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 i 
 
 BR A5 .H8A 1845-18A6 
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 Hulsean lectures 
 

 
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 4«* 
 
 THE FITNESS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE 
 FOR UNFOLDING THE SPIRITUAL LIFE OF MEN 
 
 BEING 
 
 / 
 
 THE HULSEAN LECTURES 
 
 FOR THE YEAR M.DCCC.XLV. 
 
THE HULSEAN LECTURES 
 
 FOR M.DCCCXLV AND M.DCCC.XLVI. 
 
 BY RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, M.A„ 
 
 VICAR OF ITCHEN-STOKE, HANTS; PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY, 
 
 king's college, LONDON ; EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO 
 
 THE LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD ; AND LATE 
 
 HULSEAN LECTURER. 
 
 SECOND EDITION, REVISED. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : 
 
 MACMILLAN; BARCLAY, AND MACMILLAN. 
 
 LONDON: JOHN W. PARKER. 
 
 1847. 
 
/sJTL 
 
 13rtntcU at ttie ©ntDerstts ^prcss. 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 I HAVE not felt myself at liberty to make more 
 than a few verbal alterations, or here and there to 
 recast a sentence, or add a clause, in these Lec- 
 tures, on the occasion of their second appearance. 
 I have inserted indeed a few brief passages, which 
 originally belonging to the Discourses, had been 
 omitted in the delivery, and have to the Second 
 Series appended a considerable number of Notes in 
 confirmation or illustration of statements made in 
 the text. These having been asked for in more 
 quarters than one, I trust may not be found unac- 
 ceptable to some readers. 
 
 Itchen-stoke, Nov. 1.9, 1847. 
 
Substance of certain Clauses in the Will 
 OF The Rev. J. Hulse, M.A. 
 
 (Dated July 21, 1777.) 
 
 He founds a Lectureship in the University of Cam- 
 bridge. 
 
 The Lecturer to be a " Clergyman in the Univer- 
 sity of Cambridge, of the degree of Master of Arts, 
 and under the age of forty years." He is to be 
 elected annually^ " on Christmas-Day, or within seven 
 days after, by the V ice-Chancellor for the time being, 
 and by the Master of Trinity College, and the Master 
 of St John's College, or any two of them."" In case 
 the Master of Trinity or the Master of St John's 
 be the Vice-Chancellor, the Greek Professor is to be 
 the third Trustee. 
 
 The duty of the said Lecturer is, by the Will, 
 " to preach twenty Sermons in the whole year," at 
 " St Mary Great Church in Cambridge ; " but the 
 number having been found inconvenient, application 
 was made to the Court of Chancery for leave to 
 reduce it, and eight Sermons only are now required. 
 These are to be printed at the Preacher's expense, 
 within twelve months after the delivery of the last 
 Sermon. 
 
VI 
 
 The subject of the Lectures is to be " the Evidence 
 for Revealed ReHgion ; the Truth and Excellence 
 of Christianity ; Prophecies and Miracles ; direct or 
 collateral proofs of the Christian Religion, especially 
 the collateral arguments ; the more difficult texts, 
 or obscure parts of the Holy Scriptures ; " or any 
 one or more of these topics, at the discretion of the 
 Preacher, 
 
CONTENTS 
 FOR THE YEAR 1845. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 
 PSALM CXIX. 18. 
 
 PAGR 
 
 Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of 
 
 thy law X 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 EPHESIANS L 9, 10. 
 
 Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according 
 to his good pleasure, which he hath purposed in himself; 
 that in the dispensation of the fidness of times he might 
 gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are 
 in heaven and which are on earth ; even in him 19 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 THE MANIFOLDNESS OP SCRIPTURE. 
 
 MATTHEW XIV. 20. 
 
 They did all eat, and were filled 37 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 HEBREWS I. 1, 2. 
 
 God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time 
 past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days 
 spoken unto us by his Son 57 
 
viii CONTENTS. 
 
 ^ LECTURE V. 
 
 THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 
 JOHN XII. G. 
 
 PACK 
 
 These things understood not his disciples at the first; hut when 
 Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things 
 were written of him 74 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 ISAIAH XIL 3. 
 
 With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation . 90 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 THE FRUITFULNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 EZEKIEL XLVII. 9. 
 
 A7id it shall come to pass, that every thing that liveth, which 
 
 moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall com£, shall live 107 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 REVELATION VL 2. 
 Conquering and to conquer 123 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 FOR THE YEAR 1846. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 
 
 HAGGAI II. 7. 
 The Desire of all nations shall come 143 
 
 PAe£ 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 
 MARK XVI. 3. 
 
 Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? 162 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 THE SON OF GOD. 
 ACTS XIV. II. 
 
 And luhen the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up 
 their voices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, The gods 
 are come down to us in the likeness of men . 179 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 
 
 MICAH VI. 6, 7. 
 
 Wfierewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself 
 before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt- 
 offerings ; with -calves of a year old? Will the Lord be 
 pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands 
 of rivers of oil ? shall I give my Jirstborn for my trans- 
 gression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? ... 195 
 T. H. L. b 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 THE RESTORER OF PARADISE. 
 GENESIS V. 29. 
 
 PACK 
 
 And he called his name Noah, saying. This same shall com- 
 fort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because 
 of the groimd which the Lord hath cursed 212 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 
 
 ROMANS VJI. 21, 23. 
 
 I jind then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present 
 with me. For I delight in the law of Ood after the 
 inward man: hut I see another law in my members, 
 warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me 
 into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members . . . 227 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 ^ THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 
 
 HEBREWS XI. 10. 
 
 A city which hath foundations, whose builder^ and maker is God . 246 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 CONCLUDING LECTURE. 
 
 1 THESSALONIANS V. 21. 
 
 Prove all things ; hold fast that which is good 264 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY LECTURK 
 
 Psalm CXIX. 18, 
 
 Open thou mine eyes, that I may hehold wondrous things 
 out of thy law. 
 
 It was with a true insight into the sad yet needful con- 
 ditions of the Truth miHtant in a world of error, that 
 he who has of such just title given his name to these 
 Lectures, which I am now permitted to deliver in this 
 place, devoted so largely of his temporal means to 
 the securing among us a succession of discourses, 
 having more or less nearly to do with the establishing 
 and vindicating of that Truth against all gainsayers 
 and opposers. For such apologies of our holy Faith 
 as he desired by this and other kindred foundations 
 of which he was the author, to promote and set for- 
 ward, are deeply grounded in the very nature of that 
 Faith itself — and this, whether they be defensive or 
 aggressive, whether they be of the Truth clearing 
 itself from unjust aspersions, or carrying the war, as 
 it must often do, into the quarters of error, and prov- 
 ing itself not merely to be 'true, but to be Truth abso- 
 lute, to the exclusion of all rival claims. We know, 
 as a matter of history, that Christian literature did 
 begin, as far back as we can trace it, with works of 
 this character; they are among the earliest which 
 have reached us ; probably among the earliest which 
 existed. Nor do they belong merely to the first ages 
 of the Church's being, however in them they may 
 
 T. H. L. 1 
 
2 LECTURE I. [1R45. 
 
 naturally have had a special importance. The Truth, 
 like Him Avho gave it, will alivays be a sign which 
 shall be spoken against. The forms of the enmity 
 may change ; the coarser and more brutal accusations 
 of one age may give place to subtler charges of 
 another ; but so long as an ungodly world exists, the 
 enmity itself will remain, and will find utterance. The 
 Truth, therefore, must ever be succinct, and prompt 
 to give an answer for itself; and this it does the more 
 readily, as knowing that not man's glory, but God's 
 glory, is at hazard, when it is assailed ; as being in- 
 finitely removed from that pride which might tempt 
 to the keeping silence, because it knows that the 
 accusations made against it are unjust ; being rather 
 full of that humility and love, which make it willingly 
 condescend to the most wayward, if haply it may win 
 them to the service of its King. 
 
 And this is not all : the Truth cannot pause when 
 it has thus refuted and thrown back the things that it 
 knew not, which yet were laid to its charge. In its 
 very nature it is aggressive also. How should it not 
 be so ? how should it not make war on the strong- 
 holds of falsehood and error, when its very task in the 
 world is to deliver them that were prisoners there ? 
 how should it not seek to gather men under its ban- 
 ner, — being moved, as it ever is, with an inward 
 bleeding compassion for all them that are aliens from 
 the faith of Christ, as knowing that every man, till he 
 has found himself in Him, is estranged from the true 
 home of his spirit, the right centre of his being ? 
 How should it not press its treasures upon each, com- 
 mend its medicines to all, when they are medicines 
 for every man's hurt, treasures which would make 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 3 
 
 every man rich? when it knows that it has the reality, 
 of Avhieh every lie is the counterfeit ; that Avhen men 
 are the fiercest set against it, then are they the most 
 madly at strife with their OAvn blessedness ? 
 
 But this, it might be said, would sufficiently ex- 
 plain the uses of Christian apology before a world 
 which resists, or puts by, the Faith ; it would explain 
 why the Truth should count itself happy to stand, as 
 it did once in the person of Paul, before Festus and 
 Agrippa, and in presence of Gentile and Jew, to 
 make answer for itself. But, allowing this, what 
 means it when before a congregation of faithful men, 
 when at one of the great centres of Christian light 
 and knowledge in our own land, a preacher under- 
 takes, and that at large and from year to year, the 
 handling some j)oint of the evidences of our Religion ? 
 Might not this seem at first as superfluous a form, as 
 when, upon a day of coronation, a champion rides 
 forth, and with none but loyal hearts beating in unison 
 with the multitudinous voices which have hailed his 
 king and theirs, flings down his glove, and challenges 
 any that will gainsay the monarch's right to the 
 crown which hast just been set upon his brows ? Our 
 task might indeed be superfluous as this, were its only 
 purpose to convince opposers. There is, blessed be 
 God, a foregone conclusion in the minds of the faith- 
 ful, drawn from all which they have known themselves 
 of the life and power of the Truth, which suflers 
 them not for an instant to regard it as something yet 
 in debate, and still to be proved ; since it has already 
 approved itself iii power and blessing unto them. 
 
 And yet even for them a work of Christian apo- 
 logy may be so constructed as to have its worth and 
 
 1—2 
 
LECTURE I. [1845. 
 
 If it widen the basis on which their Faith 
 reposes, if it help them to take count of and use 
 treasures, which before they had, but which they knew 
 not before save in part ; if it cause them to pass from 
 belief to insight ; if it bring out for them the perfect 
 proportions of the Truth, its singular adaptations to 
 the pre-established harmonies of the world, as they 
 had not perceived these before ; if it furnish them 
 with a clue for guiding some perplexed and wander- 
 ing brother from his dreary labyrinth of doubt and 
 error, — if in any of these ways it effectually serve, 
 surely it has not been in vain. Such uses we acknow- 
 ledge in Evidences of our Faith, when we constitute 
 them a part of our discipline in this University ; which 
 assuredly we do, not as presuming that we have to 
 deal with any who are yet aliens from that Faith, who 
 have yet need to be brought to the acknowledging of 
 the truth as it is in Jesus ; but rather as desiring to 
 put them who already have drawn in their faith, and 
 that from better sources, from the lips of their mothers, 
 from the catechisms of their childhood, from among 
 the sanctities of their home, in possession of the sci- 
 entific grounds of that belief, which already, by a 
 better and more immediate tenure, is theirs. 
 
 Nor may we leave wholly out of sight that in a 
 time like our own, of great spiritual agitations, at a 
 place like this, of signal intellectual activity, where 
 oftentimes the low mutterings of distant controversies, 
 scarcely heard elsewhere, are distinctly audible, — there 
 can hardly fail to be some j)erplexed with difficulties, 
 harassed, it may be, with doubts which they do not 
 welcome, but would give worlds to be rid of for ever 
 — doubts which, perhaps, the very preciousness of the 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 5 
 
 Truth in their sight alone magnifies into importance; 
 for they feel that they are going to hang upon that 
 Truth all that is clear to them for life and for eter- 
 nity ; that it must be to them as their spirits' bride ; 
 and therefore they cannot endure upon it the faintest 
 breath of suspicion. I say, brethren, that we may 
 not leave wholly out of mind that one and another 
 in such perplexity of spirit may be among us here. 
 Happy above measure he, who has ''a mouth and wis- 
 dom" given him to meet the necessities of such an 
 one among his brethren ; who shall help to bring him 
 into the secure haven of belief, into the confession 
 that in Christ Jesus are indeed laid up " all," and 
 those infinite, " treasures of wisdom and knowledge." 
 
 But if discourses of the kind which I am com- 
 mencing to-day, are indeed to be of profit to any, 
 there appear to be one or two preliminary conditions 
 in the choice of a subject, most needful to be ob- 
 served; which failing to observe, we shall, of sure con- 
 sequence, fall wholly short of those ends of usefulness 
 which we desire. 
 
 And first, a work of Christian defence will be 
 marred, if the subject which we select be one upon 
 which none of the great and decisive issues of the 
 mighty conflict between Truth and error depend ; 
 as when in jousts and tournaments a knight touches 
 the shield of some feeble adversary, passing by and 
 leaving the stronger and more accomplished unchal- 
 lenged. For thus it is with us, when we go off" upon 
 some minor point, which, even were it plainly won, 
 would leave us in no essential degree the better, nor 
 an adversary the worse ; which he might yield without 
 
6 LECTURE I. [1845 
 
 being dislodged from his strongholds of unbelief, with- 
 out even feeling them less tenable than before. 
 
 Or again, it will be to little profit that we deal 
 with hinderances to men's belief, which once indeed 
 were real and urgent, but of which the urgency and 
 reality have long since departed ; if we take our stand 
 in some part of the battle-field from which the great 
 turmoil of the conflict has now ebbed and shifted 
 away ; or conjure up phantom forms of opposition, 
 which once indeed were living and strong, but now 
 survive only in the tradition of books, and at this day 
 practically weaken no man's faith, disturb no man's 
 inner peace. This, too, Avere a fatal error, to have 
 failed to take note of that great stream of tendency, 
 which has borne ks amid other shoals, and near other 
 rocks, from those among which our forefathers steered 
 with manful hearts the bark of their faith, and of 
 God's great mercy made not shipwreck of that faith 
 amidst them all. 
 
 Or, once more. Christian apology fails in its lofti- 
 est aim, when it addresses not the whole man, but 
 the man only upon one side, and that not the highest, 
 of his being ; when it addresses not the conscience, 
 the affections, the will, but the understanding faculties 
 alone. How often do we meet in books of Christian 
 evidence the attempt made to substitute a logical or 
 mathematical proof of our most holy Faith for a 
 moral one ; to ascend to that proof by steps which 
 can no more be denied than the successive steps of a 
 problem in geometry, and so to drive an adversary 
 into a corner from whence there shall be no escape. 
 But there is always an escape for those that in heart 
 and will are alienated from the truth. At some sta^e 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 7 
 
 or other of the process they will successfully break 
 away, or even if they are brought to the end, they 
 remain not with us long. And we may thank God 
 that it is so ; for it is part of the glory of the Truth 
 that it leads in procession no chained, no unwilling 
 captives — none that do not rejoice in their captivity, 
 and share in the triumph which they adorn. It is not 
 therefore that arguments which address themselves to 
 lower parts of man's being than the highest are to be 
 rejected — but only their insufficiency acknowledged ; 
 that they of themselves will never introduce any to 
 the inner sanctuary of the Faith ; but can only lead 
 him up to the doors. Most needful are they in their 
 place ; most needful that Christianity should approve 
 itself to have a true historic foundation ; that as a 
 fact in history it should stand as rigid a criticism as 
 any other fact ; that the books which profess to tell 
 its story should vindicate for themselves an authentic 
 character; that the men who wrote those books should 
 be shoAvn capable and credible witnesses of the things 
 which they deliver ; that the outworks of our Faith 
 should be seen to be no less defensible than its 
 citadel. But after all, the heart of the matter is not 
 there ; when all is done, men will feel in the deepest 
 centre of their being that it is the moral which must 
 prove the historic, and not the historic which can ever 
 prove the moral ; that evidences draAvn from without 
 may be accepted as the welcome buttresses, but that 
 we can know no other foundations, of our Faith than 
 those which itself supplies. Kevelation, like the sun, 
 must be seen by its own light ; being itself the highest, 
 the ultimate appeal with regard to it cannot lie with 
 any lower than itself. There was indeed a sense in 
 
8 LECTURE I. [1845. 
 
 which Christ received the witness of John, but there 
 was another in which He received not witness of any 
 man, only his own witness and his Father's. Even so 
 is it with his Word and his doctrine. There is a 
 witness which they can receive of men ; there is also 
 a witness which no other can yield them than them- 
 selves. 
 
 I trust, then, that taking for my argument The 
 fitness of Holy Scripture for unfolding the spiritual life 
 of men, and finding' in its adaptations for this a proof 
 of its divine origin, I shall not fail in these primary 
 conditions, however immeasurably I shall of necessity 
 fall below the greatness and grandeur of my theme. 
 
 For first this question, Whether Scripture be not 
 a book capable of doing, and appointed to do, an 
 higher work than every other book, cannot be re- 
 garded as one which is not vital. It is felt to be vital 
 by all those whose aim and purpose is to prove that 
 it is but a book as other books, and therefore under- 
 lying the same weakness and incompletenesses as 
 every other work of men's hands. And these are 
 many ; since for one direct assault on Christianity as 
 a delivered fact, there are twenty on the records of 
 Christianity, or the manner of its delivery. Many a 
 one who would not venture boldly to enter on the 
 central question, Avhether the Christ whom the Church 
 believes, whom not any one passage alone, but the 
 collective sum of the Scriptures has delivered to us, 
 be not the highest conceivable revelation of the In- 
 visible God, and his Incarnation the necessary out- 
 coming of the perfections of the Godhead, will yet 
 hover on the outskirts of the conflict, and set himself 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 9 
 
 to the detecting, as he hopes, a flaw in this narration, 
 or to the proving the historic evidence for that book 
 insufiicient. They who pass by the consideration as 
 one which never rose up before their minds, whether 
 there has not been a great education of our race, 
 reaching through all ages, going forward from the 
 day that God called Abraham from among his fathers' 
 idols ; and whether this great idea be not as a golden 
 thread, running through the whole woof and tissue of 
 Scripture — they who shun altogether considerations 
 such as these, will yet set themselves diligently to 
 look for petty discrepancies between one historic 
 book and another, or for proofs which shall not be 
 put by, of some later hand than that of Moses in 
 some notice in the book of Genesis. And however 
 paltry and petty this warfare may be, it is no doubt 
 a true instinct of hate which makes them hope to dis- 
 cover vulnerable points in Scripture, as knowing that 
 could they really find such, through them they might 
 eflectually wound Him, of whom the Scripture is the 
 outcoming and the Word. 
 
 Xor, again, can it be said that this is a matter, 
 which, though once brought into earnest debate, is 
 now so no more ; or that the earnestness of the struggle 
 has been now transferred to other parts of the great 
 controversy between the kingdoms of light and of 
 darkness. It is not so : the Porphyrys, the Celsuses, 
 and the Julians of an earlier age, have never wanted 
 their apt scholars, their worthy successors. The 
 mantle of the false prophet is as surely dropped and 
 bequeathed, as the mantle of the true. Who that 
 knows ought of what is going forward among a peo- 
 ple, who not in blood only, but in much besides, are 
 
10 LECTURE I. [1845. 
 
 most akin to us of all the nations of Europe, will 
 deny that even now God's Word is tried to the utter- 
 most ; that it still has need to make good its claims ; 
 or knowing this, will presume to say how soon we 
 may not find ourselves in the midst of controversies, 
 which assuredly have not 3'et run themselves out, nor 
 by the complete victory of the Truth brought them- 
 selves to a quiet end? 
 
 Nor shall we with this theme be lingering about 
 the outer precincts of our Faith. Not the external 
 authority with w^hich these books come to us, but the 
 inner seal with which they are sealed, the way in 
 which, like Him of whom they testify, they receive 
 not witness of men, but by all which they are, by 
 all which they have wrought, bear witness of them- 
 selves that they are of God, even the witness of 
 power, this is our high argument. 
 
 And to it perhaps there will be no fitter intro- 
 duction than a few general remarks on the connexion 
 in which a book may stand to the intellectual and 
 spiritual life of men. And would we appreciate the 
 importance of a book received as absolute law, for 
 the mental and moral culture of those who in such 
 wise receive it, the influences which it will exert in 
 moulding them, if only that book contain any ele- 
 ments of truth ; let us consider for an instant what 
 the Koran has been and is to the whole Mohamme- 
 dan world ; how it is practically the great bond and 
 band of the nations professing that spurious faith, 
 holding fast in a community, which is a counterpart, 
 however feeble, of a Christendom, nations whom 
 everything else would have tended to separate ; how 
 it has stamped on them the features of a common 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 11 
 
 life, and set them, however immeasurably below the 
 Christian nations, yet well nigh as greatly above all 
 other nations of the world ; — let us consider this, and 
 then what the book is that has wrought these mighty 
 effects — the many elements of fraud and folly which 
 are mixed up with, and which weaken, the truth which 
 it possesses ; and then let us ask ourselves what by 
 comparison must be a Bible, or Scripture of absolute 
 truth, to the Christian world ? 
 
 Or to estimate the shaping moulding power which 
 may lie in books, even when they come not as revela- 
 tions, real or pretended, of the will of God, let us 
 attempt to measure the influence which a few Greek 
 and Latin books, (for the real effective books are but 
 few,) exert and have exerted on the minds of men, 
 since the time that they have been familiarly known 
 and studied ; the manner in which they have modified 
 the habits of thought, coloured the language, and 
 affected the whole institutions of the world in which 
 we live ; how they have given to those who have sedu- 
 lously occupied themselves in their study and drunk 
 in their spirit, a culture and tone of mind recogniz- 
 ably different from that of any other men ; and this, 
 although they come with the seal of no absolute 
 authority; although, on the contrary, we feel that on 
 many points (and some of these the very chiefest) we 
 stand greatly above them. Let us take this into 
 account, and we shall allow that it is scarcely possible 
 to overrate the influence of a Book which does come 
 with highest sanction, to which men bow as contain- 
 ing the express image of the Truth, and which is, as 
 those are, only for a longer period and in a higher 
 
12 LECTURE I. [1845. 
 
 region of the spiritual life, the appointed instrument 
 for calling out the true humanity in every man. 
 
 At first, indeed, it seems hard to understand how 
 any ivritten word should possess such influence as that 
 which we attribute to this ; difficult to set a dispen- 
 sation of the Truth in that form at all upon a level 
 in force and influence with the same Truth, when it is 
 the living utterance of living men, or to ascribe to it 
 powers at all equal to theirs. But when we consider 
 more closely, the wonder disappears ; we soon per- 
 ceive how, by the Providence of God, a written word, 
 be it of man's truth or of God's Truth, should have 
 been charged with such important functions to fulfil. 
 For first, it is plain that the existence of a written 
 word is the necessary condition of any historic life or 
 progress whatsoever in the world. If succeeding 
 generations are to inherit ^ught from those that went 
 before, and not each to begin anew from first rudi- 
 ments, — if all is not to be always childhood, — if there 
 is to be any manhood of our race, — it is plain that 
 only thus, only through such an instrument could this 
 be brought about. 
 
 And most of all it is evident that through a Scrip- 
 ture alone, that is, through a written record, could 
 any great epoch, and least of all an ei^och in which 
 great spiritual truths were revealed or reasserted, 
 transmit itself unimpaired to the after world. For 
 every new has for a long while an old to contend 
 with, every higher a lower, which is continually seek- 
 ing to draw it down to itself The most earnest 
 oral tradition will in a little while lose its distinct- 
 ness, undergo essential though insensible modifica- 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. IS 
 
 tions. Apart from all desire to vitiate the committed 
 word, yet, little by little, the subjective condition of 
 those to whom it is entrusted, through whom it passes, 
 will infallibly make itself felt ; and in such treache- 
 rous keeping" is all which remains merely in the memo- 
 ries of men, that after a very little while, rival schools 
 of disciples will begin to contend not merely how 
 their master's words were to be accepted, but what 
 those very words were themselves. 
 
 Moreover, it is only by recurrence to such wit- 
 nesses as are thus secured for the form in which the 
 Truth was at the first delivered, that any great resto- 
 ration or reformation can proceed ; only so can that 
 which is grown old renew its youth, and cast off the 
 slough of age. Without this, all that is once let go 
 would be irrecoverably gone — all once lost would be 
 lost for ever. Without this, all that did not interest 
 at the moment, all which was laid deep for the uses 
 of a remote posterity, of which they were first to 
 discover the j^rice and value, would long before it 
 reached them have inevitably perished. And when 
 the Church of the Apostolic age, with that directly 
 following, is pointed to as an exception to this general 
 rule, — as a Church existing without a Scripture, — 
 even as no doubt for some while the Church did exist 
 with a canon not full formed, but forming, and for a 
 little while without any Scriptures peculiarly its own, 
 it is left out of sight that the question is not, whether 
 a Church could so exist, but whether it could subsist — 
 not whether it could be, but whether it could continue 
 to be. That for a while, under rare combinations of 
 favourable circumstances, with living witnesses and 
 fresh memories of the Lord's life and death in the 
 
14 LECTURE I. [1845. 
 
 midst of it, a Christian Church without any actual 
 writino's of its new Covenant could have existed, is 
 one thing ; and another, whether it could so have sur- 
 vived through long ages ; whether without them it 
 could have kept ever before its eyes any clear and 
 distinct image of Him that was its founder, or stamped 
 any lively impress of Him on the hearts of its chil- 
 dren. No ; it is assuredly no happy accident of the 
 Church that it possesses a Scripture ; but if the won- 
 ders of the Church's first becoming were not to repeat 
 themselves continually, if it was at all to know a na- 
 tural evolution in the world ; then, as fiir as we can 
 see, this was a necessary condition of its very sub- 
 sistence. 
 
 This then, brethren, will be the aim of these lec- 
 tures which I am allowed to deliver in your hearing. 
 I shall desire reverently, and with God's grace assist- 
 ing, to discover what I may, of the inner structure of 
 this Book which is so essential a factor in the spiritual 
 life of men — humbly to trace where I can, the wisdom 
 with which it is laid out to be the nourisher and 
 teacher of all men, and of all men in all ages and in 
 all parts of their complex being ; also to show, where 
 I am able, how it has effectually approved itself as 
 such. 
 
 And yet, brethren, such considerations may not 
 be entered on without one or two needful cautions, 
 which I should wish to keep ever before myself, which 
 I should wish to commend also to you. And first, 
 let us beware lest contemplating this goodly fabric, 
 we be contemplators only ; as though we were to 
 stand without Scripture and admire it, and not to 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 15 
 
 stand Avithin it and obey it. That were a mournful 
 self-deceit — to see and marvel at its fitness for every 
 man, and never to have made proof of that fitness 
 for the needs of one heart, for the healing the deep 
 wound of one spirit, even of our own. And, indeed, 
 only in this way of love and of obedience shaU we 
 enter truly into any of the hidden riches which it 
 contains ; for that only which we love, we know. No 
 book, much less the highest, yields its secrets, reveals 
 its wonders, to any but the reverent, the loving, and 
 the humble. To other than these, the door of higher 
 understanding is ever closed. We must pass into 
 and unite ourselves with that which we would know, 
 ere we can know it more than in name. 
 
 And then, brethren, again, when we propose to 
 consider the structure of Scripture, it is not as though 
 this were needed before men could enter into its full- 
 est and freest enjoyment. It is far from being thus ; 
 for as a man may live in an house without being an 
 architect, so may we habitually live and move in Holy 
 Scripture, without consciously, by any reflex act, being 
 aware of any one of the wonders of its construction, 
 the secret sources of its strength and power. To 
 know simply that it is the Word of God has sufficed 
 thousands and tens of thousands of our brethren ; 
 even as, no doubt, in this one affirmation is gathered 
 up and anticipated all that the most earnest and 
 devout search may unfold. AVe may say this, that 
 it is God's Word, in other language, we may say this 
 more at large, yet more than this we cannot say ; 
 after the widest range we shall only return to this at 
 the last. 
 
 But while this is true, it remains true also that 
 
16 LECTURE I. [1845. 
 
 " the works of the Lord are great, sought out of all 
 them that have pleasure therein," if only leisure and 
 opportunities are theirs — that if love is the way of 
 knowledge, knowledge also is the food of love, the 
 appointed fuel of the sacred fire ; that, if the affec- 
 tions are to be kept lastingly true to an object, the 
 reasonable faculties, supposing them to have been 
 actively called out, must find also in that object their 
 satisfying employment. Many among us here have, 
 or will have, not merely to live on God's Word our- 
 selves, but, as our peculiar task, to unfold its secrets 
 and bring forth its treasures for others. We there- 
 fore cannot draw from it that unconscious nutriment 
 which do many. Whatever may be the danger of 
 losing the simplicity of our love for it, and coming to 
 set that love upon other grounds than those on which 
 the love of the humblest and simplest of our brethren 
 reposes, and so of separating ourselves in spirit from 
 him ; this, like any other danger of our spiritual life, 
 must not be shrunk from, by shrinking from the duty 
 to which, like its dark shadow, it cleaves ; but in other 
 and more manful ways must be met and overcome. 
 We all of us have need, if not all from our peculiar 
 functions, yet all from our position as the highest 
 educated of our age and nation, as therefore the 
 appointed leaders of its thoughts and feelings, not 
 merely to prize and honour this Book, but to justify 
 the price and honour, in which we hold it ourselves, 
 in which we bid others to hold it. 
 
 May some of us be led by what shall be here 
 spoken to a fuller recognition of those treasures of 
 wisdom and knowledge which are or may be, day by 
 day, in our hands. May we be reminded of the high 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 17 
 
 privilege which it is to have a book which is also, as 
 its name declares, the Book ; which stands up in the 
 midst of its brethren, the kingly sheaf, to which all 
 the others do obeisance (Gen. xxxvii. 7 ;) — not casting 
 a slight upon them, but lending to them some of its 
 own dignity and honour. May we in a troubled time 
 be helped to feel something of the grandeur of th« 
 Scripture, and so of the manifold wisdom of that 
 Eternal Spirit by whom it came — and then petty 
 objections and isolated difficulties, though they were 
 multiplied as the sands of the sea, will not harass us. 
 For what are they all to the fact, (I am here using 
 and concluding with words far better than my own,) 
 that *' for more than a thousand years the Bible col- 
 lectively taken has gone hand in hand with civiliza- 
 tion, science, law, — in short, with the moral and 
 intellectual cultivation of the species, always support- 
 ing, and often leading the way? Its very presence 
 as a believed book, has rendered the nations emphati- 
 cally a chosen race, and this too in exact proportion 
 as it is more or less generally studied. Of those 
 nations which in the highest degree enjoy its influ- 
 ences, it is not too much to affirm that the differences, 
 public and private, physical, moral and intellectual, 
 are only less than what might be expected from a 
 diversity in species. Good and holy men, and the 
 best and wisest of mankind, the kingly spirits of his- 
 tory enthroned in the hearts of mighty nations, have 
 borne witness to its influences, have declared it to 
 be beyond compare the most perfect instrument, the 
 only adequate organ, of humanity ; the organ and 
 instrument of all the gifts, powers, and tendencies, 
 by which the individual is privileged to rise above 
 
 T. H. L. 2 
 
18 LECTURE I. [1845. 
 
 himself, to leave behind and lose his dividual phan- 
 tom self, in order to find his true self in that distinct- 
 ness where no division can be, — in the Eternal I AM, 
 the ever-living Word, of whom all the elect, from the 
 archangel before the throne to the poor wrestler 
 with the Spirit until the breaking of day, are but the 
 fainter and still fainter echoes." 
 
LECTURE IL 
 
 THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Ephesians I. 9, 10. 
 
 Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, accord- 
 ing to his good pleasure, which he hath purposed in him- 
 self; that in the dispensation of the fulness of times he 
 might gather together in one all things in Christ, both 
 which are in heaven and which are on earth; even in 
 him. 
 
 It is the necessary condition of a book which shall 
 exert any great and effectual influence, which shall 
 stamp itself with a deep impression upon the minds 
 and hearts of men, that it must have a unity of pur- 
 pose : one great idea must run through it all. There 
 must be some single point in which all its different 
 rays converge and meet. The common eye may fail 
 to detect the unity, even while it unconsciously owns 
 its power : yet this is necessary still ; this growing 
 out of a single root, this subordination of all the parts 
 to a single aim, this returning of the end upon the 
 beginning. We feel this in a lower sphere ; nothing 
 pleases much or long, nothing takes greatly hold, no 
 work of human genius or art, which is not at one with 
 itself, which has not form, in the highest sense of that 
 word ; which does not exclude and include. And it 
 is hardly necessary to add, that if the effects are to 
 be deep and strong, this idea must be a great one : 
 it must not be one which shall play lightly upon the 
 surface of their minds that apprehend it, but rather 
 
 2—2 
 
20 LECTURE II. [1845. 
 
 one which shall reach far clown to the dark founda- 
 tions out of sight upon which reposes this awful being 
 of ours. 
 
 Now what I should desire to make the subject of 
 my lecture to-day is exactly this, that there is one 
 idea in Holy Scripture, and this idea the very high- 
 est ; that all in it is referable to this ; that it has the 
 unity of which I spake ; that a guiding hand and 
 spirit is traceable throughout, including in it all which 
 bears upon one mighty purpose, excluding all which 
 has no connexion with that, — however, from faulty or 
 insufficient views, we might have expected it there ; 
 however certainly it would have intruded itself there, 
 had this been a work of no higher than human skill. 
 I would desire to shew that it fulfils this condition, 
 the necessary condition of a book which shall be 
 mighty in operation ; that it is this organic whole, 
 informed by this one idea ; — how this one explains 
 what it has and what it has not ; much in its form, 
 and yet more in its substance ; why it should be brief 
 here, and large there ; why it omits wholly this, and 
 only touches slightly upon that ; why vast gaps, as at 
 first sight might seem to us, occur in some portions 
 of it ; infinite minuteness of detail in others ; how 
 things which at first we looked to find in it, we do 
 not find, and others, which we were not prepared for, 
 are there. 
 
 And this unity if it can be shown to exist, none 
 can reply that it was involved and implied in the ex- 
 ternal accidents of the Book, and that we have mis- 
 taken the outward aggregation of things similar for 
 the inward coherence of an organic body : since these 
 accidents, if the word may be permitted, are all such 
 
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 21 
 
 as would have created a sense of diversity ; and it is 
 only by penetrating through them, and not suffering 
 them to mislead us, that we do attain to the deeper 
 and pervading unity of Scripture. Its unity is not, 
 for instance, that apparent one which might be pro- 
 duced by a language common to all its parts. For it 
 is scarcely possible, I suppose, for a deeper gvdf to 
 divide two languages than divides the two in which 
 severally the Old and the New Testament are written. 
 Nor can it be likeness of form which has deceived us 
 into believing that unity of spirit exists ; for the forms 
 are various and diverse as can be conceived ; it is now 
 song, now history ; now dialogue, now narration ; now 
 familiar letter, now prophetic vision. There is scarcely 
 a form of composition in which men have clothed their 
 thoughts and embodied their emotions which does not 
 find its archetype here. Nor yet is the unity of this 
 volume brought about through all the parts of it being 
 the upgrowth of a single age, and so all breathing 
 alike the spirit of that age ; for no single age beheld 
 the birth of this Book, which was well nigh two thou- 
 sand years ere it was fully formed and had reached 
 its final completion. Nor can its unity, if it exists, 
 be accounted for from its having had but one class of 
 men for its human authors : since men not of one 
 class alone, but of many, and those the widest apart, 
 kings and herdsmen, warriors and fishermen, wise men 
 and simple, have alike brought their one stone or 
 more, and been permitted to build them in to this 
 august dome and temple which God through so many 
 ages was rearing *to its glorious height. Deeper than 
 all its outward circumstances, since these all would 
 have tended to an opposite result, this unity must 
 
22 LECTURE II. [1845. 
 
 lie — in the all-enfolding seed out of which the whole 
 book is evolved. 
 
 But this unity of Scripture, where is it? from 
 what point shall we behold and recognize it ? Surely 
 from that in which those verses which I have taken 
 from the Epistle to the Ephesians will place us ; when 
 we regard it as the story of the knitting anew the 
 broken relations between the Lord God and the race 
 of man ; of the bringing the First-begotten into the 
 world, for the gathering together all the scattered 
 and the sundered in Him ; when we regard it as the 
 true Paradise Regained — the true De Civitate Dei, — 
 even by a better title than those noble books which 
 bear these names — the record of that mystery of 
 God's will which was working from the first, to the 
 end " that in the dispensation of the fulness of 
 times He might gather together in one all things in 
 Christ." 
 
 And all nearer examination will shew how true it 
 is to this idea, which we affirm to lie at its ground. 
 It is the story of the divine relations of men, of the 
 divine life which, in consequence of those still sub- 
 sisting relations, was struggling to the birth with 
 more or less successful issues in every faithful man ; 
 which came perfectly to the birth in the One, even 
 in Him in whom those relations were constituted at 
 the first, and perfectly sealed at the last. It is the 
 story of this, and of nothing else ; the record of the 
 men who were conscious of a bond between earth and 
 heaven, and not only dimly conscious, for that all 
 people who have not sunk into savage hordes have 
 been, but who recognized these relations, this fellow- 
 ship, as the great undoubted fact with which God 
 
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 23 
 
 had underlaid their Hfe — the support not merely of 
 their personal being, but as that which must sustain 
 the whole society of earth — whether the narrower 
 society of the Family, or the wider of the State, or 
 the all-embracing one of the Church. 
 
 HoAV many temptations there were to wander out 
 of and beyond this region, which yet every one of us 
 must recognize at once to be the true region in which 
 only an Holy Scripture should move ; how man}'^ other 
 regions in which, had it been other than what it is, it 
 might have lost itself! For instance, other so called 
 sacred books almost invariably miss the distinction 
 between ethics and physics, lose themselves in theories 
 of creation, endless cosmogonies, subtle speculations 
 about the origin of the material universe. Such a 
 deep ground has this error, so willing are men to sub- 
 stitute the speculative for the practical, and to lose 
 the last in the first, that we find even after the Chris- 
 tian Faith had been given, a vast attempt to turn even 
 that into a philosophy of nature. What, for example, 
 was Manicheism, but the attempt to array a philo- 
 sophy of nature in a Christian language, to empty 
 Christian truths of all their ethical worth, and then to 
 use them as a gorgeous S} mbolic garb for clothing a 
 system different to its very core ? But Scripture is 
 no story of the material universe *. A single chapter 
 is sufficient to tell us that " God made the heavens 
 
 * Compare the remarkable words of Felix the Manichaean, and 
 the fault which he finds with it on this very ground (Augustine, Acta 
 c. Felice Manichceo, 1. 1, c. 9) : Et quia venit JManichaeus et per suam 
 prsedicationem docuit nos initium medium et finem ; docuit nos de 
 fabrica mundi, quare facta est et unde facta et qui fecerunt ; docuit 
 nos quare dies et quare nox : docuit nos de cursu solis et lunse ; qui.i 
 hoc in Paulo non audivimus, nee in cfeterorum apostolornm scnpturis, 
 hoc credimus, quia ipse est Paraclitus. 
 
24 LECTURE II. fl845. 
 
 and the earth." Man is the central figure there, or, 
 to speak more truly, the only figure ; all which is there 
 besides serves but as a background for him ; he is 
 not one part of the furniture of this planet, not the 
 highest merely in the scale of its creatures, but the 
 lord of all — sun and moon and stars, and all the 
 visible creation, borrowing all their worth and their 
 significance from the relations wherein they stand to 
 him. Such he appears there in the ideal worth of his 
 unfallen condition ; and even now, when only a broken 
 fragment of the sceptre with which once he ruled the 
 world, remains in his hand, such he is commanded to 
 regard himself still. 
 
 It is one of Spinoza's charges against Scripture, 
 that it does erect and recognize this lordship of man, 
 that it does lift him out of his subordinate place, and 
 ever speak in a language which takes for granted that 
 nature is to serve him, and not he to acquiesce in 
 nature, that the Bible everywhere speaks rather of a 
 God of men than a Creator of the universe. We 
 accept willingly the reproach ; we acknowledge and 
 we glory in its entire truth, — that the eighth Psalm is 
 but a single distinct utterance of that which all Scrip- 
 ture proclaims ; for that everywhere sets forth man 
 as the crown of things, the last and the highest, the 
 king to rule over the world, the priest to offer up its 
 praises — and deals with nature not as co-ordinated 
 with him, much less as superior ; but in entire sub- 
 ordination ; " Thou makest him to have dominion of 
 the works of thy hands, and thou hast put all things 
 in subjection under his feet." And herein Holy 
 Scripture is one, that it is throughout the history of 
 man as distinct from nature, as immeasurably above 
 
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 25 
 
 nature — that it is throughout ethical, and does never, 
 as so many of the mythic accounts of heathen reU- 
 gions, resolve itself on nearer inspection into the mere 
 setting forth of physical appearances. 
 
 It is then the history of man ; yet not of all men, 
 only of a chosen portion of our race ; and such, if we 
 have rightly seized the purpose and meaning of a 
 Scripture and what it is intended to tell, it must needs 
 be. It is true that this too is often brought against 
 it as a short-coming. It is a frequent sneer on the 
 part of the master-mocker of France, that the Bible 
 dedicates its largest spaces, by far the greatest num- 
 ber of its pages, to the annals of a little tribe, which 
 occupied, to use his very words, a narrow strip of 
 mountainous territory, scarcely broader than Wales, 
 leaving almost unnoticed the mighty empires of Egypt 
 and Assyria ; and he goes on to observe, that from a 
 book which professes to go back, as this does, to the 
 very beginning, and to be in possession of all authen- 
 tic history from the first, to have in its keej^ing the 
 archives of our race, we should gladly have received, 
 even as we might have reasonably expected, a few 
 notices of these vast empires ; which had been cheaply 
 purchased by the omission or abridgement of lives 
 and incidents now written with such a special minute- 
 ness. 
 
 Now it is no doubt remarkable, and a fact to 
 awaken our earnest attention, that in a Book, wherein, 
 if in any, all waste of room would have been spared, 
 the lives of an Abraham, a Joseph, a David, fill singly 
 spaces so large ; while huge empires rise and fall, and 
 all their multitudes pass to their graves almost with- 
 out a word. These vast empires are left in their utter 
 
26 LECTURE II. [1845. 
 
 darkness, or if a glimpse of light fall upon them for a 
 moment, it is only because of the relations in which 
 they are brought to this little tribe ; since no sooner 
 do these relations cease, than they fall back into the 
 obscurity out of which they emerged for a moment. 
 
 But strange as this may at first sight appear, it 
 belongs to the very essence of Scripture that it should 
 be thus and no otherwise. For that is not a world- 
 history, but a history of the kingdom of God ; and He 
 who ever chooses " the weak things of the earth to 
 confound the things which are mighty," had willed 
 that in the line of this family, this tribe, this little 
 people, the restoration of the true humanity should be 
 effected : and each man who at all realized the com- 
 ing Restorer, each in whom that image of God, which 
 was one day to be perfectly revealed in his Son, ap- 
 peared with a more than usual distinctness, however 
 indistinctly still, — every such man was singly a greater 
 link in the world's history than all those blind mil- 
 lions of whom these records have refused to take 
 knowledge. Those mountains of Israel, that little 
 corner of the world, so often despised, so often 
 wholly past over, was yet the citadel of the world's 
 hope, the hearth on which the sparks that were yet to 
 kindle the earth were kept alive. There the great 
 reaction which was one day to find place against the 
 world's sin Avas preparing : and just as, w^ere we tracing 
 the course of a stream, not the huge morasses, not 
 the vast stagnant pools on either side, would delay 
 us ; we should not, because of their extent, count 
 them the river ; but that we should recognize as the 
 stream, though it were the slenderest thread, in wliich 
 an onward movement and current might be discerned; 
 
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 27 
 
 so it is here. Egypt and Assyria and Babylon were 
 but the vast stagnant morasses on either side ; the 
 man in whose seed the whole earth should be blest, 
 he and his family were the little stream in which the 
 life and onward motion of the world were to be 
 traced. 
 
 For indeed, properly speaking, where there are 
 no workings, conscious or unconscious, to the great 
 end of the manifestation of the Son of God in the 
 flesh, — conscious, as in Israel, unconscious, as in 
 Greece, — where neither those nor these are found, 
 there history does not and cannot exist. For history, 
 if it be not the merest toy, the idlest pastime of our 
 vacant hours, is the record of the onward march of 
 humanity towards an end. Where there is no belief 
 in such an end, and therefore no advance toward it, 
 no stirrings of a divine Word in a people's bosom, 
 where not as yet the beast's heart has been taken 
 away, and a man's heart given, there history cannot 
 be said to be. They belong not therefore to history, 
 least of all to sacred history, those Babels, those cities 
 of confusion, those huge pens into which by force and 
 fraud the early hunters of men, the Nimrods and 
 Sesostrises, drave and compelled their fellows : and 
 Scripture is only most true to its idea, while it passes 
 them almost or wholly in silence by, while it lingers 
 rather on the plains of Mamre with the man that 
 " believed God, and it was counted to him for right- 
 eousness," than by "populous No," or great Babylon, 
 where no faith existed but in the blind powers of 
 nature, and the 'brute forces of the natural man. 
 
 And yet, that there were stirrings of a divine life, 
 longings after and hopes of a Deliverer, at work in 
 
28 LECTURE II. [1845. 
 
 Israel, had not been, of itself, sufficient to exalt and 
 consecrate its history into a Scripture. These such 
 an history must contain, but also something more and 
 deeper than these ; else all in Greece and elscAvhere 
 that was struggling after moral freedom, that was 
 craving after light, all that bore witness to man's 
 higher origin and nobler destinies, might have claimed 
 by an equal right to be there. But Ploly Scripture, 
 according to the idea from which we started, is the 
 history of men in a constitution — of men, not seeking 
 relations with God, but having them, and whose task 
 is now to believe in them, and to maintain them. 
 Its mournful reminiscences of a broken communion 
 with heaven are evermore swallowed up in the firm 
 and glorious assurances of a restored. The noblest 
 efforts of heathenism were seekings after these rela- 
 tions with God, if haply man might connect himself 
 anew with an higher world, from which he had cut 
 himself loose. But here man does not appear as 
 seeking God, and therefore at best only dimly and 
 uncertainly apprehending him ; but rather God ap- 
 pears as seeking man, and therefore not seeking in 
 vain, but ever finding — and man only as seeking God, 
 on the ground that God has already sought and 
 found Mm, and has said to him, " Seek my face," and 
 in that saying has pledged Himself that the seeking 
 shall not be in vain. With this, Scripture excludes 
 all mere feelings after God, not as counting them 
 worthless, — for precious and significant in the eyes of 
 a Paul was the altar " To the unknown God" reared 
 at Athens, — but excludes them, in that they belong 
 to a lower stage of religious life than that to which it 
 ministers, and in which it moves. It has no mytho- 
 
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 29 
 
 logy ; no ideal which is not also real ; no dreams and 
 anticipations of higher things than it is itself destined 
 to record as actually brought to pass. These may be 
 deep out-speakings of the spiritual needs of man, 
 precious recollections of a state which once was his, 
 but which now he has forfeited ; yet being only utter- 
 ances of his want, cries of his need, confessions of his 
 loss, sharing too, as they must ever, in the imperfec- 
 tions of which they testify, therefore they can find no 
 place in a Bible. For that is in no way a record of 
 man's various attempts to cure himself of the deep 
 wound of his soul ; it is no history of the experiments 
 which he makes, as he looks round him to see if he 
 may find on earth medicinal herbs that will meet 
 his need ; but it presents him already in an hospital 
 of souls, and under a divine treatment. Heathen phi- 
 losophy might indeed be a preparation for Christian- 
 ity — heathen mythology, upon its better side, an 
 unconscious prophecy of Christ ; yet were they only 
 the negative preparation and witness ; Jewish religion 
 was the positive ; and it is with the positive alone 
 that a Scripture can have to do. 
 
 Thus we have seen what, under some aspects, 
 such a book must be : we have seen why it is not 
 that, which men superficially looking at it, or in whom 
 the speculative tendencies are stronger than the moral 
 needs, might have desired it to be. In the first place, 
 that it is not the history of nature, but of man ; nor 
 yet of all men, but only of those who are more 
 or less conscious of their divine original, and have 
 not, amid all their sins, forgotten that great word, 
 "We are God's offspring;" — nor yet even of all 
 these, but of those alone who had been brought by 
 
30 LECTURE II. [1845. 
 
 the word of the promise into immediate covenant 
 relations with the Father of their spirits. We have 
 seen it the history of an election, — of men under the 
 direct and immediate education of God — not indeed 
 for their own sakes only, as too many among them 
 thought, turning their election into a selfish thing, 
 but that through them he might educate and bless 
 the world. That it does not tell the story of other 
 men — that it does not give a philosophy of nature, is 
 not a deficiency, but is rather its strength and glory ; 
 witnessing for the Spirit Avhich has presided over its 
 growth and formation, and never suffered ought 
 which was alien to its great plan and purpose to find 
 admission into it — any foreign elements to weaken 
 its strength or trouble its clearness. 
 
 Nor less does Holy Scripture give testimony for 
 a pervading unity, an inner law according to which it 
 unfolds itself as a perfect and organic whole, in the 
 epoch at which growth in it ceases, and it appears 
 henceforth as a finished book. So long as humanity 
 was growing, it grew. But when the manhood of our 
 race was reached, when man had attained his highest 
 point, even union with God in his Son, then it comes 
 to a close. It carries him up to this, to his glorious 
 goal, to the perfect knitting again of those broken 
 relations, through the life and death and resurrec- 
 tion of Him in whom God and man were perfectly 
 atoned. So long as there was anything more to tell, 
 any new revelation of the Name of God, any new 
 relations of grace and nearness into which he was 
 bringing his creatures, — so long the Bible was a grow- 
 ing, expanding Book. But when all is given, when 
 God, who at divers times spake to the world by 
 
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. SI 
 
 his servants, had now spoken his last and fullest 
 Word by his Son, then to this Book, the record of 
 that Word of his, there is added no more, even while 
 there is nothing more to add ; — though it cannot end 
 till it has shewn in prophetic vision how this latest 
 and highest which now has been given to man, shall 
 unfold itself into the glory and blessedness of a per- 
 fected kingdom of heaven. 
 
 For thus, too, it will mark itself as one, by return- 
 ing visibly in its end upon its beginning. Vast as the 
 course which it has traced, it has been a circle still, 
 and in that most perfect form comes back to the 
 point from whence it started. The heaven, which 
 had disappeared from the earth since the third chap- 
 ter of Genesis, reappears again in visible manifesta- 
 tion, in the latest chapters of the Kevelation. The 
 tree of life, whereof there were but faint remini- 
 scences in all the intermediate time, again stands by 
 the river of the water of life, and again there is no 
 more curse. Even the very differences of the forms 
 under which the heavenly kingdom reappears are 
 deeply characteristic, marking as they do, not merely 
 that all is won back, but won back in a more glorious 
 shape than that in which it was lost, because won 
 back in the Son. It is no longer Paradise, but the 
 New Jerusalem — no longer the garden, but now the 
 city, of God, which is on earth. The change is full 
 of meaning ; no longer the garden, free, spontaneous, 
 and unlaboured, even as man's blessedness in the 
 state of a first innocence would have been ; but the 
 city, costlier indeed, more stately, more glorious, but, 
 at the same time, the result of toil, of labour, of 
 pains — reared into a nobler and more abiding habita- 
 
32 LP:CTURE II. [1845. 
 
 tion, yet with stones which, after the pattern of the 
 '* elect corner-stone," were each in its time laboriously 
 hewn and painfully squared for the places which they 
 fill. 
 
 And surely we may be permitted to observe by 
 the way, that this idea, which we plainly trace and 
 recognize, of Scripture as a whole, this its architect- 
 onic character, cannot be without its weight in help- 
 ing to determine the Canonical place and worth of 
 the Apocalypse, which, as is familiar to many among 
 us, has been sometimes called in question. Apart 
 from all outward evidences in its favour, do we not 
 feel that this wondrous book is needed where it is ? — 
 that it is the key-stone of the arch, the capital of the 
 pillar — that Holy Scripture had seemed maimed and 
 imperfect without it, — that a winding up with the 
 Epistles would have been no true winding up ; for in 
 them the Church appears as still warring and strug- 
 gling, still compast about with the weaknesses and 
 infirmities of its mortal existence — not triumphing 
 yet, nor yet having entered into its glory. Such a 
 termination had been as abrupt, as little satisfying as 
 if, in the lower sphere of the Pentateuch, we had 
 accompanied the children of Israel to the moment 
 when they were just entering on the wars of Canaan ; 
 and no book of Joshua had followed to record their 
 battles and their victories, and how these did not 
 cease till they rode on the high places of the earth, 
 and rested each man quietly in the lot of his con- 
 quered inheritance. 
 
 And again, this oneness of Holy Scripture, when 
 we feel it, is a sufficient, even as it is a complete, 
 answer to a very favourite topic of Romish contro- 
 
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 33 
 
 versialists. They are fond of bringing out how much 
 there is of accident in the strvicture, nay, even in the 
 existence, of Scripture, — that we have one Gospel (the 
 third) written at a private man's request, — another, 
 (the fourth) because heresies had risen up which 
 needed to be checked — epistles owing their origin 
 to causes equally fortuitous — one, because temporary 
 disorders had manifested themselves at Corinth, — 
 another, because an Apostle, having promised to visit 
 a city, from some unexpected cause was hindered — 
 a third, to secure the favourable reception of a fugi- 
 tive slave by his master — that of the New Testament 
 at least, the chiefest part is thus made up of occa- 
 sional documents called forth by emergent needs. 
 And the purpose of this slight on Scripture is evident, 
 the conclusion near at hand — which is this, How little 
 likely it is that a book so formed, so growing, should 
 contain an absolute and sufficient guide of life and 
 rule of doctrine — how needful some supplementary 
 teaching. 
 
 But when once this inner unity of God's Word 
 has been revealed to us, when our eye has learned to 
 recognize not merely the marks and signs of an higher 
 wisdom, guiding and inspiring each several part, but 
 also the relations of each part to the whole ; when 
 it has risen up before us, not as aggregated from 
 without, but as unfolded from within, and in obe- 
 dience to an inner law, then we shall feel that, how- 
 ever accidental may appear the circumstances of its 
 growth, yet this accident which seemed to accom- 
 pany its production, and to preside in the calling 
 out of the especial books which we possess, and no 
 other, was no more than the accident which God is 
 
 T. H. L. 3 
 
34 LECTURE II. [1845. 
 
 ever Aveaving into the woof of his providence, and 
 not merely weaving into it, but which is the staple 
 out of which its whole web is woven. 
 
 Thus, brethren, we have been led to contemplate 
 these oracles of G od in their deep inner unity ; we 
 have seen, not merely how they possess, but how we 
 can reverently trace them in the possession of, that 
 oneness of plan and purpose, which should make them 
 effectual for the unfolding the spiritual life of men. 
 We have seen how men's expectations of finding 
 something there which they did not find, with their 
 disappointments at its absence, have ever grown out 
 of a mistaken apprehension of what a Scripture ought 
 to be ; how the presence of that which they miss 
 would indeed have marred it, would have contra- 
 dicted its fundamental idea, would have been a dis- 
 cord amid its deep harmonies, even as the discords 
 which men find in it come oftentimes as its highest 
 harmonies to the purged ear. 
 
 Nor is it without its warning to ourselves, that 
 these murmurings and complaints do most often evi- 
 dently grow out of a moral fault in them that make 
 them. Men have lost the key of knowledge — the 
 master-key which would have opened to them every 
 door ; and then they wander with perjilexed hearts up 
 and down this stately palace which the Eternal Wis- 
 dom has builded, but of which every goodlier room 
 is closed against them, till, in the end, they complain 
 that it is no such peerless palace after all, but only 
 as other works which man's art has reared. Nor is 
 this conclusion strange ; for unless they bring to it a 
 moral need, unless that moral need be to them the 
 
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 35 
 
 interpreter of every part, and gather all that is ap- 
 parently abnormal in it under an higher and recon- 
 ciling law, the Book, in its deepest meaning and 
 worth, will remain a riddle to them still. 
 
 But this moral need, what is it ? It is the sense 
 that we are sundered and scattered each from God, 
 each from his fellow-man, each from himself — with a 
 belief deep as the foundations of our life, that it is 
 the will of God to gather all these scattered and 
 these sundered together anew — this, with the convic- 
 tion which will rise out of this, that all which bears 
 on the circumstances of this recovering and regather- 
 ing is precious ; that nothing is of highest Avorth 
 which does not bear upon this. Then we shall see in 
 this Word that it is the very history which w^e require 
 — that altogether, nothing but that — the history of 
 the restoring the defaced image of God, the re-con- 
 stitution of a ruined but godlike race, in the image 
 of God's own Son — the deliverance of all in that 
 race, who were willing to be delivered, from the idols 
 of sense, from the false gods who would hold them in 
 bondage, and would fain make them their drudges 
 and their slaves. 
 
 And, brethren, what is it that shall give unity to 
 our lives, but the recognition of the same great idea 
 which gives unity to this Book ? Those lives, they 
 seem often broken into parts, with no visible connexion 
 between one part and another ; our boyhood, we know 
 not how to connect it with our youth, our youth with 
 our manhood : the different tasks of our life, we want 
 to bind them up into a single sheaf, to feel that, 
 however manifold and apparently disconnected they 
 are, there is yet a bond that binds them into one. 
 
 8—2 
 
36 LECTURE II. 
 
 Our hearts, we want a central point for them, as it 
 were a heart within the heart, and we oftentimes 
 seek this in vain. Oh, what a cry has gone up from 
 thousands and ten thousands of souls ! and this the 
 burden of the cry, I desire to be one in the deep 
 centre of my being, to be one and not many — to be 
 able to reduce my life to one law — to be able to 
 explain it to myself in the master-light of one idea, 
 to be no longer rent, torn, and distracted, as I am 
 now. 
 
