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fcibrarp of €he t^eoiocjicd gminavy 
 
 PRINCETON ■ NEW JERSEY 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 Th ate of the 
 
 Rev. John . edine-er 
 
 BR 85 .F3 
 
 
 -Farrar, Frederic William, 
 
 
 1831-1903. 
 
 
 Words of truth and wisdom 
 
 
f- 
 
WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM 
 
WORDS OF TRUTH 
 AND WISDO 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. FREDERIC W. FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S. 
 
 CANON OF WESTMINSTER 
 
 THIRD EDITION 
 
 iBMntmrgb 
 
 JOHN GRANT 
 
 31 GEORGE IV. BRIDGE 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHRISTIAN STATESMANSHIP 
 
 LEGISLATIVE DUTIES 
 
 THE USE OF GIFTS AND OPPORTUNITIES 
 
 THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN 
 
 ENERGY OF CHRISTIAN SERVICE ... 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE HUMAN RACE 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 THE VICTORIES OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN'S REMEDY AGAINST THE 
 
 OF LIFE 
 PRAYER, THE ANTIDOTE TO SORROW 
 THE CONQUEST OVER TEMPTATION 
 TOO LATE 
 
 THE SOULS OF THE DEPARTED ... 
 WHAT HEAVEN IS 
 
 NO DISCHARGE IN THE WAR AGAINST SIN 
 THE DEAD WHICH DIE IN THE LORD 
 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 
 THE BLIGHTED LIFE 
 
 FRAILTIES 
 
 I 
 
 9 
 
 17 
 26 
 
 3i 
 42 
 
 54 
 
 87 
 
 99 
 
 107 
 
 116 
 
 128 
 
 131 
 136 
 144 
 152 
 158 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 WISDOM AND KNOWLEDGE ... ... ... 169 
 
 THE VOICE OF HISTORY ... ... ... ... 176 
 
 SAINTLY WORKERS. 
 
 THE MONKS ... ... ... ... ... j^g 
 
 THE EARLY FRANCISCANS ... ... ... 198 
 
 THE HERMITS ... ... ... ... ... 2 IO 
 
 THE MISSIONARIES 
 
 LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGES. 
 
 SANSKRIT 
 
 GREEK AND HELi^EW 
 
 WORDS ... 
 
 215 
 
 THE MARTYRS ... ... ... ... ... 228 
 
 SEEKERS AFTER GOD. 
 
 239 
 249 
 
 SENECA... 
 
 SENECA AND ST. PAUL ... 
 
 GALLIO AND ST. PAUL ... ... ... ... 255 
 
 ROMAN SOCIETY IN THE DAYS OF SENECA ... 259 
 
 271 
 
 277 
 
 ARYAN MIGRATIONS ... ... ... ... 290 
 
 302 
 
CHRISTIAN STATESMANSHIP. 
 
 HPHOSE who worship here will, I think, have recognised 
 my desire that, amid the daily endeavour to work out 
 our own salvation with fear and trembling, we should not 
 forget our national duties, our duties as human beings in 
 the great family of man. We suffer even in our spiritual 
 life when we confine our thoughts to the narrow horizon 
 of our individual welfare. If the great remedy for selfish- 
 ness be to lose ourselves in God, if the great example of 
 unselfishness be the example of Christ, if the great work 
 of Christ was to sacrifice Himself for the sins of the 
 whole world, then surely he must be the best and truest 
 man whose hopes and fears are not wholly absorbed into 
 the silence and seclusion of his interior life, but who 
 yearns for the religion of active service, who desires to 
 follow in the Divine footsteps of Him who " went about 
 doing good." But he who would live thus, while he 
 strives to be a child of God, must never forget that he 
 nil* be a better child of God in proportion as the whole 
 
2 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 influence of his life, whether in a large sphere or in a 
 small, tends not to poison but to purify the current of the 
 world's life. If at the words, "Iaraa man ; and there- 
 fore in all things human I have a concern," the whole 
 audience of a heathen theatre could rise up to shout 
 their approval, ought not a Christian congregation to feel 
 that those lessons are deeply religious which turn their 
 thoughts to our own work in a Christian nation, and to 
 the work of a Christian nation in the world? It is a 
 mistake to suppose that such questions are too vast and 
 vague. Results the most vast are brought about by the 
 aggregate of small separate exertions. The coral insect 
 is a small and ephemeral creature, with soft and feeble 
 body, yet the result of its insignificant existence, the 
 contribution of its tiny grain, rears the league-long reef 
 which forms a barrier in the ocean, or builds the basis of 
 continents which form for untold ages the home of man. 
 Let none of us try to prove that we have but little 
 responsibility. "We never die; we are the waves of 
 the ocean of life, communicating motion to the expanse 
 before us, and leaving the history we have made on the 
 shore behind. ' ; 
 
 I shall speak to you then this morning of matters 
 political. I shall touch only on those eternal principles 
 of which it is well for us at all times to be reminded. 
 And if you ask me how I can venture to speak of politics 
 
CHRISTIAN STATESMANSHIP. 
 
 in the presence of statesmen and senators, I answer 
 that there can be no presumption in the herald who 
 in any presence, however august, does but deliver the 
 message of the King of kings. 
 
 Let me speak first of what should be the Foreign Policy 
 of England, and let me indulge for a moment in a large 
 retrospect. 
 
 You heard in the first lesson of this morning about 
 the three sons of Noah. When first the separate races 
 of mankind begin to be discernible in the confused sea 
 of humanity, we see dark-skinned and savage tribes living 
 for the most part in the deepest night of barbarism, 
 identified theoretically with the race of Ham. Out of 
 this aeon of unprogressive barbarism emerge, in course 
 of time, the great semi-civilised nations of Eastern Asia 
 and Northern Africa, the Chinese and the Egyptians, 
 with their oppressive despotisms and cruel superstitions. 
 Then in the third great aeon of human records, from 2000 
 to 3000 years before the birth of Christ, we witness the 
 first definite appearance of those two mighty races, the 
 Semitic and the Aryan, which many have regarded as the 
 race of Shem and the race of Japhet. Fairer in com- 
 plexion, stronger, more physically beautiful, more intel- 
 lectually gifted, they appear first in the great table-lands 
 of Central Asia, and to them is due almost all that is 
 progressive or noble in the history of mankind. To the 
 
 B 2 
 
WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 Semitic race, and pre-eminently to the Jew, God en- 
 trusted the religious education of the ancient world. To 
 this race it was mainly given to keep alive in the world a 
 belief in the Unity of God, and the Eternal Majesty of 
 the moral law. To the Aryan race, to which we belong, 
 was entrusted mainly the civilisation of mankind ; from it 
 sprang mainly the arts of war and peace ; the glory that 
 was Greece belongs to it, and the grandeur that was 
 Rome ; it has been the parent of the lofty spiritualism of 
 India, the deep philosophy of Germany, the glorious art 
 of Italy, the dauntless energy of England. But its destiny 
 did not culminate until, in the crucifixion of our Lord, the 
 Semitic race, knowing not the day of its visitation, proved 
 false to its function and its heritage. Then the torch of 
 the Christian Revelation, which would have been ex- 
 tinguished for ever in the hands of the Semitic, was 
 transferred into the hands of the race of Japhet, and 
 soon burst into a lustre which was intended to illuminate 
 the world. Of all the families of that Aryan race we, 
 the English of to-day, have the grandest history and the 
 most magnificent, yet also the most perilous responsi- 
 bilities. We have colonised the western world, we are 
 undisputed lords of the great southern continent. Our 
 language is already more widely disseminated than any 
 tongue that was ever spoken by the lips of man. It seems 
 likely to become the almost universal language of the 
 
CHRIS TIAN ST A TESMANSHIP. 
 
 future. Who can exaggerate the immensity of such an 
 influence, or the awfulness of such duties ? They affect 
 many of us directly, and in many ways. Our sons and 
 daughters go to every quarter of the globe, and such as 
 we are they are, and as are the lessons they have learnt 
 in their English homes so will be the influence which they 
 exercise in the most distant colonies. But a vast propor- 
 tion of these our national duties are summed up in the 
 words, "the Foreign Policy of England." What then 
 should be the one object of that Foreign Policy? Can 
 there be in the light of Christianity any other answer than 
 this— the intellectual, the moral, the spiritual welfare of 
 mankind ? Ought we not to teach to the world the lessons 
 of a superior wisdom, a purer justice, a loftier morality? 
 Ought we not to inscribe on the banner of our progress 
 that sacred name which it is at once our highest mission 
 and our most blessed privilege to render visible and 
 glorious through a regenerate world ? Much, by God's 
 blessing, we have done. But, alas ! there is another side 
 of the picture. Whole races have disappeared before the 
 advancing conquests of our sons. The footsteps of our 
 countrymen as they have passed across the world have 
 too often been footsteps dyed in blood. Africa has 
 known them as the buyer of the slave. The islands of 
 the Pacific have known them as the stealer of their youth. 
 The aborigines of Tasmania have known them as the 
 
WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 exterminators of their race. Wise and eminent laymen 
 often speak of these things more plainly than we timid, 
 conventional clergymen, terrified as we too often are into 
 a decorum which is cowardice, and into a weakness of 
 statement which is a treachery against eternal truth. 
 
 Ah, my brethren, ought we not to have stern search- 
 ings of heart as to the way in which we have dealt with 
 these other sheep of Christ, though they be not of this 
 fold — children with us of a common God, heirs with us 
 of a common immortality? Do we not owe them an 
 immense reparation, as well as eternal duties ? And do 
 we not owe these duties not to them only, but to all our 
 brethren, whether they belong to our own or to other races 
 of mankind ? In two great ways we influence them — by 
 war, and by commerce. War is sometimes inevitable ; 
 it must sometimes be. Only let us see that as, in carry- 
 ing out its dreadful arbitrament, our sons have always 
 been heroically gallant, so in entering into it we all strive 
 to be inflexibly, rigidly, scrupulously just. Every war 
 that is not absolutely indispensable — every war of mere 
 ambition and of wanton aggression — is a sowing of 
 dragons' teeth. Nor let us ever forget that on all that we 
 do — undisturbed by sophistries, unbribed by interest, 
 judging solely by everlasting laws of righteousness — God 
 will exact His strict retribution, and history record her 
 impartial verdict. 
 
CHRISTIAN ST A TESMANSHIP. 
 
 Righteousness — you might write it as the epitome 
 of all history, upon the first page of every history — 
 Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is the reproach 
 of any people. If we never go to war save when justice 
 and righteousness require that we should do so ; — if our 
 dealings with every other nation, whether weak or strong, 
 whether civilised or savage, be rigidly and chivalrously 
 upright ; — if our commerce be not corrupted at the fount 
 by that horrible selfishness which sacrifices nations to its 
 insatiate greed of gain ; — then we may expect, and we 
 shall receive a blessing from the God of all nations, for 
 then the one principle of all our foreign policy will be 
 this, — to aim at ever finding our own highest good in the 
 highest good of all mankind. 
 
 How wide, how noble is the sphere of enlightened 
 Christian politics ! What ample scope is there still for 
 men to win a civic wreath as green as that of Chatham 
 or Wilberforce ! To see that the very weakest and 
 humblest be safe under the inviolable protection of equal 
 laws; to see that by the universal extension of sound 
 learning and religious education a limit be put to brutality 
 and vice ; to see that there be a national acknowledg- 
 ment of our allegiance to Him before whom all nations 
 are but as dust in the balance — does this open no sphere 
 of action wide enough for the most soaring ambition ? 
 
 In one last word, then, of all that I have said this is 
 
8 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 the sum : Let godless philosophy say what it will, let a 
 cold-blooded political economy say what it will, I say 
 that unless all history be a delusion and all Scripture a 
 lie, then "what is morally wrong cannot be politically 
 right;" and that " every state's organisation is perverted, 
 perverse, and doomed to ruin, where single individuals 
 or single classes have the pretension to constitute the 
 broad bases of society." And of our foreign policy I say 
 that our intercourse with all nations, whether strong or 
 weak, will be always wrong, and must be ultimately fatal, 
 if it be not based on the principle that international 
 morality has no separate code, but is only a wider appli- 
 cation of the Christian ethics. " Mankind/" said a great 
 patriot and a great orator, " has but one single aim ; it is 
 Mankind itself; and that aim has but one single instru- 
 ment — Mankind again." " God," said an inspired 
 Apostle, speaking to contemptuous Pagans, " hath made 
 of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face 
 of the earth, and hath determined the times before 
 appointed, and the bounds of their habitation ; that they 
 should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, 
 and find Him, though He be not far from every one of 
 us : for in Him we live, and move, and have our being ; 
 as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are 
 also His offspring." 
 
 Ephfliatka Scttnons, p. 287. 
 
LEGISLATIVE DUTIES. 
 
 \70U have just heard, my brethren, that ancient bidding 
 prayer, which reminds us that the Parliament of Eng- 
 land has been, once more, summoned to meet for a special 
 session. It reminds us also that, by a privilege 300 
 years old, this Church is known as the Church of the 
 House of Commons. Here, in former days, the members 
 of the House met, year after year, on Ash Wednesday, to 
 hear the exhortations of the greatest divines of the Eng- 
 lish Church. This parish of St. Margaret's was then 
 the parish of the rich ; the church was the church of 
 royalty, and every Sunday the members of Parliament 
 worshipped here in hundreds. All these conditions are 
 changed. Streets are now abandoned, which were then 
 full of wealthy and noble residents, and the parish is 
 almost exclusively a parish of the poor. But the 
 church has its memories. We are met within the same 
 walls which were thronged by the Commons of England 
 during the stormiest epochs of their career. Pym, and 
 
io WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 Hampden, and Vane, and Eliot, and Marvell, and Har- 
 rington have here knelt in prayer no less than Strafford, 
 and Falkland, and Prince Rupert ; and the altar and the 
 font are associated with the memories alike of Milton, 
 the secretary of Cromwell, and Clarendon, the his- 
 torian of Charles, and Sir William Waller, the Parlia- 
 mentary general. But apart from all these constitutional 
 associations, the mere fact that Parliament has again 
 assembled might well furnish the subject for our morning 
 exhortation ; and since we cannot but feel in that event 
 a special interest, I purpose to ask you to dwell with me 
 for a few moments on the thoughts which a new Session 
 of Parliament suggests. I need not say that they will 
 be religious thoughts. The functions of a pastor are not 
 the same as those of a citizen, and the occasions are rare 
 in which it could be the duty of the preacher to deal 
 polemically with those burning questions which awaken 
 the animosities of party strife. No ! it is his duty, and a 
 blessed one it is, to deal with those indestructible prin- 
 ciples which are, to the transient questions of political 
 division, as is the ocean to its wreaths of foam ; with 
 those truths which tower above all passing questions, and 
 lie behind them, wide as eternity and deep as life. It 
 is his duty to enforce the deep moral obligations of 
 Christian citizenship, not to thrust himself needlessly into 
 the arena of its evanescent strifes. It is his duty to plead 
 
LEGISLATIVE DUTIES. 
 
 tor mutual appreciation ; to soften bitternesses ; to dwell 
 on points of agreement ; to urge that generosity is nobler 
 than violence, that courtesy is more honourable than 
 invective. Times indeed there have been, and may be 
 again, when at all costs the Christian preacher must 
 cry aloud and spare not ; times when the laws of God 
 have been imperilled; when the principles of justice have 
 been traversed ; when the rights of the many have been 
 crushed under the encroachments of the few; when wealth 
 and power have tyrannously pressed their privileges, and 
 forgotten utterly their duties ; when men have called evil 
 good, and good evil ; put bitter for sweet, and sweet for 
 bitter. At such times the Christian preacher should, 
 like the ancient prophets, speak out, even before kings, 
 and not be ashamed. But my duties to-day are wholly 
 different. I wish to make our bidding prayer real to you; 
 I wish to impress on you the grandeur and solemnity 
 of the functions of our legislature, and to urge upon you 
 the duty of not forgetting, as you kneel at the throne of 
 grace, those on whom rest such grave responsibilities. 
 
 " I exhort," says St. Paul, " that supplications, prayers, 
 intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men." 
 It is a grand and elevating duty. "But thou," says 
 the dying king in the Idylls, — 
 
 "If thou shouldst never see my face again, 
 Pray for my soul ; more things are wrought by prayer 
 
12 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 Than this world dreams of. Therefore let thy voice 
 Rise like a fountain for me, night and day. 
 For what are men better than sheep or goats, 
 That nourish a blind life within the brain, 
 If, knowing God, they lift not holy hands, 
 Both for themselves, and those who call them friend ? 
 For so the whole round world is every way 
 Bound by gold chains about the feet of God." 
 
 But the Apostle proceeds especially to urge prayers 
 " for kings and all in authority, that we may lead a quiet 
 and peaceable life in godliness and honesty." Nor haT e 
 Christians ever overlooked this injunction. In the very 
 earliest liturgies we find prayers for rulers. " With out- 
 spread hands," says Tertullian, "we pray for all sove- 
 reigns a long life, a secure dominion, a safe home, brave 
 armies, a faithful senate, an upright people, a quiet 
 world." Now in England the strongest power is that of 
 the Parliament. It results from the entire growth of 
 our constitution, that the authority of Parliament, which 
 is ultimately the will of the people, is irresistible and 
 supreme. Even the Plantagenets felt that force, and it 
 wrung from them the strongest charters of our liberty. 
 Even the Tudors felt it, and it curbed their lion will. 
 In vain did the Stuarts fight against it. When James 1.. 
 on receiving a deputation from the House, ordered so 
 many gilded chairs to be set, " for," he said, " there are 
 so many kings a-coming," he did but utter an uncon- 
 scious prophecy of a force which was to cost his son a 
 
LEGISLATIVE DUTIES. 13 
 
 life, and his family a throne. And since then the Parlia- 
 ment of England has been the mainstay of England's 
 liberties ; its will has been the motive force, its laws the 
 sheet-anchor of the state. Thank God we all love and 
 honour the Crown of England with a most loyal affec- 
 tion, and we rejoice that there is a House of Lords, 
 lifted above the perils of immediate unpopularity, repre- 
 senting the most established rights, and recruited yearly 
 by the noblest intellects ; and yet, again and again, the 
 towering fasces of the sovereign and of the aristocracy 
 have been loyally and fitly lowered before the majesty of 
 a people's will. And if this be the grandeur of a senator's 
 position, it is the privilege of ours. The members of the 
 House of Commons are not our tyrants, but our repre- 
 sentatives ; not our masters, but the agents of our will. 
 For these blessings of freedom and self-government we 
 ought to thank God. Citizens, by this gift, of no mean 
 commonwealth, we ought not, amid the dwarfing selfish- 
 ness of individualism, to forget that, in the formation of 
 that enlightened public opinion by which the issues of 
 legislation are decided, it is our duty to take a part 
 which, however humble, ought to be both thoughtful and 
 sincere. And the slow, just, legal growth of this glorious 
 prerogative is the great characteristic of English history. 
 Even our civil wars, stained as they were with a king's 
 blood, had none of those lurid scenes of riot, those 
 
i 4 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 hideous excesses of revolution, which have reddened 
 page after page of the annals of France, and caused her 
 fortunes to oscillate with such terrible violence between 
 the extremes of anarchy and despotism. We then — more 
 perhaps than any nation under the sun — owe this debt of 
 "thanksgiving" to God, of which the Apostle reminds 
 us, " for kings, and all who are in authority." 
 
 And if we have such large reason to offer those thanks- 
 givings, may not this be due, in no small degree, to the 
 "prayers and supplications" which St. Paul tells us that 
 we ought also to offer ? All that there is among us of peace, 
 of progress, of prosperity is due to the collective wisdom of 
 the nation, as guided by the voice of her Parliament ; and 
 if that wisdom have produced rich results, must we not 
 believe that God has heard the prayers of His people ? If 
 " every good gift, and every perfect gift," to nations as 
 well as to individuals, is from above, must it not be due 
 to His goodness that so many statesmen have been 
 raised up among us whose great example is the heritage 
 of the world? Ought we not to thank God for these 
 great men — for their learning, for their dignity, for their 
 eloquence, for their inflexible determination, to the 
 utmost of their power, to be just and fear not? 
 
 Let none of us, my brethren, be so vulgarly absorbed 
 by our shops and our families, by our private interests 
 and selfish domesticities, as to think that Parliaments 
 
LEGISLATIVE DUTIES. 
 
 and laws make small difference to him. Their functions 
 are so far-reaching that there is not a home or hearth in 
 England which is not happier or more dismal from their 
 influence. Not only does the safety of nations, the peace 
 of churches, the prosperity of commerce depend on 
 them, but even no little of the security, the order, the 
 happiness of our individual lives. With them rests the 
 continuance of the loyal affection of our colonies, over 
 realms on which the sun never sets. When some great 
 social iniquity has entrenched itself in the citadels of 
 power, it is theirs to drive the battering-ram against its 
 walls. By fearless repression of wrong, by wide encourage- 
 ment of right, by high moral influence, by strong sanitary 
 legislation, it is theirs to secure the righteousness of our 
 land, and the health of our people. 
 
 These then are the reasons why, in this Church of the 
 House of Commons, we pray " for the Great Council of 
 the nation now assembled in Parliament." May we feel, 
 as often as we hear that bidding prayer, how real it is ! 
 May we recognise that under every form of human 
 government the Lord God is still our King ! May our 
 senators have wisdom to realise the grandeur of their 
 duties ! May they hand on, unquenched, that torch of 
 freedom which, across the dust and darkness of many 
 centuries, has been handed on to them ! May they pre- 
 serve unimpaired the high prestige and dignity and 
 
1 6 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 honour which are their illustrious heritage! May they 
 refer every question to the Law of Righteousness, as read 
 by the light of conscience,— never giving up to party 
 what was meant for mankind, or to a province what is 
 the heritage of a kingdom, or to a section what is the 
 prerogative of a race;— never forgetting that each vote of 
 theirs will tend, in its measure, to make England a greater 
 and better, or a weaker and poorer, land ; always on their 
 knees asking God that they may use the power entrusted 
 to them, not for private interests, not for transient 
 ambitions, not for factious triumphs, but always with 
 sternest integrity, and in His faith and fear. So shall 
 we be able to hold our own against every force which 
 can be brought against us ; so shall we realise more and 
 more the Psalmist's golden picture of national prosperity, 
 that " truth shall flourish out of the earth, and righteous- 
 ness look down from heaven. Yea, the Lord shall show 
 loving-kindness, and our land shall give her increase. 
 Righteousness shall go before Him, and He shall direct 
 her going in the way." 
 
 Ephphatha Sertnons, p. 259. 
 
THE USE OF GIFTS AND OPPORTUNITIES. 
 
 'T^HE full, rich, innocent use of gifts and opportunities — 
 how little do we understand it ! For every purpose 
 of noble gladness, how much more might almost every one 
 of us make of our life than we do ! How do we throw 
 away the substance for the shadow, and the healthy reality 
 for the feverish dream ! How do we crowd out the natural 
 effects, and make all life artificial ! We spend our life, as 
 it were, on the stage and under the gaslight, when we 
 might be walking in the sunlight under heaven. We 
 talk of poverty and limitation, while we make life "a 
 haggard, malignant running for luck," and are daily neg- 
 lecting the elements of purest and loftiest pleasure. 
 "Give me," says an American writer, "health and a 
 day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous." 
 But to enable us thus to enjoy the gifts of nature we all 
 need more open eyes, more grateful hearts. I often 
 think that most of us in life are like many of those sight- 
 eers who saunter through this Abbey. Their listless look 
 
WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 upon its grandeur and its memorials furnishes an illus- 
 tration of the aspect which we present to higher powers, 
 as we wander restlessly through the solemn minster-aisles 
 of life. For this Abbey appeals in different ways to 
 different feelings. There are some who, with no special 
 knowledge or education, have yet a heart to feel at once 
 the genius of the place. Its grandeur and solemnity strike 
 into them an involuntary awe. They feel as even the 
 puritan Milton felt when he spoke of the " high-embowed 
 roof," the massy pillars, the storied windows, the pealing 
 organ, the full-voiced choir, the solemn Psalms. They 
 have at least the innate sense of what is great, and, amid 
 these ugly wildernesses of brick, the Abbey, blackened as 
 it is by the smoke and fog which hangs over this city 
 year by year, and with its battlements and stones cor- 
 roded by the sulphurous acids of the air, still speaks to 
 them in a nobler language than they hear in the shops 
 and streets. Others, who have some knowledge of 
 Architecture, can exult in each exquisite detail of sculp- 
 ture, each harmony of proportion, each impress of the 
 thought of those ages of faith to which these cathedrals 
 of England owe their origin. Others have a deep interest 
 in History, and the memorials around us seem to give 
 them a deeper comprehension, and a more living union 
 with the past. Others, again, thrill with sympathy as 
 they stand among the tombs of the mighty dead, and 
 
THE USE OF GIFTS AND OPPORTUNITIES. 19 
 
 amid these records of past lives they hear in its softest 
 tones " the sad music of humanity." But when all these 
 feelings are combined, then a visit to the Abbey leaves 
 those rich and vivid impressions of delight and elevation 
 which you may find recorded in the descriptions of an 
 Addison, a Washington Irving, or a Macaulay. How is 
 it then that myriads who come here do but look round 
 with dreary indifference and listless vacancy, while they 
 would be roused to an enthusiasm of delight by the buf- 
 foonery of a comic singer, or the horrible fling of an 
 acrobat on a trapeze ? To them as to the most gifted 
 the Abbey presents the same outward appearance; the 
 same vision strikes their retina. But the eye can only 
 see what it brings with it the power of seeing. The 
 difference is in them, and mostly through no fault of 
 theirs. They have neither the sense of beauty, nor the 
 knowledge of art, nor the feeling for history, nor the 
 interest in noble lives, which should make these walls 
 speak to them. Music can be nothing to the deaf ear ; 
 nor the glories of the sunset to the blind eye ; nor the 
 highest utterances of poetry to the ignorant, dead, and 
 callous heart. To them that have is it given, and they 
 have more abundantly. 
 
 Even so it is with life, with the temple of the out- 
 ward world. We talk of human misery; how many of 
 us derive from life one-tenth part of what God meant to 
 
 C 2 
 
20 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WIS DON. 
 
 be its natural blessedness ? How many of us drink the 
 deep draughts of joy which every pure heart may drink 
 out of the river of His pleasures ? Sit out in the open 
 air on a summer day, and how many of us have trained 
 ourselves to notice the sweetness and the multiplicity of 
 the influences which are combining for our delight — the 
 song of birds ; the breeze beating balm upon the fore- 
 head ; the genial warmth ; the delicate odour of ten 
 thousand flowers ; the play of lovely colours ; " the soft 
 eye-music of slow-waving boughs " ? How many of us 
 ever watch the pageant of the clouds, or take in the 
 meaning of a starry night, or so much as see the sun- 
 rise? How many of us notice, as loving and gifted 
 observers might help us to notice, the multitudinous 
 beauty and tenderness of the burst of spring j the black 
 ash-buds in March; the glistening chestnut-buds in April; 
 the blaze of celandines ; the golden dust in the catkins of 
 the hazel ; the rosy sheath of the larch-tree's fresh green 
 leaves ? A poet speaks of one to whom 
 
 ** A primrose by a river's Drim, 
 A yellow primrose was to him, 
 And it was nothing more." 
 
 He means by those lines to express the difference 
 between bare sight and divine insight ; between the 
 cold, unfurnished, sensual soul, and the soul that sees 
 the Unseen, sees God in all things, and sees all things in 
 
THE USE OF GIFTS AND OPPORTUNITIES. 21 
 
 God. Truly "the misery of man appears like childish 
 petulance, when we explore the steady and prodigal 
 provision which has been made for his support and 
 delight on this green ball that floats him through the 
 universe." 
 
 "More servants 
 Wait on man than he'll take notice of." 
 
 We all live on far lower levels of vitality and of joy than 
 we need to do. We linger in the misty and oppressive 
 valleys when we might be climbing the sunlit hills. 
 God puts into our hands the Book of Life, bright on 
 every page with open secrets, and we suffer it to drop 
 out of our hands unread. 
 
 If we suffer from limitation of the insight which would 
 open our blind souls to myriads of happy impressions, 
 how do we suffer also — all mankind alike — from the 
 neglect of our own powers ! Our capacities— and the 
 full exercise of every capacity is a source of happiness — 
 largely exceed our attainments. No nation has ever 
 desired to train a particular faculty of man without find- 
 ing that faculty capable of indefinite development. Why 
 does the wild Indian track his path with unerring 
 certainty through the interminable forest? Why was 
 there no limit to the hardy endurance of the Spartan 
 boy ? Why was the young Athenian a model of grace, 
 agility, and beauty? Why can the Arab tell you the 
 
22 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 number of approaching horsemen where you barely see 
 a speck on the horizon ? Why do the muscles stand out 
 so strong upon an athlete's arm ? The faculties, the gifts 
 are there — they are a part of our natural heritage — but 
 they lie undeveloped in us all. They perish for lack of 
 training, and become as though they were not. We talk 
 of education; we call this an age of education. For 
 myself, I doubt — such poor blind creatures are we at the 
 best — whether, after millenniums of its existence, the 
 human race has grasped one tenth part of the secrets of 
 education ; whether many of our aims and methods of 
 education are not deplorably foolish ; whether, while aim- 
 ing at our fineries of Latin Verse and other trivialities, 
 we have not grievously retrograded from sensible ideals ; 
 whether much of our so-called highest education is not 
 — in comparison with much that we might do — an 
 elaborate missing of the mark. At any rate who shall 
 venture to say that, in the use of our blessings, in the 
 training of our powers, we have as a race attained to 
 anything like what we might be, or done even a fraction 
 of what we might do ? Far better and brighter is the 
 world than we will see, or suffer it to be for us j far 
 more rich in capabilities of power and blessedness than 
 we have made them are the immortal souls which God 
 has given us, the mortal bodies into whose nostrils He 
 has breathed the breath of life. 
 
THE USE OF GIFTS AND OPPORTUNITIES. 23 
 
 Man complains of his misery on earth; but "this," 
 it has been said, " we may discover assuredly; this every 
 true light of science, every mercifully-granted power, 
 every wisely-restricted thought may teach us more clearly 
 day by day, that in the heavens above, and in the earth 
 beneath, there is one continual and omnipotent Pre- 
 sence of life, and of peace, for all who know that they 
 live, and remember that they die." Alas ! do we not, 
 too often, and too many of us, live as though we should 
 never die to earth, and die as though we should never 
 live beyond it ? Do we not make of life a living death 
 till we have sunk so low that the best boon for us might 
 well seem to be an everlasting oblivion ? 
 
 Oh, my brethren, if men would but make a more 
 serious effort to live, as they were taught by their cate- 
 chisms to live, in temperance, soberness, and chastity ; 
 to live as they pray in their prayers to live, a righteous, 
 sober, and godly life ; to live as all wise men have urged 
 us to live, in " plain living and high thinking ; " to live as 
 nature teaches us to live, by the rule of "not too much;" 
 to live as Scripture urges us to live, " not in rioting and 
 drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in 
 strife and envying ; " — and how much more if we would 
 but strive to live by " putting on the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 and making no provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts 
 thereof: " — how vast a change would even one single 
 
 / 
 
24 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 generation see in the health, the happiness, the ennoble- 
 ment of mankind ! And if we could, by energy, and faith- 
 fulness, and earnest prayer for the aid of God's Holy 
 Spirit, teach but the youth of one generation that the 
 sowing of the wind means always the reaping of the 
 whirlwind; that each man is mainly what he makes 
 himself; that there is an inevitable congruity between 
 the seed and the fruit; that he who would be truly 
 courageous, who would dare all things, who would be 
 a benefactor of his race, who would look unabashed 
 into the face of all mankind, though they were ar- 
 rayed together to crush him, who would achieve the 
 highest purposes of his reason and the most generous 
 ideals of his soul, — that he who, though he sternly 
 mastered his passions, would combine calmness and 
 peace with force and fire, whose life would be a poem 
 though he wrote none, — that he who would live as one 
 " who loves all beauty, whether of nature or of art, and 
 hates all vileness, and respects others as himself," and 
 whose life, as it draws its strength from holy inspiration, 
 so spends that strength in devoted service ; if, I say, we 
 could teach the youth of but one generation that he who 
 would do thus, and be this, "must retain from his earliest 
 youth, and in the most secret sessions of his memory, a 
 spotless title to self-respect," by a pure, a self-denying, and 
 a holy life ; then how soon would these mortal bodies of 
 
THE USE OF GIFTS AND OPPORTUNITIES. 25 
 
 ours, these harps of a thousand strings, not only keep in 
 tune, but ring with the very melodies of heaven ! Then 
 would the nations grow in strength, in health, in noble- 
 ness, and would eliminate from among themselves, each 
 man for himself, and all by united allegiance to the 
 interests of their race, not a few out of that multiplicity 
 of afflictions for which Christ sighed, and from which 
 He came to set us free. Then should old age and 
 death be like the dropping of ripe fruit from the tree; 
 — say rather, like a sleep sent by God to His beloved 
 when their day's work is done — a sleep which shall 
 awake amid the eternal realities of heaven. Is this a 
 path worth the efforts of mankind to walk in? It was 
 described long ago : " And an highway shall be there, 
 and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness j 
 the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for 
 those : the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err 
 therein. No ravenous beast shall go up thereon; but 
 the redeemed shall walk there: they shall obtain joy 
 and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." 
 
 Epkphatha Sermons, p. 191. 
 
THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN. 
 
 John x. 16. 
 
 "And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I 
 must bring, and they shall hear My voice; and there shall be one 
 flock, one shepherd" 
 
 T^HERE is an almost inexhaustible depth and wisdom 
 in these words ; and it would be well for us if, in- 
 stead of our crude theories of a mechanical inspiration, 
 we accustomed ourselves to understand in their full signifi- 
 cance — in the spirit which giveth life, — were it but a few 
 of those passages which reveal to us the deep things of 
 God. In this verse, for instance, there lies a truth 
 hidden from men for aeons, but now revealed. That 
 truth is the great Idea of Humanity — of the whole race 
 of mankind as gathered up into one under the Federal 
 Headship of its Lord. 
 
 In this meaning the very word Humanity was un- 
 known to the ancient world. In Greek there is no- 
 thing corresponding to it ; in Latin, Humanitas means 
 
THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN. 27 
 
 kindly nature or "refined culture." The Jew looked 
 on the world as divided into Jews and Gentiles j of which 
 the Jews were the children of the Most Highest, the 
 Gentiles dogs and sinners. The Greeks looked on the 
 world as divided into Greeks and barbarians ; of which 
 the Greeks were the lords of the human race, the bar- 
 barians were natural enemies and natural slaves. Jew 
 and Greek and barbarian alike looked on mankind as 
 divided into men and women ; of which women were fit 
 only for ignorance and seclusion, as the chattels of man's 
 pleasure and the servants of his caprice. And what was 
 the consequence of these errors ? It was that the ancient 
 world was cursed with a triple curse — the curse of 
 slavery, the curse of corruption, the curse of endless 
 wars. What had Christianity to say to this state of 
 things? She taught emphatically and for the first time 
 that there is no favouritism with God ; that God is no 
 respecter of persons; that in God's sight all men are 
 equally guilty, all equally redeemed j that each man is 
 exactly so great as he is in God's sight and no greater ; 
 that man is to be honoured simply as man, and not for 
 the honours of his station, or the accidents of his birth ; 
 that neither the religious privileges of the Jew, nor the 
 intellectual endowments of the Greeks, made them any 
 dearer to God than any other children of His great 
 family of man. Christianity taught us, in the words of 
 
28 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 St. Peter, to honour all men j and, in the words of St. 
 Paul, that in Christ Jesus there is neither circumcision 
 nor uncircumcision ; neither Jew nor Greek ; neither 
 male nor female ; neither barbarian, Scythian, bond nor 
 free j but Christ all and in all. And these great apostles 
 thus taught, because, in the view of our Lord and Mas- 
 ter, mankind were indeed as sheep without a shepherd, — 
 scattered by a thousand wolves, and wandering in the 
 dark and cloudy day, — but He is the Good Shepherd, 
 whose work it was to seek for His lost sheep, and bring 
 them back again into His one flock. In the Jewish 
 temple ran a middle wall of partition, on which were 
 stern inscriptions forbidding any Gentile to set foot 
 within it on pain of death j Jesus came to break down 
 that middle wall; to make God's Temple co-extensive 
 with the universe, and its worshippers with all mankind. 
 The Gospel introduced then into the world a new, a 
 glorious, a beneficent conception : the conception of 
 mankind as one great brotherhood bound together by 
 the law of love ; as one great race ; — united to the universe 
 by natural laws; united to God by the common mys- 
 teries of creation and redemption ; united to all the 
 dead by the continuity, to all the living by the solid- 
 arity of life. And the result of this grand conception 
 is a deadening of that mean and narrow selfishness which 
 is the worst curse of our nature ; a widening of the 
 
THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN. 29 
 
 horizon of our hopes and aims ; a throwing down of 
 ignorance and prejudice; a more cheerful and hearty 
 devotion to our common work on earth, which is the 
 increase of man's happiness by the free development of 
 his spiritual nature. We learn from it that the Chris- 
 tianity of the pure Gospel is essentially social; that it 
 aims at universal amelioration as well as at individual 
 holiness; that from the common mystery of Death, and 
 the common blessings of salvation, should flow an exuber- 
 ance of kindness, in which the dearest personal interests 
 are recognised as identical with the highest general good. 
 It is thus from God's own word that we learn that love 
 to Him our Father is best shown by love to man our 
 brother; that "No man for himself, every man for all," 
 expresses the very ideal of a Christian society; that 
 " mankind has but one single aim— mankind itself: and 
 that aim but one single instrument — mankind again." 
 
 But these truths — all truths — are worse than useless if 
 they be left neglected in the lumber-room of the memory. 
 But my words will not be in vain if they lead us, as 
 citizens of England, to meditate humbly on our vast 
 duties as citizens of the City of God. I beg you not to 
 think these truths unpractical. They are deeply re- 
 ligious if they break the sordid dream of our individual 
 selfishness, and I never speak from this place without 
 feeling how much we might do if but God's fire would 
 
3° 
 
 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 touch our hearts. If each of us recognised, in our hearts, 
 and in our lives, the brotherhood of man ; — the fact that 
 man forms but one flock in different folds under one 
 Shepherd, it would not be long before London would be 
 better j and if London, then England ; and if England, 
 then the world. Is it not an aim worth living for? is it 
 not a task worth effort to hasten the day when we too, 
 God helping us, may be suffered to take a place, how- 
 ever humble, in that great multitude which no man can 
 number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and 
 tongues, standing before the throne, and before the 
 Lamb, in white robes, and palms in their hands ; — hun- 
 gering no more, and thirsting no more, but led to living 
 fountains of waters, ten thousand times ten thousand, 
 and thousands of thousands ; — singing praise to Him who 
 has redeemed them by His blood to God ? 
 
 Ephpliailia Sertnons, p. 319. 
 
ENERGY OF CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 
 
 Matt. xx. 6, 7. 
 * ■ Why stand ye here all the day idle ? Go ye also into the vineyard. " 
 
 WHEN God in bad times has good soldiers, He 
 places them in the thick of the battle, and they 
 have fallen under a monument of darts. Near Him, 
 they have been near the fire. For them, as for the old 
 Moslem, " Paradise has been prefigured under the shadow 
 of the crossing scimitars." See how they have sunk to 
 the ground with bleeding feet on the world's highway, 
 whereon often till death they have walked well-nigh 
 alone ! But what happens? They have never failed— 
 never ultimately failed; they have startled the deep 
 slumber of false opinions ; they have thrilled a pang of 
 noble shame through callous consciences ; they become 
 magnetic. Into the next age, if not into their own, " they 
 flash an epidemic of nobleness." 
 
 " They utter but a thought, 
 And it becomes a proverb for the state ; 
 They write a sentence in a studious mood : 
 It is a saying for a hemisphere." 
 
32 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 Yes, their goal becomes a starting-point of their 
 followers ; their heresy the truth of churches ; the sons 
 of their murderers build their tombs. But indeed they 
 need no tombs ; for their tombs are reared in the 
 gratitude of nations, and their epitaphs are written on 
 the ruins of the lies which they have annihilated, and 
 the immoral tyrannies which they have overthrown. 
 
 See if it has not been so. Glance first at the history 
 of the chosen people, which best you know. Israel had 
 gone down into Egypt, and in the torpid civilisation of 
 that sluggish soil — amid the leeks and the melons, the 
 flesh-pots and the cucumbers — they were fast sinking 
 into a nation of sensual slaves. Then in the burning 
 bush God appeared to Moses, and sent him to rouse 
 this dull people j and with plague, and conflict, and 
 victory, and the rolling waters of the sea, he led them 
 into the free air of the wilderness. And when, even in 
 the wilderness, they relapsed into lust and sloth, and — 
 falling into the accursed trap set for them by Balaam, 
 son of Bcor — would have been consumed, Phinehas, the 
 son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, once more 
 saved them, — piercing adulterer and adulteress with one 
 thrust of his avenging spear. Then they conquered 
 Canaan, but again and again sinking into the same 
 idolatry, the same degradation, they became a prey to 
 all the surrounding tribes. How did God deliver them ? 
 
ENERGY OF CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 33 
 
 By better men than common men j by braver men than 
 cautious men; by men who would not shelter themselves 
 in refuges of lies j by men whose love to Him still burned 
 like a fire on the altar of noble hearts, not yet buried 
 under the whitening embers of immoral acquiescence. 
 Wild times needed wild remedies. From Moab, from 
 Amalek, from Canaan, from the Amorite, from the 
 Philistine, the wooden dagger of Ehud, the flashing 
 torch of Gideon, the burning inspiration of Deborah, 
 the rude sword of Jephthah, the rough strength of 
 Samson, the stainless ephod of Samuel, set them free. 
 What was the one grand quality of all these men ? It 
 was courage. Not mere physical courage — though that 
 is something — but the moral courage which towered 
 behind the physical courage; the faith in right which puts 
 an invincible sword into the grasp of resolution ; the 
 courage which so hates and despises wrong-doing, that 
 in facing evil it is not afraid to die. I may be speak- 
 ing to some young men for whom the day shall come 
 on which they may need the courage to risk life, or 
 things as dear as life, in confronting guilty tyranny, or 
 strong oppression, or conventional falsehood, or immoral 
 custom. Well, let them do it, and not be afraid. 
 Gideon's 300 routed the Amalekites ; the 300 at Ther- 
 mopylae faced the myriads of Xerxes ; the three at the 
 Milvian bridge saved Rome from the hosts of Porsena. 
 
34 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 Are these but dead facts of history or of legend ? 
 Do they need more modern, and very humble ex- 
 amples ? Well then, let me tell them of the old woman 
 whose dauntless bearing in the face of a surging tumalt 
 saved the only two houses that were saved in Queen 
 Square at the Bristol riots; of the single verger who 
 saved the cathedral in that city by resolutely closing 
 and barricading the door in the face of the raging mob ; 
 of the single sentinel who, in the lifetime of some here, 
 confronted thousands at the entrance of Downing Street, 
 and prevented them from attacking the house of the 
 Prime Minister, by telling them that except over his 
 body not a man should pass, — and who so woke their 
 admiration that they gave him three cheers and passed 
 on. " Do the thing and scorn the consequence." It was 
 the motto of one of our bravest generals in the Indian 
 Mutiny (Col. Neill). It was the motto of the judges and 
 heroes of Israel. If we are to do any real good in the 
 world, it must be ours. 
 
 But a far rarer, more splendid, more effective thing 
 than the physical courage of warriors was the spiritual 
 and moral courage of the Hebrew Prophets. They had to 
 take their stand, not only against brute violence, but 
 against perverse authority and corrupted religion; against 
 hypocritic priests and godless kings ; against the mono- 
 polists of orthodoxy and the masters of armies. Well 
 
ENERGY OF CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 35 
 
 might they shrink from the hard task. One of them was 
 diffident ; another was a poor peasant ; another was called 
 when a mere boy; and in the bitter wail of Jeremiah 
 you may hear how painfully they felt the task that was 
 laid upon them. Yet how bravely they performed it ! 
 Before the terrible Jezebel and her Baal priesthood 
 Elijah takes his stand ; he confronts Ahab at the vineyard 
 gate of his murdered victim; Zechariah rebukes the 
 apostatising Joash ; at the high priests Pashur and 
 Amaziah, Jeremiah and Amos hurl their defiant curse ; 
 into the palace of Herod the prophet of the desert 
 strides with his blunt reproof. When religion in Judah 
 had degenerated into gorgeous externalism, the message 
 of the prophets was a protest for everlasting truths. 
 Sequences of colours — shapes of vestments — methods of 
 ablution — repetitions of formulae — archaeological disputes 
 about the interpretation of rubrics — these are not religion ; 
 have nothing to do with pure religion and undefiled. "I 
 will have mercy, and not sacrifice." u Your new moons 
 and fasts and feasts I cannot away with ; " but, " Wash 
 you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings 
 from before Mine eyes." Not "thousands of rams, or 
 ten thousands of rivers of oil," but what the Lord re- 
 quires of thee is " to do justly, and to love mercy, and 
 to walk humbly with thy God." These were the messages 
 
 of the prophets, and these the truths which might have 
 
 d 2 
 
36 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 saved the chosen people. And though the chosen people, 
 like all people, murdered their prophets, and slew those 
 who were sent unto them, these are the truths which have 
 again and again regenerated the world. They are truths 
 which raise their eternal protest against false types of 
 goodness and false types of orthodoxy, and even if 
 destroyed for a time they spring up again. 
 
