an inhabitant of another world, a
   divine stranger who passed before them for a moment, and of whom they
   could form no distinct impression. The great physiognomist Lavater is
   said to have been inspired in his researches into the human form by the
   hope of recovering this lost image of Christ. This was the eccentric
   fancy of a great and good man. But may there not be such an image
   present with us still? not pourtrayed by the fancy of the painter, nor
   chiselled in marble by the sculptor's art, nor capable of any outward
   representation, but Christ in the heart and conscience of man, Christ
   in the light of our lives, who is ever shining in us if we look inward
   and have eyes to see; to which image we repair when, like all things in
   the past, the vision of the historical Christ seems to be in any degree
   dim or distant to us.

   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 and
   precise rule to the feeling of the heart--Why do Thy disciples fast
   not?' to which the answer is, They cannot fast while the bridegroom is
   with them; but when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they
   shall fast.' And there are some questions which He will not answer at
   all. For example, that very one, Who gave Thee this authority?' And at
   the last, when interrogated by Pilate, Art Thou King of the Jews?' when
   on the point of being led away to death, in the tone of an equal He
   answers still: My kingdom is not of this world; if my kingdom were of
   this world, then would my servants fight that I should not be delivered
   to the Jews; but now is my kingdom not from hence.'

   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 in religion; the scribes and Pharisees are only
   capable of disputing about details. Christ comes to bring a sword on
   earth, that is to say, to make men think, to make them repent, to
   arouse in a nation a consciousness of sin; to fight a battle against
   evil and falsehood everywhere: their mission is to make men contented
   with themselves, to bring down their principles to their practice, to
   attenuate the stern demands of the law of God, and to reduce them to
   the level of public opinion and of ordinary life. They are absorbed in
   routine and custom. They have never risen to the thought of a moral
   duty or of the nature of God as a Moral Being. To their minds what they
   supposed to be the revelation of Him to Moses was prior to every
   consideration of truth and right.

   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.' These are the truths
   about which the minister of Christ should desire to speak with
   authority; not about baptisms or laying on of hands, or about rubrics
   or vestments or metaphysical controversies.

   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 borne along on
   the wings of sympathy; and then popular goodwill deserts them, and they
   fall and die. But Christ was not one of these dependent beings; He knew
   and was His own witness to the truth which He taught; He was Himself
   the truth embodied in a person of which He could no more divest Himself
   than we can divest ourselves of personal identity. And had all men been
   against Him, had He passed away without making a single convert, the
   truth would not have been the less true to Him. This simplicity, this
   confidence in God and in the truth, this freedom from the traditional
   opinion of men, this divine calmness., this union of strength and love,
   are the features in the character of Christ which we naturally connect
   with the authority which He exercised. He seemed to be above men
   because He was above them, because He was at one with Himself and had a
   hidden strength in God, because the words which He spoke were in
   accordance with the will of God and the eternal laws of the world.

   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 of a
   consistent life? This is a speculation of great practical importance of
   which I propose to speak in the remainder of this sermon, hoping still
   to keep present before our mind the example of Christ with which we
   began.

   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 together in unity,' in a
   family, in a school, in a college, in a state. And we can only live in
   harmony when the spirit of order prevails among us, when there is the
   union of kindness and authority, when personalities are not rife among
   us, when we recognize that, over and above our individual lives, we
   have duties which we owe one to another, of friendliness and good will,
   as well as of mutual help and support. Is it not a fault of worldly
   prudence, as well as of Christian charity, ever to have a quarrel with
   another? Why should we say things which rankle in a sensitive mind,
   sometimes for this very reason, that we are ill at ease ourselves and
   vent our displeasure upon others? For quarrels and differences and
   coldnesses arise almost insensibly out of very small matters; a hasty
   word, a laugh, a command too sharply or nakedly uttered, will alienate
   the affection of another. Men are weak, and do not like to have their
   amour propre wounded; we must acknowledge this weakness, being
   conscious that we also experience the same. Especially persons who have
   any kind of superiority over others should try to enter into the
   feelings of those who are placed under them. The satirical word which
   might be allowable in others is not allowable in them. They cannot
   trample on the feelings of others and still govern them with a strong
   hand, although that is a fiction in which inconsiderate rulers or
   statesmen sometimes indulge. Rather, in the language of the apostle,
   there is a sense in which they must become all things to all men, that
   they may win some'; or, to express the same truth more popularly, they
   must find the way to the hearts of men, and then they may do what they
   like with them. That authority is the most complete which is the least
   felt or perceived.

   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 which lightly pass away and
   are cured by time. There are no doubt some tendencies in this age which
   are unfavourable to the formation of such a character. Ideas succeed
   one another so fast; there is so much talk about persons; knowledge is
   so soon dissipated in criticism, that it is hard for the mind to remain
   in one stay; we seem to require simpler and deeper notions of truth and
   of God, and a more even current of life, not liable to eddies and
   distractions; and this equable life we must make for ourselves. And of
   this calmness or repose we must have the springs in ourselves, for we
   shall hardly find them in the world. The peace of God is to be found,
   not in this or that opinion, but in the sense of duty, in consistency,
   in simple faith and in the hope of another life. Where we began as
   children we end as men, confiding in a parent's love.

   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
   the great struggle of existence, and not adapted to the profession or
   employment which we have chosen for ourselves? Forty years hence men
   will be passing judgement on us, and telling why one has succeeded and
   another failed, inverting sometimes the hopes that had been entertained
   of them in their youth. They will be raising the question why the life
   of one has been a blessing in the sphere to which he belonged, and
   another has gone from one thing to another and brought no fruit to
   perfection. Ought we not to forecast this judgement a little? Many
   reasons will be given for these failures and successes. Because so and
   so was or was not weak or vain; because he could or could not make
   himself respected; because he had no stability in him, or because he
   had a fixed purpose; because he was selfish or unselfish, hated or
   beloved; because he could not keep men together or manage them, or was
   or was not to be trusted in business. And there are many other reasons
   which will be given. Can we not see ourselves as others see us? For the
   world is a hard schoolmaster, and punishes us without giving reasons,
   and sometimes when we can no longer correct the deficiency. And often
   our own self-love blinds us to the end, and we attribute to accident
   what is really to be ascribed to some weakness or error in ourselves.

   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 dignity and authority, we would feign make our pattern,
   though we follow Him at a distance only. For while we acknowledge the
   value, of the judgements of our fellow men, which may correct our own
   judgements, we desire also a higher and perfect standard which may
   correct theirs. We cannot altogether trust them, and still less can we
   trust ourselves. And we know of course that the worth of a life is not
   altogether measured by failure or success. We must live in the world,
   but we want to live above it; in this way only can we have the true use
   of it. Self-knowledge and the knowledge of mankind have a great value,
   but there is a higher knowledge still, which shows us human ends and
   purposes as they are in the sight of God. The truest rule of conduct
   is, Thou God seest me'; and the truest dignity and the highest
   authority which man can attain among his fellows is derived from the
   consciousness that, like Christ, he is seeking to fulfil the will of
   God on earth and to do His work.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [15] Preached at Balliol, April 12, 1880.
     __________________________________________________________________

XIII

THE UNWORLDLY KINGDOM [16] .

   MY KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD; IF MY KINGDOM WERE OF THIS WORLD, THEN
   WOULD MY SERVANTS FIGHT.

   JOHN viii. 36.

   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
   for man, the uncontrollable passions or inspirations within him, are
   also supposed to be protecting or guiding powers. The institutions of
   the state are received by some legislator from heaven. Though among the
   Greeks individuals may have been stigmatized as atheists, yet there was
   no city without gods. At every turn human life was regulated by
   ceremonies, of which the meaning was often lost in after ages. Religion
   was the bond of society as well as of the state. In later ages it
   became divided into two parts--the icy crust and the living stream--the
   prescribed routine of sacrifice and offering and the better mind of the
   worshippers rising in almost unconscious thought to a divine power and
   goodness.

   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 may be compared with similar works of legislators in ancient
   Hellas, while the Jewish prophets, though so different, would have a
   certain analogy to the philosophers of Hellas. However this question
   may be determined, the ideal, whether of the past or of the future (as
   indeed is ever the case in this world), remained unrealized. The
   prophets and psalmists are always lamenting over the backsliding of
   their countrymen. They were a rebellious race, never good for much at
   any time. After the return from captivity they sank into Pharisaism and
   Sadduceeism, as their ancestors had fallen into Phoenician and Egyptian
   idolatry. At length in the minds of good men arose a settled belief,
   that there remained yet a rest for the people of God.' Somehow--they
   could not tell where, whether at Jerusalem or in the distant heaven, a
   King would reign in righteousness, and there would be a kingdom
   comprehending all nations. And any premature efforts to establish this
   kingdom, like those of the Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with
   their sacrifices, ended only in disappointment, fanaticism and death.
   In our own age the outward connexion between religion and politics has
   been to a great extent given up. Religious observances no longer
   inaugurate all public occasions, and when they are retained they often
   partake of the nature of a form. Church and State are more and more
   divided, and in our own country they abstain to a great extent from
   interference with one another. The days of Corporation and Tests Acts,
   of Roman Catholic exclusion, have passed away, and no one wishes to
   revive them. One distinguished man, Dr. Arnold, living between the old
   and the new worlds of politics, and forming his opinion too entirely on
   the study of the Old Testament and of ancient history and philosophy,
   used to maintain the identity of Church and State; whence he deduced
   the somewhat perilous inference that none but Christians should be
   members of a state. The contemporary representation of a some what
   different school of thought was equally strenuous in asserting that the
   state was only a machine for the protection of life and property,
   assuming that if these were secured the interests of religion and
   morality would best take care of themselves. And the political
   reformers of that day, probably not from any vulgarity of mind, but
   because they felt the necessity of having a single and definite
   principle, based their doctrine chiefly on the philosophy of utility.
   In the greatest happiness of the greatest number they saw, or thought
   they saw, the firmest safeguard or bulwark against war, against
   priestcraft, against the various forms of selfishness and
   class-interest. Such a principle offered a guiding thread through the
   tangle of human actions and motives; and many who held it were among
   the most disinterested of mankind. In our own generation we are
   beginning to feel that there was a want which this system had not
   supplied. It was too dry and logical, neither appealing in the right
   way to the imagination nor touching the heart, though furnishing a
   useful corrective to many errors and prejudices.

   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 when we consider how
   deep and powerful an influence religion has exerted in all ages and
   countries we can hardly suppose that her power is exhausted, or that
   the aberration of human nature from itself is destined to be permanent.
   The day may be coming when a larger idea of Christianity, the true
   religion of Christ, may win back the hearts of those who have been
   repelled by the perversions and disfigurements of it.

   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 examined the false, I
   will proceed to consider the true connexion, which is not necessarily
   less real because it is not displayed in outward signs and symbols as
   was formerly the case in mediæval and other ages. Religion may be the
   greatest blessing of the human race, and also a curse; it may guide men
   into light and truth; it may plunge them into darkness and false hood.
   It may raise them above human nature; it may depress them below it.
   There is a religion which is the imitation of Christ; there is also a
   religion which is the incentive to any wickedness, and the disguise of
   it. And, when we would introduce religion into politics, we must be
   careful what sort of a religion it is. When I try a public act by this
   standard, when I ask, Is this declaration of war, this annexation of
   territory, this protection of slavery, according to the will of God? I
   must begin by asking what is the true notion of God: Is He a Being to
   whom war is acceptable or in whose service wars can be waged? Is He the
   God of Christ, or of Mahomet? Even in the Hebrew Scriptures there are
   expressions which fall very far short of the conception of Him which is
   declared to us in the New Testament, and which, independently of the
   New Testament, receives the witness of our own heart and conscience;
   and until we have purified our conception of God from every dark shadow
   of human prejudices, we cannot safely make His will the rule of
   political action or of our daily life. We must see Him as the prophet
   saw Him, having the body of heaven in His clearness,' not the mere
   reflection of our own religious opinion or of the traditions of our
   ancestors.

   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 be a sin not to number the people,
   for we should remain in wilful ignorance of the laws by which God
   governs the world, including the ways of that very pestilence by which
   He was supposed to have punished Israel. Consider, again, the relief of
   the poor: How often has an unthinking appeal to Scripture been made on
   this behalf! It is our duty to do much more for them than we do. But
   ought we to remedy an evil by increasing it? or alleviate physical
   suffering at the expense of moral degradation? The whole question of
   their condition lies deep in the constitution of society, and cannot be
   got rid of by the distribution of alms, or by indulging the first
   impulses of pity and compassion. What we do for them must be done
   wisely, or it will effect more harm than good.

   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 only secured by the threat of war,
   and war may be hastened by the knowledge that another nation is secure
   in peace. There is more than one illusion to which we are naturally
   subject on this question--the horror of the war may deter us from
   considering the duty and necessity of self-defence; the heroism of war
   may gild the aggression of a tyrant. Who can tell whether the
   sufferings of one generation may not be compensated by the safety and
   liberties of another, or by the example which they have bequeathed to
   posterity? We cannot say of all battles that it would have been well
   for the world if they had not been fought--the virtues of war tend in a
   measure to correct the vices of peace. There is no greater
   responsibility than that of declaring war; but considering the
   complexity of human affairs and the uncertainty of consequences, this
   is not a question which can be always decided simply as a matter of
   right and wrong.

