r. 2.0, 2 iFrnm the IGtbrarg of $equeatheii by l|im to tljr IGtbrarg of •pnttrrtmt utyrologtral £>mtnarg BX 5133 .P3 S7 1895 Paget, Francis, 1851-1911. ;i Studies in the Christian STUDIES IN THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER a BY THE SAME AUTHOR. THE SPIRIT OF DISCIPLINE : Sermons. Together with an Introductory Essay concerning Accidie. Sixth Edition. Crown %vo. 6s. 6d. FACULTIES AND DIFFICULTIES FOR BELIEF AND DISBELIEF. Third Edition. Croicm Svo. 6s. 6d. THE HALLOWING OF WORK. Addresses given at Eton, January 16-18, 1888. Fifth Edition. Small $Z'o. 2s. LONDON AND NEW YORK LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. Studies -•• IN THE hristian Character SERMONS WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY BY FRANCIS "PAGET, D.D. DEAN OF CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD; SOMETIME VICAR OF BROMSCROVF. LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. AND NEW YORK : 15 EAST 16th STREET 1895 All rights reserved Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/studiesinchristiOOpage & REVERENDISSIMO ■ IN • CHRISTO ■ PATRI • EDWARDO • EPISCOPO • LINCOLNIENSI • QUI • LIBERTATIS • DEFENSOR • OBEDIENTLE ■ EXEMPLAR UNO ■ CAR1TATIS • TENORE • PER • jEQUA • PER • ARDUA • CONSERVATO • VITAM • CHRISTIANAM • QUAM • PULCHRA • SIT • QUAM ■ POTENS • DECI.ARAVIT • b Contents INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. PAGE ON THE STUDY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER, . xi I. THE EXERCISE OF JUDGMENT. " Then tlu/ught I to understand this : but it was too hard for me, until I went into the sanctuary of God." — Ps. lxxiii. 15, 16, 1 II. THE SAFEGUARD OF JUDGMENT. " He that is spiritual judgeth all things." — 1 Cor. ii. 15 14 III. THE LORD'S DAY. " / was in the Spirit on the Lord's day." — Rev. i. 10, 32 IV. THE WORK OF GOD'S WORD. " For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returnelh not thitlier, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: so shall My Word be that gotth forth out of My mouth : it shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accom- plish that which I please, and it shall prosper in tlve thing whereto I sent it." — ISA. LV. 10, 11 41 V. THE SANITY OF SAINTLINESS. ' Wholesome words, even the words of our Jtrrd Jesus Christ." — 1 Tim. vi. 3, . 55 Vlll CONTENTS. VI. THE SIMPLICITY OF GOODNESS. PAGE " Put thou thy trust in the Lord, and be doing good."— Ps. xxxvu. 3, . .70 VII. THE MISUSE OF WORDS. " / say unto you, That every idle word that men shall tpeale, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." — St. Matt. xii. 36, .... 79 VIII. THE HIDDEN ISSUES. " Xevertlieless when the Son of Man Cometh, shall He find faith on the earth? "—St. Luke xvnr. 8 89 IX. COWARDICE. ii g ot j },ath not given us the spirit of fear ; but of power, and of lore, and of a sound mind."— 2 Tim. 1.1 100 X. THE MESSAGE OF CHRIST'S BIRTH. ii f; 0( j rrfco at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son."— Heb. i. 1, 2 112 XI. THE REASSURANCE OF CHRISTMAS. ii -phe angel said unto them, Fear not."— St. Luke ii. 10, .... 122 XII. THE GREETING OF PEACE. «« On earth peace."— St. Luke ii. 14 132 CONTENTS IX XIII. THE CONFESSION OF DEPENDENCE. PAGE "After this, Jesus knowing that all tilings were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, sailh, I thirst."— St. John xix. 28, I 42 XIV. SINS OF IGNORANCE. " Then said Jesus, Fattier, forgive them ; for they know not what they do." — Sr. Luke xxiii. 34, 154 XV. EXACTINGNESS. "Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours." — Isa. lviii. 3 16 < XVI. FORBEARANCE. " And they went unto another village." — St. Luke ix. 56 1 1 I XVII. HONOURING ALL MEN. " Honour all men." — 1 St. Peter ii. 17, 187 XVIII. PATRIOTISM. " / could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flak." — BOK. ix. 3, 190 XIX. COURTESY. " This beginning of miracles did Jesus in ('ana of Galilee, and manifested forth Itis glory: awl His disciples belieoalon Him." — Sr. John ii. 11, . 209 X CONTENTS. XX. KINDNESS. PAGE " Which now of these th'ee, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?" — St. Luke x. 36 221 XXI. THE DISCLOSURE OF THE ASCENSION. " Xow I go My wag to Him that sent Me: and none of you askcth Me, Whither goest Thou?" — St. John XV!. 5, 234 XXII. THE RESERVE OF THE ASCENSION. " A cloud received Sim out of their sight." — Acts i. 9, 24G INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. ON THE STUDY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. The Christian character, the coherent group of traits evinced in lives surrendered to the rule of Christ with reliance on His grace, seems to be a subject which gets less than its due share of thought. To turn one's mind to it in some of those free spaces which all the overcrowding of one's days may still leave open (unless one has the folly to enclose them for the cultivation of anxiety when it is out of season) ; to give one's unclaimed thoughts to the recollection and study of the most Christ-like characters, the most unselfish lives that one has known ; — even this, besides raising greatly the value of one's leisure, would tend to discoveries well worth making about one's self and about others, and might lead one on to the discernment or surmising of truths far beyond all price. But it would be well to devote something more than such leisurely and occasional thinking to the scrutiny and xii INTRO D UCTOR Y ESS A Y. examination of the Christian character. It would be well to make it the subject of the strongest and most persevering attention that one is able to use ; to study it as men study the things they are most bent on understanding and least ready to think they under- stand : to concentrate on it efforts of thought re- sembling as neaxdy as possible the accurate, sustained, and irrepressible inquiry by which a great scholar or physician labours on in silence towards that victory of penetration which releases light. For the depths of the Christian character have much to yield both for those who undoubtingly believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ and for those who disbelieve or doubt about it. Both alike may find in that character, beyond its broad and obvious notes, strange reserves of strength, wonders of tenderness, adjustments of ministry, details of beauty and wisdom, refinements of loyalty, secrets of endurance and of self-sacrifice ; and such discoveries, progressive and unending as they are apt to be, may wield an unanticipated power over a man's thoughts and conduct. I. Those who, without hesitation or reserve or apprehension, in the glad confidence of untroubled conviction, believe as the Christian Church believes concerning Christ, may gain, perhaps, in the minute INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xiii and persevering investigation of the Christian char- acter, constant help against a temptation which does much unrecognized harm. The accusation of formalism is often insolently made and honestly repudiated ; for it is a handy label to attach to ways one does not understand : it is at once easier and more ex- citing to say that there is nothing real under forms or formularies not one's own, than to acknowledge that they well may embody a reality beyond one's reach : and when formalism is thus carelessly imputed, the imputation is naturally resented. But the charges that men have naturally resented are among the many things in which time may show them unsuspected truth. The danger of formalism is serious and world- wide, however blunderingly and cruelly the fault may often be alleged. For the central demand of the Christian life is high and unremitting. 1 To love God with all one's heart and soul and mind and strength ; to worship Him in spirit and in truth ; — this requires an ascent, a self-recollection, a gathering up of all one's powers, a concentration of desire and of thought to which there is no parallel — and, it may be, hardly any approach — in one's ordinary life. Many men's minds are apt to be in harness for half their 1 Cf. J. H. Newman's "Versus on Various Occasions," No. cxv., ad fin. XIV 1NTR0D UCTOR Y ESSAY. days, and desultory, whether through weariness or indolence, for the other half ; and minds that are so used will wander and flag when they are called to anything like the simplicity of prayer. And even those who have long tried to discipline and rule their thoughts, alike in toil and rest, may know that the reconciliation between that secluded simplicity which prayer recpaires and the manifold correspondence in social life with an ever-shifting environment is often very difficult. Christians believe that they are called to begin here the very life which is to be perfect hereafter; to enter here upon privileges and duties which are continuous and, however hindered and obscured, in essence identical with those of heaven : and it is not strange, when one considers how and where that calling finds them, that they should be very sorely tempted to falter from the height and singleness of intention which it involves. And with that faltering, that swerving from the central and characteristic energy of religion, the undivided per- severance of the soul towards God in love and worship, comes the tendency to halt and rest amidst the helps, conditions, means towards that end ; to mitigate with them one's failure of attainment or of aspiration. Plainly the temptation and the tendency are peculiar to no school or type of religion : the INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. XV forms which are so misused may be forms of feeling, or of conduct, or of thought, or of language, or of ritual, or of organization, or of observance, or of negligence ; they may be individual or social ; they may be of God's appointing or of man's. In all there is the same possibility of settling down where one was meant to press on ; of seeking satisfaction where one was meant to find help ; of making one's home at a lodging-place upon the way of one's pilgrimage. In all the curtain may be drawn, as it were, behind the form ; and the gaze may be stayed there when it should be travelling on towards Him, in seeking Whom it will fare better than in finding all else. " Not Thee, but Thine ; " — surely that short- coming of desire, that inversion of choice, conscious or unconscious, transient or prolonged, is the real note of formalism, and the cause of much disappointment and arrested growth and inconsistency and unhappi- ness in religious people ; and also of much offence and perplexity to those who, more or less critically, are watching and thinking about their ways. The sincere, persistent consideration of the Christian character seems to be among the best safeguards against this derangement and crippling of religion. For that character rests on and is framed for and ruled by communion with God. It is learnt, begun, INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. advanced, and finished in His Presence. ' I am the Almighty God: walk before Me, and be thou sincere:" there is "the foundation of the religious character, the character which was to grow up into ' the mind of Christ : ' " thus was its determining habit, so to ■speak, proclaimed to him who was at once the friend of God and the father of us all ; 1 proclaimed at its first introduction into the course of human history, among the phenomena of human character and con- duct. It was to receive and renew and perfect its distinctive quality, not primarily by conformity to a prescribed type or to external rules, but by a steady reference to God, by communion with Him, by realizing and remembering His Presence, by acting always for His sight and as watched by Him. The influence exerted upon character by the friendship of man with man is incalculable ; and the Christian character was to be shaped, upheld, and animated by friendship with God. ''Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned : " that cry goes up, not in any disregard for the wide havoc that sin makes on earth, but as the cry of one whose first and most overwhelming misery in seeing how low he had fallen might come from seeing how he had outraged the friendship which had 1 Gen. xviL 1 ; B. W. Church, " The Discipline of the Christian Character." pp. 19.20; Fe'nelon. "CEuvres." Classe II. Tome xviii. p. 224 (ed. 1S23> INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xvii been the spring and strength of all that was good or hopeful in him : a misery that would not dull or interfere with his sense of all the wrong that he had done to others, since it would stand apart from that, with a bitterness and horror all its own. It is the cry of one who saw what lust and cruelty meant in regard to that Love which is the only light and reality in the life of the soul, the Fountain of all goodness, the one Source of all power to serve men. " Mine eyes are ever looking unto the Lord ; " "I have set God always before me;" " Thy lovingkind- ness is ever before mine eyes : " so is expressed for all time the posture of the soul that is taking its fashion from Almighty God ; surrendering itself to the discipline whereby it shall receive that signature and impress, that image and superscription, which was perfectly displayed in the mind of Christ, and the sustained rendering of which among mankind is recognized as the Christian character. — And surely that character as it is quietly studied shows the school from which it comes and the method by which it was imparted. It seems among the varieties of human nature as the Psalter seems among the varieties of religious poetry. It has the same distinctive inde- pendence and unearthliness ; the same frankness and simplicity : the same disclosures of unconquerable xviii INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. hope and trust; the same astounding flashes of heavenward venture and of insight into that which passes understanding ; the same peculiar exemption from the power of time and of this world's changes ; the same aptness for the real wants of men in all ages. But, above all, it stands apart by the same pervading sense of a personal relation to Almighty God. That which has been marked as the char- acteristic note of the Psalter 1 is also the secret of the mysteriousness which is felt through all the sim- plicity and homeliness of the Christian character ; a mysteriousness out of which emerges its power to control and overawe mere force and to make clever- ness uncomfortable. 2 It bears about it the air of God's Presence ; it is accustomed to the ways of His Court ; its indifference to the world rests on a glad and loving deference to Him ; in communion with Him it has received the distinction for which nothing upon earth accounts. And thus it stands in ceaseless witness against all stopping short or swerving off from the highest endeavour, the central calling of the Christian life. " Not Thine, but Thee," is always at its heart ; and however one may fail to follow on to their very 1 Cf. K. W. Church, " The Gifts of Civilization," pp. 421-426. * Cf. R. Browning, " Instans Tyrannus," INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xix Source its characteristic strength and liberty and beauty, one may feel a certain Divine originality in them, one may know that they were not learnt from any lower discipline than that which comes by the sustained effort to have Him in all one's thoughts, to commit one's way to Him, and truly to know Him. How hard that effort is they may best say who have longest kept it up. No one can want proof that it is hard, that it is often hindered and, it may be, crushed by failure and faint-heartedness. But all may want proof that it is possible ; that it is worth while; that it can be renewed when one has flagged or broken down in it ; that it holds a place which nothing else can take among the possible uses of a human life, the possible exercises of will ; that it has had, and has still, its distinctive triumphs and results. And for proof of all this, with the Bible and the Church, stand the past history and the actual pre- sence of the Christian character. II. The share borne by the Christian character in the appeal which Christianity can make to those who are doubting its truth is, perhaps, larger in the actual experience of men than it seems in the formal state- ment of evidence. For in many cases it is at once haunting and uncontentious ; it is associated with thoughts and memories which are rightly dear to XX INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. men ; it is apt to speak to them most clearly when they know themselves to be at their best. And so its hidden energy on the side of faith is probably far beyond its prominence in argument ; it goes about the world as one of those secret forces of beneficence which are behind the surprises of goodness, and which, if they were made visible, might decisively reinforce a great deal of threatened and imperilled hope. But there is one signal service which the appeal of the Christian character is peculiarly apt to render in the cause of faith. It is often the only power which can confront the steady, surreptitious, miserable pressure with which the sins of Christians fight against the work of Christ. It may be that the contest between these two forces covers by far the greater part of the whole battle-field; and that, while critics and apologists, with their latest weapons (or with the latest improvement of their old ones), are charging and clashing amidst clouds of dust — with the world still thinking that here at last is the real crisis — the practical question between belief and dis- belief is actually being settled for the vast majority of men by the silent and protracted conflict between the consistent and the inconsistent lives of those who alike profess themselves Christians; the con- flict between the contrasted experience of Christ's INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. XXI Presence manifest in goodness, and Christ's Name dis- honoured in hypocrisy, or blindness, or indifference. In many lives faith must have to hold on somehow through an almost overwhelming weight of dis- couragement in the hourly experience of the ill- temper, or injustice, or worldliness, or self-indulgence of religious people — it may even be of some who are actively ministering in God's Name ; — and the one stand-by and stronghold through that dismal onset of unreality may be the known reality of the Chris- tian character, the personal conviction that there are some at least on whom the grace of God is not bestowed in vain, in whom it does achieve its dis- tinctive and transcendent work — the Mind of Christ. It is high service that is thus rendered for the reinforcement of that belief in goodness and in God which is distressed and staggered by religious in- consistency. But in pointing to this service, and in marking the conflict of pressure one way and the other', it is necessary to lay stress on a truth which may easily be forgotten. The conflict cannot be decided by a mere preponderance — even though it were a great preponderance — of inconsistent lives ; of instances in which the profession of Christianity seems to have no reflection, no congruous symptoms, in the sphere of character or conduct. Pathetic and XXII INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. aweful as such failures are, disheartening as their number may be, they should not be made the ground of false inferences, or of unreasonable surprise or fear. Their bearing on Christ's claims must be appraised with constant reference to the conditions He accepted for His work. If He had ever narrowed in His ministry to those who were certain to respond to it ; if He had let the multitude alone and dealt out blessings in a little circle of select souls : if He had overborne men's freedom and saved them at the cost of their humanity ; or if He had brought down His standard to their level, and come to terms with frailty, and met low thoughts half-way ; if, in short, He ever had appeared at any point to be thinking of what is called success, and adapting His system to secure it ; then the extent of the apparent failure about His work would be profoundly and directly significant in regard to His claims. But, as a matter of fact, He addressed Himself to those who seemed least promising ; He " in no wise cast out " any who came to Him ; He showed a scrupulous and patient considerateness for the liberty, the genuine and un- constrained development, of all with whom He dealt ; He coerced no one, slighted no one, hurried no one : and still, with all this far-sighted gentleness in work, He allowed no standard save the very highest ; He INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xxiii would have sinful men rise uncompelled to the perfectness of God. Such was the plan of His work ; such were the conditions He accepted for it ; and thus it has continued wherever it has been truest to its ruling principles and its informing Spirit. For such work in this world the frequent experience of defeat and interruption and delay was surely to be expected ; it was expected from the outset ; and the expectation has been realized. And thus the in- consistent lives of many who profess themselves Christians, the apparent failure of the forces which should make for holiness, the fruitlessness of good seed, wild grapes in God's vineyard, and all the shameful crimes of Christian nations, do not prove that grace is unreal, or that sanctification is a word without any actual process corresponding to it, or that Christianity was an experiment which has broken down. Wretched and terrible as these things are, they are consistent, to say the least, with the belief that there has been sent into this world (being such as, by experience and by introspection, men may know it to be) a perfect Example for mankind, and means whereby those who will may follow that Example. The shock of turning from the Sermon on the Mount to the actual state of things in a country which has been for centuries under the xxiv INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. influence of Christianity is very great ; but Chris- tianity itself gives an account of the contrast ; and it is quite unreasonable to let the shock confuse or overpower the distinct appeal, the independent demand for attention and explanation, with which the plain facts of the Christian character come before one. The penetrating cogency of those facts is, indeed, the aptest antidote to the chilling and discouraging effect of lives Christian in name and wholly unlike Christ's ; — for it is a force of a like sort, and it acts on the same plane : — but the two groups of phenomena have separate and independent claims for consideration, and neither of them cancels the necessity of accounting for the other. Even if it could only be shown that here and there — just frequently enough to preclude a reasonable suspicion of mere blundering in observation — there appeared a character, an ethical specimen, which could be recognized as a distinct product, suggesting, at least, the action of distinct influences, it would be necessary to give some account of the phenomena, and some attention to the account given by those who were best acquainted with the facts. Thus much right to be accounted for could hardly be denied even to a few well-established instances ; since rarity, apart from the probability of false or erroneous recording, INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. XXV does not prove casualness or insignificance ; and nature would supply analogies for any amount of sterility and waste in the sphere of grace. But some- what more than this may without fear be claimed, when the character appears not in a few scattered cases here and there, but as a vigorous, enduring, and coherent element in moral history ; submitting to the changes of human life that it may subdue what is unchanged in humanity ; stooping, as it were, to conquer ; adapting itself to different nationalities and generations, yet proving presently to have adapted their inner life to its inner substance ; suffering some harm at times, as everything must suffer that is projected boldly into the tumult and treachery of the world, yet recovering its health as if by the power of an endless life ; moving like a great river, now broader, and now deeper, through the ages since Christ came ; referred and traced to Him, as its one Source and Principle and Guide and Strength, by the accordant voice of all in whom its might and beauty have been manifest. The appearance and work of the Christian char- acter among men, with the unvarying conviction of Christians as to its ox*iginal and sustaining force, require explanation. By the belief of the Church concerning Christ they are explained : if He was and xxvi INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. is what the Church says, the outcome of His work in the history and in the hearts of men may well be such as this. And it is not easy to think out any other explanation of the facts upon which a careful study of them would not bring a severe and ultimately an intolerable strain. There is always danger of mis- representation in the attempt to present a view that is not one's own ; but it does seem clear that those who deny the Divinity of Christ must think that the Christian character was introduced and realized and propagated and maintained under strangely incon- gruous and uncongenial conditions. It certainly does not look like a character that has started up out of an enthusiastic delusion, an exaggerated and mis- guided devotion, a fanatical misunderstanding of a teacher's meaning, a credulous fostering of irrational hopes and fancies ; still less can the thought of it be brought into connexion with any wilful or self- deceivinof fraud. For it is not out of such darkness and disorder, by the working of natures so perverse and unhealthy and unreasonable, that such a type of moral excellence as this could spring up and endure — a type in which humanity attains its best harmony and strength, and renders its most reasonable service. The sobriety and usefulness of the Chris- tian character ; its quiet and wide attractiveness ; its INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xxvii unconscious skill in prompting others to do right ; its readiness for adaptation to new demands and opportunities in shifting circumstances and strange countries ; its peculiar balance and blending of traits which are generally found apart, and thought to stand in contrast ; its steady health and freshness ; its hidden stores of strength and charm and wisdom and refreshment ; its power to help all men at all times ; — these are distinctive qualities which seem to thrust away the suggestion of an origin in delusion, or misunderstanding, or extravagance, and to claim for the character that bears them a direct line of kindred with some perfect type of manhood, some true idea of what man might and should be, some thought about him in the Mind of God. III. As one tries to study the Christian character, in its past history and in its present life, one can hardly help inquiring as to the career that lies before it in the future. The inquiry may rise concerning it either as a type, appearing in and telling on the general history and lot of man, or as a distinction of certain individual lives, a quality acquired by this and that man, more or less perfectly, during the years he spends on earth. One may ask either what are likely to be the new phases and renderings of the type as the scene around it changes on the stage xxviii INTRO D UCTOR Y ESS A I '. of this world, or what further development and new uses and opportunities may be anticipated for it, as a soul which has been striving 1 here to learn and realize it passes out of this world into that which is beyond. Such lines of inquiiy are scarcely suggested before one sees the clouds gathering about them and hurrying, as it were, towards one, closing the way of forecast or imagination. There is no forgetting the fragmentariness of knowledge and the limitation of powers when such questions are before one. And yet there may be some use in letting one's thoughts dwell upon them for a while. For although it may be quite impossible to foresee the part which the Christian character will bear in the future course of human affairs, there may be some reassurance of trust and some help towards tranquillity in finding reason to believe that that character will not prove antiquated, or ineffective, or out of touch with life, even though things change quickly and profoundly, and new needs start up with abrupt imperiousness. Great changes in the social order may be, in their real outcome, largely affected by the transmuting power of goodness in the national or individual character; and the readiness, the preparedness of the gospel of peace, may be a real INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xxix force in critical times. In the life of nations, as in the life of individuals, the meaning and quality of change and trial, the effect of new demands and calls, will mainly depend upon the reserve of moral strength with which they can he met. What would be really terrible would be to apprehend a state of society in which the surge of innovation and excite- ment and recpairement might rise too high for the resources of national character, so that goodness would be powerless to deal with it, powerless to discern and answer the Divine purpose in it, powerless to elicit and reinforce and make supreme those elements in the confusion which all along were striving in God's cause. The resourcefulness and triumphs of the Christian character in the past seem a real ground for courageously refusing such an apprehension about the future. Time after time that character has addressed itself to new and great tasks : it has accepted strange conditions ; it has confronted vast demands with the fearless confidence of treasures that are infinite ; the fierceness of man has turned to its praise, and his frailty has been ennobled by its tenderness ; nations most unlike in temperament and ideals have alike been purified, exalted, hallowed by its discipline ; it has put forth new powers of benefi- cence and sympathy and attraction in the presence XXX IXTRODUCTORY ESSAY. of new perils and opportunities ; at times it has assumed an aspect men had never seen before, so that these who came to fight against it saw in it what they could not but revere and love. While the character which has so told upon the past abides in unspent energy and promise, while the tradition of the saints is still sustained and clear, it is faithless to despond about the future. Already the Christian character has seemed to be feeling its way towards new ventures of self-devotion and new renderings of old virtues in adaptation to the new wants of modern life in England. Already thoughtful and impartial students have suggested that Christian self-denial and sympathy and brotherliness have told during the last fifty years in a real mitigation of those crises and conflicts through which great changes penetrate the fabric of society and affect the relations of its parts. Already there have been many signs of readiness and desire for that closer community and discipline of life which in monastic orders has from time to time achieved a type of freedom and unworldliness and radiance and freshness such as is scarcely formed elsewhere. Surely it is not an un- reasonable hope that the baffling difficulties of our overcrowded cities, our overdriven lives, our rest- less, ill-informed, impatient aspirations, our loosened IXTKODUCTOR V ESS A V. xxxi coherence of classes mutually dependent, may yet be found to be beckoning the Christian character to new sacrifices and new conquests, and eliciting from its unfathomable depths a form of beauty, a reserve of strength, a skill of service, which the world has never seen since the days when all perfectness was seen at once in Jesus Christ of Nazareth. But the Christian character must have a future, not only in the course of society, but also in the separate career of individuals. And concerning this, amidst much that is incomprehensible and across an interval of almost unbroken mystery, there comes a clear disclosure : " We know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him." " To be conformed to the image " of Christ, — that, far off as it may stand above the present reach of human thought, is a plain point of light; it may quiver in the pure depths of a boundless sky, but it is sure and steadfast and distinct. And though a vast tract stretches between that transcendent excellence and all that is attained on earth, yet without doubt the set and tendency of the Christian character as it may be studied here is wholly towards that consummation which is thus revealed for it hereafter. To be like Christ must mean far more than men can yet imagine ; but the beginnings of the likeness, the first hints at least of His lineaments, xxxii INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. are unmistakably present in the traits men gain as by His grace they serve and follow Him in this world. It may be worth while to insist on this prophetic aspect of the Christian character — on the way in which its habits and faculties point on towards no other goal than that of a perfect likeness to Jesus Christ. For if this is so, if the whole bent and growth and development of the character is simply towards absolute unselfishness, the unselfishness that chose the Cross, then light falls on the true nature and quality of Christian hope. That hope and the purpose which it animates are often suspected as more or less mercenary : it is suggested that Chris- tians do not serve God for nought — that in the practice of religion an eye is kept on the prospect of personal enjoyment. The suspicion is not strange ; for words which may well account for it are freely said by Christians, and still more freely sung. But it is hard to imagine that in the hearts of those who have learnt from the Bible the motives of their life, there is any such spirit of self-regard and calculation as some of their hymns might seem to show. The suspicion is dispelled, or relegated at least to the surface of life, if one tries to find out what is really in men's minds as they set themselves to serve God ; or if attention is concentrated, as it should be, on the INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xxxm plainest utterances of the Bible about the recompense of goodness ; or if the forecast, the prophetic import of the Christian character, is duly studied. For, in the first place, surely it will be found that very few people go on striving to do God's will for the sake of selfish advantage ; for the hope that it will ultimately prove to have been well worth while. Christians may often do injustice to themselves and to their creed by the phrases they adopt; but in reality the hope they have at heart is not a hope that can be justly stated in terms of personal gratification : the heaven they expect, the vision that lifts up their flagging purpose, does not appeal to passions or desires such as stir and throb at the thought of selfish pleasure. If they are craving from God's service any happiness for themselves beyond this world, it is, probably, the happiness of reunion with those whom they have loved far better than them- selves ; those, it may be, whom for years they have waited on and tended ; those for whose sake they have foregone everything that is ordinarily regarded as enjoyable, and turned all life to loving ministry ; those of whom they can hardly think save with an instinctive wish to be able to do something for them. The happiness of the reunion that is thus craved seems an unlikely object for a selfish and mercenary quest. xxxiv INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. And, secondly, the witness of the Bible is against the suspicion of self-regard in Christian hope, since the recompense it sets before men is in its very nature such as cannot be selfishly pursued. Language that is mysterious or symbolical may be misunderstood, but not if it is studied — as men are bound to study it — in the light of those plain words which stand as part of the same revelation. "They shall see God;" " Then shall I know, even as also I am known : " " We shall be like Him ; " — these are plain words, and these should rule men's thoughts of that to which Christians hope to win their way. It is a recompense which necessarily dismisses and alienates a mercenary purpose : to set one's self to seek it selfishly is in reality to seek not it, but something else that is falsely called by its name ; in proportion as it is discerned and desired with sincerity it will chasten and purify the heart that seeks it. It is hard to see how any man can want, in a worldly, mercenary temper, to attain to utter unworldliness and unselfish- ness ; to have all self-seeking and all greediness quite driven out of his heart for ever ; to be made perfect in love, so that the very thought of a joy that others could not share should be intolerable ; to stand for ever in the light in which a single selfish pleasure would make him hateful to himself ; to live wholly INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. XXXV in and for sheer love. A man may be disinterested, even though he has an ulterior object in trying to do his duty, provided that his heart is ready to exult with a surprise of joy as he discerns more and more clearly that his ulterior object all along has been somewhat of this sort. Nor is the quality of Christian hope less clearly to be seen in the facts of Christian character. The sort of men Christ's servants come to be, the traits they take and perfect as they move towards death, are a fair token what it really is that they hope to find beyond death. Few things tell on character more surely and precisely than the goal on which the heart is set and the temper in which that goal is sought. And certainly the Christian character, as it appears in Christ-like lives, does not look at all as though it had been formed and fostered and determined by a mercenary attention to a selfish aim. For the faculties and the capacity that grow in those who try to be true to Christ in daily life are strikingly ill suited for the opportunies of enjoy- ment which might be imagined in a heaven of selfish- ness. Christians do not grow in the capacity for selfish pleasure, nor attain an exceptional power of relishing to the utmost a separate and individual gratification. The faculty which they develope is the XXXVI INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. faculty of self-denial ; of glad, unhindered self-forget- fulness for others' sake ; of delighting in goodness and eliciting what is best in others ; of simple, cheer- ful, unclouded self-surrender. These, and such as these, are the powers that accrue to those who choose the Christian life ; and it is strange if the way along which they are acquired is a way of self-seeking ; strange if, in striving towards a paradise of selfish pleasure, there is formed a character which would be as wretched there as a selfish character in the heaven of the saints. Surely it is a very different sort of aim and quest that is betrayed in the develop- ment of the Christian character and in the lines on which it presses forward ; its preparation through the discipline of this life is for something else than what is here called pleasure or success ; the faculties that are strengthened with its strength must have a work surpassing all our thoughts, and the capacity it brings can never be satisfied with aught that is created. For, in truth, the Christian character prophesies of this — that God has made us for Him- self ; and that there is neither rest, nor goal, nor joy for man, save in His Love. Christ Church, All Saints' Day, 189i. I. THE EXERCISE OF JUDGMENT. " Then thought I to understand this : but it was too hard for me, until I went into the sanctuary of God." Ps. lxxiii. 15, 16. The sight which was before the Psalmist is often to be seen ; and it is always likely to seem strange. The divorce between goodness and welfare in the lives of men ; the failure of witness to God's justice in a world that is upheld by His power ; — this is what thoughtful and religious men are called to face in every age. A common phrase owns that it is so ; for when we speak of " poetic justice," we imply that in the actual events of human life, between the limits of any fragment of it, much will be left unbalanced, unrewarded, unavenged. And still this sight, although it is so ancient and familiar, does not wholly lose its power to surprise and challenge and distress us. It has reserves of strangeness ; and no account of it is always sure to be immediately and thoroughly satisfying B 2 THE EXERCISE OF JUDGMENT. in the moments of its urgency. Every man, with the toil of his own soul, must either solve the problem for himself, or really appropriate and take into his own life some solution of it which is put before him. And every man should be prepared to find that his solution, true as it may be, and sincerely as he may believe it, is yet at times less pacifying or triumphant than he hoped it would be. He may not need to change or qualify it ; but he may greatly need to deepen, purify, re-animate his own sense of it, as he hears afresh, in the increase of experience and sympathy, the hard denial that is tossed up from the disorder of a sinful world against the Righteousness and Omnipotence of God. Now, the recurrence and pressure of this problem tasks with a crucial demand the faculty of judgment. The grace of clearness and strength in judgment; the power and the will to see things truly, plainly, and steadily ; to see them with an ample view of their manifold relations, and with a constant recollection of the immensity of that which is not seen or dreamt of ; to see them with an equal eye for light and shade ; — this may do much to help a man when the strangeness and misery of the world's confusion breaks upon him, when his feet THE EXERCISE OF JUDGMENT. 3 are almost gone, and his treaclings have well-nigh slipt. For he is then in clanger of being either bewildered by surprise or dulled by acquiescence ; of either staggering from his faith in God through distress at the sights he sees, or else, through the account he gives of them, receding from his hope for men ; of losing either his patience or his ardour. It is the soberness and vigour of good judgment that he needs. And as the Psalmist owns how nearly he had failed when this strain came on him, so he tells us where he regained the calmness and courage and humility that belong to judging rightly. " My heart," he says, " was growing bitter : and a pang went through my reins. So foolish was I, and ignorant : even as it were a beast before Thee." — " I mused on this, to understand it : but it was too hard for me, — it was labour and trouble in mine eyes,- — until I went into the sanctuary of God." Let us try, then, to think for a while of the Presence of God as the school of a right judgment ; of communion with God as the means of growth in that high grace whereby frail, erring men may come to view with some justice of insight the move- ments and problems and controversies, the hopes and fears, the promises and opportunities and dangex*s 4 THE EXERCISE OF JUDGMENT. of the age in which they have to play their part. We are here at the outset of much conference and debate; 1 and questions are about to be raised, and difficulties brought forward, such as need the most strenuous and persevering efforts of well-trained minds. It seems in season to be thinking over the character and conditions of that rare faculty which gives to the deliberations of men value and dignity in the eyes of others, and the hope of some result which, partial and delayed and indirect as it may be, will yet prove real and fruitful in the end, when God looks down to hallow it in His own manifold and everlasting work. I. But first let us remind ourselves how rare a thing is any high degree of the faculty of judgment. It may be, perhaps, more common than the very finest forms of literary or artistic excellence ; but it is surely rarer than such a measure of genius as suffices to secure a recognized place among the poets or painters of a generation. There are more men whose works one can praise than there are whose judgment one can trust. There are many, indeed, whose decision on any point within the sphere of their especial business or study we, from outside 1 This sermon was preached at the beginning of the Church Con- gress at Folkestone in 1892. THE EXERCISE OF JUDGMENT. 