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OSfV 
 
THE SILENT VOICE, 
 
 AND OTHER DISCOURSES. 
 

 £}■ THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 For 
 
 THE POETS' BIBLE. 2 Vols. 
 IS THERE A FUTURE LIFE? 
 THE HYMN LOVER. 
 CONGREGATIONAL HYMNS. 
 
 Critical Notices, Prices, etc., see the end of 
 present volume. 
 
THE SILENT VOICE 
 
 AND OTHER DISCOURSES 
 
 W. GARRETT HORDER 
 
 ' het us be men with men, but always cliildren before God: for in His 
 eyes we are but children." — Joubert 
 
 LONDON 
 
 Wm. ISBISTER Limited 
 15 AND 16 TAVISTOCK STREET COVENT GARDEN W.C. 
 
/\ ,i(oOiji~ 
 
 "God calleth preaching folly. Do not grudge 
 To pick out treasures from an earthern pot. 
 The worst speak something good ; if all want sense, 
 God takes a text, and preacheth patience." 
 
 George Herbert. 
 
THESE discourses are published in response to a 
 request from many friends, whose wishes have very 
 argely determined the selection. In this respect hearers 
 are in a better position to judge than the preacher ; but for 
 such expressed wishes the volume would probably have 
 consisted only of practical discourses, of which, as it is, 
 it chiefly consists. I hold that the feelings kindled by 
 religious influences need to be guided into right channels, 
 and that if this be not done, the results on the life are 
 usually very poor. In the New Testament, doctrine ever 
 leads up to practice, theology to ethics ; and the piety 
 of the Church at large would have been of a much less 
 sentimental and of a far more robust type had this pro- 
 cedure been closely followed. 
 
 It is only necessary to add that, since these discourses 
 were delivered I have here and there inserted illustrative 
 extracts which confirmed, or set in better language than 
 I have at my command, some of the truths enforced. 
 I shall be thankful if this little book should serve to 
 confirm faith, to dispel difficulty, or guide conduct. 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031296852 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 THE SILENT VOICE 
 
 THE FAINTING HEART . .... 
 
 THE LEAST AND THE MUCH 
 
 FIRST AND SECOND IMPRESSIONS OF CHRIST . 
 
 THE GENTLENESS AND SEVERITY OF GOD . 
 
 THE PERFECTION OF GOD 
 
 THE VISION OF THE INVISIBLE . 
 
 THE CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE 
 
 THE PLACE OF EMOTION IN RELIGION 
 
 THE VARIETY OF CHRIST'S METHOD .... 
 
 THE QUIETNESS OF THE DIVINE METHOD . 
 
 THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD — 
 
 (1) THE RELATION OF THE MEMBERS TO ITS HEAD . 
 
 (2) THE RELATION OF THE MEMBERS TO ONE ANOTHER 
 
 PROFITLESS FOREBODING 
 
 LOVING TRUTHFULNESS 
 
 ACCEPTABLE WORDS .... 
 
 ANGER WITHOUT SIN ... . . 
 
 A LOVING MASTER . . . . 
 
 MASK-WEARING . 
 
 THE HEALING SUN . . .... 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 14 
 31 
 40 
 48 
 
 55 
 68 
 
 78 
 
 88 
 
 100 
 
 no 
 
 118 
 129 
 
 139 
 153 
 161 
 
 175 
 184 
 
 193 
 
 200 
 
" I know ye nothing care ior me 
 Each to each deep mysteries, 
 We cannot guess what we may be 
 Except by what a glance can seize. 
 Perchance we never met before, 
 Meet now the first and final time 
 Yet are ye mine, over and o'er, 
 That haply I may help you climb 
 To Jesus, up the mount divine. 
 Oh ! might such high success be mine 
 Fain would I couch your vision dim ! 
 Fain would I lead you up to Him " 
 
 Ftom "'A Preacher s Soliloquy," by Henry Septimus Suttok. 
 
THE SILENT VOICE. 
 
 "Day unto day uttereth speech, 
 And night unto night showeth knowledge. 
 There is no speech nor language ; 
 Their voice cannot be heard. 
 Their line is gone out through all the earth, 
 And their words to the end of the world." 
 
 Psalm xix. 2-4 (Revised Version). , 
 
 THE first part of this psalm furnishes a key to the 
 spiritual significance of nature. The psalm unlocks 
 no scientific secret. That is not its object ; it is indeed 
 unscientific, for it grows out of the imperfect physical 
 knowledge of that far-off age in which men thought of the 
 earth as stationary, and of the sun as moving from east 
 to west. But scientifically inaccurate, it is spiritually 
 accurate; physically misleading, it is morally revealing. 
 Though we have outgrown its conception of the facts, we 
 have not, and never shall, outgrow its conception of their 
 spiritual significance. We know now that the sun does 
 not move, like a giant, from one end of the heavens to 
 the other, but in relative immobility stands as the centre of 
 its system ; but none the less the heavens declare the glory 
 of God, day uttering speech, and night revealing knowledge. 
 The heavens are looked at in a new fight, but they still 
 quicken the old faith. But the words before us are sugges- 
 tive of the Divine method of teaching, and the suggestion 
 is conveyed, as so often in Scripture, by an apparent con- 
 tradiction. The apparent contradiction is here ; in the 
 
 I 
 
2 THE SILENT VOICE. 
 
 second and fourth verses we are told that " day unto day 
 uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. 
 Their hne is gone out through all the earth, and their 
 words to the end of the world ; " but in the third verse 
 we are told, "There is no speech nor language; their 
 voice cannot be heard." 
 
 The heavens utter speech, and yet they are silent ; they 
 reveal knowledge, and yet their voices are not heard ! 
 An utter contradiction, you say. Yes ; but it could not 
 have been a contradiction to the Psalmist, for both concep- 
 tions are at the same moment in his mind, and find expres- 
 sion from his lips in the same breath. It is true, men 
 often contradict themselves. One statement may be set 
 against another from the same speaker; the thoughts of 
 one mood may be opposed to those of another. But, 
 unless they are very foolish, men do not in the same breath 
 contradict themselves. What seems like a contradiction 
 to the hearer is from the standpoint of the speaker only 
 harmony. A great orchestra may to the listener at one 
 point seem to give forth only discord, but from another 
 point its music may be perfectly harmonious. There is a 
 way of regarding this passage so that it seems a gross 
 contradiction, but regarded from the Psalmist's point the 
 seeming contradiction sets forth in the clearest way the 
 noblest truth. The heavens are silent — neither sun nor 
 moon nor stars speak. The music of the spheres, of which 
 in the early times Pythagoras spoke, is but a poetic figure. 
 And yet in another sense the heavens are eloquent beyond 
 all speech. There is an eloquence of the eye as well as of 
 the voice. The greatest teachers of the world are often 
 silent ones. The portrait may be dumb, and yet the canvas 
 be eloquent. You stand before it and exclaim, "What a 
 speaking likeness ! " The sculptor's calm, cold marble is 
 the very image of silence, and yet it sometimes speaks 
 
2'HE SILENT VOICE. 3 
 
 more powerfully than the orator's lip. Before the child 
 can speak its tiny face is full of meaning to its mother's 
 eye. No word may have passed between youth and 
 maiden, and yet more than words could express has 
 shone out of their love-filled eyes, or thrilled through the 
 grasp of each other's hands. In this sense speech is but 
 silvern, whilst silence is golden. The two mightiest voices 
 Emmanuel Kant ever heard were both silent ones — " the 
 starry heavens above, the moral law within." In our 
 wordy age this eloquence of silence is often overlooked, 
 but none the less is it true that where neither speech nor 
 language is heard the revelation is often the clearest. 
 
 " There are sounds, like flakes of snow falling 
 In their silent and eddying rings : 
 We tremble, they touch us so lightly, 
 Like, the feathers from angel's wings. 
 
 There are pauses of marvellous silence 
 
 That are full of significant sound, 
 Like music echoing music 
 
 Under water or under ground," 
 
 We are often compelled to say, as did Sheridan 
 Knowles — 
 
 " I hear a voice so fine 
 That nothing lives 'twixt it and silence." 
 
 Now, here is to be found the clue to the Divine method. 
 We will consider it a little more in detail. 
 
 I. This is God's method in nature. Nature has neither 
 speech nor language; her voices are not heard. Sun, 
 moon, and stars, mountain and valley, flower and tree, 
 alike are silent. The ocean may roar, the wind may sigh, 
 the birds may sing, but they have no articulate voice — no 
 key has ever been found to their language ; it has never 
 been translated into any human equivalent. Nature never 
 puts her meaning into words of any language, and yet 
 
4 THE SILENT VOICE. 
 
 her sound has gone forth through all lands, and her words 
 to the end of the world. 
 
 " Thefe's not the smallest orb that thou behold'st, 
 But in his motion like an angel sings, 
 Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim.'' 
 
 And everywhere men have heard, and in greater or less 
 degree have felt, her meaning. The old rendering of the 
 third verse of this psalm, though it does not represent the 
 original, is yet true in fact — "There is no speech nor 
 language where their voice is not heard "—heard so clearly 
 that in almost every land men have been drawn to the 
 worship of nature. To the Persian, the sun spoke so 
 clearly that he made it the object of his adoration ; to the 
 Greek, earth and ocean, sun and moon, seemed alive with 
 Divine presences ; to the ancient Druids, the heavenly 
 bodies spoke so clearly that in their rude stone temples at 
 Avebury and Stonehenge, open as they were to the sky, 
 they worshipped the orbs of heaven. To many a savage, 
 earth has been so eloquent that he invested it with a 
 Divine significance, and offered it, in his rude way, Divine 
 honours. To Wordsworth the voices of nature were as 
 clear as if angels sang above his head. In " A Voluntary, 
 composed upon an evening of extraordinary splendour 
 and beauty," he says — 
 
 " Time was when field and watery cove 
 With modulated echoes rang, 
 While choirs of fervent angels sang 
 Their vespers in the grove ; 
 
 Or, crowning, starlike, each some sovereign height. 
 Warbled for heaven above and earth below. 
 Strains suitable for both. — Such holy rite, 
 Methinks, if audibly repeated now 
 From hill or valley, could not move 
 Sublimer transport, purer love. 
 Than doth this silent spectacle — the gleam — 
 The shadow — and the peace supreme." 
 
THE SILENT VOICE. 5 
 
 Whilst in his wonderful "Lines on Tintern Abbey" he 
 speaks of — 
 
 " that blessed mood 
 In which the affections gently lead us on, 
 Until, the breath of this corporeal frame 
 And even the motion of our human blood 
 Almost suspended, we are laid asleep 
 In body, and become a living soul ; 
 While, with an eye made quiet by the power 
 Of harmony and the deep power of joy, 
 We see into the life of things.'' 
 
 Mrs. Barrett Browning, in her striking poem on " A 
 Child's Thought of God," says— 
 
 " God is so good, He wears a fold 
 
 Of heaven and earth across His face — 
 Like secrets kept, for love, untold ; 
 
 But still I feel that His embrace 
 Slides down by thrills, through all things made. 
 
 Through sight and sound of every place. 
 As if my tender mother laid 
 
 On my shut lips her kisses* pressure, 
 Half-waking me at night, and said, 
 
 'Who kissed you through the dark, dear guesser?'" 
 
 And Aubrey de Vere speaks of — 
 
 " Some presence veiled, in fields and groves, 
 That mingles rapture with remorse ; 
 Some buried joy beside us moves. 
 
 And thrills the soul with sweet discourse, 
 
 " As they, perchance, that wondering pair 
 Who to Emmaus bent their way. 
 Hearing, heard not ; like them our prayer 
 
 We make — 'The night is near us. . . . Stay !' " 
 
 Victor Hugo nobly says— 
 
 " We are but night ; 
 God is the only light the world can need : 
 Atoms and space are in this text agreed. 
 God only great the humble flow'rets name. 
 And only true the mighty floods proclaim. 
 
6 THE SILENT VOICE. 
 
 And only good winds tell from spot to spot. 
 O man, let idle vaunts deceive you not ! 
 Whence did you spring, to think that you can be 
 Better than God, who made the stars and sea. 
 And who awakes you, when your rest is done, 
 With His prodigious smile of love — the sun ? " 
 
 And a recent poet only gives voice to the feeling of 
 many hearts when she says — 
 
 " Sometimes, as in the summer fields 
 I walk abroad, there comes to me 
 So wild a sense of mystery, 
 My senses reel, my reason fails ; 
 I am in such strange company. 
 
 " Yet somewhere, dimly, I can feel 
 The wild confusion dwells in me, 
 And I, in no strange company. 
 Am the lost link 'twixt Him and these. 
 And touch Him through the mystery." 
 
 Some friends of mine on one occasion came suddenly on 
 a scene of surpassing glory, high among the mountains 
 in Switzerland, and stood holding each other's hands, 
 awed into worship, feeling, " Surely the Lord is in this 
 place ! " Thus Nature, silent though she be, yet speaks ; 
 though no words are heard, her meaning is clearly dis- 
 cerned. It is no refutation of all this to say, '/do not 
 hear her voice, or discern her meaning.' You are musical, 
 it may be, and whilst listening to a noble orchestra, one 
 in your company says, " This to me is meaningless, only 
 a confused Babel of sound." Does that convince you 
 that the music which holds you captive is but a delusion ? 
 You are artistic, it may be, and standing before a great 
 picture, you hear a beholder exclaim, "What a lovely 
 frame ! " (as once I did). Does that convince you that 
 the frame is more than the picture ? You are mechanical, 
 it may be, and looking on a wondrous piece of mechanism, 
 you notice one who, with no such aptitude, turns listlessly 
 
THE SILENT VOICE. 7 
 
 away. Are you convinced that the mechanic has toiled in 
 vain ? And will you dare to say of Nature, " She has 
 no voice that / can hear, no meaning that / can discern ; 
 to me she is only a dwelling-place for man ; what seems a 
 voice and meaning is only an illusion ; those who say 
 they hear a voice or discern a meaning are self-deceived " ? 
 Would it not be wiser, humbler, truer, to say, "The fault 
 is mine; my hearing is not keen enough to hear the voice; 
 my sight is not cleared to discern the meaning " ? 
 
 " If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness, 
 And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor ; 
 There towers the mountain of the voice no less, 
 Which whoso seeks shall find ; but he who bends 
 Intent on manna still, and mortal ends. 
 Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore." 
 
 If Nature has drawn men in every land to worship, it 
 she has moved the hearts of some of the noblest of the 
 race to rapture, then, silent though she be, she surely 
 speaks, and though she utter no word, her meaning is real. 
 
 It is a vain conceit of a literary age to fancy that 
 meanings can be conveyed only by words, or that truth 
 can be revealed only by books. The deepest things are 
 felt, not heard ; the noblest truths reach us by a voice 
 that is both still and small. And if Nature is ever to be 
 to us what it was to the Psalmist and the noblest of 
 every land, we must not be content to understand her 
 mere alphabet by manuals of geology, or botany, or physics, 
 but by opening our hearts to her deeper revelations, 
 and regarding with deepest adoration the mysteries she 
 contains. 
 
 Well does Emerson say, " God Himself does not speak 
 prose, but communicates with us by hints, omens, 
 inferences, and dark resemblances in objects lying all 
 around us." 
 
8 THE SILENT VOICE. 
 
 " Heart, heart, awake ! the love that loveth all 
 Maketh a deeper calm than Horeb's cave, 
 Where in hei temple, earth o'erarched wflth sky 
 God's heart to mine may speak, my heart reply. 
 
 II. This is God's method in man. I have already 
 reminded you that the greatest philosopher of modern 
 times was most deeply impressed by the starry heavens 
 above and the moral law within. And of the moral law, 
 as of the starry heavens, it may be said, " It has neither 
 speech nor language ; its voice is not heard." Conscience 
 is as silent as the eternal heavens ; it never reaches to 
 articulate expression. Sometimes, it is true, it is so 
 aroused that it clothes its commands in words, and, as we 
 lean to the evil, cries with majestic voice, " Thou shalt 
 not ! " or, as we shrink back from the good, with tones of 
 entreaty declares, " This do, and thou shalt live ! " But 
 the words are only a human clothing of a Divine reality ; 
 just as Luther, in the castle of the Wartburg, tempted 
 of evil, in imagination unconsciously clothed it with bodily 
 form, and threw at it the ink-horn with which he was 
 writing. No bodily form was there which his ink-horn 
 could mark or wound ; intercepted by no Satanic body, 
 it only reached and left its stain upon the castle wall.. And 
 conscience is too spiritual to speak in words ; it is a spirit 
 bearing witness within our spirit, moving upon and directing 
 the troubled waters of the soul. Its realm is feeling and 
 awakened thought; it is a force, not a voice ; it is a con- 
 straint, not a revelation. 
 
 " Yet high above the limits of my seeing. 
 And folded far within the inmost heart. 
 And deep below the deeps of conscious being. 
 
 Thy splendour shineth ; there, O God, Thou art." 
 
 And therefore our wisdom is not so much to listen or 
 consider as to yield — to be responsive to this Divine in- 
 
THE SILENT VOICE. 9 
 
 fluence. We may not be able to formulate the influence 
 to others ; to set it out in words, or reduce it to writing ; 
 thus translated it may look foolish, as the feeling of love 
 often does when treated thus. Love is too sacred, too 
 subtle, to bear such expression, but none the less it is 
 the mightiest force in the universe, and the deepest in the 
 heart of the Most High. . The more readily we yield the 
 mightier will be this spiritual influence, the more we shall 
 be possessed thereby, until all opposition shall at length 
 •cease, and there shall be no discord between the host and 
 the guest. And at last the Apostle's high condition will 
 be reached, " I live, yet not 1, but Christ that liveth in 
 me. 
 
 III. This is God's method in revelation. Of the Divine 
 revelation it may be said, God has neither speech nor 
 language ; His voice is not heard. God's voice, as that of 
 Nature, is a silent one ; it is not heard with the ear, but 
 felt in the heart, an altogether higher and nobler realm for 
 the Divine. Indeed, the Prophet Jeremiah expressly says, 
 " But this is the covenant that I will make with the house 
 of Israel after those days, saith the Lord. I will put My 
 law in their inward parts, and in their hearts will I write 
 it." But you say, " Does not Scripture often come to us 
 with the declaration, ' Thus saith the Lord ' ? " Assuredly 
 it does ; but it does not follow that the saying was to the 
 £ars of men. Elijah was most deeply moved, not by the 
 fire, or the earthquake, or the wind, but by " the still, small 
 voice," which is surely only another way of describing a 
 silence which might be felt, felt all the more keenly after 
 the mighty sounds which preceded. When Judas asked, 
 " How is it that thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and not 
 unto the world ? " this was the answer of our Lord : " If 
 a man love Me, he will keep My words : and My Father will 
 love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode 
 
10 THE SILENT VOICE. 
 
 with him." No assurance is here of any audible voice. 
 It is by presence, not by speech, He will be revealed. A 
 distinguished Rabbinical scholar once told me that it was 
 his conviction that all communications from Jehovah to 
 Israel were to the heart rather than to the ear; whilst the 
 Jews say that His will was revealed to their elders, after 
 the times of the prophets, not by any articulate words, 
 but by some secret inward inspiration, which they call 
 Bath-kol, i.e. the daughter of the voice — the voice of a 
 voice, an echo within the soul. An impression on the 
 heart is a finer mode of communication than a sound 
 falling on the outward ear. If the preacher could carry 
 the impression of truth into the heart, he would gladly be 
 silent with his voice. The ear is but the porch of the 
 temple ; the heart is the temple itself. Which is the 
 nobler, the messenger who delivers his message at the 
 door, or the friend who enters, and holds fellowship within 
 the house ? Count Zindendorf once stood before a picture 
 of Christ on the cross, underneath which was written, " I 
 did all this for thee; what hast thou done.for Me ?" No 
 voice fell on his ear, but a great emotion passed over his 
 heart, and led him to yield himself to one crucified for 
 him. It is a poor conception of Scripture to think of its 
 messages as conveyed to the outer ear of the writers. It 
 is a far nobler one to regard them as impressions made 
 within the heart. The writers were not mere reporters, 
 but exponents of thoughts quickened within their hearts. 
 And this is evident from two considerations : first, from the 
 express declaration of Scripture. We are told, " Holy men 
 of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost ; " 
 moved, not spoken to, moved by the Holy Ghost, who 
 never speaks by audible voice, a " Spirit that beareth wit- 
 ness with our spirits " that we are the children of God, 
 " the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." 
 
THE SILENT VOICE. ii 
 
 "When He, the Spirit of truth, is come. He shall lead you 
 into all truth." Scripture gains a new glory when we 
 regard it as an impression made within the heart rather 
 than of a voice speaking in Hebrew or Greek from the 
 sky. Whilst the second consideration is, that every book of 
 Scripture bears on its face the idiosyncrasy of the writer. If 
 to the outer ear, and in human speech, God had spoken, 
 the book would have been all ahke ; it would have been 
 marked by uniformity rather than variety. But springing 
 as it does from impressions within the nature, it is dis- 
 tinguished by the characteristics of the men who put those 
 impressions into language. Isaiah and Ezekiel, Paul and 
 John, Luke and James, all ahke are moved by a Divine 
 Spirit, but it finds voice in the special style and language 
 of each. And the great task in relation to Scripture is to 
 separate between the human personality of the speaker 
 and the Divine impression made upon his mind, to pass 
 through the earthly court, so as to behold the Divine glory 
 in the Holy of holies. 
 
 IV. This method to some extent prevails in relation to 
 Jesus Christ Himself. He is the clearest voice of God 
 which men could bear. His words the fullest embodiment 
 of the Divine thought possible in human language. His 
 words are spirit and life ; but all of Christ is not to be 
 found in His words. 
 
 " Christ is the Beautiful, Eternal Word, 
 Breathed from God's heart into this world of ours." 
 
 There were many things He could not say, because men 
 could not bear them. Hence, He is greater than His 
 words, great as those words are-; nay. He lifts Himself 
 above His words, and cries, " I am the Light of the world : 
 he 'Ca.'a.t followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall 
 have the hght of life." "When Christ is silent He speaks ; 
 
12 THE SILENT VOICE, 
 
 when His words do not reach the ear He yet teaches. 
 Well did Victor Hugo write at the foot of a crucifix — 
 
 " Come to this God, 3-e weepers,, for He weeps; 
 Come to Him, ye who suffer, for He cures ; 
 Come to Him, ye who fear. He pity keeps ; 
 Come to Him, ye who pass, for He endures." 
 
 Thus in most realms the Divine method is neither by 
 speech nor language, and yet it is a method which carries 
 the sound into all lands, and the words unto the end of 
 the world. God has not given to men a code of Divine 
 instructions, or a philosophy of life to be mastered as a 
 lesson. He has rather reflected Himself in Nature, in 
 the Human Conscience, in Scripture, in His Son Jesus 
 Christ. And therefore our part is not just to master the 
 record as we should a lesson in school, but to yield our 
 natures to these gracious influences, to be receptive, to be 
 plastic under them. The Divinest lessons cannot be learnt 
 by mere intellectual effort, but only by quiet pondering. 
 Nature will never bear her witness save to hearts that 
 love her. The Spirit will not fashion us anew save as 
 we yield to His influence ; Scripture will not minister 
 save to those whose hearts are yearning for God ; Christ 
 will not deliver us from darkness save as we follow His 
 light-giving footsteps. But alas ! alas ! in these days 
 many of us are in too much haste for all this. 
 
 " The world is too much with us ; late and soon, 
 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ; 
 Little we see in Nature that is ours ; 
 We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! " 
 
 " Yes, we are too busy, too encumbered, too much . 
 occupied, too active ! We read too much ! The one 
 thing needful is to throw off all one's load of cares, of 
 preoccupations, of pedantry, and to become again young, 
 
THE SILENT VOICE. 13 
 
 simple, child-like, living happily and gratefully in the 
 present hour. We must know how to put occupation 
 aside, which does not mean that we must be idle. In an 
 inaction which is meditative and attentive the wrinkles of 
 the soul are smoothed away, and the soul itself spreads, 
 unfolds, and springs afresh, and, like the trodden grass of 
 the road-side or the bruised leaf of a plant, repairs its 
 injuries, becomes new, spontaneous, true, and original. 
 Reverie, like the rain of night, restores colour and force 
 to thoughts which have been blanched and wearied by the 
 heat of the day. With gentle fertilising power it awakens 
 within us a thousand sleeping germs, and as though in 
 play, gathers round us materials for the future, and 
 images for the use of talent. Reverie is the Sunday of 
 thought; and who knows which is the more important and 
 fruitful for man, the laborious tension of the week, or the 
 life-giving repose of the Sabbath ? " * 
 
 In quietness and confidence alone can we find our 
 strength. It is only as we come apart and rest awhile 
 that the Divinest lessons will reach our hearts and mould 
 our lives. 
 
 * "Journal Intime of Henri-Frtderic Amiel,'' pp. 23, 24, 
 
THE FAINTING HEART. 
 
 "I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord 
 in the land of the living." — Psalm xxvii. 13, 
 
 THERE are many in our day who are fainting because 
 they cannot " see the goodness of the Lord in the 
 land of the living." A vast number of voices are heard 
 asking, "Who will show us any good?" Pessimism — 
 the creed of despair^throws its dark shadow over thou- 
 sands both in Germany and England. Its wail is heard 
 through much of our popular literature. The light and 
 glow which once filled life with glory have, from many 
 a heart, quite departed. The more sympathetic we 
 become the more are we disposed to ask, " Why is 
 suffering permitted in the world ? " The callous move 
 on unconcerned ; but the tender feel for the woes of their 
 fellows. And their very feeling often awakens the cry, 
 " Why hast Thou made us thus ? " 
 
 Now, it should be noted first — that whilst the misery 
 of the world is great, it is not so great as it sometimes seems. 
 I admit frankly and freely that, look where we will, the 
 shadows are broad and deep. Wherever there is con- 
 scious life there is heard, at some point or other, the note 
 of suffering. In the animal world the prevailing order is 
 that the strong and great prey upon the weak and small. 
 One race lives upon another and lower one. It is thus 
 among the insects which people the air, the fishes that 
 
THE FAINTING HEART. 15 
 
 swim the sea, the birds that fill the forests, the beasts 
 that roam the earth. The Poet Laureate speaks of — 
 
 " Nature red in tooth and claw 
 With ravine." 
 
 Over the whole animal world man reigns, and, with 
 •unrelenting hand, wields the great destructive forces which 
 his higher intellect and knowledge put at his service. It 
 is so, though in less degree, in the human realm. The 
 higher races tyrannise over the lower. Before the white 
 man's presence many an aboriginal race has utterly 
 perished ; whilst among men at large there are miseries 
 which neither civilisation, nor culture, nor science, nor 
 ■even Christianity, nor all of them together, have as yet 
 been able to banish. Poverty is widespread and keenly 
 felt, probably more keenly felt, in England than in savage 
 lands. Suffering invades the homes of the wealthy and 
 the poor alike. Bereavement wrings the heart of peer 
 and pauper, whilst over all the dark shadow of death 
 hangs with threatening and awful form.* Again and 
 again the great forces of Nature, which to a large extent 
 man bends to his will, break forth in their irresistible 
 might and overwhelm him in ruin. The earthquake gulphs 
 men by thousands in sudden overthrow. The storm 
 sweeps over a land, carrying death in its train. The sea 
 
 * As in the present discourse I do not deal with the problem of death, 
 I may perhaps be permitted to say that, constituted as the world and 
 man at present are, the abolition of death, greatly to be desired as at 
 first sight it seems, would be a very questionable boon. One has only to 
 think of the world without death — of all the generations of the past still 
 living on — the " eaily world's grey fathers " still moving amongst us 
 (as Dean Swift in his "Gulliver's Travels" has pictured) — to feel that 
 death is a factor necessary to the happiness and progress of humanity, 
 whilst, beyond this, it is essential in order that man may be ushered into 
 that higher class of the great school of life which is now hidden from us 
 iehind the veil. 
 
1 6 THE FAINTING HEART. 
 
 rises up in her might, and whelms the vessel and all on 
 board beneath her waves. Pestilence stalks forth in subtle 
 and invisible might, and strikes down her victims by 
 thousands. War has made many a fair field red with 
 blood. I do not wonder that many a one who has pon- 
 dered these things has felt the ground of faith trembling 
 beneath his feet, and, in the agony of his troubled thought, 
 has cried, ' Is there in the heavens a God of love, a 
 Father of men ? ' 
 
 But, great and awful as are the things of which I 
 have spoken, it is very easy to exaggerate their signifi- 
 cance. There are those who speak as if cruelty or 
 indifference to suffering were the law of the Universe, 
 as if anguish and agony were written across the face of 
 the earth. It is not thus. Anguish, suffering, sorrow are 
 not the prevailing notes in the music of earth. They are 
 rather like minor chords which throw into grander relief 
 the full and jubilant notes of the music. 
 
 "Never was day so over-sick with showers 
 But that it had some intermitting hours ; 
 Never was night so tedious but it knew 
 The last watch out, and saw the dawning too ; 
 Never was dungeon so obscurely deep 
 Wherein or light or day did never peep ; 
 Never did moon so ebb or seas so wane 
 But they left hope seed to fill up again.* 
 
 This is true of each of the realms to which I have 
 referred. A very large part of the animal life of the 
 world, it is true, falls a prey to creatures of greater 
 strength, or to man — the lord of creation. But, in spite 
 of this, happiness is the law of the animal world. Indeed, 
 it furnishes us with some of the noblest pictures of 
 contented enjoyment. The hum of insects in the summer 
 air is but their cry of joy. The birds, though exposed . 
 
 * R. Herrick, " Hesperides." 
 
THE FAINTING HEART. 17 
 
 to the chilling frost of winter or the gun of the sportsman, 
 sing among the branches. As I was writing this dis- 
 course my eye lighted on a robin hopping about on a 
 fruit-tree opposite my study window, and a more perfect 
 picture of happiness it would be difficult to conceive. 
 The fishes coursing through the waters may at any 
 moment be devoured by larger members of their own 
 tribe, or be drawn out of their element by net or line ; 
 but if sportive motion can express pleasure, this is surely 
 their portion. The beasts which form the prey of the 
 carnivorous animals do not seem to live in constant dread 
 of the blow that will lay them low. They sport in 
 prairie or jungle, or on the plain, happy as the days are 
 long.* And it is thus in the human realm. To hear 
 some men talk you would think that there was nothing 
 to be heard but " the low, sad music of humanity." 
 That may, indeed, be heard, sad with an inexpressible 
 sadness; but the music has its hallelujahs as well as its 
 misereres. Humanity has its joys as well as its sorrows, 
 its pleasures as well as its pains. " Weeping may endure 
 for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." There are 
 the weeping with whom we may weep, but there are, 
 also, the rejoicing with whom we may rejoice. Calamities 
 are the exception and not the rule. Earthquakes are 
 not always upheaving the earth ; storms are not always 
 
 • Since this sermon was delivered I have been glad to notice that 
 its main positions have been fully confirmed by the distinguished 
 naturalist Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace. In his recent book " Darwinism " 
 there is a striking passage on " The Ethical Aspect of the Struggle for 
 Existence," chap, ii., pp. 36-40, the whole of which should be pondered 
 by all inclined to Pessimistic thought concerning the universe. Space 
 will only permit the quotation of its closing sentences : — 
 
 "On the whole, then, we conclude that the popular idea of the struggle 
 for existence entailing misery and pain on the animal world is the very 
 reverse of the truth. What it really brings about is the maximum 
 of life and of the enjoyment of life, with the minimum of suffering and 
 
1 8 THE FAINTING HEART. 
 
 raging on the ocean ; pestilence is not always stalking 
 abroad. But, unfortunately, we note these all too care- 
 fully, and overlook, or take for granted, the quietness 
 and stability of the earth, the calm of the sea, the health 
 of the peoples. We cry, " God be pitiful ! " and fail 
 to cry, " God be praised ! " The fact is, the pervading, 
 the constant element in Nature and life is the gracious, 
 the merciful ; the exceptional is the painful, the troublous. 
 Look at your own lives, and say whether it is not so. 
 How few, comparatively, are the days in which you have 
 been racked by pain, or desolated by sorrow, or burdened 
 with anxieties ! The times in which it has been so with 
 you are remembered and even recorded ; but the times 
 in which the stream of your life flowed peacefully, 
 quietly, even joyously on are unrecorded and almost 
 forgotten. The cry of Jacob, " Few and evil have been 
 the days of my pilgrimage," is neither a true nor an 
 appreciative one, for his days were not few, nor, so 
 far as God was concerned with them, were they evil. 
 And the modern representative of Jacob, the Pessimist 
 who cries, " Who will sjiow us any good ? " who declares, 
 as Schopenhauer does, " The end of human existence is 
 suffering," " Accustom yourself to consider this world 
 as a penal colony," "A man should not address his 
 neighbour as Sir ! but as my Fellow-sufferer," is not 
 fair in his observation of hfe ; and out of his false and 
 
 pain. Given the necessity of death and reproduction, — and without 
 these there could have been no progressive development of the organic 
 world, — and it is difficult even to imagine a system by which a greater 
 balance of happiness could have been secured. And this view was 
 evidently that of Darwin himself, who thus concludes his chapter on 
 the struggle for existence : — 
 
 "'When we reflect on this struggle we may console ourselves with 
 the full belief that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, 
 that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, 
 and the happy survive and multiply." 
 
THE FAINTING HEART. 19 
 
 one-sided view there grow the gloomy and unthankful 
 thoughts which shadow his life. 
 
 Then, too, it must be remembered that much of the 
 misery upon which we look is not so great to those who 
 have to bear it as it appears to us. I do not wish, in the 
 least, to understate such misery, so that we should be 
 content to let it remain. God forbid ! But, at the same 
 time, that misery can only be rightly estimated from the 
 standpoint of those who have to bear it. We go into 
 the homes of poverty and distress ; we see their bareness 
 of furniture, their lack of comfort and refinement — no 
 pictures adorn the wall, no objects of beauty meet the eye, 
 no books offer their pages to instruct or to charm the 
 mind. The very necessities of life are scarcely to be 
 found there. And our hearts ache at the sight. It 
 seems scarcely right to go home and enjoy its comforts 
 and refinement whilst others have them not. To us 
 life seems scarcely worth living without these. Why ? 
 Because for years, probably always, we have been used to 
 them. But then, it must be remembered that, save in 
 the case of those who have dropped down from higher 
 ranks of life, the poor have not been used to these 
 things. They were born into the order amidst which 
 they are found. They are used to it, and use is second 
 nature ; so that even amidst their hard and unlovely 
 surroundings they are comparatively happy. I dare say 
 those above us in rank, as they look at our life, as they 
 see the narrow limits of our houses, their inferior style 
 of adornment, the absence of luxuries to which they are 
 accustomed, would be disposed to pity us, and think ours 
 a very unenviable lot. But their pity would be wasted, 
 for we are accustomed to such a lot. We do not feel 
 the lack which they discern.* Indeed, I question very 
 
 * The substance of this discourse was delivered as an address to 
 
20 IHE FAINTING HEART. 
 
 much whether there is not quite as much real happiness 
 among the middle as among the upper classes of society. 
 I should be disposed to say that because work is 
 imperative on us, there is probably more. We must 
 never forget that there are wondrous powers of adaptation 
 to circumstances in human, and, for the matter of that, 
 in all living natures.* Animals suit themselves to the 
 countries and climates to which they may be taken. 
 Take a sheep to a warm country like India, and its coat 
 will grow less woolly and more like hair in its texture. 
 Take it to a cold climate, and it will grow more woolly 
 than it is in this one. And that is but a visible sign 
 of how life adapts itself and gets used to its surroundings. 
 As Byron well says — 
 
 " Life will suit 
 Itself to sorrow's most detested fruit." 
 
 This always seems to me a capacity of our nature full 
 of benign intent on the part of Him who constituted it, 
 since it constantly tends to the alleviation of suffering 
 and the production of content, and, sometimes, even of 
 happiness, under what at first were unfavouring con- 
 ditions. Upon this alone no mean argument for the 
 goodness of the Creator might be built up. 
 
 a guild at the East End of London, in which all classes, from that of 
 labourers to University graduates, were represented. A free discussion 
 followed, in the course of which a bricklayer told the following story : 
 Some time before, in the depth of winter, whilst at work on a building, 
 he had noticed a little fellow running about with neither stockings nor 
 boots on his feet. He thought how he must be suffering from the cold, 
 and resolved to buy him a pair of boots. He got into conversation 
 however, with the boy, and found, to his astonishment, that his feet, 
 naked though they were, were quite warm — warmer, indeed, than his 
 own, though covered with both stockings and boots ! 
 
 * For striking examples of how animals suit themselves to their 
 surroundings, see "The Colours of Animals," by E. B. Poulton, M.A., 
 F.R.S., and " Darwinism," by A. R. Wallace. 
 
THE FAINTING HEART. 21 
 
 And, therefore, to get a right idea of the condition of 
 even the poorest, we must look at it from their place, and, 
 as it were, out of their eyes. The Low-German poet Klaus 
 Groth truly says — 
 
 " Thou must not 
 Condemn as worthless what thou dost not know. 
 For every station has a world its own, 
 And each one's life is moulded to its form. 
 Survey it from without, and all within 
 Looks cold and lifeless to thine eye, although 
 Within the life is throbbing as before. 
 And each has got his share of grief and joy, 
 For empty through the world no heart may go. 
 
 '• The peasant, too, has got his little world — 
 He that would see it must have eyes to see — 
 And has it then grown sadder than of old ? 
 Let him but take a closer, surer look ; 
 And if within himself be found a heart, 
 Then he will see this world is still as true, 
 As happy, and as homely, and as gay 
 As all the fairest tales that e'er were told." * 
 
 This is no argument for leaving them as they are. It is 
 our bounden duty to do all we can to improve the condition 
 of the poor, since amid more favourable surroundings their 
 life will grow to greater beauty and glory, f All that it 
 
 * Cf. "The Poets and Peoples of Foreign Lands," by J. W. Crombie. 
 
 f Speaking of this class, Professor Alfred Marshall says ; " Their life 
 is not necessarily unhealthy or unhappy. Rejoicing in their affections 
 toward God and man, and perhaps even possessing some natural refine^' 
 ment of feeling, they may lead lives that are far less incomplete than 
 those of many who have more material wealth. But for all that, their 
 poverty is a great and almost unmixed evil to them, pven when they 
 are well their weariness often amounts to pain, while their pleasures are 
 few ; and when sickness comes, the suffering caused by poverty increases 
 tenfold. And though a contented spirit may go far towards reconciling 
 them to these evils, there are others to which it ought not to reconcile 
 them. Overworked and undertaught, weary and careworn, without quiet 
 and without leisure, they have no chance of making the best of their 
 faculties." — "Principles of Economics," Book I., chap, i., p. 2. 
 
22 THE FAINTING HEART. 
 
 should do is to keep our hearts from breaking at the sight 
 of distress and poverty, for thus we may be so saddened 
 as to lose heart and hope, and so give up the endeavour to 
 alleviate poverty and to uplift the poor. 
 
 Nor should it be forgotten, as we regard the sorrow of 
 the world, that there could scarcely be the capacity for joy 
 unless there were also the capacity for sorrow. I am dis- 
 posed to think that, conditioned as we are here, a sorrowless 
 would be a joyless world. If there be joy in possession 
 there must be sorrow at loss. It is for things we hold 
 most dear that our sorrow at their loss is most acute. 
 Where the light is strongest the shadows are deepest. 
 The natures most capable of mirth are most capable of 
 pathos. That prince of mirth Thomas Hood is also as 
 great a prince of pathos. From the same mind we have 
 the "Whims and Oddities" and "The Song of the Shirt," 
 and those incomparable lines, " We watched her breathing 
 through the night." Indeed, in one of his poems he 
 says — 
 
 " There's not a string attuned to mirth 
 But has its chord in melancholy." 
 
 So far as this world is concerned the loss of the power to 
 weep would not be an unmixed gain, for we should pro- 
 bably lose at the same time the power to laugh. The 
 idiot may look with unmoved nature on the saddest sight ; 
 but then he will be also unmoved by the gladdest of 
 earth's scenes. The eyes that beam with joy are those 
 that overflow with tears. The heart that thrills with 
 gladness is the very heart that may be broken with grief 
 The land that has the loftiest and grandest mountains has, 
 of necessity, the deepest and darkest valleys. I would 
 rather journey through a country in which I must climb 
 the loftiest hills, even though I may have to descend into 
 the deep valleys that lie between, than journey through 
 
THE FAINTING HEART. 23 
 
 a monotonous level country like Holland. Sorrow, which, 
 of course, springs out of the capacity for sorrow, is a sign 
 rather of the goodness than the indifference of Him who 
 constituted our nature. 
 
 "This truth came borne with bier and pall ; 
 1 felt it when I sorrowed most : 
 'Tis better to have loved and lost 
 Than never to have loved at all." 
 
 When we think hard thoughts of God, because of the 
 sorrow that shadows the world, we surely charge God 
 foolishly. 
 
 Nor must we forget that much, very much, of the misery 
 of the world is not in any real sense chargeable upon God at 
 all. It lies at the door of man, not of God. If from the 
 misery of the world be deducted all that springs out of 
 the folly or sin of man, the mountain becomes almost as 
 a mole-hill — e.g., much of human misery is due to the 
 diseases which darken and give anguish to so many lives. 
 But disease is not in the original constitution of humanity. 
 God made man perfect, not diseased. Disease, all disease, 
 I believe, springs directly or indirectly out of the careless- 
 ness, or folly, or sin of man. Vice is its chief parent. 
 Any candid physician will tell you that to it can be 
 traced, actually traced, fully half the maladies he has 
 to treat. Violation of the moral law of God gives rise to 
 most of the baneful and worst diseases of humanity. One 
 of the greatest surgeons of the day has affirmed that he 
 can trace in the formation of the teeth of little children the 
 results of vice in their ancestry three or four generations 
 back. Is it right to charge such results on the all-wise 
 and all-loving Father-God ? A sinless world would, I 
 believe, be a world of perfect health. Or take the 
 epidemics which from time to time ravage whole districts. 
 Whence do they come ? From heaven ? Assuredly not. 
 
