!,;'-•' , 
 
 
PRESENTED TO THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 PRINCETON THEOLOGICHL SEMINHRY 
 
 Ppofessop }i^riipy van Dyke, D.D., LiLi.O. 
 
 Broods'; WaUer R. 1821-188 
 God in nature and life 
 
 RV ^^-JTi T5 7«; n^ 
 
GOD L\ NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 THE SERMONS AND WETTINGS 
 
 OP 
 
 WALTER R. BROOKS. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH AND CO. 
 
 38 West Twentt-Thied Street. 
 
Copyright, 1SS9, 
 By Anson D. F. Randolph and Co. 
 
 JJSnibctsftn ^9ress : 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 'T^IIE sermons and other writings collected in this 
 -^ volume are designed to preserve in affectionate 
 hearts the memory of a great, fresh, powerful mind, 
 that was in love with God and truth. The volume 
 is intended also as one more expression of Dr. 
 Brooks's favorite thoughts. The sermons were all 
 preached between 1858 and 1873, when he was the 
 pastor of the Baptist Church in Hamilton, N. Y. 
 The two lectures belong to a slightly earlier period. 
 The Book of Prayers gradually grew up from Dr, 
 Brooks's own experience, and was put into its present 
 form for the use of a friend. It is here given as it 
 left his hand, the few selections which he added to 
 his own work having been retained. The printed 
 sermons represent the manuscripts as they are ; but 
 there is reason to doubt whether Dr. Brooks ever 
 wrote a sermon in full as he preached it. The manu- 
 scripts are often disappointing to hearers who re- 
 member how they have been thrilled by some lofty 
 passage, thrown in as he was speaking. The best 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 things often came in this way. Yet in spite of this in- 
 completeness, it is hoped that the book may be recog- 
 nized as truly characteristic of the man. If it gives 
 expression to his lofty faith in God, his marvellous 
 interest in Nature, and his profound love of truth, it 
 will not merely revive precious memories, but per- 
 petuate a noble influence. 
 
 WILLIAM N. CLARKE. 
 
 Hamilton, N. Y., 
 
 October, 1889. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Sermons. 
 
 Paob 
 
 God the One Lord 11 
 
 Meeting with God 23 
 
 The Pattern of Life 38 
 
 Loving Jesus 55 
 
 The Real Presence 65 
 
 The History of a Soul 77 
 
 The Way of Perfection 91 
 
 Uncertainty 105 
 
 Walking on the Sea 117 
 
 Lessons from the Summer 134 
 
 The Lesson of the Leaves 149 
 
 The Day 165 
 
 ILcrturrs anti iHi'scdIaneous Paptrg. 
 
 Sources of Spiritual Conviction 181 
 
 Statements 206 
 
 The Balancing of the Clouds 226 
 
 The Fire in the Burning Bush 230 
 
 Briefer Extracts 236 
 
viii CONTEXTS. 
 
 a Book of Pragcrs. 
 
 Page 
 
 Te Deum 253 
 
 Prayer for Spiritual Life 254 
 
 Prayer to anticipate the Day 256 
 
 A Prayer for Morning Use 257 
 
 A Prayer from the Greek Service 258 
 
 A Lesson of Evening Worship 259 
 
 Evening Prayer 260 
 
 A Prayer for the Evening 262 
 
 A Litany 264 
 
 A Prayer for Evening Use 267 
 
 A Mother's Prayer for her Children 269 
 
 A Prayer for Help in Common Life 271 
 
 Thoughts 27;i 
 
 A Lesson of Submission and Hope 274 
 
 An Act of Patience and Resignation 275 
 
 A Prayer of Submission 276 
 
 Sentences of Comfort in Sorrow 277 
 
 An Act of Hope "'^ 
 
 An Occasional Prayer 281 
 
 An Act of Fellowship 282 
 
 A Lesson of God in Nature 286 
 
 An Act of Worship 287 
 
SERMONS. 
 
GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 GOD THE ONE LORD. 
 
 Hear, Israel! the Lord our God is one Lord. 
 Deut. vi. 4. 
 
 THIS "form of sound words" was the compre- 
 hensive creed of the nation of Israel. On all 
 great occasions it was the rallying-cry of the people 
 of God. It was their battle-cry in time of war. This 
 doctrine of the unity of God was the truth that sepa- 
 rated the Israelites from the nations of the earth. This 
 fact is the greatest of stumbling-blocks to those who 
 would deny any revelation from God to men; because 
 it is unaccountable that in such early times, and amid 
 universal idolatry, any people should have risen to the 
 great discovery of the unity of God, without a revela- 
 tion of this truth from Him. No man of himself could 
 ever have risen to this conception, except from such 
 a knowledge of the unity of all the forces of Nature 
 as was impossible in the times of Abraham and Moses. 
 Many gods, of many different characters and powers, 
 are the natural conception of men, who see in Nature 
 such diversities and contradictions of good and evil, 
 life and death. Only a revelation of God to men could 
 account for the existence of this jrreat truth. There is 
 
12 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 something grand and inspiring in the thought of this 
 glorious cry sounding out amid the universal idolatry 
 of the world, — " Hear, Israel ! the Lord our God is 
 one Lord ! " 
 
 There are many aspects of this great truth which it 
 would be interesting and profitable to consider. I am 
 concerned to-day, however, with only one, which will 
 be expressed by an emphasis on the last word, — " The 
 Lord our God is one Lord." In all the great and wide 
 universe there is but one lordship, one controlling will, 
 one governing, guiding force and presence. As all the 
 different elements, members, and functions of our bodies 
 find their unity in the one indwelling life and will of 
 our spirits, and thus a man is one, a unity, though 
 having many members, and each member a different 
 office, so the universe, with all its elements, parts, and 
 motions, finds its unity in the one indwelling life and 
 will of God. The universe is one, — a universe, — be- 
 cause all brought together, and held together, and con- 
 trolled by one and the same will and life of God. Many 
 letters form one word, though each has a different sound 
 of its own. Although when separated the letters are 
 the most arbitrary, unconnected, and unmeaning things 
 in the world, yet when united to form a word, they are 
 made a unity by the idea which unites them, and which 
 they express. All the numberless parts of tlie universe 
 are but the letters which spell the name of God. They 
 make one word, and that word means Him. There is 
 one God, and all things were made by Him. Thus the 
 unity of God necessarily involves the unity of the uni- 
 verse. There is one life in all things, one meaning, one 
 power of control, in all things ; for " all things are of 
 
GOD THE ONE LORD. 13 
 
 God." Heaven, where angels and saints behold His 
 glory and walk in His love, is of God. He made 
 heaven, He lives in it, it is the place of God ; but uo 
 more than the earth. He made the earth, He lives in 
 it, in the earth His daily work is done. It is as much 
 and as entirely of God as heaven. The difference be- 
 tween heaven and earth is not a difference of God's 
 presence, but of our condition and apprehension. Jesus 
 said, " No man hath ascended up into heaven, but He 
 that came down from heaven, even the Son of man, 
 which is in heaven." He was on earth, but at the 
 same time He was in heaven. He walked the hard 
 and rocky ways of Palestine ; the miseries of the world 
 were all around Him ; the dying, the dead, the sufferer, 
 and the sinner met Him at every turn, — but the Son 
 of man was in heaven. Heaven spreads over and 
 around the earth, like a second atmosphere mixed in 
 the common air, and heavenly souls like His breathe 
 it, hear its vibrations, and are not out of heaven be- 
 cause they are in the world. 
 
 The power, the wisdom, the holiness and love which 
 are exhibited in the life and happiness and beauty of 
 the soul of the saint or angel are one and the same 
 with those qualities as they are exhibited in the life 
 and beauty of the flower of the held. It is not one God 
 who made man's soul, and another who made the flower. 
 Is the life of the saint a glorious blossoming-out of life, 
 of power, of love, and spiritual beauty ? All that is of 
 God. He gave the soul its life and purity and worth. 
 Even so the flower is of God. He that made the soul 
 made the flower also, and both are children of God, 
 though differing from each other, as children should. 
 
14 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 This great truth, that the universe is all one, that all 
 it reveals is the revelation of one mind, one will, and 
 that all parts of it are filled with the same meaning, 
 teaches us many lessons. 
 
 1, It teaches us how to study the highest truths that 
 God has revealed to us in His Word. That is to say, it 
 suggests that we study these higher truths by compar- 
 ing them with lower forms of the same truths in the 
 world. Jesus taught the spiritual truths of His gospel 
 by illustrations and comparisons drawn from the natural 
 world ; and this He did because He saw that all truth 
 was one. We may believe a thing just because it is 
 told us, when we can see no other reason for it than 
 because some authority requires us to believe it. But 
 when we see that it is natural, that it is supported by 
 all natural truth, that it is one with the trutli of Nature, 
 then with how much greater satisfaction do we accept 
 it, and how much more hearty is the obedience that we 
 yield to it ! If the Lord our God is one Lord, then the 
 whole universe must be one, agreeing, not contradictory, 
 in all its parts. And when we see that a doctrine 
 agrees with wliat God has revealed in Nature, we doubt 
 it no longer ; it has become forever true and real to us. 
 This is what the world is good for, and what it was 
 meant for, — to be an illustration of the high and spirit- 
 ual truths of the gospel of Jesus. If the teachings of 
 the Bible are true, they will find confirmation in the 
 truths of Nature somewhere. One hindrance to the 
 growth of our souls in knowledge of God is this, that 
 we study the Bible as if it were something by itself, 
 having no connection with natural truth ; as if it .should 
 be understood by arbitrary logical interpretation, and 
 
GOD THE ONE LORD. 15 
 
 not as if it ought to be compared with common truth 
 and common experience. Nature, or the universe, is 
 the introduction to revelation. It is like the first chap- 
 ters of a work on geometry, where the signs are ex- 
 plained, and the axioms on which depends the truth 
 of all that follows are given in distinct form. He who 
 should study geometry without studying the introduc- 
 tion with the signs and axioms, would only give a 
 meaning of his own to the terms of his problems, and 
 be ever studying and never able to come to the knowl- 
 edge of the truth, — even like many who study God's 
 Word without remembering that if it is true it is natu- 
 ral, and will iind its illustration in what God has 
 revealed in Nature. 
 
 Thus the incarnation of God in our humanity is the 
 supreme truth of revelation. To some it appears the 
 most unnatural and improbable of doctrines. But 
 when we realize that the universe is all one in God, 
 that the lowest and the highest are equally related to 
 Him, that He inhabits aU, then there is everything 
 natural in the fact that He who made and animates all 
 things makes His appearance among His works in the 
 person of that creature who stood next to Him, because 
 created in His image. It comforts us and helps our 
 faith to see that the incarnation is in harmony with 
 God's natural relation to men. It helps our faith no 
 less to see that the substitution of Christ, the putting 
 Him in the sinner's place and making Him to bear our 
 sins, is natural, — that this great act proceeds on prin- 
 ciples which are revealed in Nature and constantly 
 exemplified in common life. And so it may be seen 
 by this method of studying God's Word that there is 
 
16 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 no contradiction of the great truths of revelation in 
 any facts or principles of the universe. All is one, 
 hound in harmony by the same principles, from the 
 crystal in its rocky matrix to the saint washed in the 
 blood of his Redeemer. If the revelation of the Bible 
 explains Nature truly, so, in turn, does Nature explain 
 revelation. Every part of Nature will support whatever 
 is true, because the whole is one. When you study 
 any truth of revelation in the Word of God, see if you 
 cannot make it natural, as well as supernatural. See 
 if you cannot find the principle of it in Nature ; and if 
 you can, you will be able to trust it with a new degree 
 of conviction and satisfaction. Yet, to be sure, if we 
 cannot make our truth seem natural and in harmony 
 with Nature, to reject it therefore at once would be 
 to assume that our knowledge is perfect, and that we 
 know everything that is natural, which would be to 
 make fools of ourselves in assuming to be wise. The 
 testimony of Scripture to any truth stands good and 
 authoritative against the ignorance of man. Nor can 
 any truth of Scripture be reasonably rejected because 
 to us it seems impossible to make it harmonize with 
 natural truth ; for we are bound to think that our igno- 
 rance is the reason of our difficulty, since we know so 
 infinitely less than we are ignorant of. 
 
 2. The great fact that the Lord our God is one Lord, 
 and that all the universe is one, a unity in Him, teaches 
 us that there can be no department or province of 
 Nature or of life in which we do not have to do with 
 God. If one place is sacred, for the same reason every 
 place is sacred. If one employment is religious because 
 it has reference or relation to God, for the same reason 
 
GOD THE ONE LORD. 17 
 
 all employments are religious. Whatsoever we do, 
 whetlier we eat or drink, every such common action 
 is as much in His sight, and as truly related to Him, 
 as are the acts of angels in heaven. The universe is 
 one, because every part of it was made by God and is 
 filled witli His presence. There are no places, no employ- 
 ments, of which we can say, " There is no God here, in 
 this place there is nothing to do with God." It is too 
 common a thought with us, however, that God has only 
 a special and limited department in life and Nature. 
 There are a few things that relate to God, a few things 
 with which He is connected, a few times and places in 
 which we have to do with Him ; but there are more in 
 which there is no connection of God with our circum- 
 stances. This very false thought arises from the fact 
 that we have made a distance of that which is only a 
 difference between God and us, — as if because He was 
 so different from us and the world, He must therefore 
 be as far from it as He is different from it. Few men 
 think of farming as having any divine or religious 
 character, or as being in any manner a dealing with 
 God. Yet how far must a man go from the work of 
 farming before he comes to the agency, the power, the 
 blessing of God ? Who does the larger part in produ- 
 cing tlie harvest that is gathered ? If tlie earth is the 
 Lord's, how much more does the farmer use of his own 
 than of that which belongs to God ? It is very instruc- 
 tive to observe in what the earliest known reliffions of 
 man consisted. Apart from the endless ceremonials for 
 cleansing from such defilement as might communicate 
 disease or death, their sacred and religious actions were 
 the ploughing of the land, tlie sowing of the seed, the 
 
 2 
 
18 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 gathering of the harvest, the building of a house, the 
 planting of a tree, the opening of a well. It was with 
 these actions that their solemn religious services were 
 connected. It was on these occasions that they made 
 their prayers; and not, apparently, in childish selfish- 
 ness, as if they knew or desired no higher good, but as 
 understanding that all earthly blessings were true gifts 
 of God, and must be acknowledged with humility and 
 gratitude to Him. As they labor in vain that build a 
 house, unless the Lord build it also, so in vain do they 
 labor who till the ground, unless He "maketh it soft 
 with showers, and blesseth the springing thereof." 
 
 The one Lord who rules all things, rules equally in 
 the fortunes of the business of men as in the courses 
 of the stars. You cannot do the business of this world 
 without Him. As in the tilling of the earth, so in the 
 transactions of business, His providence must do in- 
 finitely more for you than you can do for yourself, or 
 it is not possible for you to succeed. And even in this 
 realm, wliere men so rarely perceive that He is present, 
 it is wholly false and unnatural for us to assume that 
 God fills only a little place, a limited sphere in our 
 life and work, and leaves all the rest to the control of 
 something else. This breaks the unity of the universe, 
 denies the unity of God, and practically declares that 
 there are other lords than He, other laws in the world 
 than His. 
 
 3. Again, the great fact that all the universe is one, 
 all in one relation to God, all pervaded by His wisdom 
 and goodness and presence, teaches us that there is a 
 moral significance, a lesson of God, in all things. A 
 merely scientific knowledge of the world, a mere knowl- 
 
GOD THE ONE LORD. 19 
 
 edge of its chemical elements, its orders, classes, and 
 species, is an utterly inadequate knowledge. As well 
 might one pretend to have described a man when he 
 has described liis skeleton, his members, and the 
 chemical elements of which he is composed. Above 
 all these is a living soul, and a moral and immortal 
 life. So in the worhl there is a living God, a divine 
 and moral meaning ; and if we see not this we do not 
 see the world. The blue deeps above us, with the 
 countless stars by night and the fleecy clouds by day, 
 are not just air and moisture, just height and breadth. 
 There is something more, a something that speaks to 
 the inmost heart. There is the infinite peace of God 
 brooding on the world, the repose of an infinite power 
 while it watches the countless flocks of which it is the 
 shepherd. The earth around us, in its variety of crea- 
 ture and life, is not merely a varied form of matter ; it 
 has a meaning; it is a revelation; the character of God 
 is spread over it, and the thoughts of God are revealed 
 in it. 
 
 In this season, whose sweet influence we all feel, we 
 ought especially to recognize the lessons that are taught 
 us. Most especially ought we to see in all the beauty 
 of life and growth about us the tokens of that infinite 
 goodness and loving character of God whicli they re- 
 veal. The Scriptures say that " God is love ; " and they 
 say also, " The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord." 
 We can well believe this when we see all things around 
 us filled with life and joy, and overlaid witli beauty. 
 Who but a loving God would care whether His world 
 was beautiful or not ? Who but a loving God would 
 care for pretty colors in insects, for grace and beauty 
 
20 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 in plants and flowers ? How gentle nnist the nature 
 of God be, how tender and loving, to delight in the 
 kappiness of birds ! How the great Life overflows in 
 beauty, in music, in grace, in happiness ! There is 
 always a soft murmur of harmony in the world, as if 
 some great peaceful heart were humming its happy 
 content to a sleeping child. Oh, God is good ! God 
 is love ! Each blossom and bird, as well as the wide, 
 universal scene of life and beauty, is witness of it. If 
 He were a cold-hearted, unloving God, he could never 
 have made such a world as this, so crowded with happy 
 life, and so glowing with loveliness. "What a lesson it 
 is of His loving nature and disposition ; what a lesson 
 against the cold, unloving selfishness of men ! Alas ! 
 how many can see no beauty, feel no delight, in any- 
 thing but the yellow glitter of gold, and trample on 
 all that is tender and gentle in themselves, in wife 
 and children, because there is no money to be made in 
 givinfj life to such affections ! How unlike God is the 
 soul that is unloving, selfish, and cold ! How little any 
 man knows of God who has studied Him only in logical 
 dogmas and intellectual systems, and has never studied 
 His glory and His goodness as He has shown them in 
 the vast universe of life and beauty around him ! As 
 in all that man does he shows what he is, so God, in 
 making the world as He has, so full of life and joy and 
 beauty, has shown us what He is. And as in looking 
 on the stones of the Pyramids, or the sculptured mar- 
 bles of the ruins of Eome and Athens and Baalbec, he 
 is blind who does not see a higher meaning in these 
 than in common stones, so he is blind who looks on 
 all the life and beauty of the world and does not see a 
 
GOD THE ONE LOUD. 21 
 
 divine meaning, a lesson of God, in it all. The man 
 who can feel God only in his conscience, only in 
 the sense of duty and of sin, has only begun to live ; 
 as yet his eyes are not open. When we are farther 
 advanced in the spiritual life, every Lush will burn 
 with the glory of God, from every mountain we shall 
 hear the voice of God, and every day will be a Sabbath 
 of holy peace, and all things will be of God. 
 
 4. But the great fact that the Lord our God is one 
 Lord, that all the universe is one, with no lordship but 
 His, no life but His, teaches us how to think of God. 
 And our thought of God is the king-thought of life; 
 it makes our character, it moulds our life, it governs 
 all When we have thought of God as Creator and 
 Sovereign, and have adored Him as such, — when we 
 have thought of Him as incarnate in Christ, coming to 
 seek and save us, showing us His infinite grace in this 
 most wondrous fact, — when we have seen Him thus, 
 and have cast our souls upon His mercy, then let us 
 think of God as familiarly present in all the world. 
 Let us think of Him as that Presence which fills all 
 things and all places, and makes them full. As the 
 elements wrap us round and touch us continually, so 
 we are embosomed in God, — as the clouds are in the 
 air, as the islands are in the sea. He is the most 
 familiar presence in the world. There is more of God 
 in the world than there is of the world itself. He 
 encompasseth our path; so we walk with Him, and 
 He is not far from us. With such thoughts of God, 
 if we love and serve Him, His presence, His power, 
 and His love become a great sympathy with us, a 
 sweet and holy society for us ; and our religion becomes 
 
22 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 not a worship only, nor a fear only, nor a hope only, 
 but a walking with God, an entering into rest, an 
 earnest and anticipation of the pure and perfect life 
 of heaven. The universe is one ; it is all heaven to 
 the soul that is one with God. The Lord our God is 
 one ; the Person whose presence is in Nature is the 
 same God whom we shall see in heaven. The world 
 is as sacred as a church, for it is God's temple, hlled 
 with His glory. Life is as sacred as a prayer, for it is 
 all lived in His immediate presence. It is as wicked 
 to commit a sin on earth as it would be to commit the 
 same sin in heaven, for it is done before the face of 
 God. If we seek Him, He will be found of us, for 
 He is a God at hand, and not afar off. 
 
MEETING WITH GOD. 23 
 
 MEETING WITH GOD. 
 
 / Jiave heard of thee hy the hearing of the ear ; but now 
 mine eye seeth thee: wherefore I abhor myself and repent in 
 dust and ashes. — Job. xlii. 5, 6. 
 
 THE inference that may be drawn from these words 
 is, that God does sometimes appear to men. It is 
 not an impossibility that men should meet and recognize 
 the personal presence of God, in the same real sense 
 in which they meet and feel one another's presence. 
 It takes but few words to make this assertion, but no 
 words can express the interest and greatness of the fact 
 itself. If it is true that God Himself does sometimes 
 appear to men, what other fact is there, or can there 
 be, to men so great as this? No other fact can so 
 largely affect our views of the existence of God and 
 His relations to us, and no other fact can so affect the 
 view that we must take of ourselves. If such is the 
 condition of things in the universe that the soul of 
 man and God, the infinite Author of all, can meet 
 personally, and come into eacli other's conscious pres- 
 ence, how wonderful is this fact ! And if it should be 
 that you and I and all human souls are destined at 
 some time to encounter Him as men meet one another, 
 what else can we look forward to with equal interest ? 
 
24 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 What other event in all the future can there be like 
 this ? 
 
 The question is, whether we are shut up to the 
 necessity of knowing all that we are to know of God 
 by what is declared to us about Him, by the exhibi- 
 tions of His attributes in His works, or whether, 
 beyond all these, He ever shows Himself, and permits 
 men to know His existence by encountering His Person. 
 We know it is often repeated, " No man can see God," 
 " No man hath seen God at any time." When Moses 
 prayed to be permitted to see His glory, he was told, 
 "No man can see my face and live." But all these 
 passages do only assert that He cannot be seen by 
 men as Nature is seen, tliat He does not show Himself 
 visibly to our senses. And this is naturally to be 
 inferred from the spirituality of His substance. But 
 it is not necessary that He should put on form, and 
 visible, material body, in order to our meeting Him, 
 and knowing that we have met Him. Without this 
 He can make His presence known to us, and make a 
 meeting of our souls with Him. The blind can truly 
 meet one another without the aid of sight. If you 
 truly meet your friend, it is not because you and he 
 see each other, but because you make yourself con- 
 scious of his presence at the same time that he makes 
 himself conscious of your presence; and the two do 
 not meet until you know that he is conscious of you, 
 and he knows that you are conscious of him. It is 
 not in the seeing, but in the consciousness of each 
 other, that the meeting takes place and has its effect 
 upon you both. To this meeting the sight of each 
 other's forms is not essential; there are other means 
 
MEETING WITH GOD. 25 
 
 by which it can be effected. Neither is it necessary 
 that we should see God materially, in order to encounter 
 Hiin, feeling His presence and knowing that He feels 
 ours. If, through all eternity, neither you nor I should 
 ever see God, yet we may truly meet Him every day 
 in all those ages. 
 
 We may feel that this is unsatisfactory. Perhaps 
 we cannot help wishing that if we must meet Him, we 
 could also see Him. But this feeling arises only from 
 the feeble consciousness we now have of His presence. 
 When that consciousness grows clearer, stronger, more 
 intense, we shall not wish for any other sight of God. 
 Man instinctively closes his eyes to see God, when he 
 worships, when he prays, naturally feeling that it is by 
 making himself spiritually conscious of God that he is 
 to meet Him. Yet this is the true meeting, the real 
 encounter. For me to know that I am in the presence 
 of God, and know that He is conscious of me, and 
 know that He knows I am conscious of Him, — this 
 is for me to see God : nay, it is far more, it is to meet 
 Him, in tlie most perfect sense. Why cannot you 
 and your friend look each other in the eye more than 
 an instant at a time, while you can stand side by side 
 and talk all day ? To meet by mere bodily presence 
 and by formal intercourse is easy and endurable ; but 
 to meet directly, by mingling your consciousnesses with 
 each other, is meeting too closely, — it cannot be borne, 
 except by the intensity of love or the intensity of hate. 
 If we cannot meet God by seeing Him, still we may 
 meet Him far more directly and closely by spiritual 
 consciousness. We may come to some moment when 
 our step is arrested, our soul aroused, by the conscious- 
 
26 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 ness that we have come into His presence; and though 
 we see no form, we feel and know that He is there, the 
 dread and solemn presence of the Author of our life 
 and spirit. We know that our inmost soul is naked 
 before Him, since He takes us into His consciousness. 
 We feel His presence, we have met Him at last. What 
 He is to us we shall now feel, instantly and thoroughly, 
 and what we are to Him will he equally clear. And 
 even if it be necessary that there should be some visible 
 sign or token of His presence, something that the senses 
 can apprehend, He cannot want for means of this kind, 
 to make Himself manifest to us. If a burning bush 
 or a cloud of fire is needed to declare His presence, 
 He can use these means of making us feel that we are 
 before Him. We never see each other's souls, and yet 
 our souls thoroughly meet : when we look into one 
 another's eyes we know that we are conscious of one 
 another at the same moment. Thus directly may our 
 souls meet God ; not as men meet when they hide 
 themselves behind their own words, and encounter 
 each other only at a great spiritual distance, but as 
 men's souls meet when they lift the curtain and look 
 directly into one another's consciousness. 
 
 It is indeed saying a great deal to assert that the 
 spirit of man may thus meet God in personal encounter, 
 and to assert it as a true and literal fact, not to be ex- 
 plained away into something else. Yet, much as it is 
 to say, if there is one single instance in which it ever 
 happened, we are authorized to say it, and to set it 
 down as one of the established truths of human life. 
 
 There have been many instances in whicli it is said 
 that God met men and was with them, so that His 
 
MEETING WITH GOD. 27 
 
 presence was a real fact of their life, but in whicli it 
 does not appear that they were fully conscious of His 
 presence, or that they met Him. Jacob said, when he 
 rose from his stone pillow at Bethel, " Surely God is in 
 this place, and I knew it not." He had been in God's 
 presence, but had not met Him, — or had met Him only 
 in this unconscious manner. Such meetings of God 
 with men are frequently described in the Bible. A 
 similar presence of God with us all, indeed, is taught 
 in His Word. But in these instances the veil is not 
 removed. Man does not perceive and feel God's pres- 
 ence as God perceives and feels man's presence. Man 
 does not see as he is seen, and know as he is known. 
 The mother stands over her child while he is busy in 
 thought and hand with his toys upon the floor. She is 
 deeply conscious of her child; he fills her whole con- 
 sciousness. She pours out upon her little one a flood 
 of tender, gentle, loving consciousness. She sees his 
 thoughts, she feels his emotions, he lives in her, but 
 they have not met. The great fact of his mother's 
 presence, and her full consciousness of him, he does not 
 perceive and does not feel. But he looks up, their 
 eyes meet, their souls mingle, he feels the sweetness 
 of that conscious love which she is pouring out upon 
 him, he springs toward its source in her soul, — and 
 they have met. And when we read the incident re- 
 corded in the third chapter of Exodus, when Moses is 
 said to have met God at the burning bush, we are evi- 
 dently reading of an equally real interview between 
 God and man. True, after the man was addressed, and 
 was made conscious that it was God who spoke to him, 
 he veiled his eyes, and dared not look on God ; yet he 
 
28 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 was thoroughly conscious of God's presence, and did 
 truly meet Him. There was still a distance preserved, 
 but he came as near to God as he could come and live. 
 It is a true instance of a real meeting of God and man. 
 Though it is not so perfect and open and full an en- 
 counter as we are taught to expect hereafter, still it is 
 a sufficient proof that God can and does appear to man. 
 That He has done so even once is a powerful confirma- 
 tion of the prospect that every one of us will at some 
 time meet Him in direct and personal meeting. 
 
 The Holy Scriptures always describe the departing 
 spirit as returning to God, and death as a going into 
 His presence. Our bodies and the material world are 
 between our souls and the spiritual world. When we 
 go out of our bodies and out of this world, where shall 
 we be ? We must be in the spiritual world, without 
 anything between us and it. And if God is in that 
 spiritual world, how shall we not meet Him when we 
 go in there ? He is behind the world's laws and forms, 
 and when we go out beyond the limits of our bodies 
 and of material nature, what will there be to conceal 
 Him from us ? The body returns to the dust from 
 whence it was taken, and the soul returns to God who 
 gave it. 
 
 It is the constant doctrine of Scripture that there is 
 for us each in that future world a day of judgment. " It 
 is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the 
 judgment ; " " because God hath appointed a day in which 
 He will judge the world in righteousness, by that JSIan 
 whom He hath ordained, whereof He hath given assur- 
 ance to all men, in that He hath raised Him from the 
 dead." " Then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory, 
 
MEETING WITH GOD. 29 
 
 and before Him shall be gathered all nations." Tlie one 
 great truth that is asserted in all that relates to the 
 future judgment is, tliat we shall all meet God. We 
 have heard of Him by the hearing of the ear, but tlien 
 our eyes shall see Him. It will be a true and personal 
 meeting, for every one of us must give account of him- 
 self unto God. All else that is described is but the 
 scenery of that meeting, the great fact is tlie meeting 
 itself. He will be no longer a God tliat hideth Himself, 
 no longer at a distance, no longer avoiding our personal 
 recognition. " Behold, He cometh. He cometh, and 
 every eye shall see Him." This language, you will say, 
 refers to Christ; and so it does. As Christ is the mani- 
 festation of God's character to this world, so He will be 
 the manifestation of God's Person to that world. While 
 He was here, what was visible in Him to this world was 
 the human, the man's nature, the face marred and wet 
 with tears for our sins. What will be visible in that 
 ■world will be the divine, the God's nature, the bright- 
 ness of His glory, the express image of His person. 
 From the beginning, before all worlds, and in the crea- 
 tion of all worlds. He was God as manifested, God as 
 known and revealed ; and He will be the manifested 
 God in all eternity. God is in Him, and He is God. 
 With Him we have to do. Christ will not be between 
 God and us ; He will be God. We look into a man's 
 eye, and see a spirit; we shall look into His eye, and see 
 God. And when we encounter spiritually the presence 
 of God, who will that be, whom we have thus met? 
 Who but the same One whom we saw when we looked 
 into the eye of Christ? Who but the same who in Christ 
 makes Himself understood by men ? 
 
30 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 If the Scripture be true, we shall meet God, — He 
 will appear to us. After all the reports that have been 
 made to us of His existence and character, M'hich we 
 have heard by the hearing of the ear in tlie voices of 
 Nature and the proclamations of the Bible, we shall see 
 Him. And does it seem to us that there is no natural 
 probability to support these teachings of the Bible ? 
 Even if there were none, how is it possible to deny that 
 what the Scriptures predict will happen in the future ? 
 We cannot confidently say that it will not occur, be- 
 cause we have no other means of knowing wliat will be, 
 nor have we any means of destroying the authority of 
 prophecy, except by voluntarily refusing to believe it. 
 We must at least wait until the event disproves the 
 prediction, before we can assert that it is false. But 
 there are natural probabilities that support the declara- 
 tion of the Scriptures that we all shall meet with God. 
 They are many and strong ; so many and so strong that 
 we must not neglect the truth which they commend 
 to us. 
 
 The fact that there is a God, that He exists and we 
 exist, establishes a strong probability that we shall 
 sooner or later meet Him. We are continually ex- 
 tending the boundaries of our acquaintance with the 
 universe, continually coming into contact with new 
 objects. Our lives carry us forward, and tlie evident 
 destiny of man is thus to go on forever during Ids 
 whole existence, meeting new objects and extending 
 his acquaintance. The very fact that there is a God 
 in the universe makes it very probable that we shall 
 at some time meet Him. All things in tlie universe 
 are so connected, so bound together by the same laws. 
 
MEETING WITH GOD. 31 
 
 SO pervaded by the same forces, — the great whole is 
 so complete a unity at last, — that if we continue to 
 exist, all the probabilities are that sooner or later we 
 shall be brought into contact with everything else in 
 the universe. There is no real separation even between 
 worlds. Tliey shine and sing to each other across the 
 spaces, and move within magnetic reach, and are ap- 
 parently anxious to show themselves to the spirit of 
 man. And if God is in His universe, why should we 
 not encounter Him ? If He is a spirit, and can never 
 be met in a material way, we also are spirits, and can 
 enter the spiritual world as well as the natural. This 
 fact that we are spirits, and can enter the spiritual 
 world, adds greatly to the natural probability that we 
 shall some time see God and meet Him. The world 
 of spiritual existences is as truly natural to us as the 
 world of Nature, and its realities are for us natural 
 objects of desire and knowledge. If God is in the 
 spiritual world, we too shall be there before long, and 
 why shall we not meet Him there ? How can we be 
 forever meeting the smaller facts in the universe, and 
 never meet in plain contact tlie greatest fact of all, 
 even God Himself? 
 
 Every natural connection of our life with God in- 
 creases this probability. He is our Creator, Author of 
 our being. It is said in Scripture, "He that formed the 
 eye, shall He not see ? " And we may ask again. The 
 eye that He formed, shall it never see Him ? " He 
 that formed the ear, shall He not hear ? " The ear 
 wliich He formed to hear, shall it never hear Him who 
 formed it ? He is the Father of our spirits ; and shall 
 the spirit never meet its Father ? He is our Creator, 
 
32 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 and has created us with powers adapted to know that 
 He is our Creator : in this fact, surely, we must trace 
 strong probability that we shall some time see Him. 
 If He had meant that we should never meet Him, 
 would He not have concealed from us the fact that He 
 is our Creator, as He has concealed it from the animals ? 
 And our natural dependence upon God is so great, 
 so constant, so complete, as to form a constant connec- 
 tion with Him for us. It is the simplest truth of 
 natural religion that God's power and will are the 
 steady and constant support of all His creatures. The 
 fact that our connection with His power and presence 
 is so direct and constant, makes it most improbable 
 that we shall never see, never meet, Him upon whom 
 we thus depend. That He should be forever so near 
 to us, that we should always so live and move in Him, 
 and yet that we should never meet Him face to face, 
 never consciously encounter Him eye to eye, is not 
 probable, is not believable. And when we observe 
 how much He has revealed of Himself, how plainly 
 He put the tokens of His power and Godhead in the 
 things that are made, how He set the stars singing for- 
 ever " The hand that made us is divine," how He has 
 forced upon our reason the necessity of recognizing 
 His existence, how He made our souls to cry out for 
 Him in their extremity, — what do all these things 
 mean ? They certainly cannot mean that He wishes 
 us never to know Him. Why does He show Himself 
 to our mind in Nature, if He does not wish to show us 
 more ? All these things are in the direct path to that 
 meeting and seeing of Hira which shall be ultimate 
 and complete. He intimates His presence, but does 
 
MEETING WITH GOD. 33 
 
 not show Himself; but He cannot expect us to be 
 satisfied with this. Can you or I be satisfied if we 
 know that some one is near us and concerned with us, 
 so long as he will not show himself, and let us see him? 
 I have seen men who tried earnestly to satisfy them- 
 selves that they never should see or meet God person- 
 ally, but had to do only with His revealed laws ; and 
 the unsatisfied and wretched condition of their spirits 
 served to show how utterly unnatural such a conception 
 is. No, because we now know in part, we shall here- 
 after know even as we are known. Because we now 
 see through a glass darkly, we shall hereafter see face 
 to face. When by the ways that He now employs 
 He has made us conscious of His existence, and be- 
 gotten in us some conception of His character and our 
 relations to Him, He will unveil Himself, and we shall 
 meet Him. 
 
 Let us remember, too, that our moral responsibility, 
 our sense of obligation beyond all that human law 
 requires of us, is another and still higher connection 
 with Him. Our souls are under His laws ; our duties 
 arise by His appointment ; our obligations are measured 
 by His will ; our destiny is at His disposal By His 
 character we judge our own; by His will we must 
 regulate our lives. His nature is the foundation of 
 moral truth ; the idea of Him controls all our ideas of 
 right and wrong, of holiness and sin. Shall the crimi- 
 nal never meet his Judge ? Shall the soul never meet 
 Him whom it is so necessary for it to know ? How 
 can it be that all these moral relations between our 
 souls and God will never bring us into His presence ? 
 We are personal beings, not mere parts of a race. 
 
 3 
 
34 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 Each of us is a living soul. God is a personal God, — 
 not an element, not a mere power, but a Person, He 
 aud we must meet, and look into each other's conscious- 
 ness, as we men meet personally when our spirits mingle 
 in mutual recognition through the eye. 
 
 These natural probabilities amount almost to cer- 
 tainty, and hardly need the express assertion of God 
 Himself that we shall see Him. But when to these 
 are added the express assurance of Him whose voice 
 recalled the dead, whose command spread peace upon 
 the stormy sea, and of those in whom the Spirit of God 
 spoke to the world, we can doubt no more. As we have 
 heard of Him by the hearing of the ear, so shall our 
 eyes see Him. It is for each of us sooner or later to 
 meet God in open, full, and perfect meeting. This 
 sublime fact is set down in the plan of my life and of 
 yours ; so much we know of what will befall us here- 
 after. We must take it into our account, and give it 
 its place in our plan of living, and in our anticipations 
 of what we are to find in the life beyond. 
 
 We have now to observe that this meeting with 
 God cannot take place without the full discovery of 
 our personal relations to Him. W^hat these are is not 
 fully discovered until we do meet Him. What regard 
 He has for us, what real sympathy there may be 
 between Him and us, what ground there is in our 
 relations for a true fellowship, we cannot fully know 
 until we do meet Him. Whether He approves of us, 
 we can only trust, until we know by standing in His 
 presence. Whether He condemns us, and how deeply 
 He condemns us, we shall fully know only when we 
 know it from Himself. In this world it is easy to 
 
MEETING WITH GOD. 35 
 
 misapprehend our relations to Him. It is hard even 
 for the most devoted Christian to feel even a com- 
 fortable assurance of his true standing with God. We 
 are perpetually exaggerating one view or another of His 
 character, and estimating our own standing accordingly. 
 But when we stand in the light of His eye, when we 
 can look straight into His consciousness, our personal 
 relations to Him will be perfectly clear. Thus in every 
 scriptural representation of the meeting of men with 
 God we see most prominently this discovery and adjust- 
 ment of their relation to Him : " Come, ye blessed ; de- 
 part from me, ye cursed." It is a singular yet common 
 fact that we can never directly meet witliout being com- 
 pelled to adjust our mutual relations. The master mind 
 takes supremacy, and the lesser, for the time, is subject. 
 We instinctively perceive and accept the degree of con- 
 fidence and kindness with which we are met. Nothing 
 is more distressing than to be unable to perceive the 
 relation that we truly hold to those whom we meet. 
 Bring a steel rod into the presence of a compass-needle, 
 and instantly the needle takes its place, assuming its 
 true relation to the steel. When souls, when our souls, 
 are brought before the personal presence of God, they 
 will at once discover their true relation to Him, and 
 will take it. Such meeting with God will be the test 
 of moral character. In the scriptural instances of 
 meeting with God, this is the effect : thus in the text, 
 " I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, 
 but now mine eye seeth Thee ; wherefore I abhor 
 myself, and repent in dust and ashes." In our o\vn 
 experience we know that any strong apprehension of 
 God brings up to view our imperfections and our 
 
36 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 sinfulness. It is not possible, indeed, that we should 
 meet God and not see our own moral character in its 
 true light. He is the standard of moral worth, and 
 before Him our moral worth cannot but be seen and 
 measured. In this world our moral condition is tested 
 mainly by comparison with one another, and in that 
 comparison we find little to alarm us ; but if some 
 one brings himself to a comparison with God as He 
 stands revealed in His Word, how soon and utterly 
 his self-complacency is destroyed, his justifications and 
 excuses disappear, and he is left to struggle as he can 
 with the painful sense of his sin and guilt ! Yet what 
 are all the exposures and discoveries of character that 
 are made in this world, to that which will be made in 
 the unveiled presence of God when He reveals Him- 
 self as the Judge of all the earth ? If you cannot 
 conceal your imworthiness here, how will you hide it 
 there ? If you cannot bear the exposure of it now, 
 how can you endure the full exposure then ? If the 
 sense of alienation from God makes Him now a trouble 
 to your heart at times, how will you stand in His im- 
 mediate presence ; how will you enjoy that direct 
 meeting with God ? 
 
 But if there is no condemnation, if sin has all been 
 pardoned, if the soul has been renewed in holiness, and 
 its affections have been harmonized with God, then how 
 sublime the moment when the soul shall look into the 
 eyes of God, and those eyes shall look back upon him 
 only infinite tenderness and love, and he shall see in 
 the infinite deptlis of that consciousness into which 
 he gazes only kindness, only love ! Oh, how blessed are 
 the pure in heart, when they see God ! Who cannot 
 
MEETING WITH GOD. 37 
 
 see how great a value dwells in that pardon of sin and 
 peace with God which I am here to offer you in the 
 name of Jesus ? Oh, may it be as sweet for you to 
 hear as it is to me to say, " Him that cometh uuto me, 
 I will in no wise cast out." 
 
38 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 THE PATTERN OF LIFE. 
 
 Looking unto Jesus. — Heb. xii. 2. 
 
 TT is natural to us all to look away from ourselves to 
 ■^ find a pattern for our life. If the question is asked 
 of us, " How will you spend your life ; what kind of 
 life will you live ? " we do not set about answering the 
 question by consulting our own best judgment or our 
 own highest interests, but we look away from ourselves 
 to the different kinds of life that are already customary 
 in the world, and from them choose the pattern that 
 pleases us best. Very few people invent their own 
 dress. Almost every person accepts and wears the 
 kind and style of dress which is already fashionable, 
 following without question the example of others ; or 
 if any depart from the fashion at all, it is only in some 
 very slight degree, sufficient to constitute merely a 
 personal mark upon a common style. This is natural, 
 and so far right; and it is a beneficent fact, because 
 it saves us from a vast deal of trouble in studying 
 "wherewithal we shall be clothed." But not only 
 are there styles of dress which have become general 
 fashions, there are also styles of life, governing ideas, 
 which have become fashionable among men and women. 
 Whoever has a life to live finds ways of living already 
 
THE PATTERN OF LIFE. 39 
 
 established by custom and general example, and he 
 falls into one of these fashions of life very much as 
 he ado[)ts the customary style of dress, and feels that 
 it is a sufficient justification of his way of living that 
 it is the general custom. Every seed, when it begins 
 its own life, finds that it is already one of a class 
 which has its own style of life ; and what it will be, 
 whether a vine, a shrub, or a tree, what kind of flower 
 and fruit it will bear, and all its habits, — these matters 
 are decided by the fashions or habits of its class or 
 species. Its life is already prepared for it, and it does 
 nothing but conform to the fashions of its kind. This 
 is of course in respect to the plant a law of Nature 
 which it cannot violate ; but the soul of man does 
 voluntarily what the plant does naturally. It gives 
 itself up to follow the general example of those who 
 constitute its class or society in the world ; not trying 
 to make life for itself, it accepts and adopts the life 
 which the example of others sets before it. And to 
 do this, to find a pattern for our life in the life of 
 others, is natural. In all the earlier parts of life we 
 are too weak and ignorant to do otherwise. But just 
 as a man or woman may choose a false, unhealthy, 
 ridiculous style of dress, so we may choose a false, 
 wrong, injurious pattern for our life. Very few lives 
 are original; every man has his class, and justifies his 
 life by its example ; and the real question is not 
 whether we will follow the example of others or make 
 our life for ourselves, but what example we shall 
 follow, — for some pattern outside of ourselves we are 
 sure to have. 
 
 Since it is thus natural to us to follow in our life a 
 
40 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 pattern which we do not make for ourselves, it would 
 seem to be a true part of God's care for us to give us 
 the pattern of a true, right, and good life. 
 
 A pattern of life was given us in the giving of the 
 law, but in a negative form. We are shown in the 
 law what a good life is not. It is not idolatrous, not 
 profane ; it is not Sabbath-breaking ; it is not dis- 
 honest, impure, or covetous. By the law is the know- 
 ledge of sin, the knowledge of what a good life must 
 avoid because it is wrong and injurious. The man 
 who lives by the law, the legalist in religion, will 
 naturally be most concerned merely not to transgress, 
 to keep within the prohibitions of the law, and will 
 feel his life and freedom limited by these prohibitions. 
 But a perfect pattern of life in the positive form was 
 ffiven us in the human life of Christ. What a true, 
 good life is, in its principles and habits, is found in 
 Him. And the difference between the life of a legal- 
 ist and a Christian life is the difference between a law 
 and a life, between the Ten Commandments and the 
 living Christ. The life of a legalist may be very regu- 
 lar, consistent, and blameless, but it lacks living 
 warmth and growth and freedom. A plant is alive ; 
 it grows, it blossoms in beauty, it brings forth fruit ; 
 and that is like a Christian soul. A crystal is very 
 clear, very regular, exactly according to law, every 
 angle mathematically true, but it has no life, no 
 growth, no freedom, no blossom, no fruit; and that is 
 like a legalist soul, one who lives by law rather than 
 by communion with Christ. 
 
 We may feel a difficulty, however, in thinking of 
 Christ as a pattern for our life, because it is difficult 
 
THE PATTERN OF LIFE. 41 
 
 for us to tliink of Him as a man, living a man's life 
 in this world. The divine nature which was also in 
 Him overshadows and conceals for us the true and 
 pure human life that He lived. It may seem to us 
 that He who was Son of God, and had all power in 
 heaven and earth, can be no pattern for us who have 
 lives to live so far beneath His in every way. It may 
 seem presumption for us to make Him our pattern, 
 and impossible for us to conform our lives to His. 
 But if He was infinitely above us in divine character, 
 still He was one of us in His human nature and life. 
 We can properly look on beyond His miracles, His 
 Godhead, His command over all Nature, and see the 
 " tbrm of the servant," the " fashion of the man." 
 Christ as He lived in Palestine might come in here 
 among us this morning, and there would be nothing 
 to distinguish Him from any other stranger. In His 
 dress He was like others, in His appearance there was 
 nothing to betray His unusual character. He looked 
 like any common man. His disciples lived with Him, 
 and talked with Him of common affairs, in perfect 
 familiarity. When He did His mighty works, He did 
 them with no supernatural show ; as any man who 
 had power would speak and act, so did He. He was 
 not taken out of common human conditions and re- 
 lations V)y His divine nature ; He was made like unto 
 His brethren, and if we could look into His daily 
 human life Ave should see that it was only what we 
 mi'^ht imitate, and ouLrht to imitate. He did not come 
 merely to die for us, but to live before us to show us 
 how to live, to set us an example that we should follow 
 His steps. It will not be wrong for us to think often 
 
42 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 of Christ in this light, — as a man, apart from His awful 
 
 Divinity ; to see that He must often have been j ust 
 where we are, with the same things to do, the same 
 small obligations of home and social life upon Him, 
 and to consider how He acted in such circumstances. 
 Christ is a true pattern for us in our earthly life, as 
 He is the pattern of what we hope to be in the life to 
 come. He is the one Son of man, the model, the type, 
 the pattern for all men. " Looking unto Jesus " is 
 making His life the pattern of our own, adopting the 
 principles of His conduct, justifying our life by His 
 example and approbation, and disregarding all other 
 examples as not concerning us. 
 
 We have indeed but an incomplete history of our 
 Saviour's life. A few facts of His childhood, and the 
 history of His public ministry and miracles, is all that 
 is given us. It is not, therefore, in particular acts or 
 in personal habits that we can make Him our pattern. 
 But we have a very clear statement of the principles, 
 the moral spirit, the great ideas, which governed His 
 life and made it what it was ; and it is in these things 
 that He must be our pattern. There is a type of every 
 kind of plant, and Nature forms every plant according 
 to the type of its species ; yet not by holding up the 
 type as a working model, and mechanically making the 
 plant like the type in its form and I'ruit, but by giving 
 to the seed the principles and tendencies of the kind 
 of plant it is to be : then by the living growth under 
 the control of those principles it comes to be like its 
 type. So our souls must make the principles and 
 moral spirit of Christ the principles and spirit of our 
 life ; and living by these principles, we sliall make 
 
THE PATTERN OF LIFE. 43 
 
 our lives like His. If we could know all the personal 
 habits of Christ, — how He dressed, how He regulated 
 His diet, how He practised His devotions, how He 
 treated others, — if we could know all His manners, 
 and how He spent the day, from morning till night, 
 and should in all these things do just as He did, still 
 we might not at all be Christlike. He is all the more 
 a perfect pattern for us because we know so little of 
 Him personally, and because the great principles of 
 His lile are what we do know most about. 
 
