...■■-• 
 
 
 ■ i I 
 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 
 arV15467 
 
 A wise discrimination 
 
 3 1924 031 241 460 
 
 olin.anx 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031241460 
 
&\)t 33oijlen Hcctures, 1881 
 
 A WISE DISCRIMINATION 
 
 The Church's Need 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS UNDERWOOD DUDLEY, D.D. 
 
 ASSISTANT-BISHOP OF THE DIOCESE OF KENTUCKY 
 
 Delivered in the Church of the Holy Trinity, Phila- 
 delphia, in February, 1881 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THOMAS WHITTAKER 
 
 2 and 3 Bible House 
 
 18S1 
 
 J] 
 
SHW-3TE-£7 
 
 /7jN^ 
 
 COPYRIGHT 
 l88l 
 
 By Thomas Whittakee 
 
The John Bohlen Lectureship. 
 
 John Bohlen, who died in this city on the 26th day 
 of April, 1874, bequeathed to trustees a fund of One 
 Hundred Thousand Dollars, to be distributed to religious 
 and charitable objects in accordance with the well-known 
 wishes of the testator. 
 
 By a deed of trust, executed June 2, 1875, the trustees, 
 under the will of Mr. Bohlen, transferred and paid over 
 to "The Rector, Church Wardens, and Vestrymen of the 
 Church of the Holy Trinity, Philadelphia," in trust, a sum 
 of money for certain designated purposes, out of which 
 fund the sum of Ten Thousand Dollars was set apart for 
 the endowment of The John Bohlen Lectureship, 
 upon the following terms and conditions : 
 
 " The money shall be invested in good substantial and 
 safe securities, and held in trust for a fund to be called 
 The John Bohlen Lectureship, and the income shall be 
 applied annually to the payment of a qualified person, 
 whether clergyman or layman, for the delivery and pub- 
 lication of at least one hundred copies of two or more 
 lecture sermons. These lectures shall be delivered at 
 such time and place, in the city of Philadelphia, as the 
 
persons nominated to appoint the lecturer shall from 
 time to time determine, giving at least six months' notice 
 to the person appointed to deliver the same, when the 
 same may conveniently be done, and in no case selecting 
 the same person as lecturer a second time within a pe- 
 riod of five years. The payment shall be made to said 
 hcturer, after the lectures have been printed and received 
 by the trustees, of all the income for the year derived 
 from said fund, after defraying the expense of printing 
 the lectures and the other incidental expenses attending 
 the same. 
 
 "The subject of such lectures shall be such as is within 
 the terms set forth in the will of the Rev. John Bampton, 
 for the delivery of what are known as the ' Bampton 
 Lectures,' at Oxford, or any other subject distinctively 
 connected with or relating to the Christian Religion. 
 
 " The lecturer shall be appointed annually in the month 
 of May, or as soon thereafter as can conveniently be 
 done, by the persons who for the time being shall hold 
 the offices of Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
 of the Diocese in which is the Church of the Holy Trinity; 
 the Rector of said Church ; the Professor of Biblical Learn- 
 ing, the Professor of Systematic Divinity, and the Pro- 
 fessor of Ecclesiastical History, in the Divinity School of 
 the Protestant Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. 
 
 "In case either of said offices are vacant, the others 
 may nominate the lecturer." 
 
 Under this trust the Right Reverend Thomas Under- 
 wood Dudley, D.D., Assistant Bishop of the Diocese 
 of Kentucky, was appointed to deliver the lectures for 
 the year 1881. 
 
 Philadelphia, Septuagesima, 1881. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Discrimination as to Dogma, . . , 9 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 Discrimination as to Evidences, . . . ... 65 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 Discrimination as to Ritual, 125 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 Discrimination as to Recreation and Amusement, . 191 
 
LECTURE I. 
 Discrimination as to Dogma. 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 DISCRIMINATION AS TO DOGMA. 
 
 "... if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord 
 Jesus, and shall believe in thine heart that God hath raised 
 Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." — Romans io : 9. 
 
 I AM asked to deliver a course of lectures 
 ■*■ designed to "confirm and establish the 
 Christian Faith." May 1 be pardoned that I 
 add, I feel myself to be summoned by the 
 voice of him who years ago welcomed me, a 
 stranger, a novice, a beggar for help to preach 
 this same faith in a war-desolated region, and 
 sent me on my way rejoicing in the gift he had 
 bestowed, as in the hearty God-speed he had 
 spoken ? I come that by my voice he, being 
 dead, may yet speak. I pray that the true light 
 in which he now stands may illumine my mind, 
 that I may know what things I ought to speak, 
 and that the grace of Him to Whom he is gone 
 may make me bold that, in plain, unmistakable 
 words, 1 may testify that I have learned. 
 
io Discrimination 
 
 As I begin to write there rises straightway 
 the thought of the contrast between the teach- 
 ing of the men who were "eye-witnesses and 
 ministers of the Word," and of those who now 
 for a thousand years past have sat in their 
 seats as " leaders and commanders to the 
 people. 
 
 Among the documents of the faith, the writ- 
 ten memorials of the things to be believed, I 
 lay my hand upon that " triumphant paean"* 
 of orthodoxy which the mighty name of the 
 conqueror at Nicaea protected from the anath- 
 ema of the Councils of Ephesus and Chalce- 
 don. It is nearly two hundred years since 
 scholars abandoned the hypothesis that this 
 Symbol could lay claim to the name of the 
 " Father of Orthodoxy" ; and yet to-day its 
 metaphysical subtleties, its abstruse definitions 
 are to a multitude the normal expression of 
 the true catholic faith ; and until now in our 
 mother Church of England the thunder tones 
 of its "everlasting no," its proclamation of 
 
 * Dean Stanley, quoted by Schaff, " History of Creeds," 
 vol. i. p. 35. 
 
as to Dogma. 1 1 
 
 despair, still reverberate with, discordant roar 
 through the " long-drawn aisles" where sounds 
 the pealing anthem of hope. And alas ! even 
 in our day and in our own household is heard 
 the suggestion that we shall seek to bind the 
 limbs of our countrymen with these cords of 
 dogma ; that we too shall pronounce anathema 
 against misbelief, and give assurance of salva- 
 tion to correctness of opinion. 
 
 "The catholic faith is this": the Pseudo- 
 Athanasius cries — even a logical definition of 
 the nature of the infinite and incomprehensible 
 Godhead — " which faith except every one do 
 keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he 
 shall perish everlastingly." Ah ! how like a 
 breeze of pure air from far-away mountains 
 comes to the spirit, fast bound and imprisoned 
 within these walls of scholastic speculative 
 dogmatism, this writing which Phcebe the 
 widow has brought from the tent-maker at 
 Corinth to the handful of Christians at Rome ! 
 Therein he has written words hard to be under- 
 stood ; yes, therein he attains to such height 
 of argument as uninspired intellect can never 
 
1 2 Discrimination 
 
 reach. He looks with open eyes through the 
 blue veil which hides the Omnipotent ; he is 
 caught up into " the third heaven" to behold 
 things which cannot be uttered in human lan- 
 guage. Thus instructed he writes for all the 
 men of all time, " the revelation of the mystery 
 which was kept secret since the world began, 
 but now is made manifest." But, mark you, 
 there is no judgment of exclusion from the hope 
 of heaven pronounced against all who cannot 
 accept even these apostolic definitions, "whole 
 and undefiled" ; and the very climax and con- 
 clusion of the whole system is the words I have 
 read as the motto of our lecture. St. Paul, too, 
 says: "Whosoever will be saved, before all 
 things it is necessary that he hold the catholic 
 faith" ..." and the catholic faith is this" : 
 " if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord 
 Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God 
 hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be 
 saved. 
 
 Again, I take my place among that motley 
 multitude which crowds Jerusalem at the Pen- 
 tecost, and listen to the first Christian ser- 
 
as to Dogma. 13 
 
 mon which the world ever heard. Simon Peter 
 is the preacher, the man who once leaped into 
 the sea to come to his Master ; who afterward 
 turned coward at the question of a little servant- 
 girl in the palace of the high priest, and denied 
 that Master, as He had foretold. But he is 
 the man to whom was given the personal and 
 peculiar warrant of apostolic power ; to whom 
 was sent the special message from the opened 
 sepulchre ; and he is the man into whose heart 
 thrice went the probing question, " Lovest 
 thou Me ?" Always first named in the chosen 
 company of witnesses, he first makes proclama- 
 tion of the message, he first opens the door of 
 the kingdom, to both Jew and Gentile. Does 
 he not know what is the Gospel he is sent to 
 preach ? Hear him : He justifies the extraor- 
 dinary multiform utterances of his fellows on 
 the ground that the prediction of Joel is ful- 
 filled and the Spirit is outpoured in visions to 
 the young, and dreams to the old, and in 
 prophecies to their sons and daughters ; these 
 wonders and signs in heaven and earth do 
 herald the day of the Lord, on Whom whoso- 
 
14 Discrimination 
 
 ever should call should be saved. Then mark 
 what follows : " Ye men of Israel, hear these 
 words : Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of 
 God among you by miracles and wonders and 
 signs, which God did by Him in the midst of 
 you, as ye yourselves also know ; Him being 
 delivered by the determinate counsel and fore- 
 knowledge of God, ye have taken, and by 
 wicked hands have crucified and slain ; Whom 
 God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of 
 death, because it was not possible that He 
 should be holden of it."* Hebrew prophecy 
 is again summoned — for remember he is speak- 
 ing to the sons of Abraham — to justify expecta- 
 tion of the resurrection, and the preacher adds : 
 "This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we 
 all are witnesses. Therefore being by the 
 right hand of God exalted, and having received 
 of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, 
 He hath shed forth this which ye now see and 
 hear. Therefore," he adds — grand, all-satisfy- 
 ing, all-demanding conclusion! — "Therefore, 
 let all the house of Israel know assuredly that 
 * Acts 2. 
 
as to Dogma. 15 
 
 God hath made that same Jesus, Whom ye 
 have crucified, both Lord and Christ." 
 
 This is Apostolic preaching, even this : God 
 hath raised His Son from the dead, and there- 
 fore the Holy Ghost, the illuminating, the 
 convincing, the enabling Spirit, He is come to 
 all who hear this word. Therefore — mark it — 
 therefore "repent," says the preacher; "re- 
 pent and be baptized, every one of you, in 
 the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of 
 sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy 
 Ghost." 
 
 How much did they know of what, in the 
 language of our popular theology, is called 
 "the plan of salvation" — these men and 
 women who crowded the way to the water of 
 baptism ? Could not any child of our Sunday- 
 schools have puzzled them with questions to 
 which he could give accurate reply ? They be- 
 lieved what ? That Jesus was the Christ ; that 
 God the Father had raised His Son from the 
 dead ; that the Holy Spirit was given ; and 
 believing this they were baptized into the hope 
 and covenant of salvation. 
 
1 6 Discrimination 
 
 How unlike this to much of the discourse now 
 heard from the pulpits of the Christian Church ! 
 Polished complexity' is come intc the room of 
 the rugged simplicity of the beginning ; inge- 
 nious speculations are offered in place of the 
 inexplicable realities ; and the acceptance of a 
 system of dogma, the assertion of a stereotyped 
 experience, the understanding and approval of 
 an Ecclesiastical Order, the renunciation of a 
 catalogued series of arbitrarily selected indul- 
 gences — all these are demanded as the pass- 
 word at the gate of the pilgrim pathway, 
 though there is written above it in letters large 
 and plain: "If thou -shalt confess with thy 
 mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in 
 thine heart, that God hath raised Him from 
 the dead, thou shalt be saved." 
 
 Again, I remember that " the beloved physi- 
 cian" writes to Theophilus that the occasion 
 of the history which he had " taken in hand " 
 is that he might " know the certainty of those 
 things wherein he had been instructed," or 
 catechised. • Of what things had been the 
 questions and answers in the assembly, of which 
 
as to Dogma. 17 
 
 the youth had been one, when on the first day 
 of the week they met where " the doors were 
 shut for fear of the Jews" ? The nature of the 
 Godhead ? He has heard how that Jesus de- 
 clared that Jehovah, the Lord God, is One, that 
 this God is His own Father, and that He and 
 His Father are One. Pie has heard how Jesus 
 said that the Holy Ghost should teach His ser- 
 vants what they " ought to say" in the hour 
 of danger and of trial, and how He proclaimed 
 the awful majesty of that God-Spirit by the 
 denial of possible forgiveness of blasphemy 
 against Him. And He has heard of the part- 
 ing commandment to His disciples, that they 
 baptize men into the name of Father, Son, and 
 Holy Ghost. What more ? He has learned 
 that the Son of God was manifested to destroy 
 the works of the devil, and that by His lifting 
 up He would draw all men unto Him that they 
 might be saved from the evil in the world. 
 Code of morality ? He has heard that the 
 Spirit of Jesus is spirit of love to God and man, 
 and is the fulfilling of the law ; for it is at once 
 all-embracing commandment and all-powerful 
 
Discrimination 
 
 motive. In a word, he has been taught the 
 events of that marvellous life which had been 
 born at Bethlehem, and was now gone away to 
 the highest heavens ; and that to know Him 
 and to confess Him — confess with the mouth 
 and receive into the heart — was salvation from 
 the evil. Decrees of God ! He had heard of 
 them only in their fulfilment. The Father 
 loved the world, and gave His only begotten 
 Son, " that whosoever belie veth in Him should 
 not perish, but have everlasting life." Sacra- 
 ments, their nature- and efficacy? The very 
 word was not yet coined, but he knew that with 
 washing of water must there be confession of 
 the Lord, and that with bread and wine must 
 Memorial be made of that death which is his 
 life. 
 
 How simple had been his instruction ! He 
 learned the facts of Jesus' life, the plainest 
 promises He had spoken. Now there is the 
 very embarrassment of riches in the selection 
 of the instruction-book for the catechumen, 
 and the learner of the lesson of salvation must 
 often begin afar back in the eternity of the 
 
as to Dogma. 19 
 
 past, with speculations about the economy of 
 the Divine government, and his course extend 
 to as minute speculations of that which shall 
 be the final outcome of that government's rule. 
 In the midst shall be theories upon theories, of 
 inspiration, of incarnation, of atonement, of 
 grace; until our Theophilus, alas ! is bewildered 
 by the much learning into practical forgetful- 
 ness of the Life that was manifested to be the 
 Light of men, and of the fact that He was born, 
 and died, and rose again, and that whosoever 
 shall confess Him with his mouth, and believe 
 in his heart, — mark you, in his heart — that He 
 has brought with Him from the grave a never- 
 dying life, shall share that risen life, and in its 
 power be saved from sin which is death. 
 
 I believe, men and brethren, that herein is 
 one largest part of the hindrance to the 
 progress of the religion of Jesus Christ among 
 men ; that herein is at least partial explanation 
 of the fact that it must be defended from 
 assault ; and of the further sadder fact that in 
 our day " the enemy cometh on so fast" that 
 the Church beginneth to be afraid, and to speak 
 
20 Discrimination 
 
 coward words of unbelief ; namely, that by 
 Christian teachers so much of mere theological 
 opinion is mingled with the essential truth as 
 it is in Jesus ; that so much of theoiy is 
 blended with the proclamation of the perhaps 
 inexplicable facts it would explain ; that so 
 many questions of theology, of morality, and 
 even of philosophy and of history, are made to 
 appear as part of the Christian religion, and 
 upon their settlement one way or another is 
 made to depend the correctness, the reality, 
 the " soundness," as it is called, of our Chris- 
 tian belief ; nay, that, seemingly but too often, 
 Christianity is made to stand or fall with 
 them. And so the men who cannot accept our 
 philosophy — be it physical, metaphysical, or 
 historical — are driven away from the confession 
 of the divine fact, and are shut out from the 
 home of hope. A great company of them, 
 which no man can number, as I think (for how 
 can I help so thinking when I listen to the 
 words of the Master, and remember the con- 
 vincing power of the Holy Ghost, and the con- 
 straining power of the love of Christ ?), do be- 
 
as to Dogma. 21 
 
 lieve in the heart that God hath raised Jesus 
 from the dead, and in the new hope born of 
 that resurrection, and by the grace of His Spirit 
 do confess Him, though not with the mouth, 
 and do follow Him, while they strive after the 
 things that are true, and honest, and just, and 
 pure, and lovely, and of good report. But 
 they come not into any organized division of 
 the Christian host ; they give not the help 
 which we so much need, and which it is their 
 bounden duty to bestow ; they receive not the 
 visible pledge, the covenant seal, their hearts 
 cannot but desire ; and the Church is clamor- 
 ous with the questions, " Why do not w«z come 
 forward to confess Christ," and " How shall we 
 reach the masses?" Answers multiform are 
 spoken in reply. I answer that which I believe, 
 that undue development of Christian dogma, 
 unwise statement of Christian evidences, un- 
 warranted demand of belief and practice, are 
 perhaps largest factors in the solution of our 
 problem. Our systems of doctrine, builded by 
 our fathers, the champions of the faith in their 
 generation, have become at too many points 
 
22 Discrimination 
 
 but obstacles to the approach of our friends 
 and countrymen ; for the fast-flowing river of 
 unbelief has in its furious course cut out a new 
 channel, and left our levees to separate us only 
 from the land where dwell our kinsfolk. We 
 have forgotten that theological statement must 
 always have closest relation to the philosophy 
 of the age ; we have forgotten that no logically 
 formulated system of dogma, that no marshalled 
 array of evidence is of divine origin, and there- 
 fore of universal and eternal value ; we have 
 forgotten what the Laureate sings : 
 
 " Our little systems have their day, 
 
 They have their day and cease to be : 
 They are but broken lights of Thee, 
 And Thou O Lord art more than they.' - 
 
 And therefore a multitude of men, recalcitrant 
 against our inferences, refuse to confess the 
 facts from which we will consent that no other 
 deduction may come. 
 
 Doubtless the progress of theological de- 
 velopment was an inevitable result of the re- 
 ception of the facts of the Gospel by the human 
 intellect. The fantastic dreamings of that 
 
as to Dogma. 23 
 
 Jewish-Gentile gnosis which St. Paul condemns 
 are but the natural consequence of bringing 
 together the revelation of the Christ and their 
 Oriental theosophy ; and the definitions of the 
 false Athanasius, the Westminister Confession, 
 the decrees of the Council of Trent, the 
 Thirty-nine Articles, are all, it seems to me, 
 the no less natural effort to express the tradi- 
 tional aspect of the eternal realities agreeably 
 to the philosophic conception of the day, and 
 in the language of the different schools. 
 
 Just as natural, perhaps just as inevitable, 
 has been the consequent division of the Chris- 
 tian Church into schools of thought, and then 
 its disruption into rival sects. I shall not call 
 the roll of the contending legions which in this 
 our own land march all under the same banner, 
 and yet whose unseemly rivalries and un- 
 brotherly dissensions so much disfigure the 
 glory of the one Leader, to Whom all alike 
 have sworn the soldier's oath of allegiance. 
 The divisions at Corinth, which the name of 
 the greatest of all Apostles was employed to 
 foster, have but repeated" themselves until now, 
 
24 Discrimination 
 
 when, alas ! all the passages of the Jordan 
 which separates the world from the Church, 
 which flows as protection about the city of our 
 refuge, are guarded by men of Gilead, each 
 company demanding a peculiar " shibboleth," 
 so that the most valiant defender may cross the 
 stream and enter the city at none other pas- 
 sage than that which he guards ; and the way- 
 farer, confused by the multiform demand, will 
 contentedly dwell without. And yet, men and 
 brethren, is it not true, absolutely, incontro- 
 vertibly true, that the ground of hope is with 
 each and all the same ? Is it not true that, 
 from the self-styled infallible vicar of God upon 
 earth to the most illiterate and most bigoted 
 partisan of ultra Protestantism, each and all 
 believe ' ' that if thou shalt confess with thy 
 mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in 
 thine heart that God hath raised Him from the 
 dead, thou shalt be saved ?" 
 
 We Christians are separated into almost hos- 
 tile bands ; and those without, who believe as 
 we believe, and are being saved from sin as we 
 are, by the might of the Spirit of Jesus, yet 
 
as to Dogma. 25 
 
 have not put on the badge — why ? Because the 
 leaders, in their very eagerness to make it more 
 plainly visible, in their honest desire to protect 
 it from disgrace, and to make it more efficient 
 protection to him who shall wear it, have add- 
 ed new features which the recruit cannot find 
 in " the pattern shown in the mount." Yes, 
 my brethren, I believe that the evil of our 
 Christian age, the burden under which the re- 
 ligion of Jesus Christ is being wearied that its 
 mighty strength cannot be displayed, is the 
 erecting of mere theological opinions and theo- 
 ries into articles of the faith ; the making tests 
 of communion with the Church on earth other 
 than the one simple, all-embracing test of the 
 Apostle, the loyal acceptance of Jesus Christ, 
 the risen Saviour, as the very hidden man of 
 the heart, that animated, enabled, restrained, 
 directed, controlled by His Spirit, the life we 
 live therefore may be His life ; and the honest 
 confession of this acceptance publicly as He 
 appointed. 
 
 Therefore I am come to speak to you of 
 Discrimination as the crying need of the 
 
26 Discrimination 
 
 Church to-day ; Discrimination as to Dogma, 
 that we preach according to the analogy of the 
 faith ; that we preach only Jesus and the 
 resurrection as the essential revelation, the 
 Gospel of good tidings ; that we preach plain- 
 ly the Apostles' Creed as the statement of 
 facts to be received (for I thank God from my 
 heart that only this is demanded by the vener- 
 able Church whose commission we bear) ; that 
 we preach Him, and not any theories about ■ 
 Him ; Him the only begotten Son of the 
 Father ; Him the Revealer of that Father as 
 the Father of all men ; Him the Mediator, 
 Redeemer, Sanctifier, Whose Spirit shall be 
 ours if we believe in our heart and confess 
 with our mouth, shall be ours to teach us 
 what we ought to do, and to enable the per- 
 formance. 
 
 But I would not be misunderstood to speak 
 disrespectfully or slightingly of the great body of 
 other doctrines, important, interesting, help- 
 ful to many, which are connected in one way 
 or another with the religion of Jesus. Surely 
 there are heights of holy knowledge to be 
 
as to Dogma. 
 
 27 
 
 scaled, there are depths of revealed truth to be 
 fathomed. Light is thrown back upon the 
 eternal past, and we may please ourselves with 
 guesses about the Divine working ; light is cast 
 forward upon the uncertain future, and we may 
 speculate on our knees what the end shall be. 
 Yes, the disciple of this risen Master will be 
 ever learning, that he may come to the full 
 knowledge of the truth at last. The words of 
 the Christ Himself, the words of His Apostles 
 who spake in His Name and by His Spirit, 
 afford material for thoughtful, prayerful study, 
 are the wells of salvation from which we must 
 draw the living water to refresh our thirsty 
 spirits ; but to the man who asks now as afore- 
 time, What must I do that I may be saved ? — 
 saved here if there be no heaven nor hell be- 
 yond — the answer is to be now as then : not 
 any inquisitorial search to find out what have 
 been the dealings of the Spirit with his spirit, 
 not any setting forth of theory as to the nature 
 of atonement, not any forensic metaphors of 
 imputation of guilt and of righteousness, nor 
 mercantile simile of bargain and payment ; nay, 
 
28 Discrimination 
 
 these are but theories, efforts to explain the in- 
 explicable ; but I will tell him who Jesus was, 
 and what He was : His life, His death, His 
 resurrection ; and then, " If thou shalt confess 
 with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in 
 thine heart that God hath raised Him from the 
 dead, thou shalt be saved. ' ' 
 
 Secondly, I wish to speak of the need for 
 discrimination in the method we shall adopt in 
 presenting the evidences of Christianity to un- 
 belief. 
 
 Thirdly, I would make application of this 
 same principle to our differences of opinion 
 touching ritual or worship — the mode of ex- 
 pressing our devotion to Him in Whom we have 
 believed, and Whom we have confessed. 
 
 And fourthly, I would ask for discrimination 
 in the judgment of Christian people concerning 
 questions relating to recreation and amuse- 
 ment ; questions as to whose decision I believe 
 that we are now standing on ground that is 
 wholly untenable. ''-, 
 
 And in beginning to speak in this first Lec- 
 ture of the necessity for discrimination in the 
 
as to Dogma. 29 
 
 presentation of dogmatic truth, I would make 
 plain, if possible, that I am not quarrelling with 
 Creeds and Confessions of faith, nor yet with 
 Catechisms and Articles of Religion. I recog- 
 nize fully the authority of the Church to fash- 
 ion such caskets to enshrine the precious de- 
 posit ; I recognize not only the right to form, 
 but also the necessity for, such tests of even 
 the religious opinions of those whom she will 
 send forth to teach and to premonish her chil- 
 dren, to warn and persuade men that they 
 neglect not the great salvation. I further rec- 
 ognize their value as lights shining in a dark 
 place, and so helping the unlearned to under- 
 stand the meaning of those Scriptures by 
 which they may be "most surely proven." 
 But if the casket shall be offered as the jewel 
 itself ; or if some earnest, honest inquirer can- 
 not find his way to its opening ; if to some 
 mind the interpretation of Catechism or Article 
 be a darkening of the truth as he has learned 
 it, 'shall he be denied the privilege of the 
 baptismal sign or of the Master's feast ? 
 
 As I said a little while ago, my brethren, I 
 
30 Discrimination 
 
 thank God that we have inherited, as part of 
 the wisdom of the ages, our Office for the Ad- 
 ministration of Baptism, which demands as pre- 
 requisite only the acceptance of the Apostles' 
 Creed, with renunciation of Christ's enemies, 
 and the promise of obedience to His will. 
 And these last are but the essential manifesta- 
 tion of the welcome of Him to the heart, as 
 the supreme authority of the life. This is the 
 wisdom of the ancient historic Church ; but 
 is her wise moderation in all cases suffered to 
 be sufficient by those who minister in her 
 name ? The inquiry cannot be profitless, and 
 as profitable it may be to consider the wider 
 departure from this Apostolic and Scriptural 
 standard of required belief, on the part of 
 those who have left the old paths to follow 
 some deviser of new speculative system, the 
 propounder of new theory, who must in the 
 very nature of the case demand acceptance of 
 the system or the theory as condition for en- 
 rollment in the new Communion. 
 
 The Apostle, as it seems to me, proclaims 
 concisely and yet clearly, in this motto-text I 
 
as to Dogma. 31 
 
 have read, the fundamental doctrines of the 
 Christian religion, any one of which being 
 taken away the religion could have no reality. 
 And these are — first, that there is a something 
 from which mankind, all mankind, needs to be 
 saved ; 
 
 Secondly, that a Saviour, the Lord Jesus, 
 has come, and has accomplished that deliver- 
 ance ; and, 
 
 Thirdly, that there is a means, even the faith 
 of the heart and the confession of the mouth, 
 by which each and every man born of a 
 woman may secure for himself the help of that 
 Saviour, and the consequent salvation from 
 that which oppresses and makes afraid. 
 
 Now let us inquire briefly what has been the 
 treatment of these three fundamental doctrines 
 in their presentation by Christian teachers to 
 the children of men. I answer, first of all, 
 that with reference to each of the three there 
 has been analysis, exposition, explanation, in 
 the shape of pulpit exhortation, of ecclesiastical 
 practice, and, alas ! of dogmatic denunciation, 
 all alike unwarranted by the Holy Scripture. 
 
32 Discrimination 
 
 Do not misunderstand me, again I must 
 ask, that I am in any sense an opponent of 
 theological science and study. The formula- 
 tion of a systematic science of Christian theol- 
 ogy is a duty, even a necessity of the Chris- 
 tian Church and of Christian scholarship. Its 
 inductions from the phenomena of Revela- 
 tion, its deductions from premises thus found, 
 are alike interesting and profitable ; but I do 
 plead that theological conclusions may, nay, 
 must be, kept separate and distinct from the 
 essential facts of Christianity, about which 
 they are formed, lest- they prove in the time 
 to come, as they have proved in the time past, 
 and are now, hindrances rather than helps to 
 the advancement of the kingdom of Christ 
 among men. 
 
 Sin is a fact — hard, stubborn, positive fact — 
 clearly visible to every rational beholder within 
 and without himself. Here, there is no possible 
 conflict between Reason and Revelation. The 
 long watches by day and by night of the scien- 
 tist, who calls himself nature's servant, do but 
 teach him that which the Holy Spirit revealed 
 
as to Dogma. 33 
 
 to the mind of the Apostle, that " the whole 
 creation groaneth and travaileth in pain togeth- 
 er until now."* Tares are ever found among 
 the wheat, and the good seed springing up is 
 choked by the thorns. On earth, in air, and 
 sea, the weaker is the prey of the stronger, and 
 the fittest which survives is only the fittest to 
 destroy. The lion will tear the lamb who 
 would lie down by his side, and the little child 
 who should lead them. More than this : even 
 in a world grown old under the constant teach- 
 ing of the Christian Church, the works of the 
 flesh, those shameless enormities we may not 
 name, which the Apostle catalogues for the 
 Galatians, are still manifest ; and if so be that 
 through the influence of Christian civilization, 
 which is, you know, a direct product of the 
 religion of Jesus, we have escaped these open 
 violations of the laws of common decency, yet 
 in ourselves we behold an ever-active principle 
 developing itself into wrath, malice, and false- 
 hood, if so be that we have learned to prevent 
 its utterance of blasphemy and foulness. Yes, 
 * Romans 8 : 22. 
 
34 Discrimination 
 
 there can be no controversy here — sin is a fact. 
 More than this : the universal consciousness of 
 mankind bears witness to man's inability to 
 master this enemy who has gained, how we 
 know not, possession of the very citadel of his 
 life. Pagan poet and Christian philosopher 
 alike is spokesman of the race when each de- ' 
 clares, " The good that I would I do not, but 
 the evil which I would not, that I do" ;* and 
 it is the voice of nature, human nature, aroused 
 by the Holy Spirit from its sleep, to the recog- 
 nition that this body to which it is chained is 
 dead, which cries out in St. Paul : " Wretched 
 man that I am, who shall deliver me from the 
 body of this death ?"f because the spirit's in- 
 herent powers are seen to be insufficient for 
 the task. Therefore clearly we may hold and 
 must teach that a belief in the reality of sin is 
 a necessary element of the belief in Jesus 
 Christ as the Deliverer from sin ; that convic- 
 tion of sin m-ust precede and be a reason for 
 the conviction of righteousness, of that justifi- 
 cation of the sinner which the Father hath pro- 
 
 * Romans 7 : 19. f Romans 7 . 22. 
 
as to Dogma. 55 
 
 vided, and of that judgment by which the 
 Prince of this world shall be condemned. 
 
