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 BX 9178 .SA3 S3 1877 
 Service, John, 1833-1884. 
 Salvation here and hereafter 
 
SALVATION HERE AND HEREAFTER 
 
SALVATION 
 
 HERE AND HEREAETER. 
 
 SERMONS AND ESSAYS. 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. JOHN SERVIC'E 
 
 MINISTER OF IN'CH. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 |£artbon : 
 MAC MILL AN AND CO. 
 
 1877. 
 
 All rioJifs reserved. 
 
Gi-AS(;ow ; 
 
 PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITV PKESS 
 BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 1 PAGE 
 
 \. -THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS - - - I 
 
 II. — THE SPIRITUAL THEORY OF ANOTHER LIFE 20 
 
 Ul.— PROFIT AND LOSS 58 
 
 rv. — CONFESSION OF SIN AND CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 FAITH ------- 82 
 
 V. —AUTHORITY OF TRUTH AND AUTHORITY OF 
 
 THE SCRIBES 97 
 
 VI. — THE FAITH OF MOSES AND THE FAITH OF 
 
 CHRIST 119 
 
 \\.\. ~ PARABLES FOR TiYO MULTITUDES - - 137 
 
 WW. —GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS - - . - 156 
 
 \\.. — THE FEIV AND THE MANY - - - - 180 
 
 X. — CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL - - - 206 
 
 XL — IS CHRIST DIVIDED? 230 
 
 X\]. -THE CHURCH BENEFICENT - - - -243 
 
SERMONS AND ESSAYS. 
 
I. 
 
 THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 
 
 Lukexvi, 19-31. 
 
 Our Lord's purpose in this parable is, I think, to 
 startle us into serious religious thought, not to set 
 forth a particular religious doctrine. If we look 
 for a special doctrine in it, we shall find it difficult 
 to agree as to what the special doctrine is. It is 
 not, of course, that rich men go to hell because 
 they are rich, and that beggars because they are 
 beggars go to heaven. It is not that it is sin 
 to have property and salvation to be a pauper. 
 For in that case, for one thing, the road to hell 
 would, contrary to Scripture, be difficult and the 
 way to heaven easy; it being easy for us all to come 
 to beggary if we wish, and hard for all of us to 
 become rich, try how we will. Neither is it 
 that a rich man is lost if he is a bad man, while a 
 beggar if he is a good man is saved ; for, besides 
 that this is a lesson not worth teaching, nothing is 
 said either as to the rich man being bad, or the 
 beggar being good. You may say, of course, that 
 I A 
 
2 THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. [i. 
 
 the doctrine is that in the world to come distinc- 
 tions are final, that between class and class there is 
 a gulf which cannot be passed ; but then, in that 
 case, what we should like to know is, what the 
 classes are, and why they are so separated, and 
 this the parable does not help us to understand. 
 
 Look for a particular religious doctrine in this 
 parable, I say, and you will have difficulty in 
 finding one — one about which many would agree. 
 Its purpose I believe to be wider and greater — viz., 
 to awaken serious thought. The curtain is the 
 picture. The story is the doctrine. It is a flash 
 of lightning in the night, which lightens up 
 a familiar landscape under an unfamiliar aspect 
 and awakens in the spectator unfamiliar feelings. 
 It is a glimpse of the world of human life, in which 
 reality bursts through appearance with the crash 
 of doom, in which the tremendous possibilities 
 that lie hid under cover of some superficial class 
 distinctions overturn these distinctions, and by the 
 suddenness and violence with which they do it 
 force from us the question. Is there indeed some- 
 thing besides appearance and much more than 
 appearance } 
 
 We have here neither Pharisee and publican, nor 
 Jew and Gentile, nor any characters which might 
 turn our minds off upon considerations of place, 
 or time, or religious profession, or anything of 
 that sort. We have two men, such as men every- 
 where are, and must be, the one rich, the other 
 poor. What happens to these two happens to all 
 
I.] THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 3 
 
 men ; reality in their case, as in every case, 
 outlives and surmounts appearance ; the distribu- 
 tion of "good things" and "evil things" which 
 sunders them in the one sphere, leaves them, when 
 it comes to an end, the possibilities of good and 
 evil that belong to the other, and among these 
 possibilities we see there are the rich man's Hades, 
 and the beggar's Paradise. You may find an 
 answer to the question, Who is the rich man and 
 who is Lazarus, in other parables and other teach- 
 ing of Christ ; you m^y find it too in Moses and 
 the prophets. You will find, if you inquire, that 
 the rich man figures often among the poor and the 
 beggar among the rich ; but the purpose of the story 
 concerning these two is not to teach us to make 
 fine distinctions of character, but to bring out, as 
 regards human life, the broad distinction between 
 appearance and reality, and to force us to attend 
 to that distinction — in a word, as I have said, to 
 awaken in us religious thought. 
 
 In this view of the parable I do not need to 
 puzzle myself about words or phrases contained in 
 it. I certainly do not need to suppose that when 
 the rich man speaks of being " tormented in this 
 flame," we are to understand that Christ teaches 
 us that there is a real lake of fire and brimstone 
 in which living men are to burn to all eternity. 
 I do not need to suppose this any more than to 
 suppose that Abraham's bosom is the bosom of 
 the patriarch Abraham. The parable is not 
 mixed with history or doctrine ; it is parable and 
 
4 THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. \i. 
 
 nothing else. The rich man asking for water 
 across the gulf which no one could pass — 
 Abraham replying to him across that gulf — he 
 replying to Abraham — Abraham again replying 
 to him — all this is grotesque if you forget that the 
 whole story is a parable. If you forget this, 
 Abraham's bosom and the place of torment, so 
 contiguously placed, and having such close com- 
 munications, become absurd too. Christ took 
 the common language of his day about the in- 
 visible world, and made use of it in this parable, 
 certainly never intending that any part of it should 
 be quoted to substantiate this or that theory of 
 hell or heaven, or in regard to either " to thicken 
 proofs which do demonstrate thinly." It was the 
 purpose of this parable, I repeat, to awaken 
 thought, not to teach doctrine ; its language 
 therefore is not indeed exaggerated (for exaggera- 
 tion is here impossible), but it is bold, pictorial, 
 imaginative. 
 
 Few men think much of anything but the out- 
 ward appearance, the outward and superficial dis- 
 tinctions, in human life ; most men never think 
 of anything else. Even where there is religious 
 profession and religious talk, there is in this sense 
 little religious thought. This in which we live 
 is a real world in its way ; you may call it an 
 illusion, or a cheat, or vanity, or what you will, 
 but at any rate there are some things in it which 
 are real enough to flesh and blood. The comforts 
 of abundance like the rich man's, the wretchedness 
 
I.] THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 5 
 
 of poverty and disease like those of Lazarus, are, 
 in a fashion, real. These things and the like of 
 these are real to bodily sense, and bodily sense 
 every one has. Compared with these, good and 
 evil in the form of what is spiritual, are more or 
 less unreal except to those who are spiritual, and 
 they are few. Thus it is, that if we are like the 
 mass of men, we are more or less earnest and en- 
 grossed in those outward things which superficially 
 distinguish man from man — so much in earnest 
 about them, and so much engrossed, that we forget 
 to think how much or how little there is behind 
 and beyond these distinctions. What man is as 
 man gets little of our notice, because so much of it 
 is given to what men have or want. The contrasts 
 which strike us most are those made by wealth 
 and poverty. The differences of which we make 
 most account or most constant account, are differ- 
 ences of outward estate. By custom we regard 
 this outward estate not as if it were only for 
 a time, and only a part of life, but as if it were 
 the whole and everlasting. Happy man, we 
 say, looking at a rich man — wretched man, we 
 think, seeing a beggar go by. To our minds in 
 their ordinary mood, if we are ordinary men, and 
 even ordinary Christians, it is as if all of human life 
 were on the surface and we saw it all, so that any 
 change in the outward appearance must be of grave 
 consequence, and nothing could be of consequence 
 so grave as a great change in that. We have, 
 perhaps, religious opinions, including views of a 
 
6 THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. [i. 
 
 hereafter, and according to them we ought in our 
 way of thinking to go much beyond the present 
 moment and the outward shows of things. But 
 in point of fact we do not. We seldom" know well, 
 and often we do not consider at all, what sort of 
 life, what sort of experience, a man has in himself, 
 besides what he has in his means and substance. 
 Whatever views we may have of heaven or 
 hell, or the importance of character, they do not 
 materially lessen our sense of the importance of 
 distinctions of the outward estate and condition. 
 It is as if the things that are seen were eternal. 
 It always costs us an effort, and often a great effort, 
 to conceive of a state of things different from the 
 present — different in this, that those distinctions 
 which riches and poverty, prosperity and adver- 
 sity, health and disease make between men, shall 
 be less important than they are here or shall have 
 no place at all. Our regular and customary way, 
 in a word, is to look at human life as if we saw 
 it all when we see what we cannot help seeing— 
 its outward conditions. 
 
 Now, this parable is meant to take us, as it 
 were, by storm, and, once for all, out of this way of 
 regarding life ; and with this view it parts circum- 
 stances and conditions, separates riches and poverty, 
 Dives and Lazarus in another world, as they are 
 parted and separated in our common modes of 
 thought — only it makes the distance between them 
 that between heaven and hell, instead of something 
 less, to which our calculations point, and then, so to 
 
I.] THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 7 
 
 Speak, it puts that in heaven which we put in hell, 
 and puts that in hell which we put in heaven — 
 it does this, it takes this startling line, in order to 
 force us to ask. Can such things be ? is it thus 
 things are, so different from what they seem ? 
 
 It is not then, as I believe, the purpose of this 
 parable to teach us a doctrine or doctrines. Cer- 
 tainly it is not its intention to teach us that rich 
 men because they are not poor go to hell, and that 
 beggars because they are not rich go to heaven. 
 Yet I venture to remark, that if we might find 
 in it any trace of a doctrine at all, it would be 
 doctrine as to wealth and poverty, as to those 
 good things and those evil things by which the 
 outward lot of men is most conspicuously diversi- 
 fied. "Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime 
 receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus 
 evil things : but now he is comforted, and thou 
 art tormented." As I think of these words, I 
 have to ask myself whether the law of exchange 
 or compensation, at w^hich they not vaguely hint, 
 to which, indeed, they give the most unequivocal 
 expression, which constitutes the argument of the 
 story, and the ground-work of its action — I have to 
 ask myself, I say, w^hether this law of exchange or 
 of compensation is only invented, so to speak, for 
 the occasion, or whether it has any existence in 
 fact. Is that which is so pat to the purpose of the 
 story, so essential to its framework, altogether wide 
 of the truth of things, so wide that as far as we 
 follow the story wdth interest and with feeling, we 
 
8 THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. [i. 
 
 diverge from truth into one of the many tracks of 
 error. I cannot suppose it ; I cannot think that 
 where the story explains its own course and move- 
 ment, the explanation is drawn from the side of 
 the improbable and impossible, and not from that 
 of the credible and actual. 
 
 It is most true that at their death the rich man 
 and the beggar are equal, equal so far as absolute 
 poverty at the moment can make them so. We 
 brought nothing into this world, and it is certain 
 we can carry nothing out. Naked we came into 
 the world, naked we return to the dust. But when 
 it is granted that the rich man and the beggar are 
 equal at the moment of death, the fact remains 
 that they were not equal before ; and if everything 
 is to be accounted for, that fact must also be reck- 
 oned and explained. Is it not, then, suggested to 
 us here, and is it not consistent with all we know, 
 or believe, or hope of the Eternal Righteousness 
 and Goodness to suppose that whereas good 
 things and evil things are here unequally dis- 
 tributed, this inequality will hereafter be redressed, 
 so that as far as any man has had reason to com- 
 plain that his lot here was hard, he will have 
 amends made to him hereafter; so that the 
 beggar who has had his evil things here will be 
 comforted hereafter ; and the rich man who has 
 had his good things, will, by comparison with the 
 beggar, be tormented. It must be so. Justice 
 must be done. There is no heaven to fall, there 
 is no righteousness which governs and is supreme, 
 
I.] THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 9 
 
 if justice is not to be done. It is true that poverty- 
 no more than wealth, beggary and sores no more 
 than purple and fine linen, produce always one sort 
 of character ; it does not follow that because a man 
 is afflicted he must learn what affliction has some- 
 times taught — patience, and fortitude, and trust 
 in God. Too often, as regards character, the result 
 of poverty is as fatal as the result of luxury. Give 
 me neither poverty nor riches, was a prayer dictated 
 by common-sense, if not by piety. The school of 
 extreme poverty, like the school of excessive 
 luxury, turns out some of the worst specimens of 
 mankind. Yet for all that, if you take a wide 
 view of the government of this world, supposing 
 it to be a government of goodness, you must see 
 that it is probable, to say the least, that all 
 privation and pain and suffering and loss to 
 which men are subjected now will be made use 
 of hereafter. Does God waste that wretchedness, 
 of which the best instincts of the human heart 
 teach us to be most painfully sparing .-* Does the 
 Eternally Good, the Father of Christ, allow misery 
 to swallow up in its blackest depths so many 
 mortal lives without any intention that anything 
 should ever come of it t I cannot suppose it. 
 My belief is that nothing is wasted in this uni- 
 verse, and especially no woe of any human being. 
 If this be your belief can you not suppose that 
 the beggar's misery may be turned to account in 
 the way of teaching him to know what true bless- 
 edness is, that by his poverty he may be put in the 
 
lo THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. [i. 
 
 way of the acquisition of the true riches? Can 
 you not imagine that some profit might be made 
 for Lazarus out of his experience at the rich man's 
 gate as a preparation for that fuhiess of joy which 
 is at God's right hand ? — is it not possible to fancy 
 that somehow the soul which has never known 
 anything but want and wretchedness in this life 
 should have a way of its own in another life of 
 taking in any blessedness which is there ? May 
 we not say, using the most general terms we can 
 find, that it is not only no loss for a beggar to 
 lose his misery, but that out of a lifetime of misery 
 like the beggar's there is this which a man can carry 
 away with him — a certain aptitude, or talent, or 
 genius, for the appreciation of any happiness to 
 be met with elsewhere ? 
 
 On the other hand, it does not need to be said 
 that, while it is no loss for the beggar to lose his 
 poverty, it is a loss to the rich man to lose his 
 riches. Apart altogether from any questions as to 
 the punishment which "every sin deserves/' is it 
 not most certain that the rich man who has had 
 his good things here, and who by his use of them 
 or misuse (call it what you will) makes the posses- 
 sion of them his good, and the loss of them his evil 
 — is it not most certain, I say, that he must be 
 tormented in a different state of existence from this 
 — by comparison tormented, if only Lazarus and 
 himself are placed on a footing of equality as re- 
 gards having none of them. He who has had his 
 good things and loses them, requires also to lose 
 
I.] THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. u 
 
 his relish for them in order to be content with noth- 
 ing or to appreciate other things. Thus while it is 
 easy to suppose the beggar comforted by the loss 
 of his rags, it is equally easy to suppose the rich 
 man tormented by the loss of his purple and fine 
 linen. 
 
 It is not necessary to make fine distinctions. 
 All that is needful is to recognize the fact that, 
 whereas no man can love beggary and bodily 
 sores, a man can love purple and fine linen, and 
 sumptuous fare, so as to have no relish or to lose 
 all relish for other things ; to this extent a man 
 can pamper his body so as to lose his soul. And 
 so it may be, nay, must be, that while we can carry 
 nothing out of this world in the shape of wealth, 
 yet the wretch who goes out of it with the sense 
 of lifelong misery takes with him what may be 
 profitable to him in eternity ; while he who goes 
 out of it with the sense that he has had his good 
 things and has been deprived of them takes with 
 him that which might make a hell of heaven. 
 
 If there is anything in the shape of doctrine here 
 to be found, it is this — doctrine surely, which is 
 worthy of the Son of Man, revealing the Father 
 of All, making plain the impartial and eternal 
 goodness with which this world and every world 
 is ordered — Let the poor take comfort ; let the 
 rich take heed. God is no respecter of persons. 
 Behold, there are first which shall be last, and 
 there are last which shall be first. 
 
 But I repeat once more, that the purpose of this 
 
12 THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. [i. 
 
 parable is greater and wider than to teach us some 
 one rehgious lesson. It is to awaken us once for 
 all to serious, to religious thought. If there is 
 reality, if heaven and hell belong to it, what is it } 
 The parable puts us on asking this. And when 
 we ask the question we have not far to go for an 
 answer. It is the good and the evil, not of the 
 outward condition and estate, but the good and 
 the evil of disposition and character with which are 
 boLind up for men the issues of life and death, the 
 possibilities of that good which we call heaven, 
 and that evil which we call hell. All experience 
 and, not alone, all Scripture, teaches us this. A 
 beggar, in virtue of his character, may be envi- 
 able ; a rich man, in spite of his purple and fine 
 linen, may be an object of pity. Do you wish to 
 sound the deepest depths of misery t do you wish 
 to scale the topmost heights of blessedness } You 
 cannot do either by the way of beggary or the way 
 of luxury, but you can do it by the love of evil or 
 the love of goodness. It is not a revelation of 
 things beyond our ken, outside of our experience, 
 but a revelation of things that were and are and 
 ever shall be, the most certain and most real of 
 all things, which is made by any religion worth the 
 name. It is a fact which transcends all facts as 
 well in its certainty as in its importance, and not a 
 doctrine or a theory resting upon doubtful author- 
 ity, or limited observation, that the good of this 
 life and all life is goodness, and the misery of this 
 life and all life is sin. We are human ; therefore 
 
I.] THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 13 
 
 our life turns in its larger movements and its 
 greater issues, not upon meat and drink and cloth- 
 ing, but upon right and wrong, upon truth and 
 falsehood, upon selfishness and kindness, upon 
 passion indulged and passion regulated, — not upon 
 the needs of the body, but upon the wants of the soul. 
 Search the world, and you will not find one corner of 
 it containing one man where the law has not been 
 and is not, that the soul that sinneth it shall die, 
 and the soul that loves good it shall eat and be 
 satisfied. Talk to us of heaven and hell, as this 
 parable does, and bid us ask what these things 
 may be, and we are driven, turn where we will, to 
 one conclusion. These things mean good and evil, 
 righteousness and iniquity, salvation from selfish- 
 ness and sin, the condemnation of vice and hardness 
 of heart. 
 
 We forget this in our common worldly ways and 
 thoughts. However we may feel the certainty and 
 truth of it when we set ourselves deliberately to 
 think of it, we forget it in our everyday life. 
 We look with envy upon the rich ; we shrink with 
 horror from the beggar's unsavoury doom. We 
 do not, to the same extent, or so instinctively, envy 
 the good man and shudder at the man of mean 
 and impure spirit. The temporary and superficial 
 distinctions in human life are what occupy our 
 minds. How much keener than other feelings 
 the regret in many of our minds that the lot of 
 the many is to be poor. How few are there who 
 do not feel as if the best of worlds would be 
 
14 THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. [l. 
 
 one in which the lot of the many would be to be 
 rich. 
 
 But if we only took to heart, in any measure, 
 what this parable teaches ; if the tremendous 
 possibilities it shadows forth were in any degree 
 present to us as facts ; if we were disposed, that 
 is to say, to serious religious thought, how different 
 would be our views of things and our experience 
 of the world. We should not envy the rich man 
 more than we envy the good man ; we should not 
 despise and pity the poor man more than we pity 
 or despise the mean or selfish man. We should 
 not feel as if life were lost or gained according as 
 our lot is that of the many poor or the few rich. 
 With the sense that heaven and hell are behind 
 the outward appearance in every man's life, we 
 should be concerned about meat and drink and 
 clothing as for to-day, and about other things — right- 
 eousness, truth, goodness — as for ever. We should 
 bear poverty with cheerfulness as thinking it God's 
 opportunity and ours, and we should use wealth 
 as thinking it not our own but His. 
 
 Thus if we but tasted the powers of the world 
 to come as this parable might teach us to do ; if 
 religious thought were but awakened in us as this 
 parable might awaken it ; if we only looked at 
 things as this parable would have us look at them, 
 not in the outward appearance, but in the eternal 
 reality, what a step we should take in the direction 
 of that highest blessedness called heaven, and 
 away from that deepest misery called hell ! The 
 
I.] THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 15 
 
 effect of this would not be that we should be 
 prompted to make a hell of this world in order to 
 make a heaven of the next ; its effect would not 
 be that we should have to go about bemoaning 
 ourselves and asking how we are to escape the 
 wrath to come, by what sort of belief or assurance 
 that Ave believe something, are we to make sure of 
 beino; taken at last to Abraham's bosom. If we 
 but tasted the powers of the world to come as they 
 are to be tasted here, felt that these powers are 
 the awful powers of good and evil with which we 
 have had to do every moment of our lives — with 
 which, whether we will or no, we have more to do 
 than with anything else ; and if thus our supreme 
 concern were to cleave to that which is good, and 
 to depart from that which is evil, we should enjoy 
 salvation, and not merely expect it ; we should be 
 in heaven, instead of only hoping to escape from 
 hell. 
 
 Is not this a parable, then, worthy of Him whom 
 we call the Light of the world 1 This undoctrinal 
 view of the universe, how full it is of the great 
 doctrine of the Gospel that God is our Father! 
 Here He is no taskmaster, reaping where He 
 has not sowed, and gathering where He has 
 not strawed, demanding from all men alike that 
 which He has made it impossible for most to give. 
 Here He is that universal and eternal Father who, 
 alike when He gives and when He withholds, 
 in His distribution of good things and of evil 
 things, remembers justice and does not forget to 
 
THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. [i. 
 
 be kind ; asks only from those who have, requires 
 much only from those to whom much is given, and 
 of them to whom little has been given requires 
 little, and even that little only where their good 
 requires it. 
 
 On any view of this parable the reference to 
 Moses and the prophets with which it ends must 
 be significant ; but in this view its significance is 
 obvious. In favour of reality, the counterpart of 
 appearance, with which religious thought and 
 religious belief, properly so called, has to do, no 
 miraculous witness needs to be adduced. Moses 
 and the prophets, the great and good whose 
 memories we revere, who, being dead, in virtue 
 of their greatness yet speak, are ample witness to 
 it since no witness whatever is required. If we 
 feel, if our own experience teaches us, that life is 
 good or evil according as it is well or ill lived,- 
 that there is good in righteousness, and the last 
 extremity of evil in all falsehood and iniquity, 
 Moses and the prophets, our religious pioneers 
 and guides, will then teach us much which 
 it is profitable for us to learn, in order that we 
 may follow in their footsteps, and live lives like 
 theirs. But if we feel nothing of this, if in all our 
 experience nothing of this has been brought home 
 to us, neither should we be persuaded though one 
 rose from the dead. All the apparitions, divine 
 or diabolic, that could be imagined could never 
 serve to convince a human soul that truth and 
 goodness are other or better than falsehood and 
 
I.] THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 17 
 
 iniquity, or that any of these things belong to 
 reahty, much less that they are reality, compared 
 with which all else is but appearance. A ghost 
 might be an authority among ghosts, an unexcep- 
 tionable or a powerful witness in their affairs; but 
 no ghost could furnish any new testimony or any 
 testimony whatever to that reality with which men 
 have to do as long as they are in the body and are 
 not without souls. It is not something strange and 
 miraculous that we have to think or believe if we 
 are to be religious in our thought and in our 
 belief — something for which we must have super- 
 natural witness : it is that great fact of all human 
 experience to which Moses and the prophets, and 
 Christ himself bear constant testimony, that good- 
 ness is life and evil is death. 
 
 Last of all, I cannot but remark, that we turn 
 away from the rich man of this parable with a feel- 
 ing of pity. There was some humanity left in him 
 by his selfish and sensual life. He was anxious that 
 his five brethren should not come into this place 
 of torment. The parables of our Lord, the Scrip- 
 tures in general, do not give us those pictures of 
 human beings converted into fiends which abound 
 in religious literature. Among the accepted 
 notions as to the place of perdition, one of the 
 most unquestioned is that there good is not, not 
 even as a recollection, but that evil is good. 
 You cannot take that meaning out of this parable. 
 Rich man as he was, the rich man of this parable 
 was very ignorant, as ignorant and unthinking and 
 
 B 
 
1 8 THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. [r. 
 
 unidea'd as the mass of men, rich and poor, every- 
 where are. He belonged to the great majority, 
 the children of the night ; he was one of that great 
 host of spiritual infants and imbeciles with whom 
 all that is beyond the sphere of sense, all that 
 concerns religion, is unreal, out of the course of 
 nature, not born with the man, but created by 
 arbitrary commandments, and to whom, therefore, 
 the best or only witness to religious truth is a 
 miracle, a portent, something which is neither mat- 
 ter nor spirit, neither dead nor alive, neither of earth 
 nor of heaven, a ghost, one risen from the dead. 
 But still, beggarly as was his soul, he was not 
 without a heart. He was earnest with Abraham 
 about his five brethren. Now, for my part, if I 
 were going to argue anything upon this ground, 
 I should not argue that sinners in the next 
 world are past all hope and all feeling of what is 
 good, but rather that even the prayer of a lost 
 soul must find some response with God. Will 
 any one tell me that a man can be represented as 
 praying in the place of torment that his brethren 
 may not be allowed to come into it, and that God, 
 who is the Father of all men, can be supposed to 
 have so much less humanity than a man as not to 
 heed whether the suppliant himself is to remain 
 for ever in that place 1 Will you make men out 
 more humane than God t Will you represent^men 
 as concerned about their kinsmen lest they should 
 go to hell, and then will you represent Him as 
 not caring if as many as are once there stay there? 
 
I.] THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 19 
 
 If you do so it must be upon some other ground 
 than any that you find in this parable. 
 
 There is a real heaven and a most real hell, 
 which all figures of speech only feebly serve to 
 describe ; it is the heaven of doing God's will as it 
 was done by Christ ; it is the hell of loving anything 
 more than we love goodness and God who is good. 
 Because the lake of fire and brimstone is a figure 
 of speech do not suppose that there is no hell ; 
 that though no such lake exists, all the torment 
 which has been imagined as belonging to that lake 
 may not be got out of evil. Fools make a mock at 
 sin. The wise tremble at the shadow of a shade of 
 guilt in thought, or word, or deed, knowing that 
 the wages of sin is death. " Be not deceived, God 
 is not mocked ; whatsoever a man soweth that 
 shall he also reap ; he that soweth to his flesh 
 shall of the flesh reap corruption, he that soweth 
 unto the spirit shall of the spirit reap life ever- 
 lasting." 
 
30 
 
 II. 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL THEORY OF ANOTHER 
 
 LIFE. 
 
 {Reprinted from " The Contemporary Review, ^^ April, 187 1.) 
 
 However vain it may be, or may seem to be, to 
 speculate on the nature of our future existence, it 
 is impossible not to do so. So many crude and 
 ridiculous, or coarse and repulsive, attempts have 
 been made to penetrate the invisible world and 
 describe it to us, the feeling is natural, and it is 
 strong in many minds at the present moment, 
 that it were better if we had seen the last of 
 any endeavours to lift the veil which hides it 
 from our view. In the present insurrection, too, 
 of the human mind against all dogma, the remark 
 of Goethe has great weight with many : We may 
 well leave the next world to reveal itself to us 
 in due time ; we shall be soon enough there and 
 know all about it. But still it is not a question 
 whether we will or will not speculate on the sub- 
 ject. It is impossible not to speculate ; we are 
 
II.] SPIRITUAL THEORY OF ANOTHER LIFE. 21 
 
 impelled to it by the very constitution of our 
 minds. We live as much almost in the future as 
 in the present ; more passionately often, and 
 therefore more really, in the one than in the other. 
 What may be going to happen to us to-morrow, 
 or next year, is of importance to us to-day. 
 Eternity is a part of time, as the ocean is portion 
 of a fisherman's garden, whose cottage is on the 
 shore. The wonder is not, therefore, that some 
 people feel so much curiosity about a future state, 
 but that there are any people who feel none. 
 
 The title of the present article has been sug- 
 gested, of course, by Isaac Taylor's " Physical 
 Theory of Another Life." We should have pre- 
 ferred a less ambitious one, but none equally 
 suitable and more modest has occurred to us. 
 Perhaps, however, the adoption of it may be felt to 
 be so far justified or excused if we succeed in our 
 aim, which is to show that there are certain positive 
 data on which to found a spiritual theory of another 
 life, and that these, at least, point in a direction 
 which can hardly be mistaken. It would be strange 
 indeed if any fresh data of this sort remained to be 
 discovered by anybody at this time of day, espe- 
 cially within the compass of the Scriptures, or if 
 any one were found to have anything absolutely 
 new to communicate respecting another world. 
 But, on the other hand, possibly the time may 
 have come when changes in theological opinion and 
 the development of certain lines of Christian 
 thought not only admit of a restatement of the 
 
22 THE SPIRITUAL THEORY [ii. 
 
 question, or demand it, but when these changes 
 and this development have given consistency in 
 the general Christian mind to ideas and principles 
 bearing upon futurity, which formerly were traced 
 in the faintest colours and the most uncertain lines. 
 Hateful as the word may have been made to many 
 sincere Christians, there has been a " development" 
 beyond question in Christian dogma. In spite of 
 passionate denials, the unimpassioned student of 
 theology traces distinctly a line of growth along 
 which the Church of Christ has moved in respect 
 to some of the most important articles of her creed. 
 Dogmas which the Calvinist of to-day holds in a 
 shape as definite as so many propositions in mathe- 
 matics, were, if they were anything, vague senti- 
 ments of Christian minds in earlier ages. It may 
 be, then, in regard to the question of a future state, 
 that while no discovery is possible in regard to it, 
 except by the way of one coming back from the 
 dead, we are now in a position to see some of its 
 bearings more distinctly than people who lived ten 
 hundred years ago, or even last century. 
 
 Eternity is a question of the day. It is as if an 
 altogether unprecedented curiosity on the subject 
 of the hereafter had seized the human mind within 
 the last few years, so numerous have been the 
 books, tracts, sermons written on the subject. We 
 do not pretend to have read even all those among 
 them that have achieved some notoriety ; but 
 judging by those with which we are acquainted, 
 there is one point on which they are generally 
 
II.] OF A NO THER LIFE. 2 3 
 
 agreed, and that is that the subject of which they 
 treat is one of which nothing, or next to nothing, 
 is, or indeed can possibly be known. Strong 
 curiosity, and not only curiosity but hope and 
 desire, are awakened in regard to a certain remote 
 region ; but being an utter blank on all the maps, 
 and being declared to be unexplored and unex- 
 plorable, its topography is determined and delin- 
 eated, the blank space on the map is filled up, 
 according to the fancy of each individual mind. 
 This is perhaps a not unjust account of the volu- 
 minous literature of the last few years relating to 
 a future state. It is a literature the diversity of 
 which is remarkable ; but on this point it seems to 
 speak with a unanimity and assurance more re- 
 markable still — viz., that we kiiozv nothing of the 
 matter to which it all relates. Dean Alford, in his 
 well-known sermons on " the State of the Blessed 
 Dead," reiterates this with great emphasis. His 
 volume, indeed, as one of the latest contributions 
 to this literature of the utterly unknown, may be 
 considered a representative volume. Its concluding 
 pages are an assertion of our ignorance of the whole 
 subject ; they tell us that all that has been revealed 
 of the state of the blessed dead is, that they shall 
 ever be with the Lord — a statement which, as the 
 author argues, leaves us in almost total darkness. 
 In what is to come we shall follow the lead of 
 Dean Alford, so far as to limit our view almost ex- 
 clusively to the state of the blessed dead. But we 
 hope to be able to show that the idea that we know 
 
24 THE SPIRITUAL THEORY [li. 
 
 nothing-, or next to nothing-, of that state is one 
 which requires to be somewhat modified. 
 
 But before attempting to do this, we have to 
 remark another point in regard to which writers 
 on the subject of another Hfe seem to be agreed — 
 a point with respect to which there is among them 
 the most wonderful apparent diversity and the 
 most thorough actual unanimity. It follows natur- 
 ally from the notion that we know nothing of 
 heaven, that the pictures which have been drawn 
 of it should be of the most diverse character. 
 Where nothing is known, where all is blank and 
 void, imagination has free scope, different minds 
 paint not what they see, but what they wish and 
 what they hope. As are the hopes and wishes of 
 the designer, so are the colours and the lines of his 
 picture. Thus sorrow for the dead has its own 
 heaven ; it is the meeting and recognition in a 
 better world of loving Christian friends. Intellec- 
 tual ardour has its own heaven — endless progress 
 in knowledge, prosecuted without earthly impedi- 
 ments amid stars and suns of illimitable illuminated 
 space. Then again — sad witness of the woes of 
 this present world — there are countless representa- 
 tions of heaven which exhibit it as a place of 
 freedom from all sin, pain, trouble, want, sickness, 
 death ; a place enriched with all manner of pure, 
 unfading enjoyments, and filled with the sweet 
 incense of continual adoration and thanksgiving. 
 Nothing, or next to nothing, is thought to be hiown 
 of heaven. These are some of the various ideas 
 
II.] OF ANOTHER LIFE. 25 
 
 which minds differently constituted have formed to 
 themselves of it. With such varieties of line and 
 figure and colour has the blank space on the maps 
 been filled up. Not less remarkable, however, 
 than this apparent diversity is the real unanimity 
 which underlies it. With only imagination for a 
 guide in so vast a region as eternity, we might 
 have expected that men would wander off on 
 trackless, ever-diverging paths. It is wonderful 
 to find that in point of fact whatever road they take 
 they always come very soon to the same point. 
 That point is the blessedness of self in heaven. 
 However different their representations of heaven, 
 they agree to represent it as a state of gratified 
 and glorified selfishness — of blessedness which 
 appeals above all to selfish desire and selfish hope. 
 However noble and godlike the attainments, how- 
 ever pure or lofty the gratification, however refined 
 or exalted the enjoyment of which we are told as 
 entering into that blessedness, it is still attainment, 
 gratification, enjoyment, for which we have no 
 other or better name than selfish. Worldliness, 
 the predominance of the lower self, figures to itself 
 the goal of a happy life to be " honour, love, obedi- 
 ence, troops of friends," or, less poetically, comfort, 
 independence, ease. " Other-worldliness" the pre- 
 dominance of the higher self, has figured to itself 
 the goal of a Christian life to be holiness, peace, 
 glory. Both seem, though in different ways, alike 
 selfish. Starting with the assumption that we 
 know nothing of heaven, and resorting to the aid of 
 
26 THE SPIRITUAL THEORY [ii. 
 
 the imagination to gain some conception of its 
 blessedness, the conception, it would seem to be 
 proved by a vast existing literature, at which men 
 naturally arrive is, that heaven is the regenerated 
 self beatified and glorified — the new Adam re- 
 stored to the old garden, and needing not to dress 
 it and to keep it. The truth of this conception, 
 thus stated at any rate, will appear questionable. 
 But, suppose it true, one inference from it claims 
 here a moment's notice. Heaven in that case 
 would have every conceivable attraction for 
 rational and moral beings, except the greatest of 
 all — occupation. This has not escaped the notice 
 of Dean Alford. 
 
 " I need hardly press it on you," he says, " that it is 
 impossible to conceive of man in a high and happy estate 
 without employment worthy of that estate, ^nd /;/ fact coii- 
 
 stitiiting its happiness To read some descriptions 
 
 of heaven, one would imagine that it were only an endless 
 prolongation of some social meeting ; walking and talking in 
 some blessed country with those whom we love." 
 
 It is disappointing, however, to find that in what 
 follows he seems to give us for occupation in " that 
 glorious land" chiefly *'the attainment of and 
 advance in the light and knowledge peculiar to it." 
 In his pages, as in those of so many other writers, 
 while we gaze up into heaven, not Jesus the cruci- 
 fied, but the spectre of self, seems to flit across the 
 field of vision. We do not mean to suggest that, 
 on this score, the blessedness of heaven is com- 
 
II.] OF ANOTHER LIFE. 27 
 
 monly exaggerated. Self is a part of us, if only a 
 part ; and blessedness which is not in any degree 
 that of self would be not human, and not blessed- 
 ness. But to speak of blessedness so purely sel- 
 fish, as even the attainment of light and knowledge, 
 constituting the blessedness of eternity, argues, we 
 think, a strange forgetfulness of facts in time which 
 are much to the point. The best of men in this 
 present world do not find their highest and truest 
 blessedness even in such high pursuits as the 
 attainment of light and knowledge, or, indeed, in 
 any pursuits however high which are purely selfish. 
 The best of this present life for the worthiest and 
 noblest of our race, for those to whom life, after all, 
 yields its best, is that it is a field for the display of 
 moral activity and the exercise of moral energy, 
 and that it yields to the moral w^orker a perpetual 
 harvest of incomparable satisfactions and enjoy- 
 ments. David Livingstone (to mention one name 
 which naturally occurs to a Scotchman), wandering 
 through Africa on a moral errand — an errand of 
 pure humanity — drinks even in the burning and 
 alien desert from fountains of deeper satisfaction 
 than he would have done if he had stayed at home 
 and cultivated his own farm and his own soul. 
 We see no such room anywhere in heaven as in 
 the heart of Africa for this moral activity, if the 
 common representations of heaven are correct. 
 They do not seem to provide at all for the exercise 
 of some of the noblest and best feelings of our 
 nature. They seem to say, " Hold ! enough ! " 
 
28 THE SPIRITUAL THEORY [ii. 
 
 to what is most sublime and glorious in man's 
 being and history — his love of his kind, his courage, 
 his magnanimity, his patience, his pity, his self- 
 sacrifice. They superannuate the moral part of 
 man. In reply to the question, "We are beings 
 endowed with moral and spiritual faculties and 
 energies, what then are we to do in eternity t " 
 they seem to answer " Nothing ; you are not to do, 
 but to be. Your career as a moral agent is ended ; 
 you will become higher and nobler ; but it is no 
 more yours to do and dare. You have returned to 
 God and are stopped. Those moral and spiritual 
 energies in your nature, which were developed 
 with so much pain and at so much cost, being 
 developed, have served their turn, and now as 
 regards use are counted with the swords and 
 banners of forgotten wars." 
 
 We do not wish here to say anything of what 
 seems the necessary deterioration of a moral being 
 any of whose moral energies, and especially the 
 highest and noblest, are no longer actively exercised. 
 It would lead us too far from our main point to 
 argue, as we think we might, that if men ceased to 
 exercise pity, self-denial, courage, they would, from 
 the inevitable narrowing of a nature whose faculties 
 are not used, degenerate from heavenly perfections 
 into some of those very earthly imperfections which 
 make some Christians ridiculous and others intol- 
 erable. But apart from this, and looking only at 
 the fact that they do not provide for — or rather 
 seem to exclude — the exercise of some of the 
 
II.] OF ANO THER LIFE. 2 9 
 
 noblest energies of our nature, we find ample 
 reason for being dissatisfied with the views which 
 have been, with so much unanimity, propounded 
 from the imagination as to the state of the blessed 
 dead. 
 
 We return, however, from what has been ima- 
 gined of heaven to the question, whether it is true, 
 as we have seen it to be so generally assumed, that 
 we have to imagine everything, that we know 
 nothing, regarding it. 
 
 There is one passage of Scripture which, as our 
 readers know, has been so often referred to heaven, 
 that we hardly think of heaven without thinking of 
 it — the passage quoted from Isaiah in i Cor. ii: "But 
 the things which eye hath not seen and ear hath 
 not heard, and which have not entered into the heart 
 of man, the things which God hath prepared for 
 them that love him, God hath revealed to us through 
 his Spirit." Did this passage refer to heaven, as so 
 many uncritical readers have assumed, it would 
 seem explicitly to deny the possibility of acquir- 
 ing any knowledge of heavenly blessedness. But 
 referring, as we need not say it actually does, in 
 the first place, to the present experience of Chris- 
 tian believers, but yet, of course, indirectly also to 
 the future — all that God hath prepared for them 
 that love Him, not certainly being contained in the 
 sphere of the present life — it is a passage which not 
 only does not declare it to be impossible to obtain 
 any positive knowledge of heaven, but in its double 
 reference to the present and the future, it offers 
 
30 THE SPIRITUAL THEORY [ii. 
 
 itself as a finger-post to inquiry. Heaven is not 
 inconceivable to any human heart, to even the 
 wordliest and grossest natures, as heaven has been 
 painted. The blessedness of freedom from all 
 earthly pain, sorrow, death, even sin and imperfec- 
 tion — that blessedness it does not require " genius 
 in its most gifted hour," let alone the seeing eye of 
 faith, to perceive and admire. But the blessedness 
 of what is not so remote and not so strange — the 
 blessedness of Christian life here upon the earth, of 
 those things that God hath prepared for them that 
 love him here — this blessedness eye hath not seen, 
 ear hath not heard. No mind, no heart, which is 
 without a measure of real, though it may be un- 
 conscious, Christian enlightenment and grace, can 
 understand or feel how there can be the highest 
 good and the truest blessedness in a life of unselfish- 
 ness, in suffering with and for others, in self-sacrifice. 
 This is eternally the most inconceivable of all 
 things to a selfish and altogether worldly nature. 
 This is the mystery which has been hid from ages 
 and generations — hid to the many, open to the few. 
 In this respect, this often-quoted passage in 
 Corinthians really asserts a mystery with regard to 
 the present life which has been supposed to belong 
 only to the life to come. The mystery is as to what 
 we see, not as to what we see not. And the inquiry 
 is started by this, whether really what we know of 
 Christian life here is not also knowledge possessed 
 by us in regard to the life which is to come — whether 
 the problem in regard to futurity is not simply to 
 
II.] OF A NO THER LIFE. 
 
 31 
 
 understand the present. He who can tell what God 
 hath prepared for them that love Him here, can he 
 not also give us important information as to what 
 He hath prepared for them hereafter ? 
 
 With this question in our minds, we turn to 
 consider the blessedness of Christian life now. 
 We have already partially indicated our views 
 upon this point, and wish to confine ourselves in 
 speaking farther of it to what is least questionable 
 and most important. If we were asked, then, to 
 say from the words, and from the life of Christ, and 
 from what we know of the lives that have most 
 perfectly embodied the spirit of His life — if we 
 were asked to say from this what the blessedness 
 of Christian life is, we should certainly not say 
 that it is a lot made happy and contented by 
 Christian piety, not even assurance, doubly sure, 
 of personal salvation through Christ, but rather 
 the blessedness which there is for an unselfish 
 spirit in the exercise of moral and spiritual 
 energies, directed to the glory of God and the 
 good of men — the blessedness, in a word, of self- 
 sacrifice. Were we asked this question as to 
 Christian blessedness, we should select for an 
 example of it, not some member of the Christian 
 Church, who, since he became such, has found the 
 path of life much smoothed and the pleasures of 
 life much increased, but rather we should turn to 
 such a man as one we have already named, David 
 Livingstone — a man whose way through the world 
 since he became a Christian has been over rough 
 
32 THE SPIRITUAL THEORY [ii. 
 
 and dangerous ground, but who, in toiling and 
 suffering for the good of the world and the glory 
 of God, has found for himself in the huts of 
 savages, and in the burning desert among wild 
 beasts, enjoyment which it has been pain for him 
 to relinquish, even temporarily, for the pleasures of 
 piety in a drawing-room. " Remember the words 
 of the Lord Jesus, how He said, It is more blessed 
 to give than to receive." 
 
 Remember these words, and you have the key 
 to the blessedness of Christian life, to the whole 
 Gospel of God's grace, and to all human experi- 
 ence, to revelation, and to history. It is the key 
 to the mystery of God sending his Son into the 
 world, to remember the Son's words — to know that 
 the great Possessor is the great Giver, that the 
 Highest of all is the Best of all, that it is His glorj- 
 not to smite, but to heal, not to destroy, but to 
 save, to bless the evil and the good, to compre- 
 hend all in His infinite beneficence. It is the key 
 to the life and the death of Christ. He, for the joy 
 that was set before Him, endured the cross. In 
 sounding the uttermost depths of outward and 
 seeming humiliation, and real sorrow and anguish, 
 He tasted also of the deepest and purest fountains 
 of divine peace and joy. To the eyes of men, and 
 indeed actually, the one holy and perfect life that 
 was ever lived, was passed on the cold wet sands 
 from which the tide of happiness had ebbed utterly 
 away ; but there rolled into that life, invisibly yet 
 really, the whole boundless ocean of divine love 
 
II.] OF A NO THER LIFE. 3 3 
 
 and divine joy. " My peace I give unto you." 
 " These things have I spoken unto you that my 
 joy might remain in you." That which is the key 
 to Christ's Hfe is the key to history, to the Hfe of 
 man. He who has most carefully sought to 
 receive and most carefully shunned to give has 
 ever been the great loser. The sunshine and the 
 flowers exist but for glad souls. Joys are only for 
 the generous heart. The best and noblest of our 
 race have thrown away their lives only to live truly 
 and live for ever. Human history, now almost 
 itself becoming an inspired oracle, teaches us from 
 many an evangelical page that he does not know 
 what true life is who takes his notions of it from 
 the songs of ancient heathen poets, and from the 
 no less heathen judgments of the modern street 
 and market-place — who does not know, with heroes 
 and saints and martyrs, and humble unknown 
 benefactors of their kind in all ages, of all lands, 
 of all creeds, the strange, deep blessedness of 
 denying ourselves, and striving and suffering for 
 the good of others. 
 
