Srom t^e £,i6rarg of 
 
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 (Princeton S^eofo^tcaf ^eminarj) 
 

RATIONAL GODLINESS. 
 
|3r(ntctf at tlje mnibtxSit^ |3rt^S. 
 
RATIONAL GODLINESS. 
 
 AFTER THE MIND OF CHRIST, 
 AND THE WRITTEN VOICES OF HIS CHURCH. 
 
 ROWLAND WILLIAMS, B.D. 
 
 FELLOW AXD FORMERLY TUTOR OF KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, 
 AND PROFESSOR OF HEBREW AT LAMPETER. 
 
 The Letter killeth : but the Spu-it giveth life.— S< Paul. 
 
 But we have the Mind of Christ. — Id. 
 
 The Church is His Body ; the fulfilment of Him that filleth all in all.— J(/. 
 
 There can neither be true \yisdom without religion, nor true religion without 
 
 wisdom ; but where wisdom is religious, and religion wise, there is Truth. — 
 
 LadantiHS. 
 The Law of the Spirit is what is written witli no letters soever. . . .The Law of the 
 
 Letter is whatever is written with letters.— /.((Witv. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL, & CO. 
 
 LONDON: BELL & DALDY. 
 
 1855 
 
TO THE 
 MEMORY OF MY FATHER, 
 
 ROWLAND WILLIAMS, M.A. 
 
 RECTOR OF YSCEIVIOG, AND CANON OF ST ASAPH, 
 
 WHO TAUGHT ME (HUMANLY) TO WRITE THESE SERMONS, 
 
 AND BY WHOSE DESIRE SOME OF THEM WERE BEING PREACHED, 
 
 WHEN BY HIS DEATH THEIR COURSE WAS INTERRUPTED, 
 
 I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME, 
 
 IN TOKEN OF REVERENTIAL AFFECTION, 
 
 WISHING IT WERE WORTHIER OF HIM. 
 
 Felix, non vita; tantum spatio, sed etiam opportunitate mortis. 
 
" Then came his disciples, and said unto him, Knowest thou 
 that the Pharisees were offended, after they heard this saying? 
 But he answered and said. Every planting, which my heavenly 
 Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up." — ^S"^ Mattheir, xv. 
 
 " Nicodemus answered and said unto him. How can these things 
 be? Jesus answered and said unto him. Art thou a master of Israel, 
 and knowest not these things?" — St John, iii. 
 
 " Your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the 
 power of God. Howbeit, we speak wisdom among them that are 
 
 perfect Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and the 
 
 Spirit of God dwelleth in you? Know ye not that your bodies 
 
 are the members of Christ? I think that I also have the Spirit 
 
 of God I speak as unto wise men; judge ye what I say; the 
 
 bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of 
 
 Christ? No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the 
 
 Holy Ghost. Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. 
 
 But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man By 
 
 one Spirit are we all baptized into one body... and have all been 
 
 made to drink into one Spirit Now ye are the body of Christ, 
 
 and members in particular Charity never faileth ; but whether 
 
 there be prophecies, they shall fail ; whether there be tongues, they 
 shall cease ; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For 
 we know in part, and we prophesy in part... we see through a glass 
 by way of figure : but then face to face; now I know in part 
 
Vlll 
 
 If I pray in a {strange?) tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my under- 
 standing remaineth unfruitful. What is it, then? I will pray with 
 the spirit {i.e. with the deep breathing of affection?) and I will 
 pray with the understanding also." — St Paul, \st Epistle to the 
 Corinthians {passim et sparsim). 
 
 " In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that 
 God sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live 
 
 through him And we have known and believed the love that 
 
 God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth 
 in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we 
 may have boldness in the day of judgment." — St Johns \st Epistle. 
 
 " Desire the pure milk of the understanding, that ye may grow 
 thereby. If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious; by 
 cominof to whom, a living stone, rejected indeed of men, but elect of 
 God, and precious, ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual 
 house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable 
 to God, through Jesus Christ." — St Peter's \st Epistle. 
 
 " Practical Christianity is a plain thing. The more distinct 
 knowledge of those things, the study of which the Apostle calls 
 going on unto perfection, may require very exact thought and careful 
 consideration. And as it is owned, the whole scheme of Scripture 
 is not yet understood, so, if it ever comes to be so without miracu- 
 lous interposition, it must be by the continuance and progress of 
 learning and of liberty, and by particular persons attending to, com- 
 paring, and pursuing, intimations scattered up and down it, which 
 are overlooked by the generality of the world. For this is the way 
 in which all improvements are made ; by tlioughtful men tracing on 
 obscure hints, as it were dropt us by nature accidentally, or which 
 seem to come into our minds by chance. Nor is it at all incredible 
 that a book, which has been so long in possession of mankind, should 
 
 contain many truths as yet undiscovered Reason can and it 
 
 ought to judge not only of the meaning, but also of the morality and 
 
IX 
 
 the evidence of revelation There might be wise and good reasons 
 
 that miraculous interpositions should be by general laws As it 
 
 is manifest that Christianity is a scheme revealed but in part, and a 
 scheme in which means are made use of to accomplish ends, so the 
 credibility, that it may all along have been carried on by general 
 
 laws, has been distinctly proved But we are greatly ignorant 
 
 how far things are considered by the Author of nature under the 
 single notion of means and ends ; so as that it may be said, this is 
 
 merely an end, and that merely means, in his regard There is 
 
 no absurdity in supposing future punishment may follow Avickedness 
 of course, as we speak, or in the way of natural consequence, from 
 God's original constitution of the world. It may follow in a way 
 analogous to poverty, sickness, infamy, untimely death by diseases, 
 
 death from the hands of civil justice Men should remember that 
 
 when things come to pass according to the course of nature, thisjdoes 
 not hinder them from being his doing, who is the God of nature ; 
 and that the Scripture ascribes those punishments to divine justice, 
 
 which are known to be natural, and which must be called so 
 
 In this darkness, or this light of nature, call it which you please, 
 revelation comes in ; confirms every doubting fear, which could 
 enter into the heart of man, concerning the future, unprevented, 
 consequences of wickedness ; supposes the world to be in a state of 
 ruin, a supposition which seems the very groundwork of Christi- 
 anity, and ichich, if it is not provable hy reason, yet is in no tcise 
 
 contrary to it But it is not Christianity Schick has put us into 
 
 this state. Whoever will consider the manifold miseries, and the 
 extreme wickedness of tlie world ; that the best have great wrong- 
 nesses within themselves, which they complain of, and endeavour to 
 amend ; but that the generality grow more profligate and corrupt 
 with age, &c. &c.; will think he has little reason to object against 
 the Scripture account The Son of God 'loved us, and gave Him- 
 self for us,' with a love which He Himself compares to that of 
 human friendship ; though, in this case, all comparisons must fall 
 
 infinitely short of the tiling intended to be illustrated by them 
 
 How, and in what particular tcay, the sacrifice of Christ had this 
 
 a 5 
 
efl&cacy, there are not wanting persons who have endeavoured to 
 explain ; but I do not find that the Scripture has explained it. "We 
 seem to be very much in the dark concerning the manner in which 
 tlie ancients understood atonement to lie made; i.e. pardon to be 
 
 obtained by sacrifices Some have endeavoured to explain beyond 
 
 what the Scripture has authorised In the daily course of natural 
 
 Providence it is appointed that innocent people should sufter for 
 the faults of the guilty. Men, by their follies, run themselves into 
 extreme distress; into difficulties which would be fatal to them, 
 were it not for the interposition of others. God commands by the 
 law of nature, that we afibrd them this assistance, in many cases 
 where we cannot do it without very great pains, and labour, and 
 sufferings to ourselves. And we see in what variety of ways one 
 person's sufferings contribute to the relief of another, and how this 
 
 comes to pass from the constitution of nature What has been 
 
 often alleged, even from the tendency of this method of our redemp- 
 tion, to vindicate the authority of God's laws, has never yet been 
 answered, and is, I think, unansvs^erablej though I am far from 
 
 thinking it an account of the whole case Not only the reason of 
 
 the thing, but the whole analogy of nature, should teach us not to 
 expect to have the like information concerning the divine conduct as 
 concerning our own duty." — Butler's Analogy., Part II. Chapters iv. 
 and V. {inuch abridged). 
 
 " The general and perpetual voice of men is as the sentence of 
 God Himself. For that wliich all men have at all times learned, 
 Nature herself must needs have taught ; and God being the Author 
 of Nature, her voice is but his instrument. By her from Him we 
 
 receive whatsoever in such sort we learn The Apostle St Paul 
 
 having speech concerning the heathen, saith of them, ' They are a 
 law unto themselves.' His meaning is, that by the force of the light 
 of Reason, wherewith God illuminatcth every one which cometli 
 into the world, men being enabled to know truth from falsehood, and 
 good from evil, do thereby learn in many things what the will of 
 God is; which will Himself not revealing by any extraordinary 
 
XI 
 
 means unto tliem, but they by natural discourse attaining the know- 
 ledge thereof, sean the makers of those laws which indeed are His, and 
 
 they hut only the finders of them out The rule of ghostly or 
 
 immaterial natures, as spirits and angels, is their intuitive intellec- 
 tual judgment concerning the amiable beauty and high goodness of 
 that object, which with unspeakable joy and delight doth set them 
 on work. The rule of voluntary agents on earth is the sentence that 
 reason giveth concerning the goodness of those things wliich they are 
 
 to do Notwithstanding, whatsoever such principle there is, it was 
 
 at the first found out by discourse, and drawn out of tlie very bowels 
 of heaven and earth Good doth follow unto all things by fol- 
 lowing the course of their nature; and on the contrary side, evil by 
 
 not observing it But amongst creatures, only man's observation 
 
 of the law of his nature is righteousness ; only man's transgression 
 
 sin Take away the will, and all acts are equal 
 
 " Capable we are of God, both by understanding and will ; 
 
 by understanding, as He is that sovereign Truth w^hich compre- 
 hendeth the rich treasures of all wisdom ; by will, as He is that sea 
 
 of Goodness, whereof whoso tasteth shall thirst no more AVe 
 
 now love, in respect of benefit ; we shall then love the thing that is 
 good, for the goodness of beauty in itself. The soul being in this 
 sort, as it is active, perfected by love of that infinite Good, shall also, 
 as it is receptive, be perfected with those supernatural passions of 
 
 joy, peace, and delight Man doth not rest satisfied with fruition 
 
 of that wherewith his life is preserved... but doth manifestly piirsue 
 with great earnestness that which cannot stand him in any stead for 
 vital use ; that which exceedeth the reach of sense ; yea, somewhat 
 above capacity of reason, somewhat divine and heavenly, which with 
 hidden exultation it rather surmiseth than conceiveth ; somewhat it 
 seeketh,and what that is, it knoweth not; yet desire thereof doth so 
 
 incite it, that all other desires give place When supernatural 
 
 duties are exacted, natural are not rejected As St Paul's words 
 
 concerning ancient Scripture presuppose the Gospel of Christ em- 
 braced ; so our own words, when we extol the entire body of Scrip- 
 ture, must be understood with this caution, that the benefit of 
 
Xll 
 
 nature's light be not thought excluded as unnecessary, because tlie 
 necessity of a diviner light is magnified 
 
 "That which is of God, and may be evidently proved to be 
 
 so, we deny not but it hath in his kind, although iimcritten, yet the 
 selfsame force and authority with the written laws of God 
 
 ...... " Our belief in the Trinity, the coeternity of the Son of God 
 
 with his Fatlier, the ])roceeding of the Spirit from the Father and 
 the Son, the duty of baptising infants — are in Scripture nowhere to 
 be found by express literal mention ; only deduced they are out of 
 Scripture by collection 
 
 "The bounds of wisdom are large Wisdom endued the 
 
 fathers who lived before the law with the knowledge of holy things. 
 
 Now, if wisdom did teach men by Scripture (only) every way 
 
 of doing well, there is no art, but Scripture should teach it 
 
 Whatsoever either men or angels know, is as a drop of that un- 
 emptiable fountain of wisdom, which wisdom hath diversely imparted 
 her treasures nnto the world. Some things she openeth by the sacred 
 books of Scripture; some things by the glorious works of Nature; 
 with some things she inspireth them from above by spiritual influ- 
 ence ; in some things she leadeth and traineth them only by worldly 
 experience and practice. We may not so in any one special kind 
 admire her, that we disgrace her in any other ; but let all her ways 
 
 be according nnto their place and degree adored Tliat authority 
 
 of men should prevail with men against or ahove reason, is no part 
 of our belief. Companies of learned men, be they never so great and 
 reverend, are to yield unto reason ; the weight whereof is no whit 
 prejudiced by the simplicity of the person that doth allege it, but 
 being found to be sound and good, the bare authority of men to the 
 contrary must of necessity give place 
 
 "Admit this — what would follow? God, in delivering 
 
 Scripture to his Church, should have abrogated the law of nature, 
 which is an infallible knowledge imprinted in the minds of all the 
 children of men — Admit this, and what shall the Scripture be but a 
 snare and a torment to weak consciences, fillijig them with infinite 
 perplexities, scrupulosities, doubts insoluble, and extreme despairs? 
 
Xlll 
 
 Not that the Scripture itself doth cause any such thing What- 
 soever is spoken of God, or things appertaining to God, otherwise 
 than as the truth is, though it seem an honour, it is an injury. And 
 as incredible praises given unto men do often abate and impair the 
 credit of their deserved commendation, so we must likewise take 
 great heed, lest, in attributing to Scripture more than it can have, the 
 incredibility of that do cause even those things which indeed it hath 
 most abundantly to be less reverently esteemed* I therefore leave it to 
 themselves to consider whether they have in this point, or not, over- 
 shot themselves." — Hooker, Eccl. Polity, Books I. & II. (extracted 
 in fragments at intervals, and some redundancies, not affecting the 
 sense, omitted). 
 
 " The outcry with which Sx Jerome had once been assailed was 
 now renewed against Erasmus. The annotations also by which he 
 justified what were regarded as his innovations, were fresh causes of 
 displeasure to many among the monkish tlieologians of the day. It 
 was in vain for him to say that it was not his place, as an editor, to 
 add to the Greek text which was before him ; he was treated, as 
 other critics have since been, as though it had been his duty to have 
 invented evidence when he did not find it. He was attacked by 
 Edward Lee, and also by Stunica. The ignorance and presumption 
 of the former are such as might seem almost incredible. If Eras- 
 mus's MSS. did not contain what Lee said ought to have been there, 
 he should have condemned and rejected them as worthless ! It was 
 in vain for Erasmus to answer that the ' omission' of 1st St John, 
 
 V. 7, ^vas a case not of omission, but simply of non-additio7i 
 
 The revision of the Latin version of Erasmus raised up against him 
 yet more enemies. In liis edition, 1519, he followed the phraseology 
 of the early Latin Fathers, substituting 'sermo' for 'verbum.' This 
 was deemed almost, if not quite, a heresy ; and he had to defend 
 
 himself, in consequence, against many attacks A bishop, whose 
 
 name Erasmus suppresses, was preaching at ' Paul's Cross,' when he 
 went out of his way to attack the new translation. It was a shame- 
 ful thing for those who had been so long doctors of divinity, to have 
 to go to school again — for such to receive instruction from any mere 
 
XIV 
 
 Greekling. At length his zeal' waxed so warm (he said), that he 
 called ou the Lord Mayor of London, who was present, and on the 
 citizens, for aid, that they would shew themselves men, and not 
 suflfer such neio translations, which subvert the authority of Holy 
 Scriptitre, to obtain further currency 
 
 "This critic (Bengel), like his predecessors, had to pass 
 
 through misrepresentation on account of his work The Greek 
 
 Testament, with the text revised in some measure, and with further 
 corrections in the margin, was considered ' dangerous.' One of his 
 opposers, Kohlreif, publicly challenged him to a most uncritical 
 measure; namely, to hush the enemies of criticism, by admitting 
 that even the various lections were given by inspiration, in order to 
 meet the necessities of various readers ! 
 
 " Bengel felt that the attacks to which he was exposed 
 
 were not made so much against himself personally, as against the 
 genuine text of the New Testament ; he thus bore the violent lan- 
 guage with which he was assailed, with much equanimity, while he 
 replied firmly and temperately to those who attacked him 
 
 " Lachmann's object was to give the Greek Testament in 
 
 that form in which the most ancient documents have transmitted 
 
 it His plan was in fact this — such evidence ought to lead to 
 
 such results. Reviewers mis-stated his plan and purpose, and 
 described his edition in such a manner as to shew that the}'^ did not 
 comprehend what he had intended, or what he had performed 
 
 "The great diligence which Mill displayed... exposed him 
 
 to the attacks of many writers 'Not only the clergy, but even 
 
 1 If instead of zeal, or by the side of it, we have the desii-e of tliriving in a 
 fraudulent Uvelihood upon clamour, there is no Umit to the cloud of mis- 
 representation which may be raised. But neither such things, nor thrusting 
 into the very chamber of Death falsehoods brutal enough to wound, and artful 
 enough to escape legal responsibility, can take away the duty, or the satis- 
 faction, of buying the Truth, and selling it not. Such things, however, do show 
 what chance their authors conceive themselves to have in the field of argument, 
 as well as "what spirit they are of." 
 
 ^ Thus many speak as if Gcsenius and Rosenmiiller altered the Hebrew text 
 more than Lowth and Kennicott ; whereas just the reverse is the fact. 
 
XV 
 
 professors in the universities, who had no knowledge of criticism, 
 considered liis vast collection of various readings as a work of evil 
 
 tendency, and inimical to the Christian religion.' The principal 
 
 opponent was AVhitby It is scarcely possible to conceive that 
 
 he could have attempted to defend the common text, had he really 
 been conscious how it originated. And yet some will always be 
 found to listen and applaud, when writers like Whitby charge 
 honest and reverential criticism with ' rendering the word of God 
 
 uncertain,' and with being hostile to Christianity Whitby's 
 
 accusation is a manifest proof how little he was capable of appre- 
 hending the subject on which he was writing 
 
 "The generation of Edward Lee and Daniel Whitby is yet 
 
 flourishing among us. iMany still sympathize with those feelings 
 which aroused against Erasmus, on account of his meddling with 
 sacred criticism, the indignation of a certain bishop, who wished the 
 secular arm to hinder the boldness of biblical scholars. It was then 
 deemed to be unbearable that theologians should have to learn from 
 grammarians what theAVord of God actually contains; «o«?, however, 
 both theologians and grammarians of certain classes are united in con- 
 temning and condemiiing those critical studies which they have never 
 taken the pains rightly to understand for themselves. And thus it is 
 that those who labour in the collation of MSS., or in seeking to render 
 the results of such collation available for others, are misrepresented, 
 not on the ground of what they have done, but because of what 
 some choos^e to sag that they have done or attempted. And such 
 sweeping condemnations find their admirers amongst those who wish 
 to ' take ' what may be called a popular theological ' stand.' These 
 things are not very encouraging to those who, with solemn and 
 heartfelt reverence for God's Holy Word, desire to serve Him, and 
 to serve his people, by using intelligent criticism in connexion with 
 the text of the New Testament. Assailants often say much of the 
 'temerity' of critics, and they speak of 'sweeping' alterations on 
 slight or insufficient grounds. This involves the question not simply 
 of principles, but also of facts. It may sound not quite courteous to 
 say of such opposers, Don't believe them too readilg ; but still those 
 
XVI 
 
 important words express what has to be said, and that plainly. They 
 do thus advance allegations as facts, which are not such; and by 
 such invented premises, they draw conclusions of the most unfavour- 
 able kind The evil lies in this, not that opinions of a peculiar 
 
 kind are held, but that facts are misrepresented — facts, which are 
 
 the true basis of all argument This it is that requires that plain 
 
 words should be spoken ; for the uninformed are actually misled, 
 though it may be to the instructed sufficient refutation of those 
 allegations for them to be stated plainly." — (The above extracts 
 are fragraentarily abridged from Dr S. Tregelles's " Account of the 
 Printed Text of the New Testament" — a work of the most sterling 
 value for integrity and for learning, though containing ' some things 
 with which I can only wish myself able to agree.) 
 
 " One thing more there is to be added as an instance to the 
 simplicity of religion ; and that is, that we never deny our religion, 
 or lie concerning our faith, nor tell our propositions and articles 
 deceitfully, nor instruct novices or catechumens with fraud; but 
 that when we teach them, we do it honestly, justly, and severely ; 
 not always to speak all, but never to speak otherwise than it is ; nor 
 to hide a truth from them whose souls are concerned in it that it be 
 known. ' Neque enim id est celare, quicquid reticeas; sed cum, 
 quod taceas, id ignorare emolumenti tui causa vclis eos quoram 
 intersit id scire' — so Cicero determines the case of })rudence and 
 simplicity. The discovery of pious frauds, and the disclaiming of 
 
 ^ Quotations may sometimes be only ilustralions ; and generally are not to 
 be understood as claiming a wider agreement on the part of the author from 
 whom they are taken than is expressed in the words adopted. As to some of 
 the notes, it may be added, that while the latter part of this volume was being 
 printed, I was removed by journeying, or by change of residence, from almost 
 all means of reference to books. For candid readers this explanation, and for 
 others none, will be sufficient. So, by appending the dates of the earlier Ser- 
 mons, I shew some probability of their not being borrowed from a work first 
 published at a later date : but I do not expect this will avail me with those who 
 d'jclare the "basis" of my views to be in a book which I never happen even 
 now to have seen, and which report at le.ast represents as of very opposite 
 object and different methods. 
 
XVll 
 
 false but profitable and ricb jiropositions ; the quitting honours 
 fraudulently gotten and unjustly detained; the reducing every man 
 to the perfect understanding of his own religion, so far as can con- 
 cern his duty ; the disallowing false miracles, legends, and fabulous 
 stories, to cozen the people into awfulness, fear, and superstition ; 
 these are parts of Christian simplicity which do integrate this 
 duty. . . . 
 
 " For religion hath strengths enough of its own to support itself; 
 it needs not a devil for its advocate ; it is the breath of God ; and 
 as it is purer thah the beams of the morning, so it is stronger than a 
 tempest, or the combination of all the winds, though united by the 
 prince that ruleth in the air And he that tells a lie for his reli- 
 gion, or goes about by fraud and imposture to gain proselytes', either 
 dares not trust his cause, or dares not trust God. True religion is 
 open in its articles, honest in its prosecutions, just in its conduct, 
 innocent when it is accused, ignorant of falsehood, sure in its truth, 
 simple in its sayings, and (as Julius Capitolinus said of the emperor 
 Varus) it is ' morum simplicium, et quee adumbrare nihil possit.' " — 
 Jeremy Taylor, S'ennoti on Christian Simplicitt/. 
 
 " Many ways have been attempted to reconcile the differences of 
 the Church in matters of religion, and all the counsels of man have 
 yet proved ineffective ; let us now try God's method ; let us betake 
 ourselves to live holily, and then the Spirit of God will lead us into 
 all truth." — Id., Sermon preached to the University of Dublin. 
 
 " God made man after his own image ; that is, secundum 
 imaginem et ideam quam concepit ipse; he made him by a new idea 
 of his own." — Id., Sermon XIX. 
 
 " This labour is so far from being a curse, that without it our 
 bread would not be so great a blessing." — Id., Sermon XXV. 
 
 " Was it not an infinite mercy that God should predestinate all 
 mankind to salvation by Jesus Christ, when He had no other reason 
 to move Him to it, but because man needed pity?" — Ibid. 
 
 ^ The remarks of Archbishop Mliately, in an Essay in the later editions of 
 his Rhetoric, upon the temptation of religious teachers to support truth by 
 false arguments, are not unworthy of consideration. 
 
XVlll 
 
 " Whenever any of you are tempted violently, or grow weary in 
 your spirits, you may be cured, if you will please but to remember 
 and rejoice that now you have something of your own to give to 
 God ; something that He will be pleased to accept ; something that 
 He hath given thee, that thou mayest give it to Him." — Hid. 
 
 "God will not fail in any thing that is necessary to them that 
 honestly and heartily desire to obtain it ; if very good men, that do 
 all their duty to the getting of truth, perish, it is certain they cannot 
 help it ; and that is demonstration enough that they cannot perish, 
 considering the justice and goodness of our Lord and Judge." — Id. 
 Sermon XXII. 
 
 "God had mercy on all mankind before Christ's manifestation... 
 
 and they were saved, as we are We may publicly worship this 
 
 mercy of God which is kept in secret, and be not too forward in 
 sentencing all heathens, and prevaricating Jews, to the eternal 
 pains of hell; but hope that they too have a portion in the divine 
 
 mercy In the assemblies of heretics there are persons innocently 
 
 and invincibly mistaken, and who mean nothing but truth, while 
 in the simplicity of their heart they talk nothing but error." — Id.., 
 Sermons XXVII and XX VL 
 
COLLECTS. 
 
 Almighty God, by whose providence thy servant John Baptist 
 was wonderfully born, and sent to prepare the way of thy Son our 
 Saviour, by preaching of repentance ; Make us so to follow his 
 doctrine and holy life, that we may truly repent according to his 
 preaching ; and after his example constantly speak the truth, boldly 
 rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth's sake; through Jesus 
 Christ our Lord. Amen. 
 
 God, who didst teach the hearts of thy faithful people, by the 
 sending to them the light of thy Holy Spirit ; Grant us by the same 
 Spirit to have a right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice 
 iu his holy comfort ; through the merits of Christ Jesus our Saviour, 
 who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the same Spirit, 
 one God, world without end. Amen. 
 
 O Lord, from whom all good things do come ; Grant to us thy 
 humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration we may think those 
 things that be good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the 
 same; through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 THE RESTORATION OF THE ROYAL FAMILY. 
 
 PAOK 
 
 OLord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made 
 
 them all. Psalm civ. 24. 
 Surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee : the remainder of wrath 
 
 shalt Thou restrain. Psalm Ixxvi. 16. 
 Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did He in heaven, and in earth, 
 
 in the seas, and in all deep places. Psalm cxxxv. 6. 
 Compare Psalm xcii. 5—6, and xciv. 8—10 .... 1 
 
 SERMON II. 
 
 DRAWING NIGH TO GOD. 
 
 Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you.— Epistle of 
 
 St James, iv. 8 . . • ■ • • .17 
 
 SERMON III. 
 
 WHAT MANNER OF LOVE THAT WE SHOULD BE CALLED 
 THE SONS OF GOD. 
 
 Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, 
 
 that we should be called the sons of God. — 1 St John iii. 1 32 
 
 SERMON IV. 
 
 HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Whatsoever things were written aforetime, were written for our 
 learning, that we, through patience and comfort of the Scrip- 
 tures, might have hope. — Romans xv. 4 . . . .45 
 
xxii Contents. 
 
 SERMON V. 
 
 WHAT DOEST THOU HERE? 
 
 PAOB 
 
 Behold, a voice unto him that said. What doest thou here, Elijah ? 
 
 1 Kings six. 13 ....... rji 
 
 SERMON VI. 
 
 OFFERING TO GOD. 
 
 I will not offer burnt-offerings to the Lord my God of that which 
 
 doth cost me nothing. — 2 Samuel xxiv. 24 , . .76 
 
 SERMON VIT. 
 
 Deborah's song. 
 
 Then sang Deborah and Barak the son of Abinoam on that day, 
 saying. Praise ye the Lord for the avenging of Israel. — 
 Judges v. i, 2 . . , . . . . .89 
 
 SERMON VIII. 
 
 PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 
 
 A foolish son is a grief to his father, and bitterness to her that bare 
 
 him. — Proverbs xvii. 25 . . . . . .106 
 
 SERMON IX, 
 
 THE FALLING OF MAN. 
 
 Against Tliee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy 
 sight; that Thou mightest be justified in Thy saying, and be 
 clear when Thou judgest. — Psalm li. 4 . . . .121 
 
 SERMON X. 
 
 VOLUNTARY PALSY. 
 
 Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk. — St Mark ii. 9 . . 137 
 
 SERMON XI. 
 
 CASTING OUT DEVILS. 
 
 Why could we not cast him out?— S>r Mark ix. 28 . . 161 
 
Contents. xxiii 
 
 SERMON XII. 
 
 BEING FORSAKEN OF GOD. 
 
 PAOK 
 
 My God, my Ood,ivhy hast Thou forsaken mef — Psalm xxii. 1 . 165 
 
 SERMON XTTI. 
 
 THE PRAYER ON THE CROSS. 
 
 Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. — St Luke 
 
 xxiii. 34 179 
 
 SEBMON XIV. 
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD A KINGDOM OF THE MIND. 
 
 Behold, the kingdom of God is within you. — St Luke xvii. 21 .192 
 
 SERMON XV. 
 
 THE spirit's operations. 
 
 There are diversities of operations ; but it is the same God, ivhich 
 
 worketh all in all. — 1 Cor. xii. 6 . . . . .210 
 
 SERMON XVI. 
 
 GOD WORKING HITHERTO. 
 
 My Father worketh hitherto, and T work. — St John v. 17 . . 227 
 
 SERMON XVII. 
 
 THE HOLY TRINITY AN INFERENCE FROM THE INCARNATION. 
 
 No man hath seen God at any time : the only begotten Son, which is 
 in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. — St John 
 i. 18 241 
 
 SERMON XVIII. 
 
 THE WITNESS OF GOD. 
 
 There are three that bear witness, the spirit, and the water, and the 
 blood: and these three agree in one. If we receive the wit- 
 ness of men, the witness of God is greater ; for this is the 
 witness of God which He hath testified of his Son. He that 
 believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself. — 
 1 St John v. 8—10 258 
 
xxiv Contents. 
 
 SERMON XIX. 
 
 SERVANTS OF GOD SPEAKING AS MOVED BY THE 
 HOLY GHOST. 
 
 PAOB 
 
 Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. — 
 
 2 St Peter i. 21 286 
 
 SERMON XX. 
 
 GOSPEL FREEDOM, NOT ANTINOMI ANISM. 
 
 As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness. — 
 
 1 St Peter ii, 16 . . . ... 312 
 
 SERMON XXr. 
 
 OUR KINDRED TO GOD. 
 
 For we are also His offspring. — Acts xvii. 28 . . . 330 
 
 SERMON XXII. 
 
 THE DAY OF THE LORD. 
 
 It shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear, 
 
 nor dark. — Zechariah xiv. 6 .... . 347 
 
 SERMON XXIII. 
 
 the times AND THE SEASONS. 
 
 It is not for you to know the times and the seasons, which the Father 
 
 hath settled by His own power. — Acts i. 7 . . . 360 
 
 SERMON XXIV. 
 
 THE SPIRIT AND THE LETTER. 
 
 After the way which (they) call heresy, so worship I the God of 
 
 my Fathers. — Acts xxiv. 14 .... . 377 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 Page lOG line 8 for were read wear 
 
 — IIG — 5 the stoj} after likeiibBS should be onli/ a comma. 
 
 — 277 — 11 for in read an 
 
 — 281 — C there should he a iracJcet after Euclid, 
 
 — 281 note read ovx, and llXdrwi/os 
 
SEEMON V 
 
 THE RESTOEATIOX OF THE ROYAL FAMILY. 
 
 O Lord, how manifold are thy works ! in wisdom hast thou made them 
 
 all. Psalm civ. 24. 
 Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee : the remainder of wrath shall 
 
 thou restrain. Psalm Ixxvi. 10. 
 Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did He in heaven, and in earth, in 
 
 the .-eas, and in all deep places. Psalm cxxxv. 6. 
 Compare Psalm xcli. 5 — 6, and xciv. 8 — 10. 
 
 That there is such a thing as Evil in the world, and 
 that evil men and spirits may tempt the unwary to 
 their destruction, are truths which no sound Divine will 
 venture to deny. Occasions will often arise, when it 
 may be necessary to insist upon such topics, as induce- 
 ments to that watchfulness and prayer, in which Chris- 
 tian Humility finds her armour. 
 
 Perhaps however a doubt may be suggested, whe- 
 ther the range of Evil is so extensive, and its operation 
 so unmitigated, as on a superficial view we might be 
 inclined to apprehend. In the mere physical world, it 
 
 ^ I print this sermon, preached hy me formerly as a resident Fellow 
 at Cambridge, to be a sort of introduction to the more recent ones. 
 After about eight years interval, I find little to change but some formal 
 expressions which I would not now write for the first time. 
 
 w. s. 1 
 
2 Tlie Restoration of the Royal Family. [serm. 
 
 has long been acknowledged, that those stormy agencies, 
 which seem fraught with malignity and ruin, serve pur- 
 poses of wisdom and beneficence ; observation having 
 partly removed the errors of less favoured times, and a 
 natural piety having taught men, not rashly to charge 
 with folly those forces which are ministers' of the Most 
 High, nor on account of our partial knowledge, to 
 arraign the harmony of that stupendous whole, on 
 which its Divine Author has stamped a law which shall 
 not be broken. How far, then, may a very consider- 
 able analogy be traced in the moral world ? There 
 may appear to be a new element here introduced into 
 our enquiry, by the volition of responsible agents ; nor 
 indeed must any sophistry ever induce us to evade the 
 primary laws of conscience, or to deny the immutable 
 distinction between right and wrong. Nevertheless, we 
 are taught, that even the wicked is a sword in the hand 
 of God ; and, if not Hell and^ Destruction, still less can 
 we dissociate the heart of man from the Providence of 
 Him, in whose book not only all our members are 
 written, but who having implanted the sources of our 
 volition, knows also our thoughts long before. It is in 
 the highest degree probable, that a balance and mutual 
 counteraction of human passions may have had a more 
 important part allotted it as an instrument in the 
 government of the world, than the tone most popular 
 (and possibly most useful) in our general teaching would 
 lead our hearers to infer. The nature indeed of man's 
 motives before the Fall is a subject on which, in the 
 
 1 See Pearson on Psalm civ. in Creed. 
 ^ Prov. XV. and xvi. 
 
1.] The Restoration of the Royal Family. 3 
 
 absence of Scriptural data, we may forbear to reason ; 
 and we may fairly start with the assumption, that those 
 virtues and graces which, being peculiar to Christianity, 
 are the especial work of the Holy Ghost, would, if gene- 
 rally adopted, ensure the largest amount of human hap- 
 piness. But herein seems to consist the wisdom of God; 
 that, whereas we have made those things which should 
 have been for our health an occasion of falling, his 
 never-failing providence combines and balances the 
 discord of things human, so as to work out on a scale 
 of tremendous magnitude the harmony of things divine. 
 Some men strain the language of the New Testament 
 so as to require a literal extirpation of almost every- 
 thing characteristic of our humanity. But the truth 
 seems to be, that we should interpret Scripture with 
 constant reference to the actual nature of those crea- 
 tures of God, for whose use his Spirit intended it. 
 
 There is indeed no portion or capacity of our nature, 
 which may not be rendered by proper use a moral 
 instrument. Suppose we had to educate a child, who, 
 having no sense of physical hunger, wanted the earliest 
 (though if you please the lowest) inducement to obe- 
 dience or exertion ; who, having no germ of love, had 
 no affection to be appealed to ; who, insensible of fear, 
 could neither be influenced by threats, nor provide 
 against danger ; who, incapable of anger, could neither 
 resist aggression on itself, nor ward it off from others 
 committed to its protection ; who, untouched by resent- 
 ment, could not appreciate those principles which enter 
 into all retribution, as sanctioned by law human and 
 divine. How in such a case could we evoke reason, or 
 
 1—2 
 
4 The Resto7'ation of the Royal Family, [serm. 
 
 how implant knowledge ? Instead of that wonderful 
 instrument, the human soul, on which the Divine fingers 
 seem to play mysteriously as upon a harp, we should 
 have to deal with a mere human log, with a biped so 
 little raised above a vegetable, as to be less capable of 
 education, than a horse or a dog. So true is it, that we 
 are fearfully and wonderfully made — that hard by the 
 springs of our meaner appetites a higher wisdom has 
 implanted — if not the sources, — at least the means of 
 awakening our noblest faculties — and that in refer- 
 ence to our inner mind, not less than to the outer 
 world, we have placed before us good and evil, life and 
 death. Is not every man's history full of instances, in 
 which some want, or some emotion, some wrong or 
 some disappointment, without or within — for it matters 
 little — has helped to train him for the purposes of his 
 existence ? Only in each case it is necessary we should 
 consider life a divine school, and look up to that great 
 Teacher, who by secret and indiscernible ways brings 
 good out of evil. 
 
 Nor are the principles which pervade the more 
 tangled field of society, different in their kind, though 
 often more difficult to be traced. Here also we find 
 " twye-streaming founts," the frequent conflict of diverse 
 evils, and a general balance of good. Who will presume 
 to say, his guidance could make that straight, which 
 God has made crooked ? Take away poverty out of 
 the world ; — where would be the exercise of charity ? 
 Heal all sickness and pain and aching of the heart ; — 
 where would be the discipline of those who in patience 
 possess their souls ? Remove all insult and grievance and 
 
I.] The Restoration of the Royal Family. 5 
 
 provocation ; where would be the virtue of forbearance? 
 Let all men understand each other's intentions, when 
 really good ; — where would be love hoping all things, 
 or the same love bearing all things ? Let the majority of 
 men be meek and unresisting; — then what could check 
 the lust of power, and stay the march of some victorious 
 outlaw of nations, or quell the rapine of the domestic 
 tyrant? Make all government just; — where would be the 
 struggle of the patriot, and the grand drama of gra- 
 dually self-evolving freedom ? Concede all wholesome 
 reforms as soon as desired; — what a field would be lost 
 for patient forethought and active struggle ; how many 
 great epochs would be blotted out of the world's his- 
 tory; and how much sooner, for ought we know, the 
 very attainment of perfection might pass on to decline ? 
 
 I have ventured to throw together these reflexions, 
 trusting that by His grace in whose sanctuary Ave are, 
 they may help us to appreciate those critical periods, 
 which from their connexion with the history of our 
 Church are often forced upon our consideration. 
 
 In the lapse of about three centuries two great 
 movements stand out emphatically in connexion with 
 the spiritual and social state of Great Britain. The 
 first was a religious Reformation, not unmixed with 
 diverse political workings ; the second a political con- 
 vulsion, into which the element of religious disunion 
 largely entered. The Church of England, by whose 
 deliberate judgment I would endeavour to abide, has so 
 fully adopted the first, that to persons gifted with a 
 certain confusion of thought she appears to be its off- 
 spring ; while she has so emphatically repudiated the 
 
6 The Restoration of the Royal Family, [serm, 
 
 second, that, either from choice or persuasion, she has 
 incorporated in her Prayer-book two services, one 
 lamenting its great outrage, and the other exulting, as 
 on this day', in its general revocation. It is only natural 
 for persons nurtured amidst the wholesome influences 
 of the Church, and familiar with the deep piety of her 
 services, to expect that the Reformation will appear, 
 when examined, a work of pure faith and holiness ; and 
 they are distressed and embarrassed, when they find 
 traces (often maliciously magnified) of human passion, 
 now expressing itself in coarseness of language, and 
 now breaking out into deeds of plunder or sedition. 
 So a similar process of feeling leads persons of analo- 
 gous character to conceive that the Civil War was alto- 
 gether a great rebellion against all lawful power, and 
 that hypocrisy, sacrilege, and regicide were its leading 
 characteristics. These persons again, if they have the 
 moral courage to compare calmly authorities, are startled 
 by the amount of honest intention, unquestionable 
 piety, and manliness proved in extremest trial, which 
 seem to have existed in the ranks of the rebellious 
 side. Shall we then desert the teaching of that reli- 
 gious community, which represents to us the Catholic 
 Church of Christ, from whose hands we have eaten the 
 bread of life, and drawn from her teaching our purest 
 inspirations ? Or on the other hand shall we lightly speak 
 calumny over the graves of the dead ? God forbid ! 
 But if it be in any degree true, that the play of human 
 passion is practically an element in the divine govern- 
 
 1 This Sermon was preached at St Mary's, Cambridge, on May 29, 
 in, I think, 1847. 
 
I.] The Restoration oj the Royal Family. 7 
 
 ment of the world, we sluiU easily find a clue to satisfy 
 our own consciences, and to reconcile the tradition of 
 our Church with the truth of secular history. We may 
 approve in the main the great principle of the British 
 reformers, that of purifying God's very truth from the 
 corruptions which false tradition had thrown around it, 
 without pretending to justify every Cyrus or Constan- 
 tine, or all the sons of Zebedee who were agents in the 
 work ; while again we may disapprove of the self-willed 
 and rebellious spirit, which found its culminating point 
 in the death of Charles the First, without denying that 
 many upright and conscientious men were, partly from 
 great provocation, partly from error and other human 
 circumstances, arrayed in deadly contest against the 
 Altar and the Throne. 
 
 Time and place will allow me only a rapid glance 
 at some opinions affecting the Reformation. We are 
 taught from our infancy to regard it as the great era, 
 when the Scriptures were unsealed, when the poor had 
 the Gospel preached to them, when the blasphemous 
 abuse of indulgences was swept away, when marriage 
 recovered its primitive sanctity, and the Christian sacra- 
 ments their genuine meaning. How natural to look for 
 almost superhuman wisdom and purity in the clergy 
 and laymen Avho effected such a change ! Nor is such 
 an anticipation altogether disappointed ; but how morti- 
 fying to find it in any degree exceed the reality ! Let 
 others speak harshly of those too sensitive spirits upon 
 whom arguments drawn from this topic have been urged, 
 in some cases insidiously, and sometimes with too sad a 
 result. But, did such persons entertain large views of 
 
8 The Restoration of the Royal Family, [serm. 
 
 human nature, and its history ; did they conceive aright 
 of the Reformation as a great upheaving of the human 
 mind against a yoke not imposed of God ; as a passion- 
 ate yearning of desire for that light of the Sun of 
 righteousness, which after the partial eclipse of ages 
 broke upon the world in its brightness, they would 
 never wonder that a certain extravagance of zeal dis- 
 played itself even in the purest minds, and that their 
 enthusiasm was caught or simulated by the baser 
 natures which surrounded them. In truth, brethren, 
 God gave us this treasure in earthen vessels. Yet who 
 would reject the Apostles' doctrine, because St Peter 
 denied his Lord, and St Thomas doubted, and St Paul 
 persecuted him ? If it should be necessary for some of 
 us (as it is not necessary for every man) to study the 
 lanffuasre of the Reformers, and if we do so not in 
 hostile extracts, but in their own fulness, we shall find, 
 I admit, some things to regret, but far more to ap- 
 prove : and if we once catch their genuine spirit of 
 undoubting trust in whatever God has revealed, and 
 their extreme shrinking from any earthly commixture, 
 we shall bring our third thoughts back to our first, and 
 easily forgive the roughness of the shell, for the sake of 
 this pearl of great price. Yet it does not follow, that 
 the freedom of expression, natural in their times, is 
 either necessary, or truly Evangelical, in our own. 
 
 So again, we have read the traces of the great 
 Rebellion, in many a violated church, and many an 
 outraged law : we still see its effects in that hereditary 
 Puritanism, which now thwarts, and now calumniates 
 the faithful children of the Church ; we are taught on 
 
I.] The Restoration of the Royal Family. 9 
 
 one day to condemn as sacrilegious the death of Charles, 
 and to-day to celebrate as a signal blessing the Restora- 
 tion of his son. How are we to reconcile with such 
 traces, and such observances, the fact, which every year 
 fewer persons deny, that among the opponents of the 
 King and his administration, were men learned, and 
 acting (as they at least contended) upon constitutional 
 law — honest, and prepared to sacrifice everything for 
 their principles — pious, and believing that the work 
 of God prospered in their hands ? To this question, it 
 is, I conceive, a sufficient answer to say, that scarcely 
 in any great contest can such a line of demarcation 
 be drawn, as to represent one party as possessing — 
 the other as destitute of — all moral excellence. It 
 may almost be doubted, if any cause, utterly bad, 
 would stand for a moment. It is at least certain, we 
 may discover some errors of policy on the Royal side in 
 the Civil War, and some semblance of reason in argu- 
 ments used by the Puritans, which, when contemplated 
 from certain points of view, might easily create in the 
 minds of the latter an impression, that they were doing 
 God service. There are some features in their conduct 
 which it is impossible not to admire, and some results 
 of their struggle, for which posterity is still thankful. 
 Perhaps, after all, it may by an ingenuous mind be con- 
 sidered a proof of the healing influences of Christianity, 
 that a civil contest waged in its name was not altogether 
 unmitigated by its temper. The Revolution which our 
 fathers saw wrought by infidelity, among a people, 
 probably of gentler nature, and certainly more polished 
 than ourselves, was of a far more bloody and terrible 
 
 1—5 
 
10 The Restoration of the Royal Family, [serm. 
 
 character. Contrast with the horrors of that national 
 spasm, the many redeeming features of our Civil War, 
 the frank loyalty of the cavalier, the stern soberness of 
 the Puritan soldier, the courage of both on fairly fought 
 fields, their firmness in disaster, and comparative mode- 
 ration in victory — and say — ^^if, after all, the very cruel- 
 ties of religion are not better than the tender mercies 
 of the wicked. There may be persons, (possibly here,) 
 who think it dangerous to express even a qualified sym- 
 pathy with men who assumed as a guide their own con- 
 science, unchecked by authority. But at least, let me 
 beg such persons to consider, for I speak as unto wise 
 men, lest they carry their argument too far. For when 
 the minister of Christ invites men to be religious, it is 
 to their conscience that he must mainly appeal. If then 
 we over vilify this great ally which our Master has pro- 
 vided for us in every man's breast, I no longer know 
 what argument we shall use, to men Avho recognise 
 only the authority of the world, or else no authority at 
 all. But, perhaps, what we really mean by the word 
 authority, is either grave testimony, or not much more. 
 
 Nevertheless, after all concession, as regards the 
 motives of the better among the Puritans, we are bound 
 to ascertain the main and characteristic principle, which 
 divided them, as it were a chasm, from their opponents. 
 Nor can we fail to discover a certain high-minded prin- 
 ciple of self-will; which pretending to a peculiar illumi- 
 nation, and carried insensibly from step to step, was 
 ultimately arrayed against institutions which we justly 
 value in Church and State. Against such a principle, 
 we need not fear to warn men; and, by this warning, we 
 
I.] The Restoration of the Royal Family. 11 
 
 in some measure affirm the value of what the Puritans 
 assailed. We acknowledge our own allegiance to that 
 hereditary Sovereign, who is to us something more than 
 a chief Magistrate; whose possible infirmities we would 
 not curiously scan, but to whom we would bow with 
 affectionate loyalty. We testify also our attachment to 
 that embodied representation of Christianity, which is, 
 in a certain sense, the elect assembly of God; which, 
 having been from the beginning, retains the pattern 
 committed to her trust by the Apostles; the one vine 
 with many branches, but according to her true idea, 
 though ever imperfectly realised on earth, having only 
 one branch in each nation ; the witness of Holy Writ, 
 and dispenser of the Sacraments, and so the peculiar 
 Temple of the Holy Spirit ; claiming the allegiance of 
 all faithful men, upon this ground, that she is the mysti- 
 cal body of Christ, so that we cannot be her true mem- 
 bers, without being also members of Him. It is in 
 homage to such ideas, and in acknowledgement of that 
 Divine Providence which rules both the raging of the 
 sea, and the madness of the people, that we are met 
 here to-day. 
 
 When we have fastened with firm grasp upon such 
 great principles, we can better afford to be charitable. 
 For it does not follow that our judgment upon historical 
 questions and persons need be reduced to an iron uni- 
 formity. We may see clearly, on which side our princi- 
 ples would have ranged us, if the contest were to take 
 place; but may with perfect consistency doubt, whether 
 greater wisdom and calmness might not have averted it. 
 We may even thank God, that by adversity our Church 
 
12 The Restoration of the Royal Family, [serm. 
 
 learnt to value that liberty of prophesying, of wfiicli in all 
 temptations she was ever after to afford so illustrious an 
 example; while the State acquired that balance, which, 
 if it once more needed adjustment, has yet tended in 
 the main to secure our country peace amid the per- 
 plexity of nations, and security amid the crash of 
 thrones. 
 
 All honour then to the really good on both sides. 
 There may be expressions in the services of to-day, as on 
 other like occasions, somewhat tinged with the feeling of 
 the hour. How could it be otherwise — when men had 
 seen fire cast into the sanctuary, and all the carved 
 work broken down with axes and hammers ? Who would 
 not then have fretted himself because of the ungodly? 
 Nevertheless, the deliberate mind of our Church may be 
 gathered (in the silence of her proper organ), from the 
 uniform moderation of her very soundest Divines, as well 
 as from that Christian temper, which it is the tendency 
 of her services to form. Let no man think, he either 
 does her service, or enters into her inner spirit, by 
 denying the uprightness of Hampden, or the massive 
 intellect and enormous learning of Selden; by arrogating 
 the divine judgment upon our greatest Poet, whose 
 daring genius trod the very realms of Eternity, and saw, 
 in trance almost approaching the prophetic, God and all 
 the sanctities of heaven, about Him thick as stars ; or 
 by libelling a man scarcely inferior in his kind, Baxter, 
 to whom she offered a bishopric, whose whole life was 
 one of moderation, and whose works are even now one 
 of our store-houses of practical theology; or by banning 
 others, whom she has blessed, and whom I scarcely 
 
I.] The Restoration of the Royal Family. 13 
 
 know whether to call Puritans or Churchmen, such as 
 Lightfoot and Pococke, Reynolds and Manton, Wilkins 
 and Whichcote. Of all these and many of their fellows, 
 we may say, " Cum tales fuerint, utinam penitus nostri 
 fuissent;" and yet our hearts may turn, with fonder and 
 more enduring affection, to the firmness of Laud on the 
 scaffold; to the gentleness of Hammond in prison; to 
 the eloquent learning of Jeremy Taylor, a fugitive ; to 
 South, a schoolboy, praying for Royalty dethroned, or 
 Hacket, still communing with God in a liturgy pro- 
 scribed; to the profound discrimination of Ussher and 
 Williams, both great names not lightly to be maligned, 
 and one of them dying of a broken heart for the violent 
 death of the Prince to whom he was falsely accused of 
 lukewarmness; to that Fellow of King's, to whom exces- 
 sive joy at the happy event of this day was not less 
 fatal ; to that Welsh gentleman, who thought it sufficient 
 honour to lose his head in such noble company; and to 
 that more than chivalrous gallantry, Avhich triumphed 
 over incalculable odds, and endured with constancy to 
 the death, around the Royal standard of Montrose. 
 
 If any one thinks this a strange aggregation of 
 names, let him please to consider, that our Faith looks 
 forward to a world, where all misunderstandings will be 
 cleared up, and all jealousies done away; and as there is 
 no one of these persons, whose salvation he would ven- 
 ture to pronounce less probable than his own, it is a 
 strange inconsistency to cover with obloquy on earth, 
 those whom we hope, through the mercy of Jesus Christ, 
 to meet in Heaven. Or, if he requires the sanction of 
 authority to permit his heart to feel, let him hear the 
 
14 Tlie Restoration of the Royal Family, [serm. 
 
 noble language of not the least Teacher (among those 
 whom I have mentioned) of things human and divjne. 
 " I have conversed with some men," says the Author of 
 the Hohj Living, "who rejoiced in the death or calamity 
 of others, and accounted it as a judgment upon them 
 for being on the other side, and against them in the 
 contention : but within the revolution of a few months, 
 the same man met with a more uneasy and unhandsome 
 death ; which when I saw, I wept, and was afraid ; for 
 I knew that it must be so with all men ; for we also 
 shall die, and end our quarrels and contentions by pass- 
 ing to a final sentence." 
 
 It will be clear to the attentive hearer of these 
 remarks, that I have not represented our Church as 
 recommending the sacrifice of any of her hereditary 
 princij)les. If, indeed, it were not possible to hold fast 
 what appears right, with kindly consideration of those 
 whom God's good providence may have appointed either 
 to awake us to Christian jealousy, or to warn us against 
 some exaggeration of statement, I had rather then en- 
 dure the loss of charity, than the wilful denial of Truth. 
 But, surel}', it is not unwise to hope that, as the world 
 advances, we may learn to reconcile zeal and love ; that 
 we may gather from all history, by what mutual error 
 and collision of men the purposes of God are partly 
 retarded, and yet finally wrought out ; and how impor- 
 tant it is, not to charge our opponent with error which 
 he disclaims, or even exaggerate that which he un- 
 doubtedly holds. 
 
 Who knows if, hereafter, the same good Providence, 
 whose footsteps we have faintly traced, may bring about 
 
I.] The Restoration of the Royal Family. 15 
 
 a day, when, with a Church less gagged by the world, 
 with hearts less embittered, in proportion as our minds 
 are more fully cognizant of each other's meaning, we 
 may unsay whatever was harshly said of old, and the 
 triumphant song which justly goes up to God for 
 having reared again our broken altars, and turned the 
 captivity of our princes, may be no longer mingled with 
 the sound of earthly discord ; when our national Psalm 
 may not be as in the strain of temporal Israel — " they 
 are fallen, but we stand upright" — but rather humbly 
 devout, as well as jubilant : " Not unto us, oh Lord, not 
 unto us, but unto thy name give glory ;" and again : 
 " Lord, Thou hast been our refuge from one generation 
 to another." 
 
 I have almost done ; but my task has been speaking 
 of the Dead. Would that we also who live, brethren, 
 might not wait for the grave to close over this already 
 perishing flesh, before we do some justice to each other's 
 motives, make some attempt to understand the princi- 
 ples implied in each other's language, and some allow- 
 ance for each other's inevitable errors ; remembering, 
 that in many things we all offend daily. Nor perhaps is 
 there any better mode to obviate the evil of partial dis- 
 agreement, than to co-operate heartily in those things 
 where we do fully agree. Nor are such objects wanting, 
 when all around us poverty is pining, ignorance is sin- 
 ning, souls are perishing, and many men, not indifferent 
 to Truth, are still exclaiming, Who will shew us any 
 good? 
 
 But lastly, brethren, the fashion of this world passeth 
 away. It remains to all men, whatever opinions they 
 
16 The Restoration of the Royal Family, [serm. i. 
 
 may have chosen, to give an account before the judg- 
 ment-seat of Christ, of the manner in which they have 
 maintained them. Now there is no acceptance of per- 
 sons with God. Forgive me, then, if in anything I have 
 spoken wrongly, and join with me in a short prayer, as 
 for ourselves, so for all Christian souls. Amen. 
 
 St Mary's, Cambridge, May 29, 1847 
 
SERMON II. 
 
 DRAWING NIGH TO GOD. 
 
 Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. 
 
 Epistle of St James, iv. 8. 
 
 It might seem at first sight, as if the course of time, 
 and the discoveries which are made in some things, 
 were increasing the distance between God and man. 
 For as the world grows older, it seems to be farther 
 from its creation ; and some are tempted to fancy it 
 farther from the hands of its Creator. Nor is this all ; 
 but as men grow wiser in earthly things, they find out 
 many natural causes for events which might once have 
 been considered wonderfully strange. We know, how 
 the simple poetry of a rude people is apt to describe 
 their gods as sitting in the clouds on some high moun- 
 tain, or as brandishing the thunderbolt in their hand, 
 or even as descending bodily to mingle in the fray. 
 But when people have explored all mountains, and dis- 
 covered what clouds are made of, and found that the 
 lightning obeys laws which are as regular as those of 
 the sunbeam, only more difficult for us to trace, they 
 find themselves obliged to put farther and farther back, 
 
18 Drawing nigh to God. [serm. 
 
 that great first Cause, which yet they wisely conclude 
 must be somewhere, though unseen — and even if unknow- 
 ingly worshipped, still ever to be worshipped by us as 
 nothing less than the eternal God. Early in the last 
 century the people of an English village entreated their 
 clergyman (the father of the late Bishop Cleaver) to go 
 to prayers, because the number of meteoric lights in the 
 sky made them fancy the end of the world must be at 
 hand. We are tempted to smile at such a fear. For it 
 has been discovered, not by any merit of ours, that even 
 those extraordinary things in nature, which appear most 
 eccentric in their movements, have still an order, which 
 (however fluctuating) still implies a law ; even the course 
 of comets can be to a great extent predicted ; and 
 although nothing can well seem to us more accidental 
 than a change in the weather, we know that the rain of 
 Cardiganshire is connected with currents of air half the 
 distance of the world away ; the climate of Scotland is 
 softened by waves which have grown warm under the 
 sun of Mexico ; so that both from the innumerable links, 
 and the astonishing extent of the scale of nature, there 
 is nothing so small that it may not become great, if we 
 view it in connexion with other things, and nothing 
 apparently accidental, but the eye of knowledge can 
 view it as falling within the realm of order. 
 
 Now such a view of the grandeur of the scale, and 
 the steadiness of the operations, of nature, may serve to 
 give us confidence, that things apparently evil will be 
 overruled for some better purpose, either to ourselves, 
 or to some other pensioners upon the bounty of Him, by 
 whom the whole world is governed and preserved. It 
 
II.] Draiving nigh to God. 19 
 
 may also help us to understand, why many of our prayers 
 are not granted; for perhaps they could not be granted 
 consistently with some parts of the widely-extended 
 designs of God. 
 
 But if any one is seriously inclined to draw from 
 thence any argument for forgetting the Lord our jNIaker, 
 his pretended wisdom deserves pity, far more than the 
 simplicity of those older generations, on whom he may 
 bestow only a smile. By professing to be wise in such 
 a fashion, he does indeed become a fool. 
 
 For, we may in all calmness ask, what possible reason 
 can be given, for thus divorcing the world from Him in 
 whom we live, and move, and have our being ? No one, 
 worth listening to, has even pretended, that the great 
 mystery of life, or the beginning of creation, is easier to 
 explain now than it was a thousand years ago. On the 
 contrary, it is only more mysterious. The conditions 
 (or circumstances) of life we understand better ; but 
 what life in itself is, we know less than ever. We have 
 handled in all directions the casket which contains that 
 awful secret ; but the invisible jewel not the less escapes 
 our grasp. It is as if God had said. Learn how life is to 
 be cherished; its affections developed ; its powers braced; 
 but what that depth is, which I breathed into the nos- 
 trils of man, when I made him a living spirit, I have 
 hidden behind the veil : thus far shall you come, and no 
 farther. If indeed anything has been gained in the last 
 few years, by the concurrent researches of men who 
 understand both the body and the mind, it is a stronger 
 conviction of there being in the human soul something, 
 in no other way to be explained, but by referring it 
 
20 Drawing nigh to God. [serm. 
 
 either to the presence, or in some way to the mysterious 
 power, of the only wise and invisible God. 
 
 What some men, however, profess to apprehend, is 
 not so much our approaching the Creator in a sort of 
 rivalry (like Prometheus) — for that is too absurd an 
 audacity — but they rather speak, as if the Divine judg- 
 ments had gone up out of our sight — as if the traces of 
 the Divine handiwork were less legible in the world ; or 
 the signs less palpable of the presence of Him who is 
 the same to-day, and yesterday, and for ever. But how 
 can this possibly be so ? Would any man, who had 
 fancied a field to be sown at random, turn round and 
 say there was no sower, because the more he looked, 
 the more he discovered the seed to be arranged in the 
 most beautiful order? Or, if we found, that what 
 appeared at a distance a confused multitude of men, 
 was really an army with all its tents, arranged by rule, 
 should we say (or should we be mad if we said), " Now 
 it is clear that these people have no general" ? Surely 
 it is manifest, that the more order you find in the 
 world, the more manifestly you find a plan ; and the 
 more plan', the more thought; and the more thought, 
 the more necessity for falling down and worshipping 
 Him, whose thoughts indeed are beyond our thoughts, 
 but who thus gives us glimpses by things visible of his 
 
 ^ The real weight of some negative arguments on this point is, not 
 properly against "final causes," but against the hasty assumption that 
 we understand their entire range. The Divine scheme may be not 
 only large, but lavish and multiform, beyond our comprehension ; hence 
 it may be a natural error for us each to make our self, or our world, 
 the centre as it were of the circle of God's providence ; yet it is not 
 less true that Ho encompasses us all. 
 
II.] Draiving nigh to God. 21 
 
 own invisible power and Godhead. The more causes 
 (in short), I say, the more need of reverently acknow- 
 ledging that great and good Being, by whom alone they 
 are ordered and sustained. 
 
 Then, however, some pei'sons profess to be lost in 
 the vast periods of time which must have rolled silently 
 along, since we can even imagine the world beginning 
 to be. Thus they seem to be removed farther from the 
 Creator, or his face melts, as it were, away into the 
 clouds of the distant Past. Certainly, it is true, few 
 persons would now represent our world as having been 
 made for the first time so little as a few thousand years 
 ago. But what difference does it make to the liffhtnina: 
 whether it has to travel a hundred miles or a thousand ? 
 It travels both alike in a second. But if there are 
 things in nature, to which distance makes no difference, 
 much less does it make any difference to mind. Our 
 thoughts travel quicker even than the liglitning, and 
 take cognizance of the ends of the earth. For example, 
 if any one has friends in India, he is able to call up their 
 likenesses before his mind, and to fancy the scenes in 
 which they mingle, and every employment they are 
 engaged in, without moving from the spot where he 
 stands, and without caring whether India is a thousand, 
 or a hundred thousand miles away. 
 
 But still more and more, my brethren, again : if we 
 could for one moment frame in our mind a true con- 
 ception of that clear and eternal Spirit, to whom all our 
 thoughts are perhaps hardly so much as the twilight is 
 to the bright noonday, we should find all distance and 
 time, and every thing that seems to separate man from 
 
22 Drawing nigh to God. [serm. 
 
 the eye of his Maker, fade away like the shadow of a 
 cloud. We should then see our Maker and our Judge 
 to be both a God afar off, and also a God at hand. We 
 should be brought nigh to Him, without changing our 
 place, by a sense of that power and that goodness, which 
 are about our path and about our bed, and which watch 
 over our going out and our coming in. We should then 
 feel, that as no part of the round world is farther than 
 another from the blue sky which is over all, so before 
 the eye of God all hearts are alike open, and from Him 
 no secrets are hid. 
 
 Now it is true, we never shall get a full and worthy 
 conception of God, by merely thinking of him, as a 
 matter of the understanding. We cannot by mere 
 searching find him out. But happily, brethren, it is not 
 necessary for us to travel such a road, in order to arrive 
 at peace. We have only to speak to him at heart, as 
 a child speaks to its father, and He himself draws nigh 
 to us with his very present help. He makes our very 
 life a school for us ; and if we watch all its events, not 
 superstitiously, as if they were quite beyond our control, 
 but with a reasonable faith, considering them as things 
 ■which we may partly mould, and partly be moulded by, 
 we shall find him not a God that hides himself, but one 
 that reveals himself to us day by day. 
 
 I mean to say, if there is anything in life which 
 puzzles us, or even happens to us so as to be remark- 
 able, we have only to apply to it this idea, of its being 
 part of a scheme by which God is training us, and 
 this faith will teach us to understand it. In thy light, 
 said the devout Psalmist, we shall see light. We only 
 
II.] Drawing nigh to God. 23 
 
 understand the world when we make God its beffinnin^r 
 and its end. Our joy is holy when we consider God as 
 leading us through cheerfulness to charity. Our sorrow 
 too becomes blest, if we take it as a chastening from 
 One who knows, that we needed either humility or resig- 
 nation, and who fits us thereby for a better inheritance. 
 
 Again, our wealth, our talents, our knowledge, and 
 all the strange differences which God leaves between 
 his children in these things, are never so well accounted 
 for, as when we remember our Saviour's lesson, " Freely 
 ye have received, freely give." Or, if there are still 
 riddles in the world's course, which no one has ex- 
 plained, how can these be better looked upon, than as 
 parts of that groaning, wherewith (St Paul teaches us 
 that) all Creation travaileth together, looking with 
 earnest expectation, for the uncovering of some greater 
 happiness of the children of God. Thus faith escapes 
 from either the turmoil, or the downfall, of our earthly 
 city, by looking forward to that city of God, which is 
 eternal in the heavens. 
 
 Nor yet would I speak, brethren, as if the strength 
 of our consolation lay only in the future. For who can 
 unroll that sacred volume, in which the experiences of 
 bygone members in the Church of God are recorded 
 for our benefit, without seeing that in whatever time of 
 need they drew nigh, they found him a very present 
 God, even in time of trouble. When Jacob in his wan- 
 dering prayed, before he laid himself down to sleep at 
 Bethel, the place of his prayer became to him the 
 house of God. When Solomon asked wisdom rather 
 than wealth, and wisdom not for any selfish purpose, but 
 
24 Draiving nigh to God. [serm. 
 
 in order to serve his people, God gave him wisdom 
 beyond all the princes of his time, and added abun- 
 dantly beyond all he had asked or thought. Thus, of 
 Samuel dedicating himself in the devout purity of 
 childhood, of Josiah giving his heart early to the Lord, 
 and of DanieP when he remembered the God of his 
 fathers even by the waters of Babylon, we find, that 
 each had an abundant recompense, — though one per- 
 haps after the manner of earth, and another in that 
 of heaven ; one an honoured life, and another a strange 
 deliverance, and another a providential death ; but 
 which of the three was best, is clear only to Him, to 
 whom not only things past, but also things possible, are 
 known. But why should I linger upon meaner instances ? 
 We read of one above all others, who had indeed been 
 rich in the wealth of heaven, but who for our sake had 
 become poor : and though he was a son, yet he learned 
 obedience and drew nigh to God through humility, 
 through prayer, through a life of well-doing, through 
 an offering up of himself in a death of pain. Is it not 
 worthy of all remembering, that never in the days of 
 our Lord's incarnation did his Heavenly Father so mani- 
 festly draw nigh to him, as when He, the only-begotten, 
 had first drawn nigh by some act of submission as a 
 servant, or of duty as a son. It is when he has stooped 
 in Jordan to fulfil all the requirements of religious 
 observance by being baptized, that the heavens are 
 opened, and a voice is heard, saying, " This is my 
 
 1 In using the illustration of Daniel, I did not mean to pledge 
 myself to any critical opinion as to the date of the book, or as to ques- 
 tions depending on the date 
 
II.] Drawing nigh to God. 25 
 
 beloved Son, hear ye him." It was while He was pray- 
 ing, and already anticipating the hour of his voluntary 
 agony, that He was transfigured, and his face shone as 
 the sun, and both the first founder and the greatest 
 restorer of the old Jewish law appeared to do homage 
 to him as their Lord. But still more, it is in his utter 
 desertion, and the hour of his darkest solitude, that 
 an angel appears to him from heaven strengthening 
 him ; and it is from that tree of shame, which He made 
 the symbol of divine patience, that He both promised 
 paradise, and received, in the darkness and the earth- 
 quake, and in the firstfruits of the resurrection, the 
 testimony of nature to that majesty which did not 
 shield him from suffering, but which left him mighty to 
 save, as the Son of the living God. 
 
 In this ever-memorable history of Him who is our 
 Saviour, our Master, and our example, we have, as it 
 were, the crowning proof, that whoever would have God 
 draw nigh to him in mercy, must in humble faith, and 
 in sincerity of self-devotion, draw nigh to God. 
 
 It remains therefore for me to ask you, brethren, 
 are you drawing nigh to God? Is He in all your 
 thoughts ? Are you trying to shape the week-days of 
 your lives according to his will ? Or, if any of you 
 have never seriously thought of taking him as your 
 master, how can you possibly expect to have him as 
 your Saviour. 
 
 Let this be our first question, and the grand test, of 
 
 whether we are drawing nigh to our God. When we 
 
 offer that petition in our prayer, Thy will he done, do 
 
 we mean at heart only an idle resignation of the course 
 
 w. s. 2 
 
26 Drawing nigh to God. [serm. 
 
 of the world, and other such things as are utterly out of 
 our power to change ; or do we really and earnestly 
 include our own thoughts and our own conduct ? These 
 are, to some extent, in our own power. If we pray for 
 God's will to be done in these, He will assuredly grant 
 that prayer. One petition, therefore, there is, we can 
 always obtain ; and that is the one, which of all others 
 most concerns our happiness. But now, is every one 
 here daily praying, Thy will, O Thou most holy and 
 most true, be done by me, in my thoughts, in my feel- 
 ings, in my deeds ? If that is our sincere prayer, we 
 are then drawing nigh to God, for we are offering the 
 prayer of self-devotion. Doubt not, then, but earnestly 
 believe. He will in mercy draw nigh to us. 
 
 But secondly, in all such prayers as the above, (that 
 is, prayers which endeavour chiefly to change our sinful 
 lives into the likeness of God, rather than change his 
 holiness to consent to our sin), have we the most perfect 
 sincerity of heart ? This is a most vital point. For, if 
 any man is double-minded in his prayers, asking salva- 
 tion from sin, and desiring only safety from pain, let 
 him not think to receive spiritual grace from God. He 
 is so far from drawing nigh, that his heart is really afar 
 off*. Therefore God beholdeth him afar off". Nor can 
 any man be considered truly sincere, who does not act 
 as he prays. For this is the reason which St James 
 gives, why our prayers do not prosper : " Ye ask, and 
 have not, because ye ask amiss." And again : " A 
 doubleminded man is unstable in all his ways." 
 
 Thirdly, are we drawing nigh in humility ? When 
 the prophet Isaiah had conceived truly of the majesty 
 
II.] Drawing nigh to God. 27 
 
 of God, he said, "Woe is me, for I am a man of un- 
 clean lips." Thus to feel strongly that divine excellence 
 must ever tend to humble our thoughts of ourselves as 
 dust and ashes. Not that I mean this as if the most 
 abject expressions of servile abasement were always the 
 most pleasing in the ears of God. There is such a 
 thing as a decent soberness, the twin sister of true 
 reverence. We should not like to see a favourite child, 
 even when he deserved punishment, cringe like a beaten 
 hound. But we know that the Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ is also, in a lower sense, but a true sense, our 
 Father. His throne is a throne of grace. Therefore 
 let us draw nigh, in all time of our need, with full 
 assurance of faith. But yet, remembering what that 
 All-holy Being is, who chargeth his angels with folly, 
 and what we are, with all our giddiness, our vanity, and 
 inconsideration, let us raise our conception of that 
 which the Holy Spirit would have us to do ; and thereby 
 deepen our sense of how sadly we have fallen short of 
 it. It will be both a natural consequence of such humi- 
 lity, and in turn a help to it, if we throw our minds into 
 an attitude of deep reverence, whenever our thoughts 
 approach the things which belong to God. Let his 
 name, his worship, his consecrated house, and even all 
 words and things associated with the affectionate expe- 
 rience of devout spirits, retain that power to awaken 
 reverential thoughts in us, which they ever exercise 
 upon uncorrupted minds. For thus, we shall have many 
 little remembrances of our highest duty and our purest 
 happiness, Avhich the giddy neglect, and which the 
 scoffer has for ever thrown away. If a man steps into a 
 
 2—2 
 
28 Drawmg nigh to God. [serm, 
 
 church like into a market-place, or handles a prayer- 
 book like a newspaper, or suffers the levity (which he 
 mistakes for wit), " foolish jestings, which are not con- 
 venient," to play about consecrated words and things, 
 he has at least begun to weaken the outward defences 
 of the soul against sin ; and he becomes in danger (as 
 the wise man said) of perishing by little and little. 
 Whereas, on the other hand, if we have that true rever- 
 ence, which comes of humbling ourselves before God, 
 he will in due time exalt us with those graces of cha- 
 racter, which are to the consistent Christian when he 
 mingles with the world, what the glory on the face of 
 Moses was, when he came forth, enlightened, inspired, 
 and godlike, from deep communion with the Father of 
 the spirits of all flesh. 
 
 Fourthly, are we drawing nigh to God in watchful- 
 ness ? " Watch unto prayer," says the Apostle. And 
 again, "Young men likewise exhort to be sober-minded." 
 There is a kind of grace, which may be called wakeful- 
 ness of character in respect of our duty. It is the 
 opposite of giddiness ; and it seems naturally to spring 
 of true reverence, as in turn it gives birth to the spirit 
 of self-control. We read of Abel, and Enoch, and 
 Moses, that they endured, as seeing Him who is invi- 
 sible. Thus, if we put before the eyes of our mind the 
 unwritten word of God, which abideth for ever in the 
 Heavens, we shall be strengthened by faith in our un- 
 seen Saviour and Comforter, to put aside many temp- 
 tations, which would otherwise be too strong for us. 
 For, having our minds thus opened to behold spiritual 
 things, we shall be on our guard against evil thoughts, 
 
II.] Draiving nigh to God. 29 
 
 and watch for all means of grace, and all secret helps, 
 which the Spirit of God may in silence and prayer 
 suggest to ns. Hence we shall be strengthened to 
 command our passions, to restrain our unruly appetites, 
 to mortify our lusts, and come more than conquerors 
 out of every temptation. Thus shall we be led into 
 that holy obedience of faith, which, when carried out 
 in the spirit of self-devotion already spoken of, is the 
 surest and best criterion of our drawing nigh to God. 
 
 It will not, I trust, have escaped you, that all the 
 modes of drawing nigh, above mentioned, are really 
 acts and instances of faith, though I have not so much 
 as used the word. Supposing, then, we draw nigh, not in 
 a selfish presumption of our being especial favourites 
 with God, but with humble faith in his own righteous 
 promise to receive whoever comes to him in sincerity, 
 He will daily more and more draw nigh to us, by exalt- 
 ing the earnestness of faith into the cheerfulness of 
 hope, and by hallowing our hope with the blessedness 
 of love. For it is God who gives strength to the Aveak, 
 and courage to the timid ; who counsels the embar- 
 rassed, and comforts them that mourn. It is God who 
 trains up the devout child into the prevailing prophet, 
 and who gives the Apostles more than all the fathers and 
 brothers and sisters whom they left. It is God, even 
 now, as much as ever, who overrules our blind strivings 
 after good, until our hearts take hold of a blessedness, 
 greater than our minds conceived. Thus there comes, 
 to men who follow Christ in any rough path of duty, a 
 hope begotten of experience, and a peace of mind 
 which passeth understanding; a pleasantness, far greater 
 
30 Drawing nigh to God. [serm. 
 
 than any pleasure from seeking to please themselves. 
 Only, be you partakers in will of the Saviour's cross, 
 rather than followers of him, for the loaves and fishes 
 by the way. On that condition only, if the patience of 
 Christ hath its perfect work in you, can your patience 
 work an experience of God's dealings with his children; 
 and only such experience works a hope, which can 
 never be ashamed. 
 
 Be not you, then, my young friends, frightened at 
 the idea of trusting yourselves, both for the guidance 
 of your lives, and for the fixing of your lot, to the God 
 who cannot lie. Dare to make the experiment of draw- 
 ing nigh to him in the morning of your days, with the 
 prayer of self-devotion, with sincerity, with humility, 
 and with sober watchfulness. So may you be spared 
 the agony and the doubt of drawing nigh to him 
 late in shame, and remorse, and uselessness, with the 
 possibility of being driven far from him by guilty de- 
 spair. 
 
 Do not grudge him now the best you have to give — 
 bring the firstlings of your thoughts, the freshness of 
 your minds. So shall Almighty God, the Father, the 
 Saviour, and the Comforter, draw nigh to you in the 
 experience of this life, with blessings a hundredfold for 
 every pure aspiration of your hearts to his holiness ; 
 and, though eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, all the 
 secrets of the world to come, we know that the Sanc- 
 tifier is also the life-giver ; and at the right hand of the 
 Father, where our Saviour Jesus prepares a place and a 
 crown for them who are partakers of his cross, there 
 are pleasures for evermore. 
 
II.] Drawing nigh to God. 31 
 
 There may God enable us in heart and mind to 
 ascend, by now drawing nigh to him with a fervent 
 spirit, so that even if the time of our departure come 
 suddenly as a thief in the night, we may not be like 
 plants moved only to wither in some uncongenial atmo- 
 sphere, but may be a people fitted for the place pre- 
 pared for us ; even as children trained in discipline by 
 a wise father, reaching the full stature of the spiritual 
 man, before we enter into the joy of our Lord. 
 
 Lampeter, Oct. 2, 1853. 
 
SERMON III. 
 
 WHAT MANNER OF LOVE THAT WE SHOULD BE 
 CALLED THE SONS OF GOD. 
 
 Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that 
 we should be called the sons of God. 1 John iii. 1. 
 
 It is what some woiiLl say was the equivocal property, 
 but we may venture to call it the glory, of our earliest 
 known ancestors in Great Britain, that they have haixied 
 down a memorable example of the power of conscience. 
 The very climate of our island may then, as now, have 
 tinged the imagination of its inhabitants with gloom ; 
 and the main characteristic of their piety, as of the 
 ancient forests and rugged masses among which they 
 worshipped, was a spell of awe which lay heavy on the 
 spirit. But we know, that the strong expectation of a 
 future life had a practical force among them which sur- 
 prised the more sensual nations of the south ; and that 
 this sentiment not only animated their courage in war, 
 but influenced their dealings in those* homelier matters 
 which require the agency of money ; indeed, it was 
 assumed, as a fundamental truth, in all the structure of 
 
 1 Negotiorum ratio, et exactio crediti, ad inferos deferebatur. — 
 Pomp. Mela. 
 
SERM. III.] What manner of love, &c. 33 
 
 their society. It was also one of their ideas, that no 
 less a sacrifice than the life of man was required to 
 appease that heavenly power whom they believed to 
 witness our actions and to judge us accordingly. Some 
 persons may remark, that such a ritual of blood 
 savours of Moloch ; Avhile others may take a pleasure in 
 comparing it rather with the trial of faith, when the 
 patriarch withheld not from Jehovah his son, even his 
 only son whom he loved. Or again, it may be consi- 
 dered an unconscious prophecy among the heathen of a 
 more perfect oblation to be offered. But no candid 
 observer will refuse to admit, that, however fierce were 
 such customs, they yet existed among a people, who had 
 deep thoughts of the unseen God, and of the value of 
 the soul in his sight, since they thought it could be 
 redeemed by no sacrifice less precious than that of 
 itself. 
 
 It was in a more sunny climate, but amidst a race of 
 men not cast in so heroic a mould, that dances and 
 song, libations of wine and offerings of flowers, were 
 deemed sufficient testimonies of thankfulness to the 
 Giver of good. Just as now the stern sabbath of Scot- 
 land differs from the carnival of Naples, even such was 
 the contrast of old. But we find in every nation, where- 
 ever mankind had not fallen below humanity into a 
 mere bestial state, some attempts made, either to 
 acknowledge the goodness of God, or to deprecate his 
 wrath, or to conjecture, under what form, or conception 
 of the mind, he ought to be adored. Such attempts 
 might differ from each other as widely as the aspira- 
 tions of Milton from those of a common mechanic ; and 
 
 2—5 
 
34 What manner of love [serm. 
 
 might be wise or foolish, lofty or grovelling, as in any 
 case the degree of purity of the national conscience 
 enabled the Spirit of God to retain a footing, or the 
 degree of cultivation (under Divine Providence) enabled 
 a sufficient balance to be supplied by the understand- 
 ing. Only, so far as anywhere the conception was pure 
 or elevating, we doubt not that in all this was working 
 one and the selfsame spirit. Nor was that spirit any 
 other than the great Being, who in no age or country 
 has left himself altogether without witness. It has 
 been truly remarked by one of our profoundest living 
 preachers, that the writers of the Old Testament, 
 though they represent their countrymen as especially 
 favoured, still do not conceive of all other nations as 
 living without God in the world. On the contrary, if 
 any Pharaoh declares, that he knows not the Lord, it 
 is mentioned as a mark of especial hardness of heart. 
 But the earlier Pharaoh did know the Lord. Abime- 
 lech, king of Gerar, knew the Lord. Melchisedec, 
 though possibly a prince of the race^ of Ham, was a priest 
 of the most high God. Balaam, the prophet of Midian, 
 was certainly not wanting in knowledge of God, how- 
 ever unlike his end may have been to the end of the 
 righteous. 
 
 It seems worth while occasionally dwelling on such 
 clear instances, in order to be reminded of the univer- 
 sality of the idea of God, and of the purely spiritual 
 manner in which such knowledge is kept alive. Per- 
 sons greatly mistake, who suppose that in the day of 
 
 1 This is implied by bis name, as compared with that of Adonit- 
 sedec, and the city of each. 
 
III.] that we should he called the sons of God. 35 
 
 Judgment men will be called to account for any other 
 talents than those which they have received. Nor is it 
 a less mistake, to suppose that the eternal providence, 
 and the love, and the grace of God, cannot manifest 
 themselves in all the efficacy of their mysterious, but 
 purely spiritual personality, by a thousand channels, 
 very different from what are required, if the religion of 
 the heart is to be turned into a syllogism of logic. 
 
 This is the condemnation, that light was in the 
 world, and evil men chose darkness rather than light. 
 For this cause, the wrath of God was declared, because 
 the corrupt heathen, seeing clearly his eternal power 
 and godhead, stifled that knowledge by unrighteousness 
 (or held it in wickedness). There was a time when men 
 talked of the state of nature as a savage state. But 
 most of our profoundest inquirers now believe, that the 
 savage state is not natural, but is a vile degeneracy. 
 It is the fall of Adam repeated again and again. For 
 Almighty God did not make man to creep on his belly 
 with the beasts, or to be a wild hunter like Nimrod, 
 and like the Tatar hordes, or to be afraid of the tiger 
 like some tribes of India ; but he bade him look up in 
 prayer like Abel, and be the father of nations like Abra- 
 ham and Jacob, and subdue the earth, which was his 
 portion as the offspring of God, until he put all things 
 under his feet. 
 