 Looking unto Jesus, then, for a pattern for our life, 
 we are obliged first of all to consider His piety. His 
 religion, as a pattern for our own. No man can claim 
 any resemblance to Him who is not truly religious. 
 His was pre-eminently a religious life. And with Him 
 religion was not something added to His life as a mere 
 part of it ; it was the character of the whole. If He 
 is the pattern for the life of men, then piety is the 
 very first and highest requisite of a true human life. 
 The very name of Christ can suggest nothing but 
 religion. If we tried to think of Him leaving out 
 His religious character, we could not think of Him 
 at all. Our minds cannot conceive of Him without 
 encountering His religious character in every view 
 we take of Him. Is He in this a true pattern of a 
 true life ? Is piety an absolute necessity ? I will 
 not attempt to prove it. Those who deny it must 
 take tlie responsibility. I only say that men who live 
 their life without piety live a false life. They are not 
 true to their own nature, to their own conscience, to 
 their relations to themselves, to God, or to immortality. 
 A soul without religion is only a small part of a human 
 
44 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 soul, and a life without piety is only a small part of a 
 complete human life. Look around you upon the men 
 and women that you know who are without piety 
 toward God, — without religion, as we commonly ex- 
 press it. They perhaps possess abilities and positions 
 that command your respect, and their behavior in the 
 ordinary relations of this world may be honorable and 
 kind. I would not take from them one particle of the 
 respect in which they are held ; but their lives are false 
 lives, — there is a great and radical wrong in their way 
 of living. Looking on them as citizens and neighbors, 
 we might not see this; but looking on them as God's 
 creatures going on to another world, we cannot help 
 seeing how wholly false their life without piety is. 
 And just this is the danger, and the total falsity, of 
 all the patterns of life that we find in this world. They 
 do not recognize a soul in man, or a God in heaven, or 
 a life beyond the grave. Can we be satisfied to live 
 our life on a plan so false ? Is not Christ tlie true 
 pattern for us, and especially because His life makes 
 piety the great and ruling principle ? Should a man, 
 in order to live truly and rightly, cast religion out of 
 his life, and disregard God and immortality ? It is 
 not possible for any sane man to think so. But where 
 shall we find a true pattern of religion for our life, 
 except in Christ ? There is no other. He is the only 
 pattern of religion that any of us could choose if we 
 chose at all. 
 
 But there is a special character belonging to tlie 
 piety of Christ which should be the pattern of our 
 own. The piety of Christ seems to differ from all 
 other in the character of familiar, confiding, intimate 
 
THE PATTERN OF LIFE. 45 
 
 friendship with God. He once said to His disciples, 
 " All ye shall leave me alone ; and yet I am not alone, 
 for the Father is with me." He lived in the society 
 of God; God was His company, His companion, al- 
 ways near, always accessible. And most evidently 
 His religious experience was an experience of pleas- 
 ant, familiar intercourse with God, concealing nothing, 
 fearing nothing. It is this that we should have felt if 
 we could have seen Him when He was on earth. We 
 should have felt that He was very intimate with God, 
 very independent of human aid and of human neglect, 
 because He found a blessed and constant sympathy 
 in God. Christ is Christ, not because He was so holy, 
 so pure, so perfect, not because He was to God so 
 faithful a servant, but because He was so intimate, so 
 familiar, so friendly with God. This is the great char- 
 acteristic of His personal religion. In this familiar, 
 friendly intimacy with God, in a life of trust and 
 prayer, He made His religion to consist. It was so 
 different a pattern of religion from that whicli then 
 was fashionable. It put profound contempt upon mere 
 ceremonials, mere forms of religion, in which, accord- 
 ing to the prevailing pattern, religion was made to 
 consist. 
 
 This character of our Saviour's piety we should 
 make the pattern of our own. There are other kinds 
 of religious life, which may be very sincere and earnest, 
 but which are of necessity imperfect. There is a style 
 of piety which might be called a religion of worship, 
 in which reverence is the great characteristic. We 
 come to God as worshippers merely; we do not think 
 of Him as near to us, our Friend, in whom we lovingly- 
 
46 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 confide ; we have no feeling of familiarity and affec- 
 tion toward Him. We revere, we worship Him, but 
 we go no nearer to Him ; He is not society for us, — 
 He is rather the great and awful Majesty, before whom 
 we are so very little as to be almost beneath His sight. 
 There is not too much of reverence in this kind of 
 religion, but there is too little knowledge. There is 
 too little knowledge of what God really is, and there 
 is too little surrendering of self in trustful confidence 
 to Him. We need to look unto Jesus, the pattern for 
 our piety, who lived at peace in the society of God. 
 If we look unto Jesus for our type of piety, we shall 
 learn that God is to be loved, that He is to be con- 
 fidingly trusted, that He is to be familiarly approached, 
 that He is to be our company. 
 
 So, too, there is a style of piety that may be called 
 a religion of conscience, wliich is chiefly concerned 
 either with its sins or with its duties. Its experience 
 consists in self-condemnings, half despair, doubts and 
 fears of God's mercy, anxieties about what one has 
 done or what one may do. It is a constant effort to 
 keep right in our own eyes, with the misery of a con- 
 stant failure to do so, and a cry to God for pardon and 
 lielp. There are times when souls in such a life may 
 truly taste the joys of salvation for a little wliile, as 
 when strong outward religious influences, like those 
 of a revival, take them away from themselves, and 
 their hearts are free to rejoice in the joy of others. 
 This is a very genuine, amiable, and sincere religion, 
 but it is imperfect when judged by the great pattern 
 of piety. It lacks the peace, the rest, the confidence 
 in God, the friendly feeling toward Him that marks 
 
THE PATTERN OF LIFE. 47 
 
 the piety of Christ. There is perhaps a little lingering 
 remnant of self-righteousness mingling in it, showing 
 itself in making so much of duty and obedience, and 
 so little of the atoning power of Christ's death and the 
 forgiving grace of God. The soul says to itself, " You 
 must not hope very confidently in God, because you 
 are so sinful," — not accepting in all its fulness the 
 great Christian truth that wholly for Christ's sake God 
 freely forgives the soul. We may perhaps feel, indeed, 
 that Christ could be thus familiar, friendly, and in- 
 timate with God only because He was so sinless. 
 Undoubtedly it is true that a soul in order to feel thus 
 must either be without sin or be permitted to feel that 
 his sin is atoned for and forgiven. But surely when 
 sin has been atoned for and pardoned, and the soul 
 is restored to God's favor, it is in a condition to ap- 
 proach Him with confidence, unhindered by the re- 
 membrance of sin. It is prepared to come all the 
 more near, and approach all the more confidingly, by 
 the remembrance of that great love which has par- 
 doned. Has not Christ done enough to assure His 
 disciple that his sins are pardoned, and do not any 
 longer alienate God's love from him ? Do you believe 
 that Christ's death is an atonement for the sins of 
 those who believe on Him ? Do you believe that God 
 forgives the sins of such ? Then, tliough you are sinful, 
 you are to feel no less confidence in coming to God 
 than if you were not. All that familiar, perfect con- 
 fidence in God which appears so beautiful in Christ 
 is just as much the privilege of every penitent sinner 
 as it was of Christ Himself. 
 
 But we may say also that Christ could not doubt 
 
48 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 God's great love for Him, and that this was the reason 
 why He could feel thus familiar and intimate with 
 God. And it is true that if God does not truly love 
 us, we can never feel a familiar confidence in approach- 
 ing Him. But had Christ any greater reason to think 
 that God loved Him than you and I have to be sure 
 that He loves us ? Ah, but God went and lived in 
 Him, made Him the very temple of His residence, 
 constituted Him heir of all things. Yes, it is true; 
 but for wliose sake did He do all this ? Was it for 
 Jesus' own sake, or for yours and mine ? All the 
 glory, all the power, all the truth, all the grace which 
 God gave to Jesus, He gave for us. His love was not 
 thinking so much of Him as it was of us. It is indeed 
 necessary to know that God loves us trul}^, tenderly, 
 before we can feel that familiar, happy confidence and 
 intimacy with Him which our pattern presents. But 
 how can we doubt it ? How dare we question God's 
 love for us ? What could make us believe it, if what 
 He is and what He had done for us cannot ? If our 
 soul seeks Him, we ought to take it as a settled and 
 unquestionable thing that God loves us. If only this 
 simple confidence could take stronger hold of us, we 
 should find ourselves better able to make our religion 
 more like that of our great pattern of perfect piety. 
 
 But we may still say that God's presence and power 
 dwelt with Christ in so intimate and constant a manner 
 as to enable Him to feel familiar and intimate with 
 the Father as we cannot. It is true that if God is not 
 present with us, if He is not caring for us, if He goes 
 away from us and forgets us, if we do not live in His 
 knowledge and remembrance, we cannot feel that in- 
 
THE PATTERN OF LIFE. 49 
 
 timate, confiding affection and trust toward Him which 
 our pattern sliows us. But oh, what abundant, what 
 perfect assurances fill the whole Bible that He is al- 
 ways with us ; tliat we live and move and have our 
 being in Him ; that His Spirit abideth with us and 
 sliall be in us ; that the very hairs of our head are 
 all numbered, our steps all counted ! In every place, 
 at every moment, we are with Him. Always He is 
 before our face and on our right hand. His presence 
 besets us before and behind, and His watchful provi- 
 dence is always caring for us. No friend, however 
 intimate, is so near to us, so always with us, as He. 
 Let us permit ourselves to see this fact, and continu- 
 ally to believe it, and it will help us to be like our 
 pattern in that free, happy, familiar intercourse with 
 God which distinguished Him. It is by realizing 
 God's close and constant presence and providence 
 that we must come nearer to Him. However much 
 is implied in this ftimiliar friendliness, this intimate 
 intercourse with God, still it is all provided for, and 
 any kind of piety that does not include it must always 
 be imperfect. It may be long before we come to the 
 measure of our pattern, but we must make the piety 
 of Christ the model of our own in this respect, and be 
 ever striving toward it. So deeply do we need just 
 this familiar intimacy with God for the rest of our 
 hearts and the work of our life ! It is hard to live a 
 true life in our outer relations toward others, when 
 the centre of life within is unsettled and disturbed. 
 When the ground under our feet is agitated by an 
 earthquake, we can think of nothing and care for 
 nothing but our own safe standing. Let us cultivate 
 
 4 
 
50 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 our Saviour's standard of piety, that like Him we may 
 always be sustained, and always have peace in the 
 inmost heart. 
 
 Christ would not be a perfect pattern for our life if 
 He did not further set us an example for our inter- 
 course with others. In all social relations, as well as 
 in piety, His life is the pattern for ours. 
 
 "We know, indeed, that His social life is a perfect 
 pattern of benevolence. " He went about doing good." 
 There was no pride, no exclusiveness in Him ; all, 
 however poor and despised, felt free to approach Him, 
 and were unembarrassed in His presence. His sym- 
 pathies were accessible to the worst as well as to the 
 best. He loved children, and His love for His 
 friends was as pure as His love for the little ones. 
 He was the friend of man, — everybody's friend, broad, 
 deep, and perfect in all His sympathies toward all man- 
 kind. He could not be unjust. He resented nothing 
 personally. He despised none, not even the Pharisees 
 whom He so heavily condemned. He was above all 
 jealousies, above all resentments, above all selfishness. 
 He held Himself always ready to receive and meet 
 the calls that the wants of others made upon Him. 
 Oh, it was indeed a wondrous human life that our 
 Saviour lived ! Who can wonder at the charac- 
 ter to which His apostles came, — at the almost 
 divine character of John, the disciple whom Jesus 
 loved ? How imperishable their love for Him must 
 have been ! How great His transforming power upon 
 them ! 
 
 "We are ready to say, " But all this is exceptional, 
 and to us impossible." Let us first, however, ask how 
 
THE PATTERN OF LIFE. 51 
 
 He could live such a life, so free from all the wrong 
 passions that mar our relations to others ; how He 
 could live in a world of sinners, a world that hated 
 and persecuted Him, and not sin in His relations to 
 men. How did He begin ? How did He look upon 
 men so as to be able to treat them always with such 
 compassion, such patience, such changeless benevolence 
 and love ? It was because He looked upon them as 
 He did. He looked upon all men as God's creatures, 
 going into another world to be eternally happy or 
 eternally miserable. He saw them in this light of 
 eternity, and in their relation to God as subjects and 
 as sinners. He saw men aright, and therefore He 
 could treat men rightly. And if we would make Him 
 our pattern, we must not only try in special cases to 
 be patient, forgiving, helpful, but we must begin as 
 He did, — by looking on ourselves and all around us 
 as God's creatures, all ungrown and imperfect, all 
 needing mercy and help, all going straight on to the 
 judgment after death. If we teach ourselves to look 
 thus on all around us, we shall not find it hard to 
 be Christlike in our social relations. Have you an 
 enemy ? You must love him. But how can you ? 
 By looking upon him as belonging to God, and as 
 going with you to the judgment-seat of Christ; by 
 remembering how soon both you and he will be in 
 your graves, and your spirits in God's presence. Do 
 we need a spirit of kindliness, sympathy, interest in 
 the people around us ? Let us look on them and 
 ourselves as all being tried and disciplined by our 
 lives in this world for a so much greater life hereafter. 
 Looking thus on men, we shall never resent with per- 
 
52 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 sonal anger their offences, or wickedly withdraw our- 
 selves from them because they do not please our tastes. 
 In the presence of God and before the great eternity 
 our little distinctions of wealth and talent and learn- 
 ing and goodness vanish ; we are all equal here, and 
 we can feel a brotherly sentiment toward all. Christ 
 saw us all thus before God and before eternity, and 
 needing help, and gave Himself for us in life and 
 death. This loving and lovely spirit of the Master 
 will come to us when we see God and eternity behind 
 every man, as we see the great, infinite sky behind the 
 trees. 
 
 When God has been served, and our neighbor has 
 been rightly treated, we still have ourselves, our personal 
 course and fortunes in the world, to think of. What, 
 then, can we learn from the example of Christ in this 
 respect ? The example that He has given us appears 
 to follow from His doctrine of Divine Providence. He 
 does not begin life, as we so often do, with the thought, 
 " I must take care of myself, I must make my own 
 fortune." Thus minded, we feel obliged to make our 
 fortunes in the world our first concern. But He begins 
 with the thought, " My Father knoweth what things I 
 have need of: my life is in His care, and He will see 
 to it." This thought of the Heavenly Father's Provi- 
 dence is the first, the ruling thought of Christ respecting 
 personal fortunes in this world. This is the thought of 
 Him who is our pattern, and looking unto Jesus we 
 should make this thought our own. And this thought 
 will save us from the two great errors which without 
 it are almost certain to spoil our lives. Trusting to 
 the providence of God, and submitting ourselves to its 
 
THE PATTERN OF LIFE. 53 
 
 care, we shall not be led off to seek our advancement 
 by unnatural or dishonest means. Our Lord would 
 not conseut to change stones into bread for His own 
 advantage. He would wait on tlie providence of God, 
 and do what Providence opened to him the opportunity 
 of doing ; but he would not force events, as if He had 
 His own fortunes to secure. You think God will not 
 take care of you, and therefore make it the first thought 
 and business of your life to take care of yourself; and 
 when you make this your first thought, you are as 
 unlike Christ as you can be. And believing in the 
 providence of God over all the life we live, we are 
 saved from the anxieties, the eagerness for property, 
 the foolish passion for possession, which is like a 
 canker on so many lives. Christ's great idea of provi- 
 dence made Him feel that His fortune was secure, 
 and left Him free to do His work and fulfil His life 
 without distraction of worldly care. We have need of 
 avoiding in our life the mischief which the strife for 
 money does to so many souls. We must set our hearts 
 upon avoiding the sordid anxieties, the selfish calcula- 
 tions, and the dangerous temptations which mingle in 
 the life of so many. Let us look unto Jesus, our great 
 pattern. Let us accustom ourselves, with Him, to this 
 great fact, that we are in the hands and care of God. 
 Under that care we can do our work without anxiety, 
 and contemplate the future without fear. 
 
 How true, how right and good, our life would be if 
 Christ were its pattern ! Let us make Him our guide. 
 Let Him be our Public Opinion. Let it be enough for 
 us that His example justifies us, even though others 
 condemn. Looking unto Jesus, we shall not only learn 
 
54 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 to live, but find strength to live, and sympathy and 
 encouragement for all our life. Let us forsake all other 
 guides, take up our cross, and follow Him. Whosoever 
 follows Jesus shall not walk in darkness, but shall have 
 the light of life. 
 
LOVING JESUS. 55 
 
 LOVING JESUS. 
 
 And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things, thou 
 knowest that I love thee. — John xxi. 17. 
 
 Tr)I'"i'EE'S own conduct in the judgment-hall had 
 -*- justified a doubt of his love for the Master. He 
 had utterly denied Him. It was proper that some 
 notice should be taken of such a fact, and this is the 
 notice that Jesus does take of it, — He asks Peter, 
 very pointedly and significantly, whether He loves 
 Him ; for after what He has done, this point requires 
 to be settled anew. Peter did love his Master, and it 
 was not because he did not love Him that he had denied 
 Him. He had been overtaken with a sudden fear, and 
 under this influence had denied that he was a disciple 
 of Jesus, in order to save himself. His love was indeed 
 imperfect, but it was real; and it shows us how one 
 who really loves Christ may still sin against Him. 
 When we indulge ourselves in supreme regard for our 
 own safety and comfort, such regard for ourselves will 
 suppress for the time all regard for others, even for 
 Christ. Jesus knew that Peter loved Him, and this 
 was the only reproof, — if this can even be called a 
 reproof, — that He ever gave him for his sin. And 
 yet it must have cut the heart of Peter to have his 
 
56 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 love thus questioned, as if he were distrusted by the 
 Master. 
 
 But Jesus had a great work for Peter to do, aud this 
 was another reason for asking if he loved Him. Peter 
 was to be a shepherd to the sheep and lambs of Christ's 
 flock, and love to Christ alone could fit him for his 
 pastoral office and work. And there was very much of 
 suffering for Peter to endure ; and this was yet another 
 reason for thus appealing to his love, — for if he did 
 not love Christ above all things, he could not endure 
 the sufferings in life and the martyrdom in death which 
 awaited him when he should be old, and another should 
 gird him, and lead him whither he would not. So 
 Peter, all through his life, when there was hard work 
 and harder suffering before him, would hear the Master's 
 voice asking, " Simon, lovest thou me ? " and this appeal 
 would nerve him for his work and sustain him in his 
 suffering. 
 
 The disciples must have loved Jesus with a very 
 tender affection : He was so loving Himself, so gentle, 
 patient, and compassionate, while He was also so great, 
 so wonderful. We cannot conceive a character so 
 adapted to touch the heart and awaken love in those 
 who lived with Him, as the character of Jesus. He 
 made Himself free with them ; He ate with them, slepl 
 with them, talked His pure, sweet wisdom with them as 
 they sat in the house or walked the rough ways. He waa 
 beautiful in person, tender as a woman to the sick and 
 miserable, grand as a king among His enemies, great as 
 a God among tlie elements of Nature, and everywhere 
 their friend. There was every quality in Him to touch 
 their reverence, and to draw out a strong, imperishable 
 
LOVING JESUS. 57 
 
 personal affection. And this was what they felt for 
 Him while lie lived and when He died. When they 
 saw Him hanging on the tree, amid the mockeries of 
 His enemies, gentle, loving, patient still, and dying 
 with His last cry to God, it was a deep and personal 
 affection that they felt toward Him. When the won- 
 derful report was spread that He had risen from the 
 dead, when they saw Him in the inner chamber where 
 they had met, and on the shore of Galilee, it was with 
 a tender personal affection for Him that they were glad 
 when they saw the Lord. And after He had ascended 
 up to heaven, when they went abroad in the world, 
 telling men of His wonderful life and death and 
 resurrection, they spoke of Him as of one they loved, 
 the dearest, nearest friend that they possessed. His 
 glory, His Godhead, did not take Him away from 
 them. They had seen Him, known Him, touched 
 Him here on earth, and these sacred memories of their 
 intercourse with Him kept alive that personal love for 
 Him which made warm their hearts in all discourage- 
 ments and trials. And when they came to die, though 
 it were by cruel crucifixions, the prospect that cheered 
 them through was the prospect of being with Him 
 again. The triumph of this thought destroyed the 
 power of death, and their hearts leaped joyfully over 
 all the intervening darkness to the welcome from Him 
 to which they looked. 
 
 It would seem at first thought impossible that any 
 other disciples of Christ should have so great a personal 
 affection for Jesus as these, the personal associates and 
 daily companions of His earthly life. What woman 
 could so feel the personal influence of Jesus as those 
 
58 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 three or four who had seen the wondrous beauty of 
 those deep eyes when the infinite tenderness of God 
 looked through upon them while they ministered offices 
 of love to Him, or as that poor sinful one who kissed 
 the feet that stand now on the footstool of tlie great 
 white throne ? Or what disciple could feel such a 
 personal love for Him as that young, loving John who 
 had lain in His bosom and felt around him the loving 
 arras of Christ? Yet I would not dare to say that 
 there have not been many thousands of Christians who 
 have loved Jesus with as strong a personal affection as 
 ever He received from Mary or from John, although 
 they have never seen His face or heard His voice. It 
 is remarkable that Jesus never appears to think that 
 His going out of the world will make any difference to 
 the love, the affection, of His people for Him. He does 
 not expect that His followers will love Him any the 
 less because He is no longer on the earth. He does 
 not think it necessary that men should see Him or be 
 physically near Him in order to love Him. He expects 
 of you and me to love Him, as much as He did of 
 Peter, James, and John. It is love for Himself that 
 He requires, and if we love Him not, we have no part 
 in Him. 
 
 I wish to deal with this idea of personal affection 
 for our Saviour. I would take love for Christ in the 
 simple, natural sense in which Peter used it when he 
 said, " Lord, Thou knowest all things ; Thou knovvest 
 that I love Tliee." He did not mean any philosophical 
 or theological definition of love, but a natural, human, 
 loving affection for Jesus. He meant that he loved 
 Him, — loved to be with Him, loved to hear Him 
 
LOVING JESUS. 59 
 
 speak, loved to please Him, and thought more of 
 Christ's love for him tluui of anything else in the 
 world. I cannot help thinking what an effect this 
 personal love for Jesus would have upon his piety. 
 Faith, for Peter, was not merely a belief in the truth ; 
 it was confiding in One whom he knew and loved. 
 Prayer was but another foim of his personal intercourse 
 with Christ. A Christian life was not for him so many 
 duties, so many laws and obligations ; a Christian life 
 for him was nothing more than his friendship with 
 Jesus. Our Christian life needs nothing so much as 
 more of this element of personal love for Christ. Our 
 religion is cold, it does not warm our hearts. It is a 
 worship of God, or a hope of heaven, or a striving after 
 perfection, or a conscientiousness about sins and duties. 
 If added to all this there could be a warm, loving per- 
 sonal affection for Jesus, we should be not only so much 
 freer, but far happier. I think that nothing could make 
 any of us so happy at heart as a warm, conscious love 
 for Jesus. We feel the need of something real and 
 personal in the object of our faith. We try to conceive 
 a spiritual and infinite God, but He is too vast, too far 
 from us, and there is no real satisfaction of heart in 
 thinking of Him if we think in this manner alone. 
 We cry out in the deeps of our hearts, " Such knowl- 
 edge is too wonderful for me ; it is high ; I cannot 
 attain unto it." So with all our piety we have too 
 little present rest and joy. We are reaching after the 
 unattainable ; we lack the near, the tender, the lovable. 
 If it is true that Christ is so related to us that we 
 can properly feel toward Him the same simple, natural 
 human love that His disciples felt, — if such a love is 
 
60 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 possible in us and will Le accepted with Him, — then 
 this is a truth that deeply concerns us, and one that 
 should be deeply considered. One question that we 
 have first to answer is, Can we feel a true personal 
 affection for Jesus ? Can we love Him as John did 
 and as Mary did ? We shall find the answer to this 
 question in the answers to some other questions. Is 
 Jesus alive now ? For if He is dead, if He has wholly 
 gone out of the world, if He has nothing to do with 
 the world at present, we may greatly admire His 
 character, and cherish reverence for His teaching and 
 example, but I do not see how we can feel a personal 
 affection for Him. We cannot give personal love to 
 those who do not exist. They themselves are gone 
 beyond our reach. We love living persons. If Jesus 
 is a living person, if He is now the same person whose 
 history we know, He is so far a proper object for our 
 personal love. And this He is. He died at Jerusalem, 
 but He was dead only till the third day. He returned 
 to life, He is alive now. He ascended in the clouds ; 
 but it was the same Jesus, with the same body that 
 had been seen on earth, and He is the same to-day. 
 He is a living person. All that He was, He is. All 
 that made Him lovable is in Him still. There is no 
 reason why He should not be loved. He is not a 
 shadow, not an impassible, unfeeling ghost, but a living, 
 loving man and God. Those wlio are near Him can 
 love Him. He can be loved as much as when He sat 
 at supper in the house of Lazarus at Bethany. 
 
 But is He anything to us ? Does He hold any per- 
 sonal relation to you and me ? For if He has no re- 
 lation to us, if there is no connection between His life 
 
LOVING JESUS. 61 
 
 and yours and mine, how can we love Him ? "We 
 cannot feel a personal affection for one who is outside 
 of our life and has no connection with it. What is 
 Jesus to nie and to you ? He is our brother in nature 
 and experience ; He has lived our life and borne our 
 sorrows. He is not an angel, He is a man, one of our 
 race. But at the same time He is God, — God dwelling 
 in a man. If He were merely a man, He would have 
 some relation to us as our fellow, and would be some- 
 thing to us ; but as God-man, as a man in whom Jeho- 
 vah is incarnate, how much more directly and richly 
 is He related to us ! How much more every human 
 being is to Christ than he is or can be to any one else ! 
 because He is not only man, but man and God in one. 
 What Jesus is to us Thomas expressed when he ex- 
 claimed, " My Lord, and my God ! " Oh, yes, the di- 
 vine character of Jesus, so far from raivsing Him beyond 
 us and separating Him from us, is just what unites 
 Him more closely to us all, and makes Him ours, our 
 own, as He could not be if He were merely man. Be- 
 cause He is a man, a living man, we can love Him ; 
 but because while He is perfectly a man God dwells 
 in Him also, we can love Him as we cannot love any 
 other, with an adoring, unlimited love and confidence. 
 
 But does He care for us ? — a question most impor- 
 tant in a personal affection. We can indeed love those 
 who do not care for us, but we do not usually do so, and 
 such affections are wont to be sources of pain to those 
 who feel them. H Jesus does not care for me, can I feel 
 a personal affection for Him ? And can I say with per- 
 fect certainty that He does care for me ? Can I afHrm 
 with certainty that He cares for each one of you ? 
 
62 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 Wherever Jesus may have lived since He went up 
 from the earth so long ago, I cannot see what else can 
 possibly have filled His heart but care and love for 
 those who have believed and trusted in Him. Con- 
 stituted as He was and is, it is absolutely necessary 
 to the conception of His character to think of Him as 
 caring for the souls that are depending upon Him. 
 Think of Christ, — Christ as we know Him in the 
 Gospels, — caring for anything else in preference to 
 His people, His followers ! What should it be ? What 
 could it be ? You cannot think, I cannot think, what 
 He should have cared for all these years, if He did 
 not care for the souls that pray, and seek to be saved. 
 When He was here, it was His whole character and 
 nature to care for these, and for nothing else in the 
 world before them. He has no other interest, He can 
 have no other. K we can love Him only in case He 
 first loves us, then we need not hesitate. It is not 
 that He loved us once, when He died for us. We 
 could love Him for that ; but ever since He has been 
 in heaven it has been His whole life to care for all 
 that called upon Him, to watch the souls of men, to 
 observe the first faint motion toward a new life, to 
 foster it and help it, to bring the soul to repentance 
 that He may sanctify and save it. All your Christian 
 life is the token and proof of His care for you. When 
 you were first awakened, when you were struggling 
 with religious convictions, oh, how He cared for you, 
 how He tried to help you ! When you repented and 
 believed, how gladly He received you and gave you 
 peace! And every day and hour since then He has 
 cared for you as He did for His disciples when He 
 
LOVING JESUS. 63 
 
 walked with them on earth. And not only does He 
 care for us, but He cares for our love. Love is what 
 He seeks to create in us. Worship without love, — do 
 you tliiuk He cares much for that ? Obedience from 
 moral compulsion, — do you think He cares much for 
 that ? What can we give Him that He will accept but 
 love ? How can He care for anything else from us ? 
 
 Let us love Him. Our very souls are starving for 
 the warmth and comfort which a true love for Him 
 would give them. Many good, true Christians are re- 
 straining themselves from loving Him because they 
 do not understand that loving Christ is the true life 
 of religion. They need to be told that Jesus cares 
 more for one affectionate emotion toward Himself than 
 for all their worship and awe. If we do not love Him, 
 He Avants nothing of our worship, nothing of our 
 service. Do we understand that this is what religion 
 requires ? It is to love Jesus. Many suppose that 
 what religion demands is a certain kind of goodness, 
 holiness, and that to be Christians they must be un- 
 naturally good. But it is love for Christ in which 
 true religion consists. Could you love Jesus with a 
 heartfelt love if that was all that God required of 
 you ? Well, it is all. If you can love Christ, you can 
 be a Christian. If you cannot love Him, no goodness, 
 no righteousness, however perfect, could make you a 
 Christian. 
 
 Let us love Him, then ; and in order that we may 
 love Him, let us think of Him more as He is presented 
 to us in the Bible. Read the simple story of His life. 
 Think of Him as He appeared mingled in the con- 
 ditions of this life on earth. Try to see Him as His 
 
64 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFK 
 
 friends saw Him. Bead the Gospels over again, as if 
 you bad never read them in your life. Eeraeraber al- 
 ways that He was human. Eemember that He loved 
 and suffered like a great, tender-hearted man, as He 
 was. And when you think of Him as He now is, 
 think that He is " this same Jesus," not changed, but 
 living with His people just as He lived with them in 
 the world. Do not so deify Christ as to rob Him of 
 His human loveliness and tenderness. Do not worship 
 Him with such awe as to kill your love for Him. He 
 wants to come near to us and be familiar with us ; we 
 must not put Him far off, and treat Him with cere- 
 mony, as if He were some grand emperor of heaven. 
 Too easily we neglect the human history of Jesus. We 
 cultivate our consciences and neglect our hearts, and 
 religion comes to be a careful, holy, painful living, 
 rather than a free and happy loving. Eemember, the 
 question that Jesus asks of us is not whether we be- 
 lieve in His divinity, whether we will worship Him 
 as God, or whether we will submit to His authority ; 
 but the question is, " Lovest thou me ? " 
 
THE REAL PRESENCE. 65 
 
 THE EEAL PRESENCE. 
 
 Hoicheit, when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he iriU 
 gxdde you into all truth ; for he shall not speak of him- 
 self ; hut whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he. speak: 
 and lie will show you things to come. — John. xvi. 13, 
 
 THE life of God in the souls of His people, like the 
 life of God in Nature, is secret and unsearchable, 
 but constant, indestructible and eternal. The life that 
 animates, develops, and matures all living tilings cannot 
 be confounded with the forces of matter. It belongs to 
 the spiritual world. It is the life of God. The Chris- 
 tian life in the Church of Christ cannot be confounded 
 with natural affections, with results of education, or 
 with the natural conscience. It is something different 
 from all these. It is the life of God in the soul of man. 
 Its source is in the constant communion of God with 
 the soul ; " I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." 
 The life in the humblest plant that grows is a super- 
 natural fact ; it cannot be explained by any scientific 
 analysis, it cannot be analyzed. It is like a spirit, 
 much more than like a natural force. The liie of re- 
 li<-don in the heart is in another sense a supernatural 
 fact. It cannot be explained by mental science. The 
 only explanation of the Christian life in the soul is in 
 
 6 
 
66 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 the communion of God with the soul. If it is not this, 
 it is a delusion. The Christian life of the Church there- 
 fore shares in the permanence and power and eternity 
 of the life of God. Institutions, governments, civiliza- 
 tions, founded on the interests and ideas of men, grow 
 old and useless, and die : but the Church of Christ, 
 founded on the life of God and nourished by it, is 
 indestructible and eternal. " God is in the midst of 
 her," as the soul is in the body, as the king is in his 
 kingdom. 
 
 This indwelling of God by the Spirit in the souls of 
 His people is the ultimate fact, beyond which we can- 
 not go and short of which we must not stop, when we 
 seek for the real sources and the true explanation of 
 religious life in men. The teachings of Scripture in 
 regard to the Holy Spirit signify in general terms this 
 abiding presence of God in the Church and in the soul. 
 And as this indwelling of God serves many purposes, 
 it is described in Scripture in many forms. In our 
 text the indwelling Spirit of God is called the Spirit of 
 Truth, because it takes the things of Christ and shows 
 them unto us — makes the truth revealed to be truth 
 for us — by a second revelation of them to the heart 
 and conscience within us. This indwelling Spirit of 
 God is also called the Comforter. It is described as 
 regenerating the soul, quickening the dead with spir- 
 itual life, sanctifying the believer through the truth, 
 and making intercession in us. But though the forms 
 are many, the Spirit is one. It is the one constant 
 presence of God in the Church, begetting, nourishing, 
 comforting, enlightening and enlarging the spiritual 
 life, which is to be complete only when it has 
 
THE REAL PRESENCE. 67 
 
 grown to the measure of the stature of the fulness of 
 Clirist. 
 
 It is impossible to interpret the Scriptures which 
 refer to this truth as teaching anything less than the 
 real and actual presence and working of God in the 
 souL If the Scriptures teach that God is a living 
 Person, existing anywhere in the universe, they teach 
 as plainly that He resides in certain souls of men. If 
 we ask where there is a living God, who sees and 
 knows and works, is there any other place where it 
 is so certain that He is, as in the soul of His child ? 
 Surely as much is said in Scripture of His presence 
 in the heart of the believer, and in the Church, as of 
 His presence in heaven itself. If God is in heaven, 
 He certainly is in the pious soul. We have no proof 
 in Scripture of the presence of God in any place, 
 which is not proof of His actual presence and actual 
 working in the hearts of His people. We are not at 
 liberty so to interpret the Scriptures that relate to 
 the Holy Spirit as in any way to deny or weaken the 
 reality of this indwelling. God is in His people, not 
 because they hold the thought of Him in their mind 
 and faith ; not because the idea of God dwells in 
 their memory or is cherished in their heart ; but be- 
 cause He is in their soul, as their soul is in their 
 body. Such surely is the most obvious and simple 
 interpretation of such Scriptures as these : " Know ye 
 not that your bodies are the temples of the Holy 
 Ghost ? " " As God hath said, I will dwell in them and 
 walk in them." "For He dwelleth with you, and 
 shall be in you." To weaken this great fact by timid 
 or qualified interpretations is to weaken the very 
 
68 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 foundations of the kingdom of God. To call the in- 
 dwelling of God in His people a mere subjective fact, 
 the mere dwelling of the thought of God in their 
 hearts, is a kind of sin against the Holy Ghost, a 
 denying of the reality of a Holy Spirit as taught in 
 Scripture. 
 
 IVIoreover, this real and literal interpretation of the 
 presence of God in the soul is the most rational, as it 
 is the most scriptural. It is more rational and scien- 
 tific to believe that the influence which God exerts 
 upon men is exerted by direct contact and immediate 
 presence than by indirect methods. It is more rational 
 to believe that the infinite God is in direct connection 
 with all that He has created, than to believe that His 
 presence is withdrawn from any part of His universe. 
 The progress of thought and knowledge may make our 
 interpretations of certain Scriptures erroneous or false, 
 and we may slowly come to modify the existing form 
 of certain doctrines ; but the one great Christian truth 
 which is most unassailable, to which the progress of 
 scientific thought will only give strength, is the truth of 
 a divine presence, an indwelling of God in the soul that 
 apprehends Him and lives in communion with Him. 
 For the facts of a Christian life, — the deep apprehension 
 of God's existence and character, the transformation of 
 moral life in man, the pure aspirations of faith and hope 
 and love toward Him, — facts which no earthly force 
 can shake, and which carry the soul as a conqueror 
 through the trials of life and the glooms of death, — 
 for these facts no adequate cause can be found, save in 
 an actual connection of God with the soul. 
 
 We have, then, at the basis of religion in the hearts 
 
THE REAL PRESENCE. 69 
 
 of men this great fact, the presence and work of God iu 
 tlie heart. Tliis is the true foundation of religion. On 
 this fact it rests, from this fountain it flows, by this 
 force it is maintained. Here we rest. The permanence 
 and perfecting of our own spiritual life is assured by 
 the divine life and power by which it is begotten and 
 maintained. Our confidence in the safety of religion 
 against all attacks, and in its final conquest of all 
 mankind, rests on that actual presence and work of 
 God in the souls of men. 
 
 This great fact of the actual presence of God in the 
 hearts of His people explains the origin of the Christian 
 life iu the soul of any individual. A man becomes a 
 Christian only by a true and real work of God done in 
 his soul. This work is described by our Lord as a 
 regeneration, a being born again. It is the beginning 
 of a new life, — a life new not only in its habits and 
 purposes, but also in its nature, a new kind of life, 
 a spiritual, immortal, divine life. A man, from having 
 been a living soul, becomes alive unto God, deeply con- 
 scious of Him. The world, which before contained for 
 him only natural elements, becomes filled with the 
 presence of God. In the solitary places where he was 
 alone he now walks with God. Over all things, just 
 behind all things, in all things, he sees and feels this 
 divine presence which fills the world. All things are 
 new, and all things are of God. It is as if now for the 
 first time he had become immortal, and related to God. 
 There is added to the boundaries and interests of his 
 worldly life a whole new world, a world of divine rela- 
 tions, of eternal existence, and of immortal enjoyments. 
 His life is changed by this immense addition to it of 
 
70 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 the love of God and an eternal life. This new, this 
 Christian life in his soul has sprung up there because 
 God has come into his heart and entered into com- 
 munion with him. He who made the man's soul for 
 Himself has come to take real possession of it. He 
 who made him a spirit has awakened in him the true 
 life of an immortal spirit. It is God who has touched 
 him. It is God who has changed his heart. 
 
 But how did He do it ? "Was it by an act of power 
 put forth like a physical force upon the substance of his 
 soul ? Was the man's soul clay and God the potter, 
 fashioning it anew by simple power; or did He do 
 His work of mercy through the man's own conscience 
 and moral nature ? We believe that it was through 
 the reason andj conscience of the man himself that 
 God wrought the great and blessed change. God 
 comes into our souls as a man goes into his house ; but 
 when He seeks to influence us, it is by showing truth 
 to our consciences and to our hearts with a clearness 
 and force that the soul cannot resist, — as the Lord 
 said of the Spirit, "He shall take of mine, and shall 
 show it unto you." It is as if God said, when He came 
 to a soul, " Come, now, let us reason together." It is 
 through the moral reason, the conscience, that He 
 addresses the soul, and influences and changes and 
 recjenerates it. In doing this He uses all the truth 
 that tlie man has heard or knows, taking what lie has 
 heard and remembered and showing it with divine 
 power to his conscience. It is therefore the work of 
 the Church to preach to men those truths which God 
 can use to make them penitent, believing, and willing 
 to forsake all and follow Christ. It is to men that we 
 
THE REAL PRESENCE. 71 
 
 preach, but it is also for God. We must preach such 
 truths as the Spirit can take to show them for His 
 purpose to the soul. We preach, like many Indian 
 missionaries, through an interpreter ; but the interpreter 
 is God Himself. This indwelling Spirit of God, through 
 whom alone the truth can reach the heart and con- 
 science, shall not speak of Himself, the Saviour says, 
 but what He shall hear, that shall He speak. The 
 Spirit will not teach a man what he has not been 
 taught. He takes the truth that has been taught al- 
 ready, and " shows " that in demonstration of the Spirit 
 and with power. 
 
 To a soul already regenerated, and living unto God, 
 all truths on all themes are useful, if they are presented 
 to it as divine truth, — as illustrations of the greater 
 truths of the Gospel of salvation ; but how valueless 
 by themselves ! The themes of natural religion, of 
 God in Nature, are, with Christian doctrine, appropriate 
 teachings to a soul already taught the first great prin- 
 ciples of religion by the Spirit of God ; but the Chris- 
 tian life is not awakened by such truths. In all that 
 the Bible teaches, — in all the wide world, — what 
 means are there by which a soul can be made alive 
 unto God ? The truths by which God works to regene- 
 rate a soul are the great truths of human sinfulness and 
 exposure to God's displeasure, a man's utter helj)less- 
 ness under the terrible condemnation that lies upon his 
 character, and the great, the infinite love of God which 
 through Christ is assured to the penitent sinner. There 
 are no truths of which the Church and its ministry 
 need clear and true ideas as they need them of the 
 true nature of human depravity and the true method 
 
72 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 of a soul's reconciliation with God. It is these that 
 should be most carefully studied, — not with reference 
 to logical systems alone, but with reference to actual 
 human experience, and to the purpose of saving souls 
 now and at once. 
 
 It is the severest criticism that can be passed upon 
 those churches which have parted off from the orthodox 
 faith, that their teachings have so generally failed to 
 awaken any Christian life. They cultivate a religion 
 without regeneration, without repentance, without per- 
 sonal communion with God, without zeal for the sal- 
 vation of men. The experience of sinfulness and 
 alienation from God is the basis and beginning of 
 Christian life ; and this experience is awakened only by 
 the earnest presentation of that sinfulness and aliena- 
 tion. To talk of God's love for men, without setting 
 forth men's criminality and alienation from Him, is 
 only to quiet the conscience when it should be aroused, 
 to sanction in a manner the life of irreligion by taking 
 away from it all real danger and condemnation. It is 
 by the truth of man's sinfulness that God will show a 
 man his sins. And as the indwelling Spirit will not 
 speak of Himself, but will speak only what He shall 
 hear, it is essential that the great truth of man's sin 
 and danger should be distinctly and constantly heard 
 in the teachings of the Church. 
 
 This presence and work of God in the souls of His 
 people serves, moreover, as a guidance for them when 
 they are placed in doubt between error and truth. 
 " When He, the Spirit of truth, is come. He shall guide 
 you into all truth." It may be tliat something special 
 to the Apostles was intended in this promise ; and a 
 
THE REAL PRESENCE. 73 
 
 special guiding inspiration was certainly given to these 
 first teachers of the doctrine of Christ. But surely, too, 
 something of this guidance into all truth is given to all 
 souls in which God the Spirit resides. As it is God in 
 the heart who leads the soul at first into the truth of 
 its own sinfulness, into the truth of its dependence and 
 responsibility, and into the truth of reconciliation with 
 God without works of merit and simply through the 
 pardoning mercy of God revealed in Christ, so it is the 
 same great and gracious teacher in the heart who leads 
 the soul into other truths, and into discoveries of truth 
 ever clearer and broader as time goes on. These first 
 truths are but primary lessons in a complete education ; 
 and He who taught us the first teaches us all the rest, 
 until all that God has taught is converted into expe- 
 rience in our hearts. Every new discovery of truth 
 that we make is made to us by that same Spirit of God 
 who showed us at first the truth through which we 
 were reconciled to Him. 
 
 This promise of inward teaching our Lord limits, 
 however, by the following words : " For He shall not 
 speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that 
 shall He speak." The indwelling Spirit is not a guide 
 who acts in independence of what God has spoken by 
 the prophets and by His Son. That Spirit is the same 
 God who spoke in them ; and He cannot contradict 
 Himself. We cannot suppose that the Spirit of God is 
 any guide for us independently of His revealed Word. 
 The Spirit speaks only what He hears ; He teaches in 
 the inmost secret soul what is spoken in the outer 
 courts of the senses and the intellect ; He takes the 
 things of Christ and shows them unto us. This limita- 
 
74 V GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 tion of the promise, therefore, will not allow us to dis- 
 pense with the word, the spoken word of God. The 
 Quaker, the enthusiast, the Separatist, believe that the 
 indwelling Spirit of God makes new revelations, speaks 
 of Himself, independently of the words of Christ, and 
 beyond them. But the inward light shows only the 
 same truth that has been revealed. Whatever is beyond 
 the teachings of Jesus can have no authority for His 
 followers. 
 
 A man's soul is not, alone, the last authority for his 
 opinions and belief But what a soul in true communion 
 with God sees, in studying the words of Jesus, is truly 
 seen. It is a necessary condition of our attaining to 
 truth, that our souls should be in communion with God, 
 — or, in other words, that God the Spirit should guide 
 us into truth. We also cannot speak of ourselves with- 
 out first consulting God. What He shows to us in 
 that communion with Him we can show to men, — 
 and we can really show them no more. We have gone 
 as far into the truth as the indwelling Spirit of God has 
 led us, — and with all our education, we have gone no 
 farther. We know as much of God and His Gospel as 
 we have learned by our real communion with God Him- 
 self and His with us ; and we really know no more. 
 
 We have, then, at the basis of religion in the souls of 
 men this great and unspeakably precious fact, of the 
 real presence and work of God in the heart. This is 
 our real dependence ; it is the one fact which alone 
 makes it possible that souls can be saved. This truth, 
 therefore, must govern us in the employment of all 
 means that we use to promote religion in the world. 
 We cannot depend upon the omnipotence of the Spirit 
 
THE REAL PRESENCE. 75 
 
 ill the hearts of men without proper means, for He shall 
 not speak of Himself, but what He shall hear, that shall 
 He speak. It is when the truth is heard in the teachings 
 of the Church, that He speaks in the heart, like a voice 
 whispering behind us, "This is the way, walk ye in it;" 
 and our only legitimate work as servants of God is to 
 show to men those truths by which the religious life is 
 awakened and intensified. If the plain, saving truths 
 of the Gospel, earnestly and lovingly preached, taken 
 up and shown by the indwelling Spirit, are not enough 
 to spread religion in the world and save men, then men 
 cannot be saved and religion cannot be spread in the 
 world. We complain that churches are not filled and 
 people are not reached by the means of grace. How shall 
 they be reached, and how shall the churches be fiUed ? 
 If we condescend to worldly acts, if we substitute for 
 the Gospel an entertaining discourse, if we appeal to 
 the curiosity of men, or seek to draw them by worldly 
 motives of any kind, we may gain a temporary social suc- 
 cess ; but it is our success, not that of religion or the true 
 cause of Christ. The plain, faithful preaching of man' s 
 sinfulness and salvation by Christ is the only means we 
 can employ to promote religion. If this fails, the cause 
 is lost. The fantastic tricks of sensational preaching 
 certainly will not save it. But we complain that these 
 gi-eat truths are often preached, and yet without apparent 
 usefulness. And why ? There may be many reasons. 
 They may be preached merely in set theological form, 
 or repeated as a lesson learned in school, or simply 
 taught and proved as doctrines ; and all such preaching 
 may well serve only to hide the truth itself. These 
 truths, which are our only means of influencing men 
 
76 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 religiously, should be studied ou the practical side, 
 that we may really influence men ; and they should be 
 preached, not mainly in the current forms of expres- 
 sion, but in such original forms as earnest original study 
 of them may furnish to our minds. We are too apt 
 to think that our attainments — the variety of our 
 thought, and the fulness of our illustrations — are our 
 means of influencing men. But our real and only effec- 
 tive means are the depth of our apprehension of human 
 sinfulness, the clearness of our conception of the char- 
 acter of God in holiness and saving mercy, and the 
 degree of our sympathy with souls in their religious 
 needs. If we spent the time that we give to the study 
 of side issues in studying how to present to men more 
 clearly, more originally, more forcibly, their alienation 
 from God, their need of His mercy, and the way of 
 peace with Him, we should never labor in vain. We 
 should fill our churches, we should reach the greater 
 number, we should indeed be workers together with 
 God. 
 
 Resting upon the great fact of God's real presence in 
 the soul and in the Church, having this for our ground 
 of confidence, we can work without anxiety or distrust. 
 The Christian vine, with its roots striking into the life 
 of God, cannot be withered by the poisoned air of the 
 world. It will grow and spread until it fills the earth, 
 and every living branch shall blossom in tlie beauty of 
 holiness, and bear fruit unto everlasting life. 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SOUL. T7 
 
 THE HISTORY OF A SOUL. 
 
 Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the 
 kingdom of God as a little child, shall in no wise enter 
 therein. — Luke xviii. 17. 
 
 But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ. — 2 Peter iii. 18. 
 
 Till we all come, in the unity of the faith, and of the 
 knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the 
 measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. — Ephesians 
 iv. 13. 
 
 THESE passages represent the beginning, the prog- 
 ress, and the final attainment of every redeemed 
 soul. They outline its whole history. They clearly 
 express all the interest and importance that there is 
 in any human life beyond the interest and importance 
 of daily events and experiences. They contain the 
 substance of all Christian thought, the inspiration of 
 all Christian energy and enterprise, and the matter of 
 every true Christian ministry. They mark the three 
 periods into which the whole vast history of a redeemed 
 soul is divided. 
 
 The history of a soul from the beginning of its 
 existence through the whole course of its duration 
 could be exceeded in interest and importance only by 
 one other history, — the history of God. Around the 
 
78 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 course of a soul's existence gathers all that is good 
 and great and beautiful in the universe, and all that is 
 tragic and awful hangs over its way or opens beneath 
 its feet. Into its experience must enter at some time 
 all that has power to set in vibration the infinite 
 sensibilities of pleasure or of pain. It must convert 
 the universe into an experience of its own, until it 
 possesses in itself, in its own thought and feeling, all 
 that is true and beautiful and good in the vast creation 
 of God, until all things that exist in the worlds of light 
 or worlds of darkness may be found in the soul as a 
 knowledge, and as a joy or as a pain. For " all things 
 are yours," — yours to be possessed, to be lived through 
 and experienced. The history of a soul would be not 
 only the history of the universe, but, far more, of the 
 conversion of the universe into human life, human 
 happiness or suffering. 
 
