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FAITH and SELF=SURRENDER. 
 By Dr. Martineau. 
 
FAITH THE BEQINNINQ, 
 SELF=SURRENDER THE 
 FULFILMENT, OF THE 
 SPIRITUAL LIFE. 
 
 / 
 By James Martineau, d.d., d.c.l.. 
 
 Author of "Endeavours after a Christian 
 Life," "Hours of Thought" &c. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 The macmillan co. 1897. 
 
Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Faith the Root of Knowledge and 
 
 of Love ... ... 1 
 
 The Lapse of Time and the Law of 
 
 Obligation ... ... ... ... 35 
 
 Thou Art My Strength 67 
 
 The Claims of Christian Enterprise 97 
 
Faith the Root 
 
 of 
 
 Knowledge and of Love, 
 
FAITH THE ROOT 
 
 of 
 
 KNOWLEDGE AND OF LOVE. 
 
 " The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy . . , 
 faith."— Gal. v. 22. 
 
 That it is the natural tendency 
 of a good heart to believe in 
 goodness and of the cunning to 
 suspect intrigue^ is a fact perfectly 
 familiar to us all ; and f roro the 
 kind of interpretation which a man 
 habitually puts upon the conduct 
 of his fellows^ you would never 
 hesitate to take your impression 
 of what he himself is. In human 
 affairs it is not esteemed a reproach 
 
FAITH THE ROOT OF 
 
 to read off tlie appearances of life 
 by the light of a pure and loving- 
 soul^ and repress as a temptation 
 the misgivings of a cold, untrust- 
 ful temper. There we know well 
 enough that as a man feels so 
 will he think; that the scene 
 before him will take its colour 
 from the tint of his affections ; yet 
 we do not on that account mock at 
 all his notions as a dream of the 
 insane, or, unless they betray him 
 into manifest illusions, suppose 
 him cut off from all hope of know- 
 ing the truth. Nor do we recom- 
 mend him, in order to prevent mis- 
 takes, to get rid of all his affections 
 and become indifferent to every 
 thing now dear. Thus to slip the 
 shades over every luminous side 
 of his moral nature would only 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND OF LOVE. 5 
 
 turn it into a dark lantern, with 
 which, prowl about as he may, he 
 could find neither knaves nor 
 honest men. Impartiality of this 
 sort — consisting of absolute sup- 
 pression of every wish — is only an- 
 other name for utter blindness to 
 the relations of the moral world. 
 Extinguish every emotion, and no 
 intellect remains by which any 
 sense at all can be extracted from 
 the course of human affairs. You 
 might still, indeed, beat time like 
 a clock, and measure space like a 
 chain, and weigh the strength of 
 the winds, and keep account of 
 damps and heat ; you might grind 
 your corn and post your books. 
 But with the physical outside and 
 uses of things your intelligence 
 would stop; their expressiveness 
 
6 FAITH THE ROOT OF 
 
 would lie in the dark ; no sound 
 would be music,, no sight would 
 be beauty; the eyes of a saint 
 would be but two optical organs, 
 and the sweetest smile but a 
 twisted mouth. Accordingly^ 
 there are no men whose judgment 
 on human life is so incompetent^, 
 and who pass through it so ignorant 
 of its chief realities, as those who 
 have no heart-wisdom, and, in the 
 numbness of their nature, rely on 
 mere sharp-sightedness for seeing 
 what is invisible. Clear, impartial 
 insight requires, not that we 
 have no preferences, but that 
 we have right preferences; not 
 that we shut ourselves up with 
 one faculty, but that we be free 
 through the harmony of all. A 
 man who cannot see correctly 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND OF LOVE. 7 
 
 unless he is perfectly indifferent 
 as to what he sees^ to whom one 
 discovery must be as welcome as 
 another else he will lie to his own 
 heart, who cannot give an honest 
 verdict in the face of agony, is 
 unfit for the exercise of moral 
 judgment at all. There is no such 
 thing as mere outside evidence of 
 matters either human or Divine. 
 It is all reciprocation and response . 
 between the inner soul and the 
 outer object ; and the quiclniess of 
 that response, the penetration of 
 the glance, the certainty of the 
 mutual understanding, will depend 
 not on the coldness, but on the 
 fixed intensity of the mind that 
 sends forth its look. If you carr}' 
 tidings that a child is dead, the 
 mother will be the first to read the 
 
8 FAITH THE ROOT OF 
 
 news upon your very face, and 
 drag it from the hiding of your 
 reserve ; and if there were no God, 
 the soul that had loved Him most, 
 and could pretend to no joy 
 without His presence, would be 
 the first to miss Him. To say, as 
 some strangely do, that religious 
 people cannot judge about religion, 
 is like saying that the humane 
 cannot understand suffering, or 
 genius appreciate poetry ; that for 
 truth in Art you must avoid con- 
 sulting Raphael, and in music you 
 must keep clear of Beethoven. In 
 contradiction to all such pedantry 
 I venture to maintain that only 
 through love and trust can God be 
 known ; that by bare sense and 
 understanding faith may be lost, 
 but can never be won ; that when 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND OF LOVE. 9 
 
 it goes, the intellect is in such re- 
 lations intellect no more^ but is 
 turned from a medium of light 
 to an instrument of delusion and, 
 degraded from the prophet's rod 
 to the measuring staff of material 
 science, ennobles and consecrates 
 us no more. To a being quite 
 strange to our affections — a being 
 differently made and coming from 
 another world — the human coun- 
 tenance would present nothing but 
 a configuration of protuberances 
 and depressions; all the dear living 
 light, the waves of thought that 
 chase across like- corn that bends 
 before the wind, the springing 
 tears, the kindling joj, the silent 
 prayer, would be dead to him. 
 And he who, from a like physical 
 point of view, gazes on the face of 
 
10 FAITH THE ROOT OF 
 
 this universe, who presents him- 
 self before it as a foreigner with 
 no sympathies to aid him, will find 
 it all made up of matter and 
 motion; he sees one thing standing 
 beside another, and one change 
 coming after another, but it will 
 be the expression of no mind. Its 
 space and silence will not look at 
 him like the clearness of an ever- 
 lasting brow. No awful Pity will 
 watch him beneath the arch of 
 night. No solemn Will flows down 
 upon the streams ; and the spring 
 grass and the autumn forest will 
 be simply a painted green and red 
 without being felt as the blush of 
 Thought coming to the surface. 
 Natural faith is the essential root 
 of all knowledge, love, and peace ; 
 whose place, do what you will, is 
 
KNOWIiEDGE AND OF LOVE. 11 
 
 not at the end, but at the begin- 
 ning of thought ; which gives to 
 the intellectual faculties their only 
 ground, instead of being indebted 
 to them for its own ; which, while 
 allied with them, exchanges with 
 them refinement and elevation, 
 and forms a glorious nature ; but, 
 when divorced from them, dooms 
 them and itself to dwindle and 
 die. By natural faith I mean 
 the assumption that a Divine 
 Perfection is the everlasting basis of 
 all things, that infinite Thought 
 and Holiness are and ever must 
 be at the helm of affairs, and that 
 the universe is but the pheno- 
 menon for expressing God's eternal 
 reality. 
 
 Apart from this faith, know- 
 ledge itself becomes lowered in its 
 
12 FAITH THE ROOT OP 
 
 spirit and restricted in its blessing. 
 Knowledge bears a double fruit 
 — a physical and a moral. It 
 enables us to do more, and disposes 
 us to he better. But it is not the 
 same kind of knowledge that 
 effects both of these results. We 
 increase our power by knowing 
 objects that are beneath us ; our 
 goodness bj knowing those that 
 are above us. All the triumphs of 
 the modern arts have been won by 
 detecting the secret of some force 
 inferior in quality to our own — 
 some force, therefore, which we 
 could transcend and subject to our 
 convenience . Thu s human thought 
 has proved too much for the elas- 
 ticity of steam, and sends it, like 
 a captured bondsman, to do its 
 task-work on the roads and in 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND OF LOVE. 18 
 
 the ships. Electricity has been 
 caught^ despite its invisible wing, 
 and made to fly to and fro on 
 messages it knows not. Light has 
 been trained to record and ^x the 
 images it creates, and paint por- 
 traits of the objects it reveals. 
 In all such instances of new skill 
 and enlarged resources, the ad- 
 vances of knowledge have been 
 upon the physical laws of Nature ; 
 some conquered province of crea- 
 tion lies at our feet, and pays a 
 tribute to our superiority. But 
 who can say that we are personally 
 nobler for this homage ? The 
 telegraph carries no redeeming 
 shock to any guilty will ; the 
 sunbeam enables no deluded soul 
 to see itself. Quicker voyages, 
 more abundant jewelry, larger 
 
14 FAITH THE ROOT OP 
 
 surfaces of silver, and unlimited 
 square feet of glass, will not make 
 one temper sweeter, or open a 
 transparent way througb. the 
 heart of selfishness and guile. An 
 Eiffel tower, from its sublime 
 height, may tell a story of stoop- 
 ing very low. If you could bridge 
 the Atlantic, it would give a path 
 to knaves as well as to honest 
 men ; and did you roof the world 
 with crystal, it would make a 
 winter garden for weeds as well as 
 flowers. It is a fatal delusion to 
 imagine that the arts of hfe, 
 which only enlarge its resources, 
 have any necessary tendency to 
 improve its spirit; or that the 
 completest acquaintance v\dth 
 science affords any guarantee of 
 higher goodness. No laboratory 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND OF LOVE. 15 
 
 can neutralise the poison of the 
 passions, or find a crucible to 
 make the hard nucleus of the 
 heart flown down ; no observatory 
 can show us a new constellation 
 of the virtues, correct the aberra- 
 tion of life's true light, or deepen 
 any heavens but those of space. 
 Scientific culture is morally 
 neutral, simply enlarging the 
 range without altering the quality 
 of the character. If love and 
 faith be brought into it, they will 
 find the universe diviner than they 
 had thought, and yet, with an 
 elastic incense of contemplation, 
 be able to fill it all with glory. If 
 only the sharpness of sense and in- 
 tellect be brought into it, nothing 
 else will be fetched out of it, and 
 where evil passions reign, new 
 