 The blessedness, then, of Christian life is 
 essentially that of all moral and spiritual exist- 
 ence, created and uncreated, and it is, in a 
 word, and above all, self-sacrifice. Grant this, 
 and it follows that we are not without positive 
 knowledge on the subject of spiritual life beyond 
 the grave. No reason that we know of can be 
 assigned for supposing that in another world 
 spiritual life will not only undergo modification. 
 
34 THE SPIRITUAL THEORY [ii. 
 
 but revolution in its essential character; that its 
 self-sacrifice here will become selfishness there. 
 Na such chang^e can be imagined taking place in 
 the nature of spiritual existence in its supreme 
 manifestations. If, as it would be hard for any 
 one to deny who believes the Gospel, it has been 
 and is the divine blessedness to give and bless and 
 save and even sufi"er, we do not suppose that any 
 one imagines this will not always continue to be 
 the divine blessedness. Even those stem dog- 
 matists, who, as we may 'think, attribute severity 
 or even ferocity to the divine nature, do not impute 
 to it variableness, or the least shadow of turning. 
 As it exists in God the Father, and in Christ, who 
 is the manifestation at once of His life and blessed- 
 ness, spiritual life cannot be imagined to be under 
 any circumstances anything but what it has been 
 and is. It is impossible to imagine the case re- 
 versed as regards the sons of God in the second 
 rank — their spiritual life not only modified but 
 revolutionized. Even upon this ground we find 
 ourselves at issue with those who think that we 
 know nothing of heaven, and are dissatisfied with 
 their imaginative representations of it. In these 
 imaginative representations we are witnesses of a 
 transformation of spiritual life of which no rational 
 account is given us. We see in them, Avithout 
 reason assigned, those whose deliberate and, in- 
 deed, inevitable choice has been the pleasure of 
 perpetual struggle, subside contentedly into eternal 
 torpor and into disuse of all the faculties which 
 
n.] OF ANOTHER LIFE. 
 
 35 
 
 perpetual strug'gle exercised ; we see those whose 
 delight it has been to strive and toil, cheerfully 
 accept the role of the eternally unemployed ; those 
 whose glory and joy it has been to practise self- 
 denial, denied but one thing — self-denial — and in 
 that privation of their true life and joy made per- 
 fectly blessed for ever. This is a transformation 
 for which we are not prepared by anything in the 
 New Testament. It is a transformation, we even 
 venture to affirm, by which the whole spirit of the 
 New Testament prepares us to be staggered and 
 appalled. It seems to us very much the same as 
 talking of annihilation to talk of a missionary going 
 from Africa to a heaven in which spiritual life — his 
 life, his being — -is to be so transformed. The sense 
 of spiritual identity in a true missionary's soul 
 would suffer in such a heaven a tremendous shock, 
 \{ it would not be altogether destroyed. The 
 Christian hero, superannuated for ever from any 
 joy but that of enjoying his own individual bless- 
 edness, would hardly, we venture to say, ever 
 know or be himself again. He might say with 
 Thekla's melancholy shade — 
 
 " Hab' ich nicht beschlossen und geendet, 
 Hab' ich nicht geliebet und gelebt ,^''' 
 
 It may seem, then, even with reference only to 
 what we know of spiritual life here, that we are not 
 without positive knowledge of what it shall be 
 hereafter. But even without attaching undue im- 
 portance to this, taking it merely as something to 
 
36 THE SPIRITUAL THEORY [ii. 
 
 guide our steps to other knowledge, we do not need 
 to torture Scripture, we think, to make it yield 
 more positive information. Without entering min- 
 utely into all the questions respecting eternal life, 
 or minutely examining the passages relating to it 
 in the New Testament, we may say we believe that 
 all discussions on the subject have only brought out 
 more fully the great fact that life eternal, as it is 
 spoken of in the Gospels, especially the latest of 
 them, does not mean life begun in eternity, after 
 time, but rather that life which is independent of 
 time and chance and change, which is eternally 
 right and true and good, according to the will 
 of the Eternal. It is thus Christian life under its 
 various aspects of knowledge of God, of love of 
 Christ, of brotherly love, is characterized as life 
 and eternal life. In a word, what we have been 
 calling Christian or spiritual life is declared to be 
 eternal life in the Gospels. Even to those, then, to 
 whom the authority of isolated texts is indispens- 
 able or more weighty than that of the general sense 
 and tenor of Scripture, we are able to offer the 
 testimony which they require in confirmation of 
 our views. Self-sacrifice, undoubtedly, is the word 
 which best describes Christian life here. If Chris- 
 tian life is eternal life in any sense, self-sacrifice is 
 eternal. In saying so, we only say eternal life is 
 not temporary. The law of Christian life, about 
 which there can be no mistake, is unmistakably 
 declared to be the law of eternal life. To suppose 
 that the self-sacrifice towards our fellow-creatures 
 
II.] OF ANOTHER LIFE. 37 
 
 which is so large a part of Christian life here, will 
 have no part in it hereafter, is to make a distinction 
 between Christian life and eternal life, which it 
 seems to be the express object of much of the New 
 Testament to deny. If this be granted, on the 
 same ground on which we know anything of a 
 future state at all, we knozv that the state of the 
 blessed dead is one, the nature and the blessed- 
 ness of which is best expressed in the word self- 
 sacrifice. 
 
 We are here, however, met by an objection which 
 seems to bar our way. The state of the " dead in 
 Christ " being one of '' blessedness," how, it will be 
 asked, can there be any room for the exercise of 
 self-sacrifice, such, at an}^ rate, as is most conspicu- 
 ous and most necessary in Christian life here } 
 They hunger no more, neither thirst any more. 
 Materialistic views of the future life give force to 
 this objection. It will have most force with those 
 minds that most distinctly and complacently con- 
 ceive of heaven as a place cut off by walls and 
 bulwarks from all the rest of the universe — a place 
 in which, as in a field innumerable stalks of corn 
 or barley are seen growing to the same height, all 
 souls are made all alike, and to the same degree 
 blessed for ever. As to heaven being a place, how- 
 ever, a place cut off by walls and bulwarks from 
 the rest of the universe, from every place where 
 there is any evil or any wretchedness, we do not so 
 think of it when we think of angels and saints in 
 glory taking an interest in what is going on in this 
 
38 THE SPIRITUAL THEORY {ii. 
 
 world. Again, as to heaven being a place at all, 
 we may, in company with many good and great 
 men, suppose either that it is or that it is not. 
 Suppose it is not a place ; suppose, at any rate, it 
 is a state rather than a place, character rather than 
 locality. Suppose the blessed dead not made all 
 alike blessed in one place, the blessedness of which 
 is just to be there, but blessed in proportion to the 
 degree and measure of heavenly, of spiritual life 
 possessed by each — blessedness independent of 
 place. This, at any rate, is conceivable. It is not 
 only conceivable, it is probable, it is certain. It is 
 the measure of faith, truth, love which is in a man 
 that is the measure of his true, his eternal life and 
 blessedness. If this be granted, it expands heaven 
 for the display of self-sacrifice to all immensity and 
 all eternity. Where there is higher and lower, 
 superior and inferior, greater and less, if it be only 
 in one thing, and that thing blessedness, where 
 there is no positive evil or defect of any kind, but 
 only more blessedness and less blessedness, there is 
 room for the everlasting play of self-sacrifice. It 
 is certain a great many people, to whom no one 
 would deny the character of Christian, live exceed- 
 ingly imperfect Christian lives, and depart from this 
 world with all their Christian imperfections on their 
 head. It is not in going down to the lowest moral 
 strata of society to seek and save the lost and 
 degraded, but rather in intercourse with these 
 imperfect specimens of Christianity, that many a 
 Christian mind of the nobler order has to experi- 
 
II.] OF ANOTHER LIFE. 39 
 
 ence some of the severest trials to which human 
 nature can be exposed. Nothing (to mention only 
 one set of defects) is harder to put up with than the 
 ignorance, narrowmindedness, conceit, bigotry of 
 many who profess themselves, and no doubt are. 
 Christians. The shrinking of the mind from a 
 heaven in which the society of some Christians we 
 have known and not admired would be inevitable 
 and eternal, has been too widely felt and too ener- 
 getically uttered to need further expression. It 
 would be easy to collect, in any large centre of 
 population in Christendom, a congregation of 
 Christians, every one of them so ignorant and 
 bigoted that, if you do not exactly say as he says 
 on every conceivable religious topic, he will resent 
 it with anathemas as an affront to God and eternal- 
 truth. There is no reason for supposing that all 
 this will be changed by a miracle, so that the least 
 tolerable and tolerant of Christians shall be placed 
 at once in heaven on a par with John the Evan- 
 gelist and John Locke. If this be so, the objection 
 that there can be no room for self-sacrifice in heaven 
 vanishes. For St. John and John Locke to help 
 some Christians of our own time, even some pro- 
 minent Church leaders, to rise out of their narrow- 
 ness and bigotry and bitterness into wider and 
 larger views, into nobler and more gracious life, 
 this would be a work of painful self-sacrifice — 
 painful beyond doubt, but yet glorious and blessed. 
 The state of the blessed dead, then, we take to 
 be one the blessedness of which is best expressed 
 
40 THE SPIRITUAL THEORY [ii. 
 
 in the word self-sacrifice. To this conclusion we 
 had come when we turned aside to notice an ob- 
 jection which might very readily occur, but which 
 when examined vanishes. It is a conclusion which 
 we think supplies a proof of its own correctness 
 and value in two ways, to the consideration of 
 which we devote our remaining space : (i) By the 
 meaning which it lends to much Scripture ; (2) By 
 the light which it seems to shed on some problems 
 of human life and destiny. 
 
 I. We have already referred to the passage in 
 Corinthians, and shown how, as far as it relates to 
 heaven, its meaning is obvious and definite, if the 
 mystery to which it alludes be understood to be 
 self-sacrifice. Eye hath not seen the beauty of 
 that, ear hath not heard its celestial harmonies ; it 
 hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive 
 its majesty and glory. God is love. No man 
 hath seen God at any time. But let us take a few 
 passages which refer directly to heaven. Heb. xii, 
 I, is one passage in which we see, or seem to see, 
 a new, or at any rate a fuller, meaning, if we think 
 of self-sacrifice as the law and the blessedness of 
 heavenly life: "Seeing we are compassed about 
 with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay asid-e 
 every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset 
 us," &c. The great and good of bygone days, our 
 friends and brethren who have gone before us, are 
 not removed in imperturbable serenity of blessed- 
 ness from the struggles in which others of their 
 kind are now struggling, failing, winning. They 
 
II.] ' OF ANOTHER LIFE. 41 
 
 have the blessed pain, by sympathy, of struggling 
 in these struggles, not merely, we may well suppose, 
 of friends and kindred and fellow-Christians, but 
 of mankind. What shame, what wTong, to increase 
 their sympathetic pain, to cloud their sky, to mar 
 their joy, by failure or by turning back. 
 
 "Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that 
 repenteth more than over ninety and nine just 
 persons that need no repentance." This announce- 
 ment from the lips of Christ himself cannot be said 
 to have a meaning, if it does not mean that the 
 blessedness of the immortals is self-sacrifice. We 
 may be, we often are, unconcerned as to the 
 spiritual tragedies on which in this world the 
 curtain of the day and night is for ever rising and 
 falling. Of none of these are the angels of God, 
 or "they who through faith and patience inherit 
 the promises," indifferent spectators. While lives 
 are base and miserable, while souls are lost and 
 fatherless, while hearts are crushed and broken here 
 below, heaven is heaven; but there is not.the indif- 
 ference of selfish enjoyment there — there is sus- 
 pense, watching, sympathy, anxiety. And when it 
 is said truth wins the day, souls are saved, the 
 Captain of salvation has won other victories, there 
 are bursts of joy which could only come from hearts 
 in which suspense and waiting and anxiety are 
 known. 
 
 It strikes every reader of the parable of the 
 sheep and the goats, in which the separation of the 
 righteous and the unrighteous is described by our 
 
42 THE SPIRITUAL THEORY [ii. 
 
 Lord, that tJie only righteousness is self-sacrifice, 
 selfishness the only sin. To those on the right hand 
 it is said, " I ^vas an hungered, and ye gave me 
 meat ; " to those on tlie left, '* I was an hungered, 
 and ye gave me no meat." These go away into 
 everlasting punishment, and those into life eternal. 
 To the righteous the invitation is given, '' Come, ye 
 blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared 
 for you from the foundation of the world." All this 
 is full of meaning. It cannot be a heaven without 
 self-sacrifice, out of which the selfish are to be kept, 
 and into which the self-sacrificing are invited. It 
 cannot be a selfish heaven which the Father has 
 prepared for the Lamb slain from the foundation 
 of the world, and for His followers. "Eternal 
 life" for self-sacrificing souls, their eternal reward, 
 cannot be to go away into everlasting selfish en- 
 joyment. 
 
 There is a whole class of passages in the 
 apostolic epistles which speak of departed be- 
 lievers as " with the Lord." What these passages 
 tell us is, indeed, as we have seen, according to 
 Dean Alford, all that we know of their state and 
 blessedness. But even if this be all, it is some- 
 thing — it is more than has been thought. A 
 materialistic conception of heaven, according to 
 which the blessedness of believers shall be to be 
 in the same place with Christ, is, to say the least 
 of it, a very poor, if not a monstrous conception. 
 The apostolic phrase lends itself readily, at any 
 rate, to a much wider and nobler conception — that 
 
II.] OF ANOTHER LIFE. 43 
 
 of Christians participating more and more largely 
 and immediately in Christ's life, sharing His Spirit, 
 entering into His activities. This, in any spiritual 
 sense, must be what it is to be "with the Lord." 
 Community of life, of thought, feeling, action, is 
 spiritual neighbourhood. What, then, do we think 
 of Christ 1 Not surely as retired from self-sacrifice, 
 not as superannuated in glory from the sympathetic 
 anxiety and sorrow and pain which on earth He 
 bore, nor as ever to be retired from these while 
 man is man. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, 
 to-day, and for ever. It is not His work alone, but 
 His life, His eternal joy. The Lamb slain from the 
 foundation of the world. Those, therefore, who are 
 spiritually with Him for ever shall for ever w^ork 
 with Him that work of which He said, "My Father 
 worketh hitherto, and I work." 
 
 The meaning which it gives to such passages of 
 Scripture — a meaning in harmony with the Avhole 
 tenor of Christian revelation — is, we think, one in- 
 dication of the correctness of the conclusion at 
 which we have arrived as to the nature of heavenly 
 blessedness. 
 
 2. We pass on, however, now to observe its 
 bearing upon some of the darker problems of 
 human life and destiny, on which it appears to 
 cast at least a ray of light. 
 
 " Nothing," says Pascal, " is so intolerable to a 
 human being as to be in complete rest, without 
 suffering, Avithout occupation, without employment. 
 Then he feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his 
 
44 THE SPIRITUAL THEORY [ii. 
 
 insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his 
 emptiness. Irrepressibly there must issue from the 
 bottom of his soul ennui, gloom, sadness, chagrin, 
 disgust, despair." One of the problems of human 
 destiny is that occupation for immortal souls, the 
 want of which Pascal in this forcible passage seems 
 to indicate would make a hell of heaven. On this 
 problem our view of heaven as self-sacrifice throws 
 some light. Supposing not place but character 
 to be heaven, we have no difficulty in supposing, 
 we have insuperable difficulty in not supposing, the 
 heaven of noble Christian souls who have lived and 
 toiled and suffered for and with others all their 
 Christian life, to be not " complete rest," but rather 
 leave, scope, room, still to do the same, still to 
 strive and toil, and find in doing this, it may be, 
 something of old anxiety and pain, but ever also 
 new, and deeper, and truer, and diviner joy. 
 
 To be any more explicit than this, to suppose 
 any cases of noble Christian life thus eternally pro- 
 longed and eternally blessed, is very likely to run 
 some risk of being misunderstood. But accepting 
 even this risk in our anxiety to say what we mean, 
 we have not far to look for instances which will 
 serve our turn. Much eloquence has been expended 
 on celestial studies and celestial students. Much 
 has been said of the delight of eternally pursuing 
 knowledge of God's works and ways. It is not 
 difficult to suppose something more blessed and 
 more heavenly even than this delight. There are 
 Christians who, with all the advantages of genius 
 
II.] OF ANOTHER LIFE. 
 
 45 
 
 or high talents, of exceptional culture and experi- 
 ence, have been all their lives students of divine 
 truth, and whose strongest personal craving must 
 ever be to pursue the study of it further. It is not 
 difficult to imagine some such, in a spirit of self- 
 sacrifice, checking the desire for knowledge, bend- 
 ing themselves heroically to the task of tutoring 
 less gifted or less enlightened, perhaps utterly 
 heathen souls, in divine science, and finding 
 eternally in this a deeper blessedness than the 
 loftiest attainments in knowledge of man or seraph 
 could ever yield. 
 
 So again we can imagine — and here we speak 
 with even more confidence, as from the ground of 
 universal and imperishable humanity — we can 
 imagine the interrupted, or neglected, or unsuc- 
 cessful task of Christian parents in time resumed 
 in eternity. It costs us no effort of the imagina- 
 tion, and certainly conflicts with no part of 
 Christian revelation that we know of, to suppose 
 a mother, whose duty to a child has been ill or 
 unsuccessfully performed, finding in all eternity a 
 real but blessed toil in the endeavour to reach the 
 ends contemplated in that unaccomplished duty. 
 
 It becomes every day more intolerable for the 
 Christian mind to entertain the notion of the 
 general or universal perdition of the heathen. 
 Commerce and science together impress us more 
 and more with their enormous numbers; Christian- 
 ity deepens our sense of brotherhood with them all, 
 and, consequently, of the Father's part in them; 
 
46 THE SPIRITUAL THEORY [ir. 
 
 and the more impossible therefore it becomes 
 almost daily even for the severest type of 
 Christian mind to accept the verdict in their 
 case — all lost It becomes, therefore, on the 
 other hand, every day the easier to suppose the 
 missionaries and philanthropists, the Xaviers and 
 Moffats, of all time and all lands, not superan- 
 nuated in a blessedness foreign to all their earthly 
 experience, but in never-ending toil experiencing a 
 never-ending joy. 
 
 Instances like these, not difficult to imagine, are 
 suggestive of reflections bearing on the problem of 
 that occupation for our moral energies, without 
 which heaven would be for Pascal, and all such 
 souls, a place of ennui, of chagrin, of darkness, and 
 despair. 
 
 Problems remain which are not to be lightly 
 handled, but on which we may venture to say a ray 
 of light seems to be cast on the supposition that we 
 judge rightly the nature of the heavenly blessed- 
 ness. One, the greatest of all, we may here glance 
 at for a moment — the problem of the lost It is 
 the less inexcusable to advert to this subject that it 
 has not always escaped rough treatment at the 
 hands of ignorant or bigoted speculation, and 
 especially that it has not been always put in a light 
 as regards the joys of the redeemed at all pleasing 
 or satisfactory to a humane mind. With regard to 
 lost souls, it is certainly the idea in many minds, 
 fostered by many writers, that, being seen to be 
 righteously outcast and deserted and punished. 
 
II.} OF ANOTHER LIFE. 47 
 
 they are no concern of the blessed. Either they 
 are forgotten, or their fate exdtes no curiosity or 
 compassion. The wife, whose last word was for 
 her husband a word of blessing and undying love, 
 remembers him no more. In death converted 
 David and (let us suppose it) unconverted Jonathan 
 are not only divided, but estranged or oblivious of 
 earthly ties. The mother forgets in heaven, who 
 could not forget on earth, the child she bore. 
 Benevolent souls, that were tortured here by the 
 thought of souls being lost, in heaven are uncon- 
 cerned — they are finally at ease in Zion. When 
 there is danger only of souls being lost, Christians 
 can scarcely breathe for anguish ; when the loss is 
 certain, when it is known, they recover their com- 
 posure, they tune their harps, and adore and glorify 
 God for their own salvation. Somehow all this 
 just about as little commends itself to our minds as 
 the more antique and happily antiquated represen- 
 tations of the redeemed bending over the battle- 
 ments of heaven to derive, from the sight of the 
 tortures of the damned and the hearing of their 
 cries, access to their own unmeasured joy. All 
 this, though it has found its way into the common 
 mind in Christendom, cannot maintain itself even 
 there. Every motion of the spirit of Christ in 
 Christian communities, every advance of religious 
 thought, every revival of religious feeling, withers 
 it as with fire. We do not speak here of the 
 recovery of the lost. But suppose even we hold 
 that the lost are eternally lost, or altogether refuse 
 
48 THE SPIRITUAL THEORY [ii. 
 
 to discuss the question, there is, at any rate, another 
 view which we can take of the redeemed than that 
 they are indifferent to their fate. It ought not to 
 be, ■ and will not be, difficult for any humane 
 Christian mind to imagine the blessed, urged by 
 an irresistible Christ-like tenderness and pity and 
 love, lavishing upon the lost, even if it be to no 
 purpose, their tenderness and pity and love ; plead- 
 ing, wrestling, agonizing with them, to win them 
 from the outer darkness of their selfishness and 
 alienation to the eternal light and eternal love in 
 Christ and God. We have no difficulty in suppos- 
 ing the wish of father, brother, friend, of apostle, 
 martyr, confessor, saint, to be in heaven what was 
 the wish of one on earth — to be accursed from 
 Christ for his brethren's sake. Here love toils 
 gloriously on at many a profitless and, indeed, 
 hopeless task, and finds its own good and glory in 
 it. So, for that matter, it may be hereafter. All 
 that we say is, that we can conceive, and, for 
 reasons that have already been assigned, are in 
 fact bound to conceive, of redeemed souls, not as 
 dwelling apart in imperturbable enjoyment, but 
 rather as thus, with overflowing love and sympathy 
 and self-sacrifice, toiling at the task, be it even 
 profitless and hopeless, of bettering the worse lot of 
 others. God himself is, and as He changes not, 
 always will be, kind even to the evil and unthankful. 
 Those who are his by community of spirit and life, 
 will not even in eternity be found unkind or indif- 
 ferent to the unthankful because they are also evil. 
 
II.] OF ANOTHER LIFE. 49 
 
 If not much light be thus thrown — it is not our 
 object to do so here — on the state of the lost, some 
 we think is thrown upon that of the blessed dead, 
 or, at any rate, some conceptions of it which it is 
 important to correct are shown to need correction. 
 Substituting for the representations of heaven 
 which have been commonly accepted self-sacrifice 
 as its law and blessedness, wide views of human 
 life and destiny, we think, are opened up to us. 
 This is the case, in the first place, as regards 
 Christian perfection — development of the individual 
 man. In most representations of the heavenly 
 state we start with perfection, and have therefore 
 no moral or spiritual goal. We start from the goal. 
 We are made perfect at once in holiness and happi- 
 ness. But that perfection, which is thus put on as a 
 wedding-garment at the gates of heaven, is obviously 
 imperfect, one-sided. Its definition is holiness in 
 the sense of mere freedom from sin, mere absence 
 of evil. It is perfection of another kind, the 
 definition of which is supplied by the life and death 
 of Christ, and of which He gives us the measure in 
 his sermon on the mount. " Be ye perfect, even as 
 your Father which is in heaven is perfect," is an 
 exhortation which does not refer immediately to 
 the precepts of the sermon as to not being or doing 
 evil, but to those which relate to being and doing 
 good — blessing them that curse us, doing good to 
 them that hate us. This is the reference of the 
 injunction on one side ; on the other, with equal 
 significance, it refers to Him who has just been 
 
50 THE SPIRITUAL THEORY [ii. 
 
 declared to be kind to the evil and the good, the 
 just and the unjust. Christ's "perfection," to 
 speak both of his life and his teaching, lay not in 
 not being or doing evil, but, above all, in being and 
 doing good — in charity, not innocence ; in a word, 
 in self-sacrifice. In this, as in all other perfection ; 
 iVi this above all, one alone is or can be perfect. 
 In regard to '' holiness," mere freedom from sin, it 
 may be different ; but, in regard to goodness, love, 
 self-sacrifice, all created beings in time and eternity 
 can only be at the most strivers after perfection. 
 In that view of the state of the blessed dead, for 
 which we have been contending, we find exactly 
 that theatre for this striving which the case 
 demands ; we behold the creature, among his 
 fellows, striving after the ultimate perfection of the 
 Creator — God is love — and in that striv^ing never 
 successful, but never baffled, eternally blessed, 
 ennobled, glorified. We catch here a wonderful 
 glimpse of that reconcilement of all antagonisms 
 which it is the glory of the cross to have accom- 
 plished or prepared — self and self-sacrifice, eternally 
 harmonized in the presence of the Lamb slain from 
 the foundation of the world. 
 
 Again, if the conceptions which have been sug- 
 gested as to the blessedness of heaven be enter- 
 tained, they open wide views of the development 
 of the race, and of moral satisfactions and moral 
 victories connected with that development. Wc 
 have already remarked that the common repre- 
 sentations of the heavenly state present no prospect 
 
n.] OF ANOTHER LIFE. cj 
 
 of a career to man as a moral being, no field for 
 the exercise of his moral energies. They reduce, 
 or rather elevate, all souls to a dead-level of 
 blessedness which rejects sympathy, and of per- 
 fection which scorns labour. Our pass-word, 
 self-sacrifice, opens heaven under another and 
 totally different aspect. Eternity, according to 
 our view of heaven, will have its history as v/ell 
 as tim.e. As on earth, the richest and brightest 
 and heavenliest rooms in our Father's house are 
 those into which they have pressed who have 
 passed into them through dens and caves of the 
 earth, not pursuing- their own good, but the good 
 of others ; they who, with many a day of anxiety 
 and toil and sympathetic pain, have turned dark- 
 ness into light, sorrow into rejoicing, evil into good, 
 in the lot of others; so the most enraptured 
 moments and the best rooms in the house of 
 many mansions, will be those in which the toil 
 and sympathy and anxiety of holier and more 
 loving souls, their eternal struggling and striving, 
 is rewarded with the knowledge of increase of 
 good, increase of love in other souls, in which it 
 is announced that again something has been hardly 
 and toughly won from the kingdom of darkness 
 for the kingdom of light. We do not, we say 
 again, speak here of the recovery of the lost. We 
 do not speak of there being joy in heaven over 
 one sinner that repenteth in the sense that would 
 be attached to the words in the present connection. 
 But eternity will have a history like time, a history 
 
52 THE SPIRITUAL THEORY [ii. 
 
 not of fixed misery here and motionless enjoyment 
 there, but of moral enterprise and divine self-sacri- 
 fice, on the one hand, always scaling nobler heights, 
 and darkness and imperfection always shrinking 
 into narrower vales. In the course of that history, 
 events will transpire, achievements will occur, 
 victories will be won, by which new raptures will 
 be made to thrill through heavenly bosoms, and 
 new hosannas to echo through heavenly places. 
 While we are apt to be discouraged by some pres- 
 ent aspects of the religious world, we look to the 
 kingdom of God of the unbounded future, and see 
 not only churches, but nations that have never yet 
 heard the Gospel, entering into it, and bringing 
 with them, as spoils of victory over the decaying 
 kingdom of darkness, fresh glory and fresh blessed- 
 ness to the realms of light. These are some of the 
 views of human life and destiny Avhich present 
 themselves when, at the word self-sacrifice, at the 
 sign of the cross, we see heaven opened. 
 
 A larger view of human life, we remark in 
 conclusion, than that which is commonly expressed 
 in calling it a state of probation, is suggested by 
 all this. Eternity is a state of rewards and punish- 
 ments. So is time. But neither of them is that 
 alone. The present state of things is an education ; 
 the future will be that also ; both an endless 
 development of the human spirit in true, and, 
 above all, self-sacrificing life. It is the key to 
 the riddle of human history, to all this otherwise 
 unintelligible world. It is the explanation of all 
 
II.] OF ANOTHER LIFE. 
 
 53 
 
 the perplexing contrasts of human existence, past 
 and present, poverty and riches, east and west, 
 barbarism and civilization, health and sickness., 
 evil and good, that they serve to individualize, to 
 differentiate human beings so as to give scope 
 eternally for self-sacrifice. Different ages, different 
 races, different creeds give us different men, in 
 order that differences and antagonisms, and with 
 them that which reconciles them all, the spirit of 
 self-sacrifice in Christ, may not fail eternally. 
 Earth has an infinite variety of spiritual climates 
 and soils, that humanity, transplanted to the one 
 climate and the one soil of the invisible and 
 eternal, may retain an infinite variety, and in that 
 variety a paradise for all self-sacrificing souls, and 
 for God whose life they share. Evil exists that 
 good may grow strong by conquering it ; selfish- 
 ness, the root and stem of all evil, that self-sacrifice 
 may never lack a duty and a reward. Sin, the 
 divider between man and man, and between man 
 and God, shall be, through Christ, the eternal bond 
 of human brotherhood and human blessedness. 
 And thus we understand how the least shall be the 
 greatest. Often, among the lowly and the poor in 
 spirit, among the " nobodies " of society and the 
 least esteemed in churches— not among the mighty 
 of society or the leaders of Christian sects — the 
 lesson of self-sacrifice has been well learned on 
 earth, proficiency in which is true, is heavenly, 
 greatness and glory and blessedness. Thus, too, 
 we understand the meaning of the words, " Blessed 
 
54 THE SPIRITUAL THEORY [ii. 
 
 are the dead which die in the Lord ; yea, saith tlie 
 Spirit, that they may rest from their labours : and 
 their works do follow them." Every man's work 
 follows him, every man's work is his reward. But 
 alone in the blessed work of self-sacrifice is there 
 final rest, that rest in congenial and perpetual 
 activity which is the true life of man. They that 
 have done that work, and whom that work follows, 
 will rest in heaven, not in eternal idleness, but in 
 much and blessed toil, and the more they have 
 done on earth, the greater to all eternity will be 
 their capacity for that toil, and for the blessedness 
 which attends it. 
 
 It will be said, no doubt, that in all this we 
 assume, imagine, think, suppose, much more than 
 we prove. And we have little to answer to this 
 objection, except that we have only been anxious 
 to show that, on the same ground on which Ave 
 knozv Kh'dX there is a future state at all, we know 
 that the law, and the blessedness of it, will be self- 
 sacrifice, and not what common representations of 
 it appear to indicate. 
 
 The tone of our remarks, perhaps, needs more 
 apology than the argument which they present. It 
 is, we confess, little in keeping with the majesty of 
 the theme. But we have been obliged to keep in 
 view, not so much heaven, the unseen glory, as 
 certain pictures of it which adorn the galleries of 
 religious art, and our remarks have therefore taken 
 naturally a critical turn. So much the easier, how- 
 ever, will it be to detect any fallacies which they 
 
II.] OF ANO THER LIFE. 5 5 
 
 * 
 
 may contain, and to give them the answer which 
 they crave, not from isolated texts, but from the 
 general tenor of divine revelation, and the witness 
 of the Spirit in Christian character and ex- 
 perience. 
 
 It will be seen that we do not, in any of our 
 observations, travel away fromi the ground of 
 Scripture, and the ordinarily received doctrines of 
 Christianity, to the ground of philosophy. We 
 have used terms like " self-sacrifice " in a popular 
 sense, and without attempting philosophical defi- 
 nitions. We have not discussed the being of a 
 God, the existence of a future state, or the authen- 
 ticity of the Gospels. Our object, as we have 
 before said, has been to meet common notions, 
 which VvC believe to be common mistakes, on their 
 own ground. Apart altogether from their exact 
 theological character, simply as common, and 
 therefore influential, the peculiar views of heaven 
 to which we have referred have an importance 
 which, whether it is deplored or not, is at any rate 
 unquestionable. It seemed therefore important, 
 as it certainly seemed easy, to oppose them on their 
 own ground. 
 
 If it be objected by some, who in the main agree 
 with our theory of another life, that, in substance 
 it cannot but be familiar to many thoughtful minds, 
 our reply must be that the theory to w^hich it is an 
 answer is certainly more familiar to ordmary minds. 
 Whether our theory of another life be correct or 
 not, it is certain, we may add, the theory of 
 
56 THE SPIRITUAL THEORY [ir. 
 
 Christian life on which it rests cannot be false. It 
 is true with regard to the present world, if not with 
 regard to the next, that charity is the bond of 
 perfectness, self-sacrifice the law of true life and 
 blessedness. If our theory of another life have any 
 truth in it, it is important for this life that as much 
 truth as there may be in it should be generally 
 inculcated in place of much which comes at present 
 from the pulpit and the religious press. The future, 
 or our conception of it, as we have before remarked, 
 is important to our present happiness. Our view 
 of the future is important also to our present 
 conduct. No doubt it is, first of all, a selfish earth 
 which makes a selfish heaven ; but there is a reflex 
 action, and a selfish heaven makes a selfish earth. 
 As long as materialistic views of heaven give 
 currency to the notion that, in heaven, all that was 
 of earth — distinctions of mind, character, life — are 
 obliterated in a uniform perfection and a monoton- 
 ous blessedness, so long will the belief prevail that 
 it is very much the same what a man's life is up 
 to the last moment, if, only just before that, his 
 sins are pardoned and his entrance into the abode 
 of the blessed secured. On the other hand our 
 theory of a future life, if it be accepted, obviously 
 leads to the conclusion that no action of our present 
 lives is unimportant in respect to the eternity which 
 is to follow. It is true, it will probably be objected 
 by many, that we seem, in adopting any such 
 theory, to declare the possibility of changes in the 
 condition both of the good and of the evil which 
 
1 1. ] OF A NO THER LIFE. 5 7 
 
 have been commonly pronounced to be impossible, 
 
 and therefore directly encourage people to live now 
 
 as if the issues of their life might be set aside or 
 
 modified in the life to come. But the answer to 
 
 this objection, we think, is not to assert the eternal 
 
 immobility of existence in the next world, but the 
 
 eternity of the issues of our actions in this world. 
 
 Our lives are fleeting, but our momentary acts are 
 
 eternal. They live in that which is eternal in us. 
 
 As regards sin, the wages is death — even if it be 
 
 pardoned. God is not mocked ; whatsoever a man 
 
 soweth, that shall he also reap. He that soweth to 
 
 the flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption ; but he 
 
 that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap 
 
 life everlasting. Not mere immortality, on the one 
 
 hand, any more than mere bodily corruption on 
 
 the other. He that soweth to the flesh reaps in 
 
 the spirit propensity to evil ; importunity of the 
 
 lower nature, in which there is the terrible force 
 
 and vitality of spirit. He that soweth to the 
 
 Spirit, shall reap in spiritual power and faculty, 
 
 in capacity for and enjoyment of life, true life, 
 
 eternal life. The spiritual theory which we have 
 
 advanced of another life, if it implies change in 
 
 eternity, rests upon the eternity of all that goes 
 
 on in time. 
 
58 
 
 III. 
 PROFIT AND LOSS. 
 
 " What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose 
 his own soul?" — Matthew xvi, 26. 
 
 The word here translated soul is, in tlie verse 
 immediately preceding this, twice translated life — 
 " Whosoever will save his life shall lose it : and 
 whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall 
 find it." We have to remember this in order to 
 avoid putting a false meaning into this great 
 question, and giving to it a mistaken point. We 
 have to remember that here the soul and the life 
 are not different, as the different translation of 
 successive verses would make them appear ; that 
 what is here meant by soul is not that something in 
 man which is supposed to be immaterial and im.- 
 mortal, but it is life in a general sense, and we may 
 of course add, specially that higher life of faith and 
 goodness which is man's true life. The question is 
 not, " What is the profit if a man is a gainer in this 
 world, and then a loser in the next ; a loser 
 because the immortal part is lost ? " It is, " What 
 
111.] PROFIT AND LOSS. ^^ 
 
 profit is it, what good is it, if a man exists and 
 yet does not truly live ; gains anything or every- 
 thing outside of himself, and in himself, though 
 he can be rich nowhere else, is naked and 
 destitute ? " 
 
 A hundred mysterious and perplexing questions 
 which have been raised about the soul — whether it 
 exists at all, whether it is immaterial, whether it is 
 immortal, how it can inhabit a material frame — 
 are answered or emptied of their meaning, at least 
 for our present purpose, when we take the word in 
 this sense, when we regard the thing in this 
 light. 
 
 The New Testament is a collection of writings 
 about the soul. But there is not one argument in 
 the whole collection to prove that men have souls, 
 or one disquisition to show what souls are. Just as 
 Christ and his apostles assume that men have 
 bodies, they take for granted that they have souls. 
 They have the same way of proving the existence 
 of the soul as of proving the existence of the 
 body, or of a material world, and that is by not 
 proving it at all, but taking it for granted. 
 
 What our Lord does to show that we have a 
 soul and to show what the soul is, is not to discuss 
 these points as a philosopher would do, but to 
 exhibit life which is that of the soul. 
 
 In fact the Bible is one long demonstration of the 
 same thing by the same method. What we call 
 Revelation is more than anything a revelation of 
 the soul, of man's higher life. As far as the Bible 
 
6o PROFIT AND LOSS. [in. 
 
 is history it is the history of a nation whose national 
 Hfe is not intellectual like that of Athens, not 
 political like that of Rome, but the life of the soul. 
 It is the history of a nation whose great men are 
 great, not in virtue of birth, or literary genius, or 
 public station, but in virtue of faith and goodness. 
 It is the history of a nation whose great epochs and 
 events are not those in which fortune or misfortune 
 has occurred in trade or diplomacy or war, in which 
 a battle has been lost or won, a king elected or 
 dethroned, but in which man's higher life has 
 prospered or suffered eclipse, God has been served 
 or Baal worshipped. As far as the Bible is his- 
 tory it is the history, not of mind, but of soul ; not 
 of politics, but of religion ; and it is so because it 
 is the history of a nation whose strange destiny it 
 was to be a sort of spiritual and religious stage for 
 all the world — their national life a kind of religious 
 drama or miracle play for all mankind. 
 
 As history, the Bible is the history of the soul ; 
 as a record of individual experience and as a 
 repository of ideas, it is the same. When you 
 have described the outward condition and circum- 
 stances of men like Abraham, and Moses, and 
 Samuel, and David, you have done almost nothing 
 to describe the men. It was not because, though 
 by origin a Chaldean shepherd, Abraham had a sort 
 of princely rank and station assigned to him in 
 the countries where he sojourned, that Abraham 
 is what he is in the Bible story. David would 
 hardly have been a less memorable figure in the 
 
III.] PROFIT AND LOSS. 6i 
 
 Bible if he had remained to the end of his days 
 a shepherd on the plains of Bethlehem, and never 
 filled an uneasy seat upon the throne of Israel. 
 These men lived a life which was too grand and 
 too lofty to be affected, except in the most super- 
 ficial manner, by accidents of fortune, by the 
 extremes of poverty or splendour. That life which 
 David described in the 23rd Psalm — a life full of 
 interest, variety, sweetness, grandeur; a life above 
 sense, beyond the visible ; a life on the shores of 
 which there heaved always the vast ocean of the 
 eternal truth and goodness and power and glory — 
 that life, and not the life which he led at one time 
 in the fields, another time in the camp, now in a 
 shepherd's cottage, now in a king's palace, was his 
 true life. It was the life, not of the body or of 
 the intellect, but of the soul. 
 
 As history and as biography, the Bible is a 
 record of man's higher life. As a repository of 
 truth and doctrine it is the same. The Bible, in 
 all its variety — not in spite of its variety, but in, 
 virtue of it — is an exhibition, on an immense 
 scale, of man's higher life in all its moods and 
 phases, in its failures and reverses, its heroism and 
 its commonplace, its poetry and its prose. In 
 the Gospel, that which is exhibited in all the 
 Bible is exhibited in its last and total perfection. 
 Christ's life is the soul, the higher life of man, 
 translated into the visible language of fact. Ask 
 me what soul is, and what is its worth, and if 
 I have to speak of it as a philosopher, I am lost in 
 
62 PROFIT AND LOSS. [in. 
 
 a thousand perplexities, I can give but the most 
 ambiguous and uncertain answers to a thousand 
 questions. But as one concerned about the life 
 and well-being of humanity, I have little difficulty 
 or doubt ; I have but to say, Consider that life of 
 Jesus of Nazareth, how absolute its poverty, how 
 utterly unattractive on the score of what belongs to 
 mere intellect and taste, as well as of what belongs 
 to rank and affluence, yet how rich and glorious 
 in something else, and something grander and 
 better ! No life so poor and mean as that, no 
 life so naked of all outward adornment, yet none 
 either so majestic or at the same time so 
 blessed ! He who lived that life had meat to eat 
 which his lowly peasant life did not afford, and 
 which no princely or imperial fortune could have 
 procured him. In that communion which he per- 
 petually enjoyed with an unseen Father, the Eternally 
 Good and Righteous, in that supreme desire to 
 save and bless which was His meat and drink, He 
 lived a life which, if you mean by life not mere 
 existence, unconscious, as of a vegetable, or dull, 
 as of a grazing ox, but variety and depth and 
 grandeur of feeling and purpose and experience — 
 if this is what you mean by life ; if one hour of 
 crowded life is worth an age without a name — He 
 lived a life in Nazareth, in Capernaum, in Bethany, 
 Gethscmane, Jerusalem, which makes all other life 
 appear in comparison but variety of death. It 
 is this life which He lived of which we speak 
 when we speak of soul. Ask me how I know 
 
III.] PROFIT AND LOSS. (^t^ 
 
 tliat soul exists, how its existence is to be proved, 
 v/hat its worth is, I answer all these questions by- 
 saying, It is that true, that perfect life of man 
 which was lived upon the earth by one man, 
 Christ Jesus, and is to be lived again by us. 
 
 It is when we understand this — it is when we 
 remember that the soul is man's higher life, the 
 divine life which is exhibited in Christ, that we see 
 the exact force and meaning of this question — 
 " What is a man profited if he shall gain the 
 whole world and lose his own soul } " What is the 
 good of having anything outward to himself, even 
 suppose it were the whole world, if he is himself 
 nothing, if his true life as a man is not exercised 
 and enjoyed } 
 
 In order to bring out the force of this question 
 we might ask a similar one with regard to many 
 things of more or less importance, — bodily life, 
 for example, a nation, a university, a church. 
 Suppose a man cut off from all, or almost all, 
 that affords pleasure to the senses, suppose him 
 rendered blind and deaf and dumb, suppose him 
 stricken with paralysis in all his limbs and faculties, 
 we can imagine in such a case life continued, but 
 v\^e might well ask what is the use or profit of it, 
 all that makes life a blessing having been struck 
 out of it. 
 
 Or, in place of bodily life, think of that of a 
 great nation like our own. Suppose we became so 
 corrupted by the love of money or the love of 
 pleasure as to forfeit our rank and influence as a 
 
64 PROFIT AND LOSS. [iii. 
 
 people — suppose all that has given this country 
 power and glory to have ceased — suppose that, in- 
 stead of planting civilization in distant continents, 
 we let all our institutions and agencies for educating 
 and elevating our own race fall into disuse and 
 decay — suppose we became a nation of shop- 
 keepers and vulgar pleasure-seekers — you might 
 well say. What though such a nation grows richer 
 and richer, what though its commerce extends from 
 year to year, what though its resources never fail, 
 what good is there in its existence, what sort of 
 national life is this, and what is the profit of it, 
 with all that is really great and good, all that is 
 noble and stirring, for ever departed from it ? 
 
 Or suppose again you had a University like this,* 
 founded in a remote age to foster learning and the 
 arts, to be a centre of intellectual light, and a focus 
 of moral influence, to be in fact a corporate teacher 
 and live a teacher's life, to perform long beyond 
 the three score years and ten of our mortal term a 
 teacher's duties, to be crowned with a teacher's 
 glory — suppose that you had such an institution^ 
 and that you found it grown forgetful of the ends 
 for which it was founded, anxious only to collect 
 its rents from old property, zealous only to husband 
 or increase its revenues, and suppose that you found 
 it attaining these ends, rich and despised, endowed 
 and useless, its history become not a record of 
 splendid intellectual achievement, but of dull and 
 plodding avarice, you might well ask, What is the 
 
 * This sermon was preached before theUniversity of Glasgow. 
 
iiT.] PROFIT AND LOSS. 65 
 
 use or profit to such an institution of wealth, of 
 fine buildings, of increasing revenues, if this is all 
 for which it exists ? 
 
 It is in this way that the question of my text is 
 asked — it is not, What is a man profited if he gain 
 the whole world, and his gain be counterbalanced by 
 the pains of hell ? it is this more direct and search- 
 ing question, What is the good of life to us if we 
 do not live ? what is the profit of being a man in 
 form and not a man in fact ? what is the worth of 
 existence if its worth is all, or, for the most part, 
 outside of us and not in us ? 
 
 There are two remarks which might be made 
 in illustration of this question, in the sense in which 
 I take it. 
 