 And whence shall this oneness come ? where shall 
 we find, amid all the chances and changes of the 
 world, this law of our life, this centre of our being, 
 this key-note to which setting our lives, their seeming 
 discords shall reveal themselves as their deepest har- 
 monies ? Only in God, only in the Son of God — only 
 in the faith that what Scripture makes the end and 
 purpose of God's dealing with our race, is also the 
 end and purpose of his dealing with each one of us, 
 namely, that his Son may be manifested in us — that 
 we, with all things which are in heaven and all things 
 which are in earth, may be gathered together in 
 Christ, even in Him. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Matthew XIV. 20. 
 
 Thei/ did all eat^ and were filled. 
 
 It was the aim of my preceding Lecture to trace the 
 unity which reigns in Scripture, that it has a law to 
 which each part of it may be referred, a root out of 
 which it all grows. It will be my purpose in the pre- 
 sent to bring out before you how this Book, which is 
 one, is also manifold ; a fact which we may not be so 
 ready to recognize the instant that it is presented to 
 us, as the other. For the truth which occupied us 
 last Sunday, of the Bible as one Book, not merely one 
 because bound together in the covers of a single volume, 
 but as being truly one, while it testifies in every part 
 of one and the same Lord, while it is everywhere the 
 utterance of one Spirit ; this, whether consciously or 
 unconsciously, has strong possession of men's minds 
 in this our land. We feel, and rightly, that every at- 
 tempt to consider any of its parts in absolute isolation 
 from the other, rent away from the connexion in which 
 it stands, is false, and can lead to no profitable result ; 
 and it is hardly possible to estimate too highly the 
 blessing of this, that the band which binds for us the 
 parts of this volume together is unbroken even in 
 thought ; that we still feel ourselves to have, not a 
 number of sacred books, but one sacred Book, which 
 not merely for convenience sake, but out of a far 
 deeper feeling, we comprehend under one name. 
 
38 LECTURE III. [1845. 
 
 Yet, on the other hand, there are other truths 
 which, if we mean to enter into full possession of our 
 treasures, we need also to make thoroughly our own. 
 This idea of the oneness of Holy Scripture is incom- 
 plete and imperfect, till it pass into the higher idea of 
 its unity ; till we acknowledge that it is not sameness 
 which reigns there ; that, besides being one, it is also 
 many ; that as in the human body we, having many 
 members, are one body, and the perfection of the 
 body is not the repetition of the same member oa er 
 and over again, but the harmonious tempering of dif- 
 ferent members, all being instinct with one life — not 
 otherwise is it with Scripture. For in that, whether 
 we look at the Old or New Testament, the same rich- 
 ness and variety of form reveal themselves, so that it 
 may truly be said, that out of the ground of this 
 Paradise, the Lord God has made " to grow every 
 tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food ; "' 
 all that the earth has fairest appearing here in fairer 
 and more perfect form — the fable, only here trans- 
 formed into the parable — the ode transfigured into 
 the psalm — oracles into prophecies — histories of the 
 world into histories of the kingdom of heaven. Nor 
 is tragedy wanting, though for Qildipus, we have the 
 man of Uz ; nor epos, though for "the tale of Troy 
 divine," ours is the story of the New Jerusalem, "com- 
 ing down out of heaven as a bride adorned for her 
 husband." And it will be my desire to shew how this 
 also was needful, if it was to be the Book which should 
 indeed leaven the world, which should offer nutriment, 
 not merely for some men, but for all men ; which 
 should not tyrannically lop men till they were all of 
 one length, but should encourage in every man the 
 
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 39 
 
 free development of all which God had given him. 
 Thus it must needs have been, if the Spirit by this 
 Word was to sanctify all in every man which was 
 capable of being sanctified ; which, coming originally 
 from God, could be redeemed from the defilements of 
 this world, and in purer shape be again restored unto 
 Him. 
 
 It will be my task then to consider to-day the 
 relations of likeness and difference in which various 
 parts of Scripture stand to one another ; to shew how 
 the differences are not accidental, but do plainly cor- 
 respond to certain fixed differences in the mental and 
 moral constitutions of men ; how there is evidently a 
 gracious purpose of attracting all men by the attrac- 
 tions which shall be most potent upon them ; of spread- 
 ing a table at which all may sit down and find that 
 wherein their soul delights, till those words of our 
 text, ^'They did all eat and were filled," shall not be 
 less true in regard of all the faithful now, — true rather 
 in an higher sense, — than they were in regard of those 
 comparatively few, whom the Lord nourished with 
 that bread of wonder in the wilderness. And truly 
 this Book, in the plainness and simplicity of many, 
 and those most important, parts of it, might be likened 
 well to the five barley-loaves of the Lord's miracle. 
 Seeing them about to be set before the great spiritual 
 hunger of the world, seeing the multitudes waiting to 
 be fed, even disciples might have been tempted to 
 exclaim, " What are they among so many?" But the 
 great Giver of the feast confidently replies, "Make 
 the men sit down;" and they have sat down — wise men 
 and simple, philosophers and peasants, "besides women 
 and children," — and there has been enough and to 
 
40 LECTURE III. [1845. 
 
 spare ; all have been nourished, all have been quick- 
 ened ; none have been sent empty away. 
 
 And first, let us take those books which must ever 
 be regarded as the central books, relating as they do 
 to the central fact, to the life of our blessed Lord, and 
 which will afford the fullest illustration of my mean- 
 ing. It is a fact which would at once excite every 
 man's most thoughtful attention, were it not that 
 familiarity had blunted us to its significance, that we 
 should have, not one history only, but four parallel 
 histories, of the life of Christ — a fact which indeed 
 finds a slight anticipation in the parallel records which 
 the Old Testament has preserved of some portions of 
 Jewish history. None will call this an accident, or 
 count that the Providence which watches over the fall 
 of a sparrow, or any slightest incident of the world, 
 was not itself the bringer about of a circumstance 
 which should have so mighty an influence on all the 
 future unfolding of the Church. It is part, no doubt, 
 of this spreading of a table for the spiritual needs of 
 all, that we have thus not one Gospel, but four ; which 
 yet in their higher unity, may be styled, according to 
 that word of Origen's, rather a four-sided Gospel* 
 than four Gospels, even as out of the same instinctive 
 sense of its unity, the whole Instrument, which con- 
 tained the four, Avas entitled Evangelium in the early 
 Church. 
 
 And if we follow this more closely up, we can 
 trace, I think, a peculiar vocation in each of the Evan- 
 gelists for catching some distinct rays of the glory of 
 
 » EuayyeXtoK TCTpdywvov. Thus too AugTistine {l7i Ev. Joh., Tract. 
 26) : Quatuor Evangelia, vel potiiis quatiior libri imiiis Evangelii. 
 
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 41 
 
 Christ, Avhich the others would not catch, and for re- 
 flecting them to the world — so that the terms, Gospel 
 according to St. Matthew, according to St. IMark, and 
 so on, are singularly happy, and imply much more 
 than we, for whom the words are little more than a 
 technical designation of the different gospels, are wont 
 to find in them. The first is the Gospel according to 
 St. Matthew — the Gospel as it appeared to him. This 
 which he has pourtrayed is his Christ : under this 
 aspect the Deliverer of men appeared to him, and in 
 this he has presented Him to the world ; and so also 
 with the others. For Christ, ever one and the same, 
 does yet appear with different sides of his glory re- 
 flected by the different Evangelists. They were them- 
 selves men of various temperaments ; they had each 
 the special needs of some different classes of men in 
 their eye when they wrote their Gospels ; and as these 
 classes, though under altered names, still subsist, they 
 have in this respect also, as ministering to these various 
 needs, an everlasting value. 
 
 Thus the first Gospel, that of St. Matthew, was 
 evidently a Gospel designed for the pious Israelite, 
 for him who was waiting the theocratic King, the Son 
 of Abraham, the Son of David ; who desired to find 
 in the New Testament the fulfilment of the prophecies 
 of the Old, and in Christianity the perfect flower, of 
 which Judaism was the root and stem. And as among 
 the Epistles that of St. James, so among the Gospels, 
 this of St. Matthew was to serve as the gentle and 
 almost imperceptible transition for so many as clung 
 to the forms of Old Testament piety ; and desired to 
 hold fast the historic connexion of all God's dealings 
 from the first. 
 
42 LECTURE III. [1845. 
 
 But the second Gospel, written, as all Church tra- 
 dition testifies, under the influence of St. Peter and 
 at Eome, bear;? marks of an evident fitness for the 
 practical Homan world — for the men who, while others 
 talked, had done ; and who would not at first crave 
 to hear what Christ had spoken, but Avhat He had 
 wrought. It is eminently the Gospel of action. It 
 is brief; it records comparatively few of our Lord's 
 sayings, almost none of his longer discourses; it occu- 
 pies itself mainly with his works, with the mighty 
 power of his ministry, into which ministry it rushes 
 almost without a preparatory note. Some deeper 
 things it has not, but presents a soul-stirring picture 
 of the conquering might and energy of Christ and of 
 his Word. 
 
 But the third Gospel, that of St. Luke, composed 
 by the trusted companion of St. Paul, and itself the 
 correlative of his Epistles, while it sets forth one and 
 the same Christ as the two which went before, yet in 
 some respects sets Him forth in another light. Not 
 so much, with St. Matthew, '' Jesus Christ, a minister 
 of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm 
 the promises made unto the fathers" — not so much, 
 with St. Mark, Jesus Christ " the Lion of the tribe of 
 Judah," rushing as with lion-springs from victory to 
 victory ; but Jesus Christ, the Saviour of all men, is 
 the object of his portraiture. This is what he loves 
 to dwell on, — the manner in which not Israel alone, 
 but the whole heathen world, was destined to glorify 
 God for his mercy in Christ Jesus ; he describes Him 
 as the loving physician, the gracious healer of all, the 
 good Samaritan that bound up the wounds of every 
 stricken heart ; in whom all the small and despised 
 
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 43 
 
 and crushed and down-trodden of the earth should 
 find a gracious and ready helper. Therefore, and in 
 accordance with this his plan, has he gathered up for 
 us much which no other has done ; he sets the seventy 
 disciples for the w^orld over against St. Matthew's 
 twelve Apostles for Israel ; he breaks through narrow 
 national distinctions — tells of that Samaritan, that 
 alone shewed kindness — of that other, who, of ten, 
 alone remembered to be thankful ; and his too, and 
 his only the parable of the Prodigal Son, itself a 
 gospel within the Gospel. 
 
 But to hasten on from these characteristics of the 
 earlier three, which might well detain us much longer, 
 something was yet wanting ; — a Gospel in which the 
 higher speculative tendencies, which Avere given to 
 men not to be crushed or crippled, should find their 
 adequate satisfaction — a Gospel which should link 
 itself on with whatever had occupied the philosophic 
 mind of heathen or of Jew — the correction of all which 
 in this was false — the complement of all which was 
 deficient. And such he gave us, for whom the Church 
 has ever found the soaring eagle as the fittest em- 
 blem'"' — he who begins Avith declaring that the Word 
 of God, whereof men had already learned to speak so 
 much, was also the Son of God, and had been made 
 flesh, and had dwelt among us full of grace and truth 
 — -who, too, has brought out the inner, and, so to 
 
 * Thus the Christian poet 
 
 Ccelum transit, veri rotam 
 Soils ibi vidit, totam 
 Mentis figens aciem : . 
 Speculator spiritalis 
 Quasi Seraphim sub alls 
 Dei videt faciem. 
 
 Volat avis sine meta 
 
 Quo nee vates, nee propheta 
 
 Evolavit altius : 
 
 Tarn implenda quam impleta 
 
 Nunquam vidit tot secreta 
 
 Purus homo purius. 
 
44' LECTURE III. [1845. 
 
 speak, the mystical relations of the faithful with their 
 Lord, as none other before him had done'". 
 
 It is true that this fulness under which the life of 
 our Lord has been set forth to us, being, as it is, one 
 of the gracious designs of God for our good, has been 
 laid hold of by adversaries of the Faith, who would 
 fain wrest it to their ends. Taking the difference, 
 where it is the most striking, they have bidden us to 
 note how unlike the Christ of the first three Gospels 
 and of the fourth ; and what a different colouring is 
 spread over this Gospel and over those ; and they 
 would draw their conclusion, that either here or there 
 historic accuracy must be wanting, that both portraits 
 cannot be faithful. We allow the charge, so far as 
 the difference, and only reject it when it assumes a 
 diversiti/, of setting forth. There are features of our 
 Lord which we should have missed but for his por- 
 traiture who lay upon the Lord's bosom ; deep words 
 which he has caught up, for which no other words 
 that any other has recorded would have been ade- 
 quate substitutes. But what then ? This is not a 
 weak point with us, but a strong. We rejoice and 
 glory in this, rather than seek to gloss it over or con- 
 ceal it. So far from being first detected by an hostile 
 criticism, an early Father of the Church had expressed 
 this very distinction in words which in sound perhaps 
 are almost overbold, styling the first three Gospels, 
 €vayyeXiu aM/uLariKci, and the fourth an evayyeXiov 
 TTvevfxaTLKov. Yet it is needless to observe, that herein 
 
 • See Origen's interesting discussion {Comm. in. Joan., Tom. i.) 
 on the relation of the Gospels to the other Scriptures, and their relation 
 within themselves, one to another. On this latter subject he expresses 
 
 himself thus : To\/>i»/tc'oi/ to'lvw cl-Trelv d-TTupxvi^ Mfct' TratTMV ypacliwv eii/ai 
 TO. euayyeXia, twi/ ne evayyeXiMv dirapxnv to kutci '\wdvvr\v. 
 
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 45 
 
 he meant not to cast the faintest slight on those by com- 
 parison with this, but would only imply that those set 
 forth more the outer, and this the inner, life of Christ. 
 And for the fact itself, do we not find analogies 
 to it, however weak ones they may be, in lower 
 regions of the spiritual life ? To take an example 
 which must be familiar to every scholar, — how dif- 
 ferent the Socrates of Xenophon, and the Socrates 
 of Plato. Yet shall we therefore leap to the con- 
 clusion, that if the one has painted the master truly, 
 then the other has pourtrayed him falsely? Such 
 a conclusion may lie upon the surface ; it might ap- 
 pear to us an easy solution of the difficulty ; yet were 
 it a very different solution from that to which all the 
 profoundest enquirers into the matter have arrived. 
 Were it not wiser to suppose with them, that each of 
 the great scholars of the Sage appropriated and carried 
 away, as from a rich and varied treasure-house, that 
 which he prized the most, that which was most akin 
 to himself and his own genius, that which by the 
 natural process of assimilation he had made most truly 
 and entirely his own ; — the practical soldier, the man 
 of strong common sense, appropriating and carrying 
 away his world-wisdom, his popular philosophy ; the 
 more meditative disciple taking as his portion the 
 deeper speculations of their common master concern- 
 ing the Good and the True ? And if thus it prove 
 with eminent servants of the Truth — if they are so 
 rich and manifold that they present themselves under 
 divers aspects to divers men, it being appointed them 
 in their lower sphere to feed many, — if, like some rich 
 composite Corinthian metal, they yield iron for this 
 man's spade, and gold for the other's crown, how much 
 
46 LECTURE III. [1845. 
 
 more was this to be looked for from Him, who was the 
 King- of Truth, who was to feed and enrich not some, 
 but all ; and this, not in some small and scanty mea- 
 sure, but who was to satisfy all in all ages with good- 
 ness and truth ? How inevitable was it that He, the 
 Sun of the spiritual heaven, should find no single mirror 
 large enough to take in all his beams — should only be 
 adequately presented to the world, when many from 
 many sides did, under the direct teaching of God's 
 Spirit, undertake to set him forth. 
 
 Doubtless the pregnant symbol of the early Church, 
 according to which the four Gospels found their type 
 and proi^hecy in the four rivers of Paradise, that toge- 
 ther watered the whole earth, going each a different 
 way, and yet issuing all from a single head ; — a sym- 
 bol, which w^e find evermore repeated in the works of 
 early Christian art, wherein, from a single cross-sur- 
 mounted hill, four streams are seen welling out ; — this 
 symbol was so great and general a favourite, because 
 it did embody under a beautiful image, this fact, 
 namely, how the Gospels were indeed four, and yet 
 in their higher unity but one'"". And so not less, when 
 the Evangelists were found, as they often were, in the 
 
 * Allusions to it are frequent in the early hymnologists. Thus, 
 one of them in an hymn, De SS. Evangelistis : 
 
 Paradisus his rigatur, Ilorum rivo ebretatis 
 
 Viret, floret, fa?cundatur, Sitis crescat caritatis, 
 
 His abundat, his latatur Ut de fonte Deitatis 
 
 Quatuor fluminibus. Satiemur plenius. 
 
 Fons est Cliristus, hi sunt rivi, j Horum trahat nos doctrina 
 
 Fons est altus, hi proclivi, 
 Ut saporem fontis vivi 
 JMinistrent fidelibus. 
 
 Vitiorum de sentina, 
 Sicque ducat ad divina 
 Ab imo superius. 
 
 Another too in an hymn, De S. Joanne EvangeUstd : 
 
 Inter illos primitivos 
 Veros veri fontis rivos 
 Joannes exiliit, 
 
 Toti mundo propinare 
 Nectar illud salutare 
 Quod de throno prodiit. 
 
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 47 
 
 four living creatures of EzekieFs vision, of whom each 
 with a different countenance looked a different way, 
 and yet all of them together upheld the throne and 
 chariot of God, and ever moved as being informed by 
 one and the selfsame Spirit ; this too was something 
 more and better than a mere fanciful playing with 
 Scripture ; there was a deep truth lying at the root of 
 this application, and abundantly justifying its use*. 
 
 And as we have a Gospel which stands thus four- 
 square, with a side facing each side of the spiritual 
 
 * The first that we know of who connected these with the four 
 Evangelists was Irenaeus. He says {Con. Hcer., 1. 8, c. 2 § 8,) 
 
 TsTpd/jLopcpa yap to. ^toa, TerpdfJiOpcpov koL to eiiayyiXiov^ and drawS OUt 
 
 at length the fitness of each to represent each ; on which see Suicer's 
 Thes., s. V. euayyeXio-Tjj'?. It was taken up by many after him; thus 
 by Jerome, Comm. in Ezek. c. i.; Prol. in Comm. super Matth. ; and 
 Ep. 50 : Matthaeus, Marcus, Lucas, et Johannes, quadriga Domini, et 
 verum Cherubim, per totum corpus oculati sunt, scintillae emicant, 
 discurrunt fulgura, pedes habent rectos et in sublime tendentes, terga 
 pennata et ubique volitantia. Tenent se mutuo, sibique perplex! 
 sunt, et quasi rota in rota volvuntur, et pergunt quoquumque eos 
 flatus Sancti Spiritus perduxerit. Cf. Augustine, De Cons. Evang. 
 1. 1., c. 6 ; and the Christian poet sings thus : 
 
 Circa thronum majestatis Formse formant figurarum 
 
 Cum spiritibus beatis Formas Evangelistarum, 
 
 Quatuor diversitatis Quorum imber doctrinarum 
 
 Astant animalia. ' Stillat in Ecclesia. 
 
 Formam primum aquilinam, Hi sunt Marcus, et Matthaus, 
 
 Et secundum leoninam ; Lucas, et quem Zebedasus 
 
 Sad humanam et bovinam Pater misit tibi, Deus, 
 
 Duo gerunt alia. j Dum laxaret retia. 
 
 And another: 
 
 Curam agens sui gregis 
 Pastor bonvis, auctor legis 
 Quatuor instituit : 
 Quadri orbis ad medelam, 
 Formam juris et cautelam 
 Per quos scribi volu^t. 
 
 Circa tbema generale 
 Habet quisque speciale 
 Sibi privilegium ; 
 
 Quos designat in propheta 
 Forma pictus sub discreta 
 Vultus animalium. 
 
 His quadrigis deportatur 
 Mundo Deus, sublimatur 
 Istis area vectibus : 
 Paradisi ha-c fluenta 
 Nova fluunt sacramenta, 
 Quae irrorant gentibus. 
 
48 LECTURE III. [1845. 
 
 Avorld, so have we a two-fold development of the more 
 dogmatic element of the New Testament. For like 
 as the seed, one in itself, yet falls into two halves in 
 the process of its fructifying, or as the one force of 
 the magnet manifests itself at two opposing poles, 
 exactly according to the same law, re-appearing in the 
 spiritual world, we have two developments of the same 
 Christian theology, which make themselves felt from 
 the very first, whereof St. Paul may be taken as chief 
 representative of the one, and St. John of the other. 
 We cannot do more than trace the distinction in some 
 of its broadest features. We see then St. Paul making 
 man the starting point of his theology. The divine 
 image in man, that image lost, the impossibility of its 
 restoration by any powers of his own ; the ever deeper 
 errors of the sin-darkened intellect ; the ever vainer 
 struggles of the sin-enslaved will ; — it is from this 
 human side of the truth that he starts ; these are the 
 grounds which he first lays, — as eminently in his 
 great dogmatic Epistle to the Romans. And only 
 when he has brought out this confession of a fall, of 
 an infinite short-coming from the true ideal of huma- 
 nity, and from the glory of God, only when the cry, 
 " Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?" 
 has been wrung out from the bond-slaves of evil, does 
 he bring in the mighty Eedeemer, and the hymn of 
 praise, the " I thank God through Jesus Christ" of 
 the redeemed. But St. John, upon the other hand, 
 starts from the opposite point, from the theology in 
 the more restricted sense of the word ; in this justify- 
 ing the title o 060X0709, which he bears. His centre 
 and starting-point is the Divine Love, and out of that 
 he unfolds all ; not delineating, as his brother Apostle, 
 
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 49^ 
 
 any mighty birth-pangs, in which the new creature is 
 born ; since rather in that passing from death unto 
 life, and in that abiding in the Father and in the Son 
 which follows therefrom, the discovery of sin does not 
 run long before, but rather goes hand in hand with, 
 the discovery of the grace of God for forgiving, and 
 the power of God for overcoming, that sin which by 
 the Spirit of Christ is gradually revealed. Thus we 
 have man delivered in St. Paul, God delivering in 
 St. John ; man rising in the one, God stooping in 
 the other ; and thus each travels over an hemisphere 
 in the great orb of Christian Truth, and they, not 
 each singly, but between them, embrace and encircle 
 it all. 
 
 For this is part of the glory of Christ as compared 
 with his servants, as compared with the chiefest of his 
 servants, that He alone stands at the absolute centre 
 of humanity, the one completely harmonious man, un- 
 folding all which was in that humanity equally upon all 
 sides, fullt/ upon all sides — the only one in whom the 
 real and ideal met, and were absolutely at one. Every 
 other man has idiosyncrasies, characteristics — some 
 features, that is, of his character marked more strongly 
 than others, fitnesses for one task rather than for an- 
 other, more genial powers in one direction than in 
 others. Nor even are the greatest, a St. Paul or a 
 St. John, exempted from this law ; but, according to 
 this law, are made to serve for the kingdom of God ; 
 and the regeneration, even that mighty transformation 
 itself, does not dissolve these characteristics, but 
 rather hallows arid glorifies them, using them for the 
 work of God. And thus, in the power of these special 
 gifts, that which lay as a fruitful germ in the doctrine, 
 
 T. H. L. 4 
 
50 LECTURE III. [1845. 
 
 or, more truly, in the facts of our Lord's life, was by 
 his two Apostles developed upon this side and upon 
 that. 
 
 And as it was meant that the Gospel of Christ 
 should embrace all lands, should fix, at its first en- 
 trance into the world, a firm foot upon either of its 
 two great cultivated portions, so in these two, in 
 St. Paul and in St. John, we recognize wondrous 
 preparations in the providence of God for the winning 
 to the obedience of the cross both the western and 
 the eastern world. Who can fail to see in the great 
 Apostle of Tarsus, in his discursive intellect, in his 
 keen dialectics, in his philosophic training, the man 
 armed to dispute with Stoic and Epicurean at Athens; 
 who should teach the Church how she should take the 
 West for her inheritance ? — nor less was he the man 
 who, by the past struggles of his inner life and the 
 consequent fulness and power with which he brought 
 out the scheme of our justification, should become 
 the spiritual forefather of the Augustines and Luthers, 
 of all them who have brought out for us, with the 
 sense of personal guilt, the sense also of personal 
 deliverance, the consciousness of a personal standing 
 of each one of us before God. And in St. John, the 
 full significance of whose writings for the Church is 
 probably yet to be revealed, and, it may be, will not 
 appear till the coming in of the nations of the east 
 into the fold, we have the progenitor of every mystic, 
 in the nobler sense of that word — of every contem- 
 plative spirit that has delighted to sink and to lose 
 itself, and the sense of its own littleness, in the bright- 
 ness and in the glory of God. Shall we not thank 
 God, shall we not recognize as part of his loving 
 
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 51 
 
 wisdom, that thus none are left out ; that while there 
 are evidently among men two leading types of mind, 
 he has made provision for them both — for the dis- 
 cursive and the intuitive, — for the schoolman and the 
 mystic, — for them who trust through knowing to see, 
 and for them also who believe that only through 
 seeing they can know ; — that, whatever in their intel- 
 lectual condition men may be, the net is laid out to 
 catch them ? For then, when once they are taken, 
 all that might have been in them of overbalance in 
 one direction, all of faulty excess, is gradually done 
 away, and redressed, till they and those that have 
 been brought in by an opposite method, are more 
 and more led to a mutual recognition and honouring 
 of the gifts each of the other, and to the unity of a 
 perfect man in Christ Jesus. 
 
 Nor is it only that there is different nourishment 
 for different souls, but the same nourishment is also 
 so curiously mixed and tempered, that it is felt to be 
 for all. As, perhaps, the most signal example of this, 
 let us only seek to realize to ourselves what the Book 
 of Psalms, itself, according to that beautiful expres- 
 sion of Luther's, ' a Bible in little,' has been, and for 
 whom — how men of all conditions, all habits of thought, 
 have here met, vying with one another in expres- 
 sions of affection and gratitude to this book, in telling 
 what they owed to it, and what it had proved to 
 them. Men seemingly the most unlikely to express 
 enthusiasm about any such matter — lav*yers and 
 statists immersed deeply in this world's business, clas- 
 sical scholars familiar with other models of beauty, 
 other standards of art — these have been forward as 
 the forwardest to set their seal to this book, have 
 
 4—2 
 
52 LECTURE III. 
 
 left their confession that it was the voice of their 
 inmost heart, that the spirit of it past into their 
 spirits as did the spirit of no other book, that it 
 found them more often and at greater depths of their 
 being, lifted them to higher heights than did any 
 other — or, as one greatly-suffering man, telling of the 
 solace which he found from this book of Psalms in 
 the hours of a long imprisonment, has expressed it, — 
 that it bore him up, as a lark perched between an 
 eagle's wings is borne up into the everlasting sunlight, 
 till he saw the world and all its trouble for ever 
 underneath him. I can imagine no fairer volume 
 than one of such thankful acknowledgements as I 
 have described, and it is a volume which might easily 
 be gathered, for such on all sides abound ; not a few 
 of them as large, as free, as rapturous as that of our 
 own Hooker, which must be present to the minds of 
 many of us here. Nor is it wonderful that there 
 should be such ; for, to quote but one noble utter- 
 ance* in relation of this book, " the conflict of naked 
 power with righteousness, of the visible with the invi- 
 sible, of confusion with order, of the devilish with the 
 divine, of death with life, this is its subject. And 
 because this is the subject of all human anxieties, 
 this book has been that in Avhich livino; and sufferina' 
 men in all ages have found a language, which they 
 have felt to be a mysterious anticipation of, and pro- 
 vision for, their own especial wants, and in which 
 they have gradually understood that the Divine voice 
 is never so truly and distinctly heard, as when it 
 
 * Maurice's Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy in the Encyclop. 
 Metropolitana, 
 
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 53 
 
 speaks through human experience and sympa- 
 thies-"/' 
 
 * The reader may be well pleased to see a few more of these 
 brought at a single glance under his eye. St. Basil may fitly lead. 
 In a passage Horn. I. in Psalmos^ quoted at much greater length 
 
 in Suicer S Thes. S. v. ^aA/xos, ^aA^ds Baiimovcov c^vyaoevTt'ipLov' t;"/? Ttov 
 dyye\u}L> ^orjQeia^ eTraycoyi] ' ottXov ev (j)6^oi^ vvKTe/jLvoT?, dvdiravaL^ kottcov 
 ■qixepivuiv' vi]'rrioL's d(y(pd\eLa' dK/xaX^ovcnv eyKnWwTrKriuia' Trpea^vrepoL^ iraprj- 
 yopia' yvvai^l Koafxos dpfxaoicoTaTO^' Tas €pi]p.ia<s oiKt^et ' Ta^dyopd^ aaxppu- 
 vi^€L ' ei cr ay op.4 VOL'S dToi'^^eiwaL^, irpoKO-nTov^uiv au^^jcri?. TeXeiovjULevatv aTij- 
 piyfxa, eKK\i]crla<s <p(x)V}j . oOto9 Tas eo/jTos (paiopuveL, outos t-jji/ Kwrd Qeov 
 XvTr7]u 07]pioupyeT. ^aX/xos yap Kal e/c XiOtvij's Kapoia^ BdKpvov eKKaXel-raL. 
 "^aXjuid^ TO Twv dyyeXcov epyou, to ovpdviov TroXlTevfJia, to TrvevpLaTLKov Ov/uli- 
 
 afxa, K. T, X. St. Ambrose, as it was often his manner to reproduce what 
 he found in the Greek Fathers to his purpose, would seem to have had 
 this passage of his great eastern contemporary in his mind when 
 he composed his not less beautiful laud of the Psalms, Enarr. in Ps. i. 
 Here too it is but a fragment which can be quoted : Historia instruit, 
 Lex docet, prophetia annunciat, correptio castigat, moralitas suadet : 
 in libro Psalmorum profectus est omnium, et medicina quaedam salutis 
 humanse. Quicunque legerit, habet quo propriae vulnera passionis 
 speciali possit curare remedio... Quantum laboratur in Ecclesia ut fiat 
 silentium, cum lectiones leguntur ! Si unus loquatur, obstrepunt uni- 
 versi: cum psalmus legitur, ipse sibi est effector silentii. Omnes 
 loquuntur, et nuUus obstrepit. Psalmum reges sine potestatis super- 
 cilio resultant. In hoc se ministerio David gaudebat videri. Psalmus 
 cantatur ab imperatoribus, jubilatur a populis. Certant clama,re sin- 
 guli quod omnibus proficit. Domi psalmus canitur, foris recensetur. 
 Sine labore percipitur, cum voluptate servatur :* psalmus dissidentes 
 copulat, discordes sociat, oflFensos reconciliat...Certat in Psalmo doc- 
 trina cum gratia simul. Cantatur ad delectationem, discitur ad erudi- 
 tionem. Nam violentiora praecepta non permanent : quod autem cum 
 suavitate perceperis, id infusum semel praecordiis, non consuevit elabi. 
 And Augustine {Confess., 1. 9, c. 4,) speaks of the manner in which he 
 exulted in the Psalms at the time of his first conversion : Quas tibi, 
 Deus meus, voces dedi cum legerem psalmos David... et quomodo in te 
 inflammabar ex eis, et accendebar eos recitare si possem toto orbe 
 terrarum adversum typhum humani generis... Quam vehementi et 
 acri dolore indignabar Manichaeis, et miserabar eos rursus, quod ilia 
 sacramenta, ilia medicamenta nescirent, et insani essent adversus 
 antidotum quo sani eSse potuissent. 
 
 Jeremy Taylor in his Preface to the Psalter of David, speaking of 
 the manner in which, by the troubles of the civil wars, he was de- 
 prived of his books and his retirements, and how in his deprivation he 
 
 found 
 
54 LECTURE III. 
 
 Indeed, in the fact of such a book as the Psalter 
 forming part of our sacred Instrument, we trace a 
 most gracious purpose of God. For in the very idea 
 of a Revelation is implied rather a speaking of God 
 to men than of men to God : and such a speaking 
 from heaven predominantly finds place in all other 
 books of Holy Scripture. Yet how greatly had we 
 been losers, had there been no corresponding record 
 of the answering voices that go up from earth unto 
 heaven. How earnestly should we have craved a 
 standard by which to try the feelings, the utterances 
 of our si^irits, — a rule whereby to know whether they 
 were healthy and true, the same voices, the same 
 
 found comfort here, thus goes on : " Indeed, when I came to look upon 
 the Psalter with a nearer observation, and an eye diligent to espy any 
 advantages and remedies there deposited... I found so many admirable 
 promises, so rare variety of the expressions of the mercies of God, 
 so many consolatory hymns, the commemoration of so many deliver- 
 ances from dangers and deaths and enemies, so many miracles of 
 mercy and salvation, that I began to be so confident as to believe there 
 could come no affliction great enough to spend so great a stock of 
 comfort as was laid up in the treasure of the Psalter ; the saying of 
 St. Paul was here verified, ' If sin ' and misery ' did abound, then did 
 grace superabound / and as we believe of the passion of Christ, it was 
 so great as to be able to satisfy for a thousand worlds ; so is it of the 
 comforts of David's Psalms, they are more than sufficient to repair 
 all the breaches of mankind." And Donne, {Sermon GO), taking his 
 text from Ps. Ixiii. 7, proceeds : " The Psalms are the manna of the 
 Church. As manna tasted to every man like that that he liked best, 
 so do the Psalms minister instruction and satisfaction to every man in 
 every emergency and occasion. David was not only a clear prophet 
 of Christ himself, but a prophet of every particular Cliristian; he 
 foretells what I, what any, sliall do and suffer and say. And as the 
 whole book of Psalms is oleum effusiim, an ointment poured out upon 
 all sorts of sores, a searcloth that supples all bruises, a balm that 
 searches all wounds, so are there some certain psalms that are imperial 
 psalms, that command over all affections, and spread themselves over 
 all occasions; catholic universal psalms, that apply themselves to all 
 necessities." 
 
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 55 
 
 cries, as those of each other regenerate man. Such 
 a rule, such a standard we have here ; man is speak- 
 ing unto God; that which came from heaven is return- 
 ing to heaven once more. Here we have insight into 
 the mystery of prayer ; streams of life are rising up as 
 high as the heights from which first they came down ; 
 the mountain-tops of man's spirit are smoking, but 
 smoking because God has descended upon and touched 
 them. 
 
 These are but a few examples, brethren, — time 
 will allow us to adduce no more, — of that which all 
 Scripture will abundantly supply, — the evidences, 
 namely, of its own adaptation for the needs of all, 
 for all the needs of each. And these things being so, 
 let us for ourselves gladly enter into this many- 
 chambered palace of the Truth, whereof the doors 
 stand open to us evermore. Let us thankfully sit 
 down at this feast of many spiritual dainties, which is 
 spread for us and for all. And if not every one of 
 them at once delights us ; if of some we have rather 
 to take the word of others that they are good than 
 as yet proved it so ourselves, let us believe that the 
 cause of this lies rather in the sickness of our palate, 
 than in the faulty preparation of that which the'great 
 Master of the feast has set before us ; — and let us 
 ask, not that these be removed, but that our true 
 taste be restored; and this the more, seeing that 
 unnumbered guests, who in time past have sat down, 
 or are now sitting down, at this heavenly banquet, 
 have borne witness that these meats which may be 
 dull and tasteless to us, were life and strength to 
 them, " yea, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb." 
 We are sick, and these are medicines no less than 
 
56 LECTURE III. [1845 
 
 food ; and for us that word must stand fast, Non cor- 
 7'igat ceger niedicanienta sua. Let us thus bear ourselves 
 towards Holy Scripture, and then presently, in that 
 which seemed a stranger face we shall recognize the 
 countenance of a gracious, a familiar friend. We shall 
 more and more see how this Scripture was laid out by 
 One Avho knew what was in man, One who desired also 
 to unfold us on all sides of our moral and spiritual 
 being ; who, too, in the largeness of his love Avould 
 send none empty away ; but who does herein open his 
 hand, that He may fill all things living with plenteous- 
 ness. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE ADV.ANCE OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 Hebrews I. 1, 2. 
 
 God^ tvho at sundry times and in divers manners spake in 
 tiine past unto the fathers hy the prophets^ hath in these 
 last days spoTzen unto us hy his Son. 
 
 We have seen how in Holy Scripture one idea is 
 dominant, the idea of a lost, defaced, and yet not 
 wholly effaced, image of God in man, with God's 
 scheme for its restoration and renewal : we have seen 
 how that, which is one in having this for its subject, 
 and in knowing no other subject, has yet a manifold 
 development, marvellously corresponding to the mani- 
 fold necessities of his nature to whom it is addressed, 
 and who by its help should be renewed. But the 
 progressive unfolding of God's plan in Scripture, may 
 well afford matter for another discourse, and will sup- 
 ply our theme for this day. 
 
 Nor shall I herein be wandering from my argument, 
 since this progressiveness of Scripture is an important 
 element in its fitness for the education of man. For 
 this we claim of a teacher to whom we yield ourselves 
 with an entire confidence, that there be advance and 
 progress in his teaching ; not indeed that this should 
 be at every moment distinctly perceptible, but that it 
 should be so when long periods and courses of his 
 teaching are contemplated together. The advance 
 may sometimes be rather in a spiral than in a straight 
 line, yet still on the whole there must be advance; he 
 
58 LECTURE IV. [1845. 
 
 must not eddy round in ceaseless circles, leaving off 
 where he began, but evidently have a scheme before 
 him, according to which he is seeking to lead on unto 
 perfection those that have committed themselves to 
 his teaching. It is of the essence of a true teacher, 
 be that teacher book or person, thus to carry forward. 
 If it be a book claiming to educate, it must be itself 
 the history of an education, the record of an intensive, 
 as well as extensive, development. We look for this, 
 and we rest our expectation on a j^et deeper feeling. 
 We feel that as each individual man was meant to go 
 on from lower to higher, and in the end to have Christ 
 fully formed in him, so the Church as a living body 
 could not have been intended to be a stationary thing, 
 always conning over the same lessons, but rather ad- 
 vancing in a like manner to perfection ; — not in this 
 advance leaving €jiight behind which God has taught 
 it; but ever carrying with it into its higher state, as 
 part of its realized possession, all which it has gotten 
 in a lower. And if so, that Book which was to be the 
 record and interpreter of these dealings of God, ever 
 running parallel with them, growing with their growth, 
 explaining them as they unfolded themselves, that 
 must bear the stamp and impress of the same pro- 
 gress. 
 
 Does a nearer examination of Holy Scripture bear 
 out this our expectation ? Does it speak of itself as a 
 progressive revelation of the Name of God ? And if 
 so, can Ave discern it to be such, to be the gradual 
 unfolding of the ideas of the kingdom, and of men's 
 relations to it, to be a continual calling out in them 
 the sense of new relations and new faculties and 
 powers ? I think, both. And, first. Revelation sjieaks 
 
THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 59 
 
 of itself in such language. " I have many things to 
 say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now;" surely 
 this was what God had been saying to his elect from 
 the first, till that crowning day of Pentecost, when 
 they were made capable of all mysteries, and had the 
 unction of the Holy One, and knew all things ; — and 
 with much before us, it needs not to tarry with the 
 proofs of this. 
 
 And as regards ourselves, we can trace, I think, 
 the Scripture to be this which it affirms itself to be. 
 Who, for instance, can help feeling that in the three 
 memorable epochs by which it marks the greatest un- 
 unfoldings of the kingdom of God, — I mean, in the 
 calling of Abraham, the giving of the Law by Moses, 
 the Incarnation of the Son of God, — we have the 
 childhood, the youth, the manhood of our race, of that 
 elect portion of it, at least, which God had gathered 
 into a Church and constituted for the while the repre- 
 sentative of all ; and that we have this with marvellous 
 correspondencies of these epochs to similar periods in 
 the lives which we ourselves are living ? 
 
 In Abraham and the Church of the patriarchal we 
 have that which exactly answers to childhood. Their 
 relations to God were as a child's to a father, — the 
 same undoubting, unquestioning affiance ; with as yet 
 no fixed code of law ; the deeper evils of the heart 
 not as yet stirring, the awful consciousness of those 
 evils as yet unawakened. So Abraham and the patri- 
 archs walked before God, in the beauty and the sim- 
 plicity of a childlike faith — love seeming as yet the 
 only law, and no other law being needed, since not 
 yet the whole might of the rebellious will had been 
 aroused, since a sheltering Providence had hitherto 
 
60 LECTURE IV. [1845. 
 
 kept aloof many temptations which should afterwards 
 arrive. 
 
 But a very different stage of man's history begins 
 with Moses. The father is thrown for awhile into the 
 back ground by the lawgiver ; God appears the giver 
 of a " fiery law : " and the race having outgrown its 
 childlike estate, with all the blessed privileges of that 
 time, appears now as the youth, aware of this terrible 
 law, and struggling against it ; and in this struggle 
 brought to a consciousness of that which before was 
 hidden from it, namely, the deep alienation of its will 
 from the perfect will of God. This seems, at first 
 sight, as though it were a retrograde step in man's 
 progress, and regarded apart from the final issues it 
 were ; as the Apostle himself confesses, when he says, 
 " I was alive without the law once, but when the com- 
 mandment came, sin revived, and I died." Yet nor 
 he, nor any, could have done without this coming in 
 of the law. The opposition of his will to God's will 
 being in man, most needful was it that it should not 
 remain latent, but be brought out, yea, brought out 
 in all its strength, as an holy law could alone bring it 
 out ; for thus only was it in the way of being subdued. 
 God having made Himself known as a God of love, 
 most needful was it that men should know Him also 
 the God of an absolute righteousness ; since without 
 this that love itself had shewn in men's eyes as a poor 
 thing, as a weak toleration of their evil, instead of 
 being, as it is, that which more than all else makes 
 Him a consuming fire for all impurity and evil. 
 
 But with the entering of the Son of God into our 
 nature, the manhood of the race begins — that which 
 it was meant in its final perfection to be — that, for 
 
THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 61 
 
 the sake of which it passed through those lower stages. 
 The consciousness of the filial relation has again re- 
 vived in its full strength, and the suspended privileges 
 are restored. "Abba, Father!" is once more on the 
 lips of the Church, only with deeper accents and a 
 fuller sense than at that earlier day of all which in 
 these words is included. The sense of God's love 
 which belonged to its childhood, of God's righteous- 
 ness which i3redoniinated in its youth, are reconciled ; 
 they have met and kissed each other. His love is seen 
 to be righteous, and his righteousness to be loving. His 
 law is no longer struggled against, for it is written in 
 the heart, and it reveals itself as that which to keep is 
 the truest blessedness. 
 
 And hoAv mysteriously, brethren, does this teach- 
 ing of our race, which was thus written large, and 
 acted out upon a great scale in the history of God's 
 chosen people, repeat itself evermore in the smaller 
 world, in the microcosm of elect souls, which are under 
 the same divine education. Is there not many a one 
 who can trace in himself the same process and pro- 
 gress as we have been following here ? First was our 
 childhood, corresponding to Abraham's state — the 
 undeveloped, yet true affiance on an heavenly Father, 
 — when we needed no more than this ; when as yet 
 we had not looked down into the abysmal deeps of 
 evil in our hearts, when Ave too were alive without the 
 law, and dreamt not of the rebel, who was ready, 
 when occasion came, to take arms against his Lord, 
 though that rebel was no other than ourselves. 
 
 But the years went on, with all which they brought, 
 with their good and with their evil : and childhood 
 was left behind ; and to us too the time arrived for 
 
62 LECTURE IV. [1845. 
 
 the giving of the law ; and then ns too God led apart 
 into the wilderness, separated us from every other 
 living soul, made us feel the mystery of our awful 
 personality, and sj^oke to us as He had never spoken 
 before, even face to face, — revealing Himself to us no 
 longer merely as the God of our fathers, but Avith an 
 higher revelation, as the I AM, the Holy One. For 
 us, too, was that terrible giving of the law in the deep 
 of our souls, which he who has known will say boldly, 
 that Sinai with its thunders and lightnings, its black- 
 ness and its darkness, its unendurable voice which he 
 who heard craved that he might hear no more, was 
 not more terrible ; — and sin is no longer a word but a 
 reality, is no longer felt as the transient grieving of a 
 parent's heart, but as the violation of an eternal order, 
 a violation which cannot remain unavenged or unre- 
 drest. But dreadful as this law is, terrible and threat- 
 ening shape as it rises over the soul, does not each 
 man make the same experience as did Israel of old, 
 and find out its helplessness for the true ends of his 
 life ? It can kill the sinner, but it cannot kill the 
 sin : that only shrinks deeper into its hiding-places in 
 the soul, and needs another charmer to lure it out. 
 This is our state of condemnation, which is yet most 
 needful for a right entering into the state of life and 
 freedom : this is the law preparing for, and handing 
 over unto, Christ. 
 
 And as there was the manhood of the race, as the 
 Church which God had been training and disciplining 
 so long, was introduced into the fulness of its inherit- 
 ance, when Christ, who had upheld it always, came 
 visibly into the midst of it ; so is it in like manner 
 when God brings his First-begotten into the inner 
 
THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 6S 
 
 world of any single heart. Then that heart under- 
 stands all the way by which it had been led, and sees 
 how all things have worked for the bringing it into 
 that grace in which now it stands. Then the child's 
 faith returns ; only is it now a mightier faith, a more 
 heroic act of affiance, for it is a faith in God despite of 
 and in full knowledge of our evil, instead of a faith in 
 God in ignorance of our evil. 
 
 Marvellously does He thus run oftentimes the lives 
 of his children parallel with the life of the Church at 
 large, as that life is unfolded in Sacred Writ, bringing 
 each in particular under the same teaching as the 
 whole. Yet this is not all : we have not merely in 
 Scripture God carrying Israel his Son through succes- 
 sive stages, which may serve to explain to us the stages 
 of our own innermost spiritual life ; but we may trace 
 there another sequence, another progress — that by 
 which He is training his people into a sense of ever- 
 widening relationships, and this also making answer to 
 the sequence in which He trains each one in particular 
 of his children into the same, and serving as a pattern 
 thereto. For what are the great fellowships of men, 
 which rest not ujDon man's choice, but upon God's 
 will, which are not self-willed associations into which 
 men gather of themselves, but societies wherein they 
 are set by the act of God ? Each will at once reply, 
 The Family, The State, The Church. And this too is 
 their order ; the Family must go before the State, 
 being itself the corner-stone on which the State is 
 built ; and the State, which is the fellowship of certain 
 men to the exclusion of others, waits to be taken up 
 into the Church, which is the fellowship of all men 
 who believe in the risen Head of their race. 
 
64 LECTURE IV. [1845. 
 
 And this sequence is that maintained in the Bible ; 
 for what is the early history of the Bible, but pre- 
 dominantly the history of the Family ? of the blessing 
 which awaits reverence for the family order, of the 
 sure curse which avenges its violation. On the one 
 side, we have the men who were true to this divine 
 institute; who, amid many weaknesses, recognized and 
 honoured it — the Seths and Enochs before the flood, 
 the Abrahams and Isaacs, the Jacobs and Josephs 
 after. On the other side we have the Lamechs and 
 Tubal Cains, and at a later day, the builders of Babel, 
 the men who thought to associate themselves, to say, 
 A confederacy, where God had not said it, to knit 
 themselves into a body by bands of their own, instead 
 of owning that God had knit them already — skilled 
 masters, as we learn, in the arts of life, starting up, as 
 we are told, into a premature civilization ; yet having 
 in themselves, through violations, which we can plainly 
 trace, of that family order, of the primal institutes of 
 humanity, the seeds of a sure and swift decay; so 
 that presently they are lost to our sight altogether ; 
 Avhile the Patriarchs, the honourers and sanctifiers of 
 these relations, walk before us heads of a nation, of 
 that kingly and priestly nation in which all other 
 nations should be blest. 
 
 But Holy Scripture does not linger here. It 
 passes on, and its middle history is the history of this 
 nation, of national life ; shewing us by liveliest ex- 
 ample, all that can exalt, all that can degrade, a peo- 
 ple : how Israel, so long as it believed in its invisible 
 Lord and King, its righteous Lawgiver, was great and 
 prosperous — how, when it lost that faith and bowed to 
 idols of sense, it became of a surety inwardly distracted, 
 
THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 65 
 
 externally enslaved — forfeiting those very outward 
 gifts for the sake of which it had turned its back upon 
 the Giver — righteousness and truth and justice perish- 
 ing between man and man, while He in whom alone 
 these have any substantial existence was no longer 
 held fast to and believed. 
 
 And then in the New Testament, not the conditions 
 under which the Family can exist, not the conditions 
 under which the State, but the idea of the Church, of 
 that fellowship which, including all, may itself be in- 
 cluded by none, is unfolded to us. There we behold 
 the laws of the universal kingdom, and Christ, not the 
 King of a single nation, but the Head of humanity, 
 the Saviour of all. 
 
 And this order of Sacred Scripture, is also the 
 order of our lives. I mean not that we first become 
 members of a family, and then of a State, and lastly 
 of a Church ; but this is the order in which we become 
 conscious of relations. For what is it that a child 
 first discovers? that it is the member of a family — 
 that it has kindred. What are its earliest duties ? a 
 faithful entering into these relations ; its earliest sins? 
 a refusal to enter into them. And what next ? that 
 there is a wider fellowship than this of home-love 
 and home-affections, to which it belongs ; that there 
 are other men to whom it owes other duties ; that it 
 is the member of a State no less than a family, that it 
 must be just as well as loving. And last of all is per- 
 ceived that there is yet another fellowship at the root 
 of both these fellowships, which gives them their mean- 
 ing, which alone upholds and sustains them against all 
 the sin and selfishness which are continually threaten- 
 ing their dissolution — a fellowship with the Lord of 
 
 T. H. L. 5 
 
66 LECTURE IV. [1845. 
 
 men, and in Him with every man of that race which 
 He has redeemed, of that nature which He has taken. 
 And so the cycle of God's teaching is complete, and 
 that cycle in Avhich the Scripture shews us that He 
 taught the world is found here also again to be the 
 cycle in which He teaches the individual soul. 
 
 But to pass to quite another province of our sub- 
 ject : — we must not leave unobserved the manner in 
 which prophecy bears witness to this progressive un- 
 folding of God's purpose with our race. Often we 
 dishonour prophecy, Avhen the chief value which it has 
 in our eyes is the use to which it may be turned as 
 evidence ; when we regard it as serving no nobler 
 ends, as having no deeper root in the economy of 
 God than in this are presumed ; when it is for us 
 merely a miraculum scientim, which, with the miracles 
 properly so called, the miracula potentice, may do duty 
 in proving against cavillers the divine origin of our 
 Faith ; when all that we can find is that the doers of 
 the works and the utterers of the words did and said 
 what was beyond the reach and scope of common 
 men. But the fact that prophecy should constitute 
 so large an element in Scripture finds its explanation 
 rather in that law which we have been tracing through- 
 out all Scripture — the law, I mean, of an orderly 
 development, according to which there is nothing 
 sudden, nothing abrupt or unprepared in his counsels, 
 all whose works were known to Him from the begin- 
 ning. It is part of this law that there should ever be 
 prefigurations of the coming, that truths so vast and 
 so mighty as those of the New Covenant, so difficult 
 for man's heart to conceive, should have their way 
 
THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 67 
 
 prepared, should, ere they arrive in their highest 
 shape, give pledge and promise of themselves in lower 
 forms and in weaker rudiments. 
 
 Thus was it good that before the appearing of the 
 Son of God in the flesh, there should be, in the lan- 
 guage of Bishop Bull, " preludings of the Incarnation," 
 transient apparitions of Him in a human form, though 
 not in the verity of our human nature. Thus was it 
 ordered that each one of the mighty acts of our 
 Lord's life should not stand wholly apart, and without 
 analogy in any thing which had gone before, but ever 
 find in something earlier its lineaments and its out- 
 lines. Weak and faint these lineaments may have been, 
 weak and faint they must have been, when compared 
 with the glory that excelleth ; yet sketches and out- 
 lines and foreshadowings still of the glory to be re- 
 vealed. Thus, more than one was wonderfully born, 
 with many circumstances of a strange solemnity, with 
 heavenly announcements, with much that went beyond 
 human expectation, ere He was born, by the annun- 
 ciation of an Angel, through the overshadowing of the 
 Holy Ghost, whose name should be called Wonderful, 
 The Mighty God. So we may say that in the shining 
 of Moses' face, as he came down from the mount of 
 God, we have already a weaker Transfiguration, a 
 feeble fore-announcement of that brightness, which, 
 not from without, but breaking forth from within, 
 should clothe with a light which no words could ade- 
 quately utter, not the face only, but the whole person, 
 of the Son of God. So again, in the translation of 
 Elijah the lineaments of his Ascension appear, who, 
 not rapt in a chariot of fire, not needing the cleansing 
 of that fiery baptism, nor requiring that commissioned 
 
 5 — 2 
 
68 LECTURE IV. [1845. 
 
 chariot to bear him up, did in tlie far sublimer cahn- 
 ness of his own indwelling power arise from the earth, 
 and with his human body pass into the heavenly 
 places*. And once more, in the dividing of the Spirit 
 which Moses had, upon the seventy elders of Israel, so 
 that they all did prophesy, we recognize an earlier 
 though a weaker Pentecost ; in which however the 
 later was surely implied : for if from the servant could 
 be imparted of his spirit, how much more and in what 
 larger measure from the Son ? All these should be 
 contemplated as preparatory workings in a lower sphere 
 of the same Spirit, which afterwards wrought more 
 gloriously in the later and crowning acts ; as knit to 
 those later by an inner law, as sharers of the same 
 organic life with them. 
 
 The rending away of isolated passages, and then 
 saying. This Psalm, or That chapter of Isaiah, is pro- 
 phetic and has to do with Christ and his kingdom, — 
 and this mthout explaining how it comes that these 
 have to do, and those nearest them have not, can 
 never truly satisfy ; men's minds resist this fragmen- 
 tary capricious exposition. The portions of Scripture 
 thus adduced very likely are those in which prophecy 
 concentrates itself more than in any other : they may 
 be the strongest expressions of that Spirit which 
 quickens the whole mass ; but it has not forsaken the 
 other portions to gather itself up exclusively in these. 
 
 * Gregory the Great {Horn, in Evany.): Elias in curru legitur 
 ascendisse, ut videlicet aperte demonstraretur, quia homo purus adju- 
 torio indigebat alieno. Per angelos quippe facta et ostensa sunt adju- 
 menta ; quia nee in coclum quidem aerium per se ascendere poterat 
 quern naturae suae infirmitas gravabat. Redemtor autem noster non 
 curru, non angelis sublevatus legitur, quia is qui fecerat omnia^ nimi- 
 rum super omnia sua virtute ferebatur. 
 
THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 6.9 
 
 Eather the subtle threads of prophecy are woven 
 through every part of the woof and texture, not 
 separable from thence without rending and destroy- 
 ing the whole. All the Old Testament, as the record 
 of a divine constitution pointing to something higher 
 than itself, administered by men who were ever look- 
 ing beyond themselves to a Greater that should come, 
 who were uttering, as the Spirit stirred them, the 
 deepest longings of their souls after Ms appearing, 
 is prophetic ; and this, not by an arbitrary appoint- 
 ment, which meant thus to supply evidences ready 
 to hand for the truth of Revelation, in the curious 
 tallying of the Old with the New, in the remarkable 
 fulfilments of the foretold, but prophetic according to 
 the inmost necessities of the case, which would not 
 suffer it to be otherwise. 
 
 For how could God, bringing to pass what was 
 good and true, do other than make it resemble what 
 was best and truest, which he should one day bring to 
 pass? Raising up holy men, how could he avoid 
 giving them features of likeness to the Holiest of all? 
 appointing them functions and offices in which to bless 
 their brethren, how could these otherwise than an- 
 ticipate his functions and his office, who should come 
 in the fulness of blessing to his people ? Inspiring 
 them to speak, stirring by the breath of his Spirit the 
 deepest chords of their hearts, how could He bring 
 forth from them any other notes but those which made 
 the deepest music of their lives ; their longings, namely, 
 after the promised Redeemer, their yearnings after 
 the kingdom of his righteousness, — mere longings and 
 yearnings no longer now, since the Spirit that inspired 
 such utterances, being the very Spirit of Truth, gave 
 
70 LECTURE IV. [1845. 
 
 pledge, in sanctioning and working the desire, that 
 the fulfilment of that desire in due time should not be 
 wanting ? If the poet had right when he spake of 
 
 "the prophetic soul 
 Of the great world, dreaming of things to come ;" 
 
 by how much higher reason must a prophetic soul 
 
 have dwelt in Israel, by which it not vaguely dreamed, 
 
 but in some sort felt itself already in possession, of 
 
 the great things to come, whereof it knew that the 
 
 seeds and germs were laid so deeply in its own bosom? 
 
 We may say of Judaism, that it bore in its womb the 
 
 Messiah, as the man-child whom it should one day 
 
 give birth to, and only in the forming and bearing of 
 
 whom it found its true meaning. This was its function, 
 
 and according to the counsel of God it should have 
 
 been saved through this child-bearing ; though by its 
 
 own sin it did itself expire in giving birth to Him 
 
 who was intended to have been not its death but its 
 
 life. 
 
 This, then, is another remarkable aspect under 
 
 which the progressiveness of God's dealings, and of 
 
 that Book which is their record, presents itself to us, — 
 
 this long and patient training of his people through 
 
 many a preceding word and institution and person 
 
 into the capacity of recognizing his glory, of whom 
 
 all that went before was but the shadow and the 
 
 symbol. In all this was a prelude to prepare the 
 
 spiritual ear for the full burst of a later, and but for 
 
 that, an overwhelming harmony ; — a purpling of the 
 
 east, which might tell in what quarter the Sun of 
 
 Righteousness would appear, and whither the straining 
 
 eyes must turn, that would catch the first brightness 
 
 of his rising. 
 
THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 71 
 
 Nor is it unworthy of observation, that prophecy 
 did never run before that actual development, which 
 alone would enable it to speak a language which men 
 should understand. It did not paint upon air; but 
 ever claimed forms of the present in which to array 
 its promises of the future. Thus we have no mention 
 of Christ the Prophet till a great prophet had actually 
 arisen, till Moses could say, " The Lord thy God will 
 raise up unto thee a Prophet like unto me." We hear 
 nothing of Christ the King, till there were kings in 
 Israel — theocratic kings — who should give the pro- 
 phecy a substance and a meaning ; who should make 
 men know, though with many imperfections, what a 
 sceptre of righteousness was, and a king ruling in 
 judgment. And thus (did time allow) we might trace 
 in much more detail how not only in the idea of type 
 and prophecy there is obedience to that law of advance 
 and progress, which we have everywhere been finding, 
 but in the very order and sequence of the prophecies 
 themselves. Yet this matter we must leave. Sufficient 
 for us to have seen how in prophecy are the outlines 
 and lineaments which shall indicate, and fit men to 
 know the very body of the Truth, when that at length 
 shall come ; — to have considered under another aspect 
 to-day, how Scripture is its own witness, gives proof 
 that it is what it affirms itself to be, a Book for the 
 education of men, — in that it plainly contains the 
 gradual unfolding of a great idea, such a thought as 
 only could have entered into the mind of God to con- 
 ceive, such a thought as He only who is the King of 
 ages could have carried out. 
 
 And without question, for ourselves, brethren, the 
 lessons which the Scripture contemplated as this Book 
 
72 LECTURE IV. [1845. 
 
 of an ever-advancing education may suggest, are not 
 very far to seek. And this first. God has taken our 
 whole race by the hand that He may lead it on toge- 
 ther ; even so will He lead every single soul that will 
 trust itself to Him. He will speak to us first as "little 
 children," then as " young men," and then as "fathers." 
 His Word in our hearts shall be as the blade, and the 
 ear, and the full corn in the ear. He will give us, as 
 we are faithful, an ever larger horizon, a widening 
 horizon of duty, with an increasing consciousness of 
 powers and faculties for fulfilling that duty. 
 
 And our second lesson lies also at the door, — that 
 seeing, as we do in Scripture, what the school has 
 been in which all God's saints have been trained, we 
 be well content to learn in the same, nor count that 
 we can learn better in any other. The study of this 
 Scripture shews us how through the everlasting ordi- 
 nances of the Family, the State, the Church, God 
 trains into nobleness and freedom the souls and spirits 
 of men ; how he calls out in their strength, first the 
 affections, then the conscience, and last of all, the 
 reason and the will of men. It teaches us that, not 
 in self-willed separation from common duties, but in a 
 lowly and earnest fulfilling of them, men have grown 
 up to their full stature as men. Often in that evil 
 pride which makes us rather to follow after that which 
 Avill divide us from our brethren, than that which will 
 unite us to them, we have counted, it may be, that 
 we could discipline ourselves better, that we could 
 train ourselves higher, than by those common ways in 
 which all our fellows are being trained, — better than 
 through the ordinances of the family, better than 
 through the duties which devolve on us as citizens. 
 
THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 73 
 
 better than by the teaching and Sacraments of Christ's 
 Church. It has seemed to us a poor thing to walk in 
 those trite and common paths wherein all are walking. 
 Yet these common paths are the paths in which bless- 
 ing travels, are the ways in which God is met. Wel- 
 coming and fulfilling the lowliest duties which meet 
 us there, we shall often be surprized to find that we 
 have unawares been welcoming and entertaining An- 
 gels ; and nurturing ourselves upon these, it shall be 
 with us in our souls and spirits as it was with Daniel 
 and his young companions, when they shewed fairer 
 and better liking, and had more evidently thriven 
 upon their common food, their ordinary pulse, than 
 had all their compeers upon their royal dainties, 
 their profane meats, brought from the table of the 
 Babylonian king. 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCIIIPTUIIE. 
 
 John XII. 16. 
 
 These tilings understood not his disciples at the first ; but 
 when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they^ that these 
 were written of 
 
 The subject of the Lectures which I am now permitted 
 to resume, is the fitness of Holy Scripture for unfold- 
 ing the spiritual life of men, and the arguments which 
 we may from this fitness derive for its being the gift 
 of God to his reasonable creatures, whom He has 
 called to a spiritual fellowship with Himself. So many 
 who are now present cannot have heard the earlier 
 discourses, so little have I a right to expect that those 
 who did, should vividly retain them in their memories, 
 that I shall just mention at this resumption of the 
 course the point at which I have arrived, not attempt- 
 ing to retrace even with hastiest steps, but indicating 
 merely by lightest hints, the way by which we hitherto 
 have gone. Passing by, then, the external arguments, 
 not as comparatively unimportant, but as not belong- 
 ing to the domain of my peculiar subject, I have 
 sought, after some preliminary observations which 
 filled the chief part of my first Lecture, in the second 
 to trace the oneness of Scripture ; how there runs 
 through it one idea, that of the kingdom of God, and 
 how by that one are knit into unity its most diverse 
 parts and elements ; in the third, how this Scripture 
 
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 75 
 
 which is one, is also manifold, so laid out that it shall 
 nourish all souls, and make wonderful answer to the 
 moral and intellectual needs of all men ; and then in 
 the fourth, the latest of that 'series, I endeavoured to 
 shew how Scripture is fitted to be the Book of our 
 education, the furtherer of our spiritual growth, through 
 itself being the history of the progressive education of 
 our race into the fulness of the knowledge of God. 
 
 An ample task remains for us still : this day's 
 portion of that task will consist in an attempt, it 
 must be indeed a most imperfect one, to shew how 
 this treasure of divine Truth, once given, has only 
 gradually revealed itself; how the history of the 
 Church, the difficulties, the trials, the struggles, the 
 temptations in which it has been involved, have inter- 
 preted to it its own records, brought out their latent 
 significance, and caused it to discover all which in 
 them it had ; how there was much written for it there 
 as in sympathetic ink, invisible for a season, yet ready 
 to flash out in lines and characters of light, whenever 
 the appointed day and hour had arrived. So that in 
 this way the Scripture has been to the Church as 
 their garments to the children of Israel, which during 
 all the years of their pilgrimage in the desert waxed 
 not old, yea, according to rabbinical tradition, kept 
 pace and measure with their bodies, growing with 
 their growth, fitting the man as they had fitted the 
 child, and this, until the forty years of their sojourn 
 in the wilderness had expired. Or, to use another 
 comparison which may help to illustrate our meaning, 
 Holy Scripture thus progressively unfolding what it 
 contains, might be likened fitly to some magnificent 
 landscape on which the sun is gradually rising, and 
 
76 LECTURE V. [1845. 
 
 ever as it rises, is bringing out one headland into 
 light and prominence, and then another ; anon kin- 
 dling the glory-smitten summit of some far mountain, 
 and presently lighting up the recesses of some near 
 valley which had hitherto abided in gloom, and so 
 travelling on till nothing remains in shadow, no nook 
 nor corner hid from the light and heat of it, but the 
 whole prospect stands out in the clearness and splen- 
 dour of the brightest noon. 
 
 And we can discern, I think, in some measure, 
 causes which in the wisdom and providence of God 
 worked together to constitute Scripture as this glorious 
 landscape which should ever reveal new features of 
 wonder and beauty, this boundless treasure with riches 
 laid up for all future times and all future needs. The 
 apostolic Church — that of which the sacred writings 
 of the New Covenant are a living transcript — was not 
 merely one age and one aspect of the Church, but we 
 have in it the picture and prophecy of the Church's 
 history in every future age. All which in those after 
 ages should only slowly declare itself, is there presented 
 in one great image, — the most amazing contrasts, the 
 best and the worst, the highest and the lowest, the 
 noblest assertions, and the deadliest perversions, of the 
 Truth. It is, if we may so speak, a rapid rehearsal of 
 the great drama of God's providence with his Church, 
 which should afterwards be played out at leisure on 
 the world's stage. Nothing, which was after to be, 
 was not there ; although by the necessities of the case, 
 all comprest and brought into narrowest compass, and 
 so to speak, all foreshortened, and, as a picture of the 
 future, Avanting in perspective and in distance. But 
 this glimpse once vouchsafed to us of all, the wondrous 
 
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 77 
 
 picture dislimns and dissolves again ; that gera in which 
 were all other seras wrapped up, closes, and the period 
 of gradual development begins ; but yet not this, be- 
 fore every error and the antidote of every error had 
 been set down, every heresy which should afterwards 
 display itself full-blown, had budded, and the witness 
 against it had been clearly borne ; not till it had been 
 seen how Jewish legality and heathen false liberty 
 would equally seek to corrupt the Truth, and with 
 what weapons both were to be encountered ; not till 
 missions to the Jew and missions to the heathen had 
 alike been founded, and the manner of conducting 
 them been shewn ; not till many Antichrists had re- 
 hearsed and prefigured the final one, and tried the 
 faith of God's elect. And thus it was ordained that 
 the canonical Scriptures, which seem to belong only 
 to one age, should indeed belong to all ages ; inas- 
 much as that age, that fruitful time, that middle point 
 of the world's history, in which an old world died and 
 a new world sprang to life, had the germs and rudi- 
 ments of all other times within its bosom. 
 
 It is this fact, — that the Holy Scripture contains 
 within itself all treasures of wisdom and knowledge, 
 but only renders up those treasures little by little, 
 and as they are needed or asked for, — which justifies 
 us in speaking of a development of doctrine in the 
 Church, and explains much in her inner history that 
 might else startle or perplex. But about this matter 
 so much has lately been spoken, and another theory 
 of the manner in which the Church unfolds her doc- 
 trine, looking at first sight the same as this, but at 
 heart] entirely different, has so diligently been put 
 forth, — and that with purposes hostile to that sound 
 
78 LECTURE V. [1845. 
 
 form of faith and doctrine, which it is given us to 
 maintain and defend, — that it might be worth our 
 while to linger here for a little, and consider wherein 
 the essential difference between the false theory and 
 the true is to be found, and in what sense, and in what 
 only, the Church may be said to develop her doctrine. 
 It is familiar to many who have watched with interest 
 the course of the controversies of our day, that those 
 who have given up as hopeless the endeavour to find 
 in Scripture, or in the practices or creeds of the early 
 Church, evidence for the accretions with which they 
 have overlaid the Truth, have shifted their ground, 
 and taken up a position entirely new. True, they 
 have said, these additions are not there, but they are 
 the unfolding of the Truth which is there ; they are 
 but the producing of the line of Truth, the later num- 
 bers of a series, whereof the earlier in Scripture are 
 given ; they are necessary developments of doctrine, 
 such as the Church has ever allowed to herself, and 
 which will alone explain many of the appearances 
 which she presents. 
 
 Now doubtless there is a true idea of Scriptural 
 developments, which has always been recognized, to 
 which the great Fathers of the Church have set their 
 seal * ; and it is this, that the Church, informed and 
 quickened by the Spirit of God, more and more dis- 
 
 * Thus Augustine {Enarr. in Ps. lIv. 22.) : Multa cnim latcbant 
 in Scripturis, et quum praecisi essent haerctici, qusestionibus agitavcrunt 
 Ecclesiam Dei ; aperta sunt quae latebant, ct intellecta est voluntas 
 Dei....Numqui(i cnim perfccte de Trinitate tractatum est antcquam 
 ohiatrarent Ariani 1 numquid perfecto de poenitentibus tractatum est 
 antcquam obsisterent Novatiani ? Sic non perfccte de baptismate 
 tractatum est antequam contradicerent foris positi rebaptizatores. Cf. 
 Enarr. in Ps. Lxvii. 81 ; and Confess., 1. 7, c. 19. Improbatio haereti- 
 corum facit eminerc quid Ecclesia sentiat, et quid habeat sana doctrina. 
 
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE.. 79 
 
 covers what in Holy Scripture is given her ; but it is 
 not this, that she unfolds by an independent power 
 anything further therefrom. She has always possessed 
 what she now possesses of doctrine and truth, only 
 not always with the same distinctness of consciousness. 
 She has not added to her wealth, but she has become 
 more and more aware of that wealth ; her dowry has 
 remained always the same, but that dowry was so rich 
 and so rare, that only little by little she has counted 
 over and taken stock and inventory of her jewels. She 
 has consolidated her doctrine, compelled thereto by 
 the provocation of enemies, or induced to it by the 
 growing sense of her own needs. She has brought 
 together utterances in Holy Writ, and those which 
 apart were comparatively barren, when thus married, 
 when each had thus found its complement in the other, 
 have been fruitful to her. Those which apart meant 
 little to her, have been seen to mean much, when thus 
 brought together and read each by the light of the 
 other. In these senses she has enlarged her dominion, 
 her dominion having become larger to her. 
 
 And yet all this which she has laboriously won, 
 she possessed before, implicitly though not explicitly, 
 — even as the shut hand is as perfect an hand as the 
 open ; or as our dominion in that huge island of the 
 Pacific is as truly ours, and that region as vast in ex- 
 tent now, as it will be when every mountain and valley, 
 every rivulet and bay, have been exj^lored and laid 
 down in our maps, and the flag of England has waved 
 over them all. All, for example, which the later 
 Church slowly and through centuries defined upon 
 this side and that, of the person of the Son of God — 
 of the relation of his natures and the communication 
 
80 LECTURE V. [1845. 
 
 of their properties — of his divine will and his hnman, 
 — all this the earliest had, yea and enjoyed, not hav- 
 ing arrived at it by analytic process, not able perhaps, 
 as not needing, to lay it out with dialectic accuracy, 
 but in total impression, in synthetic unity. She pos- 
 sessed it all, she lived in the might and in the glory 
 of it; as is notably witnessed by the prophetic tact, 
 if one may venture so to call that divine instinct, by 
 which she rejected all which was alien to and would 
 have disturbed the true evolution of her doctrine, 
 even before she had fully elaborated that doctrine; 
 by Avhich she refused to shut the door against her- 
 self; and^ even in matters which had not yet come 
 before her for decision and definition, preserved the 
 ground clear and open from all that would have em- 
 barrassed and obstructed in the future. 
 
 We do not object to, rather we fully acknowledge, 
 the theory of the develojiment of religious Truth so 
 stated. We no more object, than we do to a Nicene 
 Creed following up and enlarging an Apostolic, which 
 rather we gladly and thankfully receive as a rich 
 addition to our heritage. But that Nicene Creed in 
 the same manner contains no new truths which the 
 Church has added to her stock since the earlier was 
 composed, though it may be some which she has 
 brought out with more distinctness to herself and 
 to her children, — as it contains broader and more 
 accurately guarded statements of the old. But the 
 essential in this progress of Truth is, that the later 
 is always as truly found in Scripture as the earlier — 
 not as easy to discover, but when discovered, as 
 much carrying with it its own evidence ; — and there, 
 not in some obscure hint and germ, putting one in 
 
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 81 
 
 mind of an inverted pyramid, so small the founda- 
 tion, so vast and overshadowing the superstructure — 
 as for instance, the whole Papal system, which rests, 
 as far as Scripture is adduced in proof, on a single 
 text — nor yet there in some passage which is equally 
 capable of a thousand other turns as that given ; as, 
 for example, when the worship of the Blessed Virgin 
 is found prophesied and authorized in the Lord's 
 answer to her at the marriage in Cana of Galilee. 
 
 But with these limitations the scheme is altogether 
 different from that which some of late have put for- 
 ward, — different not in degree only, but in kind ; and 
 it is that mere confusion of unlike things under like 
 terms, which is so fruitful a source of errors in the 
 world, to call by this same name that theory which, 
 refusing the Scriptures as, first and last, authoritative 
 in and limitary of the Truth, assumes that in the 
 course of ages there was intended to be, not only the 
 discovery of the Truth which is there, but also, by 
 independent accretion and addition, the further growth 
 of doctrine, besides what is there ; which recognizes 
 such accretions, when they fall in with its own notions, 
 for legitimate outgrowths, and not, as indeed they 
 are, for noxious misgrowths, of doctrine ; and which 
 thus makes the Church from time to time the creator 
 of new Truth, and not merely the guardian and definer 
 and drawer out of the old. This is all that she assumes 
 to be ; whatever she proclaims, she has ever the con- 
 sciousness that she is proclaiming it as the ancient 
 Truth, as that which she has always borne in her 
 bosom, however she may not have distinctly outspoken 
 it till now ; as part of the Truth once delivered to 
 
 T. H. L. 6 
 
82 LECTURE V. [1845. 
 
 her, though, it may be, not all at once apprehended 
 by her. 
 
 Thus was it felt in the ages long past of the 
 Church ; thus also was it at the Reformation ; for 
 that too was an entering of the Church on a portion 
 of the fulness of her heritage, on which she had not 
 adequately entered before. It is hardly too much to 
 say, that the Eeformation called out from their hiding- 
 places the Epistle to the Romans, the Epistle to the 
 Galatians, and generally the Epistles of St. Paul, which 
 then became to the faithful all which they were in- 
 tended to be. It is not, of course, implied that these 
 were not read and studied and commented on before, 
 or that much and varied profit was not drawn from 
 them in every age, or that they had not been full of 
 blessing for unnumbered souls. But with all this, 
 men's eyes were holden, and had been for long, so 
 that the innermost heart of them, the deepest signifi- 
 cance was not seen. For they were the needs of souls, 
 the mighty anguish of men's spirits, which were the 
 true interpreters of these portions of God's Word. 
 When that vast and gorgeous fabric, the Papal Chris- 
 tendom of the middle ages, dissolved and went to 
 pieces, — that which, as one contemplates it on its 
 bright side or its dark, one is inclined to regard as a 
 glorious realization, or an impious caricature, of the 
 promised kingdom of Christ upon the earth ; — when 
 the time arrived that men could no longer live by 
 faith that they Avere members of that great spiritual 
 fellowship, (for it was felt now to be only the mockery 
 of such ;) when each man said, " I too am a man, my- 
 self and no other, one by myself, with my own burden, 
 
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 8S 
 
 my own sin, the inalienable mystery of my own being 
 which I cannot put off on another, and as such, I must 
 stand or fall ; it helps me nothing to tell me that I 
 belong to a glorious community, in which saints have 
 lived and doctors taught, wherein I am bound in closest 
 fellowship with all the ages that are past ; this helps 
 me nothing, unless I too, by myself, am a healed man, 
 with the deep wound of my own spirit healed, unless 
 you shew me how my own personal relations to God, 
 which sin has utterly disturbed, may be made firm and 
 strong again;" — then, when men thus felt, where 
 should they so naturally turn as to those portions of 
 Scripture especially designed to furnish a response to 
 this deep cry of the human heart, and which are occu- 
 pied with setting forth a personal Deliverer from this 
 personal sense of guilt and condemnation ? And not 
 anything else but this mighty agony of souls would 
 have supplied the key of knowledge to the Epistles of 
 St. Paul, which had remained otherwise to the faithful 
 as written in a strange language, to be admired at a 
 distance, but dealing with matters in which they had 
 no very close concern. But with this preparation, and 
 thus initiated by suffering, men came to them with 
 ineffable joy, as to springs in the desert, and found in 
 them all after which their inmost spirits had yearned 
 and thirsted the most. 
 
 Thus at the Reformation the relations of every 
 man to God, consequent on the Incarnation and death 
 and resurrection of the Son of God, were those for 
 which the Church mainly contended ; — that those re- 
 lations were perfect, — that by one oblation Christ had 
 perfected for ever them that were sanctified, that 
 nothing might come between God and the cleansed 
 
 6—2 
 
84 LECTURE V. [1845. 
 
 conscience of his children, to bring them nearer than 
 they were brought ah'cady, — no pope, no work, no 
 penance, — that all which pretended to intrude and 
 come between was a lie. And by consequence those 
 records of Scripture Avhich were occupied with declar- 
 ing the perfectness of these relations, were those most 
 sedulously and most earnestly handled ; bright beams 
 of light flashed out from them, at once enlightening 
 and gladdening and kindling, as there had never done 
 until now. 
 
 But in our own day, as we see in that country 
 where alone a speculative philosophy, with which theo- 
 \og^ has to put itself in relation, exists, the controversy 
 has drawn, as was to be looked for, even nearer yet 
 to the very heart of the matter. For now it is not, 
 What is the meaning for us of this constitution in the 
 Son ? but whether there is such a constitution at all? 
 it is not what follows on the relations which the In- 
 carnate Word established between God and men, but 
 whether there have been any such relations at all 
 established — any meeting of heaven and earth in the 
 person of Jesus of Nazareth, — whether all which has 
 been spoken of such has not been merely dreams of 
 men, and not, as the Church afiirms, facts of God? 
 And therefore the Gospels, as we see, come mainly 
 into consideration now ; round them the combatants 
 gather, the battle rages : they are felt to be the key 
 of the position, which, as it is won or lost, will carry 
 with it the issues of the day. Every one that would 
 strike a blow at Christianity, strikes at them ; criticises 
 the record, or the fact recorded ; — the record, that it 
 is a loose and accidental aggregation of floating ma- 
 terials, of insecure traditions, which crumbles to pieces 
 
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 85 
 
 at any accurate handling — or the fact recorded, that 
 a man who was God, and God who was man, is in- 
 conceivable, and carries its own contradiction on its 
 front. 
 
 And as the Gospels are the point mainly assailed, 
 so are they the citadel in which they must make them- 
 selves strong, from which they must issue, who would 
 win in our day any signal victory for the Truth. First, 
 the record itself must be vindicated, the glory and 
 perfeetness of its form, the mystery of those four 
 Gospels in their subtle harmonies, in the manner 
 wherein they complete one another, handing us on, 
 the first to the second, and the second to the third, 
 and the third to the last : — the wondrous laws of 
 selection, and laws of rejection, which evidently pre- 
 sided at their construction, and do continually reveal 
 themselves to the deeper enquirer, however the shallow 
 may miss or deny them. And then, secondly, the facts, 
 or, to speak more truly, the fact must be justified, 
 which in those Gospels is recorded, — that it is the 
 highest wisdom, — that a Son of God, who is also the 
 Son of man, is the one, the divine fact, which alone 
 explains either God or man, — is that which philosophy 
 must end by accepting at the hands of Theology as 
 the crowning Truth, and only in accepting which it 
 will find its own completion, and the long and weary 
 strife between the two obtain an end. 
 
 And as it was at the Keformation with the Pauline 
 Epistles, — as it is now with the Gospels, — so, I can- 
 not doubt, a day will come when all the significance 
 of the Apocalypse for the Church of God will be ap- 
 parent, which hitherto it can scarcely be said to have 
 been ; — that a time will arrive when it will be plainly 
 
86 LECTURE V. [1845. 
 
 shewn how costly a gift, yea rather, how necessary an 
 armour was this for the Church of the redeemed. 
 Then, when the last things are about to be, and the 
 trumpet of the last Angel to sound, when the great 
 drama is hastening with ever briefer pauses to its 
 catastrophe, — then, in one unlooked for way or an- 
 other, the veil will be lifted up from this wondrous 
 Book, and it will be to the Church collectively, what, 
 even partially understood, it has been already to tens 
 of thousands of her children — strength in the fires, 
 giving her " songs in the night," songs of joy and 
 deliverance in that darkest night of her trial, which 
 shall precede the break of her everlasting day ; and 
 enabling her, even when the triumph of Antichrist is 
 at the highest, to look securely on to his near doom 
 and her own perfect victory. 
 
 But we are dealing to-day with the past develop- 
 ment of Scripture, not with the future — with what it 
 has already unfolded, not with what it may have still 
 in reserve. That may well occupy us hereafter ; for 
 the present, let us ask ourselves what is the great 
 lesson which we should draw from this aspect of the 
 subject which we have been this day contemplating. 
 A lesson surely of the very deepest significance. For 
 if other generations before us have had their especial 
 task and work, so also must we ; a work which none 
 other have done for us, even as none other could ; 
 for just as each individual has some task which none 
 other can fulfil so well as he, for it is Ms task, so 
 every generation has its own appointed labour, and 
 only can be at harmony with itself, when it has faith- 
 fully girded itself to that. Let us not then, under 
 shew of humility, flatter our indolence, and say that 
 
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 87 
 
 in this matter of the treasures of the knowledge of 
 God all is searched out ; that for us it remains only 
 to live on the handed down, on that which others 
 have already won from his Word. Let us not, in this 
 manner, turn that into a standing- pool or reservoir, 
 which might be a spring of water springing up as 
 freshly and newly to our lips as to the lips of any who 
 have gone before us. 
 
 Shall we determine, for instance, to know no other 
 Theology, no other results of Scripture, save those of 
 the Church of the first ages ? Are we thus honouring 
 Christ's promise to His Church, when we imply, as so 
 we do, that the Spirit of wisdom and understanding 
 was given to her once, but is not given to her always? 
 Shall all history, as an interpreter of God's Word, go 
 for nothing with us — be assumed to stand in no rela- 
 tion to that Book, of which surely the very idea is, 
 that as it casts light upon all, so it receives light from 
 all ? Or do we presume too far in believing that there 
 are portions of its vast and goodly field, which we can 
 cultivate with larger success than those who preceded 
 us, to which we shall bring experience which they did 
 not and could not bring, which will yield therefore to 
 us ampler returns than they yielded to them ? 
 
 Or, again, were it not as great a mistake, as partial 
 a view upon another side, to require that the Theology 
 of the Keformation should be the ultimate term and 
 law to us, — to say that we would know nothing fur- 
 ther, and to look, respectfully it may be, but still 
 coldly, on any truths which were not at that day 
 counted vital? Surely our loss were most real, re- 
 fusing to take our part in cultivating this field which 
 the Lord has blest, and which He has noAv delivered 
 
88 LECTURE V. [1845. 
 
 to US, that we in our turn might dress and keep, and 
 enrich ourselves from it ; — a loss we know not how 
 great ! for Ave too, had we been faithful and earnest, 
 might have found hid in that field some treasure, for 
 joy whereof we should have been ready to renounce 
 all that we had, all our barren theories, and hungry 
 speculations, and mutual suspicions, if only we might 
 have made that treasure our own ; so reconciling, so 
 evidently fitted would it have shewn itself for all our 
 actual needs. 
 
 We may purpose indeed to live on what others 
 have done, the mighty men of the days which are 
 past, the fathers or revivers of our faith ; and we 
 may count that their gains will as much enrich us as 
 they enriched them. But this will not prove so indeed; 
 for it is a just law of our being, one of the righteous 
 compensations of toil, that what a man wins by his 
 labour, be it inward truth, or only some outward sup- 
 pliance of his need, is ever far more really his own, 
 makes him far more truly rich, than ought which he 
 receives or inherits ready made at the hands and from 
 the toils of others. And they of whom we speak 
 earned their truths, by toil and by struggle, by mighty 
 wrestlings till the day broke ; watering with the sweat 
 of their brow, oftentimes with tears as of blood — yea, 
 with the life-blood of their own hearts, the soil which 
 yielded them in return an harvest so large. So was 
 it, and so only, that they came again with joy, bearing 
 their sheaves with them. And would we do the same, 
 let us first indeed see that we let nothing go — that 
 we forfeit no part of that which we inherit at their 
 hands. But also with a just confidence in that blessed 
 Spirit, who is ever with His Church, who is ever lead- 
 
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 89 
 
 ing it into the Truth which it needs, — let us labour, 
 that through prayer and through study, through earnest 
 knocking, through holy living, that inexhausted and 
 inexhaustible Word may render up unto us om- truth, 
 — the truth by which we must live, — the truth, what- 
 soever that be, which, more than any other, will deliver 
 us from the lies with which we in our time are beset, 
 which will make us strong where we are weak, and 
 heal us where we are divided, and enable us most 
 effectually to do that work which our God would have 
 done by us in this the day of our toil. 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Isaiah XII. 3. 
 With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation. 
 
 It was my endeavour in my last Lecture to bring* be- 
 fore you the progressive unfolding of the Scripture 
 for the Church — the manner in which for the company 
 of faithful men in all ages, considered as one great 
 organic body with one common life, there has been 
 such a lifting up of veil after veil from the Word 
 of God ; they only gradually coming into the know- 
 ledge of all the riches which in that Word were their 
 own. It were a worthy task for us to-day to consider, 
 what no doubt all of us must often have felt, the way 
 in which it has been ordained that the treasures of 
 Holy Scripture should for the individual believer be 
 inexhaustible also, — should be quarries in which he 
 may always dig, yet which he never can dig^ out, — a 
 world of wisdom in which the most zealous and suc- 
 cessful searcher shall ever be the readiest to acknow- 
 ledge that what remains to know is far more than 
 what yet he has known. 
 
 For this is a most important need for a Book such 
 as we affirm the Bible to be, a Book for the cultivat- 
 ing of humanity, for the developing, by the ministry 
 of the Church, through the teaching of the Spirit, the 
 higher life of every man in the world. It belongs to 
 
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 91 
 
 the very primal necessities of a Scripture which is 
 ordained for such ends as these, that it should be thus 
 inexhaustible ; — that no man should ever come to its 
 end, himself containing it, instead of being contained 
 by it, as by something far larger than himself. The 
 very idea of such a Book, which is for all men and 
 for all the life of every man, is that it should have 
 treasures which it does not give up at once, secrets 
 which it yields slowly and only to those that are its 
 intimates ; with rich waving harvests on its surface, 
 but with precious veins of metal hidden far below, and 
 to be reached only by search and by labour. .Nothing 
 were so fatal to its lasting influence, to the high pur- 
 poses which it is meant to serve, as for any with justice 
 to feel that he had used it up, that he had worked it 
 through, that henceforward it had no "fresh fields" 
 nor ''pastures new" in which to invite him for to- 
 morrow. Even where this did not utterly repel him, 
 where he maintained the study of this Book as a com- 
 manded duty, his chiefest delight and satisfaction in 
 the handling of it would have departed ; he no longer 
 would draw water with joy from these wells of salva- 
 tion, for they would be to him fresh springing wells 
 no more. 
 
 It will be my purpose on the present occasion to 
 trace, as far as I may, what there is in the structure 
 and conformation of Scripture to constitute it this 
 Book of unsearchable riches for each : and in so doing 
 I shall not, as might perhaps at first sight appear, be 
 going over again the subject which was treated last ; 
 for that was the organic unfolding of the Word for the 
 Church considered as an whole ; this the wealth which 
 there is stored for each one of the faithful in particu- 
 
92 LECTURE VI. [1845. 
 
 lar, and which all, given to him in his Baptism, he yet 
 only little by little can make his own, appropriating 
 and transmuting it into the substance of his own life. 
 Now the first provision made for this by the grace 
 and wisdom of God, — the first at least which I would 
 note, — is one which by shallow or malignant objectors 
 has been often turned into a charge against it, I mean 
 the absence of a systematic arrangement ; for such is 
 the shape which the complaint generally assumes. 
 But this complaint of the want of method in Scrip- 
 ture, what is it in fact but this, that it is not dead, 
 but living ? that it is no herbarium, no hortiis siccus, but 
 a garden ? a wilderness, if men choose to call it so, 
 but a wilderness of sweets, with its flowers upon their 
 stalks — its plants freshly grooving, the dew upon their 
 leaves, the mould about their roots — with its lowly 
 hyssops and its cedars of God. And when men say 
 that there is want of method in it, they would speak 
 more accurately if they said that there was want of 
 system; for the highest method, even the method of 
 the Spirit, may reign where system there is none. 
 Method is divine, is inseparable from the ideas of God 
 and of order : but system is of man, is an help to the 
 weakness of his faculties, is the artificial arrangement 
 by which he brings within his limited ken that which 
 in no other way he would be able to grasp as an 
 whole. That there should be books of systematic 
 Theology, — books with their plan and scheme thus 
 lying on their very surface, and meeting us at once, — 
 this is most needful; but most needful also that Scrip- 
 ture should not be such a book. The dearest interests 
 of all, of wise men equally as of women and children, 
 demand this. 
 
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 93 
 
 It is true that one of the latest assaults on Scrip- 
 ture by a living adversary of the faith, by one who, at 
 first attacking only the historical accuracy of the 
 Gospels, has since gone rapidly the downward way, 
 till he has sunk at last, as his latest writings testify, 
 into the bottomless pit of sheerest atheism*, — it is true 
 that his assault is mainly directed against this very 
 point. He demands of a book, which claims to be the 
 appointed book for the guidance and teaching of hu- 
 manity, that he should be able to lay his finger there 
 upon a precept or a doctrine for each occurring need, 
 — that he should be able to find in one place and 
 under one head all which relates to one matter ; and 
 because he cannot find this in the Bible, he opens his 
 mouth against it, and proclaims it insufficient for the 
 ends which it professes to fulfil. But Holy Scripture 
 is not this book for the slothful — is not this book 
 which can be interpreted without, and apart from, and 
 by the deniers of, that Holy Spirit by whom it came. 
 Rather is it a field, upon the surface of which if some- 
 times we gather manna easily and without labour, and 
 given, as it were, freely to our hands, yet of which 
 also many portions are to be cultivated with pains and 
 toil, ere they will yield food for the use of man. This 
 bread of life also is to be often eaten in the whole- 
 some sweat of our brow. 
 
 It is not a defect in Scripture, it is not something 
 which is to be excused and explained aAvay, but rather 
 a glory and a prerogative, that there reigns in it the 
 freedom and fulness of nature, and not the narrow- 
 ness and strictness of art ; — as one said of old who 
 
 * Strauss. Compare his Lehen Jesu with his Christliche Glau- 
 benslehre. 
 
94 LECTURE VI. [1845. 
 
 adorned this University, and is yet numbered among 
 the honoured band of the Cambridge Platonists, when 
 speaking of the delightful exercise of the highest 
 faculties of the soul, which is thus secured : " All 
 which gratulations of the soul in her successful pur- 
 suits of divine Truth would be utterly lost or prevented, 
 if the Holy Scripture set down all things so fully and 
 methodically that our reading and understanding would 
 everywhere keep pace together. Wherefore that the 
 mind of man may be worthily employed, and taken 
 up with a kind of spiritual husbandry, God has not 
 made the Scriptures like an artificial garden, wherein 
 the walks are plain and regular, the plants sorted and 
 set in order, the fruits ripe and the flowers blown, 
 and all things fully exposed to our view ; but rather 
 like an uncultivated field, where indeed we have the 
 ground and hidden seeds of all precious things, but 
 nothing can be brought to any great beauty, order, 
 fulness, or maturity, without our industry, — nor indeed 
 with it, unless the dew of his grace descend upon it, 
 without whose blessing this spiritual culture will thrive 
 as little as the labour of the husbandman without 
 showers of rain*." 
 
 But to pass to another branch of the subject ; — it 
 is part of this absence of system, with the presence in 
 its stead of an higher method, of this constitution of 
 Scripture as a Book which no man should ever search 
 
 * Henry More, in his Mystery of Godliness^ B. i., c, 2. Another in 
 our own day has expressed himself in like manner : '' Scripture cannot, 
 as it were, he mapped, or its contents catalogued ; hut after all our 
 diligence to the end of our lives and to the end of the Church, it must 
 he an unexplored and unsuhdued land, with heights and valleys, 
 forests and streams, on the right and left of our path and close ahout 
 us, full of concealed wonders and choice treasures/' 
 
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 95 
 
 to the end, and then be tempted to lay aside as known 
 and finished, that so much of it should be occupied 
 with the history of lives. That which is to teach us 
 to live, is itself life — not precepts, not rules alone, 
 but these clothing themselves in the flesh and blood 
 of action and of suffering. A system of faith and 
 duty, however intricate, one might come to the end 
 of at last. One might possess thoroughly a Summa 
 Theologice, however massive and piled up ; for after 
 all, however vast, it yet has its defined bounds and 
 limits. But life stretches out on every side, and on 
 every side loses itself in the infinite. An Abraham, a 
 David, a Paul, — there is always something incomplete 
 in the way in which we have hitherto realized their 
 characters ; they always abide greater than our con- 
 ception of them, and at the same time always ready 
 to reveal themselves in some new features to the lov- 
 ing and studious eye. Beheld in some new combination, 
 in some new grouping with those by whom they are 
 surrounded, they will yield some lesson of instruction 
 which they have never yielded before. And if they, 
 how much more He, whom we are bidden above all to 
 consider, looking unto whom we are to run our course, 
 and whose every turn and gesture and tone and word 
 are significant for us. We might study out a system; 
 but how can we ever study out a person ? And our 
 blessedness is, that Christ does not declare to us a 
 system, and say, ' This is the truth ; ' so doing he 
 might have established a school : but he points to a 
 person, even to himself, and says, ' I am the Truth,' 
 and thus he founded, not a school, but a Church, a 
 fellowship which stands in its faith upon a person, not 
 
96 LECTURE VI. [1845. 
 
 in its tenure of a doctrine, or, at least, only mediately 
 and in a secondary sense upon this. 
 
 But another reason why the AYord of God should 
 be for us this mine which shall never be worked out, 
 is, no doubt, the following : — that our own life brings 
 out in it such new and undreamt-of treasures. What 
 an interpreter of Scripture is affliction ! how many 
 stars in its heaven shine out brightly in the night of 
 sorrow or of pain, which were unperceived or over- 
 looked in the garish day of our prosperity. What an 
 enlarger of Scripture is any other outer or inner event, 
 which stirs the deeps of our hearts, which touches 
 us near to the core and centre of our lives. Trouble 
 of spirit, condemnation of conscience, pain of body, 
 sudden danger, strong temptation — when any of these 
 overtake us, what veils do they take away, that we 
 may see what hitherto we saw not ; what new domains 
 of God's word do they bring within our spiritual ken ! 
 How do promises, which once fell flat upon our ears, 
 become precious now; psalms become our own, our 
 heritage for ever, which before were aloof from us ! 
 How do we see things now with the eye, which before 
 Ave knew only by the hearing of the ear ; which, before, 
 men had told us, but now we ourselves have found ! 
 How much, again, do we see in our rij^er age, which 
 in youth we missed or passed over ! And thus, on these 
 accounts also, the Scripture is well fitted to be our 
 companion, and to do us good, all the years of our 
 life*. 
 
 * Fuller. " The same man at several times may in his apprehen- 
 sion prefer several Scriptures as best, formerly most affected with one 
 place, for the present more delighted with another ; and afterwards 
 
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 97 
 
 Another provision which in it is made for awaken- 
 ing attention, and for summoning men to penetrate 
 more deeply into its meaning, is to be found in its 
 apparent, I need not say only apparent, contradictions. 
 But it is not at pains to avoid the semblance of these. 
 It is not careful to remove every handle of objection 
 which any might take hold of. On the contrary, that 
 saying, " Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended 
 in me," finds as true an application to Christ's Word 
 as to his person. For that Word goes on its way, not 
 obviating every possible misconception, not giving 
 anxious pains to shew how this statement which it 
 makes and that agree. It is satisfied that they do 
 agree, and lets those that are watching for an offence 
 take it. They whose hearts were already alienated 
 from the Truth are suffered to stumble at this stone, 
 which was set for this very fall and rise of many, 
 that the thoughts of many hearts might be revealed, 
 and that they who were longing for an excuse for un- 
 belief might find one. 
 
 And with the same challenge to the false-hearted, 
 the same fruitful supply of suggestive thought for the 
 devout enquirer, these matters claiming reconciliation 
 will meet us, not in the history only, but also in the 
 doctrine. For it is ever the manner of that Word 
 with which we have to do, now boldly to declare its 
 truth upon this side, and then presently to declare it 
 as boldly and fearlessly on the other — not jDainfully 
 and nicely balancing, limiting, qualifying, till the whole 
 
 conceiving comfort therein not so clear, choose other places as more 
 pregnant and pertinent to his purpose. Thus God orders it that 
 divers men, (and perhaps the same man at divers time) make use of 
 all his gifts, gleaning and gathering comfort, as it is scattered through 
 the whole field of the Scripture." 
 
 T. H. L. 7 
 
98 LECTURE VI. [1845. 
 
 strength of its statements had evaporated, not earing 
 even though its truths shoukl seem to jostle one an- 
 other. Enough that they do not do so indeed. It is 
 content to leave them to the Spirit to adjust and re- 
 concile, and to shew how the rights of each are com- 
 patible with the rights of the other — and not compatible 
 only, but how most often the one requires that the 
 other have its rights, before it can have truly its own. 
 Thus how profitable for us that we have the divers 
 statements of St. Paul and St. James — divers, but not 
 diverse — each, in the words of St. Chrysostom, declar- 
 ing the same truth, ^ia(pop(x)s, but not euauriw^ — how 
 do they summon us to a deeper entering into the 
 doctrine than might otherwise have been ours, bidding 
 us not to be satisfied till we reach that central point 
 where we can evidently see how the two are at one, 
 and do but present, from different points of view, the 
 same truth. How useful to find in one place that God 
 tempted Abraham, and in another, that God tempteth 
 not any'". Should we have learned so well the signifi- 
 cance of temptation, should we have been set to think 
 about it so effectually, by any other process ? Or when 
 the Lord sets before the pure-hearted, that they shall 
 see God, that God whom his Apostle declares that no 
 man hath seen nor can see +, how does this set us to 
 meditate on that awful yet blessed vision of God, 
 which in some sense shall be vouchsafed to his servants, 
 even as in some it shall remain incommunicable even 
 unto them. 
 
 If indeed these difficulties had been artificially 
 contrived, if they had been puzzles and perplexities 
 
 * Compare Gen. xxii. ], \vith Jam. i. 13. 
 t Compare Matt. v. 8, Avitli 1 Tim. vi. 36. 
 
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 99 
 
 with which the Bible had been sown, that it might last 
 us the longer, that in the explaining and reconciling 
 of them we might find pleasant exercise for our facul- 
 ties, they would be but of slightest value. But they 
 grow out of a far deeper root than this ; they have 
 nothing thus forced and unnatural about them. Bather 
 is it here as in the kingdom of nature. How often 
 does nature seem to contradict herself, so beckoning 
 us onward to deeper investigations, till we shall have 
 reached some higher and more comprehensive law, in 
 which her seeming contradictions, those which lie upon 
 her surface, are atoned. And this because she is in- 
 finite : for it is of the essence of manifold and endless 
 life that it should at times thus present itself as at 
 variance with its own self. It is the glory of Scripture 
 that its harmonies lie deep, so deep, that to the care- 
 less or perverse ear they may be sometimes mistaken 
 for discords. There might have been a consistency of 
 its different parts — a poor and shallow thing — lying 
 on the outside, traced easily and at once, which none 
 could miss ; but such had been of no value, had been 
 charged with no deeper instruction for us. 
 
 To look, on another side, at the manner in which 
 Holy Scripture presents itself as this inexhaustible 
 treasure, — what riches are contained in its minutest 
 portions ! As it can bear to be looked at in its largest 
 aspect, so it challenges the contemplation of its 
 smallest details — in this again like nature, which shews 
 more wonderful, the more microscopic the investiga- 
 tion to which it is subinitted. Here truly are maxima 
 in minimis — the sun reflecting itself as faithfully in 
 the tiny dewdrop, as in the great mirror of the ocean. 
 The most eminent illustrations of this widest wealth 
 
 7—2 
 
100 LECTURE VI. [1845. 
 
 laid up in narrowest compass must naturally be found in 
 single sayings of our Lord's. How do they shine, like 
 finely polished diamonds, upon every face ! how simple 
 and yet how deep ! apparent paradoxes, and yet pro- 
 foundest truths ! Every one can get something from 
 them, and no one can get all. He that gathers little 
 has enough, and he that gathers much has nothing 
 over : every one gathers there according to his eating *. 
 For example, "Whosoever will save his life shall lose 
 it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall 
 find it;" — who sees not that in these words the keys 
 of heaven and of hell are put into his hands ? and yet 
 who will venture to affirm that he has come to their 
 end ? that he has dived down into all their deeps, or 
 that he ever expects to do so ? that he has made alto- 
 gether his own the mysteries of life and of death which 
 are here? Or again, "Every one that exalteth himself 
 shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be 
 exalted ;" — what is all the history of the world, if read 
 aright, but a comment on, and a confirmation of, these 
 words ? In the Hght of them what vast pages of men's 
 
 * Augustine {Enarr. in Ps. ciii.) making spiritual application of 
 the words, " All beasts of the field drink thereof," (Ps. civ. 11.) to the 
 streams of Holy Scripture, beautifully says : Inde bibit lepus, inde 
 onager: lepus parvus et onager magnus; lepus timidus, et onager 
 ferus, uterque inde l^ibit, sed quisque in sitim siiam Non dicit a(jua, 
 Lepori sufficio et repellit onagrum ; neque hoc dicit. Onager accedat, 
 lepus si accesserit, rapietur. Tarn fideliter et temperate fluit, ut sic 
 onagrum satiet ne leporem terreat. Sonat strepitus vocis Tulliana?, 
 Cicero legitur, aliquis liber est, dialogus ejus est, sivc ipsius sive 
 Platonis, seu cujuscumque talium: audiunt imperiti, infirmi minoris 
 cordis, quis audet illuc aspirare ? Strepitus aqute et forte turbatae, 
 certe tamen tam rapaciter fluentis, ut animal timidum non audeat 
 accedere et bibere Cui sonuit, In principio fecit Deus coelum et 
 terram, et non ausus est bibere 1 Cui sonat Psalmus, et dicat, Multum 
 iest ad me ? 
 
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 101 
 
 destinies, of our own lives, become clear ! Even the 
 sceptic Bayle was compelled to call them an abridge- 
 ment of all human history ; and such they are, setting 
 us as they do at the very centre of the moral oscilla- 
 tion of the world. These examples of that, whereof 
 hundreds might be adduced, must suffice. 
 
 Nor is it only what Scripture says, but its very 
 silence which is instructive for us. It was said by one 
 wise man of another, that more might be learned from 
 his questions than from another man's answers. With 
 yet higher truth might it be said that the silence of 
 Scripture is oftentimes more instructive than the speech 
 of other books ; so that it has been likened to " a dial 
 in which the shadow as well as the light informs us *." 
 For example of this, how full of meaning to us that 
 we have nothing told us of the life of our blessed 
 Lord between the twelfth and the thirtieth years — 
 how significant the absolute silence which the Gospels 
 maintain concerning all that period ; that those years 
 in fact have no history, nothing for the sacred writers 
 to record. How much is implied herein ! the calm 
 ripening of his human powers, — the contentedness to 
 wait, — the long preparation in secret, before he began 
 his open ministry. What a testimony is here, if we 
 will note it aright, against all our striving and snatch- 
 ing at hasty results, our impatience, our desire to 
 glitter before the world ; against all which tempts so 
 many to pluck the unripe fruits of their minds, and to 
 turn that into the season of a stunted and premature 
 harvest, which should have been the season of patient 
 
 * Boyle (Style of Holy Scripture) : " There is such fulness in that 
 hook, that oftentimes it says much hy saying nothing ; and not only 
 its expressions hut its silences are teaching, like a dial in whicli the 
 shadow as well as the light informs us." 
 
102 LECTURE VI. [1845. 
 
 sowing, of an earnest culture and a silent ripening of 
 their powers. 
 
 How pregnant with meaning may that be which ap- 
 pears at first sight only an accidental omission ! Such 
 an accidental omission it might at first sight appear 
 that the Prodigal, who while yet in a far country had 
 determined, among other things which he would say to 
 his father, to say, " Make me as one of thy hired ser- 
 vants," when he reaches his father's feet, when he hangs 
 on his father's neck, says all the rest which he had 
 determined, but says not this *. We might take this, at 
 first, for a fortuitous omission ; but indeed what deep 
 things are taught us here ! This desire to be made as 
 an hired servant, this wish to be kept at a certain dis- 
 tance, this refusal to reclaim the fulness of a child's 
 privileges, was the one turbid and troubled element in 
 his repentance. How instructive then its omission ; — 
 that, saying all else which he had meditated, he yet 
 says not this. What a lesson for every penitent, — in 
 other words, for every man. We may learn from this 
 wherein the true growth in faith and in humility con- 
 sists — how he that has grown in these can endure to 
 be fully and freely blest — to accept all, even when he 
 most strongly feels that he has forfeited all ; that only 
 pride and the surviving workings of self-righteousness 
 and evil stand in the way of a reclaiming of every 
 blessing, which the sinner had lost, but which God is 
 waiting and willing to restore. 
 
 Many other of the apparent accidents of Scripture, 
 on what deep grounds do they rest ! Thus, for example, 
 in the history of Pharaoh's trial, that God should ten 
 times be said to have hardened his heart, and he ten 
 
 * Compare in Luke xv. ver. 19 and 21. 
 
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 103 
 
 times to have hardened his own, or to have had it 
 hardened, without any reference to other than himself. 
 The least attentive reader will scarcely have failed to 
 observe this hardening- attributed sometimes to God, 
 and, sometimes, more or less directly, traced to the 
 king's own wilfulness and pride. But in the history 
 of that great strife between the will of God and the 
 will of his creature, in this the pattern history of that 
 struggle, such exactly equal distribution of the lan- 
 guage which assumes the freedom of man's will, and 
 that which assumes the ultimate lordship of God over 
 the course of the world — a lordship which even the 
 resistance of the wicked does not derange or impugn — 
 this exactly equal distribution of either language is 
 surely most remarkable. The great, however mysteri- 
 ous, fact of the freedom of man's will going hand in 
 hand with the sovereignty of God is not put in ques- 
 tion by an exclusive use of a language resting on or 
 assuming one of these truths or the other — nay rather, 
 exactly equal rights are given to them both ; for both 
 are true, both of paramount importance to be affirmed. 
 The sinner does harden his own heart ; his resistance 
 to God is most real : and yet there is a sense, a most 
 true sense also, in which God hardens it ; for, to use 
 the old distinction. He who is not the auctor is yet the 
 dispositor malorum — determines that the evil of the 
 sinner shall break out in this form or in that, works 
 even the dark threads of that resistance into the woof 
 of providence which He is weaving ; and as Solomon, 
 in Jewish legend, compelled the wicked spirits to assist 
 in the temple which he was building, so does God 
 compel even his enemies, and them, when they are 
 striving most fiercely against Him, to do his work, 
 
104 LECTURE VI. [1845. 
 
 though they mean not so, and to contribute their 
 stones to that heavenly temple of which He is the 
 builder and the maker. 
 
 Neither let us leave out of sight, when we are 
 taking into account the provision which Scripture 
 makes for nourishing the faithful in all the stages of 
 their spiritual life and growth, that infinite condescen- 
 sion, according to Avhich, like the prophet who made 
 himself small, that he might stretch himself, limb for 
 limb, upon the dead child, it, in some sort, contracts 
 itself to our littleness *, that we, in return, may become 
 able to expand ourselves to its greatness. We see 
 this gracious condescension in nothing more strongly 
 than in that teaching by parables and similitudes, 
 which there occupies so prominent a place. No one 
 turns away from them in pride, as too childish ; none 
 retreat from them in despair, as too high. In the 
 parable the Truth of God is not sought to be trans- 
 planted, as a full-grown tree, into our minds ; for, as 
 such, it would never take root and flourish ; we never 
 could find room for it there. But it comes first as a 
 seed, a germ — small to the small, but with capacities 
 of indefinite expansion ; it grows with our growth, 
 enlarging the mind which receives it to something of 
 its own dimensions. Little by little the image reveals 
 itself more fully ; some of its fitnesses are perceived at 
 once, and more and more, as spiritual insight advances ; 
 all of them perhaps never, lying as they do so deep, 
 and having their roots in the mind of God, who has 
 constituted this outward world to be an exponent of 
 the inner, a garment of mysterious texture which his 
 
 * Or as one said in the middle ages : Tota sacra Scriptura loqui- 
 tur nobis tanquam balbutiendo, sicut mater balbutiens cum filio suo 
 parvulo, qui alitor non potest intelligcre verba ejus. 
 
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 105 
 
 creative thoughts have woven for themselves. But 
 for this very reason, we come back again and again to 
 these divinely chosen similitudes with fresh interest, 
 with new delight, being continually rewarded with 
 glimpses, unperceived before, of the strange and mani- 
 fold relations, in which the visible and the invisible 
 stand to one another. 
 
 Thus, brethren, have I endeavoured to present to 
 you this day a few of the aspects under which this 
 Word of the Scripture may be contemplated as one 
 fitted evermore to provoke, and evermore to reward, 
 our enquiries. As one said of old, Hahet Scriptura 
 Sacra haustus primos, hahet secundos, hahet tertios. 
 There is, indeed, a tone and temper of spirit, in which 
 if we allow ourselves, all its wells will seem dry, and 
 all its fields barren. The superficial dealer with this 
 Word, he who reads, formally fulfilling an unwelcome 
 task, he who feels in no living relation with the things 
 which he reads, who consults the oracle, but expects 
 no living answer from its lips, who has never known 
 himself a pilgrim of eternity, to whom life has never, 
 like that fabled Sphinx, presented riddles which either 
 he must solve, or, not solving, must perish, — such an 
 one may say, as in his heart he will say. What is this 
 Word more than another ? It may bring to him no 
 other feelings but those of tedious monotony and in- 
 expressible weariness. But with the loving and earnest 
 seeker it will prove far otherwise : he will ever be 
 making new discoveries in these spiritual heavens; 
 ever to him will what seemed at first but a light 
 vaporous cloud, upon closer gaze, to his armed eye, 
 resolve itself into a world of stars. The further he 
 
106 LECTURE VI. [1845. 
 
 advances, the more will be aware that what lies before 
 him is far more than what lies behind — the readier 
 will he be to take up his hymn of praise and thanks- 
 o-iving, and to wonder with the Apostle at '' the depths 
 of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of 
 God" which are displayed at once in his works and in 
 his AVord. 
 
LECTURE VIL 
 
 THE FRUITFULNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 EzEKiEL XL VIL 9. 
 
 And it shall come to pass, that exery thing that liveth, which 
 moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live. 
 
 The aspect of my subject, which I desh-e this day to 
 bring under your notice is this, namely the fruitfulness 
 of Holy Scripture ; in other words the manner in which 
 is has shewn itself a germ of life in all the noblest 
 regions of man's activity ; has with its productive 
 energy impregnated the world ; and how, to use the 
 image suggested by my text, everything has lived 
 where these healing waters have come ; so that in this 
 way too this Word has attested itself that which in 
 my preceding lectures I have endeavoured to prove 
 that it was fitted for being, that which we might be- 
 forehand presume it would be, namely, the unfolder 
 of all the nobler and higher life of the world. And 
 these are considerations which will suit as well at a 
 period of these discourses, when they are drawing 
 nigh to their conclusion. For it were to little profit 
 to have shewn how the Scripture ought to have been 
 all this, how it was fitted for being all this, unless it 
 could be shewn also that it had been ; unless we could 
 point to the world's history in evidence that it had 
 done that, which we say it was adapted for doing. 
 '' The blind see, the lepers are cleansed, the dead are 
 raised ;" — it was to these mighty works that Christ 
 
108 LECTURE VII. [l«-t5. 
 
 appealed in answer to the question, "Art thou He that 
 shoukl come, or look we for another?" And this is 
 the true answer to every misgiving question of a like 
 kind. The real evidence for ought which comes claim- 
 ing to be from God, is its power — the power which it 
 is able to put forth for blessing and for healing. If 
 the Scriptures manifested no such power, all other 
 evidence for their divine origin, however convincing 
 we might think it ought to be, yet practically would 
 fiiil to convince. Men will not live on the report that 
 ought is great or true, unless they so see it and so 
 find it themselves. But if they do, no assertion on 
 the part of others that it is small, will prevail to make 
 them count light of it. For a moment the confident 
 assertions of gainsayers may perplex, or even seriously 
 injure, their faith: but presently it will resume its 
 hold and its empire again. 
 
 Thus it has been well and memorably said, that 
 the great and standing evidence for Christianity is 
 Christendom ; and it was with good reason, and out 
 of a true feeling of this, that Origen and other early 
 apologists of the Faith, albeit they had not such a 
 full-formed Christendom as we have to appeal to, did 
 yet, when the adversaries boasted of their Apollonius 
 and other such shadowy personages, and sought to set 
 them up as rivals and competitors with the Lord of 
 glory, make answer by demanding "What became of 
 these men ? what significance had they for the world's 
 after development? what have they bequeathed to shew 
 that they and their appearance lay deep in the mind 
 and counsel of God? what society did they found? 
 where is there a fellowship of living men gathered in 
 their name ? or where any mighty footmarks left upon 
 
THE FRUITFULNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 109 
 
 the earth to witness that greater than mortals have 
 trodden it ?" And the same answer is good, when it is 
 transferred to the books which at any time have made 
 ungromided claim to be divine records, and as such, to 
 stand upon a level Avith the Canonical Scriptures ; and 
 which sometimes even in our day are brought forward 
 in the hope of confounding the Canonical in a common 
 discredit with them. We in the same way may make 
 answer. Is there not a difference ? besides all other 
 condemnation under which they lie, besides the absence 
 of historic attestation, and the want of inward religious 
 meaning and aim, are they not self-condemned, in 
 their utter insignificance — in their barrenness — in the 
 entire oblivion into which they have fallen — in the 
 fact, in short, that nothing has come of them ? What 
 men have they moulded ? what stamp or impress have 
 they left of themselves upon the world? where is 
 there a society, or even a man, that appeals to them 
 or lives by them. 
 
