BV 4800 .T74 1914 Trevelyan, W. B. b. 1853, Apples of gold ^O /ir^ a Hpples of (3olb " A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in baskets of silver." — Prov. xxv. ii. Bpplee of (3oIb MAR 26 191 COMPILED AND ARRANGED BY THE REvX6^>/, W. B. TREVELYAN, M.A. ^ ^ WARDEN OF LIDDON HOUSE WITH INTRODUCTION BY THE VERY REV. H. C. BEECHING, D.D. DEAN OF NORWICH NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY " Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honourable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." — Phil. iv. 8. Compilei's preface SO many books of extracts already exist that some apology is needed for a new one. This is intended specially for the use of those who, whether through sickness, trouble, or any other cause, have more time than usual for reading and thinking, and who need some guidance. It is significant that the Latin word " Confortare " — from which is derived our English word " Comfort " — ^means " to streng- then," and the Compiler believes that what is needed is not anything merely emotional, or even simply devotional, but rather something strengthening. He would justify this line by referring to the words of St. Paul in Philippians iv. 8. Thus the passages selected are intended to suggest thoughts, lay foundations, and build up character, rather than to afford passing con- solation. It is hoped that those who use the book will be led on to further study of some at least vi COMPILER'S PREFACE of the books quoted. The choice is wide enough to meet the needs of a great variety of minds, and, if used thoughtfully, ought to create a desire for closer acquaintance with these and other works of the same writers. The Compiler gratefully acknowledges the permission accorded by the following authors and owners for the use of copyright quotations : The Archbishop of York ; the Bishop of Bloemfontein ; the Bishop of Winchester ; Mr. Warre Cornish ; Mr. Henry Newbolt ; Mrs. Coventry Patmore ; Mr. Harold Spender ; the Ruskin Executors ; Messrs. George Allen & Sons ; George Bell & Sons ; Burns & Gates ; Chapman & Hall ; Chatto & Windus ; the Clarendon Press ; Constable & Co. ; J. M. Dent & Sons ; Bertram Dobell ; Duckworth & Co. ; Hodder & Stoughton ; Kegan Paul & Co. ; Longmans, Green & Co. ; Macmillan & Co. ; Elkin Mathews ; Methuen & Co. ; Mowbray & Co. ; John Murray ; Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons ; Rivington ; Walter Scott, Ltd. ; Charles Scribner's Sons ; Skefhngton & Son ; Smith, Elder & Co. The Compiler also wishes to acknowledge the help given to him by Mrs. F. W. Herbert, without whose assistance the work could not have been carried out. Every care has been taken to ascertain the ownership of copyrights. Should any such have been printed without permission the Compiler sincerely hopes the error may be forgiven. 3ntrobuction THIS book of readings, which I have been privileged to read over in proof, differs from any other that I know, partly in its main purpose, which is to quicken the spirit of devo- tion by an appeal to the intelligence, and partly in the fact that its author has thrown his net wider than usual, and has found his material in essays and other secular writings as well as in the treatises of orthodox divines. Moreover, though a few pieces are taken from older writers, the greater number are from those of our own day, who know the spiritual sickness of the time and are best able to minister to it. I remember Jowett once saying, in deprecation of what seemed to him the excessive praise of a popular preacher, " But what we want in a ser- mon is facts.'^^ He meant, of course, not facts of history, but facts about the spiritual life ; about man's being and character, and the being and viii INTRODUCTION character of God. And that surely is what men do want. What we ask from our teachers, when we are awake to the need of teaching at all, is the clear exposition of some divine truth, which, by virtue of their individual thought or experience, they have apprehended with special vividness. To have brought together so many passages illustrating with such variety the truths most helpful to those whose minds in time of trouble are asking for more light, is an achievement for which many beside myself will be grateful to the spiritual insight and wide sympathy of the Compiler. H. C. BEECHING. THE DEANERY, NORWICH. Contente l^art 31. Solitude ....... Loneliness and the Blessings of Solitude Quiet Separation from the World . Leisure ..... Uses and Interpretation of Suffering Pain a Blessing .... Acceptance of Suffering The Cross interpreting Life Purification Life-long . The Outcome of Sacrifice Triumph ..... Fruitfulness .... PAGE 3 4 9 12 H I? i8 22 28 31 34 34 43 3n XTime of Stcl^ness^ Penitence ........ 53 Conversion ........ 54 Self-knowledge 6l Contrition ........ 64 Confession . ....... 74 Amendment . . . . . . .84 ix X CONTENTS PAGE Faith 92 Its Nature 95 A Gift of God . 102 An Adventure . 107 Through Experience , 114 A Good Life Necessary 120 Obedience 122 The Obedience of Christ 123 (Passive) Resignation . 126 (Active) Fortitude 132 Part m% ffrutts ot Sutfettng. Sympathy ....... As revealed in Christ and manifested to All Men The Beam and the Mote . Inspiring Power of Sympathy Gift of Self Necessary Courage ...... A Gift of God : approved by Him Christ's Courage : Our Need of it Endurance ..... Heroism innate in Men The Unconquerable Nature of Courage 141 142 144 147 150 152 153 154 156 156 159 CONTENTS xi PAGE Hope 162 In Nature and in Christ .... . 163 The Grace of Hope . 164 The Strength of Optimism .... . 167 The Never-failing Character of Hope . . 169 Joy 172 A Distinctly Christian Attribute . 173 Its Influence 175 Joy is necessarily mixed with some sadness in thi s life, but this is quite distinct from Accidie 177 The Joy of Jesus Christ : Reflected in Nature 179 Joy must be sought, not waited for, and recognized everywhere . ..... 181 Work 184 The Possibilities of the Common Life . 185 Pledged to Service ..... 190 The Nobility of Work .... . 193 Redeeming the Time 196 tTrouble SoUtu&e— mses an& interpretation of Suttertng— Ube ©utcome of Sacrifice A.G. Solitube. n^HE Spirit lifted me tip, and took me away : and I went in bitterness, in the heat of my spirit, and the hand of the Lord was strong upon me. Ezek. iii. 14. Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands he strong, in the days that I shall deal with thee ? I the Lord have spoken it, and will do it. Ezek. xxii. 14. Let us go . . . three days' journey into the wilderness, that we muy sacrifice to the Lord our God. Exod. iii. ig. I have trodden the winepress alone, and of the peoples there was no man with Me. Isa. Ixiii. 3. And after He had sent the multitudes away. He went up into the mountain apart to pray : and when even was come He was there alone. S. Matt. xiv. 23. The Temptation. S. Matt. iv. i-ii. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world I S. John ii, 15. Lord Jesus, we beseech Thee by the lonehness of Thy suffering on the Cross, be nigh unto all them that are desolate in pain or sorrow ; and let the magic of Thy presence transform their loneliness into com- fort, consolation, and holy fellowship with Thee, Lord Jesus, Thou pitiful Saviour. — Sursum Cor da. Grant us, O Lord, not to mind earthly things, but to love things heavenly ; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to cleave to those that shall abide : through Jesus Christ our Lord. — Leonine Sacr anient ary. 3 4 TROUBLE XoneUne00 an& tbe ffileaaing^ of SoUtube* A great space in the Ideal Life was given to solitude. ... " After He had sent the multi- tudes away, He went up into the mountain apart to pray, and when even was come, He was there alone." It was His way of realizing His undis- turbed Communion with the Father. His chosen rest was the solitude in which He retreated from the bustle of the world to the refreshing calm of the eternal. He was the Image of God, in which we too are made ; and if we are to realize our true life, of which His was the model, we must learn to be alone. It is in solitude that we discover the secret of detachment, and realize that supreme relation- ship which is the fount at once of greatness and peace — the relationship of the individual soul and God. . . . Solitude is necessary for com- munion with God. It is in silence that the final truths assert and reveal themselves. ... It is through the intuitions of silence — the deep soul- convictions which escape words and cannot brook the atmosphere of the crowd and its chatter — that we reach God. " Be stilly and know that I am God." Archbishop Lang. SOLITUDE 5 As Christ was led into the wilderness that He might triumph over the very spirit of selfishness, so let any loneliness of place or spirit kill in us the soul of selfishness ; and, in it, of any sullen separa- tion from those around us. So, as we draw nearer to Him, we shall draw nearer to our brethren, our hearts will open to them with a true sym- pathy ; and for His sake, the holy world above us will come down to us ; we too shall meet the hosts of God upon our way ; and even in the wilderness of this life, amongst its wild beasts and evil spirits, from us shall not be withheld the unseen, but most real ministry of God's holy angels. Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. No man doth safely appear abroad, but he who can abide at home. No man doth safely speak, but he that is glad to hold his peace. No man doth safely rule, but he that is glad to be ruled. No man doth safely rule, but he that hath learned gladly to obey. Whoso therefore withdraweth himself from his acquaint- ance and friends, God will draw near unto him with His holy angels. 6 TROUBLE Shut the door upon thee, and call unto thee Jesus, thy Beloved. Stay with Him in thy closet : for thou shalt not find so great peace anywhere else. Imitation of Christy Book I, xx. Farewell, my Loneliness ! I that had thought to curse thee, come to bless. Deep skies and glovv^ing stars in thee I found. A stream ran through the sandy wilderness And roses blossomed on the desert ground. Beloved Solitude ! No voices over-eager, harsh or rude, Mar the sweet music of thy gracious hours. Among the crowd of those too near and dear Too often have I known disgust and fear. The isolation of those glorious powers That in self knowledge are, not, not ourselves, but ours. Mary E. Coleridge. The severest of all the limitations of Jesus lay in the isolation of His life, both actual and spiritual. It is recorded that He was homeless, but the absence of a dwelling-place — sufficient privation in itself — ^was a symbol of an intellec- tual, moral, and spiritual homelessness such as, in its last rigours, passes our comprehension. No man has ever been so lonely as was Jesus. None has ever experienced so entire a disappoint- SOLITUDE 7 ment of the social instinct. ... It is true that He had the attachment of His disciples, but these men were inaccessible to the ideas and motives which formed His constant theme. . . . With infinite patience He strove to make them par- takers of what was the inspiration of His own life, but to the close they misunderstood Him. . . . However deeply personal misunderstanding wounded Him, there is no trace of scar in the Man as we behold Him ; it was when *' the King- dom " was misunderstood, when the spiritual was exploited in interests political or legal, when human life was cheapened, when the Magdalen's gift or the publican's hospitality was miscon- strued, it was then that the wound was inflicted, that the isolation became anguish. This is something so altogether beyond the experience of ordinary life that many men and women must live and die without so much as a glimpse of the lonely regions Jesus trod. T. J. Hardy. God calls and guides the soul to inward Soli- tude, and mystical Silence, when He says that He will speak to her alone, in the most secret and hidden part of the heart. Thou must enter into this mystical Silence, if thou wouldest hear the sweet and Divine Voice. It is not enough, in 8 TROUBLE order to gain this Treasure, to forsake the World, nor to renounce thine own Desires, and all things created, if thou wean not thyself also from all Desires and Thoughts. Rest in this mystical Silence, and open the Door, that so God may communicate Himself unto thee, unite Himself with thee, and transform thee into Himself. Michael de Molinos. To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, To slowly trace the forest's shady scene, Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been ; To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, With the wild flock that never needs a fold ; Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean ; This is not solitude ; 'tis but to hold Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unroll'd. But 'midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men, To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess. And roam along, the world's tired denizen, With none who bless us, none whom we can bless ; Minions of splendour, shrinking from distress ! None that, with kindred consciousness endued. If we were not, would seem to smile the less. Of all that flatter'd, followed, sought, and sued ; This is to be alone ; this, this is solitude. Byron. SOLITUDE 9 Unthinking heads which have not learnt to be alone are a prison to themselves if they be not with others ; whereas, on the contrary, those whose thoughts are a fair and a hurry within, are sometimes fain to retire into company to be out of the crowd of themselves. Sir Thomas Browne. ®uiet It seems to be a law of the imagination that it only works in a mind of stillness. The noise and crush of life jar it. Walter Bagehot. It is in thy power, whenever thou shalt choose, to retire into thyself. For nowhere with more quiet or with more freedom from trouble does a man retire, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquillity. Marcus Aurelius. An old man leaning on a gate, Over a London mews — to contemplate — Is it the sky above — the stones below ? Is it remembrance of the years gone by, Or thinking forward to futurity. That holds him so ? 10 TROUBLE Day after day he stands, Quietly folded are the quiet hands, Rarely he speaks. Hath he so near the hour when Time shall end. So much to spend ? What is it he seeks ? Whate'er he be. He is become to me A form of rest. I think his heart is tranquil, from it springs A dreamy watchfulness of tranquil things. And not unblest. Mary E. Coleridge. In times of quietness the heart unfolds itself before God. H thou wouldst grow in grace, enter into thy closet, and shut thy door upon the world, — upon that world which gets the closest to thee, and haunts thee so familiarly. Shut it, most of all, upon thy busy, unresting self : and then God shall speak to thee. It may be He will commune with thee as He has never done before, and reveal unto thee the secret of His presence. . . . And this truly is to know Him ; not as an abstraction, but as One who careth for us. Who is nigh to us, to Whom we may draw nigh ; and ?s such, to pour out our hearts before Him ; to be silent in His presence ; to be drawn SOLITUDE II out of self ; out of earthliness, and the noise, and the dimness of self worship, and to " hold our- selves still in Him." Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. There was an indescribable repose about Lord Clarendon's manner and appearance. No one who saw him, in his later years at least, would have ever thought him a specially active man. . . . But those who have watched the habits of men of business, in politics and out of it, will have seen many cases in which a still and quiet man, who does not seem to be doing much, and probably is talking of something quite different, has in matter of fact, and at the week's end, accomplished much more than the " rushing mighty wind," — the very energetic man who is never idle or at rest, and who has no thought but his office business. Walter Bagehot. All heaven and earth are still — ^though not in sleep. But breathless, as we grow when feeling most ; And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep : — All heaven and earth are still : From the high host Of stars, to the lull'd lake and mountain coast. All is concenter'd in a life intense. Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost, But hath a part of being, and a sense Of that which is of all Creator and defence. 12 TROUBLE Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt In solitude, where we are least alone ; A truth, which through our being then doth melt And purifies from self : it is a tone, The soul and source of music, which makes known Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm. Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone. Binding all things with beauty ; — 'twould disarm The spectre Death, had he substantial power to harm. Byron. Separation from tbe Morl&^ From the Last Supper and the incidents which accompanied it, discipleship to the Lord received its permanent consecration ; and from the words which were then spoken till the depar- ture into the garden, its articulate interpretation. In the upper room in the midst of the crowded city the disciples were assembled together alone with the Lord, that they might learn how to find their way in the outer throng. They were lifted for a season on high apart from enemies, and neutrals, and even other disciples, that when they resumed their place among their fellows they might not be dragged down by the world which they were appointed to raise up. F. J. A. HoRT. SOLITUDE 13 Like Him, the disciples should go forth into the world to overcome it for its own sake : like His, their mastery over the world for good would depend on their inner separation from it, trans- cending the outer commingling : without a secret hallowing like His, they would be powerless to strive, a few against many. Ibid. The Christian has a deep, silent, hidden peace, which the world sees not — like some well in a retired and shady place, difficult of access. He is the greater part of his time by himself, and when he is in solitude, that is his real state. What he is when left to himself and to his God, that is his true life. He can bear himself ; he can (as it w^ere) joy in himself, for it is the grace of God within him, it is the presence of the eternal Comforter, in which he joys. He can bear, he finds it pleasant, to be with himself at all times — " Never less alone than when alone." He can lay his head on his pillow at night, and own in God's sight, with overflowing heart, that he wants nothing, — that he " is full and abounds " — that God has been all things to him, and that nothing is not his which God could give him. Many hard things may be said of the Christian, 14 TROUBLE and may be done against him, but he has a secret preservative or charm, and minds them not. J. H. Newman. The world is too much with us ; late and soon. Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers : Little we see in Nature that is ours ; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! The sea that bares her bosom to the moon : The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers ; For this, for everything, we are out of tune ; It moves us not. W. Wordsworth. The great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the serenity of solitude. Emerson. ILeieure. There are spaces day by day in almost every life v^hen the attention is not demanded for any definite object ; when we are, or may be, free to think of what we will. They are the times in which some people are simply listless, and hardly conscious of thinking at all ; some build castles in the air ; some think of their ambition ; . . . some of their anxieties ; some of their grievances ; SOLITUDE 15 some of their dislikes ; some, happily, of their hobbies; some, very unhappily, of their health. . . . It is this " no man's land," this unclaimed, fallow ground, that St. Paul would have rescued from its uselessness or misuse ; and he points us to the right and wholesome use for it : " What- soever things are true, whatsover things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." Francis Paget. There is nothing in this world much more worth gaining than the happiness of a mind that tends to dwell on pure and generous thoughts. . . . And all experience would teach us to regret that every year, if we are not careful, it will grow harder to change the habitual bearing, the in- grained likes and dislikes which give tone and direction to our leisure thoughts ; we might win now, perhaps, with a little firmness of self-disci- pline, that which some few years hence we may have to fight for inch by inch, and may hold only with constant effort and distress. And cer- tainly these (right) mental ways and habits will make the gladness of whatever leisure and loneli- i6 TROUBLE ness and silence may come in the years of life that may be still before us. . . . It is in pure and bright and kindly lives that the grace of God most surely takes root down- ward, and bears fruit upward ; that the presence of our Lord unfolds the fulness of its power, and achieves its miracles of transforming love. He works unstayed, untroubled, in the soul that has been trained to think in all its leisure times of true and high and gentle thoughts. Ibid. Business is like brown paper, useful to wrap things up in, but a great many people think the wrapping the important thing. The longer I live, the more certain I am that a great deal of what is called business might as well be left undone : it only serves to amuse idle people or to occupy busy- bodies and men of quarrelsome instincts. How can anything grow ripe without leisure ? Leisure is sunshine. The rising age, like all rising ages, is changing old things for new, and there is some danger of its abolishing leisure, and getting to live in a perpetual hurry. Warre Cornish. IHqcq anb interpretation of Suffering. n^HOUGH He cause grief, yet will He have compassion according to the multitude of His mercies. For He doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men. Lam. iii. 32, 33. Behold, I have refined thee, hut not as silver ; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction. Isa. xlviiii. 10. When He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. Job xxiii. 10. Who, though He was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which He suffered. Heb. v. 8. They verily . . . chastened us as seemed good to them ; but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness, Heb. xii. 10. Now for a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief in manifold temptations, that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold that perisheth though it is proved by fire, might be found unto praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ. i S. Pet. i. 6, 7. The God of all grace. Who called you unto His eternal glory in Christ, after that ye have suffered a little while, shall Himself perfect, stablish, strengthen you. I S. Pet. V. 10, Almighty and everlasting God, Who, of Thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent Thy Son, our Saviour A.G. 17 g i8 TROUBLE Jesus Christ, to take upon Him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the Cross, that all mankind should follow the example of His great humility ; Mercifully grant, that we may both follow the example of His patience, and also be made partakers of His resurrection ; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. — Collect for Palm Sunday. Lord, burn with the fire of Thy Holy Spirit, our reins and our hearts, that we may serve Thee with chaste body and please Thee with pure mind. Jesus, our God, Who gavest Thy cheek to those who smote Thee, and wast for our sakes filled full with reproach ; grant to us Thy servants that, being instructed by the example of Thy Passion, we may be fitted alway to bear Thy sweet yoke, and learn of Thee Who art meek and lowly of heart. Almighty and everlasting God, the Comfort of the sad, the Strength of sufferers, let the prayers of those that cry out of any tribulation come unto Thee ; that all may rejoice to find that Thy mercy is present with them in their afflictions : through Jesus Christ our Lord . — Gelasian Sacramentary. pain a Bleasing* The higher we rise in the scale of being, the more intense the pain that may visit us. As life is developed and made perfect, so is the capacity, I might almost say the faculty, of pain. . . . And our experience tells us that pain, though so terrible, is one of the most salutary, — in the end the most beneficent, — of the conditions of our nature and state here. It does not account for its mysterious presence, but it reconciles the wise and thoughtful to what USES OF SUFFERING 19 is in itself so hard to understand, to consider, how pain has been the occasion and groundwork of some of the greatest of human virtues, and the most glorious of human actions ; how it has called forth in the human soul energies, affections, sweetness, strength, goodness, which only its awful but mighty touch could have quickened into life ; how, under its discipline, character — even com- monplace character — has been elevated and made beautiful, heroes have been created, martyrs have triumphed, saints have been made perfect. The world and life require pain, to make them as noble as they may be, as noble as they have been. R. W. Church. Pain is with us all our lives long, from the hour of our first breathing this air of ours, to the moment when we breathe it for the last time. In pain we begin life, in pain we leave it ; and in the interval between these points we each of us have our various experience of its strange and manifold companionship. . . . But pain is something over and above our mere weakness and littleness and fewness of days. Pain means that wonderful power of feeling (which seems as much meant to give us pleasure and happiness as the eye is meant for seeing), turned back against its natural purpose and use, . . . 20 TROUBLE made the means of driving the iron into our very soul ; fitting us for a new life which is filled with new and amazing energy, but one that qualifies us for tasting deeper and deeper the cup of sufi^ering. Ibid. ... If this be the hardest ill of all For mortal flesh and heart to bear in peace, It is the one comes straightest from God's hand. And makes us feel Him nearest to ourselves. God gives us light and love, and all good things Richly for joy, and power, to use aright ; But then v^^e may forget Him in His gifts : — We cannot well forget the hand that holds, And pierces us, and will not let us go. However much we strive from under it. E. Hamilton King. Then was the truth received into my heart, That under heaviest sorrow earth can bring, If from the affliction somewhere do not grow Honour, which could not else have been a faith. An elevation, and a sanctity ; If new strength be not given, nor old restored, The blame is ours, not Nature's. W. Wordsworth. What is true of . . . voluntary self-discipline, is equally true of that other discipline which comes USES OF SUFFERING 21 to all of us without our seeking, — sickness, pain, bereavement, sorrow, and all the minor cares which go to constitute the cross that we are bidden daily to take up. The suffering of these things is never to be viewed as an end in itself, or sought for its own sake ; but, on the other hand, it is, in one degree or another, an indis- pensable means towards our real end, which is the formation of a character in union with God. J. R. Illingworth. O that thou wouldest understand the great good of Tribulation ! This it is which blots out sins, cleanses the soul, and produces Patience : this in Prayer inflames it, enlarges it, and causes it to exercise the most sublime act of Charity ; this rejoices the Soul, brings it near to God, causes it to be called, and to enter, into Heaven. This it is which tries the true Servants of God, and renders them wise, valiant, and constant. This it is which makes God hear them with speed. . . • It is this which Annihilates, Refines, and Perfects them : and finally, it is this which of earthly, makes Heavenly Souls, and of human. Divine ; transforming them, and uniting them in a wonder- ful way with the Lord's Humanity and Divinity. Michael de ?vIolinos. 