24 THE FAINTING HEART. 
 
 From filth or folly. Whence came the cholera that raged 
 last autumn in Toulon, Marseilles, and many a fair city 
 of Southern France? From the open and filthy drains 
 of the great arsenal of the French people. Whence came 
 the last attack of that foul disease in England ? From 
 sewage filtering into the water supply of one great portion 
 of the East of London. That this was its cause is clear 
 from the fact that the disease did not extend beyond the 
 district supplied by the water thus contaminated. In the 
 year 1849 the city of Salisbury was ravaged by the 
 same disease. Whence did it come ? From the open 
 channels in the street, into which the drainage ran, so 
 that the city was called the English Venice. That visita- 
 tion brought about a sanitary revolution, and cholera has 
 since been quite unknown there. It is commonly believed 
 that certain diseases, such as measles, are inevitable to 
 children. Never was there a greater mistake. Not long 
 ago a distinguished physician showed that there were 
 many races among which these are quite unknown — that 
 there was a time even in England when they did not 
 prevail. Where they now prevail among uncivilised 
 peoples they have been imported by civilised settlers. 
 These are not, as they used to be called, visitations of 
 God ; they are rather the outcome of human folly. They 
 spring from infringement of Divine laws. They are 
 penalties of such infringements, intended to force us to 
 obey the laws of purity. 
 
 Or take the calamities which arise from the outburst 
 of the great forces of Nature — the earthquakes which 
 desolate great tracks of country and whelm great masses 
 of the dwellers in ruin. These, you say, are not due to 
 human or preventable causes. True ; but two things must 
 be borne in mind. The first is that they are confined to 
 certain districts which are few and far between. The 
 
THE FAINTING HEART. 25 
 
 whole earth is not volcanic. There is plenty of space in 
 the world for men to dwell where they would be quite 
 safe from such overthow of property and person. A great 
 earthquake is surely like a voice from heaven saying to 
 the inhabitants, " Depart hence." But men will not 
 depart. They cling to the old spots. Not long ago 
 Camicciola, in the Bay of Naples, was well-nigh destroyed 
 by earthquake. We should have thought that henceforth 
 the place would have been avoided as too dangerous for 
 human habitation ; but the overthrown buildings have 
 been restored, and are again inhabited. Vesuvius has 
 time after time belched forth its lava and ashes and de- 
 stroyed the dwellings within a radius of many miles ; and 
 yet not only around the mountain, but even creeping up 
 its sides, are still villages crowded with dwellers. If in 
 these places earthquake shocks should again be felt, or over 
 them a lava stream should flow, is it fair to charge their 
 destruction upon the Most High ? You might as well 
 charge upon Him the death of the foolhardy skater who 
 ventures upon thin and yielding ice. 
 
 Or turn to the sea, from which there is constantly 
 coming stories of vessels and men whelmed in its waters. 
 Are these to be charged upon the Great Father ? How 
 many of them are due to badly built, or overladen, or under- 
 manned vessels 1 How many are due to the fact that 
 vessels are sent to sea when every weather warning says 
 that storms are imminent ! How many are due to the 
 fact that the vessels are of too slight a build to stand the 
 stress of storm and wave ! Owners could be named 
 whose record shows that they have rarely, if ever, lost 
 either a vessel or a crew.* If cupidity and carelessness 
 could be got rid of, the annals of the sea would not be 
 
 * It is the boast of the Cunard Company that they have never lost a 
 passenger. 
 
26 THE FAINTING HEART. 
 
 stained by the awful loss of life with which at present 
 they are. 
 
 Or take the existence of poverty in the world. Men 
 talk as if this were due to the insufficiency of the Divine 
 supplies ; as if the earth did not bring forth in sufficient 
 abundance to meet man's needs; as if there were not 
 space enough for men on the earth ; as if God gave as 
 with a niggard hand ; whereas the fact is that God "giveth 
 unto all men Hberally ; " th^re is bread enough and to spare. 
 The earth is the witness to the munificence of God. At 
 what a marvellous rate Nature is capable of producing 
 her supplies ! A single seed of corn rightly used would 
 soon provide sufficient for all the needs of the world. 
 The gardener is often even troubled by the very pro- 
 digality of Nature. "There is nothing grudging in His 
 munificence ; He does not weigh His gifts like a money- 
 changer or number them like a cashier. Come ; there is 
 enough for all." Whence, then, comes the poverty ? 
 From the selfishness, from the love of hoarding, from the 
 withholding of land from cultivation by too many of the 
 rich, and from the carelessness and improvidence of many 
 among the poor. Let the rich use their wealth as stewards 
 for God, and let the poor use all care and thrift, and 
 poverty would cease out of the land. 
 
 " Were men to one another 
 As kind as God to all, 
 Then no man on his brother 
 For help would vainly call. 
 
 " On none for idle wasting 
 
 Would honest labour frown ; 
 And none, to riches hasting, 
 
 Would tread his neighbour down." 
 
 And so, if time permitted, it would be possible to go 
 over every dark page which makes it hard for men to 
 
THE FAINTING HEART. 27 
 
 believe in a gracious Father, and show that such records 
 are, to a very large extent, to be charged, not upon Him, 
 but on the folly, or sin, or selfishness of man. 
 
 But, it may be said, after all deductions have been 
 made, the world presents many a sad spectacle which 
 seems to cast a darkening shadow over the face of God, 
 making men doubt whether in Him there be a really loving 
 heart. And so, it may be asked, why could not these be 
 rendered impossible ? Why could not the misery of the 
 world be brought to an end ? Why could not every trace 
 of anguish, or pain, or sorrow be wiped out from human 
 history, and then be for ever prevented ? 
 
 So far as I can see, this would only be possible under 
 two conditions. One is that each being should be a separate 
 ■and distinct creation — unconnected with all which preceded 
 and all that will follow. For, of course, much of the 
 anguish of the world is the result of inherited nature. 
 Disease passes from parents to their descendants through 
 many generations. Character is propagated in the same 
 way. Both the good and evil elements live on from parent 
 to child. It is thus in both the animal and human kingdom. 
 If this is to be prevented, it could only be by each life 
 being a distinct creation, with no ties either to the past 
 or the future — each creature fresh from the hand of God. 
 But would not the loss outweigh the gain ? For the loss 
 would be of all the sweet and gracious associations between 
 parent and child, between friend and friend. Society 
 would be impossible. In its place there would be a collec- 
 tion of separate entities. Homes would be no more. For 
 this reason alone I, for one, would rather bear the ills we 
 have than fly to others that we know not of 
 
 The other condition is that the free-will of man should 
 cease. Much of the misery of the world is the result of our 
 human liberty. Man is free, and so he can wander from 
 
28 THE FAINTING HEART. 
 
 the true path for his life. He may choose the way of 
 death rather than of life. But if all evil is to be prevented 
 it can only be by'the loss of liberty, since freedom means 
 the possibiUty of going wrong. Wrong can only be 
 rendered impossible by the deprival of liberty, the most 
 precious of the Divine endowments, an endowment which 
 renders man likest to God. This is the chief sense in 
 which man is fashioned in the Divine image. " So man 
 is likest and unlikest God of all existence." Likest God 
 by reason of his freedom, unlikest by reason of his use, or 
 rather misuse of that freedom. When God made the world 
 He fixed it under laws from which it could not break ; 
 but when He made man He made it possible for him to 
 break the laws of his being. God commands the universe ; 
 He speaks in tones of entreaty or persuasion to men. 
 How differently in the pages of Scripture God speaks 
 where Men and where Nature are concerned ! When God 
 created the sun it was impossible for that sun to resist the 
 law of the Most High. But when He made man He 
 rendered it possible for him to say to his clearest com- 
 mand, I will not. Sin, with its train of anguish and pain, 
 is one of the fruits of this high prerogative. It is a great 
 price to pay ; but I dare to say not too great for the price- 
 less boon. For if our liberty were to be done away, if we 
 were driven like machines whither the Divine hand desired, 
 the light and glory of humanity would depart. I say, 
 deliberately, better all the sorrow of the world than to be 
 like dumb, driven cattle before our Maker. 
 
 " Those ills that mortal men endure 
 So long are capable of cure 
 As they of freedom may be sure ; 
 But that denied, a grief, though small. 
 Shakes the whole roof or ruins all." * 
 
 * Herrick, " Hesperides." 
 
THE PAINTING HEART. 29 
 
 If you afe prepared to sell your birthright for such a 
 mess of pottage, I am not ; and if you did, like Esau of 
 old, when too late, you would find no place of repentance, 
 though you sought it diligently with tears. 
 
 A philosopher once dared to say that he could have 
 designed a better world than the Almighty. I would 
 rather rest content with the world we have than risk the 
 trial of the philosopher's ; for in this world I see quite 
 enough to assure me of the gracious and wise intent of 
 the Most High. I look at Nature through the microscope, 
 and I am overpowered at the delicacy and perfection of 
 all her work. All seems holy because of its perfection. 
 I look through the telescope at the skies, and I am im- 
 pressed beyond measure by the vastness, the magnificence, 
 the order of the universe. I look out on human life and 
 society, and I see nearly everywhere the tokens of a loving 
 purpose on the part of God. I look within my own 
 nature, and find, amid all its evil, gracious purposes ; and I 
 feel that "if man is capable of conceiving goodness, the 
 general principle of things, which cannot be inferior to 
 man, must be good." These fill the great breadths 
 of the picture ; here and there I see dark spots which I 
 cannot understand ; but I let the light of love which 
 shines out of things at large fall on these dark spots, and 
 I say, " Since I find love and care in the general plan 
 of Nature, I will, I must believe, that even in these dark 
 things there is some good and gracious purpose which at 
 present I cannot discern, but which one day will be re- 
 vealed, and then I shall see that He doeth all things well." 
 In moments of depression we may be compelled to say, 
 ■" All things unto me show their dark sides." Yet in our 
 brighter and therefore saner moods we must also say, 
 " Somewhere there must be light." " If we are to escape 
 the grip of despair we must believe either that the whole 
 
30 THE FAINTING HEART. 
 
 of things at least is good, or that grief is a fatherly grace, 
 a purifying trial." 
 
 " The world may recognise in all times and scenes, 
 Though belts of cloud bar half its burning disk, 
 The overruling, overthrowing power 
 Which by our creature purposes works out 
 Its deeds, and by our deeds its purposes." 
 
 And I am quite assured of this, as I hear the voice of 
 Him whose voice to me is as the voice of God saying, 
 " Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father; 
 the very hairs of your head are all numbered." As the 
 Poet Laureate, who has known the bitterness of grief, says 
 in well-known lines — 
 
 " Oh, yet, we trust that somehow good 
 Will be the final goal of ill. 
 To pangs of nature, sins of will. 
 Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; 
 
 "That nothing walks with aimless feet ; 
 That not one life shall be destroy'd. 
 Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
 When God hath made the pile complete ; 
 
 "That not a worm is cloven in vain ; 
 That not a moth with vain desire 
 Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire 
 Or but subserves another's gain. 
 
 " Behold ! we know not anything ; 
 I can but trust that good shall fall 
 At last — far off— at last, to all, 
 Aijd every Winter change to Spring." 
 
 Or as another great poet of our age in his terse and 
 pregnant manner puts it — 
 
 "God's in His heaven; 
 All's right with the world." 
 
THE LEAST AND THE MUCH. 
 
 " He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much." — 
 Luke xvi. lo. 
 
 THESE words are usually interpreted as if they meant 
 that the man who is faithful in little things is faith- 
 ful also in great ones. That is true, but is not, I think, 
 exactly the truth Christ here enforces — which will be 
 evident when we bear in mind that in this whole passage^, 
 which may be regarded as the application of the parable 
 which precedes, two great realms are before the mind 
 of Christ. These are brought into comparison in the 
 phrases " sons of this world,'' who are contrasted with 
 sons of light ; the " mammon of unrighteousness," with 
 " the eternal tabernacles ; " "a very little," with " much ; "■ 
 " the unrighteous mammon," with " the true riches." 
 Thus Christ sets forth, from somewhat different aspects, 
 the two great realms of life. If therefore we would 
 understand what He means by the "least" and the 
 "much" of the text, we must regard them in the hght 
 of this series of contrasts of which they form a part. 
 Regarded thus, they do not point to things that are small 
 or great in themselves, but rather to two great realms of 
 life. The "least" stands for that visible, outward, tangible 
 kingdom in which the unjust steward had been moving. 
 The " much " stands for that unseen kingdom which 
 Christ here calls " the eternal tabernacles." 
 
 I. Human estimates are thus reversed by the decisions of 
 
32 THE LEAST AND THE MUCH. 
 
 Christ. His larger vision makes that to appear first which 
 we think last, and that last which we think first. We can 
 easily realise how this comes about. Increase of know- 
 ledge often reverses our estimates of the value and import- 
 ance of things. For example, the child just learning to 
 write thinks more of the form than the sense of the 
 words he pens. He is much more anxious to have a clean 
 and well-written copy than to have worthy thought in 
 the sentences ; he will take immense pains to erase a 
 wrongly formed letter or a blot upon the page. But when 
 he becomes a man all this will be reversed, and he will 
 care infinitely more for the meaning than the penmanship 
 of his sentences. He will rather have a page full of 
 erasures or corrections than a faulty sentence or one 
 which gives a wrong impression. Once the writing was 
 the greatest thing, now it is the least ; once the meaning 
 was the least, now it is the greatest. Thus increase of 
 knowledge makes considerable changes in our estimates 
 of things. 
 
 Then, too, in many a realm we do not trust our own 
 estimates, but those of men who are acknowledged masters 
 therein. If we took our own estimates we should make 
 the most ludicrous mistakes. In astronomy, for example, 
 we should probably judge by appearance, and fancy that 
 our earth was the very centre of the universe, and by far 
 the largest portion of it ; that the sun was only a huge 
 lamp of dazzling light, to warm and illuminate our earth 
 by day, and the moon a similar lamp for the night, only 
 less bright, and without the power to give heat. We 
 should fancy that the stars were only ornaments of the 
 midnight sky, passing away with the night. But we do 
 not trust our own estimates, but those of men who are 
 acknowledged masters in the astronomical realm. And 
 from them we learn that our earth, which seems by far 
 
THE LEAST AND THE MUCH. 33 
 
 the greatest, is amongst the least; and that sun, moon, 
 and stars, which seem so small, are infinitely greater. It 
 is thus in nearly every realm. Why, then, should it not 
 be thus in the realm of goodness ? Should we not rather 
 expect that in relation to this realm we are liable to similar 
 mistakes ? Is it not most likely that there are men who 
 should rightly be regarded as authorities in this realm, 
 as there are in those of scienc-e or philosophy, whose 
 judgments are far more likely to be true than those of 
 men living on a lower moral plane of life ? As a matter 
 of fact, a really holy man does regard things in a way 
 very different from an evil one. And as we ourselves grow 
 ever so little nearer to perfection, do not our estimates 
 of things greatly change ? And if we were quite to reach 
 such perfection, would they not be altogether changed ? 
 But since we make only so very small an advance toward 
 such perfection, our estimates are of necessity only a far- 
 off approach to the truth ; and therefore, if we would get 
 at the real truth, we must appeal to and accept the 
 dicta of One who is actually perfect in character. Of 
 course His dicta will startle us. They may even seem 
 fanatical or contradictory, as do those of the astronomer 
 to men ignorant of the real facts of that marvellous 
 science. Recite to such the marvels of the heavens, and 
 they will look incredulous. And to us men much of 
 Christ's teaching has a similar appearance, because our 
 moral and spiritual education is so defective. Is it any 
 wonder, then, that Christ, the Perfect One, should regard 
 things in quite another light from imperfect men ? It would 
 be strange if He did not — nay, it would be almost proof 
 presumptive that He was only such a one as ourselves. 
 As it has been well said, " The truest, best judge is, then. 
 Infinite Goodness, and next to it the regenerated sinner, 
 or the saint, the man tried by experience, or the sage, 
 
 3 
 
34 THE LEAST AND THE MUCH. 
 
 Naturally the touchstone in us becomes finer and truer 
 the better we are." * And we shall never estimate aright 
 the precepts of Jesus Christ until we ourselves reach the 
 high vantage-ground of holiness, whence He beholds and 
 forms His estimates of things. 
 
 And yet there are times of holy vision when we do 
 realise that His estimates are right. When in any small 
 measure we follow Him, His teachings commend them- 
 selves to our consciences, and we know that they are true. 
 It is so in relation to the words before us. We treat 
 the things visible and tangible as the great things ; we 
 make them the object of our keenest pursuit ; we regard 
 them as the one thing needful in life ; but moments come 
 to us when we feel that after all they are not the greatest, 
 but the least. For example, we are successful in our 
 pursuit of these visible things ; we have a time of pros- 
 perity in our business ; we increase our possessions : but 
 we soon find out that these things are not so great in 
 possession as they seemed in prospect; that they do not 
 bring us so much happiness as we expected ; that distance 
 lent enchantment to the view ; and now that the dis- 
 tance has gone, and we look at them closely as our own, 
 they seem to have shrivelled up to very small dimensions. 
 Or it may be, in the full tide of our prosperity, one of our 
 loved ones sickens ; and as we stand by the bed which we 
 fear may be the place of a last farewell our great things 
 lose their greatness, and we feel that we would gladly 
 give them all up to hold off the approach of the summoning 
 angel of death. Now, a really great thing is not dwarfed 
 either by close inspection, or possession, or change of cir- 
 cumstances. It will bear any light, even the fiercest, and 
 shine out with increased glory. "Age cannot wither, nor 
 custom stale it." Wightwick once wrote to Macready 
 
 * "Journal Intime of Henri Frederic Amiel," p. 281. 
 
THE LEAST AND THE MUCH. 35 
 
 concerning his friendship, " I value it as if the desired 
 'having' were still to be obtained." It is only the 
 seemingly great which grows small upon closer acquaint- 
 ance. The least may seem great to far-off beholders, but 
 it is only the least. And Christ, the clear, open-eyed 
 Christ, sees things as they are, and so He tells us that 
 the visible, the external, the tangible, which we fancy 
 great, is after all only the least. 
 
 II. But then Christ sees a close connection between the 
 " least " and the " much." He declares that only by being 
 faithful in the least are we prepared to be faithful in the 
 much. This is not the conclusion we should have reached. 
 It seems to us more natural to say, 'If these visible 
 things are "least," if they are only temporal, we do well 
 to pass by or neglect them.' And as a matter of fact that 
 is the conclusion which many good but spiritually un- 
 enlightened folk have drawn from the teachings of Christ. 
 Thus the hermit was driven to his cave, the monk to the 
 wilderness, the nun to the cloister. These said, ' The 
 world is so little, so despicable, so sinful, that we do 
 well to flee from and treat it with contempt.' And in 
 Protestant circles, when men have been led to see that 
 there is a greater kingdom than the visible, upon which 
 their hearts should be set, have they not frequently fancied 
 it their duty to neglect and even despise this " least " ? 
 They have not, like their counterparts in the Roman 
 Church, fled to the cloister (for a true Protestantism has 
 no cloister) ; but though they still abode in the world, they 
 felt it their duty to treat it with contempt. So good a 
 man as Richard Cecil once said, " I want to see no more 
 sea, hills, fields, abbeys, or castles. I feel vanity pervad- 
 ing everything but eternity and its concerns, and perceive 
 these things to be suited to children." Those possessed 
 with this spirit treat with a kind of Pharisaic supercilious- 
 
36 THE LEAST AND THE MUCH. 
 
 ness the very pursuits in which they are obliged to engage, 
 and cast disdainful glances on commerce, politics, art, 
 science, and the manifold interests of this present world. 
 A draper once said to me — and he fancied himself, I have 
 no doubt, very spiritual as he said it — "Think of a man with 
 an immortal soul measuring out yards of tape." Yes, think 
 of it. If he did it faithfully, giving full measure and the 
 quality asked for, he was only obeying Christ's precept, 
 and fitting himself for whatever occupation may await 
 him in the eternal order. It might as well be said. Think 
 of that wondrous Being, whose power keeps all worlds in 
 their orbits, painting with uttermost care a butterfly's wings, 
 which last only for the few brief days of a single summer ! 
 Think of Him who " telleth the number of the stars, and 
 calleth them all by their names," healing the broken hearts 
 and binding up the wounds of the frail creatures of earth ! 
 The Divine method is to call nothing common or unclean. 
 The only Divine Being who ever walked our earth did not 
 shrink from the lowly toil of the carpenter's bench ; and 
 if a record of His work thereat had been given us, we 
 should surely have seen that He was faithful in that least 
 — yea, as faithful as in the great things of the spiritual 
 kingdom He came to establish on the earth. It has been 
 said of Cardinal Newman, that " vivid and real as was 
 the world of religious mystery to him, he could give the 
 closest attention to matters of secular detail. He could, 
 in a moment, pass from the greatest to the smallest. He 
 would leave the atmosphere of religious thought and 
 meditation, and betake himself to his violin." Thomas 
 Carlyle once said, " I call a man remarkable who becomes 
 a true workman in this vineyard of the Highest. Be his 
 work that of palace-building or kingdom-founding, or only 
 of delving and ditching, to me it is no matter, or next 
 to none. All human work is transitory, small in itself, 
 
THE LEAST AND THE MUCH. 37 
 
 contemptible ; only the worker thereof and. the spirit that 
 dwells in him is significant."* 
 
 And it is needful to remember that the work in which 
 we are engaged may be small or insignificant, but that 
 the way in which we do it determines our own character, 
 which is by no means an insignificant matter. In itself 
 the visible realm and all its affairs are as the least ; but 
 upon our relationship thereto will depend whether we are 
 fitted or unfitted for that which is really great. The drill- 
 ground is not great like the battle-field, but it is the place 
 where men are trained to meet the foe, and without such 
 training they would make a poor show in the day of 
 conflict. The school is but the least compared with the 
 larger sphere of Life, but if its little tasks be neglected 
 the scholar will never enjoy the delights of literature, or 
 be equipped for the larger duties of his after career. And 
 this world is not the great, the abiding sphere for our true 
 life — to us it is the least ; but to be unfaithful here in our 
 homes, our business, in the multitude of seemingly little 
 things which go to make up our life, is to be unfitted 
 for the larger, more enduring sphere for which we are 
 destined. We are sometimes tempted to despise the trivial 
 round of life's duties — they seem to have no connection 
 with the larger eternal order ; there seems an impassable 
 gulf between them ; but they are connected, closely con- 
 nected, Christ says, in that by our relationship to these 
 least things we are being influenced, and the nature thus 
 influenced will go with us from the lower to the higher realm. 
 
 " No, no ! the energy of life may be 
 Kept on after the grave, but not begun ! 
 And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife. 
 From strength to strength advancing — only he, 
 His soul well knit, and all his battles won, 
 Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life."f 
 
 * "Reminiscences," p. 7. "I- Matthew Arnold. 
 
38 THE LEAST AND THE MUCH. 
 
 No, we must not allow the larger realm into which 
 religion introduces us to unduly dwarf the present one, 
 so as to render us first contemptuous, and then indifferent 
 to our work, even to its small and insignificant details. 
 This has sometimes been, and is even now, the effect of 
 certain ill-balanced interpretations of the teachings of 
 Christ, which divorce work from faith — which lay stress 
 upon religious opinions rather than religious living. Christ 
 demands that we be faithful in the least, even in the 
 unrighteous mammon, as a condition of inheriting the true 
 riches, which with wondrous insight He describes as " that 
 which is our own," that which is vital, normal, essential 
 to our nature. 
 
 " Deeds are the pulse of time, his beating hfe, 
 And righteous or unrighteous, being done, 
 Must throb in after throbs till time itself 
 Be laid in stillness, and the Universe 
 Quiver and beat upon no mirror more.'' 
 
 So Christ summons us, not to one supreme and quickly 
 ended conflict by which the kingdom of heaven will be 
 taken, but to a lifelong faithfulness — in the small as well 
 as the great, in the things of time as well as of those of 
 eternity, in that which perishes with the handling as well 
 as in that which endures. 
 
 " Hold fast by the present ! Every situation — nay, 
 every moment — is of infinite value, for it is the repre- 
 sentative of a whole eternity," says Goethe. 
 
 " Only in dreams is a ladder thrown 
 From the weary earth to the sapphire walls ; 
 But the dream departs and the vision falls, 
 And the sleeper wakes on his pillow of stone. 
 
 " Heaven is not reached by a single bound ; 
 But we build the ladder by which we rise 
 From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, 
 And we mount to its summit round by round." * 
 
 * " Gradatim," by Josiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
THE LEAST AND THE MUCH. 39 
 
 " He that is faithful in a very little is faithful also in 
 much, and he that is unrighteous in a very little is 
 unrighteous also in much. If, therefore, ye have not been 
 faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to 
 your trust the true riches ? and if ye have not been faithful 
 in that which is another's, who will give you that which 
 is your own ? " 
 
FIRST AND SECOND IMPRESSIONS OF 
 ■ CHRIST. 
 
 " Depart from nie ; for I am a sinful man, O Lord. . . . And when they 
 had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed Him." — 
 Luke v. 8-ii. 
 
 SIMON PETER has been well described as "that 
 transparent nature in whom we are able to trace, 
 as in the simplest organism, those changes and reactions 
 which become obscure and hard to trace in structures 
 that are more complete and complicated. Simon Peter 
 has Jesus in his little fishing-boat, when by some exhibi- 
 tion of His power, by some wonderful draught of fishes 
 in the before empty net, the personality of the Master 
 has been pressed close upon His disciple. And then 
 Peter breaks out. Prostrate at Jesus' knees, ' Depart 
 from me,' he cries ; ' for I am a sinful man, O Lord.' 
 Despondency, almost despair, a deep sight into his own 
 heart, a bitter sense of contrast with the nature which the 
 touch of miracle, like a flash of lightning, had made clear 
 to him — all this is in those passionate and hurried words. 
 But what comes next ? When they had brought their 
 ships to land, they forsook all and followed Him. Peter 
 and all the rest ! Not only all the rest, but Peter. With 
 the imploring cry — Depart — yet on his lips, he follows 
 Him whom he had begged to go away."* But then, 
 how different was Peter's cry to Christ to depart from that 
 
 * Dr. Phillips Brook's " Influence of Jesus," p. 30. 
 
J^IRST AND SECOND IMPRESSIONS OF CHRIST. 41 
 
 ■of the Gadarenes who, because they had suffered loss, 
 besought Him to " depart out of their coasts " ! But, 
 surrounded by a great draught of fish, a great gain to 
 him and his brother-fishermen, Peter cries, " Depart from 
 me." There is a whole world of difference between these 
 two cries, although they find expression through the same 
 word, " Depart." The one had its eye on the visible loss 
 — the other was so intent on Christ that all joy at the 
 gain was forgotten. Words are often mere counters. 
 It is the feeling that lies behind which fills them either 
 with glory or shame. The very oaths of Peter are better 
 than the " Hail, Master," of Judas. 
 
 Now, this cry of Peter's, " Depart from me," grew out 
 of a first impression on his quick and passionate nature ; 
 soon, very soon, to be corrected by a second one, which 
 leads him with his fellow-fishermen to leave all and follow 
 Christ. The first thought is full of anxiety that Christ 
 should depart ; the second so draws him to Christ that 
 he will not let Him go out. of his sight. 
 
 Our subject then is — First and Second Impressions of 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 The first impression awes, and it may be even terrifies, 
 Peter, so that he falls down at Jesus' knees. He had 
 caught a glimpse of the power that lay concealed in the 
 humble Nazarene whom he had come to acknowledge as 
 Master. In that wonderful moment he seems to have 
 felt that in Him there was a great hiding of strength — that 
 He was far more than at other times He seemed to be. 
 Before they had enclosed the great multitude of fish he 
 calls Christ " Master ; " now he is obliged to call Him 
 ■" Lord." Before he stood as in the presence of a Teacher, 
 a Rabbi ; now he stands as in the presence of a King, 
 whose sceptre is over the sea as well as the land. The 
 sense of power overawes him, and he cries, " Depart." In a 
 
42 FIRST AND SECOND IMPRESSIONS OF CHRIST. 
 
 little time he will see, what he does not yet, that in power 
 there is a nothing to overawe, provided it be directed by 
 a heart of love. Here the power had been used for and 
 not against him, and should therefore have inspired rather 
 than dismayed. 
 
 And this is usually the first impression men have 
 about God, whom Christ came to reveal. They think of 
 His power, and it makes them afraid. They are awed 
 before Him, and since such feelings are not pleasant, 
 they seek to put Him out of their thoughts. Because of 
 this, religion seems to them like a heavy cloud, casting 
 deep shadows over their life. But there is nothing in 
 power to produce such results as these, unless the power 
 be moved against us by anger or hatred. If this is 
 the case there is ground for fear. But if, behind the 
 power, there be purposes of love and good-will to us, it 
 is rather a ground for confidence and joy. I may be 
 rightly alarmed at the power of a great army, if the rulers 
 of the land to which it belongs are hostile to my own 
 nation. I may rightly tremble at its numbers, its 
 organisation, its equipment, since these may be used 
 to crush my native land. But I should be very foolish 
 to be frightened at our own army, however powerful it 
 may be ; indeed, the more powerful, the better armed and 
 directed it is, the greater should be my confidence and 
 quietness, the more safe I should feel from invasion. 
 The great matter to be concerned about is not the power, 
 but the feeling which lies behind it. If the power of God 
 be swayed by feelings hostile to men, then there is ground 
 for alarm ; but if, on the other hand, it be directed by 
 the friendliest feeling, then the very power is a ground 
 of confidence. A monarch's child has no fear of the 
 soldiers that surround the palace, because he knows these 
 are for his defence, and not for his destruction. And we 
 
FIRST AND SECOND IMPRESSIONS OF CHRIST. 43 
 
 shall have no fear of the power of God when we know that 
 it is for us and not against us. " Among the children of 
 God, there is always that fearful and bowed apprehension 
 of His majesty, and that sacred dread of all offence of 
 Him, which is called the Fear of God ; yet of real and 
 essential fear there is not any, but clinging of confidence 
 to Him as their Rock, Fortress, and DeHverer ; and perfect 
 love, and casting out of fear ; so that it is not possible 
 that while the mind is rightly bent on Him there should 
 be dread of anything earthly or supernatural ; and the 
 more dreadful seems the height of His majesty, the less 
 fear they have that dwell in the shadow of it. ' Of whom 
 shall I be afraid ? ' " * That lesson Christ taught by always 
 using the Divine power that was in Him/or, and not against, 
 men. Here it was used, not to whelm the fishing-boats 
 beneath the waters of the lake, but to fill them with food 
 for the fisher-folk He loved so well. So Christ always 
 used His power. And when rightly regarded, this is the 
 visible sign that God, His Father, is not against men, but 
 for them, that all the Divine resources are for their aid, 
 and not for their hindrance. Let this thought sink down 
 into our hearts, and the very power of God which now, 
 it may be, we dread, will be as a strong tower in which 
 we may find both rest and safety. 
 
 But then there must have been something beyond this. 
 If there had been only the thought of Christ's power, 
 Peter would have cried, ' Depart from me ; for I am a 
 feeble man, O Lord." The power would have wakened the 
 sense of weakness. But Peter cries, " Depart from me ; 
 for I am a sinful man, O Lord.' There must, therefore, 
 have been the shining out in Christ, not only of power, 
 but of purity. Only holiness wakens the thought of sinful- 
 ness. And, in some way or other, Peter must have been 
 
 * " Modern Painters." 
 
44 FIRST AND SECOND IMPRESSIONS OF CHRIST. 
 
 impressed, not only with the strength, but the sinlessness 
 of Christ. And so he cried, as the light of purity fell on 
 him, " I am a sinful man, O Lord." ' In Thy light I see 
 and know it to be thus.' And the first effect which purity 
 has upon the heart is to repel. The guilty man shrinks 
 from the innocent, the impure from the pure, the selfish 
 from the unselfish ; and men think of the perfect holiness 
 of God, and their 7?rs^ desire is to shrink away from Him, 
 to put Him out of their thoughts, to hide themselves from 
 His sight. They fancy that holiness, like power, must be 
 against them. But though this may be the first, it is not 
 the true impression, and that for two reasons. 
 
 The first is that holiness includes tenderness. Holiness is 
 opposed to hardness. A really holy nature must by its 
 very nature be sensitive. This, it may be, has been 
 hidden from our sight by the fact that so many of the men 
 who have had a reputation for holiness have been hard ; 
 but in so far as they were so their holiness was defective. 
 A perfectly holy nature, like that of Jesus Christ, must be 
 so filled with love that hardness is impossible. We are 
 told of Him that " He did not break the bruised reed, 
 nor quench the smoking flax." And this is one reason 
 why we should not shrink from the holiness of God. 
 Our first thought is to shrink away, but the second and 
 truer one will be to keep in its company. The first 
 thought of many a man in his trouble has been to resort 
 to the evil companions who, it may be, led him into it. He 
 goes to them, and finds " the tender mercies of the wicked 
 are cruel ; " and then he turns to those whose holier cha- 
 racters formerly repelled him, and there he finds comfort 
 and help. And so men turn away from God, fancying 
 that His holiness is against them, when all the while it 
 is on their side, though it is against their sin. 
 
 The second reason is that holiness desires to liken others 
 
FIRST AND SECOND IMPRESSIONS OF CHRIST. 45 
 
 to itself. It is not, like selfishness, exclusive, but rather 
 seeks to include others in its realm. In all holiness there 
 is a passion for its reproduction in others. And therefore 
 the Holy God would have holy children. His cry is, "Be 
 ye holy, for I am holy." So that all the resources of the 
 Divine holiness, as of the Divine powder, are ranged, not 
 against us, but for us. " I will walk with them and talk 
 with them ; they shall be My people, and I will be their 
 God." 
 
 And it was when such second thoughts came to Peter 
 that he ceased to cry, " Depart," and with his fellow- 
 fishermen " left all and followed Him." A wonderful 
 change in a few short hours ! For men do not leave 
 their all without some overmastering conviction. We 
 naturally cling most closely to the things that are visible. 
 Behind such forsaking there must, therefore, have been 
 a mighty change of feeling. For there was nothing out- 
 wardly attractive in the way to which Christ called them. 
 It was not as if a king had summoned them from their 
 fishing-boats to the splendour and luxury of a palace. 
 All that Christ held out was the hope that they should 
 catch men — that is, win men to a like allegiance with 
 themselves to the despised Nazarene. There may have 
 been a dim idea of future triumph and glory ; but it 
 must have been far away, and scarcely visible on the 
 horizon's rim. A second and loftier thought of Christ 
 stilled the cry, " Depart," and made them arise and follow, 
 as if all their hope lay in the company of Christ. 
 
 And if the first impressions of the power and holiness 
 of God can only be exchanged for the second — the truer, 
 the nobler ones I have tried to describe — then as great, 
 though not as visible, a change will be wrought in our 
 hearts. God will no longer be to us a Being to be feared, 
 avoided, shrunk away from, but One to be sought unto and 
 
46 FIRST AND SECOND IMPRESSIONS OF CHRIST 
 
 delighted in. The thought of Him will no more be like 
 a cloud upon our spirit, but as the very sun of our life. 
 Counted before as our enemy, He will now be as our 
 dearest and closest Friend. We shall no longer cry, like 
 the silly Israelites, " Let not God speak to us, lest we 
 die," but like the prophet-instructed child, " Speak, Lord : 
 Thy servant heareth." We shall feel that God is on our 
 side, and that we need not fear what man can do to us. 
 
 There are those disposed to treat all this as transcen- 
 dental imagining, which has no foundation in fact. To 
 such let me say, human experience is just as real, just as 
 much a fact, as any of the phenomena with which geology 
 or botany or zoology is concerned, the only difference 
 being that the spiritual experience of a man is infinitely 
 more important than the development of stone or flower 
 or animal. " How much is a man better than a sheep ! " 
 And I do not tell merely of my own experience, but of a 
 multitude of others, when I say that to have such thoughts 
 of God, and the feelings they naturally arouse, is, to use 
 Scripture language, like passing from darkness to light. 
 I can vividly remember the time when, fancying that the 
 power of God was a force against me, and that His holi- 
 ness rendered Him vindictive, I hated the very thought 
 of Him. It fell like a cloud over many a sunny hour. 
 I prayed to Him because I was afraid not to do so. I 
 believed in Him because I dared not disbelieve — if such 
 feelings can be rightly called by such names. I know 
 how Peter felt when he cried, " Depart." There have 
 been times in my life when, if I had dared, I should have 
 uttered the same cry. But such thoughts have gone ; in 
 God's light I have seen light, so that I know His power 
 and holiness are on my side — for my help, my deliverance, 
 my salvation. In a word, I have seen God in Christ, and 
 I cannot but trust Him. There is a story told of William 
 
FIRST AND SECOND IMPRESSIONS OF CHRIST. 47 
 
 Jay, of Bath, that one misty morning he was walking 
 along a road, and saw in the distance what appeared hlce 
 a towering form approaching. He was afraid, and half 
 disposed to take to his heels ; but the mist lifted, and he 
 saw that the form he dreaded was that of his own brother. 
 So, through the mist raised by their own sin or the foolish 
 representations of the Church, men often regard God as 
 their foe, who in reality is their dearest Friend, for He 
 could scarcely be God unless He were the Friend of men. 
 Will you not come out of the shadowy land of distrust 
 and fear into the sunlight of confidence and love ? for then 
 you would rather leave your all than leave Him who 
 declares, "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will 
 I comfort you." 
 
THE GENTLENESS AND SEVERITY OF GOD. 
 
 " Behold therefore the goodness (gentleness) and severity of God." — 
 Rom. xi. 22. 
 
 THE word here rendered goodness is in Gal. v. 22 
 translated " gentleness," and in the Rheims version 
 of the New Testament it is in one place translated 
 "benignity," and in another " sweetness." There is another 
 Greek word (JuyaOtoavvT]) which sets forth the idea con- 
 noted by our word "goodness." The word in the text is 
 better represented by the word "gentleness," as it is 
 translated in Gal. v. 22. We will, therefore, render it, 
 " Behold therefore the gentleness and severity of God." 
 
 Gentleness and severity ! These seem to be mutually 
 exclusive. To be gentle seems to make severity impossible ; 
 to be severe seems to exclude gentleness. Why does 
 this seem to be so ? Because in men these two qualities 
 are scarcely ever evenly balanced. The gentleness usually 
 banishes the severity, and renders the nature weak ; or the 
 severity excludes the gentleness, and then the nature is 
 hard. But in a perfect nature they are evenly balanced. 
 The one does not encroach on, but only tends to perfect, 
 the other. The gentleness softens the severity, and the 
 severity fortifies the gentleness. No nature can be 
 perfect save as both these elements co-exist in it. There 
 are parents in whom only what is here called gentleness 
 is seen. Their one object in relation to their children 
 is to make things easy and pleasant ; and the consequence 
 
THE GENTLENESS AND SEVERITY OF GOD. 49 
 
 is that those children do not respect them ; they feel that 
 they can sway them in any direction they please. A 
 good cry, a fit of temper, will extort almost anything. 
 Discipline, training, character-building — these are things 
 unknown in such a home; and the children grow up 
 invertebrate sort of animals — to use the common phrase, 
 they are " spoilt." 
 
 On the other hand, there are parents who are only 
 severe. They are mere disciplinarians. The home is 
 a kind of drill-ground. Their children fear rather than 
 love them. The softening, hallowing, combining influence 
 of affection is wanting. If the children are kept right 
 it is by the terror of punishment. Such children do not 
 know what home really is, for the place in which they 
 dwell differs little from a barracks. And they grow up 
 like trained soldiers rather than sons and daughters. So 
 that, even for the smaller circle of the home, both " gentle- 
 ness and severity " are necessary. Indeed, in the truest 
 sense, severity should be but one expression of gentleness, 
 for without it perfect gentleness is impossible. And for 
 the larger realm of the world gentleness and severity 
 are both needed. Without both it could not be rightly 
 governed. A world whose ruler was without gentleness 
 would be like a prison or a penitentiary, a place in which 
 men would drag out a weary existence. In it there would 
 be none of the elements which give sanctity and beauty 
 to life. Nature would be without any of the things which 
 give delight to eye, or ear, or taste. Society would be 
 without the softening, uniting influence of affection. Human 
 life would be without either hope or love. For all these 
 have their primal source in the gentleness of God. No, 
 we could not do without gentleness. Nor, on the other 
 hand, could we do without severity, for without it con- 
 fusion would be the order of life. Imagine a world from 
 
 4 
 
50 THE GENTLENESS AND SEVERITY OF GOD. 
 
 which every penal consequence of folly and sin was 
 absent — a world in which men might sin and not suffer, 
 where they might disobey the laws of conscience or of 
 nature and not be punished. In such a world a positive 
 premium would be put on disobedience. Confusion would 
 fall on human society. Anarchy would be rampant, as 
 in a land without law and the penalties it enforces. The 
 restrictive influence of suffering being wanting, offenders 
 would be free to go their own wild way, with health 
 unweakened and vigour undiminished. At present sin 
 is kept from dominance by the severity which reduces 
 the sinner's strength or brings his course to an untimely 
 end. But if this were wanting, inclination would probably 
 lead the whole race astray, and make earth a hell, — or what 
 is more probable, bring the human race to a speedy end. 
 So that the very severity we count an evil is really a good, 
 and instead of being our foe, is in reality our friend. And 
 therefore the Apostle does not scruple to bid his hearers 
 "behold therefore the gentleness and severity of God." 
 We may see these two characteristics of God in every 
 realm. 
 