 Thus, let any one acquainted with the apocryphal 
 gospels, compare them for an instant with the sacred 
 Four which we recognize and receive. It is not merely 
 that there is an inward difference between these and 
 those, which would be characterized not too strongly 
 as a difference like that which finds place between 
 stately forest-trees and the low tangled brushwood 
 which springs up under their shadow ; it is not merely 
 that those spurious gospels are evermore revolting to 
 the religious sense, abandoning earth without soaring 
 to heaven ; robbing the person of Christ of its human 
 features, without lending to it any tridy divine ; ever 
 mistaking size for greatness, and the monstrous for 
 the miraculous. It is not this only, but the contrast 
 
110 LECTURE VII. [1845. 
 
 is at least as remarkable in this respect, that while the 
 Canonical Gospels have been so fruitful, from those 
 other nothing has sprung : while the Canonical have 
 been as germs unfolding themselves endlessly ; winged 
 seeds endued with a vital energy, which, where they 
 have lighted, have taken root downward and sprung 
 upward ; those other might be likened to the chaff 
 borne about by the winds of chance, having no repro- 
 ductive powers ; owing their origin to obscure heretical 
 sects, never extricating themselves from those narrow 
 circles in which they first were born ; and, save only 
 as literary curiosities, with the perishing of those sects, 
 themselves perishing for ever. They have remained 
 as dry sticks, as the barren rods Avhich refused to 
 blossom, — and as such not to abide in the sanctuary. 
 (Numb, xvii.) But the Canonical Gospels have wit- 
 nessed for themselves, as did Aaron's rod, when it 
 budded and clothed itself with leaves and blossoms 
 and almonds. They too, blossoming and budding, 
 have borne witness to themselves, and to their right 
 to be laid up in the very Ark of the Testimony for 
 ever. For it is not the authority and decision of the 
 Church which has made the Canonical Gospels potent, 
 and the apocryphal impotent, those fruitful and these 
 sterile ; rather that decision is the formal acknowledg- 
 ment of a fact, which was a fact before ; a submission 
 to authority, to the authority of the Spirit witnessing 
 to and discerning that Word which is the Lord's ; this 
 rather than any exercising of authority. That decision 
 was the spiritual instinct of the Church recognizing 
 and setting her seal to a fact which was a fact before 
 —namely that these were false and those true ; she 
 distinguished thus the chaff from the corn, but it was 
 
THE FRUITFULNESS OF SCRIPTURE. Ill 
 
 not her decision which had any thing to do with 
 making these to be chaff and those wheat. 
 
 It is the task which I propose to myself to-day, to 
 consider a few aspects under which the Scriptures 
 have thus shewn themselves strong ; have approved 
 themselves quickeners of the spiritual and intellectual 
 life of men ; although here, in treating such a subject 
 as this, one is tempted, as more than once has been 
 my lot, to start back at the greatness of the theme, 
 the vastness of knowledge of all kinds which to handle 
 it worthily would require, the fragmentary nature of 
 ought which, even were the knowledge possessed, one 
 could hope within the limits of a single discourse to 
 present. As the matter however may not be past by, 
 I will seek to present to you one or two reflections, 
 in the hope that they may be only as the first thoughts 
 of a more fruitful series which your own minds will 
 suggest. 
 
 And perhaps one of the first which suggests itself 
 is this, namely, how productive the Holy Scriptures 
 have been, even in regions of inward life and activity, 
 where at first sight one would least have expected it, 
 where we should have been tempted for many reasons 
 to anticipate exactly opposite effects. How many 
 things Christianity might, at first sight, have threatened 
 to leave out, to take no note of, or indeed utterly to 
 suppress, which, so far from really warring against, it 
 has raised to higher perfection than ever in the old 
 world they had attained. With what despair, for ex- 
 ample, a lover of art, one who at Athens or at Eome 
 fondly had dwelt among the beautiful creations of 
 poet and of painter, would have contemplated the rise 
 of the new religion, and the authority which its doc- 
 
112 LECTURE VII. [1845. 
 
 trines were acquiring over the hearts and spirits of 
 men. What a death-knell must he have heard in this 
 to all in which his soul so greatly delighted. He might 
 have been ready perhaps to acknowledge that our 
 human life under this new teaching would be more 
 rio-orously earnest, more severe, more pure : but all 
 its grace and its beauty, all which it borrowed of these 
 from the outward world, he would have concluded, 
 had been laid under a ban, and must now vanish for 
 ever. This was evidently in great part the cause of 
 the unhappy Julian's mislike of the rising Faith — of 
 his alienation from it, as of that of many other hea- 
 thens like-minded with him. It is true, their hostility 
 lay much deeper than this ; that it grew out of a far 
 bitterer root. But this was evidently one of their 
 griefs against the doctrine of the Nazarene. They 
 could not consent to lose the grace and beauty of the 
 Hellenistic worship : all art seemed inextricably linked 
 and bound up with the forms of the old religion, and, 
 if that perished, inevitably doomed to perish with it : 
 and so they resisted while they could ; and when they 
 could resist no longer, they sat down and made pas- 
 sionate lamentation at the grave of the old world, 
 which all their lamentations could not call back to 
 life ; instead of rejoicing at the birth and by the 
 cradle of the new, with which indeed all the hojDCS of 
 the future were bound up. 
 
 And the Christian himself of those earliest ages 
 might almost have consented to take the same view — 
 even as we do find a Tertullian, and others of his 
 temper, actually doing : nor in this was he at all to be 
 wondered at, least of all did he deserve the sneers 
 with which the infidel historian of the later empire has 
 
THE FRUITFULNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 113 
 
 on this account visited him. His exaggerations were 
 only those into which a man of strong moral earnest- 
 ness might most naturally have fallen. So had all 
 skill and device of poet and of painter engaged then 
 in the service of the flesh, so did they do exclusive 
 homage to the old idolatries, so deeply polluted, for 
 the most part, were they, so far sunken with a sunken 
 moral world, that the Christian neophyte, when he 
 renounced in his baptismal vow all pomps of the devil, 
 might easily have deemed that these were certainly 
 included ; and that to forego them wholly and for 
 ever was his one duty, his only safety. 
 
 How little, at any rate, could one or the other, 
 could friend or foe of the nascent faith, have forecast 
 that out of it, that nourished by the Christian books, 
 by the great thoughts which Christ set stirring in 
 humanity, and of which these books kept a lasting 
 record, there should unfold itself a poetry infinitely 
 greater, an art infinitely higher, than any which the 
 old world had seen ; — that this faith, which looked so 
 rigid, so austere, even so forbidding, should clothe 
 itself in forms of grace and loveliness, such as men 
 had never dreamt of before ? that poetry should not 
 be henceforward the play of the spirit, but its holiest 
 earnest ; and those skilless Christian hymns, those 
 hymns '' to Christ as to God," of which Phny speaks, 
 so rude probably in regard of form, should yet be the 
 preludes of strains higher than the world had listened 
 to yet. Or who would have supposed that those art- 
 less paintings of the catacombs had the prophecy in 
 them of more wondrous compositions than men's eyes 
 had ever seen — or that a day should arrive when, above 
 many a dark vault and narrow crypt, where now the 
 
 T. H. L. 8 
 
114 LECTURE VIL [1845. 
 
 Christian worshippers gathered in secret, should arise 
 domes and cathedrals, embodying loftier ideas, because 
 ideas relating to the eternal and the infinite, than all 
 those Grecian temples, which now stood so fair and 
 so strong, but which yet aimed not to lift men's minds 
 from the earth which they adorned. 
 
 How little would the one or other, would Christian 
 or heathen, have presaged such a future as this — that 
 art was not to perish, but only to be purified and re- 
 deemed from the service of the flesh, and from what- 
 ever was clinging to and hindering it from realizing 
 its true glory, — and that this Book, which does not 
 talk about such matters, which does not make beauty, 
 but holiness, its end and aim — should yet be the truest 
 nourisher of all out of which any genuine art ever has 
 proceeded ; the truest fosterer of beauty, in that it is 
 the nourisher of the affections, the sustainer of the 
 relations between God and men ; which affections and 
 which relations are indeed the only root out of which 
 any poetry or art worthy of the name, ever have 
 sprung. For these affections being laid waste, those 
 relations being broken, art is first stricken with bar- 
 renness, and then in a little while withers and pines 
 and dies — as that ancient art, which had been so 
 fertile while faith survived, was, when the Church was 
 born, already withering and dying under the influence 
 of the scepticism, the profligacy, the decay of family 
 and national life, the extinction of religious faith, 
 which so eminently marked the time : only having a 
 name to live, resting merely on the traditions of an 
 earlier age, and on the eve of utter dissolution. Such 
 was its condition when Christ came, and cast in his 
 Word, as that Avhich should make all things new, 
 
THE FRTJITFULNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 115 
 
 into the midst of an old and decrepit and worn-out 
 world. 
 
 Yet here it may be as well to observe, that when 
 I use this language, it is not as assuming that the 
 Bible, merely as a book apart, had done, or could 
 have done, this, or ought else whereof presently there 
 may be occasion to sjieak — not as though the Book 
 had been cast into the world and had leavened it, 
 itself the sole and all-sufficient gift which Christ had 
 bequeathed unto men. Bather, the Spirit, the Word, 
 and the Church are the three mighty factors which 
 have wrought together for the great and glorious 
 issues of a Christendom such as that in the midst of 
 which we now stand. The Church, taught and enlight- 
 ened by the Spirit, vmfolds and lays out the Word, 
 and only as it is informed and quickened by that 
 blessed Spirit of God, can lay it out for the healing 
 of the nations. We cannot think of this Book by 
 itself doing the work, any more than we can think 
 of the Church doing it without this Book, or of the 
 two doing it together without the ever-present breath 
 of an Almighty Spirit. 
 
 But while this work is thus the result of a three- 
 fold energy ; while we can never, so long as we think 
 correctly, separate one of its factors, save for distinc- 
 tion's sake, from the others ; while, therefore, speaking 
 of the Scripture and what it has wrought, we must 
 ever conceive of it as in the possession of a living 
 body of interpreters, the company of the faithful, and 
 of them as enlightened by the Holy Spirit to use it 
 aright ; yet not the less may I ask you to contemplate 
 the mighty work of the world's regeneration in those 
 features upon which the influences of a Scripture are 
 
 8—2 
 
116 LECTURE VII. [1845. 
 
 mainly traceable, to note the part which this Scripture 
 has borne in bringing about that new creation, wherein 
 the old things of the world have past away, and all 
 things have become new. 
 
 For without running into the tempting error of 
 painting the old world black, for the purpose of bring- 
 ing out, as by a dark background, the brightness and 
 glory of the new ; without denying to that old world 
 what it had of noble and true, or caHing, as some have 
 done, its virtues merely shewy and splendid sins ; yet 
 it is not easy to estimate how much was to be done, 
 how much to be undone, ere a Christendom, even 
 such as we behold it now, could emerge out of that 
 world which alone yielded the materials out of which 
 the new creation should be composed. The Word of 
 the Cross had need, as a mighty leaven, to penetrate 
 through every interstice of society, leavening language, 
 and laws, and literature, and institutions, and manners. 
 For it was not merely that at that change the world 
 changed its religion, but in that change was implied 
 the transformation, little by little, of everything be- 
 sides ; everything else had need to reconstruct itself 
 afresh. And in this Word there resided a power 
 equal to this need. The pattern of Christ, kept in the 
 record of Scripture ever clear in all its distinctness of 
 outline before men's eyes, his w^ork thus ever repeat- 
 ing itself for them over again, has given, as we our- 
 selves see and feel, a new, inasmuch as it is an infinitely 
 higher, standard of ideal goodness to the world — has 
 cast down usurping pretenders to the name of virtues 
 from their seats, has lifted up despised graces in their 
 room. That Word has everywhere given to us graces 
 for virtues, and martyrs for heroes ; it has so reversed 
 
THE FRUITFULNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 117 
 
 men's estimate of greatness, that a wreath of thorns 
 is felt to be a far worthier ornament for a brow than 
 a diadem of jewels — a Christ upon his cross to be a 
 spectacle more glorious far than a Caesar on his throne. 
 
 From that Word too we have derived such a sense 
 of the duties of relation, of the debt of love which 
 every man owes to every other, as was altogether 
 strange to the heathen world. For when in that well- 
 known story the poet awoke shouts of a tumultous 
 applause by declaring nothing human alien from him- 
 self who was a man, deep as was the feeling in men's 
 hearts which was here appealed to, yet in those very 
 shouts of applause it was declared to be as new as it 
 was deep. In those was the joyful recognition of a 
 truth which lay deep in every man's bosom, but which 
 had not taken form or shape or found utterance until 
 then. Yet, with all our practical shortcomings in love 
 to our brethren, how different is the condition marked 
 by this little incident from ours, in which this noble 
 utterance of the Roman poet is felt to be so true as 
 hardly to escape from being a truism ; and the love 
 which men owe to one another on the score of their 
 common stock, is so taken for granted, and the idea 
 of it has so penetrated even into our common speech, 
 that kind and kinnecl, human and humane, are with us 
 but different pronunciations of the same words. 
 
 And at least as wonderful, at least as fruitful, is 
 the incoming of the Word of Christ, not into the 
 midst of an old and corrupt civilization, but when it 
 kindles for the first time a savage people into life. 
 Hovr does it seem to brood with a creative warmth 
 and energy over all the rudiments of an higher life, 
 which lay in that people's bosom, and yet but for this 
 
118 LECTURE VII. [1845. 
 
 never eould liiive come to the birth, rather were in 
 dano-er of utterly dying out. How does it arrest at 
 once that centrifugal progress of sin, which is ever 
 drawin"* the men or the nations that have wandered 
 out of the sphere of the divine attraction, further and 
 further from God, the true centre of their being. 
 Tribes which were in danger of letting go the last 
 remnant of their spiritual heritage, nay, of utterly and 
 literally perishing from the face of the earth, victims 
 of their own vices, and of that uttermost degradation, 
 which had caused them at length to let go even those 
 lowest arts by which animal existence is sustained, 
 even these that Word finds, even in these nurses up 
 the dying embers of life ; till the savage re-awakens 
 to the consciousness of a man, and the horde begins, 
 however feebly at first, to knit itself into the promise 
 of a nation. 
 
 There may be spectacles which attract us more, 
 there may be tidings to which we listen with a keener 
 interest, but surely there can be no tidings worthier 
 to be listened to, no spectacle upon which Angels look 
 down with a livelier sympathy, than those which such 
 a land and time will often present ; when, it may be, 
 some greybeard chief, stained in times past with a 
 thousand crimes, but now having washed away them 
 all in the waters of Baptism, hangs upon the words of 
 life, makes himself, perhaps, the humble and willing 
 scholar of some little child, that he may learn to read 
 with his own eyes of that Saviour who has pardoned 
 even him. And ever as he reads of " the gentleness 
 of Christ," of his prayers for his crucifiers, of Him 
 who, being first, made Himself the last, who, being 
 Lord of all, became servant of all, there dawns upon 
 
THE FRUITFULNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 119 
 
 him more and more the glory of meekness, of over- 
 coming evil with good, of serving others in love, instead 
 of being himself served in fear : and he understands 
 that this only is truly to live, and all which he has 
 lived contrary to this, has been not life, but an hideous 
 denial of life. Such sights other days have seen ; such 
 are to be seen in our own : for, blessed be God, it is 
 not our fathers only who have told us of such things 
 done in their times of old, but our own report the 
 same. We too " see our tokens." In New Zealand, 
 in far islands of the Pacific, we have proof that this 
 Word is yet mighty through God for casting down 
 the strongholds of Satan and of sin. 
 
 Nor needs it to look thus far abroad to be re- 
 minded of what this Word has done. The Scripture 
 itself is full of remembrancers of its own power. He 
 who, tolerably acquainted with the past history of the 
 Church, with the struggles which accompanied the 
 unfolding, fixing, and vindicating of her dogma, — he 
 who, furnished with this knowledge, passes over Scrip- 
 ture, may in some moods of his mind pass over it as 
 over a succession of battle-fields. He may be likened 
 to a traveller journeying through some land, which, 
 by the importance of its position or the greatness of 
 its attractions, has drawn contending hosts to its soil, 
 and been a battle-ground for innumerable generations. 
 Besides all in those pages which speaks more directly 
 to himself, they are eloquent to him with a thousand 
 stirring recollections. For at every step which he 
 advances, he recognizes that which has been the mo- 
 tive of some mighty and long drawn conflict, in which 
 the keenest and brightest intellects, the kingiiest 
 spirits, the Bernards and the Abelards of their day. 
 
120 LECTURE VII. [1845. 
 
 were engaged. Here, there, and everywhere, be it 
 that he wanders among the extinguished volcanoes of 
 controversies which have now burned themselves out, 
 or among those Avhich are flaming still, he meets with 
 that, to maintain their conviction about which, men 
 have been content to spend their lives, to make ship- 
 wreck of their worldly hopes, have dwelt in deserts, 
 in caves, and in dungeons, yea, gladly have encountered 
 all from which nature most, and most naturally, shrinks. 
 And whatever there may have been of earthly and of 
 carnal mingling in the motives of the combatants, 
 however in some of them he can recognize only the 
 champions of error, yet in these mighty and passionate 
 strivings, in these conflicts which generation has be- 
 queathed to generation, he reads the confession which 
 all past ages have borne, that this Word was worth 
 contending for, — being felt by those worthiest to 
 judge, dearer than life itself, and such that things 
 else were cheap by comparison with it. 
 
 Strange too, that even where there have not been 
 these stirring excitements, where there has been no 
 trumpet-peal sounding in men's ears, and summoning 
 them to do battle for some perilled truth, that even 
 here too, multitudes of men should have been well- 
 pleased to employ their lives in learning themselves 
 better to understand, in seeking to make others un- 
 derstand better, this one Book — should have counted 
 those lives worthily spent, and all other wisdom and 
 knowledge then only to have found their true meaning 
 and destination, when doing service as of handmaids 
 unto it. For vast as is the apparatus of helps of all 
 kinds which have accumulated round such other books 
 as are signal monuments of human intellect and power; 
 
THE FRUITFULNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 121 
 
 many as we find well satisfied to be nothing as inde- 
 pendent labourers in the fields of knowledge, content 
 to be only ministrant to the better understanding of 
 this author or that book ; yet are these taken alto- 
 gether few and insignificant beside those that have 
 thus felt in regard of the one Book with which we 
 have to do. Surely the spectacle of any great library, 
 and of the volumes there which stand in immediate 
 relation to this one^ with the certainty, that so long as 
 the world stands, they will go on accumulating and 
 multiplying, must to a thoughtful mind suggest many 
 meditations of what the meaning and significance of 
 that one must be, and the manner in which it must 
 set in motion the minds of men. Nor will he, in esti- 
 mating this, fail to call to mind that those which stand 
 in direct relation to that Volume, which bear upon the 
 front that they are thus connected with it, multitu- 
 dinous past all count as they seem, are yet but a small 
 fraction of those which owe to this one all which is 
 most characteristic in them — their impulse, their mo- 
 tive, their form, their spirit ; that all modern European 
 literature is there as in its germ ; that even the works 
 which seem to stand remotest from it, least to own a 
 fealty to it, do yet pay to it the unconscious, it may 
 be the unwilling, homage of being wholly different 
 from what they would have been, — had they indeed at 
 all existed,— without it. 
 
 Such, brethren, are a few aspects under which I 
 would ask you to consider how the Holy Scriptures 
 have justified themselves by the effects which they 
 have brought about, by the mighty deeds which they 
 have done ; shewing themselves seeds of life, leaven 
 
122 LECTURE VII. 
 
 of power in the world. And I should be untrue to 
 my position here, did I conclude without asking you 
 to make personal api^lication of the things which you 
 have heard to yourselves. This Word which has thus 
 been fruitful everywhere, which has supplied what was 
 lacking, and healed what was sick, and revived what 
 was ready to die, will it be less effectual in us, if only 
 we receive it aright ? This, w hich has made so much 
 else, like the dry rod of Aaron, to blossom and to bud, 
 will it not be as potent in our hearts, till they too are 
 clothed with foliage and fruits and flowers which are 
 not naturally their own ? Shall we say, " I am a dry 
 tree," when we might be as trees planted by rivers of 
 water, which should not fear the drought of the desert, 
 nor see when the heat cometh ? All things have lived 
 whithersoever these waters which issue from the sanc- 
 tuary have come. Shall not our hearts live also, until 
 we too have like reason with the Psalmist for prizing 
 these testimonies of God, even because with them He 
 has quickened us ? 
 
LECTURE VIIL 
 
 THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Revelation VI. 2. 
 Conquering and to conqtier. 
 
 An earlier lecture in this present course was dedicated 
 to the manner in which Holy Scripture had, little by 
 little, laid bare its treasures to the Church ; and in 
 my very latest I had occasion to speak of the victories 
 which the Truth had won and was winning still — the 
 way in which the word of the Scripture was vindi- 
 cating itself to be all that it claimed to be, shewing 
 itself mighty, through God, for doing its appointed 
 work; how, like the personal Word, it had ridden 
 forth, and was riding yet, a victorious conqueror over 
 the earth. It remains to consider, and with this con- 
 sideration we shall fitly conclude our subject, in what 
 way it is likely to approve itself a conqueror to the 
 end ; what preparations we can trace in it for meet- 
 ing the future evils of the world, the future needs of 
 the Church ; how far we may suppose that this Book, 
 which has revealed so much, may yet have much more 
 to reveal. 
 
 And this is our confidence, that as the Scripture 
 has sufficed for the past, so also it Avill suffice for the 
 time to come ; that it has resources adequate to meet 
 all demands which may be made on it ; that it has in 
 reserve whatsoever any new conditions of the world, 
 
124 LECTURE VIII. [1845. 
 
 any new shapes of evil, — any new, if they be righteous, 
 cravings of the spirits of men, — may require. We 
 believe that as the Scripture is an armoury in which 
 the Church Jias found weapons for all past conflicts, so 
 will it find them there for all which are yet to come — 
 conflicts which, it may be, we as little forecast or 
 dream of now, as we do of the weapons which are 
 ready wrought in this armoury for bringing them to 
 a glorious termination ; and the weapons too them- 
 selves being oftentimes such, that they who were by 
 God employed to forge them, while they knew that 
 they would serve present needs, yet hardly knew, 
 perhaps knew not at all, what remote purposes they 
 should also serve, to what great ulterior purposes they 
 should one day be turned. Yet thus, no doubt, it shall 
 be : for just as in works of man's mind, talent knows all 
 which it means, but genius, which is nearer akin to 
 inspiration, means much more than it consciously 
 knows ; even so wise men and projDhets and evan- 
 gelists, who were used for the uttering of this Word, 
 knowing much of that which they spake and recorded, 
 yet meant still more than they knew — the Holy Ghost 
 guiding and shaping their utterances, and causing 
 them oftentimes to declare deeper things, and things 
 of wider reach and of more manifold utility, than even 
 they themselves, enlarged and enlightened by that 
 SjDirit as they were, were conscious of the while. 
 That which they spake being central Truth, presented 
 a front, not merely to the lies of their day, not merely 
 to the falsehood which they distinctly had in their 
 mind to encounter, but presents a front to every 
 later lie as well; and so we have entire confidence 
 that the Truth being ever, in the language of Bacon, 
 
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 125 
 
 " ai\ hill not to be commanded," the same those 
 Scriptures, which are Scriptures of very truth, shall 
 shew themselves — aX hill which shall never be com- 
 manded, but which rather shall itself command all 
 other heights and eminences of the spiritual and in- 
 tellectual world. However high these tower, this 
 AVord will always have heights which tower above 
 them all ; judging all things, it will be judged of 
 none; itself the measure of all, no other thing will 
 bring a measure unto it. 
 
 We can indeed guess but uncertainly what may 
 be the future unrolling of the world's history — what 
 antichristian forms of society may rise up, promising 
 good, for the moment seeming to keep their promise, 
 consecrating the flesh, breaking down the walls of 
 separation between the holy and the profane, making 
 all profane while they pretend to make all holy — 
 what master-works of Satan, his latest and crowning 
 forms of opposition to the Truth. Or, again, we can 
 only uncertainly apprehend what heresies may appear, 
 subtler and more attractive even than any Avhich the 
 world has yet beheld — coming with greater semblance 
 of holiness, and well-nigh causing even the elect to 
 fail. But our reliance in this Word and the revela- 
 tion of the Name of God which is there, is this, that 
 out of it the Church will be able to refute those 
 heresies — by the help of its warnings and intimations 
 to detect and to defy the attractions of Antichrist, 
 even when he comes with all the lying wonders, and 
 in all the false glory, of his kingdom. 
 
 For while it is hard for us to say what may be the 
 exact forms of those future evils, while we cannot 
 discern accurately beforehand the lineaments and 
 
126 LECTURE VIII. [1845. 
 
 proportions of these latest monstrous shapes which 
 shall ascend from the pit, — as neither would this fore- 
 knowledge profit us much ; — yet the hints which in 
 God's prophetic word we have, the course of the 
 mystery of iniquity as it is already working, seem 
 alike to point to this, that as there has been an aping 
 of the monarchy of the Father, in the absolute des- 
 potisms of the world, an aping of the economy of the 
 Son, as though he already sat visibly on his throne, 
 in its spiritual despotisms, and eminently in that of 
 Rome ; so there remains yet for the world, as the 
 crowning delusion, a lying imitation of the kingdom 
 and dispensation of the Spirit — such as in the lawless 
 Communist sects of the middle ages, in the Familists 
 of a later day, in the St. Simonians of our own, has 
 attempted to come to the birth, though in each case 
 the world was not ripe for it yet, and the thing 
 was withdrawn for a time. Yet doubtless only for a 
 time ; to reappear in an after hour- — full of false free- 
 dom, full of the promise of bringing all things into 
 one ; making Avar on the family, as something which 
 separates between man and man, breaking down and 
 obliterating all distinctions, the distinctions between 
 nation and nation, between the man and the woman, 
 between the flesh and the Spirit, between the 
 Church and the world. So seems it ; and when we 
 translate St. Paul's words, with which he characterizes 
 the final Antichrist, as though he had simply called 
 him "that wicked one'''," we lose a confirmation of 
 this view which his words more accurately rendered 
 would have given us. He is not simply the wicked 
 one, but o ai/o/xo?, the lawless one ; and the mystery is 
 * 2 Thess. ii. 8. 
 
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 127 
 
 not merely a mystery of iniquity but of lawlessness 
 (dvo/uia^). Law, in all its manifestations, is that which 
 he shall rage against, making hideous misapplication 
 of that great truth, that where the Spirit is, there is 
 liberty. 
 
 Then, when this shall have come to pass, then at 
 length the great anti-trinity of hell, the dragon, the 
 beast, and the false prophet, will have been fully 
 revealed in all deceivableness of unrighteousness ; — 
 and yet not so mighty to deceive, but that the Church 
 of the redeemed, armed and forewarned by this 
 Word of God, shall see in all this, only what it looked 
 to see, only what it had been taught to expect ; and 
 in the might of the counter-truth, in the confes- 
 sion of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, 
 shall be saved even in its weakest and simplest mem- 
 ber, from that strong delusion, which shall be too 
 much for every one besides. 
 
 And in thus speaking of Holy Scripture, I am but 
 expressing a confidence which those who have searched 
 the deepest into it have oftentimes expressed. Thus, 
 to take but one name and another out of the noble 
 catalogue of English worthies, Eobert Boyle expresses 
 himself thus : " I consider here that as the Bible was 
 not written for any one particular time or people, but 
 for the whole Church militant diffused through all 
 nations and ages, so there are many passages very 
 useful, which will not be found so these many ages ; 
 being possibly reserved by the prophetic Spirit that 
 indited them, (and whose omniscience comprises and 
 unites in one prospect all times and all events,) to 
 quell some future foreseen heresy, which will not, 
 perhaps, be born till we be dead, or resolve some 
 
128 LECTURE VIII. [1845. 
 
 vet unformed doubts, or confound some error that 
 hath not yet a name." And Bishop Butler uses lan- 
 jruao-e well nich the same : " Nor is it," he says, " at 
 all incredible that a Book which has been so long in 
 the possession of mankind should yet contain many 
 truths as yet undiscovered. For all the same pheno- 
 mena and the same faculties of investigation from 
 which such great discoveries in natural knowledge 
 have been made in the present and last age, were 
 equally in the possession of mankind several thousand 
 years before. And possibly it might be intended 
 that events as they came to pass, should open and 
 ascertain the meaning of several parts of Scripture." 
 
 But, besides these mighty mischiefs which may 
 hereafter arise, of which we can at most discern now 
 only the dim beginnings, the obscure foreshadowings, 
 there are also others which have already taken form 
 and shape — some of them such as have stood strong 
 and in the main unshaken for thousands of years ; 
 which yet we believe, which indeed yet we know, shall 
 one day be overthrown by the greater power and 
 prevalence of the Truth. For we are sure that the 
 religion of Christ is as the rod of Moses, which did in 
 the end swallow up every rod of the magicians — that 
 the Church shall possess the earth — that "the field" 
 in which the Son of Man sows his seed is not this 
 land or that land, but " the world." And anticipating, 
 or to speak more truly, being sure of this, it may not 
 l^e unbecoming to see if we can at all discern in 
 Scripture the preparations which have been there made, 
 and the might which is there slumbering, against each 
 of those closer conflicts, which the Church, by its 
 help, must one day wage with those forms of untruth 
 
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 129 
 
 and error. Such enqiiir}^ will, at any rate, not be 
 foreign to our subject ; for that subject being the fit- 
 ness of Holy Scripture for unfolding the spiritual life 
 of men, a great part of that fitness must lie in its 
 capacity to meet and overcome each deadlier form of 
 superstition and error, which, under one name or an- 
 other, cramps and confines, or wholly hinders, the true 
 development of the spirits of men. 
 
 How profitable were it, in regard of the more 
 effectual conducting of Christian missions, to be more 
 conscious than generally we seek to be, of what is our 
 peculiar strength, and what the peculiar weakness of 
 each of those systems of error, which we seek, in love 
 to the souls which are made prisoners by it, to over- 
 throw ; — so that we should not blindly run a tilt against 
 it, with no other preparation save a confidence in the 
 goodness of our cause, but with wisdom and insight 
 assail it there, where there were best hope of assailing 
 with success. For every one of these, while their 
 strength is in that fragment of Truth, which, however 
 maimed and marred, with whatever contradictions and 
 under whatever disguises, they hold, have also emi- 
 nently their weak side, that on which they signally 
 deny some great Truth which the spirit of man craves, 
 which the Scriptures of God affirm — a side, therefore, 
 on which if assailed, they must sooner or later perish, 
 or rather will not always continue at strife with their 
 own blessedness. To know this, and to know also 
 what engines out of the divine armoury ought to be 
 especially advanced against each of these strongholds 
 of confusion, to know not merely that we are strong* 
 and they weak, but where and why strong in regard 
 of each, and where and why they are weak ; this is 
 
 T. H. L. 9 
 
130 LECTURE VIII. [1845. 
 
 surely a needful, as it is a much-neglected, discipline; 
 this is a duty not indolently to be forgone by a 
 Church like our own, a Church Avhicli God's providence 
 and leading has so clearly marked out to do the work 
 of an Evangelist on vast continents and in far islands 
 of the sea. 
 
 To give such a training as this, was no doubt the 
 meaning and purpose of the catechetical schools of 
 Alexandria, so famous through all Christian antiquity ; 
 they were instituted to afford the highest culture to 
 the evangelist, to give him the fullest understanding 
 of what he was to oppose, and how he was to do it. 
 And such an insight as this, could we have it clear, 
 into Scripture and its adaptation for overcoming each 
 shape of falsehood, how would it make us workmen 
 that did not need to be ashamed. How would it 
 enable us at once, and without beating the air, to ad- 
 dress ourselves to the points really at issue between 
 us on one side, and Jews, Mohammedans, and infidels, 
 on the other. For the Truth which is still the same, 
 which might not give up one jot or tittle of itself, 
 though it had with this the certainty of winning a 
 world, may yet of infinite love continually change its 
 voice, and present itself ever differently, according to 
 the different necessities of those whom it would fain 
 make its own. 
 
 And on the other hand, we address ourselves but 
 in a slight and inefficient manner to our work, when, 
 without discrimination, without acquaintance with those 
 systems which hold souls in bondage, which hinder 
 them from coming to the light of life, we have but one 
 method with them all — one language in which to de- 
 scribe them all — one common charge of belonging to 
 
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 131 
 
 the devil on which to arraign them ; instead of recog- 
 nizing, as we ought, that each province of the dark 
 kingdom of error is different from every other; instead 
 of seeing that it is not a He which can ever make any 
 thing strong — that it is not certainly their lie which 
 has made them strong, and enabled them to stand 
 their ground so long, and some of them, saddest of 
 all ! to win ground for a while from Christendom 
 itself; but the truth which that lie perverts and denies. 
 Handling them in that other way, we turn but to little 
 advantage that manifold Word of wisdom with which 
 God has enriched his Church, and which, containing 
 as it does its own special antidote for every error, 
 would allow, and indeed demands, a much more special 
 dealing with each, and one which would get much 
 more nearly to the heart of the matter. 
 
 Thus, the Mohammedan is strong in that he affirms 
 God to be distinct from the creature, so that he may 
 not without blasphemy be confused with it — a jealous 
 God, who will not give his glory to another. In the 
 might of this faith, in the conviction that God had 
 raised him up to assert this truth in the face of all 
 who were forgetting it, he overran half a world. But 
 he is weak, and the moon of Islam, as it has waxed, 
 so will it wane before the Sun of Righteousness, inas- 
 much as he makes the gulf which divides God and 
 man to be a gulf which can never be bridged over, an 
 impassable chasm, fixed for eternity ; he is weak, 
 because he knows not, and will not know, of one, the 
 Son of Mary, the Son of God, in whom the human 
 and divine were not confounded, nor lost one in the 
 other, but united. He does not satisfy the longings 
 of the human race, which was made for this union as 
 
 )J — 2 
 
132 LECTURE VIIL [1845. 
 
 its highest end and crowning perfection, which will be 
 satisfied with nothing short of this ; and therefore we 
 are sure that the day will come, however little we may 
 as yet discern its signs, when the fiery sword of Mo- 
 hammed will grow pale before the ever- brightening 
 lustre of the cross of the Son of Man ; when the Scrip- 
 tures will shew themselves over all the dark places of 
 the earth mightier than the Koran. AVe are sure of 
 this, because those Scriptures maintain all which is 
 there of truth — are as jealous and more jealous of the 
 incommunicable name of God, — say, and say far more 
 clearly, Our God is one God ; but in addition to this, 
 affirm that which is there denied, but which the spirit 
 of man will never rest till it has found and known, a 
 Son of God, and him also the Son of Man. 
 
 The Indian religions, — they too are not without 
 their elements of an obscured truth — and in this 
 mainly, that they declare it to be most worthy of 
 God to reveal Himself as man — that this is the only 
 true revelation of Him, that an incarnation is the 
 fittest outcoming of the glory of God. But, not to 
 urge that what they have to tell of such matters are 
 only dreams of men, and not facts of God — besides 
 this, they are comparatively worthless, in that they do 
 not concentrate and gather up this revelation of God 
 in one incarnation, but lose and scatter it through 
 unnumbered. For while one incarnation is precious, 
 a thousand are worth nothing ; they become mere 
 transient points of contact between God and man, 
 momentary docetic apparitions of the divine under 
 human forms. And the books which are the records 
 of these, and the religion which rests on those books, 
 must give way before that Book, which can say in 
 
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 133 
 
 holiest, yet soberest, earnest, '' The Word was made 
 flesh" — and which knows not merely of an Incarna- 
 tion, but of a Resurrection and an Ascension, in which 
 the Son of God made manifest that he had wedded 
 the humanity for ever, that he had not come merely 
 into transient relation with it, but had made it his 
 own for eternity ; sitting down in it on the right hand 
 of the Majesty on high. 
 
 And that other later birth of Hindooism, that other 
 vast system of further Asia, which we are continually 
 perplexed whether to call it a pantheism, or a gigantic 
 atheism, that which in the end loses everything in 
 God, and makes absorption in Him the ultimate end 
 of being, that too begins with fairer promises. For 
 it starts with that which is so deeply true, that in God 
 we live and move and have our being — that as man 
 came from God, so he must return to God — that 
 there is but one Spirit which moves through all things. 
 But then, refusing to know caught but the Spirit, re- cC 
 fusing to know the Father and the Son from whom 
 that Spirit proceeds, so neither can it save its votaries 
 from that gulf wherein all things, and man the first, 
 are annihilated in an abysmal deep, which is not the 
 less dreadful, because it calls itself God ; that gulf 
 which is ever yawning for every nobler and deeper 
 speculator in theology, who has not the mystery of 
 the ever-blessed Trinity, three Persons and one God, 
 for his safeguard and his stay, — an ever-abiding wit- 
 ness to him for the distinctness of personal being. 
 And we are sure that neither will this system stand 
 before that Word which affirms, and only with far 
 higher clearness, that " God is a Spirit ; " but afiirms 
 also, that '' there are three that bear record in heaven, 
 
134 LECTURE VIII. [1845. 
 
 the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost;" without 
 which that other truth is only as a noble river pre- 
 sently to lose itself among the sands. 
 
 These, brethren, are the great rival religions to 
 Christianity, which yet contend with it for the pos- 
 session of the world — each of them, as you see, pre- 
 senting points of contact for the absolute Truth ; and 
 at the same time all presenting points of weakness — 
 sides upon Avhich they dumbly crave to be fulfilled by 
 this Truth, even while they are striving the most 
 fiercely against it ; the Truth in Holy Scripture being 
 at once the antagonist and the complement of them 
 all. 
 
 Nor may I not observe that any other dealing 
 with them than this, which, even while it wars against 
 them, welcomes and honours the wreck and fragment 
 of Truth which they still may retain — any ruder and 
 less discriminating assault on that which men have 
 hitherto believed, and which, however mixed up with 
 falsehood and fraud, has yet been all whereby they 
 have holden on to an higher world, — any such attack, 
 even when it seems most successful, may be full of the 
 utmost peril for them whom we thus coarsely seek to 
 benefit, and with these unskilful hands to deliver. For, 
 indeed, there is no office more delicate, no task need- 
 ing greater wisdom and patience and love, than to set 
 men free from their superstitions, and yet, with this, 
 not to lay waste in their hearts the very soil in which 
 the Truth should strike its roots — to disentangle the 
 tree from the ivy which was strangling it, without, in 
 the process and together with the strangling ivy, de- 
 stroying also the very life of the tree itself, which we 
 designed to save. Where this process of men's extri- 
 
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 135 
 
 cation from error has been rudely or unwisely carried 
 out, either by their own fault or that of others, where 
 they have been urged to rise up in scorn, and to 
 trample upon their past selves, and all that in time 
 past they have held in honour, how mournful fre- 
 quently the final issue ! Thus, how unable do we often 
 prove to retain the converts from Eomanism which we 
 have won. They do not return to that which they 
 have left, but they pass on, they pass through the 
 Truth into error on the other side. They pass from 
 darkness into the sunlight, and that sunlight scarcely 
 gilds and brightens them for an instant, ere they glide 
 into another and thicker darkness again ; scarcely are 
 they in the secure haven a moment, ere they put 
 forth, as though incapable of enjoying its repose, among 
 the shoals and eddies once more. 
 
 And so too the Hindoo children in our Indian 
 schools, when we have gathered them there, and shewn 
 them in the light of modern philosophy, the utter 
 absurdity and incoherence of their sacred books, and 
 provoked them to throw uttermost scorn on these, we 
 yet may not have brought them even into the vesti- 
 bule of the Faith, rather may have set them at a 
 greater distance than ever ; for to have taught them 
 to pour contempt on all with which hitherto they have 
 linked feelings of sacredness and awe, is but a ques- 
 tionable preparation for making them humble and 
 reverent scholars of Christ. Wiser surely was St. 
 Paul's method, who ever sought a ground common to 
 himself and him whom he would persuade, though it 
 were but an handbreadth, upon which to take his 
 stand — who taught men reverently to handle their 
 past selves and their past beliefs, — who to the Athe- 
 
136 LECTURE VIII. [1845. 
 
 nians said, " Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, 
 Him dechxre I unto you," and spake of the Cretan 
 poet as "a prophet of their own;" who re-adopted 
 into the fiimily of the Truth its lost and wandering 
 chikh'en, however they miglit have forgotten their true 
 descent, in whatever far land, under whatever unlikely 
 disguises, he found them. Thus, and because he thus 
 dealt, he became, in the language of a Greek father, 
 Avhich contains scarcely an exaggeration, the vv/ncpa- 
 y coy OS Trj^ oiKov(xei/rj^, he who led up the world as a 
 bride unto Christ. 
 
 But I must draw my subject to an end, and with 
 a few general remarks on the aim and scope of what 
 here I have been permitted to deliver, will conclude. 
 My purpose has been, as I trust even they may have 
 gathered who have heard but a part, and that the 
 latest, of these discourses, to bring out an inner wit- 
 ness for Scripture from that which, to an earnest and 
 devout examination, it shews itself as fitted for doing — 
 from that which it has already done — from that which 
 we may believe it will accomplish yet. And this sub- 
 ject I have chosen out of those which were before me, 
 because truly there is great strength and comfort and 
 assurance for us in these evidences for the things 
 that we have believed, which are drawn, not from 
 without, but from within — from their inner glory, 
 their manifest fitness. Thus, for example, if gainsa3^ers 
 at any time should adduce apparent disagreements 
 between one Gospel or one book of history and an- 
 other, as between Matthew and Luke, Chronicles and 
 Kings, and seek to trouble and perplex us with these, 
 surely the true way to meet them were to bring first 
 
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 137 
 
 the whole question into an higher court. Let us put 
 rather the question to be resolved as this, In what 
 traceable connexion do these books, each by itself, 
 each in relation to the whole of the other books, stand 
 to the great purpose of God with humanity ? Can 
 they be shewn evidently to form integral parts of a 
 mightier whole ? Do they reveal the Name of God ? 
 Do they yield their nourishment for the divine life of 
 man ? Have they yielded such for our own ? 
 
 And then — not indeed to refuse entering into 
 those lower and merely critical questions of detail ; 
 but if it has been found that the book satisfies higher 
 needs, fulfils loftier requirements — claiming for it on 
 the score of this, the entire, the trustful confidence of 
 faith, that it will justify itself in all lesser matters, 
 that it will come out as clear and clean in them, as in 
 its greater purpose and aim. Here too that word Avill 
 hold good, " He that believeth shall not make haste." 
 He will be content to wait. For w^hat Aveakness does 
 it manifest, what inner mistrust of the things which 
 we Imve believed, how feebly must we hold them, 
 how little can they have blest us, when we raise a cry 
 of fear at any new and startling results to which 
 science or criticism may have, or may seem to have, 
 arrived. These too will presently be shewn what they 
 are ; if true, they will fall into their place, and that 
 place a place of subjection to revealed Truth : if false, 
 however noisy now, however threatening to carry the 
 world before them, will vanish away in a little while. 
 But to dread anything, to wish that anything which 
 has been patiently sought or honestly won, should be 
 ignored or kept back, betrays an extreme weakness ; 
 Christ has not laid his hand on us with power, or we 
 
138 LECTURE VIII. [1845. 
 
 should not be so easily persuaded to believe his cause 
 tottering, or his Truth endangered. 
 d And, indeed, as regards ^ught which may be 
 brought forAvard with purposes hostile to the Faith, may 
 not the past well give us confidence for the future? One 
 and another adversary has risen up ; for what has not 
 the world beheld in this kind ? Essays on the Miracles, 
 Ages of Reason, Lives of Jesus, Theories of Creation. 
 And then, in the first deceitful flush of a momentary 
 success, oftentimes the cry has gone forth. It is finished; 
 and the fortress of the Faith is held to be so fatally 
 breached, as henceforward to be untenable, and its 
 defenders to have nothing more to do than to lay 
 down their arms, and surrender at discretion. And 
 already those that dwell upon the earth begin to make 
 merry over the slain witnesses ; and already the new 
 Diocletians rear their trophies and stamp their medals, 
 the memorials of an extinguished Faith — they them- 
 selves being about to perish for ever, and that Faith 
 to go forward to new victories. For anon the floods 
 retreat ; and temple and tower of God, round whose 
 bases those waters raged and foamed and fretted for 
 an instant, stand calmly and strongly as ever they did 
 before. We too some of us have heard, and probably 
 we shall hear again, such premature hymns of an 
 imaginary triumph. And when such are confidently 
 raised, the unstable are perplexed, and the waverers 
 fall off, and seeds of doubt, to be reaped in an harvest 
 of weakness, are sown in many minds. But let us, 
 brethren, have a sanctuary to retreat to, till each such 
 tyranny is overpast, as overpass it surely and shortly 
 willi^. Let us have that immediate syllogism of the 
 heart, against which no argument is good. Let us be 
 
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 189 
 
 able to say, These words, we have found them words 
 of healing, words of eternal life. This is our sole 
 security — to have tasted the good Word, to have 
 known the powers of the world to come. And what 
 if Theology may not be able, on the instant, to solve 
 every difficulty, yet Faith will not therefore abandon 
 one jot or tittle of that which she holds, for she has 
 it on another and a surer tenure, she holds it directly 
 from her God. 
 
 THE END OF THE LECTURES 
 FOR 1845. 
 
(ft. <f : Zu-i^tiu 
 
 CHRIST THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS, 
 
 OE, THE UNCONSCIOUS PEOPHECIES 
 
 OF HEATHENDOM: 
 
 BEING 
 
 THE HULSEAN LECTURES 
 
 FOR THE YEAR M.DCCC.XLVI. 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 
 
 Haggai II. 7. 
 The Desire of all nations shall come. 
 
 Although the Founder of these Lectures, which it is 
 permitted me a second time to deliver in this place, 
 did by no means offer a narrow range of subjects, 
 from which the preacher should make his choice, but, 
 on the contrary, so expressed himself, that it would 
 be quite possible to adhere to the letter of his injunc- 
 tions, and still, at the same time, altogether to quit 
 the region of Christian apology ; yet I cannot but 
 believe that in so doing I should be forsaking the 
 spirit of those injunctions, and hardly fulfilling the 
 intentions with which these Lectures were founded 
 by him. Those who have gone before me in this 
 honourable office, arguing, probably, from the sub- 
 jects which he has placed in the foremost rank ; from 
 the purpose which kindred foundations, by him esta- 
 blished among us, were evidently meant to serve ; 
 from the esj)ecial importance attached by good men 
 in the age wherein he lived, to such defences of our 
 holy faith, have generally concluded that they should 
 best be fulfilling his intention, to which they felt a 
 pious reverence was due, if they undertook the main- 
 tenance of some portion of the truth, which had been 
 especially assailed or gainsayed. Nor do I purpose, 
 on the present occasion, to depart from the practice 
 
144 LECTURE I. .. [1846. 
 
 which the example of my predecessors has sanctioned; 
 having rather chosen for my argmiient a subject re- 
 commending itself to me, first, by a certain suitable- 
 ness, as I trust Avill appear, to our present needs, and 
 to controversies of our day, such as are approaching, 
 if we are not actually in the midst of them as yet ; 
 and secondly, by an evident bearing which it has upon 
 one of the two great branches of study cultivated 
 among us in this University. Christ the Desh^e of all 
 Nations, or, The Unconscious Prophecies of Heathendom 
 — such appears to me the title which will best gather 
 up and present at a single glance to you the subject, 
 which it will be my aim in the following discourses, if 
 God will, under successive aspects to unfold. 
 
 Leaving aside, as not belonging to my argument, 
 what there was of positive divinely constituted prepa- 
 ration for the coming of Christ in the Jewish economy, 
 I shall make it my task to trace what in my narrow 
 limits I may, of the implicit expectations which there 
 were in the heathen world — to contemplate, at least 
 under a few leading aspects, the yearnings of the 
 nations for a redeemer, and for all which the true 
 Redeemer only could give, — for the great facts of his 
 life, for the great truths of his teaching. Nor may 
 this be all : for this, however interesting in itself, 
 would yet scarcely come under the title of Christian 
 apology ; of which the idea is, that it is not merely 
 the truth, but the truth asserting itself in the face of 
 error. It will therefore be my endeavour further to 
 rescue these dim prophetic anticipations of the hea- 
 then Avorld from the abuse which has sometimes been 
 made of them, to shew that these dreams of the world, 
 so far from helping to persuade us that all which we 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 145 
 
 hold is a dream likewise, are rather exactly that which 
 ought to have preceded the world's awaking : that 
 these parhelions do not proclaim everything else to 
 be an optical illusion, but announce, and witness for, 
 a sun that is travelling into sight; that these false 
 ancilia of man's forging, tell of a true which has in- 
 deed come down from heaven. I would fain shew 
 that there ought to have been these ; the transcend- 
 ing worth and dignity of the Christian revelation not 
 being diminished by their existence, but rather en- 
 hanced ; for its glory lies, not in its having relation 
 to nothing which went before itself, but rather in its 
 having relation to every thing, in its being the middle 
 point to which all lines, some consciously, more un- 
 consciously, were tending, and in which all centered 
 at the last. 
 
 And this it is worth our while to shew : for we do 
 not here, as the charge has sometimes been made 
 against us, first set up the opponent, — whom we after- 
 wards easily overthrow, for he was but the phantom 
 of our own brain. On the contrary, it has been at 
 divers times from the very first, and is in our own 
 day, a part, and a favourite part, of their tactics who 
 would resist the Faith, to endeavour to rob it of its 
 significance as the great epoch in the world's history, 
 by the production of anterior parallels to it. 
 
 These may be parallels to its doctrines and ethical 
 precepts ; and they are brought forward with the pur- 
 pose of shewing that it is therefore no such wisdom 
 of God, no such mystery that had been kept secret 
 from the beginning of the world ; that what it pro- 
 fessed to give as a revelation from heaven, men had 
 attained before by the light of reason, by the unas- 
 
 T. H. L. 10 
 
U6 LECTURE I. , [1846. 
 
 sistecl efforts of their own minds. The attempts to 
 rob Christianity in this way of its significance are, as 
 I observed, not new. If such objections have been 
 zealously urged in modern times, they belong also to 
 the very earliest. To take two examples, one old, one 
 new. Celsus, in the second century, quoting words 
 of our blessed Lord's, in which he exhorts to the for- 
 giveness of enemies, remarks that he has found the 
 identical precept in Plato, — with only the difference, 
 as he dares to add, that it is by the Grecian sage 
 better and more elegantly spoken'''. And Gibbon, 
 having occasion to speak of one of Christ's most me- 
 morable moral precepts, " Whatsoever ye would that 
 men should do to you, do ye even so to them," cannot 
 resist the temptation of adding — " a rule which I read 
 in a moral treatise of Isocrates four hundred years 
 before the publication of the Gospel." And in like 
 manner we all probably remember, if not the contents, 
 yet the title which the book of an English deist bore, 
 one of the ablest of that unhappy band, " Christianity 
 as old as the Creation;" a book which by that title at 
 
 * Origen, Con. Cels., 1. 7, c. 58. In like manner Celsus affirmed 
 that our. Lord's words, Matt. xix. 23. were transferred from Plato, 
 De Legg, 1. 5. 742. {Con. Cels., 1. 6. c. 16.) Augustine too (De Doctr. 
 Christ, 1.2, c. 28) makes mention of some in his own time, readers 
 and lovers of Plato, — qui dicere ausi sunt omnes Domini nostri Jesu 
 Christi sententias, quas mirari et prsedicare coguntur, de Platonis 
 libris eum didicisse. St. Ambrose also, as we learn from Augustine, 
 (£■/). 31,) had found it necessary to write against such; which he did 
 in a work that now has perished. How excellent is Augustine's own 
 answer {Enarr. in Fs cxl. 6) : Dixit hoc Pythagoras, dixit hoc Plato 
 
 Proptcrea si inventus fuerit aliquis eorum hoc dixisse quod dixit 
 
 et Christus, gratulamur illi, non sequimur ilium. Sed prior fuit ille 
 quam Christus. Si quis vera loquitur, prior est quam ipsa Veritas ? 
 O homo, attcnde Christum non quando ad te vencrit, sed quando te 
 fecerit . 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 147 
 
 once indicated the quarter from which its author ad- 
 vanced to the assault of revealed religion. 
 
 And not seldom this charge appears in an aggra- 
 vated form ; and it has been sought to be proved, not 
 merely that others had said the same before the 
 Gospel, but that it had covertly borrowed from them 
 — that so far from being more and higher than an- 
 other birth of the human mind, it possessed so little 
 vital and independent energy, as to have been com- 
 pelled to go back to prior sources, and to build with 
 the materials of others, and to adorn itself with their 
 spoils. Urged by their desire to prove this, hoping to 
 convict it thus of being in possession of things not its 
 own, the adversaries of the Christian faith have gone 
 far to seek for the anticipations and sources of its 
 doctrine. Thus, with Voltaire, India, and still more, 
 China, were the favourite quarters from which he 
 laboured to shew that its wisdom had been drawn ; 
 although his almost incredible ignorance exposed him 
 to the most ridiculous errors, and made him the dupe 
 of poorest forgeries, palmed on him as works of the 
 ancient wisdom of the East, and which by him were 
 .again confidently produced as such*. Somewhat later 
 
 * There is a curious account of a fraud which was played off on 
 him, in Von Bolilen's Das Alte Indien, v. 1, p. 186, connecting itself 
 with a singular piece of literary forgery. A Jesuit missionary, whose 
 zeal led him to assume the appearance of an Indian Fakir, in the 
 beginning of last century forged a Veda, of which the purpose was, 
 secretly to undermine the religion which it i^rofessed to support, and 
 so to facilitate the introduction of Christianity — to advance, that is, 
 the kingdom of truth with a lie. This forged Veda is full of every 
 kind of error or ignorance in regard of the Indian religions. After 
 lying, however, long in a Romanist missionary college at Pondicherry, 
 it found its way to Europe, and a transcript of it came into the hands 
 of Voltaire, who eagerly used it for the purpose of depreciating the 
 
 1 2 Christian 
 
148 LECTURE I. [1846. 
 
 the Zend-Avesta and the rchgion of Zoroaster were 
 triumphantly appealed to, as having been the true sun 
 from which the borrowed light of Judaism and Chris- 
 tianity had proceeded. Then again, men said that 
 our blessed Lord had been educated and initiated in 
 the secret lore of the Essenes, and that he, the Wisdom 
 of God, had first learned wisdom in these schools of 
 men. Or by others. Rabbinical parallels to various 
 sayings in the New Testament, to evangelical parables 
 and doctrines, have been solemnly adduced, as solving 
 the riddle of Christianity, as enough to dissipate that 
 nimbus of glory with which it had been hitherto sur- 
 rounded, to refute its loftier claims, and to prove its 
 origin of earth, and not of heaven. So has falsehood 
 travelled round the world, as inconsistent with itself 
 as it is remote from the truth, each later birth of it 
 devouring the preceding. 
 
 And they have wrought in the same spirit, and in 
 reality with the same weapons to the same ends, who 
 yet, somewhat shifting their ground, have not so 
 much sought to turn our Christian faith into a doc- 
 trine which had been often taught before, as into a 
 dream which has been often dreamed before ; who 
 have not therefore laboured to produce parallels to its 
 isolated sayings or doctrines — to rob it here and there 
 of a jewel in its crown ; but have aspired to a com- 
 pleter victory, striking at the very person and acts of 
 Him on whom it rests, and out of whom it has un- 
 folded itself. And in this way ; — they have ransacked 
 all records of ancient religions for such parallels, 
 
 Christian Books, and shewing how many of their doctrines had been 
 anticipated by the wisdom of the East. The book had thus an end 
 wortliy of its beginning. 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 149 
 
 nearer or more remote, as they could in them find, 
 not now any more to the sayings, but rather to the 
 doings, of his Hfe ; and having mustered and marshal- 
 led in threatening order as many of these as they 
 could draw together, they have turned round and said 
 to us — " In all times, and all the world through, men 
 have been imagining for themselves, as you see, sons 
 of God, expiations by sacrifice, direct communications 
 with a^ higher world, oracles and prophecies, wielders 
 of a power mightier than nature's, restorers of a lost 
 Paradise, conquerors of Hades, ascensions into heaven. 
 They have imagined them, and nothing more ; for the 
 things which they thus in spirit grasped at, never found 
 an historic realization, however men may have en- 
 riched themselves, and we do not deny that they did 
 so, with the thought that such things had been, or one 
 day should be." And then it has been further asked 
 us. What right had we to difference our hope from 
 the hope of all others ? They longed so earnestly, 
 that at last their longing wove a garment, made even 
 a body, for itself; what right have any to affirm that 
 it is otherwise with the things which they believe ? 
 
 And thus, because men have hoped for, and reached 
 after, that which in Christ is given, and hoped so in- 
 tensely, that they have sometimes imagined it to be 
 actually theirs, so projecting their hope, as to give it 
 at last an objective reality, we are bidden to believe 
 that ours is but such an ardent desire, fashioning at 
 length a body for itself. Parading a long line of 
 shadows, these adversaries require us to acknowledge 
 the substance we have embraced to be a shadow also ; 
 shewing hoAv much false money is in the world, and 
 has at different times passed current, they demand of 
 
150 LECTURE I. [1846. 
 
 us, how we dare to assume that which we have accepted 
 to be true ; — Avhen they should see that the shadows 
 imply a substance somewhere, that the false money 
 passes only under shelter of a true. Proving", as it 
 is not hard to prove, those parallels to be groundless 
 and mythical, to rest on no true historic basis, they 
 hope that the great facts of the Christian's belief will 
 be concluded to be as weak — that they Avill be in- 
 volved in a common discredit* — and the faiths of 
 which those other formed a part having come to 
 nothing, or evidently hastening to decay, that this 
 may be assumed to underlie the same judgment, and 
 to be hastening to the same inevitable dissolution, 
 however the signs of it as yet may not appear. 
 