16 FAITH THE ROOT OP 
 
 knowledge is as likelj to become 
 the implement of more powerful 
 wickedness, as tlie limb which, you 
 restore for the crippled criminal,, 
 or the tool invented in a career of 
 theft. The onlj knowledge that 
 can really make us better is not of 
 things and their laws, but of per- 
 sons and their thoughts ; and I 
 would rather have an hour's sym- 
 pathy with one noble heart than 
 read the law of gravitation through 
 and through. To teach us what 
 to love and what to hate, whom to 
 honour and whom to despise, is 
 the substance of all human train- 
 ing, and this is not to be learned 
 from the magnet or the micro- 
 scope, from insects born in galvan- 
 ism and light polarised in crystals, 
 but only among the affairs of 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND OP LOVE. 17 
 
 men ; from the rich records of the 
 pastj the strife of heroic and the 
 peace of saintly souls^ from the 
 great thoughts of great minds, and 
 the sublime acts of indomitable 
 conscience. The soul takes its 
 complexion and its true port from 
 the society in which it dwells ; ifc 
 lives with the living and dies with 
 the dead, and no intimacy with 
 rocks and reptiles, however enlarg- 
 ing to its conception of the world, 
 can lift it to its dignity, and warm 
 it with its proper glow ; but only 
 communion with the prophets, the 
 patriot^ the sage, the martyrs of 
 the cross. It is the grand fault 
 of our modern education — a fault 
 which reaches its acme in the 
 theory of a purely secular educa- 
 tion — that we limit it to the mere 
 
 2 
 
18 FAITH THE ROOT OF 
 
 l^nowledge of things, smd, except 
 where the Christian Scriptures 
 save us from such blight^ bring 
 the scholar's mind into scarce any 
 admiring contact with pre-eminent 
 persons. We teach him the gram- 
 mar and the forms of speech, but 
 few of the things most worthy to 
 be spoken. We teach him the seas 
 and lands^ the rivers and moun- 
 tains of a dead or empty world, but 
 of the histories they have passed 
 there, the proud passages of his 
 country's life, the good men that 
 should be as the beacon to his 
 path, we too often leave him in 
 ignorance. We lost the true notion 
 of human culture when we threw 
 away the ^'^ lives of the sai7its," 
 ^The type of excellence which they 
 held up was not_, indeed, the right 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND OF LOVE. 19 
 
 one^ or worthy to be preserved in 
 the place it claimed ; but until 
 they be rewritten with a better 
 selection of examples, and be 
 made the manual and favourites 
 of the cottage and the school, all 
 our education will multiply the 
 force without greatly mending the 
 character of our society. The 
 soul grows godlike, not by its 
 downward gaze at inferior nature, 
 but by its uplifted look at thought 
 and goodness greater than its 
 own. Where there is no faith, 
 where even persons are regarded as 
 things — organisms moulded by the 
 elements and galvanised across 
 the stage — this attitude ceases to 
 be possible ; inferior nature be- 
 comes all in all, is itself the 
 expression of no Thought, but the 
 
20 FAITH THE ROOT OF 
 
 raw material of its manufacture, 
 evolves every higher product out 
 of the lower, so that the source of 
 everything is the lowest of all, 
 and the student's own genius and 
 intelligence blindly issue from 
 forces that neither live nor under- 
 stand. Where the object known 
 is not of higher nature than the 
 knower, he contemplates it with 
 reverence no more. He looks 
 on material law as at once 
 his creator and his slave, and the 
 effect says to the cause, '^ J am 
 the greatest thing that you have 
 done ; in making me you have 
 made your master, who will turn 
 you to unexpected account." In 
 this mood knowledge is pushed 
 forward only in the love of power, 
 the passion for it sinks from a 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND OF LOVE. 21 
 
 devoutness to an ambition^ is no 
 longer as the liglit upon a holy 
 face, but as a flame upon the rest- 
 less brow of demons, and seizes its 
 desire like the mad draught of 
 fever rather than as the solemn 
 wine that has but to kiss the lips 
 to become a sacrament. Nothing 
 is so delirious, nothing so credu- 
 lous, as this eagerness for know- 
 ledge as power, where the wisdom 
 of faith is not present to restrain. 
 Wild dreams of success, prophecies 
 of magic triumphs, occupy and 
 intoxicate the understanding ; 
 create impatience at the present, 
 and throw contempt upon the past; 
 impair the clearness of reason and 
 observation ; and entail all the 
 delusions of a scornful mind. 
 Modesty and humility are but 
 
22 FAITH THE ROOT OF 
 
 expressions of a secret worship in 
 tlie heart ; thej are that natural 
 homage to the higher which cannot 
 long subsist but in the over- 
 shadowing presence of the Highest 
 of all. Apart from God we lose 
 all our proportions ; like the stones 
 of the arch without their kej^ 
 know not our place^ but scramble 
 into a level equality of ruin. And 
 whoever sees the unloveliness of 
 egotism and arrogance, and 
 shrinks from the danger of them, 
 m.ust press close upon Him who 
 holds us together, giving a use to 
 each and a form of beauty to us 
 all. He who ceases to kneel before 
 the Divine wisdom, soon talks 
 superciliously of the human, and 
 ends with the worship of his 
 own. 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND OF LOVE. 23 
 
 But, perhaps^ in thus emphasiz- 
 ing Faith, I am disarranging the 
 Christian graces, the supreme of 
 which, I may be reminded, is 
 neither ^' Faith,^' nor " Hope," but 
 ''Love." Yes ; " Love is greatest " ■ 
 precisely because, in its Christian 
 sense, it presupposes Faith and 
 Hope, and is their working develop- 
 ment and crown and, without 
 them, remains a mere pathetic 
 fondness, hardly deserving its 
 name. How wide is the interval 
 which separates its rudiments 
 from its perfect type ! If you love 
 your dog, it is that you sympathise 
 with his pleasures and pains, and 
 reciprocate his attachment, and 
 feel for his limitations, wishing 
 that he could speak and tell all 
 that his dumb looks imply. But 
 
24 FAITH THE ROOT OF 
 
 the relation stops short with the 
 present facts of a common animal 
 nature ; it has no future in it ; it 
 ends where the essence of your life 
 begins. When you love your child, 
 these rudiments are also there. 
 But^ as he leaps into your arms, 
 you embrace him^ less for what he 
 is than for what he is to he. Be- 
 sides Jiis jo J, which '' comes first, 
 as the natural," is yours, which 
 transcends it, as "^ spiritual." 
 You see in him a casket of immor- 
 tal powers, whose guardian you 
 are to be under the eye of God. 
 Whatever this affection has beyond 
 mere instinct is due to faith and 
 hope, through which it blends the 
 loveliest features of incipient finite 
 nature with the glory of a spiritual 
 infinitude. Again, perhaps you 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND OF LOVE. 25 
 
 love some wise and saintly friend, 
 the higli le\^el and tender beauty of 
 wliose life have made your own ill- 
 ordered ways intolerable to you, 
 and have led vou throug-h the dis- 
 cipline of service to the peace of 
 God. What, then, is your devotion 
 to him but the confluent flames 
 of the faith which he has kindled, 
 and the hope which he has 
 justified ? Or, once more, have 
 you, with Christ-like pity, set 
 your heart upon some soul 
 desolate in guilt, which yields 
 before your watchful eye and that 
 alone, and so forbids you to go 
 away, lest the wanderings return ? 
 Even here, what is the secret 
 spring of that patient love but 
 faith in the recuperative power of 
 sustained repentance, and hope 
 
26 FAITH THE ROOT OF 
 
 that beneath, the quickening 
 breath of a pure experience the 
 spirit ma.y jet be born again ? 
 All distinctively human love carries 
 in it the vision of higher possi- 
 bilities, so that its verj essence is 
 tinctured with Reverence — rever- 
 ence for what is promised in the 
 child ; for what is present in the 
 saint ; for what is contingent, but 
 attainable yin the sinner. And Rev- 
 erence has no entrance except 
 where souls are free, and not fore- 
 doomed to the better or the worse. 
 ISTor would God Himself be right- 
 eously adorable if His perfection 
 were but an infinite Necessity. 
 Vain and cruel would it then be to 
 bid us be ^' perfect, as our Father 
 in heaven is perfect " ; and the 
 declaration that ^^His thoughts 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND OF LOVE. 27 
 
 are not as our thoughts " woukl 
 have an absohite meaning more 
 terrible than we could bear. 
 "Without the assurance,, natural 
 to a good heart, that intending 
 thought and preferential holiness 
 are the everlasting basis of the 
 universe, intellect ceases to under- 
 stand, and conscience bears false 
 witness. 
 
 Every sympathetic observer of 
 life must have noticed how the 
 enthusiasm of Reverence declines 
 with the fading away of Faith and 
 Hope. In the mind which ceases 
 to commune with the Supreme 
 Perfection, the discernment of 
 human excellence gradually loses 
 its quickness ; the feeling for it 
 becomes changed and lowered ; it 
 is regarded with less of simple 
 
- 28 FAITH THE ROOT OF 
 
 trusfc, witli nothing of intent 
 aspiration. It stands no longer 
 upon "the hills whence cometh 
 onr help," and up which we press 
 with eager feet and panting 
 \ breast ; but settles upon the flats 
 of life, where we all herd together 
 as boon companions of an earthly 
 bounty. It is looked upon neither 
 as the beauty of a heavenly grace, 
 nor as the trophy of a faithful 
 will ; but, like a handsome figure 
 or a fine complexion, as a happy 
 combination of nature, wholesome, 
 not holy. The world and its 
 history, its muster-roll of conse- 
 crated names, its ranks of the 
 brave and good, pass before such 
 an eye like troops in a review ; 
 whose general, seeing a regiment 
 of men six feet high and in the 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND OF LOVE. 29 
 
 prime of life, says, ^^ Fine fellows 
 these ! " The purest elements of 
 affection are incompatible with 
 this temper ; did men live bj its 
 theory, they would have to choose 
 a friend as they would buy a 
 horse, looking at his points and 
 showing off his paces. Where 
 moral qualities are degraded to 
 the level of natural, and treated 
 as the product of material neces- 
 sity, the well-springs of sacred 
 love are quite dried up. When I 
 love another, it is not because he 
 ranges at the top of the Mammalia, 
 but because his foot is on the 
 steps of the ascent to God. If 
 this be an optical delusion ; if, 
 when we look up together to 
 higher altitudes, our hearts burn 
 within us in vain ; if, when I am 
 