 I. Take first that of Nature. Many in our day see only 
 severity there. They seem to regard nature as the scene 
 of relentless forces which hold on their way, bringing in 
 their train pain, sorrow, death to men. They tell how 
 the stronger creatures prey upon the weaker and more 
 defenceless ; how the hurricane sweeps away vessels 
 and their crews ; how the earthquake gulphs men in 
 a sudden grave ; how malaria lays low its victims by 
 thousands. They see nothing but severity in nature. 
 And doubtless severity is there, for nature is the realm 
 of unbending law — law which spares not those who come 
 into conflict therewith. Without such law nature would 
 be a realm of confusion. We should not know how to 
 
THE GENTLENESS AND SEVERITY OF GOD. 51 
 
 regulate our lives. But then the goodness is also visible 
 in nature, in that her laws are full of arrangements which 
 tend to the happiness of men. The laws may, in the 
 main, be unbending, but probably if we quite under- 
 stood the whole scheme we should see that all of them 
 make for the good of the race. It is true, if you put 
 your hand into the fire it will be burned, but none the 
 less fire is a great boon. If you go out with head 
 uncovered into the full summer sunshine you may get 
 sunstroke ; but none the less sunlight and heat are of 
 transcendent importance and value. The storm may over- 
 take the ship at sea, bringing peril to those on board ; 
 but at the same time the storm is fulfilling some neces- 
 sary function. 
 
 And these stern laws of nature seem' to me to be 
 the outcome of a severity in whose very heart is gentle- 
 ness ; just as parental punishment on a disobedient child 
 is severity, but a severity prompted by a heart of love ; 
 whilst who can doubt that many of the arrangements of 
 nature have been ordered only with a view to the happi- 
 ness of men ? It is a jaundiced eye which sees only 
 severity in nature. A more candid survey will probably 
 lead to the conclusion reached by so keen and widely 
 travelled an observer as Mr. A. R. Wallace, who gives 
 it as his opinion that the struggle for existence " brings 
 about the maximum of happiness and of the enjoyment 
 of life with the minimum of suffering and pain."* 
 
 II. Take, secondly, Human Nature. There are those who 
 tell us that here only severity can be discerned. In 
 moments of suffering and disappointment, it may be, we 
 have thought so ourselves, and that we have cried, like 
 Job, " Thou writest bitter things against me, and makest me 
 to possess the iniquities of my youth." God seems severe 
 
 * " Darwinism/' p. 40. 
 
52 THE GENAENESS AND SEVERITY OF GOD. 
 
 in that we always have to suffer for our folly or dis- 
 obedience or sin. We sow to the flesh, and we reap 
 corruption. In some cases we have to suffer for the 
 sins of those who were our ancestors ; in others we 
 have to suffer from the folly of our children or our 
 friends. All this is so. " The fathers have eaten sour 
 grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." Severitj' 
 — yes, but a needed severity, and in it, if we could see 
 all, a heart of gentleness. 
 
 We repine at the evil inherited from our ancestors ; 
 but then we inherit the good as well as the evil. And 
 perhaps it is better to inherit some evil tendencies than not 
 to be bound together by such a relationship as that between 
 parent and child. We repine at suffering caused to us by 
 the action of others, that we have to bear the burden 
 caused by the folly of other people. But if society is to 
 exist, if we are not to be quite isolated, it must be so. We 
 do not grumble at joy caused to us by others. Why, then, 
 should we grumble at a little suffering coming to us in a 
 like way ? It may have at its heart our real good — to 
 keep us from being self-centred — to keep us closer to our 
 brother men. It may be, if we were quite in our right 
 mind, we should desire to suffer with and for others, as 
 He did who " bare our infirmities and took our sicknesses," 
 not because He was obliged to do so, but because He delighted 
 to do so. I think I had a little glimpse into that feeling 
 a few days ago, when one of my sons was about to 
 undergo a painful operation, and I could not help saying, 
 " Oh, my boy, I wish I could bear a part of it for you ! " 
 
 We may think it severity that we have to reap where 
 we sow ; but if vice sometimes brought forth virtue's harvest 
 should we not be tempted to cleave to the vice ? If from 
 a sowing of tares the farmer sometimes got a crop of wheat 
 would he not be tempted always to sow tares ? And the 
 
THE GENTLENESS AND SEVERITY OF GOD. 53 
 
 confusion and uncertainty which would then ensue would 
 show the need for certain and unyielding law. Yes, 
 severity is but the stern force which we mortals need ; 
 but behind it there is the goodness of God. 
 
 III. Take, last of all, the Christ. That Christ should 
 suffer, that the cross should be reared and He put to death 
 thereon, seems to reveal only the severity of God. It does 
 reveal that severity in relation to sin — the assertion on 
 the part of God of its awfulness, that it was something 
 so terrible that it needed the Cross to overcome it. That 
 Cross does bring into view not only the gentleness, but the 
 severity of God — His indignation at sin — that to it He 
 would be as a consuming fire. But it is the severity of 
 love — love which does not lay the burden on another, but 
 takes it upon its own shoulders ; for on the Cross God takes 
 on Himself the guilt against which He is angry. " God 
 was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself" 
 
 This is finely expressed by the words put into the 
 mouth of the Son of God by the author of " Festus "- ■ 
 
 " Creator and Created ! witness both 
 How I have loved ye, as God-natured life 
 Alone can love and suffer. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 My life is evi.r suffering for love ; 
 
 In judging and redeeming worlds is spent 
 
 Mine everlasting being." 
 
 Can we get any glimpse from our human relationships of 
 how that is possible ? I think we can. A son has com- 
 mitted a great wrong— a wrong at which his father is 
 full of righteous indignation— an indignation which may 
 compel him to be the punisher of it. But all the while so 
 close, so tender are the bonds which bind the son to him, 
 that the wrong seems to be almost his own ; he carries it 
 about in his heart ; it is a dark shadow over his way ; it 
 
54 THE GENTLENESS AND SEVERITY OF GOD. 
 
 rises before him even in visions of the night. He bears 
 the sin of his wrong-doing son, at one and the same time 
 that his heart is hot against that sin. That is a poor, 
 feeble, lialting illustration of how severity and goodness 
 are united at the Cross. There is such severity against 
 sin that the Divine One must take it upon His own 
 shoulders. That Cross is the witness of the Divine 
 severity against sin, and at the same time of the fact that 
 it is borne by the God who in Christ suffered thereon. 
 
 There is a faint approach to this union of diverse feelings 
 in what is certainly the most pathetic incident of Hebrew 
 history. Absalom is in revolt against his father David ; 
 naturally the king is angry at the rebellion of his son. 
 Tidings come of the overthrow of the rebel army, but the 
 king seems indifferent to the good news. To messenger 
 after messenger the one question is addressed, " Is the 
 young man Absalom safe ? " And when at last the truth 
 is extorted from them of his sudden and awful death, 
 the broken-hearted king, in the agony of his soul, exclaims 
 with a pathos which still rings out in the words, "O 
 Absalom, my son, my son Absalom ! would God I had 
 died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son ! " For the rebel, 
 in spite of his rebellion, to his father's heart was still 
 a son. Such is the Divine feeling expressed in Jesus 
 Christ — a feeling against the sin, but for the sinner. 
 And the Cross in which that Divine feeling reached its 
 climax is the assurance that at the very heart of all God's 
 feeling expressed in Nature and in Humanity there is only 
 gentleness, the gentleness of a God of whom it is de- 
 clared, " Thou wast a God that forgavest them, though 
 Thou tookest vengeance of their inventions.'' 
 
THE PERFECTION OF GOD. 
 
 "As your heavenly Father is perfect." — Matt. v. 48. 
 
 THIS is the climax of a series of precepts — a climax 
 in which all the previous precepts are included in 
 one all-embracing phrase, " Be ye therefore perfect, even 
 as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." If it be 
 thus, it follows, as a natural consequence, that the 
 heavenly Father must be all that men are here bidden to 
 become. Each precept of Christ simply called men on 
 some point to seek a likeness to the Divine nature. In 
 the verses immediately preceding the text He has bidden 
 men to love their enemies ; God, therefore, must love 
 those who are His enemies by wicked works. He has 
 bidden men pray for those who persecute them ; the 
 feeling in the heart of God must therefore be such as, if 
 it were in man, would find expression in prayer on their 
 behalf Indeed, prayer for such persecutors is urged on 
 the express ground that we may be sons of our Father 
 which is in heaven — sons, and therefore like to the Father 
 in spirit — who " maketh His sun to rise on the evil and 
 the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust." 
 To the clear eye of Christ, God is seen to be all, and 
 more than all, which in the Scriptures men are bidden to 
 become. The perfection to which they are urged is a 
 perfection already existing in the nature of the heavenly 
 Father. The goal for men is manhood after a Divine 
 pattern. 
 
56 THE PERFECTION OF GOD. 
 
 " By all that He requires of me 
 I know what God Himself must be." * 
 
 Now, it is not too muchi to say — although it may seem 
 a very strong thing to say — that the Church's conception 
 of God has often been much lower than the ideal of life 
 she has held up to men. The Divine nature, as set forth 
 in many of the Confessions of the Church, has been of an 
 altogether lower type than that after which many a good 
 man has striven. God, as represented in many a scheme 
 of theology, has been far removed from being a Father, 
 still, farther removed from being a heavenly Father, farthest 
 of all removed from being a perfect heavenly Father. 
 Many an earthly father would be ashamed to treat his 
 children as theology says the heavenly Father treats His. 
 Christ said that if earthly parents, in spite of the evil in 
 their nature, gave good gifts unto their children, how 
 much more would the Father in heaven ; but theology has 
 forbidden us to argue from the love, the patience, the 
 undying forgiveness in the fathers of our flesh to the still 
 greater love, patience, forgiveness in Him " of whom the 
 whole family in heaven and earth is named." We have 
 been told that the infinitude of the Divine nature rendered 
 all such comparisons valueless, whereas to the mind of 
 Christ that infinitude only rendered the love, the patience, 
 the forgivingness more encompassing in their scope and 
 lasting in their endurance. If love, patience, forgiving- 
 ness in men can reach so far, how far may they not be 
 expected to reach in God ? The infinity of God assures 
 us of a like infinity in the application, the breadth, the 
 continuance of every feeling of His heart. You would be 
 astonished were one to say of some millionaire, ' There is 
 love in his heart, but of course the vastness of his wealth 
 prevents the full expression of that love.' You would 
 
 * J. G. Whittier. 
 
IHE PERFECTION OF GOD. 57 
 
 naturally reply, ' His wealth is but the servant of his love, 
 and enables him to minister more completely to the objects 
 of his affection.' And yet apparently sober-minded 
 Christians have argued that the infinitude of God prevents 
 us knowing what His love may be expected to accomplish 
 for men ; whereas, rightly regarded, that infinitude only 
 makes it impossible to realise the vastness of the time 
 that love endures, or the might of the forces it employs to 
 accomplish its purposes, or the all-embracingness of its 
 scope. We know with certainty the direction along which 
 infinite love will move, though, by reason of the limitation 
 of our faculties, we cannot realise the endlessness of the 
 Divine seeking for men. These are considerations which 
 have only of late emerged in the thinking of the Church, 
 but they will sooner or later completely banish every 
 shadow by which the perfection of the Divine character 
 has been obscured from the gaze of men. 
 
 Now let us look at Christ s own representation. He came 
 out, to use the expressive language of Scripture, from the 
 bosom of the Father. Christ's representation should, to 
 all Christian hearts, therefore, be the first, the authoritative 
 one. In His words we have the thinnest possible veil 
 between God and man — a veil thinner, more transparent 
 than even that in the words of the Apostles. Christ, both 
 in His life and words, is the express image of the Father. 
 The Apostles can only tell us what they tasted and 
 handled and felt of the good word of life ; but Christ is 
 the Life itself. And His message is of a perfect Fatherhood 
 in heaven. 
 
 The two parts of this message have too often been 
 severed. The perfection has been severed from the 
 Fatherhood. Now, it would be a mere truism to say that 
 the Divine Being is perfect. If He were not. He would 
 not be God. Theology has always affirmed the perfection 
 
58 THE PERFECTION OP GOD. 
 
 of God, but it has too often gone on to paint a picture of 
 Him which appears anything but perfect. The affirmation 
 of an abstract perfection is of little avail. It is scarcely 
 thinkable. Perfection must inhere in a distinct conception 
 or relationship. We naturally ask, Perfect as what ? 
 Indeed, there may be perfection in one direction, and the 
 reverse in another. A man may be perfect, or well-nigh 
 perfect, as an artist, and most defective as a parent. A 
 man may be an almost perfect parent, and most faulty as 
 a man of business. Before we can get any clear idea of 
 perfection the question must be answered. Perfect as 
 what ? And the whole stress and force of this declaration 
 of our Lord lies in the fact that it asserts the perfection of 
 the Divine Fatherhood. God is perfect as the Father of 
 men. This is the very heart of Christ's teaching, asserted 
 again and again, and even when not asserted being as a 
 kind of background to all His teaching. In it lies the 
 inspiration to lead filial lives. It is parental love which 
 tends to make obedient children. It is not the mere idea 
 that the child owes its life to its parents which quickens 
 love, love which leads to obedience. It is a present and 
 actual love, shining through speech, life, ministry in the 
 home, which knits the child's heart to its parent. And it 
 is the assurance of an unseen but perfect Fatherhood in 
 God which quickens and keeps alive religion in the 
 heart, which is only another name for the response 
 of the child of earth to his Father in heaven. And the 
 message which Christ brings to us is that this Fatherhood 
 is perfect — perfect as to its quality, undimmed by any 
 shadow of sin ; perfect as to its sweep of affection, in- 
 cluding in its love the evil and the good ; perfect as to its 
 endurance, loving with an everlasting love ; a Fatherhood 
 of which every earthly one, even the holiest, is but a dim 
 reflection. By means of earthly parentage, whether that 
 
THE PERFECTION OF GOD. 59 
 
 Iby which we have been blessed or that we exercise to our 
 own children, we are able to climb but a few short steps 
 toward this perfect, this infinite Fatherhood of God. So 
 the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews felt when he 
 :said, " Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh who 
 ■corrected us, and we gave them reverence : shall we not 
 much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and 
 live ? For they merely for a few days corrected us after ■ 
 their pleasure ; but He for our profit, that we mightj be 
 partakers of His holiness." There, is a hint of the infinite 
 ■distance the Apostle discerned between the earthly and 
 Jieavenly fatherhood — the one a fatherhood of the flesh, 
 the other of the spirit ; the one marred by selfishness, 
 the other perfect in its self-forgetfulness ; the one lasting 
 for a few days, the other ceasing not till we partake of its 
 holiness. Some of you, it may be, have been blessed with 
 a parentage that seemed almost perfect — wise, just, firm, 
 patient, loving. You look back upon it with mingled rever- 
 ence and affection. It is one of the chosen objects in the 
 secret oratory of your heart. Yes, but beautiful as it is, 
 it is only a hint of that perfect Fatherhood from which all 
 that was worthy in it was derived. 
 
 '• All fathers learn their craft of Thee ; 
 All loves are shadows cast 
 From the beautiful eternal hills 
 Of Thine unbeginning past." 
 
 Let the earthly fatherhood be as a ladder up which we 
 may climb to the heavenly, the perfect Fatherhood of 
 God. 
 
 Secondly, this truth of the perfect Fatherhood of Godshould 
 be the standard by which we test every doctrine. I have 
 long been accustomed to ask concerning every doctrine. 
 What idea of God does it involve ? Is it compatible with 
 the belief in a perfect Fatherhood in Him ? Now let us 
 
6o THE PERFECTION OF GOD. 
 
 subject some of the dogmas which have long held sway 
 in the Church to this searching test. 
 
 Take, first of all, what is called the doctrine of election 
 — that God was pleased to choose a certain number of His 
 creatures to eternal life, and that He passes by the rest, 
 leaving them uncalled, unpersuaded, to use the words of 
 the Westminster Confession, " passing them by, ordaining 
 them to dishonour and wrath for their sins, to the praise, 
 of His glorious justice." Would such a procedure be a 
 worthy one even in a frail and fallible earthly parent? 
 Would it not draw upon him the condemnation of all 
 right-minded observers ? Partiality, favouritism in the 
 family is a thing beyond defence. In so far as any parent 
 is guilty of it he fails in his paternal relationship. Paternal 
 feeling goes out to the obedient and disobedient, the 
 responsive and unresponsive in the family. In some cases 
 disobedience only calls forth keener efforts to win to better 
 ways. The wayward are not loved more than those who 
 remain at home, but they are the object of greater solicitude 
 and more persistent pursuit. Often it is concerning the 
 Absalom of the family that the parent cries, " Would 
 God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son ! " 
 The vision of a perfect Fatherhood in heaven seems to 
 carry in it the assurance of thought, care, love, effort for 
 every child. Nor is this a mere deduction from the ideal 
 of fatherhood. In the previous verses of this chapter we 
 are bidden to love our enemies and pray for them that 
 persecute us. Love to those who oppose us, prayer even 
 for those who persecute us, are laid as a duty upon us. 
 Can what is right to us be wrong to God ? Are we to move 
 in one direction, and God in another and opposite one ? 
 Nay, this cannot be true. Love to our enemies, prayer 
 for our persecutors, are enjoined, that we may be the 
 children of our Father who is in heaven, a Father who 
 
THE PERFECTION OF GOD. 6i 
 
 makes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends 
 His rain on the just and the unjust. In the realm that is 
 visible to us the impartiality of God is cleariy seen. His 
 sun rises on and brings to maturity the crops of the evil 
 and the good. His rain falls with the same freshening 
 effect upon the fields of the just and unjust. Nature is 
 the witness for the utter impartiality of the Most High. 
 Is it thus in the lower, and not thus in the higher realm ? 
 Has God one method in the realm of Nature, and another 
 in the realm of Grace ? Is it possible to believe that there 
 is such a schism in the Divine dealings ? If difference 
 there be, surely it is that in the higher the method will be 
 more just, more considerate, more loving than in the lower. 
 The higher the realm — that is the more spiritual — the more 
 just, the more considerate, the more tender the laws which 
 govern it. And yet sensitive and tender souls have 
 troubled themselves with the question whether they were 
 among the elect of God. This has pressed as with an 
 insupportable weight upon their spirits — it has been as a 
 cloud whose shadow has. well-nigh excluded light from 
 their lives. In some cases it has cast so deep a shadow 
 that reason has given way, and their days have been 
 passed amid the company of the insane. And all the 
 while, in the very name by which they called upon God, 
 lay the answer to their fear, and the thought which would 
 have calmed their spirits. There is only one word needed 
 to fight this spectre of the soul, and that word is Father, 
 for beyond the Father's love no child can ever pass. 
 
 Or take another dogma — that Christ came and died to 
 meet and appease the anger of God. Men had sinned, sin 
 must be punished, and therefore, that the sinner might 
 be free, Christ bore the punishment instead. Will such a 
 conception bear the light of perfect fatherhood ? Let us 
 see. The child disobeys his father — grievously disobeys 
 
62 THE PERFECTION OF GOD. 
 
 him. Does he look about for some one to appease his 
 anger ? Does he choose another member of the family, 
 and inflict punishment upon him, that his anger, or his 
 justice if you will, may be satisfied ? Is it not the case 
 that the more perfect the father, the less of anger there 
 is ? Is not the anger rather grief at the sin — a longing 
 to win the disobedient child to repentance and return ? 
 Is not the supreme thought and effort of the father to 
 draw the child to righteousness ? Does he not strain 
 every effort to waken a better mind in the child, and con- 
 vince him that he needs only to come back to find 
 forgiveness ? He will not punish another child, but he 
 may take means which shall at once reveal his horror at 
 the sin and his yearning love for the child who has thus 
 gone astray. He may despatch another child as his mes- 
 senger, charged to express at once his grief at the sin and his 
 willingness to receive the prodigal back again to his heart 
 and home. And the Cross is the Divine method for the 
 accomplishment of both these ends ; for there the Divine 
 sense of the awfulness of sin is revealed, and at the same 
 time the infinite love of God to the sinner, in that in the 
 person of His Son, in whom He was and in whom He 
 suffered, God takes on Himself the burden of human guilt. 
 Thus Christ, as God Incarnate, bears, that He may bear 
 away, the sins of the world — thus in a very real sense 
 " He was made sin for us who knew no sin, that we might 
 be made the righteousness of God in Him." But the 
 value and meaning of this is lost if Christ be separated 
 from the Father, concerning whom He declared, " I and 
 My Father are one." Any schism here robs the Father 
 of the glory of Redemption, and the Son of the vital 
 element in His redeeming work. But united, vitally 
 united, there is preserved to us the true Fatherly cha- 
 racter of God, and the perfect oneness of will and purpose 
 
THE PERFECTION OF GOD. 63 
 
 between the Father and the Son. This is a conception in 
 deepest harmony with the thought of a perfect fatherhood ; 
 but Christ punished for sinners — the object of the Father's 
 anger — may, perhaps, be harmonised with the notion of 
 a low jurisprudence, though it must be a very low one, 
 but it cannot be harmonised with the idea of a perfect 
 fatherhood. Unworthy indeed is the father who needs 
 to be appeased ; only in some poor moment of passion 
 is such a desire in his heart. In his better moments 
 the one thought will be how to win his child back to 
 the way of righteousness and peace. And this is the 
 root-idea of the Gospel — " God was in Christ, reconciling 
 the world unto Himself." There, is the true fatherly 
 instinct. That is worthy of a father — yea, even of a 
 Father that is perfect. 
 
 Or take another dogma — that human life is a probation; 
 that we are sent into the world to be tested, and that upon 
 the result of such testing our everlasting destiny depends. 
 So long as we are on the earth we are the objects of a 
 Divine care and love ; but if we do not respond to such 
 love on earth, it will cease towards us. Our life may 
 close just as years of maturity are reached, or we may live 
 on to middle life or even to old age. Our course may 
 run to its appointed length, or be cut off by accident, for 
 which we were not responsible ; but death, come when it 
 may, ends our time of probation. So long as it lasted 
 God cared for and loved us ; but when the probation 
 ended, if we had not believed, the love ceased. Now, I 
 ask, is that compatible with the idea of a perfect father- 
 hood ? Can any limit be fixed to the love of a worthy 
 parent ? Did any parent worthy of the name ever say, 
 ' I will give my child twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years ; 
 and then, if he do not respond, my love for him will 
 cease and be turned to hatred ' ? Have not parents- 
 
64 THE PERFECTION OF GOD. 
 
 gone down to their graves after years and years of weary 
 waiting for a prodigal child, with words of prayer and 
 benediction for him on their lips ? If mortal ones can 
 thus wait, shall not the Eternal One — to whom a thousand 
 years are but as one day — wait for sinful men ? St. Peter, 
 in a striking passage, bids us " account the longsuffering 
 of our Lord as salvation." In relation to eternity, fifty, 
 sixty, seventy, eighty, even a hundred years are but as a 
 speck. To God " a thousand years are but as yesterday 
 when it is past, and as a watch in the night." Is it 
 possible to believe that the failure of some tiny piece of 
 the mechanism of the body resulting in death should 
 cause to cease the love of the Divine heart toward the 
 sinner ? 
 
 The more I think of it the more deeply I am convinced 
 that this idea of life as a mere probation is not compatible 
 with the perfect Fatherhood of God. The mind cannot 
 believe in them both. The one must sooner or later 
 force the other out. To believe that this life is 2i probation, 
 and the only one, you must limit and minimise the idea 
 of the Divine Fatherhood. But not so the idea of life as 
 an education, of which the present scene;is only the first 
 stage, and which will go forward through the ages. This 
 is a conception which can be harmonised with ideas of a 
 perfect Fatherhood in God, and which gives new meaning 
 and glory to life. Faithful here in little, we shall have 
 opportunity there to be faithful in much. Unjust here in 
 the least, we may be there unjust in the much. Burying 
 our talent in the earth, we may be sent into age-long 
 discipline, intended to burn out our sin, under whose 
 influence we may perchance come to a better mind, and 
 enter there some lowly class, whose lessons should have 
 been learnt here on the earth ; but because in our folly 
 we did not then learn them, we shall be obliged to undergo 
 
THE PERFECTION OF GOD. 65 
 
 the keen suffering which sin ever renders necessary, so 
 that as long as our sin lasts God, by reason of the very 
 purity and strength of His love, will be to us as a 
 consuming fire. 
 
 What the final issue in the case of the impenitent will 
 be we know not. Dowered as man is with freedom of 
 will (without which there could be no responsibility, and 
 therefore no sin that could be rightly punished), it is 
 possible that sin may, in certain cases, so turn his will 
 against God, in knowledge of whom is Eternal Life, that 
 all His gracious purposes for his salvation may be set 
 at nought. Two points, however, are clear and certain. 
 As George Herbert says — 
 
 " But there are two vast, spacious things, 
 The which to measure it doth more behove ; 
 Yet few there are who sound them — Sin and Love." * 
 
 The first is, that without the yielding of the will to 
 God, by which alone there is delivery from sin, the soul 
 cannot be a partaker of Eternal Life ; so long as the soul 
 loves darkness rather than light it will be under condemna- 
 tion. And that preference of darkness to light cannot 
 be overcome by any Divine fiat — thus accomplished, the 
 change would not be the sinner's, but God's. Only by 
 moral influences working on the will, and leading it from 
 the love of darkness to that of light, can the great change 
 be accomplished. Until this be done only what we call 
 Hell is possible, and what we call Heaven is impossible, 
 to the soul. 
 
 The second is that God, being the Father of men, must, 
 by the very nature of that relationship, put at their service 
 all possible aids and means for their recovery to Himself. 
 He must do the best that is possible for them. As the 
 Psalmist declares, " His mercy endureth for ever ; " so 
 
 * " The Agony.'' 
 
 5 
 
66 THE PERFECTION OF GOD. 
 
 that whenever and wherever the impenitent become 
 willing and obedient, yielding up their sin and yielding 
 their souls to His Fatherly love, there will stand open 
 
 " The happy gate which leads to where 
 Love is like sunshine in the air, 
 And Love and Law are both the same, 
 Named with an everlasting Name." 
 
 Beyond this we have no certain ground on which to 
 stand. Into the mysteries of the Eternal World we 
 cannot pry, for we know only in part ; and Scripture 
 candidly read, probably because of our imperfect under- 
 standing of its teachings, seems to point, in certain parts, 
 to a punishment that is endless, in others to the annihila- 
 tion of the finally impenitent, in others to a final restora- 
 tion of all men. If we could reach the true point of 
 observation, we should probably find that between all 
 these declarations there is a point of harmony — that in 
 these seeming contradictions there is, as is so often the 
 case, a larger truth, of which they are partial but vital 
 elements. 
 
 Treating of this matter, Frederick Denison Maurice, in 
 a letter to the Rev. F. J. A. Hort, says, "How can I 
 reconcile these contradictory discoveries ? I cannot 
 reconcile them. I know no theory which can. But I 
 can trust in Him who has reconciled the world to Him- 
 self. I can leave all in His hands. I dare not fix any 
 limits to His love. I cannot tell what are the limits to 
 the power of a rebel will. I know that no man can be 
 blessed except his will is in accordance with God's will. 
 I know it must be by an action on the will that love 
 triumphs." * 
 
 Of this we may be assured by Christ's revelation of the 
 Father, that He is doing, and will ever do, the best that 
 
 * "The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice," vol. ii., p. 19. 
 
THE PERFECTION OF GOD. 67 
 
 is possible for all His creatures ; and that whatever may 
 come to them in the hidden future, even though it be the 
 keenest suffering on account of their sin, they will see 
 and acknowledge that " He doeth all things well,'' that the 
 Judge of all the earth, by reason of His nature, must do 
 right. Nothing less than this can satisfy the conception 
 given us by our Lord Jesus Christ of a Father who is 
 perfect. 
 
 "The great unending future, 
 I cannot pierce its shroud ; 
 Yet nothing doubt, nor tremble : 
 God's bow is on the cloud. 
 
 " To Him I yield my spirit ; 
 On Him I lay my load : 
 Fear ends with death ; beyond it 
 I nothing see but God. 
 
 " Thus moving toward the darkness, 
 I calmly wait His call, 
 Now seeing, fearing — nothing; 
 But hoping, trusting — all." 
 
 Let the idea of a perfect heavenly Father sink down 
 into our hearts, a Father imaged in Christ, a Father 
 whose love He did but embody and reveal — a revelation 
 which reached its climax on the Cross, where, with infinite 
 pity, the very God against whom we have sinned, and 
 who was in Christ, bore the sins of the whole world. Let 
 that idea sink down into our hearts, and then as, in days 
 long gone by, the thought of a righteous father or of a 
 loving mother was the mightiest force to keep us from 
 evil, and draw our hearts to goodness, so will the thought 
 of one whose Fatherhood theirs did but faintly image be 
 the mightiest influence to win us from evil, and draw our 
 feet into the way everlasting. 
 
THE VISION OF THE INVISIBLE. 
 
 "While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things 
 which are not seen : for the things which are seen are temporal ; but the 
 things which are not seen are eternal." — 2 Cor. iv. i8. 
 
 THIS is the true attitude of a spiritual mind. Its 
 gaze is fixed, not on the things which are visible, but 
 invisible — "which eye cannot see or ear hear." It is this 
 which differentiates the spiritual from the carnal man, 
 who lives in the realm of things that are visible. It is 
 this power to look at the things which cannot be seen 
 which lifts man above the animal, whose realm is bounded 
 by the reach of its senses — of sight, hearing, touch. The 
 animal has no power to look on the invisible, or hear 
 the inaudible, or to feel the untouchable. It is confined 
 to one realm, as the fish is to the water, or the bird to 
 the air. But man may live in two worlds — the seen 
 and the unseen. As the author of the " Christian Year " 
 well says — 
 
 " Two worlds are ours ; 'tis only sin 
 Forbids us to descry 
 The mystic heaven and earth within, 
 Plain as the earth and sky." 
 
 And as good old George Herbert says — 
 
 " Man is one world, and hath 
 Another to attend him." 
 
 A man is scarcely a man who belongs only to one world — 
 he is more of an animal than a man. 
 
THE VISION OF THE INVISIBLE. 69 
 
 " Unless above himself he can 
 Erect himself, how mean a thing is man ! " 
 
 There are those who, when cut off from the visible by 
 loss of sight or hearing, almost cease to live ; thrown in 
 upon themselves, life becomes a burden, since they have 
 no inward ideas on which to feed, no mental sight by 
 which they can see. But there are those who see as 
 clearly when blindness closes the outer eye as when it 
 was open to all things within the range of its vision. 
 When the outer world had been cut off, by his blindness, 
 from Milton, what glorious visions passed before his 
 inward eye, so that he was enabled to give to the world 
 that great epic, " Paradise Lost." He could yet say — 
 
 " Doth God exact day-labour, light denied ? 
 I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent 
 That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need 
 Either man's work or His own gifts. Who best 
 Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state 
 Is kingly : thousands at His bidding speed, 
 And post o'er land and ocean without rest ; 
 They also serve who only stand and wait." 
 
 To this latter class belonged St. Paul ; indeed, he was one 
 of its most conspicuous examples. So real, so blessed, 
 so near was this invisible realm, that it made the visible 
 one seem shadowy and unsubstantial. The weight ot 
 glory of this spiritual realm made the outward trouble of 
 his life seem light and almost unworthy of notice. It made 
 him indifferent to the decay of the outward man, since all 
 the while the inward man was being renewed day by day. 
 And no life is what it should be, what it might be, until 
 above the things which are seen it discerns the things 
 which are unseen and eternal. 
 
 Let us consider a little more closely this attitude of the 
 Apostle. 
 
70 THE VISION OF THE INVISIBLE. 
 
 We must not suppose from this declaration, however, 
 that the Apostle was indifferent to the things which are 
 seen, but only that his gaze was most intent on the things 
 which are not seen. He is here telling us, not of the direc- 
 tion of his physical, but of his spiritual eye. The engage- 
 ment of the spiritual sight with the invisible does not 
 preclude that of the bodily eye with the visible. The 
 spiritual, indeed, quickens the material vision. The more 
 spiritual a man becomes, the more he discerns in the 
 visible world worthy of his admiration. It is a false 
 spiritualism which leads men to despise the visible. Indeed, 
 in another place this very Apostle declares that these 
 visible things reveal the eternal power and Godhead ; 
 whilst a greater than St. Paul was keenly alive to all 
 the beauty of the earth, and bade men consider the lilies 
 of the field and the birds of the air. The invisible realm 
 was a greater reality to Christ than to any of the sons 
 of men, but in no sense did it lead Him to despise the 
 visible world around Him. You cannot find in His words 
 anything approaching to the morbid depreciation of the 
 present order of things which forms so large an element 
 in the speech of a good many so-called religious people. 
 To Him this visible world was a part of His Father's 
 domain just as truly as the invisible, to which He most 
 really belonged. To despise it, to be discontented with 
 it, is to be guilty of ingratitude to Him who arranged it 
 as the first stage of our immortal existence. We must 
 be on our guard against any thoughts or feelings which 
 render us indifferent or contemptuous in relation to the 
 visible around us. In such thoughts there is something 
 morbid or unreal. And as a matter of fact, piety of 
 such an order is not beautiful or Christ-like. Those in 
 whom it is found are like men who try to walk on air, 
 rather than being content with walking on the ground 
 
THE VISION OF THE INVISIBLE. 71 
 
 with their faces to the sky, and in the end they only 
 fall prone to the earth. Robert Browning well says — 
 
 "Who climbs keeps one foot firm on fact 
 Ere hazarding the next step.'' 
 
 Life is kept most healthy, most really spiritual, by using 
 all that is about us here, with the consciousness that there 
 is a higher, invisible realm to which we still more endur- 
 ingly belong. 
 
 " Our little lives are kept in equipoise 
 By opposite attractions and desires — 
 The struggle of the instinct that enjoys, 
 And the more noble instinct that aspires." * 
 
 We do not become more spiritual by closing our eyes 
 to the beauties of earth and sky and sea, of the faces of 
 our friends, of the glory of art ; or by closing our ears to 
 the music of the world or the voices of men ; we only 
 grow self-contained and morbid. As Horace Bushnell 
 says ; " The unworldly Christian, if he has the true 
 metal of a great life in him, never looks away from the 
 things of time, but looks only the more piercingly into 
 them and through them. He does not expect to find God 
 beyond them, but in them, and by means of them." 
 
 Earth is not, it is true, our abiding home; we must, sooner 
 or later, depart hence ; but it is our first place of sojourn, 
 where our characters are largely affected by our surround- 
 ings — a place ordained for us by heavenly wisdom, and 
 from which we should derive all the good we can. He will 
 be best prepared for the next stage who has wisely used 
 this first one — who, to use the words of Francis Bacon, 
 makes 
 
 "The earth his sober inn and quiet pilgrimage." 
 
 To sit down contentedly in the lowest room of earth is 
 to hear at the right time the call, " Come up higher." 
 
 * H. W. Longfellow. 
 
72 THE VISION OF THE INVISIBLE. 
 
 Nor must we fancy that in this passage the Apostle is 
 thinking, when he speaks of the things which are not 
 seen, of the world to come. He is rather thinking of an 
 invisible world which may be ours now, and here. This 
 whole passage is set in the present, not the future tense. 
 But, unfortunately, we constantly change the present tense 
 of Scripture into the future. When we speak of eternal 
 hfe we too often think of it as ours only in the world to- 
 come. But Christ always speaks of it as a present pos-^ 
 session. "This is life eternal, to know Thee, the only 
 true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." "My 
 sheep hear My voice, and they follow Me, and I give unto 
 them eternal life." The " other-worldliness," which has 
 been the bane of so much of our religious life, and which 
 thrusts what should be a present possession into another 
 world, finds no warrant in Scripture. Half the passages 
 which men quote about heaven refer to this present life. 
 How often do we hear heaven described as that " which 
 eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man 
 conceived " ! But those words do not refer to a future 
 state, but to this present one, as is clear from the words 
 which follow, " But God hath revealed them unto us by 
 His Spirit : for the Spirit searcheth all things, even the 
 deep things of God." John Ruskin well says, " I hear 
 men speak continually of going to a ' better world ' rather 
 than of its coming to them : but in that prayer, which 
 they have straight from the lips of the Light of the World,, 
 there is not anything about going to another world ; only 
 of another government coming into this, which will con- 
 stitute it a world indeed : new heaven and a new earth. 
 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is- 
 in heaven." 
 
 And here the Apostle tells us that he looks — that 
 is, looks most eagerly — not on the things which are seen,, 
 
THE VISION OF THE INVISIBLE. 73 
 
 but the things which are not seen. Behind the visible 
 he discerns an invisible and spiritual realm ; behind the 
 temporal he sees the eternal. Heaven, doubtless, will be 
 the abiding home of that which is invisible and eternal, 
 but it already exists here. There are invisible things 
 even in this visible realm of earth ; there are eternal 
 elements even in this temporal sphere. In nature, which 
 is ever changing, where nothing abides in one stay, there 
 is an unseen, an eternal element. Behind its phenomena 
 there is an eternal, a Divine substance, something which, 
 as the word "substance" implies, stands below. Nature is 
 but the vesture of Deity. 
 
 "Yea, the worlds 
 Are but Thy shining footprints upon space.'' 
 
 " For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all 
 things." The man who only sees the visible in nature 
 does not reach to its true glory and meaning. As Samuel 
 Taylor Coleridge says, "There is something in the 
 human mind which makes us know that in all finite 
 quantity there is an infinite, in all measure of time an 
 eternal ; that the latter are the bases, the substance, the 
 true and abiding reality of the former ; and that as we 
 truly are only as far as God is with us, so neither can 
 we truly possess (that is, enjoy) our being, or any other 
 real good, but by living in the sense of His holy presence." 
 Nor is it otherwise with humanity. Behind the visible 
 form there is an unseen and eternal reality. The body 
 is temporal in that it is ever changing, passing from baby- 
 hood to youth, from youth to manhood, from manhood to 
 old age. Its form, and even its matter, are ever under- 
 going change, but behind, there is an unseen something 
 we call spirit, which ever preserves its identity, and which 
 maintains a certain likeness between the form of its earliest 
 and latest days. With the eye we can see only the 
 
74 THE VISION OP THE INVISIBLE. 
 
 visible, the temporal ; with the eye of the spirit we discern 
 that which lies behind — the spiritual, the eternal. At 
 this moment two sights are before me. With my organs 
 of vision I see your forms and faces ; . with the inner eye 
 I see that which is invisible and eternal in you ; for 
 
 " The mind hath features as the body hath." 
 
 The things most vital to humanity are invisible. Who 
 ever saw faith, hope, love ? And yet, as this very Apostle 
 says, these are the elements which abide ; amid the wreck 
 and decay of the body, these may flourish in greatest 
 beauty. We may even recognise these in men and 
 women whom we have never seen in the flesh. Indeed, 
 our life is largely influenced by the thoughts, the feelings, 
 the aspirations, of those who passed away before our 
 entrance to earth. We are now swayed by the things 
 which are unseen, by the thoughts of apostles and 
 prophets, of poets and martyrs, of saints and heroes — 
 above all by the life and death of a Christ whose form 
 can no more be seen on earth, and by the influence of 
 a Spirit " whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth 
 Him not, neither knoweth Him ; but ye know Him ; for 
 He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you." 
 
 And the great difference between men lies here — that 
 some see only the things which are visible, whilst others 
 look on the things which are not seen and eternal. The 
 carnal man only uses his eyes — sees what they can reveal. 
 The spiritual man uses an inward sense which reveals 
 the unseen, so that to him the real world is the unseen, 
 and the unreal the seen. To the carnal man the closed 
 eye means vacancy ; to the spiritual the closed eye throws 
 him back on a larger, a more real realm. The carnal 
 man is " cribbed, cabined, confined " by his senses ; the 
 spiritual man moves in a realm whose horizon is ever 
 
THE VISION OF THE INVISIBLE. 75 
 
 widening. Which is the nobler life, which the more 
 worthy, the more satisfactory, the more blessed ? 
 
 Let us now consider the influence this conception should 
 exert on life. 
 
 All that is visible is temporal. We do not know 
 whether the visible will actually come to an end. This 
 visible universe may continue to exist, but our relations 
 with it must cease. But whether earth cease to exist or 
 not, it is ever undergoing change. "O earth, what changes 
 hast thou seen ! " In so far as we are visible we are 
 temporal. The outward man decays, is laid in the grave, 
 and passes back to the elementary substances from which 
 it sprang, and of which it was built up. To say that 
 a thing is visible is only to say that it is temporal ; at 
 all events, in its relation to us. What an argument 
 is here to lead us to hold with a lighter grasp all that 
 can be touched, or tasted, or handled ; to keep us from 
 setting our affection on things below. Hold them, but 
 hold them lightly. Hold them, but do not let them hold 
 you or draw too strongly your hearts. It is a pitiable 
 sight to see men and women looking on, living for the 
 things which are seen — things which can be theirs only 
 for the brief span of their earthly course. It is still more 
 pitiable when we remember that such a course drags them 
 ■down from their true position and robs them of their true 
 life. " The man who has no refuge in himself, who lives, 
 so to speak, in his front rooms, in the outer whirlwind 
 of things and opinions, is not properly a personaHty at 
 all ; he is not distinct, free, original, a cause, — in a word, 
 some one. He is one of a crowd ; a taxpayer, an elector, an 
 anonymity, but not a man. . . . Such men are reckoned, and 
 weighed merely, as so many bodies ; they have never been 
 individualised by conscience, after the manner of souls. 
 He who floats with the current, who does not guide him- 
 
76 THE VISION OF THE INVISIBLE. 
 
 self according to higher principles, who has no ideal, no 
 convictions, such a man is a mere article of the world's 
 furniture — a thing moved, instead of a living and moving 
 being — an echo, not a voice. The man who has no inner 
 life is the slave of his surroundings, as the barometer is 
 the obedient servant of the air at rest, and the weather- 
 cock the humble servant of the air in motion." * Well 
 might the clear eye of our Master Christ say of one who 
 cried, " Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many 
 years ; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry," " Thou 
 fool ! " Let us be on our guard against that supreme 
 folly. Our lot is cast in a visible world ; our hands are 
 constantly occupied with visible things ; we may easily 
 sink down to a condition in which we shall look only on 
 the things which can be seen, missing the eternal element 
 in them, and so forfeiting the true birthright of our life. 
 
