- Biiaa v 
 
THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
THE EXPOSITOR’S LIBRARY 
 
 First 50 Volumes. Cloth, 2 /- net each 
 
 The New Evangelism 
 
 Prof. Henry Drummond, F.R.S.E. 
 Fellowship with Christ 
 
 Rev. R. W. Dale, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 The Jewish Temple and the Chris¬ 
 tian Church 
 
 Rev. R. W. Dale, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 The Ten Commandments 
 
 Rev. R. W. Dale, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 The Epistle to the Ephesians 
 
 Rev. R. W. Dale, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 The Epistle of James 
 
 Rev. R. W. Dale, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 A Guide to Preachers 
 
 Rev. Prin. A. E. Garvie, M.A., d.d. 
 Modern Substitutes for Christian¬ 
 ity Rev. P. McAdam Muir, d.d. 
 
 Ephesian Studies 
 
 Rt. Rev. Handley C. G. Moule, D.D. 
 
 Philippian Studies 
 
 Rt. Rev. Handley C. G. Moule, D.D. 
 Colossian Studies 
 
 Rt. Rev. Handley C. G. Moule, D.D. 
 Christ is All 
 
 Rt. Rev. Handley C. G. Moule, D.D. 
 
 The Life of the Master 
 
 Rev. John Watson, D.D. 
 
 The Mind of the Master 
 
 Rev. John Watson, D.D. 
 
 Heroes and Martyrs of Faith 
 
 Professor A. S. Peake, D.D. 
 The Teaching of Jesus Concerning 
 Himself 
 
 Rev. Prof. James Stalker, M.A., D.D. 
 Studies of the Portrait of Christ 
 Vol. I. Rev. George Matheson, D.D. 
 Studies of the Portrait of Christ 
 Vol. II. Rev. George Matheson, D.D. 
 The Fact of Christ 
 
 Rev. P. Carnegie Simpson, D.D. 
 The Cross in Modern Life 
 
 Rev. J. G. Greenhough, M.A. 
 The Unchanging Christ 
 
 Rev. Alex. McLaren, D.D., D.LITT. 
 The God of the Amen 
 
 Rev. Alex. McLaren, D.D., D.LITT. 
 The Ascent through Christ 
 
 Rev. Principal E. Griffith Jones, B.A. 
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 Professor F. Godet, D.D. 
 
 Studies on the New Testament 
 
 Professor F. Godet, D.D. 
 
 Studies on St. Paul’s Epistles 
 
 Professor F. Godet, d.d. 
 
 OTHER VOLUMES 
 
 Christianity in the Modern World 
 Rev. D. S. Cairns, M.A. 
 Israel’s Iron Age 
 
 Rev. Marcus Dods, d.d. 
 
 The City of God 
 
 Rev. A. M. Fairbairn, M.A., D.D., LL.D. 
 
 Christ’s Service of Love 
 
 Rev. Prof. Hugh Black, M.A., D.D. 
 
 Humanity and God 
 
 Rev. Samuel Chadwick. 
 
 The Work of Christ 
 
 Rev. Principal P. T. Forsyth, D.D. 
 
 Sidelights from Patmos 
 
 Rev. George Matheson, d.d. 
 
 The Teaching of Jesus 
 
 Rev. George Jackson, B.A. 
 
 The Miracles of Our Lord 
 
 Rev. Professor John Laidlaw, d.d. 
 
 The Creation Story in the Light of 
 To-Day Rev. Charles Wenyon, M.D. 
 
 Saints and Sinners of Hebrew His¬ 
 tory Rev. J. G. Greenhough, M.A. 
 
 Via Sacra Rev. T. H. Darlow. 
 
 The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ 
 Rev. Prof. James Stalker, M.A., D.D. 
 
 Aspects of Christ 
 
 Rev. Principal W. B. Selbie, M.A. 
 
 The Resurrection of Christ 
 
 Rev. Professor James Orr, M.A., D.D. 
 
 The Doctrines of Grace 
 
 Rev. John Watson, M.A., D.D. 
 
 Cardinal Virtues 
 
 Rev. Canon W. C. E. Newbolt, M.A. 
 
 Speaking Good of His Name 
 
 Ven. Archdeacon Wilberforce, d.d. 
 
 Living Theology Archbishop Benson. 
 Heritage of the Spirit 
 
 Bishop Mandell Creighton. 
 
 The Knowledge of God 
 
 Bishop Walsham How. 
 
 A Devotional Commentary on St. 
 Paul’s Epistles to the Colos- 
 SIANS AND THESSALONIANS 
 
 Joseph Parker, D.D. 
 
 A Devotional Commentary on St. 
 Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians 
 Joseph Parker, d.d. 
 
 Bible Studies in Living Subjects 
 
 Rev. Ambrose Shepherd, D.D. 
 
 IN PREPARATION 
 
 LONDON : HODDER AND STOUGHTON. 
 
CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. W. C. E. NEWBOLT 
 
 CANON AND CHANCELLOR OF S. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL, ETC. 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
 
 NEW YORK TORONTO 
 
 LONDON 
 

 ✓ 
 
 
 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This volume consists of sermons delivered 
 at S. Paul’s during the preacher’s months 
 of residence. 
 
 The first four, which give the title to the 
 book, deal with those great virtues which are 
 at the bottom of all systems of morality; 
 and are called “ cardinal ” in contradistinction 
 to the three theological virtues of Faith, 
 Hope, and Charity. 
 
 The other sermons have to deal with sub¬ 
 jects either of special interest to men of 
 this generation, as, e.g ., the beginning of 
 the New Century, or the Coronation of 
 King Edward VII., or with subjects of such 
 permanent importance as the life and oppor¬ 
 tunities of a great city. The reader must 
 bear in mind that sermons have a special 
 characteristic of their own, viz., to arrest 
 
 y 
 
vi 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 attention and interest a mixed audience, as 
 well as to teach great truths of religion to 
 those who are willing to hear. And as ser¬ 
 mons, not as essays, they are submitted by 
 the preacher to a wider audience than can 
 be reached from the pulpit, with an earnest 
 hope that their defects may be overlooked, 
 and their aim recognised in preparing, how¬ 
 ever imperfectly, the way of the Lord in 
 the hearts of His faithful people. 
 
 3, Amen Court, E.C., 
 March 30, 1903. 
 
 W. C. E. N. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. 
 
 Temperance .... 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1 
 
 II. 
 
 Prudence .... 
 
 . 25 
 
 III. 
 
 Justice. 
 
 . 49 
 
 IY. 
 
 Fortitude .... 
 
 . 73 
 
 V. 
 
 The New Century 
 
 . 93 
 
 VI. 
 
 The Citizenship of Heaven 
 
 . 119 
 
 VII. 
 
 The King .... 
 
 . 141 
 
 r III. 
 
 The God of Glory 
 
 . 165 
 
 IX. 
 
 The Lord of Hosts 
 
 . 187 
 

I 
 
 TEMPERANCE 
 
 2 
 
* 
 
 
 
 
 
I 
 
 TEMPERANCE 
 
 A Sermon Preached in S. Paul’s 
 Cathedral in August, 1900. 
 
 ‘ And if a man love righteousness, her labours are virtues: 
 for she teacheth temperance and prudence, justice and 
 fortitude : which are such things, as men can have nothing 
 more profitable in their life.” —Wisdom viii. 7. 
 
 What a wonderful world this is as the child 
 of God takes his first tottering steps out into 
 it! What a perplexing world he finds it 
 befoie he has gone very far! The hand 
 which he stretches out to caress is scratched 
 and torn ; the sun which cheered him with 
 its brilliant expanse of light smites him by 
 day, the moon smites him by night. The 
 fruits which look so tempting, poison as 
 well as feed, are bitter as well as sweet. A 
 mystery hangs over creation, it is a puzzle 
 to which he has no key; he buys experience 
 at a heavy cost, and learns that he must move, 
 and walk, and touch, and taste only with 
 caution and constant care. 
 
 3 
 
4 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 It is so with the fuller world which opens 
 out to him as a man, through the paths of 
 perception, intellect, and experiment. He 
 pursues a road littered with failures, and 
 lined with the sick and wounded who have 
 sunk down only to die. The literature of the 
 world, its proverbs, its sayings, are full of the 
 puzzle, the pain, the disappointment, the 
 anger that a world which looks so fair, 
 and promises so much, should strike without 
 warning, poison with such sweetness, and kill 
 with such heartlessness. The inspired apostle, 
 as he looked out over creation, saw all things 
 as it were with upturned head, waiting for 
 the reproach of failure and misery to be rolled 
 away from them. “ The earnest expectation 
 of the creature w^aiteth for the manifestation 
 of the sons of God. For the creature was 
 made subject to vanity, not willingly, but 
 by reason of Him who hath subjected the 
 same in hope.” 1 
 
 And so we shall find different attitudes 
 adopted towards the world by those who 
 knew its fascinations and dreafied its assaults. 
 There have been men, there are now, who 
 have stood outside it altogether as far as it is 
 possible for a man to do so. Philosophers, 
 who have spurned with scorn things which 
 could be so treacherous, and which offered so 
 
 1 Rom. viii. 20. 
 
TEMPERANCE 
 
 5 
 
 little real satisfaction; hermits who have gone 
 away to their caves in the mountains saying, 
 If we are to live in the world, at least it must 
 be made a place where a man can live decently 
 without constant fear of corruption. “ To 
 despise the world, to despise no one, to despise 
 self, to despise being despised, these are four 
 good things,” so ran the old legend. 
 
 But there were others who knew that 
 their lot was cast in this world, and that 
 they must live in it, if not of it, and win 
 the prize of victory out of its conflicts, and 
 be hardened by its buffets, and braced by 
 its disappointments, and they pointed out 
 and elaborated certain precautions and 
 methods which a good man was bound to 
 take, not only if he wished to avoid evil, 
 but also if he wished to gain to himself good 
 out of the contact with evil. The experience 
 of mankind pointed out four main attitudes 
 to be assumed, four great virtues to be 
 acquired, four potent habits to be mastered, 
 which are famous in ancient systems, and 
 which Christianity itself has taken over and 
 amplified. They are those which the author 
 of the Book of Wisdom has also specified 
 as the fruit of wisdom—Temperance, Pru¬ 
 dence, Justice, and Fortitude. 
 
 These are well known as the four cardinal 
 virtues—virtues, that is, on which a man’s 
 
6 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 life is hinged, virtues which help a man 
 to govern his actions in view of the tempta¬ 
 tions, difficulties, and dangers which beset 
 his journey through the world. 
 
 Temperance teaches him the child’s first 
 lesson, not to touch. Prudence teaches him 
 how to avoid moral blunders and the taking 
 of wrong paths. Justice teaches him that 
 he is not the only man in the world, that 
 there are others who have rights in it as 
 well as he; while Fortitude tells him that 
 many of the obstacles which he meets are 
 not there merely to bar his progress, but are 
 set to divert the stream of his life into fresh 
 channels of usefulness. Without some such 
 virtues, which the wisdom and experience of 
 men were guided by God to discover, it would 
 be impossible to pass through the world 
 unscathed, or to attain to that perfection 
 which God designs for His children. 
 
 These solid virtues are as necessary to-day, 
 dear brethren, as they ever were; Christianity 
 has but elevated them, and made them more 
 easy of attainment than they were before. 
 It was the great aim of Christ’s religion 
 to roll away the reproach which vitiated the 
 best efforts of the heathen world, that they 
 knew what was right and did what was 
 wrong; that with high precepts they had but 
 indifferent practice. The Gospel supplied to 
 
TEMPERANCE 
 
 7 
 
 men the means of reaching the heights which 
 appeared to be inaccessible before; and availed 
 not merely to show men what was right, but 
 to help them until, by the gifts of grace, they 
 were able to reach it. 
 
 I. 
 
 Now Temperance is a virtue which needs 
 to be reclaimed and restored to its true posi¬ 
 tion. It is quite true that by reason of 
 centuries of bad habit, we in these northern 
 islands have followed for so many years the 
 vicious habit of excess in the use of in¬ 
 toxicating drinks, that we have become 
 terrified, as well we might, at the moral, 
 physical, and spiritual havoc that this one 
 sin is working amongst us. The governors of 
 our gaols, the doctors in our hospitals, those 
 who have care of asylums, the clergy, the 
 magistrates, those who know anything of the 
 state of their fellow-men combine in saying 
 that the sin of drunkenness is the national 
 besetting sin, and the most terrible curse 
 which is devastating our land. And in view 
 of this great and admitted evil, Temperance, 
 as a word, is generally confined to self- 
 restraint in the use of intoxicants, amounting 
 to abstaining from them altogether. Tern- 
 
8 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 perance is this, but it is much more. We 
 must rescue it from such a partial and limited 
 use to its true meaning as governing all a man’s 
 actions, not regulating his dealings only with 
 one particular form of temptation. 
 
 Temperance is, as I ventured to say just 
 now, the virtue which enables a man as he 
 passes through the world not to touch. He 
 is surrounded with temptations to self-in¬ 
 dulgence, temperance tells him at once, the 
 when, the how, the how much, the how 
 long, what to take, and what to avoid. Is he 
 tempted to hasty speech? Temperance puts 
 a bridle on his lips. Is he tempted to indulge 
 evd passion? Temperance controls him. Is 
 he tempted to misuse his appetites? Tem¬ 
 perance shows him their proper and legitimate 
 use, and rigidly restrains all that exceeds 
 that use. So that it is a master virtue. 
 You will need it, dear brethren, just as 
 much as the poor drunkard needs it, in 
 the quiet simplicity of your every-day life. 
 Don t let us imitate the Pharisee once 
 mor e. God, I thank Thee that I am not 
 
 as this drunkard, this degraded slave to his 
 appetite." Perhaps that has not been your 
 temptation, perhaps God has mercifully 
 shielded you from it. What of the inward 
 purity of your life ? What of the disabling 
 ease and selfish indulgence which so ruins 
 
TEMPERANCE 
 
 9 
 
 and disfigures our Christian profession ? 
 What of our hasty words, our greediness, 
 our selfishness ? Ah! dear brethren, we are 
 all too much like children, who cry for all 
 that they see, and stretch out greedy hands 
 for all that they can get; who, if they dread 
 the fire, dread it because they have been 
 burned ; who, if they are shy of evil, are shy 
 because they have been bit, and find it the 
 best policy to keep to the paths of integrity. 
 Temperance is a great virtue, a cardinal 
 virtue, which helps a man to keep himself 
 in check on principle, and to move amidst 
 all the manifold riches of the world with the 
 liberty and ease which belong to a man 
 who can taste or not taste, use or not use, 
 take or leave alone, with a freedom and 
 certainty which characterize the man who 
 reigns supreme within the circle of his own 
 life. 
 
 “ Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control. 
 
 These three alone lead life to sovereign power. 
 
 Yet not for power (power of herself 
 Would come uncall’d for), but to live by law, 
 
 Acting the law we live by without fear : 
 
 And because right is right, to follow right 
 Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.” 
 
 Let us rescue Temperance from its partial 
 meaning and its limited significance until we 
 find in it the first of those cardinal virtues, 
 
10 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 which bear up the integrity of life, as it 
 moves among forces which might shatter 
 and disintegrate it, with the treacherous 
 connivance of unbridled desire. 
 
 II. 
 
 There are certain well-defined stages 
 in the development of Temperance which we 
 should do well to consider. For let no one 
 believe for one moment that a virtue like 
 this grows up in us without effort, or is 
 inherited with transmitted qualities. Human 
 nature is the same wherever we find it. 
 Where every living thing, if left to itself, 
 may do one of three things, either stay as it is 
 or get better or get worse. Human nature, if 
 left undirected and undeveloped, by a law 
 of degeneration, tends to become gradually 
 but inevitably worse. 1 Passions will not mind 
 themselves, inclinations to evil will not pass 
 away with our advanced growth. Every one 
 who possesses the unspeakable blessing of 
 Temperance, or the noble faculty of self- 
 restraint in the proper regulation of desire, 
 has learned by many a struggle and many 
 a hard-fought combat the strength of passion 
 
 1 See Drummond, “ Natural Law in the Spiritual World,” 
 Degeneration. 
 
TEMPERANCE 
 
 11 
 
 and the effort required to assert the sup¬ 
 remacy of the will. He has known what it 
 is to feel the murderous onslaught threatening 
 to sweep him away; he has known what 
 forces he can summon to his aid, and the 
 certainty of victory and salvation to those 
 who endure to the end. And therefore to 
 him who would possess the virtue of Tem¬ 
 perance there comes first of all this message 
 to the soul, which the ancient world received 
 as an oracle from Heaven, “ Know thyself.” 
 Self-knowledge is one real step towards the 
 attainment of true Temperance. 
 
 My brethren, we vary our moods from time 
 to time, now we are vaunting our powers and 
 glorying in the possibilities of almost infinite 
 development and progress. “Lord, what is 
 man ? ” we say with wonder and admiration ; 
 while at another time we are humbled to the 
 dust by the spectacle of passion overmastering- 
 reason, pushing aside prudence, scattering 
 to the winds the endowments which education 
 has contributed ; and we say, “ Lord, what is 
 man ? ” Was there ever a living being so un¬ 
 controlled, so capable of degradation, so mad 
 in his frenzied rush after evil gratification ? 
 My brethren, it is a great moral help to know 
 ourselves, to know our history, to know our 
 constituent elements, to know the ills to 
 which we are exposed, and the Divine help 
 
12 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 which it is ours to welcome. “ Know thyself.” 
 It is a great help to Temperance. A voice 
 within is ever whispering : Man is frail, every¬ 
 one around you is tainted and vitiated in some 
 way or another by contact with the world. 
 You cannot struggle against nature; to curb 
 the horse of desire is only to make it restive, 
 and to precipitate the catastrophe which 
 is bound to come. It is by gently yielding 
 that the final peace will come, not by a 
 stubborn resistance to the inevitable. How 
 many a man is beaten down by that sophistry, 
 until, instead of managing and ruling the 
 passions, his passions rule him ! A little self- 
 knowledge, a little acquaintance with his own 
 history, will show him that nature does not 
 mean the same thing everywhere, that the 
 nature of plants is one thing, of the lower 
 animals is another thing, while the nature 
 of man stands out as a thing by itself. Man 
 is a free state in a land of despotisms. Man 
 has a ruling power within him known as 
 reason, which is designed to be and is absolutely 
 free. No allurement of this world can force 
 a man to yield to it, unless his will gives 
 consent. No coercion of superior force can 
 overrule a man’s reason, unless his will first 
 consents. Further, the great God Himself 
 wills not to force man to attain even to his 
 highest good. He puts before him life and 
 
TEMPERANCE 
 
 13 
 
 death, blessing and cursing, but the man must 
 choose. What an immense step towards true 
 Temperance it is to know this! All these 
 rebellious passions which clamour for gratifi¬ 
 cation, all these allurements which demand 
 that I should yield to them, all the clamour 
 of corrupt public opinion which demands that 
 I should bow to it, can all be met, subdued, 
 and dispersed by a sanctified reason and a 
 firm will. 
 
 It is possible that I am speaking to-day 
 to some one who is being carried along, a 
 slave to some sin from which he longs to be 
 free. He has got now into a state of despair ; 
 he believes that he cannot help it, and he con¬ 
 soles himself by seeing other slaves at his side. 
 I think one of the most ironical and sad 
 spectacles in the recent rejoicings for deliver¬ 
 ance and victory was to see masses of men 
 degrading themselves by excess and shouting, 
 “ Britons never will be slaves ! ” Ah ! if we 
 knew ourselves enough to be able to feel that 
 a Christian never can be a slave, that he was 
 born to rule, and must rule, it would liberate 
 many a captive and emancipate many a bond- 
 servant. It is being freely discussed now as to 
 whether or not it is desirable to warn young 
 people beforehand in a definite way of the 
 dangers that must inevitably cross their path. 
 It is a question beset with difficulties, and, in 
 
14 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 view of the priceless and irreparable value 
 of innocence where it can be maintained, a 
 question which can only be entertained as the 
 lesser of two evils; but at the same time there 
 is no doubt that a wise estimate of our own 
 peculiar dangers, a prudent calculation of our 
 force, and a just appreciation of the enemy’s 
 real strength would help a man. Courage! 
 After all, no temptation has overtaken you 
 hut that which is common to man. God 
 Himself, out of the temptation, and by means 
 of it, will provide the way of escape. Courage ! 
 because you are a man, because God has given 
 you a sovereign reason, and bidden you reign 
 supreme over your enemies. Courage ! even 
 in front of hereditary weakness, in the face 
 of that affinity to sin which you know you 
 have inherited. Perhaps the right hand must 
 come off, perhaps the right eye must be 
 plucked out. Still courage ! because He made 
 you. It is God that made you. “ He knoweth 
 whereof we are made. He remembereth that 
 we are but dust.” Courage ! because grace is 
 stronger than nature. To know myself is 
 to know that I have that nature which He for 
 ever dignified by the Incarnation. It is to 
 know that God is almighty, and that the 
 omnipotence of God does not stop short, 
 baffled by human passions. 
 
 After “know thyself,” Temperance calls to 
 
TEMPERANCE 
 
 15 
 
 us from her pure height, and says, “ Control 
 thyself.” Certainly the most superficial intro¬ 
 spective glance will show us the tremendous 
 power of the forces which rage within us. 
 Reputations have been lost, fortunes have 
 been dissipated, health wrecked—yes, cities 
 destroyed, by reason of a wandering and 
 rebellious desire. It is a motley crew, full 
 of dangerous energy, and ripe for rebellion, 
 that passes beneath the sovereign throne 
 of the will which is set to rule within a 
 man the passions, desires, and forces which 
 are there for his completeness and for the 
 fulfilment of his mission. My brethren, have 
 we yet mastered this great stage in the 
 development of Temperance known as self- 
 control ? Does anything pass within the 
 portals of your heart of which the will has no 
 cognisance, or is powerless to resist? You 
 remember how the Apostle spoke of a self- 
 control which brings into captivity every 
 thought to the obedience of Christ. 
 
 There are many checks, thank God ! placed 
 by public opinion, by civilisation, by society, 
 whatever you like to call it, on the unbridled 
 exercise of our likes and dislikes, our passions 
 and desires. There is what we may call the 
 ritual of propriety which fences round the 
 freedom of social intercourse. A man must 
 choose his words, must be respectful in his 
 
16 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 actions, must regard prejudices, obey the rules 
 of etiquette, be orderly and well behaved. 
 And it is difficult to over-estimate the impor¬ 
 tance of all this as a safeguard of greater 
 things. It is a bad thing for a nation when it 
 allows itself to break down the proprieties 
 of social life. Degradation of morals filteis 
 through with alarming rapidity from the 
 stage-play which allows itself to tear away 
 the screen of propriety, and scatters it con¬ 
 temptuously to the winds as prudery; a 
 strong situation in a realistic novel means a 
 great deal more than a shock to the artistic 
 sense or the religious feeling of good men ; it 
 is again an attempt to pluck away the barrier 
 of propriety. Free-and-easy manners, loose 
 banter, coarse slang, unmannerly behaviour 
 these are not a return to real life uncorrupted 
 by artificial distinctions and uninjured by 
 pedantry; they are the deliberate destruction 
 of the barriers set around good behaviour, the 
 bulwarks of social discipline and the ritual of 
 its inner life. Self-control within has lost a 
 valuable ally and subsidiary help if it finds 
 itself deserted by self-restraint without in 
 the region of common life. But ritual is not 
 religion, and social propriety is not self-con¬ 
 trol. Temperance is a great principle within 
 the man; it means, as I have said, a setting 
 the will upon a firm throne, so that all life 
 
TEMPERANCE 
 
 17 
 
 goes forward on an even basis and with a 
 fixed purpose, where nothing is rushed under 
 the sudden influence of an impulse, nor the 
 better overborne by the worse, nor reason 
 clamoured down by passion, nor the body 
 cramped by fear, nor ruined by indulgence, 
 but all things are ordered and settled by an 
 equable rule. 
 
 My brethren, are we masters in our own 
 house ? Do we rule within the circle of our own 
 homes ? Have we mastered the true principles 
 of self-control, so that passions and impulses 
 assume their proper place under the guidance 
 of the will ? Self is a very wide empire; while 
 we are holding the capital against deadly sin 
 a fierce guerilla warfare may be raging in the 
 outskirts of our life, whose issue we do not 
 foresee, and whose danger we do not accurately 
 forecast. That sin which does so easily beset 
 us, which some day we are going to turn 
 out, has every appearance of having come to 
 stay. It is true it may be hidden, the flag is 
 flying bravely over every fortress in our life : 
 the world does not know that we have come 
 to a secret understanding with just this one 
 sin, which, after all, we must assume to exist 
 in many cases besides our own. The will has 
 an awkward knack of showing that it has been 
 beaten in some direction, and is curtailed in 
 the extent of its dominion. Vacillation, weak- 
 
 3 
 
18 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 ness in the matter of principle, these betray 
 the loss of perfect self-control. Ah, my breth¬ 
 ren, as we look at the wide area over which 
 we are called to rule, we may well feel anxious. 
 Memory, with its dark record of defeats; 
 imagination, with its treacherous fantasies 
 and strange illusions; the five senses, with 
 their ready service, need constant repression, 
 and constant watchfulness. The tongue, again, 
 is a region of difficulty sufficient to tax the 
 effort of the strongest will in lessons of self- 
 control. “If any man offend not in word,” 
 says St. James, “ the same is a perfect man 
 and able also to bridle the whole body.” 
 Self-control is no child’s play, it reaches right 
 away from our actions to the inmost recesses 
 of the heart. But self-control stands in the 
 very forefront of Temperance. 
 
 “ Know thyself,” “ Control thyself ”—these 
 are good and essential, but, further, from her 
 throne of excellence Temperance cries, “ Deny 
 thyself.” The will must not wait to be 
 attacked, the will must not wait to show that 
 it is master in days of turbulence, and in the 
 fierce blasts of passion. Before the attack 
 comes, while all is peaceful, when no tempter is 
 in sight, while all is calm, the will must 
 exercise herself in her discipline by self-denial. 
 The way to resist indulgence in things unlaw¬ 
 ful is to accustom the powers and faculties to 
 
TEMPERANCE 
 
 19 
 
 obedience in giving up even things lawful. 
 This is no doctrine for a self-indulgent age, but 
 it is sound doctrine for all that. There is a 
 great dislike to anything like systematic fast¬ 
 ing ; the fast of Lent, the weekly fast of Friday, 
 and the other days of obligation have to plead 
 hard for their observance and often to deaf 
 ears. We may well be allowed to wonder 
 whether, if fasting had taken its proper place, 
 such severe repression would have been neces¬ 
 sary in order to produce a proper attitude 
 towards the desolating sin of drunkenness. 
 However this may be, self-denial in things 
 lawful, undertaken in the strength of God and 
 in dependence on His will, does leave a man 
 less exposed to the murderous assaults of 
 appetite. He is less likely to be allured and 
 entrapped into what is wrong who shows 
 that he can, where there is no prohibition, 
 touch or not touch, taste or not taste, with 
 absolute freedom in obedience to the dictates 
 of the will. 
 
 So, dear brethren, see how our Blessed Lord 
 insisted upon all His followers taking up the 
 Cross. “ If any man will come after Me, let 
 him deny himself and take up his cross and 
 follow Me.” There ought to be less of the 
 free-and-easy life, less of the shrinking 
 from hard things. The Devil trades largely 
 upon the fact that men speak and act as 
 
20 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 if the fact of the presence of a strong 
 inclination necessitated its immediate grati¬ 
 fication. To wish for a thing intensely is no 
 reason why it should be necessary immedi¬ 
 ately to satisfy that wish. Rather the mere 
 fact of the existence of a strong desire should 
 put a man on his guard, lest the will should be 
 forced, and passion reign in the place of reason. 
 A man once asked his spiritual adviser what 
 was the meaning of “ dying unto sin,” and he 
 was told in a symbolical manner that it was to 
 behave like a dead man in the presence of that 
 which moves or excites to sin. Thus, self-denial 
 disciplines all the rebellious forces, brings them 
 under the power of reason, so that when 
 passion calls there is no response, when temp¬ 
 tation allures there is no wavering of allegiance. 
 The temperate man has reckoned with all the 
 forces of his being. He knows himself. He 
 has learned to correct every impulse and to 
 steady every desire under the assaults of 
 passion. And to this end, while the battle 
 still threatens only at a distance, in the quiet, 
 uneventful scenes of his everyday life, he has 
 learned the discipline which comes from Self- 
 denial and the power of well-regulated desire. 
 So that the will, in great things as in little, 
 reigns supreme within the circle of her own 
 dominion. 
 