 It will follow, too, doubtless, that in propor- 
 tion to the intensity of the consciousness of 
 our guilt will be the eagerness of our joy when 
 we have learned that God has put away our 
 sin, and the capacity of our love for Him who 
 has so loved us. But what may I demand on 
 this point, of those who come saying with the 
 Greeks in the old time, " Sir, we would see 
 Jesus, we have heard of the marvellous 
 beauty of His Being, we have seen the renew- 
 ing, regenerating work of His grace ; we would 
 join ourselves to His company and be called 
 by His name"? May I demand that these 
 shall accept my theory of the necessary char- 
 acter and exhibition of what I call conviction 
 of sin ? Shall I hold up before them the pic- 
 ture of the blinded persecutor on the Damas- 
 cus road, fallen prostrate to the earth, over- 
 whelmed by the vision of the light of God's 
 holiness, hearing no sound save the dreadful 
 voice of demand, personal and direct, "Why 
 persecutest thou Me?" and insist that this is 
 
36 Discrimination 
 
 the normal expression of the dealing of God 
 with man, in the day when He looks upon him 
 to take away his reproach and his despair ; 
 whereas the same Scripture record tells of other 
 men, Apostles and Martyrs as well, who fol- 
 lowed the Christ under the compulsion of the 
 beauty and glory which were manifested in 
 Him, and only after long years of companion- 
 ship came to know what great things must be 
 done, and what great things He had done, for 
 their souls ? 
 
 " Repentance," the Church teaches her chil- 
 dren required of persons to be baptized, is 
 that " whereby they forsake sin." Ah ! yes, 
 forsake sin, renounce it in its every recognized 
 form, and all the agents inciting to its perform- 
 ance, and all the means by which they secure 
 our compliance : this the necessary result of 
 the belief with the heart in this risen Christ. 
 'Tis the very first outgoing of the newly-planted 
 life ; but this one test complied with, who shall 
 dare demand that other be offered ? And yet 
 is it not lamentably true that false theory on 
 this point set forth as scriptural truth has been 
 
as to Dogma. 37 
 
 a fruitful source of evil, that a multitude of men 
 honest and true have been kept away from the 
 confession of the Master because they could 
 not proclaim as theirs this experience, it may 
 be real, to their teachers ? They might not 
 enter the city, because their approach had not 
 been along that road which the watchman and 
 guide declares to be the only way of access. 
 
 Straightway when we speak of this particular 
 departure from the catholic freedom of the re- 
 ligion of Jesus, we think of its furthest devel- 
 opment in the mad doings of the followers of 
 a good and great man : the anxious-bench ; 
 the multitude stirred into frenzy by the clam- 
 orous appeals of the preacher, which he makes 
 to men and to God with equal fervency and 
 equal familiarity ; the singing by a great con- 
 gregation of simple melodies with words of 
 sweetest simplicity and tenderness ; and as nat- 
 ural consequence the physical excitement bred 
 as by contagion. These things we have seen, 
 and, alas ! have seen the professed convert 
 wake up the next day to consciousness of the 
 unreality of the whole transaction, to recogni- 
 
38 Discrimination 
 
 tion of the fact that in purpose he had not for- 
 saken sin and turned to God, and to an after 
 lifetime of unbelief in the divine origin of the 
 Christian religion. I believe these ranting 
 follies in the name of Jesus have done more to 
 damage His cause than all the utterances of 
 that scientific scepticism whose attacks seem 
 to be the only danger that our champions now 
 dread. 
 
 But are we, the inheritors of that " form of 
 sound words" which protests by its prescribed 
 requirements against such disordered excess 
 being the regular and proper result of the 
 working of that Spirit, who " is not the author 
 of confusion but of peace" — are we without 
 blame in this matter ? Do not individual 
 ministers of this Church unwarrantably set up a 
 standard of requirement on this subject which 
 the Church has not erected ? " Repentance," 
 remember, is that "whereby we forsake sin" ; 
 that only this Church declares. Remember, 
 further, the instances of repentance recorded 
 for our learning in Holy Scripture are just as 
 varied in their incidental characteristics as are 
 
as to Dogma. 39 
 
 the temperaments of those in whom this spirit- 
 ual process goes on. David the royal Psalmist 
 rent his clothes and lay all night upon the 
 earth when convinced of his sin by the mouth 
 of the Prophet ; Simon Peter went out from 
 the presence of the Master Whom he had de- 
 nied, and wept bitterly ; the Publican in our 
 Lord's parable " sighed and smote upon his 
 breast" ; Zaccheus did neither weep nor sigh ; 
 and the penitence of each and all is declared 
 equally acceptable to God. Repentance is that 
 whereby we forsake sin ; yes, all sin which the 
 Holy Ghost shall convince us to be sin ; and 
 except it bear this fruit, surely our faith in the 
 Lord Jesus is vain ; but let us take good heed 
 that we who have found peace in believing 
 despise not the experience unlike our own, and 
 so quench the spark of life which may be kin- 
 dling in the heart. 
 
 One word more on this point. May I demand 
 of him who cometh to confess Jesus Christ that 
 he believe in the eternity of sin, and so in the 
 never-ending duration of its punishment ? 
 
 It need hardly be said that I am not here to 
 
40 Discrimination 
 
 express my assent to, or my denial of, any one 
 of the theories upon this subject which have 
 made so large a part of theological controversy 
 in our own time. It matters not whether the 
 speaker or whether any other divine agree in 
 opinion — mark you, in opinion — with the gifted 
 rhetorician of the Abbey who sets forth in such 
 beautiful words an eternal hope for all our race 
 because of a continued probation in the unseen 
 world ; or whether he follow the venerable and 
 learned Oxford Professor, and find equal com- 
 fort and hope in the thought that we cannot 
 know what souls do not die in a state of grace, 
 and " that the merits of Jesus reach to every 
 one who wills to be saved, whether in this life 
 they knew Him or knew Him not."* 
 
 It matters not whether any individual 
 Churchman may hold the opinion of the elder 
 Calvinists and of their modern interpreters, 
 who even in popular discourse can say, 
 " When the damned jingle the burning irons 
 of their torment they shall say, ' For ever ! ' 
 
 * Pusey's " What is of Faith as to Eternal Punish, 
 ment?" p. 14. 
 
as to Dogma. 41 
 
 ] when they howl, echo cries, ' Forever ! ' "* or 
 whether he accept the hypothesis of "condi- 
 tional immortality," as clearly and ably set 
 forth by one of our own most distinguished 
 men, that the "everlasting punishment" of 
 the wicked is the taking away of an endless 
 life. I say it matters not : I mean, of course, 
 that his opinion upon this confessedly mysteri- 
 ous subject can properly make no difference in 
 his proclamation of the Gospel message, and 
 certainly it can make no difference in the pass- 
 word he may require at the door of the king- 
 dom ; for it seems to me that perhaps that 
 theory containing most of appeal to the fear of 
 physical suffering offers least deterrent influ- 
 ence against the commission of sin. 
 
 No topic of human thought can be fraught 
 with higher interest than this : What shall be 
 the condition of men in that world to which 
 we depart through " the grave and gate of 
 death"? Men will think about it, and must 
 speak about it to those whom they are sent to 
 teach ; but let us remember ever to speak our 
 * Spurgeon, quoted by Farrar, "Eternal Hope," p. 1. 
 
42 Discrimination 
 
 opinions as opinions, and not as dogma resting 
 upon Church authority ox plain scriptural dec- 
 laration. 
 
 " The Church," it has been beautifully said, 
 " has its long list of saints ; it has not inserted 
 one name in any catalogue of the damned."* 
 As truly it may be said, the Church requires of 
 all who would enter its communion, the con- 
 fession of belief in the life everlasting but 
 nowhere has it asked for like belief in the never- 
 ending death. 
 
 Sin is a fact ; the punishment of sin is a cer- 
 tainty now and here, and must be there if un- 
 forgiven and unremoved ; but what emotional 
 evidence shall alone attest our conviction of 
 sin, what details of renunciation other than 
 those plainly set down in Scripture shall alone 
 declare our forsaking of sin, what shall be its 
 punishment in character and duration — these 
 are theories, opinions, important it may be, 
 and interesting, but they are not essential part 
 of Christianity, and cannot " be required of any 
 
 * Quoted by Pusey, " What is of Faith as to Everlasting 
 Punishment?" p. 14. 
 
as to Dogma. 43 
 
 man that it should be believed as an article of 
 the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary 
 to salvation." 
 
 Secondly, the Apostle declares that this de- 
 liverance is to be effected by belief, but a be- 
 lief of the heart as well as of the head, and by 
 the confessed acceptance of a Person and not 
 of a doctrine. This crucified Jesus Whom he 
 preached everywhere, as declared to be God's 
 Son with power by the resurrection from the 
 dead ; Whom his colleague Simon Peter pro- 
 claimed unto the house of Israel as made by 
 Jehovah both Lord and Christ ; Who in the 
 presence of chosen witnesses had ascended into 
 heaven ; He it is, the Apostle writes, Who 
 saves ; and he adds that this work is accom- 
 plished by the making His life which He 
 brought back from the grave to become our 
 life by believing in the heart in the reality of 
 this risen life. 
 
 So far, as it seems to me, all is simple and 
 easy of comprehension, however it may be diffi- 
 cult to receive upon any evidence the fact that 
 He rose from the dead. But we would know, 
 
44 Discrimination 
 
 naturally we would know all the history of that 
 wondrous Life, and we eagerly seek the com- 
 panionship of the men who did hear His words 
 and see His works, who did eat and drink with 
 Him after His earthly life was ended. They 
 tell us that He was born by miracle, without 
 the taint of our nature's curse. They tell us, 
 nay, He tells us, in words which are their own 
 authentication, because no human imagination 
 could have conceived them, that God is His 
 own Father, in other and closer relation than 
 that He bears to His sons by creation ; that 
 He lived by essential existence before that 
 Abraham began to be ; that His works are the 
 works of His Father, and as little subject to the 
 limitations of Moses' law ; that He Himself 
 gives eternal life to them that hear His voice 
 and follow Him ; that He Himself will send the 
 Comforter from the Father ; nay, finally, that 
 He and His Father, that Eternal God, are One ; 
 and the response in some cases comes back 
 from the angry auditors in the stones wherewith 
 they would kill Him, " because," as they said, 
 ' ' that Thou being a man makest Thyself God. ' ' 
 
as to Dogma. 45 
 
 More than this : because He ever speaketh of 
 the Comforter Whom He will send as a Person, 
 and because to Him are ascribed attributes of 
 Deity ; and because, finally, when the hour of 
 His departure is at hand, we hear Him speak 
 the parting charge to the Apostles whom He had 
 chosen, that they go and preach His Gospel to 
 all the nations, and that they baptize men into 
 the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
 Ghost ; therefore of necessity we believe what 
 He hath plainly spoken, that Jesus is God, and 
 that there are three Persons in one God — the 
 Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Yes, we 
 believe it, this whereof we can form no con- 
 ception, the nature of God, because'He Whom 
 we have welcomed to our heart reveals it. 
 
 Whatsoever He hath revealed, plainly re- 
 vealed, either by His words or His life, or by 
 His Spirit to be spoken by the witnesses whom 
 He sent to found and to govern His Church, 
 that we will receive without question, that we 
 must demand that all receive ; for otherwise 
 vain is the claim to believe in the heart that 
 God hath raised Him from the dead. But we 
 
46 Discrimination 
 
 are not bound to believe any theories to ex- 
 plain His redemption, fashioned by ingenious 
 inferences from the sacred record ; for with 
 reference to almost its every detail varying 
 hypotheses have been suggested, equally includ- 
 ing the observed phenomena. 
 
 To take but one example, and that the 
 chiefest : Again and again while He taught in 
 Jerusalem and in Galilee He foretold to the 
 little company of His immediate followers the 
 impending death that He must die. With 
 ever-increasing clearness, as the time draweth 
 nigh, He makes them understand that He will 
 be delivered into the hands of the Gentiles, 
 and that they will crucify Him, and that on 
 the third day He will rise again. More than 
 this, Himself did teach that He would draw 
 all men unto Himself by being lifted up, and 
 in yet plainer words that the Son of Man came 
 to "give His life a ransom for many." The 
 Prcphet of the Wilderness, His forerunner and 
 herald, had pointed Him out in the very begin- 
 ning of his public ministry as " the Lamb of 
 God who taketh away the sin of the world" ; 
 
us to Dogma. 47 
 
 and His apostles to whom is left the witnessing 
 to the resurrection, the preaching of the deliv- 
 erance He had accomplished, they ever empha- 
 size this death as the procuring cause of salva- 
 tion. " God commendeth His love toward us," 
 says St. Paul, " in that, while we were yet sin- 
 ners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being 
 justified by His blood, we shall be saved from 
 wrath through Him. For if, when we were 
 enemies, we were reconciled to God by the 
 death of His Son ; much more, being reconciled, 
 we shall be saved by His life. And not only 
 so, but we also joy in God through our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received 
 the atonement."* St. Johnsays: " Herein is 
 love, not that we loved God, but that He loved 
 us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for 
 our sins."f St. Peter says : " For Christ also 
 hath once suffered for sin, the just for the un- 
 just, that He might bring us to God.":j: Let 
 these passages suffice to represent the apostolic 
 teaching, teaching which the Church has 
 
 * Roman's 5 : 8-1 1. \ 1 John 4 : 10. 
 
 \ I Peter 3 : 18. 
 
48 Discrimination 
 
 echoed in the words which she bids the Priest 
 to speak in the holiest and highest act of her 
 worship, when she gives all glory to the 
 Almighty Father, for that of His tender mercy 
 He did give His only Son Jesus Christ to suffer 
 death upon the cross for our redemption : 
 " Who made there, by His one oblation of 
 Himself once offered, a full, perfect, and suffi- 
 cient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for 
 the sins of the whole world." 
 
 But has the Church, then, set her seal to 
 any theory of the atonement, which you 
 and I and all her children must receive as 
 part of the precious deposit ? Must I be- 
 lieve a mode in which Christ hath brought 
 me to God, in order to the assurance of the 
 adoption, the sonship He offers me ? Am I 
 shut up, by explicit scriptural statement, or 
 by ecclesiastical dogma resting thereon, to any 
 defined metaphysical conception as to how 
 Christ made His soul an offering for sin ; as to 
 why it was necessary that He be " crucified, 
 dead, and buried, to reconcile His Father to us, 
 and to be a sacrifice not only for original guilt, 
 
as to Dogma. 49 
 
 but also for actual sins of men"?* I thank 
 God that the utterances of holy men of old, 
 who spake as they were moved by the Holy 
 Ghost, and that the formulas of the ancient 
 historic Church, both doctrinal and devotional, 
 are all of such character that, as it seems to 
 me, men holding very differing opinions upon 
 these points, and men holding consciously and 
 definitely no theory at all, may read, mark, and 
 inwardly digest them with equal joy and equal 
 profit. 
 
 I take my place in reverent, sorrowing 
 memory at the foot of that cross on Calvary's 
 hillside ; I stand in fancy among those despair- 
 ing men who are looking upon the death-agony 
 of their dearest Friend ; I am close to the 
 weeping mother, whose heart the prophetic 
 sword is piercing. I hear the mysterious words 
 of the sufferer, His tender human commend- 
 ing of His mother to His friend, His divine 
 prayer for those who wounded Him, His God- 
 like assurance of blessedness to the penitent 
 transgressor by His side. At last there comes 
 
 " Articles of Religion," Art. 2. 
 
5<3 Discrimination 
 
 the light at eventide, the resigning His spirit 
 into His Father's hands, and then the expiring 
 mighty shout of the Victor, " It is finished !" 
 — and He is dead. Just when He willed, with 
 perfect control of the event, He is dead.. 
 What does it mean ? The sun has hidden his 
 face that he may not behold the dreadful 
 sight ; nature is shuddering, and the rocks.are 
 rent, and the graves are opened. Is it the 
 wings of the crowding angels who are hovering 
 about the scene which shut out the sunlight ? 
 Is it the mad rage of the Prince of this world 
 who beholds his own defeat, that causeth the 
 earth his kingdom to tremble and be broken ? 
 I turn away with the wondering, fearing multi- 
 tude, and muse in my heart of that thing which 
 is done, and the question keeps repeating itself, 
 Ah ! why hath it pleased the Lord to bruise 
 Him? 
 
 One man whom I meet tells: me. that only 
 therefore was He born ; that the incarnation 
 was necessary only to make possible the sacri- 
 fice of the body's blood ; and another that this 
 cruel, bloody death is only necessary develop- 
 
as to Dogma. 51 
 
 ment, a natural result of the indwelling of God 
 in humanity, that thereby may be made to the 
 Father the sacrifice of perfect repentance and 
 confession. I am told that in a fiction God 
 hath imputed to Jesus the guilt of the race, and 
 in corresponding fiction will now impute His 
 righteousness to His brethren. I am told by 
 some that God the Father was angry with His 
 children, and that the agony and death of His 
 own Son were alone sufficient to appease His 
 wrath ; and yet another bids me remember how 
 the Son Himself declared that the Father is 
 real Father to all, and because He loved them 
 sent His Son to redeem them. My very soul 
 is weary of their theories. I can find difficul- 
 ties, yes, difficulties scriptural and natural, in 
 all these theories, and none of them is in any 
 sense adequate interpretation of what is done, 
 and so I turn away to my solitude, believing 
 that God hath raised Him from the dead, be- 
 lieving that His death was surely necessary else 
 had it not been suffered ; believing that because 
 of His life and death He has gained power to 
 give me eternal life ; believing that God is my 
 
52 Discrimination 
 
 Father because He is His Father, as He de- 
 clared : yes, that though I cannot understand 
 the necessity, or the manner of meeting that 
 necessity, yet that all is done that a Father's 
 love, a Brother's suffering, a Spirit's influence 
 can do, that all men everywhere may be saved 
 from sin and death unto holiness and life. I 
 will believe and I will pray, and I will strive to 
 love Him who has so loved me, and to confess 
 Him with my mouth and in my life, that so I 
 may come at last to see Him, and then shall I 
 know all this whereof now men take so much 
 counsel which is yet dark, and darkened, by 
 words without knowledge. 
 
 And now, to speak briefly of the third essen- 
 tial element in the salvation by Christ, enunci- 
 ated by the Apostle in our text — namely, the 
 belief of the heart and the confession of the 
 mouth as the means of its attainment. I beg 
 you to note his expression, " if thou shalt be- 
 lieve in thine heart," which must, as it seems 
 to me, and as I have already more than once 
 suggested, signify the enshrining of the Spirit 
 of Jesus within our spirit, that He may be the 
 
as to Dogma. 53 
 
 fountain source of our life. May we not say, 
 in words even less susceptible of misunder- 
 standing, that the faith of the heart that God 
 has raised Him from the dead is the surrender 
 of our will, which is ourself, our very personal- 
 ity, and the taking of His will instead, because 
 God hath raised Him from the dead ? Now re- 
 member, the freedom of our will is the very 
 essence of our personality, even as it is the 
 likeness of God wherein we are created ; that 
 will surrendered and the will of another placed 
 on the throne of our being, our very personality 
 is merged in the being of that conqueror, and 
 the life we thereafter live is not our own, but is 
 lived by faith in him. True of any human 
 friend or enemy to whom, from love or from 
 fear, we thus may yield, 'tis true of the rela- 
 tion of the saved to the Saviour, and is the 
 very means whereby their salvation is effected. 
 " The life which I now live in the flesh," 
 writes St. Paul to the Galatians, " I live by the 
 faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave 
 Himself for me."* Again and again we read 
 
 * Gal. 2 : 20. 
 
54 Discrimination 
 
 how he writes to Christians that they are ' ' in 
 Jesus Christ ;" and he says,* "As many of you 
 as have been baptized into Christ have put on 
 Christ" ; and baptism, St. Peter says, is, in 
 its essential nature, and hence in its efficient 
 power to unite with Christ, f "the answer of 
 a good conscience toward God." 
 
 But necessarily the faith of the heart must in- 
 clude the faith of the mind, which is its found- 
 ation and warrant. Because we believe upon 
 evidence satisfactory to our understanding that 
 God has raised Jesus from the dead, therefore 
 under the guidance and by the enabling grace 
 of God the Holy Ghost we yield to Him our will, 
 and thus joined to Him we are saved by Him. 
 Mark well too that this faith of the heart is the 
 gift of the Holy Ghost ; for Jesus Himself de- 
 clared that " no man can come to Me except 
 the Father, which hath sent Me draw him."^ 
 But oh, mark as well how quick He was to add, 
 "... and they shall be all taught of God. 
 Every man, therefore that hath heard, and hath 
 
 * Gal. 3 : 27. + r Peter 3 : 21. 
 
 X John 6 : 44, 45 
 
as to Dogma. 55 
 
 learned of the Father, cometh unto Me. ' ' The 
 faith of the heart, the coming unto Him, is the 
 gift of God, but a gift freely offered unto all ; 
 this is His declaration, so that all are without 
 excuse. 
 
 But the fact of Jesus' resurrection being re- 
 ceived by the mind as any other great fact of 
 history upon sufficient proof, what follows as 
 necessary in its progress from the mind to the 
 heart, in its conversion from an intellectual 
 conviction to a spiritual power? The Holy 
 Ghost is to be the Agent to work the wonderful 
 transmutation ; therefore let us beware how we 
 limit or prescribe the mode of His operation. 
 As numerous and varied perhaps as were the 
 different methods of our Lord's working in the 
 days of His human life will be those of His 
 Paraclete in effecting the new creation of the 
 human soul by its self-surrender to the risen 
 Christ. To one, the full realization of his son- 
 ship, the full purpose of subjection to Christ, 
 shall come as slowly and as gradually as came 
 the light to the eyes of the blind man at Beth- 
 saida, who at the first touch of the Master's 
 
56 Discrimination 
 
 hand saw " men as trees walking," and after its 
 repetition " was restored, and saw every man 
 clearly."* Another, aroused by the Spirit to a 
 sense of his uncleanness, of his impotence, his 
 curse, shall run as the leper did to fall at Jesus' 
 feet, crying out in an agony of despair, " Lord, 
 Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean ;"f and 
 now as then the answer shall come back, " I 
 will, be thou clean" ; and new hope and pur- 
 pose and resolve, with strength to resist and to 
 endure, shall straightway come again unto him. 
 To one the waters of the covenant ordinance 
 may bring the comforting assurance and be the 
 medium of regenerating grace, even as Siloam's 
 pool was made to be the conduit of blessing to 
 him who, bidden,^: "went and washed and re- 
 ceived sight"; while to another, groping in the 
 darkness of fear and of doubt, convinced of sin 
 but not yet convinced of the righteousness of 
 God in Christ, some faithful Ananias may be 
 sent with message of help, with commission to 
 put his hands upon him that he may receive 
 
 * St. Mark 8 : 24, 25. f St. Matt. 8 : 2, 3. 
 
 % St. John 9 : 11. 
 
as to Dogma. 57 
 
 sight. For this only I plead, that we lay not 
 as burdens upon the souls of men other than 
 "necessary things" ; that we hinder not the 
 confession of the mouth by theories of our own 
 as to what must be the process of formation of 
 the crystal faith. Does the man assert his be- 
 lief in his heart that God has raised Jesus from 
 the dead, and is he come to renounce His ene- 
 mies and to swear the sacrament of obedient 
 following for all the years to come ? Then I 
 ask not by what path the Holy Ghost has 
 brought him to this state of salvation. I pry 
 with no sharp-pointed question into the past 
 experience, lest I damage and destroy the ten- 
 der plant whose seed has just sprouted in the 
 darkness and silence of its spirit-home. I ask 
 not for acceptance of any theories of sin or of 
 reconciliation, nor yet for promises of specific 
 renunciation or performance. There is not 
 time or occasion for me to give long instruc- 
 tion as to modes of ordinances or sacramental 
 efficacy. He would confess with his mouth, 
 Him in whom he has learned to believe with 
 his heart, that he may come into the assured 
 
58 Discrimination 
 
 state of salvation, and I dare not demand aught 
 else. By and by he, too, as member of the Chris- 
 tian host may, nay, must be, student of the 
 ancient writing and of the Church's teachings ; 
 but before he puts on the uniform let us beware 
 that we make no unauthorized demand of theo- 
 logical orthodoxy. I will tell Jiim, if he ask of 
 these things, that concerning them there is hon- 
 est difference of opinion among Christian men ; 
 will tell him that his opinion is as free and un- 
 constrained as theirs ; above all will tell him 
 that to know Jesus and not doctrine about 
 Jesus, that the having Him as tenant of the 
 heart, and not the having orthodox views about 
 Him in the mind, that this is eternal life. 
 
 One word more : How may I know the reality 
 of the supposed dealing between Christ and 
 my soul ? Surely the religion of Jesus must 
 afford some test whereby its alleged influences 
 may be tried, some seal of authentication of 
 the title to salvation it claims to give. Ah ! 
 what havoc has been made at this point by the 
 contending theories of the Doctors, and what' 
 barriers against the entrance of men into the 
 
as to Dogma. 59 
 
 Church have been builded of the dead bodies 
 of the contestants ! 
 
 Wouldst thou be assured of thy salvation ?— 
 go fall on thy knees before the infallible 
 teacher, guide, Vicar of Christ. His represent- 
 ative is in every parish, and for all practical 
 purposes each parish Priest is to the penitent 
 infallible. Tell him thy faith and thy sin, the 
 health thou hopest thou hast, the disease thou 
 fearest is lurking in thy soul ; he, the Priest, 
 the physician of the soul, will give thee medi- 
 cine if needed, or will guarantee the soundness 
 if it be there. Thou shalt depart in peace to 
 thine house; for do not the Priest's lips keep 
 knowledge ? 
 
 At the opposite pole of the ecclesiastical 
 sphere I find other theory, standing sentinel, 
 armed to completeness, and ready for battle ; 
 nor Priest nor word of absolving authority will 
 he admit to be possible or helpful. Wouldst 
 thou be assured of thy salvation ? — Jook in thy 
 heart and read the writing of the Spirit, where- 
 by He will witness, with thy spirit. 
 
 I thank God, my brethren, that here as before 
 
6o Discrimination 
 
 the wisdom of the ancient Church is manifested ; 
 and oh ye, her ministering servants, be careful 
 that in eager pursuit of logical, systematic con- 
 sistency, ye turn not aside to the right hand nor 
 to the left, neither to the bastard Romanism 
 of a mock confessional, nor to the partisan 
 Protestantism of a pretended miraculous expe- 
 rience ! Our Church has no theory. The 
 minister of Jesus Christ declares with authority 
 the covenanted terms of forgiveness, and when 
 the confession of a true faith is made with 
 seeming honesty he declares sin forgiven and 
 new birth accomplished. This is but the in- 
 herent necessary function of the official charac- 
 ter. But still we are not left in doubt and fear 
 in such vital matters. The gift of Christ is not 
 only salvation from sin, but salvation unto 
 righteousness ; not merely deliverance from 
 penalty, but from power. Thou wouldst know 
 whether in very deed thou hast believed in 
 thine heart and confessed with thy mouth 
 unto eternal life ; then rise up and walk, in the 
 new strength born of the resurrection of Jesus 
 Christ, in the path that He has ordained. No 
 
as to Dogma. 61 
 
 theory of absolution is needed ; the fact of de- 
 liverance from sin is proven by the fact of new 
 life conferred. Yes, to believe with the heart 
 in the risen Christ ; to confess Him, His in- 
 dwelling Presence and government with mouth 
 and life, this is salvation, no matter for ortho- 
 doxy or heterodoxy of mere religious opinion ; 
 no matter for the rudeness or the perfection of 
 our liturgic forms ; no matter for conformity 
 or disregard of the arbitrary standards of sup- 
 posed religious conduct. This St.. Paul says is 
 eternal life ; this Reason says is salvation, for it 
 is union with Him who is the Life, Him Who 
 hath conquered death and hell, and over Whom 
 death hath no more dominion. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 Discrimination as to Evidences. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 DISCRIMINATION AS TO EVIDENCES. 
 
 " How then shall they call on him in whom they have not 
 believed ?" — Romans io : 14. 
 
 \\ J E follow the great reasoner in his argu- 
 * * merit : " With the heart man believeth 
 unto righteousness, and with the mouth con- 
 fession is made unto salvation. . . . Who- 
 soever shall call upon the name of the Lord 
 shall be saved" ; but " how," he adds, " then 
 shall they call on Him in whom they have not 
 believed ?" That is, for what reason, impelled 
 by what motive, shall they appeal for deliver- 
 ance and salvation to one of whose power to 
 save they have not been convinced, and to 
 whoin, therefore, they are not persuaded to 
 surrender their will ? The mind must accept 
 as true warrant of confidence the evidences of 
 His claim to be the Saviour from sin before 
 the heart can believe to the attainment of His 
 
66 Discrimination 
 
 righteousness and the mouth confess " unto 
 salvation." Hence the necessity for evidences 
 of Christianity ; and because the doubts as 
 really as the beliefs of an age will take their 
 shape and their expression from the philosophy 
 of that age, hence the necessity that the mode 
 of stating these evidential arguments shall be 
 changed from time to time ; and we may not be 
 surprised if the defence sufficient in one genera- 
 tion shall not suffice to protect against the new 
 assault of its successor. 
 
 You remember the old story told by Canon 
 Liddon in his Bampton Lectures, of the scep- 
 tical prince who asked his Chaplain to give him 
 some clear evidence of the truth of Christianity ? 
 The king had not much time to spare for such 
 matters, and would have the reply contain but 
 few words ; and the Chaplain tersely answered, 
 " The Jews, your Majesty." 
 
