BX 5133 .L5 C5 1894 
 Liddon, Henry Parry, 1829- 
 1890. 
 
 Clerical life and work 
 
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 the Internet Archive 
 
 
 
 in 2015 
 
 
 
 https://archive.org/details/clericallifeworkOOIidd 
 
Clerical £tfe an* Worfe 
 
 A COLLECTION OF SERMONS 
 
 WITH AN ESSAY 
 
 OCT 1 
 % 
 
 By H. P. LIDDON, D.D, D.C.L., LL.D. 
 
 LATE CANON AND CHANCELLOR OF ST. 
 
 LONDON 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 AND NEW YORK : r S EAST i6 th STREET 
 1894 
 
 Ail rights 
 
iburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty 
 
ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 LL that is contained in this volume, with the 
 
 exception of Sermons VIII. and IX., was published 
 on different occasions during a period of forty years. Dr. 
 Liddon himself collected and arranged most of the 
 Sermons, and chose the title under which they are now 
 reprinted. It will be seen that they express the ideal 
 of the clerical life that was before his mind from the 
 earliest days of his ministry. He appears to have wished 
 for their republication, so that he might help a larger 
 number of the clergy to share his own belief and 
 aims. 
 
 Embertide, 
 
 September 1894. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 AN ESSAY. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE PRIEST IN HIS INNER LIFE i 
 
 ©riginalls jnililisfjrti in " Elje Ecclesiastic anB STljcoIonian," ©ctoiet 1856, 
 ant Sanuavg 1857. 
 
 SERMON L 
 
 THE "WORK AND PROSPECTS OF THEOLOGICAL COLLEGES. 
 Isaiah L 4. 
 
 The Lord God hath given Me the tongue of the learned, that I 
 should know how to apeak a word in season to him that is weary : 
 He wakenelh morning by morning, He wakeneth Mine ear to 
 hear as the learned 46 
 
 IBrcacijco at ttic anniucrsarg Jtstifaal or Ctflrtwalnm (ToUcjjc, Sunt 10, 1868. 
 
 SERMON II. 
 
 THE MORAL GROUNDWORK OF CLERICAL TRAINING. 
 Job xxviii. 12. 
 
 But where shall wisdom be found ? and where is the place of 
 understanding ? 73 
 
 JPrtatijtS at t&t anmbewarg jTcstibal of ffiucotslon doIUse, Suns 1°, 1873. 
 
viii 
 
 Contents 
 
 SERMON in. 
 OUR lord's example the strength of his ministers. 
 
 St. Matt. iv. 19. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 And He saith unto them, Follow Me, and I will make you fishers 
 of men 93 
 
 3@rcacf)rt3 at the ©ruination of tfje Bishop of ©iforl, in the ©atrjclral Church of 
 Christ, on the .fourth Sunlag in Silent, December 23, i860. 
 
 SERMON IV. 
 the whole counsel of god. 
 
 Acts xx. 27. 
 
 / have not shunned to declare unto you the whole counsel of God . 1 19 
 
 yrcachcl at tfie ©rlination of the Bishop of Salisburg, in the Sbbcg Church of 
 St. jWarn, Sherborne, on the Srcontj Sunlag in lent, JJrbruarg 21, 1S64. 
 
 SERMON V. 
 
 THE SECRET OF CLERICAL POWER. 
 
 Acts i. 8. 
 
 Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you 149 
 
 3i3rcachcl at the ©roination of the Bishop of Salisburg, in Salisburg ©athefiral, 
 on the .(fifteenth Sunlag after Crinitg, September 24, 1865. 
 
 SERMON VI. 
 
 FATALISM AND THE LIVING GOD. 
 Psalm viii. 4. 
 
 What is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? . . .172 
 
 yrcachct) at the ©rlination of the Bishop of Salisburg. in Salisburg Catrjrlral, 
 on the Seventeenth Simian after Crinitg, September 23, 1866. 
 
Contents 
 
 IX 
 
 SERMON VII. 
 
 THE MORAL VALUE OF A MISSION FROM CHRIST. 
 St. Joun xv. 1 6. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, 
 that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit 
 should remain 207 
 
 yreactjco at tl)t ©ruination of ttjc JSistjap of ©ifoto, m tip ffiattjcoral Hfjurcb of 
 ©ijrist, on ttje JJourtt) Sunoae in aobcnt, Becemiiet 22, 1867. 
 
 SEKMON VIII. 
 
 CLERICAL MOTIVES. 
 1 Cor. xvi. 8, 9. 
 
 But I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost. For a great door and 
 
 effectual is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries . 232 
 
 ^rcacfjeij at tijt ©roination of ttc Biafap of JKBincfjtsttr, in St. flip's, 
 ffiattcma, on arrintiu SunSao, fHag 26, 1872. 
 
 SERMON IX. 
 
 FAITH WITHOUT MIRACLES. 
 St. John x. 41, 42. 
 
 And many resorted unto Him, and said, John did no miracle : 
 but all things that John sjiake of this Man were true. And 
 many believed on Him there 247 
 
 $reacl)tt> at tljc ©roination of tljc ijistjop ot lonoon, in St. Raul's, 
 on STrinitp. Sunbap, fflap 31, 1874. 
 
X 
 
 Contents 
 
 SERMON X. 
 
 APOSTOLIC LABOURS AN EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIAN TRUTH. 
 Romans x. 18. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 But I say, Have they not heard ? Yes verily, their sound went 
 
 into all the earth, and their icords unto the ends of the world . 266 
 IPrtacfjeB in tfje Chapel of ILambcth palace at tfje Consecration of the Bishop of Nassau, 
 on the ifcast of St. Snorefcc, £obembct 3°> l8 63- 
 
 SERMON XI. 
 
 A FATHER IN CHRIST. 
 1 Cor. iv. 15. 
 
 For though ye have ten thousand instructers in Clirist, yet have ye 
 not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you 
 through the Gospel 
 
 djrtj in St. Raul's at the Consecration of the Bishop of Lincoln ano the Bishop 
 of lEictct on the Jfeast of St. fSarit, 2ptil 25, 1885. 
 
 SERMON XII. 
 
 BISHOP SAMUEL WILBERFORCE. 
 1 Cor. ix. 22. 
 
 / am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save 
 
 some 31 ] 
 
 yreacheo at the parish Churrh of (graffrjam, Sussex, JJobember 2, 1875. 
 
 SERMON XIII. 
 
 JOHN KEBLE. 
 
 The new man, which is renewed unto knowledge, after the image of 
 
 Him that created him ........... 332 
 
 yrcachetj at H-tcblc College, ©iforb, on occasion of the ©prning of the Chapel 
 ano ILaging the Jounbatton=stonc of the $all anb ILibrarp, on the ieast 
 of St. iSIarft, Spril 25, 1876. 
 
Contents xi 
 
 SEEMON XIV. 
 
 EDWARD BOUVERIE PUSEY. 
 
 St. Matt. v. 19. 
 
 Whosoever shall do and teach the same shall be called great in the 
 kingdom of heaven 355 
 
 ^tcacjjctl in St. ffflaroarct'a Biuret), prince's KoatJ, ILiberpool, on ttjc ScconS 
 Suniiag after tfje ISpiptjanu, Sanuarg 20, 1884. 
 
THE PRIEST IN HIS INNER LIFE. 
 
 IT is a matter for just complaint with candidates for 
 holy orders, that many books which profess to treat 
 of pastoral work address themselves almost exclusively 
 to the external duties of the Christian Priest. They enter 
 at length upon a consideration of such points as the com- 
 position of sermons, visiting the sick, schools, ritual ; and 
 they continually insist upon the necessity of bringing the 
 inward life to bear upon the discharge of such outward 
 and visible ministries. The existence of an inward life is 
 indeed assumed, but no attempt is made to determine its 
 specific character, or the laws of its formation. Thus a 
 recent writer on the duties of a parish priest remarks by 
 way of appendix to one of the most practical and valued 
 of his lectures, that, — 
 
 " After all is said and done the parish priest never can be thoroughly 
 effective in the sick-room, till his own heart shall be in a condition to 
 furnish him readily with the language he should employ in it. He 
 cannot work conviction in another of the heinousness of sin in itselfi 
 or of his participation in it, till he has arrived at that conviction him- 
 self, and in his own particular instance. He cannot impart to him an 
 adequate sense of the unspeakable comfort contained in the doctrines 
 of the Cross, till in his own very self he has tasted what that comfort 
 is. And if, when sitting by the sick man's side, he finds his ideas 
 stagnant, and his feelings unmoved, — no power to address him, and 
 no knowledge what to say — he has reason to suspect that he has work 
 to do nearer home, before he can be of much use there, that he must 
 first be converted himself and then strengthen his brother. This 
 however," continues Professor Blunt, " is not a province for a lecturer 
 
 1 This Essay appeared originally in the Ecclesiastic and Theologian, 
 October 1856 and January 1857. 
 
 A 
 
2 
 
 The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 to enter upon ; this is not a lesson to be learned from a professor in 
 the schools, but is to be gathered by self-discipline and self-restraint, 
 in the silence of night and the chamber, amidst the disappointments, 
 the disasters, the vanities, the distresses of life, consecrated all of them 
 to edification by the Spirit of God, Whose good offices are to be 
 sought for and won by purity and prayer." 1 
 
 Is it indeed so ? Are the profound experiences of the 
 religious life only to be gained by rude contact with 
 the vicissitudes of the world ? Is it indeed true that the 
 soul can only truly know and love God when everything 
 less than He has been tried, and has failed to satisfy her ? 
 We venture to think otherwise. Perhaps, indeed, the 
 most familiar type of conversion is that in which sinners 
 first apply themselves to all systems and theories of life 
 which promise happiness and peace, and which cannot 
 confer them, till in despair they at length turn to Him 
 Who created the soul for Himself, and Who makes it 
 restless till it rests in Himself. 2 To whom should they go 
 when all else has failed them, but to Him Who has the 
 words of eternal life ? Yet, surely, God can be known by 
 His creatures without making Himself the result of a 
 negative induction. He can, if He will, attract the soul 
 more powerfully by a display of His own surpassing 
 Beauty and Perfections than by discovering the worthless- 
 ness of all that disputes His empire. He can win the 
 heart of the youth who has not entered upon life, no less 
 than that of the aged to whom the world has played false. 
 Samuel is a creation of His grace no less than St. Peter, 
 and His hand is as discernible in the long training for 
 their respective labours vouchsafed to St. John Baptist 
 or St. Timothy, as in the conversion of the publican or the 
 harlot. 
 
 Moreover, " self- discipline and self-restraint," "in the 
 
 i Blunt, Led. on Duties of a Parish Priest, p. 239. 
 - St. Aug. Confessions, I. i. 
 
The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 3 
 
 silence of night and the chamber," are most necessary, and 
 quite in keeping with that spirit of Primitive Christianity 
 to the illustration of which the late Margaret Professor of 
 Divinity at Cambridge so laudably devoted himself. But 
 they will share the fate of all abstract excellencies, in being 
 admired and eschewed, so long as they are not thrown into 
 a concrete and practical form by those who recommend 
 them. And as for " purity and prayer," it cannot, unfor- 
 tunately, be assumed by any one who has an intimate 
 knowledge of the moral statistics of our Universities, that 
 a majority of those who yearly leave these seats of learning 
 to devote themselves to the service of the altar will have 
 retained the one grace, or formed habits moderately pro- 
 portioned to the moral and intellectual development of 
 the other. 
 
 Yet they do pass — a continuous stream of life and 
 energy — from the lectures, the boats, the unions, the college 
 chapels, the haunts and associations which are often too 
 degrading to bear mention, — to the pulpits, the deathbeds, 
 the altars of the Church of Jesus Christ. They may have 
 escaped in its most repulsive forms " the corruption that 
 is in the world through lust." They may in better 
 moments have made a real effort to rise "on eagles' 
 wings " and in renewed strength to Him Who made the 
 soul for Himself, and Who alone can unfold and satisfy its 
 complex faculties and its mysterious instincts. But 
 the atmosphere in which they move chills and repels 
 the efforts of Divine grace ; the well-pointed sarcasm, the 
 suppressed look of pity of some intellectual acquaintance 
 of whose society they are proud, no less than the rude 
 joke of the boon companion to whom they defer without 
 respecting him, all this does its work in counteracting 
 influences which might help men at our Universities on 
 the road to heaven, and even prepare them in a measure 
 to acquire the temper and experience of the guide of souls. 
 
4 
 
 The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 It is therefore too generally the case that men with 
 closed hearts, and scanty insight into truth, and palsied 
 wills, find themselves suddenly in a position which 
 demands sustained resolution to act for God, and tender 
 charity for the souls of sinners, and piercing intuition into 
 the depths of Divine justice and Divine compassion. They 
 are placed at the centre of the religious life of a parish. 
 From their personal devotion to, and union with, the 
 Source of Life, His healing virtue is to go forth and cleanse 
 and strengthen ; they have a part in that priestly com- 
 mission which inevitably bestows the prominence of a city 
 set on a hill on all who bear it. Sinners cry to them for 
 help, penitents for guidance, aged Christians for consolation 
 and support. " Out of the abundance of the heart the 
 mouth speaketh " ; and conversely, where the inner life is 
 faint or languishing, there is, as a matter of course, little 
 or nothing to say. 
 
 Of course deadly sin severs the soul from God, and 
 destroys its supernatural life. " The soul that sinneth, it 
 shall die." But many who have not thus fallen, or who, 
 having fallen, have returned to God by formal reconcilia- 
 tion with Him, only do not lead a devotional life, because 
 they do not comprehend the truth that such a life is a 
 work in itself, and, being so, must be treated methodically. 
 They imagine religion to be a sentiment to which they 
 occasionally surrender themselves, rather than a service 
 which lays all the energies of the soul under perpetual 
 obligations to achieve it. They are so alive to the danger 
 of inward or outward formalism, that they forget to do 
 anything with their souls or bodies "decently and in order." 
 The great Apostle took special care to run " not as uncer- 
 tainly," and in combating his spiritual enemies to aim his 
 blows with definiteness and precision ; but some who claim 
 at the present day a somewhat exaggerated right to repre- 
 sent his teaching, seem very lamentably to beat the air, and 
 
The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 5 
 
 to suppose that their prospects of reaching heaven are de- 
 pendent on the irregularity of the efforts they make while 
 upon earth. Such persons will naturally feel little interest 
 in the subjoined observations, if indeed they do not con- 
 sider them mischievous, as tending to methodise those 
 energies of the supernatural life of a Christian priest, 
 which seem to them more excellent when left to develop 
 themselves and when characterised by an erratic and 
 wayward independence of rule and system. But it may 
 be hoped that a contrary impression prevails more and 
 more increasingly with earnest clergymen, and it is to 
 such that we address ourselves. 
 
 i. 
 
 The Church of England has not left her clergy to 
 choose for themselves absolutely and without restraint or 
 direction, all the devotions with which they will daily 
 approach the Throne of Mercy. On the contrary, " All 
 Priests and Deacons are to say daily the Morning and 
 Evening Prayer, either privately or openly, not being let 
 by sickness or some other urgent cause." 1 
 
 Now the principle that to obey is better than sacrifice 
 seems to invest this direction with the dignity of a primary 
 obligation for the consciences of clergymen. They are not 
 thus enjoined to attempt any other nameable devotional 
 exercise. And, cceteris paribus, it would be the unhesitat- 
 ing instinct of a" religious mind to accept, as the safest 
 course, that which duty may suggest, rather than to seek 
 for something on its own responsibility. It is of course 
 very possible that the time devoted to the daily office 
 
 1 Rubric : Concerning the Service of the Church. That the private recita- 
 tion of the Daily Office was not regarded as an improbable case by the com- 
 pilers of our Prayer Book is further proved by their explicit statement that, 
 "when men say Morning and Evening Prayer privately, they may say the 
 same in any language that they themselves do understand." 
 
6 
 
 The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 might be spent in prayers more adapted, to elicit, in the 
 case of this man or that, a passionate and tender emotion 
 towards the Person of our Lord and Saviour. Yet this 
 will hardly counterbalance the consideration that obedi- 
 ence is a surer test of love than emotion, even when men 
 seem to check the ardour and impulsiveness of love that 
 they may win her distinguishing and primal characteristic. 
 Like her Divine Master, the Church says to her Priests, 
 " If ye love Me, keep My commandments." 
 
 If this be so, it is of importance to observe the extent 
 and definiteness of the obligation. The clergy are not 
 bound to say the Daily Office only at times, when they 
 can enjoy the privilege of joining with a congregation in 
 saying it. They are always and everywhere bound to say 
 it. It is, of course, better to join with others, if possible, 
 but if they cannot do this, they are bound to say it alone. 
 The newly-ordained deacon, who finds himself in a parish 
 where there are two Sunday Services, and an incompetent 
 Eector, is no less bound to say the Daily Service than the 
 stalled member of a Cathedral Chapter. Nor is the obli- 
 gation discharged, if he puts asunder what the Church 
 has joined together, and reads one chapter and some 
 prayers to his servants, and says the rest alone. For by 
 a certain combination of confessions, psalms, canticles, 
 lessons, and intercessions, the Church designs to produce 
 at one and the same time a double result, one upon the 
 faithful generally, and one upon the soul of the reciting 
 Priest in particular, from the efficacy of such a combina- 
 tion. It might be scarcely possible for any man to 
 appreciate the moral result upon his character, which, 
 however delicate and imperceptible, undoubtedly follows 
 upon his carefully complying with or violating an injunc- 
 tion such as that in question. But in the lapse of years, 
 who will not see the large and very serious influence 
 which such a habit formed under such a sense of respon- 
 
The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 7 
 
 sibility must of necessity produce upon the life of the 
 soul ? This result is forfeited when, by an act of self-will, 
 the priest selects from the Daily Service such portions of 
 it as suit the domestic needs of his family, and says, or 
 neglects to say, the rest apart from them. In any case 
 he would use family prayer ; and he has an instinct in 
 favour of the daily Church Lessons. But if he thinks 
 that he is complying witli the direction of the Church, 
 because he uses portions of its Daily Service in his 
 domestic worship, he is simply deceiving himself, the 
 truth being that he is consulting his own convenience. 
 If he says the whole, as enjoined in the Prayer Book, and 
 his family join him, the case is widely different ; so long- 
 as he obeys, there can be no reason against his being 
 joined by all lay Christians who are ready to associate 
 themselves with him, in an act, which may not be with 
 them a matter of duty, but can hardly be other than a 
 source of edification. 
 
 It may, perhaps, be thought that the duty is stated in 
 a harsh and technical way, and so is at variance with the 
 spirit of freedom and sonship which ought to characterise 
 all Christian devotions. But let it be considered, that in 
 saying the Daily Service, whether in Church or out of it, 
 whether alone or with others, the Priest acts as a Priest, 
 and makes a solemn act of intercession. In his private 
 prayers, he treats of the needs of his own soul, and its 
 eternal prospects ; in the Daily Office, self is almost, if 
 not quite, dismissed, and he acts for others. In the Con- 
 fession he associates himself with the penitents ; in the 
 Psalms and Canticles with the communicants of his flock ; 
 in the Creed and " Our Father," and concluding interces- 
 sions, he is praying and protesting with all and for all his 
 spiritual family. He may be in his chamber, and they at 
 their several occupations, but, in the Communion of Saints 
 he is acting with them and for them. The Priesthood of 
 
8 
 
 The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 the Great Intercessor has descended upon him ; and the 
 spirit of that marvellous chapter, S. John xvii., is the 
 spirit of the Daily Office. Even the lessons are not for 
 himself alone ; from them he culls and lays up treasures 
 of warning and encouragement and consolation which he 
 cannot keep to himself, but he must go forth and dispense 
 to the sinful, and the faltering, and the broken-hearted. 
 Like the converted thousands of S. Paul, his parishioners 
 are ever in his heart; he is always thankful, joyful, 
 anxious, even agonising, all at once, on their behalf ; and 
 the full expression of this ministerial temper he finds in a 
 careful use of the Church's appointed Matins and Even- 
 song, and it may be added — not elsewhere. 
 
 Let it be further considered that each separate portion 
 of the Daily Service is meant to bear a distinct relation 
 towards what follows or precedes it. The confession and 
 absolution cleanse the soul from venial sins, before it sings 
 God's praises ; the psalms express its gratitude for past 
 mercies, before more are received in the instructions of 
 the appointed lessons, or asked for in the prayers which 
 follow ; the lessons, like " letters from the heavenly 
 country " (as St. Augustine used to called Holy Scripture), 
 make the repetition of the creed intelligent and vivid ; 
 the creed precedes the concluding intercessions, because 
 he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that 
 He is what He has revealed Himself to be. 1 By the time 
 the collect for the day is said, the soul has been prepared 
 for this act of formal intercession by confession, by praise, 
 by instruction, by protestation of Catholic belief. It is 
 presumably in a condition widely different from that in 
 which it would have been had it not passed through this 
 varied preparation ; and not the least valuable of its quali- 
 fications for effectual intercession is the spirit of obedience 
 to the Church's injunctions in which it thus draws nigh 
 
 1 Heb. xi. 6. 
 
The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 9 
 
 to Him Who giveth grace unto the humble. This last 
 advantage is utterly forfeited ; the rest, more or less, when 
 — instead of saying the ivhole Daily Service, as a solemn 
 offering to God on behalf of His Body and Spouse, the 
 Church, — a Priest contents himself with " a selection from 
 the Prayer Book adapted for Use in Families," or, with 
 the Psalms and Lessons for the day, or in fact with any 
 possible stratification of prayer, praise, and instruction, 
 which, not being that of the Church, although taken from 
 her formularies, is in fact, a compilation of his own. 
 
 But, the Rubric contains a clause, which is not unfre- 
 quently understood to amount to a dispensation from 
 observing it altogether. We allude to the words, " not 
 being let by sickness or any other urgent cause." Who 
 is to say what is an " urgent cause " ? or who is to say 
 that any reason which Mr. A. thinks sufficiently " urgent " 
 is not so ? 
 
 Of course, in the present state of discipline, the clergy- 
 man who disregards the duty without giving it a moment's 
 consideration is as little likely to be interfered with as he 
 who mistakenly thinks that he has good reasons for 
 neglecting it. But the history of the Rubric will assist 
 any honest conscience to discover the sense in which it 
 was imposed upon the Church of England by those Savoy 
 Divines, from whom the English Formularies received 
 their final and still surviving impress. Every tiro in 
 liturgical studies will recognise in this Rubric a continua- 
 tion of the rule by which the clergy of the Church of 
 England four hundred years ago were bound to the repe- 
 tition of the Sarum Breviary. 
 
 "In 1549," says Mr. Procter, "the direction was limited to those 
 who ministered in any church ; but in 1552 the Common Prayer was 
 directly substituted for the Breviary by the order that ' all Priests 
 anrl Deacons should be bound to say daily the Morning and Evening 
 Prayer, either privately or openly, except they were letted by preach- 
 
[O 
 
 The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 ing, studying of divinity, or by some other urgent cause,' and provi- 
 sion continued to be made for the public service by the further order, 
 that curates being at home and not otherwise being reasonably letted, 
 should say the same in their parish church or chapel. 1 ' 1 
 
 To the same effect Wheatley : — 
 
 "The occasion of our rubric was probably a rule in the Roman [i.e. 
 English ante-Reformation] Church, by which even before the Refor- 
 mation and the Council of Trent, the clergy were obliged to recite 
 what they call the Canonical Hours," etc. 2 
 
 It will have been remarked, in 1549 the injunction was 
 not in force— the Sarum Hours were probably still in 
 general use. In 1552 the present rubric was attaehed to 
 the reformed offices, with one very important variation 
 from its present form. " Preaching," and " studying of 
 divinity" were cited as "causes" of an urgency which 
 might be held sufficient to dispense with the obligation. 
 This was practically to allow men, at their pleasure, to 
 substitute one duty for another ; and, as prayer, particu- 
 larly prescribed prayer, has none of the excitement of 
 " preaching " and " studying of divinity " to recommend it, 
 and its results can only be appreciated by faith of a higher 
 order than that of average clergymen, it was natural that 
 the rubric should become a dead letter. Besides which 
 the whole genius of the Elizabethan age was against 
 prayer and in favour of preaching ; it was an age impatient 
 of devotional contemplation, and eager in its treatment of 
 religion under an almost exclusively speculative and intel- 
 lectual aspect ; and men, therefore, who would stand well 
 with their age (and when has such a motive not had 
 power with the majority ?) would be easily persuaded that 
 there were other calls upon their time more "urgent" 
 than the obligation to say daily service. 
 
 When, therefore, the Savoy Divines undertook the 
 
 1 Procter on Common Prayer, p. 178. 
 
 2 Wheatley's Rational Illustration, chap. ii. § 1. 
 
The Priest in his Inner Life. 1 1 
 
 revision of the Prayer Book, they cancelled the clause by 
 which preaching, or studying of divinity, were held to be 
 sufficiently " urgent causes " for a neglect of this first of 
 clerical duties, and they substituted another by which sick- 
 ness was declared to be such a cause. It would seem that 
 they proceeded upon a principle which may be recognised 
 pretty clearly. The rubric of 1552 made the suspension 
 of the duty to depend on the will of man, that of 1662 
 referred it to the will of God. The clergy were not hence- 
 forth to decide that other duties might be more important 
 to them than the solemn tribute of their daily service ; 
 He alone, to Whom that service was due, was by the 
 course of His providence to suspend its payment. While 
 their predecessors had legislated as if the personal edifica- 
 tion of the clergy was the one end and purpose of the 
 Daily Office ; the great Caroline Divines regarded that 
 office as a tribute exacted from His ministers by the Lord 
 of Life Whose glory was promoted by it, and Who must 
 be left to signify for Himself, when He would waive His 
 rights — and further as an act of charity towards souls 
 perpetually obligatory on the Christian priest, — the omis- 
 sion of which was fraught with injury to the vitality of 
 the Church, and with danger to the souls of her pastors. 
 And this is indeed the actual meaning of the existing 
 rubric which embodies the mind of the English Church of 
 the seventeenth century on this subject, as distinct from 
 that of the latter part of the sixteenth. If the history of 
 the rubric be allowed to throw light upon its intention, we 
 cannot doubt that the Church of England, when she last 
 considered the question, deliberately phrased it in a man- 
 ner which should make the Daily Office a sacred obligation 
 upon all her conscientious ministers when they were not 
 physically incapacitated from saying it. 
 
 1. But, it will be asked, how is such a representation 
 of this obligation consistent with the fact that of those 
 
12 
 
 The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 whom it mainly concerns, a vast proportion have never 
 observed it ? Here is a sacred duty — incumbent upon an 
 order which is the teacher and guardian of morals — not 
 merely notoriously neglected, but in many quarters 
 absolutely ignored. This fact, it will be argued, must be 
 accepted as an interpretation and comment upon the 
 meaning of the rubric, illustrating its actual force by the 
 general and practical sense of the Church, and reducing 
 its proportions from those of a sharply defined precept, 
 wielding an empire in the well-regulated conscience and 
 over the disciplined will, to the limits of a more or less 
 valuable suggestion addressed to the individual judgment, 
 taste, or sense of religious expediency. 
 
 In reply, it may be remarked that the non-observance 
 of this rule of the Church has been unduly exaggerated 
 both by its opponents and advocates. Such exaggeration 
 is a natural mistake. Eeligious men do not parade the 
 habits which bind them to God ; they are more or less 
 " hidden secretly in His tabernacle from the strife of 
 tongues " and public scrutiny. The kingdom of God did 
 not originally come " with observation," and it is set up 
 in individual hearts as unostentatiously as may be con- 
 sistent with the terms of submitting to it. This feature 
 of unobtrusiveness and retirement as characterising the 
 practices of the Christian life, although estimated at its 
 true moral value in the Sermon on the Mount, is held by 
 the world, and sometimes by religious men who are looking 
 on, to argue weakness, or failure, or inefficiency, or even 
 more, in men and institutions among whom it prevails. 
 We too often believe only in what we see ; and we take 
 it for granted that excellence which does not display itself 
 does not exist, or it would be forward to proclaim the fact 
 of its existence. How false this principle is, they will 
 best know who are at all intimate with the lives of the 
 saints of Christendom. And it is not to be supposed that 
 
The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 i5 
 
 we can at all judge of the extent to which the present 
 precept was observed in the seventeenth century (for 
 example), from the records of its observance which happen 
 to have been transmitted to us. To do so would be to 
 ignore the general instinct of religious men, and therefore 
 of a conscientious clergyman, bound as he would be by 
 the example and precept of our Divine Lord to say little 
 and do much. It would be to forget how this tendency 
 to keep religious practices out of sight had received a new 
 impulse from the Eeformation, in consequence of its real 
 or alleged apprehensions of formalism, and that therefore 
 an English clergyman's religious life would, under almost 
 any circumstances, be less public than that of a French 
 ecclesiastic. Moreover it would be a fatal miscalculation, 
 from its omission to take into the account that peculiar 
 elpwveia of the Englishman's character, which mantles in 
 privacy and reserve his religious no less than his domestic 
 and social habits, and which has always been an impor- 
 tant element in the past, as it will be in any future prac- 
 tical developments of English Christianity. 
 
 Some few years ago a catena of authorities on this 
 subject was published in Oxford ; 1 and, although we 
 believe that it might be added to on further research, it is 
 in its present form a very sufficient attestation of the fact 
 that the rubric under consideration cannot be described 
 as having been a dead letter, since it has exerted a very 
 powerful influence on the past mind of the English Church. 
 And, although it should be admitted that a large propor- 
 tion of the clergy have ignored this direction, it must not 
 be forgotten that when the Church last addressed herself 
 to the subject in her corporate capacity, she increased the 
 definiteness and obligatory character of the duty — a fact 
 which more than counterbalances, in a moral point of 
 view, the licence and neglect of Puritan or Latitudinarian 
 
 1 Tracts for the Times, No. 84. 
 
14 
 
 The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 sections of the clergy, however respectable, numerous, or 
 influential. 
 
 2. But, secondly, it will be objected that the Service 
 itself witnesses against its being used in private. The 
 plural pronoun in the prayers and collects, the invitation, 
 " Let us pray " ; the Versicles which imply a Response, 
 still more the Absolution, and Exhortation, forbid the 
 supposition that the compilers of this Service actually 
 contemplated its being said in private and by way of 
 intercession. This is what may be said ; and it would be 
 sufficient to urge in answer the fact that the Saruna 
 Breviary was similarly used, yet that it was equally con- 
 gregational in its structure. The Reformers passed on a 
 principle which they found in existence without discuss- 
 ing it. That principle maintained that the fittest private 
 devotions for the interceding priest in his closet were 
 precisely those which he would use if he were in choir. 
 Why was this, but because the Communion of Saints was 
 most vividly brought before the mind by an office which 
 will not allow its reciter to believe himself alone ? He is 
 alternately priest and people : he confesses and he ab- 
 solves ; he addresses and he listens ; he prays, and he 
 ratines his own intercessions by the solemn " Amen : ' ; he 
 sustains throughout a double capacity, and it is the 
 Church's intention that he should do so. She will not 
 allow him to forget that he is a member of a body, and 
 has duties towards it. In the life of faith, as in the 
 eternal world, time and space are reduced to being mere 
 conditions of human thought ; they cease to separate as 
 in the world of sense. The priest is never without a 
 congregation ; though it be far away, and have chosen an 
 earlier or later hour than his own, or none at all ; like 
 St. Paul, he is separated from it, in person only, not in 
 spirit and reality ; for men of all times and countries meet 
 in Catholic communion before the throne of God, drawn by 
 
The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 i5 
 
 the principle of life, ever energetic and one in its opera- 
 tions, — the sacred Manhood of our Divine Lord, as diffused 
 in His Church through the agency of the Co-equal and 
 Eternal Spirit. And therefore so far from its being matter 
 for surprise that the Daily Office of the solitary clergy- 
 man is the language not of an individual, but of a Church ; 
 it is almost inconceivable that the Church could ever have 
 sanctioned a different arrangement, without weakening 
 her sense of the truth that her clergy pray not for them- 
 selves, but for and with her to whom they minister. 
 " We are to remember," observes Bishop Cosin, " that we 
 which are priests are called ' Angeli Domini ' ; and it is 
 the Angel's office, not only to descend to the people and 
 teach them God's Will, but to ascend to the presence of 
 God to make intercession for the people, and to carry up 
 the daily prayers of the Church in their behalf, as here 
 they are bound to do." 1 
 
 3. But, where, after all, it will be asked, does this in- 
 junction occur ? It is not in an Article, not even in a 
 Canon, — it is embodied in a Rubric. And is it not, it 
 may be urged, sufficiently notorious that in the judgment 
 of the living Church of England — the overwhelming- 
 majority of her Bishops and Clergy — the Rubrics can be 
 kept only so far as custom, or the local impulse of the 
 Church prescribes ? Rubrics, then, it will be said, belong 
 to questions of taste and propriety, to archaeological and 
 ecclesiological dilettantism : but to give them weight in a 
 question of moral obligation is to offer a deliberate insult 
 to strong minds, and to lay a mischievous snare for weak 
 consciences. 
 
 Waiving the large question as to the obligatory 
 character of the Rubrics as a whole, as irrelevant to the 
 present discussion, it is nevertheless obvious to remark, 
 that any injunction which proceeds from authority 
 1 Works, vol. v. p. 2. 
 
i6 
 
 The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 cannot be set aside without moral injury to the person 
 doing so, unless it be set aside upon a principle — the 
 principle of an intercepting law or higher obligation. 
 The servant who is sent on a message is not morally at 
 liberty to remain at home because he wishes to do so ; he 
 is unquestionably right in remaining if the house were 
 suddenly on fire, or the order countermanded. Any 
 authority, however weak, provided only that it exists at 
 all, imposes precepts which have power in the forum of 
 conscience, and which a religious man will not therefore 
 disregard because the subject-matter is thought trivial or 
 the imposing authority weak and incompetent to enforce 
 obedience. This needs insisting on, considering the 
 cavalier manner in which Rubrical questions are discussed 
 at present, just as though they were purely matters of 
 taste, and in no sense matters of morality and upright 
 adherence to obligations of a formal character. If a 
 Rubric be set aside at all, it must be set aside upon a 
 principle. It is a further question, which need not now 
 be entered upon, whether any sufficient principle for 
 neglect of rubrical observance can in truth be pleaded. 
 Possibly not. But clearly, if the Church has power to 
 decree rites and ceremonies, as our Article affirms that 
 she has, her decrees can only cease to bind, when some 
 sufficient reason has been adduced, which will hold good 
 in the court of conscience. Men confess this, when they 
 say that they neglect the Rubrics, because to observe them 
 would offend others, and so, that they defer to the law of 
 charity, or again when they plead want of explicitness on 
 the part of the Rubrics themselves, and say, that they con- 
 tradict or seem to contradict each other. Such pleas prove 
 at least the conviction that some plea is needed ; and a plea 
 can only be needed where what is aprimd facie duty is to be 
 overruled. Let us apply the above-named pleas to the 
 matter in hand. Grant that to preach in the surplice would 
 
The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 17 
 
 lead to a breach of Christian love, and that a clergyman 
 who substituted Saints'-Day for Sunday Lessons would be 
 liable to the charge of having acted without very definite 
 instructions. Can it be said, that any, the most sensitive 
 anti-Tractarian, could be offended by the curate's com- 
 pliance with the law of the Daily Service in the privacy 
 of bis home ? or can it be maintained, that the direction 
 to say the Daily Office privately, if public opportunities 
 do not present themselves, is not as explicit as words can 
 make it ? The ordinary pleas for non-observance of the 
 Eubrics in general do not apply to the direction before 
 us ; it therefore retains its character of an obligatory 
 command addressed to all priests and deacons of the 
 Church of England, and it can only be set aside, by doing 
 violence to the conscience, if it is in the least alive to 
 the moral bearings of the question. 
 
 And it is difficult to suppose that if, on the one hand, 
 men believe with the Great Apostle, that every priest 
 taken from among men is ordained for men in things 
 pertaining to God, that he may offer gifts and sacrifices 
 for sins, 1 and on the other, that great perils are necessarily 
 incidental to the endeavour to discharge this work of 
 intercession, — that to live perpetually on the vestibule of 
 heaven has dangers no less than blessings — that to 
 approach the everlasting God with words of our own, or 
 selections of our own from His Word, involves an element 
 of risk, — if this were felt, the Daily Office would appear 
 not in the light of a bondage and a law, to free itself from 
 which the clerical conscience must engage the services of 
 a questionable casuistry, but rather would it be hailed 
 as a merciful and welcome provision, enabling the priest- 
 hood, with diminished responsibilities to discharge daily 
 that work of intercession, which God awaits at their 
 hands, on which depends the destiny of souls, and 
 1 Heb. v. 1. 
 
i8 
 
 The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 for which they must most solemnly give account here- 
 after. 
 
 "We" (observes Bishop Cosin, in a passage written 
 before 1638, and speaking in the name of the English 
 clergy), " we are also bound, as all priests are in the 
 Church of Borne, daily to repeat and say the public sendee 
 of the Church. And it is a precept the most useful and 
 necessary of any others that belong to the ministers of 
 God, and such as have the cure of other men's souls." 1 
 The grounds of the first of these assertions have been 
 already in a measure discussed. The truth of the second 
 can only be fully tested by individual experience. Many 
 a living priest of the English Church will fervently echo 
 the assertion of the great Caroline Bishop of Durham, 
 that the precept winch eujoins the use, whether private or 
 public, of the Daily Office is " the most useful and neces- 
 sary of any others that belong to the minister of God." 
 
 It is most useful to those to whom he ministers, not 
 merely because it makes interest for them with the All- 
 merciful God, but because it further does or may promote 
 to an almost indefinite extent the ministerial capabilities 
 of their pastor. It deepens his familiarity with the words 
 of Scripture, and the formularies of the Church. He is 
 constrained, almost in self-defence, to make continual 
 efforts to penetrate more and more thoroughly the deeper 
 meaning of what he repeats so frequently. Divine truths 
 are stamped upon his soul, not merely as on that of a 
 mature intellect by enforced concession to conviction and 
 argument, but as on the soul of a little child, by way of 
 frequent repetition, and almost of physical indentation. 
 This will make itself felt in his sermons and in his private 
 ministrations, illustrating thereby the original mind and 
 purpose of the Church as declared in the Breface to the 
 Brayer Book of 1549. "The Fathers," we are told, "so 
 
 1 Works, vol. v. p. 9. 
 
The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 >9 
 
 ordered the matter, that all the whole Bible, or the greatest 
 part thereof, should be read over once every year ; intend- 
 ing thereby that the clergy, and especially such as were 
 ministers iu the congregation, should (by often reading 
 and meditation in God's Word) be stirred up to godliness 
 themselves, and be more able to exhort others by whole- 
 some doctrine, and to confute them that were adversaries 
 to the truth." 1 And in fact, the Daily Service " reverently, 
 attentively, and devoutly " said, contributes most effec- 
 tively to store the soul with matter from which medita- 
 tions, sermons, private counsels, may draw an ever fresh 
 and plenteous supply. Earnest men are pretty generally 
 agreed as to the value, almost as to the necessity, of 
 extempore preaching, uniting as it does the advantage of 
 popularity to that of accordance with Catholic instinct 
 and ancient prescription. But to attempt this, if the soul 
 be not daily fed with the nourishment of psalm, and creed, 
 and prayer, would be rash, if not disastrous. It would be 
 difficult for a man who does not habitually breathe the 
 Church's atmosphere and utter her words, to speak in 
 public without departing from her mind and temper. 
 
 Again, the priest who is much among his people knows 
 how effective is a reference to the lesson or psalm of the 
 day, as proving to his flock that he has been with God, 
 even though they have not followed him ; and men often 
 remark how the daily services seem to coincide, as if by a 
 providential guidance, with the needs of their daily 
 parochial work, and how the very psalm or the lesson for 
 the day, suggest themselves irresistibly as most opportune 
 when a sinner has to be warned, or a penitent to be 
 cheered, or a deathbed to be visited — prescribing to them 
 at the needful hour " what they shall say and what they 
 shall speak." Or again, when travelling, and exposed to 
 the many temptations which occur in the domestic circle 
 
 1 Concerning the Service of the Church. 
 
20 
 
 The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 or in general society to lay aside the keen and collected 
 spirit of an ambassador from heaven, the clergyman is 
 recalled to his true and never-ceasing relation to God and 
 the Church by the recurring office which must be said, 
 and which, by the difficulty he has in saying it, enables him 
 to test the degree in which he lias admitted to his heart a 
 worldly and un-Christlike temper. 
 
 This is the value of the precept. It obliges the minister 
 of God utterly to realise His presence at least twice in the 
 day. Either he must do this or be guilty of a miserable 
 hypocrisy. It will be said, perhaps, that the Church has 
 no right to force her clergy to the risk of such a sin ; but 
 no religious duty can be prescribed without such risk. 
 Every religious gift and grace may be profaned and 
 become a " savour of death unto death." To some our 
 Lord's own most gracious words were addressed only with 
 the result of depriving them of any cloak for their sin. 
 Of course the Daily Office may make some clergymen 
 formalists and hypocrites; but the Church runs this risk, 
 deliberately, with some that she may make many 
 " remembrancers who keep not silence, and give the Lord 
 no rest until He establish, and till He make Jerusalem a 
 praise in the earth." 1 Like the unvarying ritual in heaven 
 which is uttered by spirits who move incessantly before 
 the very throne of God, the Daily Service of the Church 
 befits and expresses the temper of those who ask one 
 thing of the Lord, that they may renounce all for His most 
 gracious and winning Presence, that they may dwell in 
 His courts, and be satisfied with the pleasures of His 
 house, even of His holy temple. To others it may seem 
 unreal and formal ; to the living soul of him who bears 
 Christ's commission, it helps to generate that reverent 
 love and piercing knowledge of the Being of Beings which 
 makes men angels, and fits them for eternity. 
 
 Isa. lxii. 6, 7. 
 
The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 II. 
 
 It may be safely asserted that, generally speaking, 
 no one practice of the Eeligious Life can exist alone. In 
 dogmatic theology, we know, that each separate article 
 of the Faith implies with more or less distinctness, that 
 whole cycle of teaching of which it is a part. In morals, 
 a single defect is held sufficient to vitiate an action or a 
 life ; and excellence must be complete " if it is to exist, in 
 any true sense, at all." " Bonum ex causa, integra, malum 
 ex quolibet defectn." 1 So the religious life is a whole, and 
 to its continued existence the integrity of its essential 
 elements is absolutely necessary. A solitary religious 
 practice, isolated from the other acts and temper of which 
 it is at once the expression and complement, will dwindle 
 first of all into a formalism, and at length be abandoned 
 in disgust. 
 
 The Church of England then, in prescribing for her 
 clergy the daily use of Matins and Evensong, has, in 
 effect, prescribed to them the Eeligious Life. For the 
 efficient discharge of this one duty a devotional and 
 collected temper is required, which must be developed by 
 other expedients. The case of a man who should ignore 
 or neglect the formation of such a temper, and yet 
 attempt to obey the Church's rule, would be lamentable, 
 but certain. He would first of all be distressed by the 
 contrast between his own inward life, its aims, tone, and 
 atmosphere, and that of the formularies, from periodical 
 contact with which his sense of duty would not allow him 
 to escape. Gradually, this sense of contrast would weaken 
 and die, and the service would be said more and more 
 mechanically. At length a crisis would arrive, however 
 
 1 Compare St. Thorn. Aq. Prima Sec. qu. 18, art. 4, 3; orSandersou, Serm. i. 
 ad Pop. § 14. De OblUj. Consc. Protect, ii. § 9. 
 
22 
 
 The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 originating: nature would revolt at a degrading and 
 hypocritical mechanism claiming to represent the soul's 
 aspirations towards its Maker; and the practice would 
 be abandoned, without a suspicion that it might have 
 become the stimulus and centre of vital religion, and not 
 without a sneer at the Church which did not erase such 
 a stumbling-block to earnest and honest men from its 
 authorised formularies. 
 
 But in truth the sense of contrast between the language 
 of the Prayer Book, and the inward life of the clergyman 
 — created as this is by the grace of God — is meant by 
 Him to issue in a widely different result. He makes us 
 thus uneasy, at the existence of an admitted evil, that He 
 may guide us to the remedy. It is His gracious purpose, 
 that the soul should be continually approximating to the 
 devotional type which is set before it in the Psalter, and 
 that as it expands with ever-increasing tenderness and 
 awe towards Him Who is its Centre and Sun, it should 
 more and more perfectly appropriate and feel at home 
 with that inspired language in which the saints have, for 
 three thousand years, learned to know and to love Him. 
 But how is this to be effected ? We reply, by Meditation. 
 
 Now Meditation is a duty, with which every person 
 who is attempting to lead a religious life, is supposed to 
 be familiar. The Bible says so much about it, that in a 
 Bible-reading country like ours, everybody takes it for 
 granted. But the popular idea of meditation is, we ap- 
 prehend, as indefinite as it is general. It supposes at 
 least this, that the mind is exercised on a religious sub- 
 ject. But beyond this it cannot advance. You see a 
 worthy clergyman in his study, — he is resting his elbow 
 on the table, and reflecting on some portions of his Bible 
 — making remarks at intervals to his wife. This is indeed 
 better than nothing, although it be a feeble and dreamy 
 effort, failing in reverence, in intellectual address, in 
 
The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 23 
 
 analysis, in stimulating the imagination, in challenging 
 and coercing the will, in opening the soul in very truth 
 to the eye of its God, and making it court His gaze, — in 
 short, failing in all the great purposes of meditation. It 
 fails in these because it fails in system ; meditation to be 
 real must be systematic ; and the soul should be taught 
 to move just as systematically and reverently when in 
 the Divine Presence as the body. Such a meditation as 
 this bears the same sort of relation to that of the well- 
 instructed Christian, as does the rant of a meeting-house 
 to the ritual of a well-appointed church. It is indeed an 
 effort in the right direction, but an effort at once undis- 
 ciplined, aimless, fruitless, — because "not according to 
 knowledge," because without " decency and order." 
 
 Meditation is popularly conceived to be an act of the 
 soul when in a state of partial passivity and listlessness. 
 It can think, contemplate, speculate, when through cir- 
 cumstances it is debarred from action. To meditate 
 when a man can act is to lose time, and to be unpracti- 
 cal. Such is the popular idea on the subject : but we 
 maintain, on the contrary, that meditation implies an 
 active exertion of all the powers of the soul, — that it is 
 impossible when the intellect is wearied, and the will 
 languid, and the memory overcast — that it demands, in 
 short, intellectual and moral activity, and that in return, 
 it illuminates the intellect, and nerves and braces the 
 will. Meditation is an act of the whole soul, rising in 
 the fulness of its energy towards its God. It is not 
 merely systematic thought about Divine things, because 
 such thought can exist when one power only of the soul is 
 exercised, whereas meditation exercises all. Still less is it 
 mere resolution to live justly and holily, resolution being 
 sudden, and not always implying the exercise of thought. 
 Nor is it mere action of the memory, however well-stored 
 and docile, — for memory does not necessarily lead to in- 
 
2 4 
 
 The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 tellectual or moral analysis, which is of the essence of 
 meditation. Least of all is it mere indulgence of the 
 imagination or religious fancy : for this is compatible 
 with utter paralysis of the will, and with feeble and 
 desultory apprehension of Divine Truth on the part of 
 the intellect. None of these powers can meditate alone : 
 but in their conjunction the understanding, the memory, 
 the imagination, and the will, do effect that interpenetra- 
 tion of the soul by the atmosphere of Eevealed Truth, 
 that living simultaneous apprehension of its severities 
 and its beauty, that sensitiveness which cannot but act 
 upon what is known, and does not shrink from knowledge 
 lest it should involve action; results — which lie at the 
 basis of the true priestly character. The mental powers 
 were given us that we might return them to God, and 
 this is best done by meditation. The reason has a higher 
 subject-matter than mathematics ; the memory than 
 Horace and Virgil ; the imagination than poetry and 
 works of fiction ; the will than the effort to live and rise 
 in life. The true object of the reason is the Incompre- 
 hensible ; His Eevelation of Himself is that of the 
 memory : the imagination was meant to gaze in perpetual 
 fascination on His surpassing Beauty ; and His Holy Law 
 is the one correlative of the human will. Man, in short, 
 was made for God ; and so far as the human soul is con- 
 cerned, this truth is expressed by meditation. 
 
 Of course it is only gradually that the Christian soul 
 learns how to apply her natural faculties to supernatural 
 ends. At first the soul moves awkwardly and indecor- 
 ously in the presence of God. Fluttered and confused, 
 like a negro entering a Christian church for the first time 
 in his life, she cannot reconcile her own activity with the 
 Presence of Him Who is eternal Eest. She is too excited 
 to lie quiet and adore ; too awestruck to move with col- 
 lectedness and self-possession. She is alternately at- 
 
The Priest zVz his Inner Life. 
 
 25 
 
 tracted and repelled, — first won by the beauty of the 
 supernatural world, then scared by its exceeding fear- 
 fulness. As she gazes, mysteries are transacted which 
 confuse her apprehension ; groups of beings throng- 
 around, with movements which she cannot interpret ; 
 voices sound, which, though the familiar words of Holy 
 Writ, seem to her purposely unintelligible ; she is in a 
 blaze of light, but she is simply oppressed by it, unable 
 to appreciate its piercing beauty, or to note its discoveries, 
 or to mark its varying scintillations, or to pursue it with 
 adoring love to its Source and Fountain. She shuts her 
 eyes, and, while moving where all else is order and devo- 
 tion, she alone is distracted, almost to being irreverent, 
 and she begins to feel that the Presence of God, as re- 
 vealed in meditation, demands from the soul the manners 
 and bearing of those who move habitually around His 
 Throne, and that it is beyond her present education and 
 attainments. 
 
 Every parish priest knows how different is the hasty 
 walk, the excited gaze, the uncontrolled prostration, the 
 rapid and unmeasured words of the new communicant, 
 from the calm, collected, restrained, yet profound devo- 
 tion of the man who has for years been constant in his 
 attendance at the foot of the altar ; and such is the differ- 
 ence between the beginner in meditation and the Christian 
 who has made some progress. 
 
 We will endeavour to describe a meditation, in its 
 leading features, premising that any such description is 
 necessarily very general, and may need much adaptation 
 to the wants and eccentricities of particular cases. 
 
 You first of all place yourself on your knees. This is 
 essential ; it reminds us that the attitude of the soul 
 towards Divine Truth is one not of criticism, but of utter, 
 prostrate, adoring self-surrender to God's assertions and 
 commands. " Let God be true, and every man a liar," is 
 
26 
 
 The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 the motto of the temper of mind which befits meditation. 
 Meditation supposes the natural reason to have yielded 
 to what St. Paul delighted to call " the obedience of faith ": 
 and proceeding on this assumption, it advances to " sub- 
 due every thought to the obedience of Christ." The 
 world of time and sense, its transient and deceptive ap- 
 pearances, are left behind, and the soul and body lie 
 motionless before Him Who is the Truth itself, — in- 
 capable alike of deceiving and being deceived, — and before 
 that Eevelation which is at once an attestation of His 
 having spoken, and a record of what He has vouchsafed 
 to say. " Taceant omnes doctores : sileant omnes creaturae 
 in conspectu Tuo ; Tu mihi loquere solus," 1 — is the lan- 
 guage of the soul as she places herself in the Presence 
 of the Ever-Blessed Trinity, with a view to meditation. 
 
 Before and above her is the Almighty, Everlasting, In- 
 finite God, Three and yet One, " dwelling in light which 
 no man can approach unto," surrounded by the whole 
 company of Heaven, the four awful creatures, the twenty- 
 four elders, the thousand times ten thousand. The Word 
 made Flesh is there : His Sacred and Immaculate Man- 
 hood is adored by Archangels, Apostles, Prophets, Martyrs, 
 Confessors, Virgins, Innocents. On this side lies the 
 narrow path to Paradise, steep, thorny, unfrequented ; on 
 that the "facilis descensus Averni," the descent to the 
 Eternal Pit broad and inviting, thronged with its count- 
 less multitudes. This presence when realised forces the 
 soul involuntarily to preparatory prayer. In a few heart- 
 felt petitions, she (i) protests to God her utter distrust of 
 self, her firm trust in His boundless compassion, her 
 resolution to attempt in His strength that to which 
 nature is so unequal, and next (2) she resigns herself to 
 His Will, as to the results of meditation, — assuring Him 
 of her readiness to accept cheerfully from Him mental 
 
 1 Be Imitat. Christi, i. 2. 
 
The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 27 
 
 darkness, or dryness of spirit, or a sense of being deserted 
 by Him, or distractions, no less tban His illuminating 
 and consoling grace. The earnestness with which this 
 last petition can be urged will enable a man to test 
 how far he is seeking God because He is God, or only 
 because meditation is a distinct source of intellectual 
 pleasure to His intelligent creatures. 
 
 So much for the first step in meditation : the second 
 consists in a careful consideration of the particular subject 
 which is to furnish material on the present occasion. As 
 the meditation will be attempted, if possible, early in the 
 morning, when the powers of the soul are fresh, vigorous, 
 and undistracted, the materials will have been perused 
 over-night. The fact, whether mystery or doctrine, parable 
 or miracle, which is to be approached, now comes before the 
 soul, and while the memory carefully gathers up the frag- 
 ments of the sacred narrative, the imagination, although 
 under rein, mantles the object of meditation in appropriate 
 scenery, gives life and vividness to scenes, persons, and 
 actions concerned, and seizes with eager penetration on 
 everything which can render the object of contemplation 
 more real, lifelike, and fascinating to the mental powers. 
 For, as Hooker remarks, "the mind, while in this present life, 
 whether it contemplate, meditate, deliberate, or howsoever 
 exercise itself, worketh nothing without continual recourse 
 unto imagination, the only storehouse of wit, and peculiar 
 chair of memory." 1 And if it should appear dangerous 
 to admit a faculty which has for its object-matter beauty 
 as distinct from truth to a conference with the truth itself 
 — a faculty so erratic and creative as the human imagina- 
 tion ; let it be considered by those who feel the objection 
 to have weight, that if God as the Eternal Truth is the 
 Object-matter of the intellect, and as Archetypal Purity is 
 that of the moral sense, so there is a faculty which He has 
 
 Eccles. Pol. v. 67. 7. 
 
2 8 
 
 The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 created that it might seek and find Hirn, as the Uncreated 
 Beauty. Men are led to Christ from the world, some- 
 times because He alone has the words of eternal life, 
 sometimes too, because He alone defies the criticism of the 
 moral sense, but sometimes also because in His Body- 
 Mystical, no less than in the days of His Flesh, He is 
 " fairer than the children of men." And it may farther 
 be remarked, that if the imagination were to be denied 
 any share in helping the human soul to find and enjoy its 
 God, it is, at least, singular that He should have spoken 
 to it in language of a structure and phraseology calculated 
 to stimulate it to peculiar activity. It is singular, we 
 repeat, that Revelation, which might have been thrown 
 into the form of hard prose or formal propositions, should 
 be imbedded in poetry such as that of the Psalter, or 
 Isaiah, or the Canticles, if God were unwilling to be 
 sought by His servants through the action of their imagi- 
 nations as well as through that of their intellects. 
 
 It is the intellect which is next summoned to the 
 Divine Presence. Memory has recalled the subject of 
 meditation ; imagination has surrounded it with circum- 
 stance and detail ; but to stop here would be to reduce 
 meditation to the proportions of an imaginative reverie. 
 The understanding accordingly proceeds to grapple with 
 the subject, and to do this effectively, it must analyse it. 
 It breaks up the sacred narrative or message, which has 
 just been contemplated as a whole, and apprehends it 
 piecemeal. There is, of course, some danger here, lest 
 mere intellectual speculation should take the place of 
 intelligent apprehension of Divine Truth ; and, to guard 
 against this, it will be found necessary to have a constant 
 eye to practical points, and to lay emphasis upon them. 
 There is danger, even in practical people, of an over- 
 anxiety to grasp many truths at once, so as to contemplate 
 them in their symmetry and relative independence : and 
 
The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 29 
 
 this will best be obviated by a resolution to be content 
 with one point at a time, and sternly to exclude con- 
 terminous subjects which press, however invitingly, for 
 consideration. It should also be observed that the tempta- 
 tion to give exaggerated attention to a favourite dogma, 
 and so to violate the analogy and due proportions of the 
 Faith, is one against which a man must be on his guard 
 while engaged in meditation, more than at any other time ; 
 because the soul is not then under the control of external 
 restraints, as in the Church Service, where we are obliged 
 to move forward, and is particularly likely to surrender 
 herself to the guidance of a temporary preference con- 
 nected with the controversial or other circumstances of 
 the day. And to do this would be very fatally to forfeit 
 that religious discipline which is one of the most valuable 
 results of systematic meditation. On the other hand, if 
 this be borne in mind, it may very fairly be assumed that 
 to follow the guidance of God the Holy Ghost, should He 
 vouchsafe any special illumination, would be the part of 
 Christian prudence, no less than of Christian reverence. 
 
 But the end to which the intellect will direct its energies 
 is this, — the selection of some one point for action or 
 imitation. This is indispensable. It must be one point, not 
 many : and, when chosen, no time must be lost in acting 
 on it. Most men will, or ought to know enough about 
 themselves, to be anxious for something bearing on the 
 improvement of their own character, or on their besetting- 
 sin. It is the privilege of saints to meditate with a view 
 to acting upon others, — although it certainly ought to be 
 the practice of clergymen. But most men " hide God's 
 image within their heart, that they themselves should not 
 sin against Him." 
 
 This done, the intellect retires, and the point upon 
 which it has fixed as cardinal is transferred to the will. 
 This is the soul — the crisis, of the meditation. That the 
 
3Q 
 
 The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 will may embrace the duty or practice selected by the 
 intellect from the materials which have been considered, 
 it becomes necessary that the affections should be forced 
 to act upon what as yet has been only contemplated intel- 
 lectually. Will, as we all know, results from the union 
 of desire and reason ; but while it is their joint result, it 
 can control them separately. Hence it is, that as men 
 are responsible for what they believe, so they will have to 
 answer for what they love. In the well-disciplined soul 
 of the Christian, the affections are all perfectly under 
 control ; he is as little the creature of impulses proceeding 
 from within as of circumstances pressing from without ; 
 and, moreover, when conscience bids, he can concentrate 
 his affections upon a given object, not artificially, and as 
 though under constraint, but with the full play, the gush- 
 ing freshness of a natural impulse. Some modern writers 
 who seem to think that human nature is only respectable 
 when it is lawless and undisciplined, are incapable 
 of understanding the belief of the Church that the 
 powers of the soul only enjoy perfect freedom when self 
 has been annihilated, and impulse is enslaved to the law 
 and will of Jesus Christ. Such, however, is the fact : the 
 perfect Christian offers and presents unto God himself, 
 his soul and body, " to be a reasonable, holy, and lively 
 sacrifice unto Him." Our Lord Jesus Christ was never 
 subject to impulse : His every affection was under perfect 
 restraint : He only loved when He willed to love : He 
 only felt sorrow when He willed to feel it ; He was never 
 surprised into an exercise of His affections which His will 
 did not sanction ; He " looked on the young man," and 
 " loved him " ; He appointed a time and place for His 
 Mental Agony, and then with full consciousness of what 
 He was going to breast, He " began to be sorrowful"; He 
 walked to the grave of Lazarus, and when there, " He 
 wept." His inner life, no less than His Sacred Body, was 
 
The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 3i 
 
 perfectly His own, and beyond the reach of external or 
 internal circumstance ; but He did not love, grieve, com- 
 passionate with less intensity, because He felt pity, grief, 
 and love, only when He perfectly willed to exercise these 
 affections. And in such proportion as the Christian 
 becomes conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, his inner 
 life is characterised by this same feature of perfect self- 
 control ; he suspends and he exercises affection when he 
 wills to do so, and he wills when conscience bids him : 
 but his affections are not the less genuine, vigorous, and 
 hearty, because they are held in obedience to the governing 
 principle of the soul, and are projected at its bidding 
 upon rightful objects. Train any natural power, and you 
 may either cripple or develop it : but men would long ago 
 have been savages again if the former had been the normal 
 and the latter the accidental result of training : and 
 experience has shown that mind and body gain strength, 
 when nature is kept somewhat under check and discipline, 
 — instead of losing it. 
 
 We need therefore be under no apprehension of arti- 
 ficiality in proceeding to direct the affections upon the 
 object of meditation. Our power of doing so will depend 
 upon the discipline of the soul, not upon the natural 
 peculiarities of our individual psychology. We can do 
 so, if we will. We can, as Christians who have God's 
 grace, love Him ; we can hate His enemy the Evil 
 Spirit ; we can abhor sin ; we can grieve over that which 
 grieves our Lord ; if we only will to grieve, to hate, to 
 love. 
 
 This exercise of the affections will often atone for the 
 deficiencies of the understanding. Emotion in uneducated 
 men has often supplied the place of culture. " A strong 
 and pure affection concentrates the attention on its objects, 
 fastens on them the whole soul, and thus gives vividness 
 of conception. It associates intimately all the ideas which 
 
32 
 
 The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 are congenial with itself ; ... it seems to stir up the soul 
 from its foundations, and to attract to itself and to impreg- 
 nate with its own fire whatever elements, conceptions, 
 illustrations can be pressed into its own service. . . . 
 Every minister can probably recollect periods, when 
 devotional feeling has seemed to open a new foundation 
 of thought in the soul." 1 We quote this remark of a 
 Socinian writer, who is not generally prone to undervalue 
 the office of the intellect in religion, or to exaggerate that 
 of the affections, by way of showing that when spiritual 
 writers on meditation recommend us to give great atten- 
 tion to the exercise of the affections, they do it on this 
 ground, that while the intellect can never do the work of 
 the affections, the affections, under the guidance of the 
 will, may achieve that of the intellect. Love implies 
 knowledge : but knowledge does not imply love. 
 
 Here then the soul must linger in the presence of our 
 Lord, laying her inmost being before Him, and entering 
 into reverent, yet confiding and affectionate conferences 
 with Him. Here, like Moses, Christians may talk to 
 Him face to face, as a man speaketh with his friend : 
 here, like children, the brethren of the Only Son, 
 Christians may seek and embrace their Father, in the 
 full liberty of the Spirit. Here, if a penitent, the soul 
 will renew acts of faith, hope, love, and contrition ; she 
 will renounce and accuse herself ; she will distrust, blame, 
 humble, hate herself; she will implore the Divine mercy, 
 and in fear and trembling will admire the love of Christ 
 which passeth knowledge, and which has spared one so 
 guilty and defiled. Here, if advancing in the religious 
 life, she will give expression to the graces of love, joy, 
 peace — for, in, and with God ; long-suffering, gentleness, 
 goodness, towards others ; faith, meekness, temperance ; 
 admitting very heartily her sad shortcomings in not 
 
 1 ChamiiDg, Works, Part II. page 454 ; Loudon and Glasgow, 1855. 
 
The Priest in his Inner Life 
 
 33 
 
 corresponding with the gracious agency of the Holy 
 Spirit. She will sigh to God for more perfect unworld- 
 liness, more purity of intention, more zeal for the salva- 
 tion of others, more sensitiveness of conscience. Here, if 
 living near to God, she will boldly claim His Friendship, 
 and His Blessing ; will insist on the Power of the Blood 
 of Jesus Christ, with which she has been sprinkled at 
 Baptism and in Penitence ; will assure God that she 
 desires to live for Him, to die for Him, to rest perfectly 
 in Him, to be utterly conformed to Him, to glory in Him 
 alone, to offer self to Him without reserve, to do all to 
 His greater glory, to be perfectly united to Him. And in 
 any case it would be desirable here, — (i) by casting one- 
 self upon God, to nerve the soul for future sufferings ; (2) 
 to resolve to sacrifice any cherished inclination or pursuit 
 which is at variance with clerical or Christian perfection ; 
 (3) to make a perfect oblation of self to the Blessed 
 Trinity, as the End and Lord of the Soul by Creation, 
 by Baptism, by Confirmation, by Ordination. 
 
 In closing the meditation it will be of importance to 
 pause for any further suggestions of God the Holy Spirit, 
 — to pay particular attention to the practical resolution to 
 which the exercise of the intellect leads, and which the 
 will confirms, and to pray that God will give strength 
 manfully to abide by it. 
 
 It is not easy to recommend a good book for beginners 
 in meditation. Indeed, such a book has long been a 
 desideratum in our devotional literature. Dr. Hook's 
 Meditations for Every Day in the Year would be better 
 described as pious reflections ; they lack the method, the 
 nerve, the point of meditations. The Daily Steps 
 towards Heaven is a valuable work for those who have 
 made progress, and can supply from the stores of their 
 inward life what is wanted to give substance and de- 
 velopment to its suggestions. Beginners complain of it as 
 c 
 
34 
 
 The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 not sufficiently suggestive ; 1 aud in its English dress it is 
 only intended for lay use. We want a book of clerical 
 meditations, more formal and systematic than Mr. Pinder's 
 work on the Ordinal — more distinctly clerical than the 
 adaptations of Nouet and Avrillon, edited by Dr. Pusey. 
 The model seems to be furnished by the great work of L. 
 De Ponte ; but it should be of English growth, and should 
 teem with references to the English formularies, other- 
 wise it will always pass for an exotic, and will fail to 
 touch the heart and influence the mind of the English 
 Church. 
 
 Meanwhile it may be suggested that the parables and 
 miracles of our Blessed Lord, the Messianic Psalms, and, 
 above all, the history of the Passion, as they stand in our 
 English Bibles, may, by the application of an adecpiate 
 method, become materials for meditation. 2 It is a very 
 good plan to keep a Psalter and New Testament for the 
 purposes of private devotion, as the margin may easily be 
 used for analysis in pen and ink ; and in this way the 
 Church of England precept " by daily reading and weigh- 
 ing of the Scriptures to wax riper and stronger in the " 
 priestly " ministry," would be obeyed in a much more 
 satisfactory manner than, it is to be feared, is at present 
 generally the case. 
 
 We have said thus much on meditation because it lies 
 at the root of the priestly life, and is of primary import- 
 ance. We have seen that it is practically implied by the 
 injunction to say the Daily Service, which else is likely 
 to lead to habits of formalism. But it also implies self- 
 examination. For unless the soul knows her own 
 
 1 The Mcditaliones of Avancini, from which the Daily Steps is an 
 adaptation, was written specially for priests ; and if we allow for Roman 
 peculiarities— is a very valuable work. 
 
 2 As an assistance to the analysis of Scripture on Patristic principles, we 
 would recommend Kilber's Analysis Diblica, recently reprinted at Paris. The 
 Psalter is analysed so as peculiarly to fit it for meditation. 
 
The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 35 
 
 deformity and weakness, she never will project herself 
 with sufficient constancy and resolution upon the thought 
 of God, and the phenomena of the supernatural world. 
 " I thought upon my ways ; and turned my feet unto Thy 
 testimonies." A priest's self-examination will, of course, 
 have to cover a larger ground than a layman's in propor- 
 tion to his larger and more serious obligations ; it will 
 have to consider the same duties under more complex 
 relations ; it will have to keep an eye on the tendency to 
 certain deep and very subtle sins (such as the love of 
 power and influence for their own sake, and apart from 
 the work of Christ, or certain disguised forms of spiritual 
 pride) incidental to the ministerial position and its 
 temptations. 
 
 But meditation, when systematically pursued, con- 
 tributes very materially to promote other features of 
 the devotional life. It must have occurred to most 
 thoughtful persons, that the practice of ejaculatory prayer 
 is one peculiarly adapted to meet the requirements of the 
 present day. We live in an age and country where the 
 energies of those who seriously labour for the cause and 
 kingdom of Jesus Christ are over-taxed to an unpre- 
 cedented extent. Those who give most time to prayer 
 give but little when it is meted in the measure of 
 antiquity. But perishing souls cry for succour, and 
 the forces of Satan never consent to an armistice during 
 which the Christian priest may draw more plenteous 
 draughts of water from the wells of salvation, to supply 
 the needs of his own soul. Certainly pastoral labour 
 may be prayer if it is offered to God, but it must be 
 sanctified by this intention of doing it for Him, and in 
 His strength, however hurried and informal may be the 
 movement of the soul by which such an intention receives 
 expression. Again, there are many intervals during the 
 day which the clergyman who knows the truth of 
 
36 
 
 The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 Leighton's remark, that " the grace of God in the heart 
 of man is like a tender plant in an unkindly soil," will be 
 careful not to lose, when they may be devoted to short 
 but earnest intercourse with our Blessed Lord. In 
 passing from cottage to cottage, or while waiting at a 
 railway station, or in the sacristy of the parish church, 
 the soul of the pastor ought to rise spontaneously to the 
 throne of God; and the morning meditation will have 
 supplied materials for doing this, culling from Holy 
 Scripture or from the Prayer Book some choice and 
 piercing words, praying for mercy, or for the gift of 
 Divine Love, or for Christ's continued presence, or for 
 spiritual discernment; petitions such as, darted up to 
 Heaven, to win in the very labour and heat of the day 
 supplies of grace and consolation from the Divine heart 
 of our compassionate and ever-present Lord. 
 
 Again, although as a general rule it is wise in praying 
 with the sick and poor to use only the Church's words, 
 there are occasions when extempore prayer becomes a 
 matter of necessity. It is impossible, or almost so, that 
 the research of the parish priest should have been able to 
 anticipate every variety of mental and moral weakness 
 by his selections from the copious stores of antiquity ; 
 and the risk of using general language when there is need 
 of pointed applicability to a particular case is very great. 
 A soul must be led to God, not under cover of a general 
 formula, but, as she is, in His Presence. It is to be 
 feared that many, who do not hesitate to approximate to 
 tbe doctrinal errors of dissenters on such vital questions as 
 that of Baptismal Regeneration or the Eucharistic Presence, 
 feel nevertheless a sort of superstitious scruple against 
 such a use as this of extempore prayer as being dissenting ; 
 verily they strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Ex- 
 tempore prayer is dangerous, if not almost impossible, in 
 the mouths of those who are strangers to systematic 
 
The Priest in his Inner Life 
 
 37 
 
 meditation upon dogmatic truth ; it is a very efficient aid 
 in the hands of the clergyman whose inner life is fed 
 by meditation, who may be himself drinking of God's 
 pleasures as out of a river, but who "can have com- 
 passion on the ignorant and on them that are out of the 
 way," and who knows what it is to lie with a broken 
 heart at the feet of Jesus Crucified. 
 
 It is obvious, moreover, that meditation will furnish 
 capacity for prayer during periods which may elapse 
 before the commencement of service, or between the 
 several parts, or, again, after all is over. The importance 
 of collectedness in those who pray for the Body of Christ 
 rather than for themselves cannot be exaggerated; and 
 distraction will be best guarded against by the occupation 
 of mental prayer during the intervals of service. Espe- 
 cially is meditation of importance to him who would at all 
 adequately discharge the highest service which a creature 
 can offer to the Supreme Being — the celebration of the 
 Blessed Eucharist. This is indeed the central and 
 supreme act of the Christian ministry, by which it is 
 directly associated in the mediatorial work of Jesus Christ. 
 As the Christian priest " by Christ's authority committed 
 to him absolves" a penitent "from all his sins"; 1 as he 
 teaches in the Name of Christ, and " as though God did 
 beseech men by him " ; so he shares the interceding work 
 of Christ, — partly in the daily office, — partly in his private 
 devotions, — but particularly and emphatically in the Holy 
 Eucharist. St. Paul charged St. Timothy that " supplica- 
 tions, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made 
 for all men," adding as a reason, " that this is good and 
 acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour." St. Augus- 
 tine {Ep. 59, ad Paulin.) shows that the apostolical precept 
 receives its fulfilment in the Eucharistic service, and the 
 Church of England evidently follows the leading of this 
 
 1 Form of Absolution iu the Office for the Visitation of the Sick. 
 
38 
 
 The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 great Father, by quoting St. Paul in the opening words of 
 the Church militant prayer, a quotation to which there is 
 nothing that corresponds in the Latin Canon. The priest 
 then prays for the universal Church, for its truth, unity, 
 and concord, for all Christian kings, for all bishops and 
 curates, for all Christ's people, for all in trouble, sorrow, 
 need, and sickness, — he commemorates " all God's servants 
 departed this life in His faith and fear," and prays that 
 " we with them " may partake His heavenly kingdom. 
 And in the Post-communion prayer, while the unconsumed 
 Body and Blood of our Lord lie before him on the altar, 
 he entreats the Eternal Father, that " by the merits and 
 death of His Son Jesus Christ, and through faith in His 
 Blood, we and all His whole Church may obtain remission 
 of our sins and all other benefits of His Passion." S. 
 Augustine held meditation to be a necessary preparation 
 for all prayer; but it must be peculiarly so for a due 
 discharge of that august worship compared with which 
 the intensest and lowliest prayer is but an earthly 
 familiarity. At least ten minutes or a quarter of an hour 
 (independently of any more formal preparatory office, or 
 needful examination of conscience) should be spent by 
 the celebrant alone with God, in such earnest and confid- 
 ing colloquy as the practice of meditation will have ren- 
 dered easy and delightful, — a time in which to pass in 
 review the many who hang on his intercession, in which to 
 offer himself and his offering to the Divine glory, in which 
 to concentrate all the powers of his soul for an act at 
 which, as St. Chrysostom says, attendant angels tremble, 
 and which thrills irresistibly through the courts and ranks 
 of heaven up to the very throne of God. 
 
 Much might be said about the private devotions of the 
 celebrant, at the intervals of the service, and particularly 
 as to the expediency of connecting the successive pauses 
 which occur with the several stages of our Lord's Passion. 
 
The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 39 
 
 Here however there is so much room for the legitimate 
 play of diverging religious idiosyncrasies that we forbear 
 making more particular observations — remarking only 
 that the method of devotion best calculated to assist each 
 man will be most quickly and effectively discovered by 
 himself in meditation. 
 
 III. 
 
 A complemental yet most useful practice of the 
 clergyman's life (if time allows) is the observance of the 
 lesser canonical hours, and particularly the use of the 
 service for Sext, by way of noonday prayer. Of course 
 such a practice as this rests on very different grounds from 
 that of the daily office, and even from meditation, of 
 which the former is positively, and the latter implicitly, 
 enjoined in the English formularies. It is simply an act 
 of the individual judgment, undertaken with a view to 
 edification. While therefore it may undoubtedly be 
 declined by any who have conscientious reasons for doing 
 so, the advantages of such a practice appear to us very 
 considerable. Matins, indeed, and Lauds are very 
 fairly, and Vespers very fully represented in the English 
 Prayer Book ; so much so, that the repetition of these 
 offices in their original shape might appear to some minds 
 to involve an act of disloyalty towards the actual services 
 of the English Church. The elements of Prime and Com- 
 pline which are embodied in our Prayer Book are less con- 
 siderable ; and the three lesser hours are wholly unrepre- 
 sented there. On this ground, it may be held that they 
 together form a natural complement to the Matins and 
 Evensong of the English Church, as illustrating the spirit 
 and extending the principle of these services without 
 superseding them. And here it is impossible not to ex- 
 press a decided preference for the Sarum use of the 119th 
 Psalm in Prime, and the three following Hours, over the 
 
4 o 
 
 The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 other Psalms which Bishop Cosin in his devotions and the 
 various Gallican breviaries of the reformed type, have in 
 deference to Eastern precedent substituted for it. If the 
 Venite exulteimos will bear daily repetition, as in the judg- 
 ment of the Church of England and indeed of the whole 
 Western Church it will, as much may at least be said for 
 that marvellous Psalm, the 1 19th — of which St. Augustine 
 observes that its wonderful depth seemed to him pro- 
 portioned to its seeming simplicity, and that he only 
 undertook to expound it at the urgent request of those who 
 had listened to his other lectures on the Psalter. 1 — The 
 119th Psalm does indeed represent in the very highest 
 degree the paradox which is more or less true of all 
 Scripture — the paradox of seeming simplicity overlying 
 fathomless depth. It conveys at first an impression of 
 tautology, when compared with the rest of the Tsalter ; 
 it seems to reiterate with little attempt at variety the 
 same aspirations, assurances, prayers, resolutions ; but a 
 man must use it daily for months and years together be- 
 fore he can understand its true value as expressing with 
 consummate beauty the language of a soul which is 
 " alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord," which 
 basks in His presence, and rejoices in His law. Draw a 
 number of lines from the centre of a circle to its circum- 
 ference, and the nearer you get to the circumference, the 
 more clearly will you perceive the divergent directions of 
 the radiating lines. On the other hand, as they approach 
 the centre, these lines perpetually approximate, till we 
 forget that if produced they will diverge into infinity. If 
 we may use the illustration, the rest of the Psalms 
 approach God, each from its own direction, and rest at a 
 sufficient distance from Him, — the one Centre to which 
 all converge — to leave their separate characteristics clear 
 and well defined; while the 119th Psalm winds itself 
 
 1 Cf. Aug. procem,. in Ps. 118, ed. Ben. torn. rr. p. 1277. 
 
The Priest in his Inner Life. 41 
 
 around Him, appropriating and embodying something from 
 all the streams that lead to Him, yet clinging to Him so 
 closely that the infinite variety which it contains seems 
 merged in a single strain of obedience and adoration. 
 The Church on earth has a varied ritual ; the angels sing 
 only Holy, Holy, Holy ; variety is a condescension to the 
 instinct of change, which, as Aristotle knew, is charac- 
 teristic of a state of imperfection: 1 but the 119th Psalm 
 is at once infinitely varied in its expressions, yet inces- 
 santly one in its direction : its variations are so delicate as 
 to be almost imperceptible, its unity so emphatic as to be 
 inexorably stamped upon its every line ; it is the language 
 of the Catholic Church, gathered out of every people, and 
 nation, and tongue, and therefore so various, it is so appar- 
 ently tautologous, because spoken beneath the very 
 Throne of God. 
 
 Nothing, we believe, so expresses the true spirit of 
 ecclesiastics as the 119th Psalm — the pure intention to 
 live for God, the zeal for His glory, the charity for sinners, 
 the enthusiastic love of the Divine law and the Divine 
 perfections, the cheerfulness without levity, the gentle- 
 ness without softness, the collectedness and gravity which 
 is never stern or repulsive ; in short, the inward and 
 outward bearing of the Priest of Jesus Christ. 
 
 IV. 
 
 But we must bring these remarks to a close, and by 
 way of summary will endeavour to sketch the dies 
 sacerdotalis — the clergyman's diary. 
 
 Of course he has a fixed hour for rising : he knows the 
 importance of rule in such a matter to his own soul, and 
 to all around him. We will suppose that, at latest, it is 
 six in the summer, and seven in the winter months. On 
 
 1 Arist. Nic. Ethic, vii. 14 : ef rov 7? tfrvois a.Tr\rj eirj, aid t) avrri 7rpa{is 
 r}dl<TT-q larai' 5it> 6 6eis aid ulav Kal aw\riv x a ^P eL ydovfy. 
 
42 
 
 The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 waking he will give his first thoughts to God, thanking 
 Him for preservation during another night, and his 
 thankfulness will be quickened by the reflection that, 
 taking an average, 12,000 souls have during this very 
 night passed to their account. AVhile engaged in dressing 
 he will, with a view to giving his thoughts to God, recite 
 the 5 1 st Psalm, or the Tc Dcum, or some Christian hymn. 
 And this ended, he will engage in mental prayer or 
 meditation for half an hour ; and if his heart is really in 
 the work, he will find half an hour a short allowance of 
 time to be spent with the Source of Light and Love. " A 
 te tua consideratio inchoet, ne frustra extendaris ip alia, 
 te neglecto," said St. Bernard to Eugenius ; he will begin 
 with himself, but he will remember before God all to 
 whom and for whom he ministers, and for whom Christ 
 has died. <; The oftener," says Bishop Wilson, " we renew 
 intercourse with God, the greater will be our devotion." 1 
 The habit of meditation will grow on a man ; if he is 
 really in earnest, it will train him sooner than any other 
 for the eternal presence of God. If it is Sunday, or there 
 is a daily celebration, he will endeavour to extend his 
 meditation, making it a preparation for the great service 
 of the Church. If he is a curate in a parish where there 
 is no daily service, he will say the morning service before 
 he leaves the room, and when meditation has quickened 
 the powers of his soul; because as Bishop Wilson remarks, 
 " they whose hearts desire nothing, pray for nothing " ; 2 
 and as the same authority reminds us, it is well to make 
 it a law to ourselves to meditate before we pray, as also 
 to make certain pauses to see whether our hearts go along 
 with our lips. 3 But the great lesson which ought to be 
 stamped indelibly on the clerical mind is the preciousness 
 of time, — its brevity and irrevocableness, — the strict 
 
 1 Saa-a Privata, p. 3, Denton's edition. 
 = Ibid. s jiid. 
 
The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 43 
 
 account which must be given of it, — the overwhelming 
 interests which hang upon its due employment. Labour 
 is the portion of the servants of God, leisure is a misery, 
 — for it is an invitation to Satan and an easy avenue to 
 deadly sin. These considerations will regulate the dis- 
 tribution of the day. It will be well to give an hour in 
 the morning to theological study, as distinct from medi- 
 tation and from preparation of sermons. The intellect 
 is a gift of God, which is as glorious when it promotes 
 His cause and kingdom, as it is hateful and satanic when it 
 opposes Him; it is therefore to be developed to the utmost 
 of our powers, and exercised on the highest subject- 
 matter. The distribution of the remaining hours of the 
 day must depend in a great degree on parochial necessities : 
 but the conscientious clergyman will feel that it is 
 absolutely necessary to seek God in prayer in the middle 
 of the day, and that two hours is an amply sufficient 
 allowance of time for a walk or recreation, if indeed his 
 parish does not give him sufficient exercise. He will 
 dine at an early hour, with a view to declining the 
 habits of society, as a rule, and to better devotiug his 
 evenings to visiting, especially in the winter months, 
 when the men will be found at home, — a rare con- 
 tingency at other times. He will make meals a matter 
 of as little ceremony as possible, and will study simplicity 
 in his table and household. He will offer each visit, 
 each meal, each conversation, each walk, to God. The 
 evening office will be said at a fixed period, and he will 
 be careful to devote some time to spiritual reading or 
 study of Holy Scripture, of which it is wise to commit 
 to heart a portion every day, with a view to the exigencies 
 of preaching and the possibilities of sickness. He will 
 say Compline with his servants, 1 and will spend a quarter 
 
 1 It is desirable that in every house there should be an oratory or room 
 specially set apart for prayer. 
 
44 
 
 The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 of an hour in general and particular self-examination ; 
 for he will learn others best in the abyss of his own 
 heart. He will offer the day to God, and pray for mercy 
 on his many falls ; and for more perfect devotion to the 
 cause of Jesus Christ. He will lay him down in peace, 
 anxious yet light-hearted, commending his spirit into 
 his Father's Hands, and resigning himself to the Will and 
 protection of his gracious Saviour. 
 
 There can be no doubt among sensible Churchmen of 
 the duty and expediency of restoring to religion that 
 outward and visible majesty, which asserts its existence 
 and position in the world, which was freely conceded to 
 it by the wisdom of Antiquity, and which it has only 
 lost in an age of indifference and laxity. And we live 
 accordingly in an age of Church -restoration, and may 
 rejoice that in some places the temples and ritual of the 
 Body of Christ bid fair to rival the beauty which 
 characterised them of old. But it is of the last import- 
 ance that we should recognise a danger, of which 
 dissenting opponents so often (with whatever animus) 
 remind us, that, namely, of substituting a devotion to the 
 externals of religion, for a supreme anxiety about the 
 state and prospects of the soul, — its freedom from the 
 empire of sin, its actual reconciliation to God, its super- 
 natural life, as exhibited in the exercise of the infused 
 graces of faith, hope, and charity, its cheerfulness and 
 peace, its readiness for death. Those who are looking on, 
 and whose criticisms are sharpened by unfriendly dis- 
 positions, often detect in a body of men, or in an 
 individual, defects of which they themselves are uncon- 
 scious. " Fas est et ab hoste doceri." It is a warning 
 for all, Priests and people, who have the true interests 
 of the Church of England at heart, and who know that 
 of the many theories which, in this busy age, claim 
 attention, the full Sacramental system of her Prayer 
 
The Priest in his Inner Life. 
 
