tibxavy of EEIXG EYE. or disapproval of the preacher ; but. having thus paid their homage to religion and given satisfaction to their conscience, they hold themselves free for the rest: they have purchased immunity from interference in the gaieties of social life. Nay, sirs, is not this temper the most complete vindication of the preacher when he ventures to handle such a subject ? I cannot ignore the fact that the drama is, and always will be, an enormously powerful engine in the hands of society — an instrument of in- calculable influence for evil or for good, as it is wrongly or rightly directed. Its popularity, its vivid- ness, its directness of appeal to the imagination and the emotions, will inevitably secure to it this influence. And, if so, I cannot consent to turn my back upon it, or to close my eyes as if it were not. It is a matter of incalculable moment to yourselves and your chil- dren, to this your country, to the Gospel and the Church of Christ in this land, whether the English drama shall be suffered to sink to yet lower depths of degradation, or whether you will use all the influence which you possess, by abstention, by encouragement, by hearty sympathy with all its nobler efforts, by outspoken abhorrence of all its baser tricks, to raise it from its fallen estate, and to make it, what God would have it be. the purifier of the moral impulses, the quickener of the intellectual life, the common ^4 THE HEARING EAR [II. educator of the people in all that is heroic and truth- ful and just and unselfish and kindly-affectioned and pure and lovely and of good report. For if any, despairing of the drama, should hold it the duty of a patriot and a Christian to crush it, the thing cannot be done ; and, even if it were possible, the history of the past does not encourage us to hope that any good would result from this repressive policy, successfully pursued. I. For first of all ; dramatic representation is natural to man. Watch your own children, when they are left to themselves, and you cannot fail to be struck with this fact. The child rehearses in the nursery the scenes which it has witnessed in the drawing-room, or has read of in the story-book. It has no instruction, it receives no encouragement, in its childish attempt at dramatic action ; but scenic imitation is a sort of instinct, which it gratifies as a matter of course. It is the same with the infancy of peoples, as with the infancy of individuals. Among the most barbarous tribes, wholly removed from the influences of civilisation and culture, the drama in some rude form has been found to exist as a spon- taneous outgrowth of the soil. What again is the painting, or the oratorio, but another mode of grati- fying this perfectly natural, perfectly human impulse, which leads to the reproduction of the real or imagi- AND THE SEEING EYE. 25 nary scenes of the past ? And if this impulse be, as it appears to be, natural to man, it is quite vain to attempt to crush it, because it is not uncommonly degraded and abused. What abuse is more common or more fatal than the abuse of that natural emotion which we call love ? The corruption of the best is always the worst. ' If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!' But the preacher and the moralist do not therefore attempt to repress the natural affections (what folly could be greater than this ?) but to guide, to cultivate, to ennoble, to chasten and purify them. 2. But again ; this policy of repression has been tried at one period of our national life, and never was its futility more signally shown than in the issue. During the Commonwealth the drama was sternly proscribed, and with what results let the history of the English stage at the Restoration declare. The pent-up passions of a coerced but not convinced people burst out in the most fearful excesses, as soon as the restraint was removed. The drama of the Restoration is the foulest blot on our national litera- ture, for which, as Englishmen, we may well hang our heads in shame, and of which, as Christians, we hardly dare venture to speak. The grossest licenti- ousness was paraded on the stage. Virtue was de- rided by all the artifices of an ignoble ridicule, and 2 6 THE HEARING EAR [H. vice recommended by all the attractions of a corrupt invention. The unclean spirit returning had found the house empty, swept, and garnished, and had entered in, taking with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself. So disastrous was the issue of this ill-judged attempt at proscription. As our brilliant historian and essayist has only too truly described it, 'A frightful peal of blasphemy and ribaldry proclaimed that the short-sighted policy which aimed at making a nation of saints had made a nation of scoffers 1 .' 3. Once more; even if history had not taught us that the attempt to crush the drama is attended with far greater evils than those which it is designed to remove, would it be altogether wise to resort to such extreme measures, and thus to cut ourselves off from a powerful instrument of education, without at least making the attempt to direct it and to use it for good ? The drama was in times past the great teacher of the people, sharpening and refining their intellectual faculties, and setting before them a lofty standard of domestic and political morality. Why should it not be so now ? The ancient stage in its purest ages was the pulpit — not only in name but in teaching. In the Athenian theatre 'tragedy in scepter'd pall' preached the noblest sermons which 1 Macaulay, Essay on the Comic Dramatists of the Restoration. AND THE SEEING EYE. 27 the poet could conceive or the age comprehend. And have we not ourselves seen of late how, in a remote village of the Bavarian highlands, the most terrible tragedy in the history of our race, represented on a rustic stage by a simple peasantry, could rivet thousands of spectators during the long hours of a summer's day, subduing the most frivolous into silent awe, and thrilling all alike with a more profound sense of the power and significance of that unique act of self-sacrifice — the most solemn, most pathetic, most vivid, most effective of all sermons ? I am far from wishing to see the religious drama introduced again into this country. Only as a directly devo- tional service is it at all tolerable. Even then the scenic representation of the Passion may be a ques- tionable mode of teaching. But profaned by the touch of gain or the vanity of display it is transmuted at once into the rankest of all blasphemies. I only mention the fact, as illustrating the capabilities of the drama for the highest purposes of instruction. But what is there to prevent the English stage from taking its proper place as the most useful ally of the school and the pulpit by promoting all that is healthiest in morality, and all that is most bracing to the intellect ? It is not without shame that as Christians we read a definition of the drama given by a heathen philosopher more than three centuries before Christ. 2 8 THE HEARING EAR [n. He tells us that the aim of tragedy is the purification of the emotions of awe and pity in the audience through their sympathy with the action of the drama 1 . To purify, and not to stimulate at any cost — this, according to Aristotle, is the proper function of scenic representation. I desire no other definition. I make no larger demand. Let it be the aim of the tragic poet to purify one set of emotions, such as anger, fear, pity, by kindred representations of pathos and suffering ; of the comic poet to purify another set — love, mirth, geniality and the like — by kindliness, by humour, if need be, by satire and by ridicule, but at all events to purify. This was the tendency of the English stage in the age of its greatest triumphs and in the person of its noblest dramatists, despite oc- casional coarsenesses of expression, the more to be deplored as blots on a fair picture. But can this definition be applied with any truth to the recent drama of this country ? I am glad to think that there are some noble exceptions, of which this may indeed be said. All honour to those dramatic writers and those stage managers who have disdained to court popularity by flattering a vicious public taste. But as a rule, is purification either the aim or the tendency of the English stage at this moment? If 1 Arist. Poet. 6 Si t\tov ko.1 Ka.8a.paiv. ".] AND THE SEEING EYE. 29 so, how comes it that the clergyman is almost barred entrance into a theatre by general consent, and even worldly men would sneer if he should appear fre- quently within its walls ? How comes it that the plots and the dialogue of pieces which are witnessed without a blush by thousands cannot be alluded to in the family circle, except under the disguise of some delicate euphemism or some carefully guarded peri- phrasis ? Test the present tendency of the theatre by this standard, and what results will the examination yield? Shall we say that it enlists all the activities of the mind and all the sympathies of the heart on the side of purity and honour and virtue ? Shall we say that it shows a scrupulous respect for the chastity of growing youth and the fidelity of wedded life, holding up every violation of the one and every breach of the other to scorn, as mean and degrading; that it carefully abstains from inflaming any corrupt passion by a gesture or a look or a word suggestive of evil ; that it is scrupulously modest in its appointments-, its dresses, its movements ; that its mirth and its repartee are not barbed with any taint of poison which will rankle and fester in the imagination ; and that thus, while it attracts and amuses, it also chastens and elevates, doing its noble work all the more effec- tually because it teaches without seeming to teach, 3o THE HEARING EAR [ii. because it demands no effort, which is not also a delight, in the spectators ? Are these its moral effects ? And do its intellec- tual influences correspond to these ? Does it give a healthy tone to the mental faculties ? Does it abhor all mean artifices, and aim at producing its effects by imagination, by humour, by careful con- struction of plots, by truthful delineation of character? Does it avoid mere sensationalism, striking right home to the mind, rather than dazzling the eye and fascinating the ear ? Does it eschew mere burlesque, scorning to purchase an easy popularity by caricatur- ing any illustrious name or any important movement or any great work of genius, and thus by a false association of ideas debasing and vitiating the public taste ? For what are sensationalism and burlesque but different kinds of mental intoxication, producing a delirious sense of excitement for the moment, but ending in the degradation and wreck of the faculties, where each fresh gratification begets a fresh craving, till the intellectual constitution is shattered by ex- cessive indulgence in stimulants ? And we have had our warning. If we sin again, we shall sin with our eyes open. The history of English literature is our monitor, and the voice speaks with no faint or stammering utterance. I have al- ready alluded to the drama of the Restoration as the AND THE SEEING EYE. 3 1 deepest stain on the pages of our national history. I might quote paragraph after paragraph from one who was no unfriendly critic of dramatic literature and had no puritanical leanings 1 , in which he paints in ever-darkening colours the profaneness and im- morality of the English stage at this period ; when ' the common characteristic was hard-hearted, shame- less, swaggering licentiousness, at once inelegant and inhuman,' when 'nothing could be so pure or so heroic, but that it became foul and ignoble by trans- fusion through those foul and ignoble minds,' when 'the comic poet was the mouthpiece of the most deeply corrupted part of a corrupted society.' These sentences of indignant scorn — and they are not the strongest — were penned, be it observed, not by some fanatical preacher of the age, but by a cultivated man of literature in our own generation, jealous for his country's honour and blushing for his country's shame. Then it was, that one man stepped forward to de- nounce the shameless scandal. It might have seemed that a clerical outlaw, like Jeremy Collier, aiming his blows at his own political friends, would prove only a sorry champion of such a desperate cause against all the genius and fashion and power of the age- But there is a majesty in purity and honour, before which baseness recoils overawed. The smooth pebble 1 Lord Macaulay in the Essay referred to above. 