 Christ our Lord and Master, when He came 
 
TEMPERANCE 
 
 21 
 
 on earth and set forth the scheme of Divine 
 sanctification, recognised and accepted these 
 masculine virtues as the foundation of even 
 higher excellences. But He did more; He 
 made them possible, not only for grand heroic 
 natures, but for every one. Every one who 
 submits himself to the rule of Christ may find 
 for himself that which will secure to him the 
 full power of resistance and defence which is 
 needed for the battle of life. To every Chris¬ 
 tian is given not only to admire Temperance 
 from afar, but to be temperate. We know it 
 already, but it needs again and again insist¬ 
 ing on. The wayward taint of hereditary 
 weakness, all the difficulties of temperament, 
 all the paralysing predisposition to evil which 
 belong to a fallen nature, are met and rectified 
 in Holy Baptism. “Ye must be born again.’ 
 This is Christ’s message to the man who 
 despairs of human nature and is paralysed by 
 inherited sin. When the strong gusts of pas¬ 
 sion now wax fierce, and temptation riots along 
 like a whirlwind; when every fresh blast 
 threatens to beat down into the dust the faint 
 virtue, and the weak growth of holiness, fresh 
 grace is promised in the ordinance of Confirm¬ 
 ation. This is no renewing of vows in a spirit 
 of defiance, but a renewing of strength given 
 to those who are willing to wait upon God 
 and renew their allegiance. So every fresh 
 
22 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 canker which springs up in the tender life 
 may be cut away in penitence, and life be 
 restored in earnest amendment. So to him 
 who is alive unto God fresh stores of grace 
 and strength are given in Holy Communion, 
 until the attractiveness of what is good drives 
 out the fascination of what is evil; until the 
 time comes when the desire for goodness and 
 righteousness surpasses the thirst of the 
 drunkard or the desire of the sensualist for 
 what is evil. Temperance in the fostering hand 
 of Christ becomes not only a possibility, but it 
 becomes alive with fresh beauty, and fulfilled 
 with fresh power. 
 
 Cease not your efforts, dear brethren, until 
 you have attained this master virtue. Only 
 with its restraining power strong upon us can 
 we venture upon the dangerous luxuries of an 
 ever-increasing prosperity. As fresh treasures, 
 fresh fascinations open up before you, “ know 
 thyself ” ; know whether they are for you, or 
 whether from the circumstances of your history 
 or the weakness of your will you must push 
 them on one side. “ Control thyself ” ; do not 
 allow even a good thing to be forced upon 
 you, unless your will and reason have first 
 consented, so that you be not enriched even, 
 at the price of liberty. “ Deny thyself.” The 
 Cross, after all, is the symbol of victory for 
 the Christian in this and by this he will con- 
 
TEMPERANCE 
 
 23 
 
 quer. It is the man who by long discipline 
 and by the power of grace has trained his 
 passions, exercised his senses, and curbed his 
 desires, who will reap in all its fulness the 
 blessing which belongs to him who is tem¬ 
 perate in all things. 
 
 We meet together, dear brethren, amidst 
 clouds and gloom which seem to envelope the 
 world. In China, perhaps, at this very mo¬ 
 ment the fate of many hundred Europeans and 
 native Christians hangs in the balance. In 
 South Africa the long war still smoulders on. 
 The traveller who leaves our shores for his 
 summer holiday will find three nations in 
 mourning : here in England, all up the Rhine, 
 in sunny Italy, the drooping flag and the 
 national mourning exhibit the same signs of 
 woe. We have learned here in England to 
 feel as a personal sorrow anything that affects 
 the happiness of our beloved Queen, and we 
 mourn with her for one more loss in that 
 family which has always appealed to our 
 most cherished English traditions. Happy 
 shall w~e be, if we lay to heart the deeper 
 lessons of these times of sorrow, and learn, as 
 we pass through this world, that here we have 
 no continuing city but seek one to come. And 
 strong in the great virtue of Temperance, learn 
 to use this world as not abusing it, for the 
 fashion of this world passeth away. 
 
II 
 
 PRUDENCE 
 

 
 
 
 
 
II 
 
 PRUDENCE 
 
 A Sermon Preached in S. Paul’s 
 Cathedral in August, 1900 . 
 
 “ And the lord commended the unjust steward, because 
 he had done wisely: for the children of this world are 
 in their generation wiser than the children of light.”— 
 S. Luke xvi. 8. 
 
 Besides Temperance, which we considered 
 last Sunday, there stands out another domi¬ 
 nant virtue, without which human nature 
 fails of its highest perfection, and that is 
 Prudence. The man of the world knows 
 the advantage of this virtue in business, 
 more perhaps than we know its value in the 
 regulation of the affairs of our inner life. 
 A long-headed man ; who is not easily taken 
 in; who is practical, cautious, and undemon¬ 
 strative ; who never trusts himself an inch 
 beyond the fair limits of safety, who can be 
 neither flattered nor frightened, he is more 
 trusted than the brilliant experimentalist 
 
 27 
 
28 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 who makes great discoveries, but who may 
 also make great mistakes, who is led away 
 by enthusiasm into positions which he cannot 
 hold, and is led to trust where he ought to 
 have suspected, and to risk where he ought to 
 have held his hand. 
 
 It is the prudent man who pushes his way 
 to the highest positions of commercial pros¬ 
 perity, and wins and holds posts by calcula¬ 
 tion, which his more brilliant neighbour has 
 captured and lost again by rashness and want 
 of method. 
 
 We do not, however, always pause to see 
 the absolute necessity there is for Prudence 
 in the guiding and directing of the more 
 serious concerns of human life. The world 
 being what it is, a man has little chance of 
 passing through its troublesome waves who 
 has not learned the Heaven-given lesson of 
 prudence 
 
 So necessary is it, that our Lord bids us 
 study it from the tactics of the enemy. 
 
 Just as our army in the field has had to 
 learn how to take cover as well as how to 
 advance; how to practise the sort of strata¬ 
 gem which the country demands in which 
 they are fighting, and to study the successful 
 methods of those who are set against them, 
 so, in our spiritual warfare, we may study 
 with advantage the eagerness, skill, and 
 
PRUDENCE 
 
 29 
 
 cleverness of those who are organised for 
 our destruction, and also note with wonder, 
 and imitate where we can, the practical 
 prudence of those who, having made a 
 definite study of what leads to worldly 
 success, have at whatever cost, and with 
 whatever sacrifice, devoted themselves to 
 the realisation of that which they proposed. 
 
 I. 
 
 What is Prudence P Prudence is that 
 virtue which enables a man to make a good 
 choice in all matters that concern his real 
 good. And you will notice these facts as 
 worthy of our consideration, that where we 
 talk of good and bad God sometimes talks of 
 wise and foolish ; that the fool of the Psalmist 
 and the fool of the Book of Proverbs repre¬ 
 sents a character who is a great deal more 
 than the intellectually deficient or the men¬ 
 tally weak man. And, further, that of the 
 sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit, which we 
 received at our Baptism and again at our 
 Confirmation, four have to do with know¬ 
 ledge in some form or another—wisdom, 
 which helps a man to reach out to the highest 
 aims which can be put before him; under¬ 
 standing, or intelligence, which represents a 
 
30 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 kind of spiritualised instinct; counsel, which 
 is the power of choosing between the good 
 and the better, after deliberation ; and know¬ 
 ledge, which is a Divine gift of that which 
 God has been pleased to impart in His various 
 modes of revelation. 
 
 All these things seem to point to the con¬ 
 clusion that there is little chance, in a com¬ 
 plex world like this, for a man who hopes 
 simply to blunder on his way, with no con¬ 
 ception of whither he is going, with no 
 realisation of the dangers which beset his 
 path, without knowing where to rest, or 
 where to turn for food or protection, without 
 power of discerning between the right road 
 and the wrong, or the good or the better, the 
 high or the highest. For a man who does 
 this contemptuously puts on one side all that 
 has been done to help him. God’s two Books 
 of Revelation and experience lie unopened. 
 The storehouses are provided in vain, and 
 the guides stand unemployed and distrusted. 
 
 Much harm has been done in the world by 
 ignorant men, perhaps more harm has been 
 done still by weak men; but great and piti¬ 
 able harm is being done by stupid men—men 
 who lie tossing like a derelict on the tide, 
 themselves speedily to become a wreck, but 
 in the meantime a hindrance and a menace to 
 all who pass by on the busy waterway of life. 
 
PRUDENCE 
 
 31 
 
 n. 
 
 Prudence is not the prosaic virtue of 
 the cautious and timid, of those whom the 
 Italian poet saw outside the limits of hell, 
 not daring enough to sin, not adventurous 
 enough for deeds of virtue, “ men who lived 
 without infamy and without praise ” ; but it 
 is a virtue which reaches right up into the 
 highest regions of intellectual and spiritual 
 action. 
 
 1. It must be the common experience of 
 many of us that we have in our daily life to 
 take for granted many things which we do 
 not stop to prove and are not always capable 
 of proving. We believe, and we act on the 
 belief, although, perhaps, we should be able 
 only imperfectly to set forth the grounds of 
 it, that by the law of gravitation we should 
 fall to the ground if we stepped off the dome 
 of this cathedral. We accepted with un¬ 
 hesitating confidence a few months ago the 
 statement of the astronomer that the sun 
 would be eclipsed on such a day and at such 
 an hour, although, if asked, we should have 
 been able to give only a sorry account of the 
 reasons which induced us to accept that 
 assurance. We think a man an intellectual 
 fanatic who is anxious to demonstrate that 
 
32 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 the world is not round, even although our 
 arguments against him are deficient in scien¬ 
 tific accuracy. So in the affairs of daily life, 
 we act on the collected experience of those 
 who are masters in their different professions ; 
 as a layman we feel disqualified from contra¬ 
 dicting a professional in his own line, and 
 feel that our soundest policy is to consult 
 those who know best, and to act on their 
 advice. And, therefore, it would seem that 
 in the highest of all spheres of knowledge, in 
 the things which concern a man’s relations 
 to God, it would be desirable not to act 
 hurriedly or on our own impression, in the 
 face of the collected experience and wisdom 
 of mankind. It is here that we see one 
 function of the great virtue “Prudence.” If 
 I find it difficult to believe this or that, at 
 least I cannot dismiss with a light heart all 
 that has been said about it, or the common 
 tradition of mankind; at least it may be 
 prudent to act as if there was a God, as if 
 there were Heaven, as if there were Hell, 
 until more light is vouchsafed to me. Surely 
 Prudence would say to fathers and mothers 
 of children, do not consult your children as 
 to whether or not they will say their prayers, 
 or be taught the great doctrines of the Faith, 
 or read the Bible, or go to church. Say to 
 them instead, “ You must act for a time on 
 
PRUDENCE 
 
 33 
 
 the belief that what the tradition of the best 
 men has handed down to you, and the 
 authority of those best qualified to know 
 has committed to you, is true. It is not 
 safe, it is not wise, to disregard it, and in 
 process of time you will be able to see for 
 yourselves whether you submit or withhold 
 the acquiescence of your conviction.” 
 
 We see around us at the present time a 
 perfect sea of controversy ; there is nothing 
 disquieting in that fact taken by itself. The 
 disturbing element is this, that passion is 
 made to do duty for proof, and denunciation 
 for argument, and things are not decided on 
 their merits. Surely Prudence meets us here 
 and says, Here is a belief which is held by 
 thousands of thinking men at the present 
 day; it has been held by thousands of think¬ 
 ing men in all ages of the Church. Is it 
 likely that there should be no truth in it ? Is 
 it likely that there should have been a con¬ 
 spiracy to believe what a child could point 
 out to be demonstrably false? Here am I, 
 perhaps, a man who imperfectly knows one 
 language, with no insight into history, with 
 no grasp of theology, who barely knows the 
 meaning of the terms or the history of the 
 controversy. Is it likely that truth will lie 
 altogether and entirely on my side ? Here is 
 one saying that on the summit of yonder high 
 
 4 
 
34 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 mountain there is a glorious prospect over 
 sea and land, with all the beauties of heaven 
 opening out before the wondering eye. And 
 here I stand in the fog and mist at the 
 bottom and say, “No, there can be no pros¬ 
 pect up there; it is impossible that you can 
 see any. I denounce you as a fool and a 
 fanatic.” Does not prudence say rather, 
 “ Listen to his voice, hearken to what he 
 says. He only bids you ‘ come and see,’ when 
 you have climbed the mountain, when you 
 have looked over the distance and tried to 
 see what he sees, then you may begin to 
 denounce if you wish, and if you can. Then 
 there will be time enough to decry sacra¬ 
 mental grace, or conversion, or Absolution, or 
 justification, or the Bible, or the Church.” 
 Prudence says, ‘ only the fanatic decries what 
 he knows nothing of, and has never striven to 
 comprehend.’ Anything whatever which has 
 at any time commanded the earnest assent of 
 large numbers of mankind, even if it be the 
 wild superstition of the heathen, merits 
 respectful investigation and careful study. 
 Most certainly no one can afford to neglect 
 the long ages of unbroken Christian tradition, 
 nor dispose of with an epigram, or demolish 
 with a sneer, the splendid endowment of the 
 ages of faith. Christian prudence knows that 
 God has spoken by divers portions and in 
 
PRUDENCE 
 
 35 
 
 divers manners, and in an age of strife 
 is most fearful of these two things, first, lest 
 in controversy we should forget the all¬ 
 essential element of Christian love, and 
 secondly, lest in demolishing a controversial 
 antagonist we he found haj^ly fighting 
 against God. 
 
 2. But it is rather in the guidance of our 
 moral life that we look for the more charac¬ 
 teristic exhibition of the virtue of Prudence. 
 I suppose we all of us have been struck from 
 time to time with the extreme stupidity and 
 folly of a life of reckless sin. Here is a man 
 ruining his health by excess in drink; is he 
 happy ? Clearly not. Does he know that he 
 is killing himself by inches ? Presumably. 
 Then why does he do it ? He says he cannot 
 help it. Here is a man made in the image 
 and likeness of God leading a life lower 
 than any beast that perishes. Does he know 
 that the purer qualities of his intellect are 
 being impaired? He cannot fail to do so. 
 Does he see that light and beauty have died 
 out of the world for him, and that, like Solo¬ 
 mon, his sun is setting in a moral night? 
 Alas ! it is too obvious that he was not meant 
 to satisfy himself with the husks of swine. 
 Here is one plunging into a course of gam¬ 
 bling, with a restless intoxication, waiting for 
 the chance which is to make his fortune, and 
 
36 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 the clever stroke which is to save him from 
 ruin. Does he know that these never come ? 
 Does he know that the whole history of such 
 transactions is against him ? He cannot fail 
 to do so. But he is blind, and cannot see afar 
 off. Perhaps he, too, says he cannot help 
 himself, as he struggles in the net laid privily 
 for him, and entangles himself the tighter by 
 the agony of his struggles. Wise men mourn 
 over the follies of youth, cynics smile at them, 
 the good try to save them from their conse¬ 
 quences. But in those who wait upon God 
 and seek for His guidance, who are resolute 
 and earnest in dealing with themselves, there 
 is formed that virtue of Prudence which saves 
 the blunder and wards off the fault, which 
 helps a man to value men and things aright, 
 to know his own weakness and his own 
 strength, to know what he can do and what 
 he must avoid. Prudence as a moral guide 
 within the soul sets up the inestimable 
 strength of principle. 
 
 The man of principle who not only knows 
 what to do, but why he does it, is saved from 
 countless follies and blunders, which lead 
 through sin to loss and spiritual suffering. 
 A man of principle can be trusted to hold 
 his own even in the most adverse sur¬ 
 roundings, a man who is deficient in this 
 saving virtue can be trusted nowhere. 
 
PRUDENCE 
 
 37 
 
 Joseph, because he had principle, was safe in 
 all the seductive dangers of an Egyptian 
 palace; Judas, because he failed in this 
 respect, was lost under the very eye and 
 guidance of Christ. Let us make up our 
 minds, brethren, once for all, that we cannot 
 hope to pass unscathed through the world 
 without it. Prudence says to you, you must 
 settle definitely with yourself how much 
 attention you are going to pay to “ what 
 people say.” If a thing is wrong in the 
 country, it won’t be right in London ; if a 
 thing is wrong at home in the society of your 
 mother and sisters, it won’t be right when 
 you come to business. If it is wrong to 
 condemn Christ, the fact that Tiberius 
 threatens to banish you will not make it 
 right. If you believed that Jesus has opened 
 your eyes, it cannot be right to deny His 
 claims upon you, because not to do so may 
 involve social or religious martyrdom. If 
 you believe in the truth of a doctrine, no 
 amount of popular clamour will make it 
 untrue, and what a poor thing popular 
 clamour is after all. Remember that four 
 of the things which popular clamour de¬ 
 nounced in London in our Churches forty 
 years ago were the weekly offertory, turning 
 to the East at the Creed, the use of the sur¬ 
 plice in the pulpit, and singing the responses 
 
38 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 to the Commandments. Respect for popular 
 clamour is a very poor substitute for principle. 
 
 Prudence says to you again, you must make 
 up your mind as to your attitude towards 
 religion. Do you take Jesus Christ for your 
 guide, or are you going to listen to whatever 
 happens to be in vogue at the time? If Jesus 
 Christ is to be your guide, then He must be 
 followed utterly. He brooks no rival. He 
 has a system of help devised for you, from 
 your cradle to your grave. He tells you that 
 He demands absolute obedience to all things 
 which He has commanded you, that He is 
 your Shepherd, your King, your Priest, your 
 Prophet, your Saviour, and your God. To 
 follow Him on principle is a very different 
 thing from following Him when there is 
 nothing to interfere with His command¬ 
 ments. His followers bear the Cross, they 
 are sometimes hated of all men, they are 
 gibbeted, persecuted, martyred, but they 
 reign with Him in glory. We, all of us, 
 admire this splendid building in which we 
 are gathered to worship God: its cross towers 
 above the city, its dome rises up like the 
 mountain of God above its traffic and its 
 life. Truly a magnificent monument to en¬ 
 shrine the name of any man ! But remember 
 that S. Paul was stricken to death in the 
 capital city of the ancient world, as a male- 
 
PRUDENCE 
 
 39 
 
 factor and an enemy of mankind, because his 
 principles refused to allow him to deny Christ. 
 
 Prudence asks you once more what attitude 
 are you going to take towards all the passions 
 and desires which will clamour to be satisfied ? 
 The youth entering on life is like the tourist 
 who lands on some foreign shore, who is 
 met by touts of all kinds, all proffering help, 
 all ready with advice, all seeking his patron¬ 
 age, and all demanding pay. The prudent 
 tourist knows what he wants and where he 
 is going, the ignorant and unwary fall a prey 
 to their extortions. Is every wish to be 
 gratified, if we have the means to do so ? Is 
 the pursuit of happiness to be our aim, or 
 the pursuit of duty? Is sin a real danger, 
 or only a theological bugbear? Is the flesh 
 only an ugly name given by ascetics to 
 human nature? Is the world only an ill- 
 natured nickname for that which is opposed 
 to ecclesiastical narrowness? Is the devil 
 any more than the hero of fairy legend or 
 the creation of monkish fancy ? Of all these 
 things, Prudence says, deliberate cognisance 
 must be taken, and the soul must form 
 principles, otherwise to drift on the smooth 
 surface of this deadly current can have but 
 one ending when the waters gather into the 
 awful leap upon destruction, whose roar 
 re-echoes through the records of history, 
 
40 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 and whose froth and foam beat upon the 
 face of the sinner, borne on the wings of 
 mournful foreboding, and in the premonitions 
 of approaching doom. 
 
 Piinciple is the saving of a man who has 
 listened to the voice of Prudence, and there 
 are several things which Prudence uses to 
 strengthen principle as a policy of life. 
 
 There is conscience, for instance, which 
 unless it has been impaired, or kept unin¬ 
 structed, or otherwise neglected, acts as a 
 constant guard in maintaining the integrity 
 of principle. A man who lives on principle 
 brings everything before the bar of conscience 
 and acts in accordance with the direction of 
 that heaven-sent monitor; and just as pain 
 has its distinct uses in warning a man of 
 the approach of evil against which he may 
 take precautions and provision, so the 
 conscience, with its sensitive smart, warns 
 at the approach of evil the heart which might 
 otherwise become injured. “This is of the 
 world, this is contrary to the principles of a 
 Christian; this is a snare of the flesh which 
 could only lead to the break-up of the dignity 
 of life; this comes from the malice of the 
 Devil, and must be discarded by one who is 
 an heir of salvation.” 
 
 And, then, besides conscience prudence 
 points out the advantage of direct guidance 
 
PRUDENCE 
 
 41 
 
 such as is to be found in the world. It was 
 designed apparently by Almighty God that 
 the one virtue which should introduce us into 
 the fulness of life’s blessings should be 
 obedience. When parents and teachers do 
 their duty, the child, leaning on obedience, 
 would already have passed through some of 
 the great difficulties of life, before he was 
 left to fight his own battles and meet his own 
 enemies. 
 
 Advice, it is true, has a bad name, because 
 so many destroy the influence of what they 
 say by the contradiction of what they do. 
 Men expect from their advisers more than a 
 sign-post, which is rooted in the ground, and 
 only points to the right way, without entering 
 upon it. “ Do as I say ” is not nearly so potent 
 an influence as “ Do as I do.” 
 
 But still we may lament the folly of an age 
 which is bent on buying for itself always and 
 in every case the experience which it might 
 very well have borrowed. 
 
 Why is it that the syrens of pleasure have 
 still such power to lure generation after 
 generation to the islands of destruction, 
 where the whitening bones of victims still 
 proclaim that the end of those things is 
 death ? Why does the youthful driver of 
 the chariot of the sun still plunge, in spite 
 of his father’s warnings that he cannot control 
 
42 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 those fiery steeds by his own strength, and 
 burn, and waste and destroy in a life of 
 dissipation and ruin ? Prudence says with 
 no uncertain voice, “Pools despise wisdom 
 and instruction.” It is not the wise man, 
 after all, who neglects advice and disdains to 
 use it, and contempt of instruction is not a 
 sign of healthy independence, but of folly. 
 Every one, for instance, is the better for 
 listening to good public opinion whether it 
 comes to us in the common tradition of man¬ 
 kind or in the social maxims, the refinements, 
 the restraints, the rules which form the un¬ 
 written code which govern public conduct. 
 Think only of those maxims of prudence 
 known as proverbs, “ the wisdom of many 
 and the wit of one,” as they have been called. 
 Here are certain maxims of collected ex¬ 
 periences which a prudent man will take as 
 the very axioms of moral action. “Though 
 hand join in hand the wicked shall not be 
 unpunished is the united voice of all genera¬ 
 tions of men protesting against the hap¬ 
 hazard folly of the man who thinks that in 
 his case there is going to be an exception, 
 that he can sin and return again to the 
 position in which he was before, and take 
 up life just as he left it, that Divine wrath 
 has somehow been swallowed up in mercy, 
 and that the sinner, like a spoiled child, can 
 
PRUDENCE 
 
 43 
 
 coax a yielding father into the relaxation of 
 penalties and the abrogation of justice. In 
 vain for him has the consciousness of the 
 ancient world armed Nemesis with its hands 
 of iron, albeit her feet are of lead ; in vain 
 for him have the great poets weaved their 
 splendid conception of unerring retribution, 
 pursuing the sinner with red-handed 
 vengeance, until he wakes up to find that 
 not even a mistake is passed over without its 
 necessary consequence in the great scheme 
 of God’s justice, that not even a David, 
 penitent and forgiven, can obtain the 
 sheathing of the sword, which is never again 
 to depart from his house, that not even the 
 Son of God can afford to cast Himself down, 
 trusting in angels who wait upon obedience 
 but disdain presumption. 
 
 Here is a man who, knowing the universal 
 testimony of experience that dishonesty 
 defeats its own ends, is yet risking it in his 
 own case, confident in the exception that is 
 to be made in his favour. Here is the man 
 doing the minimum of evil to ensure the 
 maximum of good ; it is in a righteous cause, 
 and evil is robbed of its malignity, and truth 
 abounds by his lie. And all too late he wakes 
 up to find that the world was right and he 
 was wrong; dishonesty always trips itself up 
 in the end, and the moral lie has a power to 
 
44 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 shatter the truth which is enwrap}3ed in it 
 with a startling and surprising force. 
 
 Deride the eccentricities of fashion as we 
 may, decry the hollowness of social etiquette, 
 and the fickleness of public opinion, still in 
 the higher social standard, in the verdict of 
 propriety, in the conventional standards 
 which govern conduct, a prudent man will 
 be conscious of a support which he would be 
 unwise to discard. The desire not to fall 
 below the ordinary level of respectability, the 
 determination not to outrage in any way 
 public opinion may be but a slender and 
 superficial support on which to base a man’s 
 integrity, but for all that to learn to respect 
 barriers, to put our shoes from off our feet 
 in the presence of mysteries, to recognise the 
 outer safeguards of inward truth are all 
 things which a prudent man will thankfully 
 accept. For, after all, a man is one step 
 further removed from the dangers of licence 
 who besides the inner restraints of his own 
 will is also kept back by the outward barriers 
 of good custom from situations of danger and 
 difficulty. Good advice, however it conies, 
 directly or indirectly, is not a thing to be 
 neglected by a prudent man. 
 
 And here I would venture to put in a word 
 for sermons. There are not wanting signs 
 that a reaction is setting in against sermons. 
 
PRUDENCE 
 
 45 
 
 Only a few years ago it might have been said 
 without fear of contradiction that there were 
 three things which English people firmly 
 believed in, viz., Sunday, the Bible, and 
 hearing sermons. They are fast beginning 
 to disbelieve in all three. In most churches 
 when the sermon is commenced—at all events 
 in towns—there is a steady movement towards 
 the door, not of invalids, or of very busy 
 people, or of learned men who gain their 
 knowledge elsewhere, but of young people 
 who simply dislike the fatigue of listening, 
 of those who are quite uninstructed in the 
 faith, and miss their weekly lesson. 
 
 Remember children are being less and 
 less taught religion at school, when called 
 upon to hear sermons they rebel; they read 
 little or no doctrinal or spiritual books. 
 And here, again, as in school, so in church, 
 a blow is being struck at religious instruction. 
 And then we wonder at the strange letters 
 which are written, the strange speeches which 
 are made, the ignorance of the most elemen¬ 
 tary truths which is displayed. Bad as the 
 sermons may be, dear brethren, you may take 
 it for granted that they are at least as good, 
 and as profitable, as the half-hour’s gossip 
 which takes their place, the emptiness of the 
 Sunday display, or the want of seriousness 
 which refuses to be taught. 
 
46 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 3. For Prudence is not concerned merely 
 in keeping us out of mischief; Prudence bids 
 us keep our eyes open to get what is truly 
 good and noble out of our life in this world. 
 “ I do not wonder at what men suffer, but I 
 wonder often at what they lose,” says Mr. 
 Ruskin. A prudent man in business is not 
 merely the man who avoids catastrophes, but 
 a man who never lets opportunities slip. Can 
 we rest quite happy, without a suspicion that 
 we are wrong, when we see people eagerly 
 pursuing things in which we take no sort of 
 interest, and can find no possible source of 
 joy? “What can induce a man to become a 
 missionary? ” We say: “Fancy leaving Lon¬ 
 don, leaving England, without any of the ex¬ 
 citements and interests of life? What can 
 influence a man to be a missionary ?—Why, 
 the fact that he has found in religion a pearl 
 of great price, and he cannot rest until he 
 has taught others where they can find the 
 same, because he has learnt the secret of that 
 in which true greatness exists, namely, in 
 doing good. And that he has heard the voice 
 of God saying to him, ‘What good are you 
 doing in the world for your fellow-creatures ? 
 Is one single person the better because you 
 have lived ? ’ And vocation, the call of God, 
 cries to him to go out and carry to the 
 Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. 
 