   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 excitement, and a generous person who
   has any insight into human nature is apt to revolt from them, because
   he knows that religion and morality are the disguises of party spirit.
   I will add one more illustration of the wrong way in which religion may
   be introduced into politics. I am old enough to remember the time when
   a respectable section of the community believed that the judgements of
   God were about to fall upon this country. And for what? For our neglect
   of education? for the sufferings of the poor? for our toleration of
   slavery (now happily abolished)? for the severity of our criminal code?
   For none of these things, but because we had admitted our Roman
   Catholic brethren to Parliament, or, about twelve years later, because
   we had given a grant for the education of poor Roman Catholic priests!
   It was argued that if a nation, like an individual, had a conscience,
   it must, like an individual, have one conscience; and upon this fallacy
   of composition or division, as logicians would term it, and under the
   still greater fallacy that in gratifying their own party feelings they
   were doing God service, the peace of nations was imperilled, the risk
   of civil wars was incurred. For, if such a doctrine could be
   maintained, there would seem to be no stopping until the members of all
   religions but the dominant and established one were excluded from civil
   and political rights. We must wade through oceans of blood to an
   unmeaning uniformity in religion; and, although this religious tyranny
   is overpast, it cannot be said even now that the sympathies and
   antipathies of churches and religious bodies have no influence on the
   enmities and wars of nations. The immediate interests of their own
   order may often be strong in them, while they have little or no feeling
   for all that is without.

   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 tithe shall be imposed or repealed, whether certain
   regulations respecting degrees of affinity in marriage shall be
   enforced or not, whether usury laws are good or bad. The example of
   Christ will not enable him to determine what measures of relief should
   be taken in an Irish or Scotch famine, or even in the ordinary
   management of the poor. These are questions of expediency, in which the
   best thing to be done is also the right thing, and the best can only be
   discovered by a close and conscientious study of the facts. There is no
   revelation of this from heaven; but the spirit of Christ may still be
   the underlying motive of the statesman's life. And sometimes, amid the
   piles of statistics, in the hurry and distraction of his work, that
   motive may be very near and present to him. But he must think as well
   as feel; he must balance the greater evil which is seen against the
   lesser which is unseen; he must know how much of a evil must be
   endured. He has to work through means; he cannot drop out the
   intermediate steps, or in a mistaken spirit of faith undertake some
   great enterprise.

   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
   selfish interest, he will seek to inspire the greatest unity among his
   followers at the cost of the least enmity among his opponents. He will
   sternly repress in himself all dislike of persons, for the sake of the
   cause which he has in hand, and also because he knows that, while the
   struggle is going on, he is no fair judge of them. His religion will be
   never or hardly ever on his lips, for he fears lest it should become a
   political engine. But the impress of his character, his seriousness,
   his patriotism, his elevation, will communicate itself to others and
   mould the thoughts of a generation.

   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 of
   this world, in which there are so many things wrong, they place the
   image of a city whose builder and maker is God. Here, then, is another
   field for religion in politics--to draw forth the nobler elements which
   exist in all societies, to express them and to present them to the mind
   anew, to reflect them through many mirrors on the sight of all men, to
   infuse them into a parliament or into a nation. This is a religious
   mission, and the noblest of all religious missions, on which gifts of
   poetry and eloquence and philosophy can be bestowed.

   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 hesitate to displace even a bad
   government when we can only let loose antagonistic forces.

   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 belongs neither
   to this political party nor to that. He is not one of the faction who
   call no man master, the fanatics or patriots who stirred up the war of
   the Jews with the Romans until they also perished. He would not have
   counted for anything in the disputes of Pharisees and doctors of the
   law. Their language would not have been uttered, perhaps not even under
   stood, by Him; we cannot tell. He shall not strive nor cry, nor shall
   any man hear His voice in the streets; a bruised reed shall He not
   break, nor quench the smoking flax.' This is not the description of a
   politician or a partisan. All the ordinary motives of human ambition He
   rejects: It shall not be so among you, but whosoever will be great
   among you shall be your minister; even as the Son of Man came not to be
   ministered unto but to minister.' Yet He is gifted with a sort of
   divine insight--favoured, may we say, by His manner of life--into the
   hearts and minds of men. He knew what was in man.' Nor was He wanting
   in the power of evading a subtle question: Whose wife shall she be in
   the resurrection?' and Shall we pay tribute unto Cæsar or not?' But he
   does not determine whether human relations shall continue in another
   world, or distinguish what things belong to Cæsar and what things to
   God. He only seeks to confound the ambiguities and perplexities by
   which we set aside the moral law; whether a child should support his
   parents, whether a husband might put away his wife, and the like. He
   fights the battle of human nature against hypocrisy and self-deceit
   everywhere.

   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
   heroes; there are times also when it is well for them to lead, like
   Christ, a private life only, and through that to work upon their
   fellow-men. There are characters and gifts which find a natural sphere
   in politics; there are men who are most useful when they are speaking
   or acting; there are other characters and men who find the truest
   expression of themselves in thinking or writing, who live with God or
   in the heaven of ideas rather than with their fellow-men. There are
   practical and speculative natures. Either of them may supply the defect
   of the other; and both may equally be the servants of Christ.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [16] Preached at Balliol, Jan. 22, 1882.
     __________________________________________________________________

XIV

THE LORD'S PRAYER [17] .

   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.'

   LUKE xi. 1, 2.

   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 earthly and heavenly Father. For
   although we speak of Him as a Father, which implies also the idea of
   personality, we do not mean that He is subject to personal caprice, or
   that He favours some of His children more than others, or that He will
   alter His universal laws in order to avert some calamity from us. All
   experience is against this, and we should destroy religion if we set up
   faith against universal experience. For either we should dwell in a
   sort of fools paradise, believing that our prayers had been answered
   when they had not been, because we had asked things which God could not
   grant (for they were at variance with the laws of the universe); or we
   should deny that there was a God altogether, because there was no such
   God as we had imagined. We must enlarge the horizon of our thoughts,
   and conceive of God once more as the infinite, the eternal Father, with
   whom there is no variableness nor shadow of turning' either in the
   physical or in the moral world; He of whom Christ says, Are not two
   sparrows sold for one farthing? and yet your heavenly Father careth for
   them,' and The very hairs of your head are all numbered'; and yet also
   the universal law, the mind or reason which contains all laws, as much
   above the world of which He is the Author as our souls are above our
   bodies; in whom all things live and move and have their being; who is
   the perfection of all things, and yet distinct from them.

   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 will, but to make our will His will. We
   must not kick against the pricks, or beg that this sickness or pain,
   the loss of this beloved one, may be averted from us. For God has
   taught us by many signs and proofs that these things are regulated by
   fixed laws. And is there not a kind of impiety in refusing to learn the
   plainest of lessons? Now that the book of nature has been revealed to
   us, must we not have the courage to say, a little parodying the words
   of the prophet, Henceforth there shall be no more this prayer in the
   Christian Church, "Father, alter Thy laws for our good"; but "Father,
   if it be possible . . . nevertheless not my will, but Thine be done"'?
   We wish to live, perhaps, and accomplish a little more before we go
   home; but we know very well that our prayers will not delay the coming
   on of age, or restore the failing sight, or revive the strength of the
   paralyzed. It is the Lord; let Him do what seemeth Him good.' And in
   youth there are often troubles which happen to us, great in themselves,
   and rendered greater by imagination, such as loss of fortune, or
   inferiority of position, or disappointment of the affections, or some
   other kind of disappointment; and we think with bitterness, Oh, that we
   could have this particular trial spared to us; that we could have had
   the position of which we could have made such a good use; the friend
   without whom life seems hardly worth having!' But all this is weakness
   and discontent. Can we not rise out of these crises of our lives,
   acquiescing in the will of God, but starting afresh to do Him service,
   making stepping-stones of our former selves towards something higher,
   setting our hearts where true joys are to be found? We cannot go to God
   and say, O God, give me the life of that child, or sister, or wife, who
   is visibly hastening to the end.' But we can say, Though He smite me,
   yet will I trust in Him'; the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away;
   blessed be the name of the Lord.' Neither can we go to Him and say, O
   Lord, give me wealth,' or even, give me a sufficiency of the means of
   life, that I may make a good use of them.' But we can go to Him and
   say, O Lord, we thank Thee for the blessings which Thou hast given us,
   and for the sorrows by which Thou hast chastened us. Grant that we may
   draw nearer to Thee, and do Thy will more perfectly.' What is this but
   praying that we may be more holy, more pure, more just, more truthful,
   more willing to live for others? Can we offer up such prayers too
   often, or have too many of them?

   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 depends upon the identity
   of our will with His. Can we retire to rest with the feeling, Lord,
   into Thy hands I commend my spirit,' remembering too that in the
   darkness; Thou, God, seest us'? Can we rise in the morning almost with
   a feeling of joy that we are spared another day to do Him
   service--Awake, my soul, and with the sun Thy daily stage of duty run'?
   Does the thought ever occur to us in the course of the day that we will
   correct that particular fault, intellectual or moral, whether idleness,
   or want of accuracy or method, or any other fault, not with a view to
   success in life, or to university distinction, but in order that we may
   be able to serve Him better? Or do we ever seek to carry on the battle
   against sin and evil and the temptations which beset us, conscious that
   in ourselves we are weak, but that there is a strength greater than our
   own which is perfected in weakness? Or, once more, do we sometimes
   think of God as the Eternal, into whose hands we resign ourselves when
   we depart hence, with whom do live the spirits of the just made
   perfect, and who in the hour of death will be our trust and hope? We
   would not always be thinking of death, for we must live before we die;
   yet the thought of a time when we shall have passed out of the sight
   and memory of men may also help us to live, may assist us in shaking
   off the load of passions, prejudices, interests which weigh us down,
   may teach us to rise out of this world into the clearer light of
   another.

   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, or a course of life, idle or
   expensive pleasure, in which we have indulged, or feelings which we
   have entertained towards others, which were not right: of these we
   ought to think sometimes at our prayers. Then is the time to get rid of
   hypocrisy and see ourselves as we truly are in the sight of God. I do
   not think that we are called upon to confess our sins to men, except in
   certain cases, or when we have individually wronged them; but we are
   called upon to acknowledge them before God--O Lord, against Thee, Thee
   only, have I sinned.' Nor should we tease ourselves about the past,
   which cannot be undone. But we should set before ourselves, and fix
   indelibly in our minds, that these things were wrong, offences against
   the laws of God, and some of them perhaps disgraceful in the opinion of
   men. One use of prayer is to maintain in us a higher standard, and
   prevent our principles insensibly sinking to our practice, or to the
   practice of the world around us. When a man listens to the voice of the
   tempter within him, he is inclined to do as others do, not to resist
   when the temptation seems great. But when he looks into the law of God
   and hears the words of Christ, his natural sense of right and wrong is
   restored to him, and he becomes elevated, purified, sanctified.

   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 live in
   the presence of God, in the presence of truth and justice and holiness
   and love, and to think of other men as they are in the presence of God.
   Yea, and of ourselves also, that we may free our minds from vanities
   and jealousies, that we may grow in self-knowledge and in true
   knowledge of the world, that we may have peace in the thought of death.
   And, if our horizon seems to enlarge, and new knowledge makes the old
   childish prayer impossible to us, let the horizon of our prayers
   enlarge too and include all knowledge and all truth, that we may be
   reconciled to ourselves, and learn to devote our intellectual gifts
   wholly to the service of God and man.

   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
   them; they must draw others to them by the insensible influence of
   their characters, and not by a profession of religion.

   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 them what we do not at present think about ourselves.
   We may wish that they had the restraint of religion to enable them to
   resist the lusts of the flesh and the other temptations of evil; we may
   regret that they are so worldly and external, or perhaps that,
   following some natural impulse, they have rushed into some opposite
   extreme, and perceive too late that the deficiency in their characters
   began in our own.

   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 must lament over opportunities which he has lost. He must
   desire to become better. For to all good men, whether they use the
   words or not, life is an aspiration and a prayer. And sometimes they
   may be doing the work of God while yet only seeking after Him and still
   ignorant of Him.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [17] Preached at Balliol, 1872.
     __________________________________________________________________

XV

PRAYER AND LIFE [18] .

   LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY, AS JOHN ALSO TAUGHT HIS DISCIPLES.

   LUKE xi. 1.

   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 to the
   same sort of microscopic criticism as the histories of Greece or of
   Rome? Shall we be able to pray any longer when the sequence and order
   of nature are more clearly understood; when the wind and the rain, and
   the life and the death of man, are observed to follow as certain laws
   as the stone which falls to the ground or the rivers which find their
   way into the sea? And there will not be wanting those who will apply to
   this age the language of Scripture about the latter days in which
   deceivers will wax worse and worse,' who will, perhaps, hear in the
   very advance of knowledge the footfalls of a distant antichrist; who,
   when in the natural course of human things their own sect or party or
   opinion begins to decline, will imagine that the world too is coming to
   an end.

   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
   still seems to affect us from a distance; or, in the first French
   Revolution, when the highest hopes of mankind seemed to be suddenly
   cast down into the depths of despair. But there is a reflection which
   may tend to quiet the minds of those who live, or believe themselves to
   live, in times of trial or difficulty. It is this: All such times of
   movement and change have appeared different to those who have looked
   back upon them from afar and to those who were living in the midst of
   them. They have been seen by after ages more as a part of a larger
   whole, as having a great, but still only a subordinate, place in the
   scheme of Providence; the truth that was in them has been separated
   from the error; the temporary excitement has passed away, and the
   permanent result has appeared. And, if we could imagine some one living
   a hundred years hence, and looking back on our own age as we look back
   on past history, he would certainly see us and our times in a very
   different light from that in which we regard ourselves. Perhaps he
   might note that there were some questions which are now deemed very
   important, and which are not really important at all; he might observe
   that there were oppositions insisted on by us which were only
   oppositions of words; he might wonder at the obsolete violence of party
   spirit with which even good men attacked one another; and still he
   might recognize that, amid all our errors and divisions, we were being
   led in a way that we did not understand to something deeper and truer
   than satisfied former ages.