 I. The gain here spoken of is nominal, ima- 
 ginary. 
 
 II. The loss is real and it is the greatest con- 
 ceivable. 
 
 I. I shall only have time here to say a few words 
 with regard to the latter point. As to the former 
 I will only say, that to lose the soul, not to live 
 man's higher life, is really also to lose the world, 
 whether you mean by it the material world, or the 
 activities and pleasures of human life. It is only 
 in an imaginary, entirely illusory way that any 
 man who loses his soul gains the world. 
 
 We gain as much of the world as really enriches 
 us, really enters in the shape of thought and feeling 
 into the current of our existence, really affords us 
 unmixed and enduring satisfaction, and we gain 
 
 E 
 
ee PROFIT AND LOSS. [iii. 
 
 no more of the world than this. We have of the 
 world not what we call our own, but what we are 
 able to enjoy and no more. It is not to gain the 
 world, to gain riches which can buy anything the 
 world contains, unless you can buy along with 
 it the power to enjoy it. Thus rich men gain the 
 whole world and do not gain it at all. They can 
 procure for themselves almost everything the world 
 contains ; travel where they will, and behold its 
 wonders and its beauties ; call to themselves from 
 its deepest mines their jewels ; from its farthest 
 shores their luxuries. Thus they gain the whole 
 world. Yet, after all, such men very often do not 
 gain it all: they gain less of it than most men. Their 
 fine wines and costly dainties do not afford them 
 more, probably they afford them far less, pleasure 
 than the coarsest fare, eaten with unfailing 
 relish, gives to a healthy day-labourer. As for other 
 enjoyments, such men have often very few, or none. 
 They have no delight in books, no interest in public 
 affairs, no zest for amusements. They have gained 
 the world, and do not possess it. Their world is 
 almost the poorest conceivable. It does not en- 
 rich them. It does not occupy their affections, or 
 fill up their idle hours ; it does not lend stir or 
 variety or charm or value to their existence. 
 
 Cultivate and expand the mind : in proportion as 
 you do so, though your fortunes remain stationary, 
 you gain the world. Narrow the mind, or leave 
 it in ignorance and darkness, and in the same 
 proportion you circumscribe your world. An 
 
 ^ 
 
III.] PROFIT AND LOSS. 67 
 
 uneducated peasant, whose day is divided by his 
 meals, his years by payment of his wages, whose 
 ideas are never increased beyond a very small 
 number connected with these things and with 
 the place in which he lives — give him the world 
 and it is no gain to him ; to him it is a poor world, 
 empty of all but a few, and those few most sorry 
 delights and satisfactions. On the other hand, an 
 educated man may be poor — the inhabitant of a 
 garret or of a cottage ; but the world which exists 
 for him, in which he lives, is rich and spacious. 
 In the observation of nature, in the study of books» 
 above all in the study of man, he finds deep, un- 
 failing delights. The seas which break on the shores 
 of other lands, the storms that sweep over them, 
 the streams that flow through them, the people 
 who inhabit them, are all full of interest to him, 
 and possess him and are possessed by him. In 
 comparison with that of a man devoid of intel- 
 lectual life, his world is one full of a thousand 
 various pleasures, and occupations, and posses- 
 sions. 
 
 But just as without a measure of intellectual 
 cultivation you cannot really or largely gain the 
 world, so much more you cannot really gain it 
 without soul, without living man's higher life. Mere 
 mental culture by itself has its pains and draw- 
 backs, as well as its pleasures and satisfactions. 
 Thus, it has happened that many a man of fine 
 intellect and fine culture has not only not gained 
 riches, but — a different thing — has not gained the 
 
68 PROFIT AND LOSS. [in. 
 
 world ; has missed all its common and uncommon 
 enjoyments ; instead of subjecting the universe to 
 the command of an imperial brain, has been but 
 " lord of himself, that heritage of woe." Without 
 something higher and better than even intellect 
 and mental culture and activity, you cannot gain 
 the world, except in a poor and illusory manner. 
 Only if you have the soul to scorn delights and 
 live laborious days, not for fame but for the good 
 of others, to spend riches and health and intellect 
 and life, not in ministering to selfish tastes, be 
 they either fine or coarse, but in doing good, 
 helping others to be better and happier, in being 
 to them a minister of the things which God has 
 given you, and a herald to them of the glad 
 tidings of God's love, and man's fellow-feeling 
 and charity; — only if you have such a soul can 
 you truly gain the world, enjoy its best, purest, 
 most various, and abundant pleasures and satis- 
 factions, and also have the sting taken out of its 
 worst trials and afflictions. The luxury of doing 
 good in the love of goodness, of giving rather than 
 receiving, is the best and richest which the world 
 affords. It was a luxury to enjoy which the Son of 
 man advised one whom He loved well, one who 
 had gained the world and had large possessions, to 
 sell all that he had and give it to the poor, and 
 come and follow Him. 
 
 The gain here spoken of, then, is illusory. 
 
 n. The loss is real and immense. 
 
 In the first place, the soul is lost by not being 
 
III.] PROFIT AND LOSS. 69 
 
 exercised. Life which is not effort, growth, in- 
 crease, is not life at all ; it is life lost. 
 
 All men have souls, all men are gifted with 
 capacities greater or less for higher life than that 
 of the flesh or of the mere intellect, else would they 
 not be men at all. But there are whole nations 
 and peoples, and those the largest in the world, 
 forming vastly more than half of the human race, 
 among whom this higher life can hardly be said to 
 manifest itself, except as a possibility. The 
 Gospel of Christ, our Christian civilization, has 
 called it forth, to some extent, among ourselves ; 
 but as for these nations they have yet to hear that 
 there is a gospel. 
 
 What shall we say of the heathen millions of 
 our race in this position .'' Shall we say that 
 because they have been denied what is necessary 
 to call forth any or much of man's higher life, they 
 are to be adjudged in some deathless part to un- 
 ending punishment in the world to come .^ Human 
 nature, not to say enlightened Christian reason, 
 shudders at the suggestion as a blasphemy. 
 
 Well, but if the heathen, who never heard of 
 Jesus Christ, are not to be condemned on that 
 account to eternal punishment — if their souls are 
 not in that sense lost — the question arises, Is there 
 any loss at all on their part, and, if so, w^hat } 
 Is it any misfortune, in that case, if they never 
 hear the Gospel } They cannot be condemned, 
 their souls cannot be lost, for never having heard 
 the Gospel. In case souls should be lost among 
 
70 PROFIT AND LOSS. [in. 
 
 them if Christianity were taught them, were it not 
 better not to teach them Christianity? 
 
 My answer, of course, is, Souls are not in danger 
 of being lost when they are without such light as 
 we enjoy. They are lost. There is no contingency 
 in the matter. Where man's higher life has not 
 been called forth, the loss is not what may be, but 
 what is — it is condemnation and death. Only 
 compare a savage of any country with a Christian 
 of your own land, and see if the loss is nothing or 
 little. 
 
 I speak of the heathen abroad, because what is 
 to be said of them has its application at home. 
 There are millions in this country whom, though 
 their deeds are wicked, and their years are many, 
 we ought not to regard as base and wicked men, 
 but as spiritual infants or idiots. They are heathen. 
 This is all we know of them, except that we know 
 also that their loss is unspeakable. Issue from some 
 home, not of luxury, but of Christian purity and 
 enlightenment, and peace, and find your way into 
 one of the lanes and alleys of this great city, where 
 life is not what it ought to be, but is what you might 
 expect it to be, low life, lane-and-alley life, heathen 
 life, and say, as you compare what you have just 
 left with what you see, whether, apart altogether 
 from hell, it is no loss to lose the soul, to know 
 nothing of man's true, man's higher life. 
 
 It is not only where people have never heard the 
 Gospel, or where every influence for good is coun- 
 teracted by a hundred more constant and more 
 
III.] PROFIT AND LOSS. 71 
 
 powerful influences for evil, that there is little of 
 man's higher life to be seen. There is too little of 
 it among Christian congregations. 
 
 And one reason for this which I may venture to 
 suggest is that Christian churches, as they are 
 organized and as they are used, do not always 
 serve to cultivate and call forth man's higher life. 
 It may even be alleged, I think, and with some 
 truth, that they often serve an opposite purpose. 
 It does not contribute to my bodily health and 
 well-being to spend my time in fingering my pulse 
 to see if it beats regularly, and in grasping the 
 muscles of my arm to discover whether they are 
 firm and sound. Use the body, exercise your 
 limbs, observe the laws which govern the use of 
 your physical nature and you will thus best secure 
 its health and soundness. 
 
 In the same way it does not save the soul to 
 entertain, as many do, a constant and worrying 
 anxiety as to the soul. Use the soul, exercise your 
 higher life, and you will thus save the soul, thus 
 promote your higher life. 
 
 This is a truth which many who frequent 
 churches, and not a few who teach in churches, 
 have yet to learn. When people meet together 
 twice on Sunday to engage in worship, and to 
 hear a sermon ; when they do so with the view 
 of attending to the soul, and saving the soul, the 
 result, no doubt, is or ought to be, that their minds 
 come to be well informed as to the theory of 
 man's higher life, but it does not follow that 
 
72 PROFIT AND LOSS. [ill. 
 
 there is any awakening or development of that 
 higher Hfe itself. Often the mind wakes, the 
 soul sleeps. The man is cheated. He intended, 
 perhaps, to become a good man; he becomes a 
 pedant in certain selected and assorted Scrip- 
 tures. So far indeed from its always promot- 
 ing man's higher life to use churches as many use 
 them, it has very often exactly the opposite effect. 
 If it issues, as it often does, in a man's whole con- 
 cern and anxiety being about his own soul, in his 
 saying to his soul, " Soul, art thou safe.^ soul, is thy 
 everlasting bread and water sure.-* soul, hast thou 
 much goods laid up for another world 1 " — if this is 
 what comes of going to church and hearing innumer- 
 able sermons, I think it may be contended that 
 churches, instead of saving souls, help so far to 
 facilitate their loss. For all this, I was going to 
 say, is disguised selfishness; but it is not disguised, 
 it is open and palpable. To be concerned, to be 
 consumed with anxiety, about truth and goodness, 
 and faith and love, which are man's true life — this 
 is a noble passion, one which makes a man a man 
 indeed. But to be concerned merely or mainly 
 about escape from punishment in the world to come 
 — this is not salvation, but selfishness. There is a 
 sense, in which we may literally say — He that 
 saveth his soul shall lose it, and he that loseth 
 his soul shall save it. 
 
 What our churches need to do to cultivate our 
 higher life is to convert themselves, to a large 
 extent, from schools for expounding it into 
 
III.] PROFIT AND LOSS. 73 
 
 societies for practising it. Let members of Cliris- 
 tian churches, instead of philosophizing one day 
 in the week about the soul, begin to show that 
 they have a soul ; let them exercise it every day, 
 exercise it in the brotherhood of the Christian 
 body, for the good, not of the Church, but of 
 the world — let them do this, and then, instead of 
 Christians being so hard to distinguish on week 
 days from other people, we shall know them by 
 their adding to their faith, virtue and patience and 
 charity and all nobleness. 
 
 I remark, in the second place, that the soul is 
 lost when it is perverted and corrupted. 
 
 It is perverted and corrupted in the sphere of 
 the lower life. 
 
 In this sphere souls are doubly lost, as a citadel 
 for which contending armies strive for weeks and 
 months is doubly lost when those who ought to 
 hold it are driven out and those who ought not 
 to hold it enter in. They are lost as a friend is 
 lost who becomes a foe ; they are lost as guns are 
 lost in battle when they are turned upon their 
 retreating owners. 
 
 When, instead of a man having passions and 
 commanding them, passions possess the man and 
 command him, all human life, all higher life is 
 lost ; it is gradually or rapidly narrowed, curtailed, 
 darkened, debased, emptied of its worth and value. 
 That temptation which is represented as having 
 imposed upon Adam and Eve ; which was pre- 
 sented to Christ, but did not impose upon Him ; 
 
74 PROFIT AND LOSS. [ill. 
 
 the temptation to seek wider, deeper, more intense 
 and thrilling experience of life in the way of in- 
 dulgence of sensual passions, in the way of taking 
 a step downwards from the highest manhood ; 
 that temptation is still whispered in every human 
 car, and in every human heart. Sin, eat of the 
 forbidden fmit, and ye shall be as gods, knowing 
 good and evil. Cast away moral restraint, checks 
 of conscience, early principles of rectitude, and 
 then, behold, from the high mountain of opening 
 manhood, all the kingdoms of the world, and the 
 glory of them — all these are yours. It is the 
 fiend who whispers it. All this is ihe grossest 
 of delusions. Instead of life becoming wider 
 and fuller in this way, its horizon continually 
 contracts, its kingdoms and its glory miraculously 
 collapse. 
 
 We see this Avhere something of the higher life 
 of man has once been actually awakened. If, for 
 example, a youth who has had the happiness to be 
 born and trained in a Christian household, and has 
 profited by its influences, so as to give promise of 
 a noble and a happy future — if such a youth, when 
 he leaves home and assumes the government of 
 his own course in life, forgets his father's counsel 
 and his mother's entreaty, enters the broad instead 
 of the narrow way, courts temptation instead of 
 shunning it, gives a loose rein to passion, — if he 
 docs this, and having done it, returns to the home 
 of his early days, he returns, no doubt with larger 
 experience, he has seen the world and life, but 
 
ni.] PROFIT AND LOSS. 75 
 
 with what result? Not to say that perhaps he 
 is less sincere and less affectionate than he once 
 was, the effect of his experience is that the simple 
 pleasures of home no longer please him ; he can 
 no longer, as he used to do, find books in the 
 running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in 
 everything ; no longer in vacant hours be sufficient 
 to himself and to his happiness ; no longer 
 believe as he did in innocence or purity, in un- 
 bending rectitude, in parental love. And in all 
 this, not to speak of the fact that his very pleasures 
 are but varieties of pain, he has not surely gained, 
 but immeasurably lost. With the loss of higher 
 life, which his experience of evil has cost him, all 
 life has lost its bloom and freshness and glory. 
 The old story has been retold of the Paradise 
 in which man was placed, and out of which for his 
 transgression he was driven. 
 
 It is an ingenious, but yet a just, remark which 
 has been made by the author of Gifts for Men with 
 regard to our Lord's story of the prodigal son, that 
 his language, even when he came to himself, even 
 the language of his penitence, is that of unbelief, 
 '' Make me as one of thy hired servants." The 
 emptiness of his own nature emptied to him even 
 his father's heart of all its wealth of tenderness and 
 pity and love. 
 
 The soul is perverted in the sphere of the 
 lower life. It is more important, perhaps, to 
 remark that it is perverted and corrupted in its 
 own sphere. 
 
76 PROFIT AND LOSS. [iii. 
 
 Where will you find a picture of human nature 
 in which there is less to love than that which you 
 have in the Gospel of those to whom Christ came, 
 and who received Him not — those sanctimonious 
 infidels and perfidious saints of whom Christ spoke 
 with a scorn which, as it came from Him and was 
 reserved for them, we must regard as terrible ? 
 
 If ever souls were utterly lost in this world 
 they were the souls of those to whom John 
 the Baptist said, " Ye serpents, ye generation of 
 vipers, how can ye escape the condemnation of 
 hell." 
 
 It reminds us that souls are perverted in their 
 own sphere — perverted not only by passion but by 
 religion. What is the effect of religious instruction 
 and religious observances among ourselves in many 
 cases } Not that men become more manly, women 
 more womanly ; not that church people become 
 enlightened, sincere, generous, magnanimous, 
 brotherly, sympathetic, beyond what is common. 
 On the very ground of religion there are many, 
 who, instead of loving more than others, hate more, 
 and hate more bitterly than others ; who despise 
 natural goodness without attaining any that is 
 supernatural ; who, because they must be saints and 
 meet for heaven, do not think it worth while to be 
 just and true and good in their daily life ; who differ 
 with neighbours and kinsfolk about a doctrine or a 
 rite, and regard them as Samaritans and heathen ; 
 who are members of a sect or party, and will use any 
 means to further its ends and confound its enemies. 
 
III.] PROFIT AND LOSS. yy 
 
 Here we have not the higher Hfe at its highest, but 
 all that is truly great and good and noble merci- 
 lessly extirpated from the soil of human nature. 
 If the light that is in you be darkness, how great 
 is that darkness ! If your religion is false, where 
 can you be in contact with truth ? Souls lost 
 through passion often keep a mysterious reserve 
 of goodness in which there is hope. It is not so 
 where religion is not love, but sect and party, selfish- 
 ness, spiritual pride, bigotry ; where religion, instead 
 of demolishing every wall of partition between 
 man and man, and between man and God, erects 
 new barriers and new divisions. Man's hig-her 
 life of faith and goodness is here under a double 
 curse — it is cut off at once from, nature and from 
 grace, it is severed at once from the world and God, 
 it has neither pagan health nor Christian beauty, 
 neither natural bloom nor spiritual glory. It is 
 doubly lost, because instead of leading straight to, 
 it leads straight from that point where man is united 
 with man in sympathy and love, and men are 
 united to God ; that point where in Christ all 
 things are reconciled to God, and God in his life of 
 love is all in all. 
 
 It is easy, I remark in conclusion, to exhaust the 
 world and life in all directions but one. This is 
 easy even for the few on whom the choicest o-ifts 
 of fortune and the rarest gifts of person and of 
 intellect have been bestowed. We ought indeed, 
 perhaps, to pity, as among the poorest and most 
 forlorn of their race, many a fine lady and gentle- 
 
y8 PROFIT AND LOSS. [in. 
 
 man lolling indolently in a carriage, going about 
 fussily frpm shop to shop, hasting from town to 
 country and from country to town, posting from 
 home abroad, trying to add to the stock of one 
 day's, or one month's, or one year's stale enjoy- 
 ments by a vain endeavour to escape from 
 themselves. 
 
 As for the great mass of men, they are by their 
 very condition denied all, or almost all, that makes 
 life attractive, beautiful, enjoyable. Their dull 
 round of drudgery, privation, hardship, beginning 
 in an unnoticed birth to end in an unheeded death, 
 excludes the rich man's comforts, and still more 
 the sweet solace, and the pure delights connected 
 with mental cultivation. 
 
 Even much study itself is a weariness of the flesh. 
 There arc moments when the poet, the orator, the 
 thinker, possessed, inspired with lofty and burning 
 thoughts, needs nothing added to the riches of his 
 existence ; finds life glorious and sublime. But 
 these are but moments even in the life of genius, 
 and after them and around them stretches the 
 weary waste of uninspired, inglorious, untuneful 
 days and years. 
 
 As wc think of all this, we are tempted to say — 
 Surely every man walketh in a vain show ; they are 
 disquieted in vain. Surely men of low degree are 
 vanity, and men of high degree are a lie ; to be laid 
 in the balance they are altogether lighter than 
 vanity. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Yet after 
 all this is not the truth. It is not the highest 
 
III.] PROFIT AND LOSS. 79 
 
 truth, but the deepest falsehood with regard to 
 human life ; it is the devil's most immoral and 
 most wicked whisper. It is the utterance, not of 
 perfect loyalty to the Father of All, but of rank 
 rebellion against heaven. Other life is vain — man's 
 true life is not vanity, nor vexation of spirit. For 
 all men, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, for 
 the drudge toiling in darkness in a mine, for those 
 whose labours are in the lofty fields of science, there 
 is a life possible, not remote, far off, unnatural, but 
 their own life, man's true life, life of faith and good- 
 ness, Christ's life in the unseen and eternal, from 
 which vanity is remote, to which vexation cannot 
 come, in which the rich find the true use of riches, 
 the learned and gifted of their gifts, the poor an 
 untold wealth in poverty, all men the grandeur, 
 worth, sacredness of this mortal existence. Learn 
 from Christ and by his grace to live not for self 
 but for others ; live not to do your own will but 
 God's ; count it your meat and drink to clothe the 
 naked and to feed the hungry ; think little to-day 
 of self and less to-morrow ; whether you are poor 
 or rich, let other men's sorrows and sins be a burden 
 on your spirit, because they also are the children of 
 your Father in heaven, and because for them also 
 your divine brother and Saviour tasted the empti- 
 ness of life and the bitterness of death ; go forth 
 into the world out of self as out of a prison ; live in 
 the life of your neighbours, your country, mankind 
 — in the life of the God and Father and Saviour of 
 all ; fill 3^our life with the interests which belonp- 
 
So PROFIT AND LOSS. [in 
 
 not to the fleeting moment, but to the unchanging 
 order of the universe and the mighty victory which 
 God has prepared in Christ from the foundation of 
 the world, of good over evil. Then life will be to 
 you no vanity, no vexation of spirit. Because your 
 soul is yours ; because your true life is your own ; 
 because God's purpose in giving you of His own life 
 is fulfilled — all things are yours, whether the world, 
 or life, or death, or things present, or things to 
 come, all are yours, and ye are Christ's and Christ 
 is God's. 
 
 In the same way, I will add, is immortality brought 
 to li^rht also. It is hard sometimes to believe in 
 immortality. Many arguments which are advanced 
 to prove it seem pitifully weak and poor. When the 
 clods rattle on the coffin, it is hard to believe in im- 
 mortality ; still harder when we see so much that 
 is base and evil in mankind. If all men were as 
 base as the basest, as mean as the meanest, it were 
 not difficult, at any rate, to conceive of man as 
 only a superior animal, who lives like other animals 
 a brief life, and dies like them an unmeaning death. 
 But when I see men who have an animal nature 
 and subdue it ; who are placed in a material world 
 and not confined by it ; who are above it, and see 
 and know and live infinitely beyond it; who have 
 thoughts that wander through eternity — when I see 
 men who are victorious over temptation, pain, death, 
 all earthly change and chance ; who do good even 
 if it be irksome, or painful, or dangerous, not as a 
 duty only, but as a delight ; who, in the bewildering 
 
III.] PROFIT AND LOSS. 8i 
 
 storms of this life, out on its surging waters, steer 
 calmly on to a haven of the existence of which they 
 never doubt, I cannot believe them deceived ; I 
 cannot imagine them mortal; I cannot say of them 
 or think of them. They are like the beasts which 
 perish. I cannot think of Him, the First, and Head, 
 and Saviour, and Captain of all these, as having 
 been left for ever in the grave ; I cannot suppose 
 the soul of the Holy One to have seen corruption. 
 Flesh and blood may turn again to clay; all human 
 glory may fade; but truth and righteousness and 
 love are divine and cannot die. A life which is 
 filled by these is a part of the life of God, who 
 inhabiteth eternity. It is impossible that it can 
 be cut through and ended by a grave dug in 
 consecrated or unhallowed ground. Thus, because 
 in Christ, life — man's true life — has been brought 
 to light, immortality is disclosed also. And 
 when we thus add immortality to life — when we 
 thus give to man his endless years, to the soul its 
 deathless term — how great the force of the ques- 
 tion, "What is a man profited if he shall gain the 
 whole world and lose his own soul } " 
 
82 
 
 IV. 
 
 CONFESSION OF SIN AND CONFESSIONS 
 OF FAITH. 
 
 " But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses 
 are as filthy rags ; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, 
 like the wind, have taken us away." — Isaiah Ixiv, 6. 
 
 The language of confession of sin is very different 
 from that of confessions of faith. To use a com- 
 mon distinction, the one is the language of the 
 heart, the other is the language of the head ; the 
 one is the language of feeling and of poetry, the 
 other is the language of argument and history and 
 science. Confessing his sins a man is, or may be, 
 or rather ought to be, so much under the influ- 
 ence of deep emotion, that he naturally expresses 
 himself, not in carefully measured and carefully 
 guarded terms, but vividly, passionately, pictorially, 
 imaginatively. A man confessing his sins as coolly 
 and drily as if he were stating an anomaly in 
 vegetable life or animal life, or an exception to 
 a rule of grammar, could not be supposed to be 
 candid, not to say devout. On the other hand, for 
 
IV. J CONFESSION OF SIN, ETC. 83 
 
 the purposes of creeds and confessions we choose, 
 of course, those terms and those modes of speech 
 which will serve to express, in the most exact 
 and literal way, our ideas of God, of revelation, 
 of duty, of the unseen and eternal. We eschew 
 poetry, and aim at an accuracy of definition satis- 
 factory to science. 
 
 You can see what the difference is from a single 
 instance. In the Psalms of David we have some 
 of the most memorable confessions the Bible 
 contains. In these wonderful utterances of a 
 penitent soul, there is a character portrayed which, 
 if you take what is written in a literal sense, is not 
 that of an eminently good man, but that of one 
 of the worst men who ever lived. When he says, 
 in the 51st Psalm, "Behold, I was shapen in 
 iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me," 
 or, in another psalm, " There is no soundness in 
 my flesh because of thine anger. Mine iniquities 
 have gone over my head ; as an heavy burden they 
 are too heavy for me," — when this is the way he 
 expresses himself, we should have to suppose — if 
 we forgot that this is the language of confession, 
 and in its very nature poetical, imaginative — that 
 David is here, by his own hand, and upon the 
 authority of the Word of God, exhibited as a born 
 and bred reprobate, a man under the dominion 
 of every conceivable vice, a man without one shred 
 of virtue clinging to him. 
 
 We know better, of course, than to construe his 
 language thus. But, absurd as the supposition is, 
 
84 CONFESSION OF S/N [iv. 
 
 suppose, now, it were needful to put the character 
 of David into a creed or a confession of faith, and 
 that the language he uses about himself were 
 taken to describe that character, you can easily 
 see that the effect would be to make him not 
 a good man with some faults, but a bad man 
 without one redeeming trait. If in a creed or 
 confession of faith you met with the statement that 
 David was a man in whose flesh there was no 
 soundness because of his sins, and whose iniquities 
 completely overwhelmed him, you would under- 
 stand that a horrible fact was stated in a plain, 
 literal, historical manner. David, in moments of 
 penitence reproaching himself in presence of the 
 Eternal Purity and Goodness, is one character ; 
 David, placed by us at the bar of impartial history, 
 is another man altogether. The difference is a 
 measure of the difference between the language of 
 confession and that of creeds. 
 
 Take, again, St. Paul when he calls himself 
 the chief of sinners. In that famous saying, he 
 expressed boldly, imaginatively, but all the more 
 truly and exactly, his feelings at the moment. 
 What was foolish and perverse in his earlier life 
 came back upon him now, in the way in which 
 folly and perversity only come back upon a sensi- 
 tive, noble, enlightened mind, and in a burst of 
 sorrow, passionate because it was vain, he thought 
 of himself and spoke of himself as if no one had 
 ever been equally guilty. 
 
 Would any one take that saying of Paul and 
 
IV.] AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH. g^ 
 
 put it where it would be read as if it were 
 literal fact ? Would any one, on the strength 
 of such a confession, write down the Apostle 
 Paul as the greatest sinner that ever lived? 
 He had his faults ; he was guilty (though in 
 ignorance) of one great error ; but even to compare 
 him as a sinner w^th men whom we could name as 
 living in his own time, or with men who have lived 
 since, would be ridiculous ; in that character, 
 with all his pretensions to pre-eminence, he was 
 indeed contemptible. 
 
 Or let us turn from Scripture to common life. 
 The line of the martyrs never ends ; and to 
 prolong the line, the best and purest natures 
 are often bound up in domestic relations with 
 the worst and vilest, perhaps the fieriest of 
 all possible martyrdoms. Imagine a case in 
 which a pure and good woman, mated to a bad 
 husband, and wronged beyond all but a woman's 
 patience, should, at his death, begin to accuse 
 herself in her grief, as if she had done and not 
 suffered wrong. You can fancy such a woman, her 
 old affection coming back upon her at the moment, 
 and filling to the brim the fountain of sorrow, 
 talking as if she had much of which to accuse 
 herself in presence of her dead, as if he had 
 been kind and loving, and she had been unreason- 
 able and impatient. A woman's love and grief 
 have no doubt often in this manner erred from 
 the truth of history. Thus, no doubt, have the 
 truest and the best often borne witness ag-ainst 
 
S6 CONFESSION OF SIN [iv. 
 
 themselves over the ashes and the graves of those 
 to whom they owed no duty they did not amply 
 pay. 
 
 How preposterous would be the effect if any one 
 could be absurd enough to take this language of 
 excited feeling, and give it a prosaic sense ; what 
 a ridiculous account he would invent of a good 
 woman's character and . life ; how completely he 
 would turn things upside down, and make black 
 white and white black. 
 
 I remark this distinction between the language 
 of confession and that of confessions, because it is 
 often overlooked, and because the fact that it is 
 overlooked has some strange and unhappy conse- 
 quences to religious thought and religious life. I 
 remark it especially because it is a distinction 
 which requires to be remembered in reading this 
 passage, and many other such passages in the 
 Scriptures. This language of the prophet, which 
 is that of confession, has been taken and transferred 
 to confessions of faith, written and unwritten (par- 
 ticularly the latter), and in this way has been 
 turned from figurative to literal, from poetry to 
 prose, from sense to nonsense ; has been removed 
 from a place where it has one meaning to a place 
 where it has another or rather none at all. 
 
 Besides overlooking the fact that the pro- 
 phet is not speaking here of mankind in general, 
 but only of his own countrymen, then in exile, or 
 returning from exile, and at any rate in disgrace 
 and trouble because of their national follies and 
 
IV.] AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH. 87 
 
 sins, — besides overlooking this fact which is not 
 without importance, people overlook the still 
 more obvious and important fact that this is the 
 lansfuaa-e of a soul wruns^ at the moment with 
 the bitterest anguish, the language of poetry, 
 not of history or dogma. In consequence of 
 this oversight, we have, in some confessions of 
 faith founded upon Scripture, and we have cer- 
 tainly in the popular mind, an idea of human 
 nature stamped with the authority of Scripture 
 which is not scriptural and not true. Pas- 
 sages like this, in which noble souls in moments 
 of hicrh-wroug-ht feelino; have declared that all our 
 righteousness is as filthy rags, and we are all as an 
 unclean thing, — passages like this are taken as if 
 the language were not that of feeling, but matter 
 of fact ; and the doctrine is drawn from them 
 that in human nature there is nothing good — 
 everything, even the best, is bad; the very virtues 
 of men "have the nature of sin." 
 
 It is not easy to see how such a perversion 
 of Scripture should have established itself in general 
 repute as Christian doctrine, but it is established. 
 There are perhaps few notions more firmly planted 
 in the common mind than the notion that what 
 Scripture has to say, and what Christians have to 
 believe, about human nature, is that the best of it 
 is bad. 
 
 What the effect of this has been and is, it would 
 be hard to tell. But that it tends, for one thing, 
 to obscure to many minds the importance of moral 
 
88 CONFESSION OF SIN [iv 
 
 distinctions and moral issues can hardly be dis- 
 puted. It is true that men are often better as well 
 as often worse than their creeds, and that those 
 moral instincts or dispositions or faculties or what- 
 ever you choose to call them, which are a part and 
 an indestructible part of human nature, assert 
 themselves in opposition to creeds when creeds 
 ignore or contradict them. But still, if it is literally 
 true that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, 
 and even our very virtues have the nature of sin, if 
 moral distinctions are thus in general indistinct, it 
 is inevitable that people should be tempted to ask — 
 what is the use, in particular instances here and 
 there, of being much concerned about these dis- 
 tinctions ; if white is black, if the difference 
 between virtue and vice is not clear at the best, 
 what matters a little more or a little less of the 
 one or the other ? 
 
 It may be said, of course, in answer to this, that 
 only the unbelieving and ungodly can argue in 
 this way. Granting this to be true, I question if it 
 does not make matters worse instead of better. It 
 introduces into the sphere of moral obligation a 
 distinction between saints and sinners, with the 
 effect, not of making saints more saintly, but sinners 
 more sinful. Those who are distinctly conscious of 
 having received grace to believe the Gospel, and to 
 live a religious life, feel of course, or ought to feel, 
 that as Christians they are bound to avoid sin, and 
 to live soberly, and righteously, and godly. But, on 
 the other hand, those who are not conscious of 
 
IV.] AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH. 89 
 
 having been thus called to be saints do not feel that 
 even as men, as rational beings, they are bound to 
 do the same ; they do not feel this because they are 
 accustomed to regard human nature as hopelessly 
 bad, and human conduct, except in so far as it is 
 distinctively religious, as all alike, or nearly all 
 alike, sinful. So that it just comes to this — where 
 this doctrine is in vogue, if the few consider them- 
 selves bound to be eminent saints, the many expect 
 to be, and are content to be, nothing but sinners ; 
 at any rate, are open to the temptation, which 
 besets sinners, if it does not overcome saints, to 
 apologize for actual transgression by original sin, 
 to make the depravity of human nature an excuse 
 for the disregard of moral distinctions and moral 
 issues. 
 
 If this be so, to import the language of confession 
 of sin into a confession of faith is a fatal blunder — 
 fatal to the moral and spiritual advancement of 
 mankind. Nor is this the only way in which its 
 fatal effects are to be traced. The progress of the 
 race, even in the matter of religion, does not depend 
 exclusively upon religious or, at any rate, ecclesias- 
 tical institutions and endeavours. Missionaries to 
 the heathen abroad and missionaries to the worse 
 heathen at home know how small a crop of anything 
 worth reaping is to be got by sowing the seed of 
 the Gospel in an unprepared soil. In order that 
 religion itself may have its day and do its work, 
 ignorance, barbarism, pauperism, crime, a host of 
 social and moral evils which afflict mankind, must 
 
90 
 
 CONFESSION OF SIN [iv. 
 
 be assailed and abated by other than reHgious 
 means. If there is any lesson which history con- 
 clusively teaches it is this. Christ came in the 
 fulness of time. An apostle, a prophet, a martyr, 
 may be as one born out of due season ; first-fruits of 
 Christian labour may be gathered anywhere and at 
 any time; but the birth and growth of Christian 
 civilization, the moral and spiritual elevation of a 
 community, depend upon conditions which are too 
 complex to be materially changed in one genera- 
 tion or by one kind of process. But nothing is 
 more natural than that religious people, of whose 
 creed despair of human nature is a leading article, 
 should ignore all this. Nothing is more natural, 
 not to say logical, than for them to say, Since 
 human nature needs to be completely regenerated, 
 as it can only be by religious means, there is little 
 use in trying to improve it by other measures. 
 
 Hence the common indifference and the occa- 
 sional hostility of religious bodies and religious 
 parties to movements and agencies, the aim of 
 which is to further intelligence and morality. In 
 matters which concern education, scientific inquiry, 
 free thought, political and social reform, those who 
 desire to see human nature bettered have often to 
 fear most of all the apathy or the opposition of 
 those who think that human nature must be re- 
 generated. In such matters, as often as not, 
 churches and religious coteries have been found 
 separating their interests from those of a nation or 
 a community as if they held a monopoly of human 
 
IV.] AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH. 91 
 
 welfare, and as if any infringement of their patent 
 must be attended with irretrievable disaster to 
 mankind. 
 
 A host of glaring evils, which are a reproach, not 
 only to our Christianity, but to our civilization, are 
 allowed to exist, not because they cannot be re- 
 medied at all, but because they cannot be remedied 
 in a religious manner, and by religious institutions, 
 People will give money lavishly to churches, and 
 to charities sanctified by connection with churches, 
 who will take no interest in institutions and 
 agencies which are as necessary as churches for 
 the bettering of our moral and social condition. 
 Talk to religious people — at any rate, the multitude 
 of unthinking religious people — about the lower and 
 lowest classes of society ; argue that the ordinary 
 conditions of life among these classes refuse to men 
 and women the right to be human, not to speak of 
 the privilege of being saints — Ah, they will answer, 
 suppose people were all well housed, well educated, 
 well paid, and ever so much were done for their 
 morals, how much would they be the better as 
 regards the one thing needful.'' And thus a doctrine 
 which removes all doubt as to the state of human 
 nature being deplorable, not to say appalling, 
 thwarts and discourages efforts made to im- 
 prove it. 
 
 Be this as it may however, there is no difficulty 
 in interpreting such language as this of the prophet 
 if we only remember what kind of language it is. 
 It is not the exceeding baseness of human nature 
 
92 CONFESSION OF SIN [iv. 
 
 which utters itself in this language, or adopts it 
 when it is uttered ; it is rather that rare goodness 
 to which here and there a soul like that of this 
 prophet, happily for itself and for the world, 
 attains. The greatest and noblest souls, striv- 
 ing after the loftiest and divinest aims, have been 
 most sensible of fault and failure in their lives, 
 and have in their confessions borne hardest upon 
 the weakness and sinfulness of human nature. 
 Not when men are sunk in depths of vice and 
 sensuality, but when they are struggling upwards 
 to difficult, impossible heights of virtue and noble- 
 ness, are they seized with the '' strong crying 
 and tears " which pours itself forth in such 
 language as this, in David's fifty-first psalm, 
 in Paul's " I am the chief of sinners," " Oh 
 wretched man that I am." It is not when you are 
 content to live a life like that of the common 
 multitude, engrossed in the pursuit of low aims, 
 actuated by mean passions ; it is when you are 
 in sympathy with the few earnest, true, heroic, 
 minds that are concerned above all about right 
 and truth and goodness — that you feel for your- 
 self and for others how poor and w^eak is human 
 nature at the best, and how full is human life of 
 error and sin and blindness. It is not the utter 
 depravity of human nature, but rather a rare 
 goodness and nobleness which expresses itself in 
 the language of confession, of which this is a 
 specimen. 
 
 Read it thus and it is true and simple. Ap- 
 
IV.] AhW CONFESSIONS OF FAITH. 93 
 
 parently when the prophet wrote these words his 
 countrymen had just returned from captivity, and 
 were again established at Jerusalem — Jerusalem 
 laid waste, and its crown and ornament, '"' the holy 
 and beautiful house of God," trampled in the dust. 
 Something [hadj been learned by the captives in 
 their long and miserable exile. There was a lesson 
 taught them now by their desolate homes and 
 overturned altars. But still, to an earnest and far- 
 seeing mind, there was manifest the need of a 
 much wider and deeper religious reformation than 
 had yet been accomplished. Before the nation 
 could be again what it once was, it had much 
 to learn and much to unlearn. It was a super- 
 ficial and partial work which adversity had yet 
 done in the way of curing the evils which had 
 brought adversity in their train. With painful 
 certainty and distinctness this was evident to the 
 prophet. His soul was burdened to think of it, 
 and he burst out, in his grief, with the confession 
 as for himself and his country. " We are all as an 
 unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as 
 filthy rags ; and we all do fade as a leaf ; and 
 our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away." 
 
 It is easy to imagine a prophetic mind of 
 our own country and our own time using similar 
 language to express similar feelings. We have 
 a great deal to be proud of as a nation. 
 Much that is British is great and noble. On 
 the surface of things we appear to be a very 
 religious, as well as an industrious and prosperous 
 
94 
 
 CONFESSION OF SIN \ i v. 
 
 people. Our Protestant institutions are, no doubt, 
 many of them admirable. But can you imagine 
 any very sincere, penetrating, religious mind, one 
 impressed little by material prosperity and sensitive 
 to moral and spiritual conditions, looking beneath 
 the surface of our national life, contemplating all 
 the dishonesty in trade and manufactures, the 
 corruption of morals among the rich, the low 
 intelligence, superstition, vile tastes of the mob, 
 the religious cant and conventionality, the bitter 
 rivalry of sects, which exist along with our Pro- 
 testant institutions, and not be forced to say — " We 
 are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteous- 
 nesses are as filthy rags, and our iniquities, like the 
 wind, have taken us away " — we are not a great 
 and glorious people ; "we all do fade as a leaf" .-* 
 
 As the language of confession — confession being 
 the act not of the vile but of the noble — we read this 
 language, and the application of it to national life 
 is plain. In this light it is no less easy to apply it 
 to individual life and conduct. Strive to be true 
 and good after the example of Christ, and it will 
 be easy perhaps to satisfy both the world and the 
 church that you are successful in the endeavour; but 
 if your aim is really to live Christ's life, you will not 
 so easily satisfy yourself — you will only at the best 
 succeed far enough to be conscious of immeasurable 
 failure. Compared with the good you ought to win, 
 any good to which you attain will appear to you 
 miserable failure. Compared with the purity, 
 nobleness, greatness, to which you aspire, that 
 
IV.] AND CONFESSIONS OF FAITH. 9- 
 
 which you reach will be felt to be almost sin and 
 misery. 
 
 Thus this language in its own light is true, easily 
 seen to be true. In any other light it is false. He 
 that doeth righteousness is righteous. If you are 
 using just weights and measures in your business, if 
 when you buy and sell you do so with a strict regard 
 to honesty and fair play, if you will not lie to please 
 any man or to avoid any man's displeasure, if you 
 are giving a fair day's work for a fair day's pay, if 
 you are straightforward, sincere, and kindly in your 
 dealings with your neighbours, and would rather be 
 much wronged by them all than wrong one of them 
 in the least in word or in deed, all this, be sure, is 
 according to the eternal law of righteousness ; never 
 was or can be, in the smallest degree, of the nature 
 of sin ; but is good, and only good. And be sure 
 that your duty is not to trifle with this, or dispense 
 with it as if it were rags, or as if it were filthy; but 
 it is to cling to it more than to life itself 
 
 I know that right things may be done from wrong 
 motives, and with inferior views, and I know that 
 they are not then of the same quality or the same 
 value as if they were done from right impulses and 
 with the highest aims. I know, too, that if a man 
 breaks one of the commandments he is in a sense 
 guilty of all, and cannot set himself up as a perfect 
 man, or as a more deserving man than another vvho 
 has broken all the ten. But then right is right, and 
 wrong is wrong, be it in saint or sinner, and nothing 
 can make these two opposites change places, or 
 
g6 CONFESSIOA OF SIN, ETC. [iv. 
 
 have the same character or issues. Wrong is eter- 
 nally to be feared and hated ; right is eternally to 
 be loved and sought after. Suppose you know you 
 are wrong in much, if there is anything in which 
 you are right, do not consider that to be filthy rags 
 — die rather than surrender it to force or fraud. 
 
 Instead of our reverence for the perfect life in 
 Christ requiring us to make light account of any 
 righteousness in ourselves or in our fellow-men, it 
 teaches us to prize it as our very life, nay, as 
 better than life. It is not by renouncing our own 
 righteousness, in this sense, but by clinging to it, 
 that we attain to the righteousness which is by 
 faith. To be faithful in that which is least is the 
 way to be faithful in much. It was not to render 
 our righteousness superfluous, or to certify that 
 any of our righteousness is worthless, that Christ 
 lived and died ; it was to make us truly righteous, 
 to make the tree good and its fruit good, to righten 
 us in our whole being and not merely in some of 
 our actions, to bind us in a new covenant with God 
 our Father, to be the servants only of righteous- 
 ness. 
 
97 
 
 V. 
 
 AUTHORITY OF TRUTH 
 AND AUTHORITY OF THE SCRIBES. 
 
 " For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the 
 scribes." — Matt, vii, 29. 
 
 Authority was the very breath of hfe to the 
 Scribes. They were the lawyers of a people 
 whose laws were believed to be divine, though 
 subscribed by the name of Moses ; and their 
 business was to expound these laws, and to act 
 as judges in the administration of them. Like 
 our own lawyers, therefore, they were constantly 
 referring to authority. Moses was their great autho- 
 rity. They counted the words he was supposed 
 to have written, and found in every one of them 
 a hidden as well as an open meaning. After 
 Moses and beneath him they placed the prophets ; 
 after them and beneath them the most famous 
 rabbis. They quoted the sayings of their great 
 teachers as our lawyers quote verdicts of courts 
 and decisions of judges. They judged by such 
 
 G 
 
qS authority of truth [V, 
 
 sayings cases, both civil and ecclesiastical, which 
 came before them. They enforced the elaborate 
 ceremonialism which Christ scouted and ridiculed 
 by the authority of their great lawgivers and their 
 great teachers. The thousand and one rules and 
 laws and by-laws and precepts and command- 
 ments about nothing or next to nothing — mint 
 and anise and cummin — which it was their function 
 to enforce, they enforced on the same authority. 
 They were for ever talking of authority — authority 
 of the law, authority of God, of Moses, of prophets, 
 of doctors. And in addition to all this authority, 
 there was their own. They had all that clerical 
 and priestly assumption and dogmatism with 
 which sacred offices inflate most amply the bosoms 
 of the commonest men. Church leaders and 
 office-bearers are even now in the habit of speaking 
 as if they were infallible ; though, . in the case of 
 the Pope, we who are Protestants dispute the 
 claim of any man to be so considered. No less 
 were the Scribes, who were at once the clergymen 
 and the lawyers of their people, in the habit, we 
 may be sure, of speaking with authority of their 
 own. 
 
 This accumulation of authorities which you com- 
 monly find in the utterances of divines, and which 
 was especially prominent among the pretensions 
 of the Scribes, has an imposing eff'ect on the 
 mind, at any rate when there is nothing more real 
 than itself with which to compare or contrast it. 
 Vou hear the authority of God — the Word 
 
v.] AND AUTHORITY OF THE SCRIBES. 99 
 
 of God — quoted as if there never had been, 
 and never could be, two opinions about what the 
 Word of God is ; and you hear this authority 
 quoted by men who speak as if they were quite 
 as infallible as the Word of God itself. It needs 
 courage and even audacity to set oneself up 
 against such authority, or to doubt or question 
 it. The great majority of men surrender to it at 
 discretion. Those who withstand it are few,, 
 and they are apt to suffer for their hardihood. 
 With this authority, however, in a fashion and in 
 a measure all their own, the Scribes were in the 
 habit of investing themselves. They sat in Moses' 
 seat, and spoke with the authority at once of 
 unerring God and infallible men. 
 
