Zihvavy of t:Ke 'theological ^mimvy 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 Dr. Allison Bryan 
 Z%o.^^ of «ort 
 
{pmc^txs of t^t 
 
 TNB LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/gospelofworkOOthor 
 
THE GOSPEL OF WORK 
 
 JAN 
 
 ANTHONY W. THOROLD, D.D. 
 
 LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 
 
 PRELATE OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER 
 HON. FELLOW OF QUEEN's COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 We ascend by one another " 
 
 NEW YORK 
 E. P. BUTTON & CO. 
 31, WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 
 
 1893 
 
"The Church is not responsible for saving the world ; she is 
 responsible for holding up to the world what is alone a real salvation : 
 if the world will be ignorant, let it be ignorant," — Professor 
 
 MiLLIGAN. 
 
TO THE DEAR MEMORY OF 
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS, D.D., 
 
 BISHOP OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
 
 STRONG, FEARLESS, TENDER, ELOQUENT, 
 INCAPABLE OF MEANNESS, 
 BLAZINd W ITH INDIGNATION AT ALL KINDS OK WRONG, 
 HIS HEART AND MIND DEEP AND WIDE AS 
 
 THE OCEAN AT HIS DOOR, 
 SIMPLE AND TRANSPARENT AS A CHILD, 
 KEEN WITH ALL THE KEENNESS OF HIS RACE, 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED 
 BY A BROTHER ACROSS THE WATER, 
 
 WHO CHERISHES HIS FRIENDSHIP AS A 
 
 TREASURE LAID UP IN HEAVEN, 
 AT THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST. 
 
 A. W. 
 
 ^ 3 
 
"It is not evror which opposes the progress of truth : it is indolence, 
 obstinacy, the spirit of routine, everything that favours inaction." 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 For centuries the world has been listenmg to sermons, 
 and, while cheerfully dispensing with the hour-glass, can 
 Hsten to them still. Occasionally, also, it reads them, not 
 quite unwisely, for a good sermon is, without dispute, the 
 most convenient method possible for conveying to busy 
 men, in a compact and luminous summary, the facts, and 
 ideas, and principles, and aspirations which are the only 
 reasonable explanation of the existence of the Church, as 
 well as of the religion of her Divine Head. 
 
 Preachers, if they are wise, and conscious of their 
 limitations, will usually be found to be even greedy readers 
 of sermons, whereby they seize and retain the inspiration 
 of the loftier spirits, and become fired with the glow and 
 heat of saintly thinkers, in whom the love of Christ and the 
 passion for souls burn with an unquenchable fire. They 
 will also be only too thankful to discover and master those 
 minor details of style and arrangement, which some who 
 think more highly of themselves than they ought to think 
 may flippantly despise as technical rudiments, but which 
 the wise will almost eagerly appreciate as helping them 
 more adequately to use the grandest opportunity man ever 
 vouchsafes to man, for the delivery, without interruption. 
 
viii 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 save, at the worst, of an ill-concealed weariness in his 
 hearers, of a message about which nothing higher can be 
 said than that it is Divine. 
 
 One, however, who presumes not only to preach sermons 
 but to publish them, will, if reasonably modest, never quite 
 acquit himself, in those moments of reaction with which 
 we are all so familiar, of an incredible rashness in doing 
 so; will also be conscious of a secret trepidation lest all 
 that is in his volume, recognizable as actually his own, 
 should be blandly pronounced by the critics as hardly de- 
 serving of the permanence desired for it ; while anything 
 found in it that is readable, or striking, or profound, 
 should presently be disinterred from some forgotten volume, 
 as having been much better expressed by some one else. 
 
 It is perhaps fair to observe, that to be a preacher, 
 one must first be a student ; and a student is one who, 
 while he should ever be conscious of his indebtedness to 
 others, and sincerely grateful to them, cannot always be 
 expected to remember where or when this or that thought 
 became assimilated to his own mental consciousness, and 
 was put away among his other treasures, without a label 
 to mark from whom it was first borrowed. A man of 
 genius of our own time has said, " One could not open 
 one's lips, if one was bound to say what nobody else had 
 said." In this volume — the title and subjects of which will, 
 1 trust, sufficiently justify themselves — I have honestly 
 done my best to acknowledge my obligation to those whose 
 help I recognize, and for whose writings I have a sincere 
 gratitude. The Book, of course, to which one wishes to 
 owe most, is the Word of God. If, however, of two out of 
 many other authors — both of them now in their rest — I 
 might express the hope that here and there these humble 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 pages may be found to gleam with their serene wisdom 
 and their magnificent aspirations, I may be permitted 
 to acknowledge what a debt for many years past I have 
 felt to owe to the refined and wide culture of Richard 
 William Church, once Dean of St. Paul's; as well as to 
 Phillips Brooks, late Bishop of Massachusetts, who, more 
 than any preacher I know, takes his hearers by the hand, 
 to bring them into the living presence and to the personal 
 love and to the ineffable vision of Jesus, Son of God. 
 
 A. W. 
 
 Farnham Castlk, 
 Easter, 1 893- 
 
" True Catholicity can never come about as the result of an eclectic 
 or a levelling process. It never was, or ^Yill be, made to order." 
 
C O N T E N 1' S . 
 
 OUR INDEBTEDNESS. 
 
 I'AGE 
 
 ' I am debtor."— Rom. i. 14 ... ... ... ... 1 
 
 Preached in St. James's^ Winnipeg^ August 12, 1887. 
 
 THE OBEDIENCE OF FAITH. 
 
 ' Wherefore, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the 
 
 heavenly vision." — Acts xxvi. 19 ... ... ... 15 
 
 Preached in Cuddesdon Parish Church, June 14, 1892. 
 
 DISCIPLINE. 
 
 And he took the fire in his hand, and a knife ; and they went 
 both of them together." — Gen. xxii. 6 ... ... ... 29 
 
 Preached in St. PauTs Cathedral, February 27, 1887. 
 
 MINISTERIAL EFFICIENCY. 
 " Able ministers of the New Testament." — 2 COR. iii. 6 ... 41 
 
 THE DIVINE SILENCES. 
 " But He answered her not a word." — Matt. xv. 23 ... ... 57 
 
 Preached in the Chapel Royal ^ St. James's, March 2, 1890. 
 
 THE POWER OF COURAGE. 
 ' ' Fear not, but let your hands be strong." — Zech. viii. 13 ,., 71 
 Preached at the Consecration of Lyss Churchy July 2, 1892. 
 
Xll CONTENTS. 
 
 THE SOWER AND THE SEED. 
 
 TACE 
 
 The seed is the Word of God." — LuKEviii. ii ... ... Si 
 
 Preached in St. PatiVs Cathedral, May 12, 1S90. 
 
 DETERIORATION. 
 " In the ship mending their nets." — Mark i. 19 ... ... 07 
 
 Preached at Half-way Tree Parish Church, Jamaica^ 
 March 31, 1886. 
 
 TREASURES IN HEAVEN. 
 " Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven." — Matt. vi. 20 ... 107 
 Preached in Winchester Cathedral, Ash Wednesday, 1892, 
 
 SYMPATHY. 
 
 *• Who is weak, and I am not weak ? who is offended, and I burn 
 
 not?" — 2 Cor. xi. 29 ... ... ... ... 119 
 
 Preached in ]Vinchester Cathedral, Sexagcsima Sunday, 1892. 
 
 THE PROMISE OF HIS COMING. 
 " Where ia the promise of His coming? " — 2 Pet. iii. 4 ... 131 
 
 Preached in Rochester Cathedral, December a,, 1S83. 
 
 DEATH NOT DEATPI. 
 "Verily, verily,' I say unto you, If a man keep My saying, he 
 
 shall never see death." — ^John viii. 51 ... ... ... 145 
 
 Preached in the Cathedral, Victoria, Vancouver Island, 
 September 1887. 
 
 THE OPENING OF THE BOOKS. 
 "And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God ; and 
 
 the books were opened." — Rev. xx. 12... ... ... 157 
 
 Preached in Winchester Cathedral, Advoit Sunday, 1892. 
 
 THE VISION OF GOD. 
 'And they shall ^ec His face ; and His Name shall be in ihcir 
 
 foreheads." — Rev. xxii. 4. ... ... ... ... 169 
 
 Preached in Rochester Cathedral, December i, 1890. 
 
 Bibliography ... ... ... ... ... ... 181 
 
OUR INDEBTEDNESS. 
 
" Lord, I am coming as fast a> T can. I know I must pass llirough 
 the shadow of death, before T can come to see Thee. But it is but 
 Umbra Mortis, a mere shadow of death, a little darkness upon nature. 
 ]jut Thou, through Thy merits and Passion, hast broken through the 
 jaws of death," — Archbishop LaiicTs last tvords on tJie scaffold. 
 
OUR INDEBTEDNESS. 
 
 Preached in St. James" s, Winnipeg^ August 12, 18S7. 
 '* I am debtor." — ROM. i. 14. 
 
 Fairly, I think, and not cynically, the world maybe divided 
 into two classes. One is of those who are constantly occupied 
 with considering what society owes to them ; the other is of 
 those who are even more anxious to discover what they 
 owe to society. We need not pause to inquire which of 
 these two classes is the more numerous, or the nobler, or 
 to which mankind owes more of truth and virtue, or to 
 which of them St. Paul belonged. For it is, of course, 
 quite fair to remark that as a Hebrew, and an apostle, he 
 must have felt this sense of indebtedness in an especial 
 degree. 
 
 As a member of an essentially missionary race, chosen 
 by God to be salt and light amidst corruption and darkness, 
 and to be the depository of the divine oracles until, in the 
 fulness of time, Christ should come in the flesh to explain 
 and fulfil them, he was a debtor from, and even by reason 
 of, his birth. Then, as an ap ostle, to whom the Lord Him- 
 self gave the commission to declare the glad tidings of 
 reconciliation to the Gentiles, he apparently felt the blessed 
 necessity of preaching the gospel as perhaps no man ever 
 
4 
 
 OUR INDEBTEDNESS. 
 
 felt it before or since. Woe is unto me if I preach not 
 the gospel ! " 
 
 Now, from the particular duty I' want instantly to pass 
 to the universal obligation. The Church's conscience is 
 stirred by an unspeakable gratitude to her great task of 
 evangelizing the nations. Let each of us, in the solitary 
 and invisible region of his own conscience, ponder for him- 
 self the meaning of this sentence, "I am debtor;" apply 
 to his own soul the wide obligation of it, ''How much 
 owe I unto my Lord ? " try to weigh its blessedness, " I 
 owe Thee my life ; " and to conceive its mighty reward for 
 him, if ever so feebly, yet consistently and resolutely, it 
 sliall have coloured and shaped his years. " I am debtor." 
 
 Observe here the secret of God, the burden of the Church, 
 the safety of the nation, the enthusiasm of the Christian. 
 
 What is the debt ? It is, superficially to speak of it, 
 threefold, and I can only indicate, not pretend to expound, 
 its substance. Truth, example, and charity. That man owes 
 truth to man; and that just in proportion to his own appre- 
 hension of the value of it, and his personal appropriation 
 of the substance of it, and his recognition of the need of 
 it for all, to cheer, elevate, dignify, develop, and complete 
 liuman nature, will be his readiness, even at personal cost, to 
 dispense it to others. A university is, of course, the most 
 majestic embodiment of the idea that truth is the inheritance 
 of the race— that only the learner can claim to be the 
 teacher — and that the best and noblest hospitality is the 
 hospitality of the mind, joyfully welcoming all men into its 
 temple of knowledge. But any elementary school for the 
 humblest and poorest is but the development of that prin- 
 ciple to its final logical issues. Then, if the great truths 
 of physics, and mathematics, and philosophy, and history, 
 
OUR INDEBTEDNESS. 5 
 
 which fill human life and thought with dignity and power 
 and gladness, are to be passed on as readily and constantly 
 and cheaply as possible to those whom they concern, how 
 much more those vast spiritual truths, which express the 
 only realities, which help us to see through the veil that 
 separates the visible from the invisible, the present from the 
 future and the past, telling us of a divine order running 
 through our lives, of the mind and purpose of God about 
 us, of mercy and judgment, of the way of peace, of the hope 
 laid up for us in heaven, when earth, with its sins, and 
 cares, and troubles, and battles, is behind us, and we see 
 God ! 
 
 Another part of our debt is example — the daily, uncon- 
 scious, natural, yet often supernatural exhibition of simple 
 unconscious goodness. " None of us liveth to himself, 
 and no man dieth to himself." "We here to-day may 
 have already experienced this, almost without knowing it. 
 Nothing is so helpful in a great congregation of worshippers 
 as reverence. Can we have too much of it ? It suddenly 
 recalls the listless, summons the indevout to self-recollection, 
 silently rebukes the distracted, stirs the devotion even of 
 the worshipping heart to cleave nearer to God. So, on the 
 other hand, how easily may souls be chilled, tempted, 
 hardened by continuous and deliberate irreverence ! There 
 is nothing so irresistible as a good example ; nothing that is 
 more in our own power ; nothing, also, to which our obliga- 
 tion is so supreme. 
 
 Charity is the other part of our debt, in relations and 
 proportions and degrees which justice compels, observation 
 indicates, and occasion supplies. Oh, if this were but more 
 constantly recognized, if we would, all of us, be more 
 willing to understand how much the happiness and good- 
 
6 
 
 OUR INDEBTEDNESS. 
 
 ness of others is in our power, just through our showing 
 them kindness, what a changed world this might be! 
 
 Owe no man anything, but to love one another." That 
 debt, who pays fully? and how few consent to owing it, 
 much less attempt to discharge it ! But whether we know 
 it or not, care for it or not, we do owe each otiier charity, 
 and men expect it of us, and God will judge us about it ; 
 and the best proof of the righteousness of the claim is, 
 that we feel it a real wrong if it is denied to ourselves. 
 
 So much for the debt. 
 
 But to whom is the debt owed ? 
 
 First let me observe, in passing, that we owe ourselves 
 a debt. The debt, I mean, of subjecting the lower to the 
 higher nature, the senses to the spirit, inclination to duty, the 
 immediate present to the far-distant future. Unless man 
 holds himself in constant and intelligent check, is distinctly 
 conscious of the dual forces in his moral being, resolving 
 which of them shall be supreme, and careful to make the 
 spiritual supreme, he may save himself the trouble of 
 inquiring who outside of him have claims upon him ; for 
 they are claims that will never be recognized, much less be 
 paid. 
 
 But, our personal responsibility apart, it is to God and 
 our neighbour that our debt is due. To God, who reveals 
 truth that we may believe and assimilate it, who proclaims 
 righteousness that we may recognize and desire it, who 
 invites love that we may surrender Him our hearts. Who 
 shall attempt to measure the greatness of our debt to God ? 
 As our Maker, He appeals to our conscience ; as our Father, 
 He demands our affections. The earth is full of His mercy, 
 and into each of our mouths doth He constantly put a new 
 song. Of course, the two great mercies, the one transcending 
 
OUR INDEBTEDNESS. 
 
 7 
 
 our intelligence, and the other exhausting our hopes, are the 
 possession of His divine image, in however a soiled and 
 fragmentary way; with that which is essentially bound 
 up with it, our hope — may I not say our sense? — of 
 immortality. 
 
 I quite admit that, but for these two inestimable and 
 undeniable blessings, it might be easy enough to show 
 that human life is not worth the living. Most of you would 
 concur in that. But to be made in the likeness of God, 
 and to have the hope of the fruition of His glorious 
 Godhead in life everlasting, is a mercy indeed ; and the 
 first thought that should meet us at waking, the central 
 thought that should occui:)y us among the absorbing and 
 varied activities of the day, the last thought that should 
 solemnize us before we fall asleep, should be — To God, all- 
 wise, almighty, all-good, " I am debtor." Shall I rob 
 God? 
 
 But we are also debtors to man. You remember, 
 of course, how a lawyer once tried to evade Christ's com- 
 prehensive precept about loving with the question, " Who 
 is my neighbour ? " and how wonderfully yet unanswerably 
 Christ, in the parable of the good Samaritan, replied. He 
 is my neighbour who needs me, whose need I come across, 
 know and have power to satisfy without injustice to the 
 nearer claims of others. Brethren, brethren, it is a 
 tremendous, almost an appalling, thought how much we 
 owe each other, and how little aware of it many of us seem 
 to be. 
 
 What a debt of truth we owe, in the social intercourse 
 we enjoy, whether in the opinions we propound, or in the 
 books we read, or in the commonest words we say ! What 
 a debt of example to all those into whose company we 
 
8 
 
 OUR INDEBTEDNESS. 
 
 pass, so frequently, so thoughtlessly, and whom all of us 
 more or less potently influence to a degree we can hardly 
 tell, but shall one day be judged for. The children who 
 watch us, the domestics who attend on us, the neighbours 
 who consort with us, the friends whose very love gives our 
 behaviour a persuasive power, — all these more or less are 
 affected by the moral atmosphere which every human being 
 inevitably takes with him wherever he goes. 
 
 And then there are the millions beyond, whether in our 
 own empire, or other Christian lands, or among the vast 
 peoples of heathendom. Have we nothing to do with them 
 — have they nothing to claim from us ? If the Hebrew race 
 was the missionary nation of the world before the Advent, 
 judging from the extent of her dominion, the pervasiveness 
 of her commerce, the spread of her language, the greatness 
 of her resources, the grandeur of her name, and the multitude 
 of her opportunities, Britain is the missionary nation of the 
 world between the Advents. May she not despise herself in 
 despising the souls committed to her keeping ! May she 
 say to India and Africa and China, and to the uttermost 
 islands of the sea, I am debtor " ! 
 
 But the easiest part of my task is done — the part to 
 which none will demur who call themselves Christians. 
 
 Now I have to show — what Christian folk everywhere 
 have to learn — the secret of the sense of indebtedness. 
 
 I am debtor," but do I feel it, and do I care for it ? 
 Is the debt too great for me even to begin to try to pay 
 it, or too remote for God to expect it of me; a precept 
 as much above my reach as a fixed star, as much outside 
 my conscience as the paganism of Julius Caesar ; or, indeed, 
 if recognized as a sort of duty, recognized just out of its 
 burdensomeness, approached with reluctance, handled with 
 
OUR INDEBTEDNESS. 
 
 9 
 
 levity, and dismissed with joy? The secret of it all is in 
 discovering our real relation to those who claim our duty 
 from us, and thereby and entirely transforming the burden 
 and difficulty of what may prove a real sacrifice into a motive 
 and force of life. 
 
 The great fact of redemi^tion is the true key to it all. 
 For it shows us at once the real value of our own being, 
 and the worth of our fellow-men, and the clearness and 
 loveliness of God. When I see at what cost I have been 
 redeemed, and for what purpose, I find it worth while to 
 subdue and to discipline myself for what is to come out of 
 it. If my citizenship is in heaven, and I am on my way 
 there, I can wait, and it is worth my while. 
 
 " The world passeth away, and the lust thereof : but he 
 that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." The character 
 which I am building, the purpose which I am accomplishing, 
 the mind which I am cultivating, the motives which I am 
 accepting, are all weaving the vestment of my immortality. 
 " The things which are seen are temporal, but the things 
 which are not seen are eternal." If God has set such a 
 price upon me, let me assent to it, and respect myself, 
 and live as becomes one who is the brother of His in- 
 carnate Son. 
 
 So with my fellow-man, whoever he be, or by whatever 
 name he may be called. How can I despise him, for Jesus 
 shares his nature ? how can I despair of him, for Jesus has 
 redeemed his hfe? The awful verity of the Incarnation 
 casts an incredible and ineffable dignity on the very 
 meanest human soul. The Papuan savage, the Chippewa 
 Indian, the Malay pirate, the ferocious Arab of the Soudan, 
 the filthiest and roughest child out of a London gutter, all 
 share the nature with which it has pleased the Eternal Son of 
 
lO 
 
 OUR INDEBTEDNESS. 
 
 God to invest His Divine Personality — have as much right 
 to call him Kinsman according to the flesh as St. Paul had. 
 But observe how much ne.irer am I thereby brought to 
 them. How much easier is it for me to care for them 
 when, not only through our common humanity, but by our 
 one redemption, we are doubly kinsfolk, as fellow-heirs of 
 God ! And God — how dear and glorious He becomes, 
 when we humbly meditate on Him in the light of the fact 
 of redemption ! The awfulness of our sin and the infinite- 
 ness of His love are -alike made manifest in the shame 
 and anguish of the Cross. 
 
 " I gave My life for thee ; 
 My precious blood I slied, 
 That thou might'st ransomed be, 
 And quickened from the dead. 
 I gave my life for thee : 
 What hast thou given for Me ?" 
 
 It may have happened to some of you, in your own 
 glorious continent, to have been travelling by night through 
 a sublime and beautiful country. At first all was shrouded 
 in the thick darkness — though the beauty was there, and 
 you felt it. Now and then, to be sure, you caught the quick 
 white flash of a great waterfall, or, as the train thundered 
 over a bridge, you could hear the rushing of the deep river far 
 below ; sometim,^s you had a gUmpse of thick forest, some- 
 times you were conscious of hastening past great drifts of 
 snow. You fell asleep, and when you woke all was changed. 
 The peaks of the grave mountains were touched in the rosy 
 light, and a fair landscape, beautified, almost created by the 
 sunrise, glitt.red and smiled around you. All your senses 
 had their full scope of enjoyment; you seemed suddenly 
 to have passed into a new and living world. 
 
 Just s 3 is it when the fact of redemption, grasped and 
 
OUR INDEBTEDNESS. 
 
 tasted in the personal consciousness of it, throws its inspiring 
 splendour upon the value and destiny of mankind. 
 
 " Lord, what is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? 
 and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?" is no doubt 
 the first, the abstract, the overwhelming difficulty, when we 
 remember that this tiny planet of ours is but as a speck of 
 light in an immeasurable universe of worlds ; and yet we are 
 quietly invited to believe that He who by the breath of His 
 mouth called that universe into being, became a creature — 
 suffered and died for this insignificant human race. 
 
 But the gospel outside us responds to the gospel within 
 us; the testimony of man confirms the salvation of God. 
 ]\Ian is redeemed, and he knows it ; and because man 
 is precious to God, man must be precious to his brother. 
 
 The love of Christ constraineth us ; because we thus judge, 
 that if one died for all, then were all dead ; and that He 
 died for all, that they which live should henceforth not 
 live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them 
 and rose again." 
 
 My brethren, believe me, this is the true motive of 
 Christian missions, and there is no other. If that will not 
 stir and touch us, the sight of Jesus on a second cross would 
 fail likewise. 
 
 An objection is sometimes made to Christian missions — 
 you, I am sure, do not make it, and it is disappearing, though 
 it has not yet disappeared— that missions to the heathen 
 are premature, while so much of the Church's work at home 
 remains almost hopelessly unfulfilled. No words of mine 
 can be needed to wither in a sentence an objection at once 
 so silly and so base. So base, because what it really means 
 is, that the neglect of our duty at home justifies the neglect 
 of our duty abroad, and that the consciousness of our sin 
 
12 
 
 OUR INDEBTEDNESS. 
 
 ill the past is to perpetuate it in the future.^ So silly, 
 for as the Church history of the last century shows us, the 
 awakening of the Church's conscience as to her duties with 
 the heathen abroad has a distinct reciprocal effect in the 
 stirring of home effort among the masses in England. This 
 century of evangelistic effort abroad has also been the 
 century of stirred Church sympathy, quickened devotion, 
 expanded organization, deepened reverence, national edu- 
 cation, multiplied churches, almost recreated diocesan life. 
 The English Church, in this year of grace 1887, is something 
 so amazingly different in its methods, activities, and devotion 
 from the Church of 1787, that the best way of explaining it 
 is that God has given us a second Pentecost. As a matter 
 of fact, too, those who aid missionary enterprise abroad are 
 the same men who push missionary effort at home, while it 
 only too often happens that those who deprecate foreign 
 missions in the interest of home activities are admirably 
 impartial in aiding neither. 
 
 Have you, however, a misgiving that the people do not 
 much care for the gospel ; that they would greatly prefer 
 to be left as they are, with their ancient idolatries, their 
 pleasant vices, and their earthly life ? ^ Do you remind me, 
 that when the man of Macedonia appeared to our apostle in 
 a vision, asking him to come over and help him, when he 
 went he had not much of a welcome ? At Philippi they 
 threw him into prison, Thessalonica he had to leave by 
 night to avoid violence, Athens met him with polite scorn ? 
 Ah ! but you have not got the true key to that vision. That 
 man of Macedonia represented the heathen of Europe as 
 they were present to the mind and heart of God. He knew 
 
 » See Bishop Phillips Brooks' " The Candle of the Lord," p. 167. 
 ^ Ibid., p. 94. 
 
OUR INDEBTEDNESS. 
 
 13 
 
 the capacities and possibilities in them. He saw the moral 
 faculties sleeping there, but ready to be aroused at the 
 sound of His Son's gospel. He knew His own purpose 
 about them, and the opportunities He was preparing for 
 them — the depth of His own love, and the power of the 
 Spirit He would bestow. The end of it all was that Europe 
 was won to the Cross, of which you and I here are some of 
 the results. What He did then. He will do now. What 
 man was then, he is now. The gospel is the same, and 
 we are not to be ashamed of it, " for it is the power of 
 God unto salvation." Sin is the same — in its misery, de- 
 gradation, and bondage ; and the only deliverance from it is 
 in welcoming the yoke of Christ, to be Master and Saviour 
 of the scul. 
 
 Lastly, the objection scorned and the misgiving re- 
 moved, there is the duty. Shame on the Church, that it 
 should still be the duty ! Blessing for us, if we will trans- 
 form, through grateful love, this plain duty into a happy 
 joy ! My brethren, I want to send every one of you home 
 to-day, myself as the rest, with this thought, murmuring 
 restlessly in your heart, " How much owe I unto my 
 Lord ? " 'a am debtor." 
 
 At the beginning of another century of Church life, I 
 want you to get a new insight into Christ's love, a fresh 
 discoveiy of your own mercies, a more eager purpose to 
 . use the opportunities that still remain. 
 
 If we only rightly understand it, we shall see that what wc 
 call the missionary spirit is but an essential and indispen- 
 sable feature of the regenerate life. We have been saved 
 that we may save ; taught, that we may teach ; blessed, that 
 we may share our blessings ; consoled, that we may go to 
 the mourner and with gentle hand wipe away his tears. 
 
14 
 
 OUR INDEBTEDNESS. 
 
 Be^dn at home, with truth, example, and charity. Beware 
 of Pharisaism; also beware of uselessness. Where you 
 cannot speak, you can pray. And the perfectly cogent 
 argument is the persistence of love. Then, as the circles of 
 your sympathy expand, so will your opportunities. You 
 will see many, which you do not even suspect now ; and to 
 see, will be to use. And be sure, each of you — pardon me 
 if I am overbold with you — to take some share in the 
 missionary work of the Church. 
 
 In your common daily life, in the discharge of your 
 ordinary duties, when cares oppress you or friends leave 
 you, when your sky darkens or infirmity makes you sad, ever 
 try to learn the wonderful secret of abiding peace, in a 
 stirred and grateful numbering of your mercies. The way 
 to win joy is to make sacrifices ; and if ever you are tempted 
 to think, as we all are occasionally, that you are forgotten 
 and others remembered, say to yourselves our apostle's 
 sentence, " I am debtor," and the sense of indebtedness 
 will bring back the glow of love. 
 
THE OBEDIENCE OF FAITH. 
 
" The first necessity of religion is that it should bo religious." 
 
THE OBEDIENCE OF FAITH. 
 
 Preached in Cuddesdon Parish Church, June 14, 1892. 
 
 *' Wherefore, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the 
 lieavenly vision." — Acts xxvi. 19. 
 
 If the key to the importance of an event is the result that 
 comes from it, the measure of the value of a life is its 
 influence when it is done. If the middle-aged live in the 
 present, and are apt to be absorbed in it ; if the old live 
 in the past, and, as the case may be, either reproach 
 themselves unreasonably for what they could not help, or 
 unduly glorify themselves for what would equally have 
 happened without them, the young live in the future, and 
 if they act as well as dream, dig in the earth as well as 
 build in the air, who shall justly blame them? Imagination, 
 with all its admitted perils, has a distinct and reasonable 
 influence on human conduct. "We are saved by hope." 
 " We look not at the things which are seen, but at the 
 things which are not seen." By the visions of faith, and the 
 diffidence that grows out of experience, and the sense of 
 capacity, and the grace of God, we feel our way, and see 
 our duty, and fill our place, and perfect our life. In the 
 passage before us, the apostle tells Agrippa that he had 
 not been disobedient to his heavenly vision. Agrippa, if 
 
1 8 THE OBEDIENCE OF FAITH. 
 
 he was listening, may have felt puzzled. We, at the end 
 of eighteen centuries, observing that that heavenly vision 
 has transformed the face of the world, and that the king's 
 name survives only because for a brief hour it came into 
 contact with that of Saul of Tarsus, are better able to 
 measure the value of the obedience, and of the vision to 
 which it was rendered ; may also have come to see that 
 in a very real and lofty sense every true son of God, and 
 every commissioned herald of His gospel, will have 
 heavenly visions of some kind, though not by dreams or 
 trances; that each will have his own, answering to his 
 gifts and capacities ; and that they will come when they 
 are wanted. On these visions, and what they mean for 
 us, I wish to speak to you this morning. 
 