 Our blessed Lord came to strengthen, to inspire, to 
 stamp with divinest sanction, to render alone and eter- 
 nally effectual by His life and by His death — this work 
 and this protest— this hard fighting and this high testimony 
 — of man for men. The tendency of churches to settle 
 down contentedly into sham orthodoxy and spurious 
 religion has never ceased ; and again and again has the 
 Holy Spirit of Christ broken up the fountains of the great 
 deep of individuality to pour its lustral wave over the 
 putrescent world. By the Apostles first,— by the flashing 
 impetuosity of Peter ; by the stainless asceticism of James ; 
 by the love and the lightning of John ; by the heroism 
 and dauntlessness of Paul — He carried on His work. 
 Then, after the Apostles, came the Martyrs. Durino- 
 centuries of active and passive struggle, when they could 
 do nothing else, they died. And so " by the unresistible 
 might of weakness," as with the daring of " a host of 
 Scsevolas," Justin, Ignatius, Polycarp, Cyprian, Lawrence, 
 Sebastian, Pothinus, Blandina, Felicitas — philosophers, 
 
ENERGY OF CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 37 
 
 bishops, deacons, soldiers, old men, boys, maidens — 
 they shook the world. And then when other types were 
 needed of courageous protest and courageous individuality, 
 to liberate souls from the confusion of a dying society in 
 the third century, St. Antony fled into the desert j amid 
 the wreck of empire, in the sixth century, St. Benedict 
 founded a noble order of monasticism ; in the midst of 
 wealth and corruption, in the thirteenth century, St 
 Francis of Assisi became the prophet of the poor. 
 When the life of the Church grew more and more cor- 
 rupt — when the revival of letters had made of Christianity 
 a coarse because a less excusable Paganism — when Pope 
 after Pope was a monster of avarice and crime, the wind 
 of Heaven was still blowing where it listed, and pure 
 foreheads were still mitred with the Pentecostal flame. 
 In dissolute Florence the mighty voice of Savonarola 
 repeated the denunciations of Amos against dissolute 
 Jerusalem. In England the words of Wyclif, in Bohemia 
 the words of Huss, denouncing usurpation, exposing 
 falsehood, proclaiming truth, thrilled into the hearts of 
 the people. In vain the guilty confederacies of priests 
 and rulers burned Savonarola, burned Huss, exhumed 
 and scattered to the winds the bones of Wyclif. Men 
 may be burned, truth cannot be burnt. Against the mitred 
 atheism and cultured vice of Leo X. arose one poor 
 monk, and shook the worst engines of spiritual tyranny 
 
3* WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 for ever to the ground. Tetzel was impudently selling 
 his pardons and indulgences, and shamelessly demoralising 
 the people, with all the power of the Papacy to back him, 
 when Luther sprang into the thick of the battle. He 
 nailed his theses to the cathedral door of Wittenberg ; he 
 flung into the flames the papal bull of condemnation ; 
 strong in the simple invincibility of an awakened sense 
 of truth and justice, he faced emperors, popes, dukes, 
 cardinals, doctors, theologians. In vain they told him 
 of perils, of imprisonment and assassination • " Were there 
 as many devils in Worms as there are tiles on the roofs, I 
 would go there." " Here stand I j I can no other; God 
 help me." They bid him moderate his words; he will 
 not moderate his words ; " the word of God," he says, " is 
 a war, a sword, a perdition, a stumbling-block, a ruin." 
 So he stormed, and so he set free the fettered conscience 
 of mankind. And many rose to continue his work. In 
 Scotland, Knox arose, of whom the Regent Morton said, 
 " Here lies one who never feared the face of man ;" who 
 said himself that " he had looked in the faces of many 
 angry men." When he was working in chains on the 
 galleys in France, they brought him an image of the 
 Virgin, and bade him worship the mother of God. 
 " Mother of God," he exclaimed, "it is a pented bredd" 
 (or board), and he flung it into the river to sink or swim. 
 " Who are you ? " said Mary Queen of Scots to him, " that 
 
ENERGY OF CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 39 
 
 presume to school the nobles and sovereign of this 
 realm ? " . " Madam," he answers, " a subject born 
 within the same." " Have you hope ? " they ask him 
 on his death-bed, when he can no longer speak ; and 
 lifting his hand he pointed upwards with his finger, and 
 so, pointing to heaven, he died. He died, but not his 
 work ; that was being continued when the Mayfloiver 
 sailed from Delft Haven to found on the grand principles 
 of Puritanism the mighty Republic of the West. It was 
 being continued when Hampden and Cromwell were 
 fighting, and Milton uttering words of fire, to save 
 England from the Star-Chamber and from ship-money, 
 from the divine right of an unscrupulous tyranny and 
 frcm the ruthless intolerance of a narrow ecclesiasticism. 
 Aid when again Protestantism had run to the dregs, 
 when the Church of England — the Church of Cranmer 
 and Latimer — the Church of Jeremy Taylor and Andrewes 
 — the Church of Butler and Tillotson — the Church of 
 Kei and Wilson — had grown sleepy and effete, showing 
 everywhere the trail of nepotism, worldliness, and sloth, 
 smitten with the disease of contented commonplace, 
 one more the fire of God burst forth to scathe the very 
 cedirs, while the brambles in their dense undergrowth 
 wen being consumed. It broke forth in the last century 
 in the voices of Wesley and Whitefield, which shamed 
 intc repentance, and startled into decency, a dissolute 
 and faithless age. 
 
4 o WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 What is all this to us ? Nothing, if life be nothing ; 
 nothing, "if the chief use and market of our time be but 
 to sleep and feed ; M nothing, if the main object of life be 
 in the vulgar sense " to get on ; " nothing, if to puff and 
 push our way into rank, or to toil and moil for money, 
 and then to spend it on ourselves, or accumulate it in 
 masses for the aggrandisement of our families, be deemed 
 a worthy life ; nothing, if we were only born to indulge, 
 like natural brute beasts, our meanest passions ; nothing, 
 if the sigh of Jesus were nothing, or if He would find no 
 wrongs to sigh for now. 
 
 To all of us the record of the good men who have 
 gone before us is as a trumpet's blast to make us cry, 
 
 " O that the forces indeed were arrayed ! O joy of the onset ! 
 Sound, thou trumpet of God ; come forth, great cause, to array us! 
 King and Leader, appear; Thy soldiers, sorrowing, call Thee." 
 
 But He, the King and Leader, answers, M Walk in My 
 steps, as these did. They tended My sheep ; they fed 
 My lambs; they flung the offenders of My innoceits 
 with millstones round their necks into the sea; they 
 crushed the viper-head of lies; they quenched the fire of 
 intolerance ; they dashed their hands on the lion-moith 
 of tyranny ; they set at liberty the bruised victims of 
 oppression." They did all this: can you do nothiig? 
 Begin by thinking a little of others. Begin by sparirg a 
 little of your substance. Begin by giving cups of old 
 
ENERGY OF CHRISTIAN SERVICE. 41 
 
 water in Christ's name to Christ's little ones. Begin by 
 doing faithfully the small simple duty which lies nearest 
 you. Begin by trying to teel so much of what Jesus felt 
 when he sighed for a ruined world, as at least not daily 
 to wring with sighs the heart of His ruined children, 
 the heart of His faithful servants. So perchance may 
 He at last send you also, were it but at the eleventh 
 hour, to work in His vineyard. So may He enable you 
 to rise above yourselves and your own selfish interests — 
 to feel what His sigh meant, and to labour in His sick 
 and suffering world. 
 
 Ephphatha Sermons, p. 79. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE HUMAN RACE. 
 
 TF then we look at Christianity in its freest action and 
 purest essence, we see that it wiped out the worst 
 curses of Heathendom. Nor was this the only way in 
 which, beyond all dispute, it lay the very foundation of 
 that system to which, with its magnificent inheritance of 
 progressive institutions and settled aims, we give the 
 vague name of Modern Civilisation. I trust that one 
 rapid final glance will determine our conviction that 
 Intellectually, Socially, Politically it was and is the aim, 
 and by God's special blessing the successful aim, of 
 Christianity, to guide and to glorify the present and the 
 future destinies of man. 
 
 Intellectually her work was less direct and immediate 
 than in the other spheres ; and yet how vast it was. To 
 begin with Language itself, how has Christianity enriched, 
 preserved, inspired it. How many languages, like the 
 Gothic, Cornish, Old Prussian, Saxon, and Bulgarian, are 
 solely preserved in fragments of scriptural and ecclesi 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE HUMAN RACE. 45 
 
 astical documents ; how many more, like the German 
 and the English, have been fixed and elevated by versions 
 of the Bible ; how many more, of the deepest interest for 
 the student of humanity, have been solely made known 
 to us, in every region of the globe, by missionary research. 
 In Art again, which Greece and Rome had elaborated to 
 such perfection of beauty, but degraded by such immor- 
 ality of aim, how deep and salutary was the influence of 
 our faith. Recall, however slightly, the greatest names 
 of art — in Painting, a Tintoretto and a Raphael ; in 
 Architecture, a Brunelleschi and a Giotto ; in Sculpture, 
 a Ghiberti and a Michael Angelo ; in Music, a Handel 
 and a Mozart : — recall the loveliest creations of artistic 
 genius, the resplendent mosaics of the great Italian 
 basilicas, the Transfiguration, or the Madonna di San 
 Sisto, the great cathedrals of Normandy and of England, 
 the dome of Michael Angelo or the Campanile of 
 Florence, the statues of Moses at Rome, or the apostles 
 at Copenhagen, the musical notation, and the develop- 
 ment of harmony, and the invention of the organ to lend 
 new majesty to holy worship, and you will see at once 
 the aesthetic influence of Christian faith. Or again, in 
 Literature, enumerate the very greatest glories of eighteen 
 Christian centuries, and consider whether they be not the 
 certain and the natural outcome of purely Christian in- 
 fluences. The Civitas Dei\ the Divina Com media, the 
 
44 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 Summa Theologies, the Imitatio C/iristi, the Novum 
 Organum, the Plays of Shakespeare, the Paradise Lost, 
 the Pilgrim's Progress, the In Memoriam — are not these 
 severally matchless in their kind, and are they not works of 
 which any one would have been impossible to Paganism, 
 and to which heaven and earth have alike contributed ? Is 
 there one work in all immoral, in all unchristian literature 
 which you would match with these ? Will you set the 
 Confessions of Rousseau side by side with the Confessions 
 of St. Augustine, or compare Paine's Age of Reason with 
 Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity ? Does not the history of 
 all literature prove that not even the brightest wit or the 
 keenest genius — not even the stately eloquence of Boling- 
 broke, or the universal learning of Diderot, or the glowing 
 imagination of Byron, or the flashing witticisms of Voltaire 
 — can save the writings of men, however gifted, from 
 perishing of inevitable decay, if they sin against the rules 
 of morality, or are aimed against the principles of faith, 
 
 Yet Socially the work of Christianity was more inestim- 
 able still. The vast moral revolution which it wrought 
 may be summed up in this sentence, — that it founded 
 the entire relations between man and man not, as 
 heathendom had done, on selfishness, but on the new 
 basis of universal love. The ideal of the Christian 
 family, an ideal lovelier and happier than any which the 
 world has ever known, is the direct creation of Christianity. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE HUMAN RACE. 45 
 
 " Familia" to the ear of a Roman, meant a multitude of 
 idle, corrupt, and corrupting slaves, kept in subjection by 
 the cross and the ergastulum, ready for any treachery, 
 and reeking with every vice. It meant a despot who 
 could kill his slaves when they were aged, and expose 
 his children when they were born ; it meant matrons 
 among whom virtue was rare, divorces frequent, re- 
 marriage easy, and who, from no stronger motive than 
 that of vanity, would sacrifice the lives of their infants yet 
 unborn ; it meant children spectators from their infancy 
 of insolence and cruelty, servility and sin. But the new 
 faith, while it sanctioned the authority of parents, checked 
 their despotism ; it made marriage sacred and indissoluble ; 
 it encircled the position of womanhood with all that is 
 pure, and Divine, and tender, in the names of mother 
 and of wife. Well might the Pagan orator exclaim with 
 envy, " What women these Christians have ! " A Phoebe 
 and a Priscilla, a Fabiola and a Pulcheria, a Paula and 
 a Eustochia, a Monica and a Perpetua, a Placilla and a 
 Gorgonia were new phenomena to the Pagan world. 
 For families in which, like sheltered flowers, spring up 
 all that is purest and sweetest in human lives; for marriage 
 exalted to an almost sacramental dignity ; for all that 
 circle of heavenly blessings which result from a common 
 self-sacrifice ; for that beautiful unison of noble manhood, 
 stainless womanhood, joyous infancy, and uncontamin- 
 
46 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 ated youth ; in one word, for all that there is of divinity 
 and sweetness in the one word Home; for this— to an 
 extent which we can hardly realise— we are indebted to 
 Christianity alone. 
 
 Again, Politically, how immense and how beneficent 
 was its direct action. Consider how great was the 
 problem solved by the fundamental separation yet co- 
 ordinate action of Church and State. The old Greek 
 Utopias were here realised, not by a Pedantocracy of 
 unpractical philosophers, but by a due subordination of 
 the intellect to social activity, and by rendering the 
 entire commonwealth of empires amenable to a central 
 spiritual power. It was thus that morality, which is ever 
 growing in political force, was first definitely infused into 
 civil governments, and its immediate effect was to mollify 
 all anarchical elements, to interpose a truce of God 
 between the oppressor and the oppressed, and in an age 
 of blood and iron to make the sword fall before the cross. 
 Again, consider the great idea of Unity — the Solidarity of 
 Peoples — the strong bond between the members of a 
 common Christendom. The great fabric of International 
 Law was built upon the conception that all nationalities, 
 however isolated or antagonistic, were fused into the higher 
 unity of a dominant Church, of which even the barbarous 
 tribes of unexplored continents were regarded as the 
 natural subjects. " Sirs, ye are brethren," was the voice of 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE HUMAN RACE. 47 
 
 Christendom to warring kings. It was a magnificent 
 faith. Henceforth the contemptuous exclusiveness of 
 Greece, the cunning, cruel, tortuous policy of Rome, 
 fell absolutely under the ban. Henceforth there were 
 no "natural enemies;" no treating of conquered bar- 
 barians like animals or plants ; no selfish sacrifice of the 
 ignorant many to the illuminated few. Priests had 
 begun their sacrifices with the cry " Procul este firofani" 
 but the true voice of Christianity was " Come unto Me." 
 The Philosophers had never dreamed of it, but the real 
 Unity of Mankind, revealed by the Incarnation of the 
 Son of God, had been first proclaimed, amid a thousand 
 perils, by the wandering tent-maker j and the full Univer- 
 sality of the Gospel had been first revealed to the 
 Galilaean fisherman as he slept at noon -day on the 
 tanner's roof. To realise this Unity, to effect this Uni- 
 versality, was the great mission of the Church, She did 
 not discourage Patriotism, but by supplementing it with 
 the conception of our common humanity she rendered it 
 intenser and more sublime. The ancients had had 
 mysteries and secret doctrines, but the whole of Chris- 
 tianity was open to her very meanest son : the heathen 
 had adored local divinities and gods of the profession 
 and the class, but the Saviour whom Christians 
 worshipped was the Saviour of the world. Once more, 
 consider what the Church did for Education. Her ten 
 
4 8 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 thousand monasteries kept alive and transmitted that 
 torch of learning which otherwise would have been ex- 
 tinguished long before. A religious education, incom- 
 parably superior to the mere athleticism of the noble's 
 hall, was extended to the meanest serf who wished for it. 
 This fact alone, by proclaiming the dignity of the Indi- 
 vidual, elevated the entire hopes and destinies of the 
 race. The humanising machinery of Schools and Univer- 
 sities, the civilising propaganda of missionary zeal, were 
 they not due to her? And, more than this, her very 
 existence was a living education : it showed that the 
 successive ages were not sporadic and accidental scenes, 
 but were continuous and coherent acts in the one great 
 drama. In Christendom the yearnings of the past were 
 fulfilled, the direction of the future determined. In 
 dim but magnificent procession, "the giant forms of 
 empires on their way to ruin " had each ceded to her 
 their sceptres, bequeathed to her their gifts. 
 
 Thus then does History " set to her seal that God is 
 true." And whence, my brethren, in the face of these 
 glorious facts, and a thousand more on which it is impos- 
 sible to dwell — whence then arises the strange antagonism 
 to Christianity ? In reading works hostile to our faith, I 
 find that, besides the disbelief in the Supernatural, and 
 the consequent rejection of the Divinity of Christ— most 
 of their criticisms may be summed up under the three 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE HUMAN RACE. 49 
 
 broad calumnies, that Christianity is irreconcilable with 
 Science, opposed to Liberty, and superseded by Civilisa- 
 tion. It would be an easy task, did time permit, to rend 
 these charges to pieces, and fling them to the four winds. 
 All that can now be said is this, that, as regards Science, it 
 requires courage, honesty, and enthusiasm. To all true 
 Religion, as to all true Science, the Universe is an open 
 book of revelation, whose Divine hieroglyphics are de- 
 cipherable by toil, and every fresh discovery is but a 
 fresh fact to be recorded and co-ordinated with those 
 which we already know. But Science and Faith must 
 ever be united, they are the two wings whereby alone 
 we can soar to the knowledge of God. 
 
 And who dares to say that our faith is an enemy to 
 Liberty? To that liberty indeed which is but an ill- 
 disguised name for brutal license— to that liberty which 
 holds in her right hand a civic wreath, in her left a 
 human head— to that liberty which has " for her lullaby 
 the carmagnole, and for her toy the guillotine," she is an 
 enemy. But not even in the men of Marathon, or of 
 Thermopylae, did genuine Freedom find firmer or more 
 unflinching friends than in the Church of Christ. Athens 
 had her slaves, Sparta her Helots, Rome her proletariat, 
 Hindostan her Pariahs, but to the Church all men were 
 brothers, and in her language alone the greatest Queen is 
 but " this woman," and the lordliest Emperor " this man ; " 
 
5 o WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 nor did she ever alter one single syllable of her funeral 
 offices, whether they were read over the open grave of a 
 Pauper or of a Prince. And did Harmodius or Timoleon, 
 did a Sca^vola or a Brutus ever face despots more bravely 
 than her sons ? St. John before Herod, St. Paul before 
 Nero ; Lucifer of Cagliari telling Constantine that he 
 could not respect his diadems, earrings, and bracelets 
 when it was a question of duty towards God ; St. Ambrose 
 repulsing Theodosius from the cathedral gates of Milan, 
 St. Columbanus rebuking King Thierry for his incon- 
 tinence, St. Anselm braving the anger of the violent and 
 haughty Rufus ; these scenes, and a hundred like them, 
 are the grandest comment on the true and noble words 
 of Melanchthon, Tyrannis est inimica Ecclesice. 
 
 And lastly, as to Christianity being superseded by 
 Civilisation, the words are meaningless, or if not mean- 
 ingless, are false. For Civilisation means either appli- 
 ances of comfort, increase of knowledge, refinements of 
 Art, discoveries of Science, diffusion of wealth, and all that 
 may be summed up in the one word — material improve- 
 ment ; — and to these, except that she scorns comfort, 
 frowns on luxury, and discourages the greed for gold — 
 which things are the dangers of Civilisation, and not its 
 blessings — the Church, as we have seen, is the loftiest aid : 
 — or else Civilisation means purer happiness, greater noble- 
 ness, clearer and surer wisdom ; and if, indeed, it means 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE HUMAN RACE. 51 
 
 these things, then to us it seems that Civilisation is but a 
 secular phrase for Christianity itself. Look, my brethren, 
 at your own hearts, their needs and yearnings, their sins 
 and sorrows, their low impulses and heavenly aspirations, 
 and ask whether material improvement would be any- 
 thing better than a glistering misery, unless it were 
 guided, interpreted, ennobled by the faith of Christ. 
 
 Surely then these were services which, even had their 
 power been exhausted, would deserve our deepest gratitude, 
 and we may exclaim in a very different sense from that of 
 the French Philosopher, " Religion of Christ, behold thy 
 consequences !" But, so far from being exhausted, the 
 realisation of these principles is as yet but partial, their 
 power as yet but inchoate. For, by the promise of 
 Inspiration, all is ours : all the Universe, whether height 
 or depth ; all Science, whether she labour in the starry 
 spaces or the microscopical abyss ; all History, whether 
 things present or things to come; all Humanity, whether 
 Greek or barbarian, whether bond or free ; all the wealth 
 of past Wisdom, all the treasuries of future Hope : ours 
 to study now, ours to possess hereafter ; they have been 
 prepared for us through the infinite past, entrusted to us 
 for the brief present, promised to us, in their perfect 
 restitution, for the illimitable future. Whatever Chris- 
 tianity may be, it is at least no narrow dogma, no evan- 
 escent influence. As we have seen, it dilates our whole 
 
 E 2 
 
52 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 being — corporal, mental, spiritual; it consecrates our 
 whole influence — domestic, social, political; to our partial 
 successes, .if they be honourable, it promises future com- 
 pletion ; to our total failures, if they be undeserved, it is 
 the pledge of undreamt success. It unites us to Nature, 
 by whose conditions we are bounded, but whose forces 
 we direct. It unites us to the Dead — all saints whom we 
 reverence, all souls whom we commemorate ; it unites r is 
 to the Living, all whom we love and know not, all whom 
 we love and know ; it unites us to Posterity, for which, 
 sustained by Faith, inspired by Hope, we labour with 
 patient unselfishness and active love ; above all, and 
 more than all, it unites us to the Infinite by making us 
 the children of God and joint-heirs with Christ, if so be 
 that we suffer with Him. Is this a limited horizon ? is 
 this an inadequate consolation? is this an unsatisfying 
 hope? is there nothing here which assures us that we 
 are greater than we know ? Is there anything, any 
 religion or irreligion, any philosophy or any ignorance, 
 which can in a greater degree than this 
 
 " Give grandeur to the beatings of the heart " ? 
 And. is this then a religion to be rejected as obsolete, or 
 despised as immature ? May we all pray more and more 
 earnestly from our inmost hearts that the Kingdom 
 of that beloved Saviour may indeed come in all its 
 fulness, in all its universality ; and may it be given us, 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE HUMAN RACE. 53 
 
 like "a. deep peace in the heart of a mighty agitation," 
 to realise that, if we be true to ourselves and true to God, 
 nothing can separate us from the love of Christ ; that all 
 things are ours, whether the world, or life, or death, or 
 things present, or things to come — all are ours, and we 
 are Christ's, and Christ is God's. 
 
 Witness of History, p. 179. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL. 
 
 i Thess. v. 23. 
 
 " And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly ; and 1 pray God 
 your whole spirit, and soul, and body be preserved blameless unto 
 the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 n^HE Cross conquered, as we have seen; but what did 
 the doctrine of the Cross effect for those among 
 whom it prevailed ? My brethren, we know, alas ! what 
 was the condition of the civilised world when the true 
 Light first dawned upon its darkness. We know its 
 haughty power, its brilliant refinement, its unutterable 
 shame ! Arrayed like the Apocalyptic harlot in gems 
 and purple, its heart was stony with cruelty and diseased 
 with lust. Robed like the blaspheming Herod in tissue 
 of silver, within it was eaten of worms. Its literature — so 
 elaborate, so sad, so stained — is a true reflex of its state. 
 God willed that we should see by palpable proofs how, 
 amid all its boasted wisdom, the heart of the heathen 
 world was darkened into foolishness, and that the con- 
 dition which some would gloss over with the name of a 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL. 55 
 
 healthy animalism was in reality a sick and sickening 
 putrescence. But it is dangerous to gaze even for a 
 moment down the abysses into which the nature of man 
 may fall. For us, let it be enough to glance with a 
 shudder, and to pass by not unwarned ; let it be enough 
 to note how, in his Epistle to the Romans, the great 
 Apostle who was its contemporary seized, as it were, that 
 haughty, glittering, abominable civilisation, and with firm 
 hand, in letters which are indelible, branded upon its inso- 
 lent and shameless brow the festering stigma of his stern 
 and terrible rebuke. 
 
 Such then was the world into which — not to destroy 
 but to revivify, — not to annihilate but to ennoble, — the 
 Apostles of Christ passed forth to preach His doctrine. 
 Silently, insensibly, but with certain transformation, like 
 the leaven in the meal, that doctrine made its way. We 
 have seen how the heathens emptied upon it the vials of 
 their fury and their scorn; how Rabbi and Sophist, 
 Pontifex and Emperor joined hand in hand for its destruc- 
 tion; and yet, long before Christians were known as 
 anything but a strange sect, who could stand in the fire 
 without a tremor, and face the Libyan tiger with a smile, 
 — long before they had won the shadow of a material 
 victory, — the truths which they taught had largely 
 moulded the opinions of their persecutors. We catch 
 the echo of them in a Seneca, we listen to their very 
 
56 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 accents in an Aurelius. The vernal breeze of this new 
 religion breathed health and hope into a decrepit Pagan- 
 ism for many a long year before the spring itself had 
 dawned; the morning was spread upon the mountains 
 for two centuries before its glory reached the plains. 
 
 It is not — and to this point I would ask attention — it 
 is not that we claim a mere antecedence and originality 
 for the separate precepts of Christianity. Their victory, 
 their beneficence, their unique superiority were not due 
 to this. Many of those precepts, viewed as mere literary 
 utterances, had been enounced in the world before. No 
 small portion even of the Lord's prayer may be found, it 
 is believed, in Hebrew writings. To us there is abso- 
 lutely no point in the sneer of sceptics, that the most 
 distinctive rules of Christianity may be paralleled from 
 secular sources. On the contrary, we have always re- 
 joiced to know that God left not Himself without 
 witness, and that what St. Paul so finely describes as 
 His richly-variegated wisdom had long been visible in 
 part by that light which lighteth every man that is born 
 into the world. It is perfectly true that, if from east to 
 west we ransack the literature and the philosophy of the 
 habitable globe, we may here and there cull some memor- 
 able aphorism resembling those which we too reverence 
 in our heritage of moral truths ; and, at epochs separated 
 from each other by thousands of years, it is possible to 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL. 57 
 
 catch now and then a glimpse of those prismatic hues 
 which may be combined into the pure white ray of 
 Christian doctrine. Yet what candid reasoner, even 
 were he an unbeliever in Christianity, could dream 
 of comparing any one of the sacred books, or the 
 men who originated them, or the systems in which 
 they issued, with the Gospels, or with Christianity, or 
 with Christ? With every desire to admit their services, 
 with no temptation to depreciate their worth, what is the 
 calm and deliberate judgment which History forces us to 
 pronounce ? 
 
 Ah, the most golden idol of Pagan excellence stands 
 but on feet of clay. There is flagrant intellectual error 
 in their very wisest ; there is fearful moral aberration in 
 their very best. Over their graves, as in the sigh of the 
 wailing wind, we hear the words, " The world by wisdom 
 knew not GodT They were the foremost men of all 
 ages in brilliant Greece, in stately Rome, in immemorial 
 China, in imperial Persia, in free Arabia, in solemn 
 Hindostan : the Buddha was a prince, wealthy, and 
 beautiful, and strong ; and Confucius was a descendant 
 of nobles and a counsellor of kings ; and Plato, with his 
 haughty aristocratic genius, so towered over the greatest 
 of his time, that they could only reach to lay their 
 garlands of admiration at his feet ;— yet to compare any 
 one of these with Him who spent all but three years 
 
58 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 of His humble life as the carpenter of Nazareth, is to 
 match a dim and uncertain twilight with the sun at 
 noon ; and the least in the Kingdom of Heaven — the 
 least who obeys and loves his Lord — the most unlettered, 
 the most ignorant, the most obscure — not perhaps in 
 man's judgment, but in the judgment of the Angels and 
 of God — the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater 
 than these. 
 
 And why? Not only because there was in the pre- 
 cepts of Christianity a reality, which, as precepts, they 
 had never possessed before, not only because they rang 
 more true, but also because they alone were active, 
 living, efficacious, self-renewing. The very best systems 
 of human philosophy were stricken with a fatal im- 
 potence. Like the gathered blossoms stuck in the 
 careless garden of a child, they may look lovely for a 
 time, but because they have no root they wither away. 
 Ending mostly in high-sounding conversations among an 
 illuminated few, they were powerless amid the general 
 degradation either to awaken the conscience or to 
 guide the life. Even when the truths of Christianity 
 had insensibly pervaded the moral atmosphere, and the 
 books and the lives which it inspired were in the 
 hands and before the eyes of men, the very best 
 and greatest of the heathen not only failed to surpass, 
 but failed even at an immeasurable distance to rival 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL. 59 
 
 them. Barely could they cast out the devil from their 
 own souls : they never aspired, in their hopelessness, 
 to exorcise it from the society which it tormented. 
 There is an eloquent wisdom and subtle charm in the 
 writings of the Neronian minister, the crippled slave, the 
 blameless Emperor ; but in the Gospels and the Epistles 
 we find no deep drawback, like the haughty apathy of 
 the one, the concentrated egotism of the second, the 
 unbroken sadness of the third. 
 
 Since then such is the superiority of Christianity, since 
 it comes before us not as a mere collection of dogmas, or 
 series of aphorisms, but as a living faith able to bridge 
 over the broad gulf between knowledge and action, 
 between our ideal and our life, we hardly care to waste 
 time in proving its originality. It is indeed incon- 
 trovertibly original, in that it united what others had 
 isolated; it concentrated what others had scattered; it 
 harmonised what others had opposed ; and, more than 
 this, were it our object to maintain the claim, its mere 
 vocabulary establishes its entire and noble independence. 
 Where were the Greek or Latin words for " charity" till 
 Christianity created them, and stamped them with her 
 own divine image, and made them current amid the 
 coins of a debased mintage, like pure and solid gold ? 
 Caritas, with all the mighty revolution which it has 
 effected, and all the angelic utterances which it has 
 
60 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 inspired, is the glory of Christianity alone. Or take 
 Humilitas ; to the Christian it was one of the sweetest 
 and saintliest of virtues, to the heathen one of the most 
 pusillanimous of faults. Or, again, take Humanitas ; 
 previous to the spread of Christianity it means chiefly 
 human nature, or refined culture ; it is Christianity alone 
 which breathed into it all that it connotes, and made it 
 mean love to the whole brotherhood of man, united to the 
 Universe by natural laws, united to God by the common 
 mysteries of Creation and Redemption ; united to all the 
 dead by the continuity, to all the living by the solidarity, 
 of life. We do not concede then that Christianity is un- 
 original even as a moral system; and we besides main- 
 tain that no faith has ever been able, like it, to sway 
 the affections and hearts of men. Other religions are 
 defective and erroneous, ours is perfect and entire; 
 their systems were esoteric, ours is universal; theirs 
 temporary and for the few, ours eternal and for the 
 race; a handful read the philosophers, myriads would 
 die for Christ; they in their popularity could barely 
 found a school, Christ from His Cross rules the 
 world; they could not even conceive the ideas of 
 a society without falling into miserable error; Christ 
 established an eternal and glorious Kingdom, whose 
 theory for all, whose history in the world, prove 
 it to be indeed what it was from the first pro- 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL. 61 
 
 claimed to be — the kingdom of Heaven, the kingdom 
 of God. 
 
 On the exquisite workmanship of this tabernacle not 
 made with hands, on the delicate and subtle harmonies 
 of this harp of a thousand strings, the Scriptures say but 
 little. For that task Science is abundantly competent ; 
 and for the still loftier task of confirming by decisive 
 evidence those solemn warnings of Holy Writ that men 
 must possess in manhood the sins even of their youth j 
 that if they sow to the flesh they shall of the flesh reap 
 corruption ; that the punishment of sensuality, working 
 not by special interventions, but by general laws, bears a 
 fearful resemblance to the sin itself; that the Nemesis of 
 a desecrated body is an enfeebled understanding and a 
 tormented and darkened soul. Much of this the heathen 
 saw ; and yet, even in a doctrine so simple and elementary 
 as the relation of man to his own body, how egregiously 
 even their best teachers went astray ! 
 
 And then, amid them all, how calm, how true, how 
 noble, how simple are the few holy and natural principles 
 which Christ revealed ! The body is not to be degraded 
 by vile affections, but to be won and possessed in sancti- 
 fication and honour ; not to be crushed by violent 
 asceticism, but to be controlled by quiet discipline j not 
 to be desecrated as a prison, but to be honoured as a 
 shrine. Yes, truly, Christ is also " the Saviour of the 
 
62 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 body." Consider how His revelation of the sacredness of 
 life has put an end to the dangerous sophisms of the 
 ancient world on the subject of suicide. Consider how 
 His revelation of its dignity has inspired the spirit of 
 tenderness and care. " For whom Christ died ! " — what 
 mortal intellect shall measure the full persuasiveness of 
 that appeal; an appeal for tenderness from others, an 
 appeal of intense moral force to our own selves ! In 
 how different a light does it place those sins against the 
 body which are the most potent enemies of the dignity 
 of man ! How does our Blessed Lord's innate Divinity 
 shine forth transcendently in His dealing with sins like 
 these ! The words of human teachers have been too 
 often like the Pharos-lights which deceived and wrecked 
 the vessels they were meant to save ; but what infinite 
 delicacy and yet what heart -searching directness, what 
 uncompromising purity, yet what infinite forbearance is 
 there in the words of Christ ; how sternly inexorable His 
 requirements, how tenderly infinite His love ! The same 
 lips which said, " Blessed are the pure in heart" said also, 
 " Her sins which are many are forgiven her ; " the same 
 which uttered, " If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out," 
 said also, " Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no 
 more" Yes, He who was purer than the heavens was 
 the most gentle too ; and He taught the two doctrines 
 which are more efficacious than all others t"> cleanse the 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL. 63 
 
 heart — the Resurrection of the Body, the indwelling of 
 God's Spirit in the soul. 
 
 It is often argued that Christianity gives no special 
 encouragement to the culture of the Intellect. When 
 the Scriptures sum up under Body, Soul, and Spirit 
 the totality of our being, no prominence is given to the 
 mental faculties. Undoubtedly and wisely Scripture 
 reverses the judgment of the world in making mental 
 culture wholly incommensurate in importance with 
 spiritual growth. The language of St. Augustine, " Un- 
 happy the man who knows all those things but is ignor- 
 ant of these ; " the question of the Imitatio, " Scientia 
 sine thnore Dei, quid imported V the judgment that to 
 have tended on the leper is a higher title to canonisation 
 than to have written the Summa Theologies itself, are 
 eminently Christian. To exalt genius would have been 
 superfluous, because the world was too prone already to 
 that idolatry. On that altar enough of incense had been 
 already heaped. Since the abounding knowledge of the 
 world had, in itself, but served to inflate with insolent 
 self-sufhciency and to dry up with sensual pride; since, 
 without erudition, the heart may be of saintly purity, and 
 without intellectual culture may attain to immortal bliss ; 
 to stimulate the intellect was needless, to magnify it would 
 have been pernicious. Wisdom, not knowledge ; good- 
 ness, not genius ; moral deliverance, not material dis- 
 
64 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 covery ; the regeneration of the multitude, not the exalt- 
 ing of the few — these were the aims of Christian teaching. 
 The knowledge of mankind needed to be sanctified ; it 
 needed to be baptised; it needed to be transfigured 
 from a haughty Philosophy to a humble wisdom, from 
 impotent self-assertion to fruitful life. And, in doing 
 this, Christianity by no means degrades the intellect, but 
 subordinates, controls, and so inspires. In Christ's own 
 Gospel we recognise in intellect a talent to be used, in 
 wisdom a blessing to be sought. There echoes the high 
 and loving message, " Son, go work to-day in My vine- 
 yard;" there the gentle reproach, "Why stand ye here 
 all the day idle ? " You, therefore, my brethren, who are 
 wise enough to be diligent students, you who are noble 
 enough to feel the charm of high thinking and plain 
 living, work on with high purpose and fearless faith. 
 God's vineyard, wherein we are labourers, needs all our 
 toil. God's treasury, wherein we must cast our gifts, 
 needs every mite as well as every talent we possess. 
 God's own Spirit will aid the knowledge which is the 
 sister of humility, the handmaid of religion, the coun- 
 sellor of virtue, the champion of truth. 
 
 But let me add that there is something far beyond the 
 well-being of the body, far beyond the cultivation of the 
 mind, it is the salvation of the soul. Here was the 
 greatest part of that finished work. "He restoreth on* 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL. 65 
 
 souls; He leadeth us in the paths of righteousness for 
 His Name's sake." And to show that this is all in all, 
 how often have the despised been among His holiest 
 servants, the weakest among His chosen saints ; how 
 often have we seen His hand strew dust and ashes over 
 the unhallowed genius and guilty glory of mankind. The 
 world of heathendom, after centuries of philosophy, was 
 emphatically " a world without souls." Now our Blessed 
 Saviour stooped to no idle and degrading discussion 
 whether man had a soul or not ; nor did He attempt any 
 futile analysis of what the soul may be. No ; but, simply 
 appealing to the intuitive sense of men, He told them of 
 the soul's immortality, of its accountability, of its Divine 
 origin, of its complete redemption, of its Heavenly- 
 Father, of its Eternal Life. He uttered to them those 
 solemn words which have rolled to us across the cen- 
 turies with ever-increasing significance, u What shall it 
 profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his 
 own soul ? " And that word failed not, because it rested 
 not only on a doctrine which men could believe, but on 
 the Life of One whom all could love. It was ardour for 
 His service which kindled the glorious devotion of those 
 saints who shine like a river of stars athwart the Church's 
 firmament. They are the true glory of Christendom, — 
 lucentes et ardentes — the Cherubim of knowledge, and the 
 
 Seraphim of love. One celebrated collection alone (the 
 
 V 
 
66 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 Bollandist) contains the lives of 25,000 of these heroes 
 of unselfishness; and how high and grand, how full of 
 poetry and nobleness they are ! (Compare the men whom 
 Christianity has canonised with those who won the 
 apotheosis of heathendom, and we shall have some plum- 
 met to sound the moral abyss which yawns between the 
 two religions.) And if, as many tell us, — and as seems, 
 alas, too true, — if in our refinement and perplexities, — 
 if in our luxury and mammon worship, — if in our despair 
 and faithlessness — the race of these hero souls be past, 
 yet at least the race of the humbler children in God's 
 great family abides. They, thank God, may be counted 
 in their myriads still, and henceforth as heretofore shall 
 the world for which Christ died abound with these beau- 
 tiful and holy souls. And as the moon can shine only 
 by reflection of the sun, so do these, as they borrow their 
 life and light from the Sun of Righteousness, become 
 the clearest evidence, the predestined issue, the living 
 illustration of their Saviour's work. And while these 
 remain it shall always be believed. Yea, Lord, the 
 enemy may reproach, and the foolish people blaspheme 
 Thy Name, but that Name shall be exalted for ever 
 above every name, for — 
 
 " The glorious company of the Apostles praise Thee. 
 " The goodly fellowship of the Prophets praise Thee. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL. 67 
 
 " The noble army of Martyrs praise Thee. 
 
 "The holy Church throughout all the world doth 
 
 acknowledge Thee. 
 " Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ : Thou art the 
 
 Everlasting Son of the Father." 
 
 Witness of History to Christ, p. 137. 
 
 F 2 
 
THE VICTORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 T N rudest outline suffer me rapidly to sketch what the 
 progress of Christianity has been, and when you have 
 heard it, judge for your own selves whether men gather 
 grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles ; judge whether 
 Error would thus have had a healing influence, and Im- 
 posture a regenerative power ; and if you believe that 
 there is indeed a Divinity in the affairs of men, judge 
 whether He who is the True, the Faithful, the Righteous, 
 the Unchangeable, would have deceived His own truest 
 children, and falsified His own inmost nature, by thus 
 giving blessing to an hallucination, and triumph to a lie ! 
 When that one word was uttered on the Cross which 
 told that the great work was done, — nay, even when the 
 Twelve had seen the risen Christ, — nothing could have 
 appeared more deplorable than the weakness of the new 
 religion. It numbered but a handful of timid followers, 
 of whom the boldest had denied his Lord with blas- 
 phemy, and the most devoted had forsaken Him and 
 
THE VICTORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 69 
 
 fled. They were poor, they were ignorant, they were 
 helpless. They could not claim a single synagogue, or 
 a single sword. If they spoke their own language, it 
 bewrayed them by its mongrel dialect; if they spoke 
 the current Greek, it was despised as a miserable patois. 
 And of their two doctrines — the Crucifixion and the 
 Resurrection — the one inspired indignant horror, the 
 other unbounded scorn. But when they were weak, 
 then were they strong. They had been consecrated for 
 their mighty work by no earthly chrism ; they had been 
 baptised with the Holy Ghost and with fire ; each faith- 
 less heart had been dilated with celestial courage ; each 
 lowly forehead mitred with Pentecostal flame ! 
 
 Well might they have shuddered at that conspiracy of 
 hatred with which they were confronted. So feeble were 
 they and insignificant, that it would have looked like 
 foolish partiality to prophesy for them the limited exist- 
 ence of a Galilaean sect. Had any one seen Paul the 
 aged as, in all the squalor of poverty and disease, he sat 
 chained to some coarse soldier in the prsetorium at 
 Rome; or that Galilaean fisherman, who, under the 
 shadow of the great Temple of Artemis, ministered to a 
 handful of poor converts in the splendid capital of Asia — 
 would it not have seemed the very fanaticism of ere 
 dulity to prophesy that their names should be honoured 
 for ever by the inhabitants of cities more magnificent 
 
70 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 than Ephesus, and empires more vast than Rome ? St. 
 Paul died ; they dragged, it may be, his corpse from the 
 arena, and — sprinkling the white dust over the stains of 
 his feeble blood — looked for a more interesting victim 
 than the aged and nameless Jew; St. John died we 
 know not where or how, and no memorial marks his for- 
 gotten tomb; yet, to this day, over the greatest of 
 modern cities, towers the vast dome of the cathedral 
 dedicated to the name of Paul; and the shapeless 
 mounds which once were Ephesus bear witness, in their 
 name of Agiotzeologo, to no other fact than that they 
 once were trodden by the weary feet of him who saw the 
 Apocalypse, and whose young head had rested on the 
 bosom of his Lord ! 
 
 Consider how colossal were the powers arrayed against 
 this nascent faith — how vast the forest trees which over- 
 shadowed with their dense umbrage, and well-nigh 
 crushed under their deciduous leaves, this smallest of 
 all seeds. First, Judaism both within and without the 
 fold. Judaism within, — half suggesting to the minds 
 of more than one Apostle that, unless they conformed 
 to its outward observances, they were little better than 
 a schismatic sect; Judaism without, with its fifteen 
 hundred years of gorgeous worship and holy faith. The 
 Jewish Rabbi might, with plausibility, taunt them as 
 traitorous apostates, as he recalled to some young prose- 
 
THE VICTORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 71 
 
 lyte that long and splendid history, rolling back from the 
 heroic Asmongean struggles to the magnificence of Solo- 
 mon, — nay, backward to the day when, with uplifted 
 spear, Joshua had bidden the sun to stand still upon 
 Gibeon, and Abraham, obeying the mysterious summons, 
 had abandoned the gods of his fathers in Ur of the 
 Chaldees. The rod of Moses, the harp of David, the 
 ephod of Samuel, the mantle of Elijah, the graven gems 
 on Aaron's breast, — all these were theirs ; theirs, too, the 
 granite tables of Sinai, theirs the living oracles of God ; 
 and who were these children of yesterday, these miser- 
 able Galilseans with their crucified Nazarene, in whom 
 none of the rulers or the Pharisees had believed ? were 
 they not beneath contempt? a people that "knew not 
 the law," and were accursed ? It needed no mean force 
 of character, no ordinary intensity of conviction, — it 
 needed, let us say, the Divine vision of a Peter, and the 
 inspired eloquence of a Paul, to burst the intolerable 
 yoke of these long-venerated observances, and to plant 
 the standard of Christian freedom upon the ruins of 
 Levitical form. And Jews as they were by birth, Jews 
 as they were in great measure by religion, keeping as 
 they did the Jewish Sabbath, worshipping in the Jewish 
 Temple, venerating the Jewish books, the struggle 
 against Jewish detestation might have been far longer 
 and more terrible but for a Divine interposition. Forty 
 
72 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 years after the imprecation of priests and people, the 
 blood of the King whom they had crucified fell like 
 a rain of fire from heaven upon them and on their 
 children. The storm of Roman invasion consumed 
 Jerusalem to ashes, and shook the whole fabric of 
 Judaism into the dust. The race became despised and 
 persecuted, wanderers with the brand of God upon their 
 brow. The frantic hatred of a false Messiah at length 
 taught the Pagan world that Christians were something 
 more than a Jewish sect; but when Bether had been 
 taken, and Akiba slain in prison, and Barkokeba had 
 fallen before the sword of Julius Severus, the material 
 power of the Jews, and therewith the main hopes of the 
 Semitic race, were broken for ever ; and, without an effort 
 of its own, the first great obstacle to the spread of 
 Christianity had been irrevocably swept away. 
 
 Harder, deadlier, more varied, more prolonged was the 
 contest of Christianity with Paganism. From the first 
 burst of hatred in the Neronian persecution till the end 
 of the third century the fierce struggle continued ; fierce, 
 because — meek, unobtrusive, spiritual as the Christians 
 were — they yet roused the hatred of every single class. 
 Paganism never troubled itself to be angry with mere 
 philosophers who aired their elegant doubts in the shady 
 xystus or at the luxurious feast, but who with cynical in- 
 souciance did what they detested, and adored what they 
 
THE VICTORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 73 
 
 despised. They were unworthy of that corrosive hatred 
 which is the tribute paid to the simplicity of Virtue by 
 the despair and agony of Vice. But these Christians, 
 who turned away with aversion from temples and statues, 
 who refused to witness the games of the amphitheatre, 
 who would die rather than fling into the altar-flame a 
 pinch of incense to the genius of the Emperors ; v who 
 declined even to wear a garland of flowers at the banquet, 
 or pour a libation at the sacrifice \ whose austere morality 
 was a terrible reflection on the favourite sins which had 
 eaten, like a spreading cancer, into the very heart of the 
 nation's life; these Christians, with their unpolished 
 barbarism, their unphilosophic ignorance, their stolid 
 endurance, their detestable purity, their intolerable meek- 
 ness, kindled against themselves alike the philosophers 
 whose pride they irritated, the priests whose gains they 
 diminished, the mob whose indulgences they thwarted, 
 the Emperors whose policy they disturbed. Yet, unaided 
 by any, opposed by all, Christianity won. Without one 
 earthly weapon she faced the legionary masses, and, 
 tearing down their adored eagles, replaced them by the 
 sacred monogram of her victorious labarum ; she made 
 her instrument of a slave's agony a symbol more glorious 
 than the laticlave of consuls or the diadem of kings; 
 without eloquence she silenced the subtle dialectics of 
 the Academy, and without knowledge the encyclopaedic 
 
74 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 ambition of the porch. The philosopher who met a 
 Christian Bishop on his way to the Council of Nicsea, 
 stammered into a confession of belief, and the last of 
 Pagan Emperors died prematurely in the wreck of his 
 broken powers, with the despairing words, "Vicisti 
 Galilaee ! " " Oh, Galilaean, thou hast conquered ! " 
 
 In its terror and hatred, Paganism essayed a triple 
 resistance. First, it tried the experiment of an eclectic 
 revival. But the revival, with all its paraphernalia of 
 mathematicians and jugglers, lustrations and oracles, 
 weird exorcisms and ghastly taurobolia, was all in vain; 
 it never succeeded in galvanising into even the semblance 
 of life the corrupting corpse of the old religion. Great 
 Pan was dead. 
 