 I must see myself as a soul. That is all there is of 
 me, or of you, that is not accidental and perishable. I 
 must think of my life. I can put off all the outer 
 relations of my life, stand alone on some solitary rock 
 of the sea, and be my whole self there. My relations 
 to men and to the earth are but the outer garments, 
 loosely worn. I can put off this body whole, with all 
 its organs and sensibilities ; it can lie down apart from 
 me. It is not I ; but wrapped up within this body, 
 as in a swaddling-band, is the living child, the young 
 immortal, beginning here in small sensations, in shallow 
 pains and pleasures, a life that has no bound in time or 
 space, a life into which must come the full force of all 
 that is true and good, or of all that is evil and awful. 
 You are a soul with this long great life to live, with all 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SOUL. 79 
 
 this vast experience awaiting you. This life is so small 
 a part of our whole living ! Whatever his position, a 
 man is here so small a part of his whole self ; he is so 
 falsely seen, when regarded only in his earthly character 
 and position ! A man is truly seen only when he is 
 seen with his hand in God's hand, with the solemn 
 heavens bowed around him, and the solemn eternity 
 filled with rolling mists lying before him, while he 
 walks thinking and ignorantly talking of the things 
 close around him. 
 
 Our life in this stage of it is but partly spiritual or 
 intellectual, and partly sensuous and material. We are 
 occupied with bodily employments, and filled with the 
 sensations of physical pain or pleasure ; but all this is 
 temporary, and passes away with the body to the grave. 
 The life before us is an intellectual life, a life of thought 
 and mental emotion : the pains are the sufferings of the 
 mind, the pleasures are the pleasures of the mind and 
 heart. In this life the realities, the substances, are the 
 rocks, the soil, the mountains, the sea, the climate, the 
 light, and the darkness. In that life the realities are 
 truths, and the soul's dealings with these are like 
 the body's relations to the elements of Nature. As 
 the body lives in matter here, the soul lives in truth 
 there: all experience, sensation, pain, and pleasure, 
 come there from truth, and its power on the mind. 
 
 The various texts that I have read as guides to our 
 meditation sliow three stages in this great life of the 
 soul, — a childhood of subjection, a youth of growth, a 
 maturity of the perfect man. 
 
 As we can never think at all justly of a man except 
 when we think of him as a soul, with a vast and end- 
 
80 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 less life, so we can never judge rightly of the life of a 
 soul unless we think of it as divided into these three 
 periods, and understand the law that applies to each. 
 God the Father was first revealed to men. For four 
 thousand years He was known only in this First Person 
 of His nature. Under this dispensation men were 
 children, and the law was their schoolmaster. All 
 was authority on God's part, and all was subjection, 
 submission, on man's part. Then God was revealed as 
 the Son, the brother and fellow of man's soul, bringinsr 
 in another dispensation, under which a man's soul is no 
 longer simply commanded by authority, but invited 
 and left free. The soul is no longer treated as a child, 
 but the Son makes us free indeed, — as if the soul had 
 attained its majority and must take the responsibility 
 of freedom. It must think, believe, and act for itself. 
 Two thousand years of this dispensation have passed 
 away. We know not the day or the hour when it will 
 end, but the end will come ; and then God the Spirit 
 will bring in tlie last dispensation of final and perfect 
 glory. Then the souls of all men will live in the 
 spiritual world the life of souls no longer cumbered 
 with their clay, encompassed with the ultimate realities 
 which Nature and sense conceal from us here. In that 
 spiritual world the true soul will find the maturity of 
 its perfection. It is true that these great periods of the 
 race are not absolutely distinct and separate, as if one 
 king died and another succeeded. The Father, the Son, 
 and the Spirit are in all dispensations, and there is 
 something of subjection, of freedom, and of maturity 
 for men in each. Yet what is true of the course of 
 the race is true of the course of every single soul. 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SOUL. 81 
 
 There is a period when all is authority on God's part 
 and all submission for the soul; a period when the soul 
 becomes free, and thinks and believes or denies for 
 itself; and a period when each soul attains its own 
 maturity of perfect manhood. And in the perfect, 
 final state the authority of the Father, tlie fellowship 
 of the Son, and the life of the Spirit will all mingle in 
 one perfect life, and God, the whole God, the triune 
 God, will be all in all. 
 
 Let us then endeavor to gain some true idea of the 
 course and the stages appointed for the vast and endless 
 life of our souls, the one and only object of which is to 
 bring us at length to the perfect life of perfect souls in 
 growing knowledge and greatening joy forever. 
 
 1. The first stage or period in the life of a soul to be 
 redeemed and blessed forever is described in the first text : 
 " Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the 
 kingdom of God as a little child, shall in no wise enter 
 therein." The eternal life is begun in a childlike sub- 
 jection of our minds and wills to what is required of us, 
 and a childlike faith in what is told us. This subjec- 
 tion of opinion, of will and of life, to an authority out- 
 side of ourselves, is the natural law of childhood. I 
 mean that it is as much the law of the child's nature 
 thus to trust and submit, as it is the law of his condi- 
 tion to require it of him. God has given the child a 
 nature to which submission to authority, and acceptance 
 of what is told it, is normal. So God has given us all 
 a nature to which religious submission and trust are 
 normal. It is natural to a man to submit to divine 
 authority, in whatever form it is presented to him. 
 And because it is natural to submit our minds and 
 
 6 
 
82 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 wills before we are competent to guide ourselves, it is 
 right for us to do it, and to expect it of others. The 
 child's ignorance and incompetency form a sufficient 
 reason for its submission of its own thoughts and will 
 to the authority of parents and society without question 
 or resistance. The child is surrounded by those who 
 are older, wiser by study and experience, than itself, 
 and by the law of nature the wisdom and experience of 
 others are its guide during all the period of childhood. 
 It is a foolish and monstrous presumption for a child to 
 reject the control of its superiors, and set up its own 
 wisdom and will as sufficient. So through a large por- 
 tion of our Christian life, our ignorance, our incompe- 
 tency to know and judge religious truth for ourselves, 
 is a sufficient reason for accepting heartily the doctrines 
 of the Christian Church, and submitting ourselves with- 
 out question or resistance to the common faith. We 
 have come into the world, where the lifelong studies of 
 wise men, and the lifelong faith of tlie best men, have 
 sanctioned these ideas and doctrines. It is natural 
 and right and necessary, that in our inexperience and 
 ignorance we should accept them from our superiors and 
 live in them, submitting our minds and judgments to 
 them. It is the law of our childhood that we should 
 take our ideas from those who are older and wiser 
 than we. 
 
 This is the condition of the vast majority of Chris- 
 tians. Like children they have entered the kingdom of 
 God by believing what the Christian world lias told 
 them, and doing more or less completely what the 
 Christian world has required of them ; never having 
 investigated the proofs for and against the Bible and 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SOUL. 88 
 
 the common doctrine, and content to live in truths 
 which the Christian consciousness has always held and 
 which the apostles and martyrs of Christ and the 
 millions of good men have lived and died in. This is 
 right, because it is natural and necessary. Few of us 
 are yet so far advanced as to be able or entitled to trust 
 the judgment of our own minds against the authority of 
 the general belief of centuries. If it is ever brou";ht as 
 a reproach against Christians that their faith in Chris- 
 tianity is an unthinking, unreasoning faith, there is 
 no force in the reproach. The faith of good men in all 
 ages is a better authority for their belief than the 
 reasonings of a mind narrow in its knowledge and 
 immature in its capacities, as the vast majority of our 
 minds still are. And even the humblest Christian, who 
 thinks aud knows the least about what he believes, has 
 this great and sufficient proof of his faith, that he 
 knows by experience that the Christian life is right and 
 true. If it shall hereafter be found that many of his 
 ideas are false, still he knows it can never be found 
 that to serve God and follow Christ is not a true and 
 blessed life. We really are children ; our souls are 
 in their childhood ; we cannot act otherwise than as 
 children. We cannot enter the kingdom of God except 
 as children, by believing what the Bible tells us, and 
 obeying what it requires of us. We must submit our 
 minds, our opinions, our wills, to it, for the reason that 
 we know it to be right. God ought to be worshipped, 
 loved, and obeyed, and that is what the Bible and the 
 Christian world require of us. Under all differences of 
 opinion about particular doctrines, the reality and truth 
 of religion remain the same. 
 
8i GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 I do, therefore, require of myself and of every other 
 man to accept the religion of Jesus. If we cannot 
 prove all its doctrines, neither are we wise enough, in 
 the childhood of our immortality, to set up our own 
 souls as judges of truth against the faith of ages, the 
 teachings of time, and of such a One as Christ. Let us 
 come as children to the Christian life, believing what 
 Christ has told us, and obeying what He requires. Have 
 you doubts and difficulties ? Give them up to Him. 
 Are you old enough, do you know enough, is your soul 
 grown enough, to doubt the reality and necessity of 
 religion ? Is it not right and wise and necessary to 
 live as Christ requires ? Is not God our Father ? Why 
 should not you as a child give up to Him the control of 
 your life ? You know nothing of the Christian life by 
 experience ; you must begin it as a child. How out of 
 his place is one who stands up to reason and argue 
 against God, trying to show cause why he should not 
 obey and serve Him! What is my place, what is your 
 place, but as a child in utter subjection to Him, the 
 Father of our spirits ? The more childlike and simple 
 we are in this submission, the nobler and truer do we 
 become in our whole character. 
 
 2. But though the childhood of our immortal life 
 may last long, it does not last always. Sooner or later 
 there comes to every soul the second stage of its end- 
 less course, namely, the period described by the second 
 text : " But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our 
 Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." In the course and 
 growth of a soul's life there comes a time when it seeks 
 the satisfaction of a personal knowledge ; when it is a 
 child no longer, and cannot be satisfied to accept what 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SOUL, 85 
 
 is told it and stop at that, but must know for itself. 
 As a child, a human being receives ideas on trust, — he 
 does not know, he has not made them his own by ex- 
 perience of their truth. He has heard of something, 
 but it is at a distance : he must go where it is, see it 
 for himself, and get it for his own. Our ideas of many 
 things are only like I'aint rumors or imperfect reports 
 of things far off, — the things eternal and invisible. 
 There is necessarily great imperfection in our experi- 
 ence of any truth or fact of which we have only heard. 
 In due time this imperfection and uncertainty becomes 
 a pain : the soul requires to know. From this time 
 begins the period of the soul's growth. It is under a 
 new law, which requires it to prove all things, and by 
 proving them to make them its own and get the good of 
 them. Some souls come to this period in this world, 
 and others remain under the law of childhood's faith 
 and trust until they reach their majority in the future 
 world. The Catholic Church seeks with all its vast 
 power to prevent men's souls from ever coming to this 
 period of question and personal inquiry. The Protes- 
 tant Church has in a measure hastened this period in 
 many souls, by its doctrine of private judgment on the 
 meaning of Scripture, though it has never intended to 
 encourage any liberty of doubt in regard to the Bible 
 itself But sooner or later to every soul in its endless 
 course will come the time when it can no longer live by 
 faith, but must know that which it believes ; because 
 only by so knowing for itself can a soul ever get the 
 full blessing of the great facts of life and the universe. 
 When we have believed in God, then some time we 
 must see Him. When we have through the darkness 
 
86 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 followed trustingly the voice of Christ, it will be neces- 
 sary for us to see His face, — and we shall see it. The 
 time Cometh when He will no more speak to us in 
 parables, but will show us plainly of the Father. He 
 recognizes that in time it will be necessary for us to 
 know the things that we now believe, so that they may 
 be our own, the full possession of our souls, with all 
 their power to affect and bless us. 
 
 He who comes to this period in this world finds it a 
 time of mental distress and doubt. He can no longer 
 rest content in his child-life and child-thought. It is 
 like the breaking up of all things. His nest, like the 
 young eagle's, is torn in pieces, and his soul is borne 
 out over the unstable sea, into which it seems always 
 falling. It seems at times as if he would end in utter 
 unbelief. But he will not, for he feels the need, more 
 than ever, of a rest for his soul ; and he finds it, through 
 patient reflection, in a higher form of belief, a belief in 
 which his intellect and reason as well as his conscience 
 and heart agree. It is as when the child, carefully nur- 
 tured in a sheltering home, is suddenly bereft of parents 
 and sent forth to make a home for himself: he will do 
 it, — all his manhood will rise to meet the demand. 
 "With the living soul, doubt and question and research 
 are the upward rugged path by which it comes out on 
 a higher, broader plain, where the heavens bend down 
 closer to the earth, and a new and sweeter light and 
 beauty lie on all things. By this process of personal 
 study, question, and search, every human soul is either 
 here or hereafter to grow in knowledge and in grace of 
 perfection. Heaven and the universe are broad and 
 rich, and full of all glories and beatitudes of truth and 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SOUL. 87 
 
 ]ife ; but you and I must make them our own by per- 
 sonal contact and knowledge. Not arbitrarily can they 
 be given to us. 
 
 But the soul grows also in knowledge of God, and in 
 many truths, even in the period of its childhood, by the 
 practice of piety and the service of God, — according to 
 that Word which promises that he that doeth His will 
 shall know of the doctrine. We may indeed come in 
 our life to a period of question and doubt and study 
 which is not at all the true majority of the soul, not at 
 all the sign of our growtli. Tlie doubts and questions 
 and searchings of a true soul arise from the new and in- 
 tense desire to know the truth, and the soul's necessity 
 to be satisfied. But there are questions and doubts in 
 many persons which are but the fault-findings of an 
 uneasy conscience, or the pleasure of a shallow vanity 
 pleased with the idea of superior wisdom and an inde- 
 pendent mind. Often they are only the heart's justifi- 
 cation to itself of a life that needs some excuse. Have 
 you questions, doubts, and difficulties ? One test will 
 show their real worth. Do your questions arise from 
 a real desire to know the truth ? Do they lead to an 
 earnest, faithful study of religious things ? If they 
 do, they are the signs of a soul alive and growing. If 
 they do not, they are worthless ; they do not deserve a 
 moment's regard. You have no right to them ; they are 
 the sins of your soul against your God. 
 
 3. But through the childlike submission and faith 
 by which we enter the kingdom of God we come to the 
 period of personal acquaintance with, and knowledge of, 
 all truth and all good, and through this process of soul- 
 growth we come at last to the final period of the soul's 
 
88 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 vast existence : " Till we all come, in the unity of the 
 faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a 
 perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the ful- 
 ness of Christ." 
 
 The measure of a man is not at all what we are at 
 this beginning of our life. It does not even appear, 
 in what we are now, what we shall be when we have 
 come to that perfect man which each true soul is to 
 become. No human artist could ever paint the face of 
 Christ without degrading Him, for no one could ever 
 in lines and colors represent the interior glory of His 
 divine nature. No one can ever paint in language or 
 conceive in thought the " perfect man." We can in- 
 deed discern a few outlines, as in the unlimited capa- 
 city of man to know, — how vast an outline ! — and in 
 the connections of a man's soul with God, his ability 
 to know Him, to commune with Him, to think His 
 thoughts, to share His life, — how vast an outline is 
 this also ! — and in a man's power through his sensi- 
 bilities to make a life, an experience of keenest pain 
 or pleasure, of all that he sees and feels and touches, — 
 how vast is this again ! — and in the eternity of his 
 existence. Outlines how vast of a perfect man are 
 these capacities ! Let them be filled up, and then 
 only will a man and his life be the real measure of a 
 man. And they will be filled up. They are slowly 
 being filled up by the growth in grace and knowledge, 
 and in this growth each true soul is coming to a per- 
 feet man, to the time when he can stand beside the 
 glorious Son of Man and be like Him. In the favor- 
 ing conditions of heaven every soul that is there will 
 come to perfection. " Trees of righteousness, the plant- 
 
THE HISTORY OF A SOUL. 89 
 
 ing of the Lord, that He may be glorified," no power of 
 evil shall hinder their perfect blossom or their perfect 
 fruit. The glory of God is the soul of a man. In its 
 perfection His glory, not merely His goodness, is dis- 
 played, and therefore the Son of God is not ashamed 
 to call tliem brethren, in whom His Father is revealed. 
 
 Thus after the childhood of ignorance and trust, and 
 after the struggles of the period of growth, we shall 
 come to the glorious perfection of our immortal nature; 
 and then, through the long peaceful ages, in the infi- 
 nite peace of God, the eternal life, in perfect love, 
 shall pass the years away. We shall be gathered in 
 the unity of the great family of God, the broken ties 
 of life rejoined, the dead whom the heart still holds 
 dear restored to our love, and in the perfect liberty 
 of the sons of God the great history of the eternal 
 life of the perfect soul will begin. 
 
 This is my hope for myself, and for every follower 
 of Christ. Thus I think of man, of his earthly life 
 and his future prospects. Under the conditions of 
 your life, covered up with earthly cares and imperfec- 
 tions, I see your soul in its childhood and its growth, 
 slowly coming to this perfection. I know that your 
 soul is a sacred thing to the God that made it. His 
 life. His law, His eternity, are in it. Over all the 
 littlenesses of your life I see the grandeur of this great 
 destiny. I speak to you as the children of eternity, 
 on whose life by and by I shall see the beauty of 
 holiness and the image of our God. I warn you of 
 your immortality. I remind you of the solemn scenes 
 that await you. I call you to God and the Christian 
 life, because on your relation to Him hangs all this 
 
90 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 infinite importance and value. I see, I know, nothing 
 in all the universe so great, so solemn as the soul of 
 man. I know no crime so fatal, no guilt so heavy, as 
 a soul's neglect of itself and its God. I never see the 
 world of nature or of mankind, without seeing them 
 all encompassed and embosomed in the great, solemn 
 spiritual world of God and His kingdom. I never 
 think of man's life but as a part of this vast history 
 of a soul. My motives and inducements to the Chris- 
 tian life are in the fact that that life is the straight 
 path of a man's progress to his perfection, the true in- 
 troduction or preface to the glorious records of the life 
 eternal. These motives once more I have brought to 
 you all. Let us come as little children into the king- 
 dom of God ; let us believe, and submit to Christ. Let 
 us grow in grace and knowledge of the Lord, and so 
 struggle on toward the perfect man. Then in a little 
 while we shall take up again our studies together of 
 the deep things of God, there, where a new and 
 sweeter light will shine upon them all. 
 
TUE WAY OF PEKFECTION. 91 
 
 THE WAY OF PERFECT lOK 
 
 Sanctify them through thy truth : thy word is truth. 
 John xvii. 17. 
 
 THE most exalted purpose that a man can cherish 
 and strive for is the purpose to become a pure 
 and perfect man, to reach tlie utmost limit of what a 
 man can be. That greatness and worth which belong to 
 a man's nature when fully perfected is a loftier great- 
 ness, a higher worth, than can possibly be attained 
 throuo'h any external advantages which even God 
 could bestow upon him. No man can ever represent 
 to us in this world what a perfect man is. " It doth 
 not yet appear what we shall be." We are too low, 
 as yet, that we should see so high, — too far away from 
 it to see, at such a distance, what it is. But the per- 
 fect man, fully grown, stands next to God, and nearest 
 of all His creatures to Himself, partaker of the divine 
 nature, partaker of His holiness, and entered into the 
 joy of his Lord. Christ was indeed a perfect man, 
 and presents to us the inexpressible beauty of human 
 perfection in a life of sorrow and self-sacrifice. But 
 the world knew Him not, and we have not yet seen 
 Him " as He is." What He was, in His abasement and 
 sorrow, we can " see in part ; " but what He is, in the 
 glory of His perfection at the right hand of God, we 
 
92 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 have not seen, and shall not see until we shall "be 
 with Him where He is, and behold His glory." The 
 glory that shall be revealed in us, in the perfection, 
 power, and purity of our souls, will be greater than 
 all the glory of those new conditions on which we 
 hope to enter in the heavenly life. 
 
 To be wise, to know all things, is a noble ambition, 
 an exalted purpose. To be strong and mighty, to 
 mould the fortunes and the thoughts of men, is an 
 exalted purpose. But to be is greater than to know ; 
 to be great and grand in our own nature, in what we 
 are, is far more than to be great and grand by position 
 among others. The king is a great man, whatever his 
 character; but the royal, kingly soul is greater still, 
 though his position be among the unhonored of this 
 world. And to become a royal, kingly, saintly soul 
 is an infinitely more exalted purpose and hope than 
 any other can be. This is the hope and purpose of 
 the believer in Christ. To this end the beginnings of 
 his new life lead. Toward this crown of life his soul 
 reaches forth in all holy aspirations of faith and hope 
 and prayer. That which lies at the bottom of the 
 Christian's imperfect attainments and experiences is 
 this great hope, — "I shall know all, I shall be strong, 
 I shall be holy, by and by." Yes, look on all these 
 weak, imperfect, troubled children of God ; in every 
 one of them is this hope burning as a lamp that 
 lightens the lowermost depth of the soul ; in every 
 one of them this purpose to become pure and perfect 
 holds steady like an anchor of the soul amid the waves ; 
 and every one of them shall yet glitter and shine in 
 the beauty of holiness, in the glory of perfection, in 
 
THE WAY OF PERFECTION. 93 
 
 tlie greatness and grandeur of souls that wear the 
 image and bear the likeness of God. 
 
 And this is the plan and purpose of God in respect 
 to His children ; not the vain and visionary dream of 
 a religious enthusiasm, but the solid, changeless pur- 
 pose of God. "' For this is the will of God, even your 
 sanctification. For whom He justifies, them He also 
 sanctifies, and whom He sanctifies, them He also glori- 
 fies." The whole work of redemption through Christ 
 consists in this, — the delivering of the soul from sin, 
 and the bringing it up to its utmost perfection in the 
 heavenly life. It is not, then, the mere purjDose and 
 struggle of our own hearts to reach the glory of per- 
 fection, but the whole force and drift of His provi- 
 dence and grace carries us toward the same great end. 
 And it will be reached ; and each child of God, how- 
 ever lowly and ignorant here, will surely stand at 
 last covered with the beauty of holiness and the 
 brightness of human perfection, like the angel standing 
 in the sun. 
 
 But by what means can a man reach the full per- 
 fection and purity of all the capacities of his soul ? 
 Narrow, weak, and dark, what is it that can widen, 
 strengthen, and enlighten his life ? Oppressed and en- 
 slaved, what is it that can set his powers free, and give 
 them growth and strength ? Our Lord has answered : 
 " Sanctify them through thy truth : thy word is truth." 
 
 If we would feed a soul, what is there to feed it 
 with, but " whatsoever things are true " ? If we would 
 enlarge a soul, what is there with which we can do it 
 but great ideas, great truths ? As the body is created 
 for the material elements of Nature, and feeds its 
 
94 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 growth and strength by appropriating them, so the 
 soul is created for the spiritual elements, for ideas, 
 for truth, and on these it lives what life it has. The 
 soul of any man has no larger a life than it has truth 
 to make a soul-life of. A soul that knew and felt 
 nothing of divine truth would have no life, any more 
 than a body would have life that knew and felt 
 nothing of the material world around it. The growth 
 toward greatness and purity in a soul is just as de- 
 pendent upon the knowledge and experience of divine 
 truth, as the growth and strength of a child's body is 
 iipon its food. We shall be greatly deceived if we 
 imagine that a man can grow in grace, without grow- 
 ing in the knowledf^e of Christ and of the truths He 
 taught. And how it is that by means of the truth 
 a man is brought forward toward the glorious per- 
 fection of complete sanctification, is expressed in the 
 text : " Sanctify them through thy truth ; " then of 
 course the truth must be known. In some manner 
 it must come into our notice and consideration and 
 belief. There is vast importance in every means by 
 which the truth of God is brought to our notice and 
 exhibited to our understanding. There is vast im- 
 portance in every means of knowing what is truth. 
 
 But more than this ; it is necessary that the truth 
 should be practically operative on our affections, our 
 will, and our conduct. The knowledge of the truth 
 is to be considered important only as a means of some- 
 thing better. " Sanctify them through thy trutli." The 
 moral impression and effect of truth on the heart and 
 life are the real means by which the soul is perfected 
 and the life enlarcred. The sun enlightens the world 
 
THE WAY OF PERFECTION. 95 
 
 \)y its sliining, but it has other and far more mighty 
 and important effects than this. Its chemical rays and 
 forces are the cause of all the subtle changes which 
 build up the vegetation of the earth, which color it 
 with beauty and clothe it with living, growing forms. 
 All plants and animals are dependent for life and fruit- 
 fulness upon the heat and chemical force of the sun's 
 rays. Therefore if we could take away from sunshine 
 everything but liglit, leaving light alone, the sun might 
 shine in unclouded splendor forever, yet it would only 
 shine upon a lifeless, colorless, barren, dead world ; not 
 even a liclien or a moss-cup would bless or relieve the 
 utter cold and barrenness. And if we take away from 
 divine truth all but the mere knowledge of what it is, 
 and leave to it its intellectual light alone, that light 
 will shine upon a soul cold and barren and dead as the 
 ice-fields of polar regions, — cold as they are though a 
 six-months' sun shine upon them without a single set- 
 ting in all that time. The truth of God must do more 
 than enlighten ; it must come Avith warming and 
 quickening and exciting power to our affections and 
 our will. 
 
 And that the truth may have this practical power to 
 quicken and sanctify us, one thing more is necessary. 
 "Sanctify them through thy truth;" tliis is a prayer. 
 It is a prayer in which God is asked to add His own 
 power to the truth, that it may sanctify His people. And 
 this influence of God, this direct exertion of His power, 
 is the last thing necessary to the perfection of our 
 nature in power and holiness. And that God should 
 exert His own power through the truth is' necessary by 
 very nature. How could the sunshine have any power. 
 
96 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 if there were not a great burning sun, full of power, and 
 constantly streaming forth its power in the rays that 
 flow from it ? How could what you say to your child 
 have any practical effect, unless the influence of your 
 will, join power, your authority, went with what you 
 say ? You must not merely say it, — you must will to 
 exert a personal influence at the same time. You your- 
 self must be in your word, your spirit must go with 
 your saying, or your words have no meaning and no 
 force. In like manner God Himself must exert a per- 
 sonal influence in the truth that He reveals, or else even 
 such truth as this will fail of the practical power that 
 He intends and our souls need. God himself must be 
 in God's word, and His Spirit must be in His saying, 
 or His utterance will be void of power. 
 
 If then the hope of the believer, the perfection of his 
 nature, shall ever be reached, it will be through the 
 knowledge and experience of the truths that are taught 
 in the "Word of God. Everything depends upon this. 
 There is nothing else by which the soul can be enlarged, 
 strengthened, and purified into the glory of its last per- 
 fection. Ideas, without regard to their character, may 
 have an effect to develop the mind, to sharpen its 
 powers, and strengthen its capacity to reason and to 
 judge ; but if great ideas are not true ideas, they will 
 enlarge the mind only to its injury, and he that in- 
 creaseth knowledge without gathering truth, and truth 
 in its practical effects, increaseth his own sorrow. To 
 know and to feel the truth of God is the only way we 
 have of growing free from our ignorance, our delusions, 
 our depravity, into the perfection of power and holiness 
 in life everlasting. How important then are all the 
 
THE WAY OF PERFECTION. 97 
 
 means by which our knowledge of the truth may be in- 
 creased, and our impressions and convictions of it may be 
 deepened ! " The truth shall make you free," — but the 
 want of it will leave us slaves to depravity and misery- 
 We perish for lack of vision of the truth. We starve 
 and shiver in cold and hunger of soul, because we do 
 not feed ourselves with the bread of life, the truth of 
 God. 
 
 How important thus becomes the earnest study of the 
 words of God! These are truth, truth at first hand, 
 truth in original form and substance, direct from the 
 mind of God. There is no greater evil afflicting the 
 spiritual life of men than the habit which of late years 
 has been increasing so fast, of depending upon books and 
 preaching for our knowledge of God. We express our 
 pity for the poor Catholic of the common people, who 
 can never read for himself the Word of God, but must 
 take all that he knows of it from the interpretations 
 of the Church, — whose own heart is thus kept from 
 immediate contact with the words of divine love. Yet 
 we may fear that many among us are almost as effectu- 
 ally kept from the living words of God by tlieir own 
 habit of neglecting the Bil)le, and depending for their 
 knowledge of it upon what they liear from others. 
 However incapable any person may be of understanding 
 all parts of the Bible, he will yet be all the more helped 
 by books and preaching if he is at the same time 
 faithfully reading the Word of God for himself. We may 
 find many difficulties in understanding all its teachings, 
 but it is not in vain to study and read the Word of God, 
 even if we cannot clearly understand it all. A blind 
 man cannot see the light of the sun, but he can feel its 
 
98 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 warmth ; and if we cannot see the perfect form of truth, 
 we nevertheless can feel its power to a great degree, 
 just as thousands do feel the power of great truths 
 which they cannot express. These words of Christ are 
 spirit, and they are life ; and we can feel their spirit 
 and life by means of our conscience and affections, even 
 when we cannot satisfactorily comprehend in our minds 
 the language in which the spirit and life are clothed. 
 It is not to be supposed that a person must have a clear 
 mental conception of a great religious truth before he 
 can be rightly and profitably impressed by the power of 
 that truth. The words of Christ do not describe ideas 
 so much as realities and facts ; and we can feel realities 
 and facts even when we do not clearly see them. It 
 does not matter how ignorant or weak a man may be, — 
 the Bible can still do him a great good. There is a 
 power in the words of God to go straight to the heart, 
 even when the mind is dark. No human explanations, 
 however plain, can ever be of so much service to us as 
 to study for ourselves the words of God. We come 
 closer to the fountain of spiritual life and power when 
 we are earnestly looking at something that God has 
 said, than when listening to any human teacher ex- 
 plaining it. 
 
 How wonderful a thing is the Bible ! Would we like 
 to see into the mind of God, to look into His great 
 spirit, to see what He is thinking of ? We have the 
 opportunity to do this in the words of the Bible. These 
 are openings through which one may see into the mind 
 of God and know His thoughts. How precious to us 
 should be every thought of God which He gives us the 
 privilege to see ! A thought of God ! Has ever one 
 
THE WAY OF PERFECTION, 99 
 
 such thought of God got out into this world among 
 the thoughts of men ? How should it be wonderingly, 
 adoringly cherished, as a supernatural opal burning in 
 its fiame-like glory among earth's poor pebbles ! And 
 yet the Bible is full of the thoughts of God, and for 
 these thoughts we should search in His Word. How 
 little we have thought that among the liistories, 
 biographies, parables, and prophecies of the Bible 
 there lie these great living thoughts of God, like arch- 
 angels covered with human robes, lying among children 
 at their play. We have felt toward the Bible as if 
 it were tame and dull, because we have read it or 
 thought of it as a mere book of morals, while its glorious 
 character as a revelation of God's mind and heart has 
 been overlooked. If we have no interest in what God 
 thinks and feels, it will be tedious; but if we care 
 to know His thoughts, if we wish to know how He 
 feels toward us, and look into His word to find out 
 this, it will never be dull and dry, but full of spirit 
 and of life. 
 
 Men and women seem to fancy that the meaning and 
 truth of the Word of God has somehow got out of the 
 Bible into general circulation, and that the common 
 religious ideas which all possess are the substance of all 
 there is in the Word of God ; and therefone they neglect 
 the Bible, as though they already possessed its value in 
 these common religious ideas. There is hardly a greater 
 mistake than this. The common religious ideas in gen- 
 eral circulation are the smallest part of the riches of 
 truth and instruction which it contains, as every one 
 will find who honestly and prayerfully goes to it for 
 spiritual food and light. 
 
100 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 If we would be sanctified by the truth, we must 
 study the Word of God always with a reference to our- 
 selves, to our own duty, experience, and history. The 
 Word of God is nothing if it is not practical to us. It 
 is the peculiar character of the Bible that it is a book 
 in which every man has an equal personal interest. 
 If it has any significance beyond a mere collection 
 of histories, that significance will be found by us only 
 when we study it as addressed to ourselves by God. 
 He did indeed speak first to others, but He meant that 
 we should overhear, and take to ourselves what He 
 said. Every truth is a different thing as it is consid- 
 ered in relation to ourselves or in a general manner. 
 If I tl)ink of God only to consider what He may be, I 
 may increase my ideas, but shall be little likely to in- 
 crease my satisfaction, as I do when I think of Him 
 as my God, my Sovereign, my dependence in all the 
 relations that He holds to me. To think of Providence 
 in general may be a pleasant study ; but to think of 
 Providence in relation to myself, my past life, my 
 present condition, my future changes, makes Providence 
 a great spiritual power, deeply affecting my whole soul 
 and life. We may study the character and life of 
 Jesus in such a way as never to be benefited by 
 the study, — in a way that insults Him, as if He 
 had been set forth merely to be studied as a curiosity, 
 or an abstract idea. But to think of Him as a living 
 Person, closely connected with our life, our hopes and 
 fears and dangers, makes His character and life a 
 different thing, and vastly more powerful for our 
 sanctification. Every thought of God in His word is 
 for us ; we should study each one as if it had been 
 
THE WAY OF PERFECTION. IQl 
 
 uttered to us. Then all the treasures of truth in the 
 Word of God will possess power for us. A man looks 
 on a pleasant landscape of thrifty farms and pleasant 
 homes, of fruitful fields and smiling skies, and feels it 
 only as a pleasant scene. How different it becomes 
 when he sees it all as his own inheritance, the resource 
 of his wealth, the home of his friends, and the peaceful 
 scene of his own peaceful life ! 
 
 Furthermore, since it is only by the influence of God 
 in His Word that that Word sanctifies us, we should 
 study it in the spirit of prayer. It is not the mere 
 natural force of truth that can change our moral nature, 
 subdue the tendencies to evil, and bring forward the 
 principle of a divine life toward perfection. The 
 power, the influence of God alone can do this, 
 through the truth; and it is not only proper but 
 necessary that we should seek in prayer for the Spirit 
 of God to take the truth of His Word and show it unto 
 us, and fix it deeply in our hearts. In reading any 
 book, our moods are more important to us than our 
 intelligence. If we take up a philosophical book to 
 read, we waste our time if we cannot bring our minds 
 into a philosophical mood. If we read the Bible in un- 
 suitable, un spiritual moods of mind, it can have for us 
 very little sanctifying power. If our souls are ever to 
 attain to their utmost perfection through the knowledge 
 and experience of the truth, it will be because God 
 sanctifies us by His own power through the truth. 
 We must therefore seek His power and grace in the 
 truth, as well as the truth itself. To know the truth 
 is to know God's thoughts. To feel the truth is to 
 feel what He thinks and what He feels. All true 
 
102 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 seeking of truth is seeking Gud. And the spirit of 
 prayer, the spirit of communion with God, is the 
 necessary spirit in studying His Word. 
 
 All the means by which we are to be raised above 
 our present depraved and wretched estate, and brought 
 to perfection in our whole nature, lie in the truths 
 taught in the Word of God. How vast an interest 
 you and I have, therefore, in knowing and experien- 
 cing those truths ! We cannot advance one step 
 without knowing and feeling some one of those truths 
 more thoroughly than we now do. There are no 
 other means by which the soul can be assisted in its 
 highest growth. How great occasion have we to pray 
 daily for the teaching of God, — " Open thou mine 
 eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy 
 law " ! A neglected Bible is the advertisement of a 
 character and life in which there is very little if any 
 progress, unless it be in evil. We are to judge of 
 the importance of these means of knowing and feeling 
 the truths of God's Word, by the impartance of our own 
 redemption from the power of depravity and sin, and 
 of our perfection in the powers and purity of our 
 souls. The value and importance of money is the value 
 and importance of all that money can procure. The 
 value and importance of an earnest, prayerful study of 
 the truths of God's Word is the value of the glory and 
 happiness of a perfect being in a perfect life. May we 
 find mercy for the thoughtless wickedness of neglecting 
 what God has said ! It should be our constant prayer 
 that God will not suffer us to forget what we know of 
 His truth, and that He will each day make us feel 
 some one great truth more deeply. Do we hope to be 
 
THE WAY OF PERFECTION. 103 
 
 better ? Do we hope to be freed from sin and darkness ? 
 Let us remember that this can never be, except through 
 experiencing more deeply the truths of which we hear 
 so niucli and think so little. 
 
 And yet more; if we would be sanctified by the 
 truth we must obey the truth. To do His will is the 
 way to know of the doctrine. The highest test of any 
 truth is found in putting it in practice. The quickest 
 and surest way to make ourselves feel any great truth 
 is to adopt it as a rule of life. How much more real 
 and powerful the truth of tlie existence of God will 
 be to me, if I treat Him as a living God, and worship 
 Him in my spirit, and obey Him in my actions, and 
 give up my will to His ! How much more real and 
 impressive to me will be the character and work of 
 Christ, if I make Him my Saviour, trust Him for 
 my salvation, follow Him as my Master, obey Him 
 as my Lord ! Everything tliat I do in obedience to 
 the will of God has a natural and inevitable effect 
 to strengthen all my convictions of the reality of 
 His existence. We are so constituted that we cannot 
 be practically impressed by many truths and powers 
 until we yield to them. The frozen earth in winter 
 lies under the sun as truly as in summer ; but until it 
 has turned itself more directly to the sun, and yielded 
 to its power, no bud swells, no seed starts, no lii'e 
 appears. When the frozen surface has once yielded to 
 the sun, all is changed, and it is but a little while before 
 the earth is quick with life, and crowned first with 
 beauty and then with fruit. It is by the truth of God, 
 impressed by the Spirit of God upon our hearts, that 
 we have all that we have of spiritual life and power. 
 
104 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 If we ever have more, it will be by the same means 
 applied more richly to our souls. Let us turu ourselves 
 to the sua. Let us hear and heed our Lord wheu He 
 says to us, " If ye continue in my word, then are ye 
 my disciples indeed ; and ye shall know the truth, and 
 the truth shall make you free." 
 
 The hope of that complete perfection of our nature 
 which will fit us for the utmost bliss and glory of 
 which we are created capable, is a great and blessed 
 hope, and it is one that shall surely be realized by 
 every person who loves and obeys the truth of God. 
 Toward that glory God is leading all such souls ; for it 
 He is fitting them by the truth that they are learning 
 in thought and experience. And while those of you 
 who are rejecting the counsel of God's words are laying 
 up for yourselves the bitter remorse and the weary 
 despair of a hopeless doom, those of you who are obey- 
 ing, studying, and loving the truth are being sanctified 
 by it, and will grow in grace and knowledge until you 
 come to the stature of perfect men and women in 
 Christ. And that great glory which shall be, reflects 
 its brightness back upon you now. The honor and 
 bliss of what you shall be, glorifies you even now 
 and here. Let that hope give you value in the sight of 
 your own humble faith, and let it serve as the high- 
 est motive that you can have for faithfulness in the 
 present work and service of Him who calls you up 
 to His own glory. 
 
UNCERTAINTY. 105 
 
 UNCERTAINTY. 
 
 And thy life shall hang in douht before thee. 
 Deux, xxviii. 66. 
 
 IN the long list of evils and sufferings which are 
 threatened against the disobedience of Israel this 
 is one, that, driven from their own land, wasting as 
 captives to their enemies, depending on the mercy of 
 their conquerors, " their lives shall hang in doubt before 
 them ; " a constant and painful suspense of uncertainty 
 shall fill their hearts. The safeguards of life all gone, 
 the air heavy with the boding presence of danger, and 
 their hearts heavy with the terrible burden of anxious 
 fear, thus they should be made to feel how evil and 
 bitter a thing it is to forsake their God and incur His 
 displeasure. It is indeed one of the most bitter con- 
 sequences of guilt, that it creates a fearfulness and 
 trembling of heart, and makes all our life hang in doubt 
 before us. It destroys the sense of safety, makes us 
 unable to rest, and the tremble of our own heart is 
 C(jnunuuicated to everything outside of us. The uni- 
 verse seems all uncertain, the quietness and confidence 
 of life is exchanged for haunting fears and gloomy 
 forebodings. Nor is it our welfare alone tliat seems 
 insecure and uncertain. The rocking of a guilty soul 
 on the waves of its own troubled thouMits makes the 
 
106 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 steadfast stars seem to tremble. Doubt seems to shake 
 the eternal things themselves. God's character becomes 
 doubtful and uncertain to us ; His providence, His 
 love, His justice, His word, hang in doubt before us. 
 Nothing seems trustworthy. The hand of a guilty soul 
 trembles too much to take supporting hold upon any- 
 thing. We cannot believe, we cannot trust or rest, 
 when we have by sense of sin disturbed our own hearts. 
 And this is indeed one of the greatest evils that we 
 bring upon ourselves by our sin. If we could foresee 
 how our sin would thus undermine the soul's rest, so 
 take all solid ground from under us, so set us in dark- 
 ness, with our life and our future hanging in doubt 
 before us, we would never dare to sin as we do. No 
 present evil, no suffering which is certain, which the 
 mind can understand, can be compared with that sus- 
 pense which the threatening presence of unknown evil 
 creates : and to conceive of an eternity of life hung in 
 doubt before us, tortured with the sense of insecurity 
 and exposure, haunted with the presence of coming 
 evil, is unspeakably more terrible than our conception 
 of annihilation. How blessed an escape would the 
 soul's death be, for one whose life hung in such con- 
 stant doubt before him ! 
 
 But it is not alone sin and wrong in us that makes 
 life hang in doubt before us. There is for us a great 
 uncertainty more or less investing all things. There 
 are but few things which are fixed and certain in our 
 thoughts. We have but few convictions which doubt 
 never shakes, but few hopes that never tremble. Our 
 own personal fortunes are always in doubt. We watch 
 the coming days and years, we question the silent 
 
UNCERTAINTY. 107 
 
 future, always with a great uncertainty. We have so 
 many hopes that depend on what are to us uncertain- 
 ties. Our desires, so strong and anxious, have no 
 security for their fruition. The good may come, but so 
 also may the evil ; and our past experience teaches us 
 to fear the evil much more strongly than we expect the 
 good. Our life is in the future. The unopened days 
 conceal what it will be. We can have no certainty in 
 regard to the events which are on their way to happen, 
 and all the great interest each of us has in his personal 
 fortunes is invested with uncertainty and doubt, — not 
 always because we are wrong and sinful, but because 
 God has made the plan of our life to be to us thus 
 doubtful. 
 
 The divine realities themselves hang in doubt be- 
 fore us. They exist beyond the reach of our senses. 
 Heaven lies all around us, and the presence of God is 
 the house in which we live, and the providence of His 
 love is ever busy in our life ; the silent work of re- 
 demption by the power of the Holy Spirit never ceases. 
 We are among these great facts, they touch us, we are 
 constantly influenced by them ; but they are like the 
 invisible forces of Nature which we feel without know- 
 ing where they are, whence they come or whither they 
 go. Our sense of God is something that comes in upon 
 us from some mysterious source ; we cannot verify His 
 existence or presence by our senses. Our sense of the 
 spiritual world, of the other life, of the angelic ministry, 
 and of the connection of these with our life, is an 
 intimation whispered to our hearts, rather than an 
 effect of vision or of reason : and in the absence of all 
 visible tokens, in the inability of our reason to grasp 
 
108 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 and demonstrate these divine realities, they hang in 
 doubt before us. Does God see us ? Does He hear 
 our prayer ? Does He care for us ? How can man 
 tell ? If he knows these things, he knows them by 
 a spiritual capacity of faith to receive them, in the 
 absence of all outward token of them. And he must 
 be certain of them by a spiritual experience ; but alas ! 
 our darkness, our depravity, our worldliness, are a sad 
 injury to our spiritual capacity, and it is hard to come 
 to a certainty of them while our faith is so overlaid and 
 smothered by our sin and worldliness. So they hang 
 in doubt before us, and we do but blindly feel them, 
 while we still have much of doubt and uncertainty 
 about them. Our own future life, too, rises before us 
 covered with uncertainty and doubt, and we can only 
 feel that it is true. It is hard to feel that it is real, — 
 we can hope in it, but we cannot always rest in the 
 certainty of it. Sometimes, indeed, we can wrap our- 
 selves, by anticipation, in its warmth and peace and 
 parity, but most often we can only say to our uncertain 
 souls, " Wait, it is coming, it will come ; and then 
 we shall know." Nevertheless, how good it is that the 
 light of God and of the other life can reach us at all, 
 through such clouds as in this world rise around our 
 souls ! 
 
 This fact of the uncertainty and doubt in which life 
 is suspended has been one of the great influences that 
 have deeply affected the lives of all men. How much 
 of human experience has been due to this uncertainty ! 
 How constant an influence is it in all our lives ! God 
 must have intended it as a part of our experience, and 
 it must have its uses in our life. It has made its mark 
 
UNCERTAINTY. 109 
 
 SO deeply in our lives that it deserves our careful con- 
 sideratiou. Do we rightly understand why life hangs 
 in doubt before us ; and are we rightly afl'ected by this 
 great and constant uncertainty which attends our per- 
 sonal fortunes, and all oui thinking ? 
 
 It may be a dangerous temptation to us. Seeing 
 how uncertain all things are to us, we may insensibly 
 come to think that they are really as uncertain in them- 
 selves, and that there is no certainty in anything that 
 concerns us. Have not many persons come to feel 
 thus ? It appears to them that all events happen 
 without plan or system or design. They feel that they 
 live in a fatlierless world, themselves orphans, with no 
 great divine care over them, nothing to trust in or to 
 depend upon. Such a feeling is most depraving to our 
 characters. In such a view man seems left to himself, 
 thrust out into life to fight his own way through his 
 difficulties alone ; and it affects him just as it affects 
 a little child to feel that he has no father's care, no 
 mother's love, no home in the world. But we must 
 remember that this great uncertainty is in our knowl- 
 edge only. God does reign over us, and there is a 
 perfect plan for the world's affairs. It is only because 
 His plan is so large, so wide-reaching, and aims at so 
 vast results, that we cannot comprehend it. He steadily 
 pursues His purpose, and each event is a step taken 
 toward its accomplisliment. Over all the apparent 
 confusion and uncertainty that fill the world for us, 
 reigns the power of His providence, silently governing 
 all its least affairs. We know not what a day may 
 bring forth, but He knows. He has loaded each coming 
 day with its burden of events, charged each separate 
 
110 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 hour with its work upon your life and mine. He 
 counts His stars every evening, He opens His hand 
 every morning to feed His countless flocks. He knows 
 when the lily opens, and when the sparrow falls. He 
 makes the outgoings of the morning and of the evening 
 to rejoice, and over each of us keeps ceaseless watch 
 and care. Oh, the great, quiet, infinite power and peace 
 that overlies and wraps the world ! God is there. His 
 providence and love rest over all, even as the quiet 
 summer sunlight lies in untroubled peace on the hills, 
 while the busy turmoil of life goes on in village and 
 valley below. To Him there is nothing uncertain or 
 doubtful. He sees the end to which these apparently 
 aimless motions lead. And we are not orphans, living 
 unfathered lives in a fatherless world. Life is ripening 
 its fruits, coming to a determined result, and it is 
 known what that result will be. There is a way, too, 
 in which we can rise up into that great peace and rest 
 which overlies the world. Prayer and trust in God 
 will take us into it, and make us feel, amid all the 
 uncertainties of life, a settled confidence in its safety 
 and success. 
 
 So, again, this great uncertainty may and does become 
 a temptation to an unreasonable despair. Seeing how 
 doubtful every hope is, and how uncertain our success, 
 a weak and fearful heart is in haste to conclude that it 
 is useless to pursue great purposes, and vain to strive 
 for any great good of character or usefulness. How 
 many there are who have yielded to the discouraging 
 influence of this uncertainty, and taken up some little, 
 narrow plan of life, abandoning the larger hopes and 
 nobler purposes to which life calls them ! The young 
 
UNCERTAINTY. HI 
 
 man can but feel the aspiration for a worthy place and 
 noble history among men. His gifts urge him to under- 
 take some life in which they can have free, large scope. 
 But he sees difficulties and uncertainties in the way. 
 He fears to lose his labor in a failure. Tlie prospect of 
 success is doubtful, and he desponds, and turns away to 
 find a Yil'e in living for such cliances of happiness as lie 
 within reach of his indolence. How utterly has he 
 misunderstood the uncertainties of life ! If a great 
 success was uncertain, that meant that it might be 
 attained ; it meant that there was hope in striving for 
 it. The uncertainty took away the certainty of defeat, 
 and left the door open to success. Oh, it is base in us 
 to take up and accept a poor little narrow life, when 
 the best of which we are capable is made possible to us 
 by the uncertainties that surround us. In making all 
 things thus uncertain, God made all best things pos- 
 sible, and calls upon us to cherish the largest hopes and 
 strive for the highest good. 
 