22 TROUBLE Trouble is the next best thing to enjoyment : and there is no fate in the world so terrible as to have no share in either its joys or its sorrows. H. W. Longfellow. We overstate the ills of life, and take Imagination, given us to bring down The choirs of singing angels — overshone By God's clear glory — down to earth, to rake The dismal snows instead, flake after flake — To cover all the corn. We walk upon The shadow of hills across a level thrown. And pant like climbers. Near the alder-brake We sigh so loud, the nightingale within Refuses to sing loud, as else she would. O brothers ! let us leave the shame and sin Of taking vainly, in a plaintive mood, The holy name of Grief ! — holy herein. That by the grief of One came all our good. E. B. Browning. acceptance of Suffering. Crosses are only blessed to us in so far as we give ourselves up to them unreservedly and forgetting self. Seek to forget yourself, else all suffering is use- less. God does not lay suffering on us merely that we may suffer, but that we may die to self USES OF SUFFERING 23 by dint of putting it aside under the most diffi- cult of all circumstances, viz., pain. ^ FiNELON. Habitual, prompt, and constant obedience of heart with submission of judgment (are necessary) ; the first, the death of the flesh of the old Adam; the last, the death of his spirit ; the whole, the life of the new Adam, who is Christ. The means are constant recollection of heart in your works, humility and fervour of heart in your prayers. Archbishop Ullathorne. The glory of Christ is in His willing surrender of that which belonged to Him, and which He might have always had and enjoyed. . . . To give up some precious thing which is legitimately yours ; to shut your eyes upon visions of glory or safety or luxury which you might make your own with- out a shade of blame, that is so truly one of the marks of nobleness that no man is accounted by the best standards truly noble who is not doing that in some degree. The man who is taking all that he has a right to take in life is always touched with a suspicion and a shade of baseness. . . . (This surrender) is simply the power of a higher purpose. It is the calm, manly, uncom- plaining choice to do this greater thing, and to surrender whatever would hinder the doing of it most faithfully and well. . . . 24 TROUBLE He does not count up what he has lost ; he does not ask whether he is happier or less happy than he would have been. ... It is not a ques- tion of happiness with him at all ; but gradually without his seeking it or asking anything about it he finds that the soul of the happiness which he has left behind is in him still. Like fountains of sweet water in the sea, it rises up, and keeps him a living soul. He has left the world's pleasures and its privileges only to draw nearer to its necessi- ties, which are its real life. So what he gave he keeps, a thousandfold even in this present time, and eternity is all before him, in the end everlast- ing life. Phillips Brooks. But if, impatient, thou let slip thy cross. Thou wilt not find it in this world again. Nor in another ; here, and here alone. Is given thee to suffer for God's sake. In other worlds we shall more perfectly Serve Him and love Him, praise Him, work for Him, Grow near, and nearer Him with all delight ; But then we shall not any more be called To suffer, which is our appointm.ent here. Canst thou not suffer then one hour, or two ? ***** And while we suffer, let us set our souls To suffer perfectly ; since this alone, USES OF SUFFERING 25 The suffering, which is this world's special grace, May here be perfected and left behind. E. Hamilton King. Sacrifice of some sort there must be in all human life ; it arouses either willing acceptance or grudg- ing submission. But even the willing sacrifice has two kinds. It may be that which bends the head, and shuts the lips, and steels itself to bear in a proud acknowledgment of the inevitable. ... But there is also the sacrifice which is borne and even wel- comed, because it is sustained by an uplifting trust in the motives of the Power which asks for it, and in the issue towards which it tends. It is always true that '' he who saves his life shall lose it " : it is not always true that " he who loses his life shall save it." For he must know and trust the ultimate meaning of his loss. Our Lord's promise is, " He who loses his life for My sake and the GospePs shall save it." These additional words take the blindness and the bitterness out of sacrifice. Sometimes indeed the actual pain of the sacrifice is not spared. Jesus Himself felt it keenly. But the spirit is sustained by the joy of the issue. . . . Never without struggle can the kingdom of Heaven be attained : it is the violent who press into it. To the outward observer the strain may seem hard and severe, but he who knows and trusts 26 TROUBLE what he is seeking, will find increasingly that his faith, his sureness about the worth of it all, lifts the weight of his burden and lights the darkness of the way, and brings even joy into the sacrifice. The spirit stands erect even when the head is bowed, and the cross of the Christian, like the Cross of Christ, becomes a throne. Archbishop Lang. Nothing is so humbling as to discover how tender one is over oneself, how hard towards others, how cowardly at the shadow of a cross, how frivolously ready to rebound at the least gleam of flattery. But it is well. God opens a very wonderful book for our instruction when He sets us reading our own hearts. Fenelon. The uses of adversity are sweet — when we have learnt to use them ; but the process of acquiring them is bitter to the extreme, and in the majority of cases leaves indelible scars upon the soul. T. J. Hardy. Then welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough — Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand — but go ! Be our joys three-parts pain USES OF SUFFERING 27 Strive, and hold cheap the strain ; Learn, nor account the pang ; dare, never grudge the throe ! R. Browning. Suffering borne in the Christian temper has often incidental effects upon character. For it induces tenderness, and strength, and spirituality of life. The man who has suffered much has a keener insight into the sufferings of others, and therefore a more appreciative sympathy for them. His very voice and glance and touch gain a magnetic power from his pain. Nor is this tenderness purchased at the cost of weakness, for suffering indurates and strengthens the entire person. Under all his apparent weakness, the man of sorrows is strong. And thus his own sorrow helps him to alleviate the sorrow of the world ; while, beside thus enhancing his social efficiency, suffering refines and purifies the inner man, as a necessary consequence of the closer communion with the spiritual world to which it calls him. J. R. Illingworth. Suffering may be desired, not as the reward of a kind of self-interested devotion, but as a condition in which we are brought nearer to the attainment of an object which is, in itself, worth all the sacri- 28 TROUBLE fices of which man is capable. . . . When the saint rises to fresh heights he realizes that all great things are in reality accomplished by God through the medium of man, and therefore, as far as he himself is concerned, he desires suffering solely as a means of destroying self-love and everything that tends to separate him from the object of his love. Henri Joly. One adequate support For the calamities of mortal life Exists, one only : an assured belief That the procession of our fate, howe'er Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being Of infinite benevolence and power : Whose everlasting purposes embrace All accidents, — converting them to good. The darts of anguish fix not where the seat Of suffering hath been throughly fortified By acquiescence in the Will supreme. For time and for eternity ; by faith, — Faith absolute in God, including hope, And the defence that lies in boundless love Of his perfections. W. Wordsworth. lEbe Cross interpreting Xife* The deep undertone of the world is sadness ; a solemn bass occurring at measured intervals, USES OF SUFFERING 29 and heard through all other tones. Ultimately, all the strains of this world's music resolve them- selves into that tone ; and I believe that, rightly felt, the Cross, and the Cross alone, interprets the mournful mystery of life — the sorrow of the Highest, the Lord of Life ; the result of error and sin, but ultimately remedial, purifying, exalting. F. W, Robertson. *^ The perfect human life is the life of Christ. And what is the Christ-life but sacrifice, — sacrifice as the supreme expression and ardour of self- subjecting love ? The life, not of fulness, but of sacrifice of the earthly self and the things which go to the filling of it, — the life of willing sacrifice, nay, of joy and satisfaction in sacrifice — the life of Christ the Master, and of those who have found their life by realizing Christ. I do not merely say this is hard for me to reach, with my mixed and smothered nature, hard to practise, or to love ; it is more than this — it is hard for me even to appreciate or understand. I need purifying of habit and soul ; I need changed mode and quickened powers of insight ; I need a gradual initiation, an opening out of new meanings, a shifting of the old proportions and appearances of things — before I shall really be able even to un- derstand, even thoroughly to believe in this — to 30 TROUBLE believe in it, that is, not as paradox, but as truth ; not as misery but as joy ; not as failure of human life, but as its perfectness. R. C. MOBERLY. I saw a Cross of burning gold And jewels glorious to behold : Over it a golden crown, All the people falling down. I saw an ugly Cross of wood. On it there were stains of blood : Over it a crown of thorn. Plaited for the people's scorn. Cross of gold, no fruit was thine, Nothing but the empty shrine. Cross of wood, thou living tree. The true Vine clung fast to thee. Mary E. Coleridge. However Christ may come, He will claim the offering of love moved by love, of suffering hallowed by suffering ; He will bear in this sense the marks of the Cross. The truth finds expression in a beautiful vision of S. Martin. That soldier- saint, in a time of deep distress and perplexity, when it seemed that the end of the world must be at hand, suddenly, as he prayed, saw his cell filled USES OF SUFFERING 31 with a glorious light. In the centre stood a figure of serene and joyous aspect, clothed in royal array, with a jewelled crown upon his head, and gold-embroidered shoes upon his feet. Martin was half-blinded by the sight ; and for a time no word was spoken. Then his visitant said : " Re- cognize, Martin, him whom thou beholdest. I am Christ. I am about to visit the earth ; and it is my pleasure to manifest myself to thee beforehand." When Martin made no reply, he continued : " Why dost thou hesitate to believe what thou seest ? I am Christ." Thereupon Martin, as by a sudden inspiration, answered, " The Lord Jesus did not foretell that He would come arrayed in purple and crowned with gold. I will not believe that Christ has come, unless I see Him in the dress and shape in which He suffered ; unless I see Him bear before my eyes the marks of the Cross." Forthwith the apparition vanished, and Martin knew that he had been tempted by the Evil One. Bishop Westcott. purification Xlfe=long. To all, sooner or later, Christ comes to baptize them with fire. But do not think that the baptism of fire comes once for all to a man, in some one 32 TROUBLE terrible affliction, some one awful conviction of his own sinfulness and nothingness. With most, it goes on, month after month, year after year. By secret trials, chastenings, which none but they and God can understand, the Lord is cleansing them from their secret faults, and making them to understand wisdom secretly ; burning out of them the chaff of self-will, and self-conceit, and vanity, and leaving only the pure gold of righteousness. How many sweet and holy souls, who look cheer- ful enough before the eyes of men, have their secret sorrows. They carry their cross unseen all day long, and lie down to sleep on it at night ; and they will carry it perhaps for years and years, to their grave ; and none but they and Christ will ever know what it was. ... So does the Lord watch His people, and tries them with fire, as the refiner of silver sits by his furnaces watching the melted metal till he knows that it is purged from all its dross by seeing the image of his own face reflected on it. Charles Kingsley. " The final state which we are to contemplate with hope, and to seek by discipline, is that in which our will shall be one with the will of God ; not merely shall submit to it, not merely shall follow after it, but shall live and move with it, even as the pulse of the blood in the extremities acts with the USES OF SUFFERING 33 central movement of the heart. And this is to be obtained through a double process ; the first, that of checking, repressing, quelling the inclination of the will to act with reference to self as a centre ; this is to mortify it. The second, to cherish, exercise, and expand its new and heavenly power of acting according to the will of God, first, perhaps, by painful efforts in great feebleness and with many inconsistencies, but with continually augmenting regularity and force, until obedience becomes a necessity of second nature." W. E. Gladstone (John Morley). Temptation is the natural way by which the Christian heart is at once tested and educated ; and painful as the struggle with it is, the Apostle bids us count it *'all joy" when we have to go through such temptation as comes to us by no fault of our own, because of the good result which it brings when rightly used. A. J. Mason. * A,G, XCbe ©utcome of Sacrifice- ZTriumpb* T RECKON that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to he compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us-ward. Rom. viii. i8. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Rom. viii. 38, 39. " Father, save Me from this hour : but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name." There came therefore a Voice out of heaven, saying, " / have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.'' s. John xii. 27, 28. He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit doum with Me in My throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with My Father in His throne. Rev. iii. 21. / rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body's sake, which is the Church. Col. i. 24. For our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory. 2 Cor. iv. 17. These are they which come out of the great tribulation, and they washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Rev. vii. 14. 34 THE OUTCOME OF SACRIFICE 35 And I heard a great voice out of the throne, saying. Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He shall dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God. And He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes : and death shall be no more ; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more ; the first things are passed away. He that overcometh shall inherit these things ; and I will be His God and he shall be My son. Rev. xxi. 3, 4, 7 We beseech Thee, O Lord, to preserve with watchful love those whom Thou hast cleansed : that those who have been redeemed by Thy Passion may rejoice in Thy Resurrection. — Gelasian Sacramentary. O Almighty and most merciful God, of Thy bounti- ful goodness keep us, we beseech Thee, from all things that may hurt us ; that we, being ready, both in body and soul, may cheerfully accomplish those things that Thou wouldest have done : through Jesus Christ our Lord. — Twentieth Sunday after Trinity. St. John's record of the Passion is from the beginning to the end a revelation of majesty. No voice of suffering, no horror of thick darkness, find a place in it. Every indignity is so accepted by the Lord as to become part of a gracious and willing sacrifice. The words with which He goes forth to die are a declaration of a victory which has been already achieved : " I have over- come the world." The words which precede His voluntary death are the ratification of a 36 TROUBLE work perfectly accomplished : " It is finished." The betrayal is fruitless till He places Himself in the hands of His enemies. He is Himself the Judge of His judges. Hanging upon the Cross the Lord discharged with calm and tender authority the last offices of personal affection, the last requirements of the Scripture which He came to fulfil. He gave up His Spirit : and still He lived through death. The sovereignty of Christ from the Cross is a new sovereignty. It has destroyed for ever the formula of material tyranny that *' might is right." It has put to shame the self-assertion of false heroism. It has surrounded with imperish- able dignity the completeness of sacrifice. It has made clear to the pure of heart that the prerogative of authority is wider service. Bishop Westcott. There should be no greater comfort to Christ- ian persons than to be made like unto Christ, by suffering patiently adversities, troubles and sicknesses. For He Himself went not up to joy, but first He suffered pain : He entered not into His glory before He was crucified. So truly our way to eternal joy is to suffer here with Christ ; THE OUTCOME OF SACRIFICE 37 and our door to enter into eternal life is gladly to die with Christ : that we may rise again from death, and dwell with Him in everlasting life. Visitation of the Sick, Book of Common Prayer. Everywhere the greater joy is ushered in by the greater pain. Ellen Watson. The outline of the life of Jesus Christ, in all its human essentials, is that of a failure as com- plete as can be conceived ; and yet the historic figure we know and think of stands out in all human essentials as a Conqueror. . . . And, re-examining that life, in the light of its own standard, we shall see One Who so truly overcame, both in Himself and in His influence, that nothing seems to yield such copious hint of the solution of life's mystery as does His " failure." . . . His failure stands not in a loss of spirituality, but in the superabundance and intensity of it. The isolation of His Spirit did not result in a diminution of the ideal, any more than did disappointment sour, or poverty embitter Him The bare outline of His life is harsh and forbid- ding ; it is that of a failure : but upon near 38 TROUBLE approach, it is found to be lit by an inner light, and in the light of that personal life we see a form of wondrous beauty and commanding awe. In a word, the -personality of Jesus Christ is as sublime a triumph as His life is supreme among failures. T. J. Hardy. Work, be unhappy, but bear life, my son ! R. Browning. Thank God for the essential sorrowfulness of human life ! Do we cry out against it ? Does it seem to us all punishment or all wretchedness ? Is it mere paradox to claim it, in any sense, on the side of blessing, or to connect with it, even for a moment, the thought of praise ? It is not, indeed, the ultimate condition of blessedness. The very blessing upon the tears of the weepers consists in this, that they shall be comforted. The sowing in tears is a pledge of the ultimate reaping in joy. There shall come a time indeed, when " God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes : and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain," but not in the existing order of things — only when it can be said, as explanation and cause, THE OUTCOME OF SACRIFICE 39 " for the former things are passed away." Till then it is sorrow which itself remains as a distinctive note of blessedness : " Blessed are they that mourn." " Blessed are ye that weep now." In this world there is privilege, essentially, in tears. . . . Thank God for sorrow ! And may the day never dawn on my earthly life when the discipline of sorrow shall so have become a stranger to my being that my heart shall be incapable any longer of the anguish, which is the nobleness of sorrowing. R. C. MOBERLY. In the Cross is salvation, in the Cross is life, in the Cross is protection against our enemies, in the Cross is infusion of heavenly sweetness, in the Cross is strength of mind, in the Cross joy of spirit, in the Cross the height of virtue, in the Cross the perfection of sanctity. The Cross therefore is always ready and every- where waits for thee. For not even our Lord Jesus Christ was even one hour without the anguish of His Passion, so long as He lived. '' Christ " (saith He) " must needs suffer, and rise again from the dead, and so enter into His glory." And how dost thou seek any other way than 40 TROUBLE His royal way, which is the way of the Holy Cross ? Drink of the Lord's cup with hearty affection, if thou desire to be His friend, and to have part with Him. Imitation of Christy Book II, xii. Greatly to live is such a burthen of joy that the sharpest pain of sacrifice is a welcome easement of it. '^ Consummatum est." The Cross is only a mitigation of the consummation. It becomes a fact of experience to those who truly live, that not only must we give up all in order to obtain all, but that we must do so before we attain to any assurance that such will be our reward. Where, otherwise, would be the sacrifice ? Coventry Patmore. Kind Calm years, exacting their accompt Of pain, mature the mind. R. Browning. Rejoice that man is hurled From change to change unceasingly, His soul's wings never furled. Ibid. THE OUTCOME OF SACRIFICE 41 The spirit of sacrifice is, we can see, the revela- tion of a larger life : and because it is so, it is also a revelation of victorious pov^er. The life is one, and through its action soul can reach soul. We have all been able from time to time, in the most expressive phrase, to enter into the griefs, the wrongs, the failures, of others, and as we have done so, we have found within our reach a power of relief and restoration proportioned to our power of sympathy. If we may dare to use the phrase, there is a virtue which goes out from him who truly feels for another to the object of his love, not without effort, not without loss. We must feel that which we alleviate. There is a sense in which we must pay for all we give. The instinctive pleasure which is felt in natural gifts, in wealth and strength, and beauty and rank and intellect, is a call and a promise, a call to grateful use, and a promise of effective influence. But all these things are not in themselves blessings in which we can rest, but opportunities of bless- ing. They must be consecrated in service before they can be a true joy to their possessors ; and everywhere there is the same condition of hallow- ing. Conflict goes before the victory : discipline before the prize : anxious questionings before sure love : travail pangs before the new birth. Bishop Westcott. 42 TROUBLE Therefore, to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name ? Builder and Maker, Thou, of houses not made with hands ! What, have fear of change from Thee Who art ever the same ? Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power expands ? There shall never be one lost good ! What was shall live as before; The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; On the earth the broken arcs ; in the heaven, a perfect round. All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist ; Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist ? When Eternity confirms the conception of an hour. The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky. Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard ; Enough that he heard it once ; we shall hear it by and bye. THE OUTCOME OF SACRIFICE 43 And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence For the fulness of the days ? Have we withered or agonized ? Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence ? Why rushed the discords in but that harmony should be prized ? Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear, Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and the woe ; But God has a few of us whom He whispers in the ear ; The rest may reason and welcome : 'tis we musicians know. R. Browning. 3fru(tfulne90. " /, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself.'' S. John xii. 32. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall he satisfied : by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify mxiny : and he shall bear their iniquities. Isa. liii. 11. Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone ; but if it die, it beareth much fruit. He that loveth his life loseth it ; and he that hateih his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. S. John xii. 24, 25. He emptied ^Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men. And being found in fashion as a man. He humbled Him- self, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the Cross. Phil. ii. 7, 8. 