32 THE HEARING EAR [M. from the brook, slung with fearless hand, smote the great intellectual giant of the age in the brow; and the 'towering crest of Dryden' fell before his daunt- less assailant. Dryden, a chief offender, retracted. ' In many things,' he wrote, ' he has taxed me justly and I have pleaded guilty.' Dryden retracted ; and his retraction stands recorded as a warning to all future times. But no retraction can unprint the printed page; no retraction can wipe out the stain on our literature ; no retraction can arrest the spread of the poison through the veins of generations yet unborn. But we have not fallen so low as this. The pro- fligacy and profaneness, the shameless parade of vice, which disgraced the drama of that ill-starred period, would be revolting to our good taste now. We need not fear any recurrence to such a state of things. Yes ; there is perhaps little likelihood of a return to the coarseness of the past. But may not a still greater peril to the morals of England lurk under the insidious refinement which disguises its corrupt ten- dencies in graceful images, which trades on the fact that our noblest impulses lie very close to our basest passions, and thus leads astray by working on the amiable sensibilities of the heart? Mere coarseness carries with it its own antidote, for it repels all but vulgar and debased natures by its loathsomeness. It II.] AND THE SEEING EYE. 33 is the fatal association that blends the good with the evil, that makes vice palatable by culture and refine- ment, from which we have most to dread. We have not fallen so low yet. Thank God, it is true. But in what direction are we moving ? This is the really momentous question. Are we on an incline? For, if so, unless we arrest ourselves at once by a stern effort, then by an inevitable law of forces moral as well as physical, the descent will be accele- rated, and the precipitation must come at last. I wish I could think it possible to answer this question in more than one way. But can any man who calmly reviews the last quarter of a century doubt that dur- ing this period a poisonous taint has been spreading through literature and society ? The infection may have been communicated in the first instance from abroad ; but it is naturalised, or almost naturalised, among us now. The degradation of the stage is only one token of a much more general corruption. The popular literature — the novels and poetry — the news- paper reports, even the shop-windows, tell the same tale. Subjects are discussed, and sights are exhibited, which would not have been tolerated a few years ago. And we, as patriots, look idly on, discussing the material defences of our country, as though no moral danger threatened her integrity ; we, as Christians, fold our arms, as though we should never be called 34 THE HEARING EAR [ii to account for any of these things, as though it were a light matter in ourselves or others to abuse the faculties and the senses which God has given us, forgetting the responsibility inculcated in the wise man's saying, 'The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the Lord hath made even both of them.' And yet what interests should appear more mo- mentous either to the patriot or to the Christian than the purity of his country's literature? A bad law may be rescinded, a vicious institution may be abo- lished ; but a corrupt work of genius is there, there for ever. Can there be any lesson more grave or more deeply pathetic than the confession of that epilogue in which the father of English poetry, at the close of his life, glancing back on the creations of his literary genius, retracts all that is tainted with gross- ness and levity, avowing his contrition and asking forgiveness through the mercy of Christ? And again ; will not all right-minded men echo the tribute of respect which our great living poet has paid to his great predecessor, and thankfully acknowledge that the laureate wreath did indeed descend upon him greener from the brows of one who uttered nothing base ? Who does not regret, even in Shakspeare, the occasional coarseness, possibly not his own, w hich blots the pages of dramas otherwise essentially pure and healthy and noble in their moral tone ? II.] AND THE SEEING EYE. 35 For indeed the responsibilities of literary genius are enormous, as the consequences are incalculable. Can any anguish be imagined more bitter to the awakened conscience of a penitent than the memory of some one human soul polluted, degraded, ruined by his means ? To such a one any accumulation of suffering will seem a small price to pay for redeeming the past, if only he could bear all the burden himself, if only the past were not irredeemable. Such remorse might well drag down a spirit from on high. And yet what is one isolated case of degradation through personal companionship, compared with the noxious influence of a perverted literary genius, which per- vades all classes and extends to all time ? Who is so hardened that he would dare to face such a re- trospect, if only for a moment he were gifted with a seraph's vision, and could see spread out before him the infinite, intricate consequences of his work in all their manifold and hideous forms ? Who would not hold it better far to have lived obscure and died for- gotten, than thus to have laid a whole world at his feet, dazzled with the brilliancy of his genius, and then, when the intoxication of popularity has passed away, then, when it is too late, to awaken to the awful reality? But, if the purity of our literature is threatened, the fault cannot be all on one side. There is a law 3—2 36 THE HEARING EAR [ii. of supply and demand in literature as well as in commerce. A corrupt drama is the reflection of a corrupt age. The author gives what the audience requires. Each acts and reacts upon the other, either debasing or elevating, as the tendency may be. The remedy therefore is in the hands of the people of England, more especially of the influential and culti- vated classes of England. This fact it is which makes it worth while for a preacher to dwell on the subject at all. Not a few members of this congregation have very distinct and very grave responsibilities in this matter. To such I earnestly appeal, by their example and their influence, by tacit discouragement and by outspoken reproof, by all lawful means direct and indirect, to stem this advancing tide of immorality; to set their faces sternly against the insidious attractions of a refined sensu- alism ; to accept no compromise which condones the corrupt or mean sentiment for its sparkling wit or its graceful expression ; to promote a taste for all that is high and noble and lovely in the creations of past genius ; to encourage whatever is pure and healthy in the literary efforts of their own generation. This let them do, assured that the layman who will boldly take up this position before the world is the truest benefactor to his country and the most effective preacher of Christ. This let them do, remembering n.] AND THE SEEING EYE. 37 that all those elements in our nature which are so powerfully affected by dramatic representation for good or for evil, are God's talents given to us in trust — our imagination, our affections, our emotions, our sensibilities, our senses ; ' The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the Lord hath made even both of them.' III. THE FATHER OF MISSIONARIES. And lie went out, not knowing whither he went. Hebrews xi. 8. S. Michael's Church, Cambridge, S. Andrew's Day, 1876, at the Inauguration of the Cambridge Mission to Delhi. He went out, as many had gone out before him, as many would go out after him. We picture to ourselves the scene, as it actually took place. It is an ordinary caravan moving westward. A head of a family, with his children, his servants, his camels, his flocks and herds, his household goods, starts from the home of his forefathers to seek his fortunes in some new region. From ancient Ur of the Chaldees he journeys to Haran ; from Haran to Damascus ; from Damascus to the land of the Canaanites, the land of til] THE FATHER OF MISSIONARIES. 39 the children of Heth. He moves onward and onward towards the setting sun ; till at length all progress is stopped by the sea barrier which parts him from the unknown worlds beyond. There from those bare mountain heights he would look down on the dark purple ocean with its boundless expanse and its ceaseless turmoil — the ocean terrible even to his late descendants, who shuddered to think of those that ' occupy their business in the great waters,' that ' are carried up to the heaven and down again to the deep,' while ' their soul melteth away because of the trouble,' but far more terrible, more awe-inspiring, more mys- terious still, to one who so late had left his inland home in the far East, and gazed now for the first time on this watery plain, the symbol at once of the infinitude and power of God and of the restless activity and toil of human life. And, as his eye ranged over its mighty expanse, and his imagination dwelt on those vague dream-lands which (was it fable or fact ?) were said to lie far off in the region of the setting sun, beyond the line where sky and ocean were blended together — Javan and Tarshish and Chittim (if we could imagine such names current then) — peopled with men like himself — what must have been his thoughts as he remembered the promise, the divine and irrevocable promise, that his seed should be as the stars of heaven for multitude, 40 THE FATHER OF MISSIONARIES. [m. and that in him all the families of the earth should be blessed ? For, while all else in the scene was changed, the stars, the sacrament of this promise, remained unchangeable, as the promise itself was unchangeable. They shone overhead — each particular star — with its own light, in its own region, above that strange, vague ocean, just as they had shone over his boyhood in his familiar inland home. What was there then in this movement, that Psalmists and Prophets and Apostles should single it out for special emphasis ? It was after all to the outward eye but a common caravan. Migration in Abraham's day was the rule, not the exception, of Eastern life, as it is still among the tribes of the desert. Hundreds of nomad sheiks had done the same before, and hundreds would do the same after him. War, enterprise, restlessness, even hunger, has set and is setting numberless such caravans in motion. Yet no one remembers them ; no one records them. They are as much a matter of course as the voyage of an emigrant vessel is a matter of course with ourselves. And these movements of households after all are quite insignificant compared with those vaster migra- tions of which history speaks, where whole armies, whole nations, whole peoples, have gone forth from their homes, not knowing whither they went. Century after century the tide of humanity was rolling west- in.] THE FATHER OF MISSIONARIES. 4 1 ward, turning its face like Abraham towards the setting sun. Think of those vast movements of our race — dimly discerned, if discerned at all, in the traditions of primeval history, but now at length read more clearly in the languages and customs of men — when one after another the great subdivisions of the Aryan family broke off from the parent stock and sought their fortunes in new regions, Greek and Roman, Celt and Slave and Teuton — wave dashing upon wave in ceaseless sequence, and deluging whole continents in their victorious career. Think again of those tremendous hosts, which the mere lust of con- quest has driven forward from time to time from East to West — the armies of Assyrians and Babylonians, of Medes and Persians, in ancient times, — the hordes of Saracens, Huns, Tartars in later ages — blackening like locusts the fields of the West. And at last all Europe was occupied by Asia, and from the pillars of Hercules men looked out in despair on that vast Atlantic Ocean, as from the mountains of Judaea Abraham had gazed on the Mediterranean Sea, and it seemed as if now at length a barrier were placed at once and for ever against this onward march of hu- manity. But the centuries rolled on ; and all at once the barrier was broken down. The old cry, 'Westward ho,' was raised again. Again the stream of mankind poured onward in torrents. Over the ocean now, as 42 THE FATHER OF MISSIONARIES. [m. over the continent before, this human tide advanced. Europe was poured into America, as Asia had been poured into Europe. Ambition, enterprise, com- merce, necessity, drove and are driving their thou- sands yearly to new homes in the West ; and vast cities, threatening to rival Liverpool and Manchester in numbers and wealth, have started up suddenly out of the earth, where, when some of us were boys, stood only a few log huts amidst uncleared forests or in desert prairies. Whence comes it then, that in the ceaseless tide of humanity, thus rolling westward through the ages, this one caravan of a simple nomad Bedouin — this single drop in the mighty stream — has fastened on itself the attention of men ? How is it that in the history of our race this migration of Abraham has a higher interest than all the hordes that from time to time have swept over the face of the earth — the great armies of a Rameses, a Sennacherib, a Xerxes, a Genghis Khan, a Timur? The answer is contained in one word. It was his faith, which singled him out in the counsels of God and has stamped him on the hearts of men. ' By faith Abraham being called . . . obeyed, and he went out, not knowing whither he went.' ' Abraham believed God.' ' Against hope' he 'believed in hope.' It was not ambition, not enterprise, not restlessness, not the III.] THE FATHER OF MISSIONARIES. 