PRUDENCE 
 
 47 
 
 That Bible which you neglect is full of 
 treasures; is it prudent to neglect it ? That 
 Church which you despise is full of strength 
 and comfort; is it wise to despise it ? Life is 
 stored for you with blessings and oppor¬ 
 tunities, but hedged round with difficulty 
 and girded with pitfalls. Pray to God that 
 He will give you Prudence. Prudence to trust 
 where as yet you cannot see your way. 
 Prudence to avoid danger, in obedience to the 
 warnings which are given you. And Prudence 
 to find and enjoy the spiritual stores which so 
 bountifully enrich your life. 
 
Ill 
 
 JUSTICE 
 
 o 
 
 49 
 
Ill 
 
 JUSTICE 
 
 A Sermon Preached in S. Paul’s 
 Cathedral in August, 1900. 
 
 “ He hath shewed thee, 0 man, what is good; and 
 what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, 
 and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? ”— 
 Micah vi. 8. 
 
 There is one great virtue whose rugged 
 magnificence claims almost universal homage 
 even from those who are conspicuously 
 deficient in it themselves, and that is Justice. 
 In view of the wide possibilities of self- 
 gratification, in view of the treasures which 
 open out on every side, temptingly displayed 
 within his grasp, man has to decide early, and 
 he has to decide firmly, and he has to abide 
 by his decision. What is my right to these 
 things which are thus displayed all around 
 me ? Is it to be the law of might, to snatch 
 what I can, and where I can ? Is it to be the 
 
 51 
 
52 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 calculating cunning of a Jacob, which will 
 never lose an opportunity of adding to his 
 store even from a hungry brother’s reckless¬ 
 ness, or a blind father’s mistake ? Or am I to 
 safeguard the rights of others as I would my 
 own ? To recognise that even if I could, 
 there are certain advantages which I must 
 not take of another? That there are other 
 people in the world besides myself whose 
 rights I must respect and whose interests I 
 must serve ? 
 
 A man who has once endeavoured to 
 regulate his actions in accordance with the 
 will of God, has no doubt as to which of these 
 answers he ought to give. There is set up 
 within him a court of award before which 
 every opportunity and advantage is brought. 
 He governs his action, that is, in accordance 
 with the principles of justice, what he ought 
 to do and what right requires ; not according 
 to principles of a supposed self-interest, which 
 ignores the claims of others, and reaches out 
 after aggrandisement over the trampled form 
 of another’s rights, 
 
 Of course, up to a certain point in a civilized 
 community, a man is helped in carrying out 
 this resolve by the law of the land, which is 
 based on principles of justice. The laws 
 which protect property and punish stealing 
 will enforce to a very large extent, as against 
 
JUSTICE 
 
 53 
 
 its more flagrant violations, this law of 
 another’s rights. But we all feel that Justice, 
 as a virtue, reaches much further than this 
 into the inner life, that it is a principle which 
 does much more than keep us free from a 
 collision with the laws which safeguard 
 property, that it affects our inmost relations 
 with our neighbour—nay, that it has some¬ 
 thing to do with our attitude towards God 
 Almighty Himself. 
 
 I. 
 
 The rights of others—it is not such an 
 easy thing, after all, to remember always that 
 others have rights. Look at the greedy child i 
 what an unpleasant object he is; snatching 
 and seizing here and there, regardless of the 
 cries or disappointment of others too weak to 
 resist him. Look at the selfish man! He is 
 only the greedy child enlarged, with the 
 crudities and absurdities knocked off by 
 the ways of the world, justified by such 
 maxims of prudence as make it easier for him 
 to get his own way. See him pushing and 
 elbowing his path, with only one great ideal 
 before him, how most to amplify his little 
 stock of good things, and to divert to his own 
 
54 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 use the advantages, the prosperity, and happi¬ 
 ness of all who come across his path ! 
 
 The rights of man—let us look at some of 
 them which are safe-guarded by Justice. 
 
 1. First of all, a man has a simple, a most 
 elementary right to his own property. It is 
 a mistake to suppose that the laws which 
 govern and repress dishonesty are sufficient 
 to ensure this elementary right as against 
 those who disregard it. 
 
 Here is a man who fancies that he should 
 like to become the owner of something which 
 he sees in a shop ; perhaps he is moved by 
 some passing whim, perhaps he wishes to 
 make money out of it, perhaps, poor creature, 
 he is driven to desperation by the pangs of 
 hunger. He watches his opportunity, he 
 appropriates the property, and finds himself 
 convicted as a thief in the strong clutches of 
 outraged law. But here is a man, well 
 dressed, and well supplied with the necessaries 
 of life, moved by no unbearable pangs of 
 hunger, who passes the same shop, is moved 
 with the same desire of acquiring, and he, 
 instead of stealing the article, goes in and 
 buys it, but does not pay for it, knowing that 
 he cannot pay for it then, and, perhaps, will 
 have some difficulty in paying for it at all. 
 In the sight of God he virtually has stolen 
 those goods, although no magistrate condemns 
 
JUSTICE 
 
 55 
 
 him, and no penalty follows on his actions. 
 My brethren, in view of the great virtue of 
 Justice, have you considered the great 
 question of the morality of running into debt? 
 There are many and pressing needs waiting to 
 be met, the poor, the fatherless, the widow, 
 the outcast, the sick—they get none of your 
 money. You cannot afford it. Why? Because 
 it is wasted on that monster, self. Still you 
 must have more and still more; you are 
 afraid to steal, and therefore you run into 
 debt that you may satiate this craving to 
 possess. And people who can ill afford it are 
 deprived of their means of livelihood while 
 you hold what is really their property. They 
 wait for your convenience, still they wait, and 
 at last perhaps they see him who holds their 
 property sail off a dishonest bankrupt, who 
 pays the miserable pittance which is extracted 
 from him, having thieved the rest. Ah, my 
 brethen, it is a sad cry which we hear in our 
 streets day by day, the petty record of some 
 trumpery race ; because for every one of those 
 races young men here, and young men there., 
 have been guilty of the thieving of betting, 
 for so it is; either thereby they rob another 
 of his money, which he has no right to waste 
 on such follies, however willingly he does it, 
 or rob away their own or their parents’ 
 money from the solid and serious issues of 
 
56 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 life, to squander it on one of the most 
 degrading passions which can take possession 
 of a man’s heart. And thieving begets 
 thieving. There comes a time when this man 
 thinks he can be honourable by doing a 
 dishonourable action. Like the dishonest 
 customer, he borrows without leave, intending 
 to pay, and one more coil of perdition is 
 wound round his unhappy life. 
 
 Man has a right to his own property, and 
 anything which, however remotely, interferes 
 with that right, whether we steal, or whether 
 we buy without payment or borrow without 
 leave, or misapply from its proper purpose, is 
 a blow struck at justice. 
 
 2. And if man has a right to his property, 
 much more has he a right to his life. 
 
 It is strange how long the system of slavery 
 lingered on with its systematic disregard of 
 the most elementary rights of man. Not 
 content with seizing what a man possessed, 
 men seized also his powers of acquiring 
 possessions, his productive energies and re¬ 
 sources, so that another might enjoy a 
 manifold share in this world far wider 
 than he could otherwise have attained to. 
 The slave as the living machine, without rights 
 and without recognition, remains as one of 
 the most gigantic monuments of the perver¬ 
 sion of the idea of justice in the minds of 
 
JUSTICE 
 
 57 
 
 those who, on the whole, loved justice and 
 conceived themselves to be just. 
 
 And we must remember, dear brethren, that 
 slavery still exists even in the most free 
 countries. 
 
 There are those who are enslaved by the 
 advancing tide of luxury, which demands 
 more and more ministers to its selfish enjoy¬ 
 ment. Men and women crowded together 
 without decent accommodation, forced to live 
 close to those to whose luxuries they minister, 
 men and women who toil day and night to 
 make luxuries cheaper and ever cheaper, for 
 those who insist on having more and more of 
 them, and paying less and less for their enjoy¬ 
 ments, who are dressed in finery which 
 represents the lives of men, and eat and drink 
 the good things which have been purchased 
 from barely remunerated labour. There is 
 the slavery, again, which lives on the sin and 
 degradation of others, one of the most 
 appalling spectacles of modern civilisation,— 
 men who profess to believe in Christ, or who 
 at least live in a Christian land, openly de¬ 
 spising and degrading souls for whom Christ 
 died. There is nothing to compare in awful 
 malignity to the sin of those who think to 
 make life more full of guilty intoxication by 
 compassing the ruin of another’s soul. No 
 more fearful denunciation runs through the 
 
58 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 pages of the Bible than this:—“Woe unto the 
 world because of offences! for it must needs 
 be that offences come: but woe to that 
 man by whom the offence cometh ! It were 
 better for him that a millstone were hanged 
 about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than 
 that he should offend one of these little ones.” 
 O awful cry ringing through the realms of 
 hell —*( i should not have come here but for 
 thee.” To deprive another of his soul’s life 
 through sin is to insult the love of God, 
 it is to outrage the majesty of His Divine 
 Justice. 
 
 3. If a man has a right to his life, he has 
 also a right to that which makes for happiness 
 in life. How very little we think in our 
 ordinary conversation of the value to our 
 neighbour of his reputation, his character, or 
 his position. The smallest caprice is looked 
 upon as sufficient to justify the sarcastic cut, 
 the cynical stab, the damaging suggestion 
 which demolishes, to our satisfaction, our 
 neighbour’s too exuberant life. 
 
 “Do to all men as ye would that men 
 should do unto you” is a precept of Justice 
 which we need to remember constantly in 
 conversation and behaviour; a mere passing 
 unreasonable dislike, an unworthy suspicion, 
 or a base jealousy, are not reasons which can 
 ever justify a man in depriving another of 
 
JUSTICE 
 
 59 
 
 that which is his due in courtesy and respect. 
 Gossip, scandal, whispering are not condoned 
 in the sight of the Eternal Justice, because 
 they are witty and brighten conversation, 
 because they are startling and help to sell a 
 newspaper or because they are damaging and 
 help to render more obnoxious an unpopular 
 cause. In times of religious and political 
 controversy it is doubly necessary to remem¬ 
 ber that the great cause of truth can never 
 be served by depriving your adversary of that 
 which is his due in fairness and sincerity. It 
 is not a little disquieting to see how very little 
 religious controversy has succeeded in purify¬ 
 ing its methods all through the long years 
 of miserable strife which has disgraced 
 Christianity and belied the principles of those 
 who call themselves Christians. Three cen¬ 
 turies ago a man burned his adversary to 
 death, if so be that he could bring it about, 
 deprived him, that is, of his right to live. All 
 this long lapse of time has not availed to 
 teach us that a man has a right to his reputa¬ 
 tion, which is to him as his life, even if we 
 disagree with his opinions, or believe him to 
 be mistaken. One of the saddest things to 
 see at the present day is the attempt, in the 
 miserable exigencies of partisan strife, to 
 blacken the name and tarnish the fame of 
 those who have been honoured and respected 
 
60 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 in their lives as good and sincere men. It is 
 possible to inflict pain and wounds by so 
 doing, but the price is a heavy one. The 
 world is so much the poorer for every good 
 man who is proved to be insincere; it is the 
 baser for every high name which is dragged 
 down from its honourable pedestal, and the 
 cause of progress and of truth is damaged by 
 another so-called proof of flagrant hypocrisy. 
 It is as when a merciless general in the bitter¬ 
 ness of warfare sets himself to punish a town 
 by burning down its library, its hospital, its 
 cathedral; it is brutal warfare at the best, 
 and it leaves the world with a black scar upon 
 some of its most cherished possessions. The 
 enemy is humbled, but the real sufferer is 
 humanity. My brethren, we do not need to 
 poison wells, nor war with the dead, nor seek 
 to damage honoured names, in order to win 
 the victory of orthodoxy. Give every man 
 his due, even those who seem to be most 
 opposed to you ; you will stand side by side 
 at the judgment bar, side by side you will 
 plead for His infinite pity, and claim the 
 merits of His great sacrifice. We want 
 justice in the daily dealings of our life, justice 
 in all the relations which link us to our 
 neighbour, justice in those matters where, 
 without knowing it, we may be tempted to 
 be unfair. 
 
JUSTICE 
 
 61 
 
 And there is everything to hope from the 
 fact that the Bishop of this diocese has sum¬ 
 moned certain representative men in the 
 religious world to meet together in conference 
 in the autumn, to see whether something can¬ 
 not be done to restore mutual respect, to 
 purify controversy, to abate religious bitter¬ 
 ness, and disperse party prejudice. “Sirs, 
 ye are brethren; why do ye wrong one to 
 another ? ” 
 
 II. 
 
 But if Justice is the virtue which bids us 
 do that which right requires in our dealings 
 with our fellow-men, Christianity, in the 
 higher light which she has thrown upon these 
 virtues, has felt that even more Justice is the 
 virtue which bids us do what is right in our 
 dealings with God. Every Christian, who 
 thinks at all, feels that God has a right to the 
 service and obedience of His creatures. We 
 have been taught in our Catechism to believe 
 in God Who made us and all the world, in 
 God Who redeemed us and all mankind, and 
 in God Who sanctifies us and all the elect 
 people of God. He Who made me has rights 
 over me. He Who bought me with His 
 precious Blood has rights over me. He to 
 Whom I owe it that I can think, speak, and 
 do those things that are pleasing in His sight, 
 has a right to my service. 
 
62 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 1. My brethren, one of the many serious 
 signs of the times is the apparent want of the 
 sense of responsibility which exists in so 
 many quarters. Souls wake up to find them¬ 
 selves in the possession of the gift of life. 
 They see all around them a crowd pushing 
 one way, struggling for existence, for posts of 
 honour, striving to eat, drink, and be merry. 
 They are sent to school; round the doors they 
 hear the hoarse cries of those demanding that 
 they shall not be taught this about God or 
 that about religion—“ no religion at all rather 
 than give an advantage to the Established 
 Church.” “No religion at all unless shibboleth 
 is pronounced with absolutely faultless accent 
 according to the prevailing twang of that 
 controversy which happens to be in vogue.” 
 The poor child knows nothing about God, and 
 no one seems to care about religion, except to 
 quarrel as to its terms. He enters within the 
 walls sacred to the cause of education; he is 
 taught to get on—to push and cram and 
 struggle—until he is able to take his place in 
 the throng outside; and then once more he 
 pushes and is pushed ; he is robbed, trampled 
 on ; he sits down; he gives up the struggle ; 
 it may be with his own hand he cuts off that 
 life which no one ever taught him how to 
 cherish. He came into the world without 
 being consulted, and he dies undesired. 
 
JUSTICE 
 
 63 
 
 My brethren, Justice demands that we 
 should cultivate a sense of responsibility. 
 Have you heard the voice of God calling you 
 into the place which you occupy in life ? Do 
 you feel that you are here in obedience to a 
 call? That you have a work to do which 
 only you can do, and for which you are kept 
 alive until it is done. Vocation, not ambition, 
 is the true key to life. 
 
 There are certain professions the entrance 
 to which is generally recognised to be through 
 vocation, that is to say, a call from God. 
 Such is pre-eminently the ministry of the 
 Church known as Holy Orders. This call 
 may come in various ways, it may come 
 suddenly in some divine impulse, it may come 
 gradually in the shapening of circumstances 
 all tending that way, in the wish of friends, 
 the disposition of tastes, the sudden arrest of 
 interest by a story of heroism in the mission 
 field, a sense of the needs of the Church or a 
 desire to do good. It is possible that I may 
 be speaking to some young men to-day who 
 have heard God’s voice, as Samuel heard it in 
 the still night, and scarcely know what it 
 means. To them God is calling and speaking, 
 and asks for a recognition of His claims to 
 their love and service. 
 
 My brethren, it is a sad illustration of what 
 I have been saying, that in the profession 
 
64 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 which is pre-eminently entered into in a sense 
 of Divine responsibility and Divine call, fewer 
 and fewer seem to be responding to it. Look 
 at our public schools. Three or four at the 
 most are leaving one of the greatest of them 
 with this profession in view. Look at our 
 universities, fewer and fewer are shaping 
 their training in this way. It is not the 
 poverty of the profession, it is not the 
 wretched party strife, and the sordid nature 
 of the conflict waged against the Church. 
 The cause is deeper, the sense of responsibility 
 is weakened in men’s hearts. After all, Holy 
 Orders is not the only profession the entrance 
 to which is through vocation. Life itself is, 
 or should be, as I have said, carried out in 
 obedience to vocation. My brethren, are you 
 giving Cod His due in this respect ? Are you 
 doing anything like what you ought for the 
 Great Being Who sent you into this world, 
 not to eat and drink and be crammed with 
 useful knowledge, and then push and struggle 
 again, and perhaps die exultant because you 
 had beaten a companion in the competitive 
 examinations of life, and stood one step 
 higher on its dizzy ladder. The idea is wrong 
 in itself, it is not the profession but the 
 vocation which we have to consider. If we 
 have got God’s call, and recognise our duty to 
 Him, then it matters not where we work. 
 
JUSTICE 
 
 65 
 
 The servant of God will glorify a cabin, a 
 man who forgets God will degrade a palace. 
 
 Cease, dear brethren, the mere struggle to 
 get on, and put God first. Am I glorifying 
 God by my actions in honest, serious life, 
 lived as in His sight ? Is this world the better 
 because I am alive ? Is society purer because 
 I move in it ? Is the place of business more 
 worthy because I am there ? Justice within 
 my heart assigns the first place in life to God 
 Who made it. 
 
 2. If God has a right to my ambition, He 
 has a right to my activity. Here again is a 
 sight even sadder than the former—viz., the 
 number of those who sit idly looking on as 
 the pushing, anxious stream grinds its way 
 past them. There they sit, men and women, 
 who seem to have lost energy for everything 
 and to have missed their place in life. “ My 
 Father worketh hitherto and I work/’ To be 
 idle is to fail in one of those marks of 
 resemblance which ought to distinguish man 
 made in the image and likeness of God as the 
 son of His Heavenly Father. 
 
 Think of the idleness that there is in this 
 huge city ! Think of the hundreds of lives 
 which wake up morning after morning to do 
 nothing, to lounge in the parks or streets, 
 to read novels and go to the theatre ! Think 
 of the splendid opportunities that are being 
 
 6 
 
66 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 thrown away, because men who can work 
 will not do it, and wear away their capacities 
 and their opportunities in the lotus-eating of 
 so-called pleasure ; while all the time there 
 are many who long for work and cannot get 
 it, and pine away broken-hearted in the 
 strange and mysterious allotment of life, 
 which gives opportunities to those who refuse 
 to use them, and seems to deny them to those 
 who will. Idleness is not only to dissipate 
 our own powers or rob our employers, it is to 
 cheat God of His due. God has a right to ask, 
 when He gives us work to do, that we should 
 do it with our might. There are evils which 
 come with idleness which mark out clearly 
 the bad nature of a cessation from work 
 in this busy world of God’s creation, weeds 
 which gather on the stagnant pool, blight and 
 mildew which fasten on the plant shut up and 
 untended. 
 
 “ The Devil tempts man,” says the old 
 proverb, “an idle man tempts the Devil.” 
 Nothing really can lie idle in a world like 
 this ; if it is not being used for God, it is 
 being used for His enemies. “ I went by the 
 field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of 
 the man void of understanding ; and, lo, it was 
 all grown over with thorns, and nettles had 
 covered the face thereof, and the stone wall 
 thereof was broken down. Then I saw, and 
 
JUSTICE 
 
 67 
 
 considered it well; I looked upon it, and re¬ 
 ceived instruction. Yet a little sleep, a little 
 slumber, a little folding of the hands to 
 sleep; so shall thy poverty come as one that 
 travelleth; and thy want as an armed man.” 1 
 To all, whether early in the morning or at 
 midday, or even at the eleventh hour, the 
 voice of God speaks to our slumbering sense 
 of Justice, and says : “Why stand ye here all 
 the day idle ? ” “ Go ye also into the vineyard, 
 and whatsoever is right that shall ye receive.” 
 
 3. But God has a right also to our homage 
 and worship. This we offer to no one else ; 
 but Justice demands that we should offer it 
 to Him. Do we realise that God has a right 
 to our prayers and praises and our worship ? 
 It is not a question of our inclination, but of 
 God’s due, whether or not we say our prayers. 
 It is not a matter of our own whims and 
 fancy, but of God’s honour, whether or not 
 we “ come before His Presence with thanks¬ 
 giving, and show ourselves glad in Him with 
 psalms.” Clergy are in the habit of speaking 
 of the Divine service which they offer to God, 
 as their duty; to pay God due and proper 
 worship is the duty of the layman as well. Are 
 we in any danger of losing our sense of duty 
 in this respect? In old days, not so far 
 removed from the present, parents used to 
 
 Prov. xxiv. 30-84. 
 
68 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 say to their children, when Sunday came 
 round, ‘ My children, it is the Lord’s Day; it 
 is our duty to go to church,’ and whatever 
 might be the weather, whatever might be the 
 inclination of the child, to church he went, 
 without being asked whether he wished to go 
 or not, simply because it was the duty of all 
 to go. Now too often either the child is sent 
 off to a Sunday school to be out of the way at 
 home, and be taken to church as one of a herd, 
 or sent with teacher or governess as a task, or 
 even he is consulted as to whether it is his 
 inclination to go or not, and the child longs 
 for the time when he can exercise the more 
 untrammelled right of his elders to stay at 
 home unquestioned and unrebuked. He 
 grows up to think that religious duties must 
 depend largely on the individual tastes and 
 inclinations; that on some days a journey 
 into the country will be more elevating to his 
 feelings, or attendance at a concert, or 
 complete rest at home, or the study of poetry, 
 or, perhaps, the reading of a sermon. 
 
 Church-going, regulated by inclination, is 
 the natural outcome of a religious life, which 
 has ceased to govern itself by duty, and to 
 cause inclination to submit itself to a sense of 
 what is right and fitting. This state of mind 
 sooner or later takes the almost inevitable 
 step of regulating attendance at Divine 
 
JUSTICE 
 
 69 
 
 worship, by the pleasure or satisfaction to be 
 gained by it. ‘ I do not seem to gain good by 
 going ’ is accepted as quite a sufficient reason 
 for staying away. A dislike to the messenger 
 who holds in his hands the Bread of Life is 
 quite a sufficient reason for depriving the 
 soul of the food which he offers. The ser¬ 
 mon, the singing, the ritual, the doctrine, the 
 reading—it would be hard not to be able to 
 find some excellent excuse for absenting him¬ 
 self from that which was merely designed to 
 elevate the individual, to quicken his aspira¬ 
 tions, and purify his religious tastes. How 
 quickly we can lose sight altogether of God’s 
 due in the matter ! How easy it is to forget 
 that we do not come to church mainly to get, 
 but to give: “ 0 come let us worship and fall 
 down and kneel before the Lord our Maker ” 
 —that God comes first and that we come 
 afterwards. It would be something if we 
 determined to do what we could to put a stop 
 to this robbing the Lord of His rights to the 
 worship of His creatures now so prevalent. 
 God, who gave you all your life, has a right 
 to a portion of your time as well as a portion 
 of your hearts. He has a right to one day in 
 seven, which He claims as His due. He has a 
 right to at least a small portion of your time 
 every day in the morning and in the evening. 
 It is the very least we can give as a recogni- 
 
70 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 tion of Him who gives us all, and who never 
 yet received the gifts of His creatures without 
 returning to them a bountiful interest in that 
 which enriches life and happiness. 
 
 My brethren, we are accustomed to hear 
 from some of our Continental neighbours a 
 great deal about glory. Glory is one of those 
 crowns of merit which are apt to flag and 
 wither when the first flush of renown has 
 passed away. There is a deeper and more 
 lasting motive than the desire for glory, and 
 that is the sense of duty. 44 It does not matter 
 who saved Ladysmith,” it was said, 44 as long 
 as Ladysmith was saved.” Duty—the deter¬ 
 mination to do a thing because it is right, is 
 the outcome of this great virtue Justice, 
 which sets itself to give to every one that 
 which is their due. Justice is one of the 
 attributes of God Himself which we cherish 
 and revere. We know that neither love for 
 our human nature, nor compassion for our 
 weakness, nor anger for our manifold tres¬ 
 passes, will ever move Him from the justice 
 tempered with mercy wherewith He governs 
 the world. This has been our stay in all the 
 alternations of hope and fear which have 
 moved us as to the fate of our friends in 
 China. We still wait to know the full extent 
 of God’s merciful deliverance, but we wait in 
 confident trust in God’s justice. God reigns. 
 
JUSTICE 
 
 71 
 
 “The Lord is King, be the people never so 
 impatient. He sitteth between the eherubims, 
 be the earth never so unquiet.” And we, too, 
 in our measure, can put no higher standard of 
 action before ourselves than this, which our 
 old Church Catechism has held up before 
 generations of her children :—“ To be true 
 and just in all my dealing: to bear no malice 
 nor hatred in my heart: to keep my hands 
 from picking and stealing, and my tongue 
 from evil speaking, lying, and slandering, . . . 
 not to covet nor desire other men’s goods; 
 but to learn and labour truly to get mine own 
 living, and to do my duty in that state of life, 
 unto which it shall please God to call me.” 
 

FORTITUDE 
 
IV 
 
 FORTITUDE 
 
 A Sermon Preached in S. Paul’s 
 Cathedral in August, 1900. 
 
 “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then 
 shall I fear: the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom 
 then shall I be afraid ? ” —Psa. xxvii. 1. 
 
 We have seen only lately in this city, in a 
 spot not far from this cathedral, a cloister set 
 aside to commemorate deeds of heroism and 
 self-sacrifice, that the names of those who 
 have enriched the world by beautiful examples 
 of courage and devotion should not die. 
 
 In our army there is no decoration more 
 coveted than the little bronze cross, with its 
 inscription “ For Valour,” which signalises the 
 possessor as one who displayed bravery in the 
 face of great danger. There is no virtue so 
 popular, so sure of generous applause, as that 
 of fortitude displayed in acts of courage, or in 
 quiet uncomplaining endurance ; there is no 
 
 75 
 
76 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 one so despised, on the other hand, as the 
 coward who shrinks from duty in craven 
 fear, and betrays the succours which reason 
 offers. And yet we are apt to look upon this 
 as a virtue which belongs to a few, to those 
 who have been brought face to face with a 
 supreme crisis, and have gallantly met it, 
 rather than as one of the cardinal virtues 
 which are necessary always and for every¬ 
 body, without which we cannot step forward 
 in life, or reach that position which God 
 designed us to fulfil. 
 
 I. 
 
 As Temperance teaches a man how not to 
 touch, as Prudence teaches him what to do 
 and what to avoid, as Justice teaches hin; 
 what to allow to others, so Fortitude stands 
 before him to correct the shrinking from hard 
 things, the fear of opposition, the pain of 
 endurance, ever telling him that “ no man is 
 crowned except he strive lawfully,” and that 
 “ he that shall endure unto the end the same 
 shall be saved.” 
 
 Let us pause at the outset to correct some 
 of our ideas of Fortitude. Here is no virtue 
 which belongs only to those who trade in 
 dangerous callings, such as the soldier and 
 
FORTITUDE 
 
 77 
 
 the sailor, this is not merely a virtue of the 
 battlefield, but a virtue which finds ample 
 field for development in the simplest life. 
 We stop to admire the soldier who goes back 
 under fire to rescue a wounded comrade, 
 placing him on his back, bearing him safely, 
 amidst a storm of bullets, away to the 
 ambulance waggon and safety. But his 
 courage is no less who, with scant means and 
 feeble health, struggles day by day against 
 the assaults of poverty and weariness, setting 
 aside self-indulgence, or any thought lower 
 than that of affection and duty, that out of 
 his scanty earnings he may support his aged 
 parents, and keep together the little home 
 which depends on his resolute self-sacrifice. 
 Horatio keeping the bridge over the Tiber 
 against the onrush of the enemy is a noble 
 sight : one man confident in his honour, 
 cheered by all the traditions of his country, 
 and proud in the sense of joyous strength. 
 But equally brave, equally noble, is he, that 
 unknown, despised servant of God, who stands 
 out, one against a host of evil, who sticks up 
 for a purer tradition, and fights alone the 
 battle of truth and honour, with overwhelm¬ 
 ing odds against him, supported only by a 
 great tradition, and by a sense of God’s ever¬ 
 present help : the moral hero who stands in the 
 breach against the invading onslaught of sin. 
 