 Our visions, among other things they do for us, test 
 and measure, and in a sense prepare us for a life in which, 
 like St. Paul, He who counts us worthy of it — while He 
 is even quick to dispel the visions that are of earth and 
 self — will little by little, and very gently, unfold to us 
 what great things we must suffer, and perhaps do, for 
 His name's sake. It is a poor and tame soul that has 
 no visions. It is a shallow and ill-balanced one that is 
 for long unsteadied by them. There are many of them, 
 and of differing value ; and they open out one by one in 
 the vistas of the gathering years before the Hstening con- 
 science of the dutiful servant. If they have not begun 
 for us yet, we are not fit for duty ; if they are all over for 
 us, our duty is finished. Yet of all of us, be we only true 
 men, it may be said that we stand between two visions 
 — one behind, and one in front; one which has come to 
 us, one which is sure to come, — the vision of the Personal 
 Christ, who, v/e humbly trust, has chosen and called us, 
 
THE OBEDIENCE OF FAITH. 
 
 19 
 
 lhat we should labour with Him for the salvation of the 
 world; the other, the tremendous vision of judgment, 
 when the task to which we have given ourselves is over, 
 the opportunities gone, the past irrevocable, the record 
 filled, the eternity made; when the sheep and lambs of 
 Christ, over whom in His mercy He made us overseers, 
 and about whom He will ask us, " Where is the flock that 
 was given thee, thy beautiful flock?" will all have passed 
 within the veil to see God, and to find themselves, and 
 to give their account of us. 
 
 Of the four great visions which more or less seize the 
 imagination and fire the heart of Christ's ministers, ^frj-/, 
 surely, comes the vision which summons us to be the living 
 voice of the divine oracles, the ministers of reconciliation 
 between God and men. This was A^z/^/^'^ vision. "I heard 
 the voice of the Lord, saying. Whom shall I send, and 
 who will go for us ? Then said^ I, Here am I ; send me." 
 AVho can exaggerate the solemnity of this call, or the issues 
 that hang on it, or the blessedness of being faithful to it, 
 or the misery of some day repenting that it had ever been 
 made ? I suppose the soundest condition of heart is that 
 which, like Isaiah's, while it is abashed by the loftiness of 
 the service, shrinks yet more from the baseness of refusing 
 it because it is lofty — in the end, fired with the joy of 
 salvation, quite surrenders itself to Christ. 
 
 Our second vision — it recurs again and again — is the 
 vision that sends us. It points us to the place where we 
 are to labour, and to the people whom we are to serve, and 
 to the fellows with whom our work is to be done, and it 
 may be to the fathers and elders who are to train us in 
 doing it. This vision touches at once the wisdom and the 
 righteousness of God, the fruitfuiness and faithfulness of 
 
20 
 
 THE OBEDIENCE OF FAITH. 
 
 men. St. Paul is our pattern here. " After they were 
 come to Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia : but the 
 Spirit suffered them not. And they passing by Mysia came 
 down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the 
 night; There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, 
 saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us. And 
 after he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavoured 
 to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord 
 had called us for to preach the gospel unto them." This 
 second vision is not, indeed, to supersede the usual methods 
 of what we call Providence, so much as to provoke our 
 dutiful attention to them. Instead of bidding us abdicate 
 our faculties of conscience and reason, it honourably recog- 
 nizes them by compelling their exercise. To be invited 
 to any duty does not necessarily imply that we are to accept 
 it ; simply that we are to be at the pains of thinking about 
 it. Eagerness has its risks as well as supineness, and im- 
 petuousness as much as a chilled heart. Among the servants 
 of Christ there will always be at least two classes, — the men 
 who instantly obey duty, and the men who instinctively 
 consult inclination ; the men who at once turn to God and 
 say, "What wilt Thou have me to do?" — the men whose 
 one anxiety is to discover what is pleasantest. We must 
 not, indeed, say that inclination is always to be sternly re- 
 pressed, as if it were in no sense an indication of our fitness 
 for a duty. To be attracted to duty is to be far on the road 
 for doing it. Certainly, however, it must be listened to with 
 reserve, and cross-examined with severity. Also it is true 
 that the beautiful enthusiasm which rushes to identify the 
 invitation of man with the summons of God must not too 
 lightly claim our apostle as an authority. It presents the 
 heroic side of life — and we need to have it presented, or 
 
THE OBEDIENCE OF FAITH. 
 
 21 
 
 heroes would soon become extinct ; but sometimes it creates 
 woeful reactions for itself, and so Mark goes back to 
 Jerusalem, and Demas forsakes St. Paul. It is our duty 
 to think as well as our glory to love. Nevertheless it is a 
 poor and almost sordid nature that calculates too nicely, 
 and claims too rigorously to see the conclusion of its choice. 
 An apostle suffered the loss of all things, and counted them 
 but dung, that he might win Christ. It has been finely said 
 by one at whose feet some of you in past Oxford days may 
 have rejoiced to sit, " Venture is an element in most things 
 that are worth doing, and is a condition of all spiritual 
 progress."^ "Slackness for good" is one of the perils of 
 our time ; and there is a baseness of soul in it. Do you 
 remember what Dean Church says of Sordello ? " If the 
 good had come to him of itself, he would gladly have taken 
 it. But he had not the will to imagine it, to seek it ; and 
 so his noble and beautiful nature, with all its grand possi- 
 biHties, sank into uselessness and forgetfulness, placed 
 among those who had great opportunities and great thoughts, 
 — the men of great chances and great failures." 
 
 The third vision comes to deepen, widen, expand, 
 mature us, turning youth into manhood, and summoning 
 us to the midsummer of life. It was St. Peter's at Joppa. 
 The vessel descending out of heaven with all manner of 
 fourfooted beasts, and the accompanying voice, *' Rise, 
 Peter, kill and eat," and the significant monition, " What 
 God hath cleansed, that call not thou common," had set 
 the apostle thinking and wondering, when suddenly the 
 messengers of Cornelius stood at his door, and the Spirit 
 saith unto him, " Behold, three men seek thee." That vision, 
 as we know, with all that came out of it, meant the im- 
 ' Dean Paget. 
 
22 
 
 THE OBEDIENCE OF FAITH. 
 
 mediate opening of the Gentile world to Christ. It was 
 also a new era of idea, of duty, of conquest for the apostle. 
 The struggle it must have meant for a conscientious Hebrew 
 Christian it is very hard for us adequately to measure. But 
 growth with pain is the very principle of life ; pain not only 
 of body, but of soul — not only of soul, but of mind. You 
 whom I would for a moment address, the younger among 
 us — if you are at all like what we your fathers were — nay, 
 let me add, if you are what those who truly care for you 
 sincerely wish you to be — will be ardent in your ideas, 
 tenacious of your articles of faith, resentful of divergencies 
 from ' your personal standpoint of conviction, as if they 
 implied a sort of injustice or disrespect. But you have yet 
 to discover, as we in front of you are continually discovering, 
 that we can never here know more than a mere fragment 
 of truth, and that imperfectly ; that the more you attain of 
 real knowledge, the more dissatisfied you will be with it ; 
 and that the secret of a kindly toleration of the errors of 
 others, is the consciousness of needing it for your own. 
 Well, to you who are coming up so rapidly after us, who 
 will fill our places, and take our honours, and occupy our 
 chairs, and perhaps improve our methods, when we are 
 gone and out of mind — whom we watch with no austerity, 
 and love with no grudged affection — epochs will soon 
 come, may even be coming now, when, if you are honest 
 and fresh-minded, and greatly in love with truth, windows 
 will be opened in your souls, through which will stream 
 visions of truth, and duty, and sacrifice, and enterprise, 
 hidden from you now, as the summit of some lofty alp from 
 children in their games in the valley. Your spirit may have 
 a sore travail-time, but you will pass through it into a 
 higher region, and life will henceforth seem made new for 
 
THE OBEDIENCE OF FAITH. 
 
 23 
 
 you. Men whom once you could hardly think of kindly will 
 have a new preciousness in your eyes ; and the austere, 
 perhaps unconscious, disdain which once shut you off from 
 them, as with a sort of frozen winding-sheet, will be softened 
 by the discovery that they too are the sons of God, perhaps 
 nearer His face than yourselves. Truths which once had 
 no meaning for you will slowly open out their beauty ; 
 events which had no significance for you will sparkle and 
 glitter with a new brightness. You will not have thrown 
 away the past. It is still yours, to be for ever yours. But 
 you will have added to it ; for God has spoken, and that is 
 enough. It is a tremendous moment when it comes, for 
 often it changes all the life, and always raises us to a new 
 level of thought and joy and service. 
 
 For truth is something to be passed on. The souls we 
 have to reach and win for Christ are of all sorts and con- 
 ditions : the ignorant who know their ignorance, and are 
 content with it; the ignorant who do not know their 
 ignorance, and who mistake it for knowledge ; the lettered, 
 and pleasure-seeking, and careless, who live in quite 
 another world to ours, and who, if they ever step across 
 into ours, quickly go back with a sort of amused disdain. 
 We have to deal with an infinite variety of character, and 
 occupation, and opportunity, and environment, — all factors 
 in the ever-maturing process of the final destiny ; all more 
 or less assimilating and transfusing into their own invisible 
 life what comes to them from these lives and Hps of ours. 
 Well might the wise man say, " He that winneth souls is 
 wise." W^ell might Jesus say, that the secret of winning 
 them can only be learnt in following Him. Well, too, may 
 all of us remember that the compensation for His absence, 
 the promise of His Father, the secret of all our power, is 
 
24 
 
 THE OBEDIENCE OF FAITH. 
 
 in the gifts of the Holy Ghost. For, as a great American 
 preacher has observed, the two instruments with which we 
 have to win them — or, to change the figure, the two spheres 
 which we must persuade them to enter — are truth and love. 
 They must be both together, for they are incomplete apart. 
 There is but small profit in giving them truth, if they do 
 not feel that you give it them because you love them. 
 There is still less use in loving them, if you only stir their 
 emotions, and keep back those great verities by which men 
 live, and see, and receive, and enjoy God, and which, as 
 the Church's witnesses and servants, you are to sow in their 
 hearts unto eternal life. 
 
 The fourth vision is the vision which inspires. It was 
 St John's. " After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, 
 which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, 
 and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and 
 before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in 
 their hands." This vision sustains because it inspires, for 
 it makes us hope about our work when we are gone. " One 
 soweth, and another reapeth." Some of you whom I am 
 addressing may not need it now — you may not need it for 
 years to come ; but sooner or later, if you are true, and 
 your hearts alive for your Lord's glory, and you have the 
 reward of disappointment, and hope deferred makes your 
 heart sick (and would you wish not to be disappointed, and 
 to take defeat easily, and to see your flock wandering, and 
 not to care ?), the tempter will tempt you ; and it will be 
 despondency, not presumption, that he will suggest; and 
 perhaps it may not be till quite middle life, when the old 
 buoyancy is ebbing, that the question will come, *' Is my 
 gospel true ; is my Lord faithful ; is my life fruitful ; is my 
 ministry a power? " The hands of the strongest will some- 
 
THE OBEDIENCE OF FAITH. 
 
 25 
 
 times hang down, and the knees of the swift wax feeble. 
 The greatest of the Old Testament prophets asked, " Who 
 hath believed our report ? " The greatest of the New Testa- 
 ment prophets sent to inquire of Christ, "Art Thou He 
 that should come, or do we look for another?" To'St. Paul 
 himself came once a dark hour, when his only solace was 
 prayer, his only consolation the sufficient grace of God. 
 
 Brethren, be sure, and do not fear to be assured, that to 
 you, to me, to us all, there may come, nay, if we' travail for 
 souls, and have our Lord's kingdom at heart, and lament 
 our own weakness, and deeply feel how personal unworthi- 
 ness limits the activities of God, there will come clouds and 
 darkness, shadows and gloominess, and they will sorely try 
 you ; and that is just what they are meant for, and presently 
 they will pass. But may I tell you how to help them to 
 pass ? " They that sow in tears shall reap in joy." There 
 can be, here at least, no joy without tears — the right 
 tears ; but a good many tears will be well and everlastingly 
 recompensed by the first glimpse of the King in His 
 beauty. All true work shall have its reward, by the self- 
 acting laws of the heavenly kingdom, though we must be 
 content to wait for it. Root it, however^ deeply into your 
 hearts, that no prayer, or truth, or sacrifice, or charity, or 
 smile on a little child, or a cup of cold water to a lonely 
 heart, or a joy surrendered, or a hope quenched, shall 
 miss its just, its inevitable, its magnificent recompense. 
 " Every man shall receive his own reward, according to 
 his own labour." Some of it we have even here and now, 
 and we know it. The best shall be revealed at the coming 
 of the King. 
 
 Three last thoughts let me press on you, conscious of 
 my tediousness and ashamed about it. 
 
26 
 
 THE OBEDIENCE OF FAITH. 
 
 I. Let us each be ourselves. Let us grasp, accentuate, 
 develop our own personality; expect, receive, and follow 
 our own vision from on high. Let us have our own scheme 
 of life, our own methods of duty, our own ideals of good- 
 ness, our own devotion to Christ, premising only that they 
 are generous, practicable, and complete. The holy angels 
 are all around us to-day, our hearts are full of tender 
 sympathy with each other, and sympathy means inter- 
 cession. He who walks among the seven golden candle- 
 sticks, and who holds the seven stars in His right hand, 
 and who meets you to-day in this holy place, consecrated 
 by so many blessed associations, endeared by so many 
 tender memories, waits to fill you with the love that passeth 
 knowledge. We cannot measure the honour of serving 
 Him, or the bliss of seeing Him, when life is done. He 
 asks each of us again, ''Lovest thou Me? " He bids each 
 of us again, Feed My sheep, feed My lambs." 
 
 Again, by three things shall we see God, and be capable 
 of apprehending the heavenly vision, and so serve Him. 
 They are the best things on earth. Oh that we were at 
 more pains to understand their blessedness ! They are 
 worship, truth, and character. These are the greatest forces 
 under the sun, and the mightiest blessings. They are ours, 
 as much as we care to make them so, whether for use or for 
 duty. We know that it is so ; and to know it, awes the 
 heart as well as thrills it. Let us bring the awe and the 
 joy as our offering to Him to-day. 
 
 Lastly, let us look forward and upward, and greatly 
 hope, because we have a divine commission from a divine 
 Master, to a divine society and for a divine end. We are 
 part of a vast and mighty procession, of which the beginning 
 and the end are out of sight, on our solemn and separate 
 
THE OBEDIENCE OF FAITH. 
 
 27 
 
 way to the city of God. We are not alone : on the right 
 and on the left, behind us and in front of us, visible and 
 invisible, humble and faithful souls swell our ranks and 
 chant our triumph. We think tenderly and thankfully 
 to-day, among others, of Samuel Wilberforce and John 
 Mackarness, Henry Liddon and James Denison — names 
 ever to be venerated in this place, and ever loved, who have 
 finished their course, and, we humbly trust, have received 
 their welcome, and they rest from their labours. 
 
 Their visions are over ; ours are not yet over. May 
 they never cease to be over until the conflict is over and 
 our work done. Then the visions of this present time, 
 whicli is but for a moment, shall be exchanged for the 
 glorious joy unspeakable and full of glory. 
 
 " Ever the richest, tenderest glow 
 Sets round the autumnal sun ; 
 But then sight fails : no heart may know 
 The bliss when life is done.'' 
 
DISCIPLINE. 
 
" Character precedes power." 
 
DISCIPLINE, 
 
 Preached in St, PatiCs Cathedral^ February 27, 1887. 
 
 "And he took the fire in his hand, and a knife ; and they went both 
 of them together." — Gen. xxii. 6. 
 
 Old Testament history gives us more than one glimpse of 
 a pair of kindred souls, walking side by side on a journey 
 with vast issues, knowing that they must soon say farewell, 
 and dreading unspeakably the moment of saying it; the 
 one to be taken, and the other left. Moses and Aaron 
 go up Mount Hon The elder brother is to die there, 
 and there is a penalty in his dying. The younger and the 
 greater is to strip him of his high priest's garment, and 
 to put it on Eleazar his son, and then to watch him die ; 
 and to go down the mountain without him, soon to be laid 
 in a lonely grave of his own. Two prophets stand together 
 by Jordan. The elder has striven in vain to be alone in 
 his last moments ; the younger, divining what he must 
 presently lose, will see the last of his master Elijah, and 
 so catches on his own eager and yet reverent spirit the 
 glow of the heavenly fire in which the mighty prophet 
 passes up to God. Here j-re father^ and_son. The father 
 is he in whom all the families of the earth are to be 
 blessed. The son is the child of promise, so long waited 
 for, welcomed with such passionate delight. They are 
 
32 
 
 DISCIPLINE. 
 
 walking side by side, and the mystery of an awful 
 secret divides them. My friends, was there ever journey 
 like that journey ; ever a trial like that which, as with the 
 piercing of a sword, searched Abraham ? Saint he was, but 
 still a man ; servant of God, if ever there was one, yet at 
 once husband and father. To Sarah, in that doubtless 
 indivulged errand, he must have been tempted to feel 
 guilty of a great treachery. The very sight of the son, 
 who so absolutely trusted him with an unsuspecting love, 
 and happy face, and buoyant step, under that cruel load, 
 must have stirred in his heart an untold anguish. 
 
 Divines, some of them men whose writings have made 
 an epoch in theology, have loved to formulate with more 
 or less acuteness and research the doctrinal value of this 
 pathetic incident. 
 
 Some observe in it the striking concurrence, such as 
 never could happen again, of the recognized absoluteness 
 of parental authority, the ever-present vivid sense of the 
 supernatural, as a constant reasonable factor in human affairs, 
 and of the supreme majesty of the divine will when once 
 distinctly asserting itself over every other consideration 
 whatever, whether of moral law, civil enactment, or human 
 love. That heroic obedience has been at once a unique 
 and unparalleled revelation to mankind of the power of 
 faith and the glory of sacrifice. 
 
 One thought inspired Abraham — he was doing his duty. 
 One principle underlaid his life — the absolute sovereignty 
 of God. One assurance supported him — ''Shall not the 
 Judge of all the earth do right?" One hope kept his 
 heart from breaking — ''He accounted that God was able 
 to raise him from the dead, from whence also he received 
 him in a figure." 
 
DISCIPLINE. 33 
 
 Others, again, have seen in the incident — what, of 
 course, is there — a beautiful though imperfect illustration of 
 that great atoning sacrifice, in which the Father sent the 
 Son to be the Saviour of the world. Imperfect, however, 
 for our Redeemer clearly foresaw from the beginning of 
 His ministry the death which was to meet Him at the 
 end; imperfect also, for Abraham offered Isaac in will, 
 but not in deed. Our Redeemer not only approached His 
 cross, but died on it. 
 
 To some of us, however, it may perhaps be found most 
 instructive as a very real and solemn parable of the constant 
 and blessed discipline of our daily human life, in which, 
 moment by moment, each separate soul, whether conscious 
 of it or unconscious, caring for it or not caring, is being 
 made to pass through the crucible of inexorable circum- 
 stance, with a separate life-plan for each to fulfil, and a 
 divine ideal for each to consummate, constantly and 
 separately encompassed by an awful, tender, holy, invisible 
 Presence, waiting to guide, watching to comfort, asking to 
 bless, and able to love. 
 
 Let me proceed to expound this truth a little more fully, 
 in some of the ideas which it may be thought to contain. 
 
 Every soul has its own road to travel, w^hich no one else 
 travels, or ever can traveTT Occasionally it may seem to be 
 in company w^th others ; in a sense it is. Often it is solitary. 
 Yet never quite solitary; for ever there stan^TlT'its side 
 one to guide and to strengthen : and his form is like the 
 Son of God. 
 
 Each human soul is on its way to its own Jerusalem,! 
 and that Jerusalem has its own appointed Moriah. ^ 
 
 On each of us God lays and fastens, as Abraham laid 
 and fastened on Isaac, the burden of our future, which, 
 
 D— 15 
 
34 
 
 DISCIPLINE. 
 
 whatever it may be, and for as long as He bids us, we must 
 be content to bean We cannot change it ; it would be a 
 great folly to wish to change it. We may not drop it ; for 
 in carrying it is at once the fulfilment of our destiny and 
 the training for our eternity. 
 
 Our character and our circumstances shape its , carj;;er, 
 develop its activities, and mature its capacity. Each man 
 is himself, and need not feebly desire to be any other man. 
 God has His own thought of him, and will" help him to 
 accomplish it. 
 
 As Abraham walked with Isaac, Christ our Lord walks 
 with us. But, perhaps most solemn thought of all, in His 
 hand, as in Abraham's hand^ is the fire and the knife for 
 the burnt offering. We remember that it is the pierced 
 hand, and we know it will be gentle with us, touched by 
 the recollection of His own experience. He felt the fire, 
 and the sharpness of the knife. In all our afflictions He 
 is afflicted. He lays no burden on us that He has not 
 first borne Himself — He, our Prince and Saviour. But the 
 fire and the knife mean j pain ; and though sometimes the 
 sacrifice at the last moment is spared us, as Abraham at 
 the last moment was spared the awful misery of slaying 
 his son — to look at it, and come up to it, and make up 
 our mind for it, is to drain the cup of half of its bitter- 
 ness. Nay, after having once steadily faced it, we never 
 are quite the same afterwards. 
 
 Again, each soul is continually to offer itsel f to God — 
 as Isaac offered himself to Abraham — as a living sacrifice, 
 and as a burnt sacrifice; not for expiation, but in self- 
 consecration ; not to pay a debt, but to confess it. St. 
 Paul calls it our "reasonable service." The essence of 
 the sacrifice, and the secret of it, is in the will. 
 
DISCIPLINE. 
 
 The fire and the knife are the two methods of the 
 divine discipline. Sometimes both together, sometimes 
 apart, sometimes at long intervals ; never quite done with 
 till we are in the sinless land. The fire means, through 
 the various dispensations and ministries of grace, the 
 personal dealing of God the Holy Ghost with the soul, of 
 whom it is written that He is the " Spirit of burning," 
 about whom it was promised that Christ should baptize 
 with the Holy Ghost and with fire. Every one shall 
 be salted with fire," said Christ. It is the convincing, 
 purifying, searching, self-revealing work of God on the 
 conscience and mind and heart, often very humbling 
 and terrible in its revelation of our own sinfulness and 
 the Divine Holiness — the coming near to us, close to us, 
 of Him who is expressly described as a consuming fire; 
 who hereafter is to burn up the chaff with unquenchable 
 fire; who even now is trying the work of His servants 
 by fire to see of what sort it is ; whose " eyes arc as a 
 flame of fire, and His feet like unto fine brass, as if 
 they burned in a furnace," and of whom one of His 
 own sayings is reported, " He that is near Me, is near 
 fire." 
 
 The knife is the dis cipline of separa tion, in that Divine 
 Providence which rules over us all. " If thy right hand 
 offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee." Sometimes, if 
 we will not do it for ourselves. He does it for us. Yet it 
 is not always things that offend that are thus cast away. 
 There are hidden reasons for many of God's dealings with 
 .us, about which an honest conscience is properly slow to 
 accuse itself, and about which the mind, admitting that it is 
 a mystery, waits to know until the dawning of the day. 
 This knife of God cuts off many things ; as life goes on, 
 
36 
 
 DISCIPLINE. 
 
 seems busier and busier with its work. Health, or money, 
 or the blessed opportunity of usefulness, or a life which 
 is so bound up with our own, that the knife which severs 
 one thread, half cuts through the other. If man's dignity 
 is in his thinking, his greatness is in his loving. The noble 
 penalty of loving much, is suffering much. Not to mourn 
 is not to care. 
 
 Once more, the difference between one man and another 
 is, not that one man has his burden bound on his back, and 
 another man has no burden. Each man has his own burden. 
 Nor, again, that one man has a divine Friend at his side to 
 care for him and discipHne him, and another man has no 
 such friend. Christ is the Saviour of the world, and the 
 Head of every man. Nor, again, is it true that for one 
 man there is the fire and the knife in the divine hand, and 
 not for another. Every man in turn feels the scorching of 
 the fire, and shudders at the glitter of the knife as it cuts 
 him. God is for all, and therefore all suffer. The difference 
 is, that som e_^ee their Lord at their side, and some will not 
 see Him — nay, say that there is no Lord to see. Some 
 accept the discipline as the purpose of an unspeakable love, 
 and though intensely feeling it, and honestly wishing it 
 away, welcome it for what it means j say, though not 
 instantly or easily, ''The cup which my Father hath given 
 me, shall I not drink it ? " — manfully suffer themselves, when 
 the time comes for it, to watch the altar building on which 
 they are to be offered, climb it, lay down on it, bound 
 hand and foot, saying, Though He slay me, yet will I 
 trust in Him;" while others moan, and rebel, and struggle, 
 and refuse to recognize the love, accept the discipline, or 
 obey the law, or trust the Saviour, and pushing Christ away 
 from them as of old, say, "What have we to do with Thee^ 
 
DISCIPLINE. 
 
 37 
 
 Jesus, Thou Son of God ? art Thou come hither to torment 
 us before the time ? " 
 
 To conclude. St. Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, 
 gloried in the marks of the Lord Jesus " on his flesh ; 
 claimed on account of them, and as a kind of recognition 
 of them, freedom, respect, and consideration. " Henceforth 
 let no man trouble me." Every real life, in exact proportion 
 to its intenseness, leaves its mark both on body and soul. 
 The thinker, the soldier, the statesman, the priest, some- 
 times carry their profession on their brow. But the soul 
 has its marks too, which we shall recognize and admire 
 in eternity. The Lamb as it had been slain " will be 
 adored by the countless multitudes for whom He was 
 slain ; those who have come out of great tribulation shall 
 have their marks as well. My brethren, have not you some- 
 times felt conscious, when some great trial was trying and 
 purging your inmost soul, of a closer and more direct 
 presence of your Lord, and of a sort of new dignity, and 
 independence, and courage, and supremacy coming out of 
 it ? You may often read it in a man's face, if you know 
 human nature. The littleness of these material things, 
 the greater nearness to the unseen world, and the ex- 
 cellence of glory which fills it, and the fellowship of the 
 saints who worship in it, and the nearness of the King 
 who rules it, are among the real alleviations of even the 
 greatest sorrow. " Death is but an event in life ; " and as 
 we see how calmly it is approached, how entirely it is 
 conquered, even in the moment when it seems to be most 
 supreme, the penalty of sin seems to disappear — it has 
 become but the going out of one room in our Father's 
 house into another. Christ's own word comes back to us 
 with an untold force and consolation — "Verily, verily, I 
 
38 
 
 DISCIPLINE. 
 
 say unto you, He that keepeth My word shall not see 
 death." If only the marks of the fire and the knife are on 
 us, and we wear the scars of our discipline, we claim our 
 reward. Henceforth let no man trouble us ; we will be free. 
 
 Another lesson taught us, at least incidentally, from this 
 passage, fully and solemnly all through the Old Testament 
 Scriptures, is that God cannot pass over sin ; that He can 
 by no means clear the guilty, i.e. the impenitent guilty ; 
 and that though His Son's cross has expiated its penalty, 
 our own sorrow, suffused with His grace, must be the 
 healing discipline of the soul. The fire and the knife must 
 do their joint duty on us. He did not love the world less 
 before that cross was reared ; He does not claim holiness 
 less now that it has been reared. He loves to pardon, 
 and tells us so, and we need not fear to believe it. But 
 the repentance which is in the will, and desires the pardon, 
 must not be permitted to usurp the place of that penitence 
 which the fire and the knife are continually to produce in 
 us till the end of our days. Because God loves us so 
 much, His one and firm purpose is to deliver us from the 
 power of sin, as well as from the penalty of it, and this must 
 come through the process of sorrow. The gospel of this 
 time is never more shallow and facile and perilous than 
 when it proclaims God to be Love at the expense of His 
 righteousness, or forgets to explain that He most blessedly 
 manifests His love in making us, even at much personal 
 cost, partakers of His holiness. "No chastening for the 
 present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous," but it is to 
 bring forth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them 
 which are exercised thereby." " Be ye holy, for I am holy." 
 
 Finally, have not you sometimes observed — and it is 
 often a painful mystery, to which the fire and the knife 
 
DISCIPLINE. 
 
 39 
 
 may be a partial key — that the closing years of some 
 of God's most proved and faithful servants are by no 
 means what we should have expected them to be, calm and 
 bright and fruitful ; that the poets presage, " Ever the 
 richest, tenderest glow sets round the autumnal sun," is 
 not always verified ; that whether it be broken ideals, or 
 unfinished plans, or interrupted habits, or the inevitable 
 organic decay, or friends dying all around and leaving them 
 alone, the last song in their mouth is not that of the saint 
 of old, " Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in 
 peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation " ? It troubles 
 us, for others may misunderstand it, who may not see as 
 we see that God is dealing with them, and showing the 
 things He has not shown them, before they pass to the 
 brightness of His face ; also it alarms us, for will it presently 
 happen to ourselves ? 
 
 Brethren, the first and the last thing is, not to fear 
 anything either for ourselves or for others, but always to 
 trust God, to welcome anything and everything which helps 
 us to be like God. If the fire is needed to purge us, let it 
 purge us. If the knife is needed to separate us from 
 earthly things, let it separate us. We know whom we have 
 believed. Even our Lord once had His hour of darkness, 
 and His sense of lonehness. But it was only for a moment. 
 Let us go on into the future calmly and trustfully, what- 
 ever it may have to say to us, knowing that it can only 
 give us fuller and fuller evidence of a perfect wisdom, and 
 of a love which passeth knowledge. 
 