43 lust of conquest, not the greed of gain, but the con- sciousness of a divine presence, the submission to a divine command, the trust in a divine blessing, which drove him forth into unknown lands. He saw the hand of God beckoning him onward, which others could not see. He heard the voice of God calling him forward, which others could not hear. And so he left the home of his fathers ; he detached himself from all the fond memories of the past and all the joyous associations of the present ; he made the great venture of faith ; he threw himself upon the blessing, threw himself upon the future, threw himself upon God. With what vagueness he realised the promise, we cannot tell. To him it must have seemed not less mysterious than that star-spangled vault, so calm and so impenetrable, which was its outward type. But he saw at least as in a glass, he read as in a dark enigma, the glory of the great Messianic day, when his children should rule over the earth. The shadow of the future was projected on the experience of the present. He saw, and he believed. He went forth, nothing doubting. He went forth, not knowing whither he went. And can we say that his expectation has been disap- pointed in the result ? Is it not the case that Abraham is the most wide-spread, most famous, most cherished, most universal name in the records of our race ? 44 THE FATHER OF MISSIONARIES. [m. Look at the matter from any point of view which you may choose. Put aside all thought of a divine revelation. Shut your eyes to any considerations of a supernatural guidance. Forget, if you can forget, the momentous issues of the Incarnation. Read the fact, if you will, in the dry light of secular history. Is it not true even then, that Abraham is the patri- arch of mankind in a sense in which the term will apply to no other man ? Is it not true that the main stream of human history is traced up to Abraham and Abraham's migration as its source ? Is it not true — true on any showing — that in Abraham's seed, whether his natural descendants the Jews or his spiritual descendants the Christians, all the families of the earth have been blessed ? Is it not true, that despite themselves all the most powerful, most civi- lised, most intelligent races of mankind have paid homage to Abraham's faith as inherited by Abraham's children, have poured their precious gifts — their silver and their gold — into the temple of Abraham's God ? Is it not true that all the fertilising currents of human history in all ages, Babylonian and Egyptian and Persian, Greek and Roman, Celt and Teuton and Slave, have one after another been sucked into this main stream and swelled the waters of the mighty river of God ? For Abraham was not only faithful himself, but m.] THE FATHER OF MISSIONARIES. 4 5 he was also the father of the faithful. Look at the history of the Jewish race. What was the secret of its long, unbroken life, the principle which revived, animated, sustained it amidst all disasters and under every oppression ? Was it not faith — faith in a divine purpose, in a divine call, in a divine mission for the race ? With all their narrowness and all their meanness and all their weakness, aye, and amidst all their defections too, this faith never died out. It was the breath of their national life. The spirit of Abraham never altogether left his children. And so they were despised, and yet they triumphed : they were trampled under foot, and yet they dictated terms to the nations. ' The vanquished,' said Seneca bitterly of the Jews, ' have given laws to the victors 1 .' He was dismayed by the spread of Jewish beliefs, of Jewish customs, everywhere. What would he not have said, if he could have looked forward for three centuries and forecast the time when the spiritual Israel — the offspring of Abraham by faith — should plant its throne on the ruins of the majesty and power of imperial Rome ? Men may ridicule this idea of a divine call as an illusion : they may despise this faith in the unseen as an idle dream. They may tell us to husband our 1 4 Victi victoribus leges dederunt,' quoted by S. Augustine de Civ. Dei, VI. ii. 46 THE FATHER OF MISSIONARIES. [in. material resources, to advance our scientific know- ledge, to elaborate our political and social arrange- ments, and to banish all such unrealities from our thoughts. But assuredly this belief in a divine prompting has ever been the most potent, most beneficent, most enduring influence in the history of mankind. Look outside the pale of sacred history. Take as examples the two greatest of the Greeks — the greatest in the world of thought, and the greatest in the world of action. What was it which singled out Socrates among all the philosophers and moralists of Greece, and invested his character with a moral sublimity unapproached by the rest ? What else but his belief that he too was prompted by a divine spirit, a supernatural voice, deterring, advising, inspiring, stimulating, to which he rendered implicit obedience, and for which he was content cheerfully to face even death itself? What was it which rescued Alexander from the herd of vulgar conquerors and tyrants, de- spite all his faults, which gave its permanence to his work and influence, and made it a true praeparatio evangelica ? What, I ask again, but his belief that he was sent from heaven to break down the partition wall between Greek and Barbarian, and to fuse them into one common polity, under one common rule 1 ? 1 Plutarch de Alex. Fort. i. 6 KOivbs tikuv deoOev appoarris kcu Sia\- in.] THE FATHER OF MISSIONARIES. 47 Of faith — true faith — wherever it may be, Abra- ham is the prototype. But it is in the missionary life above all others, that the special form of his faith is reproduced. The missionary leaves the home of his fathers, as Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees ; he too hears a divine voice beckoning him forward ; he too goes out not knowing whither he goeth ; and against hope he believes in hope. Abraham is the earliest of missionaries, the true, spiritual father of the glorious band of evangelists who from age to age have carried the light of God into the dark places of heathendom : of that first-called disciple, whose name we this day commemorate, the earliest to enlist in this brave army, who left his home on the Galilaean lake, left his all, that he might follow his Master to suffering and to death : of that first and chief mis- sionary to the Gentiles, the greatest because the least of all the Apostles, who carried the torch of the Gospel from city to city and from land to land, having no certain dwelling-place, knowing not from hour to hour what should befal him, bearing about in his body the dying of the Lord Jesus, till at length the martyrdom of life was crowned by the martyrdom of death : of that brave preacher, the father of English -missionaries, Boniface, who sailed from his native shores to carry the glad tidings into the wilds of Germany, and after a long life's labour died by pagan 48 THE FATHER OF MISSIONARIES. [in. hands, thanking God with his parting breath that those who kill the body have no power to hurt the soul : of that great evangelist, the Apostle of the Indies, Francis Xavier, who with the divine warning ' What doth it profit a man ' ringing ever in his ears, went out, not knowing whither he went, bearing the message to the farthest East, ambitious only to spend and to be spent, the most energetic, most self-denying, most loving of missionaries : of those pure and devoted soldiers of Christ, whom in these latest ages our own Universities have sent forth — their best and noblest sons — to lay down their lives for Christ ; of Henry Martyn, most heroic in spirit and most feeble in frame, who after a brief, energetic career was struck down, far away from friends and home, on a long and toilsome journey in Asia ; of Charles Mackenzie, the modest and singlehearted, who at the outset of a missionary career of no common promise yielded up his childlike soul to God its giver in the steaming fever-stricken wilds of Africa ; of John Coleridge Patteson, the gentle scholar and affec- tionate teacher, who fell a victim to the poisoned arrows of those Pacific islanders whom, barbarians though they were, he would only consent to treat as brothers in Christ. God grant that this noble army may never want recruits ! God grant that, as from time to time its ranks are thinned by death, III.] THE FATHER OF MISSIONARIES. 49 or as new levies are raised for some fresh campaign in the service of our great Captain, men may press forward from this our own dear Cambridge to fill the vacant places, and do battle for the truth ! I need hardly say why I have put these thoughts before you this evening. You yourselves will have anticipated the moral. These annual days of inter- cession have not been without their fruit. Some among ourselves have heard the call and are ready to obey. Steps have been taken for the formation of a Cambridge mission to North India. Two volunteers have already come forward. The head-quarters of the mission are to be fixed at Delhi. Delhi ! What associations do not gather about the name ? Delhi, the immemorial centre of Hindoo tradition — the chief stronghold of Mohammedan power — the capital of the descendants of Timur — the seat of the most splendid, if not the most powerful, of Oriental monarchies — the city of many sieges, Tartar, Persian, Mahratta, English — Delhi the beautiful, the cruel, the magnificent, the profligate. The name of Delhi will ever have a thrilling interest for English hearts. What hours of anxiety and what feats of valour does it not recal ? Though nearly twenty years have passed, it seems yet to many of us only the other day, when the power and the prestige of England was hanging on the news S. S. 4 50 THE FATHER OF MISSIONARIES. [in. from Delhi. The massacre at Delhi was the chief scene in the first act of that terrible drama, the Indian mutiny. The siege of Delhi was a crisis in the action. The fall of Delhi was the earnest that English rule in India was not broken. And what deeds of heroism did not the emergency call forth ? In all history I know no nobler feat than the daring resolution of those brave men who set fire to the magazine which they were defending, to save it from the insurgents, though it was almost certain death to every one of that gallant band — a feat nobler far, as it seems to me, than the most famous exploits of Greek or Roman story — than the deed of those far- famed three hundred who blocked the pass against the countless hosts of the barbarian invader, or those dauntless three who held the bridge while the timbers fell crashing into the river behind their back. For there were no admiring crowds to encourage and to applaud here. It seemed only too likely that not one man of those nine would live to say how the deed was done. It was duty, sheer duty, which prompted the act — an act of courage and self-sacri- fice, over which the Christian soldier in his campaign of peace would do well to ponder. And a name too of not less absorbing interest to the Christian, than to the Englishman. The Delhi mission was still in its infancy, when the mutiny in.] THE FATHER OF MISSIONARIES. 