78 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 We honour with the homage of a grateful 
 admiration the guide who takes his life in his 
 hands and climbs up the giddy precipice, 
 where the wind grapples with him, and the 
 snow blinds him, and the slippery rock baffles 
 his upward way, in order to rescue the 
 strangers who have lost their way in the 
 mountain storm. But he is no less deserving 
 of our highest admiration, his courage beats 
 no less high, his endurance is no less noble, 
 who climbs on through storms of obloquy and 
 failure, now stumbling, now falling, in order 
 to hold out the rescuing hand to some young 
 life, which is likely to lose its way, in the 
 storms of vice which sweep over a great city, 
 and fall the victim to evil fashion, and perish 
 in the ingulfing torrents of vice. The heroism 
 of daily life is just as real as the heroism 
 which shines so brilliantly in fields of sudden 
 stress and adventure. There are many on 
 whose breast the Recording Angel pins the 
 decoration “ For Valour,” whose names are 
 never known, and whose deeds have met 
 with no chronicler. 
 
 But more than this, as I would venture to 
 put before you to-day, Fortitude (courage) 
 is a virtue for all, necessary always and 
 everywhere, in a world such as this, amidst 
 dangers and assaults which beset every, even 
 the most sheltered life, and even minister 
 
FORTITUDE 
 
 79 
 
 to its perfection. And let us dismiss at once 
 the idea that courage has to do with high 
 spirits and bodily strength, that to be 
 courageous means to have no sense of danger, 
 and to be a stranger to fear. In many cases 
 it is just the opposite. There are some people 
 who are naturally high-spirited, who are 
 devoid of imagination and any sense of 
 apprehension. Danger does not appeal to 
 them, they go to meet it without any sense 
 of heroism or flutter of alarm. They may be 
 envied for the possession of a natural endow¬ 
 ment, but they do not, therefore, stand forth 
 as the highest examples of bravery. There 
 are others again who go unmoved to meet 
 the most extreme perils, simply because they 
 are ignorant of the true nature of the danger, 
 as a man who should take up a live shell and 
 plunge it over the parapet, not knowing that 
 it was at the point of exploding. He again 
 would not represent the highest type of 
 bravery. But, on the other hand, the man 
 who is delicate, even weak, apprehensive, 
 nervous, keenly sensitive of danger, and 
 accurately acquainted with the full extent 
 of the peril before him, who, with fear in his 
 heart, yet goes manfully forward and carries 
 out with a resolute sense of duty, and with a 
 stern repression of self, that line of conduct 
 which has been pointed out to him—to him 
 
80 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 we assign the meed of the highest bravery. 
 He knew his danger, and he felt it, but, strong 
 in the sense of duty, he went forward in the 
 true spirit of fortitude. So that no one need 
 flatter himself that he is exempt by con¬ 
 stitutional defects or lack of opportunity 
 from the exercise of this great virtue. Nay 
 more, to fail in it, to lose heart, to lose 
 courage, to shrink from the battle, to give up 
 endurance, to step out of rank, is to fall down 
 and die in the conflict of life. The crown of 
 life is worth a struggle, and cannot be won 
 without it. “ To him that overcometh will I 
 grant to sit with Me in My throne, even as 
 I also overcame, and am set down with My 
 Father in His throne.” 1 
 
 II. 
 
 If a man starting out on the journey of 
 life has to practice rigorous self-control in 
 view of all that meets him in his path ; if he 
 has to scan long and anxiously the many and 
 various intersecting roads: if he has to pause 
 and make way, now here, now there, for his 
 fellow travellers ; so he cannot go far without 
 finding his powers of endurance put to the 
 severest test, under the stress of constant and 
 
 1 Rev. iii. 21. 
 
FORTITUDE 
 
 81 
 
 gvgi menacing trials which are sprung upon 
 him from the most unexpected quarters. One 
 might have supposed that the carefully 
 nurtured child, the well - disposed boy, the 
 man with a purpose and an aim in life, 
 conscious of integrity, firm in principle, 
 might be allowed to go forward unmolested. 
 It is not so. 44 Strait is the gate, and 
 narrow is the way that leadeth unto life.” 
 44 My son, if thou come to serve the Lord, 
 prepare thy soul for temptation,” or trial. 
 Fortitude (courage) is necessary at every 
 stage to keep a man up amidst the strange 
 unlooked-for trials which beset his path. 
 
 1. First of all, he cannot go far without 
 finding that the service of God is one which 
 will try him to the very depths of his heart. 
 God has in His good providence designed for 
 us a certain character which He wills to work 
 out in us. It dawns upon us that God can 
 elevate and adorn the wayward temperament, 
 the constituent parts of our life; that He 
 wills us to be a kind of first-fruits of His 
 creatures. We see the wonderful possibilities 
 of the body, its strength, its vigour, its man¬ 
 hood, and we snatch it away from the degra¬ 
 dation of life around us and offer it to God. 
 We see the wondrous possibilities of mind, all 
 the beauties of intellectual power, the glories 
 of imaginative art, the almost unlimited 
 
 7 
 
82 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 capabilities of reason, and we snatch away 
 our inner life from the degrading frivolities 
 of the world and offer it up to God. While 
 there opens up to us through the spirit fresh 
 regions of beauty and love, God offers to 
 dwell in us, and we in Him, and we seek to 
 know Him more and more and His power. 
 
 We see what we might be, and we press 
 forward towards its realisation. And then 
 there comes the call of God, in what we call 
 vocation. V^e are called to this profession 01 
 to that, some to minister in His Church, as 
 the stewards of His Mysteries; some to 
 minister to the needs of men in the beneficent 
 and noble profession of medicine; some to 
 other learned professions, now here and now 
 there; some are called to be the defenders of 
 their country, and to maintain its honour, 
 and the great principles of national and inter¬ 
 national justice, to be the executors of Gods 
 wrath, the instrument of His discipline, and 
 to maintain the right; others are called in 
 this department of business and in that to 
 make just this or that part of the world 
 better, more productive, more worthy of the 
 Author of all good and perfection. And then, 
 when the call has been recognised, God has 
 chosen the circumstances. He has placed us 
 here, He has placed us there. He has given 
 us this or that measure of success, He has 
 
FORTITUDE 
 
 83 
 
 given us these or those friends. And here, 
 when we have taken God as our friend, 
 recognised His power, obeyed His call, accepted 
 His disposition of life for us, what more do 
 we need ? “ I have set God always before 
 
 me.” “The Lord is on my side, I will not be 
 afraid what man can do unto me ”—where is 
 the need for fortitude in the life hedged round 
 by God ? My brethren, we know, and we know 
 it well, that it is just on those lives which 
 God has accepted that there fall the smart 
 blows of discipline. And on our fortitude, on 
 our endurance, depends the full perfection of 
 life and character which God designs us to 
 have. Here is Abraham, he has walked with 
 God, shaping his footsteps according to His 
 loving direction. He has left home and 
 kindred in obedience to the Divine call. God 
 has given him a son, an unexpected treasure 
 on whom centres all the fulness of the endow¬ 
 ment of blessing which He had promised. 
 And, suddenly, there comes the voice, “ Take 
 now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom 
 thou lovest, and get thee into the land 
 of Moriah; offer him there for a burnt- 
 offering upon one of the mountains which 
 I will tell thee of.” 1 Here is Joseph, from a 
 child giving himself up to God, the receiver of 
 His revelation, the bearer of His messages, 
 
 1 Gen. xxii. 2. 
 
84 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 firm in his integrity and pure in life. Yet he 
 finds himself in the pit, he finds himself 
 banished, he finds his prosperity taken away 
 from him; in prison and neglect God has 
 axDparently left him. Look at the Forerunner, 
 the Great S. John the Baptist, dying alone, 
 slain by a woman’s caprice, as if all his strong 
 witness, his wonderful life, had passed for 
 nothing. Did not Abraham need courage ? 
 Did not Joseph need courage ? Did not S. 
 John the Baptist need courage?—courage in 
 the hands of God ? And we shall need it too. 
 Ask many a young man to-day who has fought 
 his way to Holy Orders—has he found it easy ? 
 Did not God know the earnestness of his heart, 
 the sincerity of his endeavour? Why then 
 these obstacles ? obstacles at home from 
 friends who tried to stop him, obstacles from 
 scanty means, so that at one time it seemed 
 impossible to get the necessary education, the 
 temptation to weariness and despair? The 
 call of God,—why does it lead us over such 
 broken paths ? Look at that life desolated 
 with sorrow and bereavement, health, friends, 
 money, all gone. Is God angry ? Is God 
 taking vengeance ? Has He not accepted the 
 earnest offer of a heart’s devotion? Again 
 and again we need courage, if we would take 
 the highest line. The crooked temper has to 
 be brought into proper order, the disabling 
 
FORTITUDE 
 
 85 
 
 vices to be eradicated, tlie rebellious self-will 
 to be brought into harmony with God’s Will. 
 Those great gifts and virtues which He 
 designs for us do not spring up naturally in 
 the heart, they have to be beaten out by the 
 blows of adversity, and shaped by the keen 
 edge of discipline. Courage is needed daily to 
 answer to God’s call, courage to draw out the 
 fulness of blessing which He designs for us, 
 knowing that whom the Lord loveth He 
 chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom 
 He receiveth. 
 
 2. But apart from God’s discipline, with 
 its healing smart and bracing correction, the 
 child of God soon becomes conscious that the 
 way of uprightness and integrity is only to be 
 pursued in the face of a fierce opposition from 
 a hostile world. We look back over the 
 glorious record of Christian heroism, and we 
 see how again and again the servant of God 
 was pursued, hunted, and trampled down, not 
 for any tangible offence, but on the grounds 
 suggested by an insane prejudice and cruel 
 misrepresentation. We sing day by day, 
 little realising what we say, “ The noble 
 army of martyrs, praise Thee.” We seldom 
 stop to consider the strange anomaly that the 
 world should have hasted to extirpate with 
 every sort of cruelty those whose only offence 
 it was that they were living lives of purity, 
 devotion, and beneficence. 
 
86 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 The days of martyrdom are not passed, we 
 have seen devoted missionaries, and natives 
 still young in their Christian profession, tor¬ 
 tured and put to death in China for 
 their faith, and the supposed evils with which 
 fanatical prejudice surrounds it. It is a stern 
 awakening to an age like this, which thinks 
 so little as to the value of this or that pro¬ 
 fession of faith, and poses as the enlightened 
 upholder of all convictions, while believing 
 sincerely in none—to see a profession of faith 
 once more made a matter of life and death. 
 Don’t let us be taken in, dear brethren, by 
 expressions of liberal tolerance at home ; there 
 are no bigots so fierce, none, in many cases, so 
 cruelly intolerant, as those who profess to 
 disbelieve in the importance of any definite 
 system of faith, and who mock at dogmatic 
 precision. Most certainly he who will follow 
 Jesus Christ wherever he lives, and however 
 humble be his position, will have to reckon with 
 a world largely and strangely hostile, with a 
 tolerance which stops short of the faith 
 which he believes, and the life which he is called 
 upon to live in virtue of his Christian calling. 
 A man of principle, i.e., a man who consis¬ 
 tently follows what is right because it is right 
 will need more and more the cardinal virtue 
 of Fortitude. It is an occasion, perhaps, when 
 some question of morality is being hotly 
 
FORTITUDE 
 
 87 
 
 argued. “ This has been denounced as wrong 
 but I see no harm in it,” says some fierce 
 disputant, “ but what sayest thou ? On what 
 authority doest thou these things, and who 
 gave thee this authority ? ” Suddenly perhaps 
 the most sacred truths of religion, the 
 doctrine of the Sacraments, the inspiration of 
 the Bible, old and cherished beliefs are tossed 
 wildly into the seething whirlpool of 
 controversy. “Is it lawful to give tribute to 
 Caesar or not ? ” Questions of the day, 
 furiously and hotly contested, have to be 
 answered, when it seems impossible to avoid 
 offending either this one or that. “ Surely 
 thou art one of this man’s disciples ? ” The 
 challenge comes when it is just most incon¬ 
 venient, when the consequences of the avowal 
 seem to be most perilous. What a tempta¬ 
 tion it is to hide the unpopular belief, to 
 shrink away from the side of those who are 
 being persecuted for righteousness sake, and 
 buy a momentary and disgraceful peace at the 
 price of cowardice, and to carry away the 
 almost unsupportable burden of a dishonoured 
 conscience. My brethren, we need not go 
 back to the ages of the persecutions to look 
 for martyrs. We need not leave our shores 
 and seek the glorious fields of missionary 
 service to win that precious prize, and make 
 that noble profession. Martyrdom, in the 
 
88 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 sense of witness to unpopular truths, is the lot 
 of every one who is trying to live close to God. 
 We cannot hope to escape it, or to pass 
 through life unnoticed. Every good life is a 
 protest to the evil around, which challenges 
 notice. Every true Christian man of principle 
 is bound to be ready to give an answer to 
 every man that asketh him a reason of the 
 hope that is in him with meekness and fear. 
 And it is astonishing how great a demand this 
 makes on a man’s courage. Many a man 
 would rather meet an armed foe and 
 court death in the assault than he would stand 
 up and proclaim himself a Christian in the 
 face of mockery and opposition. Many find it 
 harder to say the little word “ No ” to an evil 
 suggestion than they would to face some over¬ 
 whelming danger. Moral courage is needed 
 day by day if we would carry our principles 
 untarnished through the world. Few of us 
 would be able to carry out without shrinking 
 that brave determination which animated our 
 great statesman of whom we are told that he 
 rose from the dinner-table and ordered his 
 carriage when the conversation took a turn 
 which was dishonourable to the Christian 
 profession and became an insult to His Divine 
 Master. 
 
 3. And Fortitude no less is a virtue which 
 we require in dealing with our own inherent 
 
FORTITUDE 
 
 89 
 
 weakness. It takes a man a long time to dis¬ 
 cover how essentially weak he is, and how 
 utterly unable to do anything that is good, or 
 overcome anything that is evil, without the 
 grace of God. 
 
 How many people are being paralysed with 
 what they call their temperament or their 
 besetting sin ! How many have ceased 
 even to try to overcome these things which 
 seem to overmaster their nature! Here 
 Fortitude comes to our aid and bids us refuse 
 to recognise the word “ impossible ” as being in 
 the Christian vocabulary. God made us, God 
 knows whereof we are made. God is 
 Almighty. God will never suffer us to be 
 tempted above that we are able. God, by His 
 grace, will enable us to overcome sins and 
 faults which seem to be most deeply engrained 
 in our nature. Many a man is being lured 
 into sin by the enticement of temptation. 
 Many are drifting into sin from very 
 weakness, but many also are being frightened 
 into sin from a sense of their own powerless¬ 
 ness to resist. It is here that courage comes 
 to our aid. 4 Strong Son of God,’ we pray, 
 c give us of Thy strength.’ The reproach of 
 the ancient world has been done away in 
 Christ. Now we may not only know what is 
 right, but by His grace and strength we are 
 enabled to do it. To have failed again and 
 
90 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 again is no reason why we should not ulti¬ 
 mately conquer. That which we now call our 
 weak point will, by God’s grace, be our strong 
 point. Courage, with all its noble strength, 
 will rise up within us, and refuse to acquiesce 
 in slavery, in a degraded will, in overmaster¬ 
 ing desires, temptation feebly resisted, and 
 returning with overwhelming force. Again 
 and again we read in the Bible this exhorta¬ 
 tion “ Be strong.” Ghostly strength is one of 
 the gifts of the Holy Spirit which was poured 
 upon us at our baptism. And one of the 
 great secrets of overcoming evil is to be brave 
 and never to despair. 
 
 Ah ! my brethren, if ever we have admired 
 the virtue of courage in some of its noble and 
 conspicuous manifestations ; if our hearts have 
 been stirred within us at the heroes of the 
 battle-field or the hospital, let us not cease 
 our efforts until we have made it alive 
 within ourselves. “ For valour ”—let that 
 be our coveted decoration at the hands 
 of our Sovereign Lord. Yes, that hard life so 
 full of trouble, so beset with difficulty, with its 
 heartrending-sorrows and desolating anguish, 
 needs a brave heart to support it and to 
 draw from it the discipline and the blessing 
 with which God has charged it. Courage is 
 the virtue we need, as we press forward 
 clasping our treasure to our heart, as the 
 
FORTITUDE 
 
 91 
 
 world surges and tosses round us, in its fury 
 and hatred seeking to rob us of our peace 
 and joy and crown of blessing. Courage is 
 what we need to fight the great battle against 
 evil within, a courage which refuses to yield, 
 and knows no despair. Here is a virtue 
 which no one can afford to neglect, here is a 
 virtue which extracts admiration even from 
 our foes. 
 
 “ The Lord is my light and my salvation; 
 whom then shall I fear: the Lord is the 
 strength of my life ; of whom then shall I 
 be afraid ? ” 
 
y 
 
 THE NEW CENTURY 
 
y 
 
 THE NEW CENTURY 
 Preached at S. Paul’s in December, 1900 . 
 
 “ But Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail.”— 
 Psa. cii. 27. 
 
 W\e stand to-night, dear brethren, at the very 
 edge of a new century. True, day and night 
 will go on as before, as far as we know, on 
 Tuesday next ; there will be no change 
 stamped visibly on the face of the world. 
 The curtain will not fall, and a new scene 
 usher in a new act, before which we shall 
 play our little part on the stage. Business 
 will be the same, pleasure will be the same, 
 the great stream of life will pour along with¬ 
 out even a shadow of a passing cloud on its 
 surface. 
 
 A change of century is after all only a 
 sentiment, an appeal to the imagination. A 
 century is at the most a carefully ruled page 
 with its spaces, and divisions, and headings 
 under which we put down the precious figures 
 
 95 
 
96 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 of time as it pours itself out in its golden 
 flood. We are turning over another page, 
 that is all; but there is something to be 
 carried on as a remainder from those items of 
 days and years, to be added to the greater 
 column of history. A life without imagina¬ 
 tion is, after all, a maimed life, a life without 
 poetry, music, or other art. God has ever 
 hung the walls of our life with pictures to 
 cheer us and instruct us, such as we find in 
 the course of Nature, the yearly cycle of 
 religious commemorations, or the anni¬ 
 versaries of history. And one picture is 
 finished to-day on the walls of our life, and 
 another is waiting to be sketched in, while 
 God says to those who pass by, “ Interro¬ 
 gate the past, occupy the present, trust the 
 future,’’ for, after all, “ single days are 
 single lives. There is no difference between 
 a day and an age." 
 
 I. 
 
 It is a solemn thing to enter on a period 
 of which, in all human probability, no single 
 person here will live to see the end. Xerxes 
 wept as he sat on his marble throne and saw 
 gathered before him the vast host which he 
 had mustered for his colossal enterprise ; he 
 
THE NEW CENTURY 97 
 
 wept as he looked down on his battalions 
 and galleys, in which the whole Eastern 
 world seemed astir, moving to engulf the 
 West, because, he said, in a hundred years’ 
 time all would be gone. And who of all 
 gathered here can hope to see another day 
 like this ? The old century totters forward, 
 leaning on the future, an old man leaning 
 on a youth. He whispers in his ear his 
 successes; he passes on from his trembling 
 fingers the blazing torch, while youth shouts 
 back his confident schemes impatient to be 
 gone, exulting in his strength and flushed 
 already with anticipated victory. “ Things 
 will not be as they have been,” mourns the 
 old century. “The world’s great age begins 
 anew, the golden years return,” shouts the 
 new. At least, we will thank imagination 
 for giving us a pause, a time to look around 
 us, a moment to think, just such a time as 
 when we take down the sheet which has 
 covered the work, and look and compare, 
 and note: this is finished, this remains to 
 be done; this must come away. The end of 
 a century—it is a resting-place in life’s 
 stage; we will thank imagination for that. 
 We have been sailing along life’s stream, 
 now touching here, now touching there ; and 
 to-day for a moment we disembark and look 
 around us, before we enter on a new stage; 
 
 8 
 
98 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 our friends and travelling companions are 
 all around us. There are some who have 
 been carried along, and have never once 
 taken their eyes off their business : nor art, 
 nor nature, nor history, nor religion has 
 appealed to them; as the man of business 
 has been conveyed, like a bale of goods, 
 from one point to another. There are others 
 who only remember places by the food which 
 they ate, who have passed through scenes of 
 historic interest, or have been face to face 
 with nature in all its magnificence, who 
 have passed through scenes which prophets 
 and kings have desired to see, and died 
 without seeing—still they only remember 
 the dinner, or the fruit, or the heat or the 
 cold; men who have lived for appetite. 
 Whereas there are some who have become 
 “ a part of all that they have met,” to whom 
 life has been one long course of beauty, its 
 storms and its sunshine, its difficulties and 
 its pleasures all eloquent; and to-day they 
 feel a freshness in the air which blows off 
 the sea, to-day their life heaves and sighs 
 with a deep undercurrent which sets in from 
 eternity: already they can discern the white 
 barrier of foam, and the dark line beyond, 
 where the river and the sea unite over the 
 bar with its mournful moan and gasping 
 cadences; already the sea-birds with out- 
 
THE NEW CENTURY 
 
 99 
 
 stretched wings are flying in towards them, 
 messengers from the future, heralds of the 
 unknown. Imagination can do much to 
 enrich life, but we must sedulously refuse to 
 allow it to sap its vitality. Imagination is 
 no friend if it causes us to sit down on the 
 edge of a century and build castles in the 
 air which perish while we build. Imagination 
 is no friend if it be taken into the service 
 of melancholy and despondency, or if it be 
 allowed to sacrifice work for the sake of 
 feeling. 
 
 No doubt there have been watchers standing 
 at the brink of centuries before ours, who, 
 instead of borrowing from the future in hope, 
 have entered the new year weighted with 
 the liabilities of melancholy and despair. In 
 1801, as the nineteenth century began to 
 dawn, there must have been many who 
 looked out anxiously at the dark clouds of 
 war. It was the year of Nelson’s victory at 
 Copenhagen; it was a year when one of the 
 threatened invasions of England by our 
 neighbours seemed more than usually 
 imminent. Doubtless there were some who 
 sat down in despair, while imagination drew 
 a figure in fire and smoke and blood of a 
 devastated England, and the coming of a 
 military Antichrist. 
 
 When the eighteenth century dawned, in 
 
100 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 1701, there was no direct successor to the 
 throne of England, after the death of 
 William III. and Anne. James II. died this 
 year in exile, with all the complications that 
 followed on his death, and William III. 
 himself was within one year of his own 
 death. No doubt many must have sat down 
 with imagination then, and mourned over 
 the unsettled times, and have conjured up 
 visions clouded by the worst precedents out 
 of our stormy history. 
 
 When the seventeenth century dawned, in 
 1601, a glorious reign was coming to an end, 
 glorious in spite of fears and trouble. And 
 the domestic strife which centred round 
 Lord Essex was disturbing the last years of 
 Elizabeth, who was within two years of her 
 death. Here, again, there must have been 
 many who said, What will come after? Is 
 there stability and vitality enough to survive 
 the shock of change ? Imagination must 
 have had some gloomy as well as hopeful 
 pages to paint at the opening of that new 
 volume of history. And so in 1501, at the 
 beginning of the sixteenth century. This 
 was the year when Catharine of Arragon 
 appeared in England as the bride of Prince 
 Arthur, whose marriage with Henry VIII. 
 afterwards was the apparently slight instru¬ 
 mental cause of such tremendous convulsions. 
 
THE NEW CENTURY 
 
 101 
 
 Here imagination must have been at fault, 
 or, at least, barely cognisant of the changes 
 which loomed indistinguishable before it in 
 the thick clouds which veil the Providence 
 of God. 
 
 Think what it must have meant at different 
 periods throughout these four centuries, to 
 be a Churchman keenly alive to the progress 
 of religion and the interests of the spread 
 of Christian morality and sound doctrine! 
 Think how again and again the cause of 
 religion must have seemed to be desperate. 
 Think, in 1501, of the clouds which were 
 gathering, the losing of all confidence in 
 leaders, the wild upheaval of passion and 
 rapine which traded on the genuine desire 
 for reformation, and left behind them such 
 a legacy of complication, in the nemesis which 
 always follows on those who do what is 
 right in a wrong way. Think in the next 
 century of the storm which burst over the 
 Church in this land, when the strong hand 
 of Elizabeth was removed, culminating in 
 the overthrow of both Altar and Throne. 
 This has been given as a fair estimate of 
 the state of religion in the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century. “ Throughout Society 
 men looked upon office, not from the point 
 of view of the duties to be performed, but 
 from that of the emolument to be gained. 
 
102 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 If they were politicians they expected and 
 received in the shape of sinecures and 
 gratifications what they considered to be a 
 reasonable remuneration for their services. 
 If they were ecclesiastics they accepted 
 deaneries and bishoprics and rectories, be¬ 
 cause by such combinations alone could they 
 obtain a reasonable reward for their efforts. 
 The more this system flourishes the more dead 
 became religion, the more dull the sense of re¬ 
 sponsibility.” In this cathedral, for instance, 
 in the year 1700, there were but six communi¬ 
 cants at the only celebration on Easter Day. 
 And at the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century things were much the same, perhaps 
 worse. The sense of corporate worship and 
 of the meaning of a liturgy had almost died 
 out. “ Amid the crash of empires and the 
 stress of revolutions, unaffected by the losses 
 of the past or the hopes of the future, in¬ 
 different alike to the religious movement 
 within, or political danger without, the 
 Church of England raised her impassive 
 front among the storms which raged round 
 her, sublime in her apathy, unchanged and 
 apparently unchangeable, waiting in patience 
 for the knell of her doom to toll.” So might 
 Despair have spoken at any of these 
 moments, quite unconscious of the shoots 
 of life which were slowly developing beneath 
 
THE NEW CENTURY 
 
 103 
 
 the unpromising surface, the more vigorous 
 for each storm, the stronger for each 
 repression, and the more enduring by virtue 
 of each frost. If we look carefully we shall 
 find in the darkest periods that which the 
 world calls a reaction. “ All seems at one 
 moment drifting to confusion. We say it 
 is vain to fight against the current; we think 
 that all has been lost, when, the next, the 
 tide comes back in its strength to save us, 
 and, behold! more than we had lost is 
 recovered.” The comparative settlement 
 under Elizabeth succeeds the wild storms 
 under Henry, Edward, and Mary in the 
 sixteenth century. The strong and learned 
 Churchmen of the Restoration are the re¬ 
 action from the ignorance and profanity of 
 the Great Rebellion in the seventeenth 
 century. The vigorous revival of spiritual 
 life under Wesley in the middle of the 
 eighteenth century is the direct result of 
 the dead Erastianism and lifeless orthodoxy 
 of its opening years. The Oxford Revival 
 in the nineteenth century has wiped away, 
 or tended to do so, the reproach which lay 
 upon its earlier years. But these reactions, 
 as we call them, are not merely like the 
 swaying of a pendulum, first to one side 
 then to the other in the restlessness of 
 human fashion which never continueth in 
 
104 
 
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 one stay, they are comparable rather to the 
 incoming tide, each wave as it recedes comes 
 back—it is true, only to recede again—but 
 there is a steady progress all the while; 
 gradually the bay is filling up, with its flood 
 of deep water obliterating the barren sands 
 which before lay bare. Through all the 
 changes there has been one immovable 
 supreme Will, guiding and directing all. 
 Reaction, as we call it, is only the changing 
 of God’s right hand now visible now hidden 
 from us. “ Thou art the Same ” is the ex¬ 
 pression of our creed as we watch the 
 evolution of His purpose through the tossing 
 waves of centuries as they roll by us, lashed 
 with storm and white with tempest. “The 
 waters thereof rage and swell, and the 
 mountains shake at the tempest of the same.” 
 “ The Lord sitteth above the water flood. 
 The Lord remaineth a King for ever.” 
 