 On the other hand, and in contrast to them, 
 Christ was a teacher whose style of teaching was 
 marked by the total absence of authority. He 
 Himself was no authorized, or, as we should say, 
 ordained teacher. The church did not recognize 
 or employ Him. He was neither priest nor scribe 
 nor rabbi, but a Galilean peasant, with regard to 
 whom it was a matter of astonishment among 
 the people that He had sense, seeing He had no 
 learning. Imagine a ploughman or tradesman 
 among ourselves leaving his plough or his joiner's 
 bench to go about and teach and preach. What 
 authority would he have, suppose no sect coun- 
 tenanced him, or suppose all sects as far as they 
 noticed him agreed to denounce him .'* That was 
 precisely the authority of Christ. 
 
lOo AUTHOR irV OF TRUTH [v. 
 
 It is true that He spoke as if He were in direct 
 communication somehow with God the Father — as if 
 He were uttering the mind and will of the Eternal 
 not by guess, but by commission. But in doing 
 this He only did what all supremely earnest minds 
 have done in all ages and all places ; feeling that 
 what He had to say was the truth, He did not 
 hesitate to say that it was God's truth, and eternal. 
 
 Apart from this reference to God as the source 
 and fountain of truth, which at any rate might 
 have been understood to be only a brief emphatic 
 way of saying that truth is true — notice how 
 free His teaching is from the faintest tinge of 
 authority. Glance over the Sermon on the Mount 
 — the sayings here referred to as just ended. 
 It is not a sermon like one of our sermons, 
 bristling with quotations from the Bible and the 
 old commentators and divines. It is not a dis- 
 course like what we may suppose the discourses 
 of the Scribes to have been, filled with arguments 
 and sayings and conclusions of the doctors and 
 the rabbis. There are scattered references and 
 allusions to the law and to tradition ; but they are 
 brought forward in the way of illustration, not 
 of authority, commonly to enforce a forgotten 
 truth by contrast with a prevailing error. What 
 strikes us most in reading His sermon is that 
 He says what He has to say on nobody's 
 authority but His own, which was none at all. 
 He does not take )/ou to the books of Moses, and 
 beginning there, and going on through the follow- 
 
v.] AND AUTHORITY OF THE SCRIBES. loi 
 
 ing books of the Bible, prove to you by texts 
 and inferences from texts, that this doctrine is 
 to be received and that is to be rejected. Far 
 less does He refer to the standards of the church, 
 to those traditions of the fathers to which the 
 Scribes made everlasting appeal. You do not find 
 Him here or elsewhere quoting some great rabbi 
 as we quote Calvin. Except that He knows that 
 He is speaking the truth, and is therefore speaking 
 for God and in His name, He speaks for Himself 
 — a man with no authority, but such as was given 
 Him by His peasant's coat among a priest-ridden 
 people. 
 
 No contrast, therefore, could have been more 
 striking than that which existed between Him 
 and the Scribes in the matter of authority. They 
 had the highest authority continually in their 
 mouths. They sat in Moses' seat, and were 
 invested by Moses' authority with the authority of 
 God. By His very appearance as a peasant, as a 
 layman, and still more by His method of teach- 
 ing, Christ disclaimed and even disdained all 
 authority. Yet the common people who heard 
 Him were astonished at His doctrine, and what par- 
 ticularly surprised them was that He taught with 
 authority, and not as the Scribes. With that acute- 
 ness which belongs to the popular judgment in such 
 things, they felt that the Scribes talked about autho- 
 rity, while He had it; as some dotard, blind, old 
 emperor might prate of his empire in presence of 
 a minister, a born ruler of men, minister in name, 
 
I02 AUTHORITY OF TRUTH [v. 
 
 but emperor in fact. Not as the Scribes. What a 
 commentary upon all manner of papal and clerical 
 infallibilities — on the dropsical assumption which is 
 so common where sacred offices are common! Not 
 as the authority-men — not as those who if they 
 had not divine authority had nothing — not as those 
 who if stripped of authority were reduced to 
 shadows ! If the Scribes crucified Christ in the 
 flesh, He gibbeted them and all their posterity in 
 the spirit. 
 
 Supposing some real teacher of religious truth — 
 a discoyerer, not of new truth, but of eternal truth 
 — were to arise in one of our churches, and not after 
 the manner of divines, stringing texts together, 
 or piecing together obsolete doctrines, but freshly, 
 without fear, in accordance with the spirit of the 
 age, and with reference to the great wants of the 
 time, spoke out the things which be of God — 
 I wonder whether his appearance would not have 
 something of the same effect upon the Pope and 
 our infallible divines that Christ's had upon the 
 infallible Scribes — whether the real authority of 
 one would not turn to ridicule the feigned autho- 
 rity of many. 
 
 B'" this as it may, however, we have here 
 to note that the common people did perceive 
 the difference, or rather the contrast, in the mat- 
 ter of authority, between the Scribes and Christ. 
 They saw that somehow He had authority which 
 with all their pretence of it, they had not. How 
 do you account for that } I think it is not diffi- 
 
v.] AND AUTHORITY OF THE SCRIBES. 103 
 
 cult to account for it, if you will glance again at 
 the Sermon on the Mount. Remember what the 
 Scribes laid stress upon in their teaching. It was 
 rites and ceremonies, according to Moses; washing 
 the outside of the cup and platter, according to the 
 fathers ; petty proprieties, as between servant and 
 master, brother and brother, neighbour and neigh- 
 bour ; questions of marriage and divorce ; distinc- 
 tions between swearing by the temple on the one 
 hand and the gold of the temple on the other, and 
 between swearing by the altar on the one hand 
 and swearing by the gift upon the altar on the 
 other ; fasts, new moons, and sabbaths, words and 
 things forbidden or allowed on account of their 
 magical virtue, unblemished church standing. On 
 the other hand, these were not the things on 
 which Christ laid stress. He put all these things 
 aside with a firm, not to say contemptuous, hand. 
 He scorned them as paltry, or denounced them 
 as mischievous. Look at His sermon. He tells 
 you not to be of a sad countenance like the hypo- 
 crites, not to pray at the corners of the streets, not 
 to do what the Scribes said it was all the law and 
 the prophets to do. 
 
 What are the things on which He does insist t 
 Look, and you will find that His great doctrine 
 is that God is love, that He is best worshipped 
 and served, or worshipped and served only by 
 those who love good and hate evil. The prin- 
 ciples of conduct which He enforces are simply 
 those great principles of righteousness, truth, 
 
I04 AUTHORITY OF TRUTH [v. 
 
 goodness, chanty, which all religious and moral 
 systems aim at enforcing, and which, as we hold, 
 find in His teaching their supreme and final 
 expression. 
 
 Away with attempts to serve God by long 
 prayers or many prayers, by fasts and penances, 
 by sacrifices, by orthodox belief, by works of the 
 law which have no root in the soil of truth and 
 goodness. Love your enemies, bless them that 
 curse you, do good to them that hate you, pray for 
 them that despitefully use you. Be like God the 
 Father in His fatherly love. Be pure, be true, be 
 just, be generous, be magnanimous, be unselfish 
 and unworldly. This is the sum and substance of 
 what Christ says. In a word it is morality, of 
 course the highest and purest, and connected with 
 faith in God as the Father and Saviour of all, but still 
 it is morality. Blessed are the good. Cursed are 
 the evil. This is what all Christ's sayings here, 
 His blessings and His reproofs and His exhorta- 
 tions amount to. Not a word about justification 
 by faith, or the doctrine of the atonement or 
 church membership, or conversion in a moment, or 
 a deathbed repentance, or any one of all those 
 things of which, as concerning salvation, we hear so 
 much. Not a word about any of these things. 
 It is all — Blessed arc the good, the pure, the true, 
 the meek, the kind ; cursed are the unjust, the 
 impure, the worldly, the selfish. 
 
 Now, this is the secret of Christ's teaching with 
 an authority which the Scribes pretended to have. 
 
v.] AA'D AUTHORITY OF THE SCRIBES. 105 
 
 and had not. Unlike many of their doctrines and 
 some of ours, all this speaks for itself, and is its 
 own witness to the conscience. He that hath ears 
 to hear let him hear. There is no limit to the ques- 
 tions a man may put to me if I talk to him about 
 this or that theory of inspiration, or about the 
 Trinity, or the atonement, as if his salvation de- 
 pended upon the particular way in which he 
 views these things — he may have certain difficul- 
 ties in regard to these which all my texts of 
 Scripture and all my sentences from the fathers 
 and from the standards of the church do not suffice 
 to solve. There is no end of debate about these 
 things. I can understand why there should have 
 been debate. There may be more than there has 
 been. I cannot understand any one saying that no 
 debate should ever have been or ought to be. But 
 it is wholly different with those things, those great 
 principles of conduct, of which Christ here takes 
 account, and on which He lays stress. It is use- 
 less to recommend them by texts. It is absurd to 
 palm them off upon people by authority. They 
 are indisputable. If they are anything they are 
 their own w^itness to the human soul. They speak 
 for themselves. If there are two opinions about 
 them, there are only two — not two-and-twenty. 
 You must take one or other of two sides in regard 
 to them — that of reason or unreason. 
 
 Any one w4io, in any age or place, teaches in 
 the spirit of Christ, any one who teaches what Christ 
 here taught — love to God and man — needs no church. 
 
lo6 AUTHORITY OF TRUTH [v. 
 
 no Bible, no Moses, no Augustine, no Calvin, to 
 support him and back him. He has right on his 
 side, which, in the matter of opinion, is might. 
 When it is day no man needs to go about saying, 
 *' It is not night, it is not night." No more when 
 it is said, " Blessed are the good," do you need to 
 prove that it is quite true. All the world is on 
 your side, if not in practice, in theory. All nature 
 is on your side. All experience and all history 
 are in your favour. You speak to every man with 
 authority, because every man's bosom is the 
 witness to itself that what you say is true. You 
 don't need to quote Euclid or any of the philo- 
 sophers in order to demonstrate that two straight 
 lines cannot enclose a space. No more do you 
 need to quote either Moses or Calvin to prove 
 that to be evil and unthankful is to be out of 
 tune with the universe and with God, and so to 
 be cursed and miserable. Do good and get good, 
 because God is good ; do evil and get evil, for the 
 same comprehensive reason. This is a discovery 
 which is always being made afresh by religious 
 genius ; and, as often as it is made, it is acknowledged 
 to be true by others, because they have all their lives 
 been making the same discovery for themselves 
 only less clearly. Preachers who preach a system of 
 theology need to appeal to authority. They are im- 
 pressive, if at all, not from what they say, but from 
 the authority they claim for saying it. It is different 
 with preachers and teachers of religion — with those 
 whom God ordains to prophesy, line upon line, 
 
v.] AND AUTHORITY OF THE SCRIBES. 107 
 
 precept upon precept, that to love God and man is 
 all the law and the prophets. They don't need 
 authority to recommend their word. There is 
 authority in it. It matters not who said it first or 
 who says it last, because it is the truth. 
 
 This was the way in which it was felt that Christ 
 had authority. He ignored in His teaching those 
 things for which authority was required ; He in- 
 sisted upon those things that speak for themselves, 
 and carry authority along with them. These were, 
 — these are — the great principles of righteousness, 
 goodness, morality, or whatever you like to call the 
 nobler way of life. As He enlarged upon these, 
 harped upon these, people accustomed to get from 
 their religious teachers not lights for existence, but 
 marching orders for the day, were struck with the 
 difference. His discourse was nature speaking to 
 nature — a bird pouring forth its song into a listen- 
 ing ear ; not the voice of a watchman calling the 
 hour of night, and answered only by its echo. 
 
 There is a great distinction in religious matters, 
 to which all this points — a distinction between 
 things too trivial to mention, and things that cannot 
 be too often or too earnestly spoken ; between the 
 numberless commandments and traditions of men 
 and those few eternal truths which are all the law 
 and the prophets. Those things about which sects 
 and parties in the church differ and contend, in 
 proof of which we have to be referred to this text 
 and that, and to this authority and that — these 
 things are of small importance. The very fact that 
 
lo8 AUTHORITY OF TRUTH [v. 
 
 they are obscure and disputable is a proof that 
 they are trivial. It is those things of which Christ 
 here speaks — faith in God as good, truth, righ- 
 teousness, goodness ; it is those things about which 
 there is no dispute, with respect to which sects, 
 even sects, are impossible, that are important, infin- 
 itely important. Those matters of faith and prac- 
 tice that really concern us here and hereafter are 
 not left to doctors of divinity or to church courts to 
 settle and determine. They were determined from 
 all eternity, so that when God divided between 
 the day and the night, they were made as plain as 
 the difference between night and day. 
 
 It is still as true, then, as it ever was, that Christ 
 speaks with authority and not as the Scribes. 
 Those whose mouths are full of authorities — the 
 letter of scripture, standards of the church, opinions 
 of the fathers, doctrines of the reformers-- are of 
 very little authority to this unbelieving generation. 
 No one now is much impressed, not to say alarmed, 
 by decisions of church courts, presbyteries, synods, 
 convocations, councils. They speak of authority, 
 but they have little. Few are guided by their 
 judgments, still fewer are frightened by them. 
 There is a great disposition, not on the part of free 
 thinkers merely, but of all classes of men, to ques- 
 tion much which has been taught, and is still 
 taught upon authority by our official teachers. 
 Many of the traditions and doctrines of the fathers 
 to which divines still cling, and for which they 
 quote their numerous authorities, are openly dis- 
 
v.] AND AUTHORITY OF THE SCRIBES. 109 
 
 puted or denied, not outside of decent society, or 
 outside of the church, but inside both. Men's 
 minds cannot any longer be confined within 
 those narrow bounds in which they were cabined 
 when the authority of the church was absolute. 
 They must, have liberty to think, to inquire, to 
 doubt, where once it was imperative to hear and to 
 assent. 
 
 But while authority has thus departed from the 
 Scribes, it is felt more and more strongly that 
 Christ's authority is not only as great as it ever 
 was, but that it can never be less than it has been. 
 In spite of all religious inquiry, discussion, doubt, 
 denial — very much because of it — all that our Lord 
 here says in the Sermon on the Mount is felt to have 
 the force and certainty of absolute eternal truth. 
 However people may quarrel with systems of divi- 
 nity, or ecclesiastical institutions and arrangements, 
 no sane man comes forward to deny that Christi- 
 anity, as it is here exhibited by its Author, is truth. 
 No man has said, or will say, that the religion 
 here expounded is likely to be soon superseded by 
 something higher and better. Just because men 
 question the authority of other teachers, so much 
 the better is it seen how unquestionable is the 
 authority of Christ. Time has shaken one ecclesi- 
 astical system after another to its foundation ; but 
 time for that reason, only reveals more clearly that 
 the foundation on which the Church rests is the 
 Rock of Ages. 
 
 Here, then, we touch upon a principle with regard 
 
no AUTHORITY OF TRUTH [v. 
 
 to religion, which is not commonly affirmed, but 
 commonly denied, and yet is certain — viz., that in 
 its sphere authority has no place. 
 
 If it enters there, it is but to blight and to destroy. 
 I may take upon the credit, I may receive upon the 
 authority of another man, statements about many 
 things of which I have myself no knowledge, and 
 with regard to which I have no experience. If I 
 am to know many things at all, or know them well, 
 I must do so. I may believe, for example, upon 
 the authority of travellers like Livingstone and 
 Baker, that there is a great lake, or system of lakes, 
 in the centre of Africa. Except for what I know 
 from such authorities as these, I know nothing, 
 and could know nothing, on the subject. I may 
 hold, in the same way, on the authority of political 
 economists, that there is always a certain proportion 
 between wages, which is the price of labour, and the 
 price of food. Knowing nothing of these matters 
 from my own observation, I may yet trust the 
 observation of others in regard to them as if it 
 were my own. But the vital difference between 
 all such things, and those things about Avhich 
 religion properly so called is concerned is, that it 
 docs not matter whether I believe these thincrs at all, 
 certainly not whether I believe them with this or 
 that degree of conviction or of certainty, whereas 
 on the other hand, my religious beliefs being the ex- 
 pression of my soul, the question whether they are 
 true or not, and again,whether they are of this or that 
 degree of strength, is a matter of the same impor- 
 
v.] AND AUTHORITY OF THE SCRIBES. m 
 
 tance as my soul. Whether I believe in Living- 
 stone's discoveries, or the aphorisms of political 
 economists at all; whether I believe in them a little 
 more or a little less, is no great matter ; but it is a 
 matter of transcendent consequence whether I 
 believe in, that is to say, whether I love, truth and 
 righteousness and goodness, and not only whether I 
 believe in them, but how I believe in them. It is one 
 thing for me to appreciate truth and goodness as 
 possibly important, or what I should wish to con- 
 sider important, or what I have proved to be 
 important, and another thing to love truth and 
 goodness with all my soul and strength and heart 
 and mind. In the matter of religious beliefs de- 
 gree is everything. The question is not, Do you 
 believe.'' but, How do you believe, to what extent, 
 in what fashion.'' If, then, from mere indolence and 
 sluggishness of mind, or from fear of the displeasure 
 of some one, God or man, I accept my religious 
 beliefs upon authority, instead of making inquiry 
 for myself, having my own thoughts, exercising my 
 own heart and soul, in regard to them, authority 
 does not aid my beliefs, it weakens or destroys 
 them. The authority of truth is all that it is good 
 for any soul that religious beliefs should have. If 
 any other authority be added to them, their force 
 and virtue is so far not strengthened but impaired. 
 The custom, then, of looking to authority and not to 
 truth, in religious questions and religious affairs, is 
 injurious and destructive. It diverts the mind 
 from the task of obtaining a certainty worth some- 
 
112 AUTHORITY OF TRUTH [v. 
 
 thing, by giving it beforehand a certainty which is 
 worth nothing. 
 
 Apply this to some of those things which rightly 
 or wrongly are commonly considered religious. 
 There is a theory of the inspiration of the Bible — 
 that every word of it was dictated by God just as 
 it has been written. If a man believes this, he 
 believes it upon authority ; he can know it no other 
 way. Now, this is what is usually believed about 
 the Bible, this and nothing more, and nothing less. 
 What is the result .'' In many cases people, satis- 
 fied with holding a theory about the Bible, don't 
 understand the Bible, don't try to understand it as 
 they would try to understand another book ; don't 
 use it as they would use another book ; but string 
 together sentences from it, which make sometimes 
 sense and sometimes nonsense. On the other 
 hand, suppose that a man has no theory of 
 inspiration thrust upon him, but goes to his Bible 
 and finds in it a rare, an unequalled exhibition 
 of the highest wisdom and the noblest humanity, 
 and has therefore to say to himself — I don't 
 know how all this is here, but here it is, and 
 it makes this book divine ; and as for me, 
 it is my delight to pore over it, and to study it — 
 that man's belief about the Bible, because it is his 
 own, and because no authority has imposed it on 
 him, is worth something to him, and the book is 
 worth much to him in virtue of his belief. 
 
 Take, again, the great doctrine of Christ's divin- 
 ity. Whatever authority churches possess or claim 
 
v.] AND AUTHORITY OF THE SCRIBES. u^ 
 
 is exerted peremptorily to guard that doctrine. Of 
 all those, however, who say Lord, Lord, to Christ, 
 who have been taught to affirm His divinity, 
 and affirm it with more or less zeal ; of all 
 these, how many are there with whom this 
 means any intelligent belief in Him as a divine 
 being ; whose lives are better or worse for 
 believing it ; to whom it is anything but a barren, 
 abstract proposition in theology ? Is it not 
 the case that the great majority, or at any rate a 
 very large number in all our churches, finding 
 themselves required by authority to say that 
 Christ is the second person in the Trinity, con- 
 tent themselves with saying it, not inquiring how 
 He is so, or whether they really believe He is 
 so or not ? Out of empty minds they give Him 
 an empty title. 
 
 I do not mean, of course, to deny that there are 
 many Christians to whom the belief in Christ's 
 divinity is more than a bare and barren assent to a 
 theological proposition. I know that there are 
 many Christians to whom that belief is not only 
 the leading article of a creed, but the soul of 
 their Christian life. Though the doctrine comes 
 to them with authority, they do not believe it on 
 that ground ; they believe it not because they 
 have been told to believe it, but because they 
 know it, because it harmonizes with their other 
 beliefs, because their spiritual experience owns its 
 influence. 
 
 Let us, however, set aside authority altogether, and 
 
 H 
 
114 AUTHORITY OF TRUTH [v. 
 
 all that authority requires us to hold about Jesus 
 Christ, and let us look at His life as it is here 
 written, and as we would look at any other life ; 
 let us study it for ourselves, observe its purity, 
 its sweetness, its greatness. If doing so, we are 
 struck, as we may well be, with admiration and 
 wonder, if we feel within ourselves — Here is what we 
 cannot enough admire or revere or love ; here is all 
 that we have dreamed, or can imagine of beauty 
 and nobleness ; here is all that we have ever con- 
 ceived of in the way of goodness ; since divine is a 
 name for the highest and the best, this is divine — 
 if, I say, simply looking at Christ's life as it 
 is, and thinking our own thoughts about it, we 
 thought this, would this not amount to some- 
 thing of a genuine belief in Christ ? As our 
 own, the result and expression of our unaided, 
 unbiassed, unforced judgment, would not this be a 
 good substitute, as regards the making of our lives 
 Christ-like, for all that authority can do for us, 
 — at any rate for all that authority does for most 
 of us ? 
 
 Passing from these things, and coming back 
 once more to those of which Christ here speaks 
 — trath and righteousness and goodness — I ven-. 
 ture to say, last of all, that we have to beware 
 of the influence of authority in respect to these 
 things. The letter (another's word) killeth, the 
 spirit (our own thought if it is pure) maketh 
 alive. As so much of St. Paul's argumentation 
 is intended to show, any law, but that of the 
 
v.] AND AUTHORITY OF THE SCRIBES. 115 
 
 Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (which is no law), is a 
 law of sin and death. To many Christians Chris- 
 tianity is but a law of that kind. The things 
 they do, in the name of religion, even their 
 charity, they do, looking always to authority, to 
 the letter of Scripture, to certain established 
 customs and rules. They observe Sundays and 
 celebrate Sacraments, they distribute tracts, give 
 alms, convert the heathen. It is all done by 
 rule, under authority. The question always is — 
 Is this commanded } Is that forbidden t What 
 is our warrant for this t Have we any authority 
 for that .'* 
 
 The outcome is often a sorry thing in the 
 way of Christian worth and nobleness. There 
 are strict Christians of strict sects, whose righ- 
 teousness, warranted and stamped with authority, 
 is yet only the righteousness of the Scribes and 
 Pharisees over again — righteousness which dis- 
 owns nature and is disowned by grace. Their 
 goodness is churchy, not human or divine. They 
 hold a man in greater detestation for heresy 
 than for villany, for a theological opinion which is 
 supposed to be wrong than for a life in which 
 there is nothing right. They subscribe to heathen 
 missions, neglect their poor relations, and are un- 
 mannerly with their neighbours. They make 
 money by tricks of trade, build churches which are 
 tombs of the prophets and museums of their diy 
 bones, and suffer the poor and condemn the poor 
 to live in hovels. They hold a man in esteem if 
 
116 A UTHORITY OF TR UTH [v. 
 
 he is rich and goes to church. If a man is a 
 steady church-goer he is a good man, though he 
 deals in worthless goods, or cheats every market- 
 day, or is a faithless servant or a heartless ac- 
 quaintance. If a poor man is ever so honest, and 
 industrious, and kind, he is only a moral man, 
 unless he make a great profession of religion. Are 
 these Christ's ideas of truth and goodness as they 
 are here expressed 1 Is this goodness anything 
 like Christ's } 
 
 But suppose now, on the other hand, a man has 
 learned from the example of Jesus Christ, and by 
 His grace, sincerely to love whatever is good, true, 
 pure, lovely, of good report ; to love it for its own 
 sake, to love it with all his soul, and to hate what 
 is opposed to it with all his heart — suppose, I say, 
 a man loves truth and goodness thus, and thus 
 hates falsehood and iniquity, he will not need 
 to ask always what is commanded or forbidden, but 
 he will ask what is true or false, what is right or 
 wrong, what is lovely or unseemly. So, if he has 
 any goodness it will not be churchy or onesided ; 
 it will be more than that of the Scribes and 
 Pharisees ; it will not put mint and anise and 
 cummin in place of honesty and kindness ; it will 
 not rob Peter to pay Paul ; it will not starve work- 
 men at home to support missionaries to the heathen 
 abroad ; it will not make up for a deficiency of 
 generosity by superfluous devoutness ; it will not 
 compound for niggardliness by zeal against innova- 
 tions in doctrine or public worship; it will not snub 
 
v.] AND AUTHORITY OF THE SCRIBES. ny 
 
 honest doubt to make room for blatant piety ; it 
 will not expose its owner to the censure which 
 once struck the religious world heavily in the words 
 — These things — justice and righteousness and 
 mercy — ye ought to have done, and not to leave 
 the other undone. 
 
 To me it seems, I confess, that there is not a 
 worse sign of our religious state than the pre- 
 valence of the alarm lest science, truly or falsely 
 so called, should abolish Christianity altogether. 
 Inquiry, even if there is doubt along with it 
 — as doubt there must be where there is in- 
 quiry — is to be courted rather than feared by 
 the disciples of the Preacher of the Sermon 
 on the Mount. Those who are afraid of the 
 results of inquiry or of scepticism in regard to 
 what He taught are mistaken. They are jealous 
 of the authority of churches, not of His ; zealous 
 for the continuance of church systems, not for the 
 coming of His kingdom. There is no fear of His 
 authority. To be afraid of what may happen to it 
 is to suppose that the eternal order of the world 
 may chance to fail. Abolish truth and goodness 
 from the world and man will be abolished ; but 
 only then will the Christianity of Christ suffer 
 loss, or be numbered with perishable earthly 
 things. God remains, though doctors of divinity 
 come and go. Though councils of the church dis- 
 pute or condemn councils, though theologies con- 
 fute theologies, " God was, and is, and is to be." 
 He will not suffer an ingenious sceptic in his study, 
 
ii8 AUTHORITY OF TRUTH, ETC. [v. 
 
 or an unbelieving generation in its customs, to 
 upset the law by which truth and goodness have a 
 place among the things that are, and Christianity, 
 which is the doctrine according to goodness and 
 truth, is established in the earth. If it was said by 
 a fond father of his son, it is true of Christ, " His 
 name shall endure for ever; his name shall be 
 continued as long as the sun ; and men shall be 
 blessed in him, and all nations shall call him 
 blessed." 
 
119 
 
 VT. 
 
 THE FAITH OF MOSES AND THE 
 FAITH OF CHRIST. 
 
 "By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be 
 called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer 
 affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of 
 sin for a season : esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches 
 than the treasures in Egypt : for he had respect unto the recom- 
 pence of the reward." — Hebrews, xi, 24-26. 
 
 It Is not, of course, as random recollections of the 
 saints that we are to read the verses of this chapter. 
 They are biographical notices taken from the Old 
 Testament to illustrate that principle of faith, of 
 which the New Testament has so much to say. 
 In this view the variety of character and of action 
 which finds a place in this chapter is itself a lesson 
 on the subject ; it reminds us that faith is the 
 spring of all noble life, that all that is great and 
 good in human character and human history is 
 from one root — faith. Characters more dissimilar 
 than those of Abraham and his wife Sarah, Jacob, 
 Moses, Rahab, Samson, could not be imagined. 
 But, according to the Scriptures, they all lived noble 
 
I20 THE FAITH OF MOSES [vr. 
 
 lives, or did noble deedS; and in every case it was 
 by faith. Their deeds were as various as their 
 characters. Noah built an ark, Abraham offered 
 up Isaac, Rahab received the spies with peace. 
 Yet all these deeds alike were deeds of faith. 
 There is, I say, an illustration (and a notable one) 
 of faith in this very variety. Very narrow views 
 are possible, and indeed common, on the subject 
 of faith. We are apt, it would appear, to limit 
 it to one type of character and actions of one 
 pattern, especially to limit it to some particular 
 fashion not of natural goodness, but of church 
 piety. Possibly, therefore, no instruction on the 
 subject of faith is more needful for us than what 
 we get on the very face of this chapter, and from 
 the fact that it enrols in its list of saints and heroes 
 and enshrines in its roll of noble deeds a variety 
 of character and action as great as could be ima- 
 gined. 
 
 Here is one illustration of faith — perhaps the 
 greatest and clearest of the whole number — 
 Moses. 
 
 " By faith Moses, when he was come to years, 
 refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, 
 choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people 
 of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a 
 season." 
 
 According to the history, he was rescued from 
 the fate to which the male children of his people 
 were condemned, drawn out of the Nile in his 
 ark of bulrushes by Pharaoh's daughter, brought 
 
VI.] AND THE FAITH OF CHRIST. 121 
 
 Up by her, and adopted as her son. He was, 
 therefore, one of those happy or unhappy mor- 
 tals who seem born rather to enjoy pleasures 
 than to do any work or be of any use. He was 
 learned, we are told, in all the learning of the 
 Egyptians. The court at which he lived (sup- 
 posing him to have lived at court) was refined 
 and luxurious to a proverb. As the son of 
 Pharaoh's daughter he would have at his com- 
 mand all that is called pleasure : pleasures of 
 intellect and taste, besides all the pleasures of 
 sense, the pleasures of the man of the world, and 
 of the man of fashion. And he did enjoy these 
 pleasures for a while ; as the phrase " when he 
 was come to years " suggests, he was an Egyptian 
 in his feelings and habits till then, because, reared 
 as he had been, it was natural and pleasant to be 
 an Egyptian. There never was a great man 
 whose temptations were not as great as his gifts. 
 And in his youth, his Egyptian youth, the great- 
 est man in the Bible except Christ was one who 
 knew what were the fascinations of idleness, and 
 luxury, and high station, as well as any man then 
 living. 
 
 I do not mean to say that his pleasures, those 
 open to him in the position he held, were sins. I 
 do not mean to say that all of them or any of them 
 were sins. By no means. His pleasures need not 
 have been, and, up to a certain point in his 
 career, when he renounced them, were not, sinful 
 pleasures. Leave everything else out of account, 
 
122 THE FAITH OF MOSES [vi. 
 
 his rank, his influence, his command of comfort 
 and luxury, his leisure and opportunities for re- 
 fined amusements and mental cultivation — these 
 were pleasures which he no doubt enjoyed. 
 There was no sin in his enjoying these pleasures. 
 In ordinary circumstances, with reference to any 
 general laws or rules of human conduct, he was 
 at liberty to enjoy these pleasures as much as 
 he liked. In themselves and apart from duties 
 with which they might chance to be incompatible, 
 these things were pleasures, and yet not in the 
 smallest degree sins. It was what made them 
 sins to Moses which shows us what sort of man 
 he was, what nobleness of character there was in 
 him by faith. It is, I repeat, the way in which 
 pleasures which were not sins became sins to him 
 that is the very thing we have to note, if we wish 
 to understand the faith of Moses. 
 
 There is an exquisite simplicity in the story 
 in Exodus concerning the change in Moses from 
 youth to man, from Egyptian to Israelite, from 
 courtier to patriot. ''And it came to pass in those 
 days, when Moses was grown, that he went out 
 unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and 
 he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of 
 his brethren, and he looked this way and that way, 
 and when he saw that there was no man, he slew 
 the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand." He went 
 out, not as one who had never before had permis- 
 sion to leave home, but as one who, with mature 
 intellect, through effect of years which bring the 
 
VI.] AND THE FAITH OF CHRIST. 123 
 
 philosophic mind, had begun to think for himself 
 and see with his eyes ; and when he went out, this 
 was what he saw among his brethren — a sight 
 which at once broke up the day-dream in which his 
 life so far had passed, and brought him with a shock 
 face to face with the world, miserable w^orld as it 
 actually was. The deed which he did was unpre- 
 meditated, the work of a moment. It was done not 
 without alarm; but it marked the critical moment 
 when his life passed into a higher and nobler phase. 
 He went forth an Egyptian courtier ; he came 
 back a Hebrew patriot. After this, whatever they 
 might be to others, the pleasures of Pharaoh's 
 court were to him the pleasures of sin : the best 
 and most refined and most innocent of these 
 pleasures were sinful. To go on enjoying his old 
 pleasures after this wakening up of his manhood, 
 this recognition of the fact that there was an 
 oppressed people in existence, and that that 
 people was his people, was a crime of which he 
 could not be guilty. To remain in a position in 
 which his voice could not be raised in favour of 
 justice and humanity ; to be openly on the side 
 of oppression and wrong; to pass life in comfort 
 and luxury while his kindred and his country- 
 men groaned at their terrible tasks, and writhed 
 under the lash of the oppressor: this was sin 
 to him. There was in him that nobleness of 
 nature which, besides tending to sympathy with 
 the oppressed, revolts from all that is selfish and 
 cruel ; and this nobleness was stirred up in him, 
 
J 24 THE FAITH OF MOSES [vi. 
 
 by seeing the state of his kindred, and compar- 
 ing it with his own. This was his faith. Faith 
 saved him from being content to be idle and 
 useless, and gave him zeal and courage to play 
 the part of a man and of a hero in the libera- 
 tion of his people. Faith made him refuse idleness 
 and luxury as sin, when he saw that there was 
 work to be done and suffering to be endured in a 
 good cause. Faith made him despise the honours 
 of a court when, by identifying himself with the 
 shame and sorrow of a race of slaves, he could 
 help them out of bondage worse than death. 
 
 In a word, faith, in the case of Moses, was 
 another name for manliness or heroism. Every 
 man who fights for his country, not from fear 
 or by compulsion, but freely and bravely ; every 
 man who sacrifices time, or comfort, or health, or 
 ease, for the good of his fellow-men ; every man 
 who makes a stand for truth, fair play, honesty, 
 against lies and meanness and treachery and 
 wrong ; every man who thinks himself despicable 
 if he is idle and useless, and respectable if he has 
 duty to do and does it : every such man has in 
 him something of the faith of Moses. 
 
 Every young man gifted with health and wealth 
 — the wealth of a passionate nature, which is the 
 greatest wealth of all — sees before him, in the way 
 of self-indulgence, pleasures that are not only 
 tempting, but well nigh irresistible. Let one such 
 turn away his eyes from these pleasures, and fix 
 them upon some manly and noble object to be 
 
VI.] AND THE FAITH OF CHRIST. 125 
 
 gained by honest and earnest effort, by self- 
 restraint and sympathy with his kindred and 
 with mankind — he shows something of the faith 
 of Moses. 
 
 More or less of the theory of the universe, and 
 of life and duty, that we call religious doctrine, 
 may go along with this faith, and be a part of it. 
 " Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the 
 evidence of things not seen" — there may go along 
 with it wider or narrower, higher or lower, truer or 
 less true views of the world beyond the visible to 
 which these things belong. But it is of the essence 
 of faith that it looks beyond the seen and temporal 
 to that which is unseen and eternal ; beyond what 
 our lower self craves for its satisfaction, to what our 
 higher self demands for its well-being ; beyond 
 pleasure to duty; beyond meat, drink, and clothing, 
 to righteousness and goodness. It is of the essence 
 of faith that he who has it feels himself to be here 
 in a world full of better things than pleasures, 
 whether innocent or sinful, which are only pleasures 
 of sense ; and in which to be right is greater and 
 better than to be mighty or to be rich — feels, in 
 a word, that the best of this life and all life is 
 goodness. 
 
 We see, then, how the case stands as regards 
 much faith and little. Any one who gives up sin- 
 ful pleasures, or pleasures distinctly tending to sin, 
 any one who is tempted and sins not, shows some 
 faith. Any one who gives up pleasures that are 
 not sinful, who deems them sinful for him what- 
 
126 THE FAITH OF MOSES [vi. 
 
 ever they be for others — who does this, I mean, in 
 order to gain some useful and noble end — shows 
 much faith. 
 
 Again, he who follows duty rather than inclin- 
 ation as far as there is little hardship in doing so, 
 shows a little faith. He who, having, like Moses, 
 to choose between affliction and duty on the one 
 hand, and pleasures on the other, chooses the 
 one and refuses the other, shows much faith. 
 He who gives money which he does not need, 
 to promote a good work, shows a litttle faith. 
 He who gives his time and health and life itself 
 to further some beneficent end, shows much faith. 
 And in all this we but say what we have said 
 already, that faith is another name for manliness. 
 
 It was a marvellous faith which Moses exhibited 
 in his long and eventful life. With one or two 
 mysterious lapses he played his heroic part in the 
 most heroic fashion. It was not what he risked, or 
 what he suffered in the execution of his great 
 task at the hands of the Egyptians or other ene- 
 mies of his race; it was what he had to endure 
 from his countrymen ; it was their murmurings 
 and backslidings, their servile spirit, the bondage 
 to serse which they carried with them out of 
 the house of bondage — it was this which tried 
 what manner of man he was, and of what stuff 
 was his faith. As with all the greatest, as with 
 Christ Himself, his conflict was not so much 
 with force as with stupidity and baseness — those 
 ancient and indomitable foes which never fail 
 
VI.] AND THE FAITH OF CHRIST. 137 
 
 to rise up against the man whose purpose is 
 to elevate his fellows. What he chose when he 
 left the court of Pharaoh, and cast in his lot 
 with Israel, was not perhaps what he at first 
 imagined. It was not to be rewarded by the gra- 
 titude of the people to whom he gave up his life 
 for the hostility of the people whom he deserted. 
 His choice was reproach and calumny in preference 
 to ease and honour. He gave up a position in 
 which he enjoyed honour without having to seek 
 it, for one in which he had to endure that bitterest 
 of all sorrows, the sense of being misunderstood 
 and misrepresented in his own house, and among 
 his own kindred. Egypt was a hard master to 
 serve, but Israel whom Moses served was a harder 
 master still. Yet he served Israel well. They 
 murmured for the flesh pots of Egypt. Unredeemed 
 in spirit, though the house of bondage was left 
 behind them, they turned round with cowardly 
 bluster and insult upon the man who had delivered 
 them from worse than death. But the son of 
 Pharaoh's daughter, having counted the cost of good 
 work which it was given him to do, was not to be 
 wearied or frightened out of doing it — not even 
 by the discovery that it was all but hopeless. To 
 make a nation, a chosen nation, a peculiar people, 
 a commonwealth of righteousness, out of a horde of 
 slaves, was a noble task. But it was a task in 
 which he who undertook it had to suffer as much 
 affliction, and refuse as much of what is called 
 pleasure, as could well be suff"ered or refused. 
 
128 THE FAITH OF MOSES [vi. 
 
 Herein Moses, as the language of this passage 
 suggests, connects himself witli Christ. His faith 
 was the faith of Christ. Esteeming the reproach of 
 Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt. 
 — Moses was of the Christian faith. The reproach 
 which Moses preferred to the riches of Egypt was 
 the reproach of Christ — that which He incurred 
 by choosing to be the Saviour, not of a nation, 
 but of the world. He who once said of Himself, 
 " A greater than Solomon is here," more than once 
 advanced His claim to be considered greater than 
 Moses. But the faith of Moses, which was his 
 greatness, was essentially, and only in a lower 
 degree of power the faith of Christ. The choice 
 which the son of Pharaoh's daughter made in his 
 time was the same choice which was made again 
 when He who was rich for our sakes became poor. 
 
 It is striking to notice the conjunction here of 
 these two names, the greatest in the history of 
 mankind. A superficial and forcible -feeble ac- 
 count can be and often is given of it, from which 
 we get no lesson worth learning: — it is that, by 
 a marvellous second - sight, Moses anticipated 
 Christ's day, and by faith in Christ as the 
 Sav'our of the world was enabled to make his 
 choice. There is a sense, no doubt, in which 
 it is true that Moses, like Abraham, saw Christ's 
 day and was glad. But it was not certainly 
 in the way in which we see it, now that it has 
 been or, rather, is. To fancy that the Old Testa- 
 ment worthies had all the light, or substantially 
 
VI.] AND THE FAITH OF CHRIST. 129 
 
 all the light we have concerning Christ, is to 
 fancy what, in the first place, is very incredible, 
 and what, in the second, distorts and confuses the 
 whole teaching of the Bible. Christ's life is the 
 perfect life. As far as any one in times before 
 He came approached to that life he was a 
 Christian — he saw Christ's day ; he believed in 
 Christ ; he esteemed the reproach of Christ the 
 greatest of treasures. You remember that pas- 
 sage in the Epistle to the Corinthians about the 
 Israelites in the wilderness and their miraculous 
 supply of water from the rock — " for they drank 
 of that spiritual rock that followed them, and 
 that rock was Christ." There was a tradition that 
 the rock from which the water gushed at the 
 bidding of Moses wandered with the wandering 
 race. That rock, says the Apostle, glancing at 
 the tradition, was Christ. A continual presentation 
 in the world, and before their eyes, of the divine and 
 eternal, of the Great Father's inexhaustible mercy 
 and grace, that rock to them was a fountain of 
 higher and nobler life than that of sense, as 
 Christ is, or ought to be, to us. 
 
 Thus we must read the language which connects 
 Old Testament times and people with the times 
 and with the life and doctrine of Christ. And 
 when we so read it, making due allowance for the 
 symbolism which gives it its colour, it is full of 
 instruction. When Moses took that heroic part 
 which he played so wxll, — when he gave up 
 worldly grandeur to identify himself with all 
 
I30 
 
 THE FAITH OF MOSES [vi. 
 
 that was most despised and downtrodden, — 
 when he refused riches and rank, and made 
 choice of affliction and disgrace, he was not 
 thinking of Christ or faith in Christ. The mys- 
 tery that was hid from ages and generations 
 was not revealed to him. But for all that he 
 was esteeming the reproach of Christ greater 
 riches than the treasures in Egypt. The re- 
 proach of Christ, above all, is not that re- 
 proach which Christians have sometimes suffered 
 for avowing their faith — for saying, I believe in 
 Christ. It is that cheerful submission to sorrow 
 and loss and shame and suffering for the good 
 of others in the way of duty and a noble life, of 
 which Christ's is the divine example. There were 
 Christians before Christ. There are Christians 
 where the name of Christ has never been named. 
 Abraham was an eminent Christian ; Moses was a 
 Christian still more eminent— -more eminent be- 
 cause the trial of his faith was greater; the 
 reproach of Christ which he chose, and which he 
 bore, was harder to suffer. Moses was not only 
 a Christian before Christ ; he came as near almost 
 as a man can come to the stature of a perfect man 
 in Christ Jesus, inasmuch as, like Christ himself, 
 he had to be good and do good, he had to be a 
 man, and live a man's true life, at the expense 
 of having to count life-long afflictions great gain, 
 and to turn away as from sin from all that 
 •common men call pleasure. 
 
 It is a great thing to remember how old Chris- 
 
VI.] AND THE FAITH OF CHRIST. 131 
 
 tianity is — to remember that it is as old as Moses, 
 nay, as old as man. Every true and noble life that 
 was ever lived in this world, no matter where, or 
 when, or how, was Christian. Every noble and 
 generous deed that was ever done since time began 
 was Christian. Above all, every hour of suffering 
 that was ever endured in the way of duty to God 
 and man was Christian. Nor does this make 
 Christianity less or Christ less — it makes them 
 greater. It is only an expression of the fact that 
 Christianity is eternal truth and eternal life. 
 
 Let us be followers of all them who through faith 
 and patience inherit the promises. Their characters 
 were as various as their faces, or their fortunes, or 
 their names. But they had that in common which 
 makes a man master of himself and of the world — 
 that respect to the invisible and eternal, in the 
 light of which the things of this world, its good and 
 evil, its riches and its afflictions, its honours and its 
 shames, dwindle into insignificance, or at any rate 
 lose their power to sway the mind. Their faith 
 was the faith of Christ ; the reproach which they 
 suffered was the reproach of Christ, no matter what 
 they knew or did not know of him. We shall best 
 be followers of them if we look not to them only, 
 but from them to Christ. It is easy to profess 
 faith in Christ, easy to say and to believe — He is 
 the only Saviour of the world ; His blood cleanseth 
 from all sin. But if we wish to exhibit, as did 
 Moses, the man of God, the faith of Christ and 
 prove that we esteem the reproach of Christ the 
 
132 THE FAITH OF MOSES [vr. 
 
 greatest riches, we have something to do besides 
 coming to church and naming the name which 
 Moses never heard. We have to renounce all 
 the pleasures of sin, and many pleasures which 
 are not sins ; we have to be ready to give up much 
 that is pleasing to a selfish spirit at the bidding of 
 that charity, which is all the law and the prophets ; 
 we have to be willing, for the sake of truth and 
 righteousness, to face loss and reproach and grief and 
 pain. We have no right or title to the sacred name 
 of Christian unless we are prepared — alas, how few of 
 of us are so ! — to do again what Moses did, not only 
 to give up the pleasures of sin in order to secure our 
 own salvation, but to give up pleasures which are 
 not sins, and count them sinful, in order to help on 
 the salvation of others. Faith worketh by love — 
 that love which is oftenest repaid in this evil 
 world, not with thanks, but with reproach. If faith 
 in Christ does not lift a man so far above self and 
 the world as to fit him to endure, if need be, some 
 loss and some reproach and some pain for the 
 sake of doing good, it is a faith which may count 
 for much in the church, of which he is a member, 
 but it counts for little in that kingdom of God, of 
 which Moses was a faithful subject, and in which 
 Christ is greater than Moses. 
 