 But, on the other hand, how blessed a thing it is that 
 there is an invisible element which is eternal — that 
 though the outward man decay, and be even destroyed, 
 yet the inward man may be renewed day by day. The 
 eye out of which love shines may be closed in death, but 
 the love lives on. The voice whose tender tones so 
 delight our ears may be hushed, but the affection remains. 
 The form on which we look with so much delight may be no 
 more seen, but the character, which was its real substance, 
 still abides. What a persuasion is here to covet earnestly 
 the best gifts, to live the real life, to set our affection on 
 things above. It is a blessed fact that the best things 
 abide, and are beyond the power of decay or death. 
 They are like gold, which the rust cannot touch or fire 
 destroy. A pang sometimes strikes the heart as it looks 
 on a fair flower, and remembers that its beauty will soon 
 be over; but the beauty of these invisible things never 
 
 * "Journal Intime of Henri Frederic Amiel," p. 114. 
 
THE VISION OF THE INVISIBLE. 77 
 
 fades. A man gathers precious volumes or noble pictures, 
 and a shadow falls across them as he remembers that they 
 can be his only for the brief years of his mortal life ; but 
 no such shadow falls on the spiritual elements which 
 these things may have had some part in quickening in 
 his mind and heart — treasures which, by the varied dis- 
 cipline of life, have slowly accumulated — treasures which 
 are really ours, bound to us by ties which death is power- 
 less to break. And if we would only think of this, how 
 it would incite us to seek first the kingdom which cometh 
 not with observation, the kingdom which is not meat and 
 drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy 
 Ghost. Of that kingdom our citizenship will never fail ; of 
 that treasure we may say, " A treasure in the heavens that 
 faileth not, where no moth corrupteth and no thief stealeth." 
 As John Howe exclaims, " Lord, I have viewed this 
 world over in which Thou hast set me ; I have tried how 
 this and that thing will fit my spirit and the design of 
 my creation, and can find nothing on which to rest; for 
 nothing here doth itself rest, but such things as please me 
 for a while, in some degree vanish and flee as shadows 
 from before me. Lo ! I come to Thee — the Eternal 
 Being — the Spring of life — the Centre of rest — the Stay of 
 the creation, the Fulness of all things. I join myself to 
 Thee ; with Thee I will lead my life, and spend my days, 
 with whom I am to dwell for ever, expecting, when my 
 little time is over, to be taken up ere long into Thy 
 eternity." *' Or, as St. Augustine says, " Join thyself to 
 the eternal God, and thou wilt be eternal." 
 
 * " The Vanity of Man as Mortal." 
 
THE CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 
 
 "And when they came thither to the hill, behold, a company of 
 prophets met him ; and the Spirit of God came upon him, and he pro- 
 phesied among them." — i Sam. x. io. 
 
 THIS is a strange incident in the career of Saul. 
 It is a kind of second consecration. Just before, 
 Samuel had met him, poured the anointing oil on his head, 
 and made him prince over Jehovah's inheritance. . . . But 
 the greater consecration, that of the Divine Spirit, was yet 
 to come. He was to go forward to Gibeah, the Hill of 
 God, hard by the garrison of the Philistines ; and there 
 a band of prophets, with instruments of music, would 
 meet him ; and amid their prophesying — accompanied by 
 music — the Spirit of the Lord would come mightily upon 
 him, and he would be changed into another man. It is 
 passing strange that this higher consecration should be 
 brought about, not by Samuel — the greatest of the then 
 existing prophets, probably the head of the college of 
 prophets — but by lesser men, whose very names have not 
 even been preserved. Why was not this larger consecra- 
 tion brought about by Samuel himself? In most similar 
 services the central, the most vital part is performed by 
 the highest, the most august member of the consecrating 
 body, such as the Pope in the Roman, the Chief 
 Patriarch in the Greek, the Archbishop in the Anglican 
 Church ; but here Samuel, the chief of the prophets, is 
 content to fill the humbler place, and allow the members of 
 
CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAI INFLUENCE. 79. 
 
 the prophetic college, of which he was the head, to dis- 
 charge the higher function in relation to the anointing of 
 the new king. Are there any reasons for this ? The 
 only one that the narrative suggests is that the company 
 of the prophets furnished certain conditions which Samuel, 
 alone, could not supply. For let it be noticed, they do not 
 do anything in relation to Saul. They do not bring down 
 the Spirit of God upon him ; they do not even pray for 
 such descent ; they simply meet Saul, and continue their 
 musical song. They only furnish certain conditions under 
 which the Spirit of God can more easily work. This is 
 all that any mortal can do. No one, not even the holiest, 
 can confer on or communicate the Spirit of God to another 
 soul. Every Anglican bishop professes to do this in 
 the consecration of priests, but it is a mere profession ; 
 there is no reality corresponding thereto. When he says, 
 " Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of the 
 ministry,'' he does not impart the Spirit. He may, with 
 his lips, say receive, but he holds forth an empty hand. 
 At the end of the ceremony the consecrated ones have 
 obtained nothing from the bishop. All that the most 
 enthusiastic believers in Episcopacy can rightly claim is 
 that the solemn service has put the mind of those to be 
 ordained in such a condition that they are more prepared 
 to receive the inspiring Spirit into their hearts. That is 
 all that this band of prophets does for Saul. Their presence, 
 their prophetic voices, their musical song, tend to put the 
 mind of Saul, into such a state that it is more prepared to 
 receive the Spirit of the Lord. They furnish the conditions 
 under which the Spirit of God can find entrance into the 
 heart of the newly consecrated king. But that is a matter 
 of immense importance, especially when we remember 
 that the Spirit of God is waiting to come, and does come, 
 into all hearts which are in a condition to receive His 
 
8o CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 
 
 influence. To open the windows of our house is to let in 
 the light and air. We do not need to entreat these to 
 come in. The open window is a sufficient invitation. 
 And it is thus with the house of the soul. It only needs 
 to be in a receptive condition for the Spirit of God to 
 enter and inspire. 
 
 It is therefore of importance to inquire what are the 
 conditions for such entrance, or rather what are the in- 
 fluences which predispose the soul for the reception of the 
 Divine Spirit. These are many. I can now only speak 
 of those indicated by this particular incident. 
 
 First of all, it is worthy of notice that all this took place on the 
 hill of Gibeah. The anointing by Samuel had taken place 
 in the valley ; this higher inspiration comes to Saul on the 
 hill top. There is something in the influence of mountains 
 which predisposes the soul to high matters. It is difficult 
 to describe or explain, but those who have moved up 
 to such places, unless they be of a very hard type, are 
 conscious of a hallowing influence. Christ evidently felt 
 this, for when He would seek His Father's face in prayer 
 He went to the mountain side or top. The time when 
 He came nearest to His Father, when the heavenly light 
 irradiated His earthly form, was, as we all know, on " a 
 high mountain apart." There He was transfigured. 
 
 In a striking passage on the great events which happened 
 on the mountains of Scripture, John Ruskin says : " If, 
 in their remembrance of those things, and in their en- 
 deavour to follow in the footsteps of their Master, religious 
 men of bygone days, closing themselves in the hill 
 solitudes, forgot sometimes, and sometimes feared, the 
 duties they owed to the active world, we may perhaps 
 pardon them more easily than we ought to pardon our- 
 selves, if we neither seek any influence for good, nor 
 submit to it unsought, in scenes to which thus all the men 
 
CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE 8i 
 
 whose writings we receive as inspired, together with their 
 Lord, retired whenever they had any task or trial laid 
 upon them needing more than usual strength of spirit." 
 
 Nature, and especially her lofty places, has certain func- 
 tions to discharge, not only in relation to our material, but 
 also to our spiritual life. God's world may have, was 
 intended to have, an influence upon us, preparing us to 
 receive His Spirit into our hearts. The dweller in towns, 
 whose eye is ever on the works of man, is cut off from one 
 of the influences by which God would dispose the heart 
 to receive His Spirit. Religion has less chance with the 
 dweller in a crowded alley than with the dweller in the 
 open country. There is more fear of the decay of religion 
 in great cities than in villages, which are open to the 
 sights and sounds of nature. Are we not all conscious 
 of wholly different influences in the midst of the crowded 
 city and the quiet country ? I know not how it may be 
 with you, but to me a more hallowed feeling comes when 
 I am surrounded by the works of nature than when I am 
 surrounded by the works of man. There is a quieter 
 feeling in the country, which seems to give opportunity 
 for the Spirit of God to be heard within the heart. 
 I do not say that His voice may not be heard in the 
 bustle of the great city, but it is heard with more difficulty ; 
 there is more to distract and disturb the mind. I would 
 rank Nature among the means of grace. I would think 
 of her as one of the courts of the great temple of God. 
 Sometimes, to me, she is more really the Holy of holies 
 than the Church, which is often only as an outer court of 
 the Gentiles. Speaking of mountains, John Ruskin says : 
 " But the feeding of the rivers and the purifying of the 
 winds are the least of the services appointed to the hills. 
 To fill the thirst of the human heart for the beauty of 
 God's working — to startle its lethargy into the deep and 
 
 6 
 
82 CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 
 
 pure agitation of astonishment, are their higher missions. 
 They are as great and noble architecture, first giving 
 shelter, comfort, and rest ; and covered also with mighty 
 sculpture and painted legend." * And we miss one of the 
 appointed conditions for the reception of the Divine Spirit 
 when we turn from the quiet country and spend all our 
 time in the noisier city. We do well to turn to nature, 
 not only for physical recreation, not only for her beauty, 
 but for spiritual refreshment and strength. Amid her 
 quiet we may perchance feel more keenly the movings of 
 the Spirit of God within our hearts. 
 
 Secondly, it is worthy of notice that this inspiration came 
 whilst Saul was in the company of the prophets. The 
 Spirit of God reaches and affects our hearts through men 
 as well as through nature. Feeling is contagious. Mind 
 acts upon mind. How, we cannot explain, for the action 
 of mind upon mind is one of the great mysteries of life ; 
 but that it does we all know. Even apart from verbal 
 communication this is the case. There is an atmosphere 
 around every man and woman which communicates itself 
 in subtle ways to others. Just as when a number of 
 people come together they raise the temperature of the 
 place of assembly, so they make a moral and spiritual 
 atmosphere whose effects are more or less on all. Christ 
 promised a special presence of Himself when two or three 
 of His disciples met. Why ? Because coming together, 
 influencing each other, they would produce an atmosphere 
 in which His presence would be more fully felt. And this 
 atmosphere affects not only those by whom it has been 
 generated, but even those of another and even alien temper 
 who may come within its range. St. Paul declares that 
 even the unbeliever or the uninitiated into the Christian 
 mystery who comes into the Christian assembly " will fall 
 
 * "Modern Painters." 
 
CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 83 
 
 down on his face and worship God, declaring that God is 
 among you indeed." This prophetic band affects Saul — 
 draws him into its atmosphere, so that he, too, begins to 
 prophesy. Here is found the principle out of which the 
 Church grows. It is built upon the idea that we affect 
 and move each other, — that a religious gathering wakens a 
 religious atmosphere in which the Spirit of God can more 
 easily work. It is said that, on one occasion, St. Ambrose 
 was asked, in the privacy of his own home, to explain a 
 certain passage of Scripture. He replied, " I cannot now, 
 but you shall have the explanation presently in the church.'' 
 A solitary religion misses one of the great sources of 
 strength, cuts itself off from one great medium of inspira- 
 tion. Man is almost more essential than nature to a high 
 religious life. A curious illustration of this is found in the 
 life of Wordsworth, who has been called the High Priest 
 of Nature. He thought he derived all his inspirations 
 from nature, but he was mistaken. Mr. John Morley, 
 in his admirable introduction to " The Complete Poetical 
 Works of Wordsworth," says that " he had no teachers 
 nor inspirers save nature and solitude," but here Mr. 
 Morley is unmistakeably wrong. Students of his life 
 and poetry have noticed that his greatest works were 
 produced after he had been moving among men — after 
 visits to other and more populated places than those 
 around his Westmoreland home. It needed the quicken- 
 ing influence of men as well as of nature to move him to 
 his greatest work. Not one, but both are necessary. 
 Both have a place in our spiritual education. Do we 
 desire the Spirit of God to work in our hearts ? would we 
 provide the necessary conditions ? then let us mingle with 
 men guided by that Spirit, for through them, in ways we 
 cannot understand, that same Spirit will find entrance into 
 our hearts. Some people fancy that religious education is 
 
84 CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 
 
 chiefly by means of books. It is quite as much, perhaps 
 more, by means of the society of holy men. One who 
 knew Dr. Newman well says that " his need of loneliness 
 was balanced by his need of friendship. ' Heart speaks 
 to heart,'* was his motto." He himself says: ."Given 
 the alternative in a university, of social life without 
 study, or study without social life, I should unhesi- 
 tatingly declare for the former, not the latter.'' How 
 were the Apostles educated — by a book ? No — for the 
 New Testament was not then written — but by the society 
 of Jesus Christ. Through Him the Spirit of God found 
 entrance to their hearts. And the great gift of the Spirit 
 at Pentecost was not to separated believers, but when 
 they were "all with one accord in one place." The 
 company of faithful, like-minded men made the atmosphere 
 in which the Spirit could descend. The lesson lies on 
 the surface. Would we be spiritual men — that is, men in 
 whom the Spirit of God works ? let us seek the company 
 of those moved by that Spirit. In such fellowship we 
 shall be best prepared for the Spirit of God to come into 
 our hearts. 
 
 Then, thirdly, music was a co-operant influence in this 
 matter. This band of prophets which met Saul were 
 musicians, with a psaltery, a timbrel, a pipe, and a harp 
 before them. Their prophesying was set to a musical 
 a:ccompaniment. The prophetic element in those days 
 largely found expression in song, or if it did not quite do 
 that, music was a condition for the prophetic inspiration. 
 You remember that when Elisha would know how to 
 direct Jehoshaphat, he said, " Now bring me a minstrel. 
 And it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the 
 hand of the Lord came upon him." f 
 
 Music has a strange power of disposing the mind to 
 
 * Cor nd cor loqiiiiur. j- 2 Kings iii. 15. 
 
CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 85 
 
 higher things. I sometimes think that it offers a fitter 
 medium for Divine influence even than speech. Men 
 who grow impatient of the preacher's utterance are some- 
 times touched by that of the musician. Handel, I fancy, 
 often preaches to men who will not listen even to the 
 greatest preachers. It was not David the Prophet, but 
 David the Harpist, who drove off the evil spirit from Saul. 
 For somehow music has the strange power of taking us 
 into a higher world than that around us. In a celebrated 
 passage Dr. Newman says, with as much truth as beauty : 
 ■" Yet is it possible that that inexhaustible evolution and 
 disposition of notes, so rich yet so simple, so intricate yet 
 so regulated, so various yet so majestic, should be a mere 
 sound which is gone and perishes ? Can it be that these 
 mysterious stirrings of heart, and keen emotions, and 
 strange yearnings after we know not what, and awful 
 impressions from we know not whence, should be wrought 
 in us by what is unsubstantial, and comes and goes, and 
 begins and ends in itself? It is not so. It cannot be. 
 No ; they have escaped from some higher sphere ; they 
 are the outpourings of eternal harmony in the medium of 
 created sound ; they are echoes from our home ; they are 
 the voices of angels, or the Magnificats of saints, or the 
 living laws of Divine governance, or the Divine attributes ; 
 something are they besides themselves, which we cannot 
 compass, which we cannot utter, though mortal man, and 
 he perhaps not otherwise distinguished above his fellows, 
 has the power of ehciting them." Newman's faith in 
 music was so deep, that when Dr. McNiel challenged 
 him to a public disputation on the points of difference 
 between them, he accepted the challenge on the condition 
 that after his antagonist had said all he wished, he 
 (Newman) would conclude with a tune on the violin. 
 George Herbert's love of music was such that it over- 
 
86 CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 
 
 came his love of solitude, so that he went twice every 
 week on certain appointed days to the cathedral church 
 in Salisbury, and on his return would say that his 
 .time spent in prayer and cathedral music elevated his 
 soul, and was his heaven on earth. And the Sunday 
 before his death, he rose suddenly from his bed, called 
 for one of his instruments, took it into his hand, and 
 said — 
 
 "My God, my God, 
 My music shall find Thee, 
 And every string 
 Shall have his attribute to sing." 
 
 There is nothing to compare with music of the noblest 
 kind for composing or inspiring the soul so that the Spirit 
 of God may work therein. As yet we have not realised 
 this to the full ; we are on the road to doing so, but there 
 is much ground yet to be traversed. We have not as yet 
 elevated music to its true place in our public worship. 
 We place it lower than prayer or discourse. It deserves 
 to rank on an equality with these, in some senses above 
 them. Did we only throw our whole heart into music, 
 did we only yield ourselves to its spell, we should be 
 more prepared to receive fuller and richer inspirations of 
 the Spirit of God into our hearts. Nor should we confine 
 it, as we often do, to the Church or the Sunday. It 
 should have a place in our homes and in the week. Often 
 after a weary day of toil and anxiety we should be quieted 
 by the strains of holy hymn and psalm, and into our 
 spirits thus quieted the Spirit of God would come. 
 
 To sum up. If we desire the Spirit of God to come 
 into and work in our hearts we must put ourselves in a 
 condition for His operations. If we persist in living a life 
 full of excitement, ever intent on the things visible and 
 temporal ; if we turn from the calming influence of nature ; 
 
CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 87 
 
 if we forsake the company of spiritual folk ; if we will 
 not allow music to take us out into the unseen realm, we 
 neglect some of the conditions needful for the entrance 
 of the Spirit of God and for His working in our hearts. 
 Thus we do ourselves an injustice — we rob ourselves of 
 that which is most precious, most vital. For only as " the 
 Spirit beareth witness with our spirits that we are the 
 sons of God " do we live our true life. Let us give that 
 Spirit opportunity for His high and holy work within our 
 hearts. 
 
THE PLACE OF EMOTION IN RELIGION. 
 
 " For with the heart man beheveth unto righteousness.'' — Rom. x. io. 
 
 A LITTLE book * has recently been published which 
 describes the passage of a youth from faith to doubt, 
 and after a weary season spent in the darkness of that 
 dreary region, how he was led on to a faith stronger, nobler, 
 more intelligent than he originally possessed. The story on 
 which the lesson is displayed is of the slightest, nor is the 
 change from doubt to faith described sufficiently in detail, 
 but it is made clear that it was effected on this wise : 
 Doubt was first aroused, and faith at last undermined, 
 by the effort to understand religion simply by the use of 
 the intellect ; and doubt gave place to faith when the hero 
 of the story realised that the intellect was not every- 
 thing, but that there were other faculties which had a just 
 right to influence and guide the soul. As I read this 
 little book, it seems to me a plea, not for silencing the 
 intellect, but for allowing the emotions to co-operate, and 
 have their proper share in guiding the nature. In one 
 place the author says : " Finally, with regard to these 
 much-suspected emotions of human nature, I would ask, is 
 it rational, or is it in analogy with the rest of the teach- 
 ings of science, to assume that man's duty with respect to 
 one part of his being should be to crush it out of existence, 
 to deny its existence ? For this is, indeed, how the 
 emotional nature has been dealt with among us — as a 
 
 * " The Record of a Human Soul," by Horace G. Hutchinson. 
 
THE PLA CE OF EMOTION IN RELIGION. 89 
 
 dangerous thing that must be left dormant, or if, by 
 unhappy chance, awakened, mast be hushed to death 
 again with every horrible narcotic. It seems to me so 
 utterly inconceivable that that can be in accord with its 
 intended functions ! No, no ; there is a use in this emo- 
 tional nature of yours, O man, if you can but realise it ; 
 its use, indeed, is of such value that all the uses of intellect 
 and muscle are as nothing in comparison with it.'' 
 
 It was thus in the case of the poet Wordsworth. " After 
 a long spell of depression, bewilderment, mortification, 
 and sore disappointment, the old faith in new shapes was 
 given back.'' And in this way : — 
 
 "Nature's self, 
 By all varieties of human love 
 Assisted, led me back through opening day, 
 To those sweet counsels between head and heart 
 Whence grew that genuine knowledge, fraught with peace, 
 Which, through the later sinkings of this cause, 
 Hath still upheld me and upholds me now." 
 
 Now, that is a very necessary plea, especially at the 
 present moment. Every creature of God is good. At 
 our peril we reject the influence of any one. To the 
 prejudice of the present time against feeling is due 
 a very large amount of the scepticism which prevails ; 
 whilst, on the other hand, to the equally silly prejudice 
 against the use of the intellect in matters pertaining to 
 religion is due the sentimentality, and even fanaticism, 
 which prevail in many quarters. The one faculty was 
 meant to balance the other. Intellect was intended to 
 steady emotion, emotion to inspire the intellect. A 
 nature governed only by its emotions is at the mercy 
 of every mood of the soul. A nature which responds 
 only to intellect is like a delicately constructed piece of 
 machinery with no steam to start or keep it in action. 
 You may as well try to live with only a brain or only 
 
go THE PL A CE OF EMOTION IN RELIGION. 
 
 a heart, as to live rightly with only the aid of the intel- 
 lect or only that of the emotions. The brain cannot 
 think save as it is supplied with blood by the action 
 of the heart ; the heart cannot guide the course save as 
 the brain directs the impulse received from the heart. 
 The brain cannot say to the heart, " I have no need 
 of thee," nor the heart to the brain, " I have no need 
 of thee." Even the late Matthew Arnold discerned this 
 when he described religion as "morality touched with 
 emotion." And Dr. George Matheson, one of the ablest 
 of modern Scottish divines, in a clever little book just pub- 
 lished, says : " I do not believe, however, that moments of 
 devotion are moments of mental vacancy ; the wings on 
 which the spirit soars must always be wings of thought." 
 "What God hath joined together let no man put asunder." 
 Such divorce in the individual of mind and heart is even 
 worse than divorce between husband and wife. When 
 the mind turns the heart out of doors, religion becomes 
 a mere philosophy, and has no more power than philosophy. 
 When the heart ejects the mind, religion becomes a mere 
 sentiment, and becomes mischievous, as unregulated sen- 
 timent usually is. Rejection of the emotions leads to 
 Agnosticism, for the mind cannot solve all the problems 
 it attempts, and ends by declaring that nothing can be 
 known. Rejection of the intellect leads to the vagaries 
 and manifold follies which have so often brought religion 
 into contempt. In religion mind and heart alike have 
 their separate functions, the one balancing and supple- 
 menting the other. 
 
 My business just now is to show that emotion is vital 
 to religion, and cannot be dispensed with. This will be 
 evident if you will remember, first of all, that religion is 
 a Jaith, not a mere philosophy. The very word " faith " 
 points to feeling as a vital necessity. Belief is not a 
 
THE PLA CE OF EMOTION IN RELIGION. 91 
 
 purely intellectual process. To trust is a function chiefly 
 of the heart. Love, it may be, is still more entirely of 
 the heart, but faith is closely related to love. If it is not 
 a sister, it is at least a first cousin. For, remember, faith 
 is not knowledge. We sometimes say " seeing is believ- 
 ing." It is nothing of the sort. Seeing is knowing. 
 " Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence 
 of things not seen." Faith may rise almost to the certainty 
 of knowledge ; but it is not knowledge, or it would cease 
 to be faith. 
 
 " Who loves not Knowledge ? Who shall rail 
 Against her beauty ? May she mix 
 With men and prosper ! Who shall fix 
 Her pillars ? Let her work prevail. 
 
 " But on her forehead sits a fire : 
 
 She sets her forward countenance, 
 And leaps into the future chance, 
 Submitting all things to desire. 
 
 " Half-grown as yet, a child, and vain. 
 She cannot fight the fear of death. 
 What is, she, cut from love and faith. 
 But some wild Pallas from the brain 
 
 " Of Demons ? fiery hot to burst 
 All barriers in her onward race 
 For power. Let her know her place ; 
 She is the second, not the first. 
 
 " A higher hand must make her mild, 
 If all be not in vain ; and guide 
 Her footsteps ; moving side by side 
 With Wisdom, like the younger child. 
 
 " For she is earthly, of the mind. 
 
 But Wisdom heavenl}', of the soul." * 
 
 If a logical argument, complete in every particular, 
 could be constructed for religion, it would cease to be a 
 
 * " In Memoriam," cxiv. 
 
92 THE PLA CE OF EMOTION IN RELIGION. 
 
 faith, and become a philosophy. If God could be seen with 
 the eye, or heard with the ear, or proved by logic, there 
 would be no need for faith ; knowledge would have usurped 
 its place. Knowledge may be a handmaid to faith, but 
 faith always travels farther than knowledge can follow. 
 Faith is always in advance of knowledge. One of the 
 most keenly critical of modern poets says : — 
 
 " Ah, yet, when all is thought and said, 
 The heart still overrules the head ! 
 Still what we hope we must believe, 
 And what is given to us receive." * 
 
 If faith had to wait till knowledge had opened and made 
 sure the way she would never move a step. The child 
 trusts his parent long before he can give a sensible reason 
 for so doing. The heart prompts to many a course for 
 which the mind cannot give an adequate and clear reason, 
 as the old rhyme suggests : — 
 
 " I do not like thee, Dr. Fell ; 
 The reason why I cannot tell. 
 1 do not like thee. Dr. Fell." 
 
 Regarded logically, this is most unreasonable ; regarded 
 emotionally, it is most reasonable. You say, " I believe 
 in God." The sceptic comes to you and says, " Prove 
 to me that He exists." You stand abashed before him, 
 but that does not prove your position to be an unreason- 
 able one. The sceptic may say, "I beheve in my 
 mother's love." You say, " Show me that love exists ; 
 prove it by logic." He cannot, which shows that his 
 philosophy does not reach so far as he thinks. But 
 though he czxiviot prove, he feels his mother's love. Thus 
 he allows his heart a place in relation to his mother, 
 though he will not allow it a like place in relation to God. 
 
 * A. H. Clough. 
 
THE PLACE OF EMOTION IN RELIGION. 95 
 
 As Tennyson says of the wife whose husband is in intellect 
 far above her : — 
 
 " Her faith is fixt and cannot move : 
 
 She darkly feels him great and wise ; 
 She dwells on him with faithful eyes. 
 ' I cannot understand. I love.' " * 
 
 Religion claims a place, not among philosophies, but 
 among faiths. It calls to a relationship like to that we 
 sustain to our parents, the centre of which is the heart. 
 
 John Ruskin says, in words as wise as they are eloquent; 
 "If we insist upon perfect intelligibility and complete 
 declaration in every moral subject, we shall certainly fall 
 into misery and unbelief. Our whole happiness and 
 power of energetic action depend upon our being able to 
 breathe and live in the cloud ; content to see it opening 
 here and there ; rejoicing to catch, through the thinnest 
 films of it, glimpses of stable and unsubstantial things ; 
 but yet perceiving a nobleness even in the concealment, 
 and rejoicing that the kindly veil is spread where the un- 
 tempered light might have scorched us or the infinite 
 clearness wearied. And I believe that the resentment of 
 this interference of the mist is one of the forms of proud 
 error which are too easily mistaken for virtues. To be 
 content in utter darkness and ignorance is indeed unmanly, 
 and therefore we think that to love light and find knowledge 
 must be always right. Yet whenever pride has any share 
 in the work, even knowledge of light may be ill pursued. 
 Knowledge is good, and light is good ; yet man perished in 
 seeking knowledge, and moths perish in seeking light ; 
 and if we who are crushed before the moth will not accept 
 such mystery as is needful to us, we shall perish in like 
 manner. But accepted in humbleness, it instantly becomes 
 an element of pleasure ; and I think that every rightly 
 
 " In Memoriam," xcvii. 
 
94 THE PLACE OF EMOTION IN RELIGION. 
 
 constituted mind ought to rejoice, not so much in 
 knowing anything clearly, as in feehng that there is infi- 
 nitely more than that, which it cannot know. None but 
 proud or weak men would mourn over this, for we may 
 always know more, if we choose, by working on ; but 
 the pleasure is, I think, to humble people, in knowing 
 that the journey is endless, the treasure inexhaustible; 
 watching the cloud still march before them with its sum- 
 mitless pillar, and being sure that, to the end of time, and 
 to the length of eternity, the mysteries of its infinity will 
 still open farther and farther, their dimness being the 
 sign and necessary adjunct of their inexhaustibleness. I 
 know there are an evil mystery and a deathful dimness, 
 — the mystery of the great Babylon, the dimness of the 
 sealed eye and soul ; but do not let us confuse these with 
 the glorious mystery ' of the things which the ' angels 
 desire to look into,' or with the dimness which, even 
 before the clear eye and open soul, still rest on sealed 
 pages of the eternal volume." * 
 " With the heart man believeth." 
 
 But whilst this is the case, the heart does not fly in the 
 face of the intellect. The intellect may not be able to 
 explain the love you bear to wife, or friend, or parent ; 
 but it does not therefore call the love unreasonable. And 
 the intellect may not be able to explain the faith you 
 repose in God, but it should not therefore call it unreason- 
 able. Emerson says that Wordsworth held that whatever 
 combined a truth with an affection was good to-day and 
 good for ever. If you try to make the intellect supreme 
 in relation to religion, allowing no place for the heart, you 
 will become an Agnostic. You will as surely fall to the 
 ground as a bird who tries to fly without wings, or uses 
 his feet instead of his wings ; but if you will permit your 
 ■" "Modern Painters.'' 
 
THE PLA CE OF EMOTION IN RELIGION. 95 
 
 heart to work, a faith will spring up which will not move 
 in opposition to reason, but will soar far higher than it 
 can follow. 
 
 " If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep, 
 I heard a voice 'Believe no more,' 
 And heard an ever-breaking shore 
 That tumbled in the Godless deep ; 
 
 " A warmth v^^ithin the breast would melt 
 The freezing reason's colder part. 
 And like a man in "wrath, the heart 
 Stood up and answered, ' I have felt.' 
 
 " No, like a child in doubt and fear : 
 
 But this blind clamour made me wise ; 
 Then was I as a child that cries. 
 But, crying, knows his father near ; 
 
 " And what I am beheld again 
 
 What is, and no man understands ; 
 And out of darkness came the hands 
 That reached through nature, moulding men." * 
 
 Christ comes as the object of faith, not of philosophy ; 
 to be adored by the heart, not to be dissected by the 
 intellect ; to be in the unseen what the objects of our 
 deepest affection are in the seen. And no man has a 
 right to pronounce concerning Him until he has approached 
 in the way laid down by Christ Himself. Try to hear 
 music with your eyes, and you will say, ' It is a delusion.' 
 Try to see pictures with your ears, and you will say, 
 ' They do not exist.' Try to reach Christ by your reason, 
 and you will come back saying, ' I cannot find Him.' If 
 ever you are to believe, it must be by the heart, and then 
 righteousness will appear in your life, and confession on 
 your lips. 
 
 As WiUiam Cullen Bryant says : — 
 
 " I would not always reason. The straight path 
 Wearies us with its never-varying lines, 
 
 * "In Memoriam," cxxiv. 
 
96 THE PL A CE OF EMOTION IN RELIGION. 
 
 And we grow melancholy. I would make 
 Reason my guide, but she should sometimes sit 
 Patiently by the wayside, while I traced 
 The mazes of the pleasant wilderness 
 Around me. She should be my counsellor, 
 But not my tyrant. For the spirit needs 
 Impulses from a deeper source than hers, 
 And there are motions in the mind of man 
 That she must look upon with awe." 
 
 True, indeed, is the saying of St. Ambrose : " Not by 
 dialectic did it please God to save His people." * 
 
 This will appear more evident when it is remembered 
 that the object of faith is not a set of principles, but a living 
 Being. And it must be clear to all that the heart is 
 the organ by "which we come to know persons. Their 
 opinions may be reached by the mind ; but we do not 
 know themselves save by what we call the heart. Account 
 for it as we may, men and women are an enigma to us 
 till we view them sympathetically. " To love is virtually 
 to know ; to know is not virtually to love." And religion 
 calls for the employment of the heart because its very 
 centre is a living Person. To think of God as an actual 
 existence is to be either drawn to or repelled from 
 Him. I cannot remember the time when I did not 
 either fear or love God, and both fear and love are 
 emotions of the heart. Wherever men realise that God 
 really lives there must be feeling of some kind in relation 
 to Him. Men cannot leave Him alone. If they do not 
 love, they fear or even hate Him ! And Christ came not 
 to arouse feeling towards God — that already existed — but 
 to turn hatred to love, fear into faith. The heart does 
 and will concern itself with God. He is its natural object. 
 As the author of Festus says : — 
 
 " We must all think 
 On God. Yon water must reflect the sky." 
 
 * " Non in dialectica complacuit deo salvum facere populum suum," 
 
THE PLA CE OF EMOTION IN RELIGION. 97 
 
 When the men of Science talk of their own subject they 
 are generally calm ; but when science touches theology 
 how excited they get ! There is no subject which so 
 arouses the feelings as God. Men may begin to discuss 
 Him in a purely intellectual way, but very soon the heart 
 makes itself felt, and they become excited. Why ? Be- 
 cause He is the natural object, not of the mind, but of the 
 heart. When Christ, who came to represent Him, was 
 here, He was surrounded by an atmosphere of feeling. 
 Neutrality was impossible. Men either hated or loved 
 Him, were either drawn to Him or repelled from Him. If, 
 however, we would rightly reach Him, we must cease from 
 a mere intellectual pursuit ; by searching we shall not find 
 Him ; the heart must lead, and we shall find His word to 
 be true, "The pure in heart shall see God." In one of 
 the prefaces to his poems, Wordsworth says : " Faith was 
 given to man that his affections, detached from the trea- 
 sures of time, might be inclined to settle upon those of 
 eternity — the elevation of his nature which this habit 
 produces on earth being to him a presumptive evidence of 
 a future state of existence, and giving him a title to par- 
 take of its hohness." 
 
 And then, still further, since the end of religion is 
 obedience, the heart is wanted. To know what we ought to 
 do, and to do it, are two very different things. For the 
 first, perhaps, the mind is adequate ; for the second we 
 have need of the heart. " I approve the better, and I take 
 the worse way,'' said one of the ancients. Why ? Be- 
 cause there was no force strong enough to impel him to 
 that better way. That is what we all want — what the 
 philosophers call the dynamic force, to impel, to constrain 
 us to obey what we see we should. Most of us have got 
 knowledge enough of the right way ; what we lack is the 
 impulse to walk therein. The body is like a delicate 
 
 7 
 
98 THE PLA CE OF EMOTION IN RELIGION. 
 
 and subtle piece of machinery worked by the heart, which 
 sends the blood pulsating through every vein and artery. 
 Without the energy quickened by the heart all would be 
 in vain. What the heart is to the body the emotions are 
 to the soul — the impelling force. Faith in a perfect God 
 is the true channel in which they should run. He 
 should be their highest object. Thus the course of life 
 will be rightly directed, and the nature reach out to its 
 truest and best development. 
 
 But, it may be said, the heart is, of all parts of our 
 complex nature, the least under our control. Love, like 
 the wind, comes we know not whence, goes we know not 
 whither ! Faith springs up spontaneously, or not at all. 
 To bid men believe or love is a waste of breath. We can 
 no more command these than we can the winds of heaven. 
 I quite agree with this. I never yet bade a single soul 
 believe or love. I know too well the nature of faith and 
 love to do so. But I have tried again and again so to 
 speak of God as He is revealed in Christ, to represent 
 Him as so just, so true, so holy, so beautiful, so loving, 
 that the vision of Him should naturally waken faith. 
 
 " If for every rebuke that we utter of men's vices, we 
 put forth a claim upon their hearts ; if for every assertion 
 of God's demands from them, we could substitute a display 
 of His kindness to them ; if side by side with every 
 warning of death, we could exhibit proofs and promises 
 of immortality ; if, in fine, instead of assuming the being 
 of an awful Deity, which men, though they cannot and 
 dare not deny, we are always unwilling, sometimes unable 
 to conceive, we were to show them a near, visible, in- 
 evitable, but all-beneficent Deity, whose presence makes 
 the earth itself a heaven, I think there would be fewer 
 deaf children sitting in the market-place."* 
 
 * Ruskin, "Modern Painters.' 
 
THE PLA CE OF EMOTION IN RELIGION. 99 
 
 It would be folly to bid a man admire a glorious sunset, 
 or to reprove him for not doing so. It would be the 
 reverse of folly to take him to some fine post of observa- 
 tion and say, ' Look ! ' If the sight did not waken 
 admiration, no precept would ever do so. And God does 
 not come to us with the command to beheve or love. 
 When He did thus to the Israelites it was a failure. He 
 takes another course. He makes Himself visible in His 
 Son Jesus Christ. Thus He stands before our eyes that 
 we may behold. And when thus we really see Him, faith 
 springs up — it must spring up — in our hearts, as surely 
 as admiration does in the heart of a beholder of a glowing 
 sunset, or the hearer of noble music, or the spectator of 
 some heroic deed. As the author of the " Theologia 
 Germanica " says : " When God is known. He is also 
 loved, and whosoever knoweth God must love Him." 
 What Guinevere said of Arthur, whose face was as an 
 angel's, is true in a far deeper sense of God : — 
 
 " It was my duty to have loved the highest ; 
 It surely was my profit had I known : 
 It would have been my pleasure had I seen ; 
 We needs must love the highest when we see it." 
 
 A child is sinking in a stream ; you see a man at the 
 risk of his life leap in to save the precious life. It needs 
 no command to make your heart glow with gratitude to 
 such a deliverer. It leaps up at the sight. To look at 
 Jesus Christ, to follow His career on earth — a career 
 culminating on a cross where voluntarily He gave up His 
 life, with words of pity and prayer for those who nailed 
 Him thereon — touches the heart so that it is constrained 
 by the love of Christ so as to live, not unto itself, but unto 
 Him who illustrated by act His own words : " Greater 
 love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life 
 for his friends." 
 
THE VARIETY OF CHRIST'S METHOD. 
 
 " For He knew what was in man." — John ii. 25. 
 
 THE first Passover at Jerusalem during our Lord's 
 ministry was marked not only by His cleansing of 
 the Temple, but also by many mighty works. These 
 seem to have aroused much public enthusiasm in His 
 favour, so that many believed on His name. The faith, 
 however, was one wakened by His miracles rather than 
 by Himself^a faith which Christ always rated at a low 
 value, and so He did not commit Himself unto them, 
 "because He knew all men." The verb translated 
 "believe" in the 23rd verse is the same one which 
 is translated " commit " in the 24th verse. So that it 
 might be said. They believed in Christ, but Christ did 
 not believe in them. And the Apostle in the passage 
 before us gives the reason. He probably did not see it 
 at the time. It is more likely that at the time he was 
 surprised and even vexed that Christ did not care for the 
 harvest which His works had produced— that He seemed 
 to throw these people into the ranks of His foes rather 
 than receive them into His own. But in the fuller know- 
 ledge of His Master that came in after days John saw 
 the reason, and knew that it was right. Christ did not 
 trust them, because they were not worthy to be trusted. 
 He saw that their faith grew out of astonishment at His 
 works rather than perception of His character. They 
 fancied that their faith was in Him, but in reality it was 
 
THE VARIETY OF CHRIST'S METHOD. loi 
 
 only in something He had done. If He had trusted in 
 such men, in the time of temptation or opposition they 
 would have fallen away. No ; He knew what was in 
 these men, and therefore did not commit Himself to them. 
 
 In Christ's knowledge of men Hes the clue to the 
 variety which characterised His ministry. Such variety 
 meets us at every turn in the Gospels. Never was there 
 a method less stereotyped than that of Christ. It was 
 not regulated by the class to which men belonged, nor their 
 age, nor surroundings, but absolutely by their individual 
 character and need. 
 