 When however the true idea of God was once lost, 
 there might be no end to the erroneous wanderings 
 of opinion. Some might think mere animal life all 
 which either had been, or should be. Some might think 
 natural agencies, the Sun and the host of heaven, were 
 
36 What manner of love [serm, 
 
 destined to bear rule over them. Some might fall into 
 what is vulgarly called idolatry, the worship of stocks 
 and stones ; others, my brethren, into that which is 
 quite as truly and really idolatry, but which most of us 
 practise, the worship of their own interests or their own 
 passions; only giving to each some holy name, like the 
 heathen called his image Lord, or King. Thus thick 
 darkness might be said to cover the people, and gross 
 darkness the nations. It is my firm belief, from which 
 no one will ever terrify me, that God nercifully winked at 
 the times of that ignorance; and that such often-abused 
 texts, as " There is none other name given but one," — 
 are to be clearly interpreted in a spiritual, and not in a 
 grossly nominal sense. 
 
 Yet, not the less, let us yield hearty thanks to 
 Almighty God, who at last was pleased to shew mani- 
 festly unto what likeness we should liken him, or under 
 what image the Invisible and Incomprehensible should 
 be adored. He has given us his Son, born of the seed 
 of David. He has embodied in that Son, the wisdom, 
 and the power, which make up the fulness of the God- 
 head. He has thereby shewn himself as a rebuker of 
 them that sin, as a receiver of them that return, as a 
 Comforter of them that mourn, and, in every part of 
 his dealings with all mankind, as acting the part of a 
 Father towards his children. It may never perhaps 
 have occurred to some persons present, that Christ is 
 properly to us very nearly what an image was to a hea- 
 then in old time. For the heathen knew there was a 
 God beyond ; only he could not raise his thoughts to 
 address a pure spirit, without the intervention of some 
 
III.] that we should he called the sons of God. 37 
 
 visible object. Even so, we were constantly in danger of 
 lapsing from a right conception of the invisible God, 
 until we beheld his grace and truth made clear in his 
 express likeness. But having learnt what character, 
 that is, what stamp of spirit, was in Christ Jesus, we are 
 in no more danger of worshipping Jehovah under any 
 earthly form, such as fire ; though indeed to the wicked 
 he is a consuming fire. Nor again, do we liken him to 
 any visible Sun, though he may be called the Sun of 
 righteousness ; nor yet to any star, though he is Lord of 
 all the hosts of heaven. But righteousness, wisdom, 
 goodness, grace, and truth, are the characteristics we 
 find in Christ ; and these, we feel, must be the likeness 
 of God. Thus, I venture to say, Christ is our image. 
 He is the medium, through which alone we form an 
 adequate conception of the invisible. He thus heals 
 the strife between matter and spirit ; bridges over the 
 great chasm, which intervened between man encom- 
 passed with infirmities, and the purity of God ; while, 
 by pouring out his soul in voluntary death, he provides 
 an atonement, with w^hich guilt, otherwise hopeless, 
 may associate itself, and so be turned into a healthful 
 and accepted remorse. 
 
 Yet in calling Christ, as the apostle Paul called 
 him, the likeness of God, far be from us any idea, that 
 this likeness was of a mere transitory or reflected kind ; 
 or that it could have been truly exhibited bodily, with- 
 out an underlying groundwork, or a present reality 
 (hypo-stasis) of that eternal wisdom, which is of the 
 only wise God. The old fathers of the Church laboured 
 hard to express the necessity of believing in such an 
 
88 What manner of love [serm. 
 
 eternal reality (as opposed to a transient assumption) 
 of the divine likeness, when they framed the Nicene 
 Creed, and when they used the technical phrases, which 
 we translate, substance and persons. Nor is it in any 
 other faith that we conceive ourselves, in preaching 
 Christ, to be preaching the power of God, and the 
 wisdom of God. The man Jesus of Nazareth would 
 not have claimed our adoration, nor have been our 
 adequate Mediator, if the wisdom of God, which was 
 from eternity, had not manifested itself as the Word, 
 and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. By the 
 term likeness it seems especially meant that Christ is 
 the visible representation of God, who is otherwise 
 invisible. But again, not the less, let us venture, in 
 all the simple freedom which the apostles exemplify in 
 their writings, to speak not only of the Son of God, 
 but also of the Son of Man. For, here again, Christ 
 were not our Mediator, unless he were verily and in- 
 deed both. If, as coming forth from the Father, he 
 embodies the divine wisdom, it is as being born of 
 woman, that he puts on, in the character of our hu- 
 manity, the most familiar features of a Son. Thus he 
 assures us, that we too are sons of one Father, which 
 is in Heaven. 
 
 So great an idea had been partly divined by those 
 prophets of the Athenians, from whom St Paul quotes, 
 •' For we are also God's offspring." But it is when 
 confirmed by our Saviour, that this idea becomes our 
 great safeguard against every falsehood or corruption 
 in religion. It preserves us, as we have already seen, 
 from any kind of idolatry. For it shews us, that at 
 
III.] that ive should he called the sons of God. 39 
 
 least nothing less than our own spirit is to be wor- 
 shipped, seeing that our God is the Father of spirits. 
 " Seeing then that we are his offspring, we ought not 
 to think the Godhead is like to corruptible things, 
 e. g. silver and gold," &c. Moreover, the same idea 
 prevents us also from refining away our God into an 
 abstract notion, since under the character of a Father 
 is included the conception of will, and of personal 
 affection. Nor again does it suffer us to be absorbed 
 by that greatest temptation to cultivated minds, (though 
 here we are hardly educated enough for it,) the danger 
 of losing the lawgiver, in the unfathomable immensity, 
 and the indefinitely minute causation of the law, which 
 he has given to all creation, as a thing which shall not be 
 broken. For, from this likeness of God as our Father, Ave 
 learn that not merely the forecasting will, and the wise 
 arrangement, but either the affections of man, or rather 
 something correspondent to, and capable of implanting 
 those affections, must be taken into our idea of Him who 
 holdeth our steps in life, and suffereth not our feet to slip. 
 But still farther, we are also hence taught, not to 
 dread the most High, as a passionate and vindictive 
 Being, who registers the vows of mankind, in order 
 to be condemning witnesses of their failures, or who 
 so rejoices in the uncontrolled sway of his own will, as 
 to seek glory in being called a God of might, rather 
 than a God of righteousness. For this word Father 
 of Heaven ^ and (as conveyed in the word Father) the 
 
 1 The modern comma after Father, in the first verse of the Litany, 
 is without authority, and implies a misconception of the sentiment, 
 as well as forgetfulness of the Latin Pater de coelis, and of the old 
 English idiom, as in the phrase " thieves of mercy." 
 
40 What manner of love [serm. 
 
 love of God constrains us, to believe earnestly, that 
 he views with compassionate regard whatever is pre- 
 sented to him in the name of his Son, as well as to 
 hope all things, even of those who, like the younger 
 son, are as yet in a far country, not knowing how 
 much their husks fall short of the bread of life. But 
 even if they remain among the swine, and so perish, 
 being hurried into the deep, (and that some men do so 
 perish, is a most sad and necessary warning) we still 
 do not doubt, that the Father had divided to them 
 their full portion of his goods, though they wickedly 
 squandered it in riotous living. 
 
 But again, we do not indeed hence unlearn that all- 
 concerning doctrine of a judgment to come. Yet we 
 do learn, that we shall be judged by no harsh require- 
 ment, such as an earthly father would think unfair for 
 his own children, nor by any other principles than 
 those which Christ the firstbegotten of many brethren, 
 has already exemplified in the flesh, and daily recom- 
 mends to us by His Spirit. Does any man then 
 tremble (and who of any gravity must not sometimes 
 do so ?) at the thought of all hearts being open, and 
 all secrets known, before that tribunal from which a 
 few years only separate the youngest of us ? Let him 
 know, that like as a father pitieth his own children, so 
 doth God measure out judgment in mercy. Although, 
 then, even the fondest of fathers cannot prevent an 
 incurable disease, or a determined viciousness, from 
 hurrying his children to the grave, and thus even the 
 Almighty, being fettered by the perfection of his own 
 holy being, cannot prevent the wicked from ultimately 
 
III.] tliat ive should he called the sons of God. 41 
 
 eating the bitter fruit of their own doings — ^j'ct we 
 have the consolation of knowing that nothing but the 
 voluntary alienation of ourselves from all his teaching, 
 and his guidance, can prevent him from perfecting the 
 work of mercy He has begun in us. Can we be so 
 insane as thus to neglect so great a salvation ? Surely 
 we will not by choice be so untrue. Almighty God, 
 then, will take care we shall not be beguiled. 
 
 Again, as the idea of God being our Father, softens 
 the expectation, without however destroying the cer- 
 tainty, of a judgment to come, so it exercises a like 
 soothing influence, yet not an alteration of facts, in 
 the affairs of the world which now is. It does not, 
 for example, remove inequalities, either of station, or 
 of mind, or of a spiritual order. For, as an earthly 
 father may divide his estate, to the eldest son more, 
 and to the younger sons less, or as he may send one 
 a sailor to battle with the storm, and another to some 
 safer calling of more apparent ease, thus our Heavenly 
 Father makes some of his children kings, and some 
 beggars, and to some he gives Avisdom or length of 
 days, to others contempt and an early grave. Yet we 
 maintain, that with all this variety of lot, God gives 
 to every man a blessing. There is no one of his 
 children, who has not received of him the power, either 
 of acting, or bearing, or praying, or in some way of 
 playing a tolerable part, in a scheme so large as to 
 require every sort of inequality, yet in no part with- 
 drawn from the control of a forecasting wisdom, or 
 the embrace of a redeeming love. 
 
42 What manner of love [serm. 
 
 To be brief, there is in things spiritual no em- 
 barrassing enigma, and in things temporal no inequality 
 of lot, no suffering, and no disappointment, in which we 
 may not gather either instruction, or comfort, from the 
 habitual conception of God, not as Power, not as Life, 
 not as Law, though indeed He is all these, but as our 
 Heavenly Father. 
 
 Behold, then, what manner of love he hath bestowed 
 upon us, that we should be called the sons of God. We 
 are sons by creation, in that we partake of that fore- 
 thought, that reason, that power of originating action, 
 and so of becoming creators to ourselves, and con- 
 trolling within limits our own destiny, which probably 
 constitute what in the book of Genesis is called the 
 likeness of God. We are also sons by redemption, in 
 that, when we were estranged by sin from the great 
 family of angels and the spirits of just men made per- 
 fect, the very Son, coming forth from the Eternal, 
 opened again in the fiesh a communication with heaven. 
 Thereby he set up again the fallen ladder of Bethel, 
 the great chain of childlike prayers ascending from true 
 hearts, and blessings descending from a love divine 
 which passeth knowledge. We also who believe, and 
 are baptized, are sons by clear adoption, for we are 
 taken into Christ ; and He who is our head, representing 
 all mankind, has stept, as the Son of Man, into the place 
 of Israel, who was reckoned of old the firstborn of 
 Jehovah. Whatever things were written of old time, 
 are now written for our consolation, for they are the 
 breathings of that Spirit, which ever dwells in the hearts 
 
III.] that we should he called the sons of God. 43 
 
 of all faithful men. The Psalms are ours, and the Pro- 
 phets are ours. AVhen we are distressed, the words of 
 David prophesy our distress ; when we repent, his 
 restoration is the sure type of ours. And if ever, by 
 the alone grace of God, we arise and shine in all 
 godliness of life, the glory of the Lord is then risen 
 upon us, and we partake of an inheritance which cannot 
 pass away. For if we are sons, whatever the Father 
 hath, is ours. Thus, even that masculine-minded pre- 
 late, St Cyprian, was not afraid to say, that which Christ 
 is, we shall be, if only we shall have followed Christ. 
 And it was the logic of a greater than Cyprian, if Ave 
 are sons, then heirs, and fellowheirs of the saints. It 
 was also the prayer of one greater than Paul, even of 
 him whose prayer cannot fail, that as he was in the 
 Father, and the Father in him, so we might be in the 
 Son, and the spirit of sonship be made perfect in us. 
 
 Lastly then, brethren, consider, what manner of men 
 ought we to be. If God hath given us so great a hope, 
 shall we not purify ourselves, even as He is pure ? We 
 are naturally shocked, if we see the son of some noble 
 family, or of a respected gentleman, or, not least, of a 
 clergyman, degrading himself by low and vicious com- 
 pany. We are instinctively tempted to exclaim, Young 
 man, this place, or this employment, does not become 
 your father's son. It does not befit either your blood, 
 or your breeding, to share the vice of sots, or the sloth 
 of fools. Even so, brethren, sinful habits, impure pas- 
 sions, and selfish engrossments, are not becoming in 
 those, upon whom such love is bestowed, that they are 
 called the sons of God. Shall we love darkness and 
 
44 What Tnamier of love, &c. [serm. hi. 
 
 ignorance, who are the offspring of the Father of light ? 
 Or, if He is the very Truth, shall we be disingenuous 
 and insincere ? If He is Love, should we be malicious 
 and backbiting ? If He is Good, and doeth good to 
 all, shall we be grossly selfish, and have no higher 
 object in God's world, than to lay hand greedily upon 
 whatever is pleasant to the lust of the flesh, or the lust 
 of eyes, or the pride of life? Then will even Cicero, 
 that ancient forerunner of Christ to the mind of St 
 Augustine, rebuke us when he says, " In nothing does 
 man more nearly approach to the Deity, than in doing 
 good to his felloAv-creatures." Then, above all, will our 
 Master, our eldest brother, and our restorer to the 
 family of heaven, remind us of his own diviner words, 
 that by doing good, even to the unthankful, we approve 
 ourselves as the children of our Father, who letteth his 
 sun shine on the evil, and on the good. 
 
 Strive we then, while it is called to-day, to inherit 
 the spirit of our eternal and most merciful Father. 
 For thereby we may hope to realise upon earth that 
 temper, which is both the characteristic of heaven, and 
 the easy condition upon which alone man can enter 
 therein, as the place of his spiritual kindred, and his 
 eternal home. 
 
 Lampeter, April 24, 1853. 
 
SERMON IV. 
 
 EOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 WTiatsoever things were written aforetime, were written for our learning, 
 that we, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have 
 hope. Romans xv. 4. 
 
 The study of history has always been allowed to be one 
 of the happiest means of awakening and improving the 
 mind. It has even been called wisdom, teaching by 
 instances. For, if it rise in any degree to its high 
 vocation, it summons the men of past times to move 
 before us as they lived ; it enables us to hear them, 
 though dead, yet speak : to appreciate, perhaps, the 
 difficulties which surrounded them ; and, by the uncon- 
 scious effect of sympathy, to engraft on our own minds 
 the power of confronting with no less manliness any 
 similar trials which may possibly beset our path. So 
 eminently is this true, that the man who has traced 
 with throbbing heart the career of great patriots, 
 stricken down perhaps by overwhelming odds, or of 
 great thinkers, who have either embodied their wisdom 
 in legislation, or bid the eloquent page glow with its 
 record for ever, has in all probability assimilated himself 
 in some measure to the mighty of whom he has read: 
 
46 Holy Scripture. [serm. 
 
 for he has lived over in thought what was their life in 
 act : he has thus drunk into their spirit, and by breath- 
 ing a kindred atmosphere has become partaker of their 
 very nature. 
 
 But if such assertions may be ventured of great men 
 and deeds in general, they more emphatically apply to 
 such records as we have inherited of the earnest aspi- 
 rations of good men, in any time or country, to the 
 eternal source of their being, and the mysterious con- 
 troller of their destiny. That solemn ritual of Greek 
 tragedy, which our own Milton did not disdain to re- 
 commend as a repository of "grave sententious wisdom;" 
 those orators who could tell an incensed multitude, 
 that they rejoiced in having brought down on their 
 country a disastrous defeat (if Heaven so ordered it) 
 rather than see her forfeit her old character for honour, 
 and her consciousness of self-respect ; those still loftier 
 teachers, to whom their country's mythology was only 
 the fanciful expression of a far higher and more remote, 
 yet ever-present principle, and he, who declared the 
 world to bear as clear a testimony to its Author, as a 
 finished poem does to the existence of a poet ; while 
 no really great man, he thought, could be without a 
 certain divine inspiration — all these, I say, and other 
 records of kindred meaning, stir us Avith an emotion of 
 sympathy far deeper than is insi^ired by the ordinary 
 subjects of the historian. We watch with intense interest 
 such men groping their way towards an eminence of 
 light, on which not our own arm has placed us ; we 
 sigh at the weakness of our race, as we occasionally see 
 them wander in some hopeless maze of speculation ; 
 
IV.] Holy Scripture. 47 
 
 and we can scarcely refrain from an exulting cry, when 
 some pure conscience and reaching- intellect seem 
 almost to lay hands " unknowingly" upon the very 
 mercy-seat of the unsearchable I am that I am. 
 
 Yet after all, the result accruing from such teachers 
 among the Gentiles, is rather touching our hearts with 
 wholesome emotion, than furnishing our minds with any 
 groundwork on which doctrine may be reared. We 
 read them as sympathising critics, but cannot sit at 
 their feet as pupils. We have need therefore to look 
 elsewhere for more definite teaching. And if we seek 
 such aid in the Hebrew Scriptures, we soon find reason 
 to believe, that He who nowhere kept himself without 
 witness, yet gave the Spirit in larger measure to those 
 who knew him by his name Jehovah, and worshipped 
 him on Sion, the mountain of his holy place. Nor is it 
 necessary here to dwell on that mere external evidence, 
 which in itself is not unimportant. The space, which 
 custom allots me, may be more profitably employed in 
 directing your thoughts to some of the characteristic 
 features of the books themselves. 
 
 We are speaking now of the Hebrew Scriptures. 
 Perhaps the first thing to notice is the manifest fidelity 
 of the writers, both as respects the manners of their 
 country, the character of the people described, and the 
 infirmities, nay, the very crimes even, of men whom 
 they delight to honour. We read in their pages of life, 
 as it exists now in the East ; and as it may be believed 
 with partial variation to have existed for many ages. 
 We find no attempt to represent king, or prophet, or 
 priest, as perfect : the tyranny of one, the passion of 
 
48 Holy Scripture. [serm. 
 
 another, the weak connivance of the third, are set forth 
 in their naked simplicity. And this ingenuous character 
 is the more striking, because it is directly opposed to 
 the usual genius of Oriental narrative, which delights 
 rather in pompous and inflated exaggeration. It is also 
 opposed more especially to the writings of the later 
 Scribes and Rabbins, which abound in laborious trifling, 
 and transparent fable. Nor can any reason be given 
 for this superiority of the older books more obviously 
 true, than that the writers conceived themselves to be 
 acting under a responsibility of a strictly religious kind. 
 They took up the pen to celebrate events which were 
 not merely the triumphs of their race, but the manifes- 
 tations of the power and the truth of the Lord God of 
 Israel. They had heard that He abhorreth the sacrifice 
 of lying lips, and they would not blot the scriptures ani- 
 mated by his Spirit with any lying legend, or cunningly 
 devised fable'. Hence arises, (what, as far as the East 
 is concerned, seems to have been then unprecedented) 
 the strictly historical and trustworthy character of He- 
 brew literature. Growing up under the shadow of the 
 temple, superintended by those who worshipped a God 
 of truth in the beauty of holiness, yet read every seventh 
 year in the ears of all the people, it has that double 
 guarantee, which is derived from intelligent and sacer- 
 dotal authority, and from exposure to the contempora- 
 
 1 How far I now think the expression of ideas by way of narrative 
 any just ground for objection — or how far it is conceivable that God 
 may have instructed nations by imagination and poetry, as well as by 
 fact and prose — will partly appear from a later sermon in this volume, 
 and partly I hope for a fitter opportunity of explaining elsewhere. — 
 March 6th, 1856. 
 
IV.] Holy Scripture. 49 
 
 neons criticism of masses of mankind. Even those 
 books, such as Kings and Chronicles, which dwell 
 chiefly on the outward history of the nation, have hence 
 no common interest. They carry us as it were behind 
 the scenes of an important part in the great drama of 
 the history of the world. They shew us events happen- 
 ing, and the subtle causes which produced them ; man 
 proposing, but God disposing ; Israel rebelling, and 
 Jehovah smiting ; Cyrus rearranging his conquests, and 
 Jehovah (whom the conqueror knew not) wielding him 
 as an instrument to restore his people Israel. 
 
 Yet a still higher interest attaches itself to this 
 collection of records, when we consider them as a his- 
 tory emphatically of religion : that is, in the lirst place, 
 of the aspiration of the human heart to its Creator'. 
 For we then read of men of like passions with ourselves, 
 treading a course which resembles in its great analogies 
 our own ; men now striving, and now at peace ; now 
 sinning, and (as a consequence) suffering ; now crying 
 unto the Lord, and the Lord hearing them, and deliver- 
 ing them out of all their trouble. It is from this point 
 of view, that the Book of Psalms, in particular, may 
 come home to every one of our hearts. Who cannot 
 trace, in the vivid delineation of the Psalmist's personal 
 experience, in his humiliation, his strong crying and his 
 tears, his trust in God, his firm assurance of the final 
 
 1 If any one supposes such a sentence as this either to exclude the 
 preparations of tlie heart by God's providence and grace, or to imply 
 indifference or despair as to truth (as if thoughts and inferences 
 were k'ss trustworthy than sensations), I can only wonder at his 
 ingenuity in misunderstanding. What would such a person think of 
 the first and second books of Hooker? 
 
 vv. s. 3 
 
50 Holy Scripture. [serm. 
 
 triumph of the right, a type, as it were, and a portrait 
 by forecast, alike of the struggles of whatever is noblest 
 in the whole human race, and especially of Him, its great 
 Captain and its Head, who was to cherish the almost 
 expiring flame, until he made the struggle end in victory. 
 Do we fret, as it were, in uneasy anxiety at our short life, 
 and its ever-threatening end — the Psalmist teaches us 
 to make such fear an instrument of spiritual growth. 
 " Lord, let me know mine end, and the number of my 
 days, that I may be certified how long I have to live." 
 " Teach me to number my days, that I may apply my 
 heart unto wisdom." Yet, notwithstanding such appeal, 
 do our spirits sink within us, either for our own back- 
 sliding, or for the blasphemy of the multitude on every 
 side ? How is such a feeling expressed better than in 
 the words, " My heart panteth, my strength hath failed 
 me : and the sight of mine eyes hath gone from me. 
 My lovers and my neighbours did stand looking upon 
 my trouble ;... and they that went about to do me evil 
 talked of wickedness, and imagined deceit all the day 
 long" ? Would we have some one, alike righteous and 
 friendly, to whom we may appeal with confidence ? 
 " Lord, thou knowest all my desire, and my groaning is 
 not hid from thee. O Lord my God, be not thou far 
 from me." Or does the consciousness of our own un- 
 worthiness bow us down, so that almost we say with St 
 Peter, " Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful 
 man?" — Again we may adopt the piteous cry, "Innumer- 
 able troubles are come about me ; my sins have taken 
 such hold upon me, that I am not able to look up ; yea, 
 they are more in number than the hairs of my head, and 
 
IV.] Holy Scripture. 51 
 
 my heart hath ftiiled me." *• O Lord, let it be thy pleasure 
 — that is, let it be the will of thy free grace, — to deliver 
 me ; make haste, O Lord, to help me." 
 
 But, again, are such hopes and aspirations the jest 
 of the ungodly, and do the drunkards make songs upon 
 us, because we mourn in our prayer, and are vexed ? — 
 " Fret not thyself," says the same faithful monitor, 
 " because of the ungodly : neither be dismayed at the 
 proud doer : yet a little while, and the ungodly shall be 
 clean gone : hope thou in the Lord, and keep his w^ay : 
 when the ungodly shall perish, thou shalt see it.'"" Yet 
 does the kingdom of heaven tarry, and the foundations 
 of the earth seem out of course ? " Tarry thou the 
 Lord's leisure," is still the precept ; " be strong, and He 
 shall comfort thine heart :" let the man of the earth leave 
 much substance for his babes ; but as for us, we will 
 behold the presence of God in righteousness : the day 
 cometh for us to be satisfied with his presence, when we 
 wake up transformed according to his likeness. 
 
 What is it, then, brethren, which afflicts us ? Sick- 
 ness, and pining, of the body or of the heart, shrinking 
 from the sneer of the wicked, remorse for our own sin, 
 fear of again offending, fear of death, and of the dim 
 unseen, which is behind death ? In all these things 
 the Psalmist persuades us we are more than conquerors ; 
 for in the light which God shed upon him in the valley 
 of shadows we too see light : we too have a share in the 
 songs of faith, which God his maker gave him in the 
 night of his affliction. Said not the Apostle well, there- 
 fore, "Whatsoever things were written aforetime, were 
 written for our learning ; that we, through patience, and 
 comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope"? 
 
 3—2 
 
52 Holy Scripture. [serm. 
 
 It may be interesting to remark here, that although 
 a very rigid criticism would find slender grounds for 
 determining how many of the Psalms were absolutely 
 written by David the son of Jesse, there is a sufficient 
 consonance between the events of his life and the senti- 
 ments of a large portion of the number, to countenance 
 decidedly that belief^ which was the tradition alike of 
 the Jewish church, and of our own. There is the same 
 contrast in the life between David innocent and David 
 guilty, as in the Psalms between his joyful exuberance 
 of trust, and his deep cry of remorse. Contrast in your 
 memories the shepherd stripling, with his heart yet un- 
 stained, going forth to do battle with the giant warrior, 
 and the guilty king ascending the hill with downcast 
 brow, not daring to let his mighty men scourge the 
 Benjamite, who had cursed the Lord's anointed. " Let 
 him curse ; the Lord hath said unto him, Curse David." 
 Now this is the difference between innocence and guilt. 
 Even so, how jubilant the cry of communion with his 
 God : " The Lord is my strength, whom then shall I 
 fear ?" And how sad the agony of penitence : "Deep 
 calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts ; all 
 thy waves have gone over me ; my soul is full of trouble, 
 and my life draweth nigh unto hell." 
 
 May we not learn there, brethren, the eternal and 
 ineffaceable diflterence between doing the thing which is 
 right, and forsaking the law of Him whose name is Holy? 
 And was not such a lesson one of the principal reasons 
 for which Scripture was written ? Yet even in such 
 dark depths we find Scripture still written for our con- 
 solation : since a way of sighs and tears, but still a way 
 of hope, is pointed to in the words : " Thou shalt make 
 
IV.] Holy Scripture. 53 
 
 me heai' of joy and gladness, that the bones which thou 
 hast broken may rejoice.'' 
 
 On turning forward to the prophets we find their 
 general character is very much the same. One of their 
 most striking features is their evidently intense percep- 
 tion of spiritual truths. This is the more remarkable, be- 
 cause mere religion (as taught by a priesthood) has been 
 thought sometimes to blunt the moral sense, by making 
 the Deity an arbitrary being, who acts apart from the 
 eternal laws of right. Whereas it is apparent on the 
 face, that neither the Psalmist nor the Prophets had any 
 low or mean conception of the services of that sanctuary 
 where the honour of Jehovah dwelt. The Psalms were in 
 fact the main part of the Jewish Liturgy; for the strains 
 which now sweep through Westminster Abbey are the 
 same as were chanted of old in the temple of Sion ; and 
 the Prophets never burst out into such indignant strains, 
 as when their hearts burn within them at the sight of 
 altars thrown down, the ark taken, or the temple defiled. 
 Yet with all this, they ever lay most emphatic stress 
 upon the weightier matters of the law ; upon the moral 
 dispositions, and mental being, which are both the graces 
 of the Holy Spirit, and the processes by which we grow 
 up into the full stature of the children of God. 
 
 If the hands are full of unjust gain, " bring no more 
 incense, it is an abomination." If the feet are swift to 
 evil, " who hath required it of you to tread my courts ? 
 saith the Lord." Will your solemn assemblies at new 
 moons, and your sabbaths, atone for a double heart, 
 and for adding sin to sin ? Can you by passionate prayers 
 and ceremonial observances make a covenant with death ? 
 
54 Holy Scripture. [serm. 
 
 That is indeed to make lies your refuge. Judgment 
 and righteousness are the line and the plummet with 
 which the Lord layeth His sure foundation-stone. 
 " Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord : if 
 your sins be as scarlet, ^ shall they be as white as snow? 
 if they be red like crimson, shall they (at the same time) 
 be as wool ?" Think it not, is the inexorable answer 
 implied in the original : but "if ye be willing and obedient 
 ye shall eat the good of the land." "AVash you, make 
 you clean : cease to do evil." " Let the wicked forsake his 
 way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him 
 return unto the Lord, for He will (then) have mercy upon 
 him ; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon." 
 
 We have in such texts, which might be multiplied 
 indefinitely, distinct intimation of the irreconcilable 
 aversion of the Almighty to any form of moral evil, 
 yet of his abundant readiness to pardon and save the 
 sinner, returning from his sin. Now it is this truly 
 spiritual character of the Bible which fits it to be a 
 book for all nations. Hence we do not fear to put it in 
 the hands of the most ignorant, not indeed disparaging 
 other means of grace, or forgetting that scriptural lan- 
 guage may be made the vehicle of the worst passions, 
 and alleged to support the most dangerous errors : but 
 we do so in the conviction, that to the pure all things 
 are pure, and in the trust that He whose Word came of 
 old to prophets and teachers of righteousness, will not 
 suffer even the record of the same Word, which then 
 came, to return altogether empty. Hence also our 
 
 ' This interrogative rendering is grammatically as probable as 
 the common one, and in sequence of thought, more so. 
 
IV.] Holy Scripture. 55 
 
 anxiety to place the same record of many a divine 
 message to guilty man in the hands of the heathen : not 
 from any bigoted dogma that the God and Father of 
 all consolation will burn his children for not knowing 
 ■what they were never taught ; but from a jjerception, 
 that the record of the holy words of prophets and evan- 
 gelists has a natural tendency to awaken whatever is 
 good in man, and so (if properly used) to help forward 
 the moral restoration of a fallen nature. Thus then we 
 believe with the Apostle, that whatever things were 
 written aforetime, were written for our instruction. 
 
 There is yet farther, however, a distinct (but kindred) 
 feature in the Hebrew prophets, which stamps their 
 writings with peculiar value. It is that dim yet undoubt- 
 ing anticipation of a more perfect way than any com- 
 monly known in their age, which was to be revealed, when 
 the Hope of Israel should come. In other words, it is 
 that foreboding of One anointed with the Holy Spirit 
 and with power, which may especially be termed the 
 Spirit of prophecy ; and in virtue of which we ascribe to 
 its possessors a more than ordinarily large measure of 
 (that sacred impulse, which may be described as) inspira- 
 tion. We do not indeed assert, that the Hebrew 
 pi'ophets knew precisely what manner of salvation they 
 foretold; for they often shadow it forth under such 
 temporal deliverances, as to make the literal, or Jewish 
 interpretation of their predictions, not altogether unrea- 
 sonable. Nor, indeed, do they themselves make any 
 claim to omniscience. The Word of the Lord comes to 
 their heart or conscience for a particular purpose, and 
 they speak it ; but where their own faculties and usual 
 
56 Holy Scripture. [serm. 
 
 means of information can come into play, they naturally 
 exercise them. Thus their language is simple Hebrew, 
 and only when they reach Babylon, Chaldaic ; the 
 countries Avhich they describe are those adjoining their 
 own ; their general range of knowledge is that of their 
 age ; in short, the circumscribed limits of their horizon 
 stand out at every turn. Still, amidst this imperfect 
 knowledge, we find those accents which stir the heart 
 like the sound of a trumpet, foretelling with the strongest 
 confidence the ultimate triumph of pure religion, the 
 springing of a righteous Branch out of the stem of Jesse, 
 and the reign of a King who should execute justice and 
 mercy. New virtues, they say, shall flourish with this 
 new dispensation ; the nations shall not learn war any 
 more ; the sacrifice of the (human) heart shall be counted 
 above that of bulls and oxen. 
 
 Although then some circumstances in the description 
 of God's Firstborn and Elect, by whom this change is to 
 be accomplished, may primarily apply to collective Israel, 
 [many others^ will admit of no such application. Israel 
 surely was not the child whom a virgin was to bear ; 
 Israel did not make his grave with the wicked, and with 
 the rich in his death ; Israel scarcely reconciled that 
 strangely blended variety of suffering and triumph, which 
 was predicted of the Messiah.] 
 
 But however that may be, it is indisputable, that a 
 change has partly come about, and is still partly pro- 
 ceeding ; such as these ancient seers foretold. There 
 
 1 I no longer feel confident of the assertion in brackets ; but 
 now believe that all the prophecies have primarily an application 
 nearly contemporaneous. — Febr. 11, 1855. 
 
IV.] Holy Scvi'pture. 57 
 
 is a growing society in the world, which, though ever 
 lashed by stormy waves, seems still founded on a rock. 
 Its members own as their Head one whom they hail as 
 Prince of Peace; an anointed one, a first-born, and an 
 elect — a Person, in whose mysterious unity they are 
 able to combine things which might have been deemed 
 incompatible ; majesty and weakness, grace and awe, 
 suffering and conquering, death and immortality, frail 
 man and perfect God. In him the mystery is unveiled, 
 the riddle is read aright. In his kingdom men are ex- 
 alted by humility, triumphant by patience, immortal by 
 death : and to this his city not built with hands we are 
 now taught by the interpreting revolution of events to 
 apply what Isaiah spake of his ideal Sion : " Arise, shine ; 
 for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen 
 upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the 
 earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord 
 shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon 
 thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and 
 kings to the brightness of thy rising." 
 
 Thus, after the lapse of centuries, the world has seen 
 the grand anticipations of those who worshipped Jeho- 
 vah in a little corner of the world, fulfilled in a sense 
 more magnificent than they themselves expected. Per- 
 haps indeed this gift of foresight is not really more 
 excellent or desirable than such a keen perception of 
 the truths which concern our peace as we have already 
 found in the Old Testament. Nor dare I say that the 
 one has not been sometimes confounded with the other. 
 Yet this gift of prediction, as-distinct from predication, 
 is so remarkable a quality as to invest the prophetical 
 
 3—5 
 
58 Holy Scriptiii^e. [serm. 
 
 writings (according, at least, to the more received view 
 of them) with a character almost unique, and to furnish 
 a distinct ground for the Apostle's holding, that " what- 
 ever things Avere written aforetime were written for our 
 instruction." 
 
 But if for his instruction, brethren, who had seen the 
 Lord Jesus, much more for that of those whose lot is 
 cast in later days. We, too, like St Paul, may have our 
 hearts warmed by whatever is glowing and excellent in 
 the older writers ; we, like him, may trace the great 
 stream of divine Providence, and admire the unconscious 
 prefigurements of the great Teacher of the world : we, 
 moreover, unlike him, may gather corresponding in- 
 struction from his own writings also, and from those of 
 his companions in the ministry of the Word. For though 
 these later writings are scarcely comprised in the Scrip- 
 tural canon to which our Saviour appealed, yet they 
 come from men who had the best opportunities of 
 information ; who had seen the Son of God incarnate, 
 and had been animated by the Holy Spirit of God 
 descending : who also, in the power of what they believed, 
 either from eyesight or from credible testimony, con- 
 verted kingdoms, and built up the church of Christ on 
 the ruins of the gigantic power which they overthrew. 
 Either the Apostles therefore understood Christianity, 
 or else no one did. And now, suppose St John or St 
 Peter were at present to re-aj^pear on earth, with what 
 eager and devout curiosity should not we appeal to 
 either of them in our controversies, and entreat him to 
 clear up our difficulties ! Who would deny his narrative 
 of some miracle of our Lord's, or dispute his opinion as 
 
IV.] Holy Scripture. 59 
 
 to what was pure and undefiled religion ? But then may 
 we not say, that such a power of appeal is already in our 
 hands ? St John writing cannot be less trustworthy than 
 St John preaching. In neither case could he be termed 
 omniscient ; in both cases men might carry away a wrong 
 conception of his meaning ; yet surely in both we ought 
 (as Christians) to award him and his fellows a respectful 
 and candid hearing. On this ground then, that the Apo- 
 stles generally saw our Lord, and had the best means of 
 information as to his religion, their writings seem to be 
 properly added to those of the Old Testament which 
 they explain. They were men, indeed, compassed with 
 infirmities like ourselves, and they professed only to 
 know in part, and to prophesy in part. Yet God has 
 not given us any higher written authority, and the 
 highest which He has given must be sufficient for our 
 salvation. But why reason from theory ? Search rather 
 their writings in practice, brethren, and you will find 
 them sufficient for your peace. If indeed you disdain 
 rational and proper helps, such as a competent know- 
 ledge of the original tongues, and of the customs, man- 
 ners, and modes of thought of the persons using them, 
 you may stumble grievously in this, as in any other 
 inquiry. You may then, if both unlearned and also un- 
 stable, wrest the Scriptures to your own destruction. But 
 if you are content to start with such a key as the 
 Church puts into your hands in the form of the three 
 primitive Creeds, or of the English Prayer-book gene- 
 rally, you cannot go greatly wrong, even in speculation. 
 And if you use the Scriptures, as they were intended to 
 be used, chiefly for warning, for encouragement, for con- 
 solation, you will find them the book of books — a shrine 
 
60 Holy Scripture. [serm. iv. 
 
 from whence light will stream on your path, and an 
 oracle whose words will be comfort to your soul. 
 
 For, after all difficulties which may be raised, and all 
 distinctions which must be made, these Hebrew and 
 Christian Scriptures seem likely ever to constitute the 
 book dearest to the downcast and the contrite — to the 
 bereaved, the outcast, and the Magdalene — to all them 
 that are stricken or afflicted in mind, body, or estate. 
 So Collins, a man of the rarest genius and largest en- 
 dowments, solaced the lucid intervals of an overwrought 
 and shattered intellect, with one book — " it was the 
 best" he said — and it was the Bible. So, many a soul 
 stricken with remorse has been lured back to the way 
 of life : and so, (what after all, believe me, is far better,) 
 many a pure spirit has been strengthened to preserve 
 its garments of fine linen unspotted through life, and so 
 entered ivithoiit doubt into an inheritance undefiled. 
 
 Lastly, from the same source, we ever may derive 
 strength to resign those whom we love best into the 
 hands of a merciful Creator and Redeemer ; not fearing 
 also ourselves, when God shall call us, to answer, "Even 
 so. Lord: for so it seemed good in thy sight. Now 
 therefore into thy hands we commend our spirits; for 
 Thou hast redeemed us, O thou God of Truth." 
 
 Lampeter, Dec. 1850. 
 
 I print this sermon partly for the sake of comparison with one 
 preached recently at Cambridge on the same subject. The leader 
 will easily see that the four years intervening have somewhat extended 
 my own views, yet left them for practical purjjoses very much the same. 
 
 Compare Jeremy Taylor, "A Sermon preached before the Uni- 
 versity of Dublin." " Unless a light shining within our hearts ... to 
 look for Christ in the leaves of the Gospel is to look for the living 
 amongst the dead." Vol. vi. p. 393. 
 
SERMON V. 
 
 WHAT DOE ST THOU HERE 2 
 
 Behold, a voice unto him that said. What doest thou here, Elijah f 
 
 1 Kings xix. 13. 
 
 To Jeroboam the son of Nebat belongs the evil pre- 
 eminence of having made Israel to sin; yet it is not 
 certain that he would have acknowledged himself to 
 have changed the religion of his people, in such a sense 
 as to have introduced any other God besides Jehovah. 
 If at least we agree with those, who think the cherubim 
 of gold about the mercy- seat were, from Egyptian 
 associations, in the form of oxen, it will remain very 
 probable that the two golden calves at Bethel and at 
 Dan were intended to imitate, as certainly they were 
 substitutes for, the sanctuary of the Lord in Zion. This 
 is the more likely, since, although priests were made of 
 the lowest of the people, yet the schools of the prophets 
 were not rooted out of the land ; the king himself, 
 when anxious for his sick boy, sent his wife to consult 
 Ahijah; probably at Gilgal, at Bethel, and at Shiloh, 
 the altar of a pure worship still remained; and I think 
 it no extravagant supposition, that round those isolated 
 shrines the wondrous works of each succeeding prophet 
 
62 What doest thou heref [serm. 
 
 may have been cherished in filial recollection, and 
 the stories have gradually taken shape, which are now 
 compiled in our sacred books of Chronicles and of 
 Kings. 
 
 It would be very interesting, if we could learn how 
 far these worshippers of the living God, on the height of 
 Carmel or amid the stones of Bethel, maintained any 
 communication with their priestly brethren at Jerusalem. 
 Did they feel their hands strengthened so often as any 
 man of God out of Judah prophesied destruction against 
 an unbidden altar ? Did they exchange vain hopes, as 
 the downfall of one usurper after another might seem 
 to open a momentary prospect of national reform ; or 
 did they mourn in common over the more decided 
 apostasy from the God of their fathers which com- 
 mences with the reign of Ahab ? 
 
 Questions of this kind we cannot very distinctly 
 answer. But certainly under Ahab, with his idolatrous 
 wife, we first find the Sidonian deity Baal honoured 
 with rites perhaps licentious, and sometimes it would 
 appear, like those of Moloch, stained with human blood. 
 It is then that the great prophet Elijah comes upon the 
 scene. Of all the sacred seers of the Old Testament, 
 whose renown is due to their actions rather than to the 
 embodiment of their inspiration in writing, none, unless 
 it be Samuel, are more eminent than this fervid fore- 
 runner of the Baptist. Devout, fearless, eloquent, know- 
 ing in whom he has believed, and very jealous for that 
 AU-holy Being, whose likeness in man he deems de- 
 based by bowing down to any meaner thing, he is the 
 worthy champion of a Church in ruins, the monitor of an 
 
v.] What doest thou here? 63 
 
 apostate nation, and alone a match for the four hun- 
 dred priests of Baal. You see the genius of the man in 
 the directness of the issue which he raises: "If Jehovah 
 be God, follow him ; but if Baal, then follow him." So 
 he puts twelve stones in his altar, according to the num- 
 ber of the tribes of Israel : though ten out of the twelve 
 have become apostate, the prophet cannot admit that 
 the Lord has lost his dominion over the people whom He 
 redeemed ; nor will he be content until the hearts of 
 all the children are turned to the God of their fathers. 
 
 Probably there must have been many among the 
 spectators to whom such sentiments appeared to savour 
 of the rashness of fanaticism. With both the king, who 
 to oriental minds was as an angel of God, and the people, 
 whose voice in modern times is considered the voice 
 of God, arrayed against him, this rugged Tishbite from 
 the wilderness must have seemed a strange ambassador ; 
 and his summons not to halt any longer between two 
 opinions, can have sounded only as a challenge to con- 
 demn his own. " Would not it be better to have 
 let well alone ? What was the practical use of this 
 crotchety zeal? Israel would last for their time. Be- 
 sides, popular opinion had already pronounced its ver- 
 dict, &c. &c." 
 
 In truth, there never will be wanting pleaders, either 
 in the commonwealth of Israel, or in the debatings of 
 our own hearts, against any disagreeable necessity of a 
 moral change. Some touch of conscience, some feel- 
 ing of inconsistency between the language Ave use and 
 the habits we have fallen into, some awakener in the 
 form of a livelier expectation of the judgment of God 
 
64 What doest thou heref [serm, 
 
 impending, will every now and then pass through the 
 chambers of our mind ; we bar it out as long as we con- 
 veniently can, or we raise a din to prevent its being 
 heard, with the pleasant voices of our friends, or with 
 the whispers of self-flattery ; but it has an ugly way 
 of thrusting itself forward into our most secret con- 
 sciousness, as unbidden as Elijah on the path of Ahab ; 
 and in our solitude or in our sickness, over our Bible 
 or in our church, by our friend's grave or by the ex- 
 ample of some one with far less advantages, yet of far 
 higher holiness than our own, it compels our hearts to 
 thrill (perhaps reluctantly) at the question, " How long, 
 oh man, haltest thou between two opinions ? If the 
 Holy and the Merciful be Go([,folloiv Him ; but, if that 
 sin of thine can save thee, then go on, obeying it, and 
 blushing for it." 
 
 Such thoughts, I say, crossing the mind, breaking 
 up occasionally its weed-grown soil, or startling us from 
 the lethargy of habit, may be likened to Elijah, as play- 
 ing a sort of analogous part. Such visitors may come 
 unbidden. But if any one here has never known them, 
 let him send an earnest prayer in search of them, and 
 not grudge a little leisure in seeking them. It is far 
 better they should come to us early in life, while we yet 
 acknowledge Jehovah to be our strength, than that they 
 should TARRY until strange gods, in the shape of selfish- 
 ness, idleness, vice, have obtained dominion over us ; 
 better, in short, they should hasten to warn, than be 
 DEFERRED uutil they can sound only to condemn. When- 
 ever then such sternly wholesome questions present 
 themselves, let us not refuse the trial which they ask. 
 
v.] What chest thou here? 66 
 
 There will indeed be opposite pleaders, in our natural 
 love of pleasure, in our shrinking from self-denial, in 
 our readiness to doubt whether all that this Elijah at-ks 
 is really necessary, and in our willingness to halt a little 
 longer between the will of God and the fear of man's 
 opinion, or the wayward impulse of our own capricious 
 heart. " What is this tone of assumed command, sound- 
 ing out of another world, and asking obedience to an 
 unwritten law, speaking in the name of an unseen 
 master, and promising a hope of what it hath not en- 
 tered into the heart of man to conceive ? To ask, 
 how long we halt between things which the mass of 
 mankind greedily covets, and certain truths so subtle 
 that all language applied to them is acknowledged to 
 fall short of them, is to give a challenge, on which the 
 great majority have already pronounced against the 
 challenger. Something, we grant, is due to decorum ; 
 nor did we object to receive those assurances of the 
 Divine mercy which have so often lulled our consciences 
 into a placid slumber ; but to require of us an absolute 
 surrender of our thoughts and affections, or to present 
 us this inexorable kind of choice, and bid us no longer 
 halt, between Jehovah and Baal, God and Mammon, 
 Christ and Belial, Life and Death, is an unnecessarily 
 harsh dilemma. Human nature shrinks from it ; flesh 
 and blood revolt at it. Give us, however, a little delay, 
 or a little compromise, and we will listen to you ; let 
 youth keep its recklessness untamed, let manhood be 
 headstrong, vindictive, and ambitious, and let old age 
 keep one hand in its money-bags, as it stammers a few 
 lame prayers over its death-bed ; and on such conditions 
 
66 What doest thou here? [serm. 
 
 we may reconcile the two contending opinions. But 
 don't tell us that God requires that favourite desire to 
 be mortified, that growing habit to be mastered, or 
 those old streams of affection, reverence, humility, and 
 faith in unseen things, whose very fountains have been 
 so long sealed in us, to flow again with all the freshness 
 of a spiritual childhood. You ask a hard thing of us ; 
 or rather, you propose to us a happiness which we can 
 never have, unless it come to us as a gift. To others 
 perhaps God has given to be great in the kingdom of 
 heaven ; but we are little ; leave us, then, humble in 
 our littleness."" 
 
 Some such answer, I suppose, of evasion, whether 
 sneering, or doubtful, or despondent, the greater part 
 of our Israel of to-day would return to any one coming 
 in the spirit and the power of Elijah. Some excuse for 
 halting a little longer is the response, which the more 
 sluggish side of our mind puts in opposition to the more 
 daring hope, which comes over us in some hour of hap- 
 pier aspiration. So St Augustine prayed when young 
 that he might come to love God thereafter, but that 
 he might be allowed to love things earthly first. So 
 Solomon thought in his heart to give himself unto plea- 
 sure, yet acquainting himself with wisdom. So the Pha- 
 risees mocked, when Christ told them they could not 
 love God and unjust gain. For the greediness of man 
 would fain combine things incompatible ; acknowledge 
 the good so as to benefit by it, yet defile himself with 
 the evil, until it removes him farther from what is good 
 or holy day by day. 
 
 Who shall persuade us to halt no longer on the 
 
v.] What doest thou heref 67 
 
 confines between life and death ? Were it not far bet- 
 ter to escape the certainty of confession, Vanity, &c., 
 the possibility of remorse too late, when "they shall 
 call, saith the Lord, and I will not hear"? Were it 
 not better to lay the sacrifice of all our heart, our 
 soul, and our strength, upon some altar of well-doing, 
 sacred to Almighty God, and entreat him to answer, 
 whether He be the Lord, by sending down the fire of 
 his heavenly grace, and so kindling our unworthy offer- 
 ing, until whatever is earthly in it be consumed, and 
 whatever remains of our human nature be transmuted 
 into something saintly and blessed ; therefore worthier 
 of Him, to whom we can render only of his own. Let 
 no one doubt, that for all purposes of saving men's souls, 
 helping our need, purifying our thoughts, and quicken- 
 our aspirations to the throne of grace, the arm of the 
 Almighty is not shortened ; his Spirit is not farther from 
 us ; the life-giving light of his countenance is as ready 
 to descend upon our offering now as it was in the days 
 of old. Only let us bring our best offering ; that is, 
 bring all our hearts, bring all ourselves, dedicate all our 
 lives. Even as Hannah gave her child to the Lord, so 
 let us entreat him to accept of us, and to change our 
 vile natures to the likeness of his glorious nature, ac- 
 cording to the working of that Divine power which can 
 consume the sacrifice, change water into wine, heal the 
 leper, and raise the spiritually dead. 
 
 Will it now be an encouragement, or the reverse, to 
 observe the prophet himself falling somewhat from the 
 lofty tone which he held in debate with king and peo- 
 ple ? Rather, perhaps, an encouragement. For the very 
 
68 What doest thou heref [serm. 
 
 sympathy which we feel with the great nature when 
 shaken. and daunted, may teach us how truly he was of 
 like passions with ourselves ; how in the cause of his 
 Divine Master he could glow with a strength, of which 
 we by the same spirit may become alike partakers ; and 
 how, glancing aside at the danger which subsequently 
 ll^reatened him, his spirit sank, and he fled, like a com- 
 mon man fleeth, for his life. Bishop Hall indeed, and 
 perhaps others, would willingly presuppose a command 
 to flee ; but it is not so written, and perhaps rather the 
 contrary is implied. Elijah indeed is sustained on his 
 way by the same providence which had before led him 
 through the agency of the Orehim — (whether ravens or 
 Arabians, it matters little) — and he endeavours to gather 
 strength by drawing nearer, if possible, to the same 
 dread Power which of old revealed itself on the rock 
 of Sinai. Yet in this passionate pilgrimage, in which 
 the chafed spirit required little sustenance, in the weary 
 request to die under the juniper-tree, and in the choice 
 of a route subsequently, we discern little trace of obe- 
 dience to express command. It is not so much the 
 prophet we now observe, as something betAveen the fugi- 
 tive and the pilgrim. Terrified at the threats of Jeze- 
 bel, and despairing perhaps of the restoration of that 
 holier law for which he strove, he at once seeks refuge 
 in a desert, and expostulates with the Almighty, upon 
 the very soil on which his faithfulness had been pledged. 
 It is as if he said, "Oh, Holy Father" — or, if he knew not 
 the Almighty yet by that name, " Oh, Thou who art the 
 living dread of Israel, the God of our father Abraham, 
 and the Deliverer by Moses out of Egypt, whereunto 
 
v.] What doest thou heref 69 
 
 serve all thy solemn covenants of old ? Thou who 
 didst promise to Levi the light and perfection of thy 
 perpetual presence, that he should teach the v^^orld thy 
 judgments, and the Church thy law ; behold thine altars 
 broken down, thy prophets slain with the sword : that 
 promise to thy saints that thou wouldst awake as one out 
 of sleep, is so far from being fulfilled, that I, even I only, 
 am left ; and I have in vain been jealous for the Lord of 
 hosts, the living God." 
 
 "But what doest thou here, Elijah?" Was it alto- 
 gether a pure zeal, or was there something of self-excul- 
 pation, in the declining (as it were) twice to answer this 
 question directly ? He can give no account of any Avork 
 to be done in Horeb, but he can complain of the apostasy 
 of Israel. Thus many men are apt to throw a covering of 
 zeal over some project in which motives are rather 
 mingled, like iron and clay. AVe must acknowledge in 
 Elijah here something of human infirmity. Yet it is the 
 infirmity of a fervent spirit, a servant of God, and a 
 lover of his country. He had far rather have been the 
 champion and intercessor for his countrymen than act 
 as their unsparing accuser. 
 
 Perhaps, indeed, all men conscious (as the prophet 
 was) of a great and hallowed work assigned to them, 
 are at times bowed to earth by a burden of loneliness. 
 Surrounded by a mincing conventionalism, and having 
 made playmates for their thoughts out of the dark pro- 
 blems of eternal destiny, they feel the fire within them 
 burn, and know not in how many breasts there are 
 sparks of a correspondent flame. All sorts of jealousies 
 and necessities, some natural, but more conventional, 
 
70 What doesf thou here? [serm. 
 
 keep mind from touching mind, except with its out- 
 side surface. Thus St Paul linds no man likeminded. 
 Elijah thinks that he only is left ; and one of the psalm- 
 ists exclaims, with something of the fervour of verse, 
 "There is none righteous left; no, not one!" 
 
 But, blessed be God, even " those clear eyes of the 
 seer discern not" always the secret story of the All- 
 merciful. They see not the seven thousand who in patience 
 and in poverty thank God daily for some such alle- 
 viation of pain or want as we should account a hardship. 
 They know not what quiet and resolute performance 
 of duty lurks under some dull and unpretending exterior. 
 They have not allowed for the simplicity of that faith, 
 which in many a village-church cherishes to old age the 
 form of sound words which it heard from its infancy; 
 which gathers its children where its fathers prayed: un- 
 skilled, perhaps, in many a controversial distinction, 
 and liable to be puzzled by any Royal Commissioner 
 who might set his legal Avit against its unsuspecting 
 sense; yet knowing that God has revealed himself in 
 Christ as a just God and a Saviour, and striving by 
 many a homely virtue to adorn the doctrine of Him 
 who loved us, and gave himself for us, and washed us 
 from our sins, making us thereby inheritors of eternal 
 life. Again, they have not considered, how often in the 
 worst part of those overgrown cities, whose mingled 
 ignorance and profligacy are often described in such 
 frightful terms, the grace of God vindicates itself by 
 preserving honesty and innocence in close contact with 
 temptation and the grossest immorality; so that, of all 
 things the most difficult, the touching pitch and not 
 
v.] What doest thou heref 71 
 
 being defiled, is achieved, where, hard by the dwelling 
 of prosperous vice, the struggling artisan still brings up 
 his children in the fear of the Lord. 
 
 Be it our hope, and our prayer; — and in praying, 
 let us be reminded of our duty to strive, that there may 
 ever be among us many a seven thousand who have not 
 bowed the knee to whatever makes men aliens from the 
 holiness of God the Father, or the good will which his 
 only-begotten Son came preaching upon earth. Only, 
 whether they are many or few, we are intended to labour 
 in their ranks, and if possible to increase their number. 
 So that the question is, by way of emphasis, repeated 
 twice, " What doest thou here, Elijah?" 
 
 Perhaps we may change the mood of the adverb, 
 from one of place to one of temper. It may be not 
 only, What doest thou here; but what doest thou in 
 this frame of mind? If God has thrown upon any 
 man only a fragment of Elijah's mantle, what should he 
 do in that mood of despondency? Has our heavenly 
 Father given a blessing in order only to add a curse 
 to it? or is not whatever talent he has entrusted to us, if 
 only we use it faithfully, a pledge that He will give us 
 abundantly more? We need not sit mourning in the 
 cave, but go forth into the fresh air, with which the com- 
 passions of God fail not to surround us day by day. If 
 He sends us, that is, if He really sends us on a journey of 
 his own work, and if we are not pretending the Lord 
 hath sent (when our love of lucre or ease hath sent us). He 
 will enable us to go in the strength of whatever meat He 
 provides us. If He gives a command. He will give also 
 power. If He takes away the lawfulness of a thing, either 
 
72 What doest thou heref [serm. 
 
 by express command, or decency, He can also take away 
 the desire. He can enable us, by a keen sense of 
 the magnitude of the eternal interests which surround 
 us, to take comparatively little thought whether we 
 abound or whether we want. In proportion, then, as 
 any one hopes he has the spirit of Elijah, that is, of 
 a servant of the living God, he should be ashamed of 
 all doubting, fearing, desponding. We have one on our 
 side, stronger than the strong, and whose strength is 
 made perfect in our weakness. 
 
 But again, if any man's wandering steps have led 
 him, not to any mountain of passionate contemplation, 
 but to some far country of forgetfulness or presumption, 
 still greater need has he to apply to himself the question 
 of our text. What doest thou here, he may ask his own 
 soul, of whatever work had been assigned thee, either in 
 the vineyard, or in the market-place? What doest thou 
 in church with so little prayerfulness of mind? or what 
 doest thou out of it when all means of salvation called 
 thee there? or what doest thou in that brutish rage; 
 in those uncharitable surmises; in that servile will and 
 that commanding lust; or in that elaborate stinginess, or 
 in that contemptible sauntering away of life; in that 
 egotistic uselessness before God and man, which only is 
 not more boldly criminal, because it wants more oppor- 
 tunity or temptation to be so? It is no answer to say, 
 that all around us live halting, like ourselves, between the 
 service of our Divine Master and the worship of some 
 popular Baal — whether ignorance or indifferentism. For 
 if it be so, have not we greater cause to be very jealous 
 for the Lord God, who has separated us from so many 
 
^•] What doest thou heref 73 
 
 of his creatures, by giving us higlier conceptions of his 
 wisdom and his mercy; but by those very conceptions 
 has laid upon us the burden of being judged accordino- 
 to them. If by the coming down of his Only- begotten 
 Son, it has pleased God to reveal how near to himself 
 in spirit and truth and love He has deigned to bring 
 those whom henceforward He terms children, this multi- 
 plying of our talents must greatly increase our responsi- 
 bility. If we conceived aright of the near alliance thus 
 entered into between earth and Heaven, not only would 
 the love of God constrain us to be very jealous lest the 
 divine and the human be again divorced, but it would 
 teach us to be skilful and ingenious in doing his will, 
 and in bringing others, as our fellow-heirs, to salvation. 
 There is indeed a spirit more heavenly than that of 
 Elijah ; it is the spirit of the Apostle, who, after once 
 coveting the power of calling fire from heaven, learnt 
 to say, " God is Love," and, " Little children, love one 
 another." Yet perhaps it may be doubted, especially 
 when we consider the earlier fervour of St John, whether 
 men in general are likely to reach his riper tem23er, 
 unless they have also shared with him somewhat of the 
 spirit of Elijah. For Christian charity is so far from 
 being another name for indifference, that it ever requires 
 as its condition and accompaniment a certain warmth 
 of zeal. He is not likely to love man, where his own 
 interests come into conflict with his neighbour's, who has 
 not learnt to love God ; nor can any one love God 
 truly, without also feeling a reverential jealousy for his 
 name, his house, his church, and all things that belong- 
 to his service. Yet most of all, brethren, undoubtedly, 
 w. s. 4 
 
74 What cloest tliou heref [serm, 
 
 the sight of his natural likeness, the image of God in 
 man, degraded by ignorance and defiled by sin, until in 
 the lower forms of humanity it is little better than 
 the beasts that perish, should touch any man, who would 
 be numbered either with Elijah or St John, with a 
 godly jealousy on part of the Creator and Saviour of 
 mankind, and a great desire to do something in our 
 generation, that the beneficent designs of Heaven may 
 not be marred and counteracted on earth. 
 
 But lastly, what I say unto one, I say unto all. 
 There may be some in every congregation who are 
 neither priests nor prophets, nor sons of prophets ; and 
 who perhaps pride themselves that it is so. Without 
 here inquiring how far they lose thereby a chance of 
 being great in the kingdom of Heaven (since it is they 
 who forsake something for the sake of Christ to whom 
 He promises the higher places in his kingdom), it may 
 at least be suggested to them, that every human being 
 has some part on earth, assigned by God, the great Master 
 of the scenes. That part may have either been ar- 
 ranged by his providence, or it may be pointed out by his 
 spiritual grace. It behoves them every one to consider, 
 " What is the place allotted me by that good Spirit 
 which worketh all in all ? With that place, whatever it 
 is, let me be thankfully contented, and may God increase 
 in me his grace, that I may render true account of what- 
 ever is committed to my trust. In whatever place, or 
 hour, or mood, this great idea of my personal duty, and 
 my responsibility to the Judge of the whole earth, is in 
 danger of fading from my mind, may some faithful voice, 
 or some higher than any human teacher, revive it with 
 
v.] IVIiat chest tJiou heref 75 
 
 the words, What doest thou here?" There may be a 
 certain emphasis in the " Elijah;" but to every immortal 
 soul the question belongs, "What doest thou? woe, if 
 idle." 
 
 Now perhaps every one can best make minute appli- 
 cation for themselves, — only pray remember to apply 
 the words in some way ; and that way, if possible, not to 
 your neighbour. Let the finger of imagination write 
 some such a scroll as What doest thou here ? on the walls 
 of your secret chamber, and wave it before you as a 
 flaming sword whenever your footstep is trembling on 
 the threshold of any unhallowed ground. May it brace 
 the nerves of your mind in some listless hour; sober you 
 in some dubious, and perhaps desecrating company ; 
 possibly rouse you from querulous criticism of your 
 country, your race, or your church, to the doing of 
 whatever God has given you to do ; which therefore He, 
 not being like Pharaoh, moment by moment gives you 
 strength to perform. Such power, my brethren, these 
 words of Holy Scripture will have, if you let them repre- 
 sent to you, as they well may, the eye that never slum- 
 bers, the faithfulness that never leaves unhelped any true 
 servant of God, and the account which every man must 
 render of what he has done in the flesh, whether it be 
 good, or whether it be evil. 
 
 Lampeter, October 3, 1852. 
 
 4—2 
 
SERMON VI. 
 
 OFFERING TO GOD. 
 
 I will not offer burnt-offerings to the Lord my God of that which doth 
 cost me nothing. 2 Samuel xxiv. 24. 
 
 How inadequate must be our highest conceptions of 
 the Almighty, is most keenly felt by the wisest of man- 
 kind. Yet we see, from the example of the sacred 
 writers, how natural it is to picture to ourselves the King 
 eternal and invisible with something (as it were) of the 
 attributes of earthly sovereignty. We imagine, seated 
 upon a throne. Him, whom the heaven of heavens cannot 
 contain; we ascribe garments as bright as snow, and 
 hair like white wool, to Him in whose sight the heavens 
 are not clean, and who has declared there is nothing to 
 which He can be likened : we say that a sharp sword 
 proceeds out of his mouth, though his sword is the word 
 of wisdom ; we call his eyes fiery flame, though to Him 
 all space is as an eye, and omnipresent thought is sight ; 
 nor does our imagination fail, in like manner, to invest 
 with bodily form the winged thousands who minister 
 to Him, and the ten thousand times ten thousand who 
 stand before Him ; though we know that He maketh the 
 wind which bloweth where it listeth his angel, and the 
 
SERM. VI.] OffeHng to God. 77 
 
 fire which flashes through heaven the minister of his 
 word. 
 
 Verily, brethren, wind and vapour, storm and hail, 
 fulfil in turn the high behests of the Almighty. War 
 and famine and pestilence, as well as peace and plenty, 
 and every capacity of social enlightenment, have in turn 
 their tasks to perform. He says to disease, Go, and it 
 goeth ; and to the souls which He had breathed through- 
 out a populous generation, Come, and lo, they return 
 again to their mysterious Giver. 
 
 It is a part of our faith, that for all purposes neces- 
 sary to our salvation the Only-begotten Son hath declared 
 unto us the eternal Father. Still, for all that range of 
 questions which mere curiosity w^ould raise, in reference 
 to the mysterious being of the Divine Majesty, it is for 
 the generations to come as true as it was of old, " No 
 man hath seen the Father at any time." Nor, probably, 
 will it be deemed either absurd or wrong to say, that 
 much of the obscurity which envelopes the eternal 
 throne surrounds also the Cherubim and Seraphim, and 
 all that host of Heaven which we picture to ourselves as 
 waiting upon the great King, like the eyes of a servant 
 wait upon the eyes of a master, and as ever and anon 
 exclaiming, Holy ! Holy ! Holy ! 
 
 So long, however, as such thoughts are kept within 
 the range of devotional feeling, and not suffered either 
 to become controversially positive, or to degenerate into 
 superstitious imaginations, we need not be careful to 
 dispute, whether more or less of distinctness should be 
 assigned to the embodiment of those high agencies, by 
 which the only wise God worketh out his pleasure, 
 
78 Offering to God. [serm. 
 
 either in earth or heaven. There is something more 
 vivid, and (as it were) powerful to sustain our spirits, in 
 that freshness of contact with things of the unseen world, 
 which, by giving them bodily shape, renders them not 
 merely present to the heart, but makes them pass as it 
 were before the eyes, and speak in the ears, of the imagi- 
 nation. Even now, scarcely less than to our childhood's 
 gaze, the angel of the Lord, by the threshing- place of 
 Araunah the Jebusite, appears not so much the disem- 
 bodied pestilence ceasing to slay, as some gigantic 
 mower leaning upon his scythe, with heaving chest and 
 swollen brow, while the dead lie fallen around him, 
 and he hears gladly, as some reaper in harvest-time, the 
 relenting command of his Master, "It is enough, stay now 
 thy hand." 
 
 Well, indeed, might it seem enough : for within 
 three days seventy thousand lives had been gathered by 
 that stern reaper. Within so short a time must the day 
 of repentance, or the final despair, of so many immortal 
 beings have been brought to its end ; and either the 
 gathering into the garner allotted, or else the remorse 
 which dieth not, and the thirst which is not quenched 
 for ever. It is true, brethren, the same momentous 
 question is decided every day for our neighbours, or for 
 ourselves, and we little regard it. A less period than 
 three days is the crisis in many a man's life ; he grows in 
 grace, or he rejects it ; he contracts the disease of body, 
 or the habit of mind, which is pregnant, like an evil 
 mother, with a long train of irrevocable consequences; 
 and, as day by day we proceed a few inches of that 
 mysterious road, which diverges on the one hand to life, 
 
VI.] Offering to God. 79 
 
 and on the other to spiritual death, so, in some one day 
 of our lives we reach that critical point at which there 
 is no longer much likelihood of our turning back ; and 
 our doom, though unknown to ourselves, is morally fixed, 
 in the eye of any heart-searching observer, for ever and 
 for ever. Thus in far less than three days the awful 
 question may be settled, for many thousands of human 
 beings, whether they shall go away into the outer dark- 
 ness, or enter with Christ and all his holy angels into 
 life eternal. How many men we meet, on a fair day, or 
 in a crowded market-place, without reflecting how great 
 an issue may be finally settled for them on that day, 
 and who perhaps little think of it themselves ! yet 
 probably, if we had been present at the falling of the 
 seventy thousand in three days, the visible concentration 
 of the blow into so short a period would have arrested 
 our most careless thoughts. Not that, really, so many 
 deaths would have been more awful than the same num- 
 ber of lives. Death is but the full-grown harvest : and 
 the growing crop of life, being destined to so great an 
 end, and as yet more fertile in all possible contingencies, 
 is at least equally sacred, and a thing equally full of awe. 
 Still, I say it is probable that the visible fall of so 
 many thousands would have made a more vivid impres- 
 sion on our minds. It is not impossible that David 
 himself may then have doubted whether he had made a 
 prudent choice. For he had said, "Let me now fall into 
 the hand of the Lord." But he found, that, terrible as 
 it is to fall into the hands of misjudging and unmerciful 
 men, it is also a fearful thing to fall into the hands of 
 the living God. If the ignorance of man is cruel, the 
 
80 Offering to God. [serm. 
 
 knowledge of God is awful. He knows who has been 
 partaker of any national crime, and who has protested 
 against it, either audibly, or by silently standing aloof. 
 He knows who has had pleasure in them that do evil, 
 accommodating his conscience to their standard, and who 
 has shared in the earnest groaning of human aspiration to 
 be delivered from the bondage of imperfection. He knows 
 what things have been done by every man's fireside ; 
 who by intemperance, or self-neglect, has become apt to 
 imbibe the seeds of contagion ; who is a sufferer, so that 
 death will be a relief to him ; who is a sinner, so that 
 life is no longer deserved by him ; who longs for rest 
 after weariness ; and who has provoked the necessity of 
 being cut off, as a warning : in short, the Lord of the 
 harvest knows who is ripe for the reaper, or what bar- 
 ren tree must no longer cumber the ground. Thus He 
 knows how to reconcile what is fitting for us one by 
 one, with the general judgment, in Avhicli the nation is 
 involved. He knows also whom to spare, and where to 
 stay ; on what house there is a sacrificial sprinkling, 
 from whatever holiest oblation its dwellers could offer or 
 recall ; and from what parish goes up the hearty prayer, 
 " Give peace in our time, O Lord," — so that there 
 the angel, with quicker step, may carry past his idle 
 scythe : He knows too, even the Lord God most merciful, 
 the hour for saying, " It is enough, hold now thy hand." 
 Notwithstanding the grievous faults of king David, 
 he never altogether loses a certain magnanimity of 
 character. Thus we find him exclaiming, in natural 
 emotion, "What have these sheep done; let thine anger 
 be against me, and against my father's house." We 
 
VI.] Offering to God. 81 
 
 may therefore readily conceive with what satisfaction 
 he must have found the plague stayed from his people, 
 after it had reached the threshing-floor of Araunah, 
 We can enter also into the feeling Avhich prompts him 
 readily to obey the injunction by which he is directed 
 to raise an altar and to offer sacrifice unto the Lord, 
 although, indeed, some modern divines would, from a 
 misconception which comes of an exaggeration of a 
 truth, almost have blamed such an act as unnecessary, 
 or even superstitious. " For what can be the value" 
 (they would ask) of any human sacrifice ? Is not the 
 plague already stayed ? Why should we lessen the free- 
 dom of the great deliverance already wrought ? The 
 angel has already been arrested by the voice, Stay now 
 thy hand. There is therefore no longer any rational 
 end to be attained by sacrifices." 
 
 Some such arguments, it is not impossible, many 
 persons in our own time would address to king David : or 
 at least would only be restrained from doing so, because 
 they might perhaps observe, that Gad, the seer, had 
 especially directed the sacrifice in question. But, surely, 
 we need not be so inconsiderate as to suppose, that 
 either Almighty God, or his true servants, give directions 
 which are without a reason. There must have been 
 some reason, or some permanent principle concerned, 
 and probably a principle of universal application, which 
 made Gad enjoin a sacrifice, and the king not only 
 ready to perform it, but desirous that it should cost him 
 something. To the discovery or the illustration of that 
 principle 1 shall devote the short remainder of the pre- 
 sent sermon. 
 
 4—5 
 
82 Offering to God. [serm. 
 
 Under the impulse of what feeling, shall we say, 
 that king David refused the offer of Araunah to give 
 him his oxen and threshing-floor, and exclaimed, "I will 
 not offer burnt-offerings unto the Lord my God of that 
 which doth cost me nothing"? What David's inner 
 feeling was, my brethren, the patriarchal father, and the 
 type of all believers, knew, when he would not withhold 
 from God his son, even his only son Isaac, whom he 
 loved. Even so Matthew the publican knew it, when 
 at the Saviour's call he arose, and left all, and followed 
 him who was rejected of men. Mary also the well be- 
 loved, whether of Magdala or of Bethany, knew it, when 
 by her gift, which the utilitarian criticised, and the 
 unloving scoffed at, she won that blessing from the Son 
 of God; "Let her alone; she hath done what she could." 
 But among these who knew the secret, we read also of 
 one who emphatically knew it not. It is that young 
 man w^hom Jesus indeed loved, but who lacked one 
 thing ; he could admire the Saviour, and believe in his 
 goodness, and praise him ; but he could not give up any 
 thing dear for his sake ; therefore he went away sorrow- 
 ful. For he knew not the deep necessity, which all the 
 others felt, that wherever the heart has been placed, 
 there it must also carry whatever it has to give most 
 precious. There is no climate or country in which 
 strong feeling is not instinctively expected to act thus — 
 or in which to give presents has not been reckoned a 
 natural sign of affection. Neither is there any extreme 
 of liberality, or even extravagance, to which, under the 
 pressing sway of some dominant idea, men of all tem- 
 pers, both individually and in masses, may not find 
 
VI.] Offering to God. 83 
 
 themselves urged, by an impulse, alike of instinct and of 
 contagion. We see this principle in men of the world, 
 as well as in the more earnest class of Christians. Our 
 great statesmen have generally died poor. The scholar 
 seldom grudges the price of his books. The author 
 frequently feels, that, so far from gainhig a lucrative 
 livelihood, he not only sacrifices that, but even dries the 
 fountains of life, for the remote chance of becoming 
 famous, or of benefiting mankind. It is obvious that 1 
 do not allude to childish and unthinking extravagance, 
 but to that deep passion which deliberately sacrifices the 
 less for the sake of the greater, or as a sort of libation 
 upon its attainment. Thus we find, in any of the rare 
 instances (for they must be rare) in which the kingdom 
 of heaven has become as engrossing an object to a man 
 as the fiimily or the ordinary employments of life are 
 generally, there this keener and diviner love counts no 
 more its earthly treasures, or counts them only as things 
 to be cast at the feet of its Saviour, or employed in the 
 service of its God. This idea has often been applied, and 
 surely with great propriety, to the building of churches, 
 the endowment of schools or almshouses, and other such 
 good works, which belong either to the embellishment 
 of a country, or to the edification of the city of God. 
 
 But this morning, brethren, neither the rearing of 
 those solemn minsters, which attest that their builders 
 dreamt of no perishable home hereafter, nor any mea- 
 surement of Christian love, by the outward and visible 
 sacrament of charitable acts, are suggested as the 
 direction for your thoughts, — so much as that deep 
 consolation, which we may draw, in all distress of mind, 
 
84 Offering to God. [serm. 
 
 body, or estate, from this idea of offering to God out of 
 that which has cost us something. 
 
 It has pleased our heavenly Father, who doeth all 
 things well, to lay upon every one of his children a 
 burthen ; and how heavy a one upon some, none, save 
 the sufferer, can tell. How many things appear, by the 
 very constitution of the world, to have been almost 
 necessaries to our happiness; and yet how many of them 
 are denied to a large portion of mankind ! We hardly 
 know ourselves, except by imagination, the pain of want- 
 mg food ; of being maddened by cold, with insufficient 
 clothing ; or of sickness, for all which medicine can do 
 is to prescribe some remedy far beyond the means of 
 the sufferer. — Yet which of us has not known either 
 sickness, disappointment, or anxiety ? who has not felt 
 the irksomeness of some recurring duty, the jar of 
 nerves overwrought, or the blank and listless hour? 
 Probably no one is without his burthen in some shape : 
 no, not one. For all experience proclaims, that certainly 
 no exemption is furnished by wealth ; certainly none by 
 knowledge ; and none, except for a time, in that miser- 
 ably dull selfishness, which tries to escape feeling by tor- 
 por, but is destined to its day of reckoning. Perhaps the 
 very exuberance of health, or of friends and pleasant 
 associations, may have rendered it difficult for us to live 
 soberly ; and we had set our minds too much on some 
 idol of outward things : God sweeps them away from us, 
 either slowly, or with a stroke. We were wrapt up in 
 the sympathy of friends ; either some fatal misunder- 
 standing occurs, or death interposes that barrier, across 
 which no strength of merely human faculties has ever 
 
VI.] Offering to God. 85 
 
 yet attained an answer. Again, our natural disposition 
 was inclined to nothing so much as ease, or thoughtful 
 leisure : God takes us up, and casts us (where we little 
 foresaw it) amidst bitterness and strife of tongues. We 
 were perhaps somewhat sensitive, or timidly careful of 
 our reputation ; he suffers us to learn the taste of every 
 unjust aspersion, and studied inuendo. We had de- 
 termined, that facility of temper, and complaisance of 
 manner, were the means of passing through life agree- 
 ably ; we find ourselves in a position, where a wholesome 
 sternness, and the power of saying No almost harshly, 
 become the first requirements of duty. But whatever 
 we are, and wherever our lot may be cast, to do some- 
 thing, to suffer something, to deny ourselves and others 
 something, to fight in short a good fight, by patience, by 
 vigilance, by soberness, are certain to be the tests of our 
 faith, and the requisites of our allegiance, as soldiers of 
 the cross of Christ. In our vigour, action ; in our 
 weakness, patience ; in all our lives long, counting our- 
 selves not our own, but the servants of Him who gave 
 himself for us. So emphatically is this our portion, 
 tha.t whoever endures nothing, whoever is not struggling 
 in some way to do or bear something, seems to have 
 turned aside from bearing his portion with that Master 
 upon whom (as he went up Calvary) they laid his cross, 
 and the weight bowed Him to the earth. 
 
 But in all such things, brethren, whether labour, 
 sickness, or uneasiness of mind, there are chiefly two 
 consolations. The first, from the necessity of things, is 
 by no means contemptible ; but the second, which is 
 from the love of God constraining us, is far better. 
 
86 Offering to God. [serm. 
 
 Undoubtedly it is something to be assured that we 
 cannot straighten what God has made crooked. It is 
 useless to kick against the goad, like an unruly ox, or 
 like a wild beast in a cage. But it is far more con- 
 solatory to believe that our heavenly Father accepts 
 the patience with which we bear some sad disappoint- 
 ment, our meekness under some stroke of his hand, or 
 our sober perseverance amidst irksome duties and 
 embarrassing temptations, with that same eternal com- 
 passion which of old counted the blood of his saints 
 precious, and in the sight of which the ornament of a 
 meek and quiet spirit is one of great price. 
 
 We know — for all mankind instinctively acknowledge 
 the fact — and our church reminds us of it, in the most 
 holy and venerable portion of her Liturgy, that we are 
 not of ourselves worthy to offer unto God any sacrifice. 
 But let no man take away from our religion that prin- 
 ciple of giving to God the heart, and all things which 
 the heart most fondly values ; or that idea of postponing 
 all other things to the pearl of great price, which as it 
 makes men great on earth by the energy and unity of 
 purpose which it inspires, so probably it also makes 
 great in the kingdom of heaven. Still less, my brethren, 
 let any man rob us of that lively incitement to ever 
 fresh and manly exertion, that encouragement, when all 
 mankind frown upon us, and that abundant consolation, 
 in our deepest distress of body or of mind, which is de- 
 rived from the ancient idea, that God of his all fatherly 
 compassion is graciously pleased to accept the offering 
 of our souls ; He puts our tears, as it were, in his bottle ; 
 He says to us, as for his sake we bear suffering, or for- 
 
VI.] Offering to God. 87 
 
 bear, being injured, " Well done, good and faithful 
 servants," 
 
 In short, whatever we do or endure, upon principle, 
 because our conscience tells us it is right, or because 
 the love of God constrains us, and because we have 
 determined to offer before him of the travail of our souls, 
 is an oblation, like that of David ; for it is not offered 
 to the Lord our God out of that which has cost us 
 nothing. 
 
 Lastly, if our work, or our endurance, be done truly 
 in that spirit, it is also an oblation in the spirit of one 
 greater than David ; even of that Son whom David called 
 his Lord. He indeed gave of his own, and we only 
 of that which he first enables us to give. But this is 
 verily and indeed " partaking of Christ," when by daily 
 perseverance in well-doing we fill up in ourselves that in 
 which Ave have hitherto come short of the devoted life of 
 Christ. Nor can there ever be a better opportunity for 
 thus righting what is wrong in ourselves, than when we 
 are invited, in words full of comfort and of blessing, to 
 remember the sacrifice of that Lamb of God which 
 taketh away the sins of the world. Like in that grand 
 Psalm (50th) in which Jehovah calls to all the holy 
 people who were in covenant with him, so his words call 
 to you to-day ; " Offer unto God thanksgiving, and pay 
 thy vows unto the most High ; and call upon Him in the 
 day of trouble ; He will deliver thee, and thou shalt 
 praise Him." 
 
 Hear also St Paul beseeching you, not by the terrors, 
 but by the great mercies of God, that you would not 
 honor Him with that which has cost you naught ; but 
 
88 Offering to God. [serm. vi. 
 
 bring your whole hearts, your lives, yourselves, as the 
 living sacrifice to do his will, and to accept henceforward 
 whatever portion He shall assign you. Blessed be his 
 name, the God of all consolation, who comforts us even 
 in our sorest distress, by enabling us then to offer before 
 his throne something which has cost us much, even our 
 pain, our patience, our secret groanings, our entire bow- 
 ing down in the dread, yet strangely-comforting thought, 
 Oh Father, not our will, but thine be done. Such com- 
 fort has almost a sad sound; even as. Take up thy cross, 
 or, Go and suffer something for me, is not so flattering 
 an invitation, as Come and reign, or, Thou shalt sit on my 
 right hand and my left. Yet whoever makes experience 
 of thus giving himself freely and without reserve to God, 
 for Christ's sake, even as Christ freely gave himself for 
 us, will find a blessedness of peace which the world can- 
 not give or take away. Take we, then, brethren, this 
 yoke upon us, for it is easy ; and the burthen of Christ, 
 for we shall find it light. 
 
 Lampeter, Midlent, March 6, 1853. 
 
SERMON Vll. 
 
 DEBORAH'S SONG. 
 