5 that sphere, may gratefully accept as not likely to be bettered for some while. And even in regard to the conduct of life, in the sphere of judgment, there are many whose counsel it would be impossible to set aside without uneasiness or distress ; many whom we must feel to be incomparably wiser judges than ourselves ; many who will always enable us to see, more justly than by ourselves we could see, some aspects of a case. But there are very, very few from whom we get that higher, deeper, broader help which it is the prerogative of true excellence in judgment to bestow : help to discern, through the haste and insistence of the present, what is its real meaning and its just demand ; help to give due weight to what is reasonable, however unreasonably it may be stated or defended ; help to reverence alike the sacredness of a great cause and the sacred- ness of each individual life, to adjust the claims of general rules and special equity ; help to carry with one conscientiously, on the journey towards decision, all the various thoughts that ought to tell upon the issue; help to keep consistency from hardening to obstinacy, and common sense from sinking into time- serving; help to think out one's duty as in a still, pure air, sensitive to all true signs and voices of this world, and yet unshaken by its storms. Yes, it is (i THE EXERCISE OF JUDGMENT. rare indeed, such help : and one's heart goes up to God in thanks and praise for those with whom one finds it ; and it is as they are taken from one that something like the chill of autumn falls on life, and the real severity, the trial and strain of it, is felt, in deepening loneliness and silent fears. II. It hardly can seem strange that excellence in judgment is thus rare if we go on to think of the manifold discipline that it needs. (a) For we cannot deny that even physical con- ditions tend at least to tell on it; and most of us may have to own that there are days on which we know that we had better distrust the view we take of things. It is good counsel that a man should, if he has the chance, reconsider after his holiday any important decision that he was inclined to make just before it ; that he should appeal from his tired to his refreshed self ; and men need to deal strictly with the body, and to bring it into subjection, not only lest its appetites grow riotous, but also lest it trouble, with moods and miseries of its own, the exercise of judgment. (b) And then, with the calmness of sound health, or the control that a strong and vigilant will can sometimes gain over the encroachments of health that is not sound, there must also be the insight and THE EXERCISE OF JUDGMENT. 7 resourcefulness of learning ; that power to recognize, and weigh, and measure, and forecast, which comes of long watching how things move ; the power that grows by constant thoughtfulness, in study or in life ; the distinctive ability of those who, in Hooker's phrase, are " diligent observers of circumstances, the loose regard whereof is the nurse of vulgar folly." 1 It is a true note of good judgment that is touched at the beginning of Mr. Browning's picture of the old Pope, keen and strong and wary, as he sets his mind to work on the foul crime of Guido Franceschini, and disengages the sheer facts from all confusion and disguise — " Like to Ahasuerus, that shrewd prince, I will begin — as is, these seven years now, My daily wont — and read a History (Written by one whose deft right hand was dust To the last digit, ages ere my birth) Of all my predecessors, Popes of Home. Have I to dare? — I ask, how dared this Pope? To suffer ? — Such an one, how suffered he ? Being about to judge, as now, I seek How judged once, well or ill, some other Pope ; Study some signal judgment that subsists To blaze on, or else blot, the page." 2 It is a high prerogative of the real student of history, that power to summon from the past the 1 Hooker, " Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity," V. i. 2. 2 " Poetical Works of Robert Browning," vol. s. pp. 64, 65 (ed. 1889). 8 THE EXERCISE OF JUDGMENT. very scenes and issues, achievements and disasters, unverified alarms and swift reversals, which may point to the real import of the present and correct its misplaced emphasis. (c) And then once more, beyond all physical and intellectual conditions, are the moral qualities and habits, without which even able men blunder so strangely. For round the seat of judgment there are specious counsellors, who read our perverse desires before we own them to ourselves, who know exactly the rate of swerving from justice which will suit and gratify without shocking us, whose suggestions really seem reasonable enough, till as it were the search-light of an honest, contrite heart is turned full upon them. No knowledge of the world will guard right judgment in a man who lets ill temper have its way with him ; no warnings from history or experience will pierce the smoky fog of wilful sullenness ; no fineness of discernment will be proof against the steady pressure or the sudden onsets of ambition. — And what shall we say of vanity as an assessor in the work of judgment ? Surely, brethren, many of us might describe, with the help of humiliating recollections about our own folly, some stages of defective sight which are like milder forms of that blindness, that loss of all sense of humour THE EXERCISE OF JUDGMENT. 9 and fitness and proportion, which belongs to a well- settled satisfaction with one's self. III. A slowly strengthened mastery over moods and prejudices ; the ready and well-ordered riches of an accurate and thoughtful mind ; the integrity and courage and simplicity of the pure in heart ; — these are the favouring conditions and safeguards which, by God's grace, through discipline and diligence, men may prepare for the welcome, the fostering, the exercise of the faculty of judgment. And yet, even when all these are ready, there is something needed still. It is a great and rare thing for a man to observe patiently and to interpret justly what this world discloses as it moves upon its course. But there is another disclosure that he needs, if in the multitude of sorrows, in the cloudy and dark day, in the terror by night, he is still to hold the course to which God calls him. Only by a Light that is not of this world can we surely see our way about this world. Only in the strength of thoughts that are not as our thoughts can we " think and do always such things as be rightful." In God's Light do we see light ; and for all our discipline and care we shall lose our way if we try to find or keep it in forgetful- ness of Him and of His Self-revealing. Sooner or later it will come home to us, by His mercy, that 10 THE EXERCISE OF JUDGMENT. we must strive to bring our souls into His Presence, and to hold them there, if we would hope to " see life steadily, and see it whole." 1 We too may set our mind, as the Psalmist set his, to think out and understand the hard things that the experience of life presents to us. We may, perhaps, fancy that we do understand them ; and we may even deal with them successfully for a while ; but presently we too shall find that they are proving too hard for us, until we go into the sanctuary of God. For it is there, in the most adequate consciousness of His Presence that, in the power of the Holy Ghost, our weak and sinful souls can reach ; it is there that the faculty of judgment gradually gains its freedom, its illumina- tion, and its strength. It is not only that those who seek with contrite hearts that aweful, holy Light must needs have striven to put away the sins that darken and bewilder counsel. It is far more than this. It is that in the stillness and simplicity of drawing near to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, and in the passiveness and intense listening of the soul, conscience may speak to us with penetrating clearness of the height, the majesty, the tranquillity of justice ; of its home, in the very Nature of God, of its work, sure as His Will, of its exactness, 1 Cf. M. Arnold's " Poetical Works," p. 2 (ed. 1890). THE EXERCISE OF JUDGMENT. 11 absolute as His Perfection ; of the silent and imme- diate certainty with which all the false estimates and verdicts of mankind are set right before " the Judge of all the earth ; " of the solemnity of that appeal which, spoken or unspoken, reaches Him from every age, and is written down and cannot be erased : " 0 our God, wilt Thou not judge them ? " " The Lord look upon it, and require it ; " " Thou art the Helper of the friendless ; " " Thou art set in the throne that judgest right:" — and of our heavy responsibility for every exercise of the power given us from above, to judge and act, in whatsoever sphere, as His vice- gerents among men. And then, as Conscience thus speaks out her witness to the supreme and everlasting royalty of justice, the soul is also strengthened in the Presence of God by a deeper sense of the power that is on the side of justice ; the power that can wait, but not fail ; that may use this means, or that, but all for one unalter- able end ; the power which is behind the patience of Almighty God, and which we forget when we grow restless and fretful at His tarrying, and misread the little fragment that we see of His vast purpose in the world. But, above all, more moving to our hearts, more responsive to our need, than any thought which we 12 THE EXERCISE OF JUDGMENT. can grasp of His power and His justice, there comes to us, as we watch and pray in the sanctuaiy of His Presence, the distinctive disclosure of the faith of Jesus Christ. Brighter than the most glorious dawn that ever lit the expectant hills, there grows before the eyes that gaze on Him the light that changes all things ; the light that lives on earth and shall live while earth lasts, in the fact that God the Son was crucified for us; the light that glows in every life that takes its character and strength from Him ; the light that wheresoever men may meet it, howsoever it may find its way into their hearts, brings God's great demand upon them, and tells them why He made them, what He would have them be, what is the true meaning of their lives, what is indeed His will for all men, and the calling and capacity of all; even the light of that central and pervading truth that He, the righteous Judge, the Lord of all, "so loved the world ; " that He is Love. " Sic Deus dilexit mundum." It is as we read those words above the Cross of Christ, as some fresh conviction of their certainty comes home to us, and some gracious increase out of the infinite fulness of their meaning fills our hearts, that we learn our true lessons about human life and about the part that we are meant to bear in it. Much may still be dark and strange to us, and the THE EXERCISE OF JUDGMENT. 13 questions that are always rising round us will need our utmost care, and we may often make mistakes in thought and word and deed ; but the real, inner bewilderment, the fatal blundering of the soul, can hardly be when we think of men and deal with them as, one by one,- the distinct and unforgotten objects of that Love which we ourselves have known in its astounding forbearance, and condescension, and in- ventiveness, and gloiy. There is some sure light in the perplexity of this world, some hope even in its worst disasters, something steadfast through its storms, something still undefeated by its sins ; since it is the scene where God, Whose love can only be measured by the Cross, is seeking in countless hidden ways, one by one, the souls of men, if here He may but begin to draw them ever so little towards Himself, that hereafter He may prepare them to be with Him where He is. II. THE SAFEGUARD OF JUDGMENT. " He that is spiritual judgeth all things." 1 Cor. ii. 15. It is a great and bold claim that is made in these words ; hut it is not without a parallel in the Epistle. The petty contentions and conceits of the Corinthians were partly due to this — that all their thoughts stayed far below the recognition of the height and splendour of the Christian life. If they had seen the intrinsic greatness of being Christians, they would have been ashamed to care so greedily for little things, such as agitated those who did not know Christ. And so St. Paul seems trying to startle them into seeing more of all that is in their reach, by short, abrupt announcements of the distinction and dignity of their calling. " In every thing ye are enriched by Christ ; " " Ye come behind in no gift ; " " Ye are the temple of God ; " " All things are yours ; " " Things present or things to come, all are yours ; " " Be not ye THE SAFEGUARD OF JUDGMENT. 15 the servants of men ; " " The saints shall judge the world ; " " Know ye not that we shall judge angels ? " " If ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the Church." A Christian who realizes the powers and blessings of his new life, attains — so St. Paul holds — a greatness beyond all that men can give ; he can no longer be overwhelmed in the excitement and anxiety of this world ; he is advanced, uplifted, to a true royalty. And so, too, " he that is spiritual judgeth all things." He who by God's grace has yielded himself to the Spirit of God ; he whose whole being has through its highest part been entered, pervaded, changed, illuminated, by the Holy Ghost ; — he stands to all things in a new, distinct relation. Living 1 in the power of the world to come, and conversant already with its glory, he confronts this world as one who grasps the right standard of all things with a resolute and certain hold ; he can scan, examine, scrutinize, and try things with the independence of one who stands on surer ground than this world knows ; his is the quiet and lowly courage that springs from the sense of relation and communion with transcendent greatness; no earthly vehemence or boastfulness can dismay his simple loyalty to the heavenly vision ; he holds his own through all 16 THE SAFEGUARD OF JUDGMENT. glamour and confusion ; and " he will not be afraid of any evil tidings ; for his heart standeth fast, and belie veth in the Lord." Let us bear in mind this claim of St. Paul's for the spiritual man — this assertion of his power to scrutinize and judge, not only spiritual things, but all things ; and so, bearing it in mind, let us turn to look at a characteristic condition and difficulty of our own day. I. Some few years ago a thoughtful writer drew attention to the rapid increase in the channels by which tidings, images, demands, suggestions, im- pulses, stream in on most of us from the world around us ; the multiplication of the ways by which events and changes far away are swept within our ken. We may feel at once that this is true, yet not at once, perhaps, take the full measure of its mean- ing. For these afferent channels of our life are multiplied, not only by new discoveries, but far more by the increased and cheapened and accelerated use of old discoveries, and yet again by the accept- ance into common life of means of communication which once were thought exceptional, and reserved for special needs. — And, meanwhile, through these same ways the stir and business and excitement of the world around us is always growing speedier and THE SAFEGUARD OF JUDGMENT. 17 keener ; so that there is always more and more to be poured down the multiplied channels ; and we live in continually more abundant communication with a world that is continually more changeful and exacting. What was a stream becomes a flood ; and that factor of our life which comes to us from without rushes on us in fuller and fuller volume. — In old days a man was sent round the world to enlarge his mind; now, one may almost say, the world is sent round him ; and his mind must deal with the ex- perience as best it can. Yes; for here, surely, is one of the dangers that are mixed with the blessings and the opportunities of doing good which we are meant to find in this quality of modern life. How can we, beset by all this surge of demands and interests and suggestions from without us — thronged by this growing crowd of tidings — how can we ensure, or even hope for, any corresponding growth of power and command with which to meet it ? It rises more and more upon us, this stream of outward things : where shall we find the quiet strength of discernment and appreciation which should deal with it and order it ? How can we help becoming superficial ? First, perhaps, confused and hurried and distressed by our own inadequacy ; then vacillating with uncertain c 18 THE SAFEGUARD OF JUDGMENT. standards ; then conventional, and contented with short, shallow thoughts; mere tourists, who have got so many sights to see, that they can think of nothing. Surely that is a clanger which many of us have felt to he threatening the very spring of our best happiness and hope of usefulness ; the danger of coming to look on life less thoroughly and worthily, with wandering, unpenetrating eyes, with no certain standard in the mind ; the danger of that weary abdication of the toil of thoroughness which makes men i-ightly fear to trust themselves. For it is only through long years of strict sincerity and patience, that the strength of quietness and con- fidence can come to any man ; and it will never come to those who are content to judge things superficially. II. We may fancy that in bygone days it was easier to think things out, to guard the mind's steadiness and strength and self-possession, to keep the place of judgment orderly and uncrowded. For most men, I suppose, it was so ; but not, perhaps, for those who lived in the world's busiest scenes. The difficulty is, indeed, more urgent and aggressive and general now than it has ever been ; but it is no new difficulty, and some of the best counsel to be found about it is in St. Bernard's well-known admonitions, " De THE SAFEGUARD OF JUDGMENT. 19 Consideratione." But let us turn to a great teacher nearer our own times. His experience is severed from ours, indeed, by a century of incalculable change, and yet his words seem strangely fresh, and his guidance has lost nothing of its relevance and worth. In 1791 Wordsworth stayed in London — in that " Monstrous ant-hill on the plain Of a too busy world ; " in the seventh book of the "Prelude" he describes the sights that most laid hold upon his mind ; and in its closing lines he tells us with matchless skill alike a peril that he felt amid " That endless stream of men and moving things," and also the power which kept him still unharmed and self-possessed. Let us listen to his words; for surely they are words of signal and abiding wisdom. He speaks " Of what the mighty City is herself To thousands upon thousands of her sons, Living amid the same perpetual whirl Of trivial objects : " and then he tells the way of his deliverance from that overwhelming turmoil. For " Though the picture weary out the eye, By nature an unmanageable sight, It is not wholly so to him who looks In steadiness, who hath among least things 20 THE SAFEGUARD OF JUDGMENT. An under-sense of greatest ; sees the parts As parts, but with a feeling of the whole. This, of all acquisitions, first awaits On sundry and most widely different modes Of education, nor with least delight On that through which I passed. Attention springs, And comprehensiveness and memory flow, From early converse with the works of God Among all regions ; chiefly where appear- Most obviously simplicity and power." He speaks of the exalting greatness of the everlast- ing streams and woods ; of the vast movements of the sea, that ■ Shape for mankind, by principles as fixed The views and aspirations of the soul To majesty ; " and of the virtue of the ancient hills, to " Quicken the slumbering mind and aid the thoughts, However multitudinous, to move With order and relation." And then he sums up thus his debt to the education that had made him conversant with greatness before the stunning tide of the world s busiest city broke upon him — " This did I feel, in London's vast domain, The spirit of Nature was upon me there ; The soul of Beauty and enduring Life Youchsafed her inspiration, and diffused Through meagre lines and colours, and the press Of self-destroying, transitory things. Composure, and ennobling harmony." 1 1 Cf. also "Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey,"' p. 93; " The Excursion," bk. i. p. 417 ; " The Prelude," pp. 294, 295- THE SAFEGUARD OF JUDGMENT. 21 To "look in steadiness;" to "have among least things an under-sense of greatest;" — not in this passage only, but in others also, equally characteristic of his genius, Wordsworth points to this as the gift, the privilege, that had come to him from Nature's training of his mind. Of this he speaks as the power which kept him strong, possessor of his own soul, in the " blank confusion " of the huge city, lightening " The heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world." And of this he also speaks as the privilege which true education should confer. And here, surely, his words have a challenge for us all in this place. 1 For Oxford, with its teaching, its traditions, its examples, ought to help us to gain and hold through all our work, whatever it may be, that under-sense of greatest things ; that subduing, yet confirming consciousness of great heights round human life, and great issues moving through it. Whatever may be our line of study here, it should have made us, or rather should be making us, in some way conversant with great- ness ; it should be deepening and enlarging in us the discovery, the discernment of what greatness is — of its reserves, its slow, laborious processes, its hidden 1 This sermon was preached before the University. 22 THE SAFEGUARD OF JUDGMENT. discipline, the costliness of its sustained simplicity. Would not this be indeed a true test of that which is really the highest education, that it should thus make those who are capable of it conversant with greatness ; that it should at least start them in that strenuous, aspiring, humble course of toil whose best achievements seem, perhaps, only a discovering how much is still untouched ? For it is through toil like that that the knowledge of real greatness is gained and carried forward and kept fresh ; while the mind moves on from strength to strength in unswerving care for that which is highest and most arduous : dreading what is facile, showy, superficial, cheap ; surmising always something that appreciation has not grasped, and learning in this progress its own power and weakness, its own littleness and greatness. And so is gained that humble self-possession and self- reverence which will make a man, at all events, keep something in him clear above the confusion and excitement of this world ; as one who knows that there are tides deep down below the waves of this life, and steadfast heights round which the waves but fret and hurry and are gone ; and that the true worth of all work will be found in its allegiance to the greatest examples and the highest standards that the worker has been enabled to discern. Thus may THE SAFEGUARD OF JUDGMENT, 23 men find in the opportunities of Oxford something of what Wordsworth found among the hills and streams and lakes he loved ; thus may our education prove itself in essence one with the education which made him what he was ; and men may go forth from among us, or stay with us here, holding their own through all the whirl and din of modern life ; thorough, in thought and work, amidst all its hurry ; resolute to scan, discriminate, appraise its multitu- dinous interests, in the consciousness of an unchang- ing standard, and of a greatness which they have come to know, and dare not let themselves forget. III. This is a great hope to have before us ; a hope which neither corporately nor individually have we any right to lower or renounce ; the hope of bear- ing in our day the part which educated men are called to bear. But we should pitiably misunder- stand our place in life, if we were to forget that this power of self-possession and discernment may be reached by other ways than that of a high education, of which not all are capable, to which but few can come. Many who have had but scanty privileges of this sort stand clear-sighted, self- respecting, unbewildered, in the stress of life. For they have found the way by which all men are called alike to come and steep their souls in the 24 THE SAFEGUARD OF JUDGMENT. light of the one surpassing, all-ennobling greatness. It is an inestimable privilege to be conversant with greatness in literature, in science, in nature, in art ; but the glow will fade from off the heights, and the power of appreciation dwindle down into a poor pride in being appreciative, if we neglect those hints of an unapproachable greatness which come to us through all these things ; if we refuse to wait with patient, eager eyes upon His Self-revealing without Whom nothing can be strong or great. To be moving- forward, though it be but slowly, in the knowledge and the love of God, — this will give light and harmony and life to all that the soul gains as it advances in the discovery of greatness among the things of earth ; this will fortify it with self- reverence, because God has deigned to call it near unto Himself ; this will give it, amidst the throng and haste of daily work, a steadfast under-sense of greatest things to guard its clearness of discernment, its sense of proportion, its independence and simplicity and courage. — In the Acts of the Apostles, and in their Letters, we can see something of the quiet fearlessness, the steadiness of thought and purpose, the freedom and elevation, which belong to those whose minds are stayed on God, even in the presence of this world's most exciting and THE SAFEGUARD OF JUDGMENT. 25 absorbing scenes. Ephesus, Corinth, Athens, Rome, were cities in which the pride and splendour and ability of this world reached a height which seemed as though it could not be surpassed, as though it might defy the strength and ruthlessness of time ; yet we may look in vain for any sign that all their show engrossed at all the thoughts of an Apostle, or came near shaking his conviction as to the real meaning of life, and the quarter whence the conquering forces were advancing. St. Paul stands on Mars' Hill, and simply tells the Athenians that they are failing to understand the true dignity and capacity of human nature ; St. Peter writes — it seems most probable — from Rome, and judges all the glory of man to be as the flower of the grass, and all the terrors of this world as nothing to those who have the Lord God sanctified in their hearts ; St. John at Ephesus, in the loneliness of extreme old age, quietly says that the world is passing away, and the lust thereof, before the victory of the faith of Jesus Christ. It is curious to imagine the difference between the dominant interest with which St. Paul says, " I must see Rome," and that which the words would ordinarily convey. 1 Perhaps we hardly think 1 The writer thinks that lie has seen attention drawn to this contrast, but he cannot remember where. 26 THE SAFEGUARD OF JUDGMENT. of the Apostles as moving to and fro amidst the throng and splendour of great cities, or of their letters as written with the clamour of a crowded street about them ; so withdrawn they seem, and unaffected by such things ; so sure of their own ground, and unconfused in judgment. Nor can we doubt the secret of their independence. They had not always been familiar with great sights ; they clo not seem at all like men who might be naturally insensible and dull to them ; and still less can we think of them as coldly indiffei'ent to human life, to the phases in which it is displayed, to its brilliant and astounding works, its manifold surprises, its audacious ventures. No; but amidst all these things they bore the under-sense of something far greater ; the under-sense of all that they had learnt concerning man's true calling, and the glory which shall be revealed in him ; the under-sense of perfect goodness, of infinite love ; the under-sense of the Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and of God made manifest in Jesus Christ. Surely it is not strange that, with hearts thus filled, they went unawed to meet the utmost pride and tumult of this world ; and that, through their meekness and humility and self- distrust, there rises up a certain loftiness which has never been surpassed : a character, a bearing, where THE SAFEGUARD OF JUDGMENT. 27 the traits of lowliness and grandeur strangely meet — the freedom and the tranquillity of those who know God. Ah ! hut we must look beyond, above them, for the perfect Example of such simplicity and stead- fastness. Is it not true that if we try to watch our Saviour in the days of His humiliation, and to know more deeply what He was among men, this is one of the unique distinctions that emerge with growing clearness while we gaze : this calm, unhesitating independence, this sti'ength of an undoubting Self- possession, this simple certainty of discernment ? He Who so loved the world that He came down to die for it, yet moves among its interests, and displays, and agitations, and disasters, with a tranquillity of judgment which might almost be mistaken for indifference. He corrects its axioms, reverses its standards, forecasts its revolutions, disposes of its claims ; its highest powers and its most appalling terrors fail alike to affect the steadiness of His penetrating insight, the austere plainness of His words. Despised and suffering, weaiy and deserted, still He speaks at times as though He were already seated on the throne of judgment, with all nations there before Him, waiting in aweful, passive, con- centrated expectation for His separating Voice. "All 28 THE SAFEGUARD OF JUDGMENT. things are delivered to Me of My Father ; " " Fear not, little flock ; it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom ; " " Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away ; " " Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me and of My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed when He cometh in the glory of His Father with the holy angels ; " " Ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars ; see that ye be not troubled : for all these things must come to pass ; " " These are the beginnings of sorrows ; " " As for these things which ye behold, the days will come, in the which there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down ; " "I appoint unto you a kingdom, as My Father hath appointed unto Me." Thei'e is an unearthly quietness and con- fidence in utterances such as these ; they sound like His Who sitteth above the water-flood, and Whose Voice is mighty in operation. He Who so speaks holds Himself apart from the hurrying excitement of this world, and scans and tries it by a measure of His own. He is in converse with a glory that it cannot see. — Surely there is an arresting strangeness in this union of entire remoteness and entire humiliation. 1 He stands so separate, aloft, unmoved amidst those 1 Cf. E. W. Dale, " Christian Doctrine," p. 85. THE SAFEGUARD OF JUDGMENT. 29 He loves and serves as none has loved or served on earth before — the souls that He will die to save. Surely, as we look into the depth of that mysterious blending 1 , we feel that our thoughts are moving straight towards the truth that will alone account for it : — He is, indeed, at once both nearer to us men than men had ever thought that God could come, and higher, too, than men had ever thought that God could be. In His lowliest abasement He is none other than the Son of God : no wonder if He more than all men acts and speaks as one Who "Hath among least things An under-sense of greatest ; " since in every deed and utterance, and in all suffering and silence, He is the very Word of God — One with the Father before all worlds. IV. Brethren, let us try more strenuously to steep our souls in that which He has made known to us of God. Many of us may have found already that it is hard, in the full stress of work, to keep ourselves unspotted from the world, and to live in simple loyalty to truth and righteousness. And some may come to know how terrible it is to feel that the demands of life are more than they have strength to meet ; to face great duties with a sickening sense of inner poverty and unreadiness. Believe it, our best 30 THE SAFEGUARD OF JUDGMENT. hope of doing right in such an age as this lies in keeping ourselves conversant with greatness; and wherever else it may be our privilege to hold that converse, we must not fail to seek it day by day where the infinite greatness of Almighty God is brought near to us in the life of Jesus Christ our Lord. He Who gave calmness, insight, self-possession, to His saints of old, will not leave us comfortless, if we try to learn of Him ; and amidst the haste and agitation of this world His Presence will go with us, and He will give us rest. Those are wise, far-reaching words of Bishop Berkeley's that were quoted lately by one who has well known the strain of public life : 1 " Whatever the world thinks, he who hath not much meditated upon God, the human soul, and the summum bonum, may possibly make a thriving earthworm, but will most indubitably make a sorry patriot and a sorry states- man." Yes, there is no equipment for our work, whatever it may be, that is so necessary as the knowledge of God and the recollection of His Pre- sence. Much may be done, and done very well, by taking pains, by study of details, by strength of will, and prudence ; but all these things have not availed to save men from dismally misreading life, and 1 A. J. Balfour, " Essays and Addresses," p. 109. THE SAFEGUARD OF JUDGMENT. 31 blundering between their temptations and their opportunities. 1 To bear with one through all the commotion of things visible the under-sense of God — this is the true secret of simplicity and freedom ; and this is only to be learnt through that toil of thought and prayer which has been, perhaps, the subject of more broken resolutions than any other duty of the Christian life. May God grant us, howsoever often we have entered on that toil and faltered from it, still to try again; and may He, in Whom are all our fresh springs, 2 all our sources of renewal and of hope, deliver us from the bewilder- ment of those who forget Him, and from the in- calculable perils of a prayerless life. 1 Cf. Mozley's " Parochial and Occasional Sermons." Sermon ii. ■ Ps. lxxxvii. 7. III. THE LORD'S DAY. "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day." Rev. i. 10. I. There has been much doubt as to the meaning with which St. John speaks of " the Lord's day." On the one hand, there is no sign from any other source that in his time the title was used to mark the first day of the week ; on the other hand, the meanings which have been suggested instead of this are open to clear and strong objections. It is strange, for instance, that a literal and particular note of place should be co-ordinate with a metaphorical and general note of time ; and since, in the preceding verse, Patmos means plainly an island where St. John was, we should expect the Lord's day in this verse to mean plainly a day in St. John's experience, and not a period of unknown duration, or the second coming of our Lord. It seems to me most likely that St. John did wish to mark that it was on the THE LORD'S DAY. 33 first day of the week, the day on which Christ rose from the dead, that the great vision was vouchsafed to him. The day may never before have been called by this name; but St. John may have felt quite sure that no one who read his record could have any doubt what day he meant. For many years, perhaps for half a century, the day had not only stood out in each week of the Church's life and worship, — as the anniversary of a great victory or deliverance may stand out and be unlike all other days of the year to a free and thankful nation ; — it would also have been greeted by each Christian for himself and in his own heart with a sense of personal gratitude and exultation such as, yet far surpassing, that which some of us may feel, with a freshness that perhaps surprises us, as each year brings round the day on which some special blessing was granted to ourselves or to our homes. For on that mornino; each, when sleep left him, when his mind and heart were free to mount towards God, would remember that it was the day on which His Saviour's triumph had made possible for him the forgiveness, the peace and joy and hope, the knowledge and the love of God, the new beginning and the ever-renewed strength, which had changed for him the look of all things. Surely it is not strange —rather it is in true P 34 THE LORD'S DAY. accord with the unearthly gladness, the fresh mind- fulness of Apostolic Christianity — that, none the less because he was alone, the exile at Patmos should keep as he was wont the weekly festival of the Resurrection. It is not strange that, as he wrote for those to whom that day meant almost all it meant to him, (not, indeed, quite all, since they had never gone into the empty tomb, and felt that vast, unique revulsion of thought and feeling on the first Easter Day), he should wish to tell them that it was in his lonely honouring of the festival that God sent and signified the Revelation to him : not strange that, as he thinks how then he fell as dead at the feet of the Risen and Ascended Lord, he should choose, to mark the day, that title which as on that day the Saviour took to bear for ever both as man and God. For those whose life was ever ruled by the conviction that through the Resurrection God had made the Crucified, the Son of man, to be the Lord of all, might know at once what St. John meant when he spoke of the Lord's day. Even if the term was new to them, it might quite plainlj* mean the day of Christ's everlasting triumph over death and darkness : the day when He was made manifest as Lord, over all that seems most masterful among the things of time ; the day which in the consciousness of the Church THE LORD'S DAY. 35 could never be dissociated from that central fact in the Church's faith and life which we commemorate each week on Sunday and each year at Easter. II. This, I think, is the likeliest meaning of the expression ; and certainly the experience which St. John connects with it may point us to the true purpose of Sunday, to the necessary note of all right observance of it, to its great work in every life. " I was in the Spirit," he says, " on the Lord's day." " In the Spirit " — in that state, it would seem, or in a state essentially akin to that which characterized our Lord's whole manhood in the glory of its resurrection. As His human nature, when He rose again, passed beyond the restrictions which He had willed to accept for it in the days of His humiliation ; as it became wholly, freely spiritual, pervaded, wielded, filled, informed, distinguished by the unhindered and unbounded power of the Spirit — the Spirit given to Him without measure when He was in the world, re- strained then in its manifestation by His own will for His task's sake, released now to replenish and exalt and glorify every part of His humanity in its risen life ; 1 so, in some degree and for a while, was His servant, His beloved disciple, lifted above all the 1 Cf. W. Milligan, " The Resurrection of our Lord," p. 24 and note 15; and Bishop Westcott on St. John iii. 34. 36 THE LORD'S DAY. things of this world, above its trials and hindrances, its difficulty and delay, to know for a space the glory that shall be revealed, to feel the free tide of the true life coursing through his being, to see light in the Light of God, and so to measure all things. " I was in the Spirit." We cannot imagine all, or nearly all, that the words recorded as St. John wrote them. For growth in holiness and in the habit of prayer, while in many ways it brings men nearer and nearer to their fellow-men, yet increases in them also that which is incommunicable, inscrutable in the inner life. We may know them better, we may be surer of their understanding us, we may feel that barriers of severance are gone ; yet we are conscious also of an increasing mystery and reserve in them — conscious of depths and heights we cannot penetrate, and of the action of forces that are beyond our ken. So we may be sure that in the yielding of St. John's heart to that transfiguring power which brought him among the things eternal and unseen, there was far more than we in our backwardness and inconstancy can understand. Only we may imagine how the sights and sounds, the fears and threats and cares of this world, fell away from him as a dream when one awaketh, or as the morning clouds that break and lessen and are gone when the THE LORD'S DAY. 37 sun is rising. We may imagine how the fragments of truth that light this world would move towards their perfectness and union in the vision of God ; how the real character of all things, the real purpose of life, the real value of a man's soul, would be unveiled ; and how the will of God would then be known to be indeed the only way of peace. 1 III. There seems an abrupt and wide contrast be- tween the thought of such a state and our ordinary ideas of Sunday — of its meaning and its duties. But the highest standard is apt to prove the simplest and most practical in the end ; and I believe that the true worth of Sunday to us all depends on our coming to find in it the opportunity, the hope, the means of some such rising above this world as that of which St. John speaks ; some approach towards that entrance among things eternal which he links with the Lord's day. Yes, whatever may be our place and work in life, our share in its pleasures, and hardships, and interests, and sorrows, if Sunday is to mean more and not less to us as the years go by, we must be using it to learn a little more of our duty, and of our need ; of our selves, as God sees us ; and, above all, of His will, His ways, His mercy, and His justice. If we only think of it as a day to which certain 1 Cf. "E la Sua volontate e nostra pace" (Dante, "Paradiso," iii. 85). 38 THE LORD'S DAY. prohibitions and obligations have been attached, we are likely to find any strict observance of it irksome and unreasonable, and to grow more and more lax and careless in regard to it, till perhaps we come to disregard it altogether. But, in truth, we shall be disregarding not the day, nor God alone, nor His Church, but also ourselves. For Sunday is our best, if not our only, hope of self-preservation in the true meaning of the word. With increasing insistence, every year, as we grow older, and as the world grows busier, or at least more restless, the demands of work or pleasure will thicken on us. It will become harder and harder to keep any proportion in our lives ; to get time to think, and to increase the power of thinking. A man may have, perhaps, no need to work (as need is ordinarily reckoned) ; but he may lose himself in pleasure, in society, in excitement, in ambition, more thoroughly and more dismally than in any drudgery of long mechanical routine. He may become absorbed in any of these things, shaping his deeds, his words, his very thoughts and feelings, as fashion or prejudice or chance directs him, till almost all the power of thinking independently and acting simply ebbs away from him ; till he quite forgets that there is any end for men to seek, or any meaning in their lives beyond this daily, aimless THE LORD'S DAY. 39 deference to unreasonable exigencies. One who long has watched the stirring life of one of our greatest cities has spoken of "the feverish and insane devo- tion to secular business" as "one of the most serious perils to the moral life of our country ; " and has said that " there are too many people in England on whose gravestones the French epitaph might be written, ' He was born a man, and died a grocer.' " 1 Yes, but if a man is to narrow in and stifle his humanity in any groove of worldly care, it had far better be in such a groove as that, than in some other ways where men forget, perhaps, more often and more thoroughly the things unseen and the claims of their own souls — in party-spirit, in the strife for prominence, in the joyless drifting on from one way of killing time to another, in the mere avoidance of trouble or unpopularity. For self-preservation, then, and self-possession, for the renewal of our purpose in life, for a fair estimate of its various interests, for calmness and strength of mind, we need to rise at times above the ways of this world, and to remember what we are, Whom we serve, whither we are called. And it is in this that the right use of Sunday may help us far more than we fancy. For it is by quiet thought in the realization 1 "The Ten Commandments," R. W. Dale, pp. 110, 111. 40 THE LORD'S DAY. of God's Presence, and by prayer and worship, that we must regain and deepen this remembrance ; it is by the Holy Eucharist that God is ever ready to bear it into our hearts, and make it tell on all our ways. — There are in Oxford 1 many temptations, widely different for different men; different for young and old, different for those who like work and for those who do not, different for those who are slow and for those who are clever. But for all of us, I think, it is a place of some peculiar trials and risks ; and if we are to go through them rightly, by God's grace, we must not be giving up anything that helps to keep clear and strong within us the master-truths of life. And when we look beyond Oxford, when we try with any reality to forecast the wider demands we have to face ; — the problems, tasks, anxieties ; the needs and sorrows, whether of others or our own ; the changes, and losses, and dis- appointments, and responsibilities ; — surely it will seem worth some pains if we can ever hope to meet them as men who " will not be afraid of any evil tidings," because they have learnt in communion with God the secrets of self-possession and self-sacrifice. 