 The Swiss philosopher Amiel pertinently asks the 
 question, " Why do doctors so often make mistakes ? " 
 and answers it thus : " Because they are not sufficiently 
 individual in their diagnoses or their treatment. They 
 class a sick man under some given department of their 
 nosology, whereas every invalid is really a special case, 
 a unique example. How is it possible that so coarse a 
 method of sifting should produce judicious therapeutics ? 
 Every illness is a factor simple or complex, which is 
 multiplied by a second factor, invariably complex — the 
 individual, that is to say, who is suffering from it ; so that 
 the result is a special problem, demanding a special 
 solution, the more so the greater the remoteness of the 
 patient from childhood or from country life." Christ's 
 intimate knowledge of human nature enabled Him to 
 respond, in the realm in which He moved, to every 
 requirement, and therefore He had no ready-made 
 formula, no routine advice, no fixed precept, for all. 
 Every case was treated on its merits. Matthew Arnold 
 says of Goethe : — 
 
 " He took the suffering human race ; 
 
 He read each wound, each weakness clear, 
 And struck his finger on the place, 
 
 And said, ' Thoit ailest here and here. ^ " 
 
102 THE VAJRIETY OF CHRIST'S METHOD. 
 
 And Charles Kingsley ascribed to John Henry Newman 
 the power of " laying his finger-tips " on the sore place, 
 and often healing by the very touch. That may be, in a 
 measure, true of Goethe and Newman. It was true, true 
 to the uttermost, of Christ. And therefore Christ seemed 
 often to contradict Himself. He told one to do what 
 another was bade to leave undone. He laid down as 
 essential to one a condition of which another heard nothing. 
 The Church is so fond of uniformity that she has made 
 obligatory on all what Christ enjoined only on certain 
 natures. She has striven for uniformity where Christ 
 practised variety. The particular precepts of Christ are 
 applicable only to men of nature kindred to those who first 
 received them. You cannot rightly apply Christ's precepts 
 even to every member of the class to which the first hearers 
 of them belonged. To the rich young man Christ said, "Sell 
 whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor ; . . . and come, 
 take up the cross, and follow Me ; " but you have no right to 
 lay that precept on all rich men, or even on all rich young 
 men, but only on those who, like him, are trusting in their 
 riches, and are thereby shut out from the kingdom of God. 
 If a man's heart is not set on his riches he need not 
 give them all away. It is better to use them wisely and 
 generously all through his life, than, at one stroke, to 
 scatter them, for thus they would probably be scattered 
 unwisely, and do as much harm as good. This is clear 
 from the fact that Christ did not lay that same precept 
 on other rich men that came to Him, or at whose tables 
 He sat. Nicodemus was a rich man, but he heard no 
 such precept, but one of an altogether different kind. He 
 was told, "Ye must be born again." And why ? Because 
 he came trusting, not in his riches, but in his knowledge. 
 His first word revealed his position : " Rabbi, we know." 
 Confidence in his knowledge was the door that shut him 
 
I HE VARIETT OF CHRIST'S METHOD. 103 
 
 out from the kingdom of God. And Christ seems to say 
 to him, ' Knowledge will not save you ; only life from 
 above will do that.' And that is the precept which the 
 intellectual who trust in their knowledge need. They 
 must be led to feel that knowledge, while it lies like grain 
 in a granary, yields no harvest ; that not till the heavenly 
 rain and sun are permitted to touch and quicken it can 
 the dormant life be developed. But you must not hurl 
 that text at everybody, in a way to make them feel that 
 there must be some great crisis of the soul, like to that 
 when they were born into the world. Life comes to some 
 in that way, but not to all. In some it grows with their 
 growth, and strengthens with their strength. Some of 
 the best people that ever walked the earth never knew 
 such a crisis. They were born into the kingdom as the 
 day is born — so gently, so gradually, that you could not say 
 when the night ended and the day began. They were 
 born as love is born — a faint glow of pleasure in the 
 presence of another, which grew deeper and deeper, till 
 it became the one overmastering passion of their heart. 
 Multitudes are born into the kingdom so gradually as to 
 be unconscious of any crisis. They are in it ; but they 
 could not tell you how they came there. They were born 
 again by the Spirit, working through the sacred influences 
 of their home, into which they came with a predisposition 
 for the things of Christ, inherited from godly parents, 
 whose best life was in Christ — a predisposition nourished 
 by loving influences and holy ministries. They love 
 Christ, and are serving Him ; and these are the best 
 proofs that they have been born into His kingdom. Christ 
 would not have said to such, " Ye must be born again." 
 He would have recognised them as possessors of this new 
 and better life — as Paul did in the case of Timothy. Do 
 not go to such and tell them of your more special experi- 
 
104 THE VARIETY OF CHRIST'S METHOD. 
 
 ences, and ask them if they have had such. That will 
 only give them needless anxiety. They are like children 
 who have been brought a long journey in the night — it 
 may be asleep — to a new home. They could not tell you 
 the way bj' which they were brought ; but they are well 
 assured that a place is theirs in the new habitation. I 
 used to be dreadfully troubled as to whether I had been 
 the subject of a right kind of experience, whether it came 
 up to the proper standard. I see clearly enough now that 
 Christ never asked men of the way, but of the end. 
 " Lovest thou Me ? " is His question. And any one who 
 can say, " Lord, Thou knowest all things ; Thou knowest 
 that I love Thee," however unconscious as to the way in 
 which the love was quickened, belongs to His flock and 
 has a right to His name. Nay, Christ Himself acknow- 
 ledged the mysteriousness of the process of change when 
 He said, in reply to the question of Nicodemus, " How 
 can these things be?" "The wind bloweth where it 
 listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not 
 tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. So is every 
 one that is born of the Spirit." The wind is known only 
 by its results, and the best proof of birth from above is 
 that the soul is seeking those " things which are above, 
 where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God." 
 
 There is a like variety in Christ's way of cultivating 
 religious life. He recognised the fact that souls, like 
 plants, need diverse treatment. Some need checking, 
 others stimulating. If you would have good hyacinths 
 you must not hurry their growth. The bulbs must be 
 buried away from the light for a season, or the flowers 
 will be lacking in size and richness of colour. Apply the 
 same method to the rose, and your plant will die. Christ 
 saw that a like variety of treatment was necessary in the 
 spiritual realm. One nature needs repression, another 
 
THE VARIETY OF CHRIST'S METHOD. 105 
 
 needs stimulation ; one must he made to tarry, another to 
 haste. One man asks to he permitted to say farewell to 
 those at home hefore he sets out to follow Christ. Christ 
 sees that to say farewell will stir all his home affections, 
 so as to overcome the newly awakened love for the king- 
 dom of God ; and stern, therefore, is His word : " No man, 
 having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit 
 for the kingdom of God." Another man, one of enthusi- 
 astic and unreflecting nature, exclaims, "Lord, I will follow 
 Thee whithersoever Thou goest." Christ sees that he 
 has not counted the cost, that in the stress of trial his 
 heart will fail, and therefore exclaims, so as to set all the 
 difficulties before him, " The foxes have holes, and the 
 birds of the air have nests ; but the Son of man hath not 
 where to lay His head." Whilst yet another of this triple 
 company says, " Suffer me first to go and bury my father.'' 
 Christ sees that his widowed mother, the desolated house, 
 the dependent children will make an appeal greater than 
 he can bear, and with seeming hardness,- but with real 
 tenderness. He cries, " Let the dead bury their dead: but go 
 thou and preach the kingdom of God." To some, Christ 
 enjoins silence ; to others, speech. Some, Christ calls to 
 discipleship ; others. He allows to attach themselves to His 
 company. This lesson of variety springing out of the 
 differing temperaments of men has not yet been fully 
 learnt by the Church. She has too often striven after 
 uniformity; meeting all men with one precept, and demand- 
 ing from all one experience. Thus she has been forgetful 
 of the example of her Master. Thus she has failed to 
 discern the almost infinite variety of human character. 
 Our common proverb says, " One man's meat is another 
 man's poison." That has application to the spirit as well 
 as to the body. But the Church has often forgotten this, 
 and whilst studying the remedy, has overlooked the natures 
 
io6 THE VARIETY OF CHRIST'S METHOD. 
 
 of men, and so has fancied that one medicine suited all. 
 There are medicines that bring new life to some, and 
 almost quench the life of others. Quinine is a veritable 
 elixir to some ; it is almost poison to others. Christ is the 
 great Physician for all souls, but we must seek at His 
 hands the special remedy we each need. And we may 
 find this if we will take the trouble to discover how He 
 treated the natures most like to our own. Is your heart 
 set on your possessions ? His word to the rich young 
 ruler is for you. Are you intellectual, fancying that your 
 knowledge will save you, a Gnostic of these modern days ? 
 Then His discourse to Nicodemus is for you. Are you 
 timid and doubting ? Then His treatment of Thomas 
 should be your study. Are you voluble, greater in speech 
 than action ? Then the precept sternly bidding to silence 
 is for you. Each one of us may find his prototype in 
 these Gospels, for every type of character is here, and 
 when we have found it, there is Christ's treatment for us. 
 
 There are instances, however, in which the nature 
 cannot discover for itself the special treatment it needs. 
 This presupposes a discernment which all do not possess. 
 In some cases the spiritual teacher must do for the soul 
 what it cannot do for itself — apply Christ's method. This 
 demands not only a knowledge of Christ and His ways, 
 but also a knowledge of the natures to be treated. The 
 teacher, whether of adults in the congregation, or of 
 children in the home or school, should know what is in 
 man. But you say that is impossible to us in the way 
 that it was possible to Christ. In connection with Christ's 
 knowledge. Bishop Westcott, perhaps the foremost New 
 Testament student of our time, points out a very striking 
 and remarkable distinction — that where St. John speaks of 
 Christ's knowledge of His Father he uses a word which 
 implies intuition, conviction (elhevaC) ; but where he speaks 
 
THE VARIETY OF CHRIST'S METHOD. 107 
 
 of His knowledge of men he uses a word with an en- 
 tirely different signification, implying movement, progress 
 (^wtixTKUv). Now, that is very significant — that Christ's 
 knowledge of the Father should be regarded as an intuition, 
 and His knowledge of men as growing clearer and clearer. 
 This is in harmony with the ideas of the whole Gospel — 
 that Christ, coming from the bosom of the Father, knew 
 Him perfectly from the first ; but that, as Son of man. 
 He grew, not only in stature, but in wisdom. How did 
 Christ grow to this deep knowledge of men ? Surely as 
 we may do — by sympathy. Perfect sympathy with men 
 opens the door to their inmost being ; there is no other 
 key that will turn the many-warded lock of the door to the 
 human heart. Charles Kingsley says : " To understand 
 any man, we must have sympathy for him, even affection. 
 No intellectual acuteness, no amount even of pity for his 
 errors, will enable us to see the man from within, and put 
 our own soul in the place of his soul. To do that one 
 must have passed more or less through his temptations, 
 doubts, hunger of heart and brain." Or, as Emerson puts 
 it : "You must, for wisdom, for sanity, have some access 
 to the mind and heart of the common humanity. The 
 exclusive excludes." Christ's sympathy with men was 
 perfect, and therefore He knew what was in man. So 
 perfect was that sympathy that His disciples, as they 
 saw Him healing men, remembered the words of the 
 prophet, and applied them to Him : " Himself bare our 
 infirmities and carried our sicknesses." He put Himself 
 in the place of men. Their infirmities He seemed to bear ; 
 their sicknesses He seemed to carry. He looked at men, 
 not from without, but from within. He looked them 
 through and through. And hence it was that every 
 applicant received at His hands distinct and separate 
 treatment. He never repeated His prescriptions. Every 
 
io8 THE VARIETY OF CHRIST'S METHOD. 
 
 nature being different, the prescription in each case was 
 also different. In His presence the timid were encouraged, 
 the bold repressed, the sanguine made to pause, the 
 hesitating forced to decision; men who trusted in their 
 riches were bidden to put away their false confidence ; 
 those who used them wisely were suffered to retain them ; 
 those lightly esteemed of men were highly esteemed of 
 Him. All this grew out of the fact that He knew what 
 was in man. This is the knowledge that we need both in 
 relation to ourselves and others. In relation to ourselves, 
 that we may gain from Christ the very precepts adapted 
 to our nature ; in relation to others, that we may rightly 
 apply Christ's words to them. But we go blundering or, 
 fancying that knowledge of the Gospels alone is enough ; 
 which is pretty much as if the doctor should be content 
 with knowledge of medicines, without a like knowledge of 
 the body which they are intended to heal. If we are to 
 do anything for Christ and for men that is of any value, 
 we must know what is in those we desire to help or teach. 
 We must reach what Keats exquisitely calls " the inward 
 fragrance of each other's heart." And there is only one 
 way to such knowledge, and that is love — love which 
 makes us suffer with, or, as we say, sympathise. That 
 will open doors, let them be ever so closely barred. That 
 will give entrance at last to natures, be they ever so 
 reticent or self-contained. That is the " open sesame " 
 of the soul. And then we shall judge a righteous judgment 
 concerning men. We shall not expect like results from 
 wholly differing natures. We shall not condemn the 
 keenly intellectual if their faith is not so ardent as that of 
 the more emotional. We shall be tolerant of warmth 
 from the vigorous and decisive. We shall be patient with 
 those whose natures are so sluggish that they cannot 
 reach out to new ideas. We shall not hastily condemn 
 
THE VARIETY OF CHRIST'S METHOD. 109 
 
 the critical if they cannot accept all that we believe. We 
 shall forgive ignorance if there be warmth of heart. And 
 our effort will be to lead the intellectual to the warmer 
 atmosphere of love, the hot-tempered to calmness, the 
 slow of mind to larger thought, the critical to the place of 
 faith. Well does Schiller say : — 
 
 " If thou hast something, bring thy goods ; 
 A fair return be thine ! 
 If thou art something, bring thy soul, 
 And interchange with mine." 
 
 We shall, to use the Apostle's word, strive to be " work- 
 men needing not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word 
 of truth," giving to the babes their milk, and to the 
 strong men their meat. If we would be servants of Christ 
 we must know those we seek to serve, and then, like Him, 
 knowing what is in men, we shall give them their portion 
 of meat in due season. 
 
THE QUIETNESS OF THE DIVINE METHOD. 
 
 " And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent 
 the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord ; but the 
 Lord was not in the wind : and after the wind an earthquake ; but the 
 Lord was not in the earthquake : and after the earthquake a fire ; but 
 the Lord was not in the fire : and after the fire a still small voice." — 
 I Kings xix. 11-13. 
 
 THIS is, perhaps, the most forcible example of moral 
 and spiritual teaching in a dramatic form in the 
 whole range of Holy Scripture. And when regarded in 
 the light of the mental condition of the prophet to whom it 
 was granted, its force is still more evident. Elijah — the 
 prophet of fire — a man of highly strung emotional nature, 
 a man who sometimes rose very high, but, like all such 
 men, sometimes sank very low, had been marvellously 
 elated by the great scene on Carmel. He imagined that 
 the idolatry of Baal had been completely overthrown by 
 that one decisive stroke, and that now Jehovah would 
 reign supreme in the hearts of the people. His spirits 
 had therefore risen high as the great mountain on which 
 the memorable decision had been effected. But the ex- 
 citement wore away, and he saw, as so many besides him 
 have, that no great spiritual reformation is wrought by 
 one stroke, however decisive. He saw that the people 
 still lusted after Baal, that the powers of the nation were 
 still upon the side of idolatry, so that he seemed alone and 
 solitary — the prophet of the Lord. Thus he sank from the 
 clear and bracing air of the mountain to the enervating 
 
THE QUIETNESS OF THE DIVINE METHOD, in 
 
 atmosphere of the valley below. The reaction which 
 follows excitement came, and the prophet who, in solitary 
 grandeur, could stand confident and fearless in the presence 
 of the thousand priests of Baal, before the fierce oath of 
 a vindictive woman fled to the desert, where his only wish 
 was to die, because he was not better than his fathers. 
 With nerves unstrung by excitement, with the reaction 
 therefrom wakening despondency in his heart, with a sense 
 of loneliness which made life seem a burden, and death a 
 happy door of release therefrom, he plunges still further 
 into the desert, and comes even to Horeb, the Mount of 
 God. There the inward conflict of his spirit is imaged in the 
 play of the great forces of nature. There the earthquake, 
 the wind, the fire do before him their strange and awful 
 work. He fancies that in them, as in the mighty drama 
 of Carmel, God is surely at work. He stands awed in 
 spirit and bowed in body at the overwhelming scene. 
 But, somehow or other (we are not told how), the convic- 
 tion is awakened in him that in these, in the highest sense, 
 God is not found. And as this conviction springs up in his 
 heart, there succeeds to the vivid strokes of the lightning, 
 the rushing of the wind, the trembling of the earth under 
 his feet a deep quiet, a silence which could be felt, un- 
 broken by rush of wind, or note of bird, or low of cattle, 
 a silence so profound that it seems to speak, and which 
 he can only describe as " a still small voice." But we 
 are not told God was not in the silence. Nay, the 
 prophet felt that He was in it. Amidst the awful stillness 
 the Divine message reaches him, pointing him away from 
 the desert to the busy haunts of men, and assigning him 
 therein his place and work. 
 
 There are two lessons, amongst many others, suggested 
 by this scene, which are specially worthy of our notice. 
 The first is that the divinest work is not accomplished by 
 
112 THE QUIETNESS OF THE DIVINE METHOD. 
 
 the agencies that seem the mightiest. The prophet's first 
 thought seems to have been that the fire, the wind, the 
 earthquake were special tokens of a Divine presence. 
 The natural man is always disposed to take such a view. 
 Many a one who, amid the summer's calm and beauty, 
 never thinks of or turns his face to God will both think 
 of and turn to Him when the thunder-cloud is in the sky 
 and the hghtning runs its fiery course in the air. As the 
 vessel sails calmly over placid waters many a traveller 
 lives as if God had no existence ; but when storm 
 succeeds to calm, and the vessel is now mountain high on 
 the wave, and now deep in the watery hollow, he will go 
 on his knees as if God had suddenly sprung into existence. 
 And a like spirit is observable in the spiritual realm of 
 which the visible is but an illustration. Elijah fancied 
 that God was at work in Carrriel as the fire fell to devour 
 the sacrifice on the altar he had reared. Then he fancied 
 that His work was going forward in Israel, but that 
 when the exciting and striking scene was over God had 
 forsaken the land. And there are those who think that 
 God is working only when there is a great crisis in the 
 Church, when there are scenes like those of Carmel. They 
 discern His presence only where there is excitement, 
 noise, sudden and striking results. When in the spiritual 
 realm there are tokens like to those of the fire and wind 
 and earthquake of Horeb, they fancy that God is near, but 
 in the quiet which succeeds He seems to have departed. 
 Such times of excitement do little for the Church, just as 
 Carmel did little to foster real religion in Israel. I will 
 not say that they do nothing. They do — they have their 
 function just as the tempest, the lightning, the earthquake 
 have in nature ; but where would be the fruitfulness and 
 beauty of the earth if these were the only forces at work ? 
 These do but clear the air, so that rain and dew and sun- 
 
THE QUIETNESS OF THE DIVINE METHOD. 113 
 
 shine may more freely play on grass and flower and tree. 
 The real work is done by these quieter forces — forces 
 which do not strive nor cry, nor cause their voice to be 
 heard — forces which work, not at distant intervals, as the 
 more striking ones, but day by day and hour by hour. 
 To use the words of John Ruskin : " And yet it is not 
 in the broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental 
 energies, not in the clash of the hail, nor the drift of the 
 whirlwind, that the highest characters of the sublime are 
 developed. God is not in the earthquake, nor in the fire, 
 but in the still, small voice. They are but the blunt and 
 the low faculties of our nature, which can only be addressed 
 through lampblack and lightning. It is in quiet and 
 subdued passages of unobtrusive majesty, the deep, and 
 the calm, and the perpetual ; that which must be sought 
 ere it is seen, and loved ere it is understood : things 
 which the angels work out for us daily, and yet vary 
 eternally ; which are never wanting, and never repeated ; 
 which are to be found always, yet each found but once ;— 
 it is through these that the lesson of devotion is chiefly 
 taught, and the blessing of beauty given." And it is thus 
 in the higher spiritual realm. There the air may be 
 cleared by times of excitement, but if, when it is thus 
 cleared, the Spirit of God, hke the dew and rain and 
 sunshine, be not allowed to nourish and develope the life 
 of the soul, there will be no growth that is either worthy 
 or fruitful. Spiritual results are not wrought to any per- 
 fection in a moment, however decisive. Like all great 
 results, they are produced little by little. The statue is 
 wrought not by one blow of the chisel, however well 
 directed, but by blow after blow— the blows getting gentler 
 and more carefully directed as the statue nears completion. 
 The idea of a picture may be a sudden inspiration — in a 
 moment it may dawn on the imagination of the artist 
 
114 THE QUIETNESS OF THE DIVINE METHOD. 
 
 — as, indeed, may also the statue — but only by touch after 
 touch can the bright imagining of the painter be trans- 
 ferred' to the canvas. And in a moment the soul may 
 discern its true ideal — may clearly see it in the light of 
 Christ; but years of quiet, persistent endeavour will lie 
 between the discernment and the realisation of such ideal. 
 And for such realisation there must be constant and quiet 
 pursuit — a pursuit not limited by times of religious worship 
 and instruction, but extending to the whole life, and in- 
 cluding the hourly resistance of inclination, the oft-repeated 
 fight against temptation, the continued seeking of patience, 
 gentleness, grace, by which the life may be adorned with 
 beauty. Elijah fancied that one great stroke on Carmel 
 would convert and regenerate the nation. If, like him, we 
 fancy that one great act of consecration will regenerate 
 our natures, like him we shall find ourselves utterly 
 mistaken. Neither national nor individual regeneration 
 is thus effected. There is no royal or sudden road thereto. 
 Little by little the road must be travelled. Sudden growth 
 in grace, as in nature, is too often unhealthy, because ill- 
 matured. Genius has been described as an infinite capacity 
 for taking pains. That may well stand for a description 
 of holiness. It is the patient continuance in well-doing 
 which results in beauty of character, and ensures honour 
 and immortality. It is this from which we too often 
 shrink. We would rather have a speedier method. And 
 to such inclination popular religion too often panders, and 
 hence its results are so poor, so unreal, so unable to bear 
 anything like close scrutiny. Some one once remonstrated 
 with a painter for the pains he took with his pictures. 
 He replied, " Sir, I paint for eternity." We are character- 
 building for eternity. Let us not grudge any pains in the 
 fashioning of a habitation of God through the Spirit. 
 And the second thought is that God is most really 
 
THE qUIETNESS OF THE DIVINE METHOD. 115 
 
 in the gentler influences that are ever moving around 
 us and within us. It is difficult to realise that He is — 
 difficult, as Elijah found it, to realise that in the hush 
 which followed the fire, the earthquake, the wind, God 
 really was. But if there be any meaning in this story, 
 it is that the silence was more really Divine than the 
 noise, the flash, the trembling which went before. 
 And one of the hardest lessons we have to learn is that 
 God is in the quiet, the gentle influences which are ever 
 around us, working upon us as the atmosphere does, with- 
 out any visible or audible token of its presence. The 
 great and strong wind arrests our attention ; but who 
 thinks of the atmosphere in which we live as our element ? 
 But the wind is only the atmosphere in motion ; when at 
 rest it is just as necessary to our life, just as Divine a gift. 
 But who stands in awe before the atmosphere on which 
 our hfe depends ? And the reason is that it is always 
 around us like a silent sea. If it were usually agitated, 
 sweeping across us as a mighty wind, it would be its times 
 of stillness which would astonish us. The fact is, it is 
 only the rare and exceptional which impresses. The 
 Swiss peasant discerns no glory in the snow-clad peaks 
 which lift their heads above his chalet in the valley — peaks 
 which awe us to reverence and worship ; and why ? Be- 
 cause they are always within the range of his vision. It is 
 a weakness of us mortals that the glory dies out of that 
 which we always possess, or which is always around us. If 
 we were quite in our right mind, instead of growing less 
 astonished at the objects ever before us, we should grow 
 more so, because we should see more deeply into, and 
 understand them more perfectly. It is so with really 
 great natures. Wordsworth spent nearly all his life amid 
 the hills and dales of Westmoreland, but instead of growing 
 less wonderful, they grew more wonderful to his seerlike 
 
ii6 THE QUIETNESS OF THE DIVINE METHOD. 
 
 eyes, so that the meanest flower that blows often wakened 
 in him feehngs too deep for tears. This should be the 
 rule, and not the exception. It should certainly be so in 
 the higher spiritual realm. The Divine influences which 
 are ever working within us should not lose their Divine- 
 ness to us because of the constancy of their operation. 
 The Spirit of God, which is ever alluring us to the good, 
 ever seeking to hold us back from the evil, should not 
 seem less Divine because always prosecuting His holy 
 mission in our souls. Because His mode of operation is 
 akin to that of the atmosphere rather than to that of the 
 tempest, we should not despise it. It would be folly to 
 say, Take away the atmosphere, and give us in its place 
 the rushing, mighty wind. Thus the gentle growth and 
 beauty of both man and nature would be impossible. In 
 reality, and judged by its results, the atmosphere is 
 mightier than the wind. And the tender, gracious influ- 
 ence of the Spirit of God, if we will only allow it to work, 
 will bring forth in us fairer fruit than the tornado. It 
 seems to me that God is more really in the gentle than the 
 apparently mighty; in the still, small voice than the 
 tempest. And we must seek to discern this. It is, per- 
 haps, because we fail to do so that He comes sometimes 
 in the tempest. We do not find Him in health, and so 
 He comes in sickness. We do not find Him in prosperity, 
 and so He comes in adversity. We do not find Him in 
 the stillness, and so He is compelled to come in the storm. 
 But He would rather, I believe, take the gentler way, 
 just as the parent would rather come to his child in 
 tenderness than force. But He must come; and if the door 
 does not open at the soft play of the summer air, it must 
 be opened by the rude blast of the tempest. God will 
 sometimes almost force Himself upon us from His very 
 concern for our good, will arm Himself with terror when 
 
THE QUIETNESS OF THE DIVINE METHOD. 117 
 
 He would rather be clothed in the soft robe of gentleness. 
 But how much more blessed for the door to be opened to 
 admit the sunshine than to be forced open by the crash of 
 the storm. Christ's chosen way is described in the 
 prophet's words : " He shall not strive nor cry, nor cause 
 His voice to be heard in the streets ; a bruised reed shall 
 He not break, and smoking flax shall He not quench ; " 
 but His concern for men was so deep that, when they 
 would not hear His gentle voice, out of very love He 
 cried, "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!" 
 
 " But all God's angels come to us disguised : 
 Sorrow and sickness, poverty and death, 
 One after another lift their frowning masks, 
 And we behold the seraph's face beneath, 
 All radiant with the glory and the calm 
 Of having looked upon the face of God." * 
 
 Let us not by our folly force Him to such sterner ways. 
 Let us rather cry : — 
 
 " Come not in flashing storm. 
 
 Or bursting frown of thunder ; 
 Come in the viewless form 
 
 Of wakening love and wonder ; — 
 Of duty grown Divine, 
 
 The restless spirit still ; 
 
 Of sorrows taught to shine 
 
 As shadows of Thy will. 
 
 " O God ! the pure alone — 
 
 E'en in their deep confessing^ 
 Can see Thee as their own. 
 And find the perfect blessing; 
 Yet to each waiting soul 
 
 Speak in Thy still, small voice, 
 Till broken love's made whole. 
 And saddened hearts rejoice." f 
 
 "■ J. R. Lowell. f James Martineau. 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD. 
 The Relation of the Members to its Head. 
 
 "The household of God." — Ephes. ii. 19. 
 
 ST. PAUL'S conceptions of Christianity are due to twa 
 influences, the first being what he calls, speaking of 
 the very essence of his conversion, " the revelation of the 
 Son of God in me ; " this was the inner spiritual influence ; 
 the second being the story of Christ's career, which at 
 this time had not been reduced to the form in which we 
 now possess it in the four Gospels, but was preserved in 
 the retentive Oriental memories, and told as a story, in the 
 gatherings of that age. These were the two influences 
 which went to determine the Christian thought of the 
 Apostle. Of course, his own keen spiritual mind enabled 
 him to seize on the elements in the story which were most 
 vital and essential, and led him to distinguish between its 
 letter and its spirit ; but those we have mentioned were 
 the materials upon which his mind wrought, and from 
 which there grew that conception of the Christian faith 
 which finds such wonderful expression in his memorable 
 letters to the Churches of that age. 
 
 The phrase now before us, " the household of God," is 
 but a reflection of the ever-recurring reference, in the 
 teaching of Christ, to God as the Father, both of Himself 
 and of men. The idea of a household grows out of Christ's 
 idea of God as Father, just as the idea in the word citizen 
 in the previous part of the verse grows out of Christ's 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD. 119 
 
 conception of the Kingdom of God. Christ's declaration 
 of the Fatherhood of God gives birth to Paul's idea of the 
 household of God, just as His words concerning a Kingdom 
 of God gave birth to the idea of men as citizens therein. 
 It is to this idea of the Christian society as a household 
 we now give our attention. In another place, regarding 
 it, hot in the light of its Head, but of the spirit which 
 binds it to that Head, he calls it " the household of faith." 
 Now, what are the essentials of a household ? A house- 
 hold is a society marked by diversity in unity. It is like 
 light, which is composed of the many colours of the 
 spectrum, each colour having a character of its own, but 
 when combined with the others forming the pure white 
 light by which we see and work. So a household is a 
 combination — a unity of different characters under one 
 head. It is not a uniformity in which all are alike, but a 
 unity composed of diversity. A household made up of 
 members all precisely alike would be dull and uninterest- 
 ing, each one being only a reflection of the rest. They 
 would tire of each other's society ; but a diversity of mind 
 and character, bound together by a common loyalty to the 
 head of the household, gives us the variety together with 
 the unity for which we naturally crave. And this is the 
 true conception of the Christian society we call the Church. 
 Without the diversity it would be as uninteresting as the 
 grains of wheat in the garner — which are all alike ; 
 without the unity it would not be a society at all. Both 
 ideas must be kept clearly before the mind if we are to 
 reach a true conception of the household of God. Let us 
 see what each involves. 
 
 I. Of the Diversity. 
 
 (i) In a household identity of thought is not essential. 
 Each member of it may have ideas of his own. Such 
 
120 THE HOUSEHOLD OP GOD. 
 
 diversity grows naturally out of the variety of character 
 and mind in its members. One may be critical and com- 
 pelled to prove all things ; another may be trustful and 
 even credulous, and so ready to take things for granted. 
 One may be disposed to judge by appearances, another to 
 get beneath appearances to underlying principles. One 
 may be artistic or poetic, another practical and matter of 
 fact. To insist that all should have the same views on 
 all subjects — on politics, on art, on religion — would either 
 rend the household asunder or force the various members 
 into silence. One result would be as bad as the other. 
 No wise parent would take such a course. The Church is 
 a spiritual family, and should be regulated by like principles. 
 The desire for uniformity of belief in the Church is based 
 on utter forgetfulness of the diversities that exist in mind 
 and character. These render such uniformity impossible. 
 Identity of belief cannot be reached. It never has been 
 reached even in Churches constructed on the uniformity 
 principle. The divergencies of real belief are great even 
 in the Church of Rome. There are as many schools of 
 thought in the Established Church of England, or in the 
 Presbyterian Churches of Scotland, which have very 
 definite and clearly articulated creeds, as in the Churches 
 which demand no subscription to either confessions, or 
 creeds, or articles. Indeed, the very men who set their 
 signatures to creeds interpret them in very different ways. 
 They all look at the same things, but with different eyes, 
 and from different points of observation. The same words 
 mean different things to different men. Until all minds 
 are constituted alike, and I hope that time will never 
 come, there will never be identity of thought. Men read 
 the same book, and get different impressions from it. 
 They look at the same landscape, and carry away different 
 recollections of it. They associate with the same person. 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD. 121 
 
 and regard him in diflferent lights. Even inspired men 
 have not identical thoughts of the same subject. The 
 Apostles all looked on the same Christ, but were impressed 
 with points in His life that were quite distinct from one 
 another. If the thoughts of John and Paul, of Peter and 
 James concerning Christ could be represented by four 
 distinct pictures, they would be found to be alike and yet 
 unlike. We should see that it was the same Christ they 
 saw, but regarded from various stand-points. Their writ- 
 ings are characterised by variety in unity. If identity of 
 view be regarded as essential to a household of faith, then 
 there must be many households instead of one, for, on that 
 principle, not even the Apostles could be gathered into 
 the same one. And in our day, men equally good, equally 
 devout, equally truth-loving regard Christ in different, 
 lights. Shall we say that until they all see alike there 
 can be no household of God ? You may as well say that 
 there can be no human household unless there be identity 
 of thought in all the members. On that principle house- 
 holds would cease to be, and every household would 
 consist of one member. Novalis once wrote to his friend 
 Just : " I gladly admit that I believe I regard and 
 judge of religion very differently from the way in which 
 you do, and that I have entered upon a path which 
 must appear to you exceedingly strange. Nevertheless 
 we are friends, and will be friends ; and in this feeling 
 our religions, or rather our theologies, find a meeting- 
 place. The religion which is your friend has revealed 
 herself to you through her understanding, as a warm- 
 hearted understanding is the main feature in your cha- 
 racter. She has approached me through a warm-hearted 
 phantasy, for this, perhaps, is the most prominent feature 
 in my peculiar nature. Should not, then, our manifold 
 diversities and the ultimate principle of our whole human 
 
122 THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD. 
 
 constitution be exhibited in this most important relation 
 of all ? " * 
 
 Christ spoke of many yb/iafe, but one flock; many different 
 views of truth, but one great unity of spirit. Emphatically 
 did He declare to disciples who forbade one who followed 
 not with them, " Forbid him not ; for he that is not 
 against us is on our side." The household of God will 
 never be constructed on the narrow basis of doctrinal 
 uniformity, but on loyalty and love to Him who is its 
 ever-living Head. 
 
 A Highland peasant-woman once applied to her minister 
 for admission to the Church. The minister examined her 
 in the doctrines of his Church — an examination she utterly 
 failed to pass. He said, " I am sorry that I cannot 
 receive you." Deeply moved, she turned away, saying, 
 " I may not be able to answer his questions, but I think 
 I could die for Jesus Christ." This was too much even 
 for his Presbyterian strictness. He called her back, and 
 promised her the membership she desired. Any one 
 who can truly say, " Lord, Thou knowest all things ; 
 Thou knowest that I love Thee," belongs to the household 
 of God, though all the children should close the door 
 against him. 
 
 It is only another side of the same truth to say, (2) In 
 a household identity of experience is not essential. There is 
 as great a variety of inward life as of mental thought in 
 the members of a family. The differences of feeling are 
 as great as those of intellect. One member of the family 
 may be demonstrative, another reserved ; one may be 
 impulsive, another calculating ; one may be full of senti- 
 ment, another practical. Though all have sprung from 
 the same parentage, yet they are as diverse in feeling as 
 
 * " Hymns and Thoughts on Religion," by Novalis, with a Biographical 
 Sketch, translated and edited by W. Hastie, B.D. 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD. 123 
 
 the form of their faces, or the colour of their eyes, or the 
 height of their bodies. Each one is a self-contained and 
 separate unity. Each heart knows its own bitterness, 
 and no stranger — no, nor even a brother or sister — may 
 intermeddle with its joy." Dwelling together as they do, 
 they yet touch each other only on the surface. In each 
 there are abysmal depths of feeling and experience which 
 not even the dearest may sound. Every thoughtful parent 
 sometimes looks at his children and wonders what is 
 moving in each of their hearts — those hearts which, though 
 revealed by look and word, are yet more largely concealed. 
 As an American poet expresses it : — 
 
 "Thought is deeper than all speech, 
 Feeling deeper than all thought ; 
 Souls to souls can never teach 
 
 What unto themselves was taught. 
 "We are spirits clad in veils ; 
 Man by man was never seen ; 
 All our deep communing fails 
 To remove the shadowy screen. 
 "Heart to heart was never known ; 
 Mind with mind did never meet ; 
 We are columns left alone, 
 Of a temple once complete. 
 "Like the stars that gem the sky. 
 Far apart, though seeming near ; 
 In our light we scattered lie ; 
 All is thus but starlight here. 
 
 " What is social company 
 
 But a babbling summer dream ? 
 What our wise philosophy 
 
 But the glancing of a dream ? " * 
 
 Mr. Keble points to the same fact when he says — 
 
 "Not even the tenderest heart, and next our own. 
 Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh. 
 Each in his hidden sphere of joy or woe. 
 Our hermit spirits dwell and range apart." 
 
 * Christopher P. Cranch. 
 
124 THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD. 
 
 And that mysterious thing we call personality involves 
 the idea that each must have an experience of its own^ — 
 distinct, separate from that of all others. The trustful, 
 confiding nature will travel by an easy way to the Cross, 
 but the inquiring, critical nature will have to move along 
 a road full of obstacles. The practical nature will obey 
 without questioning, whilst the philosophical will need 
 to see the reason before it can obey. The gentle, guileless 
 nature will move to the better life scarcely conscious of 
 crisis or change, whilst the warm-blooded and high-spirited 
 may have to go through a veritable conflict before it is 
 enrolled in the ranks of Christ. Of one it may have to 
 be said, "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have 
 is thine," whilst from another's lips the cry, the bitter 
 cry, may have to be heard, "Father, I have sinned 
 against heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy 
 to be called thy son : make me as one of thy hired 
 servants." The experience of the soul is determined by 
 its character and constitution. There is no such thing 
 as an ideal experience ; no, not even in the case of Apostles. 
 Paul entered the kingdom by a very different path from that 
 of John. One conversion sufficed for Paul ; Peter needed 
 many conversions. Christ concerned Himself with the 
 end, not the road by which it was reached. Had men 
 faith and love? He did not trouble Himself as to the 
 way in which these had been quickened in their hearts. 
 It would have been well if the Church had followed a like 
 method. But too often she has demanded to know the 
 road by which men and women have come to the kingdom 
 of God. You might as well require the child to have a 
 conscious knowledge of its birth other than the fact that 
 it is alive. His presence in the family suffices. Faith in 
 Christ ought to be enough for the Church. She has no 
 right to ask about its genesis. But she has done this, and 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD. 125 
 
 demanded proof of conversion. She has made the proof 
 to consist not in the fact of holy character, but in certain 
 spiritual experiences which accompanied the change of 
 feeling and motives; she has wanted in the convert a 
 conscious knowledge of his birth-hour ; she has laid stress 
 on the process, and not as she ought, on the result. And 
 in many sections of the Church there is a sort of feeling 
 that there is an ideal experience through which all must 
 pass. And here lies one of the perils of rehgious 
 biography, in which the inner processes of the soul are 
 laid bare. Many read such books as the " Confessions of 
 Augustine," or Bunyan's " Grace Abounding," and they 
 say to themselves, ' I have never had an experience like 
 to this. I have never known the agony, the strong crying 
 and tears depicted here. These are strange to me. Can 
 I be a child of God, never having known these ? ' And 
 so they are troubled and distressed. To have such 
 experiences you must have had natures like to these 
 men ; you must have wandered far, like the prodigal, 
 or you could never have the long journey to travel back 
 again to home and father. Your experience will be 
 regulated by your nature and the course you have taken. 
 Was the elder son not a son because he knew not the 
 agony of his younger brother ? To know that he must 
 have gathered all together and gone into a far country. If, 
 by God's great mercy, you have been kept at home, 
 surrounded by loving Christian influence, you may pass 
 into the kingdom almost without knowing it ; but if you 
 have wandered far, there must be the bitter, weary journey 
 back to your true home. Do not trouble yourself about 
 the way. If you are in the home, with love in your heart 
 to the Father — a love which leads you to obey His word 
 — then, no matter how, you are part of the household of 
 God. 
 
126 THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD. 
 
 II. Of the Unity of the Household. 
 
 In what does it consist ? Unmistakeably in loyalty to 
 its head. Loyalty in a home is only another name for 
 love. Love is the only true atmosphere of a house- 
 hold :— 
 
 •' Sweet is the smile of home, the mutual look, 
 Where hearts are of each other sure ; 
 Sweet are the joys that crowd the household nook, 
 The haunt of all affections pure." * 
 
 All are members of the household who are loyal. The 
 children may have different conceptions of the head of the 
 family; they may regard him in different ways; but if 
 they be loyal, loving, they are a real part of the house- 
 hold. Within this limit there is room for almost endless 
 diversity. One child may understand one part of the 
 father's character, and another may understand another 
 part. The boys may best appreciate his business capacity, 
 and the girls his emotional nature. One may appreciate 
 his intellectual qualities, another his practical ability. But 
 all belong to the household who look up to and trust him 
 as the head. So it is in the household of God. One mind 
 may be compelled by its very nature to grapple with the 
 problems of the Divine existence ; another may be able 
 to believe without attempting to prove. One may need 
 definitions and theories ; another may quietly rest in the 
 Lord. One may be careful and troubled about many 
 things, like Martha ; another, like Mary, may sit at JesOs' 
 feet. But the central, the essential thing is to be loyal 
 to the Head. If a man's heart be fixed on Christ, the 
 visible Head of the household, then he belongs thereto. 
 The porter at the door has no right to ask any question 
 
 * John Keble. 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD. 127 
 
 but this : "Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" If 
 that question be answered in the affirmative the door 
 must open to the great house of God. 
 
 And closely connected with, yea, a part of such loyalty, 
 is obedience to the Head. Obedience is loyalty in action. 
 Works are the fruit of faith. " Ye are my friends, if ye do 
 whatsoever I command you." The most loyal is the most 
 obedient child. But, then, obedience in a household is 
 not like obedience in the army. The home is not the 
 realm of law, but of love ; it is not studded over with 
 commands, but filled with the atmosphere of affection. 
 The slave just takes and obeys the commands that are 
 given, in the letter. Circumstances may change and 
 render the commands inappropriate, but still he obeys those 
 very commands. The child obeys in a different manner. 
 He does not take the letter, but the spirit of commands. 
 He adapts the command to circumstances. He asks, 
 ' What would my father wish to be done under the circum- 
 stances ? ' He will thus often disobey the letter in order to 
 keep the spirit. He will alter the command to suit the 
 occasion. His supreme desire will be to do the Father's 
 will. " The servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth," 
 or would do under the circumstances, but the son claims 
 to know and to act upon his knowledge. And thus 
 loyalty leads to obedience, not to the letter, but to the spirit 
 of commands — obedience to a Spirit bearing witness 
 within, not to a code of law. This is the way love always 
 works. It moves in the atmosphere of freedom. It has 
 learnt the Father's will, and its supreme purpose is to 
 obey. Is this your position ? Can you look up into the 
 face of Christ and say, " Thou knowest that I love Thee ; 
 Thy will I would be willing to do ? " then no matter what 
 your view of the theories which men have framed of 
 Christian facts, no matter what your special experience may 
 
128 THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD. 
 
 have been, you are in the household of God — the house- 
 hold of faith ; and of you the Father's cry is this : " Son, 
 thou art ever with Me, and all that I have is thine." Of 
 you, as of these early Ephesians, it may be said, "Ye 
 are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens 
 with the saints, and of the household of God." 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD. 
 
 The Relation of the Members to One Another. 
 
 "The household of God," — Ephes. ii. 19. 
 
 IN a previous discourse we saw that a household con- 
 sists of a diversity in unity — the diversity springing 
 naturally out of the variety of constitution and character 
 in the members — out of the special thought and spiritual 
 experience of each ; and that the unity is due to loyalty, 
 which is only another name for love, to the head of the 
 household, common to all its members. We will now look 
 at the household in another aspect — namely, the relation- 
 ship of its members one to another. Sonship is one 
 side of the home relationship ; brotherhood is the other. 
 No one can be a good son unless he be a good brother. 
 The true parent cares as much for right feeling among 
 his children as for right feeling to himself. To any 
 worthy household the ancient Hebrew exclamation should 
 be applicable: "Behold, how good and how pleasant a 
 thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity ! " 
 Indeed, the parent should be the great unifying influ- 
 ence — the point around which the various members of 
 the family gather ; drawing near to him, they must of 
 necessity draw near to one another ; and one Lord, and 
 one baptism with His Spirit, must of necessity make a 
 united household. 
 
 9 
 
130 THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD. 
 
 " If I truly love The One, 
 All He loves are mine ; 
 Alien to my heart is none, 
 And life grows divine." 
 