 Can we make such response to patronizing 
 inquirer of to-day, with good hope that the 
 witness of the long history of national expecta- 
 tion, and of the still continued condition of na- 
 tional isolation and yet of thorough dispersion, 
 
as to Evidences. 67 
 
 shall have weight to convince of the claims of the 
 Christ ? True, there is record of the existence 
 of Messianic hope for thousands of years, and 
 of this hope symbolized and reinforced by pro- 
 phetic declaration and by ritual observance ; 
 but our inquirer will object that our predictions 
 were spoken after the events, or, like the acts of 
 this people's worship, have been tortured into 
 reference to the Christ who should come. Point 
 him to the present condition of the " chosen 
 people," and bid him see how it is as entirely 
 separated from the peoples among whom it 
 dwells, as when in the day of its glory it dwelt 
 in that little narrow tract of country, hedged in 
 by mountains and the sea ; bid him note the 
 unmistakable, the ineffaceable characteristics of 
 countenance, the stain that will not disappear, 
 the indelible brand of an " unexpiated self- 
 imprecated guilt ;" * he will tell you that it is 
 but a notable instance of the " persistency of 
 type" ; and, more than this, that the nation is 
 itself beginning to dig down the walls which 
 have separated it from those among whom it 
 * Liddon's Bampton Lectures, p. 97. 
 
68 Discrimination 
 
 sojourns, because no longer " its heart, its 
 home, its future are elsewhere" ; * because it 
 no longer hopes for Him whom we Christians 
 have found, and no longer " witnesses by its 
 accumulating despair to the truth of the creed 
 which it so doggedly rejects, "f Prophecy, 
 whether of Hebrew seer or of Hebrew national 
 life, will not bear the whole burden. 
 
 Shall we then call our inquirer to come see a 
 man who must be the Christ, because, as the 
 Pharisee confesses, " no man can do these mir- 
 acles" which He has done " except God be 
 with Him" ? Shall I bid him come taste the 
 new-made wine at the wedding feast at Cana, 
 or summon him to help the fishermen drag to 
 shore the breaking net into which Divine Power 
 has compelled the crowding multitude of fishes ? 
 Shall I give him place in the fast-filling ship, 
 that he may hear the words of the just-awak- 
 ened Jesus rebuking the winds and the sea into 
 calm ? Or shall he be called to shudder at the 
 sight of the demoniacs " coming out of the 
 tombs exceeding fierce," that he may hear their 
 * Liddon's Bampton Lectures, p. 97. f Ibid. 
 
as to Evidences. 69 
 
 words of despair, and then behold them " cloth- 
 ed, and in their right mind," by the mighty 
 word of the Deliverer ? Shall I command that 
 he make one of the little company who stand 
 wondering about the bed where lies the dead 
 maiden, and see how her spirit comes again 
 at the summons of the Nazarene ; or that he 
 tarry with the multitude at the gate of the 
 " city called Nain," when the prophet stops 
 the bier, and gives the dead boy back again, 
 alive, to the arms of the widowed mother ? 
 Our inquirer will answer, it may be, that he 
 cannot receive as genuine and authentic record 
 of real events these stories of wonders wrought 
 by the hands of Him we worship ; or admitting 
 most probably, that the record is true in the 
 general, he may deny the possibility of such 
 reported occurrences, and explain their finding 
 place in the story of a good man's life by the 
 natural tendency and desire to paint such halo 
 of glory about the head of a beloved teacher : 
 the inevitable confounding of the false with the 
 true, the legendary with the historical, in the 
 earliest records of a people's history. 
 
jo Discrimination 
 
 Let us assume that he is an honest sceptic, 
 who believes in God, and who, like Dr. Car- 
 penter, the Corypheeus of modern theistic 
 scepticism, is "not conscious of any such 
 scientific ' prepossession ' against miracles as 
 would prevent me [him] from accepting them 
 as facts if trustworthy evidence of their reality 
 could be adduced." Let us assume that for 
 him, as for this scientist, the " question is 
 simply, ' Have we any adequate historical 
 ground for the belief that such departure [from 
 the laws of nature] has ever taken place ' " ? * 
 Then see what difficulties present themselves in 
 the way of his thus being convinced that Jesus is 
 the Son of God, as the very initial step in the 
 ascent to his belief of the heart unto righteous- 
 ness, and confession with the mouth unto 
 salvation. 
 
 The tendency of modern philosophic thought 
 is to demand verification as the great test of 
 truth, because the whole progress of human 
 discovery goes to show that only verified facts 
 have ever conducted to valuable knowledge. 
 * Row's Bampton Lectures, p. 29. 
 
as to Evidences. ji 
 
 And this tendency, mark you, will show itself 
 in the habits of mind, not alone of the student 
 and the scientist, but just as plainly in those of 
 the artisan and the laborer, because they breathe 
 the air of their age, and are necessarily affected 
 by the temper and tone of its philosophy. A 
 priori considerations have well nigh ceased to 
 have any value in the determination of what is 
 truth, and the opinion is everywhere, that 
 " facts which can receive no kind of verification, 
 either in the realities of the present or in the 
 palpable historical events of the past, can only 
 be accepted as true on an amount of evidence 
 which is practically demonstrative." * 
 
 * " Looking at it not only as our right, but as our duty, to 
 bring the higher critical enlightenment of the present day to 
 bear upon the study of the Gospel records, I ask whether 
 both past and contemporary history do not afford such a 
 body of evidence of a prevalent tendency to exaggeration 
 and distortion, in the representation of actual occurrences 
 in which ' supernatural ' agencies are supposed to have 
 been concerned, as entitles us, without attempting any de- 
 tailed analysis, to believe that if we could know what really 
 did happen, it would often prove to be something very dif- 
 ferent from what is narrated." 
 
 " The scientific theist," the same writer says, " who re- 
 
72 Discrimination 
 
 How, then, shall we justify to our inquirer 
 the claims of our Master to his homage, if those 
 claims be made to rest exclusively, or even 
 primarily, upon the basis of the physical mira- 
 cles recorded in the "New Testament ? 
 
 It has been well pointed out by Canon Row, 
 in his Lectures upon " Christian Evidences 
 viewed in Relation to Modern Thought" (to 
 which work I would confess myself most largely 
 
 gards the so-called ' laws of nature ' as nothing else than 
 man's expression of so much of the divine order as lies 
 within his power to discern, and who looks at the uniriter- 
 ruptedness of this order as the highest evidence of its origi- 
 nal perfection, need find (as it seems to me) no abstract diffi- 
 culty in the conception that the Author of nature can, if He 
 will, occasionally depart from it. And hence as I deem it 
 presumptuous to deny that there might be occasions which 
 in His wisdom may require such departure, I am not con- 
 scious of any such scientific " prepossession ' against mira- 
 cles as would prevent me from accepting them as facts, if 
 trustworthy evidence of their reality could be adduced. The 
 question with me, therefore, is simply, ' Have we any ade- 
 quate historical ground for the belief that such departure has 
 ever taken place." — Dr. Carpenter, Contemporary Review, 
 January, 1876, quoted by Canon Row, Bampton Lectures for 
 i877,A 412. 
 
as to Evidences. 73 
 
 indebted for the thoughts I am to present in 
 this Lecture), that our modern belief in the in- 
 variability of the forces of the material universe 
 and in the continuity of nature has increased 
 the evidential value of miracles, "if we could 
 witness them ourselves, or their occurrence 
 could be proved by demonstrative evidence." 
 For we believe that only the power of the Cre- 
 ator Himself could interrupt this established 
 order, whereas in the early ages the belief was 
 prevalent that other beings could interfere with 
 and modify it. But, on the other hand, the 
 difficulty of giving the satisfying proof to this 
 modern demand for verification is immeasurably 
 increased. 
 
 The men of to-day will not accept a reported 
 miracle — nay, will not condescend to examine 
 the evidence of the alleged occurrence. True 
 that a gulf divides the pretended miraculous 
 workings of Roman Catholic images and of 
 spiritualistic media, from those ascribed to 
 Jesus Christ ; and yet as to the evidence by 
 which their reality is maintained, that attesting 
 the last-named class of phenomena is unusually 
 
74 Discrimination 
 
 strong ; and, according to highest scientific 
 authority, explanation of some of them is im- 
 possible by the hypothesis either of fraud or of 
 mesmeric influence. 
 
 Let us, then, recognize with all frankness the 
 difficulty of an honest seeker for truth in our 
 day, in receiving the Gospel story of the mira- 
 cles of Christ. First, he must have a special 
 historical training to fit him to appreciate the 
 mass of historic testimony, complicated and 
 tedious, by which the truth is sustained ; or 
 else must take his beliefrat second hand, against 
 which the very spirit gotten from his age re- 
 volts. He is met by advocates of the new 
 learning, who tell him that, granting the record 
 to be genuine, and the witnesses, whose testi- 
 mony is there written, to have, been honest, yet 
 were they deluded, laboring under mental hal- 
 lucination which mistakes subjective impres- 
 sions for objective reality, a phenomenon which 
 has been frequent in all ages of the world.; and 
 bids him remember that even good: Sir Mat- 
 thew Hale could condemn a woman to death 
 for witchcraft. He will ask him how he can dis- 
 
as to Evidences. 75 
 
 tinguish clearly and unmistakably, with such 
 absolute certainty as to justify decision of the 
 question as to ascribing divine honors to a man, 
 between the alleged marvels of the New Tes- 
 tament and those which, resting on attestation 
 almost as incontrovertible, are yet rejected as 
 unrealities. And, Christian men and women, 
 Clergy and Laymen, ye who teach and ye who 
 learn, let us honestly recognize the embarrass- 
 ment of the honest mind ; let us not denounce 
 him for his refusal to accept the story of this 
 natural and glorious manifestation of the God- 
 head which was in our Lord Jesus Christ ; 
 rather let us seek to find other pathway by 
 which he may be introduced to the All-glorious 
 Presence, that seeing Him he may recognize 
 the lineaments of Deity, and know with us that 
 it is but natural " that mighty works do show 
 forth themselves in Him." Yes, let us learn 
 the wisdom shown by the man who had follow- 
 ed Jesus from the place where John baptized, 
 to Cana of Galilee, and who would bring his 
 friend to the blessed knowledge which he him- 
 self had gained. " Philip findeth Nathanael, 
 
76 Discrimination 
 
 and saith unto him, We have found Him of 
 whom Moses in the law and the prophets did 
 write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." 
 How natural the reply we hear, what perfect 
 type and prophecy of the answer of scepticism 
 in all time : " Can there any good thing 
 come out of Nazareth?" Shall the order of 
 nature be violated, and its continuity broken ? 
 Shall new species be evolved from antecedents 
 offering no such prospect ? What evidence can 
 suffice to convince of such monstrous develop- 
 ment ? And the answer is so simple, so plain : 
 there is nor argument from prophecy accom- 
 plished, nor from miracle wrought ; there is no 
 adducing of the authority of person ; the words 
 of witness which John Baptist spake are not 
 rehearsed ; no, " Come and see" ; come see 
 Him for yourself that He is His own witness ; 
 that His words, His deeds, Himself declare 
 that He is the Christ whom Jehovah did prom- 
 ise. Yes, my friends, here in the very begin- 
 ning of the history of the kingdom of God upon 
 earth is set forth the divine model of the Chris- 
 tian evidences, even that Jesus is Himself the 
 
as to Evidences. jj 
 
 evidence of His divine origin and mission, and 
 that the showing Him, who and what He is, is 
 the first, the chief thing to do, that men may 
 believe in Him. 
 
 In the early days of the Christian Church, 
 when Christian apologists were contending 
 against Pagan misbelief and superstitious idol- 
 atry, and seeking to supplant them with Chris- 
 tian truth, " with them the moral aspects of 
 Christianity preponderate over the miraculous, 
 as the chief means of winning the assent of the 
 heathen to the Gospel." * And surely to-day 
 the demand for verification, the latest offspring 
 of modern thought, leads us to the necessary 
 return to this oldest method of defending and 
 advocating our religion. What can we show 
 to men as capable of this universal test, that 
 seeing they may believe ? I answer : we can 
 show them Jesus Christ as the miracle of mir- 
 acles, for Whose being and actions the known 
 forces of the universe are inadequate to account, 
 and that His Presence and action are capable 
 
 * Row's Bampton Lectures, p. 32. 
 
78 Discrimination 
 
 of verification in the history of the past and the 
 facts of the present. 
 
 I. The influence of Jesus Christ is the most 
 palpable fact in the history of mankind. It 
 may, I think, be said, without fear of contra- 
 diction, that even as the chronology of our age 
 takes as its starting point the supposed year of 
 His birth, that so the course of events in the 
 development of mankind morally, and indirect- 
 ly politically, has received more modification 
 from this cause than from all others combined. 
 Says Mr. Lecky, the infidel historian of 
 morality : "It was reserved for Christianity 
 to present to the world an ideal character, 
 which through all the changes of eighteen cen- 
 turies has filled the hearts of men with an im- 
 passioned love, and has shown itself capable of 
 acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and 
 conditions ; has not only been the highest pat- 
 tern of virtue, but the highest incentive to its 
 practice, and has exerted so deep an influence 
 that it may be truly said that the simple record 
 of three short years of active life has done 
 more to regenerate and to soften mankind than 
 
as to Evidences. 79 
 
 all the disquisitions of philosophers, and than 
 all the exhortations of moralists."* Here is a 
 fact, capable of verification, and verified under 
 the inspection of one unwilling to admit the 
 further fact claimed to be its only adequate ex- 
 planation. 
 
 II. Again, the Christian Church is a fact. 
 Its presence in the world can be traced without 
 effort for nearly nineteen hundred years, as the 
 home of that spiritual influence whose effect in 
 the softening and regenerating of. mankind the 
 historian finds so marvellous, and as the ap- 
 pointed agent for its diffusion. By undisputed 
 evidence we can verify its humble beginnings 
 in Jerusalem, its gradual establishment in every 
 portion of the great empire, until at the end 
 of three hundred years it welcomes the great 
 Emperor within its doors, and the history of 
 Christian civilization begins. 
 
 III. But, further, this power which has been 
 so mighty in the past that the infidel must con- 
 fess ' ' that the simple record of three short years 
 of active life has done more to regenerate and 
 
 * Lecky, " History of Morality," vol. ii. p. 8. 
 
8o Discrimination 
 
 to soften mankind than all the disquisitions of 
 philosophers, and than all the exhortations of 
 moralists," is claimed to be as active and 
 efficient now ; and this fact is capable of veri- 
 fication by you and me. 
 
 Certainly the kingdom of Christ, the Church 
 of Jesus, is still a present and potential factor 
 of our nineteenth-century civilization ; and 
 though its outward form be different from that 
 which welcomed Constantine, in that the one 
 organization of that day is now divided into 
 many, yet each and every part still claims to be 
 builded on the one foundation, Jesus Christ ; 
 that its cause of being is the worship of Christ ; 
 that its message is to proclaim the redemption 
 He has made ; and that the blessing it has to 
 offer in His name is His regenerating Spirit. 
 
 More than this : some of the existing organ- 
 izations are careful to maintain and assert their 
 organic connection, even in external order, 
 with the historic Church of the earliest day, 
 that by no possibility they may lose the cove- 
 nanted Presence of the Founder ; while others 
 give as the very warrant and ground of their 
 
as to Evidences. 81 
 
 separate existence, the fact that by omission or 
 commission of discipline, by slothful neglect 
 or undue performance of ritual, by a veiling of 
 important revelation, or by the assertion of in- 
 ference as dogma, the manifestation of Christ 
 was hindered in the Church from which they 
 came. 
 
 Just as certainly, in all the Churches of to- 
 day are found men who, quickened by the 
 spirit of Jesus into all-surrendering self-devo- 
 tion, and burning with a zeal as bright and as 
 fierce as was St. Paul's, have " counted all 
 things but loss for the excellency of the knowl- 
 edge of Christ Jesus their Lord." You and I 
 can put our hands on men who for the love of 
 Christ have abandoned home and its delights, 
 who have suffered shipwreck and imprisonment, 
 and hunger and cold, and are just as ready as 
 was Paul to brave the mad rage of a populace 
 or the doubtful judgment of ignorant heathen 
 magistrate, that they may publish among the 
 Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. 
 
 More than this : now as aforetime there are 
 daily added to the Church men and women who 
 
82 Discrimination 
 
 would be saved by this Jesus, in Whom they 
 have believed with the heart, and through the 
 working of His Spirit there are wrought trans- 
 formations of character of whose reality you 
 and I can testify. 
 
 Moral miracles confront the observer on every 
 hand, from the beginning of our era until now, 
 which must be just as plain violation of the 
 " law of nature" as those of a physical char- 
 acter, if the conclusions of modern philosophy 
 are to be accepted, " that the forces which en- 
 ergize in the moral world act in conformity with 
 moral laws, . . . that each successive stage 
 of the moral world has grown out of that which 
 preceded it, that its changes are not sudden 
 nor violent, but follow a law of gradual evolu- 
 tion." * True of the race, it is true of the in- 
 dividual, that the present is but the fruit of the 
 past, so long as only the inherent forces are in 
 action, and a result manifesting purpose for 
 which these jorces are not competent is a 
 " moral miracle." 
 
 I believe, as has already been indicated, that 
 * Row's Bampton Lectures, p. 133. 
 
as to Evidences. 83 
 
 multitudes of men are restrained from vice and 
 enabled to purity and morality by the influ- 
 ence of the Christian spirit, though they are 
 not conscious of this assistance, and have not 
 confessed the Christ. Certainly this must be 
 true on the principle just stated, that their life 
 is naturally determined by the atmosphere of 
 Christian civilization into which it is born. 
 And yet in what multitude of cases we have 
 seen this life, despite this its surrounding, break- 
 ing forth into excess of riot, and at last, regen- 
 erated and softened, made anew into the 
 strength of holiness by the conscious accept- 
 ance of Jesus Christ, and the gift of His spirit. 
 Miracles ! Oh, if man be part of nature, how 
 shall he not be subject to the inevitable law ? 
 If in man are energizing moral forces, of 
 which the power of self-determination is one, 
 how shall they" not be subject to moral law, 
 which is just as natural as physical law ! And 
 yet on every hand to-day we can behold in 
 this moral sphere the water of sorrow changed 
 to the wine of joy and gladness, the tempest of 
 injured hate calmed into peace and love, the 
 
84 Discrimination 
 
 legion of evil spirits cast out, the dead soul 
 roused from the bier of despair and given back 
 as a joy to the mother who mourned it, and all 
 accomplished by belief in Jesus Christ ! 
 
 Now all alike, Christian and Infidel, declare 
 that the life portrayed in the Gospel of the 
 New Testament is the fountain and origin from 
 which has flowed this stream of blessing to 
 mankind. The expounders of the rationalistic 
 philosophy assert that this is but an " airy 
 nothing," a picture of the imagination, a fan- 
 cied ideal of perfection, on which rests this vast 
 superstructure ; or at least that honest adhe- 
 rents of a good man have dreamed dreams of 
 superhuman excellence, and in blind devotion 
 believed them real attributes of the man Jesus ; 
 and that the thousand thousands of the best 
 and bravest of the sons of men, under the in- 
 spiration of like deluded confidence, have dared 
 all and suffered all in publishing abroad the 
 gospel of this ideal character. 
 
 Then the crucial question of Christian evi- 
 dence is reached at last : Is the character of 
 Jesus Christ, which is confessedly the creator 
 
as to Evidences. 85 
 
 of all that is best in the civilization of the 
 world, real or imaginary ? May we therefore 
 continue to proclaim the message which nine- 
 teen centuries have heard in His namej with 
 good hope that we too may find in its belief 
 true ground of hope of pardon for the past and 
 of help for the future ; or must we, under the 
 guidance of these new teachers, confess that 
 our fathers made their life journey leaning 
 upon the hand of a phantom, and in a phan- 
 tom's arms lay down to sleep ? 
 
 It is " an ideal character," says the historian 
 whose statement of the wondrous effect by it 
 produced we have heard. What follows ? 
 First of all, that if the Jesus of the Evangelists 
 be an ideal creation and not an historical 
 reality, then a mere shadow and spectre has 
 been the efficient cause of a wider blessing than 
 all the realities of earth combined. Well says 
 the Canon of St. Paul's, in contemplating this 
 alternative : "If this be so, one thing is true, 
 and one only — that man is walking in a vain 
 shadow, and disquieting himself in vain. Why, 
 then, struggle for truth ? for delusions are 
 
86 Discrimination 
 
 mightier than realities. Let us therefore take 
 refuge in delusions, for their influence for good 
 has been greater than the self-sacrifice of the 
 wisest and best of men. This is the alternative 
 which unbelief presents to us ; and I say it is 
 an alternative terrible to contemplate. If so, 
 all is vanity ; the present life is a dream, the 
 life to come a blank ; and man's only hope — 
 shall I not say, his best hope ? — to be 
 speedily swallowed up in that eternal silence 
 out of which he has come, to which he is 
 hastening, and from which there will be no 
 awakening." * 
 
 But apart from the absolute absurdity of our 
 being asked to believe that a fiction has been 
 the controlling power in the development of 
 modern civilization, and the basis on which 
 rests nearly every institution for good in Europe 
 and in America, what shall we say of the pos- 
 sibility of such conception of ideal manhood 
 being formed and delineated at the period of 
 the world's history, and among the people, 
 when and where it was confessedly put forth ? 
 * Row's Bampton Lectures tor 1877, p. 108. 
 
as' to Evidences. 87 
 
 More than this : what shall we say of the pos- 
 sibility of such ideal character being dramatized 
 by such workmen, through three years of ac- 
 tivity, with a pervading unity in the portrayal 
 which itself were a miracle of artistic excellence 
 in any age ? Where and how did they learn to 
 mix the colors with which they have painted 
 this image of such wondrous beauty that it has 
 deluded even its own creators into the belief of 
 its life, and has been the very central sun of a 
 new moral universe which its own action has 
 brought into being ? 
 
 Is it conceivable that out of the material in' 
 their hands any man, or any number of men 
 can have builded up, even upon the foundation 
 of the character of a good and great man, such 
 a conception as that of the suffering Redeemer, 
 arrayed in a morality more sublime than the 
 sages of Greece had dreamed, and teaching a 
 religion worthy of Him whom they would call 
 the Son of God ? Above all, of what existing 
 matter will they fashion the new power which 
 shall kindle anew in the cold ashes of a hope- 
 less humanity the fire which shall cause the 
 
88 Discrimination 
 
 wheels of purpose again to move, and the effort 
 after holiness to be renewed ? 
 
 The day is past when any objector to Chris- 
 tianity will hazard the charge of conscious 
 imposture upon the writers of the Gospel 
 story, but the theories now promulgated, be- 
 cause not so plainly clashing with the phe- 
 nomena the Gospel present, are beset with 
 almost equal difficulties ; and whatever be the 
 modifications of the " mythical " hypothesis, 
 it inevitably breaks down in the effort to give 
 adequate explanation of the portraiture of the 
 Jesus of the Evangelists, that positive fact 
 which has blessed the world for nineteen hun- 
 dred years. 
 
 As it seems to me, this must be the method 
 of our Christian defence : we must show to our 
 countrymen Jesus in His life, His words, His 
 works, His death, His resurrection, even as 
 they are pictured for us in the Gospels, and 
 demand the explanation of the existence of this 
 portraiture on any other supposition than that 
 of His historical reality. The reality of His 
 being is ample and natural explanation of that 
 
as to Evidences. 89 
 
 we see, of the Christian Church with its mani- 
 fold activities of blessing, and of the Christian 
 spirit ever working with new creating energy ; 
 and while possibly — I say " possibly" in its 
 widest sense — the continuance of delusion may 
 explain these surroundings and events of our 
 daily life, though unlimited credulity must be 
 demanded for the acceptance of such theory, 
 the delusion of the witnesses shall be found 
 utterly unequal to the unravelling of the mys- 
 tery of the origin of the Gospel they have 
 preached. We must show to men more and 
 more of the superhuman glory plainly visible in 
 the Life, the miracle of miracles, and bid them 
 explain it by the operation of the known forces 
 of humanity working in obedience to the recog- 
 nized laws of development. Then we will bid 
 them go near and question Him of whose his- 
 torical reality they are convinced, for whose 
 words and acts and character their speculations 
 are unequal to account, and they shall hear 
 Him claim to be the own Son of the Lord God, 
 to possess the attributes and exercise the power 
 of His Father, and like the guileless Israelite 
 
go Discrimination 
 
 at Cana, they too who have sought in guileless 
 sincerity to know the truth shall be taught of 
 the Holy Ghost to ciy unto Him, " Rabbi, 
 Thou art the Son of God, Thou art the King 
 of Israel." 
 
 Yes, men and brethren, here is the battle- 
 ground of to-day, even close round about the 
 holiest place, wherein the enemy is boasting 
 that he has already set up his standard, the 
 very " abomination of desolation," if indeed he 
 has proven that the Jesus of our Gospel is but 
 the ideal which enthusiasm has sublimated from 
 the material of our common nature. While we 
 have our Christ, living and loving, even Jesus 
 Who did live and labor, and die and rise again, 
 all for the children of men whose nature He 
 had assumed, it matters not that many doubt- 
 ful questions must remain unsettled, and even 
 that a long line of outworks, builded, it may 
 be, in the arrogance of long undisputed posses- 
 sion, have been of necessity abandoned. Let 
 it be that there are contradictions in details 
 made by the sacred writers ; let it be that there 
 are therein problems in metaphysics and in 
 
as to Evidences. 91 
 
 chronology of which we can give no solution ; 
 Ve still have a God to worship, manifested unto 
 us, and Who calls us by His Spirit; we are not 
 without hope or without God in the world. 
 
 It will not be expected that I shall do more 
 than suggest this necessary change in the 
 formatioft'of our battle array. A volume and 
 not a lecture were necessary for even the out- 
 line of this defence ; and the volumes have 
 been written, for ' ' the Church hath her doctors' ' 
 now as in the old time, who, in the learned 
 leisure of Abbey and Cathedral close, have noted 
 the drift of the shifting stream of assault, and 
 have reconstructed the old barricades to resist 
 it. I may be permitted, however, to illustrate 
 what I have been saying of the difficulties un- 
 der which any and all the mythic theories labor 
 in their attempted comprehension of the phe- 
 nomena of the evangelic record. 
 
 Manifestly the mythologists, numerous as 
 they are supposed to have been, to whose 
 widely separated and independent yet united 
 efforts our Gospel pictures of the Christ is to 
 be ascribed, must have started from the point 
 
g2 Discrimination 
 
 of the ideas and feelings, moral and religious, 
 possessed by the Hebrew people at the time 
 this development of them was effected. Agree- 
 ably to the assumption that the character of 
 Jesus is but " a body of idealized conceptions 
 which have been created by the enthusiasm of 
 His followers," * that it is entirely explained 
 by the normal operation of the normal powers 
 of man, there must be germ in the received 
 opinions and feelings of their age which is pos- 
 sible of development into this fairest product 
 of our race. 
 
 Now, grant that the men of the first century 
 of our era had learned from the Book of Enoch 
 that the Christ whom Jehovah had promised is 
 to unite in His Person the divine and the 
 human, yet the difficulty remains — difficulty 
 made more insuperable by the very training 
 they have received under the dispensation of 
 Moses and the prophets — how to represent in 
 action this complex Being. 
 
 The author of the Book of Enoch gives no 
 hint how to work out in detail the outline 
 * Row's "Jesus of the Evangelists," p. 6. 
 
as to Evidences. 93 
 
 which he has suggested, and the Jesus of our 
 Gospels is separated by a great gulf from the 
 Christ of his conception. More than this : as 
 I have said, every indication to be gotten from 
 their Old Testament Scriptures is of the impos- 
 sibility of such union, for the Spirit of Jehovah 
 dwelling in man is ever represented as totally 
 distinct from him whom He inspires ; and yet, 
 marvel of marvels, the " idealized conceptions" 
 of all these enthusiastic followers are formed in 
 one mould, and the God-man of the Gospels is 
 a character pervaded by an absolute unity. 
 There is never a clash or an inconsistency. 
 The divine-human consciousness is portrayed 
 " with an absolute uniformity of aspect through- 
 out the whole extent of the Gospels,"* though 
 confessedly the portrayal is by four different 
 hands, and the unbeliever says, by a great num- 
 ber. With one accord they represent Him as 
 communing in perfect repose with the God 
 whom He calls His own Father ; as all un- 
 conscious of any illumination from without, 
 which was the highest claim of the old-time 
 * Row's " Jesus of the Evangelists," p. 19. 
 
94 Discrimination 
 
 prophet ; as never once speaking, " Thus saith 
 the Lord, " but always, " /say unto you" ; and 
 with as perfect accord they ascribe to Him the 
 very perfection of humanity in the methods of 
 His approach to men. " The divine light has 
 been enshrined by the mythologists in a purely 
 human temple." 
 
 As in His words, so in His acts, there is this 
 calmest repose of divine majesty environed by 
 the intensest humanity ; in word and act alike 
 there is the union of unlimited self-assertion 
 and self-abnegation as complete : never once 
 appealing for sanction of His word to the 
 authority of God, never once ascribing the 
 miraculous work to the power of His Father ; 
 and yet the asserted authors of these pretty 
 stories to glorify the memory of a good man 
 must have remembered that for just this failure 
 " to give God the praise," Moses their father 
 was excluded from the Land of Promise. Is it 
 conceivable that with no other suggestions than 
 these, any genius, any enthusiasm of one or of 
 many can have fashioned such a character ? 
 
 If we look for a moment at the moral teach- 
 
as to Evidences. 
 