5 I broke out. The Delhi mission was baptized in blood. It was literally murdered. But, here as elsewhere, the blood of the martyrs was the seed-plot of the Church. The work of evangelisation has revived. A memorial Church, bearing the name of the first martyr S. Stephen, commemorates the death of these his latest successors. No missionary field in India, we are told, is more promising than this. Only men are wanted to aid in the work. And to Cambridge more especially the call comes. It is the blood of Cambridge martyrs which cries out of the ground for revenge, the noble revenge of bringing the gospel of love and peace home to the hearts of that people by whose hands they were slain. The Delhi mission was in its origin essentially a Cambridge mission. Its martyrs were Cambridge men. Its first founder, the chaplain, had been a Fellow of Christ's College. Its acting head, at the time when the mutiny broke out, was a member of Caius College. Another student, attached to the mission, was a near relative of one who now holds an honourable office in our University. All these were among the first-fruits of the slain. Shall their blood cry to us in vain ? It is therefore in some sense in fulfilment of a pledge which Cambridge has given to Delhi, that our two volunteers have devoted themselves to this work. 4—2 52 THE FATHER OF MISSIONARIES. [in. Before we meet together on S. Andrew's Day next year they will already, if it please God, have left our shores. They will go forth, not thinking that they are doing any great thing. They will thank God for the privilege, but they will not commend themselves for the effort. They will feel that such a call is only a fresh cause for self-humiliation. They will ask themselves why they should be proud of doing that for Christ which hundreds of their fellow-country- men are ready to do for patriotism, for fame, for enterprise, even for greed ? They will feel that any sacrifice is too small when they think of the Great Sacrifice. They will go forth, as Abraham went forth, in faith ; not knowing what future God has in store for them ; ready to do the work, patient to suffer the trials, strong to bear the disappointments, which He may assign to them. They will go forth, not underrating the difficulties, and yet not despairing of the end. They will know that, though they are weak, yet God is strong. They will feel assured that His truth must prevail, though others may reap the harvest where they have sown the seed. They will go forth, let us hope, not underhanded. Two only have offered hitherto. Three others are III.] THE FATHER OF MISSIONARIES. 53 needed. It is held that our mission should at first starting consist of five members at least. We desire to make a strong, united, compact assault upon one point, and thus to effect a breach through which others may pour in and occupy the fortress. I would not willingly think that Cambridge cannot find even five men for such a work as this. They will go forth, fully counting the costs. They will not be swayed by a passing gust of enthusiasm, but they will be possessed by the firm assurance of faith. Much as I should rejoice that some word of mine this evening might touch one and another heart in this congregation and lead them to offer themselves for the work, I dare not appeal to any transient feelings. It is above all things needful in our volun- teers, that having put their hands to the plough, they should not look back. They will go forth, determined to hold together. They will remember that union is strength. They will suffer no diversities of taste and no conflict of opinion and no inequalities of temper to estrange them one from another. They will entertain no rivalry, but the rivalry of doing Christ's work. They will go forth, depending on our prayers, our efforts, our sympathy, that all alike — we in Cambridge and they in India — may feel bound together in one common work. May it never be said of us that they 54 THE FATHER OF MISSIONARIES. [ill have looked to us for encouragement and support in vain ! Therefore as you kneel in silent prayer in this church before we part, and again as you commend yourselves to God this night on your knees in your secret chambers, I ask you to remember the Delhi mission. Pray that those who have offered them- selves for the work may have courage, and power, and energy, and love, and sound judgement, and largeness of heart, for the fulfilment of their task. Pray that others may be added to them, lest, while the vineyard is large, the labourers should be all too few. NOTE. The originator of the Delhi Mission was the Rev. M. Jennings, formerly Fellow of Christ's College, the Chaplain at the station, who collected money for it and laid its foundations. In July iS-,2 two Hindoos of high position, Ram Chandra and Dr Chimmum Lall, were baptized. In 1854 the Rev. J. S. Jackson, Fellow of Caius College, and the Rev. A. R. Hubbard, a member of the same College, arrived from England, and started the work as a distinct mission. At the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny in 1857 a " trle above were murdered, except Mr Jackson, who was in England at the time, and Ram Chandra, who after many hairbreadth risks managed to escape out the city alive. The other missionaries, Messrs Corrie Sandys and Louis Koch, with Miss Jennings, Captain Douglas and others, also fell victims. The mission was refounded in 1859 by Mr Skelton, Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, and was called S. Stephen's College. Its direct association with Cambridge University dates from the occasion of this sermon. IV. ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. / am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. i Corinthians ix. 22. S. Paul's Cathedral, S. Mark's Day, 1877, at the Consecration of the first Bishop of Truro. S. Paul's life has ever been an enigma to those who have failed to appreciate this ruling principle of his conduct. To his contemporaries he seemed altogether inconsistent and unintelligible. The Jew- ish converts were at a loss to understand how one who had conceded so much to Judaism in the case of Timothy should refuse everything to Judaism in the case of the Galatians. The Gentile converts could not reconcile the utterances of a teacher who in the same breath declared that an idol was nothing in the 5* ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. [IV. world, and denounced the feasters in an idol's temple as having- fellowship with devils. The party of tra- dition reviled him, because he broke loose from the time-honoured usages of his race and country. The friends of liberty suspected him, because he denounced in no sparing terms the practical license which they grafted on his doctrine. And to modern critics also his conduct has appeared not less perplexing. The Paul of the Acts, they say, is a different person from the Paul of S. Paul's Epistles. They cannot identify the facile pupil of James, who to win over those many thousands of his fellow-countrymen lent him- self to a complicity in Nazarite vows, with the stern master of Peter, who declared that those seeking justification through the law had fallen from grace. The one character to them is irreconcilable with the other. Irreconcilable, yes, to those who do not appreciate the infinite power of love in concession, in adaptation, in expedient, in varying sympathy with the wants and the weaknesses and the prejudices and the ignorances of men, while holding firmly and maintaining boldly the great central truths of God. For have we not here, in this saying, the key to all that apparent vacillation upon which his enemies fastened of old ? Is not this the solution of all that incongruity which his modern critics have detected in his portraits ? Can any words be stronger than these, iv.] ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. 57 ' To the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews : to the lawless I became as lawless . . . that I might gain the lawless ; to the weak I became weak' — weak myself, I felt with their tender scruples about forbidden meats; I narrowed myself to their narrow observance of days ; I made all their pre- judices and all their littlenesses my own, 'that I might gain the weak : I am become all things,' yes, all things in turn — Hebrew and Greek, puritan and libertine, rigid and facile, simple and learned — 'all things to all men, that by all and every means I might save some.' There is a concession which springs from cowardice, and there is a facility which is born of indifference. There is an adaptation which is the slave of self- interest, and there is a versatility which is leagued with fraud. Not such was the Apostle's principle of action. His was the elasticity of a keen, absorbing, dominating love, which concentrates its entire energies for the time on the one object before it, which watches every moment, seizes every opportunity, fastens on every rising emotion, and ingratiates itself with every transient thought, that it may force an entrance for the truth which shall save a soul from self and sin, and gain it for God. Men may misunderstand — they can hardly fail to misunderstand — a character like this. In its super- 58 ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. [iv. ficial aspects the versatility of divine love has re- semblances to the versatility of worldly craft. It is impossible to draw any rigid line which shall sepa- rate the one from the other in their external actions. Who does not remember the noble extravagance of the great Indian missionary watching the play and holding the stakes of the rude soldiers, content to become a trifler among triflers, that he might win triflers to God ? This outwardly was a very worldly thing ; and yet who for one moment would condemn Francis Xavier of worldliness ? Only the firm grasp of eternal truths, only the exacting tyranny of an unselfish love, only the indwelling presence of a Divine Spirit, though ever changing yet ever the same, transfusing itself like the breathing air which is its symbol, permeating every thought and action, adapting itself in its elasticity to each emergency of time and place and circumstance and person — these and these only can prevent the versatility of a S Paul from degenerating into the insincerity and the chicane of the worldling. The attitude of S. Paul in the first age is the precedent for the clergy in all ages. They too, like the Apostle, must in a certain sense strive to please all men in all things, careful only that while so doing, they, like him, seek 'not their own profit, but the profit of the many, that they may be saved'. iv.] ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. 59 Therefore, if they are true to his example, they will adapt themselves to the divers nations and the changing times in which their lot is cast. They will be quick to discern that the methods found most efficacious for obtaining a hearing in England may fail in India or in China. They will not fall into the error of identifying the nineteenth century with the sixteenth, or with the thirteenth, or with the fourth and fifth, or even with the first. They will thank God for that era of revived learning and awakened thought which shook the Church loose from the fetters of ignorance and superstition, and stripped off from the truth of Christ the accretions of ages; but they will not attribute to the Refor- mation such an infallibility as leaves to their own times no advance to be made and no step to be retraced. And again ; looking farther back, they will recognise gladly the noble abandonment of self- devotion which prompted the great religious move- ment of the thirteenth century ; they will not under- rate it as a counteraction of the crying evils of the time; they will value it infinitely as a protest against the selfishness of all times ; but they will not seek to introduce the anachronism of bygone institutions into an alien condition of society. They will imitate the spirit — the love, the tenderness, the absolute self-sacrifice — but they will not copy the 60 ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. [nr. methods, of a Francis of Assisi. And again ; turning back to a still earlier page in history, they will fully appreciate the services rendered to the Church by the era of the great councils in the definition of Christian truth ; but they will not be blind to its patent faults — its bitterness, its intense party spirit, its recklessness of means to an end ; they will not be so untrue to their calling, they will not so far forget the promise of the Spirit, as to suppose that they themselves have no function to fulfil in linking the truths of Christ with the enlarged knowledge and the more catholic sympathies of their own age. And lastly ; as they look back with wistful regret on those first days of a simpler faith and a more un- selfish love, when the guiding hand of the Apostles was still felt in the Church, they will not forget that Western Europe in this latest century differs widely from Palestine or Asia Minor in that earliest ; they will see that a more complex civilisation, with more diversified energies of life and thought, demands from the Church a fuller development of organisation and a more comprehensive study of means. It will be their endeavour not to stereotype the processes, but to revive the mind, of their Apostolic masters. This they will do, remembering always that 'there are diversities of gifts, and yet the same Spirit ; there are differences of administrations, and yet the same IV.] ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. 