 If our eyes be fixed on the Head, our hearts must go 
 out to all who belong to Him. 
 
 " But Heaven and Earth have been 
 More near, since Earth hath seen 
 Its God walk Earth as Man, since Heaven hath shown 
 A Man upon its throne : 
 The street and market-place 
 Grow holy ground ; each face — 
 Pale faces marked with care. 
 Dark, toil-worn brows — grows fair. 
 King's children are these all ; though want and sin 
 Have marred their beauty, glorious within. 
 We may not pass them but with reverent eye."* 
 
 It is perhaps more difficult to be loyal to our brethren 
 than it is to be loyal to the head. Where the head is 
 concerned the idea of authority comes in, but where the 
 members are concerned the relationship must be quite 
 spontaneous. The child may be afraid to offend his 
 father, but that feeling does not arise in relation to those 
 who are his brothers or sisters. The father will probably 
 not put so severe a strain on the loyalty of his children 
 as they may do on one another. Rivalry is not so likely 
 to spring up between child and parent as between brothers 
 and sisters. Difference of age, which naturally wakens 
 deference to the parent, is not present to the same degree, 
 to waken it between those whose years are more on an 
 equality. For these, and many similar reasons, it is more 
 difficult to keep unity m the household than between the 
 household and its head. But the New Testament is quite 
 as insistent on the one as on the other. It lays equal stress 
 on the two parts of the great declaration, " One is your 
 
 * Jean Ingelow. 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD. 131 
 
 Master, even Christ ; and all ye are brethren." It is quite 
 as eager that the brethren should draw close to one 
 another, as that they should all draw close to the Head of 
 the family. Christ was as much distressed when His 
 disciples quarrelled among themselves, as when they fell 
 from their allegiance to Him. One of His most earnest 
 prayers was, " That they all may be one ; even as Thou, 
 Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be 
 one in us : that the world may believe that Thou hast 
 sent Me." Christ is far from satisfied when men as 
 separate units look up to Him — He longs that their faith 
 in Him should unite them closely to one another. The 
 underlying feeling of the Society for the Reunion of 
 Christendom is a true one, only it seeks unity in the letter 
 rather than the spirit — in an outward and mechanical, 
 rather than in an inward and sympathetic way. If I may 
 make use of such a halting illustration, the rent garment 
 of Christ cannot be made whole by the stitches of 
 ecclesiastics but only as the rent is healed by the 
 spontaneous drawing together of the sundered parts. 
 Christendom will never become one by the efforts of 
 ecclesiastics or theologians, but by the growth of a Christ- 
 like spirit in all its members. It is useless to expect that 
 the household will grow to uniformity in thought or modes 
 of worship. The diversities of gift and character would 
 prevent this ; but amidst such diversity there may be one 
 spirit, and in this the real unity may be found. If I may 
 so phrase it, there may be a spiritual freemasonry amid 
 great diversities of thought and forms. The members 
 may recognise each other by Christ-like signs, though they 
 may speak different languages, and be widely separated 
 in their ideas. The Kingdom of God cometh not with 
 observation, and the unity of the Kingdom cometh in like 
 manner. The Christ-like spirit will reach over very high 
 
132 THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD. 
 
 barriers of ecclesiasticism, and join hands with those who 
 in every place love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. 
 Christ discerned in a soldier of Rome — trained in its 
 pagan ways — a faith such as He had not found even in 
 Israel, which had for ages been under a Divine education, 
 and wherever we find a like faith we must be quick to 
 recognise a member of this great household of God. The 
 form which such faith may take is, to a large extent, a 
 matter of ancestry and surrounding. If you had been 
 born in Italy you might have been adherents to-day of the 
 Roman Church. If my parents had belonged to the 
 Established Church I might to-day have been ministering 
 at her altars. These are surface differences ; below, there 
 may be the real substance, the Christian spirit. It has 
 been said of the late Empress Augusta, " Particularly 
 interesting is her endeavour to avoid all religious partiality 
 in her works of love. There exist written proofs that her 
 religious feeling was so noble that it rose far above any 
 influence occasioned by the individual belief of those with 
 whom she came in contact. The Empress was a humani- 
 tarian in the noblest sense of the word. She was con- 
 vinced that in religious impartiality lay the secret of 
 preparation for a piety that would content mankind." Our 
 position, too, is determined largely by inherited constitu- 
 tion ; one nature leans in one direction, and one in another. 
 This is a matter beyond our control ; but each disposition 
 may be baptised with the Spirit of Christ. The passionate 
 Peter, the ardent John, the intellectual Paul, the despond- 
 ing Thomas, the practical James, retaining their individu- 
 ality, are yet all one in discipleship to Jesus Christ. No 
 one type of nature may say to another, ' You have no right 
 to be in the household of God.' Each one has as good a 
 right to a place there as the other, provided there be love 
 in the heart to Christ. For a household embraces a great 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD. 133 
 
 variety of character — the sombre and the merry, the slow 
 and the quick, the poetic and the practical. "The love of 
 the human race is increased by their individual differences, 
 and the unity of the creature made perfect by each having 
 something to bestow and to receive, bound to the rest by 
 a thousand various necessities and various gratitudes ; 
 humility in each rejoicing to admire in his fellow that which 
 he finds not in himself, and each being in some respect 
 the complement of the race." * And one of the great 
 mistakes often made by the Church, especially its Noncon- 
 forming portion, has been to regard only those of a serious 
 and even sombre type as fit for the household of God. 
 Beneath the surface of what we call the serious type may 
 be hid evils peculiar to it, just as beneath the more merry 
 there may be perils peculiar to it. The believing may fall 
 into credulity, just as the inquiring may into unbelief. 
 
 The Church is a household, and should offer room for 
 children of every type, provided they turn their faces to 
 the Head. The Church is a school in which scholars of 
 every kind should be welcomed, provided they are ready 
 to sit at the feet of Christ and learn of Him. The Church 
 is a hospital where every form of disease may come under 
 the hand of the Great Physician, provided only that they 
 will permit Him to carry forward His healing work in their 
 natures. And through such variety, the discipline of the 
 household will largely go forward. A family whose members 
 were all alike would lose one great means of education. 
 Were all sanguine, prudence would die out. Were all 
 sombre, the family would grow like to a funeral company. 
 Were all merry, the family would become riotous. But 
 let there be a mingling of diverse characters, and they tend 
 to balance and modify one another. And so ought it to 
 be in the household of God. There should be room for 
 
 * "Modem Painters." 
 
134 THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD. 
 
 all diversities of character, that by contact and converse 
 they may modify and balance one another, the solemn 
 moderating the merry, the merry brightening the solemn, 
 the poetic elevating the practical, the practical steadying the 
 poetic, the guileless quickening faith in the calculating, the 
 calculating preserving the guileless from being deceived. 
 This is a part of the Divine method of education for our 
 life. We are members one of another, so that no one 
 may say to another, " I have no need of thee." There 
 may be some far removed from the serious type of 
 character, who think, ' The Church is no place for me. I 
 should be out of harmony with such a_ household ! ' Did 
 God, then, make a mistake when He gave such a nature ? 
 Is the variety of character in the world an error in the 
 Divine working ? Or did He mean only a single type to 
 be found in His household ? To ask is to answer such 
 questions. The Church needs such as you to keep it from 
 being sombre, just as you need the Church to keep you 
 from being too light. In so far as any type of character 
 holds aloof from the Church, so far is she incomplete. 
 Take one of the seven colours of the spectrum from light, 
 and how much more difficult it would be to see ! And the 
 Church is not what she should be, because there are types 
 of character which hold aloof from her. Let them come 
 in, and the gain would be mutual. 
 
 But then in such a household there must be mutual 
 forbearance. The peace of a family is gone if any one 
 member seek to dominate the rest, and always have his 
 own way. Many a household has been ruined by self- 
 will. And more than aught beside, this has rent asunder 
 the household of God. And the worst of it is, that scarcely 
 ever has such self-will been regarded, as, indeed, it is, as 
 utterly alien to the Spirit of Christ. Who ever heard of 
 censure or excommunication for self-will ? We have 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD. 135 
 
 heard of it often enough for heresy, or what passed for 
 heresy, when, indeed, it often was the very truth of God., 
 and in the next age was so regarded ; but who ever 
 heard of the Church, save in the eariiest times, saying to 
 one of its members, ' You are spoihng the family life by 
 your dogmatism, your self-will. You must either curb it, 
 or leave the household. We cannot have the peace of the 
 family disturbed by one member ' ? And yet self-will is in 
 direct opposition to the command and example of Christ. 
 " He pleased not Himself" " He made Himself of no 
 reputation." By the lips of His Apostle He bade us " look 
 not every man on his own things, but every man on the 
 things of others." To deny ourselves, to check the self- 
 will so strong in many of our natures, is a part of the 
 cross we have to bear ; nothing is more vital to a 
 household than this. Where it is found there is sure to 
 be " the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." As 
 Mr, Hayes, in his striking poem " The Last Crusade," 
 makes the saintly Louis say to his followers : — 
 
 " Remember, gentlemen, 
 We all are servants of one Master, Christ ; 
 Bound by one law, redeemed by one love, 
 And every brow sealed with the self-same print 
 Of blessed brotherhood. It matters not 
 How wide soever we may stand removed 
 In rank, or wealth, or might, if but our hearts 
 Are all attuned to one clear harmony ; 
 It matters little how we be disjoined 
 In outward strategy, if but our souls 
 Are urged by one great motive to one end." 
 
 Indeed, lying at the root of self-will is the idea of 
 infallibihty — such confidence in our own opinions that 
 all others are regarded as erroneous. The learned Dr. 
 Thompson, late Master of Trinity College, once said, 
 " None of us are infaUible, not even the youngest." 
 Nothing is more irritating — nothing is more likely to 
 
136 THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD. 
 
 disturb the unity of the home or of the Church, than 
 some one member who poses as an oracle. This is most 
 mischievous when, as is so often the case, it is associated 
 with ignorance. Far enough, too, is this from the modesty 
 of the real Christian spirit, as it is seen in the Apostles, 
 from whose lips we catch such words as these : " Great is 
 the mystery of godliness.'' "We know in part, and we 
 prophesy in part." " Now we see through a glass, darkly." 
 " We know not what we shall be." 
 
 " We have but faith ; we cannot know, 
 For knowledge is of things we see ; 
 And yet we trust it comes from Thee, 
 A beam in darkness ; let it grow." 
 
 Hitherto I have pointed only to the negative side 
 of the matter, the things to be avoided. There is a 
 positive side, things to be done. The true conception of 
 a household is of a company in which the resources of 
 each of the members are at the service of all the rest ; so 
 that " whether one member suffer, all the members suffer 
 with it ; or one member be honoured, all the members 
 rejoice with it." It should be a ministering company. 
 The joy of one should be the joy of all. The sorrow of 
 one should be the sorrow of all. A company in which the 
 strong bear the infirmities of the weak, and not please 
 themselves. Those on the hill top of faith moving down 
 to those in the valley of doubt, to lead them to the height 
 of vision. The glad and merry bearing some of the sun- 
 shine of their nature to the morbid and gloomy. The 
 strength of the young being put at the service of the feeble, 
 and the wisdom of the old being made to guide the young. 
 Those who have this world's goods counting themselves 
 stewards, and distributing to those who need. 
 
 As Henri Frdd^ric Amiel says : " Bring your health 
 and your strength to the weak and sickly, and so you will 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD. 137 
 
 be of use to them. Give them not your weakness, but 
 your energy, so you will revive and lift them up. Life 
 alone can rekindle life. What others claim is not our 
 thirst or our hunger, but our bread and our gourd." 
 
 " Ask God to give thee skill 
 
 In comfort's art, 
 That thou may'st consecrated be, 
 
 And set apart 
 Unto a life of sympathy ! 
 For heavy is the weight of ill 
 
 In every heart ; 
 And comforters are needed much 
 
 Of Christ-like touch. " 
 
 In such ministries, prompted of love, the home consists, 
 whether it be of man or of God. Indeed, the home is but 
 the miniature of the greater household of God. A home 
 is not made by those who live and eat and sleep under the 
 same roof. It may be a hotel ; it is not a home. The 
 home does not begin to be until it is a place of mutual 
 ministries, inspired of love. And the household of God is 
 not constituted by men and women who hold the same 
 creed, repeat the same prayers, join in the same sacra- 
 ments — these are but the form, the letter; not until the 
 spirit of love, reaching out to mutual help, arises, is it 
 worthy of the name of a household of God. John Ruskin 
 rightly says, " For there is a true Church wherever one 
 hand meets another helpfully, and this is the only holy or 
 Mother Church which ever was, or ever shall be." * The 
 longing of each of our hearts should be — 
 
 " May I reach 
 That pure heaven — be to other souls 
 The cup of strength in some great agony — 
 Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, 
 And in diffusion ever more intense ! 
 So shall I join the choir invisible, 
 Whose music is the gladness of the world." ■!■ 
 
 * " Sesame and Lilies," p. 86. -j- George Eliot. 
 
138 THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD. 
 
 And let it ever be remembered that this cannot be 
 brought about merely by those who are called ministers. 
 A household is determined by the character, the conduct, 
 the spirit of every one of its members. One gracious 
 spirit may do much to sweeten, but one acrid temper may 
 embitter its atmosphere. I have sometimes heard people 
 complain that their Church was not social, that it was cold 
 and divided — they laid the blame on others, but all the 
 while they did nothing to improve its atmosphere, but 
 rather did much, by their carping, to render it worse. 
 Even a bad-tempered child may spoil a home, and one 
 gossip, or retailer of scandal, or constant fault-finder may 
 do much to quench the home life of the household of God. 
 Each one of us carries around him a moral atmosphere, 
 and by the union of all in the Church its atmosphere is 
 made up. And the question each one should ask is this : 
 Am I making or marring the character of the family of 
 God .'' That household, as we delight to remember on 
 this Easter Sunday, has a living Head. It has not merely 
 the memory of a crucified, but the presence of an ever- 
 living Lord. And just in proportion as we are filled with 
 His Spirit, as we emulate His example, as we do His com- 
 mandments, do we grow worthy to be members of that 
 great company which the Apostle here calls " the house- 
 hold of God," children of that one Father of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ of whom the whole family in heaven and 
 earth is named. 
 
 " Then draw we nearer day by day, 
 Each to his brethren, all to God ; 
 Let the world take us as she may. 
 We must not change our road." 
 
PROFITLESS FOREBODING.* 
 
 "And they were saying among themselves, Who shall roll us away the 
 stone from the door of the tomb ? And looking up, they see that the 
 stone is rolled back : for it was exceeding great." — Mark xvi. 3, 4. 
 
 IN these Gospels the thoughts of many hearts are re- 
 vealed, and in every case the revelation is true to life. 
 The thoughts are such as similar persons in our own day 
 would have. In the passage before us we see a company 
 of women on their way to the sepulchre to anoint the 
 body of Him they loved so well. This is the very thing 
 women would desire to do. This is the very form which 
 a woman's love would take. It clings even more closely 
 than does a man's to the form of those who have departed. 
 A woman's thought lingers around the body. It prompts 
 her to visit the grave, and leave there tokens of love. 
 And these women, who were the last at the cross, are the 
 first at the sepulchre, to render what service they can to 
 Him whose body they expect to find therein. Very early 
 in the morning, ere, as yet, the sun has fully risen, they 
 are wending their way laden with spices — prepared in the 
 weary time which had elapsed since they had seen their 
 Lord expire on the cross — that they may anoint His 
 lifeless body. 
 
 Then, too, it is altogether womanly that, fixed upon their 
 sacred task, they should not think of the difficulties in their 
 way. Woman is usually so intent upon the one task on 
 
 * Preached the Sunday after the death of Matthew Arnold. 
 
140 PROFITLESS FOREBODING. 
 
 which she is bent, that she sees it alone. Where a man 
 looks all round, a woman looks at the one thing on which 
 she is engaged, and to which all her energy is given. 
 These devoted women have thought only of the body so 
 precious to them, and how they could best do honour there- 
 to. Their hands have been so busy gathering and preparing 
 the spices, that they have not considered the difficulty of 
 reaching the body of their Lord, secured within the rock- 
 hewn tomb. It was not until they had almost reached the 
 tomb that they begin to wonder how the huge stone by 
 which Eastern graves were usually closed should be 
 rolled away. Then they begin to ask, "Who shall roll 
 us away the stone from the door of the tomb ? " Had 
 they been men, they would probably have thought of this 
 ere they started, and provided themselves with means for 
 its removal. But here the woman's heedlessness of diffi- 
 culty, as it so often does, serves them well ; for, " looking 
 up, they see that the stone is rolled back : for it was 
 exceeding great.'' It is all true to life^ specially true to 
 woman's life. 
 
 Woman's obliviousness to difficulty, whilst it some- 
 times leads her wrong, very often leads her right. It 
 certainly often tends to balance the over-cautiousness of 
 men. It is one illustration out of many which might be 
 given that it is not good for either the man or the woman 
 to be alone, that they were meant to be helpmeets of one 
 another. The woman's hopefulness was meant to counter- 
 act the greater caution of the man, and the man's caution 
 to steady the greater hopefulness of the woman. Woman 
 is not, as the Poet Laureate says, " the lesser man," but 
 the complement of man. It is foolish to question whether 
 woman is the equal or the inferior of man. Their natures 
 do not run along the same, but along different lines. 
 Woman is strong where man is weak, and man is strong 
 
PROFITLESS FOREBODING. 141 
 
 where woman is weak. Man was not meant to be womanly, 
 nor woman to be manly. In so far as this is the case they 
 fail of their separate ideals. Each should move along their 
 own line. Thus they will best fulfil the Divine purpose. 
 
 In the case before us, however, even these women antici- 
 pate a difficulty which did not exist. They expected to 
 find a stone at the mouth of the tomb which would be 
 beyond their power to roll aside. It is true they did not 
 think of this till they had almost reached the sepulchre, but 
 they did anticipate, though by very little, a difficulty which 
 did not exist. If my conjecture be a true one, the male 
 disciples would have thought of the difficulty long before, 
 and might even have been prevented by it from setting out 
 for the tomb. The women's eagerness to accomplish their 
 task of love prevented this, but still, at the last moment, 
 even they anticipated a difficulty which did not exist. 
 
 And is it not thus in most of our lives ? Are we 
 not all, more or less, given to anticipating difficulties 
 which have no actual existence ? In some degree it is 
 thus even with women ; in greater degree it is thus 
 with men. It is true there are what we call sanguine 
 natures, which are, to a large extent, oblivious of coming 
 difficulties ; but there are also cautious natures, ever 
 imagining and preparing for difficulties which have no 
 existence save in their own imaginations. And most of 
 us fashion obstacles in our path which we shall never 
 meet. Indeed, it has become almost a proverb that " the 
 expected never happens." When we attempt to be pro- 
 phets as to our own future, our prophecies nearly always 
 fail of accomplishment. And half the trouble of our life 
 comes from imagining difficulties. The advice of Sydney 
 Smith, to "take short views of Hfe," was very wise. In- 
 deed, he had been forestalled in such advice by the 
 ancient words of Holy Writ, which enjoin " the things 
 
142 PROFITLESS FOREBODING. 
 
 of a day in its day." In another place the wise and 
 witty Canon of St. Paul's says, " Melancholy commonly 
 flies to the future for its aliment, and it must be encountered 
 by diminishing the range of our views." If the mind can- 
 not be kept from looking into the future — and sometimes 
 that is the case — an effort should be made to look on its 
 sunnier side. A friend who spent many years in China 
 tells me that the word for " to-morrow " in the language of 
 that land really means "the bright day" or "the bright 
 heaven," for day and heaven are used equally for day, and 
 a day is a sun. And we do well to remember, that how- 
 ever deep the shadows which may fall on our future 
 course, somewhere there is a sun, and therefore along- 
 side those shadows some of his light. Half the trouble 
 of many a life comes from such forecasting of the future. 
 The student for the ministry leaving college to com- 
 mence his work in a church asks himself, " How will it 
 be possible to go on Sunday after Sunday speaking to the 
 same people, and not come to an end of one's resources ? " 
 Up to that time it had taken days, and even weeks, to pre- 
 pare a sermon ; he wonders how ever he will be able to 
 prepare two, or even three, each week as it comes round. 
 But the same student, after twenty years of preaching — 
 though his idea of what a sermon should be has been 
 immensely raised, so that it would be quite impossible to 
 preach one of his college sermons, which cost so much 
 labour — instead of having said all that could be said, 
 feels that more remains to be said than when he began. 
 And sometimes now, in moments of depression, his fore- 
 cast takes another direction, and he wonders what will 
 happen when the physical power to do his work declines 
 — when the almond tree begins to flourish, and desire to 
 fail. But when that time is reached, in some way or 
 other, that stone of difficulty will be found to have been 
 
PROFITLESS FOREBODING. 143 
 
 rolled away. And probably each of us could furnish 
 illustrations of a like foreboding from his own experience. 
 Each one of us, save perhaps natures that are very 
 sanguine and hopeful, anticipates some heavy stone of 
 difficulty too great for our strength to roll away. Indeed, 
 I rather fancy that in our day, because of the keen com- 
 petition, and the high tension of modern life, men and 
 women have grown more anxious, more prone to fore- 
 bodings about the future. Men of business often grow 
 nervous as they think of some rivalry or some new inven- 
 tion, or some change of taste or fashion, which may rob 
 them of their means of livelihood. Parents look round on 
 their children, and their hearts grow anxious about their 
 future. They wonder how they shall find openings for 
 their boys, and provision for their girls. Sickness comes, 
 and their hearts sink within them at the thought that they 
 may not recover. They hear of the great crowds of men 
 and women sunk into hopeless poverty, and wonder if such 
 will at last be their lot. Many there are who anticipate 
 death with alarm — who wonder what they will do in the 
 swellings of Jordan, who are in bondage all their lifetime 
 through fear of death. Thus the present is overcast with 
 shadows from clouds which do not now fill the sky, but 
 which they fancy one day may obscure the sun. Quaint 
 old Montaigne says, " It is certainly a frenzy to go now and 
 whip yourself, because it may so fall out that fortune may 
 one day decree you a whipping, and to put on your furred 
 gown at Midsummer because you will stand in need of it 
 at Christmas." Thus the joy of summer is half banished 
 by the thought of a winter which may never come. 
 Thus trouble is doubled by anticipation. Thus imagina- 
 tion darkens rather than — as it should do — brightens our 
 way. Thus we anxiously ask, '' Who shall roll us away 
 the stone ? " — the stone too heavy for us to roll back. 
 
144 PROFITLESS FOREBODING. 
 
 when in the great majority of cases it has been rolled 
 away ere we reach the sepulchre. 
 
 " Be quiet ! Take things as they come ; 
 Each hour will draw out some surprise. 
 With blessing let the days go home ; 
 Thou shalt have thanks from evening skies. " ' 
 
 Seldom, however, are our forebodings realised. For if 
 the thing we dreaded comes, we have unexpected strength 
 to meet it ; and so our relationship to it is altogether 
 altered. I have spoken of the student's foreboding as to 
 the preparations of sermons week after week. Well, the 
 work has had to be done, but power to do it, far greater 
 than he possessed at college, has grown up. The work 
 has not exhausted, but rather increased his faculty. Con- 
 tinued draughts on the cruse of oil have not lessened, but 
 rather augmented, its contents. And the more freely the 
 cruse has been drawn on, the larger the supply which 
 remained. The more one thinks of the Gospel, the larger 
 its treasury appears. The more one considers human 
 nature, the greater the variety of its needs. And so the 
 preacher's horizon, instead of diminishing, is ever widen- 
 ing in extent. 
 
 It is not otherwise with the other forebodings to which 
 I have referred. We look out on life, and we see men 
 reaching an age when active work is no longer possible, 
 but it is the rarest thing to see them left desolate. Men 
 and women, grateful for their ministry, come to their aid. 
 Children, mindful of all they owed to them in earlier days, 
 are moved by grateful love to surround their declining 
 years with comfort and help. Christian feeling will not 
 allow the aged to suffer by neglect. 
 
 And so is it with those in business pursuits. If we 
 subtract cases in which distress has come from extrava- 
 
 ' Robert Earl Lytton. 
 
PROFITLESS FOREBODING. 145 
 
 gance, or speculation, or idleness, the instances are com- 
 paratively few in which dire poverty falls on the careful, 
 the diligent, the straightforward. I have known parents 
 with large families look forward with fear and trembling 
 to the future of their children. But I have seen a few 
 years elapse, and gradually, almost imperceptibly, one 
 after another of those children had found a vocation, and 
 become a comfort rather than an anxiety to their parents. 
 During my ministry in this place I have noticed case after 
 case in which this has happened or is happening. Sooner 
 or later, instead of being troubled as to what they should 
 do with their children, their trouble has rather been that 
 the young birds have made nests of their own, and left the 
 old one sohtary. Let children be well trained in habits of 
 industry and thrift, and there is little fear that they will 
 fail to make their way in the world. Competition may be 
 keen, England may be more crowded than in former days, 
 but there is still space and work for the trustworthy and 
 diligent. Fortunes may be harder to make — that is no 
 great misfortune ; but, for those who will work, there is still 
 space and opportunity, if not in this, in other lands not so 
 thickly peopled as our own. And as to the fear of death, 
 which so haunts and troubles many a life, it is a spectre 
 with no real existence. Indeed, where it is most dreaded 
 it is usually least felt. I have stood by many a death-bed, 
 and I say, without any hesitation, that in the great 
 majority of cases at eventide there has been light. In 
 many a case the spirit has been ready and even wishful 
 to depart. 
 
 Striking illustration of this has been furnished by the 
 lamented death of Matthew Arnold. If we may judge 
 from his poems, he feared the weakness and failure of 
 power which often comes with old age, and recoiled from 
 the sad accompaniments of the chamber of death. Some 
 
 10 
 
146 PROFITLESS FOREBODING. 
 
 of you may remember his poem on " Growing Old," which 
 closes with the following verses : — 
 
 " It is to spend long days, 
 And not once feel that we were ever young ; 
 It is to add, immured 
 In the hot prison of the present, month 
 To month with weary pain. 
 
 " It is to suffer this, 
 And feel but half, and feebly what we feel. 
 Deep in our hidden heart 
 Festers the dull remembrance of a change. 
 But no emotion — none. 
 
 " It is — last stage of all — 
 When we are frozen up within, quite 
 The phantom of ourselves, 
 To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost, 
 Which blamed the living man." 
 
 Whilst in another poem — "A Wish " — these words occur, 
 which evidently embodied his fear concerning his last 
 days : — 
 
 "Spare me the whispering, crowded room. 
 The friends who come and gape and go ; 
 The ceremonious air of gloom — 
 
 All which makes death a hideous show ! 
 
 "Nor bring, to see me cease to live. 
 
 Some doctor full of phrase and fame, 
 To shake his sapient head, and give 
 The ill he cannot cure a name. 
 
 "Nor fetch, to take the accustomed toll 
 Of the poor sinner bound for death, 
 His brother, doctor of the soul. 
 To canvass with official breath 
 
 " The future and its viewless things — 
 That undiscovered mystery. 
 Which one who feels death's winnowing wings 
 Must needs read clearer, sure, than he." 
 
 If these poems express, as they seem to do, forebodings 
 of his own, they were both unrealised. He never knew 
 
PROFITLESS FOREBODING. 147 
 
 the weakness, the slowly dying feeling of old age, but 
 passed, in the fulness of his power, to that hidden but 
 larger life behind the veil. He knew nothing of the sick- 
 room and its painful accompaniments, but in the open air, 
 beneath the over-arching sky, passed in a moment from 
 our midst. 
 
 It would have been well if he had listened to the wise 
 advice of John Milton : — 
 
 " Why need a man foretell his date of grief, 
 And run to meet what he would most avoid ? " 
 
 Or to that of the grandmother in one of Lord Lytton's 
 stories, who, when asked by a child, in the midst of happi- 
 ness, " It cannot last, can it ? " repHes, " 'Tis no use in 
 this life, my dear — no use at all disturbing present happi- 
 ness by asking, Can it last ? To-day is man's ; to-morrow 
 is his Maker's." 
 
 When Dr. Bushnell lay a-dying, to the inquiry, " But 
 how do you feel about it, Doctor ? " he replied, " I can 
 hardly tell ; but as for this dying, about which we have 
 always been so much exercised, I have come to think 
 there isn't much in it." In the night his wife asked him 
 how death looked to him. " Very much like going into 
 another room," was his answer. When the text was 
 repeated to him, " The good and acceptable and perfect 
 will of God," he replied, " Yes, and accepted." 
 
 I do not say that every stone will be found to have 
 been rolled away ; but I do say that the stone which we 
 feared the most will be found to have been removed. 
 Some stone may be there, but not the one which most we 
 dreaded. And, therefore, we may well put aside our 
 foreboding, for it isi not likely to be realised. By such 
 foreboding, indeed, we fly in the face of the Divine order 
 for our life ; for if God had meant us to be ever looking on 
 
148 PROFITLESS FOREBODING. 
 
 to the future, He would have revealed it, so that we should 
 see, and not imagine, what is in store for us. But He has 
 not done this, but the very reverse. He has drawn a 
 curtain between us and the future, even between us and 
 the morrow, which no effort of ours can lift or push aside. 
 We may imagine what is behind that curtain, but that is 
 all we can do ; and our imagining seldom corresponds to 
 the reality. The future rarely, if ever, brings us what we 
 expected. And so our vain expectations often lead us to 
 put on armour against phantom foes, and preparing to 
 fight these, we are not rightly armed against the foes 
 which will actually oppose our course. Seneca well says, 
 " He grieves more than need be who begins to grieve 
 before he needs." And our foreboding will not fit us to 
 roll away the stone, whatever it may be ; nay, it will 
 rather chill our hearts and weaken our arm. No strength 
 will come from anxious thought. That will only rob us 
 of our power. By all means let us make all possible 
 preparation for the future. There is room for prudence, 
 forethought, care ; these are parts of our duty ; these may 
 remove many a stone out of the -way ; but for anxious 
 foreboding there is no place. That will roll no stone from 
 our path ; that will neither strengthen us for the present 
 nor arm us for the future ; that will rather cloud the pre- 
 sent and darken the future, when it comes. Nay, more,, 
 it will discourage those who are about us — our children^ 
 our co-workers — and unfit them for the battle of life. To 
 do their work aright they need courage and hopefulness, 
 and these will be checked by our forebodings. But, on the 
 other hand, our trustful courage will impart itself to them, 
 and nerve them for the work of their life. 
 
 And such trustfulness should be nourished by our 
 Christian faith, which is the enemy of foreboding. Sydney 
 Smith once said, " Some very excellent people tell you 
 
PROFITLESS FOREBODING. 149 
 
 they dare not hope. To me it seems much more impious 
 to despair." Christ's words are the true panacea for such 
 anxiety. He was ever urging men to learn from the lilies 
 of the field and the birds of the air to trust in God, 
 assuring them that over anxiety can do nothing for us, 
 that it can neither add to our stature nor make one hair 
 white or black. If we would overcome such anxiety, let 
 us keep in His quiet and rest-giving company, and there 
 we shall learn that " the life is more than meat, and the 
 body than raiment." He will teach us the true secret 
 of a blessed life. Mrs. Browning caught the very spirit 
 of Christ when she said — 
 
 " I think we are too ready with complaint 
 In this fair world of God's. 
 
 Be comforted ! 
 And like a cheerful traveller take the road, 
 Singing beside the hedge. What if the bread 
 Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod 
 To meet the flints ? At least it may be said, 
 Because the way is short, I thank Thee, God." 
 
 A wise rule of life is to get all the good, ay, and all 
 the happiness, we can out of life as it passes. We are 
 saved by hope, but hope itself may be so strong as to force 
 our vision too much to the future, and thus rob us of the 
 full measure of the joy of the present ; just as the child on 
 a journey, ever asking, "Are we nearly there ? " loses the 
 beauty of the country through which he is passing. Life 
 is not long enough to let slip the present. We should 
 take the days as they come, and get as much work and as 
 much happiness out of them as we can. Yes, happiness ; 
 for it is possible to be too intent on work. I should 
 not like to see my children caring only for work; I would 
 have them get some happiness out of their life, and I 
 cannot believe that the Great Father sent us here to work 
 and toil all our days. The happier men are, the better 
 
150 PROFITLESS FOREBODING. 
 
 He is pleased. And happiness arises chiefly by catching- 
 its opportunities as they arise, not by forming ideal con- 
 ditions under which alone we fancy that we can be happy. 
 Sir John Lubbock not long ago gave the following excel- 
 lent advice to working men : — 
 
 " Few of us make our lives as bright and happy as 
 we might. We are still in a comparatively early stage 
 of human development, and we have not yet realised to- 
 the full that subordination of ourselves which is requisite 
 to the full sympathy with others, but we are beginning 
 to grasp that selfish pursuit of our own aims and our 
 own happiness is not the way to secure them. Books 
 help us to look, in George Eliot's words, ' on other lives 
 besides our own.' It is well for every one to see what 
 are the troubles of others, and how they are borne; 
 to care about something in this vast world besides the 
 gratification of small, selfish desires ; to care for what is 
 best in thought and action — something that is good apart 
 from the accident of our own lot. If we succeed in this, 
 we are sure to have happy and useful lives, whatever and 
 wherever we may be. Our lives, in fact, are what we 
 ourselves make them. To eat and drink and sleep and 
 work is not to live. We waste our time over things of 
 no importance ; we fret over trifles ; we are over-anxious, 
 and conjure up dangers and grievances which either exist 
 only in our own diseased imaginations, or at any rate are 
 much less important than they seem. It is as true now as it 
 was in the time of David that man ' disquieteth himself 
 in vain.' This world of ours is very beautiful if we 
 would only enjoy it in peace. There is, we know, a 
 ' peace of God, which passeth all understanding,' and there 
 is also a peace of Nature. The very worst troubles of life 
 are the anxieties and perplexities with which we torment 
 ourselves, and most of which are quite unnecessary. As 
 
PROFITLESS FOREBODING. 151 
 
 regards the material requirements of life, though all can- 
 not expect to be rich, industry and perseverance rarely 
 fail to secure a competence. We all, moreover, have 
 some leisure, and the less we have, the more reason that 
 we should employ that little well. Ernest Rhys well says 
 of a student's chamber — 
 
 " ' Strange things pass nightly in this little room, 
 All dreary as it looks by light of day ; 
 Enchantment reigns here when at evening play 
 Red firelight glimpses through the pallid gloom.' " 
 
 Dr. Phillips Brooks has well said, "There is no better 
 test of men's progress than this advancing power to do 
 without the things which used to be essential to their lives. 
 As we climb a high mountain, we must keep our footing 
 strong upon one ledge until we have fastened ourselves 
 strongly on the next. Then we may let the lower foot- 
 hold go. The lives of men who have been always 
 growing are strewed along their whole course with the 
 things they have learned to do without.'' And a great 
 philosopher has said, " I have learned to seek my happiness 
 by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy 
 them." This is one of the chief lessons which Christ 
 taught ; could we but really learn it, half our forebodings 
 would flee away. St. Paul learnt it, and so he could say, 
 " 1 have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to 
 be content." Let us seek to learn it, and then our hearts 
 will not be vexed by asking, " Who shall roll away 
 the stone ? " for we shall know that before we reach the 
 sepulchre, the stone, great as it is, will have been rolled 
 away. 
 
LOVING TRUTHFULNESS. 
 
 "Speaking truth in love." — Ephes. iv. 15. 
 
 RENDERED literally, though not elegantly or in quite 
 good English, this passage should read, "Truthing 
 t in love." Perhaps some day we may allow the noun 
 "truth" to be turned into a verb, and then we might 
 translate St. Paul's words into their equivalent, and say, 
 " Truthing it in love." We narrow his meaning a little 
 by saying, " Speaking the truth in love," since we may 
 communicate by other means than speech. Our common 
 proverb reminds us that actions speak louder than words. 
 We may speak by our looks, by the movement of our 
 bodies, and paradoxical as it may seem, even by our silence. 
 To allow an error, a scandal, a libel to be uttered in our 
 hearing without correction, and if needs be reproof, is to 
 be a consenting party thereto, and to share in its guilt. 
 By " truthing it " St. Paul means, I think, always giving 
 right impressions, always being loyal to what we believe 
 to be true, by word, by look, by act, by bearing, — striving 
 always (to use Archbishop Whately's distinction) not to 
 have truth on our side, but to be on the side of truth. 
 There is a vast difference between these two attitudes of 
 mind. This precept summons us to a supreme loyalty to 
 truth — that we should ever, to use our Lord's phrase, " be 
 of the truth." 
 
 " Let us be true ; this is the highest maxim of art and 
 
LOVING TRUTHFULNESS. 153 
 
 of life, the secret of eloquence and of virtue, and of all 
 moral authority." * 
 
 Now, that looks very easy, but it is in reality most 
 difficult. There is some foundation for Mr. Ruskin's 
 declaration that "speaking truth is like writing fair, and 
 comes only by practice. It is less a matter of will than of 
 habit." It is probably a matter of the will first, which 
 gradually grows into a habit. To attain to such truth- 
 fulness is to get very near perfection of character, as St. 
 James discerned when he declared that " if any stumbleth 
 not in word, the same is a perfect man, able to bridle the 
 whole body also." But this is hard to attain, since there are 
 so many influences which draw us away from such supreme 
 loyalty to truth. I will mention some of these, since to 
 know may enable us to be on our guard against them. 
 
 And first ^ strange as it may seem, modesty may turn us 
 from being quite truthful. Modesty may seem to call us in 
 one direction, and truth in quite another one. To avoid 
 Scylla it may seem impossible not to fall into Charybdis. 
 To be reckoned quite frank and truthful we may have to 
 run the risk of being considered conceited. That is rather 
 a difficult dilemma to escape. Some people are so afraid 
 of being esteemed proud that they would rather fail in fealty 
 to what seems to them to be true, and which therefore to 
 them is the truth. You say to a parent, " That child of 
 yours is very clever." The parent knows this to be the 
 case, but is afraid to agree with you, since it will seem like 
 parental fondness or partiality to do so, and therefore 
 replies, " Oh, he is about the average." You say to one 
 engaged in business, "You have been a very successful 
 man." He knows he has, but he lacks the courage to say 
 what he thinks, and replies, " Well, I may seem to have 
 been, but I have not been so successful as you imagine." 
 
 * " Journal Intime " of Henri Frederic Amiel, p. 47. 
 
154 LOVING TRUTHFULNESS. 
 
 People are wonderfully modest in their speech about 
 business or money. How rare it is for a man to acknow- 
 ledge that he has made money, or that his business is 
 good ! At all events, in a direct way. A friend of mine 
 once called on a tradesman and offered him some goods. 
 He replied, " Oh, business is too bad for me to buy.'' Only 
 a few minutes afterwards this same man said, " I am so 
 busy that I can't spare you any more time." Some men 
 are as afraid of acknowledging that their business is 
 good or that they are making money as others are of 
 being considered saints. Indeed, there are some subjects 
 that people think they may talk about with little care for 
 accuracy. They fail to see that such talk offends against 
 the rule of truth. I cannot see that the subject about 
 which we speak frees us from the obligation to be as 
 accurate and truthful as possible. Is it so very terrible to 
 be considered successful in business, or that we have been 
 able to make good profits, or that we have been enabled to 
 reach a measure of success in any work ? When we are 
 in our right mind we shall feel that it was not we, but 
 the grace or strength of God in us, that enabled us to do 
 what we may have done. At all events, it is surely our 
 duty to be loyal to what seems to us to be true. 
 
 When Dr. John Pulsford's " Morgenrothe " appeared 
 some one said to him, " That is a very remarkable book," 
 to which, conscious that it contained a message given to 
 him to deliver, he replied, " Sir, it is a remarkable book.'' 
 
 As John Ruskin says : " All great men not only know 
 their business, but usually know that they know it ; and are 
 not only right in their main opinions, but they usually know 
 that they are right in them ; only they do not think much of 
 themselves on that account. Arnolfo knows he can build a 
 good dome at Florence ; Albert Durer writes calmly to one 
 who has found fault with his work, ' It cannot be better 
 
LOVING TRUTHFULNESS. 155 
 
 done ; ' Sir Isaac Newton knows that he has worked out 
 a problem or two that would have puzzled anybody else ; 
 only they do not expect their fellow-men, therefore, to 
 fall down and worship them. They have a curious under- 
 sense of powerlessness, feeling that the greatness is not 
 in them, but through them — that they could not do or be 
 anything else than God made them, and they see some- 
 thing Divine and God-made in every other man they meet, 
 and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful." 
 
 In this sense " egotism is true modesty." 
 
 Then the love of gossip is altnost sure to turn the mmd 
 away from truth. Those infected by this spirit are 
 very seldom accurate in their reports. They become fond 
 of telling startling stories, and often to render them so they 
 lay on the colours very heavily. The reward they seek is 
 astonishment in their hearers, and if the plain, unvarnished 
 story they have heard does not produce such astonish- 
 ment, their brush soon adds colour to the picture. They 
 do not mean to be untruthful, but their craving for excite- 
 ment often renders them so. Gossip soon degenerates 
 into slander. And the love which should always mark 
 our speech soon withers in the gossip's heart, and often 
 as much harm is done as by the assassin's steel. 
 