 Then, secondly, they tried the experiment of argument. 
 But on this field, too, Christianity matched them. It 
 repelled argument with argument; it repaid scorn with 
 scorn. But far better and nobler than these were the 
 lofty Apologies of the Alexandrian Fathers, who by their 
 breadth and profundity wrought for the Church an im- 
 perishable service. It was well indeed that a Celsus 
 and a Porphyry could be matched with such noble speci- 
 mens of spiritual intuition and exhaustive learning as the 
 Protrepiikon of a Clemens, and the eight books of an 
 Origen. Models for the best and most Christian school 
 of controversy, they refute indeed the calumnies ot 
 
THE VICTORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 75 
 
 their opponents ; but, better than this, for each refuted 
 error they offer a beautiful and convincing truth \ and, 
 recognising the Divine spark which glimmered even in 
 the white embers of heathen wisdom, summon their 
 adversaries to drink with them of the living fountain, 
 and share with them the Eternal Light. Man was to 
 them no " warped slip of wilderness," but " a heavenly 
 plant ; " and in every heathen inscription their enlightened 
 eye read a prayer to the Unknown God. Neither 
 Stoicism, with its unnatural apathy and utter hopelessness, 
 nor Neoplatonism, with its cold Pantheism and esoteric 
 pride, had a chance against these living and loving truths. 
 The Enchiridion of Epictetus, the Meditations of Aurelius 
 are full of beautiful counsel, yet they are too sad and too 
 weak to reach the multitude or even to sway the few ; 
 and as for the Enneads of Plotinus, and the Comment- 
 aries of Proclus, with all their gorgeous invocations and 
 voluminous mysticism, they have ever been to mankind 
 but as the small dust of the balance compared to one 
 verse of the Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 But, though argument and philosophy failed, though 
 revivals and eclecticism failed, Pagans might always rely 
 for victory upon brute force and crushing violence. 
 Even Nero had driven through the gardens of his Golden 
 House between lines of torches of which each one was a 
 martyr in his shirt of fire ; but Nero's assault was as 
 
76 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 nothing in extent or virulence compared with those of 
 a Decius or a Diocletian. Christianity spent her first 
 three centuries in one long, legalised, almost unbroken 
 persecution. Some of her holiest bishops — an Ignatius, 
 a Polycarp, an Hippolytus; some of her greatest writers — 
 a Justin, an Athanasius, an Origen ; even her poor female 
 slaves — a Blandina, a Felicitas, a Potamisena, endured the 
 rack or the prison, perished by the sword or flame. " Yet 
 they stood safe," said Cyprian, "stronger than their con- 
 querors; the beaten and lacerated members conquered 
 the beating and lacerating hooks." " The nearer I am 
 to the sword," said Ignatius, "the nearer to God." Such 
 was their "tremendous spirit;" and when the very 
 executioners were weary, when vast holocausts had been 
 offered to the expiring divinities, then finding, as has been 
 finely said, that she had to deal with "a host of Scae- 
 volas," "the proudest of earthly powers, arrayed in the 
 plenitude of material resources, humbled herself before a 
 power founded on a mere sense of the unseen." 
 
 Yes, it was of God, and they could not overthrow it : 
 the catacomb triumphed over the Grecian temple ; the 
 Cross of shame over the wine-cup of the Salian banquet, 
 the song of the siren and the wreath of rose. These 
 obscure sectaries — barbarians, Orientals, Jews as they 
 were — fought against the indignant world and won. 
 " Not by power, nor by might, but by My Spirit, saith the 
 
THE VICTORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 77 
 
 Lord of hosts \ * by heroic endurance, by stainless inno- 
 cence, by burning zeal, by inviolable truthfulness, by 
 boundless love. The world's seductive ideals and in- 
 toxicating joys, the world's enchanting mythologies and 
 dissolute religions, all fled before a Cross of wood ! 
 Yes, because that Cross was held by the bleeding hands 
 of the world's true King, who perfected the strength of 
 His followers in weakness ; and, having been lifted up, 
 drew all men unto Him. 
 
 But worse trials remained. It was a Divine Provid- 
 ence which ordained that, not till after three centuries of 
 unaided struggle, victorious not because of princes, but 
 in spite of them, that the terrified world flung itself at the 
 feet of the oppressed, and Christianity mounted the 
 imperial throne. It did not succeed because Constan- 
 tine became a Christian, but Constantine became a 
 Christian because it had succeeded. Long before the 
 battles of Adrianople or the Milvian bridge, Christianity 
 had carried the day. "We are but of yesterday," said 
 Tertullian, " and we have filled all that belongs to you— 
 the cities, the fortresses, the free towns, the very camps, 
 the palace, the senate, the forum ; we leave to you the 
 temples only." Little, indeed, did Christianity owe to 
 that trimming Emperor and unbaptised catechumen, — 
 that strange Christian indeed ! — who placed his own 
 bust on the statues of Apollo, who thought the nails of 
 
7S WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 the true Cross a fitting ornament for the bridle of his 
 charger, and on whose extraordinary figure the robes so 
 besmeared with gold and crusted with jewels could not 
 conceal the Neronian stains of a son's and a consort's 
 blood. But it was in this the supreme hour of her 
 external triumph that the Church was attacked in a new 
 form, by the growth of heresies which threatened more 
 effectually than any persecution to sap her very existence. 
 But it is now that we hear for the first time that fatal 
 name of Arianism, which for centuries kindled the most 
 unquenchable hatred in the Church's bosom. There is 
 no more humiliating period in Christian history. Even 
 an orthodox Christian historian, Socrates, compares these 
 frenzied controversies about the Homoousion to a night 
 battle, in which the combatants could neither see each 
 other nor understand. Yet, even in this dark period, we 
 may admire the venerable charity of Hosius of Cordova, 
 the splendid faithfulness of Athanasius the Great. 
 Arianism might infect the court, and invade the camp, 
 but it was never true, except in semblance, that Athana- 
 sius was alone against the world. There were thousands 
 of knees that had not bowed to Baal, and mouths that 
 had not kissed him. The great heart of the Christian 
 multitude was sound. Amid the unintelligible precision 
 of theological technicalities, which professed to define 
 the indefinable, their instinct told them that the various 
 
THE VICTORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 79 
 
 heresiarchs were taking away their Lord. And mean- 
 while the defeat of Arianism shows that the Divinity of 
 Christ was no new dogma which had crept unchallenged 
 into the Christian faith; but that, although denied by 
 men of powerful intellects in the highest places, it was 
 yet by the Catholic Church deliberately accepted, 
 solemnly affirmed At four great councils, against four 
 great heresies, the Church promulgated her four great 
 formulae on the existence of her Lord — truly, perfectly, 
 indivisibly, distinctly— truly God, perfectly man, indi- 
 visibly God and man, distinctly God and man. 
 
 Then arose a fresh danger from without. It might 
 well have been thought that in the wild storm of northern 
 barbarian invasion the Church must perish. But it was 
 not so written in the book of God's Providence. Those 
 hero-hearts, refined by a true faith, were the necessary 
 basis for modern civilisation. The Church's attitude 
 toward them is best symbolised by those majestic scenes 
 in which the violence of Attila the Hun was overawed by 
 Leo III. at Ponte Molino, and of Genseric the Vandal at 
 the gates of Rome. Already they had heard the name 
 of Christ ; already courageous missionaries had pene- 
 trated their savage forests and traversed their gloomy 
 hills ; and thus the fury of their onset was softened by 
 the recognition of virtues more elevated than courage, and 
 blessings more to be desired than strength. And thus 
 
8o WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 Christianity was not only saved, but became herself the 
 bulwark of all that was valuable in the ancient civilisa- 
 tions. When the degenerate Romans had melted down 
 the statue of Virtus to pay their ransom to Alaric, her 
 bishops earned the title of Defe?isores Civitatis. She 
 saved the vanquished from extirpation, the victors from 
 decay. Barbarians who had seen such types of noble 
 excellence as an Ulphilas or a Severinus, or in later times 
 a Boniface or an Olaf, saw in the priesthood an institu- 
 tion for which they felt a genuine reverence ; and this 
 veneration was the means of fusing all that was valuable 
 in two violently conflicting elements into one splendid, 
 permanent, and progressive society. The churches of 
 Christian Rome, built out of the marble of heathen 
 temples, which had been levelled by barbarian hands, are 
 at once a history and a symbol of the work which the 
 Church did for the world. 
 
 One more external danger, and one alone, remained — 
 the sudden and overwhelming growth of Mohammedanism. 
 On religious grounds, indeed, the Church of Christ had 
 nothing — and less than nothing — to fear. Strong only 
 as a military theocracy, Islam as a creed was a mixture 
 of fatal apathy with sensual hopes. Checked in Europe 
 by a long line of Christian heroes from Charles Martel 
 to John Hunniades, and from Hunniades to Sobieski, its 
 aggressive power was broken. It now acts only as a 
 
THE VICTORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. Si 
 
 gradual decay in every nation over which it dominates. 
 
 The traveller in Palestine may be shocked to see even 
 
 the fair hill of Nazareth surmounted by the white-domed 
 
 wely of an obscure Mohammedan saint ; but he will be 
 
 reassured as he notices that in every town and village 
 
 where Christians are there is activity and vigour, while 
 
 all the places which are purely Islamite look as though 
 
 they had been smitten, as with the palsy, by some 
 
 withering and irreparable curse. 
 
 From this time forward Christianity had no external 
 
 enemy to fear. From the fifth to the thirteenth century 
 
 the Church was engaged in elaborating the most splendid 
 
 organisation which the world has ever seen. Starting 
 
 with the separation of the spiritual from the temporal 
 
 power, and the mutual independence of each in its own 
 
 sphere, Catholicism worked hand in hand with feudalism 
 
 for the amelioration of mankind. Under the influence 
 
 of feudalism slavery became serfdom, and aggressive was 
 
 modified into defensive war. Under the influence of 
 
 Catholicism the monasteries preserved learning, and 
 
 maintained the sense of the unity of Christendom. 
 
 Under the combined influence of both grew up the 
 
 lovely ideal of chivalry, moulding generous instincts into 
 
 gallant institutions, — making the body vigorous and 
 
 the soul pure, — and wedding the Christian virtues of 
 
 humility and tenderness to the natural graces of courtesy 
 
 G 
 
WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 and strength. During this period the Church was the 
 one mighty witness for light in an age of darkness, for 
 order in an age of lawlessness, for personal holiness in 
 an epoch of licentious rage. Amid the despotism of 
 kings and the turbulence of aristocracies, it was an 
 inestimable blessing that there should be a power which, 
 by the unarmed majesty of simple goodness, made the 
 haughtiest and the boldest respect the interests of justice, 
 and tremble at the thought of temperance, righteousness, 
 and the judgment to come. 
 
 But in the last three of these nine centuries, when the 
 Church had achieved her destiny, the germs of new peril 
 were insidiously developed. Faith and intellect began 
 to be sundered, and violence was used for the repression 
 of independent thought. The relations between the 
 spiritual and temporal authorities were disturbed. Kings 
 warred to the death with popes. Popes struggled to put 
 their feet upon the necks of kings. The Avignonese 
 captivity, followed as it was by the great schism of the 
 papacy, shook to the ground the fabric so toilfully 
 erected. Princes and nations successfully resisted a 
 spiritual power which, by becoming ambitious, had be- 
 come corrupt. Nations outgrew their spiritual nonage. 
 
 Then came the revival of learning, and that epoch 
 which we call the Renaissance. Never, perhaps, was 
 the Faith of Christ in more terrible danger than in the 
 
THE VICTORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 83 
 
 fifteenth century. It was a state of society remarkably 
 glittering and surpassingly corrupt — radiant with outward 
 splendour, rotten with internal decay. Christendom had 
 practically ceased to be Christian. All seemed to be 
 lost and dead, when the voice of Luther's indignation 
 shook the world. The strength of the "Reformers lay 
 not only in their intrinsic grasp of the truths which they 
 set forth, but also in the corruption, the avarice, the 
 infidelity which they exposed. The Romish hierarchy 
 fell, but Christian truth was saved. Sacerdotalism was 
 ruined for ever ; but the paramount authority of Scripture, 
 the indefeasible right of individual judgment, the duty 
 and the dignity of progress, the ultimate sovereignty of 
 the race over the individual, the national independence 
 from all centralised spiritual authority, were established 
 on bases which, so long as the world lasts, can never be 
 removed. The hollow majesty of an artificial unity was 
 replaced by the vigour, freshness, and intensity of an 
 individual faith. 
 
 It is abundantly clear, even from this rough survey, 
 what causes make the Church unassailable, and what 
 makes her weak. Wealth, luxury, ambition, worldliness, 
 vice j these have wounded her well-nigh to death, when 
 she has been invincible against the scimitar of Moham- 
 medan or the violence of Hun. So far back as the 
 complaints of Clemens and the denunciations of Chrysos- 
 
 G 2 
 
<S4 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 torn against the gorgeous iniquities of Alexandria and 
 Constantinople, we hear the warning note of peril, and 
 learn that " golden priests who used wooden chalices are 
 stronger than priests of wood with chalices of gold." 
 " You see that the day is past when the Church could 
 say, ' Silver and gold have I none,' " said Innocent IV. 
 complacently to St. Thomas of Aquinum, as he pointed 
 to the masses of treasure which were being carried into 
 the Vatican. " Yes, holy father," was the saint's reply; 
 " and the day is also past when she could say to the 
 paralytic, ' Take up thy bed and walk.' " But from age 
 to age God left not Himself without witness, and from 
 age to age the most mighty apology for Christianity has 
 been in the lives of her saints. These have averted 
 from guilty nations the rain of lire. Other religions have 
 withered into dishonoured decrepitude ; but she, with 
 continuous rejuvenescence, has renewed her strength like 
 the eagle ; has run and not been weary, has walked and 
 not been faint. If ever, through her own faithlessness, 
 she has fallen before her enemies, she has risen Antaeus- 
 like, with new vigour, " and shaken her invincible locks." 
 How many of her witnesses have, in ages of corruption, 
 exclaimed like the Maccabees of old, " Let us die in our 
 integrity." And never, though she seemed to be dying, 
 never in her worst days has she lacked " the viaticum of 
 good examples." The tenth century was dark, yet it 
 
THE VICTORIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 85 
 
 produced an Anselm and a Bernard ; the fifteenth was 
 corrupted, yet in it lived a Savonarola and a Huss ; 
 martyrs, hermits, monks ; schoolmen, like St. Bonaven- 
 tura and St. Thomas ; kings, like Alfred and St. Louis ; 
 noble ladies, like St. Theresa and St. Elizabeth of Hun- 
 gary; bishops, like St. Edmund of Canterbury and St. 
 Carlo Borromeo ; dissenters like Bunyan and Whitfield ; 
 country pastors, like Oberlin and Lavater ; modern 
 statesmen, like Wilberforce and Montalembert ; modern 
 clergymen, like Robertson and Lacordaire; the?e are 
 her best defenders. The "Nos soli innocentes" has 
 ever been her best appeal. The sword of her power may 
 be beaten down, but what fiery dart shall pierce the 
 silver shield of her innocence? There, my brethren, 
 there is an Apology in which, to the grave, we may all 
 take part ; for that shield may be upheld by the weakest 
 and meanest arm. It may not be ours to utter convincing 
 arguments, but it may be ours to live holy lives. It may 
 not be ours to be subtle and learned and logical, but it 
 may be ours to be noble and sweet and pure. Oh ! 
 believe me, not to the diadem of Constantine, not to the 
 tiara of Gregory, not to the gorgeousness of Leo, not to 
 the faggots of Torquemada, not to the sword of the 
 Crusaders, not to the logic of the schoolmen, does 
 Christianity owe one half-hour of her dominion over any 
 human heart ; but to the majesty of her self-denials, to 
 
86 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 the beauty of her holiness, to the meekness of her saints, 
 to the truth, the zeal, the faithfulness of those who asked 
 for nothing better than to follow His example who died 
 as a malefactor to save the world. And these lessons 
 are open to us no less than to them. " They ask me for 
 secrets for attaining to perfection," said St. Francis de 
 Sales ; " for my part I know no other secret than this : 
 to love God with all one's heart, and one's neighbour as 
 oneself." This was the great lesson of Christianity; 
 but Christianity was not only a doctrine, but a Life. Oh, 
 let us strive to imitate that Life. Take it with you, my 
 young brethren, into the dust and glare of the busy 
 world ; take but this with you, and, pure — happy, noble, 
 confident — you may smile hereafter when men tell you 
 that Christianity is dead. Do this, and it shall never 
 die ; it shall grow younger with years ; it shall deepen in 
 faith and wisdom, in dominion and power, in purity and 
 peace ; the dew of its birth shall be as the womb of the 
 morning, and all they who believe and live thereby shall 
 shine as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars 
 for ever and ever. 
 
 Witness of History io Christ, p. 93. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN'S REMEDY AGAINST THE 
 FRAILTIES OF LIFE. 
 
 Ps. lv. 6—8. 
 
 " And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would 1 fly 
 away, and be at rest" &c. 
 
 A GREAT living painter (Sir F. Leighton) has endea- 
 voured to express the thought of these verses in a 
 beautiful picture. He represents the king seated at 
 eventide upon his palace roof. It was there that he had 
 been sitting on a far different evening, when in pride, 
 fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness, he had 
 opened the wicket gate to that thought of sin which had 
 treacherously betrayed the citadel of his soul to ten 
 thousand terrible enemies, and caused the sun of his 
 glory to set in seas of blood and shame. Very different 
 was his mood on this evening. The crown which he 
 had won from the city of waters was laid aside from the 
 dark hair which had been already silvered by age and 
 sorrow. The arm that smote the giant rests wearily 
 
SS WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 upon the parapet. What good has all his glory done 
 him? In what respect is he the better for the songs 
 which, setting him above his sovereign, had sung of him 
 that Saul had killed his thousands, and David his ten 
 thousands? Had not his earthly fame trembled into 
 nothingness, like those passing breaths of articulated air ? 
 Might he not have been a better and a happier man if 
 God had never taken him away from the sheepfolds, from 
 following the ewes great with young ones ? A better and 
 happier man, if, instead of becoming first the captain of 
 outlaws, and then the king of Israel, he had remained 
 the despised of his family, the innocent ruddy shepherd 
 lad, and grown grey with the sun smiting him at noon, 
 and the dews falling on him as he kept watch over his 
 flocks by night? And as these sad thoughts chase each 
 other through his mind, his eye falls on a flock of doves, 
 which seem to be flying far away into the glories of sun- 
 set, ere it is swallowed up into the darkening night, and 
 — while a world of hollow friend, and broken system, 
 " made no purple in the distance " — he envies the swift 
 wings which carry to some safe shelter their defenceless 
 innocence. And then, seizing his harp, he pours forth a 
 wail of passionate complaint, and exclaims, "Oh that I 
 had wings like a dove ! for then would I fly away, and be 
 at rest I would make haste to escape from the stormy 
 wind and tempest." 
 
THE CHRISTIAN'S REMEDY. 89 
 
 How often has the same wish been sighed forth by 
 multitudes of hearts ! How many a man at death, how 
 many a man long before death came, has heaved such 
 sighs ! Turn to your Bible, which reflects the varying 
 moods of so many minds, and you will find there the 
 record of a multitude of these sighs of weariness, of dis- 
 couragement, of self-disgust, of pain. 
 
 Let us take some instances. Moses had as brave and 
 mighty a heart as ever beat in any breast, yet he exclaims, 
 "Wherefore hast Thou afflicted Thy servant? Have 1 
 conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that 
 Thou shouldst say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom ? 
 I am not able to bear all this people alone. If Thou 
 deal thus with me, kill me, I pray Thee, out of hand, and 
 let me not see my wretchedness." What a sigh is there ! 
 
 Gideon was a man full of faith, yet he cried, "O my 
 Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen 
 us ? But now the Lord hath forsaken us, and delh ered us 
 into the hands of the Midianites." What a sigh is there ! 
 
 There never breathed a more dauntless prophet than 
 Elijah, yet he sat under a juniper tree in the wilderness, 
 and requested for himself that he might die; and said, 
 " It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life ; for I am 
 not better than my fathers." How deep a sigh is there ! 
 And Job was patient, yet under the pitiless storm of sick- 
 ness and suffering even Job broke down and cursed the 
 
90 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 day of his birth. And Jeremiah had schooled into 
 bravery his natural diffidence, yet when Pashur smote 
 him and put him in the stocks, he too burst into the wild 
 cry, " Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see 
 labour and sorrow, that my days should be consumed 
 with shame?" And do we not seem to hear the sigh of 
 even the mighty Baptist, from his cell in the black dun- 
 geon of Makor, when he sent to ask Jesus, — then in the 
 gladness of His Galilean spring, — "Art thou He that 
 should come, or do we look for another?" Nay, even 
 Paul, though nothing can wring such sighs from that 
 indomitable soul, is yet in a strait betwixt two, and knows 
 that "to depart and to be with Christ is very far better." 
 Here then you have the weariness and discouragement 
 of the noblest of mankind. It is not generally because 
 of personal suffering, but either because the world is 
 evil — " Mine eyes burst out with water because men 
 keep not Thy law :" — or because life is full of trials — 
 " Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, 
 and have not attained unto the days of the years of the 
 life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage : " — or 
 because work is very dreary, and seems to fail — " Since 
 I came to Pharaoh to speak in Thy name, he hath done 
 evil to Thy people; neither hast Thou delivered Thy 
 people at all." Yes, all good men have had to fight 
 with impenetrable stupidity, and hard Pharisaism, and 
 
THE CHRISTIAN'S REMEDY. 91 
 
 dominant wickedness, and religious and irreligious self- 
 conceit And so the whole Bible is full of sighs. And 
 what are they in good men but different forms of that 
 agony of the Cross, which, on the awful brink of a lonely 
 death, bearing the mysterious burden of the sins of the 
 whole world, broke forth into that momentary wail of 
 utter agony, jE/i, Eli, lama sabachthani — ' ' My God, my 
 God, why hast Thou forsaken me ? " 
 
 Now, my brethren, one of the elements in Scripture 
 which makes it so inestimably valuable is that it is so 
 essentially human, and so profoundly true to nature ; so 
 inartificial, so simple, sensuous, passionate, as all true 
 history and all true poetry should be. These kings, 
 heroes, prophets were just such men as ourselves ; their 
 hearts beating like our hearts \ their joys and sorrows, 
 their hopes and fears, even such as ours. This same 
 sense of weariness, and discouragement, and willingness 
 to die we find in secular history : we find it in literature ; 
 we find it in our own souls. It is a part of our life. We 
 get tired. We are tired of the daily sameness of life. The 
 rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full. The eyes 
 of man are never satisfied. We are tired of the hungry 
 grave, crying, like the daughters of the horse-leech, " Give, 
 give ; " tired of the unrelenting past ; of the dreary pre- 
 sent ; of the uncertain future. We are tired of the weary 
 struggle in our own hearts ; the to-and-fro conflicting 
 
92 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 waves of impulse and repression ; the broad rejoicing 
 tides of spiritual emotion, and the flat oozy shores ot 
 ebbing enthusiasm. Who would not cry with the poor 
 old Scotchwoman, " O it's a sair sight," as he stands in 
 the wynds of Glasgow, or the cellars of Liverpool, or the 
 slums of London? Yes, it's "a sair sight," this scum 
 and sand in the impure fringe of the glittering wave of 
 civilisation. The old historian said that no man had 
 ever lived without coming to a day in his life when he 
 cared nothing if he were to see no morrow. 
 
 A godless experience curdles at once into acrid pessi- 
 mism. It is the philosophy at this moment of many 
 materialists — the sour unwholesome sediment left in souls 
 from which all hope has evaporated. It is Schopenhauer, 
 saying that our condition is so utterly wretched that total 
 annihilation would be preferable ; that the existence of the 
 world is a matter of grief, and a fundamental misfortune. 
 Such words are the defiant curse of deliberate unbelief; 
 but if this life were everything, many would say the same. 
 We find this hopelessness and dissatisfaction in every rank. 
 Now it is Diocletian, declaring that planting cabbages at 
 Salona is better than ruling the world in Byzantium. Now 
 it is Severus, saying he has been everything, from a com- 
 mon peasant to a victorious emperor, and nothing is of 
 any good. Now it is Abderrahman the Magnificent, re- 
 cording that in his life he has had but fourteen happy days. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN'S REMEDY. 93 
 
 Now it is St. Augustine, saying, u Let a man consider 
 the sources of his happiness, and if it will abide with him 
 alway : if not it is of the streams of Babylon, let him sit 
 down by it and weep." Now it is St. Bernard, saying of 
 human life that its beginning is blindness, its continuance 
 toil, its sum-total emptiness. Now it is Petrarch, saying, 
 " I see not what anything in the world can give me save 
 tears." Now it is Richard Hooker, saying, " I have 
 lived to see that the world is made up of perturbations, 
 and have been long preparing to leave it" Now it is 
 Luther, saying, " I am weary of life, if this can be called 
 life. There is nothing which would give me pleasure ; I 
 am utterly weary. I pray that the Lord will come forth- 
 with, and carry me home." Now it is Whitefield, saying, 
 " Lord, I am weary not of Thy work, but in Thy work. 
 Let me speak for Thee once more, then seal Thy truth 
 and die." So then History, the life-histories of men, are 
 full of these sad sighs. 
 
 And so too is literature. We hear the sigh in 
 Shakespeare's famous sonnet, 
 
 " Tired with all these, for restless death I cry." 
 
 It is Cowper's, 
 
 " O for a lodge in some vast wilderness, 
 Some boundless contiguity of shade, 
 Where rumour of oppression and deceit, 
 Of unsuccessful and successful war, 
 Might never reach me more." 
 
94 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 It is Shelley's, 
 
 " I could lie down like a tired child, 
 And weep away this life of care." 
 
 All these, and hundreds more, are sighs wrung from that 
 inexorable weariness which, as the great Bossuet said, 
 lies at the bases of our life. 
 
 Well, my brethren, it always seems to me worth while 
 to recognise facts ; to bring them out into the full light 
 of consciousness, to look them in the face. And this 
 being the fact respecting human life which we have to 
 face, where is the remedy ? what are we to do ? 
 
 The great resource in every perplexity is to look to 
 Christ. If we look to our Great Example we shall see 
 that He too, even He, was forced to sigh for the sad 
 world of sin and death ; but notice that the sigh had 
 scarcely been uttered when once more He was engaged 
 in works of mercy and thoughtful care. To sigh is 
 sometimes natural; but to waste time in sighing, to 
 suffer ourselves to be wholly absorbed in the dark side of 
 life, to exclude ourselves from its many and simple glad- 
 nesses, is unthankful and useless. However hard the 
 struggle against intolerance and bigotry, against stupidity 
 and malice, against robbery and wrong, no good and 
 brave life will ever suffer itself to be crippled by con- 
 querable melancholy. If we sigh for our own weaknesses 
 and sins, we cannot indeed fly from ourselves, but we 
 
THE CHRISTIAN'S REMEDY. 95 
 
 can by the grace of God amend ourselves. If we sigh 
 for our surroundings, no wings of a dove indeed can take 
 us from these dwellings of Meshech, these tents of Kedar, 
 but by God's grace we may help to make them better 
 and happier places. For, after all, at all times of our 
 pilgrimage — 
 
 "The primal duties shine aloft like stars, 
 And charities that soothe, and heal, and bless 
 Lie scattered at the feet of man like flowers." 
 
 The lessons of Scripture and the lessons of the life of 
 Christ alike teach us to labour and to wait ; they com- 
 bine to tell us that to every one of us alike, for sorrow 
 and disaster, for weariness and discouragement, God has 
 given us four great and perfect remedies. On these let 
 me say a very few last words. 
 
 One remedy is Action. God taught it to Moses: 
 "Wherefore criest thou unto Me? Speak to the chil- 
 dren of Israel that they go forward/' While there is 
 anything to be done the time given to inactive sorrow 
 is worse than wasted. Sorrow may take from life its 
 delights ; but thank God it can never take its duties. 
 At the lowest ebb of dejection we still have much to do; 
 and " that man is very strong and powerful who has no 
 more hope for himself; who looks not to be loved any 
 more; to be admired any more; to have any more 
 
96 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 honour or dignity ; and who cares not for gratitude ; but 
 whose sole thought is for others, and who only lives for 
 them." (So speaks Sir A. Helps.) The wings of a dove ? 
 — nay, let us rather long for the wings of an eagle to fly 
 in the path of God's commandments ; let us, with the 
 ancient Rabbi, pray that we may be bold as a leopard, 
 swift as an eagle, bounding as a stag, brave as a lion, to 
 do the will of our Father in heaven. "Let me work 
 on," said Mendelssohn ; " for me too the hour of rest 
 will come." "Doe the next thynge," — what a grand 
 motto that was ! And that was a good motto, Repos 
 ailleurs. Work here, rest is elsewhere; wipe thy tears; 
 cease thy sighing ; do thy work. " The day is short ; 
 the work abundant ; the labourers are remiss ; the reward 
 is great; the Master presses." 
 
 Another remedy is Patie?ice. God is patient. His 
 great ones are slandered every day by earth's little, and 
 His wise men judged by fools, and " He makes no ado." 
 His name is blasphemed, His character often hideously 
 misrepresented by those who profess to teach in His 
 name. He bears it all ; He has borne with man's false- 
 hood, and littleness, and disobedience for no one knows 
 how many thousand years. Cannot we too wait ? If we 
 do well and suffer for it, can we not take it patiently ? 
 " Patient continuance in weli-doing," there is a grand 
 remedy for idle tears. " O rest in the Lord, and abide 
 
THE CHRISTIAN'S REMEDY. 97 
 
 patiently upon Him; for they that patiently abide the 
 Lord, those shall inherit the land." 
 
 Another remedy is Faith. Jesus, as He sighed, looked 
 up towards heaven. " Two things alone can finally cure 
 the malady of occasional depression — they are God and 
 death." Faith looks up hopefully to God. ; hope looks 
 forward fearlessly to death. Is our sigh for our own 
 work ? " O cast thy burden on the Lord, and He shall 
 sustain thee." Is our sigh for the world? We did not 
 make the world, and He who made it will guide. One 
 day, when St. Francis was laying before God his troubles 
 and disquietudes, the answer came to him, "Why dost 
 thou trouble thyself, poor little man ? I who made thee 
 the shepherd of My order, knowest thou not that I am 
 its supreme protector? If those whom I have called 
 succumb, I will put others in their place, and if none 
 existed I would cause them to be born." "I cannot 
 mend the world," said Luther; "if I thought that I 
 could, I should be the veriest ass alive. Thou must do 
 it, oh my God." 
 
 Action, Patience, Faith • lastly, the remedy is Hope. 
 "It is good that a man should both hope and quietly 
 wait for the salvation of the Lord." "The worst of 
 evils," says the French proverb, " are those that never 
 come." Things are rarely as bad as they look to us. 
 Elijah cries, "I, even I only am left;" and God tells 
 
98 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 him that He has 7000 who have not bowed the knee to 
 Baal. The young man is terror-stricken in besieged 
 Dothan, and Elisha shows him the whole mountain full 
 of the protecting chariots of fire. If we be true and faith 
 ful, then, rightly considered, our very trials and sorrows are 
 the proofs and pledges to us of a better world beyond, 
 and of a time when God shall finish His own work. 
 Shall the great housekeeper of the world fodder His 
 cattle, and water His flowers, and prune His plants, and 
 not feed His children ? 
 
 My friends, however much the deluge may welter 
 round us, that Holy Heavenly Dove of Peace is ready 
 to descend into our hearts and rest therein. And if the 
 plucked leaf, which she bears to us from God in heaven, 
 seem bitter to us, yet none the less is it a leaf of the 
 Tree of Life, — a green leaf from that tree " whose 
 leaves are for the healing of the nations." 
 
 P.phpkatJia Sermons, p. 123. 
 
PRAYER, THE ANTIDOTE TO SORROW. 
 
 Luke xxii. 44. 
 " And being in an agony ; He prayed." 
 
 \ \ 7" HEN the last supper was over, and the last hymn 
 had been sung, our Lord and His Apostles — with 
 the one traitor fatally absent from their number — went 
 out of the city gate, and down the steep valley of the 
 Kidron to the green slope of Olivet beyond it. Solemn 
 and sad was that last walk together; and a weight of 
 mysterious awe sank like lead upon the hearts of those 
 few poor Galileans as in almost unbroken silence, — 
 through the deep hush of the Oriental night, — through 
 the dark shadows of the ancient olive-trees, — through 
 the broken gleams of the Paschal moonlight, — they 
 followed Him their Lord and Master, who, with bowed 
 head and sorrowing heart, walked before them to His 
 willing doom. 
 
 That night they did not return as usual to Bethany, 
 
 h 2 
 
ioo WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 but stopped at the little familiar garden of Gethsemane, 
 or "the oilpress." Jesus knew that the hour of His 
 uttermost humiliation was near, — that from this moment 
 till the utterance of that great cry which broke his 
 heart, nothing remained for Him on earth, save all that 
 the human frame can tolerate of torturing pain, and all 
 that the human soul can bear of poignant anguish ; — 
 till in that torment of body and desolation of soul even 
 the high and radiant serenity of His divine spirit should 
 suffer a short but terrible eclipse. One thing alone 
 remained before that hour began ; a short space was left 
 Him, and in that space He had to brace His body, to 
 nerve His soul, to calm His spirit by prayer and solitude, 
 until all that is evil in the power of evil should wreak its 
 worst upon His innocent and holy head. And He had 
 to face that hour, — to win that victory, — as all the dark- 
 est hours must be faced, as all the hardest victories must 
 be won, — alone. It was not that He was above the need 
 of sympathy, — no noble soul is j — and perhaps the 
 noblest need it most. Though His friends did but 
 sleep, while the traitor toiled, yet it helped Him in His 
 hour of darkness to feel at least that they were near, and 
 that those were nearest who loved Him most. ''Stay 
 here," He said to the little group, " while I go yonder 
 and pray." Leaving them to sleep, each wrapped in his 
 outer garment on the grass, He took Peter and James 
 
PRAYER, THE ANTIDOTE TO SORROW. 101 
 
 and John, the chosen of the chosen, and went about a 
 stone's throw off. But soon even their presence was 
 more than He could endure. A grief beyond utterance, 
 a struggle beyond endurance, a horror of great darkness, 
 over-mastered Him, as with the sinking swoon of an 
 anticipated death. He must be yet more alone, and 
 alone with God. Reluctantly He tore Himself away 
 from their sustaining tenderness, and amid the dark- 
 brown trunks of those gnarled trees withdrew from the 
 moonlight into the deeper shade, where solitude might 
 be for Him the audience-chamber of His Heavenly 
 Father. And there, till slumber overpowered them, His 
 three beloved Apostles were conscious how dreadful was 
 the paroxysm through which He passed. They saw Him 
 sometimes with head bowed upon His knees, some- 
 times lying on His face in prostrate suffering upon the 
 ground. And though amazement and sore distress fell 
 on them, though the whole place seemed to be haunted 
 by Presences of good and evil struggling in mighty but 
 silent contest for the eternal victory, — yet, before they 
 sank under the oppression of troubled slumber, they 
 knew that they had been the dim witnesses of an unutter- 
 able agony, in which the drops of anguish which dropped 
 from His brow in that deathful struggle looked to them 
 like gouts of blood, and yet the burden of those broken 
 murmurs in which He pleaded with His Heavenly 
 
102 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 Father had been ever this, " If it be possible, — yet not 
 what I will, but what Thou wilt." 
 
 What is the meaning, my brethren, of this scene for 
 us? What was the cause of this midnight hour? Do 
 you think that it was the fear of death, and that that was 
 sufficient to shake to its inmost centre the pure and 
 innocent soul of the Son of Man ? Could not even a 
 child see how inconsistent such a fear would be with all 
 that followed; — with that heroic fortitude which fifteen 
 consecutive hours of sleepless agony could not disturb ; — 
 with that majestic silence which overawed even the hard 
 Roman into respect and fear ; — with that sovereign 
 ascendancy of soul which flung open the gate of Para- 
 dise to the repentant malefactor, and breathed its com- 
 passionate forgiveness on the apostate priest? Could 
 He have been afraid of death, in whose name, and it 
 whose strength, and for whose sake alone, trembling old 
 men, and feeble maidens, and timid boys have faced it 
 in its worst form without a shudder or a sigh? My 
 brethren, the dread of the mere act of dying is a 
 cowardice so abject that the meanest passions of the 
 mind can master it, and many a coarse criminal has 
 advanced to meet his end with unflinching confidence 
 and steady step. And Jesus knew, if any have ever 
 known, that it is as natural to die as to be born ; — that 
 it is the great birthright of all who love God ; — that it 
 
PRAYER, THE ANTIDOTE TO SORROW. 103 
 
 is God who giveth His beloved sleep. The sting of 
 death— and its only sting — is sin; the victory of the 
 grave— and its only victory— is corruption. And Jesus 
 knew no sin, saw no corruption. No, that which stained 
 His forehead with crimson drops was something far 
 deadlier than death. Though sinless He was suffering 
 for sin. The burden and the mystery of man's strange 
 and revolting wickedness lay heavy on His soul; and 
 with holy lips He was draining the bitter cup into which 
 sin had infused its deadliest poison. Could perfect 
 innocence endure without a shudder all that is detestable 
 in human ingratitude and human rage ? should there be 
 no recoil of horror in the bosom of perfect love to see 
 His own,— for whom He came,— absorbed in one insane 
 repulsion against infinite purity and tenderness and 
 peace ? It was a willing agony, but it was agony ; it 
 was endured for our sakes ; the Son of God suffered that 
 He might through suffering become perfect in infinite 
 sympathy as a Saviour strong to save. 
 
 May we not all learn something from this fragment 
 of that thrilling story, that— "being in an agony, He 
 prayed " ? 
 
 For every one of us, I suppose, sooner or later the 
 Gethsemane of life must come. It may be the Geth- 
 semane of struggle, and poverty, and care ;— it may be 
 the Gethsemane of long and weary sickness ;— it may be 
 
104 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 the Gethsemane of farewells that wring the heart by the 
 deathbeds of those we love ; — it may be the Gethsemane 
 of remorse, and of well-nigh despair, for sins that we will 
 not, but which we say we cannot, overcome. Well, my 
 brethren, in that Gethsemane — ay, even in that Geth- 
 semane of sin — no angel merely, — but Christ Himself 
 who bore the burden of our sins, — will, if we seek Him, 
 come to comfort us. He will if, being in an agony, we 
 pray. He can be touched, He is touched, with the feel- 
 ing of our infirmities. He too has trodden the wine- 
 press of agony alone ; He too has lain face downwards 
 in the night upon the ground ; and the comfort which 
 then came to Him He has bequeathed to us — even the 
 comfort, the help, the peace, the recovery, the light, the 
 hope, the faith, the sustaining arm, the healing anodyne 
 of prayer. It is indeed a natural comfort — and one to 
 which the Christian at least flies instinctively. When 
 the water-floods drown us, — when all God's waves and 
 storms seem to be beating over our souls, — when 
 " Calamity 
 
 Comes like a deluge, and o'erfloods our crimes 
 Till sin is hidden in sorrow " — 
 
 oh then, if we have not wholly quenched all spiritual 
 life within us, what can we do but fling ourselves at 
 the foot of those great altar stairs that slope through 
 
PRAYER, THE ANTIDOTE TO SORROW. 105 
 
 darkness up to God ? Yes, being in an agony, we pray ; 
 and the talisman against every agony is there. 
 
 And herein lies the great mercy and love of God, 
 that we may go to Him in our agony even if we have 
 never gone before. Oh, if prayer were possible only 
 for the always good and always true, possible only for 
 those who have never forsaken or forgotten God, — if 
 it were not possible for sinners and penitents and those 
 who have gone astray, — then of how infinitely less signi- 
 ficance would it be for sinful and fallen man! But 
 our God is a God of Love, a God of mercy. He is 
 very good to us. The soul may come bitter and dis- 
 appointed, with nothing left to offer Him but the dregs 
 of a misspent life j — the soul may come, like that sad 
 Prodigal, weary and broken, and shivering, and in rags ; 
 but if it only come — the merciful door is open still, and 
 while yet we are a great way off our Father will meet, 
 and forgive, and comfort us. And then what a change 
 is there in our lives ! They are weak no longer ; they 
 are discontented no longer; they are the slaves of sin 
 no longer. You have seen the heavens grey with dull 
 and leaden-coloured clouds, you have seen the earth 
 chilly and comfortless under its drifts of unmelting snow ; 
 but let the sun shine, and then how rapidly does the 
 sky resume its radiant blue, and the fields laugh with 
 green grass and vernal flower ! So will it be with even 
 
106 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 a withered and a wasted life when we return to God 
 and suffer Him to send His bright beams of light upon 
 our heart. I do not mean that the pain or misery under 
 which we are suffering will necessarily be removed, — 
 even for Christ it was not so ; but peace will come and 
 strength will come and resignation will come and hope 
 will come, — and we shall feel able to bear anything 
 which God shall send, and though He slay us we still 
 shall seek Him, and even if the blackest cloud of 
 anguish seem to shroud His face from us, even on that 
 cloud shall the rainbow shine. 
 
 The Silence and the Voices of God, p. 187. 
 
THE CONQUEST OVER TEMPTATION. 
 
 i Cor. x. 13. 
 " There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man" 
 
 HTHESE, like most of St. Paul's words, real and 
 burning words as they always are, acquire a yet 
 intenser significance from the sequence of thought with 
 which they are connected. He has been speaking of his 
 position as an Apostle, and claiming his right to be 
 supported by his evangelising work. But he reminds his 
 Corinthian converts that he had deliberately waived that 
 right. He had followed that rarer and nobler course 
 which is so hard to learn, and which he urges so often 
 on all Christians, of calmly and habitually being content, 
 if need be, with less than is our due. And therefore, 
 instead of accepting the maintenance to which he was so 
 clearly entitled from the hands of his converts, he had 
 laboured with his own hands to meet the modest wants 
 of a disciplined and simple life. Yet he did not boast 
 
10S WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 of this great self-denial ; he had not done it for glory, or 
 for gratitude, but for God. What he had done he could 
 not help doing. The sacred hunger for souls had ab- 
 sorbed his energies ; the burning impulse of love had 
 swayed his soul ; his labour had been its own reward, 
 because it had been done for the Gospel's sake, that he 
 and they might alike be partakers of its benefits. 
 
 And there for a moment he pauses. The thought 
 arrests his attention. You may have sometimes watched 
 a great tide advancing irresistibly towards the destined 
 shore, yet broken and rippled over every wave of its sunlit 
 fretwork, and liable at any moment to mighty refluences as 
 it foams and swells about opposing sand-bank or rocky 
 cape. Such is the style of St. Paul. The word ' Gospel/ 
 — the thought of sharing with them its awful privileges, — 
 arrests him ; he is suddenly startled at the grandeur of 
 his own mission, and stops to warn them that even he, 
 their teacher, — even he called to be an Apostle, — even 
 he with all his perils and labours and sacrifices, needed, 
 no less than they did, unsparing, constant, anxious self- 
 discipline, lest he should become a castaway. He re- 
 minds them that the mortification, the conflict, the self- 
 mastery which were necessary for him who would wear 
 heaven's wreath of amaranth, were far more intense and 
 continuous than the severe training which the young 
 athletes of their city must undergo before they could win 
 
THE CONQUEST OVER TEMPTATION. 109 
 
 those coveted and fading garlands of Isthmian pine. He 
 reminds them too of the awful lesson involved in the 
 history of their fathers. They, by glorious privilege, had 
 been guided by the fiery pillar, had been baptised in the 
 parted sea, had quenched their thirst from the cloven 
 rock, — yet all had been in vain. In spite of all, their 
 hearts had lusted after evil things. Some had committed 
 fornication and fallen in one day three and twenty 
 thousand ; some had tempted Christ and been destroyed 
 of serpents ; some had murmured and been destroyed of 
 the destroyer. Oh let them beware, for all this dark and 
 splendid history was written for their example. It was 
 no dim revelation of God's will, no uncertain utterance 
 of His voice. And its lesson was, " Let him that thinketh 
 he standeth take heed lest he fall." But then, at once, 
 after those stern and solemn messages, the heart of the 
 great Apostle breaks with tears. He yearns to comfort 
 his children. " Why should they — why need they fall ? " 
 The thought flashes across his mind too rapidly for 
 utterance, and leaving it unexpressed, he continues, 
 "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is 
 common to man ; but God is faithful, who will not suffer 
 you to be tempted above that ye are able ; but will with 
 the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may 
 be able to bear it." 
 
 At those blessed words, my brethren, we too will 
 
no WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 pause. They are words of mercy, of strength, of con- 
 fidence, of comfort. 
 
 St. Paul assumes the certainty of our encountering 
 temptation. No life, not even the life of our Lord and 
 Master, was ever yet without it. That journey of the 
 Israelites in the desert to which St. Paul alludes, furnishes 
 a close emblem of our own. Before each one of us — a 
 pillar of cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night — glides 
 visibly the protecting providence of God. Wonderful 
 deliverances are vouchsafed to us. Enemies pursue us, 
 and we must fly from them. Enemies confront us, and 
 we must fight with them. Vividly and distinctly, loudly 
 and intelligibly, — as among the burning summits and 
 thunderbeaten crags of Sinai, — blaze for us the revealing 
 splendours, reverberate for us the majestic utterances of 
 the moral law. Simple and sweet as virgin honey, — if 
 we will only live thereon, — lies round us the angels' 
 food ; clear and crystalline, — if we will but drink thereof, 
 — murmurs and shines about us the river of God's love. 
 Yet, alas 1 we fall as Israel fell. Idolaters like them, we 
 inflame ourselves with idols. Sensualists like them, we 
 sigh for the fleshpots of Egypt among the manna-dews of 
 heaven. Thankless as they, we have been discontented 
 and rebellious in the midst of mercies. The language is 
 allegorical, the fact is bitterly real. All of us have been 
 
THE CONQUEST OVER TEMPTATION. in 
 
 tempted ; many of us have fallen ; some have been over- 
 thrown in the wilderness. 
 