44 TROUBLE O God of all grace, Who hast called us into Thine eternal glory in Christ, look mercifully upon Thy servants, and after that they have suffered a little while, make them perfect, stablish, strengthen, and settle them. We beseech Thee, most merciful God and Father, that as Thou givest Thy servants lengthened suffering, so Thou wilt give them faith and patience in the accep- tance of Thy will, to offer themselves up without reserve to Thee : that they may be purged from all the remains of their natural self, and may be accepted of Thee : through Jesus Christ our Lord. — Sursum Corda, Christ showed that sacrifice, self -surrender, death, is the beginning and the course and the aim and the essential principle of the higher life. To find life in our own way, to wish to save it, to seek to gain it, to love it, is, He proclaims, to miss it altogether. . . . The law of sacrifice is based on essential moral relations, justified by the facts of common experience, welcomed by the universal conscience. . . . Sacrifice alone is fruitful. . . . The essence of sin is selfishness in respect of men, and self-assertion in respect of God, the unloving claim of independence, the arrogant isolation of our interests. . . . That which we use for ourselves perishes ignobly : that which He uses for us, but not on us, proves the beginning of a fuller joy. THE OUTCOME OF SACRIFICE 45 Isolation is the spring of death ; life is revealed through sacrifice. . . . Vicarious toil, pain, suf- fering, is the very warp of life. When the Divine light falls upon it, it becomes transformed into sacrifice. . . . Not one tear, one pang, one look of tender compassion, one cry of pitying anguish, one strain of labouring arm, offered in the strength of God for the love of man, has been in vain. They have entered into the great life with a power to purify, and cheer, and nerve, measured not by the standard of our judgment, but by the completeness of the sacrifice which they represent. Bishop Westcott. " Unless above himself he can erect himself, how mean a thing is man." He that sets himself with his whole heart on this task, will find at some stage or other of the work, that, like Abra- ham, he has to offer up his firstborn, his dearest possession, his " ruling love," whatever that may be. He must actually lift the knife, — not so much to prove his sincerity to God as to him- self ; for no man who has not thus won assurance of himself can advance surely. But he will find that he has killed a ram, and that his firstborn 46 TROUBLE is safe, and exalted by his offering to be the father of a great nation ; and he will understand why God called the place in which this sacrifice was offered " The land of vision." Coventry Patmore. Is it for nothing we grow old and weak, We whom God loves ? When pain ends, gain ends too. R. Browning. ^ To many the probleui of pain seems to demand, intellectually, a philosophy not yet arrived among us. Suppose, however, that the solution should be afforded by exferience. Suppose our exceed- ing bitter cry should be answered by certain facts presented by life itself, and therefore, while uncontrovertible, requiring, in order to be under- stood, only the open mind, and the feeling heart. Suppose that life should answer our challenge at the very point where the feeling that gives rise to that challenge is most bitter, that as it is suffering that gives the edge to our despair, so it should be suffering which, in revealing the possibilities of the individual soul under its THE OUTCOME OF SACRIFICE 47 discipline, should open to our view a larger and enduring life. T. J. Hardy. We possess exactly what we use. We know that our strength is increased by the measure of every trial which we resolutely sustain ; that each power with which we are endowed can pass through death to a resurrection ; that failure, when it is felt to be failure, is ** a triumph's evidence for the fulness of the days." We know that it is blessed rather to give than to receive, to kindle love by loving, even as God first loved us, than to wait till we can acknowledge the respect paid to our worth. We know that they are happiest who lose themselves in the cares and joys and strivings of others ; who render whatever they have to a common cause . . . who have found, through the teaching of a surrendered life, the power of sacrifice ; found that sacrifice alone is fruitful, fruitful to him for whom it is made, through the manifestation of a new moral force, fruitful to him by whom it is made through the quickening of a wider fellowship, fruitful, and the source of joy. Bishop Westcott, 48 TROUBLE With the gradual acceptance of sorrow begins its transforming power. Only, acceptance of sorrow, how much it means ! It is not a sullen and silent, still less is it an angry endurance. It is not enough merely that I should turn to other things, trying so to deaden or forget the wretched- ness which I cannot avoid, but which my whole soul and will do really, in their dumbness and numbness, protest against still. This may be to tolerate, but it is not to accept. The effort of prayer by which the Man Jesus finally accepted in Gethsemane His Passion and Death involved something far deeper than this. When He fully accepted the cup, the cup was no longer His necessity, but the choice of His will. . . . And the necessities which are laid upon us, necessities though they be, it is our privilege to be allowed to transform them, even by the tardy acceptance of our will, into willing offerings. The bending of will to will, the transfiguring of our will into His will, — this is the daily aspira- tion and longing of every Christian man who has learnt to say " Our Father." And when all resistance of will has died at last away, when the life's sorrow or pain is no longer merely a fact of the life's past history — no longer, indeed, at all a painful or unwelcome fact — but is part THE OUTCOME OF SACRIFICE 49 itself of the soul's free will and choice, — then the sorrow has wrought indeed its abiding work ; then the cross has become as an altar-throne of voluntary sacrifice ; then the will of the poor human sufferer is transfigured into something higher and purer than himself — something, in- deed, with which he seemed just now in terrible contradiction, but which he finds, and cannot but find, the more he approaches it, to be after all no essential contradiction or denial of himself, but the fullest completeness and joy of his own real being. R. C. MOBERLY. Measure thy life by loss instead of gain ; Not by the wine drunk, but the wine poured forth ; For love's strength standeth in love's sacrifice ; And whoso suffers most hath most to give. # * * # * God said to Man and Woman, " By thy sweat, And by thy travail, thou shalt conquer earth ; " Not, by thy ease or pleasure : — ^and no good Or glory of this life but comes by pain. How poor were earth if all its martyrdoms, If all its struggling sighs of sacrifice, Were swept away ; and all were satiate — smooth ; If this were such a heaven of soul and sense As some have dreamed of ; — and we human still, 50 TROUBLE Nay, we were fashioned not for perfect peace In this world, how-so-ever in the next : And what we win and hold is through some strife. E. Hamilton King. The immortality which Christ proclaimed in His own Person and life had indeed been adumbrated in deeds of valour and lives of heroic self-sacrifice, but as a revelation of life^ of the true and proper life of man, it was as new as it has ever since been unique. " I am come that they might have life "was the burden of all He taught and did and suffered : and but for that " coming " it is impossible to conceive of our eyes being opened to the measureless possibilities of our spiritual life. When S. Paul exclaimed in the simple rendering of Luther, " Christ is my /z/^," he defined what immortality really is. The triumph lies in the instinct to triumph; the extension of life in the quality of the life. T. J. Hardy. 5n XTime of Sickness penitence— jfattb-®be5(ence penitence. / acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid : I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord ; and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Ps. xxxii. 5, 6. Have mercy upon me, Ood, according to Thy loving- kindness : According to the multitude of Thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin. Ps. li. i, 2. Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, Lord — Lord, hear my voice : Let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplica- tions. Ps. CXXX. I, 2. Enter not into judgment with Thy servant ; For in Thy sight shall no man living be justified. Ps. cxliii. 2 . Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgres^^ sions : According to Thy loving kindness remember Thou me, for Thy goodness' sake, Lord. Ps, xxv. 7. Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned. And done that which is evil in Thy sight. Ps. li. 4. Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in Thy sight : I am no more worthy to be called Thy son. S. Luke xv. 21. Ye shall remember your ways, and all your doings, wherein ye have polluted yourselves ; and ye shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for all your evils that ye have committed, Ezek. xx. 43. *h 53 54 IN TIME OF SICKNESS Act of Contrition. O my God, I hate, for love of Thee, all the sins by which I have ever offended Thee, and I long to hate them more. Help me by Thy grace to resist tempta- tion, and to avoid all that can lead me into sin. Almighty and everlasting God, Who hatest nothing that Thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent : Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of Thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness : through Jesus Christ, our Lord. — Collect jor Ash Wednesday. Grant, we beseech Thee, merciful Lord, to Thy faithful people pardon and peace, that they may be cleansed from all their sins, and serve Thee with a quiet mind : through Jesus Christ our Lord. — Collect jor 21st Sunday ajter Trinity. We beseech Thee, O Lord, to grant unto us the knowledge of Thy divine wisdom, and in Thy loving- kindness to clothe us with the armour of righteousness ; turn upon us the eyes of Thy grace and mercy, who confess our iniquities, that our sins being covered with Thy pardon and clemency, and being justified with Thy Saints and elect, we may rejoice with them, world without end, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Convcraion* Three things are necessary to penitence : in the heart — contrition ; in the mouth— confes- sion ; in the life — amendment. S. Chrysostom. PENITENCE 55 A true thorough conversion of heart lies in a hearty will perfectly ready to sacrifice all to God. By a hearty will I mean that the will is firmly and irrevocably set to withhold nothing within its control from God, and to submit to whatever crosses we may have to bear, perhaps always, in order to fulfil His will. Such unreserved renun- ciation and self-devotion are the most real con- version. As to conscious sorrow for sin, one may be thankful for it when it exists ; when one feels the lack thereof, it is best to humble oneself quietly before God, without endeavouring to force it, being rather content to be faithful in all things, and look to God in all. Fenelon. As the eye cannot turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too, when the eye of the soul is turned round, the whole soul must be turned from the world of generation to that of being, and become able to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being — that is to say, of the good. And this is con- version . . . not implanting eyes, for they exist already, but giving them a right direction, which they have not. Plato. 56 IN TIME OF SICKNESS If we could call off our minds from other things, and set them on grief for our sins, yet it is only God's Spirit that can work our hearts to this grief ; and for this end, perhaps God holds us off from it, to teach us that He is the Teacher of the heart to grieve. And thereupon it is our duty to wait, till He reveal ourselves so far to ourselves, as to stir up His affection in us. Richard Sibbes. 1 bear upon my brow the sign Of sorrow and of pain : Alas ! no hopeful cross is mine, It is the mark of Cain. The course of passion, and the fret Of godless hope and fear — Toil, care and guilt — their hues have set. And fixed that sternness there. Saviour ! wash out the imprinted shame ; That I no more may pine, Sin's martyr, though not meet to claim Thy Cross, a Saint of Thine. J. H. Newman. Unheeded, the unknown God cries out in the heart of man by the voice of conscience : '' Why persecutest thou Me ? " He cries out to us as one most intimate with us from our childhood, PENITENCE 57 calling us, as would a parent or a brother, by our own name. He calls out in His pain and anguish, His hunger and thirst, from that spiritual Calvary in our soul, where we crucify Him daily and put Him to an open shame, resisting, tormenting, persecuting Him. And yet, in some sense unwit- tingly ; for so close is He to us that in thought we confound that holy will that strives and works in us, with our own. For '' closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet." " Who art Thou ? " we answer to His cry of sharp pain, when, through His grace, this sense of " otherness " is brought home to us for the first time, and we find that in betraying, despising and resisting our conscience we have all along been betraying, despising and resisting our God, as real actors in that supreme tragedy which the historical Passion of Christ but symbolizes and makes visible to our imagination. Even when we are not crucifying Him afresh by flagrant sin, we are ever tormenting and persecuting Him by negligence, by recklessness, by skirting the edge of sin's precipice, so that He is never at rest or free from anxiety. George Tyrrell. The word sin implies the existence of some- 58 IN TIME OF SICKNESS thing which ought not to be where it is ; in using it, we set up an external standard and condemn what fails to conform to it. The most decisive argument against identifying sin with imperfection is the verdict of the human consciousness itself. The consciousness of sin as a positive malignant fact is most intense in the highest natures. It is the saint, not the sinner, who says, " O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death ? " It was the Son of God Himself who, as Christians believe, gave His life a ransom for sin, because no smaller price could destroy its power. W. R. Inge. What time my heart unfolded its fresh leaves In spring time gay, and scattered flowers around, A whisper warned of earth's unhealthy ground. And all that there faith's light and pureness grieves — Sun's ray and canker worm, And sudden whelming storm. But ah ! my self will smiled, nor recked the gracious sound. So now defilement dims life's memory springs ; I cannot hear an early cherished strain, But first a joy, and then it brings a pain — Fear, and self hate, and vain remorseful stings : Tears lull my grief to rest, PENITENCE 59 Not without hope this breast May one day lose its load, and youth yet bloom again. J. H. Newman. *h The Saviour of the world must heal not only the breach between God and man, but the sick- ness of human nature itself. And this He does by implanting in man, through union with His own perfect nature, a supernatural principle of regeneration ; a germ of new life which may destroy the cause of corruption, and arrest its progress, and make human nature again capable of union with God. The corrupt nature struggles still, seeks for its separate life away from God, a life that is no life. But the moment the new life is given, the helplessness, the hopelessness of the struggle is past. The cry of human nature, " I cannot do the things that I would," becomes the thank- ful utterance of the regenerate soul, " I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." Aubrey L. Moore. The history of the world morally viewed is a tragedy. All the great tragedy of the world turns upon its guilt. Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Goethe, Ibsen, all tell it you. The solution 6o IN TIME OF SICKNESS of the world, therefore, is what destroys its guilt. And nothing can destroy guilt but the very holiness that makes guilt guilt. And that destruction is the work of Christ upon His Cross, the Word of Life Eternal in your hands and in your souls. The supreme problem of the moral world is sin. Its one need is to be forgiven. And nothing but holiness can forgive. Love cannot. We are both forgiven and redeemed in Jesus Christ and in Him as crucified unto the world for the holiness of God and the sin of men. P. T. Forsyth. The first advice which I should give to a person under conviction of not yet being right with God — of not yet possessing what he sees that others enjoy of spiritual peace and comfort, — of being still under guilt and condemnation . . . would be to go somewhere all alone, and have it out by himself. . . . No man can reveal Christ to another ; he can only so speak of Christ as to teach another how to go and find Christ for himself. ... I do not know anything more suggestive or useful than the account given us in the Book of Genesis of Jacob's wrestling. . . . This, then, is the first thing, to set apart a time. PENITENCE 6i a sufficiently long time, for making a great spiritual effort. *' Come, O Thou Traveller unknown, Whom still I hold but cannot see ; My company before is gone, And I am left alone with Thee. With Thee all night I mean to stay, And wrestle till the break of day." When souls are really in earnest, we need not fear but that the Holy Spirit, which helpeth our infirmities, and maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered, will supply what is lacking in our prayer. A. J. Mason. It was said by one in great sorrow : " I feel as if God was taking great trouble with me." E. R. Self-knowledge is the foundation-stone of moral improvement. Living on terms of intim- acy with one's conscience may not open alluring vistas, but it is surely the part of prudence in view of the uncompromising justice of ultimate moral awards. Are we strictly honest with our- 62 IN TIME OF SICKNESS selves ? There is no question freighted with more tremendous issues. To play at masquerade before God in the hidden passages of the heart, is fraught with consequences more dire than result from any overt act of deceit practised among men. Moral insincerity vitiates faith at its spring. It renders the soul absolutely incapable of communion with God Who is the Truth. WiLFORD L. ROBBINS. We can suffer no greater spiritual detriment than a forfeiture of the power of self-discernment. We, self-forming, self-determining creatures, can obstruct the free flow of the sap that rises in our spiritual veins at seasons of springtime and renewal, — not only by sin, which shuts the door in God's face ; but by false solicitude ; by mistaking conditions for causes ; by overtrust in methods, devices and industries. We are as an impatient, self-confident learner, who runs ahead of his teacher and spoils the task ; forget- ting that unless God build up the house of our sanctity, our labour is in vain ; unless He watch over the citadel of our soul, our watchfulness is fruitless self-wearying. How, then, do they grow, these lilies of the PENITENCE 63 field — these miracles of, what we might irrever- ently call, God's infinite good taste ? Not by reflex conscious effort ; not by measur- ing their rate of growth hour by hour and day by day ; not by tearing themselves up by the very roots and transplanting themselves, now here, now there, in obedience to every fidgety suggestion of self -improvement. How then ? We know not how ; for it is God's concern, and not ours. George Tyrrell. A habit of sin demands the closest scrutiny and the severest self-examination. It is hard to have faith in the presence of a besetting sin. But herein lies faith's supreme test and most glorious opportunity. Honestly to repent, to be filled with contrition, yet to hope ; to gird up one's loins and renew the con- flict ; to yield not for one instant to despair but once again to aim at the highest, this is moral sincerity, and nothing short of it is worthy the name. WiLFORD L, ROBBINS. In the Psalms we see how the soul has learned to look into itself, how it has learned the need of the inward watch, the inward struggle, the 64 IN TIME OF SICKNESS inward self-disclosure — " Examine me, O Lord, and prove me ; try out my reins and my heart." " Commune with your own heart, and in your chamber, and be still," — how it has seen the awful vision of its own sin, how it has discovered how deeply it needs mercy and forgiveness and healing, and the spirit from God to help it in the right path, which, with all its sins, it longs to tread. "Who can tell how oft he offendeth ; O cleanse Thou me from secret faults." R. W. Church. Contrition* When then — if such thy lot — thou seest thy Judge, The sight of Him will kindle in thy heart, All tender, gracious, reverential thoughts. Thou wilt be sick with love, and yearn for Him, And feel as though thou could'st but pity Him, That One so sweet should e'er have placed Himself At disadvantage such, as to be used So vilely by a being so vile as thee. There is a pleading in His pensive eyes Will pierce thee to the quick, and trouble thee. And thou wilt hate and loathe thyself ; for though Now sinless, thou wilt feel that thou hast sinned, As never thou didst feel ; and wilt desire To slink away, and hide thee from His sight. And yet wilt have a longing aye to dwell Within the beauty of His countenance. PENITENCE 65 And these two pains, so counter and so keen, — The longing for Him when thou seest Him not, The shame of self at thought of seeing Him, — Will be thy veriest, sharpest purgatory. J. H. Newman. The zoish, the continued wish, to be contrite, is contrition : the wish to hate one's evil self is the beginning of such hatred. A person who feels it in the slightest degree, and tries to have more of it, and is grieved not to have more^ — such an one, so far, is surely coming to our Lord, and " him that is coming unto Him, He will in no wise cast out." Undoubtedly, the first effort at all this will be very faint and imperfect, but so are all our beginnings, and our perceiving them to be such is a good sign, not a bad one. The only sure and sufficient test of reality in one's feelings, I suppose to be our conduct, i.e., our deliberate thoughts, our words and our actions, and especially in little everyday unno- ticed and unnoticeable matters : if we are gra- dually trying more and more to bring them into captivity to the love of God and our neighbour, we may have the comfortable hope that God accepts our Repentance, however imperfect. John Keble, A.e, F 66 7A^ TIME OF SICKNESS Contrition, in a more or less perfect form, is to be found at the very beginning of the spiritual life of all who have ever sinned deeply. It is its first movement, that which causes it to say, " I will arise." It is the first thought that breaks in upon the soul as it awakens to the sense of its sin. . . . Where the sense of sin is not, the spiritual life cannot exist ; as the life of holiness grows, the spirit of contrition deepens. It seems strange, but it is undoubtedly true, that contrition deepens in proportion as the guilt of sin is removed. There is nothing that contrition will not dare. She will strive after the virtues that seem to belong only to those who have been always kept pure. Despair cannot exist where she is, nor timidity. . . . She is the life and centre of all the soul's progress. ... So clear is her own vision of God, so certain is she of her own love, that she can encourage and sustain the soul in times of utmost darkness and deadness. B. W. Maturin. Contrition is indeed the moulding and control- ling force that forms, restores and preserves the penitent. Its transforming power is so great that it can fit the greatest sinner for the company PENITENCE 67 of the saints. . . . Penitence can give to the soul what it would seem as if it could only gain by innocence. It verily can raise up the poor out of the dust, and lift up the beggar from the dunghill to set him among princes, and to make him inherit the throne of glory. Contrition bears deeply marked upon itself both the strength and the tenderness of love. It has a " heart of fire towards God, a heart of flesh towards man, a heart of steel towards self." Ibid. Lord, I have fasted, I have prayed, And sackcloth has my girdle been, To purge my soul I have essayed With hunger blank and vigil keen. O God of mercy ! why am I Still haunted by the self I fly ? " Sackcloth is a girdle good, O bind it round thee still : Fasting, it is Angels' food. And Jesus loved the night air chill ; Yet think not prayer and fast were given To make one step 'twixt earth and Heaven. R. H. Froude. 68 IN TIME OF SICKNESS The only sorrow worthy of a Christian is when one loves the God Who has been offended, and, in the midst of shame and grief felt on other accounts, cries out with David, " Against Thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight." If he finds his heart too hard to weep thus before God, then, as S. Ambrose says most beautifully, Jesus Himself will help him. "My eyes have no tears to wash away mine offences : Lord Jesus, do Thou weep for me, as Thou didst for Lazarus, and I shall be saved, and come forth to the light." It is the motive which distinguishes the perfect from the imperfect sorrow. . . . Not many souls attain at once to sorrow for the love of God. . . . Sorrow for sin produces a long and endur- ing change of character ... it goes forward with great firmness and force to the forming of holy resolutions. The eyes may be quite dry, tokens of agitation entirely absent ; but the indispensable thing— a purpose to amend our ways — will be there. That is the disposition which God accepts or blesses. Edward Churton. And so, albeit His woe is our release, Thought of that woe aye dims our earthly peace ; PENITENCE 69 The Life is hidden in a Fount of Blood ! — And this is tidings good For souls, who, pierced that they have caused that woe, Are fain to share it too : — But for the many clinging to their lot Of worldly ease and sloth, 'tis written, " Touch me not." J. H. Newman. God hears the heart rather than the voice : we do more by groans than words. S. Augustine. Repentance is a principle of hope and a pledge of restoration through return to God. Lacerated pride is a principle of despair : the self on which it relied has failed, and there is no other strength within its view. Repentance, then, is essentially different from sorrow at having to suffer, and from self contempt at having failed. Repentance is sorrow for having offended the love of God : and we must add, that, where repentance exists, full forgiveness follows. . . . Repentance must go before forgiveness : and the sorrow in which repentance consists must be real suffering, deeply felt and patiently endured. The acuteness of the suffering is the measure of our repentance ; and repentance is the guarantee of forgiveness. Arthur Chandler. 70 IN TIME OF SICKNESS Hush thee, angry heart ! An Angel's grief ill fits a penitent ; Welcome the thorn — it is divinely sent, And with its wholesome smart Shall pierce thee in thy virtue's palmy home, And warn thee what thou art, and whence thy wealth has come. J. H. Newman. But I am scanned by eyes unseen, And these no saint surround ; They mete what is by what has been, And joy the lost is found. Erst my good Angel shrank to see My thoughts and ways of ill ; And now he scarce dare gaze on me, Scar seamed and crippled still. Ibid. Repentance is not merely a change of conduct, but a change of conduct based upon a change of feeling and mind. It is a repudiation of what is now felt to be sinful. It is not enough to leave off from doing wrong and begin to do right; there must be a sense of guilt, joined with sorrow for having done wrong in the past, and for being still tainted by inward evil. And in order that the repentance may be good, the motive for PENITENCE 71 sorrow must be found not solely in the sinner's hopes or fears for himself, nor even in the thought of the injury he has inflicted upon his fellow- men ; but in the knowledge that he has grieved and offended God. The determination to make what amends may be possible, and the readiness to acknowledge to God and (where advisable) to man, the whole extent of the wrong done, must be the outcome of a loving and unselfish grief, which bears the name of contrition. These, contrition, confession, amendment, are the three parts of repentance. A. J. Mason. Contemplation of Christ's sufferings, combined with prayer, will do more than any other exercise to cause genuine sorrow for having offended the love of God. ... In following the scenes of the Passion, contemplate our Lord as the sin-bearer, and think of each insult or indignity suffered by Him as representing to us the penalties due to our own offences. . . . Thus we come to feel the stirrings of real sorrow for having rejected God's love. Moved by that sorrow, we take our place beside Him in His Passion, enduring our small sufferings cheerfully, uniting our half- hearted penitence with His Divine, all-compre- 72 IN TIME OF SICKNESS hensive sorrow, whereby it can be deepened, and strengthened, and purified. Arthur Chandler. Mortal ! if e'er thy spirits faint, By grief or pain opprest, Seek not vain hope, or sour complaint. To cheer or ease thy breast. But view thy bitterest pangs as sent A shadow of that doom. Which is thy soul's just punishment In its own guilt's true home. Be thine own judge : hate thy proud heart ; And while the sad drops flow, E'en let thy will attend the smart, And sanctify thy woe. J. H. Newman. The little sins play a more terrible part than we know in the soul's tragedy. A great sin often brings its ov/n visible punishment, its own recoil. We see its loathsomeness. But the little sins are so little, we hardly notice them. They are like the drizzling rain which wets us through before we think of taking shelter. The trifling acts of pride, of sloth, the unchecked love of self, the evil thoughts, the word of shame, the little PENITENCE 73 neglect of prayer, — ah ! we never thought that these could kill down the soul, and separate from God. And suddenly we awake to find that God has, as it were, dropped out of our lives. We were living the world's life, and thinking the world's thoughts, and adopting the world's standards. We never committed any great sin ; we knew, indeed, that God was not in all our thoughts, and now He seems to have left us altogether, and we lift up that bitter cry of the soul in separation, " O God, cast us not away from Thy presence." Sin is the unutterable mystery of our lives. We cannot solve it ; but this we know — it is man's work, not God's. " God," it has been said, " will part with no one who does not say to Him, face to face, ' I will not have Thee.' " Not one soul shall be separated from Heaven which has not rejected the appeal of love : " Ye will not come unto Me, that ye might have life." Aubrey L. Moore. No one is so blind to his own sins as the man who has most sin upon him. No men see the nature of sin so clearly as those who are freest from sin. There are three great depths which no human line can sound — the depth of our sinfulness, the 74 J^N TIME OF SICKNESS depth of our unworthiness and the depth of our nothingness. If you are beginning to learn those three things, happy are you. Meditate every day of your lives upon this great and awful truth — how easy it is to fall from God ; and say to yourselves, " God is my end ; for Him I was created." " If I do not correspond with the grace which God has given me, I shall miss my eternal end." No sins can be small which can only be cleansed away in the Precious Blood of the Incarnate Son of God. Pray to God the Holy Ghost to illuminate your heart with such a knowledge of God and of yourselves, that, in the light of His perfection, you may see the least deviation of your thoughts, words and deeds from His holy will. Cardinal Manning. dontCBBion. He that covereth his transgressions shall not prosper, But whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall obtain mercy. Pro v. xxviii. 13. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. PENITENCE 75 If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. " Confess our sins," not only acknowledge them, but acknowledge them openly in the face of men. Nothing is said or implied as to the mode in which such confession is to be made. That is to be determined by experience. Yet its essential character is made clear. It extends to specific, definite acts and not only to sin in general terms. That which corresponds to saying " we have no sin," is not saying " we have sin," but " confessing our sins." The denial is made in an abstract form : the confession is concrete and personal. Bishop Westcott. Humble thyself, and take unto thee such of thy brethren as are of one mind, and do bear kind affection toward thee, that they may to- gether mourn and labour for thy deliverance. . . . Make the priest, as a father, partaker of thy afflic- tion and grief ; be bold to impart unto him the things that are most secret : he will have care both of thy safety and of thy credit. S. Gregory of Nyssa. 76 IN TIME OF SICKNESS The Church is as Christ Himself : when thou dost therefore put forth thy hands to the knees of thy brethren, thou touchest Christ : it is Christ unto Whom thou art a suppliant : so when they pour out their tears over them, it is even Christ that taketh compassion : neither can that be easily denied, for which the Son is Himself contented to become a suitor. Tertullian. Confession to a priest, the minister of pardon and reconciliation, the curate of souls, and the guide of consciences, is of so great use and benefit to all that are heavily laden with their sins, that they who carelessly neglect it are neither lovers of the peace of consciences, nor careful for the advantage of their souls. . . . There are many cases of conscience, which the penitent cannot determine, many necessities which he does not perceive, many duties which he omits, many abatements of duty which he ignorantly or pre- sumptuously does make, much partiality in the determination of his own interests ; and to build up a soul requires so much wisdom, so much severity, so many arts, such caution and observ- ance, such variety of notices, great learning, great prudence, great piety ; that as all ministers are PENITENCE 77 not worthy of that charge ... so, it is certain, there are not many of the people that can worthily and sufficiently do it themselves ; and, therefore, although it cannot be said that God hath by an express law required it . . . yet to some persons it hath put on so many degrees of charity and prudence, and is so apt to minister to their super- induced needs ; that although to do it is not a necessary obedience, yet it is a necessary charity ; it is not necessary in respect of a positive express commandment, yet it is in order to certain ends, which cannot be so well provided for by any other instrument. Jeremy Taylor. The custom, which — ^with all its humiliation — Catholics come to feel so helpful, that, viz., of periodically practising confession, has unques- tionably been an aid to the Higher Life during the centuries in which it has been practised. The turning of the eye inwards, scrutinizing the springs and the motives of conduct, and after the discovery that one has erred this way or that, has " left undone those things which he ought to have done, and done those things which he ought not to have done," confessing it all, not to any human medium, but to the Infinite, through the guarded and gracious channel of 78 7A^ TIME OF SICKNESS the Finite ; and after Confession — keeping no- thing back, and being genuinely penitent for all — receiving absolution, in the sense of finding the burden lifted from the back, and a new step forward made possible, with a sense of freedom gained, and life renewed, not by forgetfulness of the past, but by rising " on the stepping stones of the dead self to higher things " — all that has been an immeasurable blessing to the world. The gain of Confession to all penitents is four- fold : — (i) That of self-knowledge. (2) The demand for thorough sincerity, or absolute truth- fulness, in unfolding to the eye of the Infinite what has transpired, or been acted, in the depths of the personal life. (3) Reparation for wrongs done to others is made easier and more natural. None who make a practice of genuine Confes- sion can continue to harbour grudges, or to cherish hatreds, against their fellow-men. (4) A fresh start is given to the moral life, when — after everything is told, and burdens are removed — a new beginning is made, an impulse forward received, aspiration quickened, upward movement made easier, and the ideals of life developed in every direction under happier auspices than before. William Knight. PENITENCE 79 When we have wrongly opposed another, con- fession is part of the reparation due to him ; occult compensation, from the very fact that it saves our pride, can never fully satisfy the debt. Hence we have not paid our debt to God (as we are constrained to conceive Him), till we have confessed our sin by a special act of acknowledg- ment addressed to Him ; nor will it do to rest passively in the thought that He knows all and needs not that we should tell Him. " If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us." But as we ourselves are, so also is God irritated and angered by those who obstinately justify themselves — who never own themselves wrong. To those who confess frankly, honestly, promptly. He is all propitiable and forgiving. " I have sinned," says David ; " the Lord hath taken away thy sin," is the instant response. In the same moment that we resolve upon con- fession, He runs forth to meet us, and to silence our lips with the kiss of peace. George Tyrrell. God has so incorporated Himself with the whole Church of redeemed humanity in becom- ing the Head and Heart of that mystical organism, that confession is due not to Him alone but to 8o 7A^ TIME OF SICKNESS that entire living body in union with which our salvation consists. By sin we always weaken, if we do not wholly sever, our vital connexion with that " Tree of Life " through which alone we receive the quickening sap of God's grace. The deeper this truth enters our soul the less shall we be in danger of Pharisaism (or " separa- tism " as the word means), of the spirit of those who gather in their garments from contact with sinners, and thank God they are not as others, forgetting their identity with, and their respon- sibility for, those others. Ibid. We must confess our sins in order to obtain pardon ; but we must see our sins in order to confess. How few of those who think that they have confessed and been pardoned have ever seen their sins ! Coventry Patmore. In the external and sacramental penance of the Church, Confession follows Contrition and precedes Absolution. In the spiritual and time- less world the three are coincident. Repentance is a self-accusation in the presence of the Father, PENITENCE 8i Who seeth in secret : it is a prayer for forgive- ness which is answered before it is made. The self-accusing habit of mind is an indispen- sable condition of spiritual growth ; it is a part of that general teachableness and receptivity without which the Spirit is intractable in the hands of God. The infallible and the unteach- able are doomed to stagnation and petrifaction. As necessarily as prayer tends to embody itself in utterance, and requires utterance for its due development, so necessarily does contrition require confession and the deeds of penance — not merely such deeds as are due already by a thousand titles, but deeds done more abundantly, humbly and diligently, to redeem the time that is lost by past sin and negligence. The spirit-life for us sinners is essentially a penitential life, George Tyrrell, Real contrition must express itself, first in word and then in deed ; and so it leads us onward to confession and satisfaction. It must do so if it is real, for all real thought or feeling burns impatiently within us till it has clothed itself in language. Thought and feeling, which has not yet come forth into contact with the outer world, is still, in a measure, abstract, indefinite, A,Q, G 82 IN TIME OF SICKNESS unreal : and, therefore, the contrition which comes of knowing that we have wounded love, must, in proportion to its intensity, thirst for utterance in words — out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaking. J. R. Illingworth. The more we realize God as ever present, almighty and omniscient, holy, full of compassion, and deserving both our fear and love, the more we learn to hate and mourn over the sins that we have done to His dishonour. But of such sorrow there must be outward evidence. Con- fession, then, becomes an imperative necessity. The inward grief must have an outlet. We con- fess, because we could not do otherwise. And we feel that, although the past cannot be undone, there is some slight reparation to the wounded love of a heavenly Father when we enumerate the details of our offence, by thought, word and deed. . . . Rude as were the people whom Joshua led, they would understand that it was right and for " the glory of God " that Achan should make solemn confession of his trespass. Edward Churton. PENITENCE 83 To promote humility, self-accusation, sorrow, and therefore the grace of perseverance, and to renew our peace with God, it is good to accuse ourselves of everything we know we have com- mitted, even in the least — in the sins of omission. The one only sin which is beyond the reach of absolution, the one only sin which the Precious Blood cannot absolve, is the sin that is not repented of ; that is the sole and only sin that shall not be washed as w^hite as snow. Be beforehand with the Day of Judgment. That which you confess now will be blotted out and forgiven in that day. That which you hide now will be in the book of God's remembrance, laid up for a record in the day of the great assize. Cardinal Manning. Father, list a sinner's call ! Fain would I hide from man my fall, But I must speak or faint. 1 cannot wear guilt's silent thrall — Cleanse me, kind Saint ! # # # * # ** Peace cannot be, hope must be thine ; I can but lift the Mercy sign. This would'st thou ? It shall be ! Kneel down, and take the word divine, Absolvo te." J. H. Newman. 84 IN TIME OF SICKNESS antenbment " These which are arrayed in the white robes, who are they, and whence came they ? " These are they which came out of the great tribulation, and they washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." Rev. vii. 13,14. Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee. Zech. iii. 4. And such were some of you, but ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God. I Cor. vi. II. / made haste, and delayed not, to observe Thy command- ments. Ps. cxix. 60. / have sworn, and have confirmed it, that 1 will observe Thy righteous judgments. Ps. cxix. io6- Cease to do evil ; Learn to do well. Isa. i. 16, 17, // ye love Me, ye will keep My Commandments. S. John xiv. 15. Let us therefore labour, dearly beloved, that as our Lord on this day ascended with our own body into heaven, so we, as far as we can, may ascend after Him in hope and follow Him in heart. Let us ascend after Him both in our affections and in our advances towards perfection : even through our sins and passions. How through our passions ? Surely if each one of us studies to subdue them to himself, and accustoms himself to stand above them, he makes out of them a step whereby he is able to ascend to higher things. They will lift us up if they are underneath us. — Sermon clxxvi. in Appendix to S. Augustine's Ser7nons. PENITENCE 85 If confession is honest and humbling, it is also stimulating and encouraging. A false conviction that we cannot help sinning, that we can be snared or forced into it against our wish, unnerves our effort, destroys our liberty, and creates the necessity by dreaming of it. It is here especially that humility and honesty, as opposed to insincere self -justification, is so invigorating and healthful. We cannot attempt what we fixedly believe to be impossible. Belief in our possession of power will not create power that is not there, but if it be there it will liberate it, and bring it to act where else it were dormant, and as good as absent. Hence the value of self-confidence, and the use of encouragement. Every doctor knows what suggestion can do, whether to paralyse or to invigorate ; and in moral matters the same law prevails. The fixed idea that we cannot control our imagination, our feelings, our movements ; that we are " possessed " by some alien power, or that we are the victims of some morbid condition, is often the sole and only reason why we cannot and do not. George Tyrrell. The mental side of every conscious act consists in forming a conviction that it is going to happen. 86 7.V TIME OF SICKNESS A resolution is simply a voluntary belief that we are going to act in a certain way ; and if we can hold to the belief, the action (if a possible one) will come off in the present or foreseen conditions. That the resolve and the deed, should, by habit, be inseparably associated is the essential con- dition of moral strength and self-government. Ibid. If one may legitimately believe that the moral excellence, after which he strives in vain, is nevertheless an integral element in the nature he inherits, and therefore a latent possibility of his life, — only requiring the removal of existing hindrance, and the -presence of some magnet, to draw them forth, — there is a large amount of good cheer in the prospect. The possibility of dormant virtues springing into activity, or of dull ones being quickened by transference, adds a new interest to the moral life, and its aspirations after unrealized ideals. William Knight. The true conversion is that which contemplates a definite work to be done for God. '' I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto Thy PENITENCE 87 testimonies. ... I made haste, and delayed not, to observe Thy commandments." One after another, the old temptations are to be met and conquered. Satan is to be cast out by prayer and fasting. Instead of pride, wrath and covetousness, the awakened heart is to be ruled by love, joy, peace. Wasted hours are to be redeemed : the service which dates from the eleventh hour must be unsparing of self. All these difHculties are freely embraced by one who believes that God's goodness calls him. and God's grace is sufficient for him. But . . . acceptance of such a plan of entire reformation will be gradual, for this reason, that what lies before a penitent and faithful soul is never revealed except by slow degrees. " Whither I go, thou canst not follow Me now, but thou shalt follow Me afterwards." " I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now." . .. As each fresh point of duty is perceived, there must always be a fresh movement of the will, consenting to what is required. This is to go " from strength to strength." Edward Churton. The building up of the spirit is no work of wasteless progress, no triumphant march of reason, but a work of laborious fluctuation, of 88 IN TIME OF SICKNESS continual repair, of going back upon past faults and breaches ; a picking up of missed stitches, an endeavour to turn losses into gains, and to weave our very sins into a garment of glory. George Tyrrell. Mary was not contented with contrition and confession. She brake the box of ointment and poured it on His feet. Words are more real than thoughts, and therefore confession than ►contrition ; but deeds are more real than words, and we have sinned in the region of action, and therefore our repentance must go one step farther and become fact. Satisfaction is not the whole, but it is the crown and goal of penitence, whether it comes in the form of action or of suffering, or of both. And to make your satisfaction real, think again of the great human brotherhood, and in the points in which you have wronged it, resolve to make your amends. J. R. Illingworth. No one can have any assurance that he pleases God, or puts himself within the terms of Christian salvation, but he who serves God with his whole heart, and with the utmost of his strength. PENITENCE 89 Though we are not called to such a perfection as implies a sinless state, though our imperfections will not prevent the Divine mercy, yet it cannot be proved that God has any terms of favour for those who do not labour to be as perfect as they can be. ... It is as necessary to labour after Perfection, as to labour after our Salvation, because we can have no satisfaction that a failure in one will not deprive us of the other. William Law. There is not on the earth a soul so base But may obtain a place In covenanted grace ; So that his feeble prayer of faith obtains Some loosening of his chains, And earnest of the great release, which rise From gift to gift, and reach at length the eternal prize. All may save self, — but minds that heavenward tower Aim at a wider power, Gifts on the world to shower. And this is not at once ; — by fastings gained, And trials well sustained. By pureness, righteous deeds, and toils of love, Abidance in the Truth, and zeal of God above. J. H. Newman. Our earthly nature easily falls away from its higher tone by reason of the frailty and evil go IN TIME OF SICKNESS tendency of the flesh, opposing and dragging down the soul, unless it is constantly rising up by means of a vigorous resolution, just as a bird would speedily fall to the ground if it did net maintain its flight by repeated strokes of its wings. In order to this, you need frequently to reiterate the good resolutions you have made to serve God. " You are capable of realizing a longing after God, why should you trifle with anything lower ? You can live for eternity, why should you stop short in time .? . . . You are made for God, woe be to you if you stop short in anything of Him." . . . Lift up your soul with thoughts such as these, convince it that it is eternal, and worthy of eternity ; fill it with courage in this pursuit. Consider the Eternal Love God has borne you, in that, even before our Lord Jesus Christ became Man and suffered on the Cross for you. His Divine Majesty designed your existence and loved you. . . . And amid the drawings of His Love He led you to make these resolutions to serve Him. Surely we should be ready to suffer anything whatsoever rather than let go one particle of these resolutions. The whole world is not worth one soul, and the soul is w^orth but little without its good resolutions. PENITENCE 91 You must particularize the necessary means for maintaining your good resolutions, determin- ing to use them diligently, such as frequency in prayer, in communicating, in good works : the amendment of the faults you have already dis- covered, cutting off occasions of sin, and following out carefully all the advice given you with this view. Then, take breath, as it were, in a renewed profession of your resolutions, and, as though you held your heart in your hands, dedicate, conse- crate, sacrifice, immolate it to God, vowing never to recall it, but leave it for ever in the Right Hand of His Majesty, prepared everywhere and in all things to obey His commands. Ask God to renew your will, to bless your renewed resolutions, and to strengthen them. S. Francis de Sales. jfaftb. TTE saith unto them, Why are ye fearful, ye of little ^^ faith ? S. Matt. viii. 26. Be imitators of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises. Heb. vi. 12. According to your faith be it done unto you. S. Matt. ix. 29. Blessed is she that believed, for there shall be a fulfilment of the things ivhich have been spoken to her from the Lord. S. Luke i. 45. Lord, I believe ; help Thou mine unbelief. S. Mark ix. 24. Lord, increase our faith. S. Luke xvii. 5. We walk by faith, not by sight. 2 Cor. v. 7. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the proviiig of things not seen. Heb. xi. i. By faith . . . Moses . . . endured, as seeing Him Who is invisible. Heb. xi. 27. We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen : for the things which are seen are temporal ; but the things which are not seen are eternal. 2 Cor. iv. 18. // any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God. S. John vii. 17. 92 FAITH 93 We knoiv and have believed the love which God hath in us. I S. John iv. i6. Act of Faith. O my God, I believe in Thee, One God in Three Persons. I beHeve that Jesus Christ came down from heaven and died for me, and I beHeve all the truths that He has taught me in His Word and in His Church. Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief. O Almighty God, Whom truly to know is everlasting life. Grant us perfectly to know Thy Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life : that, following the steps of Thy holy Apostles ... we may stedfastly walk in the way that leadeth to eternal life : through the same Thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. — Collect jar S. Philip and S. James' Day. Almighty and everliving God, Who, for the more confirmation of the faith, didst suffer Thy holy Apostle Thomas to be doubtful in Thy Son's resurrection : grant us so perfectly, and without all doubt, to believe in Thy Son Jesus Christ, that our faith in Thy sight may never be reproved. Hear us, O Lord, through the same Jesus Christ, to Whom, with Thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory, now and for ever- more. — Collect jar S. Thomas'' Day. Grant us, O Lord, we pray Thee, to trust in Thee with all our heart, seeing that, as Thou dost always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so Thou dost not forsake those who make their boast of Thy mercy : through Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, continually to strengthen us with a holy faith in Thine Incarnation, that the crafty enemy may never be able to overcome us who are established in the love of Thee. O God, Who art One and True, we humbly beseech Thee that the Catholic Faith, which is acceptable 94 IN TIME OF SICKNESS to Thee, may continue for ever in us all ; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Almighty and everlasting God, give unto us the increase of faith, hope, and charity : and, that we may obtain that which Thou dost promise, make us to love that which Thou dost command : through Jesus Christ our Lord.— Co//^c^ Jor lUh Sunday after Trinity, Firmly I believe and truly God is Three, and God is One ; And I next acknowledge duly Manhood taken by the Son. And I trust and hope most fully In that Manhood crucified ; And each thought and deed unruly Do to death, as He has died. Simply to His grace and wholly Light and life and strength belong, And I love supremely, solely, Him the holy, Him the strong. And I hold in veneration, For the love of Him alone. Holy Church as His creation. And her teachings as His own. Adoration aye be given. With and through the angelic host, To the God of earth and Heaven, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. J. H. Ni VMAN. FAITH 95 3t0 mature. What is Faith ? If I were to say that it is the absolute condition of all life, of all action, of all thought which goes beyond the limitations of our own minds, I should use no exaggeration. Faith is in every age, under all circumstances, that by which man lays hold on the realities which underlie the changeful appearances of things, and gives substance to hope, that by which he enters into actual communion with the powers of the unseen world and brings their mani- festation to a sovereign test. It is the harmony of reason and feeling and purpose. It is, to say all briefly, thought illuminated by emotion and concentrated by will. Faith, as applied to our present life, is a principle of knowledge, a principle of power, a principle of action. It may be quickened and intensified ; it may be dulled and neglected. As it is used so it will be fruitful ; and we are severally responsible for the use which we make of it. What is Faith to us ? Perhaps as we come to feel more distinctly what it is capable of being, we shall answer best, mindful of our selfishness, of our triviality, of our forgetfulness of God, by praying that whatever it is, it may hereafter be far more. Bishop Westcott. 96 7A^ TIME OF SICKNESS Now faith may be thus understood ; it is that power by which a man gives himself up to any- thing, seeks, wills, adheres to, and unites with it, so that his life lives in it, and belongs to it. Now to whatever the soul gives itself up ; whatever it hungereth after ; and in which it delights, and seeks to be united ; there, and there only, is its faith ; that faith which can work either life or death, and according to which faith, everything is, and must be done to man. William Law. Faith in some form or other seems to be almost a necessary condition, if not of life, yet of the most fruitful and noble life. . . . Most men^ I think, are significant, and find and make life significant, in proportion to their faith. J. N. Figgis. Faith is the sense and the call of the open horizon. If we abstract it from the forms in which we clothe it, from the specific beliefs which are, as it were, its projection into our intelligence, it presents itself as the spring of our whole life, including our intellectual life. It is the impulse to grow and expand ; and just because it is that it has itself no form, but may assume any form. FAITH 97 It is a taper burning now bright, now dim, and changing colour and substance with every change in the stuff it consumes. The frailest thing we know, it is also the least perishable, for it is a tongue of the Central Fire that burns at the heart of the world. G. Lowes Dickinson. People commonly assume that religious faith consists in holding an intricate and complicated system of beliefs. . . . The real process is both simpler and more difficult. Faith has first to shine within us, giving light to all the blind gropings, the immature instincts, the faltering affirmations, which are the chaotic fragments of a spiritual nature ; all the hopes, questionings, presentiments, doubts, aspirations, which, at the shining of that light, are to come to a knowledge of themselves, and find their own meaning and value as a living experience of God. In the light and fire of this experience, faith itself will be purified and chastened, and will emerge from it as a knowledge of God. Arthur Chandler. It is of the Christian Faith as revealed that we are now to think — ^that faith by which we see A.Q. H 98 7A^ TIME OF SICKNESS the world as a society of free, created, and immortal spirits, a world of real chances and incalculable catastrophes, a world of broken harmonies, of pain and sin : withal its Maker known to us as Father and Friend, His love flashing out in the most astounding marvels, the Incarnation and Death of the One-begotten — Whose rising is less a wonder than His dying if He be Who He is — Who hy His Cross redeems us now, and in His Body the Church gives us in Baptism and the Eucharist the very spirit and essence of eternal life. This world with God its blazing fact, and prayer and faith real forces stronger than the armies of evil, though quite congruous to common sense and our inner life, is incongruous with any mechanical system, whether of forces or ideas, or with an Absolute which is unrevealable even in symbol. J. N. Figgis. If faith be honest and sincere, however small may be the present amount, it contains the whole future development. When our Lord says to His disciples, " If ye have faith as a grain of mus- tard seed, nothing shall be impossible unto you," He does not mean that the -very smallest measure FAITH 99 of faith will then and there be able to work miracles, but that it will go on till it becomes able to work them, because a true faith necessarily expands. A. J. Mason. S. Paul meant by " faith which is in Christ Jesus " not less than this — the surrender of one's life to Christ, to be conformed to His example-, guided by the daily disclosure of His will, informed and strengthened by His grace ; the conviction that for His sake, and by the power of His perfect sacrifice, we can be set free from the sins that hinder and defile us, and know the miracle of God's forgiveness ; the growing certainty that He Himself, our Blessed Lord, vouchsafes to come and dwell within us, by the operation of the Holy Ghost, giving us His own life, and making us strong to be true, and humble, and patient, and unselfish : strict with ourselves, as knowing how much need we have of strictness ; gentle, and making large allowances for others, as never knowing how sorely they are tried ; — enabling us, in spite of all that is past, to follow the blessed steps of His most holy life. So may we live by faith, in living union with Him, seeking continually through deeper 100 IN TIME OF SICKNESS penitence, through the nearer knowledge of His life, through the less unworthy welcome of His Eucharistic Presence, to open out our hearts more freely to His love, to enthrone Him in steadier supremacy over all our ways. Francis Paget. Everywhere faith, or the capacity of receiving, has a power to claim and command the thing which it needs. ... A disbelieving life becomes a barren life . . . the nature which distrusts gets nothing from the man in whom it disbelieves. Faith is such a relation of one being to another higher being as opens the higher being's nature to the lower, and makes a ready gift of the higher to the lower possible. At any time, in any place, wherever God wills, whenever the man's soul is ready, the gates open slowly or suddenly : the soul has faith in God, and God is given to the soul. The whole of life until that comes is but a growth, a struggle, a reaching out to that. Phillips Brooks. Faith is the response of our whole soul, not of the mind alone, but also of the heart and FAITH loi affections and social instincts, to Christ and to His Church. George Tyrrell. Faith is that temper of sympathetic and imme- diate response to Another's will which belongs to a recognized relationship of vital communion. It is the spirit of confident surrender, which can only be justified by an inner identification of the life. Unless this inner relationship be a fact, faith could not account for itself : but if it be a fact, it must constitute a fixed and necessary demand upon all men. All are, equally, " children of God " : and the answer to the question, " Why should I believe ? " must be, for ever and for all, valid : " because you are a child of God." Faith itself lies deeper than all the capacities of which it makes use : it is, itself, the primal act of the elemental self, there at the root of life, where the being is yet whole and entire, a single personal individuality, unbroken and undivided. Faith, which is the germinal act of our love for God, is an act of the whole self, there where it is one, before it has parted off into what we can roughly describe as separate and distinguishable faculties. H. S. Holland. 