 45 
 
 Book alone is true, and alone worthy the energies of an 
 immortal soul. It is a warning which comes from God, 
 through whatever intermediate agencies, and while it 
 cannot he neglected without the greatest peril, it may, if 
 vigorously acted upon, convince the world, before many 
 years have elapsed, that they that are with us are more 
 than they which be against us, and that it is now, as in 
 the days of the Apostles, a miserable portion for any " to 
 be found fighting against God." 
 
SERMON I. 
 
 THE WORK AND PROSPECTS OF THEOLOGICAL 
 COLLEGES. 1 
 
 Isaiah L 4. 
 
 The Lord God hath given Me the tongue of the learned, that I should know 
 how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: He wakcneth morn- 
 ing by morning, He wakcneth Mine ear to hear as the learned. 
 
 IT would not be difficult to predict the differences which 
 are to be found among commentators, as to the 
 original application of passages like tins. A dry criticism, 
 such as that of Grotius, can never hear in these words 
 aught save the Prophet's voice, describing his mission and 
 daily inspirations from heaven. But great Teachers of 
 the Ancient Church, followed herein by thoughtful 
 moderns and by our own translators, refuse to recognise 
 in so sublime an inspiration anything else or less than 
 the very words of Christ, And that construction of this, 
 and of other passages in the later portion of Isaiah, is, 
 even on principles of criticism which are very far from 
 Patristic, the most natural one. Here, as elsewhere, the 
 personality of the Prophet himself, if it has ever mingled 
 in his thought with that of the Speaker in the text, has 
 certainly melted away before that higher Personality, and 
 has thus been practically superseded. Here is an illustrious 
 Teacher of the future Israel, to Whose school the Isles 
 and the people from afar are summoned as listeners. 
 
 1 Preached at the Anniversary Festival of Ciuldesdon College. June 10, 1868. 
 
 46 
 
Work a?id Prospects of Theological Colleges. 47 
 
 His mouth is like a sharp sword ; 1 the Spirit of the Lord 
 rests upon Him, that He may preach good tidings to the 
 meek and bind up the broken-hearted, and give to them 
 that mourn in Zion beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for 
 mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heavi- 
 ness. 2 This Elect Teacher, in Whom the soul of the Lord 
 delighteth, will not fail or be discouraged till He have set 
 judgment in the earth. 3 All this, and much else to the 
 like purpose, points to an Ideal higher than any which 
 could be realised by the greatest prophets of the old Theo- 
 cracy. The relation of each of these prophets, of Isaiah 
 himself, to the Ideal Teacher, was only that of typical and 
 partial anticipation. They had a limited, He an unlimited 
 inspiration : 4 they had a restricted sphere of action, He 
 was to act throughout all races and all time : 5 they were 
 the instructors of the ancient people of God, He was to 
 be the Doctor of doctors, the Teacher of Humanity. 6 If 
 it was true, in a sense, of Isaiah, that the Lord God had 
 given him the tongue of the learned, that is, the power of 
 instruction, that he should speak, across the intervening 
 centuries, a word of seasonable comfort to the captives in 
 Babylon ; if, morning by morning, the Prophet's ear was 
 wakened from on high to receive some new disclosure of 
 the Mind and Heart of God, yearning with a Love and 
 Mercy which Justice had not eclipsed over the actual and 
 the predestined sufferings of His Israel ; this is but a fore- 
 shadowing in earlier time of the Ministry of the Prophet 
 of Prophets ; in Whom dwelt all the treasures of wisdom 
 and knowledge; Whom to have seen was to have seen, in 
 His perfect Counterpart, the Everlasting Father; Who 
 could open wide His Arms to the whole human Family, 
 and bid men come unto Him, weary and heavy laden as 
 they were, since He would give them rest. 
 
 1 Isa. xlix. 2. - Hid. Ixi. 1-3. 3 Ibid. xlii. 4. 4 St. John iii. 34. 
 5 St. Mark xvi. 15 ; St. Matt, xxviii. 20. « St. John i. 9. 
 
48 
 
 The Work a?id Prospects of 
 
 It is indeed pre-eminently true of the ministry of our 
 Lord, that while His Human Ear was ever wakened to 
 hear as the learned, His instructions were generally 
 directed, not to stimulate the intellect, hut to solace the 
 woes of man. His teaching indeed contained within its 
 compass the final and authoritative solution of the chief 
 problems that can engage and embarrass human thought. 
 But the form of His Teaching was popular as distinct 
 from scientific, concrete rather than abstract, religious and 
 not philosophical. It was addressed to the wounded heart 
 rather than to the anxious intelligence of man. Sin, actual 
 and inherited, had made man weary of a burden which he 
 could not bear, and in view of which life and death were 
 alike unwelcome. And Christ, our Lord, throughout His 
 ministerial Life, was the speaker of a word in season, 
 whereby He not only gave light to them that sat in dark- 
 ness and in the shadow of death, but actually guided the 
 feet of humanity into the true way of peace. 1 
 
 Like His Legal and Priestly Offices, our Lord's Prophe- 
 tical Office is in a measure delegated to His Ministers. 2 
 Since the day of Pentecost, it has been permanently put 
 into commission. As the celebration of the Eucharist is 
 only and really an act of Christ's Priesthood, and the 
 administration of discipline in the Church, only and really 
 an act of Christ's Eoyal Authority, so is the perpetual 
 communication of Christian doctrine a continued exercise 
 of His Prophetical power. But herein He is Himself His 
 own Doctrine and His own Message; and the word in 
 season which the weary need is what He is, and what He 
 has done and suffered, no less than what He has said. 
 We, His Ministers, do not merely echo and expand the 
 Sermon on the Mount; we preach the Person and the 
 work of the Preacher. For Christ our Lord is the Object 
 as well as the Author of Christian Doctrine ; and His best 
 
 1 St. Luke i. 79. 2 St. John xx. ax. 
 
Theological Colleges. 49 
 
 word of consolation to human hearts is the announcement 
 of Himself. 1 
 
 The prophetical office then lives on, although its mes- 
 sage is stereotyped for all time since the appearance of 
 the Eedeemer. This is the real gift of the tongue of the 
 learned. It is given from on high. It is given, less with 
 a view to intellectual gain, than with a view to spiritual 
 relief. This is ever the double character of Christian, as 
 distinguished from secular or Pagan learning; it is ac- 
 knowledged to have been given from above, and it is culti- 
 vated, not chiefly for the sake of doing so, not even chiefly 
 for the personal advancement of the student, but for the 
 relief of the ignorant, the erring, the suffering, the poor. 
 The heavenly origin of the message and the disinterested 
 philanthropy of its promulgation mark off the prophetic 
 office of the Church from all human teacherships. And 
 as the tongue of the learned is given still from heaven, 
 and the word in season is still spoken to the weary ; so 
 still, as of old, morning by morning, in the Church of God, 
 the ears of Christ's ambassadors are wakened to listen, if 
 perchance they may hear it, to new applications of His 
 one, once-for-all given message of mercy, or of new and, 
 by them, unsuspected treasures contained within the vast 
 storehouse of His healing Truth. 2 
 
 And if on such a matter an opinion may be ventured, 
 it might seem that Holy Scripture contains few passages 
 which furnish so appropriate a motto to be graven over 
 the gateway of a Theological College as is the text before 
 us. For in preparing for Orders, it is the prophetical, 
 rather than the other aspects of the ministry, to which, of 
 necessity, most attention is directed. A theological college 
 endeavours, so far as human agency can do this, to give 
 the tongue of the learned, the power of spiritual instruc- 
 
 1 St. John ix. s ; 2 Cor. iv. 5. 
 
 ■ 2 St. Peter i. 3, iii. 18 ; 2 Cor. v. 17 ; 1 Cor. xiii. 9. 
 D 
 
5° 
 
 The Work and Prospects of 
 
 tion, to the future ambassadors of Christ. It proffers this 
 gift, not for the self-satisfaction of the students, but in the 
 interests of souls. It aims not merely at the intellectual 
 bettering of the clergy, but at the spiritual solace and 
 strength of their future flocks. It would fain teach them 
 to listen, morning by morning, for the Divine Voice, ex- 
 plaining, deepening, fertilising within them the truth 
 which is thus committed to their guardianship. 
 
 I. 
 
 The first function of a Theological College is obvi- 
 ously to teach Theology. Of late years the paradox 
 has been advanced that, properly speaking, there' is no 
 such thing as Christian theology to teach. Christ, our 
 Lord, it is broadly asserted, was a teacher, not in any 
 sense of theology, but only of religion. Theology is 
 described as an aftergrowth ; it is said to be the product 
 of an age of reflection, or an age of controversy, when 
 philosophy had really taken possession of the rudder of 
 the Church's life, and was shaping the fresh utterances of 
 living Christian feeling into truant compliances with its 
 own rigid intellectual forms. 
 
 This theory is so entirely at issue with fact, that it 
 would be undeserving of notice if it were not very accept- 
 able, or indeed little less than intellectually necessary to 
 a powerful school of thought, partly within and partly 
 without the Church at the present day. For what can be 
 less true than this assertion in its relation to our Lord's 
 teaching ? I say nothing for the moment as to that of 
 His Apostles, St. Paul or St. John. Where, in the whole 
 of Holy Scripture, is the doctrine of the Divine Providence 
 affirmed with greater explicitness and detail than in the 
 Sermon on the Mount ? 1 What other portion of the New 
 Testament enables us to say, with such certainty as does 
 
 k i St. Matt. vi. 25-34. 
 
Theological Colleges. 
 
 5i 
 
 our Lord's last discourse, that the Holy Spirit is uot only 
 Divine, but a distinct Subsistence or Person in the 
 Godhead ? 1 Who does not see that our Lord's whole 
 teaching is saturated with theology ? that His Parables (it 
 may suffice to mention the Prodigal Son) are peculiarly 
 theological, as revealing new features of the Divine 
 Character, new truths about the range of the Divine 
 attributes ? that if we follow His popular conversations, 
 such as that with the woman of Samaria, we find our- 
 selves listening to theological statements touching, for 
 example, His own Omniscience, 2 or the immateriality of 
 the Divine Essence ; 3 that appeals to the heart and 
 conscience of man so simple as, " Come unto Me, all ye 
 that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
 rest," 4 can only become practical forces acting upon and 
 changing deep currents of human life, when grave ques- 
 tions like, " Who dares to invite us thus ? " and " How 
 will He give us rest in our lifelong weariness ? " have 
 been asked and answered ; and that the only satisfactory 
 answer to these questions must be purely and profoundly 
 theological ? 
 
 The truth is that Keligion and Theology are insepar- 
 able. We are bound to God in the secret recesses of our 
 spiritual being, by the truths about God, of which we are 
 certain. If no such truths exist, then there is no possible 
 basis for any such thing as religion at all. If such truths 
 do exist, then it is of vital importance to the strength and 
 earnestness of religion, that they should be exactly ascer- 
 tained and stated. Therefore, proportioned to the strength 
 of the religious tie must be the intellectual anxiety re- 
 specting the facts which warrant it. What are these 
 facts ? upon what do they rest ? where is their real 
 frontier ? what do they exclude and contradict ? what 
 
 1 St. John xiv. 26, xvi. 15. 2 Ibid. iv. 18, i. 48. 
 
 » St. John iv. 24. * St. Matt. xi. 28. 
 
52 
 
 The Work and Prospects of 
 
 do they imply, and sanction, and necessitate ? These 
 questions are not the cumbrous weapons of a stupid 
 scholasticism, which would fain imprison a heavenly 
 poetry within the bars and bands of its graceless syllo- 
 gisms : they are the irrepressible voice of the human spirit, 
 face to face with the awful, the absorbing problem of its 
 destiny, and refusing to be satisfied with sentiments when 
 it craves for truths. The conception of an untheological 
 religion is one of those desperate shifts to which men are 
 driven when they have lost all vital, intellectual hold 
 upon the bone and substance of the Faith, while yet they 
 shrink, for a variety of reasons which I forbear to analyse, 
 from breaking with the many associations which have still 
 more or less power over their imaginations and their 
 hearts. It is contrary to experience to suppose that 
 human beings will knowingly either live in the contem- 
 plation of, or die out of devotion to any shadows, however 
 beautiful ; and if the truths which are the life of religious 
 feeling and action are to stand the wear and tear, the 
 perpetual cross-questioning, the play of hostility, of curio- 
 sity, of apprehension, of hope, necessarily and incessantly 
 directed upon them, some science of theology is, from the 
 nature of the case, not other than inevitable. 
 
 Enough, however, respecting a paradox, which will only 
 be referred to in another generation as a quaint curiosity 
 of our own. It may indeed be truly said that the most 
 accurate theology without vital religion is of little worth ; 
 and this position is one of which, as will presently be 
 shown, a theological college cannot afford to be unmindful. 
 But at least the proper business of an institution such as 
 this is not based upon a gigantic misconception. A theo- 
 logy is the correlative of a real revelation. There is such 
 a science as Christian theology. And it is the task of a 
 theological college to teach it. 
 
 And, doubtless, such a college should teach theology in 
 
Theological Colleges. 53 
 
 that narrower but profound sense which the word bore in 
 the ancient world, and which it is always healthful and 
 stimulating to recall. The Pagan Greeks reserved the 
 august title of " Theologian " for those devout bards of a 
 remote antiquity who, as Orpheus, Hesiod, Homer, had 
 not conceived of the genesis of the universe without refer- 
 ence to that of the gods, and who thus were distinguished 
 from the physiologists, such as Thales and Anaximander 
 and others, since these were occupied with theories re- 
 specting the organisation and combination of matter, 
 without any reference to the Divinity. With Aristotle, 
 theological philosophy means what we should now-a-days 
 call the science of the absolute, or that department of 
 metaphysics which deals with the primal and most 
 abstract principles ; and here we see the word already 
 wellnigh prepared for its future Christian use. Some of 
 the early Christian writers indeed, such as St. Justin and 
 Tatian, termed the science of Christian Faith simply 
 philosophy. They meant that the Christian Faith was 
 the truest wisdom for man ; they hinted, moreover, in- 
 directly that the Christian teachers could take rank side 
 by side with the greatest sages of the ancient world. But 
 the word philosophy was not really fitted to do this work. 
 It was too inextricably intertwined in that age with Pagan 
 associations ; and it further suggested a process of per- 
 petual inquiry, as distinct from the study and exhibition 
 of a fixed, ascertained, absolute truth. Accordingly, in 
 other writers of the second and early part of the third 
 century, we find the " God-taught wisdom " (aofyla 
 OeohlhaKTos) frequently contrasted with the philosophy 
 of Paganism ; and this expression almost leads us up to 
 the briefer word theology. As the employment of the 
 word by Aristotle had suggested, theology meant in the 
 first days of its Christian use only that part of the Chris- 
 tian doctrine which treats of the Being and Attributes of 
 
54 
 
 The Work and Prospects of 
 
 God. In such writers as St. Athanasius or St. Gregory of 
 Nazianzum, " theology " stands for an explanation of the 
 doctrine of the Holy Trinity ; their common expressions, 
 theologising the Son, theologising the Holy Spirit, are 
 condensed terms for stating that each of these Divine 
 Persons is truly God. Thus St. John the Evangelist was 
 commonly termed the Theologian, because he so emphati- 
 cally asserts the Divinity of our Lord : and the " theology" 
 was in this sense opposed to the " economy," that is to say, 
 to the gracious Dispensation whereby God took His place 
 as never before among the things of time and sense 
 through the Incarnation of the Eternal Son, and to the 
 various results of that stupendous mystery, as seen in the 
 powers and organisation of the Church or in Christian 
 history. In St. Augustine we find the word " theology " 
 used in the wider modern signification, 1 as practically in- 
 clusive of all Christian doctrine ; although he, too, some- 
 times restricts it to that portion of Eevelation which 
 directly concerns the Essence of God. 2 In the middle 
 ages, the sense which it bears among ourselves had already 
 become general." 
 
 This is not a mere point in the history of language, or 
 a matter only of antiquarian learning. It may serve to 
 remind us that an institution like Cuddesdon College is by 
 the very name which it bears especially devoted to teach- 
 ing theology in the sense of the science of the Supreme 
 Being. To amass, to examine, to analyse, to exhibit in its 
 collective force and in detail, that body of truth respecting 
 the Being of beings, of which, through the Christian 
 Eevelation, superadded to the activities of conscience and 
 natural observation, mankind is in possession ; — this un- 
 rivalled, this sublime occupation, is the proper central 
 intellectual work of a theological college. To that work 
 
 1 De Trin. xiv. i. 2 j) e civ. Dei, viii. i. 
 
 3 Cf. Wetzcr u. Welte, Did. Eiicycl. art. " Theologie," by Matti-s. 
 
Theological Colleges. 
 
 55 
 
 tall else is subordinate, all else is accessory, all else minis- 
 ters. Dogma, history, evidences, morals, language, criti- 
 cism, fathers, councils, commentators, liturgiology — all are 
 but varied means of approaching, contemplating, (dare I 
 say it ?) investigating God : all lead up to Him, or lead 
 down from Him, or circle round Him, or at any rate base 
 their sole claim to interest on the reality of His Life. In 
 all departments of theology, God is the real Object of 
 study. His truth, His guidance of His people, the proof 
 that He has really spoken, the moral law of His Being, 
 His written word, whether expounded by the masters of 
 Christian doctrine, whose words are heard with respect 
 and deference in all the Catholic Churches now as in days 
 when all were visibly one, or as explained by an accurate 
 analysis of language, the traditional laws and language of 
 the service which expresses Christian devotion to Him — 
 all this centres in or radiates from Him ; from His Life and 
 Presence, from His awfulness and His love, all draws the 
 secret of its undying interest. But what He Himself is 
 in the inner law of His everlasting Being, what He is in 
 His general relation to His creatures, so far as He has 
 made these things known, is properly the subject-matter 
 of theology. 
 
 Inextricably bound up with the study of this Theology 
 proper, is the study of what the ancients call the Economy. 
 There are familiar words in our Communion Service, to 
 which in past days the author of The Christian Year 
 used to point as summarising our Christian faith on this 
 head with an exhaustive clearness. " Above all things ye 
 must give most humble and hearty thanks to God, the 
 Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, for the Bedemption 
 of the world by the death and passion of our Saviour 
 Christ, both God and Man, Who did humble Himself 
 even to the death upon the cross for us miserable sinners, 
 who lay in darkness and in the shadow of death, that He 
 
56 The Work and Prospects of 
 
 might make us the children of God and exalt us to ever- 
 lasting life." 1 The Holy Trinity, the terms of the Incar- 
 nation, the Redemptive object of the Passion, man's 
 condition after the fall, the filial dignity of his regenerate 
 life, the exaltation of his life in glory hereafter ; — it is a 
 summary of God's love in the gift of His Blessed Son. 
 It suggests that the Christian teacher of the Science of 
 God must add to it the science of Man, as Man actually 
 is. If the word in season is to be spoken with effect to 
 him that is weary, it is necessary to discover and to state 
 the deep secret of this permanent weariness. The loss of 
 the supernatural robe of grace in Eden, the resulting dim- 
 ness of man's intelligence and the weakness of his will ; 
 the inheritance of guilt attaching, in the eyes of Divine 
 Justice, to humanity considered as an organic whole ; the 
 pervading taint and the wrongful acts which disfigure 
 man's personal and social life ; in short, modern human 
 nature must be studied, ere we can appreciate and duly 
 set forth the Divine Medicine which is to heal its wounds. 
 " With the Bible and Shakespeare," it has been said, " a 
 man may consider that he has all that is necessary for an 
 effective ministry." This is a rude and inaccurate state- 
 ment of a substantial truth, of the truth that God and 
 man are the two terms of any practical theology. Human 
 character in its broad, common features, and in its indi- 
 vidual peculiarities, is well worth the closest, the severest 
 observation ; and to stimulate this observation, to train 
 the eye in taking note of all that reveals the soul within, 
 is an indispensable part of an adequate clerical training. 
 Much, doubtless, can only be learnt by actual intercourse 
 with other men. Much, too, may certainly be learnt from 
 books and from the experience of those who have lived 
 longer than we, and who hand on to us something of the 
 accumulated wisdom of the centuries behind them. But 
 
 1 Communion Service. 
 
Theological Colleges. 
 
 57 
 
 however we may study him, man, on his ethical as well 
 as on his mental side ; man, in his strength as well as in 
 his weakness ; man, in his phases of bitterest hostility to 
 God, as well as in his saintliest moods of conformity to 
 God's word and will ; mau, at the dull stupid level of his 
 average action, as well as in his most exceptional and 
 heroic efforts, is a study only less important for our pur- 
 pose than is God Himself. For it is when human nature 
 is seen in its many-sidedness, in its greatness, in its little- 
 ness, that the word in season, God's Eevelation of Himself 
 in the Life and Death of His Blessed Son, can be spoken 
 to some serious purpose. Our ministry is not the random 
 proclamation of a scientific discovery, involving nothing 
 but an intellectual interest ; but the careful adaptation of 
 a Divine Eemedy to the wants of a patient, whose case 
 and symptoms we have accurately considered. To show 
 that in Jesus Christ, Incarnate, Crucified, Interceding, 
 given to us in Sacraments, presented by us again and 
 again to the Father, there is grace which can more than 
 cure all human woes ; 1 — this is the proper business of 
 men who have, in the Evangelical sense, to speak a word 
 in season to wearied humanity. 
 
 IX 
 
 But if a man is to set about this work with any 
 prospect of success, he must be something more than a 
 teacher of theology, and a lecturer on human nature. The 
 most accurate knowledge will be powerless unless the 
 speaker be himself of a certain spiritual type which, in 
 the instinctive judgment of those whom he addresses, 
 gives him a moral, as well as an official, right to speak. 
 Hence, the work of a theological college is to mould char- 
 acter as well as to teach truth ; nor is this formative duty 
 by any means the least important sphere of its activity. 
 
 1 Rom. v. 20 ; Col. iii. n ; i Cor. i. 30. 
 
58 
 
 The Work and Prospects of 
 
 (a) First of all, such a college as this has to set many 
 of those who come to it seriously thinking on the great 
 primary questions of life and death. Many a man enters 
 here, with good dispositions, with a purpose to serve God 
 in the Sacred Ministry, entertained, it may be, since 
 childhood, yet with all that light-heartedness of temper 
 and that hazy perception of the stern lines of truth which 
 are natural at twenty-two. 1 He is in the position of the 
 sons of Zebedee ; he wishes to sit on the right hand or on 
 the left ; he knows not what he asks. 2 It is then the 
 duty of a college like this to unveil to him the cup of 
 which Christ once drank, and the baptism with which 
 Christ was baptized, gently, considerately, yet sincerely. 
 This, I say, is the part of a young man's true and best 
 friend, who looks far ahead, even beyond the horizon of 
 time. When a candidate for Orders enters these walls, 
 Christ our Lord seems, if I dare so speak, to overtake him 
 as He once joined the disciples on the Emmaus road, and 
 to get him to think steadily on truths which as yet he 
 only holds in solution. What does he mean by taking 
 Orders ? Why does he choose this rather than any other 
 walk in life ? Has he any real purpose deeper and stronger 
 than his ordinary resolves ? Is he intending to follow a 
 respectable profession, or lias he, in his secret soul, given 
 himself to God ? Unless and until such an act of sincere 
 self-dedication is made, the whole teaching and life of this 
 place ought to seem to him an unintelligible riddle. For 
 it presupposes nothing less than this hearty devotion in 
 those who come here. When this self-dedication has 
 once been made, all falls into its place. God is seen to 
 be the one Being for Whom life is really worth living, 
 and a life which consistently points to God is simply the 
 common-sense of the situation. 
 
 (/3) And when this first indispensable and radical revolu- 
 
 1 St. John xxi. 18. ^ St. Mark x. 37. 
 
Theological Colleges. 59 
 
 tion has triumphed within the soul, it will be naturally 
 followed up by an endeavour to cultivate all those great 
 features of moral character which legitimately result from 
 it. It is a noteworthy feature of our day that minds which 
 are fanatically hostile to the claims of dogmatic truth, 
 and to the orderly beauty and majesty of sacramental 
 worship, are often keenly alive to the strong attractions of 
 a lofty morality. What, for instance, has been the secret 
 of the great popularity of such a book as Ecce Homo ? 
 Not the critical acumen of the writer : he would seem to 
 think cheaply of criticism ; he certainly pays little defer- 
 ence to it. Nor yet any great biographical power: he 
 does not even attempt to present the events of our Lord's 
 Life in an orderly sequence. Still less depth or accuracy 
 of doctrinal statement ; he discards doctrine upon prin- 
 ciple, and he sins most grievously against some of its 
 elementary requirements. Nor does his work appeal par- 
 ticularly to the devotional or spiritual instincts of the soul ; 
 his concern is with social and political truth, rather than 
 with such truth as belongs to the personal life of individual 
 men. Wherein, then, is the source of his power ? It lies, 
 I believe, in the writer's evident and enthusiastic devotion 
 to a certain section of moral truth. Not of all moral 
 truth : little or nothing is said by him about our duties 
 towards God. But of that portion of morality which 
 applies to the relations between man and man, as it is 
 presented to us in the Gospels, the writer has, if a some- 
 what imperfect and distorted conception, yet, beyond 
 doubt, a most enthusiastic admiration. And this admira- 
 tion, based though it be upon a very limited apprehension 
 of what Our Lord's moral teaching really was, has yet 
 enabled him to produce a work which certainly has riveted 
 the admiration of some minds of the very highest order, 
 and of large masses among our most thoughtful country- 
 men. 
 
6o The Work and Prospects of 
 
 Have we not in this fact material at once for warning 
 and for guidance ? It may be, it is true, that the clergy 
 of the Church of England, during the last century, at 
 times taught little else but a dry morality. But the re- 
 action against that disastrous state of things, inaugurated 
 by the Evangelical, and completed by the later Catholic 
 movement, has not altogether escaped the danger of for- 
 getting the sacred claims of an accurate morality. In its 
 eagerness to re-assert the great truths of the Atonement 
 and Justification through Christ, the Evangelical move- 
 ment did not, at least in its better phases, depreciate 
 morality ; but it made no real provision for its practical 
 culture. In its vindication of the real efficacy which 
 belongs to Our Lord's Spiritual presence in the Church 
 and to His action through the Sacraments, the Catholic 
 movement was most powerfully aiding morality, by 
 pointing to the real creative sources of high moral effort 
 in the soul of man. But we have been perhaps in some 
 cases too intent upon proving the reality of the assistance 
 which is given us in these great means of grace, to do 
 full justice to the purposes for which they have been 
 given. At any rate, it is ever well to be reminded, how- 
 ever awkwardly or one-sidedly, of a forgotten or depre- 
 ciated element of truth ; and it is plain that the English 
 people, just now, believe that enough attention has not 
 been bestowed by their teachers on what are called, in 
 the Collect, " the fruits of good living." But this attention 
 must begin with practical self-discipline on the part of 
 the clergy, if it is to be effectual. It is something to 
 learn the full glory and the exigency even of the natural 
 virtues, of justice, of courage, of temperance, of truthful- 
 ness, as occasions arise for putting them in practice. Yet 
 more needful is it to take lessons (if I may so speak) in 
 the virtues which do not belong to nature because they 
 transcend it, in self-forgetting love, and in uniform bright- 
 
Theological Colleges. 61 
 
 ness and joy of heart and soul, and in true inward peace 
 amid troubles and distractions, and in long-suffering when 
 there is much to provoke. 1 And surely this is a very 
 proper part of the business of a theological college. 
 Unless all are bent upon self-improvement in the highest 
 sense, nothing of course can be done on a considerable 
 scale ; but this generous love of moral truth in action is 
 not more than might reasonably be expected in each of 
 those who are looking forward to the highest service of 
 the Perfect Moral Being, while it should pervade the very 
 atmosphere of the home in which they are preparing for 
 their future work. 
 
 There are, indeed, two forms of moral excellence which 
 seem to be especially necessary to a clerical order. It 
 has been said by one of the opponents of Christianity, 
 that a clergy, left to itself, is sure to ruin itself in time, 
 partly through its general lust of promotion, and partly 
 through its self-indulgence. This prediction may warn 
 us especially to cultivate self-denying activity 2 and dis- 
 interestedness. 3 Such things do not come at once, as a 
 matter of course, or in virtue of a general disposition to 
 do right. But self-denying activity can be cultivated up 
 to a point, at which to be occupied in something that 
 shall help the cause of truth and goodness becomes a 
 second nature ; and disinterestedness may be trained into 
 an instinct, which shrinks with unfeigned distress from 
 the shame and degradation of conscious self-seeking in 
 holy things. And who does not see that these virtues, 
 even if, per impossibile, they could be isolated in the 
 character, are the elements and instruments of nothing 
 less than a great moral power, on account of the contrast 
 which they present to the ordinary tenor of men's lives ? 
 Who does not see that these are the virtues of the 
 Christian clergy of which, with pathetic sincerity, Gibbon 
 
 1 Gal. v. 22. 2 2 Tim. ii. 3. 3 Phil. ii. 20, at. 
 
62 
 
 The Work and Prospects of 
 
 complains, in a well-known passage, as having secured 
 the success of the Gospel ? Who does not perceive that 
 men, who are thus engaged in the serious personal culture 
 of moral truth, are alone able to understand it sufficiently 
 to teach it in its fulness to their fellow-men, and more- 
 over that in the long run they will alone be allowed to 
 do so ? 
 
 (7) But there is a deeper work even than this which a 
 theological college must attempt. I mean the systematic 
 cultivation of piety, the strenuous devotion of the soul's 
 purest and strongest affections to God. This work, if 
 less obviously on the surface of such au institution than 
 theological and pastoral instruction, is really much more 
 vital. It presupposes of course in every student, a 
 simple and strong desire to live for God. This unfortun- 
 ately, cannot always be taken for granted, but it must 
 always be laboured and prayed for with incessant energy. 
 Where nothing of the kind exists, all prayer will appear 
 to be more or less unreal and distasteful. But a theo- 
 logical college cannot afford to regulate its standard by 
 the needs of those who are wanting in its fundamental 
 requirements. And that devotion should be taught and 
 recommended upon system in such a college, is a point 
 which needs insisting on. Partly from our habitual 
 national reserve, and partly from our dread of all unreality 
 and cant in religious matters, it is usual even for 
 religious Englishmen to avoid any reference whatever to 
 their private spiritual life. The feeling is, that you would 
 just as soon refer to a man's income, or to the character 
 of his near relations, as to his daily prayers ; it is, as we 
 say, a strictly personal matter between each man and God; 
 and any attempt to mould or guide it — I had almost said, 
 any allusion to its existence — is held to be of the nature 
 of a social impertinence. 
 
 It is impossible not to sympathise with the sincerity 
 
Theological Colleges. 
 
 63 
 
 which seeks to protect itself against exaggeration and 
 imposture ; and yet the general result, in the case before 
 us, must be admitted to be nothing less than disastrous. 
 What cau be less like the spirit of the early Churches 
 which met in the upper chambers of Jerusalem 1 or iu the 
 catacombs of Rome, than this frigid isolation of modern 
 souls, who yet have been redeemed by Christ's Blood, and 
 illuminated and warmed by His Spirit? What can be 
 more in contradiction with the rule of pious Israelites in 
 the days of the prophets, when they who "feared the 
 Lord spake often one to another " ? 2 What can be more 
 obviously at issue with the natural and direct instincts of 
 Christians really possessed with the love of God ? 3 Too 
 often, indeed, this reserve is but a screen which is thrown 
 up to hide from a brother's eye what is really a spiritual 
 ruin ; but in any case, at a theological college, it ought 
 if possible, to be breached. If men who are preparing to 
 lead their brother-men to an eternity of communion with 
 God cannot venture to discuss and to study the practical 
 aspects of rudimentary devotion here, it is difficult to 
 see how they are, twelve months hence, to recommend 
 devotion to their flocks, with any such accent of authority 
 as that which is based on a true personal experience. 4 
 
 Is it too much to say, that, upon entering a theological 
 college, a man would naturally set about the gradual 
 reconstruction of his whole life of prayer ? Probably his 
 spiritual life at school and college has by no means kept 
 pace with his intellectual life. The circle of secular 
 interests, the horizon of secular thought, has gone on 
 steadily widening, while the spiritual range of action is 
 as contracted as it was eight or ten years ago. Now a 
 theological college affords opportunities for recovering this 
 lost ground. The old morning and evening prayers, used 
 
 1 Acts i. 14. 
 
 3 Heb. x. 25 ; St. Matt. xii. 34. 
 
 2 Mai. iii. 16. 
 
 4 1 St. John i. 3 ; Acts iv. 20. 
 
6 4 
 
 The Work and Prospects of 
 
 in private since childhood, will be best retained. But 
 they will be enlarged, supplemented, paraphrased, overlaid. 
 Like the old Norman columns in the nave of Winchester 
 Cathedral, encrusted by the genius of a "Wickham, the 
 prayers of boyhood will be preserved, but over-built with 
 much which the soul has found appropriate and needful 
 since those few simple words were first breathed heaven- 
 ward. Moreover, new habits and times of prayer will be 
 carefully, thoughtfully, deliberately adopted. Especially at 
 a theological college will a man make preparation for two 
 indispensable features of every real ministerial life, first, 
 some kind of systematic meditation upon Christian truth, 1 
 and, secondly, that daily use of the Morning and Evening 
 Service, whether in private or in public, to which the 
 conscience of the clergy is bound by the plain law of the 
 Church of England. 2 To this must be added that solemn 
 department of Christian devotion which centres in the 
 celebration and reception of the Holy Communion. Some 
 attempt, too, will be made to discharge, however im- 
 perfectly, the complex duty of intercession 3 for others, 
 according to their several wants and claims, which forms 
 so large a feature in the life of those who have the cure 
 of souls. In fine, it will be seen that devotion is a vast 
 subject, with experiences, difficulties, hopes, enthusiasms, 
 failures, triumphs, all its own ; and that nothing can be 
 more in keeping with the objects of a college such as this, 
 than an attempt to deal with it systematically. For, 
 of a truth, both the moral rectification of the soul, 
 and its devotional culture, are essential to that waken- 
 ing of the ear of which the prophet speaks, morning by 
 morning, with an ever-increasing sensitiveness to the 
 
 1 i Tim. iv. 15. 
 
 2 "And all Priests and Deacons are to say daily the Morning and Evening 
 Prayer cither privately or openly, not being let by sickness, or some other 
 urgent cause." — Concerning the Service of the Church. 
 
 s Phil. i. 9 ; Col. i. 9 ; 1 Thess. v. 23 ; Rom. xv. 30-32 ; 3 St. John 2. 
 
Theological Colleges. 65 
 
 majesty and to the claims of truth. And for such work 
 as this, diocesan colleges present advantages which cannot 
 he rivalled elsewhere. 
 
 III. 
 
 To suppose that the true work of such a college as 
 Cuddesdon can be effectively discharged by the Uni- 
 versities, is either to idealise the University-system as we 
 of this generation have known it when taken at its best, 
 or it is to underrate the essential conditions of any serious 
 preparation for Holy Orders. Certainly, in respect of the 
 mere apparatus of intellectual work, the Universities 
 must be held to distance the efforts of any diocesan or 
 provincial institutions. Libraries which have been 
 accumulated during centuries, and professors, who are, 
 presumably in all cases, and actually in most, representa- 
 tives of the highest theological knowledge in the country, 
 must of necessity produce lectures with which no private 
 enterprise can presume to enter into direct competition. 
 But, however this may be, it is certain that the University 
 training for Orders addresses itself simply, and in the 
 most business-like way, to the intellect. It does not 
 touch the soul. It does not attempt to make provision 
 for the development either of great moral features in the 
 character, or of devotional tenderness and force in the 
 affections and the will. The consequence is, that, even 
 as to theology, it can only secure a speculative interest, 
 that is to say, an interest, feebler and distinct in kind 
 from that which is felt by men who have really devoted 
 their whole mental and moral substance to the service of 
 God. Moreover, the temper of our Universities is, as a 
 rule, somewhat jealous of private personal influence ; and 
 no machinery of chapel services and of social discipline 
 can of itself do the work of living hearts and wills, fired 
 and braced by the love of God. When then, by its 
 E 
 
66 
 
 The Work and Prospects of 
 
 various devotional resources, by the familiar and open 
 intercourse which subsists between its teachers and its 
 pupils, and by the sincere effort, more or less general, of 
 all who belong to it, to compass moral and spiritual 
 improvement, a theological college endeavours to brace 
 the will and to spiritualise the affections as well as to 
 inform the understanding, it is occupying ground all its 
 own, and ground from which, except by its own remiss- 
 ness or faintheartedness, it cannot be dislodged. 
 
 Nor can it be other than obvious to those who have the 
 interests of the Church at heart, that in all probability 
 theological colleges are destined, at no distant period, 
 to act upon her mind much more powerfully than has 
 hitherto been the case. Ten or fifteen years ago it might 
 have been supposed that a recent University Commission, 
 whatever else it might or might not have done, had, at 
 least for the next two or three generations, secured the 
 administration and government of our ancient seats of 
 learning to members, although not to the clergy, of the 
 English Church. But within the last two years it has 
 become painfully evident that the most powerful party 
 in the State is, as a whole, bent on utterly destroying the 
 Church's position at Oxford and Cambridge. Unless 
 matters take a turn, upon which it would be over-sanguine 
 to reckon with anything like confidence, we may shortly 
 expect to see the greater part both of Professorships and 
 of the lay fellowships in our two Universities placed at 
 the disposal of persons who professedly reject the claims 
 of Christianity to be a revelation from God. It is indeed 
 probable that for some time to come, men in communion 
 with the Church will actually occupy the larger number 
 of important academical posts. But they will have no 
 right in virtue of their position to assume or teach the 
 Church's creed, as a thing of course, when dealing with 
 their pupils : while it will be perfectly open to any public 
 
Theological Colleges. 
 
 67 
 
 instructors, who think fit to do so, to discuss either history 
 or moral philosophy on an avowedly atheistic basis. In 
 such a state of things, the only escape from bitter con- 
 troversy among senior residents will lie in the direction 
 of an organised indifference to religious truth. It is not 
 difficult to predict that the present agitation, if successful, 
 must logically be followed by another, having for its object 
 the general suppression of clerical fellowships and of 
 chapel services, as the last relics of what is strangely 
 termed Church ascendancy. This done, that entire 
 severance between the University and religion which, as 
 has lately been proclaimed, is the aim of the most 
 advanced section of anti-religious opinion, will have been 
 completed; and Oxford will have ceased, both as a 
 corporation, and as represented by the several societies 
 which find shelter within it, to yield any public homage 
 or honour to the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 But before this point has been reached, will the Uni- 
 versity be any longer fitted even for that general pre- 
 paratory training which should precede the serious study 
 of theology in candidates for Holy Orders ? Surely this 
 may well be questioned. For in the coming time we may 
 expect to see more frequently that saddest of sights to a 
 Christian heart, now, alas ! not altogether uncommon, 
 when a lad who at his mother's knee has learnt to worship 
 Christ our Lord, and who, after having been sent to a 
 Christian school, has at length come up to the University, 
 purposing to devote himself to the ministry of the Church, 
 finds that the very studies which are necessary to secure 
 his intellectual success, have, in proportion to his 
 sympathy with them, as they are at present too often 
 taught, sapped altogether his faith in a living and govern- 
 ing God, and have left him crowned indeed with his 
 honours, but, instead of a postulant on the threshold of 
 the sanctuary, a wanderer in the desert, a disheartened, 
 
68 
 
 The Work and Prospects of 
 
 despairing infidel. Nothing is more mournful than this 
 waste of vocations, than this loss of noble hearts and 
 well-stored minds, to the cause and work of Christ our 
 Lord ; yet nothing is more certain than that the Uni- 
 versity of the future, if the secularising influences have 
 their way, and the denominational system is not adopted 
 with a view to saving the Christian character of the 
 Colleges, will be still more likely to enfeeble and kill 
 down all religious aspirations than could possibly be the 
 case in the University of the present. 
 
 And, if this be so, it is, I would submit to our Fathers 
 in Christ who are present among us to-day, a matter for 
 serious consideration, whether the Church in this land 
 should not endeavour to provide, on a totally different 
 scale from anything which has hitherto been attempted, 
 an education at once efficient and religious, for her future 
 pastors. Theological colleges will have, it may be, in 
 future years to teach a great deal besides theology. A 
 college, requiring a five years' period of residence, of 
 which the three first are devoted to the humanities and 
 to philosophy, treated from a Christian point of view, and 
 the two last to theology, may produce a clergy which will 
 not be inferior in point of culture and refinement to their 
 predecessors or to their contemporaries at the University, 
 while they will probably be greatly superior in sacred 
 learning. Doubtless it is piteous even to think of turning 
 our backs upon institutions which have been our home 
 for some ten centuries, and to which a thousand ties bind 
 us individually in reverence and love. Doubtless there 
 is social and moral value in that mixture of clergy and 
 laity, during the earlier stage of final education, which 
 would be forfeited in the case I am contemplating. But 
 sentiments cannot be seriously balanced against loyalty 
 to Truth ; nor can great social and educational advantages 
 be preferred, at least by Christians, to the duty of main- 
 
Theological Colleges. 69 
 
 taining in its integrity the faith of Christ. Most earnestly 
 is it to be hoped, that, when the choice is once nakedly 
 presented to the Rulers of our Church by our legislators, 
 between a secularised University and Christian education 
 elsewhere, no associations with the past, no sense of 
 present injustice, no theories of national comprehension, 
 will lead to hesitation between frank acceptance of what 
 must be the path of serious sacrifice, and its plain alterna- 
 tive, the gradual but utter spiritual ruin of that class from 
 which her ministerial strength is mainly drawn by the 
 Church of England. 
 
 The future, however, with all its lowering anxieties is 
 in the hands of God. But at least it is plain that theo- 
 logical colleges must be more and more important to the 
 wellbeing of the Church of England, as the Universities 
 are gradually felt to yield less and less support to the 
 cause of religious Truth. May these colleges, may those 
 who guide their destinies, be increasingly alive to the 
 greatness of their work ! They cannot indeed hope to 
 escape from criticism. They must ever be attempting 
 what is in many ways a thankless task. To the Church's 
 enemies they will of course be the honoured objects of a 
 particular dislike, and it is scarcely to be expected that 
 her sons will always be sufficiently wise and generous to 
 do them justice. Even a clerical order will not uniformly 
 welcome influences which avowedly desire to promote its 
 efficiency by raising its standard both of knowledge and 
 of moral life ; and on the other hand the best intentions 
 cannot invariably protect the directors of these, or of any 
 institutions, against errors of judgment which may 
 reasonably be deprecated. Still on the whole, the criti- 
 cisms to which theological colleges are exposed, do not 
 always assail the mistakes which may or may not be rightly 
 laid to their charge. Something will always be objected 
 to them, do what they will. If they turn out a learned 
 
7o 
 
 The Work and Prospects of 
 
 clergy, they will be told that after all the important thing 
 is not learning but vital godliness. If they send into your 
 parishes pious and earnest lovers of souls, it will be 
 observed drily that in these days, when everything is 
 questioned, men are wanted who can meet infidelity with 
 its own weapons. If an impression is produced within 
 their walls upon the mind and character of the students, 
 it will be urged that these students only reproduce the 
 phrases and mannerisms of this or that teacher, and that 
 such influence is fatal to the healthy natural play of feel- 
 ing and character. If no such impression is produced, 
 then the question will be asked, somewhat triumphantly, 
 whether it would not have been just as well if the persons 
 who throng them had remained at the Universities for the 
 purpose of reading theology. If such colleges elaborate 
 and enforce something like system, they are certain to be 
 warned against the danger of hypocrisy which will under- 
 lie any enforced or desired conformity to the rules which 
 they prescribe ; if they do nothing of the sort, they will 
 be asked to produce a raison d'6tre, — to make some 
 reasonable apology for presuming to exist at all. In 
 short, the world dislikes them for the reason which makes 
 it dislike all that really aids the cause of religion. They 
 cannot be welcome to the general public until the general 
 public is sincerely Christian. If you pipe in the market- 
 place, the world will not forthwith dance ; if you mourn 
 to it, it will not lament. If a clergy is self-denying, after 
 the manner of the Baptist, men hint now, as of old, that 
 it is a dark power of mischief — in fact, that it has a devil. 
 If it comes eating and drinking, like the Son of Man, the 
 objectors to asceticism themselves declaim with virtuous 
 warmth against such unprofessional self-indulgence, 
 " Behold a man gluttonous and a wine-bibber, the friend 
 of publicans and sinners ! " 1 
 
 1 St. Matt. xi. 17-19. 
 
Theological Colleges. 71 
 
 In point of fact, religion, whether it be the vital prin- 
 ciple of an institution or of a single soul, cannot afford to 
 lend an ear to criticisms which, after all, left to them- 
 selves, are mutually self-destructive. If wisdom is justi- 
 fied of her children, it is all that can fairly be expected. 
 A single eye to God's glory and to the claims of truth 
 will indeed, in its majestic strength, act and speak with 
 consideration for the prejudices and weaknesses around it ; 
 and it may be trusted to discern, with a tolerably unerring 
 instinct, the point at which charity shades off into dis- 
 loyalty to that which cannot be surrendered. And am I 
 not right in saying that this college, under the guidance 
 of the able and holy men who have ruled it, during the 
 last nine years, has already outlived the stormy experi- 
 ences, the failures, the disappointments, of its earlier 
 history, and has fairly established its claim to the grati- 
 tude and confidence of all that is at once intelligent and 
 believing in the Church of England ? God has indeed 
 given it the tongue of the learned, not that it may add 
 one more to the centres of theological disputation, not 
 that it may be a Christian Porch or a Christian Academy, 
 but that, aiming higher, as a true Home at once of Know- 
 ledge and of Mercy, it may speak a word in season, through 
 its ever-increasing band of students, to thousands of 
 wearied souls. And this day's assembly shows that the 
 warm brotherly feeling 1 which of old united its members 
 in the strong bonds of a free devotion to a common work 
 and a common Master, and which was referred to in those 
 its younger days, as a token of God's grace and light 
 resting upon its walls, has not, to say the least, been less- 
 ened in more recent years and under other auspices. 
 How can those who knew and loved it well in its earlier 
 and humbler phase fail to bless God for the wide prospects 
 of work and of triumph which apparently He is now 
 
 l JSti John xiii. 35. 
 
72 Work and Prospects of Theological Colleges. 
 
 opening before it ? As they take note gladly and admir- 
 ingly of its progressive victories, for what can they offer a 
 more heartfelt prayer than that it may, in the years to 
 come, be ever guided to combine the largest consideration 
 for the difficulties of minds and classes in our difficult 
 times, with a sincere loyalty to the uncorrupted, un- 
 mutilated Creed of the ancient undivided Catholic Church 
 of Christ ? And how can all of us, who are here gathered 
 this day, better express our gratitude for God's mercies to 
 this institution in the past, or our hopes for its greater 
 usefulness hereafter, than by giving generously of our 
 substance to its extension and support, in the confidence 
 that its work is very dear to our Divine Eedeemer, and of 
 a value to souls for which He died, which the last day 
 only will make known ? 
 
SERMON II. 
 
 THE MOEAL GROUNDWORK OF CLERICAL 
 TRAINING. 1 
 
 Job xxviii. 12. 
 
 But where shall wisdom be found 1 and where is the place of understanding 1 
 
 THE idea of the Wisdom or Kochmah, as all careful 
 readers of the Bible will be aware, fills a great place 
 in the mind of the Old Testament. It is, indeed, the 
 subject of a distinct literature, within the compass of the 
 sacred Canon. In their different ways, the Proverbs, the 
 Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, and the Book of Job are 
 devoted to treating of it. Wisdom is no mere synonym 
 for useful or general information ; still less does it stand 
 for practical knowingness, far-sightedness, shrewdness in 
 the affairs of life. It is much more akin to what the 
 Greeks, or some of them, meant by philosophy, and yet 
 it differs from philosophy in some important respects. 
 Like the Greeks, the Hebrews had an ardent longing to 
 get to the bottom of things ; but then the problems which 
 exercised the Greek thinkers so largely were settled, and 
 settled on the highest authority, for the Hebrews. The 
 revealed doctrine of a creation — that is to say, of a 
 creation out of nothing — made a good half of early Greek 
 speculation superfluous. The Hebrew moved about the 
 
 1 Preached at the Anniversary Festival of Cudile«lon College, June 10, 
 1873. 
 
 73 
 
74 
 
 The Moral Groundwork of 
 
 world knowing how it, and how he came to be; the 
 Greek spent his life in feeling his way towards the truth 
 which every Hebrew child had learnt in his infancy. 
 But the Hebrew mind, satisfied as to the origin of things 
 by the Revelation intrusted to the Patriarchs and the 
 Great Lawgiver, turned its eye, with constant and earnest 
 anxiety, in the direction of their final causes. A vivid 
 and unquestioning faith in God's active Providence 
 naturally gave this turn to Hebrew thought. God had 
 made, God sustained all that was; but what was the 
 purpose in detail of His creation ? What was the in- 
 tended relation of Israel to surrounding nations ? What 
 were the guiding principles and ends of all which in 
 politics and society met the eye ? what was the universal 
 truth which might be traced beneath the varieties of the 
 individual or the national ? The answer to questions of 
 this kind constituted the Wisdom or Kochmah ; but then 
 this answer was furnished, not by the enterprise and 
 collision of human minds, but from above. Hebrew 
 speculation, at least for some centuries, and in its highest 
 and permanent forms, was itself inspired : and thus we 
 are taught the general aspects of human life as exhibited 
 in the Proverbs, or the nothingness of all earthly things, 
 as in Ecclesiastes, or the mystical side and import of 
 human love as in the Canticles, or some relations of 
 suffering to demerit, as in the Book of Job. In a later 
 age, at Alexandria, Wisdom aud philosophy, the inspired 
 and the human, the assured and the tentative, meet 
 within the precincts of a great school of intelligence and 
 culture. In the Books of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus we 
 see Israel thinking of the same problems as in Job and 
 Ecclesiastes, and the Proverbs, but with a great store of 
 revealed truth to fall back upon, aud under the eye of 
 Greek Philosophy. How to acquire wisdom ; how 
 wisdom will be rewarded ; how the history of Israel and 
 
Clerical Training. 
 
 75 
 
 Israel's saints and heroes, is a long illustration of the 
 power of wisdom : — these are the topics of the book 
 which bears the name. Wisdom becomes in its pages — 
 as had been already hinted in the language of the Pro- 
 verbs — less and less a quality, more and more a being 
 clothed with the attributes of personality. And thus at 
 last Wisdom is identified with its true Source, the Eternal 
 and Personal Thought or Word of God ; and we find our- 
 selves in the prologue of St. John's Gospel, and face to 
 face with the central Truth of Christianity. 
 
 Now, in one respect the Books of the Kochmah or 
 Wisdom within the Hebrew Canon witness remarkably 
 to the world-wide importance of their subject. Although 
 generally of Israelitish origin, they are one and all re- 
 markably free from the peculiarities and allusions which 
 would connect them with the history, the worship, the 
 home of Israel. Already they seem to belong less to 
 Israel than to the whole human family. In the Book of 
 Proverbs, which treats of the relations of human life in 
 its most universal aspects, the name of Israel, the 
 covenant people, is not once mentioned. In Ecclesiastes, 
 which exhibits the proved nothingness of all earthly 
 things, Jehovah, the covenant-name of God, does not 
 once occur. If the background of the Song of Solomon 
 belongs to Israel, the subject is of universal interest, at 
 least, in its import, and mystic reference ; and the Book 
 of Job, dealing with a fundamental question of human 
 life and experience, places us altogether outside the his- 
 tory, and iu the main outside the thought and associa- 
 tions of Israel. There are no allusions to the Law of 
 Sinai, to the promises, to the history, to the worship of 
 Israel, in the whole compass of the book. 1 In this some- 
 what negative but very important manner, the writings of 
 
 1 Cf. Delitzsch, Das Buch Job, Einleitung, § 2 ; Der Chokmacharader des 
 liuchcs, pp. 5, 6. 
 
76 
 
 The Moral Groundwork of 
 
 the Kochmah in the Old Testament are a direct anticipation 
 of the Gospel. Jesus Christ our Lord, if we may dare so 
 to speak, is peculiarly at home in them — not simply as 
 One Whom they prefigure, or to Whom they lead on, but 
 as their true complement and point of unity. They are 
 universal and human in their range of interest ; so is He. 
 They grapple with the most fundamental aspects of life 
 and destiny ; He explains those aspects. They create 
 immense moral wants, which He satisfies. They name 
 and centre in a word to which He alone lias done justice ; 
 it is His Name from Everlasting, — the Wisdom of the 
 Father. 
 
 I. 
 
 Where shall wisdom be found ? Job asks this question 
 in his last address to his friends. 1 This address forms the 
 transition from the complete entanglement of the thought 
 produced by the three stages 2 through which the discus- 
 sion of the relations of suffering to demerit has succes- 
 sively passed to the solution, begun in Job's soliloquy, 3 
 continued through the four speeches of Elihu, 4 and com- 
 pleted by the voice of the Lord acknowledged in the con- 
 science of His suffering servant. 5 Job himself has been 
 insisting, as his friends had insisted, upon the punish- 
 ment which awaits the ungodly, 6 almost, as it would seem 
 at first sight, making an admission which is fatal to his 
 own logical consistency. But then he maintains unflinch- 
 ingly that he is not an evil-doer in the sense of his 
 friends. He admits the truth of their pictures of the 
 destiny of the wicked, but he will not incur the guilt of 
 falsehood, by allowing himself to acquiesce in their verdict 
 
 1 Chaps, xxvii. xxviii. 
 
 2 (I.) Chaps, iv.-xiv. (II.) Chaps, xv.-xxi. (III.) Chaps, xxii.-xxvi. 
 
 3 Chaps, xxix.-xxxi. 4 Chaps, xxxii-xxxrii. 
 5 Chaps, xxxviii.-xlii. 6. 6 xxvii. 11-23. 
 
Clerical Training. 
 
 77 
 
 as to himself. And this leads him to appeal to and fall 
 back upon the great gift of Wisdom, with which God had 
 endowed certain of His servants, and which enabled those 
 who possessed it to get far beyond the superficial idea 
 that all the suffering around us is of a penal character. 
 Suffering would be seen sometimes to have another and 
 a higher purpose in a true philosophy of the universe ; 
 and what this purpose was, was taught, as much else was 
 taught, by the Wisdom or Kochmah. Where was this 
 Wisdom to be found 1 This larger and comprehensive 
 insight into the nature of things could not come to man, 
 Job maintains, from without, in the way of ordinary 
 practical experience. It was not, for instance, to be 
 acquired by the workers in those ancient mines, of which 
 the traces are probably to be found in the Bashan 
 country. 1 
 
 " For there is a mine for the silver, 
 And a place for the gold which they reline. 
 Iron is taken from the dust, 
 And they pour out stone as copper. 2 
 
 They break away a shaft from him who remains above, 
 There, forgotten by every foot (that walks), 
 They hang far from men, and swing." 3 
 
 And thus, as he pursues, human enterprise, even in 
 these distant days, could open 
 
 " The way that no bird of prey knoweth, 
 Whereat the eye of the hawk hath not gazed ; 
 Which the proud beast of prey hath not trodden, 
 Over which the lion hath not passed." 4 
 
 And in language so vivid that it might seem to anti- 
 
 1 Compare the interesting quotation from Wetzst in Delitzsch, Das Buck 
 Job, p. 328. Besides these mines in North Gilead, the poet of the Book of 
 Job may have witnessed mining operations (i) in Nubia, for gold; (2) be- 
 tween Petra and Zoar, for copper ; (3) in the Lebanon. 
 
 - Chap, xxviii. 1-2. " Ibid. 4. 4 Ibid. 7, 8. 
 
78 
 
 The Moral Groundwork of 
 
 cipate the achievements of modern engineering, he tells 
 how the miner 
 
 "Layetli his hand upon the pebbles, 
 And turneth up the mountains from the root ; 
 He cutteth canals through the rocks, 
 And his eye seeth every precious thing. 
 That they may not leak, he dammeth up streams, 
 And that which is hidden he bringeth to light." 1 
 
 And then Job pauses. His friends might have 
 supposed that all this enterprise, in which they probably 
 had shared, and which corresponded in that early age 
 to the very foremost achievements of thinkers and 
 practical men in our own day, was the high-road to 
 wisdom; or that, at any rate, Job has in reserve some 
 crowning word of praise for that which has wrung from 
 him such sympathy and admiration. But Job only 
 asks — 
 
 " Where shall wisdom be found, 
 And where is the place of understanding ? " - 
 
 Job maintains that if man should search in every 
 direction through the inhabited world; 3 if he even 
 could penetrate to the subterranean waters ; 4 if he could 
 offer the things most precious in the judgment of that 
 primitive age — the onyx and the sapphire, gold and glass, 
 pearls, crystal, and corals, the "Ethiopian topaz," the 
 pure fine gold 5 — yet wisdom, the profoundest perception 
 of the nature of things, would still be beyond his reach. 
 How, then, could it be attained ? Job shall answer in 
 words which we may not venture to condense — 
 
 " Wisdom is veiled from the eyes of all living, 
 And hidden from the fowls of the heaven : 
 Destruction and death say, — 
 With our ears we heard a report of it. 
 God understandeth the way to it, 
 And He, — He knoweth its place. 
 For He looketh to the ends of the earth, 
 And He seeth under the whole heaven ; 
 
 Chap, xxvhi 9-11. - Ibid. 12. 3 Ibid. 13. * Ibid. 14. 5 Ibid. 16-19. 
 
Clerical Training. 
 
 79 
 
 When He appointed to the wind its weight, 
 
 And weighed the water according to measure ; 
 
 When He appointed to the rain its law, 
 
 And a course to the lightning of the thunder ; 
 
 Then saw He it and declared it, 
 
 Took it as a pattern, and tested it also ; 
 
 And unto man He said, Behold ! 
 
 The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom ; 
 
 And to depart from evil is understanding." 1 
 
 Wisdom is here the Ideal according to which God 
 created the world. The idea of natural law as an integral 
 portion of creation, regulating the wind, regulating the 
 distribution of water upon the surface of the globe, 
 regulating the rainfall, regulating the course of the 
 electric fluid, could not be more clearly expressed ; but 
 Job maintains that this creation of the world, thus 
 marshalled under the reign of law, was, at least in a 
 certain sense, the unveiling of Wisdom. It was then 
 that Wisdom — hidden eternally in God, — was " per- 
 ceived " ; it took substantial realisation and development ; 
 it was searched out and tested ; its demiurgic powers 
 were set in motion that it might clothe itself in an 
 outward and visible form. It is the same idea of Wisdom 
 as that in the Book of Proverbs ; 2 the complex unity of 
 divine ideas, — in which all the departments of creation, 
 all its laws and processes, are seen from Eternity by the 
 Infinite Mind, not as already actual but in a mirror. 
 Here it is plain that we are not far from the full revela- 
 tion of the Word or Logos : only the Logos is personal, 
 while as yet the Wisdom of the Proverbs and of Job is 
 probably an impersonal model of all creaturely existence. 3 
 
 1 Chap, xxviii. 21-28. 
 
 2 Prov. viii. 22-31. On the general relation of the Proverbs to the Book 
 of JoV>, compare Uelitzsch, Bits B. Job, Einleitung, p. 17 sqq. 
 
 3 Delitzsch, u.s. p. 341. Die Weisheit ist nicht geradezu eins mit dem 
 Logos, aber der Logos ist der Demiurg, durch welchen Gott nach jenein 
 inuerguttlicheu Urbilde die Welt ins Dasein gesetzt hat. Die Weisheit ist 
 das unpersiiuliche Modell, der Logos der persu'nliche Werk meister nach 
 Jencm Modell. 
 
So 
 
 The Moral Groundwork of 
 
 When God thus gave outward form to Wisdom in 
 creating the world, He also gave man the law hy obeying 
 which man corresponds to what he was meant to be in 
 the archetypal world — and participates, after his measure, 
 in wisdom. A comprehensive intellectual apprehension 
 of the real nature of things is beyond man's mental 
 grasp. What do we mean by matter, what by spirit, 
 what by the universe, what by our own personal 
 existence ? The moment we begin to define these things, 
 we see how little we know after all; how absolute 
 knowledge everywhere eludes us. But eternal moral 
 truth is not beyond man's moral grasp ; and it is even 
 more truly part of the Kochmah, than is intellectual 
 Truth. Fearing the Lord, and renouncing evil — this is 
 man's largest share in Wisdom ; this is the best approach 
 that man can make to what we should nowadays call a 
 philosophy of the Absolute. He cannot without a revela- 
 tion really contemplate things as they are, — as they are 
 seen by God : but he can correspond to the realities as 
 God sees them by obedience to elementary moral truth — 
 by fear of the perfect moral Being — by practical re- 
 nunciation of evil. It is the very motto of the Hebrew 
 doctrine of the Kochmah which we have in the text — 
 this substitution of obedience for ambitious speculation. 
 " Be not wise in thine own eyes," says Solomon, " fear the 
 Lord, and depart from evil." 1 " By the fear of the Lord 
 men depart from evil," he says elsewhere. 2 " The fear of 
 the Lord is the beginning of knowledge," 3 says Solomon, 
 " of wisdom," says the Psalmist : 4 " a good understanding 
 have all they that do thereafter — the praise of it endureth 
 for ever." 
 
 It is in accordance with this that when the Eternal 
 Wisdom took human form, in Jesus of Nazareth, His 
 
 1 Prov. iii. 7. 2 Ibid. xvi. 6. 
 
 8 Prov. i. 7. 4 Ps. cxi. 10. Cf. Delitzsch in loc. 
 
Clerical Training. 
 
 81 
 
 teaching followed this order. It began with moral and 
 gradually ascended to intellectual or dogmatic truth. If 
 we except our Lord's insistence upon the great dogma of 
 the Divine Providence, the direct teaching of the Sermon 
 on the Mount is moral teaching : it is a sketch, negative 
 and positive, of the New Life which would befit the sub- 
 jects of the New Kingdom. In the parables we trace the 
 two elements ; the doctrinal more and more asserting itself, 
 yet being constantly based upon the moral, until in the 
 last Discourse, in the Supper -room, we meet our Lord as 
 a teacher of doctrines — doctrines about the Father, 
 doctrines about Himself, doctrines about the Blessed 
 Comforter, — accompanied by the significant intimation, 
 " I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot 
 bear them now." 1 That sentence leads us on through 
 the Apostolic Epistles, to the Creeds, to the Councils of 
 the undivided Church, to the whole fabric and material 
 of Christian Theology. But the basis of this glorious 
 edifice was moral. " Jesus began to preach and to say, 
 Eepent : for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." 2 And 
 to this hour " the foundation of God standeth sure, haviug 
 this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are His. And, 
 Let every one that nameth the Name of Christ depart 
 from iniquity." 3 
 
 Here we touch upon one of the most important prin- 
 ciples which a man can grasp and lay to heart. The only 
 safe basis in the human mind for the highest truths of 
 faith — for the truths which satisfy and sustain the life of 
 religion in the soul — must be a moral basis. On this 
 point the Bible is utterly at issue with a large school of 
 modern thinkers. All that is wanted, say they, for 
 Wisdom, in its religious as well as in any other sense, for 
 theological as well as physical or historical Wisdom, is 
 intellectual activity — intellectual enterprise — intellectual 
 
 i St. John xvi. 12. 2 St. Matt. iv. 17. 3 2 Tim. ii. 19. 
 
 F 
 
82 
 
 The Moral Groundwork of 
 
 downrightness. Moral prepossessions, moral sentiments, 
 moral enthusiasm can do no good. Nay ! moral earnestness 
 may, by creating disturbing prepossessions, do much harm. 
 The same qualities that make a man a good student or 
 teacher of physical science will make him a good student 
 or teacher of theological science. If not — they ask 
 triumphantly — why not ? The answer is, that religious 
 truth addresses itself, not merely or chiefly to intellect, 
 but to the moral sense ; and it is justified, by the children 
 of wisdom, at the bar of the moral sense. To understand 
 God's Eevelation to any real purpose, we must begin by 
 fearing Him, by taking heed to His law. In the order of 
 our religious education, although not necessarily in the 
 order of time, the Decalogue precedes the Creed. Doubt- 
 less an intellectual interest in religious truth is possible 
 without a moral interest. Bad men, like Henry Tin., 
 have been good theologians ; journalists, notoriously hos- 
 tile to revealed religion, take the keenest and most dis- 
 criminating interest in religious questions of the day. 
 Ignorance would be bliss compared with such knowledge 
 as this : what can be more piteous than the clear, hard, 
 accurate knowledge of a soul, which has cultivated its 
 intelligence without any corresponding cultivation of its 
 heart and conscience ? The absence of this fear of the 
 Lord, which is Wisdom in the leading Bible sense of the 
 term, is fatal to any living appreciation, if not to any 
 appreciation whatever, of the doctrines of Bedemption and 
 Grace. What is the good of them in the judgment of a 
 soul which has never felt the sting of sin, or which has 
 never realised its own utter impotence to return to God ? 
 When such a soul comes into contact with the Creed of 
 Christendom — when it finds itself face to face with the 
 great truths of the Incarnation and the Bassion of Christ, 
 the Influence and Bersonality of the Holy Spirit, the 
 sacramental channels of communication between God and 
 
Clerical Training. 83 
 
 our human life, the doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity in 
 which these several truths find their justification and 
 their point of unity, it can only regard truths of this 
 magnitude, truths which we know to be so unspeakably 
 precious, as a hard block of dead dogma, weighing like an 
 incubus upon all honest and earnest thought. It is con- 
 scious of no demand which they satisfy ; it entertains no 
 anticipations which they meet ; it feels no deep-seated 
 disease for which they provide the remedy. And there- 
 fore it is lashed into indignation at the statement that 
 these truths are seriously necessary to salvation, although 
 it is willing to take a patronising interest in them as 
 monuments and landmarks of man's past intellectual his- 
 tory. The fact is, the soil in which such truths must 
 strike root is a moral soil. It is only a sensitive and 
 educated conscience that can recognise their urgency and 
 value, and so sustain the intellect in dealing with the 
 speculative difficulties which they present. Dogmatic 
 wisdom has its root and beginning in the culture of those 
 moral and spiritual sensibilities which Scripture calls the 
 " fear of the Lord." 
 
 II. 
 
 Now, it was in view of this great principle that Cuddes- 
 don College was founded. There are, of course, other forms 
 which such a foundation might have taken. It might 
 have been simply what the designation, " a Theological 
 College," strictly taken, would seem to imply. It might 
 have been only an institution in which Theological Lec- 
 tures have to be given, and theological examinations 
 periodically held. Theology being regarded only as a 
 department of knowledge, addressing itself as attractively 
 as it could to the intellect ; when theological students had 
 attended a regular course of lectures and had been 
 
8 4 
 
 The Moral Groundwork of 
 
 examined, the work of such an institution would have 
 heen complete. Teachers of language, teachers of the 
 natural sciences, teachers of history, teachers of pure 
 mathematics, say what they have to say, ascertain 
 whether what they have said is understood and remem- 
 bered by their pupils ; and then everything is over. 
 Why should it not be so in an Institution for teaching 
 Theology ? The answer — let me repeat it — is because it 
 is impossible in the case of theology to ignore morals, 
 conduct, life, without the gravest risk. That risk may 
 have to be run, to a very great extent at least, in the case 
 of a secularised University ; because a University, to be 
 true to its idea, must deal with all departments of' know- 
 ledge, as knowledge, and therefore with theology, whether 
 above or among the rest. But in the case of an institu- 
 tion designed to teach theology to the future religious 
 teachers of the people, with all that solemnity and 
 urgency which should immediately precede a man's 
 receiving the public Commission of Christ, to incur any 
 such risk would be wholly indefensible. If a man would 
 teach the power of religious truth, he must personally 
 have felt the need of it. And this need can only be felt 
 in the secret depths of the moral being, when conscience 
 has been aroused to a sensitiveness which is often and 
 most wholesomely not less than agony ; when the 
 strength of habit, old and bad, and the weakness of reso- 
 lution, good and recent, has been fully appreciated; 
 when men have recognised the simple justice of that 
 solemn sentence of Scripture that the heart — that is the 
 centre-point of moral activity in man — is, when man is 
 left to himself, " deceitful above all things, and desperately 
 wicked." 1 Until language such as this is real to a man, 
 expressing not merely what he takes it for granted is con- 
 ventionally correct, but what he knows and sees to be 
 
 1 Jer. xvii. 9. 
 
Clerical Training. 85 
 
 experimentally true, the Atoning work and eternal Person 
 of Christ our Lord, and all the varied and blessed conse- 
 quences of these facts in the Church and in the Soul, 
 must belong to the region of phrase and shadow. These 
 truths become real to men when the need of them is felt. 
 Their reality is felt increasingly, as the moral life of the 
 soul becomes more sensitive and strong. At last the 
 passion for goodness and loyalty to the Faith may blend 
 into a whole which absorbs and governs the whole inward 
 being ; each pulsation of moral enthusiasm throwing the 
 soul upon revealed doctrine, each perception of dogmatic 
 truth increasing the volume of the soul's moral force. "I 
 am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live ; yet not I, 
 but Christ liveth in me : and the life which I now live in 
 the flesh, I live by faith of the Son of God, Who loved me, 
 and gave Himself for me." 1 What better motto — to 
 describe at any rate the ideal of its corporate life — could 
 a theological college desire ? 
 
 Now if a theological college is to recognise this prin- 
 ciple, that spiritual and theological wisdom must have a 
 basis in conduct, in life, in conscience, it will be necessary 
 for such an institution to develop at least two things ; — 
 first, a system ; secondly, a spirit or atmosphere. 
 
 It must first of all develop a system. Of course a 
 system of instruction and study will be taken for granted ; 
 no one would endeavour to master less serious subjects 
 than theology, by a few efforts at random. But what we 
 require here, and chiefly, is a system of devotion, disci- 
 pline, conduct, life. Not merely study, but prayer, medita- 
 tion, if need be, confession, exercise, sleep, recreation, 
 should, as far as possible, be ordered by rule. Men should 
 learn to run, not as uncertainly, to fight their spiritual 
 foes, not as one that beateth the air. 2 For the Christian 
 life, however imperfectly and poorly, is yet in all who try 
 
 1 Gal. ii. 20. 2 1 Cor. ix. 26. 
 
86 
 
 The Moral Groundwork of 
 
 to live it at all, a matter of rule ; of rule which is the will- 
 ing expression of love ; of rule which, instead of confiscat- 
 ing, guarantees the Messed liberty with which Christ has 
 made us free ; of rule which reflects in the human soul 
 something of that Eternal Order which is the law of the 
 Divine Mind and Life. And therefore a House which 
 has a religious purpose should be a House of rule ; it 
 should be governed by system. Afterwards and else- 
 where, the exacting demands of public work may make 
 very little of the kind possible. Happy they who make 
 the most of such a blessing while they may ! 
 
 What will system do ? It will do this : it will, for the 
 first time in the lives of most men who encounter it, set 
 before them this great truth ; — that life is given us to be 
 disposed of and laid out from first to last under the eye 
 of Christ our Lord. It will furnish them with an ideal of 
 such an arrangement of life, together with opportunities 
 of attempting to realise that ideal. A man cannot throw 
 himself sincerely into a devotional system without being 
 thereby braced and elevated ; without feeling the power 
 and beauty of moral law traversing and taking possession 
 of all the wildernesses in his spiritual nature; without 
 coming face to face with Him, Whose Presence and Will 
 is everywhere implied in the rules which should govern 
 Christian lives ; with Him to Whom all leads upwards, 
 from Whom all radiates. 
 
 Not that system alone will suffice. System, pure and 
 simple, has no living power ; it is only a shell which some 
 living thing must have inhabited to give it existence, or 
 which must have been made in artificial imitation of a 
 natural growth. System, it has been truly said, if nothing 
 more than system, is a " workhouse, whence escape is 
 always welcome; wherein obedience and compliance are 
 almost always forced and hypocritical." Besides system, 
 then, a Theological College must develop a spirit — a 
 
Clerical Training. 87 
 
 moral and religious atmosphere — which will justify and 
 interpret its system to those who live in it. Now it is 
 much less easy to develop a traditional temper of thought 
 and feeling in an institution than to lay down rules for 
 its management ; but in the case of a theological college, 
 the spirit is more necessary than are the rules. A spirit 
 which is earnest and practical tends insensibly to clothe 
 itself with system; if earnest spirit without system 
 involves aimlessness and waste of spiritual material, 
 system without spirit is as dead as a soulless corpse. But 
 who is to create the spirit ? Certainly, non cuivis contigit. 
 Certainly the difficulty of breathing into and sustaining 
 in the members of any institution, the rare temper, the 
 lofty enthusiasms which in deed become them, is the most 
 rare and precious of the gifts of government ; it belongs 
 to what we term, in ordinary human language, moral 
 genius. It is far too delicate and ethereal a power to 
 submit to analysis, or to be bound down by conditions of 
 time and place : it does not depend on formal relations, 
 or emphatic occasions, or official understandings, for the 
 secret of its empire ; it makes the most of the by-play of 
 incidental circumstance ; it deals with life on its tender 
 and unguarded side, in its moments of relaxation, at its 
 intervals of despondency or frankness. It pours itself 
 around others, when and how they know not ; it saturates 
 them; it impregnates them with its own fervour and 
 impetuosity ; it insensibly furnishes them with new points 
 of view, new moods of feeling, new estimates of life ; they 
 learn, like the converted Franks, to adore what they had 
 burned, and to burn what they had adored, before they 
 know it. 
 
 Need I say, brethren, that such a gift is not really of 
 human origin? Men may be its channels and admini- 
 strators : it may attach to this man and not to that, to 
 this character rather than to that; but He only Who 
 
88 
 
 The Moral Groundwork of 
 
 governs and sanctifies the Church, the Divine and Eternal 
 Spirit, is its real author. He seems to invest all Christ's 
 greatest servants with the halo of some such power : St. 
 John and St. Paul were each the centre-points of an atmo- 
 sphere, strongly marked by their separate individualities, 
 within which many souls grew and were sanctified. So 
 in later ages was it with St. Basil and St. Chrysostom, and 
 in an eminent sense with the great Augustine : these men 
 were centres of moral and spiritual light and force, which 
 constantly escaped from them, even without their meaning 
 it, and which made companionship with them, of itself, a 
 discipline. In a college such as this, as you know from 
 its history during the last ten years, all depends, humanly 
 speaking, on the presence of such a gift as this in its chief 
 officer. It is this which explains the indescribable attrac- 
 tion and power of the place, — it is this which irradiates 
 all else ; which redeems everything here from the suspicion 
 of triviality or wearisomeness ; which gilds all the habits, 
 all the associations, all the localities — the very roads, and 
 hedges, and trees around, I had almost said — with a spiri- 
 tual and moral beauty, at least in the eyes of those who 
 amid these scenes have first learnt what life, and work, 
 and death, really mean. 
 
 It is said, I know, that personal influences of this kind, 
 in a theological college, tend to foster cliquism among 
 the clergy. This is so far true, that nothing binds men 
 together so closely as the felt power of a common enthu- 
 siasm. They who, sitting or kneeling side by side, have 
 felt the illuminating, enkindling force of the same truths, 
 dimly discerned, it may be, before, but thenceforth seen to 
 be the very life of the soul, and, indeed, the one thing 
 worth living for, feel towards each other as apostles must 
 have felt, each of whom, in the upper chamber, saw the 
 tongues of fire visibly resting on the head of every brother 
 around him. There is no friendship so sincere, no bond 
 
Clerical Training. 89 
 
 of brotherhood so pure, so intense, I will add, so legiti- 
 mate, as that which is rooted in consciously common con- 
 victions, — convictions traceable to a common origin. 
 Such friendship may be termed cliquism ; but the name 
 is only deserved, if the objects of those to whom it is 
 applied are selfish and narrow, or if their bearing towards 
 others is exclusive or conceited. Surely what we want of 
 all things in the Church of England is greater harmony 
 among the clergy ; more of that very sense of brotherhood 
 which such a college as this conspicuously encourages ; 
 a more practical appreciation, to use the Psalmist's words, 
 of the joy and goodness of dwelling together in spiritual 
 unity. 
 
 Then there is that other criticism, that a theological 
 college of this kind is really a hothouse. A hothouse, it 
 is conceded, may do good work in the winter ; but it is 
 artificial work, at best. The plants which it rears will 
 not stand the winds and frosts of the open air ; they need 
 a kindly soil and a high temperature. If a plant can be 
 made to grow out of doors and alone, it had better do so ; 
 to shut it up is to weaken it ; it is to give it a forced 
 vitality at the risk of its future hardihood and vigour. 
 
 It is an old remark, my brethren, that if you wish to 
 beg the question in an argument, your best way of doing so 
 is to employ a metaphor. Under the cover and patron- 
 age of a metaphor, the logical fallacy glides past un- 
 noticed, and too often takes its place unchallenged upon 
 the throne of reason. I deny that a college of this de- 
 scription occupies any such position in the moral and 
 spiritual sphere as to make the metaphor of a hothouse 
 tolerably accurate. For what does such a metaphor 
 assume ? It assumes that human life as a whole — so 
 sternly and inexorably condemned by our Lord and 
 Saviour under the designation of " the world," — interposes 
 no dark shadows, presents no grave obstacles, offers no 
 
9o 
 
 The Moral Groundwork of 
 
 strong resistance to the highest development of the 
 spiritual life ; it assumes that the life of the world is the 
 chosen home and natural mother of the Evangelical 
 graces. Such an assumption needs only to be stated. To 
 refute it, with the text of the Gospels in our hands, would 
 be a waste of time. No doubt there are souls, at once 
 pure, sincere, and hardy, which without preparatory disci- 
 pline, so far as we know, of any kind, do sometimes pass 
 unscathed through temptations which are the ruin of 
 multitudes ; souls which draw only strength and resolu- 
 tion from the ungenial atmosphere and active hostilities 
 amid which they spend their day of life. But such souls 
 are the exception ; they are not the rule. The rule is, that 
 all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of 
 the eyes, and the pride of life — whatever else may be said 
 of it — is not of the Father, 1 and does not help us to draw 
 closer to Him. The rule is that to live in the world with- 
 out being of it, still more to influence and improve it, you 
 must have retired from it awhile, as did St. Paul into 
 Arabia, 2 and in a Higher Presence have taken both the 
 measure of its strength and the measure of its weakness. 
 This is the moral object at which a theological college 
 should especially aim. It is not a monastery, because in 
 a monastery men are bound by obligations which last for 
 a lifetime, and which differ altogether from the restraints 
 involved in spiritual preparation for clerical work in the 
 world. It is not, on the other hand, merely a literary 
 society of men of blameless and retiring habits. It is 
 emphatically a home of discipline and training for the 
 most difficult work that a human being can undertake — 
 that of teaching and feeding the souls of others. The 
 world no more affords us such a home than do the wilds 
 of Dartmoor yield us full opportunities for becoming 
 botanists or geologists : Dartmoor yields many illustra- 
 
 1 i St. John ii. i6, - Gal. i. 17. 
 
Clerical Training. 
 
 9T 
 
 tions of these sciences, but to appreciate them, to arrange 
 them in the mental museum which we are gradually form- 
 ing, we must most assuredly have placed ourselves under 
 instruction, and have studied elsewhere. We cannot wisely 
 attempt to begin ah ovo, and reject all the treasures accumu- 
 lated by earlier observers and workers ; we cannot ignore 
 wisely either the ripe wisdom of science, or the ripe 
 wisdom of our elders in the Church, because we may 
 hope one day to add a little something from our own 
 hardly-won observation and experience. 
 
 A hothouse indeed ! In such a sense as — allowing of 
 course for the immeasurable interval — in such a sense, I 
 say, as our Lord's Companionship with His first disciples 
 deserves the metaphor, but in no other sense, does it 
 apply to institutions such as this we are considering; 
 where the object is — to rest religious faith and life, not 
 upon a forced and unreal, but upon the deepest and most 
 solid basis — the plain and steady recognition of moral 
 truth. We might, indeed, here appeal to experience. Is 
 it not the case that the students who have left Cuddesdon, 
 at least during the last ten years, have given proof of a 
 knowledge of the world and of the hearts of men, at least as 
 discriminating and true as that of others who have trusted 
 to their own efforts or to the lecture-rooms of the Univer- 
 sity ? Or rather, is not this statement felt by all who are 
 acquainted with the subject to be very greatly below the 
 real truth ; and must we not dismiss, on the strength of 
 such experience, an eminently foolish and misleading 
 metaphor, which no one who had adequate ideas of the 
 work in hand would have thought of employing ? 
 
 To-day is an anniversary, in some respects, of more 
 than ordinary interest. It is a day of many congratula- 
 tions — natural and legitimate. Never before the present 
 year has this College, in the person of any of its work- 
 ing officers, received such emphatic recognition from 
 
92 Moral Groundwork of Clerical Training. 
 
 high quarters of the services which it has been permitted 
 to render to the Church. 1 That recognition, many of you 
 will feel, however grateful in itself, is purchased at a very 
 heavy cost; and therefore to-day is a day, perhaps, of 
 some great regrets and even of some inevitable misgivings. 
 Brethren, at all such turning-points of life, whether 
 public or private, it is well to reflect that, if men pass, 
 principles, truths, means of grace, remain. Above all, He 
 remains, Who is the author and the end of these things ; 
 Who putteth down one and setteth up another ; Who, as 
 being infinite in His resources, is not dependent upon this 
 or that agent for the doing of His predestined work-; Who 
 disappoints alike, in His consummate Wisdom, our eager 
 hopes and our feverish anxieties. The one thing to be 
 really anxious about just now, is that the principle upon 
 which this College was originally founded, by the piety 
 and genius of your Lordship's predecessor, should be per- 
 manently and heartily recognised within its walls ; that 
 its religious philosophy should be moral before it dares to 
 be speculative, — its students men who know something of 
 their own hearts ere they preach to others. 
 
 1 The allusion is to the appointment of the Rev. E. King, Principal of 
 Cuddesdon College, to the Chair of Pastoral Theology at Oxford. The 
 Bishop of Bloemfoutein had left Cuddesdon College some time before his 
 elevation. 
 
SERMON III. 
 
 OUE LOED'S EXAMPLE THE STEENGTH OF 
 HIS MINISTEES. 1 
 
 S. Matt. iv. 19. 
 
 And He saith unlo them, Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men. 
 
 SUCH is the first notice of the Christian Ministry 
 which meets us in the pages of the New Testament. 
 Our Lord was standing on the shore of the lake of 
 Galilee, and, if we may assume that St. Luke's narrative 2 
 refers to the same event as St. Matthew's, He had just 
 wrought a miracle whereat all were filled with amaze- 
 ment, and in beholding which St. Peter had fallen on his 
 knees while giving expression to his mingled fear and 
 adoration. I need hardly remind you that this great 
 Apostle, together with and by the influence of his brother 
 St. Andrew, had for some months at least enjoyed the 
 high privilege of Christ's companionship. 3 This, however, 
 did not at first involve a final abandonment of their trade 
 as fishers : unlike St. Matthew, they were allowed a 
 period of preparation before their solemn call to the 
 higher service of their Master. Our Lord had now opened 
 His Ministry in Eastern Galilee, among those thickly 
 scattered towns of Gennesareth, of whose comparatively 
 large populations it has been happily said that " they were 
 to the Eoman Palestine almost what the manufacturing 
 
 1 Preached in the Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford, on the Fourth 
 Sunday in Advent, December 23, i860. 
 
 2 St. Luke v. i-n. s st. John i. 37, 40, 41. 
 
94 
 
 Our Lord's Example the 
 
 districts are to England." 1 The people pressed on Him 
 to hear the word of God ; the future Apostles had enjoyed 
 a sufficient probation to meet this new demand on their 
 faith and their obedience. Accordingly, " He saith unto 
 them, Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men." 
 