1 This sermon was preached iu Christ Church. IV. THE WORK OF GOD'S WORD. " For as the raiu coraeth down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and rnaketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater : so shall My Word be that goeth forth out of My mouth : it shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." Isa. lv. 10, 11. I. There is a peculiar richness of detail, expressed or suggested, on either side of the comparison here drawn. First, there comes before us that great commerce between earth and sky whereby God gives us rain and fruitful seasons. The rain and snow come down from heaven ; and before they may return thither they have a work to do on earth. They shall indeed return whence they came, as the mists rise from the ground, and the clouds begin again to gather ; but not till they have wrought their task. It is not a mere travelling 'to and fro of rain and mists ; that which cometh down from 42 THE WORK OF GOD'S WORD. heaven is not idle and resultless here ; in visiting the earth it blesses it : and it is a changed and bettered soil from which the moisture mounts again. The dull, dry surface is refreshed ; that which before was hard and stubborn is yielding now and penetrable, and beneath the surface life and hope are stirring with new strength. For the rain has made its way to the seed that slept below, and what was ready to perish is quickened and germinant ; the wonder and gladness of the spring are being now prepared, and soon the fresh shoots will be pushing through the loosened clods. And we, with the dismal and appal- ling story of a vast famine 1 daily set before us, page by page, may realize somewhat more vividly the meaning of the words which tell of seed given to the sower and bread to the eater, of food for life and health and strength, and of the hope and earnest of bounty yet to come. " So shall My Word be that goeth forth out of My mouth : it shall not return unto Me empty ; no, it shall not return till it hath accomplished that which I please, and prosperously carried out the thing for which I sent it." As the rain descends, and blesses, and quickens, and reascends, so does the Word of 1 This sermon was preached in February, 1892: the reference is to the famine in India. THE WORK OF GOD'S WORD. 43 God move in its appointed cycle. His Word, the utterance of His glory, the disclosure of His nature, the manifestation of His power and holiness and love and pity, the declaration of His will and of His dealings with mankind, — this also that He has sent down to earth shall not return unto Him void and fruitless ; this also has its work to do before it mounts again to heaven. The Divine revelation is not among men as a mere addition to the contents of human life, the possible subjects of study, the interests of the present or the monuments of the past ; power and energy belong to it essentially ; its place is among the living, and its life is real and effectual ; it runneth very swiftly; it is ever working the work of Him Who sent it. The thought of the Evangelic Prophet heralds that of the Apostle and Evangelist : " These are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God : and that believing ye might have life through His Name." The Word of God visits the earth with generative force and virtue ; and if it be taken apart from its work and from that action upon human life, that quickening and discipline of character, whereto He sent it, it cannot be seen as it really is. We cannot arrest and isolate the living implement of God's work ; or, at least, in proportion as we try to do so we must be prepared to find our 44 THE WORK OF GOD'S WORD. discernment of it imperfect and perplexing ; we must hold our judgment in abeyance, and keep our thoughts ready to be corrected or discarded when we return to see the Divine utterance in its true place among the chosen agents of God's eternal purpose. II. " It shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." Surely the first thing to be asked concerning that great course of His Self-revealing which is recorded for us in the Bible is as to its fulfilment of this promise. Has it accomplished, is it now accomplishing, that which He pleases ? Is it prospering in the thing whereto He sent it ? When we raise our eyes, as it were, from our critical study of it, and look out at human life : when we try to watch the Word of God at work, — is its work such as may please Him ? Is it such as fits what we may trust are our truest thoughts of Him ? Does the influence of the Bible on men and on their ways look like a prosperous carrying forward of a purpose of Infinite Love ? Ah ' brethren, before we let our minds begin to move towards answering such questions, let us try to do full justice to the conditions under which the Bible has to do its errand. Let us set our thoughts to work to give something like due import to those appalling words, " the sin of the world." It seems THE WORK OF GOD'S WORD. 45 sometimes as though almost all our misreading of life, our false views of what we have to do, our impatience of delay, our unreasonable despondency, were linked with the failure to think, or try to think, what those words mean. And certainly when we are attempting to measure what the Bible has been to men, it is of first importance that we should take pains to realize how the Bible finds men. For there are dark facts to be faced. It is not difficult, thank God, for most of us to recall some instances in which the Bible has been, to ourselves or to others, the steady source of consolation, encouragement, guidance through trials which seemed to leave little meaning in all else — the one pledge of tranquillity when all else seemed shaken. And this, indeed, is a great and wonderful experience. But we need, or at all events we may be asked for, more than this. We need to show the distinctive power of the Bible to purify and ennoble character, and to lift it higher and higher towards an absolutely perfect type. For nothing less than this can be the accomplishment on earth of that which God pleases. And it is in this regard that we have to face what well may make us pause, disquieted and humiliated. For we are confronted with much that looks very little like the prosperous career of a Divine purpose. There is the constant strangeness of 46 THE WORK OF GOD'S WORD. their lives who accept and read the Bible, and seem to find in it nothing that disturbs their worldliness, their animosity, their unkindness, their self-satisfaction or self-indulgence. But it is yet stranger and more disquieting to mark how the Bible itself can be used as relaxing the necessity for strenuous self-discipline and moral effort ; how its promises of mercy, its tidings of vast long-suffering and free forgiveness, its bountiful response to faith, its assurance of the gift of grace, can be forced into the service of self- deception, or taken as sedatives for conscience, that men may find rest unto their souls without renounc- ing their sins. Others, again, appeal to the Bible for the warrant of their cruelty and intolerance ; and we have to recognize under varying forms the temper of persecution in men who declare that they are guided by the Word of God. We have to own, for instance, that a man of great learning and religious influence, among the foremost academic and popular preachers of Elizabeth's reign, could not only hold that the Bible required that false teachers should be put to death, but also could deny that upon repentance there ought to follow any remission of their punishment. 1 It is in the face of facts like these, in the face of all the manifold inconsistency, and blindness, and 1 Thomas Cartwright's " Second Reply," pp. cvii.-cxviii. THE WORK OF GOD'S WORD. 47 indifference, and wilfulness of professing Christians, that we have to maintain that there is no light on earth to be compared with that which may be gained from the Book they hold ; that there is no perfect school of character, save that in which they claim to have been trained ; that there are found the thoughts, the convictions, the aspirations which must lift and lead men towards the life of God ; and that His Word is prospering in the thing whereto He sent it, the deliverance and the hallowing of human life. III. And we can, we must maintain it, if we are, with advancing moral insight, doing justice to two great facts : to sin, as the barrier and hindrance of the Bible's work ; to holiness, as its distinctive outcome. The outward signs of sin are in the world around us ; but it is by the knowledge of our own hearts that we must learn to read those signs, to penetrate to that which is beneath them, to measure its power of resistance to the appeal and discipline of a moral ideal. It is by the painful and deliberate recognition of our own slow, faulty growth, our reluctance to part with that which kept us back, the tricks we played with conscience, the " repentance to be repented of," the shy or grudging admission with which exacting truths were only bit by bit let in ; 48 THE WORK OF GOD'S WORD. it is by discovering, perhaps, how little we can trust ourselves, how near and ready are the movements of cowardice, impatience, anger, injustice, meanness : it is by the shock of finding some vile thing hiding, bruised, not killed, in a dark corner of the heart, that we may judge of the tenacity and cunning with which the Divine Light has to deal as it comes into the world. We must know what it has had, and yet has, to deal with in our own lives. True, we may thankfully say, what St. Paul implies in his own case, that there is no one in the world against whom we know so much as against ourselves ; 1 no one of whom we may not hope that if he had had our advantages and opportunities he would have used them far more generously, far moi*e fruitfully ; but still, as in the light of our self-knowledge we look at human history and life, we may wonder less that God's Word has not done more, than that even it has done so much. The forces against it have been so tremendous : the depth and subtlety and change- fulness of moral evil have so wrought to hinder it; the tendrils of sin from which it has to dis- engage the souls of men are so many and so strong. Only the hopefulness of Perfect Love could have undertaken such a task : only the long-suffering of 1 1 Tim. i. 15. 16. THE WORK OF GOD'S WORD. 49 the Eternal could have borne its disappointments and delay ; only the Wisdom that created man could have seen the way of his deliverance ; only the Day- spring from on high could have brought light into the shadow of that death. It is not strange if, in a world-wide process carried forward under such con- ditions, the advance is slow and broken ; if it seems precarious ; if the power that is sent down to raise men often has to bear the reproach of their mis- understanding and perverseness and disloyalty. But it is strange, it is a fact that cannot be denied importance, if under these conditions we see continu- ally being formed a character over which they seem to have less and less control ; a character which seems to be dying to sin, dying out of the sphere where sin reigns, and more and more intensely alive to God ; sensitive and alert to His Voice, radiant with His Light. It is a character which, when we meet it, we feel to bear a certain distinction of its own. We cannot analyze it ; and when we try to speak of it to others, we find that our words tell very little of what it really is to us. If ever we have distrusted it, its simplicity makes us ashamed of our prejudice and injustice ; and we are willing at once to give it honour, because we find it looks for none. We go away, and think that we remember what it was ; but E 50 THE WORK OF GOD'S WORD. when we see it again, we find it strangely brighter than our recollection of it. There is a singular reserve of power and resourcefulness in it ; so that it surprises us again and again by the disclosure of fresh ability or strength or insight. We grow sure that it is resting upon principles which we can very imperfectly understand ; that it is drawing life and light from sources not of this world ; that there is a great deal of self-discipline, of prayer, of severity, of hidden work, hard and patient, going on behind that simple cheerfulness and diligence with which the tasks of daily life are met, and the position, whatever it may be, accepted and adorned. The character stands out distinct, consistent, firm among the hazy and incongruous products of mere conventionality and compromise; and without any suggestion of monotony, there is a curious sameness in it. We recognize its identity in spite of the widest differences that break up mankind. We can discern that it is substantially the same, that it is an approximation to the very same type, whether we see it in the past or in the present ; centuries that are otherwise in sharpest contrast meet and are alike in yielding instances of it; under circumstances utterly unlike its likeness is not lost ; it is the same in all its deepest traits, whether it grows up in a monastery, or in the THE WORK OF GOD'S WORD. 51 stress and haste of business, or among the distractions of modern society. The highest culture may set it off and add a certain charm to its simplicity and modesty, but it is what it is in the peasant as in the scholar ; its central and distinctive quality is not changed even as a man goes on from early manhood to extreme age ; nay, we somehow feel that it is one and the same character in the manliest of men, and in the most womanly of women. Brethren, you know, I trust, — thank God, there is not one of us who may not know, — the character I would bring before you if 1 could ; you know the light in which it moves at all times and in all places ; you know the type from which it takes its constant traits. It is the character of holiness, the character of the saints ; the book whose influence has quickened, and directed, and chastened, and upheld it is the Bible ; and the everlasting type that gives it those unchanging notes of moral beauty is to be seen in Jesus Christ our Lord. Because His saints are what they are in every age, God's Word does not return unto Him void ; in their self-sacrifice and charity and patience it is ever accomplishing that which He pleases, and prospering in the thing whereto He sent it ; through the silent and inscrutable influence of their lives — that influence of simple goodness which emerges with a strange, unique 52 THE WORK OF GOD'S WORD. ascendency as years pass by — the earth is blessed and fruitful ; the true life wakes around them, and those who never saw them learn to hope from those whom they have taught to love ; and in their work and thankfulness and praise, God's Word, the utterance of His glory, reascends to Him Who sent it forth. It is an impressive sight that rises before us as we thus look back and see the great line of saints, and mark how all along the Bible has been their book. The impression grows deeper and more vivid if we come to know in any way what the Bible is to those who in our own day keep up the tradition of the saintly character. This is one of those com- manding and peculiar credentials of the Bible which no change, no shifting of thought, can in the least degree affect. Nothing can deprive it of this distinc- tion — that in its pages men have found, and still are finding, the discipline of the Christian character. 1 It holds the secret of the strongest, surest force that any man can wield ; and there is no superiority like that which it can give to those who meekly learn of it. Let us try in all our thoughts about the Bible to remember what it has done, by God's grace, to shape the characters of men and to sustain their 1 Cf. the volume of sermons by Dean Church which bears this title. THE WORK OF GOD'S WORD. 53 hope. And let us remember that the maintenance of this witness to its Divine authority and power rests with us all. We can all in this way help to guide aright the course of thought in our day about the Bible. Let us resolve that in all we think and say about it there shall be no touch of pride, or bitterness, or vanity, or scorn of any man ; that its spirit, the spirit of patience and humility and charity and hope, shall purify and rule us in its service ; nay, that we will force even controversy, if we needs must have to do with it, to be a means of showing forth the mind of Christ. Nor let us forget that there are other, wider ways in which we can advance, God helping us, that fruitful influence of His Word which gives it, perhaps, its readiest and most pene- trating appeal to men. Among the poor and ignorant of our own country, in the squalor of alleys, amidst the noisy vice of crowded streets, and the dull, earth-bound discontent of monotonous and ill-paid drudgery ; among the millions in other lands to whom Christ's name has never come, or has come only in association with such greed and lust as well may make it hateful to them ; in India, with its deep unsettlement of ancient thought, its rumours of coming change, when all may turn upon the Church's answer to its cry of need ; in Africa, where so many 54 THE WORK OF GOD'S WORD. noble lives have been laid down to win a hope which still is left trembling and distressed for lack of the reinforcements that come so very slowly to the front ; in every place where human life is passing on under the gaze of God, there are souls waiting to be visited, to be blest by the disclosure of His love, made known in Christ. Who can tell the joy and praise that may mount up to Him, the strength and freshness of the witness that may be rendered to His truth, when it gains its opportunity and speeds its work in those neglected multitudes ; when from them more nobly, more exultantly than ever in the past, there x'eascends to Heaven the utterance of His glory, rendered under new conditions, it may be, in the holiness and thanksgiving of the souls that His Word makes fruitful unto life eternal ? V. THE SANITY OF SAINTLINESS. " Wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Tim, vi. 3. " Wholesome words," " the wholesome teaching," " an outline of wholesome words," " healthy in the faith," " healthy, wholesome speech : " — the distinctive recurrence of these expressions in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus has been reckoned with the peculiarities which may be thought to tell against the belief that those Epistles were written by St. Paul. One would surely think it strange if new phrases and groups of phrases were not found in letters severed from those with which they are compared by a difference of character and purpose, and by the experience of many eventful years in a life of great activity and vivid feeling. St. Paul's vocabulary was not likely to be stereotyped ; new demands and new phenomena would not fail to bring new thoughts and words to one so eager as he was 56 THE SANITY OF SAINTLINESS. in sympathy and enterprise. And certainly it is not surprising if, as his work went on, he was led to insist, with an emphasis he had not used before, on health and wholesomeness and sanity as charac- teristic of the Christian faith and life. For he marked around him the quick growth of fanciful and morbid errors, the rank plenty of unprofitable talk, the corruption of character that set in with unreality and wilfulness in thought and teaching ; he watched the diseases of heart and mind that spread as strange theories became popular and lucrative. And over against all this he marked the strength and consistency and simplicity of the truth revealed in Christ, the mystery of godliness, the glorious Gospel of the Blessed God, which was committed to his trust ; he marked the surprises of fresh majesty and beauty that issued from its changeless steadfastness ; and he felt its transcendent harmony and reasonableness. But, above all, as he went from place to place, and came to know the inner life of the little communities of Christians, he could study the moral type that was formed by the faith of Jesus Christ, by His example, by His grace ; he saw what men and women came to be when they had really yielded up their lives to be fashioned by the truth ; he watched year after year that abiding THE SANITY OF SA INTLINESS. 57 miracle of Christian history, that readiest of Christian evidences, the emergence and development of the Christian character. And as he marked this broad, deep contrast between truth and error, in themselves and in their products, that which struck him again and again, that which seemed to be the salient distinction on the side of truth, was the health and wholesomeness of the thought it ruled and of the characters it formed. The healthiness of Chris- tian teaching, the soundness and wholesomeness of the saintly life, — this is what he loves to bring out in these latest of his Epistles. It is a quality which is not always owned as inherent in Christian excellence ; there are plenty of materials for a superficial and effective denial of it ; and perhaps, after all, the assertion of it must appeal to a faculty of appreciation which depends largely on a man's own will and conscience. But I believe it is a real and rightful glory of Christianity ; and I would try to speak of it to-night. I think we may be helped in regard to it by looking first to a different tract of human life ; that we may better understand the healthiness of the saintly character, if we begin by tracing the reality of health and soundness in another quarter where sometimes they have been thought deficient. 58 THE SANITY OF SAINTLINESS. L Among the " Essays of Elia," there is one of singular interest on "The Sanity of True Genius." There were scenes and conditions of Charles Lamb's life which give a pathetic intensity of mean- ing to what he wrote on such a theme ; and intrinsically the Essay is just and beautiful. Its purpose is to challenge and dispel the common, shallow thought that there is anything crazy, or undisciplined, or unaccountable, or lawless in the nights and ventures of a true poet's mind. It is a profound mistake to think that what is not commonplace must be reckless ; that nothing is rational and orderly save what is conventional and prosaic ; that a vivid imagination must be feverish. On the contrary, the boldest movements of a great poet's genius are held in loyal obedience to reason ; reason goes with him, and guides and rules him even in the remotest fields of fancy. And so, writes the Essayist, " from beyond the scope of nature, if he summon possible existences, he subjugates them to the law of her consistency. ... In their inner nature, and the law of their speech and actions, we are at home, and upon acquainted ground." 1 — It is, surely, a fine criticism. A third-rate writer is less consistent, less steady and harmonious and true to 1 " Elia and Eliana," pp. 244, 245 (ed. 1868). THE SANITY OF SA INTL I NESS. 59 nature, when he is dealing with the commonest scenes, the most conventional ways, than a great poet is when his characters are mere and even audacious imaginations, and all his scenes are in fairyland. So Shakespeare, for instance, is rational, just, restrained, and disciplined in every venture of creative power ; his strong reasonableness never falters or deserts him ; and however bold and new his work may be, it is always reasonable and always sound. II. An upward venture, away from the timid dulness of earth-bound thoughts, and above the grey canopy of earth-born clouds ; an upward venture, which those who stay below, contented with this world's conventions, suspect of eccentricity and oddness and unsteadiness ; an upward venture, not without fears and perils and demands that " shake the heart," 1 and test severely the reality of faith ; yet still a veuture that holds on, and finds a way, and releases and is greeted by an answering, confirming light ; a venture that thus warranted and reassured can then approve itself amidst the things of daily life, and bear a true message even to those who had doubted of its sanity and reasonableness, if only they will yield it a fair hearing, if only they have ears to hear ; — this, I suppose, is something like what happens in the work 1 The phrase is Dr. Dale's : " Old and New Evangelicalism." 60 THE SANITY OF SAINTL1NESS. of genius. And is it not also something like what happens in the work of saintliness, in the purest instances of the Christian character which we may- be able to discern in history or in our own experience ? Translate it from the sphere of art into the sphere of conduct, and see whether it may not all be said of those who through faith have wrought righteous- ness, and obtained promises ; those " of whom the world was not worthy." They have had the poet's courage, the courage that comes of a consciousness of power ; they were not afraid to be unworldly ; to let go the clogging and inadecpaate security of worldly standards ; to commit their way unto the Lord, and put their trust in Him ; to walk by faith and not by sight. In no age, we may be sure, has that been easy, or seemed generally to be the most sensible use of life. We may hardly be able to imagine " the heroism of faith " 1 that was in those who, in the first days, broke with all that seemed sanest, shrewdest, most certain of itself in the society around them, to throw their souls on Christ, and to know no rule, nor light, nor strength save His. The parting of the ways, the venture heavenwards, was in that age sharply marked ; and those who knew themselves called to be saints " went out, not knowing 1 The phrase is Dr. Mozley's : " Parochial Sermons." THE SANITY OF SAINTLINESS. 61 whither " they went, " to suffer affliction with the people of God," to endure " as seeing Him Who is invisible." Yet not in those first days only, but always and necessarily there is in the choice of God's way a certain abandonment of that which is plain and familiar and secure ; a determination to do with- out the guidance and companionship that this world has afforded us ; a casting forward of the soul to rely on that of which faith alone has spoken to us. It may be, and probably it is most often, all done quietly ; the venture, the shifting of reliance from the seen to the unseen, from society to God, the committal of the work and hope to His way, may be hidden in the inner life. He alone may know that there is any change ; that we have left off being clever, and are trying to be good ; that we want to shape our life to Christ's method, and to have done with worldliness. But there is need of courage all the same if we are to get on without the signs of success or approval that have reassured us in the past ; if we are to know no reassurance save in His Voice. For, as the son of Sirach teaches us, Wisdom at the first will walk with men by crooked ways, and will bring fear and dread upon them, and torment them with her dis- cipline, until she may trust their souls. 1 It is 1 Ecclus. iv. 17. 62 THE SANITY OF SA1NTLINESS. always anxious work to aim high, and any one who tries to aim where the Bible points will soon find a deep meaning in those words of warning, " My sod, if thou come to serve the Lord, prepare thy soul for temptation. Set thy heart aright, and constantly endure, and make not haste in time of trouble." 1 The worldly way of doing things seems sober, unexacting, business-like ; it keeps in sight of land ; there is plenty of company along it. The other way, the way that depends step by step on God, and that goes uncompromisingly by the dis- closure of His will, soon brings a man where the ordinary maxims and methods fail ; where the advice of men is hard to get, and where he must solve his difficulties by the light of heaven, or go back. Yes, indeed, there is in following after holiness a venture very like the enterprise of great imaginative genius ; and at times, in both cases it may be, the light burns low, the inspiration seems to flag, and faith is on its trial. Surely it is out of such moments that the frequent cry of the Psalmist rises up : " How long wilt Thou forget me, O Lord, for ever : how long wilt Thou hide Thy face from me ? " " How long shall I seek counsel in my soul, and be so vexed in my heart 1" "0 hold Thou up my goings in Thy paths ; 1 Ecclus. ii. 1, 2. THE S AMITY OF SAINTLWESS. 63 that my footsteps slip not." "Our heart is not turned back : neither our steps gone out of Thy way : no, not when Thou hast smitten us into the place of dragons, and covered us with the shadow of death." " 0 be Thou our help in trouble : for vain is the help of man." " My heart within me is desolate : yet do I remember the time past." " Hear me, O Lord, and that soon, for my spirit waxeth faint : hide not Thy face from me, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit." It is the voice of one who has dared to raise his life above the apparent security, the sheltering conventions of this world ; and who shudders lest he should be left in loneliness, lest the darkness should come down on him and the tokens fail, upon the long, mysterious, and uphill way of holiness. There is this venture, then, for saintliness as for genius. Both alike leave the plain ways of earth, the current compromise between righteousness and comfort ; and both must be prepared at times to be thought odd and unaccountable, if not positively troublesome. Such an estimate of poets, and of " great wits " generally, is proverbial. To quote " Elia " again, " Men, finding in the raptures of the higher poetry a condition of exaltation, to which they have no parallel in their own experience, besides the spurious 64 THE SANITY OF SA IN TL I NESS. resemblance of it in dreams and fevers, impute a state of dreaminess and fever to the poet." And so, when the righteous man is vindicated before those who made no account of his labours, they recall, as we read in the Book of Wisdom, a like estimate of him : " This was he, whom we had sometimes in derision, and a proverb of reproach : we fools ac- counted his life madness, and his end to be without honour." But they have to add, " How is he numbered among the children of God, and his lot is among the saints ! " 1 III. Yes, for in both cases we have marked but half the truth when we have said that genius and saintli- ness are abnormal ; that they depart from the common ways of men, and go off into a sphere undreamt of in this world's philosophy. If this were all, neither genius nor saintliness could have retained for acfe after age its hold upon the world, and its power to teach plain men the way to think and live. The real wonder, the deep significance of true saintliness, when we can see it in its purest, simplest form, is this, that as it mounts it never loses calmness, sim- plicity, sobriety, reasonableness; it passes from the bondage of worldliness, not into mere independence, but into an obedience which is perfect freedom ; like 1 Wisd. v. 3-5. THE SANITY OF SA1NTLINESS. 65 the skylark, rising high above its nest, it comes to " a privacy of glorious light " — " Whence it can pour upon the world a flood Of harmony, with instinct more divine ; Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam ; True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home." Yes, for if we try to watch the work, the outcome of a really saintly life among the common ways, the everyday business of this world, we find that, though it draws its light and strength, its principles and motives, from a land that is very far off, and though at first the matter-of-fact man thought it odd, yet somehow it has in the long run a certain strange effectiveness ; and many even of those who say they do not understand it, are frankly conscious of a very practical power and value in it. There is apt to be in it some such blending of contrasted qualities as Professor Jowett finely marked in the character of St. Paul, " the most enthusiastic of all men, " yet also " the most prudent ; " " the Apostle of freedom, and yet the most moderate ; " mingling " what the world terms mysticism " with " a perfect humanity, search- ing the feelings and knowing the hearts of all men." 1 It is easy, of course, to point to the mistakes of good and devout people ; easy to show that self-deception and inconsistency are, in this matter as in others, 1 Professor Jowett, " St. Paul's Epistles," i. 297, 300. F 06 THE SANITY OF SAINTL1NESS. quite incalculable in the oddness of their ways and works ; easy to make much of the disproportion or exaggeration which the peculiarities of individuals or of generations have foisted into the conception of the highest life at this or that time. But I believe that if one relegates these things to their proper place, and tries to disengage the Christian character from the accretions and disfigurements which it has endured, but not engendered, the sanity of saintliness may become as clear and certain as the sanity of genius. For true saintliness fosters no wilfulness of character; rather it chastens and subdues the ten- dency to one-sidedness and exaggeration. It will teach men, if they wish to learn, how best to dis- cipline those moods and tempers which most often mar the voice of joy and health ; it will train them in self-control, and equality, and harmony, and balance ; even as He wrought of Whom men said, " He hath done all things well." If the saintly character ventures far away from common views of life, it is only that from afar it may bring among life's common ways a higher, purer, brighter dutifulness ; a finer sense of what life means ; a nobler bearing towards its tasks, its pleasures, its miseries, and its difficulties. And surely, if one tries to think who, within the narrow range of one's own dim-sighted THE SANITY OF SA 1NTLINESS. observation, have seemed most nearly to reflect the traits of saintliness, they will be men who, whether young or old, simple or brilliant, active or studious, rich or poor, looked life full in the face, and did with all their might what they found to do, and were in all their ways — in work, in society, in recreation, in things secular and things sacred — such as all men most would wish to be when they are true to the best thoughts of their own hearts. IV, The study of the Christian character cannot but be a long and delicate task ; and it depends on moral and spiritual conditions which men slowly, and, in this life, imperfectly, attain. But we all may come, thank God, to know enough of that character to feel its unique power among the many witnesses to Christian truth. From the earliest days of the English Church the evidence of character has been, probably, the strongest force that has drawn English men and women to the love of Christ. 1 And now, probably, it is the force which most tenaciously keeps them Christian still at heart when the difficulties of our day press hard upon them. It is the force that travels furthest, pierces deepest and most quietly, lasts longest, binds fastest, of all that are astir among us. To have known one 1 Cf. W. Bright, " Early English Church History," p. 49 ; " Way- marks in Church History," p. 305. 68 THE SANITY OF SA INTL IN ESS. saint may often make it hard for a man ever to lose all faith in Him on Whom the saints rely, in Whom alone they glory. Therefore it is that I have tried this evening 1 to point to one remarkable element in this force — the sanity of saintliness ; to that chastened, reverent, obedient enthusiasm which has made Christ's faithful servants in the past, and makes them now, at once the boldest and the sanest of mankind, the least prosaic and the most serviceable. " Herein is a mar- vellous thing," that out of so remote a past there has risen up a character whose power to attract and serve and bless no change can antiquate, no lapse of time make obsolete ; that the life which is wholly yielded to the discipline of the Gospels, the life which is simply set to be conformed to Christ, quitting all other influence and rule and reassurance, and caring for His alone, proves to be what is needed for the help and refreshment and ennobling of age after age ; what the broad judgment of each age, across im- measurable shiftings of culture, habits, thoughts, will own for its most beneficial factor and its best attainment. Yes, " herein is a marvellous thing," if we think simply of the place such lives and characters hold among us now, in a society severed from that in 1 This sermon was preached at St. Mary's, Oxford, during the meeting of the British Association in August, 1894, THE SANITY OF SAINTLINESS. G9 which Christ lived and taught by differences deep and manifold beyond description. And surely it is almost impossible thoroughly, patiently, perseveringly, to take to heart that character, in its mystery and resourcefulness, its use and beauty, its sameness and its newness, its unearthly height and earthward dutifulness, its unquestioning devotion and its reason- able service, and then to doubt that it does rest ultimately upon a solid ground of truth and sober- ness ; that He Who brought it among men, knew men as none else has ever known them ; that He was in- capable of deceiving either others or Himself ; that He can inspire every age because He lives through all. At all events, those who feel that without Christ they could hardly bear to live, and could not dare to die, so long as that character is what it has been in the world, will go on pointing to it when they are asked for a reason of the hope that is in them, and of the faith and love with which they lift their hearts to praise the King of Saints, and to worship II iiu as Light of Light, as Very God of Very Cod. VI. THE SIMPLICITY OF GOODNESS. " Put thou thy trust in the Lord, and be doing good." Ps. xxxvii. 3. Here is the rule of a religious life, expressed in the simplest form : it rests upon trust in God, it is active in doing good ; thus is it marked and distinguished in its informing principle and in its outward mani- festation : these are the traits which make it what it is. Let us try this morning to think of them for a while. I. " Put thou thy trust in the Lord." It is the great lesson of the Bible, from end to end, in history, in psalm, in prophecy. When St. Paul speaks of " the patience of the Scriptures," he means, I suppose, that calm, enduring confidence in God which steadily they inculcate and justify. Our fathers "put their trust in Thee, and were not confounded : " that is the sum of the experience of God's servants — the broad truth that rises out of the past to give guidance and THE SIMPLICITY OF GOODNESS. 71 courage in the present, to dispel the terror and anxiety that are looming in the future ; to uphold the choice of goodness through times of perplexity and dismay. God has not hitherto betrayed the lives that have been committed to His care, and ordered in reliance on His truth. Sooner or later, in one way or another, those who have dared wholly to trust Him have found that the patience of the saints is the true use of life. However wild and casual the course of sinful history may seem, it is not merely chaotic. We have seen but a part when we have marked that it is confused and out of gear: for above its tumult God is watching and supreme ; and wind and storm fulfil His word, and the fierceness of men shall turn to His praise. He will see to it that a pure and patient will is not wholly overwhelmed and lost in the disorderly struggle of life ; He will take care that it shall always be better to have chosen rightly, even if it means apparent failure, isolation, misunderstanding, suffering, than to have chosen wrongly and had one's way. He must determine, in His wisdom, when and how the right choice shall have its warrant in attainment ; what earnests, of outward blessing or of inward peace, shall precede its one sufficient, final vindication in the perfecting of unselfishness before His Presence. 72 THE SIMPLICITY OF GOODNESS. The discipline of obscurity and disappointment may recur till the heart is almost tired out; the fashion of its hope may change and change again as life goes on ; but if the will be true and the purpose steadfast and unselfish, then God will not let it be borne down and come to nothing. And in proportion as we get near imagining what is meant by the perfecting of a human soul, by eternal life, by being made like Christ, by the vision of God, it will seem to us less and less strange if He Who is at work among us in a sinful world for these ends should require our trust through much that we do not understand. For if trust means anything at all, it means a steady and practical persistence in believing that He in Whom we trust is right, although we cannot see it. And is it likely that God should ask less than this, which is in some measure presupposed in every home and every friendship that is worth the name ? II. " Put thou thy trust in the Lord, and be doing good." The second clause points to the one adequate sequel from the acceptance of the first. It is much that men should be able to endure disappointment and perplexity, to be quiet under pain, to refrain from the rebelliousness of anger or of despondency ; and perhaps at times we may be thankful if we can attain to this, and God may accept it, in His pity. THE SIMPLICITY OF GOODNESS. 73 as the best that we can offer for a while. But the progressive revelation of His truth, the great warrant of our trust in Him, was meant to give us strength for something more than mere quiescence. It was meant to keep us always loyal to the true end of life, and to make us both steady in the singleness of our aim and also careful as to the means we use. For a lowered aim, and shifty, worldly means, are the plainest signs that a man is losing trust in God — is forgetting, or at heart denying, that God cares for men and for the issues of their work. To trust God is simply to take His way ; to strive after the example of His goodness both in the general plan and purpose of our life, and in our manner of dealing with its problems ; to resist every temptation and hankering and attraction that would lead us aside from the one line, the narrow way of doing good. A man who is overtaken upon some wide moor by nightfall, or by mists, will sometimes find it curiously difficult to trust the guidance of his compass : he keeps fancying that he surely ought to be bearing more to the right hand or to the left than the needle bids him. And there is an analogous difficulty in holding the simple and straightforward course of truth and charity and duty through all the tangled and bewildering con- fusion of human life. We know that the real 74 THE SIMPLICITY OF GOODNESS. strength and wisdom are with the pure in heart ; but it needs trust in God to carry that knowledge into all the details of our task, and to abstain from all the methods and implements which it forbids. What men call simple goodness is, under very complex conditions of work, not so simple or obvious a matter as it sounds. Behind the simplicity of the result there are qualities, both moral and intellectual, which are among the greatest attainments of a human nature. They may be attained through moral dis- cipline ; but none the less may they outstrip in a common field of exercise the mental gifts which men rate highest. The unembarrassed insight which goes straight to the real character of an action or sugges- tion; the just imagination which can enter into another's position, and transpose without altering the parts of a transaction where one's self is interested ; the kindly shrewdness which is never credulous and never cynical ; the strength of mind that can resist the temptation to be clever ; and, above all, that sense of things unseen which makes palpable the folly of ever faucying that there can be through evil a short cut to good ; — these are some of the faculties which are required and exerted and developed in that simple goodness which is enlightened and sustained by trust in God; that THE SIMPLICITY OF GOODNESS. 75 consistent and unwearied doing good, that purity both of purpose and of method, which is the distinc- tion of the souls that humbly and sincerely rest on Him. III. " Put thou thy trust in the Lord, and be doing good." For many reasons, brethren, I have wished to speak this morning of these words, and of that high, resolute simplicity to which they point. One reason has come from my thoughts of him 1 who on Christmas Eve laid down the office that for six and thirty years he had borne with diligence and honour in this place. I hesitate to speak of him, for I know how decisively he would forbid it ; and it goes against the grain to disobey even an unspoken wish of his. But examples of consistent simplicity are rare ; and while the recollection of his work is freshest, it is well to mark how simplj 7 it was all conceived and carried on. It never even crossed one's mind that any selfish aim was creeping into his purpose, or corrupting his simple desire to do right ; he never seemed to think about effect ; he never stooped to questionable means of getting what he wanted done. Mrjotv Kara tpiOuav rj Ktvodo^lav — that maxim of Christian statesmanship seemed his constant rule ; 1 The Very Rev. H. G. Liddell, D.D., who on December 21, 1891, resigned the Deanery of Christ Church. 