   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 hourly by the commonest observation, as well as by the latest
   results of science. Everywhere, as far as we can see or observe or
   decompose the world around us, the pressure of law is discernible. And
   even if there are some things which we cannot see, which are too subtle
   to be reached by the eye of man or the use of instruments, still we are
   right in supposing that the empire of law does not cease with them, but
   that, in the invisible corners of nature, as they may be termed, the
   same powers rule, giving order and arrangement to the least things as
   well as the greatest.

   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 rising of the sun, or the ebb and flow
   of the tides: but everywhere He has provided the empire of law,
   everywhere He is present Himself, in the least things as well as in the
   greatest, not acting partially or capriciously, but universally, not
   interfering but ordering; and the same to all men in all ages and
   countries, though they may have known, or may know, of His natural
   government no more than of His moral, like helpless children ignorant
   of the laws under which they live.

   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 the
   universal Father who cannot possibly desire that one of His creatures
   should be favoured at the expense of another, any more than a human
   father who had the feelings of nature could desire that one of his
   children should die and another live. In the courts of earthly
   sovereigns there may be the preference of one person to another; but
   there are no such preferences with God. He who would make a request of
   this nature is already out of the presence of God; for he who comes to
   God must believe that He loves other men as well as himself. If we
   could imagine some one among us, some one who might be pointed out in
   this place, to be the special object of God's favour, he himself would
   reject such a notion as unworthy of the Being whom he wished to serve.
   He would not like to serve a god who had his favourites after the
   manner of an earthly potentate. Nor, again, could he wish that God
   should break the laws which He has laid down for him and all His
   creatures; that He should make an exception in his favour, that He
   should introduce disorder into the world for the sake of doing him some
   benefit. For he would consider that this exception to the law which was
   made on his behalf might be made on behalf of others; and then how
   could all the individual wishes of mankind be reconciled? And there
   would be no stopping until the world was framed on some different and
   other model, and wonders and fancies and special interventions to
   individuals took the place of the divine order for all. Or how could he
   venture to ask that God should do for him what He had told him by every
   sign that He could give that He could not do for him? How could he dare
   to say, O Lord, make not Thy will to be mine, but make my will to be
   Thine'? Was ever such a prayer heard from the mouth of any human being,
   that the laws of the world should be broken for him, that God should do
   for him what He would refuse to do for any other?

   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 arms, and we could imagine the prayers
   of the two contending parties ascending in a figure before His throne,
   He could know of no favour to one or other of them except so far as
   their cause was just; He could not take their part because they prayed
   to Him; but rather we should think of Him as a father pitying His
   children in their quarrels, looking with a sort of strangeness on their
   wild and fierce game.

   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. But I would remind you that
   even in this case there may be a more excellent spirit. Father, if it
   be possible, let this cup pass from Me, nevertheless not My will but
   Thine be done.' And, The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away;
   blessed be the name of the Lord.'

   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 says in the evening, Lord,
   into Thy hands I commend my spirit'; which rises up in the morning, To
   do Thy will, O God'; and which all the day regards the actions of
   business and of daily life as done unto the Lord and not to
   men--Whether ye eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to the glory of
   God.' The trivial employments, the meanest or lowest occupations, may
   receive a kind of dignity when thus converted into the service of God.
   Other men live for the most part in dependence on the opinion of their
   fellow-men; they are the creatures of their own interests, they hardly
   see anything clearly in the mists of their own self-deceptions. But he
   whose mind is resting in God rises above the petty aims and interests
   of men; he desires only to fulfil the divine will, he wishes only to
   know the truth. His eye is single, in the language of Scripture, and
   his whole body is full of light. The light of truth and
   disinterestedness flows into his soul; the presence of God, like the
   sun in the heavens, warms his heart. Such a one, whom I have
   imperfectly described, may be no mystic; he may be one among us whom we
   know not, undistinguished by any outward mark from his fellow-men, yet
   carrying within him a hidden source of truth and strength and peace.

   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 almost said to think
   the thoughts of God, as well as do His works. And this is the spirit
   which must also animate our separate acts of prayer, the spirit of
   simplicity and truth, the spirit of love and peace, the spirit which
   says, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.' For acts of prayer
   are not mere repetitions, shorter or longer, of forms of words, or
   ceremonies with which we approach the majesty of heaven; but they are
   real requests which flow out of the nature and needs of man. Give me
   purity, give me truth; make me to understand knowledge; take from me
   all ill-will and egotism and selfish care; give me patience. Not my
   will, O Lord, but Thine be done. In Thee, O Lord, I put my trust, now
   in the time of my youth when the snares of this world are encompassing
   me, now again in the time of my age when my strength fails and I go out
   whither I know not.' Can a man live too much in this spirit? Or can
   there be a higher exercise of the reason than this?

   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 after year praying for something which
   is never granted me, and then finding a late and unsatisfactory
   explanation that if my request had been good God would have granted it,
   when the truth is that I have overlooked the very first conditions of
   His dealings with His creatures. Such prayers are necessarily hollow
   and formal; they are always at variance with experience, and we are
   only half-satisfied with our explanation of them. But the prayer that
   we may fulfil the will of God, passively in submitting to Him, actively
   in working with Him, has a real answer, and is the answer to itself;
   there can never be any doubt that God wills that we should fulfil His
   will; there can never be any doubt that the prayer to Him, the
   communion with Him, will draw us to Him.

   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 this mountain should men worship
   the Father,' when rival churches and local institutions should be
   broken up and pass away, still he would feel that God was a Spirit, and
   that the true worshippers of Him must worship in spirit and in truth,
   and that under the shadow of His will he would be safe amid the changes
   of human things.

   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 to God as our own. Neither should we forget
   some times to pray that God may clear away from our souls all error and
   prejudice--The mind through all its powers Irradiate, there plant eyes,
   all mists from thence Purge and disperse'; and that, as years go on and
   our faculties in the course of nature become weaker and narrower, and
   our limbs are old and our blood runs cold, instead of creeping into
   ourselves we may still be expanding like the flower before the sun in
   the divine presence, and cheered by the warmth of the divine love.

   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 life and actions are Christian, I would
   rather claim him as a Christian, even though he said he was not, than
   excommunicate him because he did not follow the religious usages of
   Christians in general; for there is no one whose life and character in
   any degree resembles the life and character of Christ who is really His
   enemy.

   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. Perhaps that is better left to himself. Let him make the
   actions of his life take the place of prayers if he will; let him find
   another road, through the order of nature or the sense of right, to the
   acknowledgement of an Author of Nature. He cannot, perhaps, altogether
   define his meaning or impression. Let us say Forbid him not; seeking to
   find in all things and with all men everywhere, not lines of division
   but bonds of union, not differences but agreements, not the
   distinctions of Christians or of parties but the love of God fulfilling
   Himself in many ways.

   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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [18] Preached at Balliol, May 18, 1884.
     __________________________________________________________________

XVI

THE PROPHETIC SPIRIT [19] .

   THE SPIRIT OF GOD MOVED UPON THE FACE OF THE WATERS.

   GENESIS i. 2.

   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.

   ISAIAH lxi. 1.

   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 conjecture, of prehistoric times about which we know so little.
   Though there were wars and migrations among primitive men, they
   remained for the most part in the same condition; there was hardly more
   progress among them than among the animals. Even in our own age of
   industrial and political activity we become unexpectedly aware of times
   of reaction: the force which seemed strong enough to revolutionize a
   world is suddenly arrested and brought to a stop in the midst of its
   career. Countries, like individuals, are always in danger of falling
   back into apathy and repose. So that, if some persons speak to us of a
   law of progress in human affairs, others will seem rather to discern in
   them a law of rest; not everything going forward, but everything
   standing still--not the new is ever entwined with the old,' but there
   is nothing new under the sun.' And certainly we must admit that the
   times of progress and improvement have been few and far between: the
   day-spring from on high has visited mankind at intervals. Every
   individual who has sought to do good in his generation has probably
   made the reflection: How little impression he has left upon the forces
   arrayed against him! hardly more than the husbandman on the solid frame
   work of the earth.'

   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, which have
   become the inheritance of after ages. In general the progress of
   mankind has not been gradual but sudden, like the burst of summer in
   some ice bound clime. Still less has it been a common effort of the
   whole human race. If we take away two nations from the history of the
   world; if we imagine further that the six greatest among the sons of
   men were blotted out, or had never been; the peoples of the earth would
   still be sitting in darkness and the shadow of death.' The two nations
   were among the fewest of all people: scarcely in their most flourishing
   period together amounting to a hundredth part of the human race. The
   golden age of either of them can hardly be said to extend over two or
   three centuries. The nations themselves were not good for much; but
   single men among them have been the teachers, not only of their own,
   but of all ages and countries. If the Greek philosophers had never
   existed, is it too much to say that the very nature of the human mind
   would have been different? We can hardly tell when or how the sciences
   would have come into being; many elements of religion as well as of law
   would have been wanting; the history of nations would have changed. So
   mighty has been the influence of two or three men in thought and
   speculation--the world has gone after them.

   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 Egypt,
   which seemed so imposing in their antiquity and external greatness,
   they had the force of mind to see beyond them, and beyond the existence
   of their own Jewish nation. Great as was the power of Assyria and of
   Egypt, they knew and were convinced that they were as nothing before
   the power of God. Already they saw the seeds of ruin in them: their
   garments were moth-eaten,' their palaces crumbling in the dust. For
   they were persuaded that no kingdom could be lasting which was not
   founded on righteousness and the fear of God. These are what we may
   call in modern language their principles of politics and religion. They
   taught men the true nature of God, that He was a God of love as well as
   of justice, the Father as well as the judge of mankind. They saw Him
   sweeping the earth with His judgements, and yet ever willing to have
   mercy on those who bowed to Him. They knew that He could not be pleased
   with external rites or ceremonies. Lo, O man, He hath shown thee what
   He requireth of thee; to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly
   with God.' They raised their voice against tyranny and hypocrisy,
   against luxury and vice, against the foreign superstitions which were
   imported into Israel. And, though confined within the limits of the
   Jewish people and without experience of the rest of the world, they saw
   in the distance the vision of a perfect God having the body of heaven
   in His clearness.'

   And now everywhere in Christian countries their words have sunk deep
   into the heart of the human race. If the logical and intellectual
   framework of the human mind may be said to have been constructed by the
   Greek philosophers, the moral feelings of men have been deepened and
   strengthened, and also softened and almost created by the Jewish
   prophets. In modern times we hardly like to acknowledge the full force
   of their words, lest they should prove subversive to society. And so we
   explain them away or spiritualize them, and convert what is figurative
   into what is literal, and what is literal into what is figurative. And
   still, after all our interpretation or misinterpretation, whether due
   to a false theology or to imperfect knowledge of the original language,
   the force of the words remains; and a light of heavenly truth and love
   streams from them even now (more than 2500 years after they were first
   uttered) to the uneducated and ignorant, to the widow or the orphan,
   when they read the words, Who hath believed our report?' and Comfort ye
   my people.'

   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 the same things sometimes
   exist under different names, and moral or intellectual gifts take
   different forms in different ages. There have been a few in all ages
   who have felt themselves irresistibly impelled to utter the truths of
   which they were persuaded; who have fought hopeless causes; who seem to
   have lost all feeling of themselves in their devotion to their country
   or to mankind. The term prophet' is no longer applied to them; they are
   not distinguished from their fellow men by any external note in their
   way of life. We hardly recognize the analogy until after they are dead,
   and then we sometimes find that they have received a prophet's reward.'
   Such men have been the leaders of movements among ourselves, on behalf
   of the prisoner or the slave, or the extension of education, or the
   spread of religious truth. They have been found equally among the
   clergy and the laity. The characteristic of them has been that in one
   direction at least they have seen further, and that their moral sense
   has been higher, than that of the community at large.

   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 his real
   insight into the future; whether there are any prophecies which remain
   unfulfilled, as, for example, the siege of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar, is a
   question which we cannot determine certainly. For, though we may
   interpret prophecy by history, we must not interpret history by
   prophecy. Doubtless many applications were made of the prophet's words,
   both by the writers of the New Testament and the early Fathers, which
   never came within the range of his thoughts. I notice this chiefly that
   we may set it aside as unimportant. The prophet was, and he was not, a
   foreteller of future events. He was, in so far as he saw more deeply
   into the laws of the world around him: he was not, in the sense which
   excites the vulgar credulity and admiration of man kind. At least, if
   there is anything of this kind observable anywhere in particular
   passages, it is not the essential element of Jewish prophecy. And the
   connexion of the Old Testament and the New is not one of types and
   words, but the identity of the truths contained in them--Isaiah and
   Micah in the Old Testament declaring that there should be no more vain
   oblations,' our Lord and St. Paul revealing the spiritual nature of God
   in the New.