 95 
 
 ing they have put in His mouth, the question, 
 where have they learned it, can find no an- 
 swer. Will the concession to Jesus of the 
 loftiest genius adequately explain its origin ? 
 History proves that " no human being, how- 
 ever exalted may have been his genius, has 
 been able wholly to emancipate himself from 
 the conditions imposed on him by his birth, 
 and the moral and spiritual atmosphere in 
 which he was educated. " * 
 
 What were the conditions and atmosphere in 
 which Jesus of Nazareth and His followers 
 were born ? They were the members of an 
 arrogant, exclusive race, which at this particu- 
 lar period was become to the last degree fanat- 
 ical and superstitious. This is so indisputably 
 true that, in the opinion of Mr. J. Stuart Mill, 
 it is simply incredible that the discourses at- 
 tributed to Him can have been invented by the 
 Evangelists, or even by the Apostle Paul. 
 Whence, then, this wisdom to the carpenter's 
 son of Nazareth — this wisdom which has re- 
 modelled the ethics of the world — nay, has 
 
 * Row's Bampton Lectures for 1877, p. 134. 
 
96 Discrimination 
 
 built up new system for which before Him no 
 foundation had been laid ? Yes, I say, built 
 up new system, though it be at the same time 
 gratefully confessed that the human reason is 
 equal to the discovery of moral truth ; and 
 more than this, that moral precepts of highest 
 elevation are to be found in the writings of the 
 ancient heathen authors, albeit Mr. Buckle's 
 sneering assertion that Jesus' system is not 
 original rests upon but three of such quotations, 
 and although historic criticism almost demon- 
 strates the fact that neither Jesus Christ nor 
 any one of the possible mythologists can have 
 had acquaintance with these ancient writings. 
 
 What are the characteristics of the moral 
 teaching of Jesus Christ which distinguish it 
 from that of all who have preceded or followed 
 Him ? I answer that it is the proclamation of 
 principles to be the foundation of all moral 
 duty, as wide as the world, as universal as hu- 
 manity ; and secondly, that He reveals the 
 power of faith, faith in a Person as the renova- 
 tor of the moral nature by making obedience 
 to the moral law a possibility. Where did the 
 
as to Evidences. 
 
 97 
 
 carpenter's son, who has sat at the feet of no 
 teacher, who among the teachers of his nation 
 could have heard no idea of duty as wider than 
 from Dan to Beersheba, and could have heard 
 of the power of faith from none that lived on 
 earth, oh, where can he have learned this wis- 
 dom which has made the world wise, this 
 strength which has strengthened our race ? 
 
 We read on in the story of this mysterious 
 Being, of matchless words and miraculous deeds 
 for which some explanation must be given, and 
 we reach at last the catastrophe. The good 
 man, after supping with His friends on the oc- 
 casion of an ancestral national festival, begins 
 to be exceeding sorrowful, and to speak words 
 which His companions cannot fail to understand 
 as betokening the apprehension of impending 
 disaster. One of the little company has by 
 Him been charged with treachery, and has gone 
 at His bidding to complete the detected be- 
 trayal. With a tenderness which is exquisite. 
 Jesus speaks words of comforting promise to 
 these sorrowing ones ; talks to them of the 
 glory which shall at last be the victor's reward, 
 
98 Discrimination 
 
 though now He must be wounded and die, and 
 that glory He says His friends shall share. 
 Like a menial servant he washes the feet of 
 these wondesing disciples, to teach them their 
 highest glory in being ministering servants to 
 the universal brotherhood. Then He goes 
 away to the solitude of a garden, and alone 
 wrestles in an agony of prayer, while those, 
 whom He has asked to watch with Him are 
 asleep in indifference. Suddenly the silence of 
 the night is startled by the shouts of a multi- 
 tude, and its darkness illumined by the flam- 
 ing torches which they bear. The good man 
 advances to meet them, and asks for whom they 
 are thus seeking. They tell Him, " Jesus of 
 Nazareth." " Jesus saith unto them, I am 
 He. ... As soon then as He had said 
 unto them I am He, they /went backward and 
 fell to the ground." 
 
 He is quickly seized and bound and led away 
 to the palace of the high priest, where exam- 
 ination is to be held. The night passes away 
 amid the jeers of the brutal soldiery,: who be- 
 guile the hours with mocking sport of their 
 
as to Evidences. 99 
 
 prisoner. The morning dawns, and He is led 
 away to Pilate the governor, who alone can 
 give sentence of death. The prisoner stands 
 in dignified silence. He knows that defence is 
 vain. He will answer never a word to the Gov- 
 ernor's questions. He is fulfilling, as He said, 
 the decrees of His Father, and in His Provi- 
 dence He will trust. The coward condemna- 
 tion quickly follows, and the good man toils 
 away to Calvary, staggering under the burden 
 of the cross ; but even in that extremity He can 
 speak words of consolation and of warning to 
 the women of Jerusalem. The nails are fast- 
 ened through the quivering flesh, and the cross 
 is uplifted. Three awful hours pass by ere the 
 end comes. Again and again the Sufferer 
 speaks : with the calmness of absolute self-con- 
 fidence He gives assurance of salvation to the 
 robber hanging by His side, and with the 
 thoughtful tenderness of human affection com- 
 mends H,is mother to the care of His friend. 
 He remembers to speak sublimest prayer for 
 the pardon of the ignorant perpetrators of the 
 death He is dying, and even to effect fulfilment 
 
ioo Discrimination 
 
 of the least predicted detail of the transaction ; 
 and then, with perfect control of the event, 
 having commended His spirit into the hands of 
 His Father, He bowed His head and died. 
 
 Men and brethren, there is no dispute as to 
 the reality of the death by crucifixion of one 
 Jesus of Nazareth at Jerusalem under the reign 
 of Pontius Pilate ; but come and see, is not this 
 the description of the death of a superhuman 
 Being ? And yet what difficulties the dreamers 
 of such splendid vision have overcome in its 
 depicting ! 
 
 Remember, we saw that their effort was to 
 idealize the character of a good and great man 
 into the conception, possibly suggested by the 
 Book of Enoch, of a Christ in Whom the divine 
 and the human shall be united. Their powers 
 shall be put to fullest test, now that they 
 come to portray the death of such a Being, 
 although there is no suggestion of the death 
 of that divine-human Christ in the writing 
 where they learned His nature, and the 
 apocalypse of Esdras, which tells that Messiah 
 was to die, is of questionable antiquity. But 
 
as to Evidences. 101 
 
 Jesus did die, and having ascribed to Him the 
 attribute of Christhood, they must portray Him 
 in the hour of death. Bold men they must 
 have been, these fishermen, story-tellers of the 
 world's childhood, who set themselves to the 
 performance of this task. Did they know the 
 Greek poet's story of the rock-bound hero, the 
 son of a god, yet of woman born, and from 
 that learn to picture the suffering Christ ? Ah, 
 wonderful as is the creation of ^Eschylus, who 
 would venture to compare it with that of these 
 ignorant legend-mongers who have given us 
 our dying Redeemer ? See, my friends, the 
 enthusiasts must all agree in the difficulties to 
 be encountered and in the methods by which 
 they shall be overcome ; for they have been 
 overcome, and in the Gospel narrative is ex- 
 hibited a death in perfect harmony with the life 
 gone before, a unity unbroken in the least par- 
 ticular. The God-man is to die, take care that 
 the divine is not hidden in the sufferings of the 
 human ; take equal care that it lend not undue 
 support to the human sufferer. More than 
 this : remember that the life is to be voluntarily 
 
102 Discrimination 
 
 surrendered in self-sacrificing love, and that, 
 fore- determined of God, it must be accomplish- 
 ed by the agency of self-determining man. And 
 yet see how perfectly the work is done ! What 
 artist of to-day would dare add a single touch 
 in hope to heighten the effect produced ? 
 Here, as in all the life, there is the calmness of 
 conscious divine power united to the tender- 
 ness of human affection. Uninterrupted self- 
 consciousness is united with utter forgetfulness 
 of self. The presence of the traitor disturbs 
 him, for He is a man, but it is the voice of a 
 God which commands his departure. In the 
 garden, while the divine will is in perfect accord 
 with the will of His Father, there is the strug- 
 gle, the wrestling agony, even to the point of 
 bloody sweat, that the shrinking human will 
 may come into like conformity ; and through 
 the humble self-surrender of the man shines 
 the majesty of a God, and the soldiers go back- 
 ward and fall to the ground. The cross' 
 weight cannot crush the love for the race to 
 which He belongs, and is come to redeem ; nor 
 the painful crucifixion of the flesh so engross 
 
as to Evidences. 103 
 
 the mind's thought that he speak not pardon 
 and prayer. 
 
 Men and brethren, it is simply inconceivable 
 that this wonderful creation " was effected by 
 spontaneous elaboration of mythic stories in 
 the original Christian society, for the purpose 
 of investing a human Jesus with the attributes 
 of a divine Christ." Nay, reason demands 
 rather that the beholder to-day, as the centu- 
 rion who stood wondering at the foot of the 
 cross to which he had nailed the condemned 
 criminal, shall cry out, " Truly this man was 
 the Son of God." 
 
 But can I believe, and ask others to believe 
 that this crucified Jesus did rise again from the 
 dead ? Certainly, if Christ be not risen our 
 preaching and our faith are vain ; certainly, 
 the fact of the resurrection of Jesus is the very 
 corner-stone of the edifice of salvation, the 
 crowning proof of His divine mission, and of 
 His power to save. The Apostle, remember, 
 makes demand for this — this chief, I had almost 
 said this only — as article of faith: "If thou 
 shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised 
 
1 04 Discrimination 
 
 Him from the dead." Can I so believe? 
 Grant that He was superhuman, that He was 
 morally all that in the Gospel narrative is de- 
 clared, because to believe a reality as the orig- 
 inal of this representation is easiest explanation 
 of the phenomena. Still, can I believe that he 
 did literally come back alive from the grave ? 
 I answer that to my mind it is natural that 
 Jesus shall rise from the dead as He foretold 
 He would do, even as it is natural that disease 
 and demon and death shall be subject to His 
 word, because He was what He was. Yet, be 
 it understood that the resurrection of Jesus 
 stands on another plane than that of the other 
 New Testament miracles, as to evidential value, 
 and so also as to the evidence by which it is 
 assured. That one fact made secure, then all 
 the rest are easy of proof— nay, need no proof : 
 they are the natural workings of Him who is 
 " declared to be the Son of God, with power 
 by the resurrection from the dead." And 
 blessed be God that there is, as I believe, more 
 evidence for the resurrection of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ than for any other event in the history 
 
as to Evidences. 105 
 
 of mankind ! I must tarry for a moment to 
 suggest to you, though it must be in baldest 
 outline, the strength of that guarantee as it 
 presents itself to me. 
 
 The examination of the Pauline epistles, of 
 which the historical character is undisputed, 
 will give as necessary results — 
 
 1. That within a period of thirty years from 
 the date of the crucifixion, the resurrection of 
 Jesus Christ was accepted as a fact by every 
 section of the Christian Church. 
 
 2. That the fact was accepted as the only 
 foundation on which the Church was builded, 
 as the very life of this system of religion, the 
 source of its moral and spiritual power, and 
 the pledge of its promised gift of blessed- 
 ness. 
 
 3. That immediately after the crucifixion the 
 Church was reconstituted on the basis of this 
 belief. Mark you, Paul, the man who bears 
 this testimony, was an agent to destroy this 
 "pernicious superstition," and must as such 
 have had every opportunity for investigating its 
 origin. His testimony excludes the interval of 
 
io6 Discrimination 
 
 time necessary for this consolidation of an idle 
 story, by distance and time, into an accepted 
 fact. 
 
 4. That Jesus Christ was believed by the 
 whole Church to have been seen alive after His 
 death and burial by a great number of people, 
 singly and in companies, last of all by this 
 Apostle-writer himself ; and finally, that this 
 belief was from the very beginning i/^ power of 
 spiritual regeneration. 
 
 There is but one hypothesis, 'other than that 
 of the reality of the event, which can afford 
 explanation of this condition of affairs, and that 
 is, that this belief originated in mental delusion, 
 for no theory of mythical or legendary growth, 
 of gradual evolution, will comprehend these 
 admitted phenomena, while the difficulties at- 
 tending the work of mythological dramatist, 
 great before, here become simply insuperable ; 
 and the burden is on the unbeliever to give 
 adequate account of the cause which has pro- 
 duced and does to-day produce the mighty mir- 
 acles in the spiritual sphere which we see and 
 hear. Will the supposition above mentioned, 
 
as to Evidences. 107 
 
 of mental hallucination, give the relief we seek ? 
 Let us ask it two or three questions. 
 
 1. Were those despairing disciples who went 
 weeping from the grave where they had laid 
 Him, in such condition of mind as to be by a 
 woman's story kindled into such enthusiasm as 
 to see visions of the risen Master, " and on the 
 strength of such a delusion to found an institu- 
 tion which has stood the test of eighteen cen- 
 turies"?* Was like enthusiastic delirium im- 
 parted to a great number of believers, so that 
 they not only saw Him and heard Him speak, 
 but derived from His words specific teaching, 
 which led to remodelling of the Church, already 
 
 .begun in His lifetime? 
 
 2. Were the three principles of Preposses- 
 sion, Fixed Idea, and Expectancy, in such 
 active operation in the minds of the disciples 
 as to have impelled these disappointed, despair- 
 ing followers to mistake their visions for ex- 
 ternal realities ? 
 
 3. A man brought up in all the learning of 
 his nation, ' ' exceeding zealous for the traditions 
 
 * Row's Bampton Lectures for 1877, p. 362. 
 
io8 Discrimination 
 
 of his fathers, " which traditions this reported 
 resurrection utterly destroys ; a trusted agent of 
 the Authority which would prevent the spread- 
 ing of this delusion, journeys to a strange city, 
 seeking there his recreant countrymen who have 
 accepted the new faith. He says that he met 
 the risen Jesus in the way ; he says that He 
 talked with Him, and as the result of this be- 
 lief, he abandons his career at Jerusalem, and 
 devotes a long life, despite suffering and perse- 
 cution of every description, to the proclama- 
 tion of the abounding blessing for men offered 
 by this ascended Christ. Let philosophy 
 rationally explain these indisputable facts on 
 the ground of mental hallucination. 
 
 I said that here must be our battle-ground, 
 for all depends upon its holding. Christianity 
 does, by its own declarations, stand or fall with 
 the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 
 and while we are content to maintain this line 
 our success is guaranteed. Our enemies would 
 gladly divert us to the defence of what are but 
 outposts, if indeed they be in any sense true 
 points of the Christian position ; and in gen- 
 
as to Evidences. 109 
 
 eral, the forays successful in our time, whose 
 result has been to bring dismay to the fearful 
 believer, have been directed upon some theory 
 or inference a long way distant from this our 
 citadel, but which, alas ! some of us have been 
 taught to believe to be essential to the integrity 
 of the Christian's hope. Nay, here we will stand. 
 
 Here, then, is the record of the life of 
 Jesus Christ, whose existence no theory has 
 been equal to explain ; a part of that record, 
 a natural feature of that life, is His resurrection 
 from the dead, which is so guaranteed as to 
 defy the assaults of unbelief ; here is the Chris- 
 tian Church, and its child, Christian civiliza- 
 tion ; and here are the marvels of renewal 
 wrought day by day, verifiable and verified, ac- 
 complished by the faith of the heart in the res- 
 urrection of its Lord. These are the sureties 
 of our hope, and all else we believe, if at all, 
 only because of necessary connection with, and 
 dependence upon, them. 
 
 For example, Jesus Christ declares that the 
 Old Testament writings do testify of Him, and 
 His Apostle by His Spirit ascribes the utter- 
 
1 10 Discrimination 
 
 ances of these " holy men of old " to the mov- 
 ing of the Holy Ghost. Therefore to me these 
 writings are of authority as containing the 
 Father's testimony to the Son who should 
 come, and are a helpful addition to the evi- 
 dences of the Christ because they are the ac- 
 count of a natural preparation of that which 
 should be done. 
 
 The other miraculous stories of the New 
 Testament, which confessedly stand on differ- 
 ent ground from that of the resurrection, we 
 believe because they are reported of Him of 
 Whom they are the natural outgoing ; nay, the 
 record itself which contains them we believe, 
 because it enfolds Him who must be true. I 
 go near and ask Him who He is, and I hear 
 Him say so plainly that He and His Father are 
 One, that He is from eternity, that His are the 
 attributes of God. I see that this is the under- 
 standing of His words by those to whom He 
 speaks, and that their threatening words and 
 stones* can evoke no syllable of denial or of con- 
 cession, and therefore, with the Apostle, I bow 
 my head and worship Him, rejoicing that 
 
as to Evidences. 1 1 1 
 
 through Him we have access by one Spirit unto 
 the Father. But theories of incarnation, of 
 atonement, of inspiration- -these are but the 
 works, the necessarily imperfect works, of 
 human hands. Christianity does not stand or 
 fall with any one of them, and I will offer to 
 my countrymen facts and not theories. I will 
 even take away from their consideration these 
 things which are shaken, that the " things 
 which cannot be shaken may remain." 
 
 This leads me to remark, in conclusion, that 
 perhaps the larger part of the harassing doubts 
 by which believers are distressed, and of the 
 obstacles by which honest inquirers are kept 
 away from confession and assured hope, are 
 due to their entanglement in the meshes of 
 some theory of inspiration. And here I must 
 again express my joyful thanksgiving that we 
 at least, the children of this ancient historic 
 Church, are not burdened in mind or con- 
 science by the necessary acceptance of any 
 theory. Whereas the candidate for ordination 
 is required to subscribe a formula in the words, 
 " I do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old 
 
H2 Discrimination 
 
 and New Testaments to be the word of God," 
 yet the interpretation of the object of that for- 
 mula in the fuller statement of the Article is, that 
 " Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary 
 to salvation. ' ' And therefore the man who pre- 
 fers to express his conviction as to the Revela- 
 tion in the words that " the Bible contains the 
 word of God," rather than " is" the word of 
 God, is not hindered, as it seems to me, from 
 so doing, by the Standards of this Church. 
 
 And yet, alas ! how has our ecclesiastical 
 atmosphere in years past been stirred into tem- 
 pest by the blasts of controversy upon this 
 point, and our ears been weary with the denun- 
 ciations of " unsoundness" against those who 
 in this particular seemed to dissent from the 
 theory of the self-styled orthodox, who on a 
 priori grounds demand the belief that " every 
 word, thought, conception, and expression in the. 
 Scriptures is the absolute dictation of the Spirit 
 of God, and that the writers of the different 
 books in the Bible have merely copied down 
 what the Divine Spirit dictated to them" !* 
 
 * Row's " Inspiration, its Nature and Extent," p. 15. 
 
as to Evidences. 
 
 113- 
 
 I Their opponents, glorying as proudly in their 
 heterodoxy, and publishing from the housetops 
 their belief, just as entirely a priori, of the ab- 
 sence of all other than human element in the 
 record, have laughed to scorn the slavish 
 puerility of the Book-worshippers, and made 
 merry over the absurdities resulting from their 
 system. Alas ! while the contestants have re- 
 joiced in their struggle, the ignorant and the 
 weak have sorrowed lest their hope was being 
 taken away, and the unbeliever has found new 
 occasion in the doubtful issue, for putting away 
 the consideration of his duty. Oh, let us learn, 
 and let us declare boldly, to the clearing away 
 of many hazy doubts and the strengthening of 
 many trembling souls, that " if the attestation 
 to any revelation that it is of divine origin is 
 sufficient, our belief that it is such a revelation 
 in no way depends on our views as to the na- 
 ture and extent of the inspiration under the 
 influence of which it has been communicated. ' ' * 
 We believe that our Bible is a record of a 
 revelation from our God, because of the suffi- 
 
 * Row's " Inspiration, its Nature and Extent," p. 33. 
 
114 Discrimination 
 
 cient evidence accrediting it as such ; but as to 
 the nature of the inspiration vouchsafed to the 
 several writers ; as to the proportion of the ele- 
 ments, human and divine, which go to its mak- 
 ing ; as to the manner in which the divine con- 
 trol has been exercised over the human agent, 
 we believe, as of necessity, nothing, because no 
 revelation upon that matter has been given. 
 Certainly, the writers of Scripture claim 
 " plenary inspiration"; it follows as of neces- 
 sity, from the fact that if it is a revelation 
 from God He will give plenary power for the 
 doing of that which He wills to be done. 
 Nothing can be gained by the use of this word, 
 for to determine its value in any case we must 
 first determine the will of the Revealer, which 
 is not possible. 
 
 Turn to the New Testament itself, and we 
 read that " God, who at sundry times and in 
 divers manners spake in times past unto the 
 fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days 
 spoken unto us by His Son" — nay, rather, in 
 His Son. The revelation of God is the Person 
 of Jesus Christ. 
 
as to Evidences. 115 
 
 We read that Jesus, when He had lived the 
 life of manifestation, departing, said to the 
 Apostles whom He had chosen : " Ye shall be 
 witnesses unto me." But a few days after His 
 ascension we read of the action of the remain- 
 ing Apostles in filling the vacancy caused by the 
 treachery and death of Judas, and capacity to 
 bear the testimony of an eye-witness is the 
 necessary qualification demanded of the man 
 who shall be numbered with the eleven. These 
 men go forth to bear witness of the Life : on what 
 assistance do they rely ? The Lord has prom- 
 ised the coming of the Holy Ghost, Who shall 
 guide them into all the truth, evidently all the 
 truth He willed them to proclaim ; Who shall 
 teach them all things, manifestly all the things 
 He willed them to teach, for He did not teach 
 them all things ; Who shall refresh their mem- 
 ory of the words He had spoken ; Who will en- 
 able them to know "things to come" ; and 
 finally. Who will teach them words to answer 
 when they shall stand for His sake before hos- 
 tile tribunals. 
 
 St. Paul, in writing to the Corinthians, cata- 
 
n6 Discrimination 
 
 logues the spiritual gifts which the Church had 
 received in fulfilment of the Lord's promise to 
 confer the energies necessary for the work He 
 had given it to do ; and so far as this descrip- 
 tion goes it affirms the influence exerted upon 
 the recipient to have been limited. The special 
 enlightenment is said to have been conferred 
 as to a special definite subject-matter only, and 
 the grace given to have operated according to 
 the analogy of the ordinary faculties of the 
 mind ; " the spirits of the prophets are subject 
 to the prophets." 
 
 What materials are here on which to base a 
 general theory of the nature and extent of di- 
 vine inspiration .' And yet they are ample to 
 assure me that the witnesses of the resurrec- 
 tion, the publishers of the Word, should be in- 
 fallibly guided in bearing that witness and in 
 publishing that Word ; should be supernaturally 
 protected from error as to the truth, the revela- 
 tion of God in Jesus Christ. May I not rest 
 here and be satisfied ? And resting here, of 
 what concern to me, other than literary or an- 
 tiquarian, are the petty variations, the minute 
 
as to Evidences. 117 
 
 discrepancies in the Sacred Records, which the 
 microscopic scrutiny of unbelief has discover- 
 ed ? I am content to wait even till the day of 
 the restitution of all things, that I may know 
 whether Cyrenius was once or twice governor 
 of Syria ; and I will not be made unhappy be- 
 cause Strauss boastfully asserts that St. Luke 
 has made an error in describing Lysanias as 
 tetrarch of Abilene in the fifteenth year of 
 Tiberius Caesar. 
 
 Having no theory to maintain, I find it but 
 natural that there shall be marks of individu- 
 ality in the writings of the Evangelists, and an 
 identity of recollection and of description in 
 unessential matters were as strange to me as 
 were an exact similarity of style in writing, while 
 this latter is no less demanded than the former 
 by a verbal, mechanical theory of inspiration. 
 
 Were two men or one the fierce occupants of 
 the dwelling among the tombs of Gadara whose 
 demon owned subjection to our Christ ? What 
 matters it ? He is witnessed unto as mighty to 
 overcome the Evil One who possessed the 
 demoniac. 
 
1 1 8 Discrimination 
 
 The ordinary reader finds four different in- 
 scriptions recorded in the New Testament as 
 that which was set up over the head of the 
 crucified Jesus, and the ordinary reader finds 
 therein no cause for doubt or alarm, because 
 each proclaims the reality of the death of the 
 King and His claim to be the Christ. But her- 
 meneutic ingenuity has suggested that St. Mat- 
 thew copied the one in Hebrew, St. Mark that 
 in Latin, and St. John that in Greek, while St. 
 Luke has combined two of the inscriptions into 
 one. Let this example suffice to show us the 
 extremities to which men must have recourse 
 in their effort to make the facts of Scripture . 
 harmonize with preconceived theory. 
 
 But I may not fail, in conclusion, to call at- 
 tention to the most serious evil which has arisen 
 from this assertion of extravagant a priori 
 theory of inspiration, in the conflict, with which 
 it has had much to do, between the Bible reve- 
 lation and the discoveries of modern science. 
 I would 'certainly not be understood as laying 
 the sole responsibility for this evil at the door 
 of the theologian, or as failing to recognize that 
 
as to Evidences. 1 1 9 
 
 the bigotry of physical science has in its Doc- 
 tors been as violent and as offensive as any 
 that can be ascribed to the Professors of science 
 theological. But the fault with us has been 
 real, and has arisen in largest part, as I have 
 said, from this disposition to theorize, and to 
 the feeling of ignorant fear lest the letting go 
 of the theory should be letting go of the faith. 
 Was it not because of the exigencies of a par- 
 ticular theory of inspiration that for so long a 
 time the battle raged between the testimony of 
 Genesis and the testimony of the rocks, then 
 newly discovered, upon the battle-field of the 
 creation ? And constrained by this feeling of 
 loyalty to a theory of inspiration as though it 
 were loyalty to Christ, how hardly and with what 
 unseemly compromises and flank movements did 
 Theology retreat from the ground, forgetting 
 that the rocks are as truly the scrolls of His 
 writing as those Oracles whereof a chosen people 
 was the guardian ? 
 
 Is it not in obedience to a mechanical theory 
 of inspiration that to-day men are afraid lest 
 the religion of Jesus is going to perish if so be 
 
1 20 Discrimination 
 
 that the modern scientific hypothesis, as to the 
 development of the universe and of man by 
 process of evolution, shall be proved correct ? 
 Shall we strain the language of the writing to 
 make it square with the discoveries of science, 
 or shall we deny the alleged facts ? Shall we 
 not rather learn from the great Bishop of Dur- 
 ham, "that the only question concerning the 
 truth of Christianity is whether it is a real 
 revelation, not whether it is attended with every 
 circumstance we should look for. And concern- 
 ing the authority of Scripture, whether it is 
 what it claims to be, not whether it be a book 
 of such a sort and so promulgated as weak men 
 are apt to fancy a book containing a divine 
 revelation should. And therefore neither ob- 
 scurity, nor seeming inaccuracy of style, nor 
 various readings, nor early disputes about the 
 authors of particular parts, nor any other things 
 of like kind, though they had been much more 
 considerable in degree than they are, could 
 overthrow the authority of Scripture, unless the 
 Prophets, Apostles, or our Lord had promised 
 that the book containing the Divine Revelation 
 
as to Evidences. 121 
 
 should be secure from these things. " * In other 
 words, that no theory of Divine Inspiration is 
 itself a part of the Divine Revelation, and that 
 we are incapable to determine a priori what 
 such revelation must contain. Then because 
 there can be no conflict between the different 
 utterances of the same God, therefore no dis- 
 covery of science can overthrow our faith ; for 
 there is written no promise that the Spirit 
 would communicate to Prophet or Apostle the 
 truths of science, and no one of them makes 
 claim to such knowledge. 
 
 The truth of Christianity then rests upon the 
 reality of the Christ, and the evidence of that 
 truth is the evidence of that reality. This evi- 
 dence is sufficient and satisfying, for it is Christ 
 Himself, a Being impossible to human imagina 
 tion to create, and witnessed to by testimony 
 which is inexplicable on the supposition of His 
 unreality. Therefore, I entreat, let us present 
 Christ Himself, living and omnipotent, as ir 
 the days of His sojourn here, and not any the- 
 ories as to the mode of His being or of His re- 
 * Butler's "Analogy," part ii. ch. 3. 
 
122 Discrimination as to Evidences. 
 
 demptive work. So best, I believe, shall men 
 be convinced by His Spirit to believe with the 
 heart and confess with the mouth. 
 
 I remember a day when I came, a novice in 
 my Episcopal work, to a little town in my Dio- 
 cese, where a number of Christian Denomina- 
 tions had each a representative with his shib- 
 boleth of doctrine. I was introduced to a lead- 
 ing citizen as to a man much interested in 
 religious matters, who greeted me with the 
 question, " Do you preach final perseverance or 
 falling from grace?" I answered, "I try to 
 preach Jesus Christ, that men may believe in 
 Him and strive to live His life ; we shall know 
 all the mysteries when we come where He is." 
 You will pardon the homeliness of the incident, 
 for it illustrates fully all that I have been try- 
 ing to say, the disposition of the disciples of 
 Christ to be busy with theories of doctrine, 
 whereas the need of men is the revelation of 
 God, which is Jesus Christ Himself, of which 
 revelation He is His own witness. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 Discrimination as to Ritual. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 DISCRIMINATION AS TO RITUAL. 
 
 " And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doc- 
 trine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in 
 prayers." — Acts 2 : 42. 
 
 I AM to speak this evening of the necessity 
 for discrimination in reference to the sub- 
 ject of worship or ritual ; but I am not willing 
 to admit to myself or to another, that in doing 
 so I am putting aside the " weightier matters" 
 of doctrine and evidence for the consideration 
 of the " small dust of the balance," which can 
 be of no value in estimating our condition. 
 To-day our mother Church of England is sorely 
 perplexed by the untoward result of an effort 
 to control, in this respect, the self-will of some 
 of her Ministers, and the persecution alleged to 
 be legalized by the Act of Parliament designed 
 to regulate her public worship, has accomplished 
 more in the direction of her disestablishment 
 
126 Discrimination 
 
 than all the organized combinations of dissent 
 with unbelief. In our own country and Church 
 angry controversy about this matter has dis- 
 turbed the peace and enfeebled the strength 
 of Dioceses, which has had to the ordinary ob- 
 server no greater gravamen than the posture of 
 a Minister or the shape of his vestment ; and 
 the world has made itself merry over what it 
 esteems our " much ado about nothing. " Let 
 me add that educated and cultivated men and 
 women are being repelled by the worship, bald 
 and unadorned, of our non-liturgical brethren, 
 and that perhaps largest proportion of the pros- 
 elytes to our communion are attracted by the 
 magnet of our Liturgy. 
 