61 Lord; there are diversities of operations, and yet the same God which worketh all in all' — diversities as diverse as the centuries are diverse, as the nations are diverse. This is the true policy, as it is the paramount duty, of a Christian clergy. Is their lot cast in an age, when the relations of employers and employed are in a critical state? They will not stand aloof from the struggle, as if it had no concern for them ; they will rather regard themselves as the natural mediators between masters and men, because the natural friends of both, studying the controversy from either side, and thus striving to moderate, to guide, to reconcile. Do they live at a time when aesthetic culture is making rapid strides ? They will not let it drift into a position of antagonism to Christian worship, but will rather enlist it in the service of God, careful only not to make a mistress of a handmaid, and watchful always lest artistic feeling should step into the place of devotion, or music usurp the throne of prayer. Has God called them to work among the thronging population of our large cities? They will see that the simpler modes of almsgiving which sufficed in a simpler age will not meet the demands of our more complex social condition ; that the organisation of charitable relief is a necessity of the time, if we would prevent 62 ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. [IV. our charity from degrading those whom it is intended to raise. They will discern that extensive combina- tion for providing healthy and suitable homes for the labouring classes is a primary requisite for their work, seeing that, where these are not, any moral and religious improvement on a large scale is almost impossible. Are they confronted with an era of great scientific progress ? They will meet the latest acquisitions of science, not with opposition, not with coldness, not with misgiving, but with a hearty welcome — the more hearty in proportion as their faith is the stronger — confident that in the end divine truth can only gain by enlarging the bounds of human knowledge. So they will strive to 'please all men in all things'; and this they will do, 'not seeking their own profit' — whether their own influence or their own amusement or their own advancement — 'but the profit of the many that they may be saved'. And never, during the eighteen centuries of Christian history, has there been a Church with larger opportunities and graver responsibilities in this matter than our own. Of the Church of England, more than of any other Church, it may be said that her hand reaches into every rank of social life, into every grade of intellectual culture, into every great branch of the Church of Christ, into every great religion of mankind throughout the world. iv.] ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. 63 She surely will not be wanting in sympathy with any class of society, for her position demands that she should become to the lowly as lowly, that she may win the lowly, and to the noble as noble, that she may save the noble. With her chief pastors holding high positions in the State, and her parochial ministers working in the courts and alleys of our thronged cities, she touches both ends of the social scale as no other Christian community in this country touches them. Much, very much, has yet to be done to bring the Gospel home to the labouring classes. The great problem for our Church in this age is how she may supplement her parochial machinery to this end. But even thus, with all her painful deficiencies, she still stands in closer contact with the poorest classes than any other religious body, even in our large towns, while in wide districts of the country she is almost the sole teacher of the Gospel of Christ. And, as with the social, so also with the intel- lectual scale. She has it in her power, as no other Church has, to show herself alike to the learned as learned, that she may gain the learned, and to the simple as simple, that she may save the simple. Despite all gloomy forebodings, the clergy of the English Church are still the most learned clergy in Christendom. It will be an evil day when from remissness or from inappreciation she shall resign 6 4 ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. [IV. this proud prerogative — an evil day for this land, an evil day for the Christianity of the future. And again ; when we extend our range of view beyond the boundaries of our own country to Chris- tendom at large, the Anglican Church is still seen to hold a position of exceptional advantage. It was not, you will remember, the sanguine prophecy of some only too partial son of her own, but the calm opinion of a distinguished member of the Roman community, who was no lenient critic of our faults, that this our English Church seemed destined by her position to give the impulse to a great movement which should result in the union of the divided Churches and sects. Her affinities with the most prominent forms of Christian society place her, as it were, in the moral centre of Christendom. By her adherence to the ancient creeds, she allies herself to the great Oriental Church ; in her hereditary institu- tions, she is connected with the great Latin Church ; in her repudiation of traditional corruptions and adoption of simpler forms, as well as in her larger sympathy with intellectual and social freedom, she is drawn towards the Reformed communities. Thus, without any unfaithfulness to her recognised position, she — I say it without fear of being misunderstood — may become to the Greek as a Greek, and to the Roman as a Roman, and to the Protestant as a IV.] ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. 65 Protestant, so as to unite Greek and Roman and Protestant in one, that she and they alike may be saved in Christ. And once more ; while holding this central position with regard to the Churches of Christ, she has unique advantages also with respect to the great religions of the world without. What was the lesson which the last consecration held in this cathedral only a few months ago must have sug- gested to every thoughtful mind ? Why, that in his diocese, the most populous diocese in the world, with its hundred and fifty millions of human beings, the bishop of Calcutta would be brought into close and immediate contact with the three great religions which divide with Christianity the allegiance of the civilised world, — with Brahminism in its immemorial home, with Mohammedanism in its chief stronghold and its largest aggregate, with Buddhism in one of its diverse forms. This unwieldy diocese is a satire on our theory of episcopal supervision ; it cries shame on the poverty of our missionary efforts ; but at least it brings home to us the special obligations upon our English Church and nation to study the elements of truth which have given to these three great religions their hold upon men, and through this study to point out effectively to them a more excellent way. It is for this Church above all Churches— forgive the S. S. 5 66 ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. [IV. over-boldness of my language — I do but extend the bold figure of the Apostle — it is for this Church to become to the Hindu as Hindu, to the Mohammedan as Mohammedan, and to the Buddhist as Buddhist, that she may win all alike to Christ. These are the splendid opportunities, this is the unique position, of the English Church. And shall we by precipitancy, by recklessness, by self-will, by passion, thwart the destiny which seems in God's good purpose to have been marked out for her? The crisis is full of magnificent hopes, but it is charged also with many dark forebodings and fears. And it depends on our patience, our forbearance, our discretion, our charity, our largeness of heart and of mind, which of the two shall prevail. Woe to us, if at such a time by a lawless assertion of self-will which obtrudes its own fancies at all hazards, by a reluctance to welcome zeal in others when overlaid with extravagance, by a too great importunity in urging at unseasonable moments reforms which are wise and salutary in themselves, by a too great stiff- ness in refusing to contemplate the necessity of any reforms, by headlong litigation or by violent speech, by the obstinacy of pressure or the obstinacy of resist- ance, we should overstrain and shatter this powerful but complex and delicate engine, which God has placed in our hands for the doing of His work. IV.] ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. 67 This however is no fit season for gloomy fore- bodings. The predominant feeling of all here must be one of joy and hope. The consecration of to-day is no common consecration. It is not the dedication of a new bishop, but the inauguration of a new see; or rather, to speak more correctly, the revival of a very ancient see. We need no more striking illus- tration of the vitality of our ecclesiastical institutions and the continuity of our national history, than the fact that the work of to-day is intimately connected with the work of eight centuries ago. The Cornish bishopric was united with the Devon bishopric under Edward the Confessor ; they are once more separated under Victoria. The reason given for the union in the Confessor's charter is the scanty numbers and the poverty of these districts, the coasts of Devon and Cornwall having been devastated by pirates. The reason for a separation now is the reversal of this condition of things. The growing population, spread over the vast area which the united diocese of Exeter comprises, has overtaxed the energies even of the most energetic. Thankfully therefore will the people of Cornwall accept the work of to-day, notwithstanding the regrets of a personal separation. Thankfully do we Churchmen throughout England welcome it, as an earnest of a still further increase in the Home episcopate, and a recognition of the 5—2 68 ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. [IV. growing needs of the times. The liberality which has made this day's work possible will carry with it a two-fold blessing. It will bless not only those two western dioceses, which it was designed more imme- diately to benefit, but it will bless also the Church of England at large by its example in firing the zeal and stimulating the liberality of others elsewhere. The Cornish bishopric then, though the latest, is also among the earliest of our English sees ; and he who is called to-day to preside over it will be reminded by its very history that, as a scribe instructed unto the kingdom of heaven, he is invited, nay, is compelled, to bring forth out of his treasure things new and old: things old, for he succeeds to the immemorial institutions of an ancient faith and an ancient Church ; things new, for it is his special work to organise a fresh diocese in this latest century under unique conditions. For of all counties in England Cornwall is unique ; unique in the occupation of its labouring classes — its fishermen and its miners ; unique in its religious condition — the wide influence of the Wesleyan body ; unique in its nationality — in the tenacity of British character and the pride of a British ancestry who held the land long before it was overrun by foreign invaders, the English Athelstan and the Danish Cnute and the Norman William: just as much as it is unique in its vegetation — its heather iv.] ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. 