 So the fire and the knife may still have their work to do 
 on us, but our comfort is. When we are tried, we shall 
 come forth as gold. " Who shall separate us from the love 
 of Christ ? " 
 
MINISTERIAL EFFICIENCY. 
 
" I do only one thing at a time, and I do it with all my might." 
 
MINISTERIAL EFFICIENCY. 
 
 "Able ministers of the New Testament." — 2 Cor. iii. 6. 
 
 Ministerial efficiency means practical capacity for ad- 
 vancing the kingdom of Christ. We recognize several 
 types of it, which seldom, if ever, are found together : 
 and the standard, which both defines and measures it, is 
 observed to vary from age to age. Here it may be added 
 lliat, while in special functions of the ministry other 
 religious communions distinctly surpass our own (in 
 technical training we are, perhaps, inferior to all), it is 
 probable that an English clergyman strikes a higher average 
 of general efficiency than any other minister of the gospel. 
 Bat what is the life, and what the character, on which 
 this efficiency depends ? The life is not merely the hours 
 spent in the study, the school, and the church, but the sum- 
 total of it in the dear sanctities of home, in the helpful 
 intercourse of society, in holidays, and in rest. By character 
 is meant that indefinable and inevitable tone and atmo- 
 sphere of moral nature which, moment by moment, un- 
 consciously but incessantly, forms itself out of our words, 
 thoughts, and deeds; according to the awful proverb (as 
 true of us as of our fellows) — 
 
 " Sow the act, and reap the habit ; 
 Sow the habit, and reap the character ; 
 Sow the character, and reap the eternity." 
 
44 
 
 MINISTERIAL EFFICIENCY. 
 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds was in the habit of grounding his 
 canvas with a thick white paint before he drew a single line 
 of his portraits. This gave luminousness to the picture 
 when it was complete. So a clergyman's character shines 
 through his work as well as on it ; it will not be hid, for it 
 cannot be. As Monod writes, in a well-known sermon on 
 St. Paul, For him the apostle is simply the Christian 
 authorized by God to live for nothing else but to com- 
 municate his Christianity to the world ; and then, for the 
 purpose of this communication, endowed with certain super- 
 natural powers, which are a grace of the apostleship, but 
 neither its real essence nor proper strength. In a few lines 
 he gives us the secret of his life as an apostle, to be the 
 secret of his life as a Christian." 
 
 What is the secret, in the world around us, of efficiency 
 of any kind, whether artistic, literary, scientific, or political ? 
 Is it not to be found in the combination, more or less 
 perfect, of will, affections, and intelligence, stirred and kept 
 moving by the impulse of conscience, and vitalized by the 
 energy of faith? The will first resolves on action, and 
 then perseveres in it. The affections, if they do not 
 originate the .purpose, intensify it by giving it a motive. 
 The intelligence supplies the resources, having already con- 
 ceived the ideas. The conscience says, " Thou must : it 
 is thy duty." Faith overcomes all obstacles by the vivid 
 anticipation of success. 
 
 Now, the secret of overcoming the world of material 
 things is also the secret of subduing the souls of men 
 to the yoke and cross of Jesus Christ. We too must will 
 and know, love, fear, and believe ; and if we first consider 
 what are the prominent functions of our apostolic ministry, 
 and then inquire what special moral characteristics are 
 
MINISTERIAL EFFICIENCY. 
 
 45 
 
 severally needful for them, we may find the proposition 
 with which we started quietly working itself out like an 
 actual demonstration ; and the minister of Jesus Christ will 
 be seen to be His faithful servant just in proportion as he 
 is His true disciple. Organization, the pastoral function, 
 public worship, preaching — these, as we shall all agree, 
 constitute the main substance of the ministry committed 
 to us over the souls of men ; and in relation to each one 
 of them the minister will be efficient only so far as he is, 
 first of all, a Christian man. No one will either organize 
 or administer to much purpose without resolute diligence ; 
 but diligence is born of the will : and the pastoral function 
 will never be even a possible daily task, unless the con- 
 science send us forth day by day to tell from house to 
 house that vital and indispensable story, which is the 
 revelation and channel of God : and both to join in public 
 worship, as well as to lead it, there must be devoutness, 
 which mCans the heart burning : and our message, born 
 from a grave and earnest intelligence that has first seized 
 and apprehended the joy of it before declaring it to others, 
 nmst be our very best — no mere string of pious remarks 
 about Christ, but the full and bold and objective setting 
 forth of the dignity of His Person, and the merits of His 
 sacrifice, and the sufficiency of His righteousness, and the 
 power of His intercession for a lost race — the bone and 
 sinew, the flesh and blood, the very life-marrow of our 
 spiritual and intellectual consciousness, uttered as in the 
 place of Christ, and with the breath of His Spirit, to those 
 whom, whether for good or evil, for sorrow or gladness, it 
 must either persuade or harden, win or lose, for ever. 
 
 There is, first, organization. Some years ago I visited 
 Greece, and from the summit of Pentelicus I looked down 
 
46 
 
 MINISTERIAL EFFICIENCY. 
 
 over the tumulus of Marathon and the gleaming waters of 
 the ^gean, upon the hills and valleys of the immortal 
 land. My impression when I came away was of a some- 
 what commonplace character. What that interesting 
 country seemed to need, far more than extended territory, 
 costly armaments, or even a footstool in a European 
 congress, was roads. Until she has suitable means of 
 communication between her towns, and her forests, and 
 her mines, and her quarries, and her seaports, she will 
 not be important; for she cannot be prosperous. What 
 roads are to the commerce of a country, organization is 
 to the methods of a Church. If it does not make work, 
 it often suggests it, and always facilitates it. And although 
 it is not our loftiest duty, for in a sense it can never be 
 spiritual, yet we know from the Gospels that the apostles 
 mended their nets as well as used them ; and I suppose 
 Noah was almost as much a preacher of righteousness 
 when he was building the ark, as when he was entreating 
 his neighbours to enter it. It is not for us to choose the 
 duties we prefer, to the neglect of those we dislike. When 
 we are clear that they ai-e duties for us, we must grip them, 
 and do them as well as we can. Nor is it for us to say 
 that a duty is so small that we may evade it because of 
 its smallness. What is small ? what is great ? A linch-pin 
 is not the biggest part of a wheel, but if neglected it can 
 take a terrible revenge.^ Where the work of a parish is 
 judiciously mapped out, conveniently subdivided, punctually 
 done, and steadily maintained, there must be a will behind 
 
 * As Calvin observes in his Institutes^ " Hinc et eximia consolatio 
 nascetur, quod nullum erit tarn sordidum ac vile opus quod (modo 
 tuae vocationi pareas), non coram Deo resplendeat, et pretiosissimum 
 habeatur."-— Lib. iii., cap. x. 6. 
 
MINISTERIAL EFFICIENCY. 
 
 47 
 
 it all, which can only be kept from flagging by a spirit of 
 energetic and exact obedience ; and a minister of Jesus 
 Christ who is punctual in answering letters, exact in keeping 
 engagements, prudent in choosing instruments, fertile in 
 contriving resources, cheerful in enduring disappointment, 
 patient in expecting success, and courageous in risking 
 failure, though he may sometimes, by those who do not 
 care to imitate him, jauntily be called a server of tables, 
 yet to his own Master he standeth or falleth. Depend 
 upon it that good habits of business cannot yet be safely 
 dispensed with by those who have to discharge the 
 voluminous and complex duties of an English clergyman. 
 Bishop Baring, when at All Souls', was a striking instance 
 of the possibility of combining close attention to details 
 and a great faculty of administration with solid teaching 
 and a life that will not soon be forgotten. 
 
 Then there is the pastoral function, which, to sustain 
 continuously, to master thoroughly, to discharge spiritually, 
 and to accept cheerfully, some will honestly confess, though 
 not so much with the poor as with the rich, to be one of 
 the hardest tasks of their lives ; for there is no self- 
 indulgence involved in it, though abundance of self-sacrifice. 
 As Vinet observes, a man is only sure of his vocation for 
 the ministry when he feels moved and pressed to exercise 
 the cure of souls. It needs the patient skill of the solitary 
 angler, as well as the fling and splash of the net into the 
 deep waters for the glittering spoils leaping into the wet 
 meshes, as the eager hands pull it to the shore. Do you 
 remember also what Bengel says about it ? — " Experience 
 teaches us that many souls can usefully be reached by 
 preaching; but with most men the work of grace only 
 operates by an individual treatment ; so that we must 
 
48 
 
 MINISTERIAL EFFICIENCY. 
 
 make great use of private visits. The pastor often derives 
 more results from his visits than from his public preaching." 
 And he adds, in a passage of great beauty, which I must 
 not further quote, *' Dear pastors, fill your hearts with 
 love for Christ." I said just now it is hard, — hard at least 
 to do well. Personal shyness ; lack of the very rare faculty 
 of originating conversation with those with whom we do 
 not feel to have many ideas in common; indolence, whether 
 mental or bodily, that bane of us all; a certain innate 
 difficulty of speaking anything on the great verities of 
 religion (not always the result of cowardice, sometimes of 
 a holy delicacy and tender reserve), with the painful 
 consciousness of continual failure, and the sadness of 
 humbling failure here; — all these, whether singly or col- 
 lectively, make a plan of systematic visitation very hard 
 for some of us. The only force I know of to impel us 
 to it is the force of a quick and restless conscience ; the 
 only motive that will sustain us in it is the thought of the 
 unspeakable preciousness of the souls for which Jesus 
 died. These will overcome, but nothing else will. These 
 will thaw and stir, move and soften ; give courage to the 
 timid, and patience to the hasty; tears to the heart, and 
 wings to the feet. The gospel brought to the ear, looked 
 into the eyes, uttered from the heart, and conveyed by 
 the lips of one who is literally a messenger of Jesus Christ, 
 and who goes from house to house to those who do not 
 care, or are not able, to come to him to hear it, has a 
 force and a blessing which some day we shall be amazed 
 to discover, when, in the hour of our Lord's return, the 
 souls that once we thought so hard, and flippant, and 
 morose, and immovable, when we used to visit them in 
 their hours of occupation or in their moments of ease. 
 
MIX I STE RIAL E FFICI E XC Y. 
 
 49 
 
 shall be found to have nursed in fruitful hearts the seeds 
 of truth we timidly, perhaps coldly, cast upon the waters ; 
 and we who sowed in tears shall reap in joy. 
 
 Another part of our ministry is the conducting of public 
 worship, and the ministering of the sacraments. What holy 
 reverence, what calm gladness, what scrupulous carefulness, 
 what grave collectedness, should our own demeanour as we 
 pray, the very sound of our voice as we speak, convey and 
 impress on our flock around us ! When we read Holy 
 Scripture, to utter each sacred word as in the name and for 
 the glory of Jesus ; when we administer the sacraments, 
 whether of initiation into the Church, or edification in it, to 
 minister as men possessed with the lofty but awful blessed- 
 ness of being stewards and servants of God ; with a tender 
 joyfulness and an adoring gratitude at being permitted to be 
 His instruments. Two thoughts may well fill us with a sense 
 of loss and also of surprise : How strong we might become, 
 if our prayers, through being really uttered, always reached 
 God ! how they would reach Hira, and draw from His wells 
 of salvation, if we did but love ! The wandering of our 
 prayers, and the coldness of them, their feebleness, and so 
 their impotency, may well shame us into an effort to try 
 to make them better, and thereby help us to the secret that 
 better to pray is more to love. From my very heart, to you, 
 my brethren in Christ, I speak this word : learn, learn to 
 worship, through better trying to adore. As we confess, let 
 us think of the blood shed for us. As we ask, let us plead 
 the perpetual intercession of the Priest upon His throne. As 
 we praise, let us remember that when Jesus praised, it was 
 because the gospel had been made potent to the poor and 
 simple. As we intercede, let us gather into our heart the 
 great tale of sorrow and trial and perplexity and solitariness 
 
 E— 15 
 
MINISTERIAL EFFICIENCY. 
 
 of the dear souls kneeling all around us ; and, with some- 
 thing of the love of the Good Shepherd who could die to 
 save them, let us lay them in prayer on His heart. Without 
 this, so-called simplicity is baldness ; and with this, a very 
 barn becomes a temple of God. If it has ever been possible 
 to say of evangelical worship that it is cold and repelling, 
 henceforth let it be impossible. Without comparing invi- 
 diously or ungracefully plain services with musical, this we 
 shall all agree about, that heartiness and devoutness are the 
 true essentials of acceptable worship of any kind. Yet the 
 steady and regular responses of a devout congregation have 
 a melody about them which is at least a spiritual harmony. 
 The burst of sacred song from hearts which know personally 
 the blessedness of salvation has an inimitable grandeur of 
 its own. 
 
 Then there is the preaching ; and here, if anywhere, we 
 may say with emphasis and certainty, the preacher is as the 
 man. Here, too, some of us are disposed to confess that 
 the longer we preach the harder we find it to reach our own 
 standard ; though we may for our consolation remember the 
 despair of the artist who, in the supreme work of his genius, 
 becoming conscious that he had at last satisfied himself, 
 was chilled by the thought that he could no longer improve. 
 Let me quote here the words of St. Cyran, the famous Port 
 Royalist, in a letter to a friend : Preaching is not less a 
 terrible and tremendous mystery than that of the Eucharist. 
 To me it seems that preaching is much more terrible ; for 
 it is by means of it that we beget and raise souls to God ; 
 while we only nourish them by the Eucharist, or, to speak 
 more exactly, heal them. For a man to make himself 
 worthy of this function, he must labour to put great 
 restraints on himself, and after having brought his heart 
 
MINISTERIAL EFFICIENCY. 
 
 51 
 
 to desire nothing from this world, to reduce his tongue to 
 perfect silence, which is, as I understand it, the last per- 
 fection a man acquires striving for goodness to make him 
 worthy to deliver the Word of God in public, where one 
 ought more to fear about offending Him than anywhere." 
 The solid thought behind the lucid order ; the culture that 
 gleams out of the words, and the style, that seems so facile, 
 just from the pains taken with it, but which w^mted hours, 
 perhaps days^ for its winged smoothness ; the subtle 
 humour; the pathetic action, whether of hand, voice, or 
 eye ; most of all, the quiet dignity of one who speaks for 
 Christ ; the holy tenderness of one who knows what hangs 
 on the message being accepted or being despised ; and that 
 He who is not ashamed to call us brethren, and who yearns 
 to save us, will not force even a little child to love Him 
 against its will ; the glow of righteous anger at sin and 
 meanness and selfishness, which can rebuke, yet not so as 
 to exasperate into bitterness, which can wound, yet with the 
 faithful wounds of a friend, who wounds only that he may 
 heal ; most of all, the quiet, unconscious, but felt power — 
 the power of an indomitable and lofty faith that breathes 
 out of the words, because the grace of God goes with them, 
 and because he who speaks them came straight from God 
 before he began to speak them, goes straight back to God 
 that He may bless them when they are done. All this is 
 easy to describe, delightful to observe, admirable to recom- 
 mend, possible to attain, as Brainerd and Whitefield attained 
 them in days of old : not impossible for us, on the one 
 condition that we walk closely and humbly with God. 
 
 To conclude : There is a noble controversy for us, 
 which should fire us with its lofty ideal ; there is also a 
 perilous controversy, which a wise man, who knows him- 
 
52 
 
 MINISTERIAL EFFICIENCY. 
 
 self, and loves his brethren, will be in no great hurry to 
 undertake. 
 
 To do most for Christ by purity of doctrine, by steadi- 
 ness of effort, by abundance of prayer, by meekness of 
 charity, should be our only controversy, in all generous and 
 manly love ; then not only shall the Church gain, and those 
 who would make mischief between us be sorely discomfited, 
 but there will be no compromise of faithfulness to tarnish 
 our honour, and no loss of consistency to give hoUowness 
 to our words. 
 
 But the perpetual inspiration for life and for motive, 
 for patience and for sacrifice, is conscious union with Christ. 
 Christ at this moment is different to each one of us. He 
 differs in our idea of His perfection, in our attainment of 
 His image, in our fruition of His presence, in our capacity 
 for His love. And as Christ differs for us, His kingdom 
 will differ by us. Oh, to get nearer to His face, and so 
 better see His glory, and be in deeper sympathy with the 
 l)urpose of His cross ! This at least is what He Himself 
 tells us is the one secret of glorifying Him in the world, and 
 of discovering His truth for ourselves. " He that abidelh 
 in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit." 
 
 Henceforth I call you not servants, but I have called you 
 friends ; for all things that I have heard of My Father I 
 have made known unto you." And this sustained holy 
 fellowship will mean two things : peace for our own hearts, 
 and intercession for our people. '-'Thou shalt hide them 
 in the secret of Thy presence from the pride of man. Thou 
 shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of 
 tongues." As the greatest of American Episcopal preachers 
 puts it, " God is even more jealous of His love than of His 
 honour. Let us run into the shelter of that divine life, 
 
MINISTERIAL EFFICIENCY. 
 
 53 
 
 just creep across the threshold — there no trouble can pursue ; 
 and if we are really Christ's, then back into the very bosom 
 of His Father — He will carry us. We too shall look out 
 and be as calm and independent as He is. The needs of 
 men shall touch us just as keenly as they touch Him ; but 
 the sneers and strifes of men shall pass us by, as they pass 
 Him by, and leave no mark on His unruffled life." ^ It 
 will also help us to intercession ; and our ministry with our 
 people will ever depend on our prayers for them. Hear 
 Massillon : Accompany your anxieties with your prayers; 
 speak still more often to God about the disorders among 
 your people, than to themselves ; deplore more often to 
 Him the obstacles which your own unfaithfulness offers to 
 their conversion, than their own obstinacy can produce ; 
 charge yourselves alone, before His feet, witli the scanty 
 fruit of your ministry; as a tender father, excuse in His 
 presence the faults of your children, and accuse only your- 
 selves." ^ 
 
 Finally, look on, seriously, steadfastly, solemnly, to the 
 end of all. As I, for one, look back over a ministry of 
 many and busy years, three reflections fill my spirit with 
 wonder and with sadness : the awfulness of the responsibility 
 which I have so feebly appreciated ; the grandeur of the 
 duty which I have so coldly undertaken; the joy of the 
 ministry which I so scantily taste. My brethren, my 
 brethren, the cross of Christ is at once the measure of 
 Divine love and human necessity, and the story of that 
 cross we are to preach, and to live for the salvation of 
 the world. Let us not grow accustomed to its awfulness, 
 nor wearied by its onerousness, nor indifferent to its 
 
 ' " Sermons," by Rev. Phillipii Brooks, pp. 96, 97. 
 ' *' Discours sur le Zele des Pasteurs." 
 
54 
 
 MINISTERIAL EFFICIENCY. 
 
 reward. Let us preach our sermons first to ourselves. 
 Let us humbly, eagerly, reverently, faithfully, use the 
 means of grace for our own spirit, if we would pass 
 them on to our flocks, which we are to feed for God. 
 Let us remember the failing strength, the waning oppor- 
 tunities, the regrets on the death-bed, the inevitable 
 summons to the judgment-seat of Christ. You remember, 
 perhaps, the dying regrets of Adolphe Monod, a saint of 
 God, if ever there was one in our modern time. He 
 regretted that he had not learnt to better purpose that 
 the secret of a holy, active, and peaceable life is in 
 entire self-surrender to God both of will and plan. 
 He regretted his scanty, desultory, and broken study 
 of the Word of God. He regretted that he had wasted 
 time through not being sufficiently methodical and pains- 
 taking in the use of it. He regretted his prayers. He 
 regretted the absorbing influence of trifles. And it was 
 too late; life was gone, and regrets could not bring back 
 the irrecoverable past, nor could experience be wisdom for 
 yesterday. 
 
 As I began I end, " Ministerial efficiency is dependent 
 on the life and character of the minister." In St. Paul's 
 way of putting it, Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall 
 he also reap." It is souls we have to win, and we shall 
 best win them, not so much by ingenious dialectics, or vivid 
 scene-painting, or massive erudition, or emotional appeals ; 
 but chiefly by the awful earnestness of men who are fired 
 with zeal for God, and with serious sympathy for their 
 . brethren, whose goodness is the breath of their speech, 
 and their consistency its rhetoric. We have presently to 
 meet our flocks in eternity; and these characters of ours, 
 which are the personal forces of our ministry, we are our- 
 
MINISTERIAL EFFICIENCY. 
 
 55 
 
 selves forming day by day, to be our spiritual, indeiitructiblc 
 inheritance in the everlasting future. If the fiery trial which 
 is to try us is to spare our ivork, it can only be by our now 
 welcoming the candle of the Lord to search us^ and prove 
 it ; and the only guarantee for our personal acceptance and 
 our public coronation is a life hid with Christ in God." 
 
THE DIVINE SILENCES. 
 
" Your thoughts arc making you." 
 
THE DIVINE SILENCES, 
 
 Preached in the Chapel Koyal, St. James's, March 2, 1890. 
 " But He answered her not a word." — Matt. xv. 23. 
 
 Christ, we see, had His limitations, His moods of stern- 
 ness, and His defeats. His limitations, imposed on Him 
 by His Father, recognized and accepted by Him in un- 
 questioning dutifulness, and given as the reason for declining 
 to exercise His ministry across the Jewish boundaries, are 
 instructive in two ways. They indicate in an impressive 
 and striking fashion the mighty and indisputable fact of the 
 Divine Sovereignty, which crosses, and perplexes, and, it 
 may be, disappoints us at every turn of life ; which we can 
 neither explain, nor deny, nor evade, nor resist ; and which, 
 if it may well fill some of us with unspeakable thankfulness 
 for the blessings which it has bestowed on us, to others is 
 the unfathomable problem of a clouded righteousness. I 
 am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." 
 It was enough for Him to know that, and He accepted it. 
 His Father would presently justify Himself before the 
 world. Of course the limitation of His ministry to the Jews 
 meant the loss of it to the Gentiles ; but " Shall not the 
 Judge of all the earth do right ? " 
 
6o 
 
 THE DIVINE SILENCES. 
 
 For us too, though in a sense and degree far different, 
 to know our limitations, and to accept them, and to obey 
 them, is the supreme secret of dignity and usefulness. 
 Many a spoiled life can be traced to an ambitious effort to 
 transgress this Divine order. It is not so often the man 
 with five talents who cares or tries to make other five talents 
 out of them, as the man with but two talents, who knowing 
 that they arc only two, and glad that they are as many as 
 two, manfully and cheerfully sets himself to make them 
 four. 
 
 He had His moods of sternness. Let us confess that 
 in this pathetic history there is at first sight something 
 which distresses us almost to pain. If we were to be silent 
 to each other as the Lord was silent to this poor troubled 
 mother, and then speak with the abruptness wherewith 
 He spoke to her, a great deal of self-control might be 
 needed to prevent its becoming intolerable, and only an 
 immense kindness afterwards could obliterate it from the 
 mind. 
 
 But the Lord knew His purpose and her tenacity. A 
 hasty and superficial pity might have marred a lifelong 
 blessing. In the words of the prophet, " For a small 
 moment have I forsaken thee, but with everlasting kindness 
 will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer." 
 In truth. His love was far too strong, and deep, and holy 
 to have anything of softness or weakness about it. What 
 we call kindness, in our daily relations with each other, 
 becomes quite a different thing when we consider it as 
 manifested by Christ. His kindness braced that it might 
 heal, waited that it might double itself, was absolutely in- 
 different to hasty misconstruction of its purpose, and in the 
 end was well worth waiting for. His defeat was the victory, 
 
THE DIVINE SILENCES, 
 
 6l 
 
 which the fulness of His own grace enabled her to win 
 from His love. Faith which can remove mountains can 
 also overcome God. It is, indeed, the grace of God in 
 man concurring with the eternal purpose in God. Christ 
 wondered at it, and then suffered her to claim from 
 Him all that she desired. " O woman, great is thy faith : 
 be it unto thee even as thou wilt." So "the kingdom 
 of heaven sufTereth violence, and the violent take it by 
 force." 
 
 " He answered her not a word." On the Divine Silences 
 I would speak now. History is -full of them. The Bible is 
 full of them. Most of us here know them to our cost; 
 also, I doubt not, for our consolation. To observe the 
 varieties of them, to discover the meaning of them, to 
 recognize the wisdom of them, and to secure the bless- 
 ing of them, is to go a very long way in fathoming the 
 counsels of God, and to reconcile us to the hardness of 
 our duty. 
 
 There are questions which God refuses to answer, and 
 tliere are questions which He consents to answer, and for 
 these questions much light is to be gained from this conduct 
 of Christ.' 
 
 I. The questions, at least some of them, which Christ 
 did not answer then, and will not answer now, are dis/io?iesf, 
 or presuviptuous^ or speculative^ or controversial. 
 
 He will not answer disJionest questions, by which I mean 
 questions put in an insincere spirit, or with the judgment 
 and intention already matured, or with no thought of obedi- 
 ence, or with motives which will not bear the Divine scrutiny, 
 or in an almost insolent flippancy — 
 
 * Prebendary Eyton has an instructive sermon, to which I owe 
 much, " The True Life," p. 133. 
 
62 
 
 THE DIVINE SILENCES. 
 
 " Light half-believers of our casual creeds 
 Who never deeply felt, nor clearly willed, 
 Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds, 
 Whose vague resolves never have been fulfilled ; 
 For whom each year, we see, 
 Dreeds new beginnings, disappointments new, 
 Who hesitate and falter life away, 
 And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day." 
 
 (Matthew Arnold.) 
 
 When the Pharisees demanded a sign He refused it. 
 Was He not Himself all the Sign that they could require ? 
 When the high priest said unto Him, " Answerest Thou 
 nothing ? " He held His peace. When Pilate said, Hearest 
 Thou not how many things they witness against Thee ? " 
 
 He answered him to never a word." When Herod 
 saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad, and he questioned with 
 Him in many words ; but He answered him nothing." It 
 was partly in mercy, for it might have been only to increase 
 their condemnation ; partly in judgment, for a seared heart 
 must be treated as it deserves ; partly also in dignity. 
 Could the Son of God consent to amuse the vacant hours 
 of a vicious and cruel king? 
 
 Yes, and there are many even now who go to Christ 
 with their questions, not knowing what it is they want, nor 
 at all clear that He has it to give them ; either too shallow 
 to be really in earnest or too worldly to consent to part 
 with a single bauble for the love of God. So there is no 
 voice ; all is darkness and silence. He answers them not 
 a word ; and it must be admitted that they do not much 
 care. 
 
 There are presiimphious questions, questions which ought 
 not to be asked, for they can never be answered ; questions 
 which skirt the mysterious borderland between sense and 
 
THE DIVINE SILENCES. 
 
 63 
 
 spirit, between the visible and invisible worlds ; questions 
 on which neither of the three great revelations vouchsafed 
 to man in nature, and conscience, and Scripture cast one 
 gleam of light ; questions for which Science, properly so- 
 called, has nothing but an ineffable disdain, and Religion a 
 solemn indignation. 
 
 The spirit-world with its invisible multitudes, its un- 
 fathomed capacities, its unknowable occupations, has been 
 deliberately shut off" from us by a curtain of darkness. To 
 strive to peep into that world, to filch its secrets, and to 
 converse with its inhabitants, and to discover what they 
 think, and feel, and do, by any mechanical jugglery, such 
 as that which seems to fascinate many, whose faith is not 
 strong enough to confess a living God, but whose super- 
 stition is base enough to attempt communion with the dead, 
 is, to my mind at least, a far more shocking phenomenon 
 than the corrupt animalism of the Mormons ; comes nearer 
 (if there is anything serious in it) to devil-worship than any- 
 thing we have lately seen in Western Christendom. 
 
 To suppose, even for a moment, that He who has the 
 keys of Death and Hades would permit spirits in discipline 
 to break their awful captivity just to gratify the inquisitive 
 caprice of a knot of triflers, is a grave insult to His Divine 
 Majesty. Is He more likely to spare from Paradise, for 
 the same unworthy reason, the saints who see His Face 
 and hear His Word ? 
 
 ~ Of the invisible forces of the evil spirits, their number, 
 their varieties, their activities, their permitted liberty, we 
 know hardly anything; though, indeed, what we do know 
 is hardly matter for a buff'oon's jesting. But, if we are in 
 any sense Christians, we may be well assured that they too 
 have limits which they cannot transgress, and boundaries 
 
THE DIVINE SILENCES. 
 
 which they may not pass over. Indeed, one hardly knows 
 whether to smile with contempt on what, if it be only a 
 folly, is a very horrible folly ; or to denounce with indig- 
 nation what, if it is a sin at all, is a very ghastly sin. 
 Assuredly it is not a pastime to be safely played at. No 
 reverent or believing heart should risk, even for what may 
 euphemistically be called a phantasy or experiment of 
 science, a grave dishonour to the kingdom and supremacy 
 of Christ. Christ will not answer a word to such audacious 
 attempts to force the barriers He has inflexibly imposed 
 upon us. If there ever does seem to be an answer — and I 
 fear to provoke a smile by hinting the possibility of it— it 
 must be either the impudent fraud of a designing charla- 
 tanism, or the voice of one whose works the Son of God 
 took flesh to destroy. 
 