 This scheme of attack has been so long and so 
 vigorously plied, so much success has been expected 
 from it, that in the works of the later assailants of 
 Revelation from this quarter, there speaks out a cer- 
 tain indignation, mingled with astonishment, at the 
 resistance which it is still presuming to offer ; as though 
 it were not to be endured, that every other religion 
 should have confessed itself a mythology, and that this 
 should deny it still — that each other, like a startled 
 ghost, should have vanished at the first cockcrowing 
 of an intellectual morn, but that this should continue 
 to affront, as boldly and as confidently as ever, even 
 
 * Tertullian (Ajml. 47,) speaks of the way in which these parallels 
 were played off against the Christian verities — Elysium not only 
 having forfeited belief in itself, but having helped to destroy a belief 
 in heaven — Minos and Rhadamantlms having rendered the judgment- 
 seat of Christ a mockery ; — though in his narrow fashion he sees in 
 them nothing but the adulteria veritatis — the work of the jealous 
 envy of evil spirits, quae de similitudine fidem infirmarent veritatis. 
 But if the truth was hard to receive with these, might it not have 
 l)ecn impossible to receive without them ? 
 
INTRODUCTOflY LECTURE. 151 
 
 the light of the world's middle day — that each other 
 should have crumbled into nothing at the first touch 
 of the wand of a critical philosophy, but that this 
 should entirely refuse to obey its dissolving spell. 
 
 Now all charges against the truth, however desti- 
 tute of any solid foundation, out of whatever perversity 
 of heart or mind they may have sprung, yet, when 
 continually re-appearing, Avhen repeating themselves 
 in different ages, and by the mouths of different ob- 
 jectors, and those independent of one another, have 
 yet, we may be sure, something which has rendered 
 them not merely possible, but plausible ; which sug- 
 gested them first, and, with the frivolous and thought- 
 less, with those that have been eager to believe them, 
 and to be quit of the restraints of a positive faith, has 
 given them currency and favour. Let me seek, then, 
 as an important element of my subject, to consider 
 what that something is, which has served to suggest, 
 and afterwards to give a point to these charges ; and, 
 not pausing here, to shew that the truth, which, how- 
 ever distorted, is at the bottom of these charges, is 
 one which we may cheerfully and without any mis- 
 giving recognize. 
 
 And this is not all : for I would fain also shew that 
 it would be a grievous deficiency, if that were absent 
 from our Christian faith, which has been the motive 
 and hint to these accusations — if that faith, as far as 
 regards the whole anterior world except the Jewish, 
 stood in relation to nothing which men had thought, 
 or felt, or hoped, or believed ; with no other coefficient 
 but the Jewish, and resting on no broader historic 
 basis than that would supply. It will be my purpose 
 to enquire whether we may not contemplate the rela- 
 
152 LECTURE I. [1846. 
 
 tioiis of the absolute Truth to the anterior religions 
 of the world, in an aspect in which we shall cease 
 altogether from regarding with suspicion these ap- 
 parent anticipations of good things given us in Christ ; 
 in which, instead of being secretly embarrassed by 
 them, and hardly knowing exactly how to deal with, 
 or where to range them, we shall joyfully accept these 
 presentiments of the truth, so far as they are satisfac- 
 torily made out, as enhancing the greatness and glory 
 of the truth itself; and as being, so far as they are 
 allowed to have any weight, confirmations of it. 
 
 Nor will it be a small satisfaction, — if this be pos- 
 sible, as I believe it easy, — to make our adversaries 
 do drudging work for us ; to plough with their oxen ; 
 to enter, as we shall do then, upon their labours ; and 
 all that they have painfully gathered up with purposes 
 hostile to the faith — to appropriate, and make defen- 
 sive of it ; not so much anxiously defending our own 
 position, as confidently turning theirs ; wresting from 
 them their own weapons, and then wielding them 
 against themselves. 
 
 And first, in regard of the ethical anticipations of 
 what is given to us in the Gospel, — the goodly max- 
 ims, the striking precepts, tiie memorable sayings, 
 which are gathered from the fields of heathen philo- 
 sophy, and then sometimes used to depress the original 
 worth of the teaching of Christ and his Apostles, — I 
 will not urge here, and I have no object in urging, 
 though I may, in passing, remark, how many that are 
 sometimes adduced of these are wholly deceptive as 
 parallels to Christian truths. How often in their 
 organic connexion they would be very far from con- 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 153 
 
 taining that echo or presentiment of truth which we 
 deem we catch in them ; how often they have indeed 
 a very different significance from that which we first 
 put in them, and only afterwards educe from them. 
 Nor yet will I press how the goodliest maxim is indeed 
 nothing, save in its coherence to a body of truth ; how 
 a world of such maxims, were they gotten together, 
 would be only as ten thousand artificial lamps, failing 
 altogether to constitute a day, and not in the remotest 
 degree doing the work, or supplying to the world the 
 place, of a single sun. 
 
 Not to press this, and accepting fully and freely 
 what has been said wisely and well before the Gospel 
 and apart from the Gospel, and allowing to the full 
 that it has many times touched the heart of the matter, 
 yet still is there nothing here which we need wish we 
 could deny, which we should not rather desire to find. 
 Indeed, so far from there having been in time past a 
 shunning or ignoring of these heathen parallels, the 
 early apologists perhaps only admitted them too freely : 
 yet thus at any rate they testified that to acknowledge 
 them they felt to be no confession of a weakness in 
 their position. Thus more than one has likened the 
 faithful delivered from an evil world to the children 
 of Israel brought out of Egypt, who borrowed and 
 carried forth from thence vessels of gold and vessels of 
 silver, the same which probably afterwards furnished 
 the precious metals which they dedicated to the holier 
 uses of the sanctuary. In like manner, they said, 
 there was much which the faithful, delivered out of 
 the spiritual Egypt, would leave behind him, as all its 
 abominable idolatries ; but something also which he 
 would carry forth, and which he had a right to carry 
 
154 LECTURE I. [1846. 
 
 forth, for it was not truly the riches of that land. This 
 silver and this gold had been originally dug from mines 
 of divine truth, and bearing it Avith him, he only re- 
 claimed to its noblest purposes that Avhich had been 
 more or less alienated and perverted from them*. 
 
 Nor need ive deal more timidly with these parallels 
 than they did. So long, indeed, as we regard God's 
 revelation of Himself in Christ, as a revelation merely 
 of certain moral truths, it may be startling to find 
 ought that is therein, anticipated in any other quarter. 
 But when we more rightly contemplate it as the ma- 
 nifesting of life, that the Life was manifested, and 
 dwelt among us, then we feel that they who gave, and 
 could give, precepts and maxims only, however precious 
 these were, whatever witness they bore to a light 
 shining in the darkness, to a divine spark not trodden 
 out in man, to a God nurturing the heathen, with all 
 
 * Thus Augustine {De Doctr. Christ., 1. 2, c. 40): Philosophi autem 
 qui vocantur, si qua forte vera et fidei nostrae accommodata dixerunt 
 maxime Platonici, non solum formidanda non sunt, sed ab eis etiam 
 tanquam injustis possessoribus in usum nostrum vindicanda. Sicut 
 enim iEgyptii non solum idola habebant et onera gravia, quae populus 
 Israel detestaretur et fugeret, sed etiam vasa atque ornamenta de auro 
 et argento, et vestcm, qute ille populus exiens de ^gypto sibi potius 
 tanquam ad usum meliorem clanculo vindicavit, non auctoritate 
 propria, sed prfficepto Dei, ipsis ^gyptiis nescienter commodantibus 
 ea, quibus non bene utcbantur, sic doctrinae omnes Gentilium non 
 solum simulata et superstitiosa figmenta gravesque sarcinas supervacui 
 
 laboris liabent, sed etiam liberales disciplinas usui veritatis aptiores, 
 
 quod eorum tamquam aurum et argentum, quod non ipsi insti- 
 
 tuerunt, sed de quibusdam quasi metallis divinai providentiae, quae 
 
 ubique infusa sunt, eruerunt, debet ab eis auferre Christianus ad 
 
 usum justum pnedicandi Evangelii. Origcn {Ep. ad Gregor., 1. 1. 
 p. 80) uses the same illustration, ol)serving, however, that, according 
 to his experience, the gold which is brought out of Egypt is oftener 
 used for the fashioning of an idol, a golden calf, the work of men's 
 own hands which they worship, than for the adorning of the taber- 
 nacle of God. 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 155 
 
 this yet gave not that, which for man is the gift of 
 gifts and blessing of blessings. And this is the true 
 way in which to contemplate it. That which differ- 
 ences Christianity from all other religions is not its 
 theory of morals ; this is a most real, yet at the same 
 time only a relative, difference, for there were ethics 
 before there were Christian ethics*. But its difference 
 is, that it is life and power, that it transforms, that it 
 transfigures, that it makes new creatures, that it does 
 for all what others only promised to do for a few. 
 Herein the essential difference resides. Men, for in- 
 stance, before it came, could speak worthy things, and 
 could really feel them, about the beauty of overcoming 
 their desires, of forgiving their enemies, of repaying 
 injuries with kindness, of coming to God with clean 
 hands and a clean heart. Such sayings abound in 
 every code of morals f : but the unhappiness was, that 
 they who uttered these sayings and they who admired 
 them, did little more than this. It was not that there 
 was any falseness in their admiration : they delighted 
 
 • Grotius indeed says (De Verit. Rel. Christ., 1. 4, c. 12) : Ejus 
 [scil. religionis Christiange]] partes singulae tantae sunt honestatis, ut 
 suapte luce animos quasi convincant, ita ut inter paganos non defue- 
 rint qui dixerint singula, quae nostra religio habet universa. Lactan- 
 tius expresses himself more cautiously, and is careful to add how none 
 but a teacher sent from God could have knit these scattered limbs into 
 a body. He says, Inst. Div., 1. 7, c. 7 : NuUam sectam fuisse tam 
 deviam, nee philosoi^horum quendam tam inanem, qui non viderit ali- 
 quid e vero. Quodsi extitisset aliquis, qui. veritatem, sparsam per 
 singulos, per sectasque diffusam, colligeret in unum, et redigeret in 
 corpus, is profecto non dissentiret a nobis. Sed hoc nemo facere, nisi 
 veri peritus ac sciens, potest : verum autem non nisi ejus scire est, qui 
 sit doctus a Deo. 
 
 t See for instance in Von Bohlen {Das Alte Indien, v. 1. p. 864) 
 a beautiful collection of Indian sayings of this kind on the love of our 
 neighbour, and the forgiveness of injuries. 
 
156 LECTURE I. [1846. 
 
 in them after the inner man, but in the actual struggle 
 with evil, they Avere ever Aveak to bring them to effect. 
 There Avas a great gulf betAveen the saying and the 
 doing, Avhich never till in Christ Avas effectually bridged 
 over ; so that the Christian speaker in that beautiful 
 dialogue, the Octavius of Minucius Felix, exactly hit the 
 mark, Avhen, to characterize the practical of Christian 
 life as distinguished from the speculative of heathen 
 philosophy, he exclaimed of that sect every Avhere 
 spoken against, to Avhich he belonged, Non eloquimur 
 magna, sed vivimus. 
 
 And yet, brethren, Avhen Ave thus trace the miser- 
 able contradiction that ever existed in a Avorld out of 
 Christ, betAveen the good seen and the ca^I done, the 
 vast chasm betAveen the tAvo, let this be Avith no pur- 
 pose of laying bare their sores, Avith no thought of 
 glorying in their infirmities, to Avhom in a less favoured 
 time the only fountain of effectual strength and heal- 
 ing had not yet been opened. For indeed, brethren, 
 may there not be many a one among ourselves to 
 Avhom, Avith far less excuse, all this explains itself, 
 alas ! only too easily ? many a one, it may be, Avho 
 remembers times of his OAvn life, before his moral con- 
 victions had been gathered up and found their middle 
 point in Christ — and in those times repeated falls 
 under temptation, Avhich explain to him only too 
 vividly the condition, in Avhich this ever-recurring 
 infidelity of men to their moral convictions found 
 place — in Avhich they Avere thus able to trace the out- 
 lines of a righteousness, but impotent to fill them up, 
 and so ever leaving it in outline still — Avell skilled to 
 draAV a ground-plan, but Aveak to build any superstruc- 
 ture thereon — the virtue loved, till the opportunity 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 157 
 
 came for practising it ; the sin hated, till the moment 
 for testifying that hatred had arrived. 
 
 But to pass on to the other charge, to the resem- 
 blances to the great facts on which our faith reposes, 
 to the great events of our Lord's life, which are ad- 
 duced from other quarters, with the requirement, 
 because those have proved weak to stand, that we 
 should acknowledge these to be weak also; — they 
 only will consent to such a conclusion, who have failed 
 to perceive that according to the very highest idea of 
 Christianity, such there needs must have been. For 
 what do we affirm of Christ? when do we conceive 
 worthily of Him ? When we conceive of Him, in the 
 prophet's words, as ''the Desire of all nations" — the 
 fulfiller of the world's hopes — the stiller of creation's 
 groans — the great birth of time, unto which all the 
 unspeakable throes of a suffering humanity had been 
 tending from the first. These resemblances disturb 
 us not at all, — they are rather most welcome ; for we 
 do not believe the peculiar glory of what in Christ we 
 possess to consist in this, that it is unlike every thing 
 else, " the cold denial and contradiction of all that 
 men have been dreaming of through the different ages 
 of the world, but rather the sweet reconciliation and 
 exquisite harmony of all past thoughts, anticipations, 
 revelations." Its prerogative is, that all whereof men 
 had a troubled dream before, did in Him become a 
 waking reality ; that what men were devising, and 
 most inadequately, for themselves, God has perfectly 
 given us in his Son ; that in the room of shifting 
 cloud-palaces, with their mockery of temple and tower, 
 stands for us a city, which hath come down from hea- 
 ven, but whose foundations rest upon this earth of 
 
158 LECTURE I. [1846. 
 
 ours ; — that we have divine facts — facts no doubt 
 which are ideal, in that they are the vehicle of ever- 
 lasting truths ; history indeed which is far more than 
 history, for it embodies the largest and most con- 
 tinually recurring thoughts which have stirred the 
 bosom of humanity from the beginning. We say that 
 the divine ideas which had wandered up and down 
 the world, till oftentimes they had well nigh forgotten 
 themselves and their own origin, did at length clothe 
 themselves in flesh and blood ; they became incarnate 
 with the Incarnation of the Son of God. In his life 
 and person the idea and the fact at length kissed each 
 other, and were henceforward wedded for evermore. 
 
 If these things be so, and it will be my desire in 
 this place, and in these lectures, to trace how they 
 are, one or two considerations will lie very near to us ; 
 and with the pressing of these on your thoughts and 
 hearts I will this day conclude. And first, the general 
 consideration, that what there may have been in the 
 world obscurely struggling to be Christian before 
 Christ and his Church, so far from suggesting to us 
 poorer thoughts of what in Him we possess, under 
 how far more glorious aspect does it present that to 
 us ! All which men before could conceive, but could 
 not realize, could feel after, but could not grasp, 
 could dream of, but ever when they awoke found no- 
 thing in their hands, — it is here ; '' the body is of 
 Christ." And the Church which he has founded, we 
 behold it as sitting upon many waters, upon the great 
 ocean of truth, from whence every stream that has at 
 all or at any time refreshed the earth was originally 
 drawn, and to Avhich it duteously brings its waters 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 159 
 
 again*. We may contemplate that Church as having, 
 in that it has the Word and Spirit of its Lord, the 
 measure of all partial truth in itself; receiving the 
 homage of all human systems, meekly, and yet, like a 
 queen, as her right ; understanding them far better 
 than they ever understood themselves ; disallowing 
 their false, and what of true they have, setting her seal 
 upon that true, and issuing it with a brighter image, 
 and a sharper outline, and a more paramount authority, 
 from her own mint. 
 
 Again, if the more excellent glory of that which 
 we possess in Christ is, that it is not shadoAv but sub- 
 stance, not anticii3ation but possession — not the idea, 
 but the fact, or rather the fact and the idea in one, — 
 how are we letting go our most precious gains, when 
 we at all let go, or when we even slight, our historic 
 faith, resting on and finding its object in the person 
 of the Saviour ! What a miserable exchange, to give 
 up this, and to accept the largest, the most vaunted 
 theories concerning the godlike and the true in its 
 room and as its adequate substitute, the most mag- 
 nificent ideas in the place of the humblest affiance on 
 the Son of God — soon to find that we have gotten 
 pebbles for jewels, words for things, that we are in a 
 world peopled only with ghosts and phantoms ! Oh 
 loss unutterable, if we allow any to strip off* for us the 
 historic realization of the truth in the person of Jesus 
 of Nazareth, as though it were not of the essence of 
 the matter, as though it were a thing indifferent, use- 
 ful perhaps for the simpler members of the Church, 
 
 * Clement of Alexandria on this very matter {Strom., 1. 1, c. 5) : 
 
 Mia fxhv ovv tt/? dXijdeia^ ooos" dW eh avTvu Kaddirep ei? devvaov iroTaaov, 
 iKpeovari. tu peldpa dWa dWodev, 
 
160 LECTURE I. [1846. 
 
 but for others hindering rather than helping the con- 
 templation of the pure idea, which they would persuade 
 us it is alone needful to retain. They promise, it is 
 true, who invite to this sacrifice, that if only we will 
 destroy this temple of our historic faith, in three days, 
 yea, in an instant, as by a magic wand, they will raise 
 up for us a goodlier and more gorgeous fabric in its 
 room. Let it be our wisdom to give no credence to 
 their words ; knowing this, that it was the very bless- 
 edness Avhich the coming of the Son of God in the 
 flesh brought us, that it brought us that, which these 
 would fain persuade us to relinquish and renounce, 
 that it lifted men out of and above that condition into 
 which these deceivers would willingly persuade them 
 to return. 
 
 No doubt there is a temptation to give in to this, 
 a temptation working in each one of us — to take up, 
 that is, with a religion which shall consist in the con- 
 templating of great and ennobling ideas, instead of in 
 the serving with a straightforward and downright obe- 
 dience a personal God. Those ideas, we feel that we 
 can deal with them as we like ; they exert no con- 
 straining power upon us ; we are their masters, and 
 not they ours : or if we have allowed them any rule 
 over us, when the stress comes, we can withdraw it 
 again; allowing them just as much authority as is 
 convenient to us. There is no " Be thou holy, for I am 
 holy" in them — no pointing to the rugged way of the 
 Cross, with a Forerunner walking there, and a command 
 that we follow him in it. Let us watch earnestly 
 against so subtle a temptation, shewing as it does so 
 fair, and finding so much in our slothful and sinful hearts 
 that makes them only too ready to embrace it. 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 161 
 
 And surely, brethren, at this season the Church 
 suggests and presents to us mighty helps against all 
 this. What help so effectual as to enter truly and 
 deeply into the Passion of our Lord — to tarry at no 
 cold and careless distance from that cross to which 
 each day of this lenten season is now bringing us 
 nigher ? but to seek to draw forth the riches of grace 
 which are laid up for us in it, and in the considering 
 of Him that hanged thereon. Let us determine, bre- 
 thren, that in this coming week, the beginning it may 
 be of a more holy life, we will bring ourselves con- 
 tinually within the sphere of those mighty, those trans- 
 forming influences, which are ever going forth from 
 thence. Let us make proof how it can open for us 
 the fountain of purifying tears, sealed it may be for 
 long — how a burden can be laid down at its foot 
 which is crushing us to the earth, and from which 
 nowhere else is deliverance. Let us seek to enter 
 into nearer fellowship with the Man of sorrows, with 
 our crucified God. And then, when we have proved 
 how this fellowship can bless us, how it can cleanse us 
 from our impurities, how it can strengthen us for our 
 tasks, can enable us to tread underfoot our enemies, 
 we shall not readily exchange such a fellowship as this 
 with a living Lord, so full fraught with blessings, for 
 that of mere notions and phantoms ; which, however 
 much they may promise, will desert us in the hour of 
 need, and prove utterly helpless, whensoever the real 
 stress of life's trial comes. 
 
 T. n. L. 
 
 11 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 
 
 {Preached on Easter Sunday.) 
 
 Mark XVI. 3. 
 
 Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the 
 sepulchre ? 
 
 The heathen expectations of a deliverer I ventured 
 in my preceding lecture to characterise as " the un- 
 conscious prophecies of heathendom;" — prophecies 
 indeed which knew not at what they pointed, of which 
 the lines were most wavering and indistinct when set 
 beside the clear outlines of Jewish hope — yet in a 
 wider and laxer sense prophecies still ; or if we will 
 not make that word common, but reserve it for the 
 highest of all, we may call them the world's divination 
 at the least. For in these expectations of a world, 
 which, though deeply fallen, remained God's world 
 still, it was divining what it needed, and obscurely 
 feeling after it. And this divination, these guesses at, 
 and reachings out after, the truth, so far from shun- 
 ning and keeping out of sight, we may use, I said, not 
 of course putting them in the forefront of our array, 
 yet may we use them still, as arguments for that Faith, 
 to which all has thus tended from the first, which the 
 world was craving for before it received, and short of 
 which it never found its perfect satisfaction or rest. 
 
 It is the same argument, applied in a different 
 region, of Christianity as evidently the complement of 
 
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 163 
 
 all that went before, which the early apologists were 
 wont to use in their conflict with Gnostic and Mani- 
 chaean. They urged the manner in which the Chris- 
 tian revelation as the Church received it, rooted itself 
 deeply in an anterior constitution, was evidently not a 
 sudden improvisation, but the culminating fact of an 
 idea which had been realizing itself through all the 
 sacred history of the past, was as the perfect flower, 
 of which all genuine Judaism had been the stalk and 
 stem. And they founded on this traceable connexion 
 the superiority of its claims to those of all rival sys- 
 tems, which could produce no such accordance of their 
 new with pre-existing and pre-established harmonies 
 in the spiritual world ; but had rather abruptly and 
 violently to force a place for themselves, than to fit 
 into one already prepared for their reception, which 
 rested on an undoing and denying of the past, rather 
 than a sanctioning and perfecting of it*. And as 
 there was, no doubt, a most real force in their argu- 
 ment, exactly so has it for the thoughtful mind a deep 
 significance, that Christ should have met and satisfied 
 all nobler longings of the heathen world — that all 
 deeper and better impulses which were anywhere at 
 work, should have been tending toward Him. The 
 worth of the unspeakable gift which in Christ is ours, 
 is wonderfully testified by the fact that all should have 
 been in one way or another either asking for that 
 gift, or fancying that they had gotten it, or mourning 
 its departure, or providing substitutes for it. For, 
 
 * See especially Tertullian, Adv. Marcion.,1.8 and 4, passim, in 
 which this is his ever-recurring thought, re-appearing in an infinite 
 variety of forms. Oh Christum et in novis veterem ! he exclaims, 
 having shown how the rudiments of almost all Christ's miracles are to 
 be found in the Old Testament. 
 
 11—2 
 
164 LECTURE II. [1846. 
 
 however in the one elect people, as the bearers of the 
 divine promises, — the beating* heart of the spiritual 
 world, — the appointed interpreters to the rest of their 
 blind desires, — this longing after a Iledeemer came 
 out in greater clearness and in greater strength, and 
 with no troubling disturbing elements, — their education 
 being far more directly from God, and being expressly 
 aimed at the quickening of these longings to the 
 highest, — yet were those longings themselves not 
 exclusively theirs. They, indeed, yearned, and knew 
 what they yearned for : the nations yearned, and knew 
 not for what. But still they yearned : for as the earth 
 in its long" polar night seeks to supply the absence of 
 the day by the generation of the northern lights, so 
 does each people in the long night of its heathen 
 darkness bring forth in its yearning after the life of 
 Christ, a faint and glimmering substitute for the same. 
 From these dreamy longings after the break of day 
 have proceeded oracles, priests, sacrifices, lawgivers, 
 and the like. Men have no where given up hoping ; 
 nor acquiesced in the world's evil as the world's law. 
 Everywhere they have had a tradition of a time when 
 they were nearer to God than now, a confident hope 
 of a time Avhen they should be brought nearer again. 
 No thoughtful student of the past records of man- 
 kind can refuse to acknowledge that through all its 
 history there has run the hope of a redemption from 
 the evil which oppresses it ; nor of this only, but that 
 this hope has continually linked itself on to some 
 single man. The help that is coming to the world, it 
 has ever seen incorporated in a person. The genera- 
 tions of men, weak and helpless in themselves, have 
 evermore been looking after one in whom they may 
 
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 165 
 
 find all which they seek vainly in themselves and in 
 those around them — redressers of the world's wrong-, 
 deliverers from the world's yoke, vindicators of the 
 honour of the race, souls of heroic stature, in which 
 all the features of greatness that are imparted with 
 niggard hand unto others shall be found gloriously 
 and prodigally combined. Such in almost every reli- 
 gion men have learned to look back to, as having 
 already come : such we find that they are everywhere 
 expecting, as yet to appear. 
 
 As little can one deny that there is that in men, 
 which prepares them to welcome these at their appear- 
 ing. There is a natural gravitation of souls, which 
 attracts them to mighty personalities ; an instinct in 
 man, which tells him that he is never so great as when 
 looking up to one greater than himself — that he is 
 made for this looking upward — to find, and, finding to 
 rejoice and to be ennobled in, a nobler than himself. 
 And doubtless this instinct in itself is divine. It is 
 the natural basis on which the devotion of mankind to 
 Christ is by the Spirit to be built ; it is an instinct 
 which, being perfectly purified of each baser admix- 
 ture, is intended to find its entire satisfaction in Him. 
 True, it may stop short of Him ; true, it may turn 
 utterly away from Him. It may stop short of Him, 
 resting in human heroes, in men glorious for their 
 gifts, eminent for their services to their kind ; and we 
 have then the worship of genius instead of the worship 
 of God. Or it may turn utterly away from Christ, 
 and then, being in itself inextinguishable, and therefore 
 surviving even in those who have wholly forsaken Him, 
 it will, thus perverted and depraved, lay them open 
 to all the delusions of false prophets and of antichrists. 
 
166 LECTURE II. [1846. 
 
 For it is this, this attraction of men to a mightier 
 than themselves, which, being thus perverted, has filled 
 the world with deceivers and deceived; which has 
 gathered round the hunters of men the ready instru- 
 ments which have executed their will. It is this which 
 has drawn souls, as moths to the candle, to rush into 
 and to be scorched and to be consumed in the flame, 
 which some wielder of heavenly gifts for hellish aims 
 has kindled. It is this which swells the train round 
 some conqueror's car, as he urges his destructive 
 course through the world. What for instance, to take 
 a near illustration, was the devotedness of the French 
 soldiery to their great leader but this ? Who does not 
 feel that this devotion, out of which thousands and 
 tens of thousands were ready to meet, and did joy- 
 fully meet, dangers and fatigues and agonies and 
 deaths, only for the hope of one word of approbation, 
 one smile from him, counting all more than repaid by 
 this — who does not feel that this was the inverted side 
 of something in itself most true and most noble, to 
 which even in its degeneracy it bore witness ; and 
 only had now run wild and lost its appointed destina- 
 tion ? It is this, this craving of men passionately to 
 devote themselves to some one, which makes an Anti- 
 christ possible, which will make him so terrible when 
 he appears — men by a just judgment of God being 
 permitted to dedicate all which they ought to have 
 dedicated to Christ, to his opposite, to him who comes 
 in his own name, — because they refused to give it, 
 because they refused to give themselves, to Him who 
 came in the name of his Father. It will then be 
 fearfully seen that there can be an enthusiasm of hell, 
 no less than an enthusiasm of heaven. 
 
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 167 
 
 And as on the one side there is a preparedness 
 to acknowledge these kings of men, these spiritual 
 and intellectual chiefs of our race, so soon as they 
 shew themselves ; thus too, upon the other hand, such 
 have never been wanting to claim the reverence and 
 the homage of their fellows, to seat themselves on 
 these prepared thrones of the world. Certainly there 
 is nothing in the study of the past which fills one with 
 more awe and wonder than the infinite significance of 
 single men in the development of the world's history. 
 That history lies out before our eyes no Tartarian 
 steppe, no Indian savannah, stretching out at one vast 
 level, or with only slight elevations or depressions ; but 
 with marvellous inequalities, and here and there with 
 ravines deep almost as hell itself, and again with 
 mountain summits towering well nigh unto heaven. 
 Everywhere we encounter those that bring to their 
 brethren a new blessing or a new curse, that gather 
 up as at a centre the world's light or the world's 
 darkness ; from whom that light or that darkness 
 diffuses itself anew and with a new energy — benefi- 
 cent lords or baleful tyrants in the spiritual kingdom 
 of men's thoughts and feelings — each one for weal or 
 for woe, in narrower or wider circles, for longer or 
 shorter spaces, wielding his sceptre over the hearts 
 and spirits of his fellows ; helping to make them 
 slaves or to make them free, to exalt or to cast them 
 down. On the one side august lawgivers, founders of 
 stable polities, bringers in of some new element of 
 civilization, restorers, even amid heathen darkness, of 
 some purer knowledge of God ; on the other side, 
 destroyers that have known how to knit to them as 
 with magic bands multitudes of their brethren, and to 
 
168 LECTURE II. [1846. 
 
 make them the passionate servants of their evil will ; 
 proclaimers of sensual philosophies, that have assisted 
 to make our life cheaper than beasts', to empty it of 
 its loftier hopes and its faith in an higher destination ; 
 seducers after whom the world has Avondered; stars 
 whose name has been Wormwood, that falling from 
 heaven, have made the waters of earth bitter, so that 
 the men died who drank of them. 
 
 Thus has it been, brethren, that the world has 
 been ever opening wide its arms to welcome its 
 redeemers, — oftentimes cruelly deceived, counting 
 oftentimes, like Eve, that it had gotten a man from 
 the Lord, even him who should comfort it under the 
 curse, when indeed it was thus welcoming only the 
 deepener of the curse, and it may be the author of 
 some new mischief; — yet hoping ever, with hopes that 
 even at the best Avere only most imperfectly and in- 
 adequately fulfilled. Thus have the multitudes of 
 men still gathered and grouped themselves round 
 central figures in history, giving testimony even by an 
 oftentimes fatal readiness for this, that mankind was 
 made for a Christ, for a divine leader in whom it 
 should be set free, by the mightier and holier magic 
 of his will, by the prevalence of a diviner attraction 
 which he should exercise upon them, from all the 
 potent spells of seducing spirits and seducing men — 
 that humanity was made for one to whom it should 
 be able to deliver itself perfectly and without reserve, 
 and to be blest in so delivering itself For he being 
 identical with righteousness, and wisdom, and love, 
 they who lose themselves in Him, only lose to find 
 themselves again for ever. 
 
 So much, brethren, we may say generally con- 
 
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 169 
 
 cerning the hope which the world has cherished of 
 redeemers and saviours — a hoj)e which at length was 
 fulfilled so perfectly in Him, and only in Him, who 
 bears both these titles, that we well nigh feel as if 
 the titles themselves, to say nothing of any deeper 
 homage or devotion, cannot without wrong to Him, 
 and encroachment upon his due honour, be lent to 
 any other. And upon this day, brethren, upon this 
 resurrection morn, it will fall in well with the joyful 
 solemnities of the time, with the current in which our 
 thoughts must needs be running, and from which it 
 would only be a loss if the discourse you heard in 
 this place should awhile divert them, to address our- 
 selves to a part of the subject, which, had not this 
 high day come upon us, might perhaps have been 
 more conveniently reserved to a later occasion ; but 
 which if now, moved by the fitnesses of the season, I 
 a little anticipate, you will pardon me this wrong. 
 The aspect of the subject which I mean is this, — the 
 world's hope of its deliverers as conquerors of death, 
 its expectation of One who should lead captivity cap- 
 tive, in whom mortality should be swallowed up in 
 life, who should be a vanquisher of hell, a bringer 
 back of souls, and first and chiefly of his own, from 
 the prison-house of the grave. 
 
 Such expectations in abundance there were ; for 
 nowhere have men sat down content under the heavy 
 laws of death which bound them. They have ever 
 been imagining a reversal of the curse, a breach or a 
 repeal of those inexorable laws. The old world was 
 ever feeling after " Jesus and the Resurrection." And 
 being full of this thought, it traced it every where. 
 Thus, in the cycle of the natural seasons, when the 
 
170 LECTURE II. [1846. 
 
 earth in spring starts up from its long winter sleep, 
 men saw a symbol and a never-failing prophecy of 
 life rising out of death : that winter was as the world's 
 death, this sjoring as the world's resurrection. The 
 enthusiasm which the spring woke up, the rapture 
 with which the outbursting of bud and blossom, the 
 signs of the reviving year, were hailed — the way in 
 which the chiefest and joyfulest feasts of almost all 
 religions were coincident with, and evidently cele- 
 brated, this time, being full of this spring gladness, — 
 all this was not an evidence, as some would have us 
 to believe, that those religions were merely physical, 
 did merely commemorate the revolutions of the na- 
 tural year. But this rapture and delight with which 
 the outer tokens of renovation and revival Avere 
 hailed, had their root in a profound and instinctive 
 sense of the connexion between man and nature, in a 
 most true feeling that the symbols of renovation in 
 nature could not be aimless and unmeaning, symbols 
 of nothing, but must needs point to deeper realities 
 in the life of man*. The spring-time suggested such 
 
 * I may quote, though long, the sublime passage in Tertullian 
 on the vestiges of a resurrection which we may trace everywhere 
 in nature {De Resurr. Carnis, c. 12) : Dies moritur in noctem, et 
 tenebris usquequaque sepelitur. Funestatur mundi honor; omnis 
 substantia denigratur. Sordent, silent, stupcnt cuncta: ubique justi- 
 tium est. Ita lux amissa lugetur : et tamen rursus cum suo cultu, 
 cum dote, cum sole, eadem et Integra et tota universo orbi reviviscit ; 
 interficiens mortem suam, noctem ; rescindens sepulturam suam tene- 
 bras ; heres sibimet existens, donee et nox reviviscat, cum suo et 
 ilia suggestu. Redaccenduntur cnim et stellarum radii, quos matu- 
 tina succensio extinxerat : reducuntur et siderum absentite, quos 
 temporalis distinctio exemerat : redornantur et specula lunae, quae 
 menstruus numerus attriverat : revolvuntur hyemes et sestatcs, verna 
 ct autumna, cum suis viril)us, moribus, fructibus. Quippe etiam 
 tcrne dc coelo disciplina est arbores vestirc post spoHa, flores dcnuo 
 
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 171 
 
 joyful solemnities, because it was felt to be in some 
 sort the Easter of nature, and obscurely to give 
 pledge, or at least intimation, of an higher Easter in 
 store for man. 
 
 And if it may be permitted me to take a little 
 wider range, and to gather proofs and confirmations 
 of what I am affirming, of the manner in which 
 human nature has claimed a resurrection as its own, 
 not from the heathen world only, but wherever in 
 popular faith or tradition I can find them, I would then 
 adduce, as a remarkable illustration of this, the ex- 
 ceeding difiiculty with which the world has ever per- 
 suaded itself of the death of any who have mightily 
 blest it, or with whom it has confidently garnered 
 up its dearest hopes — the eagerness with which it 
 snatches at the thought, that such a one has not 
 truly died, making much of the slightest hint that 
 seems to give a colour to this hope ; so congenial is 
 it to the heart of man. It was said of Moses, " No 
 man knoweth his sepulchre unto this day," (Deut. 
 xxxiv. 6,) and these words, despite the plain declara- 
 tion that went before, were sufficient provocation for 
 a whole family of Jewish legends to the effect that he 
 had not really paid the debt appointed to every man 
 
 colorare, herbas rursus imponere, exhibere eadem quae absumpta sunt 
 semina ; nee prius exhibere, quam absumpta. Mira ratio ! de frau- 
 datrice servatrix : ut reddat, intercipit ; ut custodiat, perdit ; ut inte- 
 gret, vitiat ; ut etiam ampliet, prius decoquit... Nihil deperit, nisi in 
 salutem. Totus igitur hie ordo revolubilis rerum, testatio est resur- 
 rectionis mortuorum. Operibus cam praescripsit Deus antcquam 
 Uteris ; viribus prsedicavit antequam vocibus. Prsmisit tibi naturam 
 magistram, submissurus et prophetiam, quo faeilius credas prophetiae, 
 discipulus naturae; quo statim admittas, cum audieris quod ubiquc 
 jam videris, nee dubites Deum carnls etiam rcsuscitatorem, queni 
 omnium noris restitutorem. 
 
172 LECTURE II. [1846. 
 
 livinir- In like manner wc know how that word of 
 the Lord concerning the beloved aj)ostle, " If I will 
 that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee ?" this 
 was enough to cause the report to go forth that he 
 should not die ; and not the express denial by St. 
 John himself of any such significance in the words, 
 was able to extinguish this belief, which continued to 
 propagate itself from age to age*. 
 
 In like manner we sometimes see a whole nation 
 which has found it impossible to believe that he on 
 whom its hopes were fondly built, whom it had 
 trusted should at length have delivered it, and with 
 whose death those hopes have all fallen to the 
 ground, — that he indeed has come, like other men, 
 under the law of mortality, — has passed away, and 
 left his work, as it seems, unconcluded. How long 
 Britain was waiting for her Arthur ; how long did the 
 legends that told of him as surviving j^et in the far 
 valley of Avalon live on the lips and in the hearts of 
 a people. And exactly in the same manner, in a 
 later and more historic age, Portugal waited for her 
 youthful king, looking fondly and with aching expec- 
 tation for his return — and this, for many a weary year 
 after he had perished, not obscurely, but in open 
 tight, among the sands of Afric f. 
 
 * See Augustine, In Ev. Joh., Tract. 124: Tertullian, Le Animd, 
 c. 50; Hilary, De Trinit. 1. 6, c.39; Jerome, Adii. Jovin., 1. 1, c. 26; 
 Neander's Kirch. Gesch., v. 6, p. 1117. 
 
 t Thus Michelet {Hut. de France, 1. 17) having told the death of 
 the last Duke of Burgundy : " II n'e'tait pas facile de persuader au 
 peuple que celui dont on avait tant parle etait bien vraiment mort. 
 II etait cache, disaiton, il etait tenu enferme, il s'e'tait ftiit moine; des 
 pelerins I'avaient vu, en Allemagne, a Rome, a Jerusalem ; il devait 
 reparaitre tot ou tard; comme le roi Arthur ou Frederic Barberousse, 
 on etait sur qu'il revicndrait. II se trouvait des marchands, qui ven- 
 
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 173 
 
 And may not some of us have known, brethren, in 
 our own experience something that quite explains to 
 us this difficulty of believing in death ? Have we not 
 found this difficulty ourselves ? and how, when the 
 loved are gone, when they have left their places 
 empty, it is only by repeated efforts that we can 
 realize to ourselves that it indeed is so — how we have 
 to say again and again to hearts half incredulous still, 
 that it will never again in this world be otherwise — 
 that so much truth and faith and love have indeed 
 been withdrawn from hence and for ever. Thus ear- 
 nestly does the spirit of man protest even against 
 that semblance of annihilation, which death seems to 
 wear. 
 
 Nor need it of necessity be the loved or hoped in, 
 those in whom the expectations of others have in- 
 tensely centered : let it be only some terrible man, 
 one that has curdled the life-blood of the world with 
 fear ; and even such a one as this, having once been 
 so much to men, though only so much to their fears, 
 they will hardly be persuaded to have indeed past 
 away from the earth which so quaked and shuddered 
 at his tread. How long after the death of Nero did 
 the firm persuasion survive, that he was only hidden 
 for a season, and that the earth should once more 
 be cursed with his presence — the Christians of the 
 Roman Empire giving this expectation a colouring 
 natural to them, and conceiving of him as the personal 
 Antichrist, who should make presently his terrible 
 
 draient a credit, pour etre payes au double, alors que reviendrait ce 
 grand due De Bourgogne. It is well known how many obscure 
 rumours have in like manner found favour with the common people 
 in different parts of Europe, that Napoleon is yet alive. 
 
174 LECTURE II. [1846. 
 
 re-appearance from the East, to carry forward against 
 them the work of blood which he had commenced "^^ 
 
 But to return to the sphere more directly marked 
 out for me by my subject, and to look there for 
 evidences of the manner in which the spirit of man is 
 incredulous of death, witnesses, protests against it, as 
 by a second sight sees what shall be in the fulness of 
 time, and prematurely grasps at it, — what frequent 
 mention in the Greek fable we meet of visitors of 
 Hades, of those that have descended and held inter- 
 course with the spirits there, those who have in a 
 sense " preached to the spirits in prison," and then 
 returned from the kingdom of night — or it may be 
 burst for others, as well as for themselves, the gates 
 and barriers of the grave, rescuing and bringing back 
 from that dark region to the glad light of life some 
 delivered soul. I may spare any great details in 
 proof of this ; time would not allow them ; such 
 might scarcely seem in place ; and to a congregation 
 like that which I address they would be evidently 
 superfluous. By one example only I would indicate 
 that which I mean, but that example the most illus- 
 trious which ancient fable supplies. It is familiar to 
 us all how the great cycle of the labours of Hercules 
 was not finished till he had done battle with Death. 
 Earthly exploits, even the mightiest and most mar- 
 vellous of these, were not sufficient. It was felt, and 
 most truly, that to complete even the idea of the 
 hero-champion of men, something more was needed, a 
 greater victory was demanded at his hands : he must 
 wrestle with, and in personal conflict overcome, foes 
 
 * Tacitus, Hist., 1. 2,c. 8; Suetonius, Nero, c. 57; Augustine, De 
 Civ. Dei, 1. 20, c. 19 ; Lactantius, De Mort. Pers., 2. 
 
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 175 
 
 mightier than those of flesh and blood — even the last 
 enemy, death and the grave. Nor even then had his 
 own life attained its perfect consmiimation ; since for 
 this it was needed that all which was of earth in him- 
 self should be burned out, that the dregs of mortality 
 should be cleansed away in the purifying flames of a 
 funeral pyre, willingly ascended — and this being done, 
 that he himself, in sign that he could not die any 
 more, that he was indeed made partaker of immor- 
 tality, that death could have no more dominion over 
 him, should be wedded to eternal Youth amid the 
 blissful mansions of the immortal gods*. 
 
 Such, no doubt, is the interpretation of this preg- 
 nant symbol ; and thus, brethren, by a thousand voices, 
 in a thousand ways, the world has been declaring that 
 it was not made for death, for that dread and alien 
 thing, which, notwithstanding, it found in the midst of 
 it. Thus has it looked round for one who should roll 
 away the stone from the door of that sepulchre, to 
 which it had seen its sons one after another unreturn- 
 ingly descend ; and eking out the weakness of its 
 arguments for immortality by the strength of its de- 
 
 * In Buttmann's Mythologus, v. 1, p. 252 seq., the higher signifi- 
 cance of the whole mythus of Herakles is unfolded with an exquisite 
 tact and beauty. Without entering into the merits or demerits of 
 other parts of the book, it may yet be as well to say that it is only 
 this single treatise which I wish to speak of in this language of admi- 
 ration. If K. O. Miiller is right in his conjecture that 'Aa^z/xos^ 
 'Add/jLaa-Tos (Tl. 9, 158) the indomitable, a name belonging to Hades, 
 and that Apollo's service of Admetus is his passmg down to the 
 infernal world in consequence of having slain the earth-bom Python ; 
 if this be true, and he brings much that is curious in confirmation of 
 this view, we may then add one more, and that no.t the least remark- 
 able, to the Greek mythic naiTations of this description. (See his 
 Scientific Mythology, p. 243—246 Engl. Transl.) 
 
176 LECTURE II. [1846. 
 
 sires, it has been forward to believe that for this one 
 and that the stone had been actually rolled away. But 
 yet j)resently again, it has felt only too surely that it 
 had but the shadow, and not the very substance, of 
 the tilings hoped for : and in doubt and perplexity, 
 in despondency and fear, has made the words of the 
 Psalmist its own ; " Dost thou shew wonders among 
 the dead? Shall the dead rise up and praise thee?" 
 but, unlike to him, it has not known what answer to 
 give to its own question. 
 
 And so it went on, until at length, after many a 
 false dawn, the world's Easter morning indeed broke, 
 and from beside an empty tomb they went forth, the 
 witnesses of Jesus, preaching Him and the resurrec- 
 tion : men able to declare things which they had seen 
 — that there was indeed a risen Head of our race, one 
 who had tasted death for every man, Avho, not in poet's 
 dreams, or in legend of olden time, but in very truth, 
 had burst its bands, because it was impossible He 
 should be holden by them ; that there was one for 
 whom death was what men had so often, and so fondly 
 and significantly called it — even a sleep ; for He had 
 laid Him down and slept, and after his three days' 
 rest in the grave, risen up again, because the Lord 
 had sustained Him. The day at length arrived, when 
 men were able to go forth, preaching Him who had 
 shewn himself alive by many infallible proofs ; in whom 
 too, being risen, mortality was swallowed up in life ; 
 and who was now seated at the right hand of the 
 Majesty on high, angels and principalities and powers 
 being made subject unto Him. 
 
 Such was the word of their message — that the 
 stone wo.<? rolled away, that the riddle of death was 
 
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 177 
 
 solved ; and hearts unnumbered welcomed the tidings, 
 and expanded themselves to it, as flowers, shut through 
 some long dreary night, unfold themselves to the 
 warmth and the light of the returning day. And shall 
 not we, brethren, bear our part in the great jubilee 
 Avhich that message of theirs has summoned the world 
 to keep, in the glory and gladness of this day and of 
 this day's mystery, before which all phantoms and 
 shadows of the night flee away, before which all sad- 
 ness and despair are weak to stand ? Truly, with a 
 deep insight into the mystery of this Easter morn, did 
 the great poet of our modern world make the Easter 
 hymn — the glad voices which said Christ is risen, 
 these, caught by accident, of potency sufficient to 
 wrest the poison-cup untasted from the hand of the 
 despairing one, who had already raised it to his lips*. 
 And how, brethren, fares it with ourselves? Is 
 that word for us a scatterer of sadnesses, a quickener 
 of joys ? Does it enable us to put off* the sackcloth of 
 our spirits, and to gird ourselves with gladness ? Let 
 us earnestly ask ourselves this question ; for surely it 
 is a sign that all is not right with us, when other things 
 make us glad, but not this — when the natural spring 
 fills our hearts with a natural joy, but this with no 
 spiritual — when we stand aloof, cold and unsympa- 
 thizing, as the wondrous cycle of the Christian year 
 goes round, as the great events of our Lord's life and 
 death and resurrection and glory succeed one another 
 in a marvellous order ; not humbling ourselves in the 
 humiliations of that life, and therefore not exulting in 
 its triumph ; never having stood beside the cross of 
 
 1". n. L. 
 
 •See Goethe's Faust , Scene 1. 
 
 12 
 
178 LECTURE II. [1846. 
 
 Jesus, and therefore having no right and no desire to 
 stand beside that open tomb, where he reared his first, 
 his everlasting trophy over death. If we feel not this 
 cladness, let us take shame to our dull hearts, and 
 ehiim it as a gift from our God, which he will not 
 deny us. Let us ask that we too may be borne up- 
 ward and borne onward on the great stream of the 
 Church's exultation. Let us ask this earnestly ; let 
 us ask it as something which we ought not to be 
 without. For of this let us be sure, that now, after 
 eighteen hundred years, that announcement of the 
 angel, "He is not here, but is risen," should he as fresh 
 and new, as full of an unutterable joy to us, as it was 
 to those weeping women, who came to pay the last 
 sad honours to their dead Lord, but found only his 
 empty and forsaken grave. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 THE SON OF GOD. 
 
 Acts XIV. 11. 
 
 And when the people saw what Paul had done^ they lifted 
 up their wices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia^ The 
 gods are come down to us in the likeness of men. 
 
 It was my endeavour when we last met, to trace out 
 the manner in which humanity has ever been looking 
 in one quarter or another for its redeemers and sa- 
 viours — for deliverers from physical, deliverers from 
 moral evil. Carrying forward my subject a step, it 
 will be now my aim to shew how it has not merely 
 been heroic men, men who triumphed over all, even 
 death itself, but divine men, for whom the world has 
 been craving ; in whom it has felt deeply that its help 
 must lie — a most true voice of man's spirit ever tell- 
 ing him that only from heaven the true deliverance of 
 the earth could proceed. We shall see how men have 
 been ever cherishing the conviction of a real fellow- 
 ship between earth and heaven, and that not merely 
 an outward one, but an iuAvard ; a conviction that the 
 two worlds truly met, not by external contact only, 
 but in the deeps of personal life, in persons that most 
 really belonged and held on to both worlds. We shall 
 see how the world, with all its discords, has had also 
 its preludes to the great harmonies of redemption ; 
 has had its incarnations — sons of God, that have come 
 down to live a human life, to undertake human toils, 
 
 12—2 
 
180 LECTURE III. [1846. 
 
 to die a human death : its ascensions — sons of men. 
 that have been lifted u^j to heaven, and made partakers 
 of divine attributes : we shall see how men have never 
 conceived of this world around us as totally dissevered 
 from that world above us, with an impassable gulf 
 between them, but always as in living intercommu- 
 nion the one with the other. 
 
 And to this subject the words of my text will form 
 a fitting introduction, yielding, as they do, a signal 
 testimony to a wide-spread faith through the heathen 
 world in these living relations between heaven and 
 earth ; for no sooner did those men of Lystra see in 
 Paul and Barnabas, beneficent healing presences, with 
 power to chase away the sicknesses of men, than at 
 once they leaped to the conclusion, '' The gods are 
 come down to us in the likeness of men," and could 
 hardly be restrained from offering them divine hon- 
 ours. The words themselves are a noticeable evidence 
 of the world's preparedness, even in that day when so 
 much of an earlier and more childlike faith had pe- 
 rished, to welcome its deliverer from heaven. Nor 
 are we without a parallel evidence to the same in that 
 exclamation of the awe-struck heathen centurion, who 
 at sight of nature suffering with her suffering Lord, 
 and setting her seal to the awful meaning of his death, 
 could come to no other than a like conclusion, and 
 exclaimed, " Truly this was the Son of God." 
 
 For indeed this, which is peculiar to our Christian 
 faith, namely, that in it at length, and in it only, a 
 real meeting-place between heaven and earth has been 
 established in the person of Jesus of Nazareth — that 
 the divine was born into the human, and so, not by 
 transient and external contact, but in very deed, hea- 
 
THE SON OF GOD. 181 
 
 veil came down to earth, and the earth was lifted up 
 into heaven, God became a man, and man God — this, 
 which is the peculiar prerogative and glory of our 
 Christian faith, is yet not so peculiarly ours, but that 
 every religion has, in some shape or other, macfe pre- 
 tension to the same. It was claimed of all, though 
 fulhlled only in one. ' The tabernacle of God is 
 with men, and he will be their God, and dwell among 
 them" — this in positive fulfilment did only in the 
 Only-begotten come true ; yet, as far as the idea 
 reaches, is the essence and centre, not of one reli- 
 gion, but of all. Men may conceive it under differ- 
 ent aspects, may imagine it to be brought about in 
 various ways ; some of these ways will approach nearer 
 to the heart of the matter than others ; but this idea, 
 in one shape or another, must constitute the central 
 one of every religion. 
 
 I will endeavour to trace a few proofs of this, as 
 in the heathen religions of antiquity they meet us 
 everywhere, — to hold up before you a few forms in 
 which, with more or less distinctness, men expressed 
 their desire after, or embodied their belief in, this 
 fellowship, — and more than fellowship, this union be- 
 tween God and man ; and then to shew how far short, 
 even in idea, not to speak of the realization of that 
 idea, all which men ever conceived in this way fell of 
 the actual fact upon which the Church is founded. 
 
 And first, would we trace what is nearest to a 
 nation's heart, we should turn to its poetry ; there we 
 shall find not what it has, but what it is reaching after 
 — not its actual work-day world, but that ideal world 
 after which it is longing. If, then, we turn to the 
 oldest, the epic,' poetry of Greece, we behold heroes 
 
182 LECTURE III. [184G. 
 
 and gods and men mingling familiarly together. In 
 this free intercourse, in this beaten and well-trodden 
 way between earth and heaven, we have what we might 
 venture to call the heathen counterpart to the heavenly 
 ladder seen by Jacob in dream, on which angels were 
 ascending and descending, with the Lord himself at 
 the summit ; even as that was but the weak intima- 
 tion of a closer union between earth and heaven to be 
 effected in the person of the Son of Man — an union 
 wherein God should no longer appear at the summit 
 of the ladder, but at its foot — no longer a God far 
 off, but near ; — men now at last beholding the " hea- 
 ven open, and the angels of God ascending and de- 
 scending upon the Son of Man." 
 
 We may select one instance more, which Greek 
 art will supply, of the sense of so intimate relations 
 betAveen God and man, as only the Incarnation could 
 at length adequately express. We oftentimes take it 
 as a matter of course, one which therefore excites in 
 us no reflection or surprize, that the statues of the 
 Grecian gods should be in human forms, in the per- 
 fection of human grace and beauty — the highest which 
 the skill of artist could attain. And yet, what a won- 
 derful thing was this, — to have arrived at the convic- 
 tion that the human was the most adequate expression 
 for the divine — that if God did reveal himself, it 
 Avould be as man — that the nearest approximation to 
 the ideal of humanity was the worthiest type of the 
 Godhead. These too in their kind we must regard 
 as prophecies of the Incarnation ; not, indeed, of the 
 deeps of that mystery, but weak prophecies of it 
 still. 
 
 Not, however, in the ideal world of art only did 
 
THE SON OF GOD. 183 
 
 this faith find utterance, but in the actual world as 
 well. The whole scheme of an Oriental court, and 
 eminently that of the Great King, was laid out on the 
 idea that it was the visible representation of the court 
 of heaven, and the king himself a visible incarnation 
 of the highest God. The sense of this speaks out in 
 every arrangement, in the least as in the greatest, 
 and is the key to them all. Thus, the laws of that 
 kingdom when once uttered, could not be reversed or 
 changed, (Dan. vi. 8,) because the king who gave them 
 was the incarnation of God, and God cannot repent, 
 or alter the thing which has gone out from his lips*. 
 None, as again we learn from the Book of Esther (iv. 
 11), might come into the king's presence unbidden 
 and live, save by a distinct act of grace. They must 
 die, unless the golden sceptre, in token of this grace, 
 was held out to them ; because none but the pardoned 
 can behold the countenance of God and not perish 
 at its intolerable brightness. So, as that same book 
 teaches us, it was forbidden to one clothed in sack- 
 cloth to enter within the palace ; (iv. 2 ;) and this, 
 because heaven, of which that palace was the image, 
 is the region of life and gladness, not of sorrow or of 
 death ; which, therefore, as they might not enter there, 
 
 * God is aT-peTTTos, his counsels dixeTOfxe\i]Ta^ and he not a man 
 that he should repent ; and even such his visible representative on 
 earth must be. It was on this unchangeableness of what had once 
 gone forth from the lips of the king, which itself was thus no capricious 
 state rule, but grew out of the very idea on .which the Persian mo- 
 narchy rested, that the enemies of Daniel founded their confident 
 expectations of success in their conspiracy against him. (Dan. vi. 8, 15.) 
 So, too, when the purposes of Ahasuerus the king were altered con- 
 cerning the Jews, he yet could not reverse the edict which permitted 
 them to be attacked by their enemies : he could only give another 
 edict, allowing them to stand upon their defence. (Esth. viii. 10, 11.) 
 
184 LECTURE III. [1846. 
 
 so neither might these things, which are their visible 
 signs and symbols, enter into the palace of the king. 
 The seven princes, that stood nearest to the throne, 
 and saw the king's face (i. 14), corresponded to the 
 seven highest angels that were supposed to stand 
 l^efore, and nearest to, the throne of God. Nor was 
 the adoration offered to the Persian king a mere act 
 of homage or sign of fealty, but was most truly, and 
 in the highest sense, a xvorsMrpjying ; and exactly 
 because felt as such, was so earnestly resisted, though 
 from different motives, by the Greek alike and the 
 Jew — by the Greek, as dishonouring to himself, by 
 the Jew, as dishouring to his God. It was a worship- 
 ping of the king's person for the presence of God, 
 which was supposed to dwell singularly in him. 
 
 Again, when the foremost place in all the earth 
 had passed into the possession of another, what was 
 the apotheosis of a Roman Cesar, in life, or after 
 death, but a troubled speaking out of men's sense, 
 that he who stood in the forefront of humanity, the 
 chiefest of the sons of men, should also be more than 
 man ? This, in itself most true, did only become the 
 fearful blasphemy it was, when the worshiji was mis- 
 applied, and the object to which it was due had been 
 mistaken. It was indeed an irony of the heathen 
 world, and of its magnificent pretensions, worthy of 
 the great author of mischief, when the honour that 
 it owed to Christ the Lord, being diverted on the 
 way, was rendered to a Nero or a Tiberius. The 
 prince of this world was herein mocking his votaries, 
 exactly as he mocked the Jews, when they too were 
 led to incorporate their rejection of all that was best, 
 and their choice of all which was worst, in an out- 
 
THE SON OF GOD. 185 
 
 ward fact, in that cry of theirs — " Not this man. but 
 Barabbas." 
 
 And I may perhaps be permitted to observe as 
 not alien to our present argument, but as another 
 striking proof of this craving of men for that which 
 is given to them in Christ and in his Incarnation, for 
 such a bridal of two worlds as was celebrated therein, 
 that whenever, even in Christendom, men have lost 
 their faith in this gift, or have suffered that faith to 
 grow weak, then they have not rested till they have 
 created for themselves a substitute for that truth 
 which thus they have let go. Thus, no sooner had 
 men's faith in a present, though invisible. Head of his 
 Church waxed feeble — no sooner did the God-man, 
 because he could not be seen or touched or handled, 
 appear far off to carnal and sense-bound generations, 
 than they began to yearn for a substitute, who should 
 give them in palpable form all which they no longer 
 felt that they possessed in Him. And thus men began 
 to lend questionable honours and ambiguous titles to 
 a pope ; and ever as they more let go their sense of 
 the reality of Christ's headship, they lent more of his 
 glories, of his names, his honours, his divine attributes, 
 to the man who had placed himself in his seat, and 
 offered them in a gross and visible way that connexion 
 between earth and heaven, which they were intended 
 to have found in Him of whom it is wi'itten, " The 
 Head of every man is Christ." 
 