 And these temptations — these impulses from without, 
 these tendencies from within, to love our bodies more 
 than our souls, our pleasures more than our duties, our- 
 selves more than our God, — begin, alas, almost with our 
 earliest years. The very youngest boy who hears me 
 knows what it is to be tempted to do wrong, — tempted 
 to neglect known duties, to utter wicked language, — 
 tempted to be idle, or self-indulgent, or unholy, or 
 unkind. 
 
 But I add eagerly and joyfully that you need not fall, — 
 not one of you need fall, — every one of you may become 
 pure, and sweet, and noble ; every one of you may die 
 a holy man. My subject is not warning, but comfort ; 
 and St. Paul's comfort to those whom he loved was this, 
 "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is 
 common to man." 
 
 Ay, this is St. Paul's comfort — not that our temptations 
 are common to man, but that they are human; that there 
 is nothing strange, abnormal, insuperable about them ; 
 that they are well within the scope of our power to 
 struggle with. St. Paul would point us to the glorious 
 company of the high and noble, of the pure and holy ; 
 to the white-robed, palm-bearing procession of happy 
 
ii2 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 human souls ; to those who have fought and conquered, 
 to those who have wrestled and overcome ! 
 
 But these, perhaps you will say to me, are the strong 
 great souls, the Scaevolas of Christian daring, the Manlii 
 of Christian faith. Temptations insignificant to them 
 might well be insuperable to us. Nay, my brethren, God 
 is faithful, and will not suffer you to be tempted above 
 that ye are able. In an age of cold faith and dead 
 enthusiasm no splendid heroisms, no agonising martyr- 
 doms are required of you. Ye have not yet resisted unto 
 blood, striving against sin. Not yet, like the boy Origen, 
 have you seen a father torn from you by violence ; or, 
 like the girl Blandina, been called upon to face the cruel 
 gaze of the bloody amphitheatre. He who tempers the 
 wind to the shorn lamb, tempers also the temptation to 
 the weak soul. He knoweth our frame, He remembereth 
 that we are but dust. Oh in that hero-multitude who 
 follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth, think not that 
 there are only the dauntless and the powerful, the great 
 in heart and the strong in faith : no, there are many of 
 the weak and the timid, many of the obscure and the 
 ignorant, many of the shrinking and the suffering there. 
 We saw not, till they were unfolded for the flight of 
 death, their angel wings. Yes! Jacob, once a mean 
 trickster, and Aaron, once a weak apostate, is there; 
 and Rahab the harlot, and David the adulterer; and 
 
THE CONQUEST OVER TEMPTATION. 113 
 
 Mary the weeping Magdalene, and Matthew the con- 
 verted publican, and Dysmas the repentant thief; many 
 as frail, many as fallen, many as sinful as the weakest 
 and the worst of you ; but there are no stains on their 
 white robes now ; there is no weakness or meanness in 
 their regenerated spirits now, and the solemn agony has 
 faded from their brows. You think that you could never 
 have been a martyr, yet women more timid, and children 
 more delicate, have won and worn that crown ; nearer 
 to the flame they were nearer to Christ, and as the balmy 
 winds of Paradise beat upon their foreheads while the 
 fire roared about their feet, so believe me will it be with 
 you. I have known martyrs here — boys ungifted and 
 unattractive, boys neglected and despised, — yet so firm 
 in their innocence, so steadfast in their faith, that no evil 
 thing had power to hurt them. Every day their struggle 
 was easier; every day their path more happy. Weak, 
 unloved, and single-handed, they overcame the world. 
 And why? because God is faithful. 
 
 Yes, God is faithful ; and most of all, because He will 
 lay no heavier burden on any one of us than we can 
 carry well. Whether in the way of trial, or in the way 
 of temptation, remember, my brethren, in the words of 
 the poet, 
 
 " Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, 
 Another thing to fall." 
 
114 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 We shall all be tempted, but the effects of the temptation 
 depend upon ourselves. Fling into the same flame a 
 lump of clay and a piece of gold, — the clay will be 
 hardened, the gold will melt; the heart of Pharaoh 
 hardened into perfidious insolence, the soul of David 
 melted into pathetic song. Bear temptation faithfully, 
 and it will leave you not only unscathed, but nobler. 
 With each temptation God will also provide not — as the 
 English version has it — a way, but the way of escape ; 
 the one separate escape for each separate temptation. 
 Because God loves us, because Christ died, because 
 having risen again He shed forth the Spirit in our hearts, 
 therefore under the fiercest assaults of Satan the soul 
 may be always safe. It may be like a beleaguered city, 
 the powers of evil may marshal all their devilish enginery, 
 and make the air hiss with their fiery darts, but every 
 sortie of the besieged shall be inevitably successful; 
 never shall there be capitulation ; and by true resistance 
 the assaults of the tempter shall at last be driven back in 
 irretrievable disgraceful rout. 
 
 It would take me too long, my brethren, were I to 
 dwell on the way of escape from each temptation. But 
 without dwelling on them, I would gladly mention — and 
 merely mention — four, with the power and efficacy of 
 which I have been often struck. The first is watchful- 
 ness over the thoughts. As is the fountain, so will be 
 
THE CONQUEST OVER TEMPTATION. 115 
 
 the stream. Quench the spark, and you are safe from 
 the conflagration. Crush the serpent's egg, and you 
 need not dread the cockatrice. Conquer evil thoughts, 
 and you will have little danger of evil words and evil 
 ways. The victory over every temptation is easiest, is 
 safest, is most blessed there. The second way is avoid- 
 ance of danger. The best courage, believe me, is some- 
 times shown by flight. Consider which is your weakest 
 point, who are your most dangerous companions, which 
 is your guiltiest hour. Avoid those companions, defend 
 that weak point, put the strongest guard upon those 
 hours. Then, thirdly, overcome evil with good. Kill 
 wicked passion by religious passion. Expel evil af- 
 fections by noble yearnings. Banish mean cravings by 
 holy enthusiasms. " Give me a great thought " said the 
 German poet, "that I may live on it." Read great 
 books ; enrich your minds with noble sentiments ; above 
 all, read your Bibles ; fill your own souls with the thought 
 of Christ ; make of Him not only a Redeemer, but a 
 brother, — not only a Saviour, but a friend. And fourthly, 
 I will mention pi-ayer. That, my brethren, is the truest 
 amulet against the siren songs, the holiest enchantment 
 against each Circsean spell. 
 
 The Silence and rhe Voues of God, p. 101. 
 
 I 2 
 
TOO LA TE. 
 
 Luke xix. 42. 
 
 " If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things 
 which belong unto thy peace 1 but now they are hid from thine 
 eyes. 1 '' 
 
 CX& Friday evening, a week before the Crucifixion, our 
 Lord arrived at Bethany, the sweet and quiet home 
 of Martha and Mary and Lazarus whom He loved. On 
 the evening of the next day, — the Jewish Sabbath, — the 
 little family made in His honour that memorable feast, 
 in which the love of Mary, glowing into sudden rapture, 
 led her to break the vase of alabaster, and anele with 
 precious spikenard her Saviour's feet. The presence of 
 the risen Lazarus added to the scene a touch of awe. 
 Many Jews from Jerusalem, who had strolled to that 
 little village when the setting sun removed the Sabbath 
 restriction of distance, mingled among the guests ; and 
 as they returned to the city, through the tents and 
 booths of the thronging pilgrims, they were able to 
 
TOO LATE. 117 
 
 answer the eagerly-debated question, whether Jesus, — 
 in spite of the violence with which he had been treated 
 in His last visit to Jerusalem, — would still venture to be 
 present at the Paschal feast. Yes ! the great Prophet 
 would indeed be there. 
 
 The rumour spread more and more widely as the 
 morning dawned ; and it was apparently towards the busy 
 noon, that, accompanied by a vast throng of Galilean 
 pilgrims, our Lord started on foot from the friendly home 
 under the palms of Bethany. The main road from the 
 village to Jerusalem wound round the southern shoulder of 
 the Mount of Olives, and when it brought Him near the 
 fig-gardens of Bethphage, Jesus despatched two of His 
 disciples to fetch for His use an ass's colt which had 
 never before been ridden. St. Mark, reflecting the vivid 
 memories of St. Peter, tells us how they found it tied up 
 to a door in the street ; and when the owners willingly 
 resigned it, the disciples, thrilling with intense excite- 
 ment, — for surely now, at last, the great Messianic king- 
 dom of their hopes was to be revealed— flung their gar- 
 ments over it to do regal honour to their Lord. Then 
 they lifted Him upon it, and the triumphal procession 
 started on its way. They had advanced but a short dis- 
 tance when there came, round the shoulder of the hill, 
 another festal throng which had streamed forth to meet 
 Him from Jerusalem, waving in the sunny air the green 
 
u8 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 branches which they had torn from the neighbouring 
 palms. All were full of awful expectation. The tale of 
 the recent raising of Lazarus was on every lip. At last, 
 swept away by uncontrollable emotion, the disciples 
 began to raise those passionate cries of " Hosanna to the 
 Son of David," which formed part of the great Hallel 
 of their festal services. A scene of intense enthusiasm 
 ensued. Breaking into involuntary acclamations, the 
 whole multitude, — as they pealed forth the burden of the 
 strain, — began to fling off their talliths, and spread them 
 on the dusty road to tapestry His path ; while others kept 
 plucking, from the roadside trees, the boughs of fig and 
 olive to strew them on His way. And so, with ringing 
 Hosannas and waving palms — one multitude preceding, 
 another following, the disciples grouped around — the 
 Saviour approached the Holy City. It was no seditious 
 movement of political indignation ; it was no insulting 
 vanity of self-asserting pre-eminence. It was but the 
 triumph of the poor; it was but the lowly pomp of 
 One who rode to die. The haughty Gentiles ridiculed 
 the very record of it and ; yet, beside the tragic 
 grandeur of its real majesty, what king's or consul's 
 triumph has had one tithe of such power to move the 
 heart ? 
 
 At the time, however, even the disciples did no' L under- 
 stand it, nor did they recall till afterwards the prophecy 
 
TOO LATE. 119 
 
 of Zechariah about " the king meek and bringing salva- 
 tion, lowly and riding upon an ass." They expected 
 something wholly different from what occurred ; they 
 still hankered for some material victory. Would He not, 
 even now, restore the kingdom to Israel ? Had not the 
 demons discerned Him, and fled His gaze ? Had not 
 heaven recognised Him, and lit her stars? Had not 
 earth known Him, and hushed her winds ? Had not the 
 rough sea heard Him, and stilled his waves? Why 
 should not the humble Prophet of the poor now burst 
 forth as the irresistible avenger of the mighty? Why 
 should He not, even now, change the ass's colt for the 
 chariots of God which are twenty thousand, and, amid 
 the rushing of congregated wings, drive down in thunder 
 upon insulting Roman and apostate priest? Had not 
 the supreme moment come ? Did not the hand point to 
 the hour on the dial-plate of heaven ? 
 
 Yes ! the moment had come : yes ! the hand pointed 
 to the hour, — but not as they hoped. — The road from 
 Bethany slopes up the Mount of Olives, through green 
 fields and shady trees, till, as it suddenly sweeps round 
 towards the north, Jerusalem, which has hitherto been 
 hidden, bursts full upon the view. Many a traveller has 
 reined his horse upon that memorable spot with feelings 
 too deep for speech. But the Jerusalem of that day, — 
 as Jesus saw it under the burning flood of vernal sun- 
 
120 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 shine, wrapped in its imperial mantle of proud towers, — 
 the Jerusalem whose massive ramparts and lordly palaces 
 made it a wonder of the world, — was a spectacle incom- 
 parably more magnificent than the decayed and crumb- 
 ling city of to-day. And as there, — through the transparent 
 atmosphere, — towering above the deep umbrageous val- 
 leys which surrounded it,— the city reared into the morn- 
 ing sunlight its multitudinous splendours of marble pin- 
 nacle and golden roofs, — was there no pride, no gladness, 
 in the heart of its true King? Far otherwise. An in- 
 describable sorrow seized Him. He paused. The pro- 
 cession halted. All the tumult of acclaim was hushed. 
 The glad cries sank into silence. And, as Jesus gazed, 
 a rush of Divine sorrow and compassion welled up from 
 His inmost heart. He had dropped silent tears at the 
 grave of Lazarus ; here, over fallen Jerusalem, He wept 
 aloud. Five days afterwards, all the shame of His 
 mockery, all the anguish of His torture, were unable to 
 extort from Him one single sob, or to wet His eyelids 
 with one trickling tear; but now an infinitude of yearning 
 pity and trembling love over-mastered His whole spirit, 
 and He not only wept, but burst into a passion of lament- 
 ation in which the choked voice seemed to struggle for 
 utterance. — Strange Messianic triumph ! Mournful in- 
 terruption of those exultant Hosannas ! As He gazed on 
 David's Sion, — as He stood before the Jerusalem of the 
 
TOO LATE. 121 
 
 prophets and the kings, — the King, the Deliverer, the 
 Son of David, wept ! 
 
 And why ? — At His feet the olives were flinging their 
 broad shadows over green Gethsemane, the scene of His 
 coming agony, — but it was not that. Opposite Him, on 
 the rocky plateau beyond the Kidron, Calvary was wait- 
 ing for His cross of torture, — but it was not that. Nay, 
 but it was something which no eye saw but His. For 
 He was gazing, with the eagle glance of prophecy, on a 
 scene far different from that which met His actual gaze. 
 What He saw was, not a fair and holy city, sitting, like 
 a lady of kingdoms, upon her virgin heights, — but a city 
 cowering, abject, degraded, desolate. To Him the 
 faithful city has become a harlot. Her gold has become 
 dross ; her wine mixed with water ; and now her hour 
 had come. In the Jerusalem that was — the glittering 
 Jerusalem of the days of Herod and Tiberius — He saw, 
 down the dim vista of fifty years, the Jerusalem that was 
 to be — the desecrated Jerusalem of the days of Titus. He 
 saw those lordly towers shattered, — those umbrageous trees 
 hewn down, — that golden sanctuary polluted, — Judaea 
 Capta a desolate woman, weeping under her palm-tree 
 amid her tangled hair. In the flush of the existing 
 prosperity He foresaw the horrors of the coming retri- 
 bution. The eye of His troubled imagination beheld 
 the 600,000 corpses carried out of those city gates ; — the 
 
122 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 wretched fugitives crucified by myriads around those 
 walls; — the priests, swollen with hunger, leaping madly 
 into the devouring flames, until those flames had done 
 their purging, scathing, avenging work, and what had 
 been Jerusalem, the holy, the noble, was but a heap of 
 ghastly ruins where the smouldering embers were half- 
 slaked in the rivers of a guilty nation's blood. 
 
 And as He saw it, — as this vision of the future rushed 
 red upon His gaze, — as He recalled the promise of peace 
 which the very name of the city breathed, and knew that 
 she would see peace again no more, — this Saviour whom 
 they rejected, whom they hated, whom they crucified, 
 cried aloud in a broken voice, and with eyes that streamed 
 with tears, " If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in 
 this thy day, the things that belong unto thy peace l* — " Ii 
 thou hadst known," — and indeed those words seemed to 
 summon up yet another picture, — not of Jerusalem as she 
 was, — not of Jerusalem as she was to be, — but of Jerusalem 
 as she might have been, — yes ! of a Jerusalem little less 
 glorious than her of the prophet's vision, descending out 
 of heaven with her walls of jasper and gates of pearl, — of 
 that Jerusalem about whom so many glowing hearts have 
 sung,— 
 
 " Oh happy harbour of the saints, 
 Oh sweet and pleasant soil, 
 In thee no sorrows may be seen, 
 No pain, no grief, no toil. 
 
TOO LATE. 123 
 
 " Thy houses are of ivory, 
 
 Thy windows crystal clear, 
 Thy tiles they are of beaten gold : 
 O would that I were there ! 
 
 " Right through the streets, with silver sound, 
 The flood of life doth flow ; 
 Upon whose banks, on either hand,. 
 The trees of life do grow." 
 
 Alas ! it was all a glorious " if" — a heart-rending " might 
 have been." It was as when a traveller stands on some 
 great misty mountain-top, — longing to gaze on the magni- 
 ficent expanse of city, and plain, and river, and the 
 rippling sea, — and for one moment, through one great 
 rent of the enshrouding mist, he looks on a fairy vision 
 bathed in sunlight and over-arched with iris, — but, almost 
 before he has seen it, the rent in the mist is closed once 
 more, and ragged and grey the clouds roll up, and he is 
 alone, and miserable, and chill, and disenchanted. Even 
 so was it with that momentary glimpse of the possible 
 Jerusalem ; it was. alas ! but a vanishing " might have 
 been," and 
 
 " Of all sad words of tongue and pen, 
 The saddest are those 'It might have been.' " 
 
 It might have been — but it was not ; it never would be 
 now ; and love, after doing all in vain, could only weep. 
 " If thou hadst known — even thou — at least in this thy 
 day — the things that belong unto thy peace ; " — if— and 
 
124 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 there sorrow suppressed the apodosis ; and when the sob 
 which broke His voice was over, He could only add, 
 " but now they are hid from thine eyes." 
 
 And herein, my brethren, lies the meaning of this scene 
 for us ; this is the lesson on which I would desire to fix 
 our hearts this evening. An awful lesson ! There, before 
 the Saviour's gaze of tears, lay a city, splendid apparently 
 and in peace, and destined to enjoy another half-century 
 of existence. And the day was a common day; the 
 hour a common hour: no thunder was throbbing in the 
 blue unclouded sky ; no deep voices of departing deities 
 were rolling through the golden doors : and yet, — soundless 
 to mortal ears in the unrippled air of Eternity, — the knell 
 of her destiny had begun to toll : and, in the voiceless 
 dialect of heaven, the fiat of her doom had been pro- 
 nounced ; and in that realm which knoweth and needeth 
 not any light save the light of God, the sun of her moral 
 existence had gone down while it yet was day. — Were her 
 i means of grace over ? No, not yet. Was her Temple 
 closed ? No, not yet. Were her services impossible ? 
 No, not yet. The white-robed Levites still thronged her 
 courts j the singers still made the heavens ring with their 
 passionate litanies and silver Psalms ; the High Priest 
 yet sprinkled, year by year, the gold of the holiest altar 
 with the blood of unavailing sacrifice. No change was 
 visible in her to mortal eyes. And yet, for her, from 
 
TOO LATE. 125 
 
 this moment even unto the end, the accepted time was 
 over, the appointed crisis past, — the day of salvation had 
 set into irrevocable night. It was with her as with the 
 barren fig-tree, on which, next day, the Lord pronounced 
 His doom. The leaf of her national life was still glossy 
 green ; the sun still shone on her ; the rain fell ; the dew 
 stole down ; but the fruit would grow on her no more, 
 and therefore the fire was kindled for the burning, the 
 axe uplifted, which would crash on the encumbering 
 trunk. She was not spared for her beauty ; she was not 
 forgiven for her fame. And, if it were so with the 
 favoured city, may it not be so with thee, and thee, and 
 me ? What shall the reed of the desert do if even the 
 cedar be shattered at a blow ? — Yes : the lesson of the 
 tears of Jesus over Jerusalem, as she gleamed before 
 Him in the vernal sunshine, a gem upon her crown of 
 hills, is this : that, as for her, so for us, there may be a 
 too-late ; the door may be shut without a sound ; the 
 doom sealed without a sigh ; life may be over before 
 death comes. It is not — (oh mark this !) — it is not that 
 God loses His mercy, but that we lose our capacity for 
 accepting it : it is not that God hath turned away from 
 us, but that we have utterly paralysed our own power of 
 turning back to Him. And then the voice sighs forth 
 with unutterable sadness, "Ephraim is turned unto idols, 
 let him alone." Let him alone, O preacher, for he hates 
 
126 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 the words of truth ! let him alone, O Word of God, for 
 he has set his face as a flint against thee ! let him alone, 
 O Conscience, for he is bent on murdering thee ; his sins 
 have become not wilful only, but willing ; he has chosen 
 them, — let him have them. He has loved death more 
 than life, and lies rather than righteousness, and vice 
 more than virtue, and the world more than heaven, and 
 the lusts of the flesh rather than the law of God. And 
 the Spirit of God hath striven with him, and striven in 
 vain : all, all hath been in vain : let him alone : let him 
 eat of the fruit of his own works, and be filled with his 
 own devices. 
 
 O fearful voice of most just judgment ! and yet observe 
 further, as a still more solemn source of warning, that, at 
 the very instant when this dread fiat is sounding forth, 
 we may be all unconscious of it. Jerusalem knew not — 
 she was wholly unaware — that this was the last day of 
 her visitation. She had quenched the light of life, — but 
 dreamed not of the hastening midnight : she had silenced 
 the voice of warning, and suspected not that the hush 
 which followed was but the hush before the hurricane, — 
 the silence before the trumpet's sound. Sick — she knew 
 it not : dying — she knew it not. " Ephraim hath grey 
 hairs upon him, and he knoweth it not." It is, alas ! 
 ever thus. This is the very method of God's dealings 
 with us, — not by stupendous miracles, but by quiet warn- 
 
TOO LATE. 127 
 
 ings ; not by shocks of catastrophe, but by processes of 
 law. The Holy Light is but a beam shining quietly in 
 the darkness, easily strangled in the wilful midnight : the 
 pleading voice is but a low whisper amid the silence, 
 easily drowned in the tempest of the passions. And so, 
 though the day of grace has its fixed limits, and these 
 may be often narrower than the day of life, we neither 
 know what those limits are, nor when they are tran- 
 scended. Oh, my brethren, who knows whether this 
 very day may not be for us the day of our visitation ? 
 Now the door of repentance stands open, and heaven's 
 light streams through it ; — now in all love and gentleness 
 the voice of our Saviour calls j — now the Holy Spirit of 
 God still strives with us in our wanderings, still pleads 
 for us in our failures ; — now, but who shall say how long ? 
 not for ever : not, it may be, even all our lives : not even, 
 it may be, for many days. Oh, to-day if ye will hear His 
 voice, harden not your hearts. 
 
 The Silence and the Voices of God. p. 171. 
 
THE SOULS OF THE DEPARTED. 
 
 A S the first day of this month was the grand festival 
 of All Saints, so in past centuries the second of 
 November was set apart in honour of " All Souls." The 
 motives which led to its abolition were doubtless 
 adequate at the time, but yet we may be allowed to 
 regret its abandonment. Undoubtedly there was a 
 certain grandeur, a certain catholicity, a certain triumph- 
 ant faith, a certain indomitable hope in that ancient com- 
 memoration of the departed. It was the feast of All 
 Souls. It is true that it was originally intended only 
 for the faithful departed; for the souls in purgatory. 
 But in the title of the day at any rate there was no 
 exception made. On that day men might think, if 
 they would, of all the souls of all the innocent little 
 ones that have passed away like a breath of vernal 
 air since time began ; of all the souls which the great, 
 and the wise, and the aged have sighed forth in pain 
 and weariness after long and noble lives; of all the 
 souls of the wild races of hunters and fishermen in the 
 
THE SOULS OF THE DEPARTED. 129 
 
 boundless prairies or the icy floes*; of all the souls 
 that have passed, worn and heavy-laden, from the roar- 
 ing city-streets; of all the souls of those whose life 
 has ebbed away in the red tide of unnumbered battles, 
 or whose bodies have been dropped into the troubled 
 waves unknelled, uncofrlned, and, save to their God, 
 unknown; of all the souls even of the guilty, and of 
 the foolish, and of the miserable, and of those who have 
 rushed by wild self-murder into their Maker's presence. 
 All Souls' Day was a day of supplication for, of com- 
 memoration of, all these. For these too are souls that 
 He created ; into these too He breathed the breath of 
 life ; and all these lie in the hollow of His hand as the 
 snows of the countless water-lilies — whether white and 
 immaculate, or torn and stained — lie all on the silver 
 bosom of the lake. Yes, there is a grandeur and sub- 
 limity in the thought of all human souls, as one by one 
 they have passed away and been taken to the mercy 
 of the Merciful ; and a day might well have been set 
 apart to commemorate, in all humble reverence, their 
 awful immortality. Out finite imaginations may grow 
 dizzy at the thought of these infinite multitudes, — these 
 who at each ticking of the clock pass from the one 
 thousand millions of the living ; the tribes, the gener- 
 ations, the centuries, the millenniums, the aeons of the 
 dead ; all of which are but the leaves — green or fallen — 
 
WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 of the mighty Tree of Existence j — the wave after wave 
 of its illimitable tide. As we think of all these souls, 
 we recall the imagination of the great poet of the Inferno, 
 and seem to be gazing on a white, rushing, indistinguish- 
 able whirl of life, sweeping on and on and on, from 
 horizon to horizon, in ever-lengthening cycles and infinite 
 processions, endless, multitudinous, innumerable, as the 
 motes that people the sun's beam. To us, inevitably, 
 in this infinitude, all individuality is lost ; human numer- 
 ation reels at it. But it is not so with Him to whom is 
 known the number of the stars of heaven, and the sands 
 of the sea, and by whom 
 
 " Every leaf in every nook, 
 Every wave in every brook," 
 
 are heard as they sing forth their unending Paean all day 
 long. And knowing this, we are not appalled at the 
 thought of these vast multitudes, whose bodies are now 
 the dust of the solid earth, even though so many millions 
 of them have passed away in sin and sorrow, because 
 we can say with the Holy Psalmist of Israel, "O let 
 the sorrowful sighing of the prisoners come before Thee ; 
 according to the greatness of Thy power, save Thou those 
 that are appointed to die : so we, that are Thy people 
 and sheep of Thy pasture, shall give Thee thanks for 
 ever, and shall alway be showing forth Thy praise from 
 generation to generation." 
 
 Eternal Hope, p. 20. 
 
WHAT HEAVEN IS. 
 
 "/ believe in God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy 
 Ghost; I believe in the Communion of Saints, in the forgiveness 
 of sins, the Resurrection of the body, and the Life Everlasting." 
 
 \l\ Y brethren, we believe in Heaven : but what is Hea- 
 ven ? Our friends die — men die by myriads ; at 
 every ticking of the clock some fifty souls have passed 
 away ; — yet not a breath of sound shakes the curtain of 
 impenetrable darkness which hangs between us and the 
 unseen world. A fair child sighs away his innocent soul, 
 and in a moment, perhaps, 
 
 " He hath learnt the secret hid 
 Under either pyramid ; " — 
 
 but to his parents, in their agony, comes no faintest whis- 
 per from the intervital gloom. Not to one of all the 
 unnumbered generations whose dust is blown upon the 
 desert winds has it been permitted to breathe one syllable 
 or letter of the dim and awful secret beyond the grave. 
 And yet the faith of man has not been shaken, nor, for 
 all this deep, unbroken silence, has he ever ceased to 
 
 K 2 
 
132 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 believe that He who called us into being will bless, will 
 save, will cherish the souls which He hath made. We 
 feel sure He did not mean us merely " to be born weep- 
 ing, to live complaining, and to die disappointed," and 
 so cease to be, but that He has a new home for us in 
 other worlds. It is thzfact which we believe ; the details 
 are not revealed to us. And hence each race has fancied 
 its own ideal of heaven. The Greek had his Elysian 
 plains, where the Eidola — the shadowy images of the 
 dead — moved in a world of shadows ; and his Islands of 
 the Blest, where Achilles and Tydides unlaced the hel- 
 mets from their flowing hair. The Scandinavian dreamed 
 of his green Paradise hereafter amid the waste. Few 
 indeed have been the nations who have not imagined that 
 there remains for holy souls beyond the grave some 
 
 ' ' Island valley of Avilion, 
 Where falls not hail or rain, or any snow, 
 Nor ever wind blows loudly." 
 
 And all Christians, that they may be enabled to give 
 some form to that which cannot be uttered, have dwelt 
 with rapture on the glowing symbols of the poet of the 
 Apocalypse — the New Jerusalem descending out of hea- 
 ven from God, having the glory of God, and her light 
 like unto a stone most precious, even unto a jasper stone; 
 and the gates of pearl, and the foundations of precious 
 stones, and the pure river of the water of life, clear as 
 
WHAT HEAVEN IS. 133 
 
 crystal, and the Tree of Life, with its leaves for the heal- 
 ing of the nations. Symbols only, — yet exquisite sym- 
 bols of the poet's vision, which dull philosophies may 
 scorn, but in which a Dante and a Milton delighted ; 
 symbols which come back to us with the freshness and 
 the sweetness of childhood, as we sing the hymns, so 
 dear to Christian worship, of "Jerusalem the golden," or 
 " There is a land of pure delight." Yet even these sym- 
 bolic passages do not thrill the heart so keenly as others, 
 which speak with scarce a symbol, and simply tell of a 
 life without life's agonies, and the vision of God undark- 
 ened by mists of sin. "They shall hunger no more, 
 neither thirst any more ; neither shall the sun light on 
 them, nor any heat. For the Lamb that is in the midst 
 of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto 
 living fountains of waters ; t and God shall wipe away all 
 tears from their eyes." And if we need any symbols to 
 help us, they are symbols of transparent meaning ; green 
 meadows, where men may breathe God's fresh air, and 
 see His golden light ; glorified cities, with none of the 
 filth and repulsiveness of these, but where no foul step 
 intrudes ; white robes, pure emblem of stainless inno- 
 cence ; the crown, and the palm-branch, and the throne 
 of serene self-mastery over our spiritual enemies \ and 
 the golden harp, and the endless song, — which do but 
 speak of abounding happiness, in that form of it which is, 
 
134 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 of all others, the most innocent, the most thrilling, the 
 most intense. 
 
 What may be the physical conditions of Heaven we 
 cannot tell, and perhaps the very phrase may be mean- 
 ingless of that place where they neither marry nor are 
 given in marriage, but are as the angels of God. But so 
 far as Heaven is a place at all, its fundamental concep- 
 tion is that it is a place where sin is not. No guilty step 
 may pass the gates of pearl, no polluting presence fling 
 shadows on the golden streets. They who live there are 
 the angels, and just men made perfect, and the spirits of 
 the saints in light. And if we ever get there, we shall be 
 as they ; for to be there is to see the face of God, and to 
 see the face of God is to be changed into the same image 
 from glory to glory. There life's stains shall have been 
 purged away ; and the gold shall be mixed with dross no 
 longer, nor the fine gold dim. But oh, to have been 
 disenchanted utterly, for ever, from the low aims of the 
 world ! oh, to have been set free for ever from the yoke 
 of habit and the power of temptation ! oh, to desire only, 
 and to do only, what is good, without evil being ever pre- 
 sent to us ! oh, to do perfectly what here we have but 
 imperfectly attempted ! oh, to be what here we have only 
 seemed to be or wished to be ! oh, to be honest, true, 
 noble, sincere, genuine, pure, holy to the heart's inmost 
 core ! Is not that Heaven ? Is it not a state rather than 
 
WHAT HEAVEN IS. 135 
 
 a place ? is it not a temper rather than a habitation ? is 
 it not to be something rather than to go somewhere ? Yes, 
 this, this is Heaven. What more we know not. In other 
 stars, amid His countless worlds, for all we know God 
 may have work for us to do. Who knows what radiant 
 ministrations ; what infinite activities ; what never-ending 
 progress ; what immeasurable happiness ; what living 
 ecstasies of unimaginable rapture, where all things are 
 lovely, honourable, pure. This, this is Heaven ! And 
 why should we not believe that the God who is so good 
 to us hath such good things in store for all who love 
 Him ? All the good and true, all the pure and noble, 
 shall be there. And all on earth who have ever been 
 high and sweet and worthy, out of every tribe, and kin- 
 dred, and nation, and language, — ten thousand times ten 
 thousand, and thousands of thousands ! 
 
 Let us then labour to enter into that rest. For if, as 
 we Christians believe, Christ hath died to give us entrance 
 into such a Heaven as this, we must believe the same 
 Gospel which tells us, not obscurely, that it is not a 
 reward but a continuity, not a change but a development. 
 If we desire Heaven we must seek it here — if we love 
 Heaven we must love it now. Heaven means holiness; 
 " Heaven means principle;" Heaven means to be one 
 with God. 
 
 Eternal Hope, p. n. 
 
NO DISCHARGE IN THE WAR AGAINST 
 SIN. 
 
 Eccles. VIII. 8. 
 " And there is no discharge in that zvar." 
 
 F^VEATH is the immediate enemy spoken of in this 
 verse; but the language of all Scripture, from 
 Genesis to Revelation, warrants us in extending its 
 meaning to every enemy who assaults the peace of man 
 or the life of nations, and, above all, to Sin — to that 
 spiritual wickedness of which the world's ruin was the 
 immediate result, which gives to the grave its victory, and 
 to death its sting. 
 
 The war, then, in which there is no discharge is the 
 war against Sin. It is this holy war of which Scripture is 
 full. Not only were many of its saints actual warriors, 
 but, with a signal and startling frequency of recurrence, 
 its very metaphors are chosen from the scenes and 
 images of war. How is the Christian's life described ? 
 He is to stand fast in the conflict ; he is to war a good 
 
NO DISCHARGE IN THE WAR AGAINST SIN. 137 
 
 warfare ; Christ is to be the captain of his salvation. 
 Though the weapons of his warfare are not carnal, they 
 are weapons still — the armour of God, the armour of 
 light, the armour of righteousness j righteousness is to 
 be his breastplate, and faith his shield, and salvation his 
 helmet, and his sword is to be the sword of the Spirit, 
 which is the Word of God. His hope in the present is 
 to be victory, through God's grace, over the world, the 
 flesh, and the devil ; and in the future, victory over the 
 thraldom of death, and the dust and darkness of the 
 grave. Life, then, is of necessity a battle-field; and 
 hence it is, that even the innocent and new-born babe is 
 ushered into the militant Church with the watchword of 
 strife ; over the smiling features and on the baby brow 
 we sprinkle the baptismal dew, and "do sign him with 
 the sign of the cross, in token that hereafter he shall 
 not be ashamed to confess Christ crucified, and manfully 
 to fight under His banner against sin, the world, and 
 the devil; and to continue Christ's faithful soldier and 
 servant unto his life's end." 
 
 History, too, is a battle, and its greatest men have 
 been fighters. Such, in Scripture, were Gideon, and 
 Barak, and Samson, and Jephthah, and David; such 
 were the great Maccabean princes, such were many of 
 the Christian legions of Constantine, and the holy 
 warriors of Christendom ; such were many of the iron 
 
138 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 soldiers of the Commonwealth, and of the stout 
 Covenanters of Cameron j and such, thank God, have 
 been and are many and many of the gallant soldiers of 
 England, both of those who are living now, and of those 
 whose graves, like the graves of Vicars and Havelock, 
 lie far away on the bleak shores of the Euxine or under 
 the burning sun of Hindostan. Nor are soldiers the 
 only heroes. In Scripture, Samuel and the prophets are 
 ranked with warriors and kings. St. Paul, the gentlest- 
 hearted of men, of an affection well-nigh womanly in its 
 tenderness, and with a voice which breaks with tears, 
 fought with lions, and with men fiercer than lions, and 
 chose as the fit expression for the close of a long career, 
 " I have fought a good fight." For, even in history, the 
 fight against bigotry, and ignorance, and error — against 
 evil customs, and favourite idols, and victorious lies — is 
 a harder and a deadlier fight, and requires a more daunt- 
 less courage and a more unshaken faith, than the fight 
 against armed hosts. And such warrior-heroes have 
 been all the glorious army who came out of great 
 tribulation, and washed their robes, and made them 
 white in the blood of the Lamb. Such heroes were 
 many of the fathers, and martyrs, and confessors of the 
 Church in every age. Ay, and it is not too much to 
 say that you will not find one great man, in our own or 
 any history, who did not fight in the teeth of clenched 
 
NO DISCHARGE IN THE WAR AGAINST SIN. 139 
 
 antagonisms with the stern courage of a heart that could 
 dare dauntlessly in the cause of God, or of freedom, or 
 of truth. 
 
 Think not that that Divine teaching of Christ's 
 Sermon on the Mount contradicts any one word of 
 truths like these. " Blessed are the peacemakers ; " yet 
 he who loves peace most must fight for it, when the 
 need has come ; and as for gentleness and love, would 
 they even be possible without the warm spirit of scorn 
 for that which is contemptible, and detestation for what 
 is wrong ? Many of our best and most resistless fighters 
 have been men whose hearts could tremble with the 
 tenderest pity at the wrongs done to a dumb animal, 
 and blaze out with the fiercest wrath at him who should 
 cause the tears of a woman, or the wailing of a child. 
 As the spirit of the lightning lies in the dewdrop, so a 
 power of righteous anger often slumbers in the noblest 
 breasts, like a fire of God, side by side with meekness 
 and compassion. Even in Him our Lord, our Teacher, 
 our Saviour, our Divine Example, in dwelling on His 
 forgiveness, His lowly-heartedness, His longsurTering, 
 His love, His patience, forget not that there was another 
 side to His character as well. He who wept at the grave 
 of Lazarus also knotted a scourge of small cords, and 
 overturned the tables of the money-changers, and drove 
 forth those who had made the House of His Father a 
 
140 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 den of thieves. He whose love would have gathered 
 the children of Jerusalem together as a hen gathereth 
 her chickens under her wings, yet scathed and laid bare 
 the seared consciences of Priest and Pharisee, and 
 dropped the molten lead of His scorn and indignation 
 upon the souls of the formalist and the hypocrite. He 
 who, out of His great love for all mankind, never shrank 
 from touching the white sores of the leper, and who 
 suffered the penitent harlot to weep her hot tears upon 
 his feet, and wipe them with the hairs of her head, yet 
 faced unflinchingly the fury of an excited synagogue, and 
 sent back a contemptuous message to a reckless and 
 blood-stained king. 
 
 We have need, then, of the dauntless spirit and the 
 tried nerve of the soldier, even in the Christian's course. 
 Easy, indeed, it were to slink through life, lapped in 
 silken effeminacies, never to strike a blow for hated 
 truths, never to stand by a maligned man, or an un- 
 popular opinion, never to face obloquy, never to defy 
 ridicule, never to brave opposition, never to smite at 
 folly, never to confront tyranny, never to denounce 
 injustice, never to rebuke vice. It were easy to spend 
 our lives in getting food and clothing, and in hoarding 
 our little dues of money, or in using it for such paltry 
 comforts and mean enjoyments as we are fit for — 
 forgetting all but our petty selves, forgetting that we 
 
NO DISCHARGE IN THE WAR AGAINST SIN. 141 
 
 are Christians and citizens, forgetting that we are 
 Englishmen, forgetting the blood and race of which we 
 came. Yes, easy and common too, but for all that 
 contemptible. Let us never dignify such wretched 
 selfishness by the name of Christian quietude, or deck 
 out our slavish pusillanimity in the guise of religion. 
 He to whom the whole round of heaven and earth is 
 shut up in his farm or his merchandise, is only fit to 
 live as a traitor or a slave. But he who would be a good 
 soldier of God, and the worthy citizen of a glorious and 
 Christian land, if there be in his spirit one spark of what 
 is noble, or generous, or manly, must, when occasion 
 comes — whether it be for God, or for truth, or for pity, 
 or for right, or for home and native land — must, I say, 
 when the occasion comes, fight, and fight hard — strike, 
 and strike home. Let no one dare to disintegrate 
 Christianity from that manliness, that freeborn courage, 
 which in the ancient languages is the very synonym of 
 virtue, and which is the might and glory of a man. 
 Timidity is no Christian virtue, but the fitting legacy left 
 by sin and shame. Let the cheat, and the liar, and the 
 drunkard, and the adulterer be haunted through a 
 shivering life by the phantoms of remorse and fear ; to 
 the Christian soldier belong the high glance, and the free 
 carriage, and the fearless soul. " The wicked flee when 
 no man pursueth ; but the righteous is bold as a lion." 
 
142 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 The meekness of the Christian must never bear the 
 brand of the coward; nor should we suffer the servants 
 of Satan to boast and swagger, as though all the daring 
 and all the strength were theirs alone. 
 
 My brethren, and you, above all, young men, who 
 walk in the pride of your strength, hardly knowing as 
 yet how many are the snares and pitfalls of life, believe 
 me, this is no easy battle — believe me, it is a warfare in 
 which there is no discharge. To live lives of heroic 
 devotion to all that is brave, and honest, and true — to 
 live in temperance, soberness, and chastity — to avoid 
 those dark and slippery ways which are the ways of 
 death, and that alluring banquet where the dead, and 
 those who are hated of God, are guests — to be in such 
 charity with all men as to scorn all petty malignities, 
 whether of word or deed — to loathe every form and 
 shape of impurity or falsehood — to love the Lord Jesus 
 Christ with all our hearts, and never to grieve the Holy 
 Spirit of God by sin wilfully indulged— this is the hardest 
 of all tasks, the longest and the sternest of all toils. To 
 this, as God's minister, I exhort you ; to this, not God's 
 ministers only, but your own consciences, which speak 
 with the voice of God within you, and the words of 
 Scripture, and the lessons of life, and the hopes of 
 immortality. Oh, shut not your ears to these voices of 
 God. Resolve, if you have not done so hitherto, resolve 
 
NO DISCHARGE IN THE WAR AGAINST SIN. 143 
 
 this day to be true and pure, and to fight manfully under 
 your Saviour's banner against the world, the flesh, and 
 the devil. If in that warfare there be no discharge, 
 nevertheless in that struggle there is no failure; and 
 thus, more than by any service, will you be the living 
 columns of your country's prosperity. 
 
 The Fall of Man, p. 214. 
 
THE DEAD WHICH DIE IN THE LORD. 
 
 Rev. xiv. 13. 
 " And their ivorks do follow them" 
 
 ~P0 those who can read it aright, few books are more 
 full of sublime comfort, — few books are more illum- 
 inated with the glory of a heavenly hope, — than the 
 Revelation of St. John. To any one who reads this 
 book with a quiet and truth-loving heart, it is full of the 
 most unspeakable wisdom. Marvellous indeed was the 
 vision unrolled before the eyes of him whose young head 
 had rested on the bosom of the Lord ! From the sul- 
 phurous mine, from the rugged island, from the loneliness 
 of exile, from the convict's company and the felon's 
 chain, he is raised into the very presence of the mightiest 
 Immortalities; the glorious spectacle of innumerable 
 multitudes sweeps before him, and the hymns of the 
 highest heaven melt in their speechless sweetness upon 
 his mortal ears. True it is that there are other scenes 
 
THE DEAD WHICH DIE IN THE LORD. 145 
 
 which he must witness ; — the seven great plagues, and 
 the seven vials full of wrath, the woe-trumpets, and the 
 scorpion army, and Death riding on his livid horse, and 
 the judgment of her who was drunken with the blood of 
 + he prophets, and "the hues of earthquake and eclipse." 
 But mingled ever with these scenes of Retribution, — 
 preceding and following and out-dazzling them, — are the 
 visions of the Lamb and the Lion, and the white-robed, 
 palm-bearing procession of happy human souls, and the 
 crowned elders, and the victor angels, and Jerusalem the 
 Golden descending out of heaven with its walls of jasper 
 and gates of pearl. Fitly indeed do the melodies of this 
 book rest last upon our ears ; fitly does it close the gate 
 of Revelation, which alone displays to man one brief 
 glimpse of the glories of Paradise. When life is weary 
 and sad, when sorrow and selfishness are oppressive, 
 when aspirations wax feeble and hope grows faint, I 
 know no book so well fitted as this dying strain of 
 Revelation to raise, to ennoble, to purify, to cheer. 
 
 It is from one of these awfully intermingled visions 
 that the words of my text are taken ; from that grand 
 poem contained in the 14th chapter. First, amid voices 
 like the sound of thunders and of many waters, St. John 
 hears the voice of harpers harping with their harps, — 
 the virgin multitude on whose forehead is the Lamb's 
 seal ; then an angel flies through the midst of heaven 
 
 
t 4 6 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 having the Everlasting Gospel in his hand; a second 
 angel cries aloud, " Fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great ; " 
 a third angel tells how the torment of them who worship 
 the beast shall ascend like smoke for ever ; — and then 
 the end of the chapter is like a garment rolled and 
 drenched in the blood of wrath ; a crowned and awful 
 figure is sitting on a white cloud, who thrusts his sharp 
 sickle into the harvest, and wrings and tramples the 
 blood of judgment from the purple clusters of earth until 
 the horrid seas of blood are rolling for a thousand fur- 
 longs bridle-deep ; — but in the very midst, between the 
 denunciation and the vengeance, as though a dove were 
 floating over the waves of that crimson deluge, a voice 
 falls from heaven, — a sweet single voice like a falling 
 star in a dark night, saying unto me, "Write, Blessed 
 are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth : 
 Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their 
 labours ; and their works do follow them." 
 
 Ah ! how often have we heard those words as we laid 
 our best-beloved under the sod. 
 
 There is perhaps no book from which we may learn 
 so much about the condition of the dead as from the 
 Book of Revelation. But after all it is but one little 
 corner of the curtain that is lifted ; let those who will lift 
 it more if they can, and strive to peer behind it. For 
 us let it be enough that the dead, as well as the living, 
 
THE DEAD WHICH DIE IN THE LORD. 147 
 
 are in God's hand. I ask no more. I know no more. 
 I pretend to know no more. For us too the veil shall 
 be one day drawn, and we too shall know. Till then, as 
 one who from the shore watches a friend sail away 
 towards the sunset, and the vessel sinks behind a round 
 of lighted sea, and the sacred darkness follows, even so 
 we look after the dead, and know little or nothing of the 
 new, strange regions which they have sought. 
 
 This verse calls us to consider the dead, not in their 
 new condition, but in their immortal memory; not as 
 what they are in death, but as what they were in life ; 
 and not the dead generally, but the dead who die in the 
 Lord, that is, the noble dead. I say the noble dead, not 
 the useless and the worthless dead, — " for the hope of 
 the ungodly is like dust that is blown away with the 
 wind ; like a thin froth that is driven away with the 
 storm ; like as the smoke which is disturbed here and 
 there with the tempest ; but the righteous live for ever- 
 more, their reward also is with the Lord, and the care of 
 them with the Most High." 
 