 There are speculative questions which Christ will not 
 answer. When the disciples asked Him, " Lord, are there 
 few that be saved?" He replied, "Strive to enter in at 
 the strait gate ; for many, I say unto you, shall seek to 
 enter in, and shall not be able." The most profound, and 
 reasonable, and melancholy, and yet pressing of all questions 
 is no doubt this— how evil came into the world; and the 
 most honest, even if it be helpless and disappointing, answer 
 is simply this— We cannot tell, and we are not meant to 
 know. In the teaching of our Lord, a hint about it 
 occasionally falls from Him, as in the parable of the tares, 
 where the owner of the field is made to say, An enemy 
 hath done this." When, again. He healed an afflicted woman 
 in the synagogue, He said of her that Satan had bound her 
 for eighteen years ; and it should be observed that no figure 
 is used here, no symbolirm, simply the distinct and em- 
 phatic assertion of a tremendous fact, which He who had 
 
THE DIVINE SILENCES. 
 
 65 
 
 come to redeem the world might reasonably be expected 
 both to understand and declare. The Bible does not 
 profess to explain the mystery, but it does tell us that evil 
 is to be overcome with good, and that Chr'st has come 
 into the world to do battle with it, and that we are to help 
 Him in the battle, and that at last all shall be reconciled, 
 and the mystery cleared, and death conquered, and God 
 and good be all in all. 
 
 Once more, there are controversial questions which He 
 will not answer \ for were they answered, we might lose a 
 very wholesome discipline for diffidence and charity. AVhen 
 the disciples asked the Lord, " Wilt Thou at this time 
 restore again the kingdom to Israel ? " He distinctly declined 
 to give them an answer. There are other matters, too, of 
 commanding interest, and of real importance, about which 
 we are sometimes tempted to think, had we been told but 
 a little more, how much burning controversy, and perilous 
 division, and weakening of strength in the face of the 
 enemy might have been spared to the Church of God. 
 If, for instance, but one clear direction had been given 
 us about the baptism of infants, there would have been 
 no opportunity, or, as some would put it, no justification 
 for a separate body of Christians, to whom the ordinance 
 that the rest of us so dearly love seems an unreal and even 
 superstitious thing. If in the not unimportant matter of 
 Church government we had been in a position to gather, 
 not only from logical inference, or from historical con- 
 tinuity, the rule of order most pleasing to God and most 
 edifying for man, but from a distinct command of Christ, 
 the three last centuries of Christian history might have 
 been spared many a rent and tear in the robe of outward 
 unity; also many a blow and wound aimed by hot and 
 
 F— 15 
 
66 
 
 THE DIVINE SILENCES. 
 
 even venomous tongues by brother against brother, and 
 even by saint against saint. 
 
 The Head of the Church has thought and ordered other- 
 wise. He sees further than we see. He looks deeper than 
 we look. It is not for us to scan His designs ; it is for us 
 to accept His discipline. If we go to His Word to justify 
 ourselves in arraigning and condemning the brethren who 
 differ from us, there is no reply. When we consent to learn 
 from His silence to decide modestly, to tolerate generously, 
 to judge kindly, to love sincerely, a Voice comes to us, and 
 grace goes with it : Peace be unto you." 
 
 II. Among the questions He consents to answer are 
 these, and they are very practical (though we do not always 
 quite appreciate them) : questions about pai7i, and about 
 diiiy^ and about iruth^ and about failure. 
 
 There was a man born blind from his birth, and the 
 disciples, regarding him with a wondering pity, asked the 
 Lord, " Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was 
 born blind?" They felt, as so many of us feel even now, 
 that affliction of a marked kind must have the nature of 
 punishment about it, and that we suffer because we have 
 sinned. The Lord's answer is most instructive. *' Neither 
 halh this man sinned, nor his parents " (in the sense they 
 put on it of having deserved such an affliction), " but that 
 the works of God should be made manifest in him." Pain^ 
 we see, is an opportunity from God to man for glorifying 
 Him, by patience, and unselfishness, and cheerfulness, and 
 power, all disciplined thereby. 
 
 We have observed this constantly in others, and some 
 day, it may be, others are meant to see it in us. As 
 man's life draws towards its sunset, a chill mist often falls 
 on what we call our happiness, through failing health, and 
 
THE DIVINE SILENCES. 67 
 
 vanishing duties, and friends departing, and the dull 
 opaque years with no pleasure in them. Then is the time to 
 show that we can trust, and endure, and hope, and praise ; 
 that we can love God, not only for what He has, but for 
 what He is ; that we feel Him to be kind, not only when He 
 gives, but when He takes away. If the final discipline of 
 the closing years is the school-time for Paradise, it may 
 also be a working of the works of God in us, by the lessons 
 it teaches to others who possibly could learn them in no 
 other way. They who stand by and wait on us should 
 be helped to discover, as no books or sermons could teach 
 them, that the life hid with Christ in God, even when all 
 active service is a thing of the past, has its lessons of 
 quiet heroism and its revelation of the Unchanging Pity. 
 There may be much uselessness in the fussy hurryings of 
 a restless if well-meaning philanthropy ; nothing so con- 
 tinually or irresistibly glorifies God, and manifests His 
 Presence, as the quiet and even joyful suffering of His 
 helpless saints. 
 
 He will answer questions about duty^ though the answer 
 may startle us, and at first seem more than we can bear, 
 and at last drop from our palsied hands. When the rich 
 young man came to Christ, with his perfectly honest 
 question, what he was to do to " inherit eternal life," Christ 
 instantly answered him, though the answer fell as the blow 
 of an iron flail on a young sapling, and crushed his eager 
 hope. The Lord could not water down duty to please 
 any one, though He would gladly have imparted all needful 
 strength for doing it, had it been desired. Perhaps it is 
 never really so hard to discover duty as to resolve on doing 
 it, whatever it may be found to be. To all of us, as life 
 goes on, there will occasionally be real and grave per- 
 
68 
 
 THE DIVINE SILENCES. 
 
 plexity as to where our duty lies between two rival claims 
 on us. But the will is ever the straightest road to the 
 judgment, and "the meek will He teach His way." 
 Christ Himself had moments when impending duty seemed 
 almost intolerable, and He can feel for us. To know our 
 duty is, of course, quite a distinct thing from consenting 
 to it ; but it is much even to wish to know it. Christ 
 pledges Himself to show it to us, and to help us in 
 getting it done. He will answer us about iinith in a 
 degree which we must appreciate, and by methods which 
 we must accept, and on conditions w^hich we must observe. 
 His promise to us is not to impart truth instantly, or 
 entirely, or infallibly, but by His Spirit to show us the 
 way into all truth, and then to leave us there to find it 
 for ourselves as individual capacity, and gifts, and the 
 leisure at our disposal, and mental sincerity, and other 
 concurring helps and circumstances may make it possible. 
 The laws of thought cannot be repealed for any school 
 of learners or for any department of truth. They are 
 unchanging and universal. Nor will He even help us 
 to truth if we choose to despise human aids, or refuse to 
 learn from our brethren, or think study superfluous and 
 books a fatigue. Also there are moral conditions to 
 intellectual progress. " If any man will do His will, he 
 shall know of the doctrine." Humility which confesses 
 ignorance, and docility which welcomes light, and industry 
 which labours, and sagacity which compares — all have 
 their great reward. In Mr. lUingworth's striking language, 
 " Christianity distinctly declines to be proved first and 
 practised afterwards. Its practice and its proof go hand 
 in hand; and its real evidence is its power." ^ 
 
 ^ "Lux Mimdi," p. 211. 
 
THE DIVINE SILENCES. 
 
 69 
 
 Truth is inexhaustible, and he who has gained most 
 will be first to confess how little he has gained. But the 
 doctrine which teaches of God has a special condition 
 attached to it, which no other doctrine can claim in a like 
 way ; and a benediction going with it. " Blessed are the 
 pure in heart : for they shall see God." 
 
 He will also answer questions about our failures. He 
 knew disappointment, and keenly felt it, in the days of His 
 flesh, though His came to Him from the slowness and per- 
 versity which constantly encountered Him, and through no 
 fault in Himself. He will mercifully enter into ours, though 
 sin and infirmity be at the root of them, and will enable us to 
 understand, and even surmount them in the patience of hope. 
 
 Why could not we cast him out ? " was the troubled 
 question of the disciples, when baffled in their treatment 
 of the demoniac child. "Because of your unbelief," was 
 the reply. Unbelief is a weakness with many elements 
 in it ; its chief mischief being, that it palsies the hand 
 which should grasp the Divine Omnipotence, and closes 
 the eye of the soul which should catch its inspiration from 
 the vision of God. Never to be disappointed is not 
 greatly to care ; always to be disappointed must mean to 
 be very weak or very foolish ; sometimes to be disappointed 
 may even be a sort of honour. 
 
 But our duty is to take our disappointments to Christ, 
 and our wisdom is to consult Him about them, and our 
 safety is to do what He bids us, and our joy is to expect 
 their final reward. For what looks to us like failure, may 
 be but the seed waiting in the frozen earth for warmth and 
 moisture. Disappointment is often but a deferred success. 
 Over a world still lying in the wicked one hangs the shadow 
 of the cross on which the Saviour died. 
 
70 
 
 THE DIVINE SILENCES. 
 
 My friends, of this let us be perfectly sure ; that what- 
 ever may be Christ's silences to those who deserve them, 
 He is never really silent to those who desire His salvation, 
 and crave His grace, and bear His cross, and trust His 
 love. It is easier for the sun to fall out of the sky than 
 for Him to be hard, or cold, or indifferent to the humblest 
 soul that seeks His face. For a moment He may seem 
 to be on the top of the mountain far away in the darkness, 
 while we are being tossed in the storm. It is night, and 
 Jesus is not with us. But the faintest cry of distress, or 
 alarm, or loneliness reaches Him as He offers His inter- 
 cession for us. He hastens to us, though in a shape we may 
 ■ not always recognize, and in a way that we cannot instantly 
 \ understand. Yet, whether He comes walking on the water 
 over the midnight sea ; or hails us from the shore, wearied 
 w.ih thankless toil ; or at the graveside speaks to us, while 
 the tears blind Him, it is no longer true of Him that He 
 answers us not a word. The silence is broken. His voice 
 whispers, It is I ; be not afraid," and there is a great 
 calm. 
 
THE POWER or COURAGE. 
 
"The worst of the worthy people is that they are such cowards. A 
 man groans over a wrong ; he holds his tongue, he eats his supper and 
 he forgets all about it." 
 
THE POWER OF COURAGE. 
 
 Preached at the Coiisecraiion of Lyss CImycJi:, July 2, 1892. 
 
 " Fear not, but let your hands be strong." — Zech. viii. 13. 
 
 It cannot be hard to see how the Church of Zechariah's 
 time needed the tonic of vigorous counsel. For there was 
 something to fear then; and to be absolutely free from 
 anxiety would have implied either the presence of a stolid 
 apathy, or the lack of a righteous jealousy for God. The 
 yet recent captivity had worked its iron into men's souls. 
 The ruined temple, while it demanded their entire energies, 
 rapidly exhausted them. Disunion in their midst bred a 
 sour and paralyzing suspiciousness, and mocking enemies 
 under the shadow of the city walls threw a chill into their 
 hearts. Yet even then the prophet did not shrink from 
 forbidding them to fear j and while he deprecated the 
 mischief, indicated the remedy. That remedy, if we may 
 so speak of it in our modern conventional language, is the 
 very perfection of good sense. Clearly he might have said, 
 " Your alarm is exaggerated," which though true would 
 have been hable to be disputed. Or he might have 
 suggested that with a little patience it would disappear, 
 which would have been like comforting a farmer gazing 
 on his drenched crops with the prospect of next year's 
 
74 
 
 THE POWER OF COURAGE. 
 
 harvest. What he does say not only inculcates a precept, 
 but presses the way of performing it ; for while he forbids 
 alarm, his antidote is duty. " Fear not, but let your hands 
 be strong." 
 
 To work, my friends, is the secret of courage for us all. 
 For while it is noble to trust, and inspiring to hope, and 
 prudent to watch, and manful to wait, and blessed to pray, 
 there are crises in life when the trusting, and hoping, and 
 w^atching, and waiting, and praying are to be all welded 
 and concentrated in action. When Joshua, after the defeat 
 at Ai, fell on his face before the Captain of the Lord's host, 
 the answer came to him — " Get thee up ; wherefore liest 
 thou thus on thy face ? . . . Up, sanctify the people." To 
 the apostles in Gethsemane, roused, ashamed, penitent, 
 ready, had they had the chance to watch and pray ten 
 nights with their Lord, the monition came with almost a 
 stern promptness — " Rise, let us be going." 
 
 And the reason is plain. The heart brooding over 
 weakness and danger magnifies them, and thereby makes 
 its task heavier. Anticipated difficulties sometimes never 
 happen ; and then we have wasted moral nerve, and perhaps 
 wholesome emotion, in slaying lions that do not cross our 
 path. It is not only actual power we need to make us 
 strong, but that consciousness of it which gives it its 
 leverage ; and whatever diminishes the leverage checks the 
 force. Possessed with its duty, happy in it, and too much 
 absorbed in it either to watch the fleeting clouds, or to 
 listen to the cawing of gloomy idlers, the soul holds itself 
 in peace ; and evil tidings, when they come, cannot move it 
 from its steadfastness. 
 
 Fear not, but let your hands be strong." About which 
 words, let me first observe that the prophet did not mean 
 
THE POWER OF COURAGE. 
 
 75 
 
 to say, and we must not pretend to think, that the Church 
 has nothing to fear, wherever she is, whatever she does. 
 This would be presumption indeed. " Others save with 
 fear," writes St. Jude. There is ever much in ourselves 
 that we ought to fear, must fear, if we be true Christians. 
 Yet, as I shall proceed to show, there assuredly is nothing 
 out of ourselves and independent of us that we need fear, 
 if we will only hold fast by God. For instance — 
 
 I. We ought to fear that unnecessary and unchristian 
 disunion which, springing not from a holy faithfulness, 
 but from a sour and narrow egotism, is grievous to the 
 mind of Christ, and secretly, but fatally, dismembers His 
 Lody. We ought to fear that base prudence which can 
 whip the poor with the cords of sharp rebuke, but holds its 
 peace at the sins of the wealthy ; and which, keeping back 
 truth lest it offend those on whose favour our worldly 
 advancement may perhaps be hanging, first asks, ''Will this 
 please my powerful hearers ? " instead of considering if it is 
 the message of God. Most of all, let us fear even for a 
 moment to weigh as with an ant's wing against the scales 
 of duty and conscience, the breath of popular favour, or the 
 possible schemes of destructive statesmen, which, to some 
 men's eyes, are already bringing a mighty and sudden chasm 
 to yawn under our feet, and smiting a timid few with a panic 
 which so justly compels the cynical, but quite reasonable 
 inquiry, if the Church is really a divine institution, or only 
 the paid hireling of men. Over such unworthy alarms a 
 man's heart gets into a white heat of Christian shame; and 
 I name them only to dismiss them with contempt. The 
 love of ease, the fear of man, the power of the sinful nature 
 within us, the love of Christ growing cold, and through that 
 coldness souls perishing for which He died, — these things 
 
76 
 
 THE POWER OF COURAGE. 
 
 we will fear ; though indeed, if we are wise, we shall not too 
 much dwell upon them. For just as the human body is 
 not braced, but depressed rather, by the air of a putrid 
 marsh, no man's soul is helped by too much contemplation 
 of his weakness and sin. 
 
 2. But I will now tell you what we need not fear. For 
 ours is a righteous Master ; as righteous as He is kind. 
 
 We need not fear the overwhelmingness of our labour. 
 Of course we think not only of the work that is being done, 
 but of that which is to be done. There are not only the 
 people that are all round here, but the people that are 
 coming here. Some of us never can overtake our work — 
 hardly even get within sight of it. The rapid increase of 
 population might well make the Church faint and tremble 
 at the duty accumulating for her, if she did not know that 
 all grace is hers ; might tempt her feebly to complain that 
 the task laid on her shoulders is more than she is able to 
 bear, if it were not even more the task of her Lord. And 
 when we think of the thousands and tens of thousands 
 of redeemed souls all over the diocese, practically destitute 
 of means of grace, or at least indifferent to them — passing 
 from childhood into youth, and from youth into manhood, 
 and from manhood to old age, and from old age to the 
 judgment-seat of Christ, "having no hope," so far as we 
 know, *'and without God in the world" — we might well 
 be daunted in even attempting to touch a burden with 
 which it seems impossible to grapple. 
 
 But, I say, we serve a just Master, who knows what 
 we are to whom the task is given, and what we need 
 for doing it when it is given. We are limited, and He 
 Himself has made us so. Limited in our bodily strength ; 
 limited in our mental freshness; limited in the number 
 
THE POWER OF COURAGE. 
 
 77 
 
 of our opportunities ; limited even in the power of our 
 devotion. He knows us, and He bears with us, and He 
 pities us (let us hope) more than we think of. Also He 
 uses and blesses us. If some of His servants have never 
 for the last thirty years of their lives been able with any 
 sort of adequacy to discharge the enormous duties of an 
 English and urban miinistry, we must nevertheless cast 
 our burden on the Lord, with all consciousness of im- 
 perfection, but in humble trust on His grace. He knows 
 them that are His, and if, with all their faults and short- 
 comings, they try their best to be faithful, He will welcome 
 and crown them at last. 
 
 3. Once more, as men, we need not fear the disaster 
 of adverse circumstances, whether of murrain or tempest, 
 of revolution or change. If any Church in the world 
 ought to be delivered from fear of circumstances into a 
 calm trust in God, it is our dear Church of England. "God 
 is in the midst of her ; she shall not be moved : God shall 
 help her, and that right early." 
 
 And this is, I think, a lesson that we need to be reminded 
 of now. Of course, I do not mean that she has not had 
 storms which have furiously tossed her, as the shrieking 
 wind sweeps down upon a lonely ship on the winter sea ; 
 or that she has not had again and again to pass through 
 fires that have scorched her to the very bone, and put 
 her to bitter suffering. The storm has in the end only 
 rooted her more firmly in the earth, and out of the fire 
 she has come pure and cleansed and strong. The Church 
 fell on evil days, as men thought then. Yes, and on 
 very gloomy days, when the great Rebellion swept 
 over the land with its besom of destruction, and the 
 Church's rulers and pastors were driven out of their 
 
;8 
 
 THE POWER OF COURAGE. 
 
 posts and homes, and her organization seemed totally sub- 
 merged as with the wave of a typhoon. But time went 
 on ; and whether or no the lesson was fully learned, God 
 restored to her her heritage, and she has kept it to 
 this hour. Presently another trial came, with the second 
 James. We know how he put his own representatives into 
 the chair of Magdalen College ; how this time Rome was 
 again her foe, instead of Puritanism ; how seven bishops 
 went to the Tower for the liberty and faith of England ; 
 and came out, having for us, as well as for their own time, 
 won their cause. That storm came, and was spent long 
 ago. Again, just fifty years ago, about the time of the first 
 Reform Bill, the Church was in peril again, and, to save 
 the vessel, much of her precious cargo was hastily thrown 
 overboard. She righted herself, and has gone on till now, 
 wiser, and I think stronger. To-day people are beginning 
 to be frightened again, and I say that, if they will be 
 frightened, let them be frightened. But they shall not 
 frighten us, when God is saying, in a voice we will listen to, 
 " Fear not, but let your hands be strong ; " and it seems 
 to us it will be time enough to be frightened when the 
 Church is losing hold of the love of the people, instead 
 of, as she plainly is, ever more gaining it ; when she deserves 
 rejection for her smoothness, rather than tempting it by 
 her courage ; when she will cease to be an object of alarm 
 and jealousy because no one any longer thinks her worth 
 either notice or attack — though she will, no doubt, be 
 always worth spoiling ; when all that she really retains will 
 be the gold in her purse, and a certain social precedence 
 for her great clergy, but has lost the grace of God, the love 
 of souls, and the esteem of men. 
 
 Fear, God forbid. For whatever may be in front of us, 
 
THE POWER OF COURAGE. 
 
 79 
 
 the benediction of God shall compensate for the conduct 
 of men. " All things shall work together for good to them 
 that love God." Only let us love God and our people for 
 His sake, and make our lives show it, then we are un- 
 assailable in all that touches our true riches, and are 
 immortal in all that affects our heavenly life. And His 
 word to us shall be, Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not 
 thy peace. For I am with thee : and no man shall set on 
 thee to hurt thee ; for I have much people in this city." 
 
 4. Once more, let active love, that is, duty (the natural 
 result and child of love), cast out fear. 
 
 *' Let your hands be strong " — socially and personally ; 
 strong in the fearless vindication of the everlasting gospel ; 
 strong in the unwearied and incessant ministrations of kindly 
 sympathy and love ; strong in the undaunted rebuke of sin 
 and falsehood, and social injustice and private iniquity ; 
 strong in the manful independence of the inner conscience 
 of the heart. Men want the gospel, and expect us to give 
 it them; and are disappointed, and wonder what we are 
 meant for if we do not give it them. Be not ashamed of 
 the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto 
 salvation. Let your neighbours know and use you as a 
 Christian friend. This is the true way to be strong. The 
 Church lives and grows only through the personal sympathy 
 and influence of her individual members. If the clergy 
 and the laity want the Church to remain as she is, the 
 condition, under God, of its so remaining rests with them. 
 Let them deserve it ; and the nation will still be theirs. 
 
 Oh, fear the face of no man, neither prince nor peasant, 
 neither gentle nor simple, neither child nor patriarch, 
 neither friend nor foe. Love truth and peace ; not truth 
 without peace, nor peace before truth, but both together. 
 
So 
 
 THE POWER OF COURAGE. 
 
 Be true, be true, be true. And, remember, to be true, we 
 need not be harsh, or passionate, or cold, or bitter. While 
 in God's presence, and from God's face, we must get 
 courage — when we have to speak even before kings and not 
 be ashamed — yet our words, being steeped in charity, shall 
 sink like oil into the soul, and, even against their will, men 
 will listen, soften, and obey. 
 
 Once more, the crown, and link, and perfection, and 
 fragrance of all is love. Little children, love one another." 
 "By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, 
 if ye have love one to another." 
 
 For love is at once a sword and a shield ; it is a weapon 
 that none can resist, and it is a shield which nothing can 
 penetrate. It carries with it both felicity and recompense. 
 He who loves most has most happiness, because he who 
 loves most has back again into his own spirit the largest 
 share of the love that he has suggested and earned. 
 
 They say, if you want to forgive man, pray for him — 
 though a wise man would never tell him of it. For prayer 
 compels you to love him, and where you love you pardon. 
 
 It is quite as true to say, that to love both makes friends 
 and disarms enemies. If nothing brings men together like 
 a common danger, nothing knits them like a common duty ; 
 and what forbids the one, and inspires the other, is the 
 parting promise on Olivet : " Lo, I am with you alway, 
 even unto the end of the world." 
 
THE SOWER AND THE SEED. 
 
 G— 15 
 
' The man who has lived most is not he who has counted most years, 
 he who has most felt life." 
 
THE SOWER AND THE SEED, 
 
 Preached in St. FauPs Cathedral, May 12, 1890. 
 "The seed is the Word of God."— Luke viii. 11. 
 
 Our times have been happily called " the times of Christ ; " 
 and if they are not His times, whose can they be ? Cer- 
 tainly they are the best times the world has seen since He 
 went back to His glory; certainly, also, faith,'ever bold and 
 hopeful in proportion to its devotion and sacrifices, looks 
 for them to be better and better, until He finally returns to 
 *'make all things new." Does any one ask, How can they 
 be Christ's times, when evil is so insolent and strife so bitter, 
 and the air hideous with discord and blasphemy ; when anti- 
 christs meet us at the corner of every street, and mockingly 
 ask us, "Where is now thy God?" We say, that if they 
 are the times of Christ they must be the times of antichrist, 
 — that the kingdom of light, by its presence and potency, 
 must stir into a malignant, if brief, activity the powers of 
 darkness, though only to disperse them and triumph ; and 
 that they are the times of Christ, because now, more than 
 ever, in the power of His Eternal Spirit, He lives, speaks, 
 moves, persuades, conquers, reigns, not only among the 
 towns and villages of our dear country, but in the continents 
 
84 
 
 THE SOWER AND THE SEED. 
 
 and islands over the sea. You Sunday-school teachers, 
 b^nt on one errand, fired with one hope, serving one Lord, 
 desiring one victory, are the best proof of it. But a handful 
 of the 704,000 teachers from all the religious bodies in 
 Great Britain, just out of love to the same risen Lord, and 
 in gratitude for the one common salvation, you are con- 
 strained by the sweetness of the love which passeth know- 
 ledge, to feed the lambs He commits to your care. The 
 seed is the Word of God." 
 
 There are three varieties of application, in which this 
 instructive symbol indicates the operative forces that work 
 towards the kingdom of God. Each singly, all conjointly, 
 and consistently inspire faith and suggest duty for the cause 
 we desire to serve. Christ our Lord, the Word Incarnate, is 
 Himself, in virtue of His Incarnation, the Seed immanent in 
 humanity, lifting it into a new condition, conferring on it a 
 fresh dignity, redeeming it unto a great future. When St. 
 Paul wrote to the Coiinthians, The Head of every man is 
 Christ," he propounded a majestic truth, the entire signifi- 
 cance of which the present age has not perhaps fully com- 
 prehended, but which is of unspeakable significance for the 
 race. 
 
 The Church, which is His Body ; His Word, so far as it 
 delivers His message ; His instrument, when it organizes His 
 methods; His representative, if it manifests His life; His 
 spouse, when it receives His love, is in its turn the divine 
 seed of human society invisibly, slowly, imperfectly, with 
 many hindrances and disappointments, yet constantly and 
 irresistibly, shining on its darkness and preventing its cor- 
 ruption, and declaring its redemption, and promising its 
 grace ; by its fabrics, and its worship, and its history, and 
 its creeds, both in its corporate life, and according to the 
 
THE SOWER AND THE SEED. 85 
 
 working of each of its manifold parts, declaring all the 
 counsel of God. 
 
 The individual Christian who understands that he has 
 been saved chiefly that he may do his best to save others, 
 and who knows that he has been bought with a price, that 
 he may glorify Him who at such a cost has bought him, is 
 also in a real sense the Word of God, or as St. Paul in an 
 equivalent expression has called him, the epistle of Christ, 
 known and read of all men : by the life he lives, and the 
 cross he carries, and the message he utters, and the duties 
 he loves, the fruitful seed of single souls, personally influenc- 
 ing them, patiently instructing them, drawing them with 
 cords of love, winning them one by one into fellowship with 
 Jesus; and it is on man, the seed of man — you, for example, 
 the seed of the souls of the children, given you to teach — 
 that I have to speak now. 
 
 Let us consider this seed of the everlasting gospel. 
 
 I. In the activities which it demands : which are chiefly 
 three — sowing, watering, reaping. Sowing is casting the 
 seed of divine truth into the minds and hearts of the young, 
 leaving it there to work out the mystery of its life, as it may 
 please God to use it, trusting about it the Fatherly love of 
 Him the measure of whose redeeming pity is the atoning 
 anguish of His Son. There are, of course, all varieties of 
 skill and of diligence and of self-sacrifice in this work of 
 sowing. In the kingdom of grace, as well as in the 
 kingdoms of this world, nothing great can be achieved 
 without taking trouble. God giveth the increase — here 
 is the supreme factor in all our success. It is equally true 
 that " every man shall receive his own reward according to 
 his own labour." Watering does not mean the impatient, 
 emotional, restless eftbrts of an unconscious unbelief to give 
 
86 THE SOWER AND THE SEED. 
 
 God the help He neither asks nor cares for ; but the vigilant 
 looking for the germinating of the seed, the expecting of 
 results, here or there, to-day or to-morrow, because God's 
 Word cannot return to Him void — not to look for results 
 is but slightly to care for them — also that humble, fervent, 
 pleading with Him in fervent, even passionate prayer, for 
 those showers of blessing whereby His Spirit moves on the 
 surface of instructed souls. "I believe in God the Holy 
 Ghost," must be the innermost exulting creed of every 
 Sunday-school teacher. Prayer, and nothing but prayer, 
 gives wings to the mind, fire to the will, tenderness to the 
 heart. Indeed, to know what we have to do and to do it ; to 
 know what God has to do and to leave Him to do it, is the 
 first secret to be mastered by the servants of His kingdom, 
 and usually the last that they come to learn. There is the 
 reaping, sometimes of that which we have ourselves sown, 
 more often of what others before us have sown, in part here 
 before we die, in part hereafter when we are summoned to 
 judgment, which is in measure given to all true workers, 
 not always when they wish for it, but when God sees they 
 need it, with the sense of acceptance and the joy of progress. 
 It is varied and sometimes hard to analyze, at the best 
 partial and liable to after-disappointments. Without some- 
 thing of it the jaded heart would sink under an intolerable 
 depression. With too much of it we should soon come to 
 think ourselves indispensable. Self-love, ever ready at a 
 moment's notice to assert itself, might be perilessly indulged 
 at the cost of Christ's honour. 
 
 II. The conditions which it imposes are three. They 
 are genuineness, skilfulness, and faith. The seed must be 
 genuine : wheat , not bastard wheat ; the wheat that makes 
 bread and sustains life— the seed of the Word of God. Not 
 
THE SOWER AND THE SEED. 
 