 Then sang Deborah and Barak the son of Abinoam on that day, saying. 
 Praise ye the Lord for the avenging of Israel. Judges v. 1, 2. 
 
 A CERTAIN kind of sacredness appears ever to have been 
 stamped by the Ahiiighty upon the several sentiments 
 which were necessary to preserve either the family or 
 the state. That the parent indeed should cherish the 
 child, was a provision so amply involved in the gentle 
 teaching of nature, as to require no written command- 
 ment. But that the child in turn should honour and 
 reverence the parent, was at the same time suggested 
 by nature and reason, and also embodied in those ten 
 fundamental precepts, which formed the essential cha- 
 racteristic of the law given by Moses on Mount Sinai. 
 From such a reverence of our fathers the sentiment of 
 love to our fatherland is so natural an offshoot, as to 
 appear but a slight extension of it. No nation has been 
 found to which the Divine wisdom ever revealed itself 
 in even the dimmest degree and obscurest fashion, with- 
 out some recognition of the sentiment, that a man's 
 country has a claim alike on his services and on his 
 affection. " We are not born merely for ourselves," said 
 
90 Deborah's Song. [serm. 
 
 all the noble spirits among the Gentiles ; nor does the 
 circle of our duty end with our immediate family, but 
 embraces those whom God has bound to us by the ties 
 of neighbourhood, citizenship, and national law. 
 
 Among the Israelites the same feeling shews itself 
 in so earnest and devoted a form, that it is not always 
 easy to distinguish how far some of the glowing expres- 
 sions of psalmist and prophet should be ascribed mainly 
 to the inspiration of patriotism or to that of religion. 
 The Sion, of which her children grieve to see the stones 
 in the dust, is at once the city which their fathers built, 
 and the si)ot where the sanctuary of Jehovah stands. 
 To dwell in the land is the inheritance of the pious, and 
 to be cut off from it the portion of the wicked. Scarcely 
 is any wish thought more worthy of being cherished by 
 the saintly patriot than that he may see Jerusalem in 
 prosperity all his life long. 
 
 Now it will be readily allowed, that whatever draws 
 a man out of the narrow will of his own selfish desires, 
 is in itself so far good. But supposing, again, a senti- 
 ment which has been so far useful, takes up its range at 
 but a short distance from the man, and refuses to be 
 carried farther, it may become in its turn not a means 
 of widening the sympathies, but a mode of narrowing 
 them. We can easily imagine cases, or our memory 
 may supply us with them, in which the feeling of attach- 
 ment to a particular country has been, so intense, as to 
 overrule the universal obligations of good faith, justice, 
 and truth. Nor ought it to surprise us if in the earlier 
 stages of the world's history we find such a sentiment 
 existing in its ruder forms. It may have glowed in 
 
VII.] Deborah's Song. 91 
 
 men's breasts so effectively as to perform all the work of 
 which our Maker intended it to be the instrument, giving 
 a stimulus to valour, and a bond of union to societies; 
 yet have been guilty in its kind of some excesses, which 
 a more enlightened humanity than that of the age would 
 have been required duly to correct. 
 
 The very circumstance, indeed, of the sentiment to 
 which we allude, being a natural sentiment, might prepare 
 us to expect some excess in its ruder manifestations. It 
 would seem a province destined for the gradual progress 
 of mankind, to suggest one after another checks and 
 limitations on feelings acknowledged to be natural. And, 
 as this process might on the whole be step by step, so if 
 at any time it should please Almighty God to teach his 
 rational creatures in any more signal and remarkable 
 manner, constituting thereby an epoch in the history of 
 mankind, we should then expect the corrections to be 
 supplied which the ruder capacities of nature might 
 require. We did not want a new revelation to teach us 
 that our nature possessed certain instincts ; but we do 
 appear to have needed some emphatical caution (or some 
 warning from no less authoritative voice than that of our 
 Maker), against the abuses into which an unrestrained 
 indulgence of those instincts might hurry us unawares. 
 Hence, when the Only-begotten Son of God came teach- 
 ing mankind the way of peace. He deemed it unnecessary 
 to recommend men the love of their own country; He says 
 nothing of selecting one person rather than another for 
 the more tender offices of friendship; and it is only on a 
 special occasion, with reference to a particular abuse, 
 that He reminds men of the primary duties of honouring 
 
92 DehoraJis Song. [serm. 
 
 their father and their mother. The points on which 
 stress is laid in the Gospel of Christ, are rather the 
 fitness of doing justly by all, loving mercy to all, and 
 speaking truth to all, as well as walking humbly with 
 our God. The great idea of Christian charity becomes 
 an extension, as far as possible, to all mankind, of the 
 same general principles of justice and benevolence which 
 had formerly been narrowed by their restriction to a 
 country or a race. Do good unto all men; be kindly 
 affectioned ; speak the truth, or lie not ; seeing that we 
 are members one of another. In Christ Jesus there 
 is neither barbarian nor Saxon, bond nor free. 
 
 So that henceforward, though we may love our coun- 
 try, as we may honour our parents, it must still be 
 remembered that other countries have their rights, just 
 as other men's parents ought not to be injured by us. 
 
 The natural instinct may be cherished so far as to 
 effect its legitimate work, but must still submit to limit- 
 ations, drawn from the principles of justice and mercy, 
 as well as from the universal brotherhood of mankind. 
 For, "have we not all one Lord and Father? why deal 
 we then treacherously every man with his neighbour?" 
 
 Now it is up to a standard of this kind that we find 
 the conceptions of men are gradually growing throughout 
 the Old Testament. We must not be surprised that in 
 the earlier stages they have not reached it. If indeed, 
 as some people appear to expect, the contemporaries of 
 Moses and Joshua had been as refined in their tone of 
 moral sentiment as the contemporaries of Malachi, or 
 those of John the Baptist, then the whole history of the 
 Old Testament would have been useless. Nay, it would 
 
VII.] Deborah's Song. 93 
 
 have been unnecessary. Whereas, in the earlier times 
 we undoubtedly find a certain harshness, which is quite 
 consistent with the general facts of human nature, and 
 with the circumstance of the Hebrew people having 
 been made the subject of a higher teaching, but would 
 not at all consist with the idea that all their actions 
 are precedents for us to imitate, or even objects for us 
 to admire. 
 
 Whenever, then, we endeavour to weigh narratives of 
 the kind alluded to, our path seems to be between two 
 dangers. On the one hand, we ought not hastily to con- 
 demn such as Deborah, Jephthah, and David, because 
 the standard of their age and country is a rude one ; nor, 
 again, should we let down to their level the far higher 
 standard of sentiment to which the good providence of 
 the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has brought his 
 children in the fulness of time. We should neither do 
 injustice to the old, nor yet desire to go back to it from 
 the new. Surely it is not without a sickening of the 
 heart that any right-minded person can hear some atro- 
 cious deed elaborately defended, or even propounded as 
 an act of faith, because it happen to be recorded in the 
 Scriptures of the Old Testament. Nor again, are we 
 warranted in supposing that actions, otherwise wrong, 
 were rendered right by any special command of the 
 Most High, unless some trace of such command appear 
 to be distinctly recorded. Rather, indeed, we should be 
 careful to preserve the fine edge of our conscience 
 unturned, and its perceptions keen. We may well ad- 
 mire the fidelity on part of the sacred historian, which 
 has led him to write down good and bad with the same 
 
94 Deboralis Song. [serm. 
 
 unfaltering pen; and moreover, however some persons 
 may suppose that purer examples of moral virtue than 
 are found in the Old Testament would have been more 
 appropriate themes for general instruction, such pure 
 examples would at least have fallen short in one mate- 
 rial point: namely, in the fidelity which represents the 
 face of nature as it exists. It is well known that the 
 nations between the Tigris and the Mediterranean have 
 never abstained in their warfare from either treachery 
 or bloodshed: suppose, then, we read in the Book of 
 Judges, that Syrian shepherds, twelve centuries before 
 Christ, were gentle, and upright lovers of truth, it would 
 have been a reasonable question, where the originals 
 existed from which so fair a picture was drawn. But as 
 the case stands, we only require in reason to be re- 
 minded, that we are reading of human nature in one 
 of its least refined stages of development, that the 
 country is the East, that the age (of Deborah for 
 example) is at least as early as the war before Troy; 
 and that when men in that age were animated by a 
 general idea that their cause (as they conceived it) 
 was a sacred one, they did not scruple to ascribe every 
 turn in its conduct, and much more its results, to the 
 direct agency of the Almighty. 
 
 When, for example, any one would enter truly into 
 the spirit of the song of Deborah, let him remember, 
 that for twenty years the children of Israel had been 
 mightily oppressed by a king whose nine hundred cha- 
 riots were of iron. The outburst of passion, in a people 
 of slaves scarce escaped from bondage, can never be 
 other than fierce. The highways had been untrodden — 
 
VII.] Deborah's Song. 96 
 
 the villages had drooped in the silence of decay — ^the 
 places of drawing water were beset by the bow of the 
 oppressor, and not a shield or spear Avas seen moved on 
 part of the down-stricken people, until, — as the strong- 
 minded woman by whose spirit they were at length 
 roused, expresses it with pardonable exultation, — "until 
 that I, Deborah, arose, a mother in Israel." In every 
 verse of the song in which she utters forth her tri- 
 umph, we see the woman, the patriot, and the bard. It 
 has been often remarked, that the gentler of the two 
 sexes is also the least apt to discriminate to what length 
 they may legitimately go, in adherence to any side on 
 which their affections happen to be enlisted. Even so 
 Deborah seems to ask only the question, Were not the 
 people of Israel oppressed? was not Sisera their op- 
 pressor? No light censure, then, she deems should fall 
 on those who stayed their hands from giving rescue in 
 the hour of need. For the divisions, which kept back 
 Reuben from the field, there were great searchings of 
 heart. As for them of Meroz, who helped not the people 
 of the Lord in their sore conflict, it seems as if she, the 
 messenger raised up by the Lord, has a right to curse 
 them : possibly even to her rapt imagination, the pow- 
 ers of the unseen world may seem ready to ratify the 
 verdict, which the agony of a trampled people is ever 
 ready to pronounce against the slow of counsel and timid 
 of heart, — against the self-seeker, in short, who stays to 
 count the mighty arrayed against them, and comes not 
 to help that cause which seems the cause of the Lord. 
 
 How different were the men of Zebulun and Napth- 
 tali ! They shrank not from their country's cause, they 
 
96 Deborah's Song. [serm. 
 
 jeoparded their lives unto the death in the high places of 
 the field. So ought it to have been with all the twelve 
 tribes, before whom God had driven out the Canaanite 
 of old. Even the powers of nature seemed to sympathise 
 with such an effort. The very stars in their courses 
 smiled more kindly upon the patriot ranks arrayed 
 against Sisera. The river of Kishon, already famous in 
 story, became a minister to carry away the dead in its 
 swollen course. Is not Jehovah the Lord of hosts? 
 He has enabled Barak to lead captivity captive, so that 
 they who handle the pen of the writer in Zebulun have 
 now a subject to celebrate for ever. 
 
 Where is then the fury of the oppressor ? What 
 has become of the vaunting of him who arrayed his nine 
 hundred chariots in the plain ? So perish all thine 
 enemies, O Lord ! 
 
 Truly, brethren, it was not without reason they of 
 old time made little difference between the prophet and 
 the poet, the bard and the seer. Which of the two 
 characters ought we more to recognise, in that language 
 of exultation over the fall of Sisera, and that approval 
 of the crime of Jael ? Possibly, in a measure, we may 
 say both. It may be the spirit of the prophetess which 
 recognises the Lord God of Israel as the setter up of 
 one, and the caster down of another, tracing ultimately 
 the disposal of all events to the Divine will : but it may 
 be only the leader of Israel's armies, and the songstress 
 of Israel's triumph, that can presume to call Jael the 
 wife of Heber, " blessed among women." — Kindling in 
 the fierce flush of victory, and borne along by a genius 
 whose chariot-wheels grow hot as they drive, the 
 
VII.] Deboralis Song. 97 
 
 Amazonian prophetess cannot stay to behold in Sisera, the 
 fugitive, the weary, the sleeping guest ; she condescends 
 only to contemplate him as the enemy of her race, the 
 oppressor fallen, the desolator desolate. To have har- 
 boured him as a friend, would have been, from the point 
 of view from which she regards the subject, to harbour 
 the enemy of Israel ; whereas to smite hiin, even with 
 circumstances of treacherous cruelty, was in her mind's 
 eye only smiting one already doomed of the Lord. Of 
 course, if you choose to turn such a sentiment into a 
 formal doctrine, you must from a humane point of view 
 utterly condemn it ; but I do not think it necessary, 
 either to justify or to condemn ; considering it only in 
 reference to the time of the speaker, the provocation 
 which her people had received, and the patriotic glow 
 with which her fervid spirit bursts into song. 
 
 Precisely of the same kind is the real key to the 
 passage lower down, about the mother of Sisera. Many 
 persons read the verses as if they narrated prosaically 
 an historical event of the mother of Sisera putting 
 her head (as Jezebel does elsewhere) out of a parti- 
 cular window. Hence Mr Thomas Scott is pleased to 
 found upon the 30th verse, a complaint of the wicked- 
 ness of Sisera's mother, and some advice to parents, to 
 form better wishes for their children. But, if a person 
 professes to interpret Scripture, he ought to give a fair 
 interpretation of it ; even at the expense of setting 
 moral reflections for a moment aside. Nothing can be 
 clearer, than that the Hebrew song of triumph dwells 
 only with dramatic vividness of representation on such 
 circumstances as might be supposed likely to have 
 w. s. 5 
 
98 Dehoralis Song. [serm. 
 
 happened, so far as their supposition might enhance the 
 sense of victory, and impress either speaker or hearer 
 with a keener sense of the great deliverance which had 
 been achieved. Had Sisera set out conquering ; and 
 did his friends conceive him destined to conquer ? Had 
 they already in imagination divided the spoils ? If they 
 had, the event taught them a bitter lesson, that he who 
 girdeth on his harness should not boast himself as he 
 that putteth it off. He came as a spoiler, but the God 
 of Israel destined him to be spoiled. Such is the senti- 
 ment, which if you put, not in a didactic form, but in 
 the most vivid manner of lyrical poetry, you will have 
 exactly, what Deborah says in her imagination of the 
 mother of Sisera. Place yourself in her position, and 
 you will enter more fully into the spirit of her words, 
 than with the aid of Mr Scott's Commentary. 
 
 What sort of moral, then, are we to draw from the 
 whole ? Something perhaps of this kind : — The oppressor 
 and the wrong-doer may be overtaken by a downfall 
 when they think themselves most secure. That retribu- 
 tion (which, though wrought out by human passions, is 
 yet not without the overruling sway of the great governor 
 of the world,) may be rapid beyond what their power 
 could have expected, and unrelenting in proportion to 
 the fierceness of the recoil which they have provoked. 
 
 Neither is this general idea true only of political 
 tyranny. It applies no less to all manner of negligence, 
 supineness, and forgetfulness of duty either to God, or 
 man. The pitcher goes often to the well, and is broken 
 at last. The Lord awakes, as it were, suddenly, as out 
 of sleep, and like a giant refreshed with wine. Our 
 
VII.] Deborah's Song. 99 
 
 poverty comes upon us like an armed man. Our sin 
 finds us out in a single day. We lie down in a false 
 security, and rise up in terror and despair. Even so, 
 the great change of life and death is apt to come as a 
 thief in the night. 
 
 But again ; we see, not only in the history of Sisera, 
 but in many other narratives throughout the Old Testa- 
 ment, a certain grand process being carried on by the 
 agency of persons, whose motives, or whose moral stand- 
 ard, we must often admit to fall far short of perfection. 
 They evidently knew but in part to what sort of result 
 their struggles were tending. The Israel for which they 
 fought was indeed their country ; and their national 
 church was the temple of Jehovah. But it evidently 
 had not entered the conceptions of Joshua or Deborah, 
 that the time should come when the whole family of 
 mankind would be recognised as standing in the same 
 relation of an elect and a well-beloved people, to the 
 God of the ends of the whole earth, as then appeared 
 the exclusive property of the twelve tribes in Canaan. 
 Exactly correspondent with this ^narrowness of their 
 horizon in respect of the filial relation to God, was also 
 their conception of the moral virtues to be exercised, 
 not only to a man's kinsman and his neighbour, but to 
 his fellow-creature, although his foe. 
 
 Still the great design of the Almighty and All-wise 
 went on developing itself, like the small cloud, no 
 bigger than a man's hand, which was destined to fer- 
 
 1 The language now used by some on questions of Race, grounded 
 as it often is on falsehood, and persuasive to wrong, is quite as repre- 
 hensible, and is a relapse from Christianity. 
 
 5 — 2 
 
100 Deborah's Song. [serm. 
 
 tilize the land with rain. He was using men of imperfect 
 views as his instruments ; and by means of them was 
 educating the world. He had long ago, indeed, implant- 
 ed in mankind certain germs and capacities of nobler 
 things. But these were so tangled and stifled, that 
 they required training by no less hand than his own. 
 The blind or servile fear of some dread unseen power 
 was to become childlike reverence ; a zeal without know- 
 ledge was to become intelligent piety ; patriotism was 
 to expand itself into benevolence and justice ; and faith 
 to grow up into the love of God and man. As to the 
 rest prepared for the people of Jehovah, the ever-being 
 God, it was ultimately to show itself beyond the grave ; 
 the warfare by Avhich it was to be attained was not 
 against the Canaanites, but against all the forms of 
 moral evil, and vicious contamination ; while our com- 
 panions and fellow-soldiers in this fair struggle were to 
 be not only Barak and his tribesmen, but all the purer 
 and nobler spirits from the East and the West, even a 
 multitude which no man can number, being many of 
 them known to the grace of God, even as Cyrus was of 
 old known to his providence., though haply they may not 
 have known him under his Hebrew name Jehovah. 
 
 Therefore God, I say, brethren, has been educating 
 mankind. He threw into the hearts of men certain 
 sentiments, which, though mingled with tares, were yet 
 destined to spring up and bear fruit. Generation after 
 generation worshipped, either at Shiloh, or Hebron, or 
 in the temple at Jerusalem, knowing the Ljrd only as 
 the Lord of hosts, and the God of Israel. But the very 
 power of those solemn services, and of those meditations 
 
VII.] DeboraJis Song. 101 
 
 on the majesty, the justice, and the mercy of the Father 
 of the spirits of all flesh, which solemn psalm and pro- 
 phecy and law awakened, was also to develope a larger 
 idea of the extent of the divine compassion, and some 
 conception of the justice, which the Judge of the whole 
 earth must, in doing right, extend to all mankind. 
 Hence we find in Isaiah and in the Psalms no mean 
 anticipation of the truth which it was reserved for our 
 divine Saviour to proclaim in all its power ; that God is 
 not a God of the Jew only, but also a God of the Gen- 
 tile. Neither is He so much pleased with his title, the 
 Lord of hosts, as with his higher name, as the Father of 
 all consolation. Nor again is it his principal attribute, 
 to be jealous ; for God is love. Nor is He to be wor- 
 shipped only at Jerusalem ; for God is a spirit, and they 
 that worship him must worship him in spirit, and in truth. 
 Let no one therefore think that God is pleased with 
 any sort of treachery ; for as He is not deceived, neither 
 doth He deceive any man. Nor yet hath He so much 
 pleasure in sacrifice as He hath in mercy. 
 
 If then we are to call any one blessed among women, 
 let it be no longer Jael the wife of Heber, but rather 
 Mary the virgin mother of the Prince of Peace. Com- 
 paring indeed her hymn, " My soul doth magnify the 
 Lord," with that of Deborah, we comprehend in a glance 
 the entire distinction between the New Testament and 
 the Old. Again, if we would be patriotic, let us remem- 
 ber that other nations have their rights ; and amongst 
 their rights may be numbered, speaking truth of their 
 character, doing justice to their motives, respecting their 
 manners, their traditions, their faith. If we saw the 
 
102 DehoraTis Song. [serm. 
 
 plaintive elegy, which perhaps the mother of Sisera may 
 have uttered over her son, it might possibly win a tear 
 from us, even fresh from Deborah"'s song. 
 
 But, on the whole, God works out his own ends. 
 Let us neither irreverently slander, nor scoff at the past ; 
 nor yet need we blindly worship it. The Almighty 
 and All-wise has himself taught us at sundry times and 
 in diverse manners, but especially by his only-begotten 
 Son, to rise alike above the manners and the sentiments 
 which are painted in the book of Judges with so lively 
 a pencil. Yet He has nowhere taught us to trample 
 irreverently on the tomb of religious antiquity, any 
 more than human instinct would lead some great con- 
 queror or successful statesman to sneer at the humble 
 cottage where perhaps his father first drew breath. 
 Perad venture the time may come, at least in heaven, 
 when much of what we now believe may appear to those, 
 for whom God has reserved some better thing, as much 
 t^'pe, as much parable, as much shadow, as the belief 
 of the Jews of old now appears to ourselves. For it is 
 written, JEye hath not seen, nor ear heard. Peradventure 
 then, I say, God is now leading us to heaven by a route, 
 which may hereafter appear to us as strange, and as 
 merely typical, as that of the Israelites through the 
 wilderness on their way to Canaan. Only some things, 
 we know, can never pass away ; for the word of the Lord 
 in its highest spirit abideth for ever. To him, our first 
 Father and our great Teacher, be all grateful worship 
 rendered for the many lessons He has hitherto in diverse 
 manners given to his creatures. To him be praise for 
 our instincts, our capacities, our feelings, our reason, 
 
VII.] Deborah's Song. 103 
 
 our conscience, our affections ; nay, even for our wants, 
 our fears, and our sorrows, which have so often turned 
 us in search of some higher strengthener than any arm 
 of flesh. To him also be glory for all the wonderful 
 course of the world's history, wherein by strange and 
 mysterious providences, good has been brought out of 
 evil, matter has been subdued to mind, brute force has 
 been found inferior to justice, the patriot has trodden 
 down the oppressor, the primeval curse has lost its sting, 
 want has become the stimulus of labour, and labour the 
 instrument of progress. Nor less, but rather more, to 
 God be praise for the religious history of mankind, 
 though the page may be sprinkled with blood. To his 
 providence and his Holy Spirit be ascribed the work of 
 raising up many servants, such as Melchisedec, Moses, 
 and Samuel ; and so of keeping alive in the world 
 an elect assembly, of priest, and prophet, and saint ; 
 who, however imperfect in their generation, still leavened 
 with the fear of God the perverseness of man's heart ; 
 trampling over influences apparently most powerful and 
 most opposed. That a succession of such men has 
 never been extinct, but has rather waxed mightier in 
 persecution ; that in the earlier stages of its progress it 
 embodied its own experiences in writing, whereby we 
 possess both a faithful record of the past, and a written 
 voice of the Church, wherewith all subsequent utterances 
 of the Holy Spirit through the reason of man must sub- 
 mit to be compared, so as to be tested thereby ; but 
 above all, that in the fulness of time the Prince of peace 
 came, breaking down partition walls, and reconciling 
 Jew and Gentile alike to each other, and to God ; so 
 
104" Deborah's Song. [serm. 
 
 that henceforward mankind is Israel, and the world is 
 Jerusalem, and all our Deborahs must learn to speak in 
 the language of Mary, seeking the one thing needful, by 
 sitting at the feet of Christ. These things, brethren, are 
 all the work of God, and they ought to be marvellous in 
 our eyes. It ought to be with us an object of no mean 
 ambition to join ourselves on to this company of the 
 servants of the Lord ; even to be afflicted, if it must 
 needs be, in their affliction ; enduring, as men who see 
 that which is invisible, and smitten with a great desire 
 of no earthly crown. Truly if our light is greater, so 
 also is our responsibility. Deborah may be judged by 
 the standard of her own times. She felt no reproach of 
 conscience as she broke into her strain of triumph, for 
 she spoke according to the light that was in her. 
 
 But we, brethren, in proportion as the Fatherly 
 providence and Holy Spirit of God are ever revealing 
 to us more of the eternal mind, are called upon, by 
 every consideration of our soul's health, to act on the 
 highest standard which may be open to our conception. 
 Judge you therefore, I entreat you, candidly for your- 
 selves, whether you are now doing your duty as honestly, 
 by God, and by man the child of God, and by your own 
 immortal souls, as Deborah and Barak did their duty in 
 their day by what they naturally conceived to be the 
 cause of the Lord. 
 
 If you see ignorance around you, and do nothing to 
 enlighten it ; or want and pain innocent yet pining, and 
 do nothing to relieve it ; if you see profaneness and vice, 
 or meanness and falsehood, yet encourage it ; if you 
 suffer any favourite sin to make encroachment on your 
 
VII.] Deborah's Song. 105 
 
 lives, lurking perhaps in the secret places of your mind, 
 like the archers of Canaan by the watering-places of 
 Israel ; if in short you are either consciously doing harm 
 or doing no good, then brethren, it is my duty to say 
 you are in danger of the curse of Meroz — for why ? — 
 'You come not to the help of the Lord against the 
 mighty. 
 
 Lampeter, June, 1852. 
 
 1 It might here be considered, whether those who observe a 
 dangerously growing discrepancy now between the faith of some, and 
 the knowledge of others, and who are aware that it arises in part from 
 the exaggerations of religious teachers, are justified in giving the 
 weight of their own authority to such exaggerations ; or in contrasting 
 the divine teachings in general, and those especially termed our two 
 great revealings, more strongly than facts will warrant. 
 
SERMON VIII. 
 
 PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 
 
 A foolish son is a grief to Ids father, and bitterness to her that hare him. 
 
 Proverbs xvii. 25. 
 
 No one can read the Book of Proverbs attentively, 
 without observing that it is of a character somewhat 
 different from any other in the Bible. It is neither 
 historical, like the Book of Kings ; nor devotional, like 
 the Psalms; nor poetical, like the grand strains in which 
 the Hebrew prophets embodied their inspiration. There 
 is rather something homely and didactic in the air of 
 the whole book. The several proverbs were precisely 
 that sound which we can imagine falling from the lips 
 of old men, as, rejoicing in the summer evening's cool- 
 ness, they sat in the gate of Hebrew cities. Whether 
 then we look at the precepts themselves, or whether we 
 consider the origin of writings which most nearly re- 
 semble them in other countries, we can scarcely doubt 
 that the wise son of king David was as much their 
 collector as their author; and that he brought out of 
 the treasury of his memory things which were old, as well 
 as out of his conception those which were new. 
 
 Nor is the above idea inconsistent with the title- 
 page prefixed to the whole book. I say the title-page ; 
 
SEUM. VIII.] Parents and Children. 107 
 
 for such is evidently the true description of the first 
 six verses, which are unfortunately in our arrangement 
 made part of the first chapter. We find, in this pre- 
 liminary description of the work now opening, that it 
 is said to comprehend " the words of the wise, and their 
 dark sayings." It follows therefore that we are about to 
 read the proverbs of more persons than one. 
 
 After this announcement of the contents of the 
 work, the seventh verse contains this motto: "The fear 
 of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge : but fools 
 despise wisdom and instruction." 
 
 In the eighth verse is the actual commencement of 
 the Book of Proverbs : " My son, hear the instruction 
 of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother." 
 
 Now it needs no elaborate proof, that the character 
 of a work thus addressed by a parent to his child, is 
 likely to be one eminently instructive. We are pre- 
 pared to find in it little touches, characteristic of the 
 life and manners of the time ; as well as old adages and 
 maxims, pregnant with the wisdom of time-hallowed 
 experience. Such is accordingly the general nature of 
 the book under consideration; and on both these ac- 
 counts it deserves more repeated perusal than is usually 
 accorded to it. For, first, we hence gather many illus- 
 trations of ancient manners. We see how lawless was 
 in many respects the society of the East ; how bold the 
 precursor of the modern Bedouin in his life of plunder, 
 and how coarse the aspect under which Vice too often 
 presented itself. We see political economy in its in- 
 fancy ; and the Jews chiefly pastoral, rather than agri- 
 cultural, but already betraying, by their aptness for 
 
108 Parents and Children. [serm. 
 
 usury, the disposition which centuries of wandering were 
 afterwards destined to ingrain. 
 
 But, amidst these features of a temporary state of 
 things, we also find many truths, gathered probably from 
 much experience, and savouring of a wisdom written 
 for all time. For, however much physical inventions 
 may modify the outward world, there is (morally) nothing 
 new under the sun. The same nature, in its wants and 
 hopes, and fears, and temptations, continually besets us. 
 We have ever therefore need to be reminded " to fear 
 the Lord and de^yat^t from evil :" for Hell and " destruc- 
 tion are before the Lord, how much more the hearts of 
 men." 
 
 If however there be one set of persons among us, to 
 whom the Book of Proverbs seems addressed, rather 
 than to another, it is emphatically the young. For it 
 contains, like the Essays of Lord Bacon, the English 
 Spectator, and the Rambler, a number of those pithy 
 sayings and just reflections, which contribute to form 
 our principles and insensibly build up the character. 
 And although there may be periods in our life, when a 
 cast of advice so eminently j^rudential might be thought 
 likely to chill rather than animate, this fear does not 
 apply to that fresh stage, when our too eager spirit 
 seems to require (the aid of) every moral restraint. But 
 the especial advantage of Solomon's Proverbs above most 
 other works of the kind, is, that it starts from the true 
 source of right thought and action : it bids us keep 
 diligently the heart within us ; and honour God. as well 
 as those whom God has made our most natural teachers, 
 without us. We recognise, in the outset, the guidance 
 
viiT.] Parents and Cliildren. 109 
 
 of the same Spirit as said of old, " Honour thy father 
 and thy mother." 
 
 Obvious, and even common-place, as such a precept 
 may appear, it may be doubted if men in general are 
 sufficiently alive to all that it involves. The most 
 accurate thinker of ancient times did indeed teach, that 
 in the family were to be found the germs of the state. 
 But we too generally speak, as if " Honour thy father 
 and thy mother" was a precept intended only for the 
 precincts of the nursery. Whereas, if we consider the 
 prominent place given to such injunctions in Holy 
 Scripture, and follow out the train of thought which 
 is thus likely to be inspired in us, we shall find the 
 principles here involved to lie at the bottom of all virtue 
 — I had nearly added — of all religion. For, when that 
 dread Being, who is the Alpha and the Omega, would 
 give mankind some faint conception of a majesty so 
 transcendant that it can only be approached in human 
 language by metaphor and parable, he does so, by con- 
 descending to term himself our Father, which is in 
 heaven. Such language seems intended at once to warm 
 our affection for the heavenly, and to deepen our rever- 
 ence for the earthly parent. It suggests to us, that, 
 after all our deepest wisdom and our most anxious 
 scheming, we are but, as it were, cherished playthings in 
 the unseen hands of One, whose providence is more to 
 us than the most thoughtful affection of parents is to an 
 unconscious infant, or a helpless child. But may it not 
 also remind us, how much, not merely of our substance, 
 but of our very minds and thoughts and principles of 
 action, is in fact derived from our parents. Does not, 
 indeed, reflection show us that we are fearfully and 
 
110 Parents and Children. [serm. 
 
 wonderfully made : not merely in that the likeness of 
 a parent's face and frame descends to child ; but that we 
 derive so much of our mental being, our impulses and 
 inclinations, our habitual thoughts and our manner of 
 reasoning or acting from the impress stamped upon us, 
 while as yet our members were written only in the book 
 of God ; or while our young spirit was unconsciously 
 imbibing an indelible change from the accent and 
 example of our father and our mother. I pretend not 
 nicely to define what comes of organisation, and what 
 is formed by habit. But if any one enjoys a healthy 
 frame, and the blessedness of sleep undisturbed by pain, 
 he owes it in a measure to the temperance or the purity 
 of those from whose loins he sprang. If his years, while 
 yet tender, are schooled in industry, if his lips learn to 
 lisp no profane or unclean sound, if an instinct of pure 
 taste and reverent feeling is developed in him with his 
 opening consciousness, and strengthens with his strength, 
 if he contracts early habits of prayer, of soberness, and 
 reverence towards God, which, abiding in the heart, 
 puts forth fruit in all honesty towards man, he is 
 indebted for all these blessings, under heaven, to those 
 who determined that they and their household should 
 fear the Lord ; who perhaps thought of him often in the 
 watches of the night, and who made him the child, not 
 of their foolish pride, but of their careful training, 
 and of their secret prayers. It cannot be, said a father 
 of the fourth century, to one who saw her child as yet a 
 stranger in every sense to Christ, — it cannot be that 
 the son of so many tears should perish everlastingly. 
 
 Our parents, indeed, lay deep the foundation of what 
 we shall be ; time builds upon it ; we add something to 
 
VIII.] Parents and Children. Ill 
 
 the building with our own hands ; the Holy Spirit of 
 God is ever near at hand, whispering through our con- 
 science, our feelings, and our understanding, what good 
 habit to lay on, and what mischievous rubbish of vice 
 and evil company we should cast aside ; but hard at 
 hand are also passions, and lusts, and conceits, the pride 
 of the eyes, and the pride of life, and that true unbelief 
 which disdains counsel ; each presenting itself in turn 
 as if it were some precious stone. So the mysterious 
 building of the inner man goes on, being daily edified. 
 Who can tell if it will grow up into a temple for all holy 
 and self-sacrificing thoughts, worthy of God and of 
 eternity ; or if the sand of selfishness, and the mire of 
 uncleanness, and the perishable stubble of pleasures 
 which pass away, will have been so kneaded into the 
 walls from the foundation, that the rough tempest of 
 the last judgment must sweep it into the sea of destruc- 
 tion? and great and lamentable, even for angels to weep 
 over, may be the fall thereof. Thus much is certain. — 
 Whoever has been blest with pious parents casts away 
 one great guarantee for the soundness of his building, 
 if he loses sight of the homely maxims, and the affection- 
 ate counsels, which they gave him at the foundation. 
 Many a man learns, by the sad experience of misfortune, 
 truths, which at last he must acknowledge, but which 
 he might have known long before, if he had onh cherish- 
 ed the words of his father, and forgotten not the law of 
 his mother. Even so mysteriously has it pleased God 
 to link our well-being with the honour of those from 
 whom we spring. 
 
 Something indeed of a like principle may be ob- 
 served even in the history of nations. Every people 
 
112 Parents and Cliildren. [serm. 
 
 inherits a certain treasury of experience from its ances- 
 tors. Time, which changes even the structure of the 
 globe, may render change or development necessary in 
 the framework and administration of states; the clothes 
 of the child do not fit the man ; and full-grown nations 
 may have to put away the things of less instructed ages; 
 but that people will make the surest and most regular 
 progress, which stands sufficiently on the old ways, to 
 consider well which new way is best; and those rulers, 
 either in Church or State, will consult most truly for the 
 improvement of our children, who in reverential affec- 
 tion desire good cause to be shown for laying aside 
 whatever they have received in honour from their 
 fathers. Some ingenious persons have even thought 
 that the fifth commandment had its most direct refer- 
 ence to the hereditary institutions of a country. They 
 have imagined, that the promise of dwelling long in the 
 land denotes that stability which is found in kingdoms 
 tenacious of established usage, as distinct from the 
 fickleness and fluctuation of races ever saying, Who will 
 show us any good ? Whatever may be thought of this 
 interpretation, the principle which suggested it is so far 
 confirmed by the experience of the world as at least to 
 deserve being occasionally borne in mind. We ourselves 
 are children of the Cavaliers and of the Crusaders; of 
 Jeremy Taylor and South; of Cranmer and Eidley; of 
 St Anselm and St David; and not least, of the Apostles 
 of Christ. God is ever teaching each generation some- 
 thing new; but may our affections never be cold to the 
 memory, nor our ears deaf to the wisdom, of those who 
 as the servants of God quitted themselves manfully in 
 the days of old. 
 
VIII.] Parents and Children. 113 
 
 But there is sufficient matter to impress whole- 
 somely, and even to awe any man who will consider for 
 half an hour the striking, and evidently providential 
 connexion, simply between parents and their own 
 children. He will find that one motive to a Christian 
 and consistent life may be drawn from the influence 
 which the texture of his own mind, and the habits of 
 his own life, probably exercise even upon his children 
 in years as yet far away. The greatest reverence, said 
 an honest Heathen, is due to our children. How again 
 this idea runs through the Psalms of the Hebrews. 
 That natural-minded people found a consolation in 
 thinking that the Lord whom they honoured would not 
 suffer their seed to beg their bread ; and the experience 
 of those who had been young, and had become old, con- 
 firmed them in this pious hope. 
 
 Now I say nothing, though with slight change my 
 argument might be directed even more strongly, to 
 those chosen few, who in love with an unearthly beauty, 
 or devoted to some great cause incompatible with 
 domestic ties, have espoused themselves in spirit to that 
 Church of God, which instead of her father's has chil- 
 dren, whom she makes princes in all lands. There is, 
 however, an unseen friend, more to be trusted than 
 husband or wife, and who can give an inheritance better 
 than sons and daugliters. 
 
 But for the overwhelming majority even of Christian 
 men it is worth considering, that whatever they are in 
 temper, in spirit, in habit, there is a certain probability 
 in favour of their children starting on the way to be- 
 come something of the same kind. They will give, 
 unconsciously, an impulse, which perhaps they would 
 
114 Parents and Children. [serm. 
 
 little desire, to the mind and the destiny of those in 
 whom their fondest wishes will be centered. Nor is it 
 either absurd or far-fetched to say that this foresight 
 for the mental inheritance of our children may begin 
 even in youth. For the rewards of God may seem to 
 linger, and his judgments may be silent of tread ; but 
 they come, dark as the night, and inevitable as the 
 winter. You see Jacob deceiving his own father for the 
 blessing's sake, and in turn deceived by his own sons, 
 when, if God had not been more merciful than man, 
 they would have brought his gray hairs in sorrow to the 
 grave. Again, you see Eli neglecting his sons; and the 
 consequence is, that men abhor the offering of the Lord; 
 the very Ark of God, to which the poor old man's heart 
 sincerely clung, is given over to the insult of the scoffer; 
 and while remorse, mingled with devout mourning, 
 quenches the feeble spark of his own life, the last 
 daughter of his house dies in childbed, saying, Ichavod — 
 The glory is departed from our house, and from Israel. 
 
 Surely, brethren, happy among ourselves is that 
 parent who remembers that the promises are to us, and 
 to our children ; that even the infant of a Christian 
 parent is to be, in the Apostle's language, holy ; that, 
 if not in the camp of Israel, much less in the Church 
 of God, is any offspring of the womb, conceived in sin, 
 to be left unsprinkled by that blood which can turn the 
 destroying angel from the door ; or by that water, which 
 represents to us the double stream — water to cleanse, 
 and blood to atone, — from the stricken side of Him 
 who bore our sins upon the accursed tree. For, as the 
 rainbow is our witness against the recurrence of a deluge, 
 so there are three that bear witness against sin and 
 
VIII.] Parents and Children. 115 
 
 death : the Spirit, the water, and the blood : that is, the 
 two sacraments of purification and of propitiation, and 
 the gracious influence with which God blesses whoever 
 rightly uses them ; and these three agree in one ; for 
 they agree in coming from Christ, and in testifying to 
 us of Christ as our Saviour, 
 
 Happy then is he, who either for such thoughts, or 
 for any others of a like nature, accepts the provision 
 of our Church as to infant Baptism, alike in the letter, 
 and in the spirit ; who therefore endeavours to quicken 
 from the first dawning of consciousness a better instinct 
 in his child for whatever things are pure and lovely and 
 of good report ; taking heed, that the waters be not 
 cruelly poisoned at their source ; and perhaps casting, 
 day by day, such fragments of the wood of the tree of 
 life, as may (in prudence) appear likely to heal the native 
 bitterness of the spring. I say in prudence, thereby in- 
 tending to suggest a doubt, how far it is prudent, to 
 require from children that strong language in which the 
 feverish play of full-grown passions may be truly de- 
 scribed, but which on very young lips has either no 
 meaning at all, or only the false meaning of a parrot, 
 which should be taught to simulate emotion. Whereas, 
 the stirring stories of the old Hebrew history, the para- 
 bles of our Saviour which interpret themselves, and 
 those precepts of his which go straight to the heart of 
 every human being, can never be misplaced : and Chris- 
 tianity seems best presented to the young mind in some 
 such form as they of themselves suggest ; in its general 
 aspect, namely, of edifying what has to be built, rather 
 than on its special side of restoring what has been 
 broken down. But prayer to God the Father, in the 
 
116 Parents and Children. [serm. 
 
 name and the spirit of his only-begotten Son, a con- 
 ception of the great Father's purity and loveliness, such 
 as Christ revealed, with simple prayer that by his Holy 
 Spirit He would enable us to grow up into such characters 
 as may have some shadow of the divine likeness. These 
 things, brethren, fall within the compass of the Chris- 
 tianity of children. 
 
 Surely he is wise who thus suffers his little ones to 
 come unto Jesus, and starts them on the journey of life 
 with a blessing, fresh from the Saviour's arms. Nor 
 here let it be thought in me impertinent to remark, that 
 whatever opinion persons may choose to hold on the 
 subject of baptism, one clear result of a controversy not 
 yet remote, ought to have been a strong conviction on 
 the mind of every rational man, of the enormous im- 
 portance of the education of a child. For, either our 
 children are Christians, as St Paul certainly thought, or 
 they are Heathens, according to the modern theory ; if 
 the first is true, can anything be more important than 
 the training of the inheritor of the kingdom of Heaven 
 to some correspondence with his high calling ? or, if 
 the second should be correct, how can we talk of " Mis- 
 sions to the Heathen," and leave human beings unedu- 
 cated, therefore necessarily unconverted, at our very 
 doors ? 
 
 One understands the circumstances which in our 
 own country have almost of necessity made the office 
 of the schoolmaster too much merged in that of the 
 preacher. But there is no reason why the duty of the 
 parent should be so as well. 
 
 Now, however, let us turn to the converse of the 
 picture, which we have been sketching in precept. That 
 
VIII.] Parents and Children. 117 
 
 son must be wise who cherishes throughout life the re- 
 membrance of what can never possibly come to him 
 again, the earliest counsels of his mother, the latest 
 wishes of his father. There is a certain danger amidst 
 all our modern improvements of education, that the 
 strong ties of family teaching may be somewhat weak- 
 ened ; that the parents, for example, in the humbler 
 classes may throw entirely upon the schoolmaster that 
 responsibility which no one but themselves can fully sup- 
 port, and that the children of classes somewhat higher, 
 thrown into scenes and modes of living removed perhaps 
 from their homes, may forget the universal and primary 
 revelation of God, to honour their father and their 
 mother. But, brethren, the human soul, tossed like a 
 little bark on some tempestuous sea, cannot afford, in 
 this difficult navigation of life, to throw away a single 
 anchor — a single help, upon the side of God and of god- 
 liness. Just as the infant's first attempt at walking is 
 encouraged chiefly by a smile, so to any right-minded 
 man it must be throughout life no weak incentive to all 
 virtue and industry, that they who started him on his 
 way have watched his goings with anxiety ; that his 
 praise would be welcomed by them as the blessing of 
 Heaven ; and that his disgrace would almost startle them 
 in their graves. None can tell what honest thrift, what 
 studiously concealed self-denial, in some simple home, 
 have given man}' a man the opportunity of becoming 
 great or useful in his generation. It is more than sad, 
 it is horrible to think, with what conceited extravagance, 
 with what base indulgence in things sensual, such ex- 
 ertions are often requited, in our towns, our universities. 
 
118 Parents and Children. [serm. 
 
 and our colleges, by the coxcomb or spendthrift son. 
 The worst cases of selfish waste, as regards things human 
 and divine, are generally in young men, who of all others 
 were most bound to abstain from everything of the kind. 
 It almost seems as if the only end of so much virtue 
 were sometimes to enable a youth to show his utter 
 worthlessness before God and man. "A foolish son is 
 a grief to his father, and a bitterness to her that bare 
 him." 
 
 If we are wise, brethren, we shall not be ashamed, 
 either of the Gospel of Christ, or of profiting by the 
 many indirect teachings in nature of the good provi- 
 dence of our Heavenly Father. The style of thought, 
 which I am endeavouring to suggest, of considering 
 ourselves in no sense our own, but as manifoldly debtors 
 to our parents, to our children, to our country, to our 
 Saviour, and to our God, would often serve as an inno- 
 cent talisman to keep back our footsteps from the broad 
 and easy way which leadeth to destruction. It would 
 be in spirit, and in temper, the track which the Apostle 
 Paul marked out for himself. (For he counted himself 
 on every side a debtor.) It would also fall in admirably 
 with that doctrine of our Saviour, that the second com- 
 mandment is like unto the first. Our duty to our neigh- 
 bour, and our duty to ourselves, are essentially the same 
 as — they differ only in aspect from — our duty towards 
 God. One of the ideas which especially needs awaken- 
 ing, in some places where the language of religion is 
 sufficiently popular, is this of the second commandment 
 being like unto the first — of our conduct in the rela- 
 tions of family and of society being the truest index of 
 
viiT.] Parents and Child7'cn. 119 
 
 the state of our heart towards the Judge of all the 
 earth. The dealings of the market-place, and the habits 
 of common intercourse, have more to do with the secret 
 chamber and the Church than many persons are willing 
 to allow. Show me your fruits, in temper, conduct, 
 management of time and money, in soberness, and self- 
 control, and I will share with St James the responsi- 
 bility of giving you credit for your faith. 
 
 But indeed, for the general tenour of what has been 
 said, we may plead the authority, not only of our Lord's 
 precept, but of his own most blessed example. We 
 read how, during his childhood as the Son of man, 
 He was subject unto his parents; as if the Evangelist 
 deemed, that so great an humility in one conscious 
 of the highest wisdom all along dwelling in himself, was 
 not the least remarkable of the miracles of his life. We 
 see how, in the prayer which He taught his disciples, He 
 did not disdain to adopt a form, every clause of which 
 (save perhaps one) is yet extant in the Jewish Talmud ; 
 which, therefore, we may fairly suppose the Son of 
 God to have meekly learnt, (therein giving us an example) 
 as He knelt in mysterious childhood at his Virgin 
 Mother"'s knee. We see him leaving his parents, only 
 when the time had come that He should be found in 
 his Heavenly Father's house ; and by the cross, on 
 which our faith is fixed, we receive also a lesson of 
 charity, when He whom the heaven of heavens awaited, 
 commended to his beloved disciple the mother with 
 whose pride and in whose sorrow He had been associated 
 during his pilgrimage on earth. Thereby we recognise 
 the features of him whom we call Master and Lord, but 
 
120 Parents and Children. [serm. vm. 
 
 who is not ashamed to call himself the firstborn among 
 our brethren, that so He may draw us by the cords of a 
 man. Thereby also the preacher of Christ may feel 
 warranted to bid his hearers recognise the sanctity of 
 human life and of all its natural relations. Since, in 
 sorrow and in glory, Christ remembered those to whom 
 he was not a debtor, but a giver above all they could 
 ask or think ; so, through whatever changes of this 
 mortal life the providence of God may lead us, whether 
 near or far off, whether humbled or exalted, whether 
 busy or at leisure, tossed into collision with men of 
 every passion and character, or undergoing the equal 
 dangers of a slightly occupied, (let it not be a listless,) 
 life, — remember we, who first of all living men prayed for 
 us, and who taught us to pray ; by whose affection every 
 honest triumph of ours would be doubled ; by whose 
 anxiety our unthinking sin is aggravated; and who, 
 more than others, will rejoice with joy unspeakable, if 
 we shall have so quitted ourselves throughout, as the 
 sons of earthly fathers, that, after this troublous life 
 ended, we may unite, both with them, and with all the 
 spirits of just men made perfect, in swelling the univer- 
 sal hymn, to our Father, which is in heaven. 
 
 This may he grant, from whom every fatherhood is 
 named, who when we had gone into a far country, brought 
 us back, and made us again sons by regeneration and 
 adoption, to whom be all glory, and honour, praise, 
 love, and thanksgiving, for ever. 
 
 Lampeter, Nov. 14, 1852. 
 
SERMOxN IX. 
 
 THE FALLING OF MAN. 
 
 Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight; 
 that Thou mightest be justified in Thy saying, and he clear when 
 Thou judgest. Psalm li. 4. 
 
 We can scarcely glance at human life, without observing, 
 that some men seem born to succeed in what they un- 
 dertake, and some to fail. It is by no means an unin- 
 teresting question, whether any clue can be found to the 
 explanation of such a different result. But, in prose- 
 cuting any inquiry of the kind, we find so infinite a 
 variety, and such frequent contradiction, in the circum- 
 stances, under which some men attain, and others fail of 
 their object, that we almost despair of reducing all the 
 instances under the operation of a general law. For the 
 race is not always to the swift; but time and chance 
 happen to all men. AVith one, industry achieves its 
 merited triumph ; with another, it breaks down the 
 health : in one case, cunning escapes its desert, in 
 another it is ignominiously branded. A marked sanctity 
 of life is sometimes honoured, at others ridiculed : a 
 vehement earnestness of temper may either force its 
 w. s. 6 
 
122 The Falling of Man. [serm. 
 
 way through reluctant crowds, or it may provoke more 
 obstmate opposition ; while a gentle suavity, in some 
 cases, soothes and wins men to compliance, and, in 
 others, is despised as feebleness ; so that, like the atoms 
 of Democritus, the moral elements of our system might 
 almost seem, in this transitory world, to be wrangling 
 and jumbled together in every variety of confusion. 
 
 Yet, on the whole, our reason ventures to affirm, 
 even before it reaches that point at which it transmutes 
 itself into faith, that to keep innocence is true wisdom ; 
 for that wicked doers shall be rooted out, and that 
 the righteous must ultimately inherit the land. For, it 
 would be a mere truism to observe, that the more nearly 
 a person approached the proper mean of the good 
 qualities above mentioned, industry, sanctity, earnest- 
 ness, and meekness, the more likely he would be to 
 enjoy the promises of the world that now is, as well as 
 of that which is to come. If good men fail here of 
 attaining solid happiness, this is the event, not in so far 
 as they are good, but by some defect, or drawback in 
 their goodness. 
 
 The system of the universe does, then, retain the 
 moral impress stamped by its Maker. Perhaps, more- 
 over, all mankind may be said to fall easily into at least 
 two classes ; for one of which we never venture to augur 
 any high or permanent success in life, while for the 
 other, even if they occasionally fail, we still anticipate a 
 .period, when the objects they have proposed to them- 
 selves will be honestly and worthily attained. Under 
 the first may be ranged all those self-complacent persons, 
 who learn nothing from experience ; while the second 
 
IX.] The Falling of Man. 123 
 
 comprehends those to whom the errors of the past are 
 a source of wisdom for the futm'C. How often do we 
 find men charging upon their ill-luck, or upon the 
 treachery of their friends, the just consequences of their 
 own misconduct ! How slow are such people to recog- 
 nize in themselves the true source of their wants, or of 
 their misfortunes! Their teacher, their doctor, their 
 government, the soil of their neighbourhood, or the 
 climate or habits of their country, are in turn invoked 
 to account for their ignorance, their ill-health, their im- 
 poverished circumstances, and the slovenliness, or even 
 the immorality of their habits. 
 
 But ivho told them that they luere naked ? That evil 
 spirit of self-love Avithin them, which eagerly suggested 
 every mode of exculpating themselves, by alleging some 
 external person or accident as an excuse. " Such a 
 man was always their enemy," or " he was the friend of 
 their opponent;" therefore only he decided the case 
 against them. Or again, if they had enjoyed such and 
 such advantages, they could have done more than some 
 one who is now applauded. From listening to such 
 whispers, men easily acquire the power of hardening 
 themselves against the lessons, which the providential 
 variety of events in our life was intended to convey : they 
 never rectify their conduct by a scrutiny of their own 
 motives, or an acknowledgement of their own errors ; 
 and being thus satisfied, that they ought already to 
 possess the esteem of mankind, they preclude themselves 
 from the chance of ever improving sufficiently to deserve 
 it. Hence their old age is only an advanced childhood : 
 as was said of some returned exiles, " They have learned 
 
 6 — 2 
 
124 The Falling of Man. [serm. 
 
 nothing, and they have forgotten nothing." A stolid pride 
 renders the first impossible, and the absence of fresh 
 ideas renders the second unlikely. 
 
 On the other hand, how different is that patient 
 sagacity, which studies nothing so keenly as the deep 
 seeds of every miscarriage of its own! How sensitive 
 in suspecting itself; how observant of all the conditions 
 of success, whether they have been complied with or 
 violated; how persevering, under happier auspices, in 
 its renewal of the trial ! Men, who thus judge them- 
 selves, have less room to be judged of others; though 
 they fall, they are not cast down ; though surrounded by 
 difficulties, they have the satisfaction of persevering to 
 the end. The memory of each mistake is a landmark 
 for the future; and their mature life is a practical em- 
 bodiment of hoarded experience. Almost all great 
 conquerors or discoverers, whether in the realm of 
 action, or of thought, have had in them something of 
 this temper. In short, it is a matter of daily observa- 
 tion, that men, who constantly throw off the responsi- 
 bility of their own failure upon others, are likely still to 
 fail: while those, whom humility enables to profit by ex- 
 perience, have at least an important element, both of 
 wisdom and of success. 
 
 Now it is worth considering, whether any principle, 
 analogous to the above, holds good, more especially in 
 religion. We have here too a race to run, in which 
 those who seem to start with the greatest natural ad- 
 vantages are not always crowned: we have a series of 
 struggles to undergo, either with our own passions or 
 with the too vivid attraction of objects around us, in 
 
IX.] The Falling of Man. 125 
 
 any one of which struggles it is most disastrous to fail, 
 and in which it is important to understand aright the 
 causes of whatever failure may occur. 
 
 Perhaps you will allow me to consider this graver 
 portion of our subject under three distinct heads: 
 
 I. The general constitution of the world. 
 
 TI. The case of personal misconduct or sin. 
 
 III. The comparatively rare occurrence of excessive 
 humility or mental distress, arising from religious causes. 
 
 In the first place, then, it may well be doubted 
 whether those teachers should be followed who assert 
 the physical frame of the world to be actually dis- 
 organised by the fall of man. We do indeed read, 
 "Cursed is the earth for thy sake:'' but this may mean 
 only, " Cursed, as far as thou art concerned:" the curse, 
 or (more properly speaking,) the guilt may be in man; 
 and to his moral disorder, those things which should 
 have been for his weal, may become occasions of falling. 
 Just as to the feverish palate the most wholesome food 
 may become nauseous or injurious, so the whole frame 
 of nature may seem (as it were) to sympathize with our 
 minds diseased. But, whether or not the above limits 
 should be assigned to the Scriptural expression, " Cursed 
 is the earth," — it is at least clear, that the world abounds 
 in a large amount of suffering. Why need I mention all 
 the aches and pains, the nerves overstrained, and poverty 
 overtasked; or the premature death perhaps of one 
 friend, and the violent divulsion of another, — events 
 which most of us have in turn been compelled either to 
 compassionate or to deplore, — and whose silent eloquence 
 our memories do but too vividly recall? Yet it is almost 
 
1*26 The Falling of Man. [serm. 
 
 equally clear, such suffering is not, as it were, the regular 
 law of the world, but rather its exception. Men seem 
 to have been designed to labour, (perhaps) but still to 
 enjoy and to be thankful: to develope every faculty of 
 body and mind by healthy exercise; to be refreshed by 
 mutual sympathy and affection; to quit themselves in life 
 with such gravity as becomes immortal and accountable 
 beings, yet with such cheerfulness as is natural in those 
 whose Judge is also a benignant Father; and to be 
 gathered in a full age to all the spirits of just men made 
 perfect, which rest (untouched by torment) in the hand 
 of God. To the development (however) of this gracious 
 design there are very numerous exceptions. Now those 
 observers who admit no clue, but mere speculation, in 
 unravelling all mysteries, are apt to consider such ex- 
 ceptions either as accidents or as a necessary result of 
 the enormous magnitude of the scale, and the general 
 nature of the laws of Creation. We need not deny the 
 importance which really belongs to the two latter con- 
 siderations. Yet certainly the human heart, perhaps 
 also the human conscience, or our innate sense of justice, 
 seems to require something more, as a satisfactory solu- 
 tion of the enigma. We rather shrink from hearing the 
 sharers of our humanity compared to seeds, like thistle- 
 down, of which a sufficient portion only is preserved to 
 satisfy the ends of nature, while far the largest quantity 
 is swept by the winds into annihilation. We seem to re- 
 quire that those inextinguishable instincts of justice and 
 mercy, which were the secret writing of the Divine 
 finger upon the walls of our heart, shall not be disap- 
 pointed in the administration of the world by Him who 
 
TX.J The Falling of Man. 127 
 
 made us capable of feeling them. We know we are 
 only the clay: we do not repine that some of us are 
 fashioned with more beauty or to more honour than 
 others; but our Potter has declared to us, that he is 
 righteous : now even an earthly potter makes not vessels 
 for the sake of shattering them: did he, the heavenly 
 one, whose name is Holy and True, breathe his diviner 
 spirit into the nostrils of any of us only on purpose to 
 make us capable of dwelling with everlasting burn- 
 ings'? Or again, in this life, is right merely might? 
 is truth only the opinion of the multitude? does sorrow 
 spring out of the earth like the sparks fly upward? is the 
 world an unwieldy machine, in which force, and fraud, 
 and chance, may derange every spring, and thwart every 
 pious calculation? 
 
 Now to all such questions as the above (and my in- 
 stances are thrown somewhat confusedly together,) both 
 conscience and Scripture seem, on the whole, to concur 
 in rendering answers, which are practically the same. 
 Scarcely a misfortune befalls, still less does an illness 
 overtake us, but our lips, even if used for a time to 
 bolder accents, tremble unconsciously into prayer. " O 
 Lord, I have sinned" — is — (with whatever variation of 
 phrase — ) the burden of the melody to which our hearts 
 at such a time are strung. 
 
 A fever reasons better than a Clarke. When earth 
 fails us, we turn to heaven, not without a miserable 
 foreboding that peradventure we turn too late. We do 
 not then say, " What have I done to deserve this sick- 
 ness?" but, "OLord, spare me," or, "heal my soul, for I 
 
 1 See Calvin on Romans, ch. ix. vv, 11, 17, 18. 
 
128 The Falling of Man. [serm. 
 
 liave sinned against thee." Such appear to be the natural 
 dictates of conscience, and such have they been {essen- 
 tially) in all ages and nations, of which any knowledge 
 has reached us. 
 
 But now what is the doctrine of our Scriptures ? Do 
 they not teach, that sin entered into the world, and 
 death by sin. If then death, surely all its precursors, 
 and all its kindred. Suffering then, and shame, sickness, 
 sorrow, madness, are in the world, by sin. We here 
 then discover what we were in search of. We have a 
 moral solution of what was otherwise a dark riddle. We 
 have two things, one of which at least cannot be denied 
 to exist ; while the existence of the other is acknow- 
 ledged in proportion as our conscience is alive to its 
 rightful office. The one, then, explains the other. 
 
 But I would not, brethren, urge this doctrine of 
 original sin, or the sin of our race, upon you, as a mere 
 theory. For it is in things spiritual, as we saw in things 
 temporal ; we cannot find a remedy, unless we know our 
 disease. Those speculative persons to whom I have 
 already alluded (not without the respect due to eminent 
 ability.) by resolving all human suffering into chance, 
 show themselves not sufficiently sensitive to human sin. 
 Again, by not knowing that we are a wreck, they betray 
 an inadequate conception of the stateliness of the vessel 
 as it rose in its original idea before our Builder's eye. 
 It is therefore no matter for surprise, that starting, as 
 they do, with an overwrought conception of the self- 
 supporting powers of our nature, they do not reach 
 practically so high a standard, as men who confess, the 
 children of Adam require to be lifted out of the dust. 
 
IX.] Ute Falling of Man. 129 
 
 Even if it seem a paradox, it appears to be at least 
 attested by experience, that the men most praiseworthy 
 have been the most steadfast renouncers of praise : the 
 most charitable have been the most earnest in denying 
 that alms could justify ; the most meritorious have most 
 utterly disclaimed merit ; the nearest to such a virtuous 
 ideal, as imagination conceives, have been men who 
 almost (perhaps) shrank from the very term virtue, as 
 thinking that by the grace of God only they were what 
 they were. Now such a testimony of experience is in 
 itself the strongest confutation of the error ascribed to 
 Pelagius, and undoubtedly held by modern philosophers 
 of a decidedly less Christian kind. It affords a practical 
 proof, that ivoe is to him who striveth with his Maker ; 
 and, that what God has made crooked, it is not for man, 
 after his own fashion, to make straight. 
 
 Against God, God only, have ive sinned., and done evil 
 in his sight : so that he is justified, even when he sentences 
 us to suffer; and clear, even when he speaks the condemna- 
 tion of our race. 
 
 Upon the second point, it would be in vain I should 
 now attempt to trace the intricate arts by which our 
 self-love defends itself against our conscience. But 
 suffer me to say, if it be important not to forget the 
 fallen condition of poor human nature, it is far more 
 vitally important we should not be blind to our own 
 personal sin. Our indignation is but lost upon dead 
 men's sins, and Jews' idolatries, unless we apply them to 
 analogous temptations, which beset ourselves. Perhaps 
 indeed many sins, especially of the more treacherous 
 kind, are apt to lurk under a ready, and almost ostenta- 
 
 Q—5 
 
130 The Falling of Man. [serm. 
 
 tious confession of the general guiltiness of mankind. 
 "Ah I sir, we are all sinners," is often the vague 
 exclamation of one with whom we would reason of 
 righteousness, temperance, and a judgment to come. 
 True enough. But we wanted something more precise, 
 something more personal, from one to whom willingly 
 we would say " Peace," yet fear to say it, while there is 
 no peace. Profuse quotations from some deeply-reason- 
 ed and ill-understood Epistle are not so much to the 
 purpose as making restitution to whomsoever we have 
 wronged ; weeping out the stain of evil thoughts ; and 
 earnest prayer for the Spirit, which is first pure, and 
 then peaceable. God trieth the heart and reins. He 
 is holy, therefore are his people to be holy. 
 
 We seem then to require a conception, at once 
 vivid and sincere, of the distance to which every sin in 
 its degree removes us from participation in the blessed- 
 ness, which is with them who love God. What can 
 create such a conception ? Surely nothing short of a far 
 more lively faith than we are apt to cherish of the ever- 
 present eye of an All-holy God : hence a sensitiveness 
 to our own faults ; a feeling of religion, which suffers us 
 not to deal lighlly and deceitfully, after the manner of 
 dissemblers, with our own conscience ; and so a habit of 
 honest and prayerful self-examination. It is sufficiently 
 obvious, that both the habit of prayer, with all the better 
 thoughts, which it is calculated to awaken ; and the 
 study both of the holy precepts and examples given us 
 in Scripture, are likely, by suggesting the contrast to 
 our own imperfections, to awaken in us such a sensitive- 
 ness as is here recommended. Nor yet should we 
 
IX.] The Falling of Man. 131 
 
 neglect all the ordinary dealings of divine Providence. 
 Every mistake we make, every misfortune we suffer, 
 should be a memento of our need of humility and 
 repentance. 
 
 Perhaps, also, we may learn much from the very cen- 
 sures of our enemies. It is one advantage of public 
 schools, that the very rudeness and free-spoken malice of 
 boys in their quarrels afford every individual such benefit 
 as he chooses to derive from keen criticism upon his most 
 obvious faults. The medicine is harsh, and the mode of 
 administering it sufficiently unamiable, yet, if wisely taken, 
 it may tend to mental health. Something of the same 
 kinds besets us throughout life. All sorts of libels, jealou- 
 sies, and misconstructions, furnish us with occasions which 
 it is only too natural to resent, but which it would be 
 our wisdom to improve, by considering what probable 
 admixture of truth gave a sting to the malice, which 
 would otherwise have been harmless. 
 
 But, most emphatically, by considering that divine 
 mercy and beneficence which have encircled our steps all 
 the days of our life, and by recognising our many sins and 
 negligences, which have most justly provoked the apparent 
 interruption of the divine favour, we may learn to say in 
 true contrition: 'Against thee, thee only have I sinned, 
 and done this evil in thy sight," so that thou, O Lord, 
 art justified in sentencing me to this pain or uneasiness, 
 and clear when in thy judgment thou findest me wanting. 
 If there is any one here who cannot use such a saying, 
 not only in doctrinal assertion for the children of Adam, 
 but in sad and actual truth for himself — let him con- 
 sider whether he has not most urgent need to learn the 
 
182 The Falling of Man. [serm. 
 
 true nature of sin, the exceeding holiness of God, and 
 his own manifold estrangement from a righteousness 
 which he seems to have lost even the power of ade- 
 quately feeling. Take heed, then, lest there be any 
 root of bitterness among you; lest any among you seem 
 to himself alive, while in the sight of God he is 
 spiritually dead. We serve a God who requires truth 
 in the inward parts. 
 
 Thirdly : it appears not improper to add some obser- 
 vations for the use of persons, who may possibly be so 
 far from deficient in the habit of humble self-condem- 
 nation above recommended, that they may have made it 
 the occasion of unnecessarily gloomy, or despondent, 
 views of the divine dealings with man. It is not 
 possible to address a mixed congregation without the 
 very necessity of dwelling upon topics, which by a large 
 portion of our hearers are required, while to some they 
 may be less appropriate. We must tell the guilty of 
 judgment, yet endeavour not to terrify the contrite; we 
 may proclaim mercy to the sincere penitent, though with 
 some danger of lulling back into its slumber the half- 
 awakened conscience of the hardened offender. 
 
 Here, however, we may remark the converse of a 
 sentiment, which was urged above — -just as the man, 
 who does not condemn himself in the sight of God, in 
 order to seek grace and forgiveness, has reason to fear, 
 lest all the woes written in the law come upon him; so 
 those persons who do thus condemn themselves, and who 
 sincerely embrace the divine mercy held out by Jesus 
 Christ both as an instrument of pardon and also of 
 sanctification, may securely feel there is no longer any 
 
IX.] The Falling of Man. 133 
 
 condemnation against them. For to both parties it may 
 be proclaimed that the life-long struggle between the 
 holiness our will aspires to and the sin our goings so 
 easily slide into, which in Scripture is imaged as the 
 primeval curse upon fallen man, and the strong remon- 
 strances of conscience, which in Scripture become more 
 audible as the thunders of Mount Sinai, as well as the 
 sorrow rising into indignation against false profession 
 and unrighteousness, which kindles the wild eloquence of 
 the Prophets, are all intended, not so much to destroy 
 man, as to save. They speak indeed of punishment, 
 but, during this our day of grace, the punishment of God 
 is remedial in its design. He sometimes causes the 
 husks of the swine to be refused us, that we may arise 
 and go unto our Father. He smites, that He may 
 heal — He terrifies, that He may console — He speaks in 
 thunder, in order to open our ears to the anthem of 
 angels, " Good ivillon earth, jjeace towards men,'''' — He pro- 
 claims the law, but it is to lead us as a schoolmaster, 
 until we feel our need of the wisdom — until we em- 
 brace the manifestation of the personal goodness — of 
 God. 
 
 The very sense then, brethren, of the Fall of Adam 
 is itself the beginning of his children's rising ; for from 
 whence could have arisen this old uneasiness with things 
 that vanish away, but from the deep yearning for an 
 inheritance more abiding? From whence this' lofty dis- 
 content with our own shortcomings, but from some dim 
 conception of the High and Holy One, who made man 
 in his own image, and would have us remember the 
 
 1 I take this quotation from Whytehead's "College Life." 
 
1 34 The Falling of Man. [serm. 
 
 Eock from whence we were hewn? From whence, in 
 short, this sense of sin ^ but from a desire, perhaps faint 
 as yet and newly born, yet still a desire of holiness? 
 See how such feelings worked in the inconsistent and 
 fallen Corinthians. What earnestness it wrought in them, 
 what jealousy, what revenge! Eevenge against ourselves 
 for every sin is the only vengeance in which He to whom 
 it belongeth allows us willingly to share. Pray to him, 
 that such a self-chastening revenge may ripen into a 
 desire of holiness, not to be satisfied until it possesses; 
 into a wisdom, to whose pinions the acknowledgment of 
 past folly shall lend its strongest plumes. 
 
 Such then, brethren, is the true moral, and the mean- 
 ing, of the Fall of Man. Let it be our strong incite- 
 ment to rise. 
 
 Know yourselves the children of the Most High : 
 and, if stricken to the ground, lie not grovelling in the 
 dust. Arise, shine, for your light is come. Shake your- 
 selves from the dust; captives once; but now redeemed, 
 and more than conquerors through Him who is stronger 
 than your strongest enemy, and who loved you before 
 the foundations of the world. Not in anger, but in 
 wise parable, spake He that sentence of stern sound: 
 " Cursed is the earth to us for the first Adam's sake: but 
 blessed is the Heaven which the second Adam has 
 opened to those whose thoughts are moulded in his 
 likeness." Thorns and briers spring forth; so are we 
 roused to developc our energies in reconquering our ideal 
 
 1 Thus we blame in a man, what we do not in a child; and in a 
 child, what we do not in an animal. The degrees of remorse are 
 similar. 
 
IX.] The Falling of Man. 135 
 
 dominion, and to escape the more deadly thorns of 
 passion and darkness, which indolence, left without a 
 stimulus, would have engendered in the rank soil of our 
 mind. In the sweat of our brow we eat bread; but 
 there is a bread of life given freely to whosoever will 
 take and eat. Dust we are, and unto dust we return; 
 but if the likeness of the first Adam was only that of a 
 living soul, the likeness of the second is that of a spirit 
 which can give life. By His resurrection, as the Cap- 
 tain of our salvation, from the great humility of the 
 grave, we have received an earnest, that, if our life be 
 hidden, it is yet communicated to all those who do not 
 obstinately reject it, by One who is both the Lord and 
 the Giver of life. We are not then ashamed of the fall 
 of man: for we know that the restoration in Christ is at 
 least as universal, at least as free, at least as efficacious 
 as the death in Adam. Probably it even leads to more 
 glorious results than if our first parents had remained in 
 mere childlike innocence ; just as the man who has learnt 
 to blame himself may lose light-hearted playfulness, but 
 gain a more aspiring earnestness. Probably, I say, the 
 divine image may not only be revived in its perfection, 
 but it may receive, from the manifestation of the divine 
 goodness in our Lord, a greater and more perfect man- 
 hood, by participation in His glorified nature, than the 
 mere inheritance of Adam could have given us, without 
 any sensible fall. 
 
 Neither do we shrink from confessing our own ex- 
 ceeding sinfulness. We know, that through the strait 
 gate of repentance, and not without a struggle, can we 
 enter on the narrow way of godliness. We do also 
 
136 The Falling of Man. [serm. ix. 
 
 know that the business of our salvation is not merely an 
 external thing, but is a work to be wrought in us. 
 
 Nor, again, are we swallowed up by overmuch 
 sorrow, even though both our own hearts and the re- 
 quirements of the divine law speak bitter things 
 against us. 
 
 We know, by whose costly self-sacrifice we are en- 
 abled to offer up ourselves with such a consciousness of 
 the love of God, and therefore such a confidence of 
 being accepted, that by His stripes we are healed. We 
 know also who it is that giveth more grace. Though 
 our temptations be many, and our weakness pitiable, 
 there are more with us than are against us. He who is 
 Almighty, manifesting himself in Christ, and delegating 
 the Holy Spirit as our strengthener, is in the midst of 
 us; so that we shall not greatly fall. Therefore, dearly 
 beloved, stand fast in the Lord. Only flee from sin, as 
 from the face of a serpent : for sin is the perpetual tempter. 
 And, putting off all filthiness of the flesh of the first 
 Adam, be you renewed daily in true holiness, according 
 to the spirit of the wisdom which cometh down from 
 Heaven. 
 
 Lampeter, Sexagesima Sunday, Feb. 23, 1851. 
 
SERMON X. 
 
 VOLUNTARY PAL S Y. 
 
 Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk. St Mark ii. 9. 
 
 The power of our Lord's miracles consists not so much 
 in their being wonderful, as in their being significant. 
 If he had merely moved mountains into the sea, we 
 should not have been so wholesomely taught, as when he 
 says to the leper, " I will, be thou clean." But the giver 
 of life is also the restorer of health. To be healthful, 
 was indeed part of the idea which seems to have been 
 originally stamped on the constitution of all things in 
 which is the breath of life. Perhaps it would be too 
 sanguine a mode of reasoning, to say, that such an idea 
 could ever have been entirely and without exception, 
 realised, or brought to perfection, in the condition of 
 mankind. Just as the steam-engine may burst, and yet 
 Ave see that steam-engines in general are intended to 
 carry; and just as the violets of early spring may often 
 be nipped by the northerly wind, which yet on the whole 
 braces the nerves of nature, and retards her vegetation 
 until its proper season ; so our teeth may be to eat, and 
 our eyes to see, and our brains to act as organs of 
 
138 Voluntary Palsy. [serm. 
 
 thinking ; yet incidentally they may not escape certain 
 aches, and sicknesses, and derangements — the effects, 
 perhaps, of circumstance — and almost the conditions, 
 upon which alone they can exist ; or, at least, of which 
 it is difficult for us to understand how they could have 
 been avoided, yet which certainly are not the end of life, 
 and therefore probably did not enter into the Creator's 
 design. 
 
 But, if this is true of the vegetable and animal life 
 of which we too are partakers, much more, on entering 
 into that intellectual region, in which human thoughts 
 and human motives play their part, we observe a 
 necessity, so to speak, for at least the capacity of evil. 
 God is a free agent. How then could man be made in 
 the likeness of God, without having freedom of choice 
 and of action ? If he were governed merely by external 
 influences, he would be like the flower or the grass of 
 the field ; and again, if he had no other guide than 
 mere natural instinct, he would be like the beasts which 
 perish. It is the power of deliberately thinking, of 
 choosing or of willing, and thus of originating action, 
 which renders man properly human, a creature with the 
 likeness of the Creator. In other words, free agency is 
 a condition of humanity: whether this freedom be more 
 or less perfect ; whether subject to more or less of 
 limitation : but in Avhatever degree it exists, it gives 
 man the capacity of doing wrong. He has before him 
 life and death ; nor these only; but all that ample field 
 of mistake, infirmity, negligence, suffering, sin, and sick- 
 ness, which embraces, as it were, the debateable ground, 
 or the confines between life, which God intended us to 
 
X.] Voluntary Palsy. 139 
 
 lay hold of, and the many forms of death, which He has 
 mercifully warned us to avoid. 
 
 You see, then, brethren, that in addition to the 
 effect of mere circumstance, and without attempting to 
 decide, how far the necessary accidents, or the hamper- 
 ing conditions of any scheme of existence on a large 
 scale, would of themselves have prevented our enjoyment 
 of invariable health, there is also a moral cause, a begin- 
 ning, as it were, within ourselves ; which renders disease, 
 pain, and trouble of body or of spirit, a new set of 
 accidents, which we are liable to have as our occasional 
 companions in life, without therefore being able to 
 ascribe their origin to Him who openeth his hand, and 
 filleth all things living with plenteousness. 
 
 Nothing, I trust, will here be understood, as if it was 
 intended that in any individual case we might argue, the 
 man is sick, and therefore he is more sinful than others. 
 Such a practice would be the very opposite of one of 
 those blessed truths, which our Saviour Christ especially 
 revealed, and which it is the great object of his Church 
 to keep alive, as glad tidings, in the world. When our 
 Saviour was asked. Who did sin, this blind man or his 
 parents ? He answered, neither ; that is, neither, more 
 than men in general. So, when He heard of the 
 Galileans slain among the sacrifices, and of those on 
 whom the tower of Siloam fell. He took occasion to 
 warn the rash dispensers of special providences, as if 
 they were wielders of the thunderbolts of God, that 
 what had befallen these sufferers was the common lot of 
 mankind, and that their fate would be best used by the 
 survivors, as a general admonition to prepare against a 
 
140 Voluntary Palsy. [serm. 
 
 judgment to come. For indeed, it was one of the 
 blessed effects of the glad tidings of the love of God, as 
 manifested by Christ, that it took away from the bent 
 back of all drooping sufferers the additional burthen of 
 believing themselves smitten by the special wrath of 
 Heaven. Yet the same Jesus, when the sick of the 
 palsy was brought near, looked down upon that distorted 
 frame which no longer moved at its owner's will, and 
 with that voice which prevails in heaven, said, " Son, 
 thy sins be forgiven thee." Thereby the Lord teaches 
 us, that, although we should judge no individual, there 
 is yet an old. and while the world shall last, an insepara- 
 ble connexion, between the sin which God must judge, 
 and the suffering which we will not allow him to heal. 
 Two remedies, brethren, the good Physician offers us. 
 We, like madmen, in the fever of our disordered 
 impulses, stretch forth our hands for the one, and have 
 no liking for the other. Give us ease, we say ; give us 
 health, strength, reputation, luxury, enjoyments, or 
 whatever else we desire ; but alas ! in this very choice, 
 we only betray the depth of the mental disease ; we 
 shew how selfish are the desires, how untamed the pas- 
 sions, how little obedient our wills to the holy law of 
 God, how little animated by any large or expansive love, 
 or any anxiety for the growth of his kingdom in the 
 welfare and improvement of mankind. So the good 
 Physician must needs turn away sorrowful, even as 
 Christ of old weeping over Jerusalem. For, Thy sins he 
 forgiven thee, must go before Take vp thy bed, and 
 walk. But there can be no forgiveness, while we 
 press closer into ourselves the sin, which is itself 
 
X.] Voluntary Palsy. 141 
 
 the disease ; or while we take no pains to shake off 
 those bad habits ; those unchristian self-indulgences, 
 which are the crutches of the halt, and the bed of men 
 palsied in their very soul. How often did not God warn 
 us against every sickness of mind and life, into which we 
 are fallen ; Avhen he cautioned us by the experience of 
 some older friend, "Avoid that sinful practice ;" when 
 he inspired the framers of our Prayer Book to put into 
 our mouth petitions for every grace, and against every 
 sin which so easily besets us, thereby guarding us on the 
 right hand and on the left, at our out-going and our 
 coming-in day by day; when at each stage of our life 
 he expanded a new world within our minds, giving us 
 again and again stronger and deeper perceptions of 
 things old in themselves, yet ever new in their experi- 
 ence ? and how often, by some touch of solemnity, 
 which all our thoughtlessness could not escape, in 
 observing suddenly the consequences of our past actions, 
 in listening to a sermon, or in partaking of the holy 
 sacrament of Christ's most precious death, has not the 
 word of God come to us ; thereby proving, that no child 
 of man is in reality predestined by him to a spiritual 
 palsy, but that he is ever saying, if we will only listen to 
 him, Arise, take up thy bed, and walk. 
 
 Who can wonder, when the laws imprinted by the 
 Almighty upon his creation are so generally broken, 
 that the amount of suffering in the world should exceed 
 that limit which might be fairly ascribed to the range 
 of accident ? If there is no appetite which men do not 
 abuse, no earthly desire which they do not carry to 
 excess, and even no deadness to all the nobler ends of 
 
142 Voluntary Palsy. [serm. 
 
 their being, into which they do not willingly plunge 
 themselves, the necessary result must be a derangement 
 of the conditions, upon which God pronounces the 
 world to be very good. Labour is not necessarily an 
 evil ; knowledge need not puff up ; thorns and briers 
 may be but the heavings of that life, which is universally 
 diffused, in places where no better harvest is sown. But, 
 if the poor are either compelled to seek labour in vain, or 
 if their just pay is perhaps unrighteously withheld, then 
 the Lord hath a controversy in behalf of the lean oxen 
 against the fat and the strong. Again, if an acquaint- 
 ance, such as man was intended to gain, with all the 
 resources of herb and drug and mineral in nature is 
 made the minister of a mere selfish luxury, or of self- 
 destroying vice, it becomes the knowledge of good 
 turned to evil ; and if large portions of the earth are 
 unnecessarily, from wantonness, ignorance, or idleness, 
 suffered to run waste, there remains an account, which the 
 Master of the household exacts in a method of his own. 
 So, again, of those faculties and powers almost crea- 
 tive, which have their root in the more disciplined ener- 
 gies of the human mind. What limits need we assign to 
 art, embodying in visible outline the boldest imaginings 
 and purest aspirations of the heart ; or to science, gazing 
 on the works of God, and enabling daily his reasonable 
 children to fulfil their mission, of subduing the earth, 
 and setting all things under their feet ? Let us boldly 
 answer, None; save only that limit, at which any one 
 of such powers becomes rebellious against the living 
 God, or forgetful of his righteous law, that to whom- 
 soever much is given, of the same shall much be required. 
 
X.] Voluntary Palsy. 143 
 
 It is not, as some would persuade us, any existence 
 in the world, or any capacity in the cultivation of man's 
 mind, which prevents us from saying, as much to-day as 
 when creation dawned, "God looks upon every thing 
 that He has made, and behold it is very good." What- 
 soever the Lord pleases, that He does in heaven and 
 earth, and in the sea, and in all deep places. He made 
 great Avhales, the terror of the deep ; and the lions, roar- 
 ing after their prey, praise him in their own fashion. 
 He made summer and winter. Praise the Lord, oh 
 my soul; and all that is within me, praise his holy 
 name. 
 
