Sa* S& «t ®* ****** jjj^ PRINCETON, N. J. % Shelf., Division «**«^ Section €pC^£? • •/•••^/ Number THE GIFTS OF CIVILISATION R. W. CHURCH THE GIFTS OF CIVILISATION AND OTHER SERMONS AND LECTURES DELIVERED AT tfoxb anfc at St. $aul R. W. CHURCH, M.A., D.C.L Dean of St. Paul's Honorary Fellow of Oriel NEW EDITION f anion MACMILLAN AND CO. 1880 [All rights reserved] OXFORD: BY E. P. HALL, M.A., AND J. H. STACY, Printers to the University. HENRY PARRY LIDDON IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF MANY BENEFITS AND NUMBERLESS KINDNESSES THIS VOLUME IS WITHOUT HIS SANCTION INSCRIBED, aj o u 0 ^ ^^ • v >-^ CONTENTS. SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OP OXFORD. SERMON I. The Gifts of Civilisation. Preached Nov. 18. Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity. 1866. i Cor. xii. 31. PAGE Covet earnestly the best gifts : and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way 5 SERMON II. Christ's Words and Christian Society. Preached May 5. Second Sunday after Easter. 1867, St. Mark x. 21. Then yesus beholding him loved him, a?id said unto him, One thing thou lackest : go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shall have treasure in heaven : and come, take up the cross, and follow Me 39 viii CONTENTS. SERMON III. Christ's Example. Preached Oct. 13. Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity. 1867. 1 Cor. xi. 1. PAGE Be ye followers ofjne, even as I also am of Christ. . 80 SERMON IV. Civilisation and Religion. Preached March 29. Fifth Sunday in Lent. 1868. St.. Matt. v. 13, 14, 16. Ye are the salt of the earth : but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. . . . Let your light so shine befoj-e men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven . . . .114 CONTENTS. ix LECTURES DELIVERED AT ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL. Civilisation before and after Christianity. 1872. LECTURE I. PAGE Roman Civilisation 147 LECTURE II. Civilisation after Christianity 177 On some Influences of Christianity upon National Character. 1873. LECTURE I. Influence of Christianity on National Character . .211 LECTURE II. Christianity and the Latin Races 254 LECTURE III. Christianity and the Teutonic Races 301 CONTENTS. The Sacred Poetry of Early Religions. 1874. LECTURE 1. PAGE The Vedas 349 LECTURE II. The Psalms 391 SERMONS AND LECTURES. SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia : veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae. { NOTICE. The following sermons were preached in the writer's turns as Select Preacher at St. Mary's, in 1 866-1 868. They touch, but only touch, without any pretension to system, and most inadequately, a subject of deep interest and importance — the relations between Christianity and the ideas and facts of modern civilised society. It is a subject which has already engaged the attention of serious and powerful minds, both in this country and abroad3-. But it has not yet been worked out ; and a great service will be done to our generation by any one who can grasp its leading truths, and do justice to its difficult problems. July, 1868. a See Preface to Guizot's Meditations stir la Religion Chretienne datis ses Rapports avec fetat actuel des Societes et des Esprits. Paris, 1868. B 2 SERMON I. THE GIFTS OF CIVILISATION. i Cor. xii. 31. Covet earnestly the best gifts : mid yet shew I unto you a more excelle7it way. By these 'best gifts' St. Paul meant the miraculous endowments which attended that outpouring of the Spirit in which Christianity as a distinct religion began. Nothing can be more astonishing, yet nothing more natural, than his picture of the feelings and behaviour of those who found themselves in possession of these spiritual powers. The gifts were novelties. The subject which received them and had to use them, and was influenced by the consciousness of their presence and the sight of their effects, was that human nature which had long formed its habits of dealing with whatever enlarged its capacities THE GIFTS OF and its sphere of action, and whose deportment under this sudden change of condition might be predicted from an old and sure experience. What came to pass at Corinth, strange as it seems at first sight, was in reality no more than there was reason to expect. Speaking of what he saw on a large scale, the Apostle describes men thrown off their balance and carried away by feeling their natural faculties transformed and exalted under that Divine influence which was pervading the Christian Church. The purpose was lost sight of in their keen appreciation of the in- strument, and in the personal satisfaction of possessing and using it ; and St. Paul's words disclose a state of feeling more absorbed by the interest of a new and strange endowment than impressed by the awfulness of its immediate source and the responsibilities of having been called to hold it. Side by side with gifts from heaven and ' powers of the world to come,' were the levity and frivolity of man, surprised and dazzled, measuring them by his own scale, press- ing them into the service of his vanity \ — CIVILISATION. childish delight in a new acquisition ; childish insensibility, childish excitement, childish dis- play, childish rivalries, mistaking the place and worth of the gifts themselves, altering their in- tended proportions, inverting their end and inten- tion. This was the disorder which the Apostle had to redress. In these chapters he bids the Corinthian Christians remember the source and the reason of this distribution of varied gifts. He recalls them from their wild extravagance and selfish thoughtlessness, to soberness and man- liness, and a recollection of the truth. ' Brethren, be not children in understanding : be babes in wickedness, but in sense grown men.' Claim- ing a use for every gift in its own place, he bids them set on each its right comparative value. He corrects their estimate, and urges them to measure, not by personal considerations, but by larger and nobler ones of the general benefit. ' Forasmuch as ye are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek that ye may abound to the edifying of the Church.' Their eagerness was roused at the sight of the new powers which the kingdom of God 8 THE GIFTS OF had brought with it into the world ; and St. Paul does not discourage their eagerness. Only, he warns them to direct their zeal wisely, and to be eager about the greatest and best : ' Covet earnestly the best gifts,' those which may serve most widely the good of the whole body, those which influence most fruitfully the ends for which it exists. Yet — as he interrupts himself to add — there is even a higher point of view than this. It is good to c covet earnestly the best gifts.' It is good to wish to be entrusted with those high gifts which are the fruits of the Lord's ascension and reign. It is good to be intent on their exercise, intent on the great purpose for which they were be- stowed, anxious to push them to their full effect. Yet the subject has to be lifted to a higher level still. There is something greater than the greatest of gifts — than wisdom in the choice of them, zeal in their exercise, usefulness in their results. When we are speaking of how Christians ought to feel and act, it is a maimed view which leaves out that which is the characteristic spring CIVILISATION. of Christian action, the principle which covers all cases, the ' new commandment ' which is to be henceforward the quickening spirit of all morality. ' Covet earnestly the best gifts : and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way.' And then he goes on to give that description of charity — charity in contrast^ with the greatest powers and most heroic acts, — charity, as the root of all the strength and all the charm of goodness, — charity, as the one essential and ever-growing attribute of the soul amid the provisional and transitory arrangements of this present state — which has made the thirteenth chapter of this Epistle one of the landmarks of man's progress in the knowledge of truth and right. I hope it is not disrespectful handling of the words of our great teacher to pass from the occasion which so deeply stirred his thoughts to the actual conditions and necessities amid which our own life is placed, and to see in what he wrote about spiritual gifts now passed away a meaning in relation to very different circum- J ' tnrv?- 10 THE GIFTS OF stances, which were beyond his range of view, and which he could not anticipate. We have long been accustomed to accept, in theory at least, the principle laid down by another apostle : 1 Every good gift and every perfect gift,' writes St. James, 'is from above, and cometh down from the Father of Lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.' It is not, then, I trust, forcing the language of St. Paul or desecrating it, to apply his words to what he was not directly thinking of ; to apply them in the most extended sense to all the powers with which men have been endowed ; to make the words of apostolic truth and sober- ness stretch beyond the temporary interest of the religious question with which he dealt, to the universal interests of human society, which is not indeed co-extensive with the Church, but which the Church was founded to embrace and restore, and St. Paul preached his gospel to fill with light and hope. Those awful gifts, which were at once the privilege and the snare of the Christians whom St. Paul had immediately to, CIVILISA TION. 1 1 teach, have passed away ; they were of their age ; they did their work ; they left their re- sults behind. But God's wonderful gifts to man are not gone. They are as real, as manifest, as operative, as ever. In what surrounds us in that condition of society in which we are actually passing our life, we see a world fuller of gifts — in one very real sense spiritual gifts of God — than was the Church of Corinth. ' Covet earnestly the best gifts/ the ' greater ' ones, the higher : ' and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way.' In these words St. Paul seems at once to put his sanction on all the great results of human civilisation, and at the same time to open a wider view beyond it, and to claim for man a higher end and a higher law of life, than even it can give. I use the word ' civilisation,' for want of a better, to express all that trains and furnishes man for that civil state which is his proper condition here : all skill, and endeavour, and achievement, all exercise and development of thought, restricted to the sphere of present 12 THE GIFTS OF things ; the high and improving organisation of society, primarily for the purposes of the present life. The contrast has often struck observers, and has been drawn out by some of the deepest as well as of the most superficial, between civil- isation and the religion of the New Testament ; and it often makes itself felt secretly and im- portunately, even where the feeling is not avowed or suffered to come to light. It is true that civilisation and religion have worked together, have acted on one another and produced joint results ; but in their aims and in their nature they are distinct, and may be, as they have been before now, in a right cause or a wrong, arrayed in opposition to one another. And it cannot be denied that minds strongly under the influence of the one, and keenly appreciating its vast relations, are apt to fear or shrink from the other. From the religious point of view, and where religious impressions are clear and paramount, it seems often strange — I do not say always as a matter of conscious reflection, but of unexplained distaste and wonder — to see men CIVILISATION. 13 giving their lives to business, or science, or political life, the pursuits which civilisation cherishes and which advance it. We are all of us perforce embarked in it ; we all use and enjoy it and profit by it : and yet uneasy mis- givings about it come upon us from time to time ; we are suspicious about its tendencies and. jealous of its claims ; and the things we do every day, and feel satisfied that they are right for us to do, we sometimes find it hard to reconcile with the deeper and more uncompromising of the religious views of life. And as civilisation grows more powerful and self-sustained, more comprehensive in its aims, more sure of its methods and perfect in its work, we must not be surprised if there grows with it, among those in whom its influence is supreme, distrust and impatience of religion. There have always been religious despisers of civilisation, and they have sometimes been its revilers. And there have been, and always will be, those who would raise it to an exclusive supremacy, the substitute for religion, and destined to clear away that which I4 THE GIFTS OF it replaces. But this supposed antagonism is but one of the many reminders to us of our own weakness and narrowness. Civilisation and re- ligion have each their own order, and move in their own path. Perhaps the more clearly we keep in view their distinctness the better. They are distinct. But no religious man, at least, can feel difficulty in believing that distinct as they may be, and in the hands of men sometimes op- posed, they have essentially one origin, and come both of them from Him who has made man for this world, as well as intended him for another. We hear civilisation both admired and dis- paraged by those who do not duly think whence it comes. That great spectacle amid which we live, daily before our eyes, and with so much that we could not do without —so familiar, yet so amazing when we think of the steps and long strange processes by which it has grown, and the vast results beyond all human anticipation which it has come to ; that fruitful elaboration of the best arrangements for the secular wellbeing of man, not material only, not intellectual only, CIVILISATION. 15 productive not merely of comfort and light, but goodness ; that complex and delicate social ma- chinery, the growth of centuries, and our inherit- ance and possession — let us make all abatements for its defects and inconsistencies, all reserves for its blemishes and drawbacks — yet deserves more respect than it has always received from religious people, as the great work of God's pro- vidence and order. The world easily suggests very awful views of its own condition, which we may call overcharged or morbid, but which it is not so easy to answer and get rid of. But the world would indeed be far more dreadful, if we must not see in its civilisation the leading and guiding hand of God, the real gifts of the Author and Giver of all good things. He who gave us the gospel of immortality, He who gave us His Son, gave us also civilisation and its gifts. His gifts are not necessarily dependent one on another, however much they may be allied. It is not necessary to trace all our civil- isation up to Christianity; no one can doubt how largely the temporal has been indebted to 1 6 THE GIFTS OF the spiritual ; but it is true that our civilisation has other sources, wide and ancient ones, besides. Nor do I see why we should be deterred from recognising it as God's work and blessing, because of its sure ill use, by luxury and pride, for impurity and wrong. It is but what hap- pened with the gifts at Corinth ; they were foolishly and wrongly used. However our civi- lisation comes, and however it is used, it is one of God's ways, as real as the sun and air and rain, of doing good to men. Surely a Christian need not be afraid to honour all that is excellent in civilisation, as being, in whatever way, from his own Master, whose awful mind and will is reflected in the universe. Surely he need not be afraid to say that it is not by religion only that tones of goodness are struck from the human soul which charm and subdue us, and that God has yet other ways, secret in working yet un- deniable in effect, of bringing out the graces which tend to make men like Himself. The Apostle's call a — if I may quote his familiar words a Phil. iv. 8. CIVILISATION. 17 in the less familiar but not less forcible Latin version of them — ' Quaecumque vera, quaecum- que pudica, quaecumque justa, quaecumque sancta, quaecumque amabilia, quaecumque bonae famae, si qua virtus, si qua laus disciplinae, haec cogitate,' finds indeed its deepest and truest response in that faith of which he was the preacher 5 but shall we say that it finds no true response apart from it and beyond it ? God teaches us about His gifts not only by His word but by His provfclence ; and His pro- vidence, working in many ages, has unfolded such a lavish munificence of gifts to men as might well deserve the praises even of an apostle. We are unreal, we talk loosely and deceive ourselves, when we ignore the gifts of our civi- lised order, in all that they have to amaze us, in all that they do to bless us ; or, when profiting by all the appliances with which they furnish us, we speak superciliously of their worth. Civi- lisation has indeed its dark side — a very dark one : there is much that is dreary and forbidding in the history of its growth ; and who can look c THE GIFTS OF without anxiety at the dangers of its future? But the irreligious and worldly tendencies of civilisation are not to be combated by simply decrying it. What it has of good and true tells of its Author too clearly, and bids us accept its benefits and claim them as coming from God, though they do not come directly through religion. Let us look at the world as we know it, with honest but not ill-natured eyes, calmly and fairly, neither as boasters nor as de- tractors— as those who were put here to ' refuse the evil and choose the good.' Let us not be driven off from the truth, because in the growth of human civilisation there is so much which must make a Christian, or any one who be- lieves in God and in goodness, shudder and tremble. Let us look at it with its terrible concomitant of men made worse by what ought to make them better. Yet look at it as it is. Follow the history of a great people, and consider what it brings forth. Observe that one great fact, the progressive refinement of our human nature, passing unconquerable when once begun, CIVILISATION. v IQ even through ages of corruption and decline, to rise up again after them with undiminished vigour ; keeping what it had gained, and never permanently losing ; bringing of course new sins, but bringing also new virtues and graces of a yet unwitnessed and unthought-of type. Ob- serve how, as time goes on, men gain in power, — power over themselves ; power to bring about, surely and without violence, what they propose ; power to have larger aims, to command vaster resources, to embrace without rash presumption a greater field. See how great moral habits strike their roots deep in a society ; habits undeniably admirable and beneficial, yet not necessarily con- nected with the order of things belonging to religion ; the deep, strong, stern sense of justice as justice ; the power of ruling firmly, equitably, incorruptly; the genius and aptitude for law, as a really governing power in society, which is one of the most marked differences of nations, and which some of the most gifted are without ; the spirit of self-devoting enterprise, the indiffer- ence to privation and to the pain of effort, the C 2 20 THE GIFTS OF impulses which lead to discovery and peopling the earth with colonies ; patriotism and keen public spirit, which some religious theories dis- parage as heathen, but which no theories will ever keep men from admiring. If nations have what, judging roughly, we call characteristic faults, there grow up in them characteristic vir- tues; in one the unflinching love of reality, in another the unflinching passion for intellectual truth, in another purity and tenderness, or large- ness of sympathy. This is what we see ; this, amid all that is so dark and disappointing, has come of God's nurturing of mankind through the past centuries. We can but speak generally ; and civilisation has many shapes, and means many things. But let us speak fairly, as we know it. Civilisation to us means liberty and the power of bearing and using liberty ; it means that which ensures to us a peaceful life, a life of our own, fenced in from wrong and with our path and ends left free to us ; it means the strength of social counte- nance given on the whole to those virtues which CIVILISATION. %\ make life nobler and easier ; it means growing honour for manliness, unselfishness, sincerity, — growing value for gentleness, considerateness and respect for others ; it means readiness to bear criticism, to listen to correction, to see and amend our mistakes ; it means the willingness, the passion, to ameliorate conditions, to commu- nicate advantages, to raise the weak and low, to open wide gates and paths for them to that discipline of cultivation and improvement which has produced such fruit in others more fortunate than they. And it has disclosed to us in the course of its development more and more of what is contained in human characters and capacities. We are, in this age, drawing forth with amazement dis- coveries which seem to be inexhaustible from the treasure-house of material nature. When we cast our eyes back over history and literature, it seems to me that the variety and the dis- closures there are as astonishing. Think of the great forms of history, so diversified, so unlike one to another, so unexpected in their traits ; 22 THE GIFTS OF think of all that a great portrait-gallery re- presents, doubtless in but too rank abundance, of vile and bad, but also of high and venerable, of what the world had never yet known but was never more to forget, of originality, of power, of goodness. The examples of actual history are but part in this great spectacle. Think of what fiction, with all its abuses, has done for us, — creating pictures of character, of infinite novelty and interest, in which imagination reflects the real, endless play of life ; multiplying and un- folding for the general knowledge types which would otherwise have been lost where they grew up : think of its world of ideal histories, revealing to man himself \ showing him with subtle and searching truth things unsuspected or dimly felt, making him understand, better sometimes, as it has been said, than graver teachers, his tempt- ations and self-deceits ; — the parables of each generation. Think again what has been be- stowed on man in the perfecting of language, its growth and changes, its marvellous acqui- sition of new powers, in the hands of the great CIVILISATION. 23 masters who have forged it anew for their thoughts ; the double process going on at once of deepening scientific analysis and continual enlargement by actual use ; as in an instrument of music, ever attaining improvement in mechan- ism, ever, under refined or powerful handling, surprising us with fresh secrets of what it can do. Think of the way in which new faculties, as it were, spring up in us of seeing and feel- ing, and how soon they are made over to the common stock ; how, by art, by poetry, by the commentary of deep and true sympathy and deep and true knowledge, our eyes are more and more opened to discern in new ways the beauty of hill and plain, of sky or sea, the wonders of the physical universe and their meaning. Think of the wealth that any great literature enshrines of true observation and diversified emotion, and of thoughts that live for ever, ever widening and purifying men's minds. Count over all our great possessions. Shall we venture to say that all this does not come from the Source of all beauty and all wisdom and all light — from 24 THE GIFTS OF Him by whom alone the great are great and the good are good? Shall we say that all these things ought not to excite in men pas- sionate admiration and interest — that men ought not to desire and follow them — to wish, to advance the progress and to share in the gifts ? What we see, then, is a profusion, overwhelm- ing to contemplate, of what, if we trace them to their source and author, we must call the gifts of God to man for this life ; most varied, most manifold, ever increasing, changing their shape, growing one out of another, unfolding and expanding as new ends appear and shape themselves. It is not wonderful that such a spectacle should win involuntary admiration even from those whose thoughts go most beyond it, and who wish to measure all things here by the measure of Jesus Christ. It is not wonderful, either, that when we come fresh from the New Testament, it should seem too dazzling. But whether or not our thoughts are baffled when we try to embrace God's different ways of work- CIVILISATION. 25 ing, this we none of us doubt, that all that tends to educate and improve and benefit man comes from the goodness of the Divine Ruler who guides his fortunes. And what He gives, it is for us to accept and improve. It is an easy thing to say, as has before now been said, Leave it. A wiser thoughtfulness, a braver and deeper faith will say Use it, only believe that there is something greater beyond. Surely we may hear in the words of the Apostle, not only the warrant, but the call, of his Master, who Himself had not where to lay His head, to take and prize and carry on to its perfection all that His providence has created of so different an order for us, the talent of our trial. ' Covet earnestly the greater, the better gifts,' Measure and compare them wisely. Fearlessly choose them, fearlessly give them full play. This is indeed one side of the matter. But there is another and a higher. Covet earnestly what most raises man's part here ; what would be to be most desired and followed, even if his part ended here ; — but remember also, that besides %6 THE GIFTS OF all this, there is a yet more excellent way. Above God's greatest gifts here, is that which He is essentially : above them all is charity ; for ' God is love.' ' A more excellent way.' It would still, I suppose, be true, — though it would be unaccount- able how it should ever have been said, — even if this world were all : it would still be true, that the perfection of character which St. Paul describes under the name of charity is the highest achievement of human nature, and that above knowledge, or power, or great acts, is the un- folding of pure goodness as the universal prin- ciple of action. But we believe that this world, with all its wonderful results, is not all. We look forward. And we believe that we have a place in something wider and more lasting. Our ties are not those only of this world, nor the duties we acknowledge, nor the hopes. We believe in the relation of men to God as a Father as well as a Creator, as a Divine Saviour and Guide and Redeemer, as well as the Infinite Cause of all things and the Ruler and Judge CIVILISATION. 2J of all that is. We believe that we have been told, as far as it concerns us and we could bear it, the truth about ourselves, and the strange aspect of this world and our condition in it. We believe that all we are brethren, sharers to- gether in a great wreck and disaster, sharers too in a great recovery, even now begun. We believe that He has been with us, and of us, who made us, and by whom we live. In Him and from Him, we learnt the mind of God ; from Him we know God's value for man, and what God thought it not too much to do that man should be restored to that for which God made him. ' God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.' In making Himself known to us, He has not indeed kept out of sight those awful attributes, in virtue of which we, and .everything we know and see, are so fearfully and wonderfully made. But that by which He makes us to understand Him and draw near to Him is His love for us. Henceforth the world 28 THE GIFTS OF knows Him irrevocably, if it knows Him at all, in the Cross of Jesus Christ. The world never can be the same, after that, as it was before it, as it would be without it. It has brought a new spirit into the world, with a divine prerogative of excellence, to which all other things excellent and admirable must yield the first place. Civi- lisation runs its great and chequered course, influenced by religion, or independent of it. As great things have been done, so still greater may be done, for the wise and just and generous ordering of society, while this life lasts ; and what God has given to men to know and to do may be little to what He has yet to give them. Yet after all, henceforth that will always be more excellent which comes nearest to the spirit of Jesus Christ. That must always remain for man, rj Raff* v-nepfio\r\v obos, the way in which our Master walked, the love in which He lived, and by which His religion lives. ' Covet earnestly the best gifts : and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way.' And then, after having shown the more excellent way, re- CIVILISATION. 29 versing the order of the precept, St. Paul proceeds — 'Follow after charity; but covet earnestly the spiritual gifts.' They were to be prized and coveted by those who were so earnestly taught how far charity was above them. Nor can we prize too much the so different gifts which our own generation sees with wonder increasing upon us. We cannot honour them too sincerely; we cannot set them at too high a rate ; we cannot take too much trouble to master all that is true and real in them ; we cannot spend ourselves better than in making the world the richer for what God has given us. But when we feel dizzy with the marvellous spectacle around us, carried away with the current of those great changes which with good reason make us hope for so much more for man in his life here, let us remind ourselves that this is not all. There is some- thing else to be thought of besides the objects and pursuits of a successful civilisation. These things are to have their time and service, and then pass away. There are interests beyond them ; and each one of us knows that zvhat he is 30 THE GIFTS OF reaches beyond them. We are not necessarily growing better men, though we may be doing a great work, when we are hiving up or dispersing abroad God's manifold gifts of knowledge or ability. And what we are here for is, if any- thing, to become good ; and goodness, since Christ has come, means essentially that spirit of love which joins man to man and lifts him to God. Whatever happens, whatever may be done in reducing this present state to greater reason and order, in drawing forth its resources, in curing its evils, the Cross of Christ is there, standing for ever ; the Cross of One who came to seek and to save that which was lost, who was among us as ' one that serveth/ our pattern, our warning, in the end our last consolation. For consolation we want at last, be our triumphs what they may. There is no need to colour or overstate. Side by side with our brilliant suc- cesses and hopes abide the certain and common- place conditions of our state, inexorable, unalter- able— pain, moral evil, death. Serious and thoughtful men, however much they may be the CIVILISATION. 31 children and the soldiers of an advancing civili- sation, must feel, after all, their individuality. As one by one they die, so one by one each must live much of his life. And when a man enters into his closet and is still ; — if ever, from the glories and the occupations of a great part in the world's business — (I say not from its tempta- tions and entanglements ; they need not be this, they may be his proper engagements) ; — if ever from these he withdraws up into the mount, and in silence and by himself looks in the face his awful destiny, the awful, endless road which lies before him, the purpose for which he was called into being, the law he was meant to live by; when he feels himself confronted alone with the Object of his worship, out of all reach and passing all knowledge, yet the most familiar and cus- tomary of all familiar thoughts, — he can hardly help feeling that the gifts of God for this life are for this life ; they cannot reach beyond ; they cannot touch that which is to be. As St. Paul argues, they are incomplete, and they are transi- tory : they are, compared with what we are to 32 THE GIFTS OF look for, but the playthings and exercises of children ; they share our doom of mortality. There is a link which joins this life with the next ; there is something which belongs equally to the imperfect and the perfect, and which we carry with us from the one to the other. We know little what will become of our knowledge ; we do know what will become of our power : one thing only 'never faileth.' The charity which seeks the good of all to whom it can do' good ; the charity which detects good wherever it is to be found or to be advanced ; the charity which opens and enlarges the human soul to conceive, and long for, and set up for its standard, and contemplate with adoring and awful gladness the perfect goodness of God, — that belongs to the world where we are going, when all is over, and, as Christians believe, comes even now from that world. There is the direction in which we look to be perfect ; there aspirations are secure against disappointment, and the object is not inadequate to the affection, nor fails it. In the next world, as in this, it is CIVILISATION. 33 by love that creatures receive and show forth the likeness of their Maker. There is, then, one great order of things which pertains to the present scene of man's activity ; and there is another, not indifferent indeed to the present, but primarily and above all, directed to the future of mankind. In both we have our parts. For the purposes of both God has been lavish in His gifts. We distinguish them, and they are distinguishable in thought and in fact also. But each of us in truth has his part in both ; and our life ought to combine them. We ought not to be afraid of God's gifts ; we ought not to make as though we saw them not, as we ought not to mistake their place or reverse their order. We are as much bound to be faith- ful to the full as the stewards of our civilisation, as we are responsible for our knowledge of the light and for our gifts of grace. Here especially, what are we here for? — we who are connected with this place, or who have ever tasted of its benefits, — what are we, or were we here for, but to desire earnestly, and seek with hearty effort D 34 THE GIFTS OF and use with fidelity for the service of our brethren, the choice and manifold gifts which a place like this stores up and distributes? ' Covet earnestly the best gifts.' Surely the gifts which God's providence puts within our reach here are among His higher, His better gifts ; surely they are meant to kindle our enthusiasm, to call forth our strong desire, as they awaken the longing of numbers outside of us. When we think of the work and the opportunities of this place — its far-reaching influences, its deep and lasting effects on English society ; how here thought and character and faculty are fashioned in those who are to lead thousands of their brethren and control their fate ; with what pro- digal abundance the means and helps are sup- plied us by which men may make things better in society, may make things more sound and wholesome and strong ; how time is ensured and leisure fenced off from outward calls ; what may be learned ; how the door of real and large and grounded knowledge is opened to men; how men may train themselves to think and to judge, to CIVILISATION, 35 discern, the true and to choose the best; — indeed we must have dull minds and poor spirits not to see the great chances given us of work and service, not to be stirred to eager and emulous thoughts about these great gifts. St. Paul is our warrant for being in earnest about them, and our teacher how to use them. ' Covet them earnestly/ Open your eyes to their greatness and charm ; remember their purpose, remember their variety. Follow after them, — only do not be children about them ; do not idly extol them and vaunt about them ; do not be jealous if you have little ; do not be proud if you have much : there are differences, and all have their use ; and ' God hath set the members, every one in the body, as it hath pleased Him.' Cultivate, as good servants, your great gifts. Be zealous for great causes which carry in them the hopes of generations to come. Appreciate all you may find here, to help you to interpret the works and the thoughts of God, to understand your- selves and the world in which you are. But there is something more. Surely there are times D % 36 THE GIFTS OF to most of us when, in the midst of the splendour and the hopes of visible things, it is with us as the Psalmist says: — 'Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks, so longeth my soul after Thee, O God. My soul is athirst for God, even for the living God : when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?' We want a tie and bond deeper than that of society. We want a standard and exemplar above this world. God has placed us to develope our full nature here ; but he has placed us here, we believe, still more to become like Himself. So, while learning to understand, to value, to use the last and greatest endow- ments which the course of things has unfolded in human society, learning to turn them honestly to their best account for the world for which they were given, remember that there is a way for you to walk in which carries you far beyond them, and opens to you even wider prospects, more awful thoughts, a deeper train of ideas and re- lations and duties which touch us in what is most inward, to the very quick. We are sinners who have been saved by a God who loved us. . CIV I LIS A TION. 3 7 There is a religion which is our hope beyond this time, and the incommunicable character of it is love. That which its Author thought necessary to be and to do, for a remedy and, comfort to man's misery and weakness — unless man's misery and weakness are a delusion — reveals a love which makes us lose ourselves when we think of it. Love was the perpetual mark of all His life, and of the Act in which His work was finished. His religion came with a new commandment, which was love. That religion has had great fruits, and their con- spicuous and distinctive feature is the love which was their motive and support. Its last word about the God whom it worshipped was, that c God is love.' It is the Gospel of One, ' who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.' 'Let this mind be in you, which was in Him,' — love for those made In the image of God and whom God has so 38 THE GIFTS OF CIVILISATION. loved — love, self-surrendering, supreme, ever growing at once in light and warmth, of Him who made them. Let us pray that He who has crowned our life here with gifts which baffle our measuring, and which daily go beyond our hopes, but who has ' prepared for them that love Him such good things as pass man's understand- ing/ would indeed 'pour into our heart such love towards Himself, that we loving Him above all things, may obtain His promises which exceed all that we can desire, through Jesus Christ our Lord/ SERMON II. CHRISTS WORDS AND CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. St. Mark x. 21. Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said tmto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven : and come, lake up the cross, and follow Me. THE lessons for this Sunday3, set before us the Prophet Balaam, that extraordinary character of the Old Testament in whom the experience of modern times has seen the great typical instance of self-deceiving obedience. But he is the type not only of the character which hides the truth from itself, but of that which sees it in vain. Balaam, admiring but unable to believe, looking at the order and beauty of the sacred camp, and plotting to tempt and corrupt ; feeling the full grandeur of the spectacle, but able to keep from his heart, though he could not from his intellect a Second Sunday after Easter. 40 CHRIST'S WORDS AND and his lips, the confession that it was Divine, — is the warning we meet with, earlier than we should have expected to find it, against every form of insincere homage to truth and religion. It seems to me that we must always feel some fear of this danger, when, living as most of us do, we turn to our acknowledged standards of life in the New Testament, and meet with such texts as that which I have just read. We live one kind of life, an innocent, it may be, a useful, improving, religious life ; but it is not the life we read of in the New Testament ; and yet that life is the one which Christians, in some sense or other, accept as their rule. We honour it, extol it, make our boast of it. But a thinking and honest man must sometimes have misgivings, when he asks himself how far his life in what he deliberately sanctions is like that set before us in the New Testament, and how much of the Gospel morality he is able practically to bring into his own. One lesson taught us by the varied ex- perience, inherited by those on whom the ends of the world are come, is a quickened sense of CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 41 the incredible facility of self-deceit. Is there not reason to be anxious, whether, when we own the New Testament as our rule of life, we are not merely making a compromise, — admiring, and not taking the responsibility of our convictions ; contemplating the New Testament with perhaps longing or respectful or wondering awe, but at an infinite distance from it in spirit and temper? This is a large subject ; and though it is much too large to be dealt with now as it should be, I will venture to say a few words about it this afternoon. What I mean is this. Here is the New Testa- ment, the confessed source of Christian morality, with its facts and language, about which there is no dispute, and with its spirit and tone equally distinct and marked. And on the other hand, here is the ordinary life of Christian society, with its accepted principles, its familiar habits, its long-sanctioned traditions ; the life of Chris- tian society, not particularly in this or that age, but as on the whole it has been from the time 42 CHRIST'S WORDS AND when Christianity won its place definitively in the world ; with its legitimate occupations, its interests, its objects, its standards of goodness, of greatness. When we put the two side by side, the mind must be dull indeed which is not conscious of a strong sense of difference and contrast. What does this feeling mean, and to what does it point ? So obvious a question has been variously answered ; but an answer of some sort is wanted by us all. \ The life set before us in the words and deeds of the New Testament is, we all confess, the root of all Christian life. Consider steadily what that was. The life which our Lord led He en- joined : His words are nothing more than general- isations of what He did. It was not that His life had in it difficulties, pain, self-denial, and that He taught men to expect them ; all lives have that, and all teaching must arm men for it : but the regular, ordinary course of that life was nothing but hardness, abstinence, separation from society or collision with it. Such a life a great reformer indeed always must go through : others CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 43 have gone through it. But here, not to speak of the degree of it, it appears as much imposed on the taught as welcomed by the teacher. He was a King, and announced a kingdom and claimed subjects ; but it was a kingdom of heaven not one of earth : and this kingdom and its members, both King and subjects, are repre- sented as in open and deadly enmity with what is called the 'present worldV They are few compared with the many; the way is narrow that leads to life, and few find it ; they are not to marvel if the world hates them ; the blessing is with those whom men revile and speak ill of ; the woe is for those of whom all men speak well. We read, how the lesson was learned, how the disciples understood their teacher. ' Be not conformed to this world0,5 says one; 'whosoever will be the friend of this world,' says another, {is the enemy of God*1;' Move not the world, neither the things that are in the world,' says another, ' if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in hime.' The claim was for b Gal. i. 4. c Rom. xii. 2. d St. James iv. 4. e 1 St. John ii. 1 5. 44 CHRIST'S WORDS AND undivided allegiance : ' No man can serve two masters ; ye cannot serve God and mammon.' And what was our Lord's call ? What were His leading maxims? He bids His disciples count the cost, as those who embark in great projects full of risk. * So likewise whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be My discipleV He warned the multi- tudes that followed Him, ' If any man come to Me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple g.' ' One thing thou lackest,' is the answer to the young man who had kept the commandments from his youth, and whom Jesus 1 beholding loved ' ; ' If thou wilt be perfect,' ' go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven : and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.' This was no isolated command ; it was given in a general form to the whole of the 'little flock ' : ' Sell that ye have, and give alms ; f St. Luke xiv. 33. % Ibid, 26. CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 45 provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth notV And what He said, they did — 'they left all and fol- lowed Him.' With such a call it is not sur- prising that there were corresponding precepts. 1 Take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself ; ' Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, neither for the body, what ye shall put on. . . Seek not what ye shall eat nor what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind. For all these things the nations of the world seek after ; and your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things.' Consider what is involved in these words ; how they touch the common occupations of mankind in ' the nations of the world ' ; what a sweep they made to those who heard them of the most ordinary motives and business of life. True, what came in His way He took ; He blessed the marriage-feast at Cana ; He refused no invitation from Pharisee or Publican, from rich or poor ', He cared so little for the current austerities of h St. Luke xii. 32- 46 CHRISES WORDS AND religion, that His enemies could sneer at one whom they called a gluttonous man and a wine- bibber, a 'friend' and 'guest' of sinners. But such passages only throw into stronger relief the general character of His words and life. He who had less a place that He could call His own than the birds which have their nests and the foxes that have their holes, had but stern warn- ings of judgment for the man who built large barns for his increasing harvests, for those who have their reward now, for him who has received his good things here. ' How hardly shall they that have riches ' — or, take it in its softened form — 'that trust in riches, enter into the kingdom of God.' ' I say unto you, swear not at all/ ' I say unto you, that ye resist not evil ; give to him that asketh thee ; turn the right cheek to him who has smitten the left ; to him that would sue thee at the law for thy coat, give up thy cloke also.' He forbids His disciples to seek high places, to claim their own, to assert their rights. He gives them as their portion slander, misunderstanding, persecution. He breaks their CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 47 ties with the world. He scarcely allows them an interest in it, beyond their work as His delegates. His first followers took Him at His word, and very literally. All his disciples were called to follow this, and they did follow it. Their first instinct was to have all things common. The religion taught by St. Paul and St. John is a religion of poverty, with little or no interest in the present life ; which submits to violence and ill-usage as a matter of course ; which accepts the loosening of family ties ; which preaches in- dulgence without limits, even to seventy times seven, ' as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven ' ; in which devotion to the unseen, a sense of the citizenship in heaven, fills the thoughts, and throws into the background — ought I not to say into utter insignificance — things visible and temporal. It discourages wealth, and says hard things of the love of money ; it is shocked at appeals to law, and holds it far 'more blessed to give than to receive ' ; it regards industry as a moral remedy against idleness, and riches only as what may be turned into 'the treasure 48 CHRIST'S WORDS AND in heaven1' ; it contemplates a state of mind in which war between Christians is inconceivable and impossible ; it brands ambition and the ' minding of earthly things k.' I need not say how severely it looked upon mere enjoyment. It was more in earnest against human selfishness than even against what caused human suffering. It seemed to be irreconcilable with litigation and the pursuit of gain, but it did not seem to proscribe slavery. What an astonishing phenomenon would it have appeared to the Christians of the first century, could they have looked forward and seen in vision the Church and Christian society as it was to be, as we know it, and as it has been for the greater part of its history. I do not speak of scandals, of invasions of worldliness, of confessed corruptions. Those were then also, and we know must be always. But the change is not only one of fact, but in the general sense of what is right and lawful, in the general view of the conduct of life. Christian society 1 i Tim. vi. 19. k Phil. iii. 19. CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 49 was then almost as separate from the society by which it was surrounded as a ship is from the sea, or a colony in a foreign land from the strangers about it. And now Christianity claims to have possession of society. Not only is the Church no longer opposed, as it then was, to society, but we find a difficulty in drawing the line between them. It seems impossible to con- ceive three things more opposite at first sight to the Sermon on the Mount, than War, Law, and Trade ; yet Christian society has long since made up its mind about them, and we all accept them as among the necessities or occupations of human society. Again, Christianity has been not only an eminently social religion, but a liberal religion. It has been so, not merely from slack indifference, but with its eyes open, and with deliberate reason given to itself for what it did. It has made large allowance for the varieties of character. It has naturalised and adopted in the boldest way — (I say this, looking at the general result of what has come to pass, and not forgetting either narrow fears and E SO CHRIST'S WORDS AND jealousies, or very terrible abuses and mischiefs) —art, literature, science. It has claimed to have a charm which could take the sting out of them. We educate by the classics, and are not afraid of Shakespeare. We may say, and say truly, that where there is society, these things must be ; but Christian society began in the life of the New Testament, and they are not there. In all direc- tions we see instances of the necessities of things enforcing an enlarged interpretation of its lan- guage ; and we believe that the common sense and instinct of Christians have on the whole caught its true meaning. If this is a compromise, re- member that every portion of the Church, every age, every class in it is implicated. Even mo- nastic religion, though it declined society, implied that there was a legitimate form of it, however hard to find, out of the cloister. Even the sect which denounces war and titles has not shrunk from the inconsistency, at least as great, of being rich. We are all involved. We may draw arbitrary lines for ourselves, and say that all outside them shall be called the world. But CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 51 these distinctions we do not always recognise ourselves, and no one else does. It seems to me impossible to exaggerate the apparent contrast between Christian society in its first shape, and that society which has grown out of it ; between the Church, as it was at first called forth out of the world, at open war with it, condemning its morality, rejecting its objects, declining its advantages, in utter antipathy to its spirit — and Christian society as we know it, and live in it, and on the whole take it for granted. The Sermon on the Mount was once taken very literally : it is easy to say, take it literally still, with the Poor Men of Lyons or the Moravians ; only then you sacrifice society. So it is easy to say, that it is for a few, that its words are counsels of perfection : only then you sacrifice the universal interest of it ; you seem to admit two rules, and lower the whole aim of Christian morality. And it is easy to soften it down and say that it merely inculcates justice, humanity, forgiveness, humility, self-command ; only then you are in danger of sacrificing its special E 2 52 CHRIST'S WORDS AND meaning altogether. It is true that it lays down principles ; but this does not account for the instances chosen to exemplify the principle. It is not satisfactory to call such language figurative; for nothing can be less figurative than the com- mands, ' Lay not up treasure on earth,' ' Take no thought for the morrow,' ' Sell all thou hast,' ' Resist not evil.' Such words do indeed embody the spirit of Christian morality ; only they do more, — they express what, to those who heard them, were the most literal of facts and duties. Is then the history of Christian society the history of a great evasion ? We Christians of this day believe that in its earlier and later forms it is one and the same ; that the later has not forfeited the mind and the hopes of the earlier. Unless we are apostates without knowing it and meaning it, we accept the difference as being, in spite of enormous and manifest faults, the result of natural and intended changes. Are we mis- taken? Are we insincere and double-minded, triflers with our belief, for allying Christianity with civilised society, for letting it take its chance, CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 53 so to speak, with the inevitable course and pur- suits of human life ? It is the very meaning of an active and advancing state of civilisation that men should be busy with things of this present time : yet between the best side of Christian civilisation and the Sermon on the Mount there seems to be a great interval. Is Christian civil- isation a true and fair growth ? or is it, as it has been held to be, a deep degeneration, a great con- spiracy to be blind ? Are we Christians to our own shame as honest men, and to our Master's dishonour — ' Christiani ad contumeliam Christi ' ? * Has the Christian Church, in its practical solu- tion of these questions, come near to the likeness of Balaam, who can neither be called a false prophet nor a true ? Has Christian society fallen away from what it was meant to be; or may we think that, with all shortcomings and very great ones, it is fulfilling its end, and that its rule, with such astonishingly different applica- tions, is still essentially the same ? * Salvian, De Gub. Dei. viii. 2. qu. by Bossuet, Serm. 6 Sur la haine de la veriteV 54 CHRIST'S WORDS AND The obvious answer is, and we hope the true one, that God. has appointed society, and that society means these consequences : that society, as well as religion, is God's creation and work. If we have anything to guide us as to God's will in the facts of the world, — if we see His providence in the tendencies and conditions amid which we live, and believe that in them He is our teacher and interpreter, we must believe that social order, with its elementary laws, its ne- cessary incidents and pursuits, is God's will for this present world. He meant us to live in this world. And for this world — unless there is nothing more to be done than to wait for its ending — what we call society, the rule of law, the employments of business, the cultivation of our infinite resources, the embodiment of public force and power, the increase of wealth, the continued improvement of social arrangements, — all this is indispensable. There is no standing still in these matters ; the only other alterna- tive is drifting back into confusion and violence. If the necessities of our condition, with all the CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. $$ light thrown on them by long experience, are no evidence of God's purposes, we are indeed in darkness ; if they are, it is plain that man, both the individual and the race, has a career here, that he has been furnished for it, I need not say how amply, and was meant to fulfil it. It is God's plan that in spite of the vanity and shortness of life, which is no Christian discovery (it was a matter for irony or despair long before Christianity), and in spite of that disproportionateness to eternity which the Gospel has disclosed to us, men should yet have to show what they are, and what is in them to do ; should develope and cultivate their wonder- ful powers ; should become something propor- tionate to their endowments for this life, and push to their full limit the employments which come to their hand. The Church by its practice, its greatest writers by their philosophy and theories, have sanctioned this view of the use and divine appointment of the present life. This natural order of things was once inter- rupted. It was when Christ came to begin $6 CHRIST'S WORDS AND society anew. But as soon as the first great shock was over, which accompanied a Gospel of which the centre was the Cross and Resur- rection, it became plain that the mission of the Church was not to remain outside of and apart from society, but to absorb it and act on it in endless ways ; that Christianity was calculated and intended for even a wider pur- pose than had been prominently disclosed at first; that in more refined and extended ways than any one then imagined, it was to make natural human society, obstinate and refractory as it was, own its sway, and yield to an influence, working slowly but working inex- haustibly, over long tracts of time, not for gen- erations, but centuries. Then was made clear the full meaning of such sayings as those of the net gathering of every kind, and the great house with many vessels. May it not be said that our Lord has done to human society — even that society which is for this world, and which in so many of its principles and influences is so deeply hostile to His spirit — what He did CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 57 among men on earth ? He came to widen men's prospects of thought and hope to another world. And yet His great employment here was healing their bodies and comforting their present sufferings ; comforting sorrows that must soon be again, healing sicknesses which were to come back worse, restoring to life bodies which were again to die. He is now above, 'giving gifts to men'; and now as then the great ends of His religion are the things of God and the soul. But as then He healed men's bodies when He sought their souls, so He has taken possession of that world which is to pass away. He has sanctified, He has in many ways transformed that society which is only for this time and life ; and while calling and guiding souls one by one to the Father, He has made His gracious influence felt where it could least be expected. Even war and riches, even the Babel life of our great cities, even the high places of ambition and earthly honour, have been touched by His spirit, have found how to be Christian. Shadows as they are, compared 58 CHRIST'S WORDS AND with the ages that are before us, and tainted with evil, we believe that they have felt the hand of the Great Healer, to whom power is given over all flesh ; all power in heaven and on earth1. The Tempter offered all the kingdoms of the world to Christ, and He refused them, and chose poverty instead. And yet they have become His, with all the glory of them, with all their incidents. Such has been the course which God's providence has appointed for that com- pany, which looked at first as if it was intended to be but a scanty and isolated band of witnesses, living, like the Rechabites, in the wilderness till their true destiny was unfolded in the world to come, — among men but not of them. It was meant, if we see in history the will and the finger of God, to have here a higher flight and a higher action. Through the whole lump of civilised society the leaven was to spread and work. The great overshadowing tree, shelter- ing such different inhabitants, was to rise out of the mustard seed. Christendom has grown 1 St. John xvii. 2 ; St. Matt, xxviii. 18. CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 59 out of the upper room. The Catholic Church was to be the correlative to the unity of all tribes of man. It was to expand and find room for all, as they all were embraced by it, with much margin for their differences, with all their fortunes and their hopes, with all that is essential and necessary in all human com- munion and society, with all that belongs to man's perfection and gives exercise to his great gifts here, with much, too, that belongs to his imperfection m. Was this an accident ? Was m If * the world ' with which Christians have to fight meant simply, as it seems sometimes in words taken to mean, ' society,' this is the same thing as admitting Chris- tianity to be anti-social. There is no help for it, and we must say, ' Come out of it and be ye separate,' as,* to a great extent, it had to be said of society in the first days. For society, as we term the world and its conditions, must make much of trade and industry, must have cares for the future, and make a virtue of prudence ; must accumulate wealth, must go by law, must take care for liberty, must accept the necessities of war. But Christianity is not anti-social, if on certain occasions it has adopted a strong attitude about the ordinary pursuits and objects of men in civil society ; about riches, or about life itself. This is no more than the soldier does, who is not anti-social, though there are times when all he does and thinks of is against the common ways of society. 