 For many reasons, then, I feel the pressing 
 need of wise discrimination on this subject. 
 Because our often bitter contests are so un- 
 seemly, and because they have been of late 
 years the most efficient causes of division in 
 our Christian camp ; because they are an ob- 
 stacle which they must overcome who would 
 fain worship God in our old-time way, and 
 often they who are just beginning to desire to 
 
as to Ritual. 127 
 
 worship Him in any way ; and, because the 
 Ritual of public worship is perhaps the most 
 effective means of inculcating particular phase 
 of Christian doctrine ; for all these reasons I 
 would consider how much of liberty the individ- 
 ual Minister and Congregation possess as to 
 this function, whether it should be increased or 
 diminished, and what are its only limitations. 
 And I would plead that we do not in our self- 
 will seek either to increase or to diminish that 
 accorded to us or to our brethren, by undertak- 
 ing to speak what neither Scripture nor Church 
 has spoken. 
 
 That the believers in the risen, ascended 
 Christ, should meet in fellowship with His 
 chosen Apostles, and especially on the day of 
 their appointment, the day of His resurrection, 
 to worship Him Whom God had declared both 
 Lord and Christ, was only natural. We may 
 find sufficient explanation of the origin of pub- 
 lic Christian worship in the nature of man, and 
 the belief these disciples have learned. Fur- 
 ther than this, we must remember that these 
 earliest Christians are members of "the elect 
 
128 Discrimination 
 
 people," whose very bond of national union 
 was kinship to one ancestor and the worship of 
 the God Jehovah, who had made covenant with 
 him. 
 
 Now, as baptized confessors of Jesus Christ 
 they believe themselves partakers of a better 
 covenant, established upon better promises," 
 because they have been made one with Him 
 Who is its Mediator ; they are the citizens of a 
 holy nation, they are a royal priesthood, whose 
 bond of union is the kinship not of blood but 
 of faith, and the worship of God in Jesus Christ. 
 
 'Tis only natural that we find them, in the 
 great congregation on the Sabbath day, min- 
 gling their prayers to Jehovah with those of all 
 the sons of Abraham ; that they still rejoice in 
 the assurance of pardon which the flaming 
 burnt-offering gives, and in the perfumed cloud 
 of incense, the symbol of accepted prayer. 
 And with, as yet, no design to separate them- 
 selves into a new religious Communion essen- 
 tially different from that into which they were 
 admitted in infancy ; with no thought even to 
 constitute a sect within the National Church ; 
 
as to Ritual. 129 
 
 not yet understanding that their ascended Lord 
 did by His own death make an end of sacri- 
 fice, they just as naturally come together, as 
 Christians, to break bread from house to house, 
 as " they continue," as Hebrews, " daily with 
 one accord in the temple." Believing in God 
 manifested in Jesus Christ, they must meet to 
 worship Him, even the God into Whose Name 
 of triple Personality they, by commandment of 
 the Lord Jesus, have b*een baptized. 
 
 True, we may find, as the Dean of Norwich 
 has done, the special charter of all public Chris- 
 tian worship in the promise of our Lord, of 
 peculiar efficacy to the prayer wherein even two 
 are agreed, and find therein at the same time 
 the almost necessity, certainly the suggested 
 value, of a prescript form. " If two of you 
 shall agree on earth," the Lord Jesus said to 
 His disciples, " as touching anything that they 
 shall ask, it shall be done for them of my 
 Father which is in heaven. ' ' * But it has been 
 suggested : " This must be primarily a continu- 
 ation of the second measure prescribed in cases 
 * St. Matthew 18 : 19. 
 
1 30 Discrimination 
 
 of offence, when two or three witnesses were to 
 be called,"* and we do not need such specific 
 warrant for assembling ourselves together. It 
 is the natural, the necessary expression of our 
 common faith, that we come to tell it each to 
 other for mutual help, and that we make it the 
 basis of a common prayer to our common 
 Father ; and it was the lesson taught by the 
 divine method of training the religious teachers 
 of the world. 
 
 In this our day of literary culture and ad- 
 vanced thought, intellectual fastidiousness is 
 crying out against the homely fare which the 
 Pulpit provides, and professes itself unable to 
 find satisfying refreshment in the " old, old 
 story," because of the lack of skill in him who 
 offers it. Even Christian men are heard excus- 
 ing their own absence from the Church's wor- 
 ship on the Lord's Day, on the ground that 
 the Press has come into the office once exclu- 
 sively held by the Pulpit, and that from printed 
 page, in the comfortable quiet of their own 
 Library, they can get more spiritual sustenance 
 * Lange, Commentary in loco. 
 
as to Ritual. 131 
 
 than from the sacred Desk in the midst of the 
 Congregation. 
 
 May I not remind them that they are doing 
 violence to the Christian instinct, as to the 
 Apostolic precept, in thus refusing to make one 
 of the assembly met in the Lord's house ? 
 May I not remind them that to the ear of the 
 loyal, faithful subject of the distant king, the 
 tone and accent and language which tell of 
 the Fatherland must be sweet and attractive, 
 though the speaker have but little art of dis- 
 course, though his thought be feeble and inco- 
 herent ? And may I not bid them consider 
 that like as the natural expression of the Chris- 
 tian heart is, " I was glad when they said unto 
 me, we will go into the house of the Lord, ' ' even 
 so the refusal to gratify that natural desire is 
 the most effective means possible to prevent 
 its strengthening ; and that when the heart no 
 longer cries out for the company of the saved 
 it begins to cease to hope for the vision of the 
 Saviour ? Above all, may I not remind them, 
 that though the preached word, foolishn-ss as 
 it seems to the world, is the appointed instru- 
 
I3 2 Discrimination 
 
 ment by which the Holy Ghost will work to 
 convince the world of sin, and of righteousness, 
 and of judgment ; yet, that the baptized disci- 
 ples of that earliest day, who must be our ex- 
 emplars, came not to their upper chamber to 
 hear a Sermon, but to worship Christ ? It was 
 " upon the first day of the week, when the dis- 
 ciples came together to break bread, Paul 
 preached unto them." 
 
 I say, then, that the assembling of Christian 
 men to worship God in Jesus Christ is natural, 
 and the question at once arises, What shall be 
 the form of such worship ? I answer, that 
 plainly the one single peculiar act of Christian 
 worship, as we are taught by the Christian 
 records, and by the devotional exercises of other 
 religions, is the "breaking of bread." A 
 moment's consideration will serve to assure us 
 of this fact. Prayer is as universal as man- 
 kind ; the reading of sacred writings, and their 
 exposition by duly appointed officers^ have been 
 features of the worship of all the religions in 
 any sense worthy of that name. Even Baptism 
 was clearly a rite of the dispensation of Moses, 
 
as to Ritual. 133 
 
 and was practiced as part of the initiatory cere- 
 monies admitting to the sacred mysteries of 
 other ancient nations. 
 
 The record is of those three thousand bap- 
 tized on the Day of Pentecost, those first con- 
 verts made after the Master was gone away, 
 that they " continued steadfastly in the apos- 
 tles' doctrine and fellowship." Yes, doubt- 
 less they longed to know more and more 
 of the heavenly doctrine of which they had 
 learned, but the very first principle, even the 
 resurrection of the crucified Jesus, and there- 
 fore they clung eagerly to the men who had 
 been eye-witnesses of His majesty, and " did 
 eat and drink with Him after He rose from 
 the dead." But they continued as well in 
 " prayers," doubtless the public prayers of the 
 assembled Church, that they might learn how 
 He the Master had taught His disciples to 
 pray ; and there is added, " the breaking of 
 bread " as part of their newly learned worship. 
 This leads me to remark, further, that while 
 apparently the public worship of the Church of 
 the early days always included " the breaking 
 
1 34 Discrimination 
 
 of bread," and that this Communion was ad- 
 ministered not only weekly but daily, and per- 
 haps even at every ordinary meal, there is yet 
 no injunction of any Apostle as to the proper 
 frequency of the Ordinance, and just as little 
 direction as to the mode of proceeding in its 
 celebration ; indeed, there is not from any 
 Apostle any positive command that it be admin- 
 istered at all. How instructive is this silence 
 as to the wisdom of the founders of what was to 
 be a Catholic Church, fitted in all things to be 
 the spiritual home of " all sorts and conditions 
 of men !" And how full of teaching for us, as 
 to the tolerant concession of liberty in the mere 
 form of expression, if only the substance of the 
 faith be kept intact ! 
 
 Public Christian worship is, as I have said, 
 a necessary outgrowth of a common belief 
 in the one Lord, but the manner of its 
 performance will be dependent upon the cul- 
 ture and taste of the worshippers, and perhaps 
 more upon the point of doctrinal develop- 
 ment they have reached, and the special as- 
 pect of the redemptive work which they have 
 
as to Ritual. 135 
 
 most fully seized. Hence its form will ever 
 be variable, while its idea remains unchanged 
 and unchangeable. As our article expresses 
 it, "It is not necessary that traditions and 
 ceremonies be in all places one, or utterly like ; 
 for at all times they have been divers, and may 
 be changed according to the diversity of coun- 
 tries, times, and men's manners, so that noth- 
 ing be ordained against God's word." 
 
 I have found it profitable, at times, in the 
 presence of the gorgeous ceremonial of some 
 great occasion, to journey, in memory, back to 
 that borrowed room at Jerusalem, where sor- 
 rowing disciples are ignorantly listening to the 
 leave-taking of their Master. How different is 
 the seed just being cast into the ground, from 
 this flowering glory we now behold and enjoy ! 
 There is the familiar unrestraint of mutual 
 affection and confidence ; every attitude and 
 every word is the feature of a family reunion, 
 rather than of a solemn function. Did they in 
 any sense realize, I have wondered, these He- 
 brews who are there, that the simple act of 
 blessing and consuming the bread and wine is 
 
136 Discrimination 
 
 to take the place of their Passover feast, with 
 all its magnificence of ritual ; that it is to be 
 the central act of a world's worship ? 
 
 But I must remember as well that nowhere is 
 like simplicity and familiarity prescribed for 
 the conduct of this Feast by those who shall 
 come after, and that such mode of its celebra- 
 tion were unnatural to us. 
 
 Further, I recall that in the only account of 
 the worship of the Apostolic Church, from 
 which we can gain even the least idea of the 
 manner of its performance, St. Paul rebukes 
 the Corinthians for their slovenly disregard of 
 the merely external proprieties. He seems to 
 find in this the evidence of their want of appre- 
 ciation of the truth of the Sacrament, to which, 
 as cause, he attributes the result, that " many 
 are weak and sickly among you (them), and 
 many sleep." 
 
 Now, on the one hand, it seems to me to fol- 
 low inevitably from such rebuke administered 
 at this time, that the Corinthian Christians can- 
 not have been taught by their father in the Gos- 
 pel any doctrine of the Lord's Supper which at 
 
as to Ritual. 137 
 
 , all approximates that of the Roman Mass, the 
 Lutheran Miracle, or the High Anglican Pres- 
 ence ; for it is inconceivable that men so in- 
 structed could so soon have fallen away into 
 such gross irreverence of behavior toward their 
 God, there present under the form of bread 
 and wine. 
 
 But, on the other hand, it is just as plain 
 that St. Paul here gives no warrant for what 
 has been called " the piety of irreverence," or 
 for the assumption that absence of " bodily ex- 
 ercise" is irrefragable proof of the activity of 
 the spirit. Most important of all, let us note 
 that here, where it was most naturally to be 
 expected, he gives no Apostolic directory of 
 worship, save only to recite the account he 
 had received of the Lord Jesus, of the institu- 
 tion of the Christian Passover. And this is 
 all : we look in vain through the Scripture 
 history for other, even the least suggestion of 
 what the ritual of the Lord's Supper should be, 
 save only the Lord's "do this," "what and 
 as ye have seen me do." The Apostle seems 
 to promise in his letter that he would give them 
 
138 Discrimination 
 
 more definite instructions when he should come 
 to Corinth. " The rest," he says, " will I set 
 in order when I come."* There were, we 
 must suppose, other irregularities in their 
 manner of keeping the feast, about which he 
 would give authoritative regulation whenever 
 he should be present with them. I cannot help 
 asking, Was he withheld by the Divine Spirit 
 from incorpoiating these minutiae in the Letter 
 which was to make part of the Church's " Rule 
 of Faith and Practice" ? 
 
 The question presents itself boldly at this 
 point, " Why, then, have any Liturgy?" If 
 confessedly there is no record of any possess- 
 ing Apostolic sanction, then presumably the 
 custom in the Churches founded by the labors 
 of inspired men was for the mode to be deter- 
 mined and provided by the Elder who should 
 be on any occasion thus ministering before the 
 Lord. Doubtless each in conformity to St. 
 Paul's account of " that which he received of 
 the Lord Jesus," would, as part of his Service, 
 recite the words of Institution, as has been the 
 * 1 Cor. xi. : 34. 
 
as to Ritual. 139 
 
 custom of all Ministers in every age and of 
 every sect ; but for the rest, why shall not the 
 Elders in every city be free now as then ? 
 
 For myself I answer, that to my mind the 
 presumption is rather that each Apostle gave 
 specific directions- as to the performance of 
 this duty to the Elders whom he ordained ; for 
 surely, after the experience at Corinth, so wise 
 a man as St. Paul would not have opened wide 
 the floodgates of error in leaving " at the 
 mercy of the individual minister presiding over 
 the congregation at the time of, the celebra- 
 tion," a service which " enshrines such a mys- 
 tery." * I do not say that any form of words 
 is essential to make the Sacrament a valid means 
 of grace, for I find no such condition in Holy 
 Scripture ; but I do say that being our Master's 
 own appointment, for the expression of the 
 common faith of* His people in common prayer 
 to Him, for communion with one another, and 
 for receiving the common blessing His grace 
 will bestow, it is natural that prearranged cere- 
 
 * Sadler, Liturgies and Ritual, " The Church and the 
 Age," p. 264. 
 
14° Discrimination 
 
 monial shall be its setting, of which His own 
 acts and words at the time of its Institution 
 must be the foundation, but of which the de- 
 tails are variable and to be fixed in every case 
 by the. proper authority. In proof that such 
 p rearrangement is natural, I note that even if 
 the authority to which he owes allegiance has 
 left to the individual Minister the freedom of 
 extempore utterance in this Service, yet in gen- 
 eral his own sense of fitness causes that his 
 apparently spontaneous expressions shall be 
 stereotyped. ' 
 
 Now two causes will be operative to effect 
 development of the Liturgy : first, the de- 
 velopment of dogma, and the consequent 
 necessary desire and endeavor to express the 
 common belief in the common worship ; and, 
 secondly, the aesthetic development and culture 
 of the Priest and the People, and the conse- 
 quent desire and endeavor to gratify the re- 
 fined taste, in the acts of religious homage. 
 
 It were wandering very far away from my 
 path for me to go into the setting forth of the 
 history of the progress of Christian doctrine in 
 
as to Ritual. 
 
 141 
 
 this particular department, and of the corre- 
 sponding development of the Liturgy to be its 
 expression. It is a long road from that gatherr- 
 ing of the disciples to break bread, when 
 Paul preached unto them," unto the celebra- 
 tion of High Mass in a Roman cathedral of 
 to-day, where, with all the dramatic surround- 
 ings of music and painting, posture and cos- 
 tume, a Priest offers Jesus Christ the Son of 
 God, as unbloody sacrifice to be the propitiation 
 for the sins of the living and the dead ; and 
 then in jewelled Monstrance uplifts for the wor- 
 ship of the congregation this Christ thus " vis- 
 ibly set forth, crucified among them." But 
 we may tarry at numerous resting places before 
 we come to this, the very ultima thule of sacra- 
 mental discovery ; they are at greatly varying 
 distance from the original starting-point, in 
 doctrine and in its representation ; but I would 
 have you mark only this, that in general the 
 departure from the simplicity of Apostolic wor- 
 ship is in exact proportion to increased appre- 
 ciation of the significance and value of the sac- 
 ramental act. I say " in general," for, as al- 
 
142 Discrimination 
 
 ready suggested, there has been another cause 
 at work to expedite this progress of liturgical 
 development, which has absolutely no connec- 
 tion with the doctrine which any Liturgy may 
 enfold. 
 
 More than this : I would not be understood 
 to say that this increased appreciation of sac- 
 ramental reality is wholly evil. . Clearly our 
 knowledge of Christian truth. is in many partic- 
 ulars greater than that of the earliest disciples, 
 and there is no one point as to which this ad- 
 vantage is more palpable than that we are con- 
 sidering. I believe that in the beginning the 
 social aspect of the Holy Supper was largely 
 predominant : that the Agape overshadowed 
 the Communion. The common meal was to 
 them the symbol of their union, in poverty, and 
 in danger of persecution ; the noivooviot had 
 perhaps to their minds, its fullest reference to 
 the " goods" wherein all shared ; and the ideas 
 of a symbolic sacrifice, and of a means of grace 
 were obscured ; ideas wrapped up in the words 
 of the Christ ; ideas which the apprehension of 
 a century later had seized and enshrined in its 
 
as to Ritual. 143 
 
 Liturgy ; ideas, one of which after generations 
 have exaggerated into a denial of the alone 
 efficacy of the " one full, perfect, and sufficient 
 sacrifice," " for the sins of the whole world," 
 and the other into a mechanical theory which 
 degrades the conception of spiritual worship, 
 and makes the cultivation of the religious life 
 the working of a machine. 
 
 The Liturgy has in every case kept accurate 
 step, with the doctrine, in its march, for they 
 are tied together by closest bond, and each 
 sustains the other. Ornate ritual is hardly 
 possible except it be vivified by a teaching 
 which it symbolizes ; and on the other hand, 
 the doctrine held and taught must find, 
 ought to find, its embodiment in the acts 
 and words of devotion. I remember to have 
 heard of most elaborate ritual being intro- 
 duced by a Unitarian minister in one of our 
 Western towns, in the administration of a Sac- 
 rament which his doctrine, if truly set forth by 
 the author of " Ecce Homo," esteems as only 
 " a club dinner," and naturally the effect was 
 only contemptuous laughter, for there was no 
 
144 Discrimination 
 
 reality within to give life to the outward ex- 
 hibition. The ritual routine is only as the pic- 
 tures stained into the window-panes, unmean- 
 ing and offensive, whether they be elaborate or 
 simple, until the light behind brings out the 
 colors and the design ; and just as really the 
 light of dogmatic truth must have some ritual 
 screen as softening medium through which it 
 may enter the eye of the beholder, else it shall 
 be painful, and provoke the resistance of the 
 closed eyelid. 
 
 But, as I have already suggested, the status 
 of a people in artistic and literary pursuits will 
 be an index, in general, of the level of their 
 liturgical necessities and desires, without any 
 reference to the connection between ritual and 
 dogma. This connection is certainly close, 
 general, indeed almost universal, and yet 
 aesthetic considerations will sometimes produce 
 a ritualistic development which at first sight 
 we may from this observed connection attrib- 
 ute to an " advance" of religious opinion. It 
 is important that we bear this fact in mind, for 
 it is a factor of large value in the problem of 
 
as to Ritual. 145 
 
 determining the limits of liturgical liberty, and 
 in the formation of the judgments sometimes 
 demanded as to the fact and the extent of the 
 transgression of those limits by an individual 
 Minister or Congregation. 
 
 How shall these limits of liturgical freedom 
 be determined ? Scripture is confessedly si- 
 lent ; genuine Apostolic traditions, even within 
 the lifetime of the Apostles, were attended by 
 counterfeits which deceived those who had 
 themselves been pupils of the inspired teach- 
 ers ; naturally, necessarily, the Church of each 
 age must fix them, as the Church has fixed 
 them in every period of her history, and we are 
 bound by the decrees of that particular Church 
 by whose authority we stand to minister before 
 God, as the leader of His people's worship. 
 
 Beyond controversy, this must be true in the 
 very nature of the case^true for us all, whatever 
 theory of Church government we may accept — 
 whether we be adherents of the loosest system 
 of Congregationalism or of the stiffest theory 
 of Apostolic succession in the Episcopate. We 
 are members of the Catholic Church of Christ, 
 
146 Discrimination 
 
 whatever be our conception of its character, 
 notes, and limits, because we are members of 
 the particular organization into which we were 
 received by baptism, and not vice versa. And 
 if that Body be part of the Catholic Church 
 (and no one would be member of it except he 
 believe it such), it must have exclusive author- 
 ity in respect to its officers and members, to 
 "ordain, change, and abolish ceremonies or 
 rites of the Church, ordained only by man's 
 authority."* The first limit, then, of our in- 
 dividual liturgical liberty is the obligation to 
 conform to the worship of that Church whereof 
 we are members and ministers. 
 
 But, secondly, the Church herself is limited 
 in the exercise of her power by the truth 
 whereof she is the-" witness and keeper," so 
 that in the liturgical legislation or appointment 
 "nothing be ordained against God's word," 
 and " so that all things be done to edifying." 
 
 Then also of necessity this, obligation, resting 
 upon a " particular church" toidecree nothing as 
 ceremonial which shall possibly convey to the 
 
 * "XXXIX. Articles of Religion," Art. xxxiv. 
 
as to Ritual. 147 
 
 beholder or the worshipper other conception of 
 God, or of the means of securing part of His 
 salvation than that set forth in Holy Scripture ; 
 and the obligation to put immediate end to 
 such false representation made in her name and 
 with her apparent sanction ; — these must rest 
 as truly upon the conscience of the individual 
 man or minister. And he must find as real 
 ground for refusal to conform, in a decreed or- 
 dinance which to him pictures falsehood, as in 
 the decreed dogma which in words asserts what 
 he believes to be untrue. Truth first, and then 
 authority — these the limits of our liberty in the 
 matter of public worship. 
 
 And, further, in the exercise of this sovereign 
 authority the Church of the age must regard 
 the wisdom of those who possessed the special 
 divine guidance to which she can lay no claim, 
 and thankfully receive and follow the advice 
 given by their practice, to set up no standards 
 of worship as immutable. But rather, having 
 regard to the ever-changing conditions of man's 
 life, to the rise and fall of philosophic systems, 
 and the consequent modifications of the forms 
 
148 Discrimination 
 
 of theological statement ; to the progress of 
 art and the resulting modifications of devo- 
 tional expression, she will expect the demand 
 for liturgical enrichment and liturgical free- 
 dom, a demand expressed most often by seem- 
 ing violation of existing law ; and finally, in the 
 wise concession to such demand, shall " all 
 things be done to edifying." 
 
 These are the principles on which, as it 
 seems to me, the question, " How shall we 
 worship God ?" must always receive answer in 
 every age and from every Church. Let us now 
 endeavor their application to the present con- 
 dition of that venerable and Apostolic Com- 
 munion whereof we are members. 
 
 We hear on every hand that with us this is a 
 day of lawlessness ; that rubrics are dead let- 
 ters ; that the " godly admonitions" of the 
 Bishops, rarely spoken, are without effect, be- 
 cause the author of the admonition has no 
 power to compel compliance ; that, in a word, 
 the Church's Ritual law is such a mass of in- 
 coherency that obedience is not possible, and 
 disobedience not a fault. One of our most 
 
as to Ritual. 149 
 
 venerable Bishops has published, in his Charge 
 to his Diocese, that the day is come when every 
 man does, liturgically, what is right in the sight 
 of his own eyes ; and he seems to express his 
 satisfaction in such condition of things. I can 
 hardly consent that such is fair description, and 
 yet I am perfectly aware that the violations of 
 our Ritual-law are frequent, on the right hand 
 and on the left, by omission and by commis- 
 sion, by defect and by excess. I am quite pre- 
 pared to be satisfied with some of these viola- 
 tions, and to find in them no disloyalty to the 
 Church, but only the demand for larger liberty, 
 that "all things may be done to edifying." 
 To me many of these violations are but the 
 action of the giant rousing up from his sleep 
 of self-indulgence to recognize the battle that 
 is before him, and shaking himself free from 
 the withes of obsolete injunctions, which are 
 dead and dry and cannot bind his strength, de- 
 spite their apparent freshness and beauty. 
 Yes, men and brethren, in my judgment the 
 rubrical offences whereof in some quarters out- 
 cry is made, and whose chief value to the 
 
IS© Discrimination 
 
 offended is that they are offset and defence for 
 their own departures in the opposite direction, 
 are just the failure to try to force the living, 
 growing Church of Christ in this land, into a 
 mould which was fashioned for other material 
 under other circumstances, and the failure to 
 insist that if it will not consent to be thus cir- 
 cumscribed in its development it shall not grow 
 at all. 
 
 Let me give you an illustrative exam- 
 ple. I remember the experience of an earnest 
 Clergyman in a great city, who, desiring to give 
 opportunity to the business men for Lenten 
 prayer and meditation, advertised that there 
 would be a " half-hour service" in his Church, 
 which was situated close to the busiest mart of 
 the city, each day at noon. The Ordinary 
 being informed, in answer to inquiry, that the 
 purpose was to read the Litany and make a 
 short address, said that he could not do so 
 unless he should theretofore say the Order for 
 Morning Prayer, either in the Church or in his 
 own Study. 
 
 I thank God that I can believe that the day 
 
as to Ritual. 151 
 
 for such mad consistency is past, and that such 
 slavish subservience to the letter of the Rubric 
 would not be possible now. The " Rubric of 
 Common Sense," as it has been called, has 
 come to be understood as a necessary rule for 
 the interpretation of the Book of Common 
 Prayer, as of any other such document. But 
 alas ! this is the evil of our present condition : 
 these violations of the Church's Order in partic- 
 ulars wherein necessity or manifest expediency 
 constrains that the law be ignored, committed 
 with implied or even explicit consent of the 
 Church authority, are made excuse or defence 
 of other violations of the Church's Order, which 
 are at the same time violations of the Church's 
 truth. A man who shakes his dusty door-mat 
 in front *bf his house, and a man who attempts 
 to take the life of his neighbor, are in one 
 sense and in some cities equally violators of the 
 law, for it as plainly prohibits one action as the 
 other. And yet the one prohibition is based 
 upon regard for the comfort of the citizens, and 
 the other upon the sanctity of a God-given life, 
 and only a most disingenuous special pleading 
 
152 Discrimination 
 
 could defend the crime by comparing it as a 
 violation of law with the misdemeanor. But 
 this distinction seems to be often utterly 
 ignored in the formation of judgments, by indi- 
 viduals, about ecclesiastical offences. Because 
 one man neglects to say, " Peace be to this 
 house," as he enters the abode of his sick 
 parishioner, therefore another is to be justified 
 in mutilating the Office for infant baptism that 
 it may not speak to the Congregation the doc- 
 trine which the Church has plainly set forth in 
 her Articles ; and another must be suffered to 
 uplift the elements of the Holy Communion, 
 and to do before them every act that is nat- 
 urally expressive of worship, though the Church 
 has declared, as plainly as words can declare, 
 that she teaches no such doctrine of the precious 
 gift of the " spiritual food and sustenance." 
 
 I would not seem to be a partisan ; I would 
 not be understood as pleading for liberty for 
 one school of thought in the Church, and for 
 the greater repression of another ; but I must 
 emphasize the radical difference between viola- 
 tions of the fundamental Protestant truth of 
 
as to Ritual. 153 
 
 the Church, of the doctrine which was the very 
 inspiration of the Reformation, and the ade- 
 quate occasion for martyr death, and violations 
 of mere prescriptions of proper ministerial per- 
 formance, whose neglect and regard are alike 
 insignificant in the inculcation of truth or error. 
 More than this : I would emphasize the fact 
 that the very existence of difference of opinion 
 upon any point makes the more obligatory the 
 faithful and accurate use of the words of the 
 formula having reference to that point ; that, 
 permitted to wander at will over wide field of 
 opinion, we must, just because of the permis- 
 sion, the more certainly return to the ren- 
 dezvous. 
 
 Now, when we come to examine the Stand- 
 ards of the Church upon the subject of the Sac- 
 raments, we may perhaps, some of us, be 
 amazed to find the large liberty of opinion 
 which is allowed, and that no positive definition 
 of the nature of the Sacrament of the Lord's 
 Supper has been therein promulgated. I mean, 
 you will of course understand, the Standards of 
 this Church, and not the recorded lucubrations 
 
1 54 Discrimination 
 
 of the individual Doctors who, within the lib- 
 erty thus accorded, have furnished definitions 
 hard and positive, often, alas ! married to ex- 
 clusive denunciations of " no-churchmanship" 
 against those who in the exercise of the same 
 liberty have reached other conclusions. 
 
 The Protestant Episcopal Church proclaims, 
 with no uncertain voice, that the Lord's Sup- 
 per is a veritable " means of grace" ; that it 
 " is not only a sign of the love that Christians 
 ought to have among themselves, one to an- 
 other, but rather it is a Sacrament of our Re- 
 demption by Christ's death : insomuch that to 
 such as rightly, worthily, and with faith receive 
 the same, the Bread which we break is a par- 
 taking of the Body of Christ, and likewise the 
 Cup of blessing is a partaking of the Blood of 
 Christ." She declares in express terms that 
 ' Transubstantiation (or the change of the sub- 
 stance of the bread and wine in the Supper of 
 the Lord) cannot be proved by Holy Writ ; 
 but is repugnant to the plain words of Scrip- 
 ture, overthroweth the nature of a sacrament, 
 and hath given occasion to many superstitions. ' ' 
 
as to Ritual. 155 
 
 She declares that " the Body of Christ is given, 
 taken, and eaten in the supper only after an 
 heavenly and spiritual manner," and that " the 
 mean whereby the Body of Christ is received 
 and eaten in the Supper is Faith." But just as 
 plainly she declares that " sacraments are cer- 
 tain sure witnesses, and effectual signs of grace, 
 and God's good will toward us, by the which 
 He doth work invisibly in us, and doth not 
 only quicken but also strengthen and confirm 
 our Faith in Him." Finally, she asserts that 
 " the sacrament of the Lord's Supper was not 
 by Christ's ordinance reserved, carried about, 
 lifted up, or worshipped." 
 