 But the one great disturber, and the sower of the 
 tares in our corn-field, is that one thing which is diversely 
 named, — the great enemy; the devil; sin; disobedience; 
 unbelief; an evil heart; forgetfulness of the living God. 
 With this disease mankind are sick ; and He who cures 
 it is the great Physician. Not but that He might leave 
 in the world many things not altogether consistent with 
 that indolent and imaginative kind of optimism upon 
 which some human dreamers would have organised 
 creation. It was a wise man who said, "Consider the 
 work of God ; Avho can make straight what He has made 
 crooked?" Probably striving is a condition of life; a 
 something, without which we should no longer live. 
 Thus, even if mankind were not fallen, that aspect of 
 things which is good in the sight of God, might be not 
 attractive to those who coveted merely ease. Yet of 
 one truth, brethren, we may be unalterably convinced. 
 Whatever possible hardships, or trials, it may be con- 
 ceived that the wisdom of God would have in any case 
 
144 Voluntary Palsy. [serm. 
 
 employed to educate his children, they sink positively 
 into nothing, when balanced against the misery which 
 we bring upon ourselves, by wilfully transgressing his 
 holy law. Take the world as it stands. Many a mis- 
 fortune may befall a man ; loss of wealth, of health, of 
 friends ; or the prospect of his own death. Yet in all 
 these things he may be more than conqueror. The spirit 
 of the man, or the Spirit of God with him, may sustain 
 his infirmity. He may learn the blessedness which be- 
 longs to the meek and poor in spirit ; he may find that it 
 was good for him to have been afflicted ; he may believe 
 his friends to have been taken away from the evil to 
 come ; and he may enter himself, in sober calmness, 
 upon that valley of the shadow of death, in which the 
 rod and the staff of his Saviour comfort him. 
 
 My brethren, it is not these natural things which 
 poison the cup of life ; it is the unnatural depravity, 
 the vice, and the sin of man. To quote the words of a 
 great master-builder of the walls of Zion in our own 
 times — "It is not these things which work the bitter 
 discomfort, but it is some form of sin. It is thou and 
 thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken the com- 
 mandments of the Lord. It is sin. It may be the sin 
 of slander, which has set one neighbour against the 
 other; or the sin of pride, which has made one lord it 
 over the other; or the sin of envy, which has made one 
 disparage the other; or the sin of lying, which has made 
 one distrust the other; or the sin of cunning, which has 
 made one suspicious of the other; or the sin of idleness, 
 which has made one disappoint or starve the other ; or 
 the sin of covetousness, which has made one pinch the 
 
X.] Voluntary Palsy. 145 
 
 other ; or the sin of ingratitude, which has made one 
 harden his heart against the other; or the sin of drunk- 
 enness, which has overclouded many an intellect; or the 
 sin of improvidence, which has clothed whole families 
 with rags; or the sin of uncleanness, which has brought 
 rottenness into their bones. These have been, not only 
 the sins, but the avenging furies, among mankind. It is 
 not the disasters which enter into men's houses, but the 
 devils which have entered into men's hearts, by which 
 they are most fatally undone ^" 
 
 When once then we apprehend sin, or doing wrong 
 against the law of God, to be the greatest cause of 
 misery in the world, we shall understand clearly how the 
 works of our Saviour are also signs. That is, they will 
 be works with a meaning; or parables quite as much 
 as miracles. For, is it not a significant thing, that both 
 to the cripple by the pool of Bethesda, and to the sick 
 of the palsy who was brought to Him, He first offers 
 the forgiveness of sins, as a kind of prelude to the heal- 
 ing of their disease. He only, who takes away the sins 
 of the world, can take away the diseases of our body 
 and our mind. But many of you know the Hebrew for 
 the word to forgive, means also, to take away. Therefore 
 must that sin, which so easily besets men, no longer 
 remain with them. The burden of it cannot truly go, 
 until the love of it, the sinful willingness to bow under 
 its yoke, be also put away far from us. 
 
 But now comes the saddest, or at least to my own 
 mind it appears the thing most full of despondency, in 
 all our story. In former ages of the world, if men 
 
 1 Blunt's University Sermons, 
 w. s. 7 
 
146 Voluntary Palsy. [serm. 
 
 acknowledged sin to be eviP, they made efforts to avoid 
 it. They knew that the wages of sin is death. Even 
 Avhen they found difficulty, they still struggled against 
 it. Like an old Pagan is made to say, "I hate these limbs, 
 and this frail servant, my body, which deserts my spirit 
 at its need," so it was once the general doctrine of all 
 mankind, among whom conscience had not been extin- 
 guished, that the body and its appetite should obey the 
 spirit, and that the spirit should be guided by the com- 
 mand and the breath of God ; and that no sacrifice was 
 too dear for this grand end of bringing all things into 
 obedience to the work which our Heavenly Father ap- 
 pointed them do. But in our own time, we have learnt 
 to call ourselves sick, and we make the acknowledgement 
 of our sickness an excuse for never striving to be well. 
 Instead of magnetising the mind, by giving a determined 
 force to its moral resolves, we even enfeeble it by our 
 treatment. Just like some listless invalid, who calls out 
 for delicate living and indulgence, when bark and steel, 
 and cold bathing and early rising, are what his constitu- 
 tion requires, so the great mass of sinners can discourse 
 ingeniously of the fall of man, the corruption of our 
 nature, the mercies of our redemption, and justification 
 by faith; and they make all these things an opiate for 
 
 1 " The philosophers of old began all their virtue in a total renun- 
 ciation of the spirit of this world But the doctrine of the Cross 
 
 is yet professed by some, who are in more friendship with the world 
 than was allowed to the disciples of Pythagoras, &c. &c. Nay, if 
 those ancient sages were to start up amongst us with their divine 
 wisdom, they would bid fair to be treated by the sons of the Gospel 
 .... as dreaming enthusiasts." — Preface to Thomas H Kempis, by the 
 Translator, John Payne, in Dr Chalmers's edition. 
 
X,] Voluntary Palsy. 147 
 
 the conscience. They pervert them into an excuse for 
 throwing the care of their souls on some higher power, 
 not mortifying any sin, not restraining or mastering any 
 impulse, and certainly not working out their salvation 
 with fear and trembling. How then are they making 
 their calling and election sure? We tell them, they are 
 spiritually diseased; they fully assent. Make haste then 
 and be cured. Ah! that is the business of the physi- 
 cian. But at least come to him. It is of no use, he 
 must come to us; we confess ourselves helpless. But, 
 oh ! you who are thus committing a slow suicide, (for 
 what is your conduct but suicidal?) the great Physician 
 of souls has already said to each of us, " Arise, take up 
 thy bed, and walk." Arise in the power of that God, 
 who raises the dead, and gives energy to the palsied 
 will ; and say boldly, " I can do all things, through the 
 Lord God that strengtheneth me." This is alike the 
 great problem of our salvation, and the gift of God, in- 
 stead of letting flesh and blood say to us, " You shall, and 
 you must;" to say for ourselves, " We can, and we will." 
 It is generally, indeed, pretended, that the tvill of 
 the sinner is on the side of God's law and of life eternal. 
 Nor is this altogether improbable. Bather indeed, it 
 must be partly so, if the man still retains any trace of 
 what can alone be called true humanity. If the will 
 were deliberately gone over to choose the devil's side, 
 then the sinner would be quite fallen into the state of 
 those darker spirits, which say, "Evil, be thou my good.'' 
 But the case is not usually so. I appeal to any body's 
 own experience, whether the will of every human being 
 not utterly depraved, does not still choose the good. 
 
 7—2 
 
148 Voluntary Palsy. [serm. 
 
 St Paul, indeed, bears clear witness: "To will," he says, 
 "is present with me; but how to perform that which I 
 would, I find not." There is not however that determi- 
 nation of will which forces a way; nor sufficient trust 
 in God's opening a way for us; and so circumstance en- 
 tangles, and temptation overcomes the man. 
 
 Now, brethren, this complaint of not being able to 
 perform that which our conscience would, is no new 
 one, but as old as mankind. To escape from this dis- 
 ease, has been not only the desire, but the enduring 
 struggle of the noblest spirits among all nations. The 
 ancient and approved remedy was to strive against it, 
 even with oriental', or Essene mortification, or with 
 Greek intensity of thought, or with Roman sternness, and 
 with an unbending virtue. When our Saviour Christ 
 appeared in the flesh, he put fresh strength into the hearts 
 of all strivers in this holy cause, by revealing to them 
 clearly that God was on their side: and, if God was for 
 them, who could be against them ? Yet, be it ever re- 
 membered, Jesus Christ most earnestly said ; " Strive 
 ye," He did not therefore dispense with the necessity 
 of striving. Now the most aggravated disease of our 
 own time, is, that men have seized upon these two 
 things; 1st, the acknowledgement of human weakness, 
 which is assumed on all hands as the foundation of our 
 need for the Gospel; and 2nd, the assurance of divine 
 help in all our struggles, which is the animating prin- 
 ciple of our religion : and they have partly made these 
 
 1 Mr De Quincy's notion that the Essenes are post-Christian, is 
 a verdict against clear evidence. But even the Bauddha and Pytha- 
 gorean discipline would bo a difficulty for his serai-Judaism. 
 
X.] Voluntary Palsy. 149 
 
 two truths a substitute for conscientiousness, and partly 
 turned them into reasons, either for a guilty self-indul- 
 gence, or for a despondent and listless apathy : they say 
 in practical effect, mankind is sinful ; therefore we can- 
 not help being sinners. But let such men be warned, 
 that the great Searcher of hearts, and the unsparing 
 Judge of every secret word and action, will not be so 
 mocked. They say themselves most truly, that it is "by 
 grace we are saved ;" but they infer most falsely, either, 
 that grace is not given to every man ; or, that it is not 
 taken away from every one who abuses it. But who, 
 then, are saved by grace ? Is it the lying and the false 
 of heart, the quarrelsome, the backbiters, perverse, ma- 
 lignant : the gluttonous and the drunken, men sen- 
 sual, not having the spirit of holiness ? Or is it 
 rather those, who having believed the kingdom of 
 heaven to be a pearl costly beyond all price, go 
 their way, and determine to count nothing that the 
 world, the flesh, and the devil can offer them, as for one 
 moment to be compared with the blessedness of the 
 pure in heart, the blessedness of seeing God? Un- 
 doubtedly, these two classes of persons cannot expect 
 to dwell together; the gulf between their destinies 
 must be as wide as the gulf between their characters. If 
 then the righteous " scarcely be saved by grace," — if it 
 requires all the love of God, and the death of Christ, 
 and the manifold operation by all natural channels of the 
 Holy Spirit, and all pains on part of the righteous who 
 are so led — inasmuch that prayers, tears, self-denial, 
 uprightness, truthfulness, and all holy charity, are the 
 characteristics of the history of all the saints in all 
 ages— if all these things, my friends, are required, and 
 
150 Voluntary Palsy. [serm. x. 
 
 if with all these, by God's grace and by man's striving, 
 the righteous be scarcely saved; — where then shall they 
 who have trifled with God's grace, and never learnt 
 what striving means, appear in that day, when he shall 
 arise to shake terribly the earth? Where then the 
 practical Antinomian? where, the speakers of the 
 Word, and not doers of it? where those, who have 
 turned round to lie in some favourite sin, like a palsied 
 man, sinking helpless upon his bed, because they would 
 not hear the everlasting Physician, saying time after 
 time to their conscience, " Arise, shake thy sin from thee, 
 and walk, by the grace of God, in newness of life.'' 
 
 Think of these things for yourselves. Try to pene- 
 trate the mystery of the wonder-working power of a 
 resolute will, when braced by faith in the all-encom- 
 passing grace of God. One strong prayer out of the 
 deep of the mind, one manly resolve, with a fixed deter- 
 mination not to be palsied by those sins from which 
 Christ came to set us free, might become a crisis in any 
 man's destiny. We are on the threshold of a season, 
 when men are especially reminded to repent. Take a 
 serious hour alone, and with prayer, to discover what is 
 your besetting sin. That is the palsy of your soul. 
 Then determine, with steadfast will, to shake it from 
 you, and hear the Son of God still saying, as of old; 
 " Arise, take up thy bed and walk^" 
 
 Lampeter, Quinquagesima Sunday/, Feb. 6, 1863. 
 
 1 This sermon should not be judged as a complete treatise on 
 its Bubjoct,but rather as an attempt to enforce a particular idea, and 
 as likely to bo balanced by others ; else its tone would seem to my- 
 self too hard. 
 
SERMON XL 
 
 CASTING OUT DEVILS. 
 
 Why could we not cast him out? St Mark ix. 28. 
 
 Many persons think, that, when we read in the New 
 Testament of men being possessed by devils, we ought 
 to understand the words in what is conceived to be their 
 most literal sense ; that is to say, that each sufferer was 
 possessed by an evil spirit, which should in each case be 
 considered as distinct a personal agent as the human 
 being over whom he tyrannized. Again, on the other 
 hand, many sober inquirers conceive the above view to 
 be open to strong objections, both as regards the nature 
 of the evidence on which it rests, and the moral con- 
 clusion to which it leads. They observe, that all language 
 must be interpreted according to the general habits and 
 conceptions of the persons using it; that the phrase 
 " demoniac possession" Avas commonly current in the 
 ancient world, to denote any violent form of disease, 
 such as we now term epilepsy, or mania ; that manifest 
 traces of this usage are found in Greek medical writers ; 
 and then they conceive that our Saviour, instead of 
 entering on a hopeless argument with the delusions of a 
 maniac, removes by his gracious power the very disease 
 
152 Casting out Devils. [serm. 
 
 which was misinterpreted. The conclusion will then be, 
 that the words put by the sacred writers in the mouths 
 of supposed evil spirits are merely the distorted utter- 
 ances of a shattered and blinded mind ; while the accept- 
 ance by our Saviour of this popular view of the case 
 will be merely an accommodation (such as we often find) 
 of his own language and gesture to the usages of his 
 country and his time. 
 
 Such are two views of the matter, between which it 
 will not be necessary for me this morning to pronounce 
 any opinion. The discussion is probably one, in which 
 men will generally take different sides, according as 
 they feel bound by the letter of Holy Scripture, or justi- 
 fied in endeavouring to discover its meaning. 
 
 But, in any case, we shall most profitably adapt the 
 words of our text to our own time and our own edifica- 
 tion, by applying them in a sense purely moral. 
 
 Why could not we cast out sin ? becomes often a 
 question of painful interest, and may be asked earnestly 
 of ourselves, and of all those who are capable of aiding 
 us with advice, and not least of our Father which is in 
 Heaven. Perhaps the first and most general reason 
 why we fail to cast out any evil habit may be called 
 pure thoughtlessness. Men do not think sufficiently to 
 know what they are doing, or consider how they stand 
 towards their Maker and their Judge. This was the 
 complaint which the prophet of old put into the mouth 
 of Jehovah : " Israel doth not know ; my people doth 
 not consider." As if it had been impossible for them 
 to consider truly who had borne them all the days of 
 their lives, and who invited them to talk with Him as 
 
XI.] Casting out Devils. 153 
 
 with an everlasting friend, yet still to turn aside into 
 sins, which must be as a thick cloud between the gaze 
 of their minds and Him who is All-merciful, yet All- 
 holy. 
 
 We meet people every day who are thus incon- 
 siderate. You can therefore make no impression upon 
 them. Very frequently also this want of thoughtfulness 
 is accompanied by a persuasion, that all which is said 
 on the subject of religion does not really deserve so 
 much attention as is claimed for it. Such a persuasion 
 will be one of the most common forms of unbelief by 
 which we are prevented from casting out any bad habit. 
 If a man believes that, after all, the satisfaction of his 
 bodily desires is the principal thing, and that to carry 
 himself comfortably through life, or to multiply the 
 number of his own enjoyments, is of more practical con- 
 sequence than all our discussions about the soul, and 
 its compliance with the will of God, and its prospects 
 throughout eternity, — then he does not believe in one 
 thing being needful above all, or in the pearl of a pure 
 conscience being a pearl beyond all price, — nor can he 
 be awakened to cast out whatever evil humours have 
 taken possession of his soul, or whatever evil habits 
 have usurped, against this lawful King, the dominion of 
 his mind. 
 
 But the unbelief here spoken of is especially that 
 kind of practical unbelief, which perhaps has no specu- 
 lative doubts, for it never speculated at all upon so 
 solemn a subject, but which thinks the whole consider- 
 ation may be postponed, or is rather the business of 
 particular classes, or at least is not so important as the 
 
 7—5 
 
154 Casting out Devils. [serm. 
 
 business of enjoying one's self, or making one's way in 
 life. The persons, now in my mind's eye, are not the 
 worst sort of men. They are seldom hypocritical or 
 malignant — they are often kind, useful in their vocation, 
 and not disagreeable — until something provokes them — 
 they may be called, as it were, animal men. The forces 
 of life are strong in them. There is something jocund, 
 and almost refreshing, in the easy activity with which 
 they force themselves through a crowd, like children or 
 like wild creatures of the forest, with their thoughts 
 undisturbed by all the terrible questions which vex who- 
 ever has had opened in him the deeper fountains of our 
 humanity. The intellect, in its deeper stage, as applied 
 to " What ought I to do ?" and " Why have I not done 
 it?" has been scarcely awakened in them; still less 
 have the determining powers of the conscientious will 
 been strengthened with new life, from a sense of true 
 subordination to the highest will of Him by whose 
 strength we are enabled to tread temptations under our 
 feet. Generally speaking men thus informed will not 
 have had the advantage of an early training into child- 
 like reverence or godly fear ; while their whole character 
 shews they have not been roused into strong emotion 
 with reference to things unseen; thus, having neither 
 what God ordained as the most blessed rule, nor what 
 he often mercifully permits as a substitute for it, they 
 are like animals never broken, or like plants with suf- 
 ficient light to live, but with no sunshine to bring out 
 their capacity of flowering and of bearing fruit. 
 
 One willingly would hope, that such persons were 
 made by God for some good purpose. Yet it is im- 
 
XI.] Casting out Devils. 155 
 
 possible not to see that for all the highest ends of 
 religion they practically live in vain. Whatever may be 
 the vices of their neighbourhood, or the temptations of 
 their stage of life, they invariably give way to them. 
 They see, in fact, no reason Avhy they should not — they 
 have no self-determining power; they have never taken 
 habitually the will of a heart-searching God for the 
 guide of their thoughts, and the test of their motives ; 
 while as for such language as, " like the hart panteth 
 after the waterbrook, so panteth my soul after thee, O 
 God," — they listen to it, and suppose it is right, be- 
 cause it is in the Bible; but as for its being an expres- 
 sion of thoughts which day by day are stirring in the 
 breasts of thousands of human beings, they confess that 
 such a notion is beyond their comprehension. 
 
 That such a state of mind, however, is not really a 
 natural one, or that it is not the idea stamped by God 
 upon mankind, is manifest from the many means which 
 He has afforded to us of attaining to something higher. 
 Many things tend to waken man out of a merely animal 
 indifference to the world beyond the grave. Even the 
 recoil of his own passions, the sense of shame which 
 follows quick upon transgression, and the unsatisfactori- 
 ness which men of all ages and opinions have confessed 
 to be the result of a selfish devotion to pleasure, all do 
 something towards turning him from an idolatry of 
 things on earth, to an apprehension of the great God, 
 in whom we live, and move, and have our being. Nor 
 again, is grand scenery', from its power of awakening 
 
 1 Compare Christian Year, 20th Sunday after Trinity, and 1st 
 Sunday after Epiphany. 
 
156 Casting out Devils. [serm. 
 
 profound emotion, altogether destitute of a tendency in 
 the same direction. But perhaps yet more lively moni- 
 tors may be found in the experiences of daily life ; in 
 joy, and in sorrow, in sharing the sympathies of our 
 brother men; in familiarity with the records of great 
 deeds and high aspirations of old; in weeping with them 
 who weep, and in praying, as those who have gone before 
 us in the faith have prayed; and generally, in those in- 
 fluences, by which God teaches us, through fear, through 
 love, through experience either of solitude or of sym- 
 pathy, how closely we stand bound, both to Himself 
 and to all around us, as fellow-heirs of eternal life. 
 Happy are those from whom, by such means, God casts 
 out early the devil of indifference, so that they learn by 
 the experience of others rather than by guilt and pain 
 of their own. Happy are they, if the law is their 
 schoolmaster, by teaching them the beauty of right 
 rather than the penalty of MTong; and if their faith is 
 so true and so tender, that they believe sin ought to be 
 avoided and God feared, before they have learnt it so 
 by bitter suffering. Nor let it be forgotten, such men 
 are really the best men. Thy servant hath feared the 
 Lord from his youth up, is the character of the man we 
 can most safely trust. Bishop Hall is somewhere de- 
 servedly severe upon those who disparage an early and 
 a natural growth of piety, as if it were likely to turn 
 out ill. Perhaps in the tone of our popular teaching, 
 when we desire to magnify the mercy of God to the 
 penitent thief, we are too apt to speak as if his end had 
 been as securely blest as that of the beloved disciple. 
 But without desiring to limit the mercies of God, we 
 
XI,] Casting out Devils. 157 
 
 may surely prefer the consistent faith of King Josiah to 
 the late repentance of Manasseh; and we may consider 
 the life-long godliness of Samuel a safer preparation for 
 eternity than the dubious repentance of Felix, or the 
 suicidal remorse of Judas. 
 
 And yet if the greater blessedness of fearing the 
 Lord early has not befallen any one, blessed also is he 
 who is able, in any hour of life, to turn away from his 
 wickedness, and do that which is lawful and right. Not 
 without fear and trembling can such a change be ex- 
 pected to take place. If any mane's eyes are fully 
 opened for the first time to the brutish manner in which 
 he has cast the mercies of God behind his back, and 
 smothered in himself all the secret promptings of con- 
 science or of grace, which haunt us from our childhood 
 upward, it must necessarily be that such a light gleams 
 upon him with terror, and such a burthen bows him with 
 shame. He once perhaps thought that whatever he did 
 wrong was an excusable impulse of nature; he now re- 
 flects with self-condemnation, that all along there was 
 a secret voice of a better nature within his soul, which 
 entered a protest, ever audible to the pure in heart. He 
 once perhaps flattered himself that God must neces- 
 sarily forgive; he now observes with terror, how inevit- 
 ably throughout earth and heaven all things are preg- 
 nant with their proper consequences: the seed bears 
 fruit; the thought ripens into action; the sin, when it is 
 fully wrought, bringeth forth death. Or perhaps he 
 once thought that the principal use of the Bible was to 
 condemn the Jews, or to furnish arguments against 
 idolatry, to which he felt himself no sort of temptation. 
 
158 Casting out Devils. [serm. 
 
 But now, he remembers those fierce threatenings of the 
 prophets, which speak alike to every child of Adam, and 
 which are never so terrible as when they denounce woe 
 upon religious people; or when they vindicate the 
 justice of God, by declaring him to be a searcher of the 
 heart and reins, and not a clearer of the guilty, but that 
 the soul which sinneth it shall die. 
 
 There may however, brethren, be a fear unto death; 
 and such a fear, as well as the unbelief of indifference 
 above spoken of, may prevent us from casting out the 
 evil spirit of alienation from God. A man, indeed, is 
 only too ready to believe before he commits a sin, that 
 it is sure to be forgiven. But that is exactly the time 
 he ought to believe nothing of the kind. For then he 
 does not see the evil in its true colours, and he requires 
 every possible terror to magnify it sufficiently. But 
 when that fear of the Lord, which is clean, has brought 
 him true repentance, he then finds it difficult to believe 
 that his sin can be put away and his iniquity covered. 
 For he now rightly reasons, the thing was hateful; con- 
 trary to the law of God; opposed to the better instincts 
 of my own conscience; unworthy in itself, and aggra- 
 vated by all the warnings I have enjoyed : 1 feel ashamed 
 at thinking what any good man would say, who could 
 either read the record of my past life or observe exactly 
 what passes in my heart: what then must be the sen- 
 tence of that All-holy One who chargeth his angels 
 with folly? How shall I stand in his sight? This rea- 
 soning of self-condemnation is so correct in every step 
 that it is not easy to answer it. The ordinary, and per- 
 haps the necessary consequence of a true repentance, 
 
XI.] Casting out Devils. 159 
 
 after a long course of forgetfulness of God our Sa- 
 viour, must be and ought to be, something of despond- 
 ency. It is not practically true that the scars which sin 
 leaves upon the soul can be lightly healed. A man may 
 be abundantly assured of the infinite mercy of God; 
 yet so long as his conscience tells him that the dispo- 
 sitions which led him wrong are not changed for the 
 better, but rather confirmed or tainted by practice, — so 
 long (if indeed his repentance be a genuine one) he 
 must feel an insuperable difficulty in bringing his fallen 
 mind into reconciliation with that, of which we most 
 emphatically feel, that it is omniscient, and essentially 
 holy. How then are two such things to be united ? It 
 is well if the just appreciation of so great a difficulty 
 does not drive the imperfect penitent into despair; if it 
 does not induce him to break away more precipitately 
 from that ever calm, yet most awful presence, for which 
 he feels that he has rendered himself unfit. 
 
 If any of us have ever to advise a man in this stage 
 of repentance, we cannot in the first instance do better 
 than urge him to pray earnestly. Prayer is itself an 
 effi)rt. Nor, if the repentance be a true one, will a 
 man's own feelings fail to make his prayer consist chiefly 
 of confession. The unburdening of the heart is half 
 the battle. We see this partly in the difficulty which 
 every spoiled child has in confessing a fault, as well as 
 in the relief which he finds from doing it ; and partly 
 again, in that ancient penitent, who went down to his 
 house, comparatively (at least) forgiven, having said, 
 " God, be merciful to me a sinner." Yet, if guilty men 
 are not aware of the necessity of confession, at least to 
 
160 Casting out Devils. [serm. 
 
 God, and wherever just restitution requires it, also to 
 men, it is the duty of ministers of religion to use all 
 faithfulness in reminding them. Nor, again, need we 
 be too hasty in drying the tears, which with some kinds 
 of temperament accompany the prayer of confession. 
 We read at least of one who let fall upon the feet of 
 the Saviour drops more precious in his sight than that 
 costly spikenard, which yet, as a true token of love, he 
 did not disdain. 
 
 There is one more, and that the greatest, instrument 
 of relief. It appears almost born out of that extremity 
 of self-condemnation, approaching to despair, in which 
 a true penitent fancies himself to discover more clearly 
 what he already knew, that if he is to be saved, his sal- 
 vation must be the gift of God. For then he recognises 
 in himself nothing worth offering : but kneeling down in 
 remembrance of the death of Christ, he both associates 
 himself, in feeling and in sacrament, with the one spot- 
 less offering, by which the whole ends of the earth may 
 be saved, and also beseeches the Father to give him 
 daily more of that Holy Spirit, by which the sacrifice of 
 Christ was acceptable, and by which we become par- 
 takers of his sonship, if we follow his example in godly 
 life. Thus he lays his own iniquities, as he also offers 
 his own contrition, upon the head of the scape-goat, or 
 of that Lamb of God slain before the foundation of the 
 world. Nor indeed, brethren, is there any limit or stint 
 to the measure, in which, upon true repentance, we may 
 proclaim the love of God, as manifesting itself in what 
 was anciently called the forgiveness of sins. In modern 
 times we have somewhat encumbered the doctrine by 
 
XI.] Casting out Devils. 161 
 
 controversial refinements. But the essential truth re- 
 mains the same, that God of his unspeakable goodness 
 is ever ready to receive Avhoever will return unto him ; 
 and not only this, brethren, but he helps us all along 
 the rugged road of repentance, by the consciousness of 
 an everlasting love being on our side ; he thus stimulates 
 the languid forces of the human soul by the assurance 
 of an unseen ally, even though that ally is, by the 
 necessity of his righteousness, also our judge : thus, in 
 the language of suffering Job, he does not plead with 
 us with his great power, but he puts strength into us. 
 Let this fulness, then, of the love of God, as especially 
 revealed by His only-begotten Son, be to every mind 
 not utterly hardened, the last and greatest instrument of 
 casting out the evil humour of earthly despair, or aliena- 
 tion from God, and of holding up our steps in the way 
 of peace. 
 
 But, once more : we also read of an evil spirit, which 
 might be compared to a strong man cast out by a 
 stronger, taking unto himself seven other spirits, and 
 returning, and the last end of a man who had been saved 
 by divine grace becoming worse than the first. For, in 
 truth, the very sense of security has a danger of its own. 
 Like the people who had been saved through the Red 
 Sea out of Egypt provoked God and were overthrown 
 in the wilderness, so Christians are in danger of thinking, 
 that because the salvation on God's part is entire they 
 need no longer work it out with sober fear. Perhaps 
 they think they can repent again. But the work of re- 
 pentance, which was never easy, becomes more and more 
 difficult after every great fall. It seems to be written 
 
162 Casting out Devils. [serm. 
 
 in the constitution of every human soul, that it can only 
 have a certain number of opportunities granted to it. 
 There are evil spirits of presumption, of backsliding, of 
 doing what is right in our own eyes, of irreverence, the 
 child of familiarity, and of a garrulous unreality in taking 
 all holy words and things in vain. Such things as these 
 make men relapse, through conceit, or through indiffer- 
 ence, into utter irreligion. Who shall deliver us from 
 these dangers? Do they not beset us daily as things 
 which call for the utmost vigilance, patience, and self- 
 discipline? Is it not probable such as these are sins to 
 which our Saviour's words will apply, " This kind can 
 come out by nothing but by prayer and fasting"? I have 
 left myself no room either to explain at length the idea 
 implied in these words, which immediately follow our 
 text, or to guard that idea against the exaggerations and 
 perversions to which in other countries, rather than in 
 our own, it may perhaps be exposed. But every one 
 present will probably feel that our Saviour meant some- 
 thing true, and something which (after all allowance 
 for change of circumstances) should still be had in re- 
 membrance by Christians. Will you then consider what 
 he did mean? whatever you conceive it ought to be 
 called, whether self-discipline, self-denial, or tempe- 
 rance in all things, or however else you interpret our 
 Saviour's words, begin to put in practice your own most 
 deliberate version of their meaning. It is not a con- 
 temptible power to be able, if we think it right, to say 
 " No" to any favourite inclination. A modern writer thus 
 expresses himself : " Though some kinds of mortifica- 
 tion, such as violent fasting, have a tendency, by weak- 
 
XI.] Casting out Devils. 163 
 
 ening and making feverish the body, to render men more 
 liable to yield to other kinds of temptation, yet it is 
 certain, that to be able to say No to the appetites is no 
 bad preparation for future and severer combats." " But" 
 (he proceeds) " let this discipline not be that of the 
 athlete, who exercises his strength in useless exertions, 
 merely to increase it, but that of the husbandman, who 
 labours to some good end, and thus at the same time 
 preserves his bodily health and strength. Instead then 
 of fasting rigorously, as an exercise in abstinence, deny 
 yourself some luxury pleasing to your palate, and devote 
 the money thus saved to some good purpose. So, instead 
 of scourging your body, discover some dangerous habit 
 or tendency, and mortify it by absolute refusal to gratify 
 it, until it shall disappear. Cultivate the habit of doing 
 right even in little things, paying slight regard to custom, 
 fashion, the opinion of men; and the religious will, which 
 can conquer these obstacles, will be better prepared 
 to resist that yet more powerful enemy within, corrupt 
 appetite, or stormy passion."" 
 
 Thus far the words of our author, which appear to 
 me not amiss. My only object is gained if you will suffer 
 yourselves to be reminded, that every restored penitent 
 must take heed lest again a worse thing befall him ; that, 
 after all, there is such a virtue as self-denial ; that men 
 who deny themselves nothing that is pleasant, are in 
 danger of some day denying themselves nothing that is 
 sinful, and that, as on the one hand, the wisest masters of 
 holy living have taught us to be in " fastings oft'"" is a great 
 instrument of spiritual vision, or of making high advances 
 in religious knowledge ; so on the other, we see daily 
 
164 Casting out Devils. [serm. xi. 
 
 instances of men subject to all evil passions, of which it 
 is at least worth considering, whether they can come out 
 by anything but by prayer and fasting. Nor, with these 
 words, will it be useless to compare that other warning 
 from the most solemn hour of our Lord in agony. When 
 He found even his three chosen disciples sleeping by 
 the side of his own dread suffering, " Watch ye," he 
 said, " and pray ;" for though the spirit, that is, the con- 
 science touched by the grace of God, may appear willing, 
 yet "the flesh,'"" that is, the mass of all our lower humours 
 and impulses, may render your soul so weak that it may 
 slumber even in Gethsemane ; or it may desert its 
 Master as He bears his cross up Calvary ; or, last and 
 worst, it may suffer all evil spirits to return, so that 
 neither man nor God can any longer cast them out. 
 
 Lampeter, 2nd Sunday in Lent, Feb. 20, 1853. 
 
SEEMON XII. 
 
 BEING FORSAKEN OF GOD. 
 
 My Ood, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Psalm xxii. 1. 
 
 Even in English we often designate a hymn or a poem 
 by merely quoting its first line. Such was also the 
 case in Latin, since we find the words Arma virumque 
 used as a title for the -^neid. A similar practice 
 appears to have prevailed still more generally among 
 the Hebrews ; for the various books of the Old Testa- 
 ment are commonly designated by the first words of 
 each. The book of Genesis, for instance, is known 
 as " In the beginning," and so on. Hence it becomes 
 not at all improbable that the words of my text might 
 be used in the New Testament as the title of the Psalm, 
 of which they are written at the beginning ; and for 
 this reason, among others, it has been supposed, in 
 modern times, that when we are told of our Lord's 
 repeating " Eloi, Eloi," &c. we should understand him 
 to have uttered aloud the whole of the twenty-second 
 Psalm. The question is one of sufficient interest to be 
 worth looking at distinctly. Perhaps the only consider- 
 able objection is, that the original words given by the 
 
166 Being forsaken of God. [serm. 
 
 Evangelist are not quite the same as those of the 
 Psalm. For instance, sahacthani, although it corre- 
 sponds in sense, is not the word for " thou hast for- 
 saken me" which we read in our Old Testament. This 
 circumstnnce may appear almost fatal to our theory. 
 But, on the other hand, it may be answered, that the 
 principal point of difference gives the Chaldee equiva- 
 lent for the Hebrew ; that our Lord, to whom the 
 mixed idiom of the Syriac was probably his vernacular 
 tongue, might naturally cite a verse of the Old Testa- 
 ment in a form somewhat different from that of the 
 original manuscript ; and, indeed, that the most ancient 
 Hebrew text was not at that time very generally familiar, 
 may be rather indicated by the misapprehension of some 
 bystanders, who conceived our Lord to be calling upon 
 Elias. The same circumstance of the Hebrew texts 
 not being in every one's mouth, is still farther illus- 
 trated by the fact, that many of the New Testament 
 citations are made from the Greek version of the 
 Septuagint, if not also by the great laxity, and even 
 discrepance, which appears in St Stephen's summary 
 of the patriarchal history, when compared with the 
 account in the book of Genesis. 
 
 Perhaps, then, our blessed Lord may really have 
 cited the Psalm, taken possibly from some Chaldaic 
 variation, without using the precise words of the Old 
 Testament ; or, again, his citation may not be syllable 
 for syllable reported by the Evangelists ; though this 
 latter possibility (as regards so awfully striking an 
 event) is too faint to be seriously urged. But, upon the 
 whole, our opinion of the probability of the supposition 
 
XII.] Being forsaken of God. 167 
 
 which we are discussing, must be determined by the 
 degree in which the Psalm is strikingly appropriate, 
 or the contrary, when applied to the position of our 
 Saviour upon the cross. 
 
 On this ground, then, it is likely that the feeling 
 and the judgment of every Christian reader will incline 
 to pronounce in the affirmative. For, if any person, 
 who may never happen to have considered the Psalm in 
 this light before, will only read it over with an eye to 
 the circumstances of that redeeming tragedy which was 
 enacted on Calvary, he will probabl}"^ be struck by the 
 fresh significance which many of the verses will assume. 
 
 Nor yet, in order to institute such a comparison, is 
 it necessary to deny, that the original writer of the 
 Psalm had probably quite a different, and a more 
 temporal meaning. We have had too much of sneers 
 at the obstinacy of the Jews, because they cannot admit 
 interpretations, which (like St Paul's' of Hagar and 
 Mount Sinai) are in a certain sense true, but which, 
 when tortured into literal explications of the text, 
 utterly break down. In almost every disputed pro- 
 phecy, the critical probabilities of the literal and pri- 
 mary sense are far more in favour of the Jewish 
 opinion, or of something like it, than they are in 
 favour of the Christian. Most truly was it said by 
 Bishop Middleton, (no mean or heterodox authority,) 
 that unless you admit a primary historical sense, you 
 make everything in the Old Testament [as] uncertain 
 [as a dream.] And although the rugged strength of 
 
 1 For the origin of St Paul's parable of Hagar see Philo's tract, 
 De Cong. Queer, erud. grat. 
 
168 Being forsaken of God. [serm. 
 
 Horsley affected at one time to deride the notion of 
 a double sense, he felt subsequently obliged to confess 
 that he had been too hasty in his opinion. The same 
 concession is made to some extent by Davison, in his 
 work on Prophecy, and generally by our more accurate 
 divines. But I conceive we do not ordinarily on this 
 point do justice to the Jews. 
 
 It is true, that the prophets frequently looked 
 forward to they knew not what salvation, which the 
 anointed Messenger, the future Restorer of Israel, was 
 to bring. But it is also true, that events or persons 
 of their own times most commonly suggested to thera 
 their glowing images — images, of which the highest 
 significance can only be found in the spiritual fulfilment, 
 which we contend they have now received. Isaiah, for 
 instance, speaks of a child who should be born in a time 
 of famine, when all the plains were overrun by the 
 hosts of Syria and Ephraim, and the vine of the hill- 
 country extorted the price of dearth. This child, he 
 says, of a marriage only now taking place, shall, as soon 
 as he is able to distinguish good and bad, eat butter 
 and honey ; and this either as a sign of dearth, because 
 the corn and wine will have been swept away; or again, 
 as a sign of reviving peace and plenty, for so ample 
 will be the abundance restored by the Lord to his 
 people, that the vines, now so costly, shall be counted 
 as briers ; the pastures shall be thronged with cattle ; 
 the infant of two years old shall eat every pastoral 
 delicacy; for the two firebrands of the hostile kings 
 shall be quenched ; the beard of the enemy's pride shall 
 be shaven by that Assyrian king, who (though bias- 
 
XII.] Being for sahen of God. IGO 
 
 phemous in conquest) is still as it were the rascr of 
 Jehovah. In either case the thing immediately pre- 
 dicted is the Assyrian overthrow of the nearer enemies 
 of Jiidah, before the child should be two years old. 
 
 Again, the same Isaiah sees that Israel, whom God 
 had called out of Egypt, and whom the Eternal had 
 denominated his first-born, trampled, captive, and de- 
 rided ; he sees the beauty of the sanctuary defiled, and 
 the anointed priests of the living God degraded from 
 their office, led as sheep to the slaughter, insulted by 
 their own countrymen, as men smitten of God, cast 
 off by Jehovah. Ah ! he says, it is through the wicked- 
 ness of the nations that Israel is thus afflicted ; it is 
 through the apostasy of the people that the priesthood 
 is thus smitten and reviled ; they hide their faces from 
 the Lord's servant ; nevertheless, no weapon that is 
 formed against him shall prosper : it is a little thing 
 that He should merely recover Israel, He shall also be a 
 light to the Gentiles, and a salvation to the ends of the 
 earth. 
 
 Even so our Psalmist, whether it were David or 
 some one else, is probably speaking of the personified 
 Israel. His fathers had trusted in God, and had been 
 delivered ; but he is a worm, and no man ; the con- 
 federacy of the heathen layeth siege to him : they 
 already cast lots for their booty : his only consolation 
 is in the distant hope, that the kindreds of the earth 
 will remember themselves, and all nations be turned 
 to the Lord. 
 
 The proper position of the Christian divine, then, 
 is, not that the Jewish interpretation of their own 
 w. s. 8 
 
170 Being forsaken of God. [serm. 
 
 prophecies is untrue, but that it is inadequate. As far 
 as it goes, it is right. But, if this be all, then has their 
 faith failed them. There is only one King of their 
 race, who is even now ruling over many nations ; nor 
 is any other ever likely to do so. There is only one 
 medium, and that medium not the law of Moses, 
 through which all the nations of the earth are being 
 turned to Jehovah. There has been only one child, 
 born of a virgin, who has so delivered mankind from 
 the spiritual dearth of something to believe upon, as 
 to be emphatically and properly Emmanuel, God with 
 us. There is only one, and he too a priest, both smit- 
 ten through the iniquity of the people, and yet through 
 whose stripes his very smiters are healed. Nor, once 
 more, is there any other save one, of whom indeed 
 Israel, as God's first-born, was no mean type ; who 
 had been taken in some emphatical sense out of his 
 mother's womb ; who had also been called out of 
 Egypt; but who was reduced in agony, too awful to be 
 traced, to exclaim from the tree which was deemed 
 accursed, " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken 
 me?" yet who, even in that hour of pain and reproach, 
 remembered to care for those whom He loved ; felt 
 power within him to assure the malefactor of pardon ; 
 and, we would willingly believe, completed the song 
 of the cross in the tone of triumph. From this 
 hour, " all the ends of the world shall remember 
 
 themselves, and be turned unto the Lord For 
 
 the kingdom is the Lord's : my seed shall serve 
 him, they shall be counted unto the Lord for a gene- 
 ration." 
 
XII.] Being forsaken of God. 171 
 
 We see how it is no longer written of those who 
 are born of flesh and blood, the children of Abraham ; 
 but, to as many as receive him, to them He gives power 
 to become the sons of God, Hence it is written, " My 
 seed shall serve him ; they shall come, and the heavens 
 shall declare his righteousness, unto a people that shall 
 be born, whom the Lord hath made." 
 
 Now we know whose righteousness the heavens de- 
 clare, and whose people are born of water and of the 
 Spirit ; may God also teach us to exemplify what kind 
 of humanity it is that the Lord makes in the place of 
 the old Adam, in whosoever does not quench the teach- 
 ing of his grace. 
 
 "With regard, then, to the Psalm before us, as well 
 as the greater part of the Old Testament prophecies, if 
 by " inspiration " we mean a minute foreknowledge on 
 part of the writer, of earthly things and circumstances 
 removed far from his own age, a thorough comparison 
 of the prophecy with the event may tend rather to 
 lessen our conception of the degree in Avhich that 
 faculty existed : but, on the other hand, it may even 
 deepen our sense of the true prophetic inspiration, as a 
 clear perception of those heavenly truths which the 
 Holy Ghost reveals to man as the abiding thoughts of 
 God, which ever repeat themselves in his eternal plan; 
 and moreover, it may give us a far higher idea of the 
 over-ruling providence of the Almighty, as controlling 
 the drama of the religious history of mankind. For it 
 may lead us to consider many things in the Old Testa- 
 ment as being not so much predictions as pictures by 
 way of forecast, and not so much anticipations by human 
 
172 Being forsaken of God. [serm. 
 
 foresight, as representations foreshadowed by heaven 
 in the form of events. 
 
 Be it, then, that the writer of our Psalm meant 
 to depict the suffering of his nation. Yet if Israel had 
 become a worm, and an outcast of the people, at least 
 he was not more so than the Only-begotten, of whom 
 they said, " Not this man, but Barabbas." Did the 
 passers by laugh the anointed successor of David to 
 scorn ? Even so mocked they the Lord of Life upon 
 the cross. Was even the lofty hope of Sion an ad- 
 ditional reason for triumph over her? So said the 
 Pharisee and the Scribe, " He saved others, himself 
 he cannot save." Surely not in the city of Jerusalem 
 so much as in the person of her Master, it is eminently 
 realised, " they pierced my hands and my feet." His 
 garments are parted ; upon His vesture lots are cast. 
 In short, what had been true of Israel, is more emi- 
 nently true of Israel's Messiah ; the tale of the people's 
 sufferings may be told emphatically of those of the 
 King. The shadow may precede, but the body follows. 
 The members have their share, but the Head has in all 
 things the pre-eminence. 
 
 Since then, brethren, no other than our Lord and 
 Master uttered that exceeding bitter cry, " My God, 
 my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?" it is credible 
 that to him the prophetic utterance points ; of him the 
 Psalm is, in a way, spoken. Upon him then came not 
 only the hour of agony in the garden, not only the 
 desertion, the scourging, and the sinking under the 
 cross, but upon his soul fell, together with the shadow 
 of death, the sense of a deeper darkness, the with- 
 
XII.] Being forsaken of God. 173 
 
 drawal of divine support, the dread solitude of suffer- 
 ing, even in the sight of men and angels, which made 
 him exclaim, "My God, my God, why hast thou for- 
 saken me ?" 
 
 But, it may be asked, how could the co-eternal 
 Son, and the alter ego (or the express image) of the 
 Father's person, be such a stranger to the consciousness 
 of indwelling divinity, as to feel himself not only stricken 
 of man, but (even as the vulgar deemed him) smitten of 
 God and afflicted. The obvious answer is, that the 
 human nature in which the Wisdom of God taber- 
 nacled, for the sake of raising the human by contact 
 with the divine, rendered the personal being susceptible 
 of whatever mankind can suffer. 
 
 The question will then, again, assume a fresh form; 
 what is the meaning to ourselves of spiritual desertion? 
 How far can we feel ourselves forsaken of God ? There 
 is a difficult, and at the same time an interesting, sub- 
 ject of inquiry. Is then the explanation something of 
 this kind ? It has pleased our heavenly Father to give 
 us various faculties, each of which may serve a good 
 end, and requires, in order to happiness, a certain exer- 
 cise. We all know the nature of hope, fear, love, joy, 
 trust, and other such feelings. We know the dominion 
 which each of them in turn can exercise over our hap- 
 piness ; and just as each muscle and nerve of body 
 requires exercise in order to health, so each of these 
 mental endowments can bring a blessing, when rightly 
 directed ; and bane, if it is either sluggish, or turned to 
 some unworthy object. But now, what earthly thing 
 shall satisfy tliem ? Health, strength, wealth, friends, 
 
174 Being forsaken of God. [serm. 
 
 pleasure, power ? Which of them in turn does not fail 
 us at our utmost need ? Which, even if permanent, 
 would not leave a void ? We require a health for the 
 uneasy restlessness of the mind ; a strength to resist 
 impulses which our own better feelings tell us are evil ; 
 friends who cannot change or forsake; pleasure which 
 cannot pall, and power at least more capable of being 
 reckoned on than that of a worm. But where shall 
 these things be found ? " Surely," says the Psalmist, to 
 Almighty God, *' in thy light shall we see light." When 
 we are duly sobered by the fear of God, we need fear 
 nothing else; when we hope in God, that hope alone 
 satisfies us ; when we rejoice in doing his will, and 
 walking in his way, our joy is one which no man taketh 
 from us. We have then peace in ourselves ; and if in 
 ourselves, also with God. For if our hearts, when duly 
 informed and disciplined, do not condemn us, there is 
 then no condemnation against us. Each man's con- 
 science, provided he does not attach that holy name to 
 passion or to waywardness, is as it were the mirror of 
 the will and the mind of God. And though the images 
 cast on this mirror be, as the Apostle says, figurative, 
 it is the province of faith to assure us, that such figures 
 represent, adequately for our guidance, eternal realities. 
 What we now see in a figure, shall be hereafter face to face. 
 Now, the more a man is truly enlightened, the more 
 he seeks that peace which flows from such a conscious- 
 ness as is above described. Nor do I think it neces- 
 sary to check the childlike freedom which accompanies 
 such an endeavour to be at peace with God, except by 
 one remark. 
 
xri.] Being forsaken of God. 175 
 
 We must not from such a course exclude the reason- 
 ing faculty. It may be readily admitted, that our devo- 
 tion, our hope, and our pious fancy, will often wing 
 their flight beyond the slower pace of dull ratiocination; 
 but they must keep in sight, and in sound of recall. It 
 is our whole being, our understanding as well as our 
 spirit, which the Holy Ghost is pleased to sanctify. 
 
 Fear not, then, I say, to seek peace by doing the 
 will of God. Thy will, O God, be done in earth as it is 
 in heaven. 
 
 With a conscience calm, with a reason satisfied, 
 with passions subdued, with fear of One only, and him 
 our friend, and that fear made cheerful by the accom- 
 paniment of a steadfast hope of an inheritance unde- 
 filed, what can injure us ? Who shall separate us from 
 the love of God ? I am persuaded, even as the Apostle 
 was, that neither earthly pain nor death can avail, save 
 for a moment, to darken over such a joy, or to take 
 away a peace, which passes the understanding alike of 
 the sensual and of the malignant. But from whom, 
 brethren, can such hopes come, save from God ? Be it, 
 if any one pleases, that the machinery through which it 
 is raised already existed in our minds. But what 
 architect's hand there raised it ? What have we that 
 we have not received ? Blessed for ever be His holy 
 name, who both enables us in his light to see light, and 
 giveth us triumph in tribulation, through the conscious- 
 ness that one stronger than the strong is on our side 
 *'My peace I leave with you," saith the Saviour: " not as 
 the Avorld giveth, give 1 unto you." 
 
 But, brethren and friends, there is a darker alterna- 
 
176 Being^ forsaken of God. [serm. 
 
 tive. There is a conscience ill at ease ; there is a fear 
 looking forward only to judgment ; there is a blank, 
 void of hope, that maketh the heart sick when the staff 
 of our reliance is removed ; there is a confused tumult 
 of passion ; there is a cheerless gloom, approaching to 
 despair. , It is in accordance with our Lord's declaration, 
 that unto whom much is given, of him much is required; 
 to believe that here too some previous enlightenment 
 may enhance the sense of darkness. Where men are 
 conscious of having known their master's will, and not 
 having done it ; of having worthily conceived the excel- 
 lence of things godlike, and fallen back upon things 
 meanly carnal ; there must be a decay of mental peace, 
 and a want of any thing durable to lean upon in the crisis 
 when things earthly must pass away. How can any man 
 of reflection feel at ease if he is conscious that all is not 
 right in the sight of God ; and, in short, aware that he 
 has no friendly relation towards that pure Being, in 
 whose presence alone is life, and compliance with whose 
 will is the true condition of our happiness ? Such a man 
 has in fact turned away from God ; and in proportion as 
 he has ever been enlightened, he must feel the desolation 
 of a blank gloom, where once had been the cheering 
 sense of compassion and fatherly lovingkindness. AVhat 
 wonder that he almost conceives the change to be in 
 God rather than in himself? that he exclaims, " My 
 God, why hast thou forsaken me?" when it should 
 rather be, " My soul, why hast thou wandered from the 
 giver of thy life, and the upholder of eternal joy ?" For 
 God indeed is ever at hand, to forgive, to bless, and to 
 save. It is chiefly our iniquities which draw a thick veil 
 
X 1 1 . J Being forsake n of God. 177 
 
 around us, that we no longer perceive a presence of our 
 eternal Saviour ; and, even if we hear his voice, we hide 
 ourselves in the trees of some vain shelter, and are afraid. 
 Yet, be it noticed, not only sin, but also misfortune, 
 and earthly pain, whether sent for some wise chastening, 
 or whether the inevitable (and, so to speak, agcidental) 
 condition of our earthly lot, may create that gloomy 
 despondence, in which we no longer see the blessings 
 descending, and forget, or mistrust, that our prayers 
 vshould ascend to fetch them. The apparent failure of 
 an honest struggle in some great cause will almost 
 tempt to the exclamation of the Roman patriot, when, 
 after worshipping the highest idea of excellence which 
 his imagination could form, he saw it trampled under 
 the usurper's foot, and said, " Ah, ill-fated virtue, it 
 seems then thou art but a shadow, whereas I thought 
 thee a power." So, now the languor of ill health, and 
 now the absence of sympathy from man, will seem a 
 reflection from the desertion of a higher and holier 
 comforter. Hence, I said, reason must not be left out 
 of sight in any attempt to analyse the causes of our 
 mental distress. Not every cloud brings a storm ; nor 
 is the darker night always unfriendly ; for it may only 
 prepare us to receive joy that cometh in the morning. 
 So, brethren, of sickness, so of disappointment, so of 
 death. They may possibly be meant to try: be not 
 hasty to believe they were intended to destroy. Rather 
 look up to that Almighty Father, and heavenly Saviour, 
 who has never failed them that sought Him. Remember 
 all the tokens of his lovingkindness ; how by birth He 
 blessed, and by adopting us into a Christian church 
 
 8—5 
 
1 78 Being forsaken of God. [serm. xii. 
 
 made us elect unto the means of grace ; how in youth 
 He warned, in travel He shielded, in sickness He raised 
 us on to our feet. Lastly, notice, that He commends 
 his lovingkindness to us, even by this strange and para- 
 doxical proof, that He suffered his only-begotten Son, 
 the coeternal partaker of the Divine Being, to utter 
 aloud that bitter cry which we have now been consider- 
 ing. For if He seemed forsaken of his Father, it was 
 in order that God might not forsake us ; it was to 
 ransom our souls in the hour of death and the day of 
 judgment from the necessity of crying in vain, " My 
 God, my God." 
 
 Therefore have hope in the God and Saviour on 
 whom you have believed ; and, moreover, as you Avould 
 not be forsaken of him hereafter, so be persuaded not 
 to forsake him now. For now, I say, my brethren, now, 
 the same voice of mediation between God and man 
 which entreats our Heavenly Father to deliver us by 
 the agony of his Son and by his cross and passion, 
 simultaneously bids us be of good cheer by his resur- 
 rection and ascension, and by the coming of the Holy 
 Ghost. But by the same tokens, even by all our Lord's 
 sufferings, and all his triumphs, it also urges us to strive 
 to do his will. 
 
 Let us not grudge Him who bought us the seeing of 
 the travail of his soul. Let his seed, being born of 
 water which purifies, and the Spirit which sanctifies, 
 truly serve Him, so shall they be counted to the Lord 
 for a generation. 
 
 Preached at Lampeter hi 1851. 
 
SERMON XIII. 
 
 THE PRATER ON THE CROSS. 
 
 Father, forgive them ; for they know not what they do. 
 
 St Luke xxiii. 34. 
 
 Whether we consider the speaker of these words, or 
 the occasion on which they were uttered, or the mean- 
 ing with which they are pregnant, they are among the 
 most remarkable in which thought ever trembled into 
 speech. The speaker, no other than the Only-begotten 
 Son of God ; the occasion, His darkest hour of suffering 
 upon the cross ; the meaning, scarcely less than a prac- 
 tical summary of the religion of Christ, 
 
 For here we are approaching the end of that great 
 humility to which our blessed Saviour condescended 
 for our sakes. We have heard of His patience and His 
 sympathy with men of low estate ; we have known Him 
 in whose character no touch of humanity is more vivid 
 than His weeping over the city of His fathers, rejected 
 of His countrymen, and wounded in the house of His 
 friends ; we have shuddered at the terrible mockery of 
 the crown of thorns, while our imagination shrinks from 
 the scourging which accompanied it : we have seen, for 
 who cannot recall with his mind's eye ? the bowing 
 under the cross of shame ; we shall shortly hear that 
 
180 The Prayer on the Cross. [serm. 
 
 sharpest cry of the Man of Sorrows, when (not only 
 deserted or disavowed by his followers, but) tasting of 
 the bitterness which sinful man knows in the agony of 
 remorse, He cried aloud, " My God, my God, why hast 
 thou forsaken me ?" 
 
 Yet, at that critical point which intervened between 
 these two stages of suffering, the Saviour of mankind 
 left to all generations an example, in that He prayed to 
 the Father, not for ease, nor for a quick passage into 
 His kingdom ; still less for the punishment of His ene- 
 mies ; but, " Father, forgive them ; for they know not 
 what they do." 
 
 If any man wishes to discover the secret of this 
 mind of Christ, he may be reminded of all those expres- 
 sions of Holy Writ which describe the Saviour^'s great 
 humility. For to be humble is the secret of the power 
 of forgiving injuries. The more magnificently any man 
 thinks of himself, the greater any offence against him 
 appears, and the more keenly he is tempted to resent it. 
 Nor is that kind of defensive pride, which tends to 
 cherish a delicate sense of honor, a thing without use to 
 human society. Wherever, indeed, it has been extir- 
 pated in masses of men, experience shows that one of 
 the ordinary securities for right sentiment has been lost. 
 Tt is not, however, a safe guide, for two reasons ; partly, 
 because it is connected with self esteem, and the idea of 
 self is apt to warp the judgment; partly, again, because 
 all rules of honor are founded upon the opinion of men ; 
 but there are higher principles of action than men in 
 general care to be reminded of; so that, without dis- 
 paraging all the helps and admonitions to do right, 
 
XIII.] The Prayer on the Cross. 181 
 
 Avhich, under the guidance of Divine providence, human 
 society affords, we still require the power of appeal to a 
 more unbending test, and a more searching judge. It 
 is in the presence of that dread tribunal, before which 
 all hearts are open, and when comparing our own con- 
 duct with the inexorable requirements of the law of 
 God, that we learn a wisdom, far humbler of thought 
 and speech than even the most humane courtesy would 
 suggest, and yet far higher in the goal of its ultimate 
 attainment. When we know ourselves, with whatever 
 advantages of knowledge or station the accidents of this 
 life may surround us, to be still but servants of God, we 
 then lay less stress upon mere external distinctions ; we 
 go on to consider an offence against ourselves as not 
 greater really than if it were against the humblest of 
 God's creatures ; and thus we have less difficulty in for- 
 giving injuries ; for who, after all, are we, that we 
 should be angry with our fellow-worm? Or rather, 
 perhaps, it will be better to say, who art thou that art 
 angry with another man's servant '? For if we really 
 conceive of ourselves as instruments, in some humble 
 form, of some divine work in the world, we shall have 
 less difficulty in regarding our opponents in any quarrel 
 as also instruments in something analogous. Like the 
 conscious king of Israel, who in the humiliation of his 
 discrowned old age, is represented as saying, " Let 
 Shimei alone ; the Lord hath said unto him, Curse 
 David," so we may conceive it possible that the trial 
 of ourselves is only a providential incident in the course 
 of some other; or at any rate, to his own master he 
 standeth or falleth. We at least have received our 
 
182 The Prayer on the Cross. [serm. 
 
 task. In proportion as we learn to discharge that task 
 in humility, we shall have less leisure, less temptation, 
 (because less of resentment from pride prompting us,) to 
 retaliate upon any aggressor his insolence or his cruelty. 
 Thus there is nothing incredible in the idea, that a 
 Christian who has made it the business of his life to 
 tread in the steps of his Master, may at length acquire 
 so much of that mind which was in Christ Jesus, as not 
 only to forgive readily, but to make injury a reason for 
 conferring benefit in return. Some such perfection of 
 temper is recorded as having marked Archbishop Cran- 
 mer ; such a spirit also speaks in the prayer of St 
 Stephen ; as, above all, it is exemplified in the words 
 of our text, " Father, forgive them ; for they know not 
 what they do." But, wherever such a spirit is attained, 
 it will certainly be connected, not with pride, but as in 
 the case of our Saviour, with a most profound humility. 
 For these had been the characteristics of his previous 
 life ; not thinking his being equal with the Divinity a 
 thing to be greedily retained', but taking upon Him the 
 form of a servant, and being obedient to his Master's (as 
 well as his Father's) will, even to the death of the cross. 
 
 Secondly, another grand instrument in enabling men 
 to forgive injuries, is knowledge. This will sound strange 
 only to persons who have never reflected upon the sub- 
 ject. For Almighty God would not be the author of 
 truth, nor would his law be the embodiment of the 
 highest wisdom, if to know things as they are did not 
 
 1 See in Eusebius this quotation from the Philippians, in the 
 epistle about the martyrs at Lyons, their rendering of it being also 
 confirmed by the sequence of thought. 
 
XIII.] TJie Prayer on the Cross. 183 
 
 dispose men in the direction of doing things as they 
 ought. Nor would faith, in the largest sense of the 
 word faith, be an instrument of religious improvement, 
 if it did not enable us to know upon trust, (being thus 
 the best substitute for knowledge) in things, which, as 
 yet, it is impossible to know by experience. But in 
 truth, to know God as our Father, our Saviour, and our 
 Judge, supplies us with the strongest motives we can 
 have to persevere in well-doing. For if we know that 
 He is the highest good ; that His will is our happiness ; 
 and that in His light we see light, even in the valley of 
 shadows, how should we not be encouraged by such 
 knowledge in the way that leadeth to life eternal? 
 
 Nor is it less true, that to know man in all his mis- 
 takes, his errors, and his misunderstandings, is both one 
 great safeguard against unreasonable resentment, and 
 also a great assistance in overcoming it, where we feel 
 it with reason. In the first place, an ignorant man is apt 
 to interpret a thousand things as affronts, which were 
 never intended to be so. Or, even if they were, he 
 makes no allowance for the misunderstanding which 
 may have produced them. He is not capable of putting 
 himself into the position of the person erring, or of 
 calculating with proper sympathy upon probable mis- 
 takes or natural motives. Whereas, when any one has 
 acquired an intelligent and a sympathising knowledge of 
 human nature, he can enter often into the feelings, and 
 make allowance for the mistaken impulses of people 
 who do wrong. He sees where the origin of the error 
 lies ; he can imagine readily in what different lights the 
 same object may be viewed from different points ; he 
 
184 The Prayer on the Cross. [serm. 
 
 knows also to what kind of temptations each age or 
 station in life is exposed ; so that the most direct fruit 
 of his knowledge is a certain large-hearted candour ; and 
 from thence there are not many steps to an indulgent 
 mode of viewing offences, which yet in strictness may 
 justly call for some amount of censure. 
 
 So that, on the whole, perhaps, no two things can 
 be named so likely to produce a frame of mind, to which 
 a prayer like that of our Saviour on the cross would 
 be congenial, than these two, humility and knowledge. 
 Nor will any one doubt that in these two things He who 
 was both Jesus of Nazareth and the Anointed of God 
 had the Spirit given to him in the most abundant mea- 
 sure. In Him we have divine love condescending, and 
 divine wisdom reading our thoughts long before. If He 
 underwent the sharpness of death, it was not because He 
 wanted power to save his life as well as to lay it down ; 
 and if He prayed for St Peter's faith, it was not because 
 He did not foresee the shameful denial. But He who 
 foreknew the sin, knew also the weakness ; and probably 
 foreknew the effect in virtue of his understanding the 
 cause. Hence another apostle tells us, that the per- 
 petual Interceder for us at the right hand of God is 
 as it were a high priest who knows (from having borne) 
 our weaknesses. So constantly does the element of 
 knowledge seem to be implied as entering into the 
 composition of sympathy. Nor is the same lesson less 
 manifestly taught us by the very words of our text. We 
 there see that the ground of the Saviour's intercession 
 is his knowledge of the ignorance of his murderers. 
 They knew not what they did. They knew not on how 
 
XIII.] Tlie Prayer on the Cross. 185 
 
 sacred a form they laid lawless hand ; nor what fierce 
 passion clothed itself in the zeal which they professed 
 for the Scripture^ and inspiration of their law. But 
 probably this ignorance would never have been pleaded 
 at the throne of Heaven, as an excuse in their behalf, 
 by the very person who suffered from it, if that suf- 
 ferer had not entered largely into the motives of men's 
 hearts, as well as partaken, without stint or measure, 
 in the infinite love of God, who knoweth whereof we 
 are made. 
 
 The very excellence of such an example will appear 
 to some persons a reason why it can hardly be held out 
 for imitation. Nor is it pretended that the mass of 
 mankind can be confidently expected to reach such a 
 standard. Perhaps, indeed, it may be almost the duty 
 of the preacher to point out one danger which a very 
 stringent requirement in such a direction would pro- 
 bably involve. It has passed almost into a proverb, 
 that very soft-spoken men are generally dangerous ; 
 and this, even where they are not conscious of delibe- 
 rate hypocrisy. Nor is the reason difficult to point 
 out. Having stifled any expression of irritation by a 
 sort of strain upon their nature, they are tempted to 
 vent their feelings subsequently in some indirect man- 
 ner. Hence detraction, censoriousness, and even a 
 studied sighing away of their neighbour's character, 
 are apt to be such persons' favourite weapons ; and 
 it is very much to be regretted, that the Christian 
 Church should ever fail to visit these disingenuous arts 
 
 I By the Law, for which they were zealous, the Jews meant the 
 Old Testament Scriptures. 
 
186 The Prayer on the Cross. [serm. 
 
 with the same stigma by which they would be branded 
 amongst men of the world. 
 
 Hence, be it remarked, that, while he is the best 
 Christian, who can from his heart give the speediest 
 and most entire forgiveness, he also Avho is " angry and 
 sins not" by disingenuousness, is a better man than he 
 who harbours a masked and silently vindictive enmity. 
 If we are offended, let us hasten as soon as possible to 
 exchange forgiveness ; but if such a course is forbidden, 
 cither by self-defence, or by moral considerations, or 
 even by the depth of a wound not yet closed in our feel- 
 ings, let us at least beware of uttering words softer than 
 butter, with war in our heart. We should not, for 
 example, say, " I entertain no unkind feeling towards 
 the man ; but I fear he is guilty of such and such a 
 thing." It will at least be more manly, and why should 
 not I add more Christian ? (if truth be a Christian virtue,) 
 to say, " In this case I am not an impartial judge ; there 
 has been a sore between us, which is not yet healed." 
 
 You will, I hope, forgive me, if I have appeared to 
 be too long in thus qualifying my argument. For it is 
 my firm conviction that much moral harin has been 
 done, and affectation (if not hypocrisy) engendered, by 
 that inconsiderate language of the pulpit, which lays 
 down the perfection' we ought all to aim at, as if it were 
 a standard every one should profess to have already 
 attained. Thus, while men make a show of having 
 pushed the evil spirit out of doors, he comes back, with 
 seven others, through the window. 
 
 1 Great social evils also come of imposing by law things which it 
 would be will if men from persuasion would do of free will, or of love. 
 
XIII.] The Prayer on the Cross. 187 
 
 But, to return: Ave still are not disciples of Christ, if 
 we do not make a sincere and constant endeavour to 
 look at the best side in the conduct of our opponents, 
 to construe their motives fairly, to make allowance for 
 their misunderstanding: and, in short, to say verily, 
 Father, forgive them. 
 
 Nor in such a duty, brethren, have we only those 
 aids of humility and of knowledge which may become 
 common to us with our Lord. But here, our very 
 weakness may be turned into strength ; and the least of 
 all human beings has (strange to say) an advantage in 
 this struggle, which was wanting to our blessed Lord. 
 We have an incitement to forgive Avhich Christ had 
 not; for while he acted only from divine love and 
 knowledge, blended with a strange humility, we, bre- 
 thren, read on the blotted pages of our own life, and 
 are reminded audibly in the whispers of our own con- 
 science, how much need has every child of man to for- 
 give, even as he prays to be forgiven. Peter said unto 
 him, " Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, 
 and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto 
 him, I say not unto thee. Until seven times : but. Until 
 seventy times seven." 
 
 If any man finds such a duty difficult, the difficulty 
 only shows it to be the more absolutely necessary for 
 him to strive. In proportion as he shrinks from the 
 easy burthen of " Forgive ye one another your tres- 
 passes," he is in danger of falling within the circle of 
 that commandment, the letter of which forbids murder, 
 but the spirit condemns hatred. 
 
 To guard against such a danger, let no one despise 
 
188 The Prayer on the Cross. [serm. 
 
 the helps which may be procured from all the thoughts 
 of natural kindness. By rejoicing with them that rejoice, 
 and weeping Avitli them that weep, we may cherish in 
 ourselves such a sense of true humanity, as will ever 
 shrink from giving unnecessary pain ; and will often 
 prompt us to an instinctively gracious and noble kind 
 of forgiveness, better than the precepts of the school- 
 master and the scribe. Yet a deeper and a more stead- 
 fast power of overcoming evil with good, will be found 
 in that humble resignation of ourselves to the will of 
 God, which (together with his knowledge of all men's 
 motives,) has already been described as the strength of 
 our blessed Saviour. By striving to imitate him, and 
 not merely boasting of his name, but taking into our- 
 selves these dispositions, which made up the mind in 
 Christ Jesus, we shall be enabled to go farther in a 
 course of steadfast meekness and self-devotion, than if 
 we considered ourselves free to follow every humour of 
 our own. As we stand in imagination under the Cross, 
 it is not the earthquake which should move us ; it is 
 not the darkness which should appear strange ; it is far 
 rather the awful self-resignation of that chief Sufferer, 
 with the cause of his suffering, and the manner of his 
 submission to it : the twelve legions of angels, which He 
 could have called, would have been no such wonder as 
 our Redeemer at once combining and standing between 
 God and man, saying to the Most High, "Father, for- 
 give them ;" and to mankind, " Look unto me, and be 
 saved ;" yet, " whoso taketh not up his cross, and follow- 
 eth not after me daily, cannot be my disciple." 
 
 Without inquiring to-day, whether it is not possible 
 
XIII.] The Prayer on the Cross. 180 
 
 to preach grace too exclusively of providence, so as 
 to make the Gospel of the Son a thing too far sepa- 
 rated from the godliness of the eternal Father, we may 
 still safely remark, that what constitutes the religion of 
 Christ good news to man, is this doctrine of the for- 
 giveness of sins'. Hence even our most solemn remem- 
 brances of that terrible hour of our Master's suffering, 
 have a cheerful, though also a sobering power. They 
 inspire thoughts which have stayed the heart of many a 
 sufferer; and which, if we are wise, will also nerve us for 
 endurance. Hence also, in all the changes of life, we 
 are taught to carry into our transactions with our fellow- 
 men something of that spirit of forbearance, consider- 
 ation, and forgiveness, which speaks in our Saviour''s 
 prayer. 
 
 Nor in vain, brethren, let us be reminded to join in 
 that grand intercession for the spirits of all flesh, which 
 the example of Christ suggests, and the Liturgy of our 
 Church contains. As we pray God mercifully to regard 
 that family of many tongues but of one heart, for which 
 his blessed Son was content to be delivered into the 
 hands of sinful men ; so we commend to his compassion 
 those many in the East and the West who have need 
 that ignorance or contempt of his Word may be taken 
 from them ; but who yet, (we pray,) may be saved 
 among the true Israelites, and made one fold under one 
 Shepherd. 
 
 " Father, forgive them ; for they know not what they 
 do." The Jew knows not how far greater a King than 
 
 ' By the term "forgiveness of sins," our Creeds express " Justifi- 
 cation by faith." 
 
190 The Prayer on the Cross. [serm. 
 
 any whom his prophets expressed has arisen from his 
 race. The Turk knows not how much better an All- 
 righteous God, sympathising with man, is than an arbi- 
 trary and almighty will. The infidel knows not how in 
 losing the embodiment of a fixed historical belief, that 
 passionate and mystical love of God, which he prizes, 
 is apt to evaporate, like water without a vessel. The 
 heretic knows not how that great society, which has 
 gone on growing from the days of Abraham to our own, 
 has numbered among her children alike the civilizers 
 and the priests of the earth; that chiefly Avithin her 
 fold have prayers, and prophecies, and praises worthy 
 of record been breathed from the conscience of men, 
 moved by the Holy Spirit ; and, at least, there a history 
 of most solemn import has been enacted, as well as an 
 inheritance been handed down of the fear of the Lord. 
 
 Nor, again, let any one forget, that the Messiah 
 saying to the Father, "Forgive, for they know not," 
 thereby teaches us, both to make prayers and supplica- 
 tions for all estates of men, and to strive for their moral 
 improvement. Pray we then for the rich, that they 
 may know what an account they must give of their 
 stewardship. Pray too for the poor, that they may 
 know how many of their sufferings come from their own 
 want of providence and management, such as education 
 would teach. Pray for ancient or noble families, that 
 they may know God has prolonged their education over 
 more than one generation, that they may be better 
 instructed to be examples in his inheritance. Pray for 
 merchants and artizans, that with diligence in their 
 callings they may not suffer their souls to be material- 
 
XIII.] The Prayer on the Cross. 191 
 
 ised, and forgetful of all holier aspirations. Pray for 
 the old, that they may know how soon they must stand 
 before their Judge, and make perfect their repentance, 
 growing daily in their desire after heaven. Nor less, 
 pray for the young, that they may know into what irre- 
 vocable beginnings of future evil their little reason and 
 great passion are too apt to hurry them. Nor let us 
 grudge a prayer for lunatics and idiots, that to whom 
 God has not given understanding, he would still grant 
 salvation at the last; and for all prisoners and mourners ; 
 for all emigrants, not knowing that perhaps they are 
 destined to be shipwrecked on some distant shore ; and 
 for all families anywhere visited with the rod of God, let 
 us pray a holy use of the affliction, and consolation or a 
 deliverance, as our Father in Heaven seeth best ; and 
 lastly, for all souls of men departing this life daily, let 
 us ask a sustaining faith in Him who can say, " This 
 day shall ye be with me in paradise ;" and a merciful 
 acceptance Avithin the shelter of the everlasting arms of 
 God our Saviour. 
 
 Father, forgive all these; for they all, in some part of 
 their conduct or their belief, know not Avhat they do ; 
 but, oh Lord ! Thou knowest. Thou knowest whereof 
 we are made ; and even because thou knowest all 
 things, yet still lovest all men, for thou art the Ee- 
 deemer of all, into thy merciful hands we evermore 
 commend our spirits. 
 
 " Let us fall into the hands of God, and not into the 
 hands of men." 
 
 Lampeter, Palm Sunday, March 20, 1852. 
 
SERMON XIV. 
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD A KINGDOM OF THE MIND. 
 
 Behold, the kingdom of God is within you. St Luke xvii. 21. 
 
 It ought not to be denied, that if we had lived in 
 the time of our Saviour we should have been slow to 
 receive as King one who professed his kingdom not to 
 be of this world. We should have been very reluctant 
 to admit the proposition, that Jesus was the Christ. 
 Possibly indeed our reluctance might have been greater 
 in proportion as our acquaintance with Scripture, 
 either as scribes (writers of it), or as Pharisees^ (ex- 
 pounders of it), had tended to render us critical. " Have 
 any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him?" 
 was the question actually asked. "VVe also know that 
 the Jews diligently " searched the Scriptures," for our 
 Lord tells them so (in a mood which every candid 
 scholar admits to be indicative), though probably they 
 did it in a spirit different from that of the ingenuous 
 Ber£eans. When, however, the Jews read in the book 
 
 1 I here adopt what seems morally the most probable, and ety- 
 mologically an admissible, derivation of Pharisee, from a word 
 meaning to expound. Hence the phrase, " dividing the word of 
 truth." 
 
XIV.] The Kingdom of God, &c. 193 
 
 of Deuteronomy of a prophet being raised up like unto 
 Moses, they interpreted the passage of that long suc- 
 cession of prophets, Samuel, Elijah, Daniel, who from 
 time to time should arise, reviving in men's hearts the 
 sound of the word of the Lord. When they read in 
 the second Psalm of " God's anointed" being established, 
 they understood it only of a king, reigning (like David 
 or Solomon) upon the visible rock of Zion. When again 
 in Isaiah they read the text " Israel is my firstborn," 
 they applied all the prophecies respecting the Son and 
 servant of Jehovah, either (as the Jew in Justin Martyr 
 says) to the personified people of Israel ; or (as later 
 Jews say) to the consecrated priesthood, who had charge 
 of the Bible and the temple at Jerusalem. So, once 
 more, in the seventh chapter of Isaiah, by the Virgin 
 who should conceive, they understood some one in the 
 reign of Ahaz; by the child born^ perhaps Maher-shalal- 
 hash-haa:, and by the two kings, Rezin of Syria and 
 Pekin of Samaria. 
 
 In short, there was a deeply-rooted, and perhaps a 
 very natural, reluctance on part of learned Jews, to 
 conceive of the anointed king and deliverer of Israel as 
 a person suffering and bowed to earth by affliction. 
 " That the Christ must needs suffer," or that the pro- 
 phetic king was to be a king " crowned with thorns,"" 
 is one of the main points which the apostles have great 
 difficulty in reconciling to the apprehensions of their 
 hearers. Possibly, indeed, there may have been a moral 
 inability on the part^ of the Jewish people generally to 
 
 1 So R. Lipmann, in his Carmen Memoriale ; R. Isaac; and the 
 author of the Nizzachon Vetus, published by Wagenseil, in 16S1. 
 
 W. S. 9 
 
194 The Kingdom of God [serm. 
 
 conceive the idea of a might, stronger than any might 
 of man, yet destined to prevail only through suffering, 
 or to think a kingdom the " desire of all nations \" 
 which had no kingly attribute, save that it came in the 
 spirit and the power of Him, to whom the angels cry, 
 Holy, Holy, Holy. 
 
 It does not however appear that the above inability 
 was connected with any neglect of the sacred volume 
 which Timothy, for example (though a Jew) had known ^ 
 from a child ; nor that it would have been remedied by 
 a more critical knowledge of the Hebrew text. Eather 
 indeed, if any one wishes to speak candidly as regards 
 the Jews, accurately as regards the sacred text, and 
 still faithfully in respect of the religion of Christ, he 
 must allow that two conditions were required in order 
 to enable a Gamaliel or a Hillel to anticipate the inter- 
 pretations of a St Paul or a St John. The first of those 
 two conditions depended upon no less a power than 
 the wonder-Avorking providence of Almighty God ; the 
 second called for no meaner teacher than the manifes- 
 tation of his grace. 
 
 In the first place, there must have come a change 
 over the history of the world, not necessarily resembling 
 in its outward details the changes anticipated by the 
 prophets, but embodying the same eternal principles 
 which the providence of God had revealed to them, 
 as wrapt up in the working of the events of their own 
 
 1 It must be fully admitted that this text of Haggai is only 
 an accommodation to the Messiah. 
 
 ^ Whether he knew it in pure Hebrew, or in some ancient version, 
 might depend partly on the local language, whether Greek, or Syriac,&c. 
 
XIV.] a Kingdom of the Mind. 195 
 
 time, and as destined therefore, in virtue of their divine 
 origin, ultimately to j^revail. Perhaps Elijah the pro- 
 phet may not come again; Israel may have no second 
 Exodus through the Red Sea out of Egypt ; the law of 
 Moses may not go forth out of Jerusalem ; the altar 
 may not smoke with the sacrifices of rams ; and the 
 child may not with impunity lay his finger on the hole 
 of the asp, or play by the cockatrice's den. But some- 
 thing must happen, analogous, or corresponding, in a 
 way, to the train of sentiment embodied in all those 
 expressions ; some great events, in relation to which the 
 language of the prophets may be only a parable, such 
 as the promised land was of heaven, must with their 
 own invisible finger unroll the scroll, and interpret for 
 us the spirit of the prophecy, even at the risk of re- 
 writing the letter. These events must convince us that, 
 in short-sighted man, as in an earthen vessel, there 
 dwelt the heavenly treasure of an unquenchable anti- 
 cipation of God's doing hereafter on a larger scale, 
 what he had already done in Zion ; and they must 
 present in themselves not necessarily mere parallels, 
 but exemplifications of the same divine dealings which 
 had already moved the spirit of the prophets to speak 
 in the language, and lavish the imagery of things tem- 
 poral, yet feeling more than they could express of 
 things eternal. 
 
 Thus in fact, my brethren, the great and emphati- 
 cally true prophet will be Almighty God. Events, traced 
 on the world's history, as it were, by his finger, and men 
 and NATIONS and priesthoods placed upon the world's 
 stage by his arrangement of the drama, will have been 
 
 9—2 
 
196 The Kingdom of God [serm. 
 
 themselves the fore-shadows of a picture which was to 
 be painted more vividly, the fore-speakers of truths 
 which should afterwards be spoken more distinctly ; and 
 so (it may almost be said) fore-seers, through the strength 
 of the religious affections, of realities already imaged in 
 the analogies of their own hope, and the transactions of 
 their own time. In short, much that is called prophecy 
 will more strictly resolve itself into type ; and not the 
 study of texts will prepare us to expect events, so much 
 as events themselves teach us, that one Divine Governor 
 is repeating on a grander scale the same eternal prin- 
 ciples, of which lie had already scattered no obscure 
 indications in the history of the days of old. 
 
 But secondly, there was required, as already has 
 been said, an expansion of the conscience, and such a 
 pouring out of the clearness of spiritual vision, as might 
 well be called " opening the eyes of the understanding." 
 There must be put aside much natural prejudice, with 
 all such local and personal predilections as acted upon 
 the mind, like a veil between its gaze and the true like- 
 ness of God ; and the removal of such a veil is called, 
 in the language of the New Testament, revelation. For 
 example, it must be seen clearly, that whether God be 
 worshipped in Jerusalem or Samaria, is of little conse- 
 quence, compared to whether He be worshipped in spirit 
 and in truth : for him to call Israel his firstborn is a 
 thing of little value compared to his becoming the Father 
 of all mankind ; and all such distinctions, whether Jew 
 or Scythian, bond or free, Englishman or Italian or 
 negro, vanish into nothing, when compared to that sacred 
 and precious character, which all men's souls have in 
 
XIV.] a Kingdom of the Mind. 107 
 
 common, as being all partakers in some measure of the 
 divine likeness, and as having their thoughts, their affec- 
 tions, and their struggles known long before to Him 
 who has provided (in many mansions) for their everlast- 
 ing welfare. Again ; it was quite necessary that men 
 should understand the only enemy of God to be sin. It 
 follows indeed from what is already said, that neither 
 Esau nor Canaan could be in themselves hateful to God, 
 except so far as they broke away from the embrace of 
 his paternal providence, and refusing his law, chose 
 rather to range themselves on the side of Moral Evil 
 and Darkness against the Lord of Life and Light. 
 