 Exactly in the same manner a thoughtful observer 
 of the progress of Unitarianism in our own day, will 
 not have failed to note that a system which shrinks I ^ 
 from saying " Christ is God," yet finds it impossible 
 to rest in that ' denial, and is rapidly and inevitably 
 
186 LECTURE III. [1840. 
 
 liastening to say, even as it has already said plainly 
 enough by the lips of its most forward votaries, " Man 
 is God ;" giving in the end to every man that which 
 it started with affirming it was blasphemy to give to 
 any, even to the Son himself. And were that, or any 
 other yet barrener form of unbelief, to succeed for a 
 time in emptying the throne in men's hearts wherein 
 the Son of God is sitting, on the instant we should 
 behold impious and frantic enthusiasts springing up 
 on every side, claiming the vacant seat, and obtaining 
 too the homage which was withholden from Him. For 
 truly, our deliverance from superstition lies not in 
 unbelief, but in faith. In holding fast the truth, and 
 only in that, are we delivered from its distorted coun- 
 terfeit. Thus the Holy Eucharist, satisfying as it 
 does the solemn and mysterious cravings of the human 
 soul, delivers the Christian world from hateful mys- 
 teries and dark orgies. Thus, again, faith in the 
 sacrifice once offered upon Calvary hinders and cuts 
 off those hideous attempts at expiation, which, but 
 for that, the sin-laden heart of man would inevit- 
 ably devise for itself. And thus, too, an exalted 
 Saviour preserves us from blasphemous usurpers of 
 divine honours, the truth of God from the lie of the 
 devil. 
 
 But let us see, brethren, what nearer to the heart 
 of the matter the old world had, of incarnations and 
 ascensions ; let us see the highest form in which it 
 presented these truths to itself. And contemplating 
 that highest, let us still take note how the Christian 
 truth of the Word made flesh, even as a doctrine, was 
 original — not to say that alone in Christ it past from 
 
THE SON OF GOD. 187 
 
 a speculation, and became a fact. It will be instruc- 
 tive to mark hoAv all other systems not merely did not 
 give what they professed to give, (for that of course,) 
 but how even what they professed to give, fell short 
 of, and was only an approximation to, the actual needs 
 of humanity. 
 
 Thus the Greek mind could conceive of a much- 
 suffering man lifted up for his toils' and virtues' sake 
 into the highest heaven. Their pantheon is full of 
 such, — of heroes after the toils and conflicts of a 
 life worthily spent for their fellow-men, made free of 
 heaven, and admitted even into the circle of the 
 immortal gods ; and so far they had in their popular 
 belief anticipations of Him, the man Christ Jesus, 
 whom, because He humbled Himself, and for our 
 sakes became obedient to the death of the cross, 
 therefore God greatly exalted, setting Him at his 
 own right hand. 
 
 But yet how little was there here any true blend- 
 ing of the human and divine, and how truly men felt 
 this ; as is wonderfully testified by the fact that this 
 exalted and glorified man, however many divine attri- 
 butes were added to him, yet did not get the name of 
 God; he was but a ^aijuwi/ after all; he was not, to 
 use language which has been well used of the Son, 
 JJeus ex radice. They felt with a right instinct that a 
 deified man did not thereby, and that indeed he could 
 not, become God — that no accumulation of divine 
 honours could make one truly God, w ho was not such 
 already ; even as the Church, in a later day, was not 
 to be deceived into accepting the Arian theory con- 
 cerning the Son of God as an adequate substitute for 
 her own, by the utmost prodigality of divine names 
 
188 LECTURE III. [1846. 
 
 and titles and honours which were proposed to be 
 hivished upon Him. She felt rightly that all these 
 would not in the least fill up the chasm that divided, 
 and nuist divide for ever, God from that which was 
 not God. So was it with the apotheosis of heroic 
 men : the divine glory did but gild and play upon the 
 surftice of their being ; if a man was to be also God, 
 if there was to be any perfect union of the two, it 
 must be by other means, by a process which must 
 reach deeper and much further back than this. 
 
 But moreover the other half, the other factor, 
 even of the idea of such a person as this, was alto- 
 gether strange to the Greek mind. A God coming 
 down from heaven, emptying himself of his glory, and 
 in a noble suffering undertaking a human life, and, 
 that he might be the helper and deliverer of men, 
 enduring all, even the hardest, for them, tasting death 
 itself, — all this, a God thus stooping, and suffering, 
 and dying, was wholly alien to every conception of 
 theirs. The very idea of the gods with them was of 
 beings free from all care, untouched by any sorrow, 
 living ever joyful, and ever at ease : or if they so- 
 journed for a while in this toilsome and tearful world, 
 yet sojourning as visitors only — not touching the bur- 
 den of its woe with the tip of their finger — under- 
 taking it might be human tasks, yet undertaking them 
 in sport, not really coming under, or feeling their 
 weight. True, indeed, that this conception of a suf- 
 fering God, which was so strange to all western habits 
 of thought, was familiar to the mythologies of the 
 East. They have their Osiris, — and not him alone, 
 though in him these sufferings of a divine nature 
 come the most prominently and gloriously out — who 
 
THE SON OF GOD. 189 
 
 in the fulness of his beneficent purposes for the race 
 of men, and in mighty and earnest conflict with the 
 prince of evil, endures all things, going down even to 
 the deeps of death : and thus, no doubt, the Eastern 
 religions were not without their anticipations of Him, 
 who though He was rich, yet made Himself poor, even 
 the poorest, for us, that we through his poverty might 
 be rich. 
 
 And yet how imperfect, even as regards the idea, 
 was this too. Humanity, however it craved a God 
 for its deliverer, yet craved just as earnestly a man ; 
 it wanted a redeemer out of its own bosom, one in 
 whose every triumph over moral or physical evil it 
 could rejoice that " God had given such power unto 
 men.'' It felt, and truly, that no other would serve its 
 turn — that, forasmuch as the children are partakers 
 of flesh and blood, he also, if he would be every man's 
 brother, and thus able to be every man's redeemer, 
 must be partaker of the same ; " fairer than the chil- 
 dren of men," and yet himself a child of man — that 
 from the midst of itself, from the depths of its own 
 life, its redeemer must proceed. A God Avho was 
 only God, might conquer for himself, but there was 
 no pledge or proof in his conquest, that man could 
 conquer ; a God who overcame death and rose from 
 the dead, gave no assurance thereby of a resurrection 
 for the race of man. 
 
 And thus each of the great divisions of the Gen- 
 tile world had but a fragment, even in thought and 
 desire, of the truth : the Greek world, the exaltation 
 of manhood — the Oriental, the glorious humiliations 
 of Godhead ; and thus it came to pass that each of 
 these, even as a speculation, was maimed and imper- 
 
]9() LECTURE III. [1846. 
 
 feet. These systems, so far from providing what man 
 needed, had not satisfactorily and on every side even 
 contemplated what he needed ; much less had they 
 given it. 
 
 And how indeed could it be given ? This was the 
 riddle which He alone whose counsels were from ever- 
 lasting, who knew all the true needs of man, and 
 meant to satisfy them all, could solve. It seemed in- 
 deed that the world, craving one who should be man 
 no less than God for its deliverer, put its demands in 
 irreconcilable contradiction with themselves; and again, 
 that demanding for its redeemer one in whom the hu- 
 man and divine should not slightly and transiently 
 touch one another, but should be brought into inner- 
 most union, it here too required that which it was 
 impossible that it ever should receive. And yet the 
 same wonder-stroke of God solved both these pro- 
 blems. 
 
 The first difficulty was this, If the world needed a 
 man, yet where should it find the man that it needed? 
 It had often put forth its champions, but there was 
 ever found an attainder of blood in every man's de- 
 scent, a blot on every man's scutcheon, a flaw in every 
 man's armour. If no helper of humanity but one 
 born out of its bosom would do, and yet every one 
 born from thence, j^artook in its sin, was one needing 
 to be healed, and who could not therefore be himself 
 the healer, was a sharer in the diseased organism, and 
 could not therefore expel its poison from others, 
 whence was such a one to come ? The answer was 
 at length given in the Virgin-born. Men had long 
 before had an obsure apprehension that only so could 
 the difficulty be solved. The birth from a pure virgin 
 
THE SON OF GOD. 191 
 
 had been attributed to many''*. For there was that 
 in men's hearts which told them that for one to be an 
 effectual Saviour, he must be a new beginning, a new 
 head of the race ; not a mere link in the chain of 
 sinful humanity, since of the sinful the Sinless could 
 never come ; but by such marvellous means as that 
 miraculous conception he must be exempted from the 
 corruption transmitted from generation to generation 
 of the children of men. 
 
 But this was not all ; this Virgin-born was also 
 Immanuel, was that which men had asked for, " God 
 with us." He had indeed a Father, but that Father 
 was God ; and thus in the deepest deep, in the inner- 
 most core and centre of his life, this man was also 
 God. In the cradle of Bethlehem, when a pure Virgin 
 had been touched with fire from heaven and had borne 
 a Son, in Him at length the world found all its long- 
 ings fulfilled, its seemingly irreconcilable desires all 
 satisfied and atoned. 
 
 Thus, brethren, I have sought to trace out before 
 you to-day that which was perhaps the worthiest 
 element in the religions of the heathen world — that 
 which, indeed, entitled them to the character of re- 
 ligions at all — their recognition, with all shortcomings 
 and deficiencies, of a real bond between earth and 
 heaven, their sense that the Divine could reveal itself 
 no way so fitly as in the forms of the human, that the 
 human could be lifted up to, and made to bear the 
 Aveight of, the Divine — that man was God's offspring, 
 of the blood royal of creation. The pervading sense 
 of this was indeed what mainly constituted them, in 
 
 * Especially to founders of religions, as Buddha, Zoroaster. 
 
192 LECTURE III. [1846. 
 
 God's providence, preparations and predispositions for 
 the absolute truth which should in fulness of time be 
 revealed. For that there were upon these points cer- 
 tain predispositions for the reception of the truth in 
 heathendom, which did not exist among" the Jews, no 
 one I think can deny. None can thoughtfully read 
 the early history of the Church, and mark how hard 
 the Jewish Christians found it to make their own the 
 true idea of a Son of God, as indeed is witnessed by 
 the whole Epistle to the Hebrews — how comparatively 
 easy the Gentile converts ; how the Hebrew Christians 
 were continually in danger of sinking back into Ebion- 
 ite heresies, making Christ but a man as other men, 
 refusing to go on unto perfection, or to realize the 
 truth of his higher nature ; — no one can mark this, 
 and contrast it Avith the genial promptness of the 
 Gentile Church to embrace the offered truth, " God 
 manifest in the flesh," without feeling that there must 
 have been effectual preparations in the latter which 
 wrought its greater readiness for receiving and heartily 
 embracing this truth when it arrived. And what 
 other preparations could they have been, but these 
 which we have been tracing''"? 
 
 It is true that there was with this, infinitely too 
 feeble a sense, too feeble even in the best, of the 
 manner in which sin had cast them down from the 
 high places of their birth — a confession far too weak 
 
 " The Cliristian apologists often find help here. Thus Arnobius 
 (Adv. Gen., 1. 1^ C.S7): Natum hominem colmius. Quid enim, vos 
 homincm nullum colitis natum? Non unum et alium, non innu- 
 mcros alios, quinimmo non omnes quos jam templis habetis vestris, 
 mortalium sustulistis ex numero, et coelo sideribusque donastis? He 
 could appeal to such passages as that of Cicero (Tusc. Qua'st., 1.1? 
 c. 13) : Totum i)ro]>e ccvhiin nonnc humano genere completum est ? 
 
THE SON OF GOD. 193 
 
 and wavering, (for only the Holy Ghost could have 
 wrought a right confession,) of that attainder that 
 was in their blood, the utter forfeiture of their in- 
 heritance which their sin had brought about. It was 
 not seen how man had ceased to be a Son of God, 
 could never but by a new adoption, a regeneration, 
 become such again. But man's divine original, his 
 first creation in the image of God, was so firmly held 
 fast to by all nobler spirits, that St. Paul upon the 
 hill of Mars could at once take his stand on this as a 
 great meeting point between himself and his Athenian 
 hearers — as the ground which was common to them 
 and him : " Certain also of your own poets have said. 
 For we are also his offspring." (Acts xvii. 28.) Here 
 at least they were at one. 
 
 And, brethren, it is possible that we may learn a 
 lesson which we need, or at least remind ourselves of 
 truths which we are in danger of suffering to fall too 
 far back in our minds, by the contemplation of those, 
 who, amid all their errors and darkness and confusion 
 and evil, had yet a sense so deeply imprinted, a faith 
 so lively, that man was from God, as well as to God ; 
 capable of the divine, only because himself of a divine 
 race. Oftentimes it would seem as if our theology of 
 the present day had almost lost sight of this, or at 
 least held it with only too feeble a grasp ; beginning, 
 as it so often does, from the fall, from the corrujDtion 
 of human nature, instead of beginning a step higher 
 up — ^beginning with man a liar, when it ought to have 
 begun with man the true image and the glor^^ of God. 
 And then, as a consequence, the dignity of Christ's 
 Incarnation, of his taking of humanity, is only imper- 
 fectly apprehended. That is considered in the main 
 
 T. H. L. 1'3 
 
194. LECTURE 111. [184G. 
 
 as a makeshift for bringing God in contact with man ; 
 and not to have been grounded on the perfect fitness 
 of man, as the image of God, of man's organs, his 
 afiections, his Hfe, to be the utterers and exponents 
 of all the Hfe, yea, of all the heart of God. It is 
 oftentimes considered the chief purpose of Christ's 
 Incarnation, that it made his death possible, that it 
 provided him a body in which to do that which merely 
 as God he could not do, namely to suffer and to die ; 
 while some of the profoundest teachers of the past, 
 so far from contemplating the Incarnation in this 
 light, have rather affirmed that the Son of God would 
 equally have taken man's nature, though of course 
 under very different conditions, even if he had not 
 fallen — that it lay in the everlasting purposes of God, 
 quite irrespective of the fall, that the stem and stalk 
 of humanity should at length bear its perfect flower 
 in Him, who should thus at once be its root and its 
 crown. But the Incarnation being thus slighted, it 
 follows of necessity, that man as man is thought meanly 
 of, though indeed it is only man as fallen man, as 
 separated by a wilful act of his own from God, to 
 whom this shame and dishonour belong. In his first 
 perfection, in the truth of his nature, he is the glory 
 of God, the image of the Son, as the Son is the image 
 of the Father, declaring the Son as the Son declared 
 the Father : — surely a thought, brethren, w hich if we 
 duly lay to heart, Avill make us strive that our lives may 
 be holy, that our lives may be noble, worthy of Him 
 who made us after his image, and w^hen we had marred 
 that and defaced it, renewed us after the same in his 
 Son. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 
 
 MiCAH VI. 6, 7. 
 
 Wheretvith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself 
 before the high God ? shall I come before him with hurnt- 
 offermgs, loith calves of a year old? Will the Lord be 
 pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of 
 rivers of oil ? shall I give my firstborn for my transgres- 
 sion, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ? 
 
 There are few facts more mysterious, brethren, than 
 the prevalence of the rite of sacrifice through the 
 world. Nations which it is impossible could have 
 learned it of one another, nations the most diverse in 
 culture, the highest in the scale, and well nigh the 
 lowest, differing in every thing besides, have yet agreed 
 in this one thing, namely, in the offering of things 
 which have life to God, — or when the idea of the one 
 God has been lost, — to the gods many of heathenism 
 — the essential of that offering in every case being 
 that the life of the victim was rendered up. And they 
 have all agreed in considering that this act of theirs 
 had a value, that it did place upon a new and better 
 footing the relations in which they stood to the hea- 
 venly powers; that by these sacrifices they might 
 more or less re-constitute the relations between them- 
 selves and God, which by any cause had been dis- 
 turbed, bringing themselves nigher to Him, and ren- 
 dering Him more favourable to them. 
 
 13—2 
 
196 LECTURE IV. [1840. 
 
 Now there are few or none in our day who would 
 count that they hatl expUiined the prevalence of these 
 convictions, in the conspiracy of the more artful few 
 to liold the simpler many in bondage. These convic- 
 tions were too wide spread, too universal ; moreover, 
 men were too direfully earnest in carrying them out, 
 to allow us to accept any such explanation as this. 
 Sacraments they might be, and often were, of the 
 devil, and not of God, but yet dreadful sacraments 
 still — bonds and bands by which men knit themselves 
 to one another, and knit themselves also to a spiritual 
 world, — if not to heaven, yet to hell. Those who 
 explain them into artful contrivances, may so give 
 witness for their ow^n shallow insight into the past 
 history of the world, for the absence of any deeper 
 needs at work in their own hearts, since if there had 
 been such, they would have suggested a profounder 
 explanation ; but the time is past when they will find 
 any number of persons to accept their exiDlanation as 
 sufficient. 
 
 As little can their theory be historically justified, 
 Avho trace up the existence of sacrifice to the rude 
 notions about God which belonged to an early age ; 
 for then we should see a people, as it attained worthier 
 views about Him, gradually outliving and renouncing 
 the practice of this rite. But, contrary to this, we 
 find in the most cultivated nations the theory of sacri- 
 fice only the more elaborately worked out, the sacri- 
 fices themselves only multiplied the more. Here and 
 there there might be found in some obscure corner of 
 the earth, a savage tribe or horde, which had sunk 
 below the idea and practice of sacrifice ; though one 
 in which, in one form or another, it did not survive, 
 
THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 197 
 
 it would be difficult to point out ; but nowhere a peo- 
 ple that had risen above it. Here and there a philoso- 
 pher may have set himself against the popular belief, 
 but nowhere has he been able to change it ; he has 
 ever stood single and alone, and has as little carried 
 with him the more thoughtful and deeper spirits of 
 his time as the common multitude. He may have 
 eloquently declaimed on the absurdity of supposing 
 the gods would be pleased with the death-struggles of 
 animals, with the blood of bulls and of goats ; but 
 there was ever something in men, though they might 
 not be able to explain it to themselves, which told 
 them that sacrifice had a significance and a meaning, 
 which a few plausible words could not get rid of or 
 destroy. 
 
 Such, brethren, I think you will admit are the 
 facts, for I speak to those capable of judging. Whe- 
 ther we turn to those pages of Greek and Roman 
 literature, brought by our studies in this place espe- 
 cially before us, or whether we take a wider range 
 within our ken, everywhere alike we encounter a con- /, 
 sciousness upon man's part, that the relations between K 
 him and the powers in whose hands he is, have been 
 interrupted and disturbed. The fact might be some- 
 times overlooked and forgotten by him in times of 
 prosperity, but we see it evermore mightily emerging 
 from the deep of his heart, when the judgments of 
 offended heaven were evidently abroad. Everywhere, 
 too, we encounter the effort by certain specific and 
 definite acts of expiation and atonement to restore 
 those disturbed relations again. ''Without blood is no 
 remission of sin," was a truth as deeply graven on the 
 heart and conscience of heathen as of Jew. 
 
198 LECTURE IV. [1846. 
 
 For vast and complex as is the Jewish system of 
 offering, yet it is not a greater body of sacrifice than 
 we meet ahiiost everywhere else, when we tm-n to the 
 ritual of heathenism. That Levitical system is of 
 course in every way more complete : it is an organic 
 whole ; excluding all individual caprice, all too into 
 which the true idea of sacrifice, when escaping from 
 God's control, would inevitably degenerate. More- 
 over it was no will-worship, but the appointed way in 
 which God Avas to be sought, and not that in which 
 men out of their own hearts imagined that they would 
 seek Him. But with all this, it does not, I think, run 
 into greater detail, nor take more entire possession of 
 the whole life of man, nor demand a more continual 
 recognition of a distance and separation from God 
 which has need to be removed, than did the heathen 
 systems of sacrifice with which it was surrounded, 
 when we take them in their sum total, when we count 
 up all their infinite forms and varieties. For doubtless 
 it was meant that they too, by this their multitude 
 and repetition, should give testimony against them- 
 selves, should witness as plainly as did the Jewish in 
 the same way, for their own weakness and unprofit- 
 ableness ; since of them, too, we may say, that had 
 they been effectual to do what they professed to do, 
 " would they not have ceased to be offered, because 
 the worshippers once purged would have had no more 
 conscience of sin?" But thus, by their endless multi- 
 plication, and by the confession of weakness contained 
 therein, they pointed, though not with prophetic ex- 
 plicitness, yet still in their degree, away from them- 
 selves, and to that one all-sufficient sacrifice once 
 offered upon Calvary. 
 
THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 199 
 
 Nor need we, when Ave look a little deeper into 
 the matter, when we come to apprehend what was the 
 central idea of sacrifice, be so much surprised, as at 
 first we are, to find it this rite of an almost universal 
 character. For then we perceive that it was no 
 arbitrary invention, for which a thousand others might 
 have been substituted as well ; but rather that the 
 essence of all religion lies in that of which sacrifice 
 was the symbol — namely, in the ofi'ering up of self, in 
 the rendering up of our will to the will of God, the 
 yielding of our life to Him as something which had 
 been rebellious in time past, and therefore worthy to \ 
 die, but of which we desire that the rebelhon may / 
 cease, that so we may of his mercy receive it back a \ 
 life pardoned and forgiven. The blood is the seat of 
 the life, the seat therefore of the eTriOufxia, the desire, 
 which in fallen man is a desire at variance with the 
 will of God. In sacrifice, in the pouring out of the 
 blood, is the symbolic rendering up of this rebellious 
 principle ; a confession that it is only worthy to die ; 
 that as the thing offered died, so the offerer might 
 justly die — the act having of course only its true sig- 
 nificance when the offerer did realize to himself what 
 he did — rested not in the outward work, but said to 
 himself and to God, '' I stand in living communion 
 with this which I offer ; even as this blood, so I offer 
 myself ; dying that I may live ; giving myself to Thee, 
 that I may receive my true life back again at thy 
 hands ; losing my life that I may find it." Of course, 
 it is not to be supposed that each worshipper so dis- 
 tinctly gave to himself an account of what he was 
 doing ; but this lay more or less obscurely in the 
 background of his mind, and gave a meaning to his 
 
200 LECTURE IV. [1846. 
 
 act. Our ordinary use of the word sacrifice, shews 
 how truly we have gotten to the innermost heart of 
 its meaning ; for it is ever used to signify the giving 
 up of something dear. And what so dear as our self- 
 will '? The giving \x^ of that is indeed the giving up 
 of all. 
 
 But when we speak of the idea of sacrifice as 
 being this giving up of the self-will, there may seem a 
 difficulty in applying this, when we come to the great 
 and only perfect sacrifice offered by Christ on the 
 cross. Of course it was not there — no one would 
 dare to suppose it was — the offering uji of a rebellious 
 will ; we hardly dare speak of such a thing, though it 
 be but to deny it. But it was the giving up of his 
 oivn will '"' — that will which had the liberty of choosing 
 for itself what the Father had not chosen for it, but 
 in the entire rendering up of which he realized the 
 very central idea of all sacrifice, which all that had 
 gone before had only pointed at weakly : " Sacrifice 
 and burnt-offering Thou wouldest not ; then said I, 
 Lo ! I come to do thy will, O God." In other words, 
 sacrifice and burnt-offering God was weary of — those 
 shadows of the true ; and Christ came to give the 
 substance ; and his actual pouring out of his soul to 
 death was the outer embodiment of the inward truth, 
 that this yielding of his will to his Father's reached to 
 the uttermost, did not shrink from or stoj) short of 
 the last and most searching proof to which it was put. 
 
 * And therefore the controversy of the Church with the Monothe- 
 lites in the seventh century, a conflict in which commonly so little 
 interest is taken even by Students of Church History, was one for life 
 .ind death. The denial of a human will in Christ was in fact a denial 
 (►f his sacrifice. 
 
THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 201 
 
 In sacrifice, then, was the confession of a life for- 
 feited, and this confession incorporating itself in an 
 act, wherein the forfeiture was actually carried out. 
 This however is but half the idea of sacrifice : for it is 
 ever this confession made in another. If a man had 
 given himself to death, because he felt that he was 
 worthy to die, he would but have involved his already o, 
 confused relations to God in deeper confusion. He , 
 might be unworthy to live, but was not therefore at 
 his own choice to die. If as a sinner, he owed God 
 a death, yet as God's creature, made to serve Him, 
 he equally owed Him a life. The premises are right, 
 that man's life is forfeited ; but the conclusion fear- 
 fully wrong, when he carries out himself and in his 
 own person the forfeiture. Such false conclusions 
 from right premises they draw, the miserable victims 
 that in our day fling their bodies to be crushed be- 
 neath the wheels of some idol car ; the same they 
 have drawn, who, in despair at the greatness of their 
 sins, have lifted up their hands against their own life ; 
 for even self-murder, that most hideous perversion of 
 the idea of sacrifice, yet grounds itself on a sense of 
 life being the only worthy ofl'ering. Thus a Judas 
 goes and hangs himself, because he feels his sin so 
 great that it cannot be left Avithout an atonement, 
 and in the darkness and unbelief of his heart, he has 
 put back the one atonement which would have been 
 sufficient even for a sin so great as his ; and this too 
 is the thought of each other, who by a like fearful act 
 of self-violence has denied the love, though he cannot 
 deny the righteousness, of God. 
 
 Never then in himself, never by means of his own 
 life, could man's acknowledgement that that life was 
 
202 LECTURE IV. [1846. 
 
 forfeited rightly be carried out. It must needs be in 
 another. And the same reason exists against making 
 that other some fellow-man. His life too is a sacred 
 thing, is itself an end. It could not therefore be used 
 as this means to some other end. In human sacrifices, 
 in the offering of other men's lives, there appear the 
 same false consequences from right grounds as in 
 men's offering of their own. It remained that, if sacri- 
 fice was to be, the sphere of animal life must be that 
 of w^hich it should take possession, and in which it 
 must move — the life of animals being the nearest 
 akin to, and the noblest after, man's — and therefore 
 fitter than any meaner for the setting forth his ob- 
 lation of himself And man thus taking possession 
 of this, either at God's express command, or moved 
 by his own religious instincts, was indeed taking pos- 
 session of that over which he had entire right, of that 
 which having been given him for the use of his body, 
 was much more given him for the spiritual needs of 
 his soul. 
 
 Such, I think, we may venture to say was the 
 normal unfolding of the idea of sacrifice ; the ab- 
 normal appears in those revolting caricatures of the 
 true idea, on which we have lightly touched — in 
 human sacrifices — in dreadful self-oblations — in Baal 
 priests cutting themselves with knives, and so pour- 
 ing out, if not all, yet a part of their life — in the 
 self-inflicted tortures and living death of Indian Fa- 
 kirs — in the blind despair of mighty sinners, who with 
 profane hand have broken in upon and laid waste the 
 awful temple of their own lives. 
 
 AVonderful indeed, brethren, is the manner in 
 which, armed with the truth, we may look upon past 
 
THE PERFECT SAERIFICE. 203 
 
 pages of the religious history of man, some of the 
 most soiled and blotted, and decypher there an origi- 
 nal writing of God, which all those stains and blots 
 have not availed to render illegible altogether*. If 
 only we have an ear to hear, marvellous voices will 
 reach us, and from quarters most unexpected, which 
 shall speak to us of Calvary and of the cross, though 
 they little mean it themselves — such voices for in- 
 stance as his, who, accounting for the human sacrifices 
 of the Gauls, observed, that they were deeply per- 
 suaded that only the life of man was a fit redemption 
 for man f. What was this conviction of theirs, but 
 the dark side of that truth which the apostle to the 
 Hebrews proclaimed, when he said that the blood of 
 bulls and of goats could not take away sin, but that 
 it must be purged away by better sacrifices than 
 these I? Nor do I think that it will otherwise than 
 
 * TertuUian {De Animd, c. 41): Quod enim a Deo est non tarn 
 extingiiitur quam obumbratur. Potest enim obumbrari, quia non 
 est Deus ; extingui non potest, quia a Deo est. 
 
 + Caesar {De B. G., 1. 6, c. 16.) : Pro vita hominis nisi hominis 
 vita reddatur, non posse aliter deorum immortalium numen placari 
 arbitrantur. Cf. Miiller's Dorians, b. 2, c. 8, § 2. Out of a sense of 
 this arose the extreme difficulty of eradicating human sacrifices in the 
 Roman empire, and the long survival of some of them. Thus Tertul- 
 Kan {Apol 9): Infantes penes Africam Saturno immolabantur palam 
 usque ad proconsulatum Tiberii. Cf. Scorp., c. 7 ; Minucius Felix, 
 p. 199. Ouzel's Edit.; Pliny, iy.iV.,1.30,c.3,4; Eusebius, Pr^/). jFmw^., 
 1. 4, c. 17. 
 
 X Thus there was an obscured truth in those abject and crouch- 
 ing superstitions which Plutarch paints with such a masterly hand in 
 his exquisite little treatise, liepl AcifTioaLfxovia^ — a truth which he misses 
 — a recognition, that is, of sin, of a great gulf fixed between the sin- 
 ner, and the offended power of heaven, which the oei(rtoai>a)y, how- 
 ever vainly, was seeking to bridge over. His terror and his trouble 
 had a true ground, and one which would hinder him from accepting 
 as sufficient such at.tempts to pacify his fears, as those which Plutarch 
 
 offers 
 
204 LECTURE IV. [1846' 
 
 repay us well to follow a little into detail the convic- 
 tions of the world concerning that which constituted 
 a sacrifice of Avorth, and trace how every thing here 
 pointed, whether it meant it or not, yea, when it 
 seemed most to point away from Him, to the central 
 figure in the world's spiritual history, to the immacu- 
 late Lamb which taketh away the sins of the world. 
 
 Thus it is hardly needful to observe, that it lay 
 ever in the deepest convictions of men that an offer- 
 ing, to be acceptable, must be an offering of value, 
 not something Avhich cost the bringer nothing — that, 
 while all was poor by comparison with Him to whom 
 it Avas offered, or considered in relation to that for 
 which it Avas offered, yet must it be the best which the 
 oflferer had ; — not the lame and the blind, not the 
 scanty gifts of a niggard hand ; — he thus giving token, 
 that if he had ought Avorthier, he Avould bring it. 
 Therefore must the selected victim be pure of fault 
 and of blemish, or, having such, Avas unfit for the altar 
 — the sense of this required perfection being as lively 
 in heathen sacrifice as in Jewish. Therefore Avas the 
 bullock brought Avhich had never yet submitted its 
 neck to the yoke, the horse which had known no rider, 
 or, in Hindoo ritual, no touch even of man ; in other 
 Avords, that Avas brought Avhich had not been already 
 used and in part Avorn out in the service of the Avorld, 
 but Avhich AA^as thus Avholly and from the first conse- 
 crated to heaven. Hence too, as the offering must 
 not be a niggard one, the prodigality in sacrifice 
 Avhich startles us at times : the hecatombs of victims, 
 the rivers of oil, the cattle from a thousand hills. 
 
 offers him, namely that the gods were kind (fxeiXixioi). There was 
 something else besides this which he was craving to know, before he 
 could dare to believe that they were other than enemies to him. 
 
THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 205 
 
 Herein too lay the explanation of yet direr sacri- 
 fice — as of their sons and daughters in the Moloch- 
 worship of the Phenicians — the fruit of their body for 
 the sin of their soul ; — such offering, for instance, as 
 we read of at Carthage, when, instead of the cheaper 
 substitutes with which they had satisfied themselves 
 for long, they sought out, in the mighty peril of the 
 city, the dearest things which they had, the choicest 
 children of the noblest houses, and cast them into the 
 glowing arms of that merciless idol, which their sin- 
 darkened hearts had devised for their god*. Out of 
 this same sense that an offering grew in worth with 
 the worth of that which was offered, sprang the re- 
 joicing among the worshippers of Odin, when the lot 
 of the yearly sacrifice fell upon no meaner man than 
 the king — the pledge of a future felicity to the nation 
 which was esteemed herein to lie-j-. To what did all 
 this reaching out after the worthiest, the purest, the 
 choicest, the best, point, even in its dreadfullest per- 
 versions, but to Him who was the fairest of the chil- 
 dren of men, the choicest which the earth had borne, 
 the one among ten thousand, who yet, being such, did 
 by the eternal Spirit offer Himself without spot to 
 God — who being the anointed King of the world, was 
 thus in a condition to make acceptable atonement for 
 all men ? 
 
 * Diodorus Siculus, 1. 20, c. 14. Cf. 2 Kin. iii. 27 ; Eusebius, 
 Frcep. Evang., 1. 4, c. 16. 
 
 f Witsius {De Theol Gent, p. 683) : De Septentrionalibus populis 
 refert Dithmarus primo anni mense nonaginta novein sortito eligi 
 solitos qui diis immolarentur, idque durasse usque ad Henriei I. Ger- 
 manise regis, tempora. Faustissimum vero id regno litamen existima- 
 tum, si sors regem tetigisset ; quam victimam totius populi multitudo 
 summa cum gratulationc et applausu prosecuta sit. 
 
206 LECTURE IV. [1846. 
 
 Nor less significant was the sense of a more 
 prevailing atonement, of an added value which was 
 imparted to an offering, when one, not thrust on by 
 necessity, not compelled to die, but Avillingly, offered 
 himself ; the feeling of which was so strong, that if not 
 the reality, yet at least the appearance, of this willing- 
 ness, was often by singular devices sought to be 
 obtained*. When, for example, the foremost man of 
 a nation gathered upon his sole devoted head all the 
 curses which impended on his people, all the anger of 
 the immortal powers f, and with that upon him gave 
 himself to a willing death for all, so turning, it might 
 be, into victory the tide of disastrous battle, what 
 have we here but in its kind a reaching out after 
 Him, the chief and champion of the race of men, 
 whose life no man took from him, for He might have 
 asked of his Father more than twelve legions of angels 
 against his enemies — but who sanctified Himself, freely 
 pouring out his soul unto death — and who, not that 
 He might deliver some single people, but all the world, 
 became the piacular expiation of that world, drew 
 upon his own head the penalties which would else 
 have alighted upon all, became a curse for man ; and, 
 when all was at the worst, when all seemed for ever 
 lost, changed by his accepted death the certain defeat 
 into the glorious victory of our race ? 
 
 * Thus TertuUian, of the parents that offered their children to 
 the Phenician Moloch {Apol. 0) : Libentes rcspondebant, et infantibus 
 blandiebantur, ne lacrimantes immolarentur. Cf. Plutarch, Tlepi Aeto-i- 
 
 OUL/JLODia'S, C. To. 
 
 t Thus Livy, of Decius {Hist., \. 8) : Omnes minas periculaque 
 ab Deis superis inferisque in se unum vertit. — On this whole subject 
 
 of men as fpap/maKoi, KuQapfiaTa, 7re/0iv|/jj^axa, diroTpoTraiot, See Lomeier, 
 
 De Lustrat. Vet. Gent., c. 22. 
 
THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 207 
 
 We may not refuse, brethren, to recognize these 
 references to the cross of Christ : we shall read the 
 history and mythology of the old world with little 
 profit if we do. Nor need we fear the recognition ; 
 for it is the marvellous, and at the same time most 
 natural, prerogative of Christianity, that, being the 
 absolute truth, it has, or rather itself is, the touch- 
 stone to discover all true and all false, detects the 
 truth which is hidden in every lie, finds witness for 
 itself in that which oftentimes seems, and indeed is, 
 most opposed to itself, is able to recognize in the 
 tares of earth the degenerate wheat of heaven; — in 
 the world's harshest discords, the wreck and ruin of 
 God's fairest harmonies ; — and in Satan himself, the 
 lineaments of the fallen angel of God. 
 
 But besides the witness for the great coming sacri- 
 fice, which was contained in the sacrifices of heathen- 
 ism, how mighty a sense of the cross of Christ, and of 
 its significance, do we meet in other regions of ancient 
 life. What a boding of it, for instance, forms the 
 background of the Greek tragedy. How mysterious 
 is the manner there in which, from some far back 
 transgression, some irptoTap^o^ arr)'^, the curse clings 
 to a family, passes on from generation to generation, 
 an ever-increasing load of transgression; until at length 
 the great calamity, the headed-up guilt of all, lights 
 not on the most, but on the least guilty head, on the 
 head of one that by comparison is innocent. What 
 an unconscious symbol this of the curse cleaving to 
 the Adamic race ! For as in each lesser circle of that 
 race we most often see the burden of the cross rent- 
 ing with the heaviest weight on the truest heart in 
 that circle, so in the great circle of humanity we 
 * iEschyliis, Agamemno7i, 1163. 
 
208 LECTURE IV. [1846. 
 
 behold Him of the truest heart of all, the only unguilty 
 One, bearing on the accursed tree the accumulated 
 curse of the whole Adamic family, which had come 
 down through long ages ; and not bearing only, but 
 bearing it away. For as in those solemn and stately 
 works of ancient art to which I alluded, mild breaths 
 of reconciliation seem to make themselves felt, when 
 once the curse has lighted, the expiation has been 
 made — not otherwise, and only far more gloriously, 
 does the deep inner connexion between the judgment 
 of the w^orld and the forgiveness of the world appear 
 in that death of Christ, which was at once judgment 
 and forgiveness, in which the world was condemned, 
 and in which, being condemned, the world was also 
 forgiven. 
 
 But another evidence of the sacrifice of Christ, as 
 that to which the world had been tending, lay in the 
 endeavour of those who, after that sacrifice had been 
 finished, would not accept it, to substitute something 
 else of the same kind in its room. They felt that 
 only so could they stand their ground, could they 
 recover or maintain any hold upon the hearts of men. 
 With what monstrous exaggerations the idea and prac- 
 tice of sacrifice re-appeared in the final struggle of 
 Paganism with the Christian faith, is abundantly known 
 to every student of Church history. The apostate 
 Julian, for instance, of whose life the revival of Pa- 
 ganism was the ruling passion, ran here into extremes 
 which earned him the ridicule of the more lukewarm 
 adherents of the old superstition themselves*; and 
 
 * See the manner in which the heathen Ammianus Marcellinus 
 (1. 22, c. 12) speaks of the prodigality of his sacrifices. Victimarius 
 was the title which was given him at Antioch, not apparently by the 
 Christians alone. 
 
THE PERFECT SACRlrfcE. 209 
 
 he, the same who had trod under foot the cross of 
 Christ, and counted the blood with which he was sanc- 
 tified a common thing, did yet submit himself to 
 loathsome rites*, seeking in the blood of bulls pro- 
 fusely poured on him, as in a cleansing bath, that 
 purifying which he had refused to find in the precious 
 blood-sprinkling of the Lamb of God, slain from tlic 
 foundation of the world. 
 
 Again, the inner necessity of having somewhere a 
 sacrifice to rest on, the certainty that if men have not 
 the true, they will generate a substitute in its room, 
 was signally proved by the manner in which the doc- 
 trine concerning the mass grew up in the Christian 
 Church itself. No sooner did men's fixith in a finished 
 sacrifice, one lying at the ground of every prayer, 
 every act of self-oblation, every acceptable work, grow 
 weak, than the feeling that they must have a sacrifice 
 somewhere, produced, or, so to speak, by instinct de- 
 veloped, a doctrine to answer their needs — turning 
 that Holy Eucharist, which is the ever-present witness 
 in the Church of a sacrifice once completed on the 
 cross, and continually pleaded in heaven, — turning 
 that itself into the sacrifice, and seeking to sui)i)ly by 
 these poor but continual repetitions, the weakness of 
 their faith in the one priceless offering, upon the ac- 
 ceptance of which, as upon an unchangeable basis, tlie 
 Church everlastingly reposes. 
 
 And now, brethren, by way of practical conclusion 
 from all this on which we have been entering to-day — 
 what a witness is there here against that shallow view 
 
 * Those of tl;ie tauroboliad. Prudentiiis {Pcrhtoph. 10, lOOO— 
 1050,) gives a description at large of this revolting rite. 
 
 T. H. L. ^^ 
 
210 LECTURE IV. [1840. 
 
 of the truth which should bless us, that Avould leave 
 it a bare doctrine, a system of morals, lopping away 
 as superfluous and mystical, as a remnant of Judaism, 
 all which speaks of atonement, of propitiation, of 
 blood-sprinkling, of sacrifice. The contemplation of 
 the benefits of Christ's death under aspects suggested 
 by these words, so far from being this shred of Judaism, 
 which a more perfect knowledge must strip off, finds 
 on the contrary as many anticipations everywhere be- 
 sides as there. They are as busy about sacrifice in 
 the outer court of the Gentiles, as in the holier place 
 of the Jevt^ ; and as little there as here is it a separable 
 accident, the garniture and fringe of something else, 
 but in either case itself constituting the core and 
 middle point of worship, recognized in a thousand 
 ways as that which must lie at the ground of all 
 approaches unto God. 
 
 And these things being so, how can Ave escape 
 from owning that some of the deepest, the most uni- 
 versal needs of the human heart have not yet been 
 awakened in us, if we have never yet desired to stand 
 under the cross, nor ever claimed our part in the great 
 oblation which v>'as made thereon, as on the holiest 
 altar ever reared upon the earth — needs which that 
 transcendent oflering on Calvary was meant for ever 
 and perfectly to satisfy ? It is plain, brethren, that we 
 are leading an outside life, playing but with the sur- 
 faces of things, never having brought ourselves in 
 contact with inmost realities, that there never yet has 
 risen upon our souls the aAvful vision of an holy God, 
 that we have wholly shrunk from looking down into 
 the abysmal deeps of our own corruption, if as yet we 
 have never cried, '' Purge me with hyssop, and I shall 
 
THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 211 
 
 be clean ; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." 
 For when once we have learned onglit of this, we then 
 surely feel that not amendment of life, that not tears 
 of sorrow, that not the most perfect baptism of rej)e)it- 
 anee, that not all these together, would of tliemselves 
 reach our needs, or remove our stains, or give peace 
 for the past, or confidence for the future ; that only 
 in the Lamb slain is there purity, or pardon, or peace. 
 Oh then, brethren, let us hasten there, where we 
 may make that precious blood-sprinkling our own ; 
 let us hasten there, lest they rise up against us in the 
 last da}' — those heathens, who set such a price on 
 their sacrifices, which were at best but shadows of 
 the true ; who made by them such continual acknow- 
 ledgement of guilt which they had contracted, of 
 punishment which they deserved, of reconciliation 
 which they desired ; lest they rise up, condemning 
 us, who shall have counted the blood with whicli we 
 Avere sanctified a common thing, and brought into the 
 awful presence of the Judge a conscience stained aiul 
 defiled, which yet might have been purged and lor 
 ever perfected by far better sacrifices than theirs. 
 
 \\—^2 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 THE RESTORER OF PARADISE. 
 
 Genesis V. 29. 
 
 And lie called his name Noah^ saying^ This same shall coin- 
 fort us concernincf our icorh and toil of our hands, because 
 of the ground which the Lord hath cursed, 
 
 A WORD or two may be needful on commencing again 
 these lectures, which, after the lapse of some months, 
 I am permitted to resume ; I may thus hope to remind 
 such among my present hearers as have heard the 
 earlier discourses, and inform such as have not, what 
 has been their course, and what the road we hitherto 
 have travelled over. I have undertaken, then, to 
 trace in a few leading lines the yearnings of the world 
 which was before Christ, or which, though subsequent 
 to Him, has yet lain without the limits of Christendom, 
 and beyond the mighty influences of his word and 
 Spirit, — a world to which He was still therefore a 
 Saviour to come — to trace I say the ^^earnings of 
 this whole world after its Eedeemer, and the pre- 
 sentiments of Him which it cherished. I have sought 
 to shew that if there was much in the world, as in a 
 fallen world there needs must have been, ready to 
 resist and oppose the coming in of the Truth, prompt 
 to take up arms against it at its appearing, so also, on 
 the other hand, in that it was a world which came first 
 from God, and which had never been abandoned by 
 
THE RESTORER OF PARADISE. 213 
 
 Him, but which all aloiig- He had been in hiohcht wis- 
 dom and highest love preparing for and leading to 
 this glorious consummation, there were in it certain 
 predispositions for the Truth, there was that wliieli 
 was ready to range itself under the banners of that 
 Truth, so soon as once they were openly set up. 1 
 have endeavoured, too, to prove that the existence 
 of unconscious prophecies of the truth, resemblances 
 in lower spheres of the spiritual life to all which at 
 last was perfectly manifested in the highest, is only 
 that which we should have expected ; so that it is not 
 the presence of these resemblances which need per- 
 plex us, but rather their absence which would have 
 been justly surprising, which would have been indeed 
 most difficult to account for. 
 
 I take up my subject at this point, and go forward 
 to another branch of it, seeking to shew that in ano- 
 ther aspect beside those already contemplated by us, 
 we have in Christ our Lord " the Desire of all na- 
 tions," inasmuch, that is, as we have in Him one wlio 
 was at perfect understanding with nature, wielded it 
 at his will, declared that He was come to restore it, 
 to bring back the lost Paradise ; and did not merely 
 declare this in word, but by firstfruits of power exer- 
 cised upon it, by the mighty Avorks that He did, gave 
 manifest tokens that He was come, at once to set it 
 free from the bondage of corruption, and to set free 
 the race of which He appeared as the Head from the 
 blind tyranny which it exercised upon them — to give 
 to his people something more than the Stoic freedom 
 of opposing an intrepid and obdurate heart to the 
 assaults of fortune, or the accidents of nature. For 
 
214 LECTURE V. [1846. 
 
 though that in its place was well, which should enable 
 a man to say amid a falling world, Impavidum ferient 
 ruince, yet better still his work, who should so bear up 
 and strengthen and establish the shaken pillars of the 
 universe, that wreck and ruin should find place in it 
 no more. 
 
 But why, it may be asked, should this deliverance 
 of nature have been, upon one side, part of the world's 
 expectation? or why, which is in fact the same question 
 on its other side, should the giving of this deliverance 
 cohere so intimately, as we shall see it does, with 
 Christ's redemptive work, as to be in fact one aspect 
 of that work itself? For this reason — because of the 
 closest connexion in which the disorder from which 
 the redemption was expected, stood related to the sin 
 of man. That disorder was felt truly to be the echo 
 in nature of the deeper discords in man's spiritual 
 being. When man sinned, then in the profound and 
 not exaggerated language of our great poet, "All na- 
 ture felt the wound." Man was as the highest note 
 in the scale of creation, and when he descended, 
 through all nature there followed a corresponding 
 reduction. It became subject to vanity, not willingly, 
 not by an act of its own will, but by reason of another, 
 by reason of him who subjected the same, by reason 
 of man. (Rom. viii. 20.) We behold the fact itself on 
 all sides acknowledged, the fact, I mean, of a primal 
 perfection, of a present disorder. Of the sense of 
 primal perfection we have singular witness in the lan- 
 guage, (and there is no such witness as the unconscious 
 one which language supplies,) of two the most highly 
 cultivated nations of the ancient world, whom all the 
 
THE RESTORER OF PARADISE. 21o 
 
 present confusions of nature could not hinder from 
 using words signifying oixler and elegance* to designate 
 the world which they beheld around them ; — for so to 
 them did this grace and beauty gleam through its 
 present disorders, so instinctively did they feel these 
 to belong to the true idea of the universe, grievously 
 as that Avas noAv defaced and marredf . While with 
 all this, on the other hand, its present disorders ap- 
 peared so great, its discords so harsh, that the l^i)icu- 
 rean poet found, as he thought, warrant and ground 
 enough in these for his atheist conclusion, that no 
 hand of Eternal Wisdom presided at its planning, that 
 no final causes could be traced throughout it, but that 
 all was the Avork of a blind chance j. That conclusion 
 of his was indeed most false, yet this much was true, 
 that Paradise had disappeared from the earth ; and 
 man, the appointed prince of creation, did stand 
 among the rebel powers of nature ; which had cast 
 off his yoke, at the moment Avhen he cast olf the 
 yoke of his superior Lord, practising upon him, by a 
 just judgment, the disobedience and the contumacy 
 which it had learned from him ; and which did now, 
 with its thorns and its briars, its wastes and its wilder- 
 nesses, its earthquakes and its storms, present him too 
 
 « KoVos and mundus. Pliny {H. iV., 1.2, c. 8): Qucni ^oafxov 
 Grseci, nomine ornamenti appellaverunt, eum nos a perfecta absohi- 
 tacxue elegantid mundum. Pythagoras is said to have been the first 
 who applied the word k-oV^uos to the material univei-r<e— a word which 
 was in its way almost as great an acquisition for natural plulosophy, 
 as was Plato's Idea for intellectual and spiritual- 
 
 t Compare the De Naturd Deoriim, b. 2. 
 
 t Lucretius : 
 
 Nequicquam nobis divinitus esse paratam 
 Naturam rcrum, tautd dat prccdita rii/pd. 
 
216 LECTURE V. [1846. 
 
 faithful a reflex of the sin and evil, the desolation and 
 barrenness of his own heart. 
 
 Yet nevertheless, though Paradise was gone, he 
 kept in his soul the memory of that which once had 
 been, and with the memory, the hope and the confi- 
 dence that it would yet be again — that perhaps, though 
 Ids eyes could see it nowhere, it yet had not wholly 
 vanished from the earth. If there bloomed no Para- 
 dise in the present, at least there lay one before him 
 and behind. If it lay not near him, yet in the dis- 
 tance, — in the happy Iran, — among the remote Hyper- 
 boreans*, — in thefar land of the blameless Ethiopians. 
 He felt, indeed, that he was himself weak to win it 
 back, but he could not resign the trust that a cham- 
 pion would arise, and accomplish for him that which 
 he was unequal to accomplish for himself. Nor was it 
 only when the son of Lamech was born that men said 
 in a joyful expectation, " This same shall comfort us 
 because of the ground Avhich the Lord hath cursed." 
 Of many more the same hope was fondly conceived. 
 The world could hardly picture to itself any one of 
 its leading spirits, of the great benefactors of the past, 
 the mighty deliverers in the future, 'without thinking 
 of the curse upon the earth as more or less lightened 
 in his time and by his aid. For it truly understood 
 that however the resistance which we find in nature, 
 a resistance so stubborn that only with long labour 
 and toil we make it subject to our will, may be part 
 of the needful discipline of the present time — may 
 be, though not good in itself, yet good for our present 
 condition, and something which we could not be with- 
 out — still that release from all this, from this resist- 
 ** See Miiller's Doriann, b. 2, c. 4. 
 
THE RESTORER OF PARADISE. 217 
 
 ance and contradiction of the outward world, is a 
 portion of the blessedness in store, not indeed so 
 much for its own sake, as because it will go hand in 
 hand with, and be the outward expression of, another 
 and greater healing and deliverance in the inner do- 
 main of men's spirits. 
 
 This yearning after a lost Paradise, this belief that 
 it should some day or other be restored, we find exist- 
 ing everywhere, and, as was to be expected, in the 
 worthier religions the most vividly. Thus it comes 
 out with a remarkable strength and distinctness in 
 that which has so many noble elements in it, Avhich is 
 in many respects so remarkably free from the more 
 debasing admixtures of most other worships of hea- 
 thendom — I mean the religion of the ancient Persians. 
 Through that all there runs the liveliest expectation 
 of a time when every poison and poisonous weed 
 should be expelled from the earth, when there should 
 be no more ravening beast, nor fiery simoom, when 
 streams should break forth in every desert, when the 
 bodies of men should cast no shadows, when they 
 should need no food to sustain their life, when there 
 should be no more poverty, nor sickness, nor old age, 
 nor death. 
 
 And what is most remarkable, and makes these 
 expectations to belong to our argument is, that not in 
 Jewish prophecy alone were these hopes, and the ful- 
 filment of these hopes, linked with, and consequent 
 upon, the coming of a righteous King, one of whom 
 righteousness should be the girdle of his loins, and 
 faithfulness the girdle of his reins, who should reprove 
 with equity for the meek of the earth (Isai. xi. 4, 5); 
 but in all the anticipations upon all sides of these 
 
218 LECTURE V. [1846. 
 
 blessings to men, they were thus comiectecl with the 
 expectation of a king reigning in righteousness. In 
 his time, and because of his presence, these blessings 
 should accrue : he should be himself the middle point 
 of blessing, from which all should flow out. For there 
 was a just sense in men, which hindered them from 
 ever looking for, or conceiving of, any blessings apart 
 from a person with whom they were linked, and from 
 whom they were diflused. Even in the Pollio of the 
 great Latin poet, however little interpreters are at 
 one concerning the wondrous child, the kindler of such 
 joyful exi^ectations, however unsatisfying the common 
 explanations must be confessed to be, yet this much 
 is certain, that the poet could not conceive or dream 
 of a mere natural golden age. It must centre in and 
 unfold itself from a living person : it must stand in a 
 real relation to his appearing, being the outcoming 
 and reflection of his righteousness. The world's his- 
 tory can have no sentimental and idyllic, it must needs 
 have an epic and heroic, close. 
 
 But it may be asked. Are we justified in looking 
 at this expectation as the expectation of something 
 which is to be indeed made ours in Him that is true? 
 All will, I think, allow that the prospect of a restored 
 Paradise, — in other words, of a world lightened from its 
 curse, does belong to the very essence of our Christian 
 hope — that there was a truth in the ancient Chilijism, 
 which all its sensual exaggerations should not induce 
 us to slight or to put aside — in so far, that is, as it 
 was a protest against the dishonour which would liave 
 been put upon a part of God's creation, or rather upon 
 the completeness of the redemption of that part, if it 
 
THE RESTORER OF PARADISE. 219 
 
 had been regarded as so utterly and irrecoverably 
 spoiled, that now it could only be destroyed, and not 
 renewed. Assuredly the hope of this recovery forms 
 part of the anticipation of prophets. The waste 
 places of the world, those outAvard signs of sin, imprest 
 visibly on nature, shall disappear ; " the wilderness and 
 the solitary place shall be glad." What glory the 
 world yet keeps shall be enhanced and infinitely 
 multiplied ; " The light of the moon shall be as the 
 light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be 
 sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that 
 the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people, and 
 healeth the stroke of their Avound*." (Isai. xxx. 26.) 
 All the discords which have followed hard upon the 
 fall shall be hushed to peace ; " The wolf also shall 
 dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down 
 with the kid." (Isai. xi. 10.) And apostles take up 
 the strain : they too declare how " the whole creation 
 groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now ;" 
 how " the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth 
 for the manifestation of the sons of God." (Rom. viii. 
 19.) They see in ecstatic vision not merely a new 
 heaven, but a new earth, and One sitting upon his 
 throne who says, "Behold, I make all things new." 
 (Rev. xxi. 5). 
 
 And we have, not lying thus on the surface of 
 Scripture, other obscurer yet not less significant indi- 
 cations of the intimate connexion between the restora- 
 tion of man and the restoration of the outward world, 
 as for instance, in the use of the same word in the 
 
 * For the way in which the Jewish commentators understood such 
 passages as these,. see Schoettgen, Hor. Heb., v. 2, pp. Crl, 171 ; and 
 Eisenmenger's Entdeckt. Judcnthum, v. 2, p. 82(>. 
 
220 LECTURE V. [1846. 
 
 New Testament to signify the one and tlie other. 
 There is a regeneration of man, but the same word 
 (iraXiyyeveaia) is most significantly applied to nature 
 also, and expresses that great and transcendent change 
 which for it also is in store. (Matt. xix. 28.) There is 
 for it also a new birth, for so much this word thus 
 applied tells us, no less than for man, — a casting ofi' 
 of its old and Avrinkled skin, — a resurrection morn, 
 when it too shall put on its Easter garments ; when, 
 as some foster-nurse, it shall share in the glory of the 
 royal child whom it has reared ; and who at length 
 ascending the throne of his kingdom, is mindful of 
 her in whose lap in time past he has been nurtured*. 
 Man's regeneration is indeed a present one, and na- 
 ture's in the main a future ; yet are they but workings 
 in narroAver and wider spheres of the same almighty 
 poAver, and so may thus justly be called by the same 
 name. 
 
 Nor by word alone, but also by pregnant symbol, 
 it was declared that this redemption was a part of 
 that work which the Son of man came to effect. For 
 I cannot doubt that there was a symbolic pointing at 
 what had been lost, and what was to be won back, in 
 the fact of the Temptation of our blessed Lord finding 
 place in the wilderness. The garden and the wilder- 
 ness are thus set forth to us as the two opposite poles. 
 By sin the first Adam lost the garden, which hence- 
 forward disappeared from the earth, so that the very 
 site of it has since been vainly sought ; and from that 
 day forth the wilderness was man's appointed home. 
 
 * ChrySOStom : Kaddirep ydp Tit)>i(/i;, -naioiov Tpiipovora (iaatXiKOV, eirl 
 T»}s «(OX»/s tKeivov yiuofxdvou ti/v iruTpiKij^-y kuI avTij avvd-Trokavei. tmu 
 dyuQCoVy OVTW Kal >; ktiViv. 
 
THE RESTORER OF PARADISE. 221 
 
 Christ therefore, the second Adam, taking' up the con- 
 flict exactly at the point where the first Adam had 
 left it, and inheriting, so to speak, all the consequences 
 of his defeat, did in the wilderness do battle with the 
 foe, and triumphing in righteousness, won back the 
 garden for man — which, though we see it not yet, 
 will in due time unfold itself from Him and as one of 
 the fruits of his victory ; for the centre being won, 
 the circumference will be won also. We recognize a 
 slight hint of the meaning that lay in making the 
 wilderness the scene of this great conflict, in that 
 which one Evangelist alone records, and which might 
 at first sight seem but as a stroke added to enhance 
 the desolate savageness of his abode : " He was with 
 the wild beasts." (Mark i. 13.) But surely it means 
 that in Him, the ideal man, the Paradise prerogatives 
 were given back ; the fear of Him and the dread of 
 Him were over all the beasts of the field : " He was 
 with them" and they harmed Him not, but did rather 
 own Him as their rightful Lord. 
 