 X 
 
 When Elijah called his future disciple from the oxen 
 and the plough, there was the same kind of abrupt 
 transition from simple physical labour to preparation for 
 high spiritual office. 2 We may perhaps measure the 
 greater exigency and imperativeness of the call of Jesus, 
 by the fact that while Elisha's request that he might take 
 leave of his father and of his mother was granted, 3 our 
 Merciful Lord bade one who wished first to bury his 
 father to enter on his discipleship without further tarry- 
 ing, 4 and dismissed another, who desired to say farewell 
 to his friends, as unfit for the kingdom of God. 5 Unlike 
 these feeble, half-hearted proselytes, the Apostles seem 
 to have asked for no delay : St. Peter and St. Andrew 
 immediately forsook their occupation ; St. James and St. 
 John their father ; as later, without their previous training, 
 St. Matthew his receipt of custom. 6 The Voice Which 
 they heard bade them leave nets and boat, and relatives 
 and home; they were to break with the memories of 
 youth, and with the hopes of manhood, and with the 
 encrustation of habit that was already gathering around 
 maturer life. Without reserve, without delay, without 
 condition, without reluctance, they were to make a 
 venture; they were to cast in their lot with One Who 
 had no home, and Who as yet had promised only this, as 
 the reward of obedience, " I will make you fishers of men." 
 That promise surely meant that in a certain sense their 
 past life would re-appear in the future before them. The 
 
 1 Sinai and Palestine, p. 371. 2 1 Kings xix. 19. 3 JUd. 20. 
 
 4 St. Matt. viii. 21, 22. 5 St. Luke ix. 62. 6 St. Matt. ix. 9. 
 
Strength of His Ministers. 
 
 95 
 
 love of enterprise, the careless indifference to danger, the 
 keen interest which is awakened where success is beyond 
 control and matter of speculation, the manifold exercise 
 of skill and inventiveness, above all, the steady, patient, 
 unrelieved, enduring toil, — in short, all the qualities which 
 hitherto had spent themselves on that inland lake were 
 now to receive a place and a consecration in the Heavenly 
 Kingdom. All that they were leaving was to have a 
 counterpart in that life to which they were called. The 
 earlier gifts which they had received from God, His 
 calling, by His Providence, to an earthly livelihood, might 
 seem, like the privileges of the Eace of Israel, to be 
 " without repentance." 1 A new home, new fathers and 
 mothers, and brethren and sisters, were to win their 
 hearts : 2 there was the Gospel-net ready to their hands, 
 and the sea of the nations was before them. David, the 
 shepherd-boy, following the ewes, had been taken, in 
 obedience to the same law of continuity between nature 
 and grace, to feed Jacob the people of the Lord Jehovah, 
 and Israel His inheritance. 3 If strangers to eloquence 
 and human learning, if ignorant of the thoughts and ways 
 of men, the disciples might rest in humble trust on that 
 promise of Him Who spake, "I will make you." The 
 seeming loss, then, was really gain ; the past was not to 
 be so much resigned as consecrated ; they were ceasing to 
 ply their earthly occupations to preside (as yet they knew 
 not how) at the regeneration of the world. One strong 
 act of love and resolution tore them from what as yet had 
 occupied their understandings and enchained their hearts; 
 That Voice had reached their inmost spirit, and they 
 followed Its leading. 
 
 It may be difficult to determine how much of the fuller 
 meaning of Our Lord's "Words may have flashed across 
 the soul of those fishermen, who already believed Him to 
 be the promised Messiah. 4 We read those words by the 
 
 1 Rom. xi. 29. 2 St. Mark x. 29, 30, 3 Ps. lxxviii. 70-72. 4 St. John i. 41. 
 
Q6 
 
 Our Lord's Example the 
 
 light of His own subsequent declarations concerning Him- 
 self, 1 and of the witness of His inspired Apostles, 2 and of 
 the Creeds of the Universal Church. We can dare to see 
 in the Speaker none less than the Infinite and Eternal 
 God. Yet, born and nurtured in the bosom of Christen- 
 dom, we can never realise the full measure of that shock 
 and wrench by which the Apostles passed from their 
 lowly fishing-boat to the helm of the Vessel of Christ. 
 As addressed to us, the words belong, it might seem, less 
 to the day of Ordination than to that inner call to the 
 sacred ministry, which must, at some time or other, have 
 gone before. We can remember, perchance, how this 
 message from God broke upon us. There was already a 
 certain sense of the mystery and responsibility of life, 
 and of the value of the soul ; there was a deeper personal 
 conviction of the hatefulness, misery, and end of sin, and 
 of the greatness of our Lord's plenteous Eedemption. 
 The life of the plant or of the animal exists not in its 
 perfection unless it be self-propagating ; and every soul 
 that is " alive unto God through Jesus Christ Our Lord," 
 must endeavour, according to its opportunities, to give 
 effect to this test and law of a true vitality, and to make 
 other men share its blessings and its joys. Of this 
 general tendency, the vocation to Holy Orders is a specific, 
 perhaps not always, although generally, an intense mani- 
 festation. We beheld those to whom Christ our Lord 
 and His love, and His promises, and His consolations 
 were unknown ; and though we ourselves knew little of 
 Him, relatively perchance as little as did the fishermen 
 of Galilee after that first companionship, the thought 
 nevertheless came upon us, and took shape, and grew, 
 and at length it whispered, " Follow Me, and I will make 
 you fishers of men." No natural gift, we too may feel, 
 
 1 St. John viii. 58 ; x. 30. 
 
 2 Col. i. 15-17 ; Phil. ii. 6 ; Heb. i. 3 ; 1 St. John iv. 15 ; Rev. i. 11. 
 
Strength of His Ministers. 
 
 97 
 
 need be wasted: the work before us needs our every 
 energy, it can hallow and employ the most common and 
 trivial, as well as the most exceptional and brilliant gifts. 
 Since that call until this day, when the promise is to be 
 fulfilled by those hands to which Our Lord has delegated 
 the bestowal of His high Commission, we have been 
 following Him. Ay, brethren, you must be our Lord's 
 true disciples in heart and will, before you may be His 
 ministers. You must be fairly enclosed in the Gospel- 
 net before you can help to bring in others. You must 
 have learnt the habit, and tone, and culture which befit 
 the court of the King of kings, ere, armed with His full 
 credentials, you go forth as His ambassadors 1 to the 
 world. It is well if, besides your letters of credit, you 
 hold from Him an inner patent of spiritual nobility. 
 You will find it hard to speak for Him with the tender- 
 ness, and firmness, and composure, and dignity, and 
 earnest perseverance which befits His representatives, if 
 you have (which God forbid) in any way forced your- 
 selves upon Him. His words must surely falter and die 
 away on your stammering lips, if He has not freed you 
 from all bondage by His Divine enfranchisement, 2 if you 
 lack inward loyalty and love, and are at heart the 
 satellites of His enemy. None who is enslaved to sin, to 
 any one ruling passion, whether it be lust, or covetous- 
 ness, or pride, or envy, or subtle ambition, or fear of man, 
 can proclaim in its majesty and its power the everlasting 
 Gospel. Such an one, if placed in the ranks of the sacred 
 ministry, will almost infallibly, and from a mere instinct 
 of honesty, tone down the note of his prophecy to the 
 grovelling level of his own experience. 3 Or it may be, 
 from an opposite instinct of duty, he will draw exaggerated 
 fancy pictures, because religion has never been real to 
 
 1 2 Cor. v. 20. 2 St. John viii. 36. 
 
 3 1 Tim. i. 19, vi. 9, 10, 21 ; Tit. i. 11. 
 G 
 
9 8 
 
 Our Lord's Example the 
 
 him. And therefore by prayer, and self-discipline, and 
 practical piety, we must have followed Our Lord, if on 
 the day of ordination we are to become in personal 
 spiritual power, as well as by note of apostolic character 
 and commission, fishers of men. 
 
 II. 
 
 But the words of the text admit of an application 
 more adapted to our present circumstances. We cannot 
 suppose that these words had lost their meaning when 
 the Apostles had received their full Commission from the 
 Lips and Hands of Christ. Such words could not thus 
 pass away. 1 It was indeed true that the power of fishing 
 for men was an acknowledgment and a reward of previous 
 discipleship. It was true that such discipleship prepared 
 the heart to receive such power. But also, it was true 
 that in following Christ the ordained Apostles became 
 ever increasingly successful as fishers of men. Without 
 this imitative energy, the hallowing grace which He had 
 breathed forth upon their spirits might have lost its 
 power like a natural faculty which has never been exer- 
 cised ; although the indelible character and stamp of 
 ministry should remain traced for ever, as its note of 
 condemnation, on the soul. The imitation of Christ as 
 a law of the Christian life has been often treated of. 
 We are now considering a distinct subject, — the imitation 
 of Christ as the regulating principle of ministerial force. 
 " Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men." 
 
 Fishers of men ! Let us dwell, dear brethren, on that 
 word, for it describes our work. We may underrate, — 
 we cannot easily form an exaggerated estimate whether of 
 its nobleness or of its difficulty. Man, we know, is an 
 animal, yet endowed with a reasonable souL His lower 
 nature excels, while it links him to, all the strata of natural 
 1 St. Mark xiii. 31. 
 
Strength of His Ministers. 
 
 99 
 
 life which are ranged beneath him. By his higher he is 
 associated with that world of spiritual intelligences of 
 which he is the lowest and the feeblest inhabitant. With 
 a being thus composite, his heart is the frontier-boundary 
 of two worlds, — the world of matter and the world of 
 spirit. Each of the great divisions of existence claims 
 him as belonging to it. Study the organism of his body, 
 the laws which he obeys at birth, in growth, at death, — 
 analyse his food, unravel and describe the mechanism of 
 his movements, draw out and exhibit the chemical ele- 
 ments of his future decomposition ; — and he will appear 
 as nothing but the highest and most complex form of 
 material and transient life. But look, on the other hand, 
 at his spiritual nature ; study its manifold resources and 
 wellnigh boundless capacities ; mark the strength, the 
 subtlety, the daring, the impetuosity of its associated even 
 though undeveloped powers ; and you see before you that 
 which never can die — nay, that which may and will 
 become, according to the law of its development, even as 
 an angel in heaven, or as a devil in hell. Such is man, 
 the personal union of two natures in the midst of God's 
 creation ; on the one side crawling on the earth, on the 
 other seeking the heavens ; here linked to what is perish- 
 able and limited, there to the Infinite and the Eternal ; 
 by one set of impulses tending to descend altogether to 
 the level of his animal existence, as if he were nothing- 
 better than a creature of sense and time, by another to 
 rise upwards to the full height and tether of his spiritual 
 capacities, and to seek amidst the ranks of angels and 
 archangels the Face, the adoration, the possession of his 
 God. 
 
 Such, brethren, are we ourselves; such is the being 
 with which, as Christ's servants, we have to treat. All 
 our work centres around this point — the conversion and 
 sanctification of man. For this — since it more than aught 
 
IOO 
 
 Our Lord's Example the 
 
 else promotes our Master's glory — for this great end we 
 preach, and visit, and build schools, and open missions, 
 and erect reformatories, and build and beautify churches, 
 and fill them with the voice of prayer and the grace and 
 presence of Sacraments. We must then consider how 
 complex and various are the influences which bear in 
 upon the heart of man from opposite quarters. We must 
 endeavour to estimate, as we can with a certain measure 
 of accuracy, the forces of man's lower nature. We must 
 allow for, since we cannot accurately investigate, the more 
 mysterious forces, good and evil, which affect his higher. 
 We cannot but observe that without and apart from Christ 
 the balance of man's being, since the Fall, has been fatally 
 over-weighted on the side of its animal and material pro- 
 pensions. A philosopher might here or there, in his proud 
 isolation, affect the life of his higher nature ; but he could 
 not escape from those strong and fearful sins of the spirit, 
 which make its partial emancipation from matter a doubt- 
 ful blessing, if not an additional misery. And Paganism, 
 as seen in the populations which it formed and nurtured, 
 lived necessarily the life of sense. For without grace the 
 flesh is more than a match for the spirit, and the powers 
 of the angel are condemned, as a matter of course, to 
 minister to the lusts and indulgence of the brute. Our 
 Lord, we know, in His mercy and His love has restored 
 the equilibrium, partly by opening upon the eye of the 
 soul a true seuse of its lofty destiny, and partly by the 
 consecration of the lower nature through its union with 
 His own Everlasting Godhead. " The law of the spirit of 
 life in Christ Jesus makes free from the law of sin and 
 death." 1 Still, allowing for and remembering this un- 
 speakable and blessed truth, the problem before us His 
 ministers is still a fearful one. We need not look far 
 abroad to conclude that the forces ranged against us, 
 
 1 Rom. viii. 2. 
 
StrengtJi of His Ministers. 
 
 101 
 
 whether they be " flesh and blood," or " the principalities 
 and powers and rulers of this world's darkness," 1 are such 
 as to make us, with good reason, anxious respecting the 
 all-important issue. How far the higher nature may be 
 reached through the lower, what are the influences to 
 which the soul is most sensitively open, how Truth can 
 best make a lasting home in the heart, and win empire 
 over the passions of man, — these and other like questions 
 force themselves upon us. And it will help us, I venture 
 to tbink, in our difficulty, if we observe how Our Lord, in 
 the days of His flesh, dealt with the being with whom we 
 have to deal ; if we endeavour to discover His moral atti- 
 tude, and motive, and spirit, and method of approach and 
 treatment in His intercourse with man, at that time when 
 He, in His marvellous condescension, was engaged in the 
 very work, a share of which (0 wondrous thought !) He 
 bequeaths, as on this day, even to us ! 
 
 Of so vast a subject as the Ministerial Life of Our Lord we 
 can but seize a few leading features. Here first observe — 
 
 i. Our Lord's riding motive. This was stamped visibly 
 upon His ministry. It was the glory and will of the 
 Eternal Father. This indeed, we are permitted to know, 
 was the principle of His Incarnation. : ' Sacrifice and 
 offering Thou wouldest not, but a Body hast Thou pre- 
 pared Me : Then said I, Lo, I come ! " 2 Every Mystery 
 of His Life, from His Birth in the manger to His Ascen- 
 sion into Heaven, was an act of homage to the glory of 
 the Father. Our Lord, we may say without risk of 
 exaggeration, never conceived a thought, nor formed a 
 desire, nor uttered a word, unless in some way word, and 
 desire, and thought might set forth His Father's glory. 
 Witness His own words : " I seek not Mine own glory " ; 3 
 " I seek not Mine own Will, but the Will of the Father 
 
 1 Epb. vi. 12. 2 Heb. x. 5-7 ; Ps. xl. 6, 7. 
 
 3 St. John viii. 50. 
 
102 Our Lord's Example the 
 
 Which hath sent Me " ; 1 "I receive not honour from 
 men " ; 2 " He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own 
 glory : but He That seeketh His glory That sent Him, the 
 Same is true, and there is no unrighteousness in Him " ; 3 
 " I do always such things as please Him " ; and at last, 
 " I have glorified Thee on the earth : I have finished the 
 work which Thou gavest Me to do." 4 
 
 Let us observe this more in detail during His ministry. 
 When Our Lord's doctrine drew on Him the admiration 
 and the applause of men, He was careful to assure them 
 that it came from heaven. " My doctrine is not Mine, 
 but His That sent Me." 5 Let us remember that "in Him 
 were hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge," u 
 and that even in His Boyhood, the Jewish Doctors " were 
 astonished " at one Ray of His Intellectual Glory. 7 Yet 
 how measured are His communications of knowledge, 
 made, " as men were able to hear," 8 in the interests of 
 the simple and of the poor, and as if purposely to rebuke 
 " display " of earthly learning in His ministers ! When 
 addressed as " Good Master," by one who wished to pay 
 Him a compliment, He answered almost sharply, " Why 
 callest thou Me good ? there is none good but One, that 
 is, God." 9 If His miracles made Him an object of popu- 
 larity, He withdrew Himself from the applause of the 
 crowd. 10 He desired the recipients of His mercy to see 
 that they told no man. 11 He, the Eternal and Infinite Son 
 of God, was content to pass for the son of the carpenter. 12 
 He imposed silence upon the devil who confessed Him to 
 be What He really was. 13 He Who advanced to meet His 
 enemies, when they sought His life, 14 fled when He knew 
 that the people sought to make Him a king. 15 
 
 I St. John v. 30. ' Ibid. 41. 3 Ibid. vii. 18. 4 Ibid. xvii. 4. 
 6 St. John vii. 16. 6 Col. ii. 3. " St. Luke ii. 47. 
 
 8 St. Mark iv. 33. 9 Ibid. x. 17, 18. 10 Ibid. i. 45 ; St. Luke v. 16. 
 
 II St. Mark i. 44, viii. 26 ; St. Luke viii. 56. 12 St. Matt. xiii. 55. 
 
 1J St. Mark i. 25, 34 ; iii. 11, 12. 1J St. John xviii. 4. 15 Ibid. vi. 15. 
 
Strength of His Ministers. 
 
 103 
 
 Ee well assured, brethren, that you have here a prin- 
 ciple of spiritual force. To the natural man the power of 
 attractive speech, the opportunity of conferring benefits, a 
 place and name in the words and hearts of men, is precious, 
 as leading to personal gain of some kind or other. 1 It is 
 an investment, so to say, which, as is thought, should 
 yield its corresponding return. Few sensible men in the 
 present day would enter the ministry for the sake of an 
 income. But the other sins of the Pharisees are the sins 
 of a teaching order ; they are the sins into which it most 
 naturally falls. The love of prominence, the love of influ- 
 ence, the love of popularity and of the praise of men, are 
 the dangers of all priesthoods of all time. For often it is 
 in truth very difficult to say where the pure motive shades 
 off into the impure ; and the real state of the case is pro- 
 bably unknown to us, until some failure in our work lets 
 in upon solitude and disappointment a ray of light from 
 heaven, and shows us how much self has appropriated of 
 that which was all along half-meant for God. Yet men 
 are really awed by a perfect disinterestedness, from its 
 very unlikeness to what they see within themselves. It 
 is a power which baffles their understandings, while it 
 takes captive their imaginations and their hearts. Even 
 amid the sin and turmoil of this world, disinterestedness 
 is always power ; and we have marked during the past 
 year, how a nation could bend in enthusiastic devotion 
 before a single name, becaus e that name was at least 
 believed to represent none oi the self-seeking ambition of 
 ordinary political and national effort. 2 So, although Our 
 Lord declined the homage of the people, it was thrust 
 upon Him ; the multitude so hung upon His Lips that 
 they had scarcely room to stand, 3 time to eat : 4 if He 
 sought to conceal His fame, so much the more a great deal 
 
 iActsviii. 18-23; Mai. i. 10. 2 The reference is apparently to Garibaldi. 
 St. Mark iv. 1. * St. Mark iii. 20, vi. 31. 
 
104 
 
 Our Lord's Example the 
 
 men published it ; 1 if He enjoined silence respecting His 
 miracles, " whithersoever He entered, villages or cities," 
 the sick were laid out, and laid out only to be made 
 whole. He " seeks not His own glory : but there is One 
 That seeketh and judgeth." 3 
 
 And if this was so with Him, the All-holy and Eternal, 
 what with ourselves ? If in our pulpits, our schools, our 
 visiting, we seek men's praise, we must in the end find 
 confusion. We dare not assume a glory whicli belongs to 
 Another. Only at our utmost peril can we seek to make 
 capital, and position, and a name out of the things of God. 
 For in truth we have nothing, whether in nature or in 
 grace, that we can call our own. If our Master " raises 
 the needy from the earth, and lifteth up the poor out of 
 the dunghill, that He may set us with the princes, even 
 with the princes of His people," 4 the glory and the work 
 is His. We are only strong when in heart and deed we 
 confess our utter weakness. We are only powerful, as 
 the ministers of Christ, in such degree as, for His blessed 
 sake, we can succeed in utterly forgetting ourselves. By 
 following Him in His disinterestedness we may indeed 
 become " fishers of men." 
 
 2. A second prominent feature in Our Lord's ministry is 
 His tender love for souls, and His burning desire for their 
 salvation. He came to seek and to save that which was 
 lost. 5 He who would win man must begin by loving 
 him. Our Lord indeed loved the souls of men so as to 
 die for them. He loved the whole race, from its first 
 parent to the latest generation; yet He entered with 
 perfect sympathy into each instance of individual suffer- 
 ing. And it is good for us, brethren, to hang on His foot- 
 steps in the Gospel narrative : for verily to us, His 
 ministers, that portion of His Divine Word is, in a 
 
 1 St. Mark vii. 36. 2 Ibid. vi. 56. 3 St. John viii. 50. 
 
 4 Ps. cxiii. 7, 8. 5 St. Luke xix. 10. 
 
Strength of His Ministers. 
 
 peculiar sense, " a lantern unto the feet and a light unto 
 the paths." 1 " Seeing the multitudes," we read, " He was 
 moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, 
 and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd." 2 
 If the people are hungry, it is He Who feels at once com- 
 passion, and it issues in one of the greatest of His miracles. 3 
 If the centurion speaks to Him of his palsied servant, 
 Our Lord offers at once to come and heal him. 4 If the 
 afflicted ruler breaks in upon His discourse with the dis- 
 ciples of St. John, and pours forth the anguish of his 
 bereavement at the Feet of the Great Consoler, Our Lord 
 at once " arose and followed him." 5 If He meets a widow 
 who has lost her only son, " He has compassion on her, and 
 saith unto her, Woman, weep not." 0 If He seems for a 
 moment harsh towards the Canaanite woman, it is only 
 that He may stimulate and reward her greater faith. 7 
 Even on the way to Calvary He pauses, as if in forgetful- 
 ness of His own awful Passion, to console the women 
 who followed Him weeping. 8 Even from His Cross, 
 when His life was ebbing, and the Father's Face was 
 hidden, and the sins of the world lay as a burden on His 
 Soul, He consoled and provided for His Mother and His 
 disciple. 9 These Acts and Words of Our Lord answer to 
 those portions of ministerial work with which we easily 
 become most familiar ; since many will seek comfort at 
 our hands under the sorrows of this life, who have no due 
 value for the next. Follow we, then, the Saviour of the 
 world in His tender and comprehensive sympathy, even 
 though afar off, and at the cost of precious time and per- 
 sonal suffering, that we become, like Him, fishers of men. 
 Mark we, too, how He seized every opportunity for con- 
 verting those who were living in sin. If men asked Him 
 
 1 Ps. cxix. 105. 2 St. Matt. ix. 36. » St. Mark vi. 34, 35. 
 
 4 St. Matt. viii. 7. 6 Ibid. ix. 19. 6 St. Luke vii. 13. 
 
 1 St. Matt. xv. 21 sqq. » St. Luke xxiii. 28. 9 St. John xix. 26, 27. 
 
io6 
 
 Our Lord's Example the 
 
 for temporal favours, He made of the earthly benefit a 
 vehicle for a spiritual blessing. He touches the higher 
 nature by healing the lower. He ministers to the suffer- 
 ing body that He may reach the unseen, wellnigh in- 
 accessible spirit. The sick of the palsy is set down before 
 Him lying on a bed ; but our Lord's first words speak of 
 the paralysis, not of the body, but of the soul ; and the 
 miraculous cure of the body is wrought as a warrant of 
 the reality of the soul's absolution from sin. 1 Our Lord 
 even accepted invitations to places where sinners were to 
 be met, that He might heal their souls. He was content, 
 for the sake of the perishing, to pass " as a man gluttonous 
 and a wine-bibber, the friend of publicans and sinners. 2 He 
 meekly reminded His critics that they that were whole 
 " need not a physician, but they that are sick. 3 He even 
 invited Himself to the house of the publican Zacchseus 
 (" To-day I must abide at thine house ") that He might bless 
 and convert him. 4 Wearied with His journey, He rests at 
 the well of Sychar ; when a soul presents herself. 5 Even 
 the much-needed rest must be interrupted that He may 
 teach us, His ministers, how unceasing are our obligations 
 to those who seek from us spiritual aid. He shows us, 
 too, how from the trifles of daily life we may draw out 
 materials for rousing souls from the sleep of sin. The 
 water of that well imaged forth to the soul of that lost 
 one the well of water — Christ's life-giving grace — spring- 
 ing up into everlasting life ; till she desired that grace, 
 and won it. It is of vital moment that we should mark 
 this our Lord's readiness to receive sinners. The Magda- 
 len presents herself most inopportunely, in the midst of 
 a banquet ; but our Lord, instead of putting her off to 
 another occasion, at once accepts her, while Simon, His 
 host, looks on her with an evil eye, as a public sinner. 6 
 
 1 St. Matt. ix. 2, 6. 2 Ibid. xi. 19. 3 Ibid. ix. 12. 
 
 4 St. Luke xix. 5. 5 St. John iv. 6-26. 6 St. Luke vii. 36-50. 
 
Strength of His Ministers. 107 
 
 The thief on the cross, who shortly before had joined his 
 fellow in their chorus of dying blasphemy, makes but one 
 advance ; the insult is at once forgiven : " To-day shalt 
 thou be with Me in Paradise." 1 The woman taken in 
 adultery, trembling and ashamed, is brought before Him ; 
 but He, Who knows that all have need of mercy, dismisses 
 her accusers in silence and confusion, and adds, "Neither 
 do I condemn thee ; go and sin no more." 2 Perhaps 
 Nicodemus experienced our Lord's condescension to weak 
 souls as strikingly as did these others His tender gentle- 
 ness in welcoming sinners. Nicodemus was learned, and 
 knew that our Lord spake truth ; but he was timid, he 
 shrank from avowing his convictions and taking a part ; 
 he " came to Jesus by night." 3 Our Lord received him 
 at his own time, and on his own terms ; He did not 
 compel a more courageous expression of conviction ; He 
 instructed the "master in Israel," and gained his affec- 
 tion. And it was Nicodemus who spoke boldly for the 
 truth in the Council of the Pharisees ; 4 it was Nicodemus 
 who, at great personal risk, joined in embalming the Holy 
 Body. 5 So again, when we are wearied with toiling in 
 our schools, it may help us to remember that our Lord 
 suffered little children to come unto Him, and forbade 
 them not. 6 In training holy souls for heaven, we may 
 note how our Lord corrected even the smaller defects 
 which still clung to His disciples, as when they disputed 
 among themselves which should be the greatest, 7 and 
 when they forbade one casting out devils in His name 
 because he followed them not. 8 So His approval of 
 Mary sitting at His Feet might teach us that it is our 
 duty to cherish in certain souls a life of contemplation. 0 
 
 1 St. Luke xxiii. 43. 2 g t , j oun v iii. n. 3 St. John iii. 2. 
 
 4 St. John vii. 50, 51. 5 ibid. xix. 39. 
 
 c St. Mark x. 14 ; St. Luke xviii. 16. 
 
 7 St. Mark ix. 34, 35 ; St. Luke xxii. 24-27. 8 St. Luke ix. 49, 50. 
 
 0 St. Luke x. 39, 42. 
 
io8 
 
 Our Lord's Example the 
 
 His washing the feet of His disciples may encourage us 
 to decline no labour, however irksome and humiliating, 
 which may be necessary to assure to our people a profit- 
 able and worthy receiving of the Holy Communion. 1 
 Above all, His words, " The Lord hath anointed Me to 
 preach the Gospel to the poor," 2 must be the motto of our 
 work. If we shrink from those whom we naturally dis- 
 like, if we indulge prejudices of family, or station, or 
 refinement, or education, when we ought to be labouring 
 equally for all, we shall find ample rebuke in the pages 
 of the Gospel. We cannot suppose that impenitent 
 Chorazin and Bethsaida were specially attractive to our 
 Lord ; yet we know that they were the scene of number- 
 less miracles. 3 It is fatal for an ordained man to hold 
 the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ with respect of places 
 or respect of persons. 4 He is sent to all, by a Saviour 
 Who loves all, and his strength lies in a hearty recognition 
 of this feature of universality which ennobles his mission. 
 By following our Lord's steps in His love for men, in His 
 sensitive sympathy for all suffering, in His persevering 
 seeking for lost sinners, in His readiness and tenderness 
 in receiving them, in His condescension to the weak, and 
 in His anxious training of the strong, we shall become, in 
 our far-off measure, fishers of men. For mankind are open 
 to such world-embracing love ; it is a force the might of 
 which they involuntarily recognise ; it is as powerful in 
 one age as another, in one society or civilisation as in 
 another ; it is always needful, as it is always welcome, to 
 the mental and bodily sufferings of mankind ; it gives the 
 man who brings it influence with souls which he may 
 and must turn to his Master's glory ; it gives him this 
 influence in the largest measure at the time when he 
 most earnestly declines it. 
 
 1 St. John xiii. 5. - St. Luke iv. 18. 
 
 3 St. Matt. xi. 21. 4 St. James ii. 1. 
 
Strength of His Ministers. 
 
 109 
 
 3. Our Lord's Teaching is so vast a subject that we can 
 note only one feature of it. The servant, we may observe 
 in passing, too often must hear from a faithful conscience, 
 the rebuke of Him Who sends him, "Why dost thou 
 preach My law, and takest My covenant in thy mouth, 
 whereas thou hatest to be reformed, and hast cast My 
 words behind thee ? " 1 But in the Divine Master doctrine 
 was perfectly illustrated by example. " He was the first," 
 St. Gregory observes, " perfectly to practise what He 
 preached." " He began," says St. Luke, "to do as well as 
 teach " at the opening of His ministry. 2 Much might be 
 said of the fervency, of the simplicity, of the wisdom, of 
 the manifold attractiveness to be noted in the discourses 
 of our Divine Lord. But the point to which I invite 
 your attention concerns neither the method nor the style 
 of our Master's words, nor their consistency with His Life, 
 important as is each of these considerations. Looking at 
 the matter of His teaching, let us observe this dominant 
 and most noteworthy characteristic ; it was definite. 
 
 It is not difficult for educated persons, at their ease, 
 with few cares, and in the strength and buoyancy of 
 youth, to speak of religious truth as versatile and impalp- 
 able ; to depreciate or ridicule the prophetical office of the 
 Church of Christ ; to insist on the equal claims of con- 
 tradictory interpretations ; to indulge in feats of ingenuity 
 which make the sacred words of Divine Scripture mean 
 anything or nothing; to hazard the false and humiliating 
 paradox, that in the things of God faith befits only the 
 infancy of mankind, and that doubt and speculation are 
 the higher and more intellectual notes of maturer years 
 and of a more advanced civilisation ; and so at length to 
 volatilise the Divine message, that, while God affirms that 
 He has made a Revelation, they can bring themselves to 
 believe that hardly any one nameable truth has been 
 
 1 Ps. 1. 16, 17. 2 Acts i. 1. 
 
no 
 
 Our Lord's Example the 
 
 certainly revealed. But that broken-hearted, desponding 
 sinner, — but that poverty-stricken, homeless wanderer, — 
 nay, your educated man himself, when he comes to lie, face 
 to face with eternity, upon his bed of death, needs some- 
 thing stronger and better than the residuary probabilities 
 which may perchance have been suffered to escape from 
 some crucible of a destructive criticism. He wants, in 
 truth, to " plant his foot on some Eock beyond the sands 
 of time "; he must be assured that what seems true to him 
 is true in itself ; he must have something to lean on, holier, 
 diviner, more enduring than his own shifting consciousness. 
 
 Every good man must own the antecedent proba- 
 bility that a Eevelation would have been given. Every 
 earnest and thoughtful man feels it to be the merest 
 trifling, if after admitting that a Eevelation has been 
 made, you add that it " tells us nothing certain, 
 nothing that we do not know or cannot guess without 
 it, nothing that comes absolutely from without," and so is 
 distinct from our own untrustworthy impressions concern- 
 ing it. Eeligion, whether true or false, cannot be a mere 
 sentiment ; she never has lived and never can live in this 
 disembodied, airy, unsubstantial form to which Idealism 
 would condemn her ; she must have doctrines ; she must 
 speak with precision and authority ; she must undertake 
 the responsibility and bear the odium of asserting that 
 which will be assuredly and energetically contradicted ; 
 or she will make no adequate response whatever to the 
 deepest needs of man. But, you ask, has God made any 
 such response ? Undoubtedly He has. Our Lord's teach- 
 ing was emphatically definite. Witness His Sermon on 
 the Mount, where He contrasts the Judaic glosses on the 
 law with the true morality which He brought from heaven, 
 not contenting Himself with general undefined assertion, 
 but descending into particular cases, and putting each 
 form of moral error into sharp contrast with its antagon- 
 
Strength of His Ministers. 1 1 1 
 
 istic truth. Again, consider the peculiar imperativeness 
 and detailed character of His instructions to His Apostles. 
 Again, how clear and startling are His enunciations of 
 Sacramental truth to Nicodemus in the third chapter of 
 St. John's Gospel, and to the Jews in the sixth. Again, 
 the very explicitness of His revelations respecting His 
 Eternal Person is acknowledged by unbelieving critics, 
 and even erected into an argument against the genuineness 
 of that Gospel in which these revelations are principally 
 contained. Even our Lord's detached sayings (to adapt 
 an illustration from the infidel Strauss) lie on the surface 
 of the Gospel narrative like boulder fragments of granite, 
 which have been rent asunder from the parent rock, — so 
 firm are they, so eloquent are they of certainty, and of a 
 clear undoubting vision of absolute truth. Only consider 
 that scene in the synagogue of Nazareth. He has read 
 the prophecy concerning Himself from the roll of the 
 prophet Esaias ; and " closed the book, and delivered it 
 again to the minister, and has sat down." And He began 
 to say, " This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears." 
 Here you have a sharply defined commentary upon the 
 words of Scripture ; and how was it received ? " All bare 
 Him witness, and wondered at the gracious words that 
 proceeded out of His Mouth." 1 They, forsooth, had had 
 enough of probable, doubtful glosses from generations of 
 Rabbinical commentators ; and their great prophet had 
 told them that a King was coming to reign in righteous- 
 ness, and that His Reign would be marked by a religious 
 certainty which would console them for the ages of hesita- 
 tion and, relatively, of ignorance, which had preceded it. 
 " The eyes of them that see shall not be dim ; the ears of 
 them that hear shall hearken ; the heart of the rash shall 
 understand knowledge, and the tongue of the stammerers 
 shall be ready to speak." 2 And why ? " Thy teachers 
 
 1 St. Luke iv. 16-22. - Isa. xxxii. 3, 4. 
 
112 
 
 Our Lord's Example the 
 
 shall not be removed into a corner any more, but thine 
 eyes shall see thy teachers ; and thine ears shall hear a 
 word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, 
 when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the 
 left." 1 And therefore when our Lord came we are told 
 that His word was with power (iv i^ovaia 2 ) ; it was 
 because He responded to the deep yearnings of mankind 
 while He fulfilled the anticipations of prophecy ; it was 
 because He " taught as one having authority, and not as 
 the Scribes." 3 I do not forget that much has been put 
 forward as certain, even in the Name of Christ, which is 
 unquestionably false. This is only to admit that error can 
 caricature the features of truth, just as vice can mimic 
 the fruits of good-living. Nor do I forget that Eevelation 
 leaves as less than absolutely certain some truth which 
 it appears to intimate ; that there is a margin round the 
 Central Verities of faith, in which there is a lawful place 
 and home for mere opinion. Nor, again, does our Lord's 
 practice of teaching as men were able to bear His dis- 
 closures of truth 4 (so touching an illustration this of His 
 thoughtful tenderness), in any way militate against the fact 
 that He required faith in what He taught at last, as being 
 absolutely certain. "He that believeth in Him is not 
 condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned 
 already, because he hath not believed on the Name of the 
 Only-begotten Son of God." 5 If this were so, it was not 
 harshness or want of charity to point out the conse- 
 quences of wilful error ; rather was it the highest mercy 
 to tell men what such consequences were. 
 
 In this same spirit the teaching of the early Church was 
 always definite : her enemies have accused her of crystallis- 
 ing faith into dogmas when she was in reality defending 
 positive truth against a disintegrating scepticism ; she was 
 
 i Isa. xxx. 2o, 2i. - St. Lute iv. 32. 3 St. Matt. vii. 29. 
 
 * St. Mark iv. 33. » St. John iii. 18, 36 ; St. Mark xvi. 16. 
 
Strength of His Ministers. 1 1 3 
 
 true to the essential spirit of our Lord, and to the highest 
 interests of His Gospel, when she maintained the symbol 
 Homoousion against the versatile but unhappy Arius, or, as 
 afterwards, the Thcotokos against the miserable Nestorius. 
 For what was this but to carry out those words of the great 
 Apostle, " If we or an angel from heaven preach unto you 
 any other Gospel than that which we have preached unto 
 you, let him be accursed " ? 1 What was this but to 
 remember the spirit of our Lord's Prayer, " Sanctify them 
 through thy truth," 2 or of His declaration, " The truth 
 shall make you free " ? 3 Once, brethren, without that 
 truth, and we have lost the great instrument as well as 
 the justification of our work — the one great means of 
 bringing men to Christ. He has surrounded us in His 
 mercy with ample means of learning the truth, if we will 
 but believe that there is a truth to be learnt. And it is 
 not for us to speak of the eternal Gospel with the hesitat- 
 ing, criticising, suspicious accent that might befit a com- 
 mentator on some cunningly devised fable i of Pagan lore. 
 Let us not forget that the emissaries of error, ever watch- 
 ful and active, stand by to make the most of our short- 
 comings. Certainly, if in the long run we would win 
 souls, we must reflect our Master's tone of certainty and 
 defmiteness. Multitudes are weary of mere speculation ; 
 they have spent their lives in ever learning and never 
 coming to the knowledge of the truth. 6 It is for us to 
 point to our Divine Lord, as the Church proclaims Him, 
 in His Person, His Natures, His Office, and His Work, 
 " as an hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the 
 tempest ; as rivers of water in a dry place, and as the 
 shadow of a great rock in a weary land." 0 
 
 4. Once more, the Gospel narrative introduces us not 
 merely to the outward characteristics of Our Lord's 
 
 1 Gal. i. 8, 9. - St. John xvii. 17. 3 Ibid. viii. 32. 
 
 4 2 St. Pet. i. 16. 5 2 Tim. iii. 7. « Isa. xxxii. 2. 
 
 H 
 
U4 
 
 Our Lord's Example the 
 
 ministry, but to the more awful sanctuary of the Inner 
 Life of His Human Soul. Every man lives two lives : an 
 outward life which is visible to and felt by others, and 
 an inner life which is open to the Eye of God. As the 
 soul of the body, so the inner life is the animating, 
 quickening principle of the outward life. The outward 
 life may, for a time and under circumstances, be main- 
 tained in apparent independence of the life within. In 
 a hypocrite it is as the soil which overlies the volcano, 
 the treacherous cinder only separates you from the 
 smouldering fire beneath. In a good man it is char- 
 acterised by more or less of that reserve which is the 
 true garb of conscientiousness. Virtue, we know, fears 
 to be seen, lest the fresh hues of her beauty should be 
 imperilled by exposure. The inner life is, however, a 
 force which must make itself felt (especially in a clergy- 
 man) on the life without. It is a fountain, whose jet as 
 it plays upon the surface of clerical effort, must freshen 
 or pollute all around. " Out of the abundance of the 
 heart the mouth speaketh." 1 Now the Gospel permits 
 us to penetrate below the outward activities of speech 
 and miracle, to observe, from time to time, as if by 
 glimpses, the Inner Life of our Holy Lord. In Him we 
 see that Life continuing under all outward circumstances, 
 unchanged and unruffled. We catch glimpses of It in 
 the several notices of His dispositions, His affections, 
 His judgments, His regularity and system, as, e.g., in 
 the record of His calmness before His judges, and other 
 like details of which we read in the Gospels. Already 
 in considering our Lord's devotion to the glory of the 
 Eternal Father, we have encountered a leading feature of 
 His Inward Life, as well as a principle of His outward 
 Ministry. But especially let us observe how this Life 
 was sustained by prayer. Before the turning-points of 
 
 i St. Matt. xii. 34. 
 
Strength of His Ministers. 
 
 "5 
 
 His ministry, such as the calling of the Apostles and the 
 Passion, He engaged in special earnest prayer. In the 
 press of His ministry, we read that " in the morning, 
 rising up a great while before day, He went out and 
 departed into a solitary place, and there prayed." 1 
 Again, before the calling of the Apostles " He went 
 out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night 
 in prayer to God." 2 Again, in His Agony, that He 
 might teach us how to continue instant in prayer, He 
 repeated the selfsame words three times with increasing- 
 earnestness. 3 How touchingly did He, when foreseeing 
 the trials of His Apostle, remind St. Peter, " I have 
 prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not." 4 Most of all, in 
 the upper chamber He poured forth to His Father that 
 most wonderful prayer which is recorded in St. John xvii., 
 which reads as if it were a recorded fragment of His 
 Intercession in heaven, although we know that it was 
 uttered on earth. In that mighty Offering of our great 
 High Priest, His ministers may discover the strength, 
 the substance, the model of their own feeble but con- 
 stant intercessions. If outward ministries are not to 
 become heartless and formal, if the soul is to escape 
 dryness and dearth, if we are to meet inevitable suffer- 
 ing and disappointment, we must be men of prayer; 
 men, too, I would add, of meditation on our Lord's Life, 
 whereby the past is rendered present to the soul, and thus 
 rescued from the neglect which is apt to attach to a mere 
 historical record, however sacred its origin. Thus, and by 
 other means on which time does not permit me to dwell, 
 may we feed the sources of the inner life. God knows 
 that we need such sustenance. For our people have the 
 Bible in their hands, and they recognise, even where 
 they cannot describe, the true mien and outline of 
 
 1 St. Mark i. 35. 
 3 St. Matt. xxvi. 44. 
 
 2 St. Luke vi. 12. 
 * St. Luko xxii. 32. 
 
n6 
 
 Our Lord's Example the 
 
 prophets and apostles. They are not satisfied by a claim 
 to steer the bark of Peter, when the men who handle 
 the Gospel nets are unlike Peter in their whole spirit 
 and bearing. They are keenly alive to the power of 
 holiness : and holiness is not a thing of impulse and 
 eccentricity, it is the product of a regular, measured 
 growth ; there is an organic connection between its 
 several stages, a regular graduated ascent, marked by 
 successive conquests and expansions, which begin with 
 the foutal Regeneration or some subsequent conversion, 
 and lead up steadily to the opening heavens and to 
 the place in glory. And of this growth the Life of our 
 Lord's Human Soul is at once the model and the prin- 
 ciple. " Let this Mind be in you which was also in 
 Christ Jesus," 1 — something of His humility, of His meek- 
 ness, of His fortitude, of His keen-sighted prudence, of 
 His perfect obedience, of His awful purity, of His sepa- 
 rateness from earthly aims and motives, — for it is pos- 
 sible. It is possible, for He has promised again and 
 again to aid us in growing up unto the measure of the 
 stature of the fulness that is in Him. And to have the 
 Mind of Christ is to bring to bear upon the complex, 
 mysterious nature of man, a force which cannot but be 
 owned and felt ; it is to justify to men the supernatural 
 ordinances and divine mission of the Church; above all, 
 it is in the deepest sense to follow our Great Master, 
 and, like Him, to become fishers of men. 
 
 You will have perceived, my brethren, that I have 
 only drawn attention to a subject with which, in such 
 narrow limits, it is impossible more fully to deal. But 
 enough will have been said if, at this solemn hour, one 
 soul resolves, by the grace of God, to make nothing less 
 than the Life of Christ the rule and pattern of ministerial 
 attainment. " I have given you," He says, " an Example, 
 
 i Phil, ii. 5. 
 
Strength of His Ministers. 
 
 117 
 
 that ye should do as I have done unto you." 1 Men talk 
 of low and high standards, just as if there existed allow- 
 able varieties, and as if each variety might equally be 
 right. In Scripture now, and at the bar of God here- 
 after, it will be seen that there is no standard but one. 
 Each minister of God on whom we fix our gaze, from 
 Xavier and Henry Martyn upwards to St. Athanasius 
 and St. Paul, will bid us with the latter look onward 
 and higher for the real measure of apostolic perfection : 
 " Be ye imitators (fii^Tai) of me, even as I also am of 
 Christ." 2 But He "Who stands above them all receives as 
 of right the homage of an imitation which can mount 
 no higher, nor find a more absolutely perfect model. 
 "Thou Only art holy; Thou Only art the Lord; Thou 
 Only, 0 Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art Most High in 
 the Glory of God the Father." To each of us, dear 
 brethren, there comes this day a voice out of the more 
 excellent glory, as of old the first command was re- 
 peated as a parting admonition to St. Peter on the shore 
 of the lake of Galilee, ' Follow thou Me ; 3 — My devotion 
 to the glory of Him Who sent Me ; My tenderness for all 
 and each of the sons of men with whom I dealt ; My 
 doctrine, so clear and precise in its final enunciation, 
 yet so adapted in its delivery to the weak capacities of 
 those who heard it ; My inward Life of prayer and 
 self-dedication, and obedience to the leading of the 
 Eternal Spirit, — as these were the power and instruments 
 of My first Apostles, so may they, if ye will, be yours.' 
 May the Holy overshadowing Spirit enable each to hear 
 and obey that gracious whispering during the solemn 
 hours on which we are entering ; may we penetrate by 
 faith beyond the outward veil which meets the eye of 
 the body in this Cathedral, and with the deepest inner 
 reverence of our prostrate spirits, may we behold Christ 
 
 1 St. John xiii. 15. - 1 Cor. xi. 1, 3 St. John xxi. 22. 
 
n8 
 
 Our Lord's Example. 
 
 Jesus, our Living and Present Lord, moving among us 
 with Hand and Eye, to discern and bless ; even as the 
 Apostle beheld in vision at Patmos, in the midst of the 
 seven candlesticks, " One like unto the Son of Man, 
 clothed with a garment down to the Foot .... and 
 with a Countenance as the sun shining in his strength." : 
 At this awful crisis of our destinies, may He support 
 and brighten ns by resting our minds on Himself, the 
 true Model as well as the Hope of our ministerial call- 
 ing, the abiding Pdches of the glory of our future in- 
 heritance among the saints.' 2 
 
 1 Rev. i. 13, 16. 2 Eph. i. 18. 
 
SERMON IV. 
 
 THE WHOLE COUNSEL OF GOD. 1 
 
 Acts xx. 27. 
 
 / have not shunned to declare unto you the whole counsel of God. 
 
 HEEE is one of those passages in the New Testament, 
 which make a forcible and direct appeal to the 
 heart and conscience of every man who has undertaken 
 or is undertaking to serve God in Holy Orders. The 
 words occur in that parting charge to the Presbyters of 
 the Church of Ephesus, which on the eve of his going up 
 to Jerusalem, at the close of what is termed his third 
 Missionary journey, the great Apostle delivered on the 
 strand at Miletus. They are such words as escape men 
 at the turning-points of life, at entering upon or taking- 
 leave of great responsibilities — compressed, fervid utter- 
 ances of the deepest thought and of the strongest currents 
 of feeling — of thought and feeling which for the moment 
 will not be pent up and restrained within the barriers of 
 ordinary habit, or of studied reserve. Even a saint may, 
 nay, at certain times, he must speak of himself: and so 
 the great Apostle glances hastily at the labours and 
 sufferings which had marked his sojourn at Ephesus. 1 
 Then he points anxiously to the lowering future : he tells 
 his hearers the precise limits of his supernatural know- 
 ledge. The exact form of each of the many trials before 
 him he did not know ; but he knew generally, that in 
 
 1 Preached at the Ordination of the Bishop of Salisbury, in the Abbey 
 Church of St. Mary, Sherborne, on the Second Sunday in Lent, February 21, 
 1864. 2 Vers. 18-21. 
 
 119 
 
120 
 
 The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 every city bonds and afflictions awaited him, and iu parti- 
 cular, that he and they to whom he spake would meet 
 again in this world no more. 1 Under the pressing urgency 
 of this conviction, he predicts the coming sorrows of the 
 Church of Ephesus— the Church indeed of St. Timothy 
 and of St. John, but also the Church of men who denied 
 the central truth of the Insurrection ; 2 the Church of 
 Hymemeus, and Philetus and Alexander ; the Church of 
 the Mcolaitans, whose morals were hateful (we are told 
 in the Apocalypse) to the Lord Jesus ; 3 the Church, as it 
 might seem from St. John's first Epistle, of some of the 
 earliest heretics, who denied the real Union of Godhead 
 and Manhood in our Lord and Saviour. 4 Indeed, only a 
 few years later, we see in the two Epistles to Timothy 
 the clear traces of an organised opposition to Christian 
 truth at Ephesus, so formidable in its various intellectual 
 activities, that the stern energy of the Apostle's language 
 in the speech before us is only understood when read by 
 the light of a struggle, unlike to, and in some respects 
 more serious than, any other within the limits of the 
 Apostolical Age. 
 
 Casting his eye over this troubled future, St. Paul 
 utters a prophecy of mournful solemnity. " I know this, 
 that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in 
 among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own 
 selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things to draw 
 away disciples after them." 5 He exhorts them to watch : 
 he commends them tenderly to God : but he also recalls 
 to them the full measure of their personal responsibility. 
 His ministry had put them in entire possession of the 
 truth as it had come from heaven : and, if they fell into 
 the snares which lay thick around their future path, they 
 could not, when facing the knowledge and the justice of 
 
 1 Vers. 22, 25. 2 1 Tim. i. 20 ; 2 Tim. ii. 17, 18. 
 
 0 Rev. ii. 6. < 1 St. John iv. 2, 3. 5 Acts xx. 29, 30. 
 
The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 121 
 
 God, attempt to shelter themselves under the plea of 
 ignorance. "I take you to record this day, that I am 
 pure from the blood of all men. For I have not shunned 
 to declare unto you, all the counsel of God." 1 
 
 The whole counsel of God! Such is the Apostle's 
 expression for that fixed body of Truth, which we of this 
 day name more commonly the Gospel, the Eevelation of 
 Christ, the Faith of Christians. St. Paul says, that he 
 had declared the whole mind — that is, the whole revealed 
 mind — of God. Observe, of God. His language excludes 
 that conception of religious truth which makes it merely 
 the product of the truest, purest, deepest thoughts of the 
 highest and largest minds among the sons of men. " Flesh 
 and blood " had not revealed to St. Peter the dignity and 
 the claims of Jesus. 2 " Flesh and blood " added nothing 
 to that Eevelation of His Son which the Eternal Father 
 had made to the soul of St. Paul. 3 Eesting on a Divine 
 Authority, and being human only so far as was necessary 
 if it was to close with the intellect and the heart of man, — 
 human in its condescensions and human in its sympathy, 
 but in its truth and essence Divine — the Gospel was for 
 St. Paul unlike any other object-matter that entered into 
 his thought. It was sundered by a broad line of demarca- 
 tion from all else that seemed like it on this side or on 
 that ; it did not shade off into any either of the higher 
 philosophies or of the less sensual idolatries of the time. 
 So absolutely and exclusively true did he deem this 
 Gospel-truth to be, that could an Angel from heaven 
 have been conceived as preaching any other, the Apostle 
 would unhesitatingly have held him " accursed." 4 
 
 The whole counsel of God ! It was God's word, not 
 man's ; it was neither the result of a thoughtful specula- 
 tion, nor yet an approximate guess, nor yet a cunningly 
 devised fable. Being God's word, it was as a whole worthy 
 
 1 Acts xx. 26, 27. 2 St. Matt. xvi. 17. 3 Gal. i. 16. 4 Ibid. i. 8. 
 
122 
 
 The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 of the best thought and love that His creature could give 
 it. That ministry of three months in the great Ephesian 
 synagogue, 1 and then the two years which followed of 
 laborious teaching in the School of the Ehetorician 
 Tyrannus, 2 and last, but not least, the wide publicity, the 
 general attention, 3 and the active hatred of heathen foes 
 which culminated in the Eiot of the Amphitheatre, 4 had 
 enabled the Apostle to put forward the Gospel, the whole 
 area of its Doctrine, the many sides on which it attracted, 
 and awed, and subdued the soul of man — in unabridged 
 unmutilated completeness. " All they which dwelt in 
 Asia (i.e. Asia Minor) heard the word of the Lord Jesus, 
 both Jews and Greeks." 
 
 This solemn and momentous day may be the very 
 crisis of their destiny to those of us who are waiting to 
 receive a Commission from heaven at the Altar of this 
 noble Minster. And the words of the Apostle may serve 
 us well, as a guide to our thoughts, our aspirations, our 
 resolves. These time-honoured walls cannot but recall 
 to a stranger some of the most cherished memories of the 
 Anglo-Saxon Church ; 5 while in their renewed beauty 
 they speak not less persuasively of the renovated life of 
 the modern Church of England. Can we forget to-day 
 that wellnigh eight centuries have passed since here at 
 Sherborne the Commission of Christ was handed on by a 
 predecessor of our Chief Faster to those who in the early 
 ages of our national history sought to serve God within 
 the precincts of the Sanctuary ? How vast, we feel, is 
 the life of a Church, when contrasted with the fleeting 
 existence of her members : yet how insignificant, when we 
 place it side by side with the Being of her Everlasting 
 Lord ! His Ferson, His Word, the Laws of His Kingdom 
 
 i Acts xix. 8. 5 Ibid. xix. 9, 10. 
 
 3 Acts xix. 10, 17, 20. 4 Ibid. xix. 23-41. 
 
 = Cf. Handbook to the Abbey Church of St. Mary, Sherborne, by the Key. 
 E. Harston, pp. 32-38. 
 
The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 123 
 
 and of His Service, the results of His doctrine upon the 
 soul of man, are at this hour what they were at the first, 
 what they will be to the end of time. And if instead of 
 losing ourselves in vague reflection, we would give a 
 practical turn to our (it may be) somewhat eager tide of 
 thought and feeling, let us fix our attention on this 
 primal, this simple duty of an ordained man — the declara- 
 tion of the whole counsel of God. When St. Paul asserts 
 that he has not "shunned" to declare it, the English 
 word, and yet more strongly 1 the original for which it 
 stands, must remind us that there are many motives and 
 hindrances calculated to keep a man back from doing that 
 which must be done, if he fears his God, if he cares for 
 his own soul, if he has any true love for the souls of those 
 to whom of his own free will he undertakes to minister. 
 
 L 
 
 Now one cause of failure in this primary duty would 
 seem to lie in a lack of religious knowledge. It is 
 much more easy to be deficient in essential knowledge of 
 religious truth than we are apt to assume. I do not con- 
 template the extreme case of ignorance, whether this or 
 that doctrine does or does not lie within the limits of 
 Eevealed Truth. For it would be simply immoral in a 
 Christian Teacher not to have learnt the frontier and out- 
 line of that sacred deposit of the Faith which our Lord 
 and Saviour has committed to His Church to hold fast 
 and to hand on to the end of time. But far short of this 
 extreme shortcoming, may we not too easily acquiesce in 
 an ignorance which is scarcely less fatal to souls ? May 
 we not lapse into a habit of thinking and speaking of the 
 doctrines of the Gospel, as if they were like soldiers in a 
 
 1 inre(TTei\dfji7]v, cf. Meyer in loc. Dr. Wordsworth sees in it a nautical 
 metaphor, which might have been suggested by the scene before the speaker. 
 
I2 4 
 
 The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 regiment, — so many units, each adding something no 
 doubt to the collective bulk and area of doctrine, while 
 yet in no way essential to its organic completeness, 
 and therefore each capable of being withdrawn, without 
 inflicting any more serious injury upon the entire truth 
 than that of diminished size ? Do we not hear persous 
 talk of the articles of the Creed in this way, — as if each 
 article was a perfectly separate and new truth, — as if 
 each was, I might almost say, a new and gratuitous inflic- 
 tion upon the reluctant intellect of man, — as if each was 
 round and perfect in itself, and had no relations whatever 
 to any truth beyond it ? 
 
 Yet what does such language really prove but defective 
 knowledge in those (be they who they may) who use 
 it ? They " know " the doctrines of the faith only as so 
 many separate propositions. Of the Great Whole, which 
 lies beyond the words, — the several sides of which the 
 words do at best but imperfectly represent, — of the Body 
 and Substance of the Faith, they know little or nothing. 
 They fail to perceive the connexion, the interdependence, 
 the organic unity of all truth that rests on the authority 
 of God. Their view is too superficial to enable them to 
 do justice to that marvellous adjustment of truth to truth, 
 of faculty to object, of result to cause, which is a direct 
 and obvious perception to souls who gaze prayerfully and 
 steadily at the complete Eevelation of Christ. These 
 really shortsighted persons do not miss a revealed doc- 
 trine which is withdrawn ; nor are they offended when a 
 human speculation is elevated to co-ordinate rank with 
 the certainties of Faith. It seems to them to be merely 
 a question between more or less belief; between a larger 
 or a smaller creed ; between, as they would speak, a 
 greater or a less number of dogmas. But in reality each 
 truth touches, implies, has relations to, truths right and 
 left of it ; and these relations are so intimate and so vital, 
 
The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 that no truth can be withdrawn, and leave conterminous 
 truths intact. The Faith is, if I may say so with rever- 
 ence, so marvellously compacted, so instinct with a 
 pervading life, as to resemble a natural organism, I had 
 almost said a living creature. Just as St. James says of 
 the moral law, that he who offends in one point is guilty 
 of all, 1 because of the unity of the impaired principle; 
 and as St. Paul teaches, that in the body of the Church, 
 if one limb or member suffer, all the members suffer with 
 it, 2 in virtue of an internal and necessary sympathy ; so 
 in the Creed, no one truth can be misrepresented, strained, 
 dislocated, much less withdrawn, without a certain, and 
 frequently an ascertainable injury resulting to other 
 truths which are supposed to be still unquestioned and 
 intact. For there are nerves and arteries which link the 
 very extremities of Eevealed Doctrine to its brain and 
 heart ; and the wound which a strain or an amputation 
 may inflict, must in its effects extend far beyond the 
 particular doctrine which is the immediate seat and scene 
 of the injury. 
 
 This power of perceiving and exhibiting the deeper in- 
 ternal relations and grounds of Christian Doctrine might 
 seem to correspond to that " word of knowledge " (X070? 
 yvaxreax;) which in his catalogue of the gifts of the Spirit 
 St. Paul distinguishes from the " word of wisdom " (X070? 
 cro^t'a?) — the faculty of stating the truths and mysteries 
 of the faith in clear and precise language. 3 It is to be 
 won partly by the culture and exercise of the sanctified 
 intellect in study, partly, nay rather specially, by prayer 
 
 1 St. James ii. 10. 2 i Cor. xii. 26, 27. 
 
 3 <To<j>la niimlich ist die hohere christliche Weisheit (1 Cor. ii. 6) au und 
 fiirsicli, so dass Rede, welche die Lehrstiieke (Mysterien) derselbeu ausspricht, 
 klar macht, anwendet, u. s. w., \6yos <ro<plas ist. Damit ist aber die tiefdrin- 
 gende Erkeuntniss dieser Lehrstiieke, die speculative Erfassung und Einsicht 
 und Verarbeitung ilires Zusammenhangs, ihrer Griinde, ihrer tiefern Ideen, 
 ihrer Beweise, ihrer Ziele, u. s. w. noch nicht gesetzt ; eine Rede aber, 
 welche sicht damit beschiiftigt, ist \6yos yv&oem. Meyer in 1 Cor. xii. 8. 
 
126 
 
 The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 for illumination and a habit of meditation on Scripture 
 and the Creeds. There are eminent exercises of this gift 
 within the limits of inspiration. St. Paul's demonstration 
 of the fatal antagonism of the practice of circumcision to 
 true belief in our Lord's redemptive work, in the Epistle 
 to the Galatians, will naturally occur to us. Of un- 
 inspired instances I may refer to that masterly and 
 well-known account of the connection between the doc- 
 trine of the Sacraments and the doctrine of the Incarna- 
 tion, which the English Church owes to the mind, and 
 which she studies in the language of the great Hooker. 
 
 When a man possesses this gift of knowledge — of 
 " knowledge " in the technical sense of St. Paul — -he will 
 teach the whole truth not by an effort or mechanically, 
 but in virtue of an instinct. He will be carried forward, 
 from principle to application, from centre to circum- 
 ference, from the heart and brain of doctrine to its utmost 
 extremities ; because he sees, he cannot but see, its 
 evident, its organic unity ; because to mutilate it would 
 be to him scarcely anything short of a moral and intel- 
 lectual agony. A living faith, informed by study, and 
 quickened and stimulated by prayer, can hardly be guilty 
 of accidental, never of culpable reticence ; it cannot but 
 " declare the whole counsel of God." 
 
 II. 
 
 A second hindrance is lack of courage. To speak for 
 God to man, — for the Just and Holy God to man, sinful 
 and wilful in his sin — requires nerve and courage. To 
 represent God as He is — as Just no less than Merciful, as 
 punishing sin no less certainly than rewarding faith and 
 holiness — this, to be done well and honestly, requires 
 courage. Moses before Pharaoh, Samuel before Saul, 
 Micaiah before Ahab, Jeremiah before the Princes of 
 Judah, St. John the Baptist before Herod Antipas, St. 
 
The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 127 
 
 Stephen before the Sanhedrim, St. Paul before Felix and 
 Agrippa, and (in a sense altogether peculiar and un- 
 rivalled) our Divine Lord before the Jewish Priest and 
 the Eoman Magistrate — these represent the attitude and 
 the fortunes of truth at the bar of human nature. Human 
 nature indeed is wretched, and it craves for comfort — 
 that, my clerical brethren, that is our opportunity ; 1 but 
 it is also proud, and it resents humiliations — ay, and it is 
 strong, and likely, in its own fashion and way, to express 
 its roused resentment. Of old they understood this well, 
 who went forth uplifting the cross, while yet baring their 
 breasts to death. They knew that the patient to whom 
 they were carrying the medicine, that would cure him 
 would often refuse the draught, and would punish the 
 physician who dared to offer it. But they loved man, 
 and they loved and feared their God too sincerely and 
 too well, to infuse new ingredients, or to withdraw any of 
 the bitter but needful elements of cure. They accepted 
 civil and social proscription ; they endured moral and 
 physical agony ; they embraced, one after another, with 
 cheerful hearts, the very warrants and instruments of 
 their death, — because they had counted the cost, and had 
 measured too well the greatness of their task, and the 
 glories of their anticipated eternity, to shrink sensitively 
 back at the first symptoms of opposition, or of difficulty. 
 St. Paul might have foreseen the conduct of Demetrius, 
 and the tumult in the amphitheatre; but this was no 
 serious reason for considering the worship of Diana as a 
 sort of modified or imperfect revelation, or as anything 
 short of a hateful lie. 2 He did not shrink from declaring 
 the whole counsel of God. 
 
 1 2 Cor. i. 4. 
 
 2 St. Paul's speech at Athens recognises that element of natural Religion 
 which is at the bottom of all superstitions, however debased. What the 
 Apostle really thought of the Paganism of the Ancient World as a whole is 
 best understood from such passages as Rom. i. 23-32. 
 
128 
 
 The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 If I yet feared men, says the Apostle, I should not be 
 the servant of Christ. 1 The man who is not in very deed 
 emancipated from bondage to any human fear cannot 
 do justice either to the needs of his fellow-men or the 
 Eights of God. He cannot be loyal to Truth. There are 
 petty oppositions, petty persecutions, indirect yet powerful 
 influences, which will stay a man's hand, and silence his 
 tongue, even in this age and land of civil freedom ; unless 
 his conscience be quick and his will strong, through a 
 constant sight of One Who is the Lord and the Subject of 
 that Truth which He proclaims. He will abridge, soften 
 down, mutilate his message, unless he have penetrated the 
 certainty that the fear of man bringeth a snare 2 — to all 
 indeed who would serve God in sincerity of purpose, — to 
 none, with such fatal and destructive results, as to the 
 man who undertakes to serve Him in the Christian 
 Priesthood. 
 
 III. 
 
 The want of spirituality of heart and soul is a third 
 cause of defective representation of doctrine. To speak 
 for God to the souls of men, a man must himself, in his 
 inmost soul, have consciously stood face to face with that 
 truth of which he speaks. 3 He must speak of God as one 
 who has known at once His dread awfulness and His 
 tender love ; of sin, as that which he feels to be the one 
 master-evil, and with which as such he has struggled in 
 good truth within his secret self ; of Christ, His Person, 
 His propitiatory and atoning Death, His life-giving Sacra- 
 ments, as of the Person and Acts of a dear Friend, loved 
 with the heart's warmest and best affection, while yet 
 adored with the deepest homage and by the chiefest 
 powers of his prostrate spirit ; of Eternity as of that for 
 
 1 Gal. i. io. 2 Prov. xxix. 25. 
 
 3 1 St. Johu i. 1-3. 
 
The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 which he is himself making daily solemn preparation ; of 
 prayer, anal the care of conscience and the culture of purity 
 and truth within, as of things of which he knows something 
 by trial and exercise, perhaps even something more by 
 failure. Himself a redeemed sinner speaking to sinners 
 who need or who have found their Redeemer, he will speak 
 in earnest. The issues of endless life or endless death may 
 hang upon his words ; but his strength must lie in the 
 profound conviction that he is but the instrument and 
 organ of One Whose livery he wears before the eyes of 
 men, and without Whom he can do nothing. Christian 
 Preaching may be defined either as Speaking for God, or as 
 Speaking to souls ; but whichever definition a man keeps 
 most prominently before him, he must aim in the pulpit 
 at making a spiritual as distinct from a merely literary 
 effort. Above him is the Father of Spirits, dwelling in 
 light which no man can approach unto. Before him is 
 the human soul, strong, subtle, intricate, with untold 
 capabilities for good and evil, for joy and agony. Surely 
 he cannot but keep close to those great truths which warm 
 the heart and nerve the will, and raise the whole spiritual 
 being from sin to holiness, from death to life, from the 
 miseries and degradations of mere nature to the sanctities 
 and magnificence of grace. But if the preacher should 
 himself stand outside the spiritual life ; if prayer, com- 
 munion with God, discipline of the will, culture of the 
 affections, — if these things should seem to him but an 
 extravagance or a fanaticism, and if the Faith of the 
 Church be only lodged in his understanding, as an im- 
 portant fact in the history of opinion, or as the bare result 
 of an arithmetical calculation ; then it is not difficult to 
 see how he will presently fail, as a matter of course, to 
 declare the whole counsel of God. His thought will drift 
 naturally away from the central and most solemn truths 
 to the literary embellishments which surround the faith ; 
 I 
 
i 3 o 
 
 The Whole Cotmsel of God. 
 
 he will toy with questions of geography, or history, or 
 custom, or scene, or dress ; he will reproduce with vivid 
 power the personages and events of long-past ages, it may 
 be with the talent of a master-artist ; he will give to the 
 human side of Religion the best of his time and of his 
 toil. In doing this he may, after the world's measure, be 
 doing good work ; but let us not deceive ourselves — he 
 will not be saving souls. Souls are saved by men who 
 themselves count all things but dung that they may win 
 Christ, and be found in Him ; 1 and who, even if they be 
 men of refined taste and of cultivated intellect, know well 
 how to subordinate the embellishments of Truth to its 
 vital and soul-subduing certainties. Especially if a man 
 should take refuge in the literary aspects of Scripture, 
 because he is not sufficiently assured of its leading truths 
 to reproduce them with the accent — the accent which the 
 people understand so perfectly — of simple unfaltering 
 conviction ; then the contrast between his graceful but 
 relatively useless disquisitions, and the glorious Creed of 
 the Church of God — which in its integrity alone responds 
 to the profound yearnings of the soul — will be painful in 
 proportion to the opportunities which he has missed, and 
 to the powers which he has abused. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Once more : here, as in the whole field of ministerial 
 labour, let a man work and pray for the grace of an un- 
 selfish spirit. Let him endeavour to strangle the love of 
 self by the love of God and the love of man. For without 
 charity, though a man should speak with the tongues of 
 men or of angels, he will do nought for the real good of 
 his hearers, or for the glory of his Lord. Selfishness will 
 spoil everything. How often are not we, the Eepresenta- 
 
 i Phil. iii. 8. 
 
The Whole Counsel of God. 1 3 1 
 
 tives of Christ, constrained to rebuke ourselves, humble 
 ourselves, condemn ourselves, by the words which we 
 speak from the Chair of Truth ! Some there have been 
 who have yielded to the fatal temptation of being, what 
 they call, consistent. They tone down God's message to 
 the miserable level of their own felt shortcomings. They 
 make of the Gospel a Gospel of acquiescence in sin, rather 
 than a Gospel of redemption from it ; they profess to see in 
 it a patronage of the flesh, and a recognition of the world, 
 I had almost said, a co-partnership with the Evil One. 
 Alas ! who can doubt, that unless a man can speak, in 
 simple sincerity, as for Christ and from Christ, — careless 
 though his words should only reach his people at the 
 manifest expense, nay, through the deep humiliation, the 
 self-inflicted, self-adjudged penance of their Minister, — it 
 must needs go hard with him hereafter in the day of 
 account. Better it surely were never to speak at all, than 
 to make the Lord of Purity and Light a seeming accom- 
 plice in the crime and darkness of His creature ! Far 
 better were silence than the advocacy of an impoverished 
 — a mutilated — a false Gospel — a Gospel robbed of all 
 that is mysterious, awful, supernatural, divine ; because, 
 forsooth, to preach the perfect Truth which came from 
 heaven is unbecoming for one who lives, and who feels that 
 he lives, as if it were not true ! Even the double-hearted 
 prophet, who knew that he had much to win by falsehood, 
 could not but tell the Pagan king, who would fain have 
 subsidised his inspirations, " Whatsoever the Lord telleth 
 me, that will I speak." 1 And can we, beneath the Cross 
 of Christ, so pander to self, as to " handle the word of 
 God deceitfully " ? Dare we say less than what we know 
 to be Truth, because we know also that Truth in its 
 fulness would be our condemnation ? 
 
 Or take another illustration of the need of an un- 
 
 1 Numb. xxii. 38 ; xxiii. 12, 26 ; xxiv. 13. 
 
132 
 
 The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 selfish spirit. It is possible, nay probable, that we may 
 have what are called favourite doctrines, sections or sides 
 of Truth through which God has in a special sense 
 spoken to us, moved us, sanctified us, (as we trust) saved 
 us. Of these, no doubt, we can speak with more power, 
 because with more intimate perception of their bearing 
 on the secret springs of life and death. But we also 
 speak of such points with less of moral and intellectual 
 effort than of others ; and this greater facility is likely 
 to be the real cause of our giving them an undue pro- 
 minence in our cycle of teaching, while we endeavour 
 to whisper to our consciences, and to persuade our, friends, 
 that these points are the essentials of the Gospel, and 
 that all the rest is comparatively unnecessary. Thus 
 men teach the Atonement, and ignore the Sacraments ; 
 or they teach the need of faith, and ignore the need of 
 love and holiness ; or they teach the beauty of our Lord's 
 character, and forget His Propitiatory and Sacrificial 
 Death ; or, conversely, they insist upon the outward 
 duties of religion, and do scant justice to the spiritual 
 and internal forces of the soul. We must teach all that 
 God has revealed, because He has revealed it, leaving it 
 to Him to touch one soul by this, and another soul by 
 that portion of His Revelation. Even within the limits 
 of inspiration, St. Paul preached faith, and St. John love, 
 and St. James practical energy, each giving prominence 
 (but nothing more) to these, several sides of the Christian 
 life, while yet each preached it as a whole. Xo man of 
 modesty and thoughtfulness would make the narrow 
 circle of experiences that have passed within his own 
 soul the absolute standard of the truths and powers 
 which may act on others: and no duty is more difficult 
 or more serious than that of detaching ourselves from 
 the influence of " favourite doctrines," and, as far as may 
 be, teaching the whole truth in its integrity to all to 
 
The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 133 
 
 whom we owe it, as the gift of God. And the Proper 
 Lessons and Epistles and Gospels of the Church Service 
 enable us to correct our natural tendency towards a 
 choice of texts and subjects which fall within our own 
 more contracted area of thought and feeling : so that in 
 making it a rule always to preach from the Services of 
 the Day, or at least on a subject suggested by the season, 
 we make provision against one of the chief temptations 
 to teach something less than the whole counsel of God. 
 Nothing, however, but a spirit of genuine self-sacrifice, 
 nothing but a true love of the souls of men, can enable a 
 man so to forego his own predilections, so to throw 
 himself into the state of mind, and points of view, and 
 peculiar difficulties, and narrower or broader horizons of 
 bis hearers, as to lose himself, and the little history of his 
 own spirit, in the mighty work of proclaiming in its 
 perf'ectness the Truth of God. We know how the great 
 Apostle combined this perfect consideration for others, 
 with an unflinching, chivalrous loyalty to the claims of 
 Truth. " Though I be free from all men, yet have I made 
 myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more. 
 And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain 
 bhe Jews; to them that are under the Law as under the 
 Law, that I might gain them that are under the Law ; to 
 them that are without law, as without law (being not 
 without law to God, but under the Law to Christ), that 
 I might gain them that are without law ; to the weak 
 became 1 as weak, that I might gain the weak ; I am 
 made all things to all men, that I might by all means 
 save some." 1 How could self-sacrifice be more un- 
 sparing? By whom could the duty of declaring the 
 whole counsel of God be more forcibly proclaimed, 
 than by a man who gave up all else to enable him to 
 disci large it ? 
 
 1 1 Cor. ix. 19-22. 
 
* 34 
 
 The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 Under ordinary circumstances, my brethren, it might 
 be natural at this point to leave the principles which 
 have been insisted on to your mature reflections, and to 
 the obvious force of their intrinsic truth. The duty 
 before us is sufficiently plain ; and the risk of wearying 
 you might well lead me to pause, if it were indeed pos- 
 sible to do so. But I yet owe something to the promptings 
 of conscience, and to the Eights of God. Nor would 
 your judgment be harsh or unreasonable, if you should 
 interpret my silence as to a matter of pressing and 
 public anxiety, as something less easily to be pardoned 
 than mere failure to satisfy the many claims, of this 
 great occasion. Such silence would in fact be nothing 
 short of notorious treachery to the whole spirit and 
 drift of those kindling words, which it has been my 
 endeavour to recommend and illustrate. 
 
 At no age of the Church could the ambassadors of 
 Christ have afforded to forget the Apostle's example of 
 " not shunning to declare all the counsel of God." But 
 never was the force of that example more needed than in 
 our own day. Illustrations indeed press so urgently upon 
 the mind, as it ranges over the recent history of the 
 Church, that the preacher's embarrassment lies in the very 
 liberty of his choice : but one illustration, I doubt not, 
 will have occurred to many of us living at this time, and 
 living, my Lord Bishop, under your Lordship's jurisdiction, 
 in this your diocese of Salisbury, with painful but irre- 
 pressible prominence. My brethren, it would be an affec- 
 tation, if I should profess to suppose you ignorant of a 
 recent Judgment, 1 proceeding not indeed from a spiritual 
 but from a temporal Court ; which, although it professes, 
 and that eagerly,' 2 to avoid all attempts at formal deter- 
 
 1 The reference is to the then recent Judgment in the case of Fendall versus 
 
 Wilson. 
 
 - " With respect to the legal tests of doctrine in the Church of England, by 
 the application of which we are to try the soundness or unsoundness of the 
 
The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 135 
 
 initiation of doctrine, yet does unquestionably determine 
 the legal sense and value of doctrinal formularies, and, as 
 doing this, has and must have, practically and morally, no 
 little weight with large classes of our countrymen. That 
 Judgment would seem, among other points, to have ruled, 
 that it is permissible in law for a clergyman to express a 
 " hope " for the final restoration of the lost. No man can 
 know anything of his own sinful heart who does not 
 know how much there is within him which is ready to 
 welcome such a permission ; but the question is a question 
 not of the inclinations of a sinful creature, but of the 
 Eevealed Will of a Holy God. May we, consistently with 
 that Will, indulge that "hope"? Assuredly not. For 
 nothing is more certain than that by the terms of the 
 Christian revelation any such hope is delusive and vain, 
 since it is opposed to the awful Truth, that they who die 
 out of favour with God and are lost, are lost irrevocably, 
 lost for ever. If Holy Scripture is still to be our Rule of 
 Faith, Scripture, I submit, is decisive. If Hooker's well- 
 known caution as to the interpretation of Scripture, " that 
 where a literal interpretation will stand, the farthest from 
 the letter is commonly the worst " is still to be kept in 
 mind, that rule will preclude any serious doubt as to the 
 real mind of Scripture in this solemn matter. Scripture 
 is no less explicit as to the endlessness of the woe of the 
 lost soul than as to the endlessness of the scene or instru- 
 ment of its punishment. Isaiah speaks of the "everlast- 
 ing burnings," 1 Daniel of " everlasting contempt," 2 our 
 
 passages libelled, we agree with the learned Judge in the Court below that the 
 Judgment in the Gorhani case is conclusive : — This Court has no jurisdiction 
 or authority to settle matters of faith, or to determine what ought in any par- 
 ticular to be the Doctrine of the Church of England. Its duty extends only 
 to the consideration of that, which is by law established to be the Doctrine of 
 the Church of England, upon the true and legal construction of her articles 
 and formularies." — Judgment (Guardian, Feb. 10, 1864). 
 1 ibSV 'IpiO Isa. xxxiii. 14. - Q^y px"n Dan. xii. 2. 
 
i 3 6 
 
 The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 Lord of " the everlasting fire " once and again, 1 -St. Paul of 
 " everlasting destruction " or ruin, 2 St. Jude of " a black- 
 ness of darkness which is reserved for ever." 3 Three 
 times speaking of the penal woe of the lost, the Apostle of 
 Love uses an expression of energetic redundancy and 
 force : he says that it lasts " unto ages of ages." 4 Just as 
 the elect will reign in heaven for ever and ever, 5 as holy 
 souls desire that God may be glorified for ever and ever, 6 
 as Jesus Risen from His grave is alive "for evermore," 7 
 as in His glory He shall reign for ever and ever, 8 as the 
 very Life of God Himself is described by saying that " He 
 liveth for ever and ever," 9 so is this same measure applied 
 to the punishment of the lost souls. 10 Are we to say that 
 a period of limited duration is all that is meant to be 
 ascribed in Scripture to the glory of the blessed in heaven, 
 to the Glorified Life and Reign of Jesus, to the very self- 
 existent Life of God Himself, in order to enable ourselves 
 to rest in the conception of a Purgatory beyond the Final 
 Judgment, as less shocking to our " consciousness " than 
 the Belief in Hell ? And if not, can we certainly deter- 
 mine that as applied to Hell this phrase has au altogether 
 narrower sense than that which we ascribe to it in such 
 passages as apply it to Heaven or to the Reign of Christ \ 
 Modern scepticism has tampered with the word " Eternal," 
 just as it has emptied " Salvation," " Atonement," " Grace," 
 — nay the very Name of God Himself — of their natural 
 meaning. But " everlasting" means neither more nor less 
 than that which lasts for ever. True indeed it is that the 
 
 1 rb irvp t6 alwinov, St. Matt, xviii. 8, xxv. 41. 
 
 2 6\(6pov aiuviov, 2 Thess. i. 9. 
 
 3 Oli 6 '(b<pos toS aKbrovs eii tov aiCiva TfTripyTai, Jude 13. 
 
 4 The smoke of their torment asceiuieth up for ever and ever, eis aiuivas 
 aiuivwv, Rev. xiv. 11 ; cZs toi'S aiui^as twv aiwvuv, Rev. xix. 3, and Rev. xx. 
 10. The language of Isaiah from which this is taken would certainly seem to 
 refer to a more than temporal judgment on Edom and other nations. Isa. 
 xxxiv. 9, 10. 5 Rev. xxii. 5. li 1 Tim. i. 17 ; Heh. xiii. 21, etc. 
 
 7 Rev. i. 18. 8 Ibid. xi. 15. 9 Ibid. iv. 9, io, v. 14, x. 6. 1(1 Cbisup. 
 
The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 137 
 
 Hebrew expression which, when applied to future time, 
 answers to the English " for ever," does in particular 
 instances mean something less than boundless duration. 
 But this is the case only where a limitation is forced upon 
 the word by the subject to which it is applied. Originally 
 the word does imply indefinite, — the nearest approach, 
 perhaps, which the human mind can make to infinite, — 
 extent of continuance. Taken at its lowest range of 
 meaning, it means an existence co-extensive with that to 
 which it is applied. 1 In the New Testament, there is a 
 substantive which varies with the various meanings of this 
 Hebrew word ; 2 but there is also an adjective derived from 
 that substantive, which at least, as used in the New 
 Testament, does not so vary, 3 but means what we English 
 
 1 D^W, properly that which is hidden ; as applied to future time, that 
 which is lost to sight in the distance. Instances of the narrow range of the 
 word may be found in Gen. ix. 12; Ex. xii. 14-17, xxvii. 21, xxviii. 43; 
 Lev. x. 15, etc. Not however in such passages as Ps. xlv. 7, lxxii. 5, 17, 
 lxxxix. 37, where Rationalists limit the word in deference to their own pre- 
 judices against the Messianic predictions. Nor again in salutations, 1 Kings 
 i. 31 ; Neh. ii. 3; Pan. ii. 4, etc., since in these cases the true force of the 
 expression is to be measured by the belief of the Jews in the immortality of 
 the soul. Of what range of meaning the word is really capable will be best 
 understood from a consideration of the following extract from Gesenius : 
 "vera aiternitatis notio in vocabulo nostro lis in locis inest, qui immortalem 
 suinini Numinis naturam spectant, quod, vocatur Qpiy Deus reternus, 
 
 Gen. xxi. 33 ; Jer. xl. 28. Q^iyn Tl > n sternum vivens Dan. xii. 7 (cf. 
 
 vivere in sternum, immortalem esse instar deorum [Dei] Gen. iii. 
 22; Job vii. 16), Cui tribuuntur ch\]} fliyif brachia oeterna Deut. xxxiii. 
 27, et de Quo dicitur nnX D^iy D^i J7» Ps- xc. 2, ab aiternitate ad 
 seternitatem, Tu es Deus. Ps. ciii. 17, cf. Ps. ix. 8, x. 16, xxix. 10, xciii. 2." — 
 Thesaurus sub voc. Q^y. 
 
 2 aluv. Although, as Bretschneidcr remarks, "partim Graecorum more 
 usurpatur." Like cb'W its original meaning 1 was that of unlimited duration, 
 and the narrower senses were imposed upon it subsequently. "Aristoteles 
 llicubi scripsit aliov dici quasi aliv &v." — Vorstius, Hebraism. X. T. ii. 39. 
 
 :1 That in the LXX. aiwfios like aiCov, when applied to future time, varies 
 in its meanings with the senses of ch)]} is clear from the passages given in 
 jfrommius, s. v. But, when the Gospel had "brought life and immortality 
 
The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 mean by " everlasting." And it is this last-named word 
 which is used in the passages principally under discussion. 
 If it should be precariously contended that this word 
 implies positive endlessness of continuance, as little as it 
 admits of any defined limitation of continuance, it may 
 at least be observed, that as used in Scripture of the 
 penal misery of the lost, the expression " eternal " is fixed 
 in the sense of endless duration by two considerations. 
 Where that word is applied to our home in Heaven, the 
 hopes and longings of men gladly do justice to the 
 natural force of human language. But it is noteworthy, 1 
 
 to light" more distinctly, the use of the word aiiivios was limited (within the 
 precincts of the New Testament) to the idea (taken at the lowest) of indefinite 
 continuance. It is used seventy-one times in the N. T. It is an attribute of 
 i"ai?) forty-four times. St. John never uses it in any other connection ; and it 
 occurs twenty-three times in his writings. In two cases only is it possible to 
 argue fairly that the word may have a limited meaning, (i) Philemon 15, 
 aiwviov avrbv d^xs*. where however Bietschneider (Lex. Man. in voc.) con- 
 strues the word ''ilium in sempiternuni, scilicet, quia C'hristianus factusjam 
 vit.e aHerua? particeps erat." So (to omit others) Huther in loc. "Die 
 christliche bruderlichc Verbinduug in die Ewigkeit reiche." (2) St. Jude 7, 
 7ri'pos aiwviov 5iktiv, where Pol. Syuops. in Inc. observes that the natural con- 
 struction of the whole passage is that "Eas urbes incensas instar exbibere 
 ignis a;terni, qui impios expectat." The remarks of Huther apply to our 
 E. V.: Trupos aiuviov construiren De Wette, Aniaud mit den folgenden SiK-nv 
 b-trlxovaai, weil dieses sonst zu entbldsst stande : allein das Feuer, womit sie 
 bestraft sind, kounte von Judas nicht wohl das eieige Feutr genaunt werden ; 
 dies ist stehende Beztichnung des Holleufeuers, dem die im letzen Gerichte 
 Verurtheilten uberliefert werden ; darum ist es besser irvp. aioiv. mit deiyfia 
 zu verbinden ; jene Stadte sind 5'ikt)v vvexovaai ein Exenipel des Ewigen 
 Feuers. — Brief des Judas, p. 217. 
 