30 FAITH THE ROOT OF 
 
 weak and he is strong, I may not 
 cling to him and bid him lift me 
 by the virtue that goes out of the 
 very hem of his garmeiits ; if the 
 pyramid of souls up which we 
 press has no summit in the heaven, 
 but the attraction by which we 
 climb on the one side is to become 
 a depression for returning to the 
 sands upon the other — then is all 
 the nobleness of affection but the 
 witchery of a lying spirit, and its 
 elevation and tenderness exist no 
 more. Whatever remits the ten- 
 sion of aspiration relaxes the 
 embrace of love. The dear ties 
 which weave our spirits into rela- 
 tions of interdependence are not 
 the palpable things they seem, to 
 be, but twine around us as a 
 mystic secret beneath the outer 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND OF LOVE. 31 
 
 folds of life; and assuredly the 
 tissue of mutual reverence that 
 binds us to each other is the same 
 that holds us all to God. Pro- 
 spective faith alone supports the 
 dignity and hopefulness of human 
 affections. Without it there may 
 indeed be abundance of good- 
 humoured sympathy and indulgent 
 pity; for moral repugnances having 
 no ground left, all evil appears as 
 a physical helplessness,, and the 
 range of compassion is so widened 
 as to absorb into its channel all 
 the currents of a good heart. It 
 avails, no doubt, where thus en- 
 larged, to quell the heats of anger^ 
 for what we pity we certainly 
 cannot hate ; but neither can we 
 honour it ; and the great problem 
 of morals — how we are to keep the 
 
32 FAITH THE KOOT OF 
 
 precept, '^Honour all men," yet 
 see all tlie meanness of many — is 
 one which only Christian faith 
 can solve. Living in mental con- 
 tact with Infinite Holiness^ the 
 pure-minded man could never 
 honour the guilty and degraded 
 on their own account, and' might 
 be supposed to acquire, in the 
 society of congenial spirits, an 
 utter distaste for the lower throng 
 of sinful beings. But there has 
 been divinely shown to him a tree 
 which, flung into the bitter waters, 
 makes them sweet. Let him turn, 
 in his thought of the wicked, 
 from what they are to what they 
 might he, and the turbid film of 
 disgust will clear away from his- 
 heart, broken up and dispersed by 
 lights of glorious capacity gleam- 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND OF LOVE. 33 
 
 ing through the cloud of their 
 ignorance and guilt. Knowing 
 that the Dinne affinity of spirit 
 with spirit ^^is not dead within 
 them, but only sleepeth," he looks 
 on them with the prophetic eye of 
 trust ; and without the least re- 
 concilement (indeed, with less 
 than ever) to what they now are, 
 he is touched with anticipatory < 
 reverence for what they are meant 
 to be. He alone who thus lives as 
 seeing the invisible, can face the 
 saddest human realities, yet lose 
 no reverential affection. He loves 
 imperfect beings as a mother loves 
 her wayward child, and kisses 
 away its passion and its tears ; 
 bearing with all their weaknesses 
 for God's sake, who has set them 
 at the parting of the broad and 
 
34 FAITH THE KOOT^ ETC. 
 
 narrow ways as tlie needful disci- 
 pKne of freedom, and the alterna- 
 tive of all holy possibility. 'N^j, 
 once possessed by this faith, he 
 not only reads the Divine possi- 
 bilities, but starts and evolves ihem, 
 by assuming them in other souls, 
 and waking them into living power 
 by the thrilling truth of his 
 appeal. From such a One it is 
 that even enemies turn back with 
 the words " Never man spake like 
 this Man " ; and wherever his 
 Spirit repeats itself in His 
 disciples, you will not look in vain 
 for ''^ the dead that are alive again, 
 and the lost that are found." 
 
The Lapse of Time, and 
 the Law of Oblig^ation. 
 
THE LAPSE OF TIME, AND 
 THE LAW OF OBLIGATION. 
 
 "While the earth remaineth, seed-time 
 and harvest, and cold and heat, and 
 summer and winter, and day and night, 
 shall not cease/' — Genesis viii. 22. 
 
 Whoever may step out into his 
 garden or throw np his window^ to 
 breathe the first air of a new day 
 or a new year, cannot fail to be 
 struck with the insensibility of " 
 nature to our divisions of time. 
 The greater and the lesser lights 
 of the sky feel not the seasons of 
 which they are appointed to be 
 signs. No great bell of the uni- 
 verse tolls away the passing spirit 
 
•38 THE LAPSE OF TIME, AND 
 
 of the year; no chimes ring out 
 from the restless wind to greet 
 the period new-born. The calm, 
 eternal heavens maintain their 
 silent steadfastness, the star slips 
 past the meridian wire which 
 divides century from century, as 
 though it were a vulgar moment, 
 without pause to think or trem- 
 bling to feel how awful the mark 
 it sets afloat on the current of 
 eternity. The unconscious earth 
 lies still and patient as before, 
 feeling only how the trees rooted 
 in its bosom are leaning and 
 rocking in the night breeze, and 
 its snow-mantle is folded here and 
 unfolded there with caprices 
 stranger than a child's. No stream 
 suspends its song to listen to the 
 moments flowing by, no tide stands 
 
THE LAW OF OBLIGATION. 39 
 
 still to watch that wondrous sea 
 of time that ever ebbs, yet never 
 fails. Even life in its several 
 forms and generations exhibits 
 the same passionless continuity, 
 and glides from era to era without 
 a celebration. The cautious bud 
 skulks near the bark, and sleeps 
 unmoved within its varnished case, 
 watching the royal sun as its ther- 
 mometer, but heedless of him as 
 its timepiece. The animals browse 
 on or sleep through crises the 
 most impressive. And the men 
 whose life goes by the pulsations 
 of their blood, rather than the 
 colours of their thought, to whom, 
 sensation remaining the same, 
 nothing becomes materially dif- 
 ferent, have no days in their 
 calendar chalked with the white 
 
40 THE LAPSE OF TIME, AND 
 
 mark of sanctity; but remember 
 their anniversaries mainly by their 
 dinners, and would lie down at the 
 most solemn point of history, if it 
 happened to be time to rest. 
 
 At the instant when lower 
 nature exhibits this unconscious 
 uniformity, many a wakeful mind 
 recognises a transition of the 
 deepest import. Though the 
 bridge which stretches from year 
 to year exists only in our idea, it 
 is a station most real and most 
 commanding. The perspective of 
 the past, with its sharp forms, its 
 clear light, its receding groups, its 
 boundary circle of protecting hills, 
 lies open to the eye of love ; and 
 the hazy passes of the future, with 
 only gleams of glorious sunshine 
 cutting across the deepest dark- 
 
THE LAW OF OBLIGATION. 41 
 
 ness^ and facing the mountain 
 shades with the green - painted 
 slope^ invite the heart of mystery. 
 How plain^ as we stand there, 
 hecomes the sense of what we are 
 and what we were ! With how 
 brilliant a sadness do the young 
 hopes^ the high resolves, the 
 capacious ambitions of our fresh 
 days, revisit our humbled hearts ! 
 As we look into the midnight of 
 the departing year, how do the 
 radiant images of blessings lost 
 glow amid the space, till, as they 
 begin to smile on us again, the 
 darkness closes round them, and 
 the saintly sight is gone ! And 
 even when we call around us the 
 living company of friends, the 
 most cheerful eye cannot wander 
 over the circle without many a 
 
42 THE LAPSE OF TIME, AND 
 
 pause of serious wonder. The 
 recent child that has the stature 
 of the man ; the infant we have 
 nursed that is now the mother ; 
 the fresh^ careless youth faded 
 perhaps into morose, disappointed 
 manhood, and sunk from a fair 
 promise into a false prime; the 
 comely form of many a matron, 
 faint and drooping now ; the brow no 
 longer smooth, the hand no longer 
 firm; the lines of sorrow on the 
 cheek, deeper than the tracery of 
 age ; and all the hieroglyphics of 
 mortality, — make us feel that we 
 do not share the immobility, and 
 cannot affect the indifference, of 
 mechanical nature; and convince 
 us, as we hear the great wheel of 
 Necessity humming its dreadful 
 monotony, that we must either rise 
 
THE LAW OF OBLIGATION. 43 
 
 into a transcendent faith, or fall 
 into a sad despair. Whoever is 
 imbued with the wisdom of a pure 
 hearty and touched with the sim- 
 plicity of Christ, will check the 
 rush of feeling towards confusion ; 
 and surveying the field of life from 
 the high station of love and faith, 
 remain to the end master of its 
 priceless opportunities. 
 
 The habit of regarding time 
 rather as a physical than as a 
 human thing is connected with 
 not a little low morality, and dic- 
 tates many a sentimental thought, 
 whose currency ought not to hide 
 from us its falsehood. It is often 
 said that the lapse of years affects 
 our duty by shortening the period 
 of service ; that the nearer we are 
 brought to the limit of our present 
 
44 THE LAPSE OF TIME, AND 
 
 career^ the more does it beLove us 
 to make haste and overtake our 
 work; that the lessening sum of 
 moments must be spent in making- 
 ready for our change of scene. And 
 if this be meant only as a sugges- 
 of natural feeling, or compunction 
 for past remissness, it states what 
 will approve itself to every good 
 mind. It is not fit for man to walk 
 blindly to such a migration as 
 death; so great a thing can be 
 worthily approached only with the 
 open eye of reason and of trust ; 
 and whoever knows that it is not 
 far, as the martyr waiting for the 
 kindling of his fires, or as the aged 
 and stricken, whose summons has 
 been signed and whose respite 
 cannot be prolonged, will fall into 
 a corresponding attitude of thought 
 
THE LAW OF OBLIGATION. 45 
 
 and find some soft and solemn hues 
 steal over liis affections. He can- 
 not but stand upon the watch 
 ready for the hint that trembles on 
 the confines of the hour, for it is 
 not in our nature to feel no differ- 
 ence between a near certainty and 
 a far ; and when, by altered place, 
 the distance has become the fore- 
 ground, it would argue an unmanly 
 insensibility did it not engage us 
 more. But this is simply the 
 natural posture of the affections in 
 an unperverted mind ; it is not a 
 matter of obligation. It expresses 
 preparation, but does not constitute 
 it ; it reveals the Christian linea- 
 ments, but does not trace them. 
 Much more than this is implied in 
 the usual lessons drawn from the 
 lapse of years ; and it greatly con- 
 
46 THE LAPSE OP TIME^ AND 
 
 cerns our primary notions of Chris- 
 tian duty to understand the precise 
 manner in which that duty is 
 affected by the seasonal changes 
 of our life. 
 