76 THE SIMPLICITY OF GOODNESS. to keep his work quite clear of party-spirit and of vain-glory, those plagues that spoil so many brilliant lives and do so much to empoverish humanity. And surely it was that high singleness of aim and effort, that fine disdain of anything like trickery, that gave his life among us its dis- tinctive strength and worth. For, amidst all the change and confusion and excitement and ingenuity, he had the courage and the wisdom to be simple. "Put thou thy trust in the Lord, and be doing good." The distress and peril for which we shall all remember the past winter, 1 may perhaps have helped some of us to find new meaning in such words as these. We meet here after a lengthened interval, which yet has seemed to many of us strangely unlike a Christmas Vacation. We all have had our share in the national sorrow for a death that, three weeks ago, brought a sudden and pathetic gloom into the early brightness of great hopes. Many of us have known intense anxiety in our own homes ; some, perhaps, have looked on death for the first time ; some will miss this Term friends and colleagues who have given them true 1 During which the epidemic of influenza had been very severe. Among those who had died was H.R.H. the Duke of Clarence and Avondale. The prevalence of the epidemic in Oxford had caused the beginning of the Term to be deferred. THE SIMPLICITY OF GOODNESS. 77 help and gladness in the past. Through times like these we test the reality and the adequacy of our convictions about life — and about death. The hour and the circumstances of that myste- rious change will be for each one of us as God wills : we can only pray that our death, when the time comes, may be " without sin and shame ; and, if it please Him, without pain." But among all the great acts that ennoble human life, and rebuke low thoughts of what a man was meant to be, none surely can be greater than the calm, deliberate, consistent bearing of one who knows that death is very near, and faces it as he has faced the daily tasks of many yeax*s, with simple trust in God. That a man should be thinking steadily, practically, within a few hours of his passing hence, what ought to be done for the comfort of the poor whom he has served for fifty years ; that another should be able then unhindered, undismayed, to lift up his heart unto the Lord, and to own it meet and right to give thanks unto our Lord God ; — surely this seems like the victory that overcometh the world ; and those who in unclouded consciousness so move towards death, do make us see the hidden greatness of the soul that really puts its trust in God, and by His grace seeks ever to be doing good. Such grace 78 THE SIMPLICITY OF GOODNESS. He gave to two whom in the past month He called from their work on earth, their place amongst us here in Oxford, and in Christ Church, as honorary canons of this Cathedral — to Thomas Chamberlain, Student of this House, and to Noel Freeling. "Put thou thy trust in the Lord, and be doing good." May God in His infinite pity help us all to live and work more and more nearly by this high rule of singleness in trust and aim and plan ; may He deliver us out of all that, from the past or in the present, may be blinding us to His will ; and whenever we go wrong, and fall from the sim- plicity which He demands, may we have grace to seek in penitence His pardon, and the renewal of that strength which is made perfect in weakness : through Jesus Christ our Lord. VII. THE MISUSE OF WORDS. " I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." St. Matt. sii. 36. I. These are words that, wherever we heard or read them, might, by their own inherent force and gravity, make us stop to think. But if we consider Who He was Who said them, if we believe that in the day to which they point He will come to be our Judge, then they become so aweful that we can hardly bear to face them, and one almost shrinks from speaking of them. For they declare that men are held responsible, and shall be arraigned before the throne of Christ, not only for the vile, the lying, the malignant and uncharitable words that they have spoken, but for " every idle word ; " for every useless, fruitless, worth- less, unprofitable saying ; for all words without reality of meaning or purpose ; for all silly talk for talking's sake ; for the speeches that, as one has said, " aim at so THE MISUSE OF WORDS. nothing and hit it ; " for all sheer careless waste of the great trust of language. We shall " give account of" " every idle word ; " and it may almost seem as though life, social life, hardly could go on if the thought were laid to heart, if men steadily remembered it. As we tiy to think of our own lives; of the way we have talked in the past ; of the things we knew we had better not say, and yet said; of the casual, heedless way in which we have gossiped with our friends ; of yesterday's talk, it may be, or even this morning's ; of our ordinary habits in conversation ; — as we go on to think of others ; of the laxity, the unscrupulousness, the injustice, which is shocking even to our taste; of the torrent of talk that is always flowing on in society, in a London Season or an Oxford Term ; of the groups of people that we see hano-ing; about the corners of streets, or at the doors of the houses down some wretched alley, or by the public-house ; — as we try to imagine anything of the idle or worse than idle words that are ceaselessly streaming from men's lips, it utterly passes our power of thought to bring to bear on all this worth- less talk what our Lord says of it. For He — He, remember, Who is to be our Judge — warns us plainly that it is all telling, all leaving a mark ; that some- where, in some way, the record of it is written and THE MISUSE OF WORDS. 81 is mounting up ; that it makes traces in men's characters, and is reckoned in the total outcome of their lives ; that they will have to face it all again, and give account of it. As the record of forces that seemed merely transient — of the passage of a glacier, of the waves upon the beach, or even of the drops of rain — may sometimes be found fixed upon the surface which they rudely scarred or lightly, quietly dinted ; so men's idle sayings do not utterly and merely pass into the air : they tell somewhere, they are printed somewhere ; things are not quite as they would have been had the foolish words been left unsaid. The separate stones in the great pillars of this Cathedral may seem to most of us to be plain, featureless, indifferent ; but on each one of them, which time has not defaced, the antiquary reads the distinctive traces of the tool with which the workman dressed its surface. The surface is not smooth, and the roughness is not casual ; there is history in the lines, the scratches that we have not noticed. And so surely must it be with the characters of men, scarred and dinted by their thoughts and words and deeds ; only the marks on them are finer and deeper and more subtle, and time has no power to efface them ; and perhaps men never think how thickly they are being multiplied, and how clear and aweful is the history they will G 82 THE MISUSE OF WORDS. disclose. For " every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." II. The warning may seem strange to us in its un- bending austerity, in its contrast with the easy view of life which we, it may be, want to take or to allow. But it may become less strange if we try to think how very much of daily life, of daily right and wrong doing, consists wholly in the use of words ; how much of our probation well may turn on what we say or leave unsaid. We often bring words and deeds into comparison, as though the former mattered comparatively little. But for many of us, of course, our words form a large part of our work ; for all of us they form some part ; and the purity, the justice, the precision, the discrimination, the right use of words, is in our work what the like qualities in regard to colours or sounds are to the painter or the musician. Not only in the work of teaching, but in all the higher relations of life, in conference, in counsel, in ruling or judging, in praising or finding fault, in encouraging or dissuading, in asking or in giving advice, the value of our part in life depends, far more perhaps than we are apt to think, upon the use that we have been wont to make, the use that we desire to make, of words. A man or woman with THE MISUSE OF WORDS. 83 a blurred sense of accuracy, a habit of exaggeration, or of letting prejudice get mixed with judgment, is as much hindered in the service of others, in the advancement of the common welfare, as an artist who has lost the sense of what pure colour means. Surely it is only at first sight that the idle, careless, unscrupulous use of the great gift of speech can seem to us a trifling fault. Think of the injustice, the pain, the anxiety, the anger, that spring up round reckless talk. Think of the confusion and uncertainty that comes by inaccurate repetition of inaccurate reports ; think of the loosening of mutual trust, the loss of real interest, the rarity of thorough sympathy, because one has to doubt the justice, the trustworthi- ness, of so much current talk ; think of the lowering of the standard of truth. Or think, again, how idle words not only disclose the inner character, but react upon it ; making dull the sense of truth, chilling the chivalry of allegiance to it ; confusing distinctions, blurring outlines ; wasting the strength that should find joy in the sincere and arduous and patient quest of the exact truth. Nor is it a little thing that our own idle words so often haunt and vex us ; that we find it hard to leave off fretting at the folly of our own talk — wishing things unsaid, wondering what harm will come of them. And then, 84- THE MISUSE OF WORDS. over against this picture of encroaching weakness and slovenliness, let us set the greatness that accrues to those who resolutely keep themselves from idle words ; in whose care the gift of speech comes near to being the power and the light it should be. An old Rabbinical fable tells of one who, when he had died and had been for a long while in his grave, was dug up, and found to be living and untouched by any corruption. And being asked what had thus protected him, he answered, " All through my life I never listened to an idle word." 1 The legend holds a truth. It marks the impenetrable purity, the health and soundness of the souls that stand aloof, distinct from petty, worthless talk. They are rare indeed, such souls ; but most of us, I trust, may have known some to whom, perhaps, we did not dare to tell the idle words that we had heard and helped into currency with others ; some who have had the courage to be silent when they had nothing real or nothing kind to say ; some who have guarded speech for its true use in giving help or gladness to their fellow-men, and glory to Almighty God. It is by the deep calm strength, the trustworthiness, the justice, the loyalty, the gentleness of those who so keep watch over their lips, that we may measure the 1 Quote; 1 by Wctsteiu, in loco. THE MISUSE OF WORDS. 85 worth of reticence, and the pitiful waste that comes by idle words ; and so may learn to wonder less at the solemn warning of our Lord and Judge, to Whom all hearts are open, and Who scans the rise and fall of every human character in the course of its probation. III. " Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." A French writer, of much ability and insight, has spoken vigorously of the harm which empty, worthless talk, without knowledge, feeling, or conviction, was working in society around him ; and he has ventured to prophesy " that this great plague of our time will be diminished when a higher education teaches later ages the deep immorality of sinning against language, and the awful sense in which we sball have to give account at God's tribunal for our idle words." 1 This is the thought with which I chose to-day 2 to speak of our Lord's great warning against the abuse of speech. For we meet in thankfulness for the widening ranere of higher education ; for the development of a scheme which brings to very many such opportunities of study and learning as they never had before : and it 1 Gratry, " Commentaire sur l'Evangile selon St. Matthieu," p. 28S. 2 This sermon was preached in the Cathedral at Oxford, on the occasion of a Summer Meeting of Students in connexion with the System for the Extension of University Teaching. 36 THE MISUSE OF WORDS. is well to remind ourselves of the increased responsi- bility which must be attached to such an increase of advantages. We believe that men shall be judged according to that which they have received ; and that there must be vast allowance made for the idle words of those who have had little teaching, whose interests are narrow, whose daily work is engrossing and mono- tonous, who live in rough and harsh surroundings, to whom history, and art, and literature, and science have disclosed nothing of their quickening, absorb- ing wonders. But, then, what shall ice say ? It is terrible, almost, to recall what some of us have received : what excuse can we plead for still going on with our misuse of language, our careless, idle talk, our poor standard of truth and justice in ordinary conversation ? Do not let us think that it is a little matter. For there is no better way, I believe, in which to test the reality of our culture than hy the self-discipline it teaches us to use in talk : and it may be that the chief service we can render, the chief outcome that God looks for from our higher education, is that in our homes, in the society around us, we should set a higher example of the right use of speech; the right tone and temper and reticence in conversation ; the abhorrence of idle words. Neither let us think that this ever will be easy to us. We must THE MISUSE OF WORDS. 87 not be affected or pedantic, we must not be always setting other people right : but we must be careful ; we must keep our wishes and passions from colouring our view of things ; we must take great pains to enter into the minds and feelings of others, to understand how things look to them, and we must remember that, whatever pains we take in that regard, the result is still sure to be imperfect ; we must rule our moods, our likes and dislikes, with a firm hand ; we must distrust our general impi'essions till we have frankly, faithfully examined them ; we must resist the desire to say clever or surprising things ; we must be resolute not to overstate our case ; we must let nothing pass our lips that chanty would check ; we must be always ready to confess our ignorance, and to be silent. — Yes, it is a hard and long task ; but it is for a high end, and in a noble service. It is that we may be able to help others ; to possess our souls in days of confusion and vehemence and con- troversy ; to grow in the rare grace of judgment ; to be such that people may trust us, whether they agree with us or not. It is that we may somewhat detach ourselves from the stream of talk, and learn to listen for the voice of God, and to commit our ways to Him. It is that we, even we, for all the unaptness and unworthiness we know in ourselves, 88 THE MISUSE OF WORDS. may, by His grace, become fellow-workers with the truth ; that the truth may make us free, and that we may bear part with it in making others free. It is that, for Christ's sake, we may find pardon for all the idle and uncharitable words we have spoken in the past, and may henceforward seek more earnestly the blessedness that is promised to the meek, the pure in heart, the peacemakers among mankind. VIII. THE HIDDEN ISSUES. "Nevertheless when the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?" St. Luke xviii. 8. The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is above all else a message of consolation. It comes to us from the God of all comfort ; it discloses to us love such as we never could have dreamt of, ruling over all things ; against the temptations of despondency or dismay, it makes us strong in unconquerable hope ; it is our final reply to all scornful or dejected disparagement of humanity. In his inmost heart a Christian knows that to lose hope is to deny Christ : that it is sin to despair of the nature which He took, or the world He died and rose again to save. We are sure that goodness cannot in the end be beaten ; and that is ground enough for patience and thankfulness. But, on the other hand, there are plain words of 90 THE HIDDEN ISSUES. Christ's which check us back from anything like an easy luxury of cheerfulness about human life, about its tendencies and prospects. The hope that is learnt in His school must be consistent with facing the very gravest thoughts that can come to us from the dark facts, the threats and boasts of evil, in this world. For, side by side with the words of infinite tenderness and encouragement, we find a forecast so aweful and pathetic that we can hardly brinp; our minds to think of it. It looks so like a sheer defeat of love ; it chills us with a dreary apprehension, like the cold air that comes from off a glacier. All our hope about the course of human affairs and the advance of p-oodness among men seems challenged, if our Saviour Himself sugg-ests to us the doubt whether the moral and spiritual history of this world may not end in utter faithless- ness, in a world-wide rejection of Almighty God. And that is the doubt which seems to be suggested and set moving in our minds by the question — " When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth ? " I. In form the question expresses an intense anxiety ; in substance it concerns the first condition of a religious life. He Who so asks seems as one shading His eyes with His hand, as it were, and gazing, THE HIDDEN ISSUES. 91 gazing in concentrated earnestness, down the ages that are to be, on and on towards the great scene that shall close the avenue of time. As He so gazes, He knows what is in men — the weakness and unsteadiness and treachery of their hearts ; He knows the strength and subtlety of temptation, He watches the deceitful- ness of sin, He counts the thronging forces that are making against faith, He sees the utter worthlessness of hollow, unreal words. But over all this vacillating and bewildered mass of human life, is the love and patience and steadfastness of Almighty God, the Re warder of them that diligently seek Him, Who will not cast out their prayer nor turn His mercy from them. Undoubtedly He will hear the cry of all who cast the venture of their hearts towards Him — the persevering, undiscouraged cry of faith. Our Lord has been showing, in the Parable of the Unjust Judge, how the most unscrupulous of men may yield at last in very selfishness to a persistent, irrepressible demand for justice. And shall not God, holy and true, give heed to the wrongs of His elect and see them righted ? Surely He will do them justice speedily. He may stay His Hand a while ; our time may not be His ; He may have much to teach us through the discipline of delay. But certainly He will not fail His people : they that 92 THE HIDDEN ISSUES. seek shall find, and they that ask, receive. Men may remember or forget : but there is no change in His patient, wondrous love ; His mercy, ever ready for them that with hearty repentance and true faith turn unto Him ; His vast, unwearied care for us ; His longing for our love. " Nevertheless " — though God so loved the world, though with such tender- ness and long-suffering He besets its course — " never- theless when the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth ? " Shall He find men answering to that great love of God, trusting Him, committing themselves to Him, waiting and watching for the fulfilment of His promise, taking His way, daring to be unworldly, ready to suffer and to stand alone, if need be, for His sake ? Shall the Son of Man, when He comes in glory to the earth on which He died in shame, find this to greet Him ? Shall He find men looking up and lifting their heads, because their redemption draweth near ? Or shall He find the contrary of all this ? When iniquity abounds and the love of many has waxed cold ; when false Christs and false prophets have deceived many ; when men's hearts are failing them for fear, or overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness and cares of this life ; when homes are broken up by hatred and betrayal ; — shall He come then, and find a world that careth THE HIDDEN ISSUES. 93 not for God, neither is God in all its thoughts ; a world that has turned its hack on God, and refused to care for ousdit but the things of sense and time ; a world that has discarded faith and hope and love ; that lifts no prayer to God and sees no excellence in goodness ? Is this what He shall find on earth, when He comes to be our Judge ? II. That such a question should be asked at all, crosses abruptly a great deal of our ordinary thinking. It is a question which we may well take to heart as Lent begins. For it brings home to us the solemnity and arduousness of human life ; it chastens our hope- fulness ; it makes us feel that issues more aweful and more critical than we had realized are being fought out round us. It tells on our view of history some- what as the discovery of the struggle for existence might tell on a man's view of nature ; the finding that beneath the beauty and the wonder of the visible world there is constant strife and suffering ; that the landscape is not only a picture, but a battle- field. 1 But the feeling of apprehension and of awe is deepened if we look back to the teaching which has preceded this question of our Lord's. It is terrible to think of love ebbing, of faith failing upon 1 Cf. Baring-Gould, "Suffering," pp. 2i, seq. ; J. B. Mozley's University Sermons, "Nature." pp. 122. 12U. 91 THE HIDDEN ISSUES. earth ; it is yet more terrible that such a change may go on quietly and secretly, with no disturbance of the surface of life, or of its ordinary interests and occupations. And of this Christ seems to warn us. — The Pharisees asked Him when the kingdom of God should come, the disciples asked Him where ; and to neither question would He give an explicit answer. Not with observation ; not when men are pointing, with " Lo, here ! lo, there ! " — not with the world arrested, silenced into passive and absorbed expectancy, are the great issues of our life to be seen moving towards decision. No; the supreme interest of human history, like the supreme interest of each man's life, is unobtrusive and by most unmarked. Men may see little to observe where angels watch in trembling and intense concern. The common cares and pleasures of the world go on, its eating and drinking, buying and selling, marrying and giving in marriage. But, amidst them all, the great silent controversy between God and men is being pleaded ; and souls unnumbered make their choice between Him and self, between love and selfishness ; and the first become last, and the last first : and He, He only, knows how each soul chooses, and what its opportunities have been, and how they have been used. — And so, too, He only knows how near the THE HIDDEN ISSUES. 95 story is getting to its end ; how many or how few the remaining pages are ; how soon this world may have served its purpose as the place of man's proba- tion. — The great issues of individual lives are, for the most part, wrought out quietly, withdrawn from every eye save God's. The ventures and the failures and the faltering of faith ; the choices through which strength and light are gained or lost ; the great refusals, and the acts of heroism, in sacrifice or resignation ; — even those who are nearest to us hardly know when these take place, and no sign of them may reach the surface of our life. Yet it is through these self-revealing moments that the one great question concerning us is being answered, and the one transcendent outcome of our years on earth is registering itself in the sight of God. — And may it not be so with human life in general, with the broad course of trial in this world ? There, too, the aweful, all-surpassing issue may be finding its decision along hidden ways, where God alone is watching it ; with no intei'ruption or disturbance of its outward course, this world's real drama may be advancing, and even speeding, towards its close. There may be but little change in the outward look of things — no change, perhaps, that does not seem natural and ordinary ; nothing that suggests the thought of an approaching 96 THE H1DDEX ISSUES. end ; while in the things that are not seen, in the things which God regards, events may he hurrying forward towards the last, the unimaginable scene, the last crisis of that hidden history to which the world's excitements and vicissitudes are hut as at- tendant circumstances and conditions. — "As a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth ; " " in an hour when they think not." In the Cathedral at Orvieto, there is a picture which expresses strikingly some such thought as this. It is a fresco painted by Luca Signorelli, with singular originality and strength. Let me speak of it in words more just than I could frame. It repre- sents " the appearance and the triumphs of Anti- christ. And Antichrist is no dreadful monster, but a most grand and dignified figure, with just a faint suircrestion of Him of Whom he is the rival : noble in look and form, till you look into the face ; and then the wickedness discloses itself. And he is sur- rounded with groups of the same stateliness and beauty, and with a profusion of rich and beautiful things ; but with nothing that openly suggests bad- ness — only worldliness and its temptations — till you look into the background ; and there, persecutions and bloodshed are going on." 1 — Yes, amidst much 1 Dean Church's " Life and Letters," p. 316. THE HIDDEN ISSUES. M7 that is comely, tranquil, dignified, and brilliant, the real disasters of human life may be hurrying on the end ; and even while history is telling of unbroken progress, the things that belong unto men's peace may be fading, fading from their eyes, and across the sky there may be gathering that darkness towards which our Saviour's gaze was set as He questioned whether, when the Son of Man cometh, He shall find faith on the eaiik. III. We can hardly doubt, I think, what use He would have us make of such a question, and of the thoughts that rise from it. They are not meant to lead us into fruitless speculations about a future of which fragments only are revealed to us — fragments which we cannot put together or harmonize in our dimly lighted state. If we take them rightly, they may make us thankful for the call, the opportunity, which Lent brings. For surely they are meant to renew, to deepen, to sustain our earnestness, our sense of urgency in God's service now. Neither in society around us, nor in our own souls, can the growth or even the maintenance of faith be a matter of course. If it could be so, our Lord's question could hardly have been asked. The demands of a faithful life are high and constant. Amidst the insistence of things visible, and the clamour of this world, to look to H 98 THE HIDDEN ISSUES. God, to live for His sight, to be listening always for His Voice, — this needs constant watchfulness and self- discipline, with a purpose day by day renewed. The life of Jesus Christ, the path He trod, cuts right across what is natural and pleasant to us ; and our hearts will never in this world cease to falter and hang back as we try to lift them to the height of His example. Nor can it fail to happen that in times of disappointment, or weariness, or perplexity, it will be hard for us simply to commit our way to God, to hold fast by Him, to be anxious about nothing save lest we should swerve from His Will. Yet this is what faith means in daily life ; an undivided, undismayed reliance on Almighty God for light, for strength, for shelter, and for joy. The ways in which we falter back from faith in God are many : for the act of faith is the act of the whole man ; and now at one point, now at another, the strain of it seems hard to keep up, or our weak- ness threatens to betray us. Each one of us must see for himself where especially, in thought, or word, or deed, by action or omission, in wilfulness or list- lessness, he has been falling back from that whole- hearted effort towards God by which alone the life of faith can be sustained and strengthened. But wherever each may have been slipping back or THE HIDDEN ISSUES. 90 swerving off to poorer, lower thoughts and aims, to all alike Lent comes with the same call from faint- heartedness to a new beginning. I have heard of a young officer who, as he went for the first time under fire, as he felt that wholly strange demand on a man's courage which comes as the bullets fly about him, and he sees men close beside him fall and die, was on the point of breaking down. It seemed almost impossible to him to go on ; and for a moment he faltered, visibly irresolute. An older officer saw what was happening: he just put his hand on the lad's shoulder — " Oh no," he said, pointing forward, " there's your way, you know ; " — and the man's whole career was saved. It is somewhat thus, I think, that Lent may speak to us, if we, in any part or sphere of our life, have been inclining, slipping towards the thought that perhaps the venture of the Christian life may be too high or hard for us. " There's our way," we know ; wherever faith, at its clearest, has bidden us to strive ; wherever we can see that Christ our Lord has gone before. IX. COWARDICE. " God hath not given us the spirit of fear ; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." 2 Tim. i. 7. Power, love, control (over himself, I think, and over others), — these are the three salient characteristics which St. Paul, looking back in old age over the many years of his Apostolate, discerns as issuing from the grace which God had given him. And it is, I think, suggestive to notice in the first place that they are, all three, qualities in which, at various stages of his Apostolic work, men had thought that he was unfortunately deficient. The Corinthians plainly said that when he was with them he pro- duced an impression, not of power, but of weakness : and the way in which, as he writes to them, he meets the charge, and throughout the rest of that letter harps upon the word, suggests that he could at least understand how the criticism came to be COWARDICE. 101 made. His love, again, was questioned by the Galatians when he told them unwelcome truth ; we can hardly doubt that at one time both St. Mark and his cousin 1 St. Barnabas thought him hard and implacable ; and it may be that Demas and Alexander, if they ever saw this Second Epistle to Timothy, resented the sternness with which the Apostle wrote of them. And as for the third grace, that calm and reasonable spirit which may give harmony and steadiness first to a man's own life, and then to the lives of those for whom he labours, Festus had frankly told him he was mad; he himself seems conscious at times that his language will be judged unbalanced and exaggerated ; and it is likely that, in the dispute at Antioch, St. Peter regarded him as hasty and impolitic. Yet power, love, and discipline are the notes which he himself quite clearly and surely knew to have passed into his life and work from the indwelling Spirit of God. And the con- trast between his own inspired estimate of what that Spirit meant, and the superficial judgments passed by others on the character that Spirit formed, may remind us that the reality of a Christian grace is often a very different thing from the current notion of it, and the ordinary forecasts of its manifestation ; 1 Cf. Col. iv. 10, with Bishop Lightfoot's note. 102 COWARDICE. that it is apt to be something deeper and more unearthly, more complex in its conditions and ways, more simple in itself, than men at first suspect ; and that to penetrate that which is highest in character takes no less time and pains than to penetrate that which is highest in art or literature. — This in the first place ; and in the second, let us just notice the extreme simplicity of the lines here drawn. Power, love, control, — (love, I suppose, guarding power from any taint of masterfulness ; control checking any approach to exuberance in power or in love), — that is all ; and the plainness of the conception seems to recall those great effects which are attained in architecture by the utmost severity 'and purity of outline. — This letter is the last of St. Paul's that has come down to us ; it was written when he was far on in life and, consciously, very near to death ; and the marked simplicity with which he draws the characteristics of the Spirit God had given him seems like the bold monotony of St. John's old age : like a fresh instance of the way in which things fall back on simpler lines as men advance in ex- perience and holiness ; as the multiplicity of detail shrinks before the commanding emergence of great principles ; and as these, again, are seen in Him Who is their Source and Being. COWARDICE. 103 I. But it is of the quality that St. Paul disclaims, the quality which he emphatically opposes to the Divine endowment he had received, that I would especially ask you to think with me this morning. "God hath not given us," he says, " a spirit of cowardice." It is unfortunate that SeiXia has been rendered " fear," for the true meaning of the word lies in a wholly different category ; it denotes not a feeling or emotion, but a trait of character or conduct. 1 Men are constitution- ally, or through early training or mistakes, prone to fear in very different degrees. It is probable that St. Paul suffered a great deal from fear: he might perhaps have said with the most brilliantly courageous soldier of our day, " For my part, I am always frightened, and very much so ; " 2 certainly he would have made his own the confession of the Psalmist, " I am sometime afraid ; " but equally with either of the two he might have added, " Yet put I my trust in God." For natural timidity, the ready apprehension 1 Cf. T. D. Bernard, "The Central Teaching of Jesus Christ," pp. 188, 189: "It expresses the worst effect of the troubling of the heart ; not the natural emotion of fear, but the cowardly yielding to it. It is the craven spirit which shrinks from duty, loses hope, abandons what it should hold fast, surrenders to the enemy, or deserts to his side." The word "is always used in a bad sense" (R. C. Trench, "Synonyms of the New Testament," p. 34). Cf. Theophrastus, " Characters," xxvii. 2 The "Journals of Major-General G. C. Gordon at Khartoum," p. 14. 104 COWARDICE. of failure and disaster, is simply a condition under which some men have to do their work ; and it seemed to interfere with General Gordon's work as little as with St. Paul's. It needed, doubtless, to be firmly kept in order, and made subject to faith : it increased the cost and pain of courage : but it in no way marred its nobleness ; rather it may have enhanced its beauty in God's sight, and saved it from some attendant dangers. No one should think that sensitiveness to fear debars him from the grace and helpfulness of courage, nor that a sanguine readiness to take things easily is any safeguard against cowardice. For this SetAta, or cowardice, like faith, its great antagonist, is not ultimately evinced in feeliDg one way or another, but in action. It is evinced whenever a man declines a task which he believes, or even suspects uncom- fortably, that he was meant to face ; whenever he looks along the way of faith, and thinks it will ask much of him, and takes the way of comfort and security — the way where he can be sure of con- tinuous company and indisputable common sense. It may appear either in action or in refusing to act, according as the demand of faith is for patient waiting or for prompt advance ; but the central wrong of it is the withholding of the service, the self-sacrifice, COWARDICE. 105 a man was born and bred and trained to render ; it is the sin of " the children of Ephraim, who, being- harnessed and carrying bows, turned themselves back in the day of battle." We can see sometimes in history or in fiction how a man seems prepared for and led up to the great opportunity of his life : some- thing is asked of him, some effort, some renunciation, some endurance, which is not asked of others. He may say that if he refuses he is not making his own life easier than the lives of thousands round him seem quite naturally and undisturbedly to be ; but he sinks thenceforward far below them if he does refuse. No man has a freehold of his gifts ; his tenure and their development depend always and necessarily on his using them dutifully; and the demand of duty has no measure save opportunity : for there are no eight hours' days in the spiritual life. — " Mancipio nulli datur, omnibus usu," is written on every higher faculty men wield. To see a task, to know it for one's own, and to decline it ; to hear, for instance, the deep sighing of the poor, and plan for one's self a leisurely and unexacting life ; — that is to incur the doom of a dwindling power to help and a fading- sense of need. " Woe is me, if I preach not the Gospel," every one of us might say for himself, whatever be the form of that Gospel which in his 106 COWARDICE. clearest, highest hours he has had grace to take to heart, and through whatever ways of dutifulness, whatever calling in life, he might make it felt in others' hearts. " He was afraid, and went and hid his lord's money in the earth " — that is the record of a coward's life ; and how strange it sounds, in its bare plainness and severity, when we compare it with that sort of admiration that is sometimes shown for those who might, it is said, have done all sorts of brilliant things if only they had cared to try. But there is a yet severer warning in the Bible about trifling with the opportunities of life and with the call of God. Doubtless men may, with very different degrees of blame and for very different causes, fail to find or do their work in this world ; and the judg- ment is with Him Who knows all. But what the wilful refusal of a task may sometimes be in His sight, and how He would have us watch and pray and fight against the assaults of cowardice, He has shown us in this — that " the fearful and the un- believing," the cowardly and faithless, stand first of all in the dread list of those whose part shall be in the burning lake, which is " the second death." 1 II. " God hath not given us the spirit of cowardice." Surely we can almost imagine a light gleaming in 1 Rev. xxi. 8. Cf. Dante, " Inferno," iii. 22-69. COWARDICE. 107 St. Paul's eyes, and something like a smile playing about his lips, as he wrote the words ; there is almost a touch of irony in their vast under-statement of the case. He, if any man, had lived and worked courage- ously; risking for the sake of truth's ultimate triumph nearer victories and prizes which were dearer far to him than life ; in all choices and against all temptations he "had kept the faith," and acted upon it. He had presumed on the Divine Spirit being a Spirit of courage; and his presumption had, even then, as he wrote, been more than warranted. He could hardly have been without some forecast of the further warrant time would bring ; and in eternity he knew Who would meet him and with what greeting. " Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the Righteous Judge, shall give me in that day." But apart from any forecast, he had had abundant warrant ; for God had granted him at one stage after another a certain deep confirming joy ; a joy that is seldom very long withheld from single-hearted ventures of faithfulness and courage ; a joy which may seem the most valid sort of verification that comes within the sphere of an individual life. True, " without were fightings and within were fears " — his chastening wretchedness in these remained ; but these had proved time after 108 COWARDICE. time the conditions under which God's grace and his will met ; in these, even when all men forsook him, he had found Christ standing with him, strengthening him ; and out of the thick of the trouble came the fresh certainty that the Spirit God had given him was a Spirit of courage. The radiance of the " treasure " had grown stronger and steadier in his heart, though it may be the " earthen vessel " seemed to be still the poor thing that it always was ; and he had realized the happiness of throwing all his energy, without a thought of recall, regret, reserve, into a work which he could know quite certainly to be both his and also God's. Surely this, which is, in the moral and spiritual life, exactly analogous to the healthy glow of exercise in the life of the body, must in part account for the almost boyish happiness that is constantly breaking out through all his trials and difficulties. He was sensitive, in bad health, over- worked and persecuted ; yet to the end there rings out through his letters the joy of one whose whole heart is in his work beyond the reach of doubt or change ; one who has thrown himself utterly upon the Spirit of courage, and found it sure, and in all need sufficient. III. Do not let us think, brethren, for all that we may know against ourselves, that we need drop into a COWARDICE. 109 lower, duller air, or look about for a more prosaic view of life, when we turn from the fresh, clear brightness of St. Paul's old age to ask about the bearing of his words on our lives. Rather let us do our best to carry into the very centre of all that embarrasses or weakens us as vivid a picture as we can form of the strength and joy he found in strenuous, courageous, self-forgetful service. There may be much around us that is tangled and per- plexing, much that must wait for other hands than ours to mend it ; it may be hard to see where, in all the confused mass of trouble, our scrap of effort may do any good, while probably many ways are clear in which it may do harm ; what we have to devote may seem even ridiculously little, and we may know that it ought to have been more, that we have let much of it slip from us. But it may be that at times St. Paul's outlook and estimate were more like ours than we think ; and anyhow, these are but conditions, more or less subordinate, of the choice which, day by day and year by year, is before each one of us. For the two great facts with reference to which our will must choose its line are for us what they were for him : the need of men, and the Spirit of God. And two sins those facts should help us to cast out of our hearts : the sins of indolence and of despondency. no COWARDICE. Is it our wish, honestly and ungrudgingly, to serve our generation : to leave the world somehow, in some fragment of it, the better for our life in it ? Then let us " remember the years of the Right Hand of the Most Highest," and " call to mind His wonders of old time ; " let us try to live as men who know that with them, even in the storm and darkness, is the Spirit of that victory that overcometh the world ; as men who know that life, with all it holds, is given them in trust for God, to be expended in His service and in His sight. And even if as we look back we see that we have faltered greatly in the past, that in indolence or despondency we have declined the task, the way that opened out before us, still let us in penitence have hope. This very letter of St. Paul's bears witness to the recovery of one who had greatly faltered : " Take Mark, and bring him with thee : for he is profitable to me for the ministry;" — Mark, whose heart had failed before ; who had " departed from them from Pamphylia, and went not with them to the work." And no voice speaks out more fearlessly in the first conflicts of the Church than his whose charge had been renewed by the Lord Whom he had thrice denied. 1 Only let us have done with indolence in a world so full of need, and with despondency, 1 1 St. Peter i. 6-8 ; iii. 1S-15 ; iv. 1, 12-14 ; v. 8, 9. COWARDICE. Ill since the strength of God is on our side ; and let us pray that it may please Him " to strengthen such as do stand, and to comfort and help the weak-hearted, and to raise up them that fall ; " and, when and as He wills, to show us His work — even if He should keep for those who may come after us the joy of seeing His glory manifest in some fresh triumph among men. X. THE MESSAGE OF CHRIST'S BIRTH. " God, Who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son." Heb. i. 1, 2. These are words which seem to control by the sheer force of their inherent majesty our desultory minds, and literally to command our attention. Familiarity makes no difference in the solemnity with which they fall on our ears ; we may scrutinize their mean- ing point by point, and still they ring out with the aweful simplicity of an utterance that seems to bring with it the very air of heaven. And this first feeling of something in the words that is wonderful beyond all our thoughts is immeasurably deepened as we try to lay hold upon the truth they tell, and to set it steadily before our minds. " God hath spoken unto us by His Son." In contrast with the fragmentary disclosures made of old by many means, in many THE MESSAGE OF CHRIST'S BIRTH. 