 1 aliliviov in N. T. dicitur omue quod est finis expers, maxime id. quod 
 est post hujus vitre mundique decursum eventurum. Hue pertinent omnia 
 ilia N. T. loca, in quibus formulae : wvp aiwviov, Kpiait aiJiifiot, Kpifxa. aiuvtov, 
 K6\aais aiiifios, fay (56%a, cur-qpia) aiwvios reperiuntur, v. c. Matt, xviii. 8, 
 xix. 16, xxv. 41, 46. Marc. iii. 29. Rom. ii. 7. 2 Tim. ii. 10. Heb. v. 9. 
 Quemadmodum enim formulis wvp ai'iivtoc et sqq. poena; perpetuse peccutorum, 
 quas impii ]>ost banc vitam luent, sorsque eorum misera Jutura non inter- 
 rujita indicautur, ita opposita formula : farj alttivtos perennis felicitatis 
 piorum post mortem status et conditio significatur, qua; 2 Cor. iv. 17. aiJivwf 
 /japos 6of7)s, Luc. xvi. 9. o^^ai ot'un'tot, Heb. ix. 15. aiwvios KXrjpoi'op.ia. 
 et 2 Pet. i. 11. aiJjvios (5a<ri\cia tov 0eoO appellatur. Schleusner, Lexicon, 
 p. 67. So too Bietschneider (Lex. Man. in v.), who after quoting all the 
 
The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 139 
 
 that no stronger expressions are applied anywhere to the 
 Eternal Life of the Blessed in Heaven, within the New 
 Testament, than are also used to describe the endlessness 
 of the pains of Hell : 1 and therefore the notion that of the 
 two states Heaven only is endless, finds no support from 
 the language of Scripture, but rests solely upon a human 
 speculation external to it. On the other hand, " eternal " 
 is not the only attribute applied in the New Testament 
 to the state of punishment : the word is illustrated and 
 defined by other terms which necessarily fix its true 
 meaning. The Baptist speaks of the penal fire as 
 " unquenchable." 2 Our Lord Himself adopts the word ; 
 He thrice said of the " worm " of a sinful conscience that 
 " it dieth not," and that " the fire " of its punishment " is 
 not quenched." 3 The prophet, whose language is quoted, 
 had used a future tense, 4 the Divine Speaker, before 
 whose Eyes the unseen world is spread out — on this side 
 in all its unspeakable Beauty, on that in all its unutter- 
 able Woe — uses a present, as describing the fact yet more 
 
 passages in which the word aiwirtos is applied to blessedness or woe, observes, 
 ' Ai'wwos in fornmlis ^utj aiiiv. irvp alwv. 56£a aiuv. kSXcmtis, 6\edpos, upt/ia, 
 Kpiais aiwv. sempiternum nunquam finiendum indicare dubio caret, quum 
 praemia aeque ac puena; post resurrectionem senipiternie quoque haberentur a 
 Juda;is. Vid. test. Aser. in Fab. Cod. Pseud. V. T. i. p. 693. potissiumm 
 Psalter. Salom. Ps. 3. vers. 13. 15, 16, ubi T) oTciXeia tov ap.apru\ov ei's 
 tov aiwva ; pioruni far] aiuji'ios autem, ovk iK\et\lret en. p.31. 
 
 1 Commenting on the use of aiwvios in St. Matt. xxv. 41, 46, with reference 
 to endless life and endless death, St. Augustine observes : " Si utrumque 
 Beternum, profecto ant utrumque cum fine diuturnum, ant utrumque sine fine 
 perpetuum debet intelligi. Par pari enim relata sunt, hinc supplicium 
 asternuiu, inde vita sterna. Dicere autem in hoc uno eodemque sensu, vita 
 asterna sine fine erit, supplicium aetcrnum finem habebit, multum absnrdum 
 est. Unde, quia vita aiterna sanctorum sine fine erit, supplicium quoque 
 sternum quibus erit, finem procul dubio lion habebit."— De Civ. Dei, xxi. 
 23. Even Hagenbach, who quotes this passage, observes : " It is superfluous to 
 quote other Fathers, inasmuch as they all more or less agree."— Hist. Docl. 
 vol. i. p. 387. 
 
 - irvp StafieaTov, St. Matt. iii. 12. 
 
 3 eis to irvp to ao~fito~Tov owov 6 ctkwXtj^ avrwv ov reXeurp, Kai to wvp oil 
 irfliwvTtu, St. Mark ix. 43, 44, 46, 48. ^331"! iib Dti'XI, Isa. lxvi. 24- 
 
1 40 The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 vividly. If endless punishment could be described in 
 human words, no words could exhaust the description 
 more absolutely than the recorded words of Christ. They 
 admit of no limitation ; they are patient of no toning 
 down or softening away ; in the page of the Evangelist, 
 they live for all time before the eyes of men, in all their 
 vivid, awful power. If Jesus Christ has told us any- 
 thing certain about the other world, we cannot doubt 
 that the Penal fire must last for ever. But may the soul 
 be withdrawn from the punishment? or may it be anni- 
 hilated ? Few Christians have dared to say "Yes " to the 
 first of these questions ; to the second, fewer still.. For 
 there are Words of Christ which seem expressly designed 
 to prevent any misconception. He speaks of a " punishment 
 no less than of a "fire," which is "everlasting." 1 And 
 we are told, that as " he that believeth on the Son hath 
 everlasting life," so "he that believeth not the Son shall not 
 see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." 2 " Abideth 
 
 1 St. Matt. xxv. 41, 46. After noticiug the classical distinc tion between 
 nbXaais and np.upla (At. Rhet. i. 15, Plat. Prot. 323, e) Archbishop Trench 
 observes (Synon. A'. T. i. p. 28) : "'It would be a very serious error, how- 
 ever, to attempt to transfer this distinction in its entireness to the words as 
 employed in the New Testament. The noXaais aiibvtos of Matt. xxv. 46, as 
 it plainly itself declares, is 110 corrective and therefore temporary discipline ; 
 it can be no other than the dSavaTOS ripupia (Josephus, B. ./. ii. 8. 11), the 
 di'Sioi Ti/Moipiai (Plato, Ax. 372, a), with which the Lord elsewhere threatens 
 finally impenitent men (Mark ix. 43-48); for in proof that /roXacm had 
 acquired in Hellenistic Greek this severer sense, and was used simply as 
 punishment or torment, with no necessary underbought of the betteriug 
 through it of him who endured it, we have only to refer to such passages as 
 the following : Josephus, Ant. xv. 2. 2 ; Philo, De Agricul. 9 ; Mart. Polycar. 
 2 ; 2 Mace. iv. 38 ; Wisd. of Sol. xix. 4. This much, indeed, of Aristotle's 
 distinction still remains, and maybe recognised in the sacred usage of the 
 words, that in koXocris the relation of the punishment to the punished, in 
 Ti/uupia to the punisher, is pre loniinant." 
 
 2 St. John iii. 36, 77 6/3777 tou Qeov p.4vci eV avrov. Compare the Psalmist's 
 11X 1X1" nV3-"iy (xlix. 20) with the earlier part of this text. The true 
 force of these words can only be set aside by the « priori and unwarrantable 
 assumption that the endless life of the soul was truth unknown to the 
 Hebrew Psalmists. Compare Kouig, Thmlorjie tier Psaimen, p. 329 sqq. 
 
The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 on him " ; — then if he die in unbelief, he still exists, though 
 in his woe — -then he is not delivered from it. " Abideth 
 on him " : the piercing words seem to ring on from day to 
 day, from year to year, from century to century, from 
 cycle to cycle of measureless periods ; we feel at this 
 moment that eighteen centuries have not blunted their 
 edge, or lessened their solemnity and power. If so (you 
 reply), it were better never to have lived, than to live and 
 be lost. Unquestionably. Our Lord states this truth 
 with equal clearness. He said of one lost soul, of one 
 who had been blessed with the high privilege of His Com- 
 panionship, but who fell so deeply as to betray Him to His 
 enemies for money, " Good it were for that man if he had 
 never been born." 1 There are undoubtedly critics who 
 treat these words as they might treat an exclamation in 
 some heathen dramatist ; as if the sentence had been 
 uttered in a free rhetorical spirit, and with no thought of 
 the meaning — the vast illimitable meaning — which they 
 really contain and convey. But you can only thus empty 
 the Words of Christ of their native power, if you will 
 consent to forget that they are the Words of One Whose 
 horizon was not bounded by the things of time. The 
 Lord of Life and Death, fixing His Eye in deepest woe, 
 yet with unfaltering precision, upon a creature whom He 
 willed to save, yet who spurned His Salvation — thus rules 
 in the fulness of His knowledge, in the tenderness of His 
 Love, that non-existence had been better than an undying 
 being, which in the abuse of its free-will His creature had 
 made an unending misery. It cannot be maintained that 
 the Words of Jesus are true, if at any conceivable point 
 of a distant future any restoration to heaven is possible 
 for Judas. For beyond that point, however distant, there 
 would still stretch the vision of a still illimitable Eternity; 
 in which the restored soul would find in the presence of 
 
 1 St. Mark xiv. 21. Compare St. Mark iv. 29, and viii. 36, 37. 
 
142 
 
 The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 God, a " fulness of joy " which would redress the balance, 
 and would speedily reduce a purgatory that had lasted 
 even for ages to a scarcely perceptible speck in a past 
 existence. Unless the human soul be not necessarily 
 immortal, Judas lives : unless the Words of Christ be un- 
 trustworthy on the question of Life and Death, Judas 
 lives in woe. There is no escape : the unspeakable awful- 
 ness of our Saviour's language is precisely this, that it 
 does leave no room for any reversal of the doom of the 
 betrayer — of the man whose epitaph was thus traced by 
 the finger of Infinite Knowledge and of Infinite Love, — 
 " Good were it for that man if he had never been 
 born." 
 
 A few gifted minds such as Origen 1 have made ship- 
 wreck, from whatever causes, of this Article of the 
 Christian Faith. But amidst the rare aberrations of 
 genius, the belief of the Christian people has been such 
 as might have been expected from the tenor of the "Words 
 of Christ. And it is particularly observable how in the 
 early ages of the Faith, the martyrs standing before their 
 heathen judges felt one after another that their choice 
 lay between a transient pang of suffering and an endless 
 
 1 The passages which best illustrate his deliberate opinion are in formal 
 treatises {lie Priii. i. 6, Contr. Celstim, v. 14, 15). In his popular teaching, 
 he sometimes expresses opinions which seem to foreshadow the later doctrine 
 of a purgatory before the Judgment (Horn. vi. in Exod. No. 4, Horn. iii. in 
 Ps. xxxvi. No. 1, quoted by Lumper, 9, 595), or which at least say nothing 
 inconsistent with it. He admitted, however, that his doctrine of a filial drona- 
 rdo-rao-is (of men and devils) might be dangerous to the unconverted. " For 
 most," he says, " it is enough to know that sinners will be punished. It would 
 be inexpedient to say more : since there are persons whom the fear of Eternal 
 Punishment scarcely restrains' from giving themselves up to wickedness with 
 all the evils that follow on it ! "—Contr. Cels. vi. 26. He speaks of belief in 
 eternal punishment as morally useful, although not true (Horn, in Jer. 19, 
 torn. iii. p. 507, 508, ed. Migne), when commenting on Jer. xx. 7, thus 
 admitting the adaptation of the Revealed Truth to the wants of the human 
 soul. This conviction seems to have coloured his popular teaching. (Horn. 7, 
 in Exod. Opp. ed. Migne, vol. ii. p. 347, where he quotes Isa. Ixvi. 24.) 
 
The Whole Cotmsel of God. 143 
 
 woe. 1 Not that the error which is connected with the 
 name of Origen has been repudiated by no process less 
 rude and irregular than the action of popular sentiment. 
 Apparently during his lifetime, and certainly after his 
 decease, the speculations of the great Alexandrian were 
 condemned by councils of the Church ; 2 and if equivocal 
 language on the subject of endless punishment is to 
 be discovered in a stray writer here and there by the 
 student of Patristic Literature, he will almost invariably 
 observe that its force is destroyed by language of an 
 opposite drift, which the same writer has elsewhere em- 
 ployed. Nor is it pretended that there is any serious 
 ground for doubt as to the Catholic Belief of the Church, 
 as evidenced by the consent of her Representative 
 
 1 Ruinart, Acta Sincera. Passio She Felic 
 Maximi, circa 250 (p. 133). Maximus is des 
 gaged in trade. When desired by the Procoi 
 escape the torture, he replied, " Hoec non 
 Domini nostri .Texu Cliristi inferuntur, sed si 
 a Domini mei pra'ceptis, quibus sum de Evar 
 petua mihi manebunt tormenta." Other 1 
 Ruinart : they show what was the simple, 
 Church. 
 
 2 Origen was silenced and deposed by two 
 lifetime. His leading tenets were conden 
 "The erroneous doctrines," says Archdeacc 
 taught, or which others taught in his name, w 
 among them the doctrine of the future restit 
 men. See this very fully proved by a Churc 
 fullest examination. Natal. Alex. Hist, /ice, 
 admitted by the best informed inquirers of 
 foreign Churches. See Bishop Pearson, Mi 
 Life of Origen in the venerable Archdeacon 01 
 thi Early Vhurch, ii. 114, 133."— {Guardian 
 tion that Origen was not condemned by any 
 it has been well replied, "that each Counci 
 
 elio Ejus eruditus, vera et per- 
 amples might be cited from 
 mhesitating faith of the Early 
 
 I 540. 
 
 II had 
 ; and 
 
 )f evil 
 it the 
 
 ,/, i, 
 
 emergency, 
 pressing que 
 1864.) It is 
 to have assei 
 thereby inch 
 — (Routh, & 
 
 ■.-[Uuarttun,, .March ,,. i8-» 4 .) To the oryec- 
 
 lat each Council did the special work of its own 
 duds of work ; and that Origenism was not a 
 , 431, or 451."— (W. B. in Guardian, March 16, 
 hat the sixth General Council declares the fifth 
 irpose of condemning Origen and other persons, 
 ema of the Synod in Constantinople in 540. 
 :. ii. 232.) 
 
144 
 
 The Whole Coimsel of God. 
 
 Fathers. 1 But, let us note it well, they who to-day deny 
 the truth in question, or who rashly express " hopes " that 
 the Faith of Christendom may not be true, oppose them- 
 selves not merely to the decrees of Councils and to the 
 consent of Fathers, nor yet merely to the " popular" belief 
 of centuries, nor to the reign of a world-wide Tradition. 
 Nor do they merely controvert a Hebrew Prophet or a 
 Christian Apostle, and take up the position of those 
 inconsequent Rationalists who, respecting nothing else in 
 Holy Scripture, still profess to respect as Divine and In- 
 fallible the recorded Words of Christ. For it is face to 
 face with Him that they stand in controversy : 2 it is His 
 sentence, in Whose disclosures concerning the world 
 beyond the tomb we Christians place our hopes for life 
 and for death, that they arraign at the bar of what is at 
 best a section of contemporary opinion. Our Lord and 
 Saviour, with what would be generosity in a mere man, 
 but with what in Him doubtless was provision against the 
 known weakness of His creatures, has not bequeathed to 
 His Servants or Representatives the responsibility — nay 
 the odium — of proclaiming those stern and awful cer- 
 tainties ; He has Himself heralded, at one and the same 
 time, the penalties and the benedictions of His Gospel ; 
 He has Himself unveiled the Eternal pit, in phrases and 
 
 i See Petavius de A ngelis, lil>. iii. e. 8. It will be observed that Petavius 
 quotes language from Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Nazianzen, which may 
 fairly outweigh those passages of doubtful import in their writings, to which 
 
 3 Observe the force of the following admission from a writer, of whose 
 relations to the true faith of the Church of Christ no unfair estimate will be 
 formed from the fact of his being one of the five authorities referred to with 
 approbation by M. Renan, in his recent Vie de Jesus (Int. p. vii). M. Keuss 
 has been citing St. Matt. xxv. 30, 41 sqq. and some similar passages : " Toutes 
 ces peintures," he says, "sont olaires et simples ; elles n'otfrent rien d'equi- 
 voque ; il n'y a pas un mot qui trahisse une arriere-pensee, qui nous fasse en- 
 trevoir une signification caehee. qui les reduise a une valeur purement fiiruree et 
 parabolique. II est evident que les narrateurs qui nous servent ici de guides, 
 out pristoutcela aupied de la lettre et qu'il ne leurest pas reste une ombre de 
 doute a cet egard." — Keuss, Tkcul. Chretienne, tome i. p. 249. Deux mc edit. 
 
The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 H5 
 
 words as urgent and positive as those whereby He has 
 opened heaven to all believers ; and fifty generations of 
 Christians have believed and confessed that His Authority 
 is final, and that to tamper with His Eevelations is only 
 more obviously foolish than it is perilously blasphemous. 
 
 Brethren ! I seem to interpret to myself the thought 
 of your hearts : men are won, you say, by the mercies 
 rather than by the terrors of the Lord. Would it not be 
 more accurate to say, with St. Augustine, that the terrors 
 of the Lord drive us men to take refuge in His unspeak- 
 able mercies ? Is it not a fact, familiar to every clergy- 
 man, is it not a matter of personal experience to some at 
 least in this vast congregation, that the undefined, haunt- 
 ing fear of an endless woe does again and again guide 
 unquiet souls to seek peace and safety in kneeling at the 
 foot of the Cross, and in tasting of that Plenteous Ee- 
 demption, which flows from the Wounds of Jesus ? Are 
 there not now resting in Paradise souls, who owe their 
 predestined crowns and thrones to that first sharp pang 
 which pierced their spirits, when, many years since, on 
 earth, in the midst of a course of sin, they first realised 
 the certain existence of an endless Hell ? You urge that 
 there are higher motives than terror for religious effort. 
 Undoubtedly. It is better to love God for His own sake 
 than to love Him for the sake of the blessings which He 
 gives, or the woes from which He saves. But He Who 
 made the human heart knew more perfectly what motives 
 are really needed to act upon it than the theorists who 
 proclaim what they would propose as the revision of His 
 work. He knew that more men are moved by fear than 
 by love : and that man may be educated to love fear- 
 lessly, if he begins by cultivating that fear which is the 
 beginning of moral and spiritual wisdom. Certainly we 
 cannot exaggerate the mercies of our redeeming Lord : 
 they are simply infinite. But side by side with them lie 
 
 K 
 
146 The Whole Co?msel of God. 
 
 also His judgments, unexplored and infinite; so that the 
 "great deep" is their symbol in the world of nature; and 
 His judgments are equally with His mercies an integral 
 part of the Truth of His Revelation, nay, of His Being : 
 they are equally a part of His " whole Counsel " as it has 
 been made known to us men ; and it is our business, as 
 clergy, to proclaim them. To do so, many of us solemnly 
 pledge ourselves this day before God and man. We owe 
 it, my brethren of the laity, to our God ; we owe it to 
 Jesus Teaching and to Jesus Crucified; we owe it to the 
 terms of our commission, and to the claims of our con- 
 sciences ; but we owe it above all to your undying souls 
 to tell you the plain, unmutilated truth. We dare not, 
 like the serpent in Paradise, whisper to you here, within 
 the precincts of the Church of God, that you may cherish 
 a " hope " that God's threats may after all be false. To 
 tell you that in the future world the only alternative to 
 Heaven is a Purgatory, might indeed earn for us, at the 
 present crisis of thought in England, a momentary popu- 
 larity. But if it were morally in our power to sacrifice 
 one truth of the Creed, we could not thereby insure the 
 rest. We could not stop at " expressing a hope " that the 
 punishment of the wicked may not be final. On the one 
 side, an Eternal Heaven might easily become both to the 
 philologists and to the metaphysicians as problematical 
 a thing as an Eternal Hell. On the other, that infinite 
 Price which our Lord paid upon the Cross that He might 
 save us from a boundless woe would soon be rejected as 
 needless ; and we should reduce His propitiatory Sacrifice 
 to the level of a moral triumph. From that it were but 
 a short step to the denial of His Godhead. For, as a 
 perfect act of faith in a single truth has already, before 
 perceiving it, grasped other truths by implication, so a 
 deliberate rejection of a single truth entails the rejection, 
 first in principle, and afterwards avowedly, of other truths 
 
The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 147 
 
 beyond. Here is our danger. Fear you we may not: 
 but you may shame our weakness by bidding us tell you 
 the truth, or you may tempt us in speaking to you, to 
 " prophesy smooth things," or at best to substitute the 
 " hay, wood, and stubble " of the things of time for the 
 unchangeable realities of the other world. If we dare 
 not be honest with you ; if through want of spirituality, 
 from a selfish instinct that we should condemn ourselves 
 in your eyes, we should shrink from a high and soul-con- 
 trolling doctrine — woe, woe to us ! One day we know, that, 
 side by side with you, but with greater, far greater re- 
 sponsibilities than yours, which we have freely chosen to 
 bear, we too, your ministers, must stand at the Judgment 
 Seat of Christ. How shall we then make answer to the 
 stern and terrible rebuke of our Master, how shall we 
 endure to hear your deserved reproaches, your wail of 
 remorse and agony, if now, through cowardly fear of man, 
 or any false refinement, or weakly acquiescence in the 
 polished unbelief of the hour, we hide from you one-half 
 of our Master's message ; justifying by our silence the 
 taunt of His enemies, that in this age we fear to preach 
 what He Himself announced as certain ; or banding our- 
 selves with them, in saying that He was at least in part 
 mistaken, and that the men of to-day have improved His 
 Gospel by eliminating its severities ? 
 
 And you, my dear brethren, who now are pressing for- 
 ward to receive your various powers from the consecrated 
 hands through which to-day, as ever before and to the 
 end of time, Christ our Lord reigning in His Church 
 bestows them — bethink you, I pray, at this the most 
 solemn crisis of your lives, of that great Day which can- 
 not be distant, and which may be very near. Bethink 
 you now, as you receive your talent of the account which 
 you must then render for its due improvement. Pray 
 that you may be fearless, as speaking for the Mighty 
 
1 48 The Whole Counsel of God. 
 
 God ; but pray too that you may be loving, and humble, 
 as becomes sinners, who remember their own sins, while 
 in God's name they dare to counsel their brethren. If 
 we of the Clergy feel in our very hearts that we may be 
 lost, as easily, nay rather, by reason of our greater oppor- 
 tunities, much more easily than other men ; we shall 
 speak of Hell, not as a threat which we flourish without 
 measuring its awfulness, but as a fact, present to the eye 
 of our spirits ; we shall think and speak of it as of a 
 common danger — just as of Heaven as of a common 
 Hope, and a common Home. Let us by God's grace 
 resolve to be true ; let us pray God to make us true — 
 true in our inmost selves — and true to that counsel of 
 God, which it is our duty to proclaim to man. God in- 
 deed is severe and stern with the self-reliant ; but for the 
 self-distrustful and thefprayerful He is a tender and most 
 indulgent Master, Whose service is not less the highest 
 joy than it is the highest freedom. Even on earth for 
 every earnest, simple, truthful, unselfish spirit among the 
 servants of the Church, there is a foretaste of the im- 
 perishable lleward above. It may be enjoyed, and that 
 abundantly, in the cottages of the poor, in the pulpits of 
 the Sanctuary, on the steps of the Altar. Stephen may 
 still ennoble the lower grade of service by a sacrifice of 
 self which opens heaven, and which Jesus owns as the 
 first of martyrdoms. And there are mercies, blessings, 
 crowns that fade not away 1 — for those who though afar 
 off, yet by word aud act faithfully witness to the justice 
 and to the grace of their God, and who, standing beneath 
 the Cross of the Redeemer of the world, wield, according 
 to the measures of their ministry, the consolations of the 
 keys of Peter, the powers of the sword of Paul. 
 
 1 1 St. Peter v. 4. 
 
SERMON V. 
 
 THE SECEET OF CLEEICAL POWER 1 
 
 Acts i. 8. 
 
 Ye sliall receive power ; after that, the Uohj Ghost is come upon you. 
 
 IT is very difficult for us to enter into the bewildering 
 sense of desolation which the Apostles must have 
 felt on the eve of the Ascension. Even before His Passion, 
 our Lord had spoken of His going to the Father, and now 
 that the event was imminent the Apostles were gradually 
 facing the situation in which they would be placed by 
 His departure. They had received a commission to make 
 disciples of all the nations. But, looking to the actual 
 circumstances of the world, they still seemed to lack 
 wellnigh all the conditions of success. Before them were 
 vast political bodies with the prestige of antiquity and 
 the prestige of possession, and committed to the support 
 of popular falsehoods. Before them were intellectual 
 systems, elaborated by generations of thinkers, and com- 
 manding, if not the belief, yet certainly the respect of the 
 educated classes. Before them were all the ambitions, all 
 the lusts, all the luxuries, all the vested interests of a 
 large and corrupt society. It may be that as yet they 
 realised little in detail of their future work, of their 
 coming sufferings. Yet a vague apprehension of un- 
 measured difficulties, of unsuspected obstacles, they must 
 have had ; they must have hoped that, ere He left them, 
 our Lord would bring help and strength that might in 
 
 1 Preached at tlie Ordination of the Bishop of Salisbury, in Salisbury Cathe- 
 dral, on the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, September 24, 1865. 
 
 149 
 
i 50 The Secret of Clerical Power. 
 
 some sense redress the balance, even if it should not atone 
 for His dreaded departure. Surely, they thought, it is 
 for some such purpose that He has risen from His grave, 
 and tarried among us. He is meditating some great blow, 
 some striking deliverance ; He has delayed it so long that 
 He may the more conspicuously show strength with His 
 arm and scatter the proud in the imagination of their 
 hearts. Will He not now break the yoke of Eoman oppres- 
 sion? Will He not now restore to Judsea a self-governing 
 theocracy, an earthly Kingdom of Heaven, in which His 
 first followers will sit visibly on His right hand and on 
 His left ? " Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the 
 kingdom to Israel ? " 1 In His reply, our Lord does not, 
 as we might have expected, rebuke the outward, political, 
 materialised conceptions of His work which His Apostles 
 still entertained. He does not show how the Jewish 
 commonwealth, which had forfeited its national existence 
 for ever, was related to the Eealm of the Incarnation 
 only as shadow to substance. He glances in a few words 
 of censure at the unspiritual curiosity which would, if it 
 might, drag forth God's own secrets from beneath the 
 veils of His providence : " It is not for you to know the 
 times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His 
 own power." 2 But He at once passes from censure to 
 promise and blessing. He graciously overlooks the form 
 of their question ; He addresses Himself to its motive, to 
 the timid apprehensions which had prompted it. They 
 were indeed to be strengthened for all that was before 
 them : " Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost 
 is come upon you." 
 
 I. 
 
 What, then, was this power thus promised to the 
 Apostles ? Power is a comprehensive term, and the 
 
 i Acts i. 6. 2 Ibid. i. 7. 
 
The Secret of Clerical Power. 1 5 1 
 
 specific form of power which was mainly intended can 
 only be determined by reference to the actual history of 
 the earliest Church of Christ. 
 
 What was this power which the Apostles were to receive ? 
 As a matter of fact, what " power " did they receive ? 
 
 a. Was it, as they anticipated, political power? Cer- 
 tainly, my brethren, in the course of years the Church 
 of Christ did acquire something very like the power of 
 the sceptre. The prophecies of Isaiah seemed to intimate 
 that this would be so : in the Evangelical prophet the 
 Church is already represented as a spiritual empire, 
 surrounded with the circumstances of temporal greatness. 1 
 But when did this form of power present itself? Not 
 in her first years of missionary enterprise and of abundant 
 martyrdom. Not when she first worshipped in the 
 catacombs and bled in the amphitheatres. Not when her 
 leaders and princes, like the first Apostles, were still and 
 universally reckoned the " filth of the world, an offscouring 
 of all things " ; 2 a spectacle of scorn and shame " to the 
 world, to angels, and to men." 3 But when she was no 
 longer composed of a despised minority, when by a long 
 catalogue of labours and sufferings she had won her way 
 to the understandings and to the hearts of multitudes, 
 she forthwith acquired power in the State. Found in all 
 the walks of life, in all the provinces of the great world- 
 empire, and in regions beyond its frontiers ; an in- 
 tellectual force, when other thought was languishing or 
 dying; a focus of high moral effort, when the world 
 around was a very flood of revolting wickedness ; a bond 
 of the closest union, when all else was tending to social 
 divergence and disruption of interests ; she became a 
 political force. Such she was long before Constantine 
 associated the Cross with the Boman purple, nay, even, 
 as it would appear, before the two last great persecutions. 
 
 1 Isa. lx. s, 6, 7, 13, 14. • 2 1 Cor. iv. 13. 3 Ibkl. 9. 
 
1 5 2 The Secret of Clerical Power, 
 
 For high moral influence among multitudes of men carries 
 with it political weight. Political power came to the 
 Church, at first unbidden, and in many cases unwelcomed. 
 It was a current charge against the primitive Christians 
 that they neglected civil and political duties. But 
 political power came to them from the nature of the case, 
 and inevitably: the Gospel was necessarily a popular 
 moral influence, and it could not be this on a great scale 
 without tending to become a power in the State. Thus 
 silently but surely a mighty revolution was wrought in 
 the souls of men ; and at last it was proclaimed in the 
 outward forms of life and in the changed hands which 
 administered government. The words of the Magnificat 
 became history, and Christ, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, 
 reigning in and triumphing with His Church, "put down 
 the mighty from their seat, and exalted the humble and 
 meek." 1 
 
 Undoubtedly political power was given to the Church 
 by the loving providence of our Lord, as an instrument 
 whereby to promote man's highest good. But if such 
 power was an opportunity often used for the highest 
 purposes and with the happiest effect, it was also a 
 temptation to worldly ambition, and even to worse sins, 
 often yielded to with the most disastrous results. Who 
 can doubt this after studying in the history of the great 
 Western See such lives as, for example, those of a 
 Julius ir. or of a Leo x. ? Who can doubt this, after an 
 impartial consideration of the history of other portions of 
 the Church nearer home, which have purchased a political 
 status at the heavy cost of sacrificing spiritual energy and 
 freedom ? He Who said at the first, " My kingdom is not 
 of this world," is perhaps bringing Christians everywhere 
 back by the course of His providences to the fuller 
 acknowledgment of this primal truth. On all sides the 
 
 i St. Luke i. 52. 
 
The Secret of Clerical Power. 
 
 153 
 
 Church is losing what she once possessed of political 
 influence ; on all sides the spiritual influences of the 
 Gospel, which are indeed indestructible, are jealously 
 warned to keep apart from the secular interests of human 
 life. If political power had been of the essence of our 
 Lord's promise to His Apostles, we might well lose heart ; 
 but there is no cause for despondency, if the power 
 which the Apostles were to receive was of a higher and 
 more enduring character. 
 
 Political power is after all but a clumsy instrument 
 for achieving spiritual success. It imperils as much as it 
 assists ; it alienates as rapidly as it compels adhesion ; 
 and those spiritual institutions which have grasped the 
 sword most tenaciously, illustrate, one after another, the 
 warning of our Lord to St. Peter at the gate of Gethse- 
 mane : they perish, sooner or later, by the sword. 
 
 /3. Was then the power in question intellectual power ? 
 The Gospel has undoubtedly lightened up man's under- 
 standing and fertilised his thought. Knowledge is of 
 itself power ; and knowledge on the highest and most 
 interesting of all subjects is a very high form of power. 
 For knowledge is the motive and warrant of action, and 
 they whose eye ranges over two worlds occupy a more 
 commanding position than they who see only one. A 
 certain power of this description was undoubtedly a result 
 of the gift of Pentecost. Our Lord had dwelt on the 
 illuminating office of the Comforter : " He shall guide you 
 into all truth." 1 And the first Apostles needed such an 
 assistance, since they were utterly uneducated men, with 
 the narrowest of mental horizons. How wonderfully, on 
 the day of Pentecost itself, is the thought of St. Peter 
 fertilised and expanded ! The unlettered fisherman is 
 suddenly the profound expositor of ancient prophecy, and 
 within a short period his teaching brings him into collision 
 
 1 St. John xvi. 13. 
 
1 54 The Secret of Clerical Power. 
 
 with the Sadducean leaders of educated sceptical opinion. 
 And in later years how rich and how various are the 
 intellectual gifts of the inspired Apostles of Christ! 
 St. John speaks at once the language of the simplest 
 devotion and of the profoundest philosophy. St. James 
 teaches moral truth wellnigh in the language of an ancient 
 prophet. Who can read his Epistle without feeling its 
 keen sense of natural beauty, its vigorous and trenchant 
 grasp of the secret tendencies and broad characteristics 
 of human nature and of the practical side of Christianity ? 
 St. Peter, in his First Epistle, harmonises with marvellous 
 comprehensiveness the practical tendencies of St., James 
 and the dogmatic teaching of St. Paul. St. Paul, who 
 owed something to his earlier education, counted it but 
 loss for Christ ; 1 and the vigorous dialectician of the 
 Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians, the master of 
 warning, of irony, of denunciation, of entreaty, whom we 
 meet in the Epistles to the Corinthians, the entranced 
 observer of sublime mysteries who speaks in the Epistle 
 to the Ephesians, the defender of the faith against a subtle 
 theosophy in the Epistle to the Colossians, the far-sighted 
 administrator who organises the hierarchy and the 
 religious communities and the discipline of the Church 
 in the Pastoral Epistles, is an intellectual creation of 
 Divine grace. And when we pass down into later ages, 
 we find the promise of intellectual power fulfilled almost 
 continuously in the annals of the Church. Take Origen's 
 Treatise against Celsus, or St. Augustine's work on the 
 Trinity or on the City of God, or the writings of Greek 
 Fathers, of Athanasius, of Basil, of Gregory Nazianzen 
 against the Arians and the Eunomians, or some of the 
 astonishing productions of the scholastic period, such as 
 the Summa of Aquinas, or the original works which 
 attacks upon the faith have called forth among ourselves, 
 
 1 Phil. iii. 7. 
 
The Secret of Clerical Poiver. 155 
 
 such as Bishop Butler's Analog]/ or the too-forgotten 
 Treatises of Law, and Waterland, and Leslie, and Chandler, 
 and say if this sense of the word has not been realised, — 
 " Ye shall receive power." 
 
 But was this intellectual power, swaying the thoughts 
 of educated men, the chief, or even a main, element of the 
 promised gift ? Surely not. The Gospel was meant for 
 the whole human family ; and the poor, in consideration 
 of the hardness of their lot, had a first claim upon its 
 preachers. The Church was to be, not as some early 
 Gnostics seemed to desire, not as some contemporary 
 rationalists have dreamed, a literary club, in which rival 
 teachers were to discuss the claims of opposing theories ; 
 but a home, in which a fixed Eevealed Truth should be 
 clearly and simply brought home to the hearts and con- 
 sciences of all. 1 Not many learned were called among 
 the multitudes who first poured into the kingdom ; and 
 mere cultivated intellect is a sorry weapon wherewith to 
 approach those who lack that cultivation which is neces- 
 sary to understand it. The gift of Pentecost may indeed 
 have included intellectual power ; a living, active soul is 
 a thinking as well as a loving soul ; but the main essen- 
 tial gift itself was something beyond, something higher, 
 something more universally acceptable, something more 
 adapted to the soul of man, as man, something more 
 capable of advancing the glory and of doing justice to the 
 grace of God. 
 
 7. Was this power then to be a faculty of working 
 miracles? Our thoughts seem to gravitate naturally 
 towards such a supposition. A certain limited power of 
 this description, varying apparently with the spiritual 
 state of the disciples themselves, had been granted to 
 them during our Lord's ministry. At one time the dis- 
 ciples rejoice that the devils are subject to them ; 2 at 
 
 1 1 Tim. iii. 15. 2 St. Luke x. 17. 
 
156 The Secret of Clerical Power. 
 
 another they are powerless to relieve the lunatic at the 
 foot of the Mount of Transfiguration. 1 But after the 
 Ascension, and because of it, they were to do works even 
 greater than those of their Divine Master. " Greater 
 works than these shall he [that believeth] do, because I 
 go to My Father." 2 The gift of miracles depended then 
 on the Ascension in the same sense as did the gift of the 
 promised Comforter ; and it was natural to identify the 
 two gifts, or to regard the former as a chief result or fruit 
 of the latter. And immediately after Pentecost the 
 Apostles are in possession of large and varied supernatural 
 powers. It is important to observe the close connection 
 in which the miracles of the Apostles stand throughout 
 the narrative of the Acts with their missionary progress 
 and success. The school of Paley may have laid a too 
 exclusive rather than a too emphatic stress on the eviden- 
 tial force of miracle ; but we witness at this day an 
 immoderate reaction, which is disposed to ignore the value 
 of miracles altogether. In the Acts of the Apostles, 
 almost every step which is made by the advancing Gospel 
 is preceded or accompanied by miraculous manifestations. 
 The gift of tongues on the day of Pentecost itself, 3 the 
 healing of the lame man in Solomon's porch, 4 the great 
 wonders and miracles which Stephen the Deacon, " full of 
 faith and power," is said to have done among the people, 5 
 the raising of Dorcas from the dead at Joppa, 6 the super- 
 natural vision which preceded the conversion of Cor- 
 nelius, 7 St. Peter's deliverance from prison by the angel, 8 
 St. Paul's healing the cripple at Lystra, 9 his exorcism of 
 the damsel possessed with the spirit of divination at 
 Philippi, 10 the handkerchiefs or aprons which were brought 
 
 1 St. Mark ix. 28. 
 4 Acts iii. 7-1 1. 
 7 Acts x. 9-48. 
 
 2 St. John xiv. 12. 
 s Ibid. vi. 8. 
 8 Ibid. xii. 7-16. 
 10 Acts xvi. 16-40. 
 
 3 Acts ii. 3-12. 
 6 Ibid. ix. 40-42. 
 9 Ibid. xiv. 8-18. 
 
The Secret of Clerical Power. 
 
 157 
 
 from his body, and which healed the sick of their diseases 
 at Ephesus, 1 his raising Eutychus from the dead at Troas, 2 
 his vision of our Lord at Corinth, 3 and of an angel during 
 the Mediterranean storm, 4 his cure of the serpent's bite at 
 Malta, 5 were all connected with important results to the 
 spread of the faith. This indeed was not less the case 
 with miracles of judgment than with miracles of mercy. 
 The death of Ananias and Sapphira produced a keen sense 
 of the awful presence of the Judge of hearts in His 
 Church; 6 the blindness of Elymas the sorcerer was 
 immediately followed by the conversion of the " deputy " 
 Sergius Paulus. 7 The whole narrative of the Acts is 
 penetrated by, encompassed with, the miraculous ; the 
 book becomes historically worthless, it falls absolutely to 
 pieces, unless the full importance and reality of the Apo- 
 stolical miracles be freely and truly acknowledged. Nor, 
 whatever may be the lack of evidence for some later 
 alleged miracles, is there any producible proof from 
 Scripture that the miraculous power itself was destined 
 to be withdrawn from the Church at the death of the 
 Apostles, or at the end of the third century, or at 
 the end of the sixth century, or at any subsequent period 
 which may have been suggested by the supposed neces- 
 sities of later controversy. 
 
 But was miracle of the essence of that power which the 
 Apostles were to receive at Pentecost ? Surely not. It 
 was rather an evidence, an occasional accompaniment, an 
 ornament of the central gift, than the gift itself. Miracle 
 is by no means a resistless instrument for propagating a 
 doctrine. Unbelief has many methods for escaping its 
 force. Where it cannot insinuate trickery, it has no 
 scruple about hinting at the agency of Beelzebub. 8 The 
 
 1 Acts xix. 11, 12. 2 Ibid. xx. 9-12. 3 Ibid, xviii. 9-1 1. 
 
 4 Acts xxvii. 23, 24. 5 Ibid, xxviii. 3-10. « Ibid. v. 5, 10, n. 
 
 7 Acts xiii. 10, 11, 12. » St. Mark iii. 22 ; St. Luke xi. 15. 
 
1 58 The Secret of Clerical Power. 
 
 state of mind which resists the historical and prophetical 
 evidences of Kevelation is likely to deal somewhat sum- 
 marily with a natural wonder, however well attested, in 
 the domain of sense. Our Lord Himself tells us that this 
 is so : " If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither 
 will they he persuaded, though one rose from the dead." 1 
 And the text seems decisively to point, if to miracle, yet 
 also to something else, to something more constantly 
 availahle, more nearly irresistihle, more calculated to 
 reassure the Apostles in that hour of their faintness and 
 desolation of spirit. " Ye shall receive power." 
 
 S. Nor did the power consist in the ministerial com- 
 mission itself ; in the authorisation to preach the Word 
 and to administer the Sacraments. Undoubtedly, in a 
 profound sense of the term, that commission, with its 
 several elementary portions, is a power unlike any other 
 which God has given to His creatures here below. But 
 our Lord had already solemnly and fully commissioned 
 His Apostles. Before speaking the words of our text, 
 He had laid on the chosen eleven the full weight of the 
 ministerial office. Not on a single occasion, and, as in a 
 modern Ordination, through the medium of one very con- 
 densed and pregnant form, had He conveyed to them the 
 essential and constitutive powers of the Christian Priest- 
 hood. The Apostles were ordained, so to speak, piece- 
 meal. The several powers with which they were intrusted 
 were laid upon them by a series of acts at considerable 
 intervals, as they were gradually strengthened to under- 
 take the accumulating burden. The various acts of this 
 gradual ordination of the Apostles were grouped around 
 the Cross, even as now Ordination in the Church is a part 
 of the Eucharistic Service. On the eve of the Passion, in 
 the supper-room, they received the momentous power of 
 consecrating the Eedeemer's Body and Blood. 2 Thus 
 
 1 St. Luke xvi. 31. *- Ibid. xxii. 19, 20 ; 1 Cor. xL 24, 25. 
 
The Secret of Clerical Pozver. 
 
 159 
 
 provision was made for the worship and growth of 
 Christian souls to the end of time. The power of remit- 
 ting and retaining sins was given by our Eisen Lord in 
 the upper room with closed doors, on the evening of the 
 day of the Resurrection. 1 In this way Jesus provided a 
 remedy for the wounds which sin would leave on the souls 
 of His redeemed. 2 The full commission and command to 
 make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the 
 Name of the most Holy Trinity, 3 more immediately pre- 
 ceded the Ascension itself. The perpetual extension of 
 the Gospel, and the self-perpetuating power of the Apo- 
 stolical ministry, were thus proclaimed by our Divine 
 Saviour. When then He said, " Ye shall receive power," 
 these functional powers of the priesthood and apostolate 
 had already been actually given ; and the Holy Ghost 
 had been bestowed in such sense as to convey to the 
 Apostles the ministerial faculty or character. The 
 Apostles were in full possession of all powers necessary to 
 feed and teach the Lord's people, but it would seem that 
 until the day of Pentecost these powers were like un- 
 developed faculties, latent in the souls of the Apostles, 
 but unexercised. Something else was needed, some 
 vivifying heavenly foi'ce which should quicken and stimu- 
 late these hidden energies, and, like the rain or the sun- 
 shine upon the dormant vitality of the seed or the shoot, 
 should provoke them into an outburst of energetic life. 
 
 e. Once more then let it be asked, Wherein did this 
 power which the Apostles were to receive consist ? 
 Creating political ascendency, yet utterly distinct from it ; 
 fertilising intellectual power, yet differing in its essence 
 from the activity of mere vigorous unsanctified intellect ; 
 working moral miracles, (it may be) gifted to work 
 physical wonders, yet certainly in itself more persuasive 
 than the miracle it was empowered to produce ; intimately 
 
 1 St. John xx. 22, 23. - 1 Cor. v. 3-5 ; 2 Cor. ii. 7. :1 St. Matt, xxviii. 19. 
 
1 60 The Secret of Clerical Power. 
 
 allied with, and the natural accompaniment of distinct 
 ministerial faculties, yet not necessarily so ; what is this 
 higher, this highest power, this gift of gifts, this trans- 
 forming influence, which was to countersign as if from 
 heaven what had previously been given by the Incarnate 
 Lord on earth, and was to form out of unlettered and 
 irresolute peasants the evangelists of the world ? My 
 brethren, it was spiritual, it was personal, it was moral 
 power. And spiritual power may be felt rather than de- 
 scribed or analysed. It resides in or it permeates a man's 
 whole circle of activities ; it cannot be localised, it cannot 
 be identified exclusively with one of them. It is felt in 
 solemn statements of doctrine, and also in the informal 
 utterances of casual intercourse ; it is felt in action no less 
 than in language, in trivial acts not less than in heroic 
 ventures, or in yet more heroic resignation ; it is traced 
 perchance in the very expression of the countenance, yet 
 the countenance is too coarse an organ to do it justice ; it 
 just asserts its presence, but its presence is too volatile, 
 too immaterial, to admit of being seized, and measured, 
 and brought by art or by language fairly within the com- 
 pass of our comprehension. It is an unearthly beauty, 
 whose native home is in a higher world, yet which tarries 
 among men from age to age, since the time when the Son 
 of God left us His example, and gave us His Spirit. It is 
 nothing else than His spiritual presence, mantling upon His 
 servants ; they live in Him ; they lose in Him something of 
 their proper personality ; they are absorbed into, they are 
 transfigured by, a Life altogether higher than their own : 
 His Voice blends with theirs,His Eye seems to lighten theirs 
 with its sweetness and its penetration ; His Hand gives 
 gentleness and decision to their acts ; His Heart communi- 
 cates a ray of its Divine charity to their life of narrower 
 and more stagnant affection ; His Soul commingles with 
 theirs, and their life of thought, and feeling, and resolve is 
 
Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 177 
 
 be that some of us have been at least indirectly sufferers 
 by, a series of occurrences calculated necessarily to arrest 
 public attention, and to stir the deeper thoughts of men. 
 A murrain upon our cattle, a pestilence carrying death 
 into our homes, a great continental war, threatening at 
 one time to become absolutely European in its range, and 
 a political ferment more serious than has been known for 
 many years in England, have already marked the present 
 year. And even now a plague of rain and waters at the 
 harvest season threatens our poor with high prices, if not 
 with actual famine, during the coming winter. Circum- 
 stances such as these brace the faith of a people, or they 
 draw forth into the sunlight the latent scepticism which 
 is preying upon its life. And the public comments upon 
 such events as these show in what currents the thoughts 
 of men are now running. Do they not appeal, my breth- 
 ren, very solemnly to us, as to the watchmen who stand, 
 or who are presently to stand, upon the towers of the 
 Holy City of God, that we may note the varying signs of 
 that night of this earthly life, which must precede the 
 dawn of the Eternal Morning ? Must we not accurately 
 observe, and, after our measure of grace, deal with, such 
 features of contemporary opinion as bear upon the honour 
 and the rights of God ? For there are times when souls, 
 too, are visited or threatened by epidemic disorders ; 
 there are times when we see hanging over the thought 
 of a class or of a nation some murky cloud charged 
 with a prodigious fallacy, with a gigantic misconception ; 
 these are times when the very atmosphere of thought 
 around us is impregnated with poison, and when nothing 
 but the utmost precautions of faith can save men's souls 
 alive. And if this language be deemed too emphatic to 
 describe anything that may have been observed of late 
 in England ; at least, my brethren, I make bold to say, 
 that the manner in which the great events of this year 
 If 
 
1 78 Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 have been discussed in many quarters, betrays the 
 prevalence of a great spiritual disease. That disease 
 is an insensibility to the action of God in His own world, 
 and especially upon the destinies of man. A view of life 
 and death, of success and of reverses, of physical occur- 
 rences, and of human activities, which professes to be 
 complete without God, which leaves God out of the question, 
 which perhaps ignores God with quiet deliberation, or 
 which uses the name of God, if at all, from a sentimental 
 feeling of propriety, rather than with the practical 
 motive of tracing events up to their One First Cause ; 
 is not such a view as this a serious spiritual disease ? 
 is it not, when widely accepted, nothing less than a 
 calamity of the very greatest magnitude ? And yet 
 this, or something of the kind at least, appears to be 
 threatening us now and here in England. Two or three 
 writers of genius and popularity among the most educated 
 classes of Englishmen, represent lines of thought which 
 have for some time been steadily making way, and 
 which simply ignore altogether the Presence and the 
 action of a living God. The influence of these writers 
 is seen in the language of a much larger circle: it is 
 observable in that great periodical literature which is 
 now so powerful an agency in forming the convictions 
 of the English people. And, if we look below the 
 educated and half-educated classes, the broad results of 
 this generally godless habit of mind, as distinct from the 
 intellectual processes by which those results are reached, 
 are distributed most widely even among the humblest 
 classes of our countrymen. It would certainly be a 
 mistake to suppose that the danger in question affects 
 only the educated classes ; since in the social system 
 of England there is a perpetual infiltration of thought 
 going on from class to class ; and this, too, more rapidly 
 now than at any former period of history. The con- 
 
Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 179 
 
 sequence is that the substance of any prominent line 
 or result of thought in a particular class soon becomes 
 in a greater or less degree the common property of 
 the people. The philosophical (so to term it) and the 
 popular form of the habit of thought now before us 
 have this broad feature in common, — that they both 
 dispense with, if they do not deliberately exclude, the 
 active government and interference of God in the affairs 
 of the world and of man. And if for this general mental 
 tendency we must, for convenience' sake, find some 
 general name, we shall do it no particular injustice by 
 calling it Fatalism. It is the substitution of a blind 
 destiny of some kind or other for the loving intelligent 
 action of a living Personal God. 
 
 Fatalism, then, is undoubtedly a formidable power; 
 for, quite independently of any arguments which it may 
 be able to produce, its strength rests mainly on that dull, 
 brutal insensibility to spiritual truth, which marks the 
 life of a great number of animalised men. In its more 
 developed and consistent form, Fatalism denies that any 
 Supreme Being exists. In its more ordinary form, it 
 admits the existence of God, but it empties that sacred 
 Name of all the meaning which it has for Christians, by 
 denying to God any freedom of action. Fatalism is not 
 one of those speculative errors that involve no practical 
 results. Fatalism eats out the very heart and root of 
 religion. The action of Fatalism upon the soul may be 
 observed principally in two separate effects. First, it 
 destroys all belief in the power of prayer. Who would 
 pray to an impotent, dormant God ? to a name, to a 
 shadow, to a something banished by the decree of the 
 fatalist thinkers to a distant heaven, even when they 
 still consent to recognise in the place of Deity the exist- 
 ence of the shadow or of the name ? Qui bono ? What 
 is the good of prayer if there is no Being in existence 
 
i8o 
 
 Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 who is free to answer it ? Prayer presupposes — not a 
 god imprisoned by a network of fixed laws — but a God 
 Who is able and willing to interfere actively, if He sees 
 good, on behalf of His clients. Prayer is an elaborate 
 waste of time, unless it be addressed to a living, working 
 God ; to a God Who is as free now as He was on the day 
 of creation ; to a God Who is the Master and not the 
 slave of nature, that is to say, of the work of His hands. 
 If prayer cannot really touch the Divine Will, if prayer 
 is after all only a high sort of poetry, well devised to act 
 upon the mind of the worshipper, but having no real 
 weight and currency in heaven, practical men will cease 
 to pray. They do cease to pray, when they become 
 fatalists. And this leads us to observe a second effect of 
 Fatalism : — it is in the long run destructive of virtue. 
 Virtue, as the word implies, is the force of a free will 
 rising against the pressure of passion and circumstances, 
 and expressing itself in right action. But what place is 
 there for virtue, if after all man is but a reed floating 
 helplessly along upon the torrent of impulse and of 
 circumstance, the prey and sport of a host of resistless 
 forces and laws around him ? Even if a fatalist believes 
 it to be his interest on the whole to be virtuous, self- 
 interest is after all no match for the vehemence and 
 impetuosity of passion. Passion sooner or later in such a 
 man must sweep all barriers before it, and when passion 
 has done its perfect work of moral and mental degradation 
 and ruin, the fatalist will whisper to himself that there is 
 no such thing as making head against natural inclinations 
 or outward events ; he will argue that it is folly for a man 
 to attempt to shape or to direct his course either with or 
 without any aid from on high ; he will maintain that a 
 man is inevitably what he is, just as trees and beasts 
 are inevitably what they are ; man, he will hold, is not 
 the moral handiwork and nursling of a Father's Will ; 
 
Fatalism and the Living God. 1 8 1 
 
 man is but the helpless product and plaything of a heart- 
 less, lifeless mechanism of the Universe. 
 
 We shall then, it may be, do something to the purpose, 
 if without attempting to deal at all exhaustively with 
 so vast a problem, we contrast some leading lines of 
 fatalist thought with those facts of Christian truth to 
 which they stand in most direct, energetic, and irrecon- 
 cilable opposition. 
 
 I. 
 
 Fatalism points first of all to the visible Universe, to 
 its vast system of "laws "and "forces" under which we 
 human beings live, and of which we form a part. Look, 
 says the fatalist, towards the heavens, or pass your eye over 
 the surface of the earth, and everywhere you will find 
 the presence of law, with its undeviating action, its strict, 
 absolute, invariable rule. All moves, all lives, all grows, all 
 wanes, all decays, all dies, in obedience to a fixed order. In 
 the Middle Ages, we are assured, men might fail to see the 
 truth and the meaning of this. Early civilisations, like 
 children, may hear the angry voice of the Eternal Justice in 
 the storm and in the thunder ; or they may welcome the 
 smile of an unseen Father's love in the flowers and in the 
 sunshine. But we of the nineteenth century, whom science 
 has taken by the hand, must resign the beautiful poetry of 
 that primitive stage of thought. We are to hear in the 
 thunder, we are to trace in the bright day, or in the 
 flower-bed, only the energy of laws, of laws of electricity, 
 of laws of light, of laws of vegetation. For us the earth 
 must but yield the results of uniform forces, the range 
 and action of which we are gradually exploring, arranging, 
 systematising : for us (I quote the words of a fatalistic 
 writer) the heavens can no more declare the glory of God, 
 they only declare the glory of Newton and of La Place. 
 
182 
 
 Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 Both on earth and in heaven a vast machinery of forces is 
 working, above us and around us, irresistibly, silently, 
 eternally ; and we men are at once the products and 
 the slaves of its action. Our individual births, our 
 bodily forms, the vicissitudes of our lives, and of our 
 deaths, are all alike determined by inevitable laws, just as 
 truly as are the movements of the heavenly bodies ; and 
 to suppose that we are each one of us the objects of 
 a particular plan, or care, or foresight on the part of a 
 Supreme Being, is said to be a superstition which should 
 have been quite killed and buried out of sight, long 
 before our reaching this advanced stage of the ' world's 
 intellectual history. -\ 
 
 So speaks openly, or where it dare not speak, so hints 
 covertly, in this our day, in many a learned coterie, 
 during many an after-dinner conversation, in many a 
 magazine, in many a newspaper, the spirit of scientific 
 Fatalism. Nor is this only the language of the learned. 
 The same idea in a ruder form is very widely diffused, 
 and few men altogether escape from its blighting breath. 
 Are we not all of us at times, in an indirect manner, 
 subject to this depressing influence ? Has it not occurred 
 to us that, supposing " Nature " to be of a truth the plastic 
 creature of our Father in heaven, her smiles and her 
 frowns ought to be in keeping with the alternations 
 of the inward life of His children ? It maj f have been 
 that we were sad or sick even unto death, while the seasons 
 pursued in tranquil unfeeling indifference their even 
 march of still beauty or of majestic tumult. The sun 
 which shone upon our joy of yore, shines to-day, it may 
 be, with yet more scorching brilliancy upon our sorrow ; 
 and the face of earth and heaven seems to our bleeding 
 hearts to meet us with the same glance of an unmoved 
 irony, as we assist in our gladness at the bridal party, or 
 stand in tears by the side of the open grave. Forgetting 
 
Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 183 
 
 that "Nature" is God's voice to all His creatures, we 
 have, perhaps, in our little selfish estimate of her mission, 
 yielded for a moment to the dreadful thought that she is 
 but the garb of a dark lifeless destiny, which hangs 
 around and imprisons our personal life; and we have 
 said to ourselves that, instead of being children fondled 
 by the love of a tender Parent, we are in truth only the 
 eccentric fruitage of some vital " force," that we are lying 
 for a brief span hapless and uncared for, ready to be 
 crushed by the cruel machinery of heartless and resistless 
 law which gave us birth. 
 
 And yet if we will, we may prove to ourselves, by a 
 very simple experiment, that this conception of a system 
 of resistless law, absolutely killing out all the freedom of 
 the life of Individual "Will, is but a creation of our dis- 
 eased imaginations. Why does a stone lie on the surface 
 of the ground instead of flying off into space ? Every boy 
 will answer, that the stone is held down by the " law " of 
 gravitation. But if I stoop down, and pick up the stone, 
 I suspend, I violate, I defy that law. My will, then, is a 
 force which, in the act of picking up the stone, sensibly 
 asserts its right to set at defiance one of the most power- 
 ful and well-ascertained " laws of nature." My will is a 
 power, it seems, of quite another order from the power of 
 natural law. Within certain limits, and of its own mere 
 motion and caprice, my will can break in upon this 
 assumed invariability of nature which lies around it ; my 
 will can secure and enhance its consciousness of its own 
 existence, by its masterful defiance of the observed " laws " 
 of nature upon which it innovates. And surely if my 
 feeble created will is capable of this, I am right in ascend- 
 ing in thought to a Will above me, to a Will Almighty, 
 irresistible, supreme. Such a Will is the only conceivable 
 explanation of the existence of my own. Such a Will 
 must be infinitely superior to the reign of natural laws, 
 
184 Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 since even my own weak will is within certain limits 
 ascertainably superior to them. Now and then, for grave 
 purposes, such a supreme majestic Will may be reason- 
 ably expected to assert Its existence. History says that 
 It has done so by a series of events which entirely outrage 
 our conception of natural law, and which we call miracles. 
 Of course there have been many false miracles, but if all 
 had been false, faith in miracles would have died out from 
 among men long ago. The false miracles naturally result 
 from, and they really imply the existence of true miracles. 
 And true proven miracles have this general value, as dis- 
 tinct from the more particular ends of their being sever- 
 ally wrought ; they make manifest before the eyes of men, 
 the subsisting freedom of the living God. They show 
 that God is not the slave of " nature," but that " nature " 
 is the slave and creature of God. They show that, if 
 " nature " ordinarily sets forth that harmony and order in 
 which God delights, by observing " the law " which He 
 has " given " " that it should not be broken " ; yet that, 
 upon occasion, a deliberate violation of natural order has 
 an effect analogous to the insistence upon a forgotten legal 
 right among men. Miracle simply asserts God's right to 
 act with unfettered freedom in the world which He has 
 made. A proved miracle, then, destroys the fatalistic 
 inference from the presumed invariableness of natural 
 law. If it is certain that Jesus Christ literally, aud as a 
 matter of historical fact, rose 1 from the grave, then it is 
 certain also, that however regular, and in the main un- 
 varied may be the Great Creator's modes of working ; 
 there He is behind that screen-work of orderly beauty 
 which so arrests and impresses our imagination ; there 
 
 1 It is remarkable that the specific evidence for the Resurrection is rarely 
 or never met, simply on its own merits, by infidel writers : they start with 
 an d priori assumption of its impossibility, and then try to bring the evidence 
 into harmony with the assumption. For a " famous " sample of this, see 
 M. Renan's recent work, Les ApCtrcs, chapters i, 2. 
 
Fatalism and the Living God. 185 
 
 He is, in all His living liberty and power of action ; able 
 to interfere, and at times actually interfering, on behalf of 
 the wellbeing of His creatures ; mindful, practically and 
 sensibly mindful, of the general and special needs of man. 
 
 But beyond the miracles recorded by history, there is 
 a truth which, even more imperatively than miracles, 
 shatters the fatalistic conception of nature as a system of 
 strictly resistless laws. Miracles suggest, they lead our 
 minds back and up to, that miracle of miracles, that 
 wonder compared with which all else is easy and obvious ; 
 they lead us up to the fact of a creation out of nothing. 
 Both the Jewish and the Christian faiths repose on a 
 belief in One God, the Maker of heaven and earth. The 
 Bible begins by telling us that in the beginning God 
 created the heavens and the earth. Now here it is that 
 the fatalistic thinkers divide into two classes, — those who 
 deny the existence of God point-blank, and those who still 
 profess to believe in Him, while they deny His freedom of 
 action. For the statement that God did create the Universe 
 out of nothing is either true or it is false. If it is false, 
 then men are only using words which blind themselves 
 and others in still professing to believe in the existence of 
 God. If God did not create the Universe out of nothing, 
 then He is not what we mean by God ; He is not the One 
 Self-existing, Self-sustaining Being. If He did not create 
 all that is besides Himself, then something must have 
 existed everlastingly alongside of Himself, and indepen- 
 dent of Himself : He must have been accompanied by 
 uncreated matter or by uncreated force, or by both, which, 
 on the supposition, are just as self-existing as He is Him- 
 self. To identify this self-existing matter or force with 
 the essence of God is to annihilate Him outright ; since it 
 is to deny the very first truth of His nature, namely, that 
 He is a purely simple uncompounded spiritual Essence. 
 And this is what is done by the most " advanced " fatal- 
 
i86 
 
 Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 istic thinkers ; they believe in the eternity of matter and 
 in the eternity of force, and in the eternity of nothing 
 whatever else except matter and force. According to this 
 school, all the very highest forms of the life of thought 
 and feeling among men are only so many results of the 
 action of " force " upon " matter." Certainly the attri- 
 bution of such an effect as the genius of Shakespeare, to 
 such a cause as the action of a blind force upon a little 
 chemical matter, is more entirely in contradiction with the 
 whole range of our experience than any mystery of 
 Divine revelation whatever ; and yet this is the creed of 
 that logical and extreme Fatalism which calls itself 
 Materialism, and which denies that God exists at all. If 
 God does really exist, then He must have created all that 
 is ; He must have summoned the material of the Universe 
 into being out of nothing ; He must have imposed form 
 and order upon the material thus placed by Himself at 
 His own disposal. In doing this He must have been free 
 to have left it all undone, or else some force wordd be in 
 existence which is superior to Himself. But if He 
 created by such a free exercise of His will, surely it 
 follows that He can interfere with His creation ; unless 
 He can be proved to have deliberately abdicated His right 
 of interference in favour of some other power : unless He 
 has delegated it to some impersonal viceroy, such as 
 " nature " is assumed to be by the less " advanced " school 
 of fatalistic theorists. Need I say that the supposition of 
 such a delegation is as opposed to accurate philosophical 
 thought, as it is to the statements of revealed truth ? It 
 is an awkward expedient, devised to reconcile a shadowy 
 theism with a fatalistic conception of " nature." The 
 order which may be observed in the natural world is 
 undoubtedly a matter of fact, having its origin in that 
 highest order which is the Life of the Creator. But the 
 highest order is also the highest freedom ; and the sub- 
 
Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 187 
 
 stantial truth which keeps the idea of " laws of nature " 
 in its proper place in the mind of a Christian, and which 
 prevents his exaggerating it into a denial of God's liberty 
 of action, is the truth of a creation out of nothing. Deny 
 creation, and in reason you must deny the existence of God. 
 Admit creation, and in reason you must admit the perpetu- 
 ated action and freedom of the living Creator. The laws of 
 nature themselves are but an orderly manifestation of that 
 action and freedom : they are, to speak more accurately, 
 abstract ideas of our own minds, not having any substan- 
 tial being or shape outside our minds, and arising within 
 our minds upon our observing the beautiful regularity of 
 God's ordinary working in the world around us. But 
 this regularity exists from moment to moment only, 
 because the Author of " nature " wills it to exist ; and 
 nothing can be less true than that the general order and 
 symmetry of God's active care and providences towards 
 men, is a proof that He is not " mindful " of man. 
 
 II. 
 
 But Fatalism falls back upon a second line of argu- 
 ment ; it pleads man's insignificance when we look at his 
 place in the Universe. Granted, it says, that God is a 
 living and working Being ; granted that He can and does 
 in some sense act upon the work which His Hands have 
 made ; yet is it conceivable that so insignificant a creature 
 as man should be the object of His especial care ? Such 
 an illusion of human conceit, we are told, was pardonable 
 in ages when the earth was seriously believed to be the 
 centre of the Universe. But the Copernican system of 
 the heavens has long superseded the Ptolemaic, and our 
 present knowledge of the Universe would have excited 
 the marvel of Copernicus himself. We now know that 
 the planet on which we live is but one of the smallest 
 
1 88 Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 satellites of one of the least important of the countless 
 suns that throng infinite space. " The milky way alone 
 contains more than twenty million suns, and the milky 
 way is but an island in the great ocean of the Universe." 
 At distances which the imagination cannot strain itself to 
 picture, the most remote fields of space are filled with 
 worlds, filled with solar systems, compared with which 
 our own is insignificant. Is it conceivable then that this 
 world and its inhabitants is really an object of particular 
 care to the Infinite Creator ? Or must not such an im- 
 pression die out along with those narrow conceptions of 
 the Universe which were prevalent some centuries ago, and 
 which were more truly in harmony with so exaggerated 
 an estimate of the importance of the human race ? 
 
 So argues Fatalism; but what does this argument 
 really involve ? It manifestly proceeds on a presumption 
 that material bulk is that which merits and enlists the 
 attention of the Supreme Being. Whereas nothing can 
 be less true than that material size is a measure of the 
 real importance of an object, even within the field of 
 human observation. The smallest creature that partakes 
 in organic life is really higher in the scale of being than 
 the largest inorganic mass ; a daisy is really a nobler 
 thing, and has in it more of the vital force of God, than a 
 granite mountain. The most extended regions of space 
 are as nothing compared to the little body or to the little 
 spot which is the seat or the scene of mind. Two-thirds 
 of the earth's surface is water, yet no naturalist would 
 seriously maintain that the earth was intended chiefly to 
 be the abode of whales. Of the remaining third, much is 
 uninhabitable by man ; and yet how true is the thought 
 which runs through the eighth Psalm, namely, that man 
 is lord of " Nature," and God's viceroy over it, although 
 he is, as to size, but as a vanishing point when compared 
 with the great heavenly bodies ! Man, though encased in 
 
Fatalism and the Living God. 189 
 
 his small body, is in himself a spirit able to compass a 
 world : and the material size of this earth on which man 
 lives has nothing whatever to do with its real claim upon 
 the attention of its Creator. If it had, we might agree in 
 the fatalistic conclusion ; but we should perhaps have 
 still to inquire how many quadrillions of cubic miles a 
 planet must have in point of bulk in order to fit it for 
 being the object of a special Providence, or still more for 
 being the scene of an incarnation of the Supreme Being. 
 
 What is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? The 
 Bible answers this question by saying, that man is a 
 being made in the image of God. Man is the highest 
 point of visible created life ; in man created life reaches 
 its climax, as far as the world of sense is concerned. The 
 lower gradations of life are summed up in him ; he is 
 mineral, vegetable, and animal, all in one. His body 
 maybe dissolved by chemistry into mineral matter ; yet 
 he grows and is nourished like the vegetable; he feels 
 and he moves like the animal. He shares in the life of 
 instinct and sensation common to the whole animal 
 world ; but the qualities which, in the animal world, are 
 portioned out among different races of animals and indi- 
 vidual creatures, are in man united into one compendious 
 and majestic whole. But, further, man has that which 
 severs him from all, even the most intelligent, of the 
 lower creatures: he has not merely a sensitive but a 
 reasonable soul. All the powers of his body and of his 
 mind are subject to this the great governing power within 
 him, the real centre aDd seat of his being. The reason- 
 able soul is the sphere of that within each one of us 
 which is shared by no other being, and which each of us 
 names " I." In other words, it is the seat of personality. 
 We become conscious of the existence of a personal life 
 by two distinct processes ; by conscious thought, and by 
 acts of free will. Animals have sensations, but thought, 
 
1 90 Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 reflective thought, never. Man not merely thinks, but he 
 knows that he thinks ; he not merely thinks, but he can 
 put his thought into the physical shape of sound ; he can 
 use language. He thinks not only about himself and the 
 necessities of his life, but he can ascend to general truths; 
 he can enter into the collective mental life of his race ; 
 he can conceive in his mind such vast ideas as the idea 
 of God and the idea of eternity. He can turn his 
 thought in upon himself, and he can make his own exist- 
 ence a subject of his thought. In this he is utterly un- 
 like any of the lower creatures, and he is a distinct 
 likeness of the Self-contemplating God Who made him. 
 Of man's likeness to God, his free will is another aspect. 
 As man's thought is distinct from the sensation and feel- 
 ing of the animals, so is man's free will distinct from 
 animal instinct. Man's true acts proceed not from any 
 blind impulse within him, not from any constraining 
 attraction of natural objects around and without him, but 
 from himself, from the consent of his own self-determin- 
 ing will. Every man has within himself a certain point 
 or pivot of freedom which no outward force, no inward 
 emotion, can violate or crush. A man may be influenced 
 by inward motives and by outward circumstances ; but 
 the man himself in the inner sanctuary of his free self- 
 governing will decides whether or not to obey these cir- 
 cumstances and motives ; they do not will for him, and 
 they cannot oblige him to will against his will. His acts, 
 in short, are his own free choice; and here again he is 
 unlike any of the lower creatures, each and all of which 
 are swayed irresistibly by inward instincts and by out- 
 ward circumstances ; here again, I say, man is like that 
 Infinite, Self-existent, Self-determining Will to Which he 
 owes his existence. 
 
 It is, then, sufficient to reply to the Psalmist's ques- 
 tion, that man is demonstrably and essentially unlike 
 
Fatalism and the Living God. 191 
 
 any other being of which we have sensible experience. 
 Thinking, and knowing that he thinks ; willing, and 
 being conscious of his freedom to will or not to will, man 
 sees within himself a form of life which is distinct from 
 and superior to those laws and processes of decay which 
 touch the life of his body, and which carries within itself 
 the secret suspicion of its own immortality. And this 
 suspicion has been heightened — on the one hand by close 
 reflection, on the other, as we Christians know, by revela- 
 tion — into an absolute certainty. Man, then, in his like- 
 ness to God, may have higher claims upon the attention 
 of the Great Creator than millions of suns of the vastest 
 material bulk, but inhabited by no spiritual beings. It 
 may or may not be the case, that our earth, although 
 certainly not the material centre, is really the vital centre 
 of the Universe ; it may or may not be true that in other 
 worlds, as according to one conjecture on the planet Mars, 
 there are creatures with a life analogous to our own ; it is 
 unpractical to lavish suppositions upon a subject as to 
 which certainty is out of our reach. But this at any rate 
 is certain, that material bulk has nothing to do with 
 eminence in the scale of being, since God Himself is not 
 a huge mass of matter, but a strictly moral and spiritual 
 Essence ; and thus it is, that of all the orders of existence 
 which fall under the observation of the senses, man is 
 himself incomparably the highest, as being beyond all 
 others in nearness and likeness to the strictly spiritual 
 God. 1 
 
 III. 
 
 But Fatalism will here reproduce the argument which 
 it draws from the insignificance of man in a some- 
 what modified form. It will grant that God does govern 
 
 1 See Dr. Luthardt's Apologelische Vortriige uber die Grundwahrheiten des 
 Christenthums, pp, 63-65 and 97-101. 
 
192 
 
 Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 and provide for mankind, but only in a general sense. 
 We are told that God deals with great laws and with 
 broad principles, and that it is unworthy of Him, on His 
 throne in heaven, to trouble Himself with petty incidents 
 immeasurably beneath Him, and seriously to go into the 
 details of His government. The general progress of the 
 human race, the great events of history, great inventions, 
 great battles, great revolutions, great famines, earthquakes, 
 pestilences, — these the modified Fatalism will admit to be 
 under, or at least not quite beyond, God's notice and 
 control. But that you and I should presume to think 
 that the Infinite Creator of all those worlds is closely and 
 earnestly interested in all the very humblest incidents of 
 our separate lives ; that we should claim His interest ; 
 that we should in prayer to Him associate His August 
 Name not merely with the majestic evolutions of His 
 Providence, having their sphere in the centuries, but with 
 the petty joys and sorrows of our personal and domestic 
 life, with our passing anxieties about ourselves and those 
 around us ; — this, according to the modified Fatalism, is 
 to exaggerate our personal importance even to the very 
 verge of the ridiculous, while it is to underrate altogether 
 the lofty magnificence of the Great God. 
 
 And yet, my brethren, it might be conceded by this 
 school of modified fatalists, — who are, it appears, too much 
 engaged in vindicating the magnificence of God to allow 
 themselves to pray to Him for special mercies, — it might 
 be conceded even by these sensitive objectors, that the 
 honour and greatness of God are sufficiently safe in the 
 keeping of the greatest of the Prophets. When has 
 modern thought mounted upwards more intelligently, 
 more adoringly, towards the greatness of the Infinite God, 
 than did the poetry of the inspired Isaiah ? " Who is 
 He," asks the Prophet, " that hath measured the waters 
 in the hollow of His hand, and meted out heaven with 
 
Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 193 
 
 the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a 
 measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills 
 in a balance ? Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, 
 or who hath been His counsellor ? . . . Behold, the nations 
 are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small 
 dust of the balance : behold, He taketli up the isles as 
 a very little thing. . . . All nations before Him are as 
 nothing; and they are counted to Him less than nothing, 
 and vanity. To whom then will ye liken God ? or what 
 likeness will ye compare unto Him ? . . . Lift up your 
 eyes on high, and behold Who hath created all these " 
 (stars), " that bringeth out their host by number : He 
 calleth them all by names, by the greatness of His might, 
 . . . not one faileth " 1 (to obey Him). 
 
 My brethren, the modified Fatalism itself will admit 
 that it could not more entirely do justice to man's insig- 
 nificance when compared with the majestic greatness of 
 the Creator. Certainly Isaiah does not fear to look the 
 magnificence of God well in the face : but what is the 
 conclusion which this great Prophet draws from it ? 
 " Why sayest thou, 0 Jacob, and speakest thou, 0 Israel, 
 My way is hid fiom the Lord, and my judgment is passed 
 over from my God ? Hast thou not known, hast thou 
 not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator 
 of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary ? 
 . . . They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their 
 strength ; they shall mount up with wings as eagles ; they 
 shall run, and not be weary ; and they shall walk, and 
 not faint." 2 
 
 Isaiah then accepts the premise of the modified Fatalism, 
 but he draws a very different conclusion from that of the 
 Fatalist. " God is great," says the Fatalist ; " and there- 
 fore He will not demean Himself to think of, and to care 
 for us men." " God is great," says the Prophet, " and it 
 
 1 Isa. xl. 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 26. 2 Ibid. 27-31. 
 
 N 
 
194 
 
 Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 is of the very essence of His greatness that He should 
 ' have respect unto the lowly/ that He should look to and 
 care for each of the puniest creatures of His Hand." 
 
 Is the Prophet's inference, think you, a forced or an 
 extreme one ? Must a true greatness then necessarily 
 give itself airs, and like some earthly despot, affect, or 
 honestly cultivate a sublime ignorance of all beneath 
 itself, or of all the particular, as distinct from the general 
 interests around it ? Is it a dishonour to our Father in 
 Heaven to suppose that His relations to His intelligent 
 creatures are not strictly analogous to the relations which 
 subsist between an Eastern Sultan, or Emperor, and the 
 subject populations around his throne ? Or do our truest 
 and most perfect ideas of greatness point in a very 
 opposite direction ? What, for instance, is the test of 
 true greatness in the human mind ? Compare the mind 
 which can only appreciate broad principles, the general 
 line and bearing of a subject, with the mind which can 
 combine with this grasp of principle a minute knowledge 
 of detail. Which of the two is, I do not say the most 
 practically useful, but the higher in the order of intelli- 
 gence ? Is a poet only or really great, who is so altogether 
 absorbed in the study of the idea and scheme of his poem, 
 as to be entirely careless about its metres, its rhythm, 
 the justice and propriety of its expressions, verse by 
 verse ? Is an architect likely to achieve professional 
 success, if he is incessantly occupied in drawing ground- 
 plans and sections of magnificent buildings, but wholly 
 indifferent to the detail of his plans, and so to the amount 
 of labour and material which will be necessary to realise 
 them ? Should we not say that such an architect was 
 intellectually deficient as well as practically untrust- 
 worthy ? On the other hand, what is it that strikes us 
 in the genius of a great sculptor or painter, of a liaffaelle, 
 of a Michael Angelo? Surely this: that the artist can 
 
Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 195 
 
 unite to so magnificent a general conception of his subject 
 so careful and elaborate a treatment of its minutest 
 features. Or how does the military genius, say of the 
 First Napoleon, chiefly impress us ? Is it not when we 
 find him at one and the same moment planning a campaign 
 which is to range across the Continent of Europe, and 
 yet calculating with the skill of a retail vendor of pro- 
 visions all the items of his commissariat, the rations of 
 his soldiers, their clothes, their comforts in the camp as 
 their movements in the field ? Or in reading Burke, or 
 when listening to one of the great speakers in our Houses 
 of Parliament, must we not see genius in that surprising 
 balance of thought which is maintained between the 
 attractions of general principle and the attractions of 
 minute detail 1 The orator is too accurate to be vague ; 
 yet he is too comprehensive to be petty. He impresses 
 us and carries us with him, first by his felt grasp of and 
 mastery over a great subject, and next by his power — not 
 of condescending to, but — of sympathising with each of 
 its subordinate elements ; and we feel his greatness almost 
 sensibly, when, even while the speaker is being carried 
 most impetuously forward by a flash of thought which 
 inspires him with unwonted fervour, he can yet deliber- 
 ately choose those exact words which most perfectly 
 express all the shades and undulations of his meaning. 
 
 Mental greatness, then, as we see it among men, seems 
 to blend a comprehensiveness of view with a minute 
 attention to detail ; it is not overcome by the study of 
 particular facts, but still less does it affect to disdain or 
 to dispense with them. Mental greatness unites qualities 
 of mind, which in men of more common mould are found 
 apart : the really great mind perceives at a glance, and 
 keeps its hold upon the two extremities of a chain of 
 thought that connects the broadest of principles with the 
 most minute of its illustrations. And if this be the gift 
 
196 
 
 Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 of genius among men, is it altogether otherwise with the 
 Source of genius, with the Eternal Mind of God ? If true 
 earthly statesmanship is not merely occupied with abstract 
 principles of government, but has a quick eye to see, and 
 a warm heart to feel for, the actual wants of the people 
 in their daily lives, so that it may protect, and aid, and 
 elevate them by a wise and provident legislation, is it 
 otherwise with Him Whose Image may be traced in all 
 that is really best in the thought of man 1 
 
 Surely, if anything about Him is certain, it is this : — 
 that in virtue of His Infinite Greatness, He unites the 
 widest reach of thought to the most perfect concentration 
 of it upon each detail of His creation ; that nothing is 
 so small as to escape the penetrating glance of His 
 Omniscient Love ; that literally not one sparrow can fall 
 to the ground without His knowledge ; and that, as a 
 matter, not of hyperbole, but of strict fact, the very hairs 
 of our head are all numbered. His knowledge of and care 
 for detail is proportioned to His grasp of principle. Both 
 are infinite. Thus His greatness it is, which makes Him 
 attentive even to the least and lowest of His creatures ; 
 His greatness, so far from being an argument in favour of 
 the fatalistic denial of a special Providence, is, when 
 rightly considered, the very truth which imperatively 
 obliges us to believe in it. 
 
 IV. 
 
 But the Fatalist has a last line of objection : he points 
 to the history of man, to the state of the world, as 
 we actually see it before us. You may argue a priori, he 
 says, that God is thus mindfid of man, because you say 
 that He ought to be so, in virtue of the terms of His 
 Nature. But see whether your anticipation is borne out 
 by the facts. Do you then trace a clear providential plan 
 
Fatalism and the Living God. 197 
 
 in history ? Is there no darkness, no confusion, no per- 
 plexity in the moral scheme of the annals of the world ? 
 What mean those sorrows, leading to no moral fruit that 
 we can trace; those deeds of violence and of blood, 
 followed as it seems by no adequate retribution, yet 
 scattered so thickly throughout the arena of history, as 
 almost to make up its main material ? How do you explain 
 those triumphs of injustice, those successes of the un- 
 scrupulous, those sudden, crushing misfortunes of the 
 deserving, which meet us in the life of nations as in the 
 life of individuals ? Look at the human family scattered 
 throughout the globe, with its vast and accumulating load 
 of crime, with its yet larger burden of suffering, with its 
 inheritance of widespread, vital, uneradicated errors. Do 
 you suppose, he continues, that this vast mass of beings, 
 pursuing each one of them its mysterious destiny, will 
 really illustrate your doctrine of a Providential rule ? Ah ! 
 you may hear the low deep murmurs of misfortune and 
 of crime, rising from time to time above the din of human 
 voices ; you may hear the terrible insinuation, that if 
 there be a God, He is the God of the rich ; that if there 
 be a Providence, it is a Providence devoted to the interests 
 of the successful and of the fortunate ; that for the mass 
 of men the heaven overhead is but clouds and thick 
 darkness ; and that the last conclusion of the man who 
 would look honestly and impartially at the facts of life 
 must be a despair, dignified perhaps by some attempt to 
 make it look like resignation. Even holy men for a 
 moment have felt the pressure of the argument which is 
 urged by Fatalism from the surface appearances of human 
 life. " Lo, these are the ungodly," said one, " these 
 prosper in the world, and these have riches in possession : 
 then I said, Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and 
 washed my hands in innocency." 
 
 Upon this difficulty let us make two observations. 
 
198 
 
 Fatalism and the L iving God. 
 
 First, that the world, as we see it, is the world as sin has 
 made it. God did not make the world as it now is. God 
 gave man moral freedom to obey or to disobey Him. 
 This freedom was an essential part of man's dignity. 
 Man has abused that freedom, and along with the result- 
 ing moral evil has come its shadow and its effect — mental 
 and physical pain. If you say that God ought not to 
 have risked so much, foreseeing, as He must have foreseen, 
 the issue, you certainly carry the discussion into a region 
 where no prudent man will follow you ; few men who 
 believe in God at all will venture to suggest that they 
 personally could have improved upon the handiwork or 
 plans of the Creator. If, however, you can learn that 
 although sin and pain have abounded, they have 
 abounded that in the end grace and joy might much 
 more abound : you will not be disposed to charge God 
 with the abuse which His free creature has made of His 
 bounty, nor will you suggest that the freedom which 
 has been abused had better have been denied. 
 
 And a second observation is this : that the past history 
 of man, and the present aspect of the world, are only a 
 very small fragment of a mighty drama. We do not see 
 enough to form a final conclusion on the strength of what 
 we see. Who would think of passing judgment on the 
 merit and plot of one of Shakespeare's plays, after he had 
 read only a scene or a couple of scenes of the first act ? 
 And in this world, and now, we follow only a little, a very 
 little, of the mighty drama of human destiny. We see, 
 indeed, enough to be quite certain that we do not see all : 
 we know for certain that the perplexities of the part 
 which we see will be unravelled by the discoveries of the 
 part which we do not see. Dreary and wretched indeed 
 would this life be, if it were our all, if there were no land 
 of reward and retribution beyond the tomb. Here we are, 
 after all, like private soldiers mingling in the fray of a vast 
 
Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 199 
 
 battle ; we only suspect, we cannot certainly explain in 
 all its detail, the plan of our Commander. The clash of 
 arms, the fury of the charge, the roar of the artillery, the 
 dust, the smoke, the cries of the wounded and of the 
 dying around us, render it impossible that we should 
 make out clearly, now and here, the meaning and drift of 
 each movement, of each advance, of each retreat. We are 
 too immersed in the struggle to form an estimate of its 
 bearings, as we might if we stood aside and looked down 
 on the combatants from some neighbouring height. Still 
 we may guess at, or be informed of the plans of our 
 Captain, if we cannot unfalteringly trace them. And we 
 know Whom we have believed ; we know that He sees 
 His way through the difficulties which to us appear 
 insuperable ; we are sure that our confidence in Him 
 may be for a while baffled, but cannot in the end prove 
 to have been misplaced. Although even millions of years 
 should pass before we see the full justification of His fore- 
 sight, we doubt not that He is leading us on to victory, 
 and that the battle of truth and justice and love which He 
 wages against error and wrong and selfishness can ulti- 
 mately have but one issue, and will not have been fought 
 in vain. 
 