102 IN TIME OF SICKNESS a (Bitt of (Bob. They shall all be taught of God. s. John vi. 45. That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. Having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of His calling. Eph. i. 17, 18. The Apostles' Creed is mainly a plain statement of matters of fact ; yet, as a formula of belief, it appeals, not to the critical and calculative under- standing which is used in the discussion or the examination of historical evidence, but to the spiritual and apprehensive faculties, which lay hold of eternal verities. It does so because the belief w^hich it asks for is not the mere belief that the facts occurred. Such a belief would be quite possible without anything that could be called " faith." What it asks for as " faith " is the com- mittal of the self to these facts as to spiritual acts, in which the eternal Love and Will of God have entered upon the scene of our human story, and have taken definite action therein. To these acts God stands committed. And to these acts He asks man to commit himself in his entire being, so that he may pass under their power and pressure and accept all their consequences, FAITH 103 and yield himself to that which God, in them, sets moving. So surrendering himself, he brings to bear upon himself the full force of those energies which the Eternal Love has evoked on his behalf. H. S. Holland. Baptism has been called the sacrament of illumination, in that the germ of faith is then planted in the soul. When the Psalmist exclaims, " the Lord is my light and salvation, whom then shall I fear ? " mystical writers have detected a reference to the effect of Baptism ; whea he adds " the Lord is the strength of my life, of whom then shall I be afraid ? " to the effect of Confirmation. " The eyes of the heart " are enlightened by the virtue of faith. This enlightenment is an inner shining ; not the light of knowledge gained by culture, or by the exercise of the senses, but an inner manifestation of God to the soul. Though in darkness, the understanding has yet the capacity for light, like the man who is groping in the night. The Holy Spirit, as the Illuminator, dispels the darkness and amplifies the view, correcting and ennobling the natural 104 IN TIME OF SICKNESS faculty with the virtue of faith and the gifts of wisdom, understanding, knowledge and counsel. W. H. HUTCHINGS. Faith grounds itself, solely and wholly, on an inner and vital relation of the soul to its source. This source is most certainly elsewhere ; it is not within the compass of the soul's own activity. In some mode, inconceivable and mysterious, our life issues out of an impenetrable background ; and as our life includes spiritual elements, that background has spiritual factors ; and as our life is personal, within that background exists personality. This supply of life in which we begin, from out of which our being opens, can never cease, so long as we exist, to sustain us by one continuous act. Ever its resources flow in ; ever its vital support is unwithdrawn. In some fashion or another we all know that this must be so : and the Christian Creed only lifts into clear daylight, and endows with perfect expression, this elemen- tary and universal verity, when it asserts that at the very core of each man's being lies, and lives, and moves, and works, the creative energy FAITH 105 of the Divine Will — " the Will of our Father which is in Heaven." H. S. Holland. Besides our mental incapacity and ignorance, our moral incapacity makes us unfit to receive the full light all at once. There must be an infinity of truths in God's mind which as yet we are mentally and morally incapable of receiving ; and for this reason, as well as for others, His revelation, being only a fractional truth, must necessarily seem mys- terious, disjointed and even perverse. George Tyrrell. We must think of faith not as an effort of the intellectual power only, but as an energy of our whole personality, gathering all the faculties of our nature and offering them alive to God. Faith seems to be an awakening of our per- sonality by the Holy Spirit to the consciousness of God, and to its need of God, Who is its life. The dead soul that does not live by faith can catch some intellectual view of the objects of faith and of Christian doctrine, but this view cannot produce that profound interior revolution io6 7A^ TIME OF SICKNESS in a man's character which we call conversion, that growing likeness to Christ which comes of the fellowship of union with Christ. Faith is an act of the higher life, an energy of the life of God in a man, — an act which affects him profoundly, and leaves its mark in character. The man of faith who feeds upon God has no fear of exhausting the supply which is his life, for he feeds upon the infinite. George Congreve. We may consider Christian faith as a super- natural gift of God to us, a " power of the world to come," enabling us to live already in a higher world than that which is seen, a faculty for approaching God, touching God personally, possessing God Himself — the faculty by which every relation to God is realized and vitalized. As we begin to use this higher faculty, we find ourselves no longer imprisoned by circumstances from which there is no escape. The imprisoning circumstances remain, but there is no prisoner. Faith in Christ gave him secret access to another world, and he is free. There was no external change, nothing was seen to happen ; the man prayed in secret, and the prayer of faith proved to be a working of the Holy Ghost in his mind. FAITH 107 and heart, and will, and he became conscious of light and power within, enabling him to rise out of his own emptiness, folly and sadness. Ibid. Hn Hbventure* Abraham . . . went out, not knowing whither he went. Heb. xi. What the Apostle says of Abraham is a descrip- tion of all true faith : it goes out, not knowing whither it goes. It does not crave or bargain to see the end of the journey ; it does not argue, with S. Thomas in the days of his ignorance, " we know not whither, and how can we know the way ? " It is persuaded that it has quite enough light to walk by, far more than sinful man has a right to expect, if it sees one step in advance ; and it leaves all knowledge of the country over which it is journeying, to Him Who calls it on. J. H. Newman. Perhaps if God's existence had been one of those things of which formal proof could be given to the world, the acknowledged fact would have io8 IN TIME OF SICKNESS lost its interest. It would have killed individual inquiry. . . . We should have lost all those touching and noble associations which gather round the name of faith, and should have had instead a cold science — common property, and so appropriated by none. As it is, each man has to prove the fact for himself. It is the great adventure, the great romance of every soul — this finding of God. Though so many travellers have crossed the ocean before us, and bear witness of the glorious continent beyond, each soul for itself has to repeat the work of a Columbus, and discover God afresh. And this can indeed be done ; but intellectual argument is not the sole nor the main means of apprehension. At best it prepares the way. Moral purification is equally necessary. Then spiritual effort, deter- mined, concentrated, renewed in spite of failure — calm and strong prayers in the Name of Christ — enable the believer to say, like Jacob after he had wrestled with the Angel, — ^' I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." A. J. Mason. If the reasons for God's dealings were always clear, there would be no room for the exercise of real trust. We have no need to trust about FAITH 109 what we see quite plainly. The end, the final issues, may be far from clear to us, but enough has been shown us to enable us to depend absolutely on Him for the rest. Some manifestation of His thought and love for each of us individually He has given us ere now. Therefore, " Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it." Bishop Webb. You must mix some uncertainty With faith, if you would have faith be. R. Browning. Any religion would be a calamity which quenched this sense of the great human adventure in the unknown. There is no certainty which could be other than dull, hard and materialistic, compared with the infinite hopes and possibilities of this spiritual quest. Only stupid people sneer at the man who says " Credo quia impossibile." To have faith in the impossible is precisely the function of religion. J. A. Spender. Faith is pledged to use all possible guidance and direction in making its great act of self- no IN TIME OF SICKNESS surrender to God. And it is the peculiar office of reason, and of the rational conscience, to guard it from any distorted and unworthy venture. Faith has to make its leap ; but to make it exactly in that direction, and in no other, where reason point the way. It is bound, as an act of the whole man, to use every conceivable means and security which knowledge can bring it. It cannot afford to enter on that venturous committal of itself less equipped and instructed than it was open to it to be. It must put all to use that can better its offer of itself to God. H. S. Holland. Faith must always remain beyond its realized evidences. There will come at last the moment when the call to believe will be just the same to the complete and reasonable man as it always is to the simplest child — the call to trust Another with a confidence which reason can justify but can never create. This act, which is faith, must have in it that spirit of venture, which closes with Another's invitation, which yields to Another's call. It must still have in it and about it the character of a vital motion — of a leap upward, which dares to FAITH III count on the prompting energies felt astir within it. j^^^^ Revelation, in most cases, throws light on nature, and anticipates the slow and uncertain fruits of philosophy ; and the revealed idea of the Communion of Saints, of the mystical Body of Christ, of the Blessed Trinity, and the depend- ent conception of Divine Charity, all seem to presuppose and expand the relationship here suggested between soul and soul ; all imply that man's final blessedness and perfection consist in a likeness and union with the Holy Trinity where Three Persons enjoy one and the same life, thought and love ; in the adoption of all created souls into that same unity ; in the com- munizing of all our experience and the breaking down of those cell-walls that now make us mys- teries one to another ; in the perfect transparency of every mind to every mind, and of every heart to every heart ; so that there shall be many eyes but one vision ; many tongues but one word ; many hearts but one joy. George Tyrrell. Faith, like all trust, is an act of the will, which 112 IN TIME OF SICKNESS decides to take risks ; and so, whenever it is tried, it must involve courage. . . . Courage may not be the one virtue, . . . but it is a very real grace ; it embraces a wider scope than is often supposed, and carries us on from the simplest acts to the heights of sacrifice and faith. ... If there were no difficulties or perplexities, if belief were a mathematical certitude, there could be none of that " personal trust in a person," none of that elan of victory and freedom which belongs to faith. It is not by ignoring our difficulties or treating them as unreal, that we can have the joy of faith ; but by finding in them the secret of our power. J. N. Figgis. At first, faith need not be more than the accept- ance of a few central facts of revelation. These will be sufficient to illuminate and justify that primitive, deep-seated instinct of kinship with God which we recognized at the beginning as the raw material of religion, and which we saw giving expression to itself in an imperfectly understood ritual of sacrifice and communion. Such a faith, again, will be sufficient to illuminate and justify the obstinate conviction that the values which we blindly pursue and cherish are FAITH 113 perfectly realized and eternally conserved in Him Who is the Word and Wisdom of the Father. What an unlimited opening does faith thus provide for the development of religion ; for the garnering of religious experience in prayer and meditation ; for the confident quest of the true, the beautiful, and the good ; for the practice of fellowship w^ith all who share the clansmen's sacrificial feast and are pledged thereby to mutual service ! Arthur Chandler. Strong Son of God, immortal Love, Whom we, that have not seen Thy face. By faith, and faith alone » embrace. Believing where we cannot prove. ***** We have but faith : we cannot know ; For knowledge is of things we see ; And yet we trust it comes from Thee, A beam in darkness : let it grow. Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell ; That mind and soul, according well. May make one music as before. But vaster. Tennyson. A.G, I 114 J^ TIME OF SICKNESS Faith is, everywhere, a holding on by the will to truths which for the moment the mind does not see, or is incapable of seeing. Faith is a voluntary holding to truths that were accepted by us in the hour of peace, but which are now obscured in the darkness of passion and temptation. George Tyrrell. ZbvowQb jEyperience* Faith is not mere belief ; but such belief as leads us to have confidence in God — confidence in what He is to us, and does for us, and asks of us, with the necessary implication of a response on our part. And when we speak of a living, or lively faith, we mean a faith by which we live in conscious response to God's love and its demands upon us ; trusting Him for to-morrow because we know that we are obeying Him to-day. J. R. Illingworth. *^ To him who waits, all things reveal them- selves," provided that he has the courage not to deny in the darkness what he has seen in the light. Coventry Patmore. FAITH 115 God ! Thou art love ! I build my faith on that. Even as I watch beside Thy tortured child Unconscious whose hot tears fall fast by him, So doth Thy right hand guide us through the world Wherein we stumble. . . . I know Thee, Who hast kept my path, and made Light for me in the darkness, tempering sorrow So that it reached me like a solemn joy ; It were too strange that I should doubt Thy love. R. Browning. True faith is not dependent upon nature, it does not arise by the accumulation of a multitude of particulars in experience ; it grows from a root of vital intercourse. P. N. Waggett. What is that life of faith which historically began with Abraham ? It is a friendship, an intimacy, between man and God, between a son and a father. Such an intimacy cannot be idle or stagnant ; it cannot arrest its instinctive development. It holds in it infinite possibilities of growth ; of increasing familiarity, of multiplied communion. And thus, such a friendship creates a story of its own : it has its jars, its frictions, its entanglements ; alas ! on one side, its lapses, its quarrels, its blunders, its misunderstandings : ii6 IN TIME OF SICKNESS and then, on the other, its corresponding indig- nations, and withdrawals and rebukes : and, yet again, its reconciliations, its reactions, its pardons, its victories. Ever it moves forward on its chequered path : ever God, the good Friend, spends Himself in recovering the intimacy, in renewing it, in purg- ing it, in raising it. Its conditions expand ; its demands intensify ; its perils deepen ; its glories gather ; until it consummates its effort in the perfected communion of God and man — in Him, Who completes and closes the story of His ever-growing intimacy, by that act of supreme condescension which brings down God to inhabit and possess the heart of man : and by that act of supreme exaltation, which uplifts man into absolute union with the God Who made him. H. S. Holland. In this story (of Lazarus) we have the rebuke of our faithlessness. Jesus did love ; He did receive the message ; but He allowed physical laws to finish their work, and Lazarus died. Yet when Martha doubted. He answered, " Said I not unto thee, that if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God ? " . . . FAITH 117 In this act of His, He is the mystery of Providence made plain . . . Time itself may pass before we see (His purpose) : but it is not lost to the eternal sight of God, to Whom a thousand years are as one day. . . . We are simply and resolutely to believe that, behind and in spite of all the perplexity of outward seeming, a higher law, " for the glory of God," is working, and will, in God's own way and time, achieve its end, and we shall see it. There are two tests of the reality of faith in the love of God : the one the instinct of prayer the other the power of waiting. Archbishop Lang. Does the precept run " Believe in good, In justice, truth, now understood For the first time ? " or, " Believe in Me, Who lived and died, yet essentially Am Lord of Life ? '' Whoever can take The same to his heart and for mere love's sake Conceive of the love, — ^that man obtains A new truth ; no conviction gains Of an old one only, made intense By a fresh appeal to his faded sense. R. Browning. He who, in his inward and outward life, puts Christ before all, even before his own life an ii8 IN TIME OF SICKNESS the objects of his deepest affection, thereby admits His Godhead with a conviction more vital than any of which the bare intellect is capable. It is from the whole soul and not from the surface of the mind alone, that we must answer the question " What think ye of Christ ? Whose son is He ? " George Tyrrell. Faith is not a crop which springs out of the world to reward a careless harvester ; it is rather the work of a soul which, out of a world which would otherwise seem dead, extracts the answer of confidence in God. Did I speak of the world as if it were empty of meaning ? It is alive with meaning, filled with a voice of God. But it is the voice rather of God's question to us than of His answer. It challenges, it provokes the response of faith, and the dark places, the breaks — " What if the breaks themselves should prove at last The most consummate of contrivances To train a man's eye, teach him what is faith ? And so we stumble at truth's very test." (R. Browning.) P. N. Waggett. FAITH 119 For an ideal, or for a principle, men have been found willing and able to give up the world and all that is in it. But not only so ; there was something yet rarer and harder that went before ; they were able to apprehend the idea as an idea, to recognize the principle as a principle, to hear and accept the word of God as a word of God, against the blindness and the rejection and the contradiction, as well as to hold it, to live by it and die for it, against all the excommunications and excisions of the world. It is the trials of faith, its pains and disappoint- ments and failures and deaths, that make faith, and are the sources of its chief virtue and real triumph. There are salvations in and with and through, or by means of, the very extremest trials of faith, with which are not to be compared any temporal deliverances from them. William P. Du Bose. That which is common to every great act of faith is that it lays hold upon some word of God and holds it against the world ; through it it transcends or overcomes the world, and inherits a promise of something above and beyond the world. The doer of such an act makes himself 120 IN TIME OF SICKNESS greater than the world, and though he lose it, in doing so he finds, or gains, or makes himself. Ibid. H (Boob life IReceeaari?. Faith is a door, not a goal. It opens the way to a thousand new difficulties which the soul never knew until it believed. ... It demands sacrifice of every kind as the condition of its growth. . . . The fruit of faith is life, not emotion, and it is unquestionably harder to live the spiritual life than to do religious works. . . . The life of faith is of necessity the life of peni- tence, and penitential discipline is hard. . . . Prayer is the most characteristic exercise of the spirit in this life of faith. ... At the outset prayer demands sacrifice. . . . This sacrifice begins in little things, — the giving up of time, the surrendering of the loved pursuit, that space may be won for spiritual exercise. And, the sacrifice passes on and up to that complete obla- tion of the will which demands for its accomplish- ment the whole vigour of manhood, inspired and sustained by the grace of God. WiLFORD L. ROBBINS. FAITH 121 The pure in heart shall see the truth, means that — given equal data, and the same intellectual advantage — the morally better man will strike the truth more nearly, will be more happy in his guesses and ventures, since he is more in harmony with reality, more subtly responsive to its hints. Not only the mind but the whole soul is the organ of truth, Christ is not merely a truth to be believed, but a way to be trodden, a life to be lived. We get to know Christ, as fellow travellers, fellow workers, fellow soldiers, get to know one another, — by mingling their lives together. It is ever in what we know to be our best moods that we find ourselves most in sympathy with Christ ; when we work more faithfully by the light of conscience. It is in what we know are our worst moods that the light of faith begins to grow dim : when we are disturbed, tempted, distracted, out of sympathy with our conscience. George Tyrrell. ©bebfence. TOEHOLD, to obey is better than sacrifice I Sam. XV. 22. He was oppressed, yet He humbled Himself and opened not His mouth ; as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before his shearers is dumb ; yea, He opened not His mouth. Isa. liii. 7. And He kneeled dovm and prayed, saying. Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup from Me : nevertheless, not My Will but Thine, be done. S. Luke xxii. 42. Though He was a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered. Heb. v. 8. For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One, shall the many be made righteous. Rom. v. 19. He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the Cross. Phil. ii. 8. Almighty and everlasting God, Who, of Thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent Thy Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ, to take upon Him our tlesh, and to suffer death upon the Cross, that all mankind should follow the example of His great humility ; Mercifully grant, that we may both follow the example of His patience, and also be made partakers of His resurrec- 122 OBEDIENCE 123 tion : through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. — Collect jor the Sunday bejore Easter. Almighty God, Who madest Thy blessed Son to be circumcised, and obedient to the law for man : grant us the true Circumcision of the Spirit : that, our hearts, and all our members, being mortified from all worldly and carnal lusts, we may in all things obey Thy blessed will : through the same Thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. — Collect Jor the Circumcision, O Almighty and most merciful God, of Thy bountiful goodness keep us, we beseech Thee, from all things that may hurt us : that we, being ready both in body and soul, may cheerfully accomplish those things that Thou wouldest have done : through Jesus Christ our Lord. — Collect Jor the 20th Sunday ajter Trinity. ITbe ©bebience of Cbrfet The life of Christ is characterized by the homage of perfect obedience, . . . consummate obedience, as a perfect manifestation, and offering of holiness : holiness in terms of human condition and character ; yet a perfectly adequate holiness ; a response worthy of the holiness of God. . . . It is a life of unreserved, unremitting, absolute and clearly conscious, dependence. The centre of His life is never in Himself. He is always, explicitly, the manifestation, the reflection, the obedient Son and Servant, of another. There is no purpose of self ; no element of self-will ; no possibility, even for a moment, of the imagina- tion of separateness ; no such thing, we may even 124 IN TIME OF SICKNESS say, as a consciousness alone and apart. He is the representative agent of another, the Son of the Father, the Image of God. This is the entire description of His life and consciousness. " I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent Me." ... " I and the Father are One." R. C. MOBERLY. We may contemplate Christ's character as the type of filial obedience, — of a complete harmony between human will and the law of holiness. . . . Obedience, based on absolute trust in the character and purpose of God ; an " obedience of faith," yet in its essence the obedience not of a servant but of a son ; an obedience that refuses nothing, shrinks from nothing, questions nothing that presents itself as Divine requirement : such is seen to be the law of Christ's Life, the law to Him of action and of endurance, the rule of prayer, the prin- ciple of sacrifice, the motive of service, the well- spring of thanksgiving and joy. If the entire completeness of this obedience becomes One Who wears " the form of a ser- vant," the willingness of it marks the glad service of a Son. And because the fulfilment by Jesus of the Father's will is spontaneous, free, whole- OBEDIENCE 125 hearted, sacrificial, it wins acceptance as the offering of One " well pleasing " and " beloved." Perfected by submission to suffering and death, the obedience of Jesus is stamped with the token of Divine satisfaction by His rising from the dead. R. L. Ottley. Christ's call was to a sterner mortification or austerity than men had yet learnt — that mortifi- cation which is the essential condition of all strenuous mental or moral development ; of the life of perfect reason ; of the subjection of the psychic will to the spiritual and Divine. It was not the mortification of the oriental ascetic, sought directly for its own sake, dictated by a disbelief in nature and in life, but such as was incidental to, and inseparable from, the quest of the highest, widest and fullest life. " He was obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross" — obedience, conformity to the Divine Will, was the end ; the Cross was but the inevit- able incident : Death for Life's sake, not Death for Death's sake. George Tyrrell. 