 Then our interest, or what we fancy so, sometimes indis- 
 poses us to be quite true. We see that it will stand in the 
 way of our business, of our prospects in life, or some 
 scheme that we have in hand. It is not easy for the trader 
 to describe accurately the goods he has to sell, or one 
 who wishes to let a house to include its drawbacks in his 
 description, or for a man to be quite fair to his rival, 
 whether it be in trade, or art, or literature, or love. All 
 these put a severe strain upon our loyalty to truth.* 
 
 * I venture here to utter a protest against a form of untruthfulness 
 which has of late grown to great dimensions. I refer to the unblushing 
 
156 LOVING TRUTHFULNESS. 
 
 Then, too, inclination makes it difficult to be quite true. 
 Inclination plays a large part in forming and fixing the 
 views we hold. It tends to blind us to the things 
 against, and to make us very keen in noting all that 
 favours, the course to which we are inclined. Many of 
 our so-called opinions are little more than apologies for 
 our own practices or tastes. It must be very hard for a 
 State Churchman, especially if he be the holder of a snug 
 deanery or a cosy rectory, to be quite fair to the ideas of 
 a spiritual kingdom set forth by the advocates of a Free 
 Church. I rather suspect that the man who is fond 
 of his glass of wine must find it difficult to give~ full 
 weight to the argument for abstinence ; whilst, on the other 
 hand, the man possessed with convictions of the necessity 
 of abstinence will hardly estimate fairly the argument for 
 moderation. If we could get at the heart of many of our 
 opinions we should find inclination playing a large part. 
 And one of the things most hard to do is to eliminate in- 
 clination in the formation of our opinions, so as to look at 
 facts and truths with unbiassed judgment. If we were 
 quite honest, we should say about a good many courses 
 for which we argue, "Well, you know, I like them; " or, 
 as Dr. Ralph Wardlaw, when his friend Dr. John Brown 
 argued against his habit of fishing, replied, "Well, I can't 
 answer you ; but fish I must, and shall." 
 
 Then, again, it is difficult to be loyal to truth if the atmosphere 
 in which we are found be uncongenial. It is easy enough 
 
 way in which many persons whilst travelling on railways, to secure 
 plenty of space for themselves, will not only spread out their luggage to 
 give the impression that all the seats have been taken, but will even say 
 that they have been engaged. On many occasions I have been told this 
 of carriage after carriage, until in sheer desperation, and fear that the 
 train would leave me behind, I have forced my way into a carriage said 
 to be full, and when the train started found how utterly untrue the 
 statements made have been. It has then been curious, if it were not so 
 sad, to watch the shamefaced looks of the deceivers. 
 
LOVING TRUTHFULNESS. 157 
 
 when we are in the midst of those holding Hke opinions 
 to our own, but it is a very different matter when all are 
 against us. It is difficult to be loyal to Liberalism in the 
 midst of Conservative circles, or to Conservatism sur- 
 rounded by Radicals — to be true to our religious convictions 
 in a sceptical circle, or for the sceptic to be true to his in a 
 religious one. These are the seasons which test a man's 
 courage and fidelity. I do not mean that it is necessary 
 to obtrude our views or assert our position — that often 
 only leads to strife ; but if points of controversy be raised 
 we should let it be clearly known where we stand, and not, 
 by silence or seeming assent, deny our faith, whether it 
 be in relation to politics or religion. Good manners may 
 demand that we should, if possible, avoid controversy ; but 
 if controversy arise through no movement of ours, then 
 truth demands that we should be loyal. There are those 
 whose ambition seems to be all things to all men — to 
 please everybody. Such men seem to me to be nothing 
 better than chameleons, which take their colour from their 
 surroundings. That may be all very well for chameleons, 
 but it is not well for men, whose end should be not to 
 please, but to be true. St. Paul went as far as any man 
 should in adapting himself to circumstances ; but he felt that 
 there was a point beyond which he dared not go, when he 
 said, " If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of 
 Christ." Against this we need to be on our guard, 
 especially in an age like ours, disposed to regard truth 
 as beyond the attainment of men. Pure, unadulterated 
 truth may be ; here on earth our powers may not be 
 adequate to the vision of absolute truth — it might blind us 
 by its brightness. We may be able only to " see through a 
 glass, darkly," but that is no reason why we should not be 
 loyal to the truth to which we have attained. One of the 
 bitter fruits of the Agnostic temper of our time is that, 
 
158 LOVING TRUTHFULNESS. 
 
 fearing to be positive, men become indifferent ; fearing to 
 say they know, they become hesitating so that they do not 
 tread life's way with a firm step. Over-positiveness may 
 have been an evil in the past ; over-hesitation is the 
 danger into which we are in peril of falling. It is almost 
 better to hold even a false idea with tenacity than to be 
 afraid to hold anything firmly because there may be some 
 element of error therein. Man in his physical frame is 
 not an invertebrate animal, and in his spiritual nature 
 there ought to be a backbone of conviction, so that he may 
 walk erect through life. Let that be wanting, and the 
 vigour of his manhood is lost. To be undetermined in 
 opinion in politics or in religion is the sign of weakness. 
 A man should fight his way to an assured position, proving 
 all things ; he should not be satisfied till he has found and 
 can hold fast that which he has proved to be good. And 
 having fought his doubt and gathered strength, he should 
 be ready to confess, and, if need be, defend his faith. 
 Thomas Carlyle says of his father, "He was one of those 
 few men that could believe and know as well as inquire 
 and be of opinion." * It is by such men that the progress 
 of the world has been secured — not by your hesitating 
 tremblers, afraid to say they know because there may be 
 some hidden particle of error in their belief These are 
 always in the wake of the army — afraid to move lest they 
 should be surprised by the foe. Pilates who ask and are 
 ever asking " What is truth ? " afraid to condemn or release 
 the Christ, always trying to find some via media, end by 
 crucifying the Truth. There are such men now. In the 
 political world they see only the errors of politicians, and 
 do nothing to bring in a better day. In the religious realm, 
 they see only the mistakes of the Churches, and help none 
 to a better course. No Church is accurate enough in 
 
 * " Reminiscences," i. 24 
 
LOVING TRUTHFULNESS. 159 
 
 •doctrine for such, and they wander about neither con- 
 tributing to nor helping the work of any. To wait till we 
 can get truth without any admixture of error, or a Church 
 without a flaw, or a state with a perfect government, 
 is folly. We might as well say we will not dwell on the 
 earth, for it is not perfect ; it has its drawbacks. All 
 that we can do is to get as near truth as possible, and then 
 be loyal to our clearest convictions. Resolve to plant 
 your foot somewhere, and then stand firm, ready to hold 
 fast, if need be to witness to and even suffer for, the 
 truth you have reached. 
 
 But then all this, the Apostle says, must be done in love. 
 We are not to carry truth about as a drawn sword, ready 
 to smite those who differ from us. To witness is not, of 
 necessity, to fight. To be loyal to truth need not make 
 us dogmatic or self-assertive. The temper in which we 
 hold truth is as important as the truth itself. Truth 
 is prejudiced by a sour or assertive temper in the man 
 who holds it. Love is more than orthodoxy. A gracious 
 spirit is more than correctness of opinion. It is better 
 to be a sceptic with a loving heart than a believer with 
 an unloving one. The devils, we are told, believe and 
 tremble. A faith that works by love is the only faith which 
 Christ acknowledges. Unloving believers do more harm 
 than even sceptics. Indeed, I question very much whether 
 there can be such a thing as an unloving believer in 
 Christ. There may be in creeds or confessions, but a man 
 who believes in Christ will catch of His loving spirit, and 
 be transformed to His image. " Truthing it in love; " that 
 is the only right way of contending earnestly for the faith 
 once delivered to the saints. The dogmatic, pugnacious, 
 assertive way in which men have contended for Christianity 
 has defeated its own purpose. A surgeon might as well 
 take a hatchet to amputate a limb ; he would get off the 
 
i6o LOVING TRUTHFULNESS. 
 
 limb, but he would destroy the life of his patient. And to 
 bear witness for Christian truth in an unloving way is 
 quite as foolish, since Christianity is a spirit even more 
 than a doctrine. Its doctrine is of little use save as it 
 creates that Christian temper and spirit which the Apostle 
 sets forth in detail as meekness, gentleness, patience, 
 longsuffering, and declares that against such there is no 
 law. One who had been looking at a portrait by a great 
 painter remarked, " It is certainly like, but it is much 
 better-looking ; " to which the painter replied, " It is the 
 truth told lovingly." And the misfortune of the past has 
 been that men have tried to propagate Christianity in 
 an unchristian spirit — they have fought for it with carnal 
 weapons, and their warfare has been waged with all manner 
 of uncharitableness. Let us ever seek to speak the truth, 
 but let us seek with equal, if not with greater earnestness, 
 to speak that truth in love, and then, though men may not 
 be convinced by our arguments, they will be won by our 
 spirit to cry, " We will go with you, for we perceive that 
 God is with you." 
 
ACCEPTABLE WORDS. 
 
 "Let the words of my mouth ... be acceptable in Thy sight."-- 
 Psalm xix, 14. 
 
 THE whole verse from which these words are taken 
 forms a comprehensive prayer for a life acceptable 
 to God. When both the meditations of the heart and the 
 words of the mouth are acceptable, of necessity the life 
 must be so. " As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." 
 Need we therefore pray for both acceptable thoughts 
 and acceptable words ? Some may say, ' Get the prayer 
 answered about the heart, and the mouth will give expres- 
 sion to the heart. Quicken right feeling, and right words 
 will follow. Get right thoughts, and you will of necessity 
 utter acceptable words. Purify the fountain, and the 
 waters will flow forth pure and free.' And yet a little 
 thought will show us that the prayer about our words is 
 not an unnecessary one. Meditation, it is true, is only 
 unuttered speech. Even our thoughts must be clothed 
 upon with words, though they may be unuttered. We 
 think in words. Complete mastery of a strange language 
 is attained only when we are able to think in it. There 
 is little, if any, thought apart from words. So that when 
 we pray for acceptable meditations, we do thereby pray 
 for acceptable, though they may be unspoken, words. 
 And yet, when uttered, words have a separate existence, 
 and most powerfully affect the thoughts of our minds. 
 Language has a reflex influence : spoken words crystallise 
 
 1 1 
 
i62 ACCEPTABLE WORDS. 
 
 thought ; utterance gives thought substance and form ; 
 thought is revealed in speech, but speech reacts upon 
 thought. There is ample scope, therefore, for the double 
 prayer, " Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation 
 of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my 
 strength, and my Redeemer.'' 
 
 It is not uncommon to iind men disposed to undervalue 
 speech. The old proverb, " Actions speak louder than 
 words," which, rightly applied, has much truth in it, is 
 often grossly misapplied. It is so when a distinction is 
 drawn between the men of speech and the men of action, 
 to the detriment of the former. We need to remind our- 
 selves that sometimes speech itself is the mightiest action. 
 In our Houses of Legislature few indeed are the men 
 who carry out by actual labour the great measures passed 
 therein. Speech is the chief portion of their duty. When 
 the history of our time comes to be written, it will be 
 found that some of the most powerful forces therein were 
 these words which some would esteem so lightly. 
 
 In many a case speech is action. Luther's words have 
 been called " half battles." His work lay chiefly in the 
 noble, fearless words which fell from his lips. 
 
 We do not realise so fully as we should the large 
 place which words fill, and the great influence for good 
 or evil, for joy or sorrow, they exert in life. In them 
 the chief commerce of life consists, for they are our only 
 means of definite communication with one another. And 
 yet we are often so careless about them. We count out 
 our coins most carefully ; but we are not so careful about 
 our words — the coins of feeling and thought. St. James 
 affirmed that "if any stumbleth not in word, the same 
 is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body also." 
 " Moses spake unadvisedly with his hps,'' and so lost the 
 high privilege of conducting Israel into the land of promise. 
 
ACCEPTABLE WORDS. 163 
 
 " One market-day in Oxford, when the town was much 
 crowded with roughs, and the 'Town' and 'Gown' element 
 were apt to come into collision, John Henry Newman 
 "was walking past All Saints' Church, in the line of march 
 of a furiously drunken butcher, who came up foul-mouthed 
 and blasphemous. When they were near together, Newman 
 stood in his path. An undergraduate — a muscular fellow, 
 the stroke of his college boat — expecting violence, came 
 •close behind the butcher, and was just making ready to 
 fell him, when he saw the man stop short; Newman was 
 speaking to him. Very quietly he said, ' My friend, if 
 you thought of the meaning of your words, you would 
 not say them.' The savage was tamed on the spot ; he 
 touched his hat, turned round, and went back."* 
 
 That reproof applies to many of us. If we thought of 
 the meaning of our words, some of them would not be 
 spoken ; but often we speak first, and think afterwards ; we 
 allow the tongue to go before the reason or the conscience. 
 Harm is oftener wrought by want of thought than want 
 of heart. To think before we speak may make us a 
 little slow in speech, but then our words would be worth 
 hearing, which is more than can always be said of those 
 of voluble folk. There is a story told of a visit paid by 
 Tennyson to Carlyle, that they sat together the whole 
 evening without a single word being spoken. When 
 Tennyson rose to go, Carlyle accompanied him to the 
 door, and exclaimed as they parted, " What a good time 
 we have had ! come again soon." Well, even that was 
 better than mere gossip, better, perhaps, than Coleridge's 
 volubiHty. He was once asked by a friend, " Did you 
 •ever hear me preach ? " "I never heard you do anything 
 else," was the prompt reply. Too few are better than 
 too many words ; for where there are too many there is 
 
 * Father Lockhart. 
 
i64 ACCEPTABLE WORDS. 
 
 likely to be some unadvised speech. We are oftener sorry 
 for our speech than for our silence. 
 
 I have sometimes wished that it were possible to trace 
 the course of some spoken word, that we could follow its 
 silent, mystic, wondrous influence through all the tangled 
 course of human thought, through all the devious way of 
 human life, seeing it as God sees it, from the moment of 
 utterance down to the end of time 1 Imagine, if you can, 
 the history of some of the unspeakably precious words 
 of Christ ! Take, for example, that great utterance which 
 in every tone seems charged with holy peace and heavenly 
 calm, " Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy 
 laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, 
 and learn of Me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart : and 
 ye shall find rest unto your souls." How it has graven 
 itself upon human hearts ! How it has echoed and re- 
 echoed in weary spirits ! How it has fallen like cooling 
 dew upon fevered brains ! How it has risen like some 
 star of hope in the night of darkness ! How it has been 
 like a tender hand leading the wanderer on his weary way t 
 
 But then I have wished that the course of some evil 
 word could be opened before us ; a word uttered against 
 the Most High God ! a word of profanity or unclean- 
 ness. What a terrible way it would lead us ! how 
 blighting its course ! Longfellow has just a hint of this, 
 far-reaching influence of words in his well-known little 
 song — 
 
 " I shot an arrow into the air ; 
 It fell to earth, I knew not where ; 
 For so swiftly it flew, the sight 
 Could not follow it in its flight. 
 
 " I breathed a song into the air ; 
 It fell to earth, I knew not where ; 
 For who has sight so keen and strong 
 That it can follow the flight of song ? 
 
ACCEPTABLE WORDS. 165 
 
 " Long — long afterwards, in an oak 
 I found the arrow still unbroke, 
 And the song from beginning to end 
 I found again in the heart of a friend." 
 
 If a true vision of the course and influence of words 
 were granted us, we should utter with new meaning and 
 earnestness the prayer of the Psalmist, "Let the words 
 of my mouth be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord ! " 
 
 We will consider some of the essentials of acceptable 
 words. 
 
 I . They must be truthful words. 
 
 I do not mean by this merely that we must not break 
 the ninth Commandment — " Thou shalt not bear false 
 witness against thy neighbour." Far more than this is 
 essential to entire truthfulness — ^that requires our words 
 to be in harmony with our thought. We all know how 
 the camera receives with perfect accuracy an impression of 
 the form placed before it. One may quarrel with an 
 artist working with brush and colours. He may say here 
 or there is little resemblance between the original and the 
 picture. He cannot thus complain in reference to the 
 work done by the pencil of the sun. That depicts what- 
 ever is put before it. And our speech should be thus 
 photographic of our thought. Speech should be simply 
 uttered thought. There are, I know, feelings which reach 
 beyond the capacity of language — which no words can 
 express. Our Poet Laureate is not the only one obliged 
 to declare — 
 
 " I sometimes hold it half a sin 
 
 To put in words i][ie gyiefl feel ; 
 For words, like nature, half reveal. 
 And half conceal the soul within. "i 
 
 But his reference is to feeling, not thought. Language 
 may not be equal to the full expression of feeling, but 
 save in the most exceptional cases, it is adequate to the 
 
i66 ACCEPTABLE WORDS. 
 
 expression of thought. When people say, " I cannot ex- 
 press what I mean," it is because they do not know clearly 
 what they mean — their thought is hazy and indistinct. 
 Clear thought soon reaches out to clear expression. 
 
 Speech is the clothing of thought, and, like clothing, 
 should fit. Why do we speak ? To give expression to our 
 sentiments or feelings or thoughts. Surely, therefore, there 
 should be harmony between them. I know full well that 
 this is the merest truism. No argument is needed to enforce 
 it. And yet how far we are from acting on the principle I 
 How should we tremble if those hearing our words at 
 the same time saw our thoughts ! Need I say that there 
 is One who at the same moment hears our words and 
 reads our thoughts ? What violent contrasts Heaven 
 must witness between them ! What strange contradic- 
 tions between words and feelings ! " Thou desirest truth 
 in the inward parts : and in the hidden part Thou shalt 
 make me to know wisdom." Let us strive to be true. 
 Better far to be silent than false. The hiding-place of 
 silence may always be ours. 
 
 Such a rule would exclude — 
 
 {a) All exaggerated speech. It is to be feared that this- 
 is a special failing of our own day. The sobriety which 
 characterised the speech of our Puritan ancestors, and 
 which still marks one of the sects of our time, has well- 
 nigh departed. Our conversation is full of exaggerated 
 phrases. Strong, solemn, earnest words are applied to 
 trivial things. Presently we shall have no serious words, 
 unmarred by their associations. The " tall talk " of the 
 Western world has come across the waters, has been taken 
 up by the fast and fashionable circles of our day — circles 
 so receptive of all that is evil, so hardened against the 
 beautiful and true ; and is gradually passing into our 
 common speech, tarnishing our noble English tongue, and 
 
ACCEPTABLE WORDS. 167 
 
 robbing it of simplicity and vigour. I will give but one 
 instance out of a great number. In what strange con- 
 nections the word " awful " is found ! How hideous it is 
 to hear a thing described as " awfully jolly " by up-grown 
 men and women ! For the sake of our noble mother 
 tongue, if for no higher motive, let us refrain from the use 
 of such unacceptable words. 
 
 But there are exaggerations not merely of expression, 
 but of thought and expression combined. It is proverbial 
 how rapidly reports as to events and persons enlarge, 
 and so great is the change wrought in them, that they are 
 unrecognised even by their authors. In some cases this 
 is intentional. There is a settled purpose to make the 
 report more striking in order to produce an effect. There 
 are persons so impatient of a plain recital, that they long 
 to give it warmth and colour. Just as an artist longs to 
 fill in the outline upon the easel, so in this sensational 
 age the story is allowed but a short life in its simple 
 beauty, but is speedily made to glow with unnatural 
 hues. 
 
 In other cases the same effect is unconsciously produced. 
 There is no intent to deceive, but so lively are the imagina- 
 tions of some, that unconsciously they add intensity and 
 vividness to the picture they describe. Rarely do we get, 
 either from the lip or the press, " a round, unvarnished 
 tale." Such are not " acceptable words." 
 
 (6) All unreal words. An illustration or two will be 
 better than any description. For example : A mistress 
 instructs her servants, should visitors call at a certain time, 
 or should certain persons call at any time, to say " she is 
 not at home." This is not using acceptable words, and, 
 let me add, she is teaching her servants methods of 
 deception which, sooner or later, they will apply in ways 
 that will not be pleasant to herself You call at a friend's 
 
i68 ACCEPTABLE WORDS. 
 
 house. It is near the time of one of the ordinary meals. 
 You are invited to remain ; you really wish, and, it may 
 be, came intending to, and do remain ; and yet you make 
 a multitude of excuses for not remaining. Such are not 
 acceptable words. An article is offered for sale. The 
 intending purchaser asks, " Is it the best ? Is it of a 
 certain kind ? " The seller, knowing full well the mean- 
 ing of the purchaser, replies in the affirmative, knowing 
 also full well that it is not the best, that it is not of the 
 kind desired, but only the best he possesses — the nearest 
 he has in stock to the kind required. Such words do not 
 harmonise with the knowledge possessed by the seller, 
 and are therefore not "acceptable words." 
 
 (c) All flattering words. This does not preclude honest 
 praise, for in this world, where nothing good is accom- 
 plished without thought and toil, words of honest com- 
 mendation are of the greatest value. They often prove 
 a stimulus and incentive to further effort. There are men 
 who, upon principle, refrain from all commendation ; it is 
 never heard from their lips by their children, their co- 
 workers, their friends. Thus they withhold that which 
 would often prove a rousing, healthful influence, and 
 would lead on to nobler efforts. Surely if there be 
 promised to the faithful, in spite of all their imperfections 
 and failures, the " Well done ! " of the Master, we may 
 give a like "Well done!" to our brethren striving to 
 do true and faithful work. If the story of many a noble 
 worker were fully told, it would show that some true 
 word of praise had formed the starting-point of his career. 
 But then they must be honest words. Let them be words 
 of flattery, and they will prove to be only pernicious. 
 There are men in whom the habit of flattering has become 
 a second nature. Their vocabulary of admiration is ex- 
 tended, and in constant use. Surely we have all known 
 
ACCEPTABLE WORDS. 169 
 
 men whose praise can never be safely accepted. Let us 
 be true, and then no flattering word will ever pass our 
 lips. Our words of praise will then have a new meaning, 
 because they will be known to be sincere. 
 
 II. They must be pure words. I do not mean by this 
 that we should only refrain from the utterance of words 
 that are actually impure, but that we should avoid in our 
 speech every suggestion of the unclean. Suggestion is 
 often more harmful even than explicit words. What our 
 French neighbours call " double entendre " is the most 
 mischievous in its influence. The bold realism of M. Zola 
 may be less harmful than the veiled impurity of some of 
 our English novelists. The former may disgust by its 
 outspokenness ; the latter often first charms, and then in- 
 jures by the way in which evil is delicately clothed in fair 
 words. We may well test our speech by asking whether 
 we should dare to utter it before the pure-minded — a 
 mother or a sister. 
 
 The evil lies chiefly, if not entirely, in men's speech 
 -one with another. When the other sex are absent men 
 are tempted to narrate stories or make jokes in which ele- 
 ments of impurity are present. The talk that goes on in 
 places where only men gather, as in fashionable and even 
 literary clubs, is enough to make the angels weep. Such 
 conversation has often corrupted the mind and led to the 
 ruin of many a youth. Any words that would be silenced 
 by the entrance of a pure-minded woman are evil, and 
 should never be spoken. 
 
 III. They must be marked by charity. This essential 
 to acceptable words is well characterised by St. Paul 
 as thinking no evil, rejoicing not in iniquity, but rejoic- 
 ing in the truth. There are men who have an instinct- 
 ive delight in depicting evil, as vultures have for the 
 carrion on which they feed. Over a brother's fault ithey 
 
170 ACCEPTABLE WORDS. 
 
 gather with gloating eye and cruel heart. Carping, 
 detracting words are ever upon their lips. To them 
 every noble purpose has some evil root. They deem all 
 hearts are moved by their own selfish motives. They 
 cast their own dark shadow over every fair and noble 
 scene. 
 
 This is an evil spirit — ^yea, it belongs to the very spirit 
 of evil. In the pages of the Old Testament there are two 
 great scenes in which the foe of man and God is revealed, 
 and in both his words are filled with this spirit. In the 
 garden of man's innocency the tempter appears with 
 these insinuations against the Most High God : " Ye 
 shall not surely die : for God doth know that in the day 
 ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye 
 shall be as God, knowing good and evil." Slanderous 
 words, not shrinking from attributing jealousy to the 
 Eternal Father ! The same spirit of evil appears in the 
 days of Job. Jehovah asks, " Hast thou considered my 
 servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a 
 perfect arid an upright man, one that feareth God ? and 
 escheweth evil ? " What reply has the tempter to this 
 Divine eulogium ? " Doth Job fear God for nought ? " 
 Slanderous words, not shrinking from attributing low, 
 selfish motives to a good man's action ! 
 
 Evil ought so to grieve our hearts as to make it impos- 
 sible for us to blazon it abroad. Truth and goodness 
 ought to be so attractive as to lead us to speak of them 
 with delight and joy. 
 
 We do not check the progress of evil by publishing 
 abroad our brethren's failings and sins. Do we not rather 
 spread the evil ? It is said that public executions wit- 
 nessed by teeming myriads of men have led to the per- 
 petration of many a murderous deed. And we are told 
 by those competent to form an opinion that the great 
 
ACCEPTABLE TVORDS. 171 
 
 publicity now given to deeds of darkness, far from check- 
 ing such deeds, often becomes a positive incitement 
 thereto. 
 
 Oh that we had greater tenderness for sinful, wandering 
 souls ! " If a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are 
 spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness ; 
 considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted." 
 
 Let us remember how, in all our lives, good and evil 
 are mingled. Let us not remember the evil, nor spread 
 it abroad, and thus close the door of hope against hearts 
 burdened with their sins. Let us strive to be like Him 
 who, though of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, yet 
 " casts our sins behind His back." 
 
 IV. They must not be passionate words. It is very hard 
 to restrain such words when, as is sometimes the case, 
 we are unjustly accused, or when evil motives are attributed 
 to our sincere action. Even Moses could not restrain 
 such words when, at Meribah, the people brought against 
 him irritating and unjust accusations. St. Paul felt this 
 difficulty when he said, " If it be possible, as much as 
 lieth in you, live peaceably with all men," implying that 
 with some men that was not always possible. And in 
 another place he asks the Thessalonians to pray for him, 
 that he "may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked 
 men : for all men have not faith," that is, faith in their 
 fellow-men — they are always suspecting motives, always 
 on the look out for selfish aims. I suspect such persons 
 measure other people's corn by their own bushel — they 
 read their own inner motives into other people's actions. 
 Under such circumstances, it is very hard to restrain 
 passionate words. Anger is perhaps allowable, but not 
 passion, and the words in which it finds expression. 
 
 For when we lose self-mastery we allow the worse rather 
 than the better self to mount the throne and wield the 
 
172 ACCEPTABLE WORDS. 
 
 sceptre of our life, we allow the tiger in us rather than the 
 man to rule ; whereas we should only allow the regenerated 
 man — the Christ-touched man — to move and speak. 
 
 The tongue is but an instrument whose discord or har- 
 mony is determined from a deeper source. The tongue 
 does but frame and express the thoughts of the mind or 
 the feelings of the heart. " But the things which proceed 
 out of the mouth come forth out of the heart ; and they 
 defile the man," said our Lord. Though this is so, the 
 tongue needs watching and checking. An Eastern proverb 
 tells us that the word a man keeps unspoken is his servant : 
 the word he utters is his master. If we can only keep 
 silence or be guarded in our speech, the passion within us 
 may die down, or, at all events, will not hurt others. But 
 let out, unlike steam, it does not exhaust, but rather 
 recuperates itself It is like flame, which, reaching out 
 to the air, burns all the fiercer. Speech often aggravates 
 instead of exhausting passion, giving it also currency 
 and wider effect. Nor can we recall its effects. It 
 wounds, and though by confession and sorrow we may 
 to some extent heal the wound, the scar remains. How 
 much some of us would give to recall passionate, hastily 
 spoken, ill-advised words ! As Will Carleton, in his 
 homely but incisive style, says : — 
 
 " Boys flying kites haul in their white-winged birds; 
 You can't do that way when you're flying words. 
 '.Careful with fire ' is good advice, we know ; 
 ' Careful with words ' is ten times doubly so. 
 Thoughts unexpressed may sometimes fall back dead ; 
 But God Himself can't kill them when they're said." 
 
 If in our speech we would only consider how our words 
 will affect those to whom they are spoken — if we would 
 try to hear them, as it were, with their ears, and consider 
 how they will affect their hearts, there would not be much 
 passionate or unadvised speech ; certainly there would be 
 
ACCEPTABLE WORDS. 173 
 
 few spirits wounded or lives embittered by the words of 
 our lips. For spirits arc wounded, lives are embittered 
 by words. Evil thoughts are bad, but then they do not 
 hurt others, only ourselves ; but evil words carry the evil 
 through the ear to the hearts and lives of others. As 
 Adelaide Procter says : — 
 
 " Yet on the dull silence breaking, 
 
 With a lightning- flash, a word, 
 
 Bearing endless desolation 
 
 On its blighting wing, I heard ; 
 
 Earth can forge no keener weapon, 
 
 Dealing surer death and pain. 
 
 And the cruel echo answered, 
 
 ' Through long years again.' 
 " I have known a spirit calmer 
 
 Than the calmest lake, and clear 
 
 As the heaven that gazed upon it, 
 
 With no wave of hope or fear. 
 
 But a storm had swept across it, 
 
 And its deepest depths were stirred, 
 
 Never, never more to slumber. 
 
 Only by a word ! 
 " Words are mightj', words are living 
 
 Serpents with their venomous stings. 
 
 Or bright angels crowding round us 
 
 With Heaven's liglit upon their wings. 
 
 Every word has its own spirit, 
 
 True or false, that never dies ; 
 
 Every word man's lips have uttered 
 
 Echoes in God's skies." 
 
 V. TJiey must be godly words. I do not mean by this 
 that our speech should be full of words about God, that 
 it should be interlarded with Scripture, as was the speech 
 of our Puritan ancestors. There are times and seasons 
 when we may calmly and earnestly speak about the high- 
 est matters. " A word spoken in due season, how good is 
 it ! " But nothing is so likely to degenerate into mere cant 
 as constant reference to high themes. Most delicately 
 must you touch the grape newly taken from the vine, or 
 
174 ACCEPTABLE WORDS. 
 
 its lovely bloom will be lost past all recovery. No 
 gardener's skill, no painter's brush, can bring it back. 
 Thus may the freshness, the sanctity, the beauty of spiritual 
 things be lost. Too frequently upon the lip, they will 
 grow to be less felt within the heart. The lip may starve 
 rather than nourish the heart. 
 
 There are circles in which the most sacred themes are 
 talked of in the most glib manner, and sung about with 
 trifling minds. Thus their sacred beauty is defiled. We 
 need to remember the caution of Aubrey de Vere — 
 
 "Ye who would build the churches of the Lord, 
 See that ye make the western portals low : 
 Let no one enter who disdains to bow. 
 High truths profanely gazed at, unadored, 
 Will be abused at first, at last abhorred." 
 
 But still earthly speech may be seasoned with godly 
 thoughts. Earthly things may be seen in a heavenly 
 light. We plead foi a godly spirit rather than godly 
 words, for the spirit of heaven rather than the language 
 of heaven. Without any reference to the scholar's lore, 
 the scholar z's felt in all his writing and in all his speech. 
 Without proclaiming his ancestry, you feel the gentleman 
 in all his ways. And thus the spirit of the Christian 
 may be seen. Better far is it to be known as a Christian 
 by our spirit than by our words, by the bearing of our 
 life than by the profession we make. It was said of 
 Edmund Burke that you could not take shelter beneath the 
 same tree with him, from a passing storm, without feeling 
 that he was no common man. Surely the presence and 
 power of the high things of our holy faith will, even 
 -without declarations and professions, make men feel that 
 -we have been in the Holiest Company, and, in some 
 xaeasure, transformed to its likeness. And then, whether 
 Ave speak or are silent, it will be felt that we have been 
 with Jesus and learnt of Him. 
 
ANGER WITHOUT SIN. 
 
 " Be ye angry, and sin not : let not the sun go down upon your wrath." 
 — Ephes. iv. 26. 
 
 HAS anger, then, a place in the Christian character ? 
 You say, ' We thought it one of the feelings to be 
 overcome or cast out from the heart. Why, a few verses 
 later the Apostle includes it among the things to be put 
 away, the same word being used in both instances — in 
 the text the verb, and in the later passage the noun from 
 which it sprang. Is there, then, a place for anger in a 
 saintly life ? ' Certainly. There may be an anger without 
 sin. 
 
 And that suggests a very important idea which has too 
 often been lost sight of — namely, that Christianity was 
 meant not to overthrow, but to regulate each faculty of our 
 nature. Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfil. That 
 holds good not only of the law, concerning which it was 
 spoken, but of man's nature. The Church, however, has 
 too often overlooked this great truth, and set herself to 
 destroy rather than regulate. She was led to this not by 
 the teachings of her Divine Master, but by ascetic Eastern 
 ideas, which in early times got mixed up with those 
 teachings. Such ideas have always prevailed more or 
 less in the East, and since the Church won its first 
 triumphs in those regions, the ideas current there filtered 
 into Christian thought, and became so mingled therewith 
 
176 ANGER WITHOUT SIN. 
 
 that the one could not be distinguished from the other. 
 You cannot get the pure water of life if you stoop to drink 
 of the river anywhere save at its fountain-head, in the 
 teaching of Christ and the Apostles. Our Anglican and 
 Roman friends are fond of pointing to the Church of the 
 first three or four centuries. By that time the pollution 
 had begun ; the crystal stream of truth had been con- 
 taminated by foreign ideas. Priestly notions had sprung 
 up, and as is always the case where they prevail, ascetic 
 ideas had gained ground. And such ascetic ideas exhorted 
 men not to the regulation, but the overthrow of certain 
 faculties of their nature. And that conception has 
 passed over in subtle forms from Catholic to Protestant 
 Churches. In the former the object of attack was chiefly 
 the body, and so fasting, penance, celibacy were enjoined. 
 In the latter the objects of attack were of a different kind. 
 The religious life was regarded as of so serious a kind that 
 no place was left for the action of many of our faculties. 
 Mirth, imagination, the histrionic power were all put 
 under the ban. 
 
 To this day there are persons who regard wit or 
 humour as being quite inconsistent with the Christian 
 character. To laugh in a church is enough to put the 
 preacher who causes the laugh, or the people who join in 
 it, quite outside the company of the elect. I do not 
 know what such persons would have said to St. Philip 
 Neri, whose saintly character won for him the title of the 
 Apostle of Rome, and whose room went by the agreeable 
 nickname of the " Home of Christian Mirth." The saintly 
 George Herbert Used to sing and play his part at a weekly 
 music meeting, and to justify this he would often say, 
 " Religion does not banish mirth, but only moderates and 
 sets rules to it," a saying which a good many religious 
 people even in our day would do well to lay to heart, and 
 
ANGER WITHOUT SIN. 177 
 
 apply both to their own lives and even more in their judg- 
 ment of otiiers. 
 
 To many, the ideal Christian is a man half of whose 
 faculties are kept in abeyance — whose life has no more 
 flavour than the white of an egg. Now, that is not the 
 New Testament idea of the matter. Its rule is regulation, 
 not destruction — mastery, not overthrow. Is it likely 
 that God would endow His creatures with faculties simply 
 that they should occupy their time in destroying them ? 
 " Every creature of God is good, and is sanctified by the 
 word of God and by prayer." The Divine plan for our 
 life is use, not abuse. Numbers of people are kept out of 
 the Church by the idea that they would have to leave 
 half their nature outside, and they would rather stay out- 
 side themselves than leave half behind. I once urged a 
 man to come into the fellowship of the Church, and he 
 gave as a reason for refusing that he had such a hot 
 temper. Is the Church, then, to be composed only of mild- 
 eyed men, who have not got force of nature enough to be 
 angry ? If so, it will be a very mediocre company. 
 
 Yes, there is room for anger, provided it do not pass into 
 sin. For anger is not only a faculty of human, but even 
 of the Divine nature. Do we not read again and again of 
 the anger of God ? Are we not told that " the Spirit of 
 God came upon Saul, and his anger was kindled greatly " ? * 
 Can we follow the course of Jesus Christ, and not perceive 
 how again and again He grew angry at the hypocrisy of 
 men ? Do we not hear of the wrath of the Lamb — that is 
 of the most tender, most patient, most loving of the sons 
 of men ? 
 
 And with such examples before us, must we not say 
 that the nature incapable of anger is far from being a 
 complete one ? James the First once said, " I love not one 
 
 * I Sam. xi. 6, 
 
 12 
 
178 ANGER WITHOUT SIN: 
 
 that will never be angry, for as one who is without sorrow 
 is without gladness, so he that is without anger is without 
 love." The mother of Dr. James Hamilton (so says her 
 son) " used often to be provoked with herself because she 
 could not be angry." F. W. Robertson, when he heard of 
 a base act, was so indignant that it rendered him sleepless. 
 After a conversation on the wrongs of women, he said his 
 blood was running liquid fire. His biographer says, " His 
 wrath was terrible, and did not evaporate in words. It was 
 Christlike indignation. Falsehood, hypocrisy, the sin of the 
 strong against the weak, stirred him to the very depths of 
 his being." Wordsworth thus describes and impersonates 
 a spirit of righteous indignation : — 
 
 " Pale was her hue ; yet mortal cheek 
 Ne'er kindled with a lovelier streak 
 When aught had suffered wrong, 
 When aught that breathes had felt a wound ; 
 Such look the oppressor might confound. 
 However proud and strong." * 
 
 Speaking of his father's anger, Thomas Carlyle says, " It 
 rather inspired him with new vehemence of insight and 
 more piercing emphasis of wisdom."! 
 
 The absence of anger, indeed, may arise from an agnostic 
 feeling that nothing can be known with certainty. I fear 
 that spirit is rather prevalent just now, and is producing 
 an indifferentism in politics as well as in religion. 
 Many matters are beyond our knowledge, but there are 
 others on which we. ought to make up our minds, and for 
 which we ought to be prepared, if needs be, to contend. 
 In recoil from dogmatism we must not swing round to 
 indifferentism, for that is the paralysis of life. There is 
 not much hope of any man who does not say of some 
 
 * Cf. Jacox's " Secular Annotations on Scripture Texts." 
 f " Reminiscences,'' p. 13. 
 
ANGER WITHOUT SIN. 179 
 
 things, as Luther did, " Here I stand ; I can do no other. 
 So help me, God." For without such men, and the 
 anger which naturally springs out of such a position, the 
 world would have made but little progress. Anger, indeed, 
 has been one of the factors in that progress. Without it 
 the slave trade and a host of great iniquities would never 
 have been brought to an end. It would be difficult to 
 name a man of gentler spirit than John Greenleaf Whittier, 
 to whom we owe some of the tenderest poems to be found 
 in our English tongue ; but his vehemence against the 
 slave trade and against war is equally noteworthy, and 
 his poems on these subjects quiver with a holy anger. 
 
 "It is vulgar to be angry on one's own account; we 
 ought only to be angry for great causes." In certain 
 cases, though not in that of the man who first said so, 
 when asked, "Doest thou well to be angry? " we ought, 
 we have a right to reply, " I do well to be angry." 
 
 But now let us see, if we can, the limitations of such 
 anger. Two of these are hinted at in the text. 
 
 The first is, it must not pass into sin. 
 
 I. To do this it must not pass into passion. When 
 this is the case it goes beyond our control. Passion 
 becomes the master, and the man its slave. Then the 
 horse gets the bit between its teeth and runs away with 
 its rider, and a man overcome by passion is in a like 
 helpless condition. We must keep a tight hold over 
 anger, and not permit it to hold us. It is only uncontrolled 
 anger which the Apostle bids us put away. We may 
 say of anger, as of fire, it is a good servant, but a bad 
 master. We must never let go our hold of the helm, or 
 our bark may be dashed on the cruel rocks, and become 
 a pitiable wreck. The moment anger passes into passion, 
 so that unconsidered words pass our lips or vengeful 
 feelings flash out of our eyes, it has ceased to be righteous, 
 
i8o ANGER WITHOUT SIN. 
 
 and become sinful. Anger is not to be turned out of 
 doors, but kept as a servant in the house. 
 
 2. Then we must he quite sure that the object of our 
 anger deserves it. Examination should precede punish- 
 ment ; the judge should go before the executioner. The 
 sword must not leap out of its scabbard till we have duly 
 considered whether its work is necessary. Most of us need 
 a keener sense of justice than we possess. Most of us need 
 a little more patience in hearing evidence. Unlike Jesus 
 Christ, we do not know by instinct what is in men, and 
 we should, therefore, inquire and examine more carefully 
 than we usually do. To judge by first appearances is often 
 to judge unrighteously. We need to look at acts not in 
 themselves, but in the light of the doers, in the light of 
 their characters, their temptations, their proclivities. There 
 is more virtue in some men's failures than in other men's 
 successes. In some cases failure deserves our pity rather 
 than our anger. After Peter's threefold denial, Christ only 
 looked on him. It may be that John Henry Newman had 
 that in mind when, as Vice-Principal of St. Mary's Hall 
 at Oxford, an undergraduate guilty of some gross mis- 
 conduct was brought before him for reproof. After the 
 interview the culprit was asked, "What did he say to 
 you ? " "I don't know, but he looked at me." We need 
 to keep the sword of anger sheathed until we are quite 
 sure not only that the evil has been done, but guiltily done, 
 and if it has been done against ourselves it is best to incline 
 to the side of mercy. It has been well said, " Every man 
 is a dispenser of justice ; but there is one wrong that he 
 is not bound to punish — that of which he himself is the 
 victim. Such a wrong is to be healed, not avenged." 
 
 3. Then, too, anger only falls short of sin when there is 
 pity in it. Anger at the evil, pity for the evil-doer. The 
 true object of anger is the sin, not the sinner. It is very 
 
ANGER WITHOUT SIN. i8i 
 
 difficult to make the distinction. Perhaps with us mortals 
 it cannot be always made. It needs a very high nature 
 to make it, but Christ made it. You remember that 
 striking declaration, "And when He had looked round on 
 them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their 
 hearts." That is the Apostle's description of His 
 feeling. He must have seen the mingled anger and grief 
 shining out of his Master's face. There is the ideal for us. 
 That represents the Divine anger in relation to us 
 sinners — anger at our sin, grief that our hearts are so 
 hard as to make us sinners. We need such an ideal before 
 us to keep our anger within proper limits, and preserve 
 it from being vindictive and revengeful. 
 
 4. Then, too, we need to remember our own frailty and 
 folly. Did we only stop to think, our anger would often 
 be diverted from others, and thrown back on ourselves. 
 " He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a 
 stone," said Christ. "And they went out one by one, 
 beginning from the eldest : and Jesus was left alone, and 
 the woman." Few stones would be cast did we wait to- 
 ask whether we are without sin, even of the particular 
 kind at which we are disposed to be angry. " First pull 
 out the beam that is in thine own eye, and then shalt 
 thou see clearly to pull out the mote which is in thy 
 brother's eye." 
 