   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. Their utterances were
   gradually committed to writing; and in after ages the sayings of
   different prophets were collected in the same volume and bore the same
   title. In the Book of Zechariah the traces of at least two authors are
   universally admitted; in the Book of Isaiah the traces of several
   appear; for we can no more suppose that the words Thus saith the Lord
   unto my well-beloved Cyrus' were composed before the Captivity, than we
   can imagine, as was the belief of many of the Fathers, that the Psalm
   beginning By the waters of Babylon we sat down' was the writing of
   David. In the second place, the later prophecies are to some extent
   formed upon the earlier. The latest of them all, the Book of
   Revelation, or the Book of the day of the Lord, as it has also been
   called, is largely made up of words and symbols taken from the older
   prophets, as the marginal references abundantly testify. Even the
   prophet Isaiah contains a repetition of Micah; Amos refers to Joel, and
   the Book of Joel, probably the oldest of the extant prophecies, has a
   reference to still earlier writings which are now lost. And perhaps we
   shall not be far wrong in supposing that the prophets who are only
   known to us from the historical books, Elijah and Elisha, as they left
   a deeper impress in Jewish history, were also greater than any of those
   whose writings have come down to us. On the other hand the later
   prophets seem to be less bound within the horizon of Jewish thought,
   and to be uttering truths in form at least more universal and more
   adapted to all ages and countries. Probably they began to write down
   their words in a book or roll when they were rejected by their own
   generation.

   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 no end of His mercy. They present the divine
   nature almost in the form of contradictions, now entreating, now
   threatening, now consoling, now punishing; and the human heart bears
   witness to both aspects, and both seem to appear in the order and
   government of the world. And so too in later ages men have spoken of
   the love of God as opposed to His justice; or as though, if I may use
   such an expression, God were just with one part of His mind and at one
   time, and loving with another part of His mind and at another time. Yet
   there is also a higher view which may be gathered from the prophets
   themselves, that His justice is ever regulated by His love, and His
   love by His justice, and that these two are in reality identical and
   inseparable. But we, seeing through a glass darkly, and able only to
   look at one side at a time, imagine the opposition, instead of
   reflecting that His justice and mercy, one and indivisible, encircle us
   both in this world and in another.

   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 judgement which is to come;
   as again in the New Testament the second coming of Christ is blended
   with the destruction of Jerusalem. But still the great day of all is at
   a distance; and one by one the prophets, like other men, pass from the
   scene. The judgement is begun but not completed here, and has an
   anticipation in the consciences of men. There remains therefore a more
   perfect justice for all mankind.

   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 He has mercy on them. When His arm is heaviest upon
   them still a remnant are left, for He will not destroy the righteous
   with the wicked; that be far from Him.' And so the prophets, reflecting
   on the nature of God, arrive at last at the conclusion, not that the
   sins of the fathers are visited upon the children,' but that henceforth
   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 on edge, but
   every soul shall bear his own iniquity,' and that, when the wicked man
   turneth away from his wickedness he shall save his soul alive.' Even
   the very judgements which are affirmed to have been executed by the
   command of God are in some in stances corrected, as for example the
   massacre of Jehu, in Hosea i. 4, where it is said Yet a little while
   and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel,' that is, of Jezebel and the
   sons of Ahab, on the house of Jehu.'

   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
   in both cases is the same, that we know them to be the truth and will
   of God in proportion as they express the highest idea of truth, of
   justice, and of love which we are capable of forming in our own minds.
   But in most men there is but a feeble sense of the power and goodness
   of God; they do as other men do, seldom deriving any light or strength
   from their knowledge of His nature or character. They do not live in
   His presence, or refer their actions to His laws, or judge of the
   world, of other men, and of themselves by the standard of His
   perfections.

   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 masses for quick and dead; we are
   justified by faith only, without rites and ceremonies.' Or again, We
   will have no more formalism or lip-service, we feel that we have sinned
   against God and have need of reconcilement with Him.'

   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 a future which is not,
   but always is to be, a vision of the kingdom of God in distant ages, in
   far-off lands, whether in this world or in another he cannot tell. This
   is the day when the mountain of the Lord's house shall be exalted in
   the top of the mountains'; when the knowledge of the Lord shall cover
   the earth, as the waters cover the sea.' But as yet the justice of God
   and the love of God are but half revealed. The world is distracted
   between good and evil, the evil seeming often to preponderate over the
   good. And in this mixed scene of good and evil the prophet beholds the
   image of a Saviour, a Redeemer, the servant of God, who partakes of the
   sufferings of man, who has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows,'
   who is led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her
   shearers is dumb'; who is exalted of God because he is despised and
   rejected of men.' There is one in whom the struggle and the final
   victory is impersonated, in whom all the sins and sorrows of mankind
   are represented, who shall justify them and himself. In such manner is
   described the life of Him to whom bear all the prophets witness.'

   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. And perhaps some of us would shrink
   from saying Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets.' Yet
   something like prophecy seems to enter into all true religion.

   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 humanity, becomes their natural
   leader; into whose ears the crying of the prisoner or the slave first
   enters; who will spend a lifetime in the detection of some wrong done
   to the fatherless and widow; or who is convinced that he must speak out
   some truth which all the world are either denying or veiling in
   ambiguities, no matter at what cost to his worldly fame or prospects;
   he too has in him the elements of a hero and of a prophet.

   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 God to his fellow-men; who from
   some eminence of thought or knowledge or position has come down to be
   the servant of all that he may be the saviour of all, and who not
   without suffering has carried out this endeavour to his life's end (if
   there be such an one), has in him the spirit not of a prophet but of
   Christ Himself.

   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 hopes
   and ideals of youth are combined with the wisdom and experience of
   maturer life, such a union is fraught with blessings to mankind.
   Enthusiasm is a gift of God, not to be repressed, but to be dissected
   and purged of its lighter and weaker elements. Even the folly of the
   enthusiast is generally wiser than the wisdom of the cynic. We know too
   that the work which begins here is not ended here. He who in later life
   retains the ideals of his early days; who has not ceased to hope and
   believe because he has ceased to be young; who deems that the next
   generation will be better than his own, having more experience and
   fewer prejudices; who looking back on the imperfections of his own life
   looks forward to another in which he will see the ways and do the works
   of God more perfectly; who, when darkness is closing in upon him, has
   his eye fixed on the light beyond, has in him the mind and spirit of a
   prophet.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [19] Preached at Westminster Abbey, July 2, 1876.
     __________________________________________________________________

XVII

THE LORD'S SUPPER [20] .

   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.

   JOHN vi. 52, 63.

   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 and could only answer, Can any man enter again his
   mother's womb and be born?' These instances are taken from the Gospel
   of St. John, who intends to show by them how near the commonplace
   interpretation of the sayings of Christ was to the minds of men, how
   difficult the spiritual one; and not only in the Gospel of St. John,
   but in the other Gospels, there are sayings of Christ, such as Let the
   dead bury their dead'; or the intimation of the resurrection given by
   God to Moses at the burning bush; or such precepts as Make to
   yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness'; or the awful
   warning, Whoso sinneth against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven';
   the meaning of which must have slumbered in the ears of those who heard
   them.

   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 have been buried under a heap of misrepresentations,
   and the meaning which is assigned to them has been in some cases the
   very reverse of that which they originally bore; and then some one has
   arisen who has dug them up again, and they have still been found
   capable of giving life to men. The great sayings of the world seem to
   be always in a process of being lost and being recovered.

   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 Supper. Without entering
   into the controversy which has prevailed respecting this great rite of
   the Christian Church, I shall inquire whether a simpler notion of the
   Communion may not be more in accordance with the Spirit of Christ, and
   more really satisfying to the wants of human nature; secondly, I shall
   speak of the thoughts which naturally arise in our minds on those
   solemn occasions when we meet together at the table of the Lord, and
   recall the memory of Him whilst He was on earth.

   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 in the heart and
   reason of man. Are not such distinctions like lines drawn upon an
   imaginary surface, or a picture painted in space? and they lead us on
   by a sort of dialectical process immediately to raise other questions
   which are not less difficult. In what manner, and by what means, is the
   change in the elements affected, and at what time is their nature
   altered? at their consecration, or after we have partaken only? And do
   all partake of them, or the worthy recipients only? And has the
   minister, who is a man like ourselves, the power of granting or with
   holding the greatest of spiritual benefits, of making, and offering, (I
   hardly dare use the words) the Body and Blood of Christ? Then follows
   the transfer of all the powers of the life to come to a human being,
   and you have a lever long enough to move the world.

   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 be wrong in not
   observing that the good inseparably clings to the evil, and yet is
   somehow not infected by it. Certainly it is with strange and mixed
   feelings that we read such books as the Life of St. Bernard, or St.
   Theresa, or the meditations on the Sacrament in the fourth book of the
   Imitation of Christ. For, although we know that to ourselves
   individually, and still more to the world at large, goodness is a very
   dear bargain when purchased at the expense of truth, yet we see
   something in the lives and thoughts of these men and women which we
   would gladly transfer to our own lives, and for which, in this
   degenerate age, we vainly seem to look; and to them the very spirit and
   essence of religion was felt to be concentrated in the Eucharist. From
   the act of partaking of the bread and wine the rest of their spiritual
   life appeared to flow; they were full of rapture and fear, of sorrow
   and joy, at the same instant; they saw and heard things of which they
   could hardly speak to others, seeming to lose the sense of mortality in
   the immediate presence of Christ. This was the food of men leading a
   superhuman life, taking no thought of this world or of themselves, but
   caring only for the good of other men, and for the service of Christ.
   There is a great deal for us to sympathize with and to reverence in
   this; and, although we feel that no good, or rather great evil, would
   arise from the attempt to revive the feelings of the fourth, or the
   eleventh, or the thirteenth century in the nineteenth, yet we shall do
   well also to separate these ideals of Christian life, these higher
   types of character and feeling, from the accidents which accompanied
   them, or the fantastic thoughts in which they clothed themselves. Men
   are apt to think that they cannot have too much of a good thing, too
   much piety, too much religious feeling, too much attendance at the
   public worship of God. They forget the truth which the old philosophy
   taught, that the life of man should be a harmony; not absorbed in any
   one thought, even of God, or in any one duty or affection, but growing
   up as a whole to the fulness of the perfect man. That is a maimed soul
   which loves goodness and has no love of truth, or which loves truth and
   has no love of goodness. The cultivation of one part of religion to the
   exclusion of another seems often to exact a terrible retribution both
   in individual characters and in churches. There is a nemesis of
   believing all things, or indeed of any degree of intellectual
   dishonesty, which sometimes ends in despair of all truth; there is an
   ecstasy of religious devotion which has not unfrequently degenerated
   into licentiousness. And in the same city, and in the same church in
   which the streaming eyes of saints have been uplifted to the image of
   Christ hanging over .the altar, there have been acts of faith' of
   another kind, which are not obscurely connected with these ardours of
   divine love, in which the voice of pity and of every other human
   feeling is silenced.

   (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 Sacraments than this,
   that they are the expressions of a religious feeling. The Sacrament of
   Baptism is not designed to draw an invidious line between baptized and
   unbaptized infants, but to express the Christian consciousness about
   all infants that they are the children of God, and that, in the
   language of our Lord, Their Angels do always behold the face of My
   Father which is in heaven.' The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, in like
   manner, is not separable from the rest of the believer's life. He is
   always desirous to follow Christ and to be one with Him, and to be as
   He was in this world. Of that hope and aspiration, so much above the
   ordinary life of man, of that prayer and vow, the Communion is the
   highest, the intensified expression. And, as men find a relief in the
   utterance of their feelings, so does he find a relief in the conscious
   acknowledgement that his highest desire in this world is to be perfect,
   to be like Christ. And, as men after a long and weary toil will meet
   together at a feast to refresh their spirits and to bind closer the
   bonds of friendship, so does he go to the table of the Lord that he may
   draw closer the bonds which unite him to Christ, that like Christ he
   may forgive his enemies, like Christ he may live only for the good of
   others, like Christ he may be pure and disinterested in word and
   thought, and have communion with goodness and truth everywhere.

   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 relation
   to God and to Christ, we are conscious also that thoughts arise up
   within us which we can never impart to any other.

   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 dignity, of the true dignity, of human nature,
   which is to be engaged in His service.

   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 to man while upon earth. The Scripture
   speaks of our being dead with Christ, or of our having a life hidden
   with Christ, or of our being one with Him, or partaking of His Body and
   Blood, seeming to de scribe in all these and similar phrases some near
   and intimate relation. But we fear to appropriate these expressions to
   ourselves, because we are afraid of being unreal and of using words
   which have no meaning to us, either because our lives are so inadequate
   to what is described by them, or because the modes of thought used in
   Scripture, as in other ancient writings, may have ceased to be familiar
   to us. They may require to be translated before they can be applied to
   practical use. And I think that we can imagine some one coming to
   Christ and asking Him about this difficulty, as the disciples seem to
   have been in the habit of doing,--Lord, how wilt Thou take up Thine
   abode in us, and in what manner shall we be conscious of Thy presence?'
   and Christ answering, as He did to a similar question, Whoever will
   take up his cross and follow Me, I am one with him'; and Forasmuch as
   ye did it unto the least of these, ye did it unto Me'; and Blessed are
   they that have not seen, and yet have believed.' For the spirit of
   Christianity is not that we should maintain this or that opinion, or
   use this or that form of words, but that, maintaining any opinion and
   using any form of words, we should be like Him. And Christ Himself
   seems everywhere to put the inward in the place of the outward, the
   wider in the place of the narrower, the principle that embraces all
   mankind in the place of that which is national and exclusive; and in
   this one word to sum up the salvation of man--that we should be like
   Him. And to be like Him is to live for others and not for ourselves, to
   be dead to the world and the opinion of the world, and to love the
   truth. Thus, after so many ages and in such an altered world, the image
   of Christ may still be present with us.