 And mark ! it says that they are blessed that they may 
 
 rest from their labours. It does not contemplate the 
 
 possibility of any dead, i. e. of any blessed dead, who 
 
 have not laboured. He whose sweet voice fell from 
 
 heaven, bearing comfort to the mourning souls of earth, 
 
 He knew of none such. There are none such. " Sweet 
 
 l 2 
 
1 48 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 is rest when work is done." But if there have been no 
 work there can be no rest. It was the first law that God 
 gave in Eden, Work ; — it is the last blessing that He 
 utters, Enter, now that thy work is over, into thy rest. 
 Here is thy place of work : the great garden of the earth 
 to be tilled ; the great vineyard of the earth to be tended, 
 and its fruits rendered, and its waste places cleared. Work, 
 till death release thee ; then shalt thou have earned, thus 
 only canst thou obtain, thus only couldst thou enjoy, thy 
 rest. For the idle, for the useless, for the self-indulgent, 
 there is no place in heaven. Dante says, 
 
 " For not on downy plumes, or under shade 
 Of canopy reposing, heaven is won." 
 
 O how pitiful, how dreary, how unutterably despicable 
 will appear, when the end cometh, a life spent in doing 
 nothing ; — how dreary, when the end cometh, will appear 
 the life of the worldling and the sluggard, the life of the 
 unlit lamp and the ungirded loin, the life of the buried 
 talent and the neglected vine ! 
 
 " Their works do follow them." Not necessarily 
 works which the world calls great; not necessarily works 
 which the world ever hears of at all. What is there 
 in the letters of a man's name being handed down 
 here on earth if they be unforgotten by the Angel- 
 witnesses? O my brethren, let us strive rather to be 
 forgotten on earth, if thereby we may be remembered 
 
THE DEAD WHICH DIE IN THE LORD. 149 
 
 in heaven. I stood once in a little church in Rome, 
 dedicated to St. Stephen, the earliest martyr, opened 
 once a year only, on his day, and bearing on its 
 frescoed walls the memory of that glorious Christian army 
 who fell in the earliest persecutions. With but one or 
 two exceptions their names are utterly unknown. Stand- 
 ing in such a place it was impossible not to think what 
 work these men had done, and what reward they had 
 received. What had they done? They had "through 
 faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained 
 promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the 
 violence of fire, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight 
 the armies of the aliens;" in a word, they had Chris- 
 tianised the world. This is what they had done; and 
 how had they been rewarded? By trial of cruel mock- 
 ings and scourgings, by bonds and imprisonment, by being 
 stoned, by being sawn asunder, by being tempted, by 
 being slain with the sword, — by being destitute, afflicted, 
 tormented, — in a word, by being obscurely huddled into 
 malefactors' graves. Yet, standing in the very midst of 
 those ghastly memorials of forgotten names, was it not 
 possible to see that their honoured blood had been the 
 seed of the Church; — that their monument was more 
 perdurable than the very pyramids ; — that their works had 
 followed them ? Against them were kings, and emperors, 
 and armies, — the flame of the stake, and the wild beast 
 
WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 of the arena, and the torture of the executioner ; but God 
 was for them, and His whole blue heaven was their shield 
 and though men obliterated their poor memories from 
 every earthly record, and trampled out their lives with 
 crushing scorn, all the powers of the banded universe 
 were impotent against them whose names were written 
 in the Book of Life. 
 
 Has all this nothing to do with ourselves ? Is it those 
 only who are great, or those only who are splendidly 
 good, whose works do follow them ? God forbid. What 
 are among these works ? Are there not, as He Himself 
 has told us, such little things as the widow's mite, and 
 the cup of cold water given for His sake ? There is a 
 greatness in unknown names, there is an immortality of 
 quiet duties, attainable by the meanest of human kind ; 
 and when the Judge shall reverse the tables many of 
 these last shall be the first. Do not be dazzled by the 
 world's false judgments. The slave is often nobler than 
 the sovereign, and the common soldier than the general. 
 Yes, because they have done their obscure duty, their 
 unknown, unnamed, unhonoured, unrewarded duty, be- 
 \ \ cause it is their duty, and done it well. Nor is it other- 
 wise on the battle-field of life. There is, believe me, yet 
 a higher and a harder heroism j — to live well in the quiet 
 routine of life, to fill a little space because God wills it, 
 to go on cheerfully with a petty round of little duties, 
 
 • 
 
THE DEAD WHICH DIE IN THE LORD. 151 
 
 little avocations; to accept unmurmuringly a low position ; 
 to be misunderstood, misrepresented, maligned, without 
 complaint ; to smile for the joys of others when the 
 heart is aching j to banish all ambition, all pride,'"and all 
 restlessness in a single regard to our Saviour's work. To 
 do this for a lifetime is a greater effort, and he who does 
 this is a greater hero, than he who for one hour stems a 
 breach, or for one day rushes onward undaunted in the 
 naming front of shot and shell. His works will follow 
 him. He may not be a hero to the world, but he is one 
 of God's heroes ; and though the builders of Nineveh 
 and Babylon be forgotten and unknown, his memory 
 shall live, and shall be blessed, and he shall sit down 
 before earth's noblest and mightiest at the marriage 
 supper of the Lamb. 
 
 TIu Fall of Man, p. coo 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 11 T KNOW that ye seek Jesus who was crucified. He 
 is not here ; He is risen, as He said." So spake the 
 sweet angel voices to those devoted women whose love 
 made them the last beside the cross of Jesus, and the 
 earliest at His tomb. So spake the sweet angel voices, 
 and their words roll to us with the Divine echoes of joy 
 and hope over the long interspace of 1800 years. Hardly 
 less sweet are these memories of Christ's Resurrection to 
 us who have reached the age of manhood or declining 
 years, than are the merry bells and blithe carols that tell 
 of the Nativity to the mirthful and the young. To them 
 in the bright morning of life belong especially the re- 
 joicings which fitly commemorate that holy infancy of 
 Jesus, so full of favour with God and man : to us, who 
 have all drunk some drops of His bitter cup, and felt 
 some sparks of His fiery baptism, belong rather the 
 triumphs and the hopes which, as our years draw onward 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 153 
 
 and pass into the ever-deepening shade, remind us, with 
 stronger significance, that our Lord and Master died as 
 we must soon die, and that He put His foot upon the 
 skull of death, that He might still the groan of a travail- 
 ing creation, and take from us all dread of the conquered 
 foe. 
 
 We are told that most savage nations live in a constant 
 horror of death ; their life is one long flight from it ; it 
 poisons their happiness ; it bursts like a ghastly phantom 
 upon their moments of peace. It is not death the agony 
 that they shudder at, though there may be something 
 terrible in that, but death the mystery, and "next to 
 God the most infinite of mysteries ; " death that slips 
 the last cable of the soul, and sets it afloat on the shore- 
 less sea of an eternal world ; there it is that lies for them 
 "the mute, ineffable, voiceless horror before which all 
 human courage is abashed." Can you wonder at this 
 continuous dread ? They know of no world beyond the 
 grave, and what would life be without the trust in that ? 
 How purposeless and mean, how weary and hopeless ; 
 a journey leading nowhither; a gate opening upon 
 nothing; a ship sent forth only that she may founder 
 upon the bare unknown deeps. Look steadily at life, 
 and consider what it is : how changeful, how short, how 
 sorrowful. A light and thoughtless youth, of which the 
 beauty and brightness pass rapidly away ; and after that, 
 
154 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 chance, and change, and bereavement; cravings that 
 meet with no fulfilment ; the dying away of hopes, the 
 disappointment of ambition, — a disappointment, perhaps, 
 more bitter when it is gratified than when it fails ; the 
 struggle for a livelihood, the cares of a family, the 
 deceitfulness of friendship, the decay and weakness of 
 health and the faculties, as inevitable old age comes on ; 
 and all the while heard at every silent interval with a 
 plainness that creeps along the nerves, as though our 
 ears caught the pacing of some ghostly tread in the far- 
 off corridors of some lonely haunted house — all the while 
 the monotonous echoing of death's mysterious footfall, 
 heard louder and louder, as day by day he approaches 
 nearer and yet more near. And all this for so short a 
 time that our petty schemes are broken off perpetually 
 like a weaver's thread. "And is this all? Is this then 
 the period of our being ? Must we end here ? Did we 
 come into the world only to make our way through the 
 press, amid many jostlings and hard struggles, with at 
 best only a few brief deceitful pleasures interspersed, and 
 so go out of it again ? " Alas for man if this were all, 
 and nought beyond, oh earth ! 
 
 And then again, if there be no resurrection of the 
 dead, how infinitely pathetic, how quite unspeakably 
 heart-rending, would be the phenomena of death itself. 
 " If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain ; and 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 155 
 
 your faith is also vain ; and we are found false witnesses 
 of God ; and ye are yet in your sins ; and " — all this is 
 terrible enough, but mark the pathos of the climax, a 
 pathos too deep for tears — " and then they also that are 
 fallen asleep in Christ are perished." Perished ! what 
 a world of desolate anguish, what sighs of unutterable 
 despair, lie hid in that strange word. 
 
 Many of you will have read the famous vision of him 
 who saw a bridge of threescore and ten arches, which 
 spanned the rolling waters of a prodigious tide, and how 
 the Genius said to him, "The bridge thou seest is 
 Human Life ; consider it attentively." And as I looked 
 more attentively I saw several of the passengers dropping 
 through the bridge into the great tide that flowed under- 
 neath it; and upon examination perceived that there 
 were innumerable trap-doors, concealed in the bridge, 
 which the passengers no sooner trod upon, but they fell 
 through them into the tide and immediately disappeared. 
 My heart was filled with a deep melancholy to see 
 several dropping unexpectedly in the midst of mirth 
 and jollity, and catching at everything that stood by 
 them to save themselves. Multitudes were very busy in 
 the pursuit of bubbles that glittered in their eyes and 
 danced before them ; but often when they thought them- 
 selves within reach of them, their footing failed, and 
 down they sunk. "Alas!" said J, "man was made in 
 
156 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 vain ! how is he given away to misery and mortality ! 
 tortured in life, and swallowed up in death ! " 
 
 And consider how frightful it would then be to live, 
 as we are living, in a world, in a universe of death. 
 Frightful, if there be no resurrection ; but, thank God, 
 we believe i?i the resurrection of the dead. 
 
 Yes, Christ is risen. O how do those words change 
 the whole aspect of human life ! The sunlight that 
 gleams forth after the world has been drenched, and 
 dashed, and terrified with the black thunder- drops, re- 
 awakening the song of birds, and re-illuminating the 
 bloom of the folded flowers, does not more gloriously 
 transfigure the landscape than those words transfigure 
 the life of man. Nothing short of this could be our 
 pledge and proof that we also shall arise. We are not 
 left to dim intimations of it from the reminiscences of 
 childhood ; vague hopes of it in exalted moments j 
 splendid guesses of it in ancient pages ; faint analogies 
 of it from the dawn of day, and the renovation of spring, 
 and the quickened grain, and the butterfly shaking itself 
 free of the enclosing chrysalis to wave its wings in the 
 glories of summer light : all this might create a longing, 
 the sense of some far-off possibility in a few chosen 
 souls, but not for all the weary and suffering sons of 
 humanity a permanent and ennobling conviction, a sure 
 and certain hope. But Christ is risen, and we have it 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 157 
 
 now ; a thought to comfort us in the gloom of adversity, 
 a belief to raise us into the high privilege of sons of 
 God. What a hope, I say again, what a change in the 
 thought of life ! Bravely and happily let us walk through 
 this Dark Valley; for though the rocks overshadow, 
 and the Phantom haunts it, at the end of it is a door 
 of hope — a door of Immortality, that opens on the 
 gardens of heaven, and the trees and streams of life. A 
 dim, weary, troubled life here, perhaps, if God sees fit, 
 ended by a spasm, a struggle, an agony, — and then to 
 have the whole soul flooded by the sense of a newer 
 and grander being, and our tears wiped away by God's 
 own hand. This is the Christian's hope, and truly herein 
 Christ maketh us more than conquerors ; more than con- 
 querors, for we not only triumph over the enemy, but 
 profit by him, wringing out of his curse a blessing ; out 
 of his prison a coronation and a home. "It is sown in 
 corruption, it is raised in incorruption j it is sown in dis- 
 honour, it is raised in glory j it is sown in weakness, it is 
 raised in power ; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a 
 spiritual body." 
 
 The Fall of Man, p. 63. 
 
THE BLIGHTED LIFE. 
 
 TJ*OR a pastoral people, a people who lived under their 
 own vines and their own fig-trees, amid the luxuriant 
 herbage of rich valleys, or on the slope of hills whose 
 terraces were beautiful with the white flowers of the 
 almond and the silver leaves of the olive, — it must have 
 been a moment almost too terrible to conceive, when 
 first, in the quiet noon, they saw here and there a locust 
 dropping down upon their fields and vineyards. Eagerly, 
 almost wildly, they strained their eyes towards the horizon 
 to see if these few were the harbingers of more; and 
 when, far off on that horizon, they marked a black speck 
 ever spreading and spreading into a pitchy, rushing cloud, 
 we can barely imagine what agitation seized them ; how, 
 in the passionate language of the prophet Joel, whose 
 book is suggested and occupied by this terrible visitation, 
 the inhabitants of the land cried, and all faces did gather 
 blackness. Well might they cry : for the advent of the 
 locust was the advent of famine, of ruin, of despair ! 
 
THE BLIGHTED LIFE. 159 
 
 Nearer, nearer, nearer the dark cloud moved, until a 
 noise broke from it like the noise of chariots leaping 
 upon the hills ; and the very sun was hidden, and the 
 dense air shuddered with innumerable wings. Then 
 indeed they knew that the locust was upon the land ; 
 and that the noise and motion was the noise and motion 
 of their flight, more dreadful to the terrified husbandman 
 than the beating wings of the Angel of Death. The ex- 
 cited imagination of poet and prophet spoke of them as 
 God's great army : — an army irresistible as horsemen, 
 and devouring as flame, that no sword could wound, that 
 no walls could stay, — swift, and winged, and numberless, 
 — before whose camp the Lord God uttered His great 
 voice. But in truth it needed not the delirium of terror 
 to exaggerate their ravages. Where they came, farewell 
 to the pride of vintage and the hope of harvest, for the 
 corn was wasted and the new wine dried up : the fields 
 of the forest that had clapped their hands, and the valleys 
 that had laughed and sung in the sunshine and the rain, 
 were blackened and loathsome, so that the eye could 
 see no green thing, and every footfall crunched on the 
 griding scales of these crawling or dead invaders. The 
 very branches of the palm, the pomegranate, and the 
 apple-tree were bare; the seed was rotten under the 
 clods, and the once green fields were strewn with heaps 
 of putrescent death ; what their raging hunger spared, 
 
160 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 their touch and their foulness infected j their corrupting 
 swarms bred plague and pestilence ; their horrible fertility, 
 passing through various stages of existence, cut off even 
 the hopes of the future by the numberless multitude of 
 their multitudes ; the land was as the garden of Eden 
 before them, and behind them it was a desolate wilderness. 
 Yes ! the coming of the locusts was a day of the Lord ; 
 a day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds 
 and of thick darkness, a day of bitter and heart-rending 
 calamity, of which fathers would tell their children, and 
 children to the generations yet unborn. And, as all 
 things are double one against another, — as the types of 
 the physical have their antitypes in the spiritual world, — 
 so, is there not something of which the locusts are an 
 emblem, and which is yet more terrible than they? — a 
 mysterious something at which in our healthier state we 
 shudder, as though an evil spirit passed us in the dark- 
 ness; — a something dimly imaged by the canker that 
 blights all beauty, and the leprosy that eats away all life, 
 — a curse that broods over the green fields of humanity 
 like the shadow of a poisonous tree ? Ay, so it is ! 
 To him whose conscience of sin is afraid ; — to him whose 
 eyes are opened to see the unseen realities of the moral 
 world ; — to him who tries to see as the Saviour saw, and 
 who would judge not by the standard of man, but of his 
 Maker,— the fall of the first accursed locust on the smiling 
 
THE BLIGHTED LIFE. 161 
 
 plain is not one tenth-part so awful as the first little cloud 
 of evil that flung its shadow over the innocence of a still 
 youthful life, — of the life of each one here, while he was 
 yet young. To those angels who behold the face of our 
 heavenly Father, the first base word spoken without a 
 blush, — the first oath that profaned unwonted lips, the 
 first lie dictated by cowardice to screen delinquency, the 
 first duty wilfully neglected, — the first wicked thought 
 consciously harboured, and rolled like a sweet morsel 
 under the tongue, — the first tear called on a mother's 
 cheek, — the first pang caused to a father's heart, — the 
 first lapse into drunkenness or dishonour, — the first desire 
 to taste of the tree of the mystery of evil, and to be as 
 gods, and to whisper to the soul, Thou shalt not surely 
 die, — the first wilful act whereby the erring soul defies its 
 knowledge of that which is true and right, and lifts as it 
 were the banner in the armies of the enemies of God, — 
 these, these are the deeds which the holy ones chronicle 
 in their tablets of sorrow ; and these — far more than the 
 storm, and deluge, and ruin of the groaning and travailing 
 creation, — these far more than the ravage of the pestilence, 
 or the carnage of the fight — force from them "such 
 tears as angels weep." We may have forgotten it ;— to us 
 it may be hidden far back in the mists of memory, that 
 first word, that first act of conscious wickedness; — as 
 much as the first locust is forgotten when the myriads 
 
 M 
 
1 62 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 have come down ; — as much as the first spark on the dry 
 leaf is forgotten when it has wrapped the roaring prairie 
 and the primeval forest in the flame of its conflagration. 
 But they forget not, and God forgets not. He, who 
 foresees "in the green the mouldered tree," knows and 
 marks what sin it was that, first settling on the fair promise 
 of a young life, caused the root to be as bitterness, and 
 the blossom to go up as dust ; He sees the pregnant evil 
 grow and multiply, and leave the seeds of its destruction 
 to spring up into their deadly existence in future years, 
 until the field has been blighted into a wilderness, and 
 the soul, which is the garden of God, has become black 
 and noisome as the valley of Hinnom, and of Death. 
 Oh, my brethren, be not deceived, God is not mocked. I 
 know how lightly it is the fashion to think and speak of 
 sin : I know how lightly the young will don and wear 
 that gay robe, which shall cling to them hereafter and 
 tear their flesh like the poisoned tunic of fable : I know 
 how boldly and easily they will laugh away " the troubles 
 of the envious, and the fears of the cowardly, the heavi- 
 ness of the slothful, and the shame of the unclean ; ■ yet 
 I do not fear for a moment that any wise man will con- 
 sider the analogy too terrible ; if so, let him pause and 
 think whether it may not be because the veil is upon his 
 heart, and he has sunk into that stupor of worldly com- 
 fort, that living death rf spiritual apathy, that easy ac- 
 
THE BLIGHTED LIFE. 163 
 
 quiescence and tolerance of habitual sin, which is too 
 often the curse and disease of middle life. Alas ! I know 
 that in many a man, who has gone on long undisturbed 
 in guilt, the soul and the conscience " may die a natural 
 death" amid the dull comforts and occupations of the 
 world, until the very sense of guilt is gone, and sin to 
 him has lost all its sinfulness and all its shame. 
 
 Most of us, my brethren, are young no longer. Much of 
 our destined term of life lies already behind us, and silently 
 the chariot of the hours and days and weeks is rolling on, 
 and bearing us to a dark river and an unknown land, — 
 and bearing us by a path which we can never pass again. 
 For better or for worse, for good or for evil, a large and 
 memorable portion — and indeed for the moulding of no 
 small extent of our destiny by far the most important 
 portion — of our lives is over ; over for ever ; never to be 
 obliterated, never to be recalled. No man bathes twice 
 in the same wave ; no man lives twice in the same time. 
 The past has glided into the dim backward j for us it has 
 vanished for ever, and is but a decaying memory; for 
 God it hath been recorded for ever, and is an eternal, 
 indestructible reality. How has it been spent ? Has it 
 been composed of " years which the locust has eaten M ? 
 
 It is a solemn question ! For a few moments let us 
 turn our faces backwards, and gaze (a sad gaze even for 
 the best of us !) on the time past of our lives. We have 
 
 M 2 
 
164 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 reached those distant hills which once looked so blue and 
 bright, and now, disenchanted, let us look back from 
 these frosty and flinty steeps upon the region which 
 we have traversed. Is it not a blank for many of us ? 
 In forecast those years were like the garden of Eden 
 before us, — is not their retrospect for many of us a 
 desolate wilderness ? A fire burned before them, behind 
 them a flame devoureth. And is it not, is it not because 
 the locust army of our sins has settled on those fair 
 fields, which might still have been green and refulgent, 
 had our many good resolutions been any better than the 
 morning cloud or than the early dew ? The locust army 
 of our sins ; singly contemptible, collectively irresistible j 
 but whether singly or in multitudes, ruinous and abhorred. 
 Why is it that, for so many men, sadness lies in looking 
 back ? Why is it that they would give anything, short of 
 their very being, to recover those lost years ? Is it not 
 because their labour has been given to the locust, and 
 their fruit to the grasshopper? How often have we 
 prayed to be nobler, holier, better ! How often have we 
 determined to avoid this snare, and wrestle with that 
 temptation ! How often have we resolved to break off 
 the bad habit, and cut short the selfish career ! How 
 often, with stifled warnings of conscience, with forgotten 
 prayers, and violated resolutions, have we returned like 
 the dog to his vomit again, like the sow that was washed 
 
THE BLIGHTED LIFE. 165 
 
 to her wallowing in the mire ! Must there not be at 
 least some here for whom thoughts of sin have ripened 
 into wishes, and wishes been consummated in acts, and 
 acts hardened into habits, which are those rocks and bars 
 of the gate of hell which no hand save the hand of God 
 can burst ? — must there not be some for whom vice has 
 become graver sin, and sin against God has become 
 crime against m *nd, unknown it may be to all save 
 his own soul and to God, vice, and sin, and crime have 
 left all over the soul their darkening trails, obliterating 
 all that was beautiful, weakening all that was vigorous, 
 poisoning all that was pure, until it is as true of their 
 wasted lives as ever it was of the fields of Israel, that 
 "that which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust 
 eaten, and that which the locust hath left hath the canker- 
 worm eaten, and that which the cankerworm hath left 
 hath the caterpillar eaten " ? Is not this the reason why 
 there is so much of sad truth in the Arab proverb, that 
 the remembrance of youth is a sigh ? 
 
 Nothing is vainer than vain regret. It may be well 
 indeed sometimes to glance rapidly along the faultml 
 past; but unless we deliberately wish to fill our souls 
 with useless misery and dangerous despair, it is a mere 
 paralysing madness to dwell on it too long. Let us 
 turn away bravely and wisely ; let us turn to the hopeful 
 future from the helpless past. For what cause is it that 
 
166 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 God gives us the gift of time, if it be not that we 
 may repent therein? For us, if we have been sinners, 
 repentance is the work of life. Is the past dark ? be it 
 so ! There at least lies the future before us ; forward 
 then, and onwards ! it is as yet an innocent, it may be a 
 happy future ; it may be a noble future, a stainless future, 
 a godlike future ; take it with prayerful gratitude, and 
 fling the withered past aside. Once more sow the seed, 
 and plant the vineyard in the furrows of the contaminated 
 soil. Poor may be the aftermath, scant the gleaning of 
 grapes upon life's topmost branches that may be left for 
 thee : yet do thou thy best to redeem these from the locust 
 swarm. Do as Israel did when the locusts settled down. 
 They remembered the God who had once swept away 
 the locusts with a mighty wind, and drowned them by 
 myriads in the Red Sea waves. "Rend your hearts," 
 said the prophet, " and not your garments, and turn unto 
 the Lord your God ; for He is gracious and merciful, 
 slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth Him 
 of the evil ; " and they did turn and seek Him ; and then 
 mark God's gracious message to them, — "Fear not, O 
 land ; be glad and rejoice, for the Lord will do great 
 things. . . . And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the 
 vats shall overflow with wine and oil. And I will restore 
 to you the years that the locust hath eaten." 
 
 In one sense indeed they can never be restored ; fresh 
 
THE BUG FIT ED LIFE. 167 
 
 years we can have, " fresh fields, and pastures new ; " but 
 not the old ones, and not the lost riches they might have 
 blossomed with. Never can we be again as though we 
 had not sinned at all. Let us recognise this stern truth : — 
 The remission of sins, as you may read amid the shattered 
 ruins of many a life, is not the remission of their conse- 
 quences, nor are the perfect freedom and unvexed fear- 
 lessness of the innocent attainable by the guilty even 
 when they have been forgiven. In a day, in an hour, in 
 a moment we may destroy a character which on earth 
 can never be rebuilt. For how many men has the sin 
 of an instant proved the anguish of a life ! And even if 
 by God's grace the deadliness of the wounds be healed, 
 yet the unsightly scars must remain for ever on our souls, 
 and the malicious hand of merciless man will point to 
 them. But, thanks be to God, God is more tender, 
 more merciful, more longsurTering than miserable man. 
 Little need we reck of man, if God forgives us. And He 
 does forgive us. Even the memory of guilt He will alle- 
 viate. Sometimes, as we float down the river of life, 
 memory flashes up from the hidden depths, and the dark 
 wave is peopled with the innumerable faces of once for- 
 gotten sins, which menace us from the waters, and 
 prophesy of death. But God can enable us to gaze 
 unshudderingly on those faces, and say with thankful 
 emotion, " Those sins are not mine ; they were mine, but 
 
[68 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 they are forgiven. They were my heavy burden once, 
 but now they are nailed to my Saviour's cross. They 
 were written against me, but He has obliterated the record 
 with His own hand, pierced for me. Such things I did, — 
 but I am washed, but I am cleansed, but I am sanctified, 
 but I am purified." We may say, like the Queen in 
 the splendid tragedy, that " all old ocean's waters " could 
 not wash away the stain of our guiltiness ; and that "not 
 poppy nor mandragora nor all the drowsy syrups in the 
 world" could lull our diseased memories asleep; — ay, 
 true ! — but one drop of Christ's most precious blood can 
 cleanse us for ever ; one whisper of His " Peace, be still " 
 can silence the wrathful storms of an agitated conscience, 
 and give us songs in the midnight of despair ! 
 
 The Fall of Man. p. 228. 
 
WISDOM AND KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 Proverbs iv. 7. 
 
 «* Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom : and with ah 
 thy getting get understanding." 
 
 T 
 
 HERE are two features of the Book of Proverbs 
 which will immediately strike the most careless 
 reader ; one is the allusive contrast which runs through 
 its earlier chapters, the other is the constant connection 
 of Wisdom with Knowledge. Two voices are heard in 
 it, the voice of Prudence and the voice of Folly ; the 
 voice of Virtue and the voice of Pleasure j the pleading 
 of the virgin Innocence and the pleading of the harlot 
 Sense ; the enticements of a Passion earthly, sensual, 
 devilish, and the lofty invitations of a Wisdom which is 
 pure, peaceable, gentle, full of mercy and good fruits. 
 
 Subtle, and sweet, and perilous, and evanescent,-— 
 powerful only to the soul that forgets its God,— heard 
 only in the twilight, in the evening, in the black, dark 
 
170 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 night, an unhallowed song is suffered to break in upon 
 those solemn utterances ; a song, drowned almost from 
 the very beginning by the groans of the deluded and the 
 stern epitaph pronounced over the living dead : and 
 ever, overmastering that strain, shaming it into terrified 
 silence, chilling it into penitent despair — is heard that 
 other Voice, pure as the voices of the Seraphim, offering 
 peace and pleasantness in life, and hope and safety 
 beyond the grave, — an ornament of grace for the living, 
 a crown of everlasting remembrance and unfading glory 
 for the dead. 
 
 And while the praises of this heavenly Wisdom are 
 painted in such fair colours, — while its worth is set far 
 above rubies and crystal, the gold of Ophir, and the topaz 
 of Ethiopia, — it is, both in the Book of Proverbs and in 
 other parts of Scripture, united constantly with Know- 
 ledge. " In the night that God did appear unto Solomon, 
 He said unto him, Ask what I shall give thee. And 
 Solomon said unto God, Give me now wisdom and 
 knowledge. And God said unto Solomon, Wisdom and 
 knowledge is granted unto thee." They are not mere 
 synonyms. Knowledge may come when wisdom lingers ; 
 and, on the other hand, wisdom may exist in rich and 
 Divine abundance where knowledge is scanty and super- 
 ficial. And it is clear that, in Scripture, wisdom is the 
 loftier and the more sacred of the two. Take knowledge 
 
WISDOM AND KNOWLEDGE. 171 
 
 to mean the sum total of every magnificent endowment 
 and every extensive acquisition \ — let it involve not only 
 erudition, but insight ; not only information, but intel- 
 lect ; not only theoretical acquaintance, but practical 
 ability ; make it include, if you will, the power to think 
 as Plato thought, and to write as Shakespeare wrote ; 
 bestow it on one single mind with such brightness as 
 never yet illuminated the world, and reward it with a 
 splendour of reputation such as no man ever yet enjoyed, 
 — yet even then knowledge falls far, far below wisdom, 
 — below wisdom merged in obscurity; below wisdom 
 accompanied by ignorance ; below wisdom burdened 
 with every earthly calamity, and insulted by every human 
 scorn. Does not all history justify herein the estimate 
 of Scripture ? Have we not read of men whose heads 
 towered high above their contemporaries, who by elo- 
 quence, or song, or intellect have elevated and charmed 
 mankind, and yet of whom the humblest child, the most 
 ignorant pauper in the kingdom of heaven, is greater than 
 these ? Any age will furnish us with examples. Has not 
 God over and over again scattered penal blindness over 
 vaunted acquisitions, and, smiting a godless intellect with 
 a moral imbecility, has He not frustrated the tokens 
 of the liars, and made diviners mad? But why need 
 we dwell on the fact that intellectual eminence is no 
 preservative against moral infatuation, when God has 
 
172 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 written the same truth so large over the history of 
 nations ? 
 
 Wisdom, then, is the principal thing, therefore get wis- 
 dom. But what is wisdom ? The world gives the name 
 to many higher and lower manifestations of intellectual 
 foresight and practical sense, but Scripture sees in it 
 nothing save one single law of life. In that most mag- 
 nificent outburst of Semitic poetry, the 28th chapter 
 of the Book of Job, — after pointing out that there is 
 such a thing as a high and noble natural knowledge, 
 that there is a vein for the silver, and ore of gold, and a 
 place of sapphires, and reservoirs of subterranean fire v — 
 the Patriarch asks, " But where shall wisdom be found, 
 and where is the place of understanding ? " — and after 
 showing with marvellous power that it is beyond man's 
 unaided search, — that the Depths and the Sea say " It is 
 not in me," and Destruction and Death have but heard 
 the fame thereof with their ears,— then he adds, as with 
 one great thunder-crash of concluding music, " God under- 
 standeth the way thereof, and He knoweth the place thereof. 
 .... And unto man He said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, 
 that is wisdom ; and to depart from evil is understand- 
 tng" And again, " The fear of the Lord is the begin- 
 ning of wisdom." And again, he who, in the Book 
 of Ecclesiastes, rises step by step out of the dreary cynic- 
 ism of the sated worldling into the calm confidence of a 
 
WISDOM AND KNOWLEDGE. 173 
 
 godly hope, states as the conclusion no less than as the 
 commencement of the whole matter, " Fear God and 
 keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of 
 man ; " and in the Epistle of St. James, after the question, 
 " Who is a wise man, and endued with knowledge among 
 you ? " the answer is, not he who understandeth all mys- 
 teries, not he who can speak with the tongue of men or 
 of angels, but " Let him show out of a good conversation 
 his works with meekness of wisdom." 
 
 But, if this be so, perhaps some one may say, Is any 
 knowledge worth the attainment, save the one knowledge 
 which is wisdom ? If knowledge be full of difficulties, — 
 if, without charity, it puffeth up, — if he who increaseth it 
 increaseth sorrow, why then do we labour for it with such 
 sore travail ? We toil and toil, and perhaps in a moment 
 we fall ill, and in one day the flames of a fever calcine 
 for ever the tablets of the earthly memory, or in one 
 moment death comes upon us, and under its cold "hie 
 jacet" buries all that we have won. Or death comes to 
 another who has not laboured, and, as that impenetrable 
 curtain is drawn aside, there is revealed to him, as by a 
 single lightning-flash, secrets deeper ten thousand -fold 
 than those which we have wearied ourselves in the very 
 fire to win. Why strive then after that which death may 
 in a moment obliterate, or disease destroy ? Were it not 
 better done as others use — not indeed to waste life in 
 
174 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 indolent frivolity or shameful sloth, but to give it all to 
 prayer and penitence, to religious musings or charitable 
 works ? " Oh happy school of Christ," wrote Peter of 
 the Cells to a young disciple who had complained of the 
 weary seductions and splendid vices of the mediaeval 
 Paris,—" Oh happy school of Christ, where He teaches 
 our hearts with the word of power ; where the book is not 
 purchased nor the master paid. There, life availeth more 
 than learning, and simplicity than science. There, none 
 are refuted, save those who are for ever rejected, and one 
 word of final judgment, ' Be' or * VeniteJ decides all 
 questions and all cavils for ever." It was a natural 
 exclamation, but the answer to it is, that to the true 
 Christian every school will be a school of Christ. On 
 the ample leaf of knowledge, whether it be rich with the 
 secrets of nature or with the spoils of time, he will read 
 no name save the name of God. The great stone pages 
 of the world will have it carved upon them legibly, as on 
 the granite tables of Sinai, and stars will sing of it in 
 their courses, and winds blow and waters roll. Each 
 Science, each History, each Literature will be to him but 
 a fresh volume of Divine revelation. We were not meant 
 to leave those volumes clasped, or to suffer the book of 
 life to drop out of our idle hands unread. Rather would 
 we exclaim to each young student, as did the wise and 
 holy St. Edmund of Canterbury, " Work as though you 
 
WISDOM AND KNOWLEDGE. 175 
 
 would live for ever ; live as though you would die to-day." 
 To seek for knowledge where it is possible is the clear 
 duty of man ; to win it is the gift of God. " Give all 
 diligence to add to your faith Virtue, and to virtue 
 Knowledge." 
 
 The Silence and the Voices of God, p. 119. 
 
THE VOICE OF HISTORY. 
 
 "C* VERY great historian should be no dull registrar of 
 events, but a prophet, standing, like him of old, 
 amid the careless riot and luxurious banqueting of life, 
 and teaching men to decipher that gleaming message 
 of God, written, as with the fingers of a man's hand, on 
 the parliament of nations and the palaces of kings, that 
 what is morally just must be politically expedient, that 
 " what is morally wrong cannot be politically right." And 
 in doing this the Hebrew prophets have been our truest 
 teachers, nor have any teachers ever enforced that great 
 lesson with such Divine insight, with such unalterable 
 certitude, with such passionate intensity as they. Around 
 their little insignificant strip of plain, and hill, and valley, 
 towered the colossal kingdoms of a cruel and splendid 
 heathendom ; but to their enlightened eyes these, in their 
 guiltiness, were but phantoms on their way to ruin, casting 
 a weird and sombre shadow athwart the sunlit horizons of 
 
THE VOICE OF HISTORY. 177 
 
 a certain hope. What matter their force, their splendour, 
 their multitude, if they stand before the slow-moving 
 chariot of the Eternal God ? Is it the Kenite? " Strong 
 is thy dwelling-place, and thou puttest thy nest in a rock \ 
 nevertheless the Kenite shall be wasted." Is it Assyria? 
 11 The Lord, the Lord of Hosts, shall send among his fat 
 ones leanness, and kindle under his glory a burning fire." 
 Is it Egypt? Her wise magicians shall be smitten with 
 fatuity, and the papyrus of her rivers fade. Is it golden 
 Babylon, the city of the oppressor? The dead, moved 
 at his coming, ask her king with gibbering taunts, " Art 
 thou also become weak as we ? art thou become like unto 
 us ? " Is it purple Tyrus with her priceless merchan- 
 dise ? " Take a harp, go about the city, thou harlot that 
 hast been forgotten." And so with all. "The nations 
 shall rush like the rushing of many waters, but God shall 
 rebuke them ; and they shall flee far off, and shall be 
 chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, 
 and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind. And 
 behold at eveningtide trouble ; and before the morning 
 he is not." " This," exclaims the prophet in a flame of 
 triumphant zeal, " this is the portion of them that spoil 
 us, and the lot of them that rob us." 
 
 Thus over the heads of the enemies of Israel did her 
 prophets roll, like a Pyriphlegethon of living fire, the 
 denunciation of God's wrath on sin. Never had any 
 
178 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 nation been taught that lesson as Israel had been taught 
 it, from the fearful eloquence of the maledictions upon 
 Ebal, down to the days when Isaiah wailed his dirge 
 over " Ariel, the Lion of God, the city where David 
 dwelt." Nor had they been taught by words alone. 
 When Israel was yet a child God loved him, and out of 
 Egypt He called His son. In the Old Testament we 
 see that son grow up to life. Many were the sins, the 
 follies, the apostasies of his youth. Can you point me 
 to one folly which was not visited with its natural con- 
 sequences? to one pleasant vice which did not become its 
 own punishment ? to one sin which was not lashed with 
 its own appropriate scourge? Then came the ruinous 
 and crushing humiliation of the Babylonish Captivity. 
 A remnant, which they themselves compared but to the 
 chaff of the wheat, returned ; and of the old temptation, 
 the temptation to a sensual idolatry, they were cured for 
 ever. But they were not saved from other sins. Keep- 
 ing the form of their religion, they lost its spirit ; from a 
 living truth they suffered it to degenerate into a meaning- 
 less ritual, into a dead formula, into a hypocritical sham. 
 They had for centuries been hoping, dreaming, talking 
 of a Messiah, and their Messiah came ; and how did they 
 receive Him ? they received Him with yells of " Crucify/' 
 And there, in Scripture, at the Cross which consummated 
 their iniquity, the story of their nation ends. But 
 
THE VOICE OF HISTORY. 179 
 
 History, which proves the responsibility of nations — 
 History adds its chapter to the Sacred Book. It shows 
 how soon the wings of every vulture flapped heavily over 
 the corpse of a nation that had fallen into moral death. 
 Some of those who had shared in that scene, and 
 myriads of their children, shared also in the long horror 
 of that siege which, for its unutterable fearfulness, stands 
 unparalleled in the story of mankind. They had shouted, 
 " We have no king but Caesar," and they had no king 
 but Caesar, and leaving only for a time the grotesque 
 phantom of a local royalty, Caesar after Caesar outraged 
 and pillaged them, till at last their Caesar slaked, in the 
 blood of his best defenders, the red ashes of the dese- 
 crated Temple. They had forced the Romans to crucify 
 their Christ; and they were themselves crucified in 
 myriads by the Romans outside their walls, till room 
 failed for the crosses, and wood to make them with. 
 They had preferred a murderer to their Messiah, and for 
 them there was no Messiah more, while a murderer's 
 dagger swayed the last counsels of their dying race. 
 They had accepted the guilt of blood, and the last pages 
 of their history were glued together with that crimson 
 stain ; and, to this day, he who will walk round about 
 Jerusalem sees in its ever- extending miles of gravestones 
 and ever-lengthening pavements of tombs and sepulchres, 
 a vivid emblem of that field which Judas bought with the 
 
 N 2 
 
180 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 price of his iniquity, — a potter's field to bury strangers in, 
 an Akeldama, a Field of blood. 
 
 I turn from Judaea to the short but splendid tragedy 
 of Athenian history j how short, how brilliant, how 
 terrible, you all know well. Yes, we owe to Greece an 
 infinite debt of intellectual gratitude. The exquisite 
 ideal beauty of her race, the grace, the subtlety, the 
 activity of her intellect, the perfection and supremacy of 
 her art, the power and splendour of her literature, con- 
 ferred upon her a wreath of unfading admiration. O 
 had she but learned righteousness ; had she but won 
 the grace to obey, as she had received the insight to 
 read that law written upon the fleshy tablets of her heart ! 
 But she chose otherwise ; and now the world may learn 
 as memorable a lesson from the rapidity of her fall, and 
 the utterness of her extinction, as from all besides ; for 
 the ever-needed moral of that little hour in which she 
 played her part upon the lighted stage is this, that intel- 
 lect without holiness, beauty without purity, eloquence 
 without conscience, art without religion, insight without 
 love, are but blossoms whose root and life are in the 
 corruption of the grave. All these gifts combined saved 
 her not from being eaten away by that fretting leprosy of 
 her favourite sins. With what fearful sternness was the 
 career of Athens cut short ! It was but ninety years after 
 her handful of heroes had clashed into the countless 
 
THE VOICE OF HISTORY. 181 
 
 hosts of Persia and routed them, that her walls were 
 rased among the songs and shouts of her insulting 
 enemies. Some who had seen the one might have seen 
 the other. And when the hour of her ruin came, when, 
 on that sleepless September night of terror and agony, 
 down the long walls from the Peiraeus to the Acropolis 
 rang that bitter unbroken wail which told that the fleet 
 of Athens had been destroyed at Aegospotami ; it is one 
 of her own sons who tells us that it was the shameful 
 consciousness of her former tyrannies, it was the aveng- 
 ing memory of Melos, and Torone, and Scione, that 
 made that bitter hour more bitter still, by bidding her 
 remember that even-handed Justice was but commending 
 to her own lips the ingredients of that poisoned chalice 
 which in the plenitude of her pride and selfishness she 
 had forced the weak, and the defeated, and the unfor- 
 tunate to drink. A great lesson doubtless, but the real 
 lesson of Grecian history is deeper, more universal, 
 more permanent than this; and surely in days when 
 some men, in the worst spirit of the tainted and god- 
 less renaissance of the fifteenth century, are beginning 
 shamelessly to preach a corrupt Hellenism, which regards 
 sin forsooth with aesthetic toleration, — in days when we 
 have read the thoughts of one calmly arguing an ideal 
 so wretched and so base as that it is best to crowd life 
 with the greatest number of pleasurable sensations, — in 
 
1 82 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 days when hearing has been found for theories of an 
 artistic effeminacy, which, one hopes, would have made 
 even Antisthenes and Epicurus blush, — it is time, I say, 
 to read again the stigma of infamy which the Apostle 
 branded for ever on the unblushful forehead of the 
 paganism which he saw, that its sons "became vain in 
 their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened ; " 
 that it was God Himself who gave them over to vile 
 affections, and to a reprobate mind, because, "knowing 
 the judgment of God, that they which do such things are 
 worthy of death, they not only did the same, but had 
 pleasure in them that did them." 
 
 Take but one more prominent example from ancient 
 days to show that there is no distinction between the 
 sacred and the secular, and that profane history is sacred 
 too. From the palsied hands of Greece, Rome rudely 
 snatched the sceptre. And you know that so long as 
 the character of Rome was simple and self-respecting; 
 so long as her family life was pure and sweet ; so long 
 as she was the Rome of the Camilli, the Cincinnati, the 
 Fabii, the elder Scipios j so long as her dictators came 
 from the honest labour of the ploughshare, and her 
 consuls from the hardy self-denial of the farm, so long she 
 prospered till none could withstand her, and impressed 
 the world with lessons of law and order and discipline 
 manlier and better than any which Greece had taught. 
 
THE VOICE OF HISTORY. 183 
 
 But, when the dregs of every foreign iniquity poured 
 their noisome stream into the Tiber ; when the old iron 
 discipline had yielded to an effeminate luxury and a 
 gilded pollution; when her youth had grown debased, 
 and enervated, and false ; when all regard had been lost 
 in her for man's honour and woman's purity ; when her 
 trade had become a flagrant imposture and her religion 
 a dishonest sham; when, lastly, her literature became 
 a seething scum of cynicism and abomination such as 
 degrades the very conception of humanity, — then you 
 know how justly, in long slow agony, the charnel-house 
 of her dominion crumbled away under the assaults of all 
 her enemies, and 
 
 " Rome, whom mightiest kingdoms curtsied to, 
 Like a forlorn and desperate castaway, 
 Did shameful execution on herself." 
 
 And why did that giant power fall into fragments 
 before the weak hands which held a despised and hated 
 cross ? Why ? because, and only because, God is King ; 
 because in the long run there is nothing fruitful but 
 sacrifice; because it is self-denial, not luxury; humility, 
 not insolence; love, not violence; justice, not ambition, 
 which overthrow the world. 
 
 And that Christian Church, why was it that it too 
 fellfrom that splendid eminence to which by the im- 
 mense ascendancy of justice, and the faith in Eternal 
 
1 84 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 Laws, it had attained in the days of a Hildebrand and 
 an Innocent ? What was it but crime after crime that 
 dashed the Papacy into dishonoured ruin ? The bound- 
 less ambition of Boniface VIII., the greedy avarice of 
 John XXII., the shameful violences of Urban VI., the 
 unblushing nepotism of Sixtus IV., the execrable crimes 
 of Alexander VI., the aggrandising wars of Julius II., it 
 was not till the disgusted nations had long been alienated 
 by such spectacles as these that a humble monk of 
 Erfurt, rising in the irresistible might of moral indig- 
 nation, shattered the supremacy of the Vatican for ever. 
 I might go on with history ; I might ask why Spain, once 
 the Lady of Kingdoms, is now the most despised and 
 impotent of European powers : I might ask what changed 
 the strong and righteous England of the Commonwealth 
 to the nation which suffered a perjured trifler to sell 
 Dunkirk, and live in infamy on the subsidies of France. 
 But though time forbids this, I ought not to take all our 
 instances from the past when one flagrant illustration of 
 this great truth has happened in the present, and under 
 the very eyes of the youngest here. Is there, I ask, no 
 plain, no unmistakable lesson in the collapse and catas- 
 trophe of modern France? Warnings enough she had 
 received ; warnings of splendour overwhelmed with dark- 
 ness, warnings of strength smitten into decrepitude, warn- 
 ings of defeat, warnings of massacre, warnings of revolu- 
 
THE VOICE OF HISTORY. 185 
 
 tion. But as fast as she had received such lessons, she 
 had, alas ! forgotten them. Her religion had become a 
 godless materialism ; her practice a calculated sensuality ; 
 her literature a cynical journalism which sneered at 
 every belief, and a leprous fiction which poisoned every 
 virtue. She trusted in her armies, in her numbers, in her 
 prestige, in the elan of her soldiers, in the persiflage of her 
 journalists, in the vapouring patriotism of hex boulevards, — 
 in anything and everything save in God and right. And 
 what came of it ? Her magnificence melted away like a 
 vision of the Apocalypse; her unfortunate Emperor 
 became a despised, broken idol ; like the corpse of some 
 exhumed king, her strength slipped into ashes at a touch. 
 And the causes of this were too obvious to miss. They 
 lay in her puerile vanity, her administrative corruption, 
 her universal effeminacy; they lay in the bourgeois 
 materialism which desired nothing but vulgar luxury ; in 
 the absence of all dignity and seriousness in the old, and 
 of all discipline and subordination in the young. 
 