 Strictly speaking", very little in 
 relation to man's duty depends on 
 the diminishing quantity of his 
 time to come. Whether it be a day 
 or a half-century makes no differ- 
 ence in the nature or the intensity 
 of his moral obligation, though it 
 must doubtless affect the external 
 actions on which it may be rational 
 for him to enter. Nay, if there 
 were no such thing as death for 
 him at all; if he had the early 
 Christian's expectation of immor- 
 tality on earth; the sentence of 
 reprieve for his animal nature 
 would bring no release from the 
 
THE LAW OF OBLIGATIO^^. 
 
 glorious bonds tliat are laid upon 
 the spiritual. Every hour would 
 retain its priceless worth, notwith- 
 standing the most copious supply ; 
 nor could eternity itself cheapen 
 the moments entrusted to his will. 
 When Paul gained the conviction 
 that he was raised above the touch 
 of mortality ; when he first looked 
 into the opening avenue of ages 
 and saw himself, with living feet, 
 securely passing through; when 
 he felt that he could defy the 
 perils of shipwreck and the 
 sword of persecution, did it abate 
 his earnestness, and whisper to 
 him that he had time enough 9 
 Did it turn his eager haste 
 into an easy stroll ? Did it fill 
 him with moral indifference to 
 the world that slumbered above 
 
48 THE LAPSE OF TIME, AND 
 
 the elements of explosion? Far 
 otherwise. It cooled his per- 
 sonal interests, and made him so 
 far of quiet heart ; but it set his 
 conscience on ^e, and he spake 
 the truth, he soothed the sorrows, 
 he warned the sins, which would 
 have been tho objects of his care 
 had he beheld that age of Provi- 
 dence as we look back upon it 
 now. '^ What would you wish to 
 be doing," was the question once 
 put to a wise man, ''^ if you knew 
 that you were to die the next 
 minute ? " '' Just what I am 
 doing now," was his reply, though 
 he was neither repeating the creed, 
 nor telling his religious experi- 
 ence ; but, for aught I know, 
 posting his accounts, or talking 
 merry nonsense with his children 
 
THE LAW OP OBLIGATION. 49 
 
 round the fire. N"otliing tliat is 
 / worthy of a living man can be 
 i unworthy of a dying one; and 
 whatever is shocking in the last 
 moment would be disgraceful in 
 every other. The most trivial 
 things, in their order and season, 
 lose their moral incongruity and 
 meanness ; the most lofty, when 
 misplaced, are deprived of all 
 their greatness. He who is 
 snatched from the world at his 
 prayers when his work is overdue 
 may well pass with culprit heart 
 away; while the punctual Chris- 
 tian need not be scared to find 
 himself brushing his hat within a 
 minute's reach of the saints in 
 heaven. In truth, it is impossible 
 to borrow motives from the mere 
 approach of death without with- 
 
50 THE LAPSE OP TIME^ AND 
 
 drawing them from the other 
 parts of life. If, as our term 
 hastens to expire^ we have just 
 reason for putting forth more 
 strenuous service^then, in proportion 
 to the remoteness of the goal, we 
 must have reason equally just for 
 less strenuous service ; our obliga- 
 tions must present a series of 
 quantities in increasing ratio ; 
 there must be times unruled or 
 slightly touched by Conscience 
 when its authority is inchoate and 
 immature. Were it thus, sins of 
 deepest dye in a life that had a 
 year to run would have a lighter 
 shade if five remained, and might 
 be all together bleached by expo- 
 sure to twenty summer suns. I 
 need not say how degrading it is 
 thus to assign chronology to the 
 
THE LAW OF OBLIGATION. 51 
 
 rule of duty, to give shifting 
 seasons to immutable Law. It is 
 to look at the most solemn of 
 realities through illusions of our 
 fancy, to suppose the holiness of 
 God capable of relaxation and 
 intensity by changes purely phy- 
 sical, to subject His approval to 
 our laws of mental distance. The 
 proximity of death may, indeed, 
 open our eyes, and startle us with 
 the consciousness of truths but 
 ill-discerned before, but the truth 
 itself was no 'less there; the duty 
 so pressing on our hand is not 
 created, but only found ; the neg- 
 lect that weighs newly on the 
 heart is not a product of to-day, 
 but oh, of how wearisome an age ! 
 Thus there is always a lax side 
 to this sort of morality. It con- 
 
52 THE LAPSE OF TIME, AND 
 
 nives at our waiting to be faithful 
 till we can scarcely help it, and by 
 pressing us to future haste slurs 
 over past delay. If it be possible 
 thus to make up for lost time, 
 then human duty must be a kind 
 of task-work, assigned in definite 
 quantity to our hand, with no 
 stipulation but that at some time 
 or other it shall be done. If it be 
 €apable of compression it must 
 admit of dilution ; remissness 
 may be compensated by diligence, 
 and early assiduity may exhaust 
 and prematurely finish up our 
 obligations. Against a conception 
 so base every true soul presents an 
 involuntary remonstrance. This 
 responsible existence is not a gaol, 
 in which we are imprisoned on the 
 ticket system, and permitted to 
 
THE LAW OF OBLIGATION. 53 
 
 work out our term of hard labour, 
 and by good use of spare hours go 
 free into idleness and ease for ever 
 after. Its sacred bondage is no 
 state of miserable punishment, of 
 grievous expiation, to be sighed 
 over and gone through, but of 
 severe and glorious privilege, 
 which once embraced can never 
 be resigned; to be clung to 
 through the changes of death as 
 of life, like the piercing yet saving 
 crucifix of self-denial. It is as 
 the vow of pilgrimage to a holy 
 land, the sepulchre of saviours 
 and of saints, the field of prophets' 
 glory, the mount of Divine trans- 
 figuration, which, real as it is in 
 God's universe, lies nowhere in 
 our geography ; to which we take 
 our passage in vain by any steam- 
 
04 THE LAPSE OP TIME, AND 
 
 ship; which the Bishop of Jeru- 
 salem cannot help us to find out ; 
 the very light of whose beauty 
 and colours of whose identity 
 appear to have fled, as we stand 
 upon the common hills and look 
 into the turbid streams, yet whose 
 image, ineffaceable from our be- 
 lieving hearts, still tempts us on, 
 explorers of successive worlds, and 
 devoted to an endless quest. 
 Whoever cannot resign himself to 
 an absolute impossibility of moral 
 collapse and rest, however much 
 he may have achieved — whoever 
 wishes to earn his discharge from 
 the service of God by the length 
 of his fidelity, is a stranger yet to 
 the true and loyal heart, and has 
 taken the vow of the hireling, not 
 the sacrament of love. On this. 
 
THE LAW OF OBLIGATION. 55 
 
 indeed, rests all the talk about 
 its being time to prepare for the 
 change of worlds. It implies that 
 our duty is but a means to a future 
 end, the medicine followed by the 
 sweetmeats ; that the period of our 
 submission to it is soon to close ; 
 that we shall then have done with 
 it, and reached the great holiday 
 of our existence. This is to 
 renounce the primary sentiments 
 of conscience, to refuse the 
 authority of God. It denies His 
 Divine right over us, and sets Him 
 on the level, bargaining with us. 
 It abrogates the whole law of 
 obligation; proclaims that there 
 is nothing above interest ; estab- 
 lishes the worship of wages ; and 
 degrades heaven and immortality 
 into a gigantic pay-day. I know 
 
56 THE LAPSE OF TIME, AND 
 
 of no more shameful profanation 
 of great and holy realities. The 
 doctrine of retribution is most true 
 and solemn, but it constitutes no 
 duty ; it changes none ; it implies 
 them all. If we were not bound 
 without it, we should still be free 
 to please ourselves under it ; and 
 it would be nobody's afiPair but 
 ours if we chose to pocket our 
 remorse and take the conse- 
 quences. !N'o, it is not retribution 
 that establishes the moral law, 
 but the moral law that establishes, 
 retribution. The shadow falls not 
 hacJcward from that world to this, 
 but forward from this world to 
 that. It is our nature and our 
 conscience that demand and must 
 determine our future lot ; not our 
 future lot that is to create ouf 
 
THE LAW OF OBLIGATION. 57 
 
 conscience and regulate our nature. 
 The true disciple's heart claims no 
 recompense, but renders willing 
 service after service, ^^ hoping for 
 nothing again " ; and though full 
 of high expectancy, and lighted 
 with the immortal glow, deriving 
 thence nothing of the faithfulness 
 of duty, but only its grandeur and 
 its joy; content to be among 
 the " children of the Highest,'* 
 whether in one world or in two, 
 for an hour or for untold years. 
 
 "While nothing, in relation to 
 human duty, depends on the 
 diminishing quantity of our time 
 to come, everything depends on 
 the ever-changing quality of present 
 objects and events ; and thus it is 
 that the lapse of years reads the 
 true lesson to our conscience. The 
 
-58 THE LAPSE OF TIBIE^ AND 
 
 mere iiiglit of dead and empty 
 duration^ and our own particular 
 relation to it^ are of little moment ; 
 but the shifting attitudes of the 
 things within it, the vicissitudes 
 of the beings it contains, are of 
 the highest and most fearful 
 concern. They are the conditions 
 of all our action, whose happy 
 adaptation to them constitutes our 
 moral wisdom ; whose disregard 
 of them makes our negligence ; 
 whose variance from them creates 
 our folly and our sin. We live in 
 a world of progress and unrest. 
 Every object by which we are 
 surrounded is passing through 
 evanescent states, which must be 
 caught or they are gone; and 
 since all our work, not being a mere 
 flourish of activity in emptiness. 
 
THE LAW OF OBLIGATION. 59 
 
 has constant reference to these, 
 there is not a particle of it that 
 can wait. If it is not struck down 
 upon the instant its solid efficiency 
 is all wasted, and its movement 
 only beats the air. It is not 
 the seasons only and the clouds 
 that change from day to day ; so 
 that if you cut not your corn by 
 the timely autumn sun, the hail 
 will pelt out and the damp skies 
 rot the hopes of the year. But 
 there is nothing that stands still 
 in time, so that no duty at all 
 admits of delay; each is strictly 
 the duty of the moment ; and our 
 moral life is a race of perpetual 
 speed, in which, at every step, the 
 ground breaks from beneath us, 
 and if our foot be not ready for 
 the advance we must sink with it 
 
60 THE LAPSE OF TIME, AND 
 
 and fall awaj. The child, neg- 
 lected to-daj, is less teachable to- 
 morrow ; his pliant and submissive 
 heart, permitted to collect the 
 crust of ignorant self-will, will 
 need some softening ere you can 
 begin ; and his eager questions, 
 betraying the wide-open mind, 
 once pushed rudely back, you 
 cannot gain entrance till by false 
 keys you have unclosed the 
 curiosity that was suffered to 
 collapse. The act of social kind- 
 ness, which is a gracious attention 
 this week, becomes an overdue 
 debt the next, and is presented 
 with sad apology instead of 
 received with glad surprise. The 
 want which we vainly purposed to 
 relieve soon looks up at us with 
 reproachful face from the still 
 