 Let these quotations suffice to exhibit the 
 salient points of the doctrine which this Church 
 has gathered from Holy Scripture touching this 
 subject. A volume and not a lecture, a life- 
 time and not an hour, were needed to give you 
 the barest outline of the scriptural proof and of 
 the historical development. But our concern 
 now is with the Ritual in which this doctrine 
 shall be embodied, and of the permissibility of 
 departure from the appointed Order. 
 
156 Discrimination 
 
 I would maintain, first of all, that because 
 there is legitimate variety of opinion about the 
 nature and efficacy of the Sacrament, that there- 
 fore there shall be closest conformity to the 
 appointed Order ; and secondly, I would plead 
 that, due regard being paid to this literal re- 
 quirement, there shall be kindest judgment and 
 self-compelled silence as to the difference of 
 opinion. But I hold that the Church should 
 give a liberty of Ritual, a defined and regulated 
 liberty, corresponding to the freedom of opin- 
 ion which she has accorded. Why shall the 
 arrangements of the Ritual of even this most 
 sacred Office, completed in a time of turmoil and 
 confusion, when the martyr fires still smoul- 
 dered, and when anxious fear still trembled lest 
 the old enemy should regain the possession from 
 which he had been with such difficulty expell- 
 ed —why shall these be continued of necessity 
 without change, for us who " were free born," 
 who ought to be able to look unappalled at the 
 history of Papal usurpation and of scholastic 
 dogmatizing, and stand firm in the old paths ? 
 Especially must the minute directions as to 
 
as to Ritual. 157 
 
 posture, which were necessary for the guidance 
 of every motion of the Rome-bred priest, to 
 keep him out of the rut of the Roman Missal — 
 must these continue to be a burden to the mind 
 and conscience of the Priest of to-day, who is 
 proudly conscious of his integrity, and intelli- 
 gent loyalty to the Church's Standards of doc- 
 trine ? Must these remain because there is like 
 danger now, as in the old time ? Then let them 
 be made more explicit, and impossible of misin- 
 terpretation. Plainly, even in this Office for 
 the administration of the highest, holiest act of 
 our worship, we need more detail of direction, 
 or less. Either take away these petty occasions 
 of rubrical stumbling and fault-finding, or make 
 them of such rugged prominence that the blind- 
 est will see them and avoid ; and make it at 
 the same time impossible for the ignorant or 
 careless tripping to become the defence of the 
 deliberate masking of the Church's fair face by 
 the omission or the addition thus justified. 
 We need liturgical enrichment, for we need li- 
 turgical freedom, which is wealth. 
 
 Ritual legislation, rubrical revision, I believe 
 
158 Discrimination 
 
 to be the crying need of the Church to-day ; and 
 I hail with thankful delight the appointment and 
 the assembling of that Commission of learned 
 men to whom this matter has by the Church been 
 given in charge. May they give us a scheme 
 which shall be, first of all, intelligible by all, 
 and of no easy misinterpretation ; a scheme 
 which shall make plainly lawful varied services 
 suited to the differing tastes and capacities of 
 our people, and which shall make as plainly 
 unlawful the denial by Ritual act, or by a gar- 
 bling of the words of worship, of the truth which 
 we have as Dogma in Articles, and in Homilies 
 as Exhortation. 
 
 Will some man say in reply, that legislation 
 is dangerous because thereby our liberty may 
 be made less, and the present condition is bet- 
 ter when each does what seemeth him good ? 
 Nay, but conscience often restrains from what 
 judgment esteems expedient, because of the 
 Church's law ; Bishops must do by connivance, 
 or by supposed inherent right, what they feel 
 and know ought to be done, while yet they feel 
 and know as well, that under our law their 
 
as to Ritual. 159 
 
 right to make alteration in the established 
 Order, save on certain specified occasions and 
 under certain specified circumstances, is no 
 more than that of the humblest Presbyter. 
 
 On the other hand, this faculty of individual 
 revision, given by supposed general consent, 
 by recognized laxity of the law, may be exer- 
 cised after this fashion in shortening the form 
 of exhortation giving notice of the administra- 
 tion of the Holy Communion — omit the words 
 " to be by them received in remembrance of 
 His meritorious cross and passion," and thus 
 make the Church declare that it is " the most 
 comfortable sacrament of the Body and Blood 
 of Christ, . . . whereby alone we obtain 
 remission of our sins and are made partakers of 
 the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 I say therefore that we need legislation in 
 the interest of liberty— liberty in all directions 
 for the truth's expression — that the consciences 
 of good men may have relief, that obstructions 
 in the path of the Church's progress among 
 Americans may be removed, and that honest 
 misinterpretation concerning nonessentials, or 
 
160 Discrimination 
 
 lazy indifference as to rules of mere propriety, 
 may no longer give occasion for the justified 
 expression of misinterpretation, honest or dis- 
 honest, ignorant or designing, concerning things 
 essential and vital. 
 
 To return for illustration to the Ritual of the 
 Lord's Supper, which as the central act of our 
 public worship, as the Liturgy proper, will ever 
 determine the characteristics of the mode in 
 which other sacred offices will be celebrated, 
 is any increase of liberty possible here ? How 
 shall there not be, in view of the wide compre- 
 hension by the Article, of theories having in 
 common only the acceptance of the fact that 
 He who gave His Son to die for our sins hath 
 also given Him "to be our spiritual food and 
 sustenance in that Holy Sacrament" ; the de- 
 nial of Presence other than spiritual and heav- 
 enly ; the affirmation that " Faith is the mean 
 whereby the Body of Christ is received and 
 eaten," and the repudiation of reservation, 
 carrying about, lifting up, and worshipping, as 
 in any sense proper accessories to the act of 
 Communion ? 
 
as to Ritual. 161 
 
 Grant that to me the Office in our Prayer 
 Book for the administration of the Holy Com- 
 munion is not only most precious heritage which 
 I have received from my fathers, is not only 
 hallowed by the recollections of my childhood's 
 awe, and by the tenderest associations of my 
 life, but also that it contains for me fullest ex- 
 pression, inmost-perfect proportion, of the truths 
 wrapped up in that one peculiar act of Chris- 
 tian devotion ; grant that therefore I find full- 
 est benefit and highest spiritual pleasure in the 
 administration of the ordinance just as it is 
 there set down, in every least particular ; is it 
 therefore certain that this must be true of all 
 men ? Can I not understand that, from one 
 cause or another, difference of taste or of habit 
 of mind, a shorter form may be more helpful to 
 others ; or at the least, that they may honestly 
 long for the liberty for its curtailment on occa- 
 sion ? What parish clergyman has not felt the 
 need for such liberty of shortening this Service 
 for the relief of the sick and the dying, who, 
 earnestly desirous to receive this visible mate- 
 rial pledge of the Saviour's love, can yet only 
 
1 62 Discrimination 
 
 with most painful difficulty undergo the fatigue 
 of body and mind necessaiy to intelligent par- 
 ticipation in the entire Office ? 
 
 Again, why shall the musical taste and skill, 
 largely developed in one congregation, be shut 
 up to that measure of musical utterance, as is 
 perhaps a requirement all beyond the capacity 
 of comfortable rendering possessed by another? 
 Why shall not the idea of mystery, which con- 
 fessedly is inherent in this act of worship, be 
 fully set forth in the Ritual of those to whom 
 this thought :s fullest of helpful blessing, pro- 
 vided only that safeguards protect from the rep- 
 resentation of any Presence other than spiritual 
 and heavenly ? And why shall a Service, whose 
 words are often unmeaning, and its construc- 
 tion unappreciated, be the compulsory perform- 
 ance of simple-minded ignorance which comes 
 to the "breaking of bread," as possibly the 
 earliest disciples came, simply to remember, 
 and to be helped to remember, the death that 
 was died for them, and to whom the idea of 
 mystery being connected with what they do is 
 inconceivable ? 
 
as to Ritual. 163 
 
 Is it helpful to some to have the sacrificial 
 aspect of the Lord's Supper made prominent, 
 the showing of the Lord's death unto the Eter- 
 nal Father, and the pleading in act of the 
 merits of His cross and passion, even as in 
 words they make petition, " for the sake of 
 Jesus Christ," why shall it not be made ex- 
 plicitly lawful, and in being made lawful the 
 " showing forth" be so ordered, that not by 
 any possibility " the dangerous fable and blas- 
 phemous deceit" of a propitiatory sacrifice 
 may find a lodgment in the mind or heart of 
 the worshipper ? 
 
 " No one," says Prebendary Sadler, " unless 
 he believes that Christ can die over and over 
 again, can hold that the sacrificial action of the 
 Eucharist is in its essence more than commem- 
 orative, and no one can hold that it is less." * 
 " No matter how differently they may ex- 
 press themselves," he says, immediately before 
 the passage above quoted, " the Ultramontane 
 and the ultra - Protestant, when their words 
 
 * Liturgies and Ritual, "The Church and the Age," 
 p. 281. 
 
164 Discrimination 
 
 come to be sifted, are here at one. ' ' But if 
 the word " express" in the last sentence may- 
 be made to include Ritual action as well as 
 spoken forms of belief, the statement mani- 
 festly is not true, for with pain and shame be it 
 confessed, in these days of lawless individual- 
 ism, in which some of us are supposed to re- 
 joice, there may be found Priests ministering 
 under the authority of the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church whose expression of sacrificial act can 
 with difficulty be distinguished, by an unedu- 
 cated eye, from that of him who blasphemously 
 deceives the people with claim to offer sacrifice, 
 which is propitiation for the sins of the living 
 and the dead. 
 
 But finally on this point, shall provision be 
 made, ought provision to be made, in our Rit- 
 ual law for liberty to express our homage to 
 the Divine Humanity come after the words of 
 Priestly consecration, to the tabernacle of bread 
 and wine, because many (shall I say " many" ?) 
 assert that the highest blessing they receive at 
 the Holy Communion is in the worship of the 
 Present Christ ? The answer is inevitable, that 
 
as to Ritual. 165 
 
 there cannot be given liberty for the expression 
 of a worship which the Church in her formulary 
 of doctrine has pronounced unlawful. And yet 
 • ceremonial is to-day a regular use in churches 
 of this Communion — ceremonial which means 
 this if it means anything, but which Bishops 
 are powerless to stop, because it cannot be 
 canonically/r0zw2 that it symbolizes " errone- 
 ous or doubtful doctrines." 
 
 For example, how can it ever be proven that 
 the elements in the Holy Communion have 
 been elevated " in such manner as to expose 
 them to the view of the people, as objects 
 toward which adoration is to be made' ' ? And 
 yet, is it not notorious that such elevation as 
 .has been practiced does to the average beholder 
 symbolize a Presence that is worshipped, and 
 ought to be worshipped ? 
 
 Again, says the author of the Essay on ' ' Litur- 
 gies and Ritual," from which I already quoted : 
 " It is clear that Jerome excuses the lighting of 
 lamps in the day time as a pardonable weak- 
 ness. . . . He mentions at the conclusion of 
 his remarks on this matter that the Oriental 
 
i66 Discrimination 
 
 Church lighted lamps — not however at the 
 Consecration, but at the reading of the Gospels, 
 at which time common-sense seems to teach 
 us that if lighted candles be used symbolically 
 at all, they are far more appropriate, for there 
 must be a certain order and discrimination in 
 symbolical teaching. . . . Again, if we 
 look to the Eucharist as a sacrificial commem- 
 oration, candles seem altogether out of place, 
 for they have nothing, even remotely, to do 
 with sacrifice."* 
 
 Shall we, too, not suffer the candles to cast 
 their pale light upon this act of our worship, 
 excusing their use " as a pardonable weak- 
 ness" ? But alas ! no matter that as symbol 
 they have no fitness for such service, and are 
 absolutely insignificant, yet to the average 
 American mind they symbolize Romanism, and 
 deny the witness for which the Reformers went 
 gladly to the stake that they might there light 
 that candle which, by the grace of God, we must 
 take care shall never be put out. 
 
 So, too, of the use of incense, which, even 
 * Liturgies and Ritual, the Church and the Age, p. 308. 
 
as to Ritual. 167 
 
 according to Roman Catholic decision, has no 
 symbolical or dogmatic bearing whatever with 
 respect to the Eucharist, for the Mass is in the 
 vast majority of cases celebrated without it. 
 Yet is it not true that to the mind of our 
 countrymen and of our age it is not the symbol 
 of acceptable prayer but of Roman worship ? 
 
 In respect to the chalice of mingled water 
 and wine, perhaps the same difficulty might 
 arise were the act of mingling a part of the 
 public Service, and not, as always in the ancient 
 time, done in private before the solemnity be- 
 gins. Surely no one can object that the lover 
 of symbolism shall thus recall to mind the 
 double stream which (lowed from the wounded 
 side. 
 
 So, too, in my judgment, about what are 
 called the " sacrificial vestments" ; if it please 
 the Priest or his people that he wear them, who 
 shall object, for most assuredly we have no law 
 to guide, and the people — I mean the people 
 who are not of us, but whom we are sent to 
 w j nj — find just as little, and just as much cause 
 for wonder in the alb and chasuble, as in the 
 
168 Discrimination 
 
 surplice, and possibly a colored stole evokes 
 their surprise no more than a black one. 
 
 Am I talking of things indifferent, things 
 unworthy of your thought and mine ? Nay, is 
 it beneath us to consider even the smallest 
 causes of division in our Body, and of slackened 
 speed in our advance to occupy the land ? 
 
 But do I seem to be advocating the liberty of 
 only those with whom I may be supposed most 
 nearly to agree ? God forbid that it be so ! 
 No, I only assert that Ritual must be ex- 
 pression of Doctrine, that the limits of the one 
 determine those of the other, only these, but 
 certainly these. I believe that because of the 
 lack of sufficient definition these limits are 
 overstepped, and the truth receives the hurt. 
 And yet I believe that there is abundant room 
 for the gratification of every taste, and the 
 symbolizing of every phase of the accepted 
 doctrine. Timid, it may be morbid, conscience 
 is restrained, and the bolder rushes to trans- 
 gression — it may be of mere Order, it may be 
 of Order involving doctrine — and straightway 
 there is accusing and excusing. Diocesan au- 
 
as to Ritual. 169 
 
 thority is silent because powerless, or if it speaks 
 its sense of the radical difference between of- 
 fences, sincere conviction sometimes, and some- 
 times disingenuous evasion, makes clamor of 
 persecution and partisanship. Such our con- 
 dition : is there not a cause that we seek its 
 improvement ? 
 
 But I know that answer will be made to 
 much that I have been saying, somewhat as 
 follows : The people must be educated, the 
 Prayer Book must be their educator, and their 
 ignorance must not be suffered to be the gauge 
 of the Forms of devotion we offer them. 
 
 True, that the Prayer Book is a mighty edu- 
 cator ; true, that as a missionary it has done 
 great work among the poorest and the most 
 illiterate, and yet equally true it is that only 
 by the application of the Rubric of common- 
 sense has its educating influence ever been 
 brought to bear. 
 
 But in regard to those points to which I 
 have made special reference — namely, the 
 different aspects of the Holy Communion, the 
 people can be but very slowly lifted • up to the 
 
1 JO Discrimination 
 
 conceptions which are set forth, often only by 
 suggestion, in the Liturgy ; lifted up from the 
 idea of mere sympathetic remembrance to the 
 realization of spiritual communion. I would 
 give liberty for the employment of means to 
 help this uplifting, chiefly by the shortening of 
 the Service. But, mark you, however far they 
 may have attained, the masses of our people 
 will never be rid, and they ought never to be 
 rid, of their horror of Rome and its enslaving 
 system. You cannot educate them into toler- 
 ance of the similitude of Roman ritual, and it 
 is worse than a mistake — it is a crime — for the 
 sake of a blind aesthetic devotion to a symbol- 
 ism which Rome has degraded, and which only 
 by largest explanation can ever be made to do 
 honor to the truth, to risk the repelling from 
 the Catholic Church, and still more from the 
 Catholic truth of the Gospel, men and women 
 who can see only Romanism in the genuflexion 
 and prostration, the burning candle and the 
 smoking censer. 
 
 Shall I be told that like mistake and prepos- 
 session oppose the introduction of any liturgi- 
 
as to Ritual. 171 
 
 cal' form, and that the people we must teach 
 are equally scandalized by surpliced Choir and 
 Priest, by written sermon and cross-capped 
 spire ? I answer, a mistake and prepossession 
 in regard to all our peculiarities does stand 
 in the way, but not of like character or of 
 equal strength. The mental inertia and bodily 
 sloth of men will always be reasons for unwill- 
 ingness to take part in a religious worship in- 
 volving bodily and mental activity, and these 
 natural instincts have been cultivated to the 
 utmost by the forms, or want of forms, of wor- 
 ship, in which the larger part of our countrymen 
 have been educated. But their love of the 
 ease they have been accustomed to enjoy is 
 not like their love of the truth of the risen 
 Christ in which they have learned to believe ; 
 their antipathy to " prayers out of a book" is 
 not like their hatred of Roman arrogance and 
 monkery, which are to their minds all repre- 
 sented in the mysterious movements of the 
 Priest at his Altar. 
 
 But I believe that the Book of Common 
 Prayer, as I have already suggested, is, not- 
 
172 Discrimination 
 
 withstanding our lost opportunities and our 
 suicidal want of harmony, a very magnet which 
 is attracting toward our Communion multitudes 
 of that ever - increasing number of educated 
 people in our land, and that it is beloved as 
 their only teacher by men and women every- 
 where, to whom the advantages of other instruc- 
 tion were never given. There is no insuperable 
 obstacle in the way of educating the people up 
 to this highest form of the public worship of 
 God, if it be the God and Father of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ in heaven, Whom we ask them to 
 worship, and there be not a suspicion that 
 prayer and praise are to be addressed to One 
 who is brought near to them by the working of 
 ecclesiastical miracle. 
 
 And now, for a very little while, suffer me to 
 speak touching the liberty to be accorded in the 
 performance of divine worship other than that 
 in the administration of the Eucharist. Be- 
 cause the most precious jewel of our treasure- 
 house is therein deposited, our anxiety will be 
 most cautious as to any proposed changes in 
 the setting, lest thereby the rays of truth from 
 
as to Ritual. 173 
 
 some one of the many sides shall not be re- 
 flected, and the blessing they bring be- lost. 
 This danger cannot be so great in any other 
 case, and our conservative timidity cannot so 
 readily find excuse. 
 
 Thank God, the days are past when every 
 Clergyman felt bound in good conscience to be- 
 gin with " Dearly beloved brethren" at every 
 meeting of Christians, and no matter what the 
 emergency, to go straight through to the Apos- 
 tolic grace before a word of exhortation could 
 be spoken, or even a pressing question of Par- 
 ish business discussed ! And yet the binding 
 rules are just as tightly fastened, and even at 
 our last General Convention there was refusal 
 on the part of one branch of our legislature to 
 consent to any loosening. 
 
 Everybody -Bishop, Priest, Deacon, and Lay- 
 man — knows very well that the Order for Daily 
 Morning and Evening Prayer is not said daily 
 in many churches, and ought not to be said 
 daily, under present circumstances. Everybody 
 knows just as well that the appointed routine 
 of service is not followed, always " before all 
 
1 74 Discrimination 
 
 sermons and lectures," and that it ought not 
 to be. And yet there is the law upon the 
 statute-book, a brutum fulmen, serving no pur- 
 pose but to bring into disrepute the Vulcan 
 who forged it, and the Jupiter by whose hand 
 it was hurled. No, I mistake ; it serves other 
 purpose as well : it is a burden to the con- 
 science of some good men, under which they 
 stagger in their going to and fro with the mes- 
 sage of salvation ; and, worse still, in being the 
 demand for an impracticable conformity, it is 
 the suggestion of an untrammelled license, and 
 so of an equalization of all offences against its 
 terms. We need clearly settled liberty in the 
 non-essentials of our worship, for the very pro- 
 tection of that which is most sacred and most 
 precious. 
 
 Now, granting that the Church's doctrine is 
 safely guarded in her Sacramental Offices, as to 
 which liberty of use must be granted with 
 greater caution, why shall the ordained Presby- 
 ter of this Church, the man who has passed the 
 ordeal of entrance, and has sworn the oaths of 
 faithful ministration of doctrine and discipline 
 
as to Ritual. 175 
 
 and worship — why shall he not be trusted with 
 a discretion as to the doings at the ordinary 
 assemblings of his people for prayer and praise ; 
 and still more, when he goes as Missionary to 
 minister to those to whom our ancient forms of 
 devotion are new and strange ; who, it may be, 
 never saw a Prayer Book, and seeing it could 
 not read nor understand it ? We cannot but 
 assume that he will love best to worship in the 
 appointed Order, and that like disposition will 
 be characteristic of the regularly organized Con- 
 gregation of the Church. We must assume 
 also that the Minister will not run counter to 
 the wishes of his people in this matter. Now, 
 grant that the law shall suffer no departure 
 from the prescribed form at Services on the 
 Lord's Day in places duly set apart for the 
 celebration of Divine Service, yet why shall not 
 the Minister be given explicit discretion to do 
 what he finds most expedient on other and ex- 
 traordinary occasions ? I will go so far as to 
 ask, what result other than good can come from 
 the social informal meeting of Churchmen for 
 prayer and praise, under the presidency and 
 
176 Discrimination 
 
 direction of the educated ordained servant of 
 the Church, even though no official robe shall 
 distinguish the Elder from his brethren, and the 
 words which are spoken to the All-hearing 
 Father are but the crude, spontaneous utterance 
 which tries to tell the thoughts and desires of 
 the heart ? You answer that the disgraceful 
 scenes witnessed at such gatherings are suf- 
 ficient, more than sufficient, reason for our 
 refusal to permit other than liturgical worship 
 on any occasion, and ought to be rebuke of the 
 suggestion of its allowance. And I rejoin that 
 perhaps the Church's failure to direct and con- 
 trol these natural manifestations of the social 
 religious feeling, which must be ancient, prim- 
 itive, Apostolic, because they are natural, may 
 be explanation of their degradation, because 
 suffered to fall into the hands of incompetency ; 
 as it may also be one explanation of how the 
 Church came to lose the privilege of being the 
 religious educator of the masses. Further, I 
 must add that in many Congregations of this 
 Church throughout the land, which have been 
 distinguished for largest possession of mission- 
 
as to Ritual. 177 
 
 ary zeal and activity, this agency has been em- 
 ployed with mighty effect by the Minister, de- 
 spite the prohibitions of the Canon. 
 
 On the other hand, if there be, as undoubt- 
 edly there are, a large number of men and 
 women in the Church, equally earnest in their 
 devotion to their Lord, who are best pleased 
 and most helped to worship God with elaborate 
 ceremonial ; who would have the Choir and 
 Clergy approach the sacred place in solemn 
 procession, marching under the standard of the 
 uplifted cross, and singing, as \hey march, the 
 song of exultant victorious hope ; who love 
 best that prayers be sung in restful monotone, 
 and that the shouted " Aniens" speed their 
 flight to the throne — why shall they be forbid- 
 den thus to offer the sacrifice of their lips ? 
 
 But further, and most important of all, I -ask, 
 why shall the worshipper at the Prayer-meet- 
 ing, rather than the worshipper at the Choral 
 Service, be denounced as " no-churchman," or 
 vice versa, when of the plain letter of our law 
 each Service is as palpable violation as the 
 other ? Herein, as it seems to me, is one larg. 
 
Discrimination 
 
 est evil of our present condition, that Church- 
 manship is being measured by a rule which has 
 no possible application, and that ignorance or 
 inconsiderateness is busy imputing disloyalty 
 because of mere difference of interpretation, or 
 of taste, or of judged expediency. I would 
 that in every one of our great cities there might 
 be a Church wherein the Service should be ren- 
 dered with all the adjuncts of ritual beauty and 
 glory, and yet wherein the keenest scrutiny of 
 partisan anxiety could discover no feature of any 
 system save purest " Evangelicalism," that so 
 the mind of all our people might be disabused 
 of the impression that Choral music is the 
 necessary vehicle of one particular phase of 
 Church doctrine, and that the churchmanship 
 of a Minister is to be determined by the pro- 
 portion in which singing and reading are 
 mingled in his Service. 
 
 And so I would that in every city some of 
 the men who are recognized as " extreme" 
 in their churchmanship would inaugurate the 
 social, informal Prayer-meeting, as one agency 
 of their manifold activity, that the false union 
 
as to Ritual. 179 
 
 between a form of prayer and a system of doc- 
 trine might be proven arbitrary and unreal ; for 
 so I believe one large occasion for stumbling, 
 one mighty provocative to harsh judgment and 
 evil speaking, were taken away. 
 
 Of course I know very well that this has 
 been done long ago in the Church of England, 
 and that their disagreements in regard to Rit- 
 ual are still fiercer than ours. Perhaps, I ven- 
 ture to say, the connection between Church 
 and State enters there as controlling factor to 
 disturb the solution of the problem, which is 
 possible to us, as certainly the extreme results 
 of their disagreement, which will now intensify 
 its bitterness and make less possible its heal- 
 ing, can never be seen in America. But, mark 
 you, those results are from alleged violations 
 of the integrity of the Church's truth, and not 
 of mere Order. 
 
 I know, too, that answer will be made to 
 my words, that the tendency of such allowed 
 liberty is dangerous. The lover of ritual- 
 observance will fear that people permitted 
 ever to worship without its restraints will at 
 
1 80 Discrimination 
 
 last find them irksome at all times. And he 
 who believes in only simplest form will dread 
 lest Choral Service lead directly and inevitably 
 to eucharistic adoration. Ah, friends ! the 
 argument from tendency, the argument from 
 our fears, will put effectual stop to all progress, 
 and be prohibition of all liberty. The tend- 
 ency of a republic, the political philosophers 
 tell us, and history seems to prove it, is toward 
 mob rule and communism ; and yet that tend- 
 ency we have withstood for a century, and the 
 outlook is fairer than ever before in man's po- 
 litical history for centuries more of well-regu- 
 lated liberty, without the presence of a stand- 
 ing army or the accumulation of a centralized 
 power. 
 
 The tendency of Low-Churchmen, we have 
 been hearing all our lifetime, is toward Geneva, 
 and that of their High-Church neighbors toward 
 Rome ; and yet they dwell together now more 
 closely than perhaps ever before, and neither 
 Calvin's seat nor Leo's is crowded with the 
 tendency-driven exiles. Certainly tendencies 
 exist in every organism, toward one point or 
 
as to Ritual. 181 
 
 another of development, but not always so 
 irresistible as to make proper that freedom 
 be destroyed lest they be suffered to become 
 operative, the freedom which is necessary that 
 the organism may accomplish its proper func- 
 tions, and be a joy and not a sorrow to itself. 
 
 But, further : natural tendency, restrained 
 unlawfully, in the judgment of him who feels 
 the repression, is thereby quickened into more 
 eager pursuit of its extreme result. If I am 
 ever being taunted with the reproach that I be- 
 long to Geneva or to Rome, it will be but nat- 
 ural for me to constantly make nearer approach 
 to my asserted final resting-place. 
 
 Therefore I urge that while our liberty con- 
 tinues undefined, we shall use nicest discrimi- 
 nation in forming our judgments and in stating 
 them. For the man who as steward gives to 
 the hungry household a stone instead of the 
 bread the Great Householder has provided, and 
 by disingenuous artifice persuades its accept- 
 ance, for his actions we can make no excuse, 
 save only that charity shall strive to hope " all 
 things" of possible explanation, and to believe 
 
1 82 Discrimination 
 
 " all things" of possible ignorance, rather than 
 believe that consciously he is violating his 
 vow, " to instruct the people committed to his 
 charge, out of the Scriptures, and to teach 
 nothing as necessary to eternal salvation, but 
 what he is persuaded may thereby be concluded 
 and proved. ' ' To ritual act which teaches the 
 unlearned, however it may be explained to the- 
 ologians, that the Sacrament is a sacrifice pro- 
 pitiatory for the sins of the living and the 
 dead, and that men must adore Christ present 
 on the Altar under the form of bread and wine, 
 we can, as loyal Churchmen, give nor counte- 
 nance nor consent ; and to the omission of 
 word or deed, which shall put partisan inter- 
 pretation upon the Church's Offices, which are 
 the Articles of our concord, we can give only 
 distinctest disapprobation. 
 
 But in reference to the multitude of varia- 
 tions in the conduct of our public worship, not 
 possibly, or certainly not plainly, involving de- 
 nial or obscuring of vital truth, variations in 
 general wholly dependent upon the taste and 
 habits of the worshippers, let us learn to be 
 
as to Ritual. 183 
 
 tolerant and silent if we cannot learn to even 
 courteously conform to the innocent, though to 
 us novel, customs of those whose worship we 
 have joined. 
 
 The time will come when things now by 
 many esteemed unwarrantable shall be ex- 
 plicitly authorized, and so terms of reproach 
 now often spoken will have their occasion taken 
 away. Churchmanship will be shown some 
 day to have no connection with, or proper 
 measure in, questions of insignificant cere- 
 mony. Things new and old we will be suffered 
 to bring out of the ritual treasure, equally val- 
 uable whether new or old, if they are efficient 
 to excite and to express the true worship of 
 the Father for the men of our time ; and 
 equally worthless, whether new or old, if unfit- 
 ted for profitable use by our countrymen. 
 
 Till then we must be governed as to these 
 matters by an enlightened Church opinion ; let 
 us use wise discrimination in its formation. 
 Let us always remember that our worship is 
 first to proclaim what is true, decreed to be 
 true by the authority to which we owe and 
 
1 84 Discrimination 
 
 have professed subjection ; it is to be the com- 
 mon expression of the common belief ; and 
 then, that for it there is due and prescribed 
 Order, to be interpreted by common-sense. 
 Therefore, there will be an analogy to which 
 our judgments must conform in estimating the 
 enormity of departures from that rule. I do 
 plead earnestly that this analogy receive due 
 consideration, for by its disregard the weight 
 of our judgment with those whom we wish to 
 influence is made nil. 
 