 When we consider what effect this uncertainty of 
 life has had upon men, we cannot but see how it has 
 the effect to hold our minds in a constant attitude 
 of expectancy. There is always something coming, 
 and we know not what it will be. It is impossible 
 for the mind to shut itself up in the present : these 
 uncertainties compel us to live in the future, to be 
 anticipating. We cannot live the lives of the brute 
 creatures around us who have no hopes, who, born for 
 no more, for no otlier life than this, are so made as to 
 live wholly in the present. As there is nothing more 
 for them to expect, so they do not feel the uncertain- 
 ties of the world and the future. But we are made to 
 
112 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 feel them, and this is one reason for it, that we have 
 more to expect : we have another life to live, and must 
 somehow be made to look up in anticipation of it. It 
 is as if God had said, " Now I have made man for 
 immortality and eternal life ; how shall I get him to 
 regard his immortality ? I have placed him in this 
 world ; how shall I get him to look beyond it ? how 
 keep him conscious of his greater future ? how prevent 
 him from giving all his thoughts and all his heart to 
 things of this world ? I will make everything un- 
 certain to him. I will make him feel that he can 
 depend on nothing here. I will thus keep his mind 
 constantly open to the future, so tliat he must feel 
 its influence upon him." And so it is. The uncer- 
 tainties of life hold us in the attitude of expectancy, — 
 and this is the only proper attitude for a soul that has 
 so much in the future to expect. It is in this attitude 
 of mind that we are prepared to take hold of the reve- 
 lations of immortality and feel them. There, before 
 us, and drawing nearer, is the vision of God ; the tre- 
 mendous scenery of final judgment ; the long ages of 
 eternity ; the purity and peace of heaven, and the 
 dark and horrible scenes of perdition ; and the uncer- 
 tainties of life compel us to be looking at the future 
 and inquiring what is to come. Thus do we get sight 
 of these great realities, and feel their power. How 
 many a deep experience of these things do we owe to 
 the uncertainty in our life, which has driven us off to 
 seek some house not made with hands, eternal, where 
 we may hope to rest in certain security ! Our pleas- 
 antest thoughts of heaven have arisen in our hearts 
 from the contrast of its permanence and certainty of 
 
UNCERTAINTY. 113 
 
 bliss with the uncertainty that makes everything 
 tremulous here. And if it were not that we felt the 
 uncertainty of our welfare in this world, we should 
 never look beyond it. We should not be open to 
 revelations of the future, nor even look up to see any 
 future before us. The stormy waves that toss our 
 souls upon their ceaseless unrest make us long for the 
 quiet anchorage of the heavenly harbor. The uncer- 
 tainties of our earthly life drive us to seek certainty 
 in heaven. 
 
 Further, the uncertainties of our life have had the 
 effect to lead us to seek for stronger convictions, by 
 the study of truth, and the use of the means God has 
 given us for coming to the knowledge of the truth. 
 "What is the interest we take in listening to any in- 
 struction, in attendance upon religious teaching, in 
 reading books, in studying the Bible ? Is it not the 
 hope of coming to some clearer knowledge and more 
 certain conviction of the truth that concerns us ? The 
 uncertainty that we feel leads us to ask for greater 
 certainty, and to seek after it. All the study and 
 labor of the world to understand and express truth 
 has been caused by the uncertainty with which it 
 was invested. It would not have been as well to 
 make all these truths perfectly certain, and place 
 them beyond doubt, because it is so natural to us to 
 disregard what we think is settled and certain. Men 
 do not think of what is not doubtful. The most cer- 
 tain facts in the world are the least considered, and 
 tlieir causes are least understood. It is better to have 
 some uncertainty of mind, some question of truth, if 
 that uncertainty leads us to study it in the Word of 
 
114 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 God, than it is to have that kind of certain faitli 
 which leads us to neglect the study of it because we 
 think it needs no more searching out. When a man 
 in science has examined a specimen, classified, named, 
 and labelled it, he puts it away and thinks no more 
 about it : it is lost to him. But if he has a doubtful 
 specimen, he is deeply impressed by it, and cannot 
 cease from thinking of it. So our best and deepest 
 convictions of God's truth have arisen from the 
 doubts which have repeatedly led us to re-examine 
 the truth and thus come to a better certainty. How 
 often life has made us doubt the love of God ! and 
 that doubt has led us to study more earnestly this 
 great truth, till we have come to deeper, sweeter im- 
 pressions of it. It is painful to doubt, but it is a 
 blessed thing that God leads the earnest soul through 
 its very doubts to certainty and rest. The faith that 
 comes of conquered doubts is the faith that has power 
 with our souls. 
 
 But the great lesson of the uncertainties of life is 
 the lesson of trust and rest in God. We have deep 
 need of some sure and certain rest for our souls. We 
 cannot find it in the world, where nothing is certain 
 for us. We cannot find it in our own convictions, 
 where there is always more or less of doubt. But we 
 can find rest and certainty in God. He will take 
 every other dependence from us, that He may be 
 Himself our rest and confidence. You cannot know 
 whether the thing you hope for will come to you or 
 not; it is all uncertain, and hangs in doubt before 
 you : yet you earnestly desire it, and deem it neces- 
 sary to your welfare. It is torture to live in such 
 
UNCERTAINTY. Hf. 
 
 suspense. But now, when life so trembles in uncer- 
 tainty, God comes to you and says, " Leave it with 
 me ; lay here your burden. You cannot know how it 
 will be, but you can know that I will decide it. Trust 
 in me." Nothing in all our experience has brought us 
 so often to God, and so near to Hira, as our uncertain- 
 ties and fears. From these more than from anything 
 else we have learned to submit to Him our lives and 
 fortunes, and to trust His love and care. He is our 
 God, and His love is our supreme good. To rest in 
 that love is the saints' everlasting rest. To confide in 
 Him gives the sense of security, even in heaven. But 
 we should never seek Him and learn to trust Him, if 
 it were not for the constant finding of uncertainty in 
 everything else. And this lesson of trust and rest in 
 God is the great lesson of life, which completes the 
 soul's education and fits it for heaven. Many things 
 are necessary to the perfect heavenly life, but first 
 and greatest of all is the power to leave everything 
 to the will of God, and trust him completely in every 
 condition. Without this, our anxieties and fears would 
 follow us into heaven, and disturb our rest even amid 
 its blessed conditions. Our ignorance of the future 
 must always make it uncertain to us. The soul's 
 foundation of rest must be, not in any outward state, 
 but in God and His love : and this rest can be entered 
 only by confiding trust. Only by often-repeated acts 
 of fiiith in God can the habit of trust be attained ; 
 and thus the uncertainties of our life, by leading us 
 to cast our care on God, are the great occasions of 
 our growth in the grace of confidence. 
 
 There is sadness in this hanging of life in doubt 
 
116 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 before us. How uncertain every blessing is ! The 
 homes which are to-day so safe and blessed may to- 
 morrow be broken up by death and separation. The 
 growing gains of life may be scattered to the winds. 
 Everything is in doubt before us. But what matters 
 it? The Christian's soul is not dependent on these 
 things. He will still be rich and strong when they 
 are gone. He can afford to lose them, for he still has 
 God, and God will be to him a place of broad rivers 
 and streams, a rich and fruitful land, a safe and 
 pleasant rest. It is terrible, only when the soul of a 
 man has nothing but the uncertainties of life to depend 
 upon, when he has no hold on God, and no rest in His 
 love. Then indeed it is dreadful tliat a man's whole 
 existence for time and for eternity should hang in 
 doubt before him, with nowhere to go for rest and 
 safety. 
 
 How is it with us ? What effect is the uncertainty 
 of life having upon us ? Has it discouraged us from 
 our highest purposes ? Has it made us careless ? 
 Have we said, " It is too doubtful, I will just live for 
 the present, and let all higher purposes go ? " Let us 
 remember that at least one thing is certain: "The 
 turning away of the simple shall slay him." That 
 soul will perish whose doubts lead him to neglect his 
 God. And once more through this voice of life God 
 is calling us to Himself. In the sacred silence of this 
 holy Sabbath He is saying, "I am thy God. All 
 earthly things are vanity and vexation ; I am thy rest, 
 and in me is a great and certain good. Lay thy life in 
 the hands of my love, and give thyself to me." 
 
WALKING ON THE SEA. 117 
 
 WALKING ON THE SEA. 
 
 And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, 
 bid me come unto thee on the water. And he said, Come. 
 And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on 
 the water to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boister- 
 ous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, 
 Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth his 
 hand, and caught him, and said unto him, thou of little 
 faith, wherefore didst thou doubt '^ — Matt, xiv. 28-31. 
 
 HOW much in our living is like walking on the sea ! 
 It would be difficult to find a comparison that 
 would more truly illustrate the character of our life. 
 In the twenty-fourth Psalm it is said, "The earth is the 
 Lord's, and the fulness thereof; for He hath founded it 
 upon the seas, and established it upon the floods." The 
 whole universe is founded on the ever-heaving sea of 
 God's own being and power, and established upon the 
 mighty floods of His eternal flowing energy. The 
 worlds in their circuits float in the great currents of 
 His will. The infinite ocean of God is that which 
 sustains the universe. The deeps that lie beneath the 
 floating worlds are the great deeps of His power and 
 wisdom, and the life and motions of the planets and 
 the stars are like walking on the sea. The earth rests 
 on nothing material ; it is afloat in the great ocean of 
 space, and its foundation is the flood of power which 
 
118 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 impels it in its courses and sustains it in its orbit. 
 The earth is a floating island in the " great and wide 
 sea " of natural forces. And so is the life of man. 
 Under man's life as its support, as the source of its 
 power and continuance, lies the great ocean of Life, of 
 God's life, on which it is founded, in which it lives and 
 moves and has its being, and on which it is a floating 
 island. 
 
 And so when we look for the foundation, the last 
 and real support, of anything in the universe, it is not 
 something fixed and material, but something fluid, and 
 like the sea with its floods and deeps. It was natural 
 to the Son of God to walk on the sea ; it was like His 
 old habit when He laid the beams of His chambers in 
 the waters^ and founded the earth upon the floods. 
 Everything is founded on a sea, and it was natural for 
 Him to stand and walk upon it. It is but natural, then, 
 that much in our living should be like walking on the 
 sea, — that the great principle that is impressed upon 
 the natural universe should appear also in the world of 
 life and spiritual conditions. And so it does. 
 
 He who walks upon the sea has beneath his feet no 
 adequate support, and is every moment liable to sink 
 beneath the floods and be overwhelmed. It is not 
 possible to conceive a man in any other conditions 
 wliere each moment is a moment of such hazard. He 
 has nothing but his dangers to walk on. Eight over 
 the deeps in which he may be swallowed up he must 
 go ; aud he is liable to perish not only, or mainly, by 
 his stumbles and bad walking, but more still by his 
 mere weight. His natural tendency to sink in the flood 
 is greater than the power of the waters to sustain him. 
 
WALKING ON THE SEA. 119 
 
 As we tliink of Peter coming down from the ship 
 and beginning to walk on the water to go to Jesus, is 
 not his condition the very type of danger, of fearful 
 liability? With what breathless suspense must his 
 brethren have watched him ! The hungry deeps seemed 
 to rage for his destruction. The darkness of niglit 
 closed round the fearful experiment. The yielding 
 waters undermined his feet. Beyond his dejDth, beyond 
 his strength, sinking and helpless, his feet already deep 
 in the fearful danger, — oh, what is it like ? If we 
 could truly see the condition of our souls in this world, 
 we should see how perfect a type of our danger this 
 scene is. Our souls are just like Peter on the sea. 
 Our worth and welfare for our whole existence is in 
 the same exposure and danger as his life. God sees 
 us, as we see Peter on that stormy night of darkness, 
 walking on the sea. He sees our souls exposed to sink 
 beneath the floods of endless sorrow, living on the edge 
 of this awful liability, balancing unsteadily amid the 
 temptations and dangers of life, and over us the dread 
 and solemn question yet unanswered, Will we be saved, 
 or sink in the black gulfs of outer darkness to rise 
 nevermore ? It would be thought a dreadful thing if 
 some one were to place you or me on the water in the 
 middle of a sea like that of Galilee, and give us only 
 that one chance of life, — to walk on the water to the 
 land. But is not this something like our living in this 
 world ? Are we not placed amid unholy influences, 
 temptations, trials, and must we not walk above and 
 upon these, and maintain our integrity, or else sink 
 beneath their power in moral degradation, to the ruin 
 of our souls forever ? Are we able to walk the floods 
 
120 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 of corrupt influence, of depraved life, of false thinking 
 in this world, alone, any better than Peter was to walk 
 the water of Galilee ? God's holy law demands that 
 we should be holy too, and if we are not holy we are 
 condemned, and the wrath of God abideth on us. Sin, 
 when it hath conceived, bringeth forth death, and sin is 
 already in our hearts and lives. Our feet are already 
 deeply covered in the waters of depravity and danger. 
 With God's condemnation making darkness and storm 
 around us, with sin working death within us, with the 
 gulf of moral ruin and endless sorrow under our feet, 
 and with our feet already wading in that sorrow and 
 ruin, are our liabilities to perish in eternal death less 
 than Peter's liabilities to perish in the sea ? 
 
 Tliere was a little time between the moment when 
 Peter stepped down upon the waters and the moment 
 when he took hold of the hand of Christ, in which his 
 life hung in awful suspense, while life and death swayed 
 in the balance. That little time is precisely like our 
 whole life, from the time we begin to know right and 
 wrong until we either take hold of Christ or sink for- 
 ever below His reach. We are living in the same 
 liability to sink and be overwhelmed. In the supports 
 on which a soul's eternal welfare rests in this life 
 there is no more stability or security than the waves 
 of the sea afforded to Peter. The attributes of God, 
 His justice, His goodness, are not under us for our 
 support, because we live in opposition to His will. 
 His providence and care are no security to us, because 
 we have rejected His care and undertaken to live 
 without Him. As impenitent souls, we are "without 
 God in the world ; " and without His care, without 
 
WALKING ON THE SEA. 121 
 
 His power, what is there to keep us from sinking in 
 tlie depths of sin and misery ? We walk forward in 
 life loaded with the great and solemn interests of an 
 endless existence. We have so much to lose or to 
 secure, such an infinite good to carry safely over the 
 waves of life, and such an infinite evil to fear if we 
 fail; there is so little in ourselves, so little in the 
 world, on which we can depend, that our life is like 
 walking on the sea. Let every man ask himself what 
 it is upon which his soul is standing. Especially let 
 every one who does not trust in Christ ask himself 
 this question. Is there anything really firm and stable 
 on which you can rest your future welfare ? Do you 
 feel that your standing is sure and safe ? Are you 
 any way confident that you can go through life with- 
 out losing your soul ? Is not your condition like stand- 
 ing on the sea ? The very uncertainty and insuffi- 
 ciency of such a support is what you feel. If constant 
 danger and liability to perish is the strong character- 
 istic of walking on the sea, so is this the characteristic 
 of our living while we live alienated from God. For 
 a little while a man can keep himself above the sur- 
 face, but how surely and how soon, if he has no help, 
 will he sink down and perish in the floods ! 
 
 There is this fearful interest and apprehension in 
 rightly seeing the condition of men. They are on the 
 sea, and are trying alone to walk over its dangers. 
 There is no support, nothing but danger under their 
 feet. How fast they are sinking in the flood ! How 
 fast they are disappearing from the world, perishing in 
 their sin and misery ! And these around us are on 
 the same treacherous sea, sinking all the while deeper 
 
122 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 in the danger, vainly trying to save their lives, and 
 losing them by the very means they use to save them, 
 their poor moralities, their self-delusions. 
 
 But this fearful liability to perish is not the only 
 feature of life that is illustrated by walking on the 
 sea. He who walks on the sea must venture his life 
 amid dangers and uncertainties; and the same neces- 
 sity of venturing amid dangers and uncertainties is 
 also a characteristic of our living. We cannot always 
 have solid, certain ground to go upon ; we must often 
 walk upon the sea, often go forward without certainty, 
 without satisfactory assurance. Such is the plan of 
 life, that every advance must be a venture. Between 
 us and the thing we seek is always a region of uncer- 
 tainty, of danger and venture ; and on these uncertain- 
 ties and dangers and ventures we must walk, like 
 walking on the sea. 
 
 A man's hopes and fears are always coming down 
 out of the ship to walk on the sea of uncertainties 
 before us ; and in so much as he lives in his hopes 
 and fears, his living is like walking on the sea. If we 
 looked for our own spirits, we should very often find 
 them leaving the solid shore of present good and 
 present life, and walking out upon the unknown and 
 uncertain sea of future good and evil. The greater 
 part of every man's interior life is spent in walking- 
 over the darkening sea of the past or the uncertain 
 possibilities of the future. We are far more familiar 
 with hopes and fears, memories and anticipations, than 
 with anything else. Our actual lives are too small for 
 us. They are like very small islands in the great sea. 
 We cannot be content with so little ; we go forth in 
 
WALKING ON THE SEA. 123 
 
 conjectures, in imaginations, in visions, in hopes, upon 
 the great sea around us. The time and thought and 
 feeling spent in these conjectures and fancies is so 
 much walking on the sea. There is nothing fixed or 
 solid under this portion of our lives ; and yet this is 
 the greater portion. It is natural for our spirits thus 
 to venture on the future by conjecture and hope ; and 
 this fact in our experience may serve to impress us 
 with the truth that all our living is a venture. 
 
 In all human enterprises, whether for public or 
 private benefit, men must venture their property or 
 their labor or their lives. They must go out beyond 
 their own power, and risk themselves or their posses- 
 sions upon uncertainties which they cannot control, 
 and wliicli may fail to sustain them. Like those who 
 sow rice upon the sea, depending upon the seed to 
 sink down into the soil and spring up when the sea 
 has receded, men have to cast their bread upon the 
 waters and risk its loss, that they may increase it. 
 Xor can men escape this necessity. All these enter- 
 prises are like walking on the sea, because they require 
 us to trust ourselves beyond our own power of self- 
 sustaining. How much too in our studies after truth 
 is like walking on the sea, — a going forth of the mind 
 upon doubts and uncertainties and mere probabilities, 
 that like the waves of the sea are forever shifting 
 under our feet ! Our intellectual life must be a ven- 
 ture also, and we are obliged to walk as on water until 
 we find a standing on some rock of truth that has 
 become certain to us. 
 
 This same necessity of venturing which is character- 
 istic of the attempt to walk on the sea applies with 
 
124 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 equal force to the religious life. We cannot see God, 
 or His presence, or His providence. We cannot see 
 the other world, or anything in it. To the senses and 
 to the mind, the actual presence of God in our lives, 
 the actual help of God in answer to our prayers, are 
 invisible, and incapable of proof by the ordinary 
 methods. We must venture upon God's help and 
 grace without seeing it, or visible signs of it. We 
 must act as under His eye, without ever meeting its 
 glance. We must depend upon, and hope for, that 
 which we see not. All the great facts upon which 
 the Christian life depends are invisible and spiritual, 
 and yet we must treat them all as realities, and go 
 forth acting upon them just as if they were solid as 
 the earth. This is like walking on the sea as if it 
 were solid ground. 
 
 As guilty sinners, we must venture our souls' sal- 
 vation upon the grace and help of Christ, and that 
 without seeing Him. It seems to men like trying to 
 walk on the sea, to trust themselves thus to Him ; but 
 we cannot come to Him in any other way than by 
 venturing. The suspicion that He may not hear us, 
 or if He does that He may not save us, does indeed 
 make our going to Him like walking on the sea. 
 It is trusting our souls out beyond our power to sus- 
 tain ourselves ; but every soul must " walk on the water 
 to go to Jesus," must venture on all the uncertainties 
 that it feels, for there is no other way of getting to 
 Him. So in all Christian living there is a continual 
 venturing beyond our own power, a trusting to the 
 unseen and to us uncertain realities of the spiritual 
 world. And thus the plan of our life is plainly seen 
 
WALKING ON THE SEA. 125 
 
 to be such as to require of us continually to venture 
 beyond our own power to sustain ourselves, — even as 
 Peter did when he came down out of the shijj and 
 walked on the water to go to Jesus. 
 
 He who walks on the sea is not only liable to perish 
 in its depths, and obliged to venture beyond his own 
 power to sustain himself, but for this very reason he 
 must be sustained by some power above his own, and 
 above that of the sea on which he walks. The sea will 
 partly sustain a man, and a man can do a little to sus- 
 tain himself in the water ; but he will as surely sink at 
 last as if the sea gave him no support and he himself 
 could do nothing. And by this fact our life is still 
 further illustrated. It is true that w^e can do a little 
 to keep ourselves from sinking in the depravity and 
 guilt of the world ; but it is also true that our natural 
 tendency to sink into sin and neglect of God is stronger 
 than our natural disposition to rise above it. AVe are 
 already heavy with our sin and depravity, and placed 
 as we are amid temptations and constant sinful influ- 
 ences, if we have no help from without, nothing is 
 more certain than that we shall sink continually 
 deeper in sin and ruin. The world will uphold us 
 in holy living no better than the waters of Galilee 
 upheld Peter. If we trust to the general influence 
 and example of the world, we might as well trust 
 our persons to the sea. Its waves would uphold our 
 bodies as long and well as the world would uphold 
 our souls in lioliness. Has your character so strong 
 a love for holiness that it cannot be overcome by the 
 temptations of life ? Do you need no help of God ? 
 Can you do without His grace, and escape from your 
 
126 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 own moral impurity and the evil in the world ? If 
 you cannot trust yourself, can you depend upon the 
 course of this world, and its influences, to make you 
 fit for heavenly life hereafter? If you are unwilling 
 to perish forever, must you not help yourself by 
 taking hold, as Peter did, of Christ ? You must have 
 something besides your own power, something besides 
 the help of the world ; and what is there in all the 
 universe that you can take hold of but Christ ? Who 
 else offers any help ? Where is any other name under 
 heaven among men ? On the dark midnight sea of 
 human danger, who else comes through the danger, 
 walking on the waves toward us ? If we reject His 
 help, who else will come to save us ? We must either 
 cry unto Him in humble prayer, or sink forever under 
 the curse of sin, in the despair of the lost. 
 
 Since, then, the very conditions of life make it 
 necessary that we should be liable to perish, that we 
 should continually venture beyond our own power, 
 and that we should have help from God, on what 
 other principle can we live than the principle of 
 faith ? If we have not faith enough to act upon 
 where we must venture, we shall have nothing to 
 uphold us in acting at all. If we have not faith 
 enough in God to support us in holy living, we are 
 left alone to sink beneath the floods of sin and 
 misery forever. We, in the midst of our great dan- 
 gers, and destitute of all earthly help, are like Peter 
 on the sea, and like him also we sink when we 
 doubt. For it is plainly implied that the reason why 
 he began to sink was that he began to doubt ; and 
 in sinking because he doubted he was as true a type 
 
WALKING ON THE SEA. 127 
 
 and illustration of the great law according to which 
 all men sink or are sustained, as in walking the sea 
 he typified and illustrated the conditions of life. 
 
 " liy faith ye stand," and ye sink when ye douht. 
 This is because in the natural constitution faith is 
 the supporting power in living. lie who undertakes 
 any enterprise, whatever means he has of carrying 
 it forward, will give it up and fail when he loses 
 faith in it. With all that he has done and gained, 
 he will sink down and his enterprise will perish, be- 
 cause he doubted. He had the means of completing 
 it, but he had not the means of completing his own 
 action. It is faith that works, and no amount or per- 
 fection of means to any end will be of any avail, if 
 we have not faith to work with them. Consider in 
 your own experience what faith does to the soul. 
 How it cheers and strengthens every faculty and 
 feeling ! how it carries the heart easily over dis- 
 couragements and oppositions ! how strong confidence 
 makes life imperial and sovereign, exultant and safe ! 
 A soul under doubt is like the body when it is faint- 
 ing. The heart beats weak and painfully, the hands 
 hang down and the feeble knees tremble, the eyes 
 are dim and the world grows blank and empty. 
 When faith comes, when some strong confidence 
 enters the soul, life and power and cheerfulness re- 
 turn; we rise up to newness of life, and the blank 
 world grows bright and full with interests and hopes. 
 Thus it is a perfectly natural principle that men 
 should sink when they doubt. 
 
 And no man really sinks until he does doubt. A 
 man may be defeated in his purpose, or hindered by 
 
128 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 great and growing difficulties ; yet lie does not sink, 
 even when his plans are broken in pieces by the sea 
 and float all apart like a broken raft, — he does not 
 sink, unless he loses the faith of life, unless he 
 admits doubt into his heart. And so if we speak of 
 the Christian life as it is, as a natural life, we shall 
 see why we sink when we doubt. Our faith in God 
 and His presence, love, and care, is the natural support 
 of our souls in holy living. If we admit doubt of Him 
 into our hearts, we sink into religious weakness and 
 under temptation, not because He has taken anything 
 away from us, but because we have left our natural 
 support. The soul of the impenitent sinks deeper ai;d 
 deeper into the depths of depravity and ruin for this 
 reason among others, that it uses no faith in God, and 
 so has not the great natural support of a soul against 
 the world, the flesh, and Satan. A soul that has no 
 faith in God as its God and Christ as its Saviour, falls 
 to sinful living and final ruin just as naturally — and 
 on the same principle — as a vine falls to the ground 
 and grovels and perishes in the dust when it ceases 
 to cling to the tree that held it upright. Does not 
 this principle show us why our Lord said, " He that 
 believeth shall be saved, and he that believeth not 
 sliall be damned " ? Are not those saved from sink- 
 ing into sin and ruin who do use faith in God ; and 
 do not they who use no faith in Him naturally fall 
 away from Him into sinful living and liopeless aliena- 
 tion ? Is not faith in God, faith in His presence and 
 help, faith in His redemption, the soul's natural sup- 
 port and salvation, and without it will not a soul 
 perish naturally ? Ah, yes, we shall perish, if we do 
 
WALKING ON THE SEA. 129 
 
 perish, not because we are imperfect, not merely be- 
 cause we are sinners, but because God is our natural 
 and only help, and of that help we will not take 
 hold. 
 
 If men sink, like Peter, when they doubt, this is 
 sometimes because God gives help or withholds it ac- 
 cording to our faith ; that is, according to our confi- 
 dence in Him or our distrust of Him. In some places 
 of our life, if we are to be kept from sinking, God 
 must give us special help, must reach forth His hand 
 and hold us up as He did Peter. But in such cases 
 the principle of God's grace is to give us support ac- 
 cording to the measure of our faith. He gave Peter 
 power to walk on the sea so long as Peter's confidence 
 in Him was unquestioning and complete ; but when 
 he began to be afraid and lose confidence, Christ 
 withdrew His help in the same degree, and thus, be- 
 ginning to doubt, he began to sink. God gives us 
 natural support of soul according to our faith. On 
 what principle should He bestow extra and special 
 help ? Should He give it without regard to our con- 
 fidence in Him ? Should he make no difference be- 
 tween the soul that trusts Him entirely and the soul 
 that treats Him M'ith distrust ? He will indeed save 
 all those who, conscious of sinking, cry to Him as 
 Peter did. But it is one thing to go to Him under 
 the pressure of dread necessity, and another thing to 
 go to Him in the use of complete and unquestioning 
 confidence. If we ever sink for want of the special 
 grace of God, we must know that He withholds it be- 
 cause of some distrust in our hearts. Nothing that God 
 can do for us will do us any good, unless it increases 
 
 9 
 
130 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 our confidence and familiar trust in Him. To gain 
 that familiar confidence in Him as the great element 
 of our life is the substance of life eternal. That we 
 may learn this is the object of all our discipline. 
 And therefore He deals with us in accordance with 
 our faith in Him. 
 
 Any who are here this morning yet unreconciled to 
 God need a very great and special exercise of His grace, 
 because they need entire and eternal forgiveness for all 
 their sins. This is no common, no natural favor of 
 God ; but will He give you that great grace and favor 
 unless you show confidence by going to Him and asking 
 it ? I do but tell you the plainest truth when I say 
 that He will sooner leave every one of you to perish 
 forever than pardon you in your unbelief, in your im- 
 penitent distrust of His sincerity. You do not believe 
 that He is sincere in threatening eternal ruin to the 
 impenitent ; you do not believe that He is sincere in 
 offering you now pardon, adoption, and eternal life. 
 How, then, can He bestow these upon you while you 
 so distrust and doubt Him ? 
 
 And many a Christian wants a deeper sense of 
 spiritual realities, a sweeter sense of God's nearness 
 and Christ's presence, a stronger apprehension of 
 heavenly life and joy. Will He give you these special 
 favors while you indulge distrust of Him, of the reality 
 of His presence or the sincerity of His promises ? You 
 must and will sink, in your sense of all these truths, as 
 you doubt, and He will leave you to sink, until your 
 poverty and danger shall bring you to cry for His 
 help. 
 
 But it will perhaps appear strange to you that all our 
 
WALKING ON THE SEA. 131 
 
 welfare and all God's favors should be contingent upon 
 our believing. Perhaps we cannot believe, for want of 
 evidence to our minds. We think that faith is a ques- 
 tion of evidence, and the exercise of faith dependent 
 upon laws of evidence ; that since faith is an intel- 
 lectual exercise, it is therefore wrong that a man should 
 be condemned for not believing, and saved because 
 he holds certain opinions. But all such thinking is 
 plainly an evasion of the truth. Our own hearts teach 
 us that in all practical questions, whether of worldly 
 or religious interests, the exercise of faith is a question 
 of disposition far more than of evidence. The amount 
 of faith, of confidence amidst the uncertainties of life, 
 that a man shows, is not an exhibition of his mind, but 
 of his disposition. In all the ventures of life, men 
 exercise faith not so much according to the clearness of 
 their opinions as according to the inclination of their 
 dispositions and affections. So it is in regard to all 
 religious questions. We are asked to submit our lives 
 and wills to God, to yield our own plans of life to what 
 He chooses for us. We have to believe, in order to 
 do this, that He is our God, our Sovereign, our lawful 
 Lord, and that His will is wisest and best. Now, as to 
 whether we actually put our confidence in Him so as 
 tlnis to yield to Him, — how much is this a matter of 
 opinion, and how much of disposition ? Christ comes 
 to us in the name of the Father, and offers us pardon 
 and adoption and eternal life if we will take up our 
 cross and follow Him. Here is to each of us an offer 
 of salvation on condition of our submission to Christ. 
 How much is it a matter of opinion with you or me, 
 whether we will put our confidence in Him, and how 
 
132 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 much more is it a question of disposition ? Exercising 
 faith is putting confidence in the object of faith ; and 
 we put confidence in anything by our will, according 
 to our inclination. If we were disposed to do so, we 
 could put our confidence in Christ and become His 
 disciples. Do but observe, when you have exercised 
 faith, and you will see that your exercise of faith was 
 the outgrowth of a disposition far more than of any 
 opinion. Opinions and evidences have their influence ; 
 but when the moment comes, and we do put confidence 
 in anything that is practical to us, it is not our opinion 
 so much as our disposition that decides us to do so. 
 And since it is true that our faith and our distrust are 
 the expressions of our disposition, it is just that God 
 should deal with us according to our faith and our 
 doubts, — that he that believeth should be saved, and 
 he that believeth not should be condemned. I know 
 that this explanation does not make the case of men 
 any better. If the difficulties of believing were in im- 
 perfect evidences, then unbelief and doubts would have 
 some excuse, and we could help men by bringing them 
 better evidence. But when men's dispositions prevent 
 their putting their confidence in Christ, what can we 
 do for them but betake ourselves to God, and pray that 
 He will change their hearts ? And if they ask, *' What 
 shall we do ? If it is our dispositions that prevent 
 our believing, still they prevent us, and can we change 
 our dispositions ? What shall we do ? " there are but 
 two things that you can do : either make up your mind 
 to perish forever, and take that doom with all its woe 
 to your heart, or else do as Peter did, — call out to 
 Christ earnestly, "Lord, save me, or I perish!" 
 
WALKING ON THE SEA. 133 
 
 We are walking on the sea : beneath our feet are the 
 deeps of danger and of ruin, arouud us is the darkness 
 of this world. Our own weight sinks us in the flood. 
 On the issue depends eternal good or evil. On the 
 waves our Lord comes to us, and seeing us in our 
 danger he says, as he said on the Sea of Galilee, 
 " Come." Let us take hold of His hand, let us cling 
 to Him in close discipleship, walking with Him on the 
 stormy sea of earthly life, until we step off with Him 
 upon the sea of glass mingled with fire, and with them 
 who have gotten the victory sing with the harps of 
 God the song of Moses the servant of God and the 
 sons of the Lamb. 
 
13 J: GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 LESSONS FEOM THE SUMMER 
 The summer is ended. — Jeremiah viii. 20. 
 
 AND we have gathered its bounteous harvests, and 
 stored them away for the times when what we 
 have gathered will be all we have. If the summer has 
 any lessons to teach us, let us gather these also. Fruits 
 of wisdom and truth are surely as valuable as the fruits 
 and grains of the earth. We want more than our daily 
 bread, our food and raiment. When a man has eaten 
 and drunk, and sits down amid all his physical com- 
 forts, then he wants, just as much, something to think 
 of, something pleasant and profitable for his spirit to 
 digest in reflection. 
 
 He who created us had to contrive for our support, 
 and to contrive variety of foods and flavors ; and so 
 He bade the earth bring forth the vast varieties of its 
 products in vegetable and animal life, and gave them 
 all to men. One thing alone might have been sufficient 
 to support us. Man's life could have been maintained 
 with corn alone, had the earth produced nothing else ; 
 but certainly man's life would have been a very dif- 
 ferent and a very dreary thing had it been so. So He 
 who created us had to provide for the support of our 
 thinking, our intellectual and spiritual life, and to 
 contrive to give us variety of thought, variety of 
 
LESSONS FROM THE SUMMER. 135 
 
 moods and feelings. One thought eternally repeated 
 might keep a man's mind alive. One mood, one feel- 
 ing, prolonged, might keep the soul from annihilation. 
 But surely life with just one thought and just one 
 feeling prolonged through days and years and centuries 
 would be a dreary life. One of the divine contrivances 
 to give us variety of thought, a continual succession of 
 new thoughts, and frequent changes of our moods of 
 feeling, is in the influence God has given to the outer 
 world upon our minds and hearts. God created this 
 great Nature around us, filled it with His own presence 
 and power and wisdom, set it in busy motion and per- 
 petual change, and then brought our spirits into it to 
 be set thinking and studying by it, that our feelings 
 might be awakened, our sentiments touched, and our 
 souls instructed by the influence of the world upon us. 
 There are, therefore, vast and varied teachings in Nature 
 for us. The mind is and ought to be perpetually 
 gathering the golden grains of new thouglit and pure 
 feeling from the elements and objects of the earth 
 around us. 
 
 But we are made also for a much higher life than 
 this mere life in Nature, for other thoughts and higher 
 feelings than natural objects alone can give us. We 
 are immortal, and we belong to God. We have to 
 think of Him and our relations to Him, and of the 
 life to come, and of all the interests, wants, dangers, 
 and hopes that God and immortality add to our life. 
 But natural things are the symbols of spiritual truths. 
 The laws of Nature are tlie true symbols or illustra- 
 tions of higher spiritual laws ; and when the light 
 of revelation shines upon the world, lo! the world is 
 
136 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 full of God and His wisdom, full of divine symbols 
 of eternal things. So Christ looked upon the world. 
 The lily blooming in its peerless beauty, the withering 
 grass, tlie weathered rock, were in His sight the speak- 
 ing symbols of those higher truths which He used 
 them to illustrate. God uses the same letters with 
 which to spell both natural and spiritual things, and 
 invisible things of God are clearly seen in their sym- 
 bols and representatives in things that are made. So 
 there are spiritual truths and lessons to be gathered 
 with our harvests of fruits and grains. The summer is 
 ended, but its harvests will not be all gathered if we 
 do not gather its spiritual teachings into our hearts. 
 
 "The summer is ended," its work is doue. And it 
 has had so much to do ! The millions of mankind and 
 the innumerable myriads of the animal world have 
 liad to be fed daily, and provided for through the long 
 winter that is coming. So much has been daily con- 
 sumed, and so much has had to be at the same time 
 ripened and stored for the future ; so many myriads 
 of Nature's little ones have had to be tended like 
 children, warmed and waited on, their activity and 
 their rest secured and guarded, and their lives brought 
 forward to such strength as will enable them to pass 
 the ordeal of the winter. Who can estimate the sum- 
 mer's work ? How vast, how almost infinite ! The 
 changes wrought on the earth by the summer now 
 ended have touched everything, the mountains and 
 tlie valleys, the sea and the land. Every single plant 
 on earth, and every single creature, has been wrought 
 upon and changed in its conditions by the summer's 
 work. And with all that the summer has had to do, 
 
LESSONS FROM THE SUMMER. 137 
 
 it has done it without haste, without waste of energy, 
 without neglecting anything. The most beautiful fact 
 in Nature is Nature's rest and leisure in her work. 
 With all the tremendous energies at work in Nature, 
 what a scene of rest and peace is each summer's day ! 
 The sun moves over the heavens, counts all his leaves 
 and lambs each day, and yet we cannot see him move, 
 and he will never be hurried. The summer works in 
 the earth, quickening all its seeds, driving forward 
 the growth of everything around us ; but we lie down 
 amid all this mighty work, and it seems to us that 
 nothing is being done, because all is leisurely, and 
 there is no haste. The summer has had time to cul- 
 tivate and paint all the flowers, time to spend in mak- 
 ing the earth beautiful, time enough not only for one 
 purpose or two, but for every purpose. The summer 
 has not singled out any one branch of business and 
 given itself to that exclusively, but, living for all that 
 God has assigned to it, has done all its duties and 
 been hurried in none. In all its work this great quiet 
 and rest has lain like a Sabbath on the world. Be- 
 cause the earth has lain and lived and moved in God, 
 in communion with Him, in harmony with His will 
 and obedience to His laws, turning itself ever toward 
 Him, opening itself in all its depths to His presence 
 and power, — therefore has the earth done its work 
 without disturbance or haste, and the very spirit of 
 rest and leisure has been upon it. 
 
 " The sunmier is ended," its work is done ; and one 
 of its lessons teaches us the true spirit that we ought 
 to take into our business and work. Neither God 
 nor necessity requires of us the feverish haste, the 
 
138 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 exhausting hurry, which more and more is coming to be 
 the style of life and the characteristic of business. In 
 comparing life at present with what it was when many 
 of us were young, it is easy to see how much more 
 time and leisure there seemed to be in the lives and 
 business of men than there is now. One cannot con- 
 sider how in these days time presses upon life, without 
 a painful fear of the consequences to all the higher 
 interests of men. In all departments we see men 
 giving all things up to business, sacrificing everything 
 to one purpose, one pursuit. They have no time for 
 anything but their business, and are hurried in that. 
 The family life, the quiet domestic circle, which both 
 men and women need and in which they are needed, — 
 this, with all its happiness and usefulness to children, 
 is sacrificed to the hurry of business. In the world, 
 every public interest and enterprise is neglected, for 
 men feel that they have no time to attend to them. 
 In the Church the most solemn covenant vows and 
 obligations are broken and disregarded, because pro- 
 fessed Christian men are so carried away by the 
 spirit of hurry in business that they have no time. 
 Men have souls to be cultivated in knowledge and 
 grace, but they have no time. They have the cause 
 of religion to serve, but they have no time. Life is 
 swept away from all its true rests by the vehement 
 stream of eagerness for wealth. Men are borne in a 
 whirlwind of haste through the days and years, to be 
 arrested by tlie hand of death at last, and set before 
 the judgment-seat of Christ with so many of life's 
 duties undone, and their accounts with God so unpre- 
 pared. So insane has this spirit of haste, this eager- 
 
LESSONS FROM THE SUMMER. 139 
 
 ness in business, become, that it is of little use to 
 reason with it. If we should ask men, " Suppose you 
 sliould not do all this business, suppose you should 
 not be in such haste, suppose you should leave your 
 business sometimes, and attend to some other of your 
 interests and obligations ? " it is doubtful whether they 
 would understand us, or even wait to entertain the 
 question. 
 
 Out of this too eager, too hurried spirit of business 
 and money-making, sooner or later will come some 
 terrible curse on the world, and on the fortunes of 
 men who are carried away with it. Because the gov- 
 ernment of the world is a moral government, such sins 
 have brought, and will ever bring, the judgment of 
 God upon men. If the summer should turn all its 
 energies to raising one kind of grain, and neglect all 
 other things, this would be as unnatural as it is for us 
 to give all the energies and interests of our life to 
 business, neglecting the interests of our souls and the 
 claims of God. Let us not be swallowed up with one 
 thing; let us live slower, and take time for all the 
 legitimate purposes of life, for our social duties and 
 privileges, for our religious needs and duties. We 
 gain nothing by all our haste and care and excitement 
 in business, and we lose the real good of life. The 
 spirit of rest and leisure is necessary to the right dis- 
 charge of our duties. We have so great need to learn 
 Nature's secret of laboring without toiling, doing her 
 work without anxiety or fretting haste, the secret of 
 doing our work without exhausting ourselves in doing 
 it. The secret is betrayed by Nature's complete sub- 
 jection to and harmony with the will of God. The 
 
140 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 Christian spirit will do for us what that does for 
 Nature. In that spirit we shall " be anxious," in 
 haste, "for nothing," but shall quietly occupy tlie 
 present moment, and rest in our work. 
 
 We are constantly saying, as the excuse for neglect of 
 our duties, that we have no time. The summer says to 
 us. There is plenty of time for all your real duties, for 
 every proper purpose of life ; only do not waste it in 
 idleness, or abuse it by attempting in covetous haste to 
 overcrowd it with activity. 
 
 " The summer is ended," and its fruits and seeds in 
 uncounted myriads are ripened, and ready to begin a 
 new life of their own. How many seeds, each capable 
 of a new and separate life, the summer has perfected ! 
 And in regard to all these seeds we must observe this 
 fact, that each one blossomed in a flower before it 
 could be perfected in fruit. No seed has been ripened 
 in secret ; every one has been compelled to open, and 
 express itself in a flower. The power and life of God 
 has wrought unseen and silent to produce all the in- 
 numerable seeds and fruits that cover the earth ; but 
 yet in no case has any seed or fruit been produced 
 without opening its veiy heart to the light and air 
 and sun in a blossom. The flower of the plant is not 
 only interesting because it is beautiful in its perfect 
 grace and delicate colors, but also because the flower 
 is the birth, the quickening to life, of the seed. The 
 flower opens itself, but opens to receive the light by 
 which the life is quickened. An unopened flower 
 smothers and strangles its seeds to death. The won- 
 derful mystery of life in Nature is expressed in 
 flowers. The petals of the flower are the red lips of 
 
LESSONS FROM THE SUMMER. 141 
 
 tliat great. Life, and it opens them to express itself, 
 to speak its name and show its wondrous nature. 
 And so the summer teaches us that one great law of 
 life is self-expression. All life must come out into 
 expression, take on some form and show itself. 
 Whatever exists, or would come into existence, must 
 declare itself by appearing in some shape, opening 
 out as a flower. Whatever does not take on some 
 form, and express itself in some manner, does not 
 come into life, but fails to get into the world, and 
 sinks back to nothing. 
 
 Everywhere in Nature it is so. Rocks express them- 
 selves in mountain-lines and towering peaks. Stars 
 blossom in the night, and express themselves in lines 
 that go out into all the earth and unto the extremity 
 of the heavens. The winds express themselves in 
 sighs around our dwellings ; and the invisible elec- 
 tricity blossoms in the lightning and speaks out in 
 the thunder. The flower blossoms, the bird sings, and 
 to man God gave the mystery of speech and the 
 power of action, that through these he might express 
 himself, and so attain to ripeness and perfection for 
 the soul within him. The seed that never blossoms 
 never comes to life, but perishes ; and so the life, tlie 
 capacities, the principles in us that are not in some 
 form expressed in our life perish and are lost. 
 
 This lesson becomes interesting and important when 
 we reflect how much of life and thought and feeling 
 and purpose in the souls of men is suppressed, and 
 never carried forward into expression or into action. 
 God has given us action and speech as ways in 
 which to express the desires and aspirations of our 
 
142 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 souls, and in one or both of these ways it is possible 
 for us to give full expression to what is within us. 
 But suppression is death. 
 
 We may feel the stirrings of a new and better pur- 
 pose within us. Our souls begin to plan a better life, 
 holy thoughts awake within, the hold of evil habits 
 grows for the moment weak. Ah, how hopeful is the 
 state of the soul! it seems all ready to blossom out 
 into a new life. But, alas ! it does not act ; it hesi- 
 tates and falters when the moment for action comes ; 
 it suppresses the new and better impulse. So the 
 seed of a better life is destroyed, the soul remains 
 barren, its life has perished. How many desires to 
 reform come into the heart of persons under the 
 power of evil habits ! Such desires are the unripened 
 seeds of a better life, but those desires require to be 
 expressed in action ; and here the soul fails, refuses 
 to act, and the new desire perishes. There are so 
 many souls that often have these strong and earnest 
 wishes for a higher, better life ; and if wishes and 
 longings would save them, they would be saved. But 
 God requires that their wishes be expressed in action : 
 they must arise, and depart, and change their life ; 
 and this they are not willing to do. But to suppress 
 these desires is death. As surely as the refusal of a 
 flower to open will miu'der all the unripened seeds, so 
 surely will the refusal of a soul to obey its convic- 
 tions and better desires smother those convictions and 
 desires. 
 
 I have seen this summer in my wandering studies 
 a flower-bud, apparently all ready to open, tightly 
 bound and strongly held, so as to be unable to open, 
 
LESSONS FROM THE SUMMER. 143 
 
 by a parasitic vine which the plant itself had nour- 
 ished. The little parasite vine coiled like a serpent 
 around the flower-bud and choked it so that it could 
 not open to the sun ; therefore it could ripen no seed, 
 — its seeds all perished. Ah, how many souls permit 
 themselves to be bound and restrained from action in 
 obedience to their convictions by some parasite pas- 
 sion or indulgence ! With one it may be covetous- 
 ness, a greedy desire for property ; with another it 
 may be pleasure, the choking serpent of self-indul- 
 gence ; with another it may be fear, a moral cow- 
 ardice. Oh, my brother, what is the parasite that is 
 choking and suppressing your soul ? Cry to God ! 
 Cast it off! Let us fear infinitely more to smother 
 the life of our souls, than to expose ourselves before 
 men by obeying our conscience and the call of God. 
 
 In the higher religious life this law of self-expression 
 is equally true and important. The soul must open it- 
 self in some expression of its religious thoughts, desires, 
 and purposes, for here too suppression is death. If 
 the heart that God has graciously touched and wakened 
 remains closed, shut up within itself, it will smother 
 to death its religious feelings and life. And it is sad 
 to think of the many souls who do suppress and con- 
 ceal their religious thoughts and emotions. I sincerely 
 wish all young persons who hear me now, and especially 
 all young men, would take this affectionate counsel, — 
 that they will make some honest and thorough expres- 
 sion of their real religious condition. It is so great 
 an evil for young people to suppress their souls in this 
 respect. They often feel themselves misjudged and 
 misunderstood, and thus grow discouraged or reckless 
 
144 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 about the opening of their hearts. And they mis- 
 judge themselves as badly as they are misjudged by 
 others, and suppress all expression of their experience ; 
 and thus their higher desires, their spiritual discern- 
 ments, the beginnings of what miglit become true 
 Christian character, are smothered and destroyed. It 
 would be well if we would all frequently express our- 
 selves, even if it were only to ourselves, — if only by 
 record in some private journal of our real religious 
 condition. Many persons do not know what is in 
 their hearts ; they suppress their religious feelings even 
 from themselves. It would be better still if you 
 would go further, and open your heart to some one 
 who would be interested to sympathize with you. Is 
 there no friend, no praying father or mother, no pray- 
 ing Christian, no teacher or minister, to whom you 
 would be willing to disclose your real religious 
 thoughts ? Let it be to-day ! It may be that some 
 parent or friend has long been anxious for your con- 
 fidence. You may be taken away with a stroke, and 
 your soul never have been opened at all. Suppression 
 is death. Often you feel inclined to open your heart ; 
 it is a great evil when you resist the inclination and 
 smother your soul with suppression. It may be there 
 is the beginning of a new life stirring in the bottom of 
 your soul ; and if there is, it must come out, it must 
 blossom in some expression of itself, or perish like a 
 seed that never blossoms. 
 
 And let us take notice how almost all the flowers 
 open upward, looking toward the sun. So let us open 
 our souls to God in prayer, and His grace will shine 
 into our hearts like the sun of righteousness, with 
 
LESSONS FROM THE SUMMER. 145 
 
 quickening and life-giving power. It is not enough 
 that a plant should have every principle and capacity 
 that is necessary in order to ripen its seeds ; having 
 all these, if it does not blossom to the sun it will 
 perish, and all its seeds with it. It is not enough 
 that a man or woman should have religious desires 
 and feelings and purposes; those desires must come 
 forth into expression, confession, prayer, or they will 
 remain fruitless and perish. We must speak, we must 
 pray. " He that asketh receiveth." " Whosoever shall 
 confess me before men, him will I confess before my 
 Father." 
 
 " The summer is ended ; " yes, its long bright days 
 spread upon the hills are past, its myriad flowers and 
 singing birds are gone, its fields are stripped, its forests 
 bare. Summer is so beautiful, winter so cold ! What 
 makes the difference ? Why is the earth so alive, so 
 beautiful in summer, so dead and cold in winter ? 
 There is but one great cause, and that is that in 
 summer the earth turns its face directly to the sun, 
 looks straight up to him, and is filled with his warmth 
 and power ; while in winter the earth averts its face 
 from the sun, and losing the light of his countenance is 
 cold and dead. The summer is ended, but has left us 
 this lesson : if we want summer in the soul, we must 
 turn our souls full face to God, we must let our souls 
 look up to Him all the day long. And if it is winter 
 in the spirit, — barren, cold, and dark, — it is because we 
 are turned away from Him. For, " When I am happy 
 in Him, December's as pleasant as May." God is 
 a sun ; and oli, how our souls need sunshine and 
 light and power ! How dark the world without the 
 
 10 
 
146 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 sun, and the soul without God ! Let us turn unto 
 Him, and He will have mercy upon us, and we shall 
 not perish. 
 