69 and its wild flowers ; and unique also in the physical conformation of its' coasts — its rugged piles of granite and its rigid masses of serpentine. These peculiarities he will study. In the Apostle's spirit he will strive to become all things to all men — to the miners as a miner, to the Cornishmen as a Cornishman, to the Wesleyans as a Wesleyan, though he is a Churchman — that he may bring all together in Christ. Even if there were no special conditions in his diocese which demanded special attention, the office of the English episcopate at this time involves no slight responsibility and bespeaks no common gifts. It demands an energetic fervour of zeal, a large sympathy of love, a quick insight and a calm judg- ment, great caution, great boldness, a staunch tenacity of conservatism, a ready fertility of innovation. ' Who is sufficient for these things ? ' Who indeed, if God be not with him ? Of one source of strength let us assure him. He will carry to his great work the prayers of many hearts ; the prayers of those friends who have grown up with him from boyhood ; the prayers of those pupils whom year after year he has sent forth from a great public school, armed for the battle of life ; the prayers of his own dear people of Lincoln, to whom three short years have bound him with the cords of 7 o ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. [IV. an affection which will last a lifetime ; the prayers of our fathers in God, who are assembled to-day in numbers rarely seen at the consecration of an English bishop ; the prayers of this congregation, which is gathered to witness his dedication of himself anew to God ; the prayers of the diocese which henceforth will look to him for guidance ; the prayers of the whole English Church. And he himself — he will go forth to do battle for Christ with a good courage, for he will go forth in a strength not his own. He will lay down this day, at the footstool of God, his successes and his failures, his hopes and his fears, his knowledge and his ignorance, his weakness and his strength, his mis- givings and his confidences — he will offer himself, all that he is and all that he might be, content to take up thence just that which God shall give him. Henceforth, amidst every trial and in every effort, this will be his wisdom, his power, his grace, his life ; to remember always that he stands face to face, as we all stand — yes, you and I, now, at this moment, in this building, if we could but see it — face to face with the glory of the Eternal Father shining full from the Person of Christ. V. THE WHIRLWIND FROM THE NORTH. / looked, and behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire. EZEKIEL i. 4. Croydon Parish Church, October 9, 1877, before the Croydon Church Congress. THE history of the Jews was a succession of startling paradoxes. Their most signal defeats were ever their most splendid triumphs. Their worst disasters ushered in their proudest successes. At three several crises in their career — in youth, in middle life, in old age — they came into collision with three giant empires of the ancient world, Egypt, Babylon, Rome. Each time they were crushed, almost annihilated, by the conflict. Yet each time they started up into a fresh and more vigorous life. 72 THE WHIRLWIND FROM THE NORTH. [v. The Egyptian bondage created Israel as a nation; the Babylonist captivity consolidated the nation as a Church ; the Roman devastation expanded the Church of a nation into the Church of mankind. Their three chief scourges were their three greatest benefactors — Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Titus. Their unmaking was in each case a making anew. As a paradox, the Babylonian Captivity was in some respects the most striking of the three. In the other cases we can trace with some distinctness (at least after the event) the connexion between the cause and the effect, between the disaster and the triumph ; but here it is far more subtle and less apparent. We picture to ourselves the earlier bands of Jewish exiles cowering on the banks of the Euphrates, homeless and forlorn, their ranks cruelly thinned by the cala- mities of war and the hardships of slavery. Hoping against hope, they strain their eyes towards their native land, eager for fresh tidings. Each new announcement is darker than the former. Blow follows upon blow, until the tale of their misery is full. The last company of exiles is deported ; the last scion of royalty is a prisoner ; the last breach in the fortress is stormed. The city is laid waste ; the temple is a heap of stones. All is over. The sweet minstrelsies of the sanctuary jar cruelly on their ears now. The very name of Sion is a bitterness to them. v.] THE WHIRLWIND FROM THE NORTH. 73 And meanwhile, in this their helpless, hopeless misery, they are confronted with the most gigantic awe-in- spiring power which the world had hitherto seen. All the environments of the scene combine to crush them with a sense of their own nothingness — the vast size of the capital, the luxuriance and extent of its gardens, the pomp and splendour of its equipages, its huge architectural piles, its solemn weird sculp- tures, the broad, ceaseless, flowing river, the mighty Euphrates (what a contrast to the scarcely audible rippling of their own little Siloah !), the boundless expanse of plain and desert beyond, parting them by a weary journey of weeks and months from the home of their forefathers. How can they help feeling dwarfed, while everything around is cast in this colossal mould ? If at that crisis any calm and impartial bystander had been asked whether of the two — Babylon or Israel — the master or the slave — held in his grasp the future destinies of mankind, would he for a moment have hesitated what answer he should give ? And yet out of the very abyss of despair the prophet's hope takes wing and soars aloft. Above the howling of the storm, and through the darkness of the night, the paean of victory rises and swells, clear and jubilant, till the whole air is charged with its defiant notes. No prophet is more hopeful, more 74 THE WHIRLWIND FROM THE NORTH. [v. lavish in his promises, more confident of the future, than the forlorn exile on the banks of the Chebar in the first stunning moment of his country's despair. It is not that he sees only the bright features of the prospect. No words can be fiercer or less com- promising than those in which he denounces the sins of the nation. It would seem as if in his imagery he could not find colours dark enough to blacken the Israel of God. The Israel of God ? Why, ' thy father was an Amorite and thy mother an Hittite ' — vile, polluted, God-forsaken heathens both — and after the foul deeds of thy parentage thou thyself hast done. The Israel of God ? Why, ' thine elder sister is Samaria' — Samaria the profane and the profligate ; ' and thy younger sister is Sodom' — Sodom whose very name is a byword for all that is most loathsome, most abominable, in human wickedness, and whose ven- geance — the sulphurous fire from heaven — flares out as a beacon of warning against sin and impurity to all time. And thou art far worse than thy sisters. Restore thee from thy captivity ? Aye, then, when Samaria is restored, then when Sodom is restored — then and not till then, unless thou repent. Would they shift the burden of blame on other shoulders ? Would they plead that it is unjust to make them suffer for the sins of past generations ? ' The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are v.] THE WHIRLWIND FROM THE NORTH. 75 set on edge.' This poor rag of excuse, with which they would cover their shame, is ruthlessly torn away : 'The soul that sinneth, it shall die.' Here then is Israel's sentence : ' Thus saith the Lord ; Say, A sword, a sword is sharpened, and also furbished. It is sharpened to make a sore slaughter ; it is furbished that it may glitter' — gleaming defiantly, flashing out laughter, as it descends on the victim cowering to receive the blow. And yet, as the prophet's eye ranges beyond the immediate present, what does he see ? The Spirit carries him into the wilderness and sets him down there. It is the scene apparently of some murderous conflict between the wild tribes of the desert or of some catastrophe which has befallen a caravan of travellers. The ground is strewn with the bones of the dead — fleshless, sinewless, picked clean by the vultures and bleached by long exposure, tossed here and there by the rage of the elements or the reck- less hand of man. Is it possible that these bones, so bare and so dry, shall unite, shall be clothed, shall live and move again ? God only can say. A moment more, and the answer is given. There is a rustling, a clatter, a uniting of joint and socket, a meeting of vertebra and vertebra. Sinews stretch from bone to bone: flesh and skin spread over them. At God's bidding breath is breathed into 76 THE WHIRLWIND FROM THE NORTH. [v. them. They start up on their feet, an exceeding great army. But the range of vision is not bounded here. Beyond the wilderness lies the pleasant land. Beyond the valley of dry bones is the hill of Sion, the city of the living God. After the revival of Israel comes the spread of the truth, the expansion of the Church. The exceeding great army is there ; but the battle is still unfought, the victory has still to be won. So the prophet is carried again by the Spirit, and set down in the holy city. He is there once again within the sacred precincts, where of old he had ministered as a priest. The scene is the same, and yet not the same. The hill of the temple has grown into 'a very high mountain.' Everything is on a grander scale — a larger sanctuary, a more faithful priesthood, richer and more abundant offerings. His eye is arrested by the little spring of pure water which issued from the temple rock and found its way in a trickling stream to the valley beneath — fit symbol of the Church of God. As he watches, it rises and swells, ankle-deep, knee-deep, overhead. Silently, steadily, it expands and gathers volume, pouring down the main valley and filling all the lateral gorges, advancing onward and onward, till it washes the bases of the far off hills of Moab and sweetens the salt waters of the very Sea of Death — teeming with v.] THE WHIRLWIND FROM THE NORTH. 77 life, watering towns and fertilizing deserts, throughout its beneficent course — a stream so puny and obscure at its sources, so broad and full and bountiful in its issues — this mighty river of God. Indeed it was no earthly pile of masonry, no building made by hands — this magnified temple, which rose before the prophet's eyes. So it has always been. God's chief revelations have ever flashed out upon man in seasons of trial and perplexity. As in Ezekiel's vision, there has been first the whirlwind, then the cloud, then the flame, the light, the glory, glowing with ever-increasing brightness from the very heart and blackness of the cloud. There is first the wild, impetuous force unseen, yet irresistible, rooting up old institutions, scattering old ideas, perplexing, deafening, blinding, sweeping all things human and divine into its eddies. Then the dark cloud of despair settles down — the despair of materialism or the despair of agnosticism — with its numbing chill. Then at length emerges the vision of the Throne, the Chariot of God, blinding the eyes with its dazzling splendour; and after this the vision of the dry and bleaching bones starting up into new life ; and after this the vision of a larger sanctuary and a purer worship. It was so at the epoch of the Babylonian captivity ; it was so at the downfall of the Roman empire; it was so at THE WHIRLWIND FROM THE NORTH. [v. the outbreak of the Reformation. And shall it not be so once again ? We are warned by the wisdom and experience of the past not to overrate either the perplexities or the hopes of the present. Nearness of view unduly magnifies the proportions of events. Yet it is surely no exaggeration to say that the Church of our day is passing through one of those momentous crises which only occur at intervals of two or three centuries. One fact alone would mark this century, even this decade which has still some years to run, as a signal epoch in the history of Christendom. The solemn ratification of the claims of the Roman pontiff to an absolute tyranny over the minds and consciences of men, followed almost without a breathing space by the annihilation of the last remnant of their temporal sovereignty — this twofold incident in itself would stamp our immediate age with a significance which no time can efface. But indeed these striking outward events, portentous as they seem, are in reality of less moment than the working of those silent underground forces, political, social, and intellectual, which betray themselves for a time only by a confused rumbling but burst out at length in devastation and ruin. It is the concurrence of so many and various disturbing elements which forms the characteristic feature of our age. Here is the vast accumulation of scientific facts, v.] THE WHIRLWIND FROM THE NORTH. 79 the rapid progress of scientific ideas ; there is enlarged knowledge of ancient and wide-spread religions arising from the increased facilities of travel. Here is the sharpening of the critical faculty to a keenness of edge dangerous to the hand that wields it; there is the accumulation of new materials for its exercise from divers sources — the recovery of many a lost chapter in the history of the human race, whether from ancient manuscripts, or from the deciphered hieroglyphs of Egypt, the disentombed palaces of Assyria, or even from the reliques of a more remote past, the flint implements and the bone caverns of prehistoric man. These are some of the intellectual factors with which the Church in our age has to reckon. And the social and political forces are not less disturbing. The question of the relations between Church and State in England has awakened many animosities and started many alarms of late. It is only one phenomenon in the general disturbance, one gust in the hurricane, one eddy in the whirlwind which is sweeping over the length and breadth of Christendom. In Italy, in France, in Germany, the atmosphere is still more agitated. Even in conservative Russia the political barometer shows symptoms of a gathering storm. What then must be our attitude, as members of Christ's Church, at such a season ? The experience of the past will inspire hope for the future. ' In quiet- 80 THE WHIRLWIND FROM THE NORTH. [v. ness and confidence shall be your strength.' We shall not rush hastily to cut the political knot, because it will take us some time and much patience to untie it. We shall keep our eyes and our minds open to each fresh accession of knowledge, stubbornly rejecting no truth when it is attested, rashly accepting no inference because it is novel and attractive. As dis- ciples of the Word Incarnate — the same Eternal Word Who is, and has been from the beginning, in science as in history, in nature as in revelation, we shall rest assured that He has much yet to teach us, that a larger display of His manifold operations, however confusing now, must in the end bring with it a clearer knowledge of Himself, that for the Church of the future a far more glorious destiny is in store than ever attended the Church of the past. There is the whirlwind now, sweeping down from the rude tempestuous north ; there is the gathering cloud now, dark and boding ; but even now the keen eye of the faithful watcher detects the first rift in the gloom, the earliest darting ray which shall broaden and intensify, till it reveals the Chariot-throne of the Eternal Word framed in transcendant light. ' This was the appear- ance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face.' To the Jewish philosopher the vision of Ezekiel was an inexhaustible theme of speculation. The v.] THE WHIRLWIND FROM THE NORTH. 