   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. There are the persons whom we love, and the thought of whom is
   the highest earthly motive which many of us have for deterring us from
   evil. There are duties which we owe to others of which we may
   especially think, passing each of them distinctly in affectionate
   remembrance before the mind. And there is the plan of life which we
   desire to consecrate to His service, the new profession on which we are
   about to enter, the work which we hope to complete if we are spared,
   not from any motive of vainglory, but that we may do something for the
   sake of truth, and add, if but a little, to the stock of human
   knowledge. There is the business that we have to carry on for the sake
   of others rather than of ourselves, the house that we have to set in
   order before we die.

   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 to have an end. They do not need our poor regards,
   but it does us good to spend a few minutes in thinking of them. They
   seem to be so numerous as we get on in life, and to be separated by so
   wide an interval from us. What has become of them? Where are they? What
   are they doing? We only know that they are in the hands of God, and
   that we shall one day be with them.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [20] Preached at Balliol, 1869.
     __________________________________________________________________

XVIII

IMMORTALITY [21] .

   IT DOTH NOT YET APPEAR WHAT WE SHALL BE.

   1 JOHN iii. 2.

   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 and the faith in immortality,
   pass out of sight and are in process of being lost. Some present
   interest of controversy, some question of Church politics which is a
   thousand miles and a thousand years away from them, takes the place of
   them in our minds. The proportions of religious truth are inverted; the
   transient phase of opinion is all-absorbing for a time. But at the
   approach of death, or in any great crisis of our lives, we return to
   first principles; then we want to have our faith confirmed about one or
   two important matters. If we are to live again in another state of
   being, if those who are taken from us are still alive in some other
   place or manner, we must think about these things. Though we see
   through a glass darkly,' though we know in part only, we cannot help
   asking ourselves what the apostle meant by the words, It doth not yet
   appear what we shall be,' and what we mean by repeating them.

   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 or argue from them, or we shall lay
   ourselves open to the objection that the sensible evidence of renewal
   of life which is present in the one case is wanting in the other, and
   that we do not see the difference between them. But, like other figures
   of speech, they clothe our thoughts; they teach us to realize what
   otherwise would be vague and abstract to us. Ideas of an invisible
   world must be rendered by earthly images; there is no tongue of angels
   in which they can be expressed. The wonders of nature may lead us to
   suspect that even in the visible world there is more than we know or
   can conceive. There are many hidden secrets there too, about the
   beginning or end of the world and of the human race; about the causes
   of life and death, which have not yet been, and perhaps never will be,
   unlocked. But this is not the foundation on which our hope of
   immortality reposes; and we must not be altogether surprised or shocked
   if some one points out that in this, as in so many other theological
   questions, what we mistook for argument was really an illustration.

   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, their
   pleasant ways still encircle us; we seem as if we should never see the
   like of them again on earth. The staff of life, or the comfort of life,
   or the light of life has been taken from us, and we are left to finish
   the journey in cold and solitude. And we have heard of those whom the
   loss of a mother or a friend has won over to the belief in immortality.
   These are not merely Christian feelings, they are natural to man. The
   ancient Greek had the same aches and pains about his departed ones. The
   worship of ancestry is one of the oldest and most universal parts of
   religion; and many books have been written to prove that we shall see
   and know our friends in heaven,' and that those ties will be renewed in
   another world which have formed the best part of our lives in this.
   But, if we reflect, we shall see that it is a train of thought which we
   cannot trust ourselves to pursue; our sorrows will not allow us to be
   impartial about those whom we love. There is a better comfort and a
   deeper truth in the answer of Christ to the shrewd question of the
   Sadducees--In the Resurrection they neither marry nor are given in
   marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven': for the dead are
   ever fading out of sight; for a few weeks or months, or perhaps years,
   they may be very near to us, and after a time we feel their loss in a
   less degree, not from any loss of constancy on our parts, but because
   this is the appointed order of God and the nature of our minds. Beyond
   the last generation, or the one before, we hardly know them; their
   names are venerated on tomb stones, and that is almost all. And yet it
   is a strange thought that they who are so little to us now, though
   bound to us by ties of blood, had affections and interests and sorrows
   and joys as strong and vivid as we now have. They are at a fixed point
   in the far distance from us, while we are floating further and further
   away from them down the stream of time. We cannot, even in thought,
   reconstruct the relationship which once subsisted. There are a few,
   perhaps, in that innumerable company who still detain our longing eyes;
   whose voice, whose look, whose character, remains with us to our life's
   end; and who, if after a long absence they could revisit the earth,
   like friends returning from India or some distant land, would find
   themselves not forgotten in the hurry of the world; and we should
   welcome them to the accustomed place which had always been vacant for
   them. But this is not the way in which we commonly regard the souls of
   the departed: we leave them in the hands of God, who is able to take
   care of them, who is as near to them as He is to us, who is their
   Father and our Father, and their God and our God.

   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 refuse to apply to our
   narrative the same principles of evidence which are applied to another.
   Can I venture to answer him by appealing to authority, still less by
   denying to him the name of Christian? And I think that we have a strong
   and just feeling that the first truths of religion cannot be rocking to
   and fro with successive schools of criticism, and that whatever does
   rock to and fro in this way is not a first truth of religion. We cannot
   suppose that anything important in human life is really affected by the
   date or mode of composition of a book, except in so far as our mistaken
   opinion has made it so.

   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
   sun, is beginning to illuminate until the whole is light. The
   appearances of this world puzzle us, and some times lead us to ask what
   is the meaning of all this--not light but rather darkness visible--in
   which truth and error, good and evil, are at war with one another, or
   more often are inextricably intertwined. For we see good which never
   comes to anything, germs and seeds which never ripen; there appears to
   be such a waste, not only of vegetable and animal natures, but also of
   human and rational souls, upon the earth. One person is taken from us
   just as he is beginning to accomplish some great end, another whose
   life is so necessary to his family, to the State, or to the Church.
   There is so little again of any perfect growth of character among us
   which is attained in the short period of three score years and ten: the
   experience of life is hardly gained when life comes to an end. The
   physical laws of the world seem to proceed in regular order, but the
   moral laws are only beginning to be developed; the whole course of the
   world appears to be a sort of education, leading up to that state of
   life and knowledge, still very imperfect, in which we find ourselves.
   But then can we really suppose that all these countless myriads who
   have gone down into silence were created only for our sake, that we
   might make a few steps onward in the march of human progress? That
   would be like supposing that the fixed stars were only created to give
   light to one of the satellites of the sun. Or do we imagine that we
   ourselves are mere stepping-stones on which future ages are to be built
   up?

   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 nature. For God has not allowed the sense of justice to grow up
   in us, or prescribed this to be the rule of our lives, that He should
   Himself violate His own law when dealing with His creatures on a larger
   scale; that justice should be administered in courts of law in the
   world, and consecrated in the opinions of men, and in the great
   conclusion of all things be finally lost sight of.

   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 on earth the
   likeness which we hope to bear in heaven.

   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 infinite variety of
   circumstances and opportunities and we cannot suppose that,
   irrespective of differences of circumstances or degrees of good and
   evil, another world is divided by a hard and fast line into two classes
   only. Natural justice seems to revolt at this; we cannot attribute to
   God a rule of judgement which would seem very imperfect and mistaken
   and ludicrous in man. We know indeed that many vain speculations have
   been entertained respecting an intermediate state, which have
   fascinated men's minds, and drawn them off from the simpler and greater
   truths of religion; and that doctrines of purgatory and masses for the
   dead have corrupted the Gospel of Christ, and been dangerous to
   morality and society. But what is not idle conjecture, nor yet
   dangerous to morality and society, but rather the foundation of them,
   is the belief that God will deal with us as we are, not as we appear to
   ourselves or others, by the rule of justice, estimating our individual
   characters and lives according to their circumstances, not roughly
   generalizing as men might do; and that this justice will still be like
   the justice of a father to his children, subject to that love whereby
   He is wishing to draw all things to Himself.

   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
   argued, not from the Christian's point of view but from the nature of
   things, that he who has an adequate conception of the world as a whole
   must have a conception of God.' In a like strain of reflection it might
   be said that he who has an adequate conception of the depth of human
   nature must have also a faith in immortality.' For the greatest
   thoughts of men carry them beyond this world; if confined to earth they
   are spoiled and stunted. The willingness to die for others, the
   indifference to the opinion of mankind, the love of truth for its own
   sake, the perfect disinterestedness--these are some of the qualities,
   though seen in a very few, which awaken and confirm our sense of the
   immortality of man.

   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 year by year trying to do his duty better, to
   know more of the truth, to carry on the work of God in the world more
   perfectly, in the conquest of evil, in the aspiration after good, just
   in proportion as he is free from every human and earthly influence he
   will feel more assured that he is not deceiving himself, and that God
   is not deceiving him.

   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
   asylum, or only into the meaner suburbs of some great city, and see
   there the worn, emaciated, distracted faces of those with whom the
   world has gone wrong, to whom from the beginning it has been a mistake,
   who have only enough reason to raise them a little above or degrade
   them a little below the animals. Is there no better thing reserved for
   them? Is there no further lesson or meaning in all this suffering? To
   one of us it may perhaps be said, Son, thou in thy lifetime hadst thy
   good things.' But what of Lazarus laid at the gate full of sores?
   Wherever we go, these sights of human sin and suffering, if we read
   them aright, lead us to the reflection that this world is not all.

   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, instead of being the hope and support of the world, the
   greatest illusion of all? and those words which He spoke, Father,
   forgive them, for they know not what they do,' a deception? and were
   not the saints who followed Him and have partaken of His sufferings
   only grasping at a shadow?

   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.'
     __________________________________________________________________

   [21] Preached at Balliol, 1869.
     __________________________________________________________________

ADDITIONAL SERMON

ON FRIENDSHIP

FRIENDSHIP.

   IRON SHARPENETH IRON; SO A MAN SHARPENETH THE COUNTENANCE OF HIS
   FRIEND.

   PROVERBS xxvii. 17.

   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 which
   unkindness or misfortune have made in our lives, who ministers to us
   and restores us to ourselves.

   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 these two, when
   David arose out of his hiding-place and bowed himself three times, and
   they kissed one another, and wept with one another until David
   exceeded.'

   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
   nature, and of all virtue. Partly owing to the different character of
   domestic life, the tie of friendship seems to have exercised a greater
   influence among the Greeks and Romans than among ourselves. And,
   although these attachments may sometimes have de generated into
   licentiousness (for the best things in human nature are not far removed
   from the worst), we cannot doubt that much of what was noble in that
   old life is also due to them. Such an ideal the Greek had before him in
   the friendship of Achilles and Patroclus, of Pylades and Orestes, who,
   as the ancient story told, were ready to die for one another. The
   school of Socrates was quite as much a circle of friends as a band of
   disciples. And in Roman times we hear of noble friendships, such as
   that of Scipio and Laelius, which Cicero has described to us, or his
   own friendship with Atticus, to whom, though a very different character
   from himself, he communicated his inmost thoughts, his weaknesses, his
   vanities, feeling sure that he would meet with a response.

   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:


   And even then, his eye being big with tears,

   Turning his face, he put his hand behind him,

   And, with affection wondrous sensible,

   He wrung Bassanio's hand, and so they parted.'

   Or the well-known passage in Hamlet, beginning:


   Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man

   As e'er my conversation coped withal.'

   And


   Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice

   And could of men distinguish, her election

   Hath sealed thee for herself.'

   Or the adieu of the prating old man of the world, whose maxims seem to
   be so far above his character:


   The friends thou hast and their adoption tried,

   Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;

   But do not dull thy palm with entertainment

   Of each new-hatched unfledged comrade.'

   Or again:


   This above all: to thine own self be true;

   Thou canst not then be false to any man.'

   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, when we become our own masters, is delightful to
   us: and we single out one or two, that we may share our pleasures with
   them, and join in their serious occupations. A young man, if poor in
   worldly goods, may reasonably hope to be rich in friends. He himself
   will be more disposed to form friendships than in later years. If he be
   kindly and affectionate and good-natured, if he cultivate the habit of
   conversing with others, not wrapping himself in a moody shyness, he
   will find that friends soon begin to gather around him. There will be
   no other opportunity in after life like that which he has here. For
   here alone the circle from which he may choose is practically
   unlimited. Here also men are brought together from different places and
   conditions, and meet one another on the common level of education and
   college life. Like draws towards like, and youth rejoices in youth. Let
   him not,' to repeat once more the words of the poet,


   Dull his palm with entertainment

   Of each new-hatched unfledged comrade;'

   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 will be cherished by us in
   imagination thirty or forty years hence; the remembrance of early
   friends will be brought back to us in many a conversation with old
   acquaintances and contemporaries, or with the chance stranger whom we
   meet perhaps in a foreign land. For we too--I mean the younger portion
   of us--if we live, will have feelings about the past of which we know
   nothing as yet; and the elder among us may go back to old scenes, which
   sometimes haunt us, of loving friends now departed, of a world which
   seems to have died out to us and yet is very easily called up and near
   to us in thought.