 The second limitation of the Apostle is, it must not become 
 a settled mood of our hearts. This he graphically sets forth 
 in the phrase, " Let not the sun go down on your wrath." 
 Plutarch says that it was a custom of the Pythagoreans 
 for those who had been engaged in a quarrel to kiss and 
 make friends before the sun went down. Old Thomas 
 Fuller quaintly urges this limitation of anger by the idea 
 that the sinking sun might carry news to the Antipodes of 
 man's revengeful nature ; but he then goes on to remind 
 
i82 ANGER WITHOUT SIN. 
 
 us that the words must not be taken literally, or our wrath 
 would lengthen with the days, and men in Greenland, where 
 the day lasts above a quarter of a year, would have plenti- 
 ful scope for revenge. Still, much would be done if we 
 never permitted anger to accompany us to bed, or be our 
 companion through the night. What I take it the Apostle 
 means is that anger should not become a settled mood or 
 even a long-staying visitor in our life. Better, far better, 
 the sharp, short lightning of the hot-tempered than the 
 dull, settled mood of the sulky. I heard once of a husband 
 who did not speak to his wife for three days, because one 
 day at dinner she did not offer him a second helping of 
 one of the dishes. Better, far better, a keen word for 
 such omission than days and nights of sulkiness. Draw a 
 limit around temper, or it will sour the spirit, and so sour 
 the atmosphere of the home. Good Bishop Wilson says, 
 " Temper is nine-tenths of Christianity." " He that ruleth 
 his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city.'' 
 
 Upon nothing does the joy of life so largely depend as 
 upon temper, both to its possessor and those who dwell 
 with him. I had rather live in a perpetual fog than with a 
 sullen temper. But with most of us temper would bear 
 improvement, especially in relation to those whom we love 
 the most. What a strange thing it is that we keep our 
 worst temper for our homes — that men, who are all sweet- 
 ness and light out of doors, are often only sourness and 
 darkness at home, where wife and children, like Luciana, 
 often "starve for a merry look."* I suppose it is that in 
 the home our real nature comes out, and in the world we 
 put on an assumed nature, as we do our best clothes to go 
 out in. But after all, where we love the most we should 
 be best-tempered. But for this to be the case, we must 
 become really, and not seemingly good-tempered, for in the 
 
 * Comedy of Errors, Act ii., sc. i. 
 
ANGER WITHOUT SIN. 183 
 
 home our true nature will out. " Do you know Mr. So- 
 and-so ? " asked one friend of another, to which the signi- 
 ficant reply was given, " How can I ? I never lived with 
 him." Ay, that is the test. What are we at home ? 
 That is somewhere near to what we are before God. 
 
 A few verses later the Apostle says, " And be ye kind 
 one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, even 
 as God also in Christ forgave you." Only the anger 
 consistent with that precept is without sin. 
 
A LOVING MASTER. 
 
 " A certain centurion's servant, who was dear unto him." — Luke vii. 2. 
 
 THIS centurion, as he stands before us in the pages 
 of the Gospel, strikes us as being an altogether 
 lovable man. The harsher traits of the Roman character 
 are conspicuous by their absence. He is conscious of 
 the authority vested in Him by the Imperial power — he 
 feels that he is a man under authority, with soldiers to 
 obey his word ; but it is clear that the authority is well 
 nigh hidden by the atmosphere of affection which pervades 
 his life and home. He so wields the power of Rome 
 toward the conquered people among whom his lot is cast, 
 that they are more conscious of the love he bears their 
 nation than of his authority over them. He is more 
 anxious to be their helper than their ruler. He finds 
 more pleasure in rearing a synagogue for them than in 
 displaying before them his military power. This is no 
 man of " blood and iron," who believes that force is the 
 only remedy ; but one with a heart so tender that it 
 reaches out even to the conquered people over whom he 
 is set. When a soldier is good he is generally very 
 good, very thorough, very downright in his goodness. 
 Our own age has had illustrations of this in the case of 
 men like Havelock, and Lawrence, and Gordon. This 
 centurion is an early example of such a type. And his 
 goodness, like all real goodness, shines out not only in 
 relation to his equals or superiors in rank, but to those 
 
A LOVING MASTER. 185 
 
 in lower places. The same generous feeling which 
 prompted him to build a synagogue for the Jews also 
 prompted him to kindness and concern for this servant, 
 or, as it should be rendered, this slave, of whom we are 
 told that " he was dear unto him." 
 
 This is the more remarkable when we remember the 
 kind of relationship which generally existed between 
 Roman masters and their slaves. " It is in vain one looks 
 for anything like common human feeling in the Roman 
 slave-law of Republican times. The breaking up of slave 
 families was entirely in the hands of the merchant or 
 the owner ; husband might be separated from wife, and 
 mother from children, all dispersed and sold off into the 
 houses of strangers and foreign towns. Slavery is equiva- 
 lent to death in the eye of the civil law, which does not 
 admit the existence of the slave, which entirely avoids 
 -and annuls the contract of a master with his slave, gives 
 the slave no action at law against him. These were the 
 dominant principles of the Roman slave law."* And the 
 practice was in harmony with the law. " The slave in 
 Rome was a chattel and a possession, had no individuality 
 or ' caput ; ' whatever he earned belonged to his master, 
 and he might be made a present of, lent, pawned, or 
 •exchanged. His union with a wife was no marriage, and 
 was deprived of all its privileges and effects. A master 
 might torture or kill his slave at will ; there was no one 
 to prevent him doing so, or to bring him. to account, and 
 the ordinary punishment of death was crucifixion. The 
 elder Cato regarded slaves as ' souled instruments.' 
 To him there was no difference between the beast and 
 the slave, except that the slave, as a reasonable being, was 
 held accountable. The punishment of death was inflicted 
 
 ■" DoUinger's "The Gentile and Jew in tlie Courts of the Temple of 
 Christ," ii., p. 263. 
 
1 86 A LOVING MASTER. 
 
 for killing a plough-ox, but the .murderer of a slave was 
 called to no account whatever. For breaking a vase a 
 slave had been thrown to feed the fish in the fish-pond. 
 Augustus ordered his steward to be crucified on the mast 
 of a ship for having roasted and eaten a quail of his that 
 had been trained for the quail-pit, and had won many- 
 mains."* Such was the Roman feeling and practice in 
 regard to slaves. And it renders the relationship 
 between this centurion and his slave the more remarkable. 
 For we are all affected by the moral atmosphere amid 
 which our lot is cast. It affects us imperceptibly. To 
 a large extent it determines our procedure. It is no 
 merit in us that we do not treat our servants as the 
 Romans did. Both law and custom forbid. But in the 
 case of this centurion law and custom alike were in favour 
 of treating slaves as mere chattels. Why did not this 
 Roman thus treat this slave ? The answer to that question 
 is a two-fold one, and must be sought in the natures of 
 both the master and the slave. Probably the master was 
 humane, and the slave responsive to his kindness. Such 
 a relationship as is here revealed presupposes both these 
 conditions. If the master had been hard and unfeeling 
 the slave's obedience and devotion would have gone for 
 nothing. If these qualities had been wanting in the 
 slave there would have been nothing to draw out any 
 kindness in the master's heart. In these days great 
 complaints are heard as to the lack of obedience and 
 care in domestic servants. They are compared with those 
 of former times to their disadvantage. It is taken for 
 granted that all the faults lie with the servants. This is 
 a huge assumption, and one that will not bear careful 
 examination. If there be a lack of obedience and care 
 on the part of servants, is there no lack of kindness and 
 
 * Ibid, ii., p. 259. 
 
A LOVING MASTER. 187 
 
 consideration on the part of masters and mistresses ? If 
 the servants of former days were less restless and less 
 fond of change than those of our own time, does not 
 the same remark hold good of masters and mistresses ? 
 In eariier times people settled down in a house, and did not 
 leave it, save when they were obliged to do so, in many 
 cases not till death called them away. But now three 
 years is quite a respectable time to remain in one house. 
 Servants like change of situation ; mistresses like change 
 of residence. A common restlessness lies at the root of 
 both. If the relationship between mistresses and servants 
 is not what it used to be, the fault cannot be laid at one, 
 but at both doors. If mistresses say, " Ah ! servants are 
 not what they used to be," servants have quite as good 
 right to say, and do say, " Ah ! mistresses are not what 
 they used to be." And if a higher relationship is to be 
 established both must nlake up their minds to do better. 
 
 Now, the pulpit is the place from which truth, with- 
 out fear or favour, should be spoken to all ; and I affirm 
 that, if we are to enter on a better time, both classes need 
 to turn over a new leaf The kindly relationship between 
 this centurion and his servant was due not only to the 
 kindness of the master, but to the responsive obedience 
 of his slave ; and those two factors are necessary to such 
 a relationship now. 
 
 Now let us look at each in turn. And first, at the master 
 or mistress in relation to the servant. In the case of this 
 centurion it was a relationship of love. Marvellous that 
 it should have been thus — that a Roman soldier should 
 have loved his slave. And in such a relationship as that 
 between master and servant there should be, in some 
 form or other, in some degree or other, the same feeling. 
 Christ bids us love our enemies. He would surely bid 
 us love those who serve in our homes. I do not suppose 
 
i88 A LOVING MASTER. 
 
 that, save in very exceptional cases, the feeling will be 
 of the deepest. But I do maintain that the relationship 
 is very far from being what it ought to be, until the servant 
 is regarded as a part of the household, and within the 
 circle of the gracious influences which should fill the 
 home. The servant is not a mere machine, engaged to do 
 so much work and receive so much pay in return, but one 
 of like nature with ourselves — with, the same capacities 
 of joy and sorrow, of health and sickness, of hope and 
 despair. The servant's position, moreover, like every 
 other, has difficulties of its own. It is monotonous — the 
 same round of work day after day. It is often lonely, 
 because of the separation from relatives and friends. Like 
 every other position in life, it has troubles of its own. 
 But this is often forgotten, and service is looked for from 
 our domestics without sufficient allowance for the fact that 
 there are times in which it is difficult, almost impossible, 
 for them to do their work as well as usual, because of 
 weakness, or sickness, or the sense of loneliness, or on 
 account of bad news from home, or mental unrest, or a 
 multitude of things which might be mentioned. If we 
 were to pause, and consider that servants are not machines, 
 but living beings — that they are not merely hands, but 
 beings with hearts, across which all the emotions of which 
 we ourselves are conscious pass, we should, I fancy, some- 
 times be a little more careful as to how we reprove them. 
 And such remembrance of the human nature of our 
 servants would lead, as in the case of the centurion, not 
 only to considerateness, but to concern and care in times 
 of sickness. The anxiety of this Roman soldier for his 
 little slave-boy leads him to look out for any means by 
 which his sickness may be removed and death averted. 
 All thought of his own dignity vanishes before his con- 
 cern. And in such concern we ought not to be excelled 
 
A LOVING MASTER. 189 
 
 by a Roman soldier. Those who in health serve us have 
 a claim on our sympathy and help when they are sick. I 
 have known cases, however, in which, when sickness has 
 fallen on a domestic, the one concern has been to get rid 
 of her — to be free of responsibility on her account. Of 
 course there are cases in which, to prevent the spread of 
 disease, the sufferer should be removed to a hospital. In 
 such cases this is a duty both to the servant and the 
 family in which she serves — that the family may be 
 freed from risk of disease, and the servant be better 
 treated than she could be in a private house. But care 
 and thought should not cease with removal ; nay, removal 
 should rather be the expression of such care, following the 
 sufferer, and surrounding her with tokens of remembrance 
 and sympathy. 
 
 Nor should care for our servants cease here, but 
 extend to their moral and spiritual condition, especially in 
 the case of very young ones. They are at the most 
 critical stage of their life — exposed to special dangers and 
 temptations. To such, mistresses should stand, as far as 
 possible, in loco parentis. A Christian mistress should 
 be as a mother, not only to her own children, but to those 
 who serve in the home. It should be hers to protect 
 from danger — to give wise and kindly advice, to endeavour 
 to form character. If this were more generally done, a 
 great part of what is called "rescue work" would be 
 unnecessary. Prevention is better than cure ; for even 
 when cure is effected the scars of sin remain.* 
 
 Parents, too, should train their children in habits of 
 respect to servants in the home — insisting on kindly 
 
 * "Mistresses might do very much to repress extravagance in their 
 servants' dress, to waken habits of thrift and saving, to prevent too early 
 and improvident marriages, which form one of the most prolific causes 
 of poverty. 
 
I go A LOVING MASTER. 
 
 speech and the avoidance of the tone of command, pre- 
 venting them, as far as possible, from giving needless 
 trouble or causing useless work. This would not only 
 be good for the servants, but would tend to prepare the 
 new generation for the proper management of those who 
 serve within the home. If we could make our homes what 
 they ought to be the work of the Church would be half 
 done, whilst they would furnish nobler illustrations of the 
 truth of the Gospel than all other arguments. I know 
 what will be said in reply to all this. I seem to hear 
 mistresses saying, " Ah ! you don't know what servants 
 are, how perverse, how obstinate, how unmanageable, how 
 ungrateful, how they set at nought all our efforts on their 
 behalf ! " Yes, some of them, but not all. There are 
 servants and servants. But is it not so with every class ? 
 "He that is without sin, let him first cast a stone." Are 
 there no bad masters, bad mistresses, bad doctors, bad 
 ministers, bad tradesmen ? And there are some servants 
 who are incorrigible, who so disturb the peace of a house- 
 hold, who do so much mischief, that perhaps the lesser evil 
 is to give them up. We may not have patience or time to 
 effect the work of reformation. If, however, we can per- 
 severe, so much the better. But whether we do or not, 
 let us not, in our concern for ourselves and for the 
 comforts of our household, lose sight of the interests 
 of those we cannot reform. And however bad the case 
 may be, let us not, as some thoughtless mistresses have 
 been known to do, thrust them from the house, late at 
 night, and with no place to go to. From such treat- 
 ment many have been led to begin a life of shame which 
 has ended in their ruin. Let us treat such as we should 
 ■wish a child of our own, were she in a similar position, 
 to be treated. If iwe err, let us err on the side of mercy 
 and care. 
 
A LOVING MASTER. 191 
 
 And now to turn to the other side of the question. 
 This centurion probably loved this slave because he had been 
 faithful, because he had cared for his master's interests, 
 because he had done his best. To bid us love those who 
 offer no returns of love is a counsel of perfection. It is 
 well if we can do it, but it is a height to which very few 
 attain. If, therefore, servants desire the care and regard of 
 their employers they must do their best to deserve these. 
 And in the great majority of cases they would find that 
 conscientious service does not fail of its reward. If young 
 women were to enter service resolving to be worthy of 
 being regarded as part of the family, they would probably 
 be treated as such. It should be their object to learn the 
 wishes of their mistress, and comply with them, to throw 
 their minds into their work — not to do it like a machine. 
 They should seek the interests of their employers, avoid- 
 ing all waste, jealous for the reputation of the household, 
 careful not to gossip about the things which they may 
 hear within the house, seeking to do as they would wish 
 their servants to do if they were mistresses. And then 
 it would not be long before they became a part of the 
 household, and all thought of leaving or of their being 
 dismissed would pass out of their minds. And so the 
 sense of servitude would gradually diminish, and at last 
 depart. It is the desire for change which ruins the pre- 
 sent relationship between mistresses and servants. In 
 the olden time servants entered a family with the idea of 
 staying, and they did stay, and so became a part of the 
 household. They were trusted by the parents and loved 
 by the children. If they married they were not lost sight 
 of or forgotten. They looked to their old place as to a 
 kind of home to which they were always welcome, and 
 where they would always find sympathy and help. Not 
 long ago I called on a minister who had nearly reached 
 
192 A LOVTNG MASTER. 
 
 fourscore years, and whose sight was so impaired that 
 he could no longer read. I said to him, " You have been 
 a great student. How do you get on now that you are 
 unable to see to read ? " He replied, " My old house- 
 keeper, about my own age, reads to me ; she has already 
 read the greater part of Neander's Church History ; she 
 gets on pretty well, save with Philosophy." What a 
 delightful picture of master and servant going down the 
 hill of life together, and helping each other on the way ! 
 It is an almost forgotten type of life. But it is worthy of 
 remembrance, and, if possible, of revival. And it might 
 be revived ; and if it were, it would be fruitful of blessing 
 to both households and domestics. But if it is ever 
 to be revived both parties must strive for its revival. 
 Mistresses must grow more considerate, sympathetic, 
 friendly to their domestics, whilst servants must respond by 
 conscientious service and deeper interest in the affairs of 
 the household. 
 
 As we learn more and more of the real spirit, and 
 teaching, and example, and self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ 
 such a relationship will be revived. This will make 
 us all, whatever our position may be, more worthy. 
 This will make those who rule considerate and gracious 
 in their rule. This will make those who serve to serve 
 not as men-pleasers, but as the servants of God, doing 
 His will from the heart. This will make us bear each 
 other's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. This will 
 transform all service into a common service to Him, for 
 we shall feel that over both there is one Master, Christ, 
 and all we are brethren. 
 
MASK-WEARING. 
 
 " Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons." — 
 Acts a. 34. 
 
 ARCHBISHOP TRENCH tells us that we have lost 
 the full force of this statement from the fact that 
 " persons " does not mean for us now all that it once 
 meant. "Person," from persona, the mask constantly 
 worn by the actor of antiquity, is, by natural transfer, the 
 part or role in the play which each sustains (as Trpcacoirov 
 is in Greek). In the great tragi-comedy of life each 
 sustains a "person,'' one that of a king, another that of 
 a hind ; one must play Dives, and another Lazarus. This 
 "person," God, for whom the question is not what " person " 
 each sustains, but how he sustains it, does not regard.* 
 
 So that this passage does not point to a disregard by God 
 of the man, but of the part he assumes in the play of life. 
 Men do not judge of an actor by the social elevation of 
 his part — for some of the most important parts are of 
 poor and lowly people — but by the fidelity to life of his 
 impersonation. And God does not respect the part, 
 whether high or low, which falls to our lot, but He does 
 respect the way in which we respond to its obligations 
 and duties. Whatever our lot may be, whether high or 
 low, rich or poor, if we fear God and work righteousness, 
 we are accepted of Him. And this is the only true way 
 
 * " Synonyms of the New Testament." 
 
 13 
 
1 94 MA SIC- WE A RING. 
 
 of estimating men. We cannot choose our part or position 
 in life; ttiis is usually fixed by circumstances over which 
 we have little or no control. 
 
 " There's a Divinity that shapes our ends 
 Rough hew them how we will." 
 
 But though choice of the part may be beyond our control, 
 fidelity thereto is possible to us all. And on that the eye 
 of God is fixed. " It is a small thing to be judged of 
 man's judgment. He that judgeth us is the Lord," who 
 alone has the full materials for judging, who alone knows 
 our capacity, our opportunity, our ability ; who alone sees 
 the weakness or strength or the mingling of both we have 
 inherited from our ancestors ; who alone knows what we 
 can and what we cannot do. From want of such know- 
 ledge even the wisest men make mistakes in their judg- 
 ments of their fellows. You have all heard the story of 
 Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, who, when punishing a boy for 
 failure, was met by the reply, " Please, sir, I have done 
 my best, indeed I have," before which the great school- 
 master felt reproved and humbled. We see only the 
 persons, the parts that are played ; God sees the man, the 
 woman, behind the parts. St. Francis of Assisi well 
 says, " What every man is in the eyes of God, that he is, 
 and no more." The application of that test makes mighty 
 changes ; it often makes the first last, and the last first. 
 As Dante well says : — 
 
 " How many are esteemed great kings up there 
 Who here shall be like unto swine in mire, 
 Leaving behind them horrible dispraises." * 
 
 And it is well for us sometimes to turn away from the 
 estimates of men, who see only the " persons," the parts 
 
 * " Inferno," viii. 49-52, 
 
MA SK- WEARING. 195 
 
 we play, to think of the Divine estimate of our lives. We 
 ourselves can, to some extent, know vsrhat this will be, 
 since the play of motive in our hearts, hidden from the 
 gaze of others, is open to ourselves. Every heart is 
 known more or less perfectly to its possessor. And we 
 do well to separate ourselves from the part we fill, and the 
 estimate formed thereof by the spectators, so as to regard 
 the real life which lies behind, and of which those around 
 us know little or nothing. We are all, I fear, more or 
 less hypocrites, seeming to be what we really are not. It 
 may not be needful to expose all that is within, to the 
 world — 
 
 " To wear our heart upon our sleeve, 
 For daws to peck at." 
 
 Life could hardly go on if we did. But we do well 
 to pause and ask ourselves — not what is men's estimate, 
 but what is the Divine estimate of our character and life. 
 At all events, we should fix well in our minds that God is 
 no respecter of " persons," of the parts we play on the 
 stage of life, but only of the character which lies behind. 
 
 Now this principle touches life at all points. Take, first 
 of all, the business world. Here the Divine and human 
 estimate often differ. There is a proverb* frequently on 
 our lips, which in a worldly sense is true, and in a 
 Divine sense as false as hell. I mean the proverb 
 " Nothing succeeds Hke success," which means that men 
 worship success, that they become votaries at its shrine, 
 in most cases caring little how the success has been 
 attained. Let a man make money enough to cut a figure 
 in the world, to turn with a golden key the door to what 
 are falsely called noble circles, and he is surrounded by 
 a crowd of sycophants who care nothing for the spirit, 
 the character, the methods which lie behind the " person," 
 the part. How different is the estimate of God, whose 
 
196 MA SK- WEARING. 
 
 eye is on the man, and not the mask, on the spirit which 
 has marked his career, and not its material results in land 
 or gold. To the eye of the world he may be " rich, and 
 increased with goods, and have need of nothing ;" to the eye 
 of Heaven he may be " wretched and miserable, and poor,, 
 and blind, and naked." And it is the duty of the Church to 
 keep its eye, as far as it can, on the man, and not ihe person, 
 the part he plays. But the Church has been infected with 
 the spirit of the world, and thinks of the possessions, and not 
 of the possessor. And the men who have only possessions 
 are often disposed to claim an undue deference from the 
 Church. This is markedly the case, it is said, in America. 
 Not long ago a young and earnest minister supplied a 
 pulpit for one Sunday in a thriving manufacturing town 
 east of the Hudson. He was the guest of a deacon, and 
 as they walked together, after the morning service, his 
 host said, " Perhaps you were not aware that you 
 preached to-day to eighteen millions of dollars ? " " No," 
 said the minister, "I was not; but they will go to perdition 
 all the same unless they repent." A right noble answer, 
 in which there was no fear of man, which bringeth a snare, 
 but the utterance of a Divine estimate, which is regardless 
 of " persons," and regardful only of life and character. 
 
 Take, secondly, the social world. It is said that in New 
 York the question asked is, " What has he got ? " in 
 Philadelphia, " Who is he ? " and in Boston, " What does 
 he know ? " The Philadelphia question only regards the 
 person in the sense of his social status. There can be no 
 merit there. A man cannot choose his ancestry. There is 
 no virtue in being born of princely or ducal parentage. 
 You cannot say, ' How very good of you to be the son of 
 such parents.' That is a matter of the person, which God 
 does not regard. Let the man rise to the responsibilities 
 and opportunities of such a position; let him seize its 
 
MASK-WEARING. 197 
 
 opportunities for doing good and communicating to others, 
 as the Poet Laureate says of the late Prince Consort — 
 
 "Not making his liigh place the lawless perch 
 Of wing'd ambitions, nor a vantage-ground 
 For pleasure ; but through all those years 
 Wearing the white flower of a blameless life ; " 
 
 let him " fear God and work righteousness/' and he will 
 be accepted ; but the mere person, the place into which 
 he has been born, will not be regarded, save in the sense 
 that where much is given' much will be required. As 
 the Latin proverb says, "Think on thyself, and not 
 thy ancestry." Let us not mistake respectable surround- 
 ings for virtuous character. To the eye of man, virtue, 
 it may be, looks more virtuous, and vice less -vicious, in 
 silk or broadcloth than in calico or fustian — -in a mansion 
 than in a hovel. And on the other hand, virtue may look 
 less virtuous, and vice more vicious, amid poverty than 
 amid wealth, as Shakespeare makes Lear say — ■ 
 
 "Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear : 
 Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold, 
 And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks ; 
 Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw doth pierce it." * 
 
 But it is not so to the eye of God. Belgravian vice, 
 though clad in fair colours, is just as vicious as Stepney 
 vice, squalid and dirty though it be. Respectability is 
 but a matter of the person, of appearance. Unless beneath 
 it there be fear of God and the working of righteousness, 
 it will not be regarded. Comely dress, decent habitation, 
 a fair exterior will not take the place of righteousness. 
 " He that doeth righteousness is righteous " is the 
 emphatic verdict of the Apostle whom Jesus loved. 
 
 Take, thirdly, the religious world. Since human nature 
 
 * " King Lear," act iv., sc. 6. 
 
1 98 MA SS:- WEA RING. 
 
 is everywhere the same, it is not to be wondered at that 
 the errors of the world reappear in the Church, it may be 
 in altered garb, but essentially the same in spirit. The 
 tares are in the enclosure of the Church as well as in the 
 field of the world. And this regard of persons is one of 
 them. There, as in the world, men judge themselves, 
 and sometimes are judged of others, by their profession 
 rather than their practice, by what they appear rather 
 than by what they are. And this in two ways. 
 
 I. Men often regard themselves as religious because they 
 attend church. That may be the outward and visible sign 
 of religion in the heart, but it may be only a matter of the 
 " person," an acted part, not a sign of a living and outward 
 reality. " Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord,, 
 shall enter the kingdom ; but he that doeth the will of my 
 Father which is in heaven," said Christ, who saw things 
 as God does. The real question is. Does the life reach 
 toward the part, the " person," indicated by attendance 
 at church ? Is it striving to fear God and keep His 
 commandments, which the author of Ecclesiastes says is 
 the whole duty of man ? Is it striving to live more nearly 
 as it prays ? Do Sundays draw the life upward to truth, 
 to charity, to righteousness ? Then, and then only, is it 
 accepted of God. I do not, you will observe, speak of 
 actual attainment, but only of effort, of struggle, of aspira- 
 tion. These may be attended with only a measure of 
 success ; but righteousness is a matter of will, not of 
 attainment. The will is the deed. " If any man willeth 
 to do the will," he is, in the Divine eyes, as though he 
 actually did it — he is righteous. As Robert Browning 
 says : — 
 
 " 'Tis not what man does that exalts him, 
 But what man would do." 
 
 Can we honestly sa}' that we are striving to be what we 
 
MASK-WEARING. 199 
 
 pray to be, what we profess to be by our presence in the 
 church ? 
 
 2. Men often judge themselves by the creed they subscribe. 
 To them righteousness is only a matter of correctness 
 of creed. Orthodoxy is put in the place of religion, 
 right thinking for right willing. Now, a creed may be 
 only a matter of the " person." Often it is not deliberately 
 chosen, but inherited. Some people are born into a 
 certain creed as they were into certain social surroundings. 
 What a man's creed is is of comparatively little conse- 
 quence, for it is only a matter of the person. What a man's 
 relationship to that creed is, whether he is trying to live 
 up to it or not, whether he is fearing God and working 
 righteousness or not, is of infinite moment, and upon it his 
 destiny will depend. I do not care to examine you as to 
 your creed, but this I do ask you, and ask myself. Are we 
 seeking to be true to it, trying to incarnate it in our life, 
 turning the things we believe into epistles of the life, 
 known and read of all men ? This is the heart of the 
 whole matter. Are we doers, not sayers, living the truth, 
 not merely repeating it with our lips ? 
 
 Well does Dante say — 
 
 " But look thou, many crying are, Christ ! Christ ! 
 Who at the judgment shall be far less near 
 To Him than some shall be who know not Christ. 
 Such Christians shall the Ethiop condemn, 
 When the two companies shall be divided, 
 The one for ever rich, the other poor."* 
 
 That is but his rendering of the piercing words of Christ : 
 " Many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit 
 down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom 
 of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be 
 cast out into outer darkness : there shall be weeping and 
 gnashing of teeth." 
 
 * " Paradiso,'' xix. 106-III. 
 
THE HEALING SUN. 
 
 "The Sun of Righteousness with healing in His wings." — Mal. iv. 2. 
 
 IN early times men viewed nature religiously rather 
 than scientifically. The wise men of the East were 
 at once priests and astrologers. Their survey of the 
 heavens was rather by faith than by the reasoning 
 faculty ; but in spite of that, any approach in early times 
 to science was made by prophet or priest. But science, 
 in our sense of that term, was not yet. Still, in their 
 religious survey of the heavens there were dim surmises 
 of the great facts which science has in these latter days 
 brought to light. That this is so is clear from the fact 
 that men upon whom the light of modern science has 
 shined can use the words of these old-world seers for 
 the purpose of worship — it may be with a fulness of 
 meaning of which they knew nothing. Take the words 
 before us as an example of this. Malachi, who first 
 uttered them, did not know the marvellous function dis- 
 charged by the sun in relation to our world and to the 
 universe at large. He probably thought of the sun as 
 really rising and setting. He had no idea that his 
 apparent movement was due to that of the earth. But 
 yet the prophet dimly discerned that the life of the world 
 —the healing, as he calls it — was due to the great orb 
 of day. And so when he would tell of the healing, life- 
 giving influence that would be exerted by the fuller and 
 clearer manifestation of God, of which he was the last 
 
THE HEALING SUN. 201 
 
 herald, he describes it as the arising of the Sun of Righte- 
 ousness. It is quite clear, therefore, that he must have 
 had a larger conception than we sometimes fancy of the 
 unique and wonderful function of the sun in the great 
 system of the Universe. That this was so is supported by 
 the fact that to the neighbouring nation of Persia the sun 
 was the chief object of worship. Thus, in early times, 
 men dimly surmised what science in later days has clearly 
 apprehended and revealed. That this is so is confirmed by 
 the fact that we can take our modern knowledge, and read 
 it, without any sense of incongruity, into these old words. 
 
 In considering this passage I am not careful to con- 
 fine myself to the ideas that were in the prophet's mind 
 when he uttered it, but only that all I may say shall 
 be congruous to the thought which gave them birth. 
 
 First, then, he saw clearly that the earth was dependent 
 on the sun. However he may have conceived of the sun, 
 whether as a great ball of fire a few feet in diameter, or as 
 a world as big or bigger than the earth on which he trod, 
 we do not know.; but he must have seen that the sun 
 was not a part of the earth, but something quite distinct 
 from it. And therefore, since healing came from the 
 beams of the sun, the earth could not do without some- 
 thing which was above and beyond itself That he must 
 have seen. He did not know, as we do, how much earth 
 owes to the sun ; but he did see, he must have seen, 
 that the earth could not suffice for itself, but that it needed 
 influences from a source outside itself to live and flourish — 
 a fact we all know. The life of the world — of plant, of 
 animal, of man — the beauty of the world — of flower and 
 tree, of creeping thing and flying fowl, of man, the lord of 
 all — are due to the sun. And with that idea rooted in 
 his mind, he passes on to a higher idea — that the great 
 spiritual world needs, and must have, a sun of its own. 
 
202 THE HEALING SUN. 
 
 a Sun of Righteousness ; that the world of humanity 
 cannot Hve or flourish by itself, that it is dependent on 
 something outside and beyond itself. Each world must 
 have its sun — the visible world a sun of heat and light, 
 the invisible world a Sun of Righteousness. The necessity 
 is as great in the one case as the other. Nature cannot 
 live without the sun whose beams warm and light her 
 domain. And man cannot live, really live, without the Sun 
 of Righteousness with healing in His wings. Man's 
 nature cannot be self-sufficient, or self-nourished, or self- 
 renewed. God is as vital a necessity to his spirit as the 
 sun is to the body in which that spirit dwells. And he 
 knows this to be the case. Everywhere men have looked 
 to something beyond themselves for the light and heat 
 which their spirits craved. A few years ago we used to 
 be told that races had been found without any trace of 
 religious worship. That mistake arose from ignorance of 
 their language and thought. Fuller knowledge has proved, 
 beyond any reasonable doubt, that every race of which we 
 have any acquaintance has a worship of some kind — that 
 everywhere men look beyond themselves, beyond their 
 own nature, for sources of inspiration, of comfort, of hope. 
 M. de Quatefrages, the author of " The Human Species," 
 says, " Obliged in my course of investigation to review 
 all human races, I have sought atheism in the lowest as 
 well as the highest. I have nowhere met with it, except 
 in individuals, or in more or less limited schools, such as 
 those which existed in Europe in the last century or which 
 may still be seen in the present day.'' 
 
 Such individual exceptions may be regarded as proving 
 the rule, or, as I should be disposed to affirm, they are 
 not real, but only seeming exceptions ; since even those 
 who call themselves " Atheists " have yet a dim but 
 ineradicable consciousness, in the realm of their moral 
 
THE HEALING SUN. 203 
 
 sense, that there is "One with whom they have to do," 
 from whom they cannot escape, such a feeling as the 
 Psalmist's words express : " Whither shall I go from Thy 
 spirit ? or whither shall I flee from Thy presence ? " 
 
 You know the old dictum, that what has been believed 
 everywhere, by all, and in all times is Catholic doctrine. 
 We may extend that saying beyond the bounds of Chris- 
 tianity and the Church, and say that what man has felt 
 everywhere and at all times expresses a radical, ineradi- 
 cable need of his nature. It is of the very essence of man 
 to look up, to look beyond himself There is that in his 
 nature which forces him, in some mode or other, to worship. 
 I sometimes hear men talk of the overthrow of religion. 
 They might as well talk of blotting the sun out of the 
 heavens. They talk as if science would sooner or later 
 overthrow faith. They might as well talk of science 
 putting an end to the sun. It may give us new knowledge 
 about the sun, and show us how dependent we are on his 
 beams. And that is probably what science will in the end 
 do in relation to the Sun of Righteousness. It will show 
 us the marvellousness of the universe, and so teach us to 
 cry with a deeper feeling, " O Lord, how manifold are Thy 
 works ! in wisdom hast Thou made them all : the earth is 
 full of Thy riches." Science may alter the form of our 
 faith and worship, may help to make it more intelligent 
 and reasonable, may clear away some of the accretions of 
 ages ; but unless man become other than he is, unless his 
 nature be radically altered — and of that there are no signs — 
 he will still need and crave a " Sun of Righteousness with 
 healing in His wings." 
 
 Why does man need such a Sun of Righteousness ? For 
 exactly the same reasons that he needs the visible sun ; 
 that is, the same reasons in a spiritual sense. What does 
 the sun do for us physically ? 
 
204 '^HE HEALING SUN. 
 
 First of all, it draws plant and tree upward. It over- 
 comes another force — that of gravitation, which tends to 
 dravsf downwards to the earth. Plants are under two 
 influences — gravitation, which draws their roots into the 
 soil ; sunHght, which draws their branches and leaves 
 and flowers upward to the heavens. Intangible as it 
 is, the sunlight is a mighty force. Plant a shrub in the 
 earth, and put a heavy stone upon it, and the sunlight will 
 so attract that the plant will either lift the stone or creep 
 out from beneath it, and lift its head to the light. 
 
 " A little flower so lowly grew, 
 So lonely was it left, 
 That heaven looked like an eye of blue 
 Down in its rocky cleft. 
 
 " What could the little flower do, 
 In such a darksome place. 
 But try to reach that eye of blue. 
 And climb to kiss heaven's face ? 
 
 "And there's no life so lone and low. 
 But strength may still be given. 
 From narrowest lot on earth to grow 
 The straighter up to heaven." * 
 
 And that is the function of the Sun of Righteousness, 
 to contend with the forces around us which would hold 
 us down to the earthly, the visible, the temporal, and 
 draw us upward to the invisible, the eternal. It wrestles 
 with the influences which would shut in our life to the 
 lower world, which would make us walk by sight, which 
 would make us mere traders, or artisans, or pursuers of 
 our worldly calling, and lifts us up so as to be the " sons 
 of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and 
 perverse nation." That is a great function, and indis- 
 pensable to a really blessed life. What pitiable objects 
 we should become if we resolutely, day after day, 
 
 * Gerald Massey. 
 
THE HEALING SUN. 205 
 
 walked with our faces to the earth ! How bent and 
 deformed we should be 1 And that is but a visible token 
 of the effects wrought in the spirits of men who will not 
 respond to the influences of the Sun of Righteousness, 
 who grow immersed in the things beneath them — things 
 less than themselves, and will not lift their eyes and their 
 hearts to the things above them — things greater than 
 themselves. In one of the services of the English Church 
 the priest bids the people, " Lift up your hearts," and they 
 respond, "We lift them up unto the Lord." Without 
 such lifting of the heart life becomes dwarfed and stunted. 
 What folly it is to be ever bending to the things beneath 
 us, when we might lift up ourselves to the things above, 
 the things invisible and eternal. When the ancient king 
 asked the cynic what he could do for him, he replied 
 that all he wanted was that the king should get out of 
 the light. And the true philosophy for our life is to put 
 out of the way all that hinders the beams of the Sun of 
 Righteousness from falling on our path. 
 
 Then, secondly, the sun is the great beautifying influence. 
 Science has shown us that the lovely colours of bird and 
 beast, of plant and flower, are due to the beams of the 
 sun. Those beams are made up, as we all know, of the 
 seven colours of the spectrum. The rainbow is but sun- 
 light broken up into the colours of which it is composed. 
 It is said that the paleness of spring flowers is due to the 
 fact that in the sunlight of that season the paler colours 
 of the spectrum are then the more powerful, whilst the 
 darker colours of the flowers of summer and autumn are 
 due to the greater force of such colours in the spectrum 
 at those seasons. The sun is the great artist, the great 
 beautifier of the world. Nor is it otherwise, in a spiritual 
 sense, with the Sun of Righteousness. To it are due what 
 the Apostle calls the "beauty of holiness." Life never 
 
206 THE HEALING SUN. 
 
 reaches its greatest beauty apart from religion. It has 
 been the great quickener of beauty in art, in poetry, in 
 music. Music and painting scarcely began to be till 
 Christ's influence had told on the world. Even ancient 
 art, restricted as its sphere seems to have been, was the 
 child of religion. So that it has had much to do with 
 material beauty. But its great work is in making man 
 spiritually beautiful — in softening down the rough angles 
 of his nature, and rounding it to a true completeness. 
 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds was taken by a friend to see 
 a picture. He was anxious to admire it, and looked 
 it over with a keen and careful but favourable eye. 
 " Capital composition ; correct drawing ; the colour, tone, 
 chiaroscuro excellent ; but, but, it wants, it wants — 
 that .'" snapping his fingers ; and wanting "that, " though 
 it had everything else, it was worth nothing.* And do 
 we not look upon many a life and say, " Yes, there 
 is much to admire, but something is lacking, that which 
 would round the whole to lines of beauty — ' the grace 
 of God that bringeth salvation ' ? " Screen a plant from 
 the sunlight, and it will probably retain its form, but 
 the stem and leaves, instead of being rich in colour, will 
 be blanched to a painful whiteness. And let a human 
 life be screened from the rays of the Sun of Righteousness, 
 and the fair colours which would have made it beautiful 
 will be sought in vain. Let us not deprive our souls of 
 that better part which will render them really beautiful, 
 and which shall not be taken from us. 
 
 And then, thirdly, the prophet tells of the healing of the 
 sun. That is true both of plant and animal. Shut off 
 from the sunlight, plants grow unhealthy ; they become 
 the prey of fungus and disease. Nor is it otherwise with 
 animal life. Man and beast alike, deprived of sunlight, 
 
 * " Horse SubsecivEe," i. 172. 
 
THE HEALING SUN. 207 
 
 grow pale and limp. "All the vital functions rise and 
 set with the sun." * There is an establishment on the 
 Continent where sunlight is the only remedy used to cure 
 disease ; all day long the patients bask in the sun. The 
 sun is the great healer directly by his beams, and in- 
 directly by the medicinal plants nourished by his rays. 
 And this is essentially the function of the Sun of Righteous- 
 ness — to " heal the hurt of the daughter of My people.'' 
 When the doctor is asked by Macbeth — 
 
 " Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, 
 Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, 
 Raze out the written troubles of the brain. 
 And with some sweet oblivious antidote 
 Cleanse the stufTd bosom of that perilous stuff 
 Which weighs upon the heart ? " 
 
 he replies — 
 
 " Therein the patient 
 Must minister to himself" 
 
 There Shakespeare was wrong, or only partly right ; 
 that is beyond the patient's power. In such a case the 
 patient cannot minister to himself; but it is not beyond 
 the skill of Him whom the prophet in distant vision 
 beheld as the Sun of Righteousness. This is the very 
 work of Jesus Christ. For such He specially came. 
 "They that are whole need not a physician, but they 
 that are sick." His cry was, " Come unto Me, all ye that 
 labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 
 Every heart has need of such healing. Every one of 
 us has sins which burden or trouble us, anxieties too 
 keen to be removed by human help, forebodings known 
 only to ourselves. We need the hfe-giving touch of the 
 Son of God. Let us open our hearts to the healing beams 
 of that great Sun of Righteousness, and gradually, but 
 surely, we shall be made whole. 
 
 * " Sol illuminatio nostra est ; Sol sa/iis nostra; Sol sapientia nostra." 
 
" Just as a mother, with sweet, pious face. 
 Yearns towards her httle children from her seat. 
 Gives one a kiss, another an embrace, 
 Takes this upon her knees, that on her feet ; 
 And while from actions, looks, complaints, pretences. 
 She learns their feelings, and their various will. 
 To this a look, to that a word dispenses, 
 And, whether stern or smiling, loves them still ; — 
 So Providence for us, high, infinite, 
 Makes our necessities its watchful task, 
 Hearkens to all our prayers, helps all our wants. 
 And even if it denies what seems our right, 
 Either denies because 'twould have us ask, 
 Or seems but to deny, or in denying grants." 
 
 " Vinccnzo da Filkaja^^ translated by Leigh Hunt,