THE LAW OF OBLIGATION. 61 
 
 graves. The tears we failed to 
 wipe away dry upon the cheek, 
 and leave us in the presence of the 
 averted features of distrust in- 
 stead of the eye of sweet reliance. 
 The wounded tenderness to which 
 we spoke not the timely and sooth- 
 ing word, passes into permanent 
 soreness, instead of healing into 
 grateful love. All round our 
 human existence, indeed, does this 
 same thing appear. The just 
 expectation which we have dis- 
 appointed cannot be recovered; 
 there must be a long undoing 
 before you can weave again, in 
 even lines and pattern fair, the 
 tangled web of life. Simply to 
 reinstate the former conditions 
 that should never have become 
 confused is ever a vast and weary 
 
62 THE LAPSE OF TIME, AND 
 
 task ; a barren and negative 
 necessity, fruitless of positive 
 good, the mere burdensome crea- 
 tion of our negligence. It is trulj 
 humiliating to think how enormous 
 a proportion of the vrorld's activity 
 is spent upon the mere repair of 
 evils occasioned by human unfaith- 
 fulness. "When the physician has 
 reckoned all the diseases and 
 sufferings be v^itnesses which 
 involve any element of guilt; when 
 the lawyer has counted the suits 
 brought to him by fraud, injustice, 
 and cupidity ; when the trades- 
 man has told how much of the 
 cost he incurs is in looking up the 
 debts which else would not be 
 paid^ or watching the servants 
 who cannot be trusted out of 
 sight ; when the labour has been 
 
THE LAW OP OBLIGATION. 6B 
 
 weighed^ which is occasioned 
 wholly by broken promises, and 
 disappointed expectations, and 
 interrupted contracts, how much, 
 think jou, would remain to 
 constitute the real productive 
 and progressive work of man- 
 kind, compensative of no arti- 
 ficial evil, but fulfilling the 
 appointed Providential good? If 
 every posture of things were 
 seized by the faithful conscience 
 at the right moment, and no crisis 
 were lost, who will venture to say 
 what sorrows would be saved, 
 what complications would be un- 
 ravelled, or even what interval 
 would be left between the heaven 
 we hope for and the earth we live 
 in? Nor must we forget that 
 while objects around us perpetu- 
 
C4 THE LAPSE OF TIME, AND 
 
 ally change we ourselves do not 
 ' stand still. We also are subjects 
 of transient and evanescent states, 
 bringing v^ith them their several 
 obligations, and carrying away 
 their fruits of tranquility or of 
 reproach. Each present convic- 
 tion, each secret suggestion of 
 duty, constitutes a distinct and 
 ^ separate call of God, which can 
 never be slighted without the 
 certainty of its total departure or 
 its fainter return. The spon- 
 taneous movement of the heart 
 €an then only be replaced by the 
 strivings of a heavy and reluctant 
 • "Will, with twice the work and 
 only half the strength. The dif- 
 ferent feeling of to-morrow is 
 destined to a different work, and 
 cannot be diverted to accomplish 
 
THE LAW OF OBLIGATION. 65 
 
 the task which was due to-daj. 
 And so the power which is not 
 wisely spent must be wildly wasted. 
 Our true opportunities come but 
 once ; they are sufficient but not 
 redundant; we have time enough 
 for the longest duty, but not for 
 the shortest sin. 
 
 5 
 
Thou Art My Strength. 
 
THOU ART MY STRENGTH. 
 
 " I can of mine own self do nothing." — 
 John v. 30. 
 
 What is the ''own self" between 
 which and '' the Father " in heaven 
 Jesns, in thus speaking, marks 
 the distinction ? Where is the line , 
 intended to be drawn which parts 
 the two agencies, and what are 
 the works characteristic of each ? 
 Must we place on the one side the 
 familiar stock of powers constitut- . 
 ing the human kind, and conduct- 
 ing the routine of common life, and 
 on the other the exceptional inter- 
 vention of the Supreme Will de- 
 claring itself in signs and wonders?^ 
 
70 THOU ART MY STRENGTH. 
 
 To take it thus would be to narrow 
 grievously the scope of the 
 thought. It is not miracle alone 
 which Jesus ascribes to the Father 
 dwelling in Him, while retaining 
 all else for His own personality. It 
 would be but a vapid tautology to 
 say that His humanity was incom- 
 petent to the superhuman. 'No; 
 the power which He disclaimed for 
 Himself was, nevertheless, not 
 foreign to Himself. It was in Him, 
 yet not of Him; it came to Him, 
 and yet was at home ; it was from 
 above Him, and yet " worked with 
 Him to will and to do." Nay, it 
 was an enthusiasm for ^'^whatso- 
 ever things He saw the Father 
 doing " in the hearts of men and 
 the government of the world ; a 
 love of the deeper meanings hid. 
 
THOU ART MY STRENGTH. 71 
 
 as the secret of God, beneath, the 
 surface of life, and yet, to the 
 sympathetic eye, rendering it 
 transparent with a light of beauty. 
 On ^^ the Father showing Him all 
 things that Himself doeth," how 
 else could the Son respond than by 
 ^^ doing just those things in like 
 manner " ? That was the presence 
 in His soul, that the living touch of 
 Divine Perfection, which lifted Him 
 out of His " own self," and made 
 Him the vehicle of a transcendent 
 spirit of righteousness. 
 
 In this view the power here 
 disclaimed by Jesus and referred 
 to God is the same in kind with 
 that which the Apostle Paul refers . 
 to Christ, when he says, " I can 
 do all things through Christ that 
 strengtheneth me." This was not 
 
72 THOU AltT MY STRENGTH. 
 
 the gift of miracle, not the im- 
 planting of knowledge exotic to 
 the mind, not any superhuman 
 attribute conferred by Jesus in 
 personal visitations, but the simple 
 might of spiritual self-devotion, 
 imparted by the idea of his great 
 TThodel dwelling ever near his con- 
 science ; which taught him, with 
 scarce the consciousness of effort, 
 ^^ both how to be abased and how 
 to abound." It was the force 
 derived from the tension of full 
 affections, by which they crush 
 resistance, and roll out the most 
 massive difficulties into films that 
 may be whiffed before the wind. 
 It was the power natural to his 
 grateful and loving mind, solely 
 occupied as it was by the concep- 
 tion of One who had been that 
 
THOU AET MY STRENGTH. 73 
 
 mind's emancipator^ by delivering 
 his worship from the bondage of 
 ceremony^ his understanding from 
 the sophistry of persecution, and 
 his heart from the miseries of 
 contempt. From the thought of 
 this holy and immortal Son of 
 God there passed into his will a 
 transforming energy, which, it was 
 hardly an exaggeration to say, 
 enabled him to ^^do all things." 
 For against what defiances did 
 he match himself in vain ? Who 
 at the end of life could look back 
 on a career of such various resolve, 
 of toils despised, of perils passed, 
 of unforfeited constancy to truth, 
 as lay beneath the retrospect of 
 " Paul the Aged " ? What veteran 
 leader, pierced in the hour of 
 victory, could hear, as he fell, a 
 
74 THOU ART MY STRENGTH. 
 
 shout of exultation so clieering 
 as the concurrent sympathies 
 amid which Nero's sword dis- 
 missed the apostle to his rest ? 
 Alone he had thrown himself into 
 the crowd of Gentile peoples, to 
 whom, as a Hebrew of the Hebrews, 
 he was an object of twofold scorn ; 
 and by the patience of his will 
 ruling an impassioned heart and 
 ennobhng a fervid speech had 
 won audience for the story of 
 Christ from Arabia to Rome. He 
 had made guilty power tremble on 
 its seat at his voice, that seemed 
 charged with the authority of 
 Righteousness itself. On ^^ Mars 
 Hill " he had stood face to face 
 with the gods of Athens, with the 
 dread cave of the Eumenides 
 beneath his feet, as he invoked 
 
THOTJ ART MY STRENGTH. 75 
 
 Jehovah^ Lord of the heaven 
 above him^ to take possession of 
 the heart of this living people^ 
 and claim the blue -^gean as his 
 own. He maintained the toil of a 
 mechanic that he might perform 
 better the duty of an apostle. 
 Persecuted from city to city, he 
 forgot the foes behind and hoped 
 for friends before. He is cast 
 into prison ; and he makes a 
 Christian of the gaoler, and leaves 
 him to preach to his captives ever 
 after the glad tidings of great joy. 
 He tranquilises the terrors of 
 shipwreck by his counsel ; and, 
 guarded by a sentinel at Rome, 
 he goes forth under cover of the 
 darkness to seek the haunts of 
 misery, and kneeling by the pallet 
 of the sick slave breathe a prayer 
 
V 
 
 76 THOU ART MY STRENGTH. 
 
 of strange refreslinient, bringing 
 to the suffering heart the protec- 
 tion of a fatherly God and the 
 sympathy of a brother man. The 
 threats against his life never damp 
 the manhood of his spirit ; but his 
 fettered hand writes many a letter 
 free and bold that bears his 
 cheerful vigour through the 
 churches, and sends a throb of 
 nobler life through the infant 
 heart of Christendom. 
 
 It was the image and the love 
 of Christ that gave Paul this 
 various power ; and it was the 
 vision, the love, the spiritual 
 touch of God without which 
 Christ could do nothing. Thus 
 he explains his own meaning 
 when, immediately after my text, 
 he says that he ^^ seeks not his 
 
THOU ART MY STRENGTH. 77 
 
 own willj but the will of the 
 Father who sent him " ; and^ just 
 before, that ^^ he can do nothing, 
 except what he sees the Father do.'' 
 The thought of God within his 
 conscience was his strength; and 
 did he think of himself he would 
 instantly sink in weakness. He 
 lets us into the secret here — not 
 of his physical power to work 
 miracles, but of his spiritual 
 power to transform the ideal of 
 righteousness for the world. And 
 in doing so he bears personal testi- 
 mony to a profound and simple 
 truth; that a mere prudential 
 virtue, though extending its 
 reckoning from earth to heaven, 
 can attain no greatness ; that the 
 most refined considerations of 
 interest are powerless in the 
 
78 THOU AET MY STRENGTH. 
 
 grander emergencies of life, and 
 are forgotten in all acts which are 
 venerable and holy ; that out of 
 the idea of self there comes no 
 miracle. Self -regarding motives 
 are unable to initiate the highest 
 acts and offices of duty ; these 
 must remain unperformed unless 
 some great moral passion imparts 
 the requisite energy. The sterner 
 services which society has a right to 
 expect from faithful hands — which 
 at all times may imperil ease and 
 reputation, and in evil days involve 
 liberty and life — would never be 
 undertaken on the most exhaus- 
 tive computation of advantage to 
 the agent. At such an instigation 
 what tongue would ever plead for 
 truth unpopular and dangerous ? — 
 dangerous, I mean, to the advocate 
 