 There are dark mysteries (I do not deny it) which hang 
 like clouds around the life of man — mysteries which, like 
 the transmission from sire to son, or through entire races, 
 of bodily sufferings or of moral taints and dispositions to 
 evil, seem, as we gaze at them, to darken for a while the 
 Face of our God. Yet beyond these clouds we may trace, 
 if we will, written in the heavens in letters of fire, the 
 words, " God is love." God is a Moral Being. He is 
 Morality in its highest and sublimest form : in other 
 words, He is Love. If God has ever revealed Himself, He 
 has revealed Himself not as a gigantic material machine, 
 not as an intellect of crushing power, but as a Heart of 
 
200 Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 boundless love. God is Love, but love is not always intelli- 
 gible : love has its reserves, no less than its disclosures ; 
 love has its periods of silence, as well as its interchange 
 of affection from heart to heart. God is Love, and there- 
 fore these dark thoughts about Him, which Fatalism 
 would suggest, are a wrong and an ingratitude. God is 
 Love ; and, therefore, whether I can trace it or not, I am 
 sure that there is a fundamental harmony in all His 
 works, and that the passions, the agitations, the crimes, 
 the agonies which are to be witnessed in the world, are 
 not a chaos of unregulated accidents, not a mere wilder- 
 ness of sterile misery, but parts of one all-embracing and 
 Divine plan, which is hidden now, but will be seen in its 
 fulness hereafter. Ah ! how often in past ages did men 
 long to behold some sensible proof of this truth, which 
 underlies all that causes such perplexity to human 
 thought, which, once mastered, makes all tolerable, and 
 which will fully explain all hereafter — this blessed truth, 
 that God is Love. For ages men longed for some sign, 
 some satisfaction, some rending of the heavens, some 
 enrichment of the earth. Entire generations of men 
 despondingly confessed with David, " Thy way is in the 
 sea, and Thy paths in the great waters, and Thy footsteps 
 are not known." 1 Entire generations of men cried out 
 with Job, " Oh that I knew where I might find Him, that 
 I might come even unto His seat." 2 Entire generations 
 of men confidently pleaded, with Isaiah, " Drop down, 
 ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down 
 righteousness : let the earth open, and let it bring forth 
 salvation." 3 
 
 And those longiugs, those plaints, those aspirations 
 have been answered. For Christians, the Life of Jesus 
 Christ is at once the standing proof and the central fact 
 of Divine Providence. Our earth has witnessed One Life, 
 
 1 Ps. lxxvii. 19. 2 Job xxiii. 3. 3 Isa. xlv. 8. 
 
Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 20I 
 
 of Which love was the informing soul, the principle of Its 
 every word and act ; and He Who led that Life pro- 
 claimed Himself an actual Incarnation of God, and 
 asserted that in seeing Him men had seen the Father. 1 
 God then has really been mindful of man, mindful of 
 man's dignity, and mindful of man's misery and degrada- 
 tion ; since He has set His seal upon the one, and He has 
 relieved the other even by the Incarnation of His Blessed 
 Sou. In the Incarnation we contemplate the Divine Pro- 
 vidence, not as an abstract quality, but in a concrete em- 
 bodiment, and beneath the Features of a Man. God has 
 not merely thought about us, He has not merely cared for 
 us, He has not merely protected and sustained and guided 
 us by His invisible hand ; He has put on a visible Form, 
 that He might inflict the fact of His Providence upon 
 our dull earthly senses of hearing and of sight ; He has 
 shattered with tender but resistless force the fatalistic 
 pleas, which would draw a veil between Himself and the 
 souls of His creatures. When Jesus fed the famishing 
 multitudes, when Jesus calmed the angry waves, when 
 Jesus raised from its tomb the putrid corpse, above all, 
 when at the dawn of morning Jesus Himself sprang from 
 the grave, wherein the selfish hate of man had laid Him, 
 He annihilated the dark suspicion, that the laws of 
 nature, observable around us, are a network of tyrannical 
 forces, which cramp the liberty of our God, and against 
 which we men fretfully dash ourselves in vain. Deny 
 Christ's Eesurrection, and you do not merely break alto- 
 gether with even the most shadowy species of Christi- 
 anity : you invalidate the laws of historical evidence. 
 Admit Christ's Eesurrection, and you admit a fact which 
 guards for ever in your thought the sacred truth of God's 
 liberty of action, against the tyranny of that false concep- 
 tion which would destroy the freedom both of God and 
 1 St. John xiv. 9. 
 
202 
 
 Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 man. Nor is this all : for it is impossible with the eye 
 upon a Life of such manifest beauty, and enhanced by such 
 miracles as that of Jesus of Nazareth, to yield to the idea 
 that man is too puny a being, and that he inhabits too 
 insignificant a world, to attract the attention of the great 
 Creator. The Life of Jesus, passed in one little province 
 of the East, passed among the lowest orders of society, 
 begun in a manger, and crushed out of Him on a public 
 gibbet, — yet withal illuminated, as even His enemies could 
 not but own, with a light that was not of this world, and 
 guarded and restored to him by a power, which the world 
 could neither resist nor gainsay, — the Life of Jesus rebukes 
 the idea that man is too microscopically small to be noticed 
 by God. If Bethlehem was not the least among the thou- 
 sands of Judah, by reason of the Governor Who should 
 thence proceed to rule God's people Israel, neither is this 
 our earth, though it be one of the smallest planets of one 
 of the least important suns, less than the greatest of the 
 heavenly bodies in that it has really been the scene of an 
 Incarnation of the great Creator. And when our Incar- 
 nate Saviour made Himself a Member of a human family, 
 and drew around Him special friends whom He admitted 
 to various degrees of intimacy, and shed His gifts of heal- 
 ing, of consolation, of enfranchisement from moral and 
 bodily evil, first upon one, and then upon another, of the 
 human sufferers who thronged around Him ; He repre- 
 sented palpably before the eyes of men, the action of God's 
 particular Providence upon each separate human life ; He 
 taught us that our Father deals with us not through any 
 delegated mechanical medium of general laws, but (even 
 though He seems to act unvaryingly) with all the tender- 
 ness of a strictly personal relationship, maintained with 
 each one of His creatures. Ay, the Life of Jesus meant 
 yet more than this. When He had reached the lowest 
 depth of His humiliation ; when with His bleeding Brow, 
 
Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 203 
 
 His Eyes reddened with tears, His Ears filled with insults 
 and blasphemies, His Hands and Feet pierced and torn, 
 His Life-blood slowly ebbing away, He hung upon the 
 cross in all the shame and agony of His dying hour ; He 
 really rose high above the perplexed and tangled maze of 
 man's life and man's history, as the revelation of the 
 hidden Providence of God. Surely in that supreme 
 moment He rebukes the argument against God's Provi- 
 dence, which is based on the unequal distribution of 
 human sorrow in the world. He is the perfect Saint, and 
 yet He is the Greatest of sufferers. He is " fairer than 
 the children of men, full of grace are His Lips " ; and yet 
 " His Visage is so marred more than any man, and His 
 Form more than the sons of men." Oh ! you who dream 
 that your lot is exceptionally hard ; that you suffer while 
 the enemies of God prosper ; that you suffer, and none 
 around you comprehends your inner load of unmentioned 
 sorrow ; that you suffer, and Heaven itself seems deaf to 
 your appeal for one, only one glance of compassion ; look 
 you to the Cross of the Man of sorrows for an explanation, 
 and for a consecration of your woe. Eising above the 
 crowd that surges beneath Him, and that represents the 
 sins and the sorrows of the world, Jesus Crucified is the 
 crowning revelation of the Justice, of the Holiness, and of 
 the Love of that Infinite Being Who has given us life, and 
 Who is never really nearer to us than when our fainting 
 hearts would deem Him most absent. " God so loved the 
 world," He so loved thee, thou solitary downcast sufferer, 
 " that He " thus " gave " to humiliation and to death " His 
 only-begotten Son," that whosoever should read in that 
 Gift^of Gifts the secret blessing of sorrow, as well as the 
 true remedy for sin ; in other words, " that whosoever 
 believeth in Him should not perish, but have," even now 
 and here, " everlasting life." 1 
 
 Solemn, indeed, is this moment, my brethren, for you 
 
 1 St. John iii. 16. 
 
204 Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 who stand on the steps of the altar of Christ, ready 
 presently to vow yourselves to His more perfect service 
 for life and until death, ready to receive from His pierced 
 Hands the commission of the Diaconate, or the more awful 
 powers of the Priesthood. It is no slight responsibility 
 to venture to suggest to you the prayer, the aspiration, 
 the resolution, which at this, the crisis of your destinies, 
 might fitly be offered in the sanctuary of your secret souls 
 to your God and Saviour. And yet, I am bold to bid you 
 pray our gracious Master to make of you, each one, soldiers 
 and heralds of His Providence. Determine here and 
 now, pray now and here, as you never prayed • before, 
 that both in your secret lives, and in the world of outward 
 activities, you may be servants — loyal, intelligent, devoted 
 servants — of the living, working, loving God. See, first 
 of all, that you recognise His Providence, the light of His 
 eye, the action of His hand, in the mystery of yovir own 
 personal lives. Each of those opportunities which have 
 been yours, perhaps yours alone ; each of those perceptions 
 of truth, of those upliftings of heart, of those strengthen- 
 ings of will, which you, in solitary converse with your 
 inmost self, can count in the past ; each friend, each book, 
 each Sacrament that has helped you onward and upward ; 
 each sorrow that has brought you on your knees, and 
 made sin hateful to you, or crushed self, or something of 
 self, out of you ; think them over ; thank Him to whom 
 you owe them ; and take courage. Adore His Providence 
 in taking you — even you — as of old He took David from 
 following the flocks, away from those lines of life in 
 which there is, from the very nature of the case, more of 
 earth and less of heaven than in the life of an ordained 
 man, — in taking you to feed Jacob His people, and Israel 
 His inheritance. If He has in very deed brought you 
 hither (and may He forbid that it could have been other- 
 wise !) by the guidance of His blessed Spirit ; you know- 
 already too much of Him ever to tamper with this or that 
 
Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 205 
 
 philosophy, by which His erring creatures would fain 
 imagine that they can banish Him from His own world ; 
 you know Him too well not to strive against that earthly 
 dependence on sense and sight which fails ever to trace 
 His Hand behind the veil, as the Hand of the Omnipresent, 
 All-working God. Say to Him, Thou, Lord, hast taught 
 me from my youth up until now : therefore will I tell of 
 Thy wondrous works. 1 And then, to-morrow, go forth 
 from the inner chamber of your consecrated spirits, all 
 illuminated by this clearer vision of His Providence, to 
 claim for Him His rights before those who know Him not, 
 or who know Him but in part, or who are in a fair way to 
 forget Him. Not merely in the pulpit, but in those 
 manifold opportunities for the interchange of thought 
 which are so dear to Christ's true servants, banish from 
 your own vocabulary, and discountenance in others, those 
 Pagan abstractions, " chance," " luck," " fortune," " nature," 
 by which men would overlay and disguise from themselves 
 His action in His own world. Point to the Living God 
 in the province of sense, in the storm and in the sunshine, 
 in abundance and in famine, in sickness and in health, 
 in life and in death. Point to the Living God in the 
 sphere of redemptive grace ; in the .words of Scripture, 
 that very voice of God now as when it first was written ; 
 in the Cross, that great discovery of the Heart of God 
 yearning over the sin and the woes of man ; in the work 
 of the Blessed Spirit, guiding, sanctifying, governing the 
 Church and its living members ; in the Sacraments, 
 specially in the Blessed Eucharist, wherein, under the 
 form of Bread and Wine, the living and eternal Christ is, 
 as we know, present with us to the end of time, as a 
 Providence of Love and Bounty, making us partakers of 
 His Nature and of His Life. 
 
 And above all things, let us, the ministers of Christ, 
 
 1 Ps. lxxi. 17. 
 
206 
 
 Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 remember that the loving Providence of our good God is 
 never so effectively preached as when it is preached by 
 imitation. Go to yon heart-broken sufferer, and tell him 
 in a perfunctory way, as if you were repeating your official 
 lesson, that he must cast all his care upon God, since God 
 careth for him, and the blessed words will but seem to 
 blister his sore and open wound. But be to him like the 
 Providence of heaven, a Providence in act as well as a 
 Providence in language ; give him your time, your thought, 
 your prayers, your substance, if need be ; give him above 
 all, and in all, your true, penetrating, unaffected sympathy ; 
 and he will bless your presence as a ray of the very Face 
 of God. It must cost us something to be like Him, Who 
 did not merely preach that God is mindful of man, but 
 Who gave His Life-blood in attestation of the truth which 
 He announced. It must cost us something, if we are to 
 follow His precept of rising so perfectly above the petty 
 selfishnesses of life as to be true children of our All- 
 Provident Father in heaven, Who maketh His sun to 
 shine upon the evil and the good, and sendeth His rain 
 upon the just aud upon the unjust. But with His love 
 in our hearts we, too, may dare to tell the world of our 
 day that God is really mindful of man, and to be certain 
 that, after whatever discouragements, in the end our 
 report will be listened to. With His love in our hearts, 
 we may, by our works, our sacrifices, our prayers, no less 
 than by our words, so reflect upon earth the Providence 
 of God as to hasten the coming of that Blessed Day when 
 the dark phantom of Fatalism shall have fled, never again 
 to darken the sky of human thought, when the Life of 
 that Being Who never slumbereth nor sleepeth, shall be 
 owned by all His glorified creatures, thrilling around 
 them, thrilling through them, in all Its undimmed and 
 unfailing splendour. 
 
SERMON VII. 
 
 THE MORAL VALUE OF A MISSION 
 FROM CHRIST. 1 
 
 St. John xv. 16. 
 
 Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye 
 should cjn and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain. 
 
 LIKE many other sayings of our Lord, especially in 
 His last discourse, these words have a double 
 application. They are addressed to the Eleven as being 
 disciples of Christ, but also as being the first Christian 
 missionaries. The life of discipleship in the Eleven was 
 practically inseparable from the ministerial life ; but it is 
 obvious that Christ chooses and places Christians in His 
 Church whom He does not call to, or invest with, any 
 specifically clerical mission. If, then, to-day we look 
 only to the ministerial bearing of these words, this will 
 not be supposed to imply any forgetfulness of the fact 
 that every living Christian soul must read in them the 
 true, authoritative explanation of its deepest history. To 
 all Christians it is said, " Ye have not chosen Me, but I 
 have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and 
 bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain." 
 
 At the same time, let it be noted that the purport of 
 the text is mainly, although not exclusively, ministerial. 
 It was addressed to the Eleven alone. It was addressed 
 to them during those solemn hours, unrivalled in the 
 moral history of the world, which passed between the 
 
 1 Preached at the Ordination of the Bishop of Oxford, in the Cathedral 
 Church of Christ, on the Fourth Sunday in Advent, December 22, 1867. 
 
 •207 
 
208 
 
 The Moral Value of a 
 
 institution of the Eucharist and the Agony. It was 
 addressed to them, as the context shows, in the capacity 
 of missionaries, who had been chosen by Christ, who were 
 soon to learn from the Comforter a heavenly lesson, and to 
 be braced by Him with heavenly strength, and then to go 
 forth into the wide world, that through toil and endurance 
 they might bring forth fruit for the Master at whose bid- 
 ding they went — fruit, as He said, that should remain. 
 And, thus considered, the words convey our Lord's own 
 judgment as to the source of ministerial power, and as to 
 the object with which such power is given into the hands 
 of men. " Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, 
 and ordained you " — and wherefore ? " That ye might go 
 and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain." 
 
 " Ye have not chosen Me." No empty antithesis to 
 what follows — no admitted, purposeless truism, we may 
 be sure, is here. The words evidently guard against, if 
 they do not condemn, a misapprehension on the part of 
 the Apostles. True, of course, it was, and beyond contro- 
 versy, that they had not chosen Him. They had not met, 
 after the fashion of some Jewish disciples of the time, to 
 elect a popular rabbi, who might teach his pupils with an 
 authority derived from their free vote in his favour. One 
 by one, Christ had chosen them {e^eKe^a^v) out of the 
 great mass of their countrymen, to follow Him ; and then, 
 by a second act, He had associated them with His own 
 blessed work by appointing them (e0r)Ka) to be His 
 envoys and representatives. It could not be denied : He 
 had called them from the toll-house or from the lake-side, 
 and they had simply obeyed. But on the other hand, 
 they had persevered in following Him, even until now, 
 when all, as it seemed, was so dark around Him and them. 
 Was not this perseverance, nay, was not the original act 
 of obedience itself, of the nature of a choice ? In form 
 He had called and they had obeyed : but might not the 
 
The Secret of Clerical Power. 1 6 1 
 
 irradiated and braced by His. " If a man love Me, he 
 will keep My words, and My Father will love him, and 
 "We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him." 1 
 " It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of My Father Which 
 speaketh in you." 2 "He that heareth you heareth Me; 
 and he that despiseth you despiseth Me." 3 "I live ; yet 
 not I, but Christ liveth in me." 4 " They glorified God in 
 me." 5 The ministers of Christ reflected the glory of their 
 invisible but present Lord. The face of Stephen in the 
 moment of his triumph and of his anguish was as the face 
 of an angel. G The very shadow of Peter was felt to 
 possess an unearthly virtue. 7 The Galatians would have 
 plucked out their eyes for the great missionary who first 
 called them within the holy fold. 8 The Eoman governor 
 trembles, as the prisoner before him makes a simple 
 statement of the elementary laws of truth and righteous- 
 ness. 9 
 
 This, and much else to the same purpose, dated from 
 the Gift of Pentecost. A power was abroad in the world, 
 and men were instinctively doing homage to its silent 
 influence. Not that it was strictly confined to the 
 ministers of Christ. God forbid. Every Christian who 
 possesses a Divine Presence in his soul is a missionary to 
 the world, and does his Master's work. And, alas ! a man 
 may be ordained, and may possess in their completeness, 
 those ministerial functions which are essential to the life 
 of souls and to the organic completeness of the Church, 
 without possessing that personal spiritual influence which 
 raises his ministerial acts, so far as he is himself con- 
 cerned, above the level of a mechanical obedience. Certain 
 it is, that such influence is offered as a distinct element, 
 nay, as the most conspicuous element, of the Grace of 
 
 1 St. John xiv. 23. 
 4 Gal. ii. 20. 
 7 Acts v. 15. 
 
 - St. Matt. x. 20. 
 s Ibid. i. 24. 
 8 Gal. iv. 15. 
 L 
 
 s St. Luke x. 16. 
 6 Acts vi. 15. 
 9 Acts xxiv. 25. 
 
1 62 The Secret of Clerical Power. 
 
 Ordination. It is the complement, the very crown and 
 beauty, of the other great gifts which are received from 
 Christ through the laying on of hands ; only, unlike those 
 gifts, it depends for its transmission upon the spiritual 
 condition of the recipient. No question can be more per- 
 tinent or more practical than the inquiry, How we may 
 hope to claim and to secure this precious, this indispens- 
 able endowment. 
 
 The grace, we know, is offered to all. " Ye shall receive 
 power" is an inheritance of all the ages of the Church. 
 But it is conditioned. It presupposes a certain recep- 
 tivity in the applicant. And that receptivity - consists 
 in nothing so much as in directness and simplicity of 
 purpose. 
 
 So it was with the Apostles : they received power, 
 because they abandoned themselves perfectly to the call 
 of God. Their self-oblation was not retarded or marred 
 by thoughts of self, which lagged in the rear of their pro- 
 fession of a perfect service. God gives Himself to the 
 soul in a degree proportioned to the completeness with 
 which the soul yields itself to Him. " With the holy 
 Thou shalt be holy ; and with a perfect man Thou shalt 
 be perfect ; with the clean Thou shalt be clean ; and " 
 (oh ! marvellous and terrible irony !) " with the froward 
 Thou shalt learn frowardness." 1 It is only when the eye 
 is single that the whole body of the Christian character is 
 full of light, and to be full of moral light is to be full of 
 moral power. 2 It is only when in Holy Orders we " give 
 ourselves wholly to this one thing, and turn all our 
 desires and studies this way," 3 that in the highest sense 
 of the term we can hope to receive a gift of spiritual 
 power which shall win souls for Christ. This was the 
 deepest work of the Holy Ghost in the Apostle of Jesus 
 Christ. He did not merely place the Christian Creed 
 
 1 Ps. xviii. 25, 26. - St. Matt. vi. 22. 3 Ordination of Priests. 
 
The Secret of Clerical Power. 
 
 before the eye of their understandings. He wrote it upon 
 their hearts, and forthwith each revealed dogma became 
 a germ of moral power. " We love Him," so speaks an 
 Apostle, " because He first loved us." 1 " He died for all, 
 that they which live should not henceforth live unto 
 themselves, but unto Him Which died for them, and rose 
 again." 2 " Our old man is crucified with Christ, that the 
 body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should 
 not serve sin." 3 " Hereby perceive we the love of God, 
 because He laid down His life for us : and we ought to 
 lay down our life for the brethren." 4 " We ought to 
 obey God rather than men." 5 Charity, humility, purity, 
 courage, disinterestedness, patience, calmness, gentleness — 
 these were the graces which were thus taught in the school 
 of the Holy Ghost. And charity is a power ; humility is a 
 power; purity is a power; courage is a power; disinterested- 
 ness is a power. These graces are powers by reason of 
 their rarity as well as on account of their intrinsic force. 
 Gibbon has told us that the unbelieving world fears the 
 virtues of the clergy, while it at once welcomes and de- 
 spises their vices. And from the age of the Apostles 
 until now our Lord's work in the world has varied with 
 the personal and spiritual elevation of us His representa- 
 tives among men, to whom at the first He left, if we will, 
 a legacy of moral power. 
 
 II. 
 
 The presence of this "power" may be more especially 
 noted by two leading characteristics or symptoms. 
 
 (i) The first, Consistency. The whole life is of a 
 piece. Thought, feeling, action, are in harmony. Within, 
 there is no waste of strength ; all the faculties move 
 together ; all are directed upon one End of ends ; and 
 
 1 i St. John iv. 19. - 2 Cor. v. 15. :i Rom. vi. 6. 
 
 4 1 St. John iii. 16. 5 Acts v. 29. 
 
164 
 
 The Secret of Clerical Power. 
 
 this concentration is the economy and the secret of force. 
 Without, there is no distracting instability of action. 
 There may be a change of scene, change of work, change 
 of friends and of intellectual atmosphere ; there may be 
 an ever-widening horizon of soul, and a silent or avowed 
 rejection of some imperfections or misapprehensions of 
 earlier years. But throughout the man's life there runs a 
 line of manifest, persistent continuity of purpose. The 
 vessel may be driving before the gale, or she may be for 
 a while becalmed, while her sails hang heavily against 
 the mast, but observe her movements when you will, and 
 her prow is ever turned towards the Eternal Shore. 
 
 Now consistency is among all men an element of power. 
 It is especially so among Englishmen, because, whatever 
 our national faults, God has given us, as a race, a natural 
 love of honesty. Thus it often happens that men who 
 stand outside truth yet sincerely admire its vivifying 
 power in the lives of others. They " do not agree with 
 so-and-so, but they like a man to be consistent." There 
 is, of course, a pride of consistency — of consistency in 
 intellectual error or in moral evil; but every virtue 
 has its counterfeit, and a virtue is not less a virtue 
 because the devil has caricatured or degraded it. In a 
 clergyman, consistency is of especial value. He theoreti- 
 cally represents intrepid adherence to faith amid feeble 
 and vacillating convictions. He theoretically represents 
 determined homage in practical matters to duty and prin- 
 ciple, when other wills are weak, and the presence of 
 temptation or of false public opinion is strong. He 
 theoretically represents a practice of the duties, the 
 sacrifices, the self-denials, the heroic efforts, which are 
 doubtless absurd if religion is only a graceful sentiment ; 
 but which are natural and obvious, if we are indeed liv- 
 ing on the brink of another world which is to last for 
 ever. And the more unwaveringly he is true to his ideal, 
 
The Secret of Clerical Power. 1 65 
 
 the more complete is his adherence to principle, the more 
 coherent are all the aspects of his life, the more certainly 
 will he be a power. His faith and love can afford to dis- 
 pense with political or social sanctions ; he needs not high 
 natural gifts of mind, or manifest powers of miracle ; he is 
 a power with or without these. Men who do not believe, 
 or who advocate or affect laxity of life, feel in their secret 
 souls an awe in his presence ; they perceive that there is 
 a majesty and force in the life of a sincere servant of 
 God ; they revere long before they dream of imitation. 
 For, as they know, a really consistent life is not to fallen 
 man, as such, a natural human life : it witnesses to the 
 presence in the soul of a superhuman force. It is a ray 
 of His Beauty Who as the ages pass before Him knows 
 no change ; Who is What He has ever been, what He ever 
 must be — the Same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; 
 always Strong, always Wise, always Merciful, always 
 Majestic, always Incomprehensible, always Holy, always 
 Just. 
 
 Who would dare to say that consistency — strict, abso- 
 lute consistency — is easy ? Who, indeed, that has been 
 for some years wearing the livery of Jesus Christ can but 
 look back on accumulated errors, weaknesses, disloyalties, 
 sins, marring the harmony and therefore impairing the 
 force of his ministerial life ? And consistency is not to be 
 achieved by a dramatic attempt to practise it. It cannot 
 be compassed by throwing ourselves in imagination out- 
 side ourselves, and thinking how our lives will look in the 
 social landscape and to the popular eye. Consistency is 
 created from within : it is the product of direct, simple 
 homage to truth. The Majesty of God, the Justice of 
 God, the Lovingkindness of God, the Omnipresence of 
 God, the atoning and sacrificial Death of Jesus Christ, 
 the power of the Eternal Spirit, the power and grace of the 
 Christian Sacraments, — these truths really dwelt on, one 
 
i66 
 
 The Secret of Clerical Power. 
 
 by one, really mastered, really received into the secret 
 soul, might work in the practical life the triumph of con- 
 sistency. If they fail to do so, it is because we do not 
 simply, heartily receive them, or because we allow our- 
 selves, as we say, with an affectation of engaging frank- 
 ness, to act from mixed motives, that is to say, to 
 neutralise the influences of Divine truth by the influences 
 of its antagonists in human society. Especially observe 
 that rationalism forfeits, by the very law of its life, this 
 power which arises from moral consistency. Holding, as 
 it does, all truth more or less in solution, it never can 
 submit itself to any, so as to translate the power of a 
 received truth into actual life, and it is therefore con- 
 demned by the "Wisdom and by the Love of God to a 
 moral impotence. But faith has only to detach herself 
 from the earthly influences around her, and she will forth- 
 with remove mountains. Mountains of ignorance, moun- 
 tains of prejudice, mountains of sin, mountains of self- 
 sufficiency, mountains of unbelief ; they would be 
 removed, easily and speedily, if this grace of consistency 
 — so freely granted to us by the Divine Spirit of our in- 
 dulgent Master, so easily forfeited by disloyalty to His 
 voice and to His truth — were but more earnestly cherished 
 by us His ministers. 
 
 (2) The presence of this power is moreover evidenced 
 by Sympathy. By sympathy I do not merely mean 
 fellow-feeling with those who suffer acute pain or who 
 experience extraordinary pleasure. Sympathy is the 
 power of entering with intelligence and tenderness into 
 the inner life and circumstances of others, although they 
 are removed from us by distance, by station, by occupa- 
 tions, by blood. Sympathy is in this sense a very great 
 gift. Most men live — " each in his hidden sphere of joy 
 or woe " — with only a partial interest in those who are 
 similarly circumstanced, and with no interest at all in 
 
The Secret of Clerical Power. 
 
 167 
 
 those who are otherwise. The young do not enter into 
 the life of old age ; and the old cannot comprehend the 
 youthful spirits which they once enjoyed. Thinkers do 
 not understand practical men, nor practical men the ways 
 and motives of thinkers. Englishmen do not compre- 
 hend Frenchmen, nor Frenchmen Englishmen. The 
 different classes of society are enigmas to each other. 
 Nay, often the different members of the same family are 
 mutually incapable of understanding the tastes and 
 pursuits which they severally have. Men who meet each 
 other daily, and who hold regular intercourse with each 
 other, yet live in different worlds of thought and feeling, 
 and each is often content to remain in tranquil ignorance 
 of any other world than his own. Sympathy, then, 
 generally requires the stimulus of a powerful motive to 
 develop it. We are apt to assume that it is a matter of 
 character and disposition. This is not often the case : 
 mere nature leaves man a self-seeking, self-contemplating 
 animal, with little or no interest in his brother man. 
 Nature at best yields in some favoured cases the raw 
 material of sympathy, but education is not alone sufficient 
 to perfect it. Education may make men large-minded ; 
 but a cold intelligence directed like the ray of a polar sun 
 upon a human life is a very different thing from sym- 
 pathy. Genuine sympathy is beyond all else the creation 
 of a religious conviction. When man's life is seen in the 
 light of eternity and in the light of the Cross ; when the 
 unmeasured capacities of every human soul for happiness 
 and for woe are realised, each human life is invested 
 forthwith with genuine and extraordinary interest. All 
 that is not evil in man's intelligence and his heart is in- 
 teresting because it is human ; it is interesting to the 
 Christian who feels the awfulness and the blessedness of 
 human life per se. This sympathy resided in its perfec- 
 tion in our Incarnate Lord. Of His earlier servants 
 
1 68 The Secret of Clerical Power. 
 
 perhaps St. Paul is the most conspicuous example of its 
 complete development ; read his Epistles, and you will 
 note that sympathy is his characteristic gift ; mark the 
 circumstances of his ministerial and missionary action, 
 and you will be convinced that sympathy is a leading 
 element of his spiritual power. 
 
 Without sympathy, religious influence is scarcely 
 possible. " If you wish me to weep," said the heathen 
 poet, " you must first grieve yourself." We may not deal 
 with men as units composing a mass, or as machines, or 
 as anything else or less than separate centres of life. Each 
 human being is worth the most careful study and atten- 
 tion, and to get at his real nature is impossible unless you 
 will note and consult its individualising peculiarities. He 
 has forms of thought, under-currents and streams of 
 affection, warps and weaknesses of will ; he is a creature 
 of habit, and habit has crystallised around him in forms 
 which you can observe and count upon. You can attract 
 him by a sympathy of which he will acknowledge the 
 delicacy and the force, but unless you do so you will not 
 touch his real self. Unless you do so, you and he may 
 have public official relations with each other, but you 
 will live in two different worlds. You might as well at 
 once speak two different languages and pass your lives in 
 different hemispheres. Yet to sympathise perfectly even 
 with one man is no easy matter, especially when sym- 
 pathy is a moral effort and not a thoughtless impulse, 
 when it has a purpose, when it draws a line between good 
 and evil, and holds its impetuosity well in check. And 
 to sympathise with a class, with a parish, with men and 
 women, of many ages and stations, and degrees of culture 
 and degrees of goodness, to rejoice with them that do 
 rejoice, and to weep with them that weep, to have in the 
 eye and on the lip the ever-ready shade of expression 
 which marks the keen perception of the soul within : this 
 
The Secret of Clerical Power. 1 69 
 
 is a great, a most precious gift ; it is a work of the Holy 
 Spirit ; it is a power supernaturally communicated from 
 the world-embracing Heart of Jesus to the heart of the 
 servant who reflects His charity while he carries His 
 commission. 
 
 in. 
 
 "Ye shall receive power." Dear brethren, at this 
 momentous hour, fold to your inmost hearts this pro- 
 mise of our gracious Master. See in these His words a 
 ground of confidence. Who are we men that, left to our- 
 selves, we should dare to speak of Him and for Him to 
 our fellow-sinners ? How unpardonable were the im- 
 pertinence of my daring to address this congregation this 
 morning from this pulpit, unless I were supported by the 
 conviction that I have my Master's authority for doing so, 
 and that He is pledged to strengthen those who bear His 
 message ! Ay, brethren, we need not scruple to be bold 
 in His strength. No clerical duty would be tolerable to 
 a man of modesty and sense who supposed himself to be 
 acting in his own strength, and putting forth his own 
 ideas ; no clerical duty can give any anxiety to those who 
 know that they are sent by Jesus Christ Himself, and 
 who are sure that He will make good His word for all 
 who in simple sincerity place themselves at His disposal. 
 
 " Ye shall receive power." See here a stimulus to con- 
 tinuous effort. You believe that you receive a gift from 
 Heaven ; you dare not bury it, however gracefully and 
 decently, out of sight ; you are a trustee, and you are 
 bound to make the most of the fund which you administer 
 in the interest of others. There is a mighty motive to 
 conscientious work in the belief that you are intrusted 
 with a delegated endowment, and you do well often to 
 recur to it. The time will surely come when you will 
 fall back upon the sense of possessing this gift of power 
 
1 70 The Secret of Clerical Power. 
 
 as a source of refreshment and of life. It may often be 
 your duty to engage in the holiest services when your 
 heart is cold ; to expound the Word of God when it says 
 nothing to you, and you fear that your words, if they are 
 to have force at all, must be an insincere transcript of 
 your languid thought; to visit the poor, the sorrow- 
 stricken, the dying, when within you there is no voice 
 to utter more than the chilling formalities, which mean, 
 and which pass for, worse than nothing ; to hold to faith, 
 to duty, to principle, when the tide of popular feeling 
 around you, and your own feeble will within, points to 
 surrender and to betrayal even of very sacred interests. 
 At these times it will help you to remember that you 
 have received power. Be sure that it is really there. Stir 
 up the dormant gift that is in you through the laying on 
 of hands. Eekindle, by faith in the reality of your 
 Orders, the fervour with which you received His Blessing 
 from the Pierced Hands of Jesus. 
 
 Once more, see in these words a preservative against 
 the snare of spiritual self-conceit. It may be God's good 
 pleasure to pour a special blessing on your work, to give 
 you an access to the intelligence and to the conscience of 
 men which He denies to others. And you may be 
 tempted for a moment to forget that you have nothing 
 that you have not received, and that you did not create 
 the instrument with which you consciously wield em- 
 pire over the hearts of your brethren. You may be 
 tempted to convert the gifts of grace into some paltry 
 equivalent of financial or social capital ; to seek, on the 
 strength of heavenly capacities, mere professional advance- 
 ment, or, while avoiding this coarser temptation, to revel 
 secretly in the perilous sense of a spiritual ascendency. 
 What is this but to rob the Fountain of all Grace of 
 His rights and of His honour, and to dim the very finest 
 gold of His kingdom with the soil and baseness of an 
 
The Secret of Clerical Power. 
 
 171 
 
 earthly instinct ? Believe simply that the Gift is His, and 
 you will be saved from claiming or treating it as your 
 own. How encouraging, how stimulating, how chastening 
 is this gracious promise ! " Ye shall receive power." O 
 Merciful and Almighty Redeemer, ever present in Thy 
 Church beneath, as on Thy Throne in heaven ; make good 
 Thy word in this our hour of expectation and of weak- 
 ness : that each one of Thy servants here gathered may 
 be in spirit and power a prophet of Thee the Highest, to 
 go before Thy Face to prepare Thy ways, to give know- 
 ledge of salvation unto Thy people for the remission of 
 their sins, through the tender mercy of our God ; whereby 
 Thou, the Dayspring from on high, hast visited us, to give 
 light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of 
 death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace. 1 
 
 St. Luke i. 76-79. 
 
SERMON VI. 
 
 FATALISM AND THE LIVING GOD. 1 
 
 AVID here touches upon a thought, which is among 
 
 -L' the very deepest that can take shape in the mind 
 of man, yet which in this or some kindred form must 
 occur, and that frequently, to any man who really thinks 
 at all. David, as it seems, is still a wandering shepherd : 
 he is keeping his flock at night on the hills near Bethle- 
 hem. He looks up at the bright starlit sky of the East, 
 and he bethiuks himself of the interval that parts the 
 Creator of all those worlds from the race of mankind, 
 from his own insignificant personal life. 
 
 " I will consider the heavens, 
 Even the work of Thy fingers, 
 The moon and the stars 
 Which Thou hast ordained : 
 What is man, 
 
 That Thou art mindful of him ? 
 And the son of man, 
 That Thou visitest him ? " 
 
 David does not raise the question whether it is possible 
 for so Magnificent a Being as God to take care and notice 
 of so puny a creature as man. No Psalmist of Israel had 
 any doubt about that. Bead David's Psalms, read the 
 songs of Asaph and of later composers, and mark how 
 
 1 Preached at the Ordination of the Bishop of Salisbury, in Salisbury Cathe- 
 dral, on the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, September 23, 1866. 
 
 Psalm viii. 4. 
 What is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? 
 
 172 
 
Fatalism and the Living God. 1 73 
 
 deeply they are all and each persuaded of the truth of 
 that relation of God to His creatures which we call His 
 Providence. Observe, for instance, the tenor of some 
 Psalms which have occurred in the daily services of the 
 last week. In the hundred-and-fourth Psalm God's Provi- 
 dence is traced in its bearing on the whole natural world, 
 on the atmospheric influences around us, on the plants 
 and trees which beautify the earth, on the lower creatures, 
 on the beasts of prey, on the monsters of the deep. Else- 
 where, as in the hundred-and-fifth Psalm, the Providence of 
 God is exhibited in its relation to the history of Israel. 
 The covenant made with the patriarchs, the imprisonment 
 and elevation of Joseph, the sojourn of Jacob and his sons 
 in Egypt, the deliverance of Israel from Egypt by the 
 ministry of Moses at the Exodus, are reviewed as so many 
 illustrations of God's constant and protecting care. Or 
 again, in the hundred-and-sixth Psalm, God's Providence is 
 set forth in its alternate phases of judgment and mercy : 
 the sins of Israel in the wilderness, the provocation at the 
 Eed Sea, the lust for the quails, the public jealousy of the 
 authority of Moses, the worship of the idol-calf, the mur- 
 muring in the tents, the idolatry of Baal-peor, the anger- 
 ing at the waters of strife, the culpable leniency towards 
 and intimacy with the Canaanites, leading to the Moloch 
 sacrifices, are successively traced in their several relations 
 to the Mind of God, expressing Itself, now in punishment, 
 now in forgiveness. Perhaps God's Providence is nowhere 
 pictured so vividly in the Psalter as in the hundred-and- 
 seventh Psalm, which apparently describes the vicissitudes 
 of various parties of the Jews, when returning to the Holy 
 City after the dispersion occasioned by the Babylonish 
 captivity. God it was Who had led some hungry and 
 despairing wanderers home from Egypt across the path- 
 less wilderness. 1 God it was Who had delivered another 
 
 1 Ps. cvii. 4-7. 
 
174 
 
 Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 band of prisoners that lay in darkness and the shadow of 
 death, in the dungeons of Babylon : He it was Who had 
 Himself broken the gates of brass, and smitten the bars of 
 iron in sunder. 1 God it was Who had taken pity upon a 
 party of sick exiles, enfeebled probably by forced labours 
 or by uncongenial climates, so that their soul abhorred 
 all manner of meat, and they were even hard at death's 
 door. 2 It was He that had calmed the stormy Mediter- 
 ranean, on whose waves a ship's company returning to 
 Palestine had " mounted up to heaven, and gone down to 
 the depths," so " that their soul melted away because of 
 the trouble." God had brought them to the haven where 
 they would be. 3 God too would again restore to the im- 
 poverished land its ancient blessings : 4 but His provi- 
 dential care must be duly and constantly acknowledged. 5 
 It would be impossible to exhaust this great subject in 
 connection with the Psalter ; every Psalmist, almost every 
 Psalm, in some way, does homage to God's Providence : 
 and David, as the chief of Psalmists, if possible, more than 
 others. Whether David is referring to his own early his- 
 tory, or making plans for the future of Israel, or going 
 forth to war against the heathen ; whether he feels him- 
 self surrounded by dark conspiracies, or is triumphing 
 over foes who have threatened his destruction ; whether 
 he is rejoicing in the bounties poured around him, or 
 writhing under a sense of his own guilt and ingratitude ; 
 — of one truth he is always sure, that the living, the per- 
 sonal God is mindful of His servant, keeping him as the 
 apple of an eye, hiding him under the shadow of those 
 eternal wings, guiding him with counsel, that He may 
 after that receive him into glory. The God of David is 
 David's hope and fortress, his castle and Deliverer, his 
 Defender, in Whom he resolves persistently to trust. 
 
 > Ps. cvii. 10-14. ' 17-20. 3 Ibid. 23-30. 
 
 4 Ps. cvii. 35-42. 5 Ibid. 43. 
 
175 
 
 David's God is uot merely above, He is around and 
 within His worshipper. He sits indeed upon the throne 
 of judgment, clouds and darkness are round about Him, 
 and He is greatly to be feared in the council of the 
 the saints ; but He is also about David's path and about 
 his bed, and spying out all his ways ; He is mingling, 
 as if with the intimate sympathy of a human friend, in 
 the household cares, in the personal and spiritual joys 
 and griefs of the sweet Psalmist of Israel. 
 
 David, then, does not inquire whether God is or is not 
 mindful of mankind. He is sure of God's mindfulness, 
 but it excites his marvel as he reflects on it. The posture 
 of his thought in this Psalm is not one of scepticism, but 
 of believing wonder. Yet his words may fairly suggest to 
 our minds the general subject of God's providential action, 
 although the subject altogether outruns the words. We 
 have here a matter of such intrinsic and capital importance 
 that, even on so solemn and exceptional an occasion as 
 the present, it may be held to be entitled to our special 
 consideration. 
 
 The Collects of the Church during the weeks through 
 which we have lately been passing dwell on various sides 
 and aspects of the Providence of God. In one Collect, 
 God's never-failiug Providence is asserted to govern all 
 things in heaven and earth ; and, therefore, we ask Him 
 to put away from us all hurtful things, and to give us 
 those things which be profitable for us. 1 Again, the 
 general action of God's Providence is described in the 
 statements, that God " declare th His Almighty power 
 most chiefly in showing mercy and pity," 2 and that " He is 
 more ready to hear than we to pray, and is wont to give 
 more than either we desire or deserve." 3 A specific form 
 
 1 Collect for 8th Sunday after Trinity. 
 - Collect for nth Sunday after Trinity. 
 « Collect for 12th Sunday after Trinity. 
 
176 
 
 Fatalism and the Living God. 
 
 of that action, bearing upon the kingdom of the Redemp- 
 tion, is a " perpetual mercy," which is invoked that it may 
 " keep " the Church of God ; 1 or again, it is a continual 
 " pity," ready to " cleanse and defend " her. 2 Without 
 God's Presence the frailty of man cannot but fall ; 3 without 
 His succour the Church herself cannot continue in safety.* 
 Of this Providential action, " grace," that is, not any mere 
 barren favour, — a thing inconceivable on the part of the 
 All-Good God, — but an actual power working in us, in 
 other words, the direct energy of the Holy Ghost applying 
 to the Eedeemed the Human Nature and the Merits of 
 Christ, is the highest possible expression. And on this 
 day we pray that " grace " may be given to us in both its 
 forms ; in its lesser prevenient form, by which it courts, 
 as it were, the obedience of our wills ; and in its full co- 
 operative or efficacious form, in which it braces and nerves 
 us during the struggle and process of action, " furthering 
 us," as we act, " with a continual help " from heaven. We 
 pray to-day that this " grace of God may always prevent 
 and follow us, and make us continually to be given to all 
 good works. 5 Such a prayer obviously implies the very 
 highest assertion of the doctrine of a Divine Providence. 
 It implies a Providence which sustains us no less than It 
 protects us ; a Providence which touches the inmost life 
 of the soul, while It guards and tends the outward life of 
 the body. 
 
 The Church Services, then, of the current season might 
 alone guide us to the truth suggested by the Psalmist ; 
 but there is, as it seems to me, an independent reason 
 for some attempt to touch upon it at the present time. 
 During the past year we have been witnesses of, it may 
 
 1 Collect for 15th Sunday after Trinity. 
 - Collect for 16th Sunday after Trinity. 
 3 Collect for 15th Sunday after Trinity. 
 * Collect for 16th Sunday after Trinity, 
 s Collect for 17th Sunday after Trinity. 
 
Mission fro?n Christ. 
 
 209 
 
 reality have been that their obedience was an election ? 
 Was He not their Master so long only as they willed to 
 serve Him ? Were not the obligations which bound them 
 to Him reciprocal ? If they perseveringly followed Him 
 now, in this hour of trial and darkness, might there not 
 be even a balance of obligation in their favour ? 
 
 " Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you." 
 Even in full view of Gethsemane, He will not consent to 
 misinterpret the past, or to modify His claim. True, He 
 does not deny their moral liberty. They had been free 
 to set His original call at naught. They were free to 
 desert, to betray Him. He had not forced self-sacrifice 
 upon the rich young man, or perseverance upon Judas. 
 As moral agents, with good and evil, truth and its opposite, 
 before them, they were free ; and in their freedom they 
 had chosen and persevered in truth and goodness. But 
 in a deeper sense, so far as they were saintly, they were 
 not free; the yearning after goodness and truth within 
 them was not free ; and it conquered their whole being 
 and led them captive. And whence came that yearning ? 
 His choice, it seems, is not a thing of yesterday : His 
 choice embraces in its range the whole mystery of their 
 several predestinations. His Eternal Person explains 
 and illuminates His words. They had obeyed His call ; 
 they had persevered in obedience, because the dispositions, 
 the desires, the secret sympathies within them, had been 
 implanted by Himself. His choice had been beforehand 
 with them ; His love had been deeper than, and prior to, 
 theirs. And as He had thus really chosen them, by 
 giving them the capacity and the will to choose, without 
 suspending their freedom ; so He had placed them as 
 plants in His vineyard, that they might bring forth fruit. 
 If they loved Him, it was because He first had loved 
 them. Looking to their act of obedience alone, they had, 
 it might be said, freely chosen Him. Looking to the vast 
 0 
 
2 IO 
 
 The Moral Value of a 
 
 moral history of which that act was the consummate 
 expression, a history penetrated from first to last by the 
 activities of His Providence and His Grace, His words 
 express a literal truth — " Ye have not chosen Me, but I 
 have chosen you." 
 
 So indeed it is in every age of the Church of Christ : 
 so it is at this hour. We speak of Holy Orders as of a 
 profession, which for sufficient reasons a man chooses in 
 preference to medicine, or to law, or to some other walk 
 in life. And this language is justifiable, if it be taken to 
 represent that final determination of the will by which a 
 man resolves to present himself for ordination. Such 
 choice is strictly within our power to make or to refuse. 
 But in a deeper sense, none whom Christ will crown here- 
 after has really been able to do otherwise than obey 
 Christ's call. He has been the object of a choice rather 
 than its author. As a moral agent, with good and evil, a 
 higher and a lower aim before him, he has, of course, been 
 free, if he would, to choose the evil and to refuse the 
 good. But as a Christian, making the most of the light 
 given him, he has not been free. He has yielded to a 
 mysterious attraction which has drawn him on. He has 
 been guided, it may be, partly by the force of family cir- 
 cumstances, partly by natural tastes and sympathies, 
 partly by the direction and results of education, partly by 
 the influence of minds with which he has come in contact. 
 He has followed, too, the guidance of an inward light, 
 growing stronger in his soul as the years have passed on ; 
 a light which has discovered him in all his native misery 
 to himself, face to face with the Eternal Love which has 
 redeemed him, and which now bids him own and glorify 
 It. And thus, what was at first a vague hope became 
 more and more a purpose, and what had been for years 
 only a general, indefinite purpose, ripened at length, in 
 the strength of prayer, into a formal resolution, solemnly 
 
Mission from Christ. 
 
 211 
 
 taken beneath the eye of the Redeemer. It was not that 
 he heard a sensible voice behind him ; it was not that 
 there was a moment in his life when the physical and 
 the moral in him seemed to blend, he knew not how, — a 
 moment from which he dates a new spiritual sensation, 
 the power and nature of which are beyond analysis. 
 These things may be in the Church of God ; but they are 
 not common ; they are not the rule. Yet when he is 
 asked, " Dost thou believe that thou art called by the 
 will of our Lord Jesus Christ to this office of Priest or 
 Deacon in His Church ? " it is the verdict of his whole 
 moral being that he can answer confidently, yet humbly, 
 " I trust so." In such a manner (the order of develop- 
 ment may vary, its main features are invariable) Christ 
 completes the inward, subjective side of His choice. 
 But if the process stopped here, it would be necessarily 
 imperfect. The strong aspiration of the soul must be 
 countersigned by the objective reality of the Apostolical 
 Commission. It comes to us, that commission, across the 
 centuries, through the unbroken line of the Episcopate, 
 through the sacred Twelve, straight from the hands and 
 lips of Christ. As He said eighteen centuries ago, " Re- 
 ceive ye the Holy Ghost : whose soever sins ye remit, they 
 are remitted unto them, and whose soever sins ye retain, 
 they are retained," so presently in this Cathedral shall 
 we listen to the echo of His creative word, sanctioning, 
 completing the long, patient travail of His Spirit in souls 
 which have heard His call, by the indelible stamp of His 
 authoritative commission. The complete scope of His 
 announcement will presently be manifest : " Ye have not 
 chosen Me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that 
 ye should go and bring forth much fruit." 
 
 The choice of His ministers by Christ is fully mani- 
 fested only in the sanction of the inward call by the 
 Apostolic authority. Without the inward call, an episcopal 
 
212 
 
 The Moral Value of a 
 
 ordination can make a ministerial machine, through which 
 life may flow to others, while itself is dead. Without 
 the due episcopal ordination, an inward call is but as 
 the budding of a tree which lacks the requisite conditions 
 of climate or of soil to produce its proper flower or fruit. 
 Such calls are among the mysteries of the spiritual world ; 
 they are spiritual parallels to the vast and mysterious 
 waste of nature. They are found in the outskirts of, or 
 even beyond, the kingdom of Grace, where the full meed 
 of spiritual rain or sunshine is wanting. We mourn as 
 we witness the efforts around us, produced by these 
 anomalies — efforts earnest and devoted, yet, withal, spas- 
 modic and incomplete, — achieving, undoubtedly, a large 
 measure of well-intentioned disorder, but destined surely, 
 as the years pass on, to wither and die back into weak- 
 ness and inaction. 
 
 The reality of the inward vocation to the ministry 
 follows upon a perception of the true nature of the soul, 
 and of the power and work of the Spirit of Christ. It can 
 only be disputed by a desperate Pelagianism, which, in our 
 day, is shading off more and more consistently into sheer 
 materialism. The reality of the Apostolic commission, 
 conveyed by the episcopate, presupposes a Divine autho- 
 rity in the promise and words of Christ, and admits of a 
 moral demonstration as complete and satisfactory as any 
 parallel fact of history. Whether in the case of the other 
 branches of the Universal Church, or in the case of 
 our English Church since the sixteenth century, it 
 can only be impugned by arguments which, if applied 
 consistently, would be fatal to the authority of at least 
 two or three books of the New Testament. And in 
 truth, the temper of these latter days has been somewhat 
 impatient of the large historical and psychological con- 
 siderations which warrant our belief in Christ's continued 
 choice of His ministers. Men are disposed to limit the 
 
Mission from Christ. 
 
 213 
 
 evidence of a doctrine to those moral results which they 
 themselves can trace as due to its influence and action. 
 " What is a man the better," we are asked, " for believing 
 that he is chosen and ordained to the ministry by an 
 unseen Being ? Why can he not be content to suppose 
 that it is with the ministry as with other professions in 
 life ? A man takes, for instance, to the study of the law 
 or of medicine, or of politics, or of agriculture, without 
 supposing that he is moved or authorised to do so by any 
 supernatural agency. Why cannot the clergy do like- 
 wise ? Surely there is an abundance of reasons which 
 might induce well-disposed young men to undertake the 
 duties of the clerical profession without the historical 
 assumption of the reality of an apostolically transmitted 
 commission, or the psychological assumption of the reality 
 of an inward call. Would it not be more honest — that is 
 the word employed— to content yourselves with these 
 practical reasons, reinforced, as they are in the case of 
 the clergy of the Church of England, by the official sanc- 
 tion of the State, and to leave the notions of a special 
 supernatural virtue in the act of ordination, or of a real 
 spiritual afflatus touching individual souls with a heaven- 
 sent impulse, as belonging to days which are passing or 
 have passed away ? " 
 
 As regards the question of "honesty," it of course 
 depends upon an anterior question of opinion or rather of 
 fact. As we descend in the scale of beliefs, we find that 
 the larger faiths above us wear a necessary semblance 
 either of credulity or knavery. To the pure materialist 
 nothing seems more foolish or " dishonest " than what he 
 regards as the assumptions of spiritualism. A Condillac 
 cannot understand the empiricism of a Locke ; since 
 Locke assumes two sources of knowledge, sensation and 
 reflection, while Condillac can see in all mental processes, 
 honestly examined, only modified sensations. The religion 
 
2I 4 
 
 The Moral Value of a 
 
 of nature thinks the supernatural "dishonest"; so does 
 the Sociniau the doctrine of Christ's literal Godhead ; so 
 does the disciple of Strauss the assertion of the infallibility 
 of Scripture : so does the theory which treats the Church 
 as a purely human association, a belief in the reality of 
 the ministerial call and of the ministerial commission. 
 This use of the word honest implies, not necessarily ill- 
 will, but only a limited imagination on the part of the 
 speaker. The speaker cannot imagine the possibility of a 
 larger range of certainties than that which he himself 
 recognises. If other men make reference to truths which 
 he does not recognise, he cannot divest himself of the 
 idea that they must be wilfully deceiving themselves, or 
 others, or both at once. 
 
 So much for the question of honesty ; but how about 
 the moral advantages of the belief before us ? Now, in 
 reply to this question, I answer that belief in a real 
 ministerial call and mission, received from Jesus Christ, 
 is not a resultless ecclesiastical fancy. It is a moral 
 power directly promoting ministerial work. It is a stimulus 
 to exertion, of which, without it, a man would be incap- 
 able. It is a protection against an unwillingness to be 
 personally prominent, which belongs to the highest type 
 of the Christian character. It is, moreover, a source of 
 true consolation under the ministerial disappointments, 
 which are a matter of course in all careers, even in the 
 most successful. " Ye have not chosen Me, but I have 
 chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and 
 bring forth fruit." Our Saviour's words directly connect a 
 strictly moral result, which He calls " fruit," with His own 
 choice and ordination of the disciples who will produce it. 
 
 I. 
 
 It is argued that ministerial work, of itself, is a natural 
 attraction to a large class of benevolent minds, sufficiently 
 
Mission from Christ. 
 
 2I 5 
 
 powerful to need no such stimulus as that afforded by a 
 heavenly call and mission. In other professions, we are 
 reminded, the work itself and its legitimate rewards con- 
 stitute a sufficient attraction. A man pleads a cause, or 
 he attends a patient, or he advocates a legislative im- 
 provement, or he drains and fertilises his broad acres, 
 without any stronger reason for doing so than is supplied 
 by the intrinsic advantage arising to society and to him- 
 self from these several occupations. Why should it not 
 be thus, it is asked, with the clergy also ? Is not the 
 enlightenment of the ignorant, is not the alleviation of 
 those who mourn and suffer, is not, in short, the whole 
 staple and cycle of clerical occupations, a sufficient reason 
 for undertaking and discharging them ? What can be 
 more welcome and grateful to a benevolent mind than 
 these large and varied opportunities of doing good ? To 
 do good is its own reward ; but if any further reward is 
 needed, is it not forthcoming ? Not to hint at anything 
 beyond the clouds, beyond the grave, is not the gratitude 
 with which ministerial work is welcomed, if there were 
 nothing else, an ample reason for engaging in it ? 
 
 At first sight this representation is forcible and per- 
 suasive ; but a little consideration will convince us that 
 it is, upon the whole, at issue with facts. While it has 
 such an air of common sense about it, its real weakness is, 
 that it is too idealistic. It ignores the plain, hard fact, 
 that a great deal of honest clerical work, of necessary, 
 inevitable clerical work, brings with it no sort of present 
 reward, and exposes the worker to much obloquy and 
 distress. If indeed Christianity were a system of teaching 
 in entire accordance with the instincts of our fallen 
 human nature, the work of a clergyman would not 
 necessarily provoke any opposition ; but at the same time 
 it is difficult to see how it would raise his fellow-creatures 
 really in the moral scale. But as a matter of fact, Chris- 
 
2l6 
 
 The Moral Value of 
 
 tianity is a constant rebuke to man, being such as he is ; 
 and its ministers therefore are, in exact proportion to 
 their faithfulness, perpetually engaged in a struggle with 
 opposing human wills. How runs the Apostolic com- 
 mission to Timothy ? " Beprove, rebuke, exhort with all 
 longsuffering and doctrine." 1 It is not possible in prac- 
 tice to obey St. Paul, however tenderly, considerately, 
 humbly, without at times rousing earnest, nay, fierce 
 opposition. 
 
 Doubtless there are theories afloat on the subject of the 
 clerical office, which would regard any like duties with 
 these as unnecessary, if not as impertinent. For instance, 
 a clergyman is sometimes described as being merely an 
 official lecturer upon the text of Scripture, capable of 
 imparting useful information once a week to persons who 
 have not leisure to study Scripture for themselves. Some- 
 times, too, he is said to be only an official philanthropist, 
 an accredited agent of the largest charitable society in 
 the world, whose one business it is to stimulate charity 
 and to organise schemes for the relief of want and pain. 
 Doubtless — it is a noble privilege — we clergy are, by the 
 terms of our office, instructors and philanthropists. But 
 we are this, because we are more, because we have duties 
 towards our fellow-men considered as immortal beings, 
 duties for which we are fitted by a special mission and by 
 a supernatural grace. The conversion, the building up of 
 souls, one by one ; — this is our real business. To this all 
 else is subservient. A clerical life which is spent upon 
 literature, even upon sacred literature, without a practical 
 spiritual object, or upon material philanthropy, without 
 that higher philanthropy which loves the human soul, is 
 a wasted life. Possibly a Divine call and a Divine com- 
 mission are not needed in order to master a certain 
 amount of Biblical scholarship, or to direct a well-con- 
 
 1 2 Tim. iv. 2. 
 
Mission from Christ. 
 
 sidered effort for relieving poverty. But to deal with the 
 human soul, with one human soul; to reveal it to itself; to 
 reveal God to it ; to lead it in the light of that revelation 
 to the cross of Jesus Christ, that it may be washed in His 
 Blood and renewed by His Spirit ; to make it thus taste 
 of the good Word of God and the powers of the world to 
 come ; to watch earnestly for it ; to struggle in prayer for it ; 
 to take frequent thought and to labour for it ; to translate 
 into the daily work of life that ideal of thought and care 
 embodied in the word Pastor, — of care and thought which 
 guides and feeds the flock of Christ ; — this does require a 
 Divine stimulus, that a man may undertake and persevere 
 in it. For it requires, beyond everything else, enthusiasm, 
 fervour. "We are told, indeed, that even the most abstract 
 of the sciences cannot be efficiently taught without a 
 certain enthusiasm on the part of the teacher, on the 
 ground that the successful teacher must not merely 
 exercise and inform the learner's intellect, but must con- 
 trive to rouse and invigorate his will. Much more true is 
 this of religion, with regard to which the learner's will is 
 often not merely sluggish, but warped and hostile. Now 
 this necessary fervour is created by nothing so effectively 
 as by that feeling of personal devotion to Jesus Christ 
 which is natural to a man who believes that he has been 
 really chosen and sent forth by Him. That He in His 
 love and condescension should have singled out one of 
 His servants to take special charge of His interests, and 
 to forward His work, must be to that servant a source of 
 moral impulse of the strongest and most lasting kind. 
 This sense of attachment and responsibility to a living 
 Person, which results from a belief in clerical mission, 
 does really avail to create and maintain that vigorous 
 fervour, which is the raw material that prudence and 
 knowledge must fashion unto effective clerical action. 
 The mere lecturer chooses his subject, and in time grows 
 
2l8 
 
 The Moral Value of a 
 
 tired of it. The mere philanthropist organises his scheme : 
 he is satisfied when it has succeeded ; he is out of heart 
 when it has failed. But — " Ye have not chosen Me, but 
 I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go 
 and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain. " 
 
 II. 
 
 Again, belief in the reality of a Divine call and 
 mission affords a real support and protection in the work 
 to which it impels an ordained man. .This support is 
 required, not merely as a make- weight against the 
 pressure of opposition, but to counteract the promptings 
 of natural modesty, which shrinks from personal promin- 
 ence and leadership. It is not merely required for the 
 effective discharge of such grave and sacred duties as are 
 involved in the celebration of the Holy Sacrament and in 
 dealing with the consciences of men. It is specially 
 required in the pulpit, A belief in his call and commis- 
 sion from Christ can alone make his pulpit ministrations 
 tolerable to a man of common sense and modesty. The 
 more a man knows of God, of the human soul, of the vast 
 range of spiritual truth ; the more he knows of the attain- 
 ments, intellectual or moral, of those around him, and of 
 his own far-reaching and radical shortcomings ; the more 
 must he shrink, if left to himself, from such a part as that 
 of enforcing spiritual truths — even the truths of which he 
 is most certain — upon a large assemblage of his fellow- 
 men. He must feel that the aged may well despise his 
 youth, that the learned may take the measure of his 
 ignorance, and the self-disciplined of his moral inconsis- 
 tencies, and the thoughtful of his superficiality. Apart 
 from his recollection of the presence of the All-wise God, 
 he is sensitively conscious of being face to face with a 
 phalanx of critics, each of whom might fairly be his in- 
 structor. He knows that if his personal qualifications 
 
Mission from Christ. 
 
 219 
 
 alone are to decide the question, his appearance in the 
 pulpit as the spiritual educator of his fellow-men can only 
 be regarded as an impertinence. Earely, indeed, can it 
 ever happen that a parish priest is absolutely, in all 
 respects, moral and spiritual, as well as mental, the natural 
 chief and leader of his flock ; and when he becomes aware 
 of his inferiority, in any one respect, to one of his hearers, 
 he must perforce fall back in his conscience upon some 
 justification for presuming to address them, higher than 
 any which personal fitness affords. 
 
 Here it may be hinted that such a justification is sup- 
 plied, in the case of the clergy of the Church of England, 
 by the sanction of the State. The State, it is argued, 
 comes to the aid of individual shortcomings with the gift 
 of official dignity and position. If the individual, as such, 
 has no title to speak to his fellow-men, on questions of 
 spiritual truth, in the tone of authority, yet we are told 
 that the individual, mantled with the prestige and authority 
 of the Nation or the Crown, may claim that title. The 
 State, considered as a rational whole, is said to have its 
 religious as well as its civil and military representatives ; 
 and its clergy can need no higher sanction than that 
 which suffices for its soldiers, its diplomatists, its police. 
 
 Now, to a certain number of peculiarly constituted 
 minds in our day and generation, this may appear to be 
 satisfactory. Nor do I wish to depreciate, even indirectly, 
 the many blessings arising to the Church, as well as to 
 the nation, over and above the mere material protection 
 which the nation affords to the Church's property, from 
 the fact of the union of Church and State. These bless- 
 ings, indeed, may be over-estimated, and they are not 
 without a heavy balance of attendant disadvantages ; but 
 they are certainly not to be remembered without grati- 
 tude, or parted with, if they must be parted with, without 
 anxiety and reluctance. But it should never for one 
 
220 
 
 The Moral Vahie of a 
 
 moment be forgotten that the sanction which the State 
 gives to the Church is not a source of any spiritual 
 authority. No spiritually-minded man can suppose, since 
 the coming of our Lord, that mankind, organised in a civil 
 capacity as the State, can really confer any properly 
 religious sanction upon a spiritual society, acting and 
 teaching in the Xame of God. If, in certain parts of his 
 great work, Hooker might seem to countenance some like 
 supposition, this is because, in Hooker's days, the Church 
 and State of England were strictly co-extensive ; the State 
 of the Ecclesiastical Polity is only the Church acting in a 
 civil capacity, among a people which wholly belongs to it. 
 It is impossible to argue from the circumstances of the 
 Elizabethan age to those of the present day ; nor is the 
 general principle, that religion, whether recognised by the 
 State or not, is not indebted to the State for its true 
 authority among men, other than certain. " Everywhere, 
 before the time of Jesus Christ," says M. Guizot, " the 
 civil and the religious life of mankind were confounded 
 with each other ; they were mutually oppressive of each 
 other. Religion or religions were institutions incorporate 
 with the State, and ruled or repressed by the State, as its 
 interests might dictate." In " the independence of 
 religious society," proclaimed by the Gospel, M. Guizot 
 is constrained to recognise a sublime innovation, a ray of 
 the very light of God. This, he contends, was the true 
 meaning of Christ's answer to the Pharisees and Herodians: 
 " Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Cesar's, 
 and unto God the things which be God's." Human society 
 was thenceforth to rest on a double basis ; it was to rest 
 upon obedience to the civil law, going hand in hand with 
 the independence of a faith which had come from heaven. 1 
 It follows that the sanction of the State, valuable as it 
 
 1 Cf. Guizot, Meditations sur V Essence dc la Religion Chrtticnnc (Paris, 
 1864), pp. 306, 307. 
 
221 
 
 is for civil and social reasons, cannot afford to the clergy 
 that support in the discharge of strictly religious functions 
 which their sense of personal weakness so eminently 
 needs. The nation may invest her officers, her ambassa- 
 dors, her statesmen, with a dignity and consideration, 
 which really supports them because they represent and 
 embody her action ; and she may give, as in this country 
 for so many ages she has given, welcome, countenance, 
 temporal place and consideration, to the ministers of 
 Christ. Spiritual power or mission she never has given, 
 she never could give. Her relation towards spiritual 
 power is exactly identical with her relation towards the 
 gifts of natural genius. She may recognise and reward, 
 she cannot create, either. " His Majesty," it was once said 
 by a statesman who has since become famous in English 
 history, — " his Majesty can make a Lord-Lieutenant, but 
 it requires God Almighty to make an Author." And in 
 like manner the State can give peerages and an income ; 
 but a true inward call to the priesthood and the com- 
 mission which descends from the Apostles, are alike the 
 gifts of Jesus Christ alone. 
 
 Therefore I say, a higher sanction is needed than that 
 of the State for the public duties of a clergyman. And a 
 clergyman finds it in his conviction of the reality of his 
 call and of the validity of his orders. His individuality 
 is thus merged in the majestic commission which he 
 bears ; and he acquires a healthy indifference to criti- 
 cism, or rather a devotion to duty, which is too engrossing 
 to be conscious that it is criticised at all. Of himself, he 
 shrinks from prominence : all that is best, if I may so 
 say, in his natural, as still more in his regenerate, man, 
 conspires to bid him keep in the background among his 
 fellows, and to hold his peace. But a necessity is laid 
 upon him from heaven, which continually does violence 
 to this inclination. The never-forgotten consciousness of 
 
222 
 
 The Moral Value of a 
 
 the mission which he has received whispers to him, as 
 of old to the prophet by the river of Chebar, that he 
 may not, if he would, be silent. There may be many 
 better men unordained than he ; but still his responsi- 
 bilities are not theirs. " And he said unto me, Son of 
 man, go, get thee unto the house of Israel, and speak with 
 My words unto them. . . . But the house of Israel will 
 not hearken unto thee; for they will not hearken unto 
 Me : for all the house of Israel are impudent and hard- 
 hearted. Behold, I have made thy face strong against their 
 faces, and thy forehead strong against their foreheads. As 
 an adamant harder than flint have I made thy forehead : 
 fear them not, neither be dismayed at their looks. . . . 
 Speak unto them and tell them, Thus saith the Lord God, 
 whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear." 1 
 
 III. 
 
 Once more, a belief in the truth of his call and com- 
 mission affords true and solid consolation to a clergyman, 
 under the disappointments which are inevitable in every 
 ministry. It may seem thoughtless or heartless in a 
 preacher, on such an occasion as this, to suggest that, of 
 the many hopes which are gathered around this altar, 
 some are certainly doomed to die away unrealised, or to be 
 cut short by ruder blows. Yet to look this contingency 
 in the face is only part of that wisdom which does not 
 " build a house," or " make war with another king," with- 
 out previously calculating its moral resources. After all, 
 my brethren, we are the servants, not of success, but of 
 Jesus Christ and His Blessed Will, whatever that may be ; 
 and we can bear to be told that it may be our appointed 
 portion to be sanctified rather by failure than by victory. 
 Still, when it comes, the failure of bright hopes is hard to 
 bear : it is hard in proportion to the enthusiasm which 
 
 1 Ezek. iii. 4, 7-9, 11. 
 
Mission from Christ. 
 
 223 
 
 first begat them. We enter upon active life ; we are alive 
 to the great needs, the great resources, the great oppor- 
 tunities around us ; alive to the crying deficiencies and the 
 gaping wounds of the Church our Mother ; alive to the 
 vast possibilities for active good which are within our 
 reach ; alive, not to our own natural strength, whether of 
 wit or of will, but to the illuminating and invigorating 
 force of the grace of Christ. We do not see, perhaps we 
 do not suspect, the obstacles before us ; and our immediate 
 foreground is filled with ideals of ecclesiastical, and 
 national, and social, and personal improvement, in realis- 
 ing which, as we humbly hope, we may have, at least, a 
 hand. Yet failure and disappointment have constantly 
 been the portion of those who, as we see, on looking back 
 upon their lives, have really been master-builders among 
 the workmen, through whom in past ages most has been 
 contributed to the splendour and dimensions of the House 
 of God. Moses leads Israel out of Egypt, and dies in view 
 of that land of promise, from which he is excluded, in 
 consequence of a personal fault. Samuel reforms the dis- 
 orders of Israel, yet lives to witness the election and the 
 downward course of Saul. Isaiah strengthens Hezekiah 
 to resist Sennacherib, and dies amid the excesses and at 
 the hands of his son. The career of Jeremiah opens with 
 the hopeful reign of Josiah, with the destruction of 
 idolatry, by the royal authority, throughout the kingdom. 
 Jeremiah is conspired against by the populace of 
 Jerusalem; he is in danger of his life at the hands of 
 his townsmen of Anathoth ; he is seized by a powerful 
 party of priests and prophets, and hardly rescued ; he is 
 imprisoned by Zedekiah ; he is smitten and tortured by 
 Pashur ; he is imprisoned again, on the charge of treason, 
 by the besieged Jews ; he is then carried down to Egypt 
 with feigned marks of deference, but in reality, as it 
 would seem, to his martyrdom. Jeremiah is the type of 
 
224 
 
 The Moral Value of a 
 
 those who hope for much and are conspicuous, at least to 
 the eye of man, in failure. In the distance, such failure 
 has a splendour of its own ; ages of veneration have traced 
 around it a nimbus which diverts attention from the his- 
 toric reality. At the time it is hard, very hard, to bear : 
 it brings with it a world of new temptations, unexperienced 
 before. It brings temptations to impatient words and to 
 impatient action, or, worse still, to suppressed gloom which 
 issues in chronic discontent with work or with life, or 
 even in the gradual growth of an indifference to truth 
 once held as most precious and sacred. He had felt the 
 beginning of these temptations who cried — " Woe is me, 
 my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a 
 man of contention to the whole earth. ... 0 Lord, Thou 
 hast deceived me, and I was deceived : Thou art stronger 
 than I, and hast prevailed : I am in derision daily, every 
 one mocketh me. . . . Cursed be the day wherein I was 
 born : let not the day wherein my mother bare me be 
 blessed." 1 And another, in a later age, not, most 
 assuredly, the least noble among the servants of Christ, 
 although living under circumstances, and labouring for 
 some ends, which are not ours — he, too, had known 
 these sore temptations, and he had conquered them when 
 he exclaimed — " I have loved righteousness and hated 
 iniquity, therefore I die in exile." 2 
 
 Doubtless there are general considerations of God's 
 wisdom and goodness upon which the faith of a good man 
 will fall back in all times of trial. But the confidence 
 with which he does so must depend, in no slight degree, 
 upon the question, whether he has himself invited these 
 trials, or whether they have come upon him through con- 
 tingencies which were practically beyond his control. A 
 general who fails after volunteering to command, fails in 
 
 1 Jer. xv. io ; xx. 7, 14. 
 
 - See "The Disappointed Prophet," in Plain Sermons, vol. v. 
 
Mission from Christ. 
 
 225 
 
 a totally distinct sense from the leader who accepts a 
 post of great responsibility at the bidding of his sove- 
 reign. If Jeremiah is constant amid the temptations of 
 failure, this is because he is not responsible for having 
 attempted a work which was destined to fail by the 
 Providence of God. He had prophesied, against his 
 natural bent of character, and in obedience to a heavenly 
 call and mission. The words of that first commission 
 must have strengthened him even in his dying hour, forty 
 years later, in a land of idolaters. " Then the word of the 
 Lord came unto me, saying, Before I formed thee in the 
 belly I knew thee ; and before thou earnest forth out of 
 the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet 
 unto the nations. Then said I, Ah, Lord God ! behold, I 
 cannot speak : for I am a child. But the Lord said unto 
 me, Say not, I am a child : for thou shalt go to all that 
 I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou 
 shalt speak." 1 With these convictions, a man can indeed 
 do his duty, and leave results, be they what they may, to 
 Him Who sent him forth. 
 
 But it may be rejoined : Granting that belief in the 
 reality of a call and commission from Christ is an incen- 
 tive, a support, and an encouragement to ministerial work 
 in the way described, is it not true that this belief has 
 also a dangerous side ? Does it not tend to foster an 
 exaggerated sense of self-importance in those who hold it ? 
 Does it not lead many a man to think more of himself 
 than of his work, more of his order than of his mission, 
 more of his place and position in the Church than of the 
 honour of Jesus Christ ? 
 
 Undoubtedly, all forms of the conviction that we are 
 specially privileged or responsible have their dangers. 
 To know this a man need not be in Holy Orders. Pharisa- 
 ism and self-assertion in sacred things are older than the 
 
 1 Jer. i. 4-7. 
 V 
 
226 The Moral Value of a 
 
 day of Pentecost, and are not confined to the Apostolical 
 Churches of Christendom. The moral sense of personal 
 predestination,of redemption, of sanctification, the exercised 
 privilege of almsgiving, the known power of prayer, 
 the felt delight in Scripture and in holy things, have all 
 in turn been perverted by the human heart to augment 
 the sense of personal importance. 
 
 So, too, it has been with the calling and gifts of the 
 clergy. The clergy are but men, and their faults are con- 
 spicuously thrown out into relief by the sacredness of 
 their office. But is self-importance the natural result of 
 belief in the reality of the ministerial call and commission ? 
 Is it certain that a clergy, which should profess to have no 
 authority or powers whatever beyond their lay brethren, 
 and should nevertheless undertake to teach and feed 
 Christ's people solely on the ground of individual personal 
 merit, would be more entirely free from self-importance 
 than are the clergy of the Church ? Is not that which is 
 personal, individual, proper to a man himself, more likely 
 to minister to this sense of self-importance than that 
 which he only enjoys in common with every member of a 
 vast corporation, and which implies nothing that distin- 
 guishes him among his clerical brethren ? Surely, in every 
 true Christian soul the felt contrast between the high 
 commission received, and the feeble, grovelling efforts of 
 the personal life, is a perpetual warning against self- 
 exaltation, a constant stimulant of that sense of sin and 
 weakness which forbids the words and thoughts that belong 
 to pride. " Unto me, who am less than the least of all 
 saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the 
 Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ." 1 So wrote 
 an Apostle to whom it was natural to speak of himself 
 as the chief of sinners, and who yet surpasses all other 
 writers in the New Testament in the vigour with 
 
 1 Eph. iii. 8 ; compare i Tim. i. 12, 13. 
 
Mission from Christ. 
 
 227 
 
 which he magnifies the office which he had received from 
 Christ. 
 
 But the precious words remain as a perpetual reminder 
 of the purpose with which Christ our Lord commits to 
 human hands the responsibilities of a Divine commission. 
 "I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should 
 go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should 
 remain." If any in the Church of Christ have higher 
 capacities, whether of nature or of grace, than others, these 
 capacities are not a title to high thoughts of self or to 
 lordly leisure; they constitute an obligation to propor- 
 tionate humility and exertion. Far better is it never to 
 have received the talent than to have received and wasted 
 it. They indeed whose ministry brings forth no fruit are 
 under the strongest of temptations to think and say that 
 their ordination has given them no powers of doing so. 
 They who abound in work for God and for souls, find in 
 that work the evidence of a strength within them which 
 is not their own, and which assures them of the reality of 
 their heavenly mission. 
 
 And surely, if ever in Christian history, the clergy of 
 the Church of Christ need that strength in our day and 
 country. Whether we look to the world of thought or to 
 the world of social human life, towards each of which 
 we have duties; how vast is the work before us, how 
 ample the opportunities, how great the necessity ! Never 
 before in this generation have we Englishmen felt civil 
 society so shaken as by the political events of the last two 
 months, (may it not be added ?) as by the tragic revela- 
 tions of the last fortnight. 1 It is a time when all who love 
 their country would fain gather in duty and loyalty around 
 her, that each should contribute whatever he may of 
 hearty support to the throne and to the law. But what 
 is at the root of the anxiety felt and expressed on all sides 
 
 1 The reference is to the explosion at the Clerkenwel] Prison. 
 
228 
 
 The Moral Value of a 
 
 of us ? Is it only that there has been an assault here, a pro- 
 cession or a riot there, a deadly explosion in the heart of 
 our metropolis ? These things are grave enough ; but their 
 gravity consists not in themselves, but in that of which 
 they are the symptoms. The recent violence may not be 
 so tragical in its immediate results as the loss of a steam- 
 ship or a railway accident ; it is more alarming, because 
 it points to a moral and social disease, which is of itself a 
 terrible evil, and is likely to produce other similar cata- 
 strophes. If indeed there was only a question of race 
 between ourselves and our Celtic fellow-subjects beyond 
 St. George's Channel, or only a question of law and order 
 between the Government and a disloyal association, it 
 might be improper to allude to such a subject on this 
 occasion. But it is felt and stated that our reasons for 
 anxiety are wider and deeper ; that old faith in principles 
 has been generally weakened, and that old attachment to 
 institutions has largely died out ; that there is no great 
 positive enthusiasm to oppose to the social solvents at 
 work amongst us. It is felt and stated by keen observers, 
 who have no clerical interest in stating what they feel, 
 that there are rottennesses and sores in the moral struc- 
 ture of English society at this hour which render it less 
 able to sustain the shock of possible war or revolution 
 than was the England of thirty years ago. And if this 
 be so, have not we of the clergy a great duty towards our 
 country, lying in that very path of sacred work which we 
 are bound to tread in virtue of the commission we have 
 received from Christ? The more we can implant, restore, 
 deepen faith ; faith in fixed truth, faith in God, faith in 
 duty ; dread of sin as the one great and only evil, honour 
 and obedience towards constituted authorities (yet this, 
 in the spirit which becomes the " Evangelical tribunes of 
 the people "), the better shall we strengthen those social 
 bands which are the real strength of our country. The 
 
Mission from Christ. 
 
 229 
 
 remotest hamlet contributes something, however in- 
 directly, to the stability of the empire ; and it contributes 
 most when it is the scene of a ministry which, in the 
 confidence and strength of a heavenly mission, brings 
 forth much fruit in rescued and sanctified souls. 
 
 And in this diocese there are generally some, often 
 many, candidates for ordination, who are admitted to the 
 diaconate or to the priesthood as holders of a fellowship. 
 Too often a college title is contrasted with a parochial 
 one, as if a life spent within college walls here in Oxford 
 afforded no opportunities for strictly clerical work. Yet 
 how great is the need of men chosen and ordained by 
 Jesus Christ, that they should go and bring forth fruit in 
 such a field as that of this University, they best know 
 who live here. Here, as elsewhere, sin is rife ; here, as 
 elsewhere, the eternal contest between good and evil 
 rages uninterruptedly ; here, souls are to be won by the 
 same spiritual activities, by the same heart-subduing 
 truths, as elsewhere. But here there are special anxieties 
 which may well invite the earnest attention of those 
 among Christ's servants who have opportunities of grap- 
 pling with them. Elsewhere, attention may be concen- 
 trated upon controversies, which are not without grave 
 importance, yet which certainly are less fundamental than 
 those which have become wellnigh chronic here. Else- 
 where, questions are raised between principles that have 
 confronted each other for centuries, while both are within 
 the Christian pale ; between importance ascribed and 
 importance denied to sacraments ; between the advocacy 
 and the repudiation of Church ceremonial. In these dis- 
 cussions, doubtless, much is really at stake ; but surely 
 less, far less, than in the controversies whispered of late 
 years around these walls, which, for so many ages, have 
 sheltered the faith and love of Christian students. Not 
 merely whether the Death of Jesus have any atoning 
 
230 The Moral Value of a 
 
 virtue; not merely whether Jesus be God, or only a sinful 
 creature ; but whether those theistic truths which Chris- 
 tianity found in the world, and sanctioned by repetition, 
 be themselves true ; — these are the questions in debate. 
 Whether prayer has any efficacy with God ; whether the 
 conception of a Providence be more than a fond dream of 
 human self-importance ; whether to affirm the freedom of 
 the human will be not to reject the last and most trium- 
 phant conclusion of the inductive philosophy ; whether to 
 assert positively the existence of God be not to place at 
 the summit of human thought a dogmatic statement so 
 vast and exacting as to be inconsistent with the needs of 
 that highest culture which, it would seem, demands, as a 
 condition of its perfect development, nothing less than 
 a strictly universal scepticism ; — these are points here 
 agitated, and, in too many instances, decided in a manner 
 which proves that the most fundamental Christian and 
 theistic truth is engaged in nothing less than a struggle 
 for its existence. Who can watch, even distantly, the oft- 
 repeated spectacle of intellectual perplexity, struggle, 
 anguish, and even despair, without praying the Lord of 
 the Vineyard to choose and ordain among His servants, in 
 this place, men who can bring effective help in our present 
 deep necessities ? For, from this centre of English intel- 
 lectual life truth or falsehood alike radiate, with terrible 
 swiftness, throughout our Church and country. What is 
 here said in the ear, by a tutor, to a group of pupils, is 
 soon, through the vast machinery by which educated 
 thought finds expression, proclaimed, for good or evil, 
 upon the housetops of the land. Surely, if the sense of a 
 mission from Christ be needed anywhere, to give zeal, 
 decision, encouragement, patience, it is needed in a clerical 
 fellow of a college of our day in Oxford. 
 
 " And your fruit shall remain." If more be required 
 to make us do Christ's work than the fact that He sends 
 
Mission from Christ. 
 
 231 
 
 us, it is here. The work of human hands and human 
 brains, done for and in this passing world, passes also. It 
 is with thought as with manual labour ; it is with greatness 
 as with obscurity ; it is with genius as with mediocrity. 
 An earthly immortality is only relative, after all ; and 
 centuries, or decades of centuries, are as nothing in the 
 history of an Universe. It may seem, too, to the servants 
 of Christ, amid the steady monotony of their daily work 
 and their incessant conflict with evil, that they are but as 
 children writing on the sands of time their little alphabet, 
 which must presently be effaced by the waters of the 
 rising tide. Brethren, it is not so. The tide of human 
 thought and life ebbs as well as flows ; but the message 
 which we write upon the mind of a generation would be 
 indelible, even if it were not destined to be re-written by 
 our successors. For spiritual fruit, even the humblest, 
 is assured of preservation in the Eternal storehouse. 
 Love, courage, truth, purity — these cannot die. As each 
 soul passes from a pastor's care, enlightened, repentant, 
 sanctified, to wait a while and then to enter upon its rest 
 in that better world beyond the stars, it bears with it the 
 spiritual result of sanctified toil, which are as immortal as 
 itself. Happy and blessed are they who, whether in 
 themselves or with others, labour for that which alone 
 does not suffer from the moth and rust of time ! Happy 
 and blessed are the servants of a Master so bountiful, and 
 indulgent, Who, when He comes to take account of the 
 produce of His vineyard, will crown, as we know full well, 
 with eternal distinctions, not our poor efforts or merits, 
 but His own fruitful and majestic gifts. 
 