 Nor may we confine to that single act of our 
 Lord's life, the tokens which He gave that He should 
 be this deliverer of nature ; nor may we say that the 
 glory of a redeemed nature is a glory which as yet 
 altogether waits to be revealed. Kather is it already 
 and most truly begun. In his miracles we see the 
 germs and beginnings of its liberation. In them na- 
 ture is no longer stiff* but fluent : its laws, so stubborn 
 to others, become elastic in his hands : before Him 
 each of its mountains becomes a plain : it listens for 
 and hears and obeys the lightest intimation of his 
 will. 
 
 That all this had need so to be in the presence 
 
222 LECTURE V. [1846. 
 
 of one claiming to be all which He claimed, that it 
 all stood in vital and intimate connexion with his work, 
 was most truly felt by a world which evermore adorned 
 its champions with like powers, which evermore con- 
 ceived of them as Avorkers of wonders, as bringers 
 back in like manner of the lost harmonies of creation, 
 and conceived of nature as plastic in their hands and 
 obedient to their will. It was a true instinct, however 
 mistaken in the persons to whom the wondrous works 
 were ascribed, out of which the world concluded that 
 he who professed to deliver his fellows, must not be 
 bound upon any side with the same heavy yoke as 
 they were — that the very idea of a champion of man- 
 kind was that of one in whom should be found again 
 all the lost prerogatives of every man. 
 
 And when we thus say that the miracles which 
 Christ wrought were these signs and tokens of a 
 redemption, let us not pause here, nor contemplate 
 them as insulated facts, once and once only having 
 been, but rather as facts pregnant with ulterior conse- 
 quences, as the earliest steps of a series, as firstfruits 
 of a gracious power which did not stop with them, but 
 has ever since continued to unfold itself more and 
 more. What Christ once, and in them, wrought in 
 1 intensive power, he works evermore in extensive. Onge 
 or twice He multiplied the bread, but evermore in 
 Christian lands, famine is become a stranger, a more 
 startling, become a more unusual, thing — the culture 
 of the earth proceeding with surer success and with a 
 larger return, A few times he healed the sick, but 
 in the reverence for man's body which his Gospel 
 teaches, in the sympathy for all forms of suffering 
 which flows out of it, in the sure advance of all 
 
THE RESTORER OF PARADISE. 223 
 
 worthier science which it implies and ensures, in and 
 by aid of all this, these miraculous cures unfold them- 
 selves into the whole art of Christian medicine, into 
 all the alleviations and removements of pain and 
 disease, which are so rare in other, and so frequent 
 in Christian lands. Once he quelled the storm ; but 
 in the clear dominion of man's spirit over the material 
 universe which Christianity gives, in the calm courage 
 which it inspires, a lordship over the winds and waves, 
 and over all the blind uproar of nature, is secured, 
 which only can again be lost with the loss of all the 
 spiritual gifts with which he has endued his people. 
 Already Paul was de facto admiral in that great tem- 
 pest upon the Adrian sea. 
 
 Thus then, brethren, we see that the world's ex- 
 pectation upon this side also has an answering fact. 
 There is One who does truly give what the hearts of 
 men have desired. Their longing after a redeemed 
 creation was no delusive dream, however the ways in 
 which they realized that longing, and gave it an out- 
 ward shape, were premature and vain. And here you 
 will bear with me, even though I repeat an admonition 
 once made already, but the importance of which will 
 abundantly justify its repetition. Let us then for our- 
 selves take care that we view aright these askings 
 after the true, and understand what they mean : let 
 us see that they be not, by the fraud of men, used 
 asrainst us, to undermine, or at least to embarrass, the 
 faith which they ought to help to establish. We have 
 spoken already of the way in which they might be so 
 used. The slight upon the miracles of Scripture, and 
 all other God's mighty gifts to the world by his Son, 
 through the adducing of other works seemingly of a 
 
224 LECTURE V. [1846. 
 
 like kind, other similar pretensions made by, or on 
 behalf of, others, — the mingling and so losing sight of 
 the divine facts amid a multitude of phenomena ap- 
 parently similar, — this opposition to the truth has been 
 often attenuated, but is probably now working itself 
 out into a more consistent theory, and one more con- 
 scious of itself, and what it means, and what advan- 
 tages it possesses, than ever in times past it has done. 
 The evading of the stress of Christ's works by the 
 reply, that such have been the accompaniment of every 
 heroic personage, glories and ornaments which the 
 imagination of his fellows has inevitably lent him, the 
 halo with which it has clothed him, — for instance, that 
 it has evermore been presumed that the outer world 
 will obey him, no reluctant slave to his material force, 
 but a ready servant to his spiritual will ; — this manner 
 of dealing with the marvellous works of Christ is likely 
 to find great favour in our time. Nor is it hard to 
 see the reason. It falls in remarkably with the ten- 
 dencies of our age. It retains, and is consistent with, 
 a certain measure of respect toward the records of 
 revelation. For it does not presume those parts of 
 them which affirm supernatural facts to be a fraud or 
 forgery, nor yet to be the record of deceptions and 
 sleights of hand, but only that the men to whom we 
 owe these accounts lay under the same laws, were 
 subject to the same optical illusions in the spiritual 
 world, as all their fellows, as belong to the very essence 
 of man's nature : it flired with them but as with others, 
 that the mighty desire became father to the belief. 
 This theory offers a Avay of dealing with a great mul- 
 titude of statements presented as historic, which men 
 are unwilling to brand outright as falsehoods, and yet 
 
THE RESTORER OF PARADISE. 225 
 
 as little willing' to accept as truths. It offers a middle 
 course, decently respectful to Christianity, and at the 
 same time effectually escaping from its authority : and 
 presenting, as it seems to do, a calm and philosophical 
 explanation both for its more perplexing phenomena, 
 and also for very much beyond it, it will be strange 
 if in our age, which rejoices so much in large and in- 
 clusive points of view, it does not find a ready and a 
 Avide acceptance. 
 
 But in truth, brethren, this universal imagination, 
 these consenting expectations upon all sides, in so 
 many thousands and thousands of hearts, these, if we 
 believe in a divine origin and destination of man, if 
 we believe that this man or that may be deceived, 
 but that all men cannot — since whatever there may 
 be of false at the surface, the foundations of his 
 being are laid in the truth, being laid in God — if 
 we believe that this or that generation may be dream- 
 ing fantastic and merely feverish dreams, which have 
 no counterparts whatever in the actual world of 
 realities, but not all generations — if there is that in 
 us which, prior to all argument, solemnly binds us 
 to believe that no such cruel falsehood would be 
 played off upon man as a great longing laid deep 
 in his heart, without a corresponding object — then 
 to us believing so, these wide-spread, or say rather 
 these universal expectations, will themselves give tes- 
 timony to a truth corresponding to them. We shall 
 not indeed look for a truth answering to them in 
 all their accidents, for of these many will be local, 
 temporary, varying : and the truth, when it comes to 
 pass, must more or less depart and differ from that 
 form in which it clothed itself to them who Avaited for 
 
 T. H. L. 1''3 
 
226 LECTURE V. [1846. 
 
 it. So of necessity it must be ; for that form per- 
 force was more or less injuriously affected, distorted, 
 and obscured by that sinful element, which in the 
 mind of each would mingle with, and in part debase 
 and degrade it. But there will be a testimony in 
 these consenting- expectations for that which lies at 
 the root of, and after the merely accidental is stripped 
 off, remains common to, and so constitutes the essence 
 of, them all. 
 
 And when we are deeply convinced of this, then 
 in all those in whom the world has greatly hoped — 
 workers, as it has been thought, of wondrous works — 
 bringers back of a golden age — utterers, as has been 
 fondly deemed, of the forgotten spell of power — 
 graspers anew of the sceptre over nature which had 
 fallen from the hand of every one beside — readers 
 backward of the primal curse — in the mighty acts 
 attributed to each one of these, we shall trace proofs 
 of the exceeding fitness which there was, that He who 
 indeed came in the fulness of the time, should come 
 furnished with signs and wonders and mighty works, 
 so that even the winds and the sea obeyed Him, and 
 the bread multiplied in his hands, and the wild beasts 
 knew him for their lord, and in the desert Paradise 
 bloomed anew at his presence. In legend and in tale 
 utterly worthless as history we shall yet read pro- 
 phetic intimations, which indeed understood not them- 
 selves, of Him who in the days of his flesh, by first- 
 fruits of power, declared Himself the promised Seed 
 of the Avoman who should comfort us for the earth 
 which God had cursed, and at length bring about its 
 perfect redemption from that curse, making it, thus 
 redeemed, a fit dwelling-place for his redeemed people. 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 
 
 Romans VII. 21, 23. 
 
 I find then a lait\ tliat^ lohen I ivould do good, eml is present 
 with me. For I delight in the law of God after the 
 inward man : but I see another law in my members, war- 
 ring against the law of my mind., and bringing me into 
 captivity to the laio of sin which is in my members. 
 
 We were occupied, when last we met together, with 
 the world's expectation of one who should deliver all 
 outward nature from its curse, of one in whom the 
 Adamic prerogatives should re-appear. To-day I shall 
 be led, as by a natural transition, to speak of a yet 
 nearer deliverance, and one which it imported to man 
 yet more that he should win, or that another should 
 win for him — an harmony which he demanded with a 
 yet more earnest longing than this harmony of nature 
 with itself, or of nature with him — an inner harmony, 
 a deliverance from his own evil, from that in himself 
 which was threatening his true being with destruction, 
 from the lusts which embraced his soul, but while they 
 embraced, strangled and destroyed. For sin has never 
 reigned so undisputed a lord in his heart, but that 
 there were voices there protesting against its lordship. 
 His will was enslaved ; but he knew that it was en- 
 slaved, that freedom was its birthright ; and that bond- 
 age, however it might be its miserable necessity now, 
 yet was not its true condition from the first. 
 
 15—2 
 
228 LECTURE VI. [184G. 
 
 It was the sense of this, of such an inner contra- 
 diction in his life, which made one to exchiim that he 
 felt as if two souls were lodged within him * ; and 
 another to set forth the soul of man as a chariot, 
 which two horses, one white and one black, were 
 drawing f — so did the wondrous fact present itself to 
 him, of the flesh lusting against the spirit, and the 
 spirit against the flesh, so had he learned that if there 
 is that in every man which is drawing him up to God 
 and to the finding of his true freedom in God, there 
 is also that which would fain drag him downward, till 
 he utterly lose himself and his own true life in the 
 mire of sensual and worldly lusts, till the divine in 
 him be wholly obscured, and the bestial predominant 
 altogether :]:. It was the sense of this, which made the 
 image of the two ways, a downward and an upward — 
 one easy and strewn with flowers, but a way of death ; 
 one hard and steep and sharp set with thorns, but a 
 way of life, as familiar to heathen moralists ^ as to us 
 
 * Xenophon, Cyrop^d., 1. C, c. 1, §41. Cf. Seneca {Ep. 52): Quid 
 est hoc, Lucili, quod nos alio tendentes alio trahit, et eo unde recedere 
 cupimus, impellit ? quid colluctatur cum animo nostro, nee permittit 
 nobis quidquam semel velle ? 
 
 t Plato, Pha'drufi, c. 25. 
 
 ij: This sense of the latent beast, or the more latent beasts than one, 
 in every man, which may be fed and pampered, and roused to fiercest 
 activity, while the true man in him perishes with hunger, supplies the 
 groundwork of that famous and often imitated passage in Plato, Rep.y 
 1. 9, c. 12. 
 
 § Hesiod, Op. 289—292 ; Cebes, Tab., c. 12 ; Xenophon, Memorah., 
 1. 2, c. 1, § 21 secj.; in regard to which last passage there is a very inter- 
 esting discussion in Buttmann's admirable elucidation of the mythus 
 of Herakles. {Mythol, v. 1, p. 252.) He there shews that according to 
 all likelihood, the " temptation" of Herakles belonged to the original 
 legend, and was not the mere poetical invention of Prodicus. Lactan- 
 tius {Inst. Dili., 1. 6, c. 3) notes how heathen poet and philosopher had 
 already used this image of the two ways. 
 
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 229 
 
 who hear of the broad and the narrow way, the Avide 
 and the strait gate, from the lips of the Lord himself. 
 
 And thus the problem which each nobler system 
 proposed to itself was the delivering from this evil, 
 the bringing of an harmony into the inner life — its 
 end to make man a king, so that he should have do- 
 minion over himself, and over all of his nature which 
 Avas not truly himself — that Avhich Avas appointed to 
 rule in him, ruling, and that Avhich Avas appointed to 
 serve, serving — the charioteer charioting, and not 
 dragged in the dust at the heels of his horses. The 
 promise Avhich it held out of giving this, was that 
 Avhich to every more earnest spirit each system had 
 of attractive, and only as it promised this, had it an 
 attraction for them. They only felt draAvn to it, as it 
 undertook to give them this liberty, and harmoniously 
 to re-adjust the disturbed relations of their iuAvard 
 life. 
 
 I knoAv that Avhen Ave undertake to speak of these 
 things, and Avould fain shcAV in hoAv Avonderful a de- 
 gree the ancient world Avas engaged Avith the same 
 moral and spiritual problems as are engaging ourselves, 
 there is a caution which Ave must take home to our- 
 selves, if Ave would not trace entirely delusive resem- 
 blances, and be led aAvay by merely accidental like- 
 nesses in expression, Avhich yet point to no real likeness 
 at the root ; this caution, I mean — that since there 
 are points of apparent contact in almost all systems, 
 it folloAvs that before Ave can find any significance in 
 these, or conclude one because of them to stand in 
 any real affinity to another, Ave must strictly ask our- 
 selves, hoAv deep these resemblances go, Avhether they 
 lie merely on the surface, or reach down to the cen- 
 
230 LECTURE VI. [1846. 
 
 tral heart of the matter, to that which determines the 
 natm-e of each ; whether we have been caught by 
 -words and phrases which have a similar sound, but 
 which, looked into more nearly, will be found to con- 
 ceal under language which sounds nearly the same, 
 statements which are really and essentially most diverse. 
 This mistake no doubt has often been made ; phrases 
 have been snatched at and claimed as ours, as antici- 
 pating and bearing witness to Christian truths, without 
 waiting to inquire what place they really hold in the 
 complex of the system from which they are taken. 
 Thus a Latin Father* has spoken of Seneca as " one 
 of us" on the score of certain shcAvy maxims which 
 sound at first hearing, and till they are adjusted into 
 their place, like great Christian truths ; and this, 
 though perhaps there could not have been two schemes 
 more opposite at the heart to one another than that 
 Stoic, which in its pride would teach us to seek all in 
 ourselves, and the Christian, which bids us with an 
 humbler yet truer wisdom to seek all out of ourselves 
 and in God. 
 
 But at the same time, and owning our liability to 
 be thus deceived, we must yet keep far from that 
 other course, which shunning the faults and exaggera- 
 tions of this, refuses to see stirring at all in the hea- 
 then world the same riddles of life and of death which 
 are perplexing ourselves. Into this extreme they run, 
 who will give any explanation rather than a moral 
 one, and the more trivial the better, to the legend and 
 the tale of antiquity, obstinately refusing to hear in 
 the most earnest voices which reach them from the 
 past, cries after the same deliverance for which we 
 * Jerome {Adv.Jovin., 1.1, in fine) : Noster Seneca. 
 
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 281 
 
 yearn. The tendency to this is in truth at its root 
 antichristian ; for it grows, whether it owns it or not, 
 out of a conviction that all with which Christianity 
 deals is in fact accidental, and does not belong to the 
 essential stuff of humanity — that this revelation of 
 which we boast, has no claim to be considered as an 
 answer to the deepest and most universal needs of 
 men — that echoes of it therefore are nowhere to be 
 listened for, or being caught, are in no wise to be ac- 
 counted more than accidental reverberations of the 
 air. 
 
 Keeping then that caution in view, but as a caution 
 only, and resisting, as we are bound to do, the en- 
 deavour to rob the whole heathen world, its philosophy 
 and mythology alike, of all moral significance for us, 
 on the score that significance has sometimes been 
 found where truly there was none, we may boldly say 
 that the highest philosophy of the old world did con- 
 cern itself with a redemption — not of course with a 
 Redeemer, for of such it knew not : but it did avow- 
 edly set before itself as its aim and purpose the help- 
 ing of souls to a birth out of a world of shews and 
 appearances into the world of realities, out of a world 
 of falsehood into one of truth, turning them from 
 darkness to light, from the contemplation of shadows 
 to the contemplation of substance*. That favourite 
 saying of Socrates that he exercised still the craft of 
 his mother, that his task and work, his mission in the 
 world, was such an helping of souls to the birth, by 
 the helping to a birth the conceptions which Were 
 
 * The great passage in the Republic of Plato, 1. 7, c. 1, 2, will at 
 once suggest itself to many. 
 
232 LECTURE VI. [1846. 
 
 struggling there*, this rested on no other thought, — 
 was in its kind and however remotely a prelude to far 
 mightier truth, the earthly anticipation of an heavenly 
 word, of his word who said, "Ye must be born again." 
 It pointed, although at an infinite distance, to the 
 possibility of a birth into a kingdom, not merely of 
 reality as opposed to semblance, but of holiness as 
 opposed to sinf. 
 
 What again is '' Know thyself," that great saying 
 of the heathen philosophy, in which, when it turned 
 from being merely physical, and a speculation about 
 natural appearances, the sun the moon and the stars, 
 to the making of man and man's being the region in 
 which it moved, the riddles of humanity, the riddles 
 which it sought to solve J — what was that "Know 
 thyself," that great word in which it embodied and 
 expressed so well its own character and aim, and all 
 that it proposed to effect, but a preparation afar off 
 for an higher word, the " Repent ye," of the Gospel ? 
 Since let that precept only be faithfully carried out, 
 and in what else could it issue but repentance ? or at 
 least in what else but in an earnest longing after this 
 great change of heart and life ? For out of this self- 
 knowledge nothing else but self-loathing could grow — 
 
 • Plato's The^Btetus, c. 6. Stallbaum's edit., p. 63. See Van 
 Heusde's Initia Philosophia! Platonicce, v. 2, p. 52 seq. 
 
 + And so too there are counterparts, weak and pale ones they 
 must needs be, of the Christian idea of conversion, which find place 
 in the same philosophy. How remarkable are the very terms, ^era- 
 
 aTpOCJ)-!] OLTTO T(x^U (TKltZv tTTt TO </)C0§ {Rep., 1. 7, C. 13), TTepLfTTpOCf)}], \f/UXV^ 
 
 irepiayuiyn {Rep., 1. 7, c. 6), with which we may compare the eTrian-pe- 
 €/)eo-0ai of the New Testament, 2 Cor. iii. 16 ; 1 Thess. i. 9; Actsxviii. 
 ]8. 
 
 + Cicero, Tusc. Quo'st., 1. 5, c. 4. 
 
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 233 
 
 SO that men being once come, as they presently must, 
 to a consciousness of their error and their departure 
 from goodness and truth, should hate themselves, and 
 flee from themselves to whatever higher guide was 
 offered them ; to the end that they might become 
 different men, and not remain the same which before 
 they were'". What could any man behold himself, if 
 only he beheld himself aright, but, to use the wonder- 
 ful comparison of Plato f, as that sea-god, in whom 
 the pristine form was now scarcely to be recognized, 
 so were some limbs of his body broken off, and some 
 marred and battered by the violence of the waves, 
 while to the rest shells and stones and sea-weed had 
 clung and overgrown them, till he bore a resemblance 
 rather to some monster than to that which by nature 
 he was ? What was man but such a wreck of his nobler 
 self, what but such a monster could he shew in his 
 own eyes, if only he could be prevailed to fix those 
 eyes steadfastly upon himself? 
 
 And when men, thus learning their fall, and how 
 
 * See the affecting words, wliich Plato {Sympos., c. 32) puts into 
 the mouth of Alcibiades, concerning the mysterious and magical 
 power of the truth, even as partially embodied in the words and 
 person of a Socrates, to convince of sin ; until, as the young man 
 owned, it seemed to him that it were far better not to live than to live 
 
 the man he was. (wcn-e /jlol So^ai /a?; (Blcotov elvai expvTL ois exw.) 
 
 -|- He Rep., 1. 10, C. 11 : "Qo-Trep ol tov daXuTTLOv TXavKov opwvTe^, ovk 
 civ CTi pa8iw3 avTOv iBoiev tiw ap\aiav c^vcriv, vtto tou to. tc TraXaid tov 
 cco'/xaTos fxepi] to. fxev eKKeKkdcrdaL, tol oh avvre-p'Kpdai Kai'rrdvTco<s\e\ui(3fi<Tdai 
 iiTTO Twv KVjxaTwv, dWa Se irpoa-rrecfiUKeuaL ocr-rpea -re Kal (pvKia Kai TreVpas, 
 wo-Te irauTi pidWov drjpita koiKCvaL ?/ olos jji/ 4)uarei. ovtw Kal tjji' v|/i/)(?}j/ rj/iCts 
 
 Gew'jueSa SiaKei/jLevriv viro juLupicov kukcov. This Glaucus, as the Scholiast 
 tells us, discovered the fountain of immortality, of which he drank ; 
 but not being able to shew it to others, was by them hurled into the 
 deep of the sea. From time to time, the fishermen catch sight of him, 
 or hear him bewailing his immortahty. The way in which this my- 
 thus is used by Plato, is a testimony for the profound meaning which 
 he found in it. 
 
234 LECTURE VI. [1846. 
 
 great it was, learned also to long for their restoration, 
 very interesting and instructive is it to observe how 
 Christ realized for yearning souls not only the very 
 thing which they asked for, but that in the very forms 
 under which they had asked it ; most instructive to 
 observe how the very language of Scripture, in which 
 it sets forth the gifts which a Saviour brings, was a 
 language which more or less had been used already to 
 set forth the blessings which men wanted, or which 
 from others they had most imperfectly obtained — the 
 Gospel of Christ falling in not only with the wants of 
 souls, but with the very language in which those wants 
 had found utterance. 
 
 Thus there had continually spoken out in men, a 
 sense of that which they needed to be done for them, 
 as an healing, as a binding up of hurts, a stanching of 
 wounds. The art of the physician did but image 
 forth an higher cure and care, which should concern 
 itself not with the bodies, but with the souls, of men. 
 They were but the branches of one and the same dis- 
 cipline, so much so, that the same god who was con- 
 ceived master in one, the soother of passions, was 
 master also in the other, the healer of diseases. It 
 was conceived of sins as of stripes and wounds, which 
 would leave their livid marks, their enduring scars, on 
 the miserable souls which had committed them, and 
 which carried these evidences of their guilt, visibly 
 impressed on them for ever, into that dark world, and 
 before those awful judgement-seats, whither after death 
 they were bound*. 
 
 How deep the corresponding image of Christ's 
 
 * Plato, Gorgias, c. 80, Stallbaum's edit. p. 814. Tacitus (Annul. 6) 
 has a fierce delight in applying these words to Tiberius. 
 
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 285 
 
 work as a work of healing, reaches in Scripture, I 
 need not remind you. His ministry of grace had been 
 set forth in language borrowed from this art, by pro- 
 phets who went before ; He should be anointed to 
 heal the broken-hearted, to bind up the bruised ; and 
 when he began that ministry, He claimed these pro- 
 phecies for Himself, laying his finger on the most 
 signal among them, and saying, " This day is this 
 Scripture fulfilled in your ears." (Luke iv. 21.) And 
 then too we shall all remember how in another place 
 He spake of sinners as being sick, and Himself as 
 their physician (Matt. ix. 12.); and by the good Sa- 
 maritan it has been often thought more than likely, 
 that He shadowed forth Himself, the despised of his 
 own people, and yet the true binder up of the bleed- 
 ing hurts of humanity. But what need of more proof, 
 when we use the very word health^ as equivalent for 
 salvation. That fearful saying of the heathen sage 
 remains most true, that every sin is a wound, that it 
 leaves behind it its scar, invisible now, — for it is a 
 scar not on the body, but the soul, — which will yet be 
 only too plainly visible in the day of the revelation of 
 all things. Yet He so heals them whom He takes in 
 hand, He makes so perfect a cure, that not even the 
 scars of their hurts shall remain ; ''by whose stripes 
 ye are healed." He only waited till there was an 
 earnest desire awakened in men that they might find 
 themselves in an hospital of souls — till these desires 
 came to an head, — till it was felt that all which was 
 offered elsewhere reached not to an effectual binding 
 
 * Thus Plato {De Rep., 1. 4, c. 18, Stallbaum's edit., p. 824) : 'Apex,/ 
 
 /U€i/ dpa COS eoiK€V^ vyLeLu. t6 Tis dv eh] kol /caWov kcu eiie^ia xj/uxv^t xctxia 
 oe ooros Te kuI alaxo^ Kal daQiveia. 
 
236 LECTURE VI. [1846. 
 
 up of hurts, was but an healing of them slightly, 
 presently to break out anew, or a covering of them 
 over with purple and with gold, leaving them the 
 while to fester unhindered beneath. He only waited 
 till it was owned that a divine Physician, and none 
 other, could take the great sufferer in hand, and then 
 straightway He stood by the sufferer's side, and prof- 
 fered him all that he had asked for, but had now 
 despaired of finding, even help and healing, and 
 these in the very forms under which he had asked 
 them *. 
 
 Nor was it otherwise with the idea o^ freedom — an 
 idea which lies so close to the very heart and centre 
 of the Gospel, that its benefits and blessings are per- 
 haps oftener set forth by a word borrowed from this 
 circle of images than by any other, oftener described 
 as a redemption or a purchase out of slavery, and Christ 
 as a Redeemer or purchaser, and thus a setter free, 
 than by any other language. It is true that we have 
 come to use these words with so little earnestness, 
 have taken them so much in vain, we have so lightly 
 passed them backward and forward from hand to 
 hand, that the sharpness and distinctness of their first 
 outline has been for us almost lost and worn away, so 
 that they scarcely, or only now and then, with any 
 vividness bring to our minds the truths which they 
 affirm — the awful truth of that slavery out of which we 
 were delivered, the glorious truth of that liberty into 
 which we have been brought. But still these words, 
 though we may forget it, do evermore proclaim this ; 
 
 * Augustine (Serm. 87, c. 10) : Jacet toto orbe terrarum ab oriente 
 usque in occidentem grandis segrotus. Ad sanandum grandem aegro- 
 tum desccndit omniiiotens medicus. Humiliavit se usque ad moi-talem 
 carnem, tamquara usque ad lectuni aegrotantis. 
 
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 237 
 
 and they are words by which oftener perhaps than by 
 any other, the Holy Spirit in the Scripture declares 
 the benefits whereof Christ has made us partakers. 
 
 And being this Redeemer or setter free, He was 
 in this regard also ''the Desire of all nations." For 
 He, when He said "Whosoever committeth sin, is the 
 servant of sin," (John viii. 34,) when his apostle cha- 
 racterized himself in his natural state as a slave, "sold 
 under sin," (Rom. vii. 14) ; when another of his apostles 
 spoke of evil men as " servants of corruption," (2 Pet. 
 ii. 19,) He and they, using this language, were but 
 affirming the same which had been found out and felt 
 by every sinner that ever lived, of which the confession 
 had been wrung out too from the lips of thousands. 
 When too He offered freedom, a victory over all which 
 was bringing into bondage, an overcoming of the 
 world, as the issue of obedience unto Him, He was 
 but offering that, which in one shape or another, each 
 guide and teacher of his fellows had offered before, — 
 with indeed the mighty difference, that He could make 
 good his offer, and they not. I need not remind you 
 with what frequency we meet, sometimes almost to 
 satiety, declarations of this kind, — of wisdom being 
 the only freedom, — the wise man, the only free man, 
 the only king, — of the soul of the sinner as a tyrant- 
 ridden city* — of lusts as evil mistresses which enslave 
 the soul and bring it into bondage ; how the promise 
 of liberty is on the lips of each who would gather dis- 
 ciples round him. All this is strewn too thickly over 
 the pages of heathen literature to need any proof in 
 particular. And meeting these statements thus fre- 
 quently and thus earnestly expressed as we often do 
 * Plato, Rep., 1. 9, c. 5. 
 
238 LECTURE VI. [1846. 
 
 meet them there, we must see how they bear testimony 
 that men continually envisaged the highest benefits 
 which their souls could attain, under the aspect of 
 freedom, of redemption — that the attaining of this 
 freedom was the object of their lives and hopes, how- 
 ever little they could make it their own, however they 
 discovered and were meant to discover, through their 
 fruitless struggles and toils, that only when the Son 
 made them free, they could be free indeed. 
 
 Again, a pointing at the crowning gift which was 
 at length given unto the w^orld in Him, may be traced 
 in the idea of music which was so frequently and so 
 fondly used as the best outward expression of inner 
 life-harmony. This indeed was felt to have so singular 
 and profound a fitness, that a term borrowed from 
 this art, was, we may say, formally adopted as the 
 aptest for setting forth that whole discipline which 
 occupied itself with the right composure of the higher 
 powers, with the bringing into one concent the three- 
 fold nature of man ; — he in whom this language comes 
 most prominently forward, finding no worthier terms 
 in which to describe that wisdom with which he was 
 enamoured, than as the fairest and mightiest of the 
 harmonies*; while sin, on the contrary, presented it- 
 self to him and to many more, as a deep inner dis- 
 harmony, as a discord which had forced itself into the 
 innermost centre of man's life, and only through the 
 expulsion of which he could again make it what it 
 ought to be, rhythmic, numerous, and harmonious. All 
 these thoughts, which, though first expressed by one 
 or two, yet found echoes in the bosoms of all, how 
 did they in their weakness to realize themselves, in 
 
 Plato {Dft IjCgg., 1. 3) : KaXXia-n^v kuI /teyio-TVV tmu (TV/x(jicovi(7)u. 
 
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 239 
 
 the fact that discords ever made themselves too plainly 
 felt in the lives, not of the taught only, but of the 
 teachers as well — how did they ask for One, the mighty 
 master of all spiritual melodies ; whose own life, free 
 from one jarring note, should make perfect music in 
 the ears of God ; and not this alone, but who should 
 attune once more that marvellous instrument which 
 had lain silent so long, or from which discords only 
 had proceeded, even the soul of man, and draw from 
 it again sounds which should be sweet even in the 
 ears accustomed to the symphonies of heaven. 
 
 Surely all their language, though they knew it not, 
 pointed to such a mighty master of heavenly harmo- 
 nies as this. For if it be true of Him, that as He 
 emptied the golden seats of Olympus, and swept their 
 long line of heroes and demi-gods and gods into the 
 darkness and corruption of the tomb, He gathered 
 from each idol as it fell its pretended majesty and do- 
 minion and power, claiming all rightfully for his own, 
 and Aveaving all the scattered rays of light into one 
 crown of glory for his own head ; then of none of 
 these could this be more truly spoken than of him 
 whom men feigned to be the god of harmony, to have 
 potency thereby over the spirits of men, with power 
 to exalt, to purify, and to soothe, whose music acted 
 as a charm to tranquillize the passions and attune the 
 spirit to a peace with itself, and with all which was 
 around it'"'. For Christian jjcace, the peace which 
 Christ gives, the peace which He sheds abroad in the 
 heart, is it |jlight else than such a glorified harmony — 
 the expelling from man's life of all that was causing 
 disturbance there, all that was hindering him from 
 ^ Miiller's Dorians, b. 2, c.8, § 11. 
 
240 LECTURE VL [1846. 
 
 chiming in with the music of heaven, all that Avoukl 
 have made him a jarring and a dissonant note, left 
 out from the great dance and minstrelsy of the spheres, 
 in which mingle the consenting songs of redeemed 
 men and elect angels*? 
 
 Thus did the Son of God at his coming in the 
 flesh, take up the unfulfilled promises of all human 
 systems. For they were unfulfilled; those systems 
 had wrought no deliverance worthy of the name in 
 the earth. How scanty was the number of those whom 
 they would even undertake to save, — a few highly 
 favoured or greatly gifted spirits of the world — not 
 the poor, the ignorant, the weak ; in this how different 
 from that Gospel which is preached to the poor, and 
 whose tidings are good because they are these, — that 
 the Lord hath founded Zion, and the poor of his 
 people shall put their trust therein ! But theirs was 
 essentially an aristocratic salvation -[-, which should 
 help a few, setting them apart from their fellows, 
 on pinnacles from w^hence they were in danger of 
 looking down far more with gratulation at their own 
 deliverance, than with any inward and bleeding com- 
 passion for the multitudes which were toiling and 
 vainly seeking for a path below. And indeed often it 
 
 * It is remarkable enough that although Christian art shrunk, and 
 so long as there was an heathenism rampant round it, rightly shrunk, 
 from any large use of symbols borrowed from heathen mythology, yet 
 pictures of Christ as Orpheus taming the wild beasts with his lyre, are 
 probably as old as the third century. {Christl. Kunst-Symholik, p. 134> 
 and Piper's Mythologie der Christl. Kiinst, p. 121.) Compare the 
 opening of the later Clement's Cohort, ad Gentes, and Eusebius, De 
 Laud. Constant ini, c. 14, p. 760, ed. Reading. 
 
 i* See Origen's admirable words in his reply to Celsus ( Con. Cels., 
 1. 7, c. .59, 60), shewing how at the best the philosophers were ia-rpol 
 
 oX/ywi/, but Christ the la-rpd'i iroWwu. 
 
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 241 
 
 was not a salvation at all, even in the very lowest 
 sense of that word : how often was it Satan casting- 
 out Satan — one form of evil expelling another, men 
 finding food for j^ride and vainglory in the very ad- 
 vances in wisdom and self-restraint which they had 
 made* — and thus those very \ictories which they had 
 won over fleshly sins, helping to make them slaves 
 of spiritual wickednesses — of the seven worse spirits 
 which take possession of the house, empty and swept 
 and garnished ; from which the one spirit of sensual 
 lust has gone out, but which has not been occupied 
 by any nobler guest. 
 
 And if, brethren, even our struggles after an in- 
 ward conformity to an higher rule, are what they are 
 — if with all the helps at our command, we yet win 
 no step without an effort, if oftentimes our premature 
 hymns of victory over this sin or that are changed 
 into confessions of a shameful defeat, and we, who 
 went forth with victorious garlands too early wreathed 
 about our brows, have to come home and put ashes 
 upon our heads, how must it have been with them ? 
 how continually must it have been a seeing* of the 
 better only with a greater guilt to choose the worse ! 
 Surely the confession of the Jewish Pharisee that was 
 zealous for the law and for righteousness must have 
 
 * The well-known passage of Cicero {De Nat. Deor., 1. 3, c. 56) has 
 been often quottd. Men justly thank the Gods for the external com- 
 modities which they enjoy; but, he proceeds, Vii-tutem nemo unquam 
 acceptam Deo retulit. Nimirum recte, propter virtutem enim jure 
 laudamur, et in virtute recte gloriamur. Quod non contingeret, si id 
 donum a Deo, non a nobis haberemus. . .JVam quis, quod vir bonus esset, 
 gratias Diis egit unquam ? At quod dives, quod honoratus, quod inco- 
 lumis. Jovemque Optimum Maximum ob eas res appellant, non quod 
 nos justos, temperantes, sapientes efficiat, sed quod salvos, incolumes, 
 opulentos, copiosos.' 
 
 T. H. L. 16 
 
242 LECTURE VI. [184G. 
 
 been the confession of unnumbered souls in all the 
 world, wrung out from a deep heart-agony, from the 
 sense of defeats repeating themselves with a sad uni- 
 formity, of ever deeper entanglement in the defilements 
 of the flesh and of the world — " That Avhich I do, I 
 allow not ; for what I would, that do I not ; but what 
 I hate, that do I. ... I delight in the law of God after 
 the inward man ; but I see another law in my mem- 
 bers, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing 
 me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my 
 members. O wretched man that I am ! who shall 
 deliver me from the body of this death ? " 
 
 Such voices, no doubt, did make themselves heard. 
 For indeed we shall not err, if contemplating the times 
 which went before the Incarnation, we affirm that 
 there had been tAVO cries which had long been going 
 up into the ears of the Lord of Hosts — two cries, 
 although one was far more distinct and articulate 
 than the other. There was the voice of appointed 
 prophets and seers, watchers on the mountains of 
 Israel, waiting for a Sun of Righteousness, who, as they 
 surely knew, should in his time scatter the world's 
 gloom, and shed healing from his wings. There was 
 their voice who, knowing this, would yet out of a 
 mighty sense of the present evil around them and 
 within them, have fain hastened the time, — psalmist 
 and prophet who exclaimed, " Oh that the salvation 
 were given unto Israel out of Zion !" " Oh that thou 
 wouldest rend the heavens and come down!" But there 
 was another, a more confused cry, of multitudinous 
 tones : it oftentimes knew not what its own accents 
 meant ; it was often rather a groan within the bosom 
 of humanity, which asked not, and thought not of, a 
 
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. ^ 243 
 
 listener, than a voice sent up unto heaven. It was a 
 cry which only infinite wisdom and infinite love would 
 have interpreted into that cry for heavenly help, which 
 indeed at the heart it was ; a cry needing infinite love 
 to pardon all in it which made it rather a cry against 
 God, than to Him. But that love it found. He who 
 said long before, " I have seen, I have seen the afflic- 
 tion of my people," saw also the affliction of a world 
 hopelessly out of the way, translated its confused 
 voices into an appeal unto Himself, and sent forth his 
 Son to be the Saviour of the lost. 
 
 And then, what not alone the Law could not do, 
 in that it was weak through the flesh, but what all 
 wisdom had been equally impotent to effect, for it 
 underlay the same weakness. He did ; Avhat they could 
 not give, He gave. For here we come back again to 
 a point which I have pressed already, but which yet is 
 so important, that I shall make no apology for pressing- 
 it once more, which is this, — that the prerogative of 
 our Christian faith, the secret of its strength is, that 
 all which it has, and all which it offers, is laid up in a 
 person. This is what has made it strong, while so 
 much else has proved weak, that it has a Christ as its 
 middle point — that it is not a circumference without 
 a centre, — that it has not merely a deliverance, but a 
 Deliverer, — not a redemption only, but a Redeemer 
 as well. This is what makes it fit for wayfaring men ; 
 this is what makes it sun-light, and all else compared 
 with it but as moon-light, — fair it may be, but cold and 
 ineffectual ; while here the light and the life are one ; 
 the Light is also the Life of men. Oh how great the 
 difference between submitting ourselves to a complex 
 of rules, and casting ourselves upon a beating heart ; 
 
 16—2 
 
244 . LECTURE VI. [1846. 
 
 between accepting a system, and cleaving to a person. 
 And how tenfold blessed the advantages of the last, 
 if that person is such a One that there shall be nothing 
 servile in the entire resignation of ourselves to be 
 taught of Him, for He is the absolute Truth — nothing 
 unmanly in the yielding of our whole being to be wholly 
 moulded by Him, for that He is not merely the highest 
 which humanity has reached, but the highest Avhich it 
 can reach — its intended and ideal perfection, at once 
 its perfect image and superior Lord. 
 
 They felt this, that help must lie in a person, that 
 only round a person souls would cluster, — those who, 
 when they would fain make a final stand for the old 
 beliefs of the world, and prove if these could not even 
 now be quickened to dispute the world with the youth- 
 ful Christian Church ; — they felt, I say, this, who set 
 about marshalling, not merely rival d^etrines to the 
 Christian, but rival benefactors to Christ. If He went 
 about Judaea doing good, they also would point to 
 sages of their own, who travelled on like errands to 
 the furthest East. This is, no doubt, the meaning of 
 that half-fabulous life of Apollonius, which just as 
 Christianity was rising into notice and evident signifi- 
 cance, made its appearance ; — this the explanation of 
 that revived interest in Pythagoras, which then found 
 place. The votaries of the old religions felt that in 
 this respect they must not come short of that which 
 they would oppose ; and rightly — however weak and 
 flitting and unreal the phantoms which they conjured 
 up to their help. 
 
 For, brethren, had we a system only, it would 
 leave us just as weak as other systems have left their 
 votaries. We should have to confess that we found in 
 
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 245 
 
 ours, as they in theirs, no adequate strength^ — that 
 not merely now and then, and at ever rarer intervals, 
 we were worsted in our conflict with the sin of our 
 own hearts, but evermore. Our blessedness, and let 
 us not miss that blessedness, is, that our treasures are 
 treasured in a person, and are therefore inexhaustible 
 — in one who requires nothing but what first He gives 
 — who is not for one generation a present teacher 
 and a living Lord, and then for all succeeding a past 
 and a dead one, but who is present and living for 
 all — as truly for us in this later day, as for them who 
 went up and down with Him in the days of his flesh. 
 Our strength and our blessedness is, that what we 
 have to know is ''the truth as it is in Jesus;" that 
 what we have to learn is to *' learn Christ ; " that 
 what we have to put on, is to " put on the Lord Jesus 
 Christ" and the righteousness which is by Him. 
 
LECTURE VII. 
 
 THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 
 
 Hebrews XI. 10. 
 
 A city which hath foundations^ lohose builder and maker 
 is God. 
 
 We have seen the manner in which He who was " the 
 Desire of all nations," met and satisfied the yearnings 
 of men for an inward peacemaker, for one who, by the 
 mighty magic of his word and Spirit, should change 
 the tumult of man's soul into a great calm ; who 
 should heal the hurts which each man was conscious 
 that he had inflicted upon himself; who should set 
 each man free from the bondage to those lords many, 
 his own lusts and inordinate affections, under whose 
 cruel tyranny he had come. But besides these long- 
 ings for harmony and health and freedom in the region 
 of his own inner life, there are other longings and 
 other desires which crave satisfaction. For each, be- 
 sides being simply a man, is also a man among men : 
 besides the sinful element which so perplexes his own 
 inner life, in the relation of one part of it to the other, 
 of the higher to the lower, which so threatens his true 
 life with destruction, not from foreign, but from intes- 
 tine, enemies — the same sinful element acting out- 
 wardly in himself, and in every other man, disturbs 
 and perplexes his relation to them, and theirs to him. 
 That which remains in himself, unsubdued, of evil. 
 
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 247 
 
 that which exists of the same in every other man, 
 brings about a collision between two selfishnesses. 
 "From whence" — in the wonderfully simple, yet pro- 
 found language of Scripture, language applicable to 
 the pettiest village braAvl, and to the mightiest conflict 
 that has ranged one half of the world against the 
 other — " from whence come wars and fightings among 
 you ? come they not hence, even of the lusts that war 
 in your members?" (Jam. iv. 1.) 
 
 At once the question has presented itself to every 
 thoughtful man,— it eminently did so to the great 
 spirits of antiquity, — Is the warfare of these encoun- 
 tering selfishnesses the necessary, the only condition 
 of society ? Is it our wisdom to acquiesce in it, satis- 
 fied if this evil will allow itself to be kept within cer- 
 tain bounds — to be so far restrained, that a society, a 
 living together of men for social conveniences unat- 
 tainable in their isolated state, becomes possible? And 
 is society such a fellowship of men that have holden 
 back, by mutual consent, so much of their selfishness 
 and evil, as would render habitation within the same 
 walls or in the same neighbourhood impossible, and 
 would thus defeat them of the gains which they 
 desired by this combination to attain ? 
 
 There have never been wanting, — there were not 
 wanting of old, — those who dared to avow this wolfish 
 theory of society for their own — that is, as a theory : 
 for no community of men has ever subsisted upon it ; 
 no sooner have they attempted to put it in practice, 
 than, biting and devouring, they have presently been 
 utterly consumed one of another. And they who 
 even avowed it as a theory were few — a profligate 
 sophist of the old or the new world, a Thrasyma- 
 
248 LECTURE VII. [1846. 
 
 chus* or a Mandeville j ; the exceptions and not the 
 rule. For rather it was truly seen that the fellowship of 
 man with man, so far from being an artificial product 
 of his wants, something added on to his true humanity, 
 that lay circular and complete in himself already, — 
 something therefore which he might have forgone 
 without any necessary imperfection,^ — is that rather 
 which constitutes the very humanity itself — animals 
 herding, men only living, together. It was seen that 
 this fellowship is the sphere in which alone his true 
 life, that which belongs to him as man, can unfold 
 itselfj — in which alone he can reach, it is little to 
 say, the perfection of his being, but without which he 
 cannot be conceived otherwise than as a monster, such 
 a monster as the world never saw. It was truly per- 
 ceived of that other condition of absolute isolation, 
 that, so far from being the state of nature, it is rather 
 a state so unnatural that no man has ever perfectly 
 reached it — the most absolute savage not having be- 
 come an isolated unit, not having been able to strip 
 himself bare of all moral relations — being at most able 
 to act as though 'he had not, but never able to cease 
 from having, these. And they understood therefore 
 that not this tamed selfishness was the idea in which 
 the state consisted, and on which it reposed, but that 
 there was another, to which every state and fellowship 
 of men, as it deserved the name, as it would be any- 
 thing better than a pirate's deck or a robber's den, 
 must be a nearer or more remote approximation : a 
 
 * Plato's Republic. t Fable of the Bees. 
 
 X As is remarkably witnessed in the words, civilized^ civilisation. 
 The civilized man, as contra-distinguished from the savage or utterly 
 degenerate man, is essentially tlie civis, belongs to a civitas. 
 
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 249 
 
 condition in which men were holclen together by in- 
 visible ties, — by sanctions which not the flesh, but the 
 spirit, owned to be binding, — by common rites, — by 
 sanctities which men dared not neglect ''% — by a god 
 Terminus keeping the boundaries of fields, — by a dread 
 of vengeance, not as the mere human recoil of outrage 
 on the wrong doer, but as being itself divine, — a con- 
 dition in which men have felt that they were one 
 people, not so much in their common interests and 
 common aims, or even in their common history and 
 descent and language, as in the one tutelar Deity that 
 overlooked their city, and to whom they had confided 
 its keeping. 
 
 If it was so — if there was this sense existing in 
 the hearts, shewing itself in the acts, of men, that the 
 relations between man and man rest on something out 
 of sight, are spiritual relations, not those of force, or 
 fraud, or convenience — that men do not huddle toge- 
 ther as cattle, to keep themselves warm, nor band 
 together as wild beasts, that they may hunt in com- 
 pany ; that law is not a result of so much self-will 
 which each man might have kept, yet for certain 
 advantageous considerations throws into a common 
 stock, but that rather there is a law of laws, anterior 
 to, and constituting the ground of, each positive enact- 
 ment — if men had any sense of this divine order, 
 which they did not themselves constitute, but into 
 which they entered ; which to accept was good, which 
 to deny and fight against was evil, — if they did thus 
 believe in a kingdom of righteousness and truth, and 
 that we were ordained for that, (in the words of the 
 father of Roman philosophy, Nos ad justitiam esse 
 ^ Sophocles, Antigone, 450 — 460. 
 
250 LECTURE VII. [1846. 
 
 natos,) — if there was any true feeling that those kists 
 and desires, so far from being the ground of the state, 
 the cement which held it together, were rather the 
 element of decay which was ever threatening its dis- 
 solution, and were to be denied as the violations of 
 the humanity, not recognized as its essentials ; then 
 we have implicitly here the acknowledgment of, and 
 the yearning after, the kingdom of God*. They who 
 believed this, believed in " the city which hath foun- 
 dations," in that only one which can have everlasting 
 foundations, for it is the only one whose foundations 
 are laid in perfect righteousness and perfect truth — 
 the city " whose builder and maker is God," which 
 Abraham looked for, and because he looked for, would 
 take no portion in the cities of confusion round him, 
 but dwelling in tents witnessed against them, and 
 declared plainly that he sought a country — the city of 
 
 * Thus Cicero {De Legg., 1. 1, c. 7-) • Universus hie mundus una 
 civitas communis Deorum atque hominum existimanda. Cf. De Fin., 
 1, 5, c. 23, and the glorious passage in Juvenal {Sat. 15, 131 — 158,) one 
 of the noblest in antiquity, on the fellowship of men with one another, 
 as resting on their divine original. I may be excused for quoting a 
 
 few lines : 
 
 Separat hoc nos 
 A grege mutorum, atque ideo venerabile soli 
 Sortiti ingenium, divinorumque capaces, 
 Atque exercendis capiendisque artibus apti 
 Sensum a coelesti demissum traximus arce, 
 Cujus egent prona et terram spectantia. Mundi 
 Principio indulsit communis conditor illis 
 Tantiim animas, nobis animum quoque ; mutuus ut nos 
 AfFectus petere auxilium, et praestare juberet, 
 Dispersos trahere in populum, migrate vetusto 
 De nemore, et proavis habitatas linquere silvas ; 
 TEditicare domos, laribus conjungere nostris 
 Tectum aliud, tutos vicino limine somnos 
 Ut collata daret fiducia ; protegere armis 
 Lapsum, aut ingenti nutantem vulnere civem; 
 Communi dare signa tuba, defendier iisdem 
 Turribus, atque una portarum clave teneri. 
 
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 251 
 
 which we already are made free, and which it was 
 given to the latest seer of the New Covenant, ere the 
 book was sealed, to behold in the spirit coming down 
 from heaven in its final glory. (Eev. xxi. 2.) 
 
 And can we say that there were not such thoughts 
 and expectations stirring in the hearts of men — that 
 the idea of a perfect state, as well as of a perfect 
 man, had not risen up before the eyes of them, the 
 men of desire, the souls to which any spirit of higher 
 divination was imparted ? Were not the latest specu- 
 lations of the wisest sage, those to Avhich he fitly came 
 after he had accomplished each other task, concerning 
 this very thing ? Nor needs it to press that derivation 
 of religion which would make it the band and bond, 
 which binding men to God, binds them also to one 
 another ; for it is a derivation at the least question- 
 able * ; and the fact, to which such an etymology 
 
 * Nitzsch {Theol. Stud. u. Krit. v. 1, p. 582) seeks elaborately to 
 prove that, according to the genius of the Latin language, the only 
 possible derivation of religio is Cicero's (De Nat. Deor., 1. 2, c. 28) : Qui 
 omnia, quae ad cultum Deorum pertinerent, diligenter retractarent 
 et tanquam relegerent, sunt dicti religiosi, ex relegendo. It will thus 
 have for its first meaning, the conscientious anxiety and accuracy in 
 the performance of the divine offices. The passage which best ex- 
 plains how the word obtains a wider meaning is this from Arnobius 
 {Adv. Gen. 1. 4, c. 30) : Non enim qui solicite relegit et immaculatas 
 hostias caedit . . . numina consentiendus est colere, aut officia solus reli- 
 gionis implere. This etymology was called in question by Lactantius, 
 who derives the word not from relegere, but religare, to wliich deri- 
 vation allusion is made in the text. He says (Inst. Div., 1. 4, c. 24) : 
 Hoc vinculo pietatis obstricti Deo et religati sumus, unde ipsa rehgio 
 nomen accepit ; et non ut Cicero interpretatus est, a relegendo. He 
 has Lucretius on his side, to whose words he alludes : 
 
 arctis 
 Relligionum animos nodis exsolvere pergo. 
 
 Augustine too, who at first had consented to Cicero's etymology, in- 
 clines at a later period {Retract., 1. 1, c. 18) in favour of the other. 
 Freund {Lat. Wdrterbuch, s. v.) without expressing himself at all so 
 
 strongly 
 
252 LECTURE VII. [1846. 
 
 would give only an additional proof, is unquestionable 
 without it — I mean, that the invisible ties were those 
 in which every state was acknowledged to consist, so 
 that with their weakening it must grow weak, with 
 their perishing it must perish ; while to strengthen 
 and to multiply these, was justly regarded as the 
 noblest mission of its noblest sons. What if here too 
 heathendom had but the negative preparation, and 
 Judaism the positive ? what if the Jew could point to 
 a state which did realize, though through his own sin 
 most inadequately, this kingdom in its unripe and 
 early beginnings, and if he was upheld by the sure 
 word of prophecy, that one day the King of this king- 
 dom should be revealed, and should reign in righte- 
 ousness ; while for the heathen they were for the most 
 part dreams to which he could impart no reality, 
 realities which tarried infinitely farther behind the 
 idea which they professed to embody — this was only 
 according to the distribution, in God's manifold wis- 
 dom, of their several parts to Jew and Gentile, in the 
 preparation for Christ's coming; to the one being 
 already given the stamina and rudiments of that which 
 afterwards should unfold itself more fully, to the other 
 being given little more than the expectation and the 
 want — ^yet both so conspiring to prepare the way for 
 his appearing. 
 
 This want and this expectation Christ came to 
 satisfy ; for He came, not merely to awaken a religious 
 sentiment in the minds and hearts of his disciples, or 
 to declare to them certain doctrines of which before 
 
 strongly as Nitzsch has clone in regard of the absolute inadmissibility 
 of the other derivation, yet accepts as certainly preferable the Cice- 
 ronian. 
 
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 253 
 
 they were ignorant ; but to found a kingdom, as He 
 Himself declared from the first ; as St. John, the 
 herald of his coming, had declared before Him ; " The 
 kingdom of God is at hand ;" "The kingdom of God 
 is among you." For this term, "kingdom of God," 
 we must not impoverish as though it were merely a 
 convenient abstraction to express the sum total of the 
 religious sentiments, opinions, feelings, actions of his 
 disciples. But this kingdom, as it is a kingdom, points 
 to a visible fellowship, and the embodiment therein of 
 a number of persons, constituting an organic whole, 
 owning a single head. And as it is a kingdom of God, 
 it declares God to be its author and its founder ; 
 it declares itself to be lifted above the caprice 
 of men, neither having been made, nor yet being to 
 be marred, by them ; which they indeed may deny, 
 but which cannot deny itself, nor by their denial be 
 annulled. 
 
 The practical Roman saw as much as the natural 
 man could see of this in a moment — that the question 
 at issue between Christ and the world was not a 
 question of one notion and another, but of one king- 
 dom and another ; and seeing, he came at once to 
 the point, "Art Thou a king then ?" And that empire 
 which tolerated all other religions, would have tole- 
 rated the Christian, instead of engaging in a death- 
 struggle with it, to strangle or be strangled by it, but 
 that it instinctively felt that this, however its first seat 
 and home might seem to be in the hearts of men, yet 
 could not remain there, but would demand an out- 
 ward expression for itself — must go forth into the 
 world, and conquer a dominion of its own — a do- 
 minion which' would leave no room in the world for 
 
254 LECTURE VII. [1846. 
 
 another fabric of force and fraud ; for it was his do- 
 minion who, sitting on his throne, should scatter away 
 all evil with his eyes ; who had said in a thousand 
 ways, " All the horns of the ungodly will I break, but 
 the horns of the righteous shall be exalted.'' 
 
 It is quite true that this kingdom, in the men who 
 at any time compose it, may misunderstand and mis- 
 take itself, even fias it has often done. There are 
 times when it caricatures itself into a popedom, when 
 knowing rightly that it ought to have a real and out- 
 ward existence, yet it will not believe that it has this, 
 or is a kingdom at all, unless it can outdo the king- 
 doms of the world on their own ground, and in their 
 own fashion ; unless it can be a kingdom like unto 
 them, and greater than they in their kind of power 
 and magnificence and glory. It is quite true that 
 times arrive when it cannot believe in its own one- 
 ness, unless it can see that oneness represented to it 
 in a visible Head. Yet this only proves that times 
 may arrive, when through the sin of its members, its 
 consciousness of itself as God's Church grows weak, 
 when it has only too much lost hold of the great 
 truths on which it was founded, and which it was 
 intended to proclaim ; and having done so, does, by 
 an inevitable necessity, act over again the unfaithful 
 request of the children of Israel, when they desired 
 a king to go forth Avith their armies, as one went forth 
 with the armies of the nations, and would not believe, 
 unless they could thus see him there, that '' the shout 
 of a King was among them." (1 Sam. viii.) And the 
 reaction from this error must not make us to count 
 that this kingdom can only be spiritual when it ceases 
 to be real, when retiring into the hearts of men, and 
 
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 255 
 
 dwelling' there apart, it claims no more the world for 
 its possession, and each region and province of man's 
 actual life for its own. 
 
 But to return. This kingdom, as it was a consum- 
 mation of all that men had ever hoped in the way of 
 a kingdom of righteousness, as it was a protest and 
 witness against the evil into Avhich each kingdom of 
 the world, each fairest polity of man's founding, was 
 ever presently degenerating, was not all. Christ came 
 to give more than this ; to give not merely a kingdom 
 of truth for some men, but for every man ; to found 
 a fellowship which should be for men as men, which 
 should leave out none, which should call no man com- 
 mon or unclean. This indeed was new, not merely in 
 fact, but even in theory ; for it had hardly risen over 
 the horizon of their minds who stood in wisdom and 
 in goodness upon the mountain-summits of the world. 
 The Greek ever left out the barbarian, the freeman 
 the slave, the philosopher the simple. The highest 
 culture of some was ever built upon the sacrifice of 
 others; they were pitilessly used up in the process. 
 So far from men themselves producing the thought 
 of an universal spiritual fellowship, even after it was 
 given, they were long in making it their OAvn. Thus 
 Celsus mocks at the madness of the Gospel, (for so to 
 him it shewed,) — adduces as enough to convince its 
 author of a shallow impracticable enthusiasm, that he 
 should have proposed such a dream as this, that 
 Greeks, and Barbarians, and Lybians, and all men to 
 the ends of the earth, should be united in the recep- 
 tion of one and the same doctrine. 
 