THOU ART MY STRENGTH. 79 
 
 himself ; and unpopular, not with 
 an absent multitude whom it is 
 easy to disregard, but with his 
 neighbours and his hearers, whose 
 derision he witnesses, and whose 
 alienation his loneliness forces him 
 to feel ? What arm would ever 
 strike the first blow at a powerful 
 wrong, and be uplifted in the vow of 
 self- dedication, often that of self- 
 immolation, to the redemption of 
 the oppressed ? Where, amid the 
 prevalence of such a spirit, would 
 the despised, the outcast, the slave, 
 the guilty, find a friend to notice 
 them beneath the eye of day ? No ; 
 Providence, as if to break the 
 crust of our selfishness, has decreed 
 that for the best blessings of this 
 world men must venture some- 
 thing, must often venture them- 
 
80 THOU ART MY STRENGTH. 
 
 selves. Progressive knowledge, 
 liberty, religion, are not won with- 
 out a thousand risks ; pearls not to 
 be had without a plunge. And 
 those who do not think the moral 
 relations of men perfect as they 
 are, those who are possessed with 
 the conception and desire of a new 
 and happier world, where crushing 
 want need not exist, and character 
 may stand at a higher level, and 
 Religion clear itself into sublimer 
 power, must look for it across the 
 margin of present darkness and 
 threatening deeps; they must 
 listen with no landman's shudder 
 to the waves, but go forth in faith 
 like Columbus of old, when, 
 haunted by the vision of some 
 happy isles, or continent of 
 unknown wealth and brighter 
 
THOU A"RT MT STRENGTH. 81 
 
 suns, he dashed into the Atlantic 
 storms that had beat upon no sail 
 before, and still, amid want and 
 discontent, steered onward to the 
 West, looking forth from his prow 
 from midnight to dawn till the 
 bird brought tidings that his 
 prophecy was true, and he 
 anchored in the green waters of 
 his promised land. I care not to 
 decide whether the spirit of moral 
 enterprise in such cases is really 
 an imprudence ; let the Utilitarian 
 make out;, if he can, that it is 
 justified by considerations of com- 
 prehensive self-interest ; and that 
 the sympathetic affections which 
 it exercises are far richer in hap- 
 piness than the physical and other 
 advantages which it forfeits. But 
 I do say that this is not the esti- 
 
82 THOU ART MY STRENGTH. 
 
 mate which, we shall make at the 
 mLoment which calls for action ; 
 then the refined satisfactions of 
 the conscience and the heart have 
 no chance against the importunity 
 of nearer and more measurable 
 benefits. And even if they had — 
 if a self -regarding judgment were 
 passed in their favour, and we 
 said, "Oh, we will make a sacri- 
 fice of our comforts for the sake 
 of getting the pleasures of benevo- 
 lence/' they would be beyond our 
 reach ; for the affections refuse to 
 be deliberately made the tools of 
 prudence, and obstinately fly when 
 sought in such a spirit. Let them 
 alone, and they will do their duty ; 
 count on them and canvass them^ 
 and they withhold their aid. Even 
 those who maintain that acts of 
 
THOU ART MY STRENGTH. 83 
 
 high courage and noble virtue may 
 have their birth in a wise prudence 
 must acknowledge that this has 
 not actually been their usual 
 origin ; that the great and excel- 
 lent whose names humanity holds 
 most dear have, in fact, left unused 
 the motives of personal welfare by 
 which they might have been deter- 
 mined in their choice, and have 
 been impelled by some mighty 
 passion of good into which the 
 idea of self could not enter. In 
 truth, our best affections have 
 that in their very nature which 
 prevents them from being objects 
 of anticipation : when their power 
 is not on us we know not what 
 they are, and, in indolent and 
 selfish conditions of the mind, 
 they are like a life forgotten in 
 
84 THOU ART MY STRENGTH. 
 
 the draughts of sin. They are^ 
 indeed^ the very essence of that 
 heaven which '^^ it doth not enter 
 into the heart of man to conceive." 
 They ever surprise us with their 
 blessedness ; we expect a stranger, 
 and find an angel as our guest. 
 The prevailing idea of Self intro- 
 duces a moral weakness into the 
 will, even in cases where there 
 seems to be no call for disin- 
 terestedness, and the duty required 
 appears mainly prudential. The 
 struggles against guilty habits are, 
 I believe, often unsuccessful, so 
 long as they are the mere struggles 
 of self-interest. Many a victim of 
 some wretched vice is warned of 
 his delusion ; hears the whole list 
 of its results; sees distinctly the 
 picture of his shattered life. 
 
THOU ART MY STRENGTH. 85 
 
 trembling at every breath with- 
 out, and gnawed by self-contempt 
 within ; weeps burning tears, and 
 frames passionate resolves ; and 
 yet secretly feels as if the springs 
 of sincerity were not touched, and 
 the probe had not reached his 
 volitions yet. He feels the con- 
 tortions of misery, but not the 
 stirrings of a better life ; and the 
 reaction of cheerfulness brings 
 the madness back again, and once 
 more the will lies prostrate in 
 shame and agony. And thus 
 might the alternation go on 
 did not some one come to him 
 with reasons perhaps not half as 
 strong but more affectionate ; 
 turn away his thoughts from the 
 loathsome image of himself; fix 
 them on his children whom it is 
 
86 THOU ART MY STRENGTH. 
 
 not too late to save, or Ms parents 
 who may yet be comforted; call 
 them to some enterprise of com- 
 passion that may claim the whole 
 faculty of an intense nature ; tell 
 him how Jesus looked with a holy 
 mercy upon guilt, and it broke 
 into instant tears , and ask him to 
 bend low his head before the Father 
 divine, and breathe forth a tran- 
 quil confession of unfaithfulness, 
 and then, with his image and 
 spirit fresh taken to the heart, 
 aspire meekly to a restored mind. 
 There are probably few who have 
 not occasionally met with instances 
 of an apparently wayward recovery 
 from a life long marked by profli- 
 gate self-indulgence ; where, after 
 the repeated failure of all rational 
 remonstance, something which 
 
THOU ART MY STRENGTH. 87 
 
 seems to us a whimsical fanaticism 
 is taken up, and suddenly the 
 libertine becomes a saint ; and in 
 spite of the world's vulgar insinua- 
 tion of hypocrisy, and cruel pre- 
 dictions of relapse, the pure will 
 keeps its ascendant seat, and, how- 
 ever weary in some moments of the 
 race, drives the chariot of the pas- 
 sions in safety to the goal. The 
 theory of these cases is far more 
 honourable to them, I believe, 
 than our distaste to everything 
 unreasonable permits us to allow. 
 They are cases of minds that out 
 of the thought of self can do 
 nothing ; but press the lever of 
 their affections, and though it 
 seems to have nothing whereon to 
 rest you will move their world. 
 And if the thought of self is 
 
88 THOU AKT MY STRENGTH. 
 
 unable to exert the best power 
 over our own minds,, still more 
 signally does it fail to give 
 us power over others. A purely 
 self -re gar ding being is necessarily 
 a solitary being ; bis band is 
 with no man^ and be can expect 
 no man's band to be witb bini. 
 If be be wise, tbere may be 
 tbose tbat use bis counsel ; if be 
 be the possessor of genius, there 
 may be those that like to see it 
 shine ; if he be rich, there will be 
 those that court his favour ; if he 
 be the leader of a party, there will be 
 numbers in his train ; but one who 
 is unlearned and poor and private, 
 and yet rich in the endowments of 
 the conscience and the heart, will 
 exert a diviner and vaster energy. 
 The planets that have most satel- 
 
THOU ART MY STRENGTH. 89 
 
 lites careerinof round them are 
 most in the dark themselves. To 
 have dependents moving about 
 our power is poor compensation 
 for banishment from the central 
 love ; and the full grandeur 
 of that gloomy world which, 
 with its apparatus of rings and 
 moons^ rides so royally through 
 the colder planetary tracks^ is less 
 fair than the merest crescent of 
 the morning star, bathed in the 
 intenser flood of solar light. The 
 wills of men may, of course, be 
 influenced by all who have fears 
 and hopes at their command — who 
 have anything either to give or take 
 away; and minds with gigantic 
 force of determination may pro- 
 duce, without much moral principle, 
 or any benevolence, or exceptional 
 
90 THOr ART MY STRENGTH. 
 
 reach, of understanding', a deep 
 impression upon society ; chieflj, 
 however, upon the yielding and 
 unresisting mass, who do not pre- 
 serve the same shape and pressure 
 from age to age, and can give 
 perpetuity to nothing. Those only 
 who have penetrating sympathies 
 and a devotion to something more 
 permanent than mere convention- 
 alism and expediency can cut deep 
 into the few firm minds who pre- 
 serve the traces of the past for the 
 uses of the future. Compare any 
 set of dealings with the human 
 mind conducted with the presence 
 and in the absence of the 
 thought of self. In education 
 what wonders are wrought by the 
 teacher becoming in heart a child, 
 and laying aside all his maturity 
 
THOU ART MY STRENGTH. 91 
 
 except its wisdom ! Instead of 
 listless attention^ and irritable 
 tempers^ and half-realised ideas, 
 and incessant complaint of per- 
 plexity_, and a hatred of all know- 
 ledge precisely in proportion to its 
 value, he that can clothe himself 
 with his infancy again sees around 
 him every symptom of happy and 
 successful instruction ; the unlan- 
 guid eye, the eager voice, the 
 delighted onslaught upon a diffi- 
 culty, all the indescribable natural 
 language of a mind alert, a con- 
 science quick, and spirits pure and 
 light. In literature, the produc- 
 tions thrown off as a bid for gain 
 or fame have never enjoyed an 
 influence comparable, in durability 
 and extent, with the power won by 
 the spontaneity of genius, and the 
 
92 THOU ART MY STKENGTH. 
 
 fervid simplicity of conviction dis- 
 interestedly surrendered to free 
 creation. Does any one suppose 
 that a hireling pen could have 
 indited Milton's immortal pleas 
 for purity in the Church and just 
 liberty of speech and action in the 
 State ? Or that the cynical exag- 
 gerations and stormy grandeur 
 of Byron will endure and rule as 
 long as the pure truth of Words- 
 worth — the growth, not of the 
 hotbed of passion, bat of the 
 snnny slopes and forest walks of 
 love and meditation ? No ; all 
 that is most permanent in our 
 intellectual wealth issues from 
 the interior and disinterested 
 realm of our nature. Only in 
 the rarest souls, at best, are 
 forces lodged adequate to produce 
 
THOU ART MY STRENGTH. 93 
 
 lasting effects of good upon a 
 world little penetrable by indi- 
 vidual effort; and nothing less 
 intense than the central fires of 
 the heart can open clefts in the 
 rocky structure of society, and 
 project the precious metals of true 
 sentiment through its mass ; the 
 convulsion, it may be, of one age, 
 but the riches of all others. 
 