 But a somewhat deeper conception must be enter- 
 tained of the love of God, which passeth knowledge ; 
 at the same time of that holiness to which moral evil 
 alone stands irreconcilably opposed ; so that, by degrees, 
 the mind may expand to this great idea of the kingdom 
 of God being properly a kingdom of love and holiness ; 
 and the only opposite kingdom being the reign of sin. 
 Thus we find St Paul, when the passionate attachment 
 of his youth to the language and the ritual of the Old 
 Testament had been changed by the grace of God into 
 a more heavenly jealousy for things not made with 
 hands, uses this strong expression : sin reigned ; or there 
 was a kingdom of sin in the world, until the kingdom of 
 God, manifesting its grace and truth by Jesus, who is 
 therefore anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power, 
 came forth as a kingdom of godliness. But now, in 
 order for anj' one to have this conception of the king- 
 dom of God, as the reign of goodness, he must have had 
 unveiled to him the face of the Most High ; he must 
 
198 The Kingdom of God [serm. 
 
 have learnt that the Ahnighty is All-righteous; that God 
 is good, and doeth good to all ; that all the highest 
 thoughts we can conceive of justice, mercy, and benefi- 
 cence, are witnesses to us of the will of the All-holy, 
 who is their author and their source ; and that creation, 
 in all its parts, does not more surely attest the ordering 
 power of the Supreme Mind, than all our purer aspira- 
 tions and moral judgments point to the divine amiable- 
 ness of our Heavenly Father. Then, as any one com- 
 pares such an idea of God with that which ruder ages 
 had taught of an irresistible but jealous and capricious 
 power, he may truly say, " God hath done great things 
 for us ;" he may justly infer that to produce this change 
 in men's conceptions, some one must have come forth 
 from the fulness of the divine love ; or rather, that the 
 divine love itself must have taken body and dwelt among 
 us; and so he may enter into the spirit of St John's 
 declaration, " No man hath seen the Father at any time : 
 the only-begotten Son, who ever abides in that intimate 
 relation, which may be expressed by the bosom of the 
 Father, he hath declared him to us." 
 
 Suppose now a person, like St Paul, to have thus 
 determined to know, not Jesus after the flesh, but 
 Christ after the spirit ; suppose him to conceive of the 
 kingdom of God as the reign of goodness instead of 
 a reign of sin, and at the same time to acknowledge 
 its foundations cemented even by the blood of whatever 
 costly offering might be required to convince man of 
 the terrible nature of moral evil, and to represent in the 
 sight of God the penitence of his people, being a some- 
 thing on which every man might, in true contrition, lay 
 
XIV.] a Kingdom of the Mind. 199 
 
 his own iniquities, thereby associating himself alike in 
 profound sympathy and in solemn sacrament with the 
 great sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. 
 
 Suppose our convert farther to find that this pre- 
 vailing sacrifice consisted of no less than the life of the 
 High-priest offering it, and the same High-priest to be 
 also the great revealer of God, by exhibiting in his 
 own person an embodied likeness of that God who, as 
 the Father, is invisible ; suppose, that the divine person, 
 thus incarnate, is in his life rejected ; but that from his 
 death goes forth a virtue such as never death had be- 
 fore ; and that, as in his life He was preacher and priest, 
 so after his death He becomes king in a kingdom which 
 extends from sea to sea, and the sound of his messen- 
 gers goes out from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. 
 "What conception do you imagine our convert would 
 then frame of the relation in which this new religion 
 stood to that which went before ? Would he not say, 
 This certainly is not quite what the expressions of our 
 old preachers of righteousness would have led me to 
 expect — but it is something very far better. They 
 certainly made the temporal Israel play a large part in 
 their visions ; I now see that the Israel which God is 
 daily more vindicating for himself, is either mankind or 
 the divine Eedeemer of mankind ; they thought Elias 
 was to come — perhaps they felt truly that some fervent 
 spirit must precede every great change in God's deal- 
 ings with mankind, and such a spirit we had in our John 
 the Baptist ; they thought of Canaanites and INIoabites 
 being trampled down ; but I now see the sin, the igno- 
 rance, and the hatred, and whatever dark powers may 
 
200 The Kingdom of God [serm. 
 
 suggest evil thoughts to the imagination of man, all 
 trampled under the feet of a people, elect to means of 
 grace, and going from strength to strength ; they 
 thought of great preachers or prophets raised up from 
 time to time ; I now see a perpetual teacher, abiding as 
 the wisdom of God in the hearts of all faithful men ; 
 they imagined, that the Gentiles would learn our written 
 laws ; I already foresee, under the influence of our new 
 kingdom, that far older and holier law, of which man 
 has hitherto had but earthly transcripts, moulding more 
 and more the consciences of successive generations into 
 its own shape ; and although eye hath not seen, nor ear 
 heard the fulness of things heavenly, yet the humblest 
 Christian knows more of the mind of the Spirit than 
 even the great Baptist-— and yet he knew more than the 
 greatest of the prophets before him — so that verily God 
 has come down to tabernacle among men ; and his 
 kingdom, not of sceptre and throne and chariot, but 
 of righteousness, goodness, grace, and truth, is being 
 established from sea to sea. Shall I not then hail the 
 author of this blessed change, as the very anointed, or 
 commissioned messenger of Jehovah, the builder up of 
 the tabernacle of Judah, not indeed by might or by 
 power, but by the Spirit of the living God? Is not this 
 presence of an everlasting love better than any She- 
 chinah in the tabernacle ; are not the graces of a meek 
 and holy character, which spring up wherever the 
 showers of this new and living word have dropt, a 
 greater glory to God, than the spoil which our priestly 
 fathers would have seen wrested from the hills of the 
 robbers? Is not, in short, Jesus of Nazareth, whether 
 
XIV.] a Kingdom of the Mind. 201 
 
 born in great humility, or preaching on the mount, or 
 taking children in his arms, or bowing to his Father's 
 will in agony, or saying, " Father, forgive them " on the 
 cross, a more truly anointed one from on high, than 
 David called from the sheepfold, or he whom the queen 
 of Sheba visited for his wisdom ? Even now, is not His 
 kingdom more emphatically that of heaven in its spirit, 
 and yet more triumphant over earth in extent, more 
 lasting in its perpetual duration of time? Surely, 
 though old things have passed away, though all things 
 have become new, yet this Jesus must be for ever the 
 Christ, not only of Israel, but of all mankind. His 
 words alone do not pass away. For He testifies, when 
 He speaks of heaven, of that which He has seen ; and 
 He keeps alive, as the Lord and Lifegiver, that which 
 his Father bids him plant on earth. 
 
 Perhaps, indeed, no man, save by the Holy Ghost, 
 that is by some inspiration or unveiling of the true 
 character of the Most High, could have said that this 
 Jesus, so rejected of men, was nevertheless the anointed 
 and the representative of God. But I am determined, 
 St Paul might continue, to count no knowledge from 
 any other quarter worth comparing with the blessed 
 glimpses which my Saviour Jesus gives me of the holy 
 and yet merciful character of God the Father; yes, 
 even Jesus cradled in a manger, and Jesus crucified; 
 little as some might look for glory or for instruction 
 from that tree of shame, yet in that strange suffering, 
 where patience is so ineffably mingled with awe ; in 
 the majesty and the humiliation ; in the very con- 
 tempt on the part of man, knowing as we do that this 
 
 9—5 
 
202 The Kingdom of God [serm. 
 
 contempt was undergone for our sake, by One who (if He 
 pleased) could have called for twelve legions of angels ; 
 and in that sharpness of death which was to enable us 
 to say, "Death, where is thy sting?" I recognise one 
 more than conqueror, a revealer of God greater than 
 Moses, a priest holier than Aaron. 
 
 Now, to revert to that old system of our Hebrew 
 polity, it certainly was in many things unlike ; yet, in 
 how many did it not resemble and foreshadow this new 
 kingdom ! The constant sense of a present God ; the 
 sacredness alike of temple and land, of king and priest 
 and people, from their relation to the judge of the 
 whole earth ; then the very ritual, with all its solemn 
 expiations ; and again the men themselves, with all 
 their train of glowing hopes and vague anticipations ; 
 their firm belief that the Lord would never forsake his 
 people ; their hailing every human deliverer as one 
 divinely sent ; and the gradual growing up among them 
 of the idea of some greater Saviour, in whom the 
 glories of the priesthood of Jehovah should culminate; 
 all these, and such things, shew the same God to have 
 governed Israel, who Avill henceforward govern Christen- 
 dom, The same principles have in all ages been at 
 work under his guidance ; the same spirit, or something 
 congenial, has dwelt in the hearts of all his servants ; 
 every writing, in which their deep thoughts have 
 been embodied, (imperfect as those thoughts may have 
 been, compared to the more lively hope into which we 
 are begotten,) was still divinely breathed ; there was a 
 divine spirit in the struggling of their minds; so that 
 even the record of things old should still be reverently 
 
XIV.] a Kingdom of the Mind. 203 
 
 cherished and may be useful' to us, to whom however 
 the promise of God is, that He will write his laws on 
 our hearts, and make our consciences (if indeed we are 
 true children of God) the dwelling-places of his living 
 Spirit. 
 
 Some such train of thought (it is humbly suggested) 
 may be gathered in a general way from St Paul's Epistles, 
 as forming in his judgment a groundwork for acknow- 
 ledging Jesus to be the Christ. It does not seem neces- 
 sary to twist details, by a Procrustean process, into a 
 greater semblance of correspondence than they naturally 
 wear. It may suffice to trace, in all the dealings of God 
 with man, a deep under-current of analogy and harmony. 
 Nor can we wonder that any such views should have 
 exposed St Paul to the reproaches ^ of his countrymen, 
 as one who spake against the revealed religion of their 
 forefathers. The very freedom with which he handles 
 the Old Testament ; the mode in which he seizes an 
 illustration of sentiment from passages of which the 
 obvious sense is something different ; and his bold an- 
 nouncement, that the bondage of the letter killeth, but 
 the freedom of the Spirit maketh alive, must doubtless 
 have differed much from the more literal interpretations 
 of the Scribes and Pharisees. In fact, the Old Testa- 
 ment in the hands of St Paul, is like an instrument of 
 music, transferred from its maker to some skilful player, 
 
 1 cocjieXel- St Paul. Compare Jeremiah's description of the New 
 Covenant. 
 
 2 Even in modern times, as I learn from Mosheim, St Paul has 
 been gravely represented as " a free-thinker in disguise ;" a charge 
 perhaps quite as true as many others in which our "religious" news- 
 papers rejoice. 
 
204 The Kingdom of God [serm. 
 
 whose touch makes it give forth notes of a loftier strain 
 than any it had previously known. Just as in the case of 
 the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, our Lord quickens 
 the text by enabling our minds to feel the life-giving 
 power of God where he is truly known ; so is it with 
 texts about the Messiah. 
 
 Now, it may be remarked, such a method of treat- 
 ment can only be quite justified when a person feels 
 himself commissioned to teach a new doctrine, upon 
 authority equal to that which established the old. Such 
 authority, however, the apostles of Christ are here 
 admitted to have possessed. Nor need I now nicely 
 inquire how far it abides for ever, and from the nature 
 of the case, with those who are " all taught of God." 
 
 But the point which this morning I wish particularly 
 to impress upon my hearers is the nature of that king- 
 dom which our Saviour Christ came to establish, and 
 which the Apostles went preaching throughout the world. 
 You see it is emphatically a kingdom of the mind. It 
 Cometh not with observation : it must be within us. 
 Upon this point all the writers of the New Testament 
 ring as it were the changes again and again. The milk 
 with which they would nourish men is the unadulterate 
 milk of the understanding. The worship they bid us 
 offer is "the worship of the mind';" the consecration, 
 or sacrifice, of our mental being. The word of God 
 which they preach is sometimes that creative word by 
 which we are told in the Psalms that the Heavens were 
 made ; sometimes again it is the judicial word, or the 
 
 ^ This is the indubitable meaning of that text so often mis- 
 quoted and argued upon even by eminent preachers. Romans xii. 1. 
 
XIV.] a Kingdom of the Mind. 205 
 
 sentence of the last day, which we read in the Hebrews 
 is sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing even to 
 the dividing asunder of the joints and marrow, bringing 
 therefore every secret thing to light ; but, oftenest by 
 far, it is the great word or message of a new and living 
 way ; or of a communication open between God and 
 man ; a communication which we may close by sin, and 
 drown the recollection of in all manner of folly ; but 
 which to-day — while it is called to-day — our Saviour 
 Christ by his living presence keeps open, pleading before 
 God the reward which was promised him of a kingdom 
 of goodness, in which He should see of the travail of his 
 soul by men saved from evil ; and pleading also to us 
 all that divine compassion which sent him, that excel- 
 lence which ought for its own amiableness to attract 
 us, and sometimes also that terror which must wait upon 
 mercies rejected : " How long, oh ye fools, will ye love 
 folly, and despise life ?" or, " How shall we escape, if we 
 neglect so great a salvation ?" 
 
 But such a word, my brethren, such a message from 
 the Almighty and All-holy God to his creatures is ever 
 represented in the New Testament as a living and almost 
 a creative thing. It is said to dwell in the heart richly. 
 Its free utterance, either in prayer or in preaching, out 
 of the fulness of the affections, is called the sword of 
 the Spirit. For so in the Epistle to the Ephesians 
 prinxa Qeov means an utterance of God^ But the word 
 itself is declared to. spring up and bear fruit. You see 
 how it dwelt in the Apostles. It so pervaded their 
 
 1 This interpretation is placed beyond doubt by its use in the 
 ancient Greek Liturgies, as I have myself observed. 
 
206 The Kingdom of God [serm. 
 
 minds and lives, that the kingdom of God was within 
 them. They became subjects to a principle of active 
 goodness. It was not sin that reigned, but God who 
 shewed himself thus reigning in them. For every good 
 and perfect gift, every gracious quality, every keen 
 perception, even of great moral truths, and not less of 
 what are particularly called spiritual, is more or less 
 directly from God. So the Apostles, having their 
 affections spiritualised, or their minds hallowed, by a 
 sense of what God had given, and what He required, 
 carried about with them, St Paul says, "the dying of 
 the Lord Jesus." That is, they Avalked through the 
 world like men who had come fresh from their Lord''s 
 cross, and whose thoughts were bent on the meaning, 
 whose lives would fain bear the stamp, of so great a 
 mystery. Nor was this, as regards the Apostles of 
 Christ, a mere garrulous or rhetorical sort of piety. 
 On the contrary, you see the same principle in the 
 sayings of the men, and in their doings. It is out of 
 the fulness of their hearts that the inspiration of their 
 writings speaks. Their epistles are inspired, because 
 their lives were full of the Spirit of God. If any one 
 will only study the writings of St Paul, for example, 
 upon this idea of their being the writings of a living 
 man, fresh from the feelings, and glowing with the 
 experience, of one who knew himself an earthen vessel, 
 but felt that he had a heavenly treasure ; we may 
 guarantee such a reader more insigJit into the Apostle's 
 mind than could be gathered from many a verbose 
 commentary. Not of course that any one wishes to ex- 
 clude the reasonable helps of language and antiquities ; 
 
XIV.] a Kingdom of the Mind. 207 
 
 but no one will ever understand the writings of the 
 Apostles who does not put himself somewhat in the 
 position of the writers, or who refuses to see that the 
 writings are the embodiments of thoughts, which have 
 passed through the minds of living men. 
 
 With respect, however, to the kingdom of God, 
 how many of us here are its true and loyal subjects ? 
 In one sense the Jews were children of the kingdom ; 
 and so in privilege and capacity are we all. Christ 
 came to redeem us all. Very possibly there may be a 
 kind of new Judaism among us, a kind of assertion, 
 almost an affectation, of belonging to Christ, and of 
 saying, "Lord, Lord," with a great zeal for what is 
 distinctive in his revelation of God. But if the king- 
 dom of God be a kingdom of goodness, it must be 
 asked whether the Spirit of Christ has made us good. 
 It is not the most pretentious repeaters of Evangelic 
 language who have always most of the spirit of the 
 Evangile. The kingdom of God must be Avithin us. 
 In that inner realm of motive and thought and aspi- 
 ration. He who is holy must reign over evil thoughts ; 
 He who giveth sight to the blind must restore and 
 quicken our moral intuitions, giving us a power of 
 discriminating between right and wrong ; He who giveth 
 us largely all good things must check our repining 
 spirit; He who is the source of all beauty in art or 
 nature, and of all unspeakable perfection in things 
 heavenly, must engage our strongest affections ; He who 
 is the Judge of the whole earth must guide the general 
 tenour of that life and action, for which every man must 
 in some shape render a true account, even as at the 
 judgment-seat of God. 
 
208 The Kingdom of God [serm. 
 
 If then any of my hearers are in the habit of doing 
 anything upon which they cannot look up to God and 
 ask his blessing, then the kingdom of goodness is not yet 
 established within them ; they are still under that reign 
 or rule of sin which is the irreconcilable opposite of the 
 reign of God our Saviour. Pray we then earnestly to 
 the great searcher of hearts, that He would come and 
 reign over our hearts and lives, thereby setting up his 
 kingdom within us. May we have such a conception of 
 the character of our heavenly King as to say in a new 
 and more earnest spirit than we have often hitherto 
 done, *' Oh thou who art our Father, and all-holy, whose 
 kingdom is the rule of goodness, may thy kingdom more 
 thoroughly come, both in my wayward heart and in all 
 the kingdoms and generations of men ! " 
 
 Lastly, it need not be thought that this true doctrine 
 of the spiritual nature of the kingdom of God leads 
 either to oriental mysticism, or to laxity on the great 
 point of Church unity. 
 
 Not extinguish constituents of nature, but hallow 
 wholly by doing what God intended. Not to mutilate, 
 but to reign over us. 
 
 Nor again, think mere waywardness or play of pas- 
 sion, the rule and the reign of the Spirit. In such an 
 idea we should miss two important elements — humble- 
 mindedness and love. 
 
 We do mean that reign of God, which by implant- 
 ing a right conception and a hearty love of him, will 
 sway our nature. 
 
 This, like the life in a tree, will put forth its leaves 
 and fruit, after its kind. Consider the vine and the Jig- 
 tree. Does not the inner-life of every tree shape itself 
 
XIV.] a Kingdom of the Mind. 209 
 
 into an outward manifestation of form and flower and 
 fruit, according to the prescribed type of its kind ? 
 
 Even so the Spirit of Christ grows into the body 
 of the Church ; puts forth creeds, liturgies, charities, 
 virtues. 
 
 An union of all the ages, a communion of all the 
 saints. 
 
 Though " ignorance at which God winked ;" yet God 
 reigning over the world, and transmuting by preserv- 
 ing it. 
 
 Therefore thank him for all the spirits of the departed. 
 
 Yet acknowledge imperfection and need to say, Thy 
 kingdom come ^ 
 
 Preached at Lampeter, about All Saints', 1852. 
 
 1 This sermon contains some things disputable, especially as re- 
 gards the interpretations of the Scribes and Pharisees. For some of 
 them may have carried a system of allegory and of accommodation 
 as far as Philo, or used a style such as St Paul's about Hagar and 
 the Law. Hence some may contend that all of them did so ; nor 
 could such an assertion be disproved without much diflBcuIt dis- 
 cussion as to the controverted age of various Targums. Walton's 
 Prolegomena and Lightfoot may furnish specimens of such. I con- 
 ceive, however, that the Trypho of Justin Martyr represents a class, 
 and will, together with some hints in the Gospels, sufficiently bear 
 out my representation. But if the reader does not admit this, 
 (though Pearson probably would,) he may still observe, that, as re- 
 gards the general drift of the sermon, the point is a subordinate 
 one ; and leaving that part as disputable, or even, if any one pleases, 
 as dramatic, I feel a strong persuasion that the main outlines of 
 interpretation proposed by me are correct. Nor, on the whole, after 
 allowance for the above, is there any sermon in the volume which 
 better expresses what may seem the peculiarities of my theology, or 
 which I would sooner indicate as a key to the rest. The few closing 
 sentences only consist of hints, which were more formally expanded 
 in preaching. 
 
SERMON XV. 
 
 THE SPIRITS OPERATIONS. 
 
 There are diversities of operations ; but it is the same God, which 
 worketh all in all. 1 Cor. xii. 6. 
 
 It was a weak device of those counsellors, who told the 
 king of Syria, that perhaps the Lord, whom Israel wor- 
 shipped, might be a God of the hills, and not of the 
 plain ; that if he arrayed his army, therefore, in the 
 plain, he might obtain better success. Well might the 
 prophet predict in Israel, that if such were the founda- 
 tion on which the enemy built his hope, it would crum- 
 ble like sand. So it proved in the day of trial. But 
 do not many of the people called Christians fall, some 
 more and some less, into a similar error ? We see it in 
 its grosser form, among persons who set aside one day 
 in seven, or one season in their year, or one or two 
 years at the close of their lives, when they acknowledge 
 themselves miserable sinners ; but spend the rest of 
 their time as if God were for a season dethroned ; or, 
 at least, as if they found no solid satisfaction in becom- 
 ing day by day more conformed to his holy will. 
 
 Perhaps, also, a more subtle form of the same error 
 may be traced in the separation, so frequently esta- 
 
XV.] The Spirit's Operations. 211 
 
 blished, between the religious element in a man and the 
 rest of his being, either as regards practical religion, or 
 doctrinal faith. It is at least not unusual to find per- 
 sons, thoroughly aware that the service of Almighty 
 God is a thing to be approached in a serious frame of 
 mind, and even Avith earnest reverence. They are per- 
 fectly sincere in the respect which they pay to the Holy 
 Scriptures, and Sundays, and other such aids or embo- 
 diments of piety. Yet all this occupies a distinct, and 
 rather a small corner of their heart. The larger portion 
 of that inner world is overrun -with thoughts or desires 
 which, whether directly contrary to true religion or not, 
 are at least never brought into close contact with its 
 tests, or, in short, subjected to its judgment ; but are 
 allowed to occupy an independent domain of their own. 
 Thus, our Lord and Master is allowed to reign with 
 absolute power in a certain limited province of his 
 rightful dominions ; but upon the tacit condition, that 
 neither his word, nor that of his messengers, shall 
 disturb the slumber or control the anarchy of the 
 remainder. 
 
 Now, while such a division (of the inheritance) leads 
 to many painful inconsistencies in the practice and the 
 life of Christians ; so, in points of doctrine, it almost 
 necessarily generates a crowd of delusions, more or less 
 pernicious. Thus men are led to push distinctions, 
 which were convenient enough in idea or in classifi- 
 cation, until they fancy the objects so described to be 
 different in themselves, and even remote in their origin. 
 For instance, in classifying the mere attributes of the 
 mind, they make intellect one thing, and reason, either 
 
212 The Spirit's Operations. [serm. 
 
 the same or something rather larger; but the feelings 
 they make entirely distinct ; even conscience some per- 
 sons treat as a separate portion of the mind. Once 
 assume the reality of such a division, and, if you are 
 asked, which of these portions shall we consider the 
 sphere of things spiritual, or of that divine agent who 
 quickens our sense of them, you most naturally answer, 
 the feelings : or possibly you assign to the infusion of 
 the grace of the Holy Spirit a distinct sphere of its own, 
 but one more in the domain of the feelings than in any 
 other. 
 
 Hence it appears to follow, that whatever can be 
 said in praise of the exceeding precious gift of God's 
 gracious help is also said in disparagement of other 
 attributes of the mind, which are regarded as not so 
 properly its province. Thus, for instance, many good 
 persons take a pleasure in vilifying, either the intellect 
 or knowledge. Thus also, a false antithesis is much in 
 vogue, between faith and reason ; whereas the true 
 opposite of faith is not reason but sense : while again> 
 with more propriety in this case, but still to an unjus- 
 tifiable extent, both the physical world, and the mass of 
 mankind, are considered as almost universally in oppo- 
 sition to God; whereas, in fact, the one bears ten thou- 
 sand traces of the wisdom and the goodness of our 
 Heavenly Father : and various members of the other 
 are constantly employed by him as his instruments, his 
 servants, almoners, and stewards, — why should I fear to 
 say — his representatives? 
 
 Now, setting aside here the historical fact of old 
 civilization having been trodden down by the savage 
 
XV.] The Spirit's Operations. 213 
 
 nations of the North, no one principle, or idea, contri- 
 buted so largely to the corruptions of our still common 
 Christianity in the dark ages, or is so likely to breed 
 analogous evils now, as tiiis notion which I have pointed 
 out, of the gifts of the Holy Spirit being generally at 
 variance with those of the Father and Creator, that is, 
 the third person in the Trinity at variance with the 
 first; God, in short, at variance with himself. For 
 hence it became a sign of grace to quench the very 
 light of that all-embracing wisdom, which is scarcely 
 other than Christ, (for Christ was the reason, or wisdom, 
 which came forth from God, and which lightens every 
 man ;) mere belief in peculiar doctrines acquired a dis- 
 proportionate value, as compared to honesty and purity 
 of intention; castes' of men, who had charge of such 
 doctrines, acquired a corresponding influence ; Christian 
 faith lost its most genuine character, as a living witness 
 in the heart against the temptations of the world, the 
 flesh, and the devil, being represented alternately, as 
 either the blind repetition of some formal text, or an 
 eager excitement under some absorbing impulse. Such 
 at least appear to be the natural results of dividing the 
 house of man's mind against itself, or of forgetting what 
 the Apostle teaches, that our whole body, and mind, 
 and spirit, are to be sanctified ; and every thought 
 brought into obedience to Him whose service is true 
 freedom. Indeed, it may generally be suspected, that 
 where teachers of religion would dwarf the mind, for 
 the sake of quickening the spirit, they are more or less 
 
 1 Not, however, that the Christian clergy hare ever been strictly 
 a caste; foi" their office has never been hereditary. 
 
214 Tlie Sjnrifs Operations. [serm. 
 
 conscious, or at least apprehensive, of some weak point 
 in their system which would not bear being tested by 
 the light. But whatever plant our Heavenly Father 
 hath not planted shall be rooted up. In venturing, 
 then, brethren, to call your attention on this day 
 to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, I desire to do so 
 under the guidance of this idea ; that, as in the natural 
 world there are diversities of operations, but it is the 
 same God which worketh, so in the spiritual world 
 there are diversities of gifts, but all these given in 
 the undivided personality of man by one and the self- 
 same spirit. 
 
 Cast back your thoughts, then, for a moment to 
 that old chaos, when earth was yet without form and 
 void, and say, what influence then brooded over the 
 deep, either casting in a new m©uld the ruins of a 
 former system, or breathing for the first time the seeds 
 of animation. Surely, it was no other than the Spirit 
 of God which then hovered over the waters; although, 
 probably, the Hebrew writer did not intend us so to 
 understand this operation of the Spirit as to exclude 
 what we are elsewhere taught, that the unsearchable 
 power of the Father made the worlds by the coeternal 
 wisdom manifested in His Son ; yet, wherever life is 
 spoken of, the Scriptures appear to ascribe it in some 
 measure to the agency of the Spirit, But, more simply, 
 it is to God, whether acting as Father, or Son, or as 
 Holy Spirit, that every power and instinct even of the 
 animal creation is ascribed. When He letteth his breath 
 go forth, they are made ; from his hand they seek their 
 food ; at his voice they fill the forest with their young ; 
 
XV.] The Spirit's Operations. 215 
 
 when He withdraws the influence which sustained them, 
 they are turned again to their dust. 
 
 But, since their soul (I use the word here in its 
 classical sense) is thus merely a vital one, and does not 
 rise to the responsibility of mind — since they spring up 
 and are cut down like the grass — their life seems only 
 removed by one degree of refinement above that of 
 mere vegetation ; both, as it were, bubble forth where- 
 ever a channel is opened for the affluence of life, 
 scattered everywhere by the Creator's hand ; and both, 
 when the purpose of their existence ends simultaneously 
 with its means, are absorbed again into the elements, 
 from whence new forms of beauty or enjoyment are to 
 spring. 
 
 There is nothing which should startle us in the 
 assertion, that we too partake of this lower life. We 
 are formed out of the same dust as the flower and the 
 worm. Especially, all our passions and our appetites 
 (I do not say our human feelings) are the same in kind 
 as those of mere animals. But the new element, which 
 in man is superadded, may be most simply defined as 
 the power of thinking. AVhatever thinks, is mind ; no 
 matter of what substance it may be made. Nor has 
 any one yet explained how mere soul, that is life, can 
 become mind. We do, indeed, see how, under the 
 influence of thinking and consciousness, many of our 
 passions may be refined so as to become human feel- 
 ings; we allow that fear may be trained into reverence; 
 that hope, by having higher things proposed to it, may 
 be turned aside from unworthy objects ; and that mere 
 appetite may be made the foundation of some virtues. 
 
216 The Spirit's Operations. [serm. 
 
 That the power of thinking works through all these, 
 I both admit and contend; but Avhence this thinking 
 power is generated, whence comes this consciousness, 
 in virtue of which we say " I and We," are questions in 
 no way so simply answered as by the supposition, that 
 mind is a higher form of soul, but inbreathed by the 
 same universal Spirit of God. 
 
 But He, who creates, does He not also sustain ? So 
 affirm both reason and Scripture. It is that Spirit of 
 God, to whom all hearts are open, by whom we must 
 conceive such attractions to be presented as will con- 
 stitute motives to do whatever is characteristic of 
 rational men. Through the power which He upholds, 
 and the impulse which He suggests, men do not herd 
 together merely as animals, owning no control save 
 that of fear, or want, but they organise themselves 
 into societies and recognise mutual rights, of which the 
 sanctions seem to grow in strength the more purely 
 moral they become. Opinion, for instance, becomes 
 stronger than bodily compulsion ; the sense of shame 
 casts out fear ; a feeling of justice resists filthy lucre ; 
 and love is often stronger than death. Here, then, is 
 mind, properly so called, wielding for good ends the 
 mere brute forces of the world, over which it is con- 
 scious of having inherited a rightful mastery : and 
 although such motives as have been spoken of are 
 developed by the contact of man with man ; by educa- 
 tion rather than by ignorance, and by society rather 
 than solitude, he is indeed thrice blinded who does not 
 ' allow such results to have been foreseen, and arranged, 
 and fostered by Him who not only made the eye, and 
 
XV.] The Spirit's Oj^erations. 217 
 
 planted the car, but who knoweth our thoughts long 
 before. Did God make the aeorn, and did he not 
 foresee the oak ? Has he smitten the rock so that the 
 waters flow ; and shall we not ascribe to him the re- 
 freshment which flows on for the thirsty mouths of a 
 thousand generations ? 
 
 By the Spirit of God, then, I say, the ancient heroes 
 founded kingdoms, and legislators devised laws, and the 
 fair fabric of every science was reared, having had its 
 twin foundations long ago laid, partly in the constitution 
 of nature, and jDartly in the unfolding recesses of the 
 human mind. Nor have the greatest men of all nations 
 feared to acknowledge this source of their inspiration. 
 Their very fables were born of this instinct. The Muse 
 of the old poets, sacred as they deemed her, the Nymph 
 who taught Numa . his laws, the whispers in which 
 father Jove counselled Scipio Africanus, as well as the 
 dedication of his great rival, while yet a boy at the 
 altar, and even the strange pride which Attila took in 
 calling himself the Flail of God, are all more or less 
 conscious witnesses to the same principle. Think not 
 that all these things were, as bad men conclude, judging 
 from themselves, gross impostures ; but although the 
 ill-trained aspirations settled down into religions so 
 imperfect that we rightly call them false, still recognise 
 in them some approximation to the truth, — something 
 to be treated by us as tenderly as the unknowing wor- 
 ship of Athens was by St Paul. At least you will allow 
 that the strong devotion of Columbus was not uncon- 
 nected with the keen presentiment, which on scientific 
 grounds he chei'ished, of a new world to be discovered ; 
 w. s. 10 
 
218 Tlie Spirits 02oerations. [serm. 
 
 you will scarcely exclude either Bacon, or Newton, or 
 Milton from a similar verdict ; how then can we refuse 
 to say, that the greatest triumphs achieved by the 
 human mind, in undertakings which required a complete 
 balance of all its powers, are due in some sense to the 
 inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God ? 
 
 But if this has been the case with the giants, why 
 not also with the masses ? for God made not only the 
 cedar of Lebanon, but every green herb, even to the 
 hyssop which groweth upon the wall. If, on the whole, 
 the lot of that uneasy multitude, which (notwithstanding 
 all its faults) Christ pitied as he looked upon it, be 
 on the whole improving as the world advances ; if 
 thousands now enjoy what was once scarcely open to 
 tens; if the general spread of intelligence be accom- 
 panied with a correspondent increase of comforts ; and 
 if many nations now mingle the produce of their craft 
 or their field, thus acknowledging the universal brother- 
 hood of mankind, where once they would have met 
 only to slay and to burn ; is it wisdom, or is it a short- 
 sighted want of faith, which is afraid of recognising in 
 this linked march of the nations, a careei' not unguided 
 of God's good Spirit; not unproductive (we humbly 
 trust) of his will ; and tending (as w^e heartily pray) to 
 hasten forward his kingdom ? 
 
 By the Holy Spirit, then, I say, we are men. But 
 yet may He also mercifully grant that we become 
 something more. Not that it is a little thing to become 
 manly, or that there is any wisdom in contemptuous 
 disparagement of our humanity. Yet it would be a 
 greater achievement if we could also become god-like : 
 
XV.] The Spirit's Operations. 219 
 
 for when man returns to his dust, his thoughts, so far 
 as they are earthly, perish with him ; but those who 
 have become truly, and in effeet, sons of God, will find 
 him not a God of the dead, but of the living. 
 
 Now, here it is the same Holy Spirit who gives 
 us power thus to become partakers of the divine nature; 
 even that imperishable nature over which our Lord has 
 shewn that death has no power. In considering then 
 the operation by which the Spirit works this end, 
 perhaps it will be allowed me to invert the order in 
 which his sevenfold gifts are usually enumerated, and 
 to commence (for convenience's sake) with the spirit 
 of fear. 
 
 It is the Holy Ghost, who, finding in our natures 
 the sensation of fear, imprints upon this yielding soil 
 due impressions of the power and majesty of our eter- 
 nal God. He teaches us the madness of striving with 
 one who is Almighty ; of attempting to deceive one 
 who is omniscient ; of hoping to be overlooked by one 
 who will bring every hidden thing to light. Thus the 
 Holy Spirit turns a faculty of our nature to its proper 
 end ; and though his agency in this process cannot be 
 an object of sensation, we infer its reality from the 
 result. He persuades us to fear God, and promises 
 us in return, that we shall fear nothing besides. Thus 
 the righteous is bold as a lion. 
 
 Secondly, the Holy Spirit gives us ivisdom. He 
 at once finds and also upholds in our nature the power of 
 forming general ideas. He directs this faculty, so that 
 it acquires a strong perception of moral truths. It 
 becomes conscious that the difference between right 
 
 10—2 
 
220 The Spirit's Operations. [serm. 
 
 and wrong is as eternal and immutable as are the 
 thoughts of Him who is eternally the same ; and that 
 true happiness can only come from harmony of our 
 will with that word which abideth for ever in the 
 heavens. This perception of moral truths is wisdom. 
 We have represented the fear of the Lord as the 
 beginning of it. 
 
 Thirdly, the Holy Ghost gives us understanding. 
 He, who knoweth the mind of the Creator, must needs 
 know that we have the faculty of observation, of noticing 
 what suits our own case, and of devising means to suit 
 practical ends. Accordingly, he lays hold of this capa- 
 city and consecrates it. He teaches us thereby to make 
 application, in our own case, of those general truths 
 which it was the province of wisdom to discern. By 
 spiritual understanding, then, is meant a spiritual feeling 
 of our own personal duties ; and not without reason, 
 for every man's peace, are we taught to pray that the 
 Holy Ghost would awaken in each of us this prac- 
 tical gift. 
 
 Fourthly, it is the same SjDirit who teaches us 
 counsel. In all human matters men learn from expe- 
 rience, and profit by reflexion. It is only because the 
 children of light are not so wise in their generation, 
 that they too often fail to profit by the experience of 
 past error ; they stumble to-day where they stumbled 
 yesterday. Yet, surely, God gave us the power of 
 considering our ways, of cross-examining our hearts, 
 and of inquiring with all good men, and good books, 
 and prayers, and meditations, how we might best avoid 
 the old pitfall ; or how most securely walk between 
 
XV.] TJie Spirit's Operations. 221 
 
 pleasure and moroseness, between presumption and 
 despondency, on the way that leadeth to life. God, 
 I say, gave us this faculty, and his Spirit also enables 
 us to turn it to good account. 
 
 The immediate result, however, of thus taking 
 counsel with the Spirit, is that which may be men- 
 tioned as his fifth gift. This gift is either the spirit 
 of " ghostly strength," or at least an earnest endea- 
 vour to seek it. By taking counsel we have learnt 
 our weakness ; we now seek for strength. Hence all 
 those earnest sighs, and supplications, which in earthly 
 distress are directed to some human helper, are now 
 lifted up to Him, from whom cometh the preparation 
 of the heart. For the Spirit easily persuades us, that 
 it is only by frequent lifting up our thoughts, and 'ly 
 conversing as it were (even out of the silent depths 
 of our mind) with the Lord of light and holiness, there 
 can be any chance of our drawing nearer to God, and 
 restoring in our minds his likeness. By thus touching 
 our conscience, and by thus informing us of both our 
 strength and our weakness, — our strength when work- 
 ing with God, and our weakness when following lawless 
 desires, — the Spirit becomes our Comforter and our 
 fountain of ghostly strength. 
 
 But, now, since there is danger lest mere earnest- 
 ness of prayer and aspiration be directed to some wrong 
 object, or spend itself in mere passionate zeal, we have 
 great need of right knowledge ; and such knowledge 
 is the sixth gift of the Holy Spirit. Probably He gave 
 the first five to good men among all mankind ; to such as 
 Socrates, who believed himself daily kept back from sin by 
 
222 The Spirit's Operations. [serm. 
 
 a divinely-awakened conscience, as by " a divine sign ;" 
 and to such as Cicero, who taught that no man could 
 be great without a certain divine inspiration. But this 
 sixth gift of right knowledge is reserved for those, who 
 have known the light of the only-begotten Son. In 
 order to give it us what an array of means were not 
 resorted to ! yet all of them connected with our natural 
 faculties. For this end the Spirit taught prophets to 
 predict the Gospel and apostles to teach it, and various 
 eyewitnesses to write Scriptures, and the church to 
 receive them, and martyrs to die rather than surrender 
 them for destruction. And although all Scriptures are 
 read most profitably by those who partake most largely of 
 the same Spirit which originally animated their writers ; 
 yet the mere Scriptures themselves supply tests b}'^ which 
 we may try our own possession of the true Spirit ; while, 
 as a record of facts which accompanied the foundation 
 of our religion, they give us more precise ideas of its 
 nature ; and, in short, furnish us with a bod}' of know- 
 ledge into which, however, the Spirit must breathe life. 
 Moreover, as at Pentecost the Holy Ghost first came 
 with most manifest and unprecedented power, because 
 the Son had just returned to the Father ; so the same 
 order is still observed. It is when the facts of our 
 blessed Saviour's incarnation, his holiness, his mercy, 
 his suffering, his triumph over the grave, have been 
 most vividly presented to our minds, that the Holy 
 Ghost has most power to convince us of sin, and of 
 judgment, and of righteousness. For He then works, not 
 upon ignorance, but upon knowledge : indeed, though 
 his special province is not so much to reveal external 
 
XV.] The Spirit's Operations. 223 
 
 facts, yet He indirectly increases that knowledge ; for by 
 his gift of wisdom He confers upon every fact, other- 
 wise known, its most pregnant significance ; and by his 
 gift of understanding enables us to view it in its most 
 heavenly bearing. Why should w^e wonder then, that 
 all well instructed Christians have ever believed the 
 Holy Spirit to be more especially guaranteed or given 
 in the two sacraments? For in these, as the inter- 
 cessor on the part of man, He exhibits before highest 
 heaven a lively image of the tremendous Sacrifice upon 
 the cross for the sins of the world, and repeats by way 
 of humble memento the pledge of the covenant, Which 
 God solemnly sware, in virtue of that sacrifice, should 
 endure for ever : in these also, as the intercessor on 
 behalf of a Father yearning to be reconciled with 
 disobedient children. He exhibits before the eyes of 
 our mind the Man of sorrows and acquainted with 
 grief, the Holy One smitten for our transgressions, the 
 Well-beloved of the Father turning back upon us the 
 life-giving mercy of God's averted countenance, by 
 exclaiming himself in agony, "My God, my God, why 
 hast Thou forsaken me?" 
 
 Even so, brethren, the Spirit comes with know- 
 ledge ; and is, in the natural order of things, able to 
 work more effectually upon such knowledge, than upon 
 the mere aspiration of a conscientious but an ignorant 
 heathen. We know the external facts, it may be said, 
 partly by the ordinary providence of God, by the 
 memory, the writing, and the handing down, which 
 ordinarily preserve historical facts ; it is the quickening 
 and expanding influence of the Spirit (yet still the 
 
224 The Spirit's Operations. [serm. 
 
 Spirit acting through the medium of our natural powers 
 and feelings), which awakens us to draw the legitimate 
 inference, which teaches us that henceforward the very 
 love of Christ should constrain us, that we should no 
 longer live to ourselves, but to God, who both made 
 us and also loved us, as He looked upon our lost 
 estate. 
 
 Nor yet, brethren, let any one be startled by this 
 view of the operations of the Holy Spirit, as if it ex- 
 plained too much away in making the channels of their 
 efficiency the natural powers and feelings of the mind. 
 For what better test could you wish of " a standing or 
 a falling " soul, than whether each of its faculties do 
 the work for which God intended it? If our fear be 
 raised into pious reverence, our hope fixed chiefly on 
 heaven, our affections the first steps of a ladder 
 reaching to the sky, our animal souls become rational 
 minds, and our minds spiritualized, the lower instru- 
 ment obeying the higher, and the higher serving God, 
 what more do we want to assure us of being taken 
 out of Adam into Christ? We have then our divine 
 Master's abiding test : we keep his commandments : 
 we do the will of the Father. Only let no man think 
 that so great a happiness is the gift of any less per- 
 son than that Spirit of God, which, when considered 
 in this Christian relation, we term with peculiar pro- 
 priety, the Holy Ghost. 
 
 If still any one yearns for a more sensible presence, 
 let me remind him, we walk by faith. Now what is 
 seen is not strictly believed. It is not an object of 
 faith. If you felt the Spirit, it would no longer be 
 
XV.] The Spirit's Operations. !225 
 
 spiritual. You would not then walk by faith. But 
 herein consists the excellence and the power of faith, 
 that as from creation it infers a God, so from the 
 renovation of God's primeval handwriting on our minds 
 it infers the Holy Ghost. The personal witness in 
 either case consists in this inference by faith of an 
 unseen agent from visible effects. The tree becomes 
 fruitful ; we know who must have watered the root, 
 though it lay far below the surface of human con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 Yet I will not quarrel with any one who chooses 
 to call the joyful feeling of devout and hallowed affec- 
 tions a sort of sensible witness. Only faith ought to 
 lie deeper than temperament. 
 
 Therefore, dearly beloved, if your hearts are touched 
 by any pious or earnest emotion, as you think either of 
 God's bounty, or his Son our Lord's sufferings to redeem 
 us, fear not in humility to hope that so good a gift 
 oometh from above. Pray, in calm and tranquil faith; 
 that He who has put into your minds good desires, 
 would mercifully bring the same to good effect. So, 
 when those sound words fall upon your ears, which, 
 surviving time, and darkness, and persecution, have 
 come down to us from the apostolic age, " Lift up your 
 hearts unto the Lord," fear not in all sincerity to 
 answer, " We lift them up unto the Lord." For by his 
 strength we stand, and it is He who giveth us the 
 blessing of peace. So, being steadfast in faith, joyful 
 in hope, and rooted in charity, may you receive that 
 last of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, which is god- 
 liness We are now called the children of God ; blessed 
 
 10 — 5 
 
226 The Spirit's Operations. [serm. xvi. 
 
 are we if we receive this our inheritance of resembling 
 our Father which is in heaven. Having this, what more 
 need we pray for ? This, brethren, which by the help 
 of the Holy Spirit you may attain if you will, is the 
 crowning gift ; in virtue of this blessing the Christian 
 will say, " Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in 
 peace." For when our whole human nature has thus 
 become godly, I most fully admit the divine will out- 
 live the human. The faith, which had reason so long 
 as its companion, will at last outrun it. They will walk 
 in company throughout life ; but when they come in 
 sight of the sepulchre, reason will stand and hesitate, 
 but faith will press on into the very chamber of the 
 grave, and there exclaim, " He is not here, but risen." 
 Perhaps reason may still question, "How can these 
 things be ?" But faith will reply exultant, " I know in 
 whom I have believed ; therefore I will not fear : though 
 my heart and my flesh fail, Thou, O God, art my por- 
 tion, and the lot of my inheritance for ever." 
 
 Therefore to Him, who both sustaineth our steps in 
 life, and can alone uphold us when we pass through the 
 many waters, be all glorious majesty, wisdom, teaching, 
 and salvation ascribed, with thanksgiving, now and for 
 ever. 
 
 Lampeter, June 7, 1851. 
 
SERMON XVL 
 
 GOD WORKING HITHERTO. 
 
 My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. St John v. 17. 
 
 These words were spoken by our blessed Lord, after He 
 had both healed the impotent man at the pool of Beth- 
 esda, and had also ordered him to carry his bed on 
 the Sabbath-day. The same sort of question might be 
 raised here, as in another very similar passage, where we 
 read, that the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath. 
 For it may be asked, on what ground does our Saviour 
 assert the right of working on the Sabbath-day? Many 
 will answer, that He does so on account of the dignity of 
 his own divine person. "A greater than David is here;" 
 or, "the Son of Man is Lord." Others again will prefer 
 answering, it is on account of the sacred character 
 which attaches to all works of charity, rendering it 
 proper for us to be zealously affected in such good 
 things at all times. So that it is lawful to do good 
 even on the Sabbath-day. 
 
 Again, a third party will not scruple to remark, that 
 however true may be the above reasons, they admit of 
 being associated with a third, namely, the entire abro- 
 gation of the Jewish Sabbath by the bringing in of a 
 better covenant. For, when God wrote his new law in 
 the heart or conscience of mankind, that which was old 
 
228 God ivorJcmg hitherto. [serm. 
 
 was ready to vanish away. Just, then, as the temple at 
 Jerusalem perishes, when the whole earth becomes God's 
 dwelling-place ; and just as the seed of Aaron and Levi 
 lose their exclusive honours, when the whole congrega- 
 tion are consecrated into a capacity of becoming priests; 
 so the Jewish Sabbath becomes obscured when the 
 whole life of every Christian man is consecrated with a 
 dedication of his being to God. The Jew might give 
 one day in seven; we must hallow the whole seven to 
 the Lord. There is only a Christian Sabbath in exactly 
 the same modified sense as there is also a Christian 
 priesthood ^ 
 
 Thus, if the Son of INIan is Lord, so also are his 
 followers and his brethren lords of the Sabbath. For 
 He is not only our Master, but our brother. Nor is He 
 only our Mediator, but also our example. Whatsoever 
 things are his are ours. Thus, even as He is Lord of 
 the Sabbath, so the Sabbath is merely made for man. 
 (This must not be understood for man as a beast, but 
 for man as an immortal and spiritual being.) Hence, 
 
 1 That the priestly or clerical office of Christians differs from that 
 of Jews or Heathens, and that it has only an r;ts<r«mc?ita^ value, may be 
 cordially admitted. But I confess myself unable to understand the 
 history, or the etymology, of those who contend, that even Hiereus or 
 sacerdos means propei-ly a slayer of victims ; or that priest, the short 
 form of presbyter, cannot be used without meaning Hiereus; or that, 
 if it did mean Hiereus, there would be any harm in it. Wherever 
 there are sacred offices, there is properly a doer of sacred things. 
 The New Testament tells no more against a priesthood than against 
 a Sabbath, though it discourages Judaic hardness in both. Nor are 
 men found practically better, either for having the pastoral office 
 ' reduced to a mere mission of preaching, or for having its esteem 
 secularized into that of a human ministry : but the latter liberty 
 seems especially to become a cloak of ignorance and instability. 
 
XVI.] God working hitherto. 22D 
 
 the great Apostle Paul is not afraid to say, " Let no 
 man judge you in respect of a Sabbath-day." 
 
 All the above answers appear to have so much truth 
 in them, that none can be entirely gainsaid. Yet 
 probably no one of them would be complete without 
 some consideration of the other two. To begin with 
 the last, we cannot overlook the fact that our Saviour 
 claimed the same freedom for his disciples which He 
 practised for himself. It was the disciples (and not 
 Jesus) who plucked the ears of corn. Thus in the 
 chapter before us our Lord bids the impotent man, who 
 had been healed, carry his bed. That was not necessary 
 to his cure. It was not therefore merely the works of 
 charity or necessity', but it was the general liberty of 
 working whenever work might be spiritually wholesome, 
 which our Saviour vindicated for all mankind. 
 
 Yet again, it must be noticed that the works which 
 our Saviour freely chose to do on the Sabbath were 
 works characteristic of his own gracious mind. They 
 are, in fact, works of 'healing and of teaching and of 
 shewing mercy, rather than choosing sacrifice. If any 
 man then have the mind which was in Christ Jesus, he 
 also will freely choose, on any day consecrated by pious 
 custom, or by the Church in her conscientious inspira- 
 tion, to do the work of visiting the sick, of teaching the 
 ignorant and them that are of low estate, or of praying 
 to our Father which seeth in secret, rather than enjoy- 
 ing the indulgences which come of sin, and which tend 
 unto death. Let us never, in denying the Jewish Sab- 
 bath, learn to despise or desecrate any opportunity of 
 serving God in freedom of spirit. 
 
230 God wo7'king hitherto. [serm. 
 
 Then again, mounting back to our first answer, we 
 cannot but acknowledge, in the speaker of the words of 
 our text, one who has declared himself greater than 
 David, and who says, in a very emphatical manner, 
 " Because my Father worketh hitherto, therefore I also 
 work." " Therefore," we read in our chapter, " the 
 Jews sought the more to kill him, because he said that 
 God was his Father, making himself equal with God." 
 
 Shall we try and consider in Avhat sense the Father 
 of our Saviour, and our Father, worketh hitherto ? We 
 should conceive of God as having created the world, 
 not like a carpenter makes a chair by nailing together 
 timbers and hammering them ; but rather like a sower 
 who scatters with lavish hand the elements pregnant 
 with life and joy. His breath is the breath of life ; his 
 looking upon things with the eyes of his mind is that 
 which causes them to be ; his thoughts are our events ; 
 his power, wisdom, and beneficence, are the omnipresent 
 fountains from which wonder and order and beauty 
 have their flow. As the light shiiles, and the fire warms, 
 and the stream flows, so the Father and Author of life 
 cannot fail to make alive. He is not weary of creating, 
 or of upholding. His arm is not shortened. His com- 
 passions fail not, but are new every morning. 
 
 Some of us may remember how a great divine' 
 protests against this tone of thought being pushed so 
 far as to make the Deity create, from any internal 
 necessity of impulse. For he piously argues that it 
 would detract from the perfection of the Most High, 
 if we did not suppose all his works to be guided by the 
 
 1 Pearson. 
 
XVI.] God ivorhing hitherto. 231 
 
 free choice, or volition, of supreme wisdom. We reckon 
 it even in man an imperfection, though an actually 
 existing one, that his mere impulses should often urge 
 him to greater ends than his understanding has fore- 
 east. We must not then ascribe to the Creator any 
 less perfect guidance than that free choice which is of 
 self-determining wisdom. 
 
 Yet the same divine is not afraid to say that the 
 eternal Father must, by the necessity of his goodness, 
 have an eternal Son. For the Deity, he conceives, 
 cannot be envious or self-centered in jealous exclusive- 
 ness, but must put forth from eternity his very likeness, 
 an '■ alter ego," and a partaker of his being, that so his 
 goodness may be communicated abroad, and mankind 
 may have a Mediator, and the world, through the Son, 
 may have access to the Father, thereby learning the 
 infinite God not only as a Creator, but as a Saviour. 
 
 We will not, then, liken God altogether to things 
 of earth. We will not say that fountain, or light, or 
 paternity, in flowing, or shining, or having children, 
 give more than a faint likeness of that life wherewith 
 the Father worketh hitherto, in making known his good- 
 ness to men. But some such necessity as there is for 
 the humane to relieve suffering, for the bountiful to be 
 liberal after his means, or for the pure-minded to shrink 
 from sin, we may perhaps piously ascribe to the loving- 
 kindness of Him who " openeth his hand and filleth all 
 things living with plenteousness." Such a necessity 
 does not take away from the freedom of the will, but 
 only shews that the will is a good will. Just as we do 
 not make a man imperfect by saying in his praise that 
 
232 God ivorking hitherto. [serm. 
 
 it would be impossible for him to do a base thing ; so 
 neither do we ascribe imperfection to God by believing 
 that so long as his eternal throne stands fast, so long 
 the streams of life and goodness must ever flow from 
 the depth of his divine and creative will. May we then 
 not venture to say, if you will receive it, for our text 
 leads us in that direction, Almighty God has no Sab- 
 bath : for He is never weary, but He worketh hitherto ? 
 Or rather, if you please, He has one eternal Sabbath. 
 For He is Good. To do good is with him to rest. 
 That which we call rest, as the refreshment of weari- 
 ness, can have no place in the things which belong to 
 God. But to rest in doing good, in creating and up- 
 holding and restoring, is the glorious prerogative of 
 Him who calls himself the Eternal. I am. He saith, 
 that which I will be. 
 
 But we have spoken hitherto of that eternal life of 
 power and beneficence which manifests itself in creation. 
 Dare we go on, without being over-awed, to observe, 
 that the moral attributes of God, his overruling judg- 
 ment, and his righteousness as well as his mercy, must 
 also have the same eternal activity? Or is it to any of 
 us (surely to some it may well be) too overwhelming 
 a thought, that to take account of all our actions, and 
 to judge us hourly for the things we do pleasing in our 
 own eyes, is no less certainly part of the life of Him 
 whose name is Holy, the Judge of the whole earth. 
 " He that formeth the eye, shall he not see ? and he that 
 planteth the ear, shall he not hear?" He that fashioneth 
 the hearts of all nations, shall not He punish whatever 
 thoughts are contrary to that inspiration of his law 
 
XVI.] God ivorking hitherto. 233 
 
 which He hath written on their conscience ? " Verily I 
 say unto you, whatsoever things ye have spoken in 
 secret, shall be proclaimed on the housetops." For our 
 Judge worketh up to the present hour. He is bringing 
 to light, in our face, in our gestures, in our conduct, in 
 the destiny of our whole lives, and in the sentence 
 already prepared for us to hear before his throne, the 
 sin we acted long ago, the perverseness of our child- 
 hood, and the iniquities of our riper years, the indul- 
 gence which we would not deny ourselves, and the 
 passion which we would not curb. All these things are 
 seeds which are for ever growing up into plants of 
 doom. If any man, who has reached middle life, can 
 assemble together the group of his youthful acquaint- 
 ances, and think over the memory of those who have 
 died, he will be stricken with solemn awe to find the 
 actions of the youth of each reflected visibly on the 
 features of one, the form of another, the fortunes or 
 character of a third, and often on the shortened career 
 of those who have dropt into the tomb. These things 
 are so because the boy is the father of the man. Not 
 less, brethren, let us add, the man is the child of an 
 eternal inheritance. And again, these things are so on 
 earth, because God is a living God, and He worketh 
 hitherto. His hand unseen upholds the visible curtain 
 of our lives. Even so, it may be argued, will these 
 things ripen into everlasting fruit, because God is not 
 a God of the dead, but of the living. That life, which 
 partakes of his Spirit, He will ever uphold ; that sin 
 which has continued in obstinate rebellion against his 
 law, his everliving righteousness cannot cease to punish. 
 
234 God working hitherto. [serm. 
 
 Thus, because our God worketh for ever, the wicked 
 go away into everlasting punishment as surely as the 
 righteous into life eternal. If you know these things, 
 happy are ye if ye think on them in time. 
 
 To any man of ordinary reflection, few things can 
 be more sobering than the strong perception of this 
 truth, that God necessarily works, even as He lives 
 eternally. Just as a Cambridge mathematician said 
 Milton's Paradise Lost appeared to him comparatively 
 tame, but there were things in the discoveries of Sir 
 Isaac Newton which made his hair stand on end, so no 
 flight of imagination can equal the terrible charm which 
 belongs to the severe beauty of naked truth. " Our 
 Father worketh hitherto," and whatever we do is in 
 some sense only a part of his work. Not that, again, 
 He uses us as a carpenter uses his tools ; but rather as 
 a gardener uses the living trees which he has planted; 
 or, as some tree itself enables all the branches which 
 partake of its life to put forth blossom and fruit in 
 the strength of that stem whose offspring they are. 
 But on such a point all metaphors fail, or only approxi- 
 mate, at best. 
 
 How far the living activity of God might also 
 present itself to us as a ground of comfort, if we were 
 left to our unassisted hopes of his fatherly mercy, is 
 happily a question which we are spared the necessity of 
 considering. For, by observing what sort of works his 
 only-begotten Son (our Saviour) did on the Sabbath, 
 and on every day, we learn to our consolation in what 
 the work of the eternal God partly consists. When 
 our Lord made his own likeness to the Father an 
 
XVI.] God working hitherto. 235 
 
 apology for saving life, He revealed to us the nature of 
 the eternal Godhead. AVhen He saw the impotent and 
 the blind, to give strength and sight became the work 
 which He did in concert with the Father ; when He 
 saw the poor, his life was to declare good news to them; 
 when He saw the ignorant, his work was to teach them ; 
 When He saw the widow cast her mite into the treasury, 
 his work was to praise her humble offering. When He 
 heard the Pharisees in pride call the people accursed for 
 not knowing the Scripture, his work was to warn them, 
 that the pure instincts of holiness which the Spirit of 
 God keeps alive in the simple, are better than all the 
 disputations of the scribe. From such works of com- 
 passion, righteousness, and judgment, the Sabbath 
 brought Jesus no rest. For in his personality dwelt an 
 element of the Infinite \ Avhich is not comprehended by 
 space or time. He partook of that eternal being, which 
 manifests itself to the world by flowing forth in grace 
 and truth. In one thing only, as to his Divinity, sub- 
 ordinate to the Father, that He had received this being 
 from Him who has it of himself; yet equal to the 
 Father, in that it was given him to have in himself not 
 any other being than that of the Father, but one and 
 the same. Partaking of this one divine and illimitable 
 life, the Word of God manifest in the flesh, must needs 
 do the work which the Father doeth for ever. He 
 must needs lift up the fallen, comfort the afflicted, and 
 speak peace to them that were broken of heart. Yet 
 with all these treasures of overflowing compassion, there 
 still comes from the Son of God that word which shall 
 1 Latin, immensus ; move commonly translated incomprehensible. 
 
236 God worhing hitherto. [serm. 
 
 judge mankind terribly at the last day. For God, who 
 has appointed to all men death, did not clearly set 
 forth the judgment after death until He had revealed, 
 to try men, that redeeming love, without which judg- 
 ment would be unbearable by any child of man, and, 
 with all the aid of which, it remains a very awful neces- 
 sity, that we must prepare to meet our God. It is like 
 preparing metal, which must be purged from all dross, 
 before it can come safely in contact with a consuming 
 fire. 
 
 If now any one is inclined to ask seriousl}'^, who 
 shall abide the day of God's appearing, the answer is 
 clear. He who has in himself a life such as that which 
 the Father gave the Son to have in himself. We 
 cannot perhaps reverently say, the same, but we must 
 say, such a life. For the religion of Christ is a living 
 power. It is an unveiling to the soul of that which 
 constitutes its strength. It is a participation in that 
 spirit by which the Father worketh hitherto, and all 
 who are partakers of his nature also work. This life 
 we cannot have of ourselves. It is not born of passion. 
 It is not congenial to flesh and blood. It is more 
 affectionate than intellect. It is more humble than 
 virtue ; it is more divine than humanity. The name 
 which we have nearest for it, namely love, is yet too 
 much mingled with things of earth to express fully this 
 power of godliness. It comes chiefly by looking to 
 God, as unveiling himself in the manifestation of our 
 Saviour. Hence the frame of mind, through which it is 
 strengthened, may be called faith. It is not our own 
 any more than the life of the vine is the life of a par- 
 
XVI.] God loorhing hitherto. 237 
 
 ticular branch. And as it comes not of ourselves, so 
 the instinct of those who live by it is not to seek 
 themselves. Being fed by the divine spirit, it partakes 
 of that divine nature which ever works. Those who 
 have most of it most deeply feel it to be a gift Avhich 
 they never merited. Yet the fact of its being a gift 
 does not lead them to trifle with it as if it required no 
 exertion, but rather to watch it more jealously, and 
 strive for it more earnestly^ lest that which was not 
 originally their own be taken away, like some honoured 
 guest departing from an unworthy house. We are apt 
 to treat our own friends and kindred unceremoniously : 
 but we observe some stranger with honour. Even so, let 
 us guard reverently this dread visitor, the Holy Spirit, 
 and take heed that our hearts be swept and garnished 
 for his presence. 
 
 Truly, brethren, this one gift to our souls would be 
 worth far more than all the world besides. It would 
 do more for our enduring happiness here ; and it would 
 launch us with the firmest hope on the dread voyage of 
 the world unknown. Pray we then earnestly, that God 
 would do for us in all other things that which He seeth 
 best ; but that He would grant us this gift of abiding as 
 lively branches in the vine of his Son. Very painful 
 may be that chastisement by which He often purgeth 
 the branches that they may bring forth more fruit. But 
 wheresoever the true life abides ; the life of humility, of 
 self-devotion, and of that love going out of ourselves to 
 God and to man, which may also be called faith (work- 
 ing by love), there is also that deep satisfaction of 
 which Christ spake, when He said, " Peace I leave with 
 
238 God ivorking hitherto. [serm. 
 
 you : not as the world giveth, give I unto you ;" there 
 comes also the spirit of power, and the spirit of a sober 
 mind. Hence that strange calmness with which the 
 few who are great in the kingdom of heaven have turned 
 aside from sinful pleasures, and gone through losses, 
 sufferings, and reproaches, breathing perhaps a new 
 spirit into their generation, changing the face of king- 
 doms, lighting candles not to be quenched, rooting up 
 old abuses, transmitting inheritances of thought, or con- 
 solidating institutions destined to abide. Such men 
 are indeed fellow- workers with God; they are admitted 
 into that fellowship of eternal life, which is a pouring 
 out of the same spirit, or the communication of powers 
 the same in kind (righteousness, forethought, benevo- 
 lence) as those by which the world is made. Even such 
 a fellowship becomes those who are also his offspring. 
 
 If any one asks why there are few who are thus 
 thoroughly saved from the corruption which is in the 
 world through selfishness ; or why most men seek the 
 things that are their own, and comparatively few that 
 peace which comes of entire self-devotion to God ; there 
 seem to be chiefly two answers. 
 
 One is, men do not thoroughly believe that there is 
 more happiness in partaking of the spirit of self-devotion 
 which was in Christ, than in seeking pleasant things for 
 themselves. Thus their faith fails them. They should 
 pray for their faith to be increased. Lord, increase our 
 faith in the blessedness of doing thy will, rather than in 
 following the world, the flesh, or the devil. 
 
 But another reason is, men do not use the grace 
 which they have; and therefore more grace is not given 
 
XVI.] God luorhing hitherto. 239 
 
 them. They have gross carnal conceptions of Scripture 
 metaphors, and pray to have their souls saved hereafter, 
 but do not strive to be saved from evil now. They do 
 not see, that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is 
 heaven ; and where the spirit of wickedness is, there is 
 destruction and the beginning of hell. 
 
 Whereas if they loved and put in practice the Spirit 
 of God, they would begin to do the work of God. They 
 would find, every day of their lives, some little act of 
 self-denial, or of kindness, or of truth-telling, or of 
 honesty, which might be a witness and an exemplifica- 
 tion of the life that was in them; then they would grow 
 in spiritual life and energy. Like the muscles of the 
 practised pedestrian differ from those of the lounging 
 sot, so the energies of the soul in the humble and 
 watchful Christian excel those of the indolent hoper for 
 heaven, who cultivates no heavenly temper. When the 
 powers of life are not used, they gradually die aAvay. 
 Prevent the living tree from growing, or persuade the 
 bee not to gather honey, and then only will you find 
 a Christian whose life is without the fruitful activity 
 which belongs to the Spirit of God. 
 
 Take with you, therefore, to-day, brethren, this one 
 saying. As our Father which is in heaven worketh 
 hitherto, so we, if we are also his offspring, shall gladly 
 and in spiritual freedom do the work of Him that sent 
 us. It was a pretty saying of a Heathen that by not 
 doing any good action he had lost a day. But the reve- 
 lation Avhich we have received of the mysterious sources 
 of our strength, should far more strongly impress upon 
 us the necessity of cherishing the gift we have all 
 
240 God working hitherto. [serm. xvi. 
 
 received. Our spiritual life, the unwritten word of God 
 within our souls, grows by his grace, and is as sure to 
 bear fruit by it as the tender blade by the dew. It can 
 no more flourish without partaking of his holy spirit 
 than the lily of the field can put forth its glory without 
 the kindly breath of the winds of heaven. But He 
 worketh hitherto, and His children partake of His life. 
 
 Let every man therefore ask himself this question, 
 By what work of self-devotion or righteousness, of fore- 
 thought or goodness, am I this day cherishing and put- 
 ting forth the divine life, even as my Father worketh 
 hitherto, being good and doing good ? Do I also work 
 as having life in Him who is eternal life ? 
 
 Lampetek, May 29, 1S53. 
 
SEEMON XVII. 
 
 THE UGLY TRINITY AN INFERENCE FROM THE 
 INCARNATION, 
 
 No man hath seen Ood at any time : the only begotten Son, which is 
 in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. John i. 18. 
 
 If any one takes the trouble to compare the Apostles' 
 Creed and the one called Athanasian, he will find the 
 same series of truths exhibited from two different points 
 of view ; while again the Nicene Creed may be said to 
 hold a middle place, in point of style, between the two 
 already mentioned, but to resemble more nearly that of 
 the Apostles. 
 
 In the simplicity of the more primitive document 
 it is thought sufficient to set forth the great cardinal 
 facts which lie at the foundation of Christianity, making 
 up as a whole the Incarnation of the Son of God as our 
 Lord and Saviour. Nor in the tone of the Nicene Creed 
 is there any essential change ; the same facts being only 
 unfolded with somewhat greater fulness, illustrated by 
 some natural metaphors, and, in at most two instances, 
 pushed to a doctrinal consequence. Whereas, on turn- 
 ing to the most modern of the three formal statements 
 of belief which our Church has thought good to retain 
 w. s. 11 
 
242 Tlie Holy Trinity an [serm. 
 
 in her services, we find those fundamental facts of 
 Christianity not so much related as a knowledge of them 
 assumed ; but in place of them we find an emphatical 
 protest against certain wrong inferences which had 
 been drawn from the facts themselves, and a reasoned 
 exposition of the doctrinal theory which is necessary to 
 bind the facts, if our belief is to comprehend them all 
 alike, into one harmonious whole. Both Creeds contain, 
 one as much as the other, the doctrine of the Trinity ; 
 but the first implies that doctrine by means of facts 
 which involve it ; while the second drawls it out by 
 means of reasonings which expound it. Now it can 
 scarcely be doubted that the first of the above modes 
 of treating the same great doctrine is, for practical pur- 
 poses in general, by far the most useful. The best 
 method by far of teaching the right faith ^ in the Holy 
 Trinity is to draw out from Scripture such statements 
 of what our Saviour himself was, and what He did for 
 our salvation, as may induce his grateful followers to 
 acknowledge him heartily as their Lord and Master ; 
 together with such mementoes of our frail nature, and 
 our only all-sufficient help, as may prevent us from anger- 
 ing the Holy Spirit, or leaning upon anything in prefer- 
 ence to Him who is our strength ever in time of need. 
 
 At the same time it should be added, that it by no 
 means follows the second mode is not also, in its kind, 
 thoroughly correct. Hence, as on a former occasion, 
 I have acted on the first, by dwelling chiefly on the 
 practical side of our Lord's divinity and the Holy Spirit's 
 
 1 Compare Jeremy Taylor's Sermon on Religious Knowledge, 
 preached before the University of Dublin. 
 
XVII.] Inference from the Incarnation. 243 
 
 personal character, so I shall glance to-day at the sym- 
 bolical doctrine, or the hypothesis by which alone the 
 requirements of those two truths in conjunction are fully 
 satisfied. 
 
 First, then, let it be noticed that every collection of 
 facts requires some theory or other to bind it together. 
 You cannot hear of summer and winter or ice and thaw, 
 without some theory, however inadequate, of the changes 
 of the seasons. Still more, if you take any historical 
 narrative, you cannot believe that certain actions are 
 truly ascribed to particular agents, without forming some 
 kind of conception of the character of the persons by 
 whom they are brought about. Ko man calls Nero 
 humane, or Alexander Borgia pious, or Howard and 
 Wilberforce cruel. You must either dispute the facts, 
 or you must assign to the actors some kind of character. 
 Of course it may happen that where the actions are of 
 a very complicated kind, we may have to pronounce the 
 character a curiously blended one, or to mingle praise 
 with blame. Only in any case we are bound to take into 
 account all the circumstances which the case presents. 
 
 The same principle, if slightly modified, will apply 
 to whatever revelation we have received of the Highest 
 Being. If, for example, we are told that the Almighty 
 punishes the wicked, we must infer him to be just ; if 
 He created the world, we must attribute to him power ; 
 if He governs it, we must not deny his general provi- 
 dence ; if He forgives the repentant sinner, and binds 
 up the wounds of the broken-hearted, we cannot hesitate 
 to say the quality of mercy belongs to God. 
 
 Now it is quite true a man may be no better for 
 
 11—2 
 
244 The Holy Trinity an [serm. 
 
 drawing out such statements into the form of proposi- 
 tions. The simplicity of the facts of the Divine dealing 
 is what it concerns him to know. Yet again, it is quite 
 conceivable that a theory may be framed of such a 
 nature as to neutralise the facts ; depriving them, as it 
 were, of their sting, either for good or evil; and so 
 making them void, while foi*mally acknowledging them 
 to have occurred. We must beware then of such a 
 theory as may vitiate in its results the facts we have to 
 deal with, and deprive them of the lesson they may be 
 intended to convey. You must not allow that certain 
 persons have acted tyrannically and criminally, and then 
 argue that tyranny and crime are things indifferent ; or 
 you must not call another man a patient martyr for the 
 truth, and at the same time sneer away the moral force 
 of his example. If you theorise at all, you are bound to 
 theorise correctly. 
 
 We may now apply this train of reflexion to the 
 writings of the New Testament. Any reader of the 
 four Gospels will either have already inherited, or will 
 form for himself, some kind of conception of the cha- 
 racter, power, and ofiice of the several persons, and 
 especially of the great central figure mentioned in those 
 memoirs, which are on every account so deserving of 
 examination. I do not say that it is wise for a man in 
 entering upon such a task to divest himself entirely of 
 such aid as may be derived from those ancient formu- 
 laries in which the great result professes to be already 
 symbolised ; but I only remark, that if he does throw 
 aside such previous creeds, he will of necessity form, 
 whether consciously or unconsciously, some analogous 
 
XVII.] Inference from the Incarnation. 245 
 
 conception for himself. If he admits the account of 
 miracles, he will probably conceive them to be in some 
 sense Divine credentials. If he finds those miracles to 
 be works of mercy and beneficence, he will draw some 
 analogous conclusion as to the character of the religion 
 which they attest ; and if he finds certain declarations 
 as to the nature or authority of the persons exhibiting 
 these significant works, he must make up his mind to 
 accept those declarations as a whole, or to reject them 
 as a whole. Is it not then as clear as daylight that 
 upon this question of the conception which such a man 
 forms being the correct conception, or the reverse, 
 depends no less than the result, whether he shall have 
 the right key or the wrong one, the true sense of the 
 records of our revelation, or the contrary ; in short, the 
 very religion of Christ, or something which may be ex- 
 ceedingly unlike it? For it is not the letter which saves, 
 but the spirit ; not the book which gives life, but that 
 truth of which the book is but the embodiment. Nor 
 am I here speaking of isolated facts, and little points 
 of criticism, but of the grand conception which we form 
 of the religion as a whole, of its Teacher and Author, 
 in his own person and character. 
 
 But if such be the case, it must be very important 
 not to overlook any of the essential facts of the history 
 in harmony with which our theory is to be framed. 
 Perhaps there may be at least two distinct sets of facts 
 to be considered. 
 
 It is true, we find the Author of our religion born of 
 woman, but we also find him conceived of the Holy 
 Ghost — Son of David and Lord of David. It is true 
 
246 The Holy Trinity an [serm. 
 
 He suffers hunger; but we also find his prevailing word 
 forbids the fig-tree to bear fruit for ever. He suffers 
 thirst by the well of Samaria ; but He reveals to the 
 woman the secrets of her heart. He has a little boat 
 to wait for him ; yet He can walk the tempestuous sea, 
 and say, " Peace, be still." He goes about rejected of 
 men ; but the fruits of his going are healing the sick, 
 cleansing the leper, making the lame to walk. By the 
 grave of Lazarus He even weeps, but He also utters in 
 no faltering accent the superhuman command, " I say 
 unto thee, Come forth." But He is betrayed of his own 
 follower ; again, He knew long before who should 
 betray him. He suffers in the garden exceeding agony; 
 but even in that dark hour the angels recognise their 
 Lord, and appear strengthening him. He suffers the 
 death of shame between two thieves ; but not that 
 accursed tree or shameful company can rob him of his 
 inalienable attribute, to forgive sin, and to promise rest 
 in that unseen world where no human device avails. 
 He is laid even in the grave ; the stones are rolled, and 
 the guard is set; but, just as if a man should wrap 
 round a ball of fire with cotton, death itself dissolves, 
 losing its power of detention when in contact with Him 
 who is the Lord of life. After rising, his resurrection 
 is doubted by one of his own disciples ; but the doubt is 
 soon succeeded by a fuller confession of "My Lord, and 
 my God." 
 
 In short, for every step of humiliation or suffering, 
 there is some corresponding mark of glory; as if the 
 Almighty was pleased that neither the human element 
 nor the divine should for a moment obscure each other, 
 
XVII.] hiference from the Incarmation. 247 
 
 even amidst the great humility of his only-begotten Son; 
 until, at length, that which appeared the lowest fall into 
 death and Hades, is swallowed up in the victory of 
 exaltation to the right hand of the Majesty on high. 
 
 Nor yet is the mysterious parallel of contrasts which 
 we have been suggesting confined to the mere earthly 
 career of our Saviour. He came into the world; yet 
 by his agency the Supreme Father had made the world. 
 He prays that He may be glorified ; but it is with that 
 same glory which He had enjoyed with the Father before 
 all the worlds began. It is not the nature of angels 
 that He takes' upon him, but the lower nature of man ; 
 yet all the angels of God worship him. He has indeed no 
 form or comeliness ; yet He had been in the form of God. 
 
 His Father is greater than He the Son is, yet He and 
 the Father are one. He is the beginning and He is the 
 end, (yet He has neither beginning nor end of days;) 
 the A and the Q, first and the last ; He is a Servant of 
 servants, and He is King of kings ; He is with God, there- 
 fore He is distinct ; and He is God, therefore He is one 
 with him. 
 
 These, brethren, are the sort of facts, or affirmations 
 having for us the force of facts, all of which must be 
 taken into account by any one Avho would frame a con- 
 sistent theory of our Lord's Incarnation ; or which he 
 must at least expect to be satisfied by any existing 
 theory, which, in consideration perhaps of its antiquity, 
 or the authority with which the Church recommends it 
 to him, he may be disposed rather to examine with 
 
 1 Ep. Hebr. ii. 14. The word fTriXafi^dverai more strictly means, 
 talcing hold so as to protect; but the context may suflQciently bear out 
 my use of the quotation here. 
 
248 The Holy Trinity an [serm. 
 
 somewhat of a friendly or at least a respectful prepos- 
 session in its favour. Can it then be a matter for 
 wonder, if, where the premises run in such a mysterious 
 parallel of Divine and human contrast, the conclusion 
 also should be one transcending the range of our ordi- 
 nary conception ? I say " transcending," but do not say 
 •' contradicting." It is one thing for the Eternal Spirit 
 not to be measured by the span of the understanding of 
 dust and ashes ; it would be quite a different thing for 
 statements to be made, even of the Almighty, which 
 were against the known laws either of our conscience 
 or our reason. But that one God should be pleased to 
 manifest himself to us in three forms of being, is no 
 more a contradiction than for one kingdom (I use this 
 as a metaphor only) to consist of three provinces. The 
 unity of essential being comprehends the triplicity of 
 person. Does not nature herself teach us, how an unity 
 of principle may run through a thousand diverse mani- 
 festations of the same principle of life ? Even so He, 
 who is the Author of life, knowing his own Majesty to 
 be unsearchable, has sent forth his second self, the very 
 brightness of his glory and express image of his person, 
 who is to the Father as an ever-flashing radiance to an 
 ineffable light, veiled indeed in flesh, but declaring by 
 his contact with humanity whatever it concerns us to 
 know of God, whom, save by one or other manifestation 
 of the Son, no man hath seen at any time. Set in 
 order, if you please, all the texts of Holy Writ bearing 
 upon this important subject ; accept each of them as it 
 stands in our Testament; explain none of them away; 
 acknowledge subordination taught in one, and observe 
 unity revealed in another; and you will find the con- 
 
xvil] Inference from the Incarnation. 249 
 
 elusion already expressed for you, with singular beauty 
 and precision, by that second of our Creeds, -which the 
 318 bishops agreed upon in the Council of Nice. Might 
 I not indeed have said, without quoting any text of 
 doubtful genuineness or rendering, the conclusion is 
 already drawn in the first chapter of St John, " The 
 Word was with God, and the Word was God'? If now 
 any one proceeds farther, and endeavours to frame what 
 has been above said of the divinity of the Son, with all 
 that he reads of the personality of the Comforter, into 
 logical propositions, and especially if he shape those 
 propositions with an eye to errors in the earlier ages of 
 the Church, he will not be able to stop short of the 
 general sum and substance of the Creed which we call 
 Athanasian. (Illustrate by heresies — Sabellian, Arian, 
 Nestorian, Eutychian.) 
 
 Here permit me to remind you that no man is really 
 better or worse for framing his religion into formal 
 propositions. It is not by doing so that he is saved. 
 Only as it is clear, from the theorising tendency of the 
 human intellect, that such propositions will in some 
 shape be formed, it may become indirectly a matter of 
 importance that they should be formed correctly. They 
 must not be of such a kind as to neutralise, or make 
 void, the facts of our faith. We are ready to admit 
 that the doctrine of the Trinity, in the particular aspect 
 in which it is laid down in the Creed called Athanasian 
 is the technical or the logical side of the Christian 
 scheme : it bears to a living faith the same sort of 
 relation that a code of laws bears to the primary prin- 
 ciples of justice : and, as for any plain person, who in 
 
 11—5 
 
250 The Holy Trinity an [serm. 
 
 the simplicity of his heart may bungle over reasonings 
 of this kind, we feel as much doubt of his perishing 
 everlastingly, as we do that the weary infant falling to 
 sleep in its mother's arms, will have its brains dashed 
 out by her, because she is displeased with some un- 
 conscious murmur in its dreams. But, on the other 
 hand, if we turn to the theologian who has been taught 
 the bearing of all the ancient controversies alluded to 
 in the formula we are considering, it is not easy to see 
 how he can reject the general substance and body of 
 the Creed, without, by necessary logical consequence, 
 denying the Lord that bought him, and forsaking the 
 faith which the Holy Church of Christ throughout all 
 the world acknowledgeth. Possibly it may have been a 
 touch of human infirmity^ which made the compiler of 
 the document, taken as it is chiefly from the works of 
 St Augustine, attest his unshakeable confidence in the 
 correctness of his own reasonings, by a somewhat sterner 
 anathema than had been thought necessary to guard 
 either the majestic fulness of the Nicene Creed, or the 
 simple narrative in that of the Apostles. It is obvious, 
 however, that we now only adopt those sentences of 
 harsh sound in some such sense as this : " Here you 
 have," the Church may be conceived as saying, " an indu- 
 bitably correct statement of certain doctrinal proposi- 
 tions, which are logically involved in the fundamental 
 facts of that religion of Jesus Christ, in virtue of which 
 alone we are authorised to offer all mankind the free 
 
 1 " It had not been amiss, if the judgment had been left to Christ:" 
 so, or nearly so, says Jeremy Taylor, no less wise than eloquent, in 
 his Ductor Dubitantium, upon Ecclesiastical Censures. The whole 
 passage is well worth turning to. 
 