60 CHRIST'S WORDS AND this a great miscarriage? Have the purposes of God once more, and in His final dispensa- tion, been turned out of their path by the per- versity and sin of man? Is all this acceptance of society by the Church, with all that society brings with it — its wars, its profession of arms, its worldly business, its passion for knowledge, its love of what is beautiful and great, its para- mount rule of law — and not the mere acceptance only, but the Christian consecration of these things of the world, — is all this not as it should have been ? It is manifest that in all this there is much that is unchristian, and that Christians have often tolerated what it was unpardonable to tolerate ; but unless the whole Church has absolutely failed in vital principle and in under- standing its mission and charge, — unless not only the Divine arrangements of the world in natural society, but the Divine interpositions to restore them have been defeated, and produced, as the poet says, ' not works but ruins11,' — we must be- lieve that what we have seen worked out with » ' Non arti ma mine.' — Dante, Par. 8. CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 61 such irresistible tendencies and uniform effects, in the fusing of society with the Church, has been according to the original law and purpose of its existence. That is to say, the Church was not meant to be always in its first limitations and conditions. Christian society was meant to take in, as avowedly legitimate, other forms of life than those insisted on and recognised at first. It was not always to have all things common. It was not always to live by the literal rule, ' Take no thought for the morrow.' It was not always to set the least esteemed to judge, or to turn the other cheek. It was not always to decline the sword. It was not always to hold itself bound by the command, ' Sell all that thou hast.' Prob- ably it is not too much to say that Christianity helped largely in that break-up of ancient society out of which modern society has grown. But society, broken up, was reorganised ; and as, while time lasts, society must last, the common, inevitable laws of social action resumed their course when society entered on its new path with the Christian spirit working in it, some- 6% CHRIST'S WORDS AND times more, sometimes less ; ebbing or advancing, but manifestly, in the long run, influencing, im- proving, elevating it. Certainly, the history of Christendom has fallen far short of the ideal of the New Testament. Yet I do not think we can doubt that true Christian living has had at least as fair chance, in the shape which the Church has taken, as it could have had if the Church had always been like one of those religious bodies which shrink from society. It has had its corruptions : we may be quite sure that it would have had theirs, if it had been like them. In its types of goodness it has had what is impossible to them — greatness and variety. And its large- ness and freedom have not been unfruitful. I am not thinking of exceptional lives of apostolic saintliness, like Bishop Ken's. But in all ages there have been rich men furnished with ability, busy men occupied in the deepest way with the things of this life, to whom Christ's words have been no unmeaning message, — students, lawyers, merchants, consumed with the desire of doing good ; soldiers filled with the love of their neigh- CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 63 bour ; ' men,' as we call them, ' of the world ' following all that is pure and just and noble in the fear and love of God ; of whom if we cannot say that they are men in earnest to follow in the steps of Jesus Christ, it is difficult to know of whom we can say so. Christianity, then, claims now to make occa- sions and instruments of serving God out of things which at first were relinquished as in- consistent with His service ; and there is no doubt that at first the call to relinquish them was absolute and unqualified. The austere maxims of privation and separation from secular things which we find in the New Testament, have seemed at times to raise an impassable bar between its religion and society. If then, in their original severity, they were not to be universal, why are they there at all ? But let us go back and see how it could have been otherwise. Consider who the Good Shepherd was who gave His life for the sheep ; who Christ was, and what He came to do. Consider what Christianity was, and that what it had in view 64 CHRIST'S WORDS AND was something which was to be for ever. Who that remembers that it was the Eternal Son of God who was here, and remembers what He was here for, can wonder at His putting aside all that we are so busy about as irrelevant and insignificant? Can we conceive Him speaking differently of the things of this life and what they are worth ; or can we conceive His putting in a different shape His call to human beings to be like Him and to share His work? Who can be surprised at the way in which the New Testament seems to overlook and despise what is most important in this world, when we con- sider that its avowed object was to break down the barriers of our present nature, and reveal an immortality before which all that now is shrinks into a transitory littleness of which nothing known to our experience can give the measure ? Who can be surprised at what it seems to sacri- fice, who thinks what the change was which it professed to make in what concerns mankind, and all that that Sacrifice embraced by which the change was made? Indeed the tone and CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 6$ views of the New Testament about the present life are very stern ; but they are in harmony with that awful dispensation of things which is recorded in the Apostles' Creed : it is not too much to say that they are the only ones that could be in harmony with it. Measured against its disclosures and declared purpose, we can hardly conceive the demands of the New Testa- ment other than what they are. Say that it claimed from the individual the absolute sur- render of all interest in the ordinary objects of life : it did so for manifest ends, the highest the human mind can conceive,— only to be obtained at the highest cost, and for which the highest cost was little. But it did no more than society itself, in its degree, is forced to do for its greatest and most critical triumphs. This world was sacrificed — sacrificed for a great object : just as the soldier is called on to sacrifice it ; just as great patriots, when they have to suffer in trying to improve human society, have themselves to sacrifice it. These maxims and precepts belong specially to the days when the Lord had just F 66 CHRIST'S WORDS AND been* here, the days of His miraculous inter- position, the days when the Church was founded. There never can be such a time again. Those to whom the words were then said were to be the salt, the light, the leaven, in an eminence of meaning to which nothing later can approach. They were to surprise the world with something unheard of, both in claims, and in end, and in power. And it seems to me that we undervalue the greatness of the time, the occasion, the necessities of the thing to be done, when we loosely take these sayings, softening and accom- modating them, as meant in the same average sense for all periods, and fail to recognise their special bearing then. We are indeed commanded humility, self-denial, forbearance, an unworldly mind ; they are always necessary. It is quite true to say that the texts we quote for them embody, as in instances, universal principles of duty in the most emphatic form, and raised to their highest power and strain : but the texts we quote for them did mean something more for those days than they do for ours. CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 6j What, then, are they to us ? What are we to think of that severe aspect of the New Testa- ment which looks at us out of every page ; its detachment from present things, its welcome for privation, its imperious demand for self-denial, its blessing on pain and sacrifice, which went so deep, not only into passionate souls of quick sensibility, like St. Francis of Assisi and the countless votaries of poverty, Catholic and here- tic, of the middle ages, but into the large mind of Augustine and into the clear mind of Pascal ? In our changed times, what is their place in our thoughts and consciences ? This meets us at the outset, and no change of times can alter it. These sayings come to us in the train of that eternal example of the Cross, of which they are but the faint shadow, and which to us is the key and centre of all religion. All that they say is but little to what is involved in that; and that is what is before the eyes of mankind henceforth. Turn their eyes where they will, wherever Christianity comes, it must bring this with it — Jesus Christ and Him F 2 68 CHRIST'S WORDS AND crucified : and the Cross can mean but one thing. Can we imagine the Cross standing alone? These sayings are not the abstract doctrines of philosophy ; they reflect a real life and work the most astonishing ever heard of on earth. While the world lasts and Christ is believed in, come what changes may over society, what tells us of the Cross must oblige us to remember all that went with it, all that inevitably surrounded it, all that it drew after it. 'Jesus Christ,' we are told, and it must be so, ' is the same yester- day, and to-day, and for ever.' Further, the stern words which in the midst of a high civilisation remind us of the foundations on which our religion were laid, give us the ultimate measure of all that we are engaged in here. We believe that society is meant by Him who made it to be always improving ; and this can only be by ends being followed and powers developed, each in their own sphere with deep and earnest devotion, and for their own sake. The artist's mind must be full of his art, the merchant's of his trade. So only are things to CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 69 be done, and objects which are great in their place and order, to be attained. But when all this is allowed for, and the largest room is made for all human work and progress, we know the limits of our working here. We know our end ; we know the conditions of our power and per- fection ; in the race, and in the highest specimens of it, the law of humiliating incompleteness is inexorable. Here then comes in the severity of the New Testament ; not mocking us, not in- sulting us, not even merely telling us the plain certain truth about what we are ; but while giving us indeed the measure of things here, giving us, too, that which compensates for their failure and completes their imperfection. For if Christianity is true, and not only there is another world, but we know it, and the way is opened to it by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, it is plain that nothing can ever reverse or alter the pro- portion established in the New Testament be- tween what is and what is to be. No progress here can qualify the words, ' Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,' or make CHRIST'S WORDS AND unreasonable St. Paul's view of life, ' the things that are seen are temporal, the things that are not seen are eternal ; 3 ' what things were gain to me those I counted loss for Christ.' In St. Augustine's words, ' Christiani non sumus, nisi propter futurum sseculum.' We hope that this world, as we know it and have a part in it, is something better, in spite of all its disorders, than the ' City of Destruction ' of the great Puritan allegory ; but after all, we can but be pilgrims and strangers on the road, and something else is our true country. Be this world what it may, the only true view of it is one which makes its greatness subordinate to that greater world in which it is to be swallowed up, and of which the New Testament is the perpetual witness. Even when least consciously remembered, its maxims are in the background and tacitly in- fluence our judgments, which would be very different if they were not there. But besides, they are the unalterable standard of the Chris- tian spirit. As long as Christianity lasts, the heroic ideal must be the standard of all human CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 71 life. Christianity can accept no other ; whatever it may tolerate, its standard is irremovable. The De Imitatione Christi can be written only in one way. The Christian spirit is a free spirit, and ' has, we believe, affinities with strangely opposite extremes. It can ally itself with riches as well as with poverty ; with the life of the statesman and the soldier as well as of the priest ; with the most energetic as well as with the most retired life ; with vastness of thought, with richness of imagination, with the whole scale of feeling, as well as with the simplest character and the humblest obedience. It can bear the purple and fine linen ; it can bear power ; it can bear the strain and absorption of great undertakings. But there is one thing with which it will not combine. Its antagonist is selfishness. Be it where it may, it is the spirit which is ready in one way or another to give itself for worthy and noble reasons. As long as the New Testament is believed in, we must believe that the Christian spirit is that which seeks not its own, which is not careful to speak its own words, or find its 72 CHRIST'S WORDS AND own pleasure, or do its own ways. It is not merely the spirit of self-denial and sacrifice ; it is the spirit of self-denial and sacrifice for the great objects put before it. For the great and rare thing is when purpose and self-denial answer to one another, and one by its greatness justifies the other, and animates it. Doubtless it is hard to have self-denial : but it is harder still to have a great object which shall make self-denial itself fall into a subordinate place, indispensable there, but not thought much of for its own sake. The heroic mind and the Christian mind are shown not simply in the loss of all things, in giving up this world, in accepting pain and want, but in doing this, if it must be done, for that for which it is worth a man's while to do it ; for something of corresponding greatness, though unseen ; for truth, for faith, for duty, for the good of others, for a high.er life. And this view the words of the New Testament keep continually before us. There is plenty of temptation to give up the heroic standard. It often fails. It is easily counterfeited. Its failure is scandalous. And CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 73 not only our self-indulgence, but our suspicion and hatred of insincere pretence, our moderation and common sense, bid us content ourselves with something short of it, and take our aim by what we call our nature. But the New Testament will not meet us here. The heroic standard is the only one • it will countenance for its own, as proportionate to the greatness of its disclosures. It is a standard which lends itself to very various conditions. It may be owned in society or out of it ; in solitude or in the press of affairs ; in secret wrestlings or in open conduct ; by the poor and ignorant or the great and wise. But everywhere it makes the same call. Everywhere it implies really great thoughts, great hopes, great attempts ; great measures of what is worthy of man, and great willingness to pay their price. The Sermon on the Mount continually re- minds us all that we are disciples of a religion which was indeed founded in a law of liberty, but began also in poverty and the deepest renunciation of self. We need the lesson. 74 CHRIST'S WORDS AND We believe, surely not wrongly, that God meant this world to be cultivated and per- fected to the utmost point to which man's energy and intelligence can go. We trust that the Christian spirit can live and flourish in society as we know it, different as it is from the first days. But it is clear that, as society goes on accumulating powers and gifts, the one hope of society is in men's modest and unselfish use of them ; in simplicity and nobleness of spirit increasing, as things impossible to our fathers become easy and familiar to us ; in men caring for better things than money, and ease, and honour ; in being able to see the riches of the world increase and not set our hearts upon them ; in being able to admire and forego. And we need such teaching as the Sermon on the Mount to preach to us the unalterable subor- dination of things present to things to come, to remind us of our object and our standard. This it is to all of us. But it was in its own time more than this. It was the call to the great revival of the world. And is it not true that in CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. J$ proportion as that impulse from time to time re- awakens sympathy, the meaning of that call comes home with more vivid light and force ? I am sure that there are numbers who follow the work of this life in simplicity of heart and purity of intention. But there is besides a more direct and conscious service of the kingdom of heaven. There are those whose hearts God has touched, who feel that they are not merely men blessed by all that the Gospel has done for them, but that they have a special business and duty as servants of that Gospel. They feel the necessity of something deeper than this world's blessings, of greater aims than this world's business. They feel that there are evils which it needs something stronger than even civilisation to cure, sufferings which ask for more than an average self-devotion to comfort, wants which nothing but a full com- pliance with the New Testament standard can meet. The words of the New Testament, which seem so austere to us common men, are in- telligible and natural to them. These words are the secret voice and sign of Christ to those J 6 CHRIST'S WORDS AND elect spirits for whom He has higher work than the highest works of this world. What, after all, are these words but the ex- pression of the universal law, that for great effects and great works a proportionate self- dedication is necessary — the single eye, the disengaged heart, the direct purpose, the con- centrated will, the soul on fire, the mind set on the invisible and the future, in love with things great and pure and high. And we shall only think that the time is over for such a call, if we are satisfied with what has been and what is. But it is the peculiarity of the religion of the Bible that, whatever may be the aspect of the past and the present, in spite of all glories of what we look back to, and all discouragements in what we see now, it ever claims the future for its own. If we have the spirit of our religion, it is on the future that we must throw ourselves in hope and purpose. But if we dare to hope in the future for a greater triumph for Christianity than the world has ever seen (and why should we not if we believe our own creed ?) we shall CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 77 come to see that the language of the New Testa- ment has not yet lost its meaning. For the world is not to be won by anything — by religion, or empire, or thought — except on those condi- tions with which the kingdom of heaven first came. What conquers must have those who devote themselves to it ; who prefer it to all other things ; who are proud to suffer for it ; who can bear anything so that it goes forward. All is gladly given for the pearl of great price. Life is at once easier in its burdens and cheaper in its value with the great end in view. Such devotion to an object and cause is no unfamiliar sight in the world which we know. We must not think it is confined to Christians. We must not think that Christians only are enamoured with simplicity of life, with absolute renunciation of wealth and honour for the sake of a high purpose ; that they only can persevere, unnoticed and unthanked, in hard, weary work. The Great Master, who first made men in earnest about these things, has taught some who seem not to follow Him. But if Christians are to CHRIST'S WORDS AND hold their place and do His work, they must not fall behind. They have an example and ideal of love and sacrifice, to which it is simply un- meaning to make anything of this world a parallel. Their horizon is wider than any- thing here can be. They have a strength and help which it is overwhelming to think of and believe. And theirs is the inherit- ance of those words and counsels by which at first the world was overcome. If great things are ever to be done again among us, it must be by men who, not resting satisfied with the wonderful progress of Christian society, yet not denying it, not undervaluing it, much less at- tempting to thwart it, still feel that there is something far beyond what it has reached to, for our aims and hopes even here. It must be by men who feel that the severe and awful words of the New Testament, from which we sometimes shrink, contain, not in the letter it may be, but in the spirit, not in a mere outward conformity to them, but in a harmony of the will, not as formal rules of life, but as laws of character and CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 79 choice, — the key to all triumphs that are to be had in the time to come. Those who shall catch their meaning most wisely and most deeply, and who are not afraid of what it in- volves, will be the masters of the future, will guide the religion of serious men among those who follow us. May our Lord give us grace to open our eyes to the full greatness of His inestimable benefit, and, each of us according to his own place and order and day, daily to endeavour ourselves to follow the blessed steps of His most holy life. SERMON III. CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. i Cor. xi. i. Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ. Once in the course of the world's history we believe that there has been seen on earth a perfect life. It was a life not merely to admire, but to follow. It has been ever since, for the period of man's existence of which we know most, and during which the race has made the greatest pro- gress, the acknowledged human standard ; the example, unapproachable yet owned to be uni- versally binding, and ever to be attempted, for those who would fulfil the law of their nature. And we have the spirit and principles of that perfect life made applicable to men in our Lord's numerous words about human character, beha- CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. 81 viour, and views of life. We have not only the perfect example ; but we have it declared, in words of equal authority, why and how it is per- fect. Lessons, teaching and enforcing, accom- pany each incident of our Lord's ministry ; they are drawn together into a solemn summary in the Sermon on the Mount. Here we have the highest moral guidance for the world. It is im- possible to conceive any life more divine than that thus shown us. All the more amazing is the contrast, when once we master it in our minds, between what is shown us and the form in which it is clothed. That inimitable acting out of perfect goodness speaks in homely, and, at first hearing, commonplace words, without any apparent consciousness of its own greatness, as if it belonged to the rudest life of the people, and were something within everybody's reach. It takes no account of what we pride ourselves upon, as the finer parts of our nature, our powers of thought, our imagination, our discrimination of beauty. In illustration and phrase and argument, it uses nothing but what is of a piece with G 8>2 CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. the first necessities of life, with the speech and cares, the associations and employments of the humblest. That appeal of the Supreme Good- ness for man's allegiance and love was to what was primary and common and elementary in his nature. It was far too real to be anything else. For that example and law of life were nothing less than universal. They were meant for all men. Yet, when we say universal, how are we at once reminded of the vast and infinite differ- ences among those for whom there is this one Pattern. For what profound and broad contrasts divide men from men ; what gulfs separate one race from another, earlier from later ages, any one state of thought and social progress from what went before it and follows it : and, within narrower limits, what endless variety, baffling all imagination to follow, of circumstances and for- tune, of capacity and character, of wealth or poverty, of strength or weakness, of inclinations and employments, of a kindly or an unkindly lot. Yet for all, one life is the guiding light, and the words which express it speak to all. A life, the CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. 83 highest conceivable, on almost the lowest con- ceivable stage, and recorded in the simplest form, with indifference to all outward accompaniments attractive whether to the few or to the many, is set before us as the final and unalterable ideal of human nature, amid all its continual and astonishing changes. Differing as widely as men do, Christ calls them all alike to follow Him : unspeakably great as His example is, it is for the many and the average as much as for the few ; homely as is its expression, there is no other lesson for the deepest and most refined. The least were called to its high goodness : the greatest had nothing offered them but its brief- spoken plainness. This combination, in the most practical and thoroughly in earnest of all rules of living, that its pattern is nothing less than the highest, and also nothing less than universal, is one of the proofs of the divine character of the Gospel. But no doubt questions suggest themselves in con- nection with it, though the honest and true heart will never find them in its way. For it may be G % 84 CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. asked, and is asked, how such an example can seriously be meant to claim the efforts of those who make up the great majority, the middle class in the moral scale, ordinary in character, ordinary in their views of life? It is not difficult to understand how it was the rule of saints ; but how was it to be that of all the world ? How can it fit in with the infinite differences of tastes, and powers, and work? How can it follow the changes of living human society ? So again, how is it to be a model at once to the poor and to the rich? How is the life of the Great Sufferer and Sacrifice to be the rule for those, who though they are serious, religious people, self-disciplined and earnest in doing good, yet live, we cannot deny it, in comfort and enjoy life ? How does the morality of the Sermon on the Mount fit in with and apply to the actual and accepted reali- ties of our modern social state? It seems the natural rule for what used to be called by way of distinction the ' religious life ;' yet is it not also the rule for the soldier, the trader, the philo- sopher, for the life of men of the world? Is CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. 85 not that example one not merely for clergymen but for laymen ? How is it, equally and really, to be the measure for one and the other? Christianity makes itself universal by making its moral standard, not verbal rules, but a cha- racter. It has often been said that Christian morality is a system of principles, not of laws ; that its definite rules are most scanty, that its philosophy of life is of the simplest and most inartificial. This is so. In it a law has been exchanged for a character. It professes to aim at doing without laws, and substituting for them the study of a living Person, and the following of a living Mind. ' The law is not for a righteous man.' ' Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.' More definitely, more plainly within our comprehension, that character is one who is called in Scripture, in an incommunicable sense, the Image of God. In the face of Jesus Christ the glory and the goodness of God shone with a new light to the consciences and reason of men. All that He did and said, the Sermon on 86 CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, His sentences on men and things and thoughts that came before Him, formed one whole, were the various ex- pressions of one mind and character, which was the reflection of the perfect goodness of the Father. And that character is the Christian law. And this is what fits the Christian standard to be a universal one. Indeed, it is not easy to see how an example and rule for the world can be, except in the form of a character. For a character, if it is great enough, carries its force far beyond the conditions under which it may have been first disclosed. If shown under one set of circumstances, its lesson can be ex- tended to another, perfectly different : a cha- racter is to rules, as the living facts of nature are to the words by which we represent them. It will bear being drawn upon for the applica- tion of its truth to new emergencies ; it adapts itself with the freedom and elasticity of life, which is very different from the accommodations of theories, to the changes which meet it. When CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. 87 by thought and sympathy we have entered into it, we feel that there are still depths beyond, that we have not exhausted what it has to sug- gest or teach. We can follow it on, from the known, to what it would be, in the new and strange. It unfolds itself in fact ; and we can conceive its doing so in idea, as things round it alter. It is not tied to the limitations and exigencies of its first development : change them, and its action changes too. We see that Character, in which we know that we behold perfect goodness, and which has in fact drawn up the soul of man to heights unknown before, — we see it, as we see all things here, only in part. We see it only in a special dispensation or economy; acting, speaking, judging, choosing, only in reference to one particular set of condi- tions, according to what the occasion and end called for. It is the supreme and essential good- ness : but we see it unfolding itself under the conditions of the supreme humiliation, meeting the demands on it of what the humiliation in- volved. 'E/ceVwo-o> kavrov. He ' emptied himself ' CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. indeed. What was the greatest of the miracles He vouchsafed to us, to that Almighty and In- finite Power which in His proper Nature He was ? What were the most overwhelming instances of His love and wisdom which we see, compared with that inexhaustible wellspring of goodness and truth from which they flowed forth ? We witnessed that absolute goodness, as He spoke and acted in the state which He had chosen for our redemption and restoration ; as was called for and was fit, under the circumstances in which our Maker descended to be one of us. But we know that that perfect goodness does not show itself only under such conditions ; it shows itself equally in Christ creating, in Christ reigning, in Christ judging : and when we raise our thoughts to what He is there, we know that His goodness must wear an aspect, which, though essentially the same, would look very different to us. 'Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day and for ever' — the same in glory as in the form of a servant. But there are other ways in which His goodness shows itself to those who worship Him CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. on the throne of nature, besides those in which they saw it who beheld Him preparing for the Cross. To us on earth it is revealed in sorrow and sympathy ; but we know that it must be exhibited too in the heaven of the divine bliss. The veil has fallen from Him ; that temporary partial state of circumstances under which His goodness was shown on earth in that narrow space of time that He was with us, has passed away. And the same goodness moves in dif- ferent lines, comes with different claims and judgments, now that, no longer despised and rejected, He has taken His own place, and has all things for His own. Still, under conditions utterly changed, His goodness is that same very goodness which we saw. And so we can derive from that Character lessons for our state, which is so different from His ; and for our imperfection make His perfec- tion the law. And not only so, but we can derive lessons from it for conditions of human life very far removed from those conditions under which His goodness was manifested to us here. 90 CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. The interval is indeed great between those con- ditions and circumstances, and the state of things amid which we believe that He has called us to run our course. We, instead of being the com- pany of poor men, separate from the world, whom He gathered round Him, and of whom He was one, belong to a varied society of the most complicated order. Functions, gifts, voca- tions differ endlessly: we include the extremes of outward fortune, of place and office and per- sonal cultivation. But under all these different conditions, there is, if we know how to find it, the way in which that perfect goodness would teach us how to feel and how to behave. Literal imitation may be impossible, but it is not im- possible to catch its spirit and apply its lessons to altered circumstances. It is true, we have only as it were part of the curve actually traced for us ; but the fragment is enough to show him who can learn its real law what, in spaces far removed, is the true line and direction of its prolongation. And so the conformity to the character of Jesus Christ extends, not only to a life CHRIST'S EXAMPLE 91 like His in its lot and duties, but to one which on earth is called to tasks outwardly as different as can be conceived. In that character, though shown to us in the form of servant, we know that everything is gathered which could make human nature what it ought to be. That perfect good- ness was potentially all that the sons of men can ever be called to be by the course of that Provi- dence which appoints their lot and the order of their life. His example enfolds them all. It will bear being appealed to for guidance under whatever different circumstances they are called to live : they may learn from it, if we may venture so to speak, how He would have acted in their place, and how He would have His followers to act. I. Consider, for instance, what was the first and prominent feature of that perfect life as we saw it : it was, I suppose, the combination in it, most intimate and never interrupted, of the work of time and human life with that which is beyond sight and time. It is vain to try to express in words that of which nothing but the Gospels 02 CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. open before us can adequately convey the extent — the impression left on our minds of One who, all the while that He was on earth, was in heart and soul and thought undivided for a moment from heaven. He does what is most human ; but He lives absolutely in the Divine. However we see Him — tempted, teaching, healing, com- forting hopeless sorrow, sitting at meat at the wedding or the feast, rebuking the hypocrites, in the wilderness, in the temple, in the passover chamber, on the Cross, — He of whom we are reading is yet all the while that which His own words can alone express, ' even the Son of Man which is in heaven.' The Divine presence, the union with the Father, is about Him always, like the light and air, ambient, invisible, yet incapable, even in thought, of being away. And yet, with this perpetual dwelling and conversing with God, to which it were blasphemy to com- pare the highest ascents of the saintliest spirit, what we actually see is the rude hard work and the sufferings by which He set up among men the kingdom of God. What the most devout CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. 93 contemplation, detached from all earthly things, could never attain to, was in Him compatible with the details and calls of the busiest ministry: yet labour and care, and the ever-thronging society of men, came not for an instant between Him and the Father ; and even we, with our dim perception of that Divine mystery, cannot think of Him without that background of heaven, not seen, but felt in all that He says or does. Men have compared the active and the con- templative life. And they have compared also the life of practical beneficence with the life of devotion, of religious interest and spiritual dis- cipline. We see great things done without the sense of religion, perhaps with the feeling towards it of distrust and aversion. We see the religious spirit sometimes unable to cope with the real work of life, failing in fruit and practical direc- tion, failing to command the respect of those who have other ways of ministering to men's wants. But in Him, who is our great Ideal, we have both lives combined. No recluse conveys so absolutely the idea of abstraction from the 94 CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. world as our Lord in the thick of His activity, Than that heavenly-mindedness, it is impossible to conceive anything more pure and undisturbed. Than that life of unwearied service, it is im- possible to conceive anything more absolute in self-sacrifice. Our Lord was the great example of man working for his fellows ; of a consuming desire to raise and bless mankind. ' The zeal of thine house,' as He says, in the loftiest sense of the words, ' hath devoured me.' But He was also, at the same time and in equal measure, the proof to the end of time, that the highest degree of the divine life is not opposed to, but in natural alliance with, the highest and noblest service of man. The world had seen instances of human goodness cut off, except in the most indirect and precarious way, from that conscious communion with God which is religion. It was incomplete and maimed. Morally, as well as theologically, without faith man cannot, even as man, be perfect. But when He came, who was to show mankind a perfect life, there was the great gap filled up ; there was goodness, thq CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. 95 goodness of human nature, with the part restored which had been wanting — its link with the Divine ; its consciousness of its relation to the Father, and capacity for communion with Him. In Jesus Christ, we see man serving to the utmost his brethren ; but we also see man one with the thought and will of God. Here we see how character in itself, irre- spective of circumstance, is adapted to be a guide ; here is an example, shown under the most exceptional conditions, yet fit to be universal. Of such a life what truer key than the words, ' Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness ' ? what more expressive account than the words, ' Ye cannot serve two masters ; ye cannot serve God and mammon ' ? But on what outward circumstances does such a life depend ? Why is it not equally to be realised in the calling of the ruler, the rich man, the student ? How need their outward conditions affect their relationship to God, their sense of it, their grasp by faith of what He is and what they are, and what He has called them to — the unfolding in g6 CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. their hearts of reverence and devotion and love ; their sense of what their work is for, and what makes its value? He whom they worship came in the deepest poverty, separate from the world and its order; and they are at the opposite social extreme, perhaps born to rule, command- ing wealth, endowed with great faculties. The mind of man cannot, indeed, help being, as it ought to be, touched with the contrast. But His example is as full of meaning to them as it would be if they, like Him, had been born in poverty. Why should not that combination of union with God and the utmost activity of all powers of soul and body go before them, as their guiding light and encouragement, as well as before the priest or the sister of charity ? How is it less adapted to be the animating and governing pattern to those in whose hands are the greatest interests of mankind, and their course and fate for times to come? Was not Jesus Christ, though we saw Him but for a short time in abasement and poverty, in reality the Lord of all things, and the Prince of the kings of the earth ? CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. 97 2. As His life was the pattern for the life of faith, so it was the great instance of the life of truth. For to all, quite apart from the accidental conditions of their state, it shows what alone is real and great in life. The imitation of Jesus Christ, even in the highest form in which we can conceive it, must always be but by way of pro- portion. When we are called to be like Him, it is obvious that the impassable distance be- tween His ends and works and ours^ limits the command. To imitate Christ, being what He was ; to imitate Him who joined in Himself what He alone ever joined ; to imitate Him whose life and work were absolutely by them- selves, both in that part which we can see, and in that larger part, impossible to be known by man, of that mystery which oppressed and baffled the illuminated intellect of St. Paul, — this, even in idea, eludes the utmost stretch of imagination. We cannot follow his steps, who for our sakes became poor that we through His poverty might be rich ; who died for us, that we might live. Like Him, in what makes Him the hope of the H 98 CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. world, we cannot be : and any attempted outward conformity of circumstances, or lot, or discipline, has in it the danger attending every attempt at what is in the nature of things impossible — the delusion, of which the extreme instance is the state of thought represented in the story of the stigmata of St. Francis. And yet it is true that in every page of the New Testament we are called to be like Him ; to be renewed into His image ; to put on Christ. An apostle is not afraid to express this conformity by that very image which we shrink from in the hard literal form of the middle age legend \ And how can we be like the Infinite Being who made and saved and shall judge man- kind, except so far as in our work and life — whatever it be matters but little — we bear a mind and spirit proportionate, as He did, to our calling and our end. For surely there are ends and purposes in the life of each of us, which are literally as real as the ends of His life. One is high and another low ; one has much and a 2 Cor. iv. 10. CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. 99 another little ; one is born to govern, to acquire, to call forth new powers in the world of man or nature; another to pass his days unknown, to carry on the detail of necessary labour in his time, to make no mark and leave no memorial. But to every one who believes in God and pro- vidence, the work of each is equally real : a call, a commission, a talent, a stewardship from God ; and who is too high or too low to say that the inexpressible seriousness and earnestness of the life described in the New Testament is not suited to guide him how to think and feel about his own life ? For what we see in that life is not only a purpose and work passing man's understanding, but that purpose followed and that work done, in a way which man can understand. It is a life governed by its end and purpose, in which shows or illusions have no place, founded on unshrinking, unexaggerated truth, facing every- thing as it is without disguise or mistake ; and further, a life in which its purpose is followed with absolute indifference to whatever sacrifice H 2 ioo CHRIST S EXAMPLE. it may cost. The Gospels show us One, with the greatest of works to do, a work so great, that it sounds unbecoming to qualify it with our ordinary words for greatness ; One, never diverted from His work, never losing its clue, never impatient, never out of heart, who cries not, nor strives, nor makes haste ; One, whose eye falls with sure truth and clear decision on everything in the many-coloured scene of life ; One, around whom, as He passes through the world, all things that stir man's desire and am- bition take their real shape and relative place and final value ; One, to whom nothing of what we call loss or gain is so much as worth taking account of, in competition with that for which He lived. He has put all this into words which mark for ever the change He made in our views of life — ' My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work ; ' ' I must work the works of Him that sent Me while it is day ;' and when all was over, ' I have finished the work that Thou gavest Me to do.' Such a life He generalises in such words as, 'what shall a CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. ici man give in exchange for his soul ;' in His say- ings about the treasure in heaven, the single eye, the pearl of great price, the violent taking the kingdom of heaven by force. Unless it is all one at last to be a trifler or in earnest, and unless a high standard of life involves no more cost or foregoing of what we like than a low one, that life is the one which all conditions want, and all may use as their guide. For the great vice of human nature is slackness about what is good ; not insensibility, not want of admiration, not want of leanings and sympathies, but feebleness and uncertainty of will; that in moral character, which would be represented in intellectual work by looseness and laziness, disinclination to close with things being content with what is superficial and in- exact. Every work and calling of life has a high side and a low one. In one extreme differ- ence as in another, down to the smallest and humblest sphere, the trial of duty and high pur- pose is equally real, and it is equally costly. Bring the Sermon on the Mount into a life of 102 CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. activity or of riches, that is, of power : is it simply, as it may seem at first, a discord? or may not the two, though so far apart, be made to answer truly to one another, as the differing parts of a harmony ? What it does is to impose upon riches, or business, or learning, or art, the severe and high view of life, instead of the low and self-indulgent one. What it does is to hold up, in its inexorable claims, the highest end, and to preach the truth that the greatest liberty is the greatest trust. Far beyond the limitations of outward circumstances it speaks of an inward foundation of character, of simplicity, thorough- ness, completeness of the man himself, answering to the facts amid which he lives and their extreme seriousness : which, like the house on the rock, can endure its appointed trials, and can take care of itself wherever it has to serve God, in high place or low. The estimate in it of the value of outward things, its warnings against their temptations — what are they but the counterpart, in infinitely more solemn tones, of the voice of all experience ? The Master of CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. 103 truth and reality, who passed by these outward things as valueless to Himself, surely knew what was in man, when He spoke so earnestly of their immense and fatal abuse. The difficulties, so great and so affecting, which they create in the way of better things, wring from Him, as it were, cries and bursts of pain — ' Many are called but few are chosen ;' ' Strait is the gate and narrow the way;' ( How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God.' They dictate those preferences for the hard lot and the bitter side of life, for mourning, for poverty, for persecution, the blessing on those of whom men speak ill. Can we say that the world did not want those plain truths and those sharp words ? But the sacrifices and self-denials of the Sermon on the Mount are not dependent on outward conditions. They simply represent the price which must be paid, in some shape or another, for all true and pure living. The alternative of loss, of pain, of being ill thought of, meets from time to time every one, wherever he is placed, who aims at anything above the dead level of T04 CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. custom, much more at such a standard as the Christian. And those higher ends of life may be the object of deep and fervent effort, where the eye of the looker-on rests upon what seems too busy, too exalted, or too humble to be the scene of the greatest of earthly endeavours, the inward discipline of the soul. Surely it may be there, where nothing is the token of its presence ; it may be there, with its bitter surrenders of will, its keen self-control, its brave and deliberate welcomings of pain, masked behind the turmoil of public life or the busy silence of study ; it may be there, stern and high in its choice, stern in its view of the world, stern in its judgment of itself, stern in its humility, yet nothing be seen but the performance of the common round of duty, nothing be shown but the playfulness which seems to sport with life. 'Se sub serenis vultibus Austera virtus occulit, Timens videri, ne suum, Dum prodit, amittat decusV b Motto to Froude's Remains. CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. 105 3. The life of faith means the life which comes nearest to His in never forgetting the unseen Father in the activities of the present. The life of truth and purified will means the life which comes nearest to His in holding fast, amid the infinite and intrusive shadows which crowd the path of life, the severe realities of our appointed lot, the unspeakable realities of our further destiny. But this is not all that that character invites us to copy. There were those who had walked with God before He came, though none ever walked with God as He did. And many had spoken wonderfully the truths concerning our state, and even concerning our hopes ; they had sounded great depths in the sea of wisdom ; they had drawn the line between what is solid and what is vain in life ; they had caught firmly and clearly what was worth living for ; they had measured truly the relative value of the flesh and the spirit. But none but He had so com- bined with the sternest reason the deepest love. This was what made Him new and without parallel in the world. It was that, in Him, 106 CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. truth, duty, religion, ended in love — love inex- haustible, all-pervading, infinitely varied. With Him, reason did not, as it so often does with the clearest and ablest of the sons of man, stop in itself; it passed over into the sphere of the affec- tions, and kindled into the manifold forms in which the play of the living heart shews itself. Reason with Him — severe inexorable reason — was translated into the diversified and elastic activity of doing good ; compassionating, making- allowances, condescending, consoling ; healing the sick, casting out devils ; forgiving sins and cleansing them ; ' preaching the gospel to the poor, binding up the broken hearted, preaching deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, setting at liberty them that are bruised ; ' calling the weary and heavy laden to rest — to make proof of His c meekness and low- liness,' and take His yoke upon them : laying down His life for the world. It is this new commandment, new to the world, but as old as the eternal Word who brought it, which turns the Sermon on the CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. 107 Mount from a code of precepts into the ex- pressions and instances of a character. Its words do not stand by themselves ; they are not as the definite commandments of a law ; they cannot be represented or exhausted by any rules ; they have their interpretation and their reason in that divine temper which had come with Jesus Christ to restore the world. The purity, the humility, the yielding and forgiving mind, the ungrudging and unflagging goodness they speak of, were but some among the in- finitely varied ways of acting out the meaning of His last charge — ' That ye love one another as I have loved youc ; ' and of His last prayer — ' That the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me, may be in them, and I in themcV His life, and the character revealed in it, is the interpreter of what He means by love. A great deal may be said of love without ever really touching what is its vital essence. But here our sympathies are appealed to. We see how Jesus Christ showed what it is to lead a life of love. He showed c St. John xv. 12. d lb. xvii. 26. 108 CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. how it could be carried out to the uttermost in what we call an extreme case of our human condition. But, as it has been said, 'glorious in His darknesses e,' He showed that mind and spirit which He had brought into the world for mankind at large ; for all conditions in which man is placed ; which is not tied to the circum- stances in which it was first disclosed ; which was something too real, too free, too universal to be restricted to any outward state ; which was to inspire and govern character in all forms of the social order ; fit to be the ruling principle in him who commands the results and powers of the last stage of civilisation, as in him whom nothing raises above barbarism but his Christian love, or in him who parts with society for the present, to sow seeds from which society shall be the better in the future. The mutable shapes of society, unfolded by God's providence, fix almost without our will our outward circumstances. But for the soul, Wherever it is, Christ our Lord has one un- e Taylor, Life of Christ, vol. ii. p. 59 ; Heber's ed. CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. 109 changing call, 'Be perfect5; and He has one un- changing rule for its fulfilment, ' Be what I am, feel what I felt, do as I should do.' How shall we ? How but by looking steadfastly at Him and trying to see and know Him ? Yet we have to remember that that Divine Character is what it is, apart from our ways of looking at it ; and that our ways of looking at it and understanding it depend on our own characters. We behold Him through the medium of our own minds and hearts. It holds true, in the things of the spirit as in those of the imaginative intellect, that ' we receive according to what we give ' : the light, the landscape, the features are the same, but the eye, the capacity, the knowledge, the feeling differ. It is but saying that He is shown to us under the conditions of all human things, to say that we do not all see Him in the same way. But, however we may mistake, that Divine manifestation still remains the same, to teach other and wiser men, and ourselves if we become wiser ; and however true our view may be, there is still, beyond what we see no CHRIST'S EXAMPLE, and grasp, more to be known and loved and copied. We see this in the history of the Church. We talk indeed with admiration of His being the one standard to the endlessly differing con- ditions of society, to rich and poor, wise and ignorant, strong and weak, the few and the many ; but what is this to the wonder of His having been the constant standard to distant and different ages ? In the same Living Person each age has seen its best idea embodied ; but its idea was not adequate to the truth — there was something still beyond. An age of intel- lectual confusion saw in the portraiture of Him in the Gospels the ideal of the great teacher and prophet of human kind, the healer of human error, in whom were brought together and har- monised the fractured and divergent truths scattered throughout all times and among all races. It judged rightly ; but that was only part. The monastic spirit saw in it the warrant and suggestion of a life of self-devoted poverty as the condition of perfection : who can doubt that there was much to justify it ; who can doubt CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. 1 j i that the reality was something far wider than the purest type of monastic life? The Refor- mation saw in Him the great improver, the breaker of the bonds of servitude and custom, the quickener of the dead letter, the stern re- buker of a religion which had forgotten its spirit : and doubtless He was all this, only He was infinitely more. And now in modern times there is the disposition to dwell on Him as the ideal exemplar of perfect manhood, great in truth, great in the power of goodness, great in His justice and His forbearance, great in using and yet being above the world, great in infinite love, the opener of men's hearts to one another, the wellspring, never to be dry, of a new humanity. He is all this, and this is infinitely precious. We may ' glorify Him for it, and exalt Him as much as we can ; but even yet will He far exceed f.' That one and the same Form has borne the eager scrutiny of each anxious and imperfect age ; and each age has recognised with boundless sympathy and devotion what it f Ecclus. xliii. 30. 112 CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. missed in the world ; and has found in Him what is wanted. Each age has caught in those august lineaments what most touched and swayed its heart. And as generations go on and unfold themselves, they still find that Character answer- ing to their best thoughts and hopes ; they still find in it what their predecessors had not seen or cared for; they bow down to it as their in- imitable pattern, and draw comfort from a model who was plain enough and universal enough to be the Master, as of rich and poor, so of the first century and the last. It has been the root of all that was great and good in our fathers. We look forward with hope to its making our children greater and better still. ' Regnum tuum regnum omnium saeculorum ; et dominatio tua in omni generatione et generationem «.' What is the lesson ? Surely this : to remember when we talk of the example of Christ, that the interpretations and readings of it are all short of the thing itself ; and that we possess, to see and to learn from, the thing itself. We should 8 Ps. cxliv. 13. CHRIST'S EXAMPLE. 1 13 be foolish and wrong to think ourselves above learning from all that wise and holy men have seen in it. But the thing itself, the Divine Reality, is apart from, and is ever greater than, what the greatest have thought of it and said of it. There it is in itself, in its authentic record, for us to contemplate and search into, and ap- propriate, and adore. Let us not be satisfied with seeing it through the eyes of others. Mind- ful how we ought to look at it — remembering what, after all, have not ceased to be the un- alterable conditions of knowing truth, — purity, humility, honesty, — let us seek to know Him directly more and more, as He is in the New Testament ; as those saw Him, whose souls took the immediate impression of His presence and His Spirit. So does the Apostle describe the progress of the great transformation, by which men grow to be like their Lord and their God. 'But we all, with open face, be- holding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.' I SERMON IV. CIVILISATION AND RELIGION St. Matt. v. 13, 14, 16. Ye are the salt of the earth : but if the salt have lost his savour ', wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden underfoot of men. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. . . . Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. One of the purposes for which our Lord in- stituted the Christian Church was that it might exercise a distinct moral influence on the society round it. Separate in idea from the world, and at first separate from it in a great measure in fact, it was to be in the world, to touch the world, and to make great changes in it ; to attract and win and renew. It was to be a principle of health and freshness, the antagonist CIVILISATION AND RELIGION. 115 of corruption and decay. And it was to work, not at a distance, but by contact, by subtle and insensible forces, which combined with what they acted on and modified. ' The kingdom of heaven was to be like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.' In that great dis- course with which the Gospel teaching opens, the first thing is the character of the children of the kingdom, the second their relation to the world around them. After the Beatitudes, comes, thus early, long before the disciples were an organised body, or were yet fitted for the greatness of what they were to be, the picture of their office to society, in its two powers of purification and light, and with its attendant responsibility, answering to its greatness. For it was in no partial or temporary sphere that they were to affect mankind. 'Ye are the salt of the earth,' says their Master. And then, in- vesting them with one of the most transcendent of His own titles, before He had yet claimed it Himself, — ' Ye are the light of the world.' I 2 1 1 <5 CIVILISATION It is simply a fact of history that Christianity and the Christian Church have exerted on human society a moral influence which justifies the figures by which it was described — an influence more profound, more extensive, more enduring, and more eventful, than any that the world has seen. But there has always been a tendency in society in its higher forms, to produce apparently by its own forces, some degree, at least, of that moral improvement and rise which the religious prin- ciple has produced. It is this rise and growth of moral standard and effort, this aim and at- tempt at higher things in life, and not merely in the instruments and appliances of life, which enters as the essential element into the true notion of civilisation, and alone deserves the name. Civilisation cannot be said to be the same thing as the influence of Christianity, or to be purely a result derived from it ; for these tendencies to moral improvement existed before Christianity, and shewed themselves by unequi- vocal signs, however much they were thwarted, neutralised, or at last destroyed. There are. AND RELIGION. 117 certain great virtues which social life loudly calls for, and tends to foster ; which as thought grows and purposes widen, are felt more clearly to be the true and imperative conditions of all human action. Civilisation, whether or not it presup- poses and assists in keeping in view another life, arranges primarily and directly for this one ; and these virtues it produces in increasing force and perfection, as its fruit and test. It is no disparagement to that which we believe to be as infinitely greater than civilisation as the future destiny of man is greater than his present state, to acknowledge gladly that these beneficial tendencies were originally implanted in society by the author of society. But the effect has been, that alongside of the influence of Chris- tianity has grown up another influence, not in- dependent of it, yet not identical with it ; owing much — it would be bold to limit how much — to Christianity, yet having roots of its own ; not in its own nature hostile to religion, yet moving on a separate line ; sometimes wearing the guise of a rival, sometimes of a suspicious and un- Il8 CIVILISATION congenial associate, with diverging aims and incommensurate views ; but always, even when most friendly, with principles and methods of its own. It has many names, and perhaps none of them happy ones ; but it is that power, distinct from religion, however much it may be affected by it, which shapes our polity, and makes our laws, and rules in our tribunals, and sets the standard in literature, and impregnates our whole social atmosphere. In our days, we seem to witness a great triumph of this influence. Many of the characteristic phenomena of our time seem to point to great and salutary results, brought about without calling on the religious principle. Most of us, I suppose, have our reserves about our actual civilisation ; most of us, I should think, must have our misgivings and anxieties ; but it seems beyond dispute that where we see justice, honesty, humanity, honour, the love of truth, and that moderation in word and act which is so akin to truth — where we see these things aimed at with no unsuccessful efforts, and, in spite of infinite failure and alloy, taking stronger hold AND RELIGION. 