113 ways, during the ages of preparatory discipline, He has concentrated into one perfect manner of revela- tion the full splendour of His truth : He " hath spoken unto us by His Son." That God should speak with men at all, had seemed a marvel of His mercy and favour. " Did ever people " — it had been asked of Israel — " did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and live ? " And it was the peculiar aggravation of His people's guilt that God had sent unto them all His servants the prophets, " rising up early and sending them." But now all other ways of utterance are surpassed, and are, as it were, hidden in the excess of light ; since God has indeed come close to men in the Person of the Eternal Word ; since He Who is Very God of Very God has been made Flesh and dwelt among us ; since in these last days the Almighty and Everlasting " hath spoken unto us by His Son." It is the beginning of that speaking unto us that we celebrate on Christmas Day. The miraculous and lowly birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, without spot of sin, began that course of witness and revela- tion which was to illuminate mankind till He should come again with glory. In the circumstances of His birth God began to speak unto men by His Son; 114 THE MESSAGE OF CHRIST'S BIRTH. and that humble and familiar scene was charged with a message which many prophets and righteous men had desired in vain to see. Let us this morning 1 for a few minutes keep that scene before our minds, as it is presented to us in the Gospel according to St. Luke, and, perhaps, in some of the great paintings which we may know ; and let us try to understand some part of the utterance which it bore from God to men. I. First, let us think how it told out for evermore the greatness of humility. We can hardly conceive the scene without admitting into our imagination of its outward look somewhat of the inner glory which we know was hidden there. We remember Who He was Who was laid in the manger ; and so for us the splendour is always throbbing behind the veil of plainness and poverty ; we are in the secret, as it were, and we cannot see things quite as though we were not. But imagine how bare and poor a birthplace it must have seemed to any one of those who were staying in the inn at Bethlehem. No lot could seem much more comfortless and destitute than that into which our Lord was born on Christmas Day. Out of all the different condi- tions which this world affords, He had chosen one of the very poorest; one most remote from any 1 This sermon was preached on Christmas Day, 1891. THE MESSAGE OF CHRIST'S BIRTH. 115 privilege of wealth or rank ; one which could least attract attention and respect ; one which lacked all that most men seek. And surely in that choice God spake unto us by His Son, and speaks continually. It can never be without significance, or without a note of warning to most of us, that from the first hour of His life on earth, and throughout all its course, He so chose the place that He would have among the various sorts and conditions of men. It is not always in our power to choose our place in life ; many of us may have to work under circum- stances which we would (or think we would) gladly make simpler and plainer if we could. But in what- ever state we are, the fact that Christ willed to come among men as He did holds still its deep, persistent lesson for us. It stands with many words of His which cross all easy acquiescence in prosperity, and warn us that a man's lot in life may be none the less perilous for being, perhaps, inevitable. What- soever our lot may be, we have to follow His example ; and if we cannot follow it in the outward setting of our life, we are bound, as we love our own souls and Him Who died for them, to follow it with genuine reality in the ordering of our affections, in the discipline of our thoughts and desires, by stern dealing with every form of pride 116 THE MESSAGE OF CHRIST 'S BIRTH. and vanity. Even they that have riches need not despair of the blessedness of the poor in spirit; and through that poverty may lie their difficult and narrow way to the kingdom of heaven. To keep our hearts unentangled, unabsorbed, independent, clear and free for God to guide, to chasten when and as He wills ; to remember what we can and what we certainly cannot take with us when we die ; to consider often, so far as we can realize it, the standard by which we must be judged ; to own frankly to ourselves the truth we know about our- selves, and by it to check ourselves whenever we are tempted to self-praise or confidence or impatience ; to bear in mind our need of discipline, and so to recognize and take it humbly in whatsoever form it comes; — these, perhaps, are some ways in which across the gap of outward unlikeness we may inwardly follow the example of His great humility, Who not only stooped in infinite con- descension to be made man, but chose from the first to take His place among the poorest and the least regarded. II. Secondly, let us try to see how God, speaking to us by His Son, teaches us to think about human nature. We greatly, deeply need the guidance of His teaching here ; it should be our light and strength for decision THE MESSAGE OF CHRIST'S BIRTH. 117 where it is easy at times to be perplexed. For the experience of life may seem to give conflicting evidence ; and now on one side, now on the other, the witness may be such as it is hard to gainsay : contradictory voices come to us, and our own hearts may suggest now one thing, now another. We may feel that there are days on which it would go hard with us if some one set himself cleverly, resolutely to put the case for cynicism at its strongest, and to convict our hopefulness of the crime of comfortably disregarding facts. True, there may be in us, by God's mercy, an impregnable stronghold of memories past all value ; memories of days in which the reality of goodness was fastened among our most profound and sure convictions ; days lit beyond the brightness of the sun with the disclosure of unsuspected moral greatness, or of silent and severe self-sacrifice in a life without any outward profession or enthusiasm. But we may have found that memory is not always most vivid and effective in the darker days of life ; and the assailing forces may come from many sides. The incessant story of crime day after day, with its shameful disclosures of sordidness or brutality ; the poignant experience of personal injustice ; the re- currence of disappointment; the recognition of our own heart's treachery; — all these may threaten the 118 THE MESSAGE OF CHRISTS BIRTH. balance and calmness of our judgment as we form or review those general ideas and anticipations about men which must gradually tell on all our dealings with them ; — all these may give advantage and prominence in high relief to the traits that cheapen life and character. But surely we " shall not be afraid of any evil tidings," surely our heart will stand fast in hope and trust if we have really taken to ourselves what God hath spoken to us by His Son concern- ing human nature ; if we know indeed that it is the nature which He took of the Virgin Mary ; the nature in which He lived that life of which the Gospels tell ; the nature in which now He reigns for evermore. For it is not only that He, the Faithful Witness and the King of Saints, has once for all set forth the moral beauty, the splendour of sinlessness, the perfect holiness which may be manifested in our nature, retracing and leaving clear and steadfast in our history the ideal it was meant to realize; but He also calls us to fellowship with Himself ; He sends out into the world the strength, the life men need to grow like Him, and to be made one with Him. A great change passes over the look of human life as we see it ruled and invaded and uplifted by the power of the Incarnate Saviour and King ; and as we learn what grace means. For thus the traits that THE MESSAGE OF CHRIST'S BIRTH. 119 make the strength of hope are seen no longer as isolated, or unaccounted for, or transient ; they are the points at which an abiding energy breaks through the veil ; they are the natural outcome of a Divine Presence; they are stages in a work of inconceivable vastness and tenderness, advancing towards a consummation known to God alone. The instances of goodness that ennoble life are held together by the one and only Source of goodness whence they come. The patience of the poor, the courage of faith, the simplicity of greatness, the devotion of love, the joyful gladness of such as are true-hearted, — they are not fugitive hints of encouragement, but a steady ground of sober, reason- able, dutiful hope, when we see them as tokens of His unwearied work Who as at this time was born to save men from their sins. We can trust them, we can lay undoubting stress on them, as men lay stress on phenomena which they have learnt to connect with a constant cause. We are not afraid to work hopefully when we know that at any moment we may find ourselves working side by side with our Lord. We are not afraid to be obsti- nate in expectancy concerning that nature which is not only made for ever His at the Right Hand of God, but also here, amidst all that may disfigure 120 THE MESSAGE OF CHRIST'S BIRTH. and degrade it, still betrays by the sure signs of saintliness the reality of His grace. III. " God spake unto us by His Son." Let us briefly recall but one more truth which in that utter- ance is declared to men ; a truth beyond the utmost range of our thoughts ; a truth which may be gradu- ally penetrated by those who come hereafter to the vision of God ; — the truth of His great love towards man. "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." As we think of the Eternal Son of God coming as at this time among men, to share their lot in weak- ness, in poverty, in extreme humiliation, in the suffering of death ; as we think that all this He freely chose to bear, that we might find forgiveness and hope ; — the love of God begins to open out before our gaze ; we begin to see what love means. The wonder of its long-suffering and undiscouraged pity ; its penetrating tenacity, as it fastens on the least germ of hope, the remnant that may be made to live ; its immense, enduring perseverance ; its vast generosity ; its meekness through ingratitude ; its delight in pardoning ; — these grow before our gaze ; these may make us feel that there are un- suspected depths of greatness and of hope in our THE MESSAGE OF CHRIST S BIRTH. 121 own lives. And there are problems, duties, burdens, trials, for others and for ourselves, which will seem very differently to us according as we have or have not taken into our hearts that assurance of God's love which was uttered in the birth of Christ ; that evidence of what worth He thinks it to disengage us from our sins, to teach us wisdom, to cleanse and sanctify us, to lead us, by the way that He knows to be best, to the end for which in His great love He made us. " God spake unto us by His Son." May He for- give us all our failure to listen to His teaching in the past ; our preoccupation with our own ways and with worldly things; our slowness to take to heart the transcendent utterance of His truth. And may He help us to begin afresh to be His disciples ; 1 to learn from Him the greatness of humility and patience ; to renew that hope concerning men which is the condition of all strength and light for helping them ; to lay hold upon- that certainty of His love which has kept His servants calm and bright and simple alike in the time of tribulation and in the time of wealth. 1 Cf. S. IgU. ad Eph., NSf apxV *X U Tu " /J-adyrfven-eai. —Id. ad Rom., NDi> apxofJ-ai /za£>7]T?)s tlvai. XI. THE REASSURANCE OF CHRISTMAS. " The angel said unto them, Fear not." St. Luke ii. 10. I. " Fear not." This was the first bidding sent from heaven to men when Jesus Christ was born. It was no new message of reassurance : again and again in a like need a like encouragement had been vouch- safed : to Abraham, to Isaac, to Gideon, to Daniel, to Zacharias, the same tranquillizing, helpful words had come from the considerateness and gentleness that are on high. But to the shepherds of Bethlehem they came with a new power and significance. For now they had their final warrant upon earth ; those attributes of God, those truths of the Divine Nature upon which the bidding rested, had their perfect expression now in a plain fact of human history. The birth of Jesus Christ was the answer, the solvent for such fears as rushed upon the shepherds when "the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the THE REASSURANCE OF CHRISTMAS. 123 glory of the Lord shone round about them." They feared, as the mystery and stillness of the night were broken by that strange invasion, what might follow it. Their fear was in some ways like that which is said to seize men in the first shock of an earthquake ; when all that seemed most fixed is shaken, and there is no knowing what may happen next ; no forecasting what catastrophe that first abrupt surprise may herald. The splendour of heaven had leapt out on the routine of common life ; it was ablaze round common, sinful men ; and who could tell what would issue from it, what it might be holding poised above them ? Some sudden utterance of judgment ? Some closing-up of men's account ? Some aweful, over- whelming onset of avenging strength ? Some in- tolerable excess of light ? Some swift descent of stored-up wrath ? — What would it be ? " And the angel said unto them, Fear not : for, behold. I bring you good tidings of great joy." — Within that glory was the love of God ; and all that it might disclose must come from Him Who so loved the world that He had sent His Son to be born, to suffer, and to die for men. There must, indeed, be awe in coming near to God, in realizing how near He comes to us : but it is like the awe with which even earthly goodness, greatness, wisdom, at their 124 THE REASSURANCE OF CHRISTMAS. highest touch us ; it is not like our terror of that which is arbitrary and unaccountable. God dwells in depths of burning light, such as the eyes of sinful men can never bear : but the light itself, with all it holds, streams forth from Love, and is instinct, informed, aglow with Love ; even with the Love for which the Son of God humbled Himself to be born as at this time for us. If we could enter and endure that radiance, if we could bear to travel, as it were, on and on into the glory of the Lord, all our thoughts about ourselves, about our sins, about the cares and hopes and fears and interests of this life, would be changed indeed beyond all we can imagine ; and dis- closures wholly inconceivable would open out on us. We might find that our thoughts of love, and of its ways and laws, were at the best but scanty fragments of the truth. But all our discovery could only be of love ; all that surprised us could but issue out of love — love terrible, it may be, to the loveless ; chastening, austere, exacting, even to those who are moving for- ward in its light ; but the love that was revealed in the birth we greet to-day, 1 and in the life of sacrifice that began from the manger of the inn at Bethlehem. It was of that redeeming love, enthroned above all things, that the angel had to tell ; and so he bade the 1 This sermon Yvas preached on Christmas Day, 1893. THE REASSURANCE OF CHRISTMAS. 125 shepherds not to fear, though the glory of the Lord was shining round about them ; since within that glory there could only be what the Will of perfect love decreed. " Fear not : for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy." The words of simple reassurance spoken to the shepherds are charged with an unend- ing power — a power which can meet and fully deal with our more complex, hidden fears. Let me try to speak of those fears, and of the comfort and assuaging that may come to them from the bidding of the text. II. If we try to think at all steadily and earnestly of God, it must come home to us that we are most unready to be brought near to Him, to stand before His throne, to meet His gaze. We are but poor judges of ourselves ; we have but low, unsteady standards ; we do not see things thoroughly or clearly ; we easily slip into partiality ; we have not trained our conscience as we should to severity and plain-speaking. Yet even we ourselves can see how very far we fall below what men, we know, should be ; even we know something of the treachery of our own hearts, of our earthliness and vanity, of our unreadiness for prayer, of the weakness and disorder that past sins have wrought in us, of our bad tempers, of our sullen moods. As we think of these and the 126 THE REASSURANCE OF CHRISTMAS. like things ; as we feel how miserably they seem worked into our life, how slowly we gain an} r mastery over them, any freedom from them ; — it may become to us almost inconceivable that we ever can be ready for the life of heaven and the vision of God To Him all hearts are open, every wish speaks out. His eyes scan all men through and through ; there cannot be a thought or feeling in the soul that is not bare and clear to Him. And He is Purity itself. Our half-lights, our comparative attainments, our qualified, precarious fragments of a better life, seem utterly irreconcilable with the whiteness of His absolute perfection ; surely He is of too pure eyes to behold us, even at our best. And who of us may abide the day of His coming ? who shall stand when He appeareth \ Can we even bring together the thought of ourselves, weak, unspiritual, selfish, slothful, irritable, and the thought of heaven, of its life of ceaseless joy in holiness, its throng of radiant and exulting saints, its glad unbroken splendour, its everlasting, ever-fresh delight in the vision of Almighty God and in the praises of His goodness ? What could we do, how could we be there ? As we dwell upon this contrast between our character and ways, and all that the life of heaven, the presence of Almighty God demands, one thought. THE REASSURANCE OF CHRISTMAS. 127 it may be, gains reality and clearness in our minds — the thought that somewhere, somehow, we have mucli to learn of that which in our experience is seldom learnt save through chastening and discipline. God, we believe, is willing, for our Lord Jesus Christ's sake, to forgive us all that is past; but that belief, that sure reliance on His vast long-suffering and mercy, may only make us long more vehemently to be changed, and purified, and taught, and fashioned according to His Will. And, in our observation of the growth and ennobling of character, we constantly see that change wrought out through chastening j perhaps we have hardly ever known it otherwise. It is deeply significant that the word which in its classical use meant simply education, means pre- dominantly in the Bible education by the way of suffering. 1 The suffering may be voluntary ; it may be chosen or welcomed for self-discipline ; it may be hidden from all eyes save God's, or it may appear on the surface of the life simply as perseverance, or serviceableness, or patience : while in other lives it takes the forms in which every one recognizes it — the forms of poverty, or pain, or disappointment, or bereavement, or prolonged anxiety. It varies, doubt- less, as widely as do men themselves ; but through 1 Cf. R. 0. Trench, " Synonyms of the New Testament," pp. Ill, seq. 128 THE REASSURANCE OF CHRISTMAS. all variety it is the chance men have of growing in unworldliness, in charity, in self-control, in pity, and in faith. It may be resented and misused, as all God's gifts and our opportunities may be ; 1 but there is no denying how it may be, how it has been used: the purity and liberty and beauty that have been gained through it are as unmistakable as the results of any process in the world. There may be other ways by which the space between what we are and what we would be may be traversed ; there may be other forms of discipline through which sinful men are trained to bear the sight of God : but there is no other way or form to which the Bible and experience bear the witness which they bear to this ; and few men can live long and thought- fully without finding for themselves some confirma- tion of the rule that " we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God." Yes, brethren, we know all this ; we own it with readiness and sincerity ; it is easily adapted as a natural and familiar element in the interest of poetry and fiction. And yet, when the chastening comes to bear upon ourselves, does it not seem a very different thing ; strange, bewildering, dreadful to us ; hard to understand dispassionately, to bear with 1 Of. J. E. Illingworth, iu "Lux Muudi," p. 118. THE REASSURANCE OF CHRISTMAS. 129 simplicity and calmness ? It interrupts us so com- pletely on the lower level that we can hardly imagine that it really is a necessary stage of progress on the higher. It preoccupies us, so that the wider views of life which we can take at other times become impossible or unreal to us ; it threatens to drain the substance and efficacy out of truths which we have felt before to be most certain and controlling. We lose our sense of proportion and our clearness of foresight ; our general understanding of what trial means is overwhelmed by the vivid details of pain or misery in our own particular trial. And then, it may be, in this confusion of the mind, when its bearings, as it were, are lost, there comes to us a deep, heart-shaking fear. What if the strain should continue and increase ? What if it should grow to be more than we are able to bear ? Our strength seems nearly spent ; we know not what is coming next, what stroke may fall upon us next. What if the stay of inner life in us- gives way — if faith, if all faith, fails ? What if, after all, the misery be really meaningless ; no discipline at all, but blind, mere waste ; all useless upon earth, unheeded in the heaven to which we stretch our weary hands ? We could hold on somehow if we were but sure that good would come of it, that it would in some way find K 130 THE REASSURANCE OF CHRISTMAS. its use ; but it is terrible, and we are sore afraid, when we begin to doubt whether it may not all be purposeless, aimless, senseless, as the waves that rise and fall, and sway this way and that, and come to nothing on the fruitless sea. " And the angel said, Fear not : for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy." To our deepest fears that bidding goes with reassurance as direct and clear as that it brought of old. For it tells us of that one great truth which most of all we need to know ; that hidden in all our trials, even as in the glory that broke out around the shepherds, is the Will of perfect love — the love revealed for ever in the birth of Christ. He is there, even He Who as at this time was born for us ; He Whose vast love bowed Him down in that immeasurable condescen- sion. Be it light or darkness that stays our eyes from seeing Him, it is He Himself ; and through whatsoever way He leads us nearer to Him, we can find nothing but the advancing disclosures of His love. Surely that is the one certainty we want " in all time of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth, in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment : " the certainty that we are not separated from the love of Christ ; that in the cloud as in the glory He is hidden, waiting, working, pleading for us ; that THE REASSURANCE OF CHRISTMAS. 131 neither joy nor sorrow need be fruitless, since in both alike we may do His Will, and give Him praise, and cleanse our souls against the day of His appear- ing. It is of that certainty that Christmas speaks ; it was that that warranted the angel's words of reassurance. How could the shepherds be frightened at God's glory when the Son of God had come from heaven to the manger for pure love of them ? And how can we give up our hearts to fear if trouble comes upon us, when we know that that same love, so manifested in His great humiliation, lives for ever in the Lord of all things, and through all things seeks to draw us to His joy ? Many of us may at times have thought that Christmas is the children's festival ; that its simple, homely gladness suffers more than that of other feasts from the wear and tear, the disappointment and anxiety, of later life. If that has been our thought about it, let us look away from all else, and fasten our minds upon the Virgin's Child ; let us try to think steadily Who He was and is; to take to heart the certainty of His almighty power and unfailing love ; — and then it may be that through all the cares that weigh upon us, we may hear with a new sense of blessing and reassurance the angelic voice that bids us fear not ; for to us is born a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. XII. THE GREETING OF PEACE. " On earth peace." St. Luke ii. 14. i I. Of the changes which were foretold, or might have been forecast as sequels from the entrance of the Son of God in our nature into our history, some are to be found plainly, strongly wrought into the world and telling on its ways. The recasting of some ethical ideas so that they have become substantially new ; the quickening of others with an intense and endless life, so that they have gone forth far and wide, conquering and to conquer; the advancement of others from an obscure and doubtful place among the various forms of human excellence to the height of God's own attributes ; the prevalence of a new standard of goodness, and a new conviction of its strength and splendour ; — these are changes clear and deep in human life ; and whatsoever else may THE GREETING OF PEACE. 133 be alleged and owned as bearing part in them, the central force, the characteristic impulse for their achievement, issues from the coming and the work of Jesus Christ. Again, there are the broad, con- spicuous changes in the outward conditions of society where Christianity prevails ; the abolition of slavery, the increased reverence for womanhood and child- hood, the acknowledgment that human life is sacred. Progress in such ways may have been strangely long delayed ; it may have been broken and unequal ; there may be ugly, evil things that it has left almost untouched, and many causes may have contributed to the result which after all has many blemishes. But yet the progress has been real ; and at its centre there has moved and worked the Spirit of Jesus Christ. There are lines of light that, starting from His birth, persist in the world's course, and will not let its hope die down ; we shall not fail to trace them, if we remember the conditions and the methods of His work ; we dare not either exaggerate their outcome, or bound their promise. Hindered and threatened as they are, we see them and take courage in the midst of trouble and perplexity. But what shall we say about that high anticipation which rings out afresh each Christmas in the echo of the angels' song ? Some changes we can mark and trace 134 THE GREETING OF PEACE. to their spring in the hidden and unfathomable wonder of our Saviour's advent ; but who that watches (things around him, and reads the si°"ns of the times, and looks into men's faces, and listens to their talk, and tries to realize the cares to which each da}* the vast majority of them wake, can easily feel reassured about that hope of peace which prophets, angels, saints have linked with the birth of Jesus Christ our Lord ? " His Name shall be called the Prince of Peace ; " " Of the increase of His govern- ment and peace there shall be no end ; " " On earth peace ; " — we may seem at times to look in vain for any earnest among men of the blessing that such words portend : here, we may be tempted to admit, things look as though the world had px-oved too hard, too quick and vigorous and stubborn in its own waj's, to make room for the hope that God sent down to it, or to yield to the motives and forces which were to have worked out His purpose. The old disfigurements of human societj*, of national life, seem changed so little ; the lust of gain and the passion for revenge break out in war and violence, or sullenry bide their time, fully armed or arming ; while in civil life competition grows continually keener and more strenuous, and hardry less unpitying. And surely as one watches these things, as one tries THE GREETING OF PEACE. 135 not merely to take them for granted, as one marks how vast a range of life and thought they rule, as one reads each day of their incidental results to nations and to individuals, they seem a strange and plain denial of the power of Christianity to work peace on earth ; they are as though in this regard the world had won the mastery, and could say decisively to one man after another, as he comes to meet it, " What hast thou to do with peace ? turn thee behind me." — And then as we recall our gaze from the wide, general look of human society, and think over the conditions, the occupation, the experi- ence of our own life, we may see much that hardly seems like the advance of peace. For peace is contrary not to conflict only, but to every form of restlessness ; and many of us may find it growing harder and harder to be restful. The haste of life increases round us ; its demands come quickly and are urgent : the channels by which fresh interests and cares pour in on us are largely multiplied ; the air seems full of questions, movements, troubles, schemes which we get little time to study,- before they hurry to the front and claim that we shall know our relation and our bearing towards them. It is notoriously easy to exaggerate the peculiarities of one's own day ; and slowness and peace are very different things : but to 136 THE GREETING OF PEACE. a certain degree the conditions of a life do really tell upon its character, and the peaceful temper really is more difficult and imperilled in a restless age. And still through all the strife around us, through all the weariness and restlessness of our own lives, the clear angelic voices speak of peace on earth : and as our hearts return to worship Him Who as on this day 1 was born for us, we are called to greet Him with an unchanged hope as Prince of Peace. II. It may he but very, very slowly that His power tells upon the strife, the manifold conflict of the world at large ; or rather, perhaps, it would be true to say that the results we see come slowly, and as it were hesitatingly. For our measure of the progress made in such a work cannot be worth much : we can form so poor an imagination of its complex hindrances, and of all those details of separate lives and separate souls with which the unhastening Omnipotence of God deals forbearingly and tenderly. With us, amplitude of scope means always some indifference to detail. But He waits on the least bit of better purpose in some poor lad's heart just as He watches nations in their rise and fall, and governs all things both in heaven and earth ; He will never overbear the freedom He has given, nor foreclose 1 This sermon was preached on Christmas Day, 1892. THE GREETING OF PEACE. 137 probation to save time : and how can we judge speed or slowness where a world-wide work is carried forward thus ? It was well said, in a striking article in the Times, 1 that the true lesson of the " contrast between the ideal of Christianity and the actual facts of human life " " is not that of the failure of Christianity, but of the immense difficulty of the task it has undertaken, and the incalculable value of so much of it as it has accomplished." While, then, we watch and pray and work as God enables us for the increase of His peace on earth, in the dealings of nation with nation and of class with class, we must not be staggered if as yet the earnest of attainment seem obscure and little. More might have seemed done by this time, if more had been left untried for ever. — But for ourselves, for the restlessness of our own separate lives, for the lack of peace in our own hearts, surely we ourselves are most to blame. For, indeed, the peace Christ came to bring, the peace which prophets saw far off and angels heralded as come at last, is near to every one of us ; not one need fail of it who really seeks it. The forces of blessing are scattered and disguised and lost to sight as they toil on at their huge task in the bewildered and tumultuous world ; only He 1 December 24, 1892. 138 THE GREETIXG OF PEACE. Who sent them out can follow them, rejoice in them, through all they do; but in individual lives their work is plain for even us to see, and to desire, and by God's grace in some degree to know. For '• There are in this loud stunning tide Of human care and crime, With whom the melodies abide Of th' everlasting chime ; Who carry music in their heart Through dusky lane and wrangling mart, Plying their daily task with busier feet, Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat." 1 They do not doubt about the meaning of the angels' song, or the realitj* of the power that works for its fulfilment. When they greet Christ as the Prince of Peace, they greet Him as they themselves have known Him : for, learning of Him, they have found rest unto their souls : following in His steps, abiding in His light, seeking constantly His grace, they have begun to know that peace which all the haste and stress of this world cannot overwhelm — the secret of calm strength and constanc} r in a restless, anxious age. In no bold despondency about God's wider work, no dull indifference to the deep appealing troubles of the world around us, but that we may be clearer, stronger, steadier in serving our generation by His will, let us try to learn for ourselves, to take into 1 J. Keble, " Christian Year : " St. Matthew's Day. THE GREETING OF PEACE. 139 our own hearts, that peace. By three chief ways, I think, it comes to men from Him Who lived and died to make it possible. By His example first. For His example ever holds before us that one manner of thought and speech, of acting and of suffering, in which peace is found. Not thinking of ourselves ; refusing to attend to the thought when it arises ; not troubling about our own rights or wishes or position ; never fancying that we are slighted ; not dwelling on our own success or failure, nor even on our own mistakes and misdoings, save with the one thought of doing better in the future ; accepting pain and weariness without complaint, indignity and in- gratitude without bitterness ; bearing each day's burden as simply and brightly as we can ; demanding no attention, grateful for any ; seeking neither praise nor any other pleasure for ourselves ; — so shall we keep clear of vexing, miserable thoughts that wreck all inward peace wherever they prevail. — And secondly, by the great disclosure that He came to make, His peace is given. For He made men sure that God is Love ; and in His life and death we see how God loved and loves the world. As we watch Him in the Gospels we know Whom we have believed ; and we are certain that He never can betray us, or despise us, or be weary of us. All else uo THE GREETING OF PEACE. may change and break up round us, but there is steadfastness in the knowledge of God as Christ reveals Him : through all storms the unshaken air of peace is about His Presence ; howsoever things may go with us, we are in His hand, and He is still the same, supreme in power, infinite in love ; and the Mind of the Almighty is the Mind of Christ. — And lastly, by the forgiveness of our sins for His sake. For sin, wherever it is, and in whatsoever form, is the one essential principle of unrest. " There is no peace for the wicked." For sin breaks into all peace with God, against Whose holy and unchanging law the sinful soul is struggling. We may forget God, or ignore Him, or keep our minds from dwelling on the thought of Him ; we cannot be entering into peace with Him while sin is kept undealt with, cherished in our hearts. Sin ruins peace with our fellow-men, in home, in work ; only as we take pains to cast it out, to purify our hearts, to keep our motives simple, our words sincere, our aim unselfish, our pride subdued and crushed, can we hope to find and guard the joy of deepening peace with those around us — the peace of mutual trustfulness and reverence and charity. Sin sets us at strife within ourselves ; it breaks up all the order of the inner life ; it is the very principle of anarchy and tumult in the soul, throwing all its THE GREETING OF PEACE. 141 desires out of gear, distorting all its faculties from their true course and task, hurrying it, silently or violently, into more and more unrest. Because Christ has dealt with sin, He is our Peace ; and it is as we return to Him and fall again before His feet, and learn afresh what the forgiveness of sins means, that we may see, perhaps, as far as we can see in this world, why the host of heaven sang of peace when He was born — " born without spot of sin to make us clean from all sin." May He, in His unutterable love and pity, help us this Christmas and in the coming year to reach some further knowledge of the peace which He was born to win for us ; the peace of men whose sins are pardoned for His sake ; the peace of those who learn to cast their care on God made known in Him ; of those who, as they humbly try to follow Him, discover that the way of patience really is the way of peace. XIII. THE CONFESSION OF DEPENDENCE. "After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst." St. John xix. 28. This utterance of our Blessed Lord has been, I think, chiefly regarded either as a cry of physical suffering, or as symbolical of the spiritual craving of His soul for the glory of the Father and for the salvation of us men. But it seems to have yet another aspect, in which a special trait of His example is disclosed ; and I would ask you to think of it in the simple sense it bore to those who stood beside the Cross : in the sense that the same words would bear to us if we heard them from the dry lips of a dying man at whose bedside we were watching. We should understand at once that he was asking us to help him, to minister to his want ; and I think that we may perhaps rightly take this for the first meaning THE CONFESSION OF DEPENDENCE. 143 with which our Saviour spoke. He had asked a like kindness of the Samaritan woman by the well ; the giving of a cup of cold water had been chosen in His teaching to represent the simplest act of ministry ; and He had said that in the last day He would remember those who had and those who had not given Him to drink when He was thirsty. 1 We scarcely can be wrong in thinking that, when in His last sufferings He said, " I thirst," He really was appealing to those who were close by to bring Him what they could for the alleviation of His great distress. I. And so, in a way which could not be forgotten, He clearly takes His place with us in the feeling, the experience of dependence upon others; and He sets us a pattern of humility in a form in which it seems to many people singularly difficult. The Almighty Son of God deigned willingly to enter into the sense of dependence upon those whom He had created, and to ask their help whom He was uphold- ing. And thus the last scene of His humiliation recalls and reaffirms the lesson of the first ; the help- lessness of His infancy in the manger reappears in the helplessness of His agony upon the Cross. Men have wondered, and staggered sometimes at the 1 St, John iv. 7; St. Matt. x. 42; xxv. 42. 144 THE CONFESSION OF DEPENDENCE. weakness, the dependence to which He stooped when He was born ; it has seemed almost inconceivable that the Godhead should have put on the pitiful feebleness of a new-born child. That condescension goes, to our thinking, deeper far than all the Self-submission to suffering and ingratitude and scorn ; for we can see a grandeur in enduring these, while there is nothing grand to our minds in simple helplessness, in the con- fession of dependence. But perhaps if we had been beside the Cross when our Saviour said, " I thirst," He would have seemed to us then as utterly and pathetically helpless, as dependent on the charity of others, as a child in the first hours of its life. Fast nailed there, hand and foot; unable even to wipe away the Blood that trickled down His face; tired out and in the very extremity of weakness and exhaustion ; as His throat is parched in the terrible distress of thirst He can only tell His need, and trust that there is some one within hearing who may have humanity enough to relieve it. Himself — because so He steadfastly wills it, in the counsel of His unchanoiua; love ; because in the condescension of His mercy He decrees to hold back, to hide His power in our weakness — Himself He cannot help ; and He appeals to the charity of the bystanders. II. We almost shrink from realizing that He THE CONFESSION OF DEPEND E ACE. 145 actually stooped to this. Yet surely, had He avoided or declined the feeling of dependence, He would have lived among men rather as we like to think of a human life than as it really is. He would not have been bearing witness to the whole truth of manhood ; and He would have left uncorrected, unrebuked, a partial, false, disastrous view of life which has had vast power in all ages, and which finds easy access to our hearts. We may be ready to own our depend- ence upon God, for that is obvious and universal : — though perhaps we are less ready than we think for the demands it may involve, and we may some day be surprised to find that in our secret thoughts we have been, even towards God, reserving our rights where in profession we had made a full surrender. But it is harder far to recognize the reality, the multiplicity, of our dependence upon men. And it is harder, not only because here our pride comes in protesting and unabashed, but also because there is so much that is high and excellent and necessary in the character and temper of independence. It is plainly right to bear our own burden, and not to be dependent upon others for that which our own work, our own self-denial, our own perseverance and carefulness, ought to secure. It is right to use our own judgment, to aim at a certain sober reliance on ourselves, to toil L 146 THE COXFESSIOX OF DEPENDENCE. at thinking things out for ourselves, and to learn, please God, to bear responsibility. It is right to ex- ercise a great deal of self-restraint in speaking of our troubles, and not to let the appetite for condolence grow on us. It is right to check resolutely that multi- plication of comforts, that softening and elaboration of the conditions of life, which needlessly encroaches on the freedom of men's latter years. It is right to endure hardness, and to get as ready as we can for pain ; it is right, above all, to be prepared to stand alone with God, if need should come ; to keep our- selves not only unspotted from the world, but also unentangled with it : to be free to hear God's Voice without prejudice or distraction, and to let all else go, if that must be, for His sake. In all these ways it is plainly right that we should aim at being independent of other men. And then, again, how serviceable independence is, in public and in private lif e ; how effective both in thought and action ; how necessary for real work, for freshness and originality, for consistency and trustworthiness. How poor and hesitating and unsteady is the policy, the utterance of one who is always looking out for what others say and do, and uncertain of his own mind till he is sure of theirs. Certainly, for practical purposes, for the formation of character and the work of life, there THE CONFESSION OF DEPENDENCE. 147 are few things more important than a spirit of independence. Yes, all this is true enough ; but it does not cover the whole field of life : within us and without, in our own nature and destiny as well as in the conditions of our work, there are elements which need another light, another rule, if we are to deal rightly with them ; if we are to escape the Nemesis which comes on those who base the whole of life upon a portion of the truth. For apart from the recognition of dependence, the independent spirit loses worth and insight ; it ignores the lines of its true service ; it t'rets^ and rebels against its very opportunities of doing good. And here, as in all things, our Lord's example brings together into perfect harmony the guiding principles which may have seemed divergent. For we see in Him the perfect freedom, the sovereign and unearthly independence of a human soul that purely, simply waits on God, with no thought or care save for His Will — the independence that, in what- ever measure it has been attained, gives greatness and distinction to His servants' lives : and we also see, in the helplessness of His infancy, in His accept- ance of all loving ministry, in His calling others to be with Him in His work, and in the appeal He utters from the Cross, His willing entrance into the 148 THE CONFESSION' OF DEPENDENCE. dependence which necessarily belongs to our state. For dependent upon others we all are : the most resolute, the most masterful, the most eminent, the best equipped of us, as truly, as inevitably dependent upon others as the weakest and the least resourceful ; though we may be able somewhat longer to defer the confession of the truth. And who can measure what we miss and mar while we refuse to own our dependence and our need ? For it is not only that we straiten and impoverish our own life, and grow colder and harder and more lonely in our fancied self-sufficiency ; we are also driving others back from the joy they might have found, we are repressing instincts and ventures through which God would have had them move forward in the twice-blest exercise of charity. It is a dreary wintriness that settles down upon the life that would be wholly independent ; the life of one who shuts out sympathy and service and compassion ; who uses reserve not for self -discipline, but for self-exaltation — not as distrusting himself, but as trusting no one else ; who hides his sorrow not in patience, but in pride. For there is "a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;" and God, Who seeth in secret, and Who knows our wants and fears, and what we are in our strength and what we may come to in our weakness and old THE CONFESSION OF DEPENDENCE. 