 There are two remarks, which I think ought to be 
 made in conclusion. 
 
 (i.) As to the relation of Judaism, of which 
 Moses was the founder, and Christianity, which 
 began with Christ. It has been argued that the 
 
VI.] AND THE FAITH OF CHRIST. 133 
 
 faith of Moses was the faith of Christ. How do 
 you account, then, you may ask me, for the differ- 
 ence between Judaism and Christianity? I answer 
 this question by saying that Judaism, or, as many 
 now prefer calling it, Mosaism, was a political as 
 well as a religious system, designed to form families 
 and tribes into a nation, as well as to further the 
 spiritual life of individuals. Much, therefore, that 
 was only good for time and place was mixed up in 
 it with what is not for an age or for a people, but 
 for all time, and all kindreds, and tribes, and all 
 men ; customs and observances that were needed 
 to make the people a peculiar people, and keep 
 them separate from the mass of heathen tribes and 
 nations, were blended with ordinances and laws 
 and commandments, in regard to the obligation of 
 which all men are one family and one nation ; 
 much, that is to say, that was in its very nature 
 destined to lose its importance, when Israel had 
 fulfilled its calling and its work was done, as a 
 witness to the one true God, was united with 
 much which can pass away only when heaven and 
 earth have passed away. But while Judaism was 
 thus a political as well as a religious system, and 
 the Jew, who was loyal to his faith, was the servant 
 or slave of ordinances and commandments, which 
 have no obligation for us, righteousness was the 
 same thing under Moses as under Christ. It was 
 not as well seen by the Jew as it is, or ought to be, 
 by us, but it was seen that to love God and man, 
 to be true and just and good, rather than to keep 
 
134 THE FAITH OF MOSES [vi. 
 
 Sabbaths or observe fasts and feasts, is righteous- 
 ness. If a man broke the laws of God, written 
 in the soul itself, he was not made a good man 
 among the Jews, any more than he would be 
 made a good man among us by keeping all the 
 laws of Moses. The mass of the people might 
 forget this, as the mass of people in Chris- 
 tian countries forget their Christianity ; but the 
 prophets, the great and good among the Jews, 
 were well aware of it, and loudly uttered it. 
 Moses, whose faith was that of Christ, did not 
 found a system which was destined to put ages of 
 no faith, or different faith, between himself and 
 Christ. There is but one faith — that which Moses 
 had, and which Judaism, in its own way, inculcated 
 — that faith which is another name for love to God 
 and man. 
 
 (2.) Lastly, remark this as to the enjoyment of 
 the world and what are called its pleasures. Many 
 Christian people are much perplexed in their 
 minds on this point. They find it hard to de- 
 termine how far it is right or wrong to enjoy 
 pleasure. Where to draw the line, between lawful 
 and unlawful pleasure is a difficulty which they 
 find great or insuperable. Now one thing which 
 is often said by way of showing where this line 
 is to be drawn is that enjoyment, any enjoyment 
 almost, of the pleasures of the world, takes the 
 mind off from God, interferes with the spirit of 
 devotion, dulls that sense of fellowship with God 
 which ought to be our chief delight. And there 
 
VI.] AND THE FAITH OF CHRIST. 13^ 
 
 is truth in this. It is true that the giddy round 
 of amusement and pleasure to which a man may 
 give himself if he choose, without putting himself 
 beyond the pale of church or chapel, hardly leaves 
 any room for so great and so sublime a thought 
 as God. But it hardly affords anything in the 
 shape of definite rule or guidance as to what 
 we should and should not call lawful and un- 
 lawful among our pleasures, to tell us that we 
 should renounce pleasures in order to be devout. 
 Are we to go as far in this way as monks and 
 hermits have gone, or hov/ far short of that.'^ We 
 are after all left in doubt and uncertainty. But 
 there is one rule as to the enjoyment and the 
 renunciation of what are called pleasures, which 
 is good for practice, and it is that which is sug- 
 gested to us here : we may safely enjoy pleasures, 
 as long as they do not interfere with our duty as 
 Christians — to be good and to do good ; and if 
 there are pleasures, as there are many, which 
 help us to do this duty, we ought to enjoy them. 
 Give up your pleasures and call them sins when 
 they hinder you from doing Christian work. 
 Till then enjoy them with a good conscience, 
 giving God thanks for them. Beware of old 
 wives' fables. Every creature of God is good, 
 and nothing to be refused if it be received with 
 thanksgiving. It is the part of the Pharisee, that 
 stranger upon earth who is farthest away from 
 heaven, to enumerate the pleasures of this life 
 which are inconsistent with piety. A good Chris- 
 
136 THE FAITH OF MOSES, ETC. [vi. 
 
 tian knows exactly when to call his pleasures sins. 
 They are sins when the enjoyment of them would 
 mean that he is to be idle, or useless, or injuri- 
 ous, or to forget that a man's life consisteth not in 
 the abundance of the things which he possesseth, 
 but in faith towards God and love towards men. 
 
137 
 
 VII. 
 
 PARABLES FOR TWO MULTITUDES. 
 
 "It is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of 
 heaven, but to them it is not given." — Matt, xiii, ii. 
 
 This was said to the disciples, and it was the 
 difference between them and the multitude. 
 Christ was speaking to the multitude and to 
 them in parables ; and the difference between 
 them and the multitude was that they did, and 
 the multitude did not, understand what He said. 
 *' The disciples came and said unto him, Why 
 speakest thou unto them in parables ? He an- 
 swered and said unto them, Because it is given 
 unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom 
 of heaven, but to them it is not given : . . . 
 Therefore speak I to them in parables; because 
 seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not, 
 neither do they understand. . . . But blessed are 
 
138 PARABLES FOR TWO MULTITUDES. [vir. 
 
 your eyes, for they see : and your ears, for 
 they hear." 
 
 As for the multitude, if you strain Christ's 
 language respecting them, you might say they 
 were punished for their blindness by His making 
 dark to them things which He made clear to 
 others. This has been said. You have heard 
 of judicial blindness — blindness, that is to say, 
 inflicted by God as the punishment of unbelief 
 or other sin. It has been said that this blind- 
 ness was visited upon the benighted multitude 
 when Christ chose to speak to them in parables. 
 But if this was the case, why did He speak to 
 them at all } Did He wish only a dozen men, 
 or a few dozens, to understand what He said } 
 Did He not wish to instruct the multitude when 
 He took pains to teach them } Was the truth 
 which He taught a charm to be kept back from 
 the many lest it should work good in them } 
 Was Christ afraid too many people would be the 
 better for His doctrine } It is surely nonsense 
 to waste time in arguing that such a supposition 
 is absurd. 
 
 If then it was not to hide His meaning from 
 the multitude that Christ taught them in parables, 
 how do you account for His choosing to teach 
 them in that v/ay .? To answer this question we 
 have to consider for a moment what a parable is. 
 When Christ spoke the sermon on the mount He 
 spoke without a parable. He told His hearers 
 the truth on that occasion directly, and without 
 
VII.] PARABLES FOR TWO MULTITUDES. 139 
 
 using figures of speech, or any but the simplest. 
 He stated facts ; He gave rules and precepts ; 
 He commented upon scripture and tradition, and 
 current views of religion ; He admonished here 
 and blessed there. He made His meaning plain 
 by the plainness of His speech. And here again, 
 if it were needful, I might remark, that it could 
 not be His intention or desire to keep the multi- 
 tude in the dark by His parables, else why should 
 He have begun His teaching by the Sermon on 
 the Mount, which is without a parable, and is a 
 marvellous instance of plain speaking. But passing 
 this by, He did, I say, at the beginning of His 
 ministry, and particularly in the Sermon on the 
 Mount, teach without parables. 
 
 When He taught thus he gained a few disciples, 
 but the multitude did not heed, or did not like 
 His doctrine. Then He changed His method, 
 and began to use parables. Instead of repeating 
 and repeating — One is your father who is in 
 heaven. He told the story of the Prodigal Son. 
 In place of answering directly the question Who 
 is my neighbour.'* He told the story of the Good 
 Samaritan. Stories like these, referring to nature 
 or social life, which could be applied, and were 
 meant to be applied, to religious affairs — of these 
 He now made constant use. 
 
 Now there is one thing certain as to these 
 stories, that whatever might be His intention in 
 using them, they do clear up things wonderfully. 
 It was no new thing for such stories to be used 
 
I40 PARABLES FOR TWO MULTITUDES. [vii. 
 
 by teachers of moral and religious truth. The 
 books of the rabbinical doctors are full of them. 
 Their use was recommended by their fitness to 
 enliven dull doctrine, and to simplify abstruse 
 doctrine. Fables in which birds and beasts talk, 
 allegories in which virtues and vices are personified 
 and speak in character, these as well as parables 
 have been everywhere used to inculcate truth ; 
 everywhere used, because by no other means in 
 many cases could truth be so clearly inculcated. 
 It would have taken a long discourse on true 
 piety to show the distinction between it and false 
 piety, which is shown in the Publican and the 
 Pharisee ; and what long discourse would have 
 shown it so well ? Who that reads the story of 
 the Good Samaritan can imagine an exposition 
 of the subject which would have shed over it an 
 equal amount of light ? 
 
 Remember this also, in regard to parables like 
 Christ's — they keep close to reality, they reproduce 
 nature and life. Fables and allegories give us 
 purely imaginary circumstances and events; it is, 
 or may be, less an observing and reflective than a 
 creative, possibly a fanciful and crotchety mind 
 which is at work in them ; there may be in them 
 much or little of reality, according as there is much 
 or little of any peculiarity of mind ; they owe so 
 much to their author that they may owe little to 
 the truth of things ; they may teach truth, but also 
 they may commend error, and at any rate they lend 
 themselves almost as easily to the service of a petty 
 
VII.] PARABLES FOR TWO MULTITUDES. j^j 
 
 conceit as of a great principle. As compared with 
 these, parables, which are also figures of speech, 
 have this peculiarity — if they do not relate things as 
 they actually happened, they present things as they 
 usually are ; if they are not actually true, they are 
 true to the nature of things : they give us as little 
 as possible of the speaker, and as much as possible 
 of reality. If the story of the man who fell among 
 thieves, and was rescued by the good Samaritan, is 
 not a narrative of what actually once happened on 
 the road to Jericho, it is as true as if the thing had 
 happened not once but a million times, since it is 
 true to ordinary observation of things ordinary. 
 
 Now if we take all this into account as to the 
 nature of parables, it is possible, I think, to account 
 for Christ's speaking to the multitude in parables, 
 and parables alone. In the first place, possibly 
 there were what we may call considerations of 
 prudence and policy in favour of this way of 
 teaching. Look at the whole set of parables in this 
 chapter ; they all relate to the kingdom of God ; and 
 one thing they all more or less distinctly intimate, 
 and it is that the establishment of that kingdom 
 must be a work of time. It is like a sower who 
 goes forth to sow ; it is like the tares and the wheat 
 which must grow up together until the harvest ; it 
 is like the mustard seed, which is the smallest of 
 all seeds, and becomes a great tree ; it is like leaven 
 hid in meal ; it is like a net dropped into the sea. 
 This was the idea which was uppermost in Christ's 
 mind — that truth must have time. The multitude 
 
142 PARABLES FOR TWO MULTITUDES. [vii. 
 
 were not untaught — they were disciples of other 
 teachers, — teachers who had filled their minds 
 with all manner of wordy conceits, instead of the 
 eternal verities of religion. The effect of this 
 which was the effect of centuries, was not to be 
 done away in a day. It was not only useless to 
 challenge directly the popular religious teaching 
 and bring on an immediate and decisive conflict 
 with the teachers as well as the taught — with vested 
 interests and inveterate prejudice: it was useless by 
 direct assertion of truth to combat prevailing error. 
 Error, if it is hunted, will turn and find an asylum 
 in the bosom of the pursuer. Error can accom- 
 modate itself in the very heart of truth. If it is 
 not endured as solid it will live as gas. Apart 
 from all danger of a conflict with the multitude or 
 their teachers, to combat their error by the direct 
 assertion of truth was useless, if only because 
 in their minds truth was certain to be assimilated 
 to error, not error to truth. The multitude who 
 heard Christ gladly, when they heard His truth, 
 were none the less likely to abide by their error. 
 To do this it was not needful to contradict what He 
 said, a thing which they might not have wished to 
 do ; they had only to take His words or some few of 
 capital importance, and put something of their own 
 meaning into them, a thing which they could not 
 help doing. Their ideas of righteousness, truth, 
 goodness, could easily enough be put into the words 
 as they came from His lips. If this was done, they 
 could agree with the Sermon on the Mount, and 
 
VII.] PARABLES FOR TWO MULTITUDES. 143 
 
 admire it from beginning to end, without accepting 
 one truth which it asserted, or abandoning one 
 error which it assailed. You cannot undo in a day 
 the work of centuries as regards modes of faith. 
 If they are wrong, ever so grossly wrong, and are 
 challenged and confuted, they will still answer for 
 themselves, if only in the way of adding to, or 
 subtracting from, or somehow modifying and 
 altering the truth by which they are assailed. Did 
 not many of the Jews who became Christians add 
 their Judaism to their Christianity, with the effect 
 of corrupting one, if not both ; the better, if not the 
 worse } Suppose then that Christ had gone on 
 from the beginning, repeating what He said in the 
 Sermon on the Mount, flatly contradicting what the 
 Scribes and Pharisees taught as religion, directly 
 and without a parable inculcating the religion which 
 we call by His name, it is certain that, where He 
 did not provoke strife which would have ended his 
 career as a teacher. He would only have got the 
 multitude to say with Him and say with their other 
 teachers too ; to take what He gave them, and add 
 their own to it, and put their own into it, with 
 the effect of making it not His but theirs. 
 
 What is easier to imagine than the multitude who 
 had the law and the prophets, and created their 
 Judaism out of them, listening to Christ's sayings 
 on the Sermon on the Mount, and answering. We 
 know all this ; this is all written in the law and the 
 prophets ; every word of what you say is true ; but, 
 then, are we not to mind what the law commands 
 
144 PARABLES FOR TWO MULTITUDES. [vir. 
 
 besides, and what the fathers have further taught 
 us ? — are the publicans and sinners, who have no 
 reh'gion, to go into the kingdom of heaven before us 
 or along with us, who fast thrice in the week, give 
 tithes, and pray at the corners of the streets ? 
 
 As all these parables here suggest to us, time was 
 needed for truth to prevail against error. Direct 
 attack upon it was useless. Christ had tried that 
 and found it unprofitable. And here the parables 
 came in to serve the purpose. They did not assail 
 error or assert truth controversially. Every one 
 could take from them and make of them what he 
 pleased. But there was one thing certain with 
 regard to them, and it was that they were certain to 
 be remembered. They were sure to pass from 
 mouth to mouth, and travel where doctrine however 
 clear, or precept however just, would not reach. 
 The meaning in them now open to the few would 
 remain, and by and by might be perceived by the 
 many. Time would ripen them for the purpose of 
 instructing the multitude as well as the disciples. 
 
 And this was their special virtue, that while they 
 were thus fitted to preserve truth from being forgot- 
 ten, they were above all fitted to preserve truth 
 from being corrupted. Those whose minds were 
 filled with the Pharisees' ideas of religion could 
 hardly help misunderstanding and misrepresenting 
 the doctrinal sayings of Jesus. But it is impossible 
 to corrupt, or sophisticate, or distort the story of 
 the Prodigal Son or the Good Samaritan. You can- 
 not add anything to these stories; you cannot take 
 
VII.] PARABLES FOR TWO MULTITUDES. 145 
 
 anything away from them. You can choose not to 
 heed them if they do not suit your views, but that is 
 all you can do with them. It is impossible to tell 
 them at all, and to do so with doctrinal variations. 
 You cannot take one of them and say, Christ told 
 this story ; but there is a text, or a number of texts, 
 in the Old or the New Testament, which must be 
 taken into account along with it, and to qualify it. 
 A parable cannot be qualified like a saying or a body 
 of doctrine. It is a bit of fact, and cannot be 
 qualified by words. It keeps its meaning pure in 
 spite of every effort to corrupt it. It is of kin with 
 nature, which, whatever you may say of it or of any 
 part of it, remains nature still, and is the truth. 
 
 And thus it was for one thing Christ spoke to 
 the multitude in parables. His purpose was to 
 teach them truth, but their minds being filled 
 with error, they had to unlearn that first. He 
 spoke in parables, knowing that parables would 
 last, and that while they lasted and were working 
 their work, they would not, because they could not, 
 be corrupted. 
 
 Prudence, policy, was thus one thing which 
 recommended the teaching of the multitude in 
 parables. But the great thing was that which 
 distinguishes parables from other figures of speech 
 — that they keep close to reality, to nature, and 
 to life. It was the special vice of the religion of 
 the multitude in Christ's day, that it was wholly 
 artificial, all sacrifice and no mercy. Their 
 teachers taught them for doctrine the command- 
 
 K 
 
146 PARABLES FOR TWO MULTITUDES. [vii. 
 
 ments of men, the thousand and one arbitrary 
 rules about eating and drinking, about fasts and 
 feasts, about offerings, about days, about intercourse 
 with Gentiles, and touching the dead. The scope 
 of Christ's teaching was exactly the opposite of 
 this. He was for mercy, and not sacrifice ; for 
 righteousness, and not mint and anise and cum- 
 min. It suited His doctrine, therefore, to be 
 taught in parables. Nature and human life are 
 great teachers where mercy, and not sacrifice, is 
 the thing to be taught. The world itself, if your 
 doctrine is mercy, is one great parable ready for 
 your use. Reality of any kind is truth, and all 
 truth, from the lowest to the highest, is one; so 
 that there are books in the running brooks, ser- 
 mons in stones, and good in everything. The 
 truth of things, begin with it where you will, if 
 you follow it out will lead you up to God. You 
 can make birds and beasts, and virtues and vices 
 talk what you please ; but you cannot, if you go 
 to nature and human life, find a parable to fit a 
 lie. Christ chose that form of teaching which 
 brought men face to face with nature and human 
 life, because the men He had to teach, in the 
 matter of their religion, had departed as far as 
 was possible from the truth of things, and had 
 lost themselves in sayings and commandments 
 and traditions, questions and strifes of words. 
 For those whose sound doctrine, drawn from the 
 law and the prophets, was mixed up with endless 
 genealogies, and strifes of words, and quibbles 
 
VII.] PARABLES FOR TWO MULTITUDES. 147 
 
 of ecclesiastical experts — mixed up with all this, 
 and lost — the very thing to be done was not to 
 enter them in another school of doctrine, how- 
 ever sound, but to send them first to the school 
 of nature and life, to unlearn all they had 
 been taught. He set men who had learned 
 only folly from strifes of words to unlearn that 
 folly, and draw wisdom from the observation 
 of things. He said to men who wxre skilled 
 in sacrifice and had forgotten there was one thing 
 called mercy — " Go ye and learn what that mean- 
 eth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice"; and in 
 His parables the school to which He sent them 
 was not the books of this or that teacher, or this 
 or that form of sound words, not even the Bible 
 itself, but nature and life. 
 
 In doing this He relied upon the fact that what 
 these teachers teach is not a kind of truth, but the 
 highest truth of all. Their thousand voices are 
 all dumb if you ask them about sacrifice, butthey 
 are all eloquent if you question them of mercy. 
 The constant facts of nature, the no less constant 
 facts of human life, yield no testimony to the com- 
 mandments of men about meats and drinks, about 
 rites, about sabbaths and clerical vestments, but 
 to the law of truth, righteousness, goodness, which 
 is written in a man's heart, they give abundant 
 sanction, and of it they supply abundant illustra- 
 tions. Fancy a story of nature or human life like 
 the parable of the good Samaritan being invented 
 to prove or illustrate something in regard to one 
 
148 PARABLES FOR TWO MULTITUDES. [vir. 
 
 of the Jewish commandments, about washing of 
 hands before meat, or in regard to one of our 
 disputes about infant baptism, or the wearing of 
 a cope or an alb, or instrumental music in church, 
 or the eastward position of the celebrant. Take 
 one of our controversies between church and 
 church or between party and party in the same 
 church, and tell me where you will send me to 
 nature or to human life for a parable to do for 
 the thing in question what the Prodigal Son does 
 for the mercy of God. Search all nature, subject 
 the facts of human life to the most careful study, 
 and where will you find a vestige of a hint of 
 High Church or Low Church, or Established 
 Church, or Independent Church t But turn to 
 nature and life, to learn something of truth, and 
 righteousness, and goodness, and you will find 
 that of all teachers they are not the least. 
 
 Christ then, I say, chose to teach in parables, 
 first of all, because by parables He gave His truth 
 time to grow ; and, secondly, because He enlisted 
 nature and human life in His service against 
 prevailing error. He put truth into a form in 
 which it could not perish or be corrupted ; He 
 turned His hearers' minds in the direction in which 
 they could soonest unlearn their errors and be pre- 
 pared to receive His truth. 
 
 Now, consider the different effect of His parables 
 upon the multitude and the disciples. As for the 
 multitude, they had first to begin and unlearn 
 everything they believed, before they could perceive 
 
VII.] PARABLES FOR TWO MULTITUDES. 149 
 
 the truth which His parables contained. Before 
 anything in this particular set of parables here as 
 to the kingdom of God could reach their minds, 
 they had to unlearn all that they had learned from 
 their teachers as to the kingdom of God being a 
 Jewish commonwealth, consisting of the twelve 
 tribes of Israel (publicans and sinners excluded), 
 and having for its constitution the numberless com- 
 mandments of men as to rites and ceremonies. 
 Nothing in these parables of Christ's would have 
 any meaning to their minds, good or bad, till they 
 got rid of that notion. The sower going forth to 
 sow, the tares and the wheat growing up together 
 until the harvest, the grain of mustard seed, the 
 leaven hid in meal, the net dropped into the sea — 
 what had these to tell them of their ideal Jewish 
 commonwealth.-* They would find no meaning in 
 these, as far as that kingdom of heaven was 
 concerned. 
 
 Take other parables and in the same way, to the 
 multitude they must be unmeaning. What could be 
 the meaning, for example, of the parable of the 
 Rich Man and Lazarus, until they had unlearned 
 all their notions as to piety being ceremonial } 
 Why, you can imagine them asking in reference 
 to that parable, what sins was the rich man guilty 
 of.'' None are specified. Did he not pay his tithes.-* 
 what offerings did he omit } did he keep some 
 fasts as feasts.-* did he marry a Gentile.-* did he 
 refuse alms to the beggar .-* With their notions 
 derived from the commandments of men, could 
 
T50 PARABLES FOR TWO MULTITUDES. [vii. 
 
 they see any point in the story, such as, with 
 your notions derived from the Gospel, you 
 may see ? 
 
 In short, you have only to take any of our Lord's 
 parables, and then think what the notions of the 
 multitude were, to see that they must have been 
 completely in the dark as to their point. They 
 were not prepared for the light that was in them. 
 It was not light to them, but darkness. Most likely 
 they felt. As long as he spoke plainly to us in 
 sentences and precepts, like those of the rabbis, we 
 knew something of what he meant; but as for these 
 parables, we know not what they mean, or if they 
 mean anything. 
 
 This, to be sure, was not to be the final effect of 
 Christ's parables, even upon the multitude. From 
 being brought into this school of nature and life, 
 some of them at least would begin to feel its in- 
 fluence, in turning them away from strifes of words 
 about rites and ceremonies. Contact with reality 
 could scarcely fail in many cases to engender sus- 
 picion, and then distrust, of all that was fictitious ; 
 and so in the decline of error truth would have its 
 day. But, while, in course of time this might be 
 the e^ect of the parables upon the multitude, the . 
 immediate effect, no doubt, was to confuse and 
 darken their minds. And thus their share in the 
 wretched religious life which had prevailed for 
 centuries, and was wretched because it was con- 
 tent to know nothing better than the right and 
 the wrong of washing of cups and wearing of 
 
viL] PARABLES FOR TWO MULTITUDES. 151 
 
 phylacteries and giving of tithes, — this wretched 
 relig^ious life — call it their misfortune or their 
 punishment as you will — made it impossible for 
 them to have part or lot in the most glorious 
 religious discovery and revelation that was ever 
 made under heaven. 
 
 Turn, on the other hand, to the disciples. They 
 had, at least in part, unlearned the false. They had 
 begun to appreciate the true. They knew, from 
 what they had heard from the great teacher, that 
 the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, 
 but righteousness and love. What would these 
 parables in this chapter teach them } Why, to 
 take large, hopeful views of that kingdom ; to 
 think it reasonable or certain that, however feeble 
 for a time, it must in the long run be universal, so 
 as to leave nothing under heaven, except what is 
 heavenly ; to think that, be the fate of Jew or 
 Gentile what it might, the destiny of mankind is to 
 become the servants of righteousness and the sons 
 of God. To the minds of the disciples, alive already 
 to the value of righteousness and the worthlessness 
 of ceremonial sanctity, how rich in instruction and 
 in comfort the story of the Prodigal Son ! — how true 
 and how glorious its representation of the great 
 Father as one who is never so happy as when he has 
 to welcome back to the home of eternal goodness 
 and eternal blessedness the erring and miserable 
 of His children! To their minds again how full of 
 meaning and of comfort, the parable of the Lost 
 Sheep! — the suggestion of the Eternal Righteousness 
 
152 PARABLES FOR TWO MULTITUDES. [vii. 
 
 engrossed, to the neglect of suns and solar systems, 
 in the recovery of one soul which has strayed into 
 the damnation of evil. 
 
 Think that these disciples, like the multitude, 
 were Jews, and held, till Christ began to teach, the 
 religious notions of the multitude. Then consider 
 all the certainty and breadth and fulness which 
 these parables of their Master could not but give to 
 their new faith, — faith in God as good, in goodness 
 as man's true life, in the ultimate triumph of good 
 over evil. Consider under what a different aspect 
 the world now presented itself to their minds, from 
 that in which it had once been seen by themselves, 
 and was still seen by the multitude ; consider the 
 new heavens and the new earth, the universe of 
 righteousness and goodness, opened above and 
 around them — consider this, and you can surely 
 understand something of what Christ meant when 
 He said to His disciples in reference to these 
 parables, " Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and 
 your ears, for they hear " ; and also when he added, 
 " For verily I say unto you, that many prophets 
 and righteous men have desired to see those things 
 which ye see, and have not seen them, and to hear 
 those things which ye hear, and have not heard 
 them." When was there so clear, so full revelation 
 made of God as great, and of goodness — God's 
 glory and man's life — being finally triumphant, as 
 was made in these parables, to those who had eyes 
 to see and ears to hear.? Not among Jews till then; 
 not among Gentiles since then. 
 
VII.] PARABLES FOR TWO MULTITUDES. 153 
 
 I conclude with two remarks, the first of which is, 
 that not one religion, but every religion, that of 
 Christ included, is apt, in the common mind, to 
 degenerate into ceremonialism and strifes of words. 
 And, in that case, what professes to be light be- 
 comes the grossest of darkness. It was not for an 
 age, therefore, but for all time, that Christ spoke 
 in parables to the multitude. These parables of 
 His, bringing us into contact with nature and 
 human life, furnish us with a resource of inestima- 
 ble value against the prevalence of irreligion, error, 
 infidelity, not only in the world, but in the church. 
 Texts from any part of the Bible, even the Sermon 
 on the Mount itself, opinions of fathers and of 
 councils, views of reformers and founders of sects, 
 may be quoted this way or that, sometimes to 
 fortify truth, possibly at other times to prop up 
 error. Systems of doctrine resting upon these 
 foundations may be systems of mistakes, if to one 
 age an embodiment of eternal truth, to another a 
 relic of some obsolete mode of thought. Conven- 
 tional forms of piety, like conventional modes of 
 belief, may vary from age to age, and range through 
 every degree of irrationality and frivolity. But at 
 any rate there is this to be said for the grounds on 
 which we profess, at least profess, to build our 
 Christian faith, that among them there always 
 remain these parables of Christ to bear the witness 
 of reality and of eternity to the supreme impor- 
 tance of being and of doing good, and of believing 
 in God, not as the Friend of the Jew or the Gentile, 
 
154 PARABLES FOR TWO MULTITUDES. [vii. 
 
 or of this or that denomination of Christians, but as 
 the Father of all men, and as the Saviour and 
 Redeemer and Hope and Dwelling-place of all who 
 love good and hate evil. 
 
 In this sense the parables which were for the 
 multitude, when the disciples were few, are for the 
 disciples when they are a multitude. Ages pass 
 and the disciples of Christ like the disciples of 
 other masters, with reference to His sayings, and 
 sayings of His inspired apostles, lose themselves 
 in doctrinal discussions, strifes of words, to which 
 things answer doubtfully or not at all. Theology, 
 which is fashionable science, usurps the place of 
 religion, which is eternal truth. The pedagogues, 
 whose business it is to bring us to Christ, re- 
 vealing the Father of all, lead us to the fathers 
 of the Church, contending among themselves. For 
 modes of faith it is obvious to common sense that 
 senseless bigots fight, and they alone. Thus the 
 parables are the salt of Christianity to preserve it 
 from corruption and extinction ; they recall us from 
 all this barren or disgraceful war of words to the 
 sterling virtue of the Good Samaritan, and the 
 substantial goodness of the Prodigal's father. 
 
 Again, I remark, the blessedness of Christian 
 belief is that it is a vision of the universe as un- 
 divided. What did the disciples, who were blessed 
 in their seeing, see } When it was given to them, 
 as it was not given to the multitude, to understand 
 these parables, what did they hear and compre- 
 hend 1 It was not that their own souls were to 
 
TIL] PARABLES FOR TWO MULTITUDES. 155 
 
 be saved ; it was not that the Jews were to be con- 
 verted, or the Gentiles to be visited by Christian 
 missionaries. It w^as, that the kingdom of God, 
 the Father and Saviour of all men, is eternal ; that 
 evil here and everywhere is temporary, and good 
 alone is for ever and ever. Miserable the man 
 whose creed is less than this, or different from 
 this ; blessed is the man whose hope in this 
 manner and in this measure is in the Lord 
 Almighty and Everlasting ! 
 
156 
 
 VIII. 
 
 GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS. 
 
 "With the merciful thou wilt show thyself merciful ; with an 
 upright man thou wilt show thyself upright ; With the pure thou 
 wilt show thyself pure ; and with the froward thou wilt show thyself 
 froward." — Psalm xviii, 25, 26. 
 
 David wrote this psalm, as the inscription over 
 it tells us, to celebrate his triumph over Saul. At 
 last justice was done between him and his chief 
 enemy. He who had striven to do his duty to 
 his God and to his country was rewarded with 
 honour and wealth and power. He who had fallen 
 away from faith and virtue, and kingly honour 
 and integrity, had been overtaken by disgrace, and 
 then by death. Saul was dead. David reigned in 
 his stead over the house of Israel. The new king, 
 therefore, in saying what he says here, was glanc- 
 ing, no doubt, at what Ave call the ways of 
 Providence ; was thinking how it comes to pass 
 in the long run that wrong is righted, and justice 
 done between man and man. And as often as 
 
Till.] GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS. 157 
 
 we have observed, in our lives or in others' lives, 
 right conduct issuing in happiness, and wrong con- 
 duct resulting in loss and misery ; so often have we 
 seen the truth illustrated that to the upright man 
 God is upright, and to the froward He is froward. 
 But it is by no means alone or chiefly in this respect 
 that the truth is truth. It is not every Saul v/ho 
 is killed or commits suicide. It is not every regal 
 head like David's which has to be measured for 
 a crown. Honesty is not always the best policy ; 
 virtue is not always its own reward in respect to 
 houses and lands and a carriage and pair. There 
 is many a villain on whom the sun of his pro- 
 sperity shines gaily till his eyes close in the 
 shadow of that last adversity which overtakes 
 us all, honest men and rogues together. It is 
 only in a rough sort of way at the best that 
 distinction is made by Providence, in the way 
 distinction was made between Saul and David, 
 between the upright and the froward. No doubt 
 in the long run, and on a great scale, it is true 
 that the issues of righteousness are different from 
 the results of vice and wickedness. Take not a 
 man here and there, but the world into view; 
 take nations as well as families and individuals 
 into account, and you will have no difficulty in 
 seeing that with the same regularity and certainty 
 with which suns and planets fulfil their courses 
 in the heavens moral causes produce their effects 
 on earth. The balance of justice, though it swings 
 slowly, is just. The hope of the evildoer is 
 
158 GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS. [viii. 
 
 belied, the desire of the just blossoms in due 
 season. 
 
 It is only however, I say, in a rough sort of way 
 at the best, as far as observation of individuals will 
 carry us, that we see distinction made by Providence 
 between the upright and the froward. But, as no 
 one knew better than the author of this psalm, it 
 is not to the fortunes of men, but to their whole 
 experience as rational and spiritual beings, that we 
 have to look in order to see how true it is that God 
 shows Himself to every man according to what 
 every man is. 
 
 In the first place, our life is experience of God ; 
 for in Him most literally we live and move and have 
 our being. That whole system of things in which 
 we are placed here, and of which we are a part, with 
 all the sorts of good and the sorts of evil, the kinds 
 of happiness and the kinds of misery, that belong 
 to it, is of God and from God. There may be 
 doubts as to what is, and what is not, of God in 
 regard to a written word, which claims to be His; 
 but if we find that life led this way is different from 
 life led that way, that this set of actions has one 
 result and that set has another — this, as far as it 
 goes, is a most authentic and indubitable revelation 
 to us of God. The arrangements by which things 
 are as they are in regard to human life — I do not 
 mean this man's life or that man's, but the life 
 of mankind — are arrangements in which God is 
 present, and in which He shows Himself as much, 
 to say the least, as in the arrangements by which 
 
VIII.] GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS. 159 
 
 plants draw sustenance from the soil, and suns 
 and systems fulfil their mighty courses. 
 
 To say, therefore, that life is different to different 
 men, above all as they differ in point of spiritual 
 character, is to say, that God shows Himself to 
 them as so many different gods. To an honest 
 man life is different from what it is to a rogue ; 
 different to a merciful man from what it is to a 
 churl or a miser ; different to a pure man from 
 what it is to a sot or a debauchee. Apart 
 altogether from the consequences of this life in 
 another, apart also from particular notable events 
 to which we would perhaps give the name of provi- 
 dential, life, which is experience of God, is different 
 to all these. No confusion ever takes place among 
 them, so that the experience which belongs to one 
 falls to the lot of another. There is no defect or 
 hitch in the arrangements by which these different 
 sorts of lives are kept as distinct from each other 
 as species of plants, or species of animals. It is 
 absurd to suppose a kind man having an unkind 
 man's experience — ^just as absurd as it would be to 
 say that a black man and a white man have the 
 same skin. 
 
 To take the illustration which is nearest at hand 
 — David would have had a different experience from 
 Saul whether he had, or had not, got Saul's place. 
 Put Saul in David's place, or David in Saul's, their 
 experience would not have been substantially 
 changed, would not have been made a bit more 
 similar. The one man, as we know, could be 
 
i6o GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS. [viii. 
 
 supremely wretched with a kingdom for his posses- 
 sion ; the other, as we may judge, could have been 
 eminently happy with a shepherd's crook; and 
 whether he was king, or whether he was shepherd, 
 mattered little to either, so long as each was what 
 he was as regards certain great features of char- 
 acter. The life of each man was different ; his 
 experience of God was different, according to the 
 difference of those features. 
 
 This song of triumph would have been a blunder, 
 if its author had been such another man as Saul, 
 for, in that case, he would have celebrated his own 
 misery more than another man's fall ; in that case, 
 he would have been at once king over Israel and 
 the most wretched man in the country. Suppose, 
 on the other hand, he had failed in the ambition 
 which took him from his father's house, and from 
 his shepherd's life, and Saul or Saul's sons had 
 reigned over Israel till his death, he would have 
 borne that disappointment of his hopes, and that 
 disaster to his fortunes, not as Saul, but as David ; 
 not with a mean man's lamentations, but with a 
 brave and good man's patience and magnanimity. 
 However it may have appeared to David himself 
 at this moment, no one reading his life now can say 
 that he was any the luckier for his triumph over 
 Saul, and his elevation to the place in which Saul 
 was wretched ; on the contrary, it would seem only 
 too clear that, if David had never been king, and 
 had never had occasion to write such a psalm as this, 
 neither would he ever have been the criminal that 
 
VIII.] GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS, i6i 
 
 he became, or have written psalms in which the 
 agonies of the human heart find their fiercest utter- 
 ance. It is not, indeed, going too far to say that, 
 if Saul's enmity to David was anything but a part 
 of a fitful disease, and if we could suppose the first 
 king of Israel in that last hour of his blackened 
 fortunes, when death was precious to him, breathing 
 a desire that his enmity might take effect after his 
 breath was gone, he could not have wished a more 
 malignant wish than that David should be the man 
 to occupy his place. No two men could have had a 
 more different experience in their lives ; but the 
 difference, such as it was, we can see, was in them- 
 selves — not made by their fortunes, but by their 
 characters ; not by the events of peace or war, but 
 by the quality of mercy jn the one case, and of 
 wilfulness in the other. To the merciful man 
 God was merciful ; to the wilful man He was 
 wilful. 
 
 Thus justice is done between man and man, 
 where justice is sure, and where it is perfect — 
 in themselves. Many good people at the present 
 time are haunted by an alarm which is altogether 
 visionary. Afraid lest too hopeful and cheerful 
 religious views and opinions should prevail and 
 do harm, they urge upon us, with anxiety in their 
 hearts and in their faces, that if you do away with 
 eternal punishment, in many cases of sin and 
 iniquity there will be no punishment at all. Look, 
 they say, how many who live vicious lives know 
 nothing of remorse ! If there be no such thing 
 
 L 
 
1 62 GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS. [viii. 
 
 as eternal torture for these there is no punish- 
 ment ; if there be no hell there is no harm. 
 
 But is not this, to say the least of it, an aston- 
 ishingly narrow view to take of the field of human 
 experience ? There is much more remorse, or 
 something like it, of course, in peoples' hearts 
 than they wear upon their sleeves. Many a man 
 who wears a smiling enough face, if you could 
 get behind that mask, would show you grim 
 enough features. I am persuaded, for my part, 
 that much of the outrageous, reckless dissipation 
 in drink and other things, which hurries multi- 
 tudes to untimely graves, is dissipation which, if 
 we knew the secrets of men's hearts, could be 
 traced to this very thing, remorse, bad conscience, 
 or whatever you like to call it, which is supposed 
 to be so uncommon. It is a proverb that people 
 drown care in drink. That care which is thus 
 miserably drowned is often enough, I believe, that 
 blackest care of all — a bad conscience. Men have 
 to take refuge from themselves, worst exile under 
 heaven, and often the nearest and best refuge they 
 can find is to go mad. Drunkenness is the cause 
 of vice ; but vice, too, is the cause of drunkenness. 
 At ^he same time, I grant readily that if what 
 is called remorse were all the difference between 
 man and man on the score of character, the dif- 
 ference might seem to be trifling. It is the best 
 natures and not the worst which have most ac- 
 quaintance with remorse. A good man falls into 
 sin, and he knows what remorse is and what hell 
 
VIII.] GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS. 163 
 
 is. We know to a certainty that there was some 
 good thing even in Judas Iscariot, if only because 
 he had remorse and went and hanged himself. But 
 let any man, John or Judas, go far enough in vice 
 and sin, have long enough acquaintance with these, 
 and one thing is certain, remorse will not haunt 
 him much. The wicked have no bands in their 
 death. Consciences, which ought to burn, are 
 seared ; they should be live coals, and they are 
 white cold ashes. I grant all this. No one who 
 knows anything of the world can be ignorant of 
 this or dispute it. But is there nothing besides 
 remorse in question as between life and life } Is 
 there no fruit of the tree of evil except one, which 
 itself shows the tree to have been grafted upon 
 good .'' Surely when good people are alarmed, and 
 say, If there is no remorse and no hell, no difference 
 is made between man and man, but there is one 
 event to all, and life as well as death is one, their 
 alarm is vain. Apart altogether from remorse, and 
 everything like it, and in the nature of things, and 
 everywhere and always, it is one thing to be up- 
 right and another to be wilful, it is one thing to be 
 a kind man and another to be an unkind, one 
 thing to be pure and another to be impure. The 
 good of being good is in being so, and not in 
 having no remorse ; and the evil of being evil is 
 in being so and not in having remorse. Why will 
 people so constantly forget this, or overlook it } 
 A stupid and uncultivated man, who has never 
 seen a picture in his life, if you take him into the 
 
1 64 GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS. [vm. 
 
 National Gallery, rich in the glories of art, will 
 have no remorse, though the spectacle affords him 
 no pleasure, or though any pleasure which he has 
 is due rather to the gilded frames that glitter 
 before him than to the finest pictures they con- 
 tain. He will have no remorse — he will not 
 blame himself, or despise himself, or hate him- 
 self, for being dull where he ought to be de- 
 lighted. But then you would not say that his 
 ignorance and his stupidity cost him nothing ; 
 you would not allow it to be supposed that he 
 is no loser as compared with some man who has 
 but to enter your gallery of pictures to be trans- 
 ported with delight ; to have hours, days, years 
 of his life made brighter by the impressions left 
 upon his mind ; to feel that there is wealth in the 
 world, and that the best, in which he, however poor he 
 may be, has his share, or, rather, which is all his own. 
 A man who has no children, or who, having 
 children, cares for them only in a cool impassive 
 way, has no remorse if he sees children at play 
 and cannot laugh with them, nor feel that their 
 laughter, like the sunshine and the song of birds, 
 and the fall of waters, and the splendour of the 
 nighily heavens, is part of the great ministry of 
 nature ministering poetry and sweetness to man's 
 heart and life — he has no remorse, no shame, no 
 bad conscience ; but is he no loser by his lack of 
 feeling as compared with the man to whom, even 
 in his age, the voices of children can restore some- 
 thing of the gladness of his youth 1 
 
VIII.] GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS. 165 
 
 I know that you cannot properly speak of re- 
 morse in such cases at all. But suppose you could, 
 are they not similar to cases of righteousness and 
 unrighteousness, of good and evil } Too often the 
 man who is neither merciful nor kind nor pure, has 
 no more of a bad conscience than the man who 
 is all three; but it does not follow that he does 
 not lose anything which a different man gains. It 
 is not only what a bad man suffers, but what he 
 does not and cannot enjoy, that you must take into 
 account when you compare him with a good man. 
 Of suffering, in one form or another, we all are 
 partakers, and man for man, I do not know that 
 there is not as much suffering (though of a different 
 kind) on the side of the good as on that of the evil. 
 But it is different as to what a good man and a bad 
 can enjoy: the good man's advantage here is not 
 open to a doubt. Take a greedy man of the world, 
 too common in the church, a man who, perhaps, 
 prays daily in the name of Christ, and daily blas- 
 phemes the doctrine of Christ, inasmuch as Christ 
 has said that it is more blessed to give than to 
 receive, while he acts steadily upon the principle 
 that the most blessed of all things is to take as 
 much as you can get, and give as little as you can. 
 He is, perhaps, just the last man in the world who 
 would ever dream of accusing himself of anything 
 wrong. He will tell you he never did any one any 
 harm. He has always paid his debts. He never 
 forged a bill ; never stole ; never swore ; never was 
 drunk. Remorse ! why should you mention such 
 
1 66 GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS. [viii. 
 
 a thing to him ? But, suppose all this to be true, 
 would any one, who takes an intelligent view of 
 things, compare, for a moment, in point of real 
 good and happiness, the life of such a man, shut up 
 in himself, narrowed and bounded by himself, with 
 the life of some kindly, generous, big-hearted man, 
 to whom it is a joy to do a deed of kindness or 
 speak a word of encouragement and sympathy, 
 whose neighbour's gladness is his own, who lives 
 in the lives of all his friends and acquaint- 
 ances, and is gladdened by all that gladdens 
 them ? 
 
 Suppose, again — no uncommon case — a man of 
 impure life, without any acquaintance with remorse. 
 Would any one, who knows really what human life 
 is, and what are its poorest pleasures and satisfac- 
 tions on the one hand, and what are its richest and 
 best on the other — would any one who knows this, 
 compare the life of such a man, a slave to his 
 appetites, at war with his reason, forced by the 
 tyranny of what is animal to forego more and 
 more of what is human and spiritual, — would any 
 one, who takes a sensible, not to say a lofty, view 
 of things, compare the life of such a man with that 
 of a pure-minded man — I do not mean a stupidly 
 innocent man, or a mechanically virtuous man — 
 but a man who fervently loves all things innocent 
 and pure and good — man's courage and strength of 
 purpose, woman's modesty and grace, the sim- 
 plicity of children, home and kindred, the sights 
 and sounds of nature, honesty in trade, truth of 
 
VIII.] GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS. 167 
 
 speech, gentleness in the strong and great, patience 
 in the weak and suffering ? 
 