 And this is the law, this the philosophy of History. 
 And it not only is, but must be so ; because the will of 
 God governs the universe, and God's will is the moral 
 law. 
 
 And therefore all unrighteousness is sin, and all sin 
 is, necessarily, weakness. You will not, I am sure, ask 
 me what you have to do with all this? what the 
 
1 86 WORDS OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. 
 
 history of nations has to do with you? It has every- 
 thing to do with every one of you. For each biography 
 is but a fragment of history; each soul but an epitome 
 of the world. Nations are but aggregates of such as 
 you ; and Universities are no small part of a nation's life ; 
 and if this University 1 send forth, year by year, men who 
 are brave, because their consciences are clear, and their 
 hearts are pure ; if, year by year, Cambridge add to the 
 life of England her stream of youthful students who are 
 manly, and soberminded, and fearless, and faithful, then 
 she will be adding no small momentum to the forces 
 which keep England great. 
 
 The Silence and tlte Voices of God, p. 57. 
 1 Preached before the University of Cambridge, May II, 1873. 
 
SAINTLY WORKERS. 
 
THE MONKS. 
 
 TV/T ONASTICISM grew naturally out of the necessities 
 of the age in which it first appeared. The multi- 
 tudes who flocked round hermits like Antony and Pacho- 
 mius became the inevitable germ of monastic institutions. 
 During the two centuries after St. Antony a different type 
 of devotion had grown up and awaited its fitting organ- 
 isation. The example of the early hermits had been 
 mainly a personal protest for the awful importance of the 
 individual soul. The example of the monks was mainly 
 a social protest for the dignity and holiness of a common 
 life. By the close of the fifth century the wild bands of 
 Gothic barbarians were shattering the political fabric of the 
 Empire to pieces. Amid homeless men, amid depopu- 
 lated provinces, amid perishing institutions, amid the 
 rising deluges of heathenism and barbarity, " A type of 
 common life," it has been said, " was needed to preserve 
 the inheritance of the old world and to offer a rallying- 
 point for the Christian forces that should fashion the 
 
igo SAINTLY WORKERS. 
 
 new. Again this type was found in a system of rigid dis- 
 cipline." What was it that had preserved the best elements 
 of Christianity in the fourth century ? The self-sacrifice 
 of the hermits. What was it which saved the principles of 
 law, and order, and civilisation ? What rescued the wreck 
 of ancient literature from the universal conflagration? 
 What restrained, what converted the inrushing Teutonic 
 races ? What kept alive the dying embers of science ? 
 What fanned into a flame the white ashes of art ? What 
 redeemed waste lands, cleared forests, drained fens, 
 protected miserable populations, encouraged free labour, 
 equalised widely-separated ranks ? What was the sole 
 witness for the cause of charity, the sole preservative of 
 even partial education, the sole rampart against intoler- 
 able oppression ? What force was left which could alone 
 humble the haughty by the courage which is inspired 
 by superiority to those things which most men \sire, 
 and elevate the poor by the spectacle of a poverty at 
 once voluntary and powerful ? What weak and unarmed 
 power alone retained the strength and the determination 
 to dash down the mailed hand of the baron when it was 
 uplifted against his serf, to proclaim a truce of God be- 
 tween warring violences, and to make insolent wickedness 
 tremble by asserting the inherent supremacy of goodness 
 over transgression, of knowledge over ignorance, of quiet 
 righteousness over brutal force? You will say the 
 
THE MONKS. 191 
 
 Church \ you will say Christianity. Yes, but for many a 
 long century the very bulwarks and ramparts of the 
 Church were the monasteries, and the one invincible 
 force of the Church lay in the self-sacrifice, the holiness, 
 the courage of the monks. Let those who have nothing 
 but blind anathemas against monasticism remember that to 
 it we owe the light of liberty and of literature ; that there 
 " learning trimmed her lamp and contemplation pruned 
 her wings;" that the Benedictines instituted schools; 
 that the Augustinians built cathedrals ; that the Mendi • 
 cant Orders founded hospitals. 
 
 Now he who gave to monasticism its best and most 
 pennanent form was St. Benedict of Nursia. 
 
 The keynote of that immortal rule, to which is due a 
 very large part of the vast services rendered to the world 
 by true and uncorrupted monasticism, is self-ab?iegation. 
 "Antony," it has been admirably said, "had shown the 
 foundation of individual freedom in self-conquest; St. 
 Benedict showed the foundations of social freedom in 
 self-surrender." That perfect obedience means perfect 
 liberty ; that to lose our lives for Christ's sake is to find 
 them ; that complete submission to the will of God is a 
 serene and tranquil empire over ourselves ; — these were 
 his leading conceptions. Poverty, chastity, obedience 
 had always been the triple vow of the monk — poverty in 
 ages which were dying of opulence ; chastity in an age 
 
192 SAINTLY WORKERS. 
 
 weakened by orgies ; obedience in an age perishing of 
 disorders. But to these St. Benedict added Work and 
 Prayer. " Ora et labora " was the rule of his followers. 
 It was Work, whether in the form of handicraft or study, 
 which rescued so many a noble ancient poem and history 
 from oblivion, and made so many a waste into a fruitful 
 land. It was Prayer which inspired so many a hope 
 amid the general despondency ; which reconquered 
 Europe into Christianity from the invading barbarians, 
 which brought down the dew of God's blessing upon the 
 fainting world. To them we owe the preservation of 
 Roman literature, for the copyists of manuscripts were 
 Benedictine monks. To them we owe our English 
 Christianity, for Augustine of Canterbury was a Bene- 
 dictine monk. To them we owe no small part of the 
 protest which saved us from irresponsible despotism, 
 for Lanfranc and Anselm were Benedictine monks. 
 And very noble in its theory, very beautiful in its 
 realisation of social life, was a Benedictine monastery 
 under a holy abbot, faithful to its principles and 
 vows. Equality reigned there : the proudest noble 
 who came as a novice had to serve like the humblest 
 peasant. Brotherhood reigned there : the rule was, 
 "Submit yourselves to one another in the fear of God." 
 Tenderness reigned there, for " There is always some- 
 thing," said St. Benedict, "to which the strong may 
 
THE MONKS. 193 
 
 aspire, and from which the weak may not shrink." 
 Humility reigned there, for if any one were appointed to 
 even the humblest office, he had to fall on his knees 
 before his brethren and beg their prayers, always ending 
 his work with the words, " Blessed art thou, O Lord, who 
 hast holpen me and comforted me." Charity reigned 
 there, for morning and evening the Lord's Prayer had to 
 be said in the hearing of all, that all alike, brought face 
 to face with the petition, that we may be forgiven as we 
 forgive, "might cleanse themselves from every offence 
 against Christian love." 
 
 You cannot, my brethren, and ought not to copy the 
 monasticism of the monks, but you can and ought to 
 copy this their ideal of brotherhood and tenderness, of 
 humility and charity, of work and prayer. " The King- 
 dom of God," said the brave and good St. Hugo of 
 Avalon, " is not made up of monks and hermits. God 
 at the Day of Judgment will not ask a man why he has 
 not been a monk, but why he has not been a Christian. 
 Charity in the heart, truth on the tongue, chastity in the 
 body, are the virtues which God demands." 
 
 And as we may learn from this byegone type of saintly 
 workers in their social life, in the principles (that is) which 
 guided them as members of a community, — so most 
 assuredly we may sit at the feet of very many of them in 
 their individual holiness, and learn from them how better 
 
194 SAINTLY WORKERS. 
 
 and more truly to follow Christ our Lord. We may find 
 warmth in their footsteps, as faint and weary, and with 
 many a sad stumble, we follow them across the sad 
 world's snow. " Languor was not in their hearts, nor 
 weakness in their words, nor weariness on their brows." 
 
 " Servants of God ! or sons 
 Shall I not call you ? because 
 Not as servants ye knew 
 Your Father's innermost mind — 
 His who unwillingly sees 
 One of His little ones lost." 
 
 It would be quite impossible to call before you the 
 multitudes of noble figures with white robes and palms 
 in their hands which would arise at the bidding of a 
 student of history. Shall it be St. Anselm, after his 
 stormy yet noble archiepiscopate, in his hour of death, 
 like the humblest brother of his old monastery at Bee, 
 laid on sackcloth, over which were strewed ashes in the 
 shape of the cross, and so, amid prayers and low chants, 
 and fervent blessings, calmly and happily breathing his 
 last among his weeping friends ? Shall it be St. Edmund 
 of Canterbury, with the pallor of his beautiful countenance 
 "growing a fair shining red," as he spoke in his lecture- 
 ioom at Oxford of God and holy things; or as he 
 sprinkled with dust the few coins, his sole possession, 
 which lay loose in his window-sill, — saying ashes to 
 ashes, dust to dust ? Or shall it be St. Thomas Aquinas, 
 
THE MONKS. 195 
 
 with his daily prayer, " Give me, O Lord, a noble heart, 
 
 which no earthly affection can drag down " ? Or shall it 
 
 be St. Bonaventura pointing in silence to his crucifix, 
 
 when he was asked the source of his vast learning \ and 
 
 found washing the meanest vessels of his monastery, 
 
 when they brought him the hat of a cardinal from Rome? 
 
 Or shall it be St. Bernardin of Siena, whose pure and 
 
 modest presence, even as a boy, hushed and overawed 
 
 at once every evil word of his companions ? Or shall it 
 
 be a ruler like Gregory the Great, the son of a poor 
 
 carpenter, yet towering so high in the might of conscious 
 
 integrity, — so utterly superior to the world by complete 
 
 indifference to its interests, — that the guilty Emperor of 
 
 Germany cowered in terror before his look, and at his 
 
 feet ? Or St. Bernard of Clairvaux, rebuking princes, 
 
 upholding popes, firing all Europe to a new crusade, 
 
 living in utter poverty, daily asking himself the stern 
 
 question, " Bernarde, ad quid venisti?" "Bernard, 
 
 wherefore art thou here?" These are but stray gleams 
 
 from lives of steady radiance. But go into our National 
 
 Gallery, or any great collection of pictures, and there — 
 
 for amid the dust and weariness of life it is well to refresh 
 
 our souls with things holy and beautiful — gaze on the 
 
 pictures of Fra Angelico of Fiesole, if you would see the 
 
 heavenly calm of spirit to which some of the monks 
 
 attained. 77 beato — as he is often called, for he was never 
 
 o 2 
 
ig6 SAINTLY WORKERS. 
 
 canonised — was a monk of that famous monastery of San 
 Marco, at Florence, which, at the same epoch, also sent 
 forth the eloquent, fiery, undaunted Savonarola, to thunder 
 his impassioned denunciations against the gross corrup- 
 tions of the Church and of the world. In every cell of 
 that monastery of San Marco is painted a crucifixion by 
 this holy painter. He painted them on his knees, and 
 with streaming tears. Never would he receive one 
 penny for them. Never would he alter a line when once 
 painted, for he painted the faces of his visions, and 
 looked on them as sent by inspiration. And inspired, 
 indeed, they were, by the spirit of holy love ; by the 
 stainless purity of a life which turned to the Divine as a 
 flower to the sunlight ; by the calm, unsullied innocence 
 of one whose soul was as a weaned child. Look at the 
 tender rose, and gold, and violet — the delicate spring- 
 tide colourings of his pictures ; — look at the angelic and 
 saintly faces, so untroubled, so unlike those around us — 
 pure and bright as the blue of heaven when there is not 
 one cloud to stain it \ — look at the rapt, exquisite devotion, 
 radiating outward as from an inward flame, which per- 
 vades the whole canvas as with a subtle lambency like 
 the atmosphere of paradise. Alike the Sinaitic thunder- 
 ings of Savonarola, and the u soft, silent pictures " of Fra 
 Angelico were the outcome of life in that monastic self- 
 sacrifice. It was the self-discipline of the monkish cell 
 
THE MONKS. 197 
 
 which fired the indignation and strengthened the courage 
 of the one to face the storms of hatred and the agonies 
 of martyrdom. It was the self-discipline of the monkish 
 cell which made the other so despise the world that, — 
 wholly dead to rank and ambition, — he refused the 
 Archbishopric of Florence, and nominated a brother 
 monk instead, who in his turn became the best and 
 holiest Archbishop by whom Florence had ever been 
 ruled. And how came it that types of virtue so different 
 — the one so magnificent in its power and fearlessness, 
 the other so perfect in its love and peace — were fostered 
 in the same cloistral shade ? It came from what Milton 
 called " the unresistible might of weakness which shakes 
 the world ; " it came from the indefinite fruitfulness of 
 self-sacrifice ; it came from that spiritual force of chastity, 
 of self-denial, "which knows how to weep, to pray, to 
 love ; which knows how to be poor, unknown, despised ; 
 harder than a diamond against pride and corruption ; 
 more tender than a mother towards all that suffers and 
 that seeks.' 
 
 Deeply, I fear, does this age need to take to heart the 
 stern, inexorable necessity of such self- conquest. It was 
 the central conception of monasticism, it may well be the 
 central lesson of modern civilisation. " Put ye on the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, 
 to subdue the lusts thereof." 
 
 Saintly Workers, p. 69. 
 
THE EARLY FRANCISCANS. 
 
 T N a Church at the very zenith of her splendid pre- 
 dominance and her ambitious ease there was need 
 to fan, out of the whitened embers of religion, the 
 smouldering flame of zeal and love. That work was 
 achieved mainly by two men — St. Dominic of Spain and 
 St. Francis of Assisi. St. Dominic founded the Ordo 
 Praedicatorum, or Preaching Friars ; St. Francis the 
 Fratres Minores, or Mendicant Friars. They both bore 
 witness to the need of energy and self-denial ; but I shall 
 speak almost solely of the latter. I do so partly because 
 he was the originator of that ideal of absolute poverty 
 which, for a time, produced rich fruit j and partly because 
 his character is infinitely more attractive than that of his 
 stern contemporary. That St. Dominic was a sincere 
 and holy man, we do not dream of questioning. He 
 whom Dante calls 
 
 1 • The loving cavalier 
 Of Christian faith, the athlete sanctified, 
 Fond to his own, and dreadful to his foes ; " 
 
THE EARLY FRANCISCANS. 199 
 
 the man who lived so much in prayer; the man who 
 could fearlessly rebuke great Papal legates for their pride 
 and ostentation ; the man who, even in his youth, having 
 given away all that he had in charity, was so distressed 
 by the tears of a poor woman, who wished to redeem her 
 son from slavery, that he offered himself to be sold into 
 slavery in her son's place, — was one whose holiness and 
 self-devotion it would be inexcusable for the comfortable 
 and conventional Christians of this age to deny. But, 
 however wide may be the Catholicity of our admiration, 
 we cannot feel specially drawn to one who instituted the 
 vain and mechanical iterations of the rosary; to one 
 who, however sincere in his zeal — who, however much he 
 may have been convinced that "agonies of pain and 
 blood shed in rivers was better than the soul spotted and 
 bewildered with (what he deemed to be) mortal sin" 
 — yet comes to us with the traditions of a persecutor; 
 looms black and ghastly to us through a century darkened 
 with the Tophet-smoke of the Inquisition, and from the 
 midst of men whose robes were drenched and dyed with 
 Albigensian blood. He presented, doubtless, a very 
 different aspect to a different age. Dante sees him like 
 one of the shining cherubs the spiritus lucentes of Para- 
 dise, and says of him and of St. Francis : — 
 
 " One all seraphic was in ardent love ; 
 The other was for wisdom on the earth 
 A radiation of cherubic light." 
 
200 SAINTLY WORKERS. 
 
 But though the workman be saved, the work is burned ; 
 though he and his followers built, or meant to build, on 
 the one foundation, yet that which they built — the cruelty 
 of remorseless persecution, the fanaticism of bigoted 
 intolerance, the furies of anathema and interdict — was a 
 superstructure of worthless hay and stubble, fit only to 
 be consumed in God's revealing fire, and winnowed to 
 the four winds with His purging fan. And therefore 
 from the ferocity and gloom of the Dominicans we will 
 turn to the angelic gentleness of Francis of Assisi — fit 
 successor of Antony, the greatest of the hermits, and 
 Benedict, the wisest of monastic founders. "Antony," it 
 has been said, " had shown to an effete and dying age an 
 image of the strength of man in fellowship with God." 
 Benedict had reared on the ruins of the desolated empire 
 the fabric of an abiding society. It remained for Francis, 
 in the midst of a Church endowed with all that learning, 
 and art, and wealth, and power could give, to reassert 
 the love of God to the poorest, the meanest, the most 
 repulsive of His children. " A man," he said, " is as 
 great as he is in the sight of God, and no greater." ft If 
 I lived to the end of the world," he said again, " I should 
 need no other book than the record of the Passion of 
 Christ." Humbling himself by every mortification be- 
 neath the lowliest, he yet did not mistake his mission. 
 Once, when he was suddenly seized by robbers, and they 
 
THE EARLY FRANCISCANS. 
 
 roughly questioned him as to who he was, he replied 
 with a prophetic voice, "I am a herald of the Great 
 King." 
 
 Of all the men who have ever lived there is probably 
 not one who has ever made it so absolutely his aim, as 
 did St. Francis, to reproduce, in letter as well as in spirit, 
 the very life of Christ. Among the hills and villages of 
 Umbria he strove to live with his few first followers the 
 very same life that our Lord had lived with His apostles 
 on the shores of Galilee and in the villages of Palestine. 
 You will say that there was in this a fundamental mistake. 
 Let the tree be known by its fruits. Call St. Francis, if 
 you will, a sublime madman, a fanatical enthusiast. In- 
 sult and. misrepresentation have ever been the portion in 
 their lifetime of God's most earnest children 
 
 " Enough ! high words abate no jot or tittle 
 
 Of what, while life still lasts, shall still be true ; 
 Heaven's great ones must be slandered by earth's little, 
 And God makes no ado. " 
 
 But still it remains true that no human being who has 
 had the faith to take Christ at His very word, — be it 
 even in unlettered ignorance, — has ever been allowed to 
 find His promise fail. This man, who was dressed in 
 rags, who fed on scraps, who was unlearned and simple, 
 and had sold cloth in a shop, did more for the Church 
 than the most absolute Pontiff, whose stirrup was ever 
 
2 o2 SAINTLY WORKERS. 
 
 held for him by princes, or who put his haughty foot 
 upon the neck of Emperors. The Church which they 
 helped to ruin, this beggar, — this simple wanderer, this 
 glorious pauper of Christ, this man who had become a 
 fool for wisdom's sake,— inspired and glorified. One 
 day when Innocent III. was walking on a terrace in the 
 Lateran, — that Pope Innocent who had made Otho of 
 Germany tremble j who had reduced Philip Augustus to 
 submission ; who had sent 
 
 "Pandulph, of fair Milan, cardinal," 
 
 to bring King John of England to his knees — while this 
 stateliest of imperial Pontiffs, at the summit of his gran- 
 deur, was meditating on the government of nations in 
 his silent pacing to and fro — he was disturbed by the 
 approach of a humble brown figure in peasant's garb. 
 With a gesture of contempt the great Pope motioned him 
 away ; but that night he had two dreams — the one was 
 that a tall and beautiful palm-tree grew up at his very 
 feet j the other that he saw the grand church of St. John 
 Lateran falling into ruins, when the same poor brown 
 figure whom he had repelled ran forward and upheld it 
 with his hands. Admonished by these dreams, or with a 
 flash of insight into the power of enthusiasm, he sent for 
 Francis and gave a general sanction to his organisation 
 of the Fratres Minores, the " Lesser Brothers," — the 
 
THE EARLY FRANCISCANS. 203 
 
 lowest and humblest, but destined to be the most power- 
 ful order, the most militant missionaries of the Church. 
 Now which was the most really influential, the magnifi- 
 cent Pope or the ascetic visionary ? Did not God make 
 the counsels of princes of none effect, but bring the poor 
 out of his misery and make him households like a flock 
 of sheep? Almost every vast design of the mighty 
 Innocent was, even in his own lifetime, more or less of 
 failure ; but the order of St. Francis of Assisi soon mul- 
 tiplied to myriads, and was to be counted by thousands 
 even at his early death. The humility and devotion of 
 Francis gave fresh force to that Church which the ambi- 
 tion of Innocent had weakened by over-strain. And yet, 
 happy in his wise ignorance, profound in his unlearned 
 simplicity, his whole secret was to follow Christ, and 
 to hold cheap what the world desires. What is at this 
 moment occupying the vast majority in this city— the 
 vast majority, it may be, of us even in this congregation? 
 Is it not some form or other of self-interest ? Is it not, 
 in some form or other, money, or pleasure, or ambition? 
 Do not the streets, the shops, the offices buzz with talk 
 of money? Bossuet speaks thus: "There are three 
 things that make up all business, which enter into all the 
 intrigues, which inflame all the passions, which actuate 
 all the eagerness of the world. St. Francis saw that they 
 were illusions; he saw that riches enslave, that honours 
 
204 SAINTLY WORKERS. 
 
 overpower, that pleasures effeminate the heart. He saw 
 that these broad roads lead many to perdition. For him- 
 self he sought another road. He found riches in poverty ; 
 joy in suffering; glory in self- abasement." At the age 
 of twenty-five he burst every bond of family, of posi- 
 tion, of comfort, and, stripped bare of every possession, 
 descended from the hill of Assisi to show the world the 
 most complete example of the madness of the cross. 
 " But far from revolting the world," says Montalembert, 
 " he subdues it ! The more this sublime fanatic abased 
 himself in order to make himself more worthy, by his 
 humility and the contempt of men, to be the instrument 
 of love, the more did his greatness shine and radiate afar, 
 and the more did men fling themselves in his path, some 
 ambitious to despoil themselves of everything like him, 
 some eager, at least, to gather up his words of inspira- 
 tion ; " — words which " penetrated like glowing fire to 
 the inmost depths of the heart." 
 
 Let me, then, as briefly as I can, tell you one or two 
 of the facts of his life. Francesco Bernardone was a son 
 of a merchant of Assisi, in Umbria. In his boyhood and 
 youth he was the gayest of the gay, the flower of the 
 Assisian youth, pure and kind, but the bright leader of 
 pleasure-loving companions ; living above his station, as 
 though he had been a prince's son ; a soldier, a singer, 
 with many a vain ambition, though not without stirrings 
 
THE EARLY FRANCISCANS. 205 
 
 of deeper hope. When he was twenty-five a dangerous 
 sickness made the whole world look different to him, and 
 changed the current of his thoughts. Visions seemed to 
 summon him to some great work. He saw a palace full 
 of pieces of armour all signed with the cross, and when 
 he asked to whom these belonged, was told : " To thee 
 and to thy soldiers ; " and felt himself bidden to be a 
 soldier ; but not, as he at first supposed, in earthly armies. 
 As he knelt before the crucifix he thought that it thrice 
 said to him: "Go, rebuild My house, which, as thou 
 seest, is falling to ruins ; " and it was years before his 
 simple and faithful heart comprehended that the Church 
 which he was bidden to rebuild was, not as he at first 
 supposed, the material structure, but the living congrega- 
 tion. In the very midst of his youthful gaiety deep 
 hushes of emotion came over him. He feels his head 
 overshadowed by the hands of "invisible consecration." 
 The life of Christ seizes possession of his thoughts with 
 overmastering sway. One day, riding across a valley, he 
 sees a leper, turns from him for one instant with irrepres- 
 sible disgust, then in shame dismounts, fills the poor 
 sufferer's hand with alms, and humbly kisses it. Then, 
 riding on, he looks back for an instant, and lo ! there is 
 no leper there, and he believes that he has had a vision 
 of " the poor man Christ Jesus " — an image of whom he 
 sees ever afterwards in all who suffer and are poor. He 
 
206 SAINTLY WORKERS. 
 
 visits Rome \ flings his whole purse of money as an offer- 
 ing on the floor of St. Peter's, and, going out, strips off 
 his gay robes, exchanges them for the ragged gaberdine 
 of a beggar, and sits begging on the steps. Though 
 naturally fond of delicacies, he began literally to beg for 
 his daily food, and to live only on the unpalatable scraps 
 which were given him. One day in church, as he listened 
 to the words of the Gospel : " Provide neither gold, nor 
 silver, nor brass in your purses ; neither two coats, neither 
 shoes, nor yet staves. And as ye go, preach, saying : 
 The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand " — the words flashed 
 in upon his soul with overpowering force, as though the 
 light of God had moved over the graven gems of the 
 Urim. " Here," he exclaimed, " is what I have wanted ; 
 here is what I have sought ! " and with literal simplicity 
 then and there he flung away shoes, and staff, and purse, 
 and bound his tunic round him with a rope. Companions 
 began to join him. The order grew and prospered. 
 They lived in a bare hut ; they preached, they prayed ; 
 they begged their daily food ; they tended the sick ; they 
 gave of what they had to all the poor who came to them; 
 they possessed nothing, either for their order or for them- 
 selves ; and thus making Poverty their bride amid the 
 mad desire of their age for wealth, they introduced nobler 
 aims and holier feelings into a luxurious and ambitious 
 Church, into an oppressive, blood-stained, cruel world. 
 
THE EARLY FRANCISCANS. 207 
 
 It was a grand, emphatic protest which appealed to the 
 imagination of all men. Nothing can show more forcibly 
 the power of this appeal than the fact that St. Francis, as 
 the chosen bridegroom of Poverty, was celebrated alike 
 in the paintings of Giotto and in the verse of Dante. 
 When men saw Francis at the table of nobles and cardi- 
 nals, bright and courteous, but while he went on talking, 
 unostentatiously deluging his plate with cold water, or 
 quietly sprinkling a few ashes over the rich food, with the 
 half apology, u Brother ash is pure," they saw at least 
 that these men had other thoughts and other hopes than 
 the fat monks, and immoral priests, and splendour-loving 
 bishops, of whom the Church in that day was full. 
 
 Thus humbly and simply did St. Francis live with his 
 brethren, caring for others, not for himself. He journeyed 
 to the Crusaders at Damietta, and earnestly courting mar- 
 tyrdom, went at the most imminent risk to convert the 
 Sultan, accompanied by but a single brother, — offering, 
 if the Sultan would embrace the faith, to walk through 
 fire. And then his long, but sweet and humble austerities 
 began to do their natural work. No one can with im- 
 punity violate the clear indications of nature. Though 
 scarcely past middle age, he fell into grievous sickness. 
 Then came his last hour. Prostrate on ashes, on the 
 bare earth, naked, till one in pity covered him with a 
 garment, in great suffering, yet in exceeding peace, he 
 
2 o8 SAINTLY WORKERS. 
 
 died, saying to his brethren almost with his last words, 
 " I have done my part : may Christ teach you to do 
 yours." 
 
 My brethren, that life of the cross was very richly fruit- 
 ful j fruitful in proportion to its transcendent self-denial. 
 St. Francis of Assisi was " a living epistle known and 
 read by all men." His order, in that very century, pro- 
 duced among its brethren lives so powerful and so famous 
 as those of St. Bonaventura and St. Thomas of Aquinam ; 
 among its Tertiaries lives so noble and so saintly as those 
 of St. Louis of France and St. Elizabeth of Hungary. 
 St. Francis furnished one more instance of the truth that 
 " the grandest revolutions in the history of the universe 
 have been accomplished by its beggars, and, as the world 
 thought, its fools. . . . Let a man, in any age, go forth 
 with the fire of God in him, and the force he wields, the 
 mastery he wins, the new life he quickens, pours silent 
 contempt on gold. The richest in such seasons are those 
 who give most, not those who have most. It fills the 
 Beatitudes with a wonderful meaning, and shows the 
 sorrows and straits of poverty overflowed by the riches 
 and joys of God" (J. Baldwin Brown). 
 
 For with all his sorrows and privations, Francis, too, like 
 Antony, like Benedict, was happy. We see it in the 
 pleasant anecdotes of his tender love for animals, of his 
 innocent delight in the beauties of nature. Yes, he was 
 
THE EARLY FRANCISCANS. 209 
 
 very happy ; and the legends of the harp which played 
 for him unbidden music, and the water which became 
 for him like heavenly wine, are but symbols of this 
 inward joy. 
 
 One thing assuredly we all can learn from St. Francis 
 of Assisi and his truest followers. It is to live lives 
 more simple, less luxurious, more contented with a little, 
 less absorbed in earthly interests. We can learn from 
 him, and from the happiness and influence which God 
 granted him, the spirit of that lesson which he had learnt 
 from the example of Christ — the lesson, namely, to 
 increase our possessions by limiting our desires ; to sit 
 more loose to worldly luxuries and worldly ambitions. 
 True riches are health, and a pure heart, and love of 
 Christ, and love to man, and perfect trust in the sustain- 
 ing providence of God, and a cheerful spirit, and a noble 
 charity i 
 
 Saintly Workers, p. 122. 
 
THE HERMITS. 
 
 " The old order changeth, giving place to the nezv, 
 And God fulfils Himself in many ways, 
 Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.*' 
 
 T ET us not sever ourselves by any sharp discon- 
 tinuity from any class of God's children in the days 
 of old. Each age has its own types of saintliness,* its 
 own ideals of the best way of serving God. No good 
 deed, no genuine sacrifice, is ever wasted. If there be 
 good in it, God will use it for His own holy purposes, 
 and whatever of ignorance, or weakness, or mistake was 
 mingled with it will drop away as the withered sepals 
 drop away when the full flower has blown. Nor was the 
 life of the hermits mere individualism. It was philan- 
 thropic also. It was very far from useless ; it was useful 
 to their own days ; useful to the days that were to follow ; 
 useful for all time. 
 
 i. It was useful to their own days. Different remedies 
 are required amid differing conditions. What might in 
 
THE HERMITS. 
 
 these times be absurd or pernicious may have been a 
 necessary resource in other ages. The hermits, let us 
 remember, arose during a period of terrible confusion, 
 amid the chaos of a society for which it might well have 
 seemed that the fountains of the great deep were being 
 broken up. There lay the decaying carcase of the in- 
 stitutions of the world of classic paganism ; and on every 
 side was heard the flap of the wings of the gathering 
 vultures. Art and science were dead ; society had sunk 
 into utter frivolity ; slavery had assumed its most revolt- 
 ing aspects ; cruelty and luxury were triumphant. They 
 might well have thought that the only protest which 
 could be effectual, the only protest which would startle 
 into attention a dead and wicked world, would be one 
 which should at least unmistakably proclaim the awful 
 dignity, the inestimable value of the individual soul. 
 Merely to preach purity, and unworldliness, and charity 
 seemed hopeless; and therefore they proclaimed the 
 glory and the necessity of these virtues in the language 
 of such examples as no human beings could misunder- 
 stand. As the days of Ahab needed an Elijah, as the 
 days of Herod needed a John Baptist, so the age of the 
 successors of Constantine needed and were leavened by 
 an Antony, an Hilarion, a Macarius, and a Paul. 
 
 ii. Nor did their example die with them. To them 
 
 we owe, both indirectly and directly, the preservation, in 
 
 p 2 
 
212 SAINTLY WORKERS. 
 
 its purity, of the Christian faith. When Athanasius was 
 in danger of death, it was among the hermits of the desert 
 that he found safe refuge from his enemies. It was 
 Athanasius who wrote the biography of Antony. It 
 was to Athanasius that Antony bequeathed his sheep- 
 skin cloak ; and of all the honours of his life, Athanasius 
 accounted none greater than this — that he had been per- 
 mitted to commune with the desert saint. And St. Basil, 
 too, and St. Gregory of Nazianzus, the eloquent maintainers 
 of the faith, had both been hermits. When the Emperor 
 Valens sent a great officer to try to win over St. Basil to 
 the Arian heresy, the saint stood firm. " I never met such 
 boldness," said the courtier. " Because you never met 
 a bishop," said Basil. " This bishop is above threats," 
 reported the officer to the Emperor, and the orthodoxy 
 of the diocese was saved. Again, it was the life of 
 Antony that tended to the conversion of St. Augustine. 
 It was St. Jerome, a hermit like Antony, who trans- 
 lated the Bible into Latin. It was Telemachus, a hermit 
 like Antony, who leapt down into the amphitheatre at 
 Rome, and, by his protest and martyrdom, put an end 
 for ever to its hideous butcheries. It was Ephrem the 
 Syrian, a hermit like Antony, who, with his dying breath, 
 raised a needful protest against slavery, when he made 
 the daughter of the governor of Edessa swear never 
 again to be carried in a litter by slaves, because " the 
 
THE HERMITS. 213 
 
 neck of man," he said, " should bear no yoke but that of 
 Christ." 
 
 iii. And lastly, for all time, the hermits have proved 
 by actual life that perfect purity and perfect self-denial 
 are possible for men ; that virtue, and even charity, are 
 not beyond human attainment; that envy, and hatred, 
 and malice, and all uncharitableness, and the base voices 
 of scandal, and the unmannerly jostlings in the throng, 
 are no necessary elements of human life, but that men 
 can live as they were meant to live together, in mutual 
 love and honour; that men can utterly do without the 
 things for which man most wildly struggles, and that 
 men need most the very things which they are apt most 
 utterly to disregard. They showed for all time that 
 when any man stood on the dignity of being simply 
 man — seeing no greatness but such as he could attain 
 in the sight of God — he could be fearless in all danger, 
 and could rise superior to all desires. 
 
 We cannot imitate the outer life of Antony or Sera- 
 pion ; it is not necessary, it is not desirable that we 
 should ; but in an age of much unbelief and irreligion, of 
 much gossip and detraction, of much anxiety and cor- 
 ruption, of much luxury and greed, we can learn their 
 strong horror of sin ; their noble struggle for righteous- 
 ness; their entire simplicity of character; their utter 
 aloofness from the mean and greedy scramble of the 
 
214 SAINTLY WORKERS. 
 
 world ; the sincerity with which they cultivated the duty 
 of mutual forbearance ; the duty of absolute forgive- 
 ness of injuries which they strenuously practised \ their 
 intense conviction that the life is more than meat, and 
 the body than raiment. 
 
 If we may (thus) gaze with profit for a moment on 
 God's saints, it is only, after all, because they dimly re- 
 flect the image of their Saviour. Their example is only 
 precious because it teaches us how they were followers 
 of Him : — 
 
 ' ' The Saviour lends the light and heat 
 That crowns His holy hill ; 
 The saints, like stars around His seat, 
 Perform their courses still. 
 
 " The Moon above, the Church below, 
 A wondrous race they run, 
 But all their radiance, all their glow, 
 Each borrows of its Sun. " — Kcble. 
 
 Saintly Workers, p. 58. 
 
THE MISSIONARIES. 
 
 IS. LII. 7. 
 
 " How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him thai bringeth 
 good tidings, that publisheth peace. " 
 
 HHHOUGH other types of self-dedication have become 
 partly or wholly extinct — -though each age has 
 altered the device upon the current gold of nobleness 
 and self-devotion — the missionaries (as Christ commanded 
 them) have continued unbroken their Christ-like toil. 
 Even the old dispensation lacked not its missionaries, 
 from Noah, down to Jonah and to Daniel. But since 
 Christ gave His last command to His assembled disciples, 
 there have ever been some who felt that it was their more 
 special call to obey it. St. Paul was not one of those 
 who heard it, but was, as it were, " the abortive-born " 
 in the apostolic family, yet what a type and model of all 
 missionaries was he ! That life of his as it stands re- 
 vealed to us in his own Epistles, how sad it was, and how 
 
216 SAINTLY WORKERS. 
 
 fruitful ! From that day on which, blind and trembling, 
 and witn the scars of God's own thunder on his soul, 
 he had staggered into the streets of Damascus, what a 
 tragedy had encompassed him of ever-deepening gloom ! 
 That first peril, when he had been let down in a basket 
 through a window — the flights from assassination — the 
 hot disputes at Antioch — the expulsion from Iconium— 
 the stoning at Lystra — the quarrel with his own heart's 
 brother — the acute spasms of that impalement by the 
 stake in the flesh at Galatia — the agony in Macedonia of 
 outward fightings and inward fears — the five Jewish 
 scourgings — the three Roman flagellations — the polished 
 scorn of Athens — the factious violence of Corinth — the 
 streaming tears of the parting at Miletus — the gnashing 
 fury of Jewish mobs — the illegal insolence of provincial 
 tribunals ; — these were but a fragment, and a small frag- 
 ment, of his trials and miseries. Even the brute forces 
 of nature seemed to be against him — he had to struggle 
 in her rushing water-courses, to faint in her sultry deserts, 
 to toss for long days and nights in leaky vessels on her 
 tempestuous seas. This was the perilous, persecuted life 
 on which he had to look back, as he sat chained to the 
 rude legionary in that dreary Roman prison. He seemed 
 to have found no result from all his labours, no reward 
 for all his immense self-sacrifice. He seemed to have 
 been abandoned and forgotten by the very Churches 
 
THE MISSIONARIES. 217 
 
 which he had loved. Nor did any sunbeam gild even 
 the last unrecorded scene. See the bent, grey, weak old 
 man, led by the soldier along the Appian Road ; see the 
 sword flash, and the head fall ; and which, think you, of 
 that small handful of weeping Christian brethren could 
 have dreamed in his wildest dream, that, to that poor 
 martyr's glorious memory, shrines more magnificent than 
 that of the Capitolian Jupiter should tower over cities 
 more glorious than Imperial Rome, long centuries after 
 the " insulting vanity" of triumph had ceased, and " silent 
 vestal " and " chiefest pontifex " had become forgotten 
 names ? Nor did the saint, the martyr himself, dream of 
 it. His thoughts were not of earthly crowns. He asked 
 the service, not the payment ; the battle, not the victory. 
 Type of all true missionary lives, his was "the faith 
 triumphant in failure, which is better than self-congratu- 
 lation on any visible results." 
 
 And for three centuries after him the whole Church 
 led more or less of a mission life. But missions in a 
 directer sense — the setting forth of Christian men to 
 preach the Gospel in heathen lands — became specially 
 memorable in the fourth and following centuries. From 
 point to point, like the flashing of a glad signal from hill 
 to hill, the heralds of the Gospel sped on its light. In 
 the fourth century Ulphilas had been the apostle of the 
 Goths. In the fifth St. Patrick converted Ireland. In 
 
2i 8 SAINTLY WORKERS. 
 
 the sixth St. Columba began that holy work which makes 
 " the heart glow amid the ruins of Iona," and St. Colum- 
 banus carried to the shores of the Swiss lakes the lessons 
 of truth and the examples of holy living. In the seventh 
 century, struck by the beauty of the fair-haired Saxon 
 slaves in the market-place of Rome — Non Angli, sed 
 Angeli, siessent Christi — Gregory despatched St. Augustine 
 to become the first Archbishop of Canterbury. When 
 England had been converted she sent forth St. Willibrod 
 in the eighth century to the shores of Northern Germany, 
 and St. Boniface to traverse undaunted the Thuringian 
 wilds ; and when the Scandinavian vikings were becoming 
 the scourge of every nation, and the terror of every sea, 
 in the ninth century, an Anskar, and, in the eleventh, an 
 Olaf, won them also to the faith of, Christ, and the main 
 work of the missionary apostolate in Europe was achieved. 
 He who sits on the hill at Canterbury may recall how, 
 from the mission-work of the little band of monks, headed 
 by Augustine, which advanced with beating hearts to 
 preach under the oak to the Pagan Ethelbert, there 
 sprang that first English Christian city of Canterbury, 
 and that first English Christian kingdom of Kent, which 
 has expanded into the Christian empire of Great Britain, 
 and which involved in its vast issues the conversion 
 not only of Germany, but also of North America, of 
 Australasia, of the far Pacific Islands, — and who can tell 
 
THE MISSIONARIES. 219 
 
 of what future empires and kingdoms, in circle after circle 
 of ever-broadening light, till the glory of the Lord shall 
 cover the earth as the waters cover the sea ? 
 
 But perhaps no missionary who ever lived was greater 
 than Francis Xavier, in the sixteenth century. A son of 
 the lords of Xavier, he entered the University of Paris, 
 and there rose into brilliant reputation. Among the 
 crowd of the wealthy and the noble who thronged his 
 lectures stood day by day the stern figure of Ignatius 
 Loyola, and his sordid dress and stern bearing were 
 often the butt of Xavier' s ridicule. Yet Ignatius did not 
 leave him. Constantly with him, in business, in pleasure, 
 in discussion, in amusement, in exercise, in society, he 
 invariably ended every meeting with the one awful ques- 
 tion : " What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole 
 world and lose his own soul ? " When the popularity of 
 Xavier failed, Ignatius revived it, but still with the same 
 question, "What shall it profit?" When his resources 
 were wasted by extravagance, Ignatius re-supplied his 
 wants, but still with the same question, "What shall it 
 profit?" In success, in happiness, in pleasure, always 
 the same question, " What shall it profit ? " At last that 
 question was burnt in upon the young man's soul, and 
 joining the Order of Jesus, which Ignatius had founded, 
 he surpassed all the rest in his austerities and penances. 
 At this time John III. of Portugal desired to plant 
 
220 SAINTLY WORKERS. 
 
 Christianity in India, and Xavier embraced with delight 
 the awful and perilous mission. Imbued with the stern 
 error that the crushing of every natural aifection was a 
 duty which Christianity required, he passed without a 
 farewell the castle in which his mother and sister lived, 
 and embarked penniless and possessionless on a vessel 
 bound for Goa. During the long months of the voyage 
 he lived entirely on the scraps given him by the soldiers 
 and sailors ; but so entirely did he win the love of all on 
 board by tending the sick, and consoling the sorrowful, 
 and trying to reclaim the sinful, that, though he landed in 
 all the emaciation of disease and weakness, his shipmates 
 regarded him as the happiest man of the crowded and 
 suffering crew. How he was shocked by the depravities 
 of Goa — how he taught the children there — how he went 
 to work among the poor degraded pearl-fishers of the 
 Straits of Manaar — how he laboured at Cape Comorin — 
 how he converted thousands, and baptised tens of thou- 
 sands — how he crossed to Travancore and inspired the 
 Rajah to repel a hostile invasion — how he reformed the 
 guilty city of Malacca — how, with calm intrepidity, he 
 carried on unmoved the offices of religion while an earth- 
 quake was rocking the very ground under his feet — how, 
 amid incredible dangers and violent opposition, he made 
 his way to Japan — how he met and foiled the bonzes — 
 how returning to Goa he tended the people during a 
 
THE MISSIONARIES. 221 
 
 raging pestilence — all his learning, all the sagacity, all 
 the patience, all the boundless self-denial, all the immense 
 empire and authority over the minds of men which that 
 self-conquest gained for him, you may read in the records 
 of his life. But in his, as in so many previous cases, I 
 should like you to observe the abounding joy and happi- 
 ness which he experienced in the midst of squalor, disease, 
 starvation, hatred, suffering. On one occasion he " bap- 
 tised till his hand dropped with weariness, and his voice 
 became inaudible \ experiencing, as he says, in his whole 
 soul a joy which it would be vain to attempt to express 
 either in writing or by speech." " So intense," he wrote 
 on another occasion, "and abundant are the delights 
 which God is accustomed to bestow on those who labour 
 diligently in His service in the vineyard in this barbarous 
 land, that if there be, in this life, any true solid enjoy- 
 ment, I believe it to be this, and this alone." And how 
 did he die ? I will read you the description. He was 
 trying to make his way to China to plant the Gospel 
 there, when the angel of death met him on his wild and 
 perilous journey. " At his own request he was removed 
 to the shore that he might meet his end with greater com- 
 posure. Stretched on the naked beach, with the cold 
 blasts of a Chinese winter aggravating his pains, he con- 
 tended alone with the agonies ol the fever which wasted 
 his vital powers. It was an agony and a solitude for which 
 
222 SAINTLY WORKERS. 
 
 the happiest of the sons of men might well have exchanged 
 the dearest society and the purest joys of life. It was an 
 agony in which his uplifted crucifix reminded him of a far 
 more awful woe endured for his deliverance. It was a 
 solitude thronged by blessed ministers of invisible con- 
 solation. Tears burst from his fading eyes, tears of an 
 emotion too big for utterance. In the cold collapse of 
 death his features were, for a few brief moments, irradi- 
 ated as with the first beams of approaching glory. He 
 raised himself on his crucifix, and exclaiming, ' In te, 
 Domine, speravi — non confundar in seternum ! ' he bowed 
 his head and died." 
 
 What shall I more say? The time would fail me 
 were I to attempt even the catalogue of all the true 
 saints and dauntless heroes of the mission cause from 
 age to age. But may I not dwell for one moment on 
 some of the beloved names of this last century ? Let me, 
 at least, make passing mention of the Moravian Missiofi- 
 aries in Greenland, 
 
 " Fired with a zeal peculiar to defy 
 The rage and rigour of a polar sky, 
 And plant successfully sweet Sharon's Rose 
 On icy plains and in eternal snows ; " 
 
 of John Eliot, the Apostle of the Red Indians, with his 
 life of toil and gentleness, and his motto, that prayer 
 and painstaking would accomplish everything; of David 
 
THE MISSIONARIES. 223 
 
 Brainerd, living alone among the savages in the forests, 
 though far advanced in consumption, and saying, " My 
 heaven is to please God and glorify Him j " of the just, 
 the venerable, the generous, the simple-hearted Schwartz; 
 of Henry Marfyn, the Cambridge senior wrangler, as we 
 see his pure pale face rising above his foul congregation 
 at Cawnpore, and pity him during those long hours of 
 lingering fever, when lie had to thrust his head for rest 
 among the damp boxes of his luggage, till he sank into 
 his lonely grave in the plague-stricken city of Tocat ; of 
 poor Adoniram Judson, bright and cheerful even amid 
 the horrors of a Burmese prison; of Bishop Reginald 
 Heber, who, though he had worked but two years in 
 India before he was found dead in his bath, yet during 
 those two years had breathed into his tender lyrics that 
 fire and dew of poetry which has done so much to 
 sweeten Indian life ; of Bishop Cotton, and the six years 
 of wise and faithful energy before that one false step on 
 the plank which flung him into the turbid river, never to 
 be seen on earth again ; of Samuel Marsden, the friend 
 of the Maories, who civilised as well as taught them, and 
 whom they loved and honoured as a father. 
 