 " The summer is ended," and its harvests are now 
 the dependence and provision of mankind for the long 
 months to come, in which the earth will yield us noth- 
 ing. So has God willed it that one season should af- 
 ford the supplies for another, and that men should lay 
 up in store for times to come. We have had in summer 
 our opportunities, a time when we could, if we would, 
 provide for ourselves, a time to labor in hope. Now all 
 our opportunities are gone ; we can plant and sow no 
 more. The fruit of our labor is what we have, and we 
 have no more. The earth must live for months to come 
 on the fruit of its labor in months past, and there is 
 not a particle of food for men beyond what men have 
 labored to produce. The summer is ended ; a season 
 of opportunity, a day of probation, is past. And life 
 is such a summer, and closes with such a harvest, 
 and is followed by even such a long season in which 
 we eat of the fruit of our doings, — a season where- 
 in we have for our comfort or affliction what we 
 have provided for ourselves by our behavior in this 
 world. Life is our summer. All our opportunities 
 for the whole duration of it are given to us here. 
 What a man can do for himself he must do now. 
 If he sows to the Spirit to reap life everlasting, he 
 must sow in the seed-time, and before the Spirit is 
 grieved away. When life is past, and he goes forward 
 into the life beyond and stands before the snow-white 
 throne of God, his portion there shall be tlie harvest of 
 his deeds here. And the seed-time is always so short. 
 
LESSONS FROM THE SUMMER. 147 
 
 So many of us there are whose summers are ended, 
 and we are only lingering through the autumn days 
 till the shroud shall fall upon us with the winter's 
 cold. Our opportunities are passing, — are they not 
 all past ? Is it not already too late ? No, no : to-day 
 if ye will hear His voice, harden not your heart. He 
 will hear yours if you cry to Him. But sure as time 
 passes, time will be past, and it will be too late. I 
 beseech you all, seek Him to-day. Let the dying sum- 
 mer, the wailing winds, the fallen leaves, the clouded 
 skies, admonish you that your summer is passing and 
 your life near its end. The great eternity is close 
 before us. The gates are open, and our feet are inevi- 
 tably tending to them. Oh, blessed soul, that when the 
 summer is ended goes home to the mansions of God, 
 filled and furnished for all eternity with the riches of 
 His infinite grace. Oh, poor lost soul, that when life 
 is past cries out of its anguish, " The harvest is past, 
 the summer is ended, but I am not saved !" 
 
 " The summer is ended," and how many things 
 ended with it ! How many belated fiowers just ready 
 to open are cut off and dead ; how many unripe seeds 
 destroyed; how many beginnings, young plants just 
 starting in life, blighted forever I All that is not 
 perennial in plants, all that is not thoroughly ripened 
 in seeds, is perished now ; nothing that is not ripe, or 
 else in its nature perennial, can meet the test of cold 
 and death. And so death comes like winter, harmless 
 to the soul ripe by the grace of God, harmless to him 
 who is secure in his hold upon eternal life, but cutting 
 off without hope all that have delayed too long. The 
 poor belated flower might say as the cold approaches, 
 
148 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 " Oh, give me but a few days more and I will open, and 
 perfect my seeds ; I am almost ready now." But win- 
 ter and cold wait for no belated flower, and death and 
 despair wait for no belated soul. Like the summer, 
 life ends when the time comes, not when men are 
 ready for it. If life should end now with us, how 
 many unfinished, unpractised purposes would it de- 
 stroy ! We have delayed and postponed from year to 
 year, but the summer will end. What have you laid 
 up in store ? What will become of you when summer 
 is past ? Well, at least, God is willing if you are not ; 
 He would save you if you would be saved, and He will 
 save us now if we will come to Him. 
 
 " The summer is ended." Well, so be it. Blessed 
 be God ! heaven and home are nearer to the Christian 
 tiian when the summer opened. When the new season 
 comes, it will find him planted as a tree of life in the 
 garden of God, the dew all night on his branches, and 
 the sunshine of heaven all day upon his fadeless leaves. 
 There "he bringeth forth his fruit in his season, and 
 whatsoever he doeth shall prosper." 
 
THE LESSON OF THE LEAVES. 149 
 
 THE LESSON OF THE LEAVES. 
 We all do fade as a leaf. — Isaiah Ixiv. 6. 
 
 THIS comparison seems to have been suggested to 
 the mind of the prophet by his deep conviction 
 and experience of the frailty of man's life, as it arises 
 from the want of that holiness which is the only ele- 
 ment of security and permanence to mankind. Because 
 man is morally unsound, therefore he is physically frail 
 and mortal, and " fades as a leaf." " But we are all 
 as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as 
 filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our 
 iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away." 
 
 The consciousness of our mortality and weakness is 
 always sad, because we cannot exclude from it the 
 attending consciousness of sin as its cause and its 
 worst evil. The interests of our life are so many and 
 so great, it is apparently so important to ourselves and 
 to others that we should be secure in our lives, we 
 have purposes so great to accomplish, and so much to 
 attain, that it seems something strange and sad that a 
 life freighted with important interests should be so 
 frail, so like a leaf. Yet it is so : everywhere the 
 leaves are falling, and they are falling on new-made 
 graves. The sobbing of the autumn winds, the tone 
 of wailing with which they gather the clouds and heap 
 
150 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 the falling leaves, does but express in outward form tbe 
 spirit of life in the world of the affections. We cannot 
 help sympathizing with Nature as subject to the same 
 vanity, mutability, and decay as that under which we 
 groan. The same great law of change spreads itself 
 over us as over it. The same God made man and the 
 tree, and ordained the conditions of life for both. The 
 two are brought into association, not only because they 
 originated from the same God, but because they are in 
 some respects subject to the same law. "We all do 
 fade as a leaf." 
 
 A tree is a living being ; it is one of God's creatures. 
 It is endowed with life, though that life be low in grade, 
 with properties few and simple. It is a real life, as 
 truly as that of an animal or a man. And as it is a 
 law of being to all forms of life, that they shall reach 
 their perfection by converting the elements of the 
 world into their own substance, so for the tree there is 
 a growth whicli is a living growth, a growth that is 
 gained by converting the elements of earth and air 
 into its own substance, and is marked by distinct and 
 different periods ; and it pleased God that the different 
 periods in the life of a tree should be marked by dif- 
 ferent generations of leaves. One set of leaves endures 
 only through one period or season of the growth, and 
 yet the leaf is to the tree the very organ of life and 
 growth. It is by the leaf that the tree is enabled to 
 gather from the elements the food of its life and 
 growth, and yet the leaves fade and perish at the close 
 of each season. The reason why one generation of 
 leaves does not serve the tree through its whole life, 
 or why a new set of leaves every season is produced, 
 
THE LESSON OF THE LEAVES. 151 
 
 lies unspoken in the mind of God. So it seemed best 
 to Him. 
 
 The luiman race is a tree of life, rooting itself far 
 back in the life of God. The nations of the earth are 
 the grand divisions of its trunk, and families are its 
 branches. The different periods of its existence and 
 growth are marked by the different generations of 
 individuals. We are all leaves of this tree of life, and 
 " we all do fade as a leaf." The race remains like the 
 tree, the generations die like the leaves. Some fade in 
 the blight of the pestilence that wasteth at noonday, 
 thousands are torn and whirled away by the storms of 
 war, some wither beneath the frosts of time, but all 
 fade at the touch of death. The earth is one mighty 
 sepulchre. The city and the cemetery, the village and 
 the graveyard, grow populous together. 
 
 Frail and tremulous as a leaf, amid the uncertainties 
 of our life, we are but creatures of a day, destroyed by 
 a breath. " We all do fade as a leaf" How vain the 
 busy projects of mankind, the climbing ambitions of 
 the great, the world-building of the wise, appear under 
 the dread shadow of death, beneath which, in their 
 turn, the generations have faded as a leaf ! A frail and 
 tremulous leaf of humanity myself, and you as frail, as 
 surely marked for falling, we have come through falling 
 leaves and the fading year, to hear the voice of inspira- 
 tion declare, " We all do fade as a leaf." For just one 
 moment let the sense of your utter insecurity have 
 place in your heart. Feel how you already tremble to 
 fall. See the subtle presence of death all around you. 
 You are fading, you are dying. Tlie pleasant places in 
 your houses where you move will soon be vacant. The 
 
152 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 home will remain, but you not there forevermore. A 
 little longer, and not a leaf will hang on all the pleasant 
 trees; and just a little longer and we shall all be in 
 the ground. Let us catch this view of life ; it is truth- 
 ful, it is necessary. It will correct the presumption 
 into which we are ever falling. It will add sobriety 
 to all our anticipations in this world, and tenderness 
 to all our affections. It will draw us to God, with a 
 better sense of what He is to us, and of the infinite 
 value of His loving care. 
 
 Leaves do not fade because of the various special 
 reasons that might be given, but because it is the 
 nature and law of their being to fade. It is their true 
 destiny to give place to other generations, to fall, and 
 render back their substance to the soil for the enriching 
 of the tree. This is the design of God for them. The 
 leaf, having served the tree in its life, serves it with all 
 it has to bestow in its death. Its substance, through 
 decay, may enter into the circulation of the tree, and 
 reappear in the new leaf that occupies in the next 
 season its old place ; and this fact reveals the real 
 purpose and value of its existence. It exists, and has 
 a value that entitles it to existence, because it serves 
 the growth and welfare of the tree. It lives to be 
 useful. It lives not for itself, it finds its own greatest 
 perfection in its greatest usefulness. It was created to 
 be useful, and must find its own best good in being so. 
 
 This also is the law of human life. We are leaves 
 of the great tree of humanity. God has given us our 
 individual existence that we may add something to the 
 welfare and progress of the human race ; and our only 
 real right to life is derived from the fact that we are of 
 
THE LESSON OF THE LEAVES. 153 
 
 some use, tliat our life really does add sometliing to the 
 welfare of the world. Only by a life really devoted 
 to the good of the world can our personal welfare be 
 attained. A leaf that does not serve the tree, as leaves 
 were made to do, the tree will not nourish, the rains 
 will not refresh, the sun will wither and destroy. If 
 it still hangs on the tree, it hangs there a blot on its 
 beauty, and fitly represents the selfish soul. And yet 
 the plan of life adopted by thousands is formed on the 
 selfish principle. Men set before them their personal 
 welfare and happiness as their end in life. What 
 serves them they value for that reason, and what does 
 not serve them they do not regard. They do not con- 
 sider how they may live to serve the good of the world, 
 but rather how they may get the most of the world's 
 good for themselves. This is nothing less than an 
 attempt to subvert the whole law of human happiness, 
 and force natural laws to work in opposition to the will 
 of God. They will not do it. The selfish man must 
 fail. The selfish plan is false, and can result only in 
 misery, guilt, and ruin. If you have now come where 
 you must form your plan for life, your method of 
 spending your days upon the earth, you should be 
 reminded of this. God has made your real welfare 
 and value dependent upon that spirit and life by which 
 you will be most useful to others. Every employment 
 and profession is necessarily a serving of others. Mer- 
 chandise, Medicine, Law and Mechanics, Agriculture 
 and TJuling, — all are founded on the principle of serv- 
 ing others, and have for their true spirit the spirit of 
 benevolence, not of selfishness. As the leaf feeds itself 
 most perfectly when it fulfils its greatest obligation in 
 
154 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 feeding the tree, so we must find our best good in being 
 useful to otliers. Every leaf of every tree proclaims a 
 principle that condemns a life of selfishness. The great 
 secret of a happy life lies in finding that life in which 
 we are sources of pure influence to all around us ; and 
 who doubts that the faithful Christian life is in every 
 way the best ? Governed by Christian principle and 
 moved by a Christlike spirit, life becomes beautiful, 
 useful, happy. 
 
 The leaf dies an honorable death. It has served a 
 great and good purpose in its life, and its monument is 
 the strong and majestic tree, whose branches spread 
 themselves over its grave like priestly hands extended 
 in benediction. It has left beliind an increase of vital- 
 ity and strength to the tree. It is humiliating that we 
 are compared to the leaf for our frailty and mortality, 
 but it is more humiliating that we cannot be compared 
 to the leaf for usefulness of life; that while it has 
 served well and truly the purpose of its life, we have 
 missed ours, and die leaving behind us no addition to 
 the happiness and good of the world. The color of 
 death in the leaf is the color of sunset, all red and 
 golden, and it is hard to tell whether the tree is more 
 beautiful in the greenness of its life or in the gold and 
 purple of its dying leaves. How different with some 
 of us ! A selfish, sinful life leads to a death uncolored 
 with pleasant memories and glorified hopes. Only the 
 Christian fades as the leaf, leaving good behind to all 
 with whom he has lived, and dying naturally, gently, 
 happily, in the glorious light of hope. 
 
 Wliat will the lives that we are living leave behind 
 them to the world ? When they are past, what will be 
 
THE LESSON OF THE LEAVES. 155 
 
 tlieir value ? We must judge them from this point of 
 view, for thus will tliey be judged by the God into 
 whose presence we fade away from the world. Would 
 to God we did fade away as a leaf fades after it has 
 accomplislied the end of its life, and faithfully served 
 the purpose of God in giving it existence ! It is so 
 sad to see the many worthless lives of men, — worthless 
 because they lack that union with God which gives 
 them value, to the person or to the world. And I 
 must tell you that your life is worthless, and will be 
 a failure, if you are living without God in the world. 
 When it is past and gone, and you fall from the race 
 in death, in your fading there will be no hope ; your 
 iniquities, like the wind, shall drive you away. 
 
 Thus like leaves the generations of men live and 
 grow for a season, and like leaves they fall before the 
 power of death. From the falling leaf we must learn 
 the lesson of our weakness and insecurity, and see 
 wherein the honor and happiness of our short life 
 consist. The true and living stock and substance in 
 the race of men, that real true life to which the ages 
 and the generations add a growth as they pass away, 
 is the kingdom of God, tlie church of Jesus Christ. 
 The race puts forth its generations like leaves ; and as 
 the leaves are the organs through which an added size 
 and strength are given to the tree, so from tlie passing 
 generations of men there is gatliered an increased 
 growtli and power to the kingdom of the Eedeenier; 
 and while " we all do fade as a leaf," the generations 
 of men have contributed to the growth of that divine 
 race, the family of God in the world. This thought is 
 expressed by the prophet Isaiah when, in threatening 
 
156 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 the judgment of God upon the people, which should 
 leave the laud utterly desolate, the cities • without in- 
 habitant, the houses without a man, he says, "But yet 
 in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be 
 eaten : as a teil-tree, and as an oak whose substance is 
 in them, when they cast their leaves." So holy seed 
 shall be the substance of the human race. They are 
 that part of it which remains living when the genera- 
 tions fall and decay like leaves from an oak. For the 
 sake of this substance, this holy seed, the seasons of 
 tlie world's history have been appointed. For the sake 
 of this holy seed the generations have lived and died. 
 Whole generations of leaves have existed to add one 
 new ring to the trunk of this tree; whole generations 
 of men have existed to add one new circle to the family 
 of God. 
 
 For the growth and development of the tree the 
 seasons have been made what they are. Indeed, the 
 whole meaning of the season is this, — it is God's con- 
 trivance to get living, growing, fruitful trees. And the 
 whole meaning of all the seasons of time and history is 
 this, — it is a plan of God to get a holy seed, a tree of 
 life, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people. 
 When the seasons are all past, when the generations 
 have all lived and died, and the true substance of the 
 liuman race remains, as the substance of the oak when 
 it casts its leaves, then will there be on the banks of 
 the river of the water of life, in the new heavens and 
 the new earth, a tree of life, whose leaf shall not wither, 
 and whose fruit shall be yielded every month. As to 
 our physical life, we belong to the old race, the Adamic 
 tree, and " we all do fade as a leaf ; " and the question 
 
THE LESSON OF THE LEAVES. 157 
 
 is, whether as to our spiritual life we belong to the new 
 race, the Christian tree, the vine of Christ. This is a 
 living tree, a true tree of life, whose roots strike firm 
 and deep into the being of God, and wliose leaves and 
 branches wax and grow in the atmosphere of His pres- 
 ence. And when the generation to which we belong 
 shall pass away, oh, shall we be of that part of it 
 who fade as a leaf, and whose iniquities as a wind shall 
 drive them away, or of that part which has been added 
 to Christ and to the holy seed that shall remain, as the 
 substance of a tree when it casts its leaves ? 
 
 There is another analogy between the leaf and human 
 life. Souls of men are trees of life. The crowth of a 
 soul is a work of time. Like the tree, it reaches its 
 maturity slowly, and by passing through distinct sea- 
 sons or periods ; and the seasons of the soul, as of tlie 
 tree, have their own several sets of leaves. In childhood 
 the soul puts forth its childish trust and questions. All 
 the manifestations of the soul in childhood, in thinkiue:, 
 in affection, and in action, are the young and tender 
 leaves of the soul. We watch them unfolding, with 
 ever fresh surprise. It is the constantly repeated mira- 
 cle of life, — these first leaves of the soul are so pure, 
 so beautiful, the activities of childhood are so natural 
 and unrestrained, so truthful and happy. But these 
 first manifestations of the soul's life and character " do 
 all fade as a leaf," and in their season, beyond which 
 they cannot pass, the soul drops them, to take on tlie 
 different thoughts and feelings and activities of its 
 next period. " When I was a child," says the Apostle, 
 " I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought 
 as a child: but when I became a man, I put away 
 
158 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 cliildish things." The interests and feelings of child- 
 hood do all fade from the soul, as leaves fade from the 
 tree ; but as the leaf while it lived added to the growth 
 and strength of the tree, so do these leaves of the soul, 
 put forth in childhood, bring the soul forward, develop 
 its powers, increase its vitality and substance, and 
 make it capable of more important life and action. In 
 youth, the soul puts forth other thoughts, affections, 
 and activities. It clothes itself in ardent sympathies 
 and enthusiastic hopes, as the young tree clothes itself 
 in luxuriant leaves. New principles of human nature 
 start into life and growth. In place of childlike 
 trust and submission there spring up the instincts 
 of sovereignty and liberty. In place of the quiet 
 affections of childhood, the soul puts forth its passion- 
 ate and selfish desires. Dreams crowd the brain, and 
 longings fill the heart. But these manifestations of the 
 soul, like those that went before them, do all fade as 
 a leaf Childhood and youth are vanity, in the same 
 sense that leaves are vanity, — they are perishable and 
 temporary. The ardor and enthusiasm, the dreams, the 
 passions and the hopes of youth fade as a leaf The 
 soul casts them as the tree casts its leaves. The de- 
 licious awakening of the soul's youth is followed by 
 the intense midsummer of our zeal and striving, and 
 this by the sober autumn of experience, in which our 
 overwrought hopes and passions fade and fall. But the 
 luxuriant leaves of youth have brought the soul for- 
 ward toward its earthly maturity, they have hardened 
 its substance and strengthened its powers, they liave 
 served its need of education and discipline. These 
 leaves of the soul have extracted from the elements of 
 
THE LESSON OF THE LEAVES. 159 
 
 life around it such good or evil as the soul was fitted 
 to take in ; and these in their season must give 
 place to the different ideas and sentiments and inter- 
 ests of maturer life. And how different they are, — 
 the passions of manhood ! how much more command- 
 ing and intense, although less boisterous ! Ambitions, 
 tastes, preferences, objects of labor and hope, all are 
 different, — if not in themselves, still they are different 
 to the soul. Behold what the soul puts forth in matu- 
 rity ! Its interests, affections, hopes, how abiding they 
 appear ! It seems now as though the soul, having 
 come beyond the delusive dreams of youth, had entered 
 upon its last and enduring stage ; but it is not so. 
 "When old age comes, the interests and excitements do 
 all fade as a leaf The world wears out ; its possessions 
 lose their value, its enterprises their attraction, and 
 from the weary and exhausted soul the interests of life 
 fade and fall like autumn leaves, leaving the soul no 
 power to put forth other hopes and interests to take 
 their place. But while the leaves fade, tlie tree grows : 
 and so all the while, through all the earthly life, the 
 various interests fade and are being left behind us, but 
 the soul, the character, is growing. Its substance re- 
 mains when it casts its leaves, and the aged man stands 
 at last alive, though leafless. His aff'ections have faded 
 because their objects are either dead or changed ; and 
 his hopes are in the past, because they have been 
 harvested, or else have failed. Alone and leafless he 
 stands, yet alive and strong, waiting for the coming of 
 the next world as a new season in which he shall again 
 put forth such interests and experiences as his condition 
 in that world shall favor and develop. Thus the soul 
 
160 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 is a tree of life, growing by means of different sets 
 of interests, which alternate in the varying seasons of 
 its life, and all fade in succession like the leaves of 
 the changing years ; while through all these changes it 
 gathers that permanent character with which it will 
 enter the new season which death, like winter, separates 
 from this. 
 
 The leaf, while it lived, has gathered from the ele- 
 ments that which now makes the substance of the tree ; 
 and we, by the affections we have cherished, by the in- 
 fluences we have allowed to affect us, by the ideas we 
 have gathered, by the quality of our deeds, have formed 
 the character which these have nourished. The tree 
 makes itself, by the use of the elements in which it 
 lives. We have made ourselves what we are, by what 
 we have accepted, and taken into our hearts and lives 
 and manners. And, oh, what are we ? What have 
 we taken to ourselves from all the elements of good 
 and evil in which we live ? We must take our lesson 
 in answer to this question from the leaf. For in every 
 case the leaf has gathered from the natural elements 
 only that which was suited to the character of the tree. 
 The leaf of the sweet maple has grown in the same 
 breeze with the poisonous ivy-vine, and the maple-leaf 
 has gathered only the elements of a maple character, 
 while from the same sources the ivy has gathered only 
 poison. Character is stronger than all outward influ- 
 ences, for it turns their action to the strengthening 
 of itself. By all the affections and sentiments and 
 purposes that we have put forth, we have gathered 
 either good or evil from all amid which we have 
 lived. 
 
THE LESSON OF THE LEAVES. IGl 
 
 The soul destitute of love aud faith toward God, 
 living unto itself and for the world alone, from all 
 that might have made it holy and happy witli God 
 lias gathered only evil. The manifestations of God 
 in the world, the evidences of His presence and 
 powder, have been around us all alike ; but from these 
 things the soul devoid of piety has gathered only the 
 bitter condemnation that " when they knew God they 
 glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but 
 became vain in their imaginations, and worshipped 
 and served the creature more than the Creator." We 
 have all lived beneath the sure word of prophecy ; 
 the Sun of liighteousness has shone upon us ; but 
 from all the truths of God which are revealed and 
 have been taught us, the unbelievijig soul has gath- 
 ered no good, but only greater hardness of heart and 
 blindness of mind, "We have been often warned ; our 
 own souls have often risen up in denunciation of our 
 lives ; conscience has threatened us, and the Gospel 
 has invited us to God ; and from neglect and resist- 
 ance toward these influences how many have gathered 
 only a hardening of lieart and an increase of guilt ! As 
 from the sunshine and rain the oak gathers by its leaves 
 only greater bitterness because its heart is bitter, so 
 while Sabbaths and their sacred hours of worship and 
 instruction have passed regularly, like sun-days upon 
 our lives, even as they are called, the heedless soul 
 has taken to itself from all their warmth and bright- 
 ness only a new growth of heedlessness and world- 
 liness. Oh, it is the evil of being irreligious and 
 disobedient toward God, that such a state of heart 
 converts all the influences of the universe into evil for 
 
 11 
 
162 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 US, — as it is the evil of a poisonous tree that by all 
 its leaves it gathers only poison from all Nature. Are 
 not our souls becoming more and more sinful ? Is it 
 not greater guilt, insensibility, and danger that the 
 days and weeks are adding to us ? Are we not grow- 
 ing more fixed in our errors, more immovable in our 
 impiety, and more established in our character as ne- 
 glecters of Christ ? What shall the end of these 
 things be ? What are we likely to become at last, 
 living as we are living ? So long as our hearts are 
 not reconciled to God, and not in communion with 
 Him, so long, by all we do or say or feel or think, we 
 are becoming more alienated and sinful. We put 
 forth our plans and hopes, our feelings and ambitions, 
 like leaves, only to gather from life the bitterness of 
 evil, the poison of sin. 
 
 It is far otherwise with the soul whose great prin- 
 ciple is faith in God. Such a soul is like a good tree, 
 which by all its leaves gathers from all things only 
 good. The leaf of the sweet maple is hung out amid 
 sunshine and storm, rain and drought, heat and cold, 
 the exhalations of the earth and the influences of the 
 stars, and from all these things gathers only good, only 
 that which adds to its richness and its sweetness. The 
 soul that loves God supremely may have to spread its 
 leaves in the air of an unfriendly condition, its hopes 
 may be twisted by the tempest, its affections blasted by 
 affliction or drowned in the storm of grief; yet that 
 pure principle of faith and love to God will convert all 
 these into food for its own virtue and sanctification. To 
 the pious soul there is no evil, for " all things work to- 
 gether for good to them that love God." Sorrow, suf- 
 
THE LESSON OF THE LEAVES. 1G3 
 
 fering, sin, temptation, poverty, riches, sickness, death, 
 life, evil, — all these give their own addition to the 
 soul's strength and fitness for heaven. 
 
 But "we all do fade as a leaf." The time comes 
 when all earthly interests fade away. The winter of 
 death passes over us, and then conies the long, long 
 season of eternity, into which we pass with the 
 characters to which we have grown in this world. 
 What kind of leaves will the soul put forth in that 
 new season ? There God himself is the sun. His 
 presence is the air. What kind of feelings will the 
 presence of God bring forward in your soul and 
 mine? What good or evil will our souls draw from 
 tlie unveiling of His face ? What can the soul of 
 the impenitent man feel but shame for its depravity 
 and despair for its ruin ? Then will the fears and 
 sensibilities, like the leaves of the poisonous tree, 
 gather only greater sorrow and shame to the soul. 
 A tree carries its own character through the winter, 
 and puts forth the same kind of leaves in the new 
 season as before ; and the soul carries its character 
 through the winter of death, and puts forth the same 
 sentiments of opposition to good and holiness as in 
 the earthly season ; and from all the elements of that 
 world, as from all the elements of this, it attracts to 
 its own life only the evil, the bitter, the poison. But 
 the Christian, when that new season comes, and the 
 leaves of his earthly life are left in the grave, will 
 put forth new leaves, in holy affections of love to 
 God and dehght in Him, through which he will 
 draw to himself and convert into his own substance 
 all the light and life, the holiness and bliss, of 
 
164 GOD IN NATURE AKD LIFE. 
 
 heaven. A tree planted by the rivers of the water 
 of life, its leaf shall not wither, its life shall not 
 fail. The dew all night upon its branches, the sun- 
 shine all day upon its leaves, it shall flourish in the 
 courts of our God. 
 
 Oh, it is so infinite a good to be holy, to have a 
 new and holy life in our souls! This is the power 
 that converts all things into good for us, and makes 
 all our thoughts and feelings like the leaves of the 
 good tree, — organs for attracting good from evil. 
 Life from death, and endless bliss from immortality. 
 "Awake! Arise from the dead, and Christ shall 
 give thee life 1 " Come this day to Him in prayer 
 and submission ; be joined to Him and to His people, 
 and your life shall be hid in Him, and safe in His. 
 Remembering our frailty, and how soon we may fade 
 as a leaf, let us make the greater haste to seek 
 Him while He may be found. 
 
THE DAY. 165 
 
 THE DAY. 
 
 Thou makest the outgoings of the Tnorning and evening to 
 rejoice. — Psalm Ixv. 8. 
 
 GOD has given indeed a peculiar beauty and 
 brightness to the lights of evening and morning. 
 We never feel so deeply as at these times the beauty 
 of the world which He has made our home. The soft- 
 ened lights, the longer shadows, heighten all the colors 
 of Nature, make all distances vaster, and all outlines 
 less sharp and distinct, and so beget a sense of freedom 
 in which we feel true pleasure. We are not crowded, 
 
 — the limits of life extend themselves, and we are 
 more free. The outgoings of the morning — the light, 
 the beauty, the brightness, the opening flowers, the 
 freshness of the dew, the songs of birds, the motions 
 of the leaves, the colors of the clouds and of the earth 
 
 — do indeed seem to be tokens of a joy in Nature it- 
 self. It is not merely light and brightness ; it affects us 
 as the brightness of a real joy, as if Nature itself were 
 conscious of happiness which it thus expressed. It is 
 not men alone that rejoice ; the outgoings of the morn- 
 ing and evening seem themselves to be full of gladness, 
 and our joy is but our share in the general rejoicing. 
 And it is the daily life and care of God in the world 
 that makes the joy. He is the sun whose beams of 
 
166 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 blessing enlighten and warm our hearts. His great, 
 infinite presence behind and below all created life 
 comes up into it and mingles, unseen and often un- 
 recognized, with the life of Nature and the experience 
 of our souls. If God were gone out of the world, no 
 morning would go out rejoicing, no evening come down 
 with its sacred mantle of peace and promise on the 
 earth. All life would depart out of plant and beast 
 and bird and man. The only sounds the earth would 
 hear would be the sounds of dissolution and decay, 
 " the mountain falling and coming to nought, the rock 
 removing from its place, and the things which grow out 
 of the dust of the earth " falling with the mournful 
 crash of death to dust again. Just behind what we 
 see in Nature, just behind the morning and evening 
 lights, just behind the beauty and growth and decay 
 of the earth, just behind our thinking and our feeling, 
 and close to it all, there is God ; there He lives im- 
 parting His life and love and power, to keep the world 
 alive and active, and full of light and good. He is 
 the ocean out of which all waters that fall upon the 
 land and rise in springs and flow in streams proceed, 
 and to Him also they return, the ocean of life out of 
 which we and every living creature have come forth, 
 and to which by the process of living we are returning. 
 Oh, it is in Him that the worlds float, in Him that we 
 live and move in being. The joy of the morning and 
 of the evening is the joy of the Lord, the overflow in 
 beauty and color and music and human happiness of 
 His great loving delight in His works. 
 
 We cannot forget, indeed, how many there are who 
 take no share in morning or evening happiness, whose 
 
THE DAY. 167 
 
 mornings wake no sense of joy in their hearts, and 
 whose evenings close like new walls of darkness that 
 bring no rest, because their hearts are filled with 
 gloom and discontent. But to the child of God, faitli- 
 ful to his duties, believing in God's love, hoping for 
 heaven, tlie outgoings of the morning and evening 
 rejoice, — of tlie morning, because it opens with new 
 tokens of his Father's love; of the evening, if for no 
 other reason, because " a day's march nearer home " 
 is done, and heaven is, by so much, less far away. 
 The happiness of life is the happiness of its separate 
 days. To make a happy and perfect life, we must 
 make happy, perfect days. We doubtless make a 
 great mistake in caring so much for other days, past 
 or future, and so little for this day, the day in which 
 we are living. We too often pray and care for our 
 whole life, earnestly intending and desiring that as a 
 whole it may be good and true, but overlook each 
 single day, as if our whole life had to be lived at once, 
 and not by days. It should be our study and our care 
 to make each separate day a perfect day; we should 
 give our hearts not to the past or to the days to come, 
 but to this day. Everything in the universe is in this 
 day ; here and now, in this day, is our chance to live 
 and be blest. And I have selected the text, because 
 it presents us with the picture of just one blessed, 
 happy day, whose morning and evening both rejoice. 
 
 The wisdom and virtue necessary to live such a 
 happy, blessed day is all that is required for the living 
 of a wliole life. He who can live one perfect day can 
 live all days so. For in one sense the whole of life 
 is in each day. All the relations of life surround us. 
 
168 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 We are related to God, to eternity, to our duty, our 
 dangers, oar temptations and trials, the same in each 
 day that we are through the whole of life. The new 
 days bring us only new outward circumstances ; they 
 do not change the great moral relations or duties. All 
 that life demands of us is demanded every day. If 
 we would make life more profitable, we must bestow 
 more care and earnestness upon the separate days, 
 resolved to make more of each. We must begin each 
 day more as if we were beginning a new and better 
 life, and finish each day more as if our whole life 
 were in it. 
 
 There was doubtless a profound and important 
 reason in the mind of God for that decree which ap- 
 pointed that life should be divided continually by the 
 nights which interrupt our living and lay us down in 
 the semblance of death. There is no other division of 
 time so strongly marked as day and night, no two 
 seasons so entirely different from each other. One 
 summer does indeed seem to be separated from another 
 by an intervening season as unlike as that which sepa- 
 rates one day from another ; but this is so only in a 
 part of the world. In the tropics, the most populous 
 portion of the earth, one summer is separated from 
 another by hardly any difference ; the growth and 
 fruit-bearing of vegetation is not arrested at all, — there 
 is no winter. But all over the world day and night 
 are everywhere established, and day is completely 
 separated from day. And this power of night to make 
 each day separate and distinct is not for us alone ; the 
 plants of the vegetable world find life and growth 
 interrupted by night, as we do. Many of the pro- 
 
THE DAY. 169 
 
 cesses of growtli are entirely stopped when the day- 
 closes. The withdrawal of the light arrests the chemi- 
 cal changes in leaf and flower which are dependent 
 upon light, and though there is in one sense a growth 
 in the night, it is not a perfect growth, and many 
 plants do not grow at all. The flowers close their 
 petals, and many species fold their leaves, at evening, 
 as if they clasped their hands in evening prayer. The 
 morning comes to them all as a new beginning of life ; 
 they spring forth with a new vigor, and all the opera- 
 tions of Nature take new force. Animals also find 
 their days separated by the intervening nights : each 
 morning is like being born again, each evening like a 
 giving-up of life, and each new day is like a separate 
 life to them. 
 
 In our own life each day is separated from its 
 neighbor by what we leave behind us, and by what 
 we receive that is new. So many of our moods of 
 feeling are washed away from our souls in sleep, and 
 we wake in the morning in a new life, so far as our 
 feelings are concerned I How many thoughts die with 
 the closing day ! How many opinions and purposes get 
 lost out of our spirits in sleep ! To our souls, how new 
 is each day that dawns upon us ; and how blessed is 
 the night and sleep that takes oft' from us burdens of 
 thinking and feeling which, borne too long, would 
 absorb us wholly! Many circumstances, indeed, are 
 the same in each succeeding day, but we ourselves 
 are never quite the same in our inward life and 
 spirit. Yet there is also very considerable change 
 in the circumstances of each new day. No day re- 
 peats itself. The same things are in some way dif- 
 
170 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 fereut to us. Each day is set solitary, enclosed by 
 its walls of night, parted off from every other by the 
 cessation of conscious living in the grave of sleep. 
 No day is permitted to run into another : each must 
 have its own specific number of hours and minutes, 
 and no two adjacent days the same. Each must come 
 forth as if just new-created, bright with the dew of 
 its youth, and each must sink to death, darken to its 
 grave as to its final, eternal end. For the evening is 
 the true death of the individual day. There is no 
 resurrection for that day : flowers, birds, beasts, and 
 men will wake and live again, but the day is dead 
 for ever ; its whole existence ends with the setting 
 sun. 
 
 The meaning of God in these strongly-marked 
 arrangements ought to be plain to us. In them He 
 says to us, " I give you life, not in years, but in 
 days. I make each day a new gift of life to you, 
 that you may live your whole life in each day ; that 
 you may not waste life and thought and feeling on 
 long periods of the future, but that your life may be 
 bounded by limits that you can comprehend ; that 
 your labors and duties may not overtask you, but 
 that you may be saved from the weariness and ex- 
 haustion that would oppress you if your life were 
 continuous, unrelieved by the pleasant interruption 
 of evening and morning." We are taught to look 
 for the happiness of life in what each day brings us; 
 to consider each day as a new gift of God, a new 
 chance to be blessed and happy ; and to find in the 
 duties and opportunities of each day the happiness 
 of living. A year is an important period of time. 
 
THE DAY. 171 
 
 but each single day is more important to us. "We 
 should care for the welfare of the year, but we should 
 care more for the dny. The day — its history, its 
 duties, its opportunities — is of all the "times and 
 seasons " on earth tlie most important to us. And 
 nothing can do us a greater good than something 
 that will lead us to set a higher value on our sepa- 
 rate days, and bestow a higher care on each day's 
 duties and opportunities, and thus make each day 
 more complete. We do so despise the days ! We 
 give up their chances of doing and gaining good, as 
 if they were of no importance, and idly dream of 
 some coming future when the chances will l)e larger, 
 and life shall have more importance than it has in 
 these insignificant days. God makes the outgoings of 
 the morning and evening to rejoice. God fills the 
 day with springs of joy for His children ; but we 
 miss the joy, through foolish, sinful looking-on be- 
 yond for brighter days to come. Our Lord rebukes 
 us when He says, " Take no thought for the morrow, 
 for the morrow shall take thought for the things of 
 itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." 
 We needlessly increase the evil of the day by neglect- 
 ing its opportunities and waiting for better days to 
 come. This day, for example, this holy day, God 
 has given to us : let us use it, — we shall not see a 
 better. All the advantages of life are in this day; 
 the universal good is opened to us each ; and the 
 question of the hour is this, — how to receive and use 
 the day that God has given us, so that we shall have 
 the good of it ; so that the outgoings of the morning 
 shall rejoice with the joy of a new life, and of the 
 
172 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 evening with the joy of gathered gains and a sanc- 
 tified rest. 
 
 To live the most perfect life of a day, it is plain 
 that the day must be begun in the right spirit toward 
 all the duties, opportunities, and trials that we may 
 have to meet. " Out of the heart are the issues of 
 life," and the experience of the day is determined 
 far more by the spirit and purpose with which we 
 enter upon it than by all its circumstances. It is 
 vain for us to think that anything can possibly do good 
 to an evil-disposed soul. The day may shine with 
 perfect brightness, and the world be full of blessing; 
 but the soul which an evil spirit of selfishness and 
 discontent possesses cannot be blessed by it. It is 
 a soil which the sunshine can only harden. The 
 question comes to us in youth with such thrilling 
 interest, standing then in the morning of life, the 
 long day before us, so much to be gained or lost, so 
 much to suffer or enjoy, — " What shall I do with 
 my life ? to what shall I give myself ? what lead 
 shall I follow through the world ? " This is the very 
 question that the opening day brings to each of 
 us, — " What shall I do with my life this day ? what 
 lead shall I follow ? to whom or to what shall I give 
 myself ? " And the history and experience of the 
 day will grow directly from the answer we give to 
 this question. God stands before us, making the 
 outgoings of the morning rejoice around us, and says 
 by a thousand voices, " Son, give me thy heart : 
 take up the cross, and follow me." The world also 
 meets us with its pleasures, its covetous enterprises, 
 its careless examples, and says to the soul, " Give thy- 
 
THE DAY. 173 
 
 self to me ; follow my leading." How many hands 
 are reached out to the soul to take the guidance of 
 it! And the will must choose to which it will give 
 itself. 
 
 How can that choice be right or safe which sets God 
 aside, and puts the world or our own will above Him ? 
 How can that day be perfect which is spent without 
 regard to Him ? The only way in which we can enter 
 safely on the dangers of life is first to put the soul in 
 the hands of God. We have much to do with the 
 world, but we have far more to do with Him. The 
 world is very important to us, but His favor is of far 
 greater importance. His favor is our life. We must 
 take Him into our life, and give Him His true place 
 there, or our life will be wholly wrong and false. 
 That day which is lived without a supreme regard to 
 God is a day lived in sin, and its whole history only 
 increases our condemnation and danger. This is the 
 sad fact in every impenitent, prayerless life ; the days 
 as they come and go only leave on the soul a growing 
 weight of sin; they treasure up wrath against that 
 great and terrible day of wrath, when the long-endur- 
 ing patience of God shall cease, and His judgments, so 
 long suspended, shall fall upon the guilty. We must 
 make our day right with God, or it will be right with 
 nothing else. If we would live in the manner of a 
 true man, we must walk erect, with our face toward 
 the sky, and not always toward the earth. That day 
 is rightly begun in which we go early to the presence 
 of God, and fill our life with the influences of His 
 presence in prayer, and put our hands in His hand, to 
 follow His guidance through the day. This grateful, 
 
174 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 submissive recognition of God is the spirit that puts 
 us right with all the work, the blessings, and the trials 
 of the day. We may indeed say our prayers and be 
 little the better for it; but we cannot really and 
 earnestly seek God and commune with Him in the 
 morning without being better prepared for all that we 
 must meet. There is no safety for the soul that does 
 not thus put itself by morning prayer into the hands 
 of God. The temptations of the day find it an easy 
 prey, and the trials of the day are unsupported by any 
 sense of God's favor and care. As the day opens before 
 us, let us enter into our closet, and when we have shut 
 the door, let us pray to our Father who seeth in secret ; 
 and He shall reward us openly with His presence and 
 favor in all our work. 
 
 But if we would live the full life of a day, we must 
 not only take God into our life and walk with Him, 
 we must also take up and prosecute all our best pur- 
 poses. The poverty and emptiness of many of our 
 days is owing to the want of any great good purpose 
 in them. We are living for nothing great and good; 
 how should life be great and good to us ? We must 
 live for something worth living for, if we would make 
 our life worth living at all; and a day must have some 
 true purposes to redeem it from emptiness and con- 
 tempt. We cherish noble purposes, it may be, for our 
 whole life, but we do not bring these purposes into 
 each day, to prosecute them earnestly in the present ; 
 and so life passes away, and its end comes, and we are 
 still far from what we meant and hoped to be. Let 
 us look on each day as time given us in which to ac- 
 complish something for all the purposes of life. You 
 
THE DAY". 175 
 
 intend to know something of all the truth that men 
 have discovered ; bring this purpose into each day, add 
 something each day to your knowledge. Carry this 
 jjurpose with you, for each day brings its opportunities, 
 which must be lost if your purpose is not ready for 
 them. You intend to make the most of yourself, to 
 gain the highest position of which you are capable ; 
 but you must make the most of this day, and of every 
 day, or you will surely fail. Each day must be made 
 a stepping-stone by which to rise. We must make 
 each step of life a step toward our end, if we are to 
 reach it. You intend to do good; it is your purpose 
 to help your fellow-men. It is the whole value of 
 what God has given you that your gifts can make 
 others happier and better. You hope and mean to live 
 a useful life. But this must be the purpose of to-day, 
 and acted on to-day as you have opportunity, or your 
 purpose is a self-deception. Your desire for such a life 
 may be sincere, but your purpose is not, if it is not 
 to-day's purpose. To-day is filled with the opportuni- 
 ties of usefulness, and you cannot want for work if you 
 are willing to do such work as God gives you. Those 
 whom you can benefit by your love or by your labor 
 are always with you, and whensoever you will you may 
 do them good. We ought not to feel that our useful- 
 ness must be postponed to other days. The question of 
 each morning to every child of God is, "What can I do 
 for the happiness or benefit of others to-day ? " And if 
 we would make our day happy and profitable to our- 
 selves we must take this purpose fully into it, and live 
 for it. You intend, it may be, to be a Christian, — to 
 change your way of living, and seek a place among the 
 
176 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 followers of Christ ; but it is not your purpose for to- 
 day. How blessed for you would this day be if it 
 were the purpose of this day ! because now is the 
 accepted time ; behold, now is the day of salvation ! 
 If this were your purpose to-day, nothing need hinder 
 its accomplishment. To-day God is granting pardons, 
 receiving sinners, adopting men and women to be His 
 sons and daughters. You could be forgiven among 
 them if you would but come in penitence and prayer 
 to Him. Every great purpose of life has just as much 
 reference to one day as to another, and we ought to 
 take up all our purposes each morning to live lor them. 
 Thus the day would be rich in importance, filled with 
 interest, and close at evening with the satisfaction of 
 feeling that we have not fallen behind in the march of 
 life, but have kept pace with time, and are ready for 
 the evening and for rest. 
 
 If we would make our day complete, its morning 
 and evening free and happy, we must finish the work 
 of the day while the day lasts, and leave nothing to 
 follow us into the next. For thus it is that we become 
 over-burdened, hurried, and oppressed, and all unable 
 to enjoy the blessings, however many they are, of our 
 condition in the world. It is a great sin against our 
 own welfare thus to neglect this day's work, and load 
 other days with burdens which God never meant that 
 the}'' should have to bear. And there is so much im- 
 portant work that can never be done, because it is not 
 done in its time. In so many lives, neglected work 
 would be found to be the one great source of wretched- 
 ness. The longer we live, the more plainly we see that 
 right work well done is the true source of real peace, 
 
THE DAY. 177 
 
 and faithfulness is the crown of all virtues. "What- 
 soever thy hand fiudeth to do, do it with thy might." 
 Jesus said, " I must work the works of Him that sent 
 me, while it is day ; the night cometh, when no man 
 can work." And what is for us the work of this holy 
 day ? Have we repenting and returning to God to do ? 
 These moments are given us for this purpose. Have 
 we sins to part from, changes of life to make ? Oh, 
 let us not put this work on other days, which will be 
 needed for their own duties. Have we some service to 
 God and His cause to render, some witness to bear, 
 some truth to teach ? Let us accept our work, and do 
 it heartily unto the Lord, and the outgoings of the 
 evening will rejoice in our hearts with the sweet sense 
 of duty done and accepted with God. 
 
 A day is a life, and the record of each day, of tlys 
 and every other, is preserved in the book of God. And 
 life is a day ; and the evening cometh, and also the 
 morning. If the evening of life is to rejoice, the day 
 must be spent in the faithful service of God. To the 
 faithful Christian the end of life comes as a joyful 
 release from toil and sorrow, in God's everlasting rest ; 
 and the morning of the next life opens with brightness 
 and beauty such as never shone on earth, and with 
 sonss such as this world never heard. 
 
 12 
 
LECTURES AND MISCELLANEOUS 
 PAPERS. 
 
SOURCES OF SPIEITUAL CONVICTION. 
 
 I HAVE selected this theme because it has seemed to 
 me to be a peculiarity of the times that men seek 
 satisfaction and conviction, in regard to spiritual truth, 
 by a mistaken reliance upon secondary and inadequate 
 sources of conviction. There has never been a time 
 when the essence of Christian truth was so profoundly 
 questioned and studied as now, or when the questions 
 of life and destiny were so originally treated, apart from 
 all systems and creeds and histories. What is true ? and 
 What is real ? are far more solemn and weighty ques- 
 tions than the old questions, formerly in dispute. There 
 is a stronger resistance than ever before to external 
 pressure, whether of evidence or of authority. The 
 soul of man demands to be satisfied, and by something 
 more real and vital than a consistent system. It de- 
 mands realities ; and when we look forth to distinguish 
 the illusory from the real and abiding, then the truest 
 realities are spiritual facts and laws, and not material 
 and sensible forms and organizations. God is a greater 
 reality than all the material worlds He has created. 
 His existence is a firmer fact than any other in the 
 universe. The soul of man is a truer reality than his 
 material form, and his radical character is a more radical 
 reality than all his separate acts. Eeality truly belongs 
 
182 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 to the final causes and ultimate sources of what we see, 
 and illusion and decay cling to the issues from those 
 sources. The visible and the material is ever the 
 perishable ; the spiritual fact and law is alone the eter- 
 nal. In us, and in the world around us, " the leaf 
 withereth, and the flower falleth," but the life endures. 
 And life is more than all living, power is more than all 
 its products. We have temporarily to do with material 
 facts, ever changing around us ; but we have eternally 
 to do with spiritual facts and laws, changeless as the 
 nature of God. 
 
 The knowledge of the material facts of the universe 
 may be learning and science, but the knowledge of 
 these spiritual facts and laws alone is truth. For truth 
 comprehends the moral meaning and the final value of 
 any fact ; and these can never be reached, except by the 
 knowledge of those spiritual and divine relations which 
 connect every fact with the thought and intention of 
 the Author of all. And as the great realities of the 
 world around us are these spiritual facts and laws, so 
 the conviction and experience of them is the true edu- 
 cation, and the greatest good of the soul within us. 
 One of the mighty problems of human existence may be 
 stated thus. Given, a world of spiritual facts and laws, 
 placed beyond the senses of man, and given, a soul at 
 zero : required, to transfer those spiritual facts and laws 
 into the knowledge and experience and happiness of 
 that soul. To bring the soul into contact with these 
 spiritual facts and under these spiritual laws, to make 
 what is true in the universe truth and experience in the 
 soul, — this is the one great purpose, which explains why 
 man's soul was created as it was, and why it was put in 
 
SOURCES OF SPIRITUAL CONVICTION. 183 
 
 the relations it occupies, and why the divers manners of 
 revelation have been employed. 
 
 It was once to be decided how near to man's soul, and 
 how far from it, these truths sliould be placed ; how 
 much they should be revealed, and how much they 
 should be concealed ; what faculties for recognizing, 
 seizing, and feeling these realities should be given to our 
 spirits ; by what means and in what manner we should 
 arrive at a knowledge of them and reach a firm, con- 
 trolling faith in them. But this has long since been 
 decided. Man's soul has been created with such fac- 
 ulties and facilities for knowing and feeling the un- 
 seen and the spiritual as seemed best to Infinite 
 Wisdom, and the spiritual world has been as far re- 
 vealed as to the same Wisdom seemed necessary and 
 profitable. Man, with all his hunger and thirst for 
 satisfactory assurance of these spiritual realities, has 
 now to be subject to the conditions which have tlms 
 been established. They cannot be known, otherwise 
 than as they are revealed, and they cannot become 
 known to us, otherwise than by the right condition 
 and use of the faculties that were given us for this 
 purpose. In so far as the revelation of spiritual facts 
 corresponds and answers to the soul, in so far is 
 there a possibility of their becoming known to the 
 soul. Tlie soul has its own divinely fixed laws of con- 
 viction and belief, and the outward revelation must 
 conform to those laws, or the soul has no power, and no 
 means, of apprehending it. To the soul must be given 
 real endowment of capacity for tlie apprehension of 
 spiritual facts, or it is vain to reveal tliem in any man- 
 ner. Light shines in vain to those who have no sense 
 
184 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 of siglit. Whether the mighty facts of the spiritual 
 world can ever be known and experienced in the soul 
 of man depends therefore just as much upon the soul 
 itself, and what it is, as upon the revelation of these 
 facts from without. The electric shock and spark of 
 revelation springs only when the circuit of the infinite 
 and tlie finite is completed by the contact of God with 
 the soul. A spiritual conception in this world is a 
 child whose father is God, and whose mother is the soul. 
 By what gifts and endowments, then, is the soul fitted 
 and qualified to apprehend the spiritual facts which 
 have been revealed ? By what means is it possible 
 to apprehend and experience them, so as to make 
 them real elements of life, and on what grounds 
 can we justly appeal to the faith of men in them ? 
 