 It is not that these different men have here and 
 there, at odd moments, different or contrary experi- 
 ences, but that the world in which each lives is a 
 wholly different world. I do not know what sort 
 of world it is in which other creatures than man 
 live, and move, and have their being ; but I do know 
 that there are different worlds in which men live, 
 so that what is day to some is night to others, or 
 rather, so that to some there is little day, and to 
 others there is little night. I do know, for certain, 
 that he who loves righteousness and truth and 
 goodness, would think that fate the cruellest of all 
 possible which condemned him to be a rogue or a 
 hypocrite. 
 
 It is true, then, that for different men life is a 
 different experience, and true also that, as we live, 
 and move, and have our being in God, different 
 men have different experience of Him, — that to 
 the upright He is upright ; to the merciful, merci- 
 ful ; and to the froward, froward. 
 
 And is not this which the Psalmist says 
 exactly what Christ says in the Sermon on the 
 Mount : " Blessed are the poor in spirit : for theirs 
 is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they 
 which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for 
 they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful : for 
 they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in 
 heart : for they shall see God. Forgive and ye 
 shall be forgiven. Judge not, that ye be not 
 
1 68 GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS. [vin. 
 
 judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye 
 shall be judged : and with what measure ye mete, 
 it shall be measured to you again. Every tree is 
 known by its fruit " .-* There is, I repeat, no more 
 confusion among men in regard to their experience 
 of the world and God, than there is in nature 
 among trees or flowers — no more in an unmerciful 
 man's life can you gather a merciful man's experi- 
 ence, than you can gather grapes of thorns, or figs 
 of thistles. Among the good on the one hand, 
 among the evil on the other, none even of the 
 nicest shades of character are lost in all the seem- 
 ing confusion of earthly things ; but the meek have 
 their experience, and the proud have theirs, and the 
 pure have theirs, and the unforgiving and unkind 
 and ungenerous have theirs. In being w^hat he is, 
 whether good or evil, and irrespective of all that 
 may happen to him here or hereafter — so the 
 Eternal Justice has decreed — every man has his 
 reward. 
 
 And in this point of view, we see how it is that, 
 just as the best and blessedest goodness is that 
 which is, so to speak, natural, unconscious, not con- 
 strained by any law or fashioned by any rule, but 
 free, ^.pontaneous love to God and man, which flows 
 unbidden in a good man's heart, so the cursedest 
 evil is not that which is attended by remorse — an 
 end which might be a beginning ; but it is that 
 dulness and deadness of soul in which a man is con- 
 demned, if he enjoys anything, to enjoy only what 
 is of the earth earthy. 
 
vm.] GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS. 169 
 
 There is no occasion for the alarm of good men 
 lest justice should fail, if all stories of God's mercy 
 be true. Justice is done, though every man in 
 God's great vineyard, whatever his hours of labour, 
 whatever his strength, receive from the hand of 
 Infinite Beneficence his penny; his pennyworth is 
 all his own, and is exactly according to his worth or 
 worthlessness. The Eternal Justice does not secrete 
 itself, a black shadow, in eternity, to receive us 
 when this life is done, and place it in the scale ; 
 it is the air our souls breathe and the light in which 
 all things in heaven and earth are seen by them ; 
 and it is to every soul what every soul is. To 
 the merciful, God is merciful; to the froward, 
 froward. 
 
 Thus, in the first place, because life is experience 
 of God, to different men God is different. But I 
 hasten now to remark that, to different men. He is 
 also different as an object of study and reflection. 
 
 On many other subjects, or rather on most, if 
 people agree they do agree, and if they differ they 
 differ, and there is an end of it. That the earth is 
 a planet, that a high mountain is sublime, that 
 temperance is a virtue — if people agree about any 
 of these things they do agree. But it is different 
 with regard to the highest object of human thought 
 — God. People may agree, and do agree, in their 
 language respecting Him, who have little or 
 nothing in common in their thought and meaning. 
 
 In point of fact, I venture to say, in the first 
 place, among us/ who all profess the same creed, 
 
lyo GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS. [vin. 
 
 there are Gods many and Lords many. Wesley, 
 the pious founder of Methodism, it is said, remon- 
 strated with Whitfield as to his ideas of God, 
 telling him " your God is my devil." And is it not 
 obvious that something of the same sort might be 
 said by sets of Christians at the present day to 
 other sets } Could any two beings be more unlike 
 each other than those two, who are called God — 
 on the one hand by some member of a Christian 
 sect, perhaps one of the obscurest of all sects, who 
 fancies that out of his sect there is no salvation — 
 that is to say, fancies that God has condemned all 
 but himself and a handful of others, no better men 
 than himself, to everlasting torment: and, on the 
 other hand, by one of those Christians, who hope 
 and believe that all evil in all the world will yet 
 be turned to good, and God, who is good, be all 
 in all } 
 
 I will go farther than this, and say that not only 
 is it plain to thoughtful observers that it is not one 
 and the same God we all believe in ; but that the 
 God of ordinary prevalent orthodox ways of think- 
 ing must be in the very nature of things, and to a 
 greater or less extent, a God in whom we ought 
 not to believe. This may seem a rash assertion. 
 But look what there is to countenance it, for ex- 
 ample, in the history of Judaism. Could any 
 notions of God be more silly and preposterous 
 to our minds than those which, as we learn from 
 His own exposure of their absurdity, Avere the 
 orthodox notions among our Lord's countrymen 
 
vm.] GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS. 171 
 
 in His time ? They had the law and the prophets 
 from which to draw their theology; and the 
 theology which they drew, as compared with 
 that of Moses, or David, or Isaiah, was simple 
 nonsense. Turn to other religions and you find 
 the same thing. Buddhism and Hindooism are 
 one thing in the sacred books, and another thing 
 altogether in the common mind. Whatever may 
 be written about God in sacred books, or in 
 creeds and confessions of faith, common modes 
 of thinking, the ideas and sentiments of the great 
 mass of ordinary minds, must always modify, or 
 rather shape the common beliefs about God. It 
 is not what the best and greatest minds have 
 been able in their most inspired moments to think 
 about Him, but what the mass of men can think, 
 and do think of Him at all hours, that embodies 
 itself in our common systems of doctrine, at any- 
 rate in the sense in which they are commonly 
 held. And for this reason, the mass of men being 
 what they are, more or less selfish and earthly, 
 not to say ignorant and unthinking, it follows 
 that there is always danger, no matter what your 
 written creed is, of the God of ordinary beliefs 
 being that of a selfish and earthly mind. I mean 
 to say that there is a danger that what the 
 church actually thinks and believes about God, 
 as distinct from what it professes to believe, may 
 be something to be denied rather than believed. 
 A staunch Protestant would readily admit this 
 with reference to that large part — much the 
 
172 GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS. [vm. 
 
 largest part — of the Christian Church which calls 
 itself Catholic. He would freely allow that a God 
 to whom prayers for the dead may be addressed 
 by a priest, and to whom prayers for the living 
 should be offered in the name of the Virgin, is 
 another God than his, and than that of his 
 church. If he were an intelligent and reflective 
 man, as well as a staunch Protestant, he might 
 say to himself— It is strange but true, as Catholics 
 would contend, that, Catholic and Protestant, we 
 have the same Bible, and hold, and have always 
 held, the same great articles of faith. But look 
 to what is religion among ignorant Catholic 
 Spaniards, or ignorant Catholic Irishmen, and 
 what is religion among educated English Pro- 
 testants, and say if it is the same, or even similar ; 
 tell me if it is the same God we all believe in. 
 A Protestant might say this, and a Catholic be 
 offended by his saying it. But the truth is, 
 though probably there are few in any church 
 who would admit it, the danger is not in one 
 church, or one part of the world, Catholic or 
 Protestant, but in every church, and all over the 
 earth, lest there should be set up as God, an idol, 
 the work of men's hands, the creation not of 
 genius, or heroism, or inspired magnanimity, but 
 of the feeble and vain, and sordid and earthly 
 mind ; and it is perhaps not going too far to say 
 that there is no church, our own included, in 
 which some such idol does not attract the crowd. 
 There are churches, I know, whose confession 
 
VIII.] GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS. 173 
 
 of faith is our own, but whose God, as far as I 
 can judge what He is from the general religious 
 sentiments of their adherents, their opinions as 
 to other churches, and the world and human 
 life, I for my part do not believe in; with regard 
 to whom I am certain, at any rate, that He is not 
 the same as the God of whom I have learned 
 anything from Jesus Christ. 
 
 Can any one think of some of our great ecclesi- 
 astical wars — like the Disruption of the Scotch 
 Establishment, for example — and calmly, at some 
 distance of time, estimate the real importance 
 of the things which were at stake, and the 
 questions which were in dispute, and not feel 
 that those who on the one side or on the other 
 spoke and acted as if the government of the 
 Eternal were laid upon their shoulders, and 
 as if His kingdom upon earth must stand or 
 fall with them, must have had notions of Him 
 very different from others which have been derived 
 by pious minds and great minds in other places, 
 and at other times, from the words of Christ and 
 the commentaries of St. Paul } 
 
 Is it not, in fact, the misery of most of those 
 great agitations that convulse churches at in- 
 tervals, and end in the establishment of new sects, 
 with new names, that there is roused about some 
 comparatively insignificant question — it always is 
 comparatively insignificant — all the feeling of 
 which a roused multitude are capable; that that 
 feeling, of course, enters into and gives its tone 
 
174 GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS. [viii. 
 
 and colour to the life of the sect which owes its 
 birth to it ; that, again, the church life which 
 is thus produced produces its own theology, its 
 own God ; and to the merciful church, as to the 
 merciful man, God is merciful ; to the angry 
 church He is jealous and wrathful ; to the 
 Pharisaic church He is no friend of publicans 
 and sinners ? 
 
 All this, if it be so, is due to the fact which we 
 have here expressed by the Psalmist, that to 
 different minds God is different. As an object of 
 thought as well as a matter of experience. He is 
 so. A man's creed may influence his life, but his 
 life must influence his creed. We cannot pass 
 judgment with regard to our fellow-men, without 
 showing what we ourselves are. The man whose 
 own life is evil, suspects all other men of the evil 
 to which he is inclined. The good man does not 
 doubt but that God, who made him, made others as 
 good as he. And in the same way, all sorts of men, 
 according to their sorts, judge God. " He that 
 loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how 
 can he love God whom he hath not seen t " The man 
 who has no love for his fellow-man, has no love in 
 him — hard, therefore, for him to believe in. love, if 
 you make it infinite and eternal, and call it God. 
 Men who cannot forgive, men who cannot pity, 
 men who cannot lend hoping for nothing again, 
 cannot have a God except in their own image. In 
 fact, every man's God must be himself, only on a 
 greater scale. He who loves righteousness, and 
 
VIII. ] GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS. 175 
 
 truth, andgoodness more than life, will have a God 
 whose life is righteousness, and truth, and goodness. 
 He who loves gain, and pleasure, and mastery over 
 others, will have a God who is arbitrary in his acts, 
 shifty in his character, stern and oppressive in his 
 government. The servant who hides his master's 
 talent in the earth, the proud and wilful man to 
 whom duty is disgusting, has for his God a hard 
 man reaping where he has not sowed, and gathering 
 where he has not strawed. Through all the differ- 
 ent shades of human character, even the faintest and 
 finest, it is the same ; each has its own God. A 
 man cannot rise above his own level, and attribute 
 to God that which is not in himself Get every liv- 
 ing man to subscribe one confession of faith, and as 
 far as it concerns God, each man will subscribe it in 
 a different sense. For, search the world and books, 
 even the Bible itself, how we will, if God is to be 
 found, or known, or seen anywhere, it must be in 
 our own souls. God is a spirit, not confined to 
 temples, not bound up in books, not coffined in 
 ancient creeds ; but in that spirit with which He 
 has endowed us, we must and we do find him, and 
 in that alone, or above all — merciful to the merci- 
 ful ; to the pure, pure ; to the froward, froward. 
 
 Here, then, if nowhere else, is reward and punish- 
 ment. There is that in man which does not admit 
 of his disowning God altogether in his way of 
 thought, however he may disown Him in his 
 manner of life. It is a necessity of human nature 
 to have a God. If there are beings in human shape 
 
176 GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS. [vm. 
 
 who have no idea of God, they can scarcely be 
 called human. To be condemned then to think of 
 God, as some men think of Him, and must think 
 of Him, their life being stronger than their creed, 
 not as a being to be loved, but as one to be feared 
 or hated — this is punishment. If the light that 
 is in you be darkness, how great is that dark- 
 ness 1 If your religion is night, where is your 
 day } If God is a bugbear, what is your life } 
 To have a religion, and that not something which 
 lightens up the world, and life, and death, and 
 things present and things to come, with the 
 smile of the Eternal Friendship, but which sits 
 heavily upon all natural joy, and darkens the 
 misery of man's few and evil days upon the 
 earth with the suspicion of years of evil without 
 end beyond — this is punishment. What other 
 gain, or reward, or happiness, on the other hand, 
 would you desire, than the religion of Christ — to 
 love righteousness and truth and goodness with 
 all your heart and soul and strength and mind, 
 and to believe that God, who is over all, and is the 
 Beginning and the End of all, is all that you love ; 
 to pity and believe in a pity which comprehends 
 all that lives and breathes ; to wish for the good of 
 all men in this world and the next, and to trust in 
 the Almighty, to whom that good must be precious; 
 to feel that our little life is not bounded by endless 
 realms of chaos and old night, peopled with shapes 
 of fear and horror, but is islanded in the deep of the 
 Eternal Charity and Kindness ; to doubt and yet 
 
VTii.] GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS. 177 
 
 more to trust; to feel that much is the mystery of 
 man's existence and God's ways, but that to live 
 and breathe is to hope good, ay, abundance of 
 good, for all that live and breathe from the Source 
 and Fountain of life and all our gladness. What 
 other reward, gain, happiness, would you have than 
 that? Christianity is a sorry gain, I admit, to 
 many who profess it, except it be the only escape 
 from the bottomless pit, and from the lake of fire 
 and brimstone. It is a sorry gain to those, and they 
 are many, whose notion is that something which 
 God can give them, or some place in which he can 
 put them, will be heaven. But that which makes 
 God Himself our heaven is great gain, without 
 reference to any life but this. With this a man 
 might live and die, and doubt if he is to live again, 
 and with his last breath bless God : — the merciful 
 man's God, and his exceeding great reward. 
 
 I have but to add then, last of all, as the prac- 
 tical lesson which we get from all this — a man 
 may change his church and his creed, and not 
 change his God ; but he changes his God when he 
 changes his life. To find God what God ought to 
 be to us, and what He was to David, to Abraham, to 
 Isaiah, to Paul, what we have to do is to order our 
 lives in righteousness. Let us by trying to do the 
 will of God in our daily life, learn of the truth 
 whether it be of God. Otherwise we shall never 
 learn it. If we would know God and delight our- 
 selves in Him, we must not be satisfied to say 
 what is commonly said, or think what is commonly 
 
 M 
 
1 78 GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS. [viii. 
 
 thought, or beheve what is commonly believed and 
 preached about him. By daily doing of His will — 
 that is to say, by daily doing all our duty, all that 
 we know to be right and good; by sincerity of 
 speech, by honest and faithful work ; by forgiveness 
 of injuries, and of ignorance and folly ; by kindness, 
 by charity, let us try rather to raise ourselves out 
 of those narrower and meaner views of Him, which 
 do, and must always prevail no less in the church 
 than in the world. There are many good people 
 who are afraid of nothing so much as any inquiry 
 on religious subjects, any thinking for oneself. 
 But just on these, if on no other subjects, every 
 man must think for himself if he is to think at all. 
 Each man must be his own instructor as to God, and 
 his life must be his great book. The merciful man, 
 the pure man, the froward man, as far as he thinks 
 at all about God, thinks for himself; each must 
 school himself in divinity at his own expense and 
 in his own school. There is a class of religious 
 books which pretend to be the only safe or profit- 
 able ones to be put into the hands of old or young, 
 and which are regarded as such by a great many. 
 In this, perhaps the most popular of all classes of 
 books, I find a few familiar, and, I will call them, 
 pitiful ideas of God constantly reiterated, while all 
 those grander ideas of Him, which make the Bible 
 the best of books, all those ideas of Him which are 
 to be derived from the study of science, or from 
 the course of history, the ideas, in fact, of a modern 
 and enlightened age, are systematically ignored or 
 
VIII.] GODS MANY AMONG CHRISTIANS. 179 
 
 solemnly tabooed. Yet many good people, afraid 
 to trust themselves, or to trust their children to 
 make any inquiry on religious subjects, religiously 
 restrict their reading to this class of books. On 
 the greatest of all subjects, good people thus con- 
 demn themselves and their children to eternal 
 poverty of mind. Were it not better if we all felt 
 that whether in books which record the experience 
 of others, or in our own lives, or in science, or in 
 nature, or in the Bible, we are free — rather we are 
 bound — to seek to know Him, whom to know is life 
 everlasting. Whether we will or no, God will be 
 different to different men's thought; but that each 
 man should think for himself, and should think 
 freely, rather than according to some common 
 notions — this, if anything is sacred or certain, is 
 certain and sacred. Poorer, more irrational, more 
 superstitious notions about God, it would not be 
 possible to find anywhere on the face of the earth, 
 than are common among ourselves, and, I will ven- 
 ture to say, are commonly enough preached among 
 us. If reading will help us, if thinking for ourselves 
 will help us to rise above these notions, rise above 
 them we should. And what is certain is — and this 
 again is the great lesson of my text — to live after the 
 example of Christ, not only to do no harm, but to 
 do good, to devote our life to the highest ends of 
 living — this will help us to rise above them, so that 
 to us, whatever He may be to others, the Merciful 
 will be merciful, the True will be true, the Upright 
 will be upright, the Pitiful will be compassionate. 
 
i8o 
 
 IX. 
 
 THE FEW AND THE MANY. 
 
 "Ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men 
 after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called." 
 I Cor. i, 26. 
 
 There is a great difference between a historical 
 statement and a doctrinal one, which, great as it 
 is, is not always noticed. At any rate, statements 
 in the Bible which are plainly historical, are not 
 seldom construed as if they were doctrinal. It is 
 very easy to explain the difference. A historical 
 statement tells you something which is true with 
 reference to a particular place or time. A doc- 
 trinal statement tells you what is always and 
 ever^^where true. Thus, for example, it is a 
 historical statement to say that our Lord ap- 
 pointed twelve apostles, and invested them with 
 the authority which He claimed for Himself — 
 historical because it refers to a particular time, 
 and, except with reference to that time, is unin- 
 telligible or unmeaning. On the other hand, it is 
 
IX.] THE FEW AND THE MANY. jgi 
 
 a doctrinal statement that Christ is the Head of 
 the Church — doctrinal because it tells you not 
 what is true of one time, or one place, but always 
 and everywhere true. 
 
 Now, of course, if there is all this difference 
 between these two kinds of statement, it must 
 often be a grave, often a most ridiculous blunder, 
 to take the one for the other. 
 
 Take, for example, the historical statement just 
 mentioned, viz., that Christ delegated His autho- 
 rity to apostles ; give to it a doctrinal sense ; 
 make it a doctrine or rule as to the seat of 
 authority and government among Christians — it 
 would require you, of course, to have a set of men 
 always holding the position which the twelve 
 apostles held ; that is to say, it would oblige you 
 to attempt what, in the very nature of things, 
 is impossible. You might elect twelve men to 
 be apostles in your Church ; others might elect 
 twelve to be apostles in theirs, but none of 
 these different sets of apostles would occupy the 
 place which the first twelve companions of the 
 Master filled. 
 
 Now, here is a statement in this epistle which 
 has been often taken as if it were doctrinal, 
 though it is, in fact, historical, and the result is 
 no less absurd, and it is much more mischievous, 
 than if you were to insist on having twelve 
 apostles and a Judas among them now, because 
 there were once twelve, and one of them had a 
 devil — " Ye see your calling, brethren, how that 
 
r82 THE FEW AND THE MANY. [ix. 
 
 not many wise men after the flesh, not many 
 mighty, not many noble, are called." 
 
 Every statement of this kind, and, indeed, every 
 statement whatever in the Bible, is regarded by 
 some readers as not only true when it was written, 
 but always and everywhere true ; true, that is to 
 say, not historically, but doctrinally. And if it is 
 taken in this way, this text means that there are 
 certain classes of men in all civilized societies 
 who, from the very nature of things, and as a 
 matter of course, reject the religion of Christ. 
 
 Any one, however, who seriously considers it 
 even for a moment, must shrink from entertaining 
 the idea that any classes of society, and especially 
 those particular classes here mentioned, are in 
 this position. In the first place, if it were found 
 that these classes are always and everywhere to 
 be reckoned among the unchristian and unbeliev- 
 ing, thoughtful men of all other classes would, on 
 that account alone, hesitate to embrace the 
 Gospel. It is quite true that the most erudite 
 scholars, the ablest philosophers, the most acute 
 and most advanced thinkers, the whole tribe of 
 wise men, are often enough prejudiced and mis- 
 taken, proved to be so by their disputes among 
 themselves ; but undoubtedly if we found that all, 
 or nearly all the clever and educated men of our 
 day, all, or nearly all the members of those classes 
 of society that enjoy the best opportunities of 
 culture and inquiry — if we found, I say, all, or 
 almost all, these ranged on one side as regards 
 
IX.] THE FEW AND THE MANY. 183 
 
 Christianity, viz., that of unbehef ; and if only the 
 mob of ill-taught, superstitious, unthinking people 
 were to be met on the other side, in exact pro- 
 portion to his intelligence, it would be difficult 
 for an intelligent man to be a Christian. 
 
 The wittiest of our English kings is reported 
 to have said that Presbyterianism was not fit to 
 be the religion of a gentleman. And that may 
 or may not be so — much depends upon what your 
 notion of religion is, and what is your idea of a 
 gentleman. But if Christianity were only fit to 
 be the religion of the vulgar and uneducated 
 mob, its prospects in this world would be poor, 
 especially as it is to be hoped the education of 
 the people will not suffer from having at last in 
 various countries been made a national affair. 
 
 Again, of course, if this statement were doc- 
 trinal, if it meant that never are the wise, or 
 mighty, or noble called, then, supposing Christi- 
 anity and salvation to be names for anything of 
 superlative value, it is a misfortune for the world if 
 what we call civilization advances. Each genera- 
 tion more nearly than its predecessor approaches 
 to the condition of the privileged classes of society 
 — the wise, the mighty, the noble. " The process 
 of the suns," in regard to privileged and non- 
 privileged classes, is one of levelling-up. Peaceful 
 commerce and progressive art and science give 
 more and more to the many the advantages, both 
 mental and social, which have been the exclusive 
 possession of the few. Where there was one man 
 
184 THE FEW AND THE MANY. [ix. 
 
 with a little knowledge of philosophy or science 
 fifty years ago, there will soon, it is to be hoped, 
 be a hundred with much. In place of one king, 
 and a few knights and warlike barons, once a 
 nation's complement of the mighty, there are, and 
 will be, many great men, great in virtue of intellect 
 and character, and of the influence, more com- 
 manding and enduring than that of sceptre or 
 coronet, which intellect and character confer. 
 Now, all this is dire misfortune and calamity, if 
 the effect is to be that the number of those who 
 reject Christianity is to be increased, the number 
 of those who accept it diminished, if it is always 
 to be true that the wisdom of the wise and the 
 greatness of the great must stand in the way of 
 their salvation. 
 
 These are some, and only some, of the objec- 
 tions which immediately occur, if you take this 
 statement of my text as doctrinal. 
 
 On the other hand, consider it as historical, and 
 it is plain enough. Look back for a moment to 
 the time when this epistle was written, glance at 
 the state of things then existing among the people 
 to whom it was written, and you not only see 
 that what is here said might be true, but you 
 understand why it was true. You see not only 
 how it might possibly happen that those classes 
 here mentioned were not attracted to Christianity, 
 but you see how inevitable it was they should be 
 repelled by it. 
 
 We still sometimes hear explanations given of 
 
IX.] THE FEW AND THE MANY. 185 
 
 how it is that the learned and the great and the 
 noble are not Christians, but in the first place 
 these explanations account for what is not the 
 fact, for there are as many Christians — that is to 
 say, good men — among cultivated and aristocratic 
 people as in any other class ; and, in the second 
 place, these explanations, as a rule, would not 
 account for the fact, if it were one. It is non- 
 sense, for example, to say that wise men are 
 conceited, and in their conceit reject Christi- 
 anity, because it is simple, or because it is 
 supernatural. The truth is, as regards conceit, it 
 is biggest not with those who have some know- 
 ledge, but with those who have none. If I wanted 
 to discover the most conceited man in this parish, 
 or this county, I should inquire first of all for the 
 most ignorant man in it, and very likely I should 
 find that he was the very man I wanted. 
 
 But be this as it may, if we glance at the world, 
 or that part of it with which we have to do in this 
 epistle at the time my text was written, it is easy 
 to understand why certain classes, and just those 
 very classes here specified, were more reluctant 
 than others to embrace Christianity. 
 
 We have first, then, the '' wise men after the 
 flesh," with regard to whom there has been heard 
 in our time so much futile declamation, against 
 whom every ignorant fanatic who occupies a 
 pulpit thinks it necessary to lift up his indignant 
 heel. 
 
 Now, with regard to this class, let me say, first 
 
1 86 THE FEW AND THE MANY. [ix. 
 
 of all, that in dealing with them we have nothing 
 whatever to do with the great sages of antiquity, 
 the illustrious poets and philosophers of Greece 
 and Rome, whose wisdom has been the wonder 
 and delight of civilized mankind for more than 
 twenty centuries. It would certainly not be any- 
 thing to boast of on the side of Christianity if we 
 had to suppose that it rejected them, or they it. 
 It would be nothing in favour of Christianity to 
 have to say that the wisdom of which they were 
 the oracles had nothing in common with that wis- 
 dom of God, of which this Apostle professed to be 
 the mouthpiece. It were only to be wished, in- 
 deed, that the majority of people in our Christian 
 Churches had attained to as lofty, as enlightened, 
 as Christian ideas of the order and government 
 of the universe, of life, and duty, and destiny, as 
 some of these men, seekers after truth in the 
 golden age of Greek wisdom, entertained and 
 taught. There is no question raised here about 
 these great sages and their relation to the faith 
 which we profess ; it is certainly not said that 
 they were not called. As every intelligent man 
 knows, this was not the golden age of Greek 
 literature and philosophy, in which the Apostle 
 Paul flourished and wrote letters to Greek readers; 
 that age was long past ; the memories of it had 
 grown dim and faint. We have to do here with 
 the men of a degenerate time, not thinkers think- 
 ing their best and truest in an earnest age, but 
 the tribe of smatterers, would-be wise men, critics. 
 
IX.] THE FEW AND THE MANY. jgj 
 
 sophists, pretenders to universal knowledge, which 
 is often largest and loudest where ignorance and 
 frivolity divide between them the empire of the 
 human mind. 
 
 This is one thing we have to note with regard 
 to these " wise men after the flesh." On the other 
 hand, we have to remember that, as they were not 
 the great sages of antiquity, so they were not 
 savants, and scholars, and thinkers of our modern 
 type. We hear the name "wise men after the 
 flesh " — nickname we should rather call it — often 
 applied by preachers of the Gospel to learned and 
 scientific men at the present day. But, if it is 
 applied to them, an injustice is done where the 
 difference between them and their namesakes of 
 antiquity is not admitted to be great. The differ- 
 ence is great ; I shall try to explain to you what 
 the difference is, in a way suited to an occasion 
 of this kind. 
 
 The methods of modern research are modern ; 
 the rules and principles according to which learned 
 and scientific men of modern times conduct their 
 inquries are of modern date ; they are themselves 
 modern discoveries. Our '* wise men after the 
 flesh" — let us speak of them by their ecclesiastical 
 nickname — are men who try to discover the facts 
 of nature, and human life, and human history ; 
 and, having done so, form comparisons of them, 
 and theories respecting them ; they find facts first, 
 and then the theory or law of the facts which they 
 have found ; they adapt theory to fact ; not fact 
 
1 88 THE FEW AND THE MANY. [ix 
 
 to theory. But just exactly the reverse, to 
 use popular language, was the common way of 
 the wise men here spoken of. These ancient 
 smatterers, sophists, disciples of more ancient 
 masters, had theories to which they adapted facts 
 — large and cumbrous theories as to the con- 
 stitution of the world, the number and nature of 
 the elements, the origin of matter and mind, good 
 and evil, life and death. You can easily see what 
 difference this would make between our wise men 
 and these ancient wise men as to the reception of 
 the Gospel. Our modern scholars and thinkers, 
 any of them worth the name, are seekers after 
 truth, to whom truth is end and aim ; and if 
 Christianity is true, they are as likely to discover 
 the truth of it as other people ; more likely, one 
 would say, than people who are neither scholars 
 nor thinkers. These ancient wise men, on the 
 other hand, stood rather in the position of our 
 ignorant and superstitious masses, who take a side 
 in politics and religion without candid inquiry, 
 and without capacity for candid inquiry, and are 
 resolute to defend their side just because it is 
 theirs. 
 
 We have still further to remember that this 
 difference between our wise men and these ancient 
 wise men involved another distinction, no less 
 important. Our literary and scientific men, no 
 doubt, for certain purposes and at certain mo- 
 ments, act together in bodies, and there are sects 
 and parties among them almost as if they were 
 
IX.] THE FEW AND THE MANY. 189 
 
 all professing Christians ; but for all that, as far 
 as they are faithful to their vocation, as far as 
 they are true to the spirit of modern research and 
 modern culture, they are inquirers who inquire 
 each man for himself and by himself, and owe no 
 allegiance to a party, or a sect, or a school, or a 
 master, but to truth alone. It was different, of 
 course, with these ancient wise men. According 
 to the various theories concerning all things in 
 heaven and earth which they adopted, they be- 
 longed to one or other of a few philosophical 
 schools or parties into which the learned world was 
 divided. As leaders or adherents of their school 
 or party, they enjoyed what credit and influence 
 they had ; they were attached, by their attach- 
 ment to it, and independently of all personal 
 considerations, to old opinions, and they were 
 jealous of new opinions, as possibly or certainly 
 inimical to its authority and its repute. Consider 
 only how a college of physicians, or an incorpora- 
 tion of lawyers, or a convocation of clergy, might 
 be expected nowadays to welcome any startling 
 novelty affecting their profession. That will show 
 you how these ancient wise men, in consequence 
 of their connection wdth a school or party, were 
 disposed to welcome Christianity. On account of 
 this connection, if for no other reason, they 
 naturally viewed with distrust or aversion that 
 preaching of the cross which, though not pretend- 
 ing to be a rival wisdom to their own, evidently 
 meant that their wisdom was foolishness with God. 
 
I90 THE FEW AND THE MANY. [ix. 
 
 In contrast to them, as I have said, our wise 
 men act independently of each other. If there is 
 any tie among them, it is that of a common 
 reverence for the unprejudiced and untrammelled 
 pursuit of truth. It is ridiculous and unmeaning 
 to speak of them in reference to Christianity or 
 anything else, as belonging to a sect of mathema- 
 ticians, or a school of physicists, or a clique of 
 philologists. And, therefore, if Christianity is true, 
 they are not as a class in any way, more than 
 other people, disabled from discovering its truth. 
 
 It is easy, then, to see how the " wise men after 
 the flesh," at the time my text was written, should 
 have had to be counted among the classes that 
 were least disposed, or most reluctant, to embrace 
 the Gospel — it is easy, that is to say, as far as 
 they are concerned, to interpret my text, if you 
 take it as historical, not doctrinal. 
 
 Turn now for a moment to the other classes 
 here mentioned — the mighty and the noble. 
 When Christianity was new, as it was when my 
 text was written, it had all the advantages, and 
 all the disadvantages, of novelty ; for one thing, 
 it least attracted, or rather it most repelled, those 
 who had least to gain and most to lose by any 
 change. These, of course, were the privileged 
 classes of society — those here mentioned. 
 
 Remember, too, that those changes which 
 Christianity threatened, were the most violent, 
 and therefore the most distasteful possible — I 
 mean to these classes. They were free, and a 
 
IX.] THE FEW AND THE MANY. 191 
 
 great part of the community were their slaves, of 
 whose property and life they could dispose 
 almost at their pleasure. It is now a maxim^ 
 the truth of which, thanks to Christianity, no one 
 dreams of disputing, that property has its duties 
 as well as its rights. But that maxim had no 
 currency, if it had any existence, then. Property 
 and power and rank had rights, which were so 
 many exemptions from duties. No wonder if a 
 religion which came to protest that the duties of 
 the great and noble are still more numerous 
 than their privileges, was at first distasteful to 
 these classes. 
 
 Then, to make what was distasteful in itself 
 doubly so by reason of the manner of it, it was 
 not some great philosopher, or legislator, or 
 magnate of their own lofty order, or even of their 
 own race, who told those that were the lords of 
 many to become the servants of all ; it was a 
 company of artisans, fishermen, slaves, foreigners, 
 the very scum of the earth. It would have been 
 not wonderful but miraculous if, under the circum- 
 stances, a ready and favourable hearing had been got 
 for Christianity among the mighty and the noble. 
 
 Especially is this obvious if you consider that 
 the Gospel was gospel in those days. It was not 
 then what it has often been since, a theological 
 jargon, but a plain, straightforward declaration 
 of the truth that God is love, and man's true life 
 is love, that to be selfish is to be damned, to love 
 is to be saved. 
 
192 THE FEW AAW THE MANY. [ix. 
 
 Fancy the effect even now upon our privileged 
 classes of a small company of penniless artisans, 
 foreign tramps, communists, starting up with some 
 new religious notions, and even, while disclaiming 
 all worldly purposes, really, in their doctrine, prog- 
 nosticating and promoting a social and political 
 revolution. 
 
 The Gospel has no longer the disadvantages, 
 any more than the advantages of novelty. When 
 sons of nobles are ill-paid clergymen, and sove- 
 reigns and statesmen are gratuitous defenders of 
 the faith, there is nothing to hinder the great 
 and noble, any more than the poor and lowly, 
 from professing Christianity. And, as regards 
 the practice of Christianity, the case is not 
 different. The mighty and the noble, as a 
 matter of course, now accept, along with their 
 honours and their privileges, a host of duties, 
 public and social, duties to the poor, to depen- 
 dents, to the community, to the sovereign, which 
 are enjoined rather by public opinion than by law. 
 So much are things changed, property now has 
 not only duties as well as rights, but has fewer 
 rights than duties, and any man of large property 
 and high rank, who even fairly and decently does 
 the duties of his station, is one of the busiest, and 
 is not one of the least useful men in the land. 
 Accordingly, and to prove all this, while it is 
 true that once there were few of the wise and the 
 mighty and the noble who professed the religion 
 of Christ, now, as I have said, there are at least as 
 
jx.] THE FEW AND THE MANY. 193 
 
 many of these classes as of any other (if there are 
 not more), who exhibit the true spirit of Christi- 
 anity in lives of faith towards God and charity 
 towards men. 
 
 With respect, then, to the mighty and the noble, 
 just as with regard to the wise men after the flesh, 
 we have but to refer to the time at which my text 
 was written, not only to see that it might possibly 
 be true, but to discover why it was true. Take it 
 as doctrinal, it is a mistake ; take it as historical, 
 it is a statement of what might easily have been 
 predicted as inevitable. 
 
 Some apology, indeed, seems required for argu- 
 ing at so much length, and with so much gravity 
 and circumstance, a point about which there can 
 be no difficulty for any intelligent mind. If an 
 apology is needed, then, it is to be found first of 
 all in the fact that there is perhaps no passage of 
 Scripture which is more often misquoted, or mis- 
 quoted to worse purpose, than the one before us. 
 Ignorant or unthinking people have no difficulty 
 about adopting opinions and beliefs, few or many, 
 in regard to the abstrusest and most mysterious 
 subjects, if only these opinions and beliefs are 
 accredited to them by any kind of authority, if 
 they are only common or orthodox. On the 
 other hand, minds accustomed to accurate research 
 and exact thought, are less ready to subscribe to 
 every doctrine which is propounded for their ac- 
 ceptance. Many things which are perfectly simple 
 to the many who make no effort to understand 
 
 N 
 
194 
 
 THE FEW AND THE MANY. [ix. 
 
 them, are exceedingly perplexing to the few who 
 are not content without knowing something of 
 what they mean. This is the reason, no doubt, 
 why our literary and scientific men as a class, 
 while not to be supposed estranged in any way 
 from the spirit of the Christian faith, are often 
 enough known to be indifferent or opposed to 
 popular forms of Christianity, or popular beliefs 
 and modes of thought which take to them- 
 selves emphatically or exclusively the title of 
 Christian. 
 
 But of this no account whatever is made in 
 much which is said and written for the edification 
 of the Christian world. If it is not explicitly 
 made a reproach to scholars and thinkers that 
 they are not brainless and illiterate, at any rate 
 no allowance is made for their having difficulties 
 to encounter of which the multitude who are not 
 thinkers know nothing. They are reproved in 
 one quarter, ridiculed in another, pitied in another, 
 as if no account could be given of them except 
 that they choose to be offended by the simplicity 
 of the Gospel, and as if it could not be retorted 
 on their behalf that simplicity is exactly what 
 they look for and cannot find in those elaborate 
 systems of doctrine to which the name of the 
 Gospel is too often given. And then, to give 
 effect to censure, for which the best ground that 
 can be assigned is a blunder, a text is quoted in a 
 sense in which it was never meant. Paul, who was 
 himself a scholar and an Apostle, is made to say 
 
IX.] THE FEW AND THE MANY. 195 
 
 here that scarcely can any one be a scholar and a 
 Christian. 
 
 How much harm is done to the cause of Chris- 
 tianity by thus associating it, or identifying it, 
 with opposition to the best thought of the best 
 minds of our time — for such science may claim to 
 be — is a point which I cannot here discuss. One 
 thing hardly needs to be said, viz., that to identify 
 or associate it with any sort of antagonism to 
 science is necessarily, however unwittingly, to 
 associate or identify it with vulgar ignorance, im- 
 becility of mind, cant, credulity — with the effect, cf 
 course, of weakening its hold upon all but the most 
 unintelligent and unthinking. Flence, for one man 
 who is shaken in his belief of this or that religious 
 doctrine by arguments advanced by men of science, 
 a hundred might perhaps be counted who owe a 
 suspicion of all religious teaching, or a contempt 
 for it, to apologists for Christianity, who undertake 
 to defend it against science, and succeed only in 
 showing with what bad arguments a good cause 
 may come to be supported. 
 
 It is more important to remark, however, that 
 when Christianity is opposed in any sort of way 
 to science, it is made to reject the help of its best 
 friend against its worst enemy. We have to thank 
 modern science, it is admitted, for dissipating for 
 us a mass of gloomy and noxious superstitions 
 with which ages of ignorance and credulity had 
 overlaid the essential verities of our Christian 
 faith. That these essential verities, very iQ\N and 
 
196 THE FEW AND THE MANY. [ix. 
 
 very simple, may be dissociated from superstitions 
 still existing, and distinguished from ecclesiastical 
 shibboleths which are nothing if not superstitions 
 in the making, much remains to be done which 
 modern science seems required to do for us. 
 Ignorance, not science, is the arch-enemy of the 
 simplicity of the Gospel, the purity of the faith, or 
 whatever you choose to call the spirit as distin- 
 guished from the letter of the Christian revelation. 
 Our controversy, on this score, is not with the few 
 who have learned from science to believe little, 
 but with the many who, from ignorance, doubt 
 nothing. Whatever may be the case, then, with 
 regard to ecclesiastical and doctrinal systems, 
 calling themselves Christian, it is at the expense 
 of the purity, and therefore at the expense of the 
 life and power of the Christian faith, that science 
 is in any way opposed or depreciated in the name 
 of Christianity. No greater gain to " pure religion 
 and undefiled " could be wished, than what it 
 would be for Christian churches to take friendly 
 account of science as having much to say in favour 
 of the simplification of their creeds. No greater 
 loss, perhaps, could be incurred by Christian 
 churches, than what they do incur by maintaining, 
 as against an arch-enemy in science, and with 
 fresh ardour and incensed dignity, ancient doc- 
 trines and traditions which, whether true or false, 
 are at any rate at once antiquated and trivial. 
 
 Passing from this point, however, though it is 
 one on which much might be said, I observe 
 
IX.] THE FEW AND THE MANY. 197 
 
 further, by way of excuse for drawing your atten- 
 tion to the distinction which is here to be noted 
 between what is historical and what is doctrinal, 
 that it is a distinction which applies to many pas- 
 sages of Scripture besides this. For example, 
 there is a hard saying of our Lord, which we all 
 know, and which has been the occasion of anxiety 
 to some sensitive souls — a saying with regard to 
 the rich — " It is easier for a camel to go through 
 the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter 
 into the kingdom of God." All sorts of explana- 
 tions are given of this saying, to soften it a little 
 for the man who has the misfortune to be what 
 we are all, or almost all, striving to become. The 
 camel has been turned into something else than 
 the animal of that name, and the needle's eye 
 has been converted, I believe, into a gateway 
 or a door, I see no need for these explana- 
 tions. The saying, no doubt, is .true in a sense, 
 with reference to all time ; to a certain extent 
 it is doctrinally true. But take it historically, 
 and though a figure of speech, it is almost, if 
 not altogether, true to the very letter. How 
 hard, or rather impossible for a rich man, rich 
 and honoured, surrounded by love, obedience, 
 troops of friends, to cast in his lot with Christian 
 society in the days of its early poverty and 
 ignominy, to renounce the flattery of orthodox 
 divines, and the respect and admiration of the 
 orthodox community, and accept the reproach 
 of heresy and fanaticism along with fishermen and 
 
198 THE FEW AND THE MANY. [ix. 
 
 publicans and sinners. It is not easy for a rich 
 man now to enter into the kingdom of God, but it 
 is because it is not easy for any man to depart from 
 evil and do good. Now, when Christianity is the 
 religion of a large portion of the human race, and 
 of all the leading nations of the earth and their 
 leaders, it is no more difficult for a camel to go 
 through a needle's eye than for any smaller body — 
 it is no harder for rich men than for poor men to 
 enter the kingdom of heaven. Each class have 
 their own special difficulties ; it is impossible 
 to say on which side the difficulties are least 
 or greatest. 
 
 I allude to this point, however, without laying any 
 stress upon it. For, after all, the best apology for 
 marking, as I have done, the distinction between 
 what is historical and what is doctrinal, in reference 
 to my text, is not that that distinction applies to other 
 passages as well as to this, but that there are few 
 passages or none to which it is so important to 
 apply it. I remark, then, finally, in illustration 
 of this, that what seems here to concern only 
 the faith of the few, really touches the faith of 
 the many. 
 
 It is true that the wise and the mighty and the 
 noble and the rich are the few — so small a minority 
 of the human race now and always that it might 
 seem to be a matter of comparatively small moment, 
 except to themselves, how they stand related to the 
 Gospel, or how the Gospel stands related to them. 
 But the real truth is, what concerns the few is the 
 
IX.] THE FEW AND THE MANY. 199 
 
 concern of the many, for if there is any class of 
 mankind to whom Christian faith in God is, in the 
 very nature of things, difficult or impossible, the 
 faith of all the rest must obviously be the poorer 
 and the weaker. So vast is the whole number 
 of the human race, it would seem, in one point 
 of view, to matter little that one individual 
 should finally perish ; but, then, if we had to 
 regard the loss of even one individual as pre- 
 meditated by God, or not regretted by Him, 
 this would make the whole human race losers to a 
 degree impossible to estimate, for it would circum- 
 scribe God, it would put bounds to that eternal 
 mercy and kindness which ought to be to our 
 minds as infinite as eternal. And much more, . 
 if we think of whole classes of mankind as 
 somehow placed in a difficult or hopeless position 
 as regards salvation, we limit God and impoverish 
 faith. It matters not that these classes are com- 
 paratively small, the supposition that faith and 
 hope have been made difficult or impossible for 
 them, beggars the faith and hope of all the human 
 race, by assigning to faith and hope as their proper 
 object a diminished God. 
 
 It is as the Father of all His creatures, kind even 
 to the evil and unthankful, infinite in His tender- 
 ness and pity for all, yearning over all with bound- 
 less love ; it is thus that God is revealed to us in 
 Christ, and that He is felt by the Christian mind 
 to be God indeed. Tell us of anything that goes 
 to show that there are some of the human race for 
 
200 THE FEW AND THE MANY. [ix. 
 
 whom God does not intend His grace, or to whom He 
 does not extend it, with regard to whom He is not 
 sorry if they are offered it and reject it ; it matters 
 not, of course, that we are not directly concerned, 
 it signifies nothing that He is still a Father to us 
 and ours, He is not that Father of all, rich in mercy 
 to all men, in whom alone it is any satisfaction or 
 any comfort to believe and hope. 
 