119 on society, we see what we ought to welcome and be thankful for; and it seems also beyond dispute that this kind of improvement goes on, and goes on with vigour, where it is often diffi- cult to trace the influence of religion, and sup- ports itself, as far as can be seen, independently of that influence, and without reference to its claims. Accordingly, it may be said, and certainly is sometimes thought, that civilisation does all that Christianity claims to do. It is suggested or an- nounced that society has outgrown Christianity ; that whatever benefits it once derived from Chris- tian ideas and motives it needs no longer ; that even if it learned its lessons from Christianity, yet now it is able to walk alone, to judge and deal without its teacher; that there is nothing left for the Church to do, as a moral influence on society, but what can be as well or better done by other influences, not holding of religion, or, at any rate, of definite Christianity. The virtues which men want will now grow on their own roots ; civilisation is become strong enough 120 CIVILISATION to maintain itself, and to provide in the healthiest way for the perfection of human character. It is a claim, as we know, which excites equally hopes and fears ; hopes and fears often, surely, far in excess of their grounds. This claim is sometimes met by the assertion that civilisation, as such, cannot do without Christianity; that owing so much to Christianity, it would ulti- mately lose, if parted from Christianity, even the virtues of its own proper sphere. It is likely. But forecasts of this sort are hazardous ; and I am not so sure of this, as that I should like to venture on it the claim of Christianity to the continued allegiance of the world. Certainly the highest and most varied civilisation that men have ever known has not come into being without Christianity. But what it might do, when once started, is another matter. I think it is possible that very excellent things, planted in the first instance by Christianity, may yet thrive and grow strong, where there is little reference to their historical origin. Still less does it seem wise or right to rest on extreme and one-sided AND RELIGION. 121 statements of effects and tendencies, such as it is easy enough to make, either way; denuncia- tions of what we fear, panegyrics of what we value. Alas ! we have had too much experience of such expedients, and paid dearly for their hollowness. Let us keep from these rash con- trasts, these rash disparagements, which provoke overwhelming rejoinders ; rejoinders which de- rive their power, not from their intrinsic force and reason, but from their rhetorical truth and justice, as answers to exaggeration and over- statement. It is enough to say, that there are things of the deepest import to man and society which civilisation does not pretend to give, and which nothing can give but Christianity. Admit that society has learned a great deal ; that, apart from the direct impulse of religion, it does a number of things well ; that independently of religion, there are reasons and motives for high morality which are listened to and act power- fully: but when all is admitted, we are a long way from the conclusion that Christianity has nothing more to do, and that its significance and 122 CIVILISATION interest are over. Put the improvement of society and its hopeful prospects at the highest. Assume, as it is most reasonable, that it is according to the order of Him who is Lord of the Ages, that truth and humanity and justice should grow and increase, even where His direct influence is unrecognised or unfelt. Yet that is not all that He came to claim of man and society, nor all that man is capable of being made. The Church is His witness to something more, even when courts and parliaments have learned to deal justly, rulers to govern in equity, men in general to be considerate and sincere, thinkers to value and toil for truth. It would, indeed, be either very shallow or very faint-hearted — a great mistake, whoever makes it, whether from premature confidence in civilisation, or from short-sighted fears for reli- gion— to think that as civilisation increases in vigour and range, and its inevitable consequences show themselves, it must displace Christianity, and narrow its influence. It is conceivable that the changes which are going on may make the AND RELIGION. 123 work of the Church more difficult : no doubt all changes have this, that they make some things difficult which were not so before. But things change for the easier as well as for the harder. We all of us have the benefit of the one law of change, as well as have to accept the necessities of the other. It is possible that mere civilisation may more and more do many things which in past times Christianity did ; that it may assert its independence ; that it may take things out of the hands of religion, which have hitherto been under its government. This may alter the form and direction of the work of religion ; but it need not cripple it, as it certainly cannot exhaust its purpose and scope. Before now, civilisation, while raising the most formidable obstacles to Christianity, had already removed others as serious, and in almost equal degree made its way easier. Why should we not still look upon the civilisation of Christendom, as we are accustomed to look upon the civilisation of Heathenism, which we know to have been as much the minister as the antagonist of the 124 CIVILISATION. Gospel conquest? Why should we not be thankful that if it raises dangerous pretensions, it has broken up for us all much rugged soil, and tamed many of the old brutalities of man ? Why should we be niggardly in confessing what it has done to our hands, in refining, ordering, calming ? Ought we not to see in its conquests the opening of a new world to the inexhaustible energies and hopes of faith, — a new world, with its new dangers and troubles, but not without abundance to outweigh and reward them ? As civilisation increases, makes things easier, does many things of its own accord that religion used to teach it, so the work of the Church is not superseded by all this : its sphere is widened ; its tasks, it may well be, are increased ; there is more to do, and perhaps some of the old facilities are removed ; but others come in their place. If any of its old work is done to its hand, it is so far put more forward for higher functions ; it may have to do different things and in a different way : but certainly its room is not occupied. If ever the Church was the salt of the earth, AND RELIGION. 125 the light of the world, the leaven of society, there is just as much place for it to be so still. The world still wants it ; and it only can supply the want. Civilised society can do many things for itself which it could not do once ; but there is much which it is not in the nature of things that it can do. Civilisation is the wisdom and the wit of this world ; and its office is for this world. If it makes the best of this world, in the highest sense of the word, this is the utmost it can do. Beyond the present — and I include in this the futurity, as far as we can conceive it, of our condition here — it does not pretend to go. And when the perfection of our present state is arrived at, even if we could imagine the law of our intellectual and moral and civil perfection carried out far beyond what we have reached to yet, there would still remain something more. ' Man,' says Hooker, ' doth not seem to rest satisfied, either with fruition of that wherewith his life is preserved, or with performance of such actions as advance him most deservedly in esti- mation ; but doth further covet, yea, oftentimes 126 CIVILISATION manifestly pursue with great sedulity and ear- nestness, that which cannot stand him in any stead for vital use ; that which exceedeth the reach of sense ; yea, somewhat above capacity of reason, somewhat divine and heavenly, which with hidden exultation it rather surmiseth than conceiveth ; somewhat it seeketh, and what that is directly it knoweth not, yet very intentive desire thereof doth so incite it, that all other known delights and pleasures are laid aside, they give place to the search of this but only suspected desire. If the soul of man did serve only to give him being in this life, then things appertaining unto this life would content him, as we see they do other creatures. . . . But with us it is otherwise. For although the beauties, riches, honours, sciences, virtues, and perfections of all men living, were in the present possession of one ; yet somewhat beyond and above all this there would still be sought and earnestly thirsted for.' In speaking of what Christianity has yet to do in civilised society, where high moral ideas have AND RELIGION. 127 established themselves and bear fruit, I do not now refer to what is of course at the bottom of all that it does — of that assumed foundation of fact and creed (without which Christianity is nothing), by which we believe and declare what God has done for the recovery of man, and which, whether in sight or only in the background, makes all the difference, as to the influence under which we live. I am not speaking of the example held up in making the great venture (for such it must be), that faith makes, as to what has been and what is to be ; nor of the effects on men of such awful truths as those of which Christianity is the message, the truths connected with what we are at this season specially think- ing of, the only truths that can bring light to pain and sorrow and ill-success, that conquer death, that can take the sting out of the irre- vocable record of sin. These, it is plain, are what they are, whatever civilisation may come to. I am on much lower and narrower ground. I am quite aware that even that is too large for me here. We all know how hard it is to 128 CIVILISATION draw broad outlines, at once adequate and exact ; how, in general statements, qualifications and exceptions start up at every step, which need to be kept in view and allowed for : and broad outlines are all that are attempted now. Yet I will venture to notice generally one or two points which seem to me to open serious reflec- tions ; points in which any of us may see that Christianity is still wanted as the 'salt' and 'light5 of society; points of great importance; points in which I cannot see that civilisation has anything to take the place of what Chris- tianity does, or can pretend to make up for it, if it is away. I shall be only recalling familiar thoughts. But even very familiar thoughts may be worth recalling ; and it is part of the business of this place to recall them. I. We are in danger, even in the highest condition of civilisation, from the narrowing of man's horizon, and we need a protection against it which civilisation cannot give. I call a narrowing of man's horizon whatever tends to put or drop out of sight the supreme AND RELIGION. 129 value of the spiritual part of man, to cloud the thought of God in relation to it, or to obscure the proportion between what is and what we look forward to, — the temporary and provisional character of the utmost we see here. To have fought against and triumphed over this tendency is the great achievement of Christianity. We hardly have the measure to estimate the great- ness of it ; of having kept alive, through such centuries as society has traversed, the faith, the pure and strong faith, in man's divine relation- ship : of having been able to withstand the con- stant enormous pressure of what was daily seen and felt ; not only of the solemn unbroken order of the natural world, but of the clogs and fetters of custom, of the maxims taken for granted in the intercourse of life, of the wearing down, the levelling of high thought and purpose which is always going on in society ; of the perpetual recurrence, with the tides and weather, of the same story of promise and disappointment, of far-reaching attempts and poor success ; of evil in high places ; of the noble mingled with the K 1 30 CIV I LIS A TION vile ; of good ever tending either to extravagance or decay ; of character in men or bodies of men insensibly deteriorating and falling away from its standard ; of wisdom hardly won, and wasted; of great steps taken and thrown away ; of the old faults obstinately repeated in the face of ever-accumulating experience ; of the bewilder- ing spectacle of vice beyond hope and without remedy ; of the monotonous dead level of the masses of mankind. For a religion to have been proof against all this, — still, through it all, to have preserved itself the same and unworn out, and still to be able to make men hold fast by faith and hope in the invisible, is, among the wonders of human history, one of the greatest and most impressive. But the pressure is still going on ; and to yield to it, and let that faith and hope pass from the common heritage, would be a disaster for which nothing conceivable could make up. There is still the weight of all we see and are accus- tomed to, making it unnatural to us to trust our spiritual ideas, calling for a strong effort to AND RELIGION. 131 resist the spells of imagination, and to grasp as real the convictions of reason about what we can never hope to see or test. There is still the inevitable temptation to make our experience — our one-sided experience, and accidental habits of thought — the measure of what is possible, the measure of the Eternal Laws of the Most High. Against this weight and pressure of the actual, the customary, the natural, civilisation, by itself, is not able to help us. For its main work and claim is to regulate this present scene. This is its confessed province ; here is its glory and triumph. I am not forgetting the value of whatever strengthens character and refines thought. I do not forget the enlargement of even religious ideas as knowledge widens. I, for one, hope never to speak but with respect and the deepest thankfulness of that dispensation of order and light — no doubt with much of evil and dan- ger, yet fruitful of blessings and bright with hope — under which God has appointed us at this day to live. But civilisation in its professed aim is content with the present ; and they whom it K2 132 CIVILISATION monopolises will be content with it too. In its highest forms, it is of the earth, earthy ; mistress and minister of the truths and marvels of this earth, but, like this earth, only to last its time and pass away. And yet, there is ' the natural,' and there is 'the spiritual'; the First Man and the Second ; the two ideals, man made for this life, and 'the Lord from heaven.' Against the tendency to look at everything from its own point of view it cannot protect us ; and to confine our- selves to its point of view is to lose sight of all that is highest in man's reason, all that is noblest in man's hope. Every occupation, every province of human interest, has its special temptations to narrowness of view and shortness of thought. We are all accustomed to be told this about theology ; and who can doubt its truth ? But just as true is it that the same vice infests as deeply the generalisations of the philosopher and the judgments of the statesman. There are worthier and wider thoughts of God, the soul, man's calling and purpose, in the Psalms, than often under the highest light of modern culture ; AND RELIGION. 133 it could not produce them, and sometimes hardly understands them. To pass to them from many a famous book of modern speculation, is like passing into the presence of the mountains and the waters and the midnight stars, from the brilliant conversation of one of our great capitals. There is no narrowing so deadly as the narrow- ing of man's horizon of spiritual things ; no worse evil could befal him in his course here, than to lose sight of heaven. And it is not civilisation that can prevent this ; it is not civilisation which can compensate for it. No widening of science, no conquest, — I say not, over nature and ignorance, but over wrong and selfishness in society, — no possession of abstract truth, can indemnify us for an enfeebled hold on the highest and central truths of humanity. ' What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?' — the soul which feels itself accountable, that owns sin and aspires after goodness, which can love and wor- ship God and hope for immortality ; the soul which can rejoice with trembling in God's grace, and dare to look forward to be like Him. What 134 CIVILISATION is it which keeps alive this estimate of man's soul, but that unearthly power which first proclaimed it to mankind ? 2. Once more : we think much of purity, with all its consequences ; that idea and family of thoughts, which is perhaps the most characteristic distinction between the old world of morality and feeling, and the new ; that idea, which, in its essential nature, apart from political ne- cessities, or ceremonial restrictions, or social expediencies or tastes, we owe absolutely to the religion of the Bible ; which had its birth for us in that wonderful mixture of severity with tenderness, of inexorable and exacting holiness with boundless pity for the sinner, tolerance for the weak, and welcome for the penitent, which marked the Son of Man ; that most mysterious of the virtues, as its opposite is the most mys- terious of the sins, which we have not yet found the way to talk much about, without danger to that which we most wish to guard. It is the flower of the Christian graces : witnessed by the care with which it has been fostered from AND RELIGION. 135 the first ; witnessed, alas ! in other and sadder ways, in the mistaken and wild expedients to cherish it, in the monstrous machinery brought into action to make up for the sluggishness or perversions of conscience, in the very magnitude of the scandals and shame inflicted on the Church, when the avowed ideal has cast a deeper shade on the bad and apostate life. The Christian idea of purity has still a hold on our society, imperfectly enough ; but who can tell what it contributes to the peace, and grace, and charm, of what is so large a part of our earthly happi- ness? Can we ask a more anxious question than whether this hold will continue? No one can help seeing, I think, many ugly symptoms ; the language of revolt is hardly muttered ; the ideas of purity which we have inherited and thought sacred are boldly made the note and reproach of ' the Christians.' And — vital ques- tion as it is, one which, if solved in the wrong way, must, it is evident, in the long run be ruinous to society — yet there is no point of morality on which it is easier to sophisticate 136 CIVILISATION and confuse, easier to raise doubts of which it is hard to find the bottom, or to make restraints seem the unwarrantable bonds of convention and caprice. It is eminently one of those things, as to which we feel it to be absolutely the law of our being as long as we obey, but lose the feeling when we do not obey. Civilisation in this matter is by itself but a precarious safeguard for very sacred interests. By itself, it throws itself upon nature, and in some of its leading and most powerful representatives, looks back to paganism. It goes along with Christianity as to justice and humanity ; but in the interest of individual liberty it parts company here. What trenches on and endangers ideas of purity, it may disapprove, but it declines to condemn or brand. At least, it does not condemn, it does not affect to condemn, in the sense in which religion con- demns ; in the sense in which, with religion, it condemns injustice, cruelty, and falsehood. It is too much to hope that civilisation by itself will adopt and protect these ideas. And the passions which assail them are not among those which AND RELIGION. 137 wear out with civilisation and tend to extinc- tion ; they are constant forces, and as powerful as they are constant. Argument is hardly a match for them. They are only to be matched successfully by a rival idea, a rival fire, the strength of a rival spring of feeling with its attractions and antipathies, a living law and instinct of the soul. Civilisation supplies none such but what it owes to Christianity. Purity is one of those things which Christian ideas and influences produced ; it is a thing which they alone can save. Here seem to be two points in which civili- sation by itself cannot guarantee us from great loss ; instances in which is manifest the need for a ' salt,' a ' light ' of the world, higher than what anything of this world can give. If there are great functions which civilised society takes over from the Church, there are others which none but the Church can discharge ; which, with- out the Church, are lost to mankind. And, at the same time, there is no reason why, if ever the Church discharged them, it should not now. 138 CIVILISATION Here is our hope and our responsibility. When we talk of the influences of Christianity on society, we use large and vague words, which we are not perhaps always able to explain and develope ; but there is one form and element of this influence which is not too subtle and fugitive for us to grasp. The influence of a system is brought to a point in the personal influence of individuals. It is not by any means the whole, or perhaps the greatest part of that influence ; but it is the most definite and appreciable part. When men live as they think, and translate ideas into realities, they make an impression corresponding to the greatness of the ideas, and the faithfulness and intensity of their em- bodiment in life. ' Ye are the salt of the earth ; ' ; Ye are the light of the world : ' so it was said at first ; so it is now. Truth, incorporate in human character, allying itself with human feel- ing and human self-devotion, acting in human efforts, is what gains mankind. In the great movements of the past, as in what is around us now, we are often baffled, when we attempt to AND RELIGION. 1 39 compare and distinguish, amidst the vast play of forces. But when the course of things has been turned, whatever is intricate and confused, we can seldom miss the men who, by what they were, turned it ; indeed it is almost appalling to observe how it has often hung on the apparent accident of a stronger character or a weaker, one equal to the occasion or unequal to it, on some great unfaithfulness which lost the game, or some energetic conviction which won it, whether some vast change should be or not. When everything has been in favour of a cause, — reason, truth, human happiness, — only dearth of character has ruined it. There are many things which we have not in our hands ; what we have is this, whether we will act out our belief. Our heart sometimes fails us when we contemplate the new world of civilisation and discovery. What are we to do against the advancing tide of what seems to us unfriendly thought, so impetuous, yet so steady and so wide? There are reasons for looking forward to the future with solemn awe. No doubt signs 1 40 CIV I LIS A TION are about us, which mean something which we dare scarcely breathe. The centre of gravity, so to speak, of religious questions has become altogether shifted and displaced. Anchors are lifting everywhere, and men are committing themselves to what they may meet with on the sea. But awe is neither despair nor fear ; and Christians have had bad days before. Passi graviora. A faith which has come out alive from the darkness of the tenth century, the immeasurable corruption of the fifteenth, the religious policy of the sixteenth, and the phi- losophy, commenting on the morals, of the eighteenth, may face without shrinking even the subtler perils of our own. Only let us bear in mind, that it is not an abstraction, a system, or an idea, which has to face them ; it is we who believe. The influence of the Church on society means, in its ultimate shape, the influence of those who compose it. The Christian Church is to be the salt of the nations, if Christians are true to their belief and equal to their claim ; nothing can make it so, nothing can secure that AND RELIGION. I4I what has been, shall be, if they are not. And so we are brought back to the secret which our Lord's words intimate ; the great secret of per- sonal influence; the key of great movements; the soul of all that is deep and powerful, both in what lasts and in what makes change. It is of infinitely less consequence what others are and do against us, and what we do to resist and defeat them, than what we are as Christians ourselves. We ask a great thing, when we talk of influencing the world ; let us believe that it imposes obligation, and must have its cost. Our Master's sentence, 'Ye are the salt of the earth, ye are the light of the world,5 has been before now the bitterest of sarcasms, the deepest of shames. The wrath and scorn of men have trodden under foot, as He said, the salt that had lost its savour ; and when the light became darkness, it has been darkness indeed. May we try so to live, that these words may not ring in our ears and thoughts as a mockery, or what is worse, a hollow, self-complacent boast. Let us hear in them our Lord's claim on us. 142 CIVILISATION AND RELIGION. How each generation fulfils this call can never be known to itself; it must be left to the judg- ment of posterity and the account of the Great Day. But we have in them the announcement that to the personal influence of Christians our Lord commits His cause ; in personal influence His Church was founded, and by this it was to stand. May we never forget, amidst the con- tests and searchings of heart round us, that these words are the measure of what we were meant to be ; the standard by which we shall all be tried. CIVILISATION BEFORE AND AFTER CHRISTIANITY. TWO LECTURES DELIVERED IN ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, AT THE TUESDAY EVENING SERVICES, January 23rd & 30th, 1872. PREFACE. The two following Lectures are part of an unfinished series which was begun in St. Paul's on Tuesday even- ings during the winter of 187 1-2, and which the prepara- tions in the Cathedral for the Queen's visit to return thanks for the recovery of the Prince of Wales made it necessary to discontinue. The Lectures were an experi- ment, arising out of the desire of the Chapter to make the Cathedral of service to the large body of intelligent young men who follow their business around it, by treat- ing, in a spirit not unbecoming the place and its purpose, subjects of interest and importance which are often as- sumed to be out of place in the pulpit. I have reprinted these two Lectures as a remembrance of an occasion of great interest to us at St. Paul's, and as being in some degree connected with the subjects of the preceding- sermons. R. W. C. LECTURE I. ROMAN CIVILISATION. I PROPOSE to bring before your thoughts, in ful- filment of my part in this series of lectures, the subject of Civilisation — first, as it was, in pro- bably its highest form before Christian times, in the Roman State ; and next, as it has been since Christianity has influenced the course of history and the conditions of human life. In doing this, I have to remember several things. I have to remember the vastness of the field before us, the huge mass of materials, the number, difficulty, and importance of the questions which arise out of the subject, or hang on it. I have to remem- ber that civilisation is a thing of more or less, and that general statements about it are ever liable to be misunderstood or excepted to, be- cause the speaker is thinking of one phase or degree of it, and the listener and critic is think- L 2 148 ROMAN CIVILISATION. ing of another. One may have his thoughts full of its triumphs, and the other of its failures and shameful blots. I have to remember that it is a subject which has tasked the powers and filled the volumes of learned, able, and copious writers — Montesquieu, Guizot, Buckle, to name only these, who have made it their special theme — •< and that they have left much unsaid, much un- settled, about it. And I have to remember that I have only two short lectures — circumstances have made this necessary — to say what I can say about it. Perhaps for what I have to say it is enough. But, with such a subject, I should gladly have had more time both for preparation and for discourse. We who pursue our business in this great city, we who come to hear or to worship in this great cathedral, have continually before our eyes, in some of its most striking and characteristic forms, a very complex but very distinctive fact in the conditions of human existence — the vast complex fact to which we give the name of civilisation. It is, we all know, a vague and elastic word, and ROMAN CIVILISA TION. 1 49 I am not going to be so venturous as here to analyse it and define even its outlines : but it expresses a substantial idea, it marks a real difference in what men are and can be; and if loose and idle thinkers throw it about as if it was a glittering counter, it is so real, and so important in its meaning, that the most accurate ones cannot dispense with the use of it. The distinction between man in the barbarian state, and man in the state of civil life and civil society, is no imaginary one, though civilised life may be penetrated and disgraced with elements of barbarism, and gleams of civilisation may be discerned far back in times which are rightly called barbarous. A cloudy sky and a bright sky are different things, though one may be brighten- ing, and the other darkening, into its opposite ; though there may be uncertainty about their confines ; though clouds may be prominent in the clear, and though there be light breaking through the dulness and gloom. Civilisation is a sufficiently definite and a sufficiently interesting thing to speak about, even though we find, as we 150 ROMAN CIVILISATION. must if we think at all, how much of the subject eludes our grasp, and how idle it is, on an occa- sion like the present, to attempt to work upon it, except in the way of rough and imperfect sketching. I include under the word Civilisation all that man does, all that he discovers, all that he becomes, to fit himself most suitably for the life in which he finds himself here. It is obviously possible, for the fact stares us in the face, now as at all times, that this moral being, endowed with conscience and yearning after good, whom we believe to be here only in an early and most imperfect stage of his existence, may yet live, and feel, and act, as if all that he was made for was completed here. He may also, with the full assurance of immortality, yet see, in this present state, a scene and stage of real life, in which that life is intended to be developed to the full perfection of which it is capable ; — a scene, intended, though temporary only, and only a training place, to call forth his serious and unsparing efforts after improvement ; just as at a ROMA N CIV I LIS A TION. 1 5 1 school, in play-time as well as in work, we expect as much thought, as much purpose, as much effort, proportionate of course to the time, as we expect in grown-up life. There is, I need not say, a further question — whether this life can become all that it is capable of becoming, without refer- ence to something beyond and above it : that, of course, is the question of questions of all ages, and emphatically of our own. But into that I am not now entering. All that I want to insist upon, is that there is such a thing as making this present life as perfect as it can be made for its own sake; improving, inventing, adjusting, correcting, strictly examining into detail, sowing seeds and launching deeply-laid plans of policy, facing the present and realising the future, for the sake of what happens and must happen in time^ under the known conditions of our experience here. To all such attempts to raise the level of human life, to all such endeavours to expand human capacity and elevate human character, to all that has in view the bettering of our social conditions, in all the manifold forms and diversified relations of 152 ROMAN CIVILISATION. the society in which we grow up and live, till our senses come to an end in death ; to all that in the sphere, which is bounded to our eyes by the grave, tends to make life more beautiful, more reason- able, more pure, more rich both in achievement and felicity, up to the point when pain, and sorrow, and death claim their dread rights over it, and that, even in the presence of pain and death, imparts to life dignity, self-command, nobleness — to all this I should give the name of civilisation. I do not, therefore, take civilisation to consist in the mere development, and extension, and perfection, either of the intellectual faculties, or of the arts which minister to the uses and conve- niences, or even the embellishment of life. The intellectual faculties, some of them at least, may be strong and keen in what I should still call a low stage of civilisation, as hitherto in India. I cannot call the stage to which man has reached in Egypt, in China, or Japan, a high one, though there he has been singularly ingenious, singularly industrious; and in many ways eminently success- ROMAN CIVILISATION. 153 ful in bringing nature under his control. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy were brilliant centuries : they witnessed a burst of genius in art, which was absolutely without its match. It was civilisation, I cannot deny it. But I cannot call that other than a corrupt and base one, of which the theory was expounded, with infinite ability, by Machiavelli, and the history told by Guicciardini. I do not call it a true civilisation, where men do not attempt to discharge their duties as men in society. Not even the presence of Leonardo, Michel Angelo, and RafTaelle can persuade me to rank it high, as a form of civilisation, in which life, amid all its splendours, was so precarious and so misguided, in which all the relations and rights of society were so frightfully confused, and in which the powers of government were systematically carried on by unlimited perfidy, by the poison bowl and the dagger. I should not consent to call the railway, or the telegraph, or even the news- paper of our own age, a final test of civilisation, till I knew better how the facilities of intercourse 154 ROMAN CIVILISATION. were employed, — what was flashed along the wires or written in the columns ; nor, again, the wonder- ful and intricate machinery of our manufactures and trade, till I knew how the wealth produced by it was used. Civilisation, the form, as perfect as man can make it, of his life here, needs these appliances, welcomes them, multiplies them ; man needs all the powers that he can get for help, for remedy, for the elevation of his state. But the true subject of civilisation is the man himself, and not the circumstances, the instruments, the inventions round him. 'A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.' The degree of civilisation in a society, high or low, rising or going back, depends, it seems to me, on the actual facts of civil life, political, social, domestic, not on the machinery of outward things of which men can dispose ; on what men try to be one to another ; on what they try to make of themselves, not of their goods and powers ; on the words which they speak, really speak from their hearts, not imitate or feign ; on the indications of will and purpose, of habits of ROMAN CIVILISATION. 155 life, of self-government or indulgence — in a word, of character. The degree of civilisation depends a great deal more on whether they are manly, honest, just, public-spirited, generous, able to work together in life, than on whether they are rich, or hard working, or cunning of hand, or subtle of thought, or delicate of taste, or keen searchers into nature and discoverers of its secrets. All these things are sure to belong to civilisation as it advances ; and as it advances it needs them, and can turn them to account, more and more. All I say is, that they are not civilisation itself, as I understand it. Our own civilisation, it is not denied, has been greatly influenced by religion, and by the Chris- tian religion ; by the close connection of this present life with a life beyond it, and by what Christianity teaches of our relations to the un- seen. But civil life of a high character has undoubtedly existed at any rate, for a time, without such connection. I will venture this evening to put before you the hasty sketch of such a civilisation, and follow it to its fate. 156 ROMAN CIVILISATION. In the ancient world, as we call it, two great forms of civilisation appear, with which we must always have the liveliest sympathy. They have deeply influenced our own : and we must become quite other men from what we are when we forget them. The civilisation of Greece, with Athens for its standard, and in a main degree its source, still lives in our civil and political, as well as in our intellectual life. The great idea of citizenship, with all that flows from it of duty and ennobling service and cherished ties, found there its clear and complete expression in real fact and spontaneous action, before it was por- trayed and analysed by writers of extraordinary force and subtlety, and of matchless eloquence, who are our masters still. But the civilisation of Athens, though not too precocious for its place in the world's history, was too precocious for its own chance of life. On that little stage, and surrounded by the ambitions and fierce energies of a world of conquest, — in its first moment of weakness and mistake, it was op- pressed and crushed. It lasted long enough to ROMAN CIVILISATION. 157 plant a new conception of human society among men, to disengage and start upon its road a new and inextinguishable power, destined to pursue its way with the most momentous results, through all the times to come. It did not last long enough to work out in any proportionate way a history for itself. It is to civilisation as exhibited in the Roman State that I invite your attention. There you have the power of growth, of change, and yet of stability and persistent endurance. There you have an ideal of social and civil life, a complex and not always a consistent one, yet in its central elements very strongly defined ; keeping its hold on a great people with singular tenacity through the centuries, amid all their varying for- tunes ; undergoing great transformations in the vicissitudes of good and evil days, yet at the bottom unchanged, and frequently reasserting its unimpaired vitality at moments when we least expect it. It grew to impress itself on mankind as the power which had a unique right to command their obedience and to order their 158 ROMAN CIVILISATION. affairs ; it made its possessors, and it made the nations round, feel that Romans were, in a very real sense, the ' Lords of the human race/ To our eyes, as we look back upon it, it represents, as nothing else does, the civilisation of the then world. Why does it deserve this character ? What in it specially has a claim on our interest ? The Romans, we know, left their mark on the world ; much of what they did is still with us, defying all our centuries of change. We live in the cities which they founded : here, at St. Paul's, one of their great roads runs past our doors. But I do not dwell on Roman civilisation, because they were builders who built as if with the infinite idea of the future before them ; because they covered the face of the earth with famous and enduring cities ; because their engineers exca- vated harbours, drained marshes, and brought the waters of the hills along miles of stupendous aqueducts ; because they bound together their empire with a network of roads and postal services ; because they were the masters of ROMAN CIVILISATION. 159 organised and scientific war ; because they were great colonial administrators, subduing the earth, to subdue its rudeness, and plant in it the arts of life. Not for all this ; but because, in spite of the crimes, which come back to our minds when we name the Romans, they were yet keenly alive to what men, as men, ought to be, — men, as men, not for what they had, but for what they were — not as rich, or clever, or high in dignity, or even as wielding power, but as citi- zens of a great commonwealth and city, the Mother and Lady of them all. Not because they possessed in large measure the arts and the expedients by which the social machine is made to move more easily, much less for the pride and sensuality which squandered these arts in ostentation and fabulous luxury ; but because, amid all the dark tragedies which fill their his- tory, in spite of the matchless perfidy and the matchless cruelty which contradicted their own ideals, and seem to silence us when we talk of Roman virtue, it is yet true that deep in the minds of the most faithless, the most selfish, the 160 ROMAN CIVILISATION. most ruthless, was the knowledge that justice and public spirit were things to which a Roman, by the nobility of his birth, was obliged ; because the traditional, accepted popular morality of Rome placed among its first articles, however they were violated in practice, that fortitude, honesty, devotion, energy in service, were essen- tial things in a society of men ; because popular opinion, loose as the term may be, had the sen- timent of honour, and owned the bond of duty, even to death ; because Romans recognised a serious use of life, in doing, and doing for the common weal — not merely in learning, or acquir- ing, or enjoying for themselves alone. Now, immediately that I have said all this, the picture of Roman history rises up before our thoughts, as it is painted in Gibbon, or Milman, or Merivale. We remember the hard and rapa- cious times of the Republic, with their resolute and unflinching vindictiveness, their insolent affectations and hypocrisies of moderation and right. We are met by the enormous corruption and monstrous profligacy of the statesmen of ROMAN CIVILISATION. 161 the age of transition ; and under the Empire, we find a system fruitful, normally fruitful, of a succession of beings, the most degraded, the most detestable, the most horrible, of all that ever bore the name of man. Is it worth while to talk in Christian days of a civilisation with such fruits as these? I venture to submit that it is — that the subject is most interesting and instructive, and that it is our own fault if, in spite of the evil, we are not taught and braced by so much that is strong and so much that is noble. We pass backwards and forwards from admiration to horror and disgust as we read the story in Gibbon, who, in his taste for majesty and pomp, his moral unscrupulous- ness, and his scepticism, reflected the genius of the Empire of which he recounted the fortunes ; but who in his genuine admiration of public spirit and duty, and in his general inclination to be just to all, except only to the Christian name, reflects another and better side of Roman cha- racter. For, there was this better side. Roman civilisation produced not only great men, but M 1 62 ROMAN CIVILISATION. good men of high stamp and mark ; men with great and high views of human life, and human responsibility, — with a high standard of what men ought to aim at, with a high belief of what they could do. And it not only produced individuals ; it produced a strong and perma- nent force of sentiment ; it produced a character shared very unequally among the people, but powerful enough to determine the course of his- tory, in the way which suited it. I think it may be said with truth that the high ideal of Roman civilisation explains its final and complete col- lapse. A people with a high standard, acted on by the best, recognised by all, cannot be untrue to the standard with impunity; it not only falls, but falls to a depth proportionate to the height which it once was seeking ; it is stricken with the penalty which follows on hollow words and untrue feelings, — on the desertion of light and a high purpose, on the contradiction between law and life. A civilisation like that of China, un- disturbed by romantic views of man's nature, and content with a low estimate of his life, may flow ROMAN CIVILISATION. 163 on, like one of its great rivers, steady, powerful, useful ; unchanged for centuries, and unagitated by that which, more than wars and ambition, is the breaker up of societies, — the power of new ideas, of new hopes and aims. But because Roman civilisation became false to its principles, there was no reversing its doom. The reason why I put Roman civilisation so high and in so unique a place is, that it grew out of and cherished, age after age, with singular distinctiveness and tenacity, two great principles. One of these was that the work of the com- munity should be governed by law ; the other, that public interest and public claims were paramount to all others. Where you have in a society a strong and last- ing tendency to bring public and private affairs under the control of fixed general rules, to which individual wills are expected and are trained to submit ; where these rules are found to be grounded, instinctively perhaps at first, method- ically afterwards, on definite principles of right, fitness, and sound reason ; — where a people's M 2 164 ROMAN CIVILISATION. habitual impulse and natural disposition is to be- lieve in laws, and to trust them, and it is accepted as the part of common sense, duty, and honour to obey them: — where these characteristics, of respect for law as an authority, of resort to it as an expedient and remedy, are found to follow the progress of a great national history even from its beginnings, it cannot be denied that there you have an essential feature of high civilisation. They, of whom this may be said, have seen truly, in one most important point, how to order human life. And Law, in that sense in which we know it, and are living under it, in its strength, in its majesty, in its stability, in its practical, business- like character, may, I suppose, be said to have been born at Rome. And it was born very early ; very different, of course, in its rude beginnings, from what it grew to be afterwards, but showing, from the first, the serious, resolute struggles of the community to escape from the mischiefs of self-will and random living, without understood order and accepted rules. The political conflicts of which Roman history is full, centred, in its ROMAN CIVILISATION. 165 best days at least, round laws : they assumed a state of law, they attempted to change it ; — the result, if result there was, was expressed in a law: violent and extreme measures might be resorted to, and not seldom, in those fierce days, some- thing worse ; but it was presupposed by public opinion, whatever violent men might dare, that law was to continue and to be obeyed, till it was changed, and that it would only be changed by lawful authority and by lawful processes. Roman law was no collection of a certain number of vague constitutional articles ; it was no cast-iron code of unchanging rules : but it was a real, living, expan- sive system, developing vigorously as the nation grew, co-extensive with the nation's wants in its range and applicability, searching and self-enforc- ing in its work, a system which the people used and relied upon in their private as much as in their public affairs. And so grew up, slowly and natur- ally, through many centuries, in the way familiar to us in our law, the imposing and elaborate system of scientific jurisprudence, which the Romans, when they passed away, bequeathed to 1 66 ROMAN CIVILISATION. the coming world : the great collections of Theo- dosius and Justinian, in which are gathered the experiences of many ages of Roman society, played upon, illuminated, analysed, arranged, by a succession of judicial intellects of vast power and consummate accomplishment : that as yet unequalled monument of legal learning, compre- hensive method, and fruitfulness in practical utility, which, under the name of Civil Law, has been the great example to the world of what law maybe, which has governed the jurisprudence of great part of Europe, which has influenced in no slight degree our own jealous and hostile English traditions, and will probably influence them still more. 'The education of the world in the principles of a sound jurisprudence/ says Dean Merivale, 'was the most wonderful work of the Roman conquerors* It was complete ; it was universal : and in permanence it has far out- lasted, at least in its distinct results, the duration of the Empire itself.' A civilisation which, with- out precedent and unaided, out of its own resources and contact with life, produced such a proof of ROMAN CIVILISATION. 167 its idea and estimate of law, must, whatever be its defects, be placed very high. Again, when, with this strong and clear and permanent sense of law, you also have in a so- ciety, among its best men, a strong force of public spirit, and among all a recognition that in this the best reflect the temper and expectations of the whole, its civilisation has reached a high level. It is the civilisation of those who have discerned very distinctly the great object and leading obli- gation of man's fellowship in a state — of his life as a citizen. And certainly in no people which the world has ever seen has the sense of public duty been keener and stronger than in Rome, or has lived on with unimpaired vitality through great changes for a longer time. Amid the accumula- tion of repulsive and dark elements in Roman character, amid the harshness and pride and ferocity, often joined with lower vices, meanness, perfidy, greed, sensuality, there is one which again and again extorts a respect that even courage and high ability cannot, — a high, undeniable public spirit. Not always disinterested, any more than 168 ROMAN CIVILISATION. in some great men in our own history, but without question, for all that, thoroughly and seriously genuine. It was a tradition of the race. Its early legends dwelt upon the strange and ter- rible sacrifices which this supreme loyalty to the commonwealth had exacted, and obtained without a murmur, from her sons. They told of a magis- trate and a father, the founder of Roman freedom, dooming his two young sons to the axe for having tampered with conspiracy against the State ; of great men, resigning high office because they bore a dangerous name, or pulling down their own houses because too great for citizens ; of soldiers to whose death fate had bound victory, solemnly devoting themselves to die, or leaping into the gulf which would only close on a living victim ; of a great family purchasing peace in civil troubles by leaving the city, and turning their energy into a foreign war, in which they perished ; of the captive general who advised his countrymen to send him back to certain torture and death, rather than grant the terms he was commissioned to propose as the price of his release. Whatever ROMAN CIVILISATION. 169 we may think of these stories, they show what was in the mind of those who told and repeated them : and they continued to be the accredited types and models of Roman conduct throughout Roman history. Even in its bad days, even at its close, the temper was there, the sense of public interest, the fire of public duty, the public spirit which accepted without complaint, trouble and sacrifice. It produced, at a time when hope seemed gone, a succession of noble and high- souled rulers, whose government gave for a mo- ment the fallacious promise of happiness to the world. It produced a race of now nameless and unremembered men, who, while they probably forgot many other duties, forg^ not their duty to the public, of which they were the servants. " The history of the Caesars," writes Dean Meri- vale," presents to us a constant succession of brave, patient, resolute, and faithful soldiers, men deeply impressed with a sense of duty, superior to vanity, despisers of boasting, content to toil in obscurity, and shed their blood at the frontiers of the Empire, unrepining at the cold mistrust of their 170 ROMAN CIVILISATION. masters, not clamorous for the honours so spar- ingly awarded to them, but satisfied with the daily work of their hands, and full of faith in the national destiny which they were daily accom- plishing. If such humble instruments of society are not to be compared, for the importance of their mission, with the votaries of speculative wisdom, who protested in their lives and in their deaths against the crimes of their generation, there is still something touching in the simple heroism of these chiefs of the legions. . . . Here are virtues not to be named indeed with the zeal of missionaries and the devotion of martyrs, but worthy nevertheless of a high place in the esteem of all who reverence human nature." For these reasons, and more might be added — among them, the real reverence with which these fierce and successful soldiers regarded the arts, the pursuits, the dress of peace, and readily and willingly returned to them, — we may look back to the civilisation of Rome with an interest which we might not give to its buildings, its wealth, or its organisation of empire. It was a ROMAN CIVILISATION. 171 signal and impressive proof of what men might rise to be ; of the height, too, to which the spirit of a nation might rise. The world is not rich enough in greatness to afford to forget men who, with so much that was evil and hateful about them, yet made the idea of law a common thing, and impressed on the world so memorably the obligations of public duty and the sanctions of a public trust. How did such a civilisation come to nought ? It is wonderful that it should have arisen ; but it is more wonderful that, having arisen, it should have failed to sustain itself. How did a civilisa- tion so robust, aiming at and creating, not the ornamental and the pleasureable, but the solid and laborious, a character so serious and manly, austerely simple and energetic in men, pure and noble in women — how did it fail and perish ? What was the root of bitterness which sprung up amid its strength, and brought it, through the most horrible epochs the world ever saw, of terror and tyranny, and the foulest and most insane licentiousness — epochs which St. Paul's words in 172 ROMAN CIVILISATION. his Epistle to the Romans are hardly strong enough to describe — to the most absolute and ignoble ruin ? Of course there was evil mixed with it from the first ; but evil is mixed with all human things, and evil was mixed to the full with the life and institutions out of which the best days of Christian civilisation have come, whether you put these days in what are called the ages of faith, or the age of the Reformation, or the ages of civil liberty. Pride and selfish greed, hypocrisy, corruption, profligacy, fraud, cruelty, have been as abundant in the centuries after Christ as they were in those before. But the civilisation of Europe is not ruined, in spite of its immense dangers ; I see no reason to think that it will be ; — why was that of Rome ? To answer this question duly would be to go through the Roman history. I must content my- self with one general statement. Roman civilisa- tion was only great as long as men were true to their principles ; but it had no root beyond their personal characters and traditions and customary life ; and when these failed, it had nothing else ROMAN CIVILISATION. 173 to appeal to- — it had no power and spring of re- covery. These traditions, these customs of life, this inherited character, did keep up a stout and prolonged struggle against the shocks of changed circumstances, against the restless and unscrupu- lous cravings of individual selfishness. But they played a losing game. Each shock, each fresh blow, found them weaker after the last ; and no favouring respite was allowed them to regain and fortify the strength they had lost. The high instincts of the race wore out : bad men had nothing to do but to deny that these instincts were theirs. The powers of evil and of dark- ness mounted higher and higher, turning great professions into audacious hypocrisies, great institutions into lifeless and mischievous forms, great principles into absurd self-contradictions. Had there been anything to fall back upon, there were often men to do it ; but what was there, but the memories and examples of past greatness? Religion had once played a great part in what had given elevation to Roman civil life. It had had much to do with law, with 174 ROMAN CIVILISATION. political development, with Roman sense of public duty and Roman reverence for the State. But, of course, a religion of farmers and yeomen, a religion of clannish etiquettes and family pride and ancestral jealousies, could not long stand the competition of the Eastern faiths, or the scepti- cism of the cultivated classes. It went ; and there was nothing to supply its place but a Philosophy, often very noble and true in its language, able, I doubt not, in evil days to elevate, and comfort, and often purify its better disciples — but unable to overawe, to heal, to charm a diseased society : which never could breathe life and energy into words for the people : which wanted that voice of power which could quicken the dead letter, and command attention, where the destinies of the world were decided. I know nothing more strange and sorrowful in Roman history than to observe the absolute impotence of what must have been popular conscience, on the crimes of statesmen and the bestial infamy of Emperors. There were plenty of men to revile them ; there were men to brand them in immortal ROMAN CIVILISATION. 175 epigrams; there were men to kill them. But there was no man to make his voice heard and be respected, about righteousness, and temper- ance, and judgment to come. And so Roman civilisation fell; — fell, before even the eager troops of barbarians rushed in among its wrecks; — fell because it had no salt in it, no wholesome and reviving leaven, no power of recovery. Society could not bear its own greatness, its own immense possessions and powers, its own success and achievements. It fell, and great was the fall thereof. The world had never seen anything like Rome and its civilisation. It seemed the finish and perfection of all things, beyond which human prospects could not go. The citizens and statesmen who were proud of it, the peoples who reposed under its shadow, the early Christians who hated it as the rival of the Kingdom of God, the men of the Middle Ages who looked on it as the earthly counterpart and bulwark of that kingdom, and insisted on believing that it was still alive in the world, — Augustine who contrasted it with the iy6 ROMAN CIVILISATION. city of God, Dante who trusted in it as God's predestined minister of truth and righteousness where the Church had failed, — all looked on it as something so consummate and unique in its kind, that nothing could be conceived or hoped for which could take its place. Before the tre- mendous destructions in which it perished the lights of man's heaven, of all human society, seemed to disappear. Cicero had likened the overthow and extinction of a city and polity, once created among men, to the ruin and passing away of the solid earth. When the elder civi- lisation of Rome went to pieces, rotten within and battered by the storms without, it was a portent and calamity which the human imagina- tion had almost refused to believe possible. It was indeed the foundering of a world. How this lost civilisation was recovered, re- newed, and filled with fresh and hopeful life, we may try to see in the next lecture. LECTURE II. CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. The failure of Roman civilisation, its wreck and dissolution in the barbarian storms, was the most astonishing catastrophe the world had yet seen in its history ; and those who beheld the empire breaking up, as blow after blow was struck more home, ceased to look forward to any future for society. In this strange collapse of the strongest, in this incredible and inconceivable shaking of the foundations of what was assumed to be eternal, the end seemed come ; and as no one could ima- gine a new and different order, men thought it useless to hope anything more for the world. It is not wonderful, — but they were too despairing. It is not wonderful,— for they had no example within their knowledge of the great lights of N 178 CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. human life, which seemed destined to shine for ever, being violently extinguished, and then being rekindled, and conquering once more in heightened splendour the gloom and confusion. They had seen empires perish, but never before the defeat of a matchless structure of law and administration without example in history, which was to provide security for empire. But they were too despairing. They thought too little of powers and principles new in the world, to which many of them trusted much, both in life and in death, but of which no one then living knew the strength or suspected the working. They guessed not how that while the barbarian deluge was wasting and sweeping away the works of men, God was pouring new life into the world. They guessed not that in that Gospel, which consoled so many of them in the miseries of this sinful world, which to so many seemed but one superstition the more, to which so many traced all their disasters, there lay the seeds of a social and civil revival, compared with which the familiar refinement and extolled civilisation of Rome CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. 179 would one day come to seem little better than an instance of the rudeness of antiquity. The decay and fall of the old Roman civilisa- tion, and the growth out of its ruins of a new one, infinitely more vigorous and elastic, steady in its long course, patient of defeat and delay, but with century after century witnessing, on one point or another, to its unrelaxed advance, — the giving way of one great system and the replacing it by another, — form a great historical phenomenon, as vast as it is unique and without parallel, and to practical people not less full of warning than it is of hope. Let us cast a hasty glance upon it, — it can be but a most hasty and superficial one. What was the change, what was the new force, or element, or aspect of the world, or assemblage of ideas, which proved able to make of society what Roman loftiness of heart, Roman sagacity, Roman pa- tience, Roman strength had failed to make of it ? What power was it which took up the discredited and hopeless work, and, infusing new energies and new hopes into men, has made the long N 1 180 CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. history of the Western nations different in kind from any other period of the history of mankind ; different in this, that though its march has been often very dark and very weary, often arrested and often retarded, chequered with terrible re- verses, and stained by the most flagrant crimes, it has never been, definitely and for good, beaten back ; the movement, as we can see when we review it, has been on the whole a uniform one, and has ever been tending onwards ; it has never surrendered, and has never had reason to sur- render, the hope of improvement, even though improvement might be remote and difficult. We are told sometimes that it was the power of race, of the new nations which came on the scene : and I do not deny it. But the power of race seems like the special powers of a particular soil, in which certain seeds germinate and thrive with exceptional vigour, but for which you must have the seed, and sow it, before the soil will display its properties. It is very important, but it is not enough to say that Teutons took the place of Latins ; indeed, it is not wholly true. CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. 