   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 for one another. They have found, as if by
   accident and mere juxtaposition, the very person in all the world who
   is most congenial to them, at any rate for a time. Yet neither is the
   choice of friends altogether independent of ourselves. A man may
   properly seek for them, he may have an honourable desire to know those
   who are his superiors in moral and intellectual qualities; or he may
   allow himself to drop into the society of persons beneath him, perhaps
   because he is more at home with them and is proud and shy with his
   superiors. And so he gets good, or harm, out of the companionship of
   those whom he loves. Such as they are he will be in some degree; he
   will take from them his manners and style of conversation; he will be
   reflected in them and they in him. We do not want to be judges of our
   fellow men (for who made thee to differ from another?'). But neither
   can we leave entirely to chance one of the greatest influences of human
   life.

   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 dignity which is
   based on mutual respect. Perhaps the greatest element of friendship is
   faithfulness. To know that there is some one who will be always the
   same to us, who has a deep and abiding affection for us, to whom in
   time of trial we may turn for advice or help, adds greatly to the
   security and happiness of life. Two going together have not only a
   twofold but a fourfold strength. They learn from each other, they form
   the character of one another, they bear one another's burdens; they
   make up for each other's defects, they double each other's pleasures.
   Few persons are so constituted that they can live wholly without
   kindness. It is this want in our nature that friendship supplies. When
   the heart is in bitterness or disappointment; when we have made a
   mistake, or are going to make a mistake; when we are over sensitive to
   the opinion of the world; we cannot value too highly the counsel and
   sympathy of another. At such times the appearance of a friend is like
   the return of sunshine, giving light and warmth to the dull and chill
   landscape.

   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
   disinterestedness of true friendship. Yet there are services, even
   pecuniary, rendered by friends to one another which are twice blessed.'
   Of the pleasures of friendship I need hardly speak to you. For every
   one in youth knows the delight of having a friend. Who has not felt his
   heart beat quicker, standing at the door of the house at which he
   expects to meet him after a long absence? How many things have we to
   say to him; how much to hear from him, protracting into the night our
   conversation with him, which seems as if it would never end. Even the
   common incident of paying a visit to an old friend is the source of a
   great deal of pleasure to us. So naturally formed are we for
   friendship; so great are the blessings which flow from it.

   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 together over the portion of their work which has
   been accomplished, and take counsel about that which remains to be
   done; or perhaps congratulate one another on some public event in which
   they took a more distinct part. They desire, if I may use a homely
   expression, to keep one another up to the mark; not to allow indolence
   or eccentricity or weakness to overgrow and spoil their lives. And some
   times, though with care and reserve, they will speak to one another of
   faults and mistakes. For we cannot see ourselves exactly as others see
   us, nor can we hear what others say of us. And, although the candid
   friend has a bad name, yet there are crises of life in which the words
   of friendship may be golden, and may save us from protracted misery or
   one long mistake. A faithful friend cannot stand by and see another on
   the high road to ruin without expostulating. Seldom, though this is a
   minor matter, will words dictated by true affection be found to give
   our friend pain or offence; the love which we bear to another is the
   measure of what we can say to him.

   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 some
   element of weakness or sentimentalism; the feeling passes away, and we
   become ashamed of them and desire that they should be no more
   remembered. Sometimes the characters of men develop differently; or
   their interests become opposed; or their opinions, as Cicero remarks
   about politics, or, as we should more often say, about the Church and
   religion, diverge widely; or at some critical time a friend has failed
   to stand by us, and then our love to him grows cold, and the point of
   view from which we regard his whole character is altered. Friendships
   should not be lightly broken; but, when they are broken, they cannot be
   easily resumed. Only let us remember that there are duties which we owe
   to the extinct' friend, as I may term him, who perhaps on some fanciful
   ground has parted company with us. We should never speak against him,
   or make use of our knowledge about him. Let us remember his former
   kindness, and bury his coldness or disloyalty; we may have even learned
   from him lessons which he has forgotten himself; for the memory of a
   friendship is like the memory of the dead, not lightly to be spoken of
   or aspersed. Yet the breaking up of a friendship and the loss of a
   friend is more often due to our own fault than to circumstances. We
   have been negligent of him; we don't see much of him, as people say; we
   have not kept the friendship in repair'; and thus insensibly alienation
   arises. Or he may have written or said something about us which is
   irritating, and we may make it an excuse for casting him off. But many
   things may be said against most of us which are perfectly just, and
   from which we may learn something about ourselves and about the truth.
   We should at least allow criticism, whether we are enlightened by it or
   not, to flow off from us, and not to disturb our minds or our relations
   to others. Nor can any man be talked down, any more than he can be
   written down, except by himself. A passing word should not be suffered
   to interrupt the friendship of years. Admonish a friend; it may be that
   he hath not done it: and if he have done it that he do it no more.
   Admonish thy friend; it may be that he hath not said it: and if he have
   that he speak it not again.' Persons often give unintentional offence
   because they are uneasy with themselves. It is a curious observation,
   that the most sensitive natures are also the most liable to pain the
   feelings of others. Nor is the reason far to seek; for they are so
   engrossed with their own sensibilities that they have no room for the
   thought of others. In friendships, as in families, a great deal of
   misery has been caused from the misunderstanding of this. Those who are
   yearning for sympathy, for kindness, for forgiveness, nevertheless wear
   a cold or haughty exterior. Among the better sort of men and women,
   half the evils of life seem to rise from a want of imagination. They
   are too literal and positive; they do not put themselves in another's
   situation; they do not understand one another's trials. Many of us must
   have known families in which for years, some times almost for
   generations, there has been no peace or comfort; and we wonder how such
   good people should have lived in such an unchristian manner, and have
   done so little for the happiness of one another. Is not the cause of
   this mainly inattention to one another's characters? Though we may with
   a certain justice attack these foibles and infirmities of human nature,
   yet we are all liable to them to some extent, and therefore should all
   seek to minister to them. There is a great deal of magnanimity
   required, and a long experience, before we can fully realize or over
   come the petty jealousies and irritations of life. Tried by the ethical
   standard of virtue and vice, these bitternesses may seem trifles. But
   any one who wishes to raise the character of society either here or
   elsewhere, who would strengthen the bonds of the family, or make
   friendship permanent or lasting, must acknowledge that he can effect
   these objects in any degree only by an entire freedom from personality
   in himself, and a loving consideration of the feelings of others.

   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 God; that which others do out of
   compassion for their fellow creatures he may do also for the love of
   Christ. Feeling that God has made him what he is, he may seek to carry
   on his work in the world as a fellow worker with God: remembering that
   Christ died for us, he may be ready to lay down his life for other men.
   And so of friendship; that also may be more immediately based on
   religious motives and may flow out of a religious principle. They
   walked together in the house of God as friends,' that is, if I may
   venture to paraphrase the words, They served God together in doing good
   to His creatures': even their earthly love to one another was
   sanctified by the thought that they were in His presence. And sometimes
   they poured forth their aspirations in prayer, or at the Communion,
   that their friendship might be worthy of servants of Christ; and that
   they might find the meeting-point of their lives in Him. For human
   friendships constantly require to be purified, and raised from earth to
   heaven. And yet they should not lose themselves in spiritual emotion,
   or in unreal words. Better that friendship should have no element of
   religion than that it should degenerate into cant and insincerity. But
   there may be some amongst us who, like St. Paul, are capable of feeling
   a natural interest in the spiritual welfare of others; or, if you like
   the expression better, in the improvement of their characters; that
   they may become more such as God intended them to be in this world. And
   all of us may sometimes think of ourselves and our friends as living to
   God, and of human love as bearing the image of the divine.

   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 months, completely cured. Is not this
   something like what the Scripture calls bearing the image of Christ'?

   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 fellow
   men seemed ever to increase with increasing years; of whom, also, it
   might be said, When the eye saw him it blessed him, and when the ear
   heard him it gave witness to him'; or some distinguished person whom we
   had known from very ancient days, who clung to us like a brother' when
   he became eminent as when we were youths together, with whom we had an
   unclouded friendship; or, if at times, like all human things, a little
   clouded, yet that makes no difference; we only wish that we had
   understood him better or been able to do more for him. Where is he, or
   she? and shall we ever see them and speak to them again? We cannot
   tell. They are withdrawn from our sight, and the language of this world
   is no longer applicable to them. But the memory of them may still
   consecrate and elevate our lives. The thoughts of a departed friend or
   child, instead of sinking us in sorrow, may be a guiding light to us;
   like the thoughts of Christ to the first disciples, bringing many
   things to our remembrance of which we were ignorant. And if we have
   hope in God for ourselves, we have hope also for them; we believe that
   they rest in Him, and that no evil shall touch them.
     __________________________________________________________________

THE CHOICE OF A VOCATION [22] .

   NOT SLOTHFUL IN BUSINESS, FERVENT INSPIRIT. SERVING THE LORD.--te
   spoude me` okneroi', to pneu'mati, ze'ontes, to Kuri'o douleu'ontes;

   ROMANS xii. 11.

   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 kurio but kairo. I may remark in passing that the difference
   of writing would be very slight, for both words would be contracted,
   and the first, kurio, would be spelt in the ancient MSS. with two
   letters, having a line written over them, and the second, kairo, 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 John i.
   28, "Bethany beyond Jordan," early noted by Origen, where in the
   Authorised Version the word Bethany has been changed into Bethabara.
   Bethany, as we all of us know, was a place near to Jerusalem,
   consecrated by many associations, but there is no trace of any other
   place of the same name either beyond Jordan or elsewhere. Thus we see
   that in the text of Scripture there is an element of accident which
   even in the very oldest copies is not wholly eliminated, and in these
   and similar cases we have sometimes, though rarely, to appeal from the
   external evidence to what is inaccurately termed the internal; that is
   to say, from the letter of the MSS. to the context of the passage, to
   the spirit or style of the writer in other passages, or to our
   knowledge of some fact (as in the instance which I have just quoted)
   inconsistent with the common reading.

   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 of the Gospel at
   all, for how could the Apostle exhort Christians to be "time servers"?
   We have to find some curious meaning for the words, perhaps an allusion
   to the day of the Lord which the early Christians supposed to be near
   at hand; we might also compare St. Paul's injunction that we should
   become "all things to all men," which has passed into a proverb; or we
   might be reminded of the advice which he gives to his Corinthian
   converts, that it was better not to marry because " the time was
   short." Still, the term "serving" (douleu'ontes) is not suited to
   express this nobler "service to the time"; the idea intended would
   hardly be described in such a passing and ambiguous manner. It is a
   hasty catching at a parallel passage--that error which has been so
   often the bane of interpreters--when one of the Fathers quoted in
   support of this reading the words, "Redeeming the time, because the
   days are evil."

   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 commandment, "Thou shalt do no evil," to the other
   ten. The difficulty which arose in their minds is a very natural one,
   and there are two answers to it. First, that the words, "serving the
   Lord," have a special reference to what has preceded, and modify the
   other precepts. As if the Apostle had said, "Doing these things as a
   service to God"; or in words which he addressed to the Ephesians, "Not
   with eye service as men pleasers, but as the servants of God."

   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 the case, we must
   have recourse, though doubtfully--for there are some things in ancient
   writings which can never be accurately determined--we must have
   recourse to the context, or the use of language, or the modes of
   thought in the same writer. Thirdly, in the matter of interpretation we
   observe that parallel passages are a very precarious help, and may
   easily be made to sustain a foregone conclusion; it is a nice judgment
   which can compare truly one passage with another, or balance the
   immediate with the remote context. Fourthly, I would remark that in
   Scripture we must not expect the same logical point or the same precise
   use of terms which we find in classical Greek. The meaning of language
   in the New Testament is upon the whole not uncertain, but it is
   different; and its peculiar nature must be gathered almost entirely
   from the study of Scripture itself, and the usage of each writer of
   Scripture from himself.

   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. As we are standing on the threshold,
   and before the door is opened to us, there are some questions which
   must often pass through our minds. Both our duty and our interest seem
   to demand of us that we should look forward a few years.

   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 symmetrical arrangement of figures,
   the unerring addition, the tabulated page, the disposition of all
   things in their places so that they may be most easily seen or found;
   these are among the outward signs of the man of business. There is
   again punctuality in answering a letter or keeping an appointment,
   clearness in giving a direction, courtesy, good temper, readiness;
   these, too, are parts of business. And there are higher qualities than
   these, such as judgment, coolness, the habit of distrusting ourselves
   in trans actions with which we are not familiar, the selection of right
   instruments, the power of organisation, the knowledge of mankind and of
   the world. The man of business must have some social qualities also; he
   must be kindly, popular, willing to make friends with others, not
   silent or reserved; he must know what to say and when to say it; he
   must be "neither in the way or out of the way," but in his place
   always; and he must be up and doing. In our small way of business--for
   the term is of wide application, and has a certain place in the lives
   of all men--some of these qualities will be required. A few minutes a
   week should be devoted by each of us to seeing how we stand in the
   matter of money; a few simple rules, which need not be particularised,
   for we all know them, will be enough to keep us straight; then we shall
   have no unpleasant surprises or concealments, no necessity for excuses.
   One great source of anxiety in life will be removed. And we shall
   acquire a habit of business which will be lasting, and may be of great
   value to us hereafter when we are called upon to in important affairs.

   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:--


   So age and sad experience hand in hand

   Led him to death, and made him understand,

   After a toil so painful and so long,

   How all his life he had been in the wrong.