 Consider the relation of parents and children. If 
 a father loves all his children with an equal, because 
 an unbounded affection, each of them is the happier 
 that every other shares that affection, because in 
 this way his reverence for his father's character, his 
 admiration of his father's goodness, is raised to its 
 utmost pitch. But suppose you have a father w4io 
 loves some of his children, and is indifferent or un- 
 feeling to the rest, it is not only those not loved by 
 him who suffer, or even possibly suffer most — those 
 whom he does love, to whom he is the kindest and 
 most doting of parents, cannot love him and esteem 
 him as they would do if his love were impartial, and 
 because they cannot do this their comfort and their 
 enjoyment as his children are curtailed and lessened. 
 It is not the same thing to be loved by one who is 
 worthy of our love, whose character draws forth our 
 affection, and to be loved by one whose character 
 imperfectly attracts us, or sometimes repels or 
 shocks us. 
 
 Apply this to the Father of all. It is one thing 
 to be loved by Him if He is really a Father to all 
 His children, boundless in His goodness and mercy, 
 
IX.] THE FEW AND THE MANY. 201 
 
 and another thing to love Him, and be loved by 
 Him, if only some of His children are objects of 
 His care. If to love God at all is good, to love a 
 good God must be best. It is best to love God, 
 not as the God of the Jews only, but as equally the 
 God and Father of the Samaritans and of the 
 heathen; it is much better to love Him as the 
 God of all denominations, than as the God of the 
 Establishment, or as the God of the Dissenters ; 
 it is better to love Him as the Father alike of 
 sinners and of saints, than as the God of any 
 peculiar or chosen people. 
 
 It is worth while, for this reason, if for no other, 
 to show that my text is not doctrine but history ; 
 true with reference to one time, not everywhere and 
 always true. As doctrine, in which sense it is com- 
 monly taken, it is one of those misinterpreted texts 
 which confute not other texts, but the Gospel itself, 
 for if there is a Gospel, it is the eternal and bound- 
 less love of God, the Father of all. 
 
 That this is the Gospel, I for one have no doubt. 
 If you ask me how many are called or not called, 
 how many chosen or not chosen, I answer — tell me, 
 is God the Father of all men, or is He not t Did 
 Christ say anything on the subject, and what did 
 He say } I answer so because, if God is our Father, 
 it is simply absurd to suppose He should not wish 
 and choose and plan and promote the well-being, 
 the eternal well-being of all. Imagine a father who 
 does not care how many or how few of his children 
 live or die, suffer or rejoice, hunger or have enough 
 
;o2 THE FEW AND THE MANY. [ix. 
 
 to eat. You don't ask, surely, whether he is a good 
 or a bad father ; you say he is not a father at all. 
 
 You empty the Gospel of its meaning, you turn 
 the Christian revelation into a puzzle, if you say, 
 then, that there is a single human being towards 
 whom God is not what a Father should be. This 
 one word Father in the Gospel is the gospel, and it 
 tells you how many are called, because it tells' you 
 how many are cast out. 
 
 In Christ Jesus — that is to say, in reference to the 
 fatherly love of God — there is neither Jew nor 
 Greek, neither bond nor free, neither rich nor poor, 
 neither high nor low, except that while death is 
 uniform, life is various. Our different outward con- 
 ditions in this mortal life are not divisions made 
 between those who are, and those who are not 
 beloved ; they are a diversity of gifts, the object of 
 which is to produce diversity of grace. The wise 
 and the mighty and the noble with a wider ex- 
 perience of the world than others, discover in their 
 own peculiar way, often more surely and more 
 miserably than others, that every man at his best 
 estate, if his best estate be worldly, is wholly vanity. 
 They, therefore, may hear, and do often hear, the 
 call of the Gospel, which is a call to higher and 
 nobler and more blessed life — hear it with thank- 
 fulness. When they do thus hear it, theirs is the 
 opportunity on a great scale, with large means, 
 with signal results, to work the work of God, and 
 share His life: able to make many rich by their 
 influence and beneficence — to them, in spite of their 
 
IX.] THE FEW AND THE MANY. 203 
 
 riches, belongs in a special degree the blessedness 
 of the poor in spirit. 
 
 So, on the other hand, the poor and obscure and 
 illiterate find life empty from the first. To them 
 it is no illusion, because there is in it so much of 
 the haggard reality of wretchedness. How good 
 and blessed for them, therefore, to discover that 
 the Highest of all is their Father and Friend, and 
 by the help of that faith to make for themselves, 
 out of a seeming predestination to misery, an 
 opportunity for that patient continuance in well- 
 doing, the gains of which are countless and eternal. 
 
 The unlearned think with envy of the lettered and 
 gifted ; the poor and obscure with jealousy of the 
 rich and great. It is pardonable, but it is weak. I 
 know that it is nonsense to condemn the ambition 
 of the poor and lowly to be great and mighty, and 
 that it is worse than nonsense to censure the am- 
 bition of the ignorant to be learned and accom- 
 plished. It is ridiculous to talk as if birth and 
 property and learning were not advantages worth 
 having. But while it is folly, and mischievous folly 
 too, to talk as if these things and the like of them 
 were not legitimate objects of ambition, what we 
 are bound as Christians not to forget is, that God 
 is kind who has denied to most of us the pos- 
 session of these things — kind because He allows 
 us to entertain a still higher ambition than that 
 of gaining them. I will tell you what was the 
 loftiest ambition which this world has seen in 
 any one — it was that with which Jesus Christ was 
 
204 THE FEW AND THE MANY, [ix. 
 
 inspired when for our sakes He became poor. We 
 cannot all be of the number of the learned and 
 the noble and the mighty, but we can all be of an 
 order which is higher still — the order to which He 
 belonged. The Society of Jesus — if there were 
 really a society answering in its character to the 
 name — might give stars and ribbons to decorate 
 the breasts of kings and princes. We cannot be 
 nobles and great men, but we can be what nobles 
 and great men were originally understood to be, 
 and what they may still as their highest ambition 
 seek to become — heroes and saints. We all know 
 and feel that a hero is grander than a monarch, a 
 saint higher than a noble. As we look back upon 
 the history of mankind, it is not the miscellaneous 
 throng of the mighty and the great, who lived in 
 big houses and wore stars and ribbons, that we 
 envy; it is here and there the truly great and noble 
 man, hero and saint, king and priest unto God, who 
 lived and laboured for his kind. We envy him, we 
 know that his life was true and blessed life. And 
 we all, even we who are born and will remain 
 among the poor and lowly, may rise to such great- 
 ness. In Jesus Christ we are called to be heroes 
 and saints, to fight the good fight of faith against 
 sense and against common example, to live the life 
 of the Son of Man, who was poor and made many 
 rich, to do good and fear no evil, to make the world 
 better and more gladsome by our presence in it, 
 and to fill a place in the hearts and memories, not 
 only of our family and our friends, but of those 
 
IX.] THE FEW AND THE MANY. 205 
 
 who work and pray that the Kingdom of God may 
 come, and all men become kings and priests unto 
 God. Ye see your calling — the wise and the 
 mighty and the noble are called, and along with 
 them the poor and lowly, called to one and the 
 same nobility of character and life. 
 
2o6 
 
 X. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL. 
 
 {Reprinted from ''Good Words.'') 
 
 The author of "The Divine Legation of Moses" 
 — that magnificent paradox in five volumes — has 
 founded an argument for the truth of the Mosaic 
 reHgion on the fact that the writings of the great 
 lawgiver contain no mention of immortality ; 
 in other words, he tries to prove that that religion 
 is divine, because it is without what is so large 
 a part of other religions — the idea of a future 
 state. An argument of a similar kind (only con- 
 clusive instead of fallacious and absurd) in favour 
 of the truth of the Christian religion may be 
 drawn from the fact that it is a religion without 
 a ritual — that it not only prescribes no ritual, 
 such as other religions sanction, but that in spirit, 
 if not in so many words, it proscribes such 
 ritual. " Pure religion and undefiled before God 
 and the Father is this. To visit the fatherless 
 and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself 
 unspotted from the world." 
 
X.] CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL. 207 
 
 Be the reasons what they may, reHgion as dis- 
 tinguished from morality is at present discredited 
 with many — has fallen in a time of light upon 
 days of darkness, days of evil tongues, or at any 
 rate of evil thoughts. In the view and intention 
 of many, its fate is to be abolished by its name 
 being given to another thing, by its being merged 
 altogether in morality. The advocates of this 
 view would contend that all that is important 
 and all that is real in any religious system, is 
 the amount and quality of the morality which it 
 serves to inculcate and enforce. Faith is nothing, 
 conduct is everything. To the support of this 
 doctrine the language of the Apostle James, which 
 we have quoted, and much more in his Epistle, 
 appears to lend its countenance, and accordingly 
 James is a popular preacher, and his texts are 
 proverbs, and the Gospel according to James is 
 a fifth Gospel. But in point of fact the Apostle 
 lends no authority to a view of religion which 
 annihilates it. There is, as every reader of Greek 
 knows, something about morality in the verse in 
 question, but nothing at all about religion. It 
 is a wrong, or at any rate an ambiguous and mis- 
 leading word which is used in our translation. The 
 word which is translated religion ought to have 
 been rendered worshipping, or ritual, or something 
 of that kind, just as in another place in which 
 it occurs — "a voluntary humility and ivorshipping 
 of angels." It would be quite as correct there 
 to say *' religion of angels" as it is to say in the 
 
2o8 CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL. [x. 
 
 Epistle of James, ''pure religion and undefiled." 
 The " practical " view of religion, as far as it 
 proposes, on the authority of this Apostle, to 
 abolish religion, to merge it in morality, is con- 
 futed, not by common sense or Scripture only, 
 but by a slight knowledge of Greek. What St. 
 James means to say, of course, is that true worship, 
 true ritual, true church service, is not rite and 
 ceremony, not costly and elaborate worshipping 
 on high days and holidays in decorated temples 
 and incensed churches — it is charity and a blame- 
 less life. His proposition is that morality is the 
 ritual of the Christian religion ; a beautiful life 
 the finest and grandest liturgy. 
 
 It has been well said by Coleridge that mor- 
 ality was the spirit of which the outward service 
 of ancient religion was the letter. The rites 
 and ceremonies and ceremonial vestments of the 
 Mosaic law were a picture-book by which a rude 
 nation was taught some simple elementary moral 
 lessons. But morality itself, even according to 
 the fifth gospel, is the service and ceremonial 
 of the Christian religion. There is endless con- 
 troversy at the present day as to ritual, as to 
 the forms of worship and the ecclesiastical usages 
 and arrangements which are sanctioned by divine 
 authority. On this point writings of buried ages, 
 volumes of forgotten lore, are disinterred and 
 ransacked, not with antiquarian curiosity, but 
 with religious zeal, in order to find the smallest 
 particle of information. When anything of the 
 
X.] CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL. 209 
 
 kind is found, when some ancient author, whose 
 obHvion ought to have remained undisturbed till 
 the day of doom, is discovered to have a word 
 to say about this rite, or that ecclesiastical custom, 
 what delight, what jubilation ! Go back, however, 
 still farther into the past than the most enthusi- 
 astic ritualist of them all. Instead of asking 
 what says this father of the third century and 
 that saint of the sixth, ask what say the apostles, 
 what say the evangelists, what say the men who 
 founded Christianity ? and you will find they 
 have nothing to say about rites or ceremonies 
 or customs (the two great sacraments excepted) ; 
 not a word, unless it be that they are all superfluous. 
 Why } It is not that in the planting of Christianity 
 the thing somehow was forgotten — that the ques- 
 tion was overlooked .whether the new religion 
 should have a ritual like the Mosaic. It is not 
 that our Lord and the apostles and evangelists 
 did not think of observance and ritual until it 
 was too late, and that this father and that saint, 
 wiser in their generation, rose up at a later time 
 to remedy the defect. Neither (though this is 
 very often said) was it because it was thought 
 that the Church might be safely left to invent a 
 ritual for itself, to adopt what rites and ceremonies 
 might be found suitable in different ages and 
 different places. Far from it. There is much 
 which is only half told in the New Testament — 
 much, at any rate, with regard to which doubt 
 
 and uncertainty is possible or inevitable. But 
 
 o 
 
2 1 o CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL. [x. 
 
 on this point there is less room for doubt and un- 
 certainty than on almost any other. Christianity 
 not only prescribes no ritual. Implicitly, and for 
 reasons which concern the most vital interests of 
 the faith and of the world, Christianity proscribes 
 ritual : it will admit of none — none but that ritual 
 which is also religion, religion expressed in act, 
 the dedication of the worshipper himself as a 
 reasonable sacrifice, holy and acceptable, unto 
 God. Ancient religion, with its ritual, ended for 
 the most part in the improvement of the indi- 
 vidual soul — in teaching this man and that to 
 be purer and holier. The new religion begins 
 where the ancient ended, with pure and loving 
 hearts, and as its ritual, by means of these, it 
 goes forth to purify and bless the world — to 
 convert, not a nation or a church, but the whole 
 earth into God's heritage and praise and glory. 
 
 If this be so, to say the least of it, ritualism 
 is an anachronism. There is a mistake in it of 
 not less than twenty centuries. We do not mean, 
 of course, by ritualism any improvement of Church 
 services, such as is desired and advocated in all 
 churches by many, who are just as willing to 
 make these services simpler than they are as to 
 make them more complex, provided only they 
 can make them more real and more beautiful. 
 To have good prayers and good music instead 
 of bad, to worship God in a beautiful instead of 
 an ugly building, is not ritualism ; at any rate, 
 it is very harmless ritualism. That which is 
 
X.] CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL. 211 
 
 properly so called, for one thing, if it loves 
 effect, abhors or disdains simplicity. To exhibit 
 Christianity outwardly in the smoke of incense, 
 in the sweet cadences of music, in the rich vest- 
 ments of priests and celebrants, in the pomp of 
 sacraments, in the substitution of wax candles 
 for daylight ; to fill the calendar with saints' 
 days ; to make the masses who can hardly read 
 the Gospels pedants and enthusiasts in the history 
 of clerical robes and church furniture ; to blazon 
 all modern life with antique, obscure, or unin- 
 telligible ecclesiastical heraldry — this ritualism, 
 properly so called, is the ambition and delight 
 of many good men, and some clever and highly 
 cultivated men, at the present day (very able and 
 very willing to do battle for themselves) ; and 
 as we see from its association with ascetic and 
 monastic views and tendencies in the minds of 
 its most conspicuous advocates, it has for its 
 immediate, if not its chief, effect, to fill the mind 
 with holy languors, sentimental ecstasies, heavenly 
 raptures. This is Christianity addressed to the 
 senses, just as Judaism was addressed to the senses, 
 and with this difference, that the old picture-book, 
 once so instructive, but now gone out of date, 
 edited for the use, not of children, but men, no 
 longer answers its purpose, no longer teaches with 
 distinctness anything in particular ; but where it 
 has any effect, has it above all in those unprofit- 
 able raptures (unprofitable to the world) in which 
 monastic minds and monastic institutions have 
 
212 CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL. [x. 
 
 allowed the vital energy of Christianity to escape 
 like waste steam from a stationary locomotive 
 into the barren fields of infinite space. How 
 different from this the Apostle James's idea ! 
 Christianity exhibiting itself outwardly, indeed, 
 but not in smoke of incense, not in procession 
 of hired singers, but in brave men and pure 
 women, instinct with the life divine of love going 
 about in an evil world to reform and regenerate 
 it — going about, and while bravely, nobly, piously 
 meeting temptation and resisting it for them- 
 selves, entering into the abodes of the destitute 
 and forlorn, the widows and the fatherless, the 
 fallen and the outcast, and illuminating these 
 cheerless places with the light which human love 
 alone brings down from heaven. It seems folly to 
 argue which of these is the true idea of Christian 
 ritual. 
 
 That renouncing all other ritual Christianity 
 claims for itself this sublime one of a perfect 
 morality, that it will have no authorized and 
 universal liturgy but that of beautiful and saintly 
 lives beautifying and sanctifying the world — this 
 is one of the most conclusive evidences which it 
 is possible to allege in favour of the truth of 
 Christianity. Beginning thus where the ancient 
 religion ended, Christianity identifies God's glory 
 and man's blessedness ; eternal well-being possible 
 to the creature, and supreme glory due to the 
 Creator, and by this one thing, this suprem.e gener- 
 alization in a loftier field than that of science 
 
X.] CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL. 213 
 
 makes good its title to be considered the one 
 true everlasting faith. It is man's true life and 
 blessedness to love and do good ; it is God's 
 glory to receive this from man as the homage 
 of the creature to the Creator, or rather of the 
 son to the Father of all. In this way Christianity 
 identifies true worship with true blessedness, the 
 ritual of religion with the true life of man. The 
 object of revelation, of all that manifestation of 
 God which we have in the Bible, in our hearts, 
 in the world — it is according to Christianity, not 
 that One, who is Lord of all, may obtain a selfish 
 glory for Himself at the expense of His creatures, 
 command tribute, in the spirit of a tyrant, from 
 a wider empire than Caesar's, but that we who 
 are invited to love Him and serve Him may be 
 blessed, and all men with us, in that love and 
 service, enjoy it in our true life and well-being. 
 Man's true life and blessedness consist in his 
 being what he was intended by God to be, in 
 his living that highest life for which he was 
 created and endowed ; in a word, in the offering 
 of himself as a sacrifice to God, above all, in 
 deeds of faith and charity. Love is the fulfilling 
 of the law. It is at the same time the fulfilling 
 
 o 
 
 of the existence of the creature. Christianity, 
 therefore, has no ritual, no ceremonial except 
 that of love ; refuses, not alone on the ground 
 of God's claims as supreme, but on the ground 
 of man's well-being as man, to recognize observ- 
 ance, or rite, or oblation, except that of a saintly 
 
214 CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL, [x. 
 
 or priestly life. Not enough according to the 
 one heaven-born religion for heaven to get its 
 due, not enough for God to be honoured in costly 
 rites, or for man to be taught by these obedience 
 to divine law. To love, to be kind even to the 
 unthankful ; to be not only just and true, but to 
 be kind and generous and loving ; to give and 
 strive and suffer for others — this was, and is, the 
 life and blessedness of God in Christ upon the 
 earth, and by this the world lying in wickedness 
 is reclaimed from darkness and despair, is purified, 
 enlightened, blessed ; by this all things are re- 
 stored to divine beauty and order; another paradise, 
 fairer than that which lends its beauty and frag- 
 rance to the primitive records of our race, is formed 
 out of the moral wilderness. Therefore, and not 
 because God is a hard taskmaster, and must have 
 honour and tribute, the only ritual of the Christian 
 faith is love, to visit the fatherless and widows, 
 and to keep ourselves unspotted from the world. 
 God accepts nothing less than this, disdains and 
 rejects anything less than this, because, even if He 
 could forego what is His own, He who is love can- 
 not sufifer His creatures to miss or come short of 
 their true life and blessedness. For this reason 
 nothing is worship of God which is not the well- 
 being of man. Ritual is not only not prescribed ; 
 it is prohibited. 
 
 There may be errors in particular views of 
 Christianity, grave untruth in some historical and 
 some current representations of it ; but beyond 
 
X.] CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL. 215 
 
 all doubt that religion is divine and everlasting, 
 never to be displaced or superseded, or essentially 
 modified, while the world endures, which thus 
 claims for itself, as its outward vesture and expres- 
 sion, not sacrifices such as a selfish being might 
 tyrannically exact and other selfish beings slavishly 
 accord, but the restoration to true and therefore 
 blessed life of a race of beings who have sinned 
 and suffered. To make that the end of his service 
 and his worship is worthy in the highest degree 
 conceivable by a human soul of a Being worthy 
 of eternal worship and glory. To seek thus to be 
 worshipped, not with men's hands, but with th.e 
 perfection and fulfilment of their existence and 
 destiny, is in this supreme degree worthy of 
 the King eternal, immortal, invisible. If there is 
 anything divine Christianity is so, because, as a 
 rehgion, it prescribes as ritual no ritual, no empty 
 forms w^hich offer to God a barren honour, or 
 which inculcate a partial view of human duty, but 
 Love which is the blessedness of the worshipper, 
 the salt of the earth, the glory of the Eternal. 
 
 All this implies, of course, that religion, in the 
 Christian sense, is real, and not outward, but in- 
 ward. Morality is a costume, but there is a living 
 form beneath the drapery.. To have no creed is 
 at the present day one of the most popular of creeds. . 
 All history, however, goes to prove that, without 
 religion, morality — and above all, the highest mor- 
 ality — is a plant without roots, a building without 
 a foundation. 
 
2i6 CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL. [x. 
 
 There is one city of the East of biblical and 
 historical renown, which is surrounded on all sides 
 by deserts ; but which, to the astonishment of the 
 traveller who has been toiling for days over burning 
 sands to reach its gates, presents to the eye, as 
 he enters, a wonderful succession of gardens gay 
 with the richest verdure and the most gorgeous 
 blooms. Above that city — the most ancient, per- 
 haps, in the world — above that desert-girdled city, 
 Damascus — towers the lofty Lebanon, with its 
 snow-clad head piercing the fleecy clouds of a 
 summer sky. It is in its lofty summits that the 
 secret of this wonderful verdure lies. There, in 
 those snows that mingle with the clouds, are the 
 inexhaustible fountains of the innumerable rills of 
 water by which, in Damascus, the desert has been 
 turned into a garden, and the wilderness made to 
 blossom as the rose. All history proves that it is 
 only from the fountain of a religion which, like 
 Lebanon, lifts its head above the ground, and 
 represents the aspirations of the soul after the 
 unseen and eternal, that the sustenance which is 
 needed for the purest and heavenliest virtues of 
 humanity, the truest and noblest morality, can ever 
 
 flOvV. 
 
 But on this point it is not necessary to enlarge. 
 On this historical ground it is superfluous to con- 
 fute that renunciation of all religious ideas and 
 beliefs which is common at the present day. In- 
 stead of saying that religion ought not to be 
 abolished because it encourages morality, or is 
 
X.] CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL. 217 
 
 essential to its existence, we may say, and we 
 ought to say, that rehgion cannot be abolished if 
 we would. 
 
 God has secured the existence of religion by 
 giving it a place in the being of man ; and if any 
 young man thinks that he can abolish religion by 
 sneering at it in his mother or his sister he argues 
 his own ignorance. Religion has its eternal founda- 
 tion in the very nature and constitution of the 
 mind of man. It is not a more natural and in- 
 stinctive act of his bodily nature to turn the eye 
 to the light, than it is of his spiritual nature to 
 ask, Is there a God t — to look beyond the visible 
 to the invisible ; to rise from the disappointment 
 connected with sensual gratification to the yearning 
 for something higher and better, to the sense of 
 religious duties and the experience of religious 
 emotions. This is what finally settles the question 
 as to religion and morality — whether we shall have 
 one or both, and if only one, which of the two. 
 Be it for good or for evil, we cannot get rid of 
 religion, except in one way, viz., not by abolishing 
 God or proving scientifically that His existence is 
 doubtful, but by abolishing man himself It is easy 
 for the fool, especially the learned and scientific 
 fool, to prove that there is no God. But like a 
 murmuring sea, which heeds not the scream of 
 wandering birds, the soul of humanity murmurs 
 of God, and confutes the erudite folly of the fool 
 by disregarding it. 
 
 That which above all distinguishes and charac- 
 
2i8 CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL. [x. 
 
 terizes man as man is this high capacity to look 
 beyond and above what is seen to what is unseen ; 
 to observe and feel the unchangeableness which 
 underlies and supports this changeful world ; to 
 understand and appreciate the grand distinction — 
 grander still than that between light and dark, 
 night and day — ^viz., that the things which are 
 seen are temporal, while the things which are un- 
 seen are eternal ; to live by faith and not by 
 sight ; to feel that a man's life, unlike that of an 
 ox, consisteth not in the abundance of the things 
 which he possesseth, but in himself, in the riches 
 of the heart, his faith towards God, his love towards 
 men. It ought to be the object of all our ecclesi- 
 astical, and, indeed, of all our social and political 
 arrangements, to develop this capacity, or to facili- 
 tate its development and exercise. But, at any 
 rate, it cannot be abolished except by abolishing 
 humanity. Those who appear to think that Acts 
 of Parliament may be passed, the effect of w^hich 
 would be to eradicate it, are as much alarmists 
 as if they dreaded lest the smoke of a bonfire 
 should extinguish the stars. 
 
 As for the outward vesture and ritual of this 
 religion, noble and beautiful as it is, it may be 
 of little worth except as ritual and vesture. A 
 man's life may be blameless and beneficent, not 
 to say decent and respectable, and yet the man 
 himself be neither loving nor pure, neither good 
 nor noble. It is what the man is which is im- 
 portant to God and to himself. To God, either 
 
X.] CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL. 219 
 
 as Creator or as the Supremely Good, the one 
 thing of importance must be, not what acts a man 
 does — what small part he plays on a fleeting" stage 
 — but of what sort, of what character he is, whether 
 that which is the real man be alive or dead, full 
 of light or full of darkness ; generous and pure and 
 sympathetic and reverent, or selfish and sordid and 
 worldly. Morality or immorality is all-important 
 between man and man. Religion or no religion 
 is important to God ; it is equally important to 
 man. We may well live moral lives, and yet find 
 that life has not much to give — that for the honest 
 and temperate, as for the vicious and profligate, 
 Hfe is vanity, and experience prolonged vexation. 
 Give the soul its own, as you give the body and 
 the intellect ; lift your thoughts to the unchanging 
 Goodness and Truth beyond this changeful world, 
 which orders all its events and changes ; think of 
 One who needs not to be worshipped with men's 
 hands, as though He needed anything, seeing He 
 giveth to all life, and breath, and all things ; think 
 of Him requiring to be loved and worshipped, not 
 because He is great and mighty, but because He 
 is good, and because to love Him is blessedness, 
 and to worship Him is heaven ; think of all duty, 
 even the commonest, as to be done to Him, all 
 work to be performed in His service, all our fellow- 
 men to be loved and cared for for His sake ; think 
 thus of Him and of your own life ; thus take a 
 religious view of all things, and be actuated hj a 
 religious spirit, and you will not escape sorrow or 
 
2 20 CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL. [x. 
 
 loss, you will rather have special crosses and losses 
 to carry and to endure ; but you will also know 
 that man was made not to record a verdict against 
 his Maker of having been made in vain, but to 
 show forth the glory and praise of Him who made 
 him, by sharing with Him his own life of immortal 
 joy and unending blessedness. This is the teaching 
 of the true religion ; and it is an evidence of its 
 truth that its ritual thus, like itself, is love ; that 
 in it all things are reconciled to God ; and God, 
 in His greatness and blessedness, in His life of 
 eternal love, is all in all. 
 
 Christianity is divine, we have said, because it 
 makes the true worship of the Creator the perfect 
 and blessed life of the creature. Christianity ren- 
 ders this life of the creature possible by the revela- 
 tion which it makes of the Creator. Before God 
 and the Father it is true worship to live a Christian 
 life — a pure and self-sacrificing life like that of 
 Christ. There is an idea of God which all religions 
 grope after, sometimes catch a glimpse of, and then 
 again (with the exception of Christianity) allow to 
 escape from their horizon. It is the idea which 
 finds sole and perfect expression in Christianity, 
 the conception of the Eternal and Almighty, of 
 whom our understandings teach us something, as 
 that infinite goodness after which our hearts crave. 
 This revelation of Himself by God in Christ renders 
 possible, not indeed a new religion — for there never 
 was any religion but one — but it renders possible a 
 new ritual, that new life of faith and love, that per- 
 
X.] CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL. 221 
 
 feet life on the part of men, peace on earth, good- 
 will everywhere, which is the ascription of Glory to 
 God in the highest. It is in the nature of man to 
 be kindled and excited to love by love alone. In 
 the Gospel, which is the revelation of the Father- 
 hood of God, there is a revelation of the infinite love 
 which sheds light over all life, and over death, this 
 world and the next, man and God, duty and plea- 
 sure, joy and sorrow, suffering and sin; a revelation 
 which makes the universe and man himself a witness 
 to one truth, to one eternal fact — God is Love. By 
 this revelation, not of a new, but of an old, an 
 eternal fact, new life is stirred in human souls. 
 Poor weak mortals laden with sins, and supersti- 
 tiously oppressed with fears are able to say and 
 think, " We do love to think of that perfectly holy 
 and pure and good Being, our Father in Heaven — 
 not as we ought, indeed, and feebly and little, but 
 still we love Him. And love is the fulfilling of the 
 law. Our duty to our fellow-men is not only sacred, 
 but easy to discharge, if we all are brethren, and 
 Christ the Brother of all, and God the Father of 
 all. Before God the Father it is pure worship, and 
 it is possible, as it is true worship, 'to visit the 
 fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep 
 ourselves unspotted from the world.' " Thus Chris- 
 tianity, which as religion prescribes love "as ritual, 
 makes that ritual possible. 
 
 Christianity is a religion, and it is a ritual. As 
 a religion, it is love ; as a ritual, it is the same. 
 According to the religion, God is love ; according 
 
222 CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL. [x. 
 
 to the ritual, man's life is love. He who receives 
 worship is worshipped as love. The worship which 
 is paid by the worshipper is love. And herein the 
 worshipper and the worshipped are both blessed, 
 and made one eternally in blessedness, the Father 
 in His children, the children in their Father ; and 
 so there shall be fulfilled at length the hope of all 
 who love God, and all who love man, when God 
 Himself in Christ shall be all in all. 
 
 Half the disputes that have arisen in the Chris- 
 tian Church, that have torn it asunder and ren- 
 dered its hopes abortive, have been disputes about 
 words. More than half of those, perhaps, in which 
 things have been concerned have been disputes 
 about forms of worship, church services, postures, 
 standing or kneeling at prayer, the elevation of the 
 host, hymn-books, organs, about pure worship and 
 impure, innovations in ritual and breaches of eccle- 
 siastical custom. True worship, according to 
 Christianity, has little or nothing to do with these 
 things. It consists in that very charity which is 
 almost always absent on both sides in disputes 
 about them. 
 
 Torn asunder by quarrels, which are mostly 
 quarrels about worship, the Church of Christ has 
 for ages presented a strange, and, it must be said, a 
 melancholy spectacle — the spectacle of an institu- 
 tion which, intended by divine wisdom to further 
 the highest of all ends, has been not merely diverted 
 from the sole pursuit of that end, but has almost 
 forgotten it in the pursuit of ends inferior, and, in- 
 
X.] CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL. 223 
 
 deed, opposite. As means of grace, as means for 
 cultivating the religious spirit as well as for giving 
 expression to religious feeling, it is impossible to 
 exaggerate the importance or the necessity of 
 Church forms, public prayer and praise, sacraments 
 and preaching. Questions arise with regard to 
 these things, therefore, which are questions of 
 moment, and which ought to be seriously examined 
 and discussed. But when these things are all 
 settled and arranged, the work of Christianity, the 
 work of the Church is not done ; it has yet to be 
 begun. Pure worship is not this or that form of 
 service — Catholic, Episcopal, Presbyterian — but it 
 is that charity which in disputes between sects is 
 generally conspicuous by its absence. The object 
 of Christianity and of the Church, as we have been 
 defining it, is to consummate the glory of God by 
 consummating the life of man. " Be ye perfect, 
 even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect," 
 Is the mandate of the Christian faith. " Till we all 
 come unto a perfect man," is the charter of the 
 Christian Church. Its worship is pure, not when 
 its members have clean hands and a pure heart, 
 but when its great aim is to perfect the life of man in 
 every corner of the earth. The Sermon on the Mount 
 is a sermon on perfection ; its text, if it had had 
 a text, would have been, " Be ye perfect." We see 
 from it in what direction perfection lies, and so in 
 what direction lies the work of the Christian Church. 
 Perfection has been often painted, often symbolized 
 as an angel, fair and spotless, with smooth brow 
 
2 24 CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL. [x. 
 
 and glistering garments, an angel with wings pointed 
 for flight up through the clear blue sky, away from 
 this world of misery and sin. Not such is the 
 image of perfection which rises before the mind as 
 we read the words of Christ in the Sermon on the 
 Mount. Rather it is a homely, honest, horny- 
 handed workman returning in the evening through 
 the fields or along the streets of the crowded town; 
 returning wearied, ''smutched," but yet unweakened, 
 a better man for his day's work, his muscles made 
 strong, his whole frame braced and developed by 
 his honest and useful toil. This is the idea of per- 
 fection which the Sermon on the Mount gives us. 
 It is not after Christ has forbidden at once the un- 
 clean act and the impure thought, but after He has 
 taught us that God is kind even to the evil and 
 unthankful, and enjoined us to follow His example 
 and to love our enemies, that the Great Preacher 
 introduces the precept, which is all religious pre- 
 cepts in one, " Be ye perfect." It is in this direc- 
 tion, doing good, not absence of evil, that Christian 
 perfection, man's true life and blessedness, lies. 
 
 It is the perfection which the Sermon on the 
 Mount thus defines, perfection consisting not in 
 the absence of sin, but in being and doing good, 
 which it is the object of the Christian religion to 
 enable mankind to attain. It is a religion, there- 
 fore, which identifies religion and ritual. It makes 
 perfection its aim ; it makes perfection consist in 
 being and doing good ; and therefore its ritual, its 
 only ritual, is charity. 
 
X. ] CHRIS TIA Nn V AND RITUAL. 225 
 
 This furnishes a basis for the union of Christen- 
 dom which, as endeavours to estabUsh a universal 
 concordat on other grounds are successively tried 
 and prove abortive, is more and more clearly seen 
 to be the true and only basis. It has been too 
 much the idea of sects and denominations in later 
 ages to maintain a scriptural form of worship — that 
 is to say, of Church service and arrangement — and 
 along with this to bear testimony to the truth of 
 one particular view of scriptural doctrine. Their 
 object has been to secure the spiritual gain of their 
 own adherents, above all by not permitting false 
 worship to be celebrated, or false doctrine to be 
 taught. Most sects have been founded, most sec- 
 tarian animosities and contentions have proceeded 
 upon the ground of opposition to a doubtful form 
 of worship, or an erroneous view of Scripture. 
 Opposition to man, not dedication to God, has been 
 the origin of sects. Their anxiety has been not 
 how to do good, but how not to do evil. We have 
 come, however, to a time in the history of the 
 Church when it is generally seen that on this ground 
 no union of Christendom, and consequently no great 
 advance of the Church of Christ, is possible. Allow 
 that Christianity has a form of worship like other 
 religions, and that it is the great business of churches 
 to discover from Scripture or antiquity what that 
 form of worship is and to] maintain it, when it is 
 discovered, at all cost, in defiance of all opposition, 
 and the history of ages and generations would go 
 
 to show that the millennium of the Church is in the 
 
 p 
 
2 26 CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL, [x. 
 
 past, not in the future. The union of Christendom, 
 the peace of the world, the kingdom of God, would 
 be farther away from us the farther we advance into 
 the future. 
 
 But while it is thus only too manifest that no 
 basis for the union of Churches and the peace of 
 Christendom is to be found in purity of worship, it 
 is only the more evident that there is a basis for 
 that union and peace in the true ritual of the Chris- 
 tian faith. If Churches cannot unite not to do evil, 
 they can unite and will unite to do good. 
 
 There is a great deal that stands in the way of 
 men becoming, not to say, perfect — the word is 
 almost ridiculous as applied to masses of men even 
 in this Christian country — but becoming decent, 
 honest, pure, intelligent ; in a word, becoming 
 men at all. A host of our present social arrange- 
 ments are of a kind which insure, as far as they 
 operate — and they operate very far — that men 
 shall not become men at all. Go out of almost 
 any church in any of our great cities — any of those 
 great centres into which so large a proportion of 
 our whole population is being rapidly gathered — 
 and consider what surrounds that church, has sur- 
 rounded it, perhaps, for ages and generations. Walk 
 about Zion, and consider, not its palaces, but its 
 dens and hovels, abodes of ancient inevitable ig- 
 norance, vice, crime. Multitudes of children un- 
 taught, uncared for ; while the sects are wrangling 
 over the precise form in which religious education 
 shall be administered, another education, under 
 
X.] CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL 227 
 
 another master than Christ, going forward steadily 
 from age to age — an education in vice and crime, 
 in stolid and brutal inhumanity. 
 
 Not to speak of the world lying in darkness 
 abroad, this is the spectacle which presents itself to 
 us at home. If sects have not caused it, at any rate 
 they have not been able to abolish it. But, be this 
 as it may, the Christian Church, in the existence of 
 all that sin and misery which abounds in the world, 
 has an opportunity for establishing the union of 
 Christendom upon an enduring, because a true, a 
 Christian basis. Sects differ about trifles, and 
 about principles; about great things and small 
 things. But they are all agreed that there are 
 many evils afflicting human society which ought 
 to be abolished, and that there are many good 
 works which ought to be begun. As "there 
 is no sect in mathematics," so there is no sect 
 in favour of ignorance, or fever, or improper 
 dwellings, or drunkenness, or immorality, or crime, 
 or misery, or want. These things make havoc 
 of human life and human society ; and all sects 
 are against these. All sects are agreed that to 
 diminish these by any means, and to promote in 
 place of them intelligence, virtue, and humanity, is 
 to do good. Here, then, is a basis of union. We 
 cannot agree how not to do evil. But here is an 
 infinite abundance of opportunities of doing good ; 
 and to do good, and not merely not to do evil, not 
 merely not to be in error in our worship, or our 
 doctrine, is the true and only ritual of the Christian 
 
2 28 CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL. [x. 
 
 faith. We all believe in doing good. Why, because 
 we cannot agree about not doing evil should we 
 not agree about doing good ? It is the vital and 
 essential part of Christianity to believe in charity 
 and to practise it. Love is the fulfilling of the law. 
 Pure worship is to do good. On this ground, when 
 sects have had their day, and the falsity of the 
 foundation on which they stand is better seen, 
 peace will be restored to the Church, peace will 
 be given to the world by the Church, and glory 
 will be rendered to God in the highest. 
 
 The Christian Church which has been understood 
 to be a devotional institution and a theological club, 
 is in reality a society of perfectionists. It does not 
 exist merely to exist. It has a work to do, a pur- 
 pose to accomplish. Take any public or charitable 
 society. It consists of public-spirited or charitable 
 persons who have common sympathies and common 
 opinions, but its object is not merely to exist and 
 be a society; it has some special object in view, 
 some special work which it sets itself to accom- 
 plish. A society, for example, for the relief of 
 indigent old women will most likely consist of 
 benevolent and amiable persons ; but the reason 
 for the existence of such a society will never be 
 that there are benevolent and amiable people ready 
 to meet together, but that there are old and indi- 
 gent persons who need to be clothed and fed. It 
 is the very same with the Christian Church. It 
 is neither a devotional institution, meeting once a 
 week, nor a theological club in which one member 
 
X.] CHRISTIANITY AND RITUAL. 229 
 
 lectures the rest ; but it is a society of people 
 who believe in Christ's life, and desire to live that 
 life. It exists to fulfil a purpose and to accomplish 
 a work — that work for which Christ lived and died 
 — the salvation of men from sin and misery, their 
 restoration to God and life and blessedness. 
 
 This being the work and end, this being the 
 ritual of the religion of Christ, that religion claims 
 to be the one true, everlasting faith. In this 
 light, and apart from questions of doctrine and 
 of worship which have rent the Church asunder, 
 the universal heart and conscience bear testimony 
 to its truth. That which abrogates selfishness in 
 God and makes Him Father, which abolishes 
 selfishness in man and makes him brother, blessed 
 in the love of God, and of his kind ; that which 
 gives back to the infinitely Good a world of evil 
 restored to beauty, as the tribute due to Him and 
 acceptable to him, is a religion which may for a 
 time be corrupted and suffer eclipse, but it is of 
 heaven, it is true to the conscience and to the 
 universe, and it will endure while man exists to 
 worship, and God to be adored. 
 
2-:jO 
 
 XL 
 
 IS CHRIST DIVIDED? 
 
 ** Everyone of you saith, I am of Paul ; and I of Apollos; and 
 I of Cephas ; and I of Christ." i Cor. i, 12. 
 
 It was a rumour in Paul's time that there were con- 
 tentions among the Christians at Corinth — every 
 one of them saying, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, 
 and I of Cephas, and I of Christ. This rumour was 
 conveyed to him by those that were of the house 
 of Chloe ; members of that family coming from 
 Corinth to the place where he was brought it 
 to his ears, and when he heard it he was astounded, 
 not to say grieved. He could scarcely believe it. 
 What, he asked in sheer amazement, is Christ 
 divided .'' was Paul crucified for you ? or were ye 
 baptized in the name of Paul ? 
 
 What would he have said if he had seen or heard 
 tell of our religious contentions ^ For three or four 
 parties then, we have I know not how many scores 
 or hundreds of sects now. And in proportion to 
 the number of our contentions is the openness with 
 which we avow them. If it was a matter of rumour 
 
XI. ] IS CHRIST DIVIDED ? 231 
 
 in Paul's time that there were three or four parties, 
 it is a thing which we take all the pains in the 
 world to declare that now we have scores of sects. 
 We build churches, we hold meetings, we publish 
 journals and magazines, we pay lecturers, we endow 
 schools and colleges to preach Christianity, indeed, 
 but first and foremost to proclaim the fact that 
 Christ is divided, and that we have been baptized 
 in the name of Paul, or of Peter, or of Apollos. 
 Instead of being ashamed of our divisions we glory 
 in them. Each sect is faithful to its principles only 
 when it is zealous in proclaiming its differences with 
 other sects. Besides all those distinctions of trade 
 and calling and rank which exist among us, there 
 are other divisions crossing all these, and in many 
 instances going deeper into our social life than all 
 these, which are divisions caused by our religion — the 
 religion of Christ. What ought to unite us in spite 
 of all possible differences, divides us in spite of all 
 bonds of union. High Church, Low Church, Broad 
 Church, Established Church, Dissenting Church, 
 Roman Catholic Church — these distinctions split up 
 the people of this country into hostile camps as no 
 political, no social, no intellectual distinctions have 
 the power or the will to do. 
 
 What would Paul have said to such a state of 
 things .'' Is Christ divided and sub-divided and 
 torn to shreds } he would certainly have asked with 
 more astonishment than he ever felt in his lifetime. 
 
 Our modern contentions, like those which so long 
 ago astonished him, for the most part father them- 
 
2 32 /-S" CHRIST DIVIDED ? [xi. 
 
 selves upon honourable names — I am of Paul, I of 
 Apollos, I of Cephas, I of Christ. Sects or parties 
 look back or look up to this or that man or 
 set of men, and if they do not call themselves by 
 their names, at any rate they claim to be the sect or 
 party who hold their views. We have sects and 
 parties who call themselves by the name of some 
 man living or dead ; others have one man or a set 
 of men of v/hom they profess to be the only legiti- 
 mate disciples. Then, again, in any place where there 
 are more churches than one (as what place in this 
 country, however much of a fishing village, and 
 however little of a populous town it may be, is 
 free from this misfortune), take the majority of 
 Christian people belonging to them, and you 
 will find that they are divided, even bitterly divided, 
 if not about the doctrines of their respective 
 churches, at any rate about the ministers who preach 
 those doctrines. 
 
 We have no one knows how many divisions in 
 our Christian body. They are mostly about men. 
 No human being with a grain of common sense can 
 suppose that they are divisions arising from a care- 
 ful and intelligent study of the Bible and religious 
 questions on the part of the majority of the people. 
 It is not many men many minds: it is rather many 
 men and not a mind among them. It is not that 
 people in general inquire into religious matters for 
 themselves, and arrive at different conclusions : it 
 is that people for one reason and another only 
 require for their religious views the authority of 
 
XI.] IS CHRIST DIVIDED? 233 
 
 somebody's name, and that the Christianity of sects 
 and divisions at war with each other, is somehow^ 
 to the multitude, a more intelh'gible and more 
 palatable Christianity than that of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Sects there are, however, and will be, and it is of 
 little use complaining that they exist, or being aston- 
 ished at their existence. If they are all of them or 
 most of them founded upon names and not upon 
 principles, we may be sorry for that, or we may smile 
 at it, or pour ridicule upon it, but there it is. It is not 
 at any rate by schemes of union, which are really 
 holy alliances to carry on war, that the nuisance of 
 sects will be abolished or abated. If you had such 
 a union to-morrow as has been proposed, a union 
 of all Presbyterians, or of all Episcopalians, you 
 would only have a few more divisions as the result 
 of it. 
 
 Yet there is something to be done, perhaps, if not 
 with sects, at any rate with individuals of all sects, 
 who are in danger of being injduenced by the 
 abominable spirit of the sects. If we cannot hope 
 to abolish one sect, any more than to eradicate sin 
 and misery, we may possibly do something towards 
 clearing away from a mind here and there some 
 of those miserable prejudices out of which sects 
 arise and are multiplied. 
 
 There is one thing, then, which it is worth while 
 to consider with this view, viz., that the great and 
 good whose names are taken as watch-words and 
 war-cries by the sects, differed only in trifles, while 
 they agreed in all that is essential and important 
 
234 ^^ CHRIST DIVIDED ? [xi. 
 