126 IN TIME OF SICKNESS IReaifinatlon^ There should be no greater comfort to Christian persons than to be made like unto Christ, by suffering patiently adversities, troubles, and sick- nesses. For He Himself went not up to joy, but first He suffered pain ; He entered not into His glory before He was crucified. So truly our way to eternal joy is to suffer here with Christ. Visitation of the Sick, Book of Common Prayer. God sets the soul long, weary, impossible tasks, yet is satisfied by the first sincere proof that obedience is intended, and takes the burthen away forthwith. Coventry Patmore. O might it please God that we should little regard the course of the way we tread, and have our eyes fixed on Him Who conducts us, and on the blessed country to which it leads ! What should it matter to us whether it is by the desert or by the meadows we go, if God is with us and we go into Paradise .? S. Francis de Sales. Wish not, dear friends, my pain away — Wish me a wise and thankful heart. OBEDIENCE 127 With God, in all my griefs, to stay, Nor from His loved correction start. # # * * * Were it not better to lie still. Let Him strike home, and bless the rod. Never so safe as when our will Yields, undiscerned by all but God. John Keble. " Resignation is too often conceived to be merely a submission, not unattended with com- plaint, to what we have no power to avoid. . . . Your full triumph as far as that particular occasion of duty is concerned will be to find that you not merely repress inward tendencies to murmur — but that you would not if you could alter what in any matter God has plainly willed. . . . Here is the great work of religion ; here is the path through which sanctity is attained, the highest sanctity ; and yet it is a path evidently to be traced in the course of our daily duties." W. E. Gladstone {John Morley). We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening, we shall hear the right word. Emeiison, 128 IN TIME OF SICKNESS The years teach much which the days never know. 1^ Ibid. " Let no man think that sudden, in a minute, All is accomplished, and the work is done : Though with thine earliest dawn thou should'st begin it, Scarce were it ended with thy setting sun." Frederick Myers. The obedient temper has a deep importance as being the counter agent of all insubordination. And insubordination is very prominent among our modern evils. There is, of course, a noble discontent with things as they are ; which is the necessary condition of our Christian desire to right social wrong ; discontent, that is to say, with all the evil that is in the world. But this is totally different from the discontented temper which issues in insubordination ; the temper that resents restraint. Against this the obedient temper is our safeguard ; the temper which recognizes the laws of nature as expressing the will of God : . . . the temper which still more immediately hears and obeys God's voice in the magisterial command of conscience . . . which bears in mind that ..." the powers that be are ordained of God," and is therefore OBEDIENCE 129 " subject to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake." J. R. Illingworth. Endurance is the crowning quaHty, And Patience all the passion of great hearts ! J. R. Lowell. O Thou God of old, Grant me some smaller grace than comes to these ! But so much Patience as a blade of grass Grows by, contented through the heat and cold. E. B. Browning. We must cultivate the practice of Patience, by which I mean the quiet endurance of the crosses, troubles, sorrows and vexations, which thwart or sadden our life. By accepting these with a good grace we shall be doing much to subdue the arrogant self-assertion which regards every cross or trial as an insult to our dignity, or an obstacle to our success. ... It is wisest to be content to endure the crosses which meet us in the ordinary way, and which are quite sufficient for our purpose. . . . The Patience which is quiet, stedfast and unostentatious, which serenely meets each trouble as it comes, accepting each as a reminder that God's strength A.G. K 130 IN TIME OF SICKNESS is made perfect in weakness, and that weakness is our natural and appropriate condition, — such Patience is a very shrewd attack on the power of Pride. Arthur Chandler. A cross wholly inflicted by God, and fully accepted without any unrestful hesitation, is full of peace as well as of pain. On the contrary, a cross not fully and simply accepted, but even slightly resisted by the love of self, is doubled : it is still more a cross, thanks to that futile resist- ance, than through the pain it necessarily entails. Fenelon. When hearts are full of innermost distress, And we are doomed to stand inactive by, Watching the soul's or body's agony, Which human effort helps not to make less — Then like a cup capacious to contain The overflowings of the heart is prayer ; The longing of the soul is satisfied, The keenest darts of anguish blunted are : And though we cannot cease to yearn or grieve, We yet have learned in patience to abide. R. C. Trench. Obedience, though it niay look at first sight like a mere abandonment of our will, is for that OBEDIENCE 131 very reason capable of becoming the very highest act of will. For — " Our wills are ours to make them Thine." To submit our will to God's will, and so to make His will our own, is the highest form of self- determination, and therefore the greatest step towards the formation of a character that is truly free ; free, that is, not from the law, but by the law, — the kw which no longer appears as an alien restraint, because it is incorporated with the self. Hence the ethical and spiritual value of obedience ; it is the road, and the necessary and only road to freedom. J. R. Illingworth. I have this bidding to perform ; but mind And body, all of me, though made and meant For that sole service, must consult, concert With my own self and nobody beside. How to effect the same : God helps not else. 'Tis I, who with my stock of craft and strength. Choose the director cut across the hedge, Or keep the foot track that respects a crop, Lie down and rest, rise up and run, — ^live spare. Feed free, — all that's my business : but arrive. Deliver message, bring the answer back. And make my bow, I must : then God will speak. Praise me, or haply blame, as service proves. R. Browning, 132 IN TIME OF SICKNESS Ifortltube. The parts of Fortitude are confidence, patience, magnanimity, magnificence, constancy and per- severance. Confidence is the assured hope of bringing what we undertake to a successful end. Patience . . . resists perturbation, grief and sadness, and victoriously endures molestation. Magnanimity is that greatness of soul which rises above difficulties and dangers. Magnificence is that largeness of soul which projects and carries out great works from high and noble motives. Constancy stands with unchangeable firmness to its resolutions, and shuns the levity that flits in restless moods from one thing to another. Perseverance is the resolute continuance in good once begun, despite of all obstacles and discouragements. Archbishop Ullathorne. S. Augustine defines fortitude as " the firmness of the soul amidst the troublesome things of time," and more especially as " the love of endur- ing all things in peace for God's sake." And elsewhere he calls it " an affection of the soul whereby we despise whatever inconveniences or OBEDIENCE 133 injuries we may suffer, that are placed beyond our power to remedy." In Romans viii. 35-39, we are taught that fortitude is the strength of charity : that it derives its ardent force from adhering to God through Christ : that it is mighty above all created powers to repel the adversaries of the soul, be they earthly or unearthly, come they with fear or enticement : and that this fortitude of charity overcomes every temptation, trial and suffering, by still adhering with constancy to God. Ibid. Though you should neglect one or more of the many shrines in your heart, never be neglectful of the shrine of fortitude : offer there frequent worship, exalt fortitude among the highest objects of your prayers. To bear pain well is to be not only man but also god. All through our lives fortitude remains above the possibility of explana- tion, a divine act, a downright interposition of Providence to help us to be good. It so rules and sways the admiration of mankind that Chris- tianity was founded and built on the Passion : and the line is unbroken down from that example to the least of us bearing well the least moment of pain. . . . 134 ^A' ^^^^ OF SICKNESS Fortitude illumines pain like sunshine, or like a procession through dull streets : it writes Victory across the very page where Failure was written : and the best of it is that no occasion is too trivial for its exercise, no point of our lives too low to catch its light. Stephen Paget. Fortitude is of two kinds : there is an active fortitude and a passive fortitude. . . . The perfection of fortitude is in its passive character. . . . The courage which shows itself in action may be little more than the energies of nature, and nature has a certain satisfaction in putting out its latent power ; but the fortitude which is shown in suffering is, I may say, contrary to nature. All our nature rises against it, and it demands an energy of will, of self-constraint, of self-subjection, which is altogether not of nature but of grace. . . . Active fortitude is one of the four cardinal virtues, . . . but the fortitude of which we are speaking is a gift of the Holy Ghost. Cardinal Manning. There are critical moments when fortitude demands that we become stern and severe with OBEDIENCE 135 ourselves, but never with others, unless to check some great evil. But where this virtue is habitual, and in good exercise, it is gentle, free and cheer- ful. As it is the gift of the H0I7 Ghost, and works with the sweet flame of charity, it sweetens the soul, and by its resistance to the vices that produce fear, hardness and disconsolation, true Christian fortitude makes the soul peaceful, pleasant and cheerful. . . . As a gift of the Holy Ghost fortitude is a gratui- tous and abounding grace, given to those who seek perfection of life through the divine counsels. ... It is the strength of God's grace working through the co-operation of the will in the weak- ness of the creature . . . the surrender of oneself to God amidst accepted afflictions, that, attached to the Cross of Christ, they may perfect our soul. Archbishop Ullathorne. Count each affliction, whether light or grave, God's messenger sent down to thee : do thou With courtesy receive him ; rise and bow. And, ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave Permission first his heavenly feet to lave. Then lay before him all thou hast ; allow No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow. Or mar thy hospitality ; no wave Of mortal tumult to obliterate 136 IN TIME OF SICKNESS The souPs marmoreal calmness : grief should be Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate, Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free ; Strong to consume small troubles, to commend Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to the end. Aubrey de Vere. Botticelli's " Fortitude " What is chiefly notable in her is — that you would not, if you had to guess who she was, take her for Fortitude at all. Everybody else's For- titudes announce themselves clearly and proudly. They have tower-like shields and lion-like helmets, and stand firm astride on their legs, and are con- fidently ready for all comers. But Botticelli's Fortitude is no match, it may be, for any that are coming. Worn, somewhat ; and not a little weary, instead of standing ready for all comers, she is sitting, apparently in reverie, her fingers playing restlessly and idly — nay, I think, even nervously — about the hilt of her sword. For her battle is not to begin to-day ; nor did it begin yesterday. Many a morn and eve have passed since it began — and now — is this to be the ending day of it ? And if this — by what manner of end ? OBEDIENCE 137 That is what Sandro's Fortitude is thinking, and the playing fingers about the sword-hilt would fain let it fall, if it might be ; and yet, how swiftly and gladly will they close on it when the far-off trumpet blows, which she will hear through all her reverie ! John Ruskin. Fortitude may be exercised chiefly in doing Very little things, whose whole value lies in this, that if one did not hope in God, one would not do them ; in secretly dispelling moods which one would like to show ; in saying nothing about one's lesser troubles and vexations ; in seeing whether it may not be best to bear a burden before one tries to see whether one can shift it ; in refusing for oneself excuses which one would not refuse for others. These, anyhow, are ways in which a man may every day be strengthening himself in the discipline of Fortitude, and then, if greater things are asked of him, he is not very likely to draw back from them. And while he waits the asking of these greater things, he may be gaining from the love of God a hidden strength and glory such as he himself would least of all expect ; he may be growing in the patience and perseverance of the Saints. Francis Paget. 138 IN TIME OF SICKNESS The greatest moral strength of which the soul is capable, comes of the Christian grace and gift of fortitude, of which patience is a potential part. . . . Patience is mostly concerned in overcoming the restlessness of nature, in enduring adversities, in resisting temptations, and in subduing or keeping away impatience, anger, or sadness. Fortitude is a braver and stronger virtue, is more deeply woven into the constitution of the soul, and is concerned with difficult action as well as with difficult endurance. Fortitude is required to face danger bravely, to undertake great works beset with difficulties, or to undergo martyrdom, or the equivalent of martyrdom. . . . Fortitude is a virtue more deeply seated in the soul, is more calm in its operations, and is less the subject of consciousness than patience. We are less conscious of fortitude because it is a force that works with greater ease ; we are more conscious of patience because it is exercised with greater effort, and is felt by the greater resistance which it encounters from irritability, impatience, or sadness. The whole man moves together in fortitude, but in patience only a portion of the faculties are brought into exercise at one time. Archbishop Ullathorne. Part 313131 fruits of Suffetino Ssmpatbg— aouraflc— t)ope-Sos-Morft Sigmpatbig. JN all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His Presence saved them : in His love and in His pity He redeemed them, and He hare them and carried them all the days of old. Isa. Ixiii. 9. When even was come, they brought unto Him many possessed with devils : and He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all that were sick : that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, say- ing, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our diseases. S. Matt. viii. 16-18. For we have not a High Priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities ; but one that hath been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Heb. iv. 15. They helped every one his neighbour ; and every one said to his brother, Be of good courage. Isa. xli. 6. Rejoice with them that rejoice ; weep with them that weep. Rom. xii. 15. Blessed Lord, Who hast given us a new command- ment that we should love one another, and hast taught us that where envy and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work, give us grace to be kindly disposed towards all men, and never to be the cause of division among any of Thy people. Put away from us all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and evil speaking, with all malice : and grant that in honour preferring 141 142 FRUITS OF SUFFERING others, we may walk in love, even as Thou, Lord, loved 'st us, and gavest Thyself to die for our sins. — Book oj Private Prayer. O Lord, make us to love Thee, and each other in Thee, and to meet before Thee to dwell in Thine everlasting love. — E. B. Pusey. O God, Who hast taught us to keep all Thy heavenly Commandments by loving Thee and our neighbour ; grant us the spirit of peace and grace, that we may be both devoted to Thee with our whole heart, and united to each other with a pure will ; though Jesus Christ our Lord. — Leonine Sacramentary, a.d. 460. 80 rcvealeJ) in Cbriat anb manifeeteb to an fiDen, It was the need of a divine assurance that there is a heart of sympathy at the root of things, which Christ came to satisfy. . . . He not only declared the Divine sympathy, He entered the human struggle. It was not enough that God should declare the divine sympathy in a word : He chose also to declare it in a Life. There can be no doubt of a sympathy which issues in self-sacrifice : and we see the Heart of God in the Cross of Jesus Christ. . . . He Who ordained the hard law of the Cross, Himself submitted to it, to prove by His self-sacrifice that it came from a will of love : and He transformed it by bidding us not only to take it, but take it after Him. It is through the fellowship of the SYMPATHY 143 Cross that He comes most closely to us. . . . When we see and greet Him there, supreme and calm, He gives us His own supremacy and calm- ness. We conquer our crosses by bearing them with Him. Archbishop Lang. Our widespread sensitiveness to suffering . . . indicates a drawing closer together of the strands of human experience, and as such is a good and not an evil. ... By a great variety of causes, there has taken place a quickening of the imagina- tive sympathy, which is among one of the most remarkable things of modern times. We are nearer to each other, even those of us who are careless and irresponsible ; our interests are less abstract, our fellowship is more inquisitive, our union more detailed and minute. ... It would seem as though sympathy, once called into being, develops more rapidly than any other power of heart or mind. Once exercised, it finds a thousand doors open to its perception, and not content with its own species, it takes up the burden of others, till it comes at length with a loud and desolate cry to the gates of life itself. T. J. Hardy. 144 FRUITS OF SUFFERING If I love the brother-man whom I see as I would love God Whom the pure shall see, what must I strive to do in the bonds of such a love ? The question seeks me, presses itself, as brother after brother calls ; and the dark mass of suffering, ignorant, sinful brother-life shuts out my sun. I cannot say, " They are in the hands of God," and fold my own ; my hands have done and still may do what is impossible for Him without my hands ; and for the deeds of my hands done and undone I stand responsible. I have played my part in the making and the keeping of that dark mass, and I play it still. . . . It is a terrible question ; God is keeper of us all and keeper of each ; but Cain must not seek there for his excuse. . . . The nearest and the dearest call in vain sometimes. So I think prudence would have me set myself to learn some catechism of love, that when calls come and I hear them I may not have to sit down and keep my brother waiting while I study the method of response. J Modern Mystic's Way. ITbe Beam anb tbe flDote. You will find it less easy to uproot faults than to choke them by gaining virtues, Do not think SYMPATHY 145 of your faults, still less of others' faults. In every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong ; honour that ; rejoice in it ; and as you can, try to imitate it ; and your faults will drop off like dead leaves, when their time comes. J. RUSKIN. Be noble, and the nobleness that lies In other men, sleeping, but never dead, Will rise in majesty to meet thine own ; Then shalt thou see it gleam in many eyes, Then will pure light about thy way be shed. J. R. Lowell. As we are, so do we see and comprehend : and this is revelation. " Where participation ends, sympathy ends ; and where sympathy ends, all understanding ends." H. W. Longfellow. Never let it be forgotten that there is scarcely a single moral action of a single man of which other men can have such a knowledge, in its ultimate grounds, its surrounding incidents, and the real determining causes of its merits, A.G. Xi 146 FRUITS OF SUFFERING as to warrant their pronouncing a conclusive judgment upon it. W. E. Gladstone {John Morley), There is an idea abroad among moral people that they should make their neighbours good. One person I have to make good : myself. But my duty to my neighbour is much more nearly expressed by saying that I have to make him happy — if I may. Robert Louis Stevenson. The temper which our Lord approves is the humility which makes the best of others, and is severe with itself. You, He seems to say, have every opportunity to know your own failings ; therefore look stringently to yourself, the mote, or the beam, that is in thine own eye. That bulks big enough in your own vision. To con- sider it prevents you from over-estimating your- self, and humbles you in your own sight. Let it also take out of your heart and off your lips all the readiness to criticize and condemn other people. Charles Gore. SYMPATHY 147 Jnepirincj power of S^mpatbij* The actual conditions of our life being as they are, and the capacity for suffering so large a principle in things — since the only principle perhaps, to which we may always safely trust is a ready sympathy with the pain one actually sees — it follows that the practical and effective difference between men will lie in their power of insight into those conditions, their power of sympathy. The future will be with those who have most of it ; while for the present, as I persuade myself, those who have much of it, have something to hold by even in the dissolution of a world, or in that dissolution of self which is for every one no less than the dissolution of the world it represents for him. . . . In the mere clinging of human creatures to to each other, nay ! in one's own solitary self- pity, amid the effects even of what might appear irredeemable loss, I seem to touch the eternal. Something in that pitiful contact, something new and true, fact or apprehension of fact, is educed, which, on a review of all the perplexities of life, satisfies our moral sense, and removes that appear- ance of unkindness in the soul of things themselves, 148 FRUITS OF SUFFERING and assures us that not everything has been in vain. Walter Pater. The heart, stirred with emotion, unfelt before, becomes conscious of a new revelation of itself and its capacities, of life, and its meaning. The stimulus of seeing another heart open before it fills it with feelings far beyond the power of expression. The deep is broken up, and new worlds come into sight. Treasure such visions, they will be useful to you. None of them is a mere dream — they are eternally true. All that we have ever seen is real : alas ! that we do not see it always. Mandell Creighton. The best help is not to bear the troubles of others for them but to inspire them with courage and energy to bear their burdens for themselves, and meet the difhculties of life bravely. Lord Avebury. Sympathy. There should be no despair for you While nightly stars are burning, While evening pours its silent dew, And sunshine gilds the morning. SYMPATHY 149 There should be no despair — though tears May flow down like a river : Are not the best beloved of years Around your heart for ever ? They weep, you weep, it must be so ; Winds sigh as you are sighing, And winter sheds its grief in snow Where Autumn's leaves are lying : Yet, these revive, and from their fate Your fate cannot be parted : Then, journey on, if not elate. Still never broken-hearted ! Emily Bronte. The Christian who sees in the beauty of the world ... a direct and intentional gift of the Creator to the child of His creation, is thereby brought into a far more definite and personal relation to God. Every sunset on a mountain, every moonrise on a lake, every nightly revelation of the stars ; . . . the sight, the sound, the scent of rill or waterfall or sea may serve ... to intensify his spiritual life. . . . And what is true of the aspect of nature, is equally true of the love made manifest through human hearts. All the tender self-sacrifice of parents ; all the joy of those who take sweet counsel together 150 FRUITS OF SUFFERING and walk in the house of God as friends ; all the loyalty of lovers, lost in each other's life ; all the sympathy of strangers who pour oil and wine into our wounds, owe their possibility to God's creative will. J. R. Illingworth. 3nt)(vibualit^. (Bift of Self IReceaaar^ It is just because God is so essentially other than ourselves that we can securely *' abide under the shadow of the Almighty " with — " The submission of man's nothing perfect to God's all complete, As by each new obeisance in spirit I climb to his feet." (Browning.) Even in our own human relationships the element of " otherness " is essential. It is because my friend is other than myself, and as such independ- ent of my personal sin or sorrow, that I can turn to him in time of trouble to support my weakness by his strength. It is because those who love me are other than myself, better, or greater, or holier, or lovelier, that I feel my whole being enriched and expanded by the gift of their love. And all true union among men is attained, not SYMPATHY 151 by the obliteration, but by the emphasis of their individuality, or peculiar difference ; ennabling each man to perform his function — that which, in Plato's phrase, " he alone can do, or can do best " — for the common good of the social whole. J. R. Illingworth. All men, even the saints, are interested only in their own affairs ; so the right and the wrong come to be matters of the scope of self, the reach of self, the depth and breadth and height of self's affairs. . . . I choose from the vast multi- tude of unacknowledged brothers born into the same image and the same family of God this one or that to be counted of my life. There may be some poor souls who choose none, and are poor indeed ; but les aveugles volontaires are the only men whose ignorance of the multitude beyond is sin ; the man who has shut out from sight and knowledge some claim which he might hear and see demanding to be recognized ; he has narrowed his attention and passed by on the other side, leaving victims he might have succoured, deeds of love he might have done, unsuccoured and undone, affairs made by him to be not his. A Modern Mystic^ s Way. Couraoe. TjEAL courageously, and the Lord he with the good. 2 Chron. xix. ii. Faint not to he strong in the Lord ; that He may confirm you, cleave unto Him. Ecclus. xxiv. 24. Fear not, for I have redeemed thee ; I have called thee hy thy name ; thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters I will he with thee ; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee : when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not he hurned ; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. Isa. xliii. 1,2. He thanked God, and took courage. Acts xxviii. 15. Let not your heart he troubled, neither let it he fearful. S, John xiv. 27. Wait on the Lord : Be strong and let Thine heart take courage, yea, wait thou on the Lord. Ps. xxvii. 