 Nor can we greatly wonder : the sense of diversity 
 was so strong, that which was differencing men was so 
 
256 LECTURE VII. [184G. 
 
 mighty, the intellectual superiority of the Greek over 
 the Barbarian was so immense, that we cannot be so 
 much surprized to find one thus mocking at the scheme 
 for bringing all men into one, as the shallow dream 
 of an enthusiast's brain. Such it must have seemed 
 to him, who had not insight enough to perceive that 
 the real ground of separation between men lay, not in 
 natural distinctions of race, of customs, of language, 
 but in different objects of worship, in the gods many 
 of polytheism. These were what kept men apart, and 
 rendered their union and communion impossible. They 
 were not at one in the highest matter of their lives : 
 how shoidd they be in the lower ? And if this luas the 
 ground of division, then the walls of partition might 
 yet be thrown down, would indeed fall away of their 
 own selves, when once there was revealed to faith one 
 God and Father of all, — one Christ a common object 
 of love and adoration for all, in whom the affections 
 of all might centre, — one Spirit, effectually working in 
 all. Then indeed the Babel mischief, the confusion 
 of spirits, whereof the confusion of tongues was only 
 the outward sign, would cease ; even as for one pro- 
 phetic moment on the day of Pentecost, in the gift 
 of tongues, it had ceased'", in sign that the Church 
 which that day was founded was for all nations and 
 tongues and tribes. The distinctions between men 
 were indeed infinite, reaching far down into the deeps 
 of their being, yet not to that being's centre ; and in 
 the regeneration, in that mighty act of God's, which 
 
 * Grotius ; Poena linguarum dispersit homines (Gen. xi.), donum 
 linguarum disperses in unum populum recollegit. In the Persian 
 religion there was the expectation of a day coming when, with the 
 
 abolition of all evil, 'iua ^lov koL fxiav iroXneiav dvdpwTTUiv fxaKapiuiv Kal 
 onoyXwcraoiv dirdvTcov yeveadai. (Plutarcll, De Is. et Osir., C. 47) 
 
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 257 
 
 does not obliterate distinctions, but reconciles them in 
 an higher unity, they might all, so far as they Avere 
 elements of separation, be annulled. When to all 
 alike it was permitted to say, " We are Christ's, and 
 Christ is God's," then the secret of a fellowship was 
 imparted, which should include all nations, in which 
 there should be neither wise nor simple, Greek nor 
 barbarian, bond nor free, but Christ should be all in 
 all. 
 
 Of all this the world had, beforehand, scarcely the 
 faintest intimations — the poorest parodies. Yet such 
 parodies perchance there were ; and we may be allowed 
 to trace dim indistinct yearnings even for this, for the 
 breaking down of the middle wall of partition, for the 
 making of twain one new man. Thus there were 
 already in the centuries anterior to our Lord meeting- 
 places for the Greek and Jew. Remarkable in this 
 respect was the existence of such a city as Alexandria, 
 where the Jew and Greek met, and sought to ex- 
 change to mutual profit the most precious commo- 
 dities each of his own intellectual and spiritual land, 
 the Jew making himself acquainted with Greek cul- 
 ture, the Old Testament Scriptures becoming acces- 
 sible to Greek readers. Yet still these meetings were 
 intellectual only : no true blending did or could have 
 followed from them. It is the fire of charity which 
 must melt, ere there can be any real moulding into 
 one. In vain had the whole East and West jostled 
 violently together ; they had hardly mingled any more 
 for this. A certain surface civilization had ensued, 
 which was common to both ; but hearts waited for 
 more prevailing bands than those which even an Alex- 
 ander could weave, ere they would knit themselves 
 
 T. H. L. 17 
 
258 LECTURE VII. [1846. 
 
 together in one. And as far as any practical realiza- 
 tion of the hopes which at any time the world cherished, 
 from this it now was further oif than ever. The iron 
 kingdom, the fourth beast, dreadful and terrible and 
 strong exceedingly, had broken all other, and was 
 stamping the residue under its feet ; until it seemed 
 now as if brutal force was all that remained, or that 
 had a meaning any more, and as if the world only 
 could be prevented from falling into pieces by those 
 links and bands of iron, which Avere forged around it. 
 
 But how hateful such a world was to live in, how 
 intense a loathing it inspired in each nobler spirit, the 
 works of Tacitus seemed preserved to us especially to 
 tell. For surely this is the key-note of them, the pre- 
 dominant thought, — this indignation and scorn, which 
 all words, even his own, seem weak to him to utter, 
 at the sight of the high places of the earth, the seats 
 of blessing, the thrones of beneficent power, occupied 
 by the meanest and basest of their kind, — till we feel, 
 as we read, this conviction to have been branded as 
 with burning iron on his soul, that it were better ten 
 thousand times not to be, than to witness the things 
 which he has witnessed, and to bear the things which 
 he has borne*. Nor on his soul only was the convic- 
 tion branded, but on those, we cannot doubt, of mul- 
 titudes besides, whose more dumb agony found only its 
 adequate expression in his words. 
 
 But these failures, these shipwrecks of the world's 
 hopes, these issues of things so different from the pro- 
 mise with which they started, this agony, this despair, 
 they were not for nothing. They were part of that 
 severe discipline of love to which the world was being 
 * Agricola, c. 2,3,45. 
 
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 259 
 
 submitted ; they helped to constitute that fuhiess of 
 time in which the Son of God should come, and, com- 
 ing, find acceptance. Not till the world's pride and 
 self-confidence were thoroughly broken, would it have 
 been prepared to humble itself under his cross, would 
 it have accepted that cross for the standard round 
 which it rallied. For the breaking of this pride two 
 great experiments had been going forward at the 
 same time, had run through, as they gave a moral 
 meaning to, all the anterior history of the world — 
 experiments which needed both to be thoroughly and 
 fairly tried. Of the Jewish it concerns us not here to 
 speak at large: it was this, if righteousness could come 
 by the law ; if there was a law which could give life — 
 an external rule of conduct, even though of divine 
 appointment, which could sanctify and save — if there 
 was not a weakness and falseness in man, which would 
 defeat and frustrate it all. This was most needful, 
 and only through the process of this could a Saul ever 
 have been transformed into a Paul. 
 
 But the other, which may not seem to us so 
 directly of God's ordaining, yet was so indeed : for it 
 was of its very essence that He should not mingle in 
 it so far, should seem to have less to do with it ; — 
 that those to whom it was given to try it out should 
 walk in their own ways, and be left to their own 
 resources. The experiment was this, whether man 
 could unfold his own well-being out of himself — -whe- 
 ther art or philosophy or institutions could give it to 
 him ; whether in any of these he coidd truly find him- 
 self and the good for which he was made. And of 
 this experiment we cannot say that it was unfairly 
 tried, or imperfectly worked out. All which was 
 
 17—2 
 
260 LECTURE VII. [1846. 
 
 required for its success was there, and had been given 
 in largest measure. God had raised up men of the 
 most glorious gifts, of the mightiest strength of will ; 
 and surely had deliverance lain in ought which man 
 could unfold, by his own strength, out of his own 
 being, the world had been indeed redeemed, and had 
 found the fountain of salvation in itself. 
 
 But fair and flattering, full of the promise of suc- 
 cess, as the results shewed oftentimes for a w^hile, 
 there was ever a worm at the root of this glory of the 
 world. The moment of highest perfection was ever- 
 more the moment of commencing decay. How deeply 
 tragic, though in different ways, the histories of the 
 Greek and Roman worlds I how had the paths of glory 
 led one and the other, though by diverse ways, to the 
 grave of all their moral and spiritual independence ; 
 the intellectual conquests of the one and the worldly 
 triumphs of the other, however diverse, yet having 
 agreed in this, that they alike left the victors enslaved, 
 degraded, and debased — the Greek a scorn to the 
 Roman*, and the Roman to himself And now the 
 fresh creative energy of an earlier time had all de- 
 parted and disappeared : and that springing hope, 
 which contemplated its objects, if not as attained, yet 
 at least as attainable, was no more. The world had 
 outlived itself and its attractions f — saddest of all, had 
 outlived even its hopes ; the very springs of those 
 hopes seemed to be dried up for ever. Yet was not 
 this all without its purpose- and its blessing. It was 
 something to be shut in to the one remedy, all other 
 
 * See sucli passages as Cicero Pro Flacco, c. 4 ; Juvenal, Sat. 3, 
 58—113 ; 10, 174. 
 
 •f Augustine : Mundus tantii rerum labe contritus, ut etiam spe- 
 ciem seductionis amiseiit. 
 
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 261 
 
 devices having failed, — to have come thus to the husks; 
 for this alone would have sent back the prodigal of 
 heathenism to claim anew his share in the rich pro- 
 vision of his father's house. This was the emptiness, 
 of which Christ's coming should be the answering 
 fulness. In all this agony, this mighty yearning of 
 souls, the gates of the world were being made high 
 and lifted up, that the King of Glory might come in. 
 Only in such an utter despair, in such a sense of de- 
 crepitude, of death already begun, would the world 
 have welcomed aright the Prince of Life, who came 
 to make all things young, and out of the wreck and 
 fragments of an old and decaying world, to build up 
 a fairer and a new. 
 
 And such he built up indeed. " They went astray \ 
 in the wilderness out of the Avay, and found no city to 1 
 dAvell in : hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in j 
 them. So they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, i 
 and he delivered them from their distress. He led * 
 them forth by the right way, that they might go to a 
 city of habitation." And this city of habitation, this 
 kingdom, was all which they had asked for, or could 
 ask. It was a free fellowship, the constraining bands 
 of it being bands of love and not of force ; and He 
 that founded it fulfilling the idea of the true spiritual 
 conqueror of men, who should subdue all hearts not 
 by force or by flattery, but by the mighty magic of 
 love — as some of old had been reaching out after this, 
 when they dreamed of Osiris, that he went forth to 
 conquer the world not with chariots and with horses, 
 but with music ; for so had they felt that the power 
 which truly wins must be a spiritual one, an appeal to 
 the latent harmonies in every man — that in a king- 
 
262 " LECTURE VII. [1846. 
 
 clom of heaven law must be swallowed up in love, — 
 not repealed, but glorified and transfigured, its hard 
 outline scarcely visible any more in the blaze of light 
 with which it is surrounded. 
 
 It was a large fellowship — larger than the largest 
 which the heart of man had conceived ; for it should 
 leave out none, it should trample upon none : He that 
 Avas its Head should " be favourable to the simple and 
 needy, and preserve the souls of the poor." Nay, it 
 should be larger than this, for it should embrace hea- 
 ven and earth. That whereof the great Italian sage 
 had caught a glimpse, that (piXia*, that amity or 
 reconciliation of all things, whether they be things in 
 heaven or things on earth, had found its fulfilment. 
 Henceforward heaven and earth, angels and men, con- 
 stituted one kingdom, " his body, the fulness of Him 
 that filleth all in all." 
 
 It was a righteous fellowship. If uught of un- 
 righteousness was within it, it was there only as a 
 contradiction to the law of that kingdom, and pre- 
 sently to be separated off: even as all of unrighteous 
 that was agahist it was in due time to be taken out of 
 the way ; for it in its weakness was yet stronger than 
 the strongest. It was only weak as the staif of Moses 
 was weak ; which being one, and an instrument of 
 peace, did yet break in shivers all weapons of war, the 
 ten thousand spears of Pharaoh and his armies. 
 
 And being this righteous kingdom, it was also an 
 
 eternal kingdom, having in it no seeds of decay, a 
 
 kino*dom not to be moved, which should endure as 
 
 * Porphyrins (De Vita Pythag.) : ^iXiau (KUTeSei^e) irdvTwv tt/oos 
 
 ctTTai/Ta?, etT6 Qeow irpo^ audpwTrov^ — eiVe Soy/JLarcov Trpos d\\^]\a — eWe 
 
 dvdpw-rruw ttjoos rtXXjjXous. See Baur's Apollonius von Tyana und Chris- 
 tus, p. 194. 
 
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 263 
 
 long as the sun and moon enduretli, of the increase 
 of which there should be no end. 
 
 To this city, brethren, ye are come — the city of 
 which such glorious things are spoken, the city of our 
 God. Not only prophet and king of Israel, but sage 
 and seer of every land, have desired to see the things 
 which we see, and have not seen them — so truly are 
 they the best things which man can conceive, or God 
 can give. And what do they require of us but a 
 walk corresponding ? Citizens of no mean city, whose 
 citizenship is in heaven, we must not shew ourselves 
 unworthy of so high an honour. It is the very aggra- 
 vation of the sinner's sin that he deals frowardly in 
 the land of uprightness ; and because he does so it is 
 declared that he shall not see the majesty of the 
 Lord. (Isai. xxvi. 10.) We baptized men are in this 
 " land of uprightness," in this kingdom of the truth. 
 For it is not that we shall come, but in the sure word 
 of Scripture, we are come to Mount Zion, the city of 
 the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to all the 
 glorious company which is there. 
 
 And surely the apostle's argument which he drew 
 from this ought to stand strong for us, his exhortation 
 to find place in our hearts ; "Wherefore we receiving 
 a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, 
 whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence 
 and godly fear." (Heb. xii. 28.) 
 
LECTURE VIII. 
 
 CONCLUDING LECTURE. 
 
 1 Thessalonians v. 21. 
 Proioe all things ; hold fast that which is good. 
 
 It needs not, I trust, to remind you, brethren, that in 
 these lectures which are now concluding, we have been 
 engaged in the seeking to discern the prophecy of 
 Christianity, which has run through all history. I 
 have traced in them, so far as under the conditions 
 and limitations of such discourses I might, the manner 
 in which the old world was in many ways blindly strug- 
 gling to be that better thing which yet it never could 
 truly be, except by the free grace and gift of God, — 
 to come to that new birth, which yet it could not 
 reach, until power for this mighty change was given it 
 from on high. We have asked ourselves whether we 
 could not discern an evident tending of men's thoughts 
 and feelings and desires in one direction, and that 
 direction the cross of Christ, — a great sj^iritual under- 
 current, which has been strongly and constantly setting 
 that way ; so that his bringing forth of his kingdom 
 into open manifestation, if in one sense a beginning, 
 was in another, and in as true a sense, a crowning 
 end. 
 
 And it has cohered intimately with the purpose of 
 these lectures, which, according to the purpose of their 
 founder, should assume more or less of a defensive 
 
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 265 
 
 character, to urge the apology for our Christian faith 
 which is here. It has been to me an argument for 
 the truth and dignity of his mission who was its author, 
 to find that in Him all fulness dwelt, all lines con- 
 centered, all hopes of the Avorld were accomplished. 
 For surely the King of Glory shews to us more glorious 
 yet, when we are able to contemplate Him not merely 
 as the Prophet and Priest and King of the Covenant, 
 but as the satisfier of vaguer, though not less real, 
 aspirations, of more undefined longings, of more wide- 
 Spread hopes — when looking at Hira, we take note, 
 with the inspired seer, that on his head are many 
 crowns, — and looking it his doctrine, that not Israel 
 only, but the isles also nad luaited for his law. 
 
 This my subject I have now brought to a close ; 
 or at least I dare not, at this latest moment, open it 
 upon another side. I may perhaps more profitably 
 dedicate the present opportunity to the considering 
 of some ways in Avhich our recognition of the intimate 
 relation between all that has gone before and all that 
 now is, between the hopes of the past and the fulfil- 
 ments of the present, may practically and usefully in- 
 fluence our study of antiquity. For indeed a Christian 
 view of the ancient world, which shall neither despise 
 it, because it is not Avhat it could not be, itself Chris- 
 tian, because its grains of finer gold, of purer ore, are 
 mixed with so much impure and debasing ; nor yet on 
 the other hand glorify it, as though its imperfect an- 
 ticipations of the truth were as good as, or rendered 
 superfluous, the manifestation of the perfect image 
 of God in his Son, or its faint streaks of light were as 
 truly an illumination as the day-spring from on high ; 
 this true it is most profitable for us that we should 
 
266 LECTURE VIII. [1846. 
 
 win. It may preserve us from extremes and exagge- 
 rations on either hand, into which we are in danger of 
 running. It maj preserve us too from a listless, care- 
 less, unfruitful study of that which, unless we neglect 
 the plain duties that lie before us, must form one of 
 the chief occupations of several, the most precious 
 and least recoverable years of our lives, — years in 
 which our minds are to be built up, if built up at all ; 
 in which, more than in any other, our characters are 
 being moulded, and are receiving that impress which 
 they shall bear to the end. 
 
 The exaggerations to which I allude are twofold. 
 There is that, first, against which one is almost un- 
 willing to say a word, springing as it so often does, 
 out of a state of mind in which there is so much that 
 is admirable, — giving witness for a moral earnestness, 
 without which men would have been scarcely tempted 
 to it ; I mean the exaggeration of those, who in a 
 deep devotion to the truth, as it is a truth in Christ 
 Jesus, count themselves bound by their allegiance to 
 Him, by his Name which they bear, his doctrine which 
 they have learned, his Spirit which they have received, 
 to take up an hostile attitude to every thing, not dis- 
 tinctly and avowedly Christian, as though any other 
 bearing were a treason to his cause — a betrayal of his 
 exclusive right to the authorship of all the good which 
 is in the world. In this temper we may dwell only on 
 the guilt and misery and defilements, the wounds and 
 bruises and hurts, of the heathen world ; or if ought 
 better is brought under our eye, we may look askant 
 and suspiciously upon it, as though all recognition of 
 it were disparagement of something better. And so 
 we may come to regard the fairest deeds of unbaptized 
 
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 267 
 
 men as only more sliewy sins. We may have a short 
 but decisive formula with which to dismiss them : we 
 may say, These deeds were not of faith, and therefore 
 they could not please God. The men that wrought 
 them knew not Christ, and therefore their work was 
 worthless — hay, straw, and stubble, to be utterly 
 burned up in the day of the trial of every man's 
 work. 
 
 Yet is it in truth a violation of the law of con- 
 science, to use so sweeping a language as this. Our 
 allegiance to Christ as the one fountain of light and 
 life, demands that we affirm none to be good but Him 
 — no goodness but that which has proceeded from 
 Him : but it does not demand that we deny goodness, 
 because of the place where we find it — because we find 
 it, a garden-tree in the wilderness ; but rather that 
 we claim it for Him, who was its true source and 
 author, and whom it would itself have gladly owned 
 as such, if, belonging to a happier time, it could have 
 known Him. We do not make much of a light of 
 nature, when we allow a righteousness in those, to 
 whom in the days of their flesh the Gospel had not 
 come ; we only affirm that the Word, though He had 
 not yet dwelt among us, yet being the light which 
 lighteth every man that cometh into the world, had 
 lighted them. Some glimpses of his beams gilded 
 their countenances, and gave to them whatever bright- 
 ness they wore ; and in recognizing- this brightness, 
 whatsoever it was, we are giving honour to Him, and 
 not to them ; glorifying the grace of God, and not khe 
 powers of man. 
 
 I can well understand how in the earnestness and 
 exclusiveness of a first love to Christ, and to that 
 
268 LECTURE VIII. [184G. 
 
 word of Holy Scripture Avhich directly testifies of 
 Him, all teaching of all other books, in which is no 
 explicit mention of his name, should appear valueless 
 to us ; and all else taste flat and dull, because we 
 taste not there the sweetness of that One Name which 
 is sweeter than all. Yet were it good for us to see 
 that, without going back one jot from this entire 
 devotedness to the Lord of our life, which everywhere 
 looks for Him, and finds everything savourless without 
 him — a devotedness too precious to be forgone, and 
 for which no other gains would compensate — that 
 without, I say, going back from this, we might yet 
 enlarge the sphere of our Christian sympathies, and 
 take a wider range of objects within it. To this end 
 let us learn to cultivate a finer spiritual ear, and one 
 which shall be more quick to catch the fainter echoes 
 and whispers of his name, which are borne to us from 
 other fields than those of Scripture ; let us learn to 
 look for Him even where they thought not and could 
 not have thought directly of Him, whose pages we 
 may hold in our hand. Let us aim to take keener 
 note of the manner in which all things pointed to Him, 
 all things were asking for Him — the world passing 
 judgment on itself'''*, and out of its own lips at once 
 
 * Cicero ( Tusc. Qucpst., 1. 2, c. 22) : In quo viro erit perfecta 
 sapientia, {quern adhuc jws quidem videmus neminem: sed philosophorum 
 sententiis, qualis fu turns sit, si modo aliquaiido fuerit, exponitur,) is 
 
 igitur, &C. Compare TheOgnis, 615, Oudeim 7rafnr)jOi]v dyaddv Kal /xe- 
 
 TftLov dvopa TMv vvv dvdptairoov Tje'Xtos Kadopa- — Even Supposing a man 
 were to reach the highest goodness, this could only be, as was confessed, 
 through a long process of anterior mistake and error : he must be as 
 a diamond which is polished in its own dust. Seneca (De Clement , 1. 1, 
 c. 6) : Etiam si quis tam bene purgavit animum, ut nihil obturbare 
 sum amplius possit aut fallere, ad innocentiam tamen peccando per- 
 venit. 
 
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 269 
 
 condemning itself, and demanding its Eedeemer*, 
 demanding him in frequent acknowledgements of the 
 vanity of all things, in confessions of its own incurable 
 evils -[-, in voices of deepest sadness and despair, — as 
 theirs who by word or solemn rite declared plainly 
 that it was better for man never to have been born 
 than to live ; or, if he lived, that then the gods had 
 no better boon for him than an early death j — and 
 this not in the Christian sense of death as a passage 
 into life, but only as the harbour from the world's 
 woe, the anodyne of the world's pains. 
 
 Let us take note too of the manner in which the 
 language of philosopher and of poet seems often 
 marvellously overruled to have a deeper significance, 
 to bear the burden of a larger and completer thought, 
 than it is possible that they who uttered it could 
 have had in their mind, or could have attached to 
 their words. As for instance, when it is said^ that 
 the highest righteousness must be approved in ex- 
 tremest trial, that if we would know certainly whether 
 
 * Seneca {Ep. 52) : Nemo per se satis valet ut emergat : oportet 
 manum aliquis porrigat ; aliquis educat. 
 
 t Thucydides, 1. 3. c. 45 ; Seneca, De Ira, 1. 2, c. 8. 
 
 % Compare the remarkable fragment of Euripides, quoted in the 
 original by Clemens of Alexandria {Strom., 1. 3, c. 3), and in a Latin 
 translation by Cicero {Tusc. Disp., 1. 1. c. 48.) 
 
 'Eoet yap f'ljULa^, (rvXXoyoi/ iroiov/jLeuov^, 
 Tov tpuvTa Qpi]v€7v, eU oa epxe-rai KaKci' 
 Tdv 8' av davovTU /cat ircuuii/ Treiravfievov 
 JLaipovTa^, evcpi^/jLOvvra^ eKTrefiireLV do/xcou. 
 
 Compare Herodotus, 1. 5, c. 4; Pliny, H. N., 1. 7, c. 1 and c. 41. 
 Si verum facere judicium volumus, ac repudiata omni fortunae ambi- 
 tione decernere, mortalium nemo estfellv; Pindar, Pijtii., 8. 131. 
 
 § By Plato {De Repiih. 1. 2, c. 4, 5.) I have not seen it noted how 
 the reverse of the picture, the perfectly unrighteous man, whom Plato 
 draws, is almost as remarkable a prophecy in its kind, of Antichrist, 
 and of the deceitful glory which will surround him. 
 
270 LECTURE VIII. [1846. 
 
 one be indeed a lover of the good, he must be set in 
 those conditions, in which to abide by the good shall 
 bring upon him every outward calamity, shame and 
 loss and scorn and torture and death, all which he 
 might have avoided would he ever so little have gone 
 back from that good ; the righteousness which he 
 chooses must be stripped utterly bare of every orna- 
 ment, yea, must seem to the world as the extremest 
 unrighteousness, and then only it will be seen whether 
 he loves it for its own sake — to us Christians shall not 
 this possible case at once present itself as an actual 
 one ? Shall we not catch here, as many indeed have 
 caught*, a prophetic word about the cross, and about 
 Him who even in this way was proved, by ignominy 
 and scorn and suffering and death, whether He would 
 love the good and hate the evil ; and who did by a 
 distinct act of his will choose for his portion that 
 righteousness to which all these were linked, and 
 which could only lead Him by roughest paths to the 
 shamefullest and bitterest end? Or when another 
 expresses his conviction that a sacred Spirit dwells 
 with man, yea, not with him only but in him, a Spirit 
 which is not his own, however freely it converses with 
 him, a Spirit which treats him as he treats it-f, shall 
 
 * Grotius {Be Verit Rel. Christ., 1. 4, c. 12) : Et vero Isetiiis esse 
 honestum, quoties magno sibi constat sapientissimi ipsoriim dixere. 
 Plato, De Repuhlica 11, quasi prcescius, ait, ut vere Justus exhibeatur, 
 opus esse ut virtus ejus omnibus ornamentis spolietur, ita ut ille habe- 
 atur ab aliis pro scclesto, illudatur, suspendatur denique. Et certe 
 summae paticntiae exemplum ut exstaret, aliter obtineri non poterat. 
 
 t Seneca {Epist. 41) : Sacer intra nos spiritus sedet, malorum bono- 
 rumque nostrorum observator et custos ; hie prout a nobis tractatus 
 est, ita nos ipse tractat...Qucmadmodum radii solis contingunt quidem 
 terram, sed ibi sunt unde mittuntur, sic animus magnus et sacer, et in 
 hoc demissusut propius divina nossemus, conversatur quidem nobiscum, 
 sed hseret origini suae. 
 
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 271 
 
 we refuse to acknowledge here a word which was 
 reaching out after that Spirit, the Spirit of the Father 
 and the Son, which, dwelHng in God, does also dwell 
 in sanctified souls ; which if we grieve, will grieve us, 
 which if we continue to provoke, will utterly forsake 
 us ? And in many such ways as these we may disen- 
 tangle the golden threads of a finer woof than its own, 
 which were running through the whole tissue which 
 the ancient world was weaving for itself; we may 
 delightedly observe how the cross of Christ was as an 
 invisible magnet, drawing hearts to itself by a mighty, 
 though secret, attraction, in ages long before it was 
 ojDcnly lifted up, an ensign for the nations. 
 
 Let us remember too how little the world could 
 have done without these preparations which sometimes 
 we are tempted to despise. Difficult as was the 
 world's reception of the word, and its transition to 
 the faith, of Christ, how much more difficult would it 
 have been, if the way had not been thus prepared. 
 What another thing would it have been, if the Avord 
 about the Son of God, where it first was delivered, 
 besides strengthening and purifying and enlarging, 
 had needed also to create, the very foundations of 
 religious belief and ethical science on ^hich it rested ; 
 if it had been needful for it to be not merely the seed, 
 but the soil, — having first to form the very ground in 
 which it should itself afterwards find room and depth 
 to germinate. If instead of finding a language ready 
 at hand, which it could appropriate, and needed only 
 thus to rescue for itself ''% if, instead of this, all nobler 
 
 * Thus not merely the more obvious, but the more recondite rites 
 of heathenism, have been made to set forth far better thmgs than 
 themselves. For example, the mysteries yield the substratum of 
 
 language 
 
272 LECTURE VIII. [1846. 
 
 words and signs, all which spoke of worship, of religion, 
 of sanctity, of initiation, of atonement, of piety, had 
 been absent from it, how different the case Avould have 
 been. And with the absence of the tilings, there would 
 also have been inevitably the absence of the words 
 which are their correlatives ; since language is no 
 more than thought and feeling permanently fixing and 
 embodying themselves ; it is but as the pillars of Her- 
 cules, to mark how far the conquests of spirit have 
 advanced. 
 
 No one can have thoughtfully jDcrused the modern 
 records of missionary labour among savage tribes, and 
 the almost insurmountable hinderances opposed to the 
 reception of the Gospel by languages, if they deserve 
 the name, stripped of each nobler and deeper element, 
 — languages in Avhich is no speculation, no distinction, 
 no hoarded thought, no embodied morality, no uncon- 
 scious wisdom,^ — no terms, in short, but for the barest 
 needs or the vilest doings* of the animal man, without 
 
 language and imagery and allusion to each word of the following 
 noble passage, in which Clement {Cohort, ad Gent, c. 12) is exhort- 
 ing the Gentiles to become ftvaTai of Christ: "Q t5)v dyiwv oJs 
 
 d\-i]du)<s fxvarrjpiwv ' tS cjxaTO^ dKi]pdTov. cadovxovfiai, toi'9 ovpavov? Kal tov 
 Qeov eTTOTTTevcra^ ' uyios yivofxaL, /uLVOUfxevoi ' iepo(f>aifTel Se 6 Kupio^, Kal 
 TOV nua-'njv acppayLX^c-rnL, (JiODTaywyuw ' Kal irapaTideTaL too TlaTpl tov ire - 
 TTKTTevKOTa, aluxTL T7ipovfj.evov. TavTa TMV efJLuiv fxvarTtjpicov Ta (iuKxev- 
 ftaTa' el (3o6\et., Kal <jv fxvov, Kal X0/O6i5<reis /jlct' dyyeXcov d/xcpl tov nyev- 
 vi]TOV Kal dv(Jo\e^pnv Kal fiavov oi/toj? Beof, a-vuvixvovvia JjVt," tov Oeov 
 Aoyov. 
 
 * Languages Hke one of the North-American Indian, which pos- 
 sesses a word for a tomahawk, but none for God ; or that of a tribe in 
 Australia, which with the same deficiency, has yet a word to describe 
 the process by which an unborn child may be destroyed in its mother's 
 womb. On all this subject of language rising and falling with the rise 
 and fall of a people's moral and spiritual life, and on the speech of 
 savages as not being the primal rudiments, but the ultimate wreck, 
 of a language, there is much of deep interest in De Maistre's Soirees 
 de St. Petershourg, Deux. Entret. 
 
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 273 
 
 feeling that a miserable necessity is imposed on the 
 Truth when it must weave for itself the very garments 
 in which it shall array itself, and is in danger of losing 
 its treasures in the very attempt to communicate 
 them, — so wretched are the only channels through 
 which it can convey them. And considering this, he 
 will esteem it to have been an infinite mercy, yea a 
 very primal necessity, that the Truth, where it uttered 
 itself in that which should be its normal utterance for 
 all future ages of the Church, where it first took body 
 and shape, should have found, as regarded language, 
 vessels ready prepared for its new wine, and only wait- 
 ing for an higher consecration, — an inheritance which 
 it had but to make its own, entering upon it, as the 
 children of Israel entered upon vineyards which they 
 had not planted, and wells which they had not digged, 
 and houses which they had not built, of which yet 
 they became the rightful possessors from henceforth. 
 Nor can we doubt that by that, which we with our 
 fuller knowledge, our larger grace, are inclined to 
 slight, many were preserved from defilements, in which 
 otherwise they had been inevitably entangled. This 
 salt may have been powerless to give the savour of 
 life to that with which it came in contact; but that 
 progress of corruption, that dissolution of social and 
 personal life, which it was unable ultimately to arrest, 
 it yet retarded for a time""*. It preserved many a 
 
 * The consideration of the Greek philosophy as a Trpoiraioeia for the 
 reception of the absolute Christian truth, is a more recurring one, and 
 takes a more prominent place, in the writings of the later Clement, 
 than perhaps in those of any other teacher of the early Church. Thus 
 he speaks of it in one place as a step to something higher : {viro^dQpav 
 ovcrav t7> kutcl XpLcrTou (fnXoaotpta^, Strom., 1. 6, c. 8.) Again, as a 
 preparatory discipline, and ordained to be such by the providence 
 
 T. H. L. 18 of 
 
274 LECTURE VIII. L184G. 
 
 man for something better than itself, and in not a few 
 eases of which we have distinct record, handed over in 
 dne time its votaries to the school of Christ. To 
 mention but a single example. Few who^ have once 
 read, will forget the manner in which the falling in 
 
 of CrOd : (e/c T7/S Qeia? irpovoia^ Sedoardat, irpoiraiciexjova'av eis ti)i/ did Xpi- 
 
 (TTov TeXeiwcriv, Stfoni., 1. G, c. l7) ; and SO again as an anterior culture 
 of the soil of man's heart for receiving the seed of life : {TrpoKadaipci 
 
 ical rrrpoediX^ci tjji/ \lfvxi)v eh irapaoo^i^v Trio-Tcoo?, btvom., 1. 7, C. 8.) It 
 
 would seem from more passages than one in his writings, that he felt 
 it needful to defend himself for the so high appreciation in which he 
 held the philosophy of Greece : iiv Tti/es ouclSe^X^Kaaii/, a\?j6cias ova-nu 
 
 e'lKova livapyri, detau 6wpedv "EXXi](tl Sedofxevnu. There were tllOSe wllO 
 
 warned against its attractions, as being those of the "strange woman" 
 of Prov. V. 8 — 8, " whose lips drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth 
 is smoother than oil." {Strom., 1. 1, c. 5.) The heathen philosophers 
 were according to them the "thieves and robbers" which "came 
 before" Him who was the true Shepherd of men {Strom., 1. 1, c. 17). 
 Tertullian may be taken as a representative of the more intolerant 
 view {Apol, c. 46) : Quid simile Philosophus et Christianus ? Graeciae 
 discipulus et coeli ? famae negotiator et salutis ? verborum, et factorum 
 operator?... interpolator erroris, et integrator veritatis? furator ejus et 
 custos ? Whatever exaggeration there is in the language of Clement, 
 yet this I think is certain, that his strong expressions have their rise 
 in a deep and solemn feeling, that nothing anywhere which is good, 
 by which men have been kept back from any evil, or prepared to any 
 good, but must be traced up to God. He dared not trace it to any 
 other ; thus speaking of this very thing his words are, ttuvtiov fxev ydp 
 uLTLo^ Tw:/ KttXwv 6 Geo'?. {StroM. , 1. 1, c. 5.) And that he did not 
 make the difference between the two a mere question of degree is 
 plain from such expressions as these : Xwjo/^eTai i] "EXXnvLKi] dX^deia 
 
 T-f/s K'a0' tjyuas, €L Kai tov uvtov pi€TeiXt]c^ev ovu/xaTO^, Kal fxeyedei yucvaew?, 
 Kal aVooei^ei KVpiwTepa, Kal dela ovvdfxei' deooiouKTOL ydp rjfxei'i. yintrom., 
 
 1. 1, c. 20.) That other was the wild olive which had need, ere it bore 
 any nobler fruit, of insertion upon the good {Strom.^l. G, c. 15) ; words 
 which may suggest a comparison with^hat most eloquent passage at 
 the end of the first book of Theodore^ft'fe-^r^^c. Affect. Carat. And 
 those remarkable words have been often qiif^ted in which Clement 
 likens heretics and founders of human systems to the rabble rout that 
 tore the body of Pentheus limb from limb : so they tore the truth, and 
 then each boasted of the fragment in his hands as though it were the 
 
 whole (fcKa'o-T); oirep ilXa)(^ev, cos Trdaav uv^qI t»;V dX)']deLuv). 
 
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 275 
 
 with the Hortensius'^ of Cicero kindled the young 
 Augustine, and inflamed him with a passionate love of 
 wisdom. What a moment it was in his life when he 
 lighted on that treatise, how greatly did it serve to 
 arrest him in that downward career which he was then 
 too rapidly treading, to hinder him from utterly laying- 
 waste his moral life ! How did it set him to the seek- 
 ing for goodly pearls, though the goodliest of all, the 
 pearl of great price, he was not yet to find ! He him- 
 self in after years describes all this, with thankful 
 ascriptions of praise to the guiding hand of his God, 
 and telling how that book, though it did not, and 
 could not bring him into the inmost sanctuary of the 
 faith, yet was to him in the truest sense a porch to 
 that auguster temple not made with hands, into which 
 at a later day he should be privileged to enter ; and 
 did at once hand him over to the searching of the 
 Scriptures, though as yet his eyes were holden, and he 
 found not in them till a later day their hid treasures 
 of wisdom and of knowledge -f*. 
 
 * Otherwise called De PhUosophid. It has been lost, all but a few 
 unimportant fragments. The subject was the superiority of philosophy 
 to eloquence. 
 
 t Coi^f., 1. 3, c. 4 : Usitato jam discendi ordine perveneram in librum 
 quemdam cujusdam Ciceronis, cujus linguam fere omnes mirantur, 
 pectus non ita. Sed liber ille ipsius exliortationem continet ad philo- 
 sophiam, et vocatur Hortensius. Ille vero liber mutavit affectum 
 meum,...et vota ac desideria mea fecit alia. Viluit milii repente omnis 
 vana spes, et immortalitatem sapientise concupiscebam sestu cordis 
 incredibili. 
 
 He has very interesting acknowledgements {Conf., 1. 7, c. 9, 20, 21) 
 of the effect which the Platonist books exerted upon him at the great 
 crisis of his life that went before his conversion, — what he found 
 in them, and what he did not find,— where they helped, and where 
 rather they hindered him : concluding with this declaration of the 
 things which he had looked for there in vain : Hoc ills litterse non 
 habent, Lacrymas Confessionis, Sacrificium tuum, Spiritum contribu- 
 
 18 2 latum. 
 
276* LECTURE VIII. [1846. 
 
 But I spoke of exagg'erations on either side into 
 which we were liable to fall. To take the very oppo- 
 site extreme to this of painting the old world to our- 
 selves in lines and colours of unredeemed blackness, 
 we may dwell exclusively on the fairer side which it 
 presents, shutting wilfully our eyes to each darker and 
 more revolting spectacle which it displays. We may 
 find in its art and its literature that which gratifies 
 our taste, and out of a lack of any deeper moral wants, 
 we may come to say with the poet, " Beauty is Truth, 
 Truth Beauty," and where we find beauty and propor- 
 tion and harmony, may be ready to pardon the absence 
 of every thing beside ; just as those Italian literati at 
 the revival of learning, who preferred calling them- 
 selves brethren in Plato to brethren in Christ, to whom 
 the groves of Academus were far more than the waters 
 of Siloam, and the cultivation of taste than the pro- 
 motion of holiness — men Avho so mourned over the 
 vacant thrones of Olympus, that to them an heaven 
 opened, with angels ascending and descending upon 
 the Son of man, seemed but an insufficient compen- 
 sation. 
 
 But such a nearer acquaintance with the world 
 which was before and out of Christ, as these studies 
 
 latum. Cor contritum et humiliatum, Populi salutem, Sponsam, Civi- 
 tatem, Arrham Spiritus Sancti, Poculum pretii nostri. Nemo ibi can- 
 tat : Nonne Deo subdita crit anima mea ? ab ipso enim salutare ineum : 
 etenim ipse Deus meus et salutaris meus, susceptor meus, non move- 
 bor amplius. Nemo ibi audit vocantem : Venite ad me qui laboratis 
 ...Et aliud est de silvestri cacumine videre patriam pacis, et iter ad 
 earn non invenire, et frustra conari per invia, circum obsidentibus 
 et insidiantibus fugitivis desertoribus cum principe suo leone et dra- 
 cone : et aliud tenere viam illuc ducentem, cura coelestis imperatoris 
 munitam, ubi non latrocinantur qui coelestem militiam deserucrunt ; 
 vitant enim earn sicut supplicium. 
 
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 277 
 
 faithfully pursued must give us, will teach us that if 
 there are sides on which heathen mythology stands 
 related to, and has the recollection and intimation of, 
 something higher than itself, there are also other sides 
 upon which it lies under the influence of man's cor- 
 ruption, is itself the outgrowth of his foolish sin-dark- 
 ened heart, with the impurities of its origin cleaving 
 to it, — does itself help distinctly to mark his down- 
 ward progress toward idolatry, and toward the losing 
 of the Creator in the creature, — is often only the 
 strangely distorted resemblance, never more than the 
 faint prophecy, of the coming truth. And if so, we 
 shall feel that to linger with that is ridiculous, whose 
 only worth is that it hands on to something better 
 than itself, and is capable of being translated into a 
 nobler language than its own. So too we shall feel 
 that if the ancient philosophy had glorious ethical 
 precepts, yet were they but adumbrations of the truth, 
 since they wanted, for the most part, that body and 
 substance which action alone could give them ; as is 
 plain from unnumbered confessions and complaints on 
 all sides heard, that the world's physicians had not 
 healed themselves, much less their patients ; as is 
 plainer still in the colossal character which sin had 
 assumed* at the time of Christ's appearing, till it 
 sat as it were incarnate in the person of a Tiberius on 
 
 * In its two great aspects of lust and cnielty : the passages in proof 
 of the first may remain unquoted ; but what a picture of the last, thia 
 account of the gladiatorial games and of the manner in which they had 
 grown ever bloodier, presents! (Seneca, Ep. 7): Quidquid ante pug- 
 natum est, misericordia fuit: nunc, omissis nugis, mera homicidia 
 sunt.-.Plagis aguntur in vulnera, et mutuos ictus nudis et obviia 
 pectoribus excipiunt. Intermissum est spectaculum? interim jugu- 
 lantur homines, nc nihil agatur. 
 
278 LECTURE VIII. [1846. 
 
 the throne of the world*. In all this we shall behold 
 how feeble all the barriers which the world's wisdom 
 could raise up, to stay the overflowings of the world's 
 ungodliness and evil"!-. 
 
 But to imagine yet a third position ; we may read 
 these books, not indeed setting them up in our af- 
 fections against the truths which ought to be dearest 
 to us, nor on the other hand slighting them, because 
 not themselves Christian ; but failing altogether to 
 trace in them any relation at all to the great facts of 
 the spiritual life of man. We may read them, forget- 
 ting that the meaning of books is to make us under- 
 stand something else besides books, that we miss their 
 
 * With only slight exaggeration Seneca compares the aspect of the 
 world in which he was living to that of a city taken by storm {De 
 Bene/., 1. 7, c. 27) : Si tibi vitje nostrae vera imago succurret, videberis 
 tibi videre captae cummaxime civitatis faciem, in qua omisso pudoris 
 rectique respectu vires in consilio sunt, velut signo ad permiscenda 
 omnia dato. Non igni non ferro abstinetur ; soluta legibus scelera 
 sunt, nee religio quidem, quae inter arma hostilia supplices texit, ullum 
 impedimentum est ruentium in praedam. Hie ex jorivato, hie ex j)ub- 
 lico, hie ex profane, hie sacro rapit : hie effringit, hie transilit : hie 
 non contentus angusto itinere, ipsa quibus arcetur evertit, et in lucrum 
 ruina venit. Hie sine caede populatur: hie spolia cruenta manu 
 gestat : nemo non fert aliquid ex altero. Compare his Ootli Epistle. 
 
 f Thus the atrocity of the gladiatorial shews was by heathen 
 moralists abundantly felt and understood. Cicero indeed makes but a 
 feeble protest against them {Tusc. Qucest, 1. 2, c. 17) ; Crudele gladi- 
 atorum spectaculum et inhumanum nonnuUis videri solet ; et baud 
 scio an ita sit, ut nunc fit. But Seneca more distinctly {Ep. 95) : 
 Homo, sacra res, homo jam per lusum et jocum occiditur, et quem 
 erudiri ad inferenda accipiendaque vulnera nefas erat, is jam nudus 
 inermisque producitur ; satisque spectaculi in homine, mors est. Cf. 
 Ep. 7. And Lucian, in a collection of the notable sayings of Demonax, 
 a Cynic philosopher of the second century, tells of him, that once when 
 the Athenians were planning a spectacle of the kind, lie told them that 
 they must overthrow the altar of Pity, before they proceeded further 
 in this matter. Yet with all this it remained for an unlettered Chris- 
 tian monk to put a stop to these bloody shews. 
 
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 279 
 
 significance to us, when they have their end in them- 
 selves, when they do not hand us on to Hfe and to 
 action ; when they explain to us no mysteries of our 
 being, help us in no struggles of our souls, make clear 
 to us no dealings of our God. 
 
 There was a time in our lives, — yet a time which 
 we who are here present should now have left behind 
 us, — when this might have been natural enough, when 
 it would have been premature to begin to meditate 
 on the moral problems which these works present, or 
 to do more than first to master their difficulties, and 
 those overcome, to walk up and down admiring and 
 enjoying the strange and wondrous world into which 
 they had helped to introduce us. But the time is 
 gone by, when that alone was our task. Further 
 duties are ours — to study that classical antiquity in 
 the light which our Christian faith and experience 
 throw back upon it, with an open eye for its moral 
 good and for its moral evil, with an entire confidence 
 that in Christ and in his Gospel is given to us the 
 touchstone which shall enable us to recognize — the 
 sharp and dividing sword which shall enable us uner- 
 ringly to separate between — ^the evil and the good, 
 the false and the true. 
 
 Let us feel that not by some strange inconsis- 
 tency, some traditional usage which we will not aban- 
 don, but cannot defend, it has come to pass that a 
 literature and philosophy, not Christian but heathen, 
 hold the place which they do among us, members of 
 the Church of Christ — are at this day contemplated, 
 as they Jiave been contemplated in time past, by each 
 wiser and more thoughtful man, as an indispensable 
 organ for all higher education, necessary instruments 
 
280 LECTURE VIII. [1846. 
 
 for the cultivating of the complete humanity*''". Let 
 us feel that this only could have been, inasmuch as 
 they stand in some real and intimate relation to the 
 innermost fact of our lives, to our Christian hope — a 
 relation of defect it will often be, yet a relation not 
 the less, which should not be overlooked or denied. 
 And these things being so, let us understand that we 
 fall below our position, we fall short of the purpose 
 with which these books were placed in our hands, 
 when we fail to regard them in such a light as this. 
 And in this light to look at them will not mar nor 
 hinder that free spontaneous joy in them which in 
 earlier times may have been ours. We may keep that 
 earlier delight, and yet, keeping it, may pass on to a 
 deeper and more meditative emotion. For indeed 
 with what livelier interest shall we occupy ourselves 
 with this classical antiquity, when we feel that it is 
 
 * The intimate connexion between the Reformation and the reAdval 
 of classical learning, with the zeal and success of the Reformers in pro- 
 moting this last, all will remember — Melancthon's especially, to whom 
 beside other titles of honour, this of Prasceptor Germanise was added. 
 There is a very interesting letter of Luther's, in which thanking 
 a friend, who had sent him a Latin poem which he had composed, and 
 had at the same time expressed his fears that the cause of Classical 
 literature would suffer from men's zeal about Theology, Luther replies 
 that it should not so wuth his consent: Ego persuasus sum, sine 
 literarum peritia prorsus stare non posse sinceram theologiam, sicut 
 hactenus ruentibus et jacentibus Uteris miserrime et cecidit et jacuit. 
 Quin video nunquam fuisse insignem factam verbi Dei revelationem, 
 nisi primo, velut praecursoribus baptistis, viam pararit surgentibus et 
 florentibus linguis et Uteris. Plane nihil minus vellem fieri aut com- 
 mitti in juventute, quam ut poesin et rhetoricen omittant. In ea certe 
 • vota sum ut quam plurimi sint et poetae et rhetores, quod his studiis 
 videam, sicut nee aliis modis fieri potest, mire aptos fieri homines ad 
 sacra tam canessenda, quam dextre et feliciter tractanda....Quare et te 
 oro ut et mea (si quid valet) precatu agas apud vestram juventutem, 
 ut strenue et poetentur et rhetoricentur. (Luther's Briefe, v. 2., p. 813. 
 ]>e Alette's edit.) 
 
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 281 
 
 not disconnected with the highest things of our life, 
 the most solemn questions which can employ us as 
 baptized men. 
 
 How many will be the thoughts and emotions, and 
 all of them purifying and ennobling, which these 
 studies, in this spirit pursued, will awaken and cherish 
 within us ! Thus surely a divine compassion will often- 
 times stir in our hearts, as with an ear made open by 
 love, we drink in the voices of the world's deep dis- 
 quietude, its confessions of an intolerable burden *, its 
 acknowledgements that if there be nothing prouder, 
 
 * In none perhaps so frequent and distinct as in Lucretius. There 
 is a very interesting lecture in Keble's Prcelectiones, on the witness for 
 and craving after that which Christianity only can give, that is to he 
 found by those who know how to look for it, in the reputedly atheistic 
 work of the great Roman Poet. He dwells on the many passages in 
 which he expresses his deep dissatisfaction with life, and with all 
 which life could offer — a dissatisfaction which yet was not, like that 
 of so many, on the score of the fleeting nature of life's pleasures and 
 the little of them which a man in his brief space could enjoy — but had 
 its rise rather in a sense that these very pleasures, even in fullest 
 measure, did never truly satisfy or fill the soul i^Prcelect. 85) ; Campus 
 hie ferme nobilium est poetarum, ut nsenias canant ac querimonias de 
 vitae flore fragili ac caduco. Habet autem Lucretius noster illud, 
 ni fallor, proprium ac modo non singulare, quod non tarn breves 
 et augustos incuset sevi in terris agendi limites, quam ipsum vitse hujus 
 statum, vel optimse actae : significet, rem eam unicuique hominum et 
 fuisse, et fore semper, molestissimo omnium oneri. This is but one of 
 the many memorable passages of the kind, 3. 1016 : 
 
 Deinde animi ingratam naturam pascere semper, 
 Atque explere bonis rebus, satiareque nunquam. 
 Quod faciunt nobis annorum tempera, ch-cum 
 Cum redeunt, foetusque ferunt, variosque labores. 
 Nee tamen explemur vital fructihus unquam; 
 Hoc, ut opinor, id est aevo florente puellas 
 Quod memorant, laticem pertusum congerere in vas. 
 Quod tamen expleri nulla ratione potestur. 
 
 Compare 3. 1066—1097. 
 
282 LECTURE VIII. [1846. 
 
 so also there is nothing more miserable, than man *. 
 And these we shall not go far without meeting : for 
 however the prevailing tone of that heathen world 
 may be lightsome and gay, a summons to enjoy the 
 present, to pluck the roses of life ere they wither, yet 
 if only we listen aright, we may detect that in its 
 laughter there is heaviness ; and oftentimes that laugh- 
 ter is followed by a sigh drawn from deeps of the 
 heart far deeper than those where its smiles were 
 born-f*. Surely we shall find in these cries of a con- 
 stant unrest, a thousand confirmations of his word, 
 who, heathen as he was, yet likened man in his sepa- 
 ration from God, to a child torn from its mother's 
 arms, and which nowhere could be well, till it was 
 given back to those arms once more^. 
 
 Again, as we acquaint ourselves with the lamenta- 
 tions of mourners for their dead, lamentations so deep 
 and so despairing, as to explain to us all the meaning 
 of that sorrowing without hope, which by the apostle 
 is attributed to the heathen J ; as we hear too the 
 
 * Pliny {H.N., 1. 2, c. 5): Nee miserius quidquam hominc, nee 
 supcrbius. 
 
 f Compare Herodotus, 1. 7, c. 46; Iliad, 17. 446; Odyss., 18. 129; 
 Lucretius, 5. 222; Mosclius, Idyll., 3. 106; Sophocles, CErf?>«5 Col., 1225 ; 
 Virgil, Georg., 3. 66. There is a striking collection of jjassages in 
 which the Aanity, the sorrow, the burden of life, are acknowledged, in 
 Plutarch's Consol. ad Apollon. 
 
 t Dio Chrysostom, Omt. 12, p. 405, ed. Rciske. 
 
 § How affecting a picture does Augustine give of what his feelings 
 were, when, in the time during which he was still moving in the 
 element of heathen life, the friend of his soul was taken from him 
 {Con/., 1. 4, c. 4) : Quo dolore contenebratum est cor meum; ct quid- 
 quid aspiciebam, mors erat. Et erat mihi patria supplicium, et paterna 
 domus mira infelicitas : et quidquid cum illo communicaveram, sine 
 illo in cruciatum immanem verterat. Expetebant eum undique oculi 
 mei, et non dabatur milii ; et oderam omnia, quia non haberent eum, 
 
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 283 
 
 wretched consolations of miserable comforters, the 
 slight palliations of sharpest sorrows, which were all 
 that, with all their kindness, they could suggest, we 
 shall know how to prize the oil and wine, the strong 
 consolations which are stored in the Gospel for each 
 bruised and smitten heart. 
 
 Or a compassion profounder yet will stir within us, 
 as the voices reach us, which proclaim that the very 
 citadel of hope was lost, voices of an utter uncertainty 
 about all things, and these coming from some of the 
 earth's noblest spirits, who asked of themselves, and 
 could give no satisfying answer to their own question, 
 whether there was indeed a God governing in right- 
 eousness*, or whether all was not given over to the 
 blindest chance — whether they who did his will were 
 a care to Him ; whether they survived the grave, and 
 if there were indeed any future and happy seats re- 
 served for the names of the just. 
 
 And even that of impure which we shall encounter, 
 as we must encounter it, there, proving, as it often has 
 done, fuel of dark fires in unholy hearts, setting them 
 as with sparks of hell in a blaze, it shall not be to us, 
 
 nee mihi jam dieere poterant : Ecce veniet, sicut cum viveret, quando 
 absens erat. Factus eram ipse mihi magna quaestio, et interrogabam 
 animam meam, quare tristis esset, et qiiare conturbaret me valde ; et 
 nihil noverat respondere mihi. Et si dicebam : Spera in Deum, juste 
 non obtemperabat ; quia verier erat et melior homo quem carissimum 
 amiserat, quam phantasma in quod sperare jubebatur. Solus fletus 
 erat dulcis mihi, et successerat araico meo in deliciis animi mei. 
 
 * The reader will remember the way in which the De Naturd De- 
 orum concludes, and the entire indecision in which all is left. Pliny 
 {H. N., 1. 2, c. 5) is more explicit yet in his open confession of an utter 
 scepticism in any moral government of the w^orld : Irridendum vera 
 agere curam rerum humanarum illud quidquid est summum. Anne 
 tam tristi multiplicique ministerio non pollui crcdamus dubitemusve ? 
 Cf. Lucian's Jupiter Tragwdus, c. 17. 
 
284 LECTURE VIIL [1846. 
 
 who go not to seek it, who unwillingly encounter it, 
 this incentive and provocative to evil. Rather shall 
 this impure itself conspire to the same ends with all 
 else which there we meet. It shall make us feel, in 
 its light we shall more plainly see, what hideous sores 
 there Avere to be healed, how deep a corruption to be 
 subdued, when men could thus glory in their shame, 
 and some comparatively pure in their lives, felt that 
 in their works it was not merely so permitted, but so 
 expected, that they should write*. And intruding, as 
 often that unholy does, among the fairest creations of 
 genius, rising up like a plague-spot upon their fore- 
 heads, who were among the most gifted of their age 
 and nation, it shall teach us a solemn lesson, even this 
 — how much of moral insensibility may co-exist Avith 
 highest capacities of intellect — how little the sense of 
 beauty by itself avails to preserve purity of heart, — 
 how needful it is that hearts should be in better 
 guardianship than this, — how the highest of this 
 earth's yields us no security against the lowest ; it 
 shall teach us that if there are pinnacles of heaven 
 above every man, and that in him which prompts him 
 to ascend them, so also are there abysses of sensuality 
 yawning beneath his feet, and that in him which 
 tempts him to engulph himself in these f. 
 
 * See the elder Pliny, Epist., 1. 4, ep. 14 ; 1. 5, ep. 3. 
 
 •f 1 borrow these remarkable words from the answer of one, whose 
 position gave him full right to speak, to the proposal for publishing an 
 expurgated edition of the Classics for the use of schools. Rather, he 
 says, he would have the works as the authors wrote them ; and en- 
 countering with his pupils any of those passages which, in such an 
 edition, would have been omitted, he would make them the occasion 
 of some such comment as the following : " This lesson they teach you, 
 that refinement of intellect will not purify the heart ; that great mental 
 endowments may co-exist with great moral insensibility ; that vigour 
 
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 285 
 
 Nor will this be all; there will mingle in these 
 studies thoughts and feelings of a liveliest thankful- 
 ness to God, as amid the great shipwreck of the Gen- 
 tile world, we recognize the planks b}? which one and 
 another attained as we trust safely, and through the 
 mercy of a Saviour whom as yet he did not know, to 
 the shore of everlasting life — thankfulness mingled, it 
 may oftentimes be, with something of an wholesome 
 shame to ourselves, as we contemplate the faithful- 
 ness and fealty to the good and true, which even in 
 the world's darkest hour have been shewn by them, 
 whose knowledge was so little, and whose advantages 
 so few, as compared with our own. And perhaps it 
 
 of understanding and delicacy of taste will not reform the world. You 
 see that these have been tried and found wanting. Something more is 
 needed. You may conclude also that the depravity of an age and 
 country was great, in which those who were the most distinguished 
 hy their intellectual endowments and literary culture, thought them- 
 selves not only licensed, but expected thus to write. It follows that you 
 have in these passages an evidence of the divine power and purity 
 of that influence which did what all the wisdom of the world could 
 7iever do. It is Christianity, and it alone, which has really expurgated 
 the literature, not only of Greece and Rome, but of the civilized 
 world. These passages are the trophies of the triumphs of Christian- 
 ity. They shew us, as in a triumphal procession, what fearful enemies 
 it has conquered. Without them you might have asked what social 
 good has the Gospel done ? What moral blessings have we derived 
 from it ? These passages forbid, they answer, those questions. They 
 remind you from what, and into what you have been delivered, and 
 by Whom. Therefore, had we expunged them, we should have 
 diminished the strength and glory of that very cause which we desire 
 to serve. Being what they are, I fear not that you should pervert 
 them to an improper use. God forbid that you should dwell on them 
 with any other feelings than those of sorrow mingled with thankful- 
 ness. Horace, had he lived when you do, would have been a Christian, 
 and had he been a Christian, he would not have written thus ; but if 
 you who are Christians, love to read, what he, had he been one, would 
 have loathed to write, you, who ought to Christianise him, heathenise 
 yourselves." 
 
286 .LECTURE YIII. [1S40. 
 
 shall seem to us then, as if that Star in the natural 
 heavens which guided those Eastern Sages from their 
 distant home, was but the symbol of many a star 
 which twinkled in the world's mystical night, — but 
 which yet, being faithfully followed, availed to lead 
 humble and devout hearts from far off regions of 
 superstition and error, till they knelt beside the 
 cradle of the Babe of Bethlehem, and saw all their 
 weary wanderings repaid in a moment, and all their 
 desires finding a perfect fulfilment in Him. ^ 
 
 THE END. 
 
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