181 But what planted among Teutons and Latins the seeds and possibilities of a renewed civilisation was the power of a new morality. It is a matter of historical fact, that in the closing days of Rome an entirely new set of moral ideas and moral purposes, of deep significance, fruitful in conse- quences, and of a strength and intensity unknown before, were making their way in society, and establishing themselves in it. It is to the awaken- ing of this new morality, which has never per- ished out of the hearts of men from that day to this, that the efforts and the successes of modern civilisation are mainly due ; it is on the perma- nence of these moral convictions that it rests. What the origin and root of this morality really are, you will not suppose that in this place I affect to make a question ; but the matter I am now dwelling on is the morality itself, not on its connection with the Christian creed. And it is as clear and certain a fact of history that the coming in of Christianity was accompanied by new moral elements in society, inextinguishable, widely operative, never destroyed, though appa- 1 82 CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. rcntly at times crushed and paralysed, — as it is certain that Christian nations have made on the whole more progress in the wise ordering of human life than was made in the most advanced civilisation of the times before Christianity. Roman belief in right and law had ended in scepticism, whether there was such a thing as goodness and virtue : Roman public spirit had given place, under the disheartening impression of continual mistakes and disappointments, to a selfish indifference to public scandals and public mischiefs. The great principles of human action were hopelessly confused : enthusiasm for them was dead. This made vain the efforts of rulers like Trajan and the Antonines, of scientific legis- lators like Justinian, of heroes like Belisarius : they could not save a society in which, with so much outward show, the moral tone was so fatally decayed and enfeebled. But over this dreary waste of helplessness and despondency, over these mud-banks and shallows, the tide was coming in and mounting. Slowly, variably, in imperceptible pulsations, or in strange, wild CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. 183 rushes, the great wave was flowing. There had come into the world an enthusiasm, popular, wide-spread, serious, of a new kind ; not for con- quest, or knowledge, or riches, but for real, solid goodness. It seems to me that the exultation apparent in early Christian literature, beginning with the Apostolic Epistles, at the prospect now at length disclosed within the bounds of a sober hope, of a great moral revolution in human life, — that the rapturous confidence which pervades these Christian ages, that at last the routine of vice and sin has met its match, that a new and astonishing possibility has come within view, that men, not here and there, but on a large scale, might attain to that hitherto hopeless thing to the multitudes, goodness, — is one of the most singular and solemn things in history. The enthusiasm of the Crusades, the enthusiasm of Puritanism, the enthusiasm of the Jacobins — of course, I am speaking only of strength and depth of feeling — were not its equal. We can, I sup- pose, have but a dim idea of the strange and ravishing novelty with which the appearance of 1 84 CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. Divine and unearthly Goodness, in real human form, burst upon eyes accustomed, as to an order of nature, to the unbroken monotony of deepen- ing debasement, wearied out with the unchang- ing spectacle of irremediable sin. The visitation and presence of that High Goodness, making Himself like men, calling men to be like Him, had altered the possibilities of human nature ; it was mirrored more or less perfectly in a thousand lives ; it had broken the spell and custom of evil which seemed to bind human society ; it had brought goodness, real, inward, energetic goodness of the soul within the reach of those who seemed most beyond it — the crowds, the dregs, the lost. That well-known world, the scene of man's triumphs and of his untold sorrows, but not of his goodness, was really a place where righteous- ness and love and purity should have a visible seat and home, and might wield the power which sin had wielded over the purposes and wills of men. To men on whom this great surprise had come, who were in the vortex of this great change, all things looked new. Apart from the infinite seri- CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. 185 ousness given to human life by the cross of Christ,, from the infinite value and dignity given to it by the revelation of resurrection and immortality, an awful rejoicing transport filled their souls, as they saw that there was the chance, — more than the chance, — the plain forerunning signs, of human nature becoming here, what none had ever dared it would become, morally better. When they speak of this new thing in the earth, the proved reality of conversion from sin to righteousness, of the fruits of repentance, of the supplanting of vice by yet mightier influences of purity, of the opening and boundless prospects of moral im- provement and elevation, — their hearts swell, their tone is exalted, their accent becomes passionate and strong. It was surely the noblest enthusiasm — if it was but rooted in lasting and trustworthy influences — which the world had ever seen. It was no wonder that this supreme interest eclipsed all other interests. It is no wonder that for this glorious faith men gladly died. This second spring-tide of the world, this fresh start of mankind in the career of their eventful i86 CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. destiny, was the beginning of many things : but what I observe on now is that it was the beginning of new chances, new impulses, and new guarantees for civilised life, in the truest and worthiest sense of the words. It was this, by bringing into so- ciety a morality which was serious and powerful, and a morality which would wear and last ; one which could stand the shocks of human passion, the desolating spectacle of successful wicked- ness, the insidious waste of unconscious degene- racy,— one which could go back to its sacred springs and repair its fire and its strength. Such a morality, as Roman greatness was passing away, took possession of the ground. Its beginnings were scarcely felt, scarcely known of, in the vast movement of affairs in the greatest of empires. By and by, its presence, strangely austere, strangely gentle, strangely tender, strangely in- flexible, began to be noticed. But its work was long only a work of indirect preparation. Those whom it charmed, those whom it opposed, those whom it tamed, knew not what was being done for the generations which were to follow them. CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. 187 They knew not, while they heard of the house- hold of God, and the universal brotherhood of man, that the most ancient and most familiar in- stitution of their society, one without which they could not conceive its going on,— slavery,— was receiving the fatal wound of which, though late, too late, it was at last to die. They knew not, when they were touched by the new teaching about forgiveness and mercy, that a new value was being insensibly set on human life, new care and sympathy planted in society for human suf- fering, a new horror awakened at human blood- shed. They knew not, while they looked on men dying, not for glory or even country, but for con- victions and an invisible truth, that a new idea was springing up of the sacredness of conscience, a new reverence beginning for veracity and faith- fulness. They knew not that a new measure was being established of the comparative value of riches and all earthly things, while they saw, sometimes with amazement, sometimes with in- considerate imitativeness, the numbers who gave up the world, and all that was best as well as 1 88 CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. worst in it, for love of the eternal heritage — in order to keep themselves pure. They knew not of the great foundations laid for public duty and public spirit, in the obligations of Christian mem- bership, in the responsibilities of the Christian clergy, in the never-forgotten example of One whose life had been a perpetual service, and who had laid it down as the most obvious of claims, for those to whom He had bound Himself. They little thought of what was in store for civil and secular society, as they beheld a number of humble men, many of them foreigners, plying their novel trade of preachers and missionaries, announcing an eternal kingdom of righteousness, welcoming the slave and the outcast as a brother, — a brother of the Highest, — offering hope and change to the degraded sinner, stammering of Christ and redemption to the wild barbarian, worshipping in the catacombs, and meekly bury- ing their dead, perhaps their wronged and mur- dered dead, in the sure hope of everlasting peace. Slowly, obscurely, imperfectly, most imperfectly, these seeds of blessing for society began to ripen, CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. 189 to take shape, to gain power. The time was still dark and wintry and tempestuous, and the night was long in going. It is hard even now to dis- cern there the promise of what our eyes have seen. I suppose it was impossible then. It rather seemed as if the world was driving rapidly to its end, not that it was on the eve of its most amazing and hopeful transformation. But in that unhappy and desponding and unhonoured time, borne in the bosom of that institution and society which the world knew and knows as the Christian Church, there were present the neces- sary and manifold conditions of the most forward civilisation; of its noblest features, of its substan- tial good, of its justice, its order, its humanity, its hopefulness, its zeal for improvement : — "There is a day in spring When under all the earth the secret germs Begin to stir and glow before they bud. The wealth and festal pomps of midsummer Lie in the heart of that inglorious hour Which no man names with blessing, though its work Is blessed by all the world. Such days there are In the slow story of the growth of souls'." ' x Story of Queen Isabel. By Miss Smedley. 1 9o CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. And such a day there was in the " slow story " of the improvement and progress of civilised Christendom. The point I wish to insist on is, that with Christianity, as long as there is Christianity, there comes a moral spring and vitality and force, a part and consequence of its influence, which did not and could not exist before it. You cannot conceive of Christianity except as a moral reli- gion, requiring, inspiring morality; and it was just this spring, this force of morality, which was wanting, and which could not be, in Roman civilisation. Morality there was, often in a high degree : but it came and went with men or with generations, and there was nothing to keep it alive, nothing to rekindle it when extinct, no- thing to suggest and nourish its steady improve- ment. At any rate there was not enough, if, when we remember the influence of great exam- ples and great writers, it is too sweeping to say there was nothing. But with Christianity the condition was changed. I am sure I am not unmindful of what shortcomings, what shames CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. 191 and sins, what dark infamies, blot the history of Christian society. I do not forget that Christian morality has been a thing of degrees and im- pulses, rising and falling; that it has been at times impracticably extreme, and at times scan- dalously lax ; that there have been periods when it seemed lost: that in some of its best days it has been unaccountably blind and perversely stupid and powerless, conniving at gross and undeniable inconsistencies, condoning flagrant wrong. This is true. Yet look through all the centuries since it appeared, and see if ever, in the worst and darkest of them, it was not there, as it never was in Rome, for hope, if not for present help and remedy. There was an undying voice, even if it came from the lips of hypocrites, which witnessed perpetually of mercy, justice, and peace. There was a seriousness given to human life, by a death everywhere died in the prospect of the judgment. I am putting things at the worst. Christian morality lived even in the tenth century ; even in the times of the Borgias and Medici. The wicked passed— the wicked age, i92 CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. the wicked men ; passed, with the evil they had done, with the good which tfiey had frustrated, with the righteous whom they had silenced or slain. And when they were gone, "when the tyranny was overpast," the unforgotten law of right, the inextinguishable power of conscience, were found to have survived unweakened through the hour of darkness, ready to reassert and to ex- tend their empire. Great as have been the dis- asters and failures of Christian society, I think we have not yet seen the kind of hopeless col- lapse in which Roman civilisation ended. Feeble and poor as the spring of morality might be in this or that people, there has hitherto been some- thing to appeal to, and to hope from, which was not to be found in the days of the Antonines, the most peaceful and felicitous of Roman times. In this great restoration of civilisation, which is due mainly to the impulse and the power of Christian morality, a great place must be given to the direct influence of Christian aspects of life and ideas of duty. Christian ideas of purity acted directly on all that was connected with CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. 193 family and domestic life. They forbade, with intense and terrible severity, before which even passion quailed, the frightful liberty in the rela- tions of the sexes which in Greece, and at last in Rome, had been thought so natural. Here was one great point fixed : the purification of the home, the sanctity thrown round the wife and the mother, the rescuing of the unmarried from the assumed licence of nature, the protec- tion given to the honour of the female slave and then of the female servant, were social victories well worth the unrelenting and often extrava- gant asceticism which was, perhaps, their inevit- able price at first. They were the immediate effects of a belief in the Sermon on the Mount ; and where that belief was held, they would more or less consistently follow. So with the fiercer tempers and habits of men : against cruelty, against high-handed oppression and abuse of strength, there was a constant, unyielding pro- test in the Christian law of justice and charity, continually unheeded, never unfelt : even war and vengeance were uneasy under the unceasing O 194 CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. though unavailing rebuke of the Gospel law, and made concessions to it, though too strong, too fatally necessary, to submit to it. Further, under the influence of Christian morality, later civil- isation showed a power of appropriating and assimilating all that was noble and salutary in its older forms. It appropriated the Roman idea of law, and gave it a larger and more equitable scope, and a more definite consecration to the ends of justice and the common good. It invested the ancient idea of citizenship and patriotism with simpler and more generous feelings, and with yet holier sanctions. It accepted from the ancient thinkers their philosophic temper and open spirit of inquiry, and listened reverentially to their les- sons of wisdom. It reinforced the Roman idea, a confused and inconsistent though a growing one, of the unity of the human race ; and though the victory over custom and appearances is hardly yet won, the tendency to recognise that unity can never fail, while the belief prevails that Christ died for the world. And once more, it is not easy to say what Christian belief, Christian life, CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. 195 Christian literature have done to make the great- est thoughts of the ancient world 'come home to men's business and bosoms.' No one can read the wonderful sayings of Seneca, Epictetus. or Marcus Aurelius, without being impressed, abashed perhaps, by their grandeur. No one can read them without wondering the next mo- ment why they fell so dead — how little response they seemed to have awakened round them. What was then but the word of the solitary thinker has now become the possession, if they will, of the multitude. The letter of great maxims has been filled with a vivifying spirit. Their truths have been quickened into new meaning by the new morality in which they have found a place, by the more general and keener con- science which has owned them. The direct effects of Christian morality on modern civilisation would be allowed by most people to be manifest and great. I wish to call attention to one or two points of its indirect in- fluence. Civilisation, the ordering with the utmost attainable success, of civil and secular life, is one O 2 196 CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. thing ; and Christian religion is another. They are two currents, meeting from time to time, inosculating, sometimes confused, at other times divergent and possibly flowing different ways : but, anyhow, they are two currents. Take such a picture of real daily human interests and human activity as is presented to us in so wonderful, so overwhelming, though so familiar a shape, in the columns, and quite as much in the advertisements, of a great newspaper; or again, when we thread the streets and crowds of a great city, and try to imagine the infinite aims and divisions of its business. There is the domain of civilisation, its works, its triumphs, its failures and blots : and its main scope is this life, whatever be the affini- ties and relations by which it has to do with what concerns man's other life. But the point that seems to me worth notice is this : the way in which the Christian current of thought, of aim, of conscience, of life, has affected the other cur- rent, even where separated and remote from it. We are told that the presence of electrical force in one body induces a corresponding force in CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. 197 another not in contact with the first, but adjacent to it ; that one set of forces is raised to greater than their normal power and intensity by the neighbourhood of another ; that currents passing in a given direction communicate, as long as they continue, new properties to a body round which they circulate : the neutral iron becomes a mag- net, attracting, vibrating, able to hold up weights, as long as it is encircled by a galvanic circuit, which does not touch or traverse it. So the pre- sence of Christian forces acted, by a remote and indirect sympathy, even where they did not mingle and penetrate in their proper shape. Much of civilisation has always been outside of Christianity, and its leaders and agents have often not thought of Christianity in their work. But they worked in its neighbourhood, among those who owned it, among those who saw it, among those who lived by it : and the con- scientiousness, the zeal, the single-mindedness, the spirit of improvement, the readiness for labour and trouble, the considerateness and sym- pathy, the manly modesty, which are wherever l98 CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. Christianity has 'had its perfect work,' have de- veloped and sustained kindred tempers, where aims and pursuits, and the belief in which a man habitually lives, have been in a region far away from religion. Take the administration of justice. It has been, it must be, in society, whether there is religion or not. It was found in Roman times, up to a certain point, in a very remarkable degree of perfection. It has been, it may still be, in Christian times, carried on, and admirably carried on, by men who do not care for Christianity. I am very far indeed from saying that in these times it has always been worthy either of Chris- tianity or civilisation. But I suppose we may safely say that it has been distinctly improving through the Christian centuries. We may safely say that in its best and most improved stages it is an admirable exhibition of some of the noblest qualities of human character ; honesty, strength without show, incorruptness, scrupulous care, un- wearied patience, desire for right and for truth, and laborious quest of them, public feeling, humanity, compassion even when it is a duty to be stern. CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. 199 There were great and upright Roman magis- trates ; but whatever Roman jurisprudence at- tained to, there was no such administration of justice, where men thought and felt right, and did right, as a matter of course. And is it too much to say that the growing and gathering power of ideas of duty, right, and mercy, derived from Christianity, have wrought and have con- quered, even when their source was not formally acknowledged, even when it was kept at a dis- tance ; and that they have given a security for one of the first essentials of civilisation, which is distinctly due to their perhaps circuitous and remote influence ? But, after all, it may not unreasonably occur to you that I am claiming too much for the civilisa- tion of Christian times ; that my account of it is one-sided and unfairly favourable. Putting aside the earlier centuries of confusion and struggle, when it might be urged that real tendencies had not yet time to work themselves clear, what is there to choose, it may be said, between the worst Roman days and many periods of later history, 200 CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. long after Christianity had made good its footing in society ? What do we say to the dislocation, almost the dissolution, of society in great wars, — the English Invasion, the Wars of the League, in France, our own civil wars, the municipal feuds in Italy, the Thirty Years' War in Germany? What to the civilisation of the ages like those of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., full of brilliancy, full of most loathsome unrighteousness and corruption, gilded by the profoundest outward honour for religion ? What shall we say of In- quisitions, and Penal Laws, and here, in our own England, of a criminal code which, up to the end of the last century, hanged mere children for a trifling theft ? What shall we say of the huge commercial dishonesties of our own age, of our pauperism, of our terrible inequalities and con- trasts of wealth and life ? What shall we say of a great nation almost going to pieces before our eyes, and even now moving anxiously to a future which no one pretends to foresee ? What advan- tage have we, how is civilisation the better for the influence on it of Christianity, if this, and much CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. 201 more like this, is what is shown by the history and the facts of the modern world ? It will at once suggest itself to you that when we speak of civilisation we speak of a thing of infinite degrees and variety. Every man in this congregation stands, probably, at a different point from all his neighbours in the success with which, if I may use the words, he has made himself a man : has devoloped the capacities and gifts which are in him, has fulfilled the purpose and done the work for which he was ma.de to live, has reached ' the measure of the fulness of that sta- ture' which he might and was intended to attain. And so with societies, and different times in the history of a society. There have been in Chris- tian times poor and feeble forms of civilisation, there have been degenerate ones, as there have been strong ones ; and in the same society there have been monstrous and flagrant inconsistencies, things left undone, unrighted, unnoticed, the neg- lect of which seems unaccountable, things quietly taken for granted which it is amazing that a Christian conscience could tolerate. Think how 202 CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. long and how patiently good men accepted negro slavery, who would have set the world in flame rather than endure slavery at home. Human nature is wayward and strange in the propor- tion which it keeps in its perceptions of duty, in its efforts and achievements. But for all this it seems to me idle to deny that men in Chris- tian times have reached a higher level, and have kept it, in social and civil life, than they ever reached before, and that this is distinctly to be traced to the presence and action in society of Christian morality. But this is not what I wanted specially to say. What I want you to notice, as new, since Chris- tianity began to act on society, as unprecedented, as characteristic, is the power of recovery which appears in society in the Christian centuries. What is the whole history of modern Europe but the history of such recoveries ? And what is there like it to be found in the ancient world? Dark days have been, indeed, in Christendom. Society seemed to be breaking up, as it did at last at Rome. But wait awhile, and you saw that which CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. 203 you looked for in vain at Rome. The tide began to turn ; the energy, the indignation, the resolute, unflinching purpose of reformation began to show itself ; and whether wise or not, whether in its special and definite work a failure or even a mischief, it was at least enough to rouse society, to set it on a new course, to disturb that lethargy of custom which is so fatal, to make men believe that it was not a law of nature or of fate, that ' as things had been, things must be.' That terri- ble disease of public and stagnant despair which killed Roman society has not had the mastery yet in Christian ; in evil days, sooner or later, there have been men to believe that they could improve things, even if, in fact, they could not. And for that power of hope, often, it may be, chimerical and hazardous, but hope which has done so much for the improvement of social life, the world is indebted to Christianity. It was part of the very essence of Christianity not to let evil alone. It was bound, it was its instinct, to attack it. Christian men have often, no doubt, mistaken the evil which they attacked : but their 204 CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. acquiescence in supposed evil, and their hope- lessness of a victory for good, would have been worse for the world than their mistakes. The great reforms in Christian days have been very mixed ones ; but they have been reforms^ an un- interrupted series of attempts at better things ; for society, for civilisation, successive and reai, though partial recoveries. The monastic life, which was, besides its other aspects, the great civilising agent in the rural populations ; the varied and turbulent municipal life in the cities ; the institutions in the Middle Ages, on a broad and grand scale, for teaching, for study, for preaching, for the reformation of manners ; the determined and sanguine ventures of heroic en- thusiasts, like St. Bernard, Savonarola, or Luther, or of gentler, but not less resolute reformers, like Erasmus and our own Dean Colet ; the varied schemes for human improvement, so varied, so opposed, so incompatible, yet in purpose one, of Jesuits, of Puritans, of the great Frenchmen of Port Royal, — all witness to the undying, un- wearied temper which had been kindled in society, CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. 205 and which ensured it from the mere ruin of helplessness and despair. They were all mis- takes, you will say perhaps, or full of mistakes. Yes, but we all do our work through mistakes, and the boldest and most successful of us per- haps make the most. They failed in the am- bitious completeness, the real one-sidedness and narrowness, of their aim : but they left their mark, if only in this — that they exhibited men in the struggle with evil and the effort after improvement, refusing to give up, refusing to be beaten. But indeed they were more than this. There are none, I suppose, of these great stirrings of society, however little we may sympathise with them, which have not contributed something for which those who come after are the better. The wilder or the feebler ones were an earnest of something more reasonable and serious. They mark and secure, for some important principle or idea, a step which cannot easily be put back. They show, as the whole history of Christendom, with all its dismal tracts of darkness and blood, seems to me to show, that society in Christian 206 CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. times has somehow or other possessed a security, a charm against utter ruin, which society before them had not ; that it has been able to go through the most desperate crises, and at length throw off the evil, and continue on its path not perhaps unharmed, yet with a new chance of life : that following its course from first to last, we find in it a tough, indestructible force of resistance to decay, a continual, unworn-out spring of revival, renovation, restoration, recovery, and augmented strength, which, wherever it comes from, is most marked and surprising, and which forms an essential difference between Christian society and the conditions of society, before and beyond Christian influences. I must bring to an end what I have to say. I know quite well that the subject is not finished. But there are various reasons why at present I am unable to finish it. Yet I hope I shall not have quite wasted your time if I have said anything to make you wish to inquire and to think about this supreme question ; the relations of our modern civilisation, not only so refined, and so full of arts CIVILISATION AFTER CHRISTIANITY. 207 and appliances and great organisations, but so serious, to those eternal truths which lead up our thoughts to the ultimate destinies of man, to the Throne of the Most High and the Most Holy. Society is debating whether it shall remain Christian or not. I hope that all who hear me, the majority of whom twenty years hence, when I and my contemporaries shall have passed from the scene, will belong to the grown-up genera- tion which then will have the fate of English society in their hands, will learn to reflect on that question with the seriousness which it deserves. ON SOME INFLUENCES OF CHRISTIANITY UPON NATIONAL CHARACTER. THREE LECTURES DELIVERED IN ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL February tfh, nth, and 18M, 1873. LECTURE I. INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY ON NATIONAL CHARACTER. I PROPOSE on this occasion to invite you to consider some of the ways in which national character has been affected by Christianity, and to trace these effects in certain leading types of national character which appear to have been specially influenced by Christianity : — The cha- racter of the European races belonging to the Eastern Churchy particularly the Greeks ; that of the Southern, or, as they are called, the Latin races, particularly the Italians and French ; and, lastly, that of the Teutonic races. These three divisions will supply the subjects of the three lectures which it is my business to deliver. P % 212 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY It is obvious that within the limits to which I am confined, such a subject can be treated only in the most general outline. Within these great divisions national character varies greatly. And national character, real as is the meaning con- veyed by the term, is yet, when we come to analyse and describe it, so delicate and subtle a thing, so fugitive, and so complex in the traits and shades which produce the picture, that its portraiture tasks the skill of the most practised artist, and overtasks that of most. But yet, that there is such a thing is as certain as that there is a general type of physiognomy or expression characteristic of different races. One by one, no doubt, many faces might belong equally to Eng- lishmen or Frenchmen, Italians, Greeks, or Rus- sians. But, in spite of individual uncertainties, the type, on the whole, asserts itself with curious clearness. If you cannot be sure of it in single faces, it strikes you in a crowd. In one of the years of our Exhibitions, an illustrated paper published an engraving — it was the border, I think, of a large representation of the Exhi- ON NATIONAL CHARACTER, 213 bition building — in which were ranged in long procession representatives of the chief national- ities supposed to be collected at the Exhibition, or contributing to it. Dress and other things had, of course, much to do with marking them out one from another: but beyond dress and adjuncts like dress, there was the unmistakeable type of face, caught with singular keenness of discrimination, and exhibited without exaggera- tion or a semblance of caricature. The types were average ones, such as every one recognised and associated with this or that familiar nation- ality ; and the differences were as real between the more nearly related types as between the most strongly opposed ones, — as real between the various members of the European family as between European and Chinese, though the dif- ficulty of detecting and expressing the differences is greater in proportion as these differences pass from broad and obvious ones to such as are fine and complicated. So it is with national char- acter. The attempt to define it, to criticise it, to trace its sources, to distinguish between what it 214 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY is and what it seems, to compare and balance its good and its bad— this attempt may be awkward and bungling, may be feeble, one-sided, unjust. It may really miss all the essential and important features, and dwell with disproportionate em- phasis on such as are partial and trivial, or are not peculiarities at all. Bad portrait-painting is not uncommon. Yet each face has its character and expression unlike every other, if only the painter can seize it. And so, in those great societies of men which we call nations, there is a distinct aspect belonging to them as wholes, which the eye catches and retains, even if it can- not detect its secret, and the hand is unequal to reproduce it. Its reality is betrayed, and the consciousness of its presence revealed, by the antipathies of nations, and their current judg- ments one of another. The character of a nation, supposing there to be such a thing, must be, like the character of an individual, the compound result of innumerable causes. Roughly, it may be said to be the com- pound product of the natural qualities and ON NATIONAL CHARACTER. 215 original tendencies of a nation, and of a nation's history. The natural qualities and tendencies have helped largely to make the history out of circumstances and events, partly, at least, inde- pendent of these inherent forces ; and the history has then reacted on the natural qualities. What a nation has come to be has depended on the outfit of moral, intellectual, and physical gifts and conditions with which it started on its career in the world ; and then, on the occurrences and trials which met it in its course, and the ways in which it dealt with them ; on the influences which it welcomed or resisted ; on critical de- cisions ; on the presence and power of great men good and bad ; on actions which closed the old, or opened the new ; on the feelings, assumptions, and habits which it had allowed to grow up in it. All this needs no illustration. The Greeks never could have been what they have been in their influence on human history if they had not started with the rich endowments with which na- ture had furnished them ; but neither could they have been what they were, wonderfully endowed 2i6 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIAN/TV as we know them to have been, if Athens had not resisted and conquered at Marathon and Salamis ; if those victories had been mere patriotic asser- tions of independence and liberty, like the great Swiss victories of Morgarten and Sempach, and had not stimulated so astonishingly Athenian capacities for statesmanship, for literature, for art ; if they had not been followed by the his- torians, the moralists, the poets of Athens ; if there had been no Pericles, no Phidias, no So- crates ; if there had been no Alexander to make Greek mind and Greek letters share his conquest of the Eastern world. So with the nations of our living world. The sturdiest Englishman must feel, not only that his country would have been different, but he might himself have been other than he is, if some great events in our history had gone differently ; if some men had not lived, and if others had not died when they did ; if England had been made an appendage to the Spanish Netherlands in 1588, or a dependency of the great French King in 1688, or of the great French Emperor in 1805; if Elizabeth had died and ON NATIONAL CHARACTER. 217 Mary lived. It is idle to pursue this in instances. It is obvious that a nation's character is what it is, partly from what it brought with it on the stage of its history ; partly from what it has done and suffered ; partly from what it has en- countered in its progress : giving to an external or foreign element a home and the right of citizenship within it, or else shutting its doors to the stranger, and treating it as an intruder and an enemy. And among these influences, which have determined both the character and history of nations, one of the most important, at least during the centuries of which the years are reck- oned from the birth of our Lord, has been religion. I state the fact here generally without reference to what that religion is, or of what kind its influence may have been. Everybody knows the part which Mahometanism has played, and is still playing, in shaping the ideas, the manners, and the history of nations in Asia and Africa. In its direct and unambiguous power over the races in which it has taken root, and in the broad and 2l8 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY simple way in which it has mastered their life and habits, and dominated in the direction of their public policy, I suppose that there is no religion which can compare with it. Its demands, devotional and moral, are easily satisfied but strictly enforced ; and to a genuine Mahometan a religious war is the most natural field for na- tional activity. As has been justly said1 — 'it has consecrated despotism ; it has consecrated polygamy ; it has consecrated slavery \ it has done this directly, in virtue of its being a religion, a religious reform. This is an obvious instance in which national character and national history would not have been what they have been with- out the presence and persistent influence of the element of religion. The problem is infinitely more complicated in the case of those higher races, for such they are, which escaped or re- sisted the Mahometan conquest : but there, too, the power of this great factor is equally unde- niable, and is much richer and more varied in results, though these results are not so much on 1 Freeman, Saracens^ p. 246. ON NATIONAL CHARACTER. 219 the surface, and are often more difficult to assign amid the pressure of other elements, to their perhaps distant causes. To come, then, to my subject this evening. What have been the effects of Christianity on what we call national character in Eastern Chris- tendom? I must remind you, once more, how very roughly and imperfectly such a question can be answered here. The field of investigation is immense, and in part very obscure; and the utmost that I can do is, if possible, to make out some salient points, which may suggest, to those who care to pursue it, the beginnings of further inquiry. I propose to confine myself to one race of the great family. I shall keep in view mainly the Greek race, as a typical specimen of Eastern Christendom. I am quite aware how much I narrow the interest of the subject by leaving out of direct consideration a people with such a strongly marked character, with such a place in the world now, and such a probable future, as the great Russian nation ; a nation which may be said to owe its national enthusiasm, its 220 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY national convictions, its intense coherence, and the terrible strength it possesses, to its being penetrated with religion. But, having to choose a field of survey with reference to the time at our disposal, I prefer to keep to the Greek race, because the impression made on them was a primary and original one, and was communi- cated by them to other nations, like Russia ; because they have had the longest history ; and because their history has been more full than that of others of the vicissitudes of circumstance and fortune. It requires an effort in us of the West to call up much interest in the Eastern Christian races and their fortunes. They are very different from us in great and capital points of character, and our historians have given them a bad name. Many persons would regard them as decisive instances of the failure of Christianity to raise men, even of its liability under certain con- ditions to be turned into an instrument to cor- rupt and degrade them. The Greeks of the Lower Empire are taken as the typical example ON NATIONAL CHARACTER. 22 1 of these races, and the Greeks of the Lower Empire have become a byword for everything that is false and base. The Byzantine was pro- foundly theological, we are told, and profoundly vile. And I suppose the popular opinion of our own day views with small favour his modern representatives, and is ready to contrast them to their disadvantage with the Mahometan popula- tion about them. There is so much truth in this view that it is apt, as in many other cases, to make people careless of the injustice they commit by taking it for the whole truth. Two things, as it seems to me,— besides that general ignorance which is the mother of so much un- fairness and scorn in all subjects,— have espe- cially contributed to establish among us a fixed depreciation of all that derives its descent from the great centres of Eastern Christianity. One is the long division between Western and Eastern Christendom, which, beginning in a rift, the con- sequences of which no one foresaw, and which all were therefore too careless or too selfish to close when it might have been closed, has widened in 222 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY the course of ages into a yawning gulf, which nothing that human judgment can suggest will ever fill up, and which, besides its direct quarrels and misfortunes, has brought with it a train of ever-deepening prejudices and antipathies, of which those who feel them often know not the real source. Another thing which has contri- buted to our popular disparagement of these races is the enormous influence of Gibbon's great History. It is not too much to say that the common opinion of educated Englishmen about the history and the character of everything de- rived from Byzantium or connected with it is based on this History, and, in fact, as a definite opinion dates from its appearance. He has brought out with incomparable force all that was vicious, all that was weak, in Eastern Chris- tendom. He has read us the evil lesson of caring in their history to see nothing else ; of feeling too much pleasure in the picture of a religion discredited, of a great ideal utterly and meanly baffled, to desire to disturb it by the inconvenient severity of accuracy and justice. ON NATIONAL CHARACTER. 223 But the authority of Gibbon is not final. There is, after all, another side to the story. In telling it, his immense and usually exact knowledge gave him every advantage in supporting what I must call the prejudiced conclusions of a singularly cold heart ; while his wit, his shrewd- ness, and his pitiless sarcasm gave an edge to his learning, and a force which learning has not always had in shaping the opinions of the un- learned. The spell of Gibbon's genius is not easy to break. But later writers, with equal knowledge and with a more judicial and more generous temper, have formed a very different estimate of the Greek Empire and the Greek race, and have corrected, if they have not re- versed, his sentence. Those who wish to be just to a form of society which it was natural in him to disparage will pass on from his bril- liant pages to the more equitable and conscien- tious, but by no means indulgent, judgments of Mr. Finlay, Mr. Freeman, and Dean Stanley. One fact alone is sufficient to engage our deep interest in this race. It was Greeks and people 224 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY imbued with Greek ideas who first welcomed Christianity. It was in their language that it first spoke to the world, and its first home was in Greek households and in Greek cities. It was in a Greek atmosphere that the Divine Stranger from the East, in many respects so widely dif- ferent from all that Greeks were accustomed to, first grew up to strength and shape ; first showed its power of assimilating and reconciling; first showed what it was to be in human society. Its earliest nurslings were Greeks ; Greeks first took in the meaning and measure of its amazing and eventful announcements ; Greek sympathies first awoke and vibrated to its appeals ; Greek obe- dience, Greek courage, Greek suffering first illus- trated its new lessons. Had it not first gained over Greek mind and Greek belief, it is hard to see how it would have made its further way. And to that first welcome the Greek race has been profoundly and unalterably faithful. They have passed through centuries for the most part of adverse fortune. They have been in some respects the most ill-treated race in the world. ON NATIONAL CHARACTER, %%$ To us in the West, at least, their Christian life seems to have stopped in its growth at an early period ; and, compared with the energy and fruitfulness of the religious principle in those to whom they passed it on, their Christianity dis- appoints, perhaps repels us. But to their first faith, as it grew up, substantially the same, in Greek society, in the days of Justin and Origen, as it was formulated in the great Councils, as it was embodied in the Liturgies, as it was concen- trated and rehearsed in perpetual worship, as it was preached by Gregory and Chrysostom, as it was expounded by Basil, Cyril of Jerusalem, and John of Damascus, as it prompted the lives of saints and consecrated the triumphs of martyrs, they still cling, as if it was the wonder and dis- covery of yesterday. They have never wearied of it. They have scarcely thought of changing its forms. The Roman Conquest of the world found the Greek race, and the Eastern nations which it had influenced, in a low and declining state — morally, socially, politically. The Roman Q •226 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY Empire, when it fell, left them in the same dis- couraging condition, and suffering besides from the degradation and mischief wrought on all its subjects by its chronic and relentless fiscal op- pression. The Greek of Roman times was the admiration and envy of his masters for his cleverness and the glories which he had in- herited ; and their scorn for his utter moral incapacity to make any noble and solid use of his gifts. The typical Greek of Juvenal's satire answered to the typical Frenchman of Dr. John- son's imitation of it, the ideal Frenchman of our great grandfathers in the eighteenth century. He was a creature of inexhaustible ingenuity, but without self-respect, without self-com- mand or modesty, capable of everything as an impostor and a quack, capable of nothing as a man and a citizen. There was no trusting his character any more than his word : ' unstable as water,' fickle as the veering wind, the slave of the last new thing, whether story, or theory, or temptation, — to the end of his days he was no better or of more value than a child in the ON NATIONAL CHARACTER. 227 serious things which it becomes men to do. Full of quickness and sensibility, open to every impulse, and a judge of every argument, he was without aim or steadiness in life, ridiculous in his levity and conceit, — even in his vice and cor- ruption more approaching to the naughtiness of a reckless schoolboy than to the grave and de- liberate wickedness which marked the Roman sensualists. These were the men in whose childish conceit, childish frivolity, childish self- assertion, St. Paul saw such dangers to the growth of Christian manliness and to the unity of the Christian body — the idly curious and gossiping men of Athens ; the vain and shame- lessly ostentatious Corinthians, men in intellect, but in moral seriousness babes ; the Ephesians, 'like children carried away with every blast of vain teaching,' the victims of every impostor, and sport of every deceit ; the Cretans, pro- verbially, ' ever liars, evil beasts, slow bellies ; ' the passionate, volatile, Greek-speaking Celts of Asia, the ' foolish ' Galatians ; the Greek-speak- ing Christians of Rome, to whom St. Paul could Q 2 228 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY address the argument of the Epistle to the Ro- mans, and whom yet he judged it necessary to warn so sternly against thinking more highly of themselves than they ought to think, and against setting individual self- pleasing against the claims and interests of the community. The Greek of the Roman times is portrayed in the special warnings of the Apostolic Epistles. After Apostolic times he is portrayed in the same way by the heathen satirist Lucian, and by the Christian preacher Chrysostom ; and such, with all his bad tendencies, aggravated by almost uninterrupted misrule and oppression, the Em- pire, when it broke up, left him. The prospects of such a people, amid the coming storms, were dark. Everything, their gifts and versatility, as well as their faults, threatened national decay and disintegration. How should they stand the collision with the simpler and manlier barbarians from the northern wastes, from the Arabian wil- derness, from the Tartar steppes ? How should they resist the consuming and absorbing enthu- siasm of Mahometanism ? How should they ON NATIONAL CHARACTER. 229 endure, century after century, the same crushing ill-treatment, the same misgovernment and mis- fortune, without at last breaking up and dissolv- ing into something other than they were, and losing the thread of their national continuity ? Look at the same group of races, and espe- cially at the leading and typical one of the group, the Greeks in Europe and Asia, after the impending evils had fallen, after century after century had passed over it of such history as nations sink under, losing heart and union and hope. Look at them when their ill-fortune had culminated in the Ottoman conquest ; look at them after three centuries and a half of Ottoman rule. For they have not perished. In the first place, they exist. They have not disappeared before a stronger race and a more peremptory and energetic national principle. They have not, as a whole, whatever may have happened partially, melted into a new form of people along with their conquerors. They have re- sisted the shocks before which nations appar- ently stronger have yielded and, as nations, have 230 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY disappeared. And next, they have not only resisted dissolution or amalgamation, but in a great degree change. In characteristic endow- ments, in national and proverbial faults, though centuries of hardship and degradation have doubtless told on the former, they are curiously like what their fathers were. But neither faults, nor gifts reinforcing and giving edge to faults, have produced the usual result. Neither their over-cleverness, nor their lamentable want in many points of moral elevation and strength, have caused the decay which ends in national death, have so eaten into the ties which keep a society together, that its disorganized elements fly apart and form new combinations. The Mahometan conquest has made large inroads on the Christian populations — in some cases, as in Bosnia and parts of Albania, it absorbed it en- tirely. But if ever nationality — the pride of country, the love of home, the tie of blood — was a living thing, it has been alive in the Greek race, and in the surrounding races, whatever their origin and language, which it once in- ON NATIONAL CHARACTER. 231 fluenced, and which shared the influences which acted on it. These races whom the Empire of the Caesars left like scattered sheep to the mercy of the barbarians, lived through a succession of the most appalling storms, and kept themselves together, holding fast, resolute and unwavering, amid all their miseries and all their debasement, to the faith of their national brotherhood. No- thing less promised endurance than their tem- perament and genius, so easily moved to change, so quick to the perception of self-interest, and ready to discover its paths. Nothing seemed more precarious as a bond than national tradi- tions and national sympathies. But at the end of our modern ages, the race on which Chris- tianity first made an impression still survives, and, though scarred by disaster and deeply wounded by servitude, is now looking forward to a new and happier career. What saved Greek nationality — saved it in spite of the terrible alliance with external mis- fortunes, of its own deep and inherent evils ; saved it, I hope, for much better days than it 2$2 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY has ever yet seen— was its Christianity. It is wonderful that, even with it, Greek society should have resisted the decomposing forces which were continually at work round it and in it ; but without its religion it must have perished. This was the spring of that obstinate tenacious, national life which persisted in living on though all things conspired for its extinc- tion; which refused to die under corruption or anarchy, under the Crusader's sword, under the Moslem scimitar. To these races Christianity had not only brought a religion, when all religion was worn out among them and evaporated into fables, but it had made them — made them once more a people, with common and popular inter- ests of the highest kind ; raised them, from mere subjects of the Roman Empire, lost amid its crowd, into the citizens of a great society, hav- ing its root and its end above this world, and even in the passage through this world binding men by the most awful and ennobling ties. Christianity was the first friend and benefactor of an illustrious race in the day of its decline ON NATIONAL CHARACTER. 233 and low estate ; the Greek race has never for- gotten that first benefit, and its unwavering loyalty has been the bond which has kept the race together and saved it. I think this is remarkable. Here is a race full of flexibility and resource, with unusual power of accommodating itself to circumstances and ready to do so when its interest prompted, not over-scrupulous, quick in discovering imposi- tion and pitiless in laughing at pretence — a race made, as it would seem, to bend easily to great changes, and likely, we should have thought, to lose its identity and be merged in a stronger and sterner political association. And to this race Christianity has imparted a corporate tough- ness and permanence, which is among the most prominent facts of history. Say, if you like, that it is an imperfect form of Christianity ; that it is the Christianity of men badly governed and rudely taught for centuries, enslaved for other centuries. Say, if you like, that its success has been very qualified in curing the race o f its ancient and characteristic faults. Say, too, that 234 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY in hardening the Greek race to endure, it has developed in them in regard to their religion, an almost Judaic hardness and formalism and rigidity of thought, a local idea of religion which can scarcely conceive of Christianity beyond its seats and its forms in the East. Yet the fact remains, that that easy-going, pliable, childishly changeable Greek race at whom the Romans sneered, has proved, through the deepest mis- fortunes, one of the most inflexible nationalities that we know of; and that the root of this permanence and power of resisting hostile in- fluences has been in Christianity and the Christian Church. In this consolidation by Christianity of a na- tional character, in itself least adapted to become anything stable and enduring, we may trace a threefold influence : — I. In the first place, Christianity impressed on the minds of men with a new force the idea of the eternal and lasting. Into a world of time and death and change, in strange and paradoxical contrast with it, it had come announcing; a one ON NATIONAL CHARACTER. 235 everlasting Kingdom of God, and a final victory- over the worst that death can do on man. Rome and the Empire claimed to be eternal and un- changing ; but they were too visibly liable, as other human greatness, to the shocks of fortune, and the inevitable course of mortal decay. But that everlasting order which was the foundation of all that Christianity supposed and taught, that 'House not made with hands,' that 'King- dom which cannot be moved,' that Temple of souls dwelt in by the Eternal Spirit of God, that Throne of the world on which sate One, 'the same yesterday and to-day and for ever ' — this was out of the reach of all mutability. With their belief in Christianity, the believers drank in thoughts of fixedness, permanence, persistency, continuance, most opposite to the tendencies of their natural temperament. The awful serious- ness of Christianity, its interpretation of human life and intense appreciation of its purpose, deeply affected, if it could not quell, childish selfishness and trifling : its iron entered into their veins and mingled with their blood. I am not 236 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY now speaking of the reforming and purifying effects of Christianity on individuals : this is not my subject. But it put before the public mind a new ideal of character ; an ideal of the deepest earnestness, of the most serious purity, of un- limited self-devotion, of the tenderest sympathy for the poor and the unhappy, of pity and care for the weak, for the sinner. And it prevailed on the public mind to accept it, in exchange for more ancient ideals. Even if it failed to wean men from their vices and lift them to its own height, yet it gave to those whom it could not reform a new respect for moral greatness, a new view of the capabilities of the soul, of the possi- bilities of human character. It altered perma- nently the current axioms about the end and value of human life. At least it taught them patience, and hardened them to endure. 2. In the next place, the spirit of brotherhood in Christianity singularly fell in with the social habits and traditions of equality, ineradicable in Greece, and combined with them to produce a very definite feature in the national character. ON NATIONAL CHARACTER. 137 Greek ideas of society and government were always, at bottom, essentially popular ones : Greek revolutions and Greek misfortunes, from the Peloponnesian war to the Roman conquest, if they had extinguished all hope of realising any more those democratic institutions under which Athens had achieved its wonderful but short- lived greatness, had developed and strengthened the feeling, that Greeks, while there was a broad line between them and those who were not Greeks, themselves stood all on the same social level one with another, and that only personal differences, not differences of birth, or even of condition or wealth, interfered with the natural equality which was assumed in all their inter- course. When Christianity came with its new principle of a unity, so high and so divine as to throw into the shade all, even the most real, dis- tinctions among men — ' Greek and Jew, barba- rian and Scythian, bond and free,' for all were one in Christ — and when in the Christian Church the slave was thought as precious as the free man in the eyes of his Father above, as much a 238 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY citizen of the heavenly polity and an heir of its immortality — then the sense of popular unity and of common and equal interests in the whole body, which always had been strong in Greeks, received a seal and consecration, which has fixed it unal- terably in the national character. This personal equality existed, and could not be destroyed, under the despotic governments by which, from the time of the Roman Empire till the emancipa- tion of Greece from the Turks, in one shape or an- other, the nation has been ruled. It marks Greek social relations very observably to this day. 3. Finally, Christianity, the religion of hope, has made the Greek race, in the face of the greatest adversities, a race of hope. In its dark- est and most unpromising hours, it has hoped against hope. On the bronze gates of St. Sophia, at Constantinople, may still be seen, — at least it might be seen some years ago, — the words, placed there by its Christian builder, and left there by the scornful ignorance or indifference of the Ottomans— I. X. NIKA, Jesus Christ conquers. It is the expression of that unshaken ON NATIONAL CHARACTER. 239 assurance which in the lowest depths of humilia- tion has never left the Christian races of the East, that sooner or later theirs is the winning cause. They never have doubted of their future. The first greeting with which Greek salutes Greek on Easter morning, Xpioros aviary], Clirist is risen, accompanied by the Easter kiss, and answered by the response, a\rjd£>s aviarrj, He is risen indeed, is both the victorious cry of mortality over the vanquished grave, and also the symbol of a na- tional brotherhood, the brotherhood of a suffering race, bound together by their common faith in a deliverer. This it seems to me, Christianity did for a race which had apparently lived its time, and had no future before it — the Greek race in the days of the Caesars. It created in them, in a new and characteristic degree, national endurance, na- tional fellowship and sympathy, national hope. It took them in the unpromising condition in which it found them under the Empire, with their light, sensual, childish existence, their busy but futile and barren restlessness, their life of enjoy- 240 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY ment or of suffering, as the case might be, but in either case purposeless and unmeaning ; and by its gift of a religion of seriousness, conviction, and strength it gave them a new start in national history. It gave them an Empire of their own, which, undervalued as it is by those familiar with the ultimate results of Western history, yet with- stood the assaults before which, for the moment, Western civilisation sank, and which had the strength to last a life — a stirring and eventful life — of ten centuries. The Greek Empire, with all its evils and weaknesses, was yet in its time the only existing image in the world of a civilised state. It had arts, it had learning, it had military science and power ; it was, for its day, the one refuge for peaceful industry. It had a place which we could ill afford to miss in the history of the world. Gibbon, we know, is no lover of anything Byzantine, or of anything Christian ; but look at that picture which he has drawn of the Empire in the tenth century — that dark cen- tury when all was so hopeless in the West, — read the pages in which he yields to the gorgeous ON NATIONAL CHARACTER. 