 The most obvious means of knowledge with which 
 we have been endowed are the senses. By these the 
 material universe is given to us. The resemblances 
 and differences among the material facts that we 
 observe force us to distinguish them into classes, and 
 the observation and classification of them according 
 to these differences constitute science ; and science 
 is founded in the senses. Nothing that does not be- 
 long to matter, and cannot be observed by the senses, 
 is any real part of science. Those faculties of man 
 which are employed in the observation of natural 
 facts are not the faculties by which anything beyond 
 those facts is discovered. Other operations of the 
 mind, taking the ascertained facts of science, deduce 
 from them general laws and intellectual truths, differ- 
 ing in kind from those of science. No spiritual fact 
 is discovered or ascertained by science. Some faculty 
 
SOURCES OF SPIRITUAL CONVICTION. 185 
 
 liiglier than the faculties that are required in scientific 
 pursuits must be possessed by men, in order to discover 
 in things that are made the invisible power and God- 
 head of the Creator. The power to know Nature is 
 not the power to know God. Tlie spiritual facts of 
 the universe do not come within the province of 
 science, and are not subject to the methods by which 
 the material facts of Nature are ascertained. And if 
 we observe that the scientific spirit is silent in regard 
 to those spiritual facts, that it resolutely and singly 
 pursues the material phenomena, never rising into 
 the region of spiritual meanings and realities, we 
 should not complain, for it is true to itself in hold- 
 ing strictly to its own department. True science is 
 wise enough to know that those spiritual realities 
 must not be degraded by subjection to its methods 
 and tests. Nature is that which is bound in adaman- 
 tine chains of law, and therefore may be subjected to 
 the Protean tortures of experiment. Spirit is that which 
 is free, and eludes all physical confinement, and resents 
 all subjection to physical law. It is known by other 
 senses, it is proved by other methods. 
 
 Whatever has been ascertained by science, and how- 
 ever vastly the bounds of human knowledge have been 
 extended by physical research, no spiritual fact — no 
 God, no soul, no moral government, no spiritual influ- 
 ence — has ever been or can ever be discovered by 
 scientific studies. And whoever he is that thinks he 
 has found God by means of the intellectual observa- 
 tion of Nature, he is deceived. He knew God before, 
 and by other means, and has simply found in science 
 no reason why he should not trust that previous 
 
186 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 knowledge. I would demand of the man of science 
 that he should recognize and believe the facts of God 
 and his own direct relation to Him, not because he is 
 a man of science, but because he is far more than that, 
 — because he is a man. This is not to assert that God 
 is not in Nature, and cannot be seen in material phe- 
 nomena. It is not to assert that the physical universe 
 does not declare and manifest God. It is only to as- 
 sert that it is not the material intellect, the bare logi- 
 cal processes of the mind, that discover Him in Nature, 
 and that it is not by the scientific method that His 
 existence and providence are proved. The soul rec- 
 ognizes God, not as logically proved, but as vitally 
 necessary : not from an intellectual observation of the 
 universe, but from the spiritual consciousness of its 
 own finite, dependent moral and responsible nature. 
 Grand as is the greatness of Nature, sublime as are 
 the harmonies that go singing on its eternal rounds, 
 it is not to the analytic intellect, but to the conscious 
 and worshipping heart or soul, that they declare God, 
 and reveal the spiritual facts of the universe which 
 answer to the spiritual facts in the soul's experience. 
 Scientific methods and mathematical demonstrations 
 can have no relation to spiritual facts, such as the 
 existence and agency of God ; and whoever attempts 
 to demonstrate these facts by such methods will only 
 degrade them, while he fails to produce conviction 
 even in himself. The value, therefore, of the knowl- 
 edge of the material universe to the knowledge of 
 the spiritual facts of the universe is only incidental. 
 It can only intimate to the higher capacities of the 
 soul that there is perhaps a world of spiritual facts 
 
SOURCES OF SPIRITUAL CONVICTION. 187 
 
 lying beyond its reach, and unattainable by its metli- 
 ods. It is not when the spirit of man is looking 
 upon Nature through tlie microscopic or telescopic 
 eyes of the intellect, that God and other spiritual 
 facts are seen ; it is when these have reached their 
 limit, and the spirit looks farther on, through its own 
 self-conscious life and conscience. It is when the soul 
 takes up Nature as related to its own affections, to its 
 own experience of spiritual law, that Nature seems 
 filled with spiritual facts and significance. The de- 
 ductions of science cannot be truly opposed to spirit- 
 ual truths, because the two do not exist on the same 
 plane, are independent of each other, are reached by 
 different methods, and are authorized by different 
 powers in the spirit of man. 
 
 But though the spiritual facts of the universe are 
 received through revelations independent of the obser- 
 vation of Nature, and are proved to us by methods 
 independent of scientific rules, there is yet a value 
 in all the truths that science gathers. 
 
 The soul will always be embarrassed in giving its 
 practical faith to any spiritual truth, unless it has 
 the full consent of tlie intellect. The soul can indeed 
 hold intellectual doubts in abeyance, and trust to the 
 convictions of its own conscience and the authority 
 of revelation ; but it would always prefer to have the 
 full consent of the intellectual reason. And that full 
 consent cannot really be given, until the mind has 
 run through Nature, and found that Nature contains 
 no real reason why the soul should not believe in a 
 personal God, in accordance with the tendencies of 
 its own moral nature and the teachincrs of revelation 
 
188 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 as it speaks to that nature. And science has so far 
 exhausted Nature of its facts and laws, that if Nature 
 contained anything to forbid the soul its acts of faith, 
 it would have been found before this. What though 
 the microscope should reveal new forms of existence 
 in myriads ? We know they would all be rooted in 
 the same principles of life, nutrition, propagation, and 
 activity with which we are already familiar. What 
 though the telescope should reveal new planets and 
 new stars ? It would only be to add a few more figures 
 to the magic dance ; they must keep step to the 
 music of the spheres, and their coming would change 
 nothing. The sublime triumph of science is, that it 
 has found the governing laws of Nature, according to 
 which all its facts occur and must occur. It has 
 found the key-tone of the mighty harmony, and new 
 discoveries can only add notes to the harmony, but 
 cannot change the theme. 
 
 Science plunges into the intricate path of chemical 
 analysis, works its way between atomic combinations, 
 and arrives at last on the shore of the infinite ocean of 
 Force and Life. But to science and the scientific spirit 
 it is only an ocean, of weltering, disembodied, imper- 
 sonal life and force. No great counterpart of man's 
 personality meets him from this outlook. Science 
 turns back thence to Christianity, and says, " I have 
 passed through Nature by this path. I found law and 
 power everywhere, and everywhere invariable, but I 
 was unable to trace them to their source. I only 
 found that that source was something entirely beyond 
 my reach, something not material, something that none 
 of my methods could detect. I stood at last outside 
 
SOURCES OF SPIRITUAL CONVICTION. 189 
 
 the organized universe, and felt myself in an awful 
 Presence, which appealed not to my reason but to my 
 heart. What was tliat awful Presence ? " Christianity 
 answers, " Let your soul reply ; " and the soul replies, 
 " God ! " Thus whatever path science takes, whether 
 outward through the stars, or backward through past 
 ages, or inward through the phenomena of life and 
 death, it comes out at last upon the shore of the same 
 ocean of infinite Power, Intelligence, and Life, and 
 comes to see that the world is but an island lying in 
 that ocean, that all its streams run into it, all its clouds 
 and rains rise out of it, and all its foundations are laid 
 in its deeps. And thus, having found in Nature itself 
 no cause for its own existence, having found indeed 
 that the spiritual realities upon which it sees all things 
 depending are over and above Nature, it cheerfully 
 gives consent to that faith of the soul which answers 
 with love and trust to the voice that speaks to it out 
 of that Infinite, saying, " I am thy God." For science 
 is then compelled to see that it is God, or nothing. 
 
 One great result and value of science has been the 
 testimony it has borne, the conviction it has added to 
 the unity of Nature, throughout the universe. The 
 recognition of this reality is a great spiritual advan- 
 tage. Science has shown that the universe is one, 
 and tlms has satisfied that instinct of our souls which, 
 conscious of the unity of our own existence, seeks a 
 similar unity in all outward phenomena. We know 
 that the universe can be a harmony only because it 
 is a unity ; and because it is a unity, it must be a 
 harmony. The conviction of this unity is the ground 
 of all confidence. When science has so far explored the 
 
190 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 worlds as to be able to bring back the report that a 
 real unity underlies all diversities, the soul is at once 
 put in possession of the universe, and feels able to 
 manage its property, however vast the estate, because 
 it is one thing, the revenues of which it holds in its 
 hands. The knowledge of those great principles which 
 bind all things in their unity enables the mind to be- 
 hold any one thing in the explaining light of its infi- 
 nite relations. The viewing of any one fact in that 
 light invests the fact that is so regarded with an al- 
 most infinite and divine significance. Every fact is 
 so much more instructive and impressive when re- 
 garded not alone but in its setting, — and every fact is 
 a gem of which the universe, material and spiritual, 
 is the setting. In every true picture, the line that 
 divides the simply pretty from the sublimely beautiful 
 is the horizon line. Whatever lies below that line is 
 seen only in its narrow and finite surroundings ; it is 
 isolated, it is beautiful only for the moment, and the 
 eye can rest with pleasure upon it but a little while. 
 Whatever rises above that line is seen in the infinite 
 background of the limitless sky, and is invested with 
 the sublime and solemn beauty of the great whole. 
 It is when we hold up any truth in its connection 
 with universal truth that we see its greatness most 
 clearly and feel its power most deeply, for then it is 
 pressed home upon us not by its own force and weight 
 alone, but by the whole force of the mighty and har- 
 monious whole with which it is identified. Notliing 
 adds such confirmation to any truth as to find its place 
 in the unity of the universe. A man must always 
 carry liis faith in his hand, and hold it by a voluntary 
 
SOURCES OF SPIRITUAL CONVICTION. 191 
 
 power and be cumbered with it, until he can find a 
 place for it in the harmony of Nature where he can 
 lay it down, and where the universe will hold it for 
 him. That which is arbitrary, the mind always finds 
 exceeding difficulty in believing. It is so in these 
 days more than ever, because now the conviction of 
 unity has spread so widely and is so deeply fixed in 
 the faith of men. Whatever violates that unity seems 
 to be rejected by the very harmony of Nature, as would 
 an attempt to force a new law upon the vegetable 
 world. An arbitrary form of religious truth is just 
 as powerfully resisted by this conviction of the unity 
 of the universe as an arbitrary form of any other truth ; 
 and there can be little doubt that arbitrary methods of ex- 
 hibiting religious truths have been productive of doubt 
 and difficulty in thousands who have felt unable to re- 
 ceive views inharmonious with the unity of all things. 
 
 But this very conviction of unity becomes a power- 
 ful authority, commanding the mind, when Christian 
 truth is seen to be a part of the great unity ; when the 
 declared principles of the divine government over men 
 are perceived to be the same principles, applied to new 
 subjects that we can so easily trace in Nature ; when 
 the spiritual facts asserted are explanatory of the 
 natural facts which need the explanation. Until we 
 liave gained such a knowledge of Nature as enables 
 us to compare its principles with tliose of Christianity, 
 we must necessarily hold our Christianity in a separate 
 and somewhat arbitrary manner, resting our faith on 
 authority, or on the moral harmony of Christianity 
 with our own souls. It will not seem to be supported 
 by the great system of Nature, and may seem at vari- 
 
192 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 ous points to be opposed to Nature. And though 
 these facts need not, cannot, destroy our faith, yet that 
 faitli would gain new power and value if we could see 
 and feel that that great Nature which is nearest to us 
 supports and authorizes and illustrates the spiritual 
 truths which we believe. And as the expanding dis- 
 coveries of the unity of Nature have come under the 
 light of revelation, it has been more and more seen 
 that Christianity is the explanation of that unity. 
 Christianity is the true explanation of the meaning 
 of Nature ; and when by knowing Nature we are able 
 to connect its facts with their divine and spiritual 
 meaning, then every truth of Nature becomes spiritual 
 to us, and contributes to the spiritual education which 
 is the object of this whole earthly life and discipline. 
 If knowledge of the spiritual realities, of God, His 
 government and will, our relations to Him, the moral 
 sources of our welfare, were dependent upon the sci- 
 entific knowledge of Nature, that scientific knowledge 
 would have no value to us in this respect, for it could 
 never reveal these realities. But when we know each 
 of these classes of truths by its own proper method, 
 the comparison of them sheds important and valuable 
 light both upon Nature and upon Christian truth. 
 
 The knowledge of material Nature does thus become 
 a source of conviction for spiritual realities, not original, 
 but secondary and confirmatory. Its value lies chiefly 
 in its power to enlarge our views, to make them more 
 comprehensive and universal, to deliver us from the nar- 
 row dogmatism that is so unlike the character of our 
 all-comprehending religion, and to give us the effect of 
 the infinite in all the finite, of the whole in every part. 
 
SOURCES OF SPIRITUAL CONVICTION. 193 
 
 We must also reckon among our sources of knowl- 
 edge that which is called Experience. This is what 
 man learns by living. It is a source of knowledge far 
 more extensive than science, because it includes all the 
 powers and activities of the mind, both intellectual and 
 moral. Our souls are set in the midst of the busy 
 forces that are ever at work in the universe, open on all 
 sides to their power and impressions. These streams of 
 power and influence flow through us as they do through 
 all things else. The impressions thus passively received 
 from the external world result in knowledge and con- 
 victions of truth to which the strongest certainty is 
 attached. Our activities of mind and exercises of 
 affection result in still more numerous and distinct 
 convictions. Infinitely more is given us than we get; 
 we learn passively, as well as by intention and con- 
 scious study. Life is a mightier teacher than all 
 schools. We are borne on by the rush of worlds faster 
 than our own feet can ever carry us. Our philosophy 
 cannot arrange our impressions as fast as they are ac- 
 quired, and so they lie in heaps in the soul, and are 
 often in the way of free thinking and easy believing. 
 If the little that teachers and study can do for us were 
 all the help we could have, we might be ever studying, 
 and never able to come to the knowledge of truth. But 
 we are forced to know ; life and experience do not wait 
 for us to ask : before we speak they answer. From tlie 
 impressions and results of experience, philosophy is 
 continually striving to construct a science of ultimate 
 truth. For as science is limited to material Nature, so 
 philosopliy is limited to the conscious exjierience of the 
 soul. It has and uses no other material, and seeks to 
 
 13 
 
194 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 know all things in their last and complete value through 
 the study of the soul itself. 
 
 The exaltation of experience as a source of knowledge 
 and truth, even above its real value, is the characteristic 
 of a most popular style of literature, in whicli the soul 
 is the oracle whose utterances must give law to faith 
 and life. Humanity is the highest law to itself. We 
 are taught to trust that alone which our own experience 
 teaches. Formerly we were entertained by the struggles 
 of the hero against the most dreadful array of outward 
 circumstances. Hercules and his twelve labors stood 
 as the model for all heroes. Now we are entertained 
 with the interior strugglings of tlie soul M-ith doubt. 
 The tragedy derives its horror from the agonies of the 
 soul in its spiritual conflicts, and the wail of distressed 
 maidens summoning their knights to the rescue gives 
 place to the wail of troubled souls who turn their 
 backs to the sun, and are 
 
 " Like an infant in the night, 
 An infant crying for the light, 
 And with no language but a cry." 
 
 Literature has thus withdrawn from the field of action, 
 and expends itself in the delineation of the inner life 
 and the phases of the soul's experience. 
 
 I do not say that this is not an advance; yet in so 
 far as men seek satisfaction for the soul's questionings 
 in the soul's experience alone, they seek in vain, and 
 lead themselves astray. Our experience of life and 
 the world does not give us any spiritual fact outside of 
 ourselves ; it only creates a demand for those spiritual 
 facts of which it develops the need, but which it cannot 
 
SOURCES OF SPIRITUAL CONVICTION. 195 
 
 reach. Experience docs not reveal God to us, but it 
 does reveal to us the need of God. Experience does 
 not reveal to us a Redeemer, but it does create the 
 want of a Eedeemer, and lead to desire for one. Ex- 
 perience does not make a revelation, but it does make 
 the counterpart of a revelation, that which in the soul 
 answers to revelation. It is the deep which calls to the 
 deep of the spiritual world. Experience reveals to us 
 responsibility and dependence, sin and ruin ; but it 
 docs not reveal to us the spiritual facts that correspond 
 to and explain the experience of sin and responsibility 
 and dependence. By these contrasts the value of ex- 
 perience as a source of knowledge for spiritual facts is 
 intimated. It is a source of conviction, but only when 
 those facts are revealed. Tliey must be declared to the 
 soul from without, for it is shut up at home, and cannot 
 go beyond the limitations of its own finite nature. The 
 experience of mankind, disengaged from the systems 
 which in the absence of revelation have grown up upon 
 it, is the qualification for the knowledge and conviction 
 of the real spiritual facts of revelation, and constitutes 
 that preparation and capacity to which the spiritual 
 facts of religion must be directly addressed. Let the 
 chords of that experience be directly struck by the 
 great spiritual facts of revelation, and they cannot 
 refuse to respond. The soul impelled by its own ex- 
 perience feels darkly and gropingly after God, if haply 
 it may find Him. Count on this, and declare Him as 
 He is manifested, and we need only to declare Him. 
 
 We should not undervalue the experience of mankind 
 because humanitarians have exalted it into a separate 
 religion, or used it to sustain a pantheism which denies 
 
196 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 any spiritual realities beyond those of experience. That 
 personal experience which arises from the practical ac- 
 ceptance of revelation and the submission of the soul 
 to faith in its teachings is a still higher authority, and 
 a more satisfactory source of conviction ; yet it is 
 strictly personal, and confers its benefits only upon the 
 soul in which it arises. Experience does not reveal 
 the pole-star of human life and destiny, but it urgently 
 calls for it by the tremulous vibrations and the ceaseless 
 perturbations of its perpetual unrest. The soul longs, 
 it hungers and thirsts, but only in self-consuming un- 
 satisfiedness, till God comes forth to meet it with an 
 objective revelation of Himself, answering to the thirst 
 which He has created. Hunger is felt, but hunger 
 does not make its own supply. 
 
 In so far, therefore, as the spiritual facts when re- 
 vealed meet and satisfy the needs of experience, it is 
 proper to demand the faith and submission of the soul 
 to them. Because a man feels responsibility, he may 
 be required to believe in his personal relations to a 
 God, a judgment, and a future condition answering to 
 his character. Because he experiences a constant de- 
 pendence, he may justly be required to submit himself 
 to the providence of God, and repose in faith upon it. 
 Because he experiences depravit}'^ and guilt, he may 
 be required to accept a redemption which meets his 
 need. 
 
 Still another source of knowledge is found in out- 
 ward Testimony ; in which is included all historic 
 proof, and the value of all such evidences as appeal to 
 the intellectual laws of belief and are designed to con- 
 vince and satisfy the logical reason. The spiritual facts 
 
SOURCES OF SPIRITUAL CONVICTION. 197 
 
 which concern us so deeply if true are asserted, and 
 the question is, what reason we have for believing the 
 witness, beyond tlie moral force of the truth itself. 
 Why must we have a reason of this kind at all ? Why 
 not accept or reject the assertion by the judgments of 
 experience and the conscience ? Thousands have ac- 
 cepted these spiritual facts, and governed their lives by 
 them, merely because the spiritual facts asserted found 
 confirmation in their own consciousness, without so 
 much as considering the question of external evidence 
 or the necessities of the logical reason. Lut with others, 
 and perhaps with all at some period of their progress, 
 it becomes necessary to a complete belief in these 
 spiritual facts that the intellectual questions should be 
 answered, and the logical reason satisfied. The child is 
 content to believe anything not contradictory, with un- 
 questioning faith, until the awakening of his intellect 
 requires that he shall have a reason. When that de- 
 mand is satisfied, he resumes his faith, and only believes 
 with clearer conviction what he believed before. And 
 herein is the whole process of the soul's education. 
 The value of all evidences that are addressed to the 
 intellect is that such evidences give to the mind sat- 
 isfactory forms of truth. It may be said that the 
 purpose and business of the intellect and logical rea- 
 son is, first, as a contrivance of the Creator, to enable 
 man to separate himself from matter : as a power to 
 make abstractions, and so to be able to think ideas 
 apart from materialities, with which his mind would 
 otherwise be enslaved and identified. In so far as it 
 is more than this, it is to create in the mind an ideal 
 model of the external universe. A man is not content 
 
198 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 that the universe should exist outside of himself, but is 
 impelled to get it into his own mind, in the form of an 
 ideal reproduction ; and his intellect and logical reason 
 are the powers by which he is enabled to construct in 
 his own mind an ideal universe corresponding to the 
 real. AVhen spiritual facts are to be admitted into that 
 ideal, it is necessary that they should pass through the 
 analysis of the intellect and the criticism of the logical 
 reason, in order to gain their place in this cosmos of 
 ideas. Tlie mind therefore questions their real existence 
 by the same principles by which it tests other facts, 
 and by criticism and comparison assigns them their 
 place. When the process is completed, the result is 
 simply that those facts are admitted into the mind's 
 ideal universe as true elements of its constitution. 
 But this is a result that does not involve the conscience 
 and the heart : it does not connect those spiritual 
 facts with the experience and the affections, to make 
 them moral powers and spiritual convictions. When 
 the mind is engaged in building its systems, it needs 
 these proofs furnished to the logical reason ; but when 
 the soul is seeking for a spiritual rest, when it 
 strives for that truth which shall meet its deep-felt 
 need, we cannot meet it by our abstract systems and 
 critical evidences. It is not for a consistent system 
 that the soul is seeking, but for some great spiritual 
 reality upon which it can cast the weight of all its 
 spiritual cares, and which shall come self-proved. 
 
 In so far as testimony establishes the historic facts 
 of religion, it constitutes a reason for believing the 
 doctrines which depend on those facts ; but the belief 
 that they are adapted to produce is little more than an 
 
SOURCES OF SPIRITUAL CONVICTION. 199 
 
 iutellectual consent to give those doctrines a place in 
 the intellectual system. Yet of itself, and alone, this 
 is not the kind of proof on which we can rely in the 
 practical attempt to procure men's submission and 
 affection. All the external, historic, critical evidence 
 of the real divine character of Jesus will only estaLlish 
 that fact in the region of intellectual ideas as distin- 
 guished from that of vital spiritual conviction ; and this 
 most weighty truth will exist only as an accepted 
 dogma, — as it does in reality exist in the intellectual 
 belief of tliousands, without power or impression on tlie 
 heart and life. Testimony, including all such proof of 
 spiritual facts as may be addressed to man's logical rea- 
 son, has this great value, that it satisfies the necessities of 
 the intellect, removes the hindrances to faith that would 
 exist while the intellect was unsatisfied, and opens tlie 
 way through the intellect to the heart and conscience. 
 The intellect and the logical reason, with their critical 
 proofs, may be the priests of the outer court; they 
 serve at the brazen altar ; they order the system : but 
 they are not the high-priest who goes inside the veil 
 into the awful Presence which dwells between the 
 cherubim, and holds converse with Jehovah face to 
 face, and feels the dread realities of the spiritual world 
 as real and present facts. It is not by his reason that 
 man meets his God, and it is not by his reason that he 
 appropriates for practical purposes of life any spiritual 
 fact. It is not even by his reason that he gets those 
 facts ; they are given to him by other means, and his 
 reason only harmonizes and arranges them. The logi- 
 cal reason is not competent to reject any spiritual fact 
 without the concurrence of the moral judgment of the 
 
200 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 heart and conscience. The most that it is competent 
 to do is to hold the mind in suspense until further 
 light shall arise upon the question. The world is on 
 the way toward finding out that the logical reason is 
 essentially material, and that the intellectual life is but 
 a refined materialism, a mere life of calculation and 
 comparison, and that we lose the greater half of truth 
 by making the mere reason judge of all things. Be- 
 tween Materialism and Idealism we need to set a 
 Christian Ilealism. 
 
 We have still to observe one more source of knowl- 
 edge and conviction regarding spiritual facts, and that 
 is found in the principle of Faith. There is a faith, so 
 called, which rests on testimony or evidence foreign to 
 the soul, and which believes in facts because they are 
 adequately proved by external evidence. There is also 
 a faith which receives and trusts spiritual facts because 
 they correspond with the soul's interior experience and 
 moral nature. The soul of man profoundly questions 
 the meaning and the destiny of life, and that which 
 answers such questions satisfactorily to the soul is re- 
 ceived and trusted because it does answer them, with- 
 out any criticism of the way in which the answer comes 
 or the external authority by which it is commended : 
 and this alone is faith, in respect to spiritual facts. 
 The sanctions of material facts are in the logical rea- 
 son : the sanctions of spiritual facts are in the spirit- 
 ual nature and experience of the soul. They cannot be 
 proved otherwise. Man is not a spiritual being because 
 he is a rational being, but because he is a moral being, 
 and joined to the spiritual world by moral relations. 
 As ,the imagination is the airent which the intellect 
 
SOURCES OF SPIRITUAL CONVICTION. 201 
 
 sends out to find the truths that it seeks, so faitli is the 
 agent that the soul sends out to find the truths that it 
 seeks. The soul has no other power by which to seize 
 spiritual truth. The truest and oldest law of life is 
 faith : the just shall live by it, and so must every man, 
 or he must live a false life, and wither and shrivel up 
 in the barrenness of intellectual abstraction. Every 
 planet, every star, every river, every beast and bird and 
 man, finds all its progress and motion in falling forward. 
 This is the law of advancement, in all Nature. In the 
 soul, faith is that falling forward by which it meets 
 and feels the power of spiritual realities, and to which 
 the revelation of spiritual facts is addressed. On this 
 principle every man holds every spiritual truth which 
 in any practical sense he holds at all. I am no 
 worshipper of self-po.ssession. There is a species of 
 self-possession which shuts up the soul in itself, and 
 excludes the inflow of truth and the divine from the 
 universe. There is a losing of one's self in abandon- 
 ment to God, to find one's self in His world. 
 
 On the supposition that the real spiritual facts 
 that belong to us are offered us in revelation, they 
 must assure themselves to us by their fitness to our 
 experience and consciousness ; and faith accepts them 
 because they do thus assure themselves to us. And 
 by faith tlie soul gets them directly, and in their highest 
 value. There are those who call for facts, historic facts, 
 and decry all attemi)ts to demand faith in spiritual 
 facts for their own sake ; and who forget that conscience 
 and experience and faith are facts as real as any other. 
 These are they to whom Jesus would say, " Except ye 
 see signs and wonders, ye will not believe." Let them 
 
202 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 be tliaukful that tliey have their " signs ; " and we will 
 rejoice that on such grounds they M-ill believe, — 
 though they deceive themselves in supposing that they 
 believe on such grounds alone. Jesus said to those 
 around Him, " Believe me that I am in the Father ; or 
 else believe me for the works' sake ; " from which 
 we must infer that to believe for the works' sake is a 
 little better than nothing, but that a far truer and 
 better faith is that which believes Him for what He 
 is, — from the impression of His character and the natu- 
 ral fitness of His teaching to the soul's experience and 
 consciousness. As spiritual realities cannot be shown 
 materially, they must be exhibited not to the material 
 senses or the material intellect, but to what is spiritual 
 in man, and can be apprehended only by the moral 
 nature. And whoever studies the method of teaching 
 that distinguished Christ, will observe that it is simply 
 declaratory, as if what He said needed but to be said ; 
 and that He evidently depended upon being understood 
 in just the degree in which His hearers were morally 
 susceptible, not in the degree in which they were 
 mentally capable. He spoke as if the souls of His 
 hearers would furnish the proof of what He said. And 
 does not man always so speak in moments of highest 
 exaltation ? Does not the poet so speak, and thereby 
 show that he depends far more on faith than upon 
 reason ? It is more natural to us to believe than it is 
 to reason : surely, therefore, to believe is as legitimate as 
 to reason, and the convictions of faith are of just as 
 high authority as the decisions of reason, and we are 
 as sure of truth in trusting what the soul sanctions as 
 in relying on the correctness of our reasonings. It is as 
 
SOURCES OF SPIRITUAL CONVICTION. 203 
 
 easy to reason badly as it is to misunderstand our own 
 experience. Faith is a legitimate source of conviction ; 
 and its value to us is so much greater than that of all 
 others, as by it we get truth which is more important 
 than all other truth, and get it in more vital and prac- 
 tical relations to our souls. 
 
 According to the views that have now been taken, 
 there is not in us, either in the intellect or in the soul, 
 any power to discover spiritual facts, until they are 
 revealed. Science, Logic, Experience, Faith, are seen 
 only as qualifications for receiving them when by reve- 
 lation they have been given us. With these alone as 
 our sources of spiritual knowledge, " stars silent rest 
 over us, graves under us silent;" the soul remains in 
 darkness, all its questions unanswered, enveloped, as in 
 a quivering anxiety, in unanswering silence and night. 
 Life remains a terrible riddle, of which the soul can 
 find no solution. I cannot know ; loaded with all the 
 weight of my cares and questions and dangers, I can 
 find no guidance, no help, no light. God must speak 
 to me. On the ground of my utter dependence I 
 stand to claim as my right that He shall speak to me ; 
 for I must otherwise perish for lack of vision. 
 
 But it may be seen that that is a true revelation 
 which simply declares the real spiritual facts of the 
 universe; that it is not essential to a revelation that 
 an overwhelming pressure of external force should 
 accompany it in order to secure its authority in the 
 world. The spiritual facts of the universe have ex- 
 isted forever, and the soul of man was created as 
 a counterpart to them; and it is only necessary that 
 the two should meet, that the soul may be bound 
 
204 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 by the spiritual realities. The publication of a law- 
 completes its authority ; — and the declaration of these 
 spiritual facts biuds the world. For the true appre- 
 hension of these facts we are in a degree disqualified 
 by the perversion of our moral character, by the dispo- 
 sitions that opj)ose them for what they are, without 
 regard to their truth or falsity. Thus our original de- 
 pendence upon God for the revelation of spiritual truth 
 is increased to a dependence upon His personal influence 
 upon our hearts for the discernment of these realities. 
 But the soul was originally made thus dependent on 
 Him, that He might talk with it. The soul is open to 
 God on its moral side ; it joins on to the spiritual world, 
 and is traversed by its forces. They can come into the 
 soul W'ithout coming through the gate of the senses, or 
 passing through the labyrinths of logic. And they do 
 come, to meet and authorize and enforce the divine 
 declarations which enter the soul on its other side, 
 toward the outer world. And that which from 
 without comes to meet the intimations of sense, the 
 longings of experience, the falling onward of faith, is 
 the Manifested God, God revealed in humanity, com- 
 ing forth from secrecy into sympathy with us, — the 
 Word, which was God, and was made flesh and dwelt 
 among us. 
 
 For conviction and experience of the spiritual 
 realities of God's presence and personal relation to 
 us, and of all spiritual facts, we need to study them 
 more, not as to their evidences, not as to their 
 proper logical form, but as to their real nature and 
 relation to us. We need, not to surround them with 
 supports of language, but to clear away from them 
 
SOURCES OF SPIRITUAL CONVICTION. 205 
 
 everything that surrounds them, and look upon them 
 as simply as possible in their substance and reality. 
 We need to treat them as facts, — which is the highest 
 test of their truth to which they can be put. We need 
 to think of them more originally and simply, more by 
 the aid of experience and the soul's afiections, less by 
 the aid of criticism and logic. And in teaching them, 
 we should strive more to show them, plainly and dis- 
 tinctly, than to defend them by our puny logic. We 
 are prone to feel that we must help God ; we must 
 bring our expedients, and organize our efforts, and 
 prevent a failure. We may far better trust to the 
 simple showing, the plainest possible exhibition, of 
 spiritual truth, and be sure that God and His truth 
 can live. 
 
 It is not proof that is required, so much as expla- 
 nation ; and let us not forget this last word, that in 
 order to successful explanation there must be pro- 
 founder spiritual experience in those who would ex- 
 plain. When wood is burned in the air, the light 
 and heat which are given off are the exact equivalent 
 of the light and heat that were absorbed by the wood 
 while it was orowinir. It is the same light and heat 
 that the wood took from the universe, and now gives 
 back. Even so in the hi<j;her things : the teacher of 
 spiritual truth can give to the world only the light 
 and the force which he has taken into his own soul 
 from the truths he teaches. 
 
206 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 STATEMENTS.! 
 
 GENTLEMEN", BROTHERS, — My theme has been 
 announced as "Statements," without any limi- 
 tation of the subject, — a theme much too large for 
 " the hour and the man," if it were designed to dis- 
 cuss the province, value, and authority of statements 
 in all the branches of human knowledge. It is not, 
 however, discussion, but suggestion, at which I have 
 aimed. Statements are sufficiently current in tlie 
 world. They need no advocate for their exi.stence or 
 their value. They are estimated sufficiently high. 
 We have no need to desire any greater authority or 
 power for them. We may need to guard ourselves 
 against their tendency to cumulate power, and to 
 take the place of the truths themselves which they 
 seek to express. It is usually a thankless task to 
 undertake to mark the distinctions between the sub- 
 stance of any truth and the form of tliat truth which 
 time and use have rendered sacred in tlie regard of 
 men. But you and I are students, not for a term of 
 years, but through all terms of time and eternity; and 
 I would like to assert for you and for myself the privi- 
 lege of going beyond and behind all the forms of truth 
 that men have prepared for us, and of looking at truth 
 
 1 A lecture before a society of students, 1859. 
 
STATEMENTS. 207 
 
 in its own original and eternal forms. It will be no 
 spirit of presumption, no mere blind iconoclasm, that 
 will lead us to assert the imperfection of statements, 
 and the consequent impossibility of rendering to them 
 an entire mental submission. 
 
 Our own nature and the universe answer to each 
 other. There is a universe of material and concrete 
 ibrms, — suns, stars, rocks, trees, and flowers. They 
 fill space, take up room, are solid and material. Be- 
 hind these material and concrete forms lies another 
 universe of spiritual forms which we call truths. 
 These are the background in front of which the rock 
 towers and the flower blooms ; these underlie and 
 linger lovingly around the material forms to which 
 they belong. Man is himself a material and concrete 
 form, and converses by his senses with the material 
 forms around him. Their voices speak to his ear, 
 and his senses reply with thrills of delight. Their 
 colors and their shadows speak to his eye, and his 
 senses answer in mute joy the mute appeal. But as 
 behind the substantial forms of Nature lie the spirit- 
 ual forn)s of truth, so behind the material, physical 
 life of man stands the spiritual man, living, looking, 
 loving itself forth toward all around. Between this 
 spiritual man and these spiritual forms of the universe 
 of truths have been placed, first his own body, behind 
 which he must still abide, and then the bodies of these 
 truths, in which they also have been expressed. The 
 material universe thus rises up as a mountain-chain 
 between two seas, — the great sea of spiritual truth 
 on the one side, and the lesser sea of human con- 
 sciousness and understanding on tlie other. But deep 
 
208 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 calleLh unto deep. The deep that spreads bouudless 
 beyond the material forms of the universe calls to the 
 deep tliat spreads boundless beyond the physical life 
 of man. To both God has given one great necessity : 
 they must speak. In some form or other they must 
 get themselves stated and expressed. The soul in man 
 presses resistlessly to some expression of itself It is 
 not enough that it lives, that it knows, that it loves : 
 it must also project its life, its knowledge, and its love 
 out of itself in some form of statement. And equally 
 do those great spiritual truths and forces which lie 
 behind the material forms of Nature press to some 
 expression of themselves. They seem to go about 
 looking for room on the great page of the earth to 
 write their names or paint their images. All concrete 
 forms on earth are such images and expressions of 
 these spiritual truths. But chiefly they appear to wish 
 to speak to us. True, they are as busily expressing 
 themselves where the eye of man never sees and his 
 ear never hears them ; but this is like a soul so over- 
 full of life and thought that it speaks and must speak, 
 though only the great Spirit of the universe should 
 hear. When man comes, the true listener seems 
 present. The meaning of all created things seems to 
 have reference to man. He is the sovereign to whom 
 the tribute of truth is paid by all the material forms 
 amid which he lives. The flower that grows by his 
 path looks up to him as he passes, and opens its rosy 
 lips to speak to him of a thousand tilings which the 
 eye never saw nor the ear heard. Great thoughts 
 of God's own mind, great harmonies of His being 
 (sometimes called natural laws), speak out to us 
 
STATEMENTS. 209 
 
 through the rolling planet, through the whispering 
 leaves, through tlie songs of birds and the tinkle of 
 the stream. 
 
 These truths, these great thoughts of God, have been 
 partially stated in the forms that express them and 
 through which they seem to try to be expressed, A 
 rock, a rose, a cloud, a stream, is a statement of a 
 spiritual truth, an utterance of a thought. Under the 
 rock, beliind the cloud, there is something not material 
 but spiritual, a meaning, a law, a truth, — a portion of 
 that great spiritual universe which flows around mate- 
 rial forms, like magnetic currents round and through 
 the earth. As these truths and thoughts seek thus 
 to state themselves in material forms and talk in winds 
 and woods and waves, so is man impelled also to state 
 himself, and talk out his meaning in his works and by 
 his words. It is as if the spiritual truths of the uni- 
 verse, unsatisfied with the statement of themselves 
 which they get by means of natural objects, sought to 
 give themselves to us, in order to find a more perfect 
 statement through us and our modes of expression, and 
 get themselves recognized not only in Nature but in 
 our world also. We may pity them most heartily that 
 so often, instead of being better stated than they are 
 in rocks and ilowers and fields and streams, they are 
 cruelly distorted and belied, and made to tell lies in 
 the presence of the God they seek to reveal and honor ; 
 still it is our work to state these truths, and give them 
 utterance through us. God has given us in the uni- 
 verse of created forms so many words, and now He 
 says to you and me, " Give the definition." 
 
 All science busies itself in the attempt to state some 
 14 
 
210 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 of these spiritual laws, ideas, and harmonies, which 
 connect the scattered and isolated facts and forms of 
 the material world. Science is the printer's composi- 
 tor, who gathers these scattered types and sets them 
 up so that their spiritual meaning can be read. These 
 facts are the scattered notes of the music of the 
 spheres; science puts the notes in some order upon 
 some staff of system, so that " harpers with their 
 harps " may give the world some portion of that 
 heavenly song. All science is thus but statement of 
 ideal spiritual truth. 
 
 All philosophy is but statement of spiritual truths 
 which are manifested in consciousness, life, and will. 
 Philosophy is not truth, but only the attempt to state 
 some certain sides and qualities of truth. All philosophy 
 is mere statement. So a man may know philosophy, 
 and not shake hands thereby with truth. I should 
 say to the soul in love with philosophy, " Your mis- 
 tress, whom you so exalt above all others, whom you 
 worship with pet names, calling her divine philosophy, 
 is after all no living thing, but is only a form, a 
 statement." 
 
 All literature, going forth among the passions of 
 mankind, and studying the play of love, the drama of 
 life, the tragedy of hate, the comedies of wit or the 
 gorgeous fictions of imagination, brings back to us 
 nothing but statements. 
 
 Theology can do no more. It can only give us 
 statements of trutlis too great to be stated, too vital to 
 be crystallized into any form of dogma, doctrine, or 
 creed. The science of God and of our divine relations 
 really exists, for these are truths and facts of the uni- 
 
STATEMENTS. 211 
 
 verse ; but theology at its best estate can only give us 
 statements about that science. 
 
 So then there is a great and wide world of truth, 
 of spiritual law and beauty and power, — and that is 
 one thing. All statements, all books, all language, — 
 that is another thing. Let me know, let me never 
 forget, that if truth exists at all in statements and in 
 books, it exists there at second hand and in a frao-- 
 mentary, cabinet-specimen form, and that the great 
 ocean is without. I may catch in the library the faint, 
 weak murmur of the great sea, as children catch the 
 solemn monotone of the ocean by listening at the shell 
 which its waves have washed ashore; but the great 
 ocean is not in the library. Men like me went out 
 alone for themselves, and walked silently along the 
 shores; the breezes of the great sea blew upon them, 
 they heard its voices, and they made a statement, and 
 the printer printed it, and the binder bound it, and 
 the merchant sold it ; and is that all that I may have ? 
 If I may also go out for myself, listen with my own 
 ears, touch with my own hands, and make my own 
 statement for myself, shall I not do it ? Is the right 
 and privilege of observation and direct communion 
 with truth given only to two or three, and must all 
 the rest see only by borrowing their eyes ? 
 
 It makes a great difference whether statements are 
 capable of expressing the whole of any truth or not. 
 If words are higher and mightier than truth, and can 
 subdue and chain truth to statements, we may perhaps 
 depend upon statements for truth. But truth is spir- 
 itual, and words are physical ; and no statement of a 
 truth can perfectly express that truth, or even the one 
 
212 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 side of the truth which it attempts to express. Eacli 
 truth is the blood-cousin of every other truth ; its re- 
 lations are infinite, and its meaning lies in these rela- 
 tions. The less cannot contain the greater ; the single 
 statement cannot contain the truth, which is so largely 
 plural in its relations and meanings. Truth flows be- 
 neath the material world in an ever-movin<f changinfj 
 stream. A man may dip a cupful by a statement, but 
 that is all, and when it rests in his cup it has lost its 
 greatest cliaracteristics, for it has lost its relations and 
 its flow. Tliere is no isolation of any truth. No one 
 truth in all the universe stands by itself alone, so that 
 it can be picked up and carried away in its entireuess, 
 and so that one can say, " Here it is, and the whole of 
 it." Has the soul parts ? Can it be taken to pieces ? 
 Or has it only, in one essence, distinctions, which are 
 distinguished only by their relations to each other, and 
 not by separation from each other ? So is truth, — it is 
 one, in an infinite variety. Only an infinite statement 
 can cover or contain completely any truth, for to 
 each truth belongs this character of infiniteness. Two 
 and two make four; how simple the truth, how easy 
 the statement ! And some one may say that the state- 
 ment holds the whole truth. But two and two make 
 four in every case, and by one of the most absolute 
 necessities. It cannot be otherwise ; through all eter- 
 nity it must be so. Here then is one of the absolute 
 decrees of Fate and the Elder Gods, one of the princi- 
 ples and bars of the universe, one of the laws of divine 
 thought, one of the modes of the Infinite Intellect. 
 Behold, through this little door we have passed out 
 into infinitude and measureless immensity, where our 
 
STATEMENTS. 213 
 
 statemeiitrcups can only cany to our lips a momentary 
 taste of the great ocean ! 
 
 We are continually impelled, indeed, to attempt the 
 statement of truth, because the statement helps us to 
 appropriate the truth as our own, and by thus appro- 
 priating it we grow in capacity, strength, and happi- 
 ness. We are impelled to statements, as a means of 
 getting possession of the truth. But all statement is 
 necessarily partial and imperfect, for the reason that 
 there is an endless progress for the soul, and the in- 
 finitude of truth is God's provision for that endless 
 progress. There is too much of truth to be exhausted 
 by our statements in this very first portion of our 
 endless life and studies. Statements do carry over 
 truth from the great ocean of truth and pour it into the 
 spirit and consciousness of men, but these vessels in 
 which it is carried over are small, and can carry but 
 very little at most, and moreover they are often very 
 leaky, so that by the time they get to us there is 
 nothincr in them at all. But whether this be so or 
 not, every statement is small and partial before the 
 greatness of truth itself. Why then should we exalt 
 statements in science, in philosophy, in theology ? 
 How can any statement be so perfect that it shall 
 comprehend the whole truth ? If I would learn any 
 science, why should I get all the statements that 
 others have made in regard to it, and conclude that 
 the whole science is in the definition of those state- 
 ments ? Let them give me what is in them, and that 
 is so much, but not all. The exaltation of any formal 
 statement of any truth into a finality and an authority 
 is something false. To render our submission to it is 
 
214 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 as much a species of superstition and idolatry, as not to 
 acknowledge its usefulness by way of help is a species 
 of vain pride and foolish presumption. Until state- 
 ments can be perfect, and express all that is or can 
 be known of the truths they assume to state, I will 
 use them, but they shall not enslave me. If they are 
 good for anything, they are good for gateways, through 
 which we may pass to the open country beyond them. 
 Their highest and best use is to make themselves use- 
 less, by carrying the mind beyond themselves to a view 
 in which the eye sees more than the statement ex- 
 presses. To stop at the statements, to make our- 
 selves dependent upon what they contain, to regard 
 statements gray with age or green with newness as 
 the final and perfect forms of truth beyond which 
 there is no need or call to go, — this is to cramp and 
 dwarf the mind, and abandon the noblest attribute 
 of humanity, its spiritual freedom. 
 
 Statements must be imperfect, not only because 
 truth is greater than language, but because all state- 
 ments must have reference to existing times and 
 opinions, and times and opinions are not always the 
 same. To the sun there is a rising, and a rising 
 seldom clear and unclouded, and through his whole 
 course earthly vapors veil his splendor and absorb 
 his warmth. So to every great truth there is a rising, 
 seldom clear and unclouded: for every such truth 
 there is also a course to run, a zenith to reach by 
 progressive ascent. We say it is eight o'clock: the 
 statement is true at the moment when the sun is at 
 eight o'clock, but in an hour that statement has grown 
 false, and we must make another. So as truths have 
 
STATEMENTS. 215 
 
 risen, men have named them, and stated them. As 
 they have risen higher, by their development, these 
 first statements have become imperfect, or false, and 
 truer ones have been framed. As the child grows, his 
 clothes must be made larger each year : and we talk 
 of clothing truths. Poor things ! the clothes of some 
 of them are terribly antiquated and ragged. As there 
 is for each truth of science, philosophy, or theology a 
 course to run, a development in the human under- 
 standing, our statements, even if they are true, can 
 only mark the present state of that truth, and tell 
 where it is at present. We must neither accept the 
 statements of a former age as perfect expressions of 
 the truth, nor impose our own as authority upon those 
 that shall come after us. In many nations the snake 
 has been an emblem of wisdom and knowledge : I 
 know not why, unless it be from the tradition of 
 Eve's temptation by the serpent. But the emblem has 
 at least this one propriety, that each new season, with 
 every revival of nature, the serpent sloughs off its old 
 skin : just as truth at every new era in human life and 
 thought casts off the old skin of lifeless statements, 
 and grows larger in a new clothing. 
 
 It is vain to attempt to arrest the growtli of truth 
 by a statement, to say of any truth, " So it is, and so 
 it shall forever be." The truth and the life of the 
 universe push onward evermore into new manifesta- 
 tions and new creations, outgrow our statements, and 
 demand new forms of expression. Why must we go 
 back to some troubled era of dispute, when some great 
 man stated the truth as it then was, and settle there, 
 and say, " Here the universe stopped moving : there 
 
216 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 has been no progress, no motion, since then : we must 
 abide by these statements forever ? " Did the universe 
 stop there ? Did Luther and Calvin and Knox and 
 Latimer with their statements block the advance of 
 the world ? Did Philosophy after the labor of cen- 
 turies and millenniums bring forth her only child, and 
 die herself in giving birth to William Hamilton ? Are 
 his statements henceforth to be Philosophy ? As in the 
 days of a long-past Chivalry, when brave knights clad 
 in steel crossed arms in lists where kings looked on 
 and beauty carried smiles and coronals for victors, when 
 the deadly strife grew awful to behold, when through 
 iron bars welled forth the life-blood of the brave, and 
 death held carnival with fame, over the fierce battle- 
 cry of Templar and St. John, over the clash of their 
 axe and sword, over the groans of the dying, rang out 
 like a trumpet-blast the herald's cry, " Fight on, brave 
 knights ; man dies, but glory lives," — so in the broader 
 lists of a greater strife, where the eternities look on 
 and God Himself holds out the prize, there too, " Man 
 dies, but Truth lives on." Whether there be visions 
 or prophecies, statements or systems, they shall fail; 
 but truth shall shine the clearer for the passing away 
 of the clouds of statement through which it has shone 
 so dimly. 
 