XVII,] Inference from the Incarnation. 251 
 
 gift of salvation. If you deny any of these statements, 
 you will by implication be denying some one or other 
 of the facts essential to the true faith of Christ. Take 
 care, therefore, lest unawares you come under that 
 sentence, ' He that believeth not shall be damned.' You 
 perhaps intend only a little ingenious reasoning : but 
 if you reason away the reality of the Incarnation of the 
 Son of God, then is our preaching vain, and your faith 
 is vain : we are yet in our sins. Once remove the 
 foundation which is laid, of God manifest in the flesh, 
 and you throw back mankind to the condition in which 
 they were before Christ came. Beware then of preach- 
 ing another Gospel, which is not a Gospel : for in 
 Christ, though He is not the Father, but the Son, w^as 
 yet manifest all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." 
 
 The assertion above ventured upon, that our doctrine 
 of the Trinity is nothing more than is required to bind 
 together the Scriptural facts of our redemption by 
 Christ, has often been proved ; but perhaps by no one 
 better than by Jones of Nayland'. It will indeed be 
 clear upon consideration, that there is no essential or 
 practical portion of our faith which has not some point 
 of junction, or contact, with this doctrine. Is the 
 certainty of dying always before us ? It is the Son 
 who, by dying for us, has taken the sting of death away. 
 Do we expect to be judged ? It is the Father who 
 has committed all judgment into the hands of the Son. 
 Do we acknowledge a propitiatory sacrifice necessary 
 to make reconciliation between the conscience of man 
 and the dread purity of his Maker ? Then must the 
 
 1 The application, however, of some of his texts may be a matter 
 for doubt, and his tone is not free from harshness. 
 
252 The Holy Trinity an [serm. 
 
 victim be one, not himself participant of any human 
 spot, but with a nature higher than any human nature ; 
 and we have already seen He took not on him the 
 nature of angels. Or do we require a constant Mediator 
 and Intercessor ? Who shall go up for us into the holiest 
 of holies, not made with hands, but He who came down 
 from thence ; or who shall reconcile the Creator and 
 the creature, save He who hath taken of the divine 
 compassion and the human sorrow, blending them with 
 awful harmony into one ? 
 
 Again, do our hearts require a constant vigilance, a 
 guard against one stronger than ourselves, and a secret 
 stay in every hour of temptation? Then will none suffice 
 for such a task save He who knoweth whereof we are made; 
 even He, who, pleading the cause of God with man, can 
 convince us of all truth ; divine in penetration, personal 
 in his capacity of receiving prayer, of being grieved, of 
 being angered ; hallowing with his holy inspiration even 
 babes and sucklings on whom He breathes; and consecrat- 
 ing with his presence even our frail bodies, until they tes- 
 tify, being transformed thereby into temples, that they are 
 tenanted by no less person than the Holy Spirit of God, 
 
 Whether then it be life, or whether it be death ; whe- 
 ther the judgment to come or the atonement whereby we 
 hope to escape it ; whether we rely upon a Mediator, who 
 has all power in heaven and earth ; or whether we dread 
 offending Him against whom offence hath no forgive- 
 ness, or again trust the same One as our Strengthener, 
 our Sanctifier, and our bringer back from the gates of 
 death — we are in every case obliged to recur to some 
 one of three persons ; that is, some one of three (I do not 
 say modes, but) forms of Divine Being, whom we can- 
 
XVII.] Inference from the Incmmation. 253 
 
 not help seeing are described in Scripture as distinct, 
 yet of all of whom we say, These three agents are one God. 
 Not without reason therefore, brethren, our blessed 
 Lord sent his apostles on their great mission to evan- 
 gelize the world, baptizing in the name of the Father, 
 and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Nor was it from 
 any indistinctness of view, as some suppose, that the 
 fathers of the first four centuries made that sacred 
 commission the corner-stone of their teaching. It is 
 as a part of the Incarnation that the great father, St 
 Athanasius, chooses to consider the atonement. They 
 all saw clearly that this commission of our Saviour's to 
 his disciples concentrated his entire Gospel ; was, in 
 short, the Word, or the great message conveyed in the 
 new dispensation of God to mankind. Any idea of 
 suffering this fundamental truth to be refined away 
 upon condition of substituting for it mere allegiance to 
 the letter of a book, from which the spirit was allowed 
 to evaporate, would have appeared to them a mere 
 halfway stepping-stone between Christianity and hea- 
 thenism. Either, they felt, the only-begotten Son, who 
 is in the bosom of the Father, has declared to us God, 
 or else God is not more known to us now than He was 
 to the Jews of old. Nay, even to the Jew, and to the 
 Greek, St Athanasius himself did not hesitate to teach 
 no other than the Eternal Son had from time to time 
 communicated such glimpses of the unsearchable Father 
 as either of them enjoyed. For if it had not been that 
 God so talked spiritually with man, pitching as it were 
 his tent by our Shiloh, no human gaze was keen 
 enough to unravel the thickly woven mystery of clouds 
 
254 The Holy Trinity an [serm. 
 
 and darkness which surround the eternal throne. Who 
 can by searching find out God ? It is high as heaven ; 
 what canst thou do ? deeper than hell ; what canst thou 
 understand? Is He, as we would wish, all mercy, all 
 benevolence ? then what mean the earthquake, the 
 pestilence, and the plague ? Or is He only capricious, 
 blind, absolute Power? then what remains for us but 
 to tremble ? Has He even a personal control over the 
 world, and a care for its inhabitants, or is the whole 
 universe only a vast ocean effervescing with life, in 
 which bubble upon bubble come up and sink back again 
 into the fluctuating mass of existence ? If so, what are 
 we better than the worm and the plant ? Who shall go 
 up for us into the unknown, and bring back a certain 
 hope, in answer to those questionings which have vext 
 the heart of the wisest of our race ? When the mere 
 religious instinct attempts to answer them, it either 
 loses itself in dreams, or becomes bewildered into super- 
 stition. Or, if a mere priesthood undertakes the same 
 task, a certain hollowness ensues, the result of a con- 
 sciousness on part of the wisest how wide is the gulf 
 between their attempt and" success. There is, in fact. 
 One only who can answer those doubts satisfactorily. 
 His own arm must work our salvation. He, even God, 
 must come out of the unsearchable and the infinite, 
 which conceal from us the First Great Cause, or the 
 Father, and must shew us some express image, not of 
 any created being, even the highest, but of Himself. 
 It is only when we have learnt, through history, through 
 conscience, through a long train of providences, and 
 through the Incarnation of the Son, how the Supreme 
 
XVII.] Inference from the Incarnation. 255 
 
 Power is pleased to work, not at random, nor by 
 caprice, but by eternal Wisdom, that we begin to com- 
 prehend the relation in which we ourselves stand to the 
 Eternal and the Divine. AVe could not ourselves have 
 searched out that Wisdom ; it must come forth out of 
 the Divine Majesty, and thereby become to us the 
 Word (St John). This is that self-revealing manifesta- 
 tion of God, which, spreading the impress of wisdom 
 over creation, and clothing infinity as it were with an 
 aspect akin to humanity, was ever inferred in some 
 measure by the purest of Gentile teachers ; which by 
 the testimony of man's conscience and his highest 
 reason also teaches him to worship in God, not mere 
 might, but supreme right and wisdom ; which com- 
 muned in perceptible form with the patriarchs of the 
 Old Testament ; which spake to Moses at the bush ; 
 was hailed by David as his Lord though his Son ; which 
 consoled the Hebrew prophets in the long night of 
 their nation's affliction by anticipations of they knew 
 not what brighter kingdom to come ; and finally, became 
 incarnate in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, being 
 " born of the Virgin Mary." 
 
 It would not be reasonable to say, that even in the 
 farthest moment of eternity this Wisdom of God ever 
 began to be. We can of no time say that the unsearch- 
 able First Cause was without wisdom. Therefore is the 
 Father eternally a father, and the Son is eternally a 
 son^ Also the Father is eternally greater than the 
 Son, yet the Father and the Son are One. 
 
 1 Here was inserted, though unwritten, some protest against being 
 thought to use abstractions or ovofxacrlai, instead of xmocrTaaas, with some 
 
256 The Holy Trinity an [serm. 
 
 Upon the whole, then, it is in virtue of this reve- 
 lation of the Supreme by the merciful, of the First by 
 the coeternal, of the Father by the Son, that our God 
 is no longer a God that hideth himself. He has come 
 forth out of the unfathomable depth of a shadowy 
 infinity ; and we know by his manifested Word, full of 
 grace and truth, whereunto we may liken Him, before 
 whom the angels bowing their heads, cry, Holy, Holy, 
 Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth ! Nor is it only an useless 
 and a curious knowledge which (if we are wise by the 
 spirit of Christ) we shall count ourselves to have attained. 
 We now know what sort of worship to offer Him who 
 is a spirit, and who will therefore be worshipped in spirit 
 and truth. We know what judgment we are to expect 
 from him ; how thoroughly He searches every recess of 
 our hearts ; yet how mercifully He will take account of 
 each human failing. 
 
 In short, we have an access to the Father, even to 
 the unsearchable, through the revelation of the Son, 
 who is the love of God manifested to mankind. We 
 understand the Fountain of light through its radiance 
 which shines upon us. We have also that constant 
 help which the Divine Strengthener, taking both of 
 the power of the Father and of the wisdom of the Son, 
 
 references to a tract of St Athanasius (tt. firavdpan.) and the change 
 in the use of terms, comparing the anathemas of Antioch and of Nicsea. 
 Account was also taken of the technical characteristics of Arius and 
 Sabellius, the catholic doctrine being described as lying between them, 
 or rather as taking something from each. For the "person" of the 
 Son is subordinate to the "person" of the Father, but the Divinity or 
 very being of both is One or identical. Hence the Aoyos is called 
 ©eof fK Oeov, *<os tK 4>cordy, and SO ho is second, rd^ei, aXX' ov ^pova. 
 
XVII,] Inference from the Incarnation. 257 
 
 will ever minister to all them that call upon him in all 
 time of affliction, of mind, body, or estate. Therefore 
 we stand fast, knowing in whom we have believed. He 
 is Almighty; He is all- wise ; He is omnipresent to up- 
 hold, to teach, and to console. Therefore He is three, 
 and yet He is one. We acknowledge the glory of this 
 eternal triplicity of manifested form, while in the essen- 
 tial being of the Divine greatness we worship the Unity. 
 
 This is our word of God. This is the one great 
 message to mankind. This is the Gospel dispensation. 
 Into this faith we are baptized, and thereby made chil- 
 dren of God. In the confidence inspired by this faith, 
 we venture, dust and ashes, sinful and defiled as we are, 
 to draw nigh to a throne which we have learnt is one of 
 grace.... You may make it a theme of dispute. If you 
 are wise, you will make it rather one of edification. 
 Thus, as a writer who had just seen the generation of 
 the apostles pass away, encourages us, " building up 
 yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy 
 Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for 
 the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life '." 
 
 Now the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the 
 love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be 
 with us all evermore. Amen. 
 
 Lamfeter, June 6, 1852. 
 
 ^ This Sermon, like some others, was barely finished when it was 
 preached. I had intended, by way of conclusion, to work in more of 
 the tract of St Athanasius already mentioned, (which has also a 
 special interest, as being closely modelled on the Timceus of Plato). 
 On the whole, I think the best notion of this great writer's doctrine is 
 got by considering his favourite simile of the Son being to the Father 
 as the radiance (anavyaafxa) is to the Sun. 
 
SERMON XVIII.' 
 
 THE WITNESS OF GOD. 
 
 There are three that hear witness, the spirit, and the water, and the blood : 
 and these three agree in one. If we receive the witness of men, the 
 witness of God is greater : for this is the witness of God which he 
 hath testified of his Son. He that helieveth on the Son of God hath 
 the witness in himself. 1 John v. 8 — 10. 
 
 If we could imagine for a few moments that the faith 
 of Christ had perished from the world, or even that 
 
 ^ Preached at Cambridge on Advent Sunday, Dec. 1854. I had 
 not then read the second edition of Bunsen's Hippolytus, in the Preface 
 to which the same use is made of the text. The argument of the 
 Sermon may be compared with the first part of Butler's Analogy, and 
 with some portions of Barclay's Apology for the Quakers, — an author, 
 however, whose anti-ecclesiastical prejudices I need hardly disclaim. 
 Soame Jenyns, and Mr T. Erskine, of Linlathen, have more expressly 
 handled the same argument in books on the internal evidence or 
 reasonableness of Christianity. 
 
 The passages enclosed in brackets were, for brevity's sake, omitted 
 in preaching ; but I have taken nothing away, nor to the original 
 MS. added anything. 
 
 With what is said of the Fall of Man, the reader may compare 
 not only St Clement of Alexandria (either in Bp Kaye or in Bunsen) 
 and Origen, (in the fragmentary Homilies on Genesis, and in Huet's 
 Origeniana,) but even the controversial writings of Jonathan Edwards, 
 and the summary of his opinions by his son Dr Edwards. For the 
 distinction between natural and moral necessity, and the concession 
 of spontaneity, but not of uncertain contingency, to the Fall, approxi- 
 mates on one side to what I have said. Professor Key's Norrisian 
 Lectures are profoundly suggestive on this, as on other subjects. 
 
XVIII.] The Witness of God. 259 
 
 its historical records had broken down to an extent 
 far greater than most candid minds Avill probably pre- 
 tend, it would be a very solemn question, in so great 
 an emergency of human thought, what course we ought 
 to pursue. [That something at least would be needed, 
 not only to bind men together in the fair sanctities of 
 life, but as a common way of access to that High and 
 Holy One, whom we call Dweller in Eternity, I think 
 much too evident to attempt proving at large. For the 
 more daring speculators by whom alone all need of 
 righteousness or piety is denied, have at almost all 
 times been few ; their lives in general have been too 
 manifestly marked with either wickedness or unhappi- 
 ness for them to attract followers ; and in the very rare 
 cases in which either the inadequacy of the symbols 
 of the national faith, or the vices of its responsible 
 teachers, have provoked an apparent severance of the 
 cords which bind men and nations to the footstool of 
 Heaven, there Almighty God has not failed to judge 
 his own cause. The nations which refused to see light 
 in his light, have felt thick darkness falling on the 
 way of peace. That outward confusion, which statesmen 
 have felt to be a disease beyond the reach of their 
 remedies, was but the sign of an uneasy blank within ; 
 and it has been clear that when godliness was lost, 
 humanity could not survive. We cannot do without a 
 religion ; and as the hunger of the body points to 
 bread, so the necessities of the soul are a sort of index 
 to truths 
 
 1 Such is St Paul's argument for purity. The voice of con- 
 Bcience requiring it is of the Holy Spirit, and of God. 1 Thcss. iv. 8. 
 
260 Tlie Witness of God. [serm. 
 
 But it is rather a different question, whether the 
 reh'gion of Christ has shown itself by experience so 
 true, that we could not afford to lose any of its cha- 
 racteristic ideas, even supposing that, out of some 
 terrible necessity, or out of wanton waywardness, we 
 felt ourselves at liberty to attempt putting something 
 in its place,] Nor would I say, brethren, that such a 
 question ought lightly to be raised : but the temper 
 of our times may have suggested it to many of us ; and 
 I propose, under God's blessing, rapidly yet seriously, 
 to examine it. Of course, whatever in such a case we 
 should not desire to alter, must also be best for us now. 
 
 It is no slight vantage-ground, at starting, that 
 everything in our religion which concerns practical life, 
 or its code of duty from man to man, is either acknow- 
 ledged, or at least is proved by experience, to be of 
 the highest excellence in its kind. For, not only the 
 particular precepts of righteousness are such as rarely, 
 if ever, mislead the simplest person who adopts them 
 literally for his guidance ; but they are so framed as 
 to point, with no doubtful significance, to principles 
 with which they are pregnant ; and these principles are 
 such as indefinitely expand ; and such as if suffered 
 through the affections to pervade the character, will 
 at length mould it into the highest beauty possible 
 to man. 
 
 [You will forgive me if I linger on what may seem 
 so plain. But] even the objections, which have been 
 raised in our own time, to the Gospel precepts of right- 
 eousness, are such as, if properly considered, may bring 
 their Divine character out into a stronger light. 
 
XVIII.] The Witness of God, ■ 261 
 
 For example, it has been said that our righteous- 
 ness is a one-sided one ; that we lay excessive stress 
 upon almsgiving, meekness, forgiveness of injuries, and 
 preparation for the world to come, while we pass over 
 the weighty matters of courage, honour, and duty to our 
 country and to our friend. 
 
 Now [there is a sufficient colouring of truth in this 
 objection to make it worth answering.] It is very true 
 that the exceeding tenderness, enjoined by our religion, 
 for all who are helpless, and amongst them for the 
 poor, is one of its most indelible characteristics ; for 
 it stands in close connexion with that fundamental 
 mystery, that He whom God exalted to be a Prince 
 and a Saviour, had first taken upon him the form of 
 a servant ; so that He was not more eminently Pro- 
 phet, or Priest, or King, than He was also the Poor 
 and Needy Man, not one of whose bones God suffereth 
 to be broken. 
 
 But then, is it possible, that any one should either 
 know the terrible inequalities which the social system of 
 the old world engendered, when the master had power 
 over the life of his slave, or should even consider the 
 scarcely less glaring contrasts produced by the accu- 
 mulation of wealth in our own day, when the crumbs 
 of so many tables laden to excess would comfort so 
 many a sufferer from want ; and can he still expect 
 us to be ashamed of this characteristic of the Gospel 
 of Christ ? If indeed such a man meant that the same 
 charity which might only admit of one, and that the 
 simplest, form of manifestation, amidst the Oriental 
 hamlets of Galilee, may devise more beneficial methods, 
 
262 The Witness of God. [serm. 
 
 and be wedded to a farther-seeing thoughtfulness, amidst 
 the hives of British industry, we should then be entirely 
 agreed. It is not necessary to defend those who feel 
 a superstitious dread of passing the sturdy vagrant, 
 while perhaps they treat harshly or neglect some needy 
 dependent or relative at home ; or while they suffer 
 to wander in perplexity or sin, some one whom a little 
 moral countenance, or a word of counsel in season, 
 might have recalled into the way of life. But this we say, 
 brethren, considering the vast divergence of classes in 
 most countries known to us, and the perpetual proneness 
 of human selfishness to forget the duties which thence 
 arise, there is ever needed in the world an energetic 
 witness in favour of the lean oxen against the insolence 
 of the fat, by whom the pastures are trampled, and the 
 waters spoiled ; and if ever the voice of such witness 
 has been stifled, some social judgment has been ever 
 imminent ; while again, where the Gospel has been 
 suffered in this respect to carry its own message, its 
 original records handled, and its letter used freely to 
 spread abroad its spirit, there no instance can be found 
 of mendicancy having been encouraged on such a scale 
 as to become a national evil. There may be places, 
 such as Rome, where these conditions are not fulfilled ; 
 but wherever they are, the spirit of intellectual freedom 
 which Christianity keeps alive, has carried its own cor- 
 rective to any undue sway of the balance ; and the 
 practical result has been, not only the almshouse, but 
 the hospital, the school, and the colony ; the softening 
 indeed of afflictions which were inevitable, but also 
 the lessening of crimes which come of ignorance and 
 
XVIII.] Tlie Witness of God. 263 
 
 circumstance ; and so, not only the lifting up of the 
 fallen, but the strengthening of those who stand. 
 
 [Is it not, indeed, very possible, that such persons 
 as neglect the Gospel precepts in this matter, not only 
 harden themselves thereby, but produce, by the Avither- 
 ing of their better sympathies, a portion at least of 
 that unhappiness which they hardly attempt to conceal, 
 and Avhich is one of the most striking characteristics 
 of men by whom the hope of immortality has been 
 laid aside ?] 
 
 The test, after all, is practice. It is by their fruits 
 that the Church of Christ is willing the doctrines of 
 her Master should be tried. Glance then, first, at the 
 qualities which his Gospel is supposed to overlook. If 
 any men, anywhere, are seriously thought to have been 
 more trustworthy as friends, or if any have shown more 
 daring hardihood in danger, or more entire devotion of 
 themselves as patriots, at the risk either of life, or ease, 
 or reputation, than may be found in those nations which 
 have ranged themselves most earnestly under the banner 
 of Christ, let their names be brought forward and placed 
 in the scale. We should not shrink from such a compa- 
 rison ; for then would come out the striking fact, that 
 even in those virtues which are thought most alien to 
 the shadow of the Cross, the generations which in hope 
 of immortality sleep around our churches have at least 
 equalled those mighty men of old who contended chiefly 
 for a perishable crown. There have at least been no 
 greater benefactors of the world which now is, than 
 those who were the firmest believers in the world which 
 is to come. 
 
264 The Witness of God. [serm. 
 
 Again, as regards those virtues which the Gospel 
 (we are told) enjoins to excess, patience, meekness, for- 
 giveness, has any man ever repented of obeying these 
 precepts to the letter? I do not speak of abstinence 
 from revenge, or of concealing resentment where the 
 only motive was a selfish cowardice ; but did ever any 
 man, because he remembered the words of our Saviour, 
 and because he was willing to bear his portion of the 
 Cross, tame down his pride to meekness, and forgive 
 the tongue that wronged, or the hand that smote him ; 
 and did he afterwards suffer any unavailing regret, or 
 any pang of shame ? Very loud and clear is the tone 
 in which all experience answers, Never. Perhaps no 
 man, save one, has tried the experiment to the utmost ; 
 but in proportion as any one has ventured to follow this 
 law of Christ, it has been found wonderful to disarm 
 opposition, turning away wrath with gentleness, and 
 even if it failed of outward triumph, still recompensing 
 its subjects a thousand-fold by the peace which passeth 
 understanding. Whereas, on the contrary, if any one 
 believes this law of our Saviour to be a fanciful exagge- 
 ration, and therefore determines to shape his humour, 
 or measure his retaliation, by some more natural stand- 
 ard, it may fairly be predicted this theory will lead him 
 into the most fatal mistakes of his life. 
 
 For herein we see the wonderful difference between 
 the law of duty laid down by Christ, and those which 
 moralists have sanctioned among men. We draw out 
 our map of the mind; we put prudence here, and 
 passion there ; with due space for intellect, and some 
 for affection : only our skeleton has no life in it ; we 
 
XV III. J The Witness of God. 265 
 
 even overdraw in theory what we make no allowance 
 for in practice ; and what we least of all know is the 
 vital mainspring of the whole. But not so deals the 
 Wisdom of God. For when He who "knoweth what is 
 in man," and who " fashioncth our thoughts long before," 
 would give a new law to his people, He spake no word 
 to the parent about preserving the fruit of his body ; 
 that law He had already written in the Scripture of the 
 heart ; but He said to the child, " Honour thy father and 
 thy mother ;" there Avas to be the beginning of virtue 
 amongst men ; and so, when He would bring mankind 
 into a new brotherhood, He spake not of the necessities 
 of self-defence, and of loving friends, and of requiting 
 good to them that treat us well; for all those things 
 the Gentiles had truly taught ; (nor is their teaching to 
 be despised ;) but, " I say unto you," are the words of 
 Him w^ho spake as never man spake, " love your ene- 
 mies, do good to them which hate you, pray for them 
 which despitefuUy use you." Thus the kingdom of 
 grace is in harmony with the kingdom of providence ; 
 the rules of the one make allowance for the texture of 
 the material of which the other is composed ; not an 
 oscillation of the living machine, not a quivering vibra- 
 tion of the secret springs of the heart, but has been 
 taken into due account; for the Only-begotten Son is 
 not ignorant of the thought, or unmindful of the plan, 
 of the Eternal Father. 
 
 But have all of us ever sufficiently considered what 
 
 a paramount " evidence " of Christianity is contained in 
 
 the fact that its rules of life exhibit the highest ideal 
 
 of righteousness practicable for man ? Is not the faith 
 
 w. s. 12 
 
266 The Witness of God. [serm. 
 
 which most elevates man likely to give the truest pic- 
 ture of God ? For what faculty do our minds possess 
 so rightfully supreme as conscience? Or what higher 
 measure is there of truth than the purest instincts of 
 our entire nature (I mean nature chastened by re- 
 flexion, and developed by experience)? It must be 
 noticed that this argument is the more appropriate, 
 because it is the one which our Blessed Saviour em- 
 phatically chose to lay stress upon himself. For even 
 when fresh from wonderful deeds of controlling nature, 
 and of restoring humanity, He did not appeal to techni- 
 cal miracle as a sign of power so much as to words full 
 of wisdom, and to works which breathed the goodness 
 of God, But this evidence. He tells us, is for them who 
 work His Father's will. It is the pure in heart who 
 most truly see him as He is. Would not this, indeed, 
 strike us more strongly, if we ventured to regard our 
 Saviour's precepts rather less as command, and rather 
 more as advice ^ ? If we laid less stress than we do 
 upon the accompaniments of hope and fear, and accus- 
 tomed ourselves to seek the strongest compulsion to 
 believe in the very excellence of the words spoken 
 by Christ, they would come out fresh in spiritual free- 
 dom, with an authority not less binding but more truly 
 divine. For surely it is more worthy of God to say, 
 "This is good," than to say, "This is your interest." 
 And yet, here we must also observe, how closely 
 connected in all countries of the world has been some 
 
 1 This idea may be partially suggested by Milton ; but I have 
 nevei- seen it brought out with all the significance of which I think it 
 capable. 
 
XVIII.] The Witness of God. 267 
 
 hope of immortality, which Christ brought fully to 
 light, with any approximation to that standard of right- 
 eousness which He also reveals to mankind. We might, 
 perhaps, have expected men to practise all the duties of 
 this life, though they knew nothing of the life to come. 
 But so inextinguishable appears from experience to be 
 that deep desire of the heart of man, which makes 
 him thirst for the waters of eternal life, that, wherever 
 despair of satisfying it comes upon him, there he sinks 
 below the measure of his nature ; drooping, as if the 
 wings of his strength were shorn, and no longer gazing 
 upon the sky, which once attracted him as his natural 
 destiny. 
 
 [If this rule has any exceptions, they seem to be 
 chiefly two. One is, when a belief in the immediate 
 presence of the Eternal God brings men into such 
 near contact with the upholder of their steps in life, 
 that they are satisfied with his countenance as with the 
 highest good, and have no anxiety to throw forward 
 their thoughts into the future — and this seems to have 
 been the case with the ancient Hebrews ; while we can 
 conceive another exception might arise, from such an 
 intense idealism, as might, with a peculiar order of 
 minds, bring their thoughts into a mystical harmony 
 with God, and so produce a tranquil resignation of 
 their future into his hands. But, however conceivably 
 possible this latter tone of thought may be, the world 
 has never seen it realized on a large scale. With men 
 in general there seems an instinctive yet mysterious 
 connexion between the standard of their moral aspira- 
 tion, and the scale of their personal hope ; the graces 
 
 12—2 
 
2G8 The Witness of God. [serm. 
 
 of a heavenly character seem a training by presenti- 
 ment for heaven ; and perhaps those other rarer cases 
 in which men think less of future happiness, because 
 its eternal fountain Himself absorbs their thoughts, are 
 not so much an exception to our rule, as a variety in its 
 mode of acting. It will at least be no exaggeration 
 to say, that whoever teaches men in general to look 
 on the grave as the bourn of their hopes, and their 
 final separation from their friends, will take from them 
 something of their motives to innocence, and something 
 of their means of peace ; and that it is only in the 
 strength of something like a Christian's hope that we 
 can attain to anything like the Christian standard of 
 righteousness.] 
 
 Here, however, some men will profess readiness to 
 practise the duties of life as enjoined in the Gospel, 
 and to share the hope of all spiritual men, in some 
 kind of immortality. But it is the peculiar mysteries 
 of Christianity they object to. What, for example, can 
 we say to them, on (such a thing as) the doctrine 
 of original sin ? Now certainly, if it were necessary 
 in our reply to become responsible for everything said 
 from the days of St Augustine to our own, our cause 
 would be more difficult than it really need be. But 
 why should the Church not vindicate for herself in 
 our time, the liberty ^ which the Alexandrine Fathers 
 handed down, of interpreting the early chapters of 
 Genesis as an allegory, an allegory, perhaps, of pro- 
 
 1 The authority of Ilorsley, (whatever his intellect may render it 
 Avorth,) might be quoted in favour of such liberty. But there are 
 also reasons for it, of every possible kind. 
 
XVII I.] The Witness of God. 269 
 
 cesses existing in the world, rather than as a narrative 
 of events which happened literally once for all? May 
 we not then understand that old Supralapsarian doc- 
 trine which has so harsh a sound, of the fall of man 
 having been compulsorily designed, as most truly mean- 
 ing that, when the human soul became cradled in flesh 
 and blood, liable to ignorance and fettered by circum- 
 stance, it must often, in all probability, mistake evil 
 for good ; often come short of its nobler aspirations ; 
 often fall, in actual brutishness, from the likeness of 
 God stamped upon it in idea : thus often it must have 
 need of repentance and revulsion, and so cry out with 
 St Paul, " Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver 
 me from this body of death ?" If such a reading 
 of the Hebrew record by the experience of all time 
 might be adopted, we should have several difficulties 
 cleared up ; we could understand how death may be 
 in the world as a sort of attendant upon sin, or as a 
 very fit correspondent to the shortcoming of the crea- 
 ture ; yet the traces of its work may be legible in the 
 records of the creation, from a date long anterior to 
 the first instance written in books, of the ever-recur- 
 ring fall of mankind. So far then is this disease from 
 being introduced by Christianity, that her mission is to 
 heal it ; but its existence is proclaimed by the world 
 with all its tongues. Almost everywhere with poets, 
 those unconscious prophets of humanity, the common 
 epithet for mankind is weary, or sicl\ or pining. In 
 the first childhood of Greek minstrelsy we hear the 
 supreme Deity lamenting that men ruin themselves by 
 their own infatuation beyond his will ; in the fulness 
 
270 The Witness of God. [serm. 
 
 of Athenian wisdom, though from the most poetical of 
 philosophers, Ave have the famous comparison of the 
 soul to a chariot, which is diversely swayed by one 
 horse of heavenly birth, and another tending downward 
 to hell ; and amidst the vast experience of the Roman 
 empire, we find man described in strange antithesis, as 
 inspired by God, yet as debasing himself to brute. Why 
 then, after due allowance for the language of his school \ 
 may not St Paul repeat in deeper tones of moral ear- 
 nestness, that which we acknowledge as true when it 
 comes from Homer, Plato, and Seneca, three authors 
 indeed inferior to scarcely any of the ancient world ? 
 Or how could any religion, if Christianity were set 
 aside, refuse to take cognizance of that which all na- 
 tions cry out ; and to which, even if they were silent, 
 our own experience would still bear the strongest and 
 the saddest witness of all? For surely very far^ are 
 we fallen from what we must infer to have been the 
 idea which seemed beautiful in the Divine foresight, as 
 that which should be born out of the great capacities 
 of man ; certainly no less far than we are also fallen 
 from our own holier vows, from the approval of our 
 better mind, and from the realization of the hope of 
 our youth. Nor is this fall a less real one, because that 
 
 1 Not only that of Tarsus, but that of Gamaliel and of Philo. 
 
 2 "To convince Man of his fall.. .it is not necessary to appeal to 
 the history which Moses has given of it ; because Moses' history of the 
 Fall is not the proof of it ..the proof lies in the known nature of 
 man..." — (The Translator, John Payne's, Preface to Thos, a Kcmpis.) 
 Even Calvin, I think, has said something of the kind; but, at a dis- 
 tance from books, I am obliged to make some of my quotations from 
 memoiy. 
 
XVIII.] TJie Witness of God. 271 
 
 which comes of our race is so curiously intertwined 
 with what comes of ourselves, that the knot is one we 
 despair of disentangling. {Now,) it is no longer our- 
 selves, for it seems to come of some companionship 
 beyond our control, whether some mysterious involu- 
 tion of circumstance, or some hereditary taint ; {yet 
 affain), it is ourselves, since who must not blame him- 
 self most of all for powers thrown away, and for oppor- 
 tunities granted in vain ? Thus whatever is taken from 
 the mystery, is only so much added to self-reproach. 
 Perhaps, indeed, no slight portion of the undercurrent of 
 interest which we feel in the sublime creations of Greek 
 tragedy, may ultimately be traced to this thought ; 
 while very much of the pathos of our own deepest 
 poetry is evidently derived from the same source. But, 
 whatever account may be given of this moral disease 
 of our race, (as for example, some may consider it as 
 the effect of an aspiration or struggle to rise,) we are 
 never cured of it, until we consent to take upon our- 
 selves blame, and so introduce the remedy of repent- 
 ance. So far, indeed, is our unbiassed conscience from 
 assenting to those who assume the Divine forgiveness 
 as a thing of facility, and almost of necessity, following 
 upon any human sin, that it is exceedingly hard for 
 any man of reflection to forgive himself. Who then 
 shall say how far the graver sentences of our own judg- 
 ment are already ratified by Him who knoweth our 
 thoughts long before ; whether the remorseful shiver 
 of the nerves, that debateable ground between body 
 and soul, be not the index of a true foreboding ; and 
 whether, what our hearts thus bind on earth, is not 
 
272 The Witness of God. [serm. 
 
 also bound in heaven? If such questions ever cause 
 any of my hearers uneasiness, I entreat them not to 
 seek a cure for it in recklessness, and not in fearing 
 to look the problem in the face. So fatal a remedy 
 would be even worse than the terrible uneasiness from 
 which it flies. And yet, to gaze fixedly on the Eternal, 
 without hope warranted by experience, or, without bor- 
 rowing assurance from passion (this latter being the 
 substitute which men often devise for a true cleansing 
 of the heart by confession and repentance.) might well 
 paralyse the strongest mind. 
 
 If necessity ever compelled us to devise a religion, 
 and if we meant by religion only the expression of the 
 heart's feelings when seriously turned towards heaven, 
 we still could not be deaf to the anxiety of those 
 trying hours. We should, at least, require, either em- 
 bodied in ritual, or expressed in speech, some acknow- 
 ledgement of the reality of sin ; and, if possible, some 
 promise of its forgiveness. Should we, then, be war- 
 ranted in attempting to satisfy this want, if we were 
 not able to satisfy another which runs parallel to it all 
 along, and yet is itself of even deeper and more endur- 
 ing grain ? It is not only the anxiety of alarm, but 
 that of mystery, which we have to deal with ; and not 
 only the fear of wrath, but still more the earnest desire 
 of the mind for knowledge of the Eternal, and its own 
 wavering in many moods between opposite probabilities, 
 which makes us cry out for some way of access in our 
 conceptions, to that which is, and was, and is to come. 
 Thus not only the heart yearns for propitiation, with 
 a need to which mere theatrical assurance in ritual 
 
XVIII.] The Witness of God. 273 
 
 could give only temporary relief; but the intellect 
 requires a revelation to its thoughts, of that which is 
 above it, and beyond it, yet which infinitely concerns 
 it to know. If I only mention the words matter and 
 spirit, I remind you of substances which metaphy- 
 sicians in all ages have left face to face, after seeking in 
 vain for any mode of bringing the two into conjunction, 
 or giving either a full apprehension of the other. If we 
 go a step farther, to the ideas of humanity and divinity, 
 or of creature and Creator, our thoughts are still more 
 vext by the gulf which intervenes. But if we superadd 
 the images of sinfulness and of purity, wq have again 
 things of which one is often impelled, though in 
 reluctant waywardness, to seek the other, while yet the 
 two are in their nature for ever irreconcilably opposed. 
 
 What need then here arises for mediation, in all 
 the senses of the word ! We require a medium even 
 to frame and hold fast our intellectual conceptions. 
 We want something, again, to bring together the high 
 and low, even in respect of difference of degree ; some- 
 thing, also, to lift us above perishable things, and to 
 make our hope as immortal as our aspiration ; but with 
 this must be something to cleanse the heart of evil 
 memories, and to make our performance equal our will ; 
 and these things, we seem to divine, can only be, if 
 Almighty Power has chosen to own a mightier than 
 itself in Love, or if the highest affections in man have 
 something practically analogous, or may be taken as 
 an index of what yet infinitely transcends them in God. 
 
 Thus, if we were obliged, in all soberness, to seek a 
 practical solution for such problems, endeavouring both 
 
 12—5 
 
274 Tlie Witness of God. [serm. 
 
 to appease the conscience and to exalt its powers, (not 
 therefore purchasing a moral sleep by any opiate of 
 Circean mixture,) we should find ourselves trembling in 
 desire upon the verge of that mystery which the faith 
 of Christ embodies in the historical fact of the Son of 
 God made man. We should earnestly wish (but I know 
 not if we should dare to imagine) some picture to our 
 mind's eye of the invisible^ God, which should present to 
 our thoughts an adequate likeness of the Divine ; and 
 we should aspire to animate our actions with some 
 sample of man, (embodying in a life with which our 
 hearts might sympathize,) the ideal of the human. We 
 should cry out as it were, and long for the manifesta- 
 tion of some one blending the two. No one, I suppose, 
 will understand me, as if our need were made an inde- 
 pendent proof of the fact ; yet the one would prophesy 
 and seem to require the other as its complement ; and 
 at least it is a reason why the other, when we have it, 
 should not be lightly esteemed. Truly did the great 
 Italian thinker, from whom so many have borrowed 
 their philosophy of history, say, that while all religions 
 have done something, godlessness alone has created 
 nothing. But it is no less true, that without some 
 mode of bringing God and man very near to each 
 other, we shall never found or perpetuate a religion for 
 mankind. 
 
 We must, indeed, acknowledge, that to bring about 
 such an union may require a blending of things difficult 
 to combine; and the formal theory of its possibility may 
 
 1 With the whole of this passage may be compared the Sermon 
 on our being Sons of God, and that on the Holy Tnnity, pp. 250, 2, 4. 
 
XVIII.] The Witness of God. 275 
 
 transcend our conception, as it outsteps the range of 
 our common experience. But there must be many 
 persons in this Church who know that the most common 
 acts of life require universal yet mysterious laws to 
 underlie them. What, then, if the Incarnation (or the 
 birth in the flesh of the Son of God) ^ould, if we 
 attempt to trace its theory, involve logically all the 
 consequences which in the Creed called Athanasian are 
 somewhat technically expressed, does it therefore in- 
 volve greater difficulties than systems which (apart from 
 the facts of Christianity) have been thought not only 
 probable but necessarily true ? Had not both the rea- 
 sonings of Plato, and the perplexed allegories of Philo ', 
 prepared us to expect a mediation of Wisdom, as alone 
 capable of revealing to us the unsearchable will of Him 
 who passeth understanding? Do we not learn, even 
 from our own inferences, which come to birth so silently 
 in the deep recesses of thought that they appear on the 
 surface like intuitions, that as thinking in man goes 
 before action, so spirit must be antecedent to matter, 
 and that all the worlds must, at least in the idea of 
 volition, (and probably also in time,) be the creation of 
 the only- wise God ? But by what name shall we call 
 that going forth as it were of an offspring of the Ever- 
 lasting ? Could the mind, or the fate, or the word, of 
 the Eternal and the Infinite, be a transient phase, or 
 must it partake of that infinity which is undivided and 
 for ever ? It is not Avithout a thrill of interest, ap- 
 proaching to awe, that I find the subtle intellect of the 
 Hindus in an appendix (and probably an ancient one) 
 ^ See particularly the Tract Quis Rer, Divin. Hccres. 
 
276 Tha Witness of God. [serm. 
 
 to the Vedic hymns, telling us of a period, " before life 
 was, and before death, and before day and night, while 
 the ineffable Deity dwelt alone ;" yet even then he had 
 companionship with " that which was sustained in Him- 
 self;" that wisdom, or desire, or voice, which after- 
 wards came forth, giving body to his thoughts, and 
 recognized by the wise, (through the intellect in their 
 hearts,) as that which binds together whatever things 
 consist'. Apart from Him was nothing then which 
 since has been. 
 
 How wonderfully such language approaches to the 
 Gospel of St John, or how far it falls short, I need 
 scarcely here explain, but I quote it as showing (what 
 indeed all the profounder philosophies show) how the 
 human mind is ever driven, by a kind of necessity, to 
 something which at least resembles the Christian Trinity 
 sufficiently to justify it. The most probable reason for 
 this convergence of opinion is, that the point where 
 they converge is the truth. 
 
 Again, what if this idea of Wisdom and Love coming 
 forth to reveal a Majesty which would otherwise have 
 been unsearchable, can only be brought home to men's 
 minds by a spirit of love, quickening their conceptions 
 and binding their lawless thoughts into harmony, both 
 with each other, and with the Highest Wisdom by which 
 all worlds are preserved ; have we not, as a conclusion 
 from this fact, just such a doctrine as may discriminate 
 between (and blend whatever is true in) the naked 
 assertion of a Creator external to the world, and the 
 sense of a Divine Being who is not only above all, but 
 1 See Colebrooke's collected Works, Vol. i. pp. 32 — 34. 
 
xviii,] 21ie Witness of God. 277 
 
 in all, and through all ? Or, may not those difficulties, 
 which embarrass the most thoughtful minds in any 
 attempt to choose between the old Hebrew belief in a 
 very Maker of the Avorld, as if by handiwork, and the 
 modern tendency to conceive of the Eternal as a source 
 from which all things flow, and into whose ample ex- 
 panse they are again gathered, find their true solution in 
 that Christian doctrine of the Holy Ghost, which at 
 once affirms a great gulf between God and man, yet 
 bridges it over by revealing the sources of our strength, 
 and by giving to all believers in actual sonship, a son- 
 ship which, although by adoption, is yet in effect as 
 eternal as that which belongs by inheritance to the 
 Only-begotten of the Father? We seem here to have 
 such a taking up and blending into one of what ap- 
 peared opposite in two conflicting views, as is likely to 
 be characteristic of truth. For all errors embraced by 
 communities of men are partially true, and that which 
 is fragmentary or distorted in each reappears in its 
 integrity in the perfect truth. 
 
 If now any one remarks, that all this argument has 
 left untouched the great question between the occur- 
 rence of historical facts, and the possibility of human 
 imagination moulding its affections (by means of accu- 
 mulating hearsay) into narrative, let him please to 
 observe, that I leave the external history of Christianity 
 exactly where 1 found it. Many others (and probably 
 some who hear me) have laboured in that field. 
 
 The object of this sermon is to propound to you 
 the idea, that, apart from all external evidences, there 
 is a voice born of those deep desires and intellectual 
 
278 The Witness of God. [serm. 
 
 requirements which make up our mental being — which, 
 when such a picture as appears in Jesus Christ of the 
 Eternal God and of His truth is presented to it — 
 exclaims, " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the 
 words of eternal life." 
 
 Nor is it to be overlooked, that, in prosecuting this 
 train of thought, we find those characteristic mysteries 
 of the faith which have by some been thought its 
 stumblingblocks, turn out to be the pillars of its 
 strength. For it is through them that we make our 
 religion unique, and in them that we find the means of 
 reconciling opposite truths, and solving what appeared 
 hopeless contradictions. 
 
 Only it ought to be allowed, in passing, that the 
 stereotyped rigidity which these doctrines have now 
 assumed in our formularies, is by no means so persuasive 
 or so healing to the mind as those devout feelings and 
 modes of conception, of which they may be considered 
 as in some measure the moulded expression. Hence, if 
 any one here should be embarrassed, either as regards 
 their meaning or their consistency, I would humbly 
 counsel him to go back in thought to those tentative 
 and, as it were, instinctive processes, by which the 
 Church^ wrought out into a system the conditions or 
 the consequences of her primary belief. He might 
 notice, for example, how far more subtle and delicate 
 was the metaphysical conception which the ancient 
 fathers framed of the personality of each of the Divine 
 
 1 Compare Jeremy Taylor, referred to above, in a note to Sermon 
 XVII., and Bishop Kaye's account of St Atbanasius, or Neander's 
 Church History. 
 
XVIII.] The Witness of God. 279 
 
 agents in our redemption, than the well-meaning dog- 
 matism of some among the moderns appears able even 
 to dream. Perhaps, also, it might be wholesome, or, 
 at least, temporarily allowable, for such a one to con- 
 ceive of the Christ, somewhat ideally, as the very Love, 
 or the very Truth, or the very Wisdom of God, exhi- 
 biting itself in a human form ; then, as he discovered, 
 both by study of the Gospels and by prayerful en- 
 deavour to lead himself a true life, how thoroughly 
 each of the above titles corresponded to, or was merited 
 by, what is written of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, he 
 might find the old story come out with a new meaning ; 
 he might recognise the fitness of having those grand 
 but abstract ideas wedded to a human sympathy, and 
 commended by the experience of human trials and 
 intercourse ; until at length, coming down from the 
 mountain of speculation to the valley of faith and duty, 
 he no longer separate, with Gnostic imaginings, that 
 which God had joined, but pray in humility, not only, 
 *' Truth of God, be thou my guide," but also, " Son of 
 David, have mercy upon me." 
 
 But to return: such a general argument as we have 
 sketched, ought, if true, to make us embrace the ex- 
 ternal history with more open arms ; for surely it 
 requires very different evidence to prove a thing intrin- 
 sically in harmony with our highest reason, and one 
 which is supposed to be improbable, either as being 
 immoral or as self-contradictory. 
 
 But (I must add) are we not too much in the habit 
 of treating Man as a mere animal, to whom religion is 
 a thing so unnatural that it requires all the fences of 
 
280 The Witness of God. [serm. 
 
 logic to prove it? and do not many even lessen the 
 force of reverence and conscience, those witnesses of 
 God in the soul, in order to magnify their jDarticular 
 mode of recommending an external creed ? Would it 
 not be better and far truer to consider Man as a child 
 of God, fallen, yet retaining something of his kindred ; 
 as a being, therefore, to whom the worship of the 
 mind is so unquenchable a desire, that the need of 
 " evidences" is rather on the side of those who would 
 thrust him down the precipice of godlessness and crime? 
 The side of Christ is truly the natural side ; for to his 
 words our hearts responded in our childhood. [It is his 
 scoffing detractors who ought to produce " evidences." 
 If our religion is not good, let them produce a better. 
 If our faith is false, let them only exhibit in their lives, 
 and in a bible, and in a church, and in a liturgy, and 
 in a lord or master, the faith which is truer. If they 
 would only make such an attempt' in earnest, they 
 would discover whether there is any other foundation 
 they can lay save that which is laid. There is not 
 even, in art or nature, a device or emblem they could 
 choose as a banner, so profoundl}' significant as the 
 Cross. If they took a sword, it would savour of war ; 
 if a book, or pen, it would be a lifeless pedantry ; if a 
 hand, or an eye, it would be but a mutilated limb ; if a 
 heart, out of it come evil passions : whereas in the 
 Cross is the world-long symbol of all impulses, powers, 
 and affections, being hallowed and strengthened by 
 
 1 Such attempts as I have seen, though I would not speak of 
 them otherwise than with compassion, go far to confirm this argu- 
 ment ; as probably they suggested it. 
 
XVIII.] The Witness of God. 281 
 
 being first patiently subdued and brought into obedience 
 to God uho gave them. 
 
 If this kind of argument sound strange^ to any of 
 my hearers, it is by no means a new one. It is far 
 older than the technical one which would turn our faith 
 into a proposition of Euclid. Thus even the stern and 
 prosaic African, Tertullian, appealed to the testimonium 
 animce naturaliter Christianoe — the witness of the soul 
 born to be on the side of God. Still more strikingly 
 the same father says, Quod nation est de Virgine, nas- 
 citur in nobis: "the Child of the Virgin is born in 
 Christian hearts ;" as if his mind had risen from the 
 idea of Christ after the flesh to that of Christ after the 
 Spirit, as the ever-springing Power and the ever- 
 quickening Wisdom of God. It is quite in the same 
 tone that St Augustine does not hesitate to claim 
 whatever had been spoken truly among the Gentiles 
 as part of that truth of God which had been incarnate 
 in our Lord. [This, by the way, is one of the many 
 advantages which a believer in our Lord's Divinity has, 
 in point of consistency, over an Unitarian, who still 
 considers the religion of Christ as an unique revelation. 
 By the one, Socrates may be acknowledged, like the 
 Baptist, as a sort of forerunner of Christ, whereas, to 
 the other, he seems only a rival.] Nor these only, but 
 the ancient Apologists ^ in general assimilated their 
 cause to whatever was best in the system of their 
 
 1 It is indeed stiange, that readers of Butler and Hooker should 
 think the evidence of conscience practically a light one ; or under- 
 rate it in order to magnify sensuous phenomena. 
 
 2 See, as a good example, the Second Apology of Justin Martyr : 
 ovK on aXXdrpia iari ra diddynara rov Tlkaravos, k.t.X. 
 
282 The Witness of God. [serm, 
 
 opponents, and so endeavoured to find an answer in 
 their consciences : whereas modern evidences have 
 fallen into the mistaken track of repelling all corre- 
 spondencies of feeling' in the Gentile world, for the 
 sake of magnifying the change of external allegiance. 
 
 What if Almighty God is mercifully bringing us 
 back, by weariness of endless disputations about things 
 external, to consider more the truth and the beauty of 
 that wisdom which is holy, harmless, and undefiled? 
 A man's religion, after all, seems not to consist so 
 much in what he does from a demonstration that Christ 
 can reward him, as in what he does out of love, for 
 the very work's sake. It was by being brought within 
 hearing of our Saviour''s voice, and within sight of his 
 healing gestures, and by watching his lowly entry into 
 Jerusalem, that our young souls were magnetised, until 
 Ave exclaimed with St Peter, " Thou art the Son of the 
 living God." So that " witness of God," which St John 
 speaks of in our text, is not the mere technical de- 
 position of the Apostles or of their writings ; that may 
 be very useful ; but yet that is the witness of man : it 
 falls within the province of the understanding ; which 
 indeed is a faculty not without peril to be despised. 
 St John certainly received it ; but yet he thought the 
 witness of God far better. This latter belongs to those 
 devout affections, and to that harmony of the feelings 
 and the conscience, which are the province of the Spirit. 
 When the Apostle saw those sacraments of water and 
 blood, which reminded him of the reality of His Master's 
 Passion on the Cross, and when he saw that outpouring 
 of peace of mind, with which the Spirit accompanied 
 
XVIII.] The Witness of God. 283 
 
 these means of grace, he could not on the one hand 
 dream, that Jesus had not truly come in the flesh, 
 nor on the other hand doubt, that the Spirit of Christ 
 was the Spirit of God. So Ave, brethren, by the sacra- 
 ment of water acknowledge the reality of sin, and our 
 need of a purifying fountain; by the sacrament of 
 blood, we acknowledge both that Christ died for us, 
 and that we ought so to die unto sin ; and that our 
 lives are not our own, but ever consecrated as an 
 offering to Him, by whose Spirit they can alone be made 
 perfect. If we rightly enter into the meaning of these 
 two witnesses of the Gospel, and understanding them, 
 use them, we shall find that the third witness, of the 
 Spirit, agrees with them in one. By laying down our 
 sins in thought, at the foot of that altar of the mind, 
 which is ever reared in the Church not made with 
 hands, we embody the Atonement in an act ; and as we 
 rise in the strength of the love of God, which is thus 
 assured to us, we learn, how the sacrifice of Christ is 
 once offered, and yet perpetually repeated ; how the 
 Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, and yet comes per- 
 petually, so often as our thoughts rightly show us the 
 Passion of our Lord ; and how it ever fills that com- 
 munity of faithful men, which having thus the mind of 
 Christ, becomes to him as it were a Body; and like 
 the world in the realm of providence, so the Church in 
 the kingdom of grace, becomes the habitation, and the 
 fulfilment, of Him that filleth all in all. 
 
 Thus, even if some points in the witness of man 
 either fail us, or at least are diversely interpreted ; if 
 that which seemed the witness of tongues should resolve 
 
284 The Witness of God. [serm. 
 
 itself into a wonderful outburst of devout rapture ; and 
 if prophesyings, however confidently once appealed to, 
 should be chiefly accommodations, the propriety of 
 which depends upon the ever-recurrent unity of the 
 divine dealings with mankind ; — yet the love of God 
 never faileth^ and this is the witness which saves the 
 soul alive. Thus also, if the roll of successive Advents 
 should, in a generation of all-questioning intellect, increase 
 the number of those who ask, how much of what is said 
 of our Lord's final coming is literal, and how much 
 parable ? we may no less hold fast by the truth, that 
 all judgment is committed to the Son, who was Incar- 
 nate ; and as the words of Him who came to his Temple 
 in great humility are found powerful to quicken and 
 console, so the same words shall judge us when he 
 comes again in power, and all the holy angels with 
 him. 
 
 Lastly, brethren, if there be any truth in the above 
 idea, that the true evidence of Christianity consists in 
 its life-giving power, it becomes a question of more 
 solemnity than it may ever have occurred to some of 
 us to reflect, how far will our own generation, our 
 Church, our university, our youth, our manhood, endure 
 to be brought forward as witness in such a cause. If 
 learning, science, ingenuity, might serve as witnesses, 
 our cause would be in no danger. But it has pleased 
 God, in that wisdom which none may gainsay, to stake 
 the issue of his own great cause, and consequently the 
 trial of our faith, upon our cherishing the mind and 
 
 1 Compare 1 Corinthians, c. xiii. vv. S — 13, and read Neander's 
 " Planting of Christianity." 
 
XVIII.] The Witness of God. 285 
 
 upon our living the life of Christ. To us, then, no 
 less than to St Augustine, it is written, " Not in rioting 
 and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, 
 not in strife and envying : but put ye on the Lord 
 Jesus Christ." This know also, that whenever our 
 Master comes, and whatever the fashion of his corn- 
 ins:, whether in mankind's weariness of formalitv, or 
 in their thirst for more living waters, or in the revo- 
 lutionary storm of nations, or in the crash of elements 
 at the last day, his first act must ever be to purge 
 his temple. It is with the ancient men before the 
 doors of the Lord's house, and with the sons of the 
 prophets on the steps of its threshold, that judgment 
 must ever begin. 
 
 " Watch you, therefore ; for in such an hour as ye 
 think not the Son of Man cometh." 
 
SEEMON XIX.^ 
 
 SERVANTS OF GOD SPEAKING AS MOVED BY TUE 
 HOLY GHOST. 
 
 Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. 
 
 2 Pet. i. 21. 
 
 So long as the religion of Christ is recommended only 
 by the inherent weight of its ideas, it stands on nearly 
 the same ground as the sentiments of justice or of 
 right if considered prior to their being exemplified in 
 history, or embodied in law. 
 
 Few minds, we may hope, are so brutishly depraved 
 as not to acknowledge their neighbour's right to his 
 own life, to the fruit of his labour, and to fair dealing in 
 all social transactions, if only the conceptions of those 
 things are brought calmly and deliberately within cogni- 
 sance of their thought. But yet the naked idea of 
 justice is not found powerful to restrain men's actions 
 with anything like the dominion which it is capable 
 of acquiring when its principles have been embodied 
 in law, transgression of them forbidden by penalty, and 
 instances of their operation in all the transactions of 
 
 i Preached before the University of Cambridge, on the Second 
 Sunday in Advent, December, 185-4. 
 
XIX.] Servants of God speaking, &c. 287 
 
 life recorded and set forth in the history of a nation. 
 So far, indeed, as the subjects of a realm are concerned, 
 the authority which practically binds them is not that 
 of the abstract sentiment of justice, but the positive 
 law of the land. 
 
 A man is not permitted to argue that his con- 
 ception of justice gives him a social claim ; it is law 
 which must ratify that claim, define its measure, and 
 lay down the method of enforcing it. There is nothing in 
 our own land so lofty, and not many things so minute, as 
 not to fall within the range of positive and written law. 
 But yet this law, which gives majesty to the sceptre, and 
 edge to the sword, extending its ample shield over the 
 lives of subject millions, and enforcing even for its own 
 errors a sacredness which the wisest are the slowest to 
 dispute, has behind it and underneath it a power greater 
 than its own. For it is itself the creature of human 
 thought ; the ever-growing and often-varying embodi- 
 ment of the conceptions of mankind ; and although legis- 
 lators, judges, and reformers, or even martyrs in the 
 cause of freedom, may have spoken it of old, as they were 
 moved by the providence and the Spirit of God, teach- 
 ing them either through experience or through impulse, 
 yet it is often marked by the imperfections of its time. 
 The vessels in which the great treasure of the desire of 
 justice was embodied, may have been vessels of earth ; 
 and if it is to retain its hold upon advancing generations, 
 it must purify itself ever by contact with the living 
 fountains of justice ; must adapt its interpretation to 
 new exigencies of social life ; and must beware lest, by 
 superstitious tenacity of the letter, any violence be done 
 
288 Servants of God speaking as [serif. 
 
 to the spirit; even to that sense of righteousness in 
 man, which is ever being trained upward, to realize the 
 unwritten Word of God. 
 
 Now, we may very reasonably say, that to ourselves, 
 as members of the Church of England, the great 
 standard of theological doctrine must be that volume 
 of Holy Scriptures which embodies the experience of the 
 Church of old ; the record of her revelations, and the 
 tradition of her spiritual life ; the transfusion, as it were, 
 of her spirit into writing ; which also the Church of 
 our own land has stamped with authority, by adopting it 
 as her written law. There are many obvious advantages 
 in having so easy a court of appeal : an authority which 
 teaches by example as well as by precept ; a judge not 
 biassed by our controversies of the day ; and a record 
 extending over a sufficiently ample range of time for 
 questions of all kinds to have found in it a practical solu- 
 tion ; for the blessings of innocence, and for the judg- 
 ments which wait on crime, to have been each very signally 
 exemplified ; and for the often-contending (though they 
 ought to be harmonious) claims of king, and priest, and 
 people, of power and weakness, of wealth and poverty, 
 to have each had a limit assigned to them ; — a sentence, 
 as it were, having been passed upon them by that expe- 
 rience of generations which expresses the verdict of the 
 great Ruler of the world. Moreover, it must be noticed, 
 that Scripture will have a greater sacredness than law, 
 because it deals with a subject-matter still more sacred ; 
 and although the relations which the two bear to the 
 thing written about may be the same, yet since the 
 subjects are different, the writings will also differ. 
 
XIX.] moved hy the Holy Ghost. 289 
 
 Yet it ought ever to be acknowledged, that this 
 Holy Scripture, which all members of our Church so 
 justly regard with veneration, has also something behind 
 it deeper ' and far holier still ; and if that spirit by which 
 holy men spake of old, is for ever a living and a present 
 power, its later lessons may well transcend its earlier; 
 and there may reside in the Church a power of bringing 
 out of her treasury things new as well as things old. 
 
 If it had been the will of Almighty God, we cannot 
 doubt his power to have instructed mankind, by pouring 
 before their gaze from the beginning all the treasures 
 of his providence, and all the wonders of his grace. 
 But it has pleased Him, who doeth all things well, to 
 train up his Israel as a child, and to make the expe- 
 rience of bygone generations a landmark for those who 
 were to come. There was a time when as yet the Bible 
 was not, and we must not think that it was necessary to 
 salvation. For the Spirit of God may have then striven 
 with men ; possibly even his Eternal Offspring, the not 
 yet Incarnate Word, may have preached through the 
 movements of conscience, and through words of warning, 
 in the days of Noah. Certainly Enoch may have walked 
 with God ; Melchisedec may, in the sanctity of a Gen- 
 tile priesthood, have blessed Abraham ; the faith of the 
 patriarch, in One who was his shield and his exceeding 
 great reward, may have been counted to him as righte- 
 ousness ; and all these, and others whom no man can 
 
 1 To deny this, is to deny Christ far more utterly than the Gala- 
 tians did ; and for any one to call such sayings an inversion of the 
 groundwork of Christianity, only shows the urgent need there is for 
 servants of God to preach them. 
 
 w. s. 13 
 
290 Servants of God speaking as [serm. 
 
 number, may have been gathered to the spirits of just 
 men made perfect, if not before any records existed, at 
 least centuries before the earliest of our sacred books 
 took their present form. 
 
 But when the patriarchs have grown into twelve 
 tribes, they are become a nation, and a nation must 
 have a history; when they come out from the house of 
 bondage, and conquer a new land, the Author of their 
 deliverance, and the Giver of their conquest, must have 
 his wondrous works recorded; when they have law, 
 which is to be enforced by human rulers, though with 
 reference to the Divine Ruler, it must be written in 
 some express form ; or, just as man, because he has the 
 gift of reason, Avill utter speech with meaning ; so the 
 nation, because thoughts are stirring in its breast, must 
 have a voice to speak forth the national mind ; and, if 
 the life which animates its thoughts be truly religious, 
 the words which are their utterance must be sacred 
 words ; thus, where there is a Church there must be a 
 Bible or a Liturgy; where there is a true Temple, there 
 will be solemn Psalms ; where decay, or formalism 
 creeps over the servants of the sanctuary, if the Spirit 
 of God has compassion on his people to awaken them, 
 there will arise prophets, whose protest will be couched 
 in accents pregnant with eternal truth ; who will say to 
 the dry bones, " Live," and to the prostrate Church, 
 ' Stand upon thy feet." 
 
 Thus, although man is gathered to his fathers, yet, 
 as nations and churches represent, throughout fleeting 
 generations, the everlasting providence and Spirit of 
 God, so it is probable they will strive to prevent their 
 
xrx.] moved hij the Holy Ghost. 291 
 
 best thoughts from being swept into forgetfulness ; and 
 they will, by writing, give a permanent shape to their 
 record of things temj^oral, and to their perception of 
 things divine. 
 
 Then again, if the destined course of the world be 
 really one of providential progress, if there has been 
 such a thing as a childhood of humanity, and if God 
 has been educating either a nation or a Church to 
 understand their duty to Himself and to mankind ; it. 
 must follow, that when the fulness of light is come, there 
 will be childish things to put away. Not (indeed) that 
 any part will have been useless in its day ; perhaps a 
 certain unalterableness of spirit may run through every 
 link of the chain. Yet, if the chain is one of living 
 men, each link must have a freedom of expansion, and 
 there will be a power of modifying mere circumstance 
 very different from the bare continuity of inanimate 
 things. Hence, if the religious records represent faith- 
 fully the inner life of each generation, whether a people 
 or a priesthood, they will all be, in St Paul's phrase, 
 divinely animated, or, with a divine life running through 
 them ; and every writing, divinely animated, will be 
 useful ; yet they may, or rather, they must be cast in 
 the mould of the generation in which they were written ; 
 their words, if they are true words, will express the cus- 
 toms of their country, the conceptions of their times, 
 the feelings or aspirations of their writers ; and the 
 measure of knowledge or of faith to which every one, in 
 his degree, had attained. And the limitation, thus 
 asserted, of their range of knowledge, will be equally true 
 whether we suppose the shortcoming to be, on an idea 
 
 13—2 
 
292 Servants of God speaking as [serm. 
 
 of special Providence, from a particular dictation of 
 sentiment in each case ; or whether, on the more reason- 
 able view of a general Providence, we consider such 
 things permitted rather than directed ; the natural 
 result of a grand scheme, rather than a minute arrange- 
 ment of thoughts and words for each individual man. 
 It may be that the Lord writes the Bible, on the same 
 principle as the Lord builds the city; or that He teaches 
 the Psalmist to sing, in the same sense as He teaches his 
 fingers to fight ; thus that the composition of Scripture 
 is attributed to the Almighty, just as sowing and thresh- 
 ing are said to be taught by Him* ; for every part played 
 by man comes from the divine Disposer of the scene. 
 
 By some such process, however, as has above been 
 sketched, it has pleased the Giver of all wisdom to bring 
 about for us through his providence the writing of these 
 sacred books, which comprehend (1) the literature of 
 the Hebrew people, (2) the oracles of Jehovah's priest- 
 hood, and (3) the experience of the apostles of Christ. 
 
 For such seems to be a division, under which we 
 may naturally class those many voices of the Church of 
 God, or those records of the spiritual convictions of 
 the great society in which the fear of the Lord has 
 been inherited from generation to generation, the ag- 
 gregate of which books we call the Bible. Shall we 
 venture to glance at each of these divisions in turn ? 
 We claim for the oldest of our sacred books an anti- 
 quity of perhaps fifteen hundred years before the 
 Christian era. But the external evidence for their ex- 
 istence can hardly be said to extend over more than 
 ' Isaiah xxviii. 23 — 29. 
 
XIX.] moved by the Holy Ghost. 293 
 
 half that period. For all the earlier half we rely chiefly 
 upon the contents of the books themselves. Nor can 
 we even appreciate this kind of evidence without a 
 certain freedom of investigation, which proceeds upon 
 what Hooker assumes as the primary revelation of the 
 human understanding. Yet, from this kind of evidence 
 we are able, for a large part of the earlier books, to 
 prove an origin of very high antiquity. Partly, the 
 language agrees Avith what the date requires ; as in the 
 earlier books of the Pentateuch there are Egyptian 
 words ; partly, the manners agree, whether we glance 
 at the ancient castes of Egypt, as attested by her 
 monumental stones, or at the wandering tents of the 
 patriarchal tribes ; partly, again, the general scenery 
 is true in character ; and, still more decisively, the 
 general tone of feeling, and the mental horizon, as it 
 were, of the writers, is exactly what we should expect, 
 as in due proportion to the age in which their lot was 
 cast. Only, it must be added, that all these proofs of 
 genuineness are also equally proofs of a positive limi- 
 tation to the range of knowledge. We cannot, in one 
 moment, say, these books were written in such an age 
 because they have the knowledge of that age, and in 
 the next moment argue that they have a divine omni- 
 science, and therefore were dictated, or, as it were, 
 drt)pt from heaven ; for this would be, with the greatest 
 inconsistency, to destroy our own argument and to 
 introduce miracle, where we have been assuming the 
 faithfulness of God's providence ; as if we said, that the 
 rain' and the sunshine are a contradiction to those laws 
 1 Dr Powell of St John's. 
 
294 Servants of God speaking as [serm. 
 
 of the Author of Nature which seem intended expressly 
 to guide them. 
 
 Here, therefore, both for the above reasons, and for 
 others to be mentioned hereafter, let me in all humility 
 protest against that unwise exaggeration which makes 
 the entire Bible a transcript of the Divine omniscience, 
 or a Word of God for all time, without due reference 
 to the circumstances and to the range of knowledge of 
 those holy men who spake of old. The writers, after 
 all, are men; and the condition of mankind is imper- 
 fection. They were holy men and servants of God ; 
 but yet all human holiness and all human service is only 
 comparative, and a thing of degree. They spake ; but 
 speech is the organ of thought ; therefore there is 
 nothing in the Scripture but Avhat was first in the mind 
 of the scribe. Nihil est in Scripto, quod non prius in 
 Scriptore. They spake of old ; but all old times repre- 
 sent, as it were, the childhood of the human race, and 
 therefore had childish things, which we must put away. 
 The Holy Ghost was their teacher ; but the province of 
 this eternal Agent in our Redemption is not to give 
 knowledge of earthly facts, which we know by the 
 Providence of the Father, nor yet to give a new reve- 
 lation of things heavenly which we know by the positive 
 Incarnation of the Son ; but the province of the Holy 
 Ghost is rather to quicken our conceptions of things 
 otherwise known ; to hallow our impulses, restrain our 
 wanderings, and guide our steps in those paths which 
 the Father and the Son have already laid down for us 
 to walk in. 
 
 But let no one therefore suppose that this limitation 
 
XIX.] moved hy the Holy Ghost. 295 
 
 of the knowledge of the sacred writers should lessen 
 the sacredness, or destroy to us the usefulness, of that 
 literature which, according to the measure of its time, 
 the Church of God spake of old. We may receive the 
 messasre of the servants as true without for a moment 
 dreaming that the Great Master had communicated to 
 them all the knowledge of his eternal plan. We may 
 acknowledge the history a very wonderful one, because 
 the events which it records were first wonderful. On 
 the same principle as the very structure of the Hebrew 
 sentence is a written echo of the chant of the temple ; 
 so that acknowledgement of the living God, which they 
 whom the nations despise and Christians often mis- 
 represent, have held fast amidst a thousand persecutions, 
 runs throughout their history as a memorial of the 
 mighty works of Jehovah in the land of Ham, and by 
 the Red Sea. 
 
 Without here venturing upon the very debateable 
 ground of where miracle begins and where Providence 
 ends, or without determining (what perhaps is by no 
 means so important as many may suppose) how much 
 we ought strictly to assign to each, we may safely say, 
 the entire history, or literature, is one Avhich seems 
 destined to be the handmaid of true religion in the 
 world. Just as the ancient Greek manifested the sen- 
 sitiveness of his organization and the activity of his 
 mind by a literature moulded in beauty and full of 
 speculation ; and as the Roman, whose mission it was 
 to civilize the world with law, spoke the firm language 
 of history and of manly virtue ; so the Hebrew, having 
 been wonderfully trained, laid the wisdom of the Egyp- 
 
296 Servants of God speaking as [serm. 
 
 tians at the feet of Jehovah ; he looked upon the earth 
 and its fulness, and he said aloud, " It is the Lord's ;" 
 he saw kings reign, and he felt that One mightier than 
 they had set fast their thrones ; he heard of his fathers 
 migrating, and marrying, and burying their dead in a 
 strange land ; and he felt that not one of these things 
 was disregarded in the sight of Him who teacheth the 
 wild-fowl their course through the heaven, and who 
 upholdeth also our steps in life : or he bowed in the 
 sanctuary on Mount Zion ; and, as the question arose, 
 " Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, or stand in 
 his holy place?" — the Spirit of God within him made 
 answer, " He that hath clean hands and a pure heart ; 
 that hath not spoken the name of Jehovah over false- 
 hood, nor sworn to deceive his neighbour." 
 
 Thus, in short, the spirit which runs through the 
 literature of the Hebrews is eminently a religious spirit: 
 in their history, and in their proverbs, and in the com- 
 mon stories of the people, though these may have been 
 moulded somewhat in Oriental form, there is a true 
 reference of all things to the will of a righteous Lord. 
 
 But, still more emphatically, the same character 
 applies to the direct utterances of the great teachers of 
 righteousness ; to the oracular songs of the Temple, 
 and to the kindling accents in which the prophets woke 
 the conscience of their compatriots, as they denounced 
 the fierce anger of a Judge long provoked by incurable 
 sin. There priest and prophet go harmoniously hand in 
 hand ; so that the attempts of the assailants of church 
 polity to sever their functions, are but vain. It is the 
 province of the priest, not only to teach the difference 
 
XIX.] moved hy the Holy Ghost. 297 
 
 between the holy and the profane, but also that his 
 lips should keep knowledge; and again, however earnestly 
 the prophet may cry aloud for reformation of heart, he 
 yet never ceases to maintain the sacredness of what- 
 ever has had spoken over it the holy name of the 
 Most High. 
 
 Only we cannot judge either one or the other truly, 
 unless we regard them in the closest connexion with 
 the history of the people among whom they are written. 
 For they are not so much a Word of God, externally 
 dropping from Heaven, as a true confession to God, 
 responding from the heart of man. Both the deep 
 sighing of passionate devotion, and the fervent trust in 
 a deliverer out of national bondage, would lose half 
 their value, unless we believed that they came from 
 men who prayed earnestly for themselves ; who had 
 tasted the rod of the oppressor ; and Avho were con- 
 cerned about the realities of their own mind and their 
 own time. But why should not their devout sayings, 
 and all the heroic deeds of trust, or love, or magnani- 
 mity, serve to the same end in religion, as the history 
 of kingdoms in politics, and the strains of poetry in 
 education, without our presuming to assign to the writers 
 an infallibility which they never claim for themselves ?- 
 We may read Moses, not for his physical geography, 
 but for his Ten Commandments and his history. We 
 may read the book of Joshua, not for its astronomy, 
 but for a tremendous example of the law by which God 
 sweeps corrupt nations from the earth ; we may find in 
 Kings and Chronicles, not imaginary and faultless men, 
 but subjects of Divine providence, instances of Divine 
 
 13—5 
 
298 Servants of God speaking as [serm. 
 
 teaching, and all that blending of interest with in- 
 struction, which the history of a devout people, told 
 with reference to the Judge of the whole earth, is ever 
 calculated to afford. We may also fully admit the 
 unalterableness of Scripture, in the sense that deeds 
 truly done cannot be undone ; and fixed principles 
 cannot be changed ; nor would it be modest, to weigh 
 the personal authority of even the most spiritual teacher 
 now, against that of the Apostles who followed Christ; 
 but yet we need not suppose that the arm of the 
 Eternal is shortened, or that his Holy Spirit ever ceases 
 to animate the devout heart. Above all, let no man 
 blunt the edge of his conscience, by praising such 
 things as the craft of Jacob, or the bloodstained 
 treachery of Jael ; nor let the natural metaphor, by 
 which men call a sacred record " the Word of God," 
 ever blind us to the fact, that no text has been found 
 from Genesis to Eevelations, in which this holy name 
 is made a synonym for the entire volume of Scripture ; 
 but rather, the spirit is often, especially in the New 
 Testament, put in opposition to the letter ; and the 
 living word, as for instance it was spoken by the 
 Apostles, is constantly distinguished from the written 
 tradition of the days of old. Most commonly in the 
 New Testament, the phrase Word of God means the 
 Gospel of Christ ; or the glad tidings of the Messiah 
 being come. It should also be noticed, that while the 
 discoveries of modern travellers do so far confirm the 
 books of the Old Testament, as to shew their historical 
 character, they give no countenance to any exaggerated 
 theory of omniscience, or dictation, but rather con- 
 
XIX.] moved by the Holy Ghost. 299 
 
 travene any dream of the kind. When men quote 
 discoveries as confirmations of the Bible, they should 
 consider in what sense and how far it is confirmed by 
 them. 
 
 And now, if we pass on to the experience of the 
 Apostles of Christ, we shall find ample means for ena- 
 bling us to fix its true value upon the record of Holy 
 Scripture. However true it may be, that we know less 
 of the individual writers ^ and of the precise dates of 
 the three earlier Gospels, than our fathers took rather 
 for granted, yet it is certain that they express the belief 
 and the preaching of the Church in the first century of 
 the Christian era. Thus, instead of three men, we may 
 rather appeal to the united testimony of the hundred 
 and twenty persons who constituted the infant Church 
 before the Day of Pentecost. 
 
 And, although some few books, such as the Epistle 
 from which our text is taken, have their authorship 
 reasonably called in question, yet modern criticism does, 
 on grounds of internal evidence, agree very closely with 
 that belief as to the genuineness of the Apostolic writ- 
 ings in general, which the Primitive Church adopted, 
 from traditions of her own. (This, by the way, is an 
 instance in which our modern freedom of investigation 
 has added a fresh argument to our evidence.) 
 
 In these books, then, we find traces of a new spirit 
 in the world. We have the thoughts of those who 
 walked with Christ, and heard the gracious words which 
 
 1 Compare the Prolegomena to Alford's Greek Testament, and Mr 
 B. F. Westcott's admirable treatise on the Harmony and Inspiration 
 of the Gospels. 
 
300 Servants of God sjMaking as [serm. 
 
 He spake. We have the simple fervour of one Apostle; 
 the despondent diffidence of another ; the angelic love- 
 liness and the love of a third ; and, above all, we have 
 the Judaic learning, the awakened mind, the passionate 
 zeal, the practical energy, and the combining wisdom 
 of St Paul. The epistles of this one writer will alone 
 prove that whenever our Gospels may have been, per- 
 haps, moulded out of the familiar converse of the 
 Apostles into their present form,'the belief in our Lord's 
 resurrection from the grave was at least current long 
 before the destruction of Jerusalem. 
 
 Now, all these writers of the New Testament 
 appear, partly as antagonists of the Old, and partly as 
 witnesses who confirm it. Partly they are antagonists, 
 for even the doctrines of Christ find fault with much 
 that had been spoken of old. He appeals from the law 
 of Moses about marriage to the purer instinct of the 
 heart, as that which had been from the beginning; He 
 refuses to confirm the law of retaliation ; and both He 
 and his Apostles, but especially St Paul, turn men's 
 thoujrhts from the tradition of the wisdom of old time', 
 which was principally enshrined in the Bible, to that life 
 of the soul which comes of the Holy Ghost, and to the 
 ever-expanding law which is both written in the heart, 
 and which accumulates enactment from experience. 
 For St Paul's " tradition " contains his Hebrew descent, 
 and his circumcision on the eighth day, with many other 
 
 ' The great contrast between Christ's kingdom of the Spirit, and 
 the Jewish kingdom of precept, strikes us less because we forget how 
 often the Old Testament Scriptures are called the '"law," or the 
 " sayings of old time." 
 
XIX.] moved by the Holy Ghost. 301 
 
 things which had been purely scriptural. They had all 
 been written in the volume of the Book, and yet he 
 repudiates them all. 
 
 Whereas on the other hand the Scribes and Phari- 
 sees call the followers of Jesus accursed, for not know- 
 ing the law ; by which they mean the Scripture. They 
 even pride themselves on searching the Scriptures, for 
 they thought that therein they had eternal life. Yet 
 our Lord does not hesitate to blame them, as searching 
 the Scriptures in vain. 
 
 So again, St Paul calls the Galatians foolish, for 
 desiring to be under the law, under which term he 
 includes the book of Genesis. He is quite in accord 
 with Jeremiah, who had prophesied under Christianity a 
 time when the Word of God should be written, not in 
 book or stone, but on the fleshly tables of the heart, or 
 in the conscience of reasonable beings. Yet, it is true, 
 the same Apostle thinks, that the Divine Teacher of 
 Mankind had never ceased to warn his Church of old ; 
 and that by the great principle of trust in an unseen but 
 all-righteous Guide, He had led its members from the 
 beginning ; and hence all the utterances of that 
 Church, or the traditions of the Old Testament, are 
 divinely animated ; they are written for our instruction ; 
 for who would not listen to the lessons of a great 
 history of thought, or spurn the inheritance of his 
 ghostly fathers ? And thus their tendency is to make 
 the servant of God wise, putting him, through the me- 
 dium of an enlightened understanding, on the track as 
 it were of Christian salvation. 
 
 Again, while the writings of the Apostles of Christ 
 
302 Servants of God speaking as [serm. 
 
 represent chiefly the principle of the living spirit, they 
 are themselves the utterance of the Church, or of that 
 society which is the habitation of the ever-present Spirit 
 of God ; and, when duly preserved, they are capable of 
 being themselves handed down as an inheritance or a 
 tradition ; yet, as being a tradition of a spiritual age, 
 they may become witnesses, either for sober history 
 against vague mysticism, or for the lively inspiration of 
 the heart against the more lifeless tradition of a grosser 
 and more formalised age. 
 
 What blessed lessons, then, may we not derive, if 
 we are wise, from these holy books ? What evidences 
 do they not afford of our faith ! They do not merely 
 record, so much as absolutely talk of the inspired lives 
 of the men who indited them. What warning do they 
 not utter, as with a trumpet's sound, when we, forgetful 
 of the Rock from whence we are hewn, become negligent 
 in the work of the Lord ! What comfort do they not 
 breathe, in all our sorest distress ; in our perplexity of 
 mind, in our pain of body, and in our lowliness of estate! 
 By cherishing their words we assimilate our thoughts to 
 the minds of apostles, and saints, and martyrs ; casting, 
 as it were, our earth-bound affections over again in a 
 holier mould ; and so drinking of the deep fountains 
 which have their source in the well of life, beneath the 
 throne of the Majesty of God our Saviour. 
 
 Let no man be ashamed, if the page on which such 
 words are written is often wet with his tears ; or, if 
 their fashion, though in many things it be temporal, give 
 shape and voice to his deepest thoughts of things eternal. 
 Neither intellect, nor humanity, nor devotion, can any- 
 
XIX.] moved by the Holy Ghost. 303 
 
 where be better purified and strengthened than in the 
 homely page either of our familiar Prayer-book or of 
 our Bible. There our sorrow and our guilty alarm will 
 almost inevitably flee for comfort ; and there, if we are 
 wise, we shall learn in time to discipline our youth and 
 to purify our joy. 
 
 But yet, brethren, let no inconsiderate exaggeration, 
 and no polemical reaction from overstrained claims of 
 the Church of Rome, induce us to mistake the spirit 
 of the Gospel or of the Cross, for the letter of the 
 Bible. A man may know his Bible by heart, and yet 
 turn a deaf ear to the Word of God. He may lay 
 stress on temporary accidents, such as anointing with 
 oil; and may be blind to eternal principles, such as 
 faith, hope, charity. He may even express the most 
 malignant passion in scriptural phrase, as if truth were 
 more true, or malice were less hateful because the 
 vehicle in which it is conveyed may be of Aramaic form. 
 Thus some have defended slavery because, they truly 
 observe, that St Paul's epistles do defend it, and even 
 condemn attempts to abolish it as the work of men 
 "proud, knowing nothing'." Yet it is evident, that 
 God had destined slavery to flee away in time before 
 the principles with which the Gospel is pregnant. Thus 
 our religion is one thing, and the books which record it 
 are another. Some, again, have laid unreasonable stress 
 upon the accidental opposition of Christianity to the 
 governments and religions of the corrupt generation in 
 which it was first founded ; and hence many irrational 
 arguments against kings and priests ; yet, it is evident, 
 ^ 1 Tim. vi. 2 — 4. 
 