8 1 chariot of God seemed to him to enfold all the mysteries of creation. To the thoughtful Christian it will have a yet higher interest; for in the Church of Christ it receives its truest fulfilment. The external imagery is borrowed in great measure from the sights which met the prophet's eye in his exile. The colossal sculptures of Assyria — those composite forms with the wings of a bird, and the body of a lion or a bull, and the head of a man — which our own age has unearthed from their tomb after the sleep of centuries, recal vividly the strange beings of the prophet's vision. But though the symbolism might be drawn — at least in part — from Babylonia in the sixth century before Christ, the thing symbolized is of all times and of all places. This is the very essence of the revelation. It taught the Jews to look beyond the local sanctuary, beyond the ritual forms, beyond the national revival, for a new covenant, for a spiritual restoration, for a limit- less Church. Three ideas, closely connected with each other, are suggested by the imagery ; mobility, spirituality, universality. i. The idea of mobility is the foremost which the image involves. The vision of Ezekiel provokes a comparison with the vision of Isaiah. It is significant in its contrasts not less than in its coincidences. Isaiah saw the Lord enthroned on high, there above S.S. 6 82 THE WHIRLWIND FROM THE NORTH. [v. the mercy-seat, there between the cherubim, there in the same local sanctuary, where for centuries He had received the adoration of an elect and special people. The awe of the vision is enhanced by its localisation. But with Ezekiel this is changed. The vision is in a heathen land. The throne is a chariot now. It is placed on wheels arranged transversely, so that it can move easily to all the four quarters of the heavens. Its motion is direct, immediate, rapid, darting like the lightning flash, whithersoever it is sped. Not indeed that the element of fixity is lost. Though a chariot, it remains still a throne. It is sup- ported by the four living creatures whose wings as they beat fill the air with their whirring, but whose feet are planted straight and firm. They have four faces looking four ways, but these are immovable ; ' They turned not, when they went.' What these four living creatures may represent, it does not fall within my purpose to enquire. However we may interpret them, they are the firm supports of the chariot, moving rapidly, yet turning never, unchangeable in themselves, yet capable of infinite adaptation in their processes. 2. The counterpart to the mobility in the larger dispensation of the future, thus implied in the vision, is its spirituality. It is mobile, just because it is spiritual. The letter is fixed ; the form is rigid and motionless as death. The Spirit only is instinct with v.] THE WHIRLWIND FROM THE NORTH. 83 life. 'Whither the Spirit was to go, they went.' This is the reiterated description of the movement of the living creatures. ' The Spirit of the living creature was in the wheels;' 'The Spirit lifted me up, and took me away;' 'The Spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven.' In such language does the prophet again and again describe his successive revelations. 1 1 will put my Spirit within you ; ' this is the repeated promise, announcing the national revival. ' I have poured out my Spirit upon the house of Israel;' this is the climax of God's grace to His forgiven and restored people. Everywhere the pre- sence of the Spirit is emphasized ; and this emphatic reiteration is the more remarkable, because it is found in the midst of accurate dates, precise measurements, topographical descriptions, minute external details of all kinds. 3. But lastly, if spirituality characterises the motive power, if mobility is the leading feature in the intermediate energies and processes, universality is the final result. The chariot of God moves freely to all the four quarters of the heavens. The prophet sees it first in the plains of Babylonia. He is then carried in his vision to the Temple at Jerusalem. There he beholds the glory filling the holy place, the throne of God supported on the cherubim ; and there too — an unwonted surprise — are the four faces, the wings, the 6—2 84 THE WHIRLWIND FROM THE NORTH. [v. hands, the wheels full of eyes, just the same forms and the same motions, which he had seen in the land of his exile. Aye, he understands it now. The living creatures of Babylonia are none other than the sacred cherubim of the sanctuary. Three times, as if he would assure himself or convince others by reiteration, he repeats the words ' the same which I saw by the river Chebar.' So then, God works with power, God is enthroned in glory, not less in that far-off heathen land, than in His own cherished sanctuary among His own elect people. The very title, by which the prophet is addressed throughout, proclaims the same truth ; not ' son of Abraham ' though Abraham's de- scendant he was, not ' son of Aaron' though of priestly race he was, but ' son of man.' He is called to be the prophet, not of a special nation, not of a sacerdotal order, but of the whole human race. I need not remind you to what extent this vision was illustrated by the Israelite Church of the Restora- tion ; how the dispersion of the Jews sowed the truths of which they were the depositaries broadcast through- out the civilised world ; how the synagogue worship grew up by the side of the temple worship, thus delocalising to a great extent the religious associations of the people ; how the order of teachers and inter- preters and students of the law rivalled and at length outstripped the hierarchy in public estimation, thus v.] THE WHIRLWIND FROM THE NORTH. 85 breaking up the monopoly of priestly influence ; how the gradual influx of proselytes tended more and more to substitute a religious for a national bond of union ; and thus, despite all the narrownesses of sects and all the reactions of epochs, the tide set steadily in the direction of a larger, freer Church. I need not say how at length in the fulness of time the vision found its true antitype in the revelation of the Eternal Word Incarnate — of Him Who, being the Son of David, was also the Son of Man— interpreted as that revelation was forthwith by a striking comment in the complete destruction of the Temple and the final dispersion of the race — the sweeping away of the old to make room for the new. The trickling brook, issuing from the hard rock of Judaism, had indeed swollen into a mighty stream, flowing onward and giving life and health to the nations. These things are plain. It remains for us to appropriate the lesson. For the vision of Ezekiel is not a dead or dying story, which has served its turn and now may pass out of mind. It lives still as the very charter of the Church of the future. If in this nineteenth century we Englishmen would do any work for Christ's Church, which shall be real, shall be solid, shall be lasting, we must follow in the lines here marked out for us. Mobility, spirituality, universality, these three ideas must inspire our efforts. Other methods may 86 THE WHIRLWIND FROM THE NORTH. [v. seem more efficacious for the moment, but this only- will resist the stress of time. Not to cling obstinately to the decayed anachronisms of the past, not to linger wistfully over the death-stricken forms of the past, not to narrow our intellectual horizon, not to stunt our moral sympathies; but to adapt and to enlarge, to absorb new truths, to gather new ideas, to develope new institutions, to follow always the teaching of the Spirit — the Spirit which will not be bound and im- prisoned — the Spirit which is like a breath of wind — the Spirit whose very name speaks of elasticity and expansion, passing through every crevice, filling every interstice, conforming itself to every modifica- tion of size and shape ; this is our duty as Christians, as Churchmen, as Anglicans, remembering meanwhile that there is one fixed centre from which all our thoughts must radiate, and to which all our hopes must converge — 'Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.' And it is just because meetings like the present do, as we believe, with all their faults conduce to this end, that they claim our sympathy and support. Since the time of that Church assembly in the dim and remote past, when these islands were for the first time represented in the deliberations of the Church, the Council of Aries, there have been numberless synods, convocations, ecclesiastical gatherings of different v.] THE WHIRLWIND FROM THE NORTH. 87 types and for various ends; but these Congresses have a character and a value of their own. It is surely no small gain that members of our Church are found to muster year after year in ever-increasing numbers — clergy and laity, representatives of all schools and types of thought, men of all positions in life — to exchange ideas, to understand others and to make themselves understood, to quicken their sympathies and enlarge their views and stimulate their energies by the contact of mind with mind and the communion of spirit with spirit. But the Congress of this year has a significance of its own. We shall meet to-day, probably in larger numbers, certainly under a higher sanction, than heretofore. We are gathered together for the first time under the shadow of that great see, which even under papal domination was regarded as second only to Rome in Latin Christendom, and which, liberated from that yoke, has certainly not lost in importance by the world-wide diffusion of the English race and language — a see which in its first beginnings was ennobled by an Augustine and a Theodore, and in after ages was graced by the saintly scholar Anselm, by the patriot statesman Stephen Langton, by a long line of famous names which it would be difficult to match elsewhere. In this year's meeting the Congress may be said to have stormed the citadel of the English Church. 88 THE WHIRLWIND FROM THE NORTH. [v. This being so, we are especially bound to see that the temper of our meeting be not unworthy of the occasion. The dangers of ecclesiastical gather- ings are notorious. From Julian to Gibbon the strifes of Churchmen have been a fertile theme of scorn to the enemies of the faith. They have neutral- ised the sufferings of many a martyr, and drowned the eloquence of many an apologist. While on the battle-field of Christian souls the attacks of foes from without have slain their thousands, the quarrels of parties within have murdered their tens of thousands. It is related by Bede (H. E. ii. 2) that when the native British bishops were about to hold a confer- ence with S. Augustine of Canterbury, they consulted a certain anchorite famed for his sanctity and wisdom, whether they should abandon their own traditions and adopt the teaching of this foreign missionary. ' The Lord,' he replied, 'has said, Take My yoke upon yon, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly of heart. If this Augustine therefore is meek and lowly of heart, ye may well believe that he bearcth the yoke of Christ himself, and presenteth it to you to bear ; but if he is ungentle and proud, then plainly he is not of God, and we may not give heed to his word.' ' But how,' they asked, ' how are we to ascertain this ? ' ' Arrange it so,' he replied, ' that he and his come first to the place of synod ; and if, when you approach, he v.] THE WHIRLWIND FROM THE NORTH. 