 “Say not the struggle naught availeth 
 The labour and the wounds are vain, 
 The enemy faints not, nor faileth, 
 
 And as things have been they remain. 
 
 If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars ; 
 
 It may be, in yon smoke concealed, 
 Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers, 
 And, but for you, possess the field. 
 
THE NEW CENTURY 
 
 105 
 
 For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, 
 Seem here no painful inch to gain, 
 
 Far back through creeks and inlets making, 
 Comes silent, flooding in, the main. 
 
 And not by eastern windows only, 
 
 When daylight comes, comes in the light. 
 In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly, 
 But westward, look! the land is bright.” 
 
 II. 
 
 “ Thou art the Same.” “ Thou art He,” the 
 unchanging One. The conduct of men has 
 varied and will vary, according to the various 
 ways in which they regard these wondrous 
 words. 
 
 1. Fatalism has a powerful fascination for 
 many minds as the religion of indolence, 
 even with those who would energetically 
 repudiate it as a formal doctrine. “Wliat 
 must be, must be ” is a formula which relieves 
 us from all necessity for exertion. “ Christ 
 has died to save me ”; there is an end of all 
 need for personal effort. “ If the Church is 
 to come to ruin, nothing that I can do will 
 save it ; “if the empire is to go the way 
 of the other great empires of the ancient 
 world, we can only submit, no one individual 
 can stay it ” ; “ if religious education in this 
 country is a defeated cause, it is no use 
 
106 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 keeping up a hopeless struggle ” ; “ if society 
 is tottering to decay over the ruins of 
 morality, no one can prevent it.” “ All these 
 things are in higher hands than ours/’ says 
 the moral sluggard, and he grounds his arms, 
 packs up his baggage, and leaves his post, 
 only too ready to give up a struggle and 
 settle down in the calm of an inglorious 
 fatalism. Rut surely we shall be reading all 
 history amiss if this is the only lesson we 
 get out of the contemplation of its records; 
 that do what we will God always has His 
 way. In one sense it is true; true if we 
 believe that whatever we do God will correct 
 our mistakes, and in the end His Will will 
 be done; false if we believe that He wishes 
 to govern the world without the co-operation 
 of man, or at the best leaving them only a 
 fictitious and unreal part, as a grown-up man 
 might please a child by letting him think 
 that he was giving him real assistance in a 
 work beyond his powers, when in reality he 
 can do him no good, or is at best “ something 
 between a hindrance and a help.” God’s Will 
 prevails, but our co-operation in the carrying 
 out of that W ill is part of the Divine 
 provision. The end which He decrees is 
 absolute, the means of approaching that end 
 are various, although still in His hand. A 
 conquered kingdom may acquiesce in the 
 
THE NEW CENTURY 
 
 107 
 
 new government thus imposed upon it, and 
 by an earnest co-operation make the best use 
 of the vicissitudes which came upon it. An 
 unwise decision, on the other hand, may 
 refuse to co-operate, prolong a useless 
 struggle, bring untold misery on the land, 
 and in the end be forced to submit to the 
 inevitable. In either case there was no re¬ 
 sisting the determination of the higher power, 
 but in the one case the means pursued were 
 those of wise acquiescence and thoughtful 
 co-operation, in the other foolish resistance, 
 with its inevitable result of punishment and 
 disaster. We must act as if everything were 
 being done by us, even while we know that 
 our movements are controlled by a higher 
 power. The indolent and rebellious are 
 bringing on themselves, and on the centuries 
 in which they live, the trouble and confusion 
 which belong to those who resist the Will 
 of God. Every man is bound to contribute 
 to the good of the age in which he lives. 
 He cannot stand on one side and say, “ Things 
 will go on without me ”; every part is 
 necessary in the great machine of God. Look 
 out, dear brethren, on the serious questions 
 which loom before us in the coming century. 
 Your duties towards them are a great deal 
 more than those of a speculative curiosity. 
 They are the duties of an earnest and 
 
108 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 thoughtful co-operation with God. What 
 has God in store for the Church of England 
 in the coming century ? We cannot for one 
 moment doubt, as we interrogate the past, 
 that the Church is alive with the rich sap 
 which runs through and through the healthy 
 branches of the one true Vine. But the 
 wilfulness and indolence of man may mar, 
 put back, and pull down much promise of 
 rich fruit in the immediate future. God will 
 save His Church, we know that, but for the 
 century now coming there may be a lopped 
 stump, instead of a fruitful bough, and God 
 may even take away the fruitful branch 
 from its unkindly prop, and train it else¬ 
 where. My brethren, a very great deal 
 depends on the earnestness and faithfulness 
 of Churchmen. Leaves without fruit are a 
 sony spectacle ; beautiful churches, beautiful 
 services without the fruits of religion are 
 a sad perversion of truth. The wild boar 
 of controversy who roots up must be driven 
 aw ay, the wild beasts of careless living 
 which rend its boughs must be chased off. 
 The apathy of Churchmen and the in- 
 diffei ence they display are fruitful sources 
 of trouble. As we look out on the Church 
 questions, the education question, the moral 
 question, the social question—on all the 
 difficulties which gather and threaten in 
 
THE NEW CENTURY 
 
 109 
 
 front of us let us at least cast off indolence, 
 the indolence of fatalism. Let each see 
 what he can do in his own way, and in his 
 own conviction, towards meeting the dangers 
 which seem to loom ahead. It is full of 
 bad omen for the world when the good men 
 stand on one side and leave the vacant posts 
 to mere adventurers. It is no use musing 
 sentimentally over the passing of a century, 
 or musing complacently over the errors of 
 the times in which we live. It is no use 
 saying, “ Where are the good old days ? We 
 are going through anarchy to atheism, and 
 through atheism to destruction.” The people 
 who sit on the edge of the hill and watch 
 the battle are always mistaking victory for 
 defeat and defeat for victory. Descend into 
 the contest, take up once more your weapons 
 of defence, do your duty to society, pay 
 your tithe of a good life to the living coffers 
 of the Church. Don t dabble in questions, 
 but contend for causes; don’t shed tears for 
 exploded Utopias, but exercise your citizen¬ 
 ship in the present. There is your post, 
 there in the thick of the fray, there in the 
 quiet corner, there on the lonely plain, 
 there in the fire and heat of danger, there 
 you must stay until your relief comes. It 
 will be a sad thing at the winding up of 
 the ages, when century has followed century 
 
110 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 until the cord of destiny has been firmly 
 fixed, sure and steadfast, in God, if it be 
 found that you, who were stored and armed 
 by God with education, with opportunities 
 which fitted you for the post, as the one 
 man designed by Him to fill it, at the last 
 and dreadful day before men and angels, 
 must be for ever proclaimed as a slothful 
 and wicked servant, who more than any one 
 else was false to a great trust, and hopelessly 
 betrayed a great opportunity. 
 
 2. But in contradistinction to the fatalism 
 of indolence we shall also find, looking out 
 on the century, the insolence of self-sufficiency. 
 Fatalism folded its arms and became an 
 inert puppet, without a will and without 
 an effort, while in pretended piety it could 
 not presume to interfere with God. Self- 
 sufficiency, on the other hand, is extremely 
 active; it deals with every department of 
 human action, and it does not need God at 
 any point, it can do without Him. It takes 
 what remains of the Old Testament, after it 
 has been stretched and contracted by Pro¬ 
 crustean methods to the precise standard of 
 criticism which happens to be in fashion ; it 
 shows us what God ought to have said, and 
 what He did say and did not say, and turns 
 away in disgust from the childish prattle of 
 an infant world. It takes the New Testament 
 
THE NEW CENTURY 
 
 111 
 
 and inverts its purpose : the Sermon on the 
 Mount is the Gospel, not the Atonement; 
 the poetry of a Galilean idyll, not the stern 
 proclamation of a warfare with sin, and the 
 means of salvation. Flushed with victory, 
 confident of success, Self-conceit turns its 
 back on a poverty-stricken past, and gazes 
 out into an ideal future, out of which 
 superstition has vanished, and humanity, 
 seated firmly in the chariot of progress, 
 shall drive the horses of certainty through 
 a woi Id prostrate with wonder and glowing 
 with admiration. Evil will shrivel up under 
 the sun of beauty; violence and greed will 
 be drawn captive by the strains of a new 
 Orpheus. Men will reach out after what is 
 for the common weal, stirred by the pro¬ 
 clamation of a new morality. And God shall 
 crown the whole as He looks down with 
 approbation on a world which exists without 
 Him, and for which He has ceased to care. 
 There must be a great First Cause; it will do 
 no harm to call it God. There are many 
 schemes, my brethren, started to-day which 
 assume a power for man which experience 
 and revelation both are unable to assign to 
 him. Any scheme which leaves out God, 
 any scheme which forgets the taint and the 
 warp of sin which must be reckoned with, 
 is not a scheme of progress, but a scheme 
 
112 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 of failure, because it means that time will 
 be wasted in recovery and repair, that the 
 errors of one generation will need to be 
 taken out by the next. An army has made 
 no real progress if it has pushed rapidly 
 forward without protecting its advance. A 
 spendthrift has made no advance in life if 
 he has spent all, while making no provision 
 for the future. Slow and exacting are the 
 ways of God ; sacraments, worship, discipline, 
 restraint, all seem so much time taken from 
 the activities of life, while in reality they 
 secure their fuller development. 
 
 God, who knew what was best for man, 
 because He was man, has nothing new to 
 offer us for the new century. Still, He says 
 to the ardent souls that step eagerly into 
 rank, “Ye must be born again.” Still He 
 says to the self-sufficient impulse of the 
 enthusiast, “ Without Me ye can do nothing.” 
 Still He says to the pushing life seeking for 
 fresh worlds to conquer, “ Except ye eat the 
 Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His 
 Blood, ye have no life in you.” Still He 
 whispers to the soul, ever restlessly darting- 
 off into new pastures and seeking for new 
 paths, “ I am the Good Shepherd; if any 
 man love Me, let him follow Me.” 
 
 Fire will burn in the new century as much 
 as it did in the old. Water will drown, 
 
THE NEW CENTURY 113 
 
 poison will kill, men will grow old and die 
 as they have done in the past. So sin will 
 scorch, and sorrow wither, and the winds of 
 temptations will riot along with headlong 
 fin y, as they have done before. There are 
 few figures more sad and pathetic than 
 those whom we may see returning footsore, 
 dishevelled, and dreary, the remnant of the 
 great army of enthusiasts who start forth 
 at every fresh crisis of the world’s history, 
 to find a new scheme for its regeneration. 
 
 Thou art the Same.” A hundred years of 
 human struggle have created no change in 
 the attitude of God. His laws are immutable. 
 His scheme of redemption embraces all 
 possible developments of human resource. 
 God is not forgetful, but patient. And He 
 is patient because He is eternal. 
 
 3. But with us, alas ! the disappointment 
 of plans is too often the prelude of despair. 
 There are those who look out on the untrodden, 
 fields of the twentieth century with gloom, 
 and sorrow, and distrust. They will tell you 
 everything is wrong, that the forces of 
 disorder are becoming too powerful to be 
 restrained by the forces of order; that nation 
 will be rising against nation and kingdom 
 against kingdom, because these are the last 
 days; that wars will increase and not 
 diminish; that education is a curse and not 
 
 9 
 
114 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 a blessing; that we know too much, and 
 that in increasing knowledge we are in¬ 
 creasing sorrow; that progress is a progress 
 downwards, not upwards; that perils are 
 threatening family life; that social life is 
 hollow, and business principles hopelessly 
 corrupt; that we are living in Sodom and 
 Gomorrah, and that the fire from heaven 
 is shortly to descend. It is inevitable that 
 men should speak like this if they lose sight 
 of God. It is the reaction which follows on 
 the pride of doing everything, the gloomy 
 conviction that they can do nothing. It would 
 be ungrateful, it would be untrue, it would 
 be wrong thus to enter on the new century. 
 “ With God onwards ” is our true motto, 
 and a motto that will never fail us. “Trust 
 the future,” that is a council of hope, and 
 no man ever did good work yet in which 
 he had lost all hope. There is one thing we 
 can all do, and that is the piece of work 
 which God has put before us. There is a 
 sundial in the midland counties whose face 
 is spread over the front of a beautiful house 
 whose walls are washed by the Ouse as it 
 slowly sinks away past meadow and village 
 on its silent course. There the dial speaks 
 to every one who enters in at the door with 
 a motto, abrupt and rude, almost a dis¬ 
 courtesy to the arriving guest, but yet 
 
THE NEW CENTURY 
 
 115 
 
 charged with a meaning which may make 
 him think—“ Go about your business.” This 
 is the message which comes from light, light 
 which is the shadow of God as it falls 
 across our life to-day, announcing the coming 
 of another break in the allotted measure of 
 our time. “Go about your business.” It is 
 possible to waste time in sentiment, and to 
 be managing the affairs of the empire in 
 our mind, when our immediate duty was 
 to sweep away the dirt before our own door. 
 So Elijah was recalled from his melancholy 
 dream of universal corruption, and of a 
 nation rushing on its doom, to the sense 
 of his own position and the immediate 
 requirements of his duty. “Go, return on 
 thy way to the wilderness of Damascus; 
 and when thou comest, anoint Hazael to be 
 king over Syria; and Jehu the son of Nimshi 
 shalt thou anoint to be king* over Israel: 
 and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel- 
 Meholah shalt thou anoint to be prophet 
 in thy room.” It is well to think of the 
 Church, of the nation, of the empire, of the 
 world; but there is one bit of improvement 
 at which we can always labour—ourselves. 
 
 The year past has been full of troubles 
 and full of mercies. “My song shall be of 
 mercy and judgment: unto Thee, O Lord, 
 will I sing.” Few of us can have seen 
 
116 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 unmoved the spectacle here, when we sent 
 out our citizen soldiers with prayer and 
 supplication to the war, and received them 
 back again with praise and thanksgiving 
 within these hallowed walls. These were 
 not the actions of a nation that had for¬ 
 gotten God. And the prayer and praises 
 which then ascended were not the ebullition 
 of excitement or the product of a theatrical 
 display. It has been a year of turbulent 
 controversy in the Church? Yes! perhaps 
 so. One or two people can make a great 
 noise; the hard workers go on doing their 
 work quietly; they know too much the 
 imperfections of their own work to have 
 even the wish to disturb their neighbours’. 
 Wherever there has been a serious endeavour 
 to work for God, Religion, and His Church, 
 there have been signs most hopeful and 
 encouraging, of the very best feeling, and 
 of the greatest desire for amity. The 
 meeting at Fulham to discuss differences 
 was the earnest of much solid good for the 
 Church. It approached them in the true 
 way, with prayer and mutual respect, with 
 reverence for a controversial adversary, and 
 an honest endeavour to find points of agree¬ 
 ment. The great religious heart of this 
 nation is on the side of unity, not of 
 agitation. It knows the problems and 
 
THE NEW CENTURY 
 
 117 
 
 difficulties of life too well to exaggerate 
 trifles; a nation which has clothed its army 
 with khaki and given up the tradition of 
 the thin red line, knows full well that the 
 conditions of warfare vary even if the strife 
 is the same. Respect for truth, respect for 
 honour, respect for one’s neighbour’s purity 
 of life, love for God and His Word, love for 
 our holy Religion: these in our own lives 
 are the things which will make themselves 
 felt rather than a listless dreaming as we 
 lean upon the barrier and look out into the 
 night. The region of the “may be” is well- 
 nigh infinite, the region of the “ must be ” is 
 limited for you and me, and, for the most 
 part, within our reach and cognisance. Look 
 back in earnestness, look forward in con¬ 
 fidence. God is the Same; God is where He 
 was before. The twentieth century comes 
 to us with the same old message, ever more 
 and more venerable, ever more and more 
 true—“Honour all men. Love the brother¬ 
 hood. Fear God. Honour the king.” 
 

VI 
 
 THE CITIZENSHIP OF HEAVEN 
 
VI 
 
 THE CITIZENSHIP OF HEAVEN 
 
 A Sermon Preached in S. Paul’s 
 Cathedral, Advent, 1894 . 
 
 “For our conversation is in heaven.” —Phil. iii. 20. 
 
 When Gibbon is assigning his five well- 
 known causes for the growth of Christianity, 
 he gives as the second the doctrine of a 
 future life, which, he says, induced men to 
 despise their present existence, and fix all 
 their hopes on immortality beyond the grave. 
 And, indeed, in a sneering way he insinuates 
 that this too great care for a future life led 
 them to neglect onerous duties and public 
 service which no State could admit with im¬ 
 punity ; for the prosaic duties of life were 
 neglected in order to attend to the enervating 
 demands of religion. 
 
 It would not be difficult to show how con- 
 
 121 
 
122 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 trary this is to the spirit of Christianity, 
 however true it may be of the abuse and mis¬ 
 application of Christian ideas; but at the 
 present day surely the tendency is all the 
 other way. The vision of Heaven as a prac¬ 
 tical influence on life and conduct is shadowy 
 and indistinct. Men seem more in sympathy 
 with those who looked for a millennium, a 
 reign of Christ upon a purified earth, from 
 which suffering and imperfection have been 
 banished. And the duties of religion and the 
 expenditure of thought upon another world 
 are looked upon as so much waste of time, 
 which might be devoted to material, econo¬ 
 mical, sanitary, and moral improvements. 
 If you asked the average man what he thought 
 about Heaven, he would probably tell you that 
 he had not much time to think about it at 
 all. “I strive,” he would say, “to do my duty 
 as well as I can here, to be straightforward 
 and honest, and keep from gross sin; I am 
 doing all I can to help my family, and try to 
 do good to my fellow-creatures, and then 
 when I can live here no longer I shall have an 
 illness, perhaps the clergyman will come and 
 read the Bible to me, I shall die, and I hope to 
 go to Heaven.” And this going to Heaven, 
 what is it ? But going to a place in which he 
 can feel but little interest, in the hope that in 
 some way death will effect a complete revo- 
 
THE CITIZENSHIP OF HEAVEN 123 
 
 lution, in taste, feelings, desires, and occu¬ 
 pations ; that things will interest him then 
 which are distinctly distasteful to him now; 
 and that things which occupy all his thoughts 
 now will then cease to affect him. We die, 
 that is, to all intents and purposes, thorough 
 
 men of the world; we wake up thorough men 
 of Heaven. 
 
 Can this be the true aim which God has 
 persistently set before us when He gave us 
 the thought and promise of Heaven ? Is it 
 something to spoil our life of duty here, while 
 we live in the distracted state of a man who 
 does one thing while he is busily thinking of 
 another ? Is it a place, a state, so shadowy 
 and unreal, that we keep it as an ornament of 
 life under a glass case while we bustle about 
 the realities of existence, and try to make this 
 world a better place, instead of dreaming 
 about another which has not yet come before 
 us ? Is it a mere refuge to which in imagina¬ 
 tion we betake ourselves as something better 
 than Hell, a place to which, if we dared, we 
 would fain, like the Indian savage, take our 
 horses and our food and our treasures, as 
 something which we can more fully under¬ 
 stand than the mystical suggestions of the 
 
 Book of Revelation with its religious 
 raptures ? 
 
124 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 I. 
 
 My brethren, if we are to believe the 
 Apostle’s statement which I have just read to 
 you, Heaven is begun already. Our conver¬ 
 sation, our citizenship is in Heaven ; as he tells 
 us elsewhere, “Ye are no more strangers and 
 foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints.” 
 Heaven is begun here to the Christian. He 
 is a member of that community already; he 
 is a citizen of that city. There is an upper 
 and a lower city and an intermediate zone, but 
 still one city. At death we do but change our 
 quarters, while we continue our life in 
 unbroken identity in the commonwealth of 
 Heaven. St. Paul was using a metaphor which 
 conveyed to him and to his hearers a very real 
 meaning. It was at Philippi, a Roman colony, 
 that he obtained that satisfaction and redress 
 which belonged to him by right of his Roman 
 citizenship. He knew what it was to be able 
 to assert wherever he went his share in that 
 marvellous life of discipline and order which 
 extended to the very edge of the Roman 
 empire. He could claim thereby protection 
 from insult and violence, and a share in their 
 interests and triumphs which made every 
 Roman hold his head higher and carry, as it 
 
THE CITIZENSHIP OF HEAVEN 125 
 
 were, stamped on his face, the consciousness 
 of his proud citizenship. 
 
 . is somewhat humiliating to think how 
 little we claim our rights as citizens of a 
 greater commonwealth, how little its conquests 
 affect us, its progress helps us, its interests 
 move us, its influences cheer us ; there it is, 
 an exaggerated, distorted, unreal impression, 
 an impalpable phantom in the night of death ; 
 whereas, could we but feel it, it encircles us in 
 its strength, protects us by its laws, enriches 
 the paths of life, regulates our activities, uses 
 our powers, and smoothes the bed of death— 
 this commonwealth of beneficence, felt rather 
 than seen ; by reason of which the world is a 
 better place to you and to me than it would 
 otherwise have been ; whereby, of the Lord’s 
 mercies, we are not consumed, nor wander 
 hopelessly from the path. 
 
 While sunk in sin and whelmed with strife, 
 
 We lose the gift of endless life.” 
 
 This inability to realise Heaven is surely one 
 part of what has been described as the poverty 
 of life. . “We can make much of life," it has 
 been said, “ if we have much soul." To some, 
 life is only real in so far as it is a field for 
 appetite and passion, a place for eating, and 
 di inking, and satisfaction. The wide fields of 
 
126 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 art and poetry are practically non-existent to 
 them. Science with its fascinating discoveries, 
 history with its moving panorama passing 
 over familiar scenes, all the various depart¬ 
 ments of human intelligence, are a blank or a 
 positive horror. They “think that it is to 
 give them wood to hew, and water to draw, 
 that the pine forests cover the mountains like 
 the shadow of God, and the great rivers move 
 like His Eternity.” While to others, life is 
 only a business warehouse, touched by none of 
 the generous impulses of self-devotion, stirred 
 and quickened by no sympathy with human 
 life around it. Virtue becomes to them the 
 highest form of utilitarian self-aggrandise¬ 
 ment ; no man will do you any good except for 
 his own interest; merit becomes merely one 
 man’s opinion of another, self-devotion a mere 
 fanaticism, liberality an ignorance of the 
 value of money, and good works generally a 
 dangerous form of sin. We must have known 
 men who live, as it were, in only a corner 
 of their possessions, in an absolute poverty 
 of resource, fast confined in a narrow cell, 
 neither understanding nor understood, alone, 
 apart in the concourse of men, surrounded by 
 wealth which they cannot appreciate, with 
 sources of enjoyment they know not how to 
 use, with instruments of beauty which they 
 know not how to manipulate. Can any 
 
the CITIZENSHIP of HEAVEN 127 
 
 outward poverty compare with this inner 
 poverty which touches not the circumstances 
 of life, but a poverty which leaves the 
 wealthiest beggared in thought in the midst 
 of his splendour, and the wisest destitute of 
 sympathy in the midst of his intellectual 
 ti iumph ? But there is a poverty even beyond 
 this, the poverty of the man who has dropped 
 out of touch with Heaven, whose thoughts are 
 bounded by this earth, whose horizon is death, 
 with a Heaven beyond in which practically he 
 has ceased to believe, who has no cheering 
 vision of a central controlling movement, no 
 sense of heavenly rights, no realisation of 
 heavenly protection ; “ a citizen of no mean 
 city,’’ still he lets himself be bound, insulted, and 
 imprisoned, he pays to it no duty, it owes him 
 no privileges. An end in himself to himself, 
 he would regard a present Heaven of practical 
 relationships as even more visionary and 
 unreal than a future Heaven, which offers him 
 neither in principle nor in practice any appre¬ 
 ciable point of contact, nor stimulates any 
 strong desire. 
 
 II. 
 
 If, then Heaven lies about us here, to be 
 consciously enjoyed by those who live in the 
 lower city, and to be more fully realised when 
 
128 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 they move higher, in what does it consist? 
 How does it make itself felt ? How shall we 
 exercise our citizenship and enjoy our privi¬ 
 leges ? (1) As citizens of Heaven we are in the 
 immediate presence of God. “Whither shall 
 I go then from Thy Spiritsays the Psalmist, 
 “ or whither shall I go then from Thy 
 Presence ? If I climb up into Heaven, Thou art 
 there : if I go down to Hell, Thou art there also? 
 if I take the wings of the morning, and remain 
 in the uttermost parts of the sea: even there 
 also shall Thy hand lead me : and Thy right 
 hand shall hold me.” We have wondered, it 
 may be, in the visions and revelations of 
 Heaven which have been put before us, how 
 large a part worship seems to play in the 
 occupation of the blessed. Worship surely is 
 the characteristic occupation of the soul which 
 has realised the Presence of God; the more 
 we are able to see Him, the more we shall 
 be driven to worship, until in Heaven above, 
 when our eyes have been accustomed to face 
 the light, and we are more and more able to 
 see Him as He is, worship becomes almost 
 the absorbing occupation of the redeemed. 
 And so here, the more we feel God’s Presence 
 the more we shall be attracted to worship 
 Him. It is when worship has been degraded 
 into a mere hearing of sounds, or listening to 
 a human voice, or an intellectual posture of 
 
THE CITIZENSHIP OF HEAVEN 129 
 
 the mind, that it becomes weary and insipid. 
 Now with an effort we have to force ourselves 
 to worship as a duty, but the more we can feel 
 His Presence, the more we shall be impelled to 
 it as a pleasure, and be able to realise how it 
 may possibly be that the satisfaction of the 
 highest part of our being may be the highest 
 joy, and to worship God without distraction, 
 and enjoy His Presence without fear, may 
 be the highest conception of Heaven. This 
 Presence of God, how it was meant to enrich 
 and beautify all our life ! Account for it as 
 you will, how many of the Christian martyrs 
 again and again experienced a peace and even 
 joy under the most cruel tortures, to the per¬ 
 plexity and exasperation of their enemies, and 
 they said it was brought to them by the 
 Presence of God. Explain it as you will, men 
 and women have lingered on in abject want, 
 suffering, and affliction, in circumstances from 
 which every ray of earthly comfort seemed to 
 have gone, not merely in sullen resignation, 
 but in joyful acquiescence and holy calm, so 
 that the room of suffering has sometimes been 
 the brightest room in the whole house, and 
 they will tell you that it was the Presence of 
 God that brought this calm. There may be in 
 the lives of many of you memories of a 
 pleasure which you cannot define, of a satis¬ 
 faction which you cannot analyse, days when 
 
 10 
 
130 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 you did not look for pleasure, but yet you 
 found joy; days when all seemed dark, and yet 
 there rose up light in the darkness; days 
 which you can only look back upon as “ days 
 of the Son of Man,” when life was illumined 
 by a heavenly glow, and filled with a satis¬ 
 faction which you had hitherto failed to reach, 
 and you trace in them the Presence of God. 
 
 What shall we say of the mystery of natural 
 beauty all around us, of beauty in art, of 
 beauty wherever we see it ? What is beauty, 
 and what does it mean ? Is it for nothing or 
 by a fortuitous combination of causes that 
 God gives us the daily pageant of sunrise and 
 sunset, lighting up fields and hedges, sea and 
 mountain, transforming the very squalor of 
 the streets and courts of the city, and speaking 
 to the hearts of those who can feel, to the 
 eyes of all that can see ? Is it for nothing that 
 God has put His mantle of flowers between us 
 and the bareness of the earth, and His veil of 
 clouds between us and the blinding brightness 
 of the sky? It is the same God who speaks 
 to us out of the poetry of the Bible, who speaks 
 to us out of the beauty of the world; and He 
 who makes the flower to glow speaks to us 
 out of the beauty of art, the beauty of music, 
 the beauty of moral character. Trace beauty 
 wherever you see it far enough, and it 
 will lead you into the Presence of God 
 
THE CITIZENSHIP OF HEAVEN 131 
 
 until you forget self and forget your needs, 
 and praise Him for what He is, and adore Him 
 for His transcendent Majesty, so that there 
 mingles with the voice of supplication and the 
 voice of gratitude the voice of thanksgiving, 
 which can only express itself in the words of 
 the Seraphic hymn, “The fulness of the whole 
 earth is His glory.” To those who can feel the 
 Presence of God as it encircles us with its power 
 and beauty, Heaven itself has begun. 
 