 8/ 
 
 all seed sown in Sunday schools, just as not all seed 
 scattered from Christian pulpits, is unadulterated truth of 
 God. While there must always be the human element in 
 the teaching of the inspired Word, it must not be all the 
 human element, which it is too often found to be, whereby 
 much of the teaching given in our Sunday schools is, for 
 all higher and divine purposes, not bread, but sawdust. If 
 God is not honoured and recognized in the exact, reverent, 
 lucid, and penetrating explanation of His Holy Word, the 
 children, though interested by attractive story-telling, will 
 not be won by the presentation of divine truth. They may 
 listen to their teacher, which is good as far as it goes ; but 
 they will not be brought to Christ. It is to His Word, and 
 His W^ord only, that the promise is given, that it shall 
 accomplish the thing whereto He sent it. Other things 
 may please, but this alone converts. In its fullest and 
 deepest, in no emotional and sensational meaning, we long 
 to win these children to their Saviour. We must never 
 forget that it is the engrafted Word which is able to save 
 our souls, and this engrafted Word they must receive at 
 your hands. 
 
 Another condition is skilfulness ; and skilfulness comes 
 through self-culture and experience. Dr. Johnson once 
 said, ''Genius is nothing more than knowing the use of 
 tools ; " but there must be tools for it to use. A trained 
 mind, a ready and retentive memory, insight into character, 
 and an immense love, are vital to a considerable success. 
 !My brothers and sisters, in this blessed enterprise for Christ, 
 bear with me, while I say to you, what I am persuaded your 
 inmost conscience will secretly ratify, that you have no right 
 to accept the trust, or share the responsibility of this great 
 duty, unless you are willing, honestly willing, according to 
 
88 
 
 THE SOWER AND THE SEED. 
 
 your several opportunities — which in some cases are ample 
 and admirable — to qualify yourselves for your work. It is 
 not easy work, though it is very honourable ; and it is not 
 the only way of working to which Christ summons His elect. 
 There are so many things you need, not always seen or 
 appreciated as they deserve to be. You will never get 
 them all ; no one has them all. Many you may hope to 
 get, though not instantly. Some you must get, or not only 
 will the work be much better without you — who in such a 
 case, though without knowing it, will be only usurping the 
 place of others who might do it better — but you yourselves 
 would be better without it, since, if badly or too imperfectly 
 done, it may some day be your grievous shame. There 
 must be a personal, loving, exact study of the Bible, for 
 your own soul's sake, if you would have anything worth 
 knowing to pass on to others. There must be some 
 capacity, however little to begin with, not only for acquiring, 
 but also for imparting knowledge. As a rule, I suspect, 
 though practice unspeakably improves it, the gift of teach- 
 ing is mostly born with us. There must be a knowledge 
 of character, and a faculty of discrimination, and a vivid 
 appreciation of the separateness as well as of the beautiful- 
 ness of each single soul. For it is not so much a net you 
 have to cast over your class, it is rather with rod and line 
 that you must angle for each one of them ; and it is much 
 easier to stand on the bank of the stream, and to drop your 
 bait into the water, than to bring the fish to land. There 
 must also be an immense love to cover manifold de- 
 ficiencies, to compensate for even grave mistakes, and 
 make the dullest, ugliest, stubbornest child beautiful in 
 your eyes for the sake of the Lord who bought it ; and 
 to make Christ Himself dear and beloved to you, for the 
 
THE SOWER AND THE SEED. 
 
 89 
 
 great privilege wherewith He has honoured you in trusting 
 you with those children to nurse for Him. From your 
 knees, where His presence has solemnized and refreshed 
 you, you will go to your class, where His grace will instruct 
 and sustain you ; and from your class you will go back to 
 your knees, there tenderly to plead for them by name, that 
 He will accept from you and bless to them the Word you 
 have tried to sow in their hearts. Such intercession will fill 
 you with quiet and blessed happiness. It will make you 
 feel that they are as safe with Him as love can wish them 
 to be ; and that you are as much accepted by Him as 
 mercy and righteousness mingling together can make you to 
 be. When the full assurance of a simple and unhesitating 
 faith has encouraged you (as with the steady, unbroken 
 swing of the husbandman's arm) to sow before you, and 
 around you, as the path of His providence directs, you 
 will not too much observe the hard and beaten impene- 
 trableness of one spirit, or the facile mobility of another, 
 or the chilly mundane tendencies of another. You will 
 teach all, for all are given you to teach; hope for all, 
 since all belong to God. If doubts arise, you will not 
 be much disturbed by them ; if fears ruffle you, you will 
 not be paralyzed by them. The kingdom of nature has 
 its magnificent wastefulness, and its myriad failures. In 
 the kingdom of grace, behind human effort, is sovereign 
 righteousness. Nevertheless, "him that cometh to Me I 
 will in no wise cast out." 
 
 III. But there are risks which the seed encounters ; 
 risks which you must bravely face and steadily reckon 
 with; risks which you must not presume to despise in a 
 shallow buoyancy, nor to exaggerate in a still more 
 unworthy despair. First, there is the incessant malevolent 
 
go 
 
 THE SOWER AND THE SEED. 
 
 presence and activity of that evil spirit, whose assaults 
 our Lord personally encountered, whose designs He 
 solemnly iinfathomed, whose snares He so distinctly ex- 
 posed. " Those by the wayside are they that hear. Then 
 Cometh the devil, and taketh away the Word out of their 
 hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. ^' My friends, 
 the question of questions — again and again coming up in 
 manifold forms— is this : Did Christ know, or did He not 
 know, what He thus spoke about? If He did not know, 
 and so warned us against an imaginary danger, told us of a 
 spiritual enemy who has no existence but in the super- 
 stitious dreams of an exploded Rabbinism, we are welcome 
 to such comfort as is to be had in the consciousness of an 
 enlightenment to which the Bible is a stranger — with this 
 result : that if in such a matter as this Jesus was a Teacher 
 who could not teach. He may also be a Saviour who cannot 
 save. If we cannot trust Him for doctrine, can we go to 
 Him for life ? If He did know, and told us what He knew 
 for our correction and instruction in righteousness, let us 
 listen to Him and heed His words, and humbly watch 
 against the snares of the devil. ^ The special peril against 
 which our Lord warns us here is, I suppose, chiefly- 
 incidental to careless and shallow souls. The way in 
 which the foe works is by the weakening, chilling, dis- 
 sipating of good impressions before they have had time to 
 take form and substance in the soul, by silly words or 
 frivolous diversion, or even actual sin. You who are in 
 charge of these children, be not ignorant of his devices. 
 Make rules, and see to the keeping of them, to anticipate 
 and prevent such mischiefs. Have your eyes and ears 
 open, and protect your young disciples from themselves. 
 ^ " The True Life," p. 42. 
 
THE SOWER AND THE SEED. 
 
 91 
 
 Rely on it, there is no work which the great enemy of souls 
 hates more than this one of teaching the young the gospel 
 of Christ. There is nothing he dreads more than that in the 
 freshness and innocence of childhood they should come to 
 love Him. 
 
 Another peril is in the nature of those whom you would 
 win ; and on either of two sides of it, the emotional or the 
 earthly. Of all woeful and far-reaching blunders, none is 
 more woeful, more disastrous, more common, than the 
 incessant stimulating of the religious feelings, which pre- 
 sently come to be chilled, blunted, even hardened, until the 
 most precious and important of all our sensibiUties become 
 impervious either to holy appeals or loving persuasion, and 
 the heart, made like cold and black scoriae in a burnt-out 
 volcano, no longer can grow end blossom with the truth of 
 Christ. To stir a child's tears is an easy, and a cheap, and 
 often a selfish triumph ; but is dearly bought at the risk of 
 a child's soul. 
 
 There is also the peril coming from the home environ- 
 ment — the atmosphere in which the child breathes its 
 daily existence, and in which unconsciously, insensibly, 
 inevitably, it is matured for responsible life. To lift up 
 its ideal, to counteract its temptations, to help it to live for 
 both worlds, to penetrate and transfigure its moral nature 
 with the fear and love of an invisible Lord — what a noble 
 aim is this, and what a lofty duty, and what an incessant 
 but divine struggle ! You are fellow-workers with God. 
 You must suffer, if you are true workmen. If you love, 
 you cannot help suffering. But in proportion as you suffer 
 now shall you reap presently. " They that sow in tears 
 shall reap in joy." The atmosphere, in school at least, 
 which you would have the children breathe, is the atmo- 
 
92 
 
 THE SOWER AND THE SEED. 
 
 sphere you must yourselves bring with you. The life you 
 would have them live must be made possible, actual, 
 beautiful, by the life you are seen and felt to be living 
 yourselves. For it is not only abstract truth that wins, it 
 is truth permeated, illuminated, and vitalized by character ; 
 and character, Christian character, is the measure of the 
 fulness with which Christ possesses the soul. 
 
 There is one more peril — I will only touch on it — the 
 peril which is created by yourselves. No wise man will 
 dispute its existence, no good man will make light of its 
 gravity, no humble man but will instantly fear for himself. 
 In the profound figure of the parable, as I have already 
 hinted, and by an inevitable law of the spiritual world, 
 every man and woman in it is both the sower who sows 
 and the seed which is sown. The peril I touch on now 
 is that which comes either from an imperfect sense of 
 responsibility, or from a one-sided view of duty, or from a 
 morbid self-distrust, or from a specious self-esteem. Either 
 to treat these children as if they were toys to be played 
 with, or as machines to be wound up and set going, and 
 then left to themselves, as if they were all mind and needed 
 nothing but facts and doctrines; or as if they were all 
 emotion, and so did not require to be taught to know 
 and think; worst of all, that this duty, w^hich should be 
 thoroughly and constantly to fertilize the very springs of 
 the invisible life with the mind and Word of God, should 
 be lightly and easily undertaken, not for salvation, but 
 for pastime, and so not thought worth the pains and time 
 for real preparation — here are risks indeed. "Take heed 
 unto thyself and to the doctrine," wrote St. Paul to his 
 son in the faith; and " thyself " comes before " doctrine." 
 That exhortation I pass on to you, my friends, in the 
 
THE SOWER AND THE SEED. 
 
 93 
 
 name of our Master Christ. The life behind the message, 
 the message accentuated by the Hfe, the Ufe hidden with 
 Christ in God, must be the unfailing, unchanging secret 
 of all your blessed labour. 
 
 IV. Once more, there are the wages that it claims, as 
 our Lord said to the disciples at Sychar : " He that reapcth 
 receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal, that 
 both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice 
 together." 
 
 Whatever may be the harvest which you will be per- 
 mitted to reap now, in the sense of visible results, and 
 garnered success, and souls laid to sleep in the Lord to 
 be your crown when He comes back; or souls fruitful in 
 activities for Him, which by His grace you have helped 
 to repent, and believe, and love, and work— of your wages 
 you may be quite sure ; and you will all of you be receiv- 
 ing more than you think of, in human love, in personal 
 blessing, in accumulated and digested truth. 
 
 The love of these children, with their bright welcome, 
 their sunny smile, their often delicate thoughtful affection, 
 their tender sympathy — is there, can there be a blesseder 
 recompense under the sun than this ? It is the reward God 
 asks from us ; and it is the only one He cares for, since 
 it impHes and contains and ensures everything else. To 
 desire love is the divine nature. To receive love is the 
 divine reward. Moreover, when they love you, you have 
 the best evidence that you are succeeding with them. 
 When they have once begun really to love you, they 
 may be more than half-way towards loving Christ. Then 
 your own personal life, in the stirring, and deepening, and 
 widening of it, through the sacrifices you accept and the 
 devotions you offer, is itself an unspeakable reward. It 
 
94 
 
 THE SOWER AND THE SEED. 
 
 is a law of the spiritual world that to help others is to 
 be helped by others ; and if the highest distinction we 
 can receive for doing one duty is immediately to be 
 offered a second, to be made more like Christ is the 
 surest mark of His grace. Nay, even in the simplest 
 teaching to the youngest and most ignorant (always by 
 the way the hardest), if only our teaching is intelligent 
 and careful, well thought out and sincere, we may find a 
 very precious and important discipline to our own under- 
 standing in the apprehension and assimilation of divine 
 truth. Unto every one which hath shall be given." To 
 share our possessions is to double them ; and truth is a 
 possession, not to be covetously hoarded, but to be eagerly 
 passed on. 
 
 In conclusion, let us remember — 
 
 I. The iiidesiriiciibleness of truth. As some of you, my 
 older friends, look back over a long tract of years in which 
 the Sunday school has had a great place in your heart and 
 a large share of your time, not without a certain pathos 
 asking yourselves, " How many of the thousands of lessons 
 which I have carefully prepared and cheerfully given will 
 bring forth fruit when the King comes back to take account 
 of His servants?" doubt not, but earnestly believe, that if 
 " long sleeps the summer in the seed," the summer is in the 
 seed, if the seed sown by you is indeed the Word of God ; 
 and even now it may be shining and ripening in many a 
 changed heart passed far out of your reach and ken. The 
 sailor keeping watch on the midnight sea, praying as he 
 watches; the miner toiling for gold in some Queensland 
 gully, and thinking of the better treasure in the heavenly 
 country towards which, by words of yours, his feet are 
 moving ; the shepherd among the wooded valleys of New 
 
THE SOWER AND THE SEED. 
 
 95 
 
 Zealand, saying over to himself the Shepherd's Psalm taught 
 him by you ; the settler's wife, in some rude cabin on the 
 Pacific slope, training her children as you trained her, may, 
 without your knowing it, have found the pearl of great price, 
 which but for you they would never have found ; through 
 you, also, may be helping others to find it. You are the 
 servants of Him who cannot fail, whether in truth, fulness, 
 or power. "Heaven and earth shall pass away; but My 
 Words shall not pass away." 
 
 2. Be assured of the sufficie?icy of grace. All of you 
 who are true will from time to time have your moods of 
 depression, your seasons of disappointment, it may be, your 
 moments of despair. Christ Himself once said, when His 
 hearers were forsaking Him, " Will ye also go away ? " 
 The great apostle, when he prayed thrice that the thorn 
 in the flesh might be removed, had for his answer, and he 
 was abundantly satisfied with it, " My grace is sufficient 
 for Thee; for ;My strength is made p'erfect in weakness." 
 
 " The river of God is full of water," and it is full for 
 you. Each one of you, and all of you together, will never 
 drink it dry, even for a moment. Nay, our sin is in this, 
 that we will not drink enough of it. Let him that is athirst 
 come, and I will give him to drink of the water of life 
 freely. This is the great message I would leave with you 
 now. To feel the thirst, and to be willing to be made to 
 feel it, is the first necessity ; then to ask and to receive, that 
 our joy may be full. 
 
 3. My last word shall be on the joy of harvest. There 
 can be no reaping without sowing, and there will be no 
 harvest without joy ; and that joy will be so noble, so holy, 
 so unselfish, so divine. Joy among the angels of God, joy 
 in the heart of the crowned Jesus, joy to the Father when 
 
96 
 
 THE SOWER AND THE SEED. 
 
 He sees His Son glorified, joy to the husbandman when he 
 gathers the sheaves into his barn. 
 
 My friends, whom I greet in the Lord, and love in the 
 Lord, this one question I leave with you. It touches your 
 eternity, and much hangs on it and it hangs on much. It 
 hangs on your secret motive of duty, on your personal and 
 supreme aim, on the measure of your sacrifices, on the quality 
 of your diligence, on the constancy of your prayers. When 
 the Lord, whom you serve, comes back in the end of the 
 days to take account of His servants and to make up His 
 jewels, w4iat think you — in your heart of hearts — will your 
 harvest be ? 
 
DETERIORATION. 
 
 H— 15 
 
" Character is ceaselessly marching, even when \\c seem lo liave sunk 
 into a fixed and stagnant mood." 
 
DETERIORATION. 
 
 PnacJied al Half-way Tree Pan's h Church, Jamaica, March 31, 18S6. 
 
 In the sliip mending their nets." — Mark i. 19. 
 
 Slxh is the inevitable employment of diligent men. For 
 "inevitable," I might indeed have substituted "necessary." 
 For how could nets be used if there were holes in them ? 
 The careless fisherman, who will not repair the tools of 
 his craft, may save himself the pains of handling them. 
 " Diligent," too ; for if the hot and languid hours of noon 
 were spent in acUvity instead of in repose, we may see how 
 the best recreation of duty is in the variety of it ; and 
 that while the lazy or feeble workman quickly finds excuses 
 for the rest which he has hardly earned, the true and 
 typical toiler will not even think of his repose until his 
 next work is ready. 
 
 Every miracle suggests a parable, and every gospel 
 incident conceals a philosophy. 
 
 So, I say, let us mend our nets. First, however, let us 
 clearly understand what our nets are, and the use we are to 
 make of them, and the conditions essential to a use which 
 shall be at once fruitful and permanent. Also that, good as 
 they may be, the more we use them, the more we shall 
 see them to need mending ; and that what Dean Church 
 
100 
 
 DETERIORATION. 
 
 lias so beautifully called " the inward discipline of the soul," 
 is absolutely essential to, must ever be the hidden con- 
 comitant of, its moral and spiritual activities. 
 
 I. What are our nets? This, I think. The separate, 
 distinct personality of each human being, in the joint 
 totality of body, soul, and spirit. It implies, also, that 
 subtle, undefinable, yet most potent atmosphere, which is 
 continually being generated by the invisible forces of its 
 existence under the circumstances which surround it, and 
 which we recognize under the word " character." 
 
 We are our nets. Man, and especially a Christian 
 man, is himself pre-eminently the organ or instrument of 
 all his activities in, or influences on, the world ; other tools 
 that he may use are subservient to this supreme one, 
 and depend in their potency on the will and motive and 
 power that handle them. The man is his work, and his 
 personality is his primary instrument in it; and it never 
 can be better or higher than what he himself is. 
 
 This being so, how important it becomes that each of 
 us should recognize what he is sent into the world for, and 
 what this fishing with his net must mean ! " The chief 
 end of man is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever." 
 Each of us has come here to work out his own salvation, 
 and to help his neighbour to work out his. We are to 
 be salt and light. W^e who are baptized into Christ's 
 body, are to recognize our fellowship with its members ; 
 baptized into His death, we must crucify the flesh ; into 
 His resurrection, we must walk in newness of life. 
 
 There can be no recognition of our duty to our neighbour 
 unless there is first an apprehension of our relation to God. 
 When wc have truly repented of sin, and taken it to the 
 precious blood that it may be washed away; when we 
 
DETERIORATION. 
 
 lOI 
 
 have come to know and believe the love that God hath to 
 us, and, beholding Him at once our revealed and reconciled 
 Father in Christ, walk with Him in conscious and filial 
 fellowship ; when we recognize that, being no longer our 
 own, but being bought with a price, we are to glorify Him 
 in our body and in our spirit, which are His; when we 
 discover that personal goodness is to be the one aim of 
 the Christian, and that the secret of this goodness is to 
 come at once from human effort and supernatural grace ; 
 also when we appreciate the wisdom and blessedness cf 
 using special helps, and holy seasons, and quiet discipline, 
 and cheerful sacrifice, if we would grow much like our 
 Lord, and live in the sunshine of His face; — then the key 
 to the secret of understanding Jesus Christ will be in our 
 hand : we shall follow on to know the Lord. 
 
 II. What are we to understand by our nets needing to 
 be mended ? 
 
 1. The body comes, through mere force of habit, and 
 the daily necessity of our obeying its imperious claims, to 
 exercise a kind of tyramiy over us ; and to get more of its 
 own way than it ought. " All things are lawful for me, but 
 all things are not expedient. All things are lawful for me, 
 but I will not be brought under the power of any." The 
 body needs its periods of mending. This is one of them. 
 It may also, of course, mean those recuperative and invigo- 
 rating processes whereby we supply the continual waste of 
 vital force, healing sickness, or contriving rest. 
 
 2. The understanding also has its similar necessities of 
 restoration and repair, and not least in that dominion of 
 truth for which a Christian teacher feels special responsi- 
 bility — revealed truth. The mind is apt to let go, in lapse 
 of years, truths it once loved and lived by; or it becomes 
 
102 
 
 DETERIORATION. 
 
 obscured in matters where light means life, certainly power ; 
 or it finds in front of it a great undiscovered land of pro- 
 found verities, which through carelessness or indolence it 
 has never yet approached to learn and to cherish and to use. 
 
 3. Then the moral nature needs caring for and looking 
 into as well. Self grows on us with a fatal and rapid stealthi- 
 ness. Temper becomes sharp, or arrogant, or feebly peevish. 
 Faults of indolence and personal indulgence will soon grow 
 in soil congenial to them. To abide in love is to abide in 
 God, and to cultivate love is to follow God ; but to love as 
 God loves, or as we wish others to love us, will not come by 
 sighing after it. It is the work of God co-operating with 
 the effort of man. 
 
 Once more, there is our spiritual life — that upper region 
 of our conscious moral existence, in which we recognize 
 God, feel after Him, commune with Him, listen to His 
 voice, try to be conformed to His image, and rejoice in the 
 shining of His face. 
 
 But how much our nets need mending here ! High and 
 glowing resolves cool down. Faults which we used to 
 struggle against we are tempted to treat as inevitable. 
 Prayer becomes dull, short, distracted, wanting in detail, 
 not looked forward to, not cherished in the heart when it 
 is done. We have less personal sympathy with Christ's 
 redeeming work in the world, less real interest in those 
 who are foremost in the doing of it ; the horizon of hope 
 is lowered when joy goes out of our religion ; and peace 
 soon follows it. Our silver becomes dross, our wine is 
 mixed with water. 
 
 III. Yes, the nets need mending ; but how is the mend- 
 ing to be done ? 
 
 First, there should be an honest, thorough, courageous 
 
DETERIORATION. 
 
 103 
 
 searching of the heart as in the presence of God, and with 
 His help, that we may know where our shortcomings lie, and 
 confess them, and then strive to remedy and repair them. 
 
 Self-knowledge is often keenly painful, and it does not 
 grow easier as we grow older ; and we are all too apt to 
 wrap ourselves in the thick mantle of self-love, through 
 which the searching air of the world's criticism fails to make 
 its way. But pain is better than death, and to be past 
 feeling means paralysis. 
 
 Then it is real loss and grave peril to the soul that we 
 should become cloudy and confused about the doctrines of 
 grace. For ideas are the true motors of all that is highest 
 within us, and the doctrines of the gospel are the thoughts of 
 God. What baptism means for us ; what Holy Communion 
 gives to faithful souls drawing near to receive their Lord ; 
 the exact place and function of faith in the soul's appre- 
 hension of Christ and eternal life ; how Christ's death 
 expiates sin, and satisfies the claims of the divine righteous- 
 ness ; — these are matters which touch our life and our 
 motives, our aims and our conduct ; and it does matter 
 what we think we are really holding of them, unless the 
 creeds themselves are but fragments of exploded specula- 
 tion, and some of St. Paul's profoundest Epistles might as 
 well never have been penned. 
 
 In our moral life and character, while generally aiming 
 at the raising of the whole level of its consistent goodness, 
 we should take special note of our besetting faults. Each 
 knows his own ; if he needs to be told them, friends are at 
 his side who can do it. The best thing is to ask God to do 
 it. He is so gentle, and so tender, and so true. It may be 
 a habit of speaking ill of other people, or at least of depre- 
 ciating them. Make a rule in the strength of God to try 
 
104 
 
 DETERIORATION. 
 
 not to speak about them at all. Why should you ? It helps 
 nobody, and it hurts many. Or is it a habit of selfishness? 
 Then every day try once at least to surrender your will to 
 some one else, and in a matter about which you really care. 
 Are you lazy ? Get up earlier. Does your thriftiness border 
 on covetousness ? Give more ; and not only as a duty, also 
 as a joy. Is quickness or moroseness of temper your fault? 
 Strive against this, for it grieves God. Ask Him to pour 
 His love into your hearts, that it may flow out on your 
 neighbour. Cultivate sympathy. Remember that " love is 
 going out of self." 
 
 Once more, let the flaws and fissures in our spiritual 
 life be healed by more communion with God. Lotus make 
 special opportunities for prayer, both private and public. 
 They will help and react on each other. Grace is as 
 essential to goodness as effort is ; work is the true comple- 
 ment of faith. Therefore let us come to Christ for His 
 presence and aid in the holy ordinances of cur religion ; 
 and, above all things, let us remember that it is not only 
 our own soul that has to be stirred and deepened, but 
 other souls near us and belonging to us. Let our life have 
 its duties of charity as well as its offices of worship. Let 
 us live for others, if we would have God to dwell in us. 
 
 To conclude : i. You may have already recollected that 
 St. Mark, in his account of this incident, is careful to relate 
 that they were in the ship mending their nets, with their 
 father Zebedee and the hired servants. Our ship in which 
 we mend our nets is the Church, and it is the best place to 
 mend them in. But to mend them together in the gathered 
 society of the faithful stirs sympathy, suggests forbearance, 
 and promotes intercession. We all err and slip and fail 
 in turn. We all in turn need the kindly forbearance of our 
 
DETERIORATION. 
 
 105 
 
 brethren, and the merciful indulgence of our Lord. We 
 have enough to do with our own faults, instead of looking 
 at our brethren's. Yet we all alike need a continual forgive- 
 ness. We all need the mutual help and blessing that comes 
 to sinful but sincere children of one heavenly family, travel- 
 ling together to the many mansions of the one celestial 
 home, from common prayer and praise. As you kneel 
 side by side in the house of prayer, sometimes quietly 
 think and tenderly pray for those near you— and without 
 telling them. No help in all this world is like the help 
 that comes by intercession. Give what you would receive. 
 
 Then mending our nets has, like everything else, a subtle 
 snare with it. It may breed too much introspection, a 
 morbid brooding over tiny faults, a religious egotism, even 
 a spiritual self-complacency. We should tread upon all 
 these possible thorns with a firm tread ; we should think 
 more of our Saviour than of our sinfulness, of His righteous- 
 ness than of our own unworthiness, of what He has done 
 for us than of what we can do for Him, of His unchanging 
 love rather than of our own poor effort after it. We walk 
 by faith, not by sight. We are dead, and our life is hid 
 with Christ in God. 
 
 Then there is a sort of comfort in the thought that, as 
 nets will wear out, so, in the nature of things, these spirits of 
 ours need repair and restoration through the very conditions 
 of their existence. Christ, so far from feeling these men to 
 be but poor and unskilful at their trade, and so unsuited for 
 the work to which He was calling them, summoned them as 
 readily as He summoned Peter and Andrew a few yards off, 
 casting their nets into the sea ; thought no scorn of them 
 because they were not actually at their trade. He will 
 observe and approve and bless us for mending our nets. 
 
io6 
 
 DETERIORATION. 
 
 He will help us to mend them ; show us where they need 
 more mending than we had thought of ; sustain us when 
 our patience fails, cheer us when our joy is ebbing. 
 For oh, dear souls, what He most desires for us is that we 
 should be partakers of His holiness ; and to be saintly means 
 a long and steep and thorny, though even more blessed, 
 climb up the hill, on the top of which we too shall be 
 transfigured, just so far and so completely as we followed 
 Him closely here. 
 
 Lastly, we mend our nets that we may use them again, 
 perhaps in even better and nobler work than before. 
 " Follow Me," said Jesus, " and I Avill make you fishers of 
 men." Every sin conquered, every habit controlled, every 
 virtue practised, every cross carried, means more goodness, 
 and therefore more usefulness. Goodness will live and 
 triumph when intellect and knowledge, wealth and genius, 
 are utterly forgotten. There is no limit to our goodness 
 but such as our own unbelief and indevoutness are pleased 
 to put in the way of it. Mending our nets may be humble 
 work, but it is useful work, and God gives His Holy Spirit 
 to them that ask Him. 
 
TREASURES IN HEAVEN. 
 
"Money may always be a beautiful thing. It is we who make it 
 
TREASURES IN HEAVEN. 
 
 Preached in Winchester Cathedral^ Ash Wednesday, 1892. 
 
 " Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven." — Matt. vi. 20, 
 
 It has been observed of our Lord, with as much acumen 
 as exactness, that it was His rule, in His public teaching, 
 not so much to stir emotion as to compel reflection, and 
 that He always aimed at reaching the conscience before 
 winning the heart. In another way of putting it. He care- 
 fully avoided, what some of our modern revivalists appa- 
 rently much desiderate, any disturbance of the equilibrium 
 of the moral sense by artificial or premature stimulating 
 of the feelings. It is, indeed, easy enough, and, alas ! 
 perilous, to stir tears or to excite a superficial repentance ; 
 but when the reaction follows — and there is sure to be a 
 reaction — the soul, with no principles to sustain it, and no 
 knowledge to buttress its weakness, is apt to succumb easily 
 to a fatal coldness; and so the last state of that man is 
 worse than the first. 
 
 The text is a good instance of Christ's method in per- 
 suading men into the higher life of faith and sacrifice. He 
 has been discoursing on the three primary constituents of 
 religion — almsgiving, worship, fasting. He does not, indeed, 
 
I 10 
 
 TREASURES IN HEAVEN. 
 
 once stop to argue their obligation or their helpfulness. 
 That he takes for granted. His teaching about all three of 
 them is of a precautionary character, and directed against 
 the characteristic fault of the time — ostentatiousness. If 
 they gave alms, and prayed, and fasted, not because they 
 loved their neighbour, and thirsted for God, and wished to 
 discipline their own spirits, but to win the praise of men, and 
 to hear their neighbours whisper, ^' See how good they are ! " 
 the reward they coveted should Indeed be theirs, for what 
 it was v/orth. But presently, when, at a woeful distance 
 from them, the glories of the invisible world opened out 
 before their eyes, none of these things would be found to 
 have followed them. Their money, their prayers, their 
 fasting, would all be seen to have been quite thrown away, 
 so far as any reward in heaven is concerned — laid up on 
 earth, and therefore rewarded there. Not to be found, not 
 to be rewarded, in heaven. 
 
 " Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven," says our 
 Lord ; appealing^ you observe, to two supreme instincts in 
 the nature of man — that of forethought and that of acquisi- 
 tiveness. As if to say, " Be not so short-sighted as to live 
 and plan only for the present ; think of eternity, and lay up 
 in that blessed home, which you are wont to call heaven, 
 treasures and possessions which will be imperishable, and 
 will meet you after death, for you to keep and enjoy for 
 ever." 
 
 Two simple questions stand out in front of us here, 
 and our careful answers to them ought in some way to 
 help us to turn our lives to usury. 
 
 1. What are the treasures which we are to lay up in 
 Heaven ? 
 
 2. In what does the laying up consist ? 
 
TREASURES IN HEAVEN. 
 
 I. Now, the treasures which vre are to lay up in heaven, 
 to be ready for us when we come, presumably correspond 
 with the three great duties of the religious life already 
 enforced by our Lord — may not inexactly be described as 
 their outcome and result. Friendship is to be earned by 
 kindness, of which almsgiving is at least one expression ; 
 and do not be startled by what may seem a bald way of 
 wording it, or suppose, in consequence, that almsgiving is 
 the only way of earning it. You remember the closing 
 admonition in the parable of the unjust steward : " Make 
 to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness ; 
 that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting 
 habitations." You remember, again, how, on an occasion 
 of being bidden to a feast, the Lord said to those who 
 bade Him^ ''When thou makest a feast, call the poor, 
 the maimed, the halt, the blind, and thou shalt be blessed, 
 for they cannot recompense thee ; for thou shalt be recom- 
 pensed at the resurrection of the just," 
 
 Once more, you remember hovr, in the parable of the 
 last judgment, those on the right hand answer the Judge, 
 saying, " Lord, when saw^ we Thee an hungred, and fed 
 Thee ? or thirsty, and gave Thee drink ? When saw we Tliee 
 a stranger, and took Thee in ? or naked, and cbthed Thee? 
 . . . And the King shall answer and say unto them, Yerily 
 I say unto you. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of 
 the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me." 
 Thus it is that one treasure, which should meet us in 
 heaven, and which we are to lay up there now, which shall 
 be incorruptible, and undefiled, and never fade away, is the 
 love of grateful souls. And, I ask, can there be a greater, 
 a sweeter, a nobler, or one more divine ? There may be 
 divers ways of earning that gratitude — ways of body and 
 
112 
 
 TREASURES IN HEAVEN. 
 
 spirit, of precept and example, of sympathy and counsel, 
 of warning and reproof. The love of wife and husband, 
 whose souls have grown into each other by the tenderest 
 and deepest of associations, and which survives parting, 
 loneliness, and death ; the love of a child to a parent, who 
 has trained and taught it ; the love of a soul to a pastor, 
 who has brought it to the feet of Jesus to hear His Word ; 
 the love of an outcast to one Avho neither despised it nor 
 despaired of it, but made a long arm of love to lift it out 
 of the pit, and set its feet on a rock ; the love of a little 
 scholar to a Christian teacher, who taught it that God's 
 love was its best possession; the love of a strong friend, 
 who in a moment of golden opportunity dared to bring 
 Jesus to the searing conscience of a thoughtless youth. My 
 brethren, as you anticipate the moment when the cloud lifts, 
 and you pass behind the veil to see your Judge, can you count 
 on any one likely to be waiting for you at the gate, and 
 to welcome you with the joy that only the redeemed can 
 know ? Has it ever even occurred to you that it is your 
 duty as well as your honour to glorify Christ by using 
 your time and your talents for His service — by acts of 
 charity, of course, and deeds of sacrifice, but also by words 
 which move, and by example which inspires ? For alms- 
 giving does not only mean the giving of money. It may 
 or may not be yours to say with the apostle, " Silver and 
 gold have I none." It is love that gives just what it has to 
 give — of courtesy, of sympathy, of friendship, and prayers. 
 We are each sent into this world, not feebly to complain 
 of its badness, but manfully to try to make it better ; not 
 to be overcome of evil, but to overcome evil with good. 
 " Pure religion "and undefiled before God and the Father 
 is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, 
 
TREASURES IN HEAVEN. 
 
 113 
 
 and to keep himself unspotted from the world." The 
 question should surely come home to us — In what way 
 are we doing this, if indeed we are doing it at all ? 
 
 Another treasure which we are to lay up in heaven is 
 knowledge, and, of all kinds of knowledge, the best, and 
 the most profound, and the most satisfying, and the most 
 dignifying — the knowledge of God in Christ ; that know- 
 ledge which is eternal life, and which grows and matures 
 through prayer. 
 
 Two questions you may reasonably interpose here. 
 One is, how is it possible to conceive of our imperfect 
 human knowledge as in any sense or degree a permanent 
 or substantial treasure, which we shall not so much meet 
 again as actually take with us, out of a world of shadows 
 into the world of realities ; from a place where we speak as 
 children, and understand as children, and think as chil- 
 dren, and know but in part, to a place where childish 
 things will be put away, and we shall know even as we are 
 known? 
 
 Surely, however, it is quite reasonable to suppose, not 
 only that the laws of the human mind are eternal and 
 immutable, and that they will continue to operate in the life 
 to come, though unhampered by the restrictions which now 
 fetter them, and under new conditions which will give wings 
 to thought, and perhaps altogether substitute intuition for 
 reason. Also that, so far as we can see, the knowledge we 
 possess, though scanty and fragmentary, yet if solid as far 
 as it goes, only waits for new environments and enfranchised 
 faculties to be deepened and widened and matured. It is 
 certain that all mental cultivation, if only for the sake of 
 the discipline that goes with it, must be an acquisition in 
 the sense of those final results on which death can make 
 
114 
 
 TREASURES IN HEAVEN. 
 
 no real impression. The incessant accumulating stock of 
 knowledge of the best and highest things will, I suppose, 
 be one of the loftiest occupations of the seons in front, 
 infinite in its scope, and elevating in its processes. Let 
 no one think that honest study of any kind is waste. 
 
 Surely, if the works of God sought out of all them that 
 have pleasure therein declare His glory, and manifest His 
 handiwork, it is His mind. His person, His nature. His pur- 
 pose, that it most helps us to know, and that in proportion 
 to our knowledge of them convey to us eternal life. What 
 He is, what He thinks, what He desires, what He forbids, 
 in the perfection of His glorious attributes, in the revelation 
 of His eternal purpose, the angels desire to look into; 
 but the Church is privileged to possess the word of the 
 Incarnate Son. 
 
 If you ask what prayer has to do with knowledge, in the 
 sense of helping us to lay it up as a treasure in heaven, 
 I answer — Much every way. Prayer, with all knowledge that 
 touches God, vitalizes and solemnizes and deepens it. It 
 helps us to see His face, and to hear His voice, and to feel 
 His presence, and to touch His hand. It helps us to know 
 that He is our Father. It reveals sin, and it proclaims 
 pardon; it indicates the mystery of evil, and it shows us 
 the way to escape from its awful power. I do not say that 
 the habit or spirit of prayer is essential to all knowledge ; 
 I do say, that where there is no sense of God, no spiritual 
 contact with the invisible world, the deepest part of this 
 wonderful nature is ignored, and its necessities denied, and 
 its loftiest aspirations crushed, and in the end there is a 
 spiritual indifference, which robs the soul of its true noble- 
 ness, and a deterioration of the moral sense which means 
 loss all round Oh for more devoutness ! By devoutness, 
 
TREASURES IN HEAVEN. 
 
 I do not mean merely the emotion and excitement of a 
 quick, mobile, but maybe shallow spirit, but that height 
 and depth of serene and intelligent fellowship which is 
 stirred by service, and deepened by knowledge, and elevated 
 by thought, and most of all fed by prayer. And do not think 
 lightly of knowledge as a help to devoutness. Our Lord 
 has said that it is eternal life to know God. Prayer and 
 knowing react on each other. 
 
 The other treasure of which I spoke was character, the 
 result of fasting. It has often been observed that our Lord 
 did not inculcate fasting ; for an age which practised it such 
 admonition was unnecessary. But He gave them regulations 
 to make their fasting profitable. While, further, He did not, 
 like John the Baptist, enjoin it on His own disciples while 
 He was with them, He distinctly intimated that when He 
 was gone they would fast. The proper object of fasting is 
 the discipline of character, and the ultimate value of it is 
 constant self-control. It is, of course, a great mistake to 
 suppose that abstinence from food is the only kind of 
 abstinence that the Church favours, or the soul requires. 
 It is even possible that abstinence from food is just the 
 one kind of abstinence which we are not to practise, because 
 it would be prejudicial to health, and therefore to usefulness. 
 The essence of the matter surely is, the denying or limiting 
 ourselves for a certain time of some innocent and even 
 laudable enjoyment, that we may not be brought under the 
 power of it, however innocent and laudable it may be, and 
 that we may become the absolute masters of our own will 
 so as to learn the true secret of manful freedom. 
 
 In conclusion, let me offer you some few practical and 
 simple counsels, to help you in each of these matters to lay 
 up treasures in heaven. 
 
Il6 TREASURES IN HEAVEN. 
 
 First, if you would lay up the treasure of friendship, try 
 to discover (God will help you) wliat service you can best 
 do, or what person you can best help. Let it be, if circum- 
 stances so permit, an additional and exceptional service. 
 A sick person to nurse, an afflicted heart to comfort, a 
 little child to teach, a lonely friend to write to or see. 
 The duty will be made plain to you, if you wish it to be 
 made plain ; and as your day, so your strength will be. 
 For to earn love you must give love, and as you give love, 
 it will be given you again — "good measure, pressed down, 
 and shaken together, and running over." Of course it 
 may happen that your days are already filled with ample 
 and suitable duties, and that to add more would simply 
 mean and make what you do now less well done than 
 before— which would be loss, not gain. In such a case, 
 try to do what you are doing with more zeal, and exactness, 
 and joy, and self-devotion. You shall have your reward 
 in the love of God constantly shed into your heart by the 
 Holy Ghost. Be well assured that one subject studied, 
 and in a sense mastered, every year — with earnest prayer 
 preventing and following it — will enrich your spirit, and 
 deepen your capacity for the vision of God. 
 
 My friends, "who can tell how oft he offendeth?" I 
 cannot — you cannot. Let us search our hearts and turn 
 to the Lord. Who of us is not guilty from time to time of 
 selfishness and indolence, of envy and jealousy, of levity 
 and self-indulgence, of pride and vanity, of hastiness and 
 resentment ? Let us be on our watch against sins of the 
 tongue and of the temper, of the mind and of the flesh. 
 The soul that thirsts for God, for the living God, shall be 
 satisfied. The soul that longs to be delivered from the 
 power of sin shall have its blessed freedom. The soul 
 
TREASURES IN HEAVEN. 
 
 117 
 
 that wishes for the company of Jesus Christ shall often 
 hear a gentle, a wounded, Hand knocking at the door — in a 
 word, asking to be let in. The soul that longs to have its 
 treasures in heaven need not fear to be disappointed, if 
 only it will seek and earn them here, by the service of man 
 and the fellowship of God. 
 
SYM PATH Y. 
 
"Those who bring sunshine to the hearts of others cannot keep it 
 from themselves." 
 
SYMPATHY. 
 
 Preached in Winchester Cathedral, Sexagesima Sunday, 1892. 
 
 " Who is weak, and I am not weak ? who is offended, and I burn 
 not ? " — 2 Cor. xi. 29. 
 
 An attempt has lately been made by an ingenious and 
 orthodox divine to trace from his writings the spiritual de- 
 velopment of St. Paul. The hypothesis has nothing about it 
 to startle the Christian thinker ; and so long as no divergence 
 can be established inconsistent with his inspired authority, or 
 other than would inevitably arise from the maturity of years, 
 and the deepening wisdom of accumulating experience, it is 
 only w'hat we should antecedently expect from one who, like 
 His master, presumably grew in wisdom, and whose mind, 
 just because it was not dead, was a living and expanding 
 organism. The chapter from which the text is taken sets 
 us thinking on a striking phenomenon in the personality of 
 the apostle — I mean the growth of and mellowing of his 
 character through the discipline of life. From the time 
 that we first come upon him, with them of Cilicia and Asia, 
 disputing with Stephen, and then going out with a fierce joy 
 to watch the martyr die, to the day when he was led out 
 of the imperial city — Paul the aged " — himself to be offered 
 up upon the service and sacrifice of his faith, a vista of 
 
122 
 
 SYMPATHY. 
 
 noble years seem gradually to transfigure him into an ever 
 more tender and yet still majestic beauty. The oftener that 
 he is called to bear in his body the marks of the Lord Jesus, 
 the more brightly is the life of Jesus manifested in his 
 mortal flesh. 
 
 I invite you seriously to meditate on a subject which 
 ought to be very helpful to all of us, both in its historic 
 and exemplary aspect — the value of circumstances in the 
 maturing of character. A man does what he is, as well 
 as is what he does. His manners make him ; but what 
 makes his manners? It is possible, of course, to think too 
 much of circumstances — to speak of ourselves, in the 
 pessimistic cant of the hour, as the helpless victims of 
 destiny, and so to throw back our moral responsibility on 
 Almighty God. It is possible, also, to think too little of 
 them, and to refuse to discover, greatly to the loss of strength 
 and comfort, the sovereign providence of a Father. The 
 simple truth is, that what we call circumstances fall more or 
 less into three distinct groups, each demanding recognition, 
 intelligence, and faith. There are the circumstances in 
 which God and ourselves concur and co-operate, where it is 
 impossible to distinguish His acting from ours. There are 
 the circumstances for which we are ourselves solely respon- 
 sible, and which conscience in its voice of righteousness 
 forbids our ascribing to any other volition than our own. 
 There are also the circumstances of our birth, our environ- 
 ment, our physical and intellectual gifts, and not a few 
 critical incidents in the course of our Hfe's journey, for 
 which the only reasonable and dutiful way of accounting is 
 simply to say about them that they happen by the will 
 of God. About them all, however, the blessed conviction of 
 this same apostle comes home to the beHever's heart as 
 
SYMPATHY. 
 
 123 
 
 infallibly true : " We know that all things work together for 
 good to them that love God, to them who are the called 
 according to His purpose." 
 
 " Who is weak, and I am not weak ? who is offended, and 
 I burn not ? " Now, here, as perhaps we may feel the apostle 
 to have unconsciously summarized it, in the sublime and yet 
 inevitable result of all those unparalleled and continuous and 
 magnificent hardships, with which, through the love of Christ 
 constraining him^ he rejoiced to labour for the salvation of 
 the world, we have a glimpse into his life, which makes us 
 instantly see how little St. Luke's narrative has enabled us to 
 appreciate of his work and sufferings. We are also helped 
 to understand how the career of a solitary and despised 
 Hebrew has had loftier and more permanent and more 
 complete blessing for the race than any life ever lived — but 
 one. It also should enable us to learn — is it quite presump- 
 tuous to say so ? — that but for this unrivalled catalogue of 
 sacrifice and peril, not only could St. Paul not have done 
 what he succeeded in doing, but he could not have been the 
 St. Paul to do it. Some things we know about him ; some 
 we infer ; some we guess. Here, however, we read, as by 
 anticipation, the divine answer to his own noble prayer, 
 when we ask ourselves the question, What was the apostle 
 before these mighty sorrows transformed him ? — " That I 
 may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the 
 fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto 
 His death." We seem familiar enough with the salient 
 features of his natural character. We can appreciate also, 
 without too much effort, how easy, nay, how inevitable it 
 would be, that these great qualities would be liable, but for 
 vigilance and self-discipline and close fellowship with God, to 
 become exaggerated, and to lose proportion and relation to 
 
124 
 
 SYMPATHY. 
 
 other also indispensable qualities, and through such exaggera- 
 tion to forfeit influence and stir dislike. Further, we can un- 
 derstand, from our own trifling experience, how in moments 
 not his best, nor his strongest, he would be sorely tempted 
 to throw up his grand task with that impetuousness which 
 makes him so lovable, and without which he could never 
 have accompHshed a hundredth part of this work; now 
 keenly disappointed, now insolently silenced, now under- 
 mined, now passionately assailed. " Without were fightings, 
 within were fears." Yet also we are to see the good hand of 
 his God making his way plain, and his enemies ashamed ; 
 bringing victory out of defeat ; and whether at Philippi or 
 at Rome, making the things which happened to him turn 
 out rather for the furtherance of the gospel. Stripes do not 
 silence the music in his voice ; nor can Nero's awful house 
 chill the divine joy in his spirit. It was the hymns he sang 
 in the dungeon that brought about the salvation of the 
 Philippian jailor. " Rejoice in the Lord alway," is his 
 message from the Praetorium which still stirs the heart of 
 the world. 
 
 More than one stratum of circumstances in his minis- 
 terial career, concurring in one force of controlling and 
 sanctifying discipline, which, when added to his manifest 
 opportunities and Roman citizenship, his rabbinical and 
 secular training, his cultured and masculine and keen dia- 
 lectic, and his burning zeal, earned him his spiritual perfec- 
 tion, won for him his final triumph. The personal animosity 
 of the really devout Jews, both men and women, in such 
 places as Perga, must have been an incomprehensible grief to 
 him. Then, as his immediate reward for loyally accepting 
 the counsel of the Church in the matter of purifying himself 
 in the temple, he nearly lost his life, quite forfeited his free- 
 
SYMPATHY. 
 
 125 
 
 dom. The treacherous and, to us, almost incomprehensible 
 opposition of false brethren at Rome, who, thinking to add 
 affliction to his bonds, preached Christ of envy and strife ; 
 the interruption during four years of his public ministry at 
 a time when the rapid spread of the gospel, and the critical 
 rivalry between the two great parties in the Church, seemed • 
 to make his presence on the spot essential both to unity 
 and to life ; last, but not least, the thorn in the flesh — no 
 doubt a bodily infirmity, not fatal, nor indeed vitally destruc- 
 tive of usefulness, but giving a painful uncertainty to the 
 accomplishment of his cherished activities, and stirring 
 among those who did not personally care for him more 
 vexation than pity ; — all these are circumstances in his 
 daily and changeful lot which helped to heat and keep 
 heated that crucible of divine trial, in which the dross was 
 being ever purged from his sinful though regenerate nature ; 
 which must have helped him to take and utter as the con- 
 stant language of his soul, " My times are in thy hands." 
 
 But in this chapter we come across other trials still, and 
 perhaps of a subtler and more penetrating kind. There is, 
 first, the bodily humiliation and anguish, whereby the iron 
 entered into his soul. In stripes above measure. . . Of the 
 Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice " 
 (probably by pagan hands) ''was I beaten with rods." 
 Well, some of us may have learned that any kind of pain is 
 power, and " sorrow is the deepest thing in the world ; " but 
 when shame and degradation go with it for Christ's sake, it is 
 multiplied tenfold. Of perils of waters he writes, " Thrice 
 I suffered shipwreck," and this before the tempest in the 
 sea of Adria ; yet more terrible still — " a night and a day I 
 have been in the deep," watching the sun go down, to leave 
 him hopeless in the darkness and storm; waiting for the 
 
126 
 
 SYMPATHY. 
 
 tedious hours to go, and the sun to rise, and to see no ship 
 on the horizon. How this must have helped him to feel the 
 sustaining presence of the living God as nothing else could, 
 and to say as one had said before, with awful meaning in 
 the words, " Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him " ! 
 
 Of " deaths oft," he writes, as also in the First Epistle to 
 these same Corinthians, I die daily." I suppose there is 
 nothing that so awes and stills and hallows the human 
 spirit as to go down into the valley of the shadow of death, 
 to the far end of it, and to feel the golden gates all but 
 opening, and the light and the music come through, and 
 then all close again, for the time is not yet come. Out of 
 the dark valley we go, back into life, but with a deep awe on 
 our spirits, with the feeling of having seen God, such as 
 does not leave us for years. This was the apostle's experi- 
 ence, not once or twice, but, as he tells us, often ; and what 
 a sense it must have given him of the uncertainty of life, 
 and the vanity of human success, and the nobleness of 
 duty, and the nearness and loveliness of God. Of weariness 
 and painfulness, of cold and nakedness, he writes, as of 
 common daily things. They must have made the spiritual 
 world very real to him, and the hope of glory the constant 
 gladness of his soul. Elsewhere he writes of having *'no 
 certain dwelling-place;" here of journeyings often," of 
 cold and nakedness." To a young strong man these are 
 trifles ; his pride of manhood almost makes him glory in 
 them. As years multiply and strength decays, they are 
 heavy and not ignoble burdens. 
 
 There is one thing more— the noblest, the hardest, the 
 blessedest of all ; that which never left him, sleeping or 
 waking, lying down or rising up ; with friends, or in solitude ; 
 in prayer to God, or in communion with his own spirit — 
 
SYMPATHY. 
 
 127 
 
 " That which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the 
 Churches." These he had to correct, these to admonish ; 
 now to console, now to rebuke. All sent to him, for all 
 needed him, and it would have pained him more if they had 
 not come for what they wanted. Yet sometimes with anguish 
 of soul and many tears he sent them his answer ; sometimes, 
 too, let us confess, with words that smote and scorn that 
 burned. The end and result of it all — to borrow the words 
 of the text — was a sublime and indescribable sympathy. 
 "Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is offended, and 
 I burn not ? " 
 
 Sympathy has two sides to it — that of pity, and that of 
 indignation ; that which yearns with compassion, and that 
 which is wroth with sin. Just as with the Lord, we read 
 that He had compassion on the multitude, because they had 
 been a long time with Him, and had nothing to eat, and had 
 come from far ; also, that He rebuked a ruler of the syna- 
 gogue with anger, because he discouraged a woman from 
 coming to be healed on the sabbath day. The great 
 apostle as much wins our affection by his tears as our 
 respect by his sternness. His sympathy, remember, was 
 not the transient spasm of a sudden emotion, nor the cheap 
 utterance of easy and turgid phrases, which boasted much 
 and held nothing ; like the gleam of a winter's sun, soon 
 passing again behind the clouds, and only leaving disappoint- 
 ment behind. It was the continual, inevitable, unconscious 
 going out of active love from a heart that overflowed with it, 
 to all who needed it, to all who came in his way. It helped 
 him to be all things to all men, through the power of a vivid 
 imagination, which enabled him to put himself in his 
 neighbour's place, and of a moral sensibility, which ever 
 stirred him to hate that which was evil, and to cleave to that 
 
128 
 
 SYMPATHY. 
 
 which was good — whereby by all means he saved many; 
 I say, further, it was the discipline of his life that was the 
 secret of it, that gave him the will and the power to save. 
 
 To conclude : first let us observe that notwithstanding 
 his weak health, and his long imprisonments, and his mani- 
 fold disappointments, and his bitter opposition, the apostle 
 found time to complete a work which has withstood the 
 storms and outUved the empires of eighteen centuries ; and 
 that weak as often he felt to be, beaten as often he seemed 
 to be, he was always strong enough for the duty God called 
 him to accomplish, and his life was not taken till his work 
 was done. 
 
 My friends, you especially to whom working for God is 
 at once the honour and delight of your lives, never fear 
 that you will not have time enough for all the good works 
 God has ordained for you to walk in ; this rather fear, that 
 your will may be slack, and your sacrifices few. God is 
 wise, and He knows how to accomplish His own purposes. 
 God is strong, and He will command strength for you. 
 God is just, and not with Pharaoh's justice. God is love, 
 and He does not grudge us the joy of thankful duty. We 
 are immortal till our work is done. When it is done, we 
 can be spared for Paradise. 
 
 See the gift to claim : the gift which binds all per- 
 fection, transfigures all activities, satisfies all necessities, 
 ennobles all experiments ; the gift which is at once the 
 nature of God, and His method — the gift of Christian 
 sympathy. In some it is born full-orbed, and so easier ; 
 with others, the germ is in them, but it needs cultivating. 
 All need the stirring and deepening and educating of it by 
 the discipline of sorrow. Welcome sorrow, that you may 
 understand more perfectly, and touch more skilfully, and 
 
SYMPATHY. 
 
 129 
 
 speak more tenderly ; ay, in your very silence, making it felt 
 how your heart loves if your lips are dumb. Oh, to have 
 more of this gift of love ! — for it turns earth into heaven, 
 and makes man the very sacrament of God. Ask for it, and 
 remember that it can come in only one way, and let it come 
 in that way ; and when it comes, keep it, and deserve to 
 have more. 
 
 Once more — get the joy to learn that all things are 
 yours, and that you are Christ's, and that Christ is God's ; 
 and so that you are not more His precious possession than 
 that God Himself is yours. I think that the end and reward 
 of all sorts of sorrow is to learn how to fall back upon God, 
 and rest in Him as our one Portion and Joy. That God in 
 Christ must have been to St. Paul. The hfe we have been 
 contemplating would have been an intolerable misery without 
 it. With God, every tear he shed, every pang he knew, was 
 but a new opportunity for the divine sweetness. Some 
 day, when God summons us, we too shall see Him face to 
 face. Then we shall understand, as we cannot understand 
 now, that " our light affliction, which is but for a moment, 
 worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight 
 of glory," and that the secret of the apostle means the 
 fellowship of Christ. 
 
THE PROMISE OF HIS COMING. 
 
" There is but one possible final proof of Christianity, and that is its 
 own essential truth." 
 
THE PROMISE OF HIS COMING. 
 
 Preached in Rochester Cathedral^ December 4, 1883. 
 
 "Where is the promise of His coming? " — 2 Pet. iii. 4. 
 
 This was a scoff, St. Peter says. None the less important 
 for that; none the less demanding an answer. It ought 
 not, indeed, to be hard to prove the shallowness of it, if 
 only from the superficial nature of the reason on which 
 it stands. Why was this coming — the supreme, triumphal, 
 spousal coming of the Son of man — scoffed at in this 
 insolent fashion, and His followers taunted with folly in 
 expecting an event which it was just as reasonable to ask 
 and hope for as for a child to cry for the moon ? On the 
 ground, I suppose — in our own day, so calmly, so blandly, 
 and with a sense of such superior wisdom urged against the 
 supernatural, and all related to it — that " miracles do not 
 happen." " All things continue as they were from the 
 beginning of the creation." In other words, the physical 
 order is the only order of which the human mind can be 
 asked to take cognizance. The invisible region of the 
 universe, where lie concealed, none the less potent or 
 real for that, the mighty springs of will and mind, and 
 government and providence, is to be treated as if it did not 
 
134 
 
 THE PROMISE OF HIS COMING. 
 
 exist, because no method is open to us for questioning or 
 analyzing it. As we do not see it, and may not examine it, 
 therefore, for all practical purposes, it cannot be said to be. 
 How this sorry view of things limits the area of observation, 
 dwarfs and ignores some of the loftiest capacities of man, 
 degrades us by limiting the knowable to the senses, robs 
 the spirit of its grandest inspirations and noblest ideals; 
 how, if even universally accepted and acted on, it would 
 inevitably send us back to something far worse than the 
 despair and the paganism of the Caesars, may the Church 
 never suffer the world to discover, nor herself be base 
 enough to permit. 
 
 The text contains two ideas— 
 
 I. The coming. 
 
 II. The delay. 
 
 My friends, let us, too, ask this question at a time when 
 it is so suitable, so dutiful, so helpful, to ask it. So suitable; 
 for the one thought that solemnizes this blessed season is 
 the Second Advent. So dutiful ; for it honours our Lord 
 to put questions to Him about it, so long as they come 
 from eager and reverent love. Helpful ; for ought it not to 
 stir unity, diligence, prayer ? Humbling, also ; for how many 
 of us really desire that coming, as the goal of our felicity, 
 and the crowning of our real happiness ? Were the King 
 of saints to come back this night — allowance duly made 
 for the awe every soul must feel at the first sight of God 
 — could we sincerely say, as the prophet tells us some 
 will say, *'This is our God; we have waited for Him, and 
 He will save us : this is our God ; we have waited for 
 Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation" ? 
 
 1. The COMING. Both the Testaments say much of 
 Christ's coming ; and if, in the literal, historical sense of 
 
THE PROMISE OF HIS COMING. 
 
 the words, there are but two real visible comings spoken 
 of, each complethig an epoch in the Church's history — the 
 first at the Incarnation, the second at the Final Judgment — 
 in an inferior and mystical, but still actual sense, this 
 promise of the coming has continually and solemnly 
 fulfilled itself, at sundry times and in divers manners, 
 whether in woeful judgments, or in marked eras of light 
 and beatitude, to nations and to Churches, to congregations 
 and to individual souls. He came to Israel, when Titus 
 drove his ploughshare of indescribable anguish through 
 the hearts of the miserable Jews; and to France, when 
 the Revolution, that began just a century ago, and is still 
 a living volcano, woke her up out of a hideous trance, and 
 made the nations say, "Here is the God of Judgment;" 
 and to Euroj)e, wlien the Reformation, for which we 
 may surely still give humble thanks to God, gave the 
 soul freedoai and the conscience truth; and to England, 
 when Augustine landed in Kent with a second message 
 of the everlasting gospel; or when, a century ago, the 
 doctrines of grace, with all their subsequent developments, 
 and not yet concluded revivals, whether of life, or worship, 
 or duty, brought a blessed resurrection to the Church. It is 
 He who visits the soul, when it is converted to repentance 
 and devotion ; it is He who comes to a congregation or a 
 parish, when a pastor comes or goes, or a wave of spiritual 
 life baptizes a crowd of souls for the Word of God to have 
 free course and be glorified. He who walketh among the 
 seven golden candlesticks, trims them with oil, and makes 
 them burn more brig-litly. But it is His coming to them 
 that does it. Every gift of His grace is His presence 
 brought close to the soul. 
 