14. O God, Who knowest us to be set in the midst of so many and great dangers, that by reason of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright : grant to us such strength and protection as may support us in all dangers and carry us through all temptations : through Jesus Christ our Lord. — Collect jor the Uh Sunday ajter Epiphany. Purge out of every heart the lurking grudge. Give 152 COURAGE 153 us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Offenders, give us the grace to accept and to forgive offenders. Forgetful ourselves, help us to bear cheer- fully the forgetfulness of others. Give us courage, and gaiety, and the quiet mind. Spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies. Bless us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavours. If it may not, give us the strength to encounter that which is to come that we be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath, and in all changes of fortune, and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving one to another. — B. L. Stevenson. a (Bit t of (Bob : approveb bi? Ibim* His Majesty loveth exceedingly courageous souls. S. Theresa. When God fails, my courage fails ; so long as God is God, my hope is in Him. Stand thou firm, as an anvil when it is smitten. It is the part of a great athlete to receive blows and be victorious. But especially must we for God's sake endure all things, that He also may endure us. Epistle of S. Ignatius to S. Poly carp {trans, by Bishop Lightfoot). The spirit-life is a seeking of God for God's sake, a disinterested worship of the Ought in 154 FRUITS OF SUFFERING feeling, in thinking, in willing ; a dying to self and a living to righteousness. So to die demands a strength that God alone can give, a strength that makes us sons of God and more than men. It demands a courage which can say to Truth : '' Lord, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest " ; which can leave positions of comfort and safety and step down fearlessly on the troubled waters when He says, " It is I ; be not afraid." George Tyrrell. Cbri6t'0 Courage : our 1Reeb of 3t Jesus Christ is to us a Teacher of courage, and it is courage of the highest sort ; not courage of the dash and the rush, or the courage that relies on bodily strength. It is not the courage of the hot word or the strong blow ; it is the courage of patience under wrong, of silence under injury, of calmness under pain. It is a quiet, steadfast courage — moral courage. We all need this courage. Men in public positions need it to face opinion, and do their duty without fear or favour ; men of business need it to stand out against the sharp practices or dishonesty which bad custom may allow ; . . . COURAGE 155 all of us in one way or another need it to stand by the right, to resist the evil, to bear shame or contempt, for duty's sake. That is the courage of true manliness. The secret of it in Jesus is twofold — a pure heart and trust in God. For Him there was only one sort of fear worth listening to. " Fear not them that kill the body ; but fear Him Which after He hath killed hath power to cast into Hell." Edward S. Talbot {Bishop of Winchester). In cultured circles it requires some courage, not so much to admit that one belongs to the Christian brotherhood, as to carry out its idea calmly and unobtrusively, in the midst of alien or antagonistic influences ; and one of the chief difhculties in our complex modern life is how to unite catholicity of spirit with religious earnest- ness. It has always been found extremely diffi- cult to combine the recognition of good in others with energetic protest against evil of all kinds. It is the duty of the Christian brotherhood to seek out the latent good : and if possible to evoke it, in all quarters, and in every character. At the same time, it is bound to bring forward, and to exhibit, the noblest possible standard 156 FRUITS OF SUFFERING of action, while it recoils from baseness of every kind, and draws the line — sharp, distinct and clear — between the two camps of light and dark- ness, the right and the wrong, the good and the evil. It is not easy to combine these two things. William Knight. lenburance. Give him his martial honours, for he fought A harder foe than man, and ne'er betrayed The trust upon him laid ; Nay, not so much as by a rebel thought. Not where the golden hope of glory lured, Not on the field of fame he fought and fell. But he endured right well ; Yea, as a soldier should, he silently endured. Mary E. Coleridge. I beg you take courage : the brave soul can mend even disaster. Catherine of Russia. Iberotem Innate in flDen^ It is a commonplace that we cannot answer for ourselves before we have been tried. But it is not so common a reflection, and surely more COURAGE 157 consoling, that we usually find ourselves a good deal braver and better than we thought. I believe this is every one's experience ; but an apprehension that they may belie themselves in the future prevents mankind from trumpeting this cheerful sentiment abroad. I wish sincerely . . . there had been some one to put me in a good heart about life when I was younger ; to tell me how dangers are most portentous on a distant sight ; and how the good in a man's spirit will not suffer itself to be overlaid, and rarely or never deserts him in the hour of need. R. L. Stevenson. It is a poor heart, and a poorer age, that cannot accept the conditions of life with some heroic readiness. Ibid. It is not to taste sweet things, but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God's Heaven as a god-made man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest day-drudge kindles into a hero. They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are the allure- 158 FRUITS OF SUFFERING ments that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a flame that burns up all lower considerations. Not happiness, but something higher. . . . Not by flattering our appetites : no, by awakening the Heroic that slumbers in every heart, can any Religion gain followers. Thomas Carlyle. ^< " Do I, indeed, lack courage ? " inquired Mr. Archer of himself. " Courage, the footstool of the virtues, upon which they stand ? Courage, that a poor private carrying a musket has to spare of ; that does not fail a weasel or a rat ; that is a brutish faculty ? I to fail there, I wonder ? But what is courage ? The constancy to endure oneself or to see others suffer ? The itch of ill-advised activity : mere shuttle-witted- ness, or to be still and patient ? To inquire of the significance of words is to rob ourselves of what we seem to know, and yet, of all things, certainly to stand still is the least heroic." R. L. Stevenson. Fear death ? — to feel the fog in my throat, The mist in my face, When the snow begins, and the blasts denote I am nearing the place, COURAGE 159 The power of the night, the press of the storm, The post of the foe ; Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, Yet the strong man must go ; For the journey is done, and the summit attained, And the barriers fall. Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained. The reward of it all. I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more, The best and the last ! I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore, And bade me creep past. No ! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers, The heroes of old. Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain, darkness and cold. For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, The black minute's at end. And the elements' rage, the fiend voices that rave, Shall dwindle, shall blend, Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain. Then a light, then thy breast, O thou soul of my soul ! I shall clasp thee again, And with God be the rest ! R. Browning. ZLbe lanconquerable IRature of Courage* David's life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of a man's moral progress and warfare here below. All earnest souls will i6o FRUITS OF SUFFERING ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul towards what is good and best. Struggle often baffled, sore baffled, down as into entire wreck ; yet a struggle never ended ; ever, with tears, repentance, true unconquerable purpose, begun anew. Poor human nature ! Is not a man's walking, in truth, always that : " A succession of falls ? " Man can do no other. In this wild element of a life he has to struggle onwards ; now fallen, deep abased ; and ever, with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still onwards. That his struggle be a faithful unconquerable one : that is the question of questions. Thomas Carlyle. Forth from the casement, on the plain Where honour has the world to gain, Pour forth and bravely do your part, O Knights of the unshielded heart ! Forth and for ever forward ! — out From prudent turret and redoubt. And in the mellay charge amain, To fall, but yet to rise again ! Captive ? Ah, still, to honour bright, A captive soldier of the right ! Or free and fighting, good with ill ? Unconquering but unconquered still ! R. L. Stevenson. COURAGE i6i As courage and intelligence are the two qualities best worth a good man's cultivation, so it is the first part of intelligence to recognise our precari- ous estate in life, and the first part of courage to be not at all abashed before the fact. A frank and somewhat headlong carriage, not look- ing too anxiously before, not dallying in maudlin regret over the past, stamps the man who is well armoured for this world. R. L. Stevenson. One who never turned his back, but marched breast forw^ard, Never doubted clouds vv^ould break ; Never dreamed, though right w^ere vv^orsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake. R. Browning. A.G, M Ibope. J?LESSED is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. Jer. xvii. 7. Thou art my hope, Lord God. Ps. Ixxi. 5. Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, in the power of the Holy Ghost. Rom. xv. 13. Thou wast wearied with the length of thy way ; yet saidst thou not, There is no hope : thou didst find a quickening of thy strength ; therefore thou wast not faint. Isa. Ivii. 10. By hope were we saved : but hope that is seen is not hope : for who hopeth for that which he seeth ? But if we hope for that which we see not, then do we with patience wait for it. Rom. viii. 24, 25. Looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ. Titus ii. 13. Every one that hath this hope set on him purifieth himself even as he is pure. i S. John iii. 3. Merciful Lord, the Comforter and Teacher of Thy faithful people, increase in Thy Church the desires which Thou hast given : and confirm the hearts of those who hope in Thee by enabling them to understand 162 HOPE 163 the depth of Thy promises ; that all Thine adopted sons may even now behold with the eyes of faith, and patiently wait for, the light which as yet Thou dost not openly manifest ; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God of hope, fill Thy despondent children with all joy and peace in beheving, that they may abound in hope in the power of the Holy Ghost. — Sursum Corda. O My God, I hope in Thee, that Thou wilt help me in all my troubles, that Thou wilt forgive me all my sins, and that Thou wilt fit me to be with Thee in heaven at last. O Lord, in Thee have I trusted ; let me never be confounded. 3n IRature anb in Cbrtat The hope which God has hidden in the germ of all created things expresses itself in the vigour of every line of the bare tree's branching. In hope it plunges downward into the dark to wrestle with the forces of nature underground, and bind to itself the solidity of the earth ; in hope it builds up the wreathed strength of its stem and stretches upward the patient appeal of its empti- ness thither where the sun was last seen, ready for the storms that are coming ; and every least twig that is *' caught and cuffed by the gale " is alive with all the hopes of next Spring, and is nursing every hope under the bitter rain and sleet. (The Soul's) Winter comes never to kill, but i64 FRUITS OF SUFFERING to invigorate a man's life by concentrating it, — by driving it back to its root, which is God. The troubles are not to stop the current of our life, but to change its direction from the surface to the centre. Self-despair is a necessary condition of the triumph of the virtue of hope in God. Once our hope was in nature, in making the best of our circumstances whatever they might be ; and looking into our grave, we found that hope had died. But Christ is born into the dead world, and by the Sacraments He is born spiritu- ally in us, and now Christ Himself, Who never dies, is become our Hope. " The silent stars ring out with mirth, The graves with grass are green ; Christ cometh twice upon the earth, We live between." George Congreve. Zbc (Brace of Ibope. Pillars of the Ducal Palace, Venice. Hope. — A figure full of devotional expression, holding up its hands as in prayer, and looking to a hand which is extended towards it out of sun- beams. HOPE 165 Of all the virtues, this is the more distinctively Christian ; and above all others, it seems to me the testing virtue, — that by the possession of which we may most certainly determine whether we are Christians or not ; for many men have charity, that is to say, general kindness of heart, or even a kind of faith, who have not any habitual hofe of, or longing for, heaven. The Hope of Giotto is represented as winged, rising in the air, while an angel holds a crown before her. John Ruskin. There is no one in whom the grace of hope is not beset by the easy hopelessness of self-satis- faction. But to some there come fiercer trials than these : the open invitation of sin ; the sickening misery of repeated penitence which has never been perfected by purity : the lying whispers of temptation which say that men will be men, hint that they may be brutes, and forget that they have been saints ; — these are antagonists of hope from which only the strength of the Holy Ghost can rescue our hindered souls. He can. He will, so rescue and sustain all who seek His Presence and listen for His Voice : and none can utterly faint who look for the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living : for if we i66 FRUITS OF SUFFERING hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it. Francis Paget. Hope — the temper and virtue answering to and embracing great and worthy things hoped for — elevates and strengthens and inspires. This is why it is one of the great elements of the reli- gious temper ; this is why it ranks with faith and charity. It is one of the great and necessary springs of full religious action. Hope is the energy and effort of faith ; the strong self-awakening from the spells of discour- agement and listlessness and despair. What gives its moral value to hope, what makes it a virtue and a duty, is that in its higher forms it is a real act and striving of the will and the moral nature. It is an act, often a difficult act, of choice and will, like the highest forms of courage. It is a refusal to be borne down and cowed and depressed by evil ; a refusal, because it is not right, to indulge in the melancholy pleasure, no unreal one, of looking on the dark side of things. It is so that hope plays so great a part in the spiritual life ; that it fights with such power on the side of God. R. W. Church. HOPE 167 ^be StrenQtb of ©ptimiem. Do you not think that the ordinary standpoint of so-called Christian teaching is undergoing a destruction ; and that the Devil's travesty is v^aning ? Terrorism is no real factor in Christi- anity. Surely Christianity is the response v^hich follows the recognition of Love and its beneficent Purpose of universal beatitude. In that atmo- sphere the heart beats freely and fully, for it is the Hope w^hich Love begets that saves. We ought to breathe the Hope before v^e attempt to deal v^ith the distresses of life ; then should v^^e be armed v^ith the Sympathy that is power- ful, and not merely with the sympathy that is the recognition of a common woe. Letters from a Mystic of the Present Day. There is no trace in anything Christ said or did of the desponding cry that '' all things are out of joint " — no touch of that pessimism which abandons itself to a belief in the necessity of evil, or of that cynicism that scorns what it cannot cure — but there is everywhere the very radiance of hope in reference to mankind at large, and the patience of hope in following out the case of each individual man, woman and child. i68 FRUITS OF SUFFERING In the same connexion we should note His calm confidence in the final coming of the King- dom of Righteousness, or the victory of moral order in the world, which grew stronger as the sorrows of His personal life increased, and its tragedy was consummated. William Knight. Say not the struggle nought availeth, The labour and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor faileth, And as things have been, they remain. If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars ; It may be, in yon smoke concealed, Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers. And, but for you, possess the field. For while the tired waves, vainly breaking. Seem here no painful inch to gain, Far back, through creeks and inlets making. Comes silent, flooding in, the main. And not by eastern windows only, When dayhght comes, comes in the light. In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly. But westward, look, the land is bright. Arthur Hugh Clough. HOPE 169 C:be ncver^^failing Cbaracter of Ibope. Man is, properly speaking, based upon Hope. He has no other possession but Hope ; this world of his is emphatically the " Place of Hope." Thomas Carlyle. Hope, they say, deserts us at no period of our existence. From first to last, and in the face of smarting disillusions, we continue to expect good fortune, better health and better conduct : and that so confidently, that we judge it needless to deserve them. R. L. Stevenson. From first to last the Bible is one unbroken, persistent call to hope — to look from the past and present to the future. Amid the worst and most miserable conditions there is one element which is never allowed to disappear — the strength of a tenacious and uncon- querable hope. Hope, never destroyed, however overthrown, never obscured even amid the storm and dust of ruin, is the prominent characteristic of the Old Testament. All leads back to hope — hope of the loftiest and most assured mind. " Whatsoever things were written aforetime 170 FRUITS OF SUFFERING were written for our learning ; that we, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope." Over all other voices in the Old Testament, voices of command, entreaty, warn- ing, rebuke, threatening, of triumph and gladness, of sorrow and desolation, rises dominant the voice of consolation, the instant call to hope even against hope, which elevates and strengthens as well as reassures. R. W. Church. Perhaps in the rapid narration of Job's many afflictions we are apt to miss the lesson of his protracted long suffering, and to regard his suc- cessive blows collectively as one. We should space them out, and consider how, after the first, he gradually reconciled himself to God's will, and was full of confidence that He Who had afflicted would presently heal and console him : and lo ! instead of consolation, comes another blow harder and seemingly less deserved than the first. Will he still hope ? Will he still say to his friends, " Wait, and see the deliverance of God ? " And so, although time after time, his hopes of speedy deliverance are frustrated, we find him as hopeful as ever, even though death, which to the Oriental mind is the culmination of HOPE 171 evil, stares him in the face. " Though He slay me," i.e., though He cut off my last hope, " yet will I hope in Him " — hoping, because it is hopeless. George Tyrrell. There is a grace which takes the place of know- ledge and brings the will and the aspirations of men into a mysterious harmony with the unseen ; a grace which lifts the desires of the human heart above all that this fragment of the universe can offer, and orders its impulses according to a truly universal law ; a grace which leads us on when knowledge falters, and will lead when knowledge shall vanish away ; a grace which is His gift alone Whose advent we commemorate to-day : that grace which in the redeemed of Christ rests upon experience ; and maketh not ashamed — the grace of hope. Francis Paget. 1^ 5o^. JJ/'HOSO offereth the sacrifice of thanksgiving glorifieth ^^ Me. Ps. 1. 23. He that is of a cheerful heart hath a continual feast. Prov. XV. 15. Let all those that put their trust in Thee rejoice : let them ever shout for joy, because Thou defendest them : let them also that love Thy name he joyful in Thee. Ps. V. II. The fear of the Lord shall delight the heart, and shall give gladness and joy, and length of days. Ecclus. i. 12. And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion ; and everlasting joy shall he upon their heads : they shall ohtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. Isa. xxxv. 10. Who, for the joy that was set hefore Him, endured the Cross, despising shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Heb. xii. 2. And ye therefore now have sorrow : hut I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no one taketh away from you. S. John xvi. 22. O Almighty and most merciful God, of Thy bountiful goodness keep us, we beseech Thee, from all things that may hurt us : that we, being ready both in body and soul, may cheerfully accomplish those things 172 JOY 173 that Thou wouldest have done : through Jesus Christ our Lord. — Collect jor the 20th Sunday after Trinity. The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating concerns and duties. Help us to play the man, help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces, let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go blithely on our business all this day, bring us to our resting beds weary and content and undishonoured, and grant us in the end the gift of sleep. — R. L. Steven- son. O God, our true Joy, and the Giver of all good things, be pleased to grant to those of Thy servants whom Thou hast called to follow Thee in the sunny paths of joy and peace, that they may be filled with the Spirit, singing and making melody in their hearts to Thee, and giving Thee thanks always for all things, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. — Sursum Corda. m 2)i0tincn? Cbrlstian attribute. Prominent among these (attributes of Christian character) is gratitude or thankfulness, with all the joy and brightness that the grateful temper brings. Many men can pray to God in times of trouble, with a hope that is very far from con- fidence, if haply they may find help. But to be grateful, to give thanks to Him, in times of gladness, is a far higher act of faith in His personal, providential care. It argues a fuller assurance that He, in very deed, is love : and 174 FRUITS OF SUFFERING that " every good gift and every perfect gift Cometh down from above from the Father of light." J. R. Illingworth. His was, indeed, a good influence in life while he was still among us ; he had a fresh laugh ; it did you good to see him ; and, however sad he may have been at heart, he always bore a bold and cheerful countenance, and took For- tune's worst as it were the showers of spring. Robert Louis Stevenson. If the Psalms have taught us the language of penitence, . . . what ever equalled, before the days of Pentecost, the freedom, the joy of their worship ? Who could have imagined such varied, such abounding exultation at the glories, the bounty, the loving kindness, the hopes of God ? When does it even seem to tire and flag — the rush, the sweep of that flood of gladness, that in spite of all interruptions of distress and fear, pours through the Book of Psalms, filling our earthly days with glory and hope, and making us feel that, short and few as they are, vain and incomplete as they seem, that can be no poor and worthless a life which man passes under the " shadow of the wings of God," — sheltered and JOY 175 guided by Him Whose " righteousness is like the strong mountains, and His judgments like the great deep." R. W. Church. It seems to me that the Gospel of the Trans- figuration should be more widely proclaimed among us. The poets sing of it, the mystics show it, even the scientific men have some foreshadowings ; but in the common ways of men it is unheard. " God is Joy itself." Where is the man who shall preach with power to the multitude of the transfiguring of pleasure into joy, as well as of the like transfiguring of pain ? " Joy, then," says Myers, " I will boldly affirm, is the aim of the Universe ; that Joy which is the very bloom of Love and Wisdom ; and men's souls need attuning to that inconceiv- able delight." A Modern Mystic's Way. 3t0 Jnfluence. You never know how one word, how your mere smile, or tone of voice, alters life for the better for your friend who was lost in the desert of his gloomy thoughts just now, — how it brings him home again, how differently 176 FRUITS OF SUFFERING he can face his warfare, through the assurance of your friendly cheer ; and when from his work he goes to his uncheerful room, he goes with joy, because he no longer goes there alone, but brings Christ risen from the dead in his heart there, and the dead staff of his soul finds the inexpressible flowers of Christ's life bloom in his prayers to-day through the grace of your salutation in the love of Christ. The voice of joy and health is in the dwellings of the righteous, not the faint cheer of feeble creatures recovering. The joy and health of Man in God, of Jesus risen and ascended, is communi- cated to us in Sacraments. We must resolve to bring the desire of God into all our duties ; not to leave our prayers and Sacraments to do us good mechanically, but to rise and exert the life of Christ risen, which we receive by them, and bring its courage and joy into everything we do. George Congreve. Blessed are the Happiness Makers. Blessed are they who know how to shine on one's gloom with their cheer. H. Ward Beecher. A crowd of troubles passed him by As he with courage waited ; JOY 177 He said, " Where do you troubles fly When you are thus belated ? " " We go," they say, " to those who mope, Who look on life dejected. Who weakly say * goodbye ' to hope, We go where we're expected." F. J. Allison. 30? 