304 Servants of God speaking as [serm. 
 
 that the sacredness of the office of governor, and of 
 teacher, and of rightful minister in the sanctuary, must 
 last as long as this world endures. How many, again, 
 with most unfair sophistry distort various texts of 
 Scripture in order to force them unnaturally into a 
 harmony which they suppose needful ; whereas the very 
 idea of a divine teaching, which lies at the bottom of 
 the Bible, implies also the idea of progress, and makes 
 it natural for the newer sentences to differ from the 
 old. So, again, every new science has to run the 
 gauntlet of opposition until, after forcing its way through 
 bitter searchings of heart, it is at last pretended to be 
 in harmony with those texts which were once (more 
 truly, but yet quite irrelevantly) alleged to oppose it. 
 Time would fail me to tell of Puritan perverseness, of 
 fanaticism passing into tyranny, of science persecuted, 
 reason insulted, morality depraved, and the Gospel of 
 Christ congealed, mutilated, and dipt, as it were, of 
 its wings, because men have assumed what the Bible 
 does not assume, that inspiration means omniscience, 
 or that the All-gracious Father, who taught men of old, 
 has his unsleeping eye blinded or his arm shortened, so 
 that He can teach us now no more. But, perhaps, no 
 single study has suffered so much from this cause as the 
 interpretation of the Bible itself It may, however, 
 be suggested, whether devotion also has not suffered 
 somewhat. For, although the Psalms and other sacred 
 writings are a treasury of expressions which harmonize 
 admirably with the deepest breathings of our hearts ; 
 yet, when men compile prayers from these with servile 
 imitation, like schoolboys take verses from the poets, 
 
XIX.] moved by the Holy Ghost. 305 
 
 the spirit of devotion is apt to be exorcised ; and this 
 is one reason why modern prayers are so inferior to the 
 ancient liturgies ; for so long as the Church of old 
 believed in the real presence of the Holy Ghost, she 
 waxed mighty in prayer as she grew rich in experience; 
 then the storehouse of her liturgies became heaped 
 with things old, and yet her heart ever indited good 
 matters that were new ; and from those fountains the 
 stream of prayer has flowed into all lands ; until, at last, 
 our bishops and pastors, as if they despaired of the 
 promise of Christ, would take no weapon in hand that 
 had not been hammered on the Jewish anvil ; and so, 
 many of cur modern prayers have become a lifeless 
 patchwork of texts; a^ disquisition to the people, instead 
 of a crying to God ; and, as there is little affection in 
 them which might even savour of the spirit, so there is 
 often something which offends the understanding. We 
 have fallen, in this respect, far below the level which 
 the genius and the piety of Hooker had attained three 
 centuries ago. That illustrious champion, both of the 
 purity of the Gospel of Christ and of the freedom of 
 the human mind, shows clearly in the second book of 
 his immortal work, how Scripture may become "a 
 
 ' Compare Jer. Taylor, Preface to Golden Orove. Would that those 
 who in our own time have right manfully endeavoured to heal the 
 disease of unreality in our devotional compilations, did not too often 
 bring their own remedies from the dregs of the Middle Ages ; and 
 often, by assembling merely the dolorous portions out of Scri()ture, 
 make work in feminine and sensitive natures for physicians of the 
 body, (I speak from sad observation,) rather than do the work of 
 the Physician of souls. But the true kingdom of God brings peace 
 and joy in believing, with childlike confidence. 
 
306 Servants of God speaking as [serm. 
 
 misery,'* and "a torment," and "a snare ;" and his 
 counsel is most truly judicious, that we should beware, 
 lest by claiming for Holy Scripture more than we ought, 
 we provoke men to deny it its due ; lest, in fact, we 
 pervert the Bible itself; and either destroy the spiritu- 
 ality of our faith, or give occasion to many perverse 
 delusions ; or, again, provoke till we almost justify a 
 most dangerous reaction into scoffing infidelity. 
 
 But if such was Hooker's counsel in his own time, 
 how much greater need is there that some one, either 
 in his spirit, or in that of the incomparable Jeremy 
 Taylor, should speak words of even bolder counsel now ! 
 For it has pleased the Giver of our thoughts, and the 
 Disposer of our lot, to enlarge on all sides the boun- 
 daries of human knowledge. There is no science of 
 the heavens above, or of the earth beneath, or of the 
 waters under the earth, which has not revealed mysteries 
 of its own ; or which does not refuse to be limited by 
 the brief range of the Hebrews, who in all such things 
 were learners rather than teachers. Again, our more 
 extended familiarity with other literatures daily shows 
 us that aspirations, congenial to those of the Hebrews, 
 had been taught elsewhere by the God of the spirits of 
 all flesh. But, above all, the critical interpretation of 
 the sacred volume itself is a study for which our gene- 
 ration is, by various acquirements, eminently qualified. 
 Hence we have learnt that neither the citations usually 
 made in our theological systems, nor even those ad- 
 duced from the Old Testament in the New, are any 
 certain guide to the sense of the original text. The 
 entire question of prophecy requires to be opened 
 
XTX.] moved by the Holy Ghost. 307 
 
 again from its very foundation. Hence, to the student, 
 who is compelled to dwell on such things, comes often 
 the distress of glaring contradictions ; and with some 
 the intellect is clouded, while the faith of others has 
 waxed cold. If the secret religious history of the last 
 twenty years could be written (even setting aside every 
 instance of apostasy through waywardness of mind, or 
 through sensuality of life), there Avould remain a page 
 over which angels might weep. So long, indeed, as 
 such difficulties are thought absolutely to militate 
 against Christianity, the strong necessity, which the 
 best men feel for Christian sentiment, will induce them 
 to keep the whole subject in abeyance. Yet surely 
 the time must come when God will mercifully bring our 
 spirit into harmony with our understanding. Perhaps 
 a greatness and a place, not far from the Apostles in 
 the kingdom of heaven, may be reserved for some one, 
 who, in true holiness and humility of heart, shall be 
 privileged to accomplish this work. We can almost 
 sympathize with that romantic, though erroneous faith, 
 which has made some men attempt to roll back the 
 stream of human knowledge, and to take refuge from 
 doubts in a dream of living infallibility. But all such 
 attempts must fail ; for the God of truth will make 
 them fail. He who dwells in light eternal does not 
 promote his kingdom by darkness ; and He, whose name 
 is Faithful and True, is not served by falsehood. If 
 knowledge has wounded us, the same spear must heal 
 our wound. 
 
 Nor can I close without humbly asking the grave, 
 the reverend, and the learned, whether all this subject 
 
308 Servants of God speaking as [serm. 
 
 does not call for greater seriousness, tenderness, and 
 frankness. Who would not be serious on observing how 
 many men's hope of Heaven is bound up with belief in 
 the infallibility of a book, which every day convinces 
 us, expresses, as regards things of earth, the thoughts 
 of fallible men ? Or who would not pity rather than 
 blame, when the very inquiries, in which the love of God 
 and zeal for his honour first engaged us, seem to intro- 
 duce (according to popular theories) the most distressing 
 contradictions ? Or who is so blind as to think the 
 cause of eternal truth should be defended by sophistries, 
 of which a special pleader would be ashamed? One 
 would make large allowance for the conscientious 
 anxiety of those eminent persons, whose position makes 
 them responsible as bulwarks of the Faith; and who 
 are ever dreading the consequences to which the first 
 outlet of the waters of freedom may tend. But may 
 God in his mercy teach them, that nothing can be so 
 dangerous as to build on a false foundation. The 
 question, how far we would go, will best be answered by 
 experience. Only it never will be safe to stop short of 
 the Truth. 
 
 But, in fact, almost everything doubtful, or, at least, 
 everything transparently erroneous in our sacred books, 
 might be surrendered to-morrow with little or rather no 
 detriment to the essentials of the Christian faith. It is 
 strangely unreasonable for men to argue that they 
 cannot believe God ought to be worshipped in spirit 
 and in truth, unless they are also convinced that Cyre- 
 niiis was president of Syria, or that the Cretans were 
 always liars. Nor ought any one to doubt whether God 
 
XIX.] moved by the Holy Ghost. 309 
 
 made sea and land, because it may fairly be questioned 
 how far the poetry in Joshua about the sun standing 
 still (or the allegory in Jonah about the whale) ought to 
 be interpreted literally. 
 
 Almost all difficulties which are fairly raised belong 
 to those things of earth, about which well-meaning 
 Martha was unnecessarily cumbered ; while the life and 
 the power and the salvation are the inalienable inheri- 
 tance of Mary while she sits in calmness at the feet of 
 the Saviour. 
 
 Let not then exaggerations, or polemical inferences, 
 fi'ighten us in vain. We may grant to the Romanist, 
 as well as to many Anglicans, that the Church was 
 before the Bible, as a speaker is before his voice ; and 
 that Holy Scripture is not the foundation of the Chris- 
 tian faith so much as its creature, its expression, and 
 its embodiment. But it will not therefore follow that 
 this Holy Scripture should be sealed in dead languages, 
 or withheld from men thirsting for the words of life. 
 Nor ought any modern mystic to persuade us that the 
 history of the Divine dealings of old is ever useless to 
 the human mind ; and yet we may concede that the 
 two things from which Scripture sprang are for ever in 
 the world, — I mean the conscience of man, and the 
 Holy Spirit of God. From these two, meeting in the 
 Church, the Bible derives its origin, its authority, and 
 its power to persuade. 
 
 I exhort, therefore, every soul who hears me to 
 value highly the Bible ; to read it, pray over it, under- 
 stand it. But yet beware of lying for God ; or of 
 ascribing infallibility to men of like passions with our- 
 
310 Servants of God speaking as [serm. 
 
 selves; or of sacrificing the spirit which enlivens to the 
 letter which deadens. 
 
 So may you deserve the praise of those ancient 
 Bera3ans, who are ever honoured because they were 
 more ingenuous {evyeveaTepoi), or because their minds 
 were candid in receiving the truth. So too will you 
 be, not infidels but believers in Holy Writ, when it tells 
 you that its authors knew only in part, and prophesied 
 only in part ; so will you avoid attributing blasphemy to 
 them, by calling the Word of God that which they 
 profess to speak as men ; and even to speak as fools ; 
 so will you not make them, as writers, more than they 
 were as speakers ; nor will you sever, as they did not 
 sever, their inspiration from that of the congregation 
 at large, when they exclaim, " I think that I too," {^okw 
 Se Kayw) that is, "I, as well as others, have the Spirit 
 of God." But above all, so will you be blessed, as 
 servants of that living God who is never weary of 
 creating, and whose promise is, that He will dwell 
 among us ; and so too disciples of Jesus, who prayed, 
 not for his Apostles only, but for all who should believe 
 through their word ; whose most precious testament 
 was, not, I give you the Bible, but, " I send you the 
 Comforter, even the Spirit of truth;" and whose binding 
 promise is, not, I am with the first generation of Chris- 
 tians, and possibly with the second, but, " lo i am with 
 
 YOU ALWAY, EVEN TO THE END OF THK WORLD •." 
 
 1 Abundant proofs of the non-Petrine origin of the Epistle called 
 St Peter's Second, are given in the second edition of Bunsen's Hip- 
 polytus, from whence, however, I did not learn it. Even Eusebius 
 had said, " Of the writings named as Peter's, I know only one Epistle 
 
XIX.] moved hy the Holy Ghost. 811 
 
 genuine," Hist. Eccl in. 3. The internal character of the Epistle 
 corresponds with this external disavowal. But if any one asks me, 
 Why then take your text from it ? such a questioner, I presume, 
 thinks that a sentiment cannot be true, or worthy of commentary, 
 unless it be a particular Apostle's ; that is to say, he thinks things are 
 true because they are written, instead of being written because they 
 are true ; or again, he thinks that the Church has not authority suffi- 
 cient to persuade even her own ministers what books they shall lecture 
 upon. But to no one of these propositions am I able to assent ; nor 
 again do I feel any difficulty in adopting the sentiment of my text, 
 whoever may have written it. 
 
 Having said positively that nowhere in Holy Scripture is the term 
 " Word of God" made an equivalent or synonym for the Bible, I may 
 refer to the Sermon on the Kingdom of God for an explanation of 
 some texts usually misapplied. I did not make up my own mind on 
 this specific point until after a consideration extending over many 
 years. The two texts most favourable to the vulgar Pharisaism are 
 perhaps St Mark vii. 13 and vii. 7 ; but in the one the thing intended 
 is the Fifth Commandment, as we see from St Matthew xv. 4, 9, where 
 also we find things both Levitical and Scriptural condemned by our 
 Lord (see 10, 11): and in the other, the antithesis is not between 
 written and unwritten, but between divine will and human precept. 
 Perhaps irapahoa-is means precept oftener than tradition. 
 
 It should however bo clear that I know of no tradition, ecclesi- 
 astical or other, worthy to bo named in the same day with St Paul's 
 Epistles; and I admit Kara a-vfx^e^rjKos the approximate coextensive - 
 ness of our New Testament Scriptures and of Apostolic doctrine ; 
 only I cannot violate the first principles of Christianity itself, as well 
 as of human reason, by putting the letter before the spirit, or the 
 books before the religion, as our popular tradition does. We are 
 rightly taught that ''all Holy Scripture is written for our instruction." 
 Whenever therefore it is used to stunt our knowledge, or fetter our 
 spirits, it must be misapplied ; as wo read that it was by the great 
 Tempter. 
 
 Respecting Cyrenius, though none of the solutions satisfy me, 
 (and I should almost like to add to them, 'ETEPA AE for 'EFENETO), 
 I did not intend to decide the question, but to contrast its class with 
 a different one. The Cretans had lying ascribed to them more than 
 other Greeks, probably because they were great antiquarians. 
 
 Preached before the University of Cambridge on the Second Sun- 
 day in Advent, Dec. 1854. 
 
SERMON XX.' 
 
 GOSrEL FREEDOM, NOT ANTINOMIANISM. 
 
 As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness. 
 
 1 Peter ii. 16. 
 
 It is natural to wish, that our own opinions may be 
 confirmed by the judgment of those whose character 
 we respect. Hence arises a feeling of disappointment, 
 when we find that very eminent persons have not always 
 welcomed great social or religious changes, which appear 
 to us manifest improvements on what existed before 
 them. We would gladly have numbered among the 
 ornaments of the Reformation either the unspotted 
 integrity of Sir Thomas More, or the learning alike 
 sacred and profane, as well as the religious sensibility, of 
 Erasmus. We can scarcely repress our surprise, that 
 both these justly distinguished men should have started 
 upon the same road as ourselves, and then have suddenly 
 turned back. Nor again are instances wanting, which 
 awaken a similar sentiment, as regards the first spread 
 of the religion of the Cross. Who would not rejoice 
 if Gamaliel, who seems to have been esteemed by his 
 contemporaries no less for his piety than for his learn- 
 1 Preached, with the exception of the conclusion, about 1861-2. 
 
XX.] Gospel Freedom, not Antinomianism. 313 
 
 ing, had not merely counselled moderation in the 
 treatment of the Apostles, but had ventured a little 
 farther, and become partaker of their suffering in the 
 name of Christ ? Or who would not have triumphed 
 if Seneca ', that remarkable thinker, whose rules of 
 conduct scarcely yield in loftiness of conception to 
 those of the Gospel, had upon meeting St Paul (as he 
 might have met him) at Rome, acknowledged his own 
 wisdom to be foolishness, in comparison of the quicken- 
 ing power which cometh down from above? But in these 
 and many other such cases, good men seem to have 
 shown a reluctance to adopt truths which we should not 
 have expected. 
 
 It is of course easy to remark, that all such in- 
 stances of shortcoming imply some fault on part of the 
 characters by which they are exhibited. Are we not, 
 however, permitted to believe, that He who knoweth 
 whereof we are made, will judge every man with the 
 largest allowance, as for the weakness of our faculties, 
 so for the prepossessions of our education ; that he will 
 remember graciously how much error we imbibe almost 
 with our mother's milk, how inveterate are the asso- 
 ciations of early habit, and how closely intertangled the 
 weed and the flower, the passion and the affection, the 
 delusion and the piety, take root in our hearts, spring- 
 ing almost from one identical stem ? 
 
 We may also go a step farther. Nor will it be an 
 unprofitable employment for us to observe, that more 
 reasons than we are at first aware of might well make 
 
 1 Quintilian and M. Aurelius might be better instances. 
 w. s. 14 
 
814 Gospel Freedom, not Antinomianism. [seem. 
 
 a wise man hesitate before he embraced any such great 
 change in belief and practice as either of those of 
 which we have spoken. We can readily understand he 
 would not foresee all the happier consequences which 
 such a change was destined ultimately to produce, while 
 the immediate evils might be palpable and striking. 
 Nor are the evils, which are apt to attend a change in 
 the religious feelings of an entire people, either few or 
 slight. For a large mass of the grosser elements of 
 human nature seems to be kept quiet more by custom 
 than by any conviction of the will ; a sort of necessity 
 of acknowledging what others acknowledge, being in the 
 sphere of many men's motives and actions almost what 
 the force of gravity is in the physical world. Nothing 
 is farther from my intention than to insinuate that our 
 Maker did not intend us to rise above such an imperfect 
 code of sentiment ; but that such is the code which in 
 fact extensively prevails, few persons will probably deny. 
 The testimony of all history on the subject is as clear 
 as it is melancholy. Wherever the old barriers, of 
 whatever kind, which customarily opposed themselves 
 to vice and crime have been removed, the tumultuous 
 rush, as of many waters, has proclaimed clearly what 
 fountains of bitterness have their source unnoticed even 
 at our doors. 
 
 Bishop Latimer, for instance, tells us that " London 
 was never so full of ill as in his time. Such was the 
 profligacy of its youth, that he marvels the earth gaped 
 not, to swallow it up. There were many that denied 
 the immortality of the soul, and the existence of a 
 heaven or a hell. Manly sports were exchanged for the 
 
XX.] Gospel Freedom, not Antinomianism. 315 
 
 gaming-table. Divorces, with all classes, had become 
 common ; for marriage being declared no sacrament, 
 many chose to interpret the declaration, as if it were 
 no bond. The elementary bread of the eucharist was 
 expressed by base and indecent nicknames ; the ale- 
 houses filled with profane disputants upon the mysteries 
 of our faith, while the scoffers made songs upon them." 
 
 Such, according to Latimer ^ were the licentious 
 abuses, to which an evil disposition, Avhere such already 
 existed, greedily applied the materials furnished by 
 the religious controversies of the time. Men who only 
 knew that something which had been a cheek upon their 
 passions was now in danger, hastened to avenge them- 
 selves for past constraint ; they were invited only to 
 protest against things Romish, but their real enmity 
 was against things Christian ; they were called to reform, 
 but their object was to destroy. 
 
 It might almost startle my hearers, if I say that 
 a practical perversion, such as I have above described, 
 was made even of Christianity itself, on its first being 
 preached to the world. Yet the Epistle of St Jude 
 may furnish many indications that such was really the 
 case. Even stronger than the language of Latimer are 
 the terms in which the Apostle speaks of men who 
 turned the grace of God into wantonness, mockers, 
 murmurers, sensual, speaking evil of things which they 
 had not mind to comprehend, and indulging freely 
 whatever passion they had in common with the brutes. 
 Nay even St Paul tells us of one of his favourite Churches, 
 in which he had laboured long, that vice was practised 
 
 ^ Quoted in Blunt's Reformation. 
 
 14—2 
 
316 Gospel Freedom, not Antinomianism. [serm. 
 
 there, in an* unnatural degree of novelty, not known 
 even among the Gentiles. This last case indeed is 
 mentioned as a thing entirely foreign to the usual tenor 
 of Christian practice, and as calling for the sharpest 
 penalty of Church discipline. Still such a case had 
 happened even among the flock ; while among the raging 
 wolves, as the various heretics are st} led who surrounded 
 the Apostle's fold, Ave cannot doubt, we have indeed all 
 the evidence the case admits of, that the reckless 
 Antinomianism of their principles extended itself to 
 their practical life. 
 
 Here then occurs the question, was there any point 
 in the genuine doctrines of Christianity, with a one- 
 sided aspect of which ill-disposed persons might readily 
 sympathize, and so pervert what was in itself good to 
 their own destruction ? Nor need we, brethren, look 
 far for an answer. For although Christianity was the 
 bringing in of a better hope, it was the doing away with 
 a covenant of obligation which had existed before ; it 
 was a building up, but also a casting down ; a binding 
 with stronger ties, and yet a loosening of ties, which 
 had previously kept many a wayward heart in some- 
 thing like subjection. Even now many good men 
 shrink from allowing the full extent of St Paul's argu- 
 ment in the Epistle to the Romans as to the entire 
 abrogation even of the moral law, as delivered by Moses, 
 in its relation to ourselves ; they shrink from the conse- 
 quences which might seem to follow such an admission, 
 and would willingly argue, that the ceremonial law only 
 is abolished, but the moral law as written in the Old 
 
 1 As Cicero says, " scelus incredibile et inauditum." 
 
XX.] Gospel Freedom, not Antinomianism. 317 
 
 Testament remains in unbroken vigour. But now, great 
 as is the weight which should justly be allowed to such 
 scruples, and entirely true as is the conclusion to which 
 they tend, that the divinely-sanctioned principles of 
 Eight are as immutable as is the faithful witness in 
 heaven, it must still be admitted that St Paul no longer 
 sends his converts even to the Ten Commandments for 
 their rule of life any more than for their instrument of 
 justification; but that he considers the entire law of 
 morality, as well as ritual, which preceded the coming 
 of our Lord, whether that law was given from Mount 
 Sinai, or whether it was imperfectly attested by the 
 consciences of the Gentiles, as having been only a 
 schoolmaster; as in short an inadequate expression of 
 an eternal truth ; as a thing, therefore, of which the 
 spirit would remain for ever, but of which the outward 
 letter, in its relation to ourselves, had alreafly passed 
 away. 
 
 It is obvious how much must have depended upon 
 the nature of the soil in which the seed of such a doc- 
 trine was sown. Many there were, perhaps of Jewish 
 descent, who heard gladly of a tedious or expensive 
 ceremonial being no longer required ; but who did not 
 simultaneously adopt the idea, that their new worship 
 was to be the dedication of their mind to the heart- 
 searching Author of all goodness. Many also appear to 
 have been, whose blood and whose sentiments were 
 alike derived from the far East, who caught eagerly at 
 any language implying a double nature in man ; and 
 perversely argued, that if the higher spirit kept itself 
 pure in thought, the licentiousness of the animal nature 
 
$18 Gospel Freedom, not Antinomianism. [serm. 
 
 implied no sin. From these, and other such causes, 
 many men in the age of the Apostles turned the grace 
 of God into lasciviousness. One man heard of an 
 unearthly kingdom, and imagined that earthly rulers 
 might be therefore set aside ; another was told of an 
 universal brotherhood among Christians, and inferred 
 that therefore no social distinctions should be retained ; 
 a third argued, if Christ were the Messiah, why should 
 his Jewish kinsmen after the flesh still bear the Roman 
 yoke ; while to very many, unlearned and unstable, the 
 true doctrine of the Mosaic law being no longer our 
 highest code or ultimate criterion of right and wrong, 
 became a dispensation from the necessity of obeying 
 those words, and embodying in life those principles, 
 which (though heaven and earth pass away) shall yet 
 abide (like their Divine Author) for ever. 
 
 There seems no reason to believe that such abuse 
 of their doctrine induced the Apostles to alter the truth 
 itself. They knew that their Master would be a stone 
 of stumbling as well as the head-stone in the corner- 
 Hence they might indeed grieve, but they could not 
 alter his Gospel, though in vessels already fitted for 
 destruction it became a savour of death. It does, hoAv- 
 ever, clearly appear, that the Apostles used every 
 reasonable exertion to guard against the tares, which 
 threatened to destroy their good seed. How many 
 injunctions might be quoted, bidding men " not sin, 
 that grace might abound," but rather to "adorn the 
 doctrine of God their Saviour ;" not to do evil that 
 good might come ; not to resist even oppression ; not 
 to let their INIaster's name be blasphemed among the 
 
XX.] Gospel Freedom, not Antinomianism. 319 
 
 Gentiles; not to become servants again in a moral 
 bondage from which they had escaped ; and, finally, not 
 to forget, that although by the works of the law no 
 flesh had been justified, yet without the works of the 
 Gospel no man should see the Lord ! 
 
 It would only be wearisome to multiply instances of 
 such language. But perhaps one of the most probable 
 opinions respecting that Antichrist so often alluded to 
 in the Epistles is, that it meant the spirit of Antino- 
 mianism. St John indeed has given us a decisive test 
 of what he meant by antichrists, in applying the terra 
 to those of his contemporaries, who denied the reality 
 of our Lord's coming in the flesh. But then it is to be 
 noticed that these same persons were also generally 
 among the more licentious sect of the Gnostics, who pro- 
 fessedly sinned because there was no law. Hence the 
 earnest and plaintive entreaty of him whom Jesus loved; 
 " I^ittle children, let no man deceive you ; he that doeth 
 righteousness, is righteous ; or he that doeth justice, is 
 justified ;" and again, " He that committeth sin, com- 
 mitteth also lawlessness ;" as if the headstrong defiance 
 of restraint was rather an aggravation of the inherent 
 badness of any bad act. If then we turn from St John's 
 first Epistle to St Paul's language to the Thessalonians, 
 where his "man of sin" is described as the lawless one, 
 or the Antinomian, and his manifestation as being in all 
 lawlessness, or Antinomianism, we shall at least obtain 
 a probable clue to that danger which the Apostles of 
 Christ thought the greatest by which his Church could 
 ever be assailed. Can there, in truth, my brethren, be 
 anything more terrible, than human nature owning no 
 
320 Gospel Freedom, not Antinomianism. [serm. 
 
 restraint save its own impulses ; calling perhaps those 
 very impulses in their worst form by the most holy 
 names ; and striding forward, deceiving and deceived, 
 to do whatever is pleasant in its own eyes ; impatient of 
 man's warning, and incredulous of God's; blind in its 
 desires, and reckless in satisfying them ; striving by 
 unscrupulous indulgence to satisfy a thirst which refuses 
 to be slaked until it consume. Many, brethren, are the 
 forms of this world-long disease — Antinomianism ; and 
 strange the disguises it may wear. Its first whispers 
 are subtle as those of the serpent; its language, as it 
 pleads for life, is plausible ; but its end is destruction. 
 
 It is no part of my purpose to-day, to direct your 
 thoughts to those gigantic manifestations of this disease, 
 in which it has poisoned states, thrown away creeds, 
 murdered kings, or trampled down altars. Neither do I 
 now dwell on what some consider a probability that 
 Antinomianism will be the predominant character of 
 those last times in which the Son of Man shall come, 
 and scarcely find faith on the earth. Sufiicient evil for 
 each of us to watch against may be found in its power 
 of disturbing the little commonwealth of a single mind. 
 What is that which says to each of us, the fruit of 
 the tree is pleasant of look and desirable to taste ; if 
 we eat it we shall not surely die ? What is that which 
 says in our anger, " do we not well to be angry ?" and 
 in our pleasure, that no sorrow shall come nigh us ; 
 which bids us relax our prayers, because God has now 
 surely made our hill so strong that we shall never be 
 moved ; or which makes us weary of sermons, for have 
 we not already a truer feeling of spiritual Christianity 
 
XX.] Gospel Freedom, not Antino7nianism. 321 
 
 than that man who troubles us ? or which says to us of 
 every duty, is it not a w eariness ? and of every safe- 
 guard, is it not unnecessary ? of every external restraint, 
 is it not an impertinence? perhaps of every self-denial, 
 is it not Romish ? of every pleasure, is it not lawful ? 
 of every wholesome and sharp remorse, is it not super- 
 stitious, since Christ has died for us ? and by degrees, 
 of every sin, is it not allowable — are we not God's 
 chosen ? we shall not surely die. Some such thing as 
 that, brethren, is the spirit of Antinomianism, or the 
 refusal to recognise the fear of God as the practical 
 guide of our lives. Take heed of its beginning. To 
 slacken prayer, to shrink from judging ourselves, to 
 ignore or refuse any wholesome restraint of divine 
 service, sacred book, holy-day, law, custom, opinion of 
 others, or checks of our own scruples, may be to dis- 
 regard little things, even as those do who perish by 
 little and little. But perhaps I can lend you no better 
 aid against such abuse of the liberty wherewith Christ 
 has made us free, than by explaining throughout the 
 remainder of this sermon, in what sense we enjoy 
 liberty, and how it should not be made a cloke of 
 maliciousness. 
 
 First, then, St Peter in our text happens to be 
 speaking primarily with a reference to the troubled 
 politics of his own time. Cemented as the fabric 
 of many ancient kingdoms was with idolatrous rites, 
 sometimes almost deifying men, and generally assum- 
 ing principles which the early Christian could not recog- 
 nise, they soon lost their hold on the affections of those 
 persecuted communities which met in upper chambers 
 
 14—5 
 
322 Gospel Freedom, not Antinomianism. [serm. 
 
 and in catacombs, worshipping a God whom their go- 
 vernors had not known, and consoHng themselves by 
 the assurance that their franchise was in the heavens. 
 Tn the eyes of men so persecuted and so consoled, 
 imperial Rome became Babylon, and even the earthly 
 Jerusalem, though endeared by sacred associations, 
 waxed pale and cold to their gaze in comparison of 
 that city not built with hands, which they already saw 
 in aspiring visions come down as it were from heaven, 
 and embrace men in a holier kingdom. They were 
 free then from earthly ties ; let the potsherd strive 
 with the potsherd of the earth. They were ready, if 
 need called them, to witness a good confession by 
 suffering ; but the honors of that pagan Babylon were 
 in their eyes contemptible ; her friendship a snare ; her 
 service in some cases a sin. But then came the ques- 
 tion from some half-reclaimed Hebrew, whose keen 
 patriotism still yearned to see the morning star not 
 only risen in its brightness, but coming down in carnal 
 millennium upon the earthly Jerusalem, might they not 
 (like St Peter) smite with the sword ? Was not the 
 time come when Jew and Christian in concert might 
 shake off the yoke of Pagan Rome ? 
 
 To all such questionings the Apostle answers quietly 
 " As free, and not making your liberty the cloke of 
 maliciousness." Wonderful power of this strange reli- 
 gion of the Cross ! Simply to suffer, and by suffering 
 to conquer. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me ; 
 I cannot attain unto it. But yet history informs us 
 such was the result. They that took the sword perished 
 by the sword. The price of slaves in the market of 
 
XX.] Gospel Freedom, not Antinomianism. 323 
 
 Rome was cheapened by the sale of those unhappy 
 thousands, who dashed themselves in the desperation 
 of a gallant but unavailing patriotism against the legions 
 of Hadrian, But God, to whom vengeance belongeth, 
 also brought on the time when she who had pressed 
 the cup of servitude to the lips of all nations, drank 
 it herself to the dregs, and had it filled for her 
 again and again. Only those slaves, simpletons, priests, 
 women, who had discharged every lawful duty out of a 
 principle of conscience to the empire in which they 
 were not tolerated, cherished among themselves the 
 grain of mustard-seed, whose tree grew until it over- 
 shadowed the earth. Now the secret of this triumph 
 was simply suffering in the name of Christ. It was 
 being free, but not using their liberty for a cloke of 
 maliciousness. 
 
 Secondly, I content myself with merely reminding 
 you that Christians were free from the ceremonial law 
 of Moses, because the Lord who bought them with 
 his own blood, had fulfilled its types, given the final 
 object to its sacrifices, and transmuted its shadows into 
 substance. Here too the Apostles made their liberty 
 no cloke of maliciousness. They had heard that God 
 was a Spirit, and therefore present everywhere ; yet 
 they went up at the ninth hour, our own canonical 
 hour for afternoon service, and worshipped in the tem- 
 ple which the High and Holy One that dwelleth in 
 eternity had called his house of prayer. So again they 
 were determined, as we^ see in St Paul, that no man 
 had the right to judge them respecting the sabbath- 
 day ; the crime of sabbath-breaking was against the 
 
324 Gospel Freedom, not Antinomianism. [serm. 
 
 Jewish ritual, and could only belong to the past; yet 
 did they not therefore forget means of mutual improve- 
 ment, but assembled together on the first day of the 
 week for prayer, for almsgiving, for sharing the conse- 
 crated symbols of that bread which cometh down from 
 heaven. But 
 
 Thirdly, it is more difficult to explain how Chris- 
 tians had become free even from the moral law, so far 
 as that law is written in the Old Testament. It was, 
 in fact, because they had died to it, and law, of which 
 earth is the sphere, can take no cognizance of dead 
 men. When therefore they became in baptism par- 
 takers, as it were, of our Lord's death, being baptized 
 into the death of Christ, they passed from the juris- 
 diction of the letter ; but on rising again into a world 
 of new feelings, motives, and principles, they found 
 this renovation wrought by the power of a Person who 
 was himself the embodied wisdom of God ; and who 
 was therefore the higliest of all law. For this un- 
 written Word of God is himself not only the Divine 
 Giver, but the true model, and the everlasting principle, 
 which the ideas filtered through the mind of JNIoses 
 (yet fresh from Egypt, and surrounded by a people in 
 a low state of civilisation) had been able but partially 
 to shadow forth, giving it (we may say) roughly in a 
 rude outline. 
 
 But now, if such were the power by which the Chris- 
 tians were raised, their moral resurrection was not into 
 a state of lawlessness, but into a state of higher law. 
 If the letter to which they died had lost its power 
 over them, the Spirit which raised them into new life 
 
XX.] Gos2)el Freedom, not Antinomianism. 325 
 
 had acquired a double title to their obedience. By the 
 works of the law therefore, truly no flesh should be 
 justified; but yet the works of the Gospel, which we 
 acknowledge to be not so much ours as God working 
 in us, remained for every Christian to do. Hence, (it 
 is St Paul that argues,) the righteousness which the 
 law aimed at, but could not attain from the weakness 
 of our nature, is now {not imputed, but actually) fulfilled 
 in us, who, if we are Christians, walk not according 
 to lawless nature, but according to the law of a con- 
 science trained by the expanding providence, and en- 
 lightened by the quickening Spirit of God our Father, 
 our Saviour, and our Friend. 
 
 Now, for any one to suppose that sincere Christians, 
 or men penetrated by the spirit of St Paul's reason- 
 ings, could make their liberty the cloke of Antinomian 
 maliciousness is the most absurd self-contradiction in 
 the world. Christians, falsely so called, would do so ; 
 just as knowledge, falsely so called, is in fiict ignorance. 
 But the true Christian recognised in the Lord who had 
 redeemed him the highest law ; a law which converted 
 the heart, and gave understanding to the simple ; the 
 divine wisdom turned into the divine Word, the intel- 
 ligence by which all things were made coming forth as 
 the love by which all things are redeemed, and as the 
 expression by which whatever concerns our salvation 
 is revealed. Just then as some great master of lan- 
 guage or of any other science might smile at the 
 suspicion, that by quietly putting aside some grammar 
 or manual offered him as an aid, he intended really 
 to disparage the unchangeable laws which regulate the 
 
326 Gospel Freedom, not Antinomianism. [serm. 
 
 expression of thought, which no one had either studied 
 more thoroughl3', or observed at length with more un- 
 conscious accuracy than himself; so St Paul might 
 exclaim " O foolish Galatians," to those who would 
 have sent him back to Leviticus and Numbers for the 
 highest expression of the eternal will of God ; or again, 
 who thought, that by teaching the freedom of Chris- 
 tians from such an inadequate utterance of the unut- 
 terable, he intended to encourage them in a liberty as a 
 cloke of maliciousness. How could those who had learnt 
 to love the Lord their God with all their heart, and to 
 know Jesus whom He had sent as the Christ, be better 
 for any of the first table of the commandments? or how 
 could those who loved their neighbour as themselves 
 require the minute specification of the second table ? 
 Or what need had they who prayed without ceasing, 
 and were fervent in spirit, to be reminded of holy- 
 days, and places, and writings, save as useful helps 
 and mementos to keep alive in themselves a sense of 
 the strength by which they stood, and communion with 
 the fountain from which it sprang ? Yet again and 
 again we observe throughout the Apostolical epistles, 
 a profound consciousness that God is not mocked ; with 
 his most holy and most blessed word, as it abides in 
 the heavens, there is no variableness, or shadow of 
 changing ; He is gracious to them that walk by its 
 spirit ; but to them that forsake it, and will not have 
 him to rule over them. He is a consuming fire. It is a 
 fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. 
 
 Now just as some constitutions are so sickly that 
 the least departure from strict regimen injures them. 
 
XX.] Gospel Freedom, not Antinomianism. 327 
 
 so we all, beloved brethren, are so infected with a 
 sickness of the heart and will, tossed to and fro by 
 a disturbance of the balance of the powers of our 
 nature, that the least carelessness as regards the safe- 
 guards suggested by our Divine physician may be the 
 beginning of a decline, taking us down into the cham- 
 bers of hell. Safer therefore is the half-instructed and 
 more child-like Christian, who thinks scarcely anything 
 lawful to himself, than the over presumptuous spiritualist 
 who fancies that all things are expedient. Let him then 
 that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. Be 
 not high-minded, but fear. By grace ye are saved ; 
 and that grace, wherein alone ye can stand free from 
 actual sin, not being your own, if you tempt its with- 
 drawal, you tempt your own destruction. 
 
 Now then be free, brethren. And first, be free 
 from fear. Think not, you can either keep an account 
 of merit with God, or that he keeps account of your 
 failures and shortcomings in order to condemn you. 
 Rather believe that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ 
 blots out both the handwriting of the external law, 
 and the deeper sentence of conscience which spoke 
 condemnation against us. For his thought is larger 
 than our thought ; and though He might charge his 
 angels with folly, yet remembering whereof we are 
 made, He does not plead with us with his great power, 
 but Pie puts strength into us. Only come to him 
 with that mind of Christ, which is love ; and if you 
 see the Father, as He is uncovered by Christ, you 
 cannot choose but love him ; then will this perfect love 
 
328 Gospel Freedom, not Antinomianism. [serm. 
 
 cast out fear. AVhen we yield ourselves to his holy 
 will, we find that his will is our salvation. 
 
 In this freedom of God, be also free from the fear 
 of man. It is the righteous who has cause to be 
 bold, even if he be naturally weak. Therefore, if you 
 suffer for well-doing, or if the Pharisees cast out your 
 name, because, like your Master, you bear witness to 
 the truth, fear them not. 
 
 Be free also from servile and superstitious value of 
 days and ceremonies, as if in themselves they were 
 ends, or had a penal necessity. Such things are helps 
 and instruments like medicine ; and sometimes like 
 food ; but it is the Lord who giveth the souls of his 
 people the blessing of health. There is no wisdom 
 in neglecting such things ; nor yet much in letting 
 them become a compulsory bondage to us. 
 
 Again, be free from such a worship of the letter 
 as that of the Scribes and Pharisees, who thought that 
 in searching the Scriptures ^ and counting their sylla- 
 bles, they had eternal life. Such use of the letter, 
 as St Paul says, is deadening. Nor think that God, 
 who sends forth the Spirit that is holy, supreme, and 
 life-giving, has no better guide for us, than Judaic 
 precepts and the records of men who were but straining 
 forward through parables and through imperfections to 
 the light of the fulness of time. 
 
 Neither fear for a moment because such imperfec- 
 
 1 That the word ('pfware in St John v. 39 is an indicative, appears 
 grammatically from the entire context ; and historically from the 
 practice of the Scribes, as in the Masora. Nor does our Lord ever 
 rebuke them for neglecting the Scripture, but for not knowing it; 
 i. e. not knowing its evangelic pregnancy and its spirit. 
 
XX.] Gospel Fi^eedom, not Antinomianism. 329 
 
 tions, or signs of humanity, are pointed out in our 
 sacred records of old, that therefore the truth and pro- 
 vidence of God can fail. He who graciously called 
 Israel out of Egypt to be his son, will accompany his 
 spiritual Israel even to old age ; and if He watched 
 over the childhood of his Church, He will not despise 
 the fulness of her strength. * 
 
 But lastly, dear brethren, beware of turning such 
 a liberty into licentiousness. Take the whole armour 
 of God, not only against external foes, but against the 
 maliciousness of a wayward spirit in yourselves. Take 
 faith in the unseen and ineffable ; take the hope of 
 everlasting life ; take the utterance of God in prayer 
 and preaching and solemn song ; take righteousness, 
 softened by love towards your fellow-men, remember- 
 ing wherein consist all the law and the prophets. Take 
 also soberness and vigilance for yourselves, the remem- 
 brance of the Cross within, and something of its pattern 
 upon your lives. Above all, take ever the love of God 
 constraining you, and a remembrance of that price 
 Avherewith we gained this freedom, even the voluntary 
 offering of the soul of Jesus our Lord in death. Let 
 that remembrance make you strive to partake of the 
 Spirit Avhich dwelt emphatically in Him; so may you too 
 partake of his priesthood, ever offering up the sj^iritual 
 consecration of your lives and bodies; and so, being 
 abundantly free from legal scriptures, you may obey 
 a far more penetrating and heart-binding law ; so, 
 having died unto sin, died unto fear, died unto penal 
 precepts, you may live, through the Spirit of Jesus, as 
 children and servants of the life-giving God. 
 
SER]\ION XXL 
 
 OUR KINDRED TO GOD. 
 
 For we are also His offspring. Acts xvii. 28. 
 
 It is generally supposed that the two great motives of 
 religion are hope and fear. The exceeding happiness 
 of heaven, and a keen desire of attaining it, — the more 
 terrible doom of the unrepentant, and our instinctive 
 shrinking from all that it involves, — are propounded as 
 the two great instruments for turning Man from sin, 
 and for restoring him to fellowship with the Spirit of 
 God. But may we not ask, are there not other motives, 
 somewhat higher in their nature, and not less lively in 
 their operation ? Is not love as strong as death ? and 
 does not gratitude, both for God's general bounty in 
 the realm of nature, and for his special loving-kindness 
 in the kingdom of grace, deserve a more prominent 
 place than is generally assigned to it ? What shall I 
 render unto the Lord, says the Psalmist, for all his 
 mercies ? We ought not to be selfish in our religion ; 
 lest, in fact, we be venturing on holy ground without 
 having taken the shoes off our feet. 
 
 But we are often told that the love of self is a 
 primary principle of our nature : and many of the 
 
XXI.] Our Kindred to God. 331 
 
 maxims given to direct our conduct, e. g., " Honesty is 
 the best policy," seem to betray a lurking conviction 
 that expediency in this low sense is the test of right. 
 Now certainly we cannot deny that human motives are 
 generally mixed. We may even admire the wisdom and 
 the mercy, which have so arranged the world, that our 
 duty and our happiness shall in the long run coincide. 
 " Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all other 
 things shall be added unto you."" So our Heavenly 
 Father deals with us as with children. He makes what 
 is good still farther attractive as being pleasant and 
 expedient. Yet he meant us not to linger in the 
 twilight of imperfect motives, and secondary consider- 
 ations, but to press forward, until by the force of habit 
 we take delight in our duty for its own sake, and rejoice 
 in the very light of that divine countenance which is 
 both the source and the concentration of all moral 
 goodness, purity, and love. Thus men too bribe, as it 
 were, their children or their pupils, by rewards and 
 prizes. But who would have a child obey his parent 
 only from the selfish desire of some particular reward ? 
 Do we not rather endeavour by such means to awaken 
 the moral instinct, to implant the habit of doing right, 
 and look forward anxiously for the day when reflexion 
 may bring a sensitiveness of conscience to the real 
 nature of actions, whether amiable or hateful, right or 
 wrong? Even so we cherish but slender hopes of the 
 student, to whom knowledge is only a trade for the 
 sake of bread ; in whose mind the deep utterance of 
 poet, or saint, or sage, finds no echo ; or in whom the 
 history of great or good men kindles no emulation of 
 
332 Our Kindred to God. [serm. 
 
 spirit. We did wish the one to obey, and the other to 
 
 study ; but the obedience was for the sake of moral, (by 
 
 Avhich I here mean the same as spiritual,) training ; the 
 
 other was for the sake of that wisdom, which alone can 
 
 prevent even conscience from being a blind guide, and 
 
 which shews us the path of life. 
 
 Perhaps in this circumstance we may trace, even 
 
 more legibly than elsewhere, the footsteps of a righteous 
 
 Governor of the world, that by such training as has 
 
 been rapidly sketched, a higher principle of action is 
 
 imperceptibly developed. The fingers, which at first 
 
 from mere vanity or from blind obedience stretch out 
 
 alms to the needy, are thus schooled to obey an impulse 
 
 of purer compassion, which will gradually stir in the 
 
 heart. The public services of religion, which may at 
 
 first have been attended from mere fashion, will often, 
 
 either by the contagious sympathy of prayer, or by 
 
 some earnest word amidst the foolishness of preaching, 
 
 implant the notion of a heart-searching Spirit, to whom 
 
 alone such worship could be rationally addressed', and 
 
 persuade the formal church-goer that he too has a soul 
 
 to be saved, as well as an example to give. We see a 
 
 glorious instance of such training in the history of the 
 
 Hebrew people. How little there is in the law of 
 
 Moses which can properly be called spiritual ! Yet 
 
 under the influence of those solemn services, which it 
 
 strictly enjoined, grew up that sensitive tenderness of 
 
 1 Where indeed means are mistaken for an end, they arc apt to 
 retard it; but the very indignation which true-hearted men feel at 
 such an abuse, then comes in, and should be reckoned as part of the 
 Means. Thus the Prophets are not alien to the Priesthood, but 
 akin. 
 
XXI.] Our Kindred to God. 333 
 
 conscience which breathed in the pathetic strains of the 
 Psalmist, and broke like startling thunder in the grand 
 indignation of the Prophets. Here we see Almighty 
 God, who knew what was in man's heart, and how our 
 minds work or are wrought upon, training up a people 
 by outward worship to heartfelt devotion ; bringing 
 them by a course of discipline from habits to feelings, 
 from precepts to principles, from the letter to the spirit. 
 Not but that in a way ^ the life is before the body, and 
 the feeling before the habit ; but yet we seem to find 
 that discipline may be made a cradle for thought ; and 
 the lower employed as a scaffolding to reach the higher. 
 We ought not, however, either in education or in reli- 
 gion to set the means above the end; or think the 
 reward worth so much as the conduct which it was only 
 intended to encourage. We should beware of lowering 
 devotion into calculation. 
 
 We may even appeal, in support of this assertion, to 
 the common practice of the world. For, although the 
 motives of the best men ai'e imperfect, and those of 
 bad men never rise above the vulgar standard of doing 
 right so far as it is their interest, we find the purer and 
 better rule can scarcely ever with safety be disclaimed. 
 Scarcely any public speaker would venture, even in 
 addressing a heathen assembly, to propound mere self- 
 interest as the only criterion by which a course of 
 policy should be tested. Some pretext of piety or 
 right, justice or honour, is generally alleged, and the 
 allegation (even when least sincere), is still an uncon- 
 
 1 This qualification might be more broadly put; and perhaps that 
 which it qualifies ought to be reconsidered. 
 
334 Our Kindi^ed to God. [serm. 
 
 scious testimony to the existence of a tribunal within 
 every man's heart, where the cause of God is still 
 pleaded against our corrupt passions by an unseen 
 Advocate ; and where (probably) some forecast of the 
 final judgment of Him, from whom no secret is hid, 
 may be (as it were) rehearsed day by day. 
 
 Nor, again, is this merely the case in theory. For 
 do not most ranks and professions of men often devote 
 themselves to tasks where there is either no induce- 
 ment of interest, or where it would be the most inade- 
 quate reward ? The soldier gives his life for honor, or 
 for duty ; the physician enters the chamber of fever- 
 stricken poverty to exercise the godlike art of healing ; 
 the scholar, if he be worthy of his vocation, lives labo- 
 rious days for the chance of scattering some spiritual 
 seed, which may bear fruit when his frame has mouldered 
 in the dust ; the statesman undergoes all galling libels 
 and stupid misconstructions, for which the highest 
 salary were scant reward if it were not accompanied by 
 the consciousness of having laboured for a nation's weal. 
 What shall I say of Howard visiting prisons, of Clarkson 
 striving against the slave trade, of Henry Martyn preach- 
 ing in Persia, Felix Neff in his Alpine parish, James 
 Davies in his village school ? Did not these all strive 
 to do good in their generation from some higher in- 
 spiration than that of its being their interest ? 
 
 Now is it possible that, of all men living, the Chris- 
 tian only, considered as a Christian, should have no 
 higher motive than mere selfish instincts of personal 
 hope and fear ? To acquiesce in such a supposition 
 would really be to rest in " beggarly elements," and to 
 
XXI.] Our Kindred to God. 335 
 
 make the "salt of the earth" an instrument of its 
 corruption. It would be to confine, by the awe of 
 Divine sanctions, the highest intellect and the most 
 earnest conscience within the narrow range of those 
 lower motives, which are intended only to be the foun- 
 dation of better things. Doubtless God planted the 
 principle of fear in our nature for some good purpose. 
 The warnings of his holy servants, recorded in Scrip- 
 ture, are occasionally and in part addressed to this 
 passion. It teaches us caution, and supplies a sort of 
 armour to our weakness. Often also it is the channel 
 through which those startling warnings are conveyed to 
 the conscience, without which it will not rise from its 
 slumber. But if such a feeling awakens our life, it 
 does not promote our growth. For it is not a generous 
 one : it seldom expands : a character formed entirely 
 upon it, or, indeed, entirely upon any calculation of 
 self-interest, cannot conceive worthily of God, but is 
 apt to be alternately crouching and harsh, disingenuous 
 and unjust. The wonder, indeed, is, that the frequent 
 and almost exclusive appeals which some teachers make 
 to such motives, and their attempts almost to intensify 
 selfishness, have not a still more debasing effect on the 
 character. Such would probably be the result, if the 
 instinctive conscience of men in general was not really 
 sounder than the maxims which some of their monitors 
 put forward. Men do, after all, act from mutual affec- 
 tion and association, controlled (perhaps unconsciously) 
 in their intercourse with each other by that wholesome 
 network of influences (such as habit, opinion, and sym- 
 pathy) with which Almighty God encompasses human 
 
336 Our Kindred to God. [serm. 
 
 society, and which he has made a channel with many 
 mouths', through which some at least of the lessons of 
 his inspiration flow. Under such influences are cherished 
 many of the virtues to which the tone of doctrine, 
 considered by some more directly religious, would have 
 afforded but slender nourishment. For our Heavenly 
 Father thus drops his dew, not always on the fleece of 
 Gideon, but sometimes on the ground all around it : 
 and we have read how his Spirit has listed to blow, not 
 only among the schools of the prophets (where, how- 
 ever, it may have dwelt in larger measure), but also 
 through the womanly compassion of Rahab in Jericho, 
 and the filial piety of Euth in Moab. Nor should it be 
 forgotten how often our Lord delights to place the 
 outcast Samaritan in favourable contrast witli the more 
 directly religious Jew. 
 
 We may consider it a signal blessing to a land when 
 the Almighty so diff'uses the discernment of spiritual 
 vision, that they who minister in his beautiful sanctuary 
 both remember the commission, which is emphatically 
 theirs, through the terror of the Lord to persuade men, 
 and also rise to the conception of whatsoever things are 
 lovely, whatsoever are amiable, whatsoever are of good 
 repute, as fit and proper motives by which they may 
 kindle in men's hearts a faith working by love, towards 
 Him from whom all good things must flow. They are 
 wise who can hear in the market-place as well as in the 
 cloister some echoes of the Divine voice ever pleading 
 by conscience, by shame, by association, and regard for 
 
 1 In social hours, who Christ would see, 
 
 Must turn all tasks to Charity. Christian Year. 
 
XXI.] Our Kindred to God. 337 
 
 the opinion of others, in behalf of that law of Hight, 
 which is so often as it were the mirror of the Divine 
 face on earth ; they are happy who can read in every 
 dispensation of Providence — in nature, in art, in spiritual 
 grace — signs of a Father's care, embellishing even our 
 temporal home, yet reminding us that it is but the 
 shadow of good things to come. 
 
 Even so, brethren, the Apostle of the Gentiles, 
 though many of his arguments bear trace alike of an 
 ardent temper and of an intellect trained in Rabbinic 
 lore, yet turned from the wonder-Avorking power of 
 miracles and tongues to shew his disciples a more 
 excellent way ; and that way was love. He remembers 
 how of old the Psalmist heard Jehovah say, " Because 
 he hath set his love upon me, therefore I will deliver 
 him." He knows, too, how the great preferment, with 
 the desire of which God kindled his own ambition, 
 consisted in those great things which He taught him 
 that he should suffer for His Name's sake. Nor did 
 he grudge this labour of love. Nay, love, he thought, 
 was greater than even faith or hope; for it was the 
 acme of the climax to which they were only steps. 
 Many indeed have thought that he makes faith itself 
 draw its life from love. Certainly he does not stop 
 short of the higher motive. His argument often comes 
 round to it, when he might seem bent only on some 
 local peculiarity ; or, at least, he is often led by his 
 own loving and sympathizing spirit to take advantage 
 of some local allusion in order to imbue men with a 
 feeling that heaven is their true home, and God their 
 highest Father. Thus, at Corinth, he sees the games 
 w. s. 15 
 
338 Our Kindred to God. [serm. 
 
 on which the inhabitants of the isthmus prided them- 
 selves as the sacred inheritance of antiquity : he re- 
 minds them of a more solemn contest and an unfading 
 garland. At Philippi, he found a people exulting in 
 their Roman citizenship : he tells them that their truer 
 franchise is in heaven ; that they are citizens of a more 
 abiding city than her of the seven hills. At Athens, he 
 finds altars to all the divine attributes (and amongst 
 others to mercy) as usually recognised and personified 
 by name ; but also, one erected in a spirit of scrupulous 
 piety, which feared to omit any proper object of worship, 
 to the unknown gods of Europe and Asia. He seizes 
 upon the occasion, and says, you already worship, with- 
 out knowing his name, the same Deity as myself: whom 
 then ye unknowingly reverence, him I declare unto you 
 more distinctly. He remembers, that, in the same 
 favoured abode of literature, certain poets had risen 
 to the conception of something kindred between the 
 human mind and its eternal Father, whom Moses had 
 represented as saying ; " Let us make man in our own 
 image, after our likeness." Here then, again, the 
 Apostle does not stay to inquire, whether the notions 
 of Aratus and Moses precisely coincided, but he takes 
 advantage of the concession, and starts from it as his 
 premise : " Seeing then we are God's kindred (or off- 
 spring), we ought not to think that He is like to silver 
 or stone, or that his ineffable presence can be limited 
 to temples made with hands. Heaven is his throne, 
 and the universe his temple, and the heart of man is his 
 most chosen altar." 
 
 Not that we need for a moment believe the Apostle, 
 
XXI.] Our Kindred to God. 339 
 
 who elsewhere desires all Divine service to be clone 
 decently and in order, would have made this spiritual 
 character of the Deity an excuse for the irreverent and 
 cold-hearted neglect of whatever sanctuary may have 
 been set apart for the worship of God's holy name. His 
 spirit too, like that of the Psalmist, would have burnt 
 within him, to see all the carved work broken down 
 with axes and hammers ; or to find those portions of a 
 church, where God's poor assemble, meanly naked and 
 desolate, while some rustic dignitary dwells apart in a 
 little palace of curtains or cedar. But in this sermon 
 at Athens he is absorbed by a greater subject. He is 
 bent upon propounding our original kindred to God, 
 who made us in his image, as a ground for offering to 
 him the oblation of our mind and being. He mentions 
 the resurrection ; for it is both our property as the 
 Divine kindred, and it is a cardinal condition of our 
 union with the Only-begotten, whom God raised from 
 the dead : he mentions also the judgment ; for it is a 
 memento of our responsibility, and an office to be exer- 
 cised by our Lord. He does not mention the propitia- 
 tion for sin, either because the Athenians were not 
 prepared for the doctrine ; or possibly because he may 
 have himself considered it, (as many of the primitive 
 doctors of the Church did,) as rather a necessary accom- 
 paniment of our Lord's Incarnation than its ultimate end: 
 and his argument is here drawn, not from Jewish or 
 Scriptural sources, but from those broad facts of the 
 Divine creation and the human conscience, which in his 
 Epistle to the Romans he values so highly, and which 
 are the common property of civilized mankind. Any 
 
 15—2 
 
340 Our Kindred to God. [serm. 
 
 illustration, therefore, from the sacrifices of the Law 
 would have been here as much out of place as in the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews it is strictly appropriate. 
 
 Now may we not venture, brethren, with the Apos- 
 tle's example before us, to take the fact of our being 
 the offspring of God, as at once a stimulus and an 
 encouragement to a God-like life ? What is God ? the 
 source, I suppose, of all the good we have either known 
 or can conceive. And what are we ? God said, " Let us 
 make man in our own image." In a sermon upon these 
 last words, Dr South has argued that we may infer the 
 nature of this Divine image, by removing, from our idea 
 of man, whatever is obviously an abuse of his original 
 powers. Take excess from his anger, take away cun- 
 ning from his ingenuity, pride from his sense of active 
 intellect, vain-gloriousness from his benevolence, and 
 envy from his emulation : you may arrive, by such a 
 process, at a probable notion of what God intended 
 Adam to be. You have, as it were, the Divine image, 
 in the blots and blurs removed. 
 
 But may we then venture, you ask, to predicate 
 (even in their perfection) like things of the Deity and of 
 ourselves ? Not, perhaps, without the largest allowance 
 for those veils of sense, and matter, and infirmity, 
 through which we perceive only the images^ of eternal 
 objects, and not the very objects themselves. It would 
 seem, however, as if we are warranted in magnifying to 
 the utmost of our power our conception of whatever is 
 most pure and excellent, and most commanding, and 
 
 1 1 Corinth, xiii. 12, where the Greek implies Jigurativeness in 
 our knowledge, more than from the English might seem. 
 
XXI.] Our Kindred to God. 341 
 
 most bountiful, and in saying, that either this, or some- 
 thing analogous, is the image under whieh in this veil 
 of shadows it is proper for us to conceive of the Deity. 
 We may take all nature with its stores, all art with its 
 beauty, all intellect with its contrivance, all justice with 
 its grand (though perhaps slow) retribution, all teaching 
 with its patience, all love with its tenderness, all mercy, 
 so far as it does not outrage justice, but rather rejoices 
 against it by some signal display of self-sacrifice ; and 
 all these things we may aiSrm — either in themselves, 
 or in some higher archetype — belong to that image in 
 which God made man : the image of Him, of whom the 
 Apostle testifies, " We are also his offspring." 
 
 Now, brethren, in whatever we fall short of such an 
 image, we are so far degenerate. We are so far like 
 children of some noble family, stolen by thieves or 
 gipsies, and taught in savage places all practices de- 
 grading and unworthy of their origin. For we are 
 God's offspring. Why should we be alienated from 
 him by wicked minds ? 
 
 If you can find any higher, or more blessed and 
 life-giving Father, do not halt between two opinions ; 
 but go boldly and seek him. If the Father of lies 
 delight you more, go and lie. If you can find one, or 
 anything, more lovely and more attractive, pour out 
 your greedy glance and be enamoured of its charms. 
 But what is it that you love elsewhere ? Is it the fair 
 outline and luxuriant growth of " mountain hoary, 
 winding shore, and deepening glen"? — it is God who 
 setteth fast the strong mountains, and is girded about 
 with majesty. Or do you admire the breathing marble 
 
342 Ou7^ Kindred to God. [serm. 
 
 and glowing canvass, in which creations of the most 
 passionate fancy still obey the geometrical rule of the 
 severest art ? — it is God who gave the eye to behold, 
 and the brain to conceive, the outward forms from 
 which hints were caught and the mind capable of com- 
 bining them. Or are you more struck by the moral 
 grandeur of well-ordered communities, and of soils, 
 v/hose fertile crop is manly virtue ? It is God by whom 
 kings reign or senates decree justice : his providence 
 and his Spirit only restrain the madness of the people. 
 Would you copy the energy which founds families and 
 transmits lands called after its name ? — the Lord is He 
 of whom we know, Except He build the house, their 
 labour is but lost that build it. Or do you count all 
 great and commanding qualities as dross compared with 
 the spiritual graces of beneficence, justice, mercy, and 
 truth ? Whose hand then filleth all things living with 
 plenteousness, save the Lord's ? Or who, save the Lord, 
 avengeth the cause of the fatherless and widow ? Who, 
 by strange providences, brings hidden crimes to light, 
 and opens in after years the secret chambers of iniquity 
 to the gaze of Israel and the sun? Who plants the 
 sting of conscience in the heart of the wrong-doer, save 
 the Lord ? or who, in more sternly-brooding wrath, 
 suffers the criminal to go on hardening himself, until 
 his own intoxication of mind becomes his more deadly 
 ruin ? Or what is all human mercy but only a hesitating 
 remedy for the imperfection of our judgment ? How 
 faint an image of the Divine, which, knowing all our 
 guilt and all its hopelessness, made the greatness of 
 our ruin a reason for saving us ; and, seeing that there 
 
XXI.] Our Kindred to God. 343 
 
 was no intercessor, became itself incarnate ; triumphing 
 in strange reconcilement over Divine justice by satis- 
 fying it, and over the obdurate heart of man by pro- 
 pounding to it a more wonderful and exceeding super- 
 abundance of Divine compassion, caring for it while 
 keeping swine as it were in a strange country ; seeking 
 it afar off in the wilderness of vain desires ; and calling 
 it back from its wanderings with the tender cry, " My 
 son, my son ! " Such is the mercy of God. And as for 
 his truth, did ever any seek the Lord and fail to find 
 him? Ask of all the generations of old, in any nation 
 of the world, if the ways of God's law, when honestly 
 followed to the best of man's light, have not been ways 
 of pleasantness ; and if all misfortunes have not been 
 light compared to the pains of a guilty conscience, the 
 pangs of shame and remorse ? 
 
 Should we not then, on the whole, acknowledge, 
 that whatever things are lovely and excellent on earth, 
 they are but images of that Divine perfection, which 
 must therefore be better fitted than anything in the 
 world to engage our love, and to claim our willing 
 obedience ? Surely we are not incapable of feeling 
 some approach to a disinterested affection and an 
 active gratitude to this holder up of our souls in life, 
 our bringer back from the gates of death. Let us love 
 Him ; for He is worthy of all love, and we are also his 
 offspring. But if any one here think this motive to 
 obedience fitter rather for Paradise than for Man driven 
 into exile and scared by the flaming sword, let him 
 please to remember that St Paul has used it, and 
 therefore he thought it consistent with that " lost 
 
344 Our Kindred to God. [serm. 
 
 estate" of man, of which he is himself the greatest 
 doctor. But the same Apostle everywhere teaches, 
 that as in Adam all, so in Christ all. Whatever we 
 lose by the one, we at least gain as much by the other. 
 For, if the second Adam were not powerful to restore 
 all that the first has lost, he would not be the Son of 
 God ; and if He were not willing, he could no longer 
 be the Son of Man. So often as we follow the earthly 
 man in mixing the knowledge of evil with good, and 
 perverting our great capacities according to the devilish 
 whisper of some serpent sin, so often we estrange our- 
 selves from the garden ' of God's delight ; then we prey 
 on our own hearts, and waste ourselves in wandering in 
 a far country, which is a land of flight from Him whom 
 the pure in heart behold — for God beholds the wicked 
 afar off; but when we come to ourselves, remembering 
 whose we are, and go back to our Father, asking his 
 Holy Spirit to make us partakers of the likeness of the 
 Man from heaven, then God gives us the spirit of 
 adoption, and calls us sons again, and is not ashamed 
 to dwell among us, and to be called our God. Then 
 He becomes nigh to us, even a very present help. Then 
 we are also his offspring and akin to him, by being 
 made like him in the character (though I dare not say 
 in the essence 2) of our minds. When will men learn 
 that Christian humility is not to be an excuse for doing 
 
 1 ovK evt, al(rdr]Ta ^vXa 
 
 iv TO) TTapadeicro), tovt icrnv, iv rfj eKKXrjcriq. 
 
 Origen, Eclog. in Gen. 
 ov Sel wepi.€x.€<Tdai rov ypafifxaTos r. yp. (os aXridovs. 
 
 Id. ibid. 
 
 2 Kara dvpofiiv, ov kut ovviau. S. Clem. Alex. 
 
XXI.] Our Kindred to God. 345 
 
 less, but comes of earnest desire to do more ? It is not 
 wallowing in the mire, as palsied by despair ; but it is 
 deliberately stooping, or drawing back, that we may 
 spring higher. We may indeed be humbled when we 
 think of what we, and all our race, have made ourselves; 
 but we are encouraged when we remember what God 
 intended us to be, and what he enables us to become, 
 through the Spirit of his well-beloved Son. If our fall 
 is great, much more our rising. For we have on our 
 side One stronger than the strong; and He puts strength 
 into us if we will only give ourselves entirely to Him. 
 
 Look down, then, brethren, and be ashamed even 
 to kneel or draw nigh before Him whose name is Holy ; 
 for what are we in His sight ! and how unworthy are 
 we of being his children ! Yet look up and rejoice, 
 and draw nigh in faith ; because His love is greater than 
 all our shortcomings, and, by teaching us to call him 
 " Our Father," He assures us that we are also his 
 offspring. How much more then, now, may I ask you 
 to let the love of God constrain you! If even godly 
 Heathens were smitten with this great desire of be- 
 coming like to Him, after whom they felt as it were in 
 darkness, how much more shall we listen to our blessed 
 Saviour, and be persuaded by his gracious words, when 
 he says, Do good, and be merciful, and be holy — 
 and even, be perfect — even as your Father which is 
 in Heaven is perfect ! 
 
 But if the great message of glad tidings, by which 
 we are brought nigh to our Heavenly Father, could 
 only be given us at the expense of the life of Him who 
 bought it, we may see, in that wonderful obedience and 
 
 15—5 
 
346 Our Kindred to God. [serm. xxi. 
 
 resignation of his soul in death, something which should 
 move us to desire earnestly the same mind. Therefore, 
 as we eat our peace-offerings and bless our cup of 
 thanksgiving, let us remember on whose innocent head 
 sin was laid, as in redeeming us He underwent the 
 sharpness of death. Show forth the Lord's death to 
 your mind's eye, until you desire earnestly to die unto 
 sin ; and until you catch, standing in thought under the 
 Cross, something of that spirit wherewith he surrendered 
 his own will to his Father's will, his cause to his Father's 
 judgment, his life into his Father's hands. If such was 
 that consecration of Himself by the well-beloved Son, 
 the remembrance of which we are now about to plead 
 before God, and before our own wayward hearts, such 
 also, brethren, should be in some measure our willing 
 consecration of our own prayers, thoughts, words, deeds, 
 and desires. The love of God should constrain us to 
 give ourselves to Him who desires our good. For, 
 though Jesus, whom God anointed with the Holy Spirit 
 and with power, is inseparably the Son, and has in all 
 things the pre-eminence — yet he is also the firstborn 
 among many brethren ; if he alone said, "My Father" — 
 he has taught all his followers to say, " Our Father," and 
 by reconciling us in the temper of our minds to God, he 
 assures us once more, that we are also his offspring. 
 
 Written chiefly about 1851. 
 Finished, and preached, in 1855. 
 
SERMON XXII. 
 
 THE DAY OF THE LORD. 
 
 It shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear, nor 
 dark. Zechariah xiv. 6. 
 
 We frequently meet in Scripture with the phrase " day 
 of the Lord." It is by no means universally used in 
 the same unique or definite sense as we might have 
 been inclined to expect. It denotes not one time, but 
 many. For any signal manifestation of the Divine go- 
 vernment of the world, or any such event as made 
 men's hearts quake within them for fear, (whether it 
 were battle or siege, earthquake or cholera,) is described 
 as the day of the Lord. Hence our Saviour, in speak- 
 ing of the distress which should befall his disciples, fore- 
 warns them of a time when they shall wish for one of 
 the days of the Son of Man. That is to say, they 
 would wish for such a period as the ancient Prophet 
 desired when he exclaimed, " Oh that thou wouldest 
 come down ! " such a period as might make their per- 
 secutors remember themselves to be but men ; and 
 cease from wrong-doing, as if in presumptuous confi- 
 dence that the arm of the Lord was shortened, and 
 his ear no longer open to the cry of the oppressed. 
 
348 The Day of the Lord. [serm. 
 
 For, though all nature is, in truth, an exponent of the 
 judgment as well as of the beneficence of God, there 
 are times and places in which his right hand, as it 
 were, is more manifestly bared. It is true, that at all 
 times every evil act calls the avengers around us ; but 
 their footsteps are silent, and their approach unper- 
 eeived. The bow is bent, and the arrow on the string ; 
 but still the man will not turn, and goes on to lose 
 the very perception of his danger. Then the hearts 
 of many are hardened, and the feeling of deep and 
 eternal truths becomes so blunted that (according to 
 the ancient complaint) there is no vision in the land. 
 That is to say, there is no earnest sense of things 
 deep, holy, and divine. Pride and its insolence, wealth 
 and the lust of it, softness of life and the hardness 
 of heart which it begets, tread down weakness, or turn 
 an indifferent ear to its uneasy pining. The fat oxen 
 gore and thrust the lean. Men look abroad on the 
 terrible amount of physical or moral evil in the world, 
 without conceiving that it is their business to remedy 
 it. They live for themselves. They forget that want 
 and wretchedness are on earth the very bodily repre- 
 sentatives of Him, Avho, holding the keys of life and 
 death, will control their destiny in heaven. " Have 
 they no knowledge ?" saith the Lord of a generation 
 thus depraved, that they are all such workers of mis- 
 chief, eating up my people as it were bread ^? Such 
 a general insensibility can have come only of one 
 
 -1 This complaint shows that the writer of Psalms xiv. and liii. 
 did not intend to describe the depravity of all mankind, howeyer his 
 words may bo accommodated. 
 
XXII.] The Day of the Lord. 340 
 
 cause : " The fool must have fancied in his heart, that 
 there is no God." 
 
 In such times the fervent spirit is tempted to wish 
 for one of the days of the Lord. " Arise now, O Lord, 
 for thy name's sake," is the instinctive prayer, uncon- 
 sciously trembling upon the lips. " O Lord of hosts," 
 said the angel in Zechariah, " how long wilt thou not 
 have mercy on Jerusalem, and on the cities of Judah, 
 against which thou hast had indignation ?" Such is 
 also the strain to which men of vehement temper 
 exalted by fervid piety, are often apt to incline. They 
 see great evil, and they would have it redressed by 
 Him who is mighty. Nay, they almost think the honor 
 of their Lord concerned that fire should come down 
 from heaven, and avenge his insulted cause. 
 
 Yet methinks, brethren, there are many reasons why 
 even in the worst times we should not wish to hasten 
 that day which will in appointed course assuredly come, 
 and will not tarry. For of old the Prophet rebuked 
 the Israelites who not so much out of pious zeal, as 
 out of ignorant impatience, would fain have hastened 
 the day of the Lord's visitation. " Woe unto them," he 
 exclaims, " that say, where is the day of the Lord ? 
 the day of the Lord is not light, but darkness ; it is 
 a great and a terrible day." That seems to mean, when- 
 ever a general alienation from the law and the Spirit 
 of God has gone so far as to bring down some startling 
 national judgments, we shall then be so far from wishing 
 for some more visible token of the Divine government 
 of the world, that it will be felt only too sensibly, too 
 keenly, too painfully. As with the maidservant, so 
 
350 The Day of the Lord. [serm. 
 
 with the mistress ; as with the beggar's child, so with 
 the firstborn of Pharaoh that sitteth on his throne. 
 It comes, a general, all-embracing, crushing calamity. 
 The diseases of which the first seeds were sown in some 
 Indian jungle, may march, like a disembodied army, 
 from city to city, until it sit among our homes, an 
 unwelcome, but too familiar guest. It may visit chiefly 
 the hut of Lazarus, but there it may gather strength 
 to force itself into the halls of Dives. So the moral 
 fever which rends social institutions, may seem pro- 
 voked by a certain crookedness, which perhaps after all, 
 none but God could have set straight ; but when it 
 has infused the strength of madness into whatever is 
 uneasy, and discontented, and criminal, rolling along 
 turbid masses to overthrow all established restraints, 
 and making no difference between the holy and un- 
 clean, who will not say, such a day of the Lord is a 
 day of blackness, and not of light? Who would not 
 rather have joined in that wholesome prayer, " Give 
 peace in our time ; because there is none other that 
 fighteth for us, but only thou, O God " ? 
 
 Instead therefore, brethren, of encouraging in our- 
 selves impatience for some great day of the Lord, let 
 us rather engrave upon our minds a conviction, that 
 such coming will be at last inevitable. Instead also, 
 of thinking that we ourselves must enjoy exemption 
 in such a day, let us recognise ourselves as parts of a 
 whole ; not being lightly afflicted in the affliction of 
 our people, nor forgetting that rarely, and to few, is 
 the refuge of some Zoar permitted. We may estimate 
 the character of such general judgments as are here 
 
XXII.] The Day of the Lord. 351 
 
 alluded to, by reading the description of those of old; 
 how God caused a destruction of fire (probably vol- 
 canic) to come on the cities of the plain ; how the 
 firstborn of Egypt, and the host of the Assyrian were 
 alike smitten, each in one night ; or how the day of 
 the Lord is with the prophet Joel an army of locusts, 
 marching in array, and leaving famine in their rear ; 
 how with Zechariah it is the gathering of nations 
 against Jerusalem ; with our blessed Lord, it is the 
 desolation of the temple, and the treading of the holy 
 city under foot ; and again, with Him, it is that last 
 day of the Son of man which cometh suddenly as a 
 thief in the night. It is rather a certain deference to 
 custom, than any idea of their being essentially inap- 
 propriate, which withholds me from adding modern 
 instances. For there is no more now than of old any 
 great stroke or crisis in any national history, which 
 does not attest the finger-work of a Ruler, and which 
 does not carry a certain moral on the face of it, legi- 
 ble even to those that run. What might not be said 
 of the downfall of that old heathen Rome, which seems 
 to be shadowed forth with such grand imagery in the 
 book of Revelation ? What of the general overrun- 
 ning of an effete and corrupt civilization, by the rude, 
 but comparatively virtuous warriors of the North ? 
 W^hat of the rise and rapid sweep of Mahometanism, 
 as in its kind something purer than what it overthrew ? 
 or what again of our own Reformation, and of other 
 events of an analogous kind ? 
 
 In some of these things light and blessing may pre- 
 ponderate, in others darkness and judgment; but in 
 
352 The Day of the Lord. [serm. 
 
 all there is a Divine finger, and, as it were, a day 
 of the Lord. By some more than others, but by all 
 in some degree, we are reminded, that the God whom 
 we serve is a living Dread ; He is not confined to past 
 ages or their records, but is in the midst of us ; He 
 speaks not merely in Oriental phrase, but in every 
 language, to every nation of the world. Moreover, in 
 all such events we may recognise instances of a Pro- 
 vidence, to the duration of which no limit can be 
 assigned ; types therefore and foreshadowings of a 
 greater judgment, to be accomplished whenever the 
 guilt of the world shall have filled up its measure, and 
 history reached its close. 
 
 What then is the sort of temper, or cast of senti- 
 ment, with which the idea of any such great national 
 visitations should be blended in our minds ? How 
 ought we habitually to think of all signal days, but 
 especially of one, the final day of the Lord ? 
 
 As citizens of a nation, or members of a commu- 
 nity, we should be aware that crime inevitably brings 
 down judgment. The very success which attended the 
 cruelty and avarice of the Spanish conquerors of the 
 New World, paved, by steps which may be traced, 
 the way for the comparative degradation of one of 
 the fairest countries of Europe. So, any general vice, 
 any laxity of sentiment as regards the great rules 
 of right and wrong, or the primary laws of God, 
 scatters broadcast the seeds which we ourselves may 
 observe germinate, but of which the full harvest may 
 be reaped only in the third and fourth generation. 
 The habitual neglect of duty by any body of men, 
 
XXII.] The Day of the Lord. 353 
 
 calls forth from many minds a feeling of disapproba- 
 tion, which gradually unites and gathers head, until it 
 becomes a swollen flood. The irreverence again, which 
 some even well-intentioned men think it no harm 
 to foster, for the sake (as they imagined) of calling 
 attention to greater things, propagates itself over space, 
 and becomes aggravated in degree, until at length it 
 takes the form of profaneness, or hardens into a surly 
 and a wayward zeal, more skilful to pull down, than 
 to build. Consider again the ignorance, supinely suf- 
 fered, or even selfishly encouraged, by those who should 
 have thought more worthily of whomever God made 
 their fellow. Into how many a form of popular delu- 
 sion, bigotry, fanaticism, and immorality, does not such 
 a current flow ? In these, and many other such cases, 
 the effect, as regards nations, may either be sudden 
 or slow ; but it is certainly unerring. It goes on 
 rising and reddening from the faint streak of the 
 first quickening of morn, until it breaks, perhaps, lower- 
 ing and stormy, in some great and terrible day of the 
 Lord. Knowing such things, brethren, be it our prayer 
 to God, that the ten righteous men may never be 
 wanting in any city or district of our country ; and 
 while we labour in whatever is our vocation, that the 
 Lord's coming may ever be to bless, rather than to 
 curse, be it also our wisdom to have our loins so girded, 
 that, if our Master come suddenly, he may find us 
 ready. Let not only the sprinkling of the blood of 
 the great Sacrifice be on the doorposts of our tem- 
 ples, our palaces, and our homes ; but let us so put 
 away all bitterness of spirit, and so give the answer 
 
354 The Day of the Lord. [serm. 
 
 of a good conscience toward God, that when the 
 avenging angel comes, he may pass by our dwelling, 
 and say, Here I have no errand ; here dwells a mightier 
 power than mine. It is chiefly indeed, on turning from 
 a national to a personal view of the subject, that the 
 necessity arises of laying stress on the idea of sud- 
 denness. The Son of Man cometh like a thief in the 
 night. This is true of every judgment that can affect 
 us personally. What we say in the proverb of the 
 pitcher, is a homely expression of nearly the same 
 sentiment. We run a certain moral risk ninety-nine 
 times, but the hundredth is fatal. We place ourselves 
 in temptation, we contract habits, we provoke judg- 
 ments. Can we wonder if we fall, if we are entangled, 
 if we are ruined '? Yet, we did not foresee it ; there 
 was no reason, we fancied, why the vengeance should 
 come to-day rather than yesterday. But in one night 
 the seed of all our misdoings has shot up into a tree ; 
 we are eating compulsorily of its bitter fruit. Guilt has 
 brought shame ; vice has entailed a hopelessly broken 
 constitution ; idleness and extravagance have brought 
 poverty upon us, like an armed man. 
 
 Watch, therefore, brethren, each man over himself 
 personally ; in his thoughts, his prayers, his actions, his 
 habits ; for the day of the Lord may come suddenly ; 
 and when we say peace, because we have put humour 
 for piety, it may be destruction unawares. 
 
 There is yet one different aspect, and that admit- 
 ting of two divisions, under which I wish to consider 
 this subject. Though in the sacred writings we read 
 of many days of the Lord, there is throughout the 
 
XXII.] The Day of the Lord. 355 
 
 course of the world's history, considered as still last- 
 ing, emphatically one. The use made by St Peter on 
 the day of Pentecost, of the words of the prophet 
 JoeP, shews that he considered the great day of the 
 Lord, previous to the day of judgment, as being the 
 Gospel Dispensation — as commencing therefore with 
 the first instruction of the Christian Church by the 
 Holy Spirit. Frequent and varied as had been the 
 previous manifestations of the Divine dealings with 
 mankind, they sank into insignificance compared to that 
 last revelation by the Son, which not only completed 
 the others, but rightly interpreted, and assigned to them 
 their true value. The days of old had severally brought 
 instruction ; but this day of the Lord's appearance, and 
 his Spirit's coming, might well be called the completion 
 of the seasons, the last dispensation under which it 
 would ever please the Maker of the world to give his 
 revolted handiwork a trial. Either in this last time, 
 this last of the earthly days of the Lord, the world 
 must be saved, and arrive at the highest perfection of 
 which it is capable, or it must remain only that it be 
 judged, and that the elements melt with fervent heat. 
 During this day of the Lord, then, our Heavenly Father 
 is trying us by every display of his goodness and 
 wisdom. He is pouring out his Spirit upon all man- 
 kind ; He is bringing nations daily more together ; He 
 is inspiring them with a perception of the blessings of 
 peace ; He is inviting them to turn their swords into 
 ploughshares ; He is unlocking daily the stores of cre- 
 ation more abundantly to our investigation and our 
 1 They were in the First Lesson for the day. 
 
356 The Day of the Lord. [serm. 
 
 enjoyment ; and as He earnestly persuades us that we 
 have all one Lord and Father, — for we have all received 
 the adoption of sons — so He invites us both to know 
 him, our Father, better, and advance his kingdom on 
 earth, by practising that commandment, in which the 
 whole law is comprehended, " Love one another." Such 
 is the dayspring from on high which has risen upon us. 
 Such is the day, not of the Lord's wrath, but of the 
 Lord's mercy, in the light of which Ave are now in- 
 vited to walk. 
 