241 magnificence of the spectacle before him, and describes not only the riches, the pomp, the splendour, the elaborate ceremony of the Byzan- tine Court and the Byzantine capital, but the comparative prosperity of the provinces, the sys- tematic legislation, the administrative experience and good sense with which the vast machine was kept going and its wealth developed, its military science and skill, the beauty and delicacy of its manufactures, — and then consider what an as- tonishing contrast to all else in those wild times was presented by the stability, the comparative peace, the culture, the liberal pursuits of this great State, and whether we have not become blind to what it was, and appeared to be, when it actually existed in the world of which it was the brilliant centre, by confusing it in our thoughts with the miseries of its overthrow : — ' These princes,' he says, ' might assert with dignity and truth, that of all the monarchs of Christendom they possessed the greatest city, the most ample revenue, the most flourishing and populous state The subjects of their R 242 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY Empire were still the most dexterous and dili- gent of nations; their country was blessed by nature with every advantage of soil, climate, and situation ; and in the support and restoration of the arts, their patient and peaceful temper was more useful than the warlike spirit and feudal anarchy of Europe. The provinces which still adhered to the Empire were repeopled and en- riched by the misfortunes of those which were irrecoverably lost. From the yoke of the Ca- liphs, the Catholics of Syria, Egypt, and Africa retired to the allegiance of their prince, to the society of their brethren : the moveable wealth, which eludes the search of oppression, accom- panied and alleviated their exile ; and Constan- tinople received into her bosom the fugitive trade of Alexandria and Tyre. The chiefs of Armenia and Scythia, who fled from hostile or religious persecution, were hospitably enter- tained, their followers were encouraged to build new cities and cultivate waste lands. Even the barbarians who had seated themselves in arms in the territory of the Empire were gradually ON NATIONAL CHARACTER. 243 reclaimed to the laws of the church and state/ ' The wealth of the province,' he proceeds, describing one of them, cand the trust of the revenue were founded on the fair and plentiful produce of trade and manufactures ; and some symptoms of a liberal policy may be traced in a law which exempts from all personal taxes the mariners of the province, and all workmen in parchment and purple/ And he goes on to describe, with that curious pursuit of detail in which he delights, the silk looms and their products, and to trace the silk manufacture, from these Greek looms, as it passed through the hands of captive Greek workmen, transported by the Normans to Pa- lermo, and from thence was emulously taken up by the northern Italian cities, to the workshops of Lyons and Spitalfields. Who would think that he was describing what we so commonly think of as the wretched and despicable Lower Greek Empire, without strength or manliness ; or that the rich province is what the Turks made into the desolate Morea ? R 2 244 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY We are accustomed to think only of its cor- ruption and pedantry, its extravagant disputes, its court intrigues and profligacies, its furious factions. But there was really no want of heroic men and noble achievements to show in the course of its annals. Even Gibbon tells us, though he tells us, as usual, with a sneer, of 'intrepid'1 patriarchs of Constantinople, whom we speak of as mere slaves of despotism, repeat- ing towards captains and emperors, impatient with passion, or in the flush of criminal success, the bold rebukes of John the Baptist and St. Ambrose. And these captains and emperors appear, many of them, even in his disparaging pages, as no ordinary men. There were lines of rulers in those long ages not unworthy to rank with the great royal houses of the West. There were men, with deep and miserable faults no doubt, but who yet, if their career had been con- nected with our history, would have been famous among us. Belisarius, Heraclius, Leo the Isau- rian, — the Basilian, the Comnenian line, — have a 1 c. 48, vol. 6, pp. 105, 106. ON NATIONAL CHARACTER. 245 full right to a high place among the rulers and the saviours of nations. The First and the Second Basil of the Macedonian line, the Lawgiver, and the Conqueror : the Comnenian dynasty; — Alexius, who 'in a long reign of thirty-seven years subdued and pardoned the envy of his equals, restored the laws of public and private order,' cultivated the arts of wealth and science, 'and enlarged the limits of the Empire in Europe and Asia ; ' — John, ' under whom innocence had nothing to fear and merit everything to hope,' and ' whose only defect was the frailty of noble minds, the love of military glory;' — Manuel, 'educated in the silk and purple of the East, but possessed of the iron temper of a soldier, not easily to be paralleled, except in the lives of Richard I. of England, and Charles XII. of Sweden : ' — I am quoting in each instance the epithets and judgment of Gibbon — these are men whom a difference of taste and historical traditions makes us under- value as Greeks of the Lower Empire. Let us not be ungrateful to them. Unconquered, when Z±6 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY the rest of the Empire fell before the new powers of the world, Byzantium kept alive tra- ditions of learning, of scholarship, of law and administration, of national unity, of social order, of industry, which those troubled and dangerous times could ill afford to lose. To the improve- able barbarians of the North, to whom Old Rome had yielded, succeeded the tmimproveable barba- rians of the East and Central Asia ; and against them, Saracens, Mongols, Turks, the New Rome was the steady and unbroken bulwark, behind which the civilisation of Europe, safe from its mortal foes, slowly recovered and organised itself. Alaric's Goths at the sack of Rome, Platoff's Cossacks at the occupation of Paris, were not greater contrasts to all that is meant by civilisation than were the Latins of the First and Fourth Crusade, the bands of Godfrey de Bouillon, Bohemond, and Tancred, and those of the Bishop of Soissons, the Count of Flanders, and the Marquis of Montferrat, in the great capital of Eastern Christendom, which they wondered at and pillaged. What saved hope ON NATIONAL CHARACTER. 247 for ages, on the edge of the world which was to be the modern one, was the obstinate resistance of Christian nationality to the mounting tide of Asiatic power. But it was when the Empire perished that it fully appeared how deeply Christianity had modified the national character. All the world was looking forward to the impossibility of that character holding its own against the pressure of Mahometanism, and to the disappearance by slavery, or forced conversion, of the representa- tives, in the East, of the Christian family. But the expectation has been falsified. It had not entered into the calculation how much of stub- born, unyielding faith and strength Christianity had introduced beneath the surface of that ap- parently supple and facile Greek nature. The spring of life was too strong to be destroyed ; and now, after steel and fire have done their worst, fresh and vigorous branches are shooting up from the unexhausted root-stock. Then, when the greatness of Constantinople was gone, it appeared how the severe side of Christianity, 248 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY with its patience and its hopefulness, had left its mark on Greek character, naturally so little con- genial to such lessons. Then it appeared what was the difference between a philosophy and literature, and a religion and life. Then, when philosophy and literature, the peculiar glories of the Greek race, may be said to have perished, was seen what was the power of the ruder and homelier teaching — about matters of absorbing interest, the unseen world, the destiny of man — of teachers who believed their own teaching, and lived and died accordingly. Then was seen on the whole nation the fruit of the unpretending Christian virtues which grow from great Chris- tian doctrines, the Cross, the Resurrection — compassionateness, humbleness of mind, self- conquest, zeal, purity. Self-sacrifice became the most natural of duties — self-sacrifice, in all its forms, wise and unwise, noble and extravagant, ascetic renunciation of the world, confessorship and dying for the truth as men died for their country, a lifelong struggle of toil and hardship for a cause not of this world. The lives of great ON NATIONAL CHARACTER, 249 men profoundly and permanently influence na- tional character ; and the great men of later Greek memory are saints. They belong to the people more than emperors and warriors ; for the Church is of the people. Greeks saw their own nature and their own gifts, elevated, cor- rected, transformed, glorified, in the heroic devo- tion of Athanasius, who, to all their familiar qualities of mind, brought a tenacity, a sober- ness, a height and vastness of aim, an inflexi- bility of purpose, which they admired the more because they were just the powers in which the race failed. They saw the eloquence in which they delighted revive with the fire and imagina- tion and piercing sarcasm of Chrysostom, and their hearts kindled in them when they saw that he was one of those who can dare and suffer as well as speak, and that the preacher who had so sternly rebuked the vices of the multitudes at Antioch and Constantinople was not afraid of the consequences of speaking the truth to an Empress at an Imperial Court. The mark which such men left on Greek society and 2jO INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY Greek character has not been effaced to this day, even by the melancholy examples of many degenerate successors. They have sown a seed which has more than once revived, and which still has in it the promise of life and progress. Why, if Christianity affected Greek character so profoundly, did it not do more ? Why, if it cured it of much of its instability and trifling, did it not also cure it of its falsehood and dis- simulation? Why, if it impressed the Greek mind so deeply with the reality of the objects of faith, did it not also check the vain inquisitive- ness and spirit of disputatiousness and sophistry, which filled Greek Church history with furious wranglings about the most hopeless problems? Why, if it could raise such admiration for un- selfishness and heroic nobleness, has not this admiration borne more congenial fruit? Why, if heaven was felt to be so great and so near, was there in real life such coarse and mean worldliness? Why, indeed? — why have not the healing and renovating forces of which the world is now, as it has ever been, full, worked ON NATIONAL CHARACTER. 251 out their gracious tendencies to their complete and natural effect? It is no question specially belonging to this part of the subject : in every other we might make the same inquiry, and I notice it only lest I should be thought to have overlooked it. ' Christianity,' it has been said, ' varies according to the nature on which it falls.' That is, in modern philosophical phrase, what we are taught in the parable of the Sower. It rests at last with man's will and moral nature how far he will, honestly and unreservedly, yield to the holy influences which he welcomes, and let them have their ' perfect work.' But if the influence of Christianity on Greek society has been partial, if it has not weaned it from some of its most characteristic and besetting sins, it has done enough to keep it from destruction. It has saved it ; and this is the point on which I insist. Profoundly, permanently, as Christianity affected Greek character, there was much in that character which Christianity failed to reach, much that it failed to correct, much that was obstinately refractory to influences which, else- 252 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY where, were so fruitful of goodness and great- ness. The East, as well as the West, has still much to learn from that religion, which each too exclusively claims to understand, to appre- ciate, and to defend. But what I have tried to set before you is this : — the spectacle of a great civilised nation, which its civilisation could not save, met by Christianity in its hour of peril, filled with moral and spiritual forces of a new and unknown nature, arrested in its decay and despair, strengthened to endure amid prolonged disaster, guarded and reserved through centuries of change for the reviving hopes and energies of happier days. To a race bewildered with sophistries, and which by endless disputings had come to despair of any noble conduct of life, Christianity solved its questions, by showing it in concrete examples how to live and to walk ; how, in the scale of souls, the lowest might be joined to the highest. Into men, whom their own passions and subtlety had condemned to listless moral indifference, it breathed enthu- siasm ; the high practical enthusiasm of truth ON NATIONAL CHARACTER. 253 and a good life. And for a worship, poetically beautiful, but scarcely affecting to be more, it substituted the magnificent eloquence of devo- tion and faith, the inspired Psalms, the majestic Liturgies. It changed life, by bringing into it a new idea ; — the idea of holiness, with its shadow, sin. That the Greek race, which connects us with some of the noblest elements of our civili- sation, is still one of the living races of Europe, that it was not trampled, scattered, extinguished, lost, amid the semi-barbarous populations of the East, that it can look forward to a renewed career in the great commonwealth of Christen- dom— this it owes mainly to its religion. What great changes of national character the Latin races owed to Christianity will be the inquiry of the next lecture. LECTURE II. CHRISTIANITY AND THE LATIN RACES. Under the discipline of Christianity in the Eastern Church the Christians of the East were trained to endurance, to a deep sense of brother- hood, to a faith which could not be shaken in great truths about God and about man, to the recognition of a high moral ideal, to a purer standard of family and social life, to inextin- guishable hope. They learned to maintain, under the most adverse and trying circum- stances, a national existence, which has lasted more than fifteen centuries. They have been kept, without dying, without apostatising, with- out merging their nationality in something dif- CHRISTIANITY AND THE LATIN RACES. %$$ ferent, till at last better days seem at hand ; and to welcome these days there is vigour and elas- ticity, a strong spirit of self-reliance, even of ambition. But what appears, at least to us, distant and probably superficial observers, is this. Their religion has strengthened and ele- vated national character : it seems to have done less to expand and refine it. At any rate, we do not see the evidence of it in what is almost the only possible evidence of it to strangers, in a rich and varied literature. To their ancient treasures, to the wisdom and eloquence of the great Christian teachers and moralists of the early centuries, such as Basil and Chrysostom, the Greeks have added nothing which can be put on a level with them ; nothing worth speak- ing of in secular literature ; nothing of real poetry ; nothing with the mark on it of original observation or genius ; nothing which has passed local limits to interest the world without. Learn- ing of a certain kind they have ever maintained. Up to the capture of Constantinople by the Ottomans, Greek learning certainly did not 2$6 CHRISTIANITY contrast unfavourably with the learning of the West ; and it was Greek teachers and scholars, flying from the Ottoman sword and the Otto- man tyranny, who brought Greek letters to the schools, the Universities, and the printing presses of the eager and curious West. But it was all ancient learning, or intellectual work connected with ancient learning. There was little to show the thought, the aspirations, the feelings, the character of the present time. All seems dry, stiff, pompous, pedantic, in curious contrast to the naturalness, the perception of the realities of character, the humour, the pathos, which are so often seen in the roughest monastic writings of the same period in the West. Echoes of what seems native poetry, the original expression, more or less graceful or pathetic, of feeling and imagination, come to us from portions of Eastern Christendom — from Russia, from Servia, per- haps from other Sclavonic races ; but little from Greece itself. Besides a few fragments, marked occasionally by genuine touches of feeling, its national poetry, exclusive of the noble but often AND THE LATIN RACES. 2& florid ecclesiastical hymns, consists mainly of Klephtic ballads, recording feats of prowess against the Turks. In curious contrast with the versatility of the old Greeks, the character of their later representatives, with all their liveli- ness, has in it, along with its staunchness and power of resistance, a stereotyped rigidity and uniformity — wanting play, wanting growth. Looked at by the side of their Western bre- thren, they resemble the shapes and branch sys- tems of the evergreen pines and firs of their own mountains, so hardy, so stern, often nobly beau- tiful, but always limited in their monotonous forms, when compared with the varied outline and the luxuriant leafage, ever changing, ever renewed, of the chestnuts of the Apennine forests, or of the oaks and elms of our English fields. It is in Western Christendom that we must look for the fuller development of the capacities and the originality of man, in those broad varieties of them, which we call national char- acter. There can be no doubt that in the later S 258 CHRISTIANITY ages of the world men and nations have been more enterprising, more aspiring, more energetic in the West than in the East ; that their history has been more eventful, their revolutions graver; that they have aimed at more, hoped for more, ventured on more. And the subject of my lec- ture to-night is the effects of Christianity on the character of what are called the Latin races, especially in Italy and France. The Latin races occupy the ground where Roman civilisation of the times of the Empire had its seat and main influence. When the Empire fell, its place and local home were taken by nations, closely connected by blood and race with its old subjects, which were to become, in very different ways, two of the foremost of our modern world. We know them well, and they have both of them been very intimately con- nected with us, in our history, and in the pro- gress of our society and our ideas. With one we have had a rivalry of centuries, which yet has not prevented much sympathy between us, or the manifold and deep influence of one great AND THE LATIN RACES. 259 rival on the intellectual and the political life of the other. To Italy, long bound to us by the ties of a great ecclesiastical organisation, we have, since those ties were broken, been hardly less closely bound by the strong interest created by Italian literature and art, and by the con- tinual personal contact with the country of a stream of travellers. We all of us form an idea, more or less accurate and comprehensive, of what Frenchmen and Italians are like. Take the roughest and rudest shape of this idea, so that it has any feature and distinctness about it, and compare it with whatever notions we can reach of the people of the same countries in the days of the Empire ; with the notion which scholars can derive of them from reading their letters, their poetry, serious and gay, their plays, their laws, their philosophical essays, their poli- tical treatises, — with the notion which those who are not scholars get of them from our own historical writers. Two strong impressions, it seems to me, result from such a comparison. The first is, how strangely modern in many ways S 2 l6o CHRISTIANITY these ancient Romans look ; what strangely- modern thoughts they think ; what strangely modern words they say. But then, when we have realised how near in many ways their civilisation and culture brought them to our own days, the next feeling is how vast and broad is the interval which lies between our conceptions, when we think of French or Italian character, its moral elements, habits, assumptions, impulses, its governing forces, with the ways in which it exhibits itself, and when we think of the con- temporaries of Cicero, of Seneca, of Marcus Aurelius. Much is like ; much in the modern form recalls the past ; but in the discriminating and essential points, how great a difference. I am not going to attempt anything like a survey and comparison, even of the most general kind, of these contrasted characters. All I pro- pose to do is to take one or two important points of difference between them, and trace, if possible, where and from what causes the differ- ences arose. Let us, then, take the two chief peoples of AND THE LATIN RACES. 261 what is called — what they themselves call — the Latin race ; the Italians and the French. Rome had so impressed her own stamp on the popu- lations which inherited what was then called Gaul, that no revolutions have effaced it. Though there has been since the fall of the Empire so large an infusion into them of Teu- tonic blood, and the name by which they are now known is a Teutonic one, yet Latin influ- ence has proved the prevailing and the dominant one among them ; a language of Latin stock and affinities expresses and controls their thoughts and associations : in the great grouping of modern nations, France, as a whole, goes with those of her provinces which geographically belong to the South, and claim a portion of the Mediterranean shore. Not forgetting their immense differences, still we may for our pur- pose class these two great nations together, in contrast with the people who, before them, in the great days of Rome, occupied the south of Europe, and ruled on the Mediterranean. And in those times, when Gaul was still but a 262 CHRISTIANITY province, we must take its provincial society, as represented by the better known society of the governing race and of the seat of empire, whose ideas and manners that provincial society un- doubtedly reflected and copied. Comparing, then, the Italians and French of modern times and history with the Romans of the Imperial city, of the Imperial peninsula, and of the pro- vinces, one striking difference seems at once to present itself before our eyes. i. It is the different sphere and space in national character occupied by the affections. I use the v/ord in the widest sense, and without reference now to the good or bad, the wise or unwise, the healthy or morbid exercise of them. But I observe that in the Roman character the affections— though far, indeed, from being ab- sent, for how could they be in a race with such high points of human nobleness, — were yet habitually allowed but little play, and, indeed, in their most typical and honoured models of excellence jealously repressed — and that in the modern races, on the other hand, which stand in AND THE LATIN RACES. 263 their place, character is penetrated and per- meated, visibly, notoriously, by a development and life of the affections and the emotional part of our nature to which we can see nothing parallel in ancient times. I suppose this con- trast is on the surface, in the most general and popular conceptions of these characters. One observation will at once bring up into our minds the difference I speak of. Take some of our common forms of blame and depreciation. We frequently attribute to our French neighbours, and still more to Italians, a softness of nature, a proneness to indulge in an excessive, and what seems to us unreal, opening and pouring forth of the heart, a love of endearing and tender words, an exaggerated and uncontrolled exhibition of feeling, which to us seems mawkish and un- manly, if not insincere ; we think we trace it in their habits, in their intercourse, in their modes of address, in their letters, in their devotions ; we call it sentimental, or effeminate ; we laugh at it as childish, or we condemn and turn away from it as unhealthy. But who would dream of 264 CHRISTIANITY coupling the word ' sentimental ' with anything Roman ? Who, for instance, though we have a plaintive Tibullus and a querulous Ovid, could imagine a Roman Rousseau ? That well-known idea which we call ' sentiment ' did not exist for them any more than that which we call ' charity.' They might be pompous ; they might profess, as men do now, feelings in excess and in advance of what they really had ; they could, for they were men, be deeply moved ; they could be passionate, they could be affec- tionate, they could be tender. I do not forget their love poems, gay, playful, or melancholy; I do not forget their epitaphs on their dead, the most deeply touching of all epitaphs for the longing and profound despair with which they bid their eternal farewell ; I do not forget the domestic virtues of many Roman households, the majestic chastity of their matrons, all that is involved of love and trust and reverence in their favourite and untranslateable word ' pie- tas'i the frequent attachment even of the slave, the frequent kindness of the master. It AND THE LATIN RACES. 265 was not that there were not affections in so great a people. But affections with them were looked on with mistrust and misgiving : it was the proper thing to repress, to disown them : they forced their way, like some irresistible current, through a hard stern crust, too often in the shape of passion, and were not welcomed and honoured when they came. Between Ro- man gravity and Roman dignity on the one hand, and Roman coarseness and brutality. Roman pride, Roman vice, on the other hand, there was no room for the danger and weakness of sentimentalism — for it is a danger which im- plies that men have found out the depth, the manifoldness, the deep delight of the affections, and that an atmosphere has been created in which they have thriven and grown into their innumerable forms. The one affection which the true Roman thought noble and safe and worthy, the one affection which he could trust unsuspected and unchecked, was the love of his country, — his obstinate, never-flagging passion for the greatness and public good of Rome. 266 CHRISTIANITY I have spoken of the unfavourable side of this increased development of the emotional part of the character in the Southern nations, because I wished to insist strongly on the fact itself of the change. But though this ready overflow of the affections can be morbid and may be weak, we should be not only unjust, but stupid and igno- rant, to overlook the truth, that in itself it is also at the bottom of what is characteristically beau- tiful and most attractive in the people of the South. If you have ever met with anything in character, French or Italian, which specially charmed you, either in literature or in real life, I am sure that you would find the root and the secret of it in the fulness and the play of the affections ; in their unfolding and in their ready disclosure ; in the way in which they have blos- somed into flowers of strange richness and varied beauty; in the inexpressible charm and grace and delicacy and freedom which they have in- fused into word and act and demeanour, into a man's relations with his family, his parents, his brothers and sisters, into his friendships, and if he AND THE LATIN RACES. 267 has been a religious man, into his religious life. In good and bad literature, in the books and in the manners which have half ruined France, and in those which are still her redemption and hope, still you find, in one way or another, the dominant and animating element in some strong force and exhibition of the affections. You will see it in such letters as those of Madame de Sevigne. You may see it in the pictures of a social life almost at one time peculiar to France — a life so full of the great world and refined culture, and the gaiety and whirl of high and brilliant circles in a great capital, yet withal so charmingly and un- affectedly simple, unselfish, and warm, so really serious at bottom, it may be, so profoundly self- devoted : such a book as one that has lately been lying on our tables, Madame Augustus Craven's Recit dune Steur, a sister's story of the most ordinary, and yet of the deepest family union, family joys, family attachments, family sorrows and partings, — a story of people living their usual life in the great world, yet as natural and tender and unambitious as if the great world did not 268 CHRISTIANITY exist for them. You may see the same thing in their records of professedly devotional lives, — in what we read, for instance, about the great men and women of Portroyal, about Fenelon, about St. Francis de Sales, or, to come later down, about Lacordaire, or Eugenie de Guerin, or Montalembert. In French eloquence, very noble when it is real — in French bombast, inimitable, unappproachable in the exquisiteness of its ab- surdity and nonsense ; — whether it is what is beautiful or contemptible, whether it subdues and fascinates, or provokes, or amuses you, the mark and sign is there of a nature in which the affections claim and are allowed, in their real or their counterfeit forms, ample range and full scope ; where they are ever close to the surface, as well as working in the depths ; where they suffuse all life, and spontaneously and irresistibly colour thought and speech ; where they play about the whole character in all its move- ments, like the lightning about the clouds of the summer evening. And so with the Italians. The great place AND THE LATIN RACES. 269 which the affections have taken in their national character, and the ways in which the affections unfold and reveal themselves, are distinctive and momentous. More than genius by itself, more than the sagacity and temperate good sense which Italians claim, or than the craft with which others have credited them, this power of the affections has determined the place of Italy in modern civilisation. The weakness of which her literature and manners have most to be ashamed, and the loftiness and strength of which she may- be proud, both come from the ruling and promi- nent influence of the affections, and the indulg- ence, wise or unwise, of their claims. From it has come the indescribable imbecility of the Italian poetasters. From it has come the fire, the depth, the nobleness of the Italian poets ; and not of them only, but of writers who, with much that is evil, have much that is both manly and touching — the Italian novelists, the Italian satirists. It has given their spell not only to the sonnets of Michel Angelo, but to the story of Manzoni, and to the epigrams, so fierce and 270 CHRISTIANITY bitter, but so profoundly pathetic, of Leopardi and Giusti. And you must not think that this is a thing of comparatively modern times. This spectacle of the affections bursting in their new vigour from the bands or the deadness of the old world soon meets us in the middle ages. Take, for instance, — an extreme instance, if you will, — one of the favourite Italian saints, St. Francis ; one who both reflected and also evoked what was in the heart of the people ; one who to us is apt to seem simply an extravagant enthusiast. but was once a marvellous power in the world, and who is beginning once more to interest our own very different age, — witness Mrs. Oliphant's life of him in the Sunday Library. In him you may see the difference between the old and the new Italians. An old Roman might have turned stoic or cynic : an old Roman might have chosen to be poor, have felt the vanity of the world, have despised and resigned it. But when St. Francis resolves to be poor he does not stop there. His purpose blossoms out into the most wonderful development of the affections, AND THE LATIN RACES. 271 of all that is loving, of all that is sympa- thetic, of all that is cheerful and warm and glad and gracious. Poverty he speaks of as his dear and glorious Bride, and the marriage of Francis and Poverty becomes one of the great themes of song and art; there must be some- thing along with his tremendous self-sacrifice which shall invest it with the charm of the affections. Stern against privation and pain and the face of death as the sternest of Ro- mans, his sternness passed on into a boundless energy of loving, a fulness of joy and delight, which most of us feel more hard to understand than his sternness. ' He was a man ' says Mrs. Oliphant, 'overflowing with sympathy for man and beast — for God's creatures — wherever he encountered them. Not only was every man his brother, but every animal — the sheep in the fields, the birds in the branches, the brother ass on which he rode, the sister bees who took refuge in his protection. He was the friend of every- thing that suffered and rejoiced And by this divine right of nature everything trusted 272 CHRISTIANITY in him For he loved everything that had life. ' He prayeth best who loveth best All things both great and small, For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.' ' Such was the unconscious creed of the pro- phet of Assisi ; ' which made him salute the birds as his sisters in praising God, and the defenceless leveret as his brother ; which in- spired the legends of his taming fierce ' Brother Wolf ' in the streets of Gubbio ; which dictated his ' Canticle of the Creatures,' praising God for all things He had made to give men help and joy — our brother the sun, our sisters the moon and the lovely stars, our 'humble and precious ' sister water, our brother fire, 'bright and pleasant and very mighty ' ; praising his Lord for those who pardon one another for His Son's sake, and stilling with the spell of his song the rage of civil discord ; praising his Lord, as the end drew near, ' for our sister the death of the body, from which no man escapeth.' This is what you see in one who in that age, among AND THE LATIN RACES. 273 those people, had access, unabashed and hon- oured, to the seats of power ; who cast a charm over Italian democracies ; who woke up a re- sponse in the hearts at once of labourers and scholars. He is a man who in ancient Rome is inconceivable at once in his weakness and his strength. This is what I mean by the changed place of the affections in the new compared with the old Italians. 2. I will notice another point of difference between the ancient and modern nations of the south of Europe. It can hardly be said that the Romans were, in any eminent sense, an imagina- tive people. I know that I am speaking of the countrymen of Lucretius and Catullus, of Virgil and Horace. And of course there was imagina- tion in the grand ideas of rule and empire which filled the Roman mind. But they had not that great gift of which art is born ; the eye to discern the veiled beauty of which the world is full, in form, in numbers, in sounds, in propor- tion, in human expression, in human character, the sympathy which can unveil and embody T 274 CHRISTIANITY that beauty in shapes which are absolutely new creations, things new in history and in what exists. They had not that wonderful native impulse and power which called into being the Homeric poems, the stage of Athens, the archi- tecture of the Parthenon, the sculpture of Phidias and Praxiteles, the painting of Polygnotus, the lyric poetry of Simonides and Pindar. I hope you will not suppose that I am insensible to the manifold beauty or magnificence of what Roman art produced in literature, in building, in bust and statue, in graceful and fanciful ornament. But in the general history of art, Roman art seems to occupy much the same place as the age of Dryden and Pope occupies in the history of our own literature. Dryden and Pope are illus- trious names ; but English poetry would be something very different from what it is if they were its only or its chief representatives. They might earn us the credit of fire, and taste, and exquisite and delicate finish of workmanship ; nay, of a cautious boldness of genius, and chas- tened venturesomeness of invention : they would AND THE LATIN RACES. 275 not entitle our literature to the praise of imagi- nativeness and originality. For that we must look to Chaucer and Shakspeare and Milton, and to names which are yet recent and fresh among us ; and I can hardly count the beautiful poetry of Rome to be of this order, or to disclose the same kind of gifts. The greatest of Roman poets, in the grandest of his bursts of eloquence, confessed the imaginative inferiority of his people, and bade them remember that their arts, their call- ing, their compensation, were to crush the mighty, to establish peace, and give law to the world. ] I need not remind you how different in genius and faculty were the later nations of the south of Europe. Degenerate as their Roman ances- tors would have accounted them for having lost the secret of conquest and empire, they won 1 Excudent alii spirantia mollius acra ; Credo equidem : vivos ducent de marmore vultus Orabunt causas melius, ccelique meatus Describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent ; Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento . Hae tibi erunt artes ; pacisque imponere morcrn. Parcere subjectis, et debellare supcrbos. T % 276 CHRISTIANITY and long held a supremacy, in some points hardly yet contested, in the arts, in which imagi- nation, bold, powerful, and delicate, invents and creates and shapes. In the noblest poetry, in painting, in sculpture, in music, Italians led the way and set the standard ; in some provinces of art they have been rivalled ; in some, in time, surpassed; in some they are still unapproached. But without laying stress on their masterpieces, the point is that in the descendants of the sub- jects of the Empire, so hard and prosaic and business-like, the whole temper and tendency of these races is altered. A new and unsuspected spring in their nature has been touched, and a current gushes forth, no more to fail, of new aspirations and ideas, new feelings to be ex- pressed, new thoughts to be embodied. Imagi- native faculty, in endlessly varying degrees of force and purity, becomes one of the prominent and permanent characteristics of the race. Crowds of unknown poets and painters all over Italy have yielded to the impulse, and attempted to realise the ideal beauty that haunted them; AND THE LATIN RACES. zyy and the masterpieces which are the flower and crown of all art are but the picked and choice examples out of a crop of like efforts — a crop with numberless failures, more or less signal, but which do nothing to discourage the passionate wish to employ the powers of the imagination. The place of one of the least imaginative among the great races of history is taken by one of the most imaginative — one most strongly and spe- cially marked by imaginative gifts, and most delighting in the use of them. Whence has come this change over the cha- racter of these nations ? Whence, in these races sprung from the subjects of the sternest of Em- pires and moulded under its influence, this re- versal of the capital and leading marks, by which they are popularly known and characterised; this development of the emotional part of their nature, this craving after the beautiful in art? Whence the inexhaustible fertility and inventive- ness, the unfailing taste and tact and measure, the inexpressible charm of delicacy and con- siderate forethought and exuberant sympathy, 27«S CHRISTIANITY which are so distinctly French, and which mark what is best in French character and French writing ? Whence that Italian splendour of ima- gination and profound insight into those subtle connections by which objects of the outward senses stir and charm and ennoble the inward soul ? What was the discipline which wrought all this ? Who was it, who in the ages of con- fusion which followed the fall of the Empire, sowed and ripened the seeds which were to blossom into such wondrous poetry in the four- teenth century, into such a matchless burst of art in the fifteenth and sixteenth ? Who touched in these Latin races the hidden vein of tender- ness, the 'fount of tears,' the delicacies and courtesies of mutual kindness, the riches of art and the artist's earnestness ? Who did all this, I do not say in the fresh natures of the Teutonic invaders, for whom the name barbarians is a very inadequate and misleading word, but in the spoiled and hardened children of an exhausted and ruined civilisation ? Can there be any question as to what pro- AND THE LATIN RACES. 279 duced this change? It was the conversion of these races to the faith of Christ. Revolutions of character like this do not, of course, come without many influences acting together ; and in this case the humiliations and long affliction of the Northern invasions produced their deep effects. Hearts were broken and pride was tamed, and in their misery men took new account of what they needed one from another. But the cause of causes, which made other causes fruitful, was the presence, in the hour of their distress, of the Christian Church, with its mes- sage, its teaching, and its discipline. The Gospel was— in a way in which no religion, nothing which spoke of the unseen and the eternal, ever had been or could be— a religion of the affections, a religion of sympathy. By what it said, by the way in which it said it, Chris- tianity opened absolutely a new sphere, new possibilities, a new world, to human affections. This is what we see in the conversions, often so sudden, always so fervent, in the New Testa- ment, and in the early ages. Three great reve- 280 CHRISTIANITY lations were made by the Gospel, which seized on human nature, and penetrated and captivated that part of it by which men thought and felt, their capacities for love and hope, for grief and joy. There was a new idea and sense of sin; there was the humiliation, the companionship with us in our mortal life, of the Son of God, the Cross and the Sacrifice, of Him who was also the Most Highest ; there was the new brother- hood of men with men in the family and Church of Christ and God. To the proud, the reserved, the stern, the frivolous, the selfish, who met the reflection of their own very selves in all society around them, there was disclosed a new thing in the human heart and a new thing in the rela- tions of men to God and to one another. There woke up a hitherto unknown consciousness of the profound mystery of sin — certain, strange, terrible; and with it new searchings of heart, new agonies of conscience, a new train of the deepest feelings, the mingled pains and joys of penitence, the liberty of forgiveness, the princely spirit of sincerity, the ineffable peace of God. AND THE LATIN RACES. 281 And with it came that unimaginable unveiling of the love of God, which overwhelms the imagina- tion which once takes it in, alike whether the mind accepts or rejects it ; which grave unbelief recoils from, as ' that strange story of a crucified God;' which the New Testament expresses in its record of those ever-amazing words, ' God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life,' — the appearance in the world of time of the ever- lasting Word, of Christ the Sacrifice, Christ the Healer, Christ the Judge, Christ the Consoler of Mankind and their Eternal Portion. And then it made men feel that, bound together in that august and never-ending brotherhood with the Holy One and the Blessed, they had ties and bonds one to another which transformed all their duties into services of tenderness and love. Once caught sight of, once embodied in the words of a spokesman and interpreter of hu- manity like St. Paul, these revelations could never more be forgotten. These things were really 282 CHRISTIANITY believed ; they were ever present to thought and imagination, revolutionising life, giving birth to love stronger than death, making death beautiful and joyful. The great deeps of man's nature were broken up — one deep of the heart called to another, while the waves and storms of that great time of judgment were passing over the world. Here was the key which unlocked men's tenderness ; here, while they learned a new enthusiasm, they learned what they had never known of themselves, the secret of new affec- tions. And in the daily and yearly progress of the struggling Church, these affections were fed and moulded, and deeply sunk into character. The Latin races learned this secret, in the com- munity of conviction and hope, in the community of suffering, between the high-born and the slave, — they learned it when they met together at the place of execution, in the blood-stained amphitheatre, in the crowded prison-house, made musical with the ' sweet solemnities of gratitude and praise,' with the loving and high-hearted farewells of resignation and patience ; they AND THE LATIN RACES. 283 learned it in the Catacombs, at the graves of the martyrs, in the Eucharistic Feast, in the sign of the Redeemer's Cross, in the kiss of peace; they learned it in that service of perpetual prayer, in which early Latin devotion gradually found its expression and embodied its faith, — in those marvellous combinations of majesty and tender- ness, so rugged yet so piercing and so pathetic, the Latin hymns ; in those unequalled expres- sions, in the severest and briefest words, of the deepest needs of the soul, and of all the ties which bind men to God and to one another, the Latin Collects ; in the ever-repeated Psalter, in the Miserere and De Profundis, in the Canticles of morning and evening and the hour of rest and of death, in the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, in the ' new song ' of the awful Te Deum — 'Deep as the grave, high as the Eternal Throne.' They learned it in that new social interest, that reverence and compassion and care for the poor, which, beginning in the elder Scriptures, in the intercessions of the Psalms for the poor and needy, and in the Prophetic championship of 284 CHRISTIANITY their cause against pride and might, had become, since the Sermon on the Mount, the character- istic of Christ's religion. They learned it in that new commandment of the Divine Founder of the Church, the great all-embracing Christian word, chanty. These are things which, sinking deep into men's hearts, alter, perhaps without their knowing it, the staple of their character. Here it is that we see, unless I am greatly mistaken, the account of one great change in the popula- tion of the South in modern and ancient times : of the contrast caused by the place which the affections occupy, compared with the sternness and hardness alike of what was heroic and what was commonplace in ancient Italian character. Imagine a Roman of the old stamp making the sign of the cross. He might perhaps do it superstitiously, as consuls might go to see the sacred chickens feed, or augurs might smile at one another ; but imagine him doing it, as Dante, or Savonarola, or Pascal might do it, to remind himself of a Divine Friend, 'Who had loved him and given Himself for him/ AND THE LATIN RACES. 285 And the same account, it seems to me, is to be given of the other great change in Southern character ; the development of imaginative ori- ginality and of creative genius in all branches of art in later times. It was that the preaching and belief of the Gospel opened to these races a new world, such as they had never dreamed of, not only of truth and goodness, but of Divine beauty. Rugged and unlovely, indeed, was all that the outward aspect of religion at first presented to the world : it was, as was so elo- quently said1 some time ago in this place, the contrast presented by the dim and dreary Cata- combs underground to the pure and brilliant Italian sky and the monuments of Roman wealth and magnificence above. But in that poor and mean society, which cared so little for the things of sense and sight, there were nour- ished and growing up — for, indeed, it was the Church of the God of all glory and all beauty, the chosen home of the Eternal Creating Spirit 1 By Professor Lightfoot. 286 CHRISTIANITY — thoughts of a perfect beauty above this world ; of a light and a glory which the sun could never see : of types, in character and in form, of grace, of sweetness, of nobleness, of tenderness, of per- fection, which could find no home in time — which were of the eternal and the unseen on which human life bordered, and which was to it, indeed, ' no foreign land.' There these Romans unlearned their old hardness and gained a new language and new faculties. Hardly, and with difficulty, and with scanty success, did they at first strive to express what glowed with such magnificence to their inward eye, and kindled their souls within them. Their efforts were rude — rude in art, often hardly less rude in language. But that Divine and manifold idea before them, they knew that it was a reality; it should not escape them, though it still baffled them;— they would not let it go. And so, step by step, age after age, as it continued to haunt their minds, it gradually grew into greater distinctness and expression. From the rough attempts in the Catacombs or the later mosaics, in all their AND THE LATIN RACES. 287 roughness so instinct with the majesty and ten- derness and severe sweetness of the thoughts which inspired them — from the emblems and types and figures, the trees and the rivers of Paradise, the dove of peace, the palms of triumph, the Good Shepherd, the hart no longer ' desiring,' but at last tasting 'the waterbrooks/ from the faint and hesitating adumbrations of the most awful of human countenances — from all these feeble but earnest attempts to body forth what the soul was full of, Christian art passed, with persistent undismayed advance, through the struggles of the middle ages to the inexpressible delicacy and beauty of Giotto and Fra Angelico, to the Last Supper of Lionardo, to the highest that the human mind ever imagined of tender- ness and unearthly majesty, in the Mother and the Divine Son of the Madonna di San Sisto. And the same with poetry. The poetry of which the Christian theology was full from the first wrought itself in very varying measures, but with profound and durable effort, into the new mind and soul of reviving Europe, till it gathered 288 CHRISTIANITY itself ^ up from an infinite variety of sources, history and legend and scholastic argument and sacred hymn, to burst forth in one mighty volume, in that unique creation of the regener- ated imagination of the South, — the eventful poem which made the Italians one, whatever might become of Italy, — the sacred song which set forth the wonderful fortunes of the soul of man, under God's government and judgment, its loss, its discipline, its everlasting glory — the Divina Commedia of Dante. I will illustrate these changes by two com- parisons. First, as to the development of the imaginative faculty. Compare, and I confine the comparison to this single point — compare, as to the boldness, and originality, and affluence of the creative imagination — the JEneid of Vir- gil and the Divina Commedia of Dante, whose chief glory it was to be Virgil's scholar. The Divina Commedia may, indeed, be taken as the measure and proof of the change which had come over Southern thought and character since the fall of the Empire. There can be no ques- AND THE LATIN RACES. 289 tion how completely it reflected the national mind, how deeply the national mind responded to it. Springing full formed and complete from its creator's soul, without model or precedent, it was at once hailed throughout the Peninsula, and acknowledged to be as great as after ages have thought it ; it rose at once into its glory. Learned and unlearned, princes and citizens, recognised in it the same surpassing marvel that we in our day behold in some great scien- tific triumph ; books and commentaries were written about it ; chairs were founded in Italian Universities to lecture upon it. In the Divina Commedia Dante professes to have a teacher, an unapproachable example, a perfect master and guide ; — Virgil, the honour and wonder of Ro- man literature. Master and scholar, the Man- tuan of the age of Augustus, and the Florentine citizen of the age of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, his devout admirer, were, it need not be said, essentially different ; but the point of difference on which I now lay stress is the place which the affections, in their variety and fulness and U 290 CHRISTIANITY perpetual play, occupy in the works of writers so closely related to one another. From the stately grace, the ' supreme elegance,' from the martial and senatorial majesty of the Imperial poem, you come, in Dante, on severity indeed, and loftiness of word and picture and rhythm ; but you find the poem pervaded and instinct with human affections of every kind ; the soul is free, and every shade of its feelings, its desires, its emotions, finds its expressive note ; they pass from high to low, from deep to bright, through a scale of infinite range and changefulness ; you are astonished to find moods of feeling which you thought peculiar and unobserved in yourself noted by the poet's all-embracing sympathy. But this is no part of the Latin poet's experi- ence, at least of his poetic outfit ; such longings, such anxieties, such despair, such indignation, such gracious sweetness, such fire of holy wrath, such fire of Divine love, familiar to our modern world, to our modern poetry, are strange to Virgil. Nay, in his day, to the greatest masters of the human soul, to the noblest interpreters of AND THE LATIN RACES, 291 its ideals, they had not yet been born. I sup- pose that in Virgil the places where we should look for examples of this bursting out of the varied play of the affections, native, profound, real, would be the account of the last fatal night of Troy, the visit to the regions and shades of the dead, the death of Pallas and his slayer Turnus, the episode, above all, of the soldier friends, Nisus and the young Euryalus. Who shall say that there is any absence of tender and solemn feeling? The Italian poet owns, with unstinted and never-tiring homage, that here he learnt the secret and the charm of poetry. But compare on this one point — viz., the presence, the vividness, the naturalness, the diversity, the frankness, of human affection, — compare with these passages almost any canto taken at ran- dom of the Divina Commedia, and I think you would be struck with the way in which, in com- plete contrast with the sEneid, the whole texture of the poem is penetrated and is alive with feel- ing ; with all forms of grief and pity and amaze- ment, with all forms of love and admiration and U 2 292 CHRISTIANITY delight and joy. In the story of Francesca, in the agony of the Tower of Famine, in the varied endurance and unfailing hope of the Purgatorio, in the joys and songs of the Paradiso, we get new and never-forgotten glimpses into the abysses and the capacities of the soul of man. In the next place, what I seek to illustrate is the difference in the place occupied by the affec- tions in men of the old and the new race, in the same great national group, a difference made, as I conceive, by Christianity. Let us take, as one term of the comparison, the great and good Emperor Marcus Aurelius. His goodness is not only known from history, but we also have the singular and inestimable advantage of possessing ' a record of his inward life, his Journal, or Com- mentaries, or Meditations, or Thoughts, for by all these names has the work been called/ I take this description from an essay on him by Mr. Matthew Arnold, which gives what seems to me a beautiful and truthful picture of one of the most genuine and earnest and elevated souls of the ancient world. I cannot express my wonder, AND THE LATIN RACES. 293 my admiration, my thankfulness, every time I open his book, and remember that it was written by a Roman Emperor in the midst of war and business, and remember also what a Roman Emperor, the master of the world, might in those days be, and what he often was. What is so touching is the mixture of heroic truth and purpose, heroic in its self-command and self- surrender, with a deep tenderness not the less evident because under austere restraint. ' It is by its accent of emotion,' says Mr. Arnold, ' that the morality of M. Aurelius acquires its special character, and reminds one of Christian mo- rality. The sentences of Seneca are stimulating to the intellect ; the sentences of Epictetus are fortifying to the character ; the sentences of Marcus Aurelius find their way to the soul.' In his opening pages, written apparently in camp in a war against the wild tribes of the Danube, he goes over in memory all his friends, remember- ing the several good examples he had seen in each, the services, great and small, to his moral nature he had received from each, and then 294 CHRISTIANITY thankfully refers all to the Divine power and providence which had kept his life, thanking the gods, as Bishop Andrews thanks God in his devotions, for his good parents and good sister, 1 for teachers kind, benefactors never to be for- gotten, intimates congenial, friends sincere . . . for all who had advantaged him by writings, converse, patterns, rebukes, even injuries' . . . ' for nearly everything good ' — thanking them that he was kept from folly and shame and sin — thanking them that 'though it was his mother's fate to die young, it was from her,' he says, ' that he learned piety and beneficence, and abstinence not only from evil deeds but from evil thoughts' — 'that she had spent the last years of her life with him : ' ' that whenever I wished to help any man in his need, I was never told that I had not the means to do it : . . . that I have a wife, so obedient, so affec- tionate, and so simple; that I have such good masters for my children.' Two centuries later we come upon another famous book, Latin in feeling, and in this case AND THE LATIN RACES. 295 in language, — the record of the history and experience of a soul thirsting and striving after the best. After the Meditations of the Roman Emperor come the ' Confessions ' of the Chris- tian saint — St. Augustine. It is not to my pur- pose to compare these two remarkable books except in this one point. In Marcus Aurelius, emotion there is, afifection, love, gratitude to a Divine Power which he knows not ; but his feel- ings refrain from speaking, — they have not found a language. In St. Augustine's Confessions they have learned to speak, — they have learned, without being ashamed of themselves, without pretence of unworthiness, to pour out of their fulness. The chain is taken off the heart ; the lips are unloosed. In both books there is a retro- spect, earnest, honest, thankful of the writer's providential education; in both, the writers speak of what they owe to their mother's care and love. Both (the words of one are few) are deeply touching. But read the burst of passion- ate praise and love to God with which Augus- tine's Confessions open— read the account of his 296 CHRISTIANITY mother's anxieties during his wild boyhood and youth, of his mother's last days and of the last conversations between mother and son in 'the house looking into the garden at Ostia;' and I think we shall say that a new and hitherto un- known fountain of tenderness and peace and joy had been opened, deep, calm, unfailing, and that what had opened it was man's new convictions of his relation to a living God of love, the Lord and object and portion of hearts and souls. ' Thou madest us for Thyself,' is his cry, ' and our heart is restless till it repose in Thee.' Here is the spring and secret of this new affection, this new power of loving : — ' What art Thou, O my God ? What art Thou, I beseech Thee, but the Lord my God? For who is God, besides our Lord, — Who is God, besides our God ? O Thou Supreme ; most merciful ; most just ; most secret, most present ; most beautiful, most mighty, most incomprehensible ; most constant, and yet changing all things ; im- mutable, never new and never old, and yet re- newing all things ; ever in action, and ever quiet ; AND THE LATIN RACES. 297 keeping all, yet needing nothing ; creating, up- holding, rilling, protecting, nourishing, and per- fecting all things. . . . And what shall I say ? O my God, my life, my joy, my holy dear delight ! Or what can any man say, when he speaketh of Thee ? And woe to those that speak not of Thee, but are silent in Thy praise ; for even those who speak most of Thee may be accounted to be but dumb. Have mercy upon me, O Lord, that I may speak unto Thee and praise Thy name/ To the light-hearted Greeks Christianity had turned its face of severity, of awful resolute hope. The final victory of Christ, and, meanwhile, patient endurance in waiting for it — this was its great lesson to their race. To the serious, prac- tical, hard-natured Roman, it showed another side — ' love, joy, peace ;' — an unknown wealth of gladness and thankfulness and great rejoicing. It stirred his powerful but somewhat sluggish soul ; it revealed to him new faculties, disclosed new depths of affection, won him to new aspira- tions and new nobleness. And this was a new 298 CHRISTIANITY and real advance and rise in human nature. This expansion of the power of feeling and loving and imagining, in a whole race, was as really a new enlargement of human capacities, a new endow- ment and instrument and grace, as any new and permanent enlargement of the intellectual powers ; as some new calculus, or the great modern conquests in mechanical science, or in the theory and development of music. The use that men or generations have made of those enlarged powers, of whatever kind, is another matter. Each gift has its characteristic perver- sions ; each perversion has its certain and terri- ble penalty. We all know but too well that this change has not cured the Southern races of national faults ; that the tendencies which it has encouraged have been greatly abused. It has not extirpated falsehood, idleness, passion, fero- city. That quickened and fervid imagination, so open to impressions and eager to communi- cate them, has debased religion and corrupted art. But if this cultivation of the affections and stimulus given to the imagination have been AND THE LATIN RACES. 