16 neceeaarili? mlyeb voitb 0ome 6at)ne60 in tbl^ life, but tbia ta quite bietinct from Hccible, It is noteworthy that there is impressed a certain sadness on the Christian countenance — in all its most characteristic types — in contrast with the refined joyousness of the Greek, and the robust valour of the Roman face ; but it is a sadness inseparable from the pursuit of the loftiest ideals. A significant fact, however, remains : the sadness referred to is neither austere, nor morose, nor petulant, nor desponding. It is that Divine sadness, which arises from the glimpse of far-off possibilities, yet in store, of ideals that are believed in, although they are unreached, and are passionately loved, though unattained. This is seen, in many characteristic and even monumental aspects, both in the poetry, and in the art of Christendom. Its hymns, its litanies, its music, the very architecture of its A.G, N 178 FRUITS OF SUFFERING churches, all show the blending of a sense of loss, with a belief in the Divine ideal, and aspiration after it. William Knight. Why do we so often prefer to believe in the necessity of suffering and weakness rather than in the possibility of strength and gladness? C. B. Newcomb. A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of good will ; and their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted. We need not care whether they could prove the forty-seventh problem ; they do a better thing than that, they practically demonstrate the great Theorem of the Liveableness of Life. R. L. Stevenson. I think that sadness is an idiot born, She has no eyes to see the sun in heaven, No ears to hear the music of the earth. No voice to utter forth her ov^n desire. Mary E. Coleridge. Gentleness and cheerfulness, these come before all morality ; they are the perfect duties, . . , JOY 179 If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say " give them up," for they may be all you have ; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people. R. L. Stevenson. It is a good thing to be happy alone. It is better to be happy in company, but good to be happy alone. Men owe me the advantage of their society, but if they deny me that just debt, I will not be unjust to myself, and side with them in bereaving me. I will not be discouraged, lest I be miserable for company. More company in- creases happiness, but does not lighten or diminish misery. Happiness was not made to be boasted but enjoyed. A man may enjoy great delights, with- out telling them. Thomas Traherne (1636-1674). ^be 3oi? of 3C6U6 Cbriet : IReflectet) In IRature. And, behold, the rod of Aaron for the house of Levi was budded, and brought forth buds, and bloomed blossoms, and yielded almonds. The almond is called in Hebrew " the wakeful tree," or " the watcher " because it is the earliest i8o FRUITS OF SUFFERING of all to awake from the winter sleep of nature. . . . Before there is a hint of green on any tree its bare winter branches are jewelled with fresh pink flowers. It seems like miracle or magic, it is so unexpected, so strangely superior to its ungenial surroundings, for it is months since you had a thought of flowers. It is so delicate, too, and trusts its extraordinary beauty so bravely to the wild moods of spring. In the midst of our winter death, here blooms a thing with the life and beauty of a better world ; here, a feast of joyous colour welcomes you, quite alien to the austere tints and the gloom of sunless months which you are grown used to. Just such a change Christ has brought into human life, a profound change in its value, significance, and beauty. Think of the ever- varying, ever-growing spiritual beauty which grace has made to spring in Christian character through the ages. The fallen world had joy of youth, but it was a joy like the beauty of the unfertilized flower, which has its day, but no mystery of fruit-bearing within itself, no hidden hope of another day. To-day it lives again with a new life. George Congreve. JOY i8i " Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the shame." What is the sufficient motive — ^power of a perfect endurance ? I agree with Aristotle that the highest and most prevailing motive is that of pleasure, happiness, and blessedness, rather than that of mere duty without these. Nothing is done perfectly until it is done with joy. Pleasure in its truest sense perfects every function. God is not law or duty, but love and blessedness. Without love enough to make it joyous there is no perfect service nor sacrifice. There was the consummate joy of perfect moral and spiritual action, attainment, life, in the supremest temptations and trials of Jesus Christ. We must not exclude the personal joy of His own perfection and blessedness. God did highly exalt Him, and gave Him the name that is above every name. He was anointed with the oil of gladness above His fellows. William P. Du Bose. 3o? mu0t be eougbt, not waiteb for, anb recogniseb ever^wbere^ There are simple souls that do not wait to rejoice till they have won a victory, but go into i82 FRUITS OF SUFFERING the battle with joy ; whose ]oy in Christ's victory, aheady won, is their strength in the hottest of the fight, and carries them through to the last stroke in gladness. The well of water is within you ; and is your life still a desert, habitually empty and sad ? Where, then, is your song, " Spring up, O well " — ^the answer of your faith to God's faithfulness, the response of your love to the infinite Love ? In our prayers, we are not asking ourselves whether we feel happy ; we evoke the power of the Spirit of God Who is in us to praise God, and that is happiness. Our joy is not in receiv- ing some sensible consolation from Heaven, but in giving to God with all the energy of grateful love our praise for being what He is. ** We do not praise Him because He has made us to triumph, but because to praise Him is to triumph." Here is S. Francis of Assisi's prescription for his sad times : *' When I am tempted to sadness and bitterness, I consider the joy of my brethren, and the sight of their happiness and cheerfulness drives away my heaviness and sadness, so that I am excited to interior rejoicing, and external cheerfulness." George Congreve. JOY 183 Joy is set in the heart of the universe : enshrine your happiest moments, they will give you the truest thought of God. As sunshine is stored up in the coal-measures, so past joy and gladness may be stored up in the soul as a light given in darker days. A. ]. Ross. Learn to enjoy the present — that little space of time between the great past and the still greater future. H. W. Longfellow, Happiness rarely is absent. It is we that know not of its presence. The greatest felicity avails us nothing if we know not that we are happy. M. Maeterlinck. Talk happiness ; the world is sad enough Without your woes. No path is wholly rough : Look for the places that are smooth and clear, And speak of those to rest the weary ear Of earth, so hurt by one continuous strain Of human discontent and grief and pain. Quoted in Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Favourite Authors. TpSTABLISH Thou the work of our hands upon us. Ps. xc. 17. Each man's work shall be made manifest . . . and the fire itself shall prove each man's work of what sort it is. I Cor. iii. 13. Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening. Ps. civ. 23. Behold, I come quickly : and My reward is with Me, to render to man according as his work is. Rev. xxii. 12. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might ; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. Eccles. ix. 10. / glorified Thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which Thou hast given me to do. S. John xvii. 4. Let each man prove his own work, and then shall he have his glorying in regard of himself alone, and not of his neighbour. For each man shall bear his own burden. Gal. vi. 4-5. Grant, O Lord, that all Whom Thou dost choose to work for Thee may labour in union with Thy holy purposes, and in living unity with Thy dear Son Jesus Christ : that by the power of Thy Holy Spirit 184 WORK 185 they may accomplish far more than they ever know, and work not for results, but for the single love of Thee. — Sursum Corda. O Lord, I give myself to Thee, I trust Thee wholly. Thou art wiser than I — more loving to me than I to myself. Deign to fulfil Thy high purposes in me whatever they be — work in and through me. I am born to serve Thee, to be Thine, to be Thy instrument. Let me be Thy blind instrument. I ask not to see — I ask not to know — I ask simply to be used. — John Henry Newman, ^be Ip066ibilitie6 of tbe Common Xife* Our Lord compares His kingdom to a business firm, which requires that all who belong to it, whether small or great, whether directors or managers or clerks, shall exhibit not only inte- grity but keenness, resourcefulness and activity in their work. " Trade with it till I come," is the language of His commission to His servants given in the Parable of the Pounds. And the Parable of the Unjust Steward tells us that the children of light are to be as practical, smart and business-like in God's pure service as the hero of the parable was for his own private interests. The devil is not to monopolize the best powers of the will, leaving religion to consist in odds and ends of sentiment or speculation. Life in the Kingdom is to be a strenuous life. The love of all mankind which is to be its objective is i86 FRUITS OF SUFFERING not to become a vague, watery emotion ; the spirituality which is its temper is not to degenerate into morbid introspectiveness. Work is to be added as a tonic or antiseptic ; zealous, methodi- cal work, such as commands success in ordinary business, but which is to be consecrated to God's service. Arthur Chandler. Work and suffering are, in the world which we are at present concerned with, the materials in which the eternal joy of the spiritual vision is to be expressed, the things we find to do and the things we have to bear are our stone or clay, and our task is to fashion these so that they may give assurance of the vision at whose behest we work, in the enjoyment of which we endure. T. J. Hardy. The true spiritual note is struck when into some little task, some common relationship, we bring grace and joy and the love of God ; when in our ordinary dealings we manage to express the temper which belongs to the larger con- sciousness of the soul, the temper of trust and charity, of righteousness, considerateness and WORK 187 peace ; when we work *' even as in the great Taskmaster's eye," offering Him our work as we offer our prayer ; when a heart full of love of the Father begets a passion to see all things actually become what He would have them be. Ibid. Well, that's my mission, so I save the world, Figure as man o' the moment, — in default Of somebody inspired to strike such change Into Society — from round to square, The ellipsis to the rhomboid, how you please, As suits the size and shape o' the world he finds. But this I can, — and nobody my peer — Do the best with the least change possible : Carry the incompleteness on a stage, Make what was crooked straight, and roughness smooth : And weakness strong : wherein if I succeed. It will not prove the worst achievement. R. Browning. Thou cam'st not to thy place by accident. It is the very place God made for thee. And should'st thou there small scope for action see, Do not for this give room to discontent, Nor let the time thou owest to God be spent In idly deeming how thou mightest be. In what concerns thy spiritual life, more free From outward hindrance or impediment. i88 FRUITS OF SUFFERING For presently this hindrance thou shalt find That without which all goodness were a task So slight, that virtue never could grow strong ; And would'st thou do one duty to His mind — The Imposer's — overburdened thou shalt ask, And own the need of grace to help, ere long. R. C. Trench. Blessed is he who has found his work ; let him ask no other blessedness. Thomas Carlyle. Our destiny is potential within ourselves. Every man, woman and child possesses this potentiality, this shaping spirit of prayer and the love of God. The golden stairs are in every home, in every house of business and workshop, whereby, in deep communings like those of Jesus on the Galilean hills, we may bring down troops of joys and graces to fill the common day with song. It is our fault altogether if the lower chambers of life are dull and spiritless. The task is diffi- cult no doubt. ... So much the more need for that steadfast communion with the Indwelling Love which gives the soul a power and persistence not long to be denied. Resolute always to see WORK 189 what good there is, and to throw the whole weight of our soul on to the side of that good, we shall find our love consuming the evil, and liberating kindred souls to co-operate with us. T. J. Hardy. And so I Uve, you see, Go through the world, try, prove, reject, Prefer, still struggling to effect My warfare ; happy that I can Be crossed and thwarted as a man. Not left in God's contempt apart, With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart, Tame in earth's paddock as her prize. Thank God, she still each method tries To catch me, who may yet escape ; She knows, — the fiend in angel's shape 1 Thank God, no paradise stands barred To entry, and I find it hard To be a Christian, as I said ! Still every now and then my head Raised glad, sinks mournful — all grows drear Spite of the sunshine, while I fear And think, " How dreadful to be grudged No ease henceforth, as one that's judged. Condemned to earth for ever, shut From heaven 1 " But Easter Day breaks ! But Christ rises 1 Mercy every way Is infinite, — and who can say ? R. Browning, 190 FRUITS OF SUFFERING JMebgeb to Service. There is no question that by our baptism our life stands under the pledge of service. It is not the privilege of the few, but the duty of all. . . . No man can be in the true sense a Christian who does not know and keep some definite place in the labours of Christ's Kingdom. For some talent, some opportunity of influence, some chance of work we all possess. God never set any man in any part of His universe without setting some opportunity of service at his side. Whatever it may be, we are to begin there and work in a great spirit. . . . In God's sight the worth of our life is never the success which it secures, but always the spirit which it puts forth. We are better men if we fail in a high endeavour than if we succeed in a meagre one. The great thing is to be up and doing, to be strengthening the world's hard upward course, and resisting its easy downward course, by the resolute output of faith and effort. Archbishop Lang. Knowing ourselves, our world, our task so great, Our time so brief, 'tis clear if we refuse The means so limited, the tools so rude WORK 191 To execute our purpose, life will fleet, And we shall fade, and leave our task undone. R. Browning. It must oft fall out That one whose labour perfects any work, Shall rise from it with eye so worn that he Of all men least can measure the extent Of what he has accomplished. He alone Who, nothing tasked, is nothing weary too, May clearly scan the little he effects. Ibid. The consciousness of living under a divine authority and providence leads us to regard our life as a vocation, a call from God. We can no longer regard our abilities, our opportunities, our circumstances as fortuitously concurrent accidental things. Taken in their combination they indicate God's will for us ; they point out the particular work that God would have us to do. . . . Our faculties and opportunities are gifts from God, to be used in His service, and for whose right use we are responsible, and must one day give account ; ... no relative insignificance of the gift will be accepted as an excuse for its misuse. We are as accountable for one talent 192 FRUITS OF SUFFERING as for ten ; for the use of the eleventh hour, as much as for the burden and heat of the day. J, R. Illingworth. The ideal of the individual is the complete and harmonious development of all his powers, physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual, with com- plete command over them, crowned by the right use of all he is and has for the service of others : for he cannot be an end to himself. These several human powers obviously exist in different men in different degrees ; but man as man must have some sense of honesty, truth, goodness, holiness : some capacity for work, for affection, for service ; and his duty is to culti- vate each power and capacity in due measure. And through all he will endeavour to realize himself and not to imitate another ; to be true to his own constitution, that so he may offer his peculiar gifts to the body of which he is a member. Such man rightly fulfils his office in virtue of his special character. . . . Thus, we shall not aim at the attainment of universal equality, but at the cultivation of per- sonal differences. Humanity is not an aggregate of indistinguishable units, but a living whole in which each part fulfils a peculiar function. Bishop Westcott. WORK 193 Zbc mobility of Morh. There is a perennial nobleness, and even sacred- ness, in work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works : in Idleness alone is there perpetual despair. . . . The latest Gospel in this world is. Know thy work and do it. . . . Know what thou canst work at ; and work at it, like a Hercules ! Labour is Life : from the inmost heart of the Worker rises his God-given Force, the sacred celestial Life-essence breathed into him by Almighty God : from his inmost heart awakens him to all nobleness, — to all knowledge ... so soon as work fitly begins. . . . Doubt, of what- ever kind, can be ended by Action alone. Thomas Carlyle. It has been written, '' an endless significance lies in work." A man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed fields rise instead, and stately cities ; and withal the man himself first ceased to be a jungle and foul unwholesome desert thereby. Consider how, even in the meanest sorts of Labour, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real A.G. O 194 FRUITS OF SUFFERING harmony, the instant he sets himself to work ! Doubt, Desire, Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation, Despair itself, all these like hell dogs lie beleaguer- ing the soul of the poor day worker, as of every man : but he bends himself with free valour against his task, and all these are stilled, all these shrink murmuring far off into their caves. The man is now a man. The blessed glow of Labour in him, is it not, as purifying fire, wherein all poison is burnt up, and of sour smoke itself there is made bright blessed flame ? Ibid. He who ascends to mountain tops, shall find The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow ; He who surpasses or subdues mankind, Must look down on the hate of those below. Though high above the sun of glory glow. And far beneath the earth and ocean spread. Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow Contending tempests on his naked head, And thus reward the toils which to these summits led. Byron. Existence may be borne, and the deep root Of life and sufferance make its firm abode In bare and desolated bosoms : mute The camel labours with the heaviest load. WORK 195 And the wolf dies in silence, — not bestowed In vain should such example be ; if they, Things of ignoble or of savage mood, Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay May temper it to bear, — it is but for a day. Ibid. " Be inspired with the belief that life is a great and noble calling ; not a mean and grovel- ling thing that we are to shuffle through as we can, but an elevated and lofty destiny." W. E. Gladstone {John Morley). There are ends and purposes in the life of each of us which are literally as real as the ends of Christ's life. One is high and another low ; one has much and another little ; one is born to govern, to acquire, to call forth new powers in the' world of man or nature ; another to pass his days unknown, to carry on the detail of necessary labour in his time, to make no mark and leave no memorial. But to every one who believes in God and providence, the work of each is equally real : a call, a commission, a talent, a stewardship from God ; and who is too high or too low to say that the inexpressible serious- ness and earnestness of the life described in the A.G. 0* 196 FRUITS OF SUFFERING New Testament is not suited to guide him how to think and feel about his own life ? For what we see in that life is not only a pur- pose and work passing man's understanding, but that purpose followed and that work done, in a way which man can understand. . . . The Gospels show us One, with the greatest of works to do, . . . One, never diverted from His work, never losing its clue, never impatient, never out of heart, Who cries not, nor strives, nor makes haste, . . . One to Whom nothing of what we call loss or pain is so much as worth taking account of, in competition with that for which He lived. R. W. Church. IRebceming tbe Zimc. The soul occupied with great ideas best performs small duties. James Martineau. I expect to pass through this life but once. If, therefore, there is any kindness I can show, or any good I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, let me not defer it, for I shall not pass this way again. Mrs. a. B. Hegeman WORK 197 Toil together one with another, struggle together, run together, suffer together, lie down together, rise up together, as God's stewards and assessors and ministers. Please the Captain in whose army ye serve, from Whom also ye will receive your pay. Let none of you be found a deserter. Let your baptism abide with you as your shield ; your faith as your helmet ; your love as your spear ; your patience as your body-armour. Let your works be your deposits, that ye may receive your assets due to you. Epistle of S. Ignatius to S. Poly carp {trans, by Bishop Lightfoot). " Now needs thy best of man ; " so spake my guide : " For not on downy plumes, nor under shade Of canopy reposing, fame is won ; Without which whosoe'er consumes his days, Leaveth such vestige of himself on earth, As smoke in air or foam upon the wave. Thou therefore rise : vanquish thy weariness By the mind's effort, in each struggle formed To vanquish, if she suffer not the weight Of her corporeal frame to crush her down." Dant6. 198 FRUITS OF SUFFERING All service ranks the same with God — There is no last nor first. R. Browning. What are great gifts but the correlative of great work ? We are not born for ourselves, but for our kind, for our neighbours, for our country ; it is but selfishness, indolence, a perverse fastidiousness, an unmanliness, and no virtue or praise, to bury our talent in a napkin. J. H. Newman. Few men suspect how much mere talk fritters away spiritual energy — that which should be spent in action, spends itself in words. Hence he who restrains that love of talk lays up a fund of spiritual strength. F. W. Robertson. How may a man attain to self-knowledge ? By Contemplation ? Certainly not ; but by Action. Try to do your duty and you will find what you are fit for. But what is your duty ? The Demand of the Hour. Goethe. WORK 1^9 Ah ! let us hope that to our praise Good God not only reckons The moments when we tread His ways, But when the spirit beckons, — That some slight good is also wrought Beyond self-satisfaction, When we are simply good in thought, Howe'er we fail in action. J. R. Lowell. Having laid ourselves at God's feet, let us not lie idly there, but arise, and for the future do the work of God, with all faithfulness and industry. Bishop Bull. One lesson. Nature, let me learn of thee, One lesson which in every wind is blown. One lesson of two duties kept at one. Though the loud world proclaim their enmity- Of toil unsevered from tranquillity ; Of labour, that in lasting fruit outgrows Far noisier schemes, accomplished in repose — Too great for haste, too high for rivalry. Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring, Man's senseless uproar mingling with his toil, Still do thy quiet ministers move on, 200 FRUITS OF SUFFERING Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting ! Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil ; Labourers that shall not fail, when man is gone. Matthew Arnold. We can pass on to the great hope which from end to end fills the Bible — the hope which en- nobles and gladdens our mortal life ; such a hope as carried S. Paul in strength and J07 through the long " daily dying " of his Apostleship, and burst forth in such impassioned yet most reasonable conviction — " For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us . . . For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other crea- ture, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." R. W. Church. Jnbey LIST OF AUTHORS AND BOOKS QUOTED A Kempis, Thomas Arnold, Matthew AuRELius, Marcus AvEBURY, Lord . Bagehot, Walter . Beecher, H. Ward Bronte, Emily Brooks, Phillips . Browne, Thomas . Browning, E. B. . Browning, Robert Bull, Bishop Byron, Lord Catherine of Russia. Chandler, Dr.. Church, Dean Imitation of Christ . (Quoted in Thoughts selected from favourite Authors) Poems Meditations .... Biographical Studies (Quoted in Thoughts selected from favourite Authors) Poems Sermons preached in English Churches ... Christian Morals . Poems Abt Vogler .... A Death in the Desert Asolando .... Christmas Eve and Easter Day 109, James Lees' Wife Paracelsus 115, Pippa Passes .... Prince Hohenstiel Prospice Rabbi ben Ezra . The Ring and the Book Sermons Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Heroes and Hero-Worship Past and Present Sartor Resartus . pages 5.39 176 199 9 148 9,11 176 148 23, 100 9 129 42 46 161 189 40 191 198 187 158 26 38 199 194 159 193 169 156 Ara Coeh 69, 71, 129 Faith and Experience . 97, 112, 185 Advent Sermons . . .166, 169, 200 Gifts of Civilization . . 195 Pascal, and other Sermons . 18, 19 The Discipline of the Chris- tian Character .... 63, 174 "75 [90, i3i> 8,11, 157, 188, Churton, Dr The Use of Penitence 201 68, 82, 86 202 INDEX Clough, a. H. Coleridge, M. E. . CONGREVE, G. Cornish, Warre . Creighton, Bishop Dant± .... De Sales, S. Francis De Vere, Aubrey . Dickinson, G. Lowes Du Bose, Dr. Emerson. F:i:NELON Figgis, Dr. Forsyth, Dr. Froude, R. H. Goethe . Gore, Dr. . Hardy, T. J. . Hegeman, Mrs. HoRT, Dr. Hutchings, W. H. Tllingworth, Dr. i6 148 197 89, 126 135 96 119, i8i 127, 128 PAGES Poems 168 Poems 6,9,30, 156, 178 Christian Progress 105,163,175, 179,181 Sunningwell Life and Letters Inferno Spiritual Letters .... Poems Religion : a Criticism and a Forecast High Priesthood and Sacri- fice Essays 14. Spiritual Letters to Men 22, 26, 55, 130 The Gospel and Human Needs 96, 97, 1 1 1 Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind .... 59 Lyra Apostolica .... 6j 198 The Sermon on the Mount 146 The Gospel of Pain 6, 26, 37, 46, 50, 143, 186, 188 (Quoted in Thoughts selected from favourite Authors) . The Way, the Truth, and the Life The Person and Work of the Holy Ghost . Christian Character . Divine Transcendence 96 12, 13 103 20,27, 114 128, 130, 149, 150, 173, 191 Sermons preached in a College Chapel . . . 81,88 Inge, Dr Truth and Falsehood in Religion 57 JoLY, Henri .... The Psychology of the Saints 27 Keble, John .... Letters of Spiritual Counsel 65 The Christian Year ... 126 King, E. Hamilton . . The Sermon in the Hospital 20, 24, 49 KiNGSLEY, C Tovi^n and Country Sermons 31 Knight, Prof The Christian Ethic 77, 86, 155, 167, 177 Lang, Dr The Miracles of Jesus . 4, 116, 142 The Parables of Jesus . . 25, 190 INDEX 203 LiGHTFOOT, Dr. Longfellow, H. W. Lowell, J. R. Maeterlinck, M. . Manning, Cardinal Martineau, James Mason, Dr. A. J. A Serious Call .... 96 Christian Perfection ... 88 Epistle of S. Ignatius to S. Polycarp 153, 197 Life and Letters . . , 22, 183 Poems 145 Poems 129, 145, 199 Wisdom and Destiny Sin and its Consequences . The Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost .... Maturin, B. W. . MOBERLY, Dr. R. C. Moore, Aubrey L. MoRLEY, John Myers, F. W. H. . Newman, Dr. . Newcomb, C. B. . Ottley, Dr. Paget, Dr. Francis . Paget, Stephen Pater, Walter Patmore, Coventry . Plato RoBBiNs, Dr. Wilford L. Robertson, F. W. Ross, A. J Ruskin, John . . . . 183 73,83 134 196 The Ministry of Conversion 60 The Faith of the Gospel 33, 70, 98, 107 Some Principles and Prac- tices of the Spiritual Life 66 Atonement and Personality. 123 Sorrow, Sin, and Beauty . 29, 38, 48 The Spiritual Guide . . 7,21 Some Aspects of Sin . . 59, 72 Life of Gladstone . 32, 127, 145, 195 S. Paul 128 Dream of Gerontius . . 64, 94 Lyra Apostohca 56, 58, 68, 70, 72, 83, 89 Parochial Sermons . . . 13, 198 University Sermons ... 107 (Quoted in Thoughts selected from favourite Authors) . 178 Lux Mundi 124 Faculties and Difficulties of Belief and Disbelief . . 165, 171 The Spirit of Discipline 14, 15,99, 137 I Wonder 133 Marius the Epicurean . . 147 The Rod, the Root, and the Flower . . . 40,45,80,114,126 The Republic 55 An Essay toward Faith . 61,63, 120 Life and Letters ... 28, 198 Life and Letters ... 183 Ethics of the Dust . . . 144 Mornings in Florence . . 136 Stones of Venice ... 164 204 H. S. Holland, Dr. . SiBBEs, Dr. R. . Spender, J. A. . . S. Augustine S. Chrysostom S. Gregory of Nyssa S. Theresa Stevenson, R. L. INDEX Lux Mundi . loi, 104, 109, On Behalf of Belief . . . The Soul's Conflict . . . The Comments of Bagshot. PAGES no, 115 102 56 109 69 54 75 153 178 161 178 174 158 160 169 [46, 56, 1575 Talbot, Dr. Taylor, Jeremy . Tennyson . Tertullian Traherne, Thomas Trench, Archbishop Tyrrell, George Ullathorne, Dr. . Watson, Ellen Waggett, p. N. . Webb, Bishop Westcott, Dr. Wilberforce, Dr. . . Wordsworth, William A Christmas Sermon Aes Triplex .... An Apology for Idlers An Inland Voyage . The Great North Road Underwoods . . . . Virginibus Puerisque Some Aspects of Christian Truth The Doctrine and Practice of Repentance .... In Memoriam .... De Poenitentia .... Centuries of Meditation Poems 130, Lex Credendi. . . 80,87,125,153 Nova et Vetera .... 170 Oil and Wine 56, 62, 79, 85, 100, 105, III, 114, 117, 121 Christian Patience . .132, 134, Letters Life and Letters The Scientific Temper in Religion 115, Life and Service before the Throne 108 Lessons from Work ... 192 The Epistles of St. John . 74 The Historic Faith ... 95 The Victory of the Cross 30,35,41, 44,47 Sermons 5? ^° Poems 14, 20, 28 154 76 "3 76 179 187 138 23 37 118 A Modern Mystic's Way Letters from a Mystic of the Present Day 144, Hh 175 167 Printed for ROBERT SCOTT, Publisher, faternoster row, London, by butler &. tanner