 (2) But as citizens of Heaven we do more than 
 repose in the Presence of God ; we rest under 
 His protection. Heaven is the great city of 
 refuge, where no thief approacheth, neither 
 moth corrupteth. And the protection of 
 Heaven is begun here to those who claim its 
 privileges and have a right to its citizenship. 
 It is a sad spectacle to see the unwilling 
 sinner driven away captive by sins which are 
 too strong for him, with a system of morality 
 clear and well defined, torn up and tossed 
 about like straws before the wind upon the 
 wild waves of passion. It is sad to see man, 
 made in the image and likeness of God, a free¬ 
 man of the empire of Heaven, marched away 
 like a slave beaten and condemned by evil. 
 We ourselves before now, it may be, have sat 
 down paralyzed before evils which we seemed 
 powerless to surmount, before habits which 
 we had failed to eradicate, beaten in spite 
 
132 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 of ourselves, and at last acquiescing in a lower 
 standard, thinking the higher life to be im¬ 
 possible, perhaps undesirable, yet haunted by 
 the idea that we had failed of the highest, and 
 were maimed in our powers. Surely the 
 citizenship of Heaven, the presence and the 
 inspiration of Heaven, ought to make itself 
 felt here. “Is it lawful for you to scourge a 
 man that is a Roman, and uncondemned ? ” 
 This is what a Roman citizen might say. “ Is 
 it lawful for you to scourge a citizen of 
 Heaven, and uncondemned ? ” This is what a 
 Christian may say. All around us and about 
 us, did we but feel it, is the protection of 
 Heaven. There is no divided empire here. 
 God has not ceded his rights in certain pro¬ 
 vinces and departments of human life. God 
 does not say to a man, “ You were born bad, 
 you have lived bad, and in all human pro¬ 
 bability you will die bad ; you are the victim 
 of hereditary contagion of sin. You cannot 
 help yourself, and I cannot help you.” No, 
 God has not resigned His empire over the 
 mysteries of transmitted life. The contagion 
 has been noted, and the remedy has been 
 planned. The transmission of characteristics 
 and the transmission of taint has been seized in 
 His hands, and made the basis of spiritual 
 transformation. God does not say to a man, 
 
 ‘ I can do nothing for you ; you are living in 
 
THE CITIZENSHIP OF HEAVEN 133 
 
 a barbarous region, where you have no chance 
 of development, where the atmosphere is evil 
 and the contagion wholly poisonous, where 
 only evil can spring up, and only evil thrive, 
 and only evil survive to the end.’ He has not 
 surrendered His empire over the barbarous 
 regions of the earth. As if to show us from 
 time to time how wide is the extent of the 
 atmosphere of Heaven, He shows us a saintly 
 life shining out in the wreck of a moral 
 avalanche, or thrusting its head like a 
 flower through the snow. It is here, indeed, 
 that God raises the hardy sons of His 
 empire with an endurance and force of 
 character which results from heavenly influ¬ 
 ence acting on adverse circumstances ; it 
 is here that He raises His heroes, as of 
 old He raised His judges out of the tribe 
 nearest to and most threatened by the enemy. 
 No, God cannot yield any part of His empire 
 to a specious fatalism. God cannot suffer that 
 men should reproach His justice and love with 
 a cruel predestination to eternal loss because 
 He has planted His citizens amidst adverse 
 surroundings. This is to return to the barest 
 Calvinism. Ah, my brethren, do not listen 
 to the pleadings of slavish impotence. The 
 child of God, wherever he may be, is free— 
 
 “ Our wills are ours, we know not how, 
 
 Our wills are ours to make them Thine.” 
 
134 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 When you give way to that violent temper 
 you are not the victim of a congenital passion. 
 You are a free citizen of Heaven submitting 
 to be bound where God has made you free. 
 When you fail miserably to curb your appe¬ 
 tite, and are driven along with the throng 
 under the sounding lash of Satan, you are not 
 the victim of society; you would not have 
 done better in other circumstances. The will 
 has become enslaved which God made free, 
 and the citizen of Heaven is yielding to a 
 power which has no right to enthral him. 
 Many and many a soul looks forward in impo¬ 
 tent longing for a time of freedom from over¬ 
 mastering sin. Let him listen to St. Paul— 
 “ Our citizenship is in Heaven.” No taint of 
 nature, no force of circumstances, no onslaught 
 of temptation, can overwhelm the citizen 
 of Heaven who throws himself back on his 
 citizenship and relies on his rights. There is 
 a strong government all around him, and a 
 firm protection that reaches the very utmost 
 edges of the territory of duty. There is peace, 
 we all know in Heaven. But we may also 
 know that “When a man’s ways please the 
 Lord, He maketh even his enemies to be at 
 peace with him.” 1 Seat the will firmly on the 
 throne, and trust in the Presence of God. And 
 then even an evil taint may be transformed 
 
 1 Prov. xvi. 7. 
 
THE CITIZENSHIP OF HEAVEN 135 
 
 into power, and an evil surrounding be the 
 stern mother of a character which out of evil 
 has drawn only strength. 
 
 (3) “ Our citizenship is in Heaven ”; our view 
 instinctively widens as we grasp these words. 
 Heaven, then, is not a hermit’s cell, whither I 
 escape by resolutely turning my back on all 
 that hinders or detains me, which I reach at 
 last by casting off every encumbrance, and 
 every duty, by a feverish anxiety to secure my 
 personal salvation. Heaven is a city, and 
 Heaven has its constitution and its citizens all 
 around me. I move as one of a vast throng. 
 
 I move as one who is influenced by the lives of 
 others, and who, in turn, sheds an influence 
 out of his own life, as he fills a post in a vast 
 community, and discharges a function in a 
 great commonwealth. There it lies in the Creed, 
 practically unmeaning to most people who 
 pronounce it, virtually otiose, and redundant in 
 a document otherwise so condensed—“I believe 
 in the communion of saints.” How seldom we 
 pause to think of what we owe to the past; if 
 we think of the men of the past at all it is to 
 smile at their maimed life and their imperfect 
 ideas, their crude civilisation, their feeble 
 grasp upon the treasures of life. But what 
 we owe to the past, daily and hourly, who 
 shall say? The very Creed which we utter 
 was hammered out by men who had reached 
 
136 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 its truth in their own experience, and never 
 rested until they had made it explicit, using 
 themselves all the stored-up riches of the past, 
 so that “ the doctrine of the Trinity was the 
 synthesis and summary of all that was highest 
 in the Hebrew and Hellenic conception of God 
 fused into union by the electric touch of the 
 Incarnation. What a debt do we owe to the 
 past again in those who did not think of this 
 island of ours as merely a place to plunder, 
 but a region to be evangelised with the good 
 news of salvation! What a debt we owe 
 to the great men who have made this king¬ 
 dom what it is, who built us churches, who 
 endowed our holy Religion with their money 
 foi ever, who adorned it with the beauty of a 
 good life ! What a debt we owe to that cloud 
 of witnesses drawn up from the rapid river 
 of life, its stagnant pools, its foul marshes, 
 until they became the glory of the firmament 
 of the Christian Church ! 
 
 If we paused to see how many lives and 
 influences act upon our own character alone, 
 we should see how great is the company which 
 surrounds us now in the citizenship of Heaven. 
 Education opens for us a door to the great 
 minds of the world, of the past and present, 
 who being dead yet speak to us in books, or 
 who, living and unknown to us, are yet with 
 us in their writings. The influence of books 
 
THE CITIZENSHIP OF HEAVEN 137 
 
 alone might shed around us a very atmosphere 
 of Heaven, and prevent us from ever feeling 
 lonely and forsaken. While we are painfully 
 conscious of the encroachments that Satan is 
 ever making here, in infidel books, in immoral 
 books, in books which destroy moral dignity, 
 frivolous, worthless, degrading, in the almost 
 limitless company to which education has 
 introduced us, it is our own fault if we fail 
 to surround ourselves with the company 
 which speaks the dignified, stately language 
 of Heaven. And if education brings us the 
 companionship of books, the mind can also 
 give us the inspiration of example. The 
 Church has her calendar of saints who have 
 passed through the same scenes as those 
 through which we are passing, and out of the 
 same passions and the same temptations have 
 produced, by the grace of God, the dignity 
 of a saintly life. The world has its heroes, 
 who have made tradition, its philanthropists, 
 who have consecrated benevolence, its 
 pioneers, and explorers, and inventors, who 
 have developed its resources. The good life 
 is not the lonely contest we are sometimes 
 tempted to think it, not the mere struggling 
 through the waves to the unknown shore, 
 on a thin plank of life, saved out of the full 
 ship from which we have tossed pleasure after 
 pleasure, the wheat and the tackling, and our 
 
138 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 very self, in order to be saved. The com¬ 
 munion of saints is an influence all around us, 
 it is Heaven begun on earth ; only it is in¬ 
 cumbent on us to make the good life more 
 a present power, to let our light shine before 
 men, that they may see our good works, and 
 glorify our Father which is in Heaven. If we 
 feel lonely, there are others lonely too; every 
 good life fearlessly lived, makes it easier for 
 some other life to glorify God. When we 
 approach God it is as “ Our Father,” and 
 we ask God to have mercy upon us, not upon 
 me. It is a thing to labour for, and live for, to 
 make the signs of God’s kingdom, its cries of 
 victory, and its shouts of triumph, its voices of 
 blessing, and its beautiful strains just as 
 prominent as the shouts of ribaldry, and the 
 roar of vice, the hideousness and the course- 
 ness and the ugliness of sin, which make the 
 citizen of Heaven now seem but a stranger and 
 a pilgrim in an alien world. Heaven is worth 
 living for, but Heaven is no dream of a sick 
 man who has lost, or of a prisoner who has 
 failed, or of a visionary who cannot enjoy 
 life, Heaven is around us and about us now, 
 and when we die, the earth will fall away from 
 us like a jealous curtain which has hid some 
 grand beauty ; and Paradise will lead us into 
 the full enjoyment of the perfect Vision. God 
 makes up the beauty and joy of Heaven, and 
 
THE CITIZENSHIP OF HEAVEN 139 
 
 God is here to be found at the end of the 
 avenues of worship, and at the end of every 
 path of true beauty, which ends in Him. The 
 absence of evil is a negative joy of Heaven ; it 
 means the omnipotence of the hand of God, 
 and that hand is omnipotent here. 
 
 Heaven is filled with the glorious cloud of 
 saints, and is rich in the citizenship of the 
 blessed. Here, too, consciously or uncon¬ 
 sciously, each man moves onwards, formed and 
 fashioned by the countless influences of many 
 lives. Do we hope at last to go to Heaven? 
 If we will but “ find God,” we are there 
 already. 
 
VII 
 
 THE KING 
 
VII 
 
 THE KING 
 
 A Sermon Preached in S. Paul’s 
 Cathedral in August, 1902. 
 
 “ God save tlie King.” — 1 Sam. x. 3. 
 
 It is difficult while passing through stirring 
 events to estimate them at their true import¬ 
 ance. We cannot get the right historical 
 perspective, because we stand too close to the 
 mountains and valleys through which we are 
 journeying ; and so it has been that not un- 
 frequently the actors in some of the greatest 
 dramas of history have been unconscious of 
 the significance of the acts which they were 
 performing. So we read of the disciples of 
 our Lord, who took part in the historical 
 scenes of Palm Sunday, “ These things under¬ 
 stood not His disciples at the first: but when 
 Jesus was glorified, then remembered they 
 that these things were written of Him, and 
 
 143 
 
144 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 that they had done these things unto Him.” 1 
 Our Blessed Lord is constrained to impress 
 upon His followers the importance of events 
 in which they were participators, and whose 
 significance they might easily misunderstand 
 when He says, “ Blessed are the eyes which 
 see the things that ye see: for I tell you, that 
 many prophets and kings 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.” 2 No one, however, 
 who thinks at all is likely to forget the scenes 
 through which we have been passing this 
 year. It does not need a great deal of 
 historical acumen to see that the Coronation 
 of King Edward VII. of England will stand 
 out even in our remarkable national history 
 as an event of peculiar and pathetic import¬ 
 ance. We have been accused by a friendly, if 
 somewhat cynical, critic of applying to our¬ 
 selves as a nation all the promises of favour 
 and the dignity of responsibility which God 
 bestowed on His chosen people, the Jews, in 
 the days of their faithfulness and trial. It 
 would be strange if we had reaped no benefit 
 from our national study of and veneration 
 for the Bible ; and without claiming for 
 this country that it enjoys the privilege of 
 being a nation dear to God, and a direct heir 
 1 S. John xii, 16. 2 S. Luke x. 23, 24. 
 
THE KING 
 
 145 
 
 of His promises, yet we have learned to read 
 in the warnings and punishments, in the 
 blessings and promises which He gave to the 
 chosen people of old, the signs of God’s 
 Presence and the interposition of His hand in 
 national events. We have learned that 
 nations, as well as individuals, live in His 
 sight charged with responsibilities for which 
 they will be judged. We have learned that 
 national vices are followed by national 
 punishment; we have learned that national 
 neglect of religion is likely to precede a 
 national downfall. And so we have felt in the 
 great disappointment which fell on us in the 
 early summer something more than a dis¬ 
 location of plans which spoiled the pleasure of 
 all, and was of serious consequence to many. 
 We have learned to see in it the interposition 
 of God. Everything was ready for the Coro¬ 
 nation but ourselves. And God in His love 
 has interposed, until we learned by greater 
 humility and seriousness how to take our 
 part in the solemn plighting of troth between 
 the King and his people, in the great con¬ 
 secration of our Sovereign to God, so that we 
 could learn that the title with which we 
 honour our monarchs is no vain and insignifi¬ 
 cant form of words, but that our anointed 
 Sovereign may be called without impropriety, 
 “ our most religious and gracious King.” 
 
 11 
 
146 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 My brethren, if the Coronation which God 
 Almighty has now allowed us to witness was 
 shorn somewhat of its outward magnificence, 
 we cannot doubt that it gained wonderfully in 
 deep spiritual solemnity. A king whom God 
 has restored to us from the jaws of death was 
 crowned in the presence of his people, who 
 had asked him from the Lord, and who believed 
 that God had been gracious unto their prayers ; 
 and, therefore, it is well surely, at a time like 
 this, that we should once more remind our¬ 
 selves of the real meaning of the ceremony of 
 Coronation, in which every inhabitant of this 
 Empire is directly concerned. Archaeologists 
 will tell us of the great antiquity and religious 
 significance of the rites of sacring. Historians 
 will help us to link the present to the past. 
 Cynics will tell us that the Coronation is a 
 survival of obsolete ideas, and that the whole 
 nation is greater than any one monarch. The 
 foolish and light-hearted will bid us congratu¬ 
 late ourselves that we have seen an interest¬ 
 ing pageant, and a brilliant if maimed display. 
 But surely as religious people, in a matter in 
 which we have seen so visibly displayed the 
 hand of God, we ought to seek for its moral 
 significance, and its religious importance, and 
 to see if we can learn to say with something 
 more than loyalty, something more permanent 
 than enthusiasm—“ God save the King.” 
 
THE KING 
 
 147 
 
 I. 
 
 What then does the person of the King 
 represent to us, clothed with all the insignia 
 and majesty of supreme greatness? What of 
 the crown, the sceptre and the orb, the sword, 
 the sacerdotal vestments, the anointing oil— 
 are they so many theatrical properties from 
 the archaeological and historical treasuries? 
 We know better than this; we know that 
 besides his personal qualities, the King is the 
 representative and embodiment of certain im¬ 
 personal and important principles, and among 
 these we reckon first in the person of the 
 King the majesty and dignity of law. He is 
 the fountain of a nation’s law, the supreme 
 embodiment of its liberty and privileges based 
 on law. In looking back over our chequered 
 history we see the fierce nature of the conflict 
 which has raged round this conception of the 
 regal office. Our King does not reign as a 
 despot in defiance of his people’s rights, but 
 as the living embodiment of all that they 
 most venerate and cling to. There are many 
 sad epitaphs to be found in our cathedrals and 
 churches, telling of quenched hopes and for¬ 
 feited ideals; there are monuments which 
 breathe still the anguish of personal sorrow 
 and which seems to tell of a life from which 
 
148 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 tlie sunshine has gone for ever. There is that 
 touching gravestone in the cloisters of West¬ 
 minster, where a broken heart pours out its 
 sorrow over the grave of a much-loved 
 daughter—“ a dear child,” so runs the simple 
 inscription. There is the famous miserimus in 
 the cloisters of Worcester, where the nameless 
 occupant of a grave, trodden by the feet of 
 passers-by, has willed that all that should be 
 known of him is his great misery. But there 
 is a sadder tomb still in that beautiful Midland 
 Cathedral, which looks across the Severn to 
 where the sun dips behind the Malvern Hills. 
 And that is the grave of King John. There 
 he lies in front of the high altar, in glory of 
 sculpture and gold, hoping to wrest a posthu¬ 
 mous protection from the wrath of God, by 
 the monk’s frock in which he is shrouded, 
 seeking the companionship of saints in his 
 death whom he despised and dishonoured in 
 his life. 
 
 There is, perhaps, none of our kings who 
 for his personal life and public dishonour is 
 more execrated. In him it was by force and 
 armed compulsion that the fount of law which 
 is represented by the idea of kingship ran in 
 proper channels, and answered to its great 
 ideals. And yet if King John were alive 
 to-day, in so far as he represented our 
 legitimate rights and liberties, we should still 
 
THE KING 
 
 149 
 
 say, “ God save the King,” because we should 
 forget the indignity of the man, in the glory 
 and beauty of the authority with which he 
 was invested. 
 
 My brethren, as children we were accus¬ 
 tomed to read history with an eye to the 
 stirring incidents of the battlefields, and the 
 struggles of kings and people in all the 
 moving incidents of the public tragedies 
 which surround a nation’s growth, and as we 
 get older we shall find that these struggles 
 lose none of their interest, they gain in 
 importance, as the conflict of liberty with 
 oppression, of order with disorder, now on 
 this side, now on that. We mark in them the 
 gradual evolution of a clearer idea of what is 
 meant by a monarch, in his supreme character 
 as the guardian and fountain of law; we see 
 the diminution by slow degrees of the idea of 
 personal irresponsible power, and the quench¬ 
 ing of the lust of greed and oppression, and 
 the emerging of the figure of dignity and 
 religion, under which a nation venerates the 
 conception of her liberty. 
 
 My brethren, have we learned yet all the 
 beauty and grandeur which lie expressed in 
 that sacred name — law? When the old 
 Greeks looked out on this magnificent universe 
 in which all things perform their ordered 
 functions, they called the world by a name 
 
150 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 which signified order, as if that were the 
 main and pervading characteristic which was 
 stamped upon its Divine mechanism. To 
 them, even more perfectly than to the Jew, 
 “ The heavens declared the glory of God, and 
 the firmament showed His handiwork.” “ The 
 invisible things of Him from the creation of 
 the world (were) clearly seen, being understood 
 by the things that were made, even His 
 eternal power and Godhead.” 1 The reign of 
 law, of perfect, unswerving law, excited their 
 veneration and awe; it was magnificent, it 
 was divine. And so we are accustomed still 
 in more intimate and hidden ways to trace 
 the action of the Holy Spirit in the regions of 
 order and discipline within the soul. The 
 Spirit of God which once moved upon the face 
 of the waters when order emerged from chaos 
 still rules over the hearts and lives of those 
 who give themselves up to His gentle guidance. 
 
 My brethren, while we honour this great 
 principle of law and order in the person of 
 our King, whom we crown and consecrate, 
 let us see to it that we honour every 
 manifestation of it in our own lives. It is a 
 sorry thing to contend for the liberty of the 
 subject, and maintain the long conflict for 
 the integrity of our laws, if at the same time 
 we are living the life of slaves, in a voluntary 
 
 1 Rom. 1. 20. 
 
THE KING 
 
 151 
 
 subjection to the tyranny of evil. The 
 struggles of the nation for freedom and for 
 liberty are parelleled in the life of many a 
 man to-day, with a very diverse issue of the 
 conflict. The supremacy of law, within the 
 circle of his own life, is the inherent birth¬ 
 right of every man. We are born free, but 
 the issue of life’s struggle too often leaves 
 us slaves. There was a pathos in the question 
 which Pilate addressed to our Blessed Lord, 
 who was brought before him, in all the 
 cruel indignities of His Passion, “Art Thou 
 a King, then ? ” 1 The Roman, with his ideas 
 of luxury and magnificence, freedom, and 
 even licence, could hardly bring himself to 
 believe in a King crowned with thorns, bound 
 with cords, and forsaken by all outward 
 insignia of royalty. And yet there reigned 
 within that stricken form the magnificent 
 supremacy which belongs to a perfect man, 
 of which Pilate knew but little and valued 
 less. My brethren, at least let us say “ God 
 save the King” with the lips of free-men. 
 Let us at least venerate the fount of law, 
 as those who know the blessings of law in 
 our inmost selves. It is a turbulent kingdom 
 which God has called upon you to rule. 
 There are fierce passions which were designed 
 to serve under your kingship, which are only 
 
 1 S. John xviii. 37. 
 
152 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 too ready to rise in rebellion and oust the 
 ruler from his throne. There sits the will, 
 on its seat of authority, guided by reason, 
 and illuminated by the spirit. Is it supreme 
 within its own domain ? There are some 
 who have lost all control over the rough 
 and tributary senses, who cower before their 
 vassal Passion, and submit their will to the 
 degradation of force. There are some who 
 have lost large portions of the domain of 
 their life, who have submitted to see fair 
 fields and flourishing territories snatched 
 away from the dominion of the will. Not 
 many hundred yards from this Cathedral 
 ther e once existed that strang’e region known 
 as Alsatia, with which the pen of the novelist 
 and the brilliant pages of Macaulay have 
 niade us familiar, that region in which the 
 king s writ did not run, the abode of criminal 
 disorder and vice. So many a man has 
 elevated his besetting sin into an Alsatia, 
 an abode of privileged misdeeds, where the 
 will gives no order, and the law of God 
 makes no challenge. 
 
 My brethren, at this Coronation time I 
 appeal for a larger and more whole-hearted 
 venei ation for law and order within the 
 kingdom of our own lives. Let us have no 
 Alsatias, no privileged sins, no times, or 
 places, or moods which are outside the 
 
THE KING 
 
 153 
 
 beneficent rule of law. Let us bring into 
 captivity every thought to the obedience of 
 Christ. And then it will be, as men who 
 know what they say, who know what law 
 is, in this world of God’s creating, who 
 know what liberty is to a people, and what 
 supremacy means to the will, that we shall 
 be able to say, “ God save the King,” and 
 recognise in an anointed King the embodi¬ 
 ment of our greatest national treasure, the 
 sacredness of law and the inviolability of our 
 liberties. 
 
 II. 
 
 The King, once more, is the representative 
 to us of our national traditions. The history 
 of the nation hangs round it like a necklace, 
 studded with glorious jewels, which represent 
 the traditions which have been worked out 
 of its long and chequered career. There are 
 memories of struggles at home and abi oad, 
 of some of which we are ashamed, of most 
 of which we are proud. We remember how, 
 in the very place where we are standing, 
 the expiring struggle of heathenism, the 
 advancing powers of Christianity, the bitter¬ 
 ness of religious and civil strife have all 
 left their mark on history. Here kings and 
 
154 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 queens have come to return thanks for 
 national mercies received. Within only the 
 last few years, we remember the thanks¬ 
 giving service for the King’s recovery from 
 the illness which threatened his life when 
 he was Prince of Wales. We, in more recent 
 times, still have seen here intercessions, 
 supplications, and thanksgivings, in times 
 of our tribulation, and in times of our wealth. 
 Nelson and Wellington lie buried in our 
 crypt, to remind us of the European struggle 
 which made such an impression on our 
 national sentiment and showed England the 
 great destiny she was called upon to fulfil. 
 Many of us can remember the horrors and 
 anxieties of the Crimean War, and the still 
 greater horrors of the Indian Mutiny. And 
 we thank God that while seldom free from 
 some form of war in some part of our 
 vast empire, God has mercifully shielded us 
 from the horrors of war in our own island. 
 The battle of Sedgemoor in Somerset, fought 
 in the Rebellion of Monmouth in the days 
 of James II., is generally regarded as the 
 last serious battle fought in our own land; 
 for which we may, indeed, thank God, when 
 we see what war means, as, for instance, to 
 the sunny plains of France in the awful 
 struggle of 1870, or in South Africa in the 
 horrors and destruction of the war now 
 
THE KING 
 
 155 
 
 happily and gloriously concluded. Through 
 long centuries of struggle, of blessings 
 received and warnings given, we do feel 
 that there has emerged a great tradition 
 which we are pledged to maintain, and of 
 which our crowned King is the personal 
 representative. We do not as a nation care 
 much for glory; it is an evanescent and 
 intoxicating sentiment which is foreign to 
 our character. We seem, on the contrary, 
 to be almost cynically indifferent to the 
 hostile criticism of our national actions, 
 which we are at the same time powerless 
 to avert. But, thank God, there has emerged 
 as the permanent tradition of our race, and 
 as the prevailing symbolism of our national 
 flag, the sense of duty. Any Englishman, 
 however humble a post he may occupy in 
 the Empire, feels that he has to maintain 
 the tradition of law and justice which we 
 have secured for ourselves at such a cost, 
 and through such long centuries of struggle. 
 The motto which is traced beneath the three 
 feathers of the Prince of Wales’s well-known 
 crest, “I serve,” may well be taken as the 
 motto of the whole nation. It is not true 
 that as a nation we are urged forward by 
 a lust of annexation, and a land-fever of 
 conquest. Those little marks of red on the 
 map of the world at least represent places 
 
156 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 where there are equal rights for all who 
 come under the protection of our flag; 
 where politically, at all events, and however 
 imperfectly, we are spelling out the lesson 
 which S. Paul, under the inspiration of God, 
 imparted to his sceptical audience at Athens : 
 “ God hath made of one blood all nations 
 of men for to dwell on all the face of the 
 earth.” 1 However we fail in its practical 
 application, however imperfect may be our 
 realisation of our responsibilities, still it is 
 something to feel that it is the great 
 tradition of our race, that England expects 
 that every man shall do his duty, and that 
 greed and injustice, where and if they exist, 
 exist only in defiance of our most cherished 
 national principles. My brethren, both 
 nations and men are the better for being the 
 guardian of a tradition. The constraining 
 force of an inherent nobility, the sacred 
 compulsion of loyalty to a tradition, are 
 immense powers for good to the nation and 
 to the individual who are influenced by them. 
 We recognise it in the national monuments 
 which we erect to keep alive the glorious 
 memories of the past; we recognise it in 
 the almost religious homage which we pay 
 to the national flag; we recognise it in the 
 devoted loyalty shown to the regimental 
 
 1 Acts xvii. 26. 
 
THE KING 
 
 157 
 
 colours, such as those which repose here in 
 this House of God, now that their work is 
 done, and only the inspiration of their 
 tradition remains. It is with a pang that 
 we see the names of noble families tarnished, 
 or a son bringing discredit on the fair name 
 of his father. Every man is better for a 
 tradition in his life. The novelist has traced 
 for us with merciless accuracy the career 
 of a man who fell from bad to worse, largely 
 because he had no tradition in his life ; who 
 never could remember the time when he 
 was not indolent and self-pleasing; who had 
 no battlefields of struggle, no records of 
 victory to help him with the strength of a 
 tradition, or the memories of outlived sorrows. 
 And so he fell, as one who is alone when he 
 falls, and who has nothing to keep him up, 
 or anything of which he should say, ‘ God 
 forbid that I should be false to my better self, 
 or betray my nobler past.’ 
 