SERMON VIII. 
 
 CLERICAL MOTIVES. 1 
 
 i Cor. xvi. 8, 9. 
 
 But I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost. For a great door and 
 effectual is opened unto me, and there are 'many adversaries. 
 
 IT is in incidental passages like these that we obtain 
 the deepest and most vivid insight into a writer's 
 mind and character. Among uninspired writings it is 
 not in formal compositions or official documents that 
 that which marks personal character and life makes 
 itself felt ; few persons would indorse the paradox of a 
 modern historian, that the character of Henry vm. is to 
 be studied most advantageously in the preambles to his 
 Acts of Parliament. The great charm of private corre- 
 spondence, and the only reason which in thousands of 
 cases can explain its publication, is that it is a revelation 
 of that which is always interesting — a revelation of 
 character. In an official mood, or in a public capacity, 
 two men of profoundly different characters will say 
 exactly the same thing: the truth being that for the 
 time all personal characteristics are dropped; it is the 
 office, or the circumstances, or the necessity of the case 
 which really speaks; it is not the man. Iu private 
 correspondence you see the man more as he is : he writes 
 with a running pen ; he writes as he feels ; his impulse, 
 his enthusiasm, his passion, his hopes and fears, his 
 
 1 Preached at the Ordination of the Bishop of Winchester, in St. Philip's, 
 
 Battersea, on Trinity Sunday, May 26, 1872. 
 
 232 
 
Clerical Motives. 
 
 233 
 
 attractions and repulsions, are represented by turns ; they 
 are vehemently uttered, or they escape him in spite of 
 himself : and, as you read him, you feel that you are in 
 contact not with a system, or a treatise, or formal theory 
 or composition of any kind, but with a soul, — with all its 
 strength or weakness, with all its thoroughness or incon- 
 sistency, with all its inertness or life and resolution. 
 
 Now, it is one of the many attractions of St. Paul's 
 Epistles, that while they embody the greatest and most 
 authoritative statements of the central necessary dogmas 
 of Christianity, they also abound in this personal and 
 incidental element, — keeping the figure of the writer 
 continually before us, and enabling us all, but especially 
 those of us who have succeeded, in whatever measure and 
 degree, to a share in his great office and work for Christ, 
 to feel at home with him, as with a personal friend, — 
 just as if eighteen centuries did not divide us, and He 
 were working at our sides in London and Southwark, or 
 we with him in the ancient cities of the Levant. 
 
 The passage before us will illustrate these observations : 
 the Apostle reveals in this expression of his intention 
 features of his ministerial character which are well worth 
 our study on an occasion like the present. " I must tarry 
 at Ephesus until Pentecost. For a great door and effectual 
 is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries." 
 
 Here we have, first of all, the announcement of a de- 
 cision, and, secondly, the reasons on which that decision 
 is based. 
 
 I. 
 
 1. In the decision to remain at Ephesus until Pentecost, 
 we may remark the Apostle's power of making up his 
 mind in face of a strong counterbalancing motive. 
 
 Certainly there was enough to make St. Paul, so pro- 
 foundly sympathetic as he was by nature, as well as 
 
234 
 
 Clerical Motives. 
 
 in bis life of grace, anxious to leave Ephesus for 
 Corinth at a moment's notice when he traced these lines. 
 The Epistle in which they occur is, in fact, a long 
 catalogue of motives, each one of which must have 
 exerted over such a mind as his a strenuous power. 
 
 Since his arrival at Ephesus, in this his third journey, 
 St. Paul had paid, as Wieseler has shown, a flying visit to 
 Corinth ; he had returned in much sorrow and dejection 
 of spirits. He had gone on account of unfavourable news 
 as to the condition of the Corinthian Church; he had 
 found matters even worse than he expected. In an 
 Epistle which is lost to us, he had ordered that the 
 profligate members of the Corinthian Church who had 
 occasioned a great scandal should be excluded from its 
 communion. The Corinthians appear to have replied by 
 asking whether the Apostle really meant them to seclude 
 themselves from all the business of life ; after all, Corinth 
 was only what all the world knew it was; and it was 
 easy for them to imply that the Apostle was too enthu- 
 siastic a person to be really practical. And since then, 
 some members of the household of Chloe, a Christian 
 family of distinction at Corinth, had arrived in Ephesus. 
 They, too, left with the Apostle the saddest impressions 
 of the state of things at Corinth. The Church there, they 
 said, was divided by fierce party spirit. The Christians 
 who wished to retain or recover as much as they could of 
 the ceremonial law of the Jews were there pleading the 
 name of St. Peter in favour of their attempt to undermine 
 the authority of St. Paul. The Christians who had found 
 in the Alexandrian culture of -Apollos a predominant 
 philosophical and literary element which was either 
 wanting in the Apostle as a disciple of Gamaliel, or 
 altogether subordinated to the spiritual side of his 
 teaching, objected to the Apostle as comparatively dull 
 and uninteresting. Others again used the Apostle's own 
 
Clerical Motives. 
 
 235 
 
 name, altogether against his will, as that of a party 
 leader to whom they owed allegiance ; while another 
 section, ostentatiously disclaiming all party spirit, and 
 appealing to the holiest of all names as that which alone 
 marked them, would probably have carried party feeling 
 to a higher pitch of narrow intolerance than any of the 
 rest. There was also, — whether distinct from these parties, 
 or nearly connected with that of Apollos, it is now 
 difficult to say, — an active antinomian body, defending 
 loose living on principle, denying the resurrection of the 
 dead, and practically representing the Gospel as a more 
 graceful kind of Epicureanism; and a member of this 
 section it would have been who, without being excluded 
 from the Church, was living in open incest with his step- 
 mother, during the lifetime of his father. Then the 
 heathen law-courts were occupied with vexatious suits 
 brought by Christians against Christians; the Holy 
 Communion was profaned by excesses which immediately 
 preceded its reception ; the gifts of the Holy Spirit were 
 turned into occasions of vain personal display ; and 
 Christian women, forgetting their higher natural instincts, 
 and even those customs of their country which embodied 
 them, came forward unveiled to make speeches in public 
 assemblies of the Church. It seemed as if the Greek 
 temper, restless, brilliant, paradoxical, had carried all its 
 clever levity, all its resources of finesse and intrigue, all 
 its genius for controversy, all its distaste for personal 
 self-discipline and improvement, into the very heart of 
 the Church of Corinth : and the Apostle may well have 
 felt that he ought, without delay, to be on the spot, 
 where there was not merely so much good to do, but also 
 so much mischief to correct and prevent. 
 
 It must have cost St. Paul much, with all his penetrat- 
 ing insight into the details of a great moral struggle, with 
 all his ready and burning sympathy, to set the claims of 
 
2 3 6 
 
 Clerical Motives. 
 
 Corinth aside, even for six weeks. Still he did : though 
 he knew that much might depend upon the delay. He 
 knew — he must have known — that there was one voice 
 to which all would listen, one heart to whose strong sym- 
 pathies all, sooner or later, would respond, one determined 
 will to which all would bend. His own presence at 
 Corinth was of the first necessity for Corinth. But there 
 was a higher necessity for him to be elsewhere. He 
 struck the balance as in a Higher Presence. Indecision 
 may be the characteristic of a weak character, with no 
 strong enthusiasms in any direction; or it may be a mor- 
 bid growth attaching itself to a character of the very 
 highest order, in which the sensitiveness of conscience as 
 to the claims of conflicting lines of duty continually arrests 
 the fiat of the executive will. But in either case, it is a 
 fatal drawback in any who bear the commission of Christ. 
 They have to work for a cause which never can be popular, 
 in face of an opposition which can never sleep : and a lack 
 of resolution is as surely taken advantage of by opponents 
 as it is disheartening to friends. No doubt a decision as 
 to the right course is sometimes a matter of the greatest 
 difficulty. No doubt there are rash resolutions, wrong 
 resolutions, obstinacy in maintaining what is rash and 
 wrong ; yet, for all that, we may not, we dare not, abdi- 
 cate — we who serve Jesus Christ in a sense different from 
 that of other men, above all others, dare not abdicate — 
 the duty of decision. If rash resolutions are wrong, the 
 absence of all resolution is not right. A man asserts his 
 manhood, a Christian puts forth within him the power of 
 the Indwelling Christ, when, feeling that God's Eye is 
 upon him, and that he will one day stand before the 
 Judgment-seat, he makes up his mind ; when he takes 
 impulses, passions, hopes, fears, enthusiasms, shrinkings, 
 well in hand, and proclaims, amid the tumult and chaos 
 within him, the sentence of that sovereign faculty which 
 
Clerical Motives. 
 
 237 
 
 is his real self — the sentence of the will ; after placing his 
 will under the guidance of well-instructed conscience. 
 St. Paul has told us in his Epistle to the Romans of his 
 conflicts with that other law in his members which warred 
 against the true law of his mind : but here we see him 
 not battling with rebellious passion, not irresolutely par- 
 leying with counteracting motives, nor yet yielding to the 
 mastery of resistless impulse. He is announcing calmly, 
 deliberately, finally, a judgment : he lias his purpose clearly 
 formed, yet well in hand : he knows how far to give reins 
 to it, and where to assign a limit. " I will tarry at 
 Ephesus," he says, " until Pentecost." 
 
 II. 
 
 Upon what reasons is this decision grounded ? Upon 
 two. Of these, the first is the greatness of the opportunity 
 offered by Ephesus. St. Paul calls the opportunity a door. 
 He had but to enter, and all that was nearest and dearest 
 to his apostolic heart was there before him. Nay, he feels 
 the opportunity so keenly that he intensifies the metaphor, 
 though at the risk of destroying it. It is not merely a 
 great door, but, as he expresses it, effectual or energetic : 
 it is as if the opportunity itself were instinct with the 
 action that should make the most of it — so impossible 
 does it appear to the Apostle not to make the most of it. 
 It had not been always thus at Ephesus. Although St. 
 Paul must have been cheered by the recent conversion of 
 Apollos, which had followed on the labours of Aquila and 
 Priscilla before his arrival : although it must have glad- 
 dened his heart to baptize those twelve disciples of the 
 Baptist who, when he first met them, had not heard 
 whether there was any Holy Ghost — there had been a 
 weary time since. At Ephesus, as elsewhere, he made 
 the great Jewish synagogue the starting-point of his mis- 
 
2 3 8 
 
 Clerical Motives. 
 
 sionary activity. Saturday after Saturday, for three long 
 months, he argued and disputed, he preached, as we should 
 say, a series of Conferences, on the true nature of the 
 Kingdom of God. As a pupil of Gamaliel, he knew, as 
 well as any man, how to approach the intellect and heart 
 of his countrymen. He knew that the Kingdom of Mes- 
 siah, as shadowed out in prophecy, as explained by the 
 earlier and better tradition of the Synagogue, was a very 
 different thing from the hard and dry political programme 
 which was popular in all the synagogues of his own day. 
 But he preached to hearers who did not mean to be con- 
 vinced, although they were intelligent enough to do jus- 
 tice to the power of the preacher. They could not afford 
 to treat him with silent neglect. 
 
 His teaching was publicly denounced in terms of con- 
 tempt and insult ; and then, as before at Corinth, he deter- 
 mined to separate, by a formal act, from all appearance of 
 communion with the Jewish worship. He and his 
 assembled in one of the apsidal lounges which were 
 attached to the gymnasiums and public baths in the cities 
 of the ancient world, and which was then frequented by 
 Tyrannus, probably a teacher of rhetoric. There for two 
 years he was to be found day after day, speaking to all 
 who would listen, sometimes to his countrymen, who 
 remembered what he had said in the synagogue, some- 
 times to the Pagan Greeks : and Ephesus was so great a 
 centre, that this daily public preaching acted as an adver- 
 tisement of the nature and claims of the Gospel through- 
 out the whole province of proconsular Asia. Thence were 
 founded many of the smaller churches which at the close 
 of the Apostolic age covered the soil of Western Asia. 
 There, too, were probably worked some of those remark- 
 able miracles which are mentioned by the writer of the 
 Acts ; there would have been discussed again and again 
 the disgrace and discomfiture of the seven sons of the 
 
Clerical Motives. 
 
 239 
 
 Jewish high priest, who had tried to use our Lord's Sacred 
 Name as a spell in their attempted exorcisms; there 
 would have been heard those public confessions of sinful 
 and wasted lives which preceded the baptism of Pagan 
 converts ; there the costly books, filled with receipts for 
 rare magical incantations, were publicly burned ; it was 
 felt that a new moral power had gone forth from the place, 
 and that society, both Jewish and Pagan, was fermenting 
 sensibly all around. 
 
 None would have known this better than St. Paul. 
 " A great door — and effectual," he exclaimed — " is opened 
 unto me." The old settled surface of Pagan and Jewish 
 thought was heaving with agitation before his mind's eye. 
 Men were asking what was really true, really worth living 
 for, really worth dying for, if there was any such thing. 
 There was a wish to base life, if it could be, upon a moral 
 rock of some kind ; there was an impatience of fiction, of 
 all that was not real. These things were not the Gospel, 
 but they were preparatory to it. The soil had to be broken 
 up before the heavenly seed could be sown with any pro- 
 bability of growth. 
 
 Brethren, it is no slight part of our responsibility to 
 make the most of every opening for doing our Master's 
 work. Every ministerial life has such opportunities, 
 sooner or later. We may work for some years amid the 
 discouragements of the synagogue; but the school of 
 Tyrannus comes at last. To fail to make the most of it 
 may well happen — such is our weakness. But to fail to 
 try to make the most of it, to make no efforts to under- 
 stand it, to let it slip by us, or ourselves to glide by it 
 down the stream of life as if there were nothing par- 
 ticular in it, as if it had no bearing either on our own 
 highest good or on that of others, this implies the 
 presence of some grave disease in our moral and spiritual 
 constitution : nay, it is that deadly apathy for which the 
 
240 
 
 Clerical Motives. 
 
 stern realities of spiritual life and death have no real 
 meaning. St. Paul was constantly failing, to all appear- 
 ance : " as dying, and behold we live." He was constantly 
 succeeding, for this among other reasons, that he was 
 always alive to the possibility of success. 
 
 2. A second reason for St. Paul's remaining at Ephesus 
 until Pentecost was the difficulty of the situation. 
 " There are," he said, " many adversaries." To begin with, 
 of course, there were the Jews of the synagogue, who 
 would not forget the circumstances which led to the 
 secession to the school of Tyrannus. Then there would 
 have been in such a city as Ephesus, a mass of inert 
 wickedness, reduced to outward decorum by military and 
 social forces, but always ready to rise in active opposition 
 to the energies of truth and goodness, and always able to 
 command the services of powerful representatives. St. 
 Paul already discerned the coming storm. He did not 
 imagine that the religion of the Crucified would make 
 itself a permanent home in that gay, pleasure-seeking, 
 easy-tempered, superstitious population without a struggle. 
 Sooner or later it would come into conflict with classes 
 who were deeply concerned to oppose it — ay, — to the 
 death. Among them were the skilled workmen who 
 made miniature copies of the inner shrine of the temple 
 of Artemis, which were bought by visitors, and placed as 
 ornaments on tables or elsewhere in the interior of 
 wealthy houses. These men were interested in prevent- 
 ing the triumph of Christianity. They were bound to 
 the worship of Diana by the double tie of old association 
 and commercial enterprise : and such a combination of 
 motives in favour of a very foolish or bad system (it is a 
 matter of experience) is excessively strong. Then the 
 working men throughout Asia Minor, at this period, were, 
 as has been amply shown from inscriptions, enrolled in 
 clubs and unions almost without exception ; so that, when 
 
Clerical Motives. 
 
 241 
 
 the interests of a particular trade were threatened, nothing 
 was easier than to organise resistance of a very serious 
 kind. St. Paul may or may not have had his eye upon 
 Demetrius the silversmith ; but he must have known 
 enough of the forces which were at work around him to 
 anticipate some such scene as the riot in the theatre as 
 at least very probable. 
 
 " There are many adversaries." Yes ; but that was no 
 reason for leaving Ephesus. Had the Divine Master 
 listened to the persuasions of the disciples, who would * 
 have kept Him at a distance from Juda3a, on the ground 
 that the Jews sought to stone Him ? Had the Christians 
 whom Paul himself had persecuted to the death before 
 his conversion shrunk from their place or their work 
 because of his own cruel opposition ? Was not opposi- 
 tion the rule, the condition — nay, more, was it not the 
 stimulus and opportunity — of all true Christian work, true 
 Christian virtue ? What does virtue mean, but manly 
 force put forth in accordance with the rule of right, put 
 forth all the more steadily when it is encompassed by 
 difficulties ? Difficulty, as a heathen saw, is positively 
 necessary to the full development of virtue: the soft 
 atmosphere of unimpeded success fosters only and surely 
 .vhen ) effeminacy, moral decay. And therefore St. Paul 
 o'ellectr upon the many adversaries at Ephesus not merely 
 tl^s no drawback, but as a positive attraction. They 
 roused within him, — not any natural spirit of brute com- 
 bativeness, — but the higher spiritualised military temper, 
 which he tells us in the Epistle to the Ephesians is part 
 of the outfit of the general Christian character, which iu 
 the Pastoral Epistles he associates especially with those 
 who have given themselves to the service of Jesus Christ. 
 It was a good thing, since he was a soldier by profession 
 — a good soldier of Jesus Christ — to be on the field and 
 taking note of the strength of the enemy. Each opponent 
 Q 
 
242 
 
 was a possible convert ; but in the last resort, an impotent 
 antagonist, come what might, "Who shall separate us 
 from the love of Christ ? " "I am persuaded, that neither 
 death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, 
 nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor 
 depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us 
 from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." 1 
 
 III. 
 
 * This solemn occasion, brethren, in the main, speaks for 
 itself. Words are often out of place when men's hearts 
 are full ; when there is much that flits before the eye of 
 the soul that no words can compass. Those of us who 
 are here as candidates for ordination this morning can 
 understand St. Paul in the text. Like him, we have 
 arrived at a conclusion. We have made up our minds in 
 a matter which binds us for life, as he did as to the best 
 way of spending six weeks. It is well. God help us 
 now and hereafter to say : " I will pay Thee my vows, 
 which I promised with my lips and spake with my heart, 
 when I gave myself to Thee, Lord Jesus Christ." There 
 may have been much to plead for other lines of life : we 
 do not deny that God may be served by men who s-< we 
 Him in secular employments, or that all secular ermple 
 ments may be hallowed by a religious motive. Bed as- 
 us, we have taken our parts: we have considered iff 
 claims of Corinth and chosen Ephesus. We have put our 
 hands to the plough, and may not look back. We want 
 no Clerical Disabilities Act to relieve us from a voluntary 
 and welcome service : we wear the uniform of the Captain 
 of our salvation, and would wear no other for all that 
 this world can give. 
 
 But " there are many adversaries." Certainly there are. 
 A man who takes Orders in the present day does so 
 
 1 Rom. viii. 35, 38, 39. 
 
Clerical Motives. 243 
 
 under very different circumstances from those which 
 would have attended the act forty, or even twenty years 
 ago. It is undeniably more difficult to meet a clergy- 
 man's responsibilities now than then. Much more is 
 expected in the way of personal exertion and ministerial 
 efficiency. The air is filled with many controversies, 
 which may be approached in many ways, but which can 
 only be safely handled in one. The Eoman Church has 
 never confronted us before on so serious a scale, in every 
 rank of society : nonconformity and irreligion have never 
 before so openly joined their forces against what remains 
 to us of power to give a Christian education to the people. 
 The future is pregnant with possibilities; who can say 
 what will be the status of the Church of England thirty, 
 twenty, ten years hence ? Who can now look forward as 
 did our fathers, as did some among ourselves, to a settled 
 order of events which would outlast us, which would sub- 
 sist unimpaired, almost unvaried, when we should have 
 passed away ? Out of those days of routine, of tranquil 
 and assured repose, we have passed into a very different 
 period, when all around us betrays a feverish impatience 
 of what has been and what is ; when change as change 
 is spoken of as if it had an inherent, a sacramental virtue ; 
 when blasts of destructive thought sweep through the in- 
 tellectual atmosphere, pulverising in numbers of souls 
 the most venerable convictions ; when, even within the 
 Church, men have accustomed themselves to think 
 patiently of — in some cases even to welcome — the public 
 repudiation of the most sacred and authoritative landmarks 
 of the central certainties of the Faith. It is a time, too, 
 this, when moral and social ideas are not less challenged 
 than doctrinal truths; when society is troubled by the 
 terrible suspicion that it may have to reckon with forces 
 more serious than any it has yet encountered since it rose 
 out of the chaos of barbarous life. Beyond any other 
 
244 
 
 Clerical Motives. 
 
 class of men, the clergy, who deal with the gravest 
 problems in the world of thought, who are more directly 
 and intimately interested than any other class of men in 
 the material as well as the spiritual wellbeing of the 
 people, must be sensitively alive to these grave circum- 
 stances ; and, as a matter of fact, they do actually deter 
 many men, who in other days would have taken Holy 
 Orders, from doing so now. Do not let us regret it : it is 
 better thus. The strength of a Church does not consist in 
 the number of pages of a clerical directory, but in the 
 sum-total of moral force which she has at command. It 
 is well that we should look on the difficulties of our time 
 as did St. Paul on his : they are as nothing for a man with 
 an honest heart and a clear positive faith. 
 
 For, after all, why is it that we do take Orders ? Is it 
 not because we believe and are sure that eighteen cen- 
 turies ago an event occurred, compared with which all 
 that has happened since, all that can happen in this 
 eventful day — happen what may — is utterly insignificant ? 
 Is it not because, like St. Paul at Ephesus, we believe that 
 the Everlasting Son of God really entered into conditions 
 of space and time, and died upon the cross for the sins of 
 all men, and rose from the grave, and ascended, and has 
 been pleading for us all ever since, and is doing so at this 
 moment, and has sent us His Spirit, and given us His 
 Sacraments ? Is it not because we are convinced that if 
 He has done so much for us — for each of us, — the least 
 we can do is to yield Him a free and cheerful service, in 
 such circumstances as He wills, in storm or sunshine, in 
 battle or repose, in hopeful times or days of despondency, 
 it matters little ? Surely this is so, brethren, and, when 
 we think of it, the present scene, the nearer horizon, 
 the tangled web of ecclesiastical and political change, 
 dwarfs down into its true proportions, and we see only 
 Jesus Christ Crucified, and souls perishing all around for 
 
Clerical Motives. 
 
 245 
 
 lack of knowledge or lack of grace, and our own one duty 
 — the duty of our predecessors, the duty of the great 
 Apostle — to bring each within our reach, by whatever 
 moral or intellectual instruments, close to the Atoning 
 Cross, to have a share in the sprinkling of the Cleansing 
 Blood, to know something of that Power and Wisdom of 
 God which is still a stumbling-block to the self-righteous, 
 and foolishness to the self-opinionated. And for this 
 blessed work — blessed in its results to others, blessed in 
 its reflex effect upon all who earnestly undertake it in 
 dependence on God's grace — we have at this day great 
 opportunities. The difficulties of the time do not merely 
 stimulate us : they unwillingly assist us. Our rivals in 
 this work, if we must term them such, are not so for- 
 midable after all. Eome, by her own act, has recently 
 condemned herself to the task of advocating the equal 
 infallibility of a long line of self-contradicting Popes. 
 Puritanism, in all its phases, is, while it still clutches the 
 pietistic formulas of its earlier history with convulsive 
 eagerness, more and more surely forfeiting its old vitality 
 as it sinks into the pit of scepticism which its sturdy 
 repudiation of external authority has too surely made. 
 
 And as for those forms of thought which are the im- 
 placable enemies of all who believe in a Living God, and 
 who own the Name of Christ, they cannot in the long-run 
 satisfy a being like man, who has the ineffaceable presenti- 
 ment of his immortality ever within him, and for whom 
 the ideas of moral right and judgment can never be 
 resolved into mere sentiment. The movement all around 
 is, in some ways, in our favour. We have a better chance 
 of winning a hearing for our Divine Master than in days 
 when thought was stagnant, and habit fixed, and men were 
 what they were not unfrequently for no reason but the 
 traditional one. Earthly theories cannot exercise the 
 human mind on the great questions which surround us in 
 
246 
 
 Clerical Motives. 
 
 this present state of existence, without affording to the 
 Truth of Heaven an opportunity of triumph. They who 
 are furthest from Truth often have profound, although as 
 yet undeveloped, perhaps unrecognised, sympathies with 
 it : the King of the New Covenant is Euler even in the 
 midst among His enemies. And the conditions of human 
 life do not alter: men live, and suffer, and die, just as 
 they did eighteen centuries ago, and the real significance 
 of this short and mysterious passage which we call life is 
 not obliterated by our material civilisation or our mental 
 theories. God grant that, be the scene of our labours 
 what it may, with simple hearts we may teach and act as 
 men who know that they will die among dying men ; that 
 so our light anxieties— afflictions, if such await us — which 
 are but for a moment, may lead us on to an exceeding 
 and an eternal weight of glory, through the boundless 
 grace and mercy of Jesus our Lord. 
 
SERMON IX. 
 
 FAITH WITHOUT MIRACLES. 1 
 
 St. John x. 41, 42. 
 
 And many resorted unto Him, and said, John did no miracle: but all things 
 that John spake of this Man were true.. A nd many believed on Him there. 
 
 THE Jews of Jerusalem had attempted to lay violent 
 hands on our Lord at the Feast of Dedication, and 
 He retired into the district beyond the Jordan. It was at 
 the end of December, in the winter before His last Pass- 
 over. The final conflict between Light and darkness 
 which was witnessed on Calvary could not now be long 
 delayed. But the hour had not yet come : and there- 
 fore, in the words of the Evangelist, " Jesus went away 
 again beyond Jordan, unto the place where John at first 
 baptized, and there He abode." There is a subtle charm 
 in finding ourselves, as life and work are drawing towards 
 the end, amid the scenes which witnessed our first hopes 
 and efforts; and our Lord, with His true Humanity, 
 would, we may be reverently sure, have shared in feelings 
 which belong to the loftiest side of our common nature. 
 But the district would not have been welcome to Him 
 only from its connection with His earlier days. It was 
 the place where John at first baptized. It was just a 
 year before that the intrepid Baptist, after being im- 
 prisoned in the gloomy fortress of Machserus, on the 
 border of the desert, had, partly for political reasons, 
 partly for his intrepid adherence to moral truth, been 
 
 Preached at the Ordination of the Bishop of London, in St. Paul's, on 
 Trinity Sunday, May 31, 1874. 
 
 247 
 
248 Faith without Miracles 
 
 laid in a martyr's grave ; but though his voice was 
 silenced, his work survived him. Certainly the " Scribes 
 and Pharisees of Jerusalem had rejected the counsel of 
 God against themselves, being not baptized of him" ; but 
 it was otherwise with the honest, earnest populations of 
 the Jordan valley. Among these people the Baptist's 
 preaching had made a deep impression ; and particularly 
 they had noted what he said about " One Who, coming 
 after him, was preferred before him." The consequence 
 was that when Jesus retired from the violent contro- 
 versies of Jerusalem into this peaceful district, He found 
 something more than welcome memories of the .past and 
 a hospitable reception. The seed which John had sown 
 had not perished in a soil like that : it had struck root, 
 and had grown ; it had been watered no doubt by the oft- 
 repeated story of the Baptist's wrongs, culminating in a 
 cruel death — a story repeated and pondered on by affec- 
 tionate hearts. Nothing fosters truth like the sufferings 
 of its representatives. And so the seed had grown, first 
 the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear ; and 
 the fields were white already to harvest, when the Divine 
 Eeaper came on His way. His appearance finished a 
 spiritual work which had been begun long before. " Many 
 resorted unto Him and said, John did no miracle : but 
 all things that John said concerning this Man are true. 
 And many believed on Him there." 
 
 Now the language of these Jordan converts appears to 
 suggest matter for fruitful consideration on an occasion 
 like this, when we are about to witness the bestowal of 
 a Divine Commission upon men who are undertaking 
 spiritual work in the Church of God. 
 
 St. John's disciples state two things about the man to 
 whom they owed their conversion to Jesus Christ : he did 
 no miracle, yet all that he spake of Christ was true. 
 Let us consider these points in order. 
 
Faith without Miracles. 249 
 
 I. 
 
 That the Baptist should have performed no miracle, 
 that he should have given no outward sign that he had 
 come from God, must strike any who reflect upon the fact 
 as remarkable. He was the heir of ages of miracle ; and 
 he spoke to a people which knew its own history, and 
 might well have looked for miracles at hands like his. 
 Spiritually speaking, he was in direct succession from 
 Daniel, from Elisha, from Elijah most of all. Himself a 
 prophet, he was himself also the subject of prophecy ; the 
 last prophet of the Hebrew Canon had distinctly an- 
 nounced him j 1 and at his birth a heavenly messenger had 
 predicted that he would live and work in the spirit and 
 power of Elijah. 2 What did this reference to the prophet 
 of Carmel mean, if its subject was to have no share in the 
 supernatural powers which awed the apostate court of 
 Israel ? In one respect, which our Lord glances at, the 
 Baptist stood on a higher eminence than his great pre- 
 decessor. " The prophets and the law prophesied until 
 John." 3 He was closing the system in and for which 
 Elijah had laboured ; a system which had been inaugurated 
 and maintained by miracle, and which it was natural to 
 suppose would not be closed without some sign of corre- 
 sponding meaning. Yet " John did no miracle." 
 
 Nor is the fact less remarkable if we consider the other 
 side of the work which the Baptist had in hand. He stood 
 on the frontier-line between two dispensations. He looked 
 forward as well as backward ; he told men to repent 
 because a new spiritual organisation, which prophecy had 
 glanced at, which Jewish Rabbis had guessed at, which 
 was intimately bound up with the very heart and sub- 
 stance of the national hope, was now at hand. He 
 
 1 Mai. iii. i ; iv. 5, 6. 2 St. Luke i. 17. 3 St. Matt. xi. 13. 
 
250 Faith without Miracles. 
 
 announced what he called the " Kingdom of the Heavens " ; 
 and we, as we look back upon that which he announced, 
 know that the kingdom which dates from the daj T of Pente- 
 cost was itself cradled in miracle. Its Author worked 
 miracles ; His Birth, His Death, His reappearance among 
 men, His final departure from the scene of sense, 
 were all accompanied by miracle ; His Apostles, in His 
 Name, worked miracles just as He did; and it might 
 have been supposed that the forerunner of a system like 
 this would have worked them too. The Jordan people 
 felt the contrast beiween the works of Jesus and 
 that of their first teacher when they said, " John did no 
 miracle." 
 
 Nor can it be said that the time at which John lived 
 was not of a character to make miracle probable. All the 
 analogies of Israel's history pointed the other way. 
 Miracles occur mainly in sacred history when a new truth 
 has to be proclaimed for the first time ; or when an 
 apostate or immoral generation has to be recalled to the 
 truth and holiness which it is in danger of forgetting ; or 
 when a revelation is wellnigh discredited and trodden out 
 of men's daily thoughts by the stress and intolerance of 
 heathen persecution. Egypt, Samaria, Babylon, are, so 
 to speak, the natural scenes of Biblical miracle ; Moses, 
 Elijah, Daniel, the appropriate organs of miraculous power. 
 Yet in the Baptist these several conditions seem to meet 
 concurrently. The Baptist had to prepare the way for a 
 new revelation. He had to do this by recalling men's 
 minds in a corrupt and careless age to the first principles 
 of the Jewish theocracy ; his baptism, unlike that of Jesus 
 Christ, was an acted sermon — it was an outward pledge of 
 renewed fidelity to the moral truth which had come down 
 from Moses and the prophets. Surely under these cir- 
 cumstances, if we are to go by historical analogies, we 
 might have expected a miracle-worker. If at any pre- 
 
Faith without Miracles. 2 5 1 
 
 vious time miracles had recommended or had upheld 
 God's truth in the minds of men, we should have looked 
 for them at the hands of the austere prophet of the 
 wilderness who immediately preceded our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. If the suggestions of the old history of Israel 
 were to go for anything, the days of John the Baptist 
 should have been — so we might think — a miracle-working 
 epoch. 
 
 2. Yet in spite of this, "John did no miracle"; that is 
 the first fact on which the Jordan converts lay stress. On 
 the other hand — this is the second fact — he produced 
 conviction. "All things that John spake of this Man 
 were true." St. John had made heavy demands upon the 
 faith of these converts. He had said that Jesus was 
 altogether greater than himself, so much greater that he, 
 John, was not worthy to unloose and hold His sandals 
 when He entered a house or the temple — the duty of the 
 lowest slaves ! 1 He had said that Jesus held in His hand 
 the winno wing-fan of judgment, with which He was on 
 the point of thoroughly purging the floor or territory of 
 Palestine, separating the just and holy souls who would 
 acknowledge His mission from the mass of corrupt and 
 hypocritical chaff around. 2 He had said that Jesus would 
 baptize, not merely, as he himself did, in water, which was 
 to symbolise repentance, but also in the Holy Ghost, and in 
 the fire, whether of God's Love or of His Justice. 3 He had, 
 as reported by the fourth Evangelist, gone far beyond this. 
 Jesus was the Lamb of God — not merely the perfectly 
 innocent Sufferer, but the predestined Victim Whose death 
 was to atone effectually for human sin. 4 Nay more, Jesus, 
 although coming after St. John in the order of time, was 
 before him, not merely in the order of eminence, but in 
 that of real existence. " He was before me." 5 Clothed as 
 
 St. Matt. iii. n. 2 Ibid. 12. * Ibid. 11. * St. Jolin i. 29. 
 
 6 St. John i. 30. 
 
252 Faith without Miracles. 
 
 He was in flesh and blood, and younger in years than His 
 forerunner, Jesus was yet indefinitely more ancient ; His 
 true existence reached back into an Eternity when as yet 
 the Baptist was not. 
 
 These were tremendous assertions, yet the people of the 
 Upper Jordan could say in after years, " All things that 
 John spake of this Man are true." They looked hard at 
 Jesus ; they listened to Him ; they watched Him ; they 
 felt that there was something about Him which altogether 
 transcended their ordinary experience. John's language 
 might well have seemed paradoxical: yet — face to face 
 with the fact — they felt that it was sober, prosaic truth. 
 They were plainly in presence of a superhuman Being 
 of unspeakable holiness and of fathomless love, Whose 
 Person, "Whose self-sacrifice, Whose judgment of men, 
 Whose baptism, was, or might well be, all that John 
 predicted. " All things that John spake of this Man are 
 true." 
 
 Yes ! mark it well : John had been a full year at the 
 least in his martyr grave, and the world had gone on its 
 course, talking and thinking of topics of the day, and 
 forgetting the victim of royal levity and female passion. 
 And wellnigh three years had passed since John had 
 been there ; he was " out of sight " — in his prison first, and 
 then in his grave, in the fortress away to the south ; but 
 he was not " out of mind." He lived, if not in bodily 
 presence, yet by his words, and in the memory of those 
 who had heard him. All those sayings of his, now that 
 he was gone, lived in human hearts deep down beneath 
 the daily speech and works of men ; and they would 
 have been forgotten in time if none had appeared to 
 verify and claim them, or if, when He did appear, they 
 had been felt to be distorted, or beside the mark, or 
 exaggerated. As it was, when Jesus presented Himself, 
 there was a common upheaving of convictions and hearts. 
 
Faith withotit Miracles. 253 
 
 " This," men said, " this is the Man, this the Character, 
 of Whom our loved and murdered master spoke to us 
 of old." " All things that John spake to us of this Man 
 are true." 
 
 3. How are we to account for the conviction thus pro- 
 duced in the minds of those people of the Jordan valley 
 by the Baptist's ministry, when he dispensed altogether 
 with the instrumentality of miracle ? 
 
 Certainly we are not to account for it by saying that 
 miracles are practically useless for the purpose of 
 producing religious conviction. Holy Scripture and the 
 common or general sense of human thought both forbid us 
 to say that. Scripture says expressly that miracles are a 
 great agent in producing faith in the mission of the 
 worker. Jesus Christ, says St. Peter, was " a Man 
 approved of God by miracles, and wonders, and signs, 
 which God did by Him in the midst of the Jewish 
 people." 1 The multitude followed Him, says the last 
 Evangelist, " because they saw His miracles, which He did 
 on them that were diseased. " 2 Men argued, as they 
 looked on, with the blind man, " How can a man that is 
 a sinner do such miracles?" 3 or, more decisively, with 
 Nicodemus, " No man can do these miracles that Thou 
 doest, except God be with him." 4 And, therefore, when 
 Jesus did the beginning of His miracles in Cana of Galilee, 
 and manifested forth His glory, His disciples believed on 
 Him ; 5 and later on, " many believed in His Name, 
 when they saw the miracles that He did." 6 And the 
 Jewish authorities felt that Christ's miracles were on 
 this account a formidable fact. " What do we ? " they 
 said, " for this Man worketh many miracles." 7 And when 
 He had passed into His glory, and His Apostles undertook 
 
 1 Acts ii. 22. 2 St. John vi. 2. ' Ibid. ix. 16, 30-34. 
 
 4 St. John iii, 2. 5 Ibid. ii. 11. « Ibid. ii. 23. 
 
 7 St. John xi. 47. 
 
254 Faith without Miracles. 
 
 to preach Him to the world, " God also bare them witness, 
 both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and 
 with gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to His own will " j 1 
 and these supernatural agencies, as we know, did as a 
 matter of fact largely recommend to a reluctant world 
 the faith which the Apostles preached. 
 
 The modern disposition to depreciate the evidential 
 force of miracles is mainly due to two causes. It repre- 
 sents a reaction of religious thought from the system of 
 Paley, who — without disrespect to a great and honoured 
 name — may be thought to have made the case of Christi- 
 anity depend too exclusively upon the Apostolic conviction 
 of the reality of the greatest Christian miracle ; through 
 not having taken collateral lines of evidence sufficiently 
 into account. But it is also due to a profound, although 
 not always avowed, disbelief in the reality of any miracles 
 at all — a disbelief which is due to an assumption that the 
 generally unvarying order of nature must, in virtue of 
 some occult necessity, be always invariable. These reasons 
 for depreciating miracle belong to the history of modern 
 thought ; and to import them into the interpretation of 
 Scripture is to make an historical as well as another and 
 graver mistake. But at the same time, nothing is more 
 clearly stated in Scripture than that the effect of miracle 
 in producing belief is not of a mechanical and resistless 
 character. Miracle is God speaking emphatically from 
 behind the veil of nature to a particular state of mind or 
 conscience ; and if the requisite state of mind or conscience 
 does not exist, the miracle is fruitless ; in order to succeed 
 it requires a certain inward susceptibility on the part of 
 the eye-witness, such as faithfulness to natural light would 
 supply. No mere external force or fact can subdue the 
 human will ; if the will is determined against any spiritual 
 impression, no material fact, however extraordinary, 
 
Faith without Miracles. 255 
 
 wrought before the eye of sense, can compel internal 
 sympathy and assent. If Moses and the Prophets do not 
 persuade to repentance, men will not be persuaded though 
 one rose from the dead. 1 Men will acknowledge the out- 
 ward fact ; but they will seek to diminish its importance, 
 or they will refer it to some evil agency, to Beelzebub, in 
 order to escape an unwelcome admission. Therefore our 
 Lord distinguishes between merely eating of the loaves, 
 and recognising the inner meaning of the miracle ; and 
 although He insists that to have seen and rejected His 
 miracles entails " sin " upon the Jewish people, He speaks 
 in the highest terms of the faith of the Pagan centurion, 
 which did not wait for miracles to call it forth. And here 
 indeed we may reverently trace one of the main objects 
 with which the last Gospel was written. When, at the 
 end of the first century of the Christian era, the first three 
 Gospels had been for some thirty years in circulation, the 
 question would naturally have occurred to their readers, 
 Why it was that the people who had seen so many miracles 
 of our Lord could have rejected Him ? The fourth Gospel 
 recognises the fact, and accounts for it. " Though Jesus 
 had done so many miracles among them," says St. John, 
 " yet they believed not on Him : that the saying of Esaias 
 might be fulfilled, which he spake : Lord, who hath 
 believed our report ? and to whom hath the arm of the 
 Lord been revealed ? Therefore they could not believe, 
 because that Esaias said again, He hath blinded their 
 eyes, and hardened their heart ; that they should not see 
 with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be 
 converted, and I should heal them. These things said 
 Esaias, when he saw His glory, and spake of Him." 2 
 Prophecy pointed not merely to the glory and force of 
 the miracle-working Christ, but to the state of mind of 
 the generation which would reject Him ; and St. John, 
 
 1 St. Luke xvi. 31. - St. John xii. 37-41. 
 
256 Faith without Miracles. 
 
 by selecting certain representative miracles and attendant 
 discourses of our Lord, and manifesting thus how close was 
 the connexion between His teaching and His miracles, 
 shows how the Jews, instead of believing His teaching on 
 account of His miracles, rejected His miracles because 
 they shrank from His teaching. We cannot be surprised 
 then that the fourth Evangelist carefully recorded the 
 triumphs of a ministry like that of the Baptist, which 
 had been unattended by miracle, while yet it had 
 achieved so much for faith. The case of the Baptist 
 showed that, if miracles could not compel faith, faith 
 might exist apart from miracles ; and in this way it has 
 also a permanent interest for the Christian ages, and for 
 ourselves, the present or expectant members of the Chris- 
 tian ministry. 
 
 My brethren, I am far from saying that no miracles 
 have occurred in the Christian Church since the Apostles' 
 days, or that they may not occur in our own. Looking to 
 the unaltered relations between God and His works, we 
 must feel that what has been, may be. Looking to the 
 unlimited character of the Gospel promises, we cannot 
 wisely say that their complete fulfilment was meant to be 
 confined to the age of the Apostles, or to the first three 
 centuries, or to any one period of the history of the 
 Church. But the possibility, or even the probability, of 
 miracle is one thing ; the proof that a reputed miracle 
 has occurred is another. There are miracles in the Primi- 
 tive Church so much in keeping with Apostolic precedent, 
 and so well attested, that it is difficult to see how they 
 can be set aside except by denying the possibility of their 
 occurrence. On the other hand, a miracle like that of 
 La Salette, and many of which it is a sample, is discredited 
 by its typical character, and still more by the insufficiency 
 of the producible proof that it ever occurred. Miracles at 
 any rate have been dispensed with, as a rule, in the 
 
Faith without Miracles. 257 
 
 Church of Christ, for reasons which we may reverently 
 conjecture ; the great miracles remain to us in the Gospel 
 and the Apostolic records : and if it should be said, with 
 or without truth, of the modern Church, " She does no 
 miracles," there is no reason whatever why it should not 
 be added by believing hearts, " All things that she has 
 said of her Lord and King may be shown to be experi- 
 mentally true." 
 
 II. 
 
 These considerations suggest encouragement and instruc- 
 tion for all of us, but especially for those who are about 
 to be ordained to-day. 
 
 1. And first, encouragement. What a good man needs 
 chiefly, when he is first setting his hands to the work of 
 Jesus Christ in His Church, is encouragement. There 
 may be, here and there, a self-confidence, a shallowness, a 
 levity of temper which treats Ordination as it might treat 
 a call to the bar, — as a piece of inevitable ceremonial in 
 a professional career. To most men who have any serious- 
 ness of purpose or any approach to a real perception of 
 what is at stake, the case must be far otherwise. A man 
 who is on the eve of his ordination, if he is worth any- 
 thing, feels, as he never felt before, the awfulness, the 
 greatness, the holiness, the love, of the Being Whom he 
 is freely undertaking to represent. He feels as it was 
 impossible to feel it in the more ordinary levels of life, 
 the intricacy, the mystery, the manysidedness of human 
 nature — that human nature to which, for his whole life, 
 he is going to address himself in his Master's Name. 
 Above all, he feels, as never before, his own personal 
 weakness — his insufficiency for these things, as well as the 
 many sins and shortcomings of his past life : like the 
 prophet, he feels himself a child ; x or as a man of unclean 
 
 1 Jer. i. 6. 
 K 
 
258 Faith without Miracles. 
 
 lips, whose eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts ; 1 
 or like the simple and sincere Christians of antiquity, 
 when they were called to high office in the Church, he 
 would fain hide himself rather than undertake "onus 
 rcformidandum angelis " — a burden from which the 
 angels might wisely hold back. 
 
 " Ah ! " many a man has said to himself in these solemn 
 hours, " the case would be different if we were really on a 
 par with those Apostles in whose steps we tread. We 
 might do Apostolic work if we could really wield Apo- 
 stolic weapons. But we are face to face with a world 
 which looks with cynical calm, or with declared hostility, 
 upon our work and message ; and yet we do not, upon 
 occasion, heal the cripple, or smite the sorcerer with 
 blindness, or shake off the deadly serpent into the fire, or 
 pass, through prison bars under the guidance of angels, or 
 expel the spirit of evil, or raise the dead. These things 
 may happen ; but, as far as experience goes, they do 
 not happen ; and we find ourselves, like the Apostles, in 
 charge of a supernatural Creed, but without the super- 
 natural aids which they could command." 
 
 Many a man has said this to himself, but surely he 
 might find comfort in the Baptist. The Baptist was not 
 a minister of the kingdom of heaven as we: he only 
 announced it. He had no such chartered means of com- 
 munion with the inmost Heart and Life of God such as 
 we Christians enjoy through the mediation of the Only 
 Begotten Son. He was more than a prophet ! true, and 
 yet the least in the kingdom of heaven was to be greater 
 than he. Our Ordination at this hour confers a gift which 
 in its fulness was certainly denied to him. Yet though 
 the herald of an unrealised future, intrusted with no 
 miraculous certificates of his mission, he made an impres- 
 sion upon the souls of men that was profound, ineffaceable. 
 
 1 Isa. vi. 5. 
 
Faith withotit Miracles. 
 
 259 
 
 Why should not we ? He did not despair because at his 
 word the desert did not again witness the miracles of the 
 age of Moses or Elijah : why should we ? 
 
 But many a man at his Ordination would state his 
 grounds of discouragement in other words. " There are, 
 if we may adapt the word, miracles within the sphere of 
 nature and order ; miracles of spiritual insight, miracles 
 of persuasive eloquence, miracles of practical pastoral 
 ability, miracles of biblical or theological acquirements. 
 These, at any rate, are given in different measures to some 
 in all ages of the Church ; and yet we may feel that, for 
 lack of aptitude or of opportunity, they each and all are 
 denied to us. There might be some hope, if one such 
 power were conspicuously ours ; as it is, must we not feel 
 that there is little or nothing that we can hope to achieve 
 in the great kingdom of souls ? " 
 
 No, my brethren, it is not so. These gifts of God, 
 whether in nature or in grace, have their value ; and we 
 are all indebted to Him when here or there He bestows 
 them on any one of His servants. We all of us, for 
 instance, have gained by such gifts as those of the late 
 Bishop Wilberforce ; yet it would be an irreligious as well 
 as a foolish idealism which should practically say, " I 
 cannot hope to do any good, because I am conscious of 
 not possessing this or that accomplishment which was so 
 conspicuous in that remarkable man." Depend upon it, 
 brethren, the real work that is done in the Church of 
 God does not in the main depend upon splendid gifts of 
 this kind, any more than it depends upon the power to 
 work literal miracles. As a rule it is the outcome of 
 certain spiritual forces and moral laws which may be 
 appealed to by every one of us ; the real Worker is the 
 same, through the weakest and lowliest, as well as through 
 the strongest and greatest, of His servants : and while it 
 is well to " covet earnestly the best gifts," there is no 
 
260 Faith without Miracles. 
 
 reason for losing heart if we are denied them. We rnay 
 work no miracles that will take the imagination of the 
 world by storm, yet we may succeed in doing that which 
 is of more importance, bringing men to see that the 
 Church's teaching about Christ is true. 
 
 2. And this brings me to the instruction which is sug- 
 gested by the language of these Persean converts. What 
 was it in the Baptist's case which secured the highest 
 spiritual success, in the absence of what was supposed to 
 be the ordinary instrumentality for commanding it ? 
 
 There was, of course, first of all, the native power of 
 truth, which cannot be wholly ignored, — which is honoured 
 indeed by the ferocity and outcry of prejudice and 
 passion ; which may be resisted successfully by an evil 
 will, but which always secures a certain measure of suc- 
 cess. There was, secondly, the voice of an inward Teacher, 
 not yet baptizing His people with Pentecostal Fire, but, 
 as in all ages, sanctioning the ministry of His representa- 
 tives and organs by seconding in the secret chambers of 
 the soul their appeal from without. And we can fall back 
 on this assistance with peculiar confidence, since it is the 
 Christian Church to which this great gift is specially 
 promised. " I will put My laws into their minds, and write 
 them upon their hearts " : 1 the Holy Ghost teaches, not 
 in words of human wisdom, but by an inward persuasion, 
 in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. 
 
 But the secret of the Baptist's ministerial power was 
 still more peculiar to himself. Thousands of Christians 
 have administered a larger and therefore more powerful 
 truth, under the chartered promise of a richer measure of 
 the Holy Spirit, but with far inferior results. 
 
 a. That which distinguishes St. Johu is, first, his clear, 
 well-defined conception of the message he has to give. 
 Eepentance first, then the coming kingdom of the heavens, 
 
 1 Heb. viii. io. 
 
Faith without Miracles. 261 
 
 then, and above all, the Person and Work of the com- 
 ing King. Whether he is addressing scribes or peasants 
 his message is the same. He is cross-questioned by a 
 delegacy which is sent by the Sanhedrim at Jerusalem, 
 and which would have placed a teacher who did not know 
 what he meant in a serious difficulty. He was consulted 
 by publicans, by soldiers, by people generally ; his answers 
 were clear and consistent with his whole representation of 
 life and duty. It was consideration for his followers, not 
 vacillation of his own, which dictated the message which 
 he sent from his prison at Machterus, " Art Thou He that 
 should come?" As reported in the fourth Gospel, he says 
 more about the great Object of his teaching than in the 
 first three ; but there is no contradiction — only progress ; 
 the Divine Object before his mind is one and the same. 
 
 There have been ages when it would have been unneces- 
 sary to insist on the value of a clear mental conception 
 of what we have to teach. But in our days the distrac- 
 tions of controversy and the sceptical feeling of the time 
 combine to ascribe a certain merit to an indefiniteness 
 which, if it could be justified on intellectual grounds, 
 which I do not care here to discuss, would be, in any case, 
 fatal to spiritual work in the souls of men. The human 
 soul needs, above everything, a clear representation of 
 truth and duty. Indefiniteness paralyses moral force : a 
 cloud is not a thing to rest upon in the hour of temptation, 
 or in the hour of bodily or mental agony. If we ourselves 
 know little or nothing clearly about the unseen world, we 
 had better, far better, hold our tongues ; if we do know 
 anything, we cannot be too explicit in stating what we 
 know. Above all things, like St. John, we of the Church 
 of Christ cannot point too clearly, too frequently, too 
 earnestly, to the Lamb of God. For us He is not the 
 beautiful theme of an old-world literature ; He is a 
 living Being, Who exerts upon the world and upon the 
 
262 
 
 Faith without Miracles. 
 
 soul at this hour a blessed and awful influence ; Who is, 
 or should be, more to us than any other is or can be. No 
 sermon should be unconsecrated by a clear reference to 
 His Person and His Work ; no enterprise should be under- 
 taken, save with an eye to His glory ; no form of minis- 
 terial or personal effort should be entertained as practic- 
 able apart from Him to Whom — as the Lamb that was 
 slain — the perfect homage of the intellect and the heart 
 of His servants is pre-eminently due in earth as in heaven. 
 His adorable Person, His unspeakable condescension, His 
 bitter and world-redeeming sufferings, His resurrection 
 glory, His endless intercession in heaven, His spiritual 
 and sacramental gifts chartered to His Church until the 
 end of time — let these truths have possession of our hearts 
 and intellects, and we shall not need the power of work- 
 ing physical miracles. 
 
 /3. St. John's strength lay, secondly, in his singleness 
 of purpose. His mental energies, his moral aims, were 
 not dissipated. That he might the better concentrate his 
 powers upon the single object of preparing the way of the 
 Lord, he lived apart from men, dwelling in solitude on 
 the meaning and exigencies of his awful message, even 
 when he was not announcing it. He would have been a 
 weaker man had he lent himself to any one of the political 
 or scholastic opinions which distracted Jerusalem: men 
 soon lose sight of a supreme object of interest amid the 
 claims of the social and intellectual world. i; A double- 
 minded man" — a man with two souls — says St. James, 
 "is unstable in all his ways": 1 and instability, of course, 
 means weakness. St. John was a man of one soul, a man 
 who could take the Psalmist's words as his own : " With 
 my whole heart have I sought Thee." 2 
 
 This absolute simplicity of purpose, brethren, is a form 
 of moral power which can dispense with miracle. It is 
 
 i St. James i. 8. 2 Ps. cxix. 10. 
 
Faith without Miracles. 
 
 263 
 
 unlike anything which the mass of men can recognise in 
 their own lives, and it impresses them accordingly. A 
 soul simply bent upon carrying out the Will of God, so 
 far as it is known, is like a man pushing his way towards 
 a definite object through a crowd of people who are 
 huddling together in aimless confusion or pointless gossip. 
 Depend upon it, St. John Baptist was a power — for this 
 if for no other reason : he had only one practical object 
 before him from first to last. 
 
 7. And thus, lastly, St. John's strength lay in his con- 
 sistency. He was a preacher of Repentance — of high and 
 awful views of God's justice, and of His impending pro- 
 vidences. He lived accordingly. As he was not a reed 
 shaken with the wind, so also he was not a man clothed 
 in soft raiment. And this had its effect in an age when 
 the Idumsean Herod was doing what he could to introduce 
 a Pagan standard of luxury into Jerusalem. The life of 
 the Baptist reflected visibly the reality and power of 
 another world ; the bleak desert, the locusts and wild 
 honey, the raiment of camel's hair and leathern girdle 
 about the loins, were in keeping with the claims of the 
 man who would dare, when true charity demanded it, to 
 speak the language of the sternest reproof and address the 
 most influential classes of his day as a "generation of 
 vipers." 
 
 My brethren, in all probability, we of the Christian 
 Church sometimes lose more than we think by an opposite 
 course. Society has its claims, no doubt ; but men look in 
 the lives of all preachers of the Crucified for something 
 that shall stand for the mark of the Nails. And if there 
 be nothing, if all be easy, pleasing, smooth, then men say 
 to themselves there is no real correspondence between our 
 lives and our message. We may get through our days 
 without trouble, but we shall not bring souls to faith in 
 Jesus Christ. If we could make up our minds, in what- 
 
264 Faith without Miracles. 
 
 ever degree, to do what we dislike, to undergo what we 
 dislike, to " endure hardness," in that exact degree shall 
 we secure moral power such as can sway the souls of men 
 — moral power which is worse than worthless, if we do 
 not use it to lead our brethren to the Feet of their and 
 our Eedeemer, but which, where it exists, can dispense 
 with miracle. 
 
 On his Ordination day a man stands as it were upon an 
 eminence from which he looks back over the path which 
 he has hitherto trodden, and forward over the plains, which 
 may or may not be long and weary, to that point on the 
 horizon which all must reach at last. On an Ordination 
 day a man does well to ask himself, What shall I desire to 
 have been, to have done, when I come to die ? All the 
 intervening circumstances of clerical life, between Ordina- 
 tion and death, are really insignificant ; marriage, promo- 
 tion, change of work and scene, loss or acquirement of 
 friends, the great joys, the great sorrows — they are every- 
 thing at the time, but, in the long-run, they cannot be 
 measured with that solemn incident which closes all. 
 And if a man who has served our Lord simply in the 
 Priesthood could choose an epitaph, not to be sculptured 
 by human art upon his gravestone, but to be traced by 
 God's finger on the hearts of his flock, what would he 
 desire but that which was uttered by the Jordan converts 
 over their martyred master : " John did no miracle : but 
 all things that John spake of this Man were true " ? What 
 will it profit in those awful, searching moments, when we 
 are passiug into the presence of the Judge, that we have 
 been literary or eloquent, or men of mark, or even men of 
 great spiritual sympathy and penetration — if all this has 
 not resulted in bringing our fellows to the foot of the 
 Cross, if it has done nothing for the glory and the empire of 
 our Lord and Saviour ? What will the absence of these 
 things matter, the absence of all gifts that impress the 
 
Faith without Miracles. 
 
 265 
 
 imagination, and win honour in the judgment of men, if 
 quietly, perseveringly, unflinchingly, we have kept our 
 eye on Him, — spoken, worked, suffered if need be, for 
 Him — so that when we are gone, His Love and Presence 
 are lodged for time and eternity in many a soul, and men 
 arise to say of us, " He was a commonplace person ; he 
 did no miracle ; but we shall bless him in the hour of 
 death and in the day of judgment, and in the everlasting- 
 world, for we have found already, by a blessed experience, 
 that all things which he spake, by his words and by his 
 life, of the Eedeemer of our souls, are certainly true"? 
 
SERMON X. 
 
 APOSTOLIC LABOURS AN EVIDENCE OF 
 CHRISTIAN TRUTH. 1 
 
 Romans x. 18. 
 
 But I say, Have they not lieard ? Yes verily, their sound went into all the 
 earth, and their words unto the ends of the world. 
 
 ,N the Feast of the Apostle who was first converted 
 
 \J to Christ, and who opens the list of festivals in the 
 Christian Year, it is obvious to attempt a consideration of 
 the work of the Apostolate under that aspect which is 
 suggested by St. Paul in the passage chosen from to-day's 
 Epistle. The whole context is in its style one of the most 
 obscure portions of the Epistle to the Romans. The 
 structure and connection are continually disjointed or 
 broken by the introduction of quotations from the Old 
 Testament : and in reading these quotations we are often 
 supposed to be in possession of secondary or even of 
 mystical senses, as well as of other underlying trains 
 of thought which connect them. These, when detected 
 and exhibited, enable us to trace the sequence of the 
 argument, and to explain in detail the sense of a passage, 
 which a too eager literalism might find hopelessly un- 
 intelligible. For the general scope of the Apostle is 
 sufficiently plain. The Jew is taught his responsibilities 
 in presence of the advancing Gospel from the pages of his 
 Hebrew Bible. He learns to contrast the religion of the 
 Synagogue with that of the Church, when viewed in its 
 spirit, method, and end. And this, not from the lips of 
 
 1 Preached in the Chapel of Lambeth Palace at the Consecration of the 
 Bishop of Nassau, on the Feast of St. Andrew, November 30. 1863. 
 266 
 
The Evidence of Apostolic Labours 267 
 
 Evangelists, but from the books of Leviticus and Deu- 
 teronomy. 1 Prophets like Isaiah and Joel successively 
 announce to him the reward of faith in Christ, and the 
 intimate and beneficent nearness of the Lord of all to all 
 His true worshippers, 2 and by consequence the abolition of 
 the Judaic nationalism, and the Catholicity of the religion 
 which was succeeding it. 3 And when the question is 
 asked how tfhere can be such true worship without faith 
 in its Object, or faith without a religious education, or 
 this again without a message from heaven, and an authori- 
 tative commission to proclaim it, 4 the reply is given in the 
 words of the Evangelical prophet, 5 for whose entranced 
 soul the intervening centuries have neither force nor 
 meaning, and the distant and contingent future is a 
 realised and present fact. Along with the messengers 
 who announce to captive Israel the speedy return of peace 
 and freedom, there mingle, in the prophet's vision, other 
 forms of Apostolic mien and greatness, and their footsteps 
 fall on all the mountains of the world, as they carry for- 
 ward the message which emancipates mankind, and which 
 proclaims an alliance between Earth and Heaven. Yet 
 more, this greatest of the prophets foresees the partial 
 acceptance of the Gospel as accurately as he foretells its 
 universal promulgation : 6 and prophecy closes around the 
 Jew, who refuses belief to the report of the Apostles, by 
 describing not merely the Truth which confronts him, but 
 his own attitude towards it. That there may be no mis- 
 take as to the weight and pressure of the Jew's responsi- 
 bility, the Apostle asks in the text somewhat abruptly, 
 whether the men of Israel 7 have not heard the Gospel- 
 
 1 Vev. s, Lev. xviii. 5 ; ver. 6, Deut. xxx. 12-14. 
 
 2 Ver. 11, Isa. xxviii. 16 ; ver. 13, Joel ii. 32. 
 
 3 Ver. 12. 4 Ver. 14, 15. 
 
 5 Isa. lii. 7. « Ver. 16, Isa. liii. 1. 
 
 1 So Meyer in loc. against Origen, Calvin, Fritzsche, etc., who refer the 
 truestion to the Heathen, in spite of the obvious connexion. 
 
268 Apostolic Labours an 
 
 message. And he answers not by pointing to the literal 
 fact, that already the messengers of Christ had penetrated 
 far and wide into either of the great branches of the Dis- 
 persion, while Jerusalem itself was the home and focus of 
 Christian Doctrine : he quotes a psalmist who is singing 
 of the heavenly bodies, and who tells how they speak for 
 the glorious Creator in terms which all can understand, 
 while from day to day and age to age, they hand on their 
 mighty tradition of the Truth, which all the languages of 
 man confess, and all the climes and regions of the earth 
 have heard. 
 
 And night unto night sheweth knowledge. 
 There is no speech nor language 
 Where their voice is not heard : 
 Their line is gone out through all the earth, 
 And their words to the end of the world." 1 
 
 In the translation " their line " the Authorised Version 
 keeps close to the etymology of the original Hebrew : but 
 unprejudiced scholars (at least on such a point we may 
 trust Ewald and Gesenius) will tell us, that the line was 
 probably the chord of a musical instrument ; 2 and that, 
 by a common form of speech, the chord might stand for 
 the sound which it produced. The sense of the LXX., 
 which St. Paul quotes, is supported by the version of 
 Symmachus, and by the Syriac translation : 3 and this 
 rendering of the passage is further illustrated by the 
 well-known representation of the morning-stars singing 
 
 1 Ps. xix. 1-4. 
 
 - Gesen. Lex. s.v. 1p. Compare too Thesaurus, p. 1201, where, however, 
 Professor Eoediger seems inclined to adopt Olshausen's "conjecture" of shp 
 for D^p, in which he had been anticipated by Bellanuine (de Vcrbo Dei, 
 lib. ii. c. 2), Ewald, Dichter A. B. ii. 28. 
 
 3 LXX. 6 006yyos. Symm. 6 ?x°s- S JT- Pesch. v O(Tll^LD " annun- 
 
 ciatio eorum." Vulg. and St. Jer. sonus eorum. 
 
 "The heav. 
 And the 
 Day untc 
 
 the glory of God, 
 ■iheweth his handiwork. 
 :th speech, 
 
Evidence of Christian Truth. 269 
 
 together, in the book of Job. 1 We might be tempted to 
 think of a literal music of the spheres, — a conception 
 familiar to the ancient world, and not unknown among 
 Christian writers : 2 but the general features, and par- 
 ticularly the gravity of inspired Scripture, would lead us 
 (with St. Augustine 3 ) to recognise a satisfactory account 
 of the metaphor in the order and harmony and proportion 
 which rule the movements of the heavenly bodies, and 
 from which the truths of his Creator's Being, as they flash 
 upon the outward eye, pierce the inner ear of the soul of 
 man. The Apostle in this very Epistle has shown how 
 the Eevelation of God in nature is only lost to man 
 through his moral corruption. 4 And the Psalm throughout 
 supposes a correspondence between God's original unveil- 
 ing of Himself in Creation, and His second revelation 
 of Himself in the Mosaic Law. 5 Let this, the internal- 
 thought of the Psalm, have been grasped, and it will be 
 admitted that St. Paul cannot be accused of an arbitrary 
 accommodation of language when he extends an analogy, 
 recognised by the Psalm itself, as existing between the 
 lessons of God's work in nature and the teaching of His 
 Voice to Moses, to the wider comparison of the teaching 
 of the heavens that shine on all climes and races of men, 
 with the world-wide mission of the Church. He is indeed 
 speaking of nothing less than the whole world, 0 yet there 
 
 1 Job xx.wiii. 7, where, however, the parallelism D , ilif'X" , 33 shows that 
 the Holy Angels are intended, although described under a metaphor which 
 illustrates the text. 
 
 - See the authorities in Lorinus in Psahn. vol. i. p. 322. 
 
 3 Quoted by Lorinus 11b. supra. Compare too cle Civ. Dei, xi. 18, where he 
 expands the idea of Ecclus. xxiii. 15 in this sense. 
 
 4 Rom. i. 20-23. 
 
 5 Comp. Kuhn, Dorjmatik Einl. vol. i. p. 6, for a clear statement of the 
 sense in which the natural world is a Revelation. 
 
 u It would be absurd to pretend that in adopting the LXX. transl. to. ire para 
 rrjs otKov^iiris, St. Paul was thinking of the Roman Empire. The words els 
 naaav tt\v yrjv would correct this. St. Ambrose christianises the idea of the 
 word oiKoi'ixtvr) (in Ps. xlviii. ver. 3, ii. 946). 
 
270 Apostolic Labours an 
 
 is no real ground for maintaining that he is speaking hyper- 
 bolically ; as though he were flourishing a quotation without 
 having ascertained its range of meaning — in other words, 
 without a due sense of the solemn responsibilities of lan- 
 guage. We must at least endeavour to place ourselves in 
 the position of the speaker, before we decide upon the 
 force which must be attributed to words of doubtful 
 import. Thus when Obadiah speaks of all the nations 
 and kingdoms of the earth into which Ahab had sent 
 to seek Elijah, he uses the language of an uneducated 
 Oriental, with the narrowest political horizon. 1 But when 
 our Divine Lord bids His Apostles go teach all. nations, 
 He speaks as One Who from all eternity had shared the 
 Intellectual no less than the other Glories of the Ever- 
 lasting Father. 2 So when St. Paul tells the Eomans 3 
 that their faith was spoken of throughout the whole 
 world, he means throughout the world of Apostolic 
 Christendom : when, later, he assures the Colossians that 
 the Gospel which had come to them " is in all the world," 4 
 his intrepid faith already sees the end in its beginning, 
 and like the prophets of the older Covenant he describes 
 a future whicli had yet to unfold itself, as if it were an 
 accomplished fact. So here, the true sense of the text 
 must be looked for in the parallel which it assumes 
 between the world-embracing light, which streams as a 
 speechless utterance of self-evident Truth from the orbs of 
 Heaven, and the Illumination of the Faith, radiating from 
 the Person of Jesus, and diffused by His Apostles and 
 their representatives through the centuries and countries 
 of the world. It is obvious that St. Paul's quotation is 
 more than sufficient for his immediate purpose. He 
 might have told us much that we yearn to know, about 
 
 1 1 Kings xviii. 10. 
 
 - St. John xvii. 5 ; x. 50 ; xiv. 9. Compare Col. ii. 3 and Epli. i. 8, 9. 
 :1 Rom. i. 8. 4 K6cr/Mp, not oiVoiyifrj, Col. i. 6. 
 
Evidence of Christian Trzith. 271 
 
 the labours of his brother Apostles : he might have 
 pointed to his own constant presence in the synagogues of 
 the Hellenic Dispersion. But while his question touches 
 merely the labours of the first age of Christendom and 
 the needs and opportunities of a single race, the answer 1 
 carries us up to an ideal or rather a prophetic vision — the 
 Jew and his responsibilities fade away into the back- 
 ground of thought — and before us there opens a panorama, 
 comprehending the whole Missionary action of the Church 
 from the labours of the first Apostle on the Day of Pente- 
 cost down to the last efforts of those servants whom our 
 Lord will find working and watching when He comes to 
 Judgment. The Apostle reads the history of the Church 
 in the light of his Master's words : " Go teach all 
 nations." 2 The intervening centuries count for nothing ; 
 just as when we gaze at the fixed star, we do not 
 ordinarily reflect upon that scintillation of the rays of 
 its light through almost measureless space which Science 
 yet reveals to us in all its wonder with minute precision. 3 
 And the Apostle sees all at a single glance : he ignores 
 the alternation of ebb and flow — the constant play of light 
 and shade — which meet us in the actual history of the 
 Church ; we forget, as we read his words, that struggle for 
 life, maintained for centuries, — maintained against over- 
 whelming forces, — maintained amid tears and agony and 
 blood ; we seem to be watching a process which has all 
 the beauty and ease of a natural movement ; we have 
 before us what is less the history of an accomplished and 
 hard-won triumph than it is the spectacle of a beneficent 
 provision or law of the universe, in which there is no 
 
 1 Some expositors seem to have inferred from the passage, that when St. 
 Paul wrote it, the Gospel was actually being preached in China and America ; 
 cf. Meyer in loc. 
 
 2 St. Matt, xxviii. 19; cf. Ps. lxxii. ri, Hag. ii. 7, St. Matt. xxiv. 14, 
 xxv. 32, Acts xvii. 26, Rom. i. 5, xvi. 26, Gal. iii. 8, Rev. vii. 9. 
 
 3 Humboldt, Cosmos, iii. p. 259 s??. ; cf. pp. 110, in. 
 
272 Apostolic Labotirs an 
 
 struggle, no effort, no jar, no resistance, and in which the 
 Heavenly Wisdom already reaches from one end to 
 another mightily, and smoothly and sweetly ordereth all 
 things. 1 " Their sound is gone into all lands, and their 
 words unto the ends of the world." 
 
 The continuous missionary and self-expanding action 
 of the Church is a truth which we generally fall back 
 upon or enforce for the practical purpose of supporting 
 Missions. But it has a distinct speculative value ; it is 
 in itself an evidence of the divinity of Christianity ; its 
 history, often intermittent and disappointing, is yet (taken 
 as a whole) a living and perpetual testimony to the pre- 
 sence in Jesus of a something which was higher than the 
 highest human foresight or human genius ; it is a feature 
 of Christianity which, if Christianity were not divine, 
 would be nothing less than inexplicable ; — it flows from 
 Words of Christ, which if Christ had been merely human, 
 would have been words of startling audacity or of unpre- 
 cedented folly. 
 
 And here are two points that demand our consideration. 
 
 I. 
 
 For our Lord's command and the prophecy of His 
 Apostle imply first of all that the Gospel would stand the 
 test of time. Of all forms of power, as of all forms of 
 thought that are merely human, time is the great enemy. 
 No sooner has a doctrine or a system taken its place in the 
 arena of human thought, than, like the ocean which im- 
 perceptibly fritters away the base of a mountain cliff, 
 time forthwith begins its relentless work of progressive 
 demolition. Take the case of any human doctrine which 
 has gained the ear of classes or of races of men, and which 
 accordingly has been formulated by genius and proclaimed 
 
 1 Wisd. viii. 1. 
 
Evidence of Christian Truth. 273 
 
 with enthusiasm. A doctrine, let us suppose, which not 
 merely does not rest upon revelation, but which is not 
 exclusively based upon those axioms of mathematics or 
 morals which themselves express truths of the Being and 
 Mind of God. And I say, that such a human speculation 
 will pursue a development of which the stages can be 
 traced with certainty : it will pass from the energy of its 
 youth to the self-reliant vigour and system of its man- 
 hood, and to the decrepitude and death which are beyond. 
 For as time passes, men slowly learn the lessons of experi- 
 ence and reflection; and the titles by which a doctrine 
 can establish permanent empire are very different from 
 those which originally recommend it. It must not merely 
 have created admiration at the first, it must bear the 
 friction of a continuous scrutiny; it must be able to 
 afford not merely the charm of an hour's entertainment, 
 but the duties of a life-long friendship. Again, time 
 brings with it what we term in our ignorance, chance ; it 
 brings combinations of circumstances, and of agencies to 
 bear, upon which no genius can calculate, and against 
 which no prudence can take its measures. Human 
 annals are rife with the history of dynasties and empires 
 which have survived the resistance of natural and mighty 
 foes, and have succumbed to indirect and accidental 
 dangers; and herein the thought of man resembles the 
 organisation of his social life, and philosophies like 
 empires have found their doom in influences upon which 
 their framers never lavished so much as a suspicion. 
 Once more, the lapse of time involves the liability to 
 internal decay : those who have reached power, betake 
 themselves to its enjoyment ; those who believe that they 
 are securely masters of the world of thought are not alive 
 to the decomposition which awaits or preys upon their 
 stagnant system. At one end of a dynasty you admire 
 the hero who founds it by his toils and his sufferings, at 
 
274 Apostolic Labours an 
 
 the other you turn away in disgust from the effeminacies 
 and luxuries and weaknesses which drain its strength and 
 its life. On the birthday of a philosophy a presiding 
 intellect is moulding thought into new forms, and im- 
 parting to it a new impetus ; in its decline, his feeble 
 representatives are defending positions which an intellec- 
 tual enemy has already turned, or are obstinately clinging 
 to phrases which have ceased to represent anything save 
 the dogged determination of their maintainers. For, 
 lastly, as the years pass over a doctrine or a system, they 
 inevitably subject it to the decisive test of opposition. 
 And this not necessarily because it has faults and. failings, 
 but because it exists, and by its existence invites hostile 
 criticism, since it drains away something, however little, 
 of the attention, and labour, and substance, which would 
 but for the fact of its existence be bestowed elsewhere. 
 Well lias it been said, that, when there is a competition 
 for the means of life, you need only live to provoke 
 hostility : and where a doctrinal system lives in earnest, 
 and demands sacrifice and submission elsewhere, it is 
 certain to be breasted by an opposition as fierce as that 
 which is provoked against political powers who threaten 
 the independence of even the most misgoverned among 
 nations, or the lives of the most guilty of men. To 
 attempt conquest in the intellectual or moral world, 
 cannot but expose the system which does so to a shock of 
 opposition, which, combining with such tendencies to dis- 
 solution from within as are incident to all that is strictly 
 human, must make its final overthrow a matter of time, 
 and even a matter of approximate calculation. 
 
 Need I say it, brethren, that He Who came from 
 heaven to redeem and save us knew what was before 
 Him ? He foresaw the coolness which would succeed to 
 a first fervour of welcome to His Truth ; He allowed for 
 the unfavourable conjunctions of circumstance, and for 
 
Evidence of Christian Truth. 275 
 
 the intimidation and the errors of those who might repre- 
 sent Him, and for the opposition which a Gospel, such as 
 His (making, as it did, no terms with any human feeling 
 or conviction that was inconsistent with the Eights of 
 God), could not but encounter in the passions of man. He 
 predicted a time when the love of many would wax cold, 
 when His disciples would be brought before kings and 
 rulers for His Name's sake, when false Christs and false 
 prophets would arise, deceiving, if possible, the very elect. 1 
 He accepted, He embraced, He set forth the idea of the 
 intense and fervid hatred which His Gospel must perforce 
 encounter in the world, so energetically, that He, the 
 Prince of Peace, described Himself as sending not peace 
 but a sword. 2 Yet foreseeing these elements of destruction 
 gathering around Him, He is calmly certain of the per- 
 petuity of His Doctrine. Heaven and earth, He says, 
 shall pass away, but My Words shall not pass away. s 
 Surely the event has not falsified the prediction. Since 
 the Incarnation, all else has changed ; new races, new 
 moulds of thought, new languages, new institutions, poli- 
 tical and social, supplant others which once seemed 
 destined to exist for ever, and which have passed away. 
 But, reigning amid the ruins of the past, reigning amid 
 the progress of the present towards the future, Jesus 
 Christ is here ; He reigns in the heart and intellect of 
 modern Europe ; He reigns here and there, if you will, 
 amid the suspicion, and the feebleness of His worshippers, 
 amid the upgrowth of forces which continually threaten 
 His supremacy, and in spite of the efforts of men who 
 succeed after eighteen centuries to the inheritance of 
 Pilate and to the task of Judas. And yet, " Thy Throne, 
 0 God, is for ever and ever ; the Sceptre of Thy Kingdom 
 is a right sceptre. Thine arrows are very sharp, and the 
 
 1 St. Matt. xxiv. 9. 11, 12, 24. 2 Ibid. x. 34. 
 
 3 St. Mark xiii. 31. 
 
276 Apostolic Labours an 
 
 people shall be subdued unto Thee, even in the midst 
 among the King's enemies." 1 
 
 You may contend that here and there His work is 
 marred or broken ; you may insist on the desolating spread 
 of the great heresies of the first ages, or on the loss of the 
 Churches of the East and of the Church of Cyprian and 
 of Augustine — trampled as these are beneath the feet of 
 the infidel. You may show from history that the great 
 Roman Communion, the largest fraction of existing Chris- 
 tendom, has subjected its polity to an unprimitive juris- 
 diction, and has surrounded its creed with an incrustation 
 of elements which were at least foreign to the belief of 
 the Early Church. You may follow the track of the 
 Eeformation, and mark how all the Churches which took 
 part in that movement, save only the Church of England 
 and a possible fraction of Scandinavian Christendom, for- 
 feited with the Episcopate the organic conditions of true 
 Sacramental life. And then you may turu to our own 
 England, and note our spiritual deadness during the last 
 century, or the heathenism of our great cities, or the 
 ravages of a feeble rationalism among a portion of our 
 educated classes, or the attitude of those more imposing, 
 logical, and fatal forms of destructive thought which rule 
 in some of the Schools of Germany, and which threaten 
 us with invasion, or the divisions, and heartburnings, and 
 scandals which paralyse what else were at this hour our 
 mighty strength, as a Church, for God. You may urge 
 all this and more ; and then ask if it be indeed true that 
 our ascended Saviour has redeemed His promise. Cer- 
 tainly, I reply, He has redeemed it, and with a surplusage 
 of honour; He has indeed rejoiced as a giant to run His 
 course ; He has trifled with foes and with dangers which 
 a cautious timidity, could such an attribute have reigned 
 in heaven, might have crushed or have avoided ; His 
 1 Ps. xlv. 6, 7. 
 
Evidence of Christian Truth. 277 
 
 Church, like His Body Crucified, is known by the Five 
 Wounds and the opened Side, and her scars, like His, 
 have been imprinted in the house of friends. 1 But now, 
 as of old, He is crucified in weakness, while He reigns in 
 power : 2 He is, by the very pressure and fierceness of 
 His foes, uniting friends who have long been sundered : 
 His vast Providences enlist the services even of men who 
 know but fragments of His Truth : He has more loyal 
 hearts who trust and worship Him than in any previous 
 age : He has more tokens of present strength and of 
 future victory than in the days when the kings of Europe 
 were more ostentatiously the nursing-fathers of His 
 Church, and its peoples more ready to own themselves 
 her children. 
 
 For observe, that He does not merely hold His ground : 
 He is extending His empire. He has already with but 
 scanty exceptions and by various agencies made the New 
 World his own : He is pushing His advances along the 
 steppes of Northern Tartary and through the deserts of 
 Central Africa. He is again laying siege to those citadels 
 of superstitious yet of philosophical idolatry — the Oriental 
 religions — which have so long resisted Him : He is, as we 
 are this day reminded, bidding the islands of the sea wait 
 on His advancing Footsteps. This would be indeed 
 passing strange, if it could be supposed that His Gospel 
 was really threatened with dissolution, whenever some 
 fitful gust of negative criticism troubles the upper atmo- 
 sphere of contemporary thought. They say that the 
 legions of the falling Empire had no heart to face the 
 barbarians on the frontier, while a principle of national 
 and political ruin was throned and crowned at Borne. 
 And the feet of the Church's missionaries might well 
 falter, and their words would surely die away on their 
 stammering lips, if they should admit the suspicion that 
 
 1 Zech. xiii. 6. 2 2 Cor. xiii. 4. 
 
278 Apostolic Labours an 
 
 the Faith they were bearing to the heathen could be 
 proved to be less than absolutely certain in itself, or 
 other than an imperious necessity for man. Only they 
 who believe can speak prevailingly for God: Only He 
 Who was, and Who knew Himself to be, the absolute and 
 the highest Truth, could by proclaiming it assure Himself 
 of the possession of an unfailing agency, streaming through 
 the ages and the countries of the world, with the life- 
 giving and penetrating ubiquity of the rays which speak 
 of God as they fall on us men by day and by night from 
 the orbs of heaven. 
 
 n 
 
 And thus we are led to observe a second feature of the 
 predicted missionary energy of the Church, which, no less 
 than that already mentioned, would seem to possess an 
 evidential value. 
 
 For our Lord did not merely ensure His Eeligion 
 against the triumph of those causes which, in the case 
 of human institutions or opinions, must ultimately pro- 
 duce decay and dissolution. The stone which you throw 
 loses force and swiftness as it obeys the impulse you gave 
 to it: it buries itself, we will suppose, beneath the 
 waters of a still lake, and again the ripple which radiates 
 from the point of disturbance becomes, moment by 
 moment, less clear to the eye, as on this side and on 
 that its widening circles approach the shore. So it is 
 with human religions ; they spend themselves while 
 they gain the prestige of antiquity : and our Lord,- as 
 we have seen, reversed this law of exhaustion in the 
 case of His Gospel. But He did more: He presumed 
 upon, He appealed to, because He knew Himself able to 
 create and to command, an ever-youthful and active 
 enthusiasm, which in the last ages of the Faith, no less 
 than in the first, would carry forward His doctrine into 
 
Evidence of Christian Truth. 279 
 
 all the regions of the earth, and, at whatever risk, would 
 press it closely in its perfectness and its power on the con- 
 sciences of men. Look at the other great religions which 
 have ruled, or which still rule, the thought or the heart 
 of the human race. Some of them are of ancient growth ; 
 they are the religions of highly-gifted races : they are 
 dominant throughout some of the fairest regions of the 
 globe : nay more, in some cases they cumber lands which 
 were once beautiful with the Faith and Worship of the 
 Eedeemer. We Christians indeed study their sacred 
 books, their traditional polities, and their unlovely rites — 
 as for other and graver reasons, so because in these we 
 find interesting records of the early mind and fortunes of 
 great divisions of the human family. But we send to 
 these heathen our own Bible and our Missions, not by 
 way or promoting literary or social intercourse, but as 
 sending to them the message and the gift of Heaven. In 
 wellnigh all the great cities of the East are to be found 
 the representatives of Christ : in many of them the mis- 
 sionaries of our own branch of the Christian Church. But 
 who ever heard of a Buddhist Mission in London or in 
 Paris ? Where are there societies for translating the 
 Vedas, or the Zendavesta, or the Koran, into all the 
 languages of the world ? What effort that is felt beyond 
 the natural limits of race, or the forced limits of empire, 
 have the millions of India or of China made to propagate 
 the thoughtful or the foolish superstitions which they 
 hold for Truth ? Where have ancient priesthoods, like 
 the Egyptian, been missionary agencies ? Where have 
 philosophical speculations, like those of the Schools of 
 Greece, been more than the luxury and the pride of the 
 selfish few, — where and when have they shown any 
 capacity of becoming the inheritance of the heart and 
 thought of the struggling many ? Certainly Mohammed- 
 anism has attempted, and at this moment it attempts 
 
280 Apostolic Labours an 
 
 a world-wide proselytism : but Mohammed had studied the 
 first six centuries of the Kingdom of the Incarnation : 
 and his great genius is more manifest in nothing than in 
 the fact, that while he borrowed from the Gospel the idea 
 of a mission to mankind without distinction of race or 
 language, he differed from it in intrusting the propagation 
 of his eclectic imposture, not to the native power of his 
 boasted truth, but to the sharp edge of his scimitar, and 
 to the courage of that warrior race from which he sprung. 
 The first apostles of Islam were beyond doubt great 
 military commanders : its earliest mission was one of the 
 most ruthless wars which have desolated the East. And 
 if to-day this creed may seem to address itself to thought 
 and conscience, in regions where no other form of move- 
 ment is possible, it is more true to its traditional methods 
 of action when it organises a mutiny against Christian 
 rulers in India, or when in the Syrian villages and the 
 streets of Damascus it bathes its sword in Christian blood. 
 It would not be difficult to show by an exhaustive induc- 
 tion, that the idea of a Truth — so beautiful in its evident 
 symmetry as to compel the absolute homage of the intel- 
 lect and of the heart — so strong in this compidsion, that 
 alone and unarmed it can dare to pass forth on the lips of 
 an unlettered Apostolate, to demand submission from the 
 passions and the prejudices of man, — is strictly proper to 
 our Eedeemer's Gospel, and undiscoverable elsewhere. 
 