 My brethren, what lives are these ! how superior to 
 ours, which are so murmuring, so somnolent, so self- 
 indulgent ! Are not our lives, compared to the lives of 
 such as these, as the brambles to the oaks at whose feet 
 
224 SAINTLY WORKERS. 
 
 they grow ? Ay, but even in these days, even in our own 
 lifetime, there have been some, who. "aiming at some- 
 thing more high and heroicai in religion than this age 
 affecteth," have even glorified the missionary's labours 
 with the martyr's crown. It was thus that, in 1840, 
 John Williams was murdered among the heathens of 
 Erromango; it was thus that, in 1845, the brave sailor, 
 Allen Gardiner, was starved to death in the long 
 Antarctic winter at Picton Island, while, on the cavern 
 near which his skeleton was found, he had painted up 
 the words, " My soul, wait thou still upon God, for my 
 hope is in Him." It was thus that, in 1862, Bishop 
 Charles Mackenzie, after a life that looked all failure, 
 died of fatigue and fever amid the malarious swamps of 
 the Zambesi. "As for happiness," he said to his sister 
 not long before his death, "I have given up looking 
 for that altogether. Now till death my post is one 
 of unrest and care. To be the sharer of every one's 
 sorrow, the comforter of every one's grief, the strength- 
 ener of every one's weakness ; to do this, as much as 
 in me lies, is my aim and object." "He said this 
 with a smile," she adds, " and, oh ! the peace in his 
 face ; it seemed as if nothing could shake it ! " 
 
 And though that is but sixteen years ago, even since 
 then two more heroic souls have joined that glorious 
 army of martyrs — David Livingstone and Coleridge 
 
THE MISSIONARIES. 225 
 
 Patteson. Five years ago, 1 on May 1, 1873, David 
 Livingstone, the great pioneer, the great foe of the 
 slave-trade, breathed his last in the sultry wastes of 
 Central Africa, in his hut at Ulala, with no white man 
 near, — no love of wife or sister to cool his fevered fore- 
 head; no hand of son or brother to close his glazing 
 eyes. And faithful to the very last to that which had 
 been the great work of his life, he wrote, as the last 
 words of his journal, almost with his dying hand, "All 
 I can add in my solitude is, may Heaven's rich blessing 
 come down on every one . . . who will help to heal 
 this open sore of the world." (These lines are recorded 
 on his gravestone in the nave of Westminster Abbey.) 
 And seven years ago Coleridge Patteson, noble Cole- 
 ridge Patteson, the pure-hearted, gallant, modest Eton 
 boy, who gave up every prospect in England to labour 
 amid the Pacific savages • — who had been obliged to be 
 ready many a time to plunge in the waters that break 
 among those coral reefs, "amid sharks, and devilfish, 
 and stinging jellies," to escape the flight of poisoned 
 arrows, of which the slightest graze meant horrid death — 
 he too in that high service died by the clubs of savages 
 whom he had often risked his life to save ; died, as since 
 then the brave and gentle Commodore Goodenough died, 
 at the hands of savages exasperated by the accursed man- 
 
 1 Preached in St. Andrew'-, Holborn, April II, 1878. 
 
 Q 
 
226 SAINTLY WORKERS. 
 
 stealing wickedness of white men who desecrate the 
 English name ; and they laid the young English martyr 
 Bishop in an open boat to float away over the bright 
 blue waters, with his hands crossed as if in prayer, and 
 a palm branch on his breast. 
 
 There are many, many lessons, my brethren, on which 
 I have not even touched, which yet spring immediately 
 from the contemplation of these noble and saintly lives 
 during nineteen centuries at which we have glanced ; — 
 lessons of self-denial, lessons of patience, lessons of self- 
 conquest, lessons of mastery over the world in the might 
 of unarmed holiness. Each one of them was a bright 
 planet in the firmament of human goodness, sparkling 
 with a different lustre, but each irradiated by one com- 
 mon sun. Faith — faith in the unseen — faith in God, 
 faith in Christ, and that faith leading to infinite self- 
 denial, and working by incessant love, that was the secret 
 of their common holiness, that is the lesson of their com- 
 mon example. For all these died in the faith. It was by 
 faith that Ignatius faced the lions ; by faith that Polycarp 
 stood unflinching in the flame; by faith Antony lived 
 his twenty years in the mountain cell \ by faith Benedict 
 rolled his naked body among the thorns to subdue the 
 lusts of the flesh; by faith Fra Angelico despised the 
 honours of the world ; by faith Francis reproduced on the 
 Umbrian hills the life of Christ ; by faith St. Columban 
 
THE MISSIONARIES. 227 
 
 faced the fierce tyranny of Burgundian kings ; by faith St. 
 Boniface hewed down the idol oak ; by faith Eliot, and 
 Judson, and Marsden, and Heber, and Mackenzie, and 
 Coleridge Patteson, and Allen Gardiner, and David 
 Livingstone civilised the Indians, converted the heathen, 
 put down the slave trade, showed us how to do, and 
 dare, and die in their Master's cause. Let us with them 
 follow Christ our common Lord. 
 
 Saintly Workers, p. 164. 
 
 0* 
 
THE MARTYRS. 
 
 Matt. x. 39. 
 " He that loseth his life for My sake shall find it." 
 
 T^HE quality which St. Stephen displayed in eminence 
 was courage, and courage is essentially the martyr's 
 virtue. But it was not by his death only that this 
 courage was manifested. The mere physical courage 
 which faces death without a shudder is not rare; it is 
 found in thousands of the most ordinary men. Take a 
 common ploughboy from the hillside and train him as a 
 soldier, and so strong are the influences upon him of the 
 discipline of his life, the presence of his comrades, the 
 eye of his officer, that he will advance unflinching upon 
 the batteries that vomit their cross-fire upon him, though 
 he well knows that not his will be the glory of victory, 
 and that where he falls there will he lie, unknown 
 and unnoticed, on the crimson sod. Far loftier is the 
 
rHE MARTYRS. 
 
 229 
 
 courage which knows no other training than the instincts 
 of a manly heart; and above all the courage which holds 
 out in utter loneliness. Almost any man will confront 
 peril with a multitude ; scarcely one in a thousand will 
 stand alone against a multitude when they are bent on 
 wrong. Thousands, again, will risk all for a hoary pre- 
 judice : only the true martyr souls have the battle-brunt 
 which will abide to the death by a new or a forgotten 
 truth. And this was the courage of St. Stephen. Though 
 only a Hellenist among Hebrews— only a deacon among 
 Apostles— he had seen deeper into Christianity than any 
 of his brethren. He saw, with perfect clearness, two 
 great principles which dawned but slowly and dimly 
 upon their minds. One was that the Law of Moses as a 
 system was doomed to pass away— fading even as the 
 *lory faded from his once-illuminated face: the other 
 was that Christianity was to be a free revelation not to 
 Jews only, but to all the world;— that henceforth all 
 mankind was to be a brotherhood, with equal privileges, 
 in the great family of God ;— that in Christ Jesus there 
 was to be neither Greek nor Jew, neither barbarian, 
 Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ all and in all. And 
 since it had been given him to see these truths, and their 
 infinite importance, he was ready even to die for them. 
 It did not damp his ardour to stand utterly alone amid 
 the raging controversies of hostile synagogues. His was 
 
230 SAINTLY WORKERS. 
 
 no mere flaring enthusiasm which smouldered at the 
 breath of danger. He did not even quail when he found 
 himself face to face with the stern menace of the Jewish 
 Sanhedrim. They bent on him their fierce frowns; 
 they glared on him with angry eyes ; but still his face 
 was as the face of an angel, and his upward gaze saw 
 Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And so he 
 delivered his glowing testimony, uttered his bold rebuke j 
 and, not flinching when they seized him to drag him to 
 his doom — even when he lay in anguish under the 
 heaped stones, he struggled to his knees, and praying for 
 his murderers, " Lord, lay not this sin to their charge," 
 he fell asleep. 
 
 So died Christ's earliest martyr ; noi was it long before 
 others followed him. James the son of Zebedee was 
 slain with the sword. James, the Lord's brother, was 
 hurled down from the Temple's summit. One by one 
 the Apostles passed to their unrecorded dooms. Thirty 
 years after the death of Christ, Rome was burnt down, 
 and being falsely accused of the crime, the Christians 
 were tied to the stake in the gardens of Nero's Golden 
 House, and while he drove about among the multitude 
 'n the guise of a charioteer, the flames were lit, and the 
 ghastly darkness illuminated by living torches, of which 
 each was a martyr in his shirt of flame. St. Peter, it 
 is said, died in the amphitheatre. St. Paul was. perhaps, 
 
THE MARTYRS. 231 
 
 beheaded on the Appian Way. Slowly, through the 
 cities of Asia, a prisoner chained in turns to ten rough 
 and cruel soldiers, whom he compared to ten leopards, 
 the aged Ignatius journeyed on, to be thrown to the 
 wild beasts before the assembled multitudes of Rome. 
 To St. Polycarp at Smyrna, as the flames arched over 
 him, the Spirit of God was as a moist whistling wind 
 amid the fire. " The Christians to the lions," became a 
 common cry of the Pagan mob. Old men like Pothinus, 
 young maidens like Blandina, mere boys like St. Pan- 
 crasius, cheerfully, nay, triumphantly, bore torture rather 
 than deny their Lord. St. Perpetua was young, and 
 delicate, and a mother. " Have mercy on thy babe," 
 they said to her : " have pity on the white hairs of thy 
 father and the infancy of thy child." "I will not." 
 "Art thou then a Christian?" they said, and she an- 
 swered, " Yes \ " and " since my father would have led 
 me away, Hilarianus ordered him to be driven off. . . . 
 Then sentence was pronounced, and we were condemned 
 to the wild beasts ; and with hearts full of joy returned 
 to our prison." '* Condemned to the wild beasts, and with 
 hearts full of joy returned to our prison I n Is it not 
 strange? as though the mention of joy were to a Chris- 
 tian the most natural thing in the world in connection 
 with an imprisonment of terrible cruelty and a death of 
 nameless horror. "Whence," it has well been asked, 
 
232 
 
 SAINTLY WORKERS. 
 
 "came this tremendous spirit, scaring, nay, offending, 
 the fastidious criticism of our delicate days ? " What 
 was it that inspired St. Ignatius to say, " Now I begin to 
 be a disciple. Whether it is fire, or the cross, or the 
 assault of wild beasts, or the wrenching of my bones, 
 the crunching of my limbs, the crushing of my whole 
 body, let the tortures of the devil all assail me, if I do 
 but gain Christ Jesus " ? Why does Tertullian so boldly 
 write, " Call us Sarmenticii and Semaxii, names derived 
 from the faggots wherewith we are burned, and the 
 stakes to which we are tied, — these are our robe of 
 victory, our triumphal chariot"? You must not think 
 that the martyrs had any spell which secured them an 
 immunity from pain. " They shrank from suffering like 
 other men, but such natural shrinking was incommensur- 
 able with apostasy." No intensity of torture could affect 
 a mental conviction, and so adequate a support and con- 
 solation to them in death was the sovereign thought in 
 which they lived; so perfect the holy beauty of the 
 maiden as she knelt to await the tiger's leap ; so peaceful 
 the sleep of the young boy beside nis wooden cross, as 
 the morn dawned grey on the grim circle where he was 
 to meet his end j so radiant was the old man's counten- 
 ance as he lifted heavenward his trembling hands out of 
 the flame — that often and often would the bystanders 
 have taken their places, and far more gladly have shared 
 
THE MARTYRS. 233 
 
 their martyrdom than have sat in guilty glory beside the 
 tyrants who sentenced them to death. 
 
 One good thing which the martyrs did for all the world 
 was this, — they changed the cross of Christ from an 
 emblem of horror and infamy to the proudest of all 
 symbols, to be woven in gold on the banners of armies 
 and set in gems on the crowns of kings. And another 
 grand thing they did was to set the loftiest of all ex- 
 amples ; to bear witness to the most necessary of all 
 truths — that there is in life something better than ease 
 and comfort, more delightful than pleasure, "more golden 
 than gold," that the life is more than meat, and the body 
 than raiment ; and that man's life consisteth not in the 
 abundance of things which he possesseth. Such men, as 
 has well been said, " create an epidemic of nobleness." 
 Men become better and greater from gazing at their 
 example j more ready to do and dare ; more willing to 
 lift their eyes out of the mire of selfishness and the dust 
 of anxiety and toil ; more brave to try whether they too 
 cannot " scale the toppling crags of duty/' and hold con- 
 verse with these their loftier brethren upon the 
 
 " Shining tablelands 
 To which our God Himself is moon and sun." 
 
 Through the darknesses and disappointments of life, 
 amid the wars and miseries of history, these high examples 
 
234 SAINTLY WORKERS. 
 
 glide ever before us like a pillar of fire. And this their 
 power of example by death becomes a power of influence 
 in life. 
 
 I could add much more on this subject, but I must 
 not weary you. What I have tried to make you see is 
 that there is some good to the world in the results of 
 martyrdom, in the example of martyrdom; that the 
 martyrs have been, in fact, the salt of the earth. Have 
 been — nay, they are ! For martyrdom is not one, but 
 manifold; it is often a battle-field where no clash of 
 earthly combatants is heard; it is often a theatre no 
 wider than a single nameless home. Sometimes it is 
 passive endurance ; sometimes it is active opposition ; 
 sometimes it is the decided warfare against a tyranny; 
 sometimes it is the stout declaration of a truth :— but it 
 is always a firm belief in the eternal distinctions between 
 right and wrong ; an evidence of conviction that there are 
 worse evils in life than pain, and poverty, and persecu- 
 tions; and higher blessings than pleasure, and success, 
 and wealth ; worse evils by far than those which the 
 world dreads, and higher blessings by far than those for 
 which it toils. To have the spirit of a martyr — and he 
 who has it will be, in the highest sense, a martyr — is to 
 be true at all costs to the best and highest things you 
 know. 
 
 Let us learn practically this one lesson. If the hour 
 
THE MARTYRS. 235 
 
 of martyrdom, of witness, comes to you, will you be 
 ready for it? It may come in very humble, in very 
 unexpected ways. Young man, who art assailed by evil 
 passions or evil temptations, when those passions are 
 running riot in your heart, or when your companions are 
 trying to make you walk in the way of sinners or sit in 
 the seat of the scornful, will not you bear testimony that 
 it is better to bear ridicule than to be a blasphemer; 
 better to face craving than to be a drunkard ; better to 
 suffer anything than to pollute or injure a soul for which 
 Christ died ? Oh the applications are a thousandfold I 
 Only be true to your God ; be true to your Saviour ; be 
 true to yourselves ; be true to the highest that you know, 
 and you, too, each in your turn, each in your measure, 
 shall have the high honour of helping forward by your 
 example the cause of God, the cause of good — you, too, 
 shall be Christ's witnesses— you, too, shall join the 
 glorious army, and even if you be never called upon 
 to taste the martyr's agony, yet, without resisting unto 
 blood, through the mercy and merit of your Lord and 
 Saviour your hands shall wave the martyr's palm-branch, 
 and your brows shall bear the martyr's crown. 
 
 Saintly Workers, p. 8. 
 
SEEKERS AFTER GOD. 
 
SENECA 
 
 T^ROM the habitual reticence of the ancient writers 
 respecting the period of their boyhood, it is not easy 
 to form a very vivid conception of the kind of education 
 given to a Roman boy of good family up to the age of 
 fifteen, when he laid aside the golden amulet and em- 
 broidered toga to assume a more independent mode of 
 life. 
 
 A few facts, however, we can gather from the scat- 
 tered allusions of the poets Horace, Juvenal, Martial, 
 and Persius. From these we learn that the school- 
 masters were for the most part underpaid and despised, 
 while at the same time an erudition alike minute and 
 useless was rigidly demanded of them. 
 
 The things taught were chiefly arithmetic, grammar 
 —both Greek and Latin — reading, and repetition of 
 the chief Latin poets. There was also a good deal of 
 recitation and of theme-writing on all kinds of trite his- 
 torical subjects. The arithmetic seems to have been 
 
2 4 o SEEKERS AFTER GOD. 
 
 mainly of a very simple and severely practical kind, 
 especially the computation of interest and compound 
 interest ; and the philolog) generally, both grammar and 
 criticism, was singularly narrow, uninteresting, and useless. 
 Despicable minutitz of no conceivable advantage to any 
 human being to know, every schoolmaster was expected 
 to have at his fingers' ends, and every boy-scholar to 
 learn at the point of the ferule — trash which was only fit 
 to be unlearned the moment it was known. 
 
 For this kind of verbal criticism and fantastic archae- 
 ology, Seneca, who had probably gone through it all, 
 expresses a profound and very rational contempt. Is 
 this true education ? or rather, should not our great aim 
 ever be to translate noble precepts into daily action? 
 " Teach me to despise pleasure and glory; afterwards 
 you shall teach me to disentangle difficulties, to dis- 
 tinguish ambiguities, to see through obscurities ; now 
 teach me what is necessary." Considering the condition 
 of much which in modern times passes under the name 
 of " education," we may possibly find that the hints of 
 Seneca are not yet wholly obsolete. 
 
 What kind of schoolmaster taught the little Seneca 
 when, under the care of the slave who was called peda- 
 gogics, or "boy-leader" (whence our word pedagogue), he 
 daily went with his brothers to school through the streets 
 of Rome, we do not know. Seneca has not alluded to 
 
SENECA. 241 
 
 any one who taught him during his early days. The 
 only schoolfellow whom he mentions by name in his 
 voluminous writings is a certain Claranus, a deformed 
 boy, whom, after leaving school, Seneca never met again 
 until they were both old men, but of whom he speaks 
 with great admiration. In spite of his hump-back, Cla- 
 ranus appeared even beautiful in the eyes of those who 
 knew him well, because his virtue and good sense left a 
 stronger impression than his deformity, and " his body 
 was adorned by the beauty of his soul." 
 
 It was not until mere school-lessons were finished that 
 a boy began seriously to enter upon the studies of 
 eloquence and philosophy, which therefore furnish some 
 analogy to what we should call "a university education." 
 Gallio and Mela, Seneca's elder and younger brothers, 
 devoted themselves heart and soul to the theory and 
 practice of eloquence ; Seneca made the rarer and the 
 wiser choice in giving his entire enthusiasm to the study 
 of philosophy. 
 
 I say the wiser choice, because eloquence is not a 
 thing for which one can give a receipt as one might give 
 a receipt for making eau-de-Cologne. Eloquence is the 
 noble, the harmonious, the passionate expression of truths 
 profoundly realised, or of emotions intensely felt. It is 
 a flame which cannot be kindled by artificial means. 
 Rhetoric may be taught if any one thinks it worth learning, 
 
242 SEEKERS AFTER GOD. 
 
 but eloquence is a gift as innate as the genius from which 
 it springs. " Cujus vita fulgur, ejus verba tonitrua" — 
 "if a man's life be lightning, his words will be thunders." 
 But the kind of oratory to be obtained by a constant 
 practice of declamation such as that which occupied the 
 schools of the Rhetors will be a very artificial lightning 
 and a very imitated thunder — not the artillery of heaven, 
 but the Chinese fire and rolled bladders of the stage. 
 Nothing could be more false, more hollow, more per- 
 nicious than the perpetual attempt to drill numerous 
 classes of youths into a reproduction of the mere manner 
 of the ancient orators. An age of unlimited declamation, 
 an age of incessant talk, is a hotbed in which real depth 
 and nobility of feeling runs miserably to seed. Style is 
 never worse than it is in ages which employ themselves 
 in teaching little else. How could eloquence survive 
 when the magnanimity and freedom which inspired it 
 were dead, and when the men and books which pro- 
 fessed to teach it were filled with despicable directions 
 about the exact position in which the orator was to use 
 his hands, and as to whether it was a good thing or not 
 for him to slap his forehead and disarrange his hair ? 
 
 The philosophic teaching which even from boyhood 
 exercised a powerful fascination on the eager soul of 
 Seneca was at least something better than this; and 
 more than one of his philosophic teachers succeeded in 
 
SENECA. 
 
 243 
 
 winning his warm affection, and in moulding the prin- 
 ciples and habits of his life. Two of them he mentions 
 with special regard, namely, Sotion the Pythagorean, 
 and Attalus the Stoic. 
 
 Another Pythagorean philosopher whom he admired 
 and whom he quotes was Sextius, from whom he learnt 
 the admirable practice of daily self-examination: — 
 "When the day was over, and he betook himself to his 
 nightly rest, he used to ask himself, What evil have you 
 cured to-day ? What vice have you resisted ? In what 
 particular have you improved?" "I too adopt this 
 custom," says Seneca, in his book on Anger, "and I 
 daily plead my cause before myself, when the light has 
 been taken away, and my wife, who is now aware of my 
 habit, has become silent; I carefully consider in my 
 heart the entire day, and take a deliberate estimate of my 
 deeds and words." 
 
 It was however the Stoic Attalus who seems to have 
 had the main share in the instruction of Seneca. He 
 tells us how he used to haunt the school of the eloquent 
 philosopher, being the first to enter and the last to leave 
 it. "When I heard him declaiming," he says, "against 
 vice, and error, and the ills of life, I often felt com- 
 passion for the human race, and believed my teacher to 
 be exalted above the ordinary stature of mankind. In 
 Stoic fashion he used to call himself a king ; but to me 
 
 R 2 
 
244 SEEKERS AFTER GOD. 
 
 his sovereignty seemed more than royal, seeing that it 
 was in his power to pass his judgments on kings them- 
 selves. When he began to set forth the praises of 
 poverty, and to show how heavy and superfluous was the 
 burden of all that exceeded the ordinary wants of life, I 
 often longed to leave school a poor man. When he 
 began to reprehend our pleasures, to praise a chaste 
 body, a moderate table, and a mind pure not from all 
 unlawful but even from all superfluous pleasures, it was 
 my delight to set strict limits to all voracity and gluttony. 
 And these precepts have left some permanent results ; 
 for I embraced them with impetuous eagerness, and 
 afterwards, when I entered upon a political career, I 
 retained a few of my good beginnings. In consequence 
 of them, I have all my life long renounced eating oysters 
 and mushrooms, which do not satisfy hunger but only 
 sharpen appetite: for this reason I habitually abstain 
 from perfumes, because the sweetest perfume for the 
 body is none at all : for this reason I do without wines 
 and baths. Other habits which I once abandoned have 
 come back to me, but in such a way that I merely sub- 
 stitute moderation for abstinence, which perhaps is a 
 still more difficult task; since there are some things 
 which it is easier for the mind to cut away altogether 
 than to enjoy in moderation. Attalus used to recom- 
 mend a hard couch in which the body could not sink ; 
 
SENECA. 245 
 
 and, even in my old age, I use one of such a kind that 
 it leaves no impress of the sleeper. I have told you 
 these anecdotes to prove to you what eager impulses our 
 little scholars would have to all that is good, if any one 
 were to exhort them and urge them on. But the harm 
 springs partly from the fault of preceptors, who teach us 
 how to argue, not how to live; and partly from the fault 
 of pupils, who bring to their teachers a purpose of train- 
 ing their intellect and not their souls. Thus it is that 
 philosophy has been degraded into mere philology." 
 
 In another lively passage, Seneca brings vividly before 
 us a picture of the various scholars assembled in a school 
 of the philosophers. After observing that philosophy 
 exercises some influence even over those who do not go 
 deeply in it, just as people sitting in a shop of perfumes 
 carry away with them some of the odour, he adds, " Do 
 we not, however, know some who have been among the 
 audience of a philosopher for many years, and have been 
 even entirely uncoloured by his teaching ? Of course I 
 do, even most persistent and continuous hearers ; whom 
 I do not call pupils, but mere passing auditors of philoso- 
 phers. Some come to hear, not to learn, just as we are 
 brought into a theatre for pleasure's sake, to delight our 
 ears with language, or with the voice, or with plays. You 
 will observe a large portion of the audience to whom the 
 philosopher's school is a mere haunt of their leisure. 
 
246 SEEKERS AFTER GOD, 
 
 Their object is not to lay aside any vices there, or to 
 accept any law in accordance with which they may con- 
 form their life, but that they may enjoy a mere tickling 
 of their ears. Some, however, even come with tablets in 
 their hands, to catch up not things, but words. Some 
 with eager countenances and spirits are kindled by magni- 
 ficent utterances, and these are charmed by the beauty of 
 the thoughts, not by the sound of empty words ; but the 
 impression is not lasting. Few only have attained the 
 power of carrying home with them the frame of mind 
 into which they had been elevated." 
 
 It was to this small latter class that Seneca be- 
 longed. He became a Stoic from very early years. The 
 Stoic philosophers, undoubtedly the noblest and purest 
 of ancient sects, received their name from the fact that 
 their founder Zeno had lectured in the Painted Porch or 
 Stoa Poecile of Athens. The influence of these austere 
 and eloquent masters, teaching high lessons of morality 
 and continence, and inspiring their young audience with 
 the glow of their own enthusiasm for virtue, must have 
 been invaluable in that effete and drunken age. Their 
 doctrines were pushed to yet more extravagant lengths by 
 the Cynics, who were so called from a Greek word mean- 
 ing "dog," from what appeared to the ancients to be 
 the dog-like brutality of their manners. Juvenal scorn- 
 fully remarks, that the Stoics only differed from the 
 
SENECA. 247 
 
 Cynics "by a tunic," which the Stoics wore and the 
 Cynics discarded. Seneca never indeed adopted the 
 practices of Cynicism, but he often speaks admiringly of 
 the arch-Cynic Diogenes, and repeatedly refers to the 
 Cynic Demetrius, as a man deserving of the very highest 
 esteem. " I take with me everywhere," writes he to a 
 friend, " that best of men, Demetrius ; and, leaving those 
 who wear purple robes, I talk with him who is half-naked. 
 Why should I not admire him ? I have seen that he has 
 no want. Any one may despise all things, but no one 
 can possess all things. The shortest road to riches lies 
 through contempt of riches. But our Demetrius lives 
 not as though he despised all things, but as though he 
 simply suffered others to possess them." 
 
 These habits and sentiments throw considerable light 
 on Seneca's character. They show that even from his 
 earliest days he was capable of adopting self-denial as a 
 principle, and that to his latest days he retained many 
 private habits of a simple and honourable character, even 
 when the exigencies of public life had compelled him to 
 modify others. Seneca was an inconsistent philosopher 
 both in theory and in practice ; he fell beyond all question 
 into serious errors, which deeply compromise his character; 
 but, so far from being a dissipated or luxurious man, there 
 is every reason to believe that in the very midst of wealth 
 and splendour, and all the temptations which they involve, 
 
248 SEEKERS AFTER GOD. 
 
 he retained alike the simplicity of his habits and the 
 rectitude of his mind. Whatever may have been the 
 almost fabulous value of his five hundred tables of cedar 
 and ivory, they were rarely spread with any more sumptuous 
 entertainment than water, vegetables, and fruit. What- 
 ever may have been the amusements common among his 
 wealthy and noble contemporaries, we know that he 
 found his highest enjoyment in the innocent pleasures of 
 his garden, and took some of his exercise by running 
 races there with a little slave. 
 
 Seekers after God, p. 23. 
 
SENECA A AW ST. PAUL. 
 
 TN the spring of the year 61 there disembarked at 
 Puteoli a troop of prisoners, whom the Procurator of 
 Judaea had sent to Rome under the charge of a centurion. 
 Walking among them, chained and weary, but affection- 
 ately tended by two younger companions, and treated with 
 profound respect by little deputations of friends who met 
 him at Appii Forum and the Three Taverns, was a man 
 of mean presence and weather-beaten aspect, who was 
 handed over like the rest to the charge of Burrus, the 
 Prefect of the Praetorian Guards. Learning from the 
 letters of the Jewish Procurator that the prisoner had 
 been guilty of no serious offence, but had used his 
 privilege of Roman citizenship to appeal to Caesar for 
 protection against the infuriated malice of his co-religion- 
 ists — possibly also having heard from the centurion Julius 
 some remarkable facts about his behaviour and history — 
 Burrus allowed him, pending the hearing of his appeal, 
 to live in his own hired apartment. This lodging was in 
 
250 SEEKERS AFTER GOD. 
 
 all probability in that quarter of the city, opposite the 
 island in the Tiber, which corresponds to the modern 
 Trastevere. It was the resort of the very lowest and 
 meanest of the populace — that promiscuous jumble of all 
 nations which makes Tacitus call Rome at this time " the 
 sewer of the universe." It was here especially that the 
 Jews exercised some of the meanest trades in Rome, 
 selling matches, and old clothes, and broken glass, or 
 begging and fortune-telling on the Cestian or Fabrician 
 bridges. In one of these narrow, dark, and dirty streets, 
 thronged by the dregs of the Roman populace, St. Mark 
 and St. Peter had in all probability lived when they 
 founded the little Christian Church at Rome. It was 
 undoubtedly in the same despised locality that St. Paul, 
 — the prisoner who had been consigned to the care of 
 Burrus, — hired a room, sent for the principal Jews, and 
 for two years taught to Jews and Christians, and to any 
 Pagans who would listen to him, the doctrines which 
 were destined to regenerate the world. 
 
 Any one entering that mean and dingy room would 
 have seen a Jew with bent body and furrowed counten- 
 ance, and with every appearance of age, weakness, and 
 disease, chained by the arm to a Roman soldier. But it 
 is impossible that, had they deigned to look closer, they 
 should not also have seen the gleam of genius and en- 
 thusiasm, the fire of inspiration, the serene light of exalted 
 
SENECA AND ST. PAUL. 25* 
 
 hope and dauntless courage upon those withered features. 
 And though he was chained, " the Word of God was not 
 chained." Had they listened to the words which he 
 occasionally dictated, or overlooked the large hand- 
 writing which alone his weak eyesight and bodily infirm- 
 ities, as well as the inconvenience of his chains, per- 
 mitted, they would have heard or read the immortal 
 utterances which strengthened the faith of the nascent 
 and struggling Churches in Ephesus, Philippi, and 
 Colossse, and which have since been treasured among 
 the most inestimable possessions of a Christian world. 
 
 His efforts were not unsuccessful ; his misfortunes 
 were for the furtherance of the Gospel ; his chains were 
 manifest "in all the palace, and in all other places;" 
 and many waxing confident by his bonds were much 
 more bold to speak the word without fear. Let us not 
 be misled by assuming a wrong explanation of these 
 words, or by adopting the Middle Age traditions which 
 made St. Paul convert some of the immediate favourites 
 of the Emperor, and electrify with his eloquence an 
 admiring Senate. The word here rendered "palace" 
 may indeed have that meaning, for we know that among 
 the early converts were " they of Caesar's household ; " but 
 these were in all probability — if not certainly — Jews of 
 the lowest rank, who were, as we know, to be found 
 among the hundreds of unfortunates of every age and 
 
252 SEEKERS AFTER GOD. 
 
 country who composed a Roman familia. And it is at 
 least equally probable that the word " praetorium " simply 
 means the barrack of that detachment of Roman soldiers 
 from which Paul's gaolers were taken in turn. In such 
 labours St. Paul in all probability spent two years. 
 
 It is out of such materials that some early Christian 
 forger thought it edifying to compose the work which is 
 supposed to contain the correspondence of Seneca and 
 St. Paul. The undoubted spuriousness of that work is 
 now universally admitted. But it is worth while inquiring 
 whether in the circumstances of the time there is even 
 a bare possibility that Seneca should ever have been 
 among the readers or the auditors of Paul. 
 
 And the answer is, There is absolutely no such 
 probability. " The world knows nothing of its greatest 
 men." Seneca would have stood aghast at the very 
 notion of his receiving the lessons, still more of his 
 adopting the religion, of a poor, accused, and wandering 
 Jew. The haughty, wealthy, eloquent, prosperous, 
 powerful philosopher would have smiled at the notion 
 that any future ages would suspect him of having bor- 
 rowed any of his polished and epigrammatic lessons of 
 philosophic morals or religion from one whom, if he 
 heard of him, he would have regarded as a poor wretch, 
 half fanatic and half barbarian. 
 
 We learn from St. Paul himself that the early converts 
 
SENECA AND ST. PAUL. 253 
 
 of Christianity were men in the very depths of poverty, 
 and that its preachers were regarded as fools, and weak, 
 and were despised, and naked, and buffeted — persecuted 
 and homeless labourers — a spectacle to the world, and to 
 angels, and to men, " made as the filth of the earth and 
 the offscouring of all things." We know that their 
 preaching was to the Greeks " foolishness," and that, 
 when they spoke of Jesus and the resurrection, their 
 hearers mocked and jeered. And these indications are 
 more than confirmed by many contemporary passages of 
 ancient writers. We have already seen the violent 
 expressions of hatred which the ardent and high-toned 
 soul of Tacitus thought applicable to the Christians ; 
 and such language is echoed by Roman writers of every 
 character and class. The fact is that at this time and 
 for centuries afterwards the Romans regarded the Chris- 
 tians with such lordly indifference that— like Festus, and 
 Felix, and Seneca's brother Gallio — they never took the 
 trouble to distinguish them from the Jews. They con- 
 fused them with the whole degraded mass of Egyptian 
 and Oriental impostors and brute - worshippers ; they 
 disdained them as seditious, turbulent, obstinate, and 
 avaricious ; they regarded them as mainly composed of 
 the very meanest slaves out of the gross and abject 
 multitude. But as far as they made any distinction 
 between Jews and Christians, it was for the latter that 
 
254 SEEKERS AFTER GOD. 
 
 they reserved their choicest and most concentrated 
 epithets of hatred and abuse. A "new," "pernicious," 
 "detestable," "execrable," superstition is the only 
 language with which Suetonius and Tacitus vouchsafe to 
 notice it. Seneca — though he must have heard the name 
 of Christian during the reign of Claudius, and during the 
 Neronian persecutions — never once alludes to them, and 
 only mentions the Jews to apply a few contemptuous 
 remarks to the idleness of their sabbaths, and to call 
 them " a most abandoned race." 
 
 The reader will now judge whether there is the slightest 
 probability that Seneca had any intercourse with St. Paul, 
 or was likely to have stooped from his superfluity of 
 wealth, and pride of power, to take lessons from obscure 
 and despised slaves in the purlieus inhabited by the 
 crowded households of Caesar or Narcissus. 
 
 Seekers after God. p. 167. 
 
GALLIO AND ST. PAUL. 
 
 TV/T ARCUS Annaeus Novatus (Seneca's elder brother) is 
 known to history under the name of Junius Gallio, 
 which he took when adopted by the orator of that name, 
 who was a friend of his father. He is none other than the 
 Gallio of the Acts, the Proconsul of Achaia, whose name 
 has passed current among Christians as a proverb of 
 complacent indifference. 
 
 The scene, however, in which Scripture gives us a 
 glimpse of him has been much misunderstood, and to 
 talk of him as " careless Gallio " or to apply the expres- 
 sion that " he cared for none of these things " to indiffer- 
 ence in religious matters, is entirely to misapply the spirit 
 of the narrative. What really happened was this. The 
 Jews, indignant at the success of Paul's preaching, dragged 
 him before the tribunal of Gallio, and accused him of 
 introducing illegal modes of worship. When the Apostle 
 was about to defend himself, Gallio contemptuously cut 
 him short by saying to the Jews, "If in truth there were 
 
256 SEEKERS AFTER GOD. 
 
 in question any act of injustice or wicked misconduct, I 
 should naturally have tolerated your complaint. But it 
 this is some verbal inquiry about mere technical matters 
 of your law, look after it yourselves. I do not choose to 
 be a judge of such matters." With these words he drove 
 them from his judgment-seat with exactly the same fine 
 Roman contempt for the Jews and their religious affairs 
 as was subsequently expressed by Festus to the sceptical 
 Agrippa, and as had been expressed previously by Pontius 
 Pilate to the tumultuous Pharisees. Exulting at this dis- 
 comfiture of the hated Jews, and apparently siding with 
 Paul, the Greeks then went in a body, seized Sosthenes 
 the leader of the Jewish synagogue, and beat him in full 
 view of the Proconsul seated on his tribunal. This was 
 the event at which Gallio looked on with such imperturb- 
 able disdain. What could it possibly matter to him, the 
 great Proconsul, whether the Greeks beat a poor wretch 
 of a Jew or not ? So long as they did not make a riot, 
 or give him any further trouble about the matter, they 
 might beat Sosthenes or any number of Jews black and 
 blue if it pleased them, for all he was likely to care. 
 
 What a vivid glimpse do we here obtain, from the 
 graphic picture of an eye-witness, of the daily life in an 
 ancient provincial forum ; how completely do we seem to 
 catch sight for a moment of that habitual expression of 
 contempt which curled the thin lips of a Roman aristo- 
 
GALLIC AND ST. PAUL. 257 
 
 crat in the presence of subject nations, and especially of 
 Jews ! If Seneca had come across any of the Alexan- 
 drian Jews in his Egyptian travels, the only impression 
 left on his mind was that expressed by Tacitus, Juvenal, 
 and Suetonius, who never mention the Jews without 
 execration. It has been often conjectured — it has even 
 been seriously believed — that Seneca had personal inter- 
 course with St. Paul, and learnt from him some lessons 
 of Christianity. The scene on which we have just been 
 gazing will show us the utter unlikelihood of such a sup- 
 position. Probably the nearest opportunity which ever 
 occurred to bring the Christian Apostle into intellectual 
 contact with the Roman philosopher was this occasion 
 when St. Paul was dragged as a prisoner into the presence 
 of Seneca's elder brother. The utter contempt and indif- 
 ference with which he was treated, the manner in which 
 he was summarily cut short before he could even open 
 his lips in his own defence, will give us a just estimate of 
 the manner in which Seneca would have been likely to 
 regard St. Paul. It is highly improbable that Gallio ever 
 retained the slightest impression or memory of so every- 
 day a circumstance as this, by which alone he is known 
 to the world. It is possible that he had not even heard 
 the mere name of Paul, and that, if he ever thought of 
 him at all, it was only as a miserable, ragged, fanatical 
 
 Jew, of dim eyes and diminutive stature, who had once 
 
 s 
 
258 SEEKERS AFTER GOD 
 
 wished to inflict upon him an harangue. He would 
 indeed have been unutterably amazed if any one had 
 whispered to him that well-nigh the sole circumstance 
 which would entitle him to be remembered by posterity, 
 and the sole event of his life by which he would be at all 
 generally known, was that momentary and accidental 
 relation to his despised prisoner. 
 
 Seekers after God, p. 16. 
 
THE STATE OF ROMAN SOCIETY IN THE 
 DA YS OF SENECA. 
 
 ^y^/"E have gleaned from Seneca's own writings what 
 facts we could respecting his early education. But 
 in the life of every man there are influences of a far more 
 real and penetrating character than those which come 
 through the medium of schools or teachers. The spirit 
 of the age, the general tone of thought, the prevalent 
 habits of social intercourse, the political tendencies which 
 were moulding the destiny of the nation, — these must 
 have told, more insensibly indeed but more powerfully, 
 on the mind of Seneca than even the lectures of Sotion 
 and of Attalus. And if we have had reason to fear that 
 there was much which was hollow in the fashionable 
 education, we shall see that the general aspect of the 
 society by which our young philosopher was surrounded 
 from the cradle was yet more injurious and deplorable. 
 The darkness is deepest just before the dawn, and never 
 
 s 2 
 
260 SEEKERS AFTER GOD. 
 
 did a grosser darkness or a thicker mist of moral pestilence 
 brood over the surface of Pagan society than at the 
 period when the Sun of Righteousness arose with healing 
 in His wings. There have been many ages when the 
 dense gloom of a heartless immorality seemed to settle 
 down with unusual weight; there have been many 
 places where, under the gas-light of an artificial system, 
 vice has seemed to acquire an unusual audacity ; but 
 never probably was there any age or any place where the 
 worst forms of wickedness were practised with a more 
 unblushing effrontery than in the city of Rome under the 
 government of the Caesars. A deeply-seated corruption 
 seemed to have fastened upon the very vitals of the 
 national existence. It is surely a lesson of deep moral 
 significance that just as they became most polished in 
 their luxury they became most vile in their manner of 
 life. He who would see but for a moment and afar off 
 to what the Gentile world had sunk, at the very period 
 when Christianity began to spread, may form some faint 
 and shuddering conception from the picture of it drawn 
 in the Epistle to the Romans. 
 
 In the age of Augustus began that " long slow agony," 
 that melancholy process of a society gradually going to 
 pieces under the dissolving influence of its own vices, 
 which lasted almost without interruption till nothing was 
 left for Rome except the fire and sword of barbaric in- 
 
ROMAN SOCIETY IN THE DAYS OF SENECA. 26] 
 
 vasion. She saw not only her glories but also her virtues 
 " star by star expire." The old heroism, the old beliefs, 
 the old manliness and simplicity, were dead and gone ; 
 they had been succeeded by prostration and superstition, 
 by luxury and lust. 
 
 The mere elements of society at Rome during this 
 period were very unpromising. It was a mixture of 
 extremes. There was no middle class. At the head of it 
 was an emperor, often deified in his lifetime, and separ- 
 ated from even the noblest of the senators by a distance 
 of immeasurable superiority. He was, in the startling 
 language of Gibbon, at once "a priest, an atheist, 
 and a god." Surrounding his person and forming 
 his court were usually those of the nobility who were the 
 most absolutely degraded by their vices, their flatteries, 
 or their abject subservience. But even these men were 
 not commonly the repositories of political power. The 
 people of the greatest influence were the freedmen of 
 the emperors — men who had been slaves, Egyptians and 
 Bithynians who had come to Rome with bored ears and 
 with chalk on their naked feet to show that they were for 
 sale, or who had bawled " sea-urchins all alive " in the 
 Velabrum or the Saburra — who had acquired enormous 
 wealth by means often the most unscrupulous and the 
 most degraded, and whose insolence and baseness had 
 kept pace with their rise to power. Such a man was the 
 
262 SEEKERS AFTER GOD. 
 
 Felix before whom St. Paul was tried, and such was his 
 brother Pallas, whose golden statue might have been seen 
 among the household gods of the senator, afterwards the 
 emperor, Vitellius. 
 
 It was an age of the most enormous wealth existing 
 side by side with the most abject poverty. Around the 
 splendid palaces wandered hundreds of mendicants, who 
 made of their mendicity a horrible trade, and even went 
 so far as to steal or mutilate infants in order to move com- 
 passion by their hideous maladies. This class was in- 
 creased by the exposure of children, and by that overgrown 
 accumulation of landed property which drove the poor 
 from their native fields. It was increased also by the 
 ambitious attempt of people whose means were moderate 
 to imitate the enormous display of the numerous million- 
 aires. The great Roman conquests in the East, the 
 plunder of the ancient kingdoms of Antiochus, of Attalus, 
 of Mithridates, had caused a turbid stream of wealth to 
 flow into the sober current of Roman life. One reads 
 with silent astonishment of the sums expended by wealthy 
 Romans on their magnificence or their pleasures. And as 
 commerce was considered derogatory to rank and position, 
 and was therefore pursued by men who had no character 
 to lose, these overgrown fortunes were often acquired by 
 wretches of the meanest stamp — by slaves brought from 
 over the sea. who had to conceal the holes bored in their 
 
ROMAN SOCIETY IN THE DAYS OF SENECA. 263 
 
 ears (this was a common ancient practice j the very 
 words " thrall/' " thraldom n are etymologically connected 
 with the roots " thrill," " trill," "drill ") ; or even by male- 
 factors, who had to obliterate, by artificial means, the three 
 letters which had been branded by the executioner on 
 their foreheads. But many of the richest men in Rome, 
 who had not sprung from this convict origin, were fully 
 as well deserving of the same disgraceful stigma. Their 
 houses were built, their coffers were replenished, from 
 the drained resources of exhausted provincials. Every 
 young man of active ambition or noble birth, whose 
 resources had been impoverished by debauchery and 
 extravagance, had but to borrow fresh sums in order to 
 give magnificent gladiatorial shows, and then, if he could 
 once obtain an asdileship, and mount to the higher offices 
 of the State, he would in time become the procurator or 
 proconsul of a province, which he might pillage almost 
 at his will. Enter the house of a Felix or a Verres. 
 Those splendid pillars of mottled green marble were dug 
 by the forced labour of Phrygians from the quarries of 
 Synnada; that embossed silver, those murrhine vases, 
 those jewelled cups, those masterpieces of antique sculp- 
 ture, have all been torn from the homes or the temples 
 of Sicily or Greece. Countries were pillaged and nations 
 crushed that an Apicius might dissolve pearls in the 
 wine he drank, or that Lollia Paulina might gleam in a 
 
264 SEEKERS AFTER GOD. 
 
 dress of emeralds and pearls which had cost 40,000,000 
 sesterces, or more than ^32,000. 
 
 Each of these " gorgeous criminals " lived in the midst 
 of a humble crowd of flatterers, parasites, clients, depend- 
 ants, and slaves. Among the throng that at early morn- 
 ing jostled each other in the marble atrium were to be 
 found a motley and heterogeneous set of men. Slaves 
 of every age and nation — Germans, Egyptians, Gauls, 
 Goths, Syrians, Britons, Moors, pampered and conse- 
 quential freedmen, impudent confidential servants, greedy 
 buffoons, who lived by making bad jokes at other people's 
 tables; Dacian gladiators, with whom fighting was a 
 trade ; philosophers, whose chief claim to reputation was 
 the length of their beards : and among all these a number 
 of poor but honest clients, forced quietly to put up with 
 a thousand forms of contumely and insult, and living in 
 discontented idleness on the sportula or daily largesse 
 which was administered by the grudging liberality of 
 their haughty patrons. The stout old Roman burgher 
 had well-nigh disappeared ; the sturdy independence, the 
 manly self-reliance of an industrial population were all 
 but unknown. 
 