 My brethren, if you have such traditions in 
 your life, cherish them, I beseech you. They 
 will be as much a source of strength to you 
 as the memory of his victory over the lion 
 and the bear in childhood was a strength to 
 David in his greater struggle with the giant. 
 Cherish the home memories, which are often 
 so great a tradition to Englishmen. Think 
 how often it is recorded in the history of a 
 
158 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 king’s success, or more often, alas! of his 
 failure, in the Bible, that his mother’s name 
 was this or that. Think when you are 
 tempted to forget honour and manhood, and 
 to sell your birthright for a mess of pottage, 
 of the shame and sorrow which the know¬ 
 ledge of such treachery would bring at home. 
 Think of it as a betrayal of family honour, 
 and as an impiety to some of the most sacred 
 memories of your life. Here is one of the 
 strongest ties which bind a man to purity and 
 truth, that there are prophecies which have 
 gone before on him, 1 and that he grasps at his 
 sordid pleasure only by pushing aside the 
 glory of his best tradition. There are also 
 definite religious traditions within the lives of 
 most of us which claim our loyalty and up¬ 
 hold our integrity. Days of solemn resolution 
 and especial grace, such as the day of our 
 Confirmation, days of the Son of Man with 
 all their bright glow, such as the days of our 
 Communions. To these we owe the homage 
 of loyalty, as the very framework of our 
 better existence, on which is built up that self 
 which is eternal, and the life which is to last 
 for ever. But every one who is not a mere 
 creature of circumstances, tossed to and fro 
 on the rough waves of the world, has his own 
 special traditions, which will stand him in 
 
 1 1 Tim. i. 18. 
 
THE KING 
 
 159 
 
 good stead in the battle of life, and will help 
 him in the evolution of character. Under the 
 name of principle we all of us recognise with 
 an instinctive homage a tradition which it is 
 only honourable for a man to maintain. A 
 temptation to a degraded sensuality loses half 
 its malignity when it comes to a man, not as 
 an isolated experience in a multiform career, 
 but as a blow aimed at a cherished principle 
 of life and a uniform course of action. It is 
 an immense strength for a man to be able to 
 say to the enticer, ‘I never have yielded to 
 that kind of temptation yet, and I am not 
 going to begin now.’ It is an immense sup¬ 
 port to a life of integrity, to be able to meet 
 the specious appeal to a supposed profit in 
 dishonesty by an honest repudiation which 
 can say, ‘ I have never done a dishonest action 
 yet, nor told a lie, and it would be contrary to 
 all my principles to do so.’ How is a good 
 habit formed, but by a constant appeal to a 
 uniform tradition, working in one direction, 
 which does not depend on whim or caprice, 
 but on a definite course deliberately chosen 
 and consistently maintained, until it becomes 
 a second nature? There is a strength in 
 tradition, which the powers of evil know, 
 even if we do not, as they thrust in face of 
 what the man may become, the numbing 
 influence of what he has been, and what he is. 
 
160 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 It is folly to ignore so potent an influence in 
 making or marring our life. One of our 
 greatest national treasures is the glorious 
 tradition which is the heritage of our race, 
 and therefore once more, as the depositary of 
 that tradition, and as the upholder of its 
 integrity, we say of him whose Coronation 
 we acclaim to-day, “ God save the King.” 
 
 III. 
 
 But we must not forget that human nature 
 being what it is, and our English nation being 
 what it is, there has gathered round the 
 sentiment of our loyalty a depth of personal 
 feeling for the individual sovereign. Not 
 officially only, but personally, out of respect 
 and affection for the reigning monarch; where 
 that has not been made impossible, we have 
 loved to say, “ God save the King.” 
 
 We, none of us, are likely to forget the 
 great personal devotion which all classes of 
 Englishmen and Englishwomen displayed 
 towards our late Queen. Her throne, if any, 
 was reared up in the hearts of her people. 
 We have read of also, and can appreciate, the 
 extraordinary devotion which burned in the 
 hearts of many at all events of his subjects, 
 towards the ill-fated Charles I. English 
 
THE KING 
 
 161 
 
 people have been proud of such a Queen as 
 Elizabeth, or have admired the prowess of 
 a Richard I., or even the undaunted determi¬ 
 nation of a William the Conqueror; and 
 certainly that heart would be cold indeed 
 which refused to go out in personal affection 
 to the touching appeal which the King has 
 made to the sympathies of his people in the 
 letter which he has addressed to them on 
 his recovery from a dangerous sickness so 
 courageously borne. Nor is this a merely 
 sentimental affection. We know how 
 earnestly our King has always laboured for, 
 as he has always deeply sympathised with, 
 the cause of the sick and afflicted in our 
 hospitals. It is a sad and humiliating page of 
 our history which Sir Walter Besant, in his 
 preface to “ Suffering London,” has put before 
 us in all its naked significance, which treats 
 of the suppression of our hospitals in this city 
 of ours, where old institutions of mercy and 
 love were ruthlessly pillaged and their 
 revenues dispersed, in one of the most dis¬ 
 graceful epochs of our history, and private 
 greed left London bereft of any sort of 
 institution for the relief of our suffering poor. 
 We shall not soon forget the efforts which 
 our present Sovereign has made in restoring 
 and re-endowing our present hospitals, and in 
 bringing to bear the personal influence of his 
 
 12 
 
162 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 great name on their permanent improvement. 
 It is not a little significant that his people, in 
 seeking a present for his Coronation most 
 near to his heart, should have agreed that 
 this present should take the form of a gift of 
 money to the London Hospitals. Here is a 
 trait in our Sovereign’s character which, with 
 many others, will add a personal strain to 
 the acclamation with which we hail him as 
 Sovereign. But we feel now, even more, that 
 he has risen from his sick-bed bound to us by 
 closer ties of sympathy, and with even greater 
 claims to our tenderness and personal affection. 
 As Christians, we have been taught to believe 
 that suffering is a special badge of favour 
 from God, bestowed on those whom the King 
 delights to honour. And we welcome him 
 now in the dignity of suffering, and in the 
 appeal of his late weakness, as one who, from 
 personal experience, can sympathise, even 
 more than he did before, with that great 
 majority of his subjects who are called upon 
 to suffer; and while he asks us to work 
 together with God in doing all that we can to 
 alleviate pain and combat sickness in spread¬ 
 ing the advantages of the scientific treatment 
 of disease, he also appeals to us by that which 
 has become one of the traditions of his royal 
 race, which came to us as a message from the 
 bed of death of a brave Emperor, whom God 
 
THE KING 
 
 163 
 
 had called upon to endure one of the severest 
 forms of bodily disease, “ Learn to suffer 
 without complaint.” 
 
 My brethren, in crowning our King, we 
 crown the majesty of law, we crown the 
 greatness of our tradition, and the glory of 
 our race, but we also crown one who has 
 mounted the steps of his throne, straight 
 from the shaping tenderness of the loving 
 hand of God. 
 
 And, therefore, with all our hearts we say : 
 “ God save the King.” 
 
VIII 
 
 THE GOD OF GLORY 
 
VIII 
 
 THE GOD OF GLORY 
 Preached in S. Paul’s in Advent, 1901. 
 
 “ Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye 
 everlasting doors: and the King of Glory shall come in.”— 
 Psa. xxiv. 9. 
 
 It has been said that in our modern world 
 God is very seldom spoken of as beautiful. 
 The old Jews, whose religion so many now 
 affect to despise, reposed on the beauty, the 
 majesty, the glory of God. We are afraid of 
 God, we hope to get certain advantages from 
 Him. We talk sometimes of His love and of 
 His providence. But our hearts seldom follow 
 our lips when we sing, “ Thou art the King of 
 Glory, O Christ.” “Thou art the everlasting 
 Son of the Father.” “We worship Thee, we 
 glorify Thee, we give thanks to Thee for Thy 
 great glory.” Think, dear brethren, can you 
 
168 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 enter into the magnificence of that great hymn 
 which we are singing through Advent, “ 0 all 
 ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord, 
 praise Him and magnify Him for ever ” ? 
 Listen how choir joins itself to choir—the 
 heaven with its thousand songs, earth with its 
 melodies, the roar of the thunder, the murmur 
 of the wind, the rustle of the grass, the clear 
 piping of the birds, the lowing of the cattle, 
 the song of the redeemed, the shout of the 
 warrior, things animate and inanimate, all men 
 and all things turned towards the Lord, to 
 praise Him for what He is, to adore Him 
 because he is glorious, to magnify him because 
 He is King above all. The King of Glory 
 passes on His way, and the flowers spring up 
 beneath His feet, and the creature lifts its 
 drooping head, and man forgets his aches and 
 pains as he swings his crippled limbs into the 
 path of progress, he forgets to fear, he even 
 forgets to beg. God is terrible, God is good, 
 but God is glorious. “ 0 come, let us praise 
 Him and magnify Him for ever.” 
 
 “ But what do you mean ? ” says the practical 
 man; “ put your poetry into prose, and tell me 
 what precise utility there is in praise. I am a 
 plain business man. I cannot stop my work to 
 sing. I have a hard battle to fight within and 
 without. Let me look to duty, and let others 
 talk of glory. I have a soul to be saved, and 
 
THE GOD OF GLORY 
 
 169 
 
 no breath to waste on rhapsodies.” And yet 
 from end to end the Bible meets him with 
 glory and praise and honour; the Church 
 takes up a large portion of his Sunday 
 devotions with praise. The glory of the Lord 
 streams out, as of old, and floods the sanctuary. 
 Has our practical friend got hold of a right 
 antithesis? Is the useful one thing and the 
 beautiful another ? Has beauty no use ? Is 
 praise the occupation of the idle? And is 
 glory a revelation for the unemployed ? 
 
 “The King of Glory.” It is a title given to 
 our Blessed Lord, the incarnate King, which 
 we can feel rather than describe ; but we re¬ 
 cognise that it is too prominently and too 
 frequently put before us that we should neglect 
 it or refuse to try to understand it. What is 
 glory? And what advance have we in the 
 term on simple beauty? Is it a radiance 
 which plays about beauty as joy is a radiance 
 which plays about happiness ? Is it an expres¬ 
 sion of inner life and force which streams out 
 and floods the outward form? The flowers 
 are glorious in their living beauty, the sun is 
 glorious in its fount of ever-kindling light, 
 art is glorious if it reflects inward beauty of 
 thought and design. Aaron’s garments were 
 meant to be for glory and for beauty. Heroic 
 actions are glorious when they shed forth a 
 lustre of greatness, or are lit up with the re- 
 
170 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 fleeted praise of right-thinking men ; and God 
 is glorious because He is the Fountain of un¬ 
 created light, because in all His works and 
 words and dealings with the children of men 
 there shines forth the expression of His good¬ 
 ness and beauty. And God is also glorious 
 because we pour out upon Him all the wealth 
 of our homage and praise. All that is great 
 and noble and beautiful reflects the power of 
 Almighty God. So that we say, “ O God, how 
 wonderful art Thou in Thy works ” ; “ O Lord, 
 how glorious are Thy works; Thy thoughts 
 are very deep.” Look at the grass beneath 
 our feet, the worm which crawls on the ground, 
 the flowers, the sky, man in his wonderful 
 mechanism of life, wherever God has put His 
 hand there is glory; and we shall find that 
 glory and beauty are not the useless things 
 which our practical friend took them to be. “ To 
 this constitution of things outward,” it has been 
 said, “the constitution and mind of man, 
 deranged although they be, still answer from 
 within. Down to the humblest condition of life, 
 down to the lowest and most backward grade 
 of civilisation, the nature of man craves, and 
 seems as it were to cry aloud, for some thing, 
 some sign or token at the least of what is 
 beautiful, in some of the many spheres of 
 mind or sense. This is it that makes the 
 Spitalfields weaver, amidst the mirky streets 
 
THE GOD OF GLORY 
 
 171 
 
 of London, train canaries and bullfinches to 
 sing to him at his work, that fills with flower¬ 
 pots the windows of the poor, that leads the 
 peasant of Pembrokeshire to paint the outside 
 of his cottage in the gayest colours, that 
 prompts in the humblest classes of women a 
 desire for some little personal ornament.” It 
 is the work of sin to eradicate the love for 
 beauty. The devil knows the power which 
 lingers round the traces of the footsteps of the 
 King of Glory, and he blots them out with 
 ugliness, and smears them with foulness, 
 that we may forget Him whose name is the 
 King of Glory. 
 
 But that we may bring these thoughts closer 
 home to our practical life, let us rather look at 
 the truth which underlies the words of the old 
 Scotch Catechism, “ What is the chief end of 
 man ? Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and 
 to enjoy Him for ever.” “ The King of Glory ” 
 appeals to His creatures for more glory. The 
 lower creation reflects God unconsciously and 
 sheds forth His glory. Man, made in the 
 image and likeness of God, dowered with 
 free-will and the power to choose, is called 
 upon to do this consciously, as a sign that 
 he is taking his place at the head of creation, 
 and that he is working together with God in 
 all the fulness of his powers, in all the capa¬ 
 cities of his being. 
 
172 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 I. 
 
 And, first of all, the King of Glory asks for 
 the glory of our worship. It is not an easy 
 matter to bring men to realise that this is 
 due to God from them. Men will come some¬ 
 times to pray, they will come sometimes to be 
 taught; but how few will come purely and 
 simply to worship ? They will come to 
 church, that is, to get, but they will not come 
 to give. But there is a mystery in beauty, in 
 itself; in flowers which no human eye sees, no 
 insect touches, in the buried magnificence only 
 to be extricated by the microscope, hidden for 
 ages from all human eye, and now only known 
 to a few. So, when the cry of the world 
 mounts up to God, when the needs of the poor, 
 the woes of the suffering, the wail of the 
 oppressed, the misery of the sinner, are all 
 powerfully pleading their prayers for aid, 
 when the ante-room of the throne of God is 
 crowded with suffering humanity and all 
 the needs of a pain-stricken world; if we 
 are tempted to ask, ‘ Why still these groans 
 with alleluias, or stifle these pleadings with 
 praise; why think now of the King of Glory 
 when our whole heart goes out to the Lord 
 of tender compassion ? ’ God would still seem 
 to say, ‘ Give Me your worship,’ for worship 
 
THE GOD OF GLORY 
 
 173 
 
 surely is the highest form of assent to His 
 sovereign will; the worship of man, in its 
 measure, is what the ceaseless hum of creation 
 fulfilling its allotted task is in the great 
 Benedicite of the world’s praise ; “ Amen, so be 
 it,” “ Alleluia,” we rejoice when we do it, 
 and praise the name of God because it is so 
 comfortable. And even more than this, we 
 offer glory to the King of Glory. He who 
 has given us the mouth to praise Him is 
 entitled to a share of its praises; He who has 
 given us the power to execute works of beauty 
 is entitled to a share of our efforts. We some¬ 
 times hear a great deal said against anything 
 like forms and ceremonies in the worship of 
 Almighty God. Certainly a religion which 
 consists merely of forms and ceremonies 
 offered in a mechanical way by a living 
 machine is comparable only to the Buddhist s 
 prayer-wheel, or any other form of unintelli¬ 
 gent worship. But when we consider what 
 God is, when we think of the King of Glory in 
 all His beauty, when we think of the wise men 
 in the Gospel tracking the desert simply to fall 
 down and worship the new-born King, while 
 they open their treasures and present unto 
 Him gifts, gold, and frankincense, and myrrh, 
 we feel there is a place for worship which is 
 not prayer, and for praise which is not sup¬ 
 plication, for beauty offered to the God of 
 
174 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 beauty by those who give Him of their best. 
 And here, perhaps, we may pause to correct 
 a common mistake, and mitigate a frequent 
 disappointment. It used to be thought in 
 some quarters—it is thought so still—that 
 beautiful accessories in worship add something 
 to the greater easiness of approach to Almighty 
 God, that he who finds it difficult to approach 
 God in simple prose may be helped to 
 approach Him by music ; he who fails to reach 
 Him with the understanding may find it easier 
 to approach by the help of the senses and the 
 things which strike the eye and ear. To a 
 certain extent it may be so, but the fuller the 
 worship which we offer to God, the more 
 difficult in reality it becomes to approach Him 
 worthily; for forms and ceremonies and ritual 
 are the opening of another treasure which 
 demands its own carefulness and its own 
 preparation. And he who trusts to be elevated 
 in spite of himself by the accessories of worship 
 finds himself instead struggling with his own 
 weakness, and left cold and unenlightened in 
 the barrenness of a devotion into which the 
 heart has never entered. Ah! dear friends, 
 we are unlike the King of Glory in this; our 
 glory adds nothing or little to the radiancy of 
 His majesty, for whereas if we search into the 
 things of God we find more and more hidden 
 beauties, if we search heneath our worship we 
 
THE GOD OF GLORY 
 
 175 
 
 find so much that is unworthy; the worship 
 of the life to which the conduct gives the lie, 
 bright and glorious words where the heart is 
 cold and irresponsive ; things which pretend 
 to be beautiful, but which are disfigured by 
 sin. How little glory there is in our worship, 
 how little of the inner radiancy penetrating 
 through to the expression, how little of the 
 glory and the beauty which belong to the 
 homage of free men, who give willingly of 
 their best to God, Who giveth all. No wonder 
 that the idea of worship has so largely died out 
 amongst us, where formalism is so easy and 
 true homage so difficult; but we must never 
 rest until we have risen above the conception 
 of many people saying their prayers in public, 
 to the grand conception of one united con¬ 
 gregation joining in the glorious worship of 
 the glorious King. 
 
 II. 
 
 But not only in our worship, but in our 
 work, must we offer glory to the King of 
 Glory. Remember, the world expects from us 
 decency, but God expects glory. God looks 
 not at our work only, but at the way in which 
 we do our work. Look at the mountain 
 valley invaded by some modern industry ; the 
 
176 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 trees which clothe the mountain side are cut 
 away, the sky is blackened, the river is 
 poisoned, the fish die, the grass withers— 
 what does it matter? Man turns out his 
 machines by the dozen day by day, his coffers 
 are filled, his trade increases. Is not this a 
 the way in which we too often push 
 our individual work in disregard of the glory 
 of God ? Sad it is to say so, sad that it should 
 be so, but it is true that free man is too often 
 the one blot in the beauty of creation, the one 
 discord in the harmony of the world’s hymn 
 of praise. What an ugly thing, for instance, 
 is selfishness. Here is a man pushing his way, 
 regardless of all the little amenities that 
 make life happy and beautiful. He goes to 
 his business in the City; as long as he is 
 comfortable, and they are punctual in their 
 duties, it does not matter to him whether the 
 clerks are prosperous or in sore distress. He 
 has no little word of condolence for their 
 sorrows, no word of sympathy for their joys. 
 He has pushed his way down to the office, he 
 will push his way through the business of the 
 day. One word of caution might have saved 
 a falling career ; it is not given. One word of 
 kindliness might have eased a troubled heart; 
 it is withheld. In his paper-basket lie the 
 appeals for help ; they are many and trouble¬ 
 some. What do the factory-girls want with 
 
THE GOD OF GLORY 177 
 
 holidays ?—London is the best place for them. 
 What do boys want with sea-side camps ?—it 
 will soon be impossible to get any boys for the 
 office. What need is there for penitentiary 
 work?—things always have been so, and 
 always will be so; he is not going to waste 
 his money. He does not approve of Missions; 
 he thinks the East-end Fund has too much 
 money. Or, perhaps, he can take a virtuous 
 line for once, and say he conscientiously dis¬ 
 approves of it. To withhold a subscription 
 is not always popular, to refuse to subscribe 
 on principle may add to his dignity. His 
 basket gets piled higher and higher, many of 
 his letters follow in the same direction. It is 
 quite safe to say he has many claims, it would 
 not be quite so safe to say how many of those 
 claims are satisfied. The world touches him 
 at countless points. The atmosphere, clouded 
 with business, is relieved by no gleam of 
 benevolence. The stream of evil, as it flows 
 by him, is unflooded with any purifying- 
 influence. Selfishness has scorched and dried 
 up all within its reach, and he goes home to 
 his house still wrapped in self, no smile to 
 make home bright, no welcome for children, 
 no sympathy for the daily burden of those 
 who labour to keep home happy. His balance 
 at the bank rises, and heaven is black, and 
 earth is scorched, and the tenderer virtues 
 
 13 
 
178 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 wither and die. Depend upon it, dear 
 brethren, it is an offence against the God of 
 Glory to forget all the amenities and bright¬ 
 nesses of life. If Dante put the melancholy 
 in hell, we must feel, at least, that those who 
 destroy joy and tenderness with the gloom of 
 their selfishness are no fit attendants in the 
 train of the King of Glory, whose work is 
 beautiful, and whose footsteps are glorious. 
 Selfishness, of course, has darker patches of 
 evil than this, which it leaves upon the world. 
 The King of Glory goes upon His way, 
 surrounded with those who excel in strength, 
 who have conquered, with those whom His 
 bounty has helped, His mercy has spared, His 
 grace has elevated. There is a career of 
 selfishness which is marked by degradation, 
 and littered with ruin, and branded with 
 death; the selfishness which thrives on the 
 degradation of another’s sin. It is a sad and 
 awful sight to see great patches of God’s 
 machinery thrown out of gear, work crippled, 
 and lives ruined by the selfishness of sinners. 
 Ah ! my brethren, if there be any here, this 
 Advent, who is trading on another’s sinfulness, 
 who, reckless of souls for whom Christ died, 
 seeks to draw after him companions of his 
 guilt, to ease the darkness of his sin-swept 
 soul, to cheer with company the intolerable 
 burden of his guilt—if there be any who 
 
THE GOD OF GLORY 
 
 179 
 
 thinks to gratify his own selfishness at the 
 price of another’s soul—let him pause and 
 think that in addition to the awful penalties 
 which attach to his action, he must also 
 reckon on this—that he is offending against 
 beauty, against the glory of this world of 
 God’s creating, which His own hands have 
 made to reflect His majesty and do honour to 
 His truth. Those black scars of sin which 
 disfigure the world, those miserable wastes of 
 creation which show what man has made of 
 man, are the scandal and the shame of our 
 boasted enlightenment, and progress is no 
 progress which leaves untouched this deadly 
 selfishness, and which turns instruction itself 
 into a deadlier implement for robbing a man 
 of his very soul, if it can do anything to add 
 to the ghastly pile of a corrupt selfishness. 
 
 Surely, dear brethren, when there are so 
 many spasmodic and ill-advised efforts being 
 made to add to the beauty of the world, in 
 our public monuments, in house decoration, in 
 street architecture ; when there is a craze for 
 the aesthetic and the beautiful, when men 
 think that a veil of poetry is a sufficient cloak 
 for nastiness, or the sacred name of art a con¬ 
 donation for offences against moral purity, it 
 is somewhat ironical that there should be so 
 little care for the beautiful in language, in 
 expression, in subjects which are brought 
 
180 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 before the public eye. It would be a startling 
 revelation, I should expect, to many of us, if, 
 after all these years of instruction, we could 
 see the use that is made by many of our 
 children of the great acquirements of reading 
 and writing. It would be a startling revela¬ 
 tion if we knew the habitual topics of conver¬ 
 sation with large portions, not the lowest, of 
 the population, and the sort of language 
 habitually used. No one can walk many 
 yards in one of our public streets, or even in 
 a country village, without hearing words 
 apparently only chosen because they are vile 
 and ugly, which mean nothing except that 
 they sound foul, which are a sort of devilish 
 converse to the flowers and beauty in which 
 God covers His work, so much foulness 
 thrown off by the mouth which speaks out of 
 the abundance of the evil heart. I ventured 
 to speak plainly from this place in the 
 summer about the scandal of vile pictures 
 exhibited to children in public places in 
 return for their poor pence. They are, I am 
 told, even worse than I supposed them to be; 
 and the only defence of those which are not 
 absolutely vile amounts to this, that they are 
 only morally ugly. There are publications 
 being sold openly to-day, and in respectable 
 places, which are an outrage on elementary 
 decency. Are we treating God fairly, I ask, 
 
THE GOD OF GLORY 
 
 181 
 
 dear brethren, in thus allowing or con¬ 
 tributing to this overflowing of ungodliness ? 
 Remember that with all this there is the 
 craving for unhealthy sensation, the appa¬ 
 rently psychological attraction in listening to 
 the discussion of interesting problems, as they 
 are called, which lie well over the borderland 
 of moral health. Remember, also, there is a 
 constant danger of clipping the current coin 
 of language until its beauty and value perish; 
 there is a danger in discarding all efforts 
 after style as unreal and unmeaning. It is a 
 common complaint that few real letters are 
 written to-day worthy of the name. There is 
 a constant danger of casting away refine¬ 
 ments of manner and courtesy in behaviour 
 and the niceties of propriety, all which mean 
 so much, as a ritual of beauty which God has 
 put round society, as a safeguard against the 
 approach of grave evils which are always 
 near, and always ready to burst in and over¬ 
 whelm public manners and public morals. In 
 a world where we worship the King of Glory 
 we can afford to despise no single shred of 
 beauty where we find it; we owe it to God, 
 and we need it for ourselves. For God draws 
 us by beauty to His own loveliness, and lures 
 us from the foulness of sin to the majesty of 
 His own great glory. 
 
182 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 III. 
 
 For not only in the outward setting of our 
 life, but much more in our inward character, 
 we must ever seek to be followers of the King 
 of Glory. When S. John in his vision of the 
 blessed in heaven is asked by one of the 
 elders, “ What are these which are arrayed in 
 white robes and whence came they ? ” he says, 
 as hardly able to answer the question or to 
 unravel the mystery of this dazzling throng, 
 “ Sir, thou knowest.” 1 “ It is rather for you to 
 tell me than for me to tell you the secret of a 
 glory so strange and unapproachable.” So we 
 feel that in human nature there is a wealth of 
 possibility, a depth of glory, with which it is 
 able to answer to God’s creative love and add 
 a fresh lustre to the glory of the King. What 
 a wonderful thing it is to live, to enjoy a 
 human life at all! As the soul newly created 
 wings its way from God to take up its human 
 habitation in the body prepared for it, what a 
 wonderful life opens out! There it stands 
 between two worlds! With the body it 
 touches all this world in which we live: 
 through the senses are brought in beauties of 
 sound, of sight, of touch, of taste and smell, 
 through the mind it links itself on with the 
 past, and to the future ; it can read the record 
 
 1 Rev. vii. 18. 
 
THE GOD OF GLORY 
 
 183 
 
 of history, it can think, and people the future 
 with images, it can fancy, it can love, it can 
 fear, it can hope and believe. Through the 
 spirit it can reach right up into heaven, all 
 God’s grace passes into it from above, and the 
 will sits within to reign, to judge, and to 
 execute. We know what a fearful thing is a 
 man or a woman who has gone wrong in 
 cruelty, in lust, in pride, or in avarice; there 
 is no animal like it in the possible depths of 
 depravity; but, also, thank God, what a 
 wonderful and glorious thing is a man who 
 goes right, in whom all things work together 
 for good. Here, again, there is nothing in 
 creation like it. "We have been allowed to 
 see from time to time the possibilities of 
 beauty in a saintly character, where have 
 been exhibited those moral beauties which 
 the King of Glory has made possible to 
 human nature. Here surely is a call to us to 
 rise to the very height of our character. We 
 too often are like men who live on lands 
 which they do not know how to cultivate, 
 who are surrounded with treasures which 
 they do not know how to unearth, or who are 
 as those who sit in front of some grand 
 instrument of music which they do not know 
 how to play. As the creations of God in 
 nature we owe to Him the beauty of our lives. 
 But He has added to the natural gifts which 
 
184 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 He has bestowed upon us the further 
 treasures of His grace. If there were some 
 spiritual microscope, as it were, by which we 
 could examine our lives, we should see the 
 wonderful place which grace occupies in them. 
 We should see how religion raises men from 
 earth to heaven, how it liberates some of that 
 glory which ought to play around the children 
 of light. We may instruct and educate, 
 cultivate and develop human nature as much 
 as we please; without religion it will remain 
 robbed of its central light, its inner beauty. 
 It will fail in that glory which it was meant 
 to give back from glory to glory, as it reflects 
 the image of God. 
 
 And even more than this. God has His 
 own special glory of character for the in¬ 
 dividual life, to be struck out by discipline 
 and the blows of chastisement. “ These are 
 they who came out of great tribulation” is 
 still the history of those glories of character 
 which we see developed around us. Here God 
 is imparting the virtue of detachment by the 
 gentle severance of ties which bind us down 
 to earth. Here the light of the eyes and the 
 joy of life is being taken away, lest human 
 affection should obscure the perfect love of 
 God. Here the lamb of the flock is being 
 taken on before, that the mother may follow 
 more easily the road which brings to heaven. 
 