 Yet these are but premonitions and foreshadowings of 
 
136 THE PROMISE OF HIS COMING. 
 
 that final and royal Advent, when He shall come for the 
 revelation of His glory, the vindication of His government, 
 the judgment of humanity, and the crowning of His saints. 
 It will be public and supernatural, and be the end. 
 
 He will reveal His glory, for all His saints will be with 
 Him; and they will be His glory — those who loved not their 
 lives unto the death, whom His example and cross, and 
 love and presence, drew to Him with an irresistible power ; 
 the satisfaction of His soul's travail, the spoils from the 
 house of the strong man armed, and the joy unspeakable 
 of the angels in light. He shall come, as St. Paul says, 
 "to be glorified in His saints, and admired in all them 
 that believe." 
 
 He will come to vindicate His government, as to its 
 righteousness, wisdom, and mercy. Many hard things are 
 said against Him now. He is silent, and waits, knowing 
 that one day He will justify Himself. Who of us that 
 observes and thinks but has, must have, difficulties which 
 he cannot answer, listens to cavils to which silence is the 
 best reply ? To such He says, " In your patience possess 
 ye your souls." These things perplex, try, even sadden 
 us ; and sometimes sadness and distress are the inevitable 
 accompaniments of loyalty and saintliness. There is a 
 morning at hand, which shall be without clouds. When 
 Christ comes back, these shadows shall flee away. 
 
 He will come to judge the world ; and in one respect 
 that judgment will need neither witnesses nor sentence. 
 Each man's own soul will be witness and judge against 
 itself Memory, relentless and awakened memory, will 
 bring up out of its hoards our past — all our past ; and if 
 the blood of Christ has not washed our robes and made 
 them white as with a fuller's whiteness, the vision of the 
 
THE PROMISE OF HIS COMING. 
 
 spotless Christ will entirely and tremendously reveal the 
 guilt and hideousness of sin. Yes, of all kinds of loneliness, 
 the bitterest is, that there a man's own faculty of self-defence 
 deserts him. Of all sorts of reproof, none is so stinging, 
 so abiding, as the voice of conscience in the soul. 
 
 He will also come to crown His saints. Come, ye 
 blessed of My Father." It is hard to get to the bottom 
 of the blessedness of those words. Certainly we shall 
 hear them pronounced to others. May we hope to 
 listen to them for ourselves ! Christ's reward to us will, 
 I suppose, be threefold ; it will be sanctity, dignity, and 
 service. Sanctity : We shall be like Him, for we shall 
 see Him as He is." But some will be more like Him than 
 others, having loved him more. Dignity : To him that 
 overcometh will I give to sit with Me on My throne." Our 
 dignity will be in our nearness to Him. Some will be 
 nearer than others then, for they have walked more closely 
 with Him here. Service : " His servants shall serve Him." 
 He will choose the service, and we shall render it. And 
 with what untold joy ! Even now in our best moments — 
 and we are not always at our best — when heaven most 
 enters into our souls, we know something of the blessedness 
 and of the honour of doing something for Him here, 
 however little. There, when sickness will not weaken us, 
 nor old age unnerve us, when selfishness will not decline 
 His offers, nor self-love demur to them, it will indeed be 
 our meat and drink to do our Father's will, and there will 
 be neither failure, weariness, nor decay. 
 
 II. But there is the delay. " Where is the promise of 
 His coming?" And the fact of this delay is not only 
 admitted, but almost emphasized by the apostle's explana- 
 tion afterwards : " The Lord is not slack concerning His 
 
138 
 
 THE PROMISE OF HIS COMING. 
 
 promise, as some men count slackness ; but is long-suffering 
 to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that 
 all should come to repentance. . . . Wherefore account that 
 the long-suffering of our Lord is salvation." You ask why 
 does the Lord delay? ''Long-suffering," is the answer; the 
 patience of the Redeemer's hope. Speaking with trembling 
 lips, and with a sense of unworthiness and incapacity to 
 comprehend the purpose of His all-wise and all-merciful 
 will, we may gather from Holy Scripture these two reasons. 
 
 First in our Lord's own words: "This gospel of the 
 kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto 
 all nations, and then shall the end come." But it takes time 
 to preach it; and even now we are losing time. How much 
 more did the Church lose it, and fail to see her duty about 
 it, from the day that the Moslem invasion devastated the 
 East and South, until the quite recent time when the idea of 
 missions dawned like a revelation on mankind ! At this 
 moment there must be millions and millions of souls on which 
 not the feeblest ray from the face or the cross of Chribt 
 has for one moment lingered ; and let the Church speed 
 on her way with flight as eager and heart as joyous as 
 an angel's from heaven with a message to some penitent 
 soul, it is still a gigantic task, and a long one, even to 
 preach Christ once to all. Not by any means that the 
 mere presence of Christianity in the world has not proved 
 a living force for its improvement and happiness in a 
 thousand ways. It has been well said that " Christianity 
 is the great reforming power of the world;" and any one 
 who needs to be convinced by it should read a book 
 recently published, called " Brace's Gesta Christi," which 
 by a series of solid facts lucidly arranged, and forcibly 
 pressed, and intelligently explained, proves by an accumu- 
 
THE PROMISE OF HIS COMING. 
 
 lating argument how jurisprudence and war, the laws of 
 nations and the dignity of women, marriage and slavery, 
 hospitality and human society at large, have felt the breath 
 of Jesus of Nazareth as He passed by — got healing, though 
 they knew not from whom. The principles, ideals, and 
 precepts of Christianity are still the light and medicine 
 of the world. 
 
 But there is yet another reason why the Lord delays 
 His coming; where we touch the border of deep and 
 even dark mysteries ; where wise and humble lips will 
 not presume to dogmatize, but where the heart of faith, 
 groping for the light, thinks, hopes, and adores. Those 
 w^ho have a tender compassion for souls, and who, 
 looking out upon the heathen world abroad, and on 
 our heathenized masses at home, think with heart as 
 well as reason what difference the '"'slant of the sun"' 
 in spiritual as well as temporal things must make in 
 the chances of a soul for its life and goodness; those, 
 too, who observe the gulf that separates even professing 
 Christians in their moral and spiritual condition as they 
 pass out to God ; above all, those who rest upon the divine 
 righteousness, as upon the rock of adamant, and who again 
 and again say to themselves, as doubts, and chills, and fears, 
 and perplexities disturb and harass them, " Shall not 
 the Judge of all the earth do right ? " — and are not some 
 of you among them ? — these seem to see in this delay of 
 the Second Advent the blessed mystery of the redeeming 
 purpose, not indeed fully revealed to us, lest sinners should 
 presume on it — which nevertheless is, and fulfils itself 
 according to the pleasure of Him who willeth not that 
 any should perish, but that all should be saved, while 
 some make light of the Saviour's own words of the worm 
 
140 THE PROMISE OF HIS COMING. 
 
 that dieth not, and of the fire that never shall be 
 quenched. 
 
 The fact, already hinted, is that millions of human 
 souls, brought into this world by God's providence, without 
 any choice of their own, have passed through and out of 
 it without a single opportunity of savingly knowing Him 
 as their reconciled Father in Christ. The principle is 
 that He will never condemn one of His own creatures for 
 losing a salvation which was never offered to him ; and that 
 in some way or other, and at some time or other, we may 
 humbly expect Him, from the hints that Holy Scripture 
 scatters on the subject, if not what we must independently 
 and assuredly expect of His righteousness and love, to 
 enable them, as He has enabled us, to see Him and live. 
 
 Thus reverent thinkers are coming increasingly to feel 
 it to be likely that the key to the problems of what is 
 called eschatology is to be found in our blessed Lord's 
 personal administration of the intermediate state ; and that 
 He who has since His resurrection distinctly described 
 Himself as having "the keys of hell and of death," 
 Who before His resurrection went and preached to the 
 spirits in prison, may, in that waiting-time for His return, 
 which certainly is not a period of utter unconsciousness, 
 be a centre of light and salvation and goodness to human 
 souls, who here have had no real chance of accepting 
 Him, in a way and by methods of which we can form 
 no conception. But if this be so, it is at least another 
 justification of His delayed return. "Jesus Himself was 
 not afraid for God," though no one loved mankind as He 
 did, no one knew God as He did, no one is so likely to be 
 jealous for His Father's honour. If we, with all reverence 
 and humility, still cannot help sometimes putting to our- 
 
THE PROMISE OF HIS COMING. 
 
 141 
 
 selves that noble question, "What is worthy of God?" while 
 conscious of our inadequacy fully to answer it — conscious, 
 also, that not our own spiritual instincts alone are sufficient 
 to answer it, but that in Holy Scripture we must also 
 seek a lamp for our feet, and a light for our path, — then 
 we shall see in the divine delay but another instance of 
 that patience of God which Christ's own parable illustrates, 
 in the shepherd seeking the lost sheep " until he find 
 it;" also we shall see how there is but "one limit to the 
 redeeming power of God's love in Christ — the limit of a 
 human will which persistently rejects the divine." 
 
 "Where is the promise of His coming ?" To conclude 
 — this Advent, this coming of Christ, is at once a test, and 
 a crisis, and a motive, and a joy. 
 
 As I have already hinted, it is a test ; and, O Christian 
 people, were He to come to-night, how should you and 
 I meet Him ? Is His coming a promise for you ? Of course 
 our going to Him in death, any more than His coming 
 to us in judgment, cannot have power to alter our spiritual 
 condition, or to effect a change which has not been 
 effected before. "Behold, He cometh with clouds; and 
 every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced 
 Him : and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of 
 Him.'- 
 
 No one can go forth to meet Him whose lamp is not 
 trimmed and his light burning. Only those in conscious 
 union with Him, and who know Him to be the Lord of 
 their hearts, can even think of that return without infinite 
 trouble and distress. Only those who are trying to serve 
 Him, praying to resemble Him, and content to suffer for 
 Him, can claim Him when He comes back as their ^Master 
 and Lord. 
 
142 THE PROMISE OF HIS COMING. 
 
 "Where is the promise of His coming?" Is it a promise 
 for you? It will be a crisis. Whatever it may be the 
 purpose of God's redeeming love to do between death 
 and judgment for those who have had no opportunities 
 for salvation and goodness, Scripture gives no faintest 
 hope for supposing that such a condition of mercy can 
 be prolonged after judgment. The great revelation will 
 then have been made, and with its final issues. The 
 revelation of Christ to man will have resulted in the 
 revelation of man to himself ; and what can there be to 
 follow? ''He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and 
 he which is filthy, let him be filthy still : and he that is 
 righteous, let him be righteous still : and he that is holy, 
 let him be holy still." The choice will have been made 
 already ''between a life growing rich unto God, or starving 
 upon self — its real final choice between the true, the eternal 
 life, and the eternal death of the heart." That choice 
 you at least, beloved brethren, are making now, possibly 
 have already made; and the acts of each hour are more 
 surely and finally committing you to it. What I want you 
 to see is that the Second Advent will reveal and confirm 
 it, and that for those who have chosen against Christ — 
 or, what comes to the same thing, have steadfastly refused 
 to choose Him, and have drifted down the tides of the 
 world, and have consciously and resolutely and finally 
 turned from Him — grace will be over, in mercy as well 
 as in judgment, when Jesus Christ comes back. 
 
 "Where is the promise of His coming?" Is the 
 coming a promise to you ? The advent is also a motive. 
 For steadfastness of purpose, for diligence in duty, for 
 meekness of temper, for sweetness of charity, for man- 
 fulness of self-control, for completeness of self-culture, 
 
THE PROMISE OF HIS COMING. 
 
 for exactness of knowledge, for mellowness of thought. 
 Memory disciplined, habits cultivated, reason exercised, 
 taste matured ; the thinker's steadfastness, the speaker's 
 carefulness, the student's love of knowledge, and the 
 writer's use of it; — all these, be sure, are steadily and 
 inevitably accumulating their final and magnificent reward, 
 when Christ comes back to give to each man according as 
 his works shall be. Yes, not only for our moral goodness 
 and our spiritual capacity shall we each have our place 
 of glory and our raiment of light, but for the full use of 
 all our powers, and the diligent improvement of all our 
 capacities, and the beneficent employment of all our 
 resources, and the ready energy of all our opportunities, 
 and the steady maturing of all our gifts, shall our judg- 
 ment and our crown be given. Nothing lost, nothing 
 forgotten, nothing despised, of effort, and diligence, and 
 thought, and perseverance. All shall come up to be 
 recognized ; and the righteousness of love shall apportion 
 our felicity. 
 
 Now, do not you see how this should give a dignity, 
 a grandeur, a kind of awful significance, to the meanest 
 life, if but a Christian life, and lived in all good conscience 
 before God, such as no human words can say? So I 
 ask again, "Where is the promise of His coming?" Is 
 that coming a promise to you ? 
 
 Once more, it will be joy — to those to whom Jesus Christ 
 now is the best possession of their hearts. Joy for what 
 it will reveal, remove, and bestow. 
 
 It will reveal Christ. I dare not, I cannot, I must 
 not, say what it will be when we first gaze on Him. It is 
 too sacred to chatter about with these soiled lips; all 
 we can say is, it will not disappoint us ; " we shall be 
 
144 THE PROMISE OF HIS COMING. 
 
 satisfied, when we awake, with His likeness ; " we shall 
 each see Him at once, and it will be as if only we saw 
 Him, and He saw only us, and seeing Him will be our 
 transfiguration. 
 
 It will remove all stain and germ of sin; all thought 
 and sadness of separation ; all fear of infirmity ; all cloud 
 and mist of confusion and despair. 
 
 It will bestow ; and we should ever remember that, in 
 the world to come, space and time will be things of the 
 past. It will bestow youth that will never fade, knowledge 
 that will ever widen, duties which will at once continue life 
 and expand it; sanctity which will more and more com- 
 prehend the perfection of God. Earthly and temporal 
 limitations will be over ; our society shall become an ever- 
 present companionship of the redeemed; and friendship 
 will not be a melancholy dream, but a solid delight. As 
 we look into each other's faces in that " blessed country," 
 the thought of an inevitable parting will not shoot sudden 
 sadness through our souls. " For ever with the Lord." 
 Then we shall see that God in Christ makes heaven. 
 
 Once again, "Where is the promise of His coming?" 
 Is His coming a promise for you ? 
 
DEATH NOT DEATH. 
 
 L-15 
 
" It is beautiful to see how death gives liberty to life." 
 
DEATH NOT DEATH. 
 
 Preached in the Cathedral, Victoria^ Vancouver Island, 
 September \, 1887. 
 
 "Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep My saying, he shall 
 never see death." — John viii. 51. 
 
 The Pharisees were startled at this saying, and we cannot 
 wonder at it. It so flatly contradicted the universal ex- 
 perience of mankind, that every one challenged it. It 
 asserted so pointedly the personal claims of Christ, that 
 there seemed to be but one of two alternatives : either He 
 had a devil, and so was not accountable for His sayings ; 
 or He was a blasphemer, and then He deserved to be stoned. 
 Christ, we may observe, expected, and indeed intended this. 
 
 Nay, it was His method, and He had often used it before. 
 A sincere teacher, whatever his doctrine may be, aims at 
 two results with his hearers. He must make them think, 
 that justice may be done to His teaching. He must make 
 them feel, that their convictions may pass into their lives. 
 Now, wherever there is stubborn prejudice, and that in- 
 veterate repugnance to spiritual teaching which a hard 
 formalism invariably engenders in the mind, a gentle and 
 winning persuasiveness will only stir contempt. The crust 
 of obstinate traditionalism needs to be suddenly, even 
 
148 
 
 DEATH NOT DEATH. 
 
 roughly, penetrated with the spear's thrust of a sharp 
 apophthegm. The iron flail of a crushing dialectic must 
 mercilessly silence the self-love that does not so much fear 
 error as the shame of being detected in it. It is a lesson 
 for all teachers, of all kinds of truth, and with every sort 
 of learner, that to give even a painful shock to the mind by 
 the blunt utterance of a paradox is sometimes the kindest 
 as well as the wisest way of training and stimulating it, and 
 that next to a love of truth for its own sake comes in im- 
 portance the habit of an absolute intrepidity in stating it, 
 without too much weighing the consequences, or too much 
 impatience for the results. 
 
 Christ's saying is of world-wide significance. Does not 
 each of you, my brethren, feel that it is for him ? He 
 introduced it by a formula which with Him always in- 
 dicates a change of subject. " Verily, verily." He expressed 
 it in words which the Jews immediately afterwards mis- 
 quoted, and which should be exactly weighed, to ascertain 
 what they really convey. That enemy, whom we are con- 
 tinually fighting, who often has to wait, but who is content 
 to wait, knowing that he will have us at last — "death" — 
 is a familiar word enough. My saying " marks the whole 
 revelation of Christ in its organic completeness, and not 
 any one feature of it. To " keep " expresses rather the idea 
 of intent watching than of safe guarding. The " seeing " 
 death, in the original, indicates a long, steady, exhaustive 
 contemplation, whereby we do not merely glance at and 
 perceive, but become slowly and increasingly acquainted 
 with the nature of the object we look at. And the sentence 
 paraphrased will run thus : " Whoever accepts, observes, 
 acts out My teaching, while he must not expect not to die, 
 will find death' when it comes so utterly transformed for 
 
DEATH NOT DEATH. 
 
 him, that his dread of it will be gone ; he will cease to 
 anticipate it with anguish ; nay, he will conquer even while 
 he yields." 
 
 First let us examine Christ's statement about death, and 
 then observe the magnificent inference that flows from it. 
 
 If a man keep My saying, he shall never see death." 
 Death, as we call it, affects us in four ways. The body 
 it ultimately dissolves into its constituent elements, until it 
 finally disappears. Even before it lays its last grip on us it 
 is wont to disintegrate the organs and tissues of our physical 
 life by a slow and often humiliating decay. The conscience, 
 I do not say with all, but certainly with a great number, it 
 penetrates with the awfully quickening sense of responsibility 
 and the apprehension of inevitable judgment. The will, 
 with all its forces and apparatus of energy and action, it 
 goes to paralyze by a total and final suspension of its 
 opportunities and aspirations. The heart it wounds as 
 widi the piercings of a sword. In the fine expression of a 
 living writer, creatures who love so much have their days 
 shut round with a wall of darkness." All this is a mere 
 matter of experience, which no one in his senses will care 
 to dispute. It would be easy to dilate on it with pathos, or 
 to describe it in thrilling detail ; but each heart has its own 
 sufficient store of sacred and tender memories, and we will 
 leave the curtain closed. Now, Christ says about death that 
 keeping His saying will prevent us from seeing it. Did 
 He mean seeing it before it comes, or seeing it when it 
 comes? Both, probably. The one includes the other. But 
 the idea^f__anticipation is perhaps paramount. The quite 
 ^ young and the elderly think of it most. It is a mistake 
 1 constantly to be thinking of it, and it is a risk never to 
 1 think of it. To scorn it is a nobler error than to dread it, 
 
DEATH NOT DEATH. 
 
 but scorn is hardly the spirit in which a sinful man should 
 wish to pass to God. Yet it is hard not to be touched even 
 to a melancholy veneration by the stern resolve of sincere 
 spirits, unable to accept revelation in spite of the conso- 
 lations it inspires ; expecting to perish, yet caring to the 
 last for the race it can help no more. Listen to one of the 
 noblest of them ; there is a spirit in his words we may all 
 bo glad to breathe. " A man will alieady be in no mean 
 paradise, if at the hour of sunset a good hope shall fall 
 upon him like harmonies of music, that the earth shall still 
 be fair, and the happiness of every feeling creature still 
 receive a constant augmentation, and yet each good cause 
 find yet worthy defenders, when the memory of his own 
 poor name and personality has long been blotted out of the 
 brief recollection of men for ever." ^ There are those, of 
 course — not all of them blatant and licentious atheists — to 
 whom the temper of repentance, and the idea of a Personal 
 God, seem alike impossible. We must not judge them ; 
 we leave them to Him who died for them ; who reads the 
 inmost secrets of their hearts ; who will assuredly save them 
 if He can ; who, when they pass into His presence, will look 
 them through and through, and righteously give them as 
 their works shall be. 
 
 But what is the saying of Christ which so changes and 
 transforms this "king of terrors;" which turns what would 
 otherwise be an awful plunge into a hideous darkness to a 
 summons to our Father's home ? The doctrines contained 
 in it are not indeed many, but without dispute they are un- 
 speakably wonderful. Only Revelation could declare them ; 
 only faith can accept them as true. 
 
 There is the Incarnation, with those divinely instituted 
 * Mr. John Morley. 
 
DEATH NOT DEATH. 151 
 
 ordinances, which convey sacramentally its benefits, and 
 extend its influence to all who rightly receive them. There 
 is the mystery of the atoning cross, which brings peace 
 and liberty and reconciliation to all who approach it in 
 simple penitence. 
 
 " Nothing in my hand I bring, 
 Simply to Thy cross I cling." 
 
 There is the resurrection, first of Christ, the Root and Head 
 of humanity, and hereafter of all who sleep in Him. There 
 is the invisible rule of the ascended Lord, through the 
 Holy Ghost, which He ever pours out on the world. These 
 mighty truths, in their order, and by the virtue inherent in 
 them, and according to our apprehension of them and 
 submission to them, give us to participate even now in that 
 eternal life in Christ which lives on world without end; 
 and in that personal deliverance from the guilt and power 
 of sin which only a divine propitiation, through faith in His 
 blood, can give to the sincere penitent ; and in that victory 
 over death through which the resurrection at the last day 
 is, by Christ's own promise, and through Himself the first- 
 fruits of them that slept, finally and everlastingly to emanci- 
 pate us, and so reunite us to those who have either gone 
 before us, or shall follow after us, in the mighty and pitiful 
 procession of humanity ever slowly marching on towards the 
 tomb. 
 
 These great truths, and none but these, meet the deepest 
 needs of our souls about death, answer our sores and diffi- 
 culties, heal our most beautiful anguish, and in our best 
 moments — which are given us when we need them — almost 
 help us to call it, as St. Francis d'Assisi loved to call it, 
 " Sister " Death. Listen to them. " Whoso eateth My flesh 
 and drinketh My blood hath eternal life, and I will raise 
 
152 
 
 DEATH NOT DEATH. 
 
 him up at the last day." " He that hath the Son hath life, 
 and he that hath not the Son of God hath not Hfe." 
 " There is therefore now no condemnation to them which 
 are in Christ Jesus." " Whosoever liveth and believeth 
 in Me shall never die." 
 
 "Down below, the church to whose poor window 
 Glory by the autumnal leaves is lent ; 
 And a knot of worshippers is mourning, 
 jMissing some one at the Sacrament. 
 
 "Down below, cold sunhght on the tombstones, 
 And the green wet turf with faded flowers ; 
 Winter roses, once like young hopes burning, 
 Now beneath the ivy dripped with showers. 
 
 " Up above, the host no man can number, 
 In white robes, a palm in every hand ; 
 Each some work subhme for ever working 
 In the spacious tracts of that great land. 
 
 " Up above, the thoughts that know no anguibh, 
 Tender care, sweet love for us below ; 
 Noble pity, free from anxious terror, 
 Larger love without a touch of woe." 
 
 (Bishop Alexander.) 
 
 I said there is a significant inference from this great 
 saying of Christ. It is this : the continuity of the Christian's 
 life, in its essence, in its aim, in its worship, in its activity, 
 in its sanctity, in its gladness. The life here and hereafter 
 is the same — God dwelling in the soul. The aim here and 
 there is the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The 
 common worship is the same, though there will be no temple 
 there. " Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our 
 sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests 
 unto God and His Father, be glory and dominion." The 
 activity is the same. If in Paradise we think of it as rest, 
 it is that kind of rest which soothes and girds for coming 
 
DEATH NOT DEATH. 
 
 acLioD. In the resurrection-life we shall serve Him day 
 and night in His temple, hungering no more, thirsting no 
 more. The sanctity will be the same ; for then, as now, it 
 will be the image of Jesus Christ reproduced in us, only 
 perfectly, and without spot of sin. The joy will be the 
 same. Joy in God, and in serving Him. The new song 
 we shall sing will be but our present one with another 
 stanza to it. For death will be behind, and we shall see 
 the Lamb that was slain. And as we stand on the sea of 
 glass mingled with fire — our foe behind us and Canaan 
 before — we shall strike on our harps even a nobler melody 
 than Miriam struck in the days of old. And this thought 
 of the continuity of our hfe is a very practical one, for the 
 activities we initiate, the friendships we fcrm, the hopes we 
 indulge, the knowledge we acquire. 
 
 Life is so short, some say, and so uncertain. Ls there 
 really much use in commencing enterprises, of which 
 perhaps only the foundations may be laid before we are 
 roughly summoned away, and must perish, like a child's 
 castle on the sand, when the devouring tide sweeps all away ? 
 Love is natural to us, essential even. We are made to 
 love. We cannot help it. . But sometimes we frigidly 
 reason with ourselves about the folly of weaving ties, 
 which when broken — and they are sure to be broken 
 some day — work and twist like cruel setons in our 
 tortured heart. We have hopes, generous, reasonable, 
 noble; but presently we become almost ashamed of them. 
 The frost steals into our garden before the June nights are 
 over; we say in our haste we will never plant flowers 
 again. As for knowledge, at the best it is but fragmentary, 
 constantly interrupted by sordid needs and conventional 
 proprieties, by scanty leisure, and the torpor of the weary 
 
154 
 
 DEATH NOT DEATH. 
 
 brain. Just when we are beginning to discover how little 
 we can know and how little we do know, and there is 
 rapture as well as melancholy in the discovery, the book 
 becomes suddenly dusty on an upper shelf; the midnight 
 lamp ceases to tell the passer-by that a thinker is busy ; 
 the tired head is quiet on the last pillow it will ever press ; 
 the book is unfinished, the invention but half worked out ; 
 for jealous, envious Death is making yet more darkness. 
 
 But faith, which unites us to Christ, and builds us up 
 into Him, which apprehends His purpose, and sees His 
 glory, has a very different voice to this, and a far loftier 
 one, in harmony with the voice of Him who says, " Behold, 
 I make all things new." Death, which to those out of Christ 
 is a state, for those in Christ is but an event in life ; not 
 even interrupting it, but simply severing its visible asso- 
 ciation with earth ; not, indeed, at all parting us from the 
 possession of each other, only from the society of each 
 other. Those who have left us are still in the Father's 
 house, but in another story of it. Our human earthly duties, 
 whatever they be, homely or august, public or remote from 
 men, are, when faithfully and truly done, links in the great 
 chain and girdle of immortal activities, which death trans- 
 figures rather than destroys, which educate and discipline us 
 for those tasks and offices of service which God's wisdom is 
 preparing for those who love Him. If there be a God, and 
 if He be a God of order and of purpose, most of all, if He 
 be a Father — and for Christians, at least, this ought not be 
 too much to assume — we may rest assured that the enigmas 
 of life will one day have their solution, and the fragments 
 of life their skilful piecing into a true harmony ; its dis- 
 cipline will bring it full recompense, its sorrowful partings 
 a joyful compensation in the final concourse and everlasting 
 
DEATH NOT DEATH. 
 
 companionship of radiant souls. In nature they say there 
 is no waste, though there often seems to be; and in the 
 higher sphere of a redeemed creation, God will justify 
 Himself to those who wait for Him, and can patiently 
 trust the silence of His veiled face. 
 
 This gospel of the Resurrection is the greatest force of 
 all that is best in humanity. Over the migl ty murmur of a 
 turbulent and weeping world there still sounds to us this 
 voice of the risen Jesus, sweet as the dropping of the honey- 
 comb, solemn as the sound of many ^vaters — for us who 
 have yet to get death over, for all who have died and shall 
 die, until death is swallowed up at the coming of the King. 
 
 "I am the Resurrection, and the Life : he that believeth 
 in Me, though he were dead^ yet shall he live : and whoso- 
 ever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die. Believest 
 thou this— believest thou this?" 
 
THE OPENING OF THE BOOKS. 
 
" Alas ! in the real life, how are we to know when we have reached 
 our end ?" 
 
THE OPENING OF THE BOOKS. 
 
 Preached in Winchester Cathedral^ Advent Sunday, 1892. 
 
 ** And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God ; and the 
 books were opened." — Rev. xx. 12. 
 
 Two things are told us here, of more moment than any- 
 thing else in the world. They are told us, moreover, on 
 the personal authority of one who knew — knew because he 
 had seen. St. John had passed behind the veil, which so 
 inexorably, yet, it may be, so slightly, separates the visible 
 and the invisible worlds, and he came back to tell the tale, 
 which is short, disappointingly short, yet all, perhaps, that 
 human language could express, or human understandings 
 apprehend. The dead live with God, and the dead are 
 judged. These truths, I say, not only transcend all others, 
 but modify and transfigure all others.^ 
 
 The event we call death, right in front of us all, and 
 which one day or other will assuredly visit ourselves, does 
 not terminate existence ; it simply translates it into a region 
 beyond sense, there to be emancipated and made perfect. 
 About the life which we now live in the flesh, which often 
 seems so trivial and commonplace, and is so easily for- 
 gotten, we are to be judged by the living God. 
 
 ^ See Bishop Phillips Brooks' " Twenty Sermons," p. 60. 
 
l60 THE OPENING OF THE BOOKS. 
 
 Our text tells us of the dead, the Judge, the books, 
 the end. 
 