 The same truth is found to hold 
 in every other department of 
 human agency. In every effort at 
 persuasion, how puny are the 
 ingenuities of art compared with 
 the majesty of simple conviction 
 and earnest purpose ! In every 
 attempt at social reformation, the 
 power which begins with selfish 
 expediency goes over in the end to 
 the faithful few who refuse to cure 
 
94 THOU ART MY STRENGTH. 
 
 one wrong by recourse to another. 
 The assertion is not true^ which 
 we often hear^ that the most re- 
 markable triumphs won by decision 
 of character are to be found among- 
 the bad ; the most numerous suc- 
 cesses may be theirs, but by far the 
 grandest prodigies of human voli- 
 tion are recorded of the champions 
 of the right ; with the magnitude 
 of whose achievements even in the 
 field not the love of glory itself 
 can contend. We are often de- 
 ceived by the length of time re- 
 quired to ripen the successes of 
 conscience. Jesus said, '^I have 
 come in My Father's name, and ye 
 receive Me not; if another shall 
 come in his own name, him ye will 
 receive." And so, doubtless, it 
 would have been ; and that other 
 
THOU ART MY STRENGTH. 95 
 
 would perchance have gathered 
 no " little flocJc/' like that to whom 
 it was the Father's good pleasure 
 to give the kingdom ; he might have 
 heard the acclamations of greater 
 multitudes than cried on behalf of 
 Jesus^ '^Hosanna to the Son of 
 David " ; he might have found a 
 throne instead of a sepulchre 
 among his people ; and then would 
 have perished as a rebel against 
 Rome, instead of rising to be the 
 moral Saviour of the world. The 
 very nation on whose fortunes such 
 a pretender would have based his 
 ambition is swept away ; its glory 
 is a tradition and a dream; the 
 place that once knew it shall know 
 it no more. Meanwhile^ the tale 
 of the man of Nazareth lives and 
 spreads, perforating with its 
 
96 THOTJ ART MY STRENGTH. 
 
 sweet melodies the shout of battles 
 and the storm of time ; refreshing 
 still the heart of poverty and the 
 downcast penitence of sin; float- 
 ing- over the mutable tide of civi- 
 lisation as it passes from shore to 
 shore ; and bearing faithful spirits 
 to His own abode of rest. Such are 
 the triumphs and immortahtj of 
 conscience and inward truth. But 
 self is a feeble and a barren thing, 
 and out of it such wonder will 
 never come. 
 
The Claims of Christian 
 Enterprise. 
 
THE CLAIMS OF CHRISTIAN 
 ENTERPRISE. 
 
 " In lowliness of mind let eacli esteem 
 other better than themselves. Look not 
 every man on his own things, but every 
 man also on the things of others." — 
 Philipp. ii. 3, 4. 
 
 If we cast our eye over the names 
 lield by us in the most honourable 
 remembrance, we find them in- 
 variably belonging to men who 
 have quitted the common path of 
 human duty, and gone out after 
 disinterested ends foreign to their 
 private sphere. Even the fruitless 
 austerities of the ascetic, however 
 exposed to the scorn of reason, are 
 
100 THE CLAIMS OF 
 
 not without a sincere cliarm for 
 the imagination ; for thej attest 
 at least a self-dedication to the 
 idea of Divine perfection^ a pre- 
 ference of goodness to ease_, so 
 powerful as to carry the will 
 beyond the requirements on which 
 m.en insist. They seem to show a 
 generous and ungrudging spirit 
 that is not content with paying the 
 tax of effort imposed by the moral 
 law, but freely throws into the 
 service of duty a spontaneity of 
 sacrifice demonstrative of a faith- 
 fulness beyond all bondage. When 
 Francis Xavier exchanges the in- 
 heritance of wealth and the pur- 
 suits of philosophy for the vows 
 of poverty and exile, transferring 
 his genius and energy from Europe, 
 where they might have ranked in 
 
CHRISTIAN ENTERPRISE. 101 
 
 the van of civilisation, to tlie 
 obscure East, where thej could 
 only serve in the rear of barbarism, 
 and assumes the garb of pilgrim 
 or of prince, if he may but lift the 
 cross to nations unapproachable 
 before, our hearts confess the 
 justice with which he is numbered 
 with the saints, and scarcely blame 
 the superstition which says there 
 is a sweet fragrance in the sands 
 of China consecrated by his 
 remains. Oberlin, quitting the 
 society of equals and the presence 
 of every refined sympathy, to 
 spend his substance and his life 
 in planting the Christian culture 
 among the neglected mountain- 
 -eers of Yosges ; Clarkson, smitten 
 to the heart by the spectacle of an 
 unendurable iniquity, and living 
 
102 THE CLAIMS OF 
 
 onlj for its abatement ; Elizabeth 
 Fry^ snatched from vanities with- 
 out and vanities within by her 
 sweet faith in the all-conquering" 
 power of Divine truth and love, 
 her assurance that prison walls 
 and iron bars are no hindrance to 
 the Holy Spirit, and that where 
 God's whisper of recall finds it 
 not too mean to go, her voice need 
 not be ashamed to speak the open 
 word : these, with all the noble 
 host of heaven's missionaries and 
 martyrs, kindle in us all a passion- 
 ate homage, and fill us with a 
 respect for our nature, and a new 
 hope for the world. The bio- 
 graphies of such persons form an 
 I unacknowledged, yet a real, portion 
 i of the Bible of our hearts, and the 
 sacred Canon of our life ; nor has 
 
CHRISTIAN ENTERPRISE. 103 
 
 Christ Himself any higher office 
 than to concentrate upon Himself 
 all the scattered lights of their 
 separate excellence, and become 
 the effulgent centre of that trust 
 and reverence which they distri- 
 bute over history. He was the 
 culminating instance of goodness 
 that did not remain at home ; of 
 patience not satisfied with its own 
 sorrows ; of sanctity which at once 
 garrisoned the citadel of His in- 
 dividual mind, and involuntarily 
 sought an empire in the soul of 
 the world ; of positive and aggres- 
 sive devotedness that could not 
 dwell in a village, or serve only 
 an age, but "went about doing 
 good," wherever grief and sin in- 
 vited Him ; first, of His own will, 
 from city to city of His native 
 
104 THE CLAIMS OP 
 
 province ; and then of God's will, 
 from land to land, and from age 
 to age of human history. What 
 is it that so subdues us in these 
 souls of large adventure, and 
 makes us gather round them as 
 the very saviours of our faith, 
 compelling us to feel that, were 
 their names not there, the record 
 of mankind would be a dreary 
 thing, and were their voices silent, 
 the course of time would have no 
 music in its flow ? Surely it is no 
 sense of selfish benefit, no grate- 
 ful thought of what they may 
 have gained for us. We measure 
 them, not by their success, but by 
 their worth ; and had their striving 
 been in vain we should have loved 
 them still, only with a sadness 
 instead of a glory in the heart. 
 
CHRISTIAN ENTERPRISE. 105 
 
 No ; thej wield over us the double 
 power of rebuke and prophecy ; 
 they show us our aspirations 
 realised^ and tell us that our con- 
 science does not dream ; their self- 
 denials put our comforts to the 
 blush ; their heavenly constancy 
 looks down, as from a clearer 
 region, upon the fickle clouds of 
 our inferior mind; we long to 
 escape from our tangled plausi- 
 bilities to their pure simplicity, 
 and from our fretful fears to their 
 trustful courage. They reveal 
 to us the spirit of the life we 
 ought to live, and present us to the 
 God who will uphold us in it. In 
 our admiration of the nobly good 
 there is always a tacit reference to 
 our own unsatisfying state, a secret 
 weeping of the soul over its mean- 
 
106 THE CLAIMS OF 
 
 ness and its misery, and a gleam 
 of freshening hope like the first 
 spring day to the invalid. Thus, 
 it is as eternal oracles and inter- 
 preters of conscience that it is 
 given to the " saints to judge the 
 world." 
 
 '*^ Yet are we required," the 
 sober critic may ask, " to live as 
 they ? Was their course even one 
 that can be wisely approved? 
 While they are away nursing the 
 stranger in the infirmary of human 
 ills, may not the sickness, in this 
 plague-stricken world, have broken 
 out at home ? Surely it can never 
 be meant that we should leave our 
 own sphere to be cared for by 
 others, while we are spending our 
 zeal on theirs ? Were all to turn 
 out under vows of ascetic sacrifice or 
 
CHRISTIAN ENTERPEISE. 107 
 
 missionary devotion, life could not 
 go on ; tlie depository of in tensest 
 energy, all its force would be in- 
 effectual ; just as the fastest at- 
 mospliere, meeting no resistance 
 but flying as a whole, is virtually 
 at rest and may carry within it the 
 malaria of stagnation. The work, 
 moreover, which has engaged the 
 hand of saintly men is no legiti- 
 mate task of Providential creation 
 — no pity for natural ills — but is 
 the artificial product of human 
 wickedness, the redress of injus- 
 tice, the repair of guilty neglect ; 
 and is it not a premium on the 
 world's unfaithfulness to take the 
 bitter ashes of death out of its 
 mouth, and, unasked, give it in- 
 instead the healing fruit of life? 
 Under a holy God can the penal- 
 
108 THE CLAIMS OF 
 
 ties of sin and the performance of 
 duty be allowed to become vicar- 
 ious, so that I am to be my 
 brother's keeper ? Must not rather 
 every man bear his own burden ? 
 Did each in his time and place 
 punctually occupy his own succes- 
 sion of obligations ; did he suppress 
 every rising desire in his heart and 
 in his home ; did he break no re- 
 solve^ forget no promise, sleep 
 through no crisis of opportunity — 
 the very ills that challenge our 
 heroes to the conflict would never 
 arise : the fidelity of each would 
 create a Paradise for all; or, at 
 least, only light and tranquil 
 sorrows would remain. If the earth 
 exhibits darker shades, this is 
 chargeable, not on good punctual 
 souls who pay the debts of con- 
 
CHRISTIAN ENTERPRISE. 109 
 
 science as they are due, but to 
 spendthrift and insolvent sinners,, 
 who reduce the accounts with 
 heaven to bankruptcy. What more, 
 then," it may be said, " can be 
 asked of me than that I do my 
 personal share towards the order 
 and peace and virtue of the world ? 
 I tell no lies, steal no man's goods, 
 break no trust ; my children are 
 taught, my servants well treated, 
 my friends not forgot ; no slander 
 defiles my lips, no suspicion 
 darkens my thought ; appetite is 
 under temperate rule, and no time 
 is given to sloth and vanity. If 
 all men would do the same, how- 
 little would there be to desire \ 
 Evil being prevented, there would 
 be scarce any good to do." 
 