 The world is where it never was before in all its 
 duration. There never was and never will be another 
 such hour as this. Statements made in other and dif- 
 ferent times cannot suit with these, without modifica- 
 tion or explanation. Thucydides is the true historian, 
 because he made statements of events that belonged to 
 his own time, giving the form of the present to the 
 
STATEMENTS. 217 
 
 events of the present. And what concerns us is to 
 state for ourselves the truths of science and philosophy 
 and theology as they now arc, and not be frightened 
 from the golden treasure by the terrors of offended 
 antiquity. As the earth rolls on, each object comes 
 under new light, the shaded sides are illuminated, and 
 each portion receives a new appearance ; so as time 
 rolls on, each truth comes into new relations and re- 
 veals new sides. The old pictures of these truths, 
 drawn in statements by old masters, are very precious 
 as representations of the truth in the conditions and 
 relations of those times, but they are not true to life 
 now. We want masters too in the present as well as 
 in the past who shall give us true and faithful portraits 
 of life and thought as it now is. We ought not to 
 wish to reproduce the past, merely to carry back the 
 world to any of its former states; but, gathering the 
 harvest of the past, accepting thankfully the rich 
 legacy, ours is the task of interpreting the present, 
 and meeting new forms of thought, of question, and of 
 doubt with fitting forms of truth. And let us never 
 hope for immortality for any forms or statements of 
 truth, however perfect they may be to us now ; for that 
 would be to liope that truth itself should cease to grow. 
 No science has exhausted the field of its studies. No 
 scientific statements but may yet require to be modified 
 to admit into them yet undiscovered trutli. No philos- 
 ophy has ever exhausted the hidden depths of man's 
 spirit, or fixed in crystalline and changeless forms the 
 vital streams of life and thought and will. No litera- 
 ture has ever exhausted the myriad changes of life and 
 passion. No theology has ever exhausted the material 
 
218 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 of revelation. No statements can ever dip up all the 
 waters of these " wells of salvation," for out of Scripture 
 flow "rivers of living water," whose fountain-head is 
 under the throne of God and the Lamb. And therefore 
 statements must always be limited in their value, being 
 unable to travel from the season and era that gave them 
 birth. 
 
 All statements must necessarily be imperfect, not 
 only because truth is greater than language, and be- 
 cause they must always be the result of existing times 
 and disputes, but also because they must always have 
 a special reference to the individual mind that framed 
 them, and for that reason cannot have a perfect uni- 
 versal value. It is indeed the mai'k of a common 
 Nature, ruled by the same general laws, that one man's 
 statement can and does serve for the expression of 
 another man's thought. It is also the mark of each 
 man's individuality and difference from every other, 
 that his own word is more to him than it can be to 
 another, and in using another man's statement we 
 never exactly repeat the thought of him who framed 
 it ; nor will another man's statement ever as perfectly 
 express our own mental state as one that, with intelli- 
 gence, we might make for ourselves. If we had been 
 created as a homogeneous mass of humanity, a state- 
 ment for one might be a statement for all ; but as we 
 are individualized and set solitary in our personal being 
 by the awful gift of a separate consciousness, each soul 
 must live and think for itself, and itself alone can ex- 
 press itself. Statements are a kind of currency. Some 
 great soul has discovered a treasure of truth, and having 
 made it his own, has issued, in his statement, a bank- 
 
STATEMENTS. 219 
 
 note to the world, payable iu truth on presentation. 
 But, what is singular, the same note has as many 
 values as there are minds that use it. When one 
 presents it he receives for it just as much, and no more, 
 as he conceives it to be worth, which may not be half as 
 much as in the hands of the maker it calls for. A 
 statement is a note for a thousand dollars; one man 
 reads it for a hundred, another reads ten, another 
 rejects the ciphers and reads it one, and still another 
 reads it as a decimal, and gets a millionth part of 
 one. 
 
 Thus individual differences render all statements 
 more or less inapplicable to other souls than those that 
 formed them ; and iu so far as they are imposed upon 
 us, they tend to narrow and destroy that individuality 
 which distinguishes us from others, and iu which the 
 only value of our particular existence consists. For if 
 I am just like some one else, I am superfluous. There 
 is a reason for the individual differences among men, 
 and a value in them. Truth gets itself revealed in its 
 manifoldness by having so many different reflectors. I 
 shall serve truth, not by forcing my mind into the exact 
 form of some other mind, but by maintaining the in- 
 tegrity and difference of my own, and letting truth 
 reflect from me the exact impression which it makes 
 upon me. If I have nothing to bring to the world but 
 what others have already brought, if my report of life 
 is a mere repetition of others, the world may very well 
 dispense with me. If there is any reason or design in 
 your special existence it must be because there was a 
 person wanted with just your peculiarities, to take just 
 the view of truth that you take, and to reflect that 
 
220 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 view upon tlie world. Let every man believe that lie 
 is a man, that God made him also, and that, born to 
 life and immortality, he also has the right to think, 
 and, if he pleases, to speak. But let him not thinli; 
 that you and I were made for the mere purpose of 
 listening to him, least of all to accept his statements 
 as the law of our thought and our self-manifestation. 
 Doubtless if the man has anything to say it will get 
 heard. But if I drink the draught, the truth, and 
 return him the cup, the statement, in which he passed 
 it to nie, he need not be angry that I would not swallow 
 the cup too. 
 
 The poet is such because he walks out beyond all 
 artificial boundaries and definitions of truth, looks upon 
 the real fact as it shows itself to him, and makes his 
 report of it as if no eye had ever seen it before, and 
 no statement ever had been made about it. He dares 
 to look for himself, and tell what he sees. He connects 
 his words directly with the thing; and it is for this 
 reason that his words have gone out into all the world, 
 and are seized upon by the soul of the race. The 
 inventors of mathematics are poets ; the accomplished 
 mathematician may be a machine. The discoverers in 
 science are poets ; their followers may be children. 
 Genius in any department is simply this original 
 observation of facts, joined to the boldness that will 
 express its observation for itself. 
 
 The prophet, rapt away from all human forms of 
 truth, is shown the substance and reality of things 
 invisible, and applies his words directly to the truths 
 themselves. His words are pictures of such things 
 as his soul sees in the jilorious vision. Therefore his 
 
STATEMENTS. 221 
 
 words are inexhaustible, and can never fail, until we 
 for ourselves, as lie for himself, shall look upon those 
 truths aud give them the form in which they appear 
 to us. While the truths themselves are beyond our 
 reach, we must depend upon the prophet's words. But 
 all truth is not beyond our reach. All truths do not 
 rec^uire inspiration for their discovery or prophecy for 
 their statement ; and as for all truths that are acces- 
 sible to us, it is not our privilege only but our duty 
 to visit them and look upon them for ourselves. No 
 man can see them for us, or by any statements of his 
 compensate us for the loss of personal acquaintance. 
 
 Statements have their value, and if tlieir value has 
 seemed to be questioned by the attempt to show that 
 they are necessarily imperfect, it is because thousands 
 have exaggerated their value, and they lie on so many 
 minds as an incubus aud a tyranny. To how many 
 are the current statements of scientific or theologic 
 truth finalities and dread authorities ! How deep and 
 pitiful is the struggle of ten thousand waking souls 
 with these arbitrary forms of truth, rising up as frown- 
 ing giants on each attempt at free, original thouglit ! 
 This is not because they are not good, not because they 
 are wrong or false, but because though imperfect and 
 limited they have been exalted into authorities com- 
 manding assent, rather than regarded as steps to lift 
 the climbing soul. Many a soul is saying to tliese 
 grim statements, " If I may regard you as helps, I will 
 be grateful ; but if I must regard you as lords, and be 
 your slave, I would rather be a rebel." And we, if we 
 will not sustain them in this declaration, ought never 
 to have opened the prison-doors of the race, ought never 
 
222 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 to have protested against Holy Mother Church, ought 
 never to have breathed a word about the right of 
 private judgment. 
 
 The statements with which men have thus crowded 
 the world have come to be the very material of 
 thought. Hence the great minds are going back to 
 Plato and to Aristotle and the primal authors, the 
 material of wliose thoughts and statements was drawn 
 from original sources. Literature comes to be a kind 
 of algebra ; men and women think and reason by 
 means of these statements, rather than by their own 
 observation of facts and principles. They build sys- 
 tems that are composed entirely of second-hand state- 
 ments; and some of these statements, it must be 
 confessed, are perfect bricks for the builder, hard, 
 angular, and lifeless as the stones of the Pyramids. I 
 have read of a creature on tlie sea-shore that inhabits 
 the rejected shells of mollusks which have died out of 
 them. Into these the creature creeps, and though 
 they fit him no better than the giant's shoes the 
 pygmy, he makes his home and passes his life within 
 them. I think human souls might be found to answer 
 to these creatures, — souls that house themselves and 
 all their thoughts in statements out of which the true 
 life died long ago. It is too difficult to get at the real 
 man in these days. He does not dare to show himself, 
 for fear he shall be found to disagree with the accepted 
 authorities. He speaks as he thinks he is expected to 
 speak, rather than as his true experience and conscious- 
 ness would prompt him, and often he seeks to crush 
 out of his own mind thoughts which though they im- 
 press him deeply, yet are not in the fashion. He 
 
STATEMENTS. 223 
 
 strives after a total couformity of mind, distrusts and 
 restrains his own individuality with the impressions 
 of life and thought that the world makes upon him, 
 and thus, perhaps not knowing what he does, is most 
 deeply injuring himself. 
 
 It is fur the mind of man to look Nature and truth 
 in the face, and not be compelled to know them only 
 by the pictures that others have made. It is for the 
 mind to look through the statements of books and men, 
 not merely into them. The knowing of all the state- 
 ments of any truth that were ever made is not worth 
 so much as one look beyond all these into the face of 
 truth itself. We need these statements ; there is no 
 education without them ; but to them applies the 
 charge that was given to the tutor of a French prince, 
 " Make yourself useless as soon as possible." 
 
 May these suggestions help to check the tendency 
 toward uniformity of mind, by helping to restore honor 
 to the individual soul, and confidence in all the genu- 
 ine impressions of the world and truth upon the soul 
 of man. The right to think involves more than we 
 are always willing either to take or to grant. We 
 should indeed be ridiculous if we should assume an 
 entire independence of the help of statements and 
 scorn the aid of history and the past. We must in- 
 deed inform ourselves of the history of truth and the 
 statements of men, but what then ? Then, with these 
 aids, we must go alone for ourselves, beyond them all, 
 and wrestle with Proteus through all his writhings 
 till he answer the question we ask. With an earnest, 
 loving heart we must open ourselves to the impressions 
 of the universe, and believe in those impressions. The 
 
224 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 terrible responsibilities of personal existence are upon 
 us, but they involve the kingly right of thinking for 
 ourselves, and of using all wisdom of men as our ser- 
 vant, without yielding ourselves to it as its slaves. It 
 was in an age of formalism and slavery to tradition 
 that the Eedeemer of men proclaimed in a command 
 the freedom of the personal soul, — " Call no man 
 Master upon earth." 
 
 There is one condition imposed upon every soul 
 who seeks for truth. That condition is not that he 
 must submit to statements, and think in the forms 
 of other minds, but that he shall be honest, earnest, 
 and fearless. No dishonest soul, no partisan spirit, 
 can hold communion with truth. ISTo timid, indolent 
 soul can ever gather the rich, ripe fruits of truth. To 
 the earnest, loving spirit she will show herself. The 
 soul in its moments of worship and adoration reasons 
 most truly. With open eye and adoring heart, we are 
 furnished for investigation, and without them we are 
 uud must be blind. 
 
 " Truth goes before the Muse, 
 And defies her skill. 
 She is rapt, and doth refuse 
 To wait the painter's will. 
 
 " Star-adoring, occupied, 
 Truth cannot bend her, 
 Just to please a poet's pride, 
 To parade her splendor. 
 
STATEMENTS. 225 
 
 " The bard must be, with good intent, 
 Not liis own, but hers ; 
 Must throw away his pen and paint, 
 Kneel with worshippers. 
 
 " Then perchance a sunny day, 
 
 Troiu the heaven of lire 
 
 His lost tools may overpay 
 
 And better his desire." 
 
 15 
 
226 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 THE BALANCING OF THE CLOUDS. 
 
 NOTES OF A SERMON. 
 
 Dost thou know the balanchiffs of the clouds ? 
 Job xxxvii. 16. 
 
 CLOUDS, balanced in the upper air and drifting in 
 what appears as empty space, seeming so heavy 
 and yet floating so lightly, seemed to the writer of this 
 book one of the mysteries of Nature, and awoke in him 
 the sense of God's majesty. Ignorant of any scientific 
 explanation of clouds, he looked upon them as we do in 
 childhood ; and probably there is nothing else in all Na- 
 ture which so profoundly affects children with a sense of 
 God's majesty as the grandeur of great masses of clouds 
 in motion. They seem not to belong to the earth, they 
 are associated with our first ideas of heaven, and it is 
 easy for the imagination to fancy that on the further 
 side of them God is concealed. 
 
 And after all that Science can tell us of clouds, and 
 how they are balanced in the air, there yet remains the 
 deep and glorious mystery about them in which all 
 things are embosomed. And after all our scientific 
 knowledge is gained, that man sees the clouds most 
 truly who sees them as the tokens of God, of His 
 power and presence in the world, — as children see 
 them, and as the writer of the text regarded them. 
 
THE BALANCING OF THE CLOUDS. 227 
 
 We know that the clouds are balanced by the oper- 
 ation of two opposite forces. One force impels them 
 upward from the earth, and the other draws them down 
 from above ; and when they reach that elevation where 
 these two forces are equal, there they are balanced, and 
 there is their place. We call that force which would 
 draw them down, gravity or weight ; and we call that 
 force which impels them upward, heat. But do we 
 know of what gravity and heat are made, or why they 
 should act as they do ? These are utter mysteries, veils 
 which the omnipresent God has drawn over His pres- 
 ence, that we should not see Him too soon. 
 
 And we know that all worlds are balanced like the 
 clouds. The earth is balanced in space between two 
 opposite forces, one which drives it away from the 
 sun, and which if unrestrained would carry it beyond 
 the light and heat of the sun into outer darkness, and 
 one which draws it toward the sun ; and at that dis- 
 tance from the sun where these two forces are equal, 
 there the earth is balanced, and there it is at rest in its 
 orbit. And God has subjected every world to such op- 
 posite forces, to find their place and rest where those 
 opposite forces balance each other. " Dost thou know 
 the balancings of the clouds ? " Do you see that they 
 are balanced between two forces acting in opposite ways ? 
 Then you know all the balancings of the universe, 
 and you may see how your own soul is balanced. Two 
 contrary forces hold the clouds in mid-air, hold the 
 earth and the planets in space and place ; and two 
 opposite forces hold your soul and mine in existence. 
 
 By one force, which we call creation, God has 
 pushed us forth from Hhnself, pushed us out into a 
 
228 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 separate existence. By this force we have come forth 
 from God. And the tendency of this force is to sepa- 
 rate us entirely from God, and to carry us off beyond 
 all connection with Him, and to bring upon ourselves 
 the whole weight of our own wants and welfare. But by 
 another force we are drawn back to God, — by the force 
 of our natural dependence upon Him for life and its 
 powers. And at just that distance from God at which 
 the force by which we came forth from Him is equal 
 to the force of our dependence upon Him, there the 
 soul is balanced and maintained in existence. If the 
 force by which God draws us toward Himself, our 
 natural dependence, were taken away, then the force 
 by which we were put forth from God w^ould be un- 
 restrained, and would carry us off into outer darkness, 
 like wandering stars, to whom is reserved the black- 
 ness of darkness forever ; we should cease to exist, 
 for want of support. And if the force by which God 
 pushes us out from Himself were taken away, there 
 would be nothing to keep us from falling back into 
 God and losing our existence in Him, becoming as 
 we were before we were pushed forth from God by 
 creation ; as, if the force which impels the clouds 
 upward were taken away, all the clouds would fall 
 into the ocean, and lose their existence in it. How 
 fearfuU}'- is the soul balanced between its dependence 
 upon God and the power that pushes it away from 
 God ! Annihilation is on both sides of it, and if it 
 lives it is only because God upholds and preserves it. 
 So much at least is God to us ; by so much let us 
 reverence and fear before Him. 
 
 Our souls are balanced also between the force of 
 
TUE BALANCING OF THE CLOUDS. 229 
 
 our passions and appetites, and the force of conscience 
 and the law of God. Our appetites, our desires and 
 passions, impel us outward into action. They are 
 the force by which we are made active beings, the 
 deep inward fires by which the will is driven onward. 
 Without these passions and desires, we might possibly 
 lose ourselves in total inactivity. But our desires 
 and passions are a force which, left to itself, would 
 push us beyond all safety, through unlimited indul- 
 gence, to utter ruin of soul and body. With desire 
 and passion driving us onward toward misery and 
 guilt, the soul was intended to be balanced and kept 
 in the path of a true and happy life by the force of 
 conscience and regard for God. And every soul is 
 balanced between these two forces. It lives and 
 moves in the path of true life or far from it, as these 
 two forces are equal or unequal. The clouds are near 
 to the earth or far from it at different times, according 
 as the two forces that balance them vary ; and what 
 life will be to us depends upon how the soul is bal- 
 anced between these. Here it is that sin has so 
 deeply injured us, weakening the force of conscience 
 and regard for God, strengthening the force of selfish 
 passions and desires, and thus leaving the soul to be 
 carried into conditions of guilt and misery and aliena- 
 tion from God. In how many souls is regard for God 
 too weak to save the soul from the excessive power of 
 selfish or sinful passion, which lead it into guilt and 
 distance from God ! 
 
 Again, the soul, with all its immortal interests, is also 
 balanced between the force of temptation and sin, and 
 the redeeming grace of the Gospel. . . • 
 
230 GOD IX NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 THE FIRE IN THE BURNING BUSH. 
 
 nr^HERE is a beauty and propriety in this symbol of 
 ■*■ the divine presence, as well as in the fact that it 
 was granted to Moses when called to his great work. 
 What element of Nature could better represent the God 
 of Nature than fire ? The source of all light and of all 
 warmth throughout the universe. He is the great cen- 
 tral, living fire, whose power and goodness enlighten 
 and warm the world. This emblem of purity and in- 
 tensity may well symbolize the intensity of His life. 
 There is nothing cold, lukewarm, indifferent, in Him : 
 His power is the intensity of power ; it is pure, un- 
 mixed with weakness or imperfection, unattended with 
 bluster or noise, intense as omnipotence, pure and quiet 
 as an infaut's sleep. His love is a flame intense and 
 burning, with no coldness, no indifference, and pure, with 
 no selfishness, no fickleness, no shadow of turning, — an 
 intense, pure, eternal fire in His heart, which warms 
 and quickens into life all that is good and beautiful 
 and blessed in His worlds. And His justice is like a 
 fire : He is not indifferent to the wrongs that are done 
 among His creatures ; He burns with strong resentment 
 against every injustice. Yet His justice is pure, un- 
 tainted with cruelty, hardness, or liaste : patient, long- 
 suffering, but ineffably just, — the time will come when 
 
THE FIRE IN THE BURNING BUSH. 231 
 
 justice will be done upon the earth, and every man 
 shall receive the reward of his deeds. 
 
 And this was an uuconsumiug fire. All earthly fire 
 is maintained by the destruction of that which feeds it ; 
 for earthly fire is a created, dependent thing, an effect 
 of change in the elements of created things. But God 
 is uncreated, independent, unchangeable. He does not 
 decay, He does not grow old. His life is not main- 
 tained by things outside of itself. He lives, but He 
 does not consume, — there is no waste or loss of life to 
 Him. Living does not exhaust His life, or diminish 
 it. His life is a fire that burns, but does not consume : 
 the burning bush that was not consumed was a signifi- 
 cant symbol of His being. He is " a consuming fire " 
 only to that which is wrong and unholy ; His own 
 life and nature is not consumed or diminished by His 
 living. And this is perfection ; that the life of God 
 should be a fire, an intensely active, conscious life, and 
 yet should be unconsumed by living, never grow old 
 and cold, — this is perfect existence. 
 
 This is the type and model of a perfect life in us. 
 The value of life is of course greatly in its intensity. 
 A life that has no feeling, no lively interest, is scarcely 
 a life at all. We cannot compare a life that is full 
 of interest, of feeling, of warm and lively emotion, 
 with one that has almost no interest for itself, that is 
 dull and low and unmoved. There is life in all ani- 
 mals, but there are animals that naturalists call cold- 
 blooded, because they are actually so : their life is 
 almost destitute of sensibility, they are incapable of 
 any but the faintest pleasure, and their existence is 
 close on the borders of insensibility and death. We 
 
232 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 cannot compare the value of a life so cold and sluggish 
 with the value of a man's life, filled with innumerable 
 interests and kindled and warmed by many passions. 
 There are cold-blooded men also, indifferent, careless, 
 unimpressible, whose nerves are deeply buried in the 
 flesh, and whose minds are incapable of auy genuine 
 enthusiasm. Their lives are poor and valueless in 
 comparison with those of others whose nature is more 
 largely endowed with sensibility, interest, and enthu- 
 siasm. The blessing of being alive is great or small in 
 proportion to the degree in which we are alive in our 
 whole nature. If half our nature is dead, indifferent, 
 inactive, the blessing of life is only half of what it 
 might be. To be indifferent is to be, by so much, 
 dead. Life ought to be a fire. I think when we are 
 dead and entered into the life to come, one of our deep 
 experiences will be the discovery of how little we were 
 alive while we lived, — how much death reigned over 
 us, even before our last sickness seized us. Indeed, we 
 may very properly ask ourselves whether w^e are alive 
 or not. Life may be kindled in us, in the body, in the 
 appetites, in the passions ; but has life reached our 
 souls, and taken up its abode in our consciences ? Is 
 there any faith, any sense of God and immortality, 
 any kindling of a genuine spiritual nature, within us ? 
 Life ought to be a fire, an intense, earnest experience 
 of all the great interests that belong to us. It is the 
 hope of heaven that there the life that is in us will 
 be a flame, an intense, full interest, a fresh, eternal 
 sensibility. 
 
 While thus there are some whose lives lack warmth 
 and interest, there are others whose life is indeed a fire, 
 
THE FIRE IN THE BURNING BUSH. 233 
 
 but a consuming fire. They are not like the bush that 
 burned but was not consumed : they are like a burning 
 house, which feeds the fire that destroys it. The soul 
 burning with unholy excitement or passion consumes 
 itself Sometimes we see a man whose appetite for 
 strong drink has become as a fire : the unnatural force 
 and excitement of his appetite is a fire in which is con- 
 sumed his health, his strength, his honor, his usefulness ; 
 everything is sacrificed to this raging flame. So too 
 there are men in the world whose lives are an intense 
 desire for property and gain. This desire is the ruling 
 passion, a steady, constant flame, but it is a consuming 
 fire. It burns up all the nobler qualities of the soul. 
 It consumes a man's religious nature, it destroys his 
 care for God and heaven. It sears the conscience, 
 it consumes the social affections. Avarice strangely 
 works upon the character, to make it narrow and in- 
 tensely selfish, coarse and unsympathetic. It burns 
 up all that is Godlike and all that is human, and 
 leaves only the poorest and meanest part of the 
 nature unconsumed. So also is the passion of ambi- 
 tion a consuming fire. The desire for distinction is 
 wholly a selfish desire, a disease of the mind, and 
 those in whom it reigns are incapable of any really 
 generous action. Envy and jealousy are the insepa- 
 rable companions of this passion for distinction. In 
 the fire of this ambition all the better sentiments 
 and nobler motives of the soul are consumed. It is a 
 fire that must be fed by the constant sacrifice of con- 
 science and religion. This unholy fire is found too 
 often at the altar of religion, in the very pulpit of the 
 church ; but it scorches and consumes the soul that 
 
234 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 cherishes it in any form. And there is a passion for 
 pleasure, for society, for display, everywhere to be met 
 with, which is a consuming fire. I tliink there is 
 hardly a sadder sight in all the world than the sight of 
 the multitudes of young men and women, and the old 
 as well, in our land to whom the one great interest of 
 living is in social pleasures, amusements, and display. 
 The passion for these things is a fire in which thousands 
 and thousands of youth in this land are consumed and 
 destroyed. If we could see the souls of these votaries 
 of fashion and pleasure, we should see them shrivelling, 
 consuming in the fire of vain excitements, becoming 
 less and less earnest in all the serious concerns of life, 
 until they were cast out at last, ruined souls, without 
 God and without hope. Do not think that these things 
 are far off. Let us look to it that our souls and the 
 souls of our children are not the victims of this 
 devouring fire. 
 
 Our life is like a fire, — a fire that is either purifying 
 us or burning us up. Tlie true Christian life is like 
 the fire in the burning bush ; it burns, but it does not 
 consume. It is earnest and intense, but it is not ex- 
 hausting. The most intense worship of God strength- 
 ens and refreshes us, and all the influences of genu- 
 ine piety are not exhausting but supporting to the soul. 
 Selfish excitements are fed from our own nature, and 
 therefore they exhaust and consume us; but the fires 
 of true religious zeal and life are fed from the life and 
 grace of God, and therefore they do not consume, but 
 only enlighten and warm us. 
 
 To the angels as they look down from the higher 
 worlds, the sinner, the worldling, looks like a burning 
 
THE FIRE IN THE BURNING BUSH. 235 
 
 soul, — a soul consuming itself in the fire of its own 
 self-will and passion. The true Christian looks to 
 them like the burning bush that Moses saw, — a bush 
 that burned with fire, genuine and intense, and yet 
 was not consumed. 
 
236 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 BEIEFER EXTEACTS. 
 I. 
 
 THE LESSON OF THE FEOST-FLOWERS. 
 
 IT was too bad that you had to go so far to find 
 sympathy for your admiration of the frost-flowers. 
 They are among the things that always impress me 
 with a singular sense of the nearness of that spiritual 
 world of intelligence and will and beauty out of wiiich 
 this material universe has come. Sometimes as I have 
 watched them grow, they seemed like something wdiich 
 that great secret Cause is now doing. I saw Him work- 
 ing ! And indeed, does anything seem so close as the 
 visible shooting of crystals to the great Cause, the 
 great spiritual Worker, who ""worketh all tilings ac- 
 cording to the counsel " of His own perfect ideals ? 
 The partition is so thin just there ! He is almost un- 
 veiled. I once felt something similar in watching the 
 opening of a blossom ; but in that case so much had 
 gone before, and the blossoming only completed 
 a process, that the result was farther removed from 
 the cause. Yet it showed His presence, in the way 
 of caring for His little ones. Sometimes these beau- 
 tiful frost-plants seem to me a kind of delicate hint 
 from Him, designedly not too plain, — "Don't mis- 
 take ! I made the plants ! The universe is all one. 
 
BRIEFER EXTRACTS. 237 
 
 the same Life is in all, the same Thought and Love 
 unites all in eternal harmony." And then I could 
 think that that life in crystallization felt in itself the 
 longing, the aspiration toward the higher sphere of 
 living growth and blossom and fruit, and expressed 
 its longing and sent its love in this pure writing, by 
 leaf-and-blossom-like letters. 
 
 Or sometimes they impress me sadly, as if the 
 moisture had been exhaled from vegetation, and re- 
 tained the remembrance, and tried to restore the lost 
 life to itself by these frozen imitations. Poor things, 
 they find as well as we that memories do not bring 
 back the dead, do not restore life, are but white grave- 
 stones over the lost ! Memories are so cold ! And then 
 I could think that possibly such hints as these will 
 all be material objects for us in the world to come. 
 But this is enough and too much of my fancies. 
 
 IL 
 
 (FROM A LETTER.) 
 
 Your last letter, so friendly and welcome, has lain 
 unanswered too long, and it is wrong, perhaps, for me 
 to take a Monday-hour to answer it. And yet perhaps 
 no other day is so devoted in my mind to absent, dis- 
 tant, lost friends, as this. It is my creed that life is a 
 privilege, and the present always the best. Alas, that 
 all creeds are so seldom held in the heart, and exist 
 only as sentiments of the soul ! I am amazed at the 
 constant, relentless dissatisfaction with the present, at 
 
238 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 the eager haste to escape into the past, at the insane 
 pulling on the rope of time to hasten on the future. 
 I know of only one thing that can keep the soul in 
 quiet occupancy of the day and the life as it passes, — 
 a satisfied affection, a love that has and holds its 
 chosen good. Eeligion, though it invests life with 
 value and daily duty with dignity, must still want 
 such an affection with which to fill and sanctify the 
 present. Alas, too, that as one ascends, what is gained 
 in breadth of view, in multitude of objects, is so lost 
 in alienation from the warm earth-life, in a colder, 
 thinner air, which, if purer, is chilling also to the 
 emotional sense ! There must surely be some mighty 
 good awaiting us, when all this restlessness is necessary 
 as a preparation. We send our thoughts out so far 
 from ourselves, so far onward beyond the real limits of 
 our life, and so feel that we must do it, to preserve us 
 from falling into the self-centred littleness of our own 
 personality ! I would gladly be a IMoutaigne, shut up 
 on the third floor of his round tower, resolutely shut- 
 ting his mind in to the equally narrow circle of real 
 and tangible truths, looking on life as a play, and 
 never asking to go behind the scenes ; but Montaigne 
 was as wretched as ever a Dante. 
 
 " Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, 
 Is our destined end or way, 
 But to act that each to-morrow 
 Find us farther than to-day." 
 
 But the faith requisite for the act, — who shall give 
 us that ? You will tell me life is all encompassed with 
 the great, kind presence of the Father in heaven ; and 
 I should answer that it is only as the life, as the soul, 
 
BRIEFER EXTRACTS. 239 
 
 that He surrounds me ; I see nothing to love, nothing 
 to trust, no intentions that regard me, no disposition 
 to do more than out of that placid depth to smile upon 
 me, as well in my distress as in my joy. I am nothing 
 to Him, He is only the world-soul to me. If He would 
 only move from the still serenity of His infinite Being, 
 enter into my nature, take it, with its limitations, 
 wants, woes, duties, loves, and griefs, into personal 
 union with Himself, take on its interests, become re- 
 sponsible for its welfare, unite its experiences with 
 His own, proclaim Himself man's God, God-Man, — I 
 could remember that fact with comfort, I could believe 
 in Him, I could go on in life with general cheerfulness 
 and joy, and with this remembrance could lay the turbu- 
 lent demon of discontent in the hours of darkness. Aud 
 so I do. My dear friend, do you know Christ ? Pardon 
 the question, but do you ? Come ! I will go with you 
 where the trees wave and wliisper overhead, where the 
 shaded depths are like the depths of a pure-souled 
 consciousness, where the waters lie so calm and un- 
 speakably beautiful in the still, bright air, where we 
 are laved and bathed in an air that seems to have come 
 from scenes of angel-life and love. Kneel and adore ; 
 so will I. Melt and weep with the over-fulness of the 
 worship ; so will I. Exult and keep silence, nor shame 
 the grandeur of the triumph with feeble words ; aud so 
 will I, — but our souls are yet far, far apart. The same 
 act of worship is not one. What shall I say ? To me 
 there is a Jesus element, a personal element, a warm 
 human element. My regards gather to and centre in 
 a Person; yours do not. And therefore when you return, 
 it is with the same uncertainty as before. God draws 
 
240 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 you on, but ever escapes your grasp. Your heart lougs 
 toward Him, but does not rest upon Him. It is be- 
 cause God comes near to us only in the Incarnation, 
 and can be our God only when He is so considered. 
 "No man conieth unto the Father but by me." To 
 come to the Father, — that is just what we seek to do. 
 Above all things this is the most desirable, but how 
 unattainable has it been ! He has come to us in one 
 path, we have gone to meet Him in quite another. 
 We meet Him in our path only after we have met 
 Him in His path first. Through Nature we can come 
 to God only when we have come to Him first through 
 Calvary. 
 
 " Well, God knows, His works speak to me of Him," 
 you say. And I say, "WeU, God knows. And the 
 voice of His works grows intelligible and distinct in 
 the teachings of His Son." They speak of Him, but 
 He speaks from Him, because He is of Him. " Lo, this 
 is our God." 
 
 III. 
 
 (FROM A LETTER.) 
 
 Few, I think, can realize the influence of a minister's 
 work upon the brain and nervous system. It is lifting 
 at such an awful load, it is dealing with realities so 
 overwhelmingly great and important. Shall we put 
 down the agony of the garden to tlie account of weak- 
 ness ? The cross of the true Christian is tlie great and 
 terrible woe of mankind. Some weeks ago I said in a 
 letter, "The dream of my life is rest; not rest from labor 
 
BRIEFER EXTRACTS. 241 
 
 because I am weary, not release from any of all my 
 burdens, but God's rest, the rest of a soul at one with 
 Hira, and tilled with His great life." I think I have 
 cast off all created forms of truth, and tried to grasp 
 with literal touch of soul the things themselves. I 
 have tried to realize God, and touch His substance ; 
 tried to make faith give me, not truth, but substances. 
 Of course it is impossible, yet I cannot admit that it is 
 foolish, or anything else than the very best that I or 
 any one else can attempt. 
 
 IV. 
 
 (FROM A LETTER.) 
 
 When I think of your busy life, the importance of 
 the plans you pursue, I have only one fear, — pardon 
 that. I know that your real patrimony lies in the 
 world or kingdom of ideal, spiritual truth and beauty ; 
 and it would be sad for you to get so far from your 
 patrimony in the pursuit of worldly ends as not to be 
 able to collect your rents. The outlet of your being is 
 not expression (you are not a poet or a prophet), but 
 action. But the fountain must be kept full, its com- 
 munion with the great sea must be constant. And 
 then sometimes I think of you standing upon the high 
 precipice of the concrete world, looking off upon the 
 weltering sea of unembodied life and power and love, 
 and with a lonely feeling saying to yourself, " It is only 
 a sea, they are only ocean streams ; there is no great, 
 perfect counterpart of my personality, who meets me 
 in personal relations. I am, but there is no other I 
 
 16 
 
242 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 AM to be a personal friend in His infinite greatness 
 and goodness to me." And I long to say to you, " There 
 is Another ! " Oh, could I give you the Omnipresent 
 Incarnation which meets me in my walks, the great 
 Personal Consciousness that holds me and all things in 
 everlasting remembrance ! You said, when I asked you 
 to define your position, that you thought you were re- 
 ceptive ; and it has seemed to me that you have gone 
 as near to God as you can ever go by that gift. If I 
 have ever gone farther, it has been by an act, a wilful 
 act of faith. I knew that God was, that He must be 
 in continual connection with me and my life. "Now, 
 what I know, I will believe. He is there ! it shall 
 be so for me ! " and then, with thrills, it was so. This 
 is indeed going out of self and beyond self, but it is to 
 find one's self by losing one's self first. Did not the 
 Eedeemer say so, and did He not also utter that deep 
 word, " This is the work of God, that ye believe " ? I 
 know not if you will believe that I have any advantage 
 over you in respect to this recognition of God. As you 
 yourself have said, it is little that is permitted us to do 
 for others in respect of spiritual gains. How awful is 
 that isolation of the single soul in its struggles with 
 Proteus, unless it joins itself consciously to God ! You 
 may think of me as getting slowly a larger, stronger 
 hold upon the universe, and feeling daily more and 
 more that life is a privilege, and may be a triumph. 
 And so " across the wastes " I send you my " All hail ! " 
 and " God be with you ! " 
 
BRIEFER EXTRACTS. 243 
 
 THE LIFE ETERNAL. 
 
 When the growth of the soul has carried it beyond 
 reliance upon earthly fortunes and conditions for its 
 happiness, to rest itself in God, and when it has come 
 to recognize the spiritual in the natural, so as to feel 
 a life, a peace, a soul, a love, in the great Nature that 
 surrounds it, then the soul has entered eternity, and 
 this life becomes the eternal life for it, and the difference 
 between this life and the next is only one of degree. 
 
 Two great facts characterize the " life everlastinof." 
 One of them is the consciousness of God as the Pres- 
 ence in which we live, the infinite Love from which a 
 constant warmth of joy is imparted to us. Whoever 
 has attained the reality of that consciousness, though 
 in an imperfect degree and by occasional experiences, 
 has entered the eternal w^orld, and lived in that ex- 
 perience the eternal life. Could the cares and claims 
 of the worldly life be carried without disturbing that 
 consciousness of Him, the soul would thus be in eter- 
 nity in the same sense as the dead are, as we all shall 
 be wlien with spiritual bodies we find earthly cares no 
 longer interfering as they do now. In our dying, the 
 material world fades away until it has vanished. We 
 see no more the sky above us, the earth around us, the 
 forms of men or things, — yet we live. What takes 
 the place of this vanished world of material things ? 
 It is God. We go to Him. He is the other world, 
 the spirit's world. " I saw no temple therein ; and 
 they need not tlie light of the sun or of the moon, for 
 the Lord is the light, and the temple thereof." The 
 
244 GOD EN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 consciousness of God that we gain here is the same 
 feeling that we shall have there. Nor can it be con- 
 ceived that any sudden greatening of that conscious- 
 ness can take place by the mere act of dying. It 
 depends upon the spiritual capacity of the soul, and 
 this depends upon the degree of its growth: so that 
 the innermost life of the soul undergoes but a slight 
 change in passing through to the life beyond. The 
 life of the soul is simply continued. 
 
 The other fact that marks the character of the life to 
 come is the predominance of the spiritual over the ma- 
 terial, — such a predominance that in all we look upon 
 we see its spiritual significance, its spiritual expression. 
 The spiritual world lies like an atmosphere close upon 
 the material. A tree, a flower, a rock, a lake, are these 
 to the senses only; but to the seeing spirit they are 
 spiritual beauties and truths and meanings. We look 
 upon the wide landscape of hill and valley, and sky 
 and green, and over it and in it, embracing and holding 
 it all, is a spiritual beauty and significance and life. 
 God broods in that quiet loveliness. His peace is on 
 it, love and rest embrace it. Often we stand on the 
 confines of this spiritual world and cannot enter. A 
 strange, self-pitying sadness seizes our hearts. We 
 feel how blessed it would be to sway and float and rest 
 in that great beauty and peace, but we cannot. Sadly 
 as a banished angel might look back on the liills of 
 heaven we look on these. That great life is so near, 
 and yet not for us. But there are souls who do enter 
 it, whom this great spiritual Nature takes to its heart 
 and floods with its life, — souls that are identified with 
 it, and blessed with its blessedness. These souls in 
 
BRIEFER EXTRACTS. 245 
 
 such moments are in eternity, living the very life of 
 heaven. They are in true conscious relations with the 
 whole universe. Every true and accepted soul is now 
 in all its eternal relations, — to God, to the universe, 
 to life ; is not still trying to enter these, but has 
 entered them. The only imperfections of the soul's 
 eternal life here arise from the presence of earthly 
 necessities mingling and claiming so much of our care 
 and thought, and from the incomplete growth of the 
 soul. It is very good for the soul to accept this 
 thought; I find no more strength and courage in any 
 other. It is good to say to ourselves, " This is eter- 
 nity ; I am now a citizen of the universe : this is 
 eternal life that I am living. The ages are mine, the 
 worlds are mine. I shall live forever ; I have no 
 need to fret with anxiety or hurry." It is, after all, 
 the pressure of time on life that disturbs our rest 
 and destroys our peace. To remember that this is 
 eternity, and we are living now in our eternal rela- 
 tions, gives to life breadth and room and leisure. And 
 the soul for whom this is written holds in its power 
 the best earthly conditions for realizing this great 
 rest. May its sweetness and power infold that soul 
 in a great peace ! 
 
 FROM A RECORD OF EXPEEIE^^CES IN THE "NORTH 
 WOODS," OF NEW YORK. 
 
 The hills are bold, primary hills, rounded but rough 
 in outline, and wooded to the tops ; and oh, the beauti- 
 ful white lakes, lying in such dense forests and foliage ! 
 
246 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 At each end of the mountain is a little long, narrow 
 pond, very singular in effect, so deeply hid between the 
 squeezing hills, like water held in two hands. The 
 finest sport we found fishing we had in a small lake, 
 deeply hid in a perfectly rocky basin, the rocks on three 
 sides one hundred and fifty feet high. I tried to sketch 
 it, but the rain washed my paper to pieces. It is our 
 own virgin lake. Fish were never taken from it before. 
 Even the guides suppose there are none in it. There 
 was something strange and almost painful in the depth 
 and purity of the water. It was too pure to yield the 
 sense of adequate support to our boat. We preserve 
 our knowledge of this lake a masonic secret, which it 
 is not hard to do. You must know that this vast forest 
 is not all known to any living man. There are portions 
 of which the deer and bear, the wolf and panther, alone 
 know. It is wonderful, this sublime, vast, glorious 
 forest in the midst of us. If it were ten times greater 
 it would not be practically increased, for it is too great 
 for any one man's knowledge as it is. We intended to 
 visit our virgin again, but a trip in another direction 
 prevented. 
 
 Sometimes we amused ourselves calling the owls in 
 the night, and became so owlish-wise that at last one 
 came at our call, and alighting on a tree near us sent 
 forth the most completely defiant and insolent "hoot" 
 that I ever heard. We insulted and provoked him in 
 every possible manner, but he evidently thought us too 
 well " brought up in the woods " for him to attack. 
 Their hooting is a grand defiant tone in the deep 
 night, and they are the " kings of the cannibal islands." 
 H. came upon one that had killed another in battle. 
 
BRIEFER EXTRACTS. 247 
 
 and was devouring its slaughtered foe. Afterward he 
 put his hand upon a great gray one, sitting in the dark 
 on the bow of the boat, whither he had been attracted by 
 the deer we had killed that evening. The kingly raven 
 had nests near our camp ; the loons laughed and cried 
 their long, echoing, plaintive cry upon the lakes. The 
 gulls fished in our waters. Miss Linnet raised her 
 family by our paths, the red-throated humming-bird was 
 busy and noisy around, the sambucus blossomed in our 
 front yard. But our favorites were the little crossbills, 
 which by the dozen chattered socially round our door, 
 coming into the camp, and sitting on the big chair in 
 front of the door, even when one of us was in it. But, 
 " speaking of birds," you must know the white-throated 
 sparrow; and if you have heard his ah-te-te-teeee," it 
 will ring in your ears now. We came frequently upon 
 broods of young ducks. Once half a dozen of the family 
 were riding nicely on the old mamma's back ; but when 
 the old one was alarmed, and had hid her duckies, it 
 was wonderful how lame she was, — oh dear, how lame ! 
 And once we came upon a brood of young partridges. 
 That old one was cunning. She walked off so slow and 
 still, but contriving so evidently to keep in plain sight, 
 wishing us to think that she was trying to hide from 
 us, while she was really anxious to have us see her and 
 follow her away from her darlings. The eagles flew off 
 at our approach with a strong, business-like working of 
 the sails. Nothing but business in their style of flying. 
 But the graceful floating and very plaintive high-keyed 
 note of the fish-hawk comported ill with his fishy 
 character and pursuits. "We had red and ground 
 sq^uirrels, mink-fishers, rabbits, and otter, for animals. 
 
248 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 And once we pursued a red squirrel wliicli was swim- 
 ming across the lake, and being headed off he lost 
 courage, and when I put out the paddle he ran up it 
 until he saw us so near, and leaped into the water ; but 
 immediately after H. gave him an oar, and he ran into 
 the boat, went a-fishing with us, and on landing took 
 very kiudly to our trees. 
 
 On reaching the balsam woods my eyes suddeuly 
 opened wide. Such mosses, such luxuriance of mosses, 
 such lycopodiums ! Such shades, such alcoves and 
 bowers ! Such places for prayer, for reading, for the 
 deep, sweet luxury of Nirvana ! Nature's very bosom ! 
 You forbade me ever to go to your Green Mountain 
 haunts. I have my revenge now. You shall never go 
 to Brown's Tract till I am ready to go with you, but you 
 shall go. In that " other world " I will drag you away 
 from your " great folks ; " I will make you tramp with me 
 through these deep silences and spiritual shadows ; you 
 shall follow me over those wondrous mosses, and admire 
 through my eyes the glory of that silent world. . . . 
 The wondrous luxuriance of the mosses on the fallen 
 timbers reminded me of you, but I brought away for 
 you only this poor young polypodium. He was grow- 
 ing in such luxuriant company on an enormous rock, 
 a perfect wilderness of young fronds. He was fore- 
 ordained to go to you, and he accepts his destiny. He 
 has closed his fingers in true baby style. Give him 
 welcome for the sake of that great mystery which allies 
 all these youngest children of God to yourself. 
 
 We fixed camp (after entering the woods) by build- 
 ing a bright fire in the wide fireplace, and making a 
 bed of hemlock, and unpacking our packs. We were 
 
BRIEFER EXTRACTS. 249 
 
 happy and noisy as big boys. We found that dignity 
 was a civilized institution, and turned it for the time out 
 of camp. We ate our supper with an intensity of enjoy- 
 ment that was really ludicrous. The first effect of such 
 an absolute freedom is a revolt to the inherent latent 
 savagery of our nature. The animal man, the king of 
 beasts, the tyrant of Nature, starts up to claim his rights 
 when he finds himself in his native paradise of woods 
 again. And then, too, Nature's purifying process in- 
 volves an emesis of all the corruptions of civilization ; 
 these have to come forth. I am afraid that P. swore, 
 and was even a little vulgar in his wit, and that I suf- 
 fered him, without any adequate rebuke. But I noticed 
 that every succeeding day we grew more serious, refined, 
 silent, and reflective. 
 
 My life was, as it should have been, mostly a mere 
 physical life, of rest and freedom. I dropped my bur- 
 dens, left my thinking, and was just swallowed up in 
 the material Nature around me. I went one quiet, bright 
 Sunday morning, before the others were awake, to one 
 of the most silent and secluded places in the woods; 
 probably no human being had ever been there before. 
 The silence, the wildness, the vast life of the forest, and 
 the equally vast decay out of which all that life grew, 
 the depth of the shadows, all overpowered me for the 
 moment. I was too awed and impressed to pray ; and 
 when I did, it was just to claim and feel myself one of 
 the creatures of God, buried in His great Nature, like 
 the animals and birds and insects around me. And the 
 sense of being a part of this Nature, and with all other 
 parts related to God, gave me such a home in existence, 
 in the world, and in God, as I never felt before. The 
 
250 GOD IN NATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 woods demand the essential manliness that is in a man; 
 so much of common life falls away from him in such re- 
 lations to Nature and life. It seems to be man's true 
 calling to find out and take his " living " directly from 
 original sources, and to give himself without scruple or 
 reserve to the material Nature in him and around him. 
 He dreads the return to the dependence and obligations 
 of civilized society. The refinement I should gather 
 from such a life would seem to me more thorough, more 
 true, because attained less through suppression of evil 
 than through a healthy superiority to evil desires and 
 dispositions. The real wants of life alone are felt ; 
 and so many of our sins originate from the artificially 
 created needs of society. 
 
A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 
 
1865. 
 
 To J. a 
 
 The Lord bless thee, and keep thee : 
 
 The Lord make His face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto 
 
 thee : 
 The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. 
 
TE DEUM. 
 
 "\^7E praise Thee, God: we acknowledge Thee to 
 ^^ be the Lord. 
 
 All the earth doth worship Thee, the Father ever- 
 lasting. 
 
 To Thee all angels cry aloud : the heavens, and all the 
 powers therein. 
 
 To Thee cherubim and seraphim continually do cry, 
 
 Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth : 
 
 Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of Thy glory. 
 
 The glorious company of the apostles praise Thee. 
 
 The goodly fellowship of the prophets praise Thee. 
 
 The noble army of the martyrs praise Thee. 
 
 The holy Church thoughout all the world doth ac- 
 knowledge Thee, 
 
 The Father of an infinite majesty ; 
 
 Thine adorable, true, and only Son ; 
 
 Also the Holy Ghost, the Comforter. 
 
 Thou art the King of Glory, Christ. 
 
 Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father. 
 
 "When Thou tookest upon Thee to deliver man, Thou 
 didst humble Thyself to be born of a Virgin. 
 
 When Thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death. 
 Thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all 
 believers. 
 
254 A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 
 
 Thou sittest at the right hand of God, in the glory of 
 the Father. 
 
 We believe that Thou shalt come to be our Judge. 
 
 We pray thee, therefore, help Thy servants, whom Thou 
 hast redeemed with Thy precious blood. 
 
 Make them to be numbered with Thy saints, in glory 
 everlasting. 
 
 Lord, save Thy people, and bless Thine heritage. 
 
 Govern them also, and lift them up forever. 
 
 Day by day we magnify Thee, 
 
 And we worship Thy name ever, world without end. 
 
 Vouchsafe, Lord, to keep us this day without sin. 
 
 Lord, have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us. 
 
 Lord, let Thy mercy be upon us, as our trust is in 
 Thee. 
 
 Lord, in Thee have I trusted : let me never be con- 
 founded. 
 
 PEAYER FOE SPIEITUAL LIFE. 
 
 /^ LOED, my Heavenly Father ! all my life is before 
 Thee, and all its sources are in Thee. Thou givest 
 me life, and to know Thee is yet another and a higher 
 life. I do thank Thee, O God, for my life in nature 
 and the world, but it is only a life in death if my 
 spirit is not conscious of Thee, if I have no spiritual 
 life. O God, I come to Thee for life. I long to be 
 conscious of the spiritual realities. I pray Thee for 
 sensibility to feel Thy tokens in my life. God, let 
 me not by unconsciousness be cut off from Thee and 
 
A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 255 
 
 the spiritual world. I beseech Thee, quicken into life 
 every susceptibility of my soul for the appreliension of 
 Thee ; and oh, impress every such susceptibility with 
 deep experiences of Thy presence and character, O 
 God, grant me faith to accept as realities the truths of 
 Thy Word, that so I may possess " the substance of 
 things hoped for." Save me, Lord, from a barren 
 belief which does not touch the heart. God, every- 
 thing in the world influences me to justify or excuse 
 myself. I beseech Thee for a just and sufiicient sense 
 of my imperfections and sins. I would not be "dead 
 in sin," or call my sins by softer names than Thou wilt 
 use at last. Oh, let not stupidity of soul exclude 
 me from the experiences of a spiritual life. Some- 
 thing in my soul, Lord, ever seeks Thee, is ever 
 turning to Thee. I beseech Thee, come and fill this 
 emptiness which cries out for Thee. Oh, make my 
 soul's apprehension of Thee clearer and more constant, 
 that I may always be able to say with my Saviour, 
 " I am not alone, for the Father is with me." 
 