149 age — God, Who has given men the capacity for pity and generosity and helpfulness, never meant us to imagine or pretend that we can get on by ourselves, that we can do without any to comfort us, that we can take our life apart and never own that we are dependent upon others. It was a true note of our Saviour's perfect manhood, a trait of glory in His perfect life, that He declared His want, and asked for help, and beckoned, as it were, to the power of sympathy, the will of service in men's hearts ; and there is a lesson for us all, a lesson we may often need, in that meek appeal to human kindness which He made when from His Cross He said, " I thirst." III. It is a lesson which we may need when we are in pain, of body or of mind. For here it is that stoicism shows most simply the defects of its qualities. We can all feel the nobleness of unmurmuring endurance, of silent heroism, playing out its tragedy with God alone to listen. But it is possible to let pride mingle with endurance, to make silence an end in itself ; to conceal what should release some tide of love that is only waiting for a word to set it free, to bid it flow in glad and gladdening ministry. Our needs and sorrows are not so wholly our own concern that we may always hide them if we will ; they may be 150 THE COXFESSION OF DEPENDENCE. meant to initiate others in the joy of service ; just as others' needs have been to us, perhaps, the occasion of discovering the best happiness on earth, the happiness that is nearest that of heaven. — Often, indeed, there is no better, higher course than that of quiet and hidden patience ; no swifter, safer discipline of character than that of secret, unsuspected suffering, of trials severely kept to ourselves with God. But it is not always so ; there may be unkindness, selfish- ness, and even weakness in concealment as well as in complaining ; we might see more truly the meaning of our trouble, and it might bear richer fruit, if we were simply to acknowledge it and to own our need of help ; if we were to follow our Lord, not only in His patience, but also in that great humility with which He asked for the ministry of the rough men about His Cross. Again, the lesson may come home to us in regard to whatever work Almighty God has given us to do ; and here also we may be needing to recognize, more frankly and steadily than we like, our sheer dependence upon others. For the higher and more complex our work is, so much the greater is the extent to which we must depend on those who work with us or for us — on their loyalty, their honesty, their forbearance, their alertness, their good temper THE CONFESSION OF DEPENDENCE. 151 and good will. High and low, rich and poor, have equally to learn the lesson of dependence : but some may learn it through the uncertainty of daily bread ; and some, quite as sharply, through the discipline of responsibility for tasks in which all may seem to turn upon the willingness, the ability, the endurance of other men. It is but very little that any one of us can do by his own hand and brain; it is he who places his trust rightly ; he who is as glad that the forwarding of common aims should fall to others as to himself ; he who draws out the ability of other men, and never grudges them just deference and full scope ; — it is he who really serves his generation. And for all this, dependence must be simply, gladly, reverently owned ; and a man must never yield to the temptations of wilfulness and imperiousness, the desire to enjoy the sense and exercise of strength, the impatient inclination to have things his own way or to give them up in petulance. For it is only through the lowly, truthful, constant recognition of one's insufficiency and helplessness that one can hope to bear one's part with others, be it great or small, conspicuous or obscure, in the work of God, and in the service of mankind. And lastly, let us think of our Lord accepting and enduring the experience of dependence, if ever we 152 THE CONFESSION OF DEPENDENCE. are tempted to imagine that we can do without the help of human love. That temptation comes to men when they are sore with disappointment or weary of neglect. For there are perils in being slighted and disliked, no less than in being popular and flattered. In the latter case we may be tempted to forget our dependence upon God, in the former to repudiate our dependence upon men ; and, perhaps, the two ways of rebellion are not far apart. For God has given us a thirst for love ; and we may neither hide our need, nor seek to satisfy it with aught else. He will not very long leave us unref reshed in this world ; for His grace is busy in the hearts of men, and often there is kindness all around us, richer, readier, nearer than we imagine. But even if at times we seem to be alone, and even if the world seems cold and hard to us, and harsh thoughts come about us, still let us honestly and humbly own the thirst we cannot slake, and let us wait on Him Who made us thus. For it may be He will send us some surprise of earthly love ; or, it may be, He Himself will comfort us with some unimaginable disclosure of His tender mercy, His great care for us. Only let us keep clear and true the craving of our hearts, and take meekly the discipline of dependence ; let us patiently and faithfully refuse THE CONFESSION OF DEPENDENCE. 153 to pretend that we are self-sufficient, or to deny a need which God is training as the capacity for perfect joy — a thirst which He hereafter may vouchsafe Himself to satisfy for ever. XIV. SINS OF IGNORANCE. "Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." St. Luke xsiii. 34. It is natural and right that our minds should notice above all else the love and generosity which these words disclose. For there is nothing which more certainly commands our admiration than any exercise of thought and care for others by one who is himself in great pain. We know how, with us, pain tends to call in attention and concentrate it upon self ; and how generally those who suffer much are tempted to consider themselves first of all, and to become self- absorbed and exacting. And here is an instance of intense suffering with gentlest consideration for those who were inflicting the anguish. That as the storm of pain was just rushing through the frail, weary limbs, in the first moments of that aweful strain, under the wild onset of outrage and brutality, — SINS OF IGNORANCE. 155 that then the voice of pleading should go up to God, not in an appeal from man's tyranny to His justice; not in a great cry for help or for release ; not that He would rend the heavens and come down ; but that He would have mercy upon those who were showing none, that He would forgive their cruelty : — this is an evidence of the strength of love, of its splendid steadfastness and perseverance, such as must arrest our thoughts, and fill our hearts with wonder and with praise. There is in this an appeal of which all are conscious, and which none can utterly set aside. For we feel the vast contrast of His absolute unselfishness with our own self-centred anxiety and preoccupation in our personal troubles ; of His unwavering, persistent love with our brief ventures of kindliness, soon tired and easily dis- couraged as they are apt to be. It is not strange, then, that the triumphant energy of love should first come home to us as we think over the words. But as we fasten our thoughts upon the second clause, and try to see what it involves, we may grow conscious of a certain severity and awefulness in it. It has somewhat of the solemnity of a judicial act ; and the love that pleads is felt to be indeed His love Who shall hereafter come to be our Judge. " They know not what they do " — it is 156 SLVS OF IGXORAXCE. on that that our Lord, reading the men's hearts, rests His plea for their forgiveness in the midst of their misdoing. There is no sort of indifference to the wrong that is being wrought : no vague merging of moral distinctions in kindness or indulgence : no loose and indiscriminate desire for a general leniency ; but an exact weighing of the case, and a discernment and presentation of one ground on which forgiveness may be asked for the offenders — " they know not what they do." Let us think over the teaching of these words ; and if, upon this great, appealing day of our Lord's death for us, 1 it seems to any to be cold and unenthusiastic to be measuring exactly the relation between ignorance and guilt, he may try to mend this by more strenuous and loving care about the duties which our thoughts may, please God, make clearer to us. L First, then, let us notice this : that our Saviour and our Judge plainly does not hold that all sins done in ignorance lose, on that ground, their sinful character. These men " know not what they do," but yet they need forgiveness. There is here no semblance and no allowance of that broad, lax deal- ing with wrong-doers which treats " I did not know " 1 This sermon was preached on Good Friday, 1S92. SINS OF IGNORANCE. 157 as clearing the conscience altogether and ending the whole matter. Ignorance and guilt are not mutually exclusive — they may meet in one act; a man may do wrong ignorantly, and yet thereby incur guilt, and therefore need forgiveness. This our Saviour's words seem clearly to imply ; and in implying this they concur with the general tenor of the Bible as to the wrong acts of those who know not what they do. " If a soul sin, and commit any of these things which are forbidden to be done by the command- ments of the Lord ; though he wist it not, yet is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity. . . . He hath certainly trespassed against the Lord." 1 Such is the express and repeated teaching of the Old Covenant ; and so a very careful writer has said that " sins of ignorance and inadvertency, or offences unwittingly done, . . . formed the largest class of offences to be atoned for by the Mosaic sacrifices. All " that " vast and complicated machinery of con- fession, bloodshed, sacrifice, and priestly atonement, existed in the main for what, in modern language, we should call venial sins, for sins committed in ignorance or inadvertence." 2 And so another writer, " God, though in grace He finds means for pardoning 1 Lev. v. 17, 19; cf. iv. 2, 13, 22, 27. 2 K. F. Willis, " Worship of the Old Covenant," pp. 145-148. 158 S/NS OF IGNORANCE. it, still judges evil as evil wherever He meets it." 1 Whatever width of meaning may be assigned to the Hebrew expression which is rendered " sinning through ignorance," there can be no doubt that it includes what is directly and plainly meant by those words : 2 and that they who broke God's Law, not knowing what they did, were required to seek His pardon in repentance and with sacrifice. Nor is this requirement, this insistence that sin may be sin, even though men know not what they do, traversed or revoked by our Lord's words (in the Gospel according to St. John) : " If ye were blind, ye would have no sin ; " " If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin : " since all ignorance is not utter blindness, sheer and absolute inability to see : nor is it one and the same thing to be left without an offer such as Christ brought, and, being confronted with the offer, to put it from one, to disregard it, with whatsoever degree of ignorance. 3 Those who were utterly and insuperably hindered from any understanding of our Lord's message, and those to whom He never came and 1 Jukes, quoted by Willis, p. 151. 2 Cf. Magee, " On the Scriptural Doctrines of Atonement and Sacrifice," i. 331, seq. ; Trench's ''Synonyms," Ixvi. ; Delitzsch on Heb. v. 2. 3 Cf. Miiller, " Christian Doctrine of Sin," i. 209. SINS OF IGNORANCE. 159 spoke, were in one case ; those who could have recognized Him, and withheld whatever measure of recognition they might have rendered, were in another case. And there is one passage in which our Lord plainly says that there are sins of ignorance which, in their demerit and desert, differ from de- liberate sins in degree only and not in kind ; since " he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes." 1 Most clearly, again, St. Paul judges his own past life on the same principle. When he made havoc of the Church, he did it ignorantly. He may have been, as one has said, " honest and sincere in doing it," he may have been "fully persuaded in his own mind that he was serving God in it ; yet he never re- flected upon it afterwai'ds but with shame and regret, with a penitential sorrow and remorse for it." 2 When years of love and service lay between him and all that chapter of his life, still he judged himself " the least of .the apostles, not meet to be called an apostle," because he " persecuted the Church of God ; " and even when old age was closing in on • St. Luke xii. 48 ; cf. Miiller, i. 209. 2 Waterland's Works, v. 729; cf. Ellicott on 1 Tim. i. 13. The use of the word vftpio-rnv in that verse seems to show that St. Paul could recall in his onslaughts on the Christians a touch of temper that was plainly sinful, — a touch of insolence. IGO S/JVS OF IGNORANCE. him, still it seemed to him the foremost instance of the Divine mercy and long-suffering that that sin in ignorance had been forgiven. So plainly the Bible witnesses against our easy self-acquittal wherever we can plead that we were ignorant, our dull and indiscriminate opinion that there can be no need of any sorrow or forgiveness for the sins of those who know not what they do. So gravely does it commend the prayers which the Church teaches us : bidding us pray God to pardon us because (and not although) we have erred and strayed from His ways like lost sheep, witless and bewildered ; to forgive us not only our sins and negligences, but our ignorances also. Yes, for as moralists in every age, pagan, mediaeval, modern, have with close concurrence taught, there are widely divers kinds of ignorance, with widely varying relations to the guilt of acts conditioned by them. 1 Thus the moi*al aspect of ignorance varies greatly according to that which is ignored. There are truths of which no man claiming to be sane has any right to be ignorant. " You ought to have known," is a phrase that seemed hard to us as > Cf. Ar. Eth., III. i. §§ 13, teq.; S. Thorn. Aq., 1™ 2** lxxvi. ; Pascal's " Fourth Provincial Letter ; " Jeremy Taylor, " Ductor Dubitantium," iv. 2. SINS OF IGNORANCE. 161 children ; but we use it and could defend it, when we are grown up ; we act upon it constantly. Again, there are responsibilities which no man has a right to undertake if he is ignorant of the laws which should guide him in sustaining them. Who, for instance, would think the plea of ignorance a full excuse for a doctor who, because he did not know what as a student he should have learnt, caused his patient's death ? Again, the moral import of ignorance varies with its cause ; no man is held guiltless because his crime of ignorance was com- mitted in drunkenness. It varies, again, according to the opportunities which a man has had ; his chances of coming to know better. So, too, the value of the plea of ignorance depends on the whole history of a man's past life ; on the light that was about him or within his reach at the time when he went wrong; on the wilfulness with which he went into temptation ; on the carelessness with which he missed or slighted the safeguards which would have kept him right. Thus the sins of ignorance may vary almost infinitely in moral gravity and guilt: in one case such a sin may be the sequel and token of long, stubborn wicked- ness ; in another it may be almost wholly free from any sort of blame: nor can we, perhaps, in that M 162 S/.VS OF IGNORANCE. wide range of variation draw any clear dividing- line. II. Such difference, surely, there may have been among those for whose forgiveness our Lord prayed, because in crucifying Him they knew not what they did. A question has been raised whether His prayer referred to the Roman soldiers or to the Jews. It is a question, surely, which we need not be much concerned to answer. For in both classes there may have been those who in very different degrees were guilty in their ignorance. Jews may have been there, trained in the expectation of the Christ, yet crying for His crucifixion now that He had come : and God alone could know what faults of wilfulness or carelessness, what indolence in the past or ill temper in the present, what love of praise or fear of light, what worldliness or party-spirit, may have made them guilty in not knowing what they did. And among the soldiers there were surely some who, though the execution of Jesus of Nazareth had come to them as that day's task, yet felt at some moments in its course, felt with a degree of clearness which was the measure of their responsibility, that this was no common criminal whose death the}* wrought or watched. They knew not what they did; but something glimmered in their minds which made SINS OF IGNORANCE. 163 those hours critical for their soul's salvation. — Iu that great picture of the Crucifixion which Luini painted at Lugano, three soldiers stand out remark- ably in the group around the cross. The Saviour's agony has closed in death ; and near Him stands the soldier who has pierced His side, and seen the sacred blood and water flow therefrom. There is wonder and sadness in his aspect ; the hand that holds the spear hangs listlessly, as though the mind were absorbed in thought; and the other hand seems raised to brush away his tears. — Behind him another soldier, with arms outstretched and with an earnest, noble face uplifted to the Crucified, seems to be springing forward towards the realization of the truth. Here, at least, however little he may be able to speak of it, even to himself, is something which brings a new hope and power and meaning into life ; something at the touch of which all else falls back into insignificance ; something which ex- plains the poverty and inadequacy and disappoint- ment he has found elsewhere. — At the foot of the cross stands the centurion who has owned the Son of God in the moment of His dying. It is a magni- ficent face ; strong and simple, quiet and courageous ; capable of great tenderness and affection ; and in the clear eyes there is a far-away look, as though his 164 S/XS OF 1G.Y0RAXCE. mind were travelling down lines that had no end, as though he had forgotten all around him in the " splendour of that sudden thought." — Surely the painter's conception is not merely fanciful. From among the soldiers sent to Calvary that day there may have come the firstfruits of our Saviour's intercession : some who knew not what they did, and yet in doing it had thoughts on which all turned ; thoughts which they might thrust away, in hardness, in frivolity, in love of cruelty or gain or pleasure ; thoughts which they might., if so they would, pursue and trust, until they found in Him the very light and truth of God sent out to bring- them to His holy hill. III. The text may teach us, then, to see in most classes of the sins of ignorance two elements : one which entails guilt, and one which mitigates it ; one calling for judgment, the other for mercy; one the ground of penitence, the other the ground of hope. For as one has truly said, " if the ignorance of which our Saviour speaks had wholly freed from guilt, they had no need of forgiveness : if it did not lessen their guilt, it could not have been used as a plea." 1 There are, then, these two elements generally present, and God only knows in each man's case the measure of 1 Miiller, i. 209. S/JVS OF IGNORANCE. 165 either element. We know but little in our own case ; we know nothing, or very nearly nothing, in the case of others. What, then, is the dutiful, the reasonable temper to be gained and guarded about the sins for which ignorance is pleaded ? Prudence, equity, and charity seem to speak with one voice. We must be fair to ourselves as well as to others ; we must be sincere and sober in judging ourselves as well as (when we are compelled to it) in judging others ; we must keep clear of unreality and of undisciplined scrupulousness. But, then, when this is seen to, surely we shall do well to be somewhat strict with ourselves, and boundlessl) T forbearing, patient, hopeful, charitable, in regard to others. For ourselves, we may reflect how much more light we should have had if we had used the opportunities which God, we know, has given us ; we may inquire carefully whether we are living, or trying honestly to live, by the light we have ; we may test the sincerity and earnestness with which we are seeking more light ; we may see whether we are really sorry for our sins of ignorance, and heartily condemn the wrong, taking no pleasure in its recollection or out- come when it comes to our knowledge. But, for others, how can we dare to judge ? — And yet — let us take it as a special thought for self-examination SINS OF IGNORANCE. and for penitence to-day — how often have we reversed the parts ; and making ourselves easy with the plea of ignorance, refused to give others time, to make allowance for their backwardness and blunders, to deal gently and trustfully and encouragingly with them, when, with a truth and fulness far beyond all that we imagine, they might plead that they knew not what they did. XV. EXACTINGNESS. "Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours." Isa. lviii. 3. I. " The prophet, being sent to reprove hypocrisy, expresseth a counterfeit fast and a true." So is the matter of the first seven verses of this chapter summed up in the heading prefixed to it in our Bible. There were, it seems, those who wanted to take their place and claim their privileges as religious people, without letting the demand for strictness pass below the surface of their lives ; who kept their rules without disturbing their hearts : whose discipline always stopped short of self-discipline : and who then were surprised that their fasting seemed to bring them no nearer to God, and to win no sign of His approval. In contrast with their superficial and fragmentary observances, He Himself declares through His prophet the notes of the fast which He will deign 168 EXACTIXGNESS. to accept. And as we look at the two sides of the contrast, we may be struck by this : that in both cases the chief stress is laid on something of which we do not ordinarily think in this connexion ; namely, on the use of a man's power or authority over others. The unreality of those who would tell off their bodies, as it were, to do the whole work of fasting, is proved simply by this : that whether the fast is a hard time to them or no, they make it much harder for all who are in their service ; they are at least as eager in money-making, as inconsiderate, as irritable and hot- tempered and insolent, as at other times. " Behold, on the day of your fasting ye carry on your business, and ye exact all your labours (or, oppress all your labourers) ; ye fast with strife and quarrelling, and with smiting with the fist of wickedness." It is a scene of harshness and bullying ; and it is not strange that, as those hard taskmasters turn to " hold up their fasting before the eyes of God," 1 they find He takes no notice of it ; not strange that, as they stop to say their prayers, they cannot " make their voice to be heard on high." — And then, on the other side of the contrast, the description of the fast that God has pleasure in opens with a scene of clemency and con- siderateness and emancipation. There is brightness 1 Delitzsch, in loco. EXACTINGNESS. 169 and gratitude about the homestead of him who is really troubled in spirit, whose broken and contrite heart fills with an intense reality the abstinence he uses ; for, as he infinitely needs mercy, so after his measure he will show it; he will "loose the cords of wickedness, and untie the bands of the yoke ; " he will "send away the oppressed as free, and break every kind of yoke." With his severity towards himself there goes a generous forbearance towards those who are under his control ; he will lighten their burdens as he bears his own ; he will hold his hand from claiming 1 all he might ; and those who have felt the cruelty of an unjust rule shall know, through his equity and generosity, the joy of freedom. II. Such is the chief point in the contrasted pictures of the counterfeit and the true fast ; and through all the changes which have told on human society and on the conditions under which men deal with one another, the teaching of the contrast is unchanged. It calls us to self-scrutiny in a matter about which most of us have some opportunity of being selfish ; it suggests a use of Lent 1 which ought to be combined with any other use that we may make of it ; it enforces the duty of self-denial in the exercise of power or authority. The power of any one man's 1 This sermon was preached in the Lent of 1891. 170 EXACTIXGA'ESS. will over another's life has, indeed, been pushed back and back by one limitation after another ; the particular abuses which the prophet has before him ma}' be impossible with us ; and it seems as though a steady tide of change had long been tending to make anything like mastery mean continually less and less. And yet I suppose there are very few among us who have not some authority, some right of recpairement over others, which we may misuse if we will. It may be little, disputable, insecure : but none the less we may use it well or ill ; and in Lent we ought to ask ourselves what we are doing with it. Let no one hastily think that he has no need to be watchful and to judge himself in this regard. Any one who has anything to do with upholding rules, with setting tasks, with estimating work, with giving directions, with receiving service or having things done for him, has therein some opportunity of being harsh or generous, exacting or considerate ; in all the relations of life, between employer and employed, master and servant, servant and under-servant ; between parents and children, between husband and wife, between elder and younger ; we may often see those traits of character and bearing which appear in the contrast that the prophet brings before us. There is, perhaps, not one EXACTING NESS. 171 of us who cannot somewhere be exacting, oppressive, if he will ; and very petty tyranny may sometimes be very hard to bear. — And then let us remember that the temptation to be exacting may be deeper and stronger than we know. We are always in peculiar danger when a selfish pleasure creeps into the fulfilment of a duty ; when we find the offer of self-indulgence ready for us as we take our proper place in the world. And so it is in this case. We are called, most of us, to some exercise of power or authority ; we cannot rightly evade it ; it is part of our contribution to the order and the course of society in our day ; it is a great part of our own education and discipline and trial ; many of the noblest traits of character never could be formed or shown save in this way ; we must accept our share of authority, however great or however little it may be, seriously and dutifully, as designed by God for us. Yes ; but then there is a subtle, perilous pleasure in the exercise of power=— a pleasure not intrinsically and necessarily wrong, but very, very seldom right in us ; a pleasux*e that soon creates a craving we may find it hard to quell ; a pleasure that has often made men and women tyrannous and unjust ; yes, and even children cruel to one another. To control others in any way may confirm the gratifying sense of our 172 EX A CTINGNESS. own strength, or keep off the humiliating discovery of our own weakness ; it may flatter our vanity, or soothe us under failure ; it may seem to repair our self-respect, or it may simply minister to our comfort : and sometimes it may save us for a while from facing- very unwelcome facts. In these and many other ways, through indolence or through pride, through ambition or through fear, there comes into the exercise of power one of the most dangerous temptations that a man can know : and in the deepest sense, and concerning the most trivial things, it is true that authority will show what a man is. 1 Here then, surely, is a matter for us all to think about in self-examination ; here is a pleasure about which we should be dealing very strictly with our- selves during these weeks of Lent. " In the day of your fast ye exact all your labours." Is there any one, in our home or in our work, with regard to whom that rebuke might be applied to us ? Let each one of us think over whom in any way, in any measure, however trivial in its outward form, he or she is allowed to have authority ; and let us frankly consider how that authority is being used. Of course, it may be guiltily neglected and left unused ; in laziness, or love of popularity, or general lowness 1 Cf. Ar. Eth., V. i. 16; Soph. Ant., 175. EXACTINGNESS. 173 of standard, we may be leaving things unchecked where our duty is to bring them up to a higher level of excellence ; but this is not the danger of which I would now speak. It is the temptation, the sin of exactingness, that the text brings before us ; the sin of wilful inconsiderateness towards those to whom in any matter we give orders, or with whom we have the responsibility of finding fault ; the sin of taking pleasure in the sense of being obeyed ; the sin which, in its barest, ugliest form, we know as bullying. Is there any relation of our life into which anything like this, any touch of the oppressor's temper, enters ? Is there any one towards whom we show less con- sideration than we desire and need for ourselves from those set over us ? Are we as thoughtful and generous in making allowance for others as in seek- ing it for ourselves ? Do we ever try, sincerely and laboriously (for it is a very difficult thing to do, and very few, I think, if any, ever do it perfectly), to put ourselves in the position of those whom we expect to do as we tell them ? III. Let me, in conclusion, speak very briefly of two thoughts which may help us to be more careful about this part of our duty. First, there seems to be an especial need in England at the present day for a great increase in the grace of 17 + EXACT1NGNESS. considerateness ; and we well may fear that grave disasters may be brought on us by the exacting temper, if it be fostered and indulged on either side in the great conflict that is going on. There are some who think that the social troubles of our time go too deep to be adequately dealt with by those indirect and gradual methods which Christianity has generally used in the vast changes it has already helped to bring about. I cannot judge as to that. But I think that, as in the maladies of the individual, so in those of the society, at least as much is wont to depend on atmosphere and light as on medical or surgical treatment ; and sometimes even in very grave cases a better air will take away the necessity for an operation which was declared to be the only conceivable means of relief. Anyhow, here is one reform in which every one of us may bear a part ; a reform which must tell with certain and immediate benefit on the narrow circle round us, no less than on ourselves ; a reform which may, perhaps, in the hidden channels of one life's influence on others, as it parts, and parts again, into innumerable branches, tell more widely than we can imagine. Only let us see to it that our lives are among our fellow-men as springs of considerateness and equity, that no im- pulse of exactingness ever starts from our abuse of EX A CT1NGNESS. 175 the power or authority we hold, 1 and theu we shall be doing something towards the diffusion of that temper which in all societies of men, civil or ecclesiastical, great or small, keeps difficulties from hardening to be desperate ; we shall be working as they should work who pray, " Give peace in our time, O Lord." And lastly, let us try to understand and to re- member how preposterous it is that we should ever be exacting self-asserting, in the use of our brief authority, while day by day we are so vastly needing, not merely the kindness of our fellow-men, but, above all, the sustained forbearance, the patient and long-suffering considerateness, of the Almighty.' 2 " God is a righteous J udge, strong and patient, and God is provoked every day ; " yes, and every hour we can only trust that He will not be " extreme to mark what is done amiss," that He will " remember whereof we are made," that He will extend His mercy and forgiveness to that which we have made our- selves, that He will " spare us a little that we may 1 It would be interesting to consider how far the vast influence of Calvin was discoloured and marred by the censoriousness and impe- riousness which seems to have been noted in him at stage after stage of his career. Cf. Hooker's Works, ed. Keble, vol. i. p. 133, note 2 (ed. 1888); Dyer's '-Life of Calvin," pp. 143-145, 535, 536; T. E. Espin's "Critical Essays," p. 170. • Cf. R. C. Trench, " New Testament Synonyms,'" p. 155. 176 EXACT1NGNESS. recover our strength." Amidst all our strange ways of inconsistency and forgetfulness, nothing seems more strange than that we should own this immense, continual need of forbearance for ourselves, and yet so often grudge or refuse forbearance to others. The sound of our own voice as we cried, " Have patience with me," might almost be still ringing in our ears, and yet we can disregard the selfsame words as we hear them from our fellow-servant. It may help us sometimes against the temptation to be exacting and inconsiderate if we think that only by the boundless love of God, by the Sacrifice of the Cross, by the prayers of many pleading for us, and by the ceaseless intercession of our Lord and Saviour, may that just sentence be held back which we so often, in our pride and selfishness, provoke, misusing what- soever trust of power or authority the King of kings has committed to our care. XVI. FORBEARANCE. "And they went unto another village." St. Luke ix. 56. I. These words close the record of a memorable inci- dent in the training of the disciples James and John, — in their preparation for the work to which our Lord had called them. The last stage of His ministry had begun, and He had set His face to go to Jerusalem. There seems to have been about His movements a deepened solemnity, such as belongs to doing things for the last time ; for He sent messengers before Him so that the villagers might be ready when He came', and might not be taken by surprise. From one of the villages His messengers came back with an abrupt rejection. The people were Samaritans; the temper of division, prejudice, antagonism, the certainty that is bred of a long quarrel, was strong in them ; they would have nothing to do with a Prophet, a Messiah, Who was N 178 FORBEARANCE. on His way to the city that ignored their position and despised their sanctuary ; they refused to receive Him. The resentment of St. James and of St. John at once breaks out ; their discipline is as yet imper- fect ; they have not fully learnt how to glorify God : perhaps they have not fully learnt how to keep in order the risings of national or personal sensitiveness ; they seem to see an occasion for a decisive proof of their Master's power and of His people's claim ; they would have fire called down from heaven to consume these unmannerly schismatics. But they are wrong, deeply wrong ; and they hear His firm rebuke, to Whom all hearts are open ; they are put back, as it were, like children who have not learnt their lesson. — And yet, perhaps, the picture, the example of their Master's bearing at that moment, may have been fastened into His disciples' minds quite as impres- sively as the words of His rebuke. For even before He spoke to them, and perhaps before their vehemence had found expression, He had turned away, it seems, from the village he had thought of entering. 1 With- out surprise, complaint, delay, or argument, He had accepted the message of rejection ; He would not press His offer where men were not ready to under- stand it ; He would wait, would give them time ; 1 Cf. E. C. Trench, "Studies in the Gospels," p. 233. FORBEARANCE. 179 hereafter they might see things differently, and He would not force them to an issue now ; so " they went unto another village." — It is remarkable that St. Luke, who tells us in his Gospel of this scene, tells us also in the eighth chapter of the Acts how one of the two peremptory disciples came in later years to Samaria ; came, perhaps, again to the very village which he would have had consumed for its stubbornness and rudeness ; came to call down indeed the fire from heaven ; but the fire, not of vengeance, but of love. 1 Yes, it may well have been among the most illuminating, chastening, transforming experiences in St. John's life to look at the village which once had made him so indignant : to stand amidst the very houses from which his Lord, rejected and despised, had turned away in meek, long-suffering submission ; and as his brothers newly won to Christ came round him, and as he laid his hands on them and they received the Holy Ghost, to realize what may come about, since God is merciful, by giving people time. II. Giving people time; not quickly taking them at their word ; not closing up the account, or forcing a complex matter to a speedy issue ; not insisting that men must mean all that their words, or even 1 Of. R C. Treuch, "Studies in the Gospels," p. 23G. ISO FORBEARANCE. their deeds, imply ; making allowance for the dif- ferent capacity, and form, and character, and move- ment of different minds : remembering by what different avenues, and with what different stages and tokens of acceptance, the same truth may be penetrating different hearts ; — is not this the bearing which we may learn from our Saviour, as He, the Lord of all, cpaietly seeks another village instead of that which has sent back His messengers and refused His offer ? And is it not the bearing which we must be learning more and more thoroughly to make our own, if we are to be in any way fellow- workers with the truth ? At all times, and, above all other times, in days of controversy and division, we need to be training, chastening ourselves so to think and speak of others, so to act towards them. Giving people time ; — it is, I think, one of the best ways to take in one of the hardest tasks — the task of being at once loyal to truth, and gentle towards those who are denying and opposing it. — For truth is sacred and commanding ; its honour may not be given away ; it is jealous, with that righteous, tranquil jealousy which is ascribed to God Himself. We know not what may hang, for ourselves and for others., on our exact and resolute allegiance to it, on the simplicity with which we bear our witness to it. FORBEARANCE. 181 And God may grant to a man to see very clearly what is true ; to be rightly sure of it ; to feel that no principle of his daily life, no conviction upon which he acts, is so plain and steadfast for him, so wrought into his being, as the truth which has been revealed to him concerning God. So men have borne to die, and to die alone, defeated and ridiculed by the world, sooner than be false to that truth, or desert it. And no good can be done by speaking as though the truth were less distinct, or less certain, or less important, than we believe it to be ; in what- soever degree we are convinced of it, we must hold the conviction as a trust, a power committed to us for the help of others, and for our own advance in the knowledge and the love of God. — But, then, who are we, what is our insight into other men's hearts, that we should foreclose the time of their growth ; that we should call for speed, when God, it may be, is patiently disengaging their minds from difficulties that we have never known ; that we should let our- selves resent their present refusal of that truth which, perhaps, they are already preparing to wel- come later on with a depth, an intensity, a thorough- ness of acceptance far beyond all that we have ever- rendered to it ? If we realize at all the height and greatness of the truth, its hidden depths, its distances 182 FORBEARANCE. of unapproachable light, its divineness and awefulness, we must know ourselves to be incapable of judging how Almighty God maj^ lead men on towards it; we must feel that it would be strange if all men could be led alike, or if we could always tell how others are dealing with their opportunities. God may be leading them by a way that they know not ; and the}' may be humbly, anxiously struggling on ; trusting, perhaps, with a hope they hardly dare to put into words, that the light is surely growing somewhat clearer, steadier around them than it was : that they are somehow nearer to God, or at least not further from Him than they were. And who can tell how He may help them through the reverent and hopeful patience of those who feel the sacred- ness both of truth and of each human life ? Who can measure the responsibility of trying to force on the decision, to presume the issue ? It is easy to affix a label, to pass our own audacious verdict, to imply that hesitation can be no longer possible or honest ; easy, but very little like His way Who, when men would not receive Him, turned simply, silently to go elsewhere ; refusing to bring things to a crisis, or to let hope go because it was deferred ; giving people time, and waiting that He might have mercy on them. FORBEARANCE. 183 Nor is it only in the great matters of belief and unbelief, of acceptance and refusal, that we may learn this lesson as to our bearing towards our fellow- men. The example of our Lord, as He humbly and calmly takes the rebuff, and turns to go to another village, may help us in the ordinary ways of ordinary daily life. The little things that vex us in the manner or the words of those with whom we have to do ; the things which seem to us so inconsiderate, or wilful, or annoying, that we think it impossible to get on with the people who are capable of them ; the mistakes which no one, we say, has any right to make ; the shallowness, or conventionality, or narrow- ness, or positiveness in talk which makes us wince and tempts us towards the cruelty and wickedness of scorn ; — surely in all these things, and in many others like them, of which conscience may be ready enough to speak to most of us, there are really opportunities for thus following the example of our Saviour's great humility and patience. How many friendships we might win or keep, how many chances of serving others we might find, how many lessons we might learn, how much of unsuspected moral beauty might be disclosed around us, if only we were more careful to give people time, to stay judgment, to trust that they will see things more justly, speak 184 FORBEARANCE. of them more wisely, after a while. We are sure to go on closing doors of sympathy, and narrowing in the interests and opportunities of work around us, if we let ourselves imagine that we can quickly measure the capacities and sift the characters of our fellow-men. III. It would be, under any circumstances, a terrible thing to discourage and throw back, by any premature, presumptuous judgment, any one who is winning his way into the light, through difficulties we do not know, through trials that have never tried us, out of defects and disadvantages which would perhaps have checked us long ago. A great responsibility plainly rests on us if we will not give men time ; time to develope and learn in whatever way they can ; time to reconsider things, and, by God's grace, to x'epent ; time to find their way in life, and feel its discipline, and do themselves justice. But what can be said of such impatience, such hurrying of issues and crying for a swift decision, when it is remembered that they who would so foreclose the case for others would themselves be without light or hope in life if God had not borne with them year after year ; if He had not again and again given, them time, when they rejected Him ; that they themselves are even now depending moment by moment on His vast long- FORBEARANCE. 