 Thus are we driven in opposite 
 
110 THE CLAIMS OF 
 
 directions of feeling respecting the 
 heroes of the cross : impelled to 
 enlist under them, and to desert 
 from them ; brought to their feet 
 by natural reverence, and then by 
 a theory of common-sense with- 
 drawn in shame at our enthusiasm. 
 But let us not hastily discard the 
 first persuasion, or trust ourselves 
 to the narrower interpretation of 
 God's will ; perhaps the truth of 
 both may be reconciled, or the 
 falsity of one detected. Certain 
 it is, and a suspicious certainty, 
 that the view which looks so 
 rational is pleaded for by all that 
 is poor and low in us, and delivers 
 us from the noblest and most pro- 
 ductive sorrows of the soul. All 
 the lazy conservatism of self- 
 righteous habit is on its side. 
 
CHRISTIAN ENTERPRISE. Ill 
 
 There are inen_, and there are 
 moods in all men, that cannot 
 bear to be reproached^ and that 
 feel hurt bj only the silent presence 
 of a humiliating goodness ; that, 
 by infusion of a poisonous self- 
 love, have degraded conscience to 
 a mere sensitive and vulnerable 
 complacency ; and at the first 
 touch of aspiration, catch the 
 disease of envy. To such minds 
 this easy little theory, that dut}^ 
 begins at home, insidiously ap- 
 peals ; it takes off the sense of 
 insignificance, relieves the burden 
 of repentance, and administers the 
 consolations of calumny. " Those 
 self-denying people resist their 
 appetites," v^e say, '^'that they may 
 better pamper their spiritual pride ; 
 and the private households of your 
 
112 THE CLAIMS OF 
 
 roving philanthropists would sel- 
 dom bear," we insinuate, ^^any 
 strict examination ; so that, after 
 all, they only abandon a duty on 
 which no eye is fixed for one which 
 brings a consecrated applause." 
 Oh ! it is a dangerous and beguil- 
 ing thing to sit thus in conjectural 
 judgment on what we have felt to 
 be above us ; to exchange the 
 bowed head and hidden face of 
 reverence for the bold front and 
 petulant glance of the critic and 
 the objector; to repent of our 
 purest admirations, and suspect 
 our noblest love. There is no 
 hour, even of our weakest and our 
 falsest, when we have not under- 
 standing enough for this poor 
 spoiling work; as the common 
 labourer may pull down the church 
 
CHRISTIAN ENTERPRISE. 113 
 
 which only genius and skill can 
 raise. But it is not every day, 'tis 
 only the rarest seasons of our life, 
 that can deliver a new and holy 
 image to our souls, to give us 
 silent counsel in temptation, and 
 flit as a light before us in the 
 darkness of our sorrows. Let, 
 then, the spirits of the just remain 
 perfect with us while they may; 
 and let us beware lest, hastily, 
 through the spleen of wilful un- 
 belief, these blessed guests be ex- 
 pelled from our inhospitable hearts. 
 In the present instance, the 
 truth which stands in the way of 
 our first admiration is of the 
 slenderest kind. I^o doubt, if all 
 men did their duty, the very mate- 
 rials for self-sacrificing enterprise 
 would scarce remain ; and in such 
 
114 THE CLAIMS OP 
 
 a worlds the occasion^ and, with 
 the occasion, the call to go out 
 beyond the personal bounds on 
 missions of mercy, would appear 
 to cease. If we contribute our 
 individual share for the further- 
 ance of this result, we so far jpay 
 our subscription towards the golden 
 age that, in bare justice, men can 
 demand of us no more ; we stand 
 clear of their claims, and, when 
 they come to us with further 
 charges for other men's sius — why 
 then, were we so little Christians 
 as to stand upon our strict rights, 
 and so little men as to be regard- 
 less of our social well-being, we 
 might protest against bearing a 
 burden not our own and say, '^ Go, 
 call them to the reckoning at whose 
 door this evil lies." But it is only 
 
CHRISTIAN ENTERPRISE. 115 
 
 as between man and man when 
 God is far awaj^ only in the ab- 
 stract view of severe distributive 
 justice, that human duty can re- 
 solve itself into this mere keeping 
 of accounts ; and so little can the 
 moral capital of the world be kept 
 up by this distraining upon bills 
 delivered^ that even society and 
 law are perpetually taxing the 
 faithful and orderly to discharge 
 the arrears of the unscrupulous 
 and idle. One half of the machin- 
 ery and work of all government is 
 but the combined effort and outlay 
 of just men to repair the mischiefs 
 of the unjust^ and to afford^ in the 
 prison, the court, the board of 
 healthy the public school, some 
 poor wholesale substitute for indi- 
 vidual fidelity. We live in a world 
 
116 THE CLAIMS OP 
 
 in whicli it is simply impossible to 
 ' ignore other men's neglected obli- 
 gations. To look no further than 
 mere self-interest, he who will not 
 own his share in our great com- 
 pany, but insists on keeping sepa- 
 rate his particular debtor and 
 creditor account, will only accele- 
 rate the ruin which he is so eager 
 to escape. You cannot simply let 
 alone the heedlessness and sin at 
 your right hand. If you treat it 
 like dead chaff to be just buried out 
 of sight, you will find it all to be 
 living seed, that will germinate and 
 spread like the poisonous man- 
 grove, till your habitable lands are 
 ' turned into a grave. If your 
 neighbour is a sluggard, and 
 allows his garden to run wild, in 
 spite of your protesting justice. 
 
CHRISTIAN ENTERPRISE. 117 
 
 your own labour will be increased. 
 At first, perhaps, you will try the 
 effect of greater diligence within 
 the limits of your little plot ; you 
 will strengthen its fences ; you 
 will ply it with a double weeding 
 power; but the rank grass 
 creeps through the hedge at 
 one end ere you have finished cut- 
 ting it out at the other; the 
 thistle-down sows its seed with 
 every wind; and in the end you 
 will find it best to take your spade, 
 open your neighbour's wicket 
 while he sleeps, and dig up his * 
 ground as well as your own. And 
 in the higher view of conscience, 
 this is clearer still. Duty is no , 
 fixed, allotted piecework, assigned 
 to us one by one, as if each was on 
 a desert island, and lived a life 
 
118 THE CLAIMS OF 
 
 unaffected by the rest. Rather is 
 it a joint enterprise^ a perilous 
 march over the mountain and 
 sharp encounter in the field, 
 committed to us all together^ as to 
 an army of the faithful. So when, 
 in this life-battle, the front ranks- 
 give way, there is nothing for it 
 but that the second advance to the 
 brunt ; and if they too are struck 
 with faint-heartedness and fly, the 
 slighter band in reserve behind 
 must take the risk, and exchange 
 support for conflict ; and even 
 though these and every other re- 
 liance should prove infirm or 
 faithless, still, unless all is to be 
 lost, some solitary hero of Divine 
 prowess, some leader of faith, 
 some captain of salvation, some 
 Jesus of Nazareth, will hold the 
 
CHRISTIAN ENTERPRISE. 119 
 
 desperate fields and, by expostulat- 
 ing death, rally the scattered host, 
 and reopen the hope of victory. 
 There can be no meaner mistake 
 than to suppose that each one's 
 duty remains just what it would 
 be in a world where all performed 
 their part; and only a soul with- 
 drawn from the vivifying look of 
 God, the soul of moral avarice, - 
 parsimonious in its expenditure of 
 effort, can delude itself with the 
 imagination that what would save 
 him there can suffice to save him 
 here. Every man, in proportion 
 as he is a true son of the Highest, 
 feels that he cannot stand by, see- 
 ing misery and guilt within his 
 reach, and say, ^^It is no concern 
 of mine " ; he knows himself re- 
 sponsible for all the wrong lie might 
 
120 THE CLAIMS OF 
 
 prevent, as well as for all lie may 
 positively do. Obligation cannot, 
 from its nature, exhaust itself, 
 and come to an end ; writing its 
 ^^ Finis," shutting itself up, and 
 standing thenceforth compact and 
 unsuggestive on the shelf. It has 
 no measure but possibility itself, 
 and thus lies ever open for fresh 
 lines of thought and love. Who- 
 soever has received of heaven the 
 suggestion of some practicable 
 deed of goodness or sacrifice of 
 mercy, bears a burthen which he 
 never can lay down, and which 
 will be asked at his hands when 
 he knocks at the everlasting gate. 
 It is the holy trust committed to 
 him ; and how is he straitened till 
 it be accomplished ! Thus do the 
 special evils of the guilty world 
 
CHRISTIAN ENTEEPRISE. 121 
 
 make room enough for the special 
 fidelity of saintly minds^ and the 
 vast amount of neglected obliga- 
 tion swell the work of faithful 
 men. Nay, not even should we 
 wait for the direct and audible 
 call of God within us. Without 
 sacrificeno man will really maintain 
 the spirit of a noble and devoat 
 life. And it is well for each to go 
 out deliberately beyond the circle 
 of his apparent personal obliga- 
 tions, and choose for himself some 
 work, just for God's sake alone — 
 some work to which no inclination, 
 no necessity invites him, but which 
 he takes in pure offering to Him. 
 It will help his self-knowledge ; it 
 will check his presumption ; it 
 will exercise his patience ; it will 
 test his fidelity. It is not that 
 
 9 
 
122 CHRISTIAN ENTERPRISE. 
 
 such works constitute his main 
 duty, and accumulate any gains of 
 merit. They are but like the 
 timepiece, which does not malce 
 our hours, but only marks them ; 
 yet, by the false measurements it 
 thus prevents, and the self-decep- 
 tions it corrects, is a priceless 
 economist of life. So is there no 
 such measurer of the way eternal 
 as the daily sacrifice. As its silent 
 index comes round, the steadiness 
 or trembling of our spirits shows 
 how our reckoning stands with 
 God; and when we feel not its 
 return, save by the passage across 
 our heart of a clearer peace and 
 brighter love, it is no slight indi- 
 cation that our course is ready to 
 be finished, and the hour come 
 that we should be glorified. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 W. SPKAIGHT AND SONS, PRINTERS, 
 
 FETTER LANE. 
 
3^..'^? 
 
 r i- V 
 
 ■i-.i 
 
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