 Surely, brethren, it were not unreasonable to surmise, 
 that if the Infinite and Eternal God has spoken in very 
 deed to us His creatures, He can only so have spoken, as 
 at the first He can only have given us being, out of the 
 free and pure love which He bare towards us. And thus 
 along with the gift of truth would come the accompanying 
 gift of love ; and we should anticipate, what is in fact the 
 case, that He, our Incarnate Lord, Whom we worship 
 as the highest and absolute Truth, is also the most tender 
 
Evidence of Christian Truth. 
 
 281 
 
 and indeed boundless Charity. It is by combining in 
 Himself Truth and Love so perfectly, that Jesus, from 
 age to age, commands the most intelligent and the most 
 heroic devotion of which man has ever been capable. For 
 when by Faith and Love, and Sacramental Union, a man 
 has not merely stood face to face with Jesus, but has 
 drawn the strength of thought and desire and action from 
 His Invigorating Life, he intuitively perceives that there 
 is nothing beyond for which the heart or the under- 
 standing need further yearn, since in Jesus the under- 
 standing and the heart are satisfied. In such a man we 
 may note this striking and characteristic symptom, — 
 that the passion for novelty, so dominant elsewhere in 
 human life, has ceased, at least to be a ruling power. 
 Where Truth and the King of Truth are as yet un- 
 known, the love of novelty is not merely pardonable, 
 it is a virtue. It is a virtue, because it expresses the fact 
 — that man's real end is an Infinite Being, as his true 
 home is Eternity, and that he cannot so forget his 
 original destiny as to find permanent satisfaction in 
 anything that is finite and that belongs to time. But 
 those to whom our Living Lord is more than a phantom 
 or a phrase, can echo His Apostle's question from century 
 to century, " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the 
 words of Eternal Life." 1 Think not that true devotion 
 to Christ our Lord is a luxury of the Primitive Church 
 which can find no lasting home in the midst of our modern 
 civilisation. It may be true that mutilated creeds cannot 
 provoke, and that coward hearts cannot understand, such 
 devotion. But wherever the truth is taught in its in- 
 tegrity to hearts that are " honest and good," the same 
 phenomena of absolute self-devotion will be found to 
 repeat themselves which illustrated so gloriously the 
 first ages and children of the Faith. For Jesus Christ our 
 
 1 St. John vi. 68. 
 
282 Apostolic Labours an 
 
 Lord, in bidding His servants make disciples of all the 
 nations, knew that He had endued human nature with new 
 powers of thought and of action ; He knew that He had 
 raised the beggar from the dust to take a place among the 
 princes of the moral world, and that His command, so im- 
 possible to unregenerate man, would be obeyed within the 
 Church. He has, indeed, made men love Himself: He has 
 made Himself the Object of an intense, tender, passionate 
 devotion to millions who have never seen Him with the 
 eye of flesh : and beneath His Throne, Christians have 
 for eighteen centuries been crying with His Apostle, 
 " Who shall separate us from the love of Christ ? " 1 For 
 around Him and His work there mantles such a robe of 
 unfailing and ever-youthful beauty, that in His Divine 
 Person, His Human Form, His Words, His World-redeem- 
 ing Sacrifice, His ceaseless Intercession, His Gift of the 
 Blessed Spirit, His oneness with His people through the 
 Sacraments of His Church, the soul finds that which 
 answers to its highest imaginings no less than to its 
 deepest needs. It finds in Him, as in none else, its rest. 
 And this absolute repose of the soul in the highest Object 
 of truth and of love, does not (as Rationalism would 
 pretend) destroy its intellectual or moral activity ; it only 
 changes their direction. The forces which were but now 
 employed in the search for Truth are, when Truth is found, 
 enlisted in its service and devoted to illustrate and explain 
 and propagate it. Here is the raw material out of which our 
 Lord fashions and carves by His Providences the mission- 
 aries and the martyrs of His Church. And the strong 
 desire to proclaim Him which is inseparable from a true 
 knowledge and love of Jesus, gains a new strength and 
 motive in a contemplation of the nature and destiny of 
 the soul of man. One single soul, one centre of strictly 
 immaterial life, one abyss of being, which once existing 
 
 1 Rom. viii. 35. 
 
Evidence of Christian Truth. 283 
 
 never can die, one tenant (it may be) of the most decrepit 
 and unlovely form among the sons of men, yet in itself a 
 capacity for boundless joy or boundless agony, nay more, 
 a being freely moving towards, while absolutely destined 
 to, an eternity of such agony or such joy, — who can con- 
 template this living fact, which each of us carries about 
 within him, which to each is his inmost self, and which 
 each may measure, in wellnigh its whole significance, by 
 close and honest self-analysis, — who, I say, can contem- 
 plate it, and not gain a new power of living and of 
 working for that Most Merciful Lord Who has made the 
 contemplation something else than what but for Him it 
 had been — a fearful, a mysterious agony ? For He Who 
 said, "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the 
 whole world and lose his own soul ? " said also (blessed 
 be His Name !), " In Me ye shall have peace." 1 
 
 Now the history of the Church is so interesting beyond 
 any annals which merely touch the material, or social, or 
 political life of man, because it is an unfolding of the 
 forces thus placed at His own disposal by our Divine 
 Redeemer in their conflict with the errors and selfishness 
 of the race which He came to save. It is a long response 
 to that command which He first, He last, He alone has 
 dared to give, — to give without giving arms, and letters, 
 and the ordinary weapons of social or political sway — to 
 give with an accent of certainty that He was giving the 
 motto of human history, and that He would be obeyed — 
 " Go teach all nations." Certain of His Doctrine, and cer- 
 tain of His Empire over hearts ; certain of the love, the 
 courage, the patience, the heroism, which would from age 
 to age draw strength from His Passion, and push its 
 self-sacrificing devotion, if need be, even to martyrdom — 
 He bade His disciples " Go teach all nations." Foreseeing 
 that mankind, like a sick but wayward child, would 
 
 1 St. Matt. xvi. 26 ; St. John xvi. 33. 
 
284 Apostolic Labours an 
 
 refuse the draught of Truth, and would resent its being 
 proffered ; foreseeing that the intelligence and resolution 
 of the race would be arrayed against Him ; knowing well 
 that the statesmen would resent a doctrine which re- 
 spected Cassar but which Csesar had not authorised, and 
 that the men of genius would be indignant at a Flash of 
 Thought which owed nothing to their penetration and 
 which condemned it as a blindness, and that the people 
 would not brook a command to break with their time- 
 honoured superstitions, and with their consecrated sensu- 
 alities ; foreseeing accurately and in all its bearings each 
 step of that long and agonising struggle which began 
 when Stephen knelt to die beneath the walls of the Holy 
 City, and which, although it ceased for a while and in a 
 sense with the world-famed Edict of Milan, yet under 
 new conditions lasts and shall last to the end of time, 
 whenever there is sin and error on the one side, and love 
 and truth on the other— He bade His followers " Go teach 
 all nations." And if ever Christians have forgotten the 
 spirit of their Master's Word and the power of His 
 Doctrine, and have invoked the proselytism of the sceptre 
 or the worse proselytism of the sword, this has been 
 mainly in dark times, or in diseased and enfeebled 
 Churches. As a rule, in the primitive, in the mediaeval, 
 in the modern period, the Church has trusted herself to 
 the Words of Christ, and has really triumphed just so far 
 as she has done so. Among the many blessings of our 
 modern civilisation, and the indirect advantages which 
 God's goodness wins for us even from the hostile activity 
 of the intellectual and political influences at work around 
 us, we may reckon this ; — that they force us Christians of 
 the Church to look the terms of our Great Charter more 
 fully in the face, and to intrust the interests which we 
 prize most dearly more and more to those moral and 
 spiritual forces, by which throughout the ages of Christen- 
 
Evidence of Christian Truth. 285 
 
 dom the sound of Christian doctrine goes forth into all 
 lands most persuasively, and its words unto the ends of 
 the world. 
 
 Some thoughts such as these will have occurred to us, 
 who are privileged to be witnesses of this solemn scene 
 to-day. There are men who see in a Bishop's Consecra- 
 tion one of those graceful but meaningless proprieties, 
 whereby high office in the Church as in the State is 
 supposed to be recommended to the imagination and 
 respect of the multitude. There are others who indeed 
 see in it a religious act, but only an act of that charac- 
 ter which is inseparable from the self-dedication of any 
 human soul to the highest service of the Truth. Yet 
 surely there is more here than a proffer of service, more 
 even than a solemn acceptance and sanction of one who 
 passes to a place of government among Christian people. 
 For us, loyal children of the Church of England, such au 
 event, if the most solemn of its uttered words and trans- 
 acted forms are to be other than an unreality which yet 
 challenges the Eye and the approval of the Most Holy ; 
 for us a Bishop's Consecration is the active assertion of 
 an essential principle of organic Life in the Church of 
 Jesus ; it is an act, which at a period when the Canon 
 of the New Testament was yet unformed, and for 
 fifteen centuries continuously, was believed by Christen- 
 dom to be absolutely indispensable to the transmission of 
 Grace and Truth in their entirety, from the Redeemer's 
 Person to the souls of men. And therefore to-day does 
 not merely call up historical associations that tell of 
 God's past mercies towards His Church ; — such as are 
 provoked, my Lord Archbishop, almost inevitably in this 
 place, and by your Grace's presence, since they cluster in 
 a profusion, unrivalled elsewhere in England, around 
 your Throne of Canterbury. Nor may we pause too 
 curiously to speculate upon the providential destinies 
 
286 Apostolic Labours an 
 
 of a See, whose occupant on the one hand might seem to 
 have peculiar opportunities for carrying the Knowledge 
 and the Love of Jesus among the fleets and seamen 
 whether of the Tyre or of the Tarshish of the modern 
 world ; and who on the other may, from his geographical 
 position, be enabled as none else to bind closer the bonds 
 of belief and affection which already unite the English 
 Church to the Church of the nascent Confederacy. 
 Blessed privilege ! thus even remotely by encouragement 
 and counsel to aid in the overflow of that miserable 
 legacy becpueathed by English rule to England's ancient 
 colonies, and to free the African race from a bondage, 
 which beneath the very shadow of Christ's Emancipating 
 Cross, outrages the rights of our common manhood. But 
 it were presumptuous to dwell on these high yet pre- 
 carious anticipations ; and duties of another order claim 
 our earnest attention during the solemn moments which 
 will presently follow. If our hearts swell with thankful- 
 ness to our Adorable Lord, for this fresh illustration of 
 the living mission of His Church, certain of her doctrine 
 and certain of her power to carry it forward; if with 
 St. Paul, the present scene seems almost to fade from 
 before us, as we lose it in the contemplation of that 
 glorious whole of which it is a real albeit a fractional 
 p av t — the perpetual Missionary Agency of the Church, 
 radiating like the light of heaven through the countries 
 and the centuries of the world ; — let us at least not forget 
 what is due to him, to whom beyond all others this day 
 all true and Christian hearts will now turn with the 
 homage of a sincere and respectful sympathy. He needs, 
 he asks our most earnest prayers, that that elevation of 
 his to the Chief Pastorate of a Plock of Christ, in which 
 we gratefully own our share in the Church's joy and gain, 
 may not turn to his own or to his Master's loss ; and that 
 he may carry forward Christ's true work, by attaining in 
 
Evidence of Christian Truth. 287 
 
 himself more and more that which is indeed the spirit of 
 predestined Apostles, and the earnest of their victories, — 
 the spirit of freedom — of freedom from all fears save the 
 fear of God, and of freedom from all ambitions save the 
 one legitimate, masterful, life-absorbing desire to be 
 Christ's alone, — His perfectly, — His for ever. 
 
SERMON XI. 
 
 A FATHEE IN CHRIST. 1 
 
 i Cob. iv. 15. 
 
 For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many 
 fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the Gospel. 
 
 HERE is a contrast which never disappears altogether 
 from Christendom, but which has not often been 
 more vivid than it was at Corinth in the age of the 
 Apostle. On the one side is a body of active-minded 
 teachers, who within the Christian society are widely 
 listened to and influential ; and some of whom, without 
 realising what Christianity really is and means, evidently 
 aspire on its behalf to meet the cultivated Paganism 
 around them on terms of something like intellectual 
 equality. The faith of Christ bad not been long enough 
 in Corinth to have entirely forfeited its character of 
 novelty, and they look upon it, possibly from other points 
 of view, but mainly as a valuable stock-in-trade for lec- 
 tures and dissertations. They are less concerned with its 
 abstract truth than with their own skill in manipulating 
 it. The divisions among the Corinthian Christians are 
 interesting to them, as adding to the general mental 
 fermentation, and as affording numberless opportunities 
 for critical discussion, analysis, perhaps amusement. 
 They are more concerned for their personal reputations 
 
 1 Preached in St. Paul's at the Consecration of the Bishop of Lincoln and 
 the Bishop of Exeter on the Feast of St. Mark, April aq, 1885. 
 288 
 
A Father in Christ. 289 
 
 than for the moral and spiritual effect upon their hearers 
 of anything that they may say ; and their reputations, no 
 doubt, in that small Christian society of Corinth, are, in a 
 sense, brilliant. 
 
 On the other side is the Apostle, not less alive to the 
 intellectual aspects of Christianity than are his enter- 
 prising opponents, but with a totally different and far loftier 
 conception of its awful meaning. To him it is valuable, not 
 as a stepping-stone to personal importance, but as a 
 message from God to man ; as a body of truth compared 
 with which the highest philosophy of this world is foolish- 
 ness. To his own interests and fame he is sufficiently 
 indifferent ; but he is passionately concerned for the well- 
 being of those poor souls at Corinth, and for their practi- 
 cal loyalty to the crucified Eedeemer, Who had been the one 
 subject of his preaching among them. He is bowed down 
 with grief and shame at the report of their divisions, 
 which might seem to surrounding heathendom to imply a 
 divided Christ ; he thinks cheaply enough of any intellec- 
 tual activity which was morally so costly. But, if the 
 premisses of his opponents were to be granted, no doubt 
 they had the best of it : — " Now ye are full ; now ye are 
 rich ; ye have reigned as kings without us. . . . We are 
 fools for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we 
 are weak, but ye are strong ; ye are honourable, but we 
 are despised." 1 It is the contrast between the merely 
 academical and the pastoral, between a business and a 
 vocation, between the professor and the Apostle, between 
 a religion in theory and a religion of practice, between 
 the intellectual world in its solitary barrenness and the 
 intellectual world illuminated and fertilised by the moral, 
 between that which only interests and occupies the mind 
 and that which rouses and quickens the conscience, and 
 invigorates the will, and changes and purifies the life. 
 
 1 1 Cor. iv. 8-10. 
 T 
 
290 A Father in Clwist. 
 
 But there is another point in the comparison which has 
 yet to be mentioned. The Corinthians might have — he 
 did not know how many — lecturers in Christianity at work 
 among them, sufficiently versatile, clever, witty, even 
 entertaining. Nevertheless only one person could claim 
 to stand towards them in the sacred and tender relation 
 of a spiritual father. For to his toil and prayers alone, 
 under God, did they owe their conversion; and his 
 •authority had a claim on them such as that of no other 
 could possibly rival. "Though ye have ten thousand 
 instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for 
 in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the Gospel." 
 
 I. 
 
 It would seem that when the Apostle looked around 
 him for a metaphor which should describe his relations 
 towards his flock, he could find nothing in life or nature 
 which so nearly satisfied him as that of a father. It is not 
 the only metaphor he uses to illustrate his Apostolic office. 
 When propagating the Gospel he is a husbandman who 
 plants while another waters ; 1 when struggling with sin 
 or error he is a soldier in the uniform of Jesus Christ ; 2 
 when entreating men to accept God's promises of mercy 
 in Christ, he is an ambassador furnished with Divine 
 credentials ; 3 when building up the fabric of the Church, 
 or the Divine Life in souls, he is an architect, greatly 
 concerned that the foundation of the edifice shall be solid. 4 
 But the figure on which his profoundly sympathetic 
 nature loves to dwell as best expressing his permanent 
 relation to those whom he has won to the faith of Christ 
 is that which we are considering. 
 
 There is nothing in nature which so resembles God as 
 a human father : for the strength, the majesty, the tender- 
 
 1 1 Cor, iii. 6. 2 2 Tim. iv. 7 ; cf. 2 Tim. ii. 3. 
 
 3 2 Cor. v. 20. 4 1 Cor. iii. 10. 11. 
 
A Father in Christ. 291 
 
 ness, above all, the authority of the universal Father, rests, 
 in a measure, on each of His earthly representatives. 
 This was instinctively felt by heathens who, when anxious 
 to salute a civil ruler by a title that should invest hini 
 with associations such as might take captive the hearts of 
 his subjects, have called him pater patriae, the father of 
 his country. This is the secret of an indefinable dignity 
 that mantles over the great patriarch whose position is so 
 unique in the history of the East and in the history of 
 Eevelation ; as the father of many nations and the father 
 of the faithful. The greater clearness and prominence 
 which the Gospel had given to the fatherly attributes of 
 God had enriched the word and the idea with a wealth 
 of authority and affection that men had not before 
 associated with it. Accordingly, when recommending 
 Timothy to the respectful sympathy of the Philippians, 
 St. Paul says that "as a son with the father he hath 
 served with me in the Gospel." 1 When reminding the 
 Thessalonians of those evangelising labours of his which 
 had resulted in their conversion, "Ye know," he says, 
 " how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one 
 of you, as a father doth his children, that ye would walk 
 worthy of God, Who hath called you unto His kingdom 
 and glory." 2 Once, indeed, he recognises in a presbyter 
 this character of spiritual fatherhood. 3 But, as a rule, 
 he reserves this figure to describe his own office. 
 " Though ye have ten thousand instructers in Christ, yet 
 have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have 
 begotten you through the Gospel." 
 
 II. 
 
 When we say that Bishops are successors of the 
 Apostles we are not formulating a theory, but stating a 
 
 1 Phil. ii. 22. '- 1 Thess. ii. n, 12. 3 1 Tim. v. 1. 
 
292 A Fatker in Christ. 
 
 fact of history. In one sense, indeed, every presbyter 
 succeeds the Apostles ; like them, he ministers the Word 
 and Sacraments of Christ. In another the Apostles have 
 no successors ; they alone were privileged to found the 
 Church of Christ, and while founding it to wield a world- 
 wide jurisdiction. But substantially, and in a sense all 
 its own, Bishops do, in the phrase of St. Cyprian, Apostolis 
 vicarid ordinatione succeditnt. 1 If they do not singly 
 share in the world-wide jurisdiction which belonged to 
 the Apostles, and which could only now be wielded by the 
 universal Episcopate acting together, they do in other 
 respects reproduce from age to age among men the fulness 
 of the Apostolic authority. 2 
 
 There are in the last analysis two, and only two, 
 coherent theories of the origin and character of the 
 Christian ministry. Of these one makes the minister 
 the elected delegate of the congregation ; in teaching and 
 ministering he exerts an authority which he derives from 
 his flock. 3 The other traces ministerial authority to the 
 Person of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who deposited it in its 
 fulness in the College of the Apostles. " All power is 
 
 1 S. Cypr. Ep. 66, ad Floreutium, § 4 (ed. Hartel.). 
 
 - Bramhall, Vindication of the Church of England, Disc. iii. "Episcopacy 
 was comprehended in the Apostolic office, tanquam trigonus in tetragono, and 
 the distinction was made by the Apostles, with the approbation of Christ"— 
 Works, vol. ii. p. 69 (Oxf. 1842). 
 
 3 This would not be admitted by the deeper minds even among the Congre- 
 gationalists. "The Church, " says Dr. Dale, "determined what men should 
 till the office, but the office was instituted by Christ." ... "It would be 
 treason to Christ to obey the rulers of the Church at all, unless their authority 
 were derived from Him." But then he adds, "In electing its officers, the 
 Church acts not for itself but for Christ ; it appoints the men whom He has 
 chosen." — Manual of Congregational Principles, by R. W. Dale, LL.D., 
 London, 1884, pp. 98-100. This might seem to confuse election to a Church 
 office with a commission to discharge it. They differ alike in their origin and 
 in their nature. Election is an act of the Christian people : ordination or con- 
 secration is a gift of Jesus Christ bestowed through the Bishops who represent 
 Him. With us, it must be owned, the election of a bishop is now but a 
 shadow. But the validity of an Episcopal Consecration is independent of the 
 machinery which decides who is to be the subject of it. 
 
A Father in Christ. 293 
 
 giveu unto Me in heaven and in earth ; go ye therefore 
 and make disciples of all nations." 1 " As My Father hath 
 sent Me, even so send I you." 2 The Apostles, thus 
 invested with the plenitude of ministerial power, detached 
 from themselves in the form of distinct grades or orders 
 of ministry, so much as was needed, at successive epochs, 
 for building up and supporting the Church. First, they 
 created an order which was charged with the care of 
 the poor and with the administration of Church funds, 
 although also specially empowered to preach, and to ad- 
 minister the sacrament of baptism. 3 Next they bestowed 
 on the Church a larger separate instalment of ministerial 
 power — that of the presbyters or bishops — as in those first 
 days the second order was called indifferently. 4 To this 
 order full ministerial capacity was committed, excepting 
 the faculty of transmitting the ministry. Lastly, St. Clement 
 of Rome tells us, 5 that desiring to avoid controversy which 
 they foresaw, the Apostles ordained certain men to the 
 end that when they should have fallen asleep in death 
 others of approved character might succeed to their special 
 office. Such were Timothy and Titus ; not yet exclusively 
 called Bishops, but certainly Bishops in the sense of the 
 sub-Apostolic and of our own age ; men who in addition 
 to the fulness of ministerial capacity had also the power 
 
 1 St. Matt, xxviii. 18, 19. - St. Jolm xx. 21. 
 
 3 Acts vi. 6, vii. 2, viii. 38 ; 1 Tim. iii. 8-13. 
 
 * Acts xx. 17, 28 ; Tit. i. 5, 7 ; of. S. Clem. I. ad Cor. 42. 
 
 5 S. Clem. I. ad Cor. 44: nai oi awbo~To\oi i]fiwv lyvwaav Sta tov Kvptov 
 T)ix£)v Sti epis larai iirl tov ovop-aTOS rrjs ewiaKOirri'S. Aiaravr-qv oSv rty aiTiav 
 Tpoyfcotrcf el\rj<p6T€S TeXelav KaT((JTr\<jav Tot'S TrpoetpTjfJ.ei'OVs, kcll /xera^v 
 eTTivop.T)!' SfSwKaatv, owois, eav KOiii-qduHJiv, Biad^uvrai Hrepoi deSoKt/j.aa/.iei'ot 
 dvdpes rrjv XeiTovpytav avrwv. Compare the remarkable statement, quoted by 
 Euseliius (H. E. v. 6) from St. Irenaeus, iii. 3. 3: de/J.e\iuo-avTes ovv Kal 
 okodop.T]cratiTes ol fj.aKO.piOi &ir6<rTo\oi tt\v iKtCKt]aiav Ai'cu) tt)v tt)s ewio-KOTrrjs 
 \uTovpyiav ivexfi-pio-av. Eusebius says (H. E. iii. 2) that Linus became 
 fetobop of Rome after the martyrdom of SS. Peter and Paul. But the language 
 of St. Iremeus, taken alone, might imply that the Apostles made him Bishop 
 of Rome during their lifetime. So Ddllinger. 
 
294 A Father in Christ. 
 
 of transmitting it. In Crete, Titus receives explicit autho- 
 rity from St. Paul to ordain presbyters ; at Ephesus, 
 Timothy has particular directions from St. Paul respecting 
 the way in which charges against presbyters are to be 
 received. 1 Thus we see in Timothy and Titus the exer- 
 cise of what is distinctive both in Episcopal orders and 
 Episcopal jurisdiction ; and unless the Pastoral Epistles 
 are not of Apostolic origin, the three orders existed in 
 their completeness under the eyes of St. Paul. Within the 
 compass of the New Testament there are two other facts 
 which point to the establishment of the Episcopate in 
 Apostolic times. One is the position of St. James the Less 
 at Jerusalem ; he seems to have been an Apostle who 
 already occupied the more localised and restricted position 
 of a Bishop. This appears in the place assigned to him 
 at the Council of Jerusalem, 2 and in the formal visit which 
 St. Paul paid him at a later period, 3 but especially in the 
 unanimous testimony of the second century, which spoke 
 of him as P>ishop of Jerusalem. 4 The other fact is the 
 representation in the Apocalypse of the "augels" of the 
 Seven Churches. What were these angels ? Guardian 
 spirits of the Churches they cannot have been, since some 
 of them were guilty of grave faults. Nor can they have 
 been the Churches themselves, since St. John distin- 
 guishes the angels and the Churches as having the 
 distinct symbols of stars and candlesticks. 5 Each angel 
 represents a Church, for the faith and practice of which he 
 is responsible ; and it would be difficult to express more 
 exactly the position of a primitive Bishop. 6 
 
 1 Tit. i. s ; i Tim. i. 19, 20. 2 Acts xv. 13. 3 Ibid. xxi. 13-18. 
 
 * See reff. in Bp. Lightfoot, Phili2}2>ians, j>. 206, note r. 
 
 5 Rev. i. 20. 
 
 6 Cf. St. Aug. Ej>. 43, § 22 ; Abp. Trench. Epistles to the Seven Ckurclies, 
 PP- 52-57- 
 
A Father in Christ. 
 
 295 
 
 III. 
 
 The origin and claims of the Episcopate is a district of 
 theology which English divines have made peculiarly their 
 own. 1 The anti-Episcopal Puritanism of Elizabeth's reign, 
 represented by Cartwright, provoked Bishop Bilson's great 
 work on the " Perpetual Government of Christ's Church " 2 
 and the seventh book of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity. 
 The more trenchant Puritanism of the next age necessi- 
 tated those deeper studies to which we owe Pearson's 
 Vindicim? and Beveridge's annotations on the Apostolical 
 Canons 4 — not to mention the often admirable, but less 
 accurate, Antiquities of Bingham. 
 
 But some English divines may also have felt, that 
 when insisting upon the Episcopate as organically 
 necessary to the structure of the visible Body of Christ, 
 — as necessary not merely to its bene esse, but to its esse, 
 — they were indirectly strengthening a barrier against 
 
 1 Perhaps the well-weighed words of Sanderson, as one of the most illus- 
 trious Bishops of Lincoln since the Reformation, may here he quoted : " My 
 opinion is that Episcopal Government is not to be derived merely from 
 Apostolical practice or institution, but that it is originally founded in the 
 Person and Office of the Messiah, our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, Who, being 
 sent by His Heavenly Father to be the great Apostle (Heb. iii. i), Shepherd, 
 and Bishop (i Pet. ii. 25) of His Church, and anointed to that Office imme- 
 diately after His baptism by John, with Power and the Holy Ghost (Acts x. 
 37, 38) descending then upon Him in a bodily shape (St. Luke iii. 22), did 
 afterwards, before His Ascension into heaven, send and empower His holy 
 Apostles, giving them the Holy Ghost likewise, as His Father had given Him, 
 in like manner as His Father had before sent Him (St. John xx. 21) to execute 
 the same Apostolical, Episcopal, and Pastoral Office, for the ordering and 
 governing of His Church, until His coming again ; and so the same office to 
 continue in them and their Successors unto the end of the world (St. Matt, 
 xxviii. 18-20)." — Works, vol. v. p. 191, ed. Jacobsou. On the general subject, 
 cf. Bp. Pearson, De Siiccessu Prim. Rom. Jipisc. Diss. i. eg; Bp. Bever- 
 idge, Theol. Works, vol. i. Serm. i. ii. (Oxf. 1844) ; Rev. H. J. Rose, On the 
 Commission and Duties of the Clergy, Serm. ii. 
 
 a Ed. Eden, Oxf. 1842, pref. vii. 3 Ed. Chnrton, Oxf. 1852. 
 
 4 Works, vol. xi. xii. ed. Oxf. 1848. 
 
296 A Father in Christ. 
 
 Ultramontanism. 1 Nothing is more remarkable in this 
 connection than certain debates, 2 both in the second and 
 third meetings of the Council of Trent. The Papal 
 representatives, especially when discussing the question 
 whether a Bishop's residence in his diocese was of divine 
 obligation, or could be dispensed with by the Pope, 
 minimised the authority and rights of the Episcopate 
 down to the very verge of Presbyterianism. Indeed, it 
 may be doubted whether any Presbyterian divine would 
 easily rival the skill of the Jesuit Lainez, when, in a 
 sermon historically famous, he essayed to reduce Episcopal 
 jurisdiction to a shadowy impotence, that would make the 
 way clear for exaggerated assertions of Papal supremacy. 3 
 In our own days the question of Episcopacy is 
 increasingly seen to be bound up with that of the 
 Apostolic origin and authority of the Pastoral Epistles. 
 The critics, who, from Schleiermacher down to Baur and 
 Pfleiderer and others, have partly or wholly denied the 
 Apostolic authorship of these Epistles, have insisted with 
 much force and justice upon their so-called hierarchical 
 characteristics ; 4 and then they have proceeded to beg a 
 very large question by arguing that these characteristics 
 prove the Epistles to be of post- Apostolic origin. It is 
 also observable that the ablest and the most destructive 
 of recent English speculations on the early organisation 
 of the Christian Church omit all reference to these 
 
 1 Compare, e.g., Skelton, 'Works, iv. 513, 514, ed. Dubl. 1770. 
 
 - For the decision, see Couc. Trid. sess. xxiii. cap. 4, can. 7. 
 
 3 Phillipson, Conlre-recolution religieuse au xvi' Siicle, pp. 403, 513, 514. 
 So Morinus, Dc Sac. Eccl. Ord. pars iii. ex. 4, c. 3, 4, gives a list of school- 
 men and others who taught "simplicem presbvterum, delegatioue Poutilicis, 
 posse diaconos et presbyteros ordinare." Even Vasquez, in iii. part. S. 
 Thomaj, diss. 243, art. 3, 4, thinks the opinion probable. Cf. Palmer, On the 
 Church, ii. 410. 
 
 See Baur, Die sogenannten Pastoralbricfe, pp. 75-89 ; Vorlesungen iiber 
 Neutest. Theologie, p. 344 ; Pfleiderer, Paulinismus, kap. xi : Holtzmann, 
 Paslnralbricfe, p. 190 sqq. 
 
A Father in Christ. 
 
 297 
 
 particular books of the New Testament, which, surely, 
 whatever their worth and character, most directly bear 
 on it. 
 
 It is, indeed, a solemn question whether we hold the 
 Episcopate to be enjoined by the Revealed Will of God, 
 or, like archdeacons and capitular bodies, to be a feature 
 of our Church arrangements, which, however admirable, 
 may conceivably be dispensed with, without sacrificing 
 anything organic in the conditions of communion with 
 Christ. If, by suppressing Deans and Chapters, we could 
 reconcile all the separated Protestant bodies to the unity 
 and doctrine of the Church, who of us would not gladly 
 make the sacrifice ? And if Bishops are not of Divine 
 obligation, is it right to maintain a cause and symbol of 
 division with which essential Christianity could dispense ? 
 The Protestant historian Eanke 1 has drawn attention to 
 the barrier which is raised by the Episcopate between 
 the English Church and the Lutheran and Reformed 
 communities on the Continent. The maintenance of such 
 a barrier is more than intelligible if we believe that upon 
 a true Episcopal succession depends the validity of the 
 Eucharist — our chief means of communion with our 
 Lord. But when we consider the present pressure of 
 infidelity upon all reformed Christendom, is such an 
 obstacle to unity even defensible, if in our hearts we 
 deem the Episcopate to be only an archaeological treasure, 
 
 1 Ranke, Hist. Engl. iv. 375 (Oxf. transl.) remarks, that at the Restoration 
 "no one was to obtain an ecclesiastical benefice or be intrusted with a cure 
 of souls who had not been ordained by a bishop." He then indorses the 
 observation that English Churchmen "thus renounced all connection with 
 the Protestant Churches of the Continent." Ibid. iii. 495 : "Although the 
 Anglican Church rose again, this was balanced by the fact that she had pre- 
 served and now restored to its full authority, one of the most important forms 
 of the ancient Church, its Episcopal Constitution." Professor Ranke under- 
 stands the importance of 1662, as putting an end to any apparent inconsistencies, 
 in respect of the principle of ordination, which may be discoverable in the 
 practice of some members of the Church of England during the preceding 
 century. 
 
298 A Father in Christ. 
 
 or only, as the phrase goes, a very interesting form of 
 Church government ? 1 
 
 IV. 
 
 It is time that we should return to the lessons which 
 the Apostle would teach us by his expression " a father 
 in Christ." 
 
 The first and great characteristic of the earthly father 
 is that, under God, he transmits the gift of physical life. 
 This is his prerogative distinction ; it most nearly likens 
 him to the Father of heaven ; it raises his relationship to 
 his children above any other between human beings. 
 
 The Bishop, too, is a father in this sense; that he 
 alone can transmit ministerial power to others. "Whereas," 
 says Hooker, "presbyters by such power as they have 
 received for administration of the sacraments are able 
 only to beget children unto God ; Bishops, having power 
 to ordain, do by virtue thereof create fathers to the people 
 of God." 2 "The Apostles, being Bishops at large, or- 
 dained everywhere presbyters." 3 " Titus and Timothy 
 having received Episcopal power, as Apostolic ambassadors 
 or legates, the one in Greece, the other in Ephesus, they 
 both did by virtue thereof likewise ordain, throughout all 
 churches, deacons and presbyters, within the circuits 
 allotted unto them." 4 
 
 1 By the existing law of the Church of England any Roman Catholic or 
 Oriental priest may be admitted to a cure of souls, on producing his Letters 
 of Orders, and subscribing the English formularies, while the most gifted and 
 experienced of Presbyterian or Congregationalist pastors would have to be 
 ordained deacon and priest. This indeed is inevitable if we hold the 
 Kpis ■■upate to be indispensable to the conveyance of a true ministerial 
 commission. But if episcopal ordination be only a matter of ecclesiastical 
 taste, or usage, or propriety, have not our separated brethren among the 
 Protestant dissenters some right to complain of the slight which is thus put 
 upon their ministry? And if Presbyterian or Congregationalist ministers 
 have been really ordained, is there no risk of sacrilege in repeating an ordina- 
 tion ? But cf. Law's Second Letter to Hoadley, p. 31. 
 
 2 E. P. vii. 6. 2. ' Ibid. * Ibid. 
 
A Father in Christ. 
 
 299 
 
 But was this prerogative shared by presbyters ? The 
 admission of presbyters to lay their hands on the ordained 
 conjointly with the ordaining Bishop, as implied in the 
 Pastoral Epistles, 1 and explicitly recognised by the 
 Fourth Council of Carthage, 2 and in our own Ordinal, 
 does not prove it, any more than the promise to the 
 Apostles that they should judge the twelve tribes of 
 Israel confers on them the office of the one universal 
 Judge. 3 The presbyters who assist in laying on hands 
 give token of moral approbation and sympathy with the 
 act of the chief pastor ; but their presence adds nothing 
 to, as their absence would subtract nothing from, the 
 validity of the rite. 
 
 Not that the power of ordination exhausts the creative 
 functions, so to call them, of a Bishop. He is not only a 
 ruler but a parent, not merely a caput but a radix ecclesiai ; 
 the author or nourisher of all activities for good among 
 those whom he rules. He perpetuates, from age to age, 
 the work of the missionary Bishop in whose chair he sits ; 
 and from him every useful effort within the scope of his 
 jurisdiction should receive, if not its original impulse, at 
 least its ready encouragement and consecration. He is 
 by the terms of his office the originating, and creating, 
 and impelling, as well as or rather than the controlling 
 force in his diocese ; — it was, perhaps, his keen realisa- 
 tion of this aspect of his ministry which made the 
 episcopate of Bishop Wilberforce so fruitful in its results 
 both to his own flock and to the Church at large. 
 
 Out of the father's relation to his children, as the 
 
 1 1 Tim. 17. 14 : pera iwiBtaews tCiv xeip&v tov trpecrfivTeptov. CI. 2 
 Tim. i. 6 : rb x°-P l -Vf- a T °v Qtov 0 Igtlv kv <ro£ dia rrj's (vi$iueus r&v x et P^>" 
 
 3 Con. Carth. iv. 3 : " Presbyter cum ordinatur, episcopo earn benedicente, 
 et manum super caput ejus tenente, etiam omnes presbyteri qui prsssentes 
 sunt, ramus suns juxta manum episcopi, super caput illius teneant." 
 Hooker, ubi sup. 
 
300 
 
 A Father in Christ. 
 
 earthly author of their life, arises a natural authority 
 which has three distinct departments for its exercise. 
 
 The father is the natural teacher of his children. Their 
 intelligence opens under the rays of his instruction. His 
 is the highest wisdom of which they have any experience, 
 and he brings truth home to them by the voice of love. 
 If he cannot himself teach his children, he not only has 
 the right but is under an obligation to choose a substitute 
 — a master who shall stand in his place, and administer 
 that which it is beyond his power to supply. 
 
 The Bishop, too, as the father of his diocese, is the one 
 teacher within its limits. In the eye of the Church all 
 the clergy are his substitutes ; he can, by the law of the 
 Church, whenever he wills, take their place. This is his 
 jus magisterii. Holding as he should in his mind and 
 conscience the deposit of the true faith, his first duty is to 
 see that it is taught to his flock, that it is taught in its 
 integrity, that it is defended when assailed, that it is re- 
 asserted in its purity when corrupted or disfigured. For he 
 is not the versatile exponent of a human theory, but the 
 keeper and teacher of a Eevelation from God. 1 He can 
 
 1 i Tim. i. 3, iii. 2, iv. 13, 16. This passage has been understood to mean 
 that every Bishop is infallible ; that no circumstances can warrant the dissent 
 of his clergy or flock from their Bishop's judgment ; and that Church history, 
 ancient and modern, amply illustrates the inconsistency of those who make 
 thus much of a Bishop's authority, yet pay scant respect to its actual exercise. 
 
 General principles must sometimes be stated, especially in sermons, with- 
 out discussing exceptional cases to which they do not apply ; aud especially 
 is this inevitable at times when such principles are in danger of being lost 
 sight of. But the analogy of a father's relations to his children, appealed to 
 in this sermon, might have prevented the misunderstanding in question. The 
 duty enjoined by the Fifth Commandment is not less generally a duty because 
 some parents teach their children to lie and steal. And yet it is undoubtedly 
 a child's duty to disobey the father who should thus employ his authority to 
 discredit that moral law which is its real sanction. 
 
 Certainly bishops have been heretics, like Nestorius ; and bishops have 
 been infidels, like Talleyrand. A bishop can only hope to be obeyed, while 
 he himself holds the faith, and believes in the Divine Commission, which alone 
 render his office something distinct from an imposture. And if earnest 
 believers in the necessity of Episcopacy have sometimes used stern language 
 
3d 
 
 neither reject an old doctrine nor welcome a new one; he 
 can only decide whether a given doctrine which falls in 
 his way is conformable or contrary to the truth which he 
 holds and teaches, and which his spiritual children may 
 expect at his hands. His intellectual outlook will indeed 
 be wide : he will keep his eye, as far as may be, on all the 
 surging currents of thought, along which souls are carried 
 hither and thither in our distracted modern world ; and 
 as he will welcome from any quarter any ray of truth, so 
 he will pay no feeble compliments to any shade of error. 
 Before all things he will be jealous for the honour of our 
 Lord — His eternal Godhead, His Incarnation in time, His 
 infallibility as a Teacher, the Atoning power of His Death, 
 the literal truth of His Resurrection and Ascension and 
 perpetual Intercession, the converting and sanctifying 
 influence of His Spirit, the life-giving and life-sustaining 
 power which He exerts through His Sacraments, the end- 
 lessness, for weal and woe, of the life to which He points, 
 beyond the grave. But an Apostle must trace a Bishop's 
 duties in this department. " Take heed unto thyself and 
 unto the doctrine." " Hold fast the form of sound words 
 which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in 
 Christ Jesus." " That good thing which was committed 
 unto thee, keep by the Holy Ghost Which dwelleth in us." 
 " The things which thou hast heard of me among many 
 witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who 
 shall be able to teach others also." 1 
 
 about the conduct of individual Bishops, this language has not been neces- 
 sarily inconsistent with their belief. Corrupt io optimi pessima. To under- 
 stand the unique malignity of Judas, a man must believe iu the greatness of 
 the Apostolic office. The immortal letters which describe Hoadley's unfaith- 
 fulness to the English Church were not due to the acuteness of a worldly 
 cynicism, but to the deeply-wounded faith and piety of William Law. 
 Nevertheless the rule is that the Bishop is the teacher and guardian of the 
 faith of his (lock, and that it is at once their happiness and their duty to obey 
 him. And there are sufficient reasons for insisting on this in our own day. 
 i i Tim. iv. 16 ; 2 Tim. i. 13, 14, ii. 2. 
 
302 A Father in Christ. 
 
 Not only does a father teach ; he governs. Like every 
 society, a family must have a government ; and the modern 
 theory of a government of all by all is not well calculated, 
 at least in a family, to ensure the general wellbeing. 
 And since children lack the requisite experience, and a 
 mother the necessary vigour, the natural and undisputed 
 ruler is the father. 
 
 As the father of his diocese, the Bishop is its ruler. 
 His right to rule is derived, not from a body of electors 
 who have made him, for their common good, a chief 
 magistrate, but from the character which he inherits from 
 the Apostles of Christ. Timothy and Titus are addressed 
 as rulers of Churches ; they are to examine the conduct 
 and bearing of their clergy ; and in particulars which are 
 specified in detail. 1 They are to see that presbyters who 
 labour in the word and doctrine are counted worthy of 
 double honour. 2 But their rule extends to all descriptions 
 of persons within the Churches over which they have 
 jurisdiction. Timothy is to superintend, according to 
 rules delivered by the Apostle, the ecclesiastical order of 
 widows ; 3 Timothy and Titus are to have especial regard 
 to the condition of the numerous Christian slaves ; 4 Titus 
 is to look after whole classes of Cretans separately, the 
 young and the old of both sexes. 5 
 
 The Bishop rules, not only the outward circumstances 
 and departments, but also the inner life of his flock ; he 
 has, within limits, the jus liturgicum ; the right and duty 
 of providing that prayers, supplications, intercessions, and 
 eucharists should be made for all men, and especially for 
 all in authority. 6 Everything liturgical, according to 
 primitive Church law, save the matter and form of the 
 Sacraments and the language of the Catholic Creeds, is 
 subject to his discretion. In later ages, as we know, this 
 
 1 i Tim. iii. 2-13 ; Tit. i. 5-9. - 1 Tim. v. 17. 3 Ibid. v. 3-16. 
 
 * 1 Tim. vi. 1-5 ; Tit. ii. 9, 10. * Tit. ii. 2-6. 6 1 Tim. ii. 1, 2. 
 
A Father in Christ. 
 
 303 
 
 discretion has been limited, almost to the point of anni- 
 hilation, by Congregations of Eites, and by Acts of Uni- 
 formity ; yet it may be well, on an occasion like the 
 present, to recall the sense of early Christendom. 
 
 But government is impossible in any society without 
 the sanction of punishment. If rules are to be made their 
 violations must be punished; if command is to be a 
 reality, there must be a means of enforcing obedience. 
 The best father who governs but cannot punish would 
 soon discover that the sceptre of his authority was already 
 falling from his feeble hands. 
 
 Nor is the Episcopate able to discharge its true duties 
 unless the Bishop can enforce obedience to the faith and 
 discipline of the Church j unless he have some kind of 
 coercive jurisdiction. Already in St. Paul's First Epistle 
 to Timothy, Timothy is addressed as if he were the judex 
 ordinarius of a later age. " Against a presbyter receive 
 not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses. 
 Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear. 
 I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
 the elect angels, that thou observe these things, without 
 preferring one before another, doing nothing by partiality." 1 
 In the same sense Hymenseus and Alexander are pointed 
 out to Timothy as having "made shipwreck concerning 
 the faith," and as having been " delivered unto Satan." 2 
 And to Titus the order runs : " A man that is an heretic, 
 after the first and second admonition, reject." 3 
 
 V. 
 
 The fatherly character of the Bishop is sometimes tra- 
 versed by the accidents of age or attainments. He may 
 find among his clergy men who are older, or more generally 
 accomplished, or better divines, or of higher spiritual 
 
 1 1 Tim. v. 19-21. 2 Ibid. i. 20. • ' Tit. iii. 10. 
 
304 A Father in Christ. 
 
 experience than himself. Of these the best will always 
 echo St. Jerome's exclamation to St. Augustine — " Amice 
 carissime, setate fili, dignitate parens." 1 They will 
 remember that a Bishop's fatherly character is inde- 
 pendent of his personal characteristics; that it belongs 
 to an office which comes from Christ. 
 
 A like result may follow on the relations of the Church 
 to the civil law. We may well, indeed, be grateful to the 
 law for the position which it secures to the clergy by 
 making every benefice a freehold ; yet a freehold may be 
 converted into a fortified castle, from within whose walls 
 a rebellious son sets at nought the counsels of a spiritual 
 father. But that which of late years has most frequently 
 veiled from the eyes of the clergy the kindly face and 
 hand of a father in Christ, is the unhappy fact that under 
 the form of interpreting documents which have a legal 
 aspect, the most sacred questions of doctrine and morals 
 are not decided in the last resort by the commissioned 
 guardians of the faith, but by accomplished lawyers, who 
 may or may not be Christians. This fatal weakness in 
 our Church polity was aggravated by the provisions of 
 the Public Worship Begulation Act. We can indeed 
 defend existing arrangements if we can suppose that St. 
 Paul would have allowed the questions pending between 
 himself and the Galatian Judaisers, or the Corinthian 
 deniers of the Eesurrection, to be settled by the nearest 
 proconsul. Only those who wish ill to the English Church 
 can desire to perpetuate a state of things which is not 
 necessary to the union of Church and State, or to the 
 maintenance of the Queen's Supremacy, and which, among 
 the many mischiefs which it entails, does more than any- 
 thing else to impair, in the eyes of faithful clergy, the 
 fatherly character of the Episcopate. 
 
 But a father does not, unless in the last extremity, 
 
 1 Opp. iv. pars ii. p. 613, Ep. 71, ad Aug. ed. Martianay. 
 
A Father in Christ. 
 
 insist upon his rights; he takes them for granted; he 
 recommends them to his children hy the love which makes 
 authority more than welcome. When the machinery of 
 Church government, especially in its penal aspects, is 
 rudely exposed to view, it is plain that there has been 
 somewhere a serious failure in duty. 
 
 So delicate a relationship as that of a father in God 
 does not depend for its working efficacy on the amount 
 of authority which can be arrogated for one side, or on 
 the submission which can be extorted from the other. 
 It depend? on moral influences ; on the respect which is 
 inspired by high and disinterested character; on the 
 attraction which is exerted by a true love of God and 
 man. Like the most beautiful things in the moral world, 
 this authority is of tender growth, and it is easily 
 impaired or forfeited. A scornful or impatient word, 
 scarcely intended by the irritated and, perhaps, over- 
 worked speaker, will rankle for years in the mind of a 
 young curate, and colour his whole conception of the 
 relation in which he stands to the fathers of the 
 Church. 
 
 It is difficult to say how much is lost to the moral force 
 of the Church and to the character of her ministers when 
 a Bishop is thought and spoken of as a good man of 
 business, or a man who might have been a judge, or a 
 very accurate scholar, or even a well-read divine, if 
 besides and beyond all these he is not recognised as a 
 father of his flock, both lay and clerical ; the one man to 
 whom men instinctively turn for advice and counsel in 
 moments of moral or mental perplexity ; the man on 
 whose wide knowledge and kindly temper and simple 
 disinterestedness of purpose they know that they can 
 depend for trustworthy guidance ; and of whom they think 
 habitually as of one whose blessing would be dearly 
 prized as a message of encouragement from another world 
 U 
 
306 A Father in Christ. 
 
 in the dark hours when its shadows are already falling 
 thick across the path of life. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Of public institutions in modern Europe the Episcopate 
 is in years the most venerable. It is older than any 
 secular throne ; it is by some centuries older than the 
 Papacy, which was an outgrowtli from circumstances un- 
 known to the first Bishops of Eome. 1 The Episcopate had 
 reached its prime while the Empire was still standing. 
 It could shed its blood with Cyprian ; it could illuminate 
 the world by the consecrated genius of an Irenasus, of an 
 Augustine, of Chrysostom and Basil and the Gregories. It 
 seemed to undergo a weird transformation at the hands of 
 feudalism. We think of the Bishops clad in mail armour 
 who fought at Senlac or in the wars of Stephen, or of later 
 prelates whose brasses in our older cathedrals represeut 
 them as blessing us in cope and mitre out of their battle- 
 mented castles. Of the sixteen sculptured compartments 
 which record the events of the episcopate of Guido Torlati 
 at Arezzo, only the first, in which he takes possession of his 
 See, and the last, where he lies upon his deathbed, exhibit 
 him in any pastoral character or have any relation to his 
 work as a father in Christ. After the soldier Bishops come 
 the great statesmen ; it requires an effort to recollect the 
 true character of Wolsey and Eichelieu, or of certain of 
 those priuce-electors who so largely swayed the fortunes of 
 Germany. Then appeared the literary Bishops ; men 
 
 1 Professor Hussey observes that the first step towards the establishment of 
 the supremacy of the See of Rome was taken " in the fourth century," when 
 an appellate jurisdiction was given to its Bishop by the Council of Sardica, 
 a.d. 347. "Then for the first time the precedence amoug equals, willingly 
 conceded to Rome in early ages, was turued into a claim of authority. " — Rise 
 of the Papal Power, by Robert Hussey, B.D., late Reg. Prof, of EccL Hist. 
 Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1863, 2nd Edition, Lect. i. p. 1, note 3, and specially 
 Pref. p. xxxii. 
 
A Father in Christ. 307 
 
 often greater in profane than in sacred letters. And now, 
 as in many other ways so in this, we are apparently 
 re-entering upon the earliest conditions of the Church's 
 life. But the intervening periods were not, as we may too 
 hastily think, periods during which the real objects of the 
 Episcopate were utterly lost sight of. The soldiers, the 
 diplomatists, the men of general literature, were always a 
 small minority of their order, which, as a whole, quietly 
 and unostentatiously pursued its course of ruling churches 
 and guiding souls. Let us remind ourselves of such 
 language as that of the Sixth Council of Aries, 1 held 
 at a time when the Bishops of France were largely great 
 feudatories under Charlemagne. "Let the Bishops bear 
 in mind," says the 17th Canon, "that they are intrusted 
 with the care of the people and of the poor, as their 
 guardians and protectors. If, then, they see the un- 
 fortunate oppressed by the powerful and the highly 
 placed, let them charitably remonstrate ; and, if their 
 advice is disregarded, let them carry their complaints 
 to the Sovereign, that he may correct by his supreme 
 authority those who would pay no regard to the advice of 
 their pastor. " And as for Wolsey, let us not recall the 
 years when — the most powerful statesman in Europe — he 
 was wont to appear in this cathedral as Legate a latere, and 
 indeed proudly held the balance between France and the 
 Empire ; let us think of the discredited and broken 
 man who had retired from the Court of the sensual Tudor 
 to his northern diocese, there to win almost at once the 
 hearts of the clergy and the poor by his pastoral care 
 and tenderness. 2 The Episcopate, as it traverses the 
 centuries, is like a weather-beaten barque on whose 
 hull clusters many a shell and weed that tells of the 
 seas of feudal or political life behind it; but as these 
 
 1 Cone. Arelat. vi. (a. 813) can. 17. Hefele, Concilicmjeschichte, iii. p. 757. 
 
 2 Cavendish, Life nf Wotseij, p. 202 (ed. Morley). 
 
3 o8 
 
 A Father in Christ. 
 
 incrustations fall away we discover that the essential 
 features of a spiritual fatherhood, which were always 
 there, remain intact. The title, father in God, has 
 never disappeared, whether from the language of the 
 Church, or of the law, or of general literature ; and the 
 reality, even in the worst times, has never heen without 
 a witness. The century which beheld Hoadley on the 
 English bench was also the century in which men knelt 
 down in the streets of London to ask for the blessing 
 of Bishop Wilson. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Certainly we meet to-day on an occasion when we 
 may insist on this characteristic of the highest order in 
 the sacred ministry with more than usual hope and 
 confidence. The eminent scholar and poet, not less saintly 
 in his life than remarkable for his acquirements, who has 
 lately left us, 1 is to be succeeded in the See of St. Hugh 
 by one whose nomination has thrilled the hearts of his 
 brother Churchmen with the deepest thankfulness and 
 joy. Never, probably, in our time has the great grace of 
 sympathy, controlled and directed by a clear sense of the 
 nature and sacredness of revealed truth, achieved so much 
 among so many young men as has been achieved, first at 
 the Theological College of Cuddesdon, and then from the 
 Pastoral Chair at Oxford, in the case of my dear and 
 honoured friend. He is surrounded at this solemn 
 moment by hundreds who know and feel that to his care 
 and patience, to his skill and courage, to his faith and 
 spiritual insight, they owe all that is most precious in 
 life, and most certain to uphold them in the hour of 
 death ; and their sympathies and prayers are shared 
 by many others who are absent from us in body, but 
 present with us in spirit. Certainly, if past experience is 
 
 i Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln. 
 
A Father in Christ. 309 
 
 any guarantee of what is to come, if there be such a thing 
 as continuity of spiritual character and purpose, then 
 we may hope to witness an episcopate which, Kara Ta? 
 irpoayovaas Trpo($>r)Teia<i l — if current anticipations are 
 not wholly at fault — will rank hereafter with those which 
 in point of moral beauty stand highest on the roll of the 
 later English Church — with Andrewes, with Ken, with 
 Wilson, with Hamilton. 
 
 And, if I may not presume to speak from such personal 
 knowledge of the successor of our own Bishop 2 in the great 
 See of the West, it is at least allowable to dwell on the 
 hopes which gather round an honoured name, and on the 
 wide reputation for devotion and spiritual experience 
 which has been gained by a long and fruitful ministry in 
 this metropolis. He, too, will carry with him into his 
 new field of labour the prayers and sympathies of grateful 
 friends, known and unknown, who earnestly desire that 
 he may long rule and feed his flock in the fulness of the 
 blessing of the Gospel of Christ. 
 
 Men say that hard times are coming upon the English 
 Church ; and, outside her walls, voices, like those of the 
 children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem, may even now 
 be heard to cry, " Down with her ; down with her ; even 
 to the ground ! " And, in truth, she has already lost much 
 which was of no mean value for our Master's service. 
 The Education Act of 1870 has largely withdrawn the 
 people from her schools, and recent legislation has swept 
 away all but a rapidly diminishing fragment of her old 
 position at the Universities. With largely secularised 
 populations, with our higher class increasingly trained by 
 infidel teachers, and with our vastly extended franchise, 
 it is not unnatural to anticipate for the Church in the 
 coming years sterner experiences than have befallen her 
 
 1 1 Tim. i. 18. 
 
 - Dr. Temple, Bishop of Exeter, had been translated to the See of Loudon. 
 
3io A Father in Christ. 
 
 since the middle of the seventeenth century. But the 
 prospect is by no means an entirely dark one ; and among 
 its brighter features is the wealth of generous devotion 
 which young men and women in increasing numbers, and 
 of various conditions in society, are freely offering, almost 
 day by day, to the sacred cause of our Lord and Saviour. 
 It is as though the anxieties of a loved and aged parent 
 could open and melt hearts which were closed against her 
 in days of more assured prosperity : and surely no token of 
 God's present favour could inspire more courage for deal- 
 ing with the problems that may be in store for her sons. 
 To all who are thus, in their opening life, giving their 
 best to God, the event of this day will be full of encourage- 
 ment and of hope. For it is the consecration to the highest 
 duties in the Church of sympathies which, next to His 
 own supernatural grace, have drawn them, most persua- 
 sively, to the feet of the Eedeemer; it is an assurance 
 that they will find on Apostolic thrones that union of 
 tenderness and wisdom which recalls while it transcends 
 all that is most revered and loved in an earthly home. 
 
SERMON XII. 
 
 BISHOP SAMUEL WILBERFOECE. 1 
 
 i Cor. ix. 22. 
 
 I am made all tilings to all men, that I might h\j all means save some. 
 
 0 one, perhaps, of St. Paul's sayings describes the 
 general effect of his life and character with such 
 terseness, or so vividly, as this. Not that the Apostle 
 can be thought of as deliberately framing an epigram 
 which might afterwards do duty in a biography. He is, 
 as you know, on his defence, as against the charge, widely 
 circulated by his Corinthian opponents, that he was really 
 a selfish person, who was making a good thing out of the 
 Gospel j he is showing that, if he chose to stand upon the 
 letter of his rights, he might have claimed more, and done 
 less, than he did. Had silence been possible, we may be 
 sure that he would gladly have said nothing about him- 
 self ; but since there is this hostile criticism in the way 
 of his usefulness, and he is forced to speak, he boldly 
 asserts the rights which he had waived, and the loftiness 
 of the motives which governed him. It is with this last 
 part of his apology that we have to do ; for in making it 
 he incidentally draws a picture of himself which is espe- 
 cially entitled to claim our attention. In so varied and 
 complex a life as his, there was of coui - se much which 
 
 1 Preached at the Parish Church of Graffbam, Sussex, November 2, 187^. 
 
 311 
 
312 Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. 
 
 could not be compressed into any single saying; but 
 nowhere else does be so nearly bring himself before us as 
 a whole, or trace with so delicate yet powerful a hand the 
 leading feature of his great career, as in the words, " I am 
 made all things to all men, that I might by all means 
 save some." 
 
 I. 
 
 The great gift which St. Paul had received of God — 
 next in order of importance after that of God's grace and 
 truth — was the power of making himself at home with all 
 classes, races, and degrees of men. A practical capacity 
 like this cannot be learnt up like an art or trick ; it must 
 be rooted in and spring from those affections and sym- 
 pathies which are at the base of human character. Nor, 
 although this gift was undoubtedly developed and shaped 
 by grace, can we suppose it to have had no place in the 
 character of St. Paul until he became a servant of Christ. 
 Nature would have contributed to it at least somewhat 
 of the raw material. As a Jew, we may be sure, Saul of 
 Tarsus — apart from the limits which Eabbinical narrow- 
 ness would have assigned to his sympathies — could 
 already have said, with the heathen poet, that, being a 
 man, he deemed nothing human strange. His broad and 
 genial humanity would have belonged to the original 
 outfit of his nature : for in him, the sympathies of our 
 race seemed to live. with extraordinary freshness and 
 power. The fact that he was a member of the great 
 human family would always have had a great place in 
 his consciousness ; he was indeed, if any man ever was, 
 enthusiastically human. For such as he, to see another 
 man is forthwith to be drawn to him ; it is to take for 
 granted, although in spite of appearances, that there is in 
 him something — nay, much — to love, if you could only get 
 at it ; it is to sink the sense of all that repels in the indi- 
 
Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. 3 1 3 
 
 vidual in a stronger sense of all that combines all members 
 of the race ; it is to meet each one as far as possible ; to 
 become " all things " to him, — as the Apostle puts it ; to 
 yield co the full force of that true human impulse towards 
 sympathy and service which knows no frontier save that 
 of the human family itself. 
 
 This, I say, is a rich natural endowment of which we 
 are speaking ; and, as such, it is to be found beyond the 
 frontiers of the Church of Christ. But, apart from Chris- 
 tianity, it commonly fares like a fastidious plant in an 
 uncongenial climate; it is only exposed to become de- 
 formed or to die. Too often it sickens into a vague, 
 dreamy sentimentalism ; or it loses itself fairly, as unsanc- 
 tified sympathies will, in the mire of animal passion ; or it 
 provokes against itself, as if it were a hollow unreality, 
 some fierce reaction within the character, which seeks to 
 crush out the original impulse in tears and blood. What 
 St. Paul's fervid nature would have become, had he been 
 left to himself, it is useless to inquire ; we only know 
 that by the grace of God he was what he was, as we 
 know him in his Epistles. The wonder-working grace of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ did not expel from or suppress in 
 this man those impulses of a wide and genial humanity : 
 rather was it the effect of that grace to refine, to spiritu- 
 alise, to transfigure, without weakening or maiming, what 
 nature had given. For, in truth, One had appeared 
 among men Who alone and adequately represented them ; 
 in Whom our race found at once its centre-point and its 
 ideal ; in communion with Whom all the finer common 
 sympathies of men are strengthened and refined ; and in 
 bringing men to Whom the virtue of true humanity finds 
 its best and highest exercise. When, then, Paul became 
 a servant of Christ, the natural gift was taken, as it were, 
 under a higher protection ; it was illuminated by the rays 
 of a loftier motive than nature could supply : " I am 
 
314 Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. 
 
 become," he said, " all things to all men, that I might by 
 all means save some." 
 
 The Apostle himself has traced this versatile sympathy 
 in three of its fields of operation. " To the Jews I became 
 as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews ; to them that are 
 under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them 
 that are under the law. To them that are without law, 
 as without law (here he explains and guards the expres- 
 sion), that I might gain them that are without law. To 
 the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak : 
 I am become all things to all men, that I might by all 
 means save some." 
 
 " All things to all men." In his own words, the Jews 
 had both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets ; 
 and, he proceeds, " have persecuted us ; and they please 
 not God, and are contrary to all men." 1 In their eyes 
 Paul was the apostate who had endeavoured to revive the 
 memory of the false and dishonoured Prophet of Xazareth. 
 In his eyes they were the race which had come nearest to 
 God, and had most decisively rejected Him. And yet 
 how tender and affectionate is he in his dealings with his 
 poor countrymen, or with Christians who shared, less 
 excusably, their hereditary prejudices! It might almost 
 seem at times as if he had turned his back upon the 
 Cross ; — so careful is he not to wound the sensitiveness of 
 the adherents of the old religion. He, the Apostle of the 
 grace of the Crucified, must take and circumcise Timothy 
 at Lystra, " because of the Jews that were in those parts, 
 for they knew all that his father was a Greek." 2 He must 
 shave his head in Cenchrea, " for he had a vow." 3 He 
 must, at the instance of the Apostle James, " purify him- 
 self," along with four Jewish devotees, and "enter into 
 the Temple, to signify the accomplishment of the days of 
 purification, until that an offering should be offered for 
 1 1 Thess. ii. 15. 2 Acts xvi. 3. 3 Ibid, xviii. 18. 
 
Bishop Samtiel Wilberforce. 3 1 5 
 
 every one of them ! " 1 And even when he is compelled, 
 by virtue of his Apostolic commission, and by the im- 
 perious Truth which fills and rules him, to utter the stern 
 and awful sentence, that by their infatuated rejection of 
 the True Messias, Who was the Crown and Promise of 
 their history, they had rejected their God — how does he 
 soften his message by all the resources of sympathy 
 and affection ! At the thought of their fall, he protests 
 that he has " great heaviness and continual sorrow in his 
 heart." 2 He cannot forget that to them pertains " the 
 adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving 
 of the law, and the solemn service of God, and the 
 promises " ; that theirs are the fathers ; that of them — 
 the last distinction and the greatest — " as concerning the 
 flesh, Christ came, Who is over all, God blessed for ever." 3 
 He remembers that he too is an Israelite, of the seed of 
 Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. 4 He even " could 
 •wish that himself were accursed from Christ for his 
 brethren, his kinsmen according to the flesh." 5 He will 
 not believe that they are finally rejected: he must soften 
 down his own description of their ruin : " Blindness," he 
 says, " in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of 
 the Gentiles be come in, and so all Israel shall be 
 saved." 6 
 
 " All things to all men ! " He, the Apostle of Revealed 
 Truth, the preacher of that One God Who is only known 
 to and approached by man through our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 how does he make himself at home with the men and 
 thoughts of the heathen world ! Eead his Epistles, and 
 see how he can sympathise with the happy conqueror in 
 the Greek games "who receiveth the prize"; 7 or with 
 the old Latin idea of the city or state, imagined as a 
 
 1 Acts xxi. 26. 2 Bom. ix. 2. 3 Ibid. ix. 4, 5. 
 
 4 Bom. xi. 1. f Ibid. ix. 3. 6 Jjjj, x ;, 2Si 26 . 
 
 7 1 Cor. ix. 24. 
 
3 1 6 Bishop Samuel Wilberjorce. 
 
 political transcript of the human body. 1 How does he 
 study each detail of the dress and accoutrements of the 
 soldier who watches him as he writes to the Ephesians ! 2 
 How interested he is in the details of the administration 
 of the empire when addressing the Romans! 3 How 
 tenderly does he survey the heathen world at Athens, as 
 " feeling after God " as though on its way to " find Him !" 4 
 Nay, the writers of Pagan Greece, — and, as has been more 
 than once observed, not always those whom, we may think, 
 a Christian would have chosen, — are constantly on his 
 lips, or in his thoughts ; he refers to them when he is 
 preaching at Athens, or writing to Corinth, or even 
 privately exhorting a trusted disciple. 5 In St. Paul's eyes 
 heathenism was not all bad; there was in it much to 
 love and to sympathise with ; it was being prepared for 
 Truth, without having yet reached it; in it, as in the 
 irrational creation at the fall, higher aspirations had 
 been for a while made subject to vanity, not willingly, but 
 in hope ; and before it was extended, not indistinctly, the 
 prospect of a deliverance from this service of corruption 
 into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 6 
 
 "All things to all men !" There were "weak" Christians, 
 as the Apostle gently calls them, who clung to observances, 
 or who entertained scruples which were at variance with the 
 import, freedom, generosity of the Gospel. And of that 
 Gospel, in its unstinted liberty and grace, St. Paul was the 
 jealous and passionate champion. He, if any man, might 
 have been expected to pour contempt upon a worthless 
 scruple — to brand, with the sternest note of disapprobation, 
 the forms, whether of life or of thought, which, however 
 
 1 i Cor. xii. 12-27. Compare Livy, ii. 32 ; Seneca he Ird, ii. 31. This 
 image furnishes the Apostle with his opportunity for unfolding the nature of 
 the Church as the o&na tov XpiffToO. 
 
 - Eph. vi. 14-17. 3 Rom. xiii. 1, 4, 6, 7. * Acts xvii. 27. 
 
 5 Acts xvii. 28 ; 1 Cor. xv. 33 ; Titus i. 12. 0 Rom. viii. 20, 21. 
 
Bishop Samttel Wilberforce. 3 1 7 
 
 unintentionally, did dishonour to the work of the Re- 
 deemer. We know how he could express himself upon 
 occasions when great principles were at stake, as when he 
 told the Galatians sharply that if they were circumcised 
 Christ would profit them nothing. 1 But, as a rule, how 
 tender he is, how full of consideration and charity, how 
 tolerant, how hopeful ! The prejudice against the meat 
 exposed for sale in the Corinthian market was a weakly 
 superstition ; but for himself he would rather eat no flesh 
 whatever while the world lasted, than offend the con- 
 science of a weak brother. 2 The private observance of 
 days, Jewish or other, at Eome, was no part of the 
 Church's rule, and might easily engender Jewish errors ; 
 but the Apostle insists that those who kept these days 
 did so to the Lord, and should be respected in the observ- 
 ance. 3 The strong, he says, with a touch of quiet irony, 
 ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to 
 please themselves. 4 And — to the scandal of some, no 
 doubt, at the time, but for the instruction of the Church 
 of all ages — what he preached he practised. 
 
 We cannot too often remind ourselves that all this was 
 not mere natural sympathy run wild ; it was throughout 
 prompted and controlled by a powerful motive. That 
 motive was not, " That I may be agreeable to all the 
 world," but that " I may by all means save some " — save 
 them from the sin which besets and from the eternal 
 death which awaits them ; save them by bringing them 
 into living communion with the Almighty and Crucified 
 Saviour. Not " all "—that were too much to hope— but 
 " some." God knows who they will be, but the duty 
 of His servant is plain. Thus, while Paul's heart is on 
 fire his reason is cool ; after all this expenditure of 
 feeling and effort he looks for very partial results. But 
 
 1 Gal. v. 2. 2 i Cor. viii. 13. 
 
 3 Rom. xiv. 5, 6. 4 Rom. xv. 1. 
 
3 1 8 Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. 
 
 whether in the Jewish synagogue or on Mars' hill in 
 Athens ; whether among scholars or the unlettered ; 
 whether amidst friends or foes ; whether he stands face 
 to face with multitudes or is pleading with a single soul J 
 — he keeps one purpose steadily before him ; he is what 
 he is — he does what he does — that some at least may 
 know the power of that faithful saying which is ever 
 worthy of all acceptation, that " Christ Jesus came into 
 the world to save sinners." 1 
 
 Mere human sympathy, however strong, wears itself 
 out; it is at least half physical in its nature, and its 
 energy shares the vicissitudes and decay of our bodily 
 frame. One motive only — the love of God — really lasts ; 
 and of the love of God, the love of man, whom God has 
 loved so well as to create and to redeem him, is in reality 
 the consequence and the attestation. 
 
 II. 
 
 The motto of the Apostle might well serve for that of 
 the Church of Christ. Just as the Divine Redeemer, 
 although born of Jewish parentage, and nurtured in a 
 Syrian village, belonged already, by the representative 
 character of His perfect Humanity, to all the world, so 
 that in Him was found exactly and exclusively neither 
 Greek nor Jew, nor barbarian nor Scythian, nor bond nor 
 free ; so was it to be — so in fact it was — with the society 
 which He established upon the earth, in order to represent 
 Him in history. Hardly had the Apostles passed away 
 when the Church was, in a large measure, at home among 
 races and in civilisations the most various and distant. 
 Her missionaries were upon the Euphrates or beyond it ; 
 she was penetrating the southern desert : scarce any city 
 in the Lesser Asia had not become familiar with her 
 
 l i Tim. i. 15. 
 
Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. 3 1 9 
 
 presence ; she was planted in strength upon the Tiber ; 
 she had already her eye, if nothing more, on Gaul and 
 Spain and Britain. Everywhere she learnt the speech, 
 the habits, the social and national temper of her children ; 
 she identified herself, so far as the law of Christ allowed, 
 with the life of the races to which she came. One treasure, 
 indeed, to be guarded at all costs, she brought them ; it 
 had come from heaven. But in all else she was a willing 
 learner — I might say, a faithful domestic. So it was at 
 the first, when the idea of an ecclesiastical absolutism — 
 which, after confiscating the ancient liberties of the Chris- 
 tian Churches, should control the action of kings and 
 governments — had not yet dawned upon the world; when as 
 yet too it was not supposed that a true Christian must per- 
 force dress, talk, and read after the fashion of a particular 
 civilisation, or must uphold a particular political polity, 
 or must be strictly independent of it. To men of many 
 climes and races the Church of Christ appeared in those 
 bright and early days as a perfectly disinterested friend 
 and adviser : she made herself " all things to all " ; not 
 that she might win place, or wealth, or power — though 
 these things came to her in time, and inevitably, from the 
 hands and hearts of her grateful children— but that out 
 of the vast mass of human beings to which she addressed 
 herself she might by all means " save some." 
 
 III. 
 
 My brethren — if we could forget the Apostle's words 
 — there is, here and to-day, one subject, one character, 
 one name, which, next to that of our Lord and Master, 
 has a first place in every heart. This Church, which, 
 although not under his pastoral jurisdiction, was peculiarly 
 controlled by him, and at his disposal; this Church, 
 which, in its older guise, was for so many years and so 
 
320 Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. 
 
 repeatedly the scene of his ministrations ; this Church, 
 which is so near to his honoured grave, and which, in 
 this its reconstruction, is associated with his dear 
 memory, we hope, for ever, obliges us, if nothing else, 
 to think of him. And surely our thoughts will have 
 been already turned towards him by our contemplation 
 of the great Apostle, of whose character, in one significant 
 respect, he was, as it appears to me, so remarkable a 
 reproduction. There were indeed, in St. Paul —not merely 
 as an Apostle, but as a man — many elements which do 
 not suggest themselves to-day. In particular St. Paul 
 was, by business, not merely a pastor and missionary, but 
 a formal theologian. First of all, he had clearly before 
 his mind the idea of a body of certain truth which had 
 come to him from above, and which was in his keeping 
 for others ; and then he set himself to unfold, to recom- 
 mend, to fortify, to define, to ascertain precisely what was 
 meant and what was not meant, — to guard on every side 
 against assaults and misconceptions, to illustrate out of 
 the resources which were supernaturally given him, — 
 this priceless treasure. In this, as it would seem, St. 
 Paul has had, amongst ourselves, others, who, at however 
 vast a distance, have more nearly imitated him. One 
 such, perhaps, beyond any, will be in our minds just now, 
 as he has lately been lost to the Church of Scotland ; for 
 he, like the Apostle, moved with severe accuracy, yet 
 with reverent passion, amid the things of God, and he 
 heightened the natural skill of an accomplished thinker 
 and dialectician by the fervour and intensity of a devoted 
 heart. 1 But he to whom our thoughts turn to-day, 
 although indeed he found time to read, and to learn more 
 than do the majority of students by profession, yet was 
 wont to say of himself that he had to deal not with books, 
 
 i Alexander Penrose Forbes, Bishop of Brechin. He died on Friday, 
 October 8, 1875. 
 
Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. 321 
 
 but with men. Bishop Wilberforce's mind was practical 
 rather than speculative ; he was better able to make the 
 most of concrete and historical fact than to feel his way, 
 with patient and measured hesitation, among the be- 
 wildering heights and passes of abstract truth. And 
 therefore he is nearer the Apostle, not when the latter, 
 as if looking upward, scans the sublime mysteries of 
 Eevelation, but when, looking downwards in the fulness 
 of his compassionate sympathy, he addresses himself as 
 one of themselves to the race of beings whose ignorance 
 and wants the message he bore was destined to relieve. 
 He was peculiarly like St. Paul in the strength, in the 
 tenderness, in the versatility of his humanity — in his 
 power of becoming all things to all men, that he might 
 by all means save some. 
 
 This was, I say, among his many great gifts, the pre- 
 rogative endowment of this most remarkable man — that 
 he could, without effort, and with the readiness and grace 
 of a perfectly natural instinct, identify himself with 
 human beings who agreed in almost nothing except the 
 being human. He was ever ready for intimacy with 
 people of all stations and temperaments : he was courtier 
 and peasant by turns ; the friend of kings and ministers, 
 and the familiar and accustomed inmate of the peni- 
 tentiary or the workhouse. He could approach, with the 
 same resistless persuasiveness, the most cultivated and 
 the roughest of mankind ; and, up to the last year of his 
 life, he could exchange the gravest business of his high 
 office at a moment's notice for a children's game, into 
 which he entered with the natural and unconstrained 
 enjoyment of a child. He was at home with the most 
 religious, and, in a sense, with the least religious of men ; 
 ever aiding and elevating the one, and doing what he 
 could — in fact, doing much — for the other. He was the 
 friend, the trusted, sympathising, intelligent friend, of the 
 x 
 
322 Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. 
 
 studious and the practical, of the enthusiastic and the 
 cautious, of the prosaic and the imaginative, of the light- 
 hearted and the sorrowful; of the young man, whose 
 robust health and untamed spirits vented themselves in 
 boisterous and joyous speech, and of the sick or the dying, 
 treading fearfully amid the shadows which fall along the 
 frontiers of the eternal world. With perfect ease he 
 could pass from scene to scene, from man to man, the 
 most dissimilar, as though, so far from experiencing any 
 strain upon his sympathies, he found positive relief in 
 the sharpest ethical contrasts; and he made each one 
 feel that his sympathy was perfect, so perfect as to seem 
 for the time to preclude the possibility of sympathy in 
 any opposite direction. What he was to those nearest 
 and dearest to him, — how unwearied in his interest, how 
 passionate yet tender in his affections — I must not 
 attempt to say in this presence. But you, my brethren, 
 who have lived in this parish, will remember what he 
 has been in past years among you ; how he came to you 
 as your own pastor ; how, without condescension on his 
 part or effort on yours, you felt at once at home with 
 him ; how he entered with a true human interest into 
 your cares, your occupations, your efforts, your failures ; 
 how from this pulpit he set before you, in all its simple 
 tenderness, the grace and Gospel of our Divine Saviour, 
 and as you listened and looked at him, you knew that in 
 him you had a friend whom you could trust so to guide 
 you through things temporal that you should finally lose 
 not the things eternal. And when he left you, it was 
 probably to appear before his own University, where the 
 ripe learning and the choicest youth of England hung 
 upon his lips ; where, if he could not command universal 
 assent — that, in a very chaos of disintegrated convictions, 
 was, alas ! impossible — yet his eloquent and intrepid 
 voice could never be heard, even by the least friendly 
 
Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. 
 
 323 
 
 hearers, without imposing or rather exacting attention 
 and respect, when indeed it did not, as it often did, achieve 
 so much beyond. And then, perhaps, within twenty-four 
 hours, he would be found in the national Senate, swaying 
 by his speech that most unsympathetic and frigid of 
 audiences, and holding his own amid veteran politicians, 
 as if he had been a statesman all his life ; or at some 
 social gathering, where his brilliant powers of conversa- 
 tion, and the incomparable grace which he could throw 
 into all the minutest details of intercourse, made men 
 think for a moment that he only lived for the entertain- 
 ment of good society. And then, as if to show what all 
 along had been his governing motive, he would suddenly 
 pass to some home of strict Christian devotion, tenanted 
 by those who knew nothing of the outer world, and who, 
 as having given up all for Clod, spent their whole time in 
 works of mercy and of prayer; and here, — in this rare 
 spiritual atmosphere, — nothing was strange to him, and 
 he could breathe it and express it so joyously and per- 
 fectly that, as a Sister of Mercy once exclaimed, after 
 hearing him preach on the joys, and risks, and enthusiasms, 
 and depressions of a consecrated life — " You would think 
 that he had been himself a Sister for at least thirty 
 years." 
 
 This astonishing social and mental versatility, this 
 combined flexibility of heart and head, so entirely beyond 
 the reach and even the comprehension of ordinary men, 
 could not but expose him to misconstruction. Too often 
 in matters of character men judge hardly what they 
 cannot understand from a personal experience. And so 
 it came to pass that the question was seriously raised 
 whether this great servant of Christ was not, after all, 
 merely a worldling, who used Church language, Church 
 occasions, even Church ordinances, as instruments to 
 promote and subserve a selfish, social triumph. It is 
 
324 Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. 
 
 hard, but it is necessary to mention, that we may brand, 
 as it deserves, the foolish and odious charge not seldom 
 made against him, as indeed against St. Paul — the charge 
 of insincerity. How could he really mean this universal 
 sympathy, men have asked, with persons, and classes, 
 and characters so dissimilar ? How could he rightly be 
 thus the country pastor, the academical preacher, the 
 far-sighted statesman, the favourite of all that is brilliant 
 and fastidious in society, the wise spiritual guide of 
 devoted souls, the ruler of the Church, and the sym- 
 pathising friend of every class of Churchmen, so perfectly 
 and all at once ? How could he truly love truth himself, 
 whilst he lavished such care on those who doubted or 
 rejected it ? how could he thus, without wrongdoing, 
 essay to combine the incompatible ? to ignore thus 
 audaciously the moral and intellectual chasms which part 
 men asunder in this modern world ? Was he not, though 
 he sat in the chair of the Apostles, only after all a con- 
 summate actor, who could, in matters of practice, assume 
 any character at will, and who, in matters of specula- 
 tion, while professing loyalty to absolute truth, really 
 strengthened the impression, that the most cultivated and 
 subtle minds of our day know that nothing beyond the 
 field of sensible experience is ascertainably true, and 
 make the best of the whirl of contradictory opinions 
 which surrounds them, by being intellectually civil to 
 everybody ? 
 
 It may be said that this estimate of him, however 
 unwarranted by facts, was, in intention, honest. Honest 
 it may have been, as the hard judgments of contracted 
 sympathies, and dull and sluggish feelings, and a very 
 narrow field of thought and observation, are wont to be 
 honest. Men who themselves love only with a very tepid 
 affection, when they love at all, and who can only con- 
 centrate affection on a single object at the price of denying 
 
Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. 325 
 
 it to others, or of viewing others with active dislike ; men 
 who cannot understand that it is possible to be sincerely 
 loyal to truth, and yet generous in the estimate and 
 treatment of its opponents ; — tbese had before them, in 
 the language and action of Bishop Wilberforce, an 
 inexplicable problem. In their eyes he was a standing 
 paradox. And as they were unwilling to think that he 
 was wholly beyond the scope of their moral comprehension, 
 they explained him, as narrow natures will, by asking 
 instinctively what, in his circumstances, would too pro- 
 bably have been true about themselves. 
 
 Thus, indeed, it had fared eighteen centuries before 
 with St. Paul. The gossips of Corinth or of Ancyra had 
 anticipated the ill-nature of some among ourselves in this 
 nineteenth century. St. Paul, also, it seems, had too 
 large a heart to be always understood ; and so it was 
 suggested that his work was tainted throughout by a 
 selfish aim ; that he sought not men, but what he could 
 get from them ; that, " being crafty, he caught them with 
 guile." 1 It is the penalty, or rather it is the distinction, 
 of moral genius to be thus misunderstood ; thus to be 
 credited with that which it abhors ; thus to be painted, 
 though on the very steps of the throne of Christ, in the 
 likeness of the enemy. 
 
 Did not He Himself, our adorable Master, forewarn us 
 that it would be so ; and was this warning meant to hold 
 good only of the first age of His Church, as though after 
 that human nature would all of a sudden change funda- 
 mentally, and unwelcome truth would always command 
 the welcome of generous or ungenerous hearts ? 
 
 For what is it that at once provokes these criticisms, 
 while it is at the same time the warrant of their injustice? 
 What is it but the strong, simple motive which in such a 
 man underlies the varieties of the outward life ; what but 
 
 1 2 Cor. xii. 16. 
 
3 26 
 
 Bishop Samziel Wilberforce. 
 
 the stern determination by all means to save some, to 
 bring, at whatever cost, some souls for pardon and peace 
 to the feet of the Crucified ? Criticism of this kind does 
 not waste itself upon the inert respectability which dreams 
 of nothing less than a serious effort for God and for right- 
 eousness ; and, if Bishop Wilberforce had been less like 
 the Apostle in his unresting work for souls, he would 
 have escaped, we may be sure, the calumnies which he 
 has shared with Christ's earlier and greater servant. The 
 stupidity — to use no harsher term — of these criticisms 
 was in reality most apparent to those who knew him best. 
 Certainly he did not always say or leave unsaid that 
 which some of us, looking at portions of truth from a 
 somewhat different standpoint, could more than once have 
 desired. But he was often credited with opinions which 
 he did not really hold ; he was charged with disloyalty to 
 beliefs which those who knew him knew he did not 
 share. Certainly, he may at times have felt the moral 
 pressure of a personal sympathy more strongly than the 
 intellectual pressure of an abstract principle ; he may, on 
 some occasion, have faltered in the actual maintenance of 
 truth ; at least, he would not now wish me to say that 
 this was impossible. But that he ever consciously 
 betrayed it, who that knew him can imagine? He 
 need not have shrunk, I firmly believe, from the Apostle's 
 words : " Our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our own 
 conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not 
 with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have 
 had our conversation in the world." 1 Take his life and 
 work as a whole, and let me dare to say, in virtue of the 
 long friendship with which he honoured me, that it was 
 penetrated throughout by sincerity of purpose. Yes ; if 
 any man, he was sincere : sincere in his assertions ; sincere 
 in his hesitations ; sincere in his negations : sincere in his 
 
 1 2 Cor. i. 12. 
 
Bishop Samtcel Wilberforce. 
 
 327 
 
 belief that much which seemed to be contradictory might 
 ultimately be reconciled, and that men were often on two 
 sides of a hedge, while they thought themselves on 
 different continents ; sincere when he seemed to be in- 
 consistent or exaggerated ; sincere too in the trivialities 
 of intercourse as in the great resolves and concerns of 
 life. Like the Apostle, he was " a deceiver, and yet 
 true." 1 An insincere man would have been less careless 
 of appearances, less ready to expose himself again and 
 again to hostile criticism for the sake of doing a kind- 
 ness ; but he, — as strong men will, — knew that he could 
 dare to be misunderstood, since God and time would 
 correct the misunderstanding. 
 