185 suffering ? Yes, we must forget God, or know very little of ourselves, if we want to be peremptory with others, to be prompt and confident in judging others. It might help most of us to grow in patience and charity and justice if now and then we were quietly to recall the forbearance we our- selves have needed and received in our past lives. The forbearance of our fellow-men ; of parents, teachers, friends ; of those who bore with us when we were wilful and stubborn and conceited ; of those whose persevering belief in us forced us to aim high, and whose hope for us made us ashamed of our sloth ; of those whose patience and self-forgetfulness kept open for us the way of return and of amend- ment. Let us think, too, how much forbearance must have been shown us that we were not even conscious of needing; how often, beyond doubt, we have wounded, or annoyed, or wearied those who were so skilful and considerate that we never suspected either our clumsiness or their pain. But, above all, let us think, and think again, (however far our thoughts may stay beneath the truth,) of the forbearance of Almighty God ; provoked by all our pride and stub- bornness, our meanness and ingratitude, our hardness and neglect and worldliness and self-indulgence ; provoked by our broken promises and our waste of 186 FORBEARANCE. all His gifts ; provoked, it may be, year after year, as far as our memory can reach ; yet still — oh, wonder of redeeming love ! — still ready to receive us, still calling us to repentance and to peace. XVII. HONOURING ALL MEN. " Honour all men." 1 St. Peter ii. 17. There must be strong reasons behind such a rule as this. For it is both wide and penetrating in its demand : and he who urges it must be sure that it will always bear the strain of actual use ; that it is drawn from certain and unchanging truths ; that there is nothing mistaken or one-sided in the view it teaches men to take; that it corresponds so justly with the reality of life, that experience rightly under- stood can only reinforce it. Let us seek to enter into some of the thoughts which may have made St. Peter thoroughly sure of all this, in regard to a rule which would be tried severely in the expe- rience of those to whom he wrote. For we may thus be readier ourselves to take the rule to heart, 188 HONOURING ALL MEN. without wanting to narrow its range or to dilute its meaning. I. Surely its first and plainest sanction was for St. Peter, and is still for us, the example of Jesus Christ. Not only in the infinite wonder of His Self-abase- ment, His suffering and death for all men ; not only in that supreme, astounding sign how " dear in the sight of the Lord " are the souls of all ; not only in the sacredness inseparable from the nature which He took and wears ; but in all His bearing among men, all His dealings with them, all His words and works in the days of His humiliation, we see that we must honour all men if we would follow Him. Think of His painstaking and sustained considerate- ness for all with whom He has to do ; they may be slow and inconsistent and disappointing, but He never despises them, never loses patience with them, never hurries on the issue or forecloses the probation. Think of the value He attaches to every better trait in men's mixed characters ; how carefully He rescues it from all that has defaced and distorted it, as one who laboriously clears some precious fragment of antiquity from the traces of misuse that have nearby spoilt it, and that hide its worth and importance from all less skilled eyes. Think of the regard, the forbearance, the watchfulness, with which He teaches HONOURING ALL MEN. 189 men as they are able to bear it ; tempering the light for them, waiting on the growth of their capacity : never overbearing their freedom or ignoring the pro- cesses by which their minds must really make the truth their own. He honours men also in the very sternness that He sometimes uses towards them ; for there is nothing more dishonouring than to meet men with a low standard, to expect little of them, to take their failure as a matter of course. And then His high and undiscouraged hope for men is shown in the care, the distinct, peculiar tenderness with which He recovers and restores those who have fallen away. It well may be that, as St. Peter spoke of the duty of honouring all men, he especially re- called how gently Christ had dealt with him when he had lapsed into sins for which the world reserves its most confident and indignant scorn. Bragging, cowardice, desertion, falsehood, — men feel secure in lavishing contempt on these ; we hardly think we can be asked to retain any honour or reverence for one who has so sinned against all self-respect ; worst of all it seems to us, if in the past we ourselves have shown him trust or friendship. Yet there is no hint of slighting or dishonour, of lowered hope or trust withdrawn, as He Whose perfect love St. Peter so had met restores him to his place among the Apostles, 190 HONOURING ALL MEN. the stewards of His mysteries, the witnesses of His resurrection. Surely, if we want to treat men as Clmst treated theni^ to guide our words and deeds by His example, we must gain more reverence for all men ; for in the story of His life we shall not find our warrant for despising any one. II. " Honour all men." The thoughts of Easter may, in the second place, help us to understand the rule ; even as for St. Peter the great light that broke on all things when he knew that Christ was risen, may have made it seem a demand that needed no explanation or defence. For how could it be hard or strange to honour all men, when for all the issues, hopes, and interests of life had undergone the immeasurable change that came with the certainty of that triumph over death and wrong ? It is difficult, perhaps it is impossible, for us to realize the transforming power that rushed over the world of thought and feeling in the joy of seeing, greeting, touching, talking with Him Who was dead : of knowing Him to be indeed alive for evermore. With that experience, — so surprising, vivid, » and engrossing, — there was no exaggeration in declaring that all things had become new. For it could not but fasten into the Apostles' minds, beyond the reach HONOURING ALL MEN. 191 of all those forces which attenuate or efface even the strongest impressions of ordinary life, truths which would tell in the future on every act and question and relation. And as that change passed over all things, nothing, surely, underwent so splendid a transformation as the estimate of a human soul, and of its meaning, purpose, promise. For the radiance of that great disclosure swept away the clouds that had hung heaviest on men's hopes and efforts ; the slavish fear of death, and the maddening sense of helplessness under oppression. " How dieth the wise man ? Even as the fool." Yea, " that which hefalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them : as the one dieth, so dieth the other." And again, "I saw under the sun the place of judgment, that wickedness was there ; and the place of righteousness, that iniquity was there;" "And, behold, the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter ; and on the side of their oppressors there was power, but they had no comforter." It* that was true — if that was, or could be, all the truth — then it would be hard indeed sometimes to keep at bay the thoughts which mock at human life, till its highest aspirations, enterprises, sacrifices, seem ridiculous or pitiful ; the thoughts that dwell on its ugly, disastrous, wasteful-seeming bits, and make 192 HONOURING ALL MEN. men doubt how that can be honoured which is so disfigured, and abortive, and precarious, and dark. If the mastery of death was unbroken ; if insolence and injustice could triumph unrebuked ; if, above all, the perfect life, the purest love, were left to end in sheer and dismal failure, quelled for ever by suc- cessful prejudice and hatred : then, indeed, the worst that could be said to disparage the lot of humanity might scarcely be confuted. " But now is Christ risen from the dead ; " and courage and high effort need no longer fear that at the end of this life they must simply drop down at the blank wall of death ; the real attainments of the soul, the brightness, strength, and beauty it has been gaining — gaining very pain- fully, perhaps, — these are not lost, like flowers thrown into a grave, or paintings on a crumbling wall. Injustice may score its success now and then, here and there, and patient hearts may have to ache with wrongs that are never righted in this world ; but if this world, this life, are only fragments, and disordered fragments, of love's whole vast work, then patience may be better than prosperity ; then the highest aim may be in truth the soberest ; then there may be no real treasures save those which will be reckoned such where Christ is ; then there may be for all men a calling, a task, a future, such as well HONOURING ALL MEN. 103 ma}? make us honour them. Not only to believe, but also to imagine, 1 to take to heart, to embody in thought, to represent to ourselves, to dwell upon what the resurrection opens out before men, — yes, before us all ; what it discloses of the issues, the possible advance, the undeveloped resources, of a human life ; — this may help us to understand why St. Peter bids us honour all men as absolutely, as emphatically, as he bids us fear God. III. Let me try to speak of yet a third reason which lies behind the rule thus given us. St. Peter lived in daily contact with those who were made pure and strong and holy by the grace of God. He saw, indeed, how low men could sink down in lust and cruelty ; he saw the monstrous vices of a corrupt, licentious civilization ; he took account of all that. But in the midst of such things he saw again and again a strange growth ; he saw forms of moral splendour springing up, surpassing all that men had thought possible. Out of the very depths of the wickedness around him, there came characters that he could only watch with silent awe and astonish- ment and joy; characters with deep reserves of tenderness and strength, blending, into a type undreamt of, traits of beauty which had before been 1 Cf. R. W. Church, " Cathedral and University Sermons," p. 213. O 194 HONOURING ALL MEN. set in contrast ; characters in which all men who could think and feel might see a sight more moving and affecting and controlling than any glory of the world of sense, in nature or in art. From widely diverse states of life they came ; they passed through many forms of trial and discipline and temptation ; but in them was fulfilled their Master's promise, " Nothing shall by any means hurt you ; " they turned to His praise the fierceness of men ; all the wrong that could be done them only led them on to a simpler, brighter patience, a more thorough self-committal to the love of God. And this, this thrilling wonder of spiritual beauty, was what God could make of human nature. These had been like other men, like other women ; and God had wrought this in them — and He might work this in others also. Yes, this, and more than this ; for the work was not finished yet ; it did not yet appear what they should be ; there were heights of perfectness yet undisclosed and inconceivable ; heights that rose where Christ had gone before. Who, then, could refuse to honour all men, since of all he might have hope that God would yet achieve, might even now be secretly preparing, such a work in them ? — That great appeal for patience and reverence towards all men, that HONOURING ALL MEN. 195 protest alike against scorn at their failure and against acquiescence in it, may have come home with peculiar clearness to the Christians of that first age, with its sharp contrasts, its sudden glories, its plain issues, its absorbing love ; to them it may have been among the fixed points that govern conduct, the principles that men need not consciously recall before they act on them ; — but is it wanting or uncertain now for us ? Surely it need not be. It is a blundering and shallow study of experience that gets from it a disbelief in goodness and a scornful view of men. We may wonder at the strange physical theories which, in bygone ages, the facts of nature were supposed to warrant ; and yet the facts of life are still misread with quite as much partiality and eccentricity ; men say that they have learnt by experience convictions quite as far removed from truth. We may have much to discover of the depth and awefulness of sin ; of the weakness of will, the deformity of conscience, the harcbheartedness that sin can work : but it will be our own fault, I think, if we do not also find with increasing clearness, and read with steadier certainty, the tokens of the power that is ever beating evil back ; the power that reasserts through human goodness man's true claim to honour ; the power that bears in itself the pledge 196 HONOURING ALL MEN. of final victory, that must " triumph because of the truth." The scenes and incidents of life through which we may win our growing knowledge of that power may be very different. Sometimes we may see it far off, sometimes very close to us ; now in brightness, now in sorrow : but the chances of seeing it come, I think, to all ; and they are the truest opportunities that life brings. In all, for instance, that we may come to learn through the experience of illness, the fresh discovery of kindness, patience, generosity, gentleness, self-forgetfulness in human hearts shines out with a distinctive brightness ; a brightness which should grow towards that perfect day from which, in truth, it comes. But howsoever we are led to know of the hidden work that is fashioning the wonder of goodness in the hearts of men and women, that knowledge surely may light up for us the bidding of the text and rebuke us when we forget it. We may gladly and sincerely " honour all men " as we meet them and deal with them even in the hurried and conventional ways of ordinary life ; since in all that secret growth may be astir, and we may be nearer than we can imagine to " the Spirit of glory and of God." IV. " Honour all men." I have left but very little HONOURING ALL MEN. 197 time in which to try to show what the rule asks of us. But perhaps, in thinking of the grounds in which it rests, we have really touched the thoughts which best may help and guide us in obeying it. For nothing, perhaps, would do more to keep us right in all our relations with men, of all classes, of all sorts, than, first, to be thinking often of the example of Jesus Christ, of His patience and considerateness ; and secondly, to do our best to realize that the issue of every human life is everlasting — that beyond this world, for all alike, for those who have fared hardest and most strangely in it, for those who have seemed to drop out and get lost in its confusion, no less than for ourselves, there is another world, a judgment-day, a state of bliss or misery in comparison with which the best and worst that this world yields may seem as nothing ; and thirdly, — if ever the sight of goodness has appealed to us, if ever we have known the surpassing beauty of an unselfish life, — to remember that a splendour such as that, and more than that, may be preparing even now in the secret discipline of any human soul with whom we have to do, and on whom our life, our conduct tells. Such thoughts as these may sux*ely guard us from the hateful sin of scorn ; they may save us from blunders which would be terrible to us if we were not too blundering to 198 HONOURING ALL MEN. be aware of them ; they may lead us, if it please God, to two great elements of happiness which are perhaps the best that can be found in this life, and the clearest earnest of the life to come — the joy of recognizing goodness, and the joy of truly serving others. XVIII. PATRIOTISM. " I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kiusmen according to the flesh." Kom. is. 3. I. Much has been written about these words, about their meaning, their morality, and their theology ; and sometimes, in anxiety as to their theological or moral bearing, strange views have been taken of their meaning. 1 They were pressed this way and that, in the great controversy which troubled the Church of France towards the close of the seven- teenth century, as her two greatest prelates disputed concerning mercenary and disinterested affection. 2 One of the most learned of English casuists warns us not to understand the text as expressing such a desire as " neither was possible," " by the law of 1 Cf. esp. Waterland's Works, vol. v. pp. 454, G2G, seq. * Cf. "CEuvres de Fe'nelon," Classe I. torn. iv. ; "CEuvres de Bossuet," vols, xxviii., xxix. 200 PATRIOTISM. nature," " nor could be regular," " by the course of charity ; " 1 while another does violence to grammar in his fear lest St. Paul's affection should seem irrational and unchristian. 2 But as, from difficulties raised about the words, one comes back to the words themselves, their claim to be taken simply and naturally reasserts itself, I think, with irresistible force. They stand with Moses' prayer of utter self- surrender for the sake of his brethren. 3 They are not, indeed, merely a transcendent utterance of patriotism ; but they show the depth and power of the passion that makes men patriots. Neither for Moses nor for St. Paul is the supreme object of desire overshadowed or dethroned — that is still the glory of God in the fulfilment of His Word, the vindication of His purpose ; but in the apostle, as in the prophet, there is no consciousness of any personal desire, any longing after joy or peace or perfecting or blessedness for himself, that would hold its ground — if the conflict were possible — against his passionate longing for the conversion, the forgiveness, the salvation of his brethren, his kinsmen according to the flesh. True, the wish of which St. Paul speaks is checked, arrested in his heart ; in thought, as in expression, it 1 Bishop Sanderson's Works, vol. i. p. 332. • Waterland, v. G2G-628 ; cf. St. Jerome, Ep. cxxi. 3 Exod. xxxii. 32. PATRIOTISM. 201 is imperfect ; his feeling that it could not be realized keeps it from completion ; so that probably there never rose before him those tremendous conditions and consequences of its fulfilment which have per- plexed the critics of his words. But he cannot mean less than this : that as he thought of those with whom in God's providence he was united by the bonds of a common kindred, and history, and nation- ality, and hope ; as he saw them spurning their own peace, belying their true life, and falling out from that great Godward movement of mankind which they had been called and trained and singled out to lead ; and as this sight, in all the pity of it, reached in him those deep capacities of joy and pain which are the strength of a man's wider life, he felt as if no fulness nor intensity nor purity of personal delight could be too much for him to part with, even for ever and ever, if it were conceivable that so his people might be brought into the peace of God through the knowledge and the love of Jesus Christ our Lord. As some have dared to die for the sake of their country, as others for the common good have borne the parting of friends, the loss of fame and work and happiness, the taunts of inconsistency or cowardice, so to St. Paul even the everlasting joy that passes man's understanding, even the communion 202 PATRIOTISM. which is beyond, all human love, seems less decisive in its control over his desires than the thought of all his nation turning from their blindness and rebellion to adore the Saviour they had crucified, and to find rest for ever in the love they had despised. " I could wish," he says, " that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh." The deep, inspiring force that makes men patriots has never reached a higher point than that. The sense of common life and public duty has often strengthened men for heroic ventux-es, or for long and painful perseverance ; but no one ever found it in his heart to offer for his nation's sake a greater sacrifice than that of which St. Paul speaks. And in him the temper of patriotism was as pure and humble and large-minded as it was enthusiastic. It might be helpful to inquire into the principles which kept it so, and guarded it in St. Paul's character from the disproportion, the blindness, the self-gratifying, which have sometimes marred its honour and its worth. But this morning I will ask you to think simply of the temper in itself — the quality of public- spiritedness, the patriotic mind, expressed at its highest intensity in St. Paul's words — that we may try to see the part it ought to play in our lives. PATRIOTISM. 203 II. Patriotism is, I suppose, the feeling which impels a man to own and do his duty towards the particular society of which he is a member. For each several form of social life proffers to men a twofold opportunity — the opportunity of receiving, and the opportunity of giving. On the one hand, from the day on which a boy goes to his first school he finds himself surrounded by ideas, traditions, influences, encouragements, advantages (as well as by hindrances, possibly, and temptations), belonging to the body he has joined. These are its corporate property or character, and a main part of all its power to tell upon the characters of those who share its life. Nowhere, perhaps, is this common heritage so rich and various as in a great public school ; no other society seems to lay so vigorous a hold on all its members, to send its common traits with such strength and penetration and detail into the lives of all who come under its influence, to stamp them with a mark so distinctive and enduring. But hardly, if at all, less deep and definite is that which men receive from Oxford or from Cambridge ; while, besides this general yet finely detailed impress, there are the special features they may take from the traditions, the tone, the character, of their own college. And blending with all this, or underlying 20-i PATRIOTISM. it, there is, again, the clear, persistent type received by inheritance and by constant influence out of the nation's common heritage and life. — One's country, one's school, one's university, one's college, — these are the great societies from which most of us have received, and may be now receiving, more than we can ever tell ; their power and wealth and hope have been within our reach; what the generosity and courage and hard work of bygone generations have stored up in them, we have had the chance of drawing into our own lives. We may enter into other forms of social life, we may have many other opportunities to answer for; but we shall scarcely find elsewhere a more ennobling and invigorating influence than these have been ready to put forth for us. — The manifold and mysterious energy which from their birth tells on men in home-life ; the ministry of grace in the Divine Society, the universal Church of Christ ; — these have each a separate, peculiar work, and make their own demands ; they do not rank with such forms of influence as I have tried to speak of. But of all the societies for which home prepares us, and in which grace will guard us, there hardly can be one which proffers more than men have drawn from their country, their school, their college, and their university. PATRIOTISM. 205 On the one hand, then, as members of such societies we have our special opportunities of receiving. What those opportunities have been at school, and what they are here, many of us may well know ; and all, perhaps, might better learn. But, great and enviable., (yes, and widely envied, brethren,) as they are, serious as is the account that we shall have to give of them, I doubt whether all that we can make of them can come to more than may be reached through the opportunities of giving. It is a pitiful thing when a man slights and wastes such chances of true self- culture, self-enrichment, as thousands crave in vain ; when he passes from one great society to another and gains no width of view, no height of aim, no depth or steadiness of judgment ; living without interests until he loses interest in life itself. All this is terrible, even if we do not try to think how God must look on it ; — but what shall we say of the con- tinuous and stubborn disregard of the opportunities of giving ? For each society as it offers us its privileges asks of us our service, our reverent and loyal devotion to its welfare, our surrender for its sake of private aims and preferences ; it asks us to keep up in our generation that which has been finest, greatest, worthiest in the past. That is the call to patriotism — the demand for public spirit. It comes 20G PATRIOTISM. in various ways to every one of us ; and we all know, at one point after another, what it wants of us. And those who live on long in such a place as Christ Church 1 see how much a great society can receive even from the career of one man, in the three or four years that he spends here, if the temper of patriotism is clear and strong and constant in him ; if he will always care more for the place than for his own pleasure or advantage in it. Let no one doubt that there is much that he can either render or withhold here; much that he may do or leave undone, to guard and develope and augment the heritage that has come down to us. The true temper of unboasting patriotism never can be barren or unfruitful, and its fruitfulness spreads far wider than the society it immediately serves. For, in the first place, the feeling of patriotism (like all other feelings) grows stronger and more settled in us by being carried into practice ; just as men generally come to care most for the cause which they have best served. 2 And so it is through the exercise of patriotism in one society that we are trained to own and do our duty towards another. Those who are loyal to their school and college will be loyal to their country; they will carry on with 1 This sermon was preached in the Cathedral at Oxford on the first Sunday of Hilary Term, 1893. ■ Cf. J. Kuskin, " Letters to a College Friend," pp. 9G-98. PATRIOTISM. 207 them to the demands of later years and the vast op- portunities of service in national life the same quality of public-spiritedness which they have shown here. And who can say how a nation needs that quality ? Surely there could hardly be for any country a graver loss than that which M. Renan seemed — unless I do him wrong — to anticipate without humiliation or dismay from the advance of reflection and of egotism ; that individuals should grow more and more incapable of those sacrifices by which nations live. 1 But amidst all that is intricate and confused and discouraging around us, in spite of all that may be thought intractable and ominous in the relations of class with class, for all the perils of unsettled minds and truths half seen, there still is hope while men will go out to their work in life with public spirit ; resolute that their influence, be it great or small, shall always be, by God's help, for the common good: not for this interest or that, not for any personal gaining or guarding, but for the true welfare of their country, so far as they can see it; without impatience, or despondency, or wilfulness, or reckless words. Surely that is the spirit and the temper England wants in men of every class ; in order that through the oscil- lation and conflict, the action and reaction of opinions, 1 E, Renan, " Melanges," Preface, pp. xi., xii, 20S PATRIOTISM. in the wide diversity of minds, things may still be working out towards good. It would be no light reward of years well spent in this place, of a frank and generous recognition of one's duty towards Christ Church and towards Oxford, that one should be better able to understand and meet aright the wide and urgent needs in national life. But patriotism, here and elsewhere, has another promise in reserve. For thesa calls to public spirit, these opportunities of serving the society in which we live, are very high among the chances that God gives us of escaping from self-love. They may work together with such forces as the experience of sorrow, the witnessing of great patience, the example of saintliness, the discovery of what suffering can be, to win us from the wasteful, fretful blunder of a selfish life. They may lead us forward, with widening views of duty and lessening- thoughts of self, helping us more fearlessly to lay aside the things that hinder and confuse us, till we can almost surmise what life may be in that Society where the joy of all is one and faultless and unend- ing ; in that Country where Almighty God makes perfect the one communion and fellowship of His faithful servants. XIX. COURTESY. " This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth His glory ; and His disciples believed on Him." St. John ii. 11. With these impressive words St. John concludes his record of our Saviour's changing water into wine at the marriage-feast in Cana ; and we can hardly doubt, as we look closely at the words, the motive of the stress they bear. Before St. John's mind, as over many years it travels back to that well- remembered scene, a strong significance and a pro- found fitness are disclosed in the form His Master chose for the beginning of His signs. He can recall many other signs in which Christ manifested forth His glory ; but he seems to see a special reason why this, and no other in that wondrous series, came first. He recognized that it was in harmony with the whole tenor of the revelation of the Incarnate Word that this should be His first miracle. P 210 COURTESY. I. To some of us, perhaps, the prominence of the scene, and the emphasis which St. John puts on it, may sometimes have been hard to understand. It may even be that the miracle itself has seemed to lack that close coherence with the fact of the In- carnation, that plain congruity with the entrance of God the Son into the common life of men, which constitutes the higher naturalness, so to speak, of His mighty works. It was natural that at the brightness of His Presence the heavy clouds that darkened human hearts should break and yield ; that the power of disease and death should be shaken at the coming of the Prince of Life ; it would have been strange had He been there and no change come at all in those great sorrows. But this first miracle lies quite apart from all the tragedies of human life ; it remedies no deep disaster, it meets no serious need. 1 It has almost the look of those pleasant deeds that are done out of a certain luxury of kindness ; it almost seems as though our Lord had turned for a moment out of the main course of His vast work, His strenuous, mysterious toil, to allow Himself the simple happiness of seeing happy, grateful faces round Him, as the wedding-feast went brightly with 1 "Onobjecte I'inutilite du miracle. C'est un 'miracle de luxe,' solon Strauss" (Gock-t, ii. 217). COURTESY. 211 no shadow of poverty falling on it. It is true that just below the surface of the act we come on some- thing graver and more complex than this first look of it. We can see a gracious, thoughtful gentleness in our Lord's care to save His host from the em- barrassment of a failux-e in hospitality, and the fear of confusion or of ridicule. 1 It was the skill of prompt and perfect courtesy that fended off that awkwardness, that quietly came in to make all go well and to spare pain ; but, graceful and admirable as courtesy may be, we are not accustomed to number it with the great principles of action that stand in the front rank to contend for God ; we should have looked for something deeper, larger, more intense and serious in the purpose of our Lord's first miracle — the hrst assertion of His Almighty Power in a world of sin and suffering and death, among broken hearts and wasted lives and homes made desolate past hope. We can see, indeed, a wealth of symbolic teaching in the act ; 2 but besides this, we seek for its immediate meaning, for the grace of character which at the time it might evince for all who could understand it ; and we come to nothing weightier or more adequate to the world's needs than the considerateness of courtesy. 1 Cf. R. C. Trench, "Notes on the Miracles," p. 113. 2 Id., ibid., pp. 105, 123. 212 COURTESY. If this be so, it may be well to ask whether we have usually done justice to the greatness of courtesy, and realized its true place in Christian ethics ; or whether we have treated as an attractive ornament for moral excellence what really is an intrinsic part of goodness, a plain invariable duty, bound up essentially in " the bond of perfectness." We may feel at once that constant courtesy, unwearied and unerring in all relations, towards all men, is a very rare grace — as rare, it may even be, as saintliness itself ; we may also feel that there is a singular power and distinction in those few lives in which we have felt sure of its unfailing presence. And perhaps these two thoughts may give us further warrant for inquiring somewhat carefully whether courtesy is not a more serious and imperative task than men generally think it. II. At the heart of all growth in strength and worth is the principle of self-respect. Without it no man finds his place or plays his part in life ; it is the necessary condition of rendering the service one was sent into the world to render. To lose it by one's own fault is a profanity like Esau's ; to be robbed of it by others is the very utmost wrong. When it is gone, there is no depth to which one may not fall ; when it is safe, there is no height to which God may COURTESY. 213 not lead one, no work one may not come to do for His sake. The counsel of Ecclesiasticus concerns the first duty of all men : " My son, glorify thy soul in meekness, and give it honour according to the dignity thereof. Who will justify him that sinneth against his own soul ? And who will honour him that dis- honoured his own life ? " And " He that is evil to himself, to whom will he be good ? " — " Qui sibi nequam, cui bonus ? " 1 Upon each one of us there lies, then, unceasingly this absolute demand of self-respect. It is the safe- guard of all that we are set to offer for the glory of God and for the good of men. And courtesy, I believe, is nothing else than sympathy with the self-respect of others. It is just the touch of help, the appointed service, which each one of us ma}' render to others, and may receive from others, in regard to this profound condition of man's welfare. There are many forces that imperil self-respect; it is undermined by sin, it is mocked and threatened by temptation, it is discouraged by the experience of failure: only the grace of God, forgiving and renewing us, suffices wholly to repair and rein- vigorate it. But amongst the means He uses to protect us from our own despondency, to lift up 1 Ecclua. x. 28, 29 ; xiv. 5. Cf. St. Bernard, " De Consideratione," I. v. 214 COURTESY. our hearts, to give us hope and courage to regain lost ground, none, I think, is surer or more blessed in its work than courtesy. It helps men to sustain their self-respect by the quiet, frank, unquestioning respect it shows them ; and it helps them to recover self-respect by presuming that they have not lost it. It moves along the level ways where most of life goes on; it generally has to do with those com- paratively little matters which make up most of life ; but in those level ways, amongst those lesser things, it is analogous to that assumption of high spiritual capacity which calls out in all men the very best that they can yield ; it may even seem a reflection of God's goodness in trusting us that He may make us trustworthy. Yes, in all relations and over almost the whole field of conduct, it has power to help men in regard to that which most concerns the integrity and independence of their life. It abolishes no distinctions and is checked by none ; no one is too humble to show it or too high to be helped by it; its silent prompting lifts in all the tone of thought and purpose ; it is never out of place or out of reach ; and there is nothing more beautiful than the courtesy of the poor, unless it be the courtesy of the suffering and of the dying. We may often think how little we can do to alleviate COURTESY. 215 the troubles, the disappointments, the mishaps of this world ; but things are bettered not only by the effort that is directly set to better them, but also by the virtue of every life that is informed and harmonized by a steady sense of what is due to all men. And it may be that much of the strength which is generously devoted to good works would vastly gain in efficacy if with it always went the grace of courtesy ; if everywhere alike, in home, in business, in society, in beneficence, the considerate- ness of perfect courtesy never flagged ; the con- siderateness that is apt to make men wonder whether they ought not to be aiming higher than they have ever aimed as yet. It may sometimes have come into our minds that the haste, the manifold demands of modern life, make courtesy more difficult than it ever was before ; that we can hardly be expected to be always courteous when we are thus hurried and hardworked. But perhaps we may be overrating the advantages in this regard of other times; and also, if we think what courtesy requires, we may see that it can never have been easy. Hurry and worry may tell against it now : but how hard it must have been when slavery halved its range and hid its true foundation ; when rough and brutal 216 COURTESY. ways prevailed unchecked ; when men had not yet learnt or had untaught themselves to be reverent towards womanhood ; when distinctions of rank were thought to go right down to the very depth of all relations between man and man ; when great people actually imagined that their servants were of a different nature from themselves and their friends. Surely if there are characteristics of our day which may hinder, there are others which should help, our growth in courtesy. But, in truth, it never can by any one, at any time of life, be easily sus- tained. For, in the first place, it will often ask of us some exercise of self-withdrawal, self-denial ; some promptness to take the lower or less pleasant part ; some carelessness about our own comfort ; some perseverance when we are tired, and perhaps when others are ungracious ; some resoluteness not to let ourselves off easily. For courtesy requires the generosity of " The gentle soul, that no excuse doth make, But for its own another's wish doth take, So soon as that by any sign is shown." 1 And secondly, like some other excellences of the Christian character, it both requires and engenders special powers of discernment — a delicate and pene- 1 Dante, " Purgatorio," xxxiii. 130-132. For the suggestion of this quotation I am indebted to the Bishop of Lincoln. COURTESY. 217 trating insight, analogous to that with which the artist reads the mystery of nature, and seizes and translates its heauty, or to that which men may get by long training in some special craft : — an insight often exercised unconsciously, suggesting and direct- ing acts whose grace and power may be felt but never analyzed. And yet, again, it needs that quiet and constant care concerning little things which seems to be in almost every field of life the only way of high attainment. It has been said, I think, that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains ; and certainly, when courtesy attains its highest beauty, there is seen in it at once the painstaking and the brilliancy of genius. Even as one tries thus to think out the quality and work of courtesy, to understand the skill and power which it wields so quietly, to see the issues upon which it tells in the lives that are affected by it, one may begin to feel that its place is really with the great forces of character that ennoble and redeem the world ; that simply and lightly as it moves, it rests on deep self-discipline and deals with a real task ; that it is far more than a decoration or luxury of leisurely excellence. But it is in contact with those who are growing perfect in it, those who never fail in it, that one may more nearly realize its 218 COURTESY. greatness. In seeing how every part of life is lit and hallowed by it ; how common incidents, daily duties, chance meetings, come to be avenues of brightness, and even means of grace ; how points of light come quivering out upon the dull routine of business, or the conventionality of pleasure ; how God is served through every hour of the day ; — it is in seeing this that one may come to think it far from strange that for His beginning - of miracles our Saviour chose an act of courtesy. And perhaps one even may see something of the truth which led St. John to lay such stress upon His choice. For if courtesy be indeed a sympathy with the self-respect of others, if its true work and virtue lie in helping men to know and bear in mind the greatness of their man- hood, then surely it comes very near the central character of our Lord's life on earth. Men wondered and were offended at His gentleness towards those who seemed to have lost all self-respect; towards publicans, towards harlots. Before the leper knew that he was cleansed, he must have felt, with a sur- prise of joy, the touch of an unshrinking hand. And as we think of our Saviour's bearing towards all who came to Him, we may almost seem to see the light of a fresh hope, a higher aspiration, kindling in the eyes of those who found that, for all they knew COURTESY. 219 against themselves, for all that had disgraced them in the past, yet He Who was so pure and strong and high had for them no word or look that was not gracious anc i encouraging. III. I have been led to dwell on courtesy to-day, partly by the teaching of the Gospel for this week, 1 partly by the desire to speak of one in whose life and work the power of courtesy was singularly clear. We may well be glad to think that Christ Church bore a part in training Edward Stanhope to serve England as he did. Few here can have forgotten how men spoke of him when, not very many days ago, he died. 2 From rich and poor, in private and in public, whether men held with him or differed from him, there came one witness, with the plain, indisputable ring of clear sincerity. He had tried to fulfil that great demand that a Christian man should "adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things." Men felt in him the strength of a single-hearted purpose to do right. He had high ability, he used it well, he strove to live as in God's sight ; and it could not be but that such a life should widely tell for good. With far less gifts than his, any one of us who will so live may surely bear a real part in the work that 1 This sermon was preached in the Cathedral at Oxford on the Second Sunday after the Epiphany, 1894. 4 On December 21, 1893. 220 COURTESY. is best worth living for, — and, if it please God, dying for. But, from all that I have heard, I think that, as the life of Edward Stanhope is recalled, besides the notes of greatness which it shares with other lives of like devotion and consistencj 7 , one note will rise into peculiar distinctness — the note of an unfailing, perfect courtesy ; the courtesy of one who, recollect- ing always what was due to others, never seemed too hurried or too tired to pay the debt, but with unselfishness and watchful kindness tried to keep steadily in His steps Who came not to be ministered unto, but to minister; and Who, for the first sign that should manifest His glory, took an act of quiet and considerate courtesy. XX. KINDNESS. " Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves ? " St. Luke x. 36. With this question our Blessed Lord concludes the Parable of the Good Samaritan. It is a very simple question, in regard to the parable ; but it is a very strange question, in regard to the inquiry which was the occasion of the parable. It is clearly meant to bear on that inquiry ; but when we bring it so to bear, we find what seems a curious irrelevance and confusion. The difficulty does not seem to have been much considered ; and I would ask you to think of it with me this morning. I. A certain lawyer found himself challenged with the demand of the Law that he should love his neighbour as himself. Willing to justify himself, he said to our Lord, " And who is my neighbour ? " Kai 222 KINDNESS. r!g lari fiov TrXiicriov; — How far, he clearly means, does that requirement of love reach ? Who is near to me ? — near enough to be within the range where such love is a duty ? Our Lord, by way of rejoinder to that question, tells him the story of the Good Samaritan ; the story of one who, coming across a case of need, did not raise that question at all. For the man in need — the man whom the thieves had stripped and nearly killed on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho — does not seem to have been in any sense a neighbour to the Samaritan who had compassion on him; he would have been on the wrong side of any limit by which the Samaritan might have bounded the number of his neighbours and the consequent range of his duty of love ; for he was an utter stranger, alien in race and worship, removed beyond the scope of any dealings by the tradition of an inveterate and cherished quarrel. Had the Samaritan asked the lawyer's question, the answer could hardly have been favourable to the wounded man's hope of relief. But he did not stay to ask it ; when he saw the man he was moved with pity for him, and he did at once what the law of love required. The lesson clearly intended and implied in the story is that the lawyer's question is one which KINDNESS. 