 SO that the way we commonly take to honour 
 their memory, is the proper way to insult their 
 character. 
 
 In another chapter Paul, still referring to these 
 contentions and divisions, says — Let no man glory 
 in men ; all things are yours, whether Paul or 
 Apollos or Cephas. Every sect and variety of 
 Christian sentiment and character is yours, if only 
 you are Christian at all. And this is true for a plain 
 reason. Look at some superficial things and there 
 seems to be a great difference between Paul and 
 Apollos, and between Apollos and Cephas, between 
 Catholic and Protestant Christian, between Es- 
 tablished Church good man and Nonconformist 
 good mian. They have different ways of looking 
 at some things, and of expressing themselves in 
 regard to the things about which they differ, but 
 then, again, those things about which they differ 
 are all of one sort — superficial and trifling. Look to 
 what is important and essential as regards life and 
 character, truth, nobleness, love to Christ, love to God 
 and man ; and where is the difference among all 
 these Christians and good men t Paul could say 
 truly, therefore, to his converts at Corinth, if you are 
 Ciiristians, all Christians, however they differ among 
 themselves, are yours ; they are really one, though 
 they appear to be many ; they have all essentially 
 the same spirit, the same character, the same faith! 
 If you have one, you have all the rest. If you have 
 one good man, you have all good men : for there 
 are not many sorts of good men, but only one sort. 
 
XI.] IS CHRIST DIVIDED? 2^^ 
 
 And in the same way we may say with regard to 
 those eminent' Christians whose names we make our 
 war-cries — it is not one of them is yours, if you are 
 of a Christian spirit, but all of them : not John 
 Knox only, or John Calvin only, or Richard Baxter, 
 or John Wesley, or Ralph Erskine, but all those, of 
 whatever creed or whatever race, who like these 
 men were followers of Christ in their love to God 
 and man. 
 
 It is only fair, and it is certainly instructive, thus 
 to view our great ^Christian worthies, not as they 
 differed, but as they agreed. There is a Christian 
 union that is better worth studying than those 
 unions of churches which have been so often pro- 
 jected, a union which you not only do not need 
 laboriously to promote, but which you cannot by 
 any endeavour prevent. It is the union, or rather 
 the unity of all who have done any honour to the 
 Christian name, of all whose names are in any sense 
 worthy of remembrance in the Christian Church. 
 Many of them took their share in the strife and 
 controversy of their day, and those things about 
 which strife and controversy then raged, are now, as 
 was inevitable, either forgotten or comparatively 
 despised, but the lesson which we get from com- 
 paring their characters and their lives, is that among 
 Christians there is a unity which is not made by the 
 skilful diplomacy of church leaders, but is the result 
 of the spirit of God lifting men above the vanity 
 and the selfishness of both the world and the 
 Church. 
 
236 IS CHRIST DIVIDED? [xi. 
 
 It is good, I say, to look at the great representa- 
 tives of Christianity, those whom sects delight to 
 name, if not to honour, in this their essential 
 unity. To dwell upon how this man differed 
 from that two or three hundred years ago on a 
 point of doctrine or of Church government ; to 
 look up to this man or that as pope or father in 
 matters of conscience — the result of this, we see, is 
 to divide people by their religion, and to embitter 
 them against each other by the peace of God ; it is 
 to have great masses of people putting their un- 
 meaning ecclesiastical shibboleths in the place of 
 those great things, truth and righteousness and love, 
 in regard to which common-sense is the amen to 
 Christianity. Without thinking of how they agreed, 
 but only or chiefly of how they differed, people, in- 
 stead of being the better for having great men in 
 the world before them, are losers in respect of their 
 Christianity, or rather sometimes are unchristian- 
 ized altogether. There are Protestants who detest 
 Papists with a detestation which, whatever it may 
 indicate as to the Christianity of their opponents, 
 is decisive as to the quality of their own. There 
 are zealots and fanatics in regard to Establishment 
 principles and Voluntary principles who, in their 
 assertion of those principles, make it certain that 
 the one great principle of Christianity is in doubt 
 with them, or rather is condemned. 
 
 Name to me the hundred names of greatest 
 eminence in the history of the Christian Church, 
 apostles, fathers, martyrs, missionaries, doctors, 
 
XI.] IS CHRIST DIVIDED? 237 
 
 heroes, saints — I will be able to show you the most 
 extraordinary variety of tastes and dispositions 
 among them, as well as the most singular differ- 
 ences of opinion. While one of the hundred thinks 
 almost the only way to live a godly life is to 
 dwell in a cave in the desert and pray night and 
 day, scourging the flesh to aid the spirit, another 
 hates the very name of monk or hermit, and is 
 none the less a man of God because he is also, at 
 least by capacity and by occupation, a man of the 
 world. One has faith in a variety of sacraments, 
 in fasts and penances, holds them to be effectual 
 and indispensable to salvation ; another looks upon 
 all these as superstition and an abomination to 
 the Lord. One accepts almost any report of the 
 miraculous which happens to reach him ; another 
 owes any doubt which haunts him solely to the 
 miracles of Scripture. One attaches an indefinite 
 value to the blessing bestowed by a duly ordained 
 priest ; another holds in abhorrence priest and 
 presbyter and all orders of clergy. Name to me, 
 I say, the hundred names of greatest acknowledged 
 eminence in the history of the Church, and, not 
 to speak of the variety of temperament, disposi- 
 tion, character, among them, you will find all this 
 variety and more than all this variety of opinion 
 and belief. 
 
 But, on the other hand, of the hundred will you 
 find one who has a difference of opinion with 
 another or a few in regard to righteousness, manli- 
 ness, charity 1 Of the hundred will you mention 
 
238 IS CHRIST DIVIDED? [xi 
 
 two who disagreed about the duty of speaking- the 
 truth, or doing as you would be done by; or will 
 you point me to one who differed from another in 
 not preferring a good conscience to meat and drink 
 and sordid self-interest? Did Paul, who differed 
 from Peter about circumcision, that old command- 
 ment of Moses, differ from him or withstand him 
 about charity, that new commandment of Christ ? 
 Did the greatest Roman Catholic saints of the time 
 differ from the greatest of the Protestant Reformers 
 about whether truth is better than falsehood, or 
 honesty and courage preferable to hypocrisy and 
 cowardice ? Did Martin Luther differ from St. 
 Francis about the duty of ministering to the wants 
 of the poor, the outcast, the afflicted ? In all those 
 innumerable Church controversies that we have 
 had upon small points and greater points in this 
 country, eminent men, men whose names are gener- 
 ally revered, have taken their part or acquired their 
 fame from the part they took — did any two of 
 them, in the greatest heat and fury of controversy, 
 ever dispute about whether it was wrong to steal or 
 whether it was right to lie ? 
 
 It is not, I say, how they differed, but how they 
 agreed that is the wonderful thing and the import- 
 ant thing to be noted with regard to our Christian 
 leaders and great men. The questions about which 
 they differed were trifles at the best, or, however 
 important in the eyes of one generation, could 
 not maintain their importance in the view of 
 succeeding ages. The questions about which they 
 
XL] IS CHRIST DIVIDED? 239 
 
 agreed were the questions, if there are such, of Hfe 
 and death. Fill your mind with the things about 
 which they differed and you will be none the better, 
 very possibly you will be much the worse for it. 
 Fix your attention upon those things about which 
 they agreed and there is no fear but, however great 
 your attention is, it will be well bestowed. Think 
 of our great Christian worthies, and not how they 
 differed, but how they agreed, to what do you learn 
 to attach weight } Not to those things about which 
 churches and church parties contend, but to truth, 
 honesty, courage, charity, faith in God as good. 
 Think of how they agreed rather than of how they 
 differed, and much of what passes for Christianity 
 at the present day, in the light of what always was, 
 always is, Christianity, will seem to you counterfeit 
 and poor. But, on the other hand, in that light 
 you will see how evangelical, how orthodox, how 
 Christian, how fruitful, is the faith that to love 
 God and man is all the law and the prophets. 
 
 We have made so much of the differences which 
 our great Christian leaders have left us, though 
 their differences w^ere trivial, that we have come to 
 treat as trifles those things which in common they 
 held to be supreme and sacred. This is the worst 
 of our divisions. They not only hinder Christianity 
 from spreading, a result all sects deplore, but they 
 make Christianity not worth spreading, a result 
 which no sect will admit. Is it not a common thing 
 in all sects for people to be very religious, much 
 devoted to the Church and to the cause of Christ, 
 
240 
 
 IS CHRIST DIVIDED} [xj. 
 
 passionate as to what is Protestant, furious as to 
 what is not evangeHcal, and to show in their conduct 
 no regard whatever to fair play, justice, honesty, let 
 alone charity ? This comes of our making much of 
 the differences our Christian worthies have be- 
 queathed to us. Make only as much or half as much 
 of their agreement as of their differences, and you 
 reverse all this — then, if any man affects to be a 
 disciple of Paul or John Knox or John Wesley, 
 you will expect from him that he should at least 
 be an honest man, and if he is not good it will be 
 sorry satisfaction to hear that he is orthodox. 
 
 It is, I say, a good thing to dwell upon the fact 
 that our Christian worthies, called by general ac- 
 clamation to be saints, agreed about some things, 
 however they differed about others, and that the 
 few things about which they agreed, and not the 
 many things about which they differed, are import- 
 ant for us and for all mankind. It is good to fix 
 our minds upon this. There is in this a papacy 
 which is infallible, a scripture which cannot err. 
 We cannot be mistaken if we agree with the great 
 and good where they all agreed. We must be 
 ricrht if, in our beliefs and in our lives, we follow 
 not Paul or ApoUos or Cephas, or Calvin- 
 ist or Arminian or Socinian doctor, or High 
 Church or Low Church or Broad Church oracle, 
 but are followers of all those who through faith 
 and patience have overcome the world. We make 
 all the great and good ours; they lived and thought 
 and toiled and suffered not in vain for us, if we 
 
XI. ] IS CHRIST DIVIDED ? 241 
 
 take note how they one and all fought against 
 the devil of selfishness and self-indulgence, and 
 meant to be servants of God and were the servants 
 of men. Then they are lights to lighten our path 
 when it is dark ; their lives are fountains to refresh 
 us when we are weak or weary. If they overcame 
 the world, so may we, though our world may differ 
 much from theirs. We could not follow them if we 
 would in all wherein they differed. But we can 
 all follow them where they agreed. In our several 
 places and conditions we can speak what is true, 
 do what is right, fear God, love man, as they did. 
 And if we do this we shall be blessed in our deed 
 as they were blessed in theirs. They were men 
 of like passions with us. They had their faults, 
 temptations, sins, errors, prejudices as we have ours. 
 By the law which is above every law for all who 
 are human, they failed oftener than they succeeded. 
 But they struggled on — in this they were an army 
 and not a mob — they struggled on, clinging to the 
 right side though in darkness and almost in de- 
 spair ; they counted all things but loss for one sort 
 of excellence ; they lived by faith and not by sight ; 
 they suffered and grew strong through suffering ; 
 they toiled and became workmen, not needing to be 
 ashamed ; they fought and waxed valiant in fight. 
 With all their innumerable differences, they had 
 this agreement — let us follow them in this, giving 
 no place to the devil, but striving always to be 
 good and to do good, so that God, the eternal 
 righteousness and love and goodness, may be all 
 
 Q 
 
242 
 
 IS CHRIST DIVIDED ? [xi. 
 
 in all, and the victory which they gained we shall 
 gain also. We may not achieve renown like theirs 
 as saints and heroes, but we shall be men whose 
 manhood is another name for salvation and im- 
 mortal life and eternal blessedness. 
 
243 
 
 XII. 
 
 THE CHURCH BENEFICENT. 
 
 "Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to 
 good works : Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, 
 as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another : and so much 
 the more as ye see the day approaching." Hebrews x, 24, 25. 
 
 We can scarcely help reading into a passage like 
 this ideas which belong to our time, and not to the 
 time of the writer ; that is to say, ideas which are 
 our own rather than his. Our notion as to Chris- 
 tians assembling themselves together is that which 
 has been fixed in our minds by our custom, an old 
 custom now, of attending church on Sundays. It 
 is the notion which one would carry away with him 
 from a meeting like the present, from taking part in 
 public worship, which is conducted by an ordained 
 and official person, and of which a great part, or, as 
 it happens, the greatest part, is the hearing of a 
 sermon. This is our modern way of assembling 
 ourselves together. Hardly any other way, perhaps, 
 has ever occurred to us as possible or desirable. 
 When we find the writer of this epistle here exhort- 
 ing his readers not to forsake the assembling of 
 
244 ^^^^ CHURCH BENEFICENT. [xii. 
 
 themselves together, we are apt, therefore, to assume 
 that he is just in other words telling them to go to 
 church on Sundays, and take part as we do to-day, 
 in public worship. 
 
 The truth is, however — and it is a point which 
 has not received all the consideration to which it is 
 entitled — meetings of Christians in those early times 
 were not exactly of the same character as ours. 
 They could not possibly be exactly what ours are ; 
 it is more than questionable whether it would have 
 been thought desirable they should be what ours 
 are supposing it had^been possible. Not only were 
 they not as formal as we make ours by having an 
 official person to conduct them, and, in fact, to take 
 up most of the time with set religious discourse — 
 not only were they not as formal as ours are thus 
 made ; they had, it is evident, different objects from 
 those at which we aim in ours. You are reminded 
 of this fact here — " Let us consider one another to 
 provoke unto love and to good works : not forsak- 
 ing the assembling of ourselves together." The 
 kind of meeting to which this pointed was a meet- 
 ing in which everybody who choose had a voice, in 
 which everybody who had any advice or information 
 or exhortation to give, was free to give it, and was 
 expected to give it. 
 
 And this is, perhaps, the least part of the 
 difference between a Christian assembly of that 
 age, and one of our time. Not only was 
 the business done in a different manner ; it 
 was, beyond a doubt, different business. These 
 
xn.l THE CHURCH BENEFICENT. 
 
 245 
 
 people who are here charged not to forsake the 
 assembling of themselves together, did not meet 
 to hear a sermon, or to pray and sing hymns ; they 
 met, it is plain, as Christian workers, to discuss their 
 work and to carry it on. Their meetings, held any 
 day of the week, but particularly on the first day, 
 because the day on which Christ rose from the dead, 
 was a holiday, a glad day with them — their meetings 
 were rather what Ave could call social meetings, or 
 business meetings, than prayer meetings. " To 
 provoke unto love and to good works," to consider 
 one another, to take steps for the relief of their 
 poor, the succour of their sick, the instruction of the 
 young, the conversion of heathen friends, the ad- 
 vancement of their faith, the promotion of every 
 scheme which an enthusiastic philanthropy sug- 
 gested for making the world better and happier — 
 this was the business which brought them together. 
 They did not meet as we do to sing psalms, pray, 
 and hear a sermon, and go away home till next 
 Sunday. At least, as far as one can make out from 
 Scripture or from history, that was not, their way. 
 Their meetings did not end as ours regularly and 
 systematically do, in nothing at all ; if there is any- 
 thing certain with regard to them, it is that they 
 served to combine the intelligence and the energies 
 of the Christian brotherhood for the accomplishment 
 of a variety of objects which were none the less 
 Christian that they were not always what you would 
 call religious. 
 
 And yet it is not to be supposed that on this 
 
246 THE CHURCH BENEFICENT. [xii. 
 
 account their meetings were less devotional than 
 ours are. Because, instead of being devotional and 
 nothing else, they were taken up chiefly with 
 matters of Christian business, those primitive as- 
 semblies which are here in question would not, in 
 the nature of things, be less favourable to the spirit 
 of supplication or the spirit of thanksgiving, than 
 Sunday meetings are now. It is impossible, indeed, 
 they could be so, if only because there can scarcely 
 be a duller affair than public worship (with some 
 exceptions) is among ourselves, and in most of our 
 Protestant communions. 
 
 In point of fact, it needs no elaborate argument 
 to show that our Christian brethren of these early 
 times had the advantage of us every way, as regards 
 the very thing at which we chiefly or exclusively 
 aim in our Sunday services, viz., religious or devo- 
 tional excitement. They had " good works " on 
 hand. When they met together there was what was 
 fresh and interesting, perhaps even stirring, to be 
 mentioned in regard to these works. They had to 
 manage the aflairs of a society, the affairs of which 
 were those of practical philanthropy — a society 
 which existed not to talk about work, but to do it. 
 Can any one who knows much of the world, or of 
 human nature, imagine that this would ever ex- 
 tinguish the spirit of devotion in their meetings, as 
 it is often enough in our experience extinguished 
 by a long dull sermon, or that it would not call 
 forth heartier praise and more fervent supplication 
 than is common in our meetings } 
 
XII.] THE CHURCH BENEFICENT. 247 
 
 I cannot but declare my conviction — I have long 
 been firmly convinced — it is because we have no 
 business in our meetings except devotion, that our 
 devotion is so dull a business. We differ from these 
 early Christians in our way of assembling ourselves 
 together ; the difference, it appears to me clear, is 
 all against us, on the score of devotion as well as 
 other things. 
 
 I do not, for my part, believe in any magical 
 effect belonging to the habit of attending church 
 regularly. It is commonly believed that a good 
 many people make of their church attendance * a 
 substitute for various cardinal virtues, and an 
 atonement for many sins and shortcomings. It 
 has to be admitted, at all events, that between those 
 who attend church with most regularity, and those 
 who attend with least, you cannot draw a line and 
 say — these are good Christians or good men on this 
 side, those are not so good on that. But, on the 
 other hand, considering how much good might be 
 got in many ways from these Sunday meetings of 
 ours, if they were anything like what they ought 
 to be, and considering that even as they are they 
 at least offer the advantages of public worship, 
 it is to be deplored that there are so many who 
 attend church irregularly, or not at all. 
 
 I must take for granted for one thing, that every 
 intelligent man, who is not strangely destitute of 
 religious feeling, has known at times the need, or at 
 any rate the good, of joining with numbers in acts 
 of worship. There is something in the voices of a 
 
248 THE CHURCH BENEFICENT. [xii. 
 
 congregation united in the praise of God which Hfts 
 a dull worshipper out of his dulness as nothing else 
 can. When the prayer which we offer is offered in 
 the company of our friends and acquaintances, in 
 the society of old and young, rich and poor of our 
 neighbourhood or religious persuasion, it may be 
 the same prayer as we should offer if we were 
 alone, but it is offered with a different feeling. There 
 is a good in public worship, something of which we 
 have all felt, a good which hardly any human being 
 would be disposed to question. It is to be deplored, 
 therefore, I say, that so many nowadays forsake 
 churches, and, in doing so, at any rate deny them- 
 selves whatever profit there is in public worship. 
 
 But the difficulty is to apply a remedy to the 
 present state of things, without going further in the 
 direction of revolution than most men are prepared 
 to go or dream of going. It is easy to reprove 
 people from the pulpit for not filling the pews. But 
 it is as useless as it is easy, for one thing, because 
 the reproof, when it is given, must be addressed 
 commonly not to those who need it most, but to 
 those who don't need it at all. Clergymen and 
 office-bearers may go the round of a parish or dis- 
 trict, and drag people to church who are reluctant 
 to come ; but neither in this way is much good to 
 be accomplished, unless something were also done 
 to keep what is once got. 
 
 It is obvious, whatever is the reason of it, our 
 present system of what we call public worship is 
 not what it once was in point of health and vigour, 
 
XII.] THE CHURCH BENEFICENT. 249 
 
 and rough and ready methods of putting new hfe 
 into it, from which much is hoped, have Httle out- 
 come. So far from the attendance at church in- 
 creasing over the country, it is, I beheve, steadily 
 falhng off". If there is no decrease in the numbers 
 of people who belong to churches and occasionally 
 go to them, there is a decline among great numbers 
 of that devoted attachment to churches which almost 
 universally existed in this country, at least among the 
 educated and intelligent. Of this perhaps no better, 
 certainly no more striking, evidence could be found 
 than what is supplied by a great deal of the ecclesi- 
 astical activity of the present day. There is an 
 anxiety, almost feverish, to be observed in most 
 churches, either to get their old machinery to go 
 better, or to have additions made to it. The de- 
 liberations of church courts are characterized by 
 this anxiety. Episcopal pastorals are instinct with 
 it. Ecclesiastical committees and associations 
 almost without number are organized expressions 
 of it. As the result of it, and in token of it, there 
 are demands everywhere for revivals of religion ; 
 missions of various kinds to every conceivable class 
 of human beings are established or projected ; there 
 are proposals to pay the clergy as schoolmasters are 
 paid, by results — that is to say, according to their 
 success in attracting hearers ; stranger and more 
 significant still, the idea gains ground that the 
 labours of an educated ministry should be supple- 
 mented or replaced by those of half-educated or 
 illiterate evangelists. I do but scant justice, I 
 
250 THE CHURCH BENEFICENT. [xii. 
 
 know, to all this ecclesiastical activity when I say 
 that the best possible intentions are at the bottom 
 of it — much devotion to the cause of Christ and the 
 highest interests of mankind — but, at the same 
 time, there can scarcely be a doubt, I think, that it 
 is a sign rather of failing than of vigorous health. 
 It may well be a question, therefore, whether we 
 should not, along with the multiplication of churches 
 or in place of it, begin to consider whether churches 
 ought not to be somewhat different from what they 
 are, and perhaps made a little more like what they 
 were once. While we are thinking only of how to 
 enlarge our ecclesiastical machinery, or to drive it 
 faster, the question perhaps really is, whether it 
 ought not first to be remodelled. 
 
 It is useless, I repeat, to spend time in complaining 
 that it is the manner of many among us to forsake the 
 assembling of themselves together. The thing which 
 is to be done, the only remedy for the evil, is to make 
 the church a more attractive institution than it is. 
 Make it more attractive, and more people will come 
 to it. People will never in our day be scolded into 
 church, or even shepherded into it, at any rate to 
 much purpose. They must feel when they come — 
 it is good for us to be here — or they will not come 
 as often, or come with as much good will as could 
 be wished. If our church attendance, then, is small 
 or irregular, the question, as I take it, is how we 
 are to make the church more attractive. 
 
 I shall answer this question, then, by pointing out 
 two ways in which we fail to make our church 
 
XII.] THE CHURCH BENEFICENT, 251 
 
 meetings as interesting and inviting as they ought 
 to be. 
 
 In the first place, it is obvious we deny ourselves 
 much of the advantage we might have from atten- 
 tion to what is beautiful and pleasing. I shall not 
 presume to discuss the question whether people 
 should or should not run by thousands to hear a 
 man with a fine voice " sing the Gospel " in the 
 shape of a few rather silly hymns, but the fact is 
 thousands do run to hear him, thousands and tens 
 of thousands who would by no means be in haste to 
 avail themselves of an extra church service. I shall 
 not pretend to determine what amount of good is 
 done or not done when people are thus attracted to 
 a religious meeting by a musical voice. Only, it is 
 safe to say, clergymen and laymen alike by the 
 hundred, or rather by thousands, are ready to testify 
 that a wonderful amount of good is done, and one 
 thing is perhaps to be admitted, viz., that the good 
 that is done does not need to be wonderful in order 
 to equal what is effected in most of our ordinary 
 Sunday assemblies. 
 
 It is a singular fact, surely, that people of all 
 churches and all shades of theological opinion agree 
 to approve of a revival meeting being made attractive 
 by good music, while many or most of them would 
 not allow the same thing to be done for an ordinary 
 church service. Here, in Protestant England, we 
 are afraid of that Popery which our forefathers did 
 not so much fear as defy, and in our dread of a 
 false worship which is beautiful, we purposely 
 
252 THE CHURCH BENEFICENT, [xii. 
 
 make our worship as nearly ugly as we can. 
 Ritualism, or a particular form of it, may be open 
 to the objection that it is sometimes silly and 
 sometimes not altogether ingenuous. But ritual- 
 ism, in almost any form, has more to say for 
 itself than the popular dread of anything in a 
 church service which is beautiful and pleasing. 
 
 There are exceptions to the rule — of late years 
 many of our leading clergymen and laymen have 
 exerted themselves, not without effect, to improve 
 our church arrangements — there are exceptions to 
 the rule, but as a rule what can be more uninviting 
 than the service with which our time in church 
 is occupied } A religious mind, a soul abounding 
 in pious ardour, will find something to kindle its 
 fires in the tamest and crudest and coldest form of 
 worship. But what is there to arouse, to excite, 
 to please the common mass of people in most of 
 our churches } Independently of the sermon al- 
 together — for the sermon is made the most import- 
 ant part of public worship, utterly against the 
 nature of things — there should be excitement in 
 our church services sufficient at any rate to keep 
 people from falling asleep in the middle of them, 
 as it is not a very rare thing to see people do. 
 Congregations, not ministers, no doubt are to blame 
 if this excitement is often conspicuous by its absence. 
 It is as a rule the fault of congregations, not of their 
 ministers, that singing in church is such commonly 
 as makes it something of a calamity for a Christian 
 worshipper to have been born with a musical ear 
 
XII.] THE CHURCH BENEFICENT. 253 
 
 or to have acquired musical tastes. Wherever 
 the blame may be supposed to rest, it is certain 
 this part of our worship, not the least important 
 part, is in general made as unattractive as complete 
 neglect can make it. Is it different with other 
 parts of our Sunday services ? There are many 
 intelligent and earnest men at the present moment 
 who are ready to say no, and not, as it would 
 seem, without a reason. They complain that long 
 extempore prayers, such as are common among 
 ourselves, are often sermons without a text, or 
 Scripture in great disorder. They allege further^ 
 that as the sermon is generally made the most 
 important part of the service, so it is generally the 
 most tedious part. And, indeed, on this subject 
 there is this to be said, that where there is so much 
 preaching of formal sermons as churches require 
 from ministers, much of it, or most of it, in the 
 nature of things, and as long as born orators are 
 scarce, must be dull and wearisome common-place. 
 If this, then, or anything like this, is the account 
 which is to be given of our public worship, or a 
 great part of it, we can scarcely wonder if there are 
 some who forsake it, and many who are not at- 
 tracted by it. We may be sure, at any rate, that 
 the way in which we deny ourselves the advantage 
 of what is beautiful and pleasing in our Sunday 
 services, has not a little to do with the fact that 
 they are so irregularly attended. 
 
 But I have said much more than I intended to 
 say on this head, and I hasten now to remark, that 
 
2 54 THE CHURCH BENEFICENT. [xii. 
 
 while we more or less deny ourselves the advantage 
 of the beautiful, we altogether reject the far greater 
 advantage of the practical and useful. 
 
 To put the matter broadly — in connection with 
 churches much good work is done, done by mini- 
 sters and office-bearers, by committees, by associa- 
 ations of members, but as churches we do nothing. 
 When we come together here on Sunday, after 
 having been for hundreds of Sundays in the habit 
 of coming, it is just to go through the old routine 
 of prayer, praise, sermon, and go away home ; the 
 congregation, as a congregation, after the bene- 
 diction, goes away home, that is to say, goes out of 
 existence. Nothing equals the regularity with 
 which our meeting takes place, except the regu- 
 larity with which nothing comes of it. There is 
 nothing new under the sun, and particularly under 
 the roof of a modern church. From Sunday to 
 Sunday we are exhorted to work together for God, 
 but, as a body of Christians thus constantly ex- 
 horted to do something, we answer constantly by 
 doing nothing. Here is one of many thousands 
 of congregations in this country — what are we 
 doing except meeting on Sundays, to talk of work 
 which we ought to do and which we never begin .'* 
 We have no work on hand, though surely there is 
 plenty of work to do, work, I mean, which a society 
 calling itself Christian should attempt to do. Or, 
 if there is no work for us to do, why should we be 
 always talking of work.? All our preaching goes in 
 at one ear and out at the other, as far as the con- 
 
XII.] THE CHURCH BENEFICENT. 255 
 
 gregatlon is concerned. Take them as they com- 
 monly are, churches are like corn-mills carefully 
 constructed and plentifully supplied with steam or 
 water power, but never put in motion, never made 
 to grind a bushel of grain. In our congregational 
 life it is all saying and no doing. Sunday is our 
 great religious day, the day on which, if at all, we 
 ought to do that Christian work which we are 
 always talking of doing. It is considered very 
 religious to go to church for an hour or two, and 
 for the rest of the day to shut ourselves up at home 
 with our Bibles or some other religious book, as if 
 Sunday were for us a sort of spiritual penitentiary 
 or infirmary, in which, to save our own souls, we 
 must undergo our regular confinement, let the 
 business and welfare of the world wag how they 
 will. Now the result of this, I think, can only be 
 what we see it is ; our Sunday meetings have no 
 particular object, and therefore no particular in- 
 terest ; they do not subserve those directly prac- 
 tical and useful ends for which other meetings are 
 held, and, consequently, they have none of the 
 liveliness which belongs to other meetings. 
 
 It would involve the remodelling of our churches 
 to an extent to which few of us, perhaps, would 
 care to see them remodelled ; but, if the practical 
 and useful were as prominent in their arrangements 
 as other things are, they would not have to com- 
 plain so much as they have now, of being forsaken. 
 What is needed to fill churches and put life into 
 them, is to revert to the original idea of a church, 
 
256 THE CHURCH BENEFICENT. [xii. 
 
 and make it a society " to provoke unto love and 
 to good works." We are accustomed to look upon 
 our church membership and church attendance as 
 so much religious duty to be done, so much sacri- 
 fice and offering to be paid, by us, with a view to 
 our own salvation. But there is another view 
 altogether to be taken of the matter, and that is, 
 that as Christians we are bound to associate to- 
 gether to do Christian work. And to demonstrate 
 that this is the right view, I might quote, not a text, 
 but the New Testament. Suppose, then, we looked 
 upon our church membership and church attendance 
 as so much association for the purpose of doing 
 good after the example of Christ, and suppose 
 every time we met together we kept this purpose 
 in view, we should find for one thing, I think, that 
 " he prayeth best who loveth best," and that 
 Christian business is a wonderful help to Christian 
 devotion. We are many in number, we have 
 means enough at our command of one kind and 
 another for doing some real good. If we were, as 
 a society, engaged in doing it, we should not, as a 
 congregation, have to depend for the interest of our 
 meetings upon what a minister has to give us in 
 the shape of a sermon. In carrying on our work 
 the practical and useful would come to the aid of 
 devotion ; devotion would aid work ; we should 
 meet difficulties, and pray the better on account of 
 them ; we should have some success, and because 
 of it sing a more hearty song. 
 
 If we were, even in the loosest sort of way, 
 
XII.] THE CHURCH BEXEFICENT. 257 
 
 united as a congregation in an endeavour to further 
 Christian objects, to reheve the poor, to comfort 
 the sick, to instruct the ignorant, to reclaim the 
 erring, to remove temptation out of the way of the 
 young, to promote decency, sobriety, honesty, 
 truth, gentleness — if we were ever so loosely united 
 as a congregation in this endeavour, it is impossible, 
 being as many as we are, that we should not 
 accomplish something. Now, if there were this 
 kind of business first, and devotion followed it, or 
 if business and devotion were somehow combined 
 in the order of our Sunday services, we should have 
 what gives zest to meetings for other and inferior 
 purposes — the sense that we are dealing with what 
 is of immediate practical utility to ourselves and to 
 others. Were we able to report to-day that some 
 work for the poor, or the sick, or the ignorant, or 
 the tempted had been done by us since last Sunday, 
 or had we now met to spend part of our time in 
 considering what work of that kind might be 
 attempted by us this week, I need not say our 
 meeting would be more lively, for one thing, than 
 our meetings usually are, and not the least so in 
 respect of our devotions. And if in this way, in 
 church meetings in general, there were substituted 
 something of the eventful activity of the busy world 
 for the humdrum piety of the cloister, more would 
 be done than will ever be done otherwise to make 
 churches attractive to multitudes for whom they 
 have now little attraction or none. 
 
 Various objections, no doubt, may be made to 
 
 R 
 
2 58 THE CHURCH BENEFICENT. [xii. 
 
 the proposal to reconstruct churches after so primi- 
 tive a model as is here in question, and among 
 them one which seems decisive, viz., that any pro- 
 posal of the kind is simply impracticable. How is 
 it possible, it may be asked, to take churches as 
 they stand — institutions for the maintenance ot 
 public worship on Sundays — and, in place of the 
 slight and elastic constitution which serves their 
 turn, and which makes of their membership a 
 motley multitude indeed, give them any organiza- 
 tion of the kind which is required for work } This 
 difficulty may be urged, and it seems formidable — 
 indeed it is formidable. It would not be an easy 
 task, it must be granted, to convert churches as 
 they are into what they ought to be. But there is 
 an answer to be given to any objection which is 
 started on this ground to church-reform being pro- 
 posed or attempted. In matters spiritual, if not in 
 any other matters, it does not follow, because a thing 
 is impracticable, that no account must be taken of 
 it. If there is anything impracticable for all man- 
 kind, it is the attainment of divine perfection. But 
 none the less, an authority higher than that of any 
 church makes it a rule for every man that that 
 perfection should be his aim ; and no one, I sup- 
 pose, will venture to say that it is useless, let alone 
 improper, that such a rule should have been laid 
 down. Though it is impossible to reach the per- 
 fection of the Eternal, it is life eternal and divine 
 to strive to reach it. If it were shown, then, with 
 reference to what has been indicated as the original 
 
xri.] THE CHURCH BENEFICENT. 2^9 
 
 and the proper aim of Christian churches, that it is 
 impracticable, this would be no more than what 
 coyld be shown with regard to spiritual aims in 
 general, and in particular the supreme aim of every 
 Christian mind, and no more in the one case than 
 in the other would it follow that the impracticable 
 must count for nothing. 
 
 The truth is, however, that, so far from its being 
 impossible to give churches other aims than they 
 now have, not a few instances might be quoted to 
 show that the thing is easily done. There are 
 Christian congregations to which we could point in 
 which the idea that Christian work is the business 
 and the bond of Christian society has found ex- 
 pression for itself in their organization being ex- 
 tended so as to include a vast deal more than the 
 maintenance of public worship on Sundays. To 
 some extent, at least, their example might be fol- 
 lowed by most churches. Some work or other 
 most of them might undertake ; some machinery 
 for doing that work need not be beyond their 
 powers of invention. But what I wish to maintain 
 is, that, no matter how impracticable the idea of 
 Christian churches of which we speak may be, or 
 may seem to be, it is the true idea, and only to 
 keep it in view Avould do a world of good, or, at 
 any rate, prevent a world of evil. 
 
 In the first place, were it only understood that 
 Christian churches, whatever else they may or 
 may not be, are essentially associations for doing 
 good, after the manner of Jesus Christ, sects and 
 
2 6o THE CHURCh BENEFICENT. xii. 
 
 sectarianism would become ridiculous or infamous. 
 According to sectarian notions, churches are associ- 
 ations of sinners wishing to be saved, and having 
 different views of things which they suppose con- 
 cern their salvation. Put in place of this concep- 
 tion of Christian churches the idea that they are 
 associations of Christians for doing good, and it 
 will seem absurd for sects to go on doing the things 
 which ought not to be done, in the way of strife 
 and animosity, and wholesale waste of money and 
 energy, and leaving undone the things which ought 
 to be done, in the way of bettering the world. 
 Substitute the one idea for the other, make churches 
 what the change would make them, and then you 
 might say to a man, or a body of men, threatening 
 dissent and schism on the score ,of a doctrine or a 
 rite or a point of church polity — you may be right 
 or you may be wrong in regard to any matter of 
 that kind, but to justify your separating from us 
 what needs to be shown is that charity is a prin- 
 ciple with you in a sense in which it is not a 
 principle with us, that this is where we are at issue 
 with each other — is it lawful to do good or to do 
 evil on the Sabbath day and every day } 
 
 Instead of begging sects for Christ's sake to 
 abate their pretensions, encourage them to pitch 
 them as high as they can be pitched. It is the sure 
 way first to diminish the number of sects, and then 
 to abolish them. It is a cheap superiority, which is 
 attained upon the footing of correct opinions on 
 points of dispute among Christians. The honour 
 
xii.] THE CHURCH BENEFICENT. 261 
 
 costs the wearer little or nothing. But give and 
 take no quarter in respect to one thing — charity ; 
 apply the rule to parties as well as to men, " By 
 their fruits ye shall know them ; " suffer no sect to 
 claim any less valid a reason for its existence than 
 that it possesses a monopoly of Christian philan- 
 thropy — this will tend to elevate sects into a 
 position of difficulty and of glory where few of 
 them would long survive, and where those few 
 would have few adherents. 
 
 The same reform of churches, I remark further, 
 which would tend to abolish sects, would tend to 
 heighten the standard of morals in Christian 
 society. As churches exist at present, insti- 
 tutions for the maintenance of public worship 
 they are largely frequented by people whose only 
 or whose chief profession of Christianity con- 
 sists in putting on their Sunday clothes to go to 
 church. Multitudes attend church on Sundays 
 consciously or unconsciously saying to themselves 
 that by doing so no more is meant than a general 
 respect for religious ordinances. They go to hear 
 a sermon from a preacher paid for preaching it, 
 without committing themselves by the act to any- 
 thing, except to sit and listen. As for the other 
 parts of the service, prayer and praise, if they get 
 no good from these, it is, they think, their own loss 
 and nobody else's business. Rather, perhaps, their 
 notion, if it were carefully analysed, would be 
 found to be that public worship, on the whole, is a 
 kind of penance, the advantage of which, as a 
 
262 THE CHURCH BENEFICENT. [xii. 
 
 substitute for goodness, those who know least good 
 of themselves should be most careful not to forego. 
 Thus we have multitudes who are professing Chris- 
 tians on Sundays and not on other days, who have 
 no conscience as to any inconsistency between 
 regular church attendance and regular disregard 
 of Christian duties and Christian obligations. The 
 complaint of commercial dishonesty (to mention 
 only one thing of the kind), of which we hear so 
 much at the present day, is a complaint which 
 touches people who mostly go to church with 
 exemplary regularity. 
 
 But this could hardly be as it is if the true idea 
 of a Christian church were more prominent in all 
 our ecclesiastical affairs. Put forward in all your 
 Sunday services the fact that the Church of Christ 
 is an association for doing good to the world, it will 
 be preposterous then for a man to belong to it 
 who, instead of doing good to his neighbours, is 
 indifferent to their welfare, not to speak of doing 
 them harm ; it will be absurd for a man to say 
 — I belong to that great philanthropic society 
 the Church ; I attend all its meetings ; I take 
 part in all its business ; but all that is an affair 
 of one day in the week, and on other days I 
 have no more scruple about lying or cheating or 
 slandering, than other people who don't belong to 
 the society. 
 
 If it be objected that any more practical scheme 
 of church life than is common is impracticable, 
 there is an answer, then, to be given to the objection. 
 
XTL] THE CHURCH BENEFICENT. 263 
 
 Before I conclude, let me advert for a moment 
 to another objection which may also be urged. 
 Would you, some one may ask, suppose it were 
 possible, divert the activity of churches from those 
 purely spiritual objects, which only churches are 
 fitted to promote, and direct it to philanthropic but 
 still secular ends, which other institutions and 
 other agencies are intended to further, and are 
 possibly better fitted to further ? To this, however, 
 it is to be answered, that charity never faileth, nor 
 the need for that organized charity which a church 
 ought to be. When all other institutions and 
 agencies, even the most benevolent and most use- 
 ful, have done their best, much will still remain to 
 be done for the welfare of mankind, much which 
 only Christian philanthropy can do, or will attempt 
 to do, and it is the business of churches to concern 
 themselves with that. 
 
 It is not desirable, I grant, that churches should 
 be made, in one sense, more political or more 
 secular than they are. Any one who takes an 
 interest in the proceedings of councils, convocations, 
 synods, and notes how much of their business is 
 political and secular, or done with an eye to the 
 movements of political and secular parties, and in a 
 purely political and secular spirit, will be disposed 
 to think, perhaps, that churches, as represented by 
 their courts, are only too political and too secular 
 already. But, if this is so, the reason is obvious. 
 Church courts, which consist chiefly or exclusively 
 of the clergy, only too well represent the character 
 
264 THE CHURCH BENEFICENT. [xii. 
 
 of churches, of which the laity have nothing or next 
 to nothing to do. Those whose Hves are devoted 
 exclusively to the service of a particular church, 
 naturally contract a zeal for the interests of that 
 church, which is apt to find occasion for displaying 
 itself in every conceivable kind of affairs, small as 
 well as large, secular as well as sacred, and, indeed, 
 is apt to discover in almost every event and move- 
 ment of the time something at which the Church 
 ought to take alarm, and against which it ought to 
 strive as if for its life. As churches are at present 
 constituted, their activity being chiefly clerical, this 
 zeal for their own interests largely prevails in them, 
 and gives often to their proceedings more than 
 enough of a political or secular character. But the 
 Sabbath and the Church were made for man, and 
 not man for the Church and the Sabbath, and while 
 churches, as a matter of fact, ask what is best for 
 the interests of the church, there is another question 
 which they might ask, and, indeed, ought to ask, 
 viz., what is best for the welfare of the community 
 and of mankind 1 Were this the question, then, 
 with churches, as the association of all classes 
 of people in their counsels and in their activity 
 would tend to make it, they would turn their, 
 swords into ploughshares, and their spears into 
 pruning-hooks ; they would sow and reap in ne- 
 glected fields, instead of marching out on many a 
 false alarm to meet imaginary foes ; industry 
 would be their policy, and it would be peace. 
 
 What is proposed, then, is not by any means to 
 
XII.] THE CHURCH BENEFICENT. 265 
 
 degrade churches into any lower sphere than that 
 which they now fill. But, as long as barbarism in 
 its worst form, pauperism, vice, crime, class hatreds, 
 and the worse hatred of sects, prevail as they do ; 
 as long as popular amusements and popular litera- 
 ture show the bent of the popular mind towards 
 what is low and vicious, in point of taste and 
 in point of morals, churches have plenty of work 
 to do which only associations of Christian phil- 
 anthropists can be expected to undertake, and 
 in the doing of which the least of all their anxieties 
 may well be lest they should meddle with business 
 not their own. 
 
 To churches, if this were their character, the 
 glory might belong of solving, or helping to solve, 
 problems which are the despair of governments 
 and legislatures, and, at the same time that they 
 were doing work which other civilizing agencies 
 have tried to do and have failed to do, they might 
 do more than they have ever yet done to advance 
 their own great spiritual aims by changing for 
 multitudes conditions and circumstances which 
 hinder spiritual life or make it impossible. 
 
 If there be any truth in all this, I cannot but 
 add, it will commend itself especially to those 
 who connect the best hopes of the human race 
 with the existence of the Church of Christ, and 
 who, in their anxiety for its prosperity, have some 
 regard to the future as well as to the present. 
 While all churches are more or less in the habit of 
 identifying their existence and their prosperity, 
 
266 THE CHURCH BENEFICENT. [xir. 
 
 and the maintenance of every one of their peculiar 
 tenets, vvith nothing less stable than the will of 
 God and the kingdom of God, it is evident to 
 many thoughtful minds, that as churches have 
 yielded to time in the past, and submitted to re- 
 form and reconstruction, so they may have to do 
 and are likely to have to do again. Considering, 
 indeed, how much of the intelligence of the age is 
 in open revolt against churches, or against the 
 policy, which is common to them all, of staking 
 their existence on the maintenance of every jot and 
 tittle of creeds and traditions of the fathers ; con- 
 sidering also how many causes are at work tending 
 to undermine or displace the authority of the 
 pulpit, on v/hich churches so much rely for their 
 efficiency and their influence, many intelligent 
 observers foresee for churches, at no distant period, 
 more perilous times than any of which most of 
 them have had any experience. The question 
 which the most illustrious statesman of our time 
 has raised, chiefly on the score of endowments, with 
 regard to the church of which he is himself a 
 devoted adherent — " Is it worth preserving } " — is 
 a question which every church must expect to find 
 debated with regard to itself, on any and on every 
 ground on which it asserts a claim to attention or 
 respect. Prescription and authority count for little 
 in an age which reckons it to be the duty of* every 
 man to think for himself. In such an age it is no 
 longer what claims to be sacred or divine which 
 must not be touched by hands profane, but only 
 
XII.] THE CHl)RCH BENEFICENT. 267 
 
 what proves itself to be divine or sacred. In this 
 view hardly too much importance can be assigned 
 to the consideration that the footing upon which 
 churches choose to stand at present is neither that 
 upon which they have always stood, nor that upon 
 which they are bound ahvays to stand. To those 
 who wish them well, and to those (if there are any) 
 who wish them ill, it must be a matter of grave 
 concern to reflect that if the breaking-up of 
 churches is threatened on one side, it may only 
 be to clear the ground for their being rebuilt on a 
 more enduring foundation. The fate of Christianity 
 is not involved in the fate of churches. If the old 
 order in the ecclesiastical world is to end, its place 
 will be taken, not by worse, but better. Let the 
 new order in the Church of Christ be that which 
 leaves minds free, and gives scope for charity — it 
 will only be the earliest order of all restored — and 
 the Church wnll flourish as long as there are men 
 to claim relations with God as their Father, and 
 with each other as brethren, and against the 
 Church the gates of hell will not prevail. 
 
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