 One consideration indeed there is which of itself should 
 enable all thinking and fair-minded persons to do justice 
 to the disinterestedness .of his character. High as was 
 the position which he held at the time of his death, it 
 was not that which the earlier opinion of his countrymen, 
 or his vast practical abilities, or the unexampled scale and 
 character of his public services, had long marked out for 
 him. By common acknowledgment the natural chief of 
 the English clergy, a man who maintained his ascend- 
 ency among his fellows with that careless ease which 
 forbids the thought of rivalry, he must have known, nay, 
 he knew, that he would have been carried by the popular 
 voice to one of the two historic seats of honour and 
 authority in the English Church, if he would only have 
 consented to make popular prejudice the measure of his 
 utterances. If he could have brought himself — they were 
 nearly his own words — to ignore the spiritual character 
 of the English Church ; to treat her practically as a State 
 department; to appeal to Acts of Parliament for her 
 highest claims upon the conscience of the English people ; 
 if he could have sincerely echoed those popular deprecia- 
 
 1 2 Cor. vi. 8. 
 
328 Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. 
 
 tions of the Christian Sacraments, which make them the 
 barren and graceless symbols of an absent and shadowy 
 Christ; — the higher ecclesiastical honours could not, in 
 the nature of things, have been withheld. Not that I 
 would be understood for a moment to imply that others 
 have consented to that which he refused. But, in his 
 case, popular errors would have exacted pledges and 
 conditions which others may have been spared, and which 
 he could not have given without moral loss. And full 
 well he knew that these matters are ordered by the 
 Church's invisible Head ; that His decisions must be 
 really best ; that such earthly rewards, if they are 
 rewards, are not what a Christian should desire. 1 Assur- 
 edly happy is he now in that world where all is true, 
 that he put from him the temptation to which many a 
 man, conscious of his vast abilities, might so easily have 
 yielded ; put it from him so decidedly, that only when 
 life's evening was closing in upon him, and his strength 
 was failing, and the end was near — how near we little 
 thought — was there any, and that but a slight, as it was 
 an unsought, recognition of his altogether unrivalled 
 services as a Bishop, to the Church of Christ in England. 
 
 Yes ! Two years and a quarter have passed since his 
 removal from among us — since that tragic moment on a 
 summer afternoon, when, without warning, he passed from 
 the very dust and turmoil of busy human life into the 
 silence of eternity. Two years and a quarter ; and even 
 yet it seems but yesterday. The flowers have long since 
 grown on his grave ; but his place in memory — the vast 
 blank which he has left in the heart and thought of the 
 Church — is still what it was on the morrow of his death. 
 Nay rather, as we do justice to the real height of a lofty 
 mountain when we are no longer in contact with it at its 
 base, but have left it in the distance, and survey it across 
 
 1 St. Matt. vi. 2, 5. 
 
Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. 329 
 
 a larger and larger foreground of vales and hills, so is it 
 with a really great character. We see our late Bishop 
 more nearly in his true proportions, as we gradually leave 
 him in the distance of history ; we have slowly learnt to 
 do him justice, when we find that even now his real place 
 in the Church of England is still unfilled. It is not that 
 the Holy and Eternal Spirit, Who made this great and 
 gifted man what he was to all of us, cannot raise up and 
 fashion new instruments for that Divine work, which 
 belongs to no one generation, or set of circumstances, or 
 type of character. But it would seem as if, all through 
 Church history, God was purposely sparing of these more 
 magnificent creations. A really great prelate — it was the 
 remark of a German historian — is of rare occurrence in 
 the history of the Church of Christ. So high is the true 
 ideal of that august office, so exacting are its require- 
 ments, so much does it demand of the loftiest qualities 
 which are supplied from earth and of the choicest graces 
 which are sent down from heaven, that even in earlier 
 and better times than these a great bishop was accounted 
 a signal token of God's favour. And, like other blessings, 
 so this is barely recognised at the time ; it is taken as a 
 matter of course, or it is depreciated : we only do it 
 justice when it is withdrawn. Certainly we have learnt, 
 in his absence, whom and what we have lost. How many 
 a mourner, how many a doubter, how many a struggling, 
 perplexed, bewildered man, has sadly felt, that the one 
 friend who could and would have brought sympathy and 
 relief is no longer in sight ! And amid the public events 
 which have passed since his death, and which are as yet 
 scarcely history, how have thousands of hearts turned 
 back in memory to one who would have done so much ; 
 who would have prevented so much ; who would have 
 understood and explained motives, and repressed extrava- 
 gances, and soothed irritations ; who would surely, amid 
 
33Q 
 
 Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. 
 
 the wild tumult of an irrational panic, have raised his 
 voice on behalf of charity and justice ; who would have 
 bridged over chasms and healed wounds which even yet 
 bode no good for the peace and wellbeing of the Church 
 of England ; who in his own person, and by the magic 
 power of that grace and charity and humanity which God 
 had given him, would have done much to turn the hearts 
 of the children to the fathers, and of the fathers to the 
 children, wherever they have been or are unhappily 
 estranged ! 
 
 But it is neither wise in itself, nor loyal to his great 
 memory, to dream away what remains of life in longings 
 for the impossible. Rather let us endeavour to-day to 
 make our own — not indeed all that he has to teach us — 
 that were far from practicable — but the single and most 
 important lesson which the text suggests. To become, as 
 nearly as may be, all things to all men from a purely 
 unselfish motive is to make a great step in Christian 
 practice. Honesty of purpose is not necessarily un- 
 sympathetic and repellent; nor has lack of sympathy, 
 felt and owned, any special title to the praise of Christ. 
 Never, perhaps, was the grace so conspicuously illustrated, 
 first by the Apostle and then by our late revered Father 
 in God, more urgently needed in members and ministers 
 of the English Church than now; — when she has so much 
 reason both for fear and for hope : when she is pressed so 
 sorely by Ultramontane propagandism on that side, and 
 by dark negations of all fundamental truth, theistic not 
 less than Christian, on this ; when within her there are so 
 many and such various elements of interest and anxiety, 
 which it is so easy to alienate irrevocably, so all- 
 important to conciliate and combine, if it may be, 
 into a new and vigorous unity. And be we what or 
 where we may, grace and courtesy of speech and manner, 
 tenderness and consideration for others, the becoming all 
 
Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. 
 
 33i 
 
 things to them — even to their prejudices and weaknesses 
 — short of sin, is a debt which we owe to our fellow- 
 creatures ; and it should be paid, not out of a stock of 
 blind though kindly impulse, or at the chance suggestions 
 of an easy temper, but with a view, if possible, to do them 
 in time the highest of all possible services. For such a 
 habit is the salt of human society ; it is the enrichment 
 and bloom of the individual Christian life ; nay, it is the 
 fruit of intimate personal knowledge of and contact with 
 that Living Saviour, Who opens His arms and His heart 
 to the whole human family, and Whose love reflects 
 itself in the lives and conduct and speech of those who 
 live with Him and for Him. God grant that this 
 occasion may be fruitful in something better and more 
 enduring than the deep and strong feelings which are 
 inevitably called forth by it ; that it may leave an impress 
 of unselfish and active charity upon our lives, and may 
 be looked back to with thankfulness by each one of us 
 from his place in the eternal world ! 
 
SERMON XIII. 
 
 JOHN KEBLE. 1 
 
 Col. iii. io. 
 
 The new man, which is renewed unto knowledge, after the image of 
 Him That created him. 
 
 THE day which is now drawing to its close, and the 
 incidents of which will not be soon forgotten by 
 those who have taken part in them, has had a double 
 significance. It is almost the second birthday of an 
 institution which must interest all who care for education, 
 as being an experiment at once bold and successful. 
 Founded at a critical moment in the history of the 
 University, and, as was felt at the time, on the eve of 
 changes of momentous importance, this College has, hy 
 God's kindly providence, rapidly attained a position of 
 usefulness which exceeds the most sanguine hopes that 
 prompted its foundation. The devoted industry, the fore- 
 sight, the high administrative genius which have been 
 placed at its service, are, within these walls, matters 
 rather for thankful remembrance than for eulogy ; but to 
 such qualities as these it is immediately due that less than 
 ten short years have sufficed to convert a timid suggestion 
 upon note-paper into one of the largest and most vigorous 
 of the colleges of Oxford. And when we look around us 
 at this chapel — the crown and flower of the surrounding 
 buildings — we may also thank God for not having denied 
 
 1 Preached at Keble College, Oxford, on occasion of the opening of the 
 Chape] and laying the foundation-stone of the Hall and Library on the Feast 
 of St. Mark, April 25, 1876. 
 
 332 
 
John Keble. 
 
 333 
 
 to our generation either the impulse to a splendid muni- 
 ficence, or the reverential instincts of sacred art, when 
 endeavouring to set forth, however faintly through 
 material things, the supersensuous realities, or the desire 
 to make whatever He has given — whether it be wealth or 
 genius— promote His glory. "Blessed are they which 
 love thee, 0 Jerusalem, for they shall rejoice in thy peace ; 
 blessed are they which have been sorrowful for all thy 
 scourges, for they shall rejoice for thee when they have 
 seen all thy glory, and shall be glad for ever. . . . For 
 Jerusalem shall be built up with sapphires and emeralds 
 and precious stones ; thy walls and towers and battlements 
 with pure gold ; and the streets of Jerusalem shall be 
 paved with beryl, and carbuncle, and stones of Ophir ; and 
 all her streets shall say Alleluia, and they shall praise Him, 
 saying, Blessed be God, Which hath extolled it for ever." 1 
 But to this aspect of the occasion justice has already 
 been done ; while in the years to come it will naturally 
 command an increasing share of interest. And, as has 
 been already intimated, the day has another meaning — a 
 meaning which will be hereafter insisted on at a compara- 
 tive disadvantage. The time cannot be very far distant 
 when all those who have known the gifted and saintly 
 man whose name has conferred such lustre and sanction 
 upon this college will have gone to their account. And 
 criticism of the dead past, however acute it be, and how- 
 ever furnished with the necessary material, yields a poor 
 substitute for that incommunicable freshness of impression 
 which actual contact with a living man alone can give. 
 Let us, then, endeavour once more to-day to place ourselves 
 in the company of the dear and honoured servant of 
 Christ, whose life and work has inspired the idea and 
 urged forward the completion of this foundation, as an 
 acknowledgment of the gratitude which is due to 
 
 1 Tobit xiii. 14, 16-18. 
 
334 
 
 John Keble. 
 
 Almighty God for all that is best and most invigorating 
 in a noble model of the Christian life. 
 
 And here, lest we should lose our way in so wide a 
 subject, the Apostle comes to our assistance in the text 
 with a particular suggestion. He is speaking of the New 
 or Ideal Man — realised perfectly in our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 and imperfectly, although, so far as it goes, truly, by each 
 of His servants. This new humanity comprises every 
 department of human nature ; for its Divine Author 
 makes all things new. A new heart, a will free because 
 regenerate, an illuminated and sensitive conscience, the 
 passions controlled by will, and the will controlled by 
 conscience, and conscience enlightened by the Holy 
 Spirit; — this is its meaning. Of this complete renewal 
 the germinal force is given in baptism, whether baptismal 
 grace be developed in accordance with God's Will, or 
 checked and lost by unfaithfulness or sin. And of this 
 New Man, " created in righteousness and true holiness," a 
 renovated intellect is not the least important feature. 
 Although the moral side of human nature, the passions, 
 the heart, the will, gain most conspicuously through the 
 re-creative power of the grace of Christ, because they 
 exhibit the ravages of sin most glaringly ; yet the intellect 
 is too closely associated with moral character not to be 
 largely affected by it for good and evil. Doubtless, there 
 have been bad meu of the highest ability, and saintly 
 men of no ability at all ; but at least in dealing with one, 
 and that the highest, class of subjects, this absolute 
 dualism of the two departments of the soul is impossible. 
 In this sphere of attainments, general intellectual dulness 
 is no bar to quick spiritual penetration ; and the acutest of 
 intellects may be fatally blinded by a bad or perverse heart. 
 
 "Eenewed unto knowledge," says the Apostle — 
 ava/caivovfievcx; ek iTriyvacnv — in process of being so 
 renewed as to enter upon a higher knowledge than that to 
 
John Keble. 
 
 335 
 
 which uuregenerate nature could attain. " Benewed," he 
 says elsewhere, "in the spirit of your minds"; 1 and once 
 again, " Be ye transformed by the renewal of your minds." 2 
 Whether it be the intuitive faculty, or the practical 
 intelligence, or intermediate powers and functions of mind, 
 it is mental renovation on a large scale that St. Baul is 
 contemplating. Such renovation is an integral portion of 
 the renewal of human nature through union with the New 
 Manhood of the Divine Bedeemer ; and a striking illus- 
 tration of its reality and of its far-reachingness is afforded 
 by him who is the subject of our thoughts to-day. 
 
 For there are three characters under which the remark- 
 able man whose name is identified with this College may 
 be considered. He was a poet ; he was a man of eminent 
 goodness ; and he was a great Christian thinker and theo- 
 logian. Of these characters the first has mainly riveted 
 the attention of the world. The name of the author of 
 The Christian Year is known to thousands who know 
 nothing, whatever they may infer, about his life and 
 character. And a scarcely smaller number who are aware 
 that he was a man of singular purity and simplicity of 
 life have no idea that his intellect was one of unusual 
 strength and beauty, and that he wielded decisive influence 
 at a crisis pregnant with consequences to the religious 
 future of his country. " The poet Keble ! " The phrase is 
 used, often indeed as a title of honour, but sometimes also 
 to imply that he was only a maker of religious verses, and 
 not properly a leader or guide of men. It is meant to sug- 
 gest that, while the fitful and turbid stream of passion 
 and thought which we term modern life was rolling 
 impetuously onwards, he sat pensive but helpless on the 
 brink of the torrent, and warbled soft strains of mournful 
 half-intelligible song which could not even catch the ear 
 of those who were battling with the angry waters. It is 
 
 1 Eph. iv. 23. - Rom. xii. 2. 
 
336 
 
 John Keble. 
 
 with a view to correcting this impression that I shall say 
 what little I have to say this evening. His poetry already 
 belongs to the literature of the country ; and it has been 
 criticised, and will be criticised yet, by those who may 
 rightly venture upon the task. Of his daily life the 
 governing feature which illuminated all else, and in which 
 all else found its centre and its harmony, has been 
 unveiled to you this morning by one who speaks on such 
 a subject with a higher authority than any other living 
 man. It will not be wrong, in a place of mental as well 
 as moral training which bears his name, to direct attention 
 to the characteristics of his mind, especially as his mind 
 flashes through his poetry, and is shaped by and insepara- 
 ble from the elevation of his moral nature. 
 
 And here let it be said once for all that in such a 
 matter as character, whether mental or moral, the eye of 
 an observer will embrace only a part of the whole, 
 probably a very small part ; and that he reports what he 
 sees, not as it is in itself, but only as it appears to him. 
 Yet, on the other hand, in the case of a beautiful and 
 highly endowed soul, each one of us perhaps recognises 
 something which others might miss ; and each may there- 
 fore hope, in spite of inevitable one-sidedness and imper- 
 fection, to contribute towards a final estimate some feature 
 or detail that may be worth remembering. 
 
 L 
 
 Of Mr. Keble's mind, then, the inspiring, controlling, 
 penetrating principle was a sense of truth— a sense so 
 keen-sighted and imperious, yet withal so delicate and 
 tender, as to form a -pecinc variety of what may be 
 thought a commonplace excellence in honest men. And 
 such a sense of truth, as is plain from the context, 1 was 
 the governing quality of that new intellectual man whom 
 
 Col. iii. 9. 
 
John Keble. 
 
 337 
 
 St. Paul describes in the text. Certainly, the noble 
 passion for truth, the passion which would woo and win 
 her, though it were through toil and suffering, is not so 
 exclusively a Christian excellence that it is undiscoverable 
 elsewhere. Greeks could desire to perish in the light; 
 and the records of Eastern mysticism, associated though 
 they are with odious and grotesque idolatries, describe 
 some of the noblest efforts and aspirations of the human 
 soul. The love of truth is, indeed, part of the outfit of 
 every noble nature : its inspiring and purifying force can- 
 not but be recognised in some of our day, who, alas ! sit 
 loosely to the creed of the Church of Christ, or are bitterly 
 hostile to it. Admitting, or rather premising this, let us, 
 on the other hand, observe that, in its higher and more 
 delicate forms, the love of truth is of Christian growth. 
 It ranks with charity and purity among the fairest flowers 
 which grow on the Tree of the Cross. By His revelation 
 of Himself our Lord brought the human mind into direct 
 contact with the highest and absolute truth; and this 
 contact had the effect of awaking in it new faculties, 
 almost a new sense of loyalty to truth, just as the sight 
 of a great masterpiece endows the young artist with a new 
 world of ideas as to the power and demands of art. 
 With his sense and love of truth as such, the Christian 
 received from Christ a capacity for working, daring, and 
 enduring much on truth's behalf; a capacity which, in its 
 intensity and range, was a new thing among men. Not 
 merely old and thoughtful men, but weak women, slaves, 
 and boys, caught the heavenly and ennobling flame, from 
 the fire which Christ came to kindle ; and by their lives, 
 their works, and their deaths they illustrated the power 
 of the Divine words, " To this end was I born, and for this 
 cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness 
 unto the truth." 1 If any man ever shared the spirit of 
 
 1 St. John xviii. 37. 
 
338 
 
 John Keble. 
 
 this noble company, it was the author of T/ie Christian 
 Year. 
 
 It is no objection to this feature of his character that 
 he was a poet. Poets, it has been said, avail themselves 
 of the services of a slave who is wont to get the better of 
 them, and who is named Imagination; and there have 
 been and are poets enough of whom this is true. But it 
 is not necessary that poetry should be hostile to truth, or 
 other than one of the most effective of its exponents ; 
 some of the truest poetry that ever was uttered was 
 uttered at the bidding of a burning sense of truth, and 
 owes its lasting power to the circumstances of its origin. 
 Everything will of course depend upon the particular 
 work and range of activity which is assigned to imagina- 
 tion ; and in the case of a Christian this will be decided, 
 not by the impetus of passion, or the supposed exigencies 
 of art, but, like other matters, by conscience. Imagina- 
 tion may invent that which is known to have no basis in 
 fact, or to be contrary to fact; but it may also place 
 itself under the guidance of fact, and recover or fill up 
 more or less successfully the minor features of an outline 
 which already exists. The cultivation and employment 
 of what is termed the " historical imagination " is held, 
 when it is under sufficient safeguards, to be ancillary and 
 not antagonistic to truth. Even physical science — I do 
 not here say how prudently or otherwise — has claimed 
 the services of imagination, to anticipate its triumphs, to 
 fill up the gaps which yawn between its successive dis- 
 coveries, or, — more doubtfully, — to elaborate the theories 
 which it constructs from time to time about the origin 
 and object of the universe. Beligious poetry, then, if it 
 is to be worthy of its name, must enlist imagination in 
 the service of fact ; poetry, like that of the Paradise lost, 
 has indeed other titles to admiration which are not here 
 in question ; but the invention of a new Satan and a new 
 
John Keble. 
 
 339 
 
 Christ prevents a Christian from regarding it as religious 
 poetry. In religious poetry, properly so called, imagina- 
 tion never lets go its hold upon the hand of truth. 
 
 With the author of The Christian Year, it may safely 
 be affirmed, the creative instincts of the imagination were 
 never consciously indulged at the expense of truth. To 
 him revealed truth was too serious a reality to be obscured 
 or contravened, on any occasion or for any purpose what- 
 ever. Certainly he allowed a chastened fancy to play 
 around his creed ; he brought, as few could bring, the 
 whole play and activity of awe, wonder, eager desire, 
 rapture, fear, into contact with the divine realities ; he did 
 not shrink from filling up the canvas — as in those exquisite 
 lines on the compassion of the mother of our Lord for the 
 mother of Judas in the Lyra Innocentmm 1 — where Holy 
 Scripture, however distantly, had pointed the way. But 
 he never resembled the artist who sacrificed the brightness 
 of his soul to the exigencies of his craft ; he was not first 
 a son of poetry and then of truth ; he was first a son of 
 truth, and then, or perhaps therefore, a son of poetry. 
 
 Still less is this governing feature of his mind inconsis- 
 tent with the fact that he was a sincere believer in all the 
 truths of the Christian Eevelation, as understood by the 
 ancient and undivided Church of Christ. It is sometimes 
 hinted that a man with a large, fixed, and exacting creed 
 cannot really love truth, subjective truth, as such ; that 
 being committed to one view of things, he is of necessity 
 debarred from inquiries which a love of truth is always 
 prosecuting in all directions. At least such a man, it is 
 said, can never think his creed out ; he can never examine 
 his premises ; he can never do more than arrange and 
 rearrange details which flow from a source which he 
 treats as beyond discussion. Any one who knew Mr. 
 Keble at all intimately would know that this view of 
 
 1 Lyr. Inn. ii. 13, "Judas' Infancy." 
 
34Q 
 
 John Keble. 
 
 religious men was to him at least inapplicable. That he 
 held his faith with sensitive and jealous tenacity it is 
 unnecessary to say ; he held it, not as his own opinion, 
 but as God's truth. But although it was in the main 
 hereditary, at least in respect of its principles and outline, 
 he was always inquiring, learning, supplementing, correct- 
 ing ; he was continually tracing the first principles of his 
 faith back to those facts of history or facts of moral 
 consciousness to which they appeal ; and he was con- 
 stantly, to use his own expression, examining his major 
 premises to see what they really did involve. Thus, 
 without any change of principle, he wrote at one period 
 of his life his poem on Gunpowder Treason, and, at a 
 later, his treatise on Eucharistical Adoration. " I have 
 learnt to see," he said, " what Scripture, explained by 
 Christian antiquity, really meant." Certainly, he was as 
 alive as the youngest of us can be to objections which 
 might be urged against his faith ; in former years he had 
 breathed an atmosphere of discussion at Oriel, where 
 nothing that passed was likely to have escaped him. 
 Whatever sorrow he might feel on account of those who 
 yielded to the pressure of modern negative systems, these 
 systems, so far as I know, never seemed to take him by 
 surprise, whether on the score of their audacity or their 
 ingenuity. He had maturely traversed and explored the 
 ground ; he had surveyed his faith in detail, and had 
 already made up his mind as to the force of theories that 
 were urged against it. This side of his intellect came as 
 a surprise upon a young man who only knew him as a 
 poet or a devotional writer, and who, perhaps, thought 
 that the current criticisms on the evidences or subject- 
 matter of revealed religion or parts of it, in the Univer- 
 sities or elsewhere, belonged to a more modern world than 
 his. Utterly as his moral nature shrank from conclusions 
 which imperilled faith, he could measure the depths of 
 
John Keble. 
 
 34i 
 
 the abyss as accurately and as coolly as most men ; and 
 could, to save a friend, venture as chivalrously near the 
 brink. But, in this class of questions, the truthfulness of 
 his mental character was especially observable. You felt 
 it in his hesitations ; — the product, as they were, of his 
 far-sightedness, already anticipating and answering an 
 objection to that which he was about to say, and weighing 
 out to himself the exact value of the answer. You felt it 
 in the concessions which he would make quite abruptly 
 to the side against which he was arguing, with a full con- 
 viction of the damage he was doing to his own conclusion. 
 His sudden reservations, dictated by a fear that he might 
 have said more than his knowledge of a subject warranted, 
 or that he might have said less than truth required ; his 
 tender but resistless expostulations with those who seemed 
 to be playing with arguments instead of using them 
 seriously ; his frequent protestations of inability to grasp 
 a given subject — as pathetically sincere as they were 
 really unnecessary — all belonged to this great feature of 
 his mental character. For the attainment or expression 
 of truth, no amount of trouble seemed to him to be 
 superfluous. Travellers in Palestine 1 have remarked the 
 accuracy of the references to the flora and natural features 
 of the country which are found in The Christian Year : the 
 author had never been out of Europe in his life. And when 
 he was an old man, and had nearly written his last book 2 
 — " I find," he said, " that I must write a great part over 
 again, as it does not express exactly what I meant to say." 
 
 It was not an imaginative temper or warm friendships, 
 but this same imperious sense of truth, that determined 
 his relation to the great religious movement which dates 
 from the year 1833, and from Oxford. That movement 
 would never have been what it has been, and is, had it 
 
 1 Stanley's Sinai and Palestine, \>. 19, note. 
 - Kucharistical Adoration. 
 
342 
 
 John Keble. 
 
 been only, or chiefly, an enthusiasm for art, or for antiquity, 
 or for ceremonial. The real spirit of that movement was 
 an appeal to reality ; it was based on a sense of truth. 
 The indifference and torpor of the eighteenth century had 
 been in part, but only in part, counteracted by the one- 
 sided religious revival which succeeded it; for this 
 revival, while stimulating the consciousness of personal 
 sin, and dwelling with praiseworthy earnestness on our 
 Lord's Atonement and the work of the Holy Spirit in the 
 Christian's heart, knew little of the real value of the 
 Christian Sacraments, or of the divinely ordered struc- 
 ture of the Christian Church, or indeed of the social 
 and objective, as distinct from the purely subjective 
 and individual aspects of Christianity. Yet the hier- 
 archical fabric of the Church of England, and the public 
 language of its formularies, and the traditional appeal of 
 its greatest divines to that Christian antiquity which 
 alone could justify them in the block, still remained. 
 The venerable words of the Ordinal and the Sacramental 
 services remained, but on the lips of a generation which 
 to a very serious extent, ignored or rejected their natural 
 meaning. In 1833 the questions for sincere minds were 
 such as these : — Ought such institutions as the Episcopate 
 to be swept away in order to promote unity among 
 Protestants, or for the sake of economy ? Are the 
 ordinances of the Church really necessary, or are they 
 only matters of antiquarian interest ? Should the doctrine 
 and forms of our Sacraments be assimilated to those of 
 the Protestant sects ? Or can a satisfactory account be 
 given of these things which would address itself to 
 religious minds, as distinct from the minds of statesmen, 
 anxious only to guard the rights of property and the 
 historical institutions of the country ? We know what 
 answer was given to these questions by the Oxford 
 Movement, which, in fact, as Mr. Keble thought, appealed 
 
John Keble. 
 
 343 
 
 to the only principles on which the Church of England, 
 as now constituted, has any religious right to exist at all. 
 If the leaders of the movement appealed to the authority 
 of that Primitive Church, which had, as a matter of fact, 
 decided no less serious a question than what was and 
 what was not canonical Scripture ; if they insisted upon 
 the reality of sacramental grace, and upon the Divine 
 authority of the Episcopate ; it was, in the first instance, 
 because they believed that an honest recognition of the 
 real frontier and contents of the Christian Revelation, 
 and of the conditions under which it had been given to 
 the world, obliged them to do so. But secondly, and as 
 it were incidentally, they felt that they were doing a 
 good work for the Church of England. The days were 
 passing, or had already gone, when sincere and religious 
 minds could suppose that difficulties about the system or 
 language of a Christian Church could be silenced at the 
 mere instance of the State. If loyalty to Church in- 
 stitutions and ordinances was to continue, it must rest 
 on some deeper ground than this ; and when the Oxford 
 leaders pointed to the Apostles and Fathers of undivided 
 Christendom, they were kindling a new enthusiasm for 
 the ecclesiastical structure and for the distinctive sacra- 
 mental teaching of the Church of England. 
 
 Into this vivid appeal to the true area and character of 
 the primitive Christian creed Mr. Keble threw himself 
 heart and soul. The new warmth, the fervour, the un- 
 worldliness, the enterprise, the poetry of the Movement, 
 its firm attitude towards history, its nascent relations 
 to philosophy — these had their charm for him ; and 
 " especially, " as he once said, " the power of feeling at 
 home in the whole Bible, if a man would; instead of 
 being afraid, in his heart, of what some parts of it miyht 
 be found to sanction if interpreted fairly, and so keeping 
 timidly to a narrow interpretation of portions of some two 
 
344 
 
 John Keble. 
 
 or three of the Epistles, and practically ignoring the rest." 
 For Mr. Keble the Christian creed was a living whole ; 
 it was not, he held, really possible for any thoughtful 
 man to deny as much as he liked and retain faith in the 
 rest at will, " I cannot understand," he once said, "how 
 good and thoughtful people can employ arguments 
 against sacramental grace which are serviceable, mutatis 
 mutandis, against truths which they hold as truly as we 
 do ; the Atonement, for instance, or the Personality of the 
 Holy Ghost." The Oxford Movement was a protest 
 against this inconsistency; and in this way too it 
 recommended itself to Mr. Keble's sense of truth. 
 
 This Movement was in different degrees under the 
 influence of several gifted men, who enjoyed no chartered 
 immunity from error and exaggeration, and who would 
 have been the first to own that they too might make 
 mistakes. But its results might have been different had 
 it been welcomed intelligently and generously in quarters 
 where such welcome might have been anticipated. As it 
 was, when defections to Borne clouded the fair prospects 
 of its earlier years, Mr. Keble's sense of truth again 
 determined the direction of his life. Like others, indeed, 
 at that tragic " parting of friends," he strained his eyes, 
 filled as they were with tears, across the frontier which 
 others were passing ; but he never thought of following. 
 Between him and Borne there was the old barrier of 
 Scripture as interpreted by antiquity — scanned now more 
 jealously, more closely than ever, by his governing sense 
 of truth, — by his clear, unwavering sense of the original 
 conditions under which the Christian revelation had been 
 given to mankind. 
 
 II. 
 
 With this love of truth we may connect some other 
 marked characteristics. 
 
John Keble. 
 
 345 
 
 I. Of t.hese, one was his estimate of the value of a 
 moral argument. The perception of the value of arguments 
 of this kind is in reality a refined form of the sense of 
 truth. It contrasts with the coarser habits of mind 
 which clamour, on all subjects alike, for sensible experience 
 or mathematical demonstration, — rather because these 
 kinds of proof, to borrow an Apostolic expression, " make 
 a fair show in the flesh," — because they admit of being 
 stated effectively, — than for a higher reason. Accordingly 
 Mr. Keble was in an eminent sense a disciple, I might 
 almost say a continuator, of Bishop Butler. " When a 
 man reads Butler seriously," he said on one occasion, 
 " I always hope the best of him." In those days Butler 
 still reigned in the schools and mind of Oxford. It had 
 not yet been whispered by brilliant critics that as he did 
 not demonstrate the Being of God — an end, by the by, 
 which he never proposed to himself, — he was out of 
 harmony with the spirit of the time, and ought to be put 
 upon the shelf. But Mr. Keble did not simply read 
 Butler as ninety-nine out of a hundred of us do, only in 
 order to master Butler's own great argument against the 
 Deists of the last century ; he extended him, if I may so 
 speak, into the mind and circumstances of his own day. 
 First of all, he met the criticism which has been so often 
 made on Butler's argument from probability, that its 
 tendency is to destroy absolute certainty, and to resolve 
 all truth into opinion which it is safe to obey or to 
 profess, but not possible to embrace with unhesitating 
 inward assent. How he did this has been stated, with 
 his usual clearness, by Dr. Newman. " Mr. Keble," he 
 says, " niet, the difficulty by ascribing the firmness of 
 assent which we give to religious doctrine, not to the 
 probabilities which introduced it, but to the living power 
 of faith and love which accepted it. In matters of religion, 
 he seemed to say, it is not merely probability which 
 
346 
 
 John Keble. 
 
 makes us intellectually certain, but probability as it is 
 put to account by faith and love. It is faith and love 
 which give to probability a force which it has not in 
 itself. Faith and love are directed towards an object ; in 
 the vision of that object they live ; it is that object, 
 received in faith and love, which renders it reasonable to 
 take probability as sufficient for internal conviction." 1 
 Such an account of Butler was open, of course, to 
 criticisms of which its author was well aware and not 
 slow to meet in detail ; but Butler did not merely furnish 
 materials by which Mr. Keble threw up new works in 
 not a few minds around belief in Bevelation. The 
 considerations which induced some of his own dearest 
 friends to transfer their allegiance to the Church of Bome 
 in the year 1845, an d afterwards, led Mr. Keble to ask 
 himself how far Butler's method afforded any guidance 
 as to the question of duty in presence of the Boman claims. 
 The answer to that question he gives in a paper which to 
 me at least recalls the substance and the flavour of his 
 thought in many a conversation, more than anything else 
 that he has left. I refer to the Preface to a volume of 
 " Sermons, Academical and Occasional." In that preface 
 he traces the applicability of Butler's argument in favour 
 of revelation to the claims of the English Church upon 
 her children ; and the arguments by which Boman 
 Catholic critics disputed this application at the time 
 suggest other arguments with which we have subse- 
 quently become familiar, and which are urged by writers 
 of a very different character, against Butler's method as 
 a whole. 
 
 It was this same delicacy of mental texture which led 
 Mr. Keble to pause reverently before Patristic reasonings 
 or principles of interpretation in which many modern 
 critics have only discovered materials for ridicule. He 
 
 1 Apologia, p. 79. 
 
John Keble. 
 
 347 
 
 used to dispute the assumptions of that phantom authority, 
 common sense, on questions in which, if anything was to 
 be decided at all seriously, it could only be by methods 
 and after a patient investigation beyond the reach of the 
 majority of men. He once brought a fluent critic of St. 
 Ambrose as an interpreter of Scripture to a standstill, 
 by asking him what he should propose to say to an 
 unbeliever who ridiculed the principle of St. Paul's 
 allegorical argument about the two covenants in the 
 Epistle to the Galatians. On another occasion he 
 expressed himself as follows: "People talk as if the 
 Fathers, instead of arguing, wrote mere rhetoric: we want a 
 monograph (that, I believe, is the modern word) to show 
 that they were like the rest of us in meaning what they 
 said, and unlike the great majority of us in seeing a great 
 deal further into divine things than we at all suspect." 
 
 2. A further quality of Mr. Keble's intellect was a 
 certain severity. His mind, like his body, seemed to be 
 schooled to endure hardness like a good soldier of Jesus 
 Christ. He who ministered to others such soft, tender, 
 consolatory thought, was eminently unsparing towards 
 himself. He was, to begin with, a scholar of the old 
 robust type, for whom nothing had as yet been made easy 
 in the way of modern grammar and dictionary, and who 
 preferred the old methods by which knowledge was 
 acquired at the cost of much greater labour than now. 
 He would read by preference the old Greek editions of 
 the classics and the Fathers (I remember especially his 
 copy of Savile's St. Chrysostom, now I suppose in the 
 library of this College) ; he was almost impatient when 
 the more effeminate scholarship of the next generation 
 stumbled over the quaint conceits of those early printers. 
 This side of his mind appears in his defence of the use 
 of Latin as the language of his exquisite Preelections on 
 the healing virtue of Poetry. The preference for the 
 
348 
 
 John Keble. 
 
 vernacular, which has long since banished its rival from 
 the field, was just then making itself felt in the University ; 
 but Mr. Keble was not disposed to entertain the idea of a 
 concession. He admits, indeed, characteristically, that in 
 using Latin his powers of expression as a lecturer are 
 fettered ; he owns that there are modern compositions to 
 which Latin could scarcely, in whatever sense, do justice ; 
 he knows that to lecture in Latin is not the way to fill 
 a lecture-room with young men of the present day ; but 
 he would retain the language, not only as the historical 
 tongue of the University, and the medium of com- 
 munication between the learned throughout Europe, but 
 as befitting the lofty severity of true criticism, and as a 
 corrective to the relaxed tone of the literature of the age. 
 " Facile patiemur plura nobis deesse, maxime alioquin 
 optata atque commoda, gratiam, favorem, plena subsellia ; 
 turn, quod longe est gravius, multis ac praeclaris locis, 
 et qui ad rem bene gerendam vel praecipue possent 
 adjuvare, requo satis animo carebimus ; modo nihil 
 putidum, nihil foecatum, nihil non vetus atque simplex in 
 sanctissima re proferatur." 1 This scruple was not merely 
 or chiefly literary ; it was moral and religious. It was 
 nearly allied to the habitual bent of his thoughts on 
 holier ground. He had no sympathy with the self-de- 
 ceiving theories which make much of the Benevolence of 
 God at the cost of His Justice, or which ignore the nature 
 and consequences of sin in order to flatter the fond hopes 
 of the sinner. He pressed this side of truth home to 
 himself with inexorable determination. He dwelt on 
 God's Justice, as " the Attribute which I have most reason 
 to think about. " He loved Lent as " the season which 
 best suited a person who ought always to be repenting." 
 His mind rested continuously on the graver statements of 
 Holy Scripture ; not from any merely mental enterprise 
 
 1 Prcclectiones Academkcc, torn. i. pp. 7, 8. 
 
John Keble. 349 
 
 or speculative curiosity, but as " the best for me. " Alter 
 the decision of the Privy Council in the Essay and Revieiv 
 case, he composed a Litany from Holy Scripture to 
 " remind himself and others of what God had really 
 revealed about the state of the lost, however men might 
 deceive themselves." His intrepid study of the sterner 
 sides of divine Eevelation was not the least characteristic 
 part of his renewal in knowledge after the image of Him 
 That created him. 
 
 3. A third characteristic was courage, — courage of that 
 simple unconscious kind which undertakes invidious or 
 perilous duty without effort and as a matter of course. 
 With his gentleness of disposition, and utter dislike of 
 prominence in any form, Mr. Keble was incapable of 
 silence when conscience bade him speak, and of speaking 
 when conscience enjoined silence. Those who know the 
 history of Oxford from thirty-five to thirty years ago, or 
 of the Church of Scotland after the Primary Charge of 
 the late Bishop of Brechin, or of the Church of England 
 during each of the graver controversies which convulsed 
 her within the last twenty years of Mr. Keble's life, will 
 feel the truth of this. No fear of unpopularity, no frowns 
 or menaces of the highly placed or the influential could 
 weigh for a moment with that clear and delicate con- 
 science; again and again, with chivalrous devotion of 
 time and learning, he threw himself into the unpopular 
 side, and, as he said, " never lived to regret it. " A visitor 
 one day observed to him that toleration was the order of 
 the day, and that certain proceedings to which reference 
 had been made would soon become impossible. "For 
 myself, " he said, " I do not expect to be included in the 
 amnesty. " On another occasion, quite towards the close 
 of his life, he was conversing with an influential friend, 
 who thought that he might venture to make a distinction 
 between the author of The Christian Year and another 
 
35o 
 
 John Keble. 
 
 great name, which in a much greater degree than his own, 
 was at that time the object of vulgar prejudice and abuse. 
 " My lord, " said Mr. Keble sternly, and using the 
 epithet which had been just employed, " your lordship 
 must have made a mistake. We are all of that kind 
 here ; I, perhaps, more than any one else." On the 
 other hand, he was an example of that higher courage 
 which is ready, not merely to confront an opponent, but 
 to disappoint a friend. In the excited years which 
 followed upon the Gorham decision he was more than 
 once pressed to say or do things which were beside or 
 beyond his convictions as to truth and duty. Impetuous 
 friends, carried forward on the high tide of panic or of 
 enthusiasm, could not understand the reserve of a highly 
 instructed and sensitive conscience; and they would 
 often, if they could, have forced his hand. But his 
 gentle, unyielding resistance to pressure of this kind was 
 not less instructive or fertile in results than his generous 
 self-sacrifice under other circumstances. It made every 
 one — friend and foe alike — feel that when he did speak, 
 he meant what he said. Much against his will, but for a 
 great many persons of very various characters who but 
 for him might have fallen under very different influences, 
 he became a sort of religious " court of final appeal." When 
 all else had been said and done, people wotild wait and see 
 what came from Hursley before they made up their 
 minds as to the path of duty. 
 
 In nothing was the simple truthfulness of Mr. Keble's 
 mind more observable than in his freedom from the spirit 
 of paradox ; it was indeed in this respect that the really 
 philosophical character of his thought made itself espe- 
 cially felt. Paradox is the ignis fatuus which beguiles 
 many a noble nature from the pursuit of strict truth ; 
 and paradox is apt to be proselytising, partly from an 
 uneasy suspicion on the part of those who accept it that 
 
John Keble. 
 
 35i 
 
 all is not absolutely right, and partly from the impulse 
 which may be due to a subtle sense of humour. Twenty- 
 five or thirty years ago, paradox, at least in certain regions 
 of thought and discussion, was a more powerful temptation 
 than it is now. Since those days there have been 
 catastrophes ; the ground of religious controversy has 
 been strewed with ruins ; and everybody who can feel or 
 think at all is more or less saddened and sobered. In 
 those days, too, sheer unbelief was still a rare and distant 
 enemy, and Christian controversialists did not shrink 
 from an appeal to weapons which seemed to promise an 
 effective surprise. The supposed dilemma between Eome 
 and infidelity was brilliantly manipulated; and men 
 played with a terrible alternative because they honestly 
 believed it to be strictly impossible that their countrymen 
 could accept an infidel conclusion. It was in reviewing 
 these arguments, as they were put before him by the 
 perplexed, the impetuous, and the young, that Mr. 
 Keble's mild wisdom shaped convictions which are still 
 energetic ; in how many cases, and how decisively, will 
 only be known hereafter. But who that has ever had the 
 experience can forget how patiently he would consider 
 propositions which less clear-sighted men would have at 
 once scornfully set aside as ridiculous ; how tenderly he 
 would identify himself with the exact prejudice or point 
 of view of his questioner ; how he would apologise for 
 saying anything at all upon a point which it was suggested 
 to him was obvious ; and then how he would gently lay 
 his finger upon some intercepting or disturbing fact, 
 which shivered the whole fabric of abstract logic, and 
 lowered the discussion to the terra firma of sober reality ? 
 Those who know the Life of Dr. Arnold will remember 
 at least one instance in which Mr. Keble sacrificed to 
 what he believed to be the voice of duty a personal 
 friendship of no common order. And in intercourse with 
 
352 
 
 John Keble. 
 
 Mr. Keble, his younger friends felt the presence of an 
 intrepid sincerity, which they knew would never scruple 
 to tell them the truth, however tenderly, or at whatever 
 cost. Indeed, if the illustration might be permitted, he 
 sometimes in his conversation recalled his old rival, the 
 venerable Provost of Oriel, by his gentle but severe 
 insistence upon accurate thought and language on the part 
 of younger men. Certainly, his most ordinary table-talk 
 had about it a soothing charm, which defies description or 
 analysis ; and those who came to him, tired by work, or 
 worried and depressed by controversy, will often have 
 applied to it the lines which have been suggested as a 
 motto for The Christian Year : 
 
 " Tale tuum carmen nobis, divine poeta, 
 Quale sopor fessis in gramine, quale per oestum 
 Dulcis aquae saliente sitim restinguere rivo." 
 
 His conversation would flow on, constantly suggesting the 
 deepest thoughts, while expressed in the simplest language, 
 and rising not seldom into ripples of quiet humour, or of 
 moral enthusiasm, or into some brilliant sally that might 
 seem an echo from the Oriel Common-room of another 
 generation, until at last a remark was hazarded by his 
 companion which was showy rather than true, or a word 
 was employed, intended to produce effect, but the true 
 meaning of which had not been considered by the speaker. 
 Then, all at once, in the gentlest, but, on that very account, 
 the most formidable way, Mr. Keble would wield — if I 
 may so speak — the " Socratic Elenchus." What was 
 exactly meant ; what was the exact element of truth in 
 what was meant ; whether something was not to be said 
 in favour of an opposite position or phrase ; whether, in 
 short, what had been advanced had not better have been 
 avoided; — this was the series of topics, embodying his 
 quiet but irresistible protest in favour of the sacredness 
 of truth, — of the duty of doing it rightful homage in 
 
John Keble. 
 
 353 
 
 language, — of the duty of avoiding all that was merely 
 showy or paradoxical. 
 
 There were other qualities of his mind which ought 
 perhaps, if time sufficed, to be insisted on. Such was an 
 intellectual rectitude which never seemed to miss the 
 relative proportions of truths, and never to be disturbed 
 by a passing enthusiasm or a temporary panic. Such 
 again was a tenderness, all his own, in explaining or com- 
 municating truth ; such, above all, was the profound, the 
 awful reverence with which, without alluding to them, he 
 bent low before those unseen realities which had ever a 
 first place in his heart and thought. No man, perhaps, 
 ever lifted others to heaven without mentioning it, more 
 persuasively than he ; his own eulogy on the poet Words- 
 worth had a wider application to himself which he little 
 suspected : " Cui illud munus tribuit Deus Optimus 
 Maximus, ut sive hominum affectus caneret, sive ter- 
 rarum et coeli pulchritudinem, legentium animos semper 
 ad sanctiora erigeret, . . . atque adeo, labente saeculo, 
 existeret, non solum dulcissimse poeseos, verum etiam, 
 divinae veritatis antistes." 1 
 
 The days will come, I suppose, — if indeed they have 
 not yet come, — when young men, looking at these build- 
 ings, will ask the question, " Who was Keble ? " To have 
 made it inevitable that that question should be asked by 
 successive generations of Oxford students is to have added 
 to the moral wealth of the world. For the answer to that 
 question cannot but do good to the man who asks it. It 
 is not high station, or commanding wealth, or great public 
 exploits, or wide popularity of opinions, which will 
 explain the foundation of this College ; — raised as it is to 
 the memory of a quiet country clergyman, with a very 
 moderate income, who sedulously avoided public distinc- 
 
 1 Prod. Ac, torn. i. dedication. 
 Z 
 
354 
 
 John Keble. 
 
 tions, and held tenaciously to an unpopular school all his 
 life. Keble College is a witness to the homage which 
 goodness carried into the world of thought, or, indeed, 
 into any other sphere of activity, extorts from all of us, 
 when we are fairly placed face to face with it; it is a 
 proof that neither station, nor wealth, nor conspicuous- 
 ness, nor popularity is the truest and ultimate test of 
 greatness. True greatness is to be recognised in character ; 
 and in a place like this character is largely, if not chiefly, 
 shaped by the degree in which moral qualities are brought 
 to bear upon the activities of mind. The more men really 
 know of him, who, being dead, has, in virtue of the rich 
 gifts of grace with which God had endowed him, sum- 
 moned this College into being, the less will they marvel 
 at such a tribute to his profound and enduring influence. 
 May this College, for long years to come, be a home of 
 teachers and students, whose clear strong faith, and 
 general intellectual and moral mould as servants of truth 
 will not be altogether unworthy of the great name it 
 bears ! 
 
SERMON XIV. 
 
 EDWARD BOUVEKIE PUSEY. 1 
 
 St. Matt. v. 19. 
 
 Whosoever shall do and teach the same shall be called great in the 
 kingdom of heaven. 
 
 OUR Lord here implies that the standard of greatness 
 in His Church — the kingdom of heaven upon earth 
 — would differ from that which commonly obtains in the 
 world outside. A claim to greatness among mankind at 
 large is made good by that quality or circumstance which, 
 in whatever way, increases a man's present importance 
 among his fellows. And thus by a great man is meant a 
 man of great intellect, or of great wealth, or of great 
 social position, or of great reputation for some form of 
 capacity or distinction. Greatness, so understood, does 
 not even involve personal obedience to the law of truth 
 and duty, much less any anxious effort to promote the 
 ascendency of truth and duty in the life of other men. 
 If, indeed, loyalty to a conviction or moral height of 
 character can be combined with the conditions which in 
 the world's estimate are of the essence of greatness, so 
 much the better ; only, of itself, this practical devotion 
 to truth and duty has nothing to do with greatness, as 
 conceived among ordinary men of the world. Eor it does 
 not necessarily enhance the relative power of the indi- 
 vidual man among his fellows ; and many, if not most, of 
 
 1 Preached in St. Margaret's Church, Prince's Road, Liverpool, on the 
 Second Sunday after the Epiphany, January 20, 1884. 
 
 355 
 
356 Edward Bouverie Pusey 
 
 those to whom the world has accorded the title of " great " 
 have been conspicuously without it. 
 
 In the Church of Jesus Christ it was to be otherwise. 
 The claim to greatness was to be weighed in the scales, not 
 of immediate social importance, but of correspondence 
 with an absolute test of excellence. Nothing that is 
 purely external to a man himself, such as income or rank, 
 can in the strict sense of the term make him great ; 
 simply because it is thus outside him, and therefore it does 
 not touch that which in himself he is. Even great powers, 
 whether of body or mind, do not of themselves, in our 
 Lord's judgment, make men great. The Pagan Greek 
 might crown the victors in games whose memory will last as 
 long as men care for the finest creations of human litera- 
 ture ; but " the Lord hath no pleasure in the strength of an 
 horse, neither delighteth He in any man's legs." And the 
 highest created intellect may be utterly fallen and per- 
 verted; there is no reason to think that the greatest 
 powers of a human mind, cultivated to the utmost in the 
 first Universities of Europe, could for a moment compare 
 with the intellectual splendour of the hateful and apostate 
 spirit who reigns in hell. Greatness in man is that in 
 man which corresponds with the eternal moral Nature 
 of God ; it is obedience to the law of truth and duty, first 
 of all controlling a man's own life, and then radiating 
 from him with the persuasive eloquence as well of example 
 as of language upon the lives of those around him. " He 
 that shall do and teach the same shall be called great in 
 the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 I. 
 
 This evening I am allowed to lead you to think of one 
 who was taken from us some sixteen months ago, and 
 whose career recalls the solemn words of our Lord which 
 are before us in the text. At first sight, indeed, it might 
 
Edward Boziverie Pusey. 357 
 
 almost seem as if Dr. Pusey's greatness were of another 
 order than that of the Divine Kingdom; since it had 
 something to do with more than one form of greatness 
 that is recognised by human opinion in general. "What 
 sort of place he held in the minds of his countrymen and 
 of the world became plain when, at last, in the fulness of 
 his years, he passed away from us. The press of this 
 country, and in particular that powerful journal which 
 stands at its head, treated his death as a matter of at least 
 national concern. His family circumstances, his literary 
 and theological work, his relations with distinguished 
 contemporaries, his influence upon the religious convic- 
 tions of our day, were discussed at much length, and, 
 generally speaking, with an obviously anxious effort to be 
 just and accurate. And since then notices of him have 
 appeared in organs of foreign opinion, which show that 
 his disappearance from the world is regarded as an event 
 of European importance in countries where the death of 
 those who hold the highest places of dignity in the 
 English Church would commonly pass unnoticed. This 
 is the more remarkable, because Dr. Pusey did not occupy 
 any official position in the Church of commanding emin- 
 ence. He was merely Canon of a Cathedral; and in a 
 body of six theological Professors he held a chair which 
 is by no means the first, either in its rank or in its natural 
 opportunities for influencing theological thought. A posi- 
 tion of this kind does not of itself imply any very parti- 
 cular claim to world-wide notice. It had already been 
 occupied by a long line of predecessors, whose names, with 
 some three or four exceptions, had been unknown beyond 
 the walls of their University. The least important cir- 
 cumstance in connection with Dr. Pusey's death was that 
 it placed a piece of Cathedral and University patronage 
 at the disposal of the Government. 
 
358 Edward Bouverie Pusey. 
 
 It 
 
 But when Dr. Pusey died those who knew or cared 
 anything about scholarship knew that the world had lost 
 one of its foremost scholars. With him scholarship — the 
 scientific knowledge of language — was even less of an 
 acquirement than of an instinct. He had that fine per- 
 ception of the vital genius of human speech which often 
 enabled him to dispense with the machinery of grammar 
 and dictionary, because he could, in fact, anticipate their 
 verdict. The author of The Christian Year, who was some 
 ten years his senior, used to say that he never knew how 
 Pindar might be translated until he heard Pusey translate 
 him in the schools. To the ordinary classical languages, 
 and — what fifty years ago was a rare accomplishment — a 
 thorough familiarity with German, Dr. Pusey added, while 
 still under thirty, an exact knowledge of Hebrew, and, as 
 there is reason to think, a still more intimate knowledge 
 of Arabic, with its rich vocabulary and literature. He 
 spent from fourteen to sixteen hours a day for a great 
 part of two years in acquiring it, partly under the guid- 
 ance of Freytag, the first Arabic scholar in Europe ; his 
 main reason for this great expenditure of labour being the 
 light which Arabic throws upon the cognate language 
 of the Old Testament. The habit of constantly enlarging 
 his intimacy with language never deserted him when he 
 was an old man. When he was more than sixty years of 
 age he made himself entirely master of Ethiopic. And 
 his enthusiasm for language was intimately connected 
 with his profoundly religious idea of what language really 
 is. In our day many ingenious theories have been put 
 forth as to the origin of language. But Dr. Pusey believed 
 that the only one which does justice to what it is in itself 
 and to its place in nature as a characteristic of man is the 
 
Edward Botwerie Pusey. 359 
 
 belief that it is an original gift of God ; the counterpart 
 of that other and greater gift of His, a self-questioning 
 and immortal soul. Language is the life of the human 
 soul, projected into the world of sound ; it exhibits in all 
 their strength and delicacy the processes by which the soul 
 takes account of what passes without and within itself ; in 
 it may be studied the minute anatomy of the soul's life — 
 that inner world in which thought takes shape and con- 
 science speaks, and the eternal issues are raised and 
 developed to their final form. Therefore Dr. Pusey looked 
 upon language with the deepest interest and reverence ; he 
 handled it as a sacred thing which could not be examined 
 or guarded or employed too carefully ; he thought no 
 trouble too great in order to ascertain and express its 
 exact shades of meaning ; and this anxiety, so religious in 
 its origin, had a certain temporal reward in the character 
 of the philological work by which he was known to the 
 world, and which made him the scholar that he con- 
 fessedly was. Those critics in Germany who have been 
 least able to agree in his general conclusions as to the 
 Hebrew Scriptures have not been slow to express their 
 respect for the scholarly learning by which he supported 
 them. 
 
 III. 
 
 With Dr. Pusey, however, language was a means to 
 an end beyond itself ; it was the means by which he 
 examined God's unveiling of Himself to man in His 
 written Word. There have been many scholars who 
 have treated scholarship, even the scholarship of the Bible, 
 as an end in itself ; while they have sometimes seemed to 
 regard the Christian Revelation as mainly interesting on 
 account of the consideration which it secures for philo- 
 logical studies. To adapt a famous saying — they en- 
 courage the suspicion that God had become Incarnate in 
 
360 Edward Bouverie Pusey. 
 
 order to aid the sale of their grammars and dictionaries. 
 This singular and weird inversion of the true relative 
 proportions of things, it is needless to say, found no 
 sympathy in Dr. Pusey. In him scholarship was entirely 
 divorced from the pedantry and self-display which has 
 at times disfigured the labours of scholars. With him 
 scholarship was ever the handmaid of Divine Truth ; 
 never so happily employed as when guarding or explor- 
 ing it ; and, as he thought, little worthy to engage the 
 attention of dying men, if divorced from this high 
 association and treated as a subject with no higher end in 
 prospect beyond. 
 
 Accordingly, if Dr. Pusey was well known as a scholar, 
 he was still better known as a divine. For him nothing 
 was comparable in interest or importance to the Eeve- 
 lation which the Infinite and Eternal God has deigned to 
 make of Himself to man ; and to study and explore this 
 Eevelation, its governing and constitutive truths and 
 principles, and its various and minutest details, was to 
 the last moment of his earthly life his greatest joy. Long 
 before he took Holy Orders, his interest was thoroughly 
 engaged in questions of religious truth ; and throughout 
 his life whatever else might occupy him for the moment, 
 the study of studies, to which all else was relative and 
 subservient, was theology. He had in great perfection 
 two natural qualities which go far to make an accom- 
 plished theologian. He combined with an intellectual 
 sensitiveness, which rendered him alive to the claims of 
 separate truths, and to distinctions between truths 
 apparently similar, a remarkable sense of balance and 
 proportion, which never allowed one truth to obscure 
 in his mind the claims of another, and thus saved him 
 from passing the line which separates the clear expression 
 of very strong conviction from this or that kind of perilous 
 exaggeration. This might, as I think, be shown by an 
 
Edward Bouverie Pusey. 36 1 
 
 examination of his most remarkable efforts in theology ; 
 or even of such sermons as those on the Holy Eucharist, 
 on Absolution, on the Rule of Faith, on Darwinism — 
 sermons which are of such a character as to form epochs, 
 it is not too much to say, in our recent religious history. 
 
 Of this knowledge Holy Scripture was the great source. 
 To him the Bible was in fact, what to all of us it is in 
 name, but to some of us only in name — the first of books. 
 Intimately as he was acquainted with the great writers of 
 Christian antiquity (to use his own words, he " lived for 
 some years in St. Augustine ") be never lost sight of the 
 vast interval which parts the sacred canon of Scripture 
 from all other writings in the world. If you would 
 know how he thought and felt in presence of the Sacred 
 Text, read his Commentary on the Minor Prophets. If 
 you would understand his jealous care for the claims of 
 Scripture when assailed by modern unbelief, read his 
 book on Daniel. He saw clearly that if Daniel was 
 really written in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, if its 
 author was really describing the past when he professed 
 to be foretelling the future, the book was not merely an 
 uninspired book, but a dishonest one. And therefore he 
 put forth his whole strength to meet the infidel criticism 
 on its own grounds ; and in none of his writings — to omit 
 other characteristics of this effort of his pen — do we see 
 his scholarship more entirely at the disposal of theology_ 
 
 IV. 
 
 But theology, like scholarship, may be so handled as 
 to lose altogether its grace and purpose. It may be 
 resolved into the arid study of ancient texts, or into 
 an almost mechanical play upon a set of propositions, 
 while He, Whose living presence alone gives life and 
 animation to all, is really lost sight of. Something of 
 
362 
 
 Edward Bouverie Pusey. 
 
 this kind seems to have been the case in Lutheran Ger- 
 many during the years which preceded the rise of what is 
 known as the Older Eationalism. The danger is a very 
 real one, especially in days of controversy ; and there is 
 only one possible safeguard against it. 
 
 Dr. Pusey's accomplishments in scholarship and theology 
 would have availed little to make him the really great 
 man he was, unless they had been accompanied by that 
 deep personal interest in Divine things — that sense of 
 boundless indebtedness to the redeeming love of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ — which he displayed even in early life, and 
 which grew with his years up to the moment when he 
 was taken from us. No one, most assuredly, could be 
 long in Dr. Pusey's company without discovering that his 
 thoughts, his feelings, his motives, his entire conception 
 of the meaning and end of life, were practically different 
 from and higher than those of the majority of men, even 
 of men who are seriously interested in matters connected 
 with religion. He did not merely now and then talk and 
 think about God : in the language of the Bible, he 
 " walked with God." No facts were so constantly present 
 to his mind as God's encompassing closeness, His Mind, 
 His Will, in their bearing on the thoughts and duties of 
 our daily life. None of the human beings among whom 
 he lived and worked visibly influenced him, as did this 
 gracious and awful Friend, with "Whom throughout the 
 day he was constantly communicating in prayer. And 
 thus to visit him was, as has often been said, to move out 
 of the world into another atmosphere, where the language 
 of the Bible was translated into reality ; where St. Paul 
 and St. John did not seem to be out of harmony with 
 accepted principles of thought and action ; where the 
 unseen reckoned for more than the seen ; and where all 
 persons and events were looked at from a distant and 
 higher point of view. Those words in to-day's Epistle 
 
Edward Bouverie Pusey. 
 
 363 
 
 which seem to most of us to describe a purely ideal life — 
 " Fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, 
 patient in tribulation, continuing instant in prayer, 
 distributing to the necessity of saints," 1 — were, all of them, 
 real in him. When he was most likely to be off his 
 guard, and engaged in intimate converse with those whom 
 he could perfectly trust, he was true to the most serious 
 language which he used in the pulpit. When other men 
 would say that a difficult question of conduct must be 
 decided by this or that consideration of immediate ex- 
 pediency, he would observe quietly, " Of course the first 
 thing for us to settle, so far as we may, is, what our Lord 
 is thinking about the matter." The only events which 
 really gave him pleasure were those which he believed to 
 promote the will or glory of our Lord. The only events 
 which long distressed him were those which appeared to 
 bode no good for the cause and kingdom of Jesus Christ. 
 He surveyed men, occurrences, politics, literature, education, 
 simply from this point of view ; it shaped his judgments ; 
 it at once controlled and animated his sympathies. He 
 was as far as possible from being morose or low-spirited : 
 no man was more equal in temperament, or more capable 
 of bright and hearty joyousness, or more free in his 
 expression of it than he. This is only a way of saying 
 that he was perfectly at peace with God, and happy in 
 the conviction, moment by moment, that he was livirjg in 
 the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed, our Lord 
 was literally to him, as St. Paul says, " wisdom, and 
 righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption"; 2 and 
 the Infinite Love Who for us men and for our salvation 
 took human flesh and died upon the cross, and pleads 
 incessantly in heaven, and bestows on us His new Nature 
 through the sacraments of His Church was the constant 
 Object of His adoring praise. 
 
 1 Rom. xii. 11-13. 1 1 Cor. i. 30. 
 
364 
 
 Edward Bouverie Pusey. 
 
 V. 
 
 Early in Dr. Pusey's life he was brought privately into 
 contact with a very pronounced form of infidelity, and 
 this circumstance seems to have exerted a decisive influ- 
 ence on his later career. It certainly determined his 
 studies during two years in Germany; and it had a great 
 deal to do with his adhesion to the Church Movement of 
 1833. That remarkable Movement, which has had such 
 various attractions for different minds, and which has 
 done, and we may trust is still doing, so much for the 
 spiritual wellbeing of the Church of England, was chiefly 
 welcome to Dr. Pusey as a providential reinforcement of 
 the cause of Christian faith. It owed its first impulse to 
 the poet of The Christian Year, and its earliest phase of 
 activity to that strong and beautiful mind who alone of 
 its three great chiefs still lingers here below, though lost, 
 alas ! to the English Church. In its first days the Move- 
 ment addressed itself largely to the task of supporting 
 and defending threatened institutions: but it was soon 
 perceived that institutions can only be defended success- 
 fully when the truths which they are intended to guard 
 and set forth are sincerely believed. Thus, if the Episco- 
 pate was after all merely an ancient feature of Church 
 government — a Bishop differing from a presbyter only as 
 a Lord-Lieutenant might differ from a county magistrate 
 — it was too cumbrous and costly a whim of ecclesiastical 
 autiquarianism to be maintained in the long-run against 
 the spirit of reform. But if the Christian Bishop, whether 
 holding his stately receptions at Lambeth, or wandering 
 about in search of souls among the solitudes of Central 
 Africa, is an essential element of the organic structure of 
 the Church of God, he will surely outlive any social or 
 political vicissitudes that may await the modem world. 
 
Edward Bouverie Pusey. 365 
 
 When men believe in the spiritual powers bestowed by 
 Christ on His Church, the shell which enshrines them, or 
 so much of it as is really necessary, will always be safe. 
 But then every truth, however incidental, is to be prized 
 for its own sake, and not only or chiefly for the sake of 
 that which it supports. Thus the Movement found itself 
 engaged in the work of proving and reasserting large 
 elements of the Church's creed and system ; and it was 
 this which chiefly and early attached Dr. Pusey to its 
 ranks. For he had come to see that the canon of the 
 New Testament itself cannot be defended on purely 
 internal evidence, and apart from the authority and wit- 
 ness of the Apostolic and primitive Church ; and if Church 
 authority is to be used in arriving at so momentous a con- 
 clusion as the true contents and frontier of Scripture and 
 the nature of its claims on man, it is not possible in con- 
 sistency to discard that authority when it also claims to 
 interpret Scripture. And thus the Movement proceeded 
 systematically to reassert the whole body of truth com- 
 mitted by Christ and His Apostles to the Ancient Church, 
 and still substantially taught us in the Prayer-Book. 
 There was, indeed, need of this. For not a few of the 
 defenders of Christianity in previous years had thought 
 to defend it best by the method of incessantly making 
 concessions to its enemies ; like those unarmed travellers 
 who, when pursued by hungry wolves, threw first one and 
 then another of their company to the savage brutes, in the 
 hope that if not sated, they would be appeased, or at least 
 occupied, by what had been so easily surrendered. Such 
 theological methods are dangerous in practice as well as 
 wrong in principle ; and what is given up in one genera- 
 tion, as no part of the so-called " simple Gospel " of the 
 Apostles, is discovered by the more penetrating criticism 
 of the next to be so intimately linked with it, that the 
 surrender becomes a good logical reason for demanding a 
 
366 Edward Bouverie Pusey. 
 
 concession of what is still unconceded. And thus men 
 came to see that in abandoning faith in the grace and 
 presence of Christ in His Sacraments, and in the necessity 
 of an Apostolical ministry, they had really in ways little 
 suspected at the time made the assaults of scepticism on 
 such central truths as the Atonement and the Holy 
 Trinity much more difficult to resist. For truths are 
 related in numberless ways to each other ; or rather, Ee- 
 vealed Truth is a great whole, no part of which can be 
 withdrawn or denied without impairing what remains. 
 A deep conviction of this was at the bottom of Dr. Pusey's 
 theological activity during the most active years of his 
 life ; and it laid under contribution his acquirements as a 
 scholar and theologian, while it brought great satisfaction 
 to his piety as a devoted servant of our Lord. 
 
 VI. 
 
 It would be impossible for me to attempt within the 
 limits at our disposal an account of Pusey's labours in the 
 field of theology. Suffice it to say that for forty-eight 
 years he was engaged in almost incessant production ; 
 while before that period began he had spent himself on 
 two works which would suffice for the life of an ordinary 
 man. Pamphlet after pamphlet, sermon after sermon, — 
 each prepared with the care and thoroughness that befits 
 a theological treatise, — book after book, attested the 
 strength of his convictions, the depth and width of his 
 learning, the indomitable tenacity of his purpose. His 
 facile pen traversed in succession nearly the whole series 
 of questions on which modern theories respecting the 
 nature of the Church and the Sacraments are at issue with 
 primitive Christianity. The grace of a new birth bestowed 
 in Baptism ; the truth of that Presence, inaccessible to 
 sight and sense, whereby nevertheless in the Sacrament 
 
Edward Bouverie Pusey. 
 
 367 
 
 of His Death our ever-living Eedeemer is wont to be among 
 us that He may feed and bless His adoring family ; the 
 reality of the pardon which is uttered in His Name over all 
 those who truly repent and unfeignedly believe His holy 
 Gospel ; the Catholic rule of faith as maintained in the 
 Church of England; the authority and constitution of 
 Church Councils ; and then the various aspects of the 
 personal and devotional life of the soul; the duty and 
 privilege of self-denial in all its forms ; the many and 
 various activities of prayer ; the complete case, in short, 
 of the single soul, learning at the foot of the Eedeemer's 
 Cross to prepare for death and judgment — all in turn 
 were passed in review. And in dark days, when hearts 
 were failing, and friends were straying away from the 
 fold of the English Church, and beckoning him to follow ; 
 whilst a vast mass of obloquy and misunderstanding, 
 taking every shape that could wound a sensitive and 
 affectionate nature, fiercely bade him begone, he had to 
 defend himself more than once against the double assault ; 
 to show that in his loyalty to Christian Antiquity he had 
 only taken the Church of England at her word ; to show 
 that she offered all the blessings, while she was free from 
 great drawbacks that are to be found elsewhere ; but also 
 to show that in resolutely making the most of all the 
 positive truth that she directly or implicitly sanctions, 
 lies the best safeguard in the long-run against disloyalty 
 to her claims. We must abandon the attempt to follow 
 him through districts of thought so interesting and so 
 vast ; — his works are the property of the Christian world, 
 and they will set me or any one else right, who has 
 said or suggested too much, or too little, respecting 
 them. 
 
368 Edward Bouverie Pus ey. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Dr. Pusey's life had two marks especially set in it by 
 Divine Providence : it was a life of controversy and a life 
 of suffering. 
 
 He often deplored the necessity which obliged him to 
 spend so much of his time and thought in religious con- 
 troversy. It was, he firmly believed, " the Lord's contro- 
 versy " in which he was thus engaged ; and he accepted a 
 task from which much in his character would have held 
 him back, as a duty laid on him by Providential Wisdom. 
 Never did any man less forget that to treat the defence of 
 truth as if it were the defence of a personal opinion, is 
 to degrade it immeasurably ; and the temper which he 
 habitually cultivated, would have made those petty fero- 
 cities which so often disfigure controversy utterly impos- 
 sible for him. Indeed, he carried into controversy great 
 self-control. Of this those who have few or no convic- 
 tions to animate them may well imitate the outer bearing ; 
 but it is difficult of attainment for men in whom devotion 
 to known truth has assumed the proportions of a strong 
 and ruling passion. Certainly he did all that could be 
 done to sweeten controversy by the charities and courtesies 
 that were natural to his chastened temper ; but, after doing 
 his best, he disliked heartily what he could not help. In 
 the agony of one of the most trying episodes of his life, 
 he made the words of Jeremiah his own, when addressing 
 the venerable parent, Lady Lucy Pusey, who had so large 
 a place in his filial heart : " Woe is me, my mother, that 
 thou hast borne me a man of strife, and a man of conten- 
 tion to the whole earth." 1 
 
 And his life was largely a life of suffering. Assuredly 
 it did not lack the Print of the Nails. He had his full 
 share of home sorrows, which the affectionateness of his 
 
 1 Jer. xv. 10. 
 
Edward Bouverie Pusey. 
 
 369 
 
 character sharpened to the utmost. His young brother, 
 his father, his wife, his eldest daughter, his eldest brother, 
 his mother, his only son, were successively taken ; and 
 what the loss meant for him in some of these cases it 
 would be impossible to convey in a few words. Troubles 
 there were of another order which wounded him even 
 more deeply. The separation which for some years 
 followed the secession of Dr. Newman, the desertion of 
 friends who remained, and from whose sympathy he 
 might well have hoped for much, the coldness or active 
 hostility of persons in high authority, the failure of 
 younger men to answer to his reasonable expectations or 
 to be true to themselves, above all the lacerations of the 
 Church, to whose wellbeing and growth he was devoted 
 heart and soul — these things cut him to the quick. 
 Some day expressions of sorrow which escaped him may 
 see the light, and may illustrate what I am saying. 
 Sorrow, we know, is a mark which God never fails to 
 trace on the lives of the predestinate, and Dr. Pusey's 
 life was no exception to the rule. 
 
 And this intimacy with suffering was probably one 
 chief secret of his moral power, because it endowed him 
 so richly, as it had endowed St. Paul, with the gift of 
 sympathy. Within the last three days twenty-three poor 
 young women, engaged in setting up types in London, have 
 sent to me what they could save from their scanty earnings 
 as a tribute to the memory of one whose helpful kindness in 
 leading them to God they could never forget. And at the 
 same time a student in the University of Giessen, who 
 reads our language with difficulty, writes, evidently under 
 the spell of that true sympathy with mental trials which 
 breathes in Dr. Pusey's writings, that his great object in 
 life will be to tread in Pusey's footsteps, and that his 
 earnest wish is to visit the scenes of Pusey's life, and to join 
 in the worship of the Church to which Pusey belonged. 
 2 A 
 
370 Edward Bouverie Pusey. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 A great life, such as that before us, is a great gift of the 
 Author of all Goodness to His Church, and especially to 
 that part of it which is the immediate scene or recipient 
 of the endowment. And let us not forget that all God's 
 blessings are tests of the faithfulness of those who receive 
 them. To treat the memory of Dr. Pusey as we might 
 that of an ordinary man of good abilities, who, as men 
 speak, had " succeeded " in his sacred profession, and had 
 won the applause of the world, and had died full of 
 honours, but without doing and teaching in the sense of 
 the Sermon on the Mount, would argue serious moral 
 dulness ; an incapacity to see the difference between what 
 passes for greatness in the world, and that which is called 
 great in the kingdom of heaven. Not that Dr. Pusey 's 
 memory would die, if Churchmen could have resolved 
 that nothing should be done to perpetuate it. His 
 writings will command attention long after our generation 
 has passed away ; he lives and will live in his commen- 
 taries on Holy Scripture, in his doctrinal treatises, in his 
 heart-searching sermons, in the abundant provision which 
 God guided him to make for the spiritual life of men. 
 Yes, he lives at this moment in the devotional life of 
 thousands, in their prayers., in their repentance, in their 
 efforts to love and serve God, and to correspond with His 
 grace ; he lives in them too constantly, too intimately, to 
 be forgotten, if it were possible that others could conspire 
 to forget him. But to forget him would be to injure not 
 him, but ourselves. My friends, what is the best endow- 
 ment, the true treasure, of a Christian Church ? Not, 
 surely, the material wealth which ancient piety has placed 
 at his disposal, whether in land or tithe ; not the noble 
 piles, raised in some distant century, around which there 
 
Edward Bouverie Ptisey. 
 
 37i 
 
 cluster a thousand associations which take the heart and 
 the imagination captive ; not even the great minds which 
 might have achieved any success in a worldly career, and 
 which have enriched with new glories the vast literature 
 of Christendom. No ! Let us not underrate the value of 
 these things ; but they do not constitute the real capital 
 or sinews of Christian Churches. That which invigorates 
 a Church, rendering it independent of outward circum- 
 stance, and endowing it with a promise of perpetuity, is 
 — next to His Presence, Who is the Source of all created 
 good — the spiritual beauty of its members, and especially 
 that union in them of knowledge and holiness which 
 invites the sympathies, nay the entire confidence, of their 
 fellow-men. Had Dr. Pusey been learned without being 
 a devoted Christian ; had he been a true servant of Christ 
 but ignorant of what is to be said for and against Chris- 
 tianity, for and against the position and claims of the 
 Church of England, he would not have been what he was, 
 or what he is to multitudes of souls. As it is, men look 
 at his life and work, and they say, and they say well — 
 " Where he could live and die, I may well be content to 
 follow." And thus his life and death are a stay to many 
 a soul, which but for him would be wandering far away, 
 whether from the Church of England or from the Faith of 
 Christ. To have been enriched with such a life, and to 
 forget or disparage it, would be, on the part of a Church, an 
 infatuation of which a country only could be guilty if it 
 should take no account of the great statesmen or soldiers 
 who have built up its fortunes, or should encourage 
 reports likely to be fatal to its public credit. In honouring 
 a man of this elevated stamp we recognise at one and the 
 same time the claims of learning, the claims of piety, the 
 claims, above all, of that portion of the Church of Christ 
 in which Divine Providence has placed us. 
 
372 Edivard Bouverie Pnsey. 
 
 IX. 
 
 An institution, as you know, is being founded in Oxford, 
 which will bear Dr. Pusey's name, and of which his own 
 library will be the nucleus. It will, at least, lead coming 
 generations of Oxford students to ask the question, Who 
 was Dr. Pusey ? And the true answer to that question 
 cannot but be very improving. But, as its promoters 
 hope, this institute will do more. It will form, in the 
 University of the future, a home of sacred learning, and a 
 rallying-point for Christian faith ; and thus it will 
 strengthen all that is dearest to a sincere Christian at 
 what, so far as we can judge, must always be one of the 
 chief centres of the mental life of this country. For such 
 an institution there would have been neither place nor 
 need thirty years ago ; but during the last thirty years 
 very great changes, amounting to nothing less than a 
 revolution, have passed over the University of Oxford. 
 At the beginning of that period the University was still 
 what, with a brief interruption in the seventeenth century, 
 she had been for a thousand years — the handmaid of the 
 Church of Christ in England. Clergymen and laymen, 
 students and teachers, made public profession of allegiance 
 to the Church ; and the whole life of the place, literary 
 aud scientific, as well as theological, was moulded and in- 
 spired by her sons. Such was Oxford, as described in her 
 own statutes ; but I am not prepared to say, either that 
 the Church made the best use of the splendid opportuni- 
 ties which were thus secured to her, or that it was pos- 
 sible in the present condition of the country to exclude 
 much longer from a share in University education — I do 
 not say teaching — those who might be neither Churchmen 
 nor Christians. Yet, at the least, recent changes might 
 have taken a religious direction as distinct from a 
 
Edward Bouverie Pusey. 
 
 373 
 
 direction which, while maintaining a semblance of 
 deference for religion, is, upon the whole, hostile to it. 
 If only two or three colleges, out of her great 
 inheritance — if only those founded since the Reformation 
 — had been left to the Church of England, the remainder 
 being frankly and at once secularised, her prospects 
 would be better than they are ; when extracts from her 
 Prayer-Book are made by bodies of Fellows of any or no 
 creed, for use in chapels, which few care to attend ; and 
 when any tutor is at liberty to tell his pupils, of course in 
 academical language, that the Body of our crucified Re- 
 deemer rotted in His grave, and that Almighty God does 
 not really reign on earth or in heaven. Nor can the little 
 that is left — the single clerical Fellow in certain colleges, 
 and the Professorships of Divinity — be considered secure. 
 Every argument that has been used in favour of secular- 
 ising College Fellowships is waiting in readiness to be 
 employed against these few remaining guarantees for 
 Christian teaching, when the hour for further spoliation 
 shall have struck. Meanwhile, young Englishmen continue, 
 and will continue, as heretofore, to flock to what has been 
 for so many centuries a home for learning ; but when the 
 recent changes have had time to take effect, and the 
 representatives of the old order of things have quite died 
 out, students will not find that the home of learning is 
 also a home of religion. Indeed, already the extent and 
 meaning of the change is often too apparent. A young 
 man has been trained in a Christian family, and is looking 
 forward to serving God in Holy Orders ; but he comes to 
 Oxford to unlearn one by one the convictions which his 
 mother had taught him, and to make up his mind that he 
 cannot become a clergyman, on the ground that he doubts 
 whether he can still honestly profess himself a Christian. 
 This is no imaginary picture ; nor should it, in reason, 
 occasion us any surprise. Young men are naturally 
 2 A 2 
 
374 Edwa rd Bo uverie Pusey. 
 
 influenced in religious matters by those whose information 
 and powers of thought they have learnt to respect when 
 studying other subjects ; and if those who teach are, in 
 whatever sense, unfriendly to the claims of Divine 
 Kevelation, it is not singular that their pupils should be 
 so too. No doubt there are evidences of religious earnest- 
 ness at Oxford as elsewhere ; there is interest in missionary 
 and philanthropic efforts; there are sincere attempts at 
 self-improvement, and other encouraging symptoms. But 
 these depend on individual influences, and the question is 
 as to the general drift and system of the University. It 
 was, until our day, in alliance with the Church of Christ ; 
 it is now at best neutral ; it is not unlikely to be actively 
 hostile. 
 
 The institute which is to shape itself around Dr. Pusey's 
 Library will, as we hope, under God's blessing, do some- 
 thing to arrest the further decay of faith in Oxford. It 
 will exhibit, as the old colleges of Oxford were meant by 
 their Christian founders to exhibit, solid learning allied 
 to Christian faith and piety. It will keep its eye not 
 only on those great and majestic studies which attend 
 on Christian theology; not only on the inheritance of 
 thought and knowledge which comes down to us from the 
 sacred past ; but also on those speculations which, with 
 the caprice of ever-changeful fashion, occupy in successive 
 years the thoughts of young men, and particularly on the 
 drift of the studies which may be from time to time pre- 
 scribed by the University authorities as necessary to a 
 degree. In this way the new institute will be, as we 
 hope, useful to the old colleges, or to whatever may here- 
 after remain of them. It will foster studies for which 
 they may naturally be expected to feel an increasing 
 disinclination; and it will supply, in a humble measure, 
 that which thirty years since was supplied to young men 
 by college tutors of the best type, who lived unmarried 
 
Edward Botiverie Pusey. 
 
 375 
 
 among their pupils, and who thought of them not merely 
 as paying attendants at their lectures, but as Christians 
 committed to their pastoral charge. And thus, as we 
 trust, it will form a centre of moral and intellectual and 
 spiritual enthusiasm, in which all that is solid in inquiry 
 and learning, aud all that is lofty and aspiring in moral 
 effort, shall find encouragement under the consecrating 
 shadow of a great name. 
 
 X. 
 
 These are our hopes. And if we ask you, my brethren, 
 to help us, when you have in this vast city so many 
 claims, present and prospective, upon your care and 
 charity, it is because our institute will, as we anticipate, 
 powerfully, although indirectly, strengthen all that you 
 have most at heart. No one need is likely to press more 
 heavily upon the Church in the future which is before us 
 than that of placing highly educated men in the great 
 centres of our population ; men who shall be abreast of 
 the thought and research of the day, and well able to 
 point out with the authority of knowledge, as well as with 
 the authority of office, how modern learning is related to 
 the faith which our Lord has brought from heaven. Your 
 Bishop, I believe, has, at least on one occasion, expressed 
 his sense of an increasing necessity for highly educated 
 men among the clergy of the Church. Well, such a need 
 will, no doubt, be partly supplied by the higher class of 
 theological colleges, the importance of which is happily, 
 year by year, more and more recognised : but we must 
 still look to the Universities for the main supply. And 
 depend upon it the question whether England is here- 
 after to remain Christian will be largely decided at the 
 Universities, and not least at Oxford. This momentous 
 question, I say, does not only concern those who live at 
 Oxford ; it interests all who think seriously about the 
 
376 Ediuard Bouverie Pusey. 
 
 future of the Church and the country ; all to whom the 
 temporal and eternal wellbeing of the great masses of 
 our countrymen, and the honour and triumph of the faith 
 of Christ, are in any sense dear. And therefore we ask 
 you to help us while we endeavour to combine the duty 
 of handing on with honour a great memory to those who 
 will come after us, with the even higher duty of provid- 
 ing, so well as we may, at a time of grave changes in 
 University education, for the already impaired, and still 
 more seriously threatened, interests of the faith. If that 
 great and humble servant of God, to whom I have referred 
 at such length, could ever have thought with pleasure 
 upon the prominence which we are asserting for his life 
 and work, it would have been solely for the sake of those 
 objects to which in life he habitually sacrificed his per- 
 sonal inclinations, namely, the glory of God and the good 
 of souls. It may well be that he was taken from us at a 
 time when his memory would best perpetuate the results 
 which he was privileged to achieve in life ; when a work, 
 the foundations of which were laid amidst suffering and 
 anxiet} r , amidst obloquy and misunderstanding, amidst 
 toils and disappointments such as fall to the lot of few 
 men in a century, would be completed amidst honours to 
 which rich and poor, the simple and the learned, the aged 
 and the young, rulers of the Church and the humblest of 
 her children, have joyfully contributed. 
 
 And there is one consideration which will appeal to 
 those who worship God in this church. You have an 
 especial interest, my brethren, in him who is to undertake 
 the great responsibility and labour of inaugurating this 
 work. 1 You know something of his devotion to truth 
 and duty, of his high and varied capacity, of the unstinted 
 charity which has spent in the sendee of your souls, year 
 
 1 The Rev. C. Gore, M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, and first 
 Librarian Residentiary of the Pusey Library, Oxford. 
 
Edivard Botiverie Pusey. 
 
 377 
 
 after year, the few weeks of leisure which could be spared 
 from exacting labours. To others who have had oppor- 
 tunities of studying his mind and character he has 
 seemed to combine, as few young men in our day com- 
 bine, a lofty simplicity of purpose with that insight and 
 knowledge in the things of faith, which makes him 
 not unworthy to represent, even in Oxford, the great 
 name of Dr. Pusey. It would be impossible, at least for 
 me, to say more of him. 
 
 Again and again, during the last two months, have we 
 looked upon the western sun, as, wellnigh shrouded by 
 masses of lowering clouds, he hurries to hide himself, as 
 if in shame, beneath the line of the horizon. But lo ! no 
 sooner has he disappeared from sight, than the heavens 
 are suffused with tints and hues of unaccustomed beauty, 
 and the very clouds which but just now seemed to gather 
 that they might cover up his face while his time of depar- 
 ture had not yet come, are touched beyond others with 
 the radiance which he flings in such profusion from his 
 place in a sky which is beyond our sight. So it is with 
 the servants of God ; only with this difference — that 
 while the splendours of the natural sunset die away before 
 the advancing night, the path of the departed just, alike 
 in the memory of the faithful here, and in the world of 
 glorified spirits, is " as the shining light, which shineth 
 more and more unto the perfect day." Surely we do 
 well to bear our part, however humble, in proclaiming the 
 moral beauty of one such life ; since thus we may hope 
 the better, through Christ's grace and guidance, to do and 
 teach after our measure also, and to have our share in the 
 promise of a name and place in that Kingdom which will 
 last for ever beyond the grave. 
 
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