299 compatible with much evil, — with much acqui- escence in wrong and absurdity, with much moral stagnation, much inertness of conscience, much looseness of principle, — it must be added, with some of the darkest crimes and foul- est corruptions in history, — yet, on the other hand, it has been, in the Southern nations, the secret of their excellence, and their best influ- ences. This new example and standard of sweetness, of courtesy, of affectionateness, of generosity, of ready sympathy, of delight in the warm outpouring of the heart, of grace, of bright and of pathetic thought, of enthusiasm for high and noble beauty — what would the world have been without it ? Of some of the most captiva- ting, most ennobling instances which history and society have to show, of what is greatest, purest, best in our nature, this has been the condition and the secret. And for this great gift and prerogative, that they have produced not only great men like those of the elder race, captains, rulers, conquerors, — not only men greater than they, lords in the realm of intelligence, its 300 CHRISTIANITY AND THE LATIN RACES. discoverers and its masters,— but men high in that kingdom of the Spirit and of goodness which is as much above the order of intellect as intellect is above material things,— for this the younger races of the South are indebted to Christianity. LECTURE III. CHRISTIANITY AND THE TEUTONIC RACES. At the time when the Roman Empire was the greatest power in the world, and seemed the firmest, a race was appearing on the scene which excited a languid feeling of uneasiness among Roman statesmen, and an artificial interest among Roman moralists. The statesman thought that this race might be troublesome as a neighbour, if it was not brought under the Roman rule of conquest. The moralists from their heights of civilisation looked with curiosity on new examples of fresh and vigorous nature, and partly in disgust, partly in quest of unused subjects for rhetorical declamation, saw in them, in the same spirit as Rousseau in later 3°2 CHRISTIANITY times, a contrast between their savage virtues and Roman degeneracy. There was enough in their love of enterprise and love of fighting to make their wild and dreary country a good exercise-ground for the practice of serious war by the Legions ; and gradually a line of military cantonments along the frontier of the Rhine and the Danube grew into important provincial towns, the advanced guard of Roman order against the darkness and anarchy of the wilder- ness outside. When the Roman chiefs were incapable or careless, the daring of the barba- rians, their numbers, and their physical strength made their hostility formidable : the Legions of Varus perished in the defiles of the German forests, by a disaster like the defeat of Braddock in America, or the catastrophe of Afghanistan ; and Roman Emperors were proud to add to their titles one derived from successes, or at least campaigns, against such fierce enemies. The Romans — why, we hardly know — chose to call them, as they called the Greeks, by a name which was not their own ; to the Romans they AND THE TEUTONIC RACES. 303 were Germans ; to themselves they were Diutisc, Thiudisco, Teutsch, Deutscher, Latinised into Teutons. What they were in themselves, in their ways and thoughts, the Romans in general cared as much as we in general care about the black tribes of the interior of Africa or the Tartar nomads of Central Asia, — must we not almost add, about the vast and varied popula- tions of our own India. What struck the Ro- mans most was that alternation of savage energy and savage indolence and lethargy, which is like the successive ferocity and torpor of the vulture and the tiger. What also partly impressed them was the austerity and purity of their manners, the honour paid to their women, the amount of labour allotted or entrusted to them. But, after all, they were barbarians, not very interesting except to philosophers, not very menacing ex- cept to the imagination of alarmists ; needing to be kept in order, of course, as all wild forces do, but not beyond the strength, the majesty, and the arts of the Empire to control and daunt. Tacitus describes the extermination of a large 3°4 CHRISTIANITY tribe by the jealousy and combination of its neighbours ; he speaks of it with satisfaction as the riddance of an inconvenience, and ex- presses an opinion that if ever the fortunes of the Empire should need it, the discord of its barbarian neighbours might be called into play. But not even he seriously apprehended that the fortunes of the Empire would fail before the barbarian hordes. There was one apparently wide-spread confederacy among the tribes, which for a time disquieted Marcus Aurelius ; but the storm passed — and this ' formidable league, the only one that appears in the two first centuries of the Imperial history, was entirely dissipated; without leaving any traces behind in Germany/ No one then dreamed that they beheld in that race the destroyers and supplanters of the an- cient civilisation. Still less did any one then dream that in the forests and morasses of that vast region — 'peopled by the various tribes of one great nation, and comprising the whole of modern Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Livonia, Prussia, and the greater part AND THE TEUTONIC RACES. 305 of Poland ' — were the fathers of a nobler and grander world than any that history had yet known : that here was the race which, under many names, Franks and Allemanns, Angles and Saxons and Jutes, Burgundians, Goths, Lombards, was first to overrun, and then revi- vify exhausted nations : that it was a race which was to assert its chief and lordly place in Eu- rope, to occupy half of a new-found world, to inherit India, to fill the islands of unknown seas: to be the craftsmen, the traders, the colonists, the explorers of the world. That it should be the parent of English sailors, of German soldiers, this may not be so marvellous. That from it should have come conquerors, heroes, statesmen, 1 men of blood and iron/ — nay, great rulers and mighty Kings— the great Charles, Saxon Ottos, Franconian Henrys, Swabian Frederics, Norman Williams, English Edwards, seems in accordance with the genius of the countrymen of Arminius, the destroyer of the legions of Augustus. But it is another thing to think that from the wild people described by Tacitus, or in the ninth x 306 CHRISTIANITY chapter of Gibbon, should have sprung Shaks- peare and Bacon, Erasmus and Albert Diirer, Leibnitz and Goethe ; that this race should have produced an English court of justice, English and German workshops of thought and art, English and German homes, English and Ger- man religious feeling, and religious earnestness. I need not remind you of the history of this wonderful transition— a transition lasting through centuries, from barbarism to civilisation. The story is everywhere more or less the same. First came a period of overthrow, wasting, and destruction. Then, instead of the fierce tribes retaining their old savage and predatory habits, they show a singular aptitude for change ; they settle in the lands which they have overrun ; they pass rapidly into what, in comparison with their former state, is a civil order, with laws, rights, and the framework of society. Angles and Saxons and Danes in Britain, Norsemen by sea, and Franks and Burgundians across the Rhine in Gaul, come to ravage and plunder, and stay to found a country ; they arrive pirates and AND THE TEUTONIC RACES. 307 destroyers, urged on by a kind of frenzy of war and ruin, a kind of madness against peaceful life ; and when the storm in which they come has passed away, we see that in the midst of the confusion they have created the beginnings of new nations : we see the foundations distinctly laid of England, Normandy, and France. And next, when once the barbarian is laid aside, and political community begins, though the early stages may be of the rudest and most imperfect, beset with the remains of old savagery, and sometimes apparently overlaid by it, yet the idea of civil society and government henceforth grows with ever-accelerating force, with ever- increasing influence. It unfolds itself in various forms and with unequal success ; but on the whole the development of it, though often retarded and often fitful and irregular, has never been arrested since the time when it began. The tribes of the same stock which continued to occupy the centre of Europe had the same general history as their foreign brethren. The great events of conquest, the contact of civilisa- x % 3o8 CHRISTIANITY tion outside, the formation and policy of new kingdoms, all reacted on the home of the race : Germany became the established seat of an Empire which inherited the name and the claims of Rome, the complement and often the rival of the new spiritual power which ruled in the ancient Imperial city. Many causes combined to produce this result. The qualities and endowments of the race, pos- sibly their traditional institutions, certainly their readiness to take in new ideas and to adapt themselves to great changes in life and manners ; their quickness in seizing, in the midst of wreck and decline, the points which the ancient order presented for building up a new and advancing one ; their instinct, wild and untamed as they were, for the advantages of law ; their curious power of combining what was Roman and foreign with what was tenaciously held to as Teutonic and ancestral ; their energy and man- liness of purpose, their unique and unconquer- able elasticity of nature, which rose again and again out of what seemed fatal corruption, as it AND THE TEUTONIC RACES. 309 rose out of defeat and overthrow; — all this ex- plains the great transformation of the invading tribes, the marvellous history of modern Europe. It was thus, no doubt, that the elder civilisations of Greece and Rome had arisen out of elements probably once as wild and unpromising as those from which our younger one has sprung ; it was thus that, coming from the mountains and the woods, from the chase or the pasture-grounds, they learned, in ways and steps now hidden from us, — 'To create A household and a father-land, A city and a state.' But the fortunes of the elder and the newer civilisations have hitherto been different in fruit and in permanence, and a force was at work in moulding the latter which was absent from the earlier. The Teutonic race found an unknown and unexpected spiritual power before them, such as early Hellenes and Latins had never known. They found, wherever they came, a strange, organised polity, one and united in a 310 CHRISTIANITY vast brotherhood, co-extensive with the Empire, but not of it, nor of its laws and institutions ; earthly in its outward aspect, but the represen- tative and minister of a perpetual and ever- present kingdom of heaven ; unarmed, defence- less in the midst of never-ceasing war, and yet inspiring reverence and receiving homage, and ruling by the word of conviction, of knowledge, of persuasion : arresting and startling the new conquerors with the message of another world. In the changes which came over the invading race, this undreamt-of power, which they met in their career, had the deepest and most eventful share. * That great society, which had half con- * In the new era, the first thing we meet with is the religious society : it was the most advanced, the strong- est : whether in the Roman municipality, or at the side of the barbarian kings, or in the graduated ranks of the conquerors who have become lords of the land, every- where we observe the presence and the influence of the Church. From the fourth to the thirteenth century it is the Church which always marches in the front rank of civilisation. I must call your attention to a fact which stands at the head of all others, and characterises the Christian Church in general— a fact which, so to speak, has decided its destiny. This fact is the unity of the AND THE TEUTONIC RACES. 311 verted the Empire, converted and won over its conquerors. In their political and social de- velopment it took the lead in conjunction with their born leaders. Legislation, political and social, the reconstruction of a society in chaos, the fusion of old things with new, the adaptation of the forms, the laws, the traditions of one time to the wants of another, the smoothing of jars, the reconciling of conflicting interests, and still more of conflicting and dimly grasped ideas, all that laid the foundations and sowed the seeds of Church, the unity of the Christian society, irrespectively of all diversities of time, of place, of power, of language, of origin. Wonderful phenomenon ! It is just at the moment when the Roman Empire is breaking up and disappearing that the Christian Church gathers itself up and. takes its definitive form. Political unity perishes, religious unity emerges. Populations endlessly different in origin, habits, speech, destiny, rush upon the scene ; all becomes local and partial ; every enlarged idea, every general institution, every great social arrangement is lost sight of ; and in this moment this Christian Church pro- claims most loudly the unity of its teaching, the univer- sality of its law. And from the bosom of the most frightful disorder the world has ever seen has arisen the largest and purest idea, perhaps, which ever drew men together, — the idea of a spiritual society. — Guizot, Lee. xii., p. 230. 31 % CHRISTIANITY civil order in all its diversified shapes, as it was to be, — was the work not only of kings, princes, and emperors, but, outwardly as much, morally much more, of the priests, bishops, and councils of the Christian Church. These results and their efficient causes are in a general way beyond dispute. But can we trace, besides these political and social changes, any ethical changes of corresponding import- ance ? Such changes, of course, there must have been, in populations altering from one state to another, where the interval between these states is so enormous as that between uncivilised and civilised life. But it is conceivable, though, of course, not likely, that they might have been of little interest to those who care about human goodness and the development of the moral side of human nature. China has passed into a remarkable though imperfect civilisation, but without perceptible moral rise. Or the changes may be perceptible only in individual instances, and not on that large scale which we take when we speak of national character. Do we see in AND THE TEUTONIC RACES. 313 the Teutonic races changes analogous to those which we believe we can trace in the Greek and the Latin races since they passed under the discipline of Christianity? I think we can. We must remember that we are on ground where our generalisations can but approximate to the true state of the case, and that when we speak of national character we speak of a thing which, though very striking at a distance and in gross, is vague and tremulous in its outlines, and in detail is full of exceptions and contradictory instances. Come too near it, and try to hold it too tightly, and it seems to elude our grasp, or, just when we have seized a distinct thought, to escape from us. We are made to feel by objectors that what is shared by so many individual and definite characters, and shared in such endlessly varying proportions, must be looked upon more as an ideal than as anything definitely and tangibly realised. And, again, when we speak of something common to the Teutonic race, we must remember the differ- ences between its different great branches, — in 314 CHRISTIANITY Germany, in the Netherlands, in the Scandina- vian countries, in England and its colonies. But for all that, there seem to be some common and characteristic features recognisable in all of them, in distinction from the Latin or Latinised races ; gifts and qualities to be found, of course, in individuals of the other races, but not prominent in a general survey : ideals if you like, but ideals which all who are under the ordinary impressions of the race welcome as expressing what they think the highest and presuppose as their stand- ard. There must be some reality attaching to such ideals, or they would never have become ideals to which men delight to look. Fully ad- mitting all the reserves and abatements neces- sary, we can speak of general points of character in the Teutonic race and try to trace their formation. There is a great and important difference in the conditions under which Christianity came to the different populations of the old world. To Greeks and to Latins it came as to people who had long been under a civilisation of a high AND THE TEUTONIC RACES. 315 order, whose habits and ideas were formed by it, and who had gone further in all that it can do for men than had ever been known in the world before. To the Teutonic races, on the contrary, it came when they had still to learn almost the first elements of civilised life ; and it was alone with Christian teaching that they learned them. It took them fresh from barbarism, and was the fountain and the maker of their civilisation. There was yet another difference. Christianity gained its hold on the Greeks and Romans in the time of their deep disasters, in the overthrow and breaking up of society, amid the suffering and anguish of hopeless defeat. It came to them as conquered, subjugated, down-trodden races, in the lowest ebb of their fortunes. It came to the Teutonic races as to conquerors, flushed with success, in the mounting flood of their new destiny. In one case it had to do with men cast down from their high estate, stricken and reeling under the unexampled judgments of God ; it associated itself with their sorrows ; it awoke and deepened in them the 3 1 6 CHRISTIANIT Y consciousness of the accumulated and frightful guilt of ages; it unlocked and subdued their hearts by its inexhaustible sympathy and awful seriousness ; it rallied and knit them once more together in their helplessness into an unearthly and eternal citizenship ; it was their one and great consoler in the miseries of the world. In the Christian literature of the falling Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries, in such books as St. Augustine's City of God, or Salvian's book on the Government of God, we may see, in its nascent state, the influence of Christianity on the shattered and afflicted race which had once been the lords of the world. But with the new nations which had arisen to be their masters the business of Christianity and the Church was not so much to comfort as to tame. They had not yet the deep sins of civilisation to answer for. The pains and sorrows of all human existence had not to them been rendered more acute by the habits, the knowledge, the intense feeling of refined and developed life. They suffered, of course, like all men, and they sinned like all AND THE TEUTONIC RACES. 317 men. But to them the ministry of Christianity was less to soothe suffering, less even, as with the men of the Roman world, to call to repent- ance for sins against conscience and light, than to lay hold on fresh and impetuous natures ; to turn them from the first in the right direction ; to control and regenerate noble instincts ; to awaken conscience ; to humble pride ; to curb luxuriant and self-reliant strength, to train and educate and apply to high ends the force of powerful wills and masculine characters. And, historically, this appears to have been its earliest work with its Teutonic converts. The Church is their schoolmaster, their legislator, their often considerate, and sometimes over-indulgent, but always resolute, minister of discipline. Of course, as time went on, this early office was greatly enlarged and diversified. But it seems to me that the effects of Christianity on their national character, as it was first forming under religious influences, are to be traced to the con- ditions under which those influences were first exerted. 318 CHRISTIANITY I have said that the great obvious change observable in the Latin nations since they passed under Christianity seemed to me to be the de- velopment of the affections : the depths of the heart were reached and touched as they never were before ; its fountains were unsealed. In the same school the German races were made by degrees familiar with the most wonderful know- ledge given here to man to know, — an insight into the depths of his own being, the steady contemplation of the secrets, the mysteries, the riddles of his soul and his life. They learned this lesson first from Latin teachers, who had learned it themselves in the Psalms, the Gospels, the Epistles of St. Paul and St. John, and in whom thought had stirred the deepest emotions, and kindled spontaneously into the new lan- guage of religious devotion. How profoundly this affected the unfolding character of the Teutonic peoples; how the tenderness, the sweetness, the earnestness, the solemnity, the awfulness of the Christian faith sunk into their hearts, diffused itself through their life, allied AND THE TEUTONIC RACES. 319 itself by indestructible bonds with what was dearest and what was highest, with their homes, their assemblies, their crowns, their graves — all this is marked on their history, and reveals itself in their literature. Among them, as among the Latin races, religion opened new springs in the heart, and made new channels for the affections ; channels, as deep, as full, as diversified, in the North as in the South ; though they were less on the surface ; though they sometimes wanted freedom and naturalness in their flow ; though their charm and beauty, as well as their degene- racy or extravagance, forced themselves less on the eye. We may appreciate very variously the forms and phases of religion and religious history in the Northern races. You may find in them the difference, and the difference is immense, ranging between mere vague, imaginative, reli- gious sentiment and the profoundest convictions of Christian faith. The moment you touch particular questions, instantly the divergences of judgment and sympathy appear, as to what is religion. But the obvious experience of facts 320 CHRISTIANITY and language, and the evidence of foreigners alike attest how, in one form or another, religion has penetrated deeply into the national character both of Germany and England ; how serious and energetic is the religious element in it, and with what tenacity it has stood its ground against the direst storms. But the German stock is popularly credited with an especial value for certain great classes of virtues, of which the germs are perhaps discerni- ble in its early history, but which, in their real nature, have been the growth of its subsequent experience and training. It is, of course, childish and extravagant to make any claims of this kind without a vast margin for signal exceptions : all that can justly be said is that public opinion has a special esteem and admiration for certain virtues, and that the vices and faults which it specially dislikes are their opposites. And the virtues and classes of virtues which have been in a manner canonised among us, which we hold in honour, not because they are rare, but because they are regarded as congenial and belonging to AND THE TEUTONIC RACES. 321 us, — the virtues our regard for which colours our judgments, if it does not always influence our actions, — are the group of virtues connected with Truth ; the virtues of Manliness ; the virtues which have relation to Law ; and the virtues of Purity. I mean by the virtues connected with Truth, not only the search after what is true, and the speaking of what is known or believed to be true, but the regard generally for what is real, substantial, genuine, solid, which is shown in some portions of the race by a distrust, some- times extreme, of theories, of intellectual subtle- ties, of verbal accuracy: — the taste for plainness and simplicity of life and manners and speech : — the strong sense of justice, large, unflinching, consistent ; the power and will to be fair to a strong opponent : — the impatience of affectation and pretence ; not merely the disgust or amuse- ment, but the deep moral indignation, at shams and imposture : — the dislike of over-statement and exaggeration ; the fear of professing too much ; the shame and horror of seeming to act Y 322 CHRISTIANITY a part ; the sacrifice of form to substance ; the expectation and demand that a man should say what he really means — say it well, forcibly, ele- gantly, if he can ; but anyhow, rather say it clumsily and awkwardly than say anything but what he means, or sacrifice his real thought to his rhetoric. I mean, too, that unforced and honest modesty both of intellect and conduct which comes naturally to any man who takes a true measure of himself and his doings. Under the virtues of Manliness, I mean those that be- long to a serious estimate of the uses, the capa- cities, the call of human life : the duty of hard work; the value and jealousy for true liberty; independence of soul, deep sense of responsi- bility and strength not to shrink from it, steadi- ness, endurance, perseverance ; the power of sustaining cheerfully disappointment and defeat; the temper not to make much of trifles, whether vexations or pleasures. I include that great self-commanding power, to which we give the name of moral courage ; which makes a man who knows and measures all that his decision AND THE TEUTONIC RACES, 323 involves, not afraid to be alone against numbers ; not afraid, when he knows that he is right, of the consciousness of the disapprobation of his fel- lows, of the face, the voice, the frown, the laugh, of those against him ; — moral courage, by which a man holds his own judgment, if reason and conscience bid him, against his own friends, against his own side, and of which, perhaps, the highest form is that by which he is able to resist, not the sneers and opposition of the bad, but the opinion and authority of the good. All these are such qualities as spring from the deep and pervading belief that this life is a place of trial, probation, discipline, effort, to be followed by a real judgment. I mean by the virtues having relation to Law, the readiness to submit private interests and wishes to the control of public authority ; to throw a consecration around the unarmed forms and organs of this authority ; to obey for conscience sake, and out of a free and lqyal obedience, and not from fear : the self-control, the patience, which, in spite of the tremendous inequalities and temptations of y 2 324 CHRISTIANITY human conditions, keep society peacefully busy; which enable men, even under abuses, wrong, provocation, to claim a remedy and yet wait for it ; which makes them have faith in the ultimate victory of right and sound reason ; which teaches men in the keen battles of political life, as it has been said, to ' quarrel by rule ' ; which instinct- ively recoils from revolution under the strongest desire for change. The phrase, a ' law-abiding ' people, may as a boast be sometimes very rudely contradicted by facts ; but it expresses an idea and a standard. I add the virtues of Purity — not forgetting how very little any race or people can venture to boast over its neigh- bours for its reverence and faithfulness to these high laws of God and man's true nature ; but remembering also all that has made family life so sacred and so noble among us ; all that has made German and English households such schools of goodness in its strongest and its gentlest forms, such shrines of love, and holi- ness, and peace, the secret places where man's deepest gladness and deepest griefs— never, in AND THE TEUTONIC RACES. 325 truth, very far apart — meet and are sheltered. These are things which, in different proportions and different degrees of perfection, we believe to have marked the development of character in the German races. I do not say, far indeed from it, that all this is to be seen among us, — that we do according to all this ; but I do say that we always honour it, always acknowledge it our only allowable standard. These things are familiar enough. But it is not always so familiar to us to measure the im- mense interval between these types of character and the rude primitive elements out of which they have been moulded, or to gauge the force of the agencies which laid hold of those ele- ments, when it was quite within the compass of possibility that they might have received an entirely different impulse and direction ; — agen- cies which turned their wild, aimless, apparently untameable, energies from their path of wasting and ruin, into courses in which they were slowly to be fashioned anew to the highest uses and purposes of human life. There is nothing incon- 326 CHRISTIANITY ceivable in the notion that what the invading tribes were in their original seats for centuries they might have continued to be in their new conquests : that the invasion might have been simply the spread and perpetuation of a hopeless and fatal barbarism. As it was, a long time passed before it was clear that barbarism had not taken possession of the world. But the one power which could really cope with it, the one power to which it would listen, which dared to deal with these terrible new-comers with the boldness and frankness given by conviction and hope, was the Christian Church. It had in its possession, influence, ideas, doctrines, laws, of which itself knew not the full regenerating power. We look back to the early acts and policy of the Church towards the new nations, their kings and their people ; the ways and works of her missionaries and lawgivers, Ulfilas among the Goths, Augustine in Kent, Remigius in France, Boniface in Germany, Anschar in the North, the Irish Columban in Burgundy and Switzerland, Benedict at Monte Cassino : or the AND THE TEUTONIC RACES. 327 reforming kings, the Arian Theodoric, the great German Charles, the great English Alfred. Measured by the light and the standards they have helped us to attain to, their methods no doubt surprise, disappoint— it may be, revolt us; and all that we dwell upon is the childishness, or the imperfect morality, of their attempts. But if there is anything certain in history, it is that in these rough communications of the deep- est truths, in these often questionable modes of ruling minds and souls, the seeds were sown of all that was to make the hope and the glory of the foremost nations. They impressed upon men in their strong, often coarse, way that truth was the most precious and most sacred of things, —that truth seeking, truth speaking, truth in life, was man's supreme duty— the enjoyment of it his highest blessedness on earth ; and they did -this, even though they often fell miserably short of the lesson of their words, even though they sometimes, to gain high ends, turned aside into the convenient, tempting paths of untruth. Truth, as it is made the ultimate ground of 328 CHRISTIANITY religion in the New Testament ; Truth, as a thing of reality and not of words ; Truth, as a cause to contend for in lifelong struggle, and gladly to die for — this was the new, deep, fruitful idea implanted, at the awakening dawn of thought, in the infant civilisation of the North. It be- came rooted, strong, obstinate ; it bore many and various fruits ; it was the parent of fervent, passionate belief — the parent, too, of passionate scepticism ; it produced persecution and intoler- ance ; it produced resolute and unsparing refor- mations, indignant uprisings against abuses and impostures. But this great idea of truth, what- ever be its consequences, the assumption of its attainableness, of its preciousness, comes to us, as a popular belief and axiom, from the New Testament, through the word and ministry of the Christian Church, from its first contact with the new races : it is the distinct product of that great claim, for the first time made to all the world by the Gospel, and earnestly responded to by strong and simple natures— the claim of reality and truth made in the words of Him who AND THE TEUTONIC RACES. 329 said, ' I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.' I have spoken of three other groups of virtues which are held in special regard and respect among us — those connected with manliness and hard work, with reverence for law and liberty, and with pure family life. The rudiments and tendencies out of which these have grown ap- pear to have been early marked in the German races; but they were only rudiments, existing in company with much wilder and stronger elements, and liable, amid the changes and chances of barbarian existence, to be paralysed or trampled out. No mere barbarian virtues could by themselves have stood the trial of having won by conquest the wealth, the lands, the power of Rome. But their guardian was there. What Christianity did for these natural tendencies to good was to adopt them, to watch over them, to discipline, to consolidate them. The energy which warriors were accustomed to put forth in their efforts to conquer, the mission- aries and ministers of Christianity exhibited in 330 CHRISTIANITY their enterprises of conversion and teaching. The crowd of unknown saints whose names fill the calendars, and live, some of them, only in the titles of our churches, mainly represent the age of heroic spiritual ventures, of which we see glimpses in the story of St. Boniface, the apostle of Germany, of St. Columban and St. Gall, wandering from Ireland to reclaim the bar- barians of the Burgundian deserts and of the shores of the Swiss lakes. It was among men like these — men who were then termed emphati- cally ' men of religion' — that the new races first saw the example of life ruled by a great and serious purpose, which yet was not one of am- bition or the excitement of war ; a life of deli- berate and steady industry, of hard and uncom- plaining labour; a life as full of activity in peace, of stout and brave work, as a warrior's was wont to be in the camp, on the march, in the battle. It was in these men, and in the Christianity which they taught, and which in- spired and governed them, that the fathers of our modern nations first saw exemplified the AND THE TEUTONIC RACES. 331 sense of human responsibility, first learned the nobleness of a ruled and disciplined life, first enlarged their thoughts of the uses of existence, first were taught the dignity and sacredness of honest toil. These great axioms of modern life passed silently from the special homes of reli- gious employment to those of civil ; from the cloisters and cells of men who, when they were not engaged in worship, were engaged in field- work or book-work, — clearing the forest, extend- ing cultivation, multiplying manuscripts, — to the guild of the craftsman, the shop of the trader, the study of the scholar. Religion generated and fed these ideas of what was manly and worthy in man. Once started, they were rein- forced from other sources ; thought and experi- ence enriched, corrected, and co-ordinated them. But it was the power and sanction of a religion and a creed which first broke men into their yoke that now seems so easy, gradually wrought their charm over human restlessness and indo- lence and pride, gradually reconciled mankind to the ideas, and the ideas to mankind, gradually 332 CHRISTIANITY impressed them on that vague but yet real thing which we call the general thought and mind of a nation. It was this, too, that wrought a fur- ther and more remarkable change in elevating and refining the old manliness of the race. It brought into the dangerous life of the warrior the sense of a common humanity, the great idea of self-sacrificing duty. It was this religion of mercy and peace, and yet of strength and purpose, which out of the wild and conflicting elements of what we call the age of chivalry gradually formed a type of character in which gentleness, generosity, sympathy were blended with the most daring courage : — the Christian soldier, as we have known him in the sternest tasks and extremest needs, in conquest and in disaster, ruling, judging, civilising. It was the sense of duty derived from this religion to the traditions and habits of a great service, which made strong men stand fast in the face of death, while the weak were saved, on the deck of the sinking Birkenhead. So with respect to law and freedom. I sup- AND THE TEUTONIC RACES. 333 pose that it may be set down as a characteristic of the race, that in very various degrees and pro- portions, and moving faster or slower in different places and times, there has been throughout its history the tendency and persistent purpose to hold and secure in combination both these great blessings. Of course there are tracts of history where this demand of the national conscience seems suspended or extinguished ; but it has never disappeared for a time, even under German feudalism or despotism, without making itself felt in some shape, and at last reasserting itself in a more definite and advanced form. It in- volves the jealous sense of personal rights and independence along with deference, respectful, and perhaps fervently loyal, to authority be- lieved to be rightful : a steady obedience to law when law is believed to be just, with an equally- steady disposition to resent its injustice. How has this temper been rooted in our race ? The quick feelings and sturdy wills of a high-spirited people will account for part, but not for all : where did they learn self-command as well as 334 CHRISTIANITY courage, the determination to be patient as well as inflexible? They learned it in those Chris- tian ideas of man's individual importance and corporate brotherhood and fellowship, those Christian lessons and influences, which we see diffused through the early attempts in these races to state principles of government and lay down rules of law. They learned it in the characteristic and memorable struggles of the best and noblest of the Christian clergy against lawlessness and self-will, whether shown in the license of social manners, or in the tyranny of kings and nobles ; in their stout assertion against power and force, of franchises and liberties, which, though in the first instance the privileges of a few, were the seeds of the rights of all. We see in the clergy a continued effort to bring everything under the sovereignty of settled, authoritative law, circumscribing in- dividual caprice, fencing and guarding individual rights ; from them the great conception passed into the minds of the people, into the practice and policy — in time often the wider and more AND THE TEUTONIC RACES. ^S comprehensive policy and practice — of civil legislators and administrators. The interpre- tation of the great Christian precepts, connect- ing social life and duties with the deepest re- ligious thought passed into the sphere of poli- tical principles and order : ' to Caesar the things that are Caesar's ; '— ' let every soul be subject to the higher powers;' — 'as free yet not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness ; ' — ' God hath set the members in the body as it hath pleased Him .... and the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee ; nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.' These and such like great rules of order and freedom, coupled with the tremendous words of the Psalms and Prophets against oppression and the pride of greatness, found sympathetic response in Teutonic minds and germinated in them into traditions and philosophical doctrines, the real root of which may be forgotten, but which indeed come down from the Christian education of the barbarian tribes, and to the attempts of their teachers to bring out the high ^6 CHRISTIANITY meaning of the Christian teaching about what is due from man to man in the various relations of society. Be it so, that these attempts were one- sided and crude ones, that the struggles to seize this meaning were often baffled. But all history is the record of imperfect and unrealised ideas ; and nothing is more unphilosophical or more unjust than to forget the place and importance which such attempts had in their time, and in the scale of improvement. We criticise the immature and narrow attempts of the ecclesias- tical champions of law. Let us not forget that they were made at a time when, but for them, the ideas both of law and of liberty would have perished. And one more debt our race owes to Chris- tianity— the value and love which it has infused into us for a pure and affectionate and peaceful home. Not that domestic life does not often show itself among the Latin races in very simple and charming forms. But Home is specially Teutonic, word and thing. Teutonic sentiment, we know, from very early times, was AND THE TEUTONIC RACES. 337 proud, elevated, even austere, in regard to the family and the relations of the sexes. This nobleness of heathenism, Christianity conse- crated and transformed into all the beautiful shapes of household piety, household affection, household purity. The life of Home has be- come the great possession, the great delight, the great social achievement of our race ; its refuge from the storms and darkness without, an ample compensation to us for so much that we want of the social brilliancy and enjoyment of our Latin brethren. Reverence for the household and for household life, a high sense of its duties, a keen relish for its pleasures, this has been a strength to German society amid much to un- settle it. The absence of this taste for the quiet and unexcited life of home is a formidable symptom in portions of our race across the Atlantic. And when home life, with its sanc- tities, its simplicity, its calm and deep joys and sorrows, ceases to have its charm for us in England, the greatest break up and catastrophe in English history will not be far off. z 338 CHRISTIANITY And now to end. I have endeavoured to point out how those great groups of common qualities which we call national character have been in certain leading instances profoundly and permanently affected by Christianity. Chris- anity addresses itself primarily and directly to individuals. In its proper action, its purpose and its business is to make men saints ; what it has to do with souls is far other, both in its discipline and its scope, from what it has to do with nations or societies. Further, its effect on national characteristics must be consequent on its effect on individuals ; an effluence from the separate persons whom it has made its own, the outer undulations from centres of movement and tendency in single hearts and consciences. Of course such effects are quite distinct ; they differ in motive, in intensity, in shape, and form. What is immediate and full in the one case is secondary and imperfect in the other, largely mixed and diluted with qualifying, perhaps hostile, influences. But nations really have their fortunes and history independently of the AND THE TEUTONIC RACES. 339 separate individuals composing them: they have their faults, their virtues, their crimes, their fate; and so in this broad, loose, and yet not unreal way, they have their characters. Chris- tianity, which spoke at first to men one by one, went forth, a high Imperial power, into the ' wilderness of the people,' and impressed itself on nations. Christianity, by its public language and public efforts, made man infinitely more interesting to man than ever he was before. Doubtless, the impression was much more im- perfect, inconsistent, equivocal, than in the case of individuals. But for all that, the impression, within its own conditions and limits, was real, was strong, was lasting. Further— and this is my special point now— it was of great im- portance. National character is indeed a thing of time, shown on the stage of this earthly and transitory scene, adapted to it and partaking of its incompleteness. The interests, the perfection of souls, are of another order. But nothing can be unimportant which affects in any way the improvement, the happiness, the increased hopes Z 2 340 CHRISTIANITY of man, in any stage of his being. And nations and societies, with their dominant and distin- guishing qualities, are the ground in which souls grow up, and have their better or worse chance, as we speak, for the higher discipline of inward religion. It is all-important how habits receive their bias, how the controlling and often im- perious rules of life are framed : wTith what moral assumptions men start in their course. It is very important to us, as individuals, whether or not we grow up in a society where polygamy and slavery are impossible, where veracity is exacted, where duelling is discountenanced, where freedom, honour, chastity, readiness for effort and work, are treated as matters of course in those with whom we live. We have seen that Christianity is very dif- ferent in its influence on different national char- acters. It has wrought with nations as with men. For it does not merely gain their ad- herence, but within definite limits it developes differences of temperament and mind. Human nature has many sides, and under the powerful AND THE TEUTONIC RACES. 341 and fruitful influence of Christianity these sides are brought out in varying proportions. Unlike Mahometanism, which seems to produce a sin- gularly uniform monotony of character in races, however naturally different, on which it gets a hold, Christianity has been in its results, viewed on a large scale, as singularly diversified — not only diversified, but incomplete. It has suc- ceeded, and it has failed. For it has aimed much higher, it has demanded much more, it has had to reckon with far more subtle and complicated obstacles. If it had mastered its special provinces of human society as Mahomet- anism has mastered Arabs and Turks, the world would be very different from what it is. Yes ; it has fallen far short of that completeness. The fruits of its power and discipline have been partial. It is open to any one, and easy enough, to point out the shortcomings of saints ; and, much more, the faults and vices of Chris- tian nations. But the lesson of history, I think, is this : not that all the good which might have been hoped for to society has followed from the 342 CHRISTIANITY appearance of Christian religion in the fore- front of human life ; not that in this wilful and blundering world, so full of misused gifts and wasted opportunities and disappointed promise, mistake and mischief have never been in its train ; not that in the nations where it has gained a footing it has mastered their besetting sins, the falsehood of one, the ferocity of another, the characteristic sensuality, the characteristic arrogance of others. But history teaches us this : that in tracing back the course of human improvement we come, in one case after another, upon Christianity as the source from which im- provement derived its principle and its motive ; we find no other source adequate to account for the new spring of amendment : and, without it, no other sources of good could have been relied upon. It was not only the strongest element of salutary change, but one without which others would have had no chance. And, in the next place, the least and most imperfect instance of what it has done has this unique quality— that Christianity carries within it a self-correcting AND THE TEUTONIC RACES. 343 power, ready to act whenever the will arrives to use this power ; that it suggests improve- ment, and furnishes materials for a further step to it. What it has done anyzvhere^ what it has done where it has done most, leaves much to do ; but evcryzvJiere it leaves the ground gained on which to do it, and the ideas to guide the reformer in doing it. We should be cowards to think that those mighty and beneficent powers which won this ground for us, and produced these ideas in dark and very unhappy times, cannot in our happier days accomplish even more. Those ancient and far-distant ages, which have been occupying our attention here for a little while, amid the pressure and strain of our busy present, we may, we ought, to leave far behind, in what we hope to achieve. But in our eagerness for. improvement, it concerns us to be on our guard against the temptation of thinking that we can have the fruit or the flower and yet destroy the root ; that we may retain the high view of human nature which has grown with the growth of Christian nations, and discard 344 CHRISTIANITY, &c. that revelation of Divine love and human des- tiny of which that view forms a part or a con- sequence ; that we may retain the moral energy, and yet make light of the faith that produced it. It concerns us to remember, amid the splen- dours and vastness of a nature, and of a social state, which to us, as individuals, are both so transitory, that first and above everything we are moral and religious beings, trusted with will, made for immortality. It concerns us that we do not despise our birthright, and cast away our heritage of gifts and of powers, which we may lose, but not recover. THE SACRED POETRY OF EARLY RELIGIONS. TWO LECTURES DELIVERED IN ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, Jan. 27 &• Fed. 3, 1874. NOTICE. My excuse for venturing to speak in these lectures on matters about which I have no knowledge at first hand, is that these matters have lately been brought very fully before English readers in a popular form by those who have. In essays of great interest, from time to time inserted in the Times and other widely read periodicals, one of the chief living masters of Oriental scholarship, Mr. Max Miiller, has made us familiar with some of its most important achievements. My authorities are his 'History of Sanscrit Literature,' i860; his Essays on the Vedas, the Zendavesta, and ' Semitic Monotheism,' republished in the first volume of ' Chips from a German Workshop,' 1868 ; his translation, of which one volume has appeared, of the Rig-Veda-Sanhita, 1869 ; his 'Lec- tures on the Science of Religion,' 1872 ; the first volume of Bunsen's 'God in History,' translated by Miss Wink- worth, 1868; and Barthelemy St. Hilaire, ' Le Bouddha et sa Religion,' 1862. R. W. C. LECTURE I THE VEDAS. THE subject on which I propose to speak to you is the sacred poetry of early religions. I need hardly tell you that the subject is a very wide one, and that we have not much time at our disposal. In what I have to say I can but deal with it very generally, and by way of speci- mens and examples. The sacred poetry of a religion is the expres- sion of feeling, in its more elevated and intense forms, towards the object of its worship. A creed expresses belief. Prayers set forth needs, present requests, ask for blessings, deprecate evils. Psalms and hymns are the voice of the religious emotions, the religious affections, it may be the religious passions. They assume what a creed asserts. They urge what a prayer 3$o EARL Y SA CRED POETR Y. urges, but they do it under more vivid impres- sions of the power addressed, from the larger and more inspiring aspect given by an awakened imagination or a heart deeply stirred. They carry to the highest point whatever there is in a religion ; they mark the level to which in idea and faith, in aspiration and hope, it can rise. The heart of a religion passes into its poetry ; — all its joy, its tenderness and sweetness, if it has any, its deepest sighs, its longings and Teachings after the eternal and unseen, whatever is most pathetic in its sorrow or boldest in its convic- tions. Its sacred songs give the measure of what it loves, what it imagines, what it trusts to, in that world out of sight, of which religion is the acknowledgment, and which it connects with this one. With the sacred poetry of one ancient religion, the religion which as a matter of history en- shrined and handed on from primitive times the faith and worship of the One Living God, we are familiar. The Psalms of those far distant days, the early utterances of their faith and love, still THE VEDAS. 351 form the staple of the worship and devotion of the Christian Church. But side by side in the course of the centuries with this religion were other religions of unknown antiquity, the reli- gions of great tribes and races and multitudes, forefathers of nations which have come down, from the days before history, into the days when history began to be written, and at" length to our own. With the earliest forms of these religions, all of them religions of Asia, with their ideas of the divine, with their ways of worship, we have only of late years become even partially ac- quainted. But Oriental learning, in the hands of great scholars of this century, from Sir W. Jones, whose monument faces me under this dome, to Burnouf and Max Miiller, has opened to us a glimpse of that primeval and mysterious world. They believe themselves to have succeeded in disengaging the earlier and primitive documents from those of later date, and in reproducing with approximate accuracy the religious lan- guage and ideas of ancient races in China, in India, in Persia. 352 EARLY SACRED POETRY. The early religions of China, the great Indian reform of Buddhism, are full of a strange and melancholy interest ; but they are mostly di- dactic in form and expression, and there seems to be little in them which can be called poetical. In the case of the primitive religions of India and Persia their earliest language is poetry, and speaks in the form of hymns. This primeval poetry is, we are assured, perfectly distinct, — in its natural freshness and comparative simplicity, in its apparent effort really to recognise and ex- press the mystery of what is seen in nature and believed beyond it — from the coarse mythologies and gross idolatry of subsequent ages. It is to this early poetry that I venture to invite your attention this evening ; and it is of this, viewed in comparison with the sacred poetry of another early age, the collection which we call the Psalms, that I propose to speak in the lecture of next Tuesday. You will understand that I have no pretence to speak about it from first-hand study. But we have in our hands the results of the work of most THE VEDAS. $55 patient and sagacious scholars ; and we may be assured that, under their guidance, we know as much as anyone can know in the present state of our information. I take for granted — and I suppose that we are safe in doing so — the general accuracy of their statements as to the character and meaning of what they cite and translate. The most ancient relics of primitive Indian religion are the hymns of the Vedas, the sacred books of Brahman religion. The age of these hymns can only be guessed at, but by those who know best it is carried back some 3000 years, to the centuries between 1200 and 1500 before our era. They are over a thousand in number, and they represent the early religious thoughts and feelings of a great race in Central Asia, the Aryan branch of the human family, the stock which was to people not only India and Persia, but the greater part of Europe — the fathers of Greeks and Italians, of the Teutonic, the Celtic, the Slavonic nations, as well as of those who crossed the Himalayas to the banks of the Indus and the Ganges. The language of these Vedic A a 354 EARLY SACRED POETRY. hymns is the oldest form of that which is often spoken of as the oldest of languages, the sacred language of the Brahmans, the Sanscrit. They are too old to have anything of a history besides what can be gathered from their language and matter. We know next to nothing of their authors, or the condition under which they were first uttered : in reading them, ' we stand in the presence of a veiled life,' on which nothing ex- ternal of record or monument throws light. It is only of late years that scholars have been able successfully to decipher what Mr. Max M tiller calls 'the dark and helpless utterances of the ancient poets of India/ The clue, however, has been found. The difficulties of interpretation have, we are assured, yielded in great degree to the skill and patience which have been expended on them; and the exceeding interest of the knowledge thus for the first time opened of these early thoughts of men has been an ample reward. And certainly it is most remarkable and most impressive that though, as I have said, they have THE VEDAS. no history, though there is not the slenderest thread of surrounding or accompanying record to connect them with the men who must have lived and the events which must have happened before they could be composed, though they stand out like constellations, projected, singly and in isolation, against an impenetrable depth of dark sky behind them, yet the poems bear in themselves the evidence of a very high advance in men's mastery of the faculties of their own mind and the arts of speech. When they were composed, the interval had already become a long one, from the rudeness and grossness of savage existence. Thought had learned to grasp and express feeling, and language had found out some of its subtlest expedients. They are the foundation of the later forms of Indian religion ; but they are, we are told, absolutely distinct in ideas and spirit from the ceremonial and the mythologies afterwards built on them. The common and prominent element in these hymns is their sense of the greatness and wonder and mystery of external nature. The composers A a 2 3$6 EARL Y SA CRED POETR Y. of them were profoundly impressed by the con- viction that in its familiar but overpowering magnificence and behind its screen there was a living presence and power greater than itself and its master, to which, though out of sight and beyond reach, man could have access : — ' A presence that disturbed them with the joy Of elevated thoughts : a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.' And what they so keenly felt and so awfully acknowledged, they had attained an adequate instrument to body forth in words. Whence their religious ideas came must still be counted among the unsolved, if not the hope- less, problems of human history. Indeed, what these ideas distinctly were must always be im- perfectly known, for this reason, if for no other — that the thoughts and the words of men living in times so far apart as ours from theirs are THE VEDAS. 357 practically incommensurable. The great wastes of time lie between us and them. We cannot, with the utmost helps of scholarship, with the highest effort of imagination, see things as they saw them, and think with their thoughts, with their knowledge, their habits, their associations. What we and the centuries before us have passed through, what we know, what we have become, prevents us. But we can know something, though not all. The most elaborate investigations, the most indefatigable and refined comparisons, have sorted out and approximately arranged for us these ancient hymns. Many of them have been translated: in the last instance by one who moves with ease under an accumulation and weight of the most varied and minute knowledge sufficient to crush most minds, but who brings to it a power and versatility of genius and interpret- ing imagination which invests his learning with the grace of poetry, and who. a German, has gained a command over the resources of English which an Englishman may envy. In Mr. Max Muller's translations of the Vedic Hymns we may 3$8 EARLY SACRED POETRY. feel confident that we come, as near as we can come, to an authentic representation of these earliest utterances of Indian religion. What then do these hymns of the Veda show us of that which is the foundation of all religion? They are the language of fervent, enthusiastic worshippers. What do they tell us of the wor- shippers' thoughts about God ? The hymns of the Veda are addressed to various names of divine beings, which may be in the first instance described as personifications of the phenomena of external nature. It is not unreasonable to call this, as it has been called, a worship of nature. But we are cautioned that this may not be an adequate representation of what was really meant, and that it would be more justly called a worship of God in nature, ' of God appearing behind its veil, rather than as hidden in the sanctuary of the human heart and conscience.' At any rate, in a great number of these hymns, such as those which compose the first volume of Mr. Max Miiller's translation of the Rigveda, the Hymns to the Maruts, the THE VEDAS. 359 Storm Gods (attendants on the Sun and the Dawn), we may watch, to use his words, ' the almost imperceptible transition by which the phenomena of nature, if reflected in the mind of the poet, assume the character of divine beings.' In these hymns it seems to me that the effort to employ imagination to the utmost in order to express and do justice to the wonders of the Wind and the Storm is much more distinct and characteristic than the religious sense of divinity. So, again, with the hymns to the Dawn, on which Mr. Max Muller comments. We, he reminds us, on whom the ends of the world are come, have mostly lost that early feeling of sur- prise and admiration of the daily wonder of sun- rise. The feeling was strong when minds were fresher and life more simple. ' The Dawn,' he says, ' is frequently described in the Veda as it might be described by a modern poet. She is the friend of men, she smiles like a young wife, she is the daughter of the sky. She goes to every house ; she thinks of the dwellings of men; she does not despise the small or the 360 EARLY SACRED POETRY. great ; she brings wealth ; she is always the same, immortal, divine ; age cannot touch her ; she is the young goddess, but she makes men grow old. All this may be simply allegorical language. But the transition is so easy from Devi, the Bright, to Devi, the Goddess ; the daughter of the Sky assumes so readily the personality given to the Sky (Dyaus), her father, that we can only guess whether in each passage the poet is speaking of a bright apparition, or a bright goddess ; of a natural vision, or of a visible deity ' : — 1 She shines on us like a young wife, rousing every living being to go to his work. The fire had to be kindled by men ; she brought light by striking down the darkness. ' She rose up, spreading far and wide, and moving towards every one. She grew in brightness, wearing her brilliant garment. The mother of the morning clouds, the leader of the rays, she shone gold-coloured, lovely to behold. 1 She, the fortunate, who brings the eye of THE VEDAS. 36 the gods, who leads the white and lovely steed [of the Sun], the Dawn was seen, revealed by her rays, with brilliant treasures she follows every one. 'Thou who art a blessing where thou art near, drive far away the unfriendly ; make the pastures wide, give us safety ! Remove the haters, bring treasures ! Raise up wealth to the worshipper, thou mighty Dawn. ' Shine for us with thy best rays, thou bright Dawn, thou who lengthenest our life, thou the love of all, .who givest us food, who givest us wealth in cattle, horses, and chariots. ' Thou, daughter of the Sky, thou high-born Dawn, whom the Vasishthas magnify with songs, give us riches high and wide : all ye gods, protect us always with your blessings.' This hymn, we are told, is an example of ' the original simple poetry of the Veda. It has no reference to any special sacrifice. It contains no technical expressions ; it can hardly be called a hymn in our sense of the word. It is simply a poem, expressing without any effort, without 3^2 EARLY SACRED POETRY. any display of far-fetched thought or brilliant imagery, the feelings of a man who has watched the approach of dawn with mingled delight and awe, and who was moved to give utterance to what he felt in measured language.' It is, in fact, the poetical counterpart of Guido's Aurora. Hymns such as these make up a great portion of the collection. But there are others more distinctly intended as expressive of worship, invocations of beings regarded as divine, the objects of religious faith and reverence and hope. They are described in language appli- cable only to the Highest of all Beings. They are addressed in words fittingly spoken by man only to his Maker and Almighty Ruler. Do we find here the worship of one or of many gods? Now the remarkable feature about these early hymns is the absolutely indeterminate character of the object of worship and praise. Different names appear of the divine powers addressed in them. They are names, as I have said, denoting, or taken from, the primary phenomena or powers of the natural world — the Sky, the THE VEDAS. 