 I. When we think of the dead, of their number, their 
 diversity, their separateness, their society, the fancy reels 
 before the awful vision, the reason is tempted to ask if it 
 can be literally true. 
 
 Since Abel died until the moment when I spoke my 
 text, what a countless army has tramped, sadly but in- 
 evitably, through the valley of the shadow of death, till the 
 corner was turned and the angel beckoned them. Take 
 some of the central names of history, and cluster round 
 them the millions whom they blessed, or ruled, or slew, 
 and they will seem but specks in the great firmament of 
 humanity, by their faint gleaming helping us to understand 
 the millions behind of whom we know nothing, except that 
 they lived, suffered, and disappeared. The Ptolemies and 
 the CaUphs; the awful monarchs who ruled on the banks of 
 the Tigris and the Euphrates and the Nile ; the emperors 
 who, by the waters of the Tiber, conquered and robbed the 
 world ; Attila and Tamerlane ; Ivan the terrible and Beli- 
 sarins the unfortunate ; the Moors and the Huns ; the 
 Crusaders and the Turks ; Frederick the Great and Napo- 
 leon the First ; the countless myriads of China and India ; 
 Africa and the islands of the sea ; and then the world across 
 the Atlantic, with its buried strata of civilizations and races 
 of which the West knows nothing ; — what a mighty crowd, 
 not yet complete, presently to stand before God, for its 
 reward or its doom ! 
 
 But the interest equals the awfulness. Each human 
 soul there is distinct from every other human soul — will 
 have had its personal history, and conflicts, and oppor- 
 tunities, and duties. To each was given its number of 
 
THE OPENING OF THE BOOKS. l6l 
 
 days, and its term of probation. Then the clock struck, 
 and it was called away. They are together, small and 
 great," as the apostle calls them ; we know not if ranked and 
 placed by any moral law ; certainly not described here as in 
 the Lord's own parable, separated one from the other, as a 
 shepherd divides the sheep from the goats, yet secretly and 
 severally and inevitably separating themselves as the search- 
 ing light falls on them from the white throne of God. For 
 they stand before God. 
 
 11. Here a word of explanation may be useful to recon- 
 cile what St. John saw with what his Lord declared. Christ 
 most distinctly taught that He is to be Judge, because He 
 is the Son of man. " As the Father hath life in Himself, 
 so hath He given to the Son to have Hfe in Himself; and 
 hath given Him authority to execute judgment also, because 
 He is the Son of ^lan." Also in the solemn parable of the 
 last judgment, it is the Son of Alan who is to come in His 
 glory, and to sit on the throne of His glory, and all the 
 holy angels with Him. For as Son of Man He has had 
 entire experience of the trials and sorrows of humanity. 
 He has met temptation, and endured hardship, and wept 
 tears, and tasted death. "We have not an high priest 
 which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities ; 
 but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without 
 sin." Now that High Priest is also to be Judge. But this 
 Son of man is also Son of God ! If human experience, 
 in one aspect of His office, is essential to His right- 
 eousness ; on another side, infinite knowledge is indispen- 
 sable for the fulfilment of His task. But for the fact that 
 He not only understands man, but also has become the 
 Head of humanity, and that each atom of that countless 
 throng has been created, and redeemed, and known, and 
 
I62 
 
 THE OPENING OF THE BOOKS. 
 
 ruled, and chastened, and at last sent for by Him who in 
 His Incarnate Person unites the almightiness of God with 
 the personal experience of man, how could He judge us 
 and pronounce our doom justly ? Unto God, however, as 
 we stand before Him in that day, all things will be naked 
 and open, known and present, complete and true. 
 
 in. The books will be opened. A figure, of course ! 
 but what is it that the figure means ? Five things, I sup- 
 pose — memory, conscience, character, privilege, and law. 
 
 Memory — that wonderful, undefinable, insoluble func- 
 tion, so artificial and so treacherous, ever so dependent 
 on physical conditions, often curiously impaired by 
 mental wealth, the servant of our will and yet its rebel, 
 failing us when we most need it, torturing us when we 
 could wish the past drowned in the depths of the sea, — this 
 memory, I suppose, when we put off mortaHty, will flood 
 and overwhelm our spirits ; our life-course will suddenly 
 be all before us, and with each most trifling incident our 
 personal history will be found to have been indelibly 
 written on the walls of our own mind. 
 
 Conscience will wake, drugged no longer, partial no 
 longer. We can silence it now if we will, and make our 
 own code of laws for it, and be deaf to it when it displeases 
 us, or, what is worse still, coax or force it into a courtly 
 guest that never is so uncivil as to reproach us, or to say 
 us nay. When we see the Judge, all these deceits and 
 phantasms will be swept away in one tremendous moment ; 
 we shall see ourselves as we really are, and as God has 
 ever seen us ; but who may abide the day of His coming, 
 and who shall stand when He appeareth ? " 
 
 There is character. What we shall be then, will be 
 the moral and spiritual result of our entire conscious lives. 
 
THE OPENING OF THE BOOKS. 1 63 
 
 Just as the washing of a pebble on the shore, or the flight 
 of a condor on the Andes, or the hurricane that devastates 
 a forest, or even the soft sweet murmur of a turtle-dove in 
 spring, makes its mark and leaves its impression on the 
 entire material universe, so nothing that we do or say, or 
 think or wish, but leaves an impression of some kind on 
 our spiritual being. The loftiest saint and the foulest 
 sinner will each be the workmanship of his own actions. 
 As v,-e live we die; as we die we are judged. We shall 
 have either dug our grave or earned our crown. " He 
 that is unjust, let him be unjust still : and he which is 
 filthy, let him be filthy still : and he that is righteous, let 
 him be righteous still : and he that is hol}^, let him be 
 holy still. And behold, I come quickly ; and My reward 
 is with Me, to give every man according as his work 
 shall be." 
 
 Then there is privilege, which I suppose to be the idea 
 contained under the figure of the book of life. This book 
 is not, I take it, applicable to ancient pagandom or modern 
 heathendom, or to any of those who have lived and died 
 outside the opportunities of Christ. It refers specially to 
 those who have been outwardly admitted into the fellowship 
 of Christ's body ; to whom, with more or less fulness and 
 frequency and power, Christ has been presented as Saviour 
 and Lord ; about whom it will be possible and true for 
 Him to say, Ye would not come unto Me that ye might 
 have life." When the Lord says to the Church at Sardis, 
 " He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white 
 raiment ; and I will not blot his name out of the book 
 of life," we see a fact, not a hope : there is plain warning 
 of what must happen were the Church to deserve it, and- 
 no mere dramatic threat of something which could never 
 
164 THE OPENING OF THE BOOKS. 
 
 happen. It tells us of a book in which names are written, 
 for the Saviour yearned for their salvation ; and a book 
 out of which names can be blotted, for the only thing 
 that separates from the love of God is wilful and repeated 
 sin. 
 
 "And Moses returned unto the Lord, and said, Oh, 
 this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them 
 gods of gold. Yet now, if Thou wilt forgive their sin — ; 
 and if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book which 
 Thou hast written. And the Lord said unto Moses, Whoso- 
 ever hath sinned against Me, him will I blot out of My 
 book." 
 
 Once more, there is the book of the Divine Law and 
 Will, written and unwritten, from which there will be no 
 escape, which no one then will try to explain away, 
 or pretend it was not for him. " Heaven and earth shall 
 pass away, but My words shall not pass away ; " " He 
 that rejecteth Me, and receiveth not My words, hath One 
 that judgeth him : the word that I have spoken, the same 
 shall judge him in the last day." 
 
 IV. Then the end. Listen to the beloved apostle of love, 
 who leaned on Jesus' breast at supper — the disciple whom 
 Jesus loved. " They were judged every man according to 
 their works . . . and whosoever was not found written in the 
 book of life was cast into the lake of fire." My brethren, 
 the gospel has its terrible side as well as its pitiful. We read 
 of the love of Christ which passeth knowledge; we read 
 also, and in this very book, of the wrath of the Lamb. We 
 must not impoverish our holy faith of all its warnings, and 
 dwell only on its exceeding precious promises. Against 
 human accommodations and modern standards of divine 
 righteousness we must set the words of Scripture and the 
 
THE OPENING OF THE BOOKS. 
 
 165 
 
 severity of Christ. Retribution is inevitable, if sin is sinful, 
 and if character is permanent. Fire is a striking illustration 
 of the agony of self-reproach, and of the awful tyranny of 
 indulged evil. It is not for us to try to be wise beyond 
 what is written, or to peer with a perilous inquisitiveness 
 into the secrets of that future discipline which, for wise 
 purposes of His own, the Judge of all the earth has not 
 made plain to man. This we are sure of, " Now is the 
 accepted time, now is the day of salvation ; " and how shall 
 we escape if we neglect it ? Can there be a second cross 
 in the life to come, with another Saviour on whom to cast 
 the burden of unrepented sins ? 
 
 To conclude : i. In the last judgment we shall all stand 
 together before the Judge. j\Iy brethren, do we sufficiently 
 understand that severally and separately we are all standing 
 before Him now? We are always standing before Him, 
 and by the self-acting, inevitable process of His pene- 
 trating righteousness He is always judging us. It has 
 been strikingly observed that in all departments of life 
 we are brought face to face with ideal standards, which 
 are just so many tribunals before which even now we live 
 and are judged. The child stands before his parents, the 
 poet before nature, the preacher before the Word of God, 
 the legislator before justice. Our final and aggregate judg- 
 ment is accumulating moment by moment before God, 
 though unspoken and secret. The verdict will be declared 
 when the Judge comes in His glory, but it is being earned 
 now. How this thought should solemnize life while it 
 dignifies it, steady it while it matures it for the final 
 reward, compensate it for unjust censures and withheld 
 commendation, enrich it with the hope of glory in the 
 presence of the King ! 
 
1 66 THE OPENING OF THE BOOKS. 
 
 2. For, in a very real sense, while human judgment must 
 be imperfect, and shallow, and one-sided, and tainted with 
 prejudice, and too often on the severe side, it is never- 
 theless inevitable, being the simple process of the sense of 
 right and wrong within us. Not to exercise it might mean 
 levity, and indifference to evil. The same apostle who has 
 said, " Judge nothing before the time until the Lord come," 
 has also said, " He that is spiritual judge th all things." We 
 are to mature our judgments, though not always to express 
 them ; we ought to judge acts, we must not judge motives. 
 We never see more than part of a subject, and we should 
 be slow to condemn, unless all the facts are before us. 
 Charity should mellow us; the consciousness of our own 
 infirmities should make us humble and tender with our 
 brethren. Nevertheless, human opinion, rash and hasty 
 as it may sometimes be, is a real bulwark and protection 
 to human society. On the whole, its verdicts are right, 
 though severe ; each in turn suffers from them, but the 
 community is saved. 
 
 Once more, St. John tells us at the beginning of the 
 Apocalypse, Every eye shall see Him, and they also 
 which pierced Him, and all kindreds of the earth shall 
 wail because of Him." My brethren, you who know Him 
 and love Him, have you ever seriously asked yourselves, 
 when first you behold Him, what your feeling will be? St. 
 John, we know, fell at His feet as dead. When the vision 
 of that awful holiness and majestic beauty first strikes on 
 the soul, it will be a strange mingling of agony and 
 rapture ; agony that we should have thought so lightly of 
 Him and so grievously have sinned against His wonderful 
 love, rapture that we possess Him at last. We cannot 
 possibly imagine what it will be to be face to face for the 
 
THE OPENING OF THE BOOKS. 
 
 167 
 
 first time in the body with the visible incarnate righteous- 
 ness of God. We shall not wish to flee from it ; in a sense 
 we shall welcome it. It may be only for a moment, but in 
 that tremendous moment we shall seem to live many lives. 
 Now we have such shallow thoughts of sin, and such feeble 
 longings after holiness. Our sacrifices are so few, and our 
 devotion so cold. But when we see Him as He is, and by 
 seeing Him are transformed into the glory of His likeness, 
 the pain of the resurrection-birth, though quick, may be a 
 keen anguish.^ 
 
 Lastly, there will be no terror, only unspeakable rever- 
 ence. We shall not fear, for "perfect love casteth out fear;" 
 and this same apostle tells us "that we may have boldness" 
 — or freedom of speech — " in the day of judgment : because 
 as He is, so are we in this world." By freedom of speech 
 is meant, I conceive, the song of Moses and of the 
 Lamb, and as in woeful contrast with the dumbness and 
 speechlessness of those who have already condemned 
 themselves, and listened to what is but the approved 
 verdict of their own consciences. They will then have 
 no excuses to make for having neglected the King's 
 invitation : no wedding garment will again be offered for 
 the marriage supper of the Lamb. Isaiah says, " He will 
 swallow up death in victory, and the Lord God will wipe 
 away tears from off all faces, .... And it shall be 
 said in that day, Lo, this is our God ; we have waited 
 for Him, and He will save us : this is the Lord ; we 
 have waited for Him_, we vv'ill be glad and rejoice in His 
 salvation." 
 
 You are now living on earth. Are you living to God or 
 
 ^ This thought will be found much more strikingly expressed in the 
 " Dream of Gerontius." 
 
l68 THE OPENING OF THE BOOKS. 
 
 to self? Do you feel that Christ has any claim on you? 
 Are you in any real sense, inadequate and insignificant as 
 it may be, striving to live for His glory ? Will you have 
 anything to show Him that you have done for Him, any 
 usury for the gifts and opportunities you enjoy ? 
 
 Some day you will die; but no one knows, save God, 
 how, and when, and where. Are you fit to die ? To the 
 Christian it is merely putting off a garment, and going into 
 another room, and leaving friends here for friends elsewhere 
 — a journey from which you will not return, but to a Father's 
 house with many mansions. Have you cast your sins on 
 your Saviour ? Have you surrendered to Him your life ? 
 Can you say, " I know whom I have believed," and that 
 Though I pass through the valley of the shadow of death. 
 Thou art with me " ? Are you in any real sense using your 
 gifts, your opportunities, your leisure, your reason, for His 
 glory? 
 
 You will be judged. Will the Judge claim you as His 
 possession, welcome you as His disciple, crown you as 
 His servant, invite you into His joy? or will He say, "I 
 know you not, depart from Me " ? 
 
 ''And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before 
 God ; and the books were opened." 
 
THE VISION OF GOD. 
 
"The brightest crown of action is good done for wliich there is no 
 reward." 
 
THE VISION OF GOD. 
 
 Preached in Rochester Cathedral^ December 3, 1890. 
 
 "And they shall see His face; and His Name "shall be in their 
 foreheads." — Rev. xxii. 4. 
 
 Scholars differ, as often elsewhere they differ, about the 
 time of this seeing of God. Is it the final reward of the 
 beatific vision, when the purged eyes shall see the King 
 in his beauty, and, like Bartimaeus of old, look up at that 
 ineffable and solemn and tender face with wonder and 
 self-abasement; or is it that insight and contemplation of 
 faith, whereby the eye of the regenerate spirit, " beholding 
 as in a glass the glory of the Lord, is changed into the 
 same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of 
 the Lord"? 
 
 In truth it is both, and if there are not both, there will 
 be neither. AVe must see Him here, or we shall never see 
 Him after death, save as they shall see Him who will wail 
 because of Him. Heaven, which is the vision of God, 
 must begin in us now if it is to be fulfilled to us hereafter ; 
 the heavenly places mean the invisible presence of the in- 
 visible God. 
 
 The text — promise, shall I not call it? — contains two 
 chief ideas : the vision and the result. 
 
i;2 
 
 THE VISION OF GOD. 
 
 I. The vision. "They shall see His face."' 
 Advent— the Second Advent, that is — implies three 
 separated, though connected epochs : the anticipation ; 
 the judgment ; the glory. For each of these there is a 
 special vision of God, exceptionally, though not exclusively, 
 belonging to it. And while each of the three in measure 
 and degree is more or less appreciated and recognized by 
 the devout spirit, the time of judgment has a wider and 
 deeper comprehension than the time of waiting ; and all 
 three unite and culminate in the last. 
 
 To see God, is not to behold Him with the organs of 
 sense. In this meaning, "No man hath seen God at any 
 time " — ever can, ever will see Him. It is to apprehend 
 Him in His purpose and attributes and character. In 
 other words, to observe His order, and accept His righteous- 
 ness, and know His love. What we, who are between the 
 Accents, have to do, is continually and reverently, and 
 even tliankfuUy, to cultivate the sense of a divine superin- 
 tending will ; to live moment by moment in the awful but 
 sustaining presence of the moral Governor of the world ; 
 and ever to be sure, even though clouds and darkness are 
 round about Him, justice and judgment are the habitation 
 of His seat. We all deeply need in this time of ours — 
 Christian men especially, if they would shine as lights in 
 the world — to appreciate and cultivate and pass on the 
 deep and imperturbable conviction that we are not help- 
 lessly drifting in the abyss of a moral chaos, but that this 
 wonderful, beautiful, sorrowful, perplexing world is being 
 ruled by no iron hand, by no stolid fate, by no arbitrary 
 tyrant, by no unstable caprice, but by a Father, who, 
 while He does not now choose to give account of any of 
 His matters to those who must learn to trust before they 
 
THE VISION OF GOD. 
 
 1/3 
 
 can understand, will give account of them presently, will 
 justify Himself before the universe as wise and just and 
 good. Let us confess it is not always easy to trace this 
 order, or to comprehend it. Gordon dies — perhaps does 
 more for us by dying than by living ; but the question 
 comes. Why was he let die ? Are there so many of such 
 that the world can easily spare them ? The waste places 
 of humanity, not only in Africa but in England, reek with 
 seeds of moral pestilence. The nation's conscience is 
 stirred for a moment, and then slumbers again. It takes 
 a woefully long time not only to discover the remedies, but 
 to apply them. When the healing comes, we so of'ten hear 
 the paralyzing message, " Thy daughter is dead ; why 
 troublest thou the Master?" ''Too late" burns itself in 
 letters of fire on the soul. From the tempter and the op- 
 pressor, hundreds of victims and mourners pass daily to 
 where the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary 
 are at rest We can only look up above the silent stars, 
 and penetrate with an eager and invisible faith to the throne 
 of Him who bides His time now, as in the days of His 
 flesh ; who, if He seems asleep on a pillow while His 
 Church is tossed in the storm, is ready to be aroused by 
 her even impatient devotion ; who sitteth above the 
 waterfloods a King for ever : who bids us wait and trust, 
 for He is at the door. 
 
 In judgment we shall see His righteousness ; and do we 
 know what that means, and are we likely to be able to bear 
 it ? As said the prophet of old, Who may abide the day 
 of His coming ? and who shall stand when He appeareth ? 
 for He is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soip.'' But 
 in judgment we shall come face to face with a spotless 
 purity such as no fuller on earth could whiten : with an 
 
174 
 
 THE VISION OF GOD. 
 
 ineffable holiness before which the very heavens are not 
 dean ; with a justice which in infallible balances will 
 weigh the merits and demerits of each human soul ; with 
 a love which, while it passeth knowledge, will help us, 
 maybe to our despair, to discover what love means. Think 
 what the revelation will be when it first bursts upon us in 
 that tremendous moment ; what the contrast between His 
 perfection and our shortcomings, in a gulf that will seem 
 to sever the Saviour even from the saved. 
 
 When He comes to judge, seeing Him will make us see 
 ourselves, admiring Him will make us loathe ourselves, 
 adoring Him will make us abase ourselves ; and yet, if we 
 have on this side of death cast ourselves on Him that He 
 may save us, yielded ourselves to Him that He may use us, 
 contemplated Him and fed on Him in His ordinances that 
 He may sanctify us, and committed ourselves to Him that 
 He may keep us safe in His everlasting arms, there will be 
 no baseness and no remorse in our wonder, and even anguish ; 
 His righteousness will not crush us, for it will be ours as 
 well as His. " Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it 
 doth not yet appear what we shall be : but we know that, 
 when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall 
 see Him as He is." In glory, to which we go when the 
 judgment is over, to reign for ever and ever, we shall see 
 His love as no one can see it now. There will be the love 
 of His providence : " How that the Lord thy God bare 
 thee, as a man doth bear his son, in all the way that 
 ye went, until ye came into this place ; . . . who went in 
 the way before you, to search you out a place to pitch 
 your tents in, in fire by night, to show you by what way 
 ye should go, and in a cloud by day." The providence 
 which disappointed us in what was hurtful, only to give 
 
THE VISION OF GOD. 
 
 us greater blessing in the end; the providence that 
 suffered us to go on for a while in the way of our own 
 wilfulness, until we had more than enough of it, and crept 
 back like tired and truant children into a kind mother's 
 arms ; the providence that chastened us for our profit, that 
 we might be partakers of His holiness ; the providence 
 that prepared us for our duties before we were summoned 
 to them, and that purged us of pride and earthliness, to 
 make the blessing safe with which He longed to stir our 
 joy; the providence which pitied the helplessness of our 
 childhood, bore with the petulance of our youth, satisfied 
 the necessities of our manhood, dignified and blessed our 
 ripening years. We shall see it all and understand it all 
 then ; the Master's word will be verified to the full : 
 " What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know 
 hereafter." The psalmist's experiences will be that of 
 each single soul in the great multitude that no man can 
 number : Oh, what great troubles and adversities hast 
 thou shown me ! Yet didst thou turn again and refresh 
 me; yea, and broughtest me from the deep of the eartli 
 again." 
 
 But if the love of His providence will seem wonderful, 
 how much more wonderful will be the love of His redemp- 
 tion ! For then we shall see the sinfulness of sin as we 
 never saw it before ; then we shall see the majesty of the 
 Eternal Godhead as we never comprehended it before ; then 
 we shall see the meaning of salvation as we could not see it 
 till it was ours, all ours — ours in body and soul in the resur- 
 rection-glory ; then we shall see to what depth of shame, 
 and loneliness, and disappointment, and agony the Redeemer 
 stooped, when He took flesh that He might be *'the Saviour 
 of the world." Unto Him that loved us, and washed us 
 
i;6 
 
 THE VISION OF GOD. 
 
 from our sins in His own blood," will be the anthem new 
 every morning and fresh every night. The more we grow 
 in the image of God, and are in sympathy with the purpose 
 of God, and are jealous for the glory of God, and are 
 instructed in the perfection of God, the more amazed shall 
 we be that creatures so vile as we could deserve His pity ; 
 the more will the apostle's judgment justify itself to us : 
 " God commendeth His love to us, in that, while we were 
 yet sinners, Christ died for us." 
 
 II. Such is the vision. What is the result ? " His Name 
 shall be in their foreheads." His Name means Himself. 
 To paraphrase it in the most direct and simple way, " God 
 shall be seen in their very face." This, too, has its inchoate 
 and partial accomplishment now. In the apostles' time, 
 men took knowledge of them that they had been with 
 Jesus. And as they were stoning Stephen, one who heard 
 and wrote of it said of him that his face was as the face 
 of an angel ; and there are those now — we all know them, 
 though there are not too many of them — who by the bright- 
 ness in their eye, and the purity in their face, and the 
 calmness of their brow, and the gentle dignity of their 
 manner — though not only by these — make us feel and know 
 that they breathe the air, and wear the dress, and speak 
 the language, and frequent the court of the King of 
 kings ; and who by their words, and deeds, and motives, 
 and principles, and sacrifices, and devotion, make the 
 discipleship of Christ a real and beautiful confession, and 
 the personality of Christ one of the vital forces of the 
 world. 
 
 Hereafter it will be more so than ever ; yet initially, in 
 exact proportion to its sweetness and potency here. Each 
 saint in glory will have his new name, and everybody will 
 
THE VISION OF GOD. 
 
 177 
 
 know it and call him by it. It will be God's Name and yet 
 liis own ; no one else will have it but he, and it will 
 become his through what he has learnt, and used, and 
 suffered, and done for the Lord on earth. As the founda- 
 tions of the wall of the city will be garnished with all 
 manner of precious stones, each saint in that glorified 
 throng will be a separate gem, expressive of its own dis- 
 tinct individuality in gifts, in capacities, in experience, 
 in holiness. Each, like St. Paul even in his mortal body, 
 will bear on him the marks of the Lord Jesus. Each will 
 have his own crown, and his own robe, and his own throne, 
 and his own service. But the colours of each gem will be 
 radiant with the glory of God most high, and in each of 
 His precious jewels will sparkle and flash the beauty of 
 Him who had for it His own ideal from the foundation 
 of the world ; who Himself washed it from its daily stains 
 in His own most precious blood, as the condition of its 
 unity with Him, and as the method of its growing edifica- 
 tion unto Him ; and thereby will see of the travail of His 
 soul and be satisfied in each one of His elect, as they walk 
 in Avhite at His side. 
 
 May I press on you some last thoughts which seem 
 unspeakably precious for you, and in the truth of which 
 I myself strive to live, and humbly hope to die ? 
 
 I. Long, strive, pray, to see more and more of God, as 
 your Life, and Hope, and Rest, and exceeding Joy. He is 
 to be seen, be sure of that, but only and always in Christ ; 
 not at a moment's notice, nor by repeating a collect or 
 two, nor by a cheap service. But He can be seen — really 
 felt and seen by the eye of the spirit, just in proportion as 
 we hate and resist and overcome sin. Nothing blinds the 
 spiritual power of seeing like sin — sin of any kind, whether 
 
 N— 15 
 
178 
 
 THE VISION OF GOD. 
 
 of the tlesh or the spirit. See that you hate the thing 
 that is evil. Be very stern with it in yourselves. Be 
 pitiful and gentle, but uncompromising with it in others. 
 " Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see God " 
 — yes, see God now. There is no blessedness, no dignity, 
 no peace, in the world that comes up to his who can 
 say, " I have seen God, and He has come to live in my 
 heart." 
 
 2. Again, you must not expect always to see Him with 
 the same precision and distinctness and power. The sun 
 does not shine in November as it shines in July ; and, besides, 
 there is always night for many hours all the year round. 
 But He can see you ; and when He sees you need it. He 
 will show Himself to you as you really desire it. He will 
 say, Mary ! " you will say, My Lord and my God ! " In 
 a real sense it is necessary to deserve these revelations of 
 God ; and they are usually, though sparingly, given as helps 
 and solaces for duty or suffering. We need not make too 
 much of them, but we must not make too little of them. 
 The recollection of them, when they are over, as with the 
 disciples going to Emmaus, helps us to wait till they 
 return. 
 
 3. I spoke just now of deserving these beatific glimpses 
 of the face of God ; and I meant it. But we deserve them 
 only by showing our desire for them, and by qualifying our- 
 selves to use them when they come. The two conditions of 
 deserving them are sacrifice and devotion. Sacrifice means 
 capacity for God. For it springs from love ; and " he that 
 loveth dwelleth in God, and God in him." Each soul has 
 to take counsel with itself what God is worth at its hands ; 
 and what God seems worth, that the soul will give Him. 
 God cannot show Himself at all to the blinded soul, and 
 
THE VISION OF GOD. 
 
 1/9 
 
 to the half-opened soul He can only show Himself a 
 little. But when love unlocks the heart, God is seen as He 
 is, so far as mortal eye can see Him, and the soul is filled 
 with His glory. There is another way — that of devotion — 
 devotion, which includes the constant study of His Word. 
 It was as the disciples walked together the first Easter 
 evening, conversing of Him, and their hearts full of Him, 
 that Jesus joined Himself to them, and walked at their side, 
 and listened to them when they said, "Abide with us," and 
 went in to tarry with them. To be in constant fellowship 
 with God, in the conscientious discharge of duty, in the 
 practice of gentle charity and truth man with man, in the 
 simplicity of spiritual worship, and in the aiming after even 
 greater holiness, is the one and the only and the victorious 
 secret of living in the presence of God. 
 
 ]\Iy brethren, in a little while all that now shuts out 
 the actual face of Jesus will have disappeared. This 
 garment of flesh will have disappeared into the grave. 
 These bodily senses, essential to our present condition, 
 will be transformed and transfigured in the resurrection- 
 glory. We shall see Him face to face, about whom now 
 we feebly stammer, like infants learning an alphabet : and 
 my last question to you is — When He comes, and you see 
 Him at last, and He asks you what you have learnt of 
 Him, and done or suffered for Him, what shall you have 
 to say ? Will He be able to welcome you and to crown 
 you; or must He send you into the darkness, with His 
 holy, tender face sadly turned away ? 
 
 When that day comes — it is coming, and it may be very 
 near — may we be all found together, with His Name on 
 our foreheads and His praises on our lips, thankful as 
 those who on earth have gone to the house of God together ; 
 
i8o 
 
 THE VISION OF GOD. 
 
 to meet again for ever in that blessed city, where there is 
 no temple, ''for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb 
 are the Temple of it j " and which hath no need of the sun 
 or of the moon to lighten it, "for the glory of God will 
 lighten it, and the Lamb is the Light thereof." 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Questions of Faith and Duty. Fourth Thousand. 
 Crown 8vo, 5^'. Isbister. 
 
 The Yoke of Christ. Twelfth Thousand. Crown 8vo, 
 5jr. Isbister. 
 
 The Gospel of Christ. Sixth Thousand. Crown 8vo, 
 4-N\ dd. Isbister. 
 
 The Claim of Christ on the Young. Third Thousand. 
 Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. Isbister. 
 
 The Presence of Christ, Nineteenth Thousand. Crown 
 8vo, 3^. 6d. Isbister. 
 
 On the Loss of Friends. Sewed, 3^. 
 
 On Being III. Sewed, 3^. 
 
 I.OXDOX : PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.