   Now, one of the principal causes of these miserable failures in life is
   the want of habits of business. A young man has no method or conduct.
   He is, perhaps, economical, or, at any rate, not extravagant; but he is
   always behindhand in his accounts, or irregular in his payments; he has
   good abilities, but he has no systematic knowledge; he is always at
   work and always losing time. With twice the labour--for order is,
   indeed, a rest which nature has provided for all of us--he produces
   half the result. He may have many virtues and gifts, but he gets the
   reputation of being a bad manager of his life and of his time, perhaps
   of having an ill-regulated mind, and then he finds, unaccountably to
   himself, that he does not succeed. If there is a vacant place in a
   school or an office, he is not promoted to it; the client passes his
   door; if there is some work to be done he is not commissioned to
   undertake it. No one tells him the reason why, and self-love long holds
   out against the logic of facts. Few things are sadder than these silent
   disappointments in middle life of good and accomplished men who have
   failed to gain the confidence of their contemporaries; they have often
   good nature and good intentions; they may have gained high University
   distinction. And yet almost at a glance the experienced eye sees that
   they are not fit to be trusted in a responsible position; they learn
   too late the meaning of those singular words of the Gospel, "If ye be
   unfaithful in the unrighteous mammon, who shall commit to your trust
   the true riches?"

   Some qualifications such as I have described are needed in every
   calling or profession; without habits of business no man can walk
   safely or thread his way through the maze of circumstances. But now a
   further question arises, What profession shall we choose? What is the
   best for us? And for which are we best suited? A large proportion,
   perhaps a majority of those here present, are looking forward to
   entering one of the two great professions, the Church or the Bar; they
   are the two most opposite ways of life, and in England they both have a
   peculiar character. The thought of one or other of them is probably
   present to the minds of most of us. And as it would be impossible to
   pass in review all the various callings to which an educated man may
   devote himself, instead of attempting to do so I think that it will be
   more instructive to consider the relative advantages or disadvantages
   of these two only, not looking at the prizes which they are supposed to
   offer, but at their effect on the character. Either of them has its own
   trials and difficulties which we must face; either of them, besides the
   regular and direct good which an honest and able man effects by the
   mere practice of his calling, offers subsidiary paths of good and
   usefulness. He who is in a profession should also be above it, above
   its narrowness, above its worldliness, above its prejudices and party
   spirit. The lawyer will be none the worse for sometimes looking at the
   world with the eyes of the clergyman, or the clergyman for possessing
   some of the worldly knowledge of the lawyer. In this place it is a
   great advantage that we should go out of ourselves and hear what others
   say or think of us. Are we aware that while some of us are uneasy and
   ill-content, fancying that Oxford alone is unfavourable to study, the
   world would tell us that here in these ancient seats of learning, in
   the quiet and comfort of our college rooms, living in comparative
   affluence, surrounded by libraries and museums, amid fair buildings and
   gardens, we possess a combination of advantages such as can never exist
   in the bustle of a great city, such as hardly ever existed before, for
   teaching, for thought, for self-improvement, for growth in every kind
   of knowledge? Let those of us who find our profession here enjoy these
   blessings and be grateful for them.

   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 to carry a point from
   one case to another. The lawyer does not require genius or
   originality--rarely will any philosophical powers he may possess be
   called into exercise; but he requires judgment trained by long habit


   Till old experience do attain

   To something of prophetic strain.

   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 difficult task,
   confident in himself, too, that he will not faint or be untrue to the
   calling which he has chosen.

   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 the life of an amateur law
   reformer--may be traced nearly every legal improvement which has taken
   place during the last century. Another great lawyer, about seventy
   years ago, devoted for more than ten years the whole energies of his
   life and mind, and his great legal attainments, to the reformation of
   the criminal code. Among English lawyers there is no one of a nobler
   and purer type than Sir Samuel Romilly. I will add another example of a
   great character trained among the technicalities of the law. "I have
   seen," says Lord Shelburne, "what I have previously considered could
   not possibly exist, a man absolutely free from fear and hope alike, yet
   full of life and warmth; nothing in the world can disturb his repose;
   he lacks nothing himself, and interests himself actively in everything
   that is good; I have never been so profoundly struck by any one in the
   course of my travels; and I feel sure that if ever I accomplish
   anything great in what remains of my life, I shall do so encouraged by
   my recollection of M. de Malesherbes." This is the illustrious jurist
   who had been disgraced for his protest in favour of the right of
   Parliament, and at the end of his life stood forward to plead the cause
   of Louis XVI. before the Convention.

   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 performed by
   educated men--public duties of an unambitious sort, the good or bad
   fulfilment of which makes a great difference to those who are helpless;
   that is, the poor. The lawyer, too, has his opportunities for charity
   of a peculiar kind which cannot be performed by others. It is not good
   for any of us to live entirely in his own class, with no thought or
   knowledge of what is below us.

   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
   character which is suited for the legal profession is not equally
   suited for the duties of a clergyman. The clerical profession ought not
   to have any concern with motives of ambition; yet these motives do,
   indeed, very largely enter into all professions, nor is it easy to say
   how far they are legitimate. Supposing a man to be conscientious in the
   performance of his duties, does it very much matter what are the
   inducements which determine its choice? So says the man of the world.
   In actual life it is argued we must not expect a clergy man to be very
   different from other people; he wishes to settle, he wants to maintain
   and promote his family, he would like to increase his income, which he
   sometimes covers by the euphemism of "extending his usefulness." He
   "best preserves the via media in theology who keeps his eye on
   preferment." There is no great harm in all this, or perhaps I should
   rather say that this is only what we must expect from human nature.
   Still, I would remark that he who enters the Church from these motives
   has lost the highest good of it: he is not one man but two; under the
   appearance of a zeal for the salvation of souls and the improvement of
   mankind he is really pursuing the objects of earthly ambition. It is
   not of such clergymen, how ever respectable, that I propose to speak to
   you, but of the clerical life in its idea, not overgrown with the
   concerns of this world.

   Its motto should be like the motto of Christ Himself, "He went about
   doing good." In this one word the whole office of the Christian
   minister may be summed up. He goes about healing the sorrows of men and
   ministering to their necessities, giving eyes to the blind, knowledge
   to the ignorant, food to the poor; he is the friend, physician,
   teacher, lawyer, peacemaker of everybody in the parish. To him all men
   turn naturally for advice and protection; he is a sort of mediator
   between the world and his parishioners; the educated person, who is
   ever ready to act for the uneducated; especially will he take charge of
   the young from a sense of the unspeakable importance of the first years
   of life; they will be his children, and he will be in a manner their
   father, bound to them by the most sacred ties. And his thoughts will
   hardly stray from this family of his into other spheres of duty or
   influence any more than the thoughts of other parents are diverted from
   their children.

   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
   which is felt at their helpless and degraded state, is a more powerful
   instrument for reforming and converting them than "the tongues of men
   or of angels." There is one language which all men understand, to the
   voice of which no human being is inaccessible--the language of
   kindness. Through the sick wife or child, when the heart is wrecked by
   sorrow or death, this "still small voice" finds its way to the rudest
   nature; and the true minister of the Gospel knows how to seize on these
   opportunities and make them the occasions of permanent good. Sometimes
   there will occur in his parish that singular phenomenon which is called
   a "revival"--he will not laugh or sneer at it, for he knows that rude
   and uneducated natures are often overpowered by a religious influence,
   carrying them whither they know not. But he will tell them of the
   transient nature of such influences; he will bring the light of
   experience to bear upon them; he will insist that by their fruits only
   they can be judged. "Let the drunkard forsake his way," and there will
   be a real revival. Through their natural emotions he will seek to lead
   them on to the real bases of religion.

   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 others? He hears
   preaching very commonly derided, and is doubtful whether the practice
   is of any real use. Such is the feeling. Yet, so far from preaching
   being unimportant, we can hardly exaggerate its effect Is it a small
   matter to seek to raise man above the world in which they live, to
   increase their knowledge in themselves, to renew in them the thoughts
   of a Divine Being? Is it nothing that they should have impressed upon
   them from time to time a higher standard of duty towards God and their
   fellow-men? The best sermons are those which are the natural out-growth
   of a man's character, not strained through books, but fresh from the
   experience of life.

   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
   profession of a clergyman is subjected--the danger of unconscious
   hypocrisy--corruptio optimi pessima. Alas! may he not even sink below
   the standard of the world against which he preaches? "Let every man
   that standeth take heed lest he fall." Let him and all of us test our
   lives and ourselves by the standard of those actions which are seen by
   no human eye, which receive no approbation or disapprobation from our
   fellow-men; thus only can we know ourselves truly.

   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--the error of party spirit. This
   is an evil which we all acknowledge, and one into which the clergy are
   more likely to fall than the laity: it is a perpetual source of
   ill-will in a Christian country; on many political and social questions
   it has had a most pernicious influence. The personal dislike, the
   sneer, the jest, the constant assertion of the rights or interests of
   the sect or community before the interests of morality or religion are
   degrading to us all. It is then a serious question demanding thought,
   "How shall a minister of religion treat those who are not of his own
   community?" Shall it be in the spirit of, "We forbade him because he
   followed not us"? Or in the spirit of, "Other sheep I have which are
   not of this fold"? There are differences among us which cannot be
   healed either in this generation, or probably in the next; there are
   separate spheres and fields of labour, and we must not intrude one upon
   another. It is a matter of tact and individual character what shall be
   the course pursued in each individual case. But there is one rule which
   we may lay down about members of other communities and worshippers of
   other religions; that we shall habitually strive to regard them in our
   own thoughts, not as they are separated from us by accidents of time
   and place, but as they appear in the sight of our Father which is in
   Heaven.

   In conclusion, let me return once more to the words of the text, taking
   them in connection with the remainder of the verse, "Not slothful in
   business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." All these ser vices and
   professions are part of a greater service or work, the work of God
   Himself, in which, if we will believe it, we are invited to have a
   part; and there are two ways in which they may be performed as "Unto
   the Lord," or "As unto men." When we speak or act from a love of
   approbation, from a desire to produce an effect, with a view to our own
   interest or advancement, then, in the language of Scripture, we are
   called "pleasers of men." But when we speak and act from a sense of
   duty, for the love of God, for the sake of our fellow-men, without any
   thought of interest or reward, then, in the words of the Apostle, we
   are "serving the Lord." As the heavens encircle the earth, so the
   service of God includes all other services; it is the unclouded light
   in which they are truly seen, the pure air which inspires them, the
   element which they have in common with the Invisible and Eternal.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [22] Preached in 1881.
     __________________________________________________________________

THE PERMANENT ELEMENTS OF RELIGION [23] .

   IF THEY HEAR NOT MOSES AND THE PROPHETS, NEITHER WILL THEY BE PERSUADED
   THOUGH ONE ROSE FROM THE DEAD.

   LUKE xvi. 31.

   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 mountain." "Forbid him not." "And other
   sheep I have which are not of this fold." "Ye know not what manner of
   spirit ye are of." "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy
   heart, and thy neighbour as thyself--this is the law and the prophets."
   "Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the Kingdom of Heaven." "Except a
   man receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter
   therein." "Let him that is without sin cast the first stone." "The
   Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." "Go and learn
   what that means, I will have mercy and not sacrifice." "Be ye therefore
   perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect." "That they
   all may be one, as Thou Father art in me, and I in Thee, that they also
   may be one in us."

   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 where ordinary religion ends, where the teaching of Churches is
   apt to fail, where the witness of general councils has been found
   wanting. They are the voice of God Himself asserting the moral and
   spiritual against the ceremonial and outward. Some of them are too much
   for us, and we fear that they may be rashly used against existing
   institutions. But though they rise above the level of religious
   communities, which are necessarily made up of mixed elements, they may
   still have an abiding place in the hearts of individuals, and through
   them infuse a portion of the spirit of Christ into the Church and the
   world.

   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 just and upon the
   unjust." Or again, "Are not two sparrows sold for one farthing, and one
   of them shall not fall to the ground without your Father." Here is the
   still small voice of ordinary life more potent than the thunder and the
   earthquake. And so in the parable from which the text is taken, when
   the case is put, "Nay, father Abraham; but if one went to them from the
   dead they would repent"--that is to say, if a miracle had been wrought
   for their salvation--our Lord, speaking in the person of Abraham,
   replies, in words which admit of many applications, "If they hear not
   Moses and the prophets, neither would they be persuaded though one rose
   from the dead."

   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 reconciliation of science and
   religion. The only explanation which either the Evangelists or Christ
   Himself give of the unwillingness to receive His message is "the
   hardness of men's hearts."

   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 the Church, and the Church to the
   regularly ordained descendants of the Apostles? Or what is there in
   common between the robber Synod of Ephesus, or the tumultuous assembly
   of Nicea, and Him who is described, in the words of the Prophet, "a
   bruised reed shall he not break, nor quench the smoking flax"? And yet,
   perhaps, there was more in common than we might at first sight imagine.
   For the good in human beings is strangely mingled with evil. And the
   bigot and the zealot may have in them a touch of human kindness, or
   even of Divine love, which has sometimes lent a power to evil.

   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 the European world found
   itself Protestant; the fathers had been of one religion, the children
   were of another, and even in a single lifetime the early education of
   the same person had been Roman Catholic, his later years Protestant.
   The suddenness of the change is strikingly brought home to us by
   Hooker's gentle plea, that God might have had mercy on some of our
   fathers, inasmuch as they sinned through ignorance; or by the amusing
   story of Archbishop Leighton, who, when he was attacked by his
   adversaries because he was himself an Episcopalian, his father a
   Presbyterian, and his grandfather a Roman Catholic, replied, "Yes, sir,
   and he was the honestest man of the three." In the middle of the
   sixteenth century the spirit of the Reformation would probably have
   taken hold of every country in Europe if the popular voice had not been
   suppressed by the strong arm of Governments and Princes.