363 Light, the Sun, the Dawn, the Winds, the Fire. The divinity, who is in the sky or' the fire, or whom they veil, or whom they symbolise, is separately invoked, adored, magnified. But yet it seems that it is impossible to tell whether these names are thought of as names of really separate powers ; whether they are the same essential power, invoked under separate names, according as the manifestation of his marvellous doings impresses the mind of the worshipper ; whether, if they are different, or different aspects of the Supreme and Infinite, there is gradation or subordination between the divine powers, or the several phases of the one ; whether they do not pass into one another, and now one of them, now another, does not take the place in the composer's thoughts of the one Most High. The distinctness of the later Hindu pantheon, with the definitely assigned characters and names and functions of its gods and goddesses, is not here ; certainly not at least as regards the highest names. The pictures given of the doings and the glories of the Being celebrated 364 EARLY SACRED POETRY. in each hymn are drawn with the most vivid and brilliant imagery, freshly derived from sights of nature, watched and gazed on and remembered with admiration and delight : but who is the unknown reality behind the name ? In the worshipper's mind apparently, certainly in the minds of those who after centuries attempt to understand it, the idea dissolves into a luminous mist, baffling all attempt to make it assume shape and substance. ' When the individual gods,' says Mr. Max M uller, ' are invoked, Varuna (the Heaven), Agni (Fire), the Maruts (the Storm Gods or the Winds), Ushas (the Dawn), they are not conceived as limited by the power of others, as superior or inferior in rank. Each god is to the mind of the sup- pliant as good as all the gods.' . . . . ' It would be easy to find, in the numerous hymns of the Veda, passages in which almost every single god is represented as supreme and absolute.' ' What more could human language achieve in trying to express the idea of a divine and supreme power, than what the poet says of THE VEDAS. $6$ Varuna ? * Thou art Lord of all, of heaven and earth ; ' or, in another hymn, ' Thou art King of all, of those who are gods and those who are men.' He knows all the order of nature and upholds it ; he looks not only into the past, but the future. But, more than this, Varuna watches also over the order of the moral world.' Sin is the breaking of his laws ; but he can be approached in prayer for his mercy, and in his mercy he pardons sinners. Can there be any other god who can be thus thought of and spoken of? Yes, a whole brotherhood of gods (the Adityas) are addressed in the same way. Indra, called the greatest of gods, is addressed in the same way as the pardoner of sin. ' We can hardly understand,' says Mr. Max Miiller, 'how a people who had formed so exalted a notion of the Supreme God, and embodied it in the person of Indra, could at the same time invoke other gods with equal praise. When Agni, the Lord of Fire, is addressed by the poet, he is spoken of as the first god, not inferior even to Indra. While Agni is invoked, Indra is $66 EARLY SACRED POETRY. forgotten ; there is no competition between the two, nor any rivalry between them or any other god.' Explain it as we will, the poets and psalmists of this early religion looked with a dizzy and uncertain eye upon that marvellous spectacle of man and nature, in which undoubtedly they believed that they saw manifest tokens of the Divine and Eternal, signs of a Presence at which their hearts kindled, and their heads bowed, and their humble offerings were presented. They recognised the 'witness' of what was greater and higher than all things seen and known, tokens of the ' Eternal Power and Godhead ' ; they recognised the Hand 'which did them good, and gave them rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness.' But they looked with unsteady and wavering vision ; they saw, and they saw not ; one impression came and was chased away by another ; all was full of confusing appearances and fitful glimpses and interfering lights : they spoke in words of stammering enthusiasm of THE VEDAS. $6 J wonders which only raised in them inconsistent and contradictory images. They seem like men striving after a great truth apparently within their reach, but really just beyond it. Serious questioners, I do not doubt that many of them were, of what they saw, of their own souls, of what had been handed down from their fathers ; seekers after God, and of ' the invisible things of Him,' they may have been. But who will say that they wiexe finders? This 'feeling after God' among the works of His hands — this anxious and perplexed, yet resolute groping in the light for Him Who is equally above the light and the darkness, is expressed in a remarkable hymn of early date. It has been often cited by recent writers. ' This yearning after a nameless deity,' says Baron Bunsen, ' who nowhere manifests himself in the Indian Pantheon of the Vedas, this voice of humanity groping after God, has nowhere found so sublime and touching an expression ' : — 'i. In the beginning there arose the Source of Golden Light — He was the only born Lord 368 EARLY SACRED POETRY. of all that is. He stablished the earth and this sky ; — 'Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? c 2. He who gives life, He who gives strength ; Whose blessing all the bright gods desire ; Whose shadow is immortality ; Whose shadow is death ; — ■ Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ?, 4 3. He who through His power is the only- King of the breathing and awakening world ; He who governs all, man and beast ; — 1 Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? ' 4. He whose power these snowy moun- tains, whose power the sea proclaims, with the distant river — He whose these regions are, as it were, His two arms ; — 1 Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? ' 5. He through whom the sky is bright and THE VEDAS. 369 the earth firm — He through whom the heaven was stablished — nay, the highest heaven — He who measured out the light in the air ; — ' Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? ' 6. He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by His will, look up trembling inwardly — He over whom the rising sun shines forth ; — ' Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? ' 7. Wherever the mighty water-clouds went, where they placed the seed and lit the fire, thence arose He who is the only life of the bright gods ; — 1 Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? ' 8. He who by His might looked even over the water-clouds, the clouds which gave strength and lit the sacrifice, He who is God above all gods ;— 'Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? Bb 370 EARLY SACRED POETRY. 1 9. May He not destroy us — He the Creator of the earth ; or He the righteous, who created the heaven ; He who also created the bright and mighty waters ; — ' Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? ' There was the question, the misgiving ; but where was the answer? Instead of the one only answer, firmly given and never let go, there were the multiplied, hesitating, varying alternatives, in which the true answer was but one among many, and the one finally abandoned. 'They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni, the Light, the Sun, the Sky, the Fire ; that which is One, the wise call it many ways.' Just that which He was, separate from all things, and above all things, beyond compare, unique, alone, — if they confessed it one moment, the next they had lost it. They looked — we are told apologetically — they saw, they thought, they spoke, as children ; it was the childhood of the world, and the childhood of religion, seeking as it could by inadequate instruments to give body to impres- THE VEDAS. 371 sions themselves imperfect. ' The spirit was willing, but the language weak. It was a first attempt at defining the indefinite impression of deity by a name that should approximately or metaphorically render at least one of its most prominent features ' — infinity, brightness, awful- ness, beneficence. 'And this is not all. The very imperfection of all the names which had been chosen, their very inadequacy to express the fulness and infinity of the Divine, would keep up the search for new names, till at last every part of nature in which an approach to the Divine could be discovered was chosen as a name of the Omnipresent. If the presence of the Divine was perceived in the strong wind, the strong wind became its name ; if its presence was perceived in the earthquake and the fire, the earthquake and the fire became its names.' It was the ' infantile prattle ' of that early world on the deepest of all subjects. Thus, in eloquent pages, does a great scholar plead for ' charitable interpretation ' of this ' childish ' faith. But we must not confound the Bb2 373 EARLY SACRED POETRY. manner of expression with the substance of the thing expressed. The manner of expression may be strange, rude, indicative of a primitive and imperfect state of thought and language : the thing itself, the idea, may be clear, distinct beyond mistake, steadily held without wavering or confusion. Doubtless, we must make allow- ances for all ancient language, its metaphors, its modes of expressing the unseen by the seen, the divine by the natural. But this is a question not of language, but of substance — of the central substance of an idea, upon which the whole meaning, and fate, and history of a religion depend. There is no bridging over the interval between the one Supreme, Almighty, Most Holy God, and any idea of divinity or of divine powers, many or few, which comes short of it. The belief is there, or it is not ; and if it is there, no weakness or imperfections of language will stand in the way of its expression. Lan- guage which belongs to a very early period of the world's history did not prevent the thought of the one living God, c I am that I am,' from THE VEDAS. 373 being grasped and held fast by another Asiatic people, did not for a moment cloud or perplex it — that thought which the poets of the Veda just saw, without recognising its value, its final and supreme truth. The analogy of childish thought and speech applied to periods of human history is partly just, but partly misleading. The Aryan singers in Central Asia or by the rivers of the Punjab were in mind and mental outfit at least as much men as the Hebrews ; the Hebrews in the im- perfection and immaturity of language and intellect, just as much children as their Aryan contemporaries. But the Hebrews, limited as they might be in speech, had and kept the one adequate idea of God ; no imagery about voice, and hands, and mouth, and countenance, for a moment obscured or disguised it. The Vedic poets, with all the genius and enthusiasm of which we seem to discern the traces, missed the way. They lost the great central truth, of which from time to time they seem to have had glimpses. They took the wrong turn in the 374 EARLY SACRED POETRY. eventful road along which their people and their religion were to travel. Their poetic names were condensed, dulled, petrified, debased into the increasingly grotesque and evil idolatry of Brahmanism, from which there was no return, no recovery, except in the mournful reform of Buddha, which swept away ancient idols by extinguishing the idea of God. The religion of the Vedas could not save itself or India : what- ever may have been its beginnings, it led by irresistible steps to what Bunsen calls the ' great tragedy of India and of humanity,' and to the 1 tragic catastrophe ' which saw in annihilation the only refuge, the single hope of man ; which raised the great Oriental faculty of resignation to the power of absolute, universal, passionless despair. I will pass from the object of faith and worship in these hymns to their moral views. What do they show of the relations of man to God, and to the law of right and wrong? We find in them unquestionably the idea of right- eousness and sin ; we find, also, less distinctly, THE VEDAS. 375 the idea of a life after death. ' The keynote of all religion, we are assured, natural as well as revealed, is present in the hymns of the Veda, and is never completely drowned by the strange music which generally deafens our ears, when we first listen to the wild echoes of the heathen worship/ Doubtless it is ' a mistake to deny the presence of moral truths in the so-called nature-worship of the Aryans.' But it is also true, and very observable, that the expressions of these moral ideas occupy but a very small space, compared with the prolonged and some- times gorgeous descriptions of natural pheno- mena, uttered with enthusiasm in praise of the Being whom the poem celebrates. And further, the moral ideas themselves are rudimentary, general, vague to the last degree. The value of moral terms must depend on what is involved in them, on the standard that governs them, on the power of conscience, on the earnestness of will and purpose, which they presuppose. Children divide the world easily into good people and bad people : such divisions 376 EARLY SACRED POETRY. do not tell us much of the characters or the qualities thus rudely classified. And though in these ancient hymns sin is confessed and its consequences deprecated, though they praise the righteous and denounce the deceitful and the wicked, there is but little to show what was the sin, and what constituted the righteousness. Of that moral conviction, that moral enthusiasm for goodness and justice, that moral hatred of wrong and evil, that zeal for righteousness, that anguish of penitence, which has elsewhere marked reli- gious poetry, there is singularly little trace. Here is a hymn addressed to Varuna, 'the Greek ovpavos, an ancient name of the sky and of the god who resides in the sky ' : — ' Let me not yet, O Varuna, enter into the house of clay ; have mercy, Almighty, have mercy. 'If I go trembling, like a cloud driven by the wind ; have mercy, Almighty, have mercy. ' Through want of strength, thou strong and high God, I have gone on the wrong shore ; have mercy, Almighty, have mercy. THE VEDAS. 377 1 Thirst came upon the worshipper, though he stood in the midst of the waters ; have mercy, Almighty, have mercy. 'Whenever we men, 0 Varuna, commit an offence before the heavenly host ; whenever we break Thy law through thoughtlessness ; have mercy, Almighty, have mercy.' I will take as another example a hymn spe- cially commended to our notice by men who from knowledge and learning are most com- petent to do so. 'The presence,' says Bunsen, ' of a moral and spiritual apprehension of God is most vividly brought out in Vasishta's magni- ficent hymn to Varuna, which will even remind our readers of the 51st Psalm.' Let me read t. The hymn is a striking one. But I think :hat you will say, when you hear it, that only unconscious prepossession could blind a saga- cious and religious mind to the immeasurable interval between it and such a Psalm as the 5xst. Here is Mr. Max Miiller's translation of the hymn : — 1 Wise and mighty are the works of Him 378 EARLY SACRED POETRY. who stemmed asunder the wide firmaments. He lifted on high the bright and glorious heavens : he stretched out apart the starry sky and the earth. 'Do I say this to my own self? How can I get near to Varuna? Will he accept my offering without displeasure? When shall I, with quiet mind, see him propitiated ? 1 1 ask Varuna, wishing to know this my sin : I go to ask the wise. The wise all tell me the same : Varuna it is who is angry with thee. ' Was it for an old s"a, O Varuna, that thou wishest to destroy thy friend, who always praises Thee? Tell me, thou unconquerable Lord, and I will quickly turn to Thee with praise, freed from sin. 'Absolve us from the sins of our fathers, and from those which we have committed with our own bodies. ... It was not our own doing, O Varuna, it was a slip ; an intoxi- cating draught, passion, vice, thoughtlessness. The old is there to mislead the young ; even sleep is not free from mischief. THE VEDAS. 379 ' Let me without sin give satisfaction to the angry God, like a slave to his bounteous lord. The Lord God enlighteneth the foolish ; He, the Most Wise, leads his worshippers to wealth. ' O Lord Varuna, may this song go well to thine heart ! May we prosper in keeping and acquiring. Protect us, O God, always with your blessings.' I have dwelt upon what seem to me the most impressive features of this ancient religious poetry of India. There is much besides, which to us, after the utmost allowances made for immense differences of time and thought, for ' mental parallax,' must appear unintelligible, grotesque, repulsive. But I wanted here to do justice to the higher and better side of it. And I have confined myself to this Vedic poetry, partly because my space is limited, and next because this poetry is, on the whole, the most remarkable of what the earliest stage of the heathen world has left us. In no others that I am acquainted with does the poetical 380 EARLY SACRED POETRY. element hold so large a place. I could refer, no doubt, to wonderful passages — wonderful both in their religious feeling and their moral earnest- ness and depth, from the lyric and tragic poetry of Greece, and even from its epic poetry ; but this is the poetry, not of an early stage of human society and thought, but of a very ad- vanced and mature one ; and I am concerned only with the earliest. Fragments have come down to us from the old religions of China ; but they are rather moral reflections, or simply prayers, than what we call hymns. The Buddhist books, again, as many of you last year heard in a singularly interesting historical survey of Bud- dhism given from this place by Dr. Liddon, are full of thoughts and words that astonish us, by the awful sense of duty, the moral insight and power which they express, and by the tre- mendous daring with which Buddhism faced the vanity and evil of the world, and met it with the completeness of religious despair. But I do not see that these passages can be called hymns. THE VEDAS. 381 In the Zendavesta, on the other hand, the ancient book of the disciples of Zoroaster, the teacher and prophet of Persia, who is described like Elijah, calling on his King and people to choose for good between truth and falsehood, there have been deciphered what from their form and manner of expression may be better termed hymns. In these compositions we come upon a moral force and purpose which is but little apparent in the hymns of the Veda. The religion of Zoroaster is regarded as a reaction against that of the Vedas, and there is a serious- ness about its language which is very significant. The hymns — they are but few and hard to in- terpret— attributed to Zoroaster are marked by a solemn earnestness, an awe-struck sense of the deep issues of right and wrong, which contrasts with the delight in nature, the vivid imagina- tiveness, the playful fancy of the Vedic poems. There is a profound reverence for an All-wise and Living God : there is a terrible conscious- ness of the conflict going on between good and evil, and of the power of both. Under the 382 EARLY SACRED POETRY. pressure of that consciousness, Zoroaster took refuge in that fatal theory which was to develop in after ages into such portentous and obstinate mischiefs ; the theory of two eternal and co- ordinate principles. He believed in an eternal God of Goodness ; but he taught also, uncreated and everlasting, a co-equal ' Twin ' principle and Power of Evil. He taught men to take their side with truth and right in the great battle ; he taught them to trust to the God of Goodness, and to nourish a high confidence that the victory must be His. But at the bottom of his religion was the poison-root of a Dual Divinity ; of a divided idea, framed of moral opposites, of the divine government of the world, and of the law which ruled it. It is not surprising that these mysterious utterances, breaking on us by surprise from the dawn of time, should have awakened a very deep interest. They seemed to require us to revise our judgments and widen our thoughts, about what we vaguely call heathen religion. It was obvious that, even if they were the words THE VEDAS. 383 of those ' who worshipped what they knew not,' and worshipped under divers names and forms, still there was the greatest difference between their ideas of the Divine, and the mythology of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva ; between their hymns to the Storm Gods and the Sky, and the Homeric mythology and hymns to Apollo and Aphrodite — the mythology of any of the coun- tries or ages by which we commonly know heathenism. These utterances have been read to mean, not a worship of nature or natural objects, but of God, unknown but yet instinctively and irre- sistibly believed in, behind the veil of Nature. They have been pointed to as consoling proofs that there was more religion in the world than we knew of, even if it was but a religion of children : ' praise from the weak lips of babes and sucklings,' who knew not the greatness of which they spoke. They rebuke us at once, and they encourage us, by showing that hea- thenism, so multitudinous and so ancient, was not all the base superstition and wild idolatry 384 EARLY SACRED POETRY. which it seemed ; but under it, as under a true dispensation, the Gentiles had much that was needful, perhaps as much as was possible ; that they had deeper thoughts in reality, and more earnest longings after their hidden yet present Father, than we knew before, and drew nigh to Him, if not yet to see behind the veil, yet at least to show that in wish and intention they sought to know and honour Him. I for my part am only too glad to believe all that can be shown of what is unexpectedly noble and hopeful in these ancient remains. Prophets and Apostles, face to face with the gross darkness of idolatry, appeal beyond it to man's deeper faith in God ; and here we have marks of it. If that was all, we are but acknowledging what they have taught us. But there is besides this a disposition to place these remains on a level with what Christians consider as the au- thenticated records of God's inspiring guidance, to merge in one common category, differing endlessly in degree, but at bottom and essen- THE VEDAS. 385 tially the same in kind, at least in origin and authority, the words, the documents, the ideas of all religions. But if there is one rule to be kept in view in the pursuit of truth it is this : that differences are as important as points of likeness, and that we must never give way to tempting and seductive analogies till we have thoroughly investigated the perhaps obscure and intractable distinctions which so incon- veniently interfere with our generalisations. Are there any such differences, do any such broad and undeniable distinctions present them- selves between these earliest utterances of heathen religion and the early religious poetry of the Old Testament as to make it impossible to confound the one with the other, as expres- sions of religious thought and faith and trust? Surely the differences are obvious and enormous. There are two things, which, apart from their substance, deprive these Indian and Persian hymns of the value which is sometimes put upon them. 1. They are and have been for ages dead relics, C c 386 EARLY SACRED POETRY. No one pretends that they are now used as they were when they were composed, and as a living part of worship. Those who actually felt and meant them in their real sense have passed away long ago ; and ' then all their thoughts perished.' The poems have been enshrined as sacred foun- dations and originals in systems unsympathetic and at variance with them ; and the life that is in them is drawn out by antiquarian and philo- sophic labour in the West, and has long ceased to breathe in the worship of the East. 2. Whatever these religions were at first, and I am quite ready to see in them ' grains of truth,' — to believe that there were in them often honest, earnest attempts to 'feel after 'and win 'Him who is not far from any one of us ' — they all have a common and an unvarying history. They end in hopeless and ignoble decay. Their singers sought Him, it may be ; but it was in vain. In all cases, among all races, it is only at their first beginning that their words command our reverence. In all instances, in all races, Aryan, Semitic, THE VEDAS. 387 Turanian, as far as we see, the original religion, or the religious reform, failed, dwindled, passed into a formal and pedantic ceremonial — passed into coarser and yet coarser forms of undisguised idolatry, monstrous, impure, or cruel. In the stir and changes of life from generation to generation, the old spirit could not hold its own ; new neces- sities, new appearances, new feelings clamorously exacted a place for new creations of the restless mind, new ventures of worship, new ways of deal- ing with the problems of the world. In the un- certainty of decaying traditions and altering points of view, the process of interpretation hardened into a prosaic literalness and formality the play of imagination, the enthusiasms, the raptures, the sportive audacities of fresher and simpler times. ' Who is the God to whom we shall offer sacri- fice ?' was the refrain of the early Vedic Hymn : the ingenuity of Brahman commentators turned the interrogative pronoun into the name of a god, and the interrogative sentence into a com- mand to sacrifice to a god whose proper name was ' Who? c c 2 388 EARLY SACRED POETRY. It is impossible, it seems to me, to overlook, to over-estimate the contrast. There is a collection of sacred poetry, not so old, it may be, certainly not in parts, as the Vedic and Zend hymns, but belonging to very early times — belonging cer- tainly to what we now call the childhood of the race. The Vedic hymns are dead remains, known in their real spirit and meaning to a few students. The Psalms are as living as when they were written ; and they have never ceased to be, what we may be quite certain they have been to-day ', this very day which is just ending, to hundreds and thousands of the most earnest of souls now alive. They were composed in an age at least as immature as that of the singers of the Veda ; but they are now what they have been for thirty centuries, the very life of spiritual religion — they suit the needs, they express, as nothing else can express, the deepest religious ideas of ' the foremost in the files of time.' The Vedic hymns, whatever they have meant originally, stand at the head of a history not yet THE VEDAS. 389 over — and never once broken, except by atheism — of irretrievable idolatry. The Psalms too, stand, in a very important sense, at the head of a great religious history, as the first great outburst of the religious affections and emotions in the people of Israel. But what they once proclaimed, as the truth of truths, about God and righteousness, that they kept alive, unquenched, unmistaken, undoubted to this hour. The Jewish religion, of which they were the soul and the guardian, passed through as many disasters, as many dangers, as any other. Its tendencies to degenerate were as obstinate ; none ever sunk at last under a more tremendous catastrophe. But the faith which was at its heart never was utterly lost in the darkest days and the foulest apostasies. It went on from one step to another, of higher thought and clearer light. It had risen from the Law to the Psalms ; it went on from the Psalms to the Prophets, from the Prophets to the Gospel. And the Psalms, which had expressed, in so many strains and in so many keys, the one unwavering belief of the people 390 EARLY SACRED POETRY, of Israel, — that belief which neither idolatry, nor its punishment, the captivity, nor the scepticism of Sadducees, nor the blindness of Pharisees, had impaired or shaken, — passed on, unchanged but transfigured, to be the perpetual language of the highest truth, of the deepest devotion, in the Christian Church. LECTURE II. THE PSALMS. There is one book of sacred poetry which is unique of its kind, which has nothing like it or second to it. It expresses the ideas and the feelings of a religion of which the central and absorbing object of faith is One who is believed to be the absolute, universal, Living God, the one God of the world and all things, Almighty, All- Holy, Supreme. It not only expresses this reli- gion, but as a matter of fact, it has been one of the most certain means of maintaining unbroken the tradition and fullest conviction of it. From age to age this book has been its companion and its minister. And there is this to be observed about it. It has been equally and in equal mea- sure the prayer-book of public and common wor- ship, and the chosen treasury of meditation, guid- ance, comfort to the individual soul. To each of 392 EARLY SACRED POETRY. these two purposes, in many respects widely dif- ferent, it has lent itself with equal suitableness ; and it has been to men of the most widely dif- ferent times and ideas what no other book has been. Whenever the Book of Psalms began to be put together, and whenever it was completed, from that time in the history of the world, the religious affections and the religious emotions, the object of which was the One Living God of all found their final, their deepest, their unsur- passed expression. From that time to this there never has been a momentary pause, when some- where or other the praises of His glory and the prayers of His worshippers have not been re- hearsed in its words. There are other collections of ancient religious poetry venerable for their age, for which our in- terest and respect are bespoken. In the preced- ing lecture I glanced at two examples of them, the primitive utterances of two great religions of Asia — the Indian hymns of the Veda, the Persian hymns of the Zendavesta. Separated as we are from these by great chasms of time and still THE PSALMS. 393 greater differences of ideas, we have been taught, rightly I think, to see in them the words of men 'feeling after' Him whom they could not see but could not help believing, and expressing, as best they could, their thoughts of his footsteps and his tokens. But put at the highest what they were in religious significance to their own age, they were so to their own age alone. They were the seeds of no spiritual truth to the ages after them or to mankind ; whatever there was of it in them, though they were themselves preserved with jealous reverence, was overlaid and perished. There were, I am ready to believe, in the ancient world many attempts to know God, to learn His mind, to rest under his shadow, to lay hold on His hope. There was only one which as a reli- gion attained its end ; only one acknowledged by God, by the blessing of vitality and fruitful- ness. Compared with the Psalms of that religion which was going on, side by side with them, in a little corner of the world, the preparation for the ' fulness of time ' — these remains of early heathen religion are like the appearance of the illumin- 394 EARLY SACRED POETRY. ated but dead surface of the moon, with its burnt-out and extinct volcanoes, contrasted with the abounding light and splendour of the unex- hausted sun, still, age after age, the source of life and warmth and joy to the world, still waking up new energies and developing new wonders. We find in these hymns a high imaginative sense of divine power and goodness to man ; an acknowledgment of human weakness and depend- ence ; a sense of sin and wrong-doing, childish and vague, yet sincere, and leading men to throw themselves on Divine compassion for forgiveness ; — and a growing sense, more observable in the Zend hymns ascribed to Zoroaster than in the songs of the Veda, of the greatness of the moral law, of truth, of righteousness, of duty. But that of which, as it seems to me, we do not find the faintest trace, is the meeting and, so to speak, the contact of the spirit of man with the God whom he worships and celebrates. The position of the worshipper and the singer is absolutely an ex- ternal one ; and he thinks of no other. He gazes THE PSALMS. 395 up with wonder and it may be hope at the Sky, the Sun, the Fire, the Storm ; he invokes That of which they are the garment, the manifestation or the disguise ; he urges the fulfilment of the Divine moral rule of right and wrong ; he loses sometimes the thought of power shown in the fire or in the sky, in the deeper and all-embracing thought of the Father in heaven. But to ap- proach Him with the full affections of a human soul — to draw nigh in communion with Him, heart to heart — to rejoice in Him, to delight in Him, to love Him — all these inward movements of the unseen spirit of man to the one unseen source and centre of all good, — this, as far as my knowledge goes, is an unknown experience, an undiscovered sphere, to the poets of the Veda or the Zendavesta. When in later times Nature ceased to satisfy, and the riddles of the world became importunate and overwhelming in their hopelessness, the religious feeling which wor- shipped God, hidden and veiled in nature, could not endure the strain : it passed away, and the refuge was Pantheism or Annihilation. 396 EARLY SACRED POETRY. To pass from the Veda to the Psalms is to pass at one bound from poetry, heightened cer- tainly by a religious sentiment, to religion itself, in its most serious mood and most absorbing form ; tasking, indeed, all that poetry can furnish to meet its imperious and diversified demands for an instrument of expression ; but in its essence far beyond poetry. It is passing at one bound from ideas, at best vague, wavering, uncertain of themselves, to the highest ideas which can be formed by the profoundest and most cultivated reason, about God and the soul, its law, its end, its good. The contrast is absolute as to the object of worship. I am ready to see in the early Indian hymns something very different from the idol- atry and the Pantheism of later times — a genuine feeling after the Unseen and the Almighty Father, a glimpse caught from time to time of His glory, an awful belief, not un- natural though mistaken, that He, a God that hideth Himself, was in the wind, and in the fire, and in the storm, rather than in the still small THE PSALMS. 397 voice. But the best that can be said is that ' they did not know what they worshipped.' They failed to seize firmly the central truth, without which religion cannot live : if ever they saw it, it faded immediately ; it melted away into endless changes. What a gap between that and the steady, clear, unwavering thought of the Psalms : — He, and He only, the One Living God, from first to last the burden and the worship of each successive Psalm — He and He only, addressed without doubt, confounded with nothing else, invoked without misgiving or possibility of the thought of another : He, the foundation and maker and hope of all things, recognised in His glorious works, yet never for a moment identified with them ; worshipped without fear under various names, spoken of without fear in His mighty doings in such phrases as human language in its weakness could supply, surrounded without fear in thought by powers awful in their unseen and unknown greatness to human imagination — ' God standing as a Judge among gods ' — without fear, I say, 398 EARLY SACRED POETRY. because there was no risk of the supreme, central, immoveable idea of the Godhead being dis- turbed or impaired — the Lord of Hosts, the God of Gods, the King of Glory. This one marvellous belief (assumption, tradition, reve- lation, according to our point of view) runs through the Psalms, clearly, naturally, with the freedom and steady force of the stream of a great river. Do those who are for putting all ancient religious poetry on the same general level take in the significance of this character- istic of the Psalms? The first volume of Mr. Max Muller's trans- lation of the Rig- Veda is composed of Hymns to the Storm-Gods, or the Winds, awful in their might and terror, and yet the givers of rain and fruitfulness. Under this aspect, veiled under these natural wonders, the Infinite, it is sup- posed, was worshipped. The frequent power and beauty of these songs, in the midst of passages to us unintelligible and grotesque, is undeniable. The Storm-Gods are invoked along with Indra, ' Him who created light when THE PSALMS. 399 there was no light, and form when there was no form, and who was born together with the dawns : ' along with Agni, the Fire-God, whose might no god or mortal withstands. They are the ' wild ones who sing their song, unconquer- able by might,' companions of those 'who in heaven are enthroned as gods, who toss the clouds across the surging sea.' They are pictured as an ' exulting and sportive host,' riding in their chariots, with swift steeds, with their spears and bright ornaments, driving furiously, rejoicing in their fierce career, darken- ing the earth under the storm-cloud, dealing the thunderbolt and the abundance of rain : — ' I hear their whips (the thunder peals), almost close by, as they crack them in their hands ; they gain splendour on their way. 'Who is the oldest among you here, ye shakers of heaven and earth, when ye shake them like the hem of a garment ? 'At your approach the son of man holds himself down ; the wreathed cloud fled at your fierce anger They at whose racings 400 EARLY SACRED POETRY. the earth, like a hoary King, trembles for fear on their ways. 1 From the shout of the Storm-Gods over the whole space of the earth men reeled forward. ' They make the rocks to tremble, they tear asunder the trees of the forest. Come on, ye Storm-Gods, like madmen, ye gods with your whole tribe.' And their blessings are invoked, their anger deprecated ; wielders of the lightning, they are besought to aim their bolts at the enemy and the wicked : — c What now, then ? When will you take us as a dear father takes his son by both hands ? Whither now ? On what errand of yours are you going in heaven, not on earth ; where are your newest favours, O ye Storm- Gods ; where the blessings ? Where all the delights ? 1 Let not one sin after another, difficult to be conquered, overcome us : let it depart, together with evil desire Give to the worshippers strength, glorious, invincible in THE PSALMS. 401 battle, brilliant, wealth-giving, known to all men. Grant unto us wealth, durable, rich in men, defying all onslaughts— wealth, a hun- dred and a thousand-fold, ever increasing. . . . I add an extract given by Mr. Max Muller from the Zendavesta : — 'I ask thee, tell me the truth, O Ahura (the Living one) ! who was from the beginning the father of the pure world? Who made a path for the sun and for the stars? Who but thou makest the moon to increase and decrease! That, O Mazda (the Wise) and other things, I wish to know. ' I ask thee, tell me the truth, O Ahura ! Who holds the earth and the clouds that they do not fall? Who holds the sea and the trees ? Who has given swiftness to the wind and the clouds? Who is the creator of the good spirit ? 1 I ask thee, tell me the truth, O Ahura ? Who has made the kindly light and the dark- ness? Who has made the kindly light and Dd 402 EARLY SACRED POETRY. the awaking ? Who has made the mornings, the noons, and the nights, they who remind the wise of his duty ? ' The Psalms are full of the glory of God in the 'heaven and earth and sea and all that is therein.' Their writers are not insensible to those wonders, so familiar, yet so amazing, which woke up a 'fearful joy' in the singers of the far East : — ' The day is thine, and the night is Thine ; Thou hast prepared the light and the sun. ' The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handy-work. One day telleth another, and one night certineth" another Their sound is gone out into all lands, and their words to the ends of the world. ' Thou hast set all the borders of the earth. Thou hast made summer and winter. Who covereth the heaven with clouds, and pre- pareth rain for the earth ; and maketh the grass to grow upon the mountains, and herb for the use of men. THE PSALMS. 403 * Praise the Lord upon earth, ye dragons and all deeps : fire and hail, snow and vapour, wind and storm, fulfilling His word/ But there is one Psalm where the awful might and grandeur of the storm fills the writer's mind, the Psalm, as it has been called, of the 1 Seven Thunders ; ' of the seven times repeated ' Voices of God,' over the sea and the mountains, the forest and the wilderness, as the storm travels onward ; ' beginning with Gloria in Excelsis and ending with In terris Pax ' — the 29th : — ' Give unto the Lord, O ye mighty, give unto the Lord glory and strength. ' Give the Lord the honour due unto His name ; worship the Lord with holy worship, ' The voice of the Lord is upon the waters ; it is the glorious God that maketh the thunder. 'The voice of the Lord is upon many waters. 'The voice of the Lord is mighty in ope- ration. ' The voice of the Lord is a glorious voice. D d 2 404 EARLY SACRED POETRY. ' The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedar trees ; yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Libanus. ' He maketh them also to skip like a calf ; Libanus also and Sirion like a young unicorn. ' The voice of the Lord divideth the flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness ; yea, the Lord shaketh the wil- derness of Kades. ' The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve, and discovereth the forests ; in His temple doth every one speak of His glory. ' The Lord sitteth above the waterflood ; the Lord remaineth a King for ever. 1 The Lord shall give strength unto His people; the Lord shall give His people the blessing of peace.' Am I not justified in saying that, in passing from the hymns of the Veda to the Psalms, we pass from poetry to serious and grave religion ? And yet it is in the fresh and bold expression of an indefinite religious sentiment, of indefinite yet real religious awe and delight and admira- THE PSALMS. 405 tion in the presence of the glories and wonders of nature, an expression not troubling itself about logical consistency, and not yet stiffened and cramped by the rules and forms of definite superstitions, that the charm and interest of the Vedic hymns chiefly consist. If the contrast is great between them and the Psalms, in respect to the way in which each sees God in Nature, it is immeasurably greater between what each understood by religion, both as regards God and as regards man ; in what each thought of God, in what each desired of Him and trusted Him for ; in what each thought of man's relation to God, of the meaning and the law of man's life, of man's capacities, of his sin, his hope, his blessedness. The following is not from the Rig- Veda, but from the Zendavesta, in which a moral earnest- ness is more observable. It is part of what is supposed to be a hymn of Zoroaster. I give it in Mr. Max Muller's translation : — 1 I. Now I shall proclaim to all who have come to listen, the praises of Thee, the all- 406 EARL Y SA CRED POETR Y. wise Lord, and the hymns of Vohumano (the good spirit). Wise Asha ! I ask that (thy) grace may appear in the lights of heaven. ' 2. Hear with your ears what is best, per- ceive with your minds what is pure, so that every man may for himself choose his tenets before the great doom ! May the wise be on our side ! ' 3. Those old Spirits who are twins, made known what is good and what is evil in thoughts, words, and deeds. Those who are good distinguished between the two, not those who are evil-doers. ' 4. When these two Spirits came together, they made first life and death, so that there should be at last the most wretched life for the bad, but for the good blessedness. ' 5. Of these two Spirits the evil one chose the worst deeds ; the kind Spirit, he whose garment is the immovable sky, chose what is right ; and they also who faithfully please Ahuramazda by good works. '6. Those who worshipped the Devas and THE PSALMS. 407 were deceived, did not rightly distinguish be- tween the two ; those who had chosen the worst Spirit came to hold counsel together, and ran to Aeshma in order to afflict the life of man. ' 7. And to him (the good) came might, and with wisdom virtue ; and the everlasting Armaiti herself made his body vigorous ; it fell to thee to be rich by her gifts. 1 8. But when the punishment of their crimes will come, and, oh Mazda, thy power will be known as the reward of piety for those who delivered (Druj) falsehood into the hand of Asha (truth). ' 9. Let us then be of those who further this world ; oh Ahuramazda, oh bliss-con- ferring Asha! Let our mind be there where wisdom abides. ' 10. Then indeed there will be the fall of the pernicious Druj, but in the beautiful abode of Vohumano, of Mazda, and Asha, will be gathered for ever those who dwell in good report. 408 EARLY SACRED POETRY. '11. Oh men, if you cling to these com- mandments, which Mazda has given, .... which are a torment to the wicked, and a blessing to the righteous, then there will be victory through them.' Beyond this these hymns do not go ; above this they do not rise. Compare with their mea- greness on these points, the fulness of the Psalms : compare these hesitating though deeply touching essays at religion, halting in the outer courts of the Temple, with the majestic and strong confidence of the Psalms, leading the soul through the manifold experiences of the spiritual life to the inmost shrines. Compare the idea of God. He is not only the One, and the Ever- lasting, and the Most Highest, the living God, but He has what in default of a fitter phrase we call a character. He is not only the Maker, the wonder worker of the world ; He is its Holy Ruler and King ; ' its righteous Judge, strong and patient,' 'set in the throne that judgest right ; ' the Hand that feeds all its creatures ; the Eye that watches all its revolutions, and THE PSALMS. 409 pierces to all its lowliest corners ; its Joy, its Hope, its Refuge. He is 'the God of Truth,' * the God that hath no pleasure in wickedness, neither shall any evil dwell with Him.' He is the ' Lord that hath never failed them that seek Him.' He is the ' Helper of the friend- less,' 'the Father of the fatherless,' 'the Hearer of the complaint and the desire of the poor ; ' He is ' the God that maketh men to be of one mind in an house.' 'Who is like to Him, who hath His dwelling so high, and yet humbleth Himself to behold the things in heaven and earth?' And so, from end to end of the Psalms, we have the clear, varied, unstudied recognition of a moral character. In the cer- tainty and consciousness of this most holy sovereignty, the trust and joy of the Psalmists are without restraint. The enthusiasm and imagination of the Vedic poets were kindled at the greatness of nature ; the enthusiasm and ima- gination of the Psalmists, not insensible to that greatness, were far more inspired by the everlast- ing righteousness of the Kingdom of God. 410 EARLY SACRED POETRY. ' O come, let us sing unto the Lord, let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our sal- vation ... for the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In His hand are all the corners of the earth, and the strength of the hills is His also. . . . O come, let us worship and fall down, and kneel before the Lord our Maker. For He is the Lord our God, and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.' 'Thou didst cause thy judgment to be heard from heaven : the earth trembled, and was still. When God arose to judgment, and to help all the meek upon earth.' ' Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad ; let the sea make a noise, and all that therein is. Let the field be joyful and all that is in it ; then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice before the Lord. For He cometh, for He cometh to judge the earth ; and with righteousness to judge the earth, and the people with His truth.' The deep, insisting faith in God's righteous- THE PSALMS. 411 ness cannot find strength enough in language for its triumphant conviction, and never tires of reiteration : — 1 The Lord is King, the earth may be glad thereof: yea, the multitude of the isles may be glad thereof. Clouds and darkness are round about Him ; righteousness and judg- ment are the habitation of His seat. The hills melted like wax at the presence of the Lord ; at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth.' Great as is the earth, great as is nature, its magnificence, its fearful and tremendous powers, One is still seen a King above them, to Whom they are but part of the adornment of His royalty: — ' The Lord is King, and hath put on glorious apparel ; the Lord hath put on His apparel and girded Himself with strength. Ever since the world began hath Thy seat been prepared : Thou art from everlasting. The floods are risen, O Lord, the floods have lift up their voice ; the floods lift up their waves. 412 EARLY SACRED POETRY. The waves of the sea are mighty, and rage horribly ; but yet the Lord who dwelleth on high is mightier.' Great, too, are the uprisings and storms of the moral world, the shock of nations, the breaking up of empires, the madness of raging peoples, the fury of tyrants ; but — ' the Lord is King) be the people never so impatient : He sitteth between the cherubims, be the earth never so unquiet. The Lord is great in Sion, and high above all people.' And it is not in power that the Psalmist finds the matchless prerogative of this kingdom — it is in power, thought of always with absolute moral goodness, power with a yet higher greatness belonging to it, the greatness of righteousness and holi- ness : — 'They (all nations) shall give thanks unto Thy name, which is great, wonderful, and holy. O magnify the Lord our God, and fall down before His footstool, for He is holy.' ' Thy testimonies are very sure ; holiness be- cometh Thine house for ever.' 'Thou, Lord, THE PSALMS. 4r3 art higher than all that are in the earth. Thou art exalted far above all gods. O ye that love the Lord, see that ye hate the thing that is evil There is sprung up light for the righteous, and joyful gladness, for such as are true-hearted. Rejoice in the Lord, ye righteous, and give thanks for a remembrance of His holiness.' The God of the Psalms is the gracious God of the Present, 'whose mercy endureth for ever;' the God not only of Sion and His chosen people Israel, but of all the heathen, of all the nations, of all the islands of the sea and the ends of the earth: the God of the Future, from generation to generation; the God of the future to them that love Him, their certain hope and Saviour, in some unexplained way, in spite of the visible ruin and vanishing of death; the God of the future, also to the mighty, the cruel, and the proud, their certain judge and avenger. Over all human power, however irresistible, over all human pride, however beyond rebuke, over all human wrongfulness and oppression, however 414 EARLY SACRED POETRY. unchecked, there is ever present the all-seeing God of judgment, ever beholding, ever trying the hearts and reins, ever waiting His time of deliverance and retribution, ever preparing the refuge which shall at last shelter the innocent, the doom which must at last smite down the proud : — 'For the sin of their mouth, and for the words of their lips, they shall be taken in their pride. 'The Lord also is a defence for the oppressed, even a refuge in due time of trouble.' His eyes consider the poor, and his eyelids try the children of men. O put your trust in Him always, ye people ; pour out your hearts before Him, for God is our hope. O trust not in wrong and robbery, give not yourselves unto vanity ; if riches increase, set not your heart upon them. God spake once, and twice I have also heard the same ; that power belongeth unto God. And that Thou, Lord, art merciful : for Thou re- wardest every man according to his work.' I say nothing here of the prophetic element THE PSALMS. 415 in the Psalms. It is most characteristic — the way in which they look onward, the way in which they dare to be prophetic — to tell of one, in whom, through suffering and through glory, the world should find its redemption and its peace — 'Desire of me, and I shall give the heathen for thine inheritance, and the ut- most parts of the earth for thy possession.' It is characteristic, unique. But I do not dwell on it here. What I wish to point out is, that all that what is called natural religion, even in its highest speculation, has concluded, of the power, the justice, the goodness of God, is found, clothed with life and recognized in actual deed, with joy and love, in the Psalms, centuries before natural religion was heard of. The Psalm of Creation (civ.) sets forth the magnificence of His bounty over all His works, from the light with which He ' decks Himself as with a garment,' to the rivers running among the hills, from which the wild asses quench their thirst, the grass for the cattle, and the green herb for the service of men, the wine 416 EARLY SACRED POETRY. that maketh glad, the bread that strengthened his heart, the lions roaring after their prey, man going forth to his work and his labour till the evening, the great and wide sea also, with its creatures great and small innumerable, ' the ships, and that leviathan/ whom Thou hast made 'to play and take his pastime there.' The Psalm of Mercy (ciii.) — mercy, as high as the heaven is in comparison with the earth, forgiveness, putting away sins as far as the west is from the east, — sets forth His dispen- sations of compassion and remedy, — forgiving all our sins, healing all our infirmities, satisfy- ing our mouth with good things, making us young and lusty as an eagle, executing righte- ousness and judgment for all them that are oppressed with wrong, long-suffering, and of great goodness — 'Like as a father pitieth his own children, even so is the Lord merciful to them that fear Him.' I will only call attention to one other feature of these expressions of joy and awful exultation at feeling ourselves encom- passed by the mercy and righteousness of God ; THE PSALMS. 417 and that is the way in which, as in the 65th Psalm, the thought of His power and His over- flowing bounty in Nature — 'Thou makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to praise Thee — Thou visitest the earth and blessest it — Thou crownest the year with Thy goodness — the valleys laugh and sing' — how this is en- twined and enwreathed with the thought of His moral empire, providing for the cravings, overruling the turmoil, of the world of souls : — 'Thou that hearest the prayer, to Thee shall all flesh come. Thou shalt show us wonderful things in Thy righteousness, O God of our salvation ; Thou that art the hope of all the ends of the earth and of them that remain in the broad sea. . . . Who stilleth the raging of the sea, and the noise of His waves, and the madness of the people.' Or, again, as in the 147th Psalm, the supreme wonders of the universe are strung and linked together in successive verses with His sympathy for the daily sorrows of mankind. ' He healeth E e 418 EARLY SACRED POETRY. those that are broken in heart, and giveth medicine to heal their sickness. He telleth the number of the stars, and calleth them all by their names.' Compare again in the Psalms their idea of man; there in nothing even approaching to it in that early religious poetry which is some- times classed along with them. Take, for in- stance, the view which pervades them of the unity of mankind. The horizon of the Vedic hymns, e.g., is confined to the worshipper who sings them. The Psalms, the songs of that chosen people which God Med like sheep by the hand of Moses and Aaron,' and expressing in every form the glory and the blessing in- volved in that wondrous election — fIn Jewry is God known, His name is great in Israel, at Salem is His tabernacle, and His dwelling in Sion ' — yet claim as the subjects of their King, and the sharers in their worship, every nation, every family of mankind. No feature is more striking in the Psalms than the unquestioning and natural directness with which they embrace THE PSALMS. 419 the heathen, the nations, as equally included with Israel, in the purposes and the Kingdom of God. The question asked by the Apostle in a degenerate age of Judaism, ' Is He the God of the Jews only ? Is he not also of the Gentiles ? ' was never a question to the writers of the Psalms, even under the bitterness of hea- then oppression, even under the keenest sense of the prerogative of God's people, whether in triumph or in punishment. There is no lack of sorrowful sighing to the God of Israel against the heathen that ' do not know Him ' — no lack of the stern joy of victory and vengeance, when the day of the heathen came. But this does not interfere with the primary belief that the whole human race belongs to God now, and has to do with Him now ; that it is destined for Him more completely hereafter. ' He Who is praised in Sion ' is also ' the hope of all the ends of the earth, and of them that remain in the broad sea ' : — 'I will give thanks unto Thee, O Lord, among the people ; I will sing praises unto E e 2 420 EARLY SACRED POETRY. Thee, among the nations.' ' The Lord's name is praised from the rising up of the sun unto the going down thereof. The Lord is high above all nations, and His glory above the heavens.' ' All nations which Thou hast made shall come and worship Thee, O Lord, and shall glorify Thy name.' c God reigneth over the heathen ; God sitteth upon His holy seat. The princes of the people are joined unto the people of the God of Abraham. God is very high exalted ; all the shields of the earth are His.' And with this universal idea of human nature and its relation to God, there is joined an equally characteristic view of its depths and heights, of its greatness, of its vanity. Nothing is more easy than to take a high view of it, alone \ or a low view, alone: there are facts and appearances in abundance to account for and justify either. But the view of the Psalms combines them ; man's littleness and insigni- ficance, in relation to the immense universe about him, and to its infinite and everlasting THE PSALMS. 421 God ; man's littleness in his relation to time, to his own short passage between its vast before and after, his feebleness, his misery, his sin : — on the other side, man's greatness, as the con- summate work of God's hands, thought worthy of his care, his choice, his provident and watchful regard ; man's greatness and respon- sibility, as capable of knowing God and loving Him, of winning his blessing and perishing under his judgment : man's greatness even as a sinner able to sink so low, and yet to rise by repentance out of the deepest degradation and most hopeless ruin. The riddle of man's ex- istence could be no unfamiliar subject, wherever men reflected at all : it certainly was not in India, in China, in Greece. Those deep and awful strains of the 88th and 90th Psalms have their counterpart in the profound despair of the sacred books of Buddhism, in the solemn, measured truth, in the plaintive perplexities of the choruses of Greek tragedy. But they painted it to the life, and there they stopped short. The Psalms confessed it and laid it up 422 EARLY SACRED POETRY. in the bosom of God, confident, rejoicing, that though they saw not yet the light, 'all would at last be well.' And then think of the high moral ideal of what they look for in those whom God ap- proves ; the hunger and thirst after righteous- ness which they reveal : ' Lord, who shall dwell in Thy Tabernacle, and who shall rest upon Thy holy hill ? Even he that leadeth an uncorrupt life, and doeth the thing that is right, and speaketh the truth from his heart. He that hath not slandered his neighbour — he that sitteth not by himself, but is lowly in his own eyes — he that sweareth unto his neighbour and disappointeth him not, though it be to his own hindrance.' ' Examine me, O Lord, and prove me ; try out my reins and my heart/ 'Who can tell how oft he offendeth — O cleanse thou me from my secret faults.' Think of the boldness with which they take hold of the great depths and problems of man's existence, the triumph of evil, the oppression THE PSALMS. 423 of the poor, the sufferings of the good : the fearless way in which these enigmas are faced, the reverent and trustful answer given to them : — ' Fret not thyself because of the ungodly, neither be thou envious against the evil- doers.' . . . ' Put thy trust in the Lord and be doing good.' . . . ' Commit thy way unto the Lord, and put thy trust in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. He shall make thy righteousness as clear as the light, and thy just dealing as the noonday. Hold thee still in the Lord and abide patiently on Him ; but grieve not thyself at him whose way doth prosper, against the man that doeth after evil counsels.'. Think of that high faith in the unseen Good- ness, of that high desire after His love and His unseen reward, which animate the Psalms : — ' The Lord is my Light and my Salvation ; whom then shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my salvation ; of whom then shall I be afraid?' .... ' My heart hath 424 EARLY SACRED POETRY. talked of Thee. Seek ye my face : Thy face, Lord, will I seek.' . . . . ' 0 my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my God, my goods are nothing unto Thee.' .... 'The Lord himself is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup.' Where, except in the Psalms, did ancient religion think of placing the blessedness of man, whether in this life or beyond it, not in the outward good things which we know on earth, not in knowledge, not in power, but in the exercise of the affections? To take one point more. There is one feature about the Psalms which it requires an effort to disengage, because it is so universal in them, and has become so familiar to us, and which yet is in that age of the world peculiar to them — the assumption that pervades every one of them, the vivid sense which shows itself in every conceivable form, of the relation, the direct^ close, immediate relation of the soul of man to God. To us Christians this has become the first axiom of religous truth, the first THE PSALMS. 