 To place on the same level, for example, the 
 mere ornamentation which a florid taste enjoys, 
 and the prostration or other posture which un- 
 gracefully announces the supernatural Pres- 
 ence to be worshipped ; to seem to look upon 
 the Choral singing of the Service as part and 
 parcel of a system whose corner-stone is at the 
 seven-hilled city ; to lazily consent that the 
 refusal to pronounce the Church's declaration 
 of new life and new hope to the waiting heart 
 of the mother whose child has been baptized, 
 is only on a par with the failure to read all of 
 the long exhortation each time the Holy Com- 
 
as to Ritual. 185 
 
 munion is administered ; this is to destroy the 
 value of our judgment with those who seek it, 
 and to drive the inquirer to inconsiderate ac- 
 ceptance of all as alike good, because we have, 
 taken away the distinction, by our assertion 
 that they are alike evil. 
 
 I believe, after some opportunity for ex- 
 amination of the question, which opportunity 
 I have tried to improve, that perhaps a 
 majority, certainly a large proportion of the 
 regular attendants upon the services of the few 
 ultra-ritualistic Churches in this country, are 
 quite indifferent to the distinguishing charac- 
 teristics of the doctrine therein taught. Some 
 of these persons attend a Church of this kind 
 because it is free, and a larger number because 
 of the hearty Congregational Choral worship 
 which they enjoy. They love the sugar-coat- 
 ing, and take the drug it disguises, in many 
 cases without any appreciable effect. Remon- 
 strance of old friends against their adherence 
 to the party they have joined is often met in 
 the way I have just now indicated. The mode 
 of Service they find a comfort and a blessing,. 
 
1 86 Discrimination 
 
 and the other peculiarities cannot be evil, if, as 
 decided by the judgment of the remonstrant, 
 they are part and parcel of the same system, 
 and no more evil than, the Service they love. 
 
 But as my last word, I entreat that discrim- 
 ination may be our companion when we come 
 to deal on this subject with the newly convinced 
 hearer who would confess his belief. He has 
 learned to accept Jesus as the Son of God ; he 
 would call upon Him in Whom he has be- 
 lieved ; he would join the Apostles' fellowship, 
 that he may learn more of their doctrine ; he 
 would be privileged partaker of their " breaking 
 of bread and prayers." About him are men 
 whom he sees to be equally active in the work, 
 of their -Master, equally influenced by " the 
 same Spirit," but among them there are wide 
 " differences of administration" concerning 
 these things. He comes to ask where and 
 with whom he may have fellowship in the 
 breaking of bread and prayers : what answer 
 shall we give ? Shall I fill his mind with par- 
 tisan theories, and his heart with suspicion of 
 my brother who calls upon the Lord with other 
 
as to Ritual. 187 
 
 tones than mine, or who breaks the bread, as 
 it seems to me, with unbecoming irreverence 
 and familiarity ? Shall I bid him beware the 
 Church wherein the voices of white-robed boys 
 swell the pealing anthem, or point out the 
 " unchurchliness" of the irregular performances 
 in the Lecture-room on the Wednesday even- 
 ing ? God help us to be wise and charitable, 
 that we plant not the seeds of ecclesiastical hate ! 
 We will teach the young disciple what we 
 ourselves believe to be " the truth as it is in 
 Jesus"- — yes, what the Scripture plainly asserts, 
 or what the Church has set forth ; that as we 
 understand it, we must teach ; but for the rest, 
 these matters of taste, these adiaphora of 
 which I have been talking, whose discussion is 
 yet so fierce that in its din the Gospel message 
 is sometimes caused to be inaudible, God help 
 us to be charitable and discriminating, and to 
 teach that though Ritual may and often does 
 set forth another Gospel which we must avoid, 
 yet that the believer in Jesus may worship 
 Him, with equal sincerity and equal truth, in 
 many different modes. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 Discrimination as to Recreation and 
 Amusement. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 DISCRIMINATION AS TO RECREATION AND 
 AMUSEMENT. 
 
 " Who gave himself for us that He might redeem us 
 from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people 
 zealous of good works." — Titus ii : 14. 
 
 QT. PAUL writes to the Overseer of the 
 v -' Church in Crete, that the effect of believ- 
 ing with the heart and confessing with the 
 mouth must be the sanctification of the believ- 
 ing confessor. He says that the indwelling 
 Spirit of Jesus Christ will be visibly manifested 
 in a conferred peculiarity, consisting in separa- 
 tion from iniquity and zealous endeavor after 
 good works. Possibly the changed value of 
 the word ' ' peculiar' ' has given occasion for m is- 
 understandihg of his demand, and for an often 
 absurd: effort to meet it. When here written 
 as the full equivalent of the Apostle's expres- 
 sion, the word signified "over and above," 
 
192 Discrimination 
 
 ." occupying position separate and peculiar, like 
 one's peculium or special treasure."* It had 
 not then acquired its new but natural meaning 
 of " singular and unlike anything else," and the 
 English Christian of King James' day was as 
 little liable, as the Cretan to whom the original 
 letter came, to be deceived into supposing that 
 singularity of costume or of speech was neces- 
 sary part of the peculiarity which is made up 
 of separation from sin and zeal for well-doing. 
 
 It seems to me that nowhere has this error 
 been so widely prevalent, and nowhere has the 
 misconception lived so long, as in the sphere 
 of recreation or amusement, and the words of 
 the great Teacher of the Gentiles furnish fullest 
 text of the thoughts about these matters that I 
 would present. 
 
 I said in my first Lecture that my reason for 
 desiring thus to apply the principle of necessary 
 discrimination in this department is that I be- 
 lieve we are, in reference to what are called 
 "popular amusements," standing on ground 
 that is wholly untenable. And I believe that 
 
 * Fairbairn, " Com." in loc. 
 
as to Recreation and Amusement. 193 
 
 therefore naturally we are unable to persuade 
 men to come and stand with us, and so as re- 
 sult, because no refuge is offered to which they j, 
 can consent to repair, they dwell without in 
 unprotected freedom and in dangerous un- 
 restraint. Confessedly the condition of the 
 Christian Church, using the word Church in its 
 largest possible application, is to-day lament- 
 able in this respect. Christian people of every 
 name, whether educated under influences of 
 Puritan severity or of Catholic liberality, the 
 descendants of the adherents of Wesley's 
 method, and I almost dare to say, even in this 
 community, of George Fox's complicated sim- 
 plicity, are alike with one accord the indiscrim- 
 inate patrons of the play-house and the ball- 
 room ; and the exceptions to this rule, to be 
 found in any Denomination of Christians, are 
 greeted with stare of surprise at their pecu- 
 liarity, like that which once opened its wide 
 eyes at the apparition of the long straight coat 
 and the broad-brimmed hat ; and, in the judg- 
 ment of the young beholder, their refusal to 
 conform to the custom of the day, to the hab- 
 
194 Discrimination 
 
 its of his fashionable society, whatever be its 
 grade, is just as unreasonable and its exhibition 
 as absurd as was the refusal of those old-time 
 worthies to be conformed to the world in the 
 garb of their bodies or of their thoughts. Of 
 course I know very well that in every com- 
 munity and in every Denomination of Christian 
 people there are numerous exceptions to -this 
 rule, which is yet increasingly general, but they 
 usually belong to the generation rapidly pass- 
 ing away, and they look with amazed and scorn- 
 ful impotence at the rushing tide which they 
 cannot stop, which is sweeping away all the 
 traditions of the past. If the children of their 
 families be kept during childhood within the 
 straitest bounds of the old-time severity, they 
 can but grieve to recognize that only this com- 
 pulsion is the efficient restraint, and that in the 
 heart of son and daughter there is evidently the 
 complaining sense of wrong, that in their life 
 there is none of the gayety and joy which make 
 glad the life of their companions. And, child- 
 hood passed, the weight of parental authority 
 removed, there is but too often the bound of 
 
as to Recreation and Amusement. 195 
 
 the released spring to the utmost limit of pos- 
 sible departure, and the boyhood of enforced 
 abstinence becomes in a day, the young man- 
 hood of prodigal pleasure. I do not know that 
 in this respect our age is peculiar and without 
 predecessor ; perhaps it has always been so in 
 the history of mankind ; perhaps the swing of 
 the pendulum must ever be the fullest illustra- 
 tion of the development of our race ; perhaps 
 in accordance with that principle we in America 
 are but passing through the period of the Res- 
 toration as following and reacting from that of 
 the Commonwealth, in that the accumulation 
 of wealth, the development of luxury, now 
 make for us a royal leisure which must be filled 
 with the new delights which were unknown in 
 the early days of our country's settlement, and 
 impossible to the uncultivated simplicity of the 
 pioneer period. 
 
 I think that it may be both interesting and 
 profitable to consider for a little while the 
 causes of this our present condition in this 
 regard, for in discovering the causes of the 
 disease we may learn something of the remedy 
 
196 Discrimination 
 
 to be administered with best hope of heal- 
 ing. 
 
 I note first, then, that in the position as- 
 sumed, touching this matter of recreation and 
 amusement, by the phase of Christianity de- 
 scribed as " Puritan," which was as we know 
 the peculiar form of religion first established 
 in that large part of our country which has been 
 perhaps most influential in giving moral and 
 social and religious complexion to the whole 
 land, there was an almost ignoring of the need 
 for amusement innate in human nature. Let 
 us remember that this religion of the Indepen- 
 dents was the stern protest of men of faith in 
 unseen realities, against the degradation of the 
 Church of Christ, into a principality appended 
 to an earthly kingdom, into a mere Department 
 of State. It was their protest against the 
 spiritual worship of God being made an unreal 
 ritual-drill ; their protest against the religion 
 of Jesus being a solace for immoral life, pro- 
 vided in miracles wrought by impure hands ; 
 their protest against the enforced acceptance of 
 a creed, a worship, a ritual, not plainly revealed 
 
as to Recreation and Amusement. 197 
 
 of God ; above all, it was their protest against 
 a tyrant whose shame was upheld by a theory 
 of divine right, which theory was part of the 
 enforced creed. 
 
 Mark you, I would not be considered the 
 defender of the Puritans. I can see, as I 
 think, perhaps as much of carnal-minded craft 
 in the leader who beheaded Charles as of 
 weak-minded sensuality in his royal victim. 
 But now I would note how natural it is that 
 in a phase of Christianity thus developed 
 there should be utter disregard of the neces- 
 sity to provide for this want of human na- 
 ture, in whose satisfaction there is such large 
 opportunity for sin. It was perhaps itself the 
 parent of the Revolution, but in its develop- 
 ment became the child of that it had begotten. 
 The character of Christian is identified with 
 that of patriot ; opposition to the King of 
 England and to the Prince of Evil are one 
 and the same thing, and the badge of the one 
 enmity must be as arbitrary and as manifest as 
 that of the other. Recreation ! What is needed 
 more than the Sermon of some ranting enthu- 
 
198 Discrimination 
 
 siast ? Amusement ? There is nor time nor 
 place for such ; for was it not the very occupa- 
 tion of the enemy of the Lord's people, and 
 does not the Scripture say — that very Scripture 
 whose every word is of divine inspiration, and 
 hence of universal and eternal application — 
 " Is any merry, let him sing psalms" ? And 
 the stern logic which, in its outworking of 
 dogmatic system, does not shrink from the 
 assertion of the eternal damnation of new-born 
 infants, as blindly and mercilessly would ig; 
 nore the nature of the race which Jesus came 
 to redeem, the nature which the Father gave ; 
 would uproot desires and faculties which He 
 did implant, because their gratification and de- 
 velopment, they have determined, cannot be 
 without sin. The result we behold in each de- 
 partment the same : the soul, which is conscious 
 of the Divine Paternity, revolting against the 
 ascription of merciless cruelty to the Father, 
 and the assertion of the consequent necessity 
 for divine sacrifice ; and, longing for a com- 
 plete human manifestation of God's father- 
 hood, will have Jesus to be only Son of man. 
 
as to Recreation and Amusement. 199 
 
 And so as to dogma, Unitarianism is the off- 
 spring of Puritanism. And the nature which 
 believes itself God-given, and therefore that 
 for all its parts there must be possible develop- 
 ment and satisfaction without sin, and agree- 
 ably to the Father's will, it tears in pieces 
 these decrees against amusement which Puritan 
 Apostles have given it to keep, and all distinc- 
 tion between the Church and the World in this 
 respect is taken away ; and Puritanism begets 
 Lawlessness. 
 
 So also in the inception of the great Meth- 
 odist movement in America, there was a per- 
 haps natural unmindfulness of the fact that 
 man is not a purely spiritual being, and that 
 the whole man is to be redeemed, and that by 
 the Spirit of Christ, his whole life is to be 
 purified, and not a part of that life destroyed. 
 Perhaps if we take into consideration the fact 
 that Wesley never designed to build a Church, 
 but only to constitute a Society for the pursuit 
 of holiness within the bounds of the Ancient 
 Church whereof he was Minister, we may feel 
 less surprised that his wisdom made no provision 
 
20O Discrimination 
 
 in this regard. But as the great work went on 
 — the work of preaching the Gospel to men who, 
 though Christians, had never heard it ; the 
 work of quickening by the Word the new' life 
 into holiness — in this great spiritual revolution 
 there was naturally the same peculiar manifes- 
 tation as in that wherein the weapons of a so- 
 called spiritual warfare were carnal. The 
 peculiar dress proclaimed the regenerate, the 
 tone of voice revealed the tone of mind, and 
 distinctions just as arbitrary in the matter of 
 social merry-making and popular amusement 
 were made to separate between the people who 
 would serve God by "method" and those 
 who saw no visions and dreamed no dreams ; 
 those to whom the ecstasy of joyful deliverance 
 in the moment when the crucified Saviour was 
 revealed, was not a tangible experience to be 
 located in time and place and circumstance. 
 Let us remark here that in those days and in 
 those circumstances such distinctions were per- 
 haps natural, and certainly that such peculiarity 
 of life was possible of maintenance. The very 
 idiosyncrasies of their conduct were a pleasing 
 
as to Recreation and Amusement. 201 
 
 excitement in their display ; the Class-meeting 
 and the Love-feast were spiritual merry-makings 
 where tragic depiction of wrestling combat with 
 the Evil One gave satisfaction to the dramatic 
 instinct of speaker and hearer, and where pov- 
 erty and ignorance found their social exchange. 
 To-day, at the great centres of population, in 
 the cities where wealth and consequent culture 
 and refinement are gathered, you shall look in 
 vain for aught more than nominal continuance 
 of these their ancient peculiarities of method : 
 even as they now worship in houses of archi- 
 tectural splendor, even as the wisest of their 
 leaders are grown chary of the employment of 
 the mourner's bench, even as their preaching is 
 no longer the unchanging cry to " flee from 
 the wrath to come," even as the system of 
 itinerancy is so modified that their pastorships 
 are as " settled " as ours, and many are asking 
 for Diocesan Episcopacy. Just so their merely 
 arbitrary distinctions as to popular and social 
 amusements are broken down, and the disciples 
 of Wesley are not now more particular in this 
 regard than other Christians. 
 
202 Discrimination 
 
 I have spoken of these movements, because 
 in them I find the origin in chief of the arbi- 
 trary distinctions largely confined to American 
 Christians ; because we of one school in the 
 old historic Church have been most largely in- 
 fluenced by their traditions, and because with 
 us, as with them, these arbitrary distinctions 
 remain enshrined in the loving memory of men 
 and women of the generation passing away, 
 and yet have no power with those who come 
 after us, and, as 1 believe, are most fruitful 
 source of the lawlessness over which we grieve. 
 
 As I have said, I can understand, it seems 
 to me, that such badges of loyalty were nat- 
 ural, were perhaps wise, in the day, and in the 
 furious struggle of the day, of their devising. 
 But if the danger to the kingdom and cause of 
 Christ be as great or greater to-day, still so has 
 changed the conviction of men as to its charac- 
 ter that they will not wear a mere cockade of 
 loyalty to testify their devotion to the king's 
 throne. They are not willing to be shut up 
 within imaginary lines of demarkation, by the 
 authority of their leaders, when they can them- 
 
as to Recreation and Amusement. 203 
 
 selves see that other territory, around which no 
 line of prohibition is drawn, is to the full as 
 dangerous as that from which they are forbid- 
 den. More than this, and most important of all, 
 the very unreality of the distinction made serves 
 but to destroy the value of their teacher's wis- 
 dom, and to justify disregard of all that he 
 ordains, even in cases where a doubtful con- 
 science adds its timid suggestion to the 
 Church's expressed warning, or rather to the 
 traditional opinion of the Christian world. 
 
 I say, "rather to the traditional opinion of 
 the Christian world" ; for speaking as I am 
 especially with reference to the dangers and 
 duties of our own Church, I must here again 
 express my satisfaction that on the statute- 
 book of the Church are found no enactments 
 against particular transgressions, other than 
 those plainly laid down in Holy Scripture. I 
 believe that her wisdom is shown here in fol- 
 lowing the example of that Holy Scripture, in 
 the inculcation of principles rather than of pre- 
 cepts, in the effort to develop self-determin- 
 ing manhood rather than to essay the continu- 
 
204 Discrimination 
 
 ance of a childhood to be directed and guided 
 at its every step. But more of this by and 
 by. Now I would emphasize the arbitrariness 
 of these moral differences made by Christian 
 people, and the absurdity — yes, absurdity — of 
 some of them. In retreating from the position 
 on this subject once held, the march has been 
 unequal at different points of the line, so that 
 now the front presented is zigzag and defence- 
 less. At one point we are come back to an 
 eminence unassailable, plainly pointed out upon 
 the chart of battle given us so long ago ; but 
 far in front of it, on the right hand or the left, 
 are still huddled a handful of fearful men, who 
 in honest loyalty to that they believe, cannot 
 surrender the place, though low and marshy 
 and easy of assault ; who cannot see that the 
 true line of defence is behind them, even that 
 natural boundary whereof the rocky height is 
 part. Alas ! the danger is that by and by, 
 driven thence by a force they cannot resist, 
 they shall in utter demoralization throw away 
 their arms and give up the contest. If they 
 cannot maintain the point where their fathers 
 
as to Recreation and Amusement. 205 
 
 stood, then is there nothing worthy of defence 
 or of struggle : let it all go. 
 
 To drop all figure and speak with perfect 
 plainness, I believe that the indiscriminate con- 
 demnation of one whole class of amusements 
 and the indiscriminate approval of another has 
 produced the effect, upon the mass of Christian 
 people, to destroy the value of all such judg- 
 ment. Of the class condemned they can find 
 particular specimens that are good and helpful, 
 as of the class approved they can find speci- 
 mens that are bad and hurtful, and the distinc- 
 tion is proven vain, and equally vain all of like 
 character. 
 
 For example, we no longer hear outcry made 
 against the reading of fictitious literature, and 
 on the Library-table of almost every Christian 
 home in this city will be found the latest prod- 
 ucts of our teeming press, any one of which 
 had been perhaps an " unclean thing" in the 
 judgment of the earnest Christian an hundred 
 years ago, which he must " touch not" lest he 
 be defiled. To-day a wise Christian father or 
 mother will be careful that the purity of son or 
 
2o6 Discrimination 
 
 daughter be not sullied by the perusal of pages 
 which can bring only defilement with guilty 
 knowledge ; but recognizing fully that much, 
 perhaps even the larger part, of contemporary 
 fictitious literature is an unclean thing, not to 
 be touched or tasted or handled save with cer- 
 tain damage, yet to secure immunity from 
 this hurt we do not in puritanic wrath burn all 
 such writings in our social market-place. On 
 the contrary, the young man and maiden are 
 bidden and urged to study the masterpieces of 
 the literary artists of the old time, and to find 
 recreation and delight in the poem, the novel, 
 the drama of to-day ; for not only are they es- 
 teemed to be legitimate sources of purest men- 
 tal recreation, but as works of art they stimulate 
 and cultivate in us the God-given appreciation 
 of the beautiful. 
 
 More than this ; because we have learned 
 that in the mirror held up to nature, igno- 
 rance and immaturity can best learn the lessons 
 that life in its multiform variety is fitted to 
 impart ; because we have learned also that the 
 art of fictitious portraiture is a blessing to 
 
as to Recreation and Amusement. 207 
 
 men ; and because in its faithful rendering of 
 the good and the evil, in their natural com- 
 mingling, is its power to give help and to give 
 pleasure, we consent that vice must be pic- 
 tured in the story — vice even sometimes trium- 
 phant — and that the danger of defilement be'- 
 gins only with the false representation, when 
 the results of vicious living are concealed, and 
 its joys exaggerated. Discrimination must 
 select the true from the false, the impure from 
 the clean. Alas ! though we have learned its 
 necessary use in this particular department, we 
 are sadly derelict in the performance of our 
 duty, and perhaps to-day there is no more 
 fruitful cause of moral degeneracy than the 
 fictitious literature which feeds the minds of 
 our boys and girls. 
 
 But, mark, I pray you, that now all Chris- 
 tians acknowledge that there is pure and health- 
 ful fictitious literature, both in prose and 
 verse ; all acknowledge that there is a proper 
 place for it in our Christian society, even ac- 
 knowledge that it is a mighty power for bless- 
 ing and for cursing, so that we seek to employ 
 
208 Discrimination 
 
 it for purpose of propagating the truth, re- 
 ligious, ecclesiastical, or even political, which 
 we value most. 
 
 Further, we cheerfully admit that the hear- 
 ing one Artist interpret what another Artist has 
 created is added delight which cannot be for- 
 bidden on any true Christian ground ; and so 
 Clergy and Laity may go hand in hand to the 
 Concert hall, where, without the assistance of 
 costume and scenery, the Prima Donna shall 
 sing for us the strains which have floated in 
 upon the rapt soul of the musician, or the Tra- 
 gedian without his buskin shall make us un- 
 derstand what the seer has beheld of the intri- 
 cate workings of that mysterious thing, a 
 human heart. 
 
 I remember that a great Tragedian, once 
 visiting a neighboring city, received request 
 from the members of the Young Men's Chris- 
 tian Association, that for their benefit and en- 
 tertainment he would come to their hall and 
 give them a Shakespearian reading. I remem- 
 ber that his answer came back, that it could 
 not be proper for them to hear him read, while 
 
as to Recreation and Amusement. 209 
 
 sitting in a chair, the words which they deemed 
 it all unlawful to listen to, if he should speak 
 them while dressed to represent the character, 
 and standing amid the mimic scene designed to 
 heighten the effect, by rendering the illusion 
 more complete. I could not help admiring the 
 man for his rebuke to the Christian inconsist- 
 ency which would thus emphasize a distinction 
 without a difference. 
 
 Are you wondering, my Christian friends, 
 that I can speak such words ? And are you writ- 
 ing me down in your judgment as the advocate 
 of the Theatre ? I know the risk I am running 
 of being misunderstood ; I know full well the 
 danger to which I am exposing my Christian 
 reputation ; but I must speak, for I believe 
 that by nothing more than by these unreal, 
 arbitrary, often absurd distinctions, is the 
 cause of Christ being hindered in our country. 
 
 The Theatre is to-day, I believe, degraded 
 into a very high school of vice ; the dramas 
 which are put upon the boards are in general, 
 I believe, suggestive pictures of licentious life ; 
 the wit is pointed only by its coarseness, the 
 
210 Discrimination 
 
 plot is an intrigue, and its incidents selected 
 for the sake of their lewd piquancy ; while 
 but too often wit and plot and incident are 
 altogether nothing but an opportunity for the 
 exhibition of shameless nakedness ; and Chris- 
 tian people of every name, young and old, rich 
 and poor, all alike are its patrons. 
 
 This the fact, the melancholy fact, which 
 compels the Christian teacher to seek its ex- 
 planation, to break down if he may the 
 scaffolding of unreal distinctions, builded by 
 Christian sentiment, which protects the indis- 
 criminate patronage, and to seek a remedy in 
 urging that we more fully recognize that the 
 peculiarity of the disciples of Christ is redemp- 
 tion from all iniquity, and purification unto 
 zeal for good works. 
 
 I say that there is a faculty implanted in our 
 nature which demands exercise in the recrea- 
 tion of its jaded companions ; that amusement 
 is as necessary as labor, to the well-being and 
 health of body, mind, and spirit ; and I say 
 that because this is true, therefore the exercise 
 of this faculty, the satisfying of this hunger, 
 
as to Recreation and A musement. 2 1 1 
 
 must be possible without sin. Further, I find 
 that the representation of nature by art, be 
 that art musical, pictorial, literary, or dra- 
 matic, does offer fullest opportunity for this 
 faculty to be developed into healthy activity, 
 does offer most satisfying food to this hunger. 
 The doll in the nurseey, the snow-man on the 
 playground, the merry singing of a group of 
 boys and girls, the masqueradings and the 
 dramas of childhood, equally with the juvenile 
 books which are such entrancing joy, — all tes- 
 tify to the reality of the need I find in men, 
 and of the natural satisfaction it seeks. 
 
 The writer's ready pen is no longer forbid- 
 den to bring to. my child happy companions 
 and gleeful sports from an unseen child-world ; 
 the Christian is no longer forbidden to laugh 
 and weep with the joys and sorrows of the 
 creatures born of the genius whose dead body 
 the great Abbey enshrines ; nay, I may even 
 go, as I have said, to see the Artist tear the 
 wrappings off, that I may behold the hidden 
 wonders of Art, whereof before I had no con- 
 ception, if only the helpful accompaniment 
 
212 Discrimination 
 
 that Artist would fain employ, and does employ 
 on other occasion, be absent. Is this natural ? 
 Grant that vice reigns supreme in the Play- 
 house ; does it not as really control the Press 
 whence issue the works of fiction ? Are actors 
 and actresses, in drama and opera, men and 
 women of evil life, who should not be counte- 
 nanced or encouraged ? Is it less encouragement 
 to give them our countenance at the Concert or 
 the Reading ? Above all, ought we to surren- 
 der this mighty engine for instruction and de- 
 light into hands that will use it only to de- 
 grade ? May there not be, should there not 
 be, a discrimination possible, which by its very 
 wisdom and reason will commend itself to the 
 mind and heart of the great multitude of Chris- 
 tians who are now utterly unmindful of any 
 such obligation, and who go to laugh at the 
 coarse obscenities of the comic opera, as they 
 go to behold the most splendid realization of 
 most splendid poetic conception ? 
 
 One other example I will give of like un- 
 meaning distinction productive of like abandon- 
 ment of all distinctions by the people. The 
 
as to Recreation and Amusement. 213 
 
 rattling dice are heard in many a Christian 
 parlor, and the dull routine of backgammon 
 whiles away many an evening in homes where 
 a card would be looked upon as the very ban- 
 ner of the Prince of all evil, from which chil- 
 dren should be bidden to flee, and which the 
 fire on the hearth should quickly consume. 
 The dominoes afford amusement to the gath- 
 ered company, with perfect Christian propriety, 
 but if the same numbers be printed on card- 
 board instead of ivory, then the same combi- 
 nations, which were just now harmless, become 
 most dangerous. Substitute letters of the 
 alphabet for the traditional characters on the 
 cards, and the game becomes innocent which 
 before was evil, though the principles of the 
 two are identical. And yet a moment's reflec- 
 tion would serve to convince us that, as the 
 implement of the gambler, the dice-box is as 
 frequent and as enticing as the card-table, and 
 that in some grades of society, even in America, 
 the game of dominoes is the most usual occa- 
 sion of the hopes and fears of the gambler ; and 
 that dice and dominoes may be and are as real 
 
214 Discrimination 
 
 provocation as cards, of the covetous lust for 
 gain, and of the angry despair of loss, which 
 blacken and foul the divine image in which he 
 was created. So that in this particular in- 
 stance, not even the argument from natural or 
 necessary tendency may be adduced as justifi- 
 cation of the arbitrary selection ; whereas the 
 stigma placed upon the one pastime, while the 
 other and the similar escapes our ban, does but 
 serve, and serve inevitably, to vacate the power 
 of our judgment in all such matters, and to sug- 
 gest that it is but an unreasoning traditional ob- 
 jection which forbids the wager upon the result 
 of any game, though that finds certain warrant 
 in the prohibition of the Master Himself of 
 the " covetousness which is idolatry." 
 
 These examples may suffice to illustrate the 
 position I would maintain, that unreal moral 
 distinctions are fruitful cause of the disregard 
 of all, even those most real. But I cannot fail 
 to mention one other, belonging to wholly 
 different category, itself perhaps a result, and 
 not a cause, of the indiscriminate conformity 
 of Christians to the world's customs, but just 
 
as to Recreation and Amusement. 215 
 
 as utterly without foundation as the others, and 
 effectual, like them, to continue this moral 
 chaos from which it oame. I mean the distinc- 
 tion, which is everywhere recognized, as to the 
 different moral duty of Clergy and Laity in this 
 respect. I feel confident that a large proportion 
 of the Christian men and women to whom I am 
 speaking to-night would consider it quite with- 
 in the limits of their Christian liberty to attend 
 the representation of some world-renowned 
 drama by an artist of fame as wide. I will take 
 for granted, as I can but hope I am justified in 
 doing, that but few of my auditors would not 
 be careful as to the character of the perform- 
 ance to which they would lend their presence ; 
 yet how amazed and sorrowful would they be 
 to see their Clergyman enter to enjoy that 
 which they consider perfectly allowed to them- 
 selves without self-condemnation ! And is not 
 their feeling of surprise and of sorrow wholly 
 without excuse, if indeed their own presence 
 may not be questioned ? Is there different 
 moral rule laid down in Holy Scripture for 
 Clergy and Laity ? Are the Ministers of Christ 
 
216 Discrimination 
 
 aught more than a part of that "peculiar 
 people," though they be their leaders and 
 guides, all of whom equally, St. Paul writes to 
 Titus, Christ would redeem from all iniquity 
 and purify unto Himself? 
 