223 ought not to be asked, nor to rise at all in an honest and good heart. Any one, of whatsoever race, kindred, sort, or condition, if he is in real need, is a neighbour in the sense of the law of love, and is within its range. Over against the lawyer's question is set the unquestioning benevolence of the Samaritan ; and if the lawyer takes the lesson of the parable to heart, he can never ask that question again. Thus far all seems plain. But suddenly this obvious line of thought is crossed by our Lord's strange question. He does not leave the lawyer to follow out the parable, or to seek its teaching along this path. He turns his thoughts into a wholly diverse course. " Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour" (or, more exactly, "became," or, " has come to be, near ") " unto him that fell among the thieves ? " The question may sound at first as though it were parallel or identical with the lawyer's question, " Who is my neighbour ? " — as though the answer to the one ought to be in substance the answer to the other ; but we soon see that they concern the opposite ends, so to speak, of the relation of neighbourliness. Nor will it do to say that if the Samaritan proved a neighbour to the wounded man, it follows that the wounded man was a neighbour to him, and that thus by inference the answer to the 224 KINDNESS. lawyer's question is suggested by our Lord's; for if one were to argue thus, it might be logically inferred that the wounded man had not a neighbour's claim upon the Priest and Levite, and that they were justified in passing by him. — The two inquiries really make for different points. "Who has a neighbour's claim upon me?" asks the lawyer. " Who undertook the neighbour's part towards the wounded man ? " asks our Lord. As we think over the questions, they seem really to meet only in the recurrence of the one word "neighbour." Our Lord's question seems to start from that word, and to trend off in a direction right apart from that along which we were finding in the parable the sufficient answer to the lawyer's question ; — the censure of it as a question which never should be asked. Our Lord's question stands as though it were meant to clench this outcome of the parable ; to compel the lawyer to recognize that his problem has been adequately dealt with. But, in fact, it raises another and, at first sight, an irrelevant line of thought. II. Yes, in a certain sense it is irrelevant — irrele- vant as the new truth is apt to be to the old questions, as new wine to old skins, — as the glory of heaven to the cavillings of earth. The parable had dealt with and dismissed the lawyer's question : our Lord KINDNESS. 225 has turned His back, as it were, on that, and His words open up a course of thought which leads on to the central light of the Christian character and life. 1 A true teacher will always help a man to put aside the shallow misdirected questions which are among the proverbial dangers of a little learning, and to find the path of investigation along which sincere and patient thought is sure to come to something real. And so, in lieu of that unprofitable asking, " Who is my neighbour ? " our Saviour sets the lawyer's mind upon a very different quest — a quest that ought to bring him to a new view of life and duty ; " not far" — to say the least — "from the kingdom of God." " Which of these three," — Priest, Levite, or Sama- ritan, — " which has come to be a neighbour to the man who fell among the thieves ? " The question points to the way in which the relation of nearness, of neighbourhood, is constituted and realized. It is through the will and activity of love. It is not merely the relation in which I stand towards others whom I recognize as having certain claims upon my kindness ; it is that which springs up where the will of kindness and charity is clear and pure and con- stant. By the virtue of that will the Samaritan came to be a neighbour to the wounded man — came 1 Cf. R. C. Trench, " Notes on the Parables." p. 328. 226 KINDHESS. to know in relation to him the joy of loving service, the incomparable happiness of doing good. The teaching of his example lies not merely in his re- fraining to ask what claim the sufferer had on him ; we learn far more when we try to realize the habit of mind and heart which made him act as he did, and when we mai'k the outcome of his unquestioning charity, the relation which it constituted between the two men. For we learn that if we would find our place and work and duty, we must begin hy trying our own hearts, by seeing clearly what is the will and purpose, the temper and the hope, that we are taking with us into the world. Do we intend first of all that anyhow it shall be a pleasant place for us — a place which shall yield us enjoyment, or success, or praise, or comfort ? Do we know that pride or sloth has a hold on us which we have never resolutely disputed and shaken off? Or is the will of love, the desire to imitate the love of God and His beneficence, the longing to lighten others' burdens, to gladden others' lives, deep, and un- checked, and dominant, and effectual in us ; is there in us the charity which beareth, belie veth, hopeth, and endureth all things ; is there really nothing on which our hearts are so much set as on the ser- vice of our fellow-men ? Then quite surely in the KINDNESS. 227 ordinary ways and occurrences of life, in its common work and pleasures, wheresoever our course may lie, we shall find the relation of neighbourliness — ay, and of friendship and of brotherhood — springing up ; we shall " come to be near " to those with whom we have to do ; we shall quicken with a real humanity all intercourse with men. Let love be without dis- simulation, quiet and undemonstrative, but strong and watchful and prepared to suffer, and it will not lack its opportunities. The duty of love is not bounded in range by a circle drawn round us while we stand still ; we shall find but little exercise for it if we wait till claims are made and proved ; we must move forward with the will of charity, and we shall find its scope. It is a duty not constituted or defined by the rights that others have over us ; it may, indeed, be pressed on us by their wi'ongs, and realized through their needs; but it is laid on us by the faculty, the grace, and the example which Almighty God has given us. The example of Almighty God. — Yes; "we love," St. John says, and he names no object — it is the very character and temper in itself of which he speaks — " we love, because He," Almighty God, " first loved us." 1 That disclosure of the mind of God 1 1 St. John iv. 19 ; cf. Bishop Westcott, in loco. 2 28 KINDNESS. towards us which is the centre of Christianity, even the Incarnation of the Eternal Son, is the supreme and uttermost illustration of the lesson indicated in the question of the text. When He came down from heaven and was made man, He set forth the perfect pattern, the very archetype of that which is commended in the Samaritan — that moving forward and bending down in love to become near to those who were far oft"; to constitute through the free act of charity the new relation of sympathy and brother- hood. That vast generosity of His stands in utter- most contrast to the narrow-hearted asking, "Who is my neighbour ? " since those whom He came down to die for were in no sense near to Him — were aliens and rebels, severed from Him by that immeasurable interval which lies between the sinful and the sinless. That great humility of His is the highest victory of love, venturing and springing forward, with no claim to beckon it, to come near to those whom it may serve and save ; and if we would see in perfect beauty the power that can turn severance to brotherhood, we must seek it in the mind of Christ. III. There may seem to be a lack of definiteness and precision in saying that what men have to do is to go about the world with the temper and the will KINDNESS. 220 of love. The counsel may be thought hazy, if it be not dismissed at once as sentimental. But it may prove in use somewhat clearer and more serviceable than it seems ; and, after all, our most precisely defined tasks are not always our most important or our most difficult. Judgment and the love of God are likely always to need more thought and more self-discipline than the tithing of all manner of herbs. And, in truth, it is the presence or the absence of this temper that makes the deepest differ- ence between one man's life and another's — a deep, grave difference which it may be helpful to recall when, at the outset of an Oxford year, 1 we may well be considering the tenor and drift of our lives. It is not hard, I think, to mark that difference in one's experience of the world ; but it eomes before us very vividly in the parable of which we have been think- ing.' Let us return for a minute to the story, and let us fasten our thoughts on the two men whom as yet we have hardly noticed — the Lcvite and the Priest. The constant, ready will of love was not in them ; they were preoccupied with other interests and desires, they had other views of life, than those of the Samaritan ; there was nothing in them that 1 This sermon was preached in the Cathedral at Oxford on the first Sunday of the Michaelmas Term, 1893. 230 A'/X£>.Y£SS. stirred and sprang forward at the sight of need, and so they passed by the wounded man and went their way ; they did not become neighbours to him. And who lost thereby 1 He, doubtless, for a while : for some hours, perhaps, of untended suffering and fear, in the comfortless trouble of the needy. But the\ T far more deeply : it may be, far more lastingly. For as they go along on the other side of the road, as they turn their docile hearts to other things and forget the distress they have neglected, they seem the very type of those who go through life missing the opportunities of showing kindness and of drawing nearer to their fellow-men ; those who find few neigh- bours in the world : those for whom the duties of life naturally seem to narrow with their narrowing sympathies ; those who grow year by year more eager and less successful in self -pleasing ; lonelier, colder, harder ; moving on towards that self-made solitude which is owned in the aweful words — " I Lave lived long enough : my way of life Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf; And that which should accompany old age, As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have." 1 Surely there is, indeed, no deeper contrast, in this world of contrasts vast and manifold, than that 1 Macbeth, Act v. Sc. 3. KINDNESS. 231 between a life so misconceived and wasted, and the life of one who day by day renews the will of charity, recalling its eternal pattern, drawing it from its un- failing source, guarding it watchfully from all that can weaken or pervert or mar it. Round him the opportunities of doing good and the answering glow of gratitude and sympathy spring up in all the common ways of life : for he has learnt the secret, he bears with him everywhere the grace, which spans all severance, and draws men near to one another and makes them neighbours. Whatsoever may be his circumstances or his trials, there is in him a power which cannot cease to bless ; and God, Who for the unloving and hard-hearted maketh a fruitful land barren, as all withers and dies down around them, — God Himself, for those who seek and cherish His most excellent gift of charity, " maketh the wilderness a standing water, and water-springs of a dry ground." IV. It has been a custom here to recall, on the first Sunday of our Oxford year, the memory and the example of any whom in the course of the Long Vacation death has taken from among us. The custom has its dangers ; and this amongst others, that it may sometimes interfere with that silent, aweful reverence which becomes us as we stand before the veil of death, and the unimaginable change that is beyond ; it may 232 KINDNESS. lead us to think too much about our own well-meant but imperfectly instructed views of those to whom one Voice, one Verdict, only one, is now of any mean- ing or importance. So we need to watch and check ourselves as we talk even kindly and with admira- tion of the dead ; for even the kindest words are out of place if deep, heart-searching thought is what Almighty God would have us busy with. But we may rightly give Him thanks for those graces which He wrought in His servants' lives, and ask Him to help us in the time to come to receive and cherish whatsoever measure of those same graces He is ready to achieve in us. So let us praise Him to-day 1 for the warm-heartedness, the persevering diligence, the accurate and steady scholarship, the simplicity, the scrupulous and chivalrous loyalty to a high standard and estimate of work, which He vouchsafed to Henry Nettleship : and for the strenuous, ungrudging in- dustry, the hidden bountifulness, the true kind heart, the public spirit, the unworldliness, the deep reserve of strength which were in Benjamin Jowett. Nor can some of us forget to-day another life, another 1 Henry Nettleship, Professor of Latin, died July 10, 1893 ; Ben- jamin Jowett, Regius Professor of Greek and Master of Balliol, died October 1, 1893; Mrs. Heurtley, wife of Dr. A. C. Heurtley, Margaret Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church, died, after a long time of suffering, September 23, 1893. This sermon was preached on the first Sunday of the following Term. KINDNESS. 233 great example, though unknown to the world, and little known even within these walls. In individual souls, as in the broad course of history, it is true that "God fulfils Himself in many ways;" here the stress of action, there the quiet strain of study, there again the long, weary days and nights of suffering, may seem to be the scene His wisdom takes for the advancing of His work of grace. And to any one of us the time may come when no example will mean more to us than such an one as hers who, the wife of our oldest Canon, has, after many years of dutiful and religious life beneath the shadow of these walls, passed from her long task of resignation under pain and agony, to Him in Whom she trusted, and was not confounded; Whom she strove to follow, and was not in darkness. XXI. THE DISCLOSURE OF THE ASCENSION. " Now I go My way to Him that sent Me : and none of you asketh Me, Whither goest Thou ? " St. John xvi. 5. L " None of you asketh Me, Whither goest Thou ? " Iu thinking over these words we may seem to discern through them the tinge of many feelings, no one of which completely characterizes them. Surprise and sorrow and reproof and pity, all occur to us as we try to imagine what may have been foremost in our Saviour's heart and voice as He so spoke ; and yet we feel, perhaps, that these are all held back and checked, as it were, from reaching predominant ex- pression ; that they are floating round the words, rather than uttered through them. No one feeling emerges to the surface or breaks through the pre- vailing tenderness and awefulness of the Master's tone as, for the last time before His death, He teaches those who are to be His witnesses unto the people. And so it can only be with an especial sense of inadequacy, THE DISCLOSURE OF THE ASCENSION. 235 an especial care lest we should take a fragment for the whole, and narrow in the wealth and fulness of the words, that we can try to think how they may have sounded, what may have been the first note they bore, to the Apostles' ears. But it can hardly be doubted, I think, that there is, in the complex and mysterious feeling that the words bear, some element of surprise, and something that sounds almost like disappointment. They have a certain link with other words spoken that same night : " Have I been so long time with }'ou, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip ? " and with those earlier questions, " Why are ye so fearful ? " " How is it that ye have no faith ? " and " How is it that ye do not understand ? " while beyond those passages, again, yet still as linked with them, there rises in our minds the record of His marvelling because of men's unbelief. We seem in such words to see Him Who " knew what was in man," and " needed not that any should testify of man," still deigning as Man gradually to explore, and through experience to take to heart and realize the strange slowness and heaviness of human souls to- wards the things of God. " He knew all men ; " yet still their pathetic dulness, their shortness of sight and thought, their persistent instability, brought Him a sorrowful surprise ; there were times when He came 236 THE DISCLOSURE OF THE ASCENSION. seeking fruit and found none : and the sadness of men's failure to understand, their disappointing re- luctance from the light, was among the sustained, besetting multitude of sorrows that He chose to bear. And through that sorrow He moved step by step, taking into His heart at point after point the experience of our astounding backwardness in regard to things real and eternal. It was strange to Him that those who had seen so many miracles, those to whom He Himself had given power to heal sicknesses, those who had listened to His teaching, should still behave as though they had no faith at all when the storm rose on the Sea of Galilee. — It was strange that the engrossing care for daily bread should still pre- occupy and divert from His true meaning the minds of those who were with Him when He fed the thousands in the wilderness. — It was strange that Philip should have been continually in His Presence, month after month, and still speak as though the manifestation of the Father had yet to be made. The note of wondering in the questions with which our Saviour meets these failures to understand, these faults of discernment and recollection, seems to show us that through these in part He willed that His human Heart should feel the severance between the world and the Light of the world, as He traced the THE DISCLOSURE OF THE ASCENSION. 237 branching mischief sin had done in enfeebling and misdirecting the faculties which should have leapt freely forward to their strength and joy in Him. And surely, in the words of the text, He speaks as though even now, in the last talk together, and even from those who were nearest to Him, there had come to Him a fresh disclosure of the hold that earth and self had got upon the minds that He was beckoning on towards Heaven and towards God. "I go My way to Him that sent Me : and none of you asketh Me, Whither goest Thou ? " — He had been preparing them for His departure ; two great groups of thoughts had been constantly before Him, constantly throbbing through His words— thoughts of His goal, thoughts of their need — and it was strange to Him that still their minds should be so wholly absorbed in the latter group, so unexcited and incurious about the former. " None of you asketh Me, Whither goest Thou ? " True, at the outset of the discourse, St. Peter had asked that very question, and St. Thomas had implied it ; 1 but after all that our Lord had said since then, He looked that the question should be renewed with a different tone and sense ; He looked for a new glow of eagerness to know all that could be told of that transcendent destination towards 1 Cf. T. 1). Bernard, " The Central Teaching of Jesus Christ," p. 2G3. 238 THE DISCLOSURE OF THE ASCENSION. which He had tried to lift up their hearts, — that destination which should make His going joy to those who loved Him : — and it was strange to Him that He so looked in vain. His eyes are gazing on to the joy beyond the Cross; and it is strange that theirs should still be constantly downcast, that they should be so absorbed in the thought of their own loss, their own loneliness, as to stay unstirred, un- quickened by the glimpses of that future upon which His gaze is set ; with so little interest or curiosity about that light which can invade even the appalling darkness of the approaching hours, about the joy for which He can despise even the shame of His Crucifixion. " None of you asketh Me, Whither g-oest Thou ? " II. We may know something of the surprise and disappointment which comes when minds that should be moving freely, gladly forward in sympathy with a great hope hang back preoccupied with their own fears or sadness. In the advancing experience of life we may have been led to recognize how in the past we disappointed in such ways those who well might have expected more of us. But surely it is for the Apostles' sakes, it is because of their loss, that our Lord is sad as He marks how incurious and slow they are about the triumph we commemorate THE DISCLOSURE OF THE ASCENSION. 239 to-day, 1 the mystery of His Ascension. For they would see things very differently, they would be far readier for the strain that is coming on them, if they could look where He is pointing — if they could disengage their hearts from absorption in their own bereavement, and lift them up towards the transcendent glory whither He is going. 2 " Sorrow hath filled your hearts : " that is at once the cause and the sequel of their preoccupation with the thought of His departure, of their inattention to the promise of His ascending into the heavens. They have been yielding themselves up to sorrow ; letting it settle down upon them and shut out all else ; and so their eyes have been " holden that they should not know " the true meaning of His going away. And again, and inevitably, because their thoughts have so hung back, not passing beyond the earthward side of His leaving them, therefore there has been nothing to dispute with sorrow its hold upon them, nothing to defend the proportion of life, to assert and vindicate the rightfulness of hope. They have stopped short in thinking; they have not made the onward effort which would have released the gladdening light, and disclosed to them 1 This sermon was preached in the Cathedral at Oxford on the Feast of the Ascension, 1894. 2 Cf. Bishop Westcott, in loco. 240 THE DISCLOSURE OF THE ASCENSION. the truth of Christ's glory and their gain in His departure. They have not rejoiced because of His going to the Father ; they have not dreamt that it could be expedient for them that He should go away. And so they have foregone the help that was ready for them and within their reach ; they have been thirsting, as it were, with the " well of water spring- ing up " close by them. The pathos of their un- inquiring, incurious bearing towards the thought of the Ascension lies in this, — that there is strength and joy stored up for them where their Lord is pointing, and that they have not the alacrity of mind, the enterprise and expectancy and trustful- ness which should release it. That, surely, is the main ground of the sadness in the text ; there was so much that He was waiting, longing to bestow on them, so much of comfort, guidance, light, if only they had looked up and away from their own fears, and had pressed on to ask Him, " Whither goest Thou ? " It is just one instance of the world-wide pathos of neglected opportunities— of blessings close at hand, unnoticed or misunderstood or slighted ; the pathos of God's willingness while men will not. III. And surely, brethren, the teaching of the words bears plainly on us all. They bid us ask ourselves whether the great truth of our Lord's Ascension, THE DISCLOSURE OF THE ASCENSION. 241 the disclosure of the height to which He has lifted manhood, has ever told on our thoughts and lives at all as He would have it tell. "None of you asketh Me, Whither goest Thou ? " We may almost imagine Him speaking so to us, when our poor views of human life, our subjection to sorrow or despondency, our loss of heart, our halting, timid aspirations, show so little sense of the triumph we celebrate to-day, so little energy of thought and care about the glory which He has entered, the way which He has opened up, the place which He prepares for us. The answer to that question, " Whither goest Thou ? " can, indeed, be given in this life but partially and very gradually ; given in words whose infinite meaning we explore but slowly, reading here a little and there a little, in the manifold experience of living, suffering, repenting, praying. But even those fragments of the answer, if we really try to work them into our daily thoughts, our practical estimate of what we ought to be and do, our survey of the world and of our place in it, may disclose unending stores of light and power. (><) So, then, let us ask, " Lord, whither goest Thou ? " And let us hear the reply of His own words : " To Him that sent Me." — Then the true calling of a human soul is into the very Presence of Almighty K 242 THE DISCLOSURE OF THE ASCENSION. God. It is for that that we somehow, somewhere are bidden to prepare ourselves. Whatever hope we have must ultimately mount, if it is to be realized at all, to that height ; there is no lower point at which it can in the end abide. The gap that must be spanned is, indeed, of inconceivable vastness. We may have given up thinking, and never adequately have thought, how far our present character falls below our aim ; and our aim, perhaps, has somehow fallen unconsciously below our ideal; and our ideal, confused and sinful as we are, must be very far below what once it might have been. Who, then, can conceive the boundless tracts that stretch between our vileness and the holiness of God; the holiness and purity which must be theirs who see Him ? Who can form any thought of the change which has to be wrought out in us if we are ever to stand in His sight ? Who can forecast or criticize the methods, the discipline, which may bear part in such a change ? How can we think of bringing forward any merits, any attainments, any exploits, any attractiveness of our own, as having any worth or significance at all in regard to the transfiguration that is needed ? How can we do anything save commit our souls to God, beseeching Him for Christ's sake to lead us as He wills, and by the means He THE DISCLOSURE OF THE ASCENSION. 243 knows to be the best, towards His holy Hill, His Dwelling, our Home ? (b) " Lord, whither goest Thou ? " Again His own words give the answer : " Unto My Father and your Father ; and to My God and your God ; " " To prepare a place for you ; " " That where I am, there ye may be also." Out of all misery and persecution and oppression, the hearts of men in every age have been lifted up by that hope ; by the revelation of the Ascended Lord, watching their endurance and fidelity, waiting to bid them enter into His joy. " Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the Right Hand of God ; " " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit ; " — those words of His first martyr Stephen have sounded on, more or less plainly and consciously,, all through the manifold " patience of the saints." We may wonder some- times how men ever found the strength and courage that they showed for His Name's sake ; how, for instance, they bore to stand alone in the glaring space of the great amphitheatre, ringed round with hatred and contempt and laughter, waiting for the wild beasts to be let out on them. We may wonder at the quiet unconquerable love with which long years of trial are turned to means of grace and ways of witnessing for God. We may wonder at he 244 THE DISCLOSURE OF THE ASCENSION. height and gentleness of characters which injustice and oppression seem unable to depress or harden — characters that draw from some hidden and unfailing source a strange brightness and dignity and freedom, ennobled through all misery by the Spirit of glory and of God resting upon them. — The minds of those who so endure have followed Christ in His Ascension ; they have dwelt constantly on the disclosure of that kingdom which He has opened for them ; they have looked up to Him, away from all that this world offers or inflicts ; listening for and loving that which He commands, desiring nothing in comparison with that which He has promised. That direct reference of all to Him, that undivided care to keep His way, is the secret of their independence and tranquillity. And perhaps we too might find that sorrow would have less power to fill our hearts, that anxiety would be less apt to hinder our prayers, and that we could rise more freely above the cares of this life, if we more often thought of our Ascended Lord, beckoning to us, as it were, from the Throne of His glory, holding out to us the hope He died to win for us, the end of our faith, the salvation of our souls ; the joy of those who, having striven to keep close to Him in this life, are led on to be with Him where He is in the life to come. THE DISCLOSURE OF THE ASCENSION. 245 (c) " Lord, whither goest Thou ? " — Into heaven itself, to appear in the Presence of God for you, to make intercession for you, in the power of an endless life, an unchangeable Priesthood. — " The night is dark, and we are far from home ; " the way is hard to find, and steep and rough sometimes when we have found it ; there are many things to tempt us from it ; many dangers, many foes, are round us as we stumble on ; we have betrayed our own strength, and prayer, perhaps, seems hardest, coldest, when we need it most ; we see not our tokens ; and the voices that once helped us most grow silent one by one — silent for the rest of our life here. But on high is One " touched with the feeling of our infirmities ; " One Whose Hands, once pierced for us upon the Cross, are spread in everlasting intercession for us now. Our broken, languid prayers may rest upon His royal Pleading, our weakness may fall back on His almighty Power ; for His sake the full wealth of grace may meet our utter need; and in our loneliness and bewilderment this certainty at least may come to us— that no one ever yet has trusted in His Name and been confounded ; yea, that " Thou, Lord, hast never failed them that seek Thee." XXII. THE RESERVE OF THE ASCENSION. "A cloud received Him out of their sight." Acts i. 9. I. We may feel, perhaps, that it could not have been otherwise. As the Son of God bore into the Father's Presence the manhood which He had taken to be for ever His, no gaze of sinful men could track the course of His Ascension. Those whom He had chosen as His witnesses might see Him mount above this earth ; He might deign to show Himself to them, moving towards the visible heavens, using the ways of space, the conditions of this world, to declare the inner truth that human apprehension could not reach ; manifesting in the change of place that unutterable change of state which raised His perfect human nature to the Throne of God. But it was only the first moments, as it were, of His Ascension that could be so made known to men ; even the wistful, strain- ing eyes of love are baffled, even within the range THE RESERVE OF THE ASCENSION. 247 that they might hope to scan ; they may not watch Him to the utmost bound of sight, inadequate indeed as that would be to tell the full reality and glory of His exaltation. No, even within the sphere of sense the veil is drawn, and while they still might think to look on Him, a cloud receives, withdraws Him out of their sight. For they must learn that the goal whither He goes is not severed from this world by the mere intervals of space, nor is the height of His ascent measured by degrees of distance. 1 Beyond that intervening cloud there is a translation of His glorious Manhood such as sense could never witness nor imagination represent. Men have no power, no preparation, no capacity, to enable them to receive as yet the truth of that majesty and honour to which, as on this day, 2 the Virgin's Son, the Crucified, was raised. We may follow the sequence of the redemp- tive work ; we may take to heart the revelations of the Risen Lord, and more or less conceive what it must have been to see Him now and again as the forty days went by. But as He ascends He quits that order of existence in which human ken must 1 Cf. Milligan, "The Ascension and Heavenly Priesthood of our Lord," pp. 21, 25, 26; Wcstcott, "The Revelation of the Risen Lord," p. 180 ; " Religious Thought in the West," p. 381. - This sermon was preached in the Cathedral at Oxford on the Feast of the Ascension, 1892. 24$ THE RESERVE OF THE ASCENSION. stay : the Conqueror's resting-place, His Throne of sovereignty and judgment, the perfecting of His glory, is in another sphere, another state of being ; and it is not strange that as He was parted from His Apostles a cloud withdrew Him from their sight. " For eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him : " and how should sinfid men look on, or earthly imaginations climb the height, as the Only Begotten carries into the central splendour of the Divine Life the nature in which He has wrought to the very end the savins work of love ? - A cloud received Hirn out of their sight." All along, indeed, even while He went in and out among them, they must have felt the mystery of His life. They were often aware of more than they could grasp ; they felt themselves in the presence of a character, a purpose, which they could but know in part : there were words and deeds which the}' did not understand, and concerning which li they were afraid to ask Him ; " there were " wonders left undone " and judgments left unspoken where reserve might seem to them as strange as the miraculous. At times they seemed so near Him : and yet His course was determined by principles and forces, of attraction THE RESERVE OF THE ASCENSION. 249 and of repulsion, which issued from a sphere they could not penetrate or explore. He moved as one whose gaze is fastened on a goal that He alone discerns, and as watching signs that He alone could read. There was always present more or less of that which they had clearly felt when they were in the way going up to Jerusalem, — the solemnity and awe of coming close to sheer unearthliness, to the transcendent height, the absolute simplicity of a Divine purpose; when "Jesus went before them, and they were amazed ; and as they followed, they were afraid." And now the mystery of His As- cension sustained and interpreted the mystery of His companionship. He left them as He had lived with them, revealing some things, veiling others : revealing all that could be needed for the quickening, the direction, the upholding of their faith and hope : reserving that for which they were not ready ; that which they could not receive or bear ; that which they might hurtfully have misunderstood ; that which might have arrested growth, overborne per- sonality, compelled assent, and so deprived it of its moral and spiritual import ; 1 that which might have blinded the unready soul with the excess of light. The cloud which received Him as He went up, was 1 Cf. H. Latham, " Pastor Pastorum," pp. 69, 140, 144. 250 THE RESERVE OF THE ASCENSION. analogous to the veil of which they had before been conscious ; it guarded that which as yet they could not bear to see in its untempered brightness ; that wherein hereafter they might exercise the faculty which He would quicken and discipline and at the last make perfect in them — the faculty which might be brought to see God. II. Surely both the reserve, the unpenetrated region, of His life on earth, and the cloud which received Him as He ascended into heaven, have their counter- part, in the present ways and character of His servants, and in that vision of their future state towards which to-day our thoughts are raised. All deeper, juster thinking about human life must make us slower to believe that we can give anything like a complete account of any human character. 1 In all men there are forces, tendencies, capacities, motives, dangers, aspirations, of which even they themselves could give but a fragmentary and inarticulate ac- count ; and so it is that often the best help a man can render to his fellow-man is to presume and trust, and so to evoke and reinforce, the nobler im- pulses of a heart that fancied itself ignoble, or in- capable of high attainment. But when it is our privilege to be with those who are living very near 1 Gf. J. Buskin, "Letters to a College Friend," pp. 82-84. THE RESERVE OF THE ASCENSION. 251 to God, when we try to read the lesson of their lives, we may feel in them a reserve and veiling of another sort ; it may even he with a certain sense of awe that we recognize how much there is in them that we cannot penetrate. In some ways, to think more ahout goodness, to watch and study it in character and conduct, may increase in us the con- viction of its simplicity ; we may see more and more distinctly how the highest lives are guided by a few plain rules, which truthfulness and obedience are ever replenishing with fresh light. But, at the same time, we may be aware of much that is mysterious to us, much that we may hope gradually to discern with clearer insight. The distinctive conceptions, motives, energies of the life issue from a sphere which the natural man cannot explore : and the very plainness of the few rules, together with the height and beauty of the result, makes us feel this. Some- where in the life there is a veil drawn ; and we must watch and pray that we may move forward in the knowledge of the forces, not of this world, that come from beyond that veil. For there it is that the light is seen, the strength gained, the purpose formed, the hope conceived, the battle fought ; there it is that unworldliness and unearthliness begin to be attained ; there the soul receives its unconscious power to 252 THE RESERVE OF THE ASCENSION. attract, perplex, affect, control the hearts of men. There is a hidden stream, a course of life and growth reserved from human eyes, watched over and sus- tained by God, from Whom it came, — towards Whom it goes. Yes, for if we are in any way conscious of this element of reserve in the life of His servants while they are on earth, much more must we acknowledge it when we try to think of that which He has prepared for them beyond this world. The cloud which received the ascending Saviour out of the sight of His Apostles is hanging still about the way towards heaven. For all that has been taught us, for all the victorious, transforming splendour that has made hope the firmest principle for men to live and die by, for all the radiance that has outshone this gaudy world and set right its partial and short-sighted estimates, how far our thoughts hang back from any real apprehension of that to which the grace of God may bring a human soul. " It doth not yet appear what we shall be." Prophets and apostles, poets, painters, mystics, saints, and students, all according to the gifts which God has given them, have spoken of the glory which shall be revealed ; there is no theme concerning which the highest faculties of man have reached so high a level ; and yet, when we try THE RESERVE OF THE ASCENSION. 253 simply and deliberately to bring before ourselves a definite thought of that which the Spirit of God is working out in those who love Him, we fall back upon that plain avowal, "It doth not yet appear Avhat we shall be." As in our Lord's Ascension, part is shown and part is hidden ; we are told enough to uphold, to animate, to refine our hope ; enough to make us patient and cheerful under trial ; enough to shame us out of worldliness and sensuality ; enough to send light streaming through the shadow of death, the sorrow of bereavement ; but still the veiling cloud is there — " it doth not yet appear what we shall be." 1 We can, as St. Augustine says, more easily say what there is not in heaven than what there is; we can more easily use metaphors than translate them ; we may even more easily approach towards the idea of pure delight than imagine our- selves so pure as to delight in it. And so it is that a few bare, simple words seem to rise above all others, and to force on us the utter inadequacy of our thoughts of that to which we all are called. — To be for ever perfectly forgiven and to sin no more ; to be free from all temptation, from disappointment, from weariness, from unkindness, from fretfulness, from sorrow, from anxiety, from pain; to be always 1 Cf. Tyrwhitt, "Christian Ideals and Hopes," pp. 48,«?g. 254 THE RESERVE OF THE ASCENSION. bright and eager without effort, unflagging in in- tensity, aglow with charity ; to enter into the joy of our Lord ; to reign with Him in glory ; to serve Him day and night in His temple ; — these are indeed wonderful and surpassing thoughts, almost impossible for us to bring into connection with what we know of ourselves now. And yet, surely they all fall back, as it were, to a secondary place, they stand as helps and approximations to the truth, and we seem to pass beyond them, when we try to realize that aweful promise which speaks of men seeing God. " They shall see God " — is not that the ultimate and central declaration of all that here can be disclosed to us about the goal, the purpose, the supreme achievement of a human life ? We cannot analyse or explain it, or render it into any other terms ; we cannot break it up and study it part by part ; it stands before us in sheer and solemn plainness. " To see God " — that is what we may be brought to ; we, so sinful and thankless ; so prayerless and worldly and unspiritual : — and for that we should be growing less unready. III. Let us try to learn one lesson both from the veiling and from the revelation of that which Christ's Ascension marks as the true goal for man. (a) First, then, let us think of the cloud that re- ceived Him from His servants' eyes, the cloud that THE RESERVE OF THE ASCENSION. •_':»:» veils from us the end of the Holy Spirit's work for men. It is no " earth-born cloud " hiding " the Sun of our souls ; " it is a screen that God in wisdom and in pity draws, to give us time to learn the truth and to prepare ourselves to bear it. And there is much that we may gain by simply taking it to heart that the joy of our Lord and of His saints is thus screened from us ; that as yet we cannot compass it by our thoughts or words. For so we may be checked from language which is unreal and ill-considered and presumptuous ; we may be brought back to the true use and meaning of the great thrilling words which we have learnt from saints and poets ; we may recollect that, like the Apostles' gaze, such words may rise above this world, and truly mark the heavenward triumph till the cloud is reached ; that they may be the stay of hope, the spring of gladness and thanks- giving, the irradiating light of perseverance; but that those who best use them know that they are inade- quate, that they do not attain, that they are as arrows truly aimed at a too distant mark. The tilings which God hath prepared for them that love Him pass man's understanding ; and perhaps if Christian people had more steadily and effectually remembered that, they would have given less occasion for thoughtful critics of their faith to charge them with a selfish hope — 256 THE RESERVE OF THE ASCENSION. with delaying, not surrendering the enjoyment of mere personal gratification. " It doth not yet appear what we shall be ; " — but those words point us to the all-important truth that it is in ourselves that the change must first of all be thoroughly wrought out : that it is inconceivable that any one who has not the mind of Christ can have His joy : " that heaven " (as an old writer has said) " is first a temper, and then a place ; " 1 that nothing can possibly bring us nearer heaven save only that which makes us more like God ; since without holiness " no man shall see the Lord." (b) But while the goal, the resting-place, the perfect work, is indeed beyond our scrutiny, we know enough to teach us which are those blessings of our present life wherein the purest foretaste of the life to come is granted to us. I shall always remember with gratitude the words which a poor woman used to me, not long after her husband's death, in speaking of her difficulty in thinking clearly about heaven. Her husband had borne with very beautiful and steadfast patience an illness of many years' duration ; and she, in the intervals of hard work, had tended him with constant gentleness. And, having spoken quite simply of her privilege in this, as she felt about 1 Benjamin Whichcote, quoted by Bishop Westcott, " Beligioue Thought iD the West," p. 381. THE RESERVE OF THE ASCENSION. 257 in her mind for the thought that might come nearest to her hope about the rest that remaineth for God's people — " Sometimes," she said, " I think, sir, that being very happy with some one as you know is living a good life must be more like it than anything else." Surely she was not wrong. — A writer of fine culture and penetration, sometime a Student of Christ Church, has spoken of "the earthly rudiments of the eternal happiness." " We think," he writes, " there is a Divine love which shall be our happiness in heaven ; we think it has been manifested on earth, and that earth still retains traces of it, which are foretastes to those who find them." 1 — The two minds trained so dif- ferently meet exactly in owning the same simple truth ; in recognizing the same line of continuity between the pux*est happiness that is known on earth and the happiness of heaven that cannot yet be known. May God, the Fountain of all goodness, help us to discern and love the goodness that His grace achieves in human hearts ; may He make us trustful, patient, gentle, that men may trust us with the knowledge of their truer, better selves ; may He deliver us from all ignorance and hardness of heart, from all pride and insolence and self-assertion, lest 1 Tyrwhitt, " Christian Ideals and Hopes," pp. 32, 33. S 258 THE RESERVE OF THE ASCENSION. we blunder through the world without a thought, a suspicion, of the moral beauty that is round us ; and may He quicken us with a thankful joy in the astounding triumphs of His grace on earth, that so, through whatsoever stages of discipline and purify- ing, we may be brought to find at last our perfect happiness in the vision of His glory, and the unchecked communion of His Love. PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND DECCLES. A Selection of Works IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE PUBLISHED BY Messrs. 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