425 element of our religious feeling : to the ancient thought of the world, God, because of His unapproachable greatness, was, to each single man, whatever he might be to the community, a distant God. Who would think of pouring out his heart to the Indra of the Vedas : who would dream of being athirst for the Father Zeus of Homer, or longing after the Jupiter, though styled the Best and Greatest, of later times ? It never occurred to those worshippers, that besides the sacrifices and praises, besides the prayer for protection, for deliverance, for benefits, to powers supreme but far off, and still further removed from the sympathies and the troubles of mankind, — besides these out- ward ways of religion, the soul could have secret yet real access, everywhere, every moment, to Infinite compassion, Infinite loving-kindness, In- finite and all-sufficing goodness, to Whom, as into the heart of the tenderest of friends, it could pour out its distresses, before whom, as before the feet of a faithful Comforter and Guide, it could lay down the burden of its care, 426 EARLY SACRED POETRY. and commit its way. But this, I need not remind you, is the idea of religion which ap- pears on the face of every single Psalm. It is the idea of the unfailing tenderness of God, His understanding of every honest prayer, the certainty that in the vastness and the cata- strophes of the world the soul in its own single- ness has a refuge, is linked at the throne of the worlds to its own reward and strength, is held by the hand, is guided by the eye, of One who cares for the weakest as much as He is greater than the greatest of His creatures. And there is no mood of mixed and varied feeling, no form of deep and yearning affection, no tone of absorbing emotion, in which this sense of what God is to the soul does not express itself. It allies itself to the most poignant grief, to the bitterest self-reproach and shame ; even a despair, which, like in the 88th Psalm, will allow itself to mention no word of hope, betrays the hope which yet lurks under it in its passionate appeal to God, in its unquenchable confidence in prayer: — THE PSALMS. 427 ' O Lord God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before Thee : O let my prayer enter into Thy presence, incline thine ear unto my calling.' Sometimes it puts into words its belief — ' O thou that nearest the prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh come ; ' sometimes it delights in the briefest and most emphatic word that implies it — ' O God, Thou art my God, early will I seek Thee ; ' ' I said unto the Lord, Thou art my God, hear the voice of my prayer, O Lord.' There is a fearless free- dom, a kind of buoyancy and elasticity in the way in which human feeling and affection expand and unfold themselves in the Psalms, and press upwards in eager and manifold desire. They are winged with joy and inexpressible delight : or the soul brings before itself with unrelenting keenness how it is seen and pierced through and through, from the first instant of existence, and in depths inaccessible to itself, by the eye of wisdom and holiness which goes through the world ; or it looks up to that eye, meeting it in return and guiding it ; looks up 428 EARLY SACKED POETRY. with tender and waiting confidence — 'As the eyes of a maiden to the hand of her mistress, even so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God, till He have mercy upon us ; ' — or, r Out of the deeps it calls to Him,' 'fleeing to Him for refuge,' waiting for Him ' more than they that watch for the morning, yea, more than they that watch for the morning ; ' or it refrains itself and keeps itself still, ' like as a child that is weaned resteth on his mother ; ' or it throws itself blindly on His mercy, in affectionate, all- surrendering trust — ' Into Thy hands I commend my spirit, for Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, Thou God of truth ; ' or it rebukes itself for its impatience — ' Why art thou so vexed, O my soul, and why art thou so disquieted within me? O put thy trust in God, which is the help of my countenance, and my God ; ' — or, without the faintest hesitation of doubt in His marvellous loving-kindness, it makes sure of His answering sympathy, ' for Thou shalt hem- me ; — keep me as the apple of an eye, hide me under the shadow of Thy wings ; ' or it confides to THE PSALMS. 429 Him its entreaty fof a little respite as the end draws near — ' O spare me a little that I may recover my strength, before I go hence and be no more seen.' Or, the helpless creature, it appeals beseechingly to the Creator's mind- fulness of that which He thought it worth His while to call into being — ' Thy mercy endureth for ever : despise not then the work of Thine own hands ; ' or it exults in the security of its retreat — ' O how plentiful is Thy goodness which Thou hast laid up for them that fear Thee Thou shalt hide them privily by Thine own presence from the provoking of all men ; Thou shalt keep them secretly in Thy tabernacle from the strife of tongues ; ' or it gives utterance to its deep longings, and finds their full satisfaction in the unseen object of its love — 'Like as the hart desireth the water- brooks, even so longeth my soul after Thee, O God. My soul is athirst for God, even for the living God : when shall I come to appear before the presence of God ' — ' O God, Thou art my God : early will I seek Thee ; my soul 430 EARLY SACRED POETRY. thirsteth after Thee, my flesh also longeth after Thee, in a barren and dry land where no water is For Thy loving-kindness is better than the life itself. . . . My soul shall be satisfied even as it were with marrow and fat- ness, when my mouth praiseth Thee with joyful lips. Because Thou hast been my helper, there- fore under the shadow of Thy wings will I rejoice/ i What was there anywhere else, like this in- tensely human outpouring of affection, in its most diversified and purest forms, affection fastening itself with the most natural freshness and sim- plicity on things unseen ; so exulting, yet so reverent; so tender, yet so strong, and manly, and severe ; so frank and unconstrained in its fears and griefs and anxieties ; so alive to its weakness, yet so willing to accept the discipline of affliction, and so confident of the love behind it ; so keenly and painfully sensitive to the present ravages of evil and sin and death, so joyfully hopeful, and sure of the victory of good. There is an awful yet transporting THE PSALMS. 431 intuition which opens upon the Christian soul in some supreme moment of silence or of trial. 'We feel' — so do they tell us, on whom that experience has come — 'we feel that while the world changes, we are one and the same. We are led to understand the nothingness of things around us, and we begin, by degrees, to perceive that there are but two beings in the whole universe, — our own souls and the God who made us.' fWe rest in the thought of two, and two only, supreme and luminously self- evident beings — myself, and my Creator.' We stand face to face with the certainty of our Maker's existence. We become conscious of being alone with the Eternal. This great ex- perience had been the Psalmist's. In this the Psalmist took refuge from the perplexities of life. ' His treadings had well-nigh slipped,' when he saw 'the prosperity of the wicked' — not thinking of their 'fearful end.' But at once the thought comes on him, in whose hands he was : — ' " Nevertheless I am alway by Thee ; for 432 EARLY SACRED POETRY. Thou hast holden me by Thy right hand. Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel, and after that receive me with glory ; whom have I in heaven but Thee ? and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison with Thee. My flesh and my heart faileth ; but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever." . . . . "I have set God always before me ; for He is on my right hand, therefore I shall not fall. Therefore my heart was glad and my glory rejoiced ; my flesh also shall rest in hope." .... "Thou shalt shew me the path of life; in Thy presence is the fulness of joy ; in Thy right hand there is pleasure for evermore." . . . . " When I wake up after Thy like- ness, I shall be satisfied with it." ' I am surely not saying too much in asserting that nothing in kind like this, nothing in any way comparable to it, is to be found in the noblest and highest examples of any other ancient religious language. We know what there was in the world besides ; where do we THE PSALMS. 433 look for its counterpart ? The Psalms stand up like a pillar of fire and light in the history of the early world. They lift us at once into an atmosphere of religious thought, which is the highest that man has ever reached ; they come with all the characteristic affections and emotions of humanity, everything that is deep- est, tenderest, most pathetic, most aspiring, along with all the plain realities of man's condition and destiny, into the presence of the living God. I am justified in saying that in that stage of the world's history this is absolutely unique. I am now only stating it as a fact, however to be accounted for. Christians account for it from the history in which the Psalms are em- bedded, and by the light and guidance from above, implied in that history ; and what other account can be given I find it hard to imagine. That such thoughts, such words, so steady and uniform in their central idea, so infinitely varied in their forms of expressing it, should have been produced in any of the nations which we call heathen, is to me absolutely inconceivable. Ff 434 EARLY SACRED POETRY. That they should have been produced among the Hebrews, if the Hebrews were only as other nations, is equally inconceivable. But I want only to impress the fact, one of the most certain and eventful in the history of the world. It is idle to talk of Semitic Monotheism, even if such tendency at that time can be proved. There is Monotheism and Monotheism : the Mono- theism even of the Koran is not the Monotheism of the Psalms ; and Monotheism is a poor and scanty word to express the continued flow of affectionateness, of joy and mourning, of hope and love, of every tone, every strain, high and low, in the human soul, which we find in the Psalms. Nor does it avail to say that they are more modern than the songs of the Veda, or the Zendavesta. Chronology is a very uncertain measure of national development and culture, and the men who sung the Vedic hymns had a language, and therefore had had a training of thought and experience, as advanced as the Hebrew Psalmists. The Psalms are certainly no product of civilisation and philosophy ; the THE PSALMS. 435 differences of date among them, which are con- siderable, from the days of David, perhaps of Moses, to the ' Pilgrim Songs ' of the returning exiles in the days of Zerubbabel, make no differ- ence in this respect. Nor is it relevant to point out alleged imperfections in the morality of some of the Psalms. This is not the occasion to go into the allegation itself; but were it sustainable, it would only make the wonder of the whole phenomenon more surprising. Here is a nation certainly rude and fierce, certainly behind its neighbours in the arts of life, in the activity and enterprise of intelligence which lead to know- ledge, to subtlety or width of thought, or to the sense and creation of beauty, and described in its own records as beset with incorrigible tendencies to the coarsest irreligion and degeneracy. Are we not constantly told that the songs of a people reflect its character ; that a religion in its idea of God, reflects its worshippers ? What sort of character is reflected in the Psalms? They come to us from a people like their neighbours, merciless and bloody, yet they are full of love F f 2 436 EARLY SACRED POETRY. and innocence and mercy. They come from a people whose deep sins and wrong-doing are recorded by their own writers ; yet the Psalms breathe the hunger and thirst of the soul after righteousness. They come from a race still in the rude childhood of the world : yet they ex- press the thoughts about God and duty, and about the purpose and reward of human life, which are those of the most refined, the gentlest, the most saintly, the most exalted, whom the ages of the world have ever seen, down to its latest. The question is asked in these days, is God knowable ? The answer depends on a further question. Whether God can be known by man depends on whether we have the faculties for knowing. We have faculties which enable us to know the phenomena of sense and of the out- ward world. We have faculties different from them, which enable us to know the truths of mathematics. Have we anything else? By whatever name we call them, we have powers very unlike, both in their subjects and in their THE PSALMS. 437 mode of working, to the knowledge of sense or the processes of mathematical science. There is a wonderful art, connected on the one hand with the senses, on the other hand with mathematical truth, yet in itself having that which belongs to neither, and which we call music. There is another, closely connected also with the senses, but, except in the most general way, beyond the domain of mathematical precision, which we call painting. There is yet a third— the art, or the power, or the gift, of calling into existence out of the imagination and the feelings and the lan- guage of men, by means of choice words and their measured rhythm, new creations of beauty and grandeur, which keep their hold on the minds and history of men for ages — the won- drous art of poetry. In music, in painting, in poetry, we say that we know. There are powers in human nature and in the human mind of deal- ing with these subjects, powers of the greatest activity and energy, most subtle and most deli- cate, yet most real, undoubting of themselves and undoubted in their effects, of which no one 438 EARLY SACRED POETRY. makes any question ; certain, within limits, of what they know and do, but which yet in their tests of certainty are absolutely different from mathe- matical or physical knowledge, and absolutely impatient of the verifications which are indispen- sable in sensible and mathematical proof. And a man might be the greatest physicist and the greatest mathematician, while all their marvellous regions were to him absolutely a blank ; though his mind was one to which, say music, its mean- ing and its laws, were absolutely incomprehen- sible, the most impossible of puzzles. He might not know a false note in music from a true one ; he might be utterly unable to see the difference between what is noble and base in it, or to dis- tinguish the greatest work of Handel or Beetho- ven from any other collection of sounds. And yet the musician knozvs : he knows the glory and the truth, and the ordered perfection of which he speaks ; he knows that this perfection is governed by the exactest laws ; he knows that, like all per- fection, it depends on infinitesimal dijfere?ices, which yet are most real ones : his faculty of THE PSALMS. 439 knowing and his knowledge, however he has got to them, and although other men or other races have them not, and he knows not the channel of communication between his own knowledge and their minds, are their own warrant and witness. The musical unbeliever might question the pos- sibility of knowing anything about what to him would be so vague and misty, full of arbitrary definitions and unintelligible rules, and, if he was obstinate, might vainly seek to be convinced. Yet the world of music is a most real world ; man has faculties for reaching it and judging of it ; and the evidences of its reality are in the domain of fact and history. Is there in human nature such a faculty, sepa- rate from the faculties by which we judge of the things of sense and the abstractions of the pure intellect, bu^ yet a true and trustworthy faculty, for knowing God — for knowing God, in some such way as we know the spirits and souls, half disclosed, half concealed under the mask and garment of the flesh, among whom we have been brought up, among whom we live ? Can we 44-0 EARLY SACRED POETRY. know Him in such a true sense as we know those whom we love and those whom we dis- like ; those whom we venerate and trust, and those whom we fear and shrink from? The course of the world, its history, its literature, our every-day life, presuppose such knowledge of men and character ; they confirm its existence and general trustworthiness, by the infinitely varied and continuous evidence of results. The question whether there is such a faculty in the human soul for knowing its Maker and God — knowing Him, though behind the veil, — knowing Him, though flesh and blood can never see Him, — knowing Him, though the questioning intellect loses itself in the thought of Him,— this question finds here its answer. In the Psalms is the evi- dence of that faculty, and that with it man has not worked in vain. 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Compiled by permission of the late J. M'Leod Campbell, D.D., from Sermons preached chiefly at Row in 1829 — 31. Crown Svo. $s. Campbell (Lewis).— SOME ASPECTS of the CHRIS- TIAN IDEAL. Sermons by the Rev. L. Campbell, M.A., LL.D., Professor of Greek in the University of St. Andrew's. Crown 8vo. 6s. THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. Canterbury.— BOY-LIFE : its Trial, its Strength, its Fulness. Sundays in Wellington College, 1859— 1873. Three Books. By E. W. Benson, D.D., formerly Master, Archbishop of Canterbury. New Edition, with Additions Crown 8vo. 6s. t( The sermons thus reprinted are ad7?iirable specimens of -what school sermons should be. . . . Every one of them marked with a vigorous grasp of the subject treated of a true sympathy with the preacher 's congregatioji, and a mately and courageous, but at the same time thoroughly devotional treatment. . . . 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Cellarius.— A NEW ANALOGY BETWEEN REVEAL- ED RELIGION and The Course and Constitution of Nature. By Rev. T. W. Fowle, Rector of Islip, Oxford ("Cbllarius"). Crown 8vo. 6s. This work having been regarded with favour by competent theologians and thinkers, the author has decided to set aside his nom de plume and appear in his true character. The Guardian says : " The book has great moral and spiritual earnestness. It is as reverent in tone as refined in style ; it abounds in traces of deep and religious thoughtfulness, and in passages of suggestive beauty. " A nd the Spectator thus analyses the work : 1 ' Well worth studying. . . . Full of thoughtful and happy suggestions. . . . We have not space to notice the many points of intei'est in A New Analogy, — points which, whether zve feel agreement or disagreement with tJmn, at least set us thinking. . . . 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Fellowship : Letters Addressed to my Sister Mourners. Fcap. 8vo, cloth gilt. 3J. 6d. Ferrar.— A COLLATION OF FOUR IMPORTANT MSS. OF THE GOSPELS, viz., 13, 69, 124, 346, with a view to prove their common origin, and to restore the Text of their Archetype. By the late W. H. Ferrar, M.A., Professor of Latin in the University of Dublin. Edited by T. K. Abbott, M.A., Professor of Biblical Greek, Dublin. 4to, half morocco. 10s. 6d. Forbes. — Works by Granville H. Forbes, Rector of Broughton : THE VOICE OF GOD IN THE PSALMS. Cr. 8vo. 6s.6d. VILLAGE SERMONS. By a Northamptonshire Rector. Crown 8vo. 6s. Fowle.— A NEW ANALOGY BETWEEN REVEALED RELIGION AND THE COURSE AND CONSTITUTION OF NATURE. By Rev. T. W. Fowle, Rector of Islip, Oxford ("Cellarius "). Crown Svo. 6s. " The book has great moral and spiritual earnestness. It is as reverent in tone as refined in style, it abounds i?i traces of deep and religious thoughffulness, and in passages of suggestive beauty.'''' — Guardian. 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By John Hamilton, Author of ''Thoughts on Truth and Error. " i2mo. 2s. 6d. Hardwick. — Works by the Ven. Archdeacon Hardwick : CHRIST AND OTHER MASTERS. A Historical Inquiry into some of the Chief Parallelisms and Contrasts between Christ- ianity and the Religious Systems of the Ancient World. New Edition, revised, and a Prefatory Memoir by the Rev. Francis Procter, M. A. New Edition. Crown Svo. ios. 6d. A HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Middle Age. From Gregory the Great to the Excommunication of Luther. Edited by William Stubbs, M.A., Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford. With Four Maps constructed for this work by A. Keith Johnston. New Edition. Crown Svo. ios. 6d. 11 As a Manual for the student of ecclesiastical history in the Middle Ages, we know no English work which can be compared to Mr. Hardwick 's book. " — Guardian. A HISTORY of the CHRISTIAN CHURCH DURING THE REFORMATION. New Edition, revised by Professor Stubbs. Crown Svo. ioj. 6d. 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THE POSITION OF THE PRIEST DURING CON- SECRATION in the English Communion Service. A Supplement and a Reply. Crown 8vo. is. 6d, Hughes.— THE MANLINESS of CHRIST. By Thomas Hughes, Author of 'Tom Brown's School Days.' Cr. 8vo. 4s. 6d. "He has given to the world 'a volume, which so truly, and in some places so picturesquely and strikingly, represents the life of our Lord, that rue can only express the hope that it may find its way into the hands of thousands of English working men.''' — Spectator. Hutton.— ESSAYS : THEOLOGICAL and LITERARY. By Richard Hutton, M.A. New and cheaper issue. 2 vols. 8vo. iSs. Hyrnni Ecclesiae. — Fcap. 8vo. ys.6d. This collection was edited by Dr. Newman while he lived at Oxford. 14 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. Hyacinthe.— CATHOLIC REFORM. By Father Hyacinthe. Letters, Fragments, Discourses. Translated by Madame Hyacinthe-Loyson. With a Preface by the Very Rev. A. P. Stanley, D.D., late Dean of Westminster. Cr. 8vo. *js. 6d. 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Jellett.— THE EFFICACY OF PRAYER : being the Don- nellan Lectures for 1877. By J. H. Jellett, B.D., Senior Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, formerly President of the Royal Irish Academy. Second Edition. 8vo. $s. Jennings and Lowe.— THE PSALMS, with Introduc- tions and Critical Notes. By A. C. Jennings, B.A/, Jesus Col- lege, Cambridge, Tyrwhitt Scholar, Crosse Scholar, Hebrew University Scholar, and Fry Scholar of St. John's College; helped in parts by W. H. Lowe, M.A., Hebrew Lecturer and late Scholar of Christ's College, Cambridge, and Tyrwhitt Scholar. Complete in two vols. Crown 8vo. iar. 6d. each. Vol. I, Psalms i. — bxxii., with Prolegomena ; Vol. 2, Psalms lxxiii. — cl. Killen.— THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF IRE- LAND from the Earliest Period to the Present Time. By W. D. Killen, D.D., President of Assembly's College, Belfast, and Professor of Ecclesiastical History. Two vols. 8vo. 2$s. " Those who have the leisure will do well to read these two volumes. 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Herbert Kynaston, M.A., Princi- pal of Cheltenham College. Crown Svo. 6s. Lightfoot. — Works by J. B. Lightfoot, D.D., Bishop of Durham : ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. A Re- vised Text, with Introduction, Notes, and Dissertations. Seventh Edition, revised. Svo, cloth. \2s. While the Author 's object has been to make this commentary generally complete, he has paid special attention to everything relating to St. Paul's personal history and his intercourse zoith the Apestles and Church of the Circumcision, as it is this feature in the Epistle to the Galatians which has given it an overwhelming interest in rexcit theological contrcruersy. The Spectator says — " There is no commentator at once of sounder judg- ment and more liberal than Dr. Lightfoot." ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS. A Revised Text, with Introduction, Notes, and Dissertations. Seventh Edition, revised. 8vo. \2s. i%No commentary in the English language can bs compared with it in regard to fulness of information, exact scholarship, and laboured attempts to settle ruerything about the epistle on a solid foundation. " — Athenoeum. THEOLOGICAL BOOKS, LIGHTFOOT (J. B., Bishop of Dujrham)— continued. ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES TO THE COLOSSIANS AND TO PHILEMON. A Revised Text with Introduction, Notes, etc. Sixth Edition, revised. 8vo. \2.s. ' ' It bears marks of continued and extended reading and research, and of ampler materials at command. Indeed, it leaves nothing to be desired by those who seek to study thoroughly the epistles contained in it, and to do so with all known advantages presented in sufficient detail and in conve- nient form. " — Guardian. ST. CLEMENT OF ROME. An Appendix containing the newly discovered portions of the two Epistles to the Corinthians, with Introductions and Notes, and a Translation of the whole. 8vo. 8s. 6d. ON A FRESH REVISION OF THE ENGLISH NEW TESTAMENT. Second Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. The Author shews in detail the necessity for afresh revision of the authorized version on the follcnuing grounds : — I. False Readings. 2. Artificial distinctions created. 3. Real distinctions obliterated. 4. Faults of Grammar. 5. Faults of Lexicography. 6. Treatment of Proper Names, official titles, etc. 7. Archaisms, defects in the English, errors of the press, etc. " The book is marked by careful scholarship, familiarity with the subject, sobriety, and circumspection.'''' — Athenaeum. Lowe.— ZECHARIAH, HEBREW, AND LXX., THE HEBREW STUDENT'S COMMENTARY ON. With Ex- cursus on several Grammatical Subjects. By W. H. Lowe, M.A., Hebrew Lecturer at Christ's College, Cambridge. Demy 8vo. 10s. 6d. Maclaren.— SERMONS PREACHED at MANCHESTER. By Alexander Maclaren. Sixth Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 4s. 6d. These Sermons represent no special school, but deal with the broad prin- ciples of Christian truth, especially in their bearing on practical, every-day life. A few of the titles are:— "The Stone oj Stumbling," "Love and Forgiveness,'''' "The Living Dead" "Memory in Another World" " Faith in Christ,'''' "Love and Fear" " The Choice of Wisdom" " The Food of the World." A SECOND SERIES OF SERMONS. Fourth Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 4-y. 6d. The Spectator characterises them as "vigorous in style, full of thought, rich in illustration, and in an unusual degree interesting." A THIRD SERIES OF SERMONS. Fifth Edition, Fcap. 8yo, 4/. 6d. THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. lf MACLAREN (A.)— continued. "Sermons more sober and yet more forcible, and with a certain wise and practical spirituality about them it would not be easy to find. "—Spectator. WEEK-DAY EVENING ADDRESSES. Delivered in Manchester. Extra Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d. THE SECRET OF POWER, and Other Sermons. Preached at Manchester. Extra fcap. 8vo. 4s. 6d. Maclear.— Works by the Rev. G. F. Maclear, D.D., Warden of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, late Head Master of King's College School : A CLASS-BOOK OF OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. With Four Maps. New Edition. 181110. 4s. 6d. " The present volume" says the Preface, "forms a Class- Book oj Old Testament History from the Earliest Times to those of Ezra and Nehe- miah. In its preparation the most recent authorities have been consulted, and wherever it has appeared useful, Notes have been subjoined illustra- tive of the Text, and, for the sake of more advanced students, refei-e?tce? added to larger zvorks. The Index has been so arranged as to form as concise Dictionary of the Persons and Places mentioned in the course of the Narrative.''' The Maps, prepared by Stanford, materially add to the value and usefulness of the book. The British Quarterly Review calls it 1 ' A careful and elaborate, though brief co?npendium of all that modern research has done for the illustration of the Old Testament. We know of no work which contains so much important information in so small cc compass.''' A CLASS-BOOK OF NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. Including the Connexion of the Old and New Testament. New Edition. i8mo. $s. 6d. The present volume forms a sequel to the Author's Class- Book of Old Testament History, and continues the narrative to the close of St. Pauls second imprisonment at Rome. The work is divided into three Books — I. The Connexion between the Old and New Testament. II. The Gospel History. III. The Apostolic History. In the Appendix are given Chronological Tables. The Clerical Journal says, "It is not often that such an amount of useful and interesting matter on biblical subjects is found in so convenient and small a compass as in this well-arranged volume. " A CLASS-BOOK OF THE CATECHISM OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. New and Cheaper Edition. i8mo.. is. 6d. The present work is intended as a sequel to the two preceding books* 1 ' Like them, it is furnished with notes and references to larger 7vorksy and it is hoped that it may be found, especially in the higher forms of our 2 18 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. MACLEAR (Dr. G. F '.)— continued. Public Schools, to supply a suitable manual of instruction in the chief doctrines of our Church, and a useful help in the preparation of Can- didates for Confirmation." The Literary Churchman says, " It is indeed the work of a scholar and divine, and as such, though extremely simple, it is also extremely instructive. There are few clergy who would not find it useful in preparing Candidates for Confirmation ; and there are not a few who would find it useful to themselves as well. " A FIRST CLASS-BOOK OF THE CATECHISM OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, with Scripture Proofs for Junior Classes and Schools. New Edition. i8mo. 6d. This is an epitome of the larger Class-book, meant for junior students and ele?nentary classes. The book has been carefully condensed, so as to contain clearly and fully the most important part of the contents of the larger book. A SHILLING-BOOK of OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. New Edition. i8mo. This Manual bears the same relation to the larger Old Testament His- tory, that the book just mentioned does to the larger work on the Catechism. It consists of Ten Books, divided into short chapters, and subdivided into sections, each section treating of a single episode in the history, the title of which is given in bold type. A SHILLING-BOOK of NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. New Edition. i8mo. A MANUAL OF INSTRUCTION FOR CONFIRMA- TION AND FIRST COMMUNION, with Prayers and Devo- tions. 32mo. 2 s. This is an enlarged and improved edition of ' The Order of Confirma- tion.'' To it have been added the Communion Office, with ATotes and Explanations, together with a brief form of Self- Examination and De- votions selected from the works of Cosiu, Ken, Wilson, and others. THE ORDER OF CONFIRMATION, with Prayers and Devotions. 32010. 6d. THE FIRST COMMUNION, with Prayers and Devotions for the Newly Confirmed. 32010. 6d. THE HOUR OF SORROW ; or, The Order for the Burial of the Dead. With Prayers and Hymns. 32010. is. APOSTLES OF MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. Cr. 8vo. 4s. 6d. "Mr. Maclear will have done a great ivork if his admirable little volume shall help to break up the dense ignorance which is still prevailing among people at large." — Literary Churchman. THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 19 MACLEAR (Dr. G. Y .)— continued. THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF THE HOLY EU- CHARIST. Being the Boyle Lectures for 1S79— 80. Delivered in the Chapel Royal, Whitehall. Crown 8vo. 6s. ''There is much that is striking in this volume. . . . This valuable book of Dr. Maclear's enters very carefully into Christ's prophecies of His own suffering and death. . . . All this Dr. Maclear puts in a very clear and forcible way" — Spectator. Macmillan. — Works by the Rev. Hugh Macmillan, LL.D., F.R.S.E. (For other works by the same Author, see Catalogue of Travels and Scientific Catalogue.) TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. Globe 8vo. 6s. THE TRUE VINE; or, the Analogies of our Lord's Allegory. Fourth Edition. Globe 8vo. 6s. The Nonconformist says — "It abounds in exquisite bits of description, and in striking facts clearly stated." The British Quarterly says — "Readers and preachers who are unscientific will find many of his illustrations as valuable as they are beautiful. " BIBLE TEACHINGS IN NATURE. Twelfth Edition. Globe 8vo. 6s. "He has made the tvorld more beautiful to us, and unsealed our ears to voices of praise and messages of love that might otherwise have been tin- heard.'''' — British Quarterly Review. "Dr. Macmillan has produced a book which may be fitly described as one of the happiest efforts for enlisting physical science in the direct service oj religion." — Guardian. THE SABBATH OF THE FIELDS. A Sequel to < Bible Teachings in Nature. ' Third Edition. Globe 8vo. 6s. " This volume, like all Dr. Macmillan 's productions, is very delight- ful reading, and of a special kind. Imagination, natural science, and religious instruction are blended together in a very charming way." British Quarterly Review. THE MINISTRY OF NATURE. Fourth Edition. Globe 8vo. 6s. " Whether the reader agree or not with his conclusions, he will ac- knowledge he is in the presence of an original and thoughtful writer." PaU Mall Gazette. " There is no class of educated men and women that will not profit by these essays." — Standard. OUR LORD'S THREE RAISINGS FROM THE DEAD. Globe 8vo. 6s. THE MARRIAGE IN CAN A. Globe 8vo. 6s. 2Q THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. Mahaffy.— THE DECAY OF MODERN PREACHING By Rev. J. P. Mahaffy, M.A., Trinity College, Dublin. Crown 8vo. 3j. 6d. " Clever and sensible in most of its criticisms and suggestions "— Saturday Review. "An excellent book:'— Church of England Pulpit. " Thoroughly worth reading." — Scotsman. Materialism: Ancient and Modern. By a late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Crown 8vo. 2s. Maurice.— Works by the late Rev. F. Denison Maurice, M.A., Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Cam- bridge : The Spectator says— "Fe" "Great Men;" "Faith;" "Doubts;" "Scruples;" "Original Sin;" "Friendship;" "Helping Others;" "The Discipline of Temptation;" 'Strength a Duty;" " Worldliness ;" "III Temper;" "The Burial of the Past. " THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 29 TEMPLE (Dr.)— continued. A SECOND SERIES OF SERMONS PREACHED IN THE CHAPEL OF RUGBY SCHOOL. Second Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s. This Second Series of Forty-two brief, pointed, practical Sermons, on topics intimately connected with the every -day life of young and old, will be acceptable to all who are acquainted with the First Series. The following are a fezu of the subjects treated of: — "Disobedience," "Almsgiving" "The Unknown Guidance of God," " Apathy one of our Trials/'1 "High Aims in Leaders," "Doing our Best," " The Use of Knowledge," "Use of Observances," "Martha and Mary," "John the Baptist " "Severity before Mercy " "Even Mistakes Punished," "Morality and Religion," "Children," "Action the Test of Spiritual Life," "Self -Respect," "Too Late," "The Tercentenary." A THIRD SERIES OF SERMONS PREACHED IN RUGBY SCHOOL CHAPEL in 1867— 1869. Extra fcap. Svo. 6s. This Third Series of Bishop Temple's Rugby Sermons, contains thirty-six brief discourses, including the " Good-bye" sermon preached on his leaving Rugby to enter on the office he nozu holds. Thornely.— THE ETHICAL AND SOCIAL ASPECT OF HABITUAL CONFESSION TO A PRIEST. By Thomas Thornely, B.A., LL.M., Lightfoot and Whewell Scholar in the Univei'sity of Cambridge, Law Student at Trinity Hall and Inns of Court, Student in Jurisprudence and Roman Law. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. ' ' The calm and judicial spirit in which the inquiry is conducted is in keeping with the aim of the writer, and we are heartily in sympathy with him in his conclusions as far as he goes." — London Quarterly. "It is marked by an evident desire to avoid oz'er-statement, and to be strictly impartial. " — Cambridge Review. Thring.— THOUGHTS ON LIFE-SCIENCE. By Rev. Edward Thring, M.A. New Edition, enlarged and revised. Crown Svo. Js. 6d. Thrupp.— AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY AND USE OF THE PSALMS. By the Rev. J. F. Thrupp, MA., late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. New Edition. 2 vols. 8vo. 25J. Trench. — Works by R. Chenevix Trench, D.D., Arch- bishop of Dublin : NOTES ON THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD. Fourteenth Edition. Svo. 12s. 3o THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. TRENCH (Archbishop)— continued. This work has taken its plate as a standard exposition and interpreta- tion of 'Christ 's Parables. The book is prefaced by an Introductory Essay in four chapters : — /. On the definition of the Parable. II. On Teach- ing by Parables. III. On the Interpretation of the Parables. IV. On otlier Parables besides those in the Scriptures. The author then proceeds to take up the Parables one by one, and by the aid of philology, history \ antiquities, and the researches of travellers, shnus forth the significancey beauty, and applicability of each, concluding with what he deems its true moral interpretation. In the numerous Notes are many valuable referetues, illustrative quotations, critical and philological annotations, etc. , and ap- pended to the volume is a classified list of fifty-six works on the Parables. NOTES ON THE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD. Eleventh Edition, revised. 8vo. \2s. In the 'Prelin&nary Essay' to this work, all the momentous and in- teresting questions that have been raised in connection with Miracles, are discussed with considerable fulness. The Essay consists of six chapters : — /. On the Names of Miracles, i.e. the Greek words by which they are designated in the New Testament. II. The Miracles and Nature — What is the difference between a Miracle and any event in the ordinary course of Nature ? III. The Authority of Miracles — Is the Miracle to command absolute obedience? IV. The Evangelical, compared zvith the other cycles of Miracles. V. The Assaults on the Miracles — I. Thejetmsh. 2. The Heathen ( Celsus, etc.). 3. The Pantheistic (Spinosa, etc.). 4. The Sceptical (Hume). 5. The Aliracles only relatively miraculous (Schleier- macher). 6. The Rationalistic (Paulus). 7. The Historico- Critical ( Woolston, Strauss). VI The Apologetic Worth of the Miracles. The author then treats the separate Miracles as he does the Parables. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. Ninth Edition, enlarged. Svo. 12s. This Edition has been carefully revised, and a considerable number oj neiu Synonyms added. Appended is an Index to the Synonyms, and an Index to many other words alluded to or explained throughout the work. "He is," the Athenaeum says, " a guide in this department of knowledge to whom his readers may intrust themselves with confidence. His sober judgment and sound sense are barriers against the misleading influence of arbitrary hypotheses. " ON THE AUTHORIZED VERSION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. Second Edition. 8vo. 7*. After some Introductory Remarks, in which the propriety of a revision is bi-iefly discussed, the whole question of the merits of the present version is gone into in detail, in eleven chapters. Appended is a chronological list of works bearing on the subject, an Index of the principal Texts con- THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 31 TRENCH (Archbishop ) — continued. sidered, an Index of Greek Words, and an Index of other Words re- ferred to throughout the book. STUDIES IN THE GOSPELS. Fourth Edition, revised. 8vo. iar. 6d. This book is published under the conviction that the assertion often made is untrue,— viz. that the Gospels are in the main plain and easy, and that all the chief difficulties of the New Testament are to be found in the Epistles. These 'Studies,' sixteen in number, are the fruit of a much larger scheme, and each Study deals with some important episode mentioned in the Gospels, in a critical, philosophical, and practical man- ner Many references and quotations are added to the Notes. Among the subjects treated are :— The Temptation; Christ and the Samaritan Woman; The Three Aspirants; The Transfiguration; ZaccJneus; The True Vine; The Penitent Malefactor; Christ and the Too Disciples on the way to Emmaus. COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLES to the SEVEN CHURCHES IN ASIA. Fourth Edition, revised. Svo. Ss. 6d. The present work consists of an Introduction, being a commentary on Rev i 4—20, a detailed examination oj each of the Seven Epistles, in all its bearings, and an Excursus on the Historico- Prophetical Interpreta- tion of the Epistles. THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. An Exposition drawn from the writings of St. Augustine, with an Essay on his merits as an Interpreter of Holy Scripture. Fourth Edition, en- larged. 8vo. ioj. 6d. The first half of the present work consists of a dissertation in eight chapters on 'Augustine as an Interpreter of Scripture the titles of the several chatters being as follow:— I. Augustine's General Views of Scrip- torTana^Ts Interpretation. II The External Helps fo, -<*r Interpret,*- Hon of Scripture possessed by Augustine. Ill Augustus Principles and Canons of Interpretation. IV. Augustine's Allegorical Interpretation of Scripture. V. Illustrations of Augustine's Skill as an Interpreter oj ScriMure VI. Augustine on John the Baptist and on St. Stephen. %f AugusHne on The Epistle 'to the Romans VIII *?*»*» Examples of Augustine's Interpretation of Scripture The late, half oj the work coisisls of Augustine's Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount not however a mete series of quotations from Augusti ^ Jut J con meted account of his sentiments on the various passages of that Sermon, inh, spersed with criticisms by Archbishop Trench. SHIPWRECKS OF FAITH. Three Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge in May, 1867. Fcap. 8vo. 25. 6d. 32 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. TRENCH (Archbishop) -continued. These Sermons are especially addressed to young men. The subjects are "Balaam " "Saul," and "Judas Iscariot," These lives are set forth as beacon-lights, * ' to warn us off from perilous reefs and quick- sands, which have been the destruction of many, and which might only too easily be ours." The John Bull says — "they are, like all he writes, af- fectionate and earnest discourses. " SERMONS Preached for the most part in Ireland. 8vo. 10s. 6d. This volume consists of Thirty-two Sermons, the greater part of which were preached in Ireland ; the subjects are as follow : — Jacob, a Prince with God and with Men—Agrippa—The Woman that was a Sinner — Secret Faults — The Seven Worse Spirits — Freedom in the Truth — Joseph and his Brethren—Bearing one another's Burdens — Christ's Challenge to the World— The Loz'e of Money— The Salt of the Earth— The Armour of God— Light in the Lord— The Jailer of Philippi— The Thorn in the Flesh — Isaiah's Vision — Selfishness — Abraham interceding for Sodom— Vain Thoughts— Pontius Pilate— The Brazen Serpent— The Death and Bu.ri,d of Moses— A Word from the Cross— The Church's Worship in the Beauty of Holiness— Every Good Giftfro?n Above— On the Hearing of Prayer — The Kingdom which cometh not with Observation — Pressing tmvards the Mark— Saul— The Good Shepherd— The Valley of Dry Bones — All Saints. LECTURES ON MEDIEVAL CHURCH HISTORY. Being the Substance of Lectures delivered in Queen's College. London. Second Edition, revised. 8vo. \2s. Contents :—The Middle Ages Beginning— The Conversion of Eng- land—Islam— The Conversion of Germany— The Iconoclasts— The Crusades— The Papacy at its Height— The Sects of the Middle Aoes— The Mendicant Orders— The Waldenses—The Revival of Learning- Christian Art in the Middle Ages, &>c. &>c. THE HULSEAN LECTURES, 1S45-1S46. Fifth Edition revised. 8vo. "js. 6d. This volume consists of Sixteen Sermons, eight being on « The Fitness of Holy Scripture for unfolding the Spiritual Life of Men ,' the others on 'Christ, the Desire of all Nations; or, the unconscioiis Prophecies of Heathendom. ' r Tulloch.— THE CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS AND THE CHRIST OF MODERN CRITICISM. Lectures on M. Renan's 'Vie de Jesus.' By John Tulloch, DD Principal of the College of St. Mary, in the University of St! Andrew's. Extra fcap. 8vo. 4J. 6d. THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 33 Vaughan — Works by the very Rev. Charles John Vaughan, D.D. , Dean of Llandaff and Master of the Temple : CHRIST SATISFYING THE INSTINCTS OF HU- MANITY. Eight Lectures delivered in the Temple Church, Second Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d. 1 ' We are convinced that the?'e are congregations, in number unmistakably increasing, to whom such Essays as these, full of thought and learning, are infinitely more beneficial, for they are more acceptable, than the recog* vised type of sermons." — John Bull. THE BOOK AND THE LIFE, and other Sermons, preached before the University of Cambridge. Third Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 4s. 6d. TWELVE DISCOURSES on SUBJECTS CONNECTED WITH THE LITURGY and WORSHIP of the CHURCH OF ENGLAND. Fourth Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 6s. LESSONS OF LIFE AND GODLINESS. A Selection of Sermons preached in the Parish Church of Doncaster. Fourth and Cheaper Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d. This volume consists of Nineteen Sermons, mostly on subjects connected with the everyday walk and conversation of Christians. The Spectator styles them ' ' earnest a?id human. They are adapted to every class and order in the social system, and tvill be read with wakeful interest by all zoho seek to amend whatever may be amiss in their natural disposition or in their acquired habits. " WORDS FROM THE GOSPELS. A Second Selection of Sermons preached in the Parish Church of Doncaster. Third Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 4s. 6d. The Nonconformist characterises these Sermons as " of practical earnest- ness, of a thoughtfulness that penetrates the common conditions and ex- periences of life, and brings the ttuths and examples of Scripture to bear on them with singular force, and of a style that owes its real elegance to the simplicity and directness which have fine cidturefor their roots. " LIFE'S WORK AND GOD'S DISCIPLINE. Three Sermons. Third Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d. THE WHOLESOME WORDS OF JESUS CHRIST. Four Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge in November, 1866. Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 3J-. 6d. Dr. Vaughan uses the zuord "Wholesome" here in its litei'al and original sense, the sense in which St. Paul uses it, as meaning healthy, sound, conducing to right living ; and in these Sermons he points out and illustrates several of the "wholesome" characteristics of the Gospel, — the Words of Christ. The John Bull says this volume is "replete with all the author' 's wdl-knoivn vigour of thought and richness of expression." 3 34 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. VAUGHAN (Dr. C. J.)— continued. FOES OF FAITH. Sermons preached before the Uni- versity of Cambridge in November, 1868. Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. y. 6d. The "Foes of Faith" preached against in these Four Sermons are: — /. "Unreality." II. "Indolence." III. "Irreverence." IV. "Incon- sistency." LECTURES ON THE EPISTLE to the PHILIPPIANS. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. Js. 6d. Each Lecture is prefaced by a literal translation from the Greek of the paragraph whic/i forms its subject, contains first a minute explanation of the passage on which it is based, and then a practical application of the verse or clause selected as its text. LECTURES ON THE REVELATION OF ST. JOHN. Fifth Edition. Crown 8vo. 10s. 6d. In this Edition of these Lectures, the literal translations of the passages expounded will be found interwoven in the body of the Lectures themselves. "Dr. Vaughan's Sermons," the Spectator says, "are the most prac- tical discourses on the Apocalypse with which we are acquainted. " Pre- fixed is a Synopsis of the Book of Revelation, and appended is an Index of passages illustrating the language of the Book. EPIPHANY, LENT, AND EASTER. A Selection of Expository Sermons. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. \os. 6d. THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. For English Readers. Part I., containing the First Epistle to the Thessalonians. Second Edition. 8vo. is, 6d. It is the object of this work to enable English readers, tmacquaiuted with Greek, to enter zvith intelligence into the meaning, connexion, and phraseology oftJie writings of the great Apostle. ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. The Greek Text, with English Notes. Fifth Edition. Crown 8vo. js. 6d. The Guardian says of the work — "For educated young men his com- mentary seems to fill a gap hitherto unfilled. . . . As a whole, Dr. Vaughan appears to us to have given to the world a valuable book of original and careful and earnest thought bestowed on the accomplishment of a work which will be of much service and which is much needed. " THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST DAYS. Series I. The Church of Jerusalem. Third Edition. „ II. The Church of the Gentiles. Third Edition. „ III. The Church of the World. Third Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 4s. 6d. each. The British Quarterly says — " These Sermons are worthy of all praise, and are models of pulpit teaching." THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 35 VAUGHAN (Dr. C. J.)— continued. COUNSELS for YOUNG STUDENTS. Three Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge at the Opening of the Academical Year 1870-71. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d. NOTES FOR LECTURES ON CONFIRMATION, with suitable Prayers. Eleven tli Edition. Fcap. 8vo. is. 6d. THE TWO GREAT TEMPTATIONS. The Tempta- tion of Man, and the Temptation of Christ. Lectures delivered in the Temple Church, Lent 1872. Second Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 3-y. 6d. WORDS FROM THE CROSS: Lent Lectures, 1875; and Thoughts for these Times : University Sermons, 1874. Extra fcap. 8vo. 4s. 6d. ADDRESSES TO YOUNG CLERGYMEN, delivered at Salisbury in September and October, 1875. Extra fcap. 8vo. 4s. 6d. HEROES OF FAITH : Lectures on Hebrews xi. Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s. THE YOUNG LIFE EQUIPPING ITSELF FOR GOD'S SERVICE : Sermons before the University of Cambridge. Sixth Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 35. 6d. THE SOLIDITY OF TRUE RELIGION ; and other S; mons. Second Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 3 J. 6d. MEMORIALS OF HARROW SUNDAYS. A Selection of Sermons preached in the Chapel of Harrow School. Fifth Edition. Crown Svo. 10s. 6d. SERMONS IN HARROW SCHOOL CHAPEL (1847). 8vo. 10s. 6d. NINE SERMONS IN HARROW SCHOOL CHAPEL (1849). Fcap. 8vo. 5 s. "MY SON, GIVE ME THINE HEART;" Sermons preached before the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, 1876 —78. Fcap. 8vo. $s. THE LORD'S PRAYER. Second Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 3-r. 6d. REST AWHILE : Addresses to Toilers in the Ministry. Extra fcap. 8vo. 5s. TEMPLE SERMONS. Crown 8vo. iar. 6d. This volume contains a selection of the Sermons preached by Dr. Vaughan in the Temple Church during the twelve years that he has held the dignity of Master. AUTHORISED OR REVISED? Sermons on some of the Texts in which the Revised Version differs from the Authorised. Crown Svo. Js. 6,7. 36 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. Vaughan (E. T.)— SOME REASONS OF OUR CHRIST- IAN HOPE. Hulsean Lectures for 1875. By E. T. Vaughan, M.A., Rector of Harpenden. Crown 8vo. 6s. 6d. Vaughan (D.J.) — Works by Canon Vaughan, of Leicester: SERMONS PREACHED IN ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, LEICESTER, during the Years 1855 and 1856. Cr. 8vo. $s. 6d. CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES AND THE BIBLE. New Edition, revised and enlarged. Fcap. 8vo. 5^. 6d. THE PRESENT TRIAL OF FAITH. Sermons preached in St. Martin's Church, Leicester. Crown 8vo. oj-. Venn.— ON SOME OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF BELIEF, Scientific and Religious. Being the Hulsean Lectures for 1869. By the Rev. J. Venn, M.A. 8vo. 6s. 6d. Vita.— LINKS AND CLUES. By Vita. Crown 8vo. 6s. li It is a long ti?ne since we have read a book so full of the life of a true spiritual mind. . . . Indeed, it is not so much a book to read through, as to read and return to as you do to the Bible itself from which its whole significance is dei'ived, in passages suited to the chief interest and difficulties of the moment We cannot too cordially recommend a book which awakens the spirit, as hardly any book of the last few years has awakened it, to the real meaning of the Christian life." — Spectator. Warington.— THE WEEK OF CREATION ; or, The Cosmogony of Genesis considered in its Relation to Modern Sci- ence. By George Warington, Author of 'The Historic Character of the Pentateuch vindicated.' Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. Westcott. — Works by Brooke Foss Westcott, D.D., Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge ; Canon of Peterborough : The London Quarterly, speaking of Br. Westcott, says — " To a learn- ing and accuracy which command respect and confidence, he unites what are not always to be found in union with these qualities, the no less valuable faculties of lucid arrangement and graceful and facile expression." AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE GOSPELS. Sixth Edition. Crown 8vo. \os. 6d. The author's chief object in this work has been to sheio that there is a true mean between the idea of a formal harmonization of the Gospels and the abandonment of their absolute truth. After an Introduction on the General Effects oj the course of Modern Philosophy on the popular vieius of Christianity, he proceeds to determine in what way the principles therein indicated may be applied to the study of the Gospels. THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 37 WESTCOTT (Dr.)— continued. A GENERAL SURVEY OF THE HISTORY OF THE CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT during the First Four Centuries. Fifth Edition, revised, with a Preface on ' Super- natural Religion.' Crown 8vo. ior. 6d. The object of this treatise is to deal with the New Testament as a whole, and that on purely historical grounds. The separate books of which it is composed are considered not individually, but as claiming to be parts of the apostolic heritage of Christians. ' ' The treatise" says the British Quarterly, 11 is a scholarly performance, learned, dispassionate, discriminating, worthy of his subject and of the present state of Christian literature in relation to it." THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. A Popular Account of the Collection and Reception of the Holy Scriptures in the Christian Churches. Seventh Edition. iSmo. 4*. 6d. A GENERAL VIEW OF THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. ioj. 6d. The Pall Mall Gazette calls the work "A brief scholarly, and, to a great extent, an original contribution to theological literature." THE CHRISTIAN LIFE, MANIFOLD AND ONE. Six Sermons preached in Peterborough Cathedral. Crown 8vo. 25. 6d. THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION. Thoughts on its Relation to Reason and History. Fourth Edition, revised. Crown 8vo. 6s. ON THE RELIGIOUS OFFICE OF THE UNIVER- SITIES. Crown 8vo. 4J. 6d. 1 * There is wisdom, and truth, and thought enough, and a harmony and mutual connexion running through them all, which makes the collection of more real value than many an ambitious treatise." — Literary Churchman. THE REVELATION OF THE RISEN LORD. Second Edition, with a new Preface. Crown Svo. 6s. THE HISTORIC FAITH : Short Lectures on the Apostles' Creed. Crown Svo. 6s. Westcott— Hort.— THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE ORIGINAL GREEK. The Text Revised by B. F. Westcott D D., Regius Professor of Divinity, Canon of Peterborough, and F J. A. HORT, D.D., Hulsean Professor of Divinity, Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge; late Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge. 2 vols. Crown Svo. IOS. 6d. each. Vol. I. Text. Vol. II. Introduction and Appendix. 38 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. WESTCOTT-HORT-^//«/^. " The Greek Testament as printed by the h.vo Professors must in future rank as one oj the highest critical authorities amongst English scholars." — Guardian. ' ' It is prob My the most important contribution to Biblical learning in our generation. " — Saturday Review. " The object in view is to present the original words of the Ne%o Testa- ment as nearly as they can be determined at the present time, to arrive at the texts of the autographs themselves so far as it is possible to obtain it by the help of existing materials We attach much excellence to this manual edition of the Greek Testament, because it is the best contribution which England has made in modern times tmuards the production of a pure text. . . . It bears on its face evidences of calm judgment and com- mendable candour. The student may avail himself of its aid with much confidence. The Introduction and Appendix specially deserve minute attention. " — Athenoeum. Wilkins.— THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. An Essay, by A. S. Wilkins, M.A., Professor of Latin in Owens College, Manchester. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. y. 6d. " It would be difficult to praise too highly the spirit, the burden, the conclusions, or the scholarly finish of this beautiful Essay." — British Quar- terly Review. Wilson.— THE BIBLE STUDENTS GUIDE TO THE MORE CORRECT UNDERSTANDING of the ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT, by Reference to the Original Hebrew. By William Wilson, D.D., Canon of Winchester. Second Edition, carefully revised. 4to. 2^s. The author believes that the present work is the nearest approach to a complete Concordance of every word in the original that has yet been made; and as a Concordance it may be found of great use to the Bible student, while at the same time it serves the important object of furnishing the means of comparing synonymous words and of eliciting their precise and distinctive meaning. The knowledge of the Hebrew language is not absolutely necessary to the profitable use of the work. Worship (The) of God and Fellowship among Men. Sermons on Public Worship. By Professor Maurice, and others. Fcap. 8vo. 3^. 6d. Yonge (Charlotte M.)— Works by Charlotte M. Yonge, Author of ' The Heir of Redclyffe ': SCRIPTURE READINGS FOR SCHOOLS AND FA- MILIES. 5 vols. Globe 8vo. is. 6d. With Comments, 3-r. 6d. each. First Series. Genesis to Deuteronomy. Second Series. From Joshua to Solomon. THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 39 YONGE (Charlotte M.)— continued. Third Series. The Kings and Prophets. Fourth Series. The Gospel Times. Fifth Series. Apostolic Times. Actual need has led the author to endeavour to prepare a reading book convenient for study with children, containing the very words of the Bible, with only a few expedient omissions, and arranged in Lessons op such length as by experience she has found to suit with children's ordinary pozuer of accurate attentive interest. The verse form has been retained be- cause of its convenience for children reading in class, and as more re' sembling their Bibles ; but the poetical portions have been given in their lines. Trofessor Huxley at a meeting of the London School-board, par- ticularly mentioned the Selection made by Miss Yonge, as an example of hoju selections might be made for School reading. "Her Comments are models of their kind. " — Literary Churchman. THE PUPILS OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE. New Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. " Young and old will be equally rejreshed and taught by these pages •, in which nothing is dull, and nothing is far-fetched." — Churchman. PIONEERS AND FOUNDERS ; or, Recent Workers in the Mission Field. With Frontispiece and Vignette Portrait of Bishop Heher. Crown Svo. 6s. The missionaries whose biographies are here given, are — John Eliot, the Apostle of the Red Indians; David Br ainerd, the Enthtisiast ; Christ- tan F. Schzcartz, the Councillor of Tanjore; Henry Jllarlyn, the Scholar- Missionary; William Carey a) id Joshua Marsh man, the Serampore Mis- sionaries; the Judson Family; the Bishops of Calcutta — Thomas Middleton, Reginald Heber, Daniel Wilson; Samuel Marsden, the Aus- tralian Chaplain and Friend of the Maori; John Williams, the Martyr of Frromango ; Allen Gardener, the Sailor Martyr; Charles Lrederick Mackenzie, the Martyr of Zambesi. Zechariah, Hebrew, and LXX., The Hebrew Student's Commentary on. With Excursus on several Grammatical Subjects. By W. H. Lowe, M.A., Hebrew Lecturer at Christ's College, Cambridge. Demy Svo. \os. 6d. 1 ' This is a useful and scholarly work. The notes are intended to in- clude the zvants of comparative beginners in Hebrezv, but they contain much also that will be of value to those zaho are more advanced ; they are always sound, and direct the student's attention to just such points of importance as he is likely to overlook. The volume abounds with suggestions and cautions, for which every diligent reader of Hebrew will be grateful; and those who desire to strengthen and increase their knozvledge of the language cannot do belter than peruse it attentively . . . Altogether we xvelcome Mr. Lozoe's volume as a real help to the study of Hebrew in this country."— Academy. THE "BOOK OF PRAISE" HYMNAL, COMPILED AND ARRANGED BY THE RIGHT HON. THE EARL OF SELBORNE, VISCOUNT WOLMER. In the following four forms : — A. Beautifully printed in Royal 32mo., limp cloth, price 6d. B. ,, ,, Small 18mo., larger type, cloth limp, Is. C. Same edition on fine paper, cloth, Is. 6d. Also an edition with Music, selected, harmonized, and composed by JOHN HULL AH, in square 18mo., cloth, 3s. 6d. The large acceptance which has been given to " The Book of Praise'''' by all classes of Christian people encourages the Publishers in entertaining the hope that this Hymnal, which is mainly selected from it, may be ex- tensively tised in Congregations, and in some degree at least meet the desires of those who seek tcniforinity in common worship as a means tcnvards that unity which pious souls yearn after, and which our Lord prayed for in behalf of his Church. '■''The office of a hymn is not to teach controversial Theology, but to give the voice of song to practical religion. No doubt, to do this, it must embody sound doctrine ; but it ought to do so, not after the manner of the schools, but with the breadth, freedom, and simplicity of the Fountain-head. " On this principle has Sir R. Palmer proceeded in the preparation of this book. The arrangement adopted is the following : — Part I. consists of Hymns arranged according to the subjects of the Creed— "God the Creator" "Christ Incarnate," "Christ Crucified," "Christ Risen" "Christ Ascended" "Christ's Kingdom and Judg- ment," etc. Part II. comprises Hymns arranged according to the subjects of the Lord's Prayer. Part III. Hymns for natural and sacred seasons. There are 320 Hymns in all. CAMBRIDGE : TRINTEP BY J. PALMER. Date Due v-w