 Now be it understood that I, as a public 
 religious teacher, may abstain from this or that 
 of self-indulgence for manifold reasons of expe- 
 diency, and with greatest propriety. Indeed I 
 think the Minister of Christ worthy of only 
 contempt who, whatever he may think of the 
 moral tendency of any offered entertainment, 
 shall selfishly refuse to abstain from it, if there 
 be reasonable probability that by his refusal he 
 shall place in the Christian pathway a stone of 
 stumbling against whose sharp sides ignorance 
 or recklessness may be wounded to death or to 
 desertion of the race. But, on the other hand, 
 this principle must have its limitations in its 
 application to each particular case, lest our 
 Christian liberty be placed in the power of 
 every moibid conscience in the community ; 
 and still more, for me to abstain from that 
 which is in my judgment sinless, on the allowed 
 
as to Recreation and Amusement. 217 
 
 ground that it is sinful, is falsehood as real as 
 were my assertion by my action, of my belief 
 in the sinlessness of what in reality I believe to 
 be sinful. 
 
 But more than this, and most important of 
 all in the discussion with which we are now en- 
 gaged, such arbitrary division of the teacher 
 from the taught tends surely to lower the stand- 
 ard of excellence for the disciples' endeavor, 
 and to make him content with lower attain- 
 ment ; and it tends as well to inculcate the 
 falsehood of a vicarious performance of per- 
 sonal duty, which is so full of danger because 
 it is so full of pleasing satisfaction to the human 
 heart. 
 
 The Clergy, we all say, must set an example 
 to the People. Yes, but example for what — to 
 be admired or to be imitated ? Manifestly, 
 only the latter, if what is sinful — mark you, 
 not merely-inexpedient, but sinful — in the Min- 
 ister is sinless in those to whom he ministers. 
 And yet, just as manifestly, such is the theory 
 prevalent to-day. The dance may go on, the 
 joy be unconfined, now that the Minister is 
 
218 Discrimination 
 
 gone from the wedding-feast ; but the conver- 
 sation grows more restrained at his approach, 
 and youth is silent and reserved, as though in 
 the unwelcome presence of a policeman come 
 to search for offenders against the law, and to 
 secure their punishment, rather than of the 
 elder brother come to share their joy, as he 
 will come to share their sorrow when the feast- 
 ing has been changed to mourning. 
 
 I believe that this enforced separation of the 
 Clergy from their People in the hours of recre- 
 ation is a mighty evil ; I believe that it tends 
 to prevent that fullest confidence and sympa- 
 thy which alone can enable them to be fullest 
 help to those who need help ; and, more than 
 all, that it tends directly to lower the tone of 
 social merry-making and public entertainment, 
 both in removing the restraint which age and 
 wisdom and feeling of responsibility would im- 
 pose, and in searing the conscience of Christian 
 disciple with hot burning recollection that he 
 is taking part in that which he himself would 
 be ashamed to see his Minister enjoy. 
 
 Certainly, the pastor must go before his 
 
as to Recreation and Amusement. 219 
 
 flock ; certainly, the teacher must have made 
 greater attainment than his pupils ; certainly, 
 he who would point the wayfarer to heaven 
 must lead the way. More than this : let us be 
 sorry for the man who, busy day after day in 
 ministering Christ's pardon to the penitent 
 and Christ's consolation to the sorrowing ; who, 
 kneeling often by the bedside of pain, and 
 breaking the bread of hope in the chamber of 
 despairing fear, is yet ever longing for the glare 
 of the^ball-room and the play-house — for the 
 follies of the society of which he must be a 
 part. He has a great work to do, and cannot 
 come down ; and yet he must come down as a 
 man among men, to be partner in all their life 
 in its every manifestation, if he shall do that 
 great work. 
 
 " The way to make indifferent things 
 wrong," says George Macdonald, " is for good 
 people to stop doing them" ; and well will it 
 be for the Church when it shall be fully recog- 
 nized that what is lawful for People is lawful 
 for Priest, and that what the Priest may not do 
 because it is sinful, his People too must forego. 
 
2 20 Discrim ination 
 
 But I can hear already the reproachful ques- 
 tion, in answer to all that I have been saying, 
 " Shall there not be a line of separation be- 
 tween the Church and the World ? Shall there 
 not be badges of abstinence and of perform- 
 ance, whereby they may be recognized who 
 have named the precious name, and have 
 sworn the sacrament of allegiance ?' ' And I 
 answer, Yes, a line, but not an imaginary one, 
 to be determined only by measured reference 
 to fixed points iar distant, but aline of division 
 deep and wide as between life and death, nat- 
 ural and necessary, the outworking, individ- 
 ual and peculiar, of the indwelling Spirit of 
 Jesus, to Whom has been surrendered the will. 
 No such real difference can distinguish the 
 officers from the host, for both classes are alike 
 saved, and alike bound, by the same act of 
 surrender and confession ; they are distin- 
 guished but in relative position, and their con- 
 duct to be differentiated by considerations only 
 of expediency and not of absolute morality. 
 
 But shall these matters of Christian conduct 
 be left to the determination of the individual 
 
as to Recreation and Amusement. 221 
 
 Christian disciple, and shall not rather the 
 Church, in discharge of her bounden duty " to 
 edify the saints," lay down rules of conduct 
 for men's guidance ? Shall she not station the 
 sentinels of anathema and excommunication 
 over against the enticing resorts of pleasure, to 
 warn away the infatuated, and to arrest and 
 discipline the offender ? 
 
 I answer, search the Holy Book, and see 
 that. in it there are no rales containing specific 
 injunction or prohibition, but that, on the 
 contrary, everywhere we read the enunciation 
 of great broad principles of conduct and of 
 duty, which all rest upon the one supreme mo- 
 tive of loyalty to the personal Christ, and are 
 all made applicable by the promised assistance 
 of His Spirit. The delectable mountains of 
 holiness are shown to the pilgrim, and toward 
 their heights he is bidden to turn his eager 
 feet ; but these heights stand forth in vague 
 and undefined magnificence, and the encircling 
 hills of little duties and little denials are not 
 described ; the aspiration for the summit must 
 be guide sufficient for their surmounting. See 
 
222 Discrimination 
 
 the great Apostle says : ' ' Whatsoever things 
 are true, whatsoever things are honest, what- 
 soever things are just, whatsoever things are 
 pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever 
 things are of good report, . . . think on 
 these things. ' ' These stand out boldly as goals 
 of our endeavor ; yet behind them we can see 
 still loftier elevation : ' ' Charity [which] beareth 
 all things, believeth all things, hopeth all 
 things, endureth all things." Still farther dis- 
 tant, still higher summit, we behold : " Thou 
 shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
 and all thy soul, and all thy mind ; and thy 
 neighbor as thyself. " And, lifted above all, 
 amid the clouds and darkness which are round 
 about Him, we are shown the glowing perfec- 
 tion to which we must come : " Be ye therefore 
 perfect, as your Father which is in heaven is 
 perfect." 
 
 And so, on the other hand, we hear of the 
 works of the flesh which are the denial of the 
 presence of the Spirit, and so the proof that 
 though there has been confession of the mouth, 
 there has been no belief with the heart in Him 
 
as to Recreation and Amusement. 223 
 
 Who was raised from the dead. Impurity and 
 falsehood, injustice and hate : these are evi- 
 dence of subjection to the Evil One, whom 
 the Christ would destroy. Therefore, against 
 them, all of them, in their every possible phase,- 
 the believer in Jesus will struggle, must 
 struggle, because the Spirit who dwelleth in 
 him lusteth against the flesh. 
 
 But have you not observed that the Apostles 
 and the Lord never specify particular provoca- 
 tions to sin to be avoided, never lay their 
 hands on any particular temptations to trans- 
 gression, and cry aloud against them ? And 
 yet we know that the world of their day offered 
 just as enticing invitation to the Christian as 
 the world of our own time, and that society — 
 best society as we might call it— was .more cor- 
 rupt, perhaps, than ever before or since. 
 
 At the games in whose wrestling and running 
 contests St. Paul finds the illustration of the 
 Christian life, which he employs in his letter to 
 the Corinthians, he seems to take for granted 
 their frequent attendance and participation ; 
 and yet, notoriously, every incitement to 
 
224 Discrimination 
 
 vicious indulgence was there offered. It seems 
 to me, then, that the wisdom of the Church of 
 to-day is to follow this example of refusal to 
 stigmatize as forbidden, anything other than 
 that which is in itself plain violation of the 
 moral law to which God bears witness in con- 
 science and in Scripture. I do not believe that 
 St. Paul designed to give complete catalogue 
 of all possible works of the flesh when he wrote 
 the list for the Galatians ; on the contrary, I 
 believe that the enemy will change his bait to 
 suit the changed habit and appetite of the prize 
 he would secure. I believe that, of necessity, 
 the dangers of our age of luxury and refine- 
 ment must be wholly different from those which 
 environed our forefathers, and hence that there 
 will be ever new occasion again and again, as 
 the years pass by, that the Church, the ever- 
 living Apostle and Guide, shall by her Ministers 
 cry aloud to tell of the new dangers to which 
 her children are exposed, and to warn that they 
 be avoided. But this very duty involves that 
 she see and admit that the old-time dangers 
 may be no longer so full of peril ; that because 
 
as to Recreation and Amusement. 225 
 
 of the changed condition in thought and habit 
 of life the old-time distinctions may be no 
 longer insisted upon ; and I repeat again, 
 that the failure to make this admission must 
 weaken if it does not destroy the value of the 
 teacher's judgment with his pupil. 
 
 More than this : I urge that in the performance 
 of this duty the modern Church shall imitate the 
 Apostolic wisdom and refrain from all legislation 
 as to particulars, and that the representatives 
 of the Church in their application of principles 
 to individual cases shall refrain from indiscrim- 
 inate condemnation and indiscriminate ap- 
 proval ; but in ministering "ghostly counsel 
 and advice" shall have fullest regard to differ- 
 ences of temperament and of development, to 
 habits of mind and of body, and that in all 
 such ministrations the aim be kept steadily in 
 view to develop a self-determining Christian 
 manhood, and not to be the director of a child- 
 hood which shall never end ; and, above all, 
 that we fail not to constantly set forth that the 
 indwelling of Christ is salvation, and that if 
 Christ be in us " the hope of glory," He must 
 
226 Discrimination 
 
 bring every thought and desire into subjection, 
 and that such increasing subjection is the alone 
 assurance of the salvation we seek. 
 
 Has not the disposition of Christian people 
 and Christian teachers been rather in this par- 
 ticular to set up a Procrustean bed of iron 
 conformity, on which every temperament and 
 disposition must be stretched, no matter for 
 radical differences of stature ? Have we not 
 rather sought to furnish Christian people, in re- 
 spect to the matter of which I speak, a patent 
 medicine equally curative of all disorders, 
 equally indicated as remedy by every symp- 
 tom of disease, and to make the one prescrip- 
 tion an universal pharmacopeia ? Have we not 
 failed to remember that, in the spiritual nature 
 as the physical, there are for different individuals 
 varying needs and varying dangers, demanding 
 varying food and varying medicine ? I can 
 take as food, with pleasure and with safety, 
 many things which to my friend and compan- 
 ion, even my closest of kin, may be deadly : 
 shall it be otherwise with the spiritual nature ? 
 And shall it not be probably true that a pursuit, 
 
as to Recreation and Amusement. 227 
 
 be it of business or of pleasure, which is harm- 
 less, or even helpful to me, shall cause lethargy 
 and death if persisted in by him ? And then, 
 too, may we not expect to meet spiritual dys- 
 peptics, who are by their very condition made 
 to be dietary propagandists, who will insist that 
 only that is safe for anybody which they have 
 found their morbid powers can comfortably 
 manage ? 
 
 But just as certainly, to carry out our 
 analogy, there are spiritual poisons, which 
 bring death to the new life from Jesus, where- 
 soever it has been quickened. Let the nature, 
 material and visible, be our guide in dealing 
 with that which is spiritual and invisible : it is 
 the work of the same Creator, and teaches us 
 that wise discrimination must decide what is 
 healthful for the individual soul ; that the 
 Father and Brethren must write " Poison" in 
 large letters upon that which the universal ex- 
 perience has proven to be hurtful to all ; but 
 with reference to all else, that advice shall invite 
 the adult to the practice of approved regimen, 
 and authority compel its adoption by the child. 
 
228 Discrimination 
 
 Further, let us remember that only advice is 
 possible for the full-grown man, and that there 
 be no failure to recognize maturity and its per- 
 sonal responsibility when they are come ; and 
 further still, that our advice be not made nuga- 
 tory by being so indiscriminate that he who 
 asks it can discover flaw by his own experi- 
 mental investigation. 
 
 The question then presents itself to the in- 
 telligent Christian faith of to-day, What shall 
 be done to protect the disciples of Jesus from 
 the influences on every hand which are oppos- 
 ing the accomplishment of His desire and pur- 
 pose, to purify them into a peculiar people, re- 
 deemed from all iniquity, and zealous for good 
 works ? These influences are so manifold, and 
 confessedly, by them, so large a proportion of 
 our young men and women are being dwarfed 
 in their spiritual stature ; for the bonds of 
 iniquity are by their means enabled still to re- 
 strain the growing limbs, and the exercise of 
 doing good works is made impossible by the 
 very preoccupation of the mind and heart with 
 these welcomed visitors. Shall we seek' to 
 
as to Recreation and Amusement. 229 
 
 close the doors against all visitors who are not 
 come expressly to help the deliverance from 
 sin, the new creation unto holiness ? Shall we 
 seek to continue the old plan of denying the 
 lawfulness of the natural desires, and of refus- 
 ing to suffer any answer to be made to their 
 calling, because we have decided that calling 
 to be only the disobedient outcry of a child 
 commanded to be silent ? Shall we seek to 
 resurrect a dead Puritanism, or to breathe a 
 new life into the Methodist asceticism, which 
 is confessedly old and dying, if not dead ? As 
 easy it were to compel that all Christians shall 
 dwell to-day in the log-hut of the frontiersman, 
 in the carpetless cold and comfortless simplicity 
 of the early days in America, as to refuse to 
 wealthy leisure its dilettante occupation in the 
 study of the works of art which its riches can 
 buy and its culture enjoy ; or to make men and 
 women believe evil the excitement of the social 
 assembly where youth and beauty " chase the 
 hours with flying feet. ' ' These things were ex- 
 hibitions of worldliness, essential worldliness, 
 to the mind and heart of our ancestors, and are 
 
230 Discrimination 
 
 still, in the judgment of many who hold on to 
 the ideas of their grandfathers, whereas they 
 are but the gratification of the natural tastes of 
 human nature, that human nature everywhere 
 and always the same, which found expression 
 then in other forms, perhaps just as liable to 
 be perverted to sin. 
 
 Nay, Christianity would not, cannot destroy 
 human nature, and it were an evil thing to do 
 if it could ; but it can and must control it, if 
 it be of any value — control it in redeeming it 
 from all iniquity, and in purifying it into zeal 
 for good works. How, then, may we assist its 
 attainment of this control ? I answer, first and 
 chief, not by lopping off the outer branches of 
 mere doubtful morality, but by cutting down 
 the tree whereon they grow, even the merely 
 external acceptance of Christ's religion, the un- 
 real union with Him. How shall we remedy 
 this diseased condition of the Church of to- 
 day ? I answer, By the intensification of the 
 conception of the living Christ, and of union 
 with Him in honest self-surrender ; for this and 
 this only can effect the separation from all in- 
 
as to Recreation and Amusement. 231 
 
 iquity, and the zealous endeavor after all good 
 works. I answer, that it must be done not by 
 legislative enactment against particular self- 
 indulgence, not by the anathema of repulsion 
 hurled by Priestly hands against joyous, light- 
 hearted youth because it has joined in this 
 or that gayety ; surely not by indiscriminate 
 condemnation of the traditionally accepted 
 " worldliness," but by the making more real to 
 those over whose departure we are grieving, 
 that to be a Christian is to have Jesus Christ 
 as the very centre and source of our life. 
 
 Let us seek to teach them, ever more and 
 more plainly, that not orthodoxy, but loyal love, 
 is salvation ; that the expression of that loyal 
 love may have very varying shape, and that no 
 routine of ritual can give assured help to our 
 weakness or be guarantee of salvation ; and 
 that if the Christ be ours, and we be His, that 
 He will teach each one of us what we must do 
 and what we must avoid, and that on our loyal 
 and willing effort to do His will depends all our 
 hope. Yes, that our redemption from all in- 
 iquity is His will, and that we are false to Him, 
 
232 Discrimination 
 
 and separate ourselves from Him, whensoever 
 we allow ourselves in the omission of what He 
 commands us, or the commission of that which 
 He by His Spirit, by His Church, by His 
 Word, teaches us to be fraught with evil. 
 
 I say further, let us strive to make men re- 
 alize more and more the dealing, the promised 
 dealing of Jesus Christ with the individual be- 
 liever, that by our murmuring complaint of a 
 brother's behavior he may not be provoked to 
 more reckless assertion of his freedom, and ex- 
 cited to angry dissatisfaction with our self- 
 appointed censorship. Let us seek to recog- 
 nize that possibly our brethren are walking with 
 unsoiled robes through places where ours would 
 most surely be all bedraggled and made unfit 
 for the King's house. And let us recognize 
 that the distinctions we have inherited from 
 those who went before us may be, many of 
 them, now without value, and cannot be main- 
 tained, and that the effort to maintain them is 
 to drive men away from us as guides whose 
 counsel they will not accept. 
 
 We will insist that separation from all sin, 
 
as to Recreation and Amusement. 233 
 
 from all that tends directly and inevitably to 
 sinful desire arid sinful habit, must be the rule 
 for all, Clergy and Laity, young and old, rich and 
 poor. But we will admit that for different na- 
 tures there may be unequal danger in the same 
 thing, and we will admit that for all there may 
 be safety in some instances of a class generally 
 dangerous, even as there is defilement in the 
 use of many particular specimens of a class in 
 general considered safe. 
 
 We will make distinctions, honest and real, 
 and not fanciful, arbitrary, and often absurd. 
 So we will seek to gain the confidence of the 
 men of to-day, that by our counsel they may 
 learn the obligation, the necessity to make such 
 distinctions for themselves, and in the matter 
 of amusement, as of all else in their life, to 
 seek the honor of Christ. 
 
 Finally, let me say that leading men thus 
 slowly and gradually, by steps which they can 
 understand, and whose need they can appre- 
 ciate, we may hope to bring them in the devel- 
 opment of their highest nature to find their 
 recreation in spiritual exercise, and to be 
 
2'34 Recreation and Amusement. 
 
 more and more free from the longing for mere 
 amusement, even though it be sinless. Yes, 
 " earthly pleasures fade away when Jesus is re- 
 vealed" ; but the full revelation of the " open- 
 ing day," which alone can conceal the stars, 
 cannot be accomplished or be hastened by the 
 denial of the reality of the starlight ; and cer- 
 tainly it cannot be effected by the foolish fail- 
 ure to distinguish between the glorious sheen 
 of those splendid fires and the feeble glimmer- 
 ing of a sputtering candle, though it be true 
 that both alike are extinguished by the sun- 
 shine. 
 
OLD PATHS. 
 
 A Course of Sermons for the Christian Year. By John N. Norton, D.D. 
 531 pp. Svo. Cloth. $2.00. 
 
 " They are characterized by great simplicity of style, beauty of treatment, copiousness 
 of illustration and earnestness of spirit, and these are the characteristics which entitle 
 them to the popularity to which they have attained." — The Southern Pulpit. 
 
 "They are plain, direct, and brief. They stimulate attention, and are sufficiently 
 unlike the dry and formal style of ancient discourses to make them seem fresh."— The 
 Churchman. 
 
 Opinions of Bishops of Dr. Norton's other volumes. — The Bishop of New Jersey ■ 
 says: '' I always recommend them." The Bishop of Missouri says: ** I have frequently, 
 in public nnd private, recommended Dr. Norton's books" The Bishop cf Kentucky 
 write* : "They are admirably adapted for the use of lay-reader-." The Bishop of Iowa 
 testifies that these sermons " have been extensively used in almost every section of my 
 diocese. ' 
 
 STUDIES OF JESUS. 
 
 By R. Heber Newton. i2mo. Cloth, red edge. $r 00. 
 " This ingenious and artistic little work is in substance a comparison of Jesus with 
 Buddha and Socrates. Although the writer devoutly adores the first and accords to Him a 
 divine pre-eminence, yet he is very far from disparaging the others.' * * * We com- 
 mend it to the consideration of those who desire to view the subject in its limitless breadth 
 and seek guidance for a more extended investigation, as well &s of those who would have 
 their faith strengthened in the old Bible, and their hearts inflamed with devotion to the 
 peerless prophet of Nazareth." — The Times^ New York. 
 
 AFTER DEATH. 
 
 An Examination of the Testimony of the Primitive Times respecting the 
 State of the Faithful Departed, and their Relationship to the Living. 
 By Herbert Mortimer Luckock, D.D., Canon of Ely. i2mo. 
 Cloth, uncut. $1.50. 
 " It is a valuable addition to any clergyman's library." — Pacific Churchman. 
 " The book is very clearly written and'in an excellent spirit, and is valuable as a com- 
 pendium of ancient opinions and practices on this subject." — 'J he Christian Union. 
 
 *' For the author's reverent desire to learn the truth and to state it for the instruction and 
 spiritual benefit of his fellow men, we have only hearty praise, but we cannot commend his 
 reasoning or his conclusions unreservedly."— The Congregationalist. 
 
 '* We have never met with a more satisfactory presentation of the subject. It is a wise, 
 temperate, thoughtful, and honest book." — The Churchman. 
 
 MORE THAN A PROPHET. 
 
 By Charles Clifton Penick, D.D., Bishop of Cape Palmas, Africa. 
 i2mo Cloth $1.00. Just Out. 
 A series of expository chapters on the life of St. John Baptist. 
 
 INDIVIDUALISM: 
 
 Its Growth and Tendencies; with some suggestions as to the remedy for its 
 evils. Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge, in No- 
 v-mb.r, 1880. By A. N. Littlfjohn, D.D., I.L.D., Bishop of 
 Long Island. 2IO pp. I2mo. Cloth. $1.00. Just Out. 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 By Alexander Marks, Rector of Trinity Church, Natchez, Miss. i2mo. 
 Cloth. $1.00. Just out. 
 
 Copies will be mailed, pos'age prepa'd, upon receipt of price. 
 
 THOMAS WH1TTAKEB, Publisher, 2 k 3 Bible House, New York. 
 
"It is one of those volumes which are produced perhaps once in a 
 century. " — The Church Monthly Magazine. 
 
 §mu}imt^$ nh Sfynrat, 1870-1880* 
 
 By A. N. Littlejohn, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of Long Island. 339 pp. 
 i2mo. Cloth. $1.50. 
 
 The Churchman^ New York. 
 
 "It is a book which every clergyman will find exceedingly helpful. It deals with 
 subjects concerning which all ministers need counsel and exhortation. It treats of the 
 nature of the pastoral office and of its relation to individual souls. It defines the grace of 
 ordination and explains how that grace may be quickened and developed." 
 
 The Herald, New York. 
 
 " They are tasteful, eloquent addresses, which must have had their proper effect when 
 being delivered, and which now cannot be read but with pleasure and profit." 
 
 The Guardian, New York. 
 
 " We commend this volume to all the clergy ; and especially to the younger, and to 
 theological students. In its reverent though tfulness, its intellectual grasp, its incisive 
 statements, its full sympathy with the spirit and teaching of the true Catholic Church, 
 its conscious strength — in all these respects it is worthy of the Bishop, and especially in 
 an age and times like these." 
 
 The Independent, New York. 
 
 <l As t 1 - e title implies, these addresses are, imprimis, made to the clergy, who in the 
 course of them are treated to a large amount of illuminating and strengthening talk and to 
 no small measure of bold truthfulness on many topics of special importance to them. * * 
 But it would be very regrettable indeed, as well as surprising, if this book were not found 
 in lay hands very much more than in clerical studies," etc., etc. 
 
 The Church News, Baltimore. 
 
 " Careful research, acute argument, brilliant illustration, eloquent appeal,' all unite in 
 enriching his pages, alluring the most indifferent to read, and compelling the most preju- 
 diced against his views to pause and consider." 
 
 Church Monthly Magazine. 
 
 " Having had the privilege of listening to a portion of these addresses, we eagerly 
 perused the volume containing them all. We hardly know how to characterize it. * * * 
 Each discourse is searching, going to the very foundation principles, pointing out difficul- 
 ties, snares, perils, and giving godly advice which it is but wisdom to heed." 
 
 Copies will be mailed, postage prepaid, on receipt of price. 
 
 THOMAS WHITTAKER, Publisher, 2 and % Bible House, New York. 
 
¥JIE CflEYTIIiIE]^ D^aepTE^. 
 
 feeing one of the Stanton-Corbet Chronicles. By Lucy Ellen Guernsey. 
 473 pp. i2rao. Cloth. $1.50. 
 t "A well told historical tale of the seventeenth century."— The Christian Union. M The 
 Spirit of the tale is noble and impressive." — The Literary World. " Miss Guernsey holds a 
 pen of rare, we might say of extraordinary power, and she has made the most of it."— 7"A* 
 Guardian. " It is finely written and pure in its tendency." — The Christian Advocate. 
 " Her present volume is of firmer and better texture than anything she has heretofore pro- 
 duced. * — The Episcopal Register. "We venture the assertion that no novel of to-day 
 is more intensely interesting in its exciting events, nor does any of them tell a more touch- 
 ing love story more gracefully." — The Inter-Ocean^ Chicago. 
 
 MFE: Ji B00K F@l^ ¥011^6 JfiE]^ 
 
 By Cunningham Geikie, DD., author of "The Life and Words of 
 Christ," etc. i2mo. Cloth $1.25. 
 
 "Dr. Geikie is a charming writer, and wise as charming. Such books as these help to 
 form character and shape life. We can recommend it to our young men, to all thoughtful 
 men, indeed. It will be found very suggestive to the clergy in preparing lectures to young 
 men."— 7%*? Living Church. 
 
 " Dr. Geikie has used his remarkable talent for clear and forcible statement in a way 
 which must benefit thousands of our youth.— The Christian Intelligencer. 
 
 cengijs MINNIE; 
 
 Or, The Feast of Life. 
 
 By Mrs. F. Burge Smith, author of " The Bishop and Nannette." i2mo. 
 Cloth. $1.00. 
 
 " This volume is one of a series giving practical and familiar instructions on the duties 
 of the Christian life, as recognized by the Church. This book is devoted to Confirmation 
 and the Lord's Supper, giving_ a clear and distinct apprehension of these two duties, the 
 nature of them, and qualifications for their due reception. The style is pleasant and at- 
 tractive, and, placed in the hands of candidates for confirmation, will help to make intelli- 
 gent and devout Christians. It is an excellent book for the Sunday School," — The Pacific 
 Ckurchtnan. 
 
 " This delightful story is full of most valuable teaching. — The Churchman. 
 
 jSIIiYEUDflLE 1^EC¥©^¥; 
 
 Or, The Golden Links. 
 
 By Grace Stebbing i2mo. Cloth. Illustrated. $1.00. 
 
 "This is a very instructive book for young people, displaying throughout its pages 
 varied and interesting teaching, told in quite a charming way, each incident illustrating 
 texts of Scripture and a portion of the Prayer Book." — The Church News. 
 
 ¥JIE EMOTING LiejH? 0F WGFINTO, 
 
 And, The Guardian Angels. 
 
 By L. T. Meade, author of " Scamp and I," " Water Gipsies,'' etc. i2mo. 
 Cloth. $1.00. 
 u The writer has the same gift of reaching the heart so noticeable in Hesba Stretton's 
 stories, and the same style of painting a good lesson in a pleasant style." — Faith and 
 Work. 
 
 Copies will be mailed, postage prepaid, on receipt of price. 
 
 THOMAS WHITTAKER, Publisher, 2 I % Bible House, New York, 
 
" These selections from Faber are exquisite gems."— The Episcopal Register. 
 
 I>|mu5|i$ rut §mi fttpimm 
 
 Selected from the Writings of Frederick William Faber, D.D., with 
 an Introduction by J. S. Purdy, D.I>. 229 pp. i2mo. Cloth, gilt 
 top. $1.25. 
 
 The Congregationalism Boston. 
 11 Profound thinking, gentleness of spirit, devotional tenderness and simplicity and 
 glowing eloquence of style, all are characteristics of the prose writings of Faber. * * * 
 Faber is known chiefly by his almost unequaled hymns, but in prose also his mind found 
 free and beautiful expression." 
 
 The Churchman, New York. 
 " The name of Faber is very dear to thousands of Christians of every class. His 
 hymns, which are among the sweetest, the tenderest, and the most spiritual ever written, 
 have prepared the way for this selection from his prose writings. We commend this vol- 
 ume as a most valuable help toward holy living." 
 
 The Standard, Chicago. 
 " The portions of his works which are brought together in this volume are essentially 
 Protestant and evangelical, both in their statements and spirit. Their value, to the general 
 reader lies in their adapta ion to the devotional necessities of our nature, suggesting lofty 
 thoughts, and stimulating reverent feeling. * * * Just as the Protestant has been 
 helped by the Catholic F6nelon, so may he be aided by the Romanist Faber." 
 
 The Independent, New York. 
 " We have here, not Faber the Romanist, but Faber the devout, tender, large-souled 
 Christian ; his meditations, broad, deep, searching, such as will help the spiritual life." 
 
 The Church Eclectic, Utica. 
 " This book is just what will be eagerly welcomed by the many who know something 
 of Faber, but who are deterred by his voluminousness. Here is a really valuable book 
 added to our devotional store." 
 
 The Observer, New York. 
 " Their devout and beautiful spirit will be appreciated by all Christian people." 
 
 The Courier, Boston. 
 " The poetic temperament of the author pervades all his works and gives them an 
 irresistible charm, while his undoubted piety will make these extracts welcome to all true 
 Christians of every creed." 
 
 Copies will be mailed, postage prepaid, upon receipt of price. 
 
 THOMAS WHITTAKER, Publisher, 2 & 3 Bible House, New York. 
 

 . 
 
 llwlll 
 
 
 '■■'■ 
 
 '.';■,-■■ 
 
 it