 Only, extending as it does over vast regions of 
 space and epochs of time, this day is not so much 
 sudden as grand and solemn, like those days of eternity, 
 the span of which to our numbering is a thousand 
 years. Hence it fluctuates, now with its hour of storm, 
 and now with its gleam of sunshine, or the dew of a 
 heavenly blessing. So it has come to pass in this day 
 that the light is neither clear nor dark. We have to 
 deal with a system of inherent crookedness ; a system 
 in which pain, want, shame, are not only found, but 
 must often even be welcomed as remedies against still 
 greater evils. How great then must be those evils ! 
 They are a licentiousness daring all things, a malignity 
 violating all things humane, and a blasphemy sinning 
 against all things Divine, — thus constituting a train of 
 evils apparently so unnatural — for they are so unwise — 
 and yet having their roots so deeply ingrained in the 
 very capacity of better things, that we can neither 
 sufficiently condemn nor yet utterly eradicate them ; 
 we know not where to place their origin, save it be in 
 the malice of what appear to be " airy principalities, 
 
XXII.] The Day of the Lord. 357 
 
 wicked spirits hovering on high." Having all around 
 us, whispering in thought, laughing out in scoff, and 
 bursting into wickedness alike bad and pitiable, such 
 principles of enmity, both to our own peace and to the 
 Lord whose servants we are, we cannot always discern 
 our landmarks ; the light is not clear ; there is a deep 
 moral disease in the world ; and, followers as we are of 
 the good Physician, we have not hitherto healed Adam 
 of his deep wound. He still lies fallen, or at best limps, 
 with his heel bruised by the serpent ; and it is well if 
 only in a moderate degree we ourselves partake of his 
 lameness. So the light is not clear. 
 
 Nevertheless, brethren, let no man persuade us there 
 are not more with us than against us. On our side are 
 the very healing pains, which no malignant power, but 
 a chastening Father, sent among mankind, the recallers 
 of wandering children, and remembrancers of his holy 
 name. On our side are the wholesome sternness of 
 shame and true remorse ; all the wonderful machinery 
 of the human conscience ; the remembrance of the rock 
 from whence we were hewn, and the capacity both of 
 being touched, and of touching others, by the abundant 
 loving-kindness of Him, in whom are hid all the trea- 
 sures of wisdom and knowledge. On our side is the 
 melancholy testimony of all past experience, and daily 
 more and more with us is the brightening hope of the 
 future. The world is improving ; for the honour of God, 
 and for the love of man, let us improve it more earnestly. 
 So, if the light be not clear, still less will it be dark. 
 
 And as of the body, so of the limbs. What is true 
 of the prospects of the Christian religion will bear 
 
358 The Day of the Lord. [serm. 
 
 applying to the daily life of each of its believers. Our 
 light is not always clear. For, whatever agencies or 
 possibilities of ill thwart our Master's kingdom, threaten 
 also the spiritual life in each one of our souls. Baffled 
 in some labour of love, embarrassed by some perplexing 
 difficulty, disheartened by a want of lively faith in the 
 ever-abiding presence of our holy and unseen Helper, 
 we are tempted to take hand off the plough, and say, 
 " Depart from us, O Lord, for we are sinful men." But 
 that, brethren, was not so much true humility as a want 
 of knowledge of the power and the wisdom of the 
 Master from whom he would have turned, which made 
 the chief apostle so speak. When he rose, in obedience 
 to the gracious command, *' Fear not," and when he 
 girded himself in a higher spirit to his work, his Lord 
 enabled him to win men. So now, whether it be a 
 difficulty in shaping our own conduct and controlling 
 our own passions which besets us, or whether it be a 
 protracted struggle in any labour of faith, and patience, 
 and love, be we persuaded that if the light be not 
 clear, still less is it dark. Possibly, such a state of 
 risk and uncertain twilight, as may render us more de- 
 pendent on the will and guidance of a higher power, 
 may be the most wholesome probation for us here. 
 Perhaps, as any man approaches nearest to the per- 
 fection of the Christian temper, he has a frame of 
 sentiment equally compounded of these two opposites, 
 hope and fear. 
 
 Thus souls by nature pitched too high, 
 
 By sorrow plunged too low. 
 Meet in the Church's middle sky, 
 
 Half way 'twixt joy and woe. 
 
XXII.] The Day of the Lord. 359 
 
 Such a frame comes of hope in God and fear of 
 ourselves. It has purged away reckless self-confidence 
 and eagerness for enjoyment, in some trial improved 
 by a recognition of the Divine Sender ; but it has also 
 looked up through the cloud, and been cheered by a 
 gleam from the highest light, to rejoice in tribulation 
 and to labour in hope. Thus it is sobered by fear, and 
 encouraged by hope in One who cannot deceive. 
 
 Such is probably the kind of frame in which men 
 most nearly walk with God. More certainly such ap- 
 pears from experience to be the frame in which they 
 most perseveringly and successfully do his will on earth. 
 So they seem to work most in harmony with his laws ; 
 having soberness rather than rapture, peace rather than 
 joy, perseverance in well-doing rather than fervour of 
 ecstasy. Often even the day of their work is unknown 
 to men, but yet a day known to the Lord. To our 
 eyes it may be an obscure twilight, not day, nor night : 
 nevertheless the path of the just brightens more and 
 more. Take we only heed, dearly beloved, that our 
 labour throughout this day of life be in the Lord; and 
 it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall he 
 light. 
 
 Lampeter, 20ih Sunday after Trinity, 1851. 
 
SERMON XXIII. 
 
 THE TIMES AND THE SEASONS. 
 
 It is not for you to know the times and the seasons, which the Father 
 hath settled by his own power. Acts i. 7. 
 
 It has often been felt that it was not altogether easy to 
 decide in what sense the Apostles so frequently speak 
 of their Lord's second coming as a thing near at hand. 
 One of the frequent burthens of their doctrine is the 
 shortness of the time. " Surely, I come quickly," is a 
 saying of their Master's, with reference to which not 
 only each man's life, but the whole tenor of his relations 
 with the world around him, should be shaped. 
 
 Now it may fairly be remarked, that many such 
 passages in the apostolic writings may be explained by 
 connecting them with those signal changes which either 
 actually arrived, or already threw their portentous 
 shadows across the world during the first half century 
 of the Christian era. We seem to be warranted by 
 St Peter in saying, that the day of Pentecost, on which 
 the great Pleader on part of God with man first taught 
 the passing away of things old, was itself one of those 
 days of the Lord which are great and terrible, yet a 
 beginning of the times of refreshing ; great indeed in 
 its revelations, and terrible in the transfer of sympathy 
 
XXIII. ] The Times and the Seasons. 361 
 
 and devotion which it required ; yet refreshing the 
 weary and heavy-laden by the removal of a burthen, 
 and the opening of a way of peace. 
 
 Nor again can we doubt, that before the generation 
 which heard our Saviour had passed away, all that 
 nearer circle of things predicted had found its fulfil- 
 ment, which He described by imagery, significant per- 
 haps of something greater to come, as the gathering of 
 the vultures and the passing away of heaven and earth ; 
 though the carcase was almost certainly the Jewish 
 nation, the heaven was the horizon of hope which sur- 
 rotmded the earthly kingdom of David, and the earth was 
 the soil of Sion, whose stones were crumbled into dust'. 
 
 Again, if time permitted us to look on to that 
 crash of society which attended the downfall of the 
 Roman empire, we should there still more evidently 
 read signs which mark a day of the Son of Man ; signs 
 of nation rising against nation, of the coming of the 
 Judge of the whole earth out of the clouds which often 
 surround the path of his providence, to humble her who 
 
 1 There are indeed strong expressions in the Greek liturgies, in 
 which the Church thanks God for having already brought her through 
 a resurrection into the kingdom of heaven. These may be added to 
 other reasons of time, &c. for thinking that our Saviour spoke only 
 of the fall of the earthly Jerusalem, and the establishment of the 
 heavenly on earth. Some ingenious suggestions to this effect may 
 be found in some recent sermons on the Apocalypse by the Rev. P. S. 
 Desprez. But to follow out this interpretation thoroughly might be 
 to fall into the error of Hymenseus and Philetus: and I know not 
 how otherwise to avoid the conclusion stated lower down, that the 
 Apostles were not careful to distinguish between two homog< neous 
 sets of predictions. It may be added that St Paul bids Timothy 
 keep the commandment until our Lord's appearing; but cannot have 
 meant him to keep it only until the fall of Jerusalem. 
 
 w. s. l(j 
 
302 The Times and the Seasons. [serm. 
 
 had humbled many reahns, and to let her sit in turn 
 a widow. 
 
 But yet, striking as is the fulfilment which we might 
 thus read of many of the denunciations of Him who 
 wept over Jerusalem, or of his Apostle who saw from 
 Patmos the phials poured out on the seven hills which 
 were the seat of Paganism', we cannot say that even 
 the most pregnant and startling changes in the world's 
 history altogether meet the full compass^ of those ex- 
 pressions which speak of the end of all things being 
 nigh, even at hand. For setting aside those passages, 
 of which there are many, which contain predictions of 
 some approaching catastrophe among the kingdoms of 
 earth, we also observe a presentiment, not always careful 
 to fashion itself into form, but evidently pervading the 
 mind of the writers, that many questions, which other- 
 wise might have been considered differently, were for 
 them decided by the nearness of the hour, when the 
 grave should give up its dead, and mankind obey the 
 summons to meet their Judge. " Now this I say, the 
 time is short." " Be careful for nothing : the Lord is 
 at hand^." Hence a superficial probability of each man's 
 death being intended. But this neither suits the breadth 
 of the scriptural expressions, nor the deeper meaning 
 that we are to take an interest in the course of God's 
 
 1 It will be obvious that I can consider the sayings about Babylon 
 in the Apocalypse as at most only referring to modern Rome in the 
 sense of warnings, parallels, or analogies; and that only so far as 
 circumstances may warrant; but not at all as predictions. 
 
 - See note in the preceding page. 
 
 ^ In 1st Corinth, xvi. 22, the word Maranatha should be stopped 
 as a distinct sentence, like 6 Kvpios tyyvs elsewhere. 
 
XXIII.] The Times and the Seasons. 363 
 
 world. Nor, indeed, has any explanation been given of 
 the passage in the 1st Thessalonians (eh. iv.) so natural 
 as the one which considers the Apostle Paul as con- 
 sidering it probable, that he himself and his contem- 
 poraries would survive, so as to be caught up into the 
 air, simultaneously with those who had already entered 
 into their rest. 
 
 Is there then any reason why we should endeavour 
 to evade the natural meaning of the words ? Why 
 not accept the fact as it appears, and then account 
 for it as we may? It is clear, that at the very date 
 of our Lord"'s ascension into Heaven, his disciples were 
 still so far from being fully informed as to the times 
 and the seasons, that they brought the subject forward, 
 even considered in its decidedly earthly aspect, in one 
 of the very last enquiries which they addressed to the 
 Master they were about to lose. Why then should 
 not a certain indistinctness of view have continued 
 until a later period? Were there not indeed some 
 reasons which would be likely beforehand to bias the 
 conception of the sacred writers upon this particular 
 subject? and may we not also now observe some bene- 
 ficial results from that conception which in fact they 
 entertained ? 
 
 If any one reads attentively the 24th chapter of 
 the Gospel of St Matthew, he will find apparently a 
 blending of two distinct sets of predictions running 
 together in artless parallel, just such as is the sort 
 of parallel which the providential recurrence of the 
 same sort of events in the world's history presents to 
 our mind. Only one broad distinction is clearly laid 
 
 IG — 2 
 
364 The Times and the Seasons. [serm. 
 
 down. While a period for the fulfihiient of the first 
 series, the human judgment, is fixed within the life- 
 time of a generation ; we, on the contrary, are told 
 of the last judgment, " Of that hour knoweth no man, 
 neither the angels, nor the Son, but the Father." 
 Alike as they were to be in many respects, in pre- 
 dicted certainty, in unexpected suddenness, in rapidity, 
 in terror, and in completeness, yet in one thing they 
 were entirely different ; the first was near, the second 
 had no date assigned. The general impression left 
 by the whole parallel, if not by other such, upon 
 the reader's mind is, that the course of Divine pro- 
 vidence loves to repeat itself ; as if the great strokes 
 on the anvil of destiny became louder and heavier^ 
 until repeated judgments end in a consummation, tran- 
 scending whatever has gone before. It would not then 
 be wonderful if the affectionate anticipation of the 
 disciples, overleaping the intermediate stages, should 
 have been willing to hasten forward the end, when He 
 who had been rejected of men should take to him- 
 self his great power, and reign as King of kings and 
 Lord of lords. Eather indeed their own language, as 
 in the question immediately preceding our text, shows 
 that they made no clear distinction at all times be- 
 tween things temporal and things eternal ; and we 
 can readily conceive the authors of that question, in 
 the very simplicity of their minds, to have been slow 
 
 1 As I regret to have no sermon, fully written, on the subject of 
 the "Types," so I include the present one, partly for the sake of these 
 suggestions, which, taken in connexion with the Sermons on Prophecy, 
 will indicate what I conceive to be the most reasonable view of a 
 question which has embarrassed many persons. 
 
XXIII.] The Times and the Seasons. 365 
 
 in learning of what kingdom our Lord spake, " Behold, 
 I come quickly." They may have caught all the es- 
 sential spirit of the warning which bade them "ivatch, 
 for the Son of Man came as a thief in the night," 
 and not therefore necessarily have been skilful to dis- 
 tinguish which watch of the night was passing, or 
 when the hour of cock-croAving should be. But I have 
 spoken merely as if this view were probable. Whereas 
 really, is it not certain that such must have been the 
 case ? For, if not even the Son upon earth had commis- 
 sion to divulge the last hour of the world's career, how 
 should his disciples have learnt it ? or why should they 
 not have suffered their own presentiment, however it may 
 have been formed, to betray itself in the general cast 
 of their writings, without therefore binding us, either 
 to explain away their language, or to alarm ourselves 
 with the idea that it contains any dangerous error? 
 Surely it was not for them to know the times and 
 the seasons, which the Father had established by his 
 own power. 
 
 But here many pious persons will present them- 
 selves, who have no objection to admit the above view 
 as correct up to the day of Pentecost: but after 
 that date, they conceive it would be of dangerous ten- 
 dency to suppose that the Apostles, either in writing, 
 or (on the same principle it ought to be admitted) in 
 acting, should not have been led into all truth ; or, 
 in fact, should have erred as regards the times and 
 the seasons. It deserves then to be noticed, that all this 
 objection derives its entire force from the supposition, 
 that the inspiration of the Apostles meant something 
 
366 The Times and the Seasons. [serm. 
 
 like partaking in the Divine omniscience, or that the 
 same persons could not be inspired and at the same 
 time but partially informed. Whereas all that suppo- 
 sition is utterly contradicted both by the simplest facts 
 of the Apostles' own narrative, and by the very modest 
 extent of the claims which they make for themselves. 
 Nothing can be more conclusive on this point than the 
 instance of St Peter. That great Apostle, who assuredly 
 came behind in no gift of the Spirit, was nevertheless 
 so far from being fully informed on so important a 
 point as the conversion of the Gentiles, that some time 
 after the day of Pentecost he required enlightenment 
 upon it, by a special vision from heaven. Nothing in- 
 deed can be farther from the sacred writers' mind, 
 than any idea of concealing the gradual manner in 
 which the knowledge of the Apostles grew, and the 
 imperfections to which it was liable from their per- 
 sonal failings, as well as the accessions which it received 
 from their experience. We may gather not obscurely, 
 by comparing the Epistle to the Galatians with the 
 Acts of the Apostles, what different shades of opinion 
 among the pillars of the Church had to be harmonized 
 together in that famous decree, which yet from its 
 tone of mingled freedom and moderation, may well be 
 said to have seemed good to the Holy Spirit, as well 
 as to the first council of Jerusalem. For so it seems 
 as if the Eternal Wisdom were pleased to work ; grant- 
 ing to no man such an immunity from error as should 
 permit him to forget that he has his treasure in an 
 earthen vessel ; nor yet suffering us while on earth to 
 know otherwise than in part ; yet so balancing and 
 
xxiir.] The Times and the Seasons. 367 
 
 moulding together the imperfections, the sore conten- 
 tions, and the prophesjings in part, that the general 
 aggregate of the mass shall be as the three bushels 
 of meal in which the quickening leaven continues to 
 ferment ; and so that the very foolishness employed in 
 the service of God shall put to shame the wisdom of 
 the wise. 
 
 It need not therefore surprise us, if those, whom 
 we call not indeed masters, yet now look upon affec- 
 tionately as our fathers in the faith, had also their 
 childhood of learning, through which they grew up to 
 the stature of scribes perfectly instructed in the mys- 
 teries of the kingdom of Heaven. But now, if in 
 anything this was the case, upon no subject is their 
 knowledge so likely, at best, to have required gradual 
 and successive steps of growth, as upon that secret 
 of unsearchable awe, the time of their Lord's coming 
 to judge the world. The only room for doubt indeed 
 is, whether we are not contradicting Scripture in ad- 
 mitting for a moment the possibility that the Apostles 
 ever could attain to knowledge of the precise time. 
 For, since it is clearly revealed by Him who is alone 
 the Author of our faith, that the Son of Man cometh 
 suddenly, even as a thief in the night, and since it is 
 the characteristic of suddenness to be unexpected, and 
 since no man is informed by the thief of the hour at 
 which he will come, it would seem a necessary con- 
 clusion, that the final judgment is an event for which 
 we ought always to be ready, but to which no man 
 can presume, save in devout consciousness of its daily 
 nearness in possibility, ever to assign a time. 
 
368 The Times and the Seasons. [serm. 
 
 Supposing, however, this last reflexion on the im- 
 possibility/ of the sacred writers knowing the precise 
 time of the day of judgment should be thought too 
 great a refinement, we have still sufficiently clear evi- 
 dence as to the fact itself. Observe only the answer 
 which our Lord gave to the enquiry, " Wilt thou at this 
 time restore the kingdom of Israel ?" " It is not for 
 you," he says, "to know the times and the seasons."" 
 As if he had said, " What is that to you ? follow you 
 me. But you shall receive power for your work, after 
 the Holy Spirit has come upon you ; though I do not 
 say you shall then receive unnecessary knowledge. 
 There are some things of which even I, in my Medi- 
 atorial character on earth, was content to become 
 ignorant, having no commission to reveal them. So 
 are there some things which the Holy Spirit, the 
 strengthener for all needful purposes, may not show 
 you. Some the Father has settled and kept secret 
 by his own power. Others you can only understand 
 when experience shall have shewn you the variety of 
 circumstances to which my kingdom must adapt itself. 
 Yet, lo, according to your need, I am with you alway 
 to the end of the world. I am with you ; as in your 
 writing, so in your preaching ; as in your thinking, so 
 in your acting ; as in your proclaiming the gospel, so 
 in your appointing of presbyters and deacons to con- 
 tinue it ; as in one part of your work, so in all that 
 tends to the edifying of my Church. Fear not there- 
 fore. You shall receive strength for that which I have 
 given you to do ; but it is not for you to know the 
 times and the seasons." 
 
XXIII.] The Times and the Seasons. 369 
 
 May we not then here safely conclude, that as, 
 upon many subjects not unimportant, the Apostles ac- 
 quired knowledge gradually, so it might be left for 
 experience to throw a clearer light upon some of our 
 Lord's predictions of the several days of the Son of 
 Man, than they would naturally appear in at the time 
 they were uttered? Supposing then in the meantime 
 any presentiment of the nearness of the last Advent 
 had been formed in the sacred writers* minds, either by 
 our Saviour's actual language, or by the connexion of 
 thought in which that language was viewed, this feeling 
 would, like any other, find a ready expression among 
 that outpouring of the thoughts, which is one of the 
 greatest charms of many of the Epistles. It is quite 
 idle to desire that those Epistles should have been 
 written in a tone of thought or language alien to the 
 author's time and country ; for if they had been, how 
 could we have defended their genuineness ? 
 
 But now, brethren, may not some useful purposes be 
 promoted by the very fact of the sacred writers having 
 entertained such a conception of the nearness of the day 
 of judgment, as does appear, upon a fair examination, 
 to have been the case? Is not there a lesson thereby 
 implied for our practical consideration, if only we are 
 wise to read it ? As none can count the drops of 
 rain, so probably no one may be able to number the 
 years, which in the unknown mind of the Almighty 
 may be intended to succeed, before time is swallowed 
 up in eternity. But it would seem as if the first 
 preachers of the Cross had not been careful to count 
 them ; but rather had their eyes fixed in faith upon 
 
 16—5 
 
370 The Times and the Seasons. [serm. 
 
 that region far away, in which the exceeding magni- 
 tude of the objects made all the intermediate steps 
 dwindle one by one until they were concentrated in 
 a speck of time. They had seen the Desire of their 
 eyes exalted with great glory to his kingdom in the 
 heavens ; they had heard He should come again. What 
 greatness could seem great, or what duration of time 
 could appear long, to them between two such events? 
 Already that consciousness which was composed half 
 of human impatience and half of Divine faith, sprang 
 forward to the time when the gifts which their Lord 
 had received for men should have become effective to 
 the casting down of all opposition, and the kingdoms 
 of the world should have become the kingdoms of their 
 God and his Christ. It was promised that the know- 
 ledge of Jehovah should cover the earth as the waters 
 cover the sea ; they knew not, perhaps, how many thou- 
 sands of years may be required for the flow of such 
 a tide ; but to their eager and trustful eye each of 
 such periods was but a day. It is probably one of 
 the latest of the Epistles ^ in which the magnitude of 
 the scale of the divine dealings is suggested to Chris- 
 tians, as a reason for patience ; yet, however much the 
 Apostles may previously have supposed the day of the 
 Lord to be near at hand, we cannot conceive them 
 ever to have been ignorant that a day of the High 
 and Holy One who inhabiteth eternity might be as 
 a thousand years. 
 
 1 See .note on the 19th Sermon in which, preached as it was 
 before a more intelligent audience, I thought it right to speak more 
 explicitly on this point of Biblical criticism. 
 
xxin.] llie Times and the Seasons. 371 
 
 There is probably no one present who has not 
 occasionally remarked how the apparent size of objects is 
 dinunished by distance. That which we fancied at some 
 distance would be a hill easy of ascent, turns out, when 
 we approach it, to be a succession of alps upon alps. So 
 if we were removed from this earth only as far as one 
 of the nearest of the stars, the whole globe we tread, 
 with its oceans and mountains, would appear a smaller 
 speck perhaps than that very star now does to our eye ; 
 or even be invisible from the vastness of the distance 
 between. Will then any man in his senses doubt that 
 whichever of us hereafter is permitted to look back 
 from " some far moment of eternity," may behold all 
 the lives of all the generations of the world, dwindled, 
 in comparison of the eternal duration that has suc- 
 ceeded them, into a very speck of time, such as the 
 imagination can scarcely conceive for smallness, even 
 into a moment, or the twinkling of the eye ? For what, 
 after all, is the difference between the effect of space, in 
 making height a thing dwarfed, and that of duration 
 in making time dwindle ? Surely it were insanity to 
 conceive, that He who has sown the field of heaven, 
 £LS with seed, with worlds which no man can number, 
 cannot give his redeemed a length of existence, to 
 which our life shall be as little as a speck is, when 
 compared to the universe. 
 
 Some such thoughts may enable us to understand 
 how the Apostles, without needing the imagery of sen- 
 sible things, but rather by the strong perceptions of 
 the spirit, saw afar off such a preponderance of light 
 and glory, that they were careless of enquiring how 
 
372 The Times and the Seasons. [ser.m. 
 
 many steps might lie between. What matter whether 
 our uneasy slumber be a few hours more or less, if 
 when joy and health visit us in the morning, all that 
 we dreaded turns out a dream ? 
 
 But now also, dear brethren, such thoughts should 
 teach us betimes to take true measure of things tem- 
 poral and things eternal. The train of sentiment which 
 I would here suggest to you, might easily, either by 
 temperaments naturally morbid, or in that listless yet 
 speculative apathy which is the temper of the far East, 
 be carried to such excess as to unfit us for practical 
 life. But with our own boasted activity, the restless 
 striving of men on all hands for power, pleasure, or 
 sin, there is little danger of my winning from you too 
 long or too earnest a consideration of the things which 
 nevertheless concern your eternal peace. A little hour 
 of thought as to the tenor of your lives, some endeavour 
 to value things now by that standard which you will 
 acknowledge hereafter was their true, unerring test, and 
 some aspiration to the Father of all Spirits to keep you 
 pure as strangers and pilgrims in this world, are all I 
 dare ask ; and more than some of you will grant me. 
 
 There are those who will not be persuaded that 
 for doing now what is right in their own eyes God 
 will hereafter call them into judgment; they cannot 
 believe that the humour or passion which now seems 
 to them so legitimate, or so irresistible, will pass away, 
 and leave shame. They cannot think that whatever 
 temptation now besets them, has only its little hour; 
 so soon passeth it away; so soon the entire form and 
 fashion of that in which it is rooted must itself perish. 
 
XXIII.] The Times and the Seasons. 373 
 
 Do we then pretend that there is no strength in tempta- 
 tion ? or that this life, which we now have, is not a 
 scene of enjoyment, wonderful to attract, and also of 
 suffering terrible to endure ? Far from it, brethren. 
 
 This earth, on which we live, is vast. The duration 
 of its existence may be long. Its enjoyment is keen. 
 Its pain may be crushing. Its affections are absorbing ; 
 and its reproaches hard to bear. It has power scarcely 
 to be limited, in moulding our desires, our hopes, our 
 feelings, and all things save one. Say all that can 
 be said of the world that now is, until the cry arises 
 in us, Who is sufficient for these things? But after 
 all, this we say, that compared to the eternity of the 
 life set before us in the heavens, our time here on 
 earth is short. The Lord is at hand. It remaineth 
 that those who weep be as though they wept not, and 
 those who rejoice as though they rejoiced not. There 
 are tears which shall be wiped away, and there is a 
 joy which must wither. Whichever may happen to be 
 the case with you now, it seems to give your whole 
 being a colour ; to be, in short, the crisis of your lives. 
 Nor is it for a moment attempted to persuade you 
 that such things are for the time indifferent. Yet it 
 remaineth that they all be counted by you hereafter 
 as though they never had been. Lift up therefore the 
 eyes of your mind, and take true measure, as if it were 
 of the grass which to-day lives, and to-morrow is cast 
 into the oven, on one side ; but on the other, of that 
 W^ord of the Lord, which endureth for ever. 
 
 We have now seen clearly there may be two modes 
 of measuring the same thing. But the true measure, 
 
374 Tlie Times and the Seasons. [serm. 
 
 brethren, must be, not the one which suits our feelings 
 now, but that which will correspond with our conditions 
 for ever. He then is wisest who begins earliest to 
 make here, whatever reckoning even the fool will make 
 of things hereafter. What a man shall suffer, or enjoy, 
 or pay, or receive, at his inn by the wayside, must be 
 comparatively insignificant to him in whose steady gaze 
 the mansions already rise of an eternal home. That 
 affliction, which we acknowledge to be but for a mo- 
 ment, ought in reason to appear comparatively light. 
 That shortsightedness, which suffers our best affections 
 to be entirely absorbed by things of earth, (classing 
 together, for the moment, things good and bad,) can- 
 not at least be the highest wisdom. Especially the 
 trifling with any kind of sin, which some persons, 
 especially the young, are apt to permit themselves, 
 must be the pastime of fools. Nor is it much more 
 reasonable to glide through life without considering 
 how many talents we have received, and what account 
 we are prepared to render. For those holy teachers 
 who represent all other earthly distinctions as little, 
 still hold out one immutable distinction which will go 
 on widening, like some river fed by many streams, until 
 it become a gulf wide and impassable. We read of 
 its remaining, that those who weep be as though they 
 wept not, and those who rejoice as though they re- 
 joiced not ; but it is nowhere written, that they who 
 are without fear to add sin to sin shall be as though 
 they sinned not, or they who have done God's work 
 upon earth, as if He who is faithful and true could 
 ever for2:et his own. 
 
XXIII.] The Times and the Seasons. 875 
 
 Rather, he who is unrighteous now is likely to be 
 unrighteous still. We know not the times and the sea- 
 sons ; but we do know there are irreconcilable contrasts 
 in the nature of things between those characters of which 
 He who is now ascended into Heaven is the Author and 
 Preserver, and those others which find their represent- 
 ative in the enemy whom our Lord saw like lightning 
 fall from Heaven. But when He who is ascended shall 
 come again, asking account of the fruit of the vine- 
 yard from which He cast out those idle husbandmen, 
 not all the mercy and free grace of the Gospel will 
 exempt us from the necessity of answering, one by one, 
 for our use of that very grace ; and this upon such a 
 principle that every man living shall undoubtedly be 
 judged according to his works. He who is the Giver 
 of all things has indeed given us, according to his 
 good pleasure, unequal advantages ; but He who is 
 the Judge of the whole earth will give us equal judg- 
 ment for whatever advantages we have received. This 
 then we say ; to-day is an accepted time, and a most 
 propitious hour, for whoever, weary of that in which 
 there is no peace, will knock at the gate of Heaven. 
 For our great Intercessor has gone, as it were, within 
 the veil. Ask then for spiritual strength, and you 
 shall receive it ; desire earnestly the true wisdom, and 
 He, who is the strengthener of all them that are feeble 
 will teach you words that can never pass away. 
 
 But of the times and the seasons to come, we only 
 know, brethren, their utmost conceivable length must be, 
 in the truest sense, exceedingly short ; and if any man 
 here is inclined to build, in idle procrastination, upon 
 
376 The Times and the Seasons, [serm. xxiii. 
 
 the utmost extent of that shortness, to such a one there 
 remains the solemn possibility, " Thou fool, this night 
 shall thy soul be required of thee.'' 
 
 After all, the Son of Man eometh as a thief in the 
 night. 
 
 Preached on Rogation Sunday in 1852. 
 
SERMON XXIV.^ 
 
 THE SPIRIT AND THE LETTER, OR THE TRUTH 
 AND THE BOOK. 
 
 After the way which (they) call heresy, so worship I the Ood of my 
 Fathers. Acts xxiv. 14. • 
 
 There certainly was a time when to be a member of 
 the Society of Friends implied something greater than 
 more or less harmless peculiarities ; for they bore wit- 
 ness before princes and people, in bonds and persecu- 
 tion, for the great principle of the Spirit of the living 
 God, and were not ashamed. If then one of them had 
 been asked. Do you not worship the God of battles? 
 he might possibly have answered, No ; and again, if he 
 were told, that the Almighty is called in the Old Tes- 
 tament the Lord of Hosts, it is conceivable that he 
 might have rejoined, But we have better oracles. 
 Immediately upon this might have been raised a cry, 
 This man is an infidel, for he denies the Scriptures ; or 
 rather an atheist, for he disowns the Lord of Hosts. 
 Yet the Quaker again might plead, that he had learnt 
 to know God, not so much by might, or by power, as by 
 the Spirit wherewith He has taught us to call Him, " Our 
 Father, which is in Heaven." He might go on to affirm, 
 
 1 Preached, before the "Vice-Chancellor and Univorsity of Cam- 
 bridge, in King's College Chapel, on March 25, 1855. 
 
378 The Spirit and the Letter, [serm. 
 
 that in thus recognising the eternal I AM, under his more 
 blessed character as the Prince of Peace, he did not for 
 a moment deny the same Lord to have been known as 
 Almighty by the patriarchs, and as Eternal by the Jews ; 
 but still, that the sundry times and diverse manners of 
 ancient revealing had somewhat melted in the brightness 
 of the revelation of that Spirit, which cometh forth from 
 the Father and the Son. Thus, that many things " said 
 of old time ' " in the rigour of the letter, must now be 
 interpreted, or rather expanded, in the freedom of life ; 
 and so, after a manner, which, even if it were called 
 heresy, was yet the manner of Christ and His apostles, 
 he worshipped the God of his fathers. 
 
 Nor would such an answer be unlike in spirit to 
 those which the great Apostle of the Gentiles often 
 urges in vain upon the attention of his irritated coun- 
 trymen. For it is not only at Athens that he is called 
 an introducer of new divinities ; but at Jerusalem he is 
 denounced as one who taught^ apostasy from the sacred 
 place, and the Book of the Law, and the worship of the 
 God of the Hebrews. [Difficult as it may be, with our 
 scanty information, to reconcile some parts of his con- 
 duct — such as the " being at charges" in participation 
 of sacrifice in the temple, with his argument in the 
 Epistle to the Galatians — we are yet able to observe a 
 wonderful blending of courage with delicacy in his 
 management of the many intricate questions which are 
 
 1 Compare the running antithesis, St Matth. v. 21 — 27, 31, 43, with 
 Jeremiah xxxi. 31, 32; Hebrews viii. 8 — 10; 2 Corinth, iii. 4 — 14; 
 1 Corinth.-ii. 7; iii. 1 ; 1 .^t John ii. 20—27. 
 
 2 The common charge against the early Christians was, with 
 Jews, infidi'lity; with Gentiles, Atheism. The word heresy had not 
 yet acquired its technical sense. 
 
XXIV.] or the Truth and the Booh. 379 
 
 proposed to him.] He does not think that the Father 
 of the spirits of all flesh was a God of the Jew only, 
 and not also of the Gentile, yet he concedes there 
 may have been great advantage in those opportunities 
 of enlightenment, and in that fiiithfulness' of tlie Divine 
 promises which belonged to the chosen people of old. 
 So he admits even the Law of JNIoses to have been in its 
 idea holy and pure, yet he contends, that this sanctity 
 was not from the fact of its being imposed with penal- 
 ties at the Exodus, but from its participation in those 
 older and holier principles of which Abraham had the 
 promise, and even the Gentiles a scripture in their 
 heart. The Law, then, so far as it is Mosaic, and penal, 
 or even outwardly preceptive, can never be the highest 
 guide of those who have the mind of Christ — yet its 
 ancient records may still be useful ; and not only would 
 he quote them largely, in addressing Jews who "desired 
 to be under them," as he quotes even Gentile prophets 
 in addressing Athenians ; but his own mind was evi- 
 dently imbued with reverential affection towards those 
 songs of Zion which (as the liturgy of his race) he must 
 often have sung in solemn services, and to those deeply- 
 searching prophets whose fervent spirit, ever penetrating 
 from the form of godliness to its power, was so often a 
 type of his own. 
 
 Again, the Apostle does not seem able to contend, 
 that the entire scheme of Christianity is legible in the 
 Old Testament with that perfect clearness which some 
 
 1 Romans iii. 2 ; where inia-TfCdTja-av may either mean believed 
 upon; or possibly, as the reasoning, and also a Hebrew idiom, rather 
 suggests, vr lire found faithful. The rendering committed can hardly be 
 right. 
 
380 The Spirit and the Letter, [serm. 
 
 modern interpreters would compel us to acknowledge ; 
 and our favourite citations of prophecy find in him little 
 place ; but yet he thinks there was always an unity in 
 the Divine dealings; the predestination of the Gospel 
 may have been veiled, but yet it must have been 
 predestined' as a scheme for calling men to repentance 
 from all eternity ; and though this veiled design had 
 lurked under the choice of temporal Israel, and under 
 the offering of slain beasts, and the form of written 
 precepts — yet its meaning (mystery) would be revealed 
 in the uncovering to all men of the face of the Father- 
 in the lively sacrifices of men saying by the Spirit of 
 Christ, " Lo, I come to do thy will 2" — and in the 
 purified vision of consciences quickened by a faith, 
 which should draw life from love, and thereby be the 
 fulfilment of the highest law. 
 
 [Thus is St Paul a servant, faithful to Christ, and 
 yet wise in the wisdom of Moses ; bringing out of his 
 treasury things new, without dissociating them rudely 
 from things old.] 
 
 Now we cannot say that any change so great as 
 that heralded by the first preachers of Christ is to be 
 expected in our own time. For certainly the words of 
 Christ, in their highest meaning, do not pass away. 
 May there not, however, be something sufficiently ana- 
 logous for the great Apostle's example in this, as in 
 other respects, to have been written for our instruction, 
 though upon us the last dispensation is come ? Even 
 in the same generation there are many persons who 
 may claim alike the designation of Christians, yet whose 
 
 1 First chapter of Ephesians. 
 
 2 Compare Psalm xl. 8, and Hebrews x. 7 — 9. 
 
XXIV.] or the Truth and the Booh. 381 
 
 conceptions of the Gospel differ so widely that no one 
 of them could adopt the views of any other one without 
 a change of mind so sweeping as to be painful. Even 
 in our own lives, if we have made it our business to 
 study religion, either as a matter of thought or of 
 practice, we cannot but be conscious of passing through 
 certain changes of apprehension. When we are chil- 
 dren we think as children ; and when we are men we 
 put away childish things. But, much more, in a suc- 
 cession of generations, very great differences may be 
 expected to prevail in the mode of holding a truth 
 essentially the same'. The Christianity of the early 
 Fathers of the Church is hardly that of St Augustine ; 
 still less is it that of St Anselm^, or of Calvin. The 
 great object of our faith remains the same yesterday, 
 to-day, and for ever ; but those reflexions from his 
 thoughts, which are thrown figuratively^ on the mirror 
 of our understanding, may be darker or more distinct, 
 from day to day. Perhaps even the very truth which 
 saves the soul, whether it be called faith, or love, or 
 Christ, or the Holy Ghost, may be held with more or 
 less clearness. Or, if this be thought necessarily simple 
 and uniform — still there is a point which may be diffi- 
 cult to define — but there is a point at which the truth 
 
 1 See some admirable remarks on this, needed now more than 
 when they were written, in Professor Hey's Norrisian Lectures, 
 edited by Bishops Kaye and Turton. 
 
 2 A sufficient notion of St Anselm may be got from some recent 
 Bampton Lectures by Mr Thompson; but the accomplished author 
 seems to be hardly aware how much more profound what the Fathers 
 meant was than the supposed improvement of St Anselm. 
 
 3 61/ alt/iyfiari. 1 Corinth, xiii. 12. 
 
382 The Spirit and the Letter, [serm. 
 
 of things eternal comes in contact with our experience 
 of things temporal, and there the knowledge, the 
 manners, the fiivoiirite studies of every generation of 
 Christians, may indefinitely vary, and give a bias, in 
 proportion, to their mode of conceiving of some of the 
 associations of their faith. 
 
 Thus, in our own time, our wider acquaintance with 
 both nations and languages, our habit of scrutinizing 
 ancient records, and comparing different faiths together, 
 as well as the cultivation of those mental inquiries which 
 approach, if they do not touch upon religion, have all 
 tended to awaken a spirit which some condemn, and 
 others welcome, but which most observers will admit 
 to exist. Even if discoveries, which must affect the 
 general shape of our conceptions as regards Divine 
 Eevelation, are not now made for the first time, yet 
 a knowledge of such discoveries, confined perhaps once 
 to a few scholars, is now diff"used amongst masses of 
 men ; and the real significance, or the import, with 
 which some characteristics of our sacred literature are 
 pregnant, is far more clearly discerned, from the oppor- 
 tunities which we enjoy for comparing such things with 
 similar phenomena elsewhere. There is a leaven which 
 may have been in the world before, but which is now 
 fermenting through the three measures of meal. Hence 
 arises the question, how a growing spirit of scepticism in 
 some quarters, and of perplexity in others, ought to be 
 met by those who are responsible both to God and man 
 for the stability or the progress of religion in the world. 
 And if it be now, as ever, the abiding sentence of the 
 Almighty, that whoso rejects knowledge shall be rejected 
 
XXIV.] or the Truth and the Book. 383 
 
 from being priest before Him, a few suggestions on 
 this subject may well claim your attention, brethren, 
 in these walls, which were consecrated to be a nursery of 
 the faith of Christ, and upon this our solemn Feast-day. 
 
 There are some persons who look on all the ten- 
 dencies above alluded to with undisguised alarm ; and 
 others who do so with hope, or at least, Avith perfect 
 tranquillity of faith. Does not this difference of view 
 imply, that there are also two sets of persons, one 
 laying exclusive stress upon the evidences of the body, 
 the other regarding rather those of the mind'. It is 
 obvious to remark that these two aspects ought to be 
 combined rather than separated; but we find that a 
 tendency in either one direction or the other is apt 
 to preponderate so much as to give a practical impress 
 to a man's character, and to the cast of his belief. 
 
 The first set consider man as a mere animal, and 
 divorce him by nature from God and from immortality. 
 
 1 I hope no one will affect to translate this into objective and 
 subjective; words which I never use, partly because they are not in 
 my English Dictionary, and partly because I am not sure of my 
 understanding them, while it is evident, from the different senses in 
 which others use them, that many persons do not understand them 
 alike. The discourse is not here of absolute and relative truth, or 
 of reality and belief, but rather of signs aflFocting the senses, and 
 truths apprehended by the mind ; e. g. when we read, " God said, 
 Let there be light," must we understand the emission of a humanly- 
 sounding voice, or may it mean the operation of the Divine Will? 
 I have already remarked that to me thoughts and inferences appear 
 as trustworthy as sensations. Nor am I here discussing a kindred 
 question, how far ideas may be often clothed in a dress of phenomenal 
 narrative or parable. Another instance might be, Does our rule over 
 the brutes depend on the speech in the Bible, or on capacities given 
 us by God, and observed by the sacred writer? 
 
384 The Spii'it and the Letter, [serm. 
 
 They may do this, either from a materialising philosophy 
 of the senses, or from an ultra-Augustinian emphasis 
 on the fall of Adam ; but in either case, they leave as 
 wide a gulf between God and mankind, as that which 
 Mahomet was unable to fill. As to any pure voice of 
 conscience, or better aspiration of the heart leading 
 us upward, they almost boast of considering all such 
 things utterly untrustwor;hy ; they cast a disdainful 
 glance over the great history of the Gentile world, and 
 find in it no traces of the finger of the God of the 
 spirits of all flesh ; and if they are asked. How then 
 does God teach man ? they answer. By Moses on mount 
 Sinai, and by our blessed Lord in Jerusalem ; and these 
 two revelations are so attested by miracles, that we 
 cannot doubt their truth, while on account also of the 
 same miracles we have our attention imperiously arrested 
 by the Book which records them ; and are then led to 
 regard that Book as not only true, but exhaustive of 
 truth, and unquestionably the very Word of God. Thus 
 only, as they conceive, can we arrive at the satisfaction 
 of certainty ; for, as to any agreement of the contents 
 of the Book with our moral and intellectual being, that 
 is at best a secondary and an untrustworthy kind of 
 evidence ; our great foundation is miracle, and our 
 only result is the Bible. 
 
 On the other hand, our second set of thinkers look 
 upon mankind as something different from the beasts 
 that perish. They regard him rather as the child of 
 God ; fallen indeed, or falling ever, below that which 
 his Maker calls good, and his own earnest expectation 
 groans for ; yet still trained by Providence ; appealed 
 
XXIV.] or the Truth and the Booh. 385 
 
 to, however indiseernibly, even from childhood upwards, 
 by something of spiritual experience ; and, from the 
 mould in which he was formed, not destined to find 
 rest or happiness apart from that Being* whose image 
 he bears. Nor is this, as they contend, a fanciful con- 
 ception, but one to which all history bears witness ; 
 the greatest men, and the noblest nations, and the 
 most enduring virtues, having been everywhere sus- 
 tained by some vestige of such a belief; nor ought it 
 to be allowed, according to all human analogies, that 
 the admixture of various errors is any argument against 
 a truth, which may yet survive, as the redeeming prin- 
 ciple, among them. So that just as Christianity had 
 the law as its schoolmaster among the Jews, it may also 
 have had a preparation of men's minds by training for 
 it, from the great teachers of righteousness in Hellas, 
 and from the masters of polity at Rome. And just as 
 these to the ancient Gentile, so our conscience with all 
 our experience of history may be to us now, what 
 Moses and the prophets were to the Jews, in respect 
 of the great Teacher and Saviour to come. 
 
 Here then is a tone of thought very different from 
 the one first described. If we attempt to illustrate the 
 two from ancient heresies, we might say the first has an 
 Ebionite tendency ; the second is in danger of some 
 form of Gnostic error \ Or, if we consider them both 
 as interpreting things connected with Scripture, the one 
 
 1 We are less fitted to meet some modern forms of thouf^ht from 
 the very meagre and uninstructive manner in which our common 
 manuals treat the ancient heresies; Dr Burton, for instance, merely 
 calls them absurd, without explaining them; whereas their train 
 of thought is often worth considering. 
 
 w. s. 17 
 
386 The Truth and the Booh, [serm. 
 
 would say, that the phylacteries of the Jews, with texts, 
 were worn in obedience to express revelation ; the 
 other would see in them a strong figure ' of exhorta- 
 tion corrupted into a formal usage. So by Urim and 
 Thummim, one Avould understand, that a light, grossly 
 physical, and yet supernatural, falling on the high-priest's 
 breastplate, made its stones oracular ; while the other 
 would imagine rather a symbol of that light which God 
 gives to his upright ones in the clearness of understand- 
 ing. Perhaps, again, the Shechinah of the temple (or 
 even of the tabernacle) might admit of a similar variety 
 of interpretation. 
 
 Again, if we ask the followers of the two tendencies 
 we are describing, for their watchwords, one will reply, 
 the infallibility of the Bible ; but the other will say, the 
 truth of Christ. So, the one would define Christianity 
 as the religion contained in the Bible ; whereas the 
 other would call it the Gospel, as being good news ; or 
 the doctrine of the Cross, as being self-sacrifice ; or, in 
 short, the religion of Christ. The one then, pays its 
 principal allegiance to the Scripture, which is true ; but 
 the other to the Truth, which is also written. Again, the 
 one finds a duty, and even takes a pleasure, in opposing 
 the Bible, by means of the sharpest conceivable con- 
 trasts to all the whispers of natural equity, to the purest 
 yearnings of our affections, and to the presentiments of 
 our conscience ; whereas the other never hesitates to 
 
 1 Compare Exodus xiii. 9 — 16 with Numbers xv. 38, 39. Does 
 the greater literalness of the later book (considering also the signs of 
 compilation in its 21st chapter) betray an interval of some genera- 
 tions ? 
 
XXIV.] or the Spirit and the Letter. 387 
 
 say, that the Bible itself is either a providential em- 
 bodiment of those very things, which are the witness 
 of God in man, and cannot be disparaged without 
 blasphemy ; or else at least it is a result, for which 
 under the good guidance of God, they had been prepar- 
 ing the way. 
 
 It is now easy to understand why the advocates 
 of our first manner of thinking are so disquieted by 
 anything which tells, I do not say against the general 
 truth, but against the infallibility of the Sacred Re- 
 cords, which they make not only the .S3'mbol, but the 
 foundation of their faith. For they have, as it were, 
 desecrated life and all its experiences ; they have in 
 effect, if not in intention, removed God from it as far as 
 they can ; they think all its fair humanities, whether 
 art, or music, or literature, have at best little to do with 
 religion, and are perhaps dangerous to it ; hence they 
 survey their progress with indifference — diversified only 
 by fits of panic ; while, as for the deep sense of things 
 eternal, wherewith our Maker encompasses us — the 
 crying out of the heart and the flesh for the living 
 God — the instantaneous response of every uncorrupt 
 conscience to the sayings of our Saviour upon the 
 luount — and the calm happiness which comes of well- 
 doing — they have either so materialised^ their own souls, 
 that they are not conscious of such experiences, or else 
 they think, that apart from a particular fashion of 
 speech, such things are utterly untrustworthy, and pos- 
 sibly may be of the devil. In short, they have staked 
 their cause upon one argument. It may be doubted if 
 1 i.e. in St Paul's langiiago, made "cai'nal." 
 
 17—2 
 
388 The Truth and the Booh, [serm. 
 
 that is the one St Paul would have recommended, or if 
 it would have been chosen by those who had been 
 longest at the foot of the Cross. " Except they see 
 signs and wonders they will not believe." When, then, 
 their tendency of opinion reaches its full result, such 
 men's religion becomes neither a leaven fermenting 
 through human nature, nor a vine rooted and growing, 
 nor a living and a moulding power ; but it is as an 
 image fallen down once for all from Heaven ; with no 
 analogy in nature ; with no parallel in history ; Avith 
 no affinity among the Gentiles ; and (except for some 
 special reasons) with no echo to its fitness from the 
 human heart. Hence, however, it is only natural for 
 any encroachment on the solitary ground of such per- 
 sons' faith to appear "dangerous;" and since the great 
 recommendation of all their cast of sentiment was its 
 fancied safety, they are in proportion alarmed. Thus it 
 is painful to them even to be told of little discrepancies 
 in our sacred books ; they cannot understand that a 
 true teacher of religion may be imperfectly informed 
 in other things : though analogous instances might 
 strike them every day ; even the idea of religious 
 growth, which pervades the whole Bible, is not kindly 
 accepted by them, or is confined to one or two great 
 epochs of dispensation ; and as for the many inquiries of 
 great literary and historical interest, which the criticism 
 of the Sacred Volume involves — they have so prejudged 
 such questions, that they either will not acquire the 
 knowledge requisite to answer them, or they shut their 
 eyes to- any fresh form of the answer, as it appears in 
 the light of to-day ; or they even raise an outcry against 
 
XXIV.] or the Spirit and the Letter. 389 
 
 the investigation of any more consistent student, as if it 
 were a triumph of " infidelity " — and thereby they most 
 unwisely make it so. Certainly, their heart does not 
 stand fast ; for they are afraid when any fresh tidings 
 come, either from general knowledge, or from fervent 
 and self-sacrificing devotion, or from a critical study 
 even of the Bible. 
 
 But turn we now to those, who, reverencing the 
 letter at least as deeply as St Paul did, have yet 
 grounded their faith mainly on the Spirit, without 
 neglecting the aids of the understanding. They are 
 persuaded that they may justify the ways of God by 
 rendering to the intellect its own, and yet render to 
 faith the things that are faith's. Nay rather, they think 
 that doing the one is a condition necessary to the 
 other ^ Clearly then, it does not disturb them to learn 
 that the purpose of God, though veiled from the Jews, 
 (/nvarrjpLov) had made the Gentiles, even of old, heirs of 
 a certain salvation of the soul. Hence they approach 
 with calmness such questions as. How far Moses took 
 anything from the wisdom of the Egyptians, or whether 
 Hellenising Hebrews ^ had used language adopted by 
 St Paul and St John ; they can even welcome any fresh 
 
 1 The sayino:, Believe, that thou mayest understand, belongs more 
 to principles than to facts, and may be as much misused as its 
 opposite. Let me understand, that I may believe. For it has been 
 applied to darkness as often as to light. Hence it might be better 
 to say, Love the truth, that thou mayest know it. For this would give 
 nearly the same lesson, and be less liable to abuse, 
 
 2 Good Jacob Bryant wrote a book to prove that Philo resembled 
 St John; and although his chronology requires to be inverted, his 
 proof of the resemblance holds good. 
 
890 The Truth and the Book, [serm. 
 
 instances that God has left himself nowhere without 
 witness ; and, since both providence and grace have 
 ultimately One Giver, they can easily believe that the 
 one has been a cradle for the other. Perhaps, indeed, 
 the wonderful correspondence between the spiritual 
 judgments of the Gospel and of the purest searchers 
 after godliness elsewhere, is not one of the least argu- 
 ments for the true divinity of Christ. For it shows 
 that the Wisdom which took flesh in Him came from 
 the Supreme and Universal Teacher of mankind. Nor, 
 again, do Christians, such as I now speak of, require 
 a great gulf between the experiences of devout men 
 to-day and those of the servants of God in the days of 
 old. One of their great reasons for believing things 
 written in Scripture, is, that they exiDerience the same. 
 They are persuaded of the comfort of prayer, the peace 
 of trustfulness, the joy of thanksgiving, the rightful rule 
 of holiness, the necessity of repentance, and the whole- 
 someness of a discipline of conscience ; and they gladly 
 welcome the forgiveness of sins ^ Because God teaches 
 such things now, they more easily believe he taught 
 them of old. Nor have they any desire to doubt, that 
 He who thus fashioned the hearts of His people, may 
 also have exhibited great wonders of old to their ex- 
 ternal sense. The great majority of them, indeed, 
 implicitly believe the letter of every miracle in the 
 Bible ; yet they would never be so illogical as to make 
 these remote and often obscurely- attested events the 
 proofs of things being true, which they know by expe- 
 
 1 i. e. Justification by Faith. 
 
 2 This is almost too forcibly put in the striking ivish of Mr Maurice, 
 
XXIV.] or the Spirit and the Letter. 391 
 
 rience, and which are so far more important in saving 
 the soul alive. Hence many of them believe the mira- 
 cles for the sake of the doctrines ; and this order is 
 more truly Christian than the converse. Some of them, 
 however, would remark, that the modern definition of a 
 miracle is far too technical ; in the old Hebrew mind 
 everything Avas a great wonder which caused a present 
 awe of the great Governor of the world. Thus the 
 morning roll of the tide, and the stormy wind arising, 
 were great Avonders ; and though other things, to which 
 the same name is applied, may seem more extraordinary, 
 yet we can believe the Divine agency in them to have 
 marched along the silent path of forethought rather 
 than Avith the Cyclopian crash of strength and force. 
 As to our Saviour"'s miracles, indeed, they are even 
 Avrought generally Avith the concurrence of the receiver's 
 faith ; and they are all signs of mercy, or parables full 
 of meaning ; and, again, so far as the element of poAver 
 is brought out in them, it is rather as exemplifying 
 the rule of a very present God over nature than as 
 "evidence^" for truths, Avhich are themselves far more 
 evident. Hence, Avhether an event should be considered 
 as more or less miraculous, is ahvays a question to be 
 decided by the probabilities of the particular passage, 
 whether prose or poetry, contemporaneous or remote ; 
 
 that persons, resting their faith as Christians on the ten plagues of 
 Egypt, might find all Egyptian experiences tend to shake it. See his 
 Sermons on the Lessons Irom the Old Testament. 
 
 1 Has not the ambiguity of the term evidence somewhat misled our 
 modern apologists ? It may have meant clearness, or visibility, as of 
 Truth and Justice ; but they take it in the sense of legal testimouy, 
 and so entangle themselves in special pleading. 
 
392 Tlie Truth and the Booh, [serm. 
 
 and is never to be prejudged as if it aifected either way 
 the foundations of our faiths 
 
 From such a tone of thought as regards miracles, 
 Ave may expect those who entertain it to approach the 
 more important subject of prophecy, without suffering 
 their reverential prepossessions to take an undue form 
 of prejudice, or any disappointment of them to be a 
 cause of overwhelming alarm. Suppose that what Bishop 
 Butler said hypothetically on this subject should now 
 be come actually upon us — suppose that things often 
 treated as direct literal predictions of Christ should 
 have been spoken primarily of some king, or prophet, 
 or nation. Such a result may cause great distress, and 
 
 1 Suppose any one brought up to understand as literal prose 
 Cowper's hymn, 
 
 Ho plants his footsteps in the sea. 
 
 And rides upon the storm — 
 would it be an utter loss to him to discover that the terms were 
 figui'ative ? or might they still express to him a truth ? Apply the 
 same idea to many of the Psalms, such as the 18th, which the Hebrew 
 title makes a description of David's deliverance from Saul. May it 
 not also apply to other poetical parts, such as part of Habbacuc, 
 and to such fragments as are expressly quoted from the book of 
 Jasher (I do not say all that have been conjecturally ascribed to it,) 
 especially if some of them closely resemble the Ode in Habbacuc ? 
 But it will be said, here was a poetical intention; and it is a wide 
 leap to interpret plain prose on such principles. This distinction 
 should have its weight. Still the fondness of some nations for 
 apologue or parable; the tendency of ideas to clothe themselves in 
 narrative; and the possibility of traditions, once oral or poetical, 
 having subsequently taken form in prose; are all things which may 
 suggest themselves to critical readers, and should weigh for what 
 they are worth in each case, and for no more. But if scholars 
 wantonly exaggerate difficulties, or state them with indecency or 
 scoffing, the case is different. I have never intended doing so, and 
 have no sympathy of feeling with any one who does. 
 
XXIV.] or the Spirit and the Letter. 303 
 
 even desolation of mind, to those who make Theology a 
 mere balance of texts, and make the peace of God, 
 which passeth all understanding-, depend upon the 
 critical accuracy of illustrations' borrowed in the New 
 Testament from the Old. But no such grievous con- 
 sequence follows to men who have been so born of the 
 Spirit, that they believe Christ's words because they 
 are spirit and truth. They are no more surprised that 
 their Saviour should appear under earthly images in the 
 Old Testament than that He should be called " the 
 carpenter's son" in the New; their conception of Him 
 is not formed by balancing the imperfect utterances of 
 childhood against those of the full-grown stature of the 
 servants of God ; but it rather takes in the height of 
 that great idea at which the Church arrived when she 
 stood as it were by the goal ; for then she looked back 
 with understanding on the race of Him, who 2, though 
 manifested in the flesh, had been justified in the Spirit, 
 
 ^ If any one, in reading the New Testament, will write down with 
 a pen the first twenty-five quotations he finds from the Old, and 
 then compare eacli with its original context, lie will see how many 
 are illustrations rather than predictions. "Jehovah's calling Israel, 
 when young, out of Egypt to be His son," may serve as an instance. 
 The books which give most aid on the subject, in English, are, perhaps, 
 Davison's Lectures, Dean Lyall's Propcedia, and Mr Maurice's Kings 
 and Prophets. But we have not one thoroughly explicit and clear. 
 Bp Randolph's Comparison is very uninstructive. The more popular 
 manuals, especially those of Scottish origin, are written in defiance of 
 all critical probabilities; and whoever makes his faith a problem of 
 Hermeneutics, to be defended by such means, will find the more he 
 grasps it the more it will dwindle like a snow-ball in his hand. 
 
 2 1 Timothy iii. 16, where I have ventured to paraphrase that 
 reading of the Greek, which seems on the whole best attested. It 
 should be compared, for the sense of angels, with ch. v. ver. 21 of the 
 
 17—5 
 
394 The Truth and the Book, [serm. 
 
 and who, though seen only by Apostles, had been 
 preached to nations ; and whom she found so believed 
 upon, as a king, throughout the world in which He once 
 had not where to lay his head, that she felt, surely God 
 must have received him up into glory. For they all 
 along admit the idea of training ; and so, the principle 
 of life and of growth. It was natural for the people 
 of Nazareth^ to see in Jesus only Joseph's son; it was 
 natural for the old Hebrews to think of the righteous 
 king, and the afflicted prophet, and the chosen people, 
 before they rose to the conception of a verily Divine 
 wisdom and love, uncovering itself in substance, and 
 pervading the conceptions of all nations. 
 
 But where, then, some one will ask, are our " evi- 
 dences"? It may be answered in two words, the 
 character of Christ, and the doctrine of Christ. Or to 
 say the same thing in the words of St Paul, we preach 
 Christ the power of God, and Christ the wisdom of 
 God. If priests embody the idea of consecration. He 
 is holy — if prophets, that of knowledge or vision. He is 
 the great speaker of truths which touch the heart — if 
 kings imply rightful rule. He, or His Spirit, is that 
 
 same Epistle; and for the general sentiment, with Romans, ch. i. 
 vv. 3, 4. On this, as on other questions of text, I am glad to fortify 
 myself with the authority of Dr Tregelles. 
 
 ^ Perhaps, in the Socinian controversy, sufficient account has not 
 been taken of the period to which texts belong, or of the expansion 
 of the sacred writers' own conceptions. But the idea of growth of 
 doctrine, so fruitful in explaining Ecclesiastical History, may be 
 soberly applied even to the New Testament. This is probably one 
 clue, as the union of humanity and divinity may be anothei", to the 
 solution of some apparent contradictions. St Mark is certainly before 
 St Jolm ; and probably also St James before St Paul. 
 
XXIV.] or the Spirit and the Letter. 395 
 
 ■which should sway our thoughts — if the poor and 
 afflicted are the special care of God, was ever affliction 
 like His ? — if teachers do a sacred work, if martyrs 
 throw a fire upon the earth which is not quenched, if 
 the shepherd to his flock, and the husband to his wife, 
 and the pastor to his people, have all some office of 
 beneficence, and so something of sacredness from their 
 having been designed in the love of God : — all these 
 things are, as St Paul says, " brought to a head in 
 Christ ;" He concentrates and exhibits in his life, in his 
 doctrine, in his death, and in the Holy Spirit whereby 
 He ever lives, and wherewith He animates the whole 
 body of His Church, the Divine perfection of those 
 excellences, of which fragments, and shadows, and 
 images, are scattered throughout the world elsewhere. 
 And however true it may be, that our religion is in its 
 essence attachment to Christ as a Person, this can never 
 mean to his name, or to his power, as if He were jealous 
 or arbitrary ; but rather^ to that goodness and that truth 
 which He embodies, and which commend themselves by 
 their excellence to the faith of the pure in heart. 
 
 Those then come to Christ who believe in the spirit 
 of Moses and of Isaiah, and who would have listened to 
 each prophet of truth from time to time among the 
 Jews — who would stand by Socrates as he drank his 
 hemlock among the Greeks — and who, in short, in all 
 times and places, would acknowledge the authority of 
 whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever are lovely, what- 
 soever are of good report. Now this kind of free alle- 
 giance, from love, and for the excellence of the Objects 
 1 The issue raised in this sentence is vitally critical, and pregnant. 
 
896 The Truth and the Booh, [serm. 
 
 sake, is perhaps not exactly that of those who, starting 
 with the Bible — or even with the Divine authority of 
 our Lord — infer from thence dogmatically the excel- 
 lence of his precepts ; but it is more like that of the 
 Apostles, who saw the superhuman beauty of our Lord's 
 truth and patience, and his majesty made perfect through 
 sufferings ; and then reasoned ^ upward, Surely this was 
 the Son of God. 
 
 Such a mode of thought has also the advantage of 
 starting more from the purer moral instincts of our 
 nature. Yet it is so far from fearing reason, that it 
 finds, in a way, confirmations everywhere. It is under 
 no temptation to wrest texts into conformity with 
 systems ; or to congeal the outpourings of passionate 
 penitence into materials for sj'llogisms ; or to make 
 traditional applications of prophecy, whether due to 
 the devout rhetoric of the early Church, or to the 
 very imperfect criticism of St Jerome ^ in his Vulgate, 
 either parts of the faith, or perilous supports of it. It 
 can readily welcome with hearty gratitude whatever dis- 
 covery in science, or language, or history, may so far 
 dissociate from the Jews, those who may yet, like the 
 Jews, remain children of a Divine Promise ; nor is it 
 with dismay, but with thanksgiving, that it sees many 
 
 1 The Apostles felt goodness, and inferred God. We assume 
 God, and demand acknowledgment of goodness. Which of these is 
 the more wholesome argument? The answer may somewhat depend 
 upon what conception of Deity we start with. 
 
 2 In Haggai ii. 7, the Hebrew says desires, or desirable things, and 
 the context shows silver and gold to be intended. But St Jerome 
 said, Veniet desideratus omnibus gentibus, and we have followed in his 
 track. But are those who clamorously make such things proofs of 
 Christianity its friends ? 
 
XXIV.] or the Spirit and the Letter. 397 
 
 of their temporal images, time after time, give way 
 to that eternal pattefn, which jNIoses saw in the Mount, 
 and which the servants of God may now see more 
 clearly revealed to them in conscience, and experience, 
 and understanding. For that which is written in the 
 nature of things is shown us by God. 
 
 But, if persons thus thinking, are less restrained 
 from the free adoption of whatever consequences the 
 mind may work out, so long as it works in righteous- 
 ness, they are far more bound to purge their mind's 
 eye, and to keep the whiteness of their soul unspotted 
 from evil. For their faith has only ceased to be a 
 congeries of human propositions, that it may better 
 become a divine life. And, although some of them 
 may meditate with Butler, how far the mysterious grace 
 of God is given us on a system, so that, if we saw the 
 whole range of things, it would appear to us regular 
 and natural, rather than contra-natural — yet the belief 
 in that " Spirit which is holy, supreme, and life-giving ^" 
 is far more a governing principle of their lives, than 
 can ever be the case with men who substitute the bonds 
 of system for those of truth, and the letter for the 
 spirit. 
 
 Hence it will be found, all great reformers, either 
 of life or institutions, have had something in them 
 of the spirit we now speak of. Nor has it been quite 
 unknown even to men in other respects of most oppo- 
 site views : it has burst forth now in that earnest 
 preaching which rent the veil of the invisible world, 
 and made men tremble or exult at the present realities 
 1 Nicene Creed. 
 
398 The Truth and the Book, [serm. 
 
 of judgment or salvation ; and it has wrought again in 
 those who reared once more the standard of the Cross 
 as a thing to live by, in a luxurious and garrulous age ; 
 it allies itself most eminently to the Gospel' ; but it 
 can also flow along the channels of the Church ; its 
 more prominent advocates in England have been men 
 whose eccentricity somewhat marred their usefulness ; 
 but it may well harmonise with the affectionate sober- 
 ness of that Prayer-book, which it should forbid us to 
 sever so widely as we do, from the inspiration of our 
 Bible ^. It woke in Reginald Pecock some presage of the 
 
 1 The frequent parade of the term Gospel, in association with 
 the most deplorable temper and objects, should not make us forget 
 its true meaning, as "good news" of the highest freedom before the 
 Father of our spirits. It may be feared, that in recoil from those 
 who would fasten the accidents of St Paul's phraseology (Paulince 
 fgurce, Augsburg Conf.) upon us as a bondage and a mannerism, 
 some very admirable persons too much deny themselves the comfort 
 of dwelling on the abundant loving-kindness of our heavenly Father, 
 and accepting our salvation as in all its parts a free gift. The fault 
 of some is not that they make salvation too free, but that they 
 curiously blend Antinomian phrases with a hard legal spirit. 
 
 2 The doctrine of the Church of England upon " Inspiration" is 
 expressed alike with precision and devotion in her Collects, as, for 
 example, in two used in the Communion-Service, which any clergy- 
 man, about to criticise these Sermons, should first consider. The 
 excellent Bishop Burgess appears hampered by the ambiguity in the 
 popular use of the term, but yet ingenuously confesses that he 
 derived more benefit from Ridley's Farewell to his Collecje than from 
 some portions of the Bible. So we cannot but see more of the 
 Spirit of Christ (and this is the movement of the Holy Ghost) in our 
 Collects and Eucharistic Ritual than in the books of Leviticus and 
 Chronicles. So most persons, if they reflected, would acknowledge 
 that Thomas-a-Kempis and Leighton are more wholesome reading 
 than the Song of Solomon. But why should they not be so? If 
 Christ has improved the world, and his Church is better than the 
 ancient Jerusalem, the indwelling Spirit, being better, must speak 
 
XXIV.] or the Siyirit and the Letter. 309 
 
 Reformation, when as yet this College was not ; it found 
 no obscure utterance in Hooker, when he taught that 
 " the rules of right conduct are the dictates of right 
 reason ;" it is assumed, either tacitly or expressly, in the 
 grand discourse of Jeremy Taylor ; it is more formally 
 put forward by Barclay, whose broad and unqualified pro- 
 positions are yet on more than one account well worthy 
 of being studied ; it moves, though in fetters, across 
 the pages of the more learned Puritans, and especially 
 of Milton ; it takes a form of wisdom, toleration, and 
 fiiith, amidst the vast learning of Cudworth, and his 
 kindred teachers of a godly humanity ' ; it is not alien 
 to the Evangelical Platonism of Leighton ; nor is it 
 quite quenched by the arrogant temper of Warburton, 
 whose learning and whose courage alike led him to 
 acknowledge some light in the Gentile world ; but with 
 greater fondness, it loved to linger amid the deep rea- 
 sonings of Butler, prevented only by his Laodicean 
 age from bearing in him its full fruit ; it took a form 
 of subtle idealism, and allied itself to " every virtue " 
 in Berkeley ; it had no mean representative in this 
 place, in the thoughtful candour of Professor Hey, over 
 whose moderation any brief triumph of zeal in our time 
 may only pave the way for a dangerous reaction : it 
 sounds, not ineloquently, but too uncertainly, from 
 
 better words. These things are so evident, that they would never 
 be denied but for the assumption of inspiration's meaning dictation, 
 and the fear of supposed evil consequences. But the regard of a 
 good churchman for his Prayer-book, or of a Wesleyan for his 
 Hymn-book, is what we ought to have for our Bible, and would best 
 secure the true interests of religion. 
 
 1 E. g. John Smith, who has been praised in such opposite quarters. 
 
400 The Truth and the Booh, [serm. 
 
 the deep struggles of Coleridge ; and it found a 
 happier expounder in him whose recent loss we may 
 well deplore, the Guesser at Truth, and the preacher 
 of the Victory of Faith \ Est et liodie, nunc tacendus : 
 olim nominahitur. In our own time, indeed, those who 
 entertain it at all, have felt themselves urged alike 
 on the negative side by the necessities of historical 
 criticism, and on the positive by the deep hunger of 
 men's spiritual affections, to cross over more and more 
 from the scribe to the Apostle, from the letter to the 
 Spirit, from the formula to the feeling which engen- 
 dered it. 
 
 How many questions now arise before me which 
 time will not permit to handle at due length ! Will 
 this freedom, which even the highest controller of our 
 destiny is in some measure awakening among us, always 
 know where to stop ? It will be led, perhaps, by the 
 inexorable laws of historical criticism to alter our modes 
 of conceiving of some portions of Hebrew literature, 
 which are comprehended in our Bible ; and even ques- 
 tions apparently barren 2, may sometimes, to the scholar, 
 be fruitful in inferences. It may also observe so much 
 
 1 I might too have mentioned the Christian Philosophy of 
 Vicesimus Knox, but the jaundiced tone of the book prevented me 
 from cordially recommending it; though many parts of it, and espe- 
 cially what is said of Evidences in the Appendix, would illustrate 
 more than one of these sermons. 
 
 2 It is morally certain, that the books of Joshua and of Daniel 
 are each four hundred years later than the date ordinarily ascribed 
 to each ; and this fact leads to inferences which it would be wise to 
 meet practically by either modifying our cycle of Old Testament 
 lessons, or by giving the clergyman at his discretion a liberty of 
 doing so. 
 
XXIV.] or the Sjnrit and the Letter. 401 
 
 of local or sensible imagery^ in describing things which 
 eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, that it may almost 
 indefinitely lessen the field of intellectual definition, 
 though sparing that of conscientious expectation. It 
 may for instance somewhat merge the doctrine of a 
 resurrection in the idea of immortality* ; and it may 
 lay not so much stress on a day of judgment, as on 
 a Divine retribution. But will it also apply St Paul's 
 idea of our Lord's laying down his Mediatorial king- 
 dom^, not to any one moment hereafter, but to that 
 period, whatever it may be, in each man's life, when 
 he has been brought by the Son to the Father : so 
 that it shall be no longer necessary for the Son to 
 pray for men^ so enlightened, since the Father him- 
 self loves them, because they have conceived of Him 
 according to the picture revealed of Him in His well- 
 beloved Son ? How far will this be a dangerous intensi- 
 fication of what is yet a true feeling of the economic 
 nature of the office of the Mediator? Or will the same 
 spirit go so far with any, as to think it unimportant 
 through what imagery God may frame in us thoughts 
 of things ineffable ; so that whether memory or fancy 
 
 1 If any one considers the various opinions on the state of dis- 
 embodied souls before the Day of Judgment, he will find them turn 
 on a clash of conflicting metaphors, or on a balance of allusions, each 
 borrowed from some temporal usage. 
 
 2 As Bishop Butler evidently did, but Isaac Taylor's Physical 
 Theory of a Future Life may bo read on the other side. 
 
 3 Read carefully 1 Corinthians xv. 24 — 28 ; but compare Pearson 
 on Sitting on the Right Hand in the Creed. It was reckoned a pecu- 
 liarity in the profound Origen that he prayed only to the Father 
 through the Son : but, at the altar, the whole African Church, and 
 perhaps the Church Catholic, did so. 
 
 < St John's Gospel xvi. 25, 26, 27 ; Colossians i. 16. 
 
402 The Trnth cmd the Book, [serm. 
 
 lend the shadow, and whether faith' be nourished more 
 from fact or from thought, still the real crisis of our 
 souls shall hang upon our ever holding fast that eternal 
 substance of the Divine Light, the radiance of which 
 is wisdom, and truth, and love, and which enlighteneth 
 every man, both at its coming into the world in the 
 flesh, and also long before ? This last would sound 
 like a dangerous revival of Gnostic imaginations. Yet 
 would even the wildest flight of such aberrations be so 
 dangerous to the spirit of religion, as that secular- 
 minded Ebionitism into which the opposite tendency, the 
 mere sifting of the letter, is ever apt to drift, the moment 
 it escapes from the influence of tradition ? To answer 
 all such questions would require a prophet rather than 
 a preacher. One thing however is clear, and that I 
 desire to say very seriously ; the spirit of inquiry is 
 most likely to go hand in hand with reverence, if no 
 other checks be imposed upon it than such as come 
 of conscience and of truth. This also, brethren, 
 let us be unshakably i3ersuaded of, whatever other 
 things fail, the attempt to realise in ourselves the mind 
 which was in Christ Jesus has never been found to fail 
 any man. This, after all, seems to be what constitutes a 
 Christian. 
 
 The prospects of an attack must depend very 
 much vipon the conduct of the defenders. If those 
 who have leisure, learning, and authority, encourage 
 persons less informed, not merely in entertaining as 
 opinions, but in asserting as foundations of the faith, 
 things which scholars are ashamed to say, there must 
 
 1 Compare Hobr. 10th and 11th chapters. 
 
XXI v.j or the Spirit and the Letter. 403 
 
 come a crash of things perishable, in which also things 
 worth preserving may sulfcr shipwreck. Whereas, if 
 the same persons were wise to distinguish eternal mean- 
 ing from temporal shape, it would still prove that 
 though the Church is beaten by waves, yet she is 
 founded on a rock. 
 
 Here then the special subject of this discourse may 
 be associated with one of the occasions of our meeting 
 here to-day \ We have somewhat learnt, and may be 
 taught more deeply hereafter, what great embarrassment, 
 as regards the spirit of ancient -statutes, may come 
 from such a profession of abiding by their letter as 
 can only be blind or insincere. Some seven years ago 
 I fully explained from this place the principles in- 
 volved in that subject ; and a slight instalment of the 
 requisite expansion" has since paved the way for greater 
 things. But may God of his great mercy, and by 
 his ever-present Spirit, grant that institutions outweigh- 
 ing this College in importance, as all the galaxy of 
 Heaven outshines each particular star, may never be 
 smitten with a like blindness on things of even greater 
 moment. 
 
 Therefore, to each one here my sacred office war- 
 rants me in saying, " Meditate on these things ; give 
 
 1 Annunciation Day beins: also Founder's Day at King's Collego. 
 
 2 I say expansion rather than reform. For it is too hastily 
 assumed by external critics, that timidity or slowness in improve- 
 ment implies cheater abuses than really exist in our Universities. • 
 Since my much canvassed Sermon on the Mind of the Founder 
 applied to our own times, our students have been permitted to enter 
 the schools. But this is not an adequate stride for a generation. 
 Possibly different preachers now await us. 
 
404 The Truth and the Booh, [serm. 
 
 thyself wholly to them ; study to show thyself a work- 
 man that need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the 
 word of truth^." No greater subject can in our own 
 day employ any man's noblest energies than preser- 
 vation or renewal of the truth of God, not fettered 
 overmuch by the human accidents of our ancestors in 
 the faith, yet with reverential tenderness even for these; 
 and with a flow of the life, if it may be, in the body 
 which God has given it. 
 
 We may say with Cicero, Midta in Collegio nostra 
 prceclara, but there could be nothing more illustrious 
 than for these walls, founded as they were for " the 
 dilatation of conning^" as well as for the confirmation of 
 believing, to send forth many servants of the living God, 
 devout, wise, and, if needs be, self-sacrificing, to wield 
 weapons of comfort and of patience in the battle of the 
 Truth. 
 
 Lastly, we commemorate to-day not only the foun- 
 dation of our College, but also the overshadowing of 
 humanity by the thought of the Most High, wherewith 
 that Holy Birth of the Blessed Virgin is announced, 
 which should be called the Son of God. Hence our 
 associations easily travel to that mystical woman of the 
 Apocalypse, Avho is clothed with the Sun, and crowned 
 with the stars, but who yet is persecuted by the old 
 Serpent, the enemy of all good, and driven into the 
 wilderness. Thus the Church, and may I not say the 
 Spouse, of God is often persecuted, but not cast down ; 
 forsaken, but yet having children whose names are in 
 
 1 There is a note on the word Phai'isee in a former Sermon. 
 
 2 From King Henry's Will. 
 
XXIV.] or the Sinrit and the Letter. 405 
 
 the Book of Life ; for her firstborn, and also her Re- 
 deemer, is the promised Seed, the Son of God made 
 Man, that so the sons of men may become children of 
 God'. Pray we then, and also strive, that whenever the 
 floods of iniquity are poured out against her, and she 
 is driven in all her sore travail into the wilderness, 
 there may yet be found men faithful to stand by her, 
 and powerful to say, alike with reason, with learning, 
 with devotion, and with sincerity, Fear not; thou hast 
 home a man-child ; and though He is caught up to the 
 throne of God, yet shall He rule all nations tvith either a 
 sceptre of righteousness, or else with a rod of iron. Call 
 His Name therefore not Ichabod, for the glory is not de- 
 parted ; hut call Him Immanuel, God present with tis, 
 noiv and for ever. 
 
 1 The Epistle and Gospel for St Mark's day, especially when read 
 together, may confirm or illustrate what is here said. 
 
 As in the present sermon I touch the question of spirit and letter, 
 so I have handled more fully that of spirit and form, or of unity and 
 union, in a Visitation Sermon preached at Cardigan in 1S51. 
 
EXCERPTA 
 
 EX CONCIONEi AD CLERUM OLIM APUD 
 CANTABRIGIENSES HABITA. 
 
 De caritate autem paullo difficilior oritur quasstio. 
 Neque tamen vel hoc in loco verear affirmare majiis 
 caritatis studium apud antiquitatis stiidiosos viguisse 
 quam apud eos, a quibus formulae recentiores sunt pro- 
 fectte. Quid de Liturgiis, ut aiunt, civilibus dicam ? 
 vel in quinto Novembris die, vel in Januarii tricesiraa 
 celebrandis? Hujusmodi omnia, qui velit, tollat : nihil 
 impedio : quicquid enim, quod minoris jam pretii sit, 
 inter religiones retinueris, negligentiam parit, et con- 
 tagio quodam sanis nocet. Nihil autem prohibet, quin 
 gratiarum actio, cum recordatione divinae in republica 
 providentiae quotannis celebretur. Jam vero etiam in 
 Articulis quot sunt, et quam difficiles controversiae ? 
 Prudenter quidem, in universum sestimantibus, diremptse 
 videntur, et a viris non sine causa derelinquendis 
 tractatae : tamen ex illis multae sunt ejusmodi, quas non 
 sine periculo etiam ad pacem adjuvandam moveris. Si 
 Ecclesiae rectoribus olim visum fuerit, ut harum con- 
 similiumque rerum aliquanto latior sit interpretatio, vix 
 vehementer videtur esse repugnandum. Si quis autem 
 ad Symbolum, quod Athanasii pseudepigraphum est, 
 pergat, sive illud Hilarii sive Vigilii opus sit, etiam hie 
 inter veritatem ipsam Symbolo conclusam et clausulas 
 illas, quae horrendum aliquid sonant, omnino distinguere 
 meminerimus. Fateor equidem mihi non minus quam 
 Tayloro nostro, sufficere, sanctissimum virum, Athana- 
 sium ipsum; neque dolendum fuisse, si inter Symbolorum 
 
 Hsec ex concione festinanter et, quod solet in tali re fieri, ad 
 perfungendum muiiiis script:!, non Latinitatis causa excerpsimus; sed 
 ut sententijim nostram per multos jam annos constanter esse ser- 
 vatam monstraremus. 
 
Appendix. 407 
 
 tarn Constantinopolitani quam Nicaeni limltes Ecclesia 
 constitisset. Hie vero animadvcrtenduni est, sensii 
 quidera liberrimo et ad earitatem maxime aceommodato 
 haee et eonsimilia saspe Priesules nostros interpretatos 
 esse. Restat tamen vel in verbis quiddam, quod aures 
 hodiernse reformidant : sunt enim, quibus etiam verba 
 ipsa recitantibus obversatur vel Miltonis, viri summi et 
 eastissimi, imago ; vel Guistonius, studiis ingenuis dedi- 
 tus ; vel Guatesius, cujus hymnos et poemata liberis 
 nostris in manus tradimus, virum ipsum affinnantes 
 proculdubio atque in seternum esse perditum. Quern 
 longe satius fuisset Deo omnium judici committere. Jam, 
 si quis clausulas illas resecandas esse censuerit, minime 
 quidem ille ab antiquitatis studio recesserit, necesse est ; 
 sed potius ad S. Athanasii ipsius regulam, lidemque 
 Nicsese sancitam, viam redeundi miiniturus sit. In hac 
 igitur re. ut in cseteris, vera ilia et priraaeva antiquitas 
 cum caritate non repugnat. Cum vero, quicquid auribus 
 mentibusque hominum inoleverit, non sine periculo re- 
 jiciendum esse videatur — scilicet, ne fidei negligentes 
 raagis quam caritatis studiosi judicemur — baud scio an 
 media sit via reperienda, qua patefacta, non male fuerit 
 reipublicse consultura. Videte, quseso, in uno tantum 
 die, scilicet in Dominica Trinitatis, si (pace Prsesulum) 
 fas esset hoc Sjmbolum recitari, an aliquod foret (neque 
 Isesa veritate) pacis adjuraentum. Tum enim occasio 
 commoda : de placito ipso mos est disserere ; et quic- 
 quid durius dictum esse videatur, facile esset expli- 
 candum. 
 
 Sed de his hactenus. Certi enim fines sunt, quos, 
 si quis fidem a Domino nostro traditam fovere velit, is 
 omnino metuat transceudere. 
 
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