   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, which for a
   time saved the Papacy. Their strict discipline, their untiring zeal,
   their seeming union of the wisdom of the serpent and the harmlessness
   of the dove, were, for a time, too much for the world. But the world
   was in the end too much for them. They governed countries; they kept
   barbarous races in a sort of tutelage; they accumulated wealth; they
   monopolised education; they whispered in the ear of princes; they used
   the conscience as a lever by which they subjugated men and women to
   themselves. To truth, to morality, to enlightenment they added nothing.
   No man of genius, no scholar or philosopher of the first class, was
   ever allowed to develop his powers within their borders. They appear to
   have been the authors of the greatest calamity which has befallen the
   nations of Europe, the Thirty Years' War. They were all but conquerors,
   and then the natural feelings of mankind rose up against them and drove
   them out. And whatever hopes or fears may be entertained in this or in
   other countries of a similar revival of priestly authority, we must
   remember that much greater fears and hopes were justly entertained
   about that earlier counter-Reformation which covered the continent of
   Europe with schools and churches; in which more than in any other
   historical struggle the greatest virtues and the noblest and finest
   natures were called into the service of the greatest evil. Who can
   judge them fairly? The saintly lives of many of them, their
   regardlessness of self, their willingness to cast themselves away and
   be trodden under foot, "perinde ac cadaver" in their Master's service,
   have gone up for a memorial before God. The evil that they did lives
   after them to be a warning and a terror to other generations.

   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 lamented the loss of their
   virtues and their talents; there were persons among them who should
   always be remembered by us with kindness and respect, for they gave up
   all their worldly prospects in exchange for what they believed to be
   the truth. Of the state of feeling in which that movement originated,
   there is no trace remaining among us now. It had effects which the
   authors of it never appreciated; for they did not calculate on the
   reaction which would follow. They did not see that in drawing the
   clergy around them they were alienating the laity; so that the
   unsettlement of received opinions in one direction would lead to a far
   greater unsettlement in another. The chief lesson which we gather from
   that tale of bye-gone days is the danger of allowing ourselves to be
   carried away by such movements, which at the time are never seen in
   their true proportions: "Call no man master on earth," if it tends to
   impair your own independence of mind, or to attach you to a person
   rather than to the truth.

   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 of material
   causes. And often the extremes seem to have a greater sympathy with one
   another than they either of them have with the mean; they say one of
   another that they alone are consistent, and that if you are not with
   them, you had better be at the furthest point from them. And sometimes,
   in ways of which they are not aware, they meet. For what is a merely
   outward religion but another form of materialism? The eye may be
   satisfied with seeing and the ear with hearing, while no light of
   Christian life or love penetrates into the heart.

   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." Then we might have had a regular and
   perfect growth to Christian manhood.

   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 adorned for her
   husband," but the Churches which we know are very different, composed
   of men like ourselves, neither much better nor much worse. When they
   meet together in Synods and in general Councils, they are often
   actuated by private motives, and are subject, like other assemblies, to
   many political and personal considerations. We hardly expect of them
   that they should make a bold or united effort in the cause of truth or
   of freedom, should these ever come into competition with ecclesiastical
   interests. And, therefore, not there, not there is the permanent
   element of religion to be sought, not in any succession of Presbyters
   or Bishops, nor in any claim of universal authority, nor in any
   variously interpreted rule of faith or life. The authority of Churches
   seems rather to be derived from the great and good men who have adorned
   them. A St. Bernard, St. Anselm, St. Thomas-à-Kempis are to us the
   witnesses for the Mediæval Church; not the Church for them.

   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 inward light," who
   shall decide between us? "If," a third adds, "this can only be decided
   by the authority of the Church," again the question arises, To what
   Church shall we go? And very often the best of men have seen visions
   and dreamed dreams; they have made God the author of their own fancies,
   and, owing to some warmth of temperament or enthusiasm which possessed
   them, have been able to impart their belief in themselves to others.
   And sometimes the bent of their own moral character towards severity
   and asceticism, or the bent of their own intellectual character towards
   casuistry and over-refinement, has led other men into ways of life for
   which they were unfitted, or has induced them to desert the high road
   of truth and right. Their faith has given others faith in them, and yet
   what they mistook for the will of God was their own will. And,
   therefore, without any disrespect for the Fathers of the Church,
   whether ancient Fathers, such as St. Augustine, or modern Fathers, such
   as John Wesley, we cannot accept them as authoritative teachers. For we
   see that they often erred, and that in many of their conclusions they
   were deter mined by their own character and circumstances.

   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 appear in that remote future. The
   historian in our own day insists on a higher standard of verification,
   and is reluctant to accept evidence which cannot be traced up to
   contemporary witnesses. It is not that we are really more sceptical
   than our forefathers, but a wider knowledge, and a greater command of
   materials, have modified our judgment. Any one who has read the
   histories of Rome and Greece by the light of Niebuhr and Mommsen, or
   Curtius and Grote, cannot help applying the lamp of criticism to the
   New Testament. He must ask himself and honestly answer the question:
   What is the date of the books in which the narrative of our Lord's life
   is contained? How did they receive their present form; how are the
   discrepancies which occur in them to be explained? Now, the answer to
   these questions in our own day will be somewhat different from that
   which would have been given in the last generation. With the advance of
   knowledge we have to shift our ground, and most of the old defences of
   Christianity, and many of the objections to it, have gone out of
   fashion, and are no longer convincing to the mind But we are seeking
   for principles which are not assail able by criticism, and do not
   change in successive generations. We cannot believe that religion
   depends upon minute questions of words and dates, when there are so
   many things in life to be done, and so short a time in which to do
   them.

   And if this degree of uncertainty which affects all early history
   affects the ordinary facts narrated in the Old and New Testament, it
   must equally affect the extraordinary. Whatever a priori arguments may
   be urged in their favour, we cannot help seeing that they must be
   judged of, like other facts, by the rules of historical evidence. We
   cannot say, with some writers, that they are more probable than other
   facts; or, with Butler, that all facts are antecedently so improbable
   that the difference between the improbability of the ordinary and
   extraordinary "cannot be estimated, and is as nothing." Nor can we
   require the evidence for them to be supplemented by belief in them; for
   this would destroy the very nature of evidence. The certain knowledge
   that in the universe there is a fixed order makes a great difference in
   our manner of regarding them. If we saw them with our own eyes and in
   the full light of day, we should have a difficulty in verifying them or
   appreciating their import; how can we see them more clearly when they
   are far away in the distance? In one age of the world it is almost
   impossible to conceive them; in another age of the world the belief in
   them is the natural, almost the necessary, accompaniment of in tense
   religious faith. The wonders of other religions are only acknowledged
   by the professors of them; the Protestant does not accept Mediæval or
   Roman Catholic ministers; the Jesuits deny those of the Portroyalists.
   The pious Catholic often imagines that a great revival of religion is
   about to be effected by the increased diffusion of miraculous gifts,
   such he has himself witnessed in these latter days with wonder and
   thankfulness, but this is a hope which can hardly be entertained by us.
   And all Christians would agree in rejecting the miracles of those who
   are not Christians. Neither can any connection be traced between the
   inward grace and spirit of the Gospel, and the admission of facts of
   history, whether ordinary or extraordinary; and, therefore, I think
   that we had better put aside this vexed question of miracles as not
   belonging to our time, and also as tending to raise an irreconcilable
   quarrel between revelation and science. As a distinguished prelate of
   the English Church has wisely said, "If you cannot come to us with the
   miracles, come to us without the miracles." For not there, not there,
   is the permanent and universal basis of religion to be found.

   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 saying
   to us not "Forasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these, ye did it
   unto Me," but "Forasmuch as ye did not accept what was written or said
   of Me in after ages, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of
   Heaven."

   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 which theology and life must alike conform. He
   who is possessed or inspired by this thought will need no other rules
   of faith or of practice; by this he will test all doctrines and will
   regulate all his actions; he will ask himself from time to time what is
   the will of the Perfect, the Divine. And, seeing also the beginnings of
   a Divine perfection, amid much imperfection in the world around him, he
   will strive to co-operate with them, and begin to understand that there
   is no opposition between God and nature, but that through the order of
   nature God is working out the good of all His creatures. And when he
   becomes conscious that there is a real good in the world, of which God
   is the author, and of which he himself may be the partaker, he will not
   be greatly troubled with the old puzzle about the existence or origin
   of evil, or the meta physical conception of the Divine nature. His own
   life will be the answer to his doubts, and in the hour of death he will
   not be cast down, for he has created in himself the faith which can
   never fail in holiness, in justice, in truth, in love.

   "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 them, as from
   some fountain of light, the Divine image may again and again be
   recovered whenever the veil of the physical world becomes too thick for
   us to penetrate.

   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 thought in other
   words, it remains because of its simplicity. The teaching of Christ is
   not like the teaching of some scribe or commentator who can eke out a
   few simple words to a tedious length; or of some scholastic divine who
   elaborates the particulars of a system: it is summed up in a word or
   two, "Believe," "Forgive," "Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is
   in Heaven is perfect." It is not only common to different sects of
   Christians, but unites different classes of society, those who have and
   those who have not education in our brotherhood And if we could imagine
   the world ever so much improved it would be still tending towards the
   kingdom of Christ, still falling short of His maxims and commands. Amid
   all the changes to which, during centuries to come, the Christian faith
   may be exposed, either from the influence of opinion or from political
   causes, the image of Christ going about doing good, of Christ suffering
   for man, of Christ praying for His enemies--this, and this alone, will
   never pass away. And if any body asks, Where, after all these assaults
   of criticism and science, and the concessions made to them, is our
   religion to be found now? We answer, Where it always was--in the
   imitation of Christ.

   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 opinions; after an interval
   of years we come back to them and find them the same. No declaration of
   Popes or Churches can alter by a single hair's breadth any one of them
   any more than it can alter in any degree the present or future lot of a
   single person. It cannot make that which is false to be true, or that
   which is improbable to be probable. And, amid the shiftings of
   opinions, the knowledge of facts and the faith in them, whithersoever
   they seem to lead, has a tendency to stablish, strengthen, settle us.
   There are a thousand ways in which they bear upon human life, and,
   therefore, indirectly upon religion. And there is also a more direct
   connection between them; for we may regard truths of fact as acceptable
   to the God of truth, and the discovery or acquirement of them as a part
   of our service to Him. And when we give up our own long-cherished
   opinions or our party views to the power of fact; or when we seek to
   train our intellectual faculties in accuracy, in attention, in the
   conscientious love of truth--in this, too, there may be something of
   the sacrifice which is well pleasing to Him.

   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 coming when we must be Christians indeed, if we are
   to be at all; for conventional Christianity is beginning to pass away.
   If we are to have any strength in us, or to do any good, we must have
   real principles harmonious with one another; and we must do what we
   have to do with all our might as unto the Lord, and not to men. There
   would be little to dread in the disappearance of orthodox beliefs (as
   they are some times called) if it were accompanied by a deeper
   consciousness of the Divine nature, by a more habitual imitation of
   Christ, by a more disinterested love of truth, and those who find the
   difficulties and distractions of the day press hardly upon them will do
   well to turn away from them and seek to quicken in themselves the sense
   of the great truths of religion and morality. The minister of the
   Gospel who sometimes asks uneasily, "What am I to teach now?" need be
   under no real apprehension because a few of the common-places of
   theology are taken from him. The essentials of Christianity strongly
   and personally felt, not mere vague abstraction, but holiness and
   unselfishness, the living sense of truth and right, the love of God and
   man, have greater power to touch the heart than anything else. The good
   life of a clergyman is his best sermon; and the doctrine by which he
   will most affect others is the fresh and natural expression of it. To
   have a firm conviction of a few things is better than to have a feeble
   faith in many, and to live in a belief is the strongest witness of its
   truth.

   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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [23] Preached in 1879.
     __________________________________________________________________
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                                    Indexes
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture References

   Genesis

   [1]1:2

   Deuteronomy

   [2]6:4

   Psalms

   [3]8:3-9   [4]9:8   [5]18:7   [6]18:9   [7]23:4   [8]50:2-3   [9]90:1-2

   Proverbs

   [10]27:17

   Isaiah

   [11]19:24   [12]61:1   [13]63:15-16   [14]63:19

   Hosea

   [15]1:4   [16]11   [17]14:4

   Matthew

   [18]7:29

   Luke

   [19]11:1   [20]11:1-2   [21]16:31

   John

   [22]1:28   [23]4:21   [24]6:52   [25]6:63   [26]7:16-18   [27]8:36
   [28]10:16

   Acts

   [29]17:27

   Romans

   [30]3:6   [31]7:19   [32]7:24   [33]7:25   [34]12:11

   1 Corinthians

   [35]15:28   [36]15:28

   2 Corinthians

   [37]6:10

   Colossians

   [38]1:15

   Hebrews

   [39]1:1-2   [40]11:6

   1 John

   [41]3:2   [42]4:8
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Greek Words and Phrases

     * douleu'ontes: [43]1
     * kairo: [44]1 [45]2
     * kurio: [46]1 [47]2
     * te spoude me` okneroi', to pneu'mati, ze'ontes, to Kuri'o
       douleu'ontes;: [48]1
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Latin Words and Phrases

     * Tantum relligio potuit suadere malorum.: [49]1
     * a priori: [50]1
     * corruptio optimi pessima: [51]1
     * minutiae: [52]1
     * perinde ac cadaver: [53]1
     * via media: [54]1 [55]2
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Index of Pages of the Print Edition

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     __________________________________________________________________

            This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal
               Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org,
                   generated on demand from ThML source.

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