THE GOD OF GLORY 
 
 185 
 
 Discipline of character, the thorn in the flesh, 
 which seems to be only the minister of Satan 
 sent to buffet, is bringing out beneath the 
 blow the radiance of character which reflects 
 Christ. 
 
 Surely a ray from the King of Glory will be 
 found to lighten up all our troubles, and 
 make glad the dark places of the earth. Just 
 as on a stormy day a shaft of light will drop 
 down from the troubled sky, and the earth 
 smiles through her tears of rain, and the 
 dripping rocks are spangled with glittering- 
 gleams, and the valleys laugh with joy, and 
 all creation gladdens beneath its touch, so 
 the glory of God lights up with its healing 
 beams the dark places of the world, where 
 trouble and sorrow lie heaviest, and the 
 problem of poverty and the squalor and sins 
 of our large towns lie with their oppressing 
 weight on the conscience and energies of the 
 Church; then out of the gloom, almost the 
 product of it, start forth the magnificent 
 examples of men and women, the brothers 
 and sisters of compassion, who, like their 
 Master before them, go about doing good. It 
 is part of the glory of Christianity which falls 
 with its enlightening beam on the sorrows of 
 the world. So, where sin has left its trail of 
 sadness, and the heart lies bleeding and 
 desolate beneath the burden of its guilt, once 
 
186 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 more there falls a ray of glory from the 
 glorious King, and penitence lights up with 
 its own bright beauty the dark places of the 
 soul where innocence has been beaten down 
 by the storm. More than all, the King of Glory 
 knows how to shed abroad, in the hearts that 
 respond to Him, that effulgence of Christian 
 power and the beauty of the higher life which 
 He came to bring. Love, joy, peace, long- 
 suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meek¬ 
 ness, temperance, send flashing back to heaven 
 the glory which streams upon them from the 
 King of perfect beauty. It may seem strange, 
 almost ironical, amidst the sin and squalor 
 and gloom of the world, to talk of glory and 
 beauty. But a moral depression is the first 
 step to a moral fall; a hopeless estimate of 
 human wickedness will check our genuine 
 enthusiasm for reformation of its many evils ; 
 a firm belief in our own moral impotence for 
 good is a sure way to lose all aspirations for 
 better things. God draws us upwards and 
 onwards by beauty; He shows us the true 
 nobility of the higher life, the true dignity of 
 work, and the glory of worship. And beauty, 
 wheresoever we see it, comes to us as a direct 
 message from God, saying, “Lift up your 
 hearts.” And we answer out of the gloom, 
 yet out of the glory which still plays around 
 the children of God— 
 
 “We lift them up unto the Lord.” 
 
THE LORD OF HOSTS 
 

IX 
 
 THE LORD OF HOSTS 
 Preached in S. Paul’s in Advent, 1901. 
 
 “ The Lord of Hosts is with us ; the God of Jacob is our 
 refuge.”— Psa. xlvi. 7. 
 
 Here is the title of Almighty God on which 
 the Psalmist seems to fall back with a sense 
 of relief, as one stricken and wounded might 
 fall back into the arms of a strong deliverer. 
 It is a sense of that repose on strength which 
 underlies the great title “ Comforter.” It is 
 the confident cry of the Creed, “ I believe 
 in God the Father Almighty.” “Strong Son 
 of God,” our own poet has said, out of the 
 anguish of a great sorrow, “ Though the earth 
 be removed, and the hills be carried into the 
 midst of the sea,” though temptation grapple 
 with us in its dread embrace, and trouble 
 topple towards us with menacing crest—still 
 
 189 
 
190 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 the eternal God is “ thy refuge, and under¬ 
 neath are the everlasting arms.” 1 
 
 The Lord of Hosts is with us. If God be 
 for us, who can be against us ? It is He 
 at whose summons all created things marshal 
 themselves like the hosts of war, and work 
 together for good, and spread out themselves 
 to be a covering to those who rest in peace 
 under the shelter of His conquering arm. 
 
 I. 
 
 “ The Lord of Hosts ’’—the Lord of Sabaoth, 
 as we know it familiarly in our Te Deum 
 is a title with which we are well acquainted 
 throughout the whole Bible. It is the war- 
 cry of the Books of Kings, and is stamped on 
 the utterances of Isaiah and the prophets; 
 in its Hebrew form it finds its way into 
 the New Testament in the Epistle to the 
 Romans and the Epistle of St. Jude, and 
 would seem to represent that idea of strength 
 especially which underlies the sovereignty 
 over things visible and invisible, all agencies, 
 all ministrations and powers ; as of a great 
 King marching to war, who is a most strong 
 tower to all them that put their trust in 
 Him, to whom all things in heaven and in 
 earth and under the earth do bow and obey. 
 
 1 Deut. xxxiii. 27. 
 
THE LORD OF HOSTS 
 
 191 
 
 It is a conception which opens up to us 
 at once such visions as were vouchsafed, for 
 instance, to Micaiah the prophet in the Book 
 of Kings, where the Lord is seen by His 
 servant sitting on His throne, and all the 
 hosts of heaven are standing at His right 
 hand and His left, from Whom go forth 
 ministers of wrath and judgment into the 
 world, and kings move where they are 
 impelled, and the arrow shot at a venture 
 is guided by an unknown hand to be the 
 weapon of destiny. It is the vision of the 
 prophet Isaiah, who sees God in His Majesty 
 adored by veiled seraphs, enthroned in glory 
 and magnified in mystery by the trembling 
 and hiding of all created things. It opens 
 up to us the door through which the inspired 
 evangelist gazed into heaven, where angels 
 pass and repass on missions of love or on 
 messages of wrath, w T here the vials of God’s 
 vengeance are stored with judgment, and 
 blessings flow forth from His hand, where 
 Churches are upheld or are removed, where 
 nations and kings are judged, and all the 
 busy life of the world is “bound by gold 
 chains about the feet of God.” “ The Lord 
 my God shall come and all the saints with 
 Thee ”; 1 “ For I am a great King, saith the 
 Lord of hosts, and My name is dreadful 
 
 1 Zech, xiv. 5. 
 
192 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 among tlie heathen.” 1 And perhaps we are 
 allowed to see that a conception such as 
 this appealed to God’s people Israel with the 
 greater force, as they realised the poverty 
 of their resources and the weakness of their 
 real position in comparison with what they 
 professed to believe as to the glory and 
 greatness of their destiny as the favoured 
 of the Lord, the peculiar people of the Most 
 High. They on that little strip of land 
 between east and west, they pressed in 
 between the great nations of the ancient 
 world, in imminent danger of being crushed ; 
 now in captivity, now restored to a maimed 
 existence—no wonder they turned to Egypt 
 for the help which they could see and ap¬ 
 preciate ; or made disgraceful compacts with 
 their enemies whose hosts could apply the 
 practical stimulus of threats and oppression. 
 
 When we think of these things we can 
 see how this war-cry, “ the Lord of Hosts,” 
 must have been not unfrequently the rallying 
 of a vanishing faith, the reassurance of a 
 well-nigh exhausted hope. “ The waves of 
 the sea are mighty and rage horribly, but 
 yet the Lord who dwelleth on high is 
 mightier.” The thought of “ the Lord of 
 Hosts ” turned the soul in upon itself in 
 face of impending danger and the gathering 
 
 1 Malachi i. 14. 
 
THE LORD OF HOSTS 
 
 193 
 
 armies of the enemy, and bade it remember 
 that they that be with us are more than 
 they that be with them, if faith be true to 
 itself and can rest on the certainty of its own 
 promises. 
 
 And this appeal is equally strong to-day. 
 At any moment, if we let ourselves go, we 
 may be tempted to imagine that the hosts 
 of evil are too many for us. It is an easy 
 thing to fold our hands in despair and 
 commit ourselves to counsels of pessimistic 
 hopelessness. ‘ I work on, but it is of no 
 good; Christianity is doomed, it must be 
 carried away by very weight of numbers. 
 The forces of evil wax stronger and stronger ; 
 unbelief is vigorous in its assaults, immorality 
 is rampant, carelessness and indifference 
 abound; scheme after scheme of benevolence 
 and utility seems to fail; evil is bound to 
 have its own way in the strong alliance 
 which it has made with wealth and influence, 
 and, indeed, human nature; why keep back 
 the inrushing tide with a broom ? Why 
 waste heart and energy on a foredoomed 
 failure ? Let us hold up our hands and yield 
 to numbers.’ 
 
 Is it not so in the battle of the soul with 
 sin ? My brethren, have you not yielded 
 again and again because you say, ‘ Everybody 
 does the wrong thing or applauds the wrong 
 
 14 
 
194 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 cause,’ because you are lonely and helpless 
 and singular; you doubt the truth of your 
 own convictions because the public opinion 
 of the moment seems to stultify you ? How 
 can you resist when your own weakness is 
 violently wrested towards evil by an over¬ 
 whelming consensus of those who ought to 
 know, who sin with apparent impunity, and 
 defy God without a pang, and persist without 
 fear of penalty ? It is the loneliness of the 
 narrow path which frightens back into the 
 broad way of destruction those who find 
 strength in sinning in company, and profess 
 to believe that death by plague does not 
 signify if it be endured in the companionship 
 born of an epidemic. Surely the sinner in 
 his utter loneliness, the sinner frightened 
 into sin by his own powerlessness, should 
 listen to this glorious title and take hope. 
 “ The Lord of Hosts is with us.” Michael is 
 at his side with sword of flame, with his 
 glorious war-cry, “ Who is like God ? ” 
 Gabriel brushes him with his wing, as he 
 flashes by on errands of imperial urgency. 
 Legions of angels stand with drawn swords 
 waiting his word of command. The cloud 
 of the saints stoops down from heaven and 
 folds him in its bright embrace ; God’s beauty 
 and power are all around him, he breathes 
 God’s air, he is warmed with God’s sun, he 
 
THE LORD OF HOSTS 
 
 195 
 
 is awed by God’s beauty, and cheered by 
 His daily comfort. Is it possible that the 
 mists of sin can be so deadening, the voice 
 of temptation so harsh and abrupt, as to 
 shut off and dull the sense of God’s majesty, 
 and of the countless agencies for good which 
 are working all around us, which survive 
 at last, even when sin has done its work, 
 and bring into harbour the poor, unmasted, 
 rifled hull which evil has stripped and robbed 
 of its treasure, and show the exhaustless 
 depths of the power of God, who can not 
 only create life in all its possibilities, but can 
 even more wonderfully restore it by the force 
 of redeeming grace ? 
 
 II. 
 
 “The Lord of Hosts.” We have only a 
 very faint conception of the multitude of 
 agencies with which God carries on His 
 beneficent rule in this world of His creating. 
 Viewed by us only in the faint indications 
 which come before us, they seem to us to 
 be more universal than we were tempted 
 in our cowardice to believe. The forces of 
 good enormously outweigh and outnumber 
 the forces of evil, but whereas evil presses 
 upon us, and seeks to overwhelm and master 
 the will right up to the supreme usurpation 
 
196 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 of possession, good would seem always to 
 respect the imperial nature of man, and to 
 work out nothing, not even his welfare, with¬ 
 out the co-operation of the will—unless it 
 be, indeed, that punishment which is penal, 
 where the rebellious will obstinately refuses 
 to accept the inevitable penalty which jus¬ 
 tice demands and sin has merited. (1) And 
 so we recognise the great army of indirect 
 agents which God uses in the service of man, 
 which are all marshalled under the banner 
 of the Lord of Hosts. History, ancient and 
 modern, is full of the wonders done by what 
 we call “ chance,” but which really is the 
 hidden action of God, and His unexplained 
 interference through His creatures. It is 
 the fashion to laugh at the method of God’s 
 interposition between Balaam and his sin, 
 and yet it is S. Peter who points out how 
 God there uses as His agent the dumb 
 creation. Napoleon is hurled out of Russia 
 by fire and frost, just as Titus, centuries 
 before him, found himself powerless to save 
 the doomed temple at Jerusalem by reason 
 of mysterious agencies which fought against 
 him. Here it is a little child which seems 
 to be the absolutely inadequate means of 
 arresting the suicide. Here the writer of 
 experiences in a gaol says, “ One of our 
 worst women we ever had in gaol we caught 
 
THE LORD OF HOSTS 
 
 197 
 
 one day weeping over a daisy.” This was 
 God’s indirect agent of appeal to her. Here 
 a chance wound, as it seemed, turns the 
 whole career of S. Ignatius ; here a chance 
 Gospel which he heard in church is the 
 crisis in the life of S. Francis. Here a 
 chance meeting with a friend, or the sagacity 
 of a horse or dog, or even a book which 
 has turned aside a bullet, has shown the 
 agencies for our protection which God uses 
 all around us; but we congratulate ourselves 
 and call it good luck :— 
 
 “ Earth’s crammed with heaven, 
 
 And every common bash afire with God, 
 
 But only he who sees, takes off his shoes; 
 
 The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.” 
 
 (2) But God does not confine His energies 
 to those indirect agencies which we label 
 luck, or help us with those calls upon His 
 creatures which we call “ chance.” He 
 employs direct agents as well, who marshal 
 themselves under His banner; His ser¬ 
 vants which do His pleasure, and minister to 
 those who are heirs of salvation. And first 
 among these we must place His angels. It 
 is difficult to induce people to believe in 
 angels as anything more than a refuge for 
 the religious artist who is seeking for 
 graceful forms, or as a property belonging 
 
198 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 to Christmas cards, or, at the most, as a 
 sort of religious fairy suitable to the child¬ 
 hood of the world, and the product of an 
 ill-regulated imagination. If we think this, 
 it would certainly steady our conception, 
 and clear our ideas, if we would trace the 
 record of the ministration of angels i ight 
 through the pages ^ ie Angels 
 
 welcome our Saviour into the world, angels 
 attend His ascending Majesty as He leaves 
 it. Genesis opens the sacred writings with 
 its glimpses of angels, Revelation closes it 
 with their majestic ministrations. Day by 
 day we link them with us in our worship, 
 as we call upon angels and archangels and 
 all the company of heaven to join with us 
 in adoring God. Day by day, as Advent 
 reminds us, we look for the advanced guard 
 of angels, who will prelude the bursting of 
 doom and the session of the Judge. Here, 
 perhaps, you say is a belief which experience 
 can neither affirm nor deny. But, at least, 
 we may say this, that experience is bi ought 
 face to face with many strange and in¬ 
 explicable facts, which we name, as we have 
 already considered, loosely as luck, and think 
 that because we have named them we have 
 accounted for them, whereas it is a beautiful 
 belief which the tradition of the Church has 
 always taught, that we have a silent com- 
 
THE LORD OF HOSTS 
 
 199 
 
 panion, a silent witness of all the secret 
 movements, the hidden as well as open sins 
 of our life, and its triumphs, dangers, and 
 temptations. The guardian angel is one of 
 the most beautiful conceptions of art, which 
 painters have lovingly dwelt upon, in which 
 the angel of our Baptism, guides us as by 
 the precipices and pitfalls of life, until he 
 yields the soul up into the hands of Him who 
 created it. If you will not respect innocence 
 and the glorious beauty of child-life, at least, 
 our Blessed Lord would seem to say, respect 
 that angel, so intimate a companion as to 
 be called his angel, his own angel. Reverence 
 that dread unseen agent, who folds his wings 
 about him, and would shield him from harm. 
 There is nothing strange to one who believes 
 in a supernatural world all around him, in 
 the presence of angels, sent forth to minister 
 to those that are heirs of salvation by the 
 Lord God of Hosts, who marshals their 
 armies. But it would be useless to insist on 
 facts which belong to the unseen world to 
 those who resolutely refuse to admit of its 
 existence; and we who know its experiences 
 can hardly put them into shape or make 
 them intelligible to those who do not see. 
 The marvels of astronomy are foolishness 
 to those who disregard the power of the 
 telescope, and the discoveries of the naturalist 
 
200 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 are child’s tales to those who are inclined 
 to discredit the revelations of the microscope. 
 Our friend in the street, who only believes 
 in what he can see, lives in a very narrow 
 world, only in one corner of this, while the 
 riches and glory of heaven and heavenly 
 things are foolishness unto him, neither can 
 he understand them, because they are 
 spiritually discerned. 
 
 We descend, at all events, to a ground of 
 more intelligible belief, but perhaps only less 
 fiercely controverted, than the ministry of 
 angels, when we contemplate the Lord God of 
 Hosts using the agencies of men. On next 
 Sunday in this cathedral we shall once more 
 be called upon to take part in the solemn 
 setting forth of men for the direct service of 
 the Almighty. It is true that every child that 
 is born into the world is started with a direct 
 and solemn mission to work in the great army 
 of God. It is true that every child that is 
 baptized is then and there enlisted into the 
 direct service of the Lord of Hosts, manfully 
 to fight under His banner against sin, the 
 world, and the devil. But few will be 
 found to deny that in the ministry God has 
 provided Himself with special agents to do 
 His special work, that He who is attended by 
 all the Hosts of Heaven, and presses all 
 nations into His service, uses the endowments 
 
THE LORD OF HOSTS 
 
 201 
 
 of reason and grace, which gather round a 
 human will, speak through a human voice, 
 and energise through human actions. They 
 are strong words in our Prayer-book which 
 speak of the Christian ministry as “ appointed 
 for the salvation of mankind.” And it is 
 because people so little realise the strength 
 of this agency—what it is and what it 
 means—that they deprive themselves of one 
 great help, which God, the Lord of Hosts, has 
 founded for men, who are being sore buffeted 
 in the battle of life. You know how again 
 and again you are appealed to here and else¬ 
 where to send labourers into God’s vineyard, 
 not to let the districts of this huge, unwieldy 
 city spread themselves out without at the 
 same time sending to them the living agency 
 of the Church; and yet what do we see ? 
 Public-houses full and churches comparatively 
 empty ; Satan’s ministers energetic and active, 
 surrounded with ready helpers, and God’s 
 ministers, alas ! too often crippled and power¬ 
 less. If a man wishes to go the broad way to 
 death, through drunkenness, lust, dissipation, 
 and unbelief, he will find a hundred agents to 
 help him; if he wishes to struggle up to God, 
 why does he feel so powerless and feeble ? 
 Why does he seem not to know where to 
 turn ? It is too often because he mistrusts, or 
 misunderstands, or fails to find those ministers 
 
202 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 of grace which God designed to help him. 
 Satan is wonderfully cunning, and knows the 
 value of a question-begging phrase and the 
 importance of an error which empties truth of 
 all its value. We shall find that the ministra¬ 
 tion of the clergy is again and again robbed of 
 its efficacy because false conceptions have been 
 formed of their aim and mission in the counsels 
 and plans of God. If you ask people, Of what 
 use are the clergy? some will tell you that 
 they are useful as setting a good example in 
 the place where they are stationed, that they 
 are set as lights in the world, as a city set on 
 a hill, as the salt of the earth. But this is only 
 a very small portion of the truth—this is the 
 duty of all Christians, not of the clergy alone. 
 The idea of a man who poses as a good example 
 dressed in black clothes, would only result in 
 making the man himself a self-conscious 
 hypocrite, and too often would repel those in 
 whom human nature resists the too obviously 
 didactic life of a moral improver. God forbid 
 that we should ever shut our eyes to the 
 immense, the utter importance of a clergy 
 whose lives are the most eloquent exponents 
 of what they teach, who recommend by 
 gentleness, purity, and devotion the supreme 
 claims of the religion of Jesus Christ. No 
 doubt the minister of Christ ought to stand high 
 (if possible, the highest) in the setting forth of 
 
THE LORD OF HOSTS 
 
 203 
 
 the beauties of Christian character. He is the 
 good man, but he is more. Then, people say, 
 he is set in his place to preach, to show people 
 the way of salvation. Most certainly he is. 
 He is a preacher; but, again, he is more than 
 a preacher. A preacher may be a remote 
 being who dispenses Divine charity with all 
 the aloofness of the unpractical philanthropist 
 of S. James’s Epistle. He says to the poor 
 sinner shivering in his lonely guilt, “ Be 
 warmed ” ; he says to the starving soul fed on 
 the husks of swine, “ Be filled.” But he gives 
 him no clothing to keep him from the cold, no 
 food for the awful hunger of his soul. And 
 once more, what does it profit? What good 
 are the thousand sermons which are preached 
 to-day doing, unless they are followed by some¬ 
 thing more practical? Our Blessed Lord’s 
 advice to His clergy is, not say to them “Beye 
 warmed and be ye fed,” but “ Give ye them to 
 eat.” The clergy, the ministers of the Lord of 
 Hosts, are stewards; they have something to 
 give. And what have they to give ? First, 
 they have to give good advice. A cheap and 
 easy thing, you say, a poor treasure in itself. 
 My brethren, not so, if it be the pei sonal 
 advice for definite needs. Why don’t we use 
 our clergy more, not keep them at arm s length 
 in the pulpit, but seek their advice ? If you 
 were ill, you would not attend a medical 
 
204 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 lecture in the hospital, and pick up what scraps 
 of information you could as to the healing of 
 your disease, but you would seek the doctor, 
 and tell him your case, and seek his help. 
 This is what God meant His clergy to be, His 
 agents, His ministers to deal with the indivi¬ 
 dual wants of sinful men, and bring them to 
 Him. And in saying this, see the goodness of 
 the Lord of Hosts, in choosing men to be His 
 agents in these matters, and not the bright 
 angels ; men who can speak, men who can give 
 an answer hack, men who can sympathise, men 
 who can weep and laugh, and sorrow and 
 rejoice. The very human element in the 
 ministry, which sometimes you so despise, was 
 ordained by God to attract and help those 
 whose chief enemy has been the infirmity of 
 their own humanity. But God does not stop 
 at making His clergy ministers of good advice. 
 Here again any good man could do this, but 
 He does store them with certain privileges for 
 the relief of mankind, those means of grace 
 which would more than countervail the means 
 of death with which the world is so amply 
 stored. The ministers of Christ have some¬ 
 thing to give. We are sometimes tempted to 
 think that the message which Christ gave to 
 His Apostles to dispense was a very simple one 
 after all, and that ages of pious accretion have 
 added picturesque, edifying, and imposing 
 
THE LORD OF HOSTS 
 
 205 
 
 accessories, which are in no sense necessary 
 nor part of the original deposit of Faith. Cer¬ 
 tainly, as regards the main position, nothing 
 can be more contrary to the fact. Open the 
 records in which the Evangelists have com¬ 
 mitted to writing the traditions of our Lord s 
 teaching, and there we find ordinances, such 
 as Baptism and Holy Communion, taking 
 their place amongst the very essentials of 
 Christian life. We give the enemy an unfair 
 advantage, we are defrauding men of a real 
 benefit provided for them, if we treat Christs 
 methods as open questions to be accepted or 
 ignored at will. The Lord God of Hosts, who 
 rules over the armies of hell, and keeps the 
 hosts of evil from overwhelming the world, 
 has provided for our help and comfort a body 
 of men intrusted with means of grace which 
 it is theirs to dispense. This is why we wel¬ 
 come and encourage with our presence and 
 prayers those who come forward, as on next 
 Sunday, to consecrate themselves to the 
 service of God and the service of humanity. 
 They all form part of the ministry of mercy, 
 and the service of strength, which He vouch¬ 
 safes to us, not as a human barrier between 
 us and Him, but as a link in the chain of bless¬ 
 ing wherewith He cheers our loneliness and 
 strengthens our weakness. O how glorious is 
 the army of God which encircles the children 
 
206 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 of His love, where meanest men and brightest 
 angels and all creatures whom He bends to 
 His work carry on unceasingly the war of the 
 Lord, whose bitter strife shall end only on 
 that day when God shall be all in all, and 
 death be swallowed up in victory. 
 
 III. 
 
 Bear with me, my brethren, if I appeal to¬ 
 day for further recruits for the army of the 
 glorious King. Again and again we clergy 
 hear the cry—“ Ye take too much upon you, 
 ye sons of Levi.” If you think so, come to our 
 side, and share our burden, and help us to 
 fight the battle of the Lord. I suppose with 
 all its faults there never was an age when 
 people were more in earnest than they are in 
 the present to redress the evils of life, to 
 alleviate suffering, to stop injustice, to help 
 poor suffering humanity in its awful struggle 
 with the ills which seem at times to be almost 
 irresistible. Men and women and children, 
 boys at school, young men at the Universities, 
 in the warehouses, soldiers in the Army, sailors 
 in the Navy, are all coming, here a few and 
 there a few, to join the army of the Lord of 
 Hosts in the battle against sin. My brethren, 
 it is only right to ask you on this Sunday, 
 
THE LORD OF HOSTS 
 
 207 
 
 so near Christmas, this Ember Week, which 
 means so much to many a man who has offered 
 himself to God, what are you doing for the 
 work of the Lord of Hosts? Surely there is 
 no one who can dare to stand altogether on 
 one side at such a time as this. There are 
 agencies for good languishing for want of 
 support, men and women who are fighting 
 hand to hand with the enemy, who have to 
 stop and beg for the sinews of war. The price 
 of one dinner party, a tithe of the money spent 
 on dress, a small proportion of the sum which 
 vanishes on luxuries, would make glad the 
 heart of many a toiler, who wistfully wonders 
 where help is to be found for those agencies of 
 good which are just beginning to grapple with 
 the hosts of evil. Oh the selfishness of a life 
 where self sits as a tyrant, to which everybody 
 must contribute. We used to be told as child¬ 
 ren, whether rightly or wrongly, of the villages 
 depopulated and fertility destroyed to make a 
 hunting-forest for our first Norman king ; it is 
 only a type of the unremitting, remorseless 
 callousness of the soul which pursues the 
 chase of self-gratification, a stranger to the 
 sterner joys of duty done, to the joy which 
 gladdens even angels for a soul saved, a lost 
 sheep brought home again, a prodigal regained. 
 And yet the subscription list and the answer 
 to appeals may easily become the hush- 
 
208 
 
 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 
 
 money to a troublesome conscience, with 
 which we buy ourselves off from work which 
 we ought to do with a payment which may 
 cost us a trifling inconvenience, and even be 
 transferred to the credit of selfishness in the 
 applause of apparent beneficence. The Lord 
 of Hosts asks for personal service. There is 
 no one so situated as to be absolutely without 
 influence, however small that influence may 
 be. When the wall of Jerusalem was rebuilt 
 in troublous times, Nehemiah tells us of 
 those who repaired it, every one over against 
 his house. Here is the place where our first 
 and main help is to be given to the armies of 
 the Lord of Hosts. We groan and mourn 
 about the growing recklessness of the times, 
 about the utter want of discipline in all ranks 
 of society. What are we doing for discipline 
 at home? Have fathers and mothers any 
 right to slip off the burden of authority which 
 God has given them, or to stultify by example 
 the feeble and insincere precepts which pro¬ 
 priety extracts from them? Would it not be 
 something if instead of protesting against the 
 desecration of Sunday, we gave up that Sun¬ 
 day dinner party which makes it impossible 
 for the servants to go to church ; or those 
 games which detract from the solemnity of 
 the day, shock the thoughtful, encourage the 
 careless, and add one more day to the mono- 
 
THE LORD OF HOSTS 
 
 209 
 
 tony of the same pursuit of frivolity unrelieved 
 b y seriousness ? The next time that we mourn 
 the decay of morals let us have a good look 
 round our own drawing-room, and the books 
 which the circulating library provides to suit 
 public taste. The next time we are shocked 
 by youthful or childish depravity, instead of 
 blaming the age, let us ask ourselves what we 
 have done to protest against an educational 
 system in which religion either finds no place, 
 or is dishonoured, or at least suspected. God’s 
 army moves forward under the conquering 
 banner of the Lord of Hosts ; He owns no 
 divided empire, He fears no foe, the very un¬ 
 godly He uses as His sword—and who hath 
 resisted His will? It is His appeal to you 
 now to come to His side, as He rides forth 
 conquering and to conquer. It will be your 
 shame and confusion if the recording angel 
 publishes abroad the indictment of your 
 cowardice, and the sentence of your sloth— 
 “ Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, 
 curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof: 
 because they came not to the help of the 
 Lord, to the help of the Lord against the 
 mighty.” T 
 
 1 Judges v. 23. 
 
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