 It was an age at once of atheism and superstition. 
 Strange to say, the two things usually go together. The 
 Romans under the Empire sneered at all the whole crowd 
 of gods and goddesses whom their fathers had worshipped, 
 
ROMAN SOCIETY IN THE DAYS OF SENECA. 265 
 
 but gave an implicit credence to sorcerers, astrologers, 
 spirit-rappers, exorcists, and every species of impostor 
 and quack. The ceremonies of religion were performed 
 with ritualistic splendour, but all belief in religion was 
 dead and gone. The priests, and Salii, and Flamens, 
 and Augurs continued to fulfil their solemn functions, and 
 the highest title of the Emperor himself was that of Pon- 
 tifex Maximus, or Chief Priest, which he claimed as the 
 recognised head of the national religion. 
 
 It was an age of boundless luxury,— an age in which 
 women recklessly vied with one another in the race of 
 splendour and extravagance, and in which men plunged 
 headlong, without a single scruple of conscience, and with 
 every possible resource at their command, into the pur- 
 suit of pleasure. There was no form of luxury, there was 
 no refinement of vice invented by any foreign nation, 
 which had not been eagerly adopted by the Roman patri- 
 cians. " The softness of Sybaris, the manners of Rhodes 
 and Antioch, and of perfumed, drunken, flower-crowned 
 Miletus," were all to be found at Rome. There was no 
 more of the ancient Roman severity and dignity and self- 
 respect. The descendants of ^Emilius and Gracchus — 
 even generals and consuls and praetors — mixed familiarly 
 with the lowest canaille in their vilest and most squalid 
 purlieus of shameless vice. They fought as amateur 
 gladiators in the arena. They drove as competing 
 
266 SEEKERS AFTER GOD 
 
 charioteers on the race-course. They even condescended 
 to appear as actors on the stage. They devoted them- 
 selves with such frantic eagerness to the excitement of 
 gambling, that we read of their staking hundreds of 
 pounds on a single throw of the dice, when they could 
 not even restore the pawned tunics to their shivering 
 slaves. 
 
 Yet it was an age of deep sadness. That it should 
 have been so is an instructive and solemn lesson. In 
 proportion to the luxury of the age were its misery and 
 its exhaustion. The mad pursuit of pleasure was the 
 death and degradation of all true happiness. Suicide — 
 suicide out of pure ennui and discontent at a life over- 
 flowing with every possible means of indulgence — was 
 extraordinarily prevalent. Men ran to death because 
 their mode of life had left them no other refuge. They 
 died because it seemed so tedious and so superfluous to 
 be seeing and doing and saying the same things over and 
 over again • and because they had exhausted the very 
 possibility of the only pleasures of which they had left 
 themselves capable. 
 
 And it was an age of cruelty. The shows of gladiators, 
 the sanguinary combats of wild beasts, the not unfrequent 
 spectacle of savage tortures and capital punishments, the 
 occasional sight of innocent martyrs burning to death in 
 their shirts of pitchy fire, must have hardened and im- 
 
ROMAN SOCIETY IN THE DAYS OF SENECA. 267 
 
 bruted the public sensibility. The immense prevalence 
 of slavery tended still more inevitably to the general cor- 
 ruption. " Lust," as usual, was " hard by hate." One 
 hears with perfect amazement of the number of slaves in 
 the wealthy houses. A thousand slaves was no extrava- 
 gant number, and the vast majority of them were idle, 
 uneducated, and corrupt Treated as little better than 
 animals, they lost much of the dignity of men. Their 
 masters possessed over them the power of life and death, 
 and it is shocking to read of the cruelty with which they 
 were often treated. An accidental murmur, a cough, a 
 sneeze, was punished with rods. Mute, motionless, fast- 
 ing, the slaves had to stand by while their masters supped. 
 A brutal and stupid barbarity often turned a house into 
 the shambles of an executioner, sounding with scourges, 
 chains, and yells. Even women inflicted upon their 
 female slaves punishments of the most cruel atrocity for 
 faults of the most venial character. A brooch wrongly 
 placed, a tress of hair ill-arranged, and the enraged 
 matron orders her slave to be lashed and crucified. If 
 her milder husband interferes, she not only justifies the 
 cruelty, but asks in amazement: " What ! is a slave so 
 much of a human being ? " No wonder that there was a 
 proverb, " As many slaves, so many foes." No wonder 
 that many masters lived in perpetual fear, and that " the 
 tyrant's devilish plea, necessity," might be urged in favoui 
 
268 SEEKERS AFTER GOD. 
 
 of that odious law which enacted that, if a master was 
 murdered by an unknown hand, the whole body of his 
 slaves should suffer death, — a law which more than once 
 was carried into effect under the reigns of the Emperors. 
 Slavery, as we see in the case of Sparta and many other 
 nations, always involves its own retribution. The class 
 of free peasant proprietors gradually disappears. Long 
 before this time Tib. Gracchus, in coming home from 
 Sardinia, had observed that there was scarcely a single 
 freeman to be seen in the fields. The slaves were infi- 
 nitely more numerous than their owners. Hence arose 
 the constant dread of servile insurrections ; the constant 
 hatred of a slave population to which any conspirator or 
 revolutionist might successfully appeal ; and the constant 
 insecurity of life, which must have struck terror into 
 many hearts. 
 
 Such is but a faint and broad outline of some of the 
 features of Seneca's age ; and we shall be unjust if we do 
 not admit that much at least of the life he lived, and 
 nearly all the sentiments he uttered, gain much in gran- 
 deur and purity from the contrast they offer to the common 
 life of " that people victor once, now vile and base." 
 
 Seekers after God, p. 36. 
 
LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGES. 
 
SANSKRIT. 
 
 HPHE year 1808 may be fixed on as the year of the 
 discovery of Sanskrit. Now what do we mean by 
 the discovery of Sanskrit ? We mean that up to this 
 time there had appeared to be an absolute distinction 
 of race and sympathy between the inhabitants of Hindo- 
 stan and the whole world of Western civilisation, when 
 suddenly attention was drawn to a certain dead language 
 in which were enshrined the sacred Vedas of the Brah- 
 mins, and which, though it had been dead for more 
 than three thousand years, was obviously the direct 
 source of all the main modern dialects of the Hindoos j 
 and it was found that this language presented the closest 
 and most remarkable affinities, not only to the Persian, 
 which was conterminous with it, but even to all the 
 main languages of Europe, from the volcanic plains of 
 Iceland and the bleak fiords of Norway down to the 
 sunny bays of Italy and Greece. At first this appeared 
 so unaccountable, so absolutely incredible, so subversive 
 
272 LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGES. 
 
 of all that had hitherto been believed, that the fact was 
 either stoutly denied, or it was asserted that any coin- 
 cidences between Greek for instance and Sanskrit were 
 simply due to a few accidental words which had got 
 currency after the conquests of Alexander. But after 
 the year 1808 it was impossible for any candid mind to 
 be contented with so inadequate an explanation of the 
 known facts. In that memorable year — which was also 
 the year of Porson's death— Colebrooke published his 
 edition of the Amara-kosha, Wilkins his Sanskrit Gram- 
 mar, Schlegel his Essay on the Language and Wisdom 
 of the I?idians, and Prichard his work on The Varieties of 
 the Human Race. The torch of knowledge was now well 
 alight, and it was snatched eagerly by many hands. 
 
 The discovery of Sanskrit brought the intellect of 
 Europe face to face with the intellect of Hindostan. 
 Hitherto the education and culture of Europe had been 
 almost solely Hellenistic, but now the modern world was 
 to receive a new impulse from its contact with the 
 grandeur, profundity, and calm of Oriental thought. 
 The rapture of Goethe — the subtlest and most cultivated 
 intellect of Europe— on perusing the Sakuntala, will 
 show how little I exaggerate— 
 
 Willst du die Bliithe des frUhern, die Friichte des spateren Jahres, 
 Willst du was reizt und entziickt, willst du was sattigt und nahrt, 
 
 Willst du den Himmel, die Erde mit einem Namen begreifen, 
 Nenn' ich Sakontala dir und so ist alles gesagt. 
 
SANSKRIT. 
 
 273 
 
 The devotion to classical literature had, at the beginning 
 of this century, been too long continued and too exclu- 
 sive ; it gave to the mind of Europe a development one- 
 sided and therefore injurious. We had learnt to confine 
 the very meaning of the word " antiquity " to the history 
 of Greece and Rome; but the discovery of Sanskrit 
 revealed to us a wholly new chapter in the history of the 
 world's youth : it enabled us to study the infancy of our 
 race in the first gorgeous bloom of its imaginative 
 passions. 
 
 Then again the discovery of Sanskrit was fraught with 
 results which may become unspeakably important to the 
 English race. With all our energy and resourcefulness it 
 must, I think, be confessed that as a colonising nation 
 we have not shown that suppleness of accommodation, 
 that sympathy of tact, which gave such marvellous 
 stability to the conquests of Alexander and the depend- 
 encies of Rome. Wherever we have gone — strong, self- 
 confident, defiant — we have too often carried with us our 
 intensest prejudices, and either ignored or trampled on 
 the profoundest and most cherished convictions of the 
 conquered races. And the result has been that, Chris- 
 tians though we are, and animated as thousands of our 
 sons have been with a sincere desire to elevate and 
 ameliorate the condition of the people we govern, — and 
 chivalrous as have been the isolated acts of beneficence 
 
274 LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGES. 
 
 which not unfrequently we have bestowed on them, we 
 have not succeeded in securing the loyalty, the affection, 
 even the devotion, which pleasure -loving Greece and 
 iron-handed Rome were often able to gain for them- 
 selves in a space of time so much more brief. It was in 
 the very year of the hundredth anniversary of that 
 memorable battle of Plassy which laid the corner-stone 
 of our Indian Empire, that the whole splendid edifice 
 was rocked and shaken to its foundations by the horrors 
 and violences of the Indian mutiny. We conquered, 
 indeed, but we conquered by fire and sword ; and every 
 burning hamlet, and every devastated field, though it 
 seemed but a just retribution exacted on murderers of 
 women and boys and little children and grey-haired old 
 men, was yet a fatal proof that we had not understood 
 the character, and still less had we won the affections, 
 of the race whose hatred against us after ioo years of 
 domination blazed no less fiercely than our indignation 
 against them. Oh! if, instead of calling them and 
 treating them as "niggers;" if, instead of absorbing 
 with such fatal facility the preposterous notion that 
 they were, with few exceptions, an abject nation of 
 cringing liars, to be despised and kicked, our young 
 officers would but have learnt from the first the noble 
 spirit of Sir John and Sir Henry Lawrence, and of Sir 
 Herbert Edwardes, of Outram, the Bayard of India, and 
 
SANSKRIT. 275 
 
 of him whose nickname of Clemency Canning will one 
 day prove his most splendid memorial — if our mission- 
 aries had but tempered sometimes their righteous fana- 
 ticism of hatred against idolatry with a deeper historical 
 knowledge of the religions of the world, the great ideas 
 which they conceal under weird mythologies, and the 
 traditions of hoary antiquity which they inshrine ; if they 
 could but have carried with them into their disputes with 
 learned Brahmins that breadth of noble reverence and 
 tender sympathy which characterised a Heber, a Martyn, 
 and a Cotton : nay, that thorough appreciation for the 
 sacred sensibilities of others which was shown by the 
 great Apostle of the Gentiles, when, in the forefront of 
 his argument with Athenian idolaters, he appealed to 
 their altar "To an unknown God;" if our scholars had 
 but earlier been enabled to discover, as they have now 
 discovered, that the glorification of Brahmins, and the 
 degradation of Sudras, and the infamous institution of 
 suttee, and the iron network of caste, which for so many 
 centuries has cramped the development of India, derive 
 no sanction from the Vedas, and were no part of the 
 ancient religion, but the invention of an arrogant and 
 usurping sacerdotalism, — then, indeed, a military despot- 
 ism would long ago have been needless for the govern- 
 ment of India ; then, indeed, the Hindoos no less than 
 
 ourselves would have recognised the bond of unity 
 
 t 2 
 
276 LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGES. 
 
 between us because of the common ancestors from 
 whose loins we both alike are sprung, and we no less 
 than they should have seen that in coming to Hin- 
 dostan with our advanced civilisation, we were return- 
 ing home with splendid gifts, to visit a member of 
 one common family, and that the meeting between us 
 was but the meeting of Esau and Jacob after long years 
 of separation,— who met each other with mutual affection 
 and the kiss of peace, although from the womb it had 
 been prophesied respecting them that " the elder should 
 serve the younger'' 
 
 Language and Languages, p. 29a 
 
GREEK AND HEBREW. 
 
 TT is deeply interesting to pursue the contrast of the 
 Aryan and Semitic languages — or, let us say, of two 
 such representatives of them as Greek and Hebrew. 
 The metaphysical subtlety of Greek, its rich variety, 
 its delicate capacity for reflecting the minutest shades 
 of difference in meaning, the extraordinary wealth of 
 its inflections, the softness and music of the language, 
 its lightness, gaiety, voluptuousness, its extraordinary 
 flexibility and precision as a well-understood, conven- 
 tional instrument of human expression, its genial lyric 
 playfulness, the oceanic roll of its oratory, and the 
 sonorous lilt of its epic verse, all contrast strangely and 
 forcibly with the grave, unbending stateliness of the 
 Hebrew. One would say that Greek is liquid, and 
 Hebrew metallic; or that Greek is a coloured sun-picture, 
 reproducing with the minute fidelity of Nature herself 
 
278 LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGES. 
 
 every shadow on the earth and every ripple on the sea, 
 while Hebrew is a broad, rough, unshaded sketch in the 
 sweeping strokes of a Michael Angelo or a Tintoretto. 
 
 But while we admit that there was in the Semite but 
 little of that science, or philosophy, or courageous love of 
 truth which are the glory of the Aryan, — while we acknow- 
 ledge him to have been utterly deficient in the spirit of 
 liberty which solved the problem of rendering individual 
 development compatible with imperial and military 
 organisation, — while we point out the one-sidedness of 
 his intellect, the sameness of his passions, the monotony 
 of his history, the uniformity of his literature, the ae- 
 ficiency in him of the social instincts and of large 
 humanitarian conceptions, the religious absorption which 
 deadened in him all interest for science, and the icono- 
 clastic zeal which destroyed for him the possibility of 
 art — let us never forget the truly immeasurable work 
 which he effected for the world. The very intensity and 
 subjectivity of his religious conceptions were his weak- 
 ness no less than his strength. They were his weakness, 
 because a noble and fertile spirit of inquiry is impossible 
 for one whose capacity of wonder is swallowed up in his 
 awe for the Infinite and the Unseen, for whom every 
 event is Kismet or Destiny — whose sufficient expression 
 of astonishment is, "Allah is great," and whose ready 
 solution of every inquiry is, " Allah knows." No philo- 
 
GREEK AND HEBREW. 279 
 
 sophic conception of great demiurgic laws, and no modi- 
 fication or adaptation of those laws to human purposes, 
 was possible to a nation which regarded everything as 
 the direct, immediate, unconditioned exercise of Divine 
 power, either by God Himself, or by individual angels or 
 demons who stood ready to effect His purpose. "When 
 a bull is angry the devil leaps up between his horns," 
 wrote one of the Rabbis, and the same conception of 
 miraculous intervention and personal agencies exhausts 
 their entire philosophy of the universe, and the events 
 which take place in it. Mr. Newman has somewhere 
 said that the result of what is called Evangelical teaching 
 upon his mind, was to intensify in him the conviction 
 that the only two realities — the only two entities whose 
 existence he could entirely realise — were himself and 
 God. No expression could be chosen which more 
 accurately describes the natural feelings of a Hebrew, or 
 which could more simply indicate the tendency of his litera- 
 ture. Yet, as a direct consequence of this, although the 
 Hebrew is the only member of his race who has handed 
 down to posterity a permanent literature, and although his 
 race has been intrusted with but one memorable work 
 for mankind, yet that literature is of absolutely priceless 
 value, and that work is the most infinite of all in its 
 bearings, for the literature is the Bible, and the work is 
 the dissemination of a belief in the One True God. If 
 
28o LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGES. 
 
 there be a meagre sterility in the Hebrew's words, there 
 is an infinitude in their power. If he evoked his awful 
 music from a monochord, it was yet a sublimer chord, 
 and one of more mysterious efficacy, than any of those 
 whose blended music was heard in the seven-stringed 
 harp which the Aryan played. The very subjectivity of his 
 emotions, the introspective egotism of his whole spiritual 
 constitution, led him in his deep meditations to educate 
 for ever the conscience of mankind, and drove him forth 
 at one period with fanatic proselytism to spread among 
 races, in all other respects his superiors, his sublime faith 
 in the unity of God. Free from the enormous con- 
 fusions and complications of unaided Aryan thought, 
 there have been but three religions which looked upward 
 consciously and solely to the one true God. Those 
 three religions were Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and 
 those three religions (which are well-nigh the sole reli- 
 gions of the civilised world) sprang from three Semitic 
 centres, which are separated from each other but by a 
 few days' journey. The Hebraic Semite was, what he so 
 intensely felt himself to be, a member of a chosen genera- 
 tion, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people. 
 "Greece," says Thomas de Quincey, "was, in fact, too 
 ebullient with intellectual activity — an activity too palaes- 
 tric and purely human — so that the opposite pole of the 
 mind, which points to the mysterious and the spiritual, 
 
GREEK AND HEBREW. 281 
 
 was, in the agile Greek— too intensely a child of the 
 earth— starved and palsied; while in the Hebrew, dull 
 and inert intellectually, but in his spiritual organs awake 
 and sublime, the case was entirely reversed. Yet, after 
 all, the result was immeasurably in favour of the Hebrew. 
 The Greek has won the admiration of the human race, 
 he is numbered among the chief brilliancies of earth, but 
 on the deeper and more abiding nature of man he has no 
 hold. He will perish when any deluge of calamity over- 
 takes the libraries of our planet, or if any great revolu- 
 tion of thought remoulds them, and will be remembered 
 only as a generation of flowers is remembered, with the 
 same tenderness of feeling, and with the same pathetic 
 sense of natural predestination to evanescence. . . . 
 Whereas the Hebrew, by introducing himself to the 
 secret places of the human heart, and sitting there as 
 incubator over the awful germs of the spiritualities that 
 connect man with the unseen worlds, has perpetuated 
 himself as a power in the human system : he is co- 
 enduring with man's race, and careless of all revolutions 
 in literature or in the composition of society." The 
 Aryans believed in the secular Avatar of their gods ; far 
 more real, far more enduring in its effects over the re- 
 motest generations, was the Avatar of Hebrew Prophecy. 
 Nor must we forget the extreme probability of our 
 having owed to the Semitic race another most memorable 
 
282 LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGES. 
 
 gift — the gift of an alphabet, the gift of those ingenious 
 symbols which can alone give perpetuity and unlimited 
 extension to human utterances. The modern alphabets 
 of all civilised nations have come from Greek, and the 
 Greeks themselves admitted that they had borrowed 
 their alphabet from the Phoenicians. Cadmus, the name 
 of the mythic introducer of writing into Greece, was 
 represented as a Phoenician, and, in fact, his very name 
 is but a Hebrew word, meaning either " the ancient " or 
 " the East." I will not here digress into the interesting 
 question as to the origin of writing, or as to the honour 
 of its invention. The Phoenicians were certainly among 
 the earliest to perfect it, and the sole nation who made 
 it widely known. Their own literature has entirely 
 perished, but they bequeathed to us an inheritance by 
 which alone all other literature would be either possible 
 or permanent. Nor is that all ; for to the same remark- 
 able people we owe some of the earliest enterprises of 
 colonisation, and their adventurous barks, engaged in an 
 active commerce, had carried them as far north as the 
 British Isles, and as far west as the Sargasso Sea. 
 
 The relations between the Aryan and the Semitic race 
 have been almost entirely hostile, from the day when 
 Alexander conquered Phoenicia and subjugated Judaea 
 down to the other day when Lord Napier of Magdala 
 crushed in a single campaign the power of Abyssinia. 
 
GREEK AND HEBREW. 283 
 
 The Aryan race has almost invariably triumphed in the 
 contest. The Semites were indeed victorious when 
 Judas Maccabeus broke the yoke of Antiochus Epiph- 
 anes ; and when Hannibal shattered the Roman armies 
 at Cannae and Thrasimene ; and when the Jews defeated 
 Cestius at Beth-horon ; and when at Kadesia the general 
 of Omar won the standard of Persia; and when, again, 
 advancing by Gibraltar, which still bears his name, the 
 Moorish chieftain Tarik scattered at Xeres the forces of 
 Roderic But, on the other hand, the Semites were 
 utterly routed by Scipio at Zama, and by Titus when 
 the Roman eagles gathered round the dying carcass of 
 Judea; and when, in the reign of Adrian, 580,000 fol- 
 lowers of the false Messiah, Barchochebas, fell by fire, 
 famine, and the sword ; and when, in 732 a.d., in seven 
 days of battle and massacre on the plains of Tours, 
 Charles Martel gave that final and decisive rout to their 
 forces, but for which, as Gibbon observes, " perhaps the 
 interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the 
 schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to 
 a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revela- 
 tion of Mahomet/' Since that day the entire fortunes 
 and destinies of the Semitic race have declined. The 
 glories of Islam, the direct result of their religious enthu- 
 siasm, were but the dying flash in the embers of its 
 vitality. The memorials of its splendour are recorded 
 
284 LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGES. 
 
 in undecipherable inscriptions in the desert or on 
 mountain rocks, or lie buried amid the ruins of Pales- 
 tine, the fisher-tents of Sidon, the broken columns of 
 Carthage, and the mounds of Kouyunjik ; nor does there 
 live for it any hope of future history save in the cherished 
 and sacred convictions of a scattered people that " the 
 Lord will yet build up Jerusalem, and gather together 
 the outcasts of Judah." 
 
 But still this race did not begin to decline and disap- 
 pear from the field of history until its work was done. 
 " Humanity may advance solely over the wrecks of past 
 ages and the ruins of former people, but it advances still." 
 Tribes and nations disappear, but it is only to make way 
 for others who have higher problems still to solve. The 
 character of the Semitic race has always been its " invete- 
 rate isolation." Even in the days of their dawning glory 
 the Semites did but occupy a small parallelogram of Asia, 
 about 1600 miles long, and 800 broad, chiefly in its two 
 western peninsulas, and not more than one-thirteenth 
 part of its whole extent. They have rarely left these 
 narrow boundaries. Their colonies were few, and in few 
 instances have they been permanent; their conquests 
 were only due to a tumultuous and vivid fanaticism, and 
 in no instance have they left very abiding traces. Not 
 to Shem, the ancestor of the Jews, but to Japheth, the 
 ancestor of the Aryans, was given the prophecy of enlarge- 
 
GREEK AND HEBREW. 285 
 
 ment, and in all ages Japheth has dwelt in the tents of 
 Shem. If it was written in the books of destiny that the 
 sons of Ham were to be slaves, and the sons of Shem to 
 be prophets, it was written also that the sons of Japheth 
 were to be kings. 
 
 And yet, before the children of Arabia had forgotten 
 the example of that fiery valour which inspired Khaled, 
 " the sword of God," they had carried their victorious 
 religion through the fairest regions of the globe, and so 
 rescued them from the worst curses of a degraded Poly- 
 theism. Before Judaism disappeared, there had been 
 intrusted to men born in her traditions that Divine reve- 
 lation which was destined to regenerate the world. The 
 Semite has sunk indeed into decrepitude, but not until 
 he had left to the Aryan the inheritance of his best 
 wealth. The religion of the Aryan was but a personi- 
 fication of external influences, and his mythology a meta- 
 phorical description of the ravages of night and winter, 
 the freshness of the dewdrops, or the glory of the dawn. 
 The Semite, more subjective, more individual, * aught him 
 to separate himself more clearly from the Universe, to 
 gain a loftier conception of the Deity, to Iogj through 
 Nature up to Nature's God. The knowledge of one God 
 was the living oracle of Semitism ; an oracle which it 
 preserved, but was at once powerless and unwilling to 
 communicate to the world. It received, it treasured ; — 
 
286 LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGES, 
 
 to disseminate was beyond its power. But when God 
 revealed Himself in His Son, the revelation was no longer 
 destined for a separate nation . When the Semitic race 
 bequeathed its sceptre to the Gentile world, it bequeathed 
 with that sceptre the heritage of a new religion. And it 
 was this new religion which enkindled the force and 
 genius of the hitherto dormant members of the Aryan 
 family. This it was which flushed with fresh vigour the 
 veins of the dying Roman Empire. This it was that raised 
 the Teutons from a race of lazy barbarians into leaders 
 in the world's intellectual advance. This it was that 
 transformed the cruel and frantic Viking into the chival- 
 rous and noble Norman. This it was which even now is 
 daily lifting the Slavonian from polygamy, isolation, and 
 serfdom. This it was that gave all which is noblest and 
 most distinctive to the names of France, and England, 
 and Italy, and Spain. Yes, the Aryan has well learnt the 
 deepest lesson which the Semite had to teach, and with 
 that lesson it seems the clear destiny of Providence that 
 he should advance farther and farther to the civilisation, 
 the enlightenment, in one word, the evangelisation of the 
 whole habitable globe. 
 
 Let me here very briefly recapitulate some of the lead- 
 ing historical conclusions and thoughts which are the 
 recent gift of the Science of Philology to the knowledge 
 and the purposes of mankind. 
 
GREEK AND HEBREW. 287 
 
 Not far from each other — the one in the regions of 
 Armenia, the other along the great Oxus valley — appeared 
 in the dimmest dawn of commencing human develop- 
 ment two races, fairer in complexion, stronger and more 
 beautifully organised in physical constitution, and with 
 spirits incomparably more finely touched to fine issues 
 than any other races which the world had to that time 
 seen. At periods varying from 3000 to 2000 years before 
 our era, a vast division took place in the Aryan race, 
 and whole tribes, destined hereafter to be the fathers of 
 mighty nations, streamed away victoriously in successive 
 waves, first towards the north and west, and later towards 
 the east and south. They became subjected to different 
 laws, — the western tribes advancing farthest in material 
 and intellectual prosperity, the eastern feeding themselves 
 on profounder conceptions in the midst of a remarkable 
 simplicity of life. Meanwhile, at about the same period, 
 the other great race also began to move in immense 
 migrations. In the person of Eber it entered Mesopota- 
 mia ; in the person of Joktan it entered Arabia ; in the 
 person of Abraham it entered Palestine. Indifferent, 
 except in those branches of it which were half Hamitic, 
 to the great arts of war and peace, to this race was it 
 mainly given to keep alive the revelation of the Unity of 
 God, and the eternal majesty of the moral law. After 
 a long history, somewhat monotonous, and but rarely 
 
288 LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGES. 
 
 triumphant, there arose in the bosom of this race a new 
 and diviner revelation which it rejected, but in the very- 
 act of rejecting imparted to the western descendants of 
 its sister-race, and then sank gradually, but with one 
 reviving and reactionary effort, into contented subordina- 
 tion. In the hands of this western race the Holy Fire 
 began to burn brighter and yet more bright, and in their 
 great commercial and military progress they reached their 
 long-forgotten and then unrecognised brothers of the 
 east. In the hands of these eastern brothers they saw, 
 as it were, the crepundia — the family tokens — which had 
 remained almost intact in their possession, and which 
 once had lain in the common cradle. But before those 
 crepundia were recognised there was many a fierce strug- 
 gle, many a blood-stained battle-field between these bro- 
 thers, who saw in each other only aliens. After a separ- 
 ation of 4000 years, after having traversed an immense 
 circle of the globe, the younger Aryan returns, not solely 
 to rule over the elder, not only to rekindle his torch at 
 the sacred flame which had once glowed on the ancestral 
 hearth, but to teach him, — in requital it may be for many 
 injuries, — the lessons of a superior wisdom, a purer 
 justice, and a loftier morality, — above all, to teach him 
 that body of sacred truth which was long the special glory 
 and amulet of the Hebraic Semite, but which, when once 
 it had been imparted to the Indo-European family, was 
 
GREEK AND HEBREW. 289 
 
 fostered by Grecian genius, and supported by Roman 
 power, and deepened by Germanic thought, and illus- 
 trated by Italian art, and disseminated by the energy and 
 empire of England, and should now be inscribed upon the 
 common labarum, which a race, — formed indeed of separ- 
 ate nationalities, but animated by a sublime unanimity of 
 purpose, — should regard it as their highest object, and 
 their providential mission, to render visible and glorious 
 through a redeemed and regenerated world. 
 
 Language and Languages, p. 357. 
 
AR YAN MIGRA TIONS. 
 
 PHE epoch of the migration of the Aryans from their 
 common home cannot be determined with any cer- 
 tainty, but possibly it may not have been earlier than 
 2000 B.C. The most ancient name by which they called 
 themselves, or rather the most ancient name of this race 
 with which we are acquainted, was the name Aryas, a 
 name derived from the root #/', to plough, and which 
 therefore implied originally an agricultural as distinguished 
 from a rude and nomadic race, and thus naturally came 
 to mean "noble." It is true that this name belonged 
 distinctively to the two great eastern branches of this 
 family, the Iranian and Indian; but as they lingered 
 the longest in the region of the primitive home, they are 
 most likely to have retained the original name ; and not 
 only are traces of the same root to be found abundantly 
 in the other families of the race, but it is even believed 
 that the beloved and familiar name of Erin is a far-off 
 western echo of this primeval designation. As the name 
 Indo-Germanic, which was originally proposed, is obvi- 
 
ARYAN MIGRATIONS. 291 
 
 ously too narrow and exclusive, and as Indo-European, 
 which conveniently represents them by geographical 
 area, is also too narrow for the universal and growing 
 colonies which this race has founded even in the remotest 
 islands of the Pacific, it is clear that Arya?i remains 
 at present the best name by which to call them. Their 
 original home may be assigned by a multitude of con- 
 current probabilities. That it was somewhere in the 
 vast plateau of Iran, in the immense quadrilateral which 
 extends from the Indus to the Euphrates, and from the 
 Oxus to the Persian Gulf, may be assumed as almost 
 certain ; and we may fairly conclude, by the aid of tra- 
 dition and other circumstances, that it was immediately 
 north of the great chain of the Hindoo-Koosh, west of 
 the Bolor range, or the ancient Imaus, in the central 
 region of Bactriana, a district so fair, and fertile, and 
 flourishing, that it was called by Orientals " the mother 
 of cities." This region was eminently suited to become 
 the cradle of that princely race of shepherds from whose 
 loins sprang the nations of Europe, and which, at a 
 period long after China and Egypt had reached the 
 apogee of their crude civilisation, was still creating in the 
 bosom of its peaceful families the eternal words which, 
 as the law of many a noble, chivalrous, and Christian 
 country, were destined to become "honour," "virtue," 
 and "duty." 
 
 u 2 
 
292 LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGES. 
 
 In this region, amid scenery ' c grandiose yet severe " — 
 where Nature yields her treasures, but does not lavish 
 them, and is far more admirably adapted than the cruel 
 North or the enervating tropics to develop and reward the 
 persevering industry of man — lived a race, unguessed at 
 by history, unknown even to tradition, but revealed by 
 philology — a race beautiful in person, pure in morals, 
 earnest in thought, simple in habits, which, in a peaceful 
 life, and under a patriarchal government, wrought out, as 
 a means of its own precocious development, a language 
 admirable for the wealth, harmony, and perfection of its 
 forms, full of poetic images and pregnant metaphors, 
 and carrying in itself the germ of a magnificent expan- 
 sion ; and, with this language to aid it, the same happy 
 race learnt to acquire ideas which were destined to bear 
 fruit a hundred-fold hereafter in the conquest, colonis- 
 ation, free institutions, and unceasing Christian progress 
 of the civilised world. 
 
 The causes which led to their emigration from their 
 peaceful home — what made the great tide of Aryan 
 emigration roll majestically in a western direction — the 
 order in which they wandered forth to win new thoughts 
 and conquer fresh countries — why it was that the 
 Zincala, from the cordilleras of Guatemala to the plains 
 of Poland, became for ever a homeless wanderer over the 
 surface of the earth — what drove the Norwegian and the 
 
ARYAN MIGRATIONS. 293 
 
 Icelander ever farther and farther towards the inclement 
 and pine-clad North — why the Kelt first ensconced 
 himself behind the storm-swept cliffs of Britain— what 
 happy destiny guided one great family to the plains of 
 Persia and Hindostan, and another to the shores of the 
 blue Mediterranean and the poetic hills of Italy and 
 Greece— we cannot tell. Whether it was the result of 
 religious divisions, or physical convulsions, or civil feuds 
 — whether it was due to the gradual dissolution or the 
 sudden dismemberment of tribal relations— whether it 
 was simply caused by the natural growth of population, 
 or by the restless spirit of enterprise — whether the tribes 
 passed away under different leaders in a succession of 
 waves, each wave driving its predecessor farther towards 
 the West and South— all this is buried in eternal oblivion ; 
 but the main fact is certain, that " westward the course of 
 empires took its way." 
 
 Looking both to geography and history, we may, 
 without any extravagance, infer that the first to move 
 westward were the Kelts, and the last the Slavonians, 
 who, finding the rest of Europe already occupied, were 
 forced to make their new home in its northern and 
 eastern regions. At any rate, the parents of these 
 nations, under whatever circumstances, did wander away 
 from the regions in which they first appeared ; their 
 communications with their old home became infrequent ; 
 
294 LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGES. 
 
 new methods of life arose ; new national characteristics 
 were developed; new dialects multiplied; they forgot 
 their Asian origin and their mutual relationships, and 
 soon learnt to regard themselves as autochthonous on the 
 soil which they possessed. The old home was gradually 
 abandoned, and the children went into far countries to 
 take an independent part in the hastening denouement of 
 the great drama of humanity, and to enrich by special 
 characteristics the noble heritage of their common en- 
 dowments. 
 
 The Aryan language certainly was the primitive language 
 of a race of mankind whose different offshoots, at various 
 periods of history down from its earliest dawn, established 
 the Achaemenid dynasty, built Athens and Lacedaemon, 
 founded Rome, worked the tin mines of Cornwall, and 
 the silver mines of Spain, first made London a city of 
 ships, occupied Paris while Paris was still but the mud 
 city of the borderers, produced the Vedas and the 
 Homeric poems, and the Sh£h-n£meh, and the Eddas, 
 and the Nibelungen-Lied, — invented the printing-press, 
 discovered America, circumnavigated the globe, developed 
 the principles of every science, and, in a word, founded 
 that immense and marvellous system of modern civilis- 
 ation which is the chief triumph of the intellect of man. 
 
 Whether ultimately all languages are not dialects of 
 one — whether millenniums back, in the impenetrable 
 
ARYAN MIGRATIONS. 295 
 
 night of ages, there ever was a period when all the 
 representatives of the entire human family (if such repre- 
 sentatives there were) expressed themselves in the same 
 forms of speech — is a question which will certainly never 
 be settled, and which as certainly there is no shadow of 
 linguistic evidence to prove. 
 
 Earliest, in all probability, to break off from the yet 
 undivided race was the Kelto-Graeco-Italic family, which 
 afterwards settled into the three important branches, 
 Greeks, Latins, and Kelts. In course of time this family 
 occupied almost all the rivers, coasts, and islands of 
 southern and western Europe, and for us it is a most 
 interesting and memorable division of the race, since it 
 not only furnished the basis of our nationality, but also 
 the chief elements of our political, social, and intellectual 
 existence. 
 
 The Keltic family is a branch of the Aryan race in 
 which we ought to feel the deepest and liveliest interest, 
 because its direct descendants are united to us by the 
 closest ties, and because no small portion of its blood is 
 flowing in our veins. It was, we have some ground to 
 believe, the first to wander, as it was the farthest in its 
 wandering from the old home, and in consequence of 
 this it was among the last to be recognised as a member 
 of the family. Our own islands, where in very early 
 days we find this Aryan settlement fishing in their osier 
 
296 LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGES. 
 
 coracles, and working the superficial veins of tin in 
 Cornwall, furnished the Kelts with their securest refuge 
 and their latest homes. From very early days they were 
 truly "a nation scattered and peeled." Subjugated by 
 Roman and Teuton, or fairly driven away by the victorious 
 arms of these invaders from the immense territories which 
 once they occupied, the purest relics of their language, 
 and the lonely cromlechs and Druidic circles which still 
 remain as the melancholy memorials of their religion , 
 are chiefly to be found in Ireland, Wales, the Highlands, 
 and the little Island of Man. But it is doubtful whether 
 these few material and linguistic records will long 
 continue to be preserved. The Cornish language has 
 perished. Manx will probably follow it in another 
 generation. Bas-Breton and Gaelic are shrinking within 
 very contracted limits; and who shall say how long 
 Welsh and Irish will withstand the encroaching force 
 of railroads and telegraphs ? But even if the languages 
 of the Kelt should perish, the traces of their past power 
 will long remain. " Mountains and rivers," says Sir Francis 
 Palgrave, "still murmur the voice of nations long de- 
 nationalised or extirpated." Though the glossaries of 
 Gael and Cymry should utterly pass away, the names 
 they gave to the grandest features of many a landscape 
 will still live upon the map. 
 
 Of the Hellenic family I need say but little. It 
 
ARYAN MIGRATIONS. 297 
 
 would be impossible, as you know, to exaggerate the part 
 they have played in the world's history. There was no 
 depth of philosophy which they did not sound, no height 
 of poetry to which they did not soar. The whole region 
 of human thought yet thrills with the electric shock of 
 their genius ; and of their art we may say, adopting the 
 address of the poet to its mythic representative, 
 
 "Weep for Daedalus, all that is fairest, 
 All that is tuneful in air or wave, 
 Shapes whose beauty is richest and rarest 
 Deck with your sighs and songs his grave." 
 
 Never did the language of man attain a greater per- 
 fection of synthetic grace, forceful accuracy, and inflec- 
 tional precision than among this marvellous people. 
 " Greek," says Henry Nelson Coleridge, "the shrine of 
 the genius of the old world ; as universal as our race, as 
 individual as ourselves ; of infinite inflexibility, of inde- 
 fatigable strength; with the complication and distinct- 
 ness of nature herself, to which nothing was vulgar, from 
 which nothing was excluded; speaking to the air like 
 Italian, speaking to the mind like English ; at once the 
 variety and picturesqueness of Homer, the gloom and 
 intensity of ^Eschylus ; not compressed to the closet by 
 Thucydides, not fathomed to the bottom by Plato, not 
 sounding with all its thunders, nor lit up with all its ardours 
 under the Promethean touch of Demosthenes himself." 
 
298 LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGES. 
 
 The Italic family has hardly been of less importance 
 to us, and to the human race, than the Hellenic. Many 
 a century must still continue to elapse before the world 
 ceases to feel the stern grasp of their once iron hand. 
 The language of the Italic family cannot boast of the 
 subtle grace, harmony, and finish of Greek, any more 
 than its ancient literature can be placed in comparison 
 with that of the Hellenes. Yet one may say the Latin 
 language had articulations of iron. It is pre-eminently 
 "the voice of Empire and of Law, of War and of the 
 State, — the best language for the measured research of 
 History, and the indignant declamation of moral satire ; 
 rigid in its constructions, parsimonious in its synonyms j 
 yet majestic in its bareness, impressive in its conciseness; 
 the true language of history, instinct with the spirit of 
 nations, and not with the passions of individuals ; breath- 
 ing the maxims of the world, and not the tenets of the 
 schools; one and uniform in its air and spirit, whether 
 touched by the stern and haughty Sallust, by the open and 
 discursive Livy, by the reserved and thoughtful Tacitus. " 
 
 With Greek and Latin alone as the instruments of 
 education, we possess, if only we knew how to use them 
 rightly, not only the keys to the richest and mightiest 
 literature of the ancient world, but also the best means 
 for the proper comprehension of human language as an 
 expression of the inmost nature of man's mind. 
 
ARYAN MIGRATIONS. 299 
 
 English, a language which has produced a literature 
 equalled by few and surpassed by none, is of course the 
 main glory of this branch of the Teutonic language. 
 Modern German belongs to the high German branch, 
 dating from Luther's translation of the Bible, which 
 at once enriched and ennobled the language, and 
 rendered it permanent in its present form. Certainly 
 this Teutonic stem of the Aryan tree, bearing on two 
 of its branches such "bright consummate flowers" as 
 English on the one hand and German on the other, 
 may challenge comparison with the noblest and most 
 fruitful scions of the noblest and most fruitful stock. 
 India may bring her Vedas and her Mahabharata, and 
 Persia her Zend Avesta and Shah Nameh, and Greece 
 her Homeric poems, — and Rome may more than supple- 
 ment the whole mass of her narrow, haughty, and un- 
 original literature by claiming the glory of the Divina 
 Commedia, and the Lusiad, and the Poem of the Cid, — 
 but can any or all of them vaunt any superiority over the 
 Teuton, who developed among his various descendants 
 languages so lovely and noble, so strong and flexible, so 
 subtle and wise, so intense and musical, — languages so 
 rich with all treasures of Poetry, Science, Philosophy, 
 Eloquence, and History, as the languages of the Eddas 
 and the Niebelungen, and of our early ballads, — the Ian- 
 guages of Kant and Goethe and Schiller, of Shakspeare, 
 
300 LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGES. 
 
 of Milton, and of Wordsworth, — the languages carried 
 by commercial enterprise from Zembla to Tierra del 
 Fuego, — the languages which the thought of Germany, 
 and the majesty of England, and the ebullient energy 
 of America have elevated into the ruling languages of 
 the political and intellectual world ? 
 
 Even since this lecture was written, recent events have 
 attracted the attention of the civilised world. We spoke 
 but briefly of the great Slavonic race, because of its com- 
 parative unimportance when brought into contrast with the 
 Hellenic, the Italic, or the Teutonic. Yet now the progress 
 and development of that race have given rise to grave 
 political questions, and have caused us a legitimate 
 anxiety with respect to its future intentions. For in the 
 case of this great Slavonic nation there has been, as it 
 were, a regurgitation of the Aryan wave. Emigrating 
 originally to the westward, they filled the immense 
 regions which they had so long occupied, and are now 
 flowing back again over the paths they traversed in their 
 first departure. Persia has been long subjected to their 
 influence : at this moment all Turkestan is practically 
 theirs. Since Peter the Great, in 1772, took Derbent, 
 on the Caspian, from Persia, they have been constantly 
 pushing their encroachments farther and farther towards 
 the East. So that, as you see, the two branches of our 
 race who stayed longest in the mother country and 
 
ARYAN MIGRATIONS. 301 
 
 wandered from it least far — the Persians and the Hindoos 
 — have both been subjugated by returning families of 
 their western brethren. We of the Teutonic race, travel- 
 ling in our commercial energy over half the slobe, came 
 to India by sea, and have forced it to acknowledge our 
 dominion : the Slavonic race, flowing back in what 
 yEschylus calls a dry-land wave, have overflowed Persia 
 by land, and reached the borders of Afghanistan. Soon 
 these two younger brothers — the Slavonian and the 
 Teuton — the former Lord of the Iranian, the latter of the 
 Hindoo, will gaze at each other face to face from opposite 
 heights of the great Himalayan range. Shall we meet 
 as brothers or as enemies ? Shall our intercourse be the 
 intercourse of mutual amity or of deadly warfare ? Let 
 the knowledge of our past history decide us in favour of 
 pacific and beneficent counsels. And so, contemplating 
 this great tidal march of Aryan emigration as it encircles 
 the globe, let us see that it be for the cleansing and the 
 blessing of the world. Then it shall be with us as though 
 the Angel of the Nations had waved his hand, and calling 
 to him the powers which guard the progress and hap- 
 piness of mankind, had addressed their leader in the 
 words of our great poet : — 
 
 ' ' Uzziel, half these draw off, and coast the South 
 With strictest watch ; these others wheel the North, 
 Our circuit meets full West." 
 
 Language and Languages, p. 319. 
 
WORDS. 
 
 T) Y earnestly studying words we are enabled historically 
 to resuscitate the long-forgotten history of bygone 
 millenniums, and to catch some glimpses into the past 
 fortunes of nations whose very name and memory have 
 been obliterated for ages from every other record. In- 
 tellectually regarded, the study of them initiates us into 
 the profoundest mysteries of the human understanding. 
 It is the foundation of all metaphysics. For it is jy 
 words alone that we can discover " the manner in which 
 ideas, born of perception, present themselves all naked to 
 the human intelligence, while it is still engaged in their 
 discovery and still seeking to communicate them to 
 others ; we follow the labour which it undergoes to arrive 
 at this result, and in the want of uniformity in that 
 labour we see the influence of different intellects." 
 Hence fresh languages wisely acquired may afford us a 
 nearer approximation to many truths than would be 
 otherwise attainable, by suggesting thoughts and con- 
 
WORDS. 303 
 
 elusions which have evaporated from our native tongue. 
 For " language is the depositary of the accumulated body 
 of experience, to which all former ages have contributed 
 their part, and which is the inheritance of all yet to 
 come." It is " like amber circulating the electric spirit of 
 truth, and preserving the relics of ancient wisdom." So 
 important and indispensable is the right use of words 
 to the progress of Science, that some have gone so far as 
 to call Science itself "a well-constructed Language;" 
 and, although this is an exaggeration, it is certain that in 
 Scientific no less than in Religious history an ill-understood 
 phrase, or an ambiguously-framed expression, has been 
 sufficient to retard the progress, and kindle the passions, 
 of men during centuries of warfare. 
 
 And who shall overstate the moral bearing and import- 
 ance of words ? They stereotype our desires, they mis- 
 lead our consciences, they add intensity to our tempta- 
 tions, they determine our bias, they decide our destiny. 
 Once spoken they are irrevocable, indelible for ever. 
 " Words, words, words, good and bad, . . . millions in the 
 hour, innumerable in the day, unimaginable in the year; 
 what then in the life ? what in the history of a nation ? 
 what in that of the world ? And not one of them is ever 
 forgotten. There is a book where they are all set down. 
 What a history, it has been well said, is this earth's atmo- 
 sphere, seeing that all words spoken from Adam's first 
 
304 LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGES. 
 
 till now are still vibrating on its sensitive, unresting 
 medium. 
 
 It is well for every man to consider solemnly such 
 truths as these, be our scientific conclusions and our 
 philological studies what they may — endeavouring not to 
 forget even in the midst of controversy that " it is by a 
 man's words that he is justified, and by a man's words 
 that he is condemned." 
 
 Latiguage and Langttages, p. 354. 
 
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