 God, all things are in Thee, and by Thee all 
 things subsist. Oh, help me to see all things, all 
 persons, all occurrences, in Thee. I have so long 
 lived a shallow life, seeing only the material surfaces 
 of things : and so many around me appear never to 
 see more in life and death thati just the hard, cold 
 facts as they befall : alas ! Lord, I am often in 
 danger of feeling that it is enthusiasm to look for 
 more or better in life than just its material blessings 
 and common social enjoyments. God, save me from 
 such infidelity and atheism. Oh, give me strong con- 
 victions of religious truths, and lively impressions of 
 
256 A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 
 
 them. Help me to be rooted in the spiritual world, 
 that my deeds may grow out of its holiness, and my 
 life may be fashioned and beautified by its purity. Oh, 
 let my outward life repose on a real and profound 
 spiritual life within me, as the sweet white lily grows 
 out of and reposes on the waters, in which it is 
 "fixed but floating." O God, let not my life again 
 become the empty shell of life which it is when Thou 
 art gone out of it. Oh, take my soul into communion 
 with Thee, that so I may live and move in the endless 
 bliss of being in Thy presence and Thy love : for the 
 sake of Christ our Saviour. Amen. 
 
 PEAYEK TO ANTICIPATE THE DAY. 
 
 r\ LOED, my Heavenly Father ! Thou hast wakened 
 ^"^ me to meet this new day, and already its duties 
 and opportunities lay their claims upon my heart. 
 God, Thou seest how weak and incompetent I am, 
 without Thy help, for what this day requires of me. 
 Oh, help me to meet it with a strength equal to its 
 demands. Help me, Lord, to be Thy servant, — to 
 work wdth Thee, in Thine employ. Help me to live 
 and go in the current of Thy will and providence. 
 
 Lord, prepossess my spirit, and draw my thoughts 
 and affections unto Thyself. Guide my way through 
 the hours and employments of this day, and save me 
 from the evil into which without Thy keeping I shall 
 surely fall : for the sake of Christ our Saviour. Amen. 
 
A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 257 
 
 A PRAYER FOR MORNING USE. 
 
 r\ LORD, my Heavenly Father ! I pray Thee, look 
 ^"^ upon me in Thy fatherly love. Oh, let me now 
 come into Thy notice. I am before Thee in the midst 
 of a life whose demands and changes continually ex- 
 haust my powers, and only in what Thou dost impart 
 can my strength be renewed. There are many ways 
 open to me, and only one the true and right way. Oh, 
 let not my soul mistake its true path of life this day. 
 Night and sleep have set me apart and free from the 
 past, and brought me to this opportunity to begin my life 
 anew. Above all things, I beseech Thee, renew a right 
 spirit within me. Help me to put away every low aim, 
 every selfish, careless spirit, from my heart, and in the 
 beauty of sincerity to serve Thy Holy Will this day. 
 
 Lord, Thou hast made all life sacred to me, by 
 Thyself prearranging its conditions, appointing its du- 
 ties, and observing for judgment their performance, — 
 by measuring its trials, and accompanying me by Thy 
 presence into all places. I would take up my life as a 
 sacred thing, despising none of its necessary employ- 
 ments, nor doing carelessly any of its work. 
 
 O Lord, uphold my spirit in the steady preference of 
 whatsoever things are pure and most acceptable to 
 Thee. most holy Father, I dread to contract pollu- 
 tion and defilement of soul in dealing with temptation 
 and sin. Oh, keep me pure and clean when I walk 
 through places haunted by the evil spirits of temp- 
 tation. Let me not yield to the general example, 
 
 17 
 
258 A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 
 
 however general it may be, of carelessness and frivolity 
 of living. 
 
 God, help me to feel the spiritual facts and 
 presences which surround me even in this life, and 
 in every place. Open mine eyes to see how all the 
 mountains are " full of Thy chariots and horsemen," 
 how all places are occupied by Thy presence. 
 
 In the quiet of home, in the intercourse of society, 
 oh, may my spirit be filled with peaceful and contented 
 thoughts of Thy goodness, with genuine charity for all 
 the souls around me ; that the unavoidable and uncon- 
 scious influences of my life may be pure and helpful. 
 
 1 know not what the day may bring to me. I know 
 that all things are possible. O Lord, guide me by Thy 
 gracious power and Spirit, that so my ways may please 
 Thee, while they lead me toward the rest -which re- 
 maineth for Thy people : through our Lord and 
 Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen. 
 
 A PRAYER FROM THE GREEK SERVICE. 
 
 r\ HEAVENLY KING, Comforter, Spirit of Truth, 
 ^^^ in all places present, in whom is all fulness, the 
 Treasury of all good gifts, and the Fountain of our life ! 
 come and make Thy tabernacle with me, cleanse me 
 from all wickedness, and replenish my soul with all 
 goodness. 
 
 All-holy triune God, be merciful to me. Lord, be 
 propitious to my sinfulness. God, pardon my trans- 
 gressions. 
 
A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 259 
 
 O Holy One, be Thou my Shepherd, and cleanse me 
 from all my imperfections, for Thy Name's sake. 
 
 Lord, have mercy ! Lord, have mercy ! Lord, have 
 mercy ! Amen, 
 
 A LESSON OF EVENING WOESHIP. 
 
 TT is good to give thanks unto the Lord, to sing 
 praises unto Thy name, O Most High. 
 
 To show forth Thy loving-kindness every morning, and 
 Thy faithfulness every night. 
 
 O God, Thou art my God; my mouth shall praise 
 Thee with joyful lips, 
 
 While I meditate on Thee in the night-watches. 
 
 Because Thou hast been my help, therefore in the 
 shadow of Thy wings will I rejoice. 
 
 Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night 
 showcth knowledge. Lord, make me to know mine end, 
 and tJie measure of my days, what it is, 
 
 That I may know how frail I am. Behold, Thou 
 hast made my days as a handbreadth, and my age is 
 as nothing before Thee. 
 
 But Thou art the same, and TJiy years have no end. 
 From everlasting to everlasting Thou art God. 
 
 Where is my God, who giveth songs in the night ? 
 O Lord, hear. Lord, forgive. 
 
 According to the multitude of Thy tender mercies, Not 
 out my transgressions. 
 
 Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquities, and 
 cleanse me from my sin. 
 
260 A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 
 
 Deliver me, Lord, from mine enemies; I Jlee unto 
 Thee to hide me. 
 
 Oh, keep my soul, and deliver me ; let me not be 
 ashamed, for I put my trust in Thee. 
 
 / will lay me down in 'peace and sleep, for TJiou, Lord, 
 makest me to dwell in safety. 
 
 He that keepeth thee will not slumber ; behold. He 
 that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. 
 
 The Lord is thy keeper ; the Lord is thy shade on thy 
 right hand. 
 
 The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil, He shall 
 preserve thy soul. 
 
 The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy com- 
 ing in from this time forth and even for evermore. 
 
 Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy 
 Ghost, 
 
 As it ivas in the heginning, is now, and ever shall he, 
 world without end. Amen. 
 
 EVENING PEAYEE. 
 
 (From Jeremy Taj'lor.) 
 
 /^^ LOED GOD, who art the light and splendor of 
 ^-^^ souls, in the brightness of Thy countenance is 
 eternal day, which knows no night. In Thine arms 
 and in Thy protection is all tranquillity, quietness, and 
 everlasting repose. While the darkness covers the face 
 of the earth, receive, O Lord, my body and soul into 
 Thy custody ; let not the spirits of darkness come near 
 my dwelling, neither suffer my fancy to be abused with 
 the visions of the night. 
 
A BOOK OF PKAYERS. 261 
 
 Pardon and forgive, Lord, all the sins and offences 
 of my youth, the errors of my understanding, the in- 
 ordination of my affections, the irregularities of all 
 mine actions, and particularly of whatsoever I have 
 transgressed this day, in thought or word or deed. 
 Lord, let not Thy wrath arise; for though I have 
 deserved the extremest pressure of Thine indignation, 
 yet remember my infirmity, and how Thou has sent 
 Thy Son to reveal Thine infinite mercies to us, and 
 convey pardon and salvation to the penitent. 
 
 I beseech Thee also to accept the heartiest devotion 
 and humblest acknowledgment of a thankful heart for 
 Thy blessings, and Tiiy preservation of me this day. 
 Lord, let Thy grace be so present with me that though 
 my body sleep, yet my soul may forever be watchful 
 that my soul sleep not in sin. Let the remembrance of 
 Thy goodness be first and last with me, and so unite my 
 heart to thee with habitual charity that all my actions 
 and sufferings may glorify Thee and serve Thy honor 
 and truth in the world. And grant, Lord, that at last, 
 escaping from the darkness of this world, I may come 
 to the land of everlasting rest, in Thy light to behold 
 light and glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Rex tremendse majestatis, 
 Qui salvandos salvas gratis, 
 Salva me, fons pietatis. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Recordare, Jesu pie, 
 Quod sum causa tuae viae, 
 Ne me perdas ilia die. 
 
262 A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 
 
 A PEAYER FOR THE EVENING. 
 
 r\ LORD, Heavenly Father, the darkness and the 
 ^^^ light are both alike unto Thee, and both alike 
 summon my soul to Thy presence, — the one to ask for 
 guidance while I act, the other for keeping while I rest. 
 To Thee, Lord, I now draw near ; turn Thee unto me, 
 and have mercy upon me. Look, Lord, upon Thy 
 weak, dependent child, with gracious thoughts. Suffer 
 me to come even to Thy seat ; to lay upon Thy hands 
 my life, my soul, my cares, my all. Behold me, my 
 God ; I can carry my burdens no farther now ; I must 
 pause and rest; I must sink for a season out of the 
 world, that I may yet stay in it. 
 
 Into thy hands, O my God, I commit my spirit. To 
 Thee I intrust all that I have, all that I love. Be 
 pleased, God, I entreat, to take this charge of mine 
 and me upon Thyself. At Thy feet, God, I lay 
 down my life this day, — all the work I have done, all 
 the thoughts of my heart, all the trials I have suffered 
 and the blessings I have enjoyed, and, alas ! the sins I 
 have committed. All my life, O Lord, I lay it down 
 before Thee. Look upon it in the greatness of Thy 
 compassion. Marked with my own imperfections, 
 and stained with the common depravity, I know it 
 cannot meet Thine acceptance for its own sake. Oh, 
 for His sake whose vast sacrifice in our belialf com- 
 pensates our failures and our sins, let Thy pardon cover 
 the sinfulness and cure the evil of my day's life, this 
 day. 
 
A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 263 
 
 Oh, let the washings of regeneration wash out the 
 stains of sinful contacts with an evil world upon my 
 soul. Let me bear away with me into the future from 
 this day nothing of the evil I have seen or suffered; 
 and let every impression of truth and beauty and 
 goodness be fixed forever upon my soul. 
 
 I pray Thee, my Father, for all in this wide world 
 whose lives are linked by any ties with mine. Be 
 pleased, Lord, to take them each into Thy favor. 
 Let Thy constant blessing make them rich in every 
 true good of life, and may Thy gracious hand guide 
 them and me to the blest reunion of all thy children 
 in their heavenly mansions. 
 
 Lord, hasten Thy kingdom and coming, when 
 there shall be no more sorrow nor crying, and when 
 Thy word shall be fulfilled which saith, "There shall 
 be no night there." 
 
 Lord, I bless Thee for all Thy gifts, I adore Thy 
 glorious majesty, I trust Thy boundless love, and I 
 beseech Thee to accept me in Thy Beloved, our Lord 
 and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen. 
 
 Quaerens me sedisti lassns, 
 Redemisii crucem passus, 
 Tantus labor non sit cassus. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Juste Judex ultionis, 
 Donum fac remissionis 
 Ante diem ratiouis. 
 
264 A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 
 
 A LITANY. 
 
 /^ GOD, the Father Almighty, source and essence 
 ^'^ of life, my soul which came forth from Thee 
 turns now to seek Thee, and 
 
 / beseech Thee, hear my prayer. 
 O God, merciful and gracious, whose love is an in- 
 finite ocean of tenderness in which all Thy creatures 
 live and move, 
 
 / beseech Thee, hear my prayer. 
 O God, everlasting Father, who for us and for our 
 sins didst enter into our nature, to assume as Thine 
 own our cause, our woes and wants, 
 / beseech Thee, hear my prayer. 
 That it may please Thee to acknowledge me among 
 Thy children whom Thou dost accept to Thine ever- 
 lasting favor, 
 
 / beseech Thee, hear my prayer. 
 That it may please Thee to endow my soul with the 
 gifts of Thy grace, to fit me for all the labors and 
 burdens of my life, 
 
 / beseech Thee, hear my prayer. 
 That it may please Thee to show me Thyself, and 
 aid me to a just recognition of Thee in all Thy rela- 
 tions to my life, 
 
 / beseech Tliee, hear my prayed'. 
 That it may please Thee to write Thy law deeply 
 upon my heart, and make me to feel daily the powers 
 of the world to come, 
 
 / beseech TJiee, hear my prayer. 
 
A BOOK OF PliAYERS. 265 
 
 From all unbelief, distrust, and slavish fear of Thee, 
 
 Lord, deliver me. 
 From all idolatry of any or all Thy works, from 
 setting them in the place of Thee, the living God, 
 Lord, deliver me. 
 From pride of reason, from presumptuous imagina- 
 tions, from all blindness of heart, vainglory, and 
 hypocrisy, 
 
 Lord, deliver me. 
 From the unreasonable dominion of my tastes, from 
 uncharitableness and neglect of other souls, 
 Lord, deliver vie. 
 From all thoughtless words, from all sarcastic and 
 critical dispositions, from wounding any by unkiud- 
 ness, 
 
 Lord, deliver me. 
 From all haste and loss of self-possession, from im- 
 patience and a troubled mind, 
 Lord, deliver 7ne. 
 In the day of my trial and affliction, in sufferings of 
 mind and pains of body, in mortifications of pride and 
 in loss of esteem, 
 
 Ljord, grant me Tliy peace. 
 In solitudes and secret places, and whensoever I am 
 alone with myself, 
 
 / beseech Thee, he with my spirit. 
 In the society of others, amid the gay and glad and 
 amid the mourning or oppressed, from losing my true 
 self through sympathy, and from losing my opportuni- 
 ties through want of it, 
 
 / beseech Tlue, preserve me, Lord. 
 That it may please Thee to bless all that I love, 
 
2G6 A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 
 
 whosoever and wheresoever they are, with safety and 
 health and Thy favor to their souls, 
 / beseech Thee, hear my prayer. 
 That it may please Thee graciously to regard and 
 help all forsaken and forgotten souls, whom death or 
 sin has bereaved of earthly friends, and who have 
 none to pray for them by name, 
 
 Lord, I beseech Thee, hear my prayer. 
 
 That it may please Thee to have mercy upon all 
 souls deluded and lost in error, and mercifully deliver 
 them into the knowledge of Thy truth, 
 / beseech Thee, hear my prayer. 
 
 By the greatness of Thy love, declared in all Thy 
 works and word, 
 
 Listen to my supplications, Lord. 
 
 By the sacred mystery of Thy holy Incarnation, 
 by Thy cross and passion, by Thy precious blood of 
 atonement, and by all the pledges of promise in Thy 
 Word, 
 
 1 beseech Thee, hear my prayer. 
 
 By the utter weakness and dependence of my life 
 and soul upon Thy grace, and the dread terrors of 
 separation from Thy love, 
 
 / beseech Thee, hear me, my God. 
 Day by day, in common labors and in sudden trials, 
 in unobserved employments and in public walks, 
 Lord, I beseech Thee, be with my spirit. 
 In the last sad hours of life, in the dark mystery of 
 death, at the entrance of the eternal world, before Thy 
 throne of judgment, and through the endless ages, 
 
 Lord, L beseech Thee, keep me in Tliy love, forever 
 and for evermore. 
 
A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 267 
 
 Lord most holy ! Father Ahiiighty ! ever- 
 blessed Christ, Son of God and Son of Man ! O Holy 
 Ghost, ever-blessed God in us, the Comforter! 
 Have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer. 
 
 Amen. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Ingemisco tanquam reus, 
 Culpa rubet vultus nieus, 
 Supijlicaiiti parce, Deus ! 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Qui Mariam absolvisti, 
 Et latronem exauuisti, 
 Mihi quoque spem dedisti. 
 
 A PEAYER FOR EVENING USE. 
 
 r~\ LOPiD, my Heavenly Father ! Thou art the only 
 ^-'^ fountain of all human excellence. All that en- 
 nobles or adorns the soul, all that enriches the life with 
 value for others or profit for myself, must come from 
 Thee. Hear me when I call, God of my righteousness. 
 All my springs are in Thee. 
 
 I take courage to call upon Thee, because Thou hast 
 been my help. In all the ages and changes of life, 
 in all my wants and sorrow and distress, Thou hast 
 helped me with deliverance, or else with grace to 
 endure my lot. Have mercy upon me now, and hear 
 my prayer. 
 
268 A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 
 
 I thank Thee, O God, that Thou hast revealed Thy- 
 self to me when I was following after empty vanities 
 and deluded with false dreams, going willingly with the 
 godless multitude in paths of impiety, despising and 
 neglecting Thy love. I bless Thee, O God, that Thou 
 wilt accept souls so unworthy as mine, and make me 
 Thine own by a gracious adoption, and hear my prayers 
 when my wants bring me to Thy throne. Before Thy 
 holy majesty, and covered with my sinfulness, / stand 
 in awe, and earnestly desire to be holy. / commune 
 with my own heart upon my bed, and long to be in per- 
 fect peace with Thee, that my restless heart may be 
 stilled by the power of Thy benediction. 
 
 How vainly, Lord, have my wandering desires 
 sought to find a real good in material, temporal bless- 
 ings ! In alienation from Thee is only despair and 
 death for me. In Thy favor is life, and in the sense of 
 Thy love is greater good than in all the world beside. 
 
 Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon 
 me. Grant me, I beseech Thee, a constant apprehen- 
 sion of Thy presence and love, for this is my supreme 
 good. 
 
 Lord, beneath Thy gracious sheltering care / will 
 lay me down in peace and sleep. In Thy hand no dan- 
 ger shall reach my soul. Through Thy guardianship 
 no evil can come nigh my dwelling. Into Thy hand 
 
 1 commit myself for all time and all eternity, look- 
 ing for Thy mercy through Thy holy Son, our Saviour. 
 Ame7i. 
 
A BOOK OF PKAYERS. 269 
 
 A MOTHER'S PEAYER FOR HER CHILDREN 
 
 f^ GOD, my Heavenly Father ! Thou hast made me 
 ^^^ with wants which so vastly transcend my powers, 
 and loaded my life with interests, fears, and hopes which 
 I can only carry, and not control ! Thou hast reserved 
 to Thyself the command over every source of good and 
 evil to my life. I humbly beseech Thee, therefore, that 
 I may come to Thee, because I have nowhere else to go; 
 and my spirit must go somewhere, witli its burdens of 
 prayer and anxiety for those whom Thou hust given 
 me. I thank Thee, my Father, for my cliikh'en, and 
 for every grace with which Thou hast endowed them. 
 I thank Thee for every qualification which they possess 
 for the life that is before them, in health, and intel- 
 lectual capacity, and moral dispositions. I bless Thee, 
 God, for their affection and confidence, and for every 
 hold that I have upon their hearts. Thou art gracious 
 unto me in these gifts. I bless Thee for all the pure 
 delight, the speechless love, that I have felt in my little 
 ones when as infants they lay in my arms, and for tlie 
 pleasant hopes that their after years have wakened in 
 my heart. But, God, Thou seest into my soul, and 
 Thou readest all the anxieties of my love. 
 
 O my Father, life is so fearful a trial, so constant an 
 exposure, of the soul. The world is so full of evil, and 
 over life hangs the dreadful possibility of ruin, and 
 hopeless sorrow. I can but feel these deep anxieties, 
 and come to Thee for help and grace to my chil(h'cn 
 and to myself. O God, hear my prayer. I beseech 
 
270 A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 
 
 Thee, make my children Thine also. Keep them from 
 the evil that is in the world. Give them a horror of all 
 vileness, a love of all goodness. Oh, let not the fasci- 
 nations of pleasure overpower their conscience, or the 
 awful unbelief of the world destroy their faith in Thee. 
 They must indeed be tried, they must be tempted, 
 but God, I beseech Thee, keep them in their 
 temptation. 
 
 I pray Thee, grant me grace to do for them all that I 
 can do. Help me, Lord, lest I fail to represent Thy 
 love and truth to them aright. Help me to show a just 
 and constant affection to them, never weakly indulgent, 
 and never coldly indifferent. 
 
 Lord, Thou seest my heart; be compassionate to 
 my fears. Through the perils that fill their path in life 
 I pray Thee preserve them. May their experience of 
 evil, of sorrow, and of sin beget in them a saving sense 
 of dependence upon Thee. May all the blessings of 
 Thy goodness make them grateful and charitable. And 
 oh, may Thy truth and word dwell in their hearts and 
 minds, preserving them from the delusions of error, 
 from the impositions of the designing, and from igno- 
 rance of their immortal relations and wants. 
 
 O God, the fountain of life is with Thee. From Thee 
 I have received these living souls that call me mother. 
 Thou art the Father of their spirits ; oh, gather them 
 and me to the house of mansions at last, safely to rest 
 in Thy love forever : through Jesus our Saviour. Amen. 
 
A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 271 
 
 A PRAYER FOR HELP IN COMMON LIFE. 
 
 /^ LORD, my Heavenly Father, I come before Thee 
 ^-^ in the midst of the common relations of life with 
 which Thou hast surrounded me. I desire to bring my- 
 self with these relations unto Thee. It is by them that 
 I feel myself accused ; and I confess M'ith sorrow how 
 incompetent and unfaithful I have been. I beseech 
 Thee to help me to enter into my daily work, into my 
 intercourse with my family, my servants, my neighbors, 
 and into my solitary employments, with a more true 
 and profitable spirit. I beseech Thee, pardon the dis- 
 content which has so often complained of my lot and 
 longed for other, or happier, or higher fortunes. Thou 
 hast made my place in the world for me ; I would 
 therefore take it with all my heart, and bring into it all 
 the powers Thou hast given me. Oh, help me to find 
 at home what I seek abroad. Help me to find my best 
 and dearest joys in the persons and employments near- 
 est to me. Deliver me, Lord, from perverted aspira- 
 tions. Oh, deliver me from the selfishness that seeks 
 its own apart from that unselfish devotion of love 
 through which "our own" must always come to us. 
 God, save me from sinning against love. Grant me 
 love enough for all my relations to all others ; let me 
 not be poor in this only power to live aright. And 
 teach me how to love, and how to show my love, and 
 how to bless others with it. I would gladly exchange 
 the narrow anxieties for myself, for the more painful 
 solicitude for others. O Lord, Thou wilt compassion- 
 
272 A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 
 
 ately see my weakness and frequent failures, for it has 
 pleased Thee so to try me daily, hy the duties and diffi- 
 culties of my daily work in the world. And it is by 
 these, God, that I am tried, more than by all the un- 
 foreseen or uncommon events of life. Oh, make me able 
 not only to fill my place and do its work, but to find 
 my peace and my rest in it. Alas ! O Lord, my wings 
 are ever fluttering for flight ; my eyes are ever on the 
 far enchanted heights ; I am ever thinking of Thee as 
 far away in some crystal sphere of white and dazzling 
 glory ; the future is ever pulling me out of the present ; 
 my life is torn and divided because I cannot bring 
 heaven into the bounds of my life in this world, or 
 transcend those bounds to find the heaven beyond. Oh, 
 teach me to do both, and especially the first, — to live 
 as an angel would who should take my life to live, 
 never feeling that heaven was beyond his reach. O 
 Lord, I pray Thee, help me to travel without leaving 
 home, — as we visit the stars, staying still upon the 
 earth. Lord, take, I beseech Thee, the aching out of 
 my longings, and give me joyful strength instead. So 
 help me to make a chariot of my common relations 
 and conditions, in which to ascend up into heaven. In 
 these Thou wilt come to me ; out of these will come 
 my judgment, and all the real rewards of my life. I 
 know, Lord, that if I am ever crowned at all at last, 
 it will be as victor and faithful in these. God, help 
 me! gracious Spirit of Life and Love, strengthen me ! 
 Now will I take up my life once more, and suffer its obli- 
 gations and cares to come upon me. Oh, leave me not 
 alone ; give me songs in my heart to cheer me in my 
 work. And, Lord, remember that I am but dust, and 
 
A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 273 
 
 grant me strength equal to my days ; that so this eartlily 
 life may lead me at last into the stronfr, unwearied life 
 of heaven : for the Kedeemer's sake. Amen. 
 
 THOUGHTS. 
 
 (From Marcus Antoninus.) 
 
 npO her who gives and takes back all, — to Nature, — 
 the man who is instructed and modest says, Give 
 what thou wilt ; take back what thou wilt : and he 
 says this not proudly, but deliberately, and well pleased 
 with her. 
 
 Everything harmonizes with me which is harmo- 
 nious with thee, Universe. Nothing for me is too 
 early or too late, which is in due time for thee. Every- 
 thing is fruit to me which thy seasons bring, O Nature. 
 Erom thee are all things, in thee are all things, to thee 
 all things return. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Preces mese non sunt dignae, 
 Sed tu bonus fac benigne, 
 Ne perenni cremer igae. 
 
 XV. 
 
 Inter oves locum prsesta, 
 Et ab hsedis me sequestra, 
 Statuens in parte dextra. 
 
 18 
 
274 A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 
 
 A LESSON OF SUBMISSIOIST AKD HOPE. 
 
 (From the Greek Church.) 
 
 T T IDE not Thy face from me, Lord ; put not Thy 
 servant away in anger. Thou hast been my 
 help : leave me not, neither forsake me, God of my 
 salvation. my God, I cry in the daytime, and in 
 the night season I am not silent. 
 
 But Thou art holy, Thou that inhabitest the praises 
 of Israel. Our fathers trusted in Thee ; they trusted 
 in Thee, and Thou didst deliver them. But I am a 
 worm, and no man ; smitten of Thee, Lord, and afflicted, 
 tormented, forsaken. Thou hast filled me with bitter- 
 ness, and made me drunk with wormwood. Thou hast 
 removed my soul far off from peace ; 1 forgat prosperity. 
 
 But, God, Thou art my God ; early will I seek 
 Thee. Be not Thou far from me ; Lord, haste Thee 
 to help me. I acknowledge my sin unto Thee, and my 
 iniquity have I not hid. Oh, do Thou forgive the in- 
 iquity of my sin. 
 
 Thou art my hiding-place ; Thou shalt preserve me 
 from trouble ; Thou shalt compass me about with songs 
 of deliverance. 
 
 I am poor and needy, yet the Lord thinketh upon 
 me. Thou art my help and my deliverer : make no 
 tarrying, my God ! 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Oro supplex et acclinis, 
 Cor contritum quasi ciuia, 
 Gere curam mei finis. 
 
A BOOK OF TRAYERS. 275 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Lachrymosa dies ilia 
 Qua resurget ex favilla, 
 Judicandus homo reus, 
 Huic ergo parce, Deus. 
 
 AN ACT OF PATIENCE AND RESIGNATION. 
 
 (From Jeremy Taylor.) 
 
 T KNOW, God, that Thou art infinitely wise and 
 infinitely good, and Thou disposest all the events 
 of Thy creatures to excellent purposes, and delightest to 
 bring good out of evil. Behold, O God, I am Thy ser- 
 vant and Thy creature; do to me as seemeth good in 
 Thine eyes : only give me patience and a long-suffering 
 spirit, that I may not murmur secretly when I complain 
 openly ; that I may not make haste in the day of my 
 calamity, but with a quiet spirit expect and wait for 
 the time of my redemption. 
 
 But make no long tarrying, O my God. Make haste 
 to help me, God of my salvation ; and be pleased to 
 give me light from heaven, that with the eye of faith I 
 may see beyond the cloud, and look for those comforts 
 which Thou didst prepare for Tliy servants that love 
 Thee and put their trust in Thee, and have laid up all 
 their hopes in the bosom of God, And when patience 
 has had its perfect work, be pleased to let Thy com- 
 forts, God, delight my soul, while I learn from the 
 things I suffer to trust Thy love with dearer faith and 
 sweeter rest. 
 
276 A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 
 
 A PEAYEE OF SUBMISSION 
 
 /^ LOED, the God of the whole earth, all souls are 
 ^^^ Thine, and my soul and my life are wholly in Thy 
 hands. I have neither power to oppose nor right to 
 gainsay Thy will. Lord, look on me now. Behold, I 
 draw near to make my submission unto Thee. My heart, 
 darkened and torn with its griefs and its fears, flees, as 
 a bird to its mountain, to Thee. In Thee, from whom 
 my trial cometh, alone is there refuge for my souL 
 
 O my God, I confess Thy perfect right to do all that 
 Thou hast done, and in all that my fears anticipate I 
 confess my desert of the worst I fear, and dare not lift 
 up my hand to resist Thy will, whatever it may be. 
 But, O my Father, I cannot bear alone my load of life. 
 I do tremblingly say Thy will be done. Oh, give me 
 power to accept Thy will without fear, — to lay myself 
 at Thy feet, without a wish for more of any earthly 
 good or less of any earthly evil than the day brings to 
 me. Thou hast created the affections which life wounds 
 and bereaves ; Thou wilt look pitifully upon the bleed- 
 ing of their wounds. Thy hand controls the changes 
 of ray life, and Thy will measures out my lot to me. 
 Oh, be patient with the weakness of a soul ungrown 
 and ignorant. My heart clings to its idols, and it is 
 hard to forsake them and cling to Thee alone. They 
 are so near, and Thou, to my weak faith, so far. Thou 
 liidest Thyself, and Thy greatness is so great above me 
 that I cannot always feel Thy sympathy for me. 
 
 my Fatlier, I am dumb before Thee. I dare not 
 urge my prayer, I dare only to leave myself in Thy 
 
A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 277 
 
 hands, and hold myself ready to accept even the worst 
 that can come. Yet oli, he merciful ! Remember, 
 Lord, how frail I am. My heart teaches me that I 
 have no right to ask exemption from any evil I suffer 
 or any sorrow which I fear; but, God, I beseech 
 Thee, measure not Thy goodness by my desert. I am 
 Thy creature. Thou hast brought me into being. Spare, 
 Lord, the work of Thine hand. Crush not utterly a 
 soul that cries to Thee out of deep weakness and de- 
 pendence. Lo, I submit myself to Thy will, venturing 
 only to implore with humility Thy mercy, to temper 
 for me Thy deserved judgments, and that whatever it 
 shall please Thee to take away from me, it may please 
 Thee to leave me the comfort of Thy peace, and leave 
 not my soul to be bewildered by its trials, and fall 
 through despair into outer darkness. 
 
 O Christ, who in the Garden and on the Cross didst 
 touch the very deeps of human grief and pain, be 
 gracious unto me in the hour of darkness and grief. 
 O Father, for His sake be merciful unto me. Amen. 
 Amen. 
 
 SENTENCES OF COMFORT IN SORROW. 
 
 A S a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitietli 
 them that fear Him. 
 He will not always chide, neither will He keep His 
 anger forever. 
 
 When He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. 
 And it shall come to pass that at evening time it 
 shall be liiiht. 
 
278 A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 
 
 AN ACT OF HOPE. 
 
 /^ GOD, my Heavenly Father ! I draw near to Thee 
 ^^^ and thankfully call upon Thy name to bless Thee 
 for the nature and the living soul that Thou hast given 
 me, and for the possibility of a great and everlasting life. 
 Hitherto my life has wandered in strange paths which 
 I have not known, but I can thankfully see that Thou 
 hast led me about and instructed me by all througli 
 which I have passed. I can see that my life has been 
 a plan to develop and instruct and save my soul, and 
 can therefore the more easily trust myself to Thee for 
 the ages to come. 
 
 O Lord, I thank Thee for the great and precious 
 hopes I cherish in my secret heart of the life to come. 
 My heart reaches forth, exultant, to grasp the perfec- 
 tion of nature and life which awaits me in the blessed 
 home which Thou hast prepared for Thy earth-born 
 children. I thank Thee that I can overlook the inter- 
 vening years, and reach by faith, and for a season rest 
 in, that " remaining rest." 
 
 O God, Thou hast indeed made the plan of man's 
 life great and good, and he who has health of body and 
 strength of soul to subdue and conquer it and enjoy its 
 resources finds it even in this world rich and blessed. 
 Oh, I thank Thee that I too shall some time be master 
 of life, stronger than all external forces, crowned king 
 of life, reigning with strong and easy sway over life's 
 difficulties and tributaries ; and that that which now 
 exhausts my strength to attain, leaving none to en- 
 joy, will then be easy of attainment and rich in reward. 
 
A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 279 
 
 my God, I long to rise to that elastic, inexhaustible 
 viofor of nature and will which, however conscious of 
 exertion, is never conscious of exhaustion. I bless 
 Thee, my God, that when I liave learned whereon I 
 stand, Thou wilt give me that power, and I shall be 
 done with all my weaknesses forever. 
 
 I bless Tiiee, my Father, for the hope of holiness. 
 
 1 shall be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness. 
 Thou wilt wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and 
 cleanse me from my sin, and I shall carry no longer 
 the hateful burden of self-consciousness which has 
 been my burden here. My soul, purified by Thy grace, 
 may then join itself to Thee unrestrained by the sepa- 
 rating sense of unlikeness and unfitness for Thy fellow- 
 ship. I shall be like Thee, for I shall see Thee as 
 Thou art. 
 
 I bless Thee, my Father, for the hope of knowledge 
 and of truth. Tliou hast ever spoken in parables, but 
 the time cometh when Thou wilt show me plainly of 
 the Father. God, there is so much to know ! I bless 
 Thee that I shall know it all. Step by step, with ever- 
 growing delight, I shall walk through every path where 
 Thy power and wisdom has gone before me, gathering 
 tlie thoughts of Thy heart, learning to know Thee better 
 by all that I learn of Thy works. For this vast and end- 
 less delight in tlie discovery of Thy truth and wisdom 
 and beauty in the universe T thank Thee, O God. 
 
 And I bless Thee for the hope of love, the hope to 
 meet again my kindred souls in more perfect relations ; 
 for the perfect love which waits to fill my own heart, 
 and for that which waits for me in the hearts of others ; 
 for the bond of perfectness which makes heavenly 
 
280 A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 
 
 society complete, and with which solitudes can never 
 be lonely any more. 
 
 I bless Thee, my Father, for the hope of Thy 
 glory. Thou wilt show me Thyself; mine eyes shall 
 see the King in His beauty. I know that my Ee- 
 deemer liveth, and in my flesh shall I see God, whom 
 I shall see for myself, mine eyes shall behold, and not 
 another. O Father, I have sought Thee in Thy works. 
 I have worshipped Thee with Thy children. In sorrow 
 and in praise have I drawn near to Thee. Thou hast 
 been the hiding-place of my spirit. But Thou art a 
 God that hidest Thyself; I praise Thee it is not for- 
 ever. I shall see Thee, shall look upon Thy glory, and 
 beneath the dread and infinite majesty shall feel with 
 blessed rest and peace of heart that Tliou art my God, 
 my Father, my portion for evermore. 
 
 God, let me be saved by hope from weak despond- 
 ings, from fatal despair. Grant me grace firmly to trust 
 Thy precious promises, and quietly to rest on the pros- 
 pect of the future. 
 
 Help me, Lord, to feel these hopes as a support in 
 my labor, a stimulant in all despondent moods; and 
 in the time that seemeth good unto Thee grant me to 
 exchange my hopes for their fruition, and in that great 
 bliss to praise Thee for their fruit, as I now do for their 
 blossom in this world. 
 
 God, I know that every hope rests wholly npon 
 Thy mercy ; and that mercy I entreat and trust, through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 
 
A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 281 
 
 AN OCCASIONAL PRAYER. 
 
 r\ GOD, my Heavenly Father! Thou art my God, 
 ^"^ my refuge, my rest. My times are in Thy hand. 
 I am as a little child in Thy great, watchful, tender care. 
 I am as the thoughtless, careless little bird, busy with 
 its little life, singing its tireless little song, and Thou 
 the great, deep, warm, motherly sky bending over it 
 the long summer day. 
 
 God, I live I know not how ; my days come and 
 go in the long procession, and I sit as the spectator of 
 the pleasant show. Thou spreadest the morning on the 
 mountains, the long bright sunny days upon the hills 
 and fields, and the wide, holy scene of peace breathes 
 to me in silent murmurs the mother-song of love. 
 
 God, it is good to live, it is so good to live, when 
 Thy peace is upon the earth, and falls as a mantle of 
 light upon my heart ! 
 
 blessed Father, my heart rejoices in the wondrous 
 love and beauty in which I and the world are em- 
 bosomed. I love my weakness, I rejoice in my little- 
 ness, that I may feel the more Thy greatness, and the 
 glorious supremacy of Thy love over me and over all. 
 
 O Lord, I thank Thee that sometimes Thou makest 
 me free from care, and givest me a pure, simple soul- 
 life, free from time and toil. Thou art so near, when 
 the world does not separate me from Thee. I can 
 drink the cup of the heavenly communion, and share 
 the dear rest and peace of the spiritual world, when 
 Thou makest for me by sickness, by solitude, a pause 
 in the turbulence of the earth-life. Father, let not 
 
282 A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 
 
 the world swallow me up. Its fightings and strivings 
 are so insiguificaut; help me to live among them and 
 bear my part without entanglement in their excite- 
 ments. Oh, let thy peace keep my heart and mind 
 untrouLled and serene. Oh, help me to feel in my 
 heart the leisure in which Thou dost work Thy works, 
 and without haste to do mine. Oh, save me from the 
 great and increasing pressure of time upon my life. 
 Teach me, Lord, the secret of labor that is not toil. 
 Weary and laden, Saviour, give me power to rest. 
 
 I thank Thee, O God, that there is also rest in the 
 grave, and in the world beyond. O God, it is good 
 also to die. In the time which Thou wilt choose, oh 
 let me die, that I may find the life everlasting, through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 
 
 AN ACT OF FELLOWSHIP. 
 
 r\ LOED, my Heavenly Father, — Father too of all 
 ^"^ mankind, — I draw near to Thee, who art my 
 spirit's home and rest, to comfort and strengthen my 
 heart by communion with Thee and fellowship with 
 all souls. It pleased Thee, God, to make me one 
 and separate, to give me a personal soul, parted by an 
 impassable gulf from all others, and to appoint for me a 
 life secret and separate from all but Thyself. Standing 
 thus alone in this great universe, loaded so with the fear- 
 ful gift of personal existence, I join myself, O Lord, to 
 Thee, my weakness to Thine omnipotence, my poverty 
 
A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 283 
 
 to Thy vast wealth. I would take up with serious 
 joy the honor of a soul that belongs to myself and the 
 sovereignty therein granted to me. And I would ac- 
 cept cheerfully the cross of isolation which must be 
 borne until I am fitted to be perfectly joined to Thee 
 and the holy society who are of one heart and one 
 mind. 
 
 But I thank Thee, God, that it has pleased Thee 
 to extend the bounds and sources of my personal ex- 
 istence by union to Thyself, and union to the life of 
 all my race ; that so my life is greatened in all its ex- 
 periences and values by the immense addition of Thy 
 life and the life of all men to it. 
 
 God, I stand up before Thee in the ranks of hu- 
 manity. I bow down before Thee to thank Thee that 
 I belong to my race, and my race belongs to me. I 
 thank Thee for the sympathy of a common experience, 
 by which the dead of all the ages are joined to me, 
 and I to them ; that so I can feel with Adam and Eve, 
 as if I had lived with them in their Eden and in their 
 banishment ; that so the simple nations that filled tlie 
 early ages are alive and real to me, and add their life 
 to mine, — among them I can wander and be enter- 
 tained, when an empty present drives me to the past. 
 Thou givest me the ages of history, the peoples that 
 are dead but not perished. For me they lived, for me 
 they live still, to show me views of truth and life that 
 I should never know but for them. Under the crum- 
 bling mementos of their long-vanished life I live a life 
 rich and deep and wise, as if it were the memory of 
 all the life that has perished from the world. Thou, 
 O Lord, iuhabitest eternity ! I thank Thee for the 
 
284 A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 
 
 power and privilege to inhabit the past of my race, 
 and live, even though imperfectly, that great life. 
 
 I thank Thee, Lord, that Thou hast set me in the 
 great circle of humanity. The life flows through me 
 also. I share the greatness of the great, the heroism 
 of the hero, the inspiration of the inspired. The great- 
 ness, the heroism, the insj)iration, is added to my life. 
 It was for me. I thank Thee for it. I thank Thee 
 for all the noble deeds of noble men, for all the wisdom 
 of the wise, for all the glorious examples of virtue in 
 action and in suffering. All that humanity has shown 
 of capacity for goodness and greatness is my inheritance, 
 and enriches me. 
 
 I thank Thee for the society and friendship of all 
 the good ; that I can sit down even now with Abraham 
 and Moses and David in the kingdom of heavenly 
 souls, and by a true fellowship share their life. I 
 thank Thee that I have already come to the general 
 assembly and church of the first-born, and am joined 
 to them and their life by knowledge and sympathy ; 
 that if they know me not, yet I know them, and stand 
 in the great circle of their fellowship. 
 
 I thank Thee, God, that I belong also to all the 
 victims of sin and ignorance and degradation; that 
 the sorrow of their vast woes and awful dangers is 
 added to enlarge and deepen my life. I bless Thee 
 that they take hold of me with their blindly groping 
 hands ; that I feel them and their woes, and bear their 
 l)urdens with them, even if I cannot help them further. 
 I stand before Thee, Lord, linked inseparably to the 
 millions of Asia, the tribes of Africa, the cliildren of 
 ignorance, the victims of sin, throughout the world. 
 
A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 285 
 
 I would not disown the outcast or deny my brother- 
 hood with the guilty, the brutahzed, the abject and 
 mean. My fellowship is with them also, and I pray 
 Thee, God, gracious God, help them, save them. 
 
 I thank Thee, God, for the company and friend- 
 ship of all those who hunger and tliirst for Thy truth ; 
 who put off the bandages of prescription, and boldly, 
 earnestly, ask for truth for themselves. I thank Thee 
 for the souls to whom Thou hast given this quenchless 
 thirst to know. 
 
 I thank Thee, God, for the great life of humanity 
 past and present, in which I can bathe my own, and 
 feel myself a living atom in a living ocean. With all 
 the sorrowful and all the sinful, with the wise in their 
 wisdom and tlie fools in their folly, with the saint in 
 his prayers and the criminal in his crimes, with the 
 happy in their joys and the wretched in their Avoes, 
 with all men everywhere I stand in fellowship and 
 sympathy, and humbly pray for all. It was this hu- 
 manity, blessed Picdeemer, that Thou didst take to 
 Thyself, and to it Thou still art joined in compassion- 
 ate sympathy and in offices of redeeming love. I joy 
 and rejoice to stand in the great fellowship of this great 
 life of my race. I would gladly bear my portion of tlie 
 common burdens, and use all my gifts to help the 
 common life. I would take into my heart a still luryer 
 fellowship with all, even the worst, — not through 
 community of sinfulness, but through deeper desires 
 for their good. 
 
 blessed Jesus, give me to know still more of the 
 fellowship of Thy sufferings when Thou dost bear the 
 sorrows and carry the griefs of the race, by that great 
 
286 A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 
 
 love which makes their sorrows and dangers personal 
 to Thyself! Let me too bear this cross of the world's 
 woe and ruin, and help with all my powers the work 
 of their redemption ; that so my fellowship with Thee 
 may be more perfect by my more perfect fellowship 
 with all the needy and wretched of mankind. 
 
 Lord, I beseech Thee, gather my soul also into 
 the glorious fellowship of Thy redeemed ones in glory 
 everlasting, to join in the songs which celebrate Thy 
 love forever and forever. Amen. 
 
 A LESSON OF GOD IN NATUEE. 
 
 (~\ LORD my God, Thou art very great. Thou art 
 clothed with honor and majesty. Who coverest 
 Thyself with light as with a garment ; who maketh the 
 clouds His chariot ; who walketh upon the wings of the 
 wind. 
 
 The sun knoweth his going down. The moon He 
 appointeth for seasons. Thou makest darkness, and it 
 is night, wherein all the beasts of the field do creep 
 forth. 
 
 The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firma- 
 ment showeth His handiwork. In them hath He set a 
 tabernacle for the sun, which as a bridegroom coming 
 out of his chamber rejoiceth as a strong man to run a 
 race. 
 
 He sendeth the springs into the valley which run 
 among the hills. By them do the fowls of heaven 
 have their habitation, which sing among the branches. 
 
A BOOK OF TRAYERS. 287 
 
 He hath made everything beautiful in His time. 
 How great is His goodness, and how great is His 
 beauty ! 
 
 Consider the lilies, how they grow: they toil not, 
 they spin not : and yet I say unto you that even 
 Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of 
 these. 
 
 The invisible things of Him from the foundation of 
 the world are clearly seen, being understood by the 
 things that are made, even His eternal power and 
 Godhead. 
 
 The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. 
 Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for 
 new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth 
 righteousness. Blessed are the meek, for they shall 
 inherit the earth. 
 
 He will beautify the place of His habitation, and 
 He will make the place of His feet glorious. 
 
 There shall be no night there, and they need no 
 candle, neither light of the moon to shine in it; for 
 the Lord God giveth them light, and the Lamb is the 
 lisht thereof. 
 
 AN ACT OF WORSHIP. 
 
 r\ LORD of all the worlds! Father of all the 
 ^^^ lights ! from amid the grandeurs and the great- 
 ness of Thy works I humbly call to Thee. Amid the 
 ceaseless anthems of unspoken praise ascending ever- 
 more to Thee I humbly mingle my own weak tone of 
 adoring worship. 
 
288 A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 
 
 I thank Thee, O God that made me, for eyes to see 
 the wondrous light, for ears to hear the sweet har- 
 monies of all natural sounds. I thank Thee, God, 
 for every expression of Thyself in all these works of 
 Thy hand; for the curtaining clouds, the tented 
 heavens, which bending down and enclosing all things 
 do thus declare Thine all-enclosing, all-slieltering pres- 
 ence and providence in the world, making the great 
 and wide immensities of space and time homelike, 
 near, and familiar to my heart ; for the vast and varied 
 beauty bathing all things, even to the commonest, and 
 declaring the tenderness and gentleness w^hich bathes 
 every attribute of Thy nature, every act of Thy power. 
 
 I thank Thee, God, for all the silent, quiet places 
 on the hills and in the fields and in the deeper haunts 
 of silence in the woods, — silent, quiet places where 
 Thy Spirit broods and rests, ungrieved by the discords 
 of human life, and where my spirit finds and feels Thy 
 presence as I do not elsewhere ; silent, quiet places, so 
 like another world, and where the spirits of the dead 
 gather on tlie outskirts of this world, and make their 
 presence felt even to the spirit cumbered still with 
 its clay. 
 
 I thank Thee, Lord, for all the wild luxuriance 
 of all the humble plants which Thou hast created to 
 cover the nakedness of the earth and to fill its empty 
 places with all soft colors and forms of grace, declar- 
 ing thus the overflow and exhaustless fulness of Thy 
 creative power and loving goodness. 
 
 I tliank Thee, Lord, for the mosses and the ferns, 
 for the creeping vines and the gentle race of flowers 
 which love the forest shades. O most blessed God, 
 
A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 289 
 
 these declare Thine equal tenderness for all, both small 
 and great, and cure the fear of barrenness in the long 
 future to come. They are even more than the vastness 
 of the worlds the assurance of Thy suiUciency for all 
 the wants of all Thy creatures. 
 
 I thank Thee, Lord, for the subtle sympathies 
 that bind me to Thy Nature and hold me in its har- 
 monies ; for the dear feeling of kindness to me which 
 I meet in all the elements of the world, and for the 
 sweet sense of a home in Nature, begotten of these 
 sympathies, even when the social home is desolate. 
 
 I thank Thee, blessed Father of all, for all the 
 loving care the world betrays by the perfection of its 
 minutest parts and the beauty and joy of its smallest 
 creatures. I need not to see Thee, but only more sen- 
 sibly to feel the goodness of which the world is full. 
 
 Blessed be Thy name also, O my God, for all the 
 truth and wisdom which Thou hast written out for me 
 in the universe of Thy works, — the endless and blessed 
 studies for my spirit in the long ages to come, 
 
 I pray Thee, my Father, make nie worthy to ap- 
 pear among these pure and perfect works of Thy power. 
 Deliver me from all selfish ambitions, I pray Thee, — 
 from all gross and sensuous passions, from all dominion 
 of pride and covetous longings, that I may inherit Thy 
 peace, while I share also Thy life in Thy great Nature. 
 
 O God, am I not a part of that great Nature Thou 
 lovest so well ? I pray Thee, O my Father, love me ! 
 Let Thy beauty be upon me also ; and through all 
 these teachings of Thy love in my earthly home, I 
 beseech Thee, fit me for the higher and still more 
 divine life in Thee in tlie heavenly mansions. 
 
 19 
 
290 A BOOK OF PRAYERS. 
 
 I pray Thee, my Father, hear my worship and 
 my prayer. Thou art ever uear me ; let me ever feel 
 Thee ! In Thee I live, O infinite ocean of life ; let Thy 
 life quicken and animate my spirit. From the growth 
 of time and the fruit of life may my soul be strong and 
 rich for the life that opens by the gateway of the grave ; 
 and when time shall be no longer, receive me, I beseech 
 Thee, into habitations of eternity, with all Thine ac- 
 cepted ones : through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 
 
 THE END. 
 
Date Due 
 
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