89 shall rise to greet you, know that he is a servant of God, and listen obediently to him ; but, if he shall spurn you and refuse to rise in your presence, though ye are more in number, then do ye also spurn him.' The advice was taken. Augustine did not rise, and the British Church was hopelessly alienated. It was a simple, foolish test, you will say. Perhaps so ; I know not ; but is not this a type, an apologue, a parable of the disastrous spirit in which from age to age Churches have fostered animosities and created schisms by stiffness, by discourtesy, by severity and unfairness to opponents, thus engendering an ex- asperation which blinds the eyes to the real points at issue ? As we read the history of the great Nestorian and Monophysite schisms for instance, must we not honestly say that no small share of the blame lies at the door of the orthodox party who triumphed at Ephesus and Chalcedon ? By their bitterness and in- justice, by the display of a temper which had nothing in common with Christ, they made the better cause appear as bad as the worse, and they forced their antagonists into a position where concession or retreat seemed impossible. And meanwhile, what is the impression made on those without by this unlovely spirit which, reversing the Apostle's language, 're- senteth all things, suspecteth all things, feareth all things, imputeth all things?' The condemnation of ecclesiastical synods by the illustrious Cappadocian 90 THE WHIRLWIND FROM THE NORTH. [v. father, Gregory Nazianzen, who himself presided at an Ecumenical Council, has passed into a proverb. These annual Church Congresses have done something to wipe away this reproach. Let this year's meeting be a brighter example than any. To hear patiently and to argue calmly, to strive to appreciate our opponents', views, to be willing to rectify our own, above all not to esteem others worse than ourselves, but to give them credit for the same sincerity and zeal for Christ of which we ourselves are conscious — this is our first and paramount duty, as members of a Church Congress. In this spirit we would meet to-day. In this spirit let us strive now and always ' to labour and to wait,' ever looking forward to the dawn of that great morning, when a fuller revelation than Ezekiel's shall open before our eyes ; when even the glory 'filling the house of the Lord ' shall fade before a brighter, purer light, as the moon and stars disappear before the rising sun ; when the very temple itself — type and antitype — shall melt and vanish away; when the vision of the prophet by the Chebar shall give place to the Apocalypse of the seer in Patmos ; when God shall be all in all. ' I saw no temple therein ; for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun neither of the moon, to shine in it : for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.' VI. SHEW ME THY GLORY. And he said, I beseech Thee, sJieiv me Thy glory. Exodus xxxiii. 18. Durham Cathedral, Trinity Sunday, 1879, after an Ordination held in the Cathedral. The passage from which these words are taken is one of the most mysterious in the whole Bible. Moses, the man of God, the chosen servant who had been faithful in all his house, asks a favour of his Master. What is it? Not wealth, not honour, not reputation, not influence, not health, not enjoyment, not a long life, not a kingdom. Nothing which men commonly admire or covet. Nothing at all tangible or substantial, as we might say. It is a shadowy, elusive, visionary advantage which he craves; 'I be- seech Thee, shew me Thy Glory.' 92 SHEW ME THY GLORY. ivi. And, if the request is thus visionary and intangible, what shall we say of the response vouchsafed ? Here everything is vague with the vagueness of a departing dream. * I will make all My goodness pass before thee.' ' All My goodness.' Can goodness then be seen ? Has goodness colour ? Has it shape ? Has it solidity ? Has it motion, that it can be seen pass- ing to and fro ? ' And I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee.' What has this to do with seeing? Proclaiming a name — a name and nothing more ! What a cruel mockery, what a bitter disap- pointment — to be put off with hearing a name when we wish to see a face ! ' And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.' Has it come to this ? Must he be baffled at last with a truism, a truism which after all has nothing to do with seeing God ? But even this elusive answer is not enough. A direct negative follows; 'Thou canst not see My face' — canst not see Me, as I am: the gratification of thy wish would be certain death to thee — ' for there shall no man see Me, and live.' Then, and not till then, it is declared, as in a parable, to what extent and with what limitations this vision of God shall be vouchsafed even to the most favoured of His servants. Moses shall stand ' in a clift of the rock ' — just one narrow strip of light in front and all darkness to the right VI.] SHEW ME THY GLORY. 93 hand and to the left. The glory of God shall pass by — fleeting across, but not resting on this narrow field of vision (if field we can call it). But even this meagre, transient view is too dazzling for human gaze. A hand shall cover his eyes and obstruct his sight. Just for one moment it shall be withdrawn ; and he shall see — not God, not the glory of God, not the face of God : this were instantaneous death to him — but the back of a passing, vanishing Form, which shall represent to him the majesty of the Eternal, Almighty Being. I said that it is declared as in a parable. We might imagine indeed that some visible apparition, as of some majestic form, was actually vouchsafed to Moses— something or other which was not indeed God (for God cannot be thus limited, God cannot be apprehended by mortal senses), but which might re- present God to the human eye. We are not told however that this was the case. There is no record in the narrative that any such appearance did, as a matter of fact, follow upon this description. It seems best therefore to take the description itself— the clift in the rock, the hand closing the eyelids of the beholder, the transient form, the averted face— as a figurative statement of all that it is possible, even under the most exceptional circumstances, for man to know of God. The definite request is met with 94 SHEW ME THY GLORY. [VI. an elusive response. The response itself fades away in a figure, a metaphor. All is mystery. So it is elsewhere, when the appearances of God, or such as seem to be His appearances, are described in the Bible. There is here and there an anthropo- morphic image. Speaking to men, the lawgiver or the prophet or the Apostle is compelled to speak after the manner of men ; but we find always something in the context of the description which puts us on our guard against a gross, material interpretation, something which warns us that we stand face to face with an inscrutable mystery. Is it Adam in Eden ? We are told of his hearing ' the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden.' But the anthropo- morphic image stops here. There is no mention of seeing the face or the form. Is it Abraham at Mamre ? We read of men coming and going, of angels appearing and disappearing, while suddenly in the midst of these movements, as if it were con- nected with them by some mysterious link, we are told that ' Abraham stood before the Lord ' — stood before Jehovah. Is it Jacob at Bethel ? There is a dream, a vision, a ladder reared up to heaven, angelic forms ascending and descending, a voice (whether a form, we are not told), a voice as of God standing and speaking from above, and then Jacob awakes and cries out ; ' Surely the Lord is in this place, and SHEW ME THY GLORY. 95 I knew it not.' So effectually had He veiled Himself. Is it this same patriarch at Peniel ? Here indeed it might seem as if some direct appearance were con- templated. In the first agony of conviction he cries out, ' I have seen God face to face.' He could speak of it as nothing less, overwhelmed, as he was, with the awe of the moment. But it was after all only the form of a strong man wrestling on almost equal terms, struggling under cover of the night, and vanish- ing at the first streak of dawn — a vision dark, mys- terious, impenetrable, altogether. Is it Moses on Horeb ? This is a very crisis of God's revelation to man : for He here declares Himself to be the Eternal ' I Am.' What then is the nature of the appearance ? We read of the Lord speaking to Moses. The voice is heard again and again. But what of the seeing ? 'Moses hid his face,' we are told, 'for he was afraid to look upon God.' But that which he saw, or which he was afraid to see, was not the Lord, but ' the angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in the bush.' This is the remarkable fact in the narrative. Though we are told without any reservation that ' God called to ' Moses ' out of the midst of the bush,' yet, at the very point where in accordance with this language we should expect God Himself to be mentioned, His angel is thus substituted in His place. Or again is it Isaiah ? What does Isaiah mean when he says, 9 6 SHEW ME THY GLORY. [vi. 'Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts' ? The whole is plainly an ecstatic vision. And even here no description is given of the central form, if form it were, in the vision. 'The Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up.' What was this ? A human shape ? A bright light ? A haze of glory ? We know not. Only the accessories of the vision are described with something like minuteness — the six-winged Sera- phim, the heaving door-posts, the live-coal taken with the tongs from off the altar. Is it Ezekiel? Here indeed there is a direct and detailed account — of the chariot, of the four living creatures, of the motion of the wheels — while above the firmament, we are told, was, not a throne and a man sitting thereupon, but ' the likeness of a throne... and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it.' Was this God Himself, think you, Whom the prophet saw, this ' likeness of a man 1 on this 'likeness of a throne'? Nay, hear the words with which the prophet closes the description. He does not identify this with God Himself, nor even with the glory of God ; but he says, ' This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.' It is a symbol thrice-removed, he would say, from the Eternal Being Himself, a shadow of a shadow, as it were. Or is it Stephen ? What does Stephen behold, when the heavens are opened to his dying eyes ? ' He saw,' we VI.] SHEW ME THY GLORY. 97 are told, ' the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.' Mark the distinction in the language. He beholds the Son of Man Himself, for the Son of Man can be so beheld, but of God he sees only the glory, some bright radiance, we may suppose, some visible symbol of the Invisible Being — nothing more. Or is it S. Paul ? Here the reserve is absolute. He does not himself know whether the revelation was made through his bodily senses or not ; he does not say that he saw anything ; he cannot, he dares not, repeat even that which he has heard, for it is unutter- able by human tongue. Thus, wheresoever any such revelation is recorded, there is some warning in the narrative itself, a sudden reticence, or an unexpected substitution, or a studied vagueness, or an emphatic assertion of the symbolism, which bids us stop short of this ultimate fact, the direct vision of God Himself, as He is. So true is it that ' no man hath seen God at any time.' He ' dwelleth in the light which no man can approach unto: Whom no man hath seen, nor can see.' These thoughts may well occupy us to-day. Tri- nity Sunday is unique among the festivals of the Christian year. Other festivals commemorate some event which has occurred in time. The fact, com- memorated on Trinity Sunday, is beyond and before all time. Other festivals set before our eyes incidents s. s. 7 9 8 SHEW .ME THY GLORY. [VI. which have taken place on the scene of this world's history — the birth of Christ at Bethlehem, the cruci- fixion of Christ on Calvary, the ascension of Christ from Olivet, the descent of the Holy Spirit in the upper chamber at Jerusalem. This festival offers for our contemplation no incident in history, no scene on this world's stage, but the Eternal Being Himself, Whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain. There- fore we may well veil our faces, and bow our heads in awe. We, like Moses, have ascended into the mountain of God. The very place whereon we stand to-day is holy ground. It is right for us to crave, as Moses craved, to be shewn God's glory. It is right for us ; since this vision of His glory (so far as it is attainable) is the very light of our life. But here, if anywhere, all pre- sumption, all self-sufficiency, all claim to finality of knowledge, must be laid aside. We must remember that it is given to no man in this present life — not even to Moses — to see His face. At best we stand 'in the clift of a rock ;' there is just one narrow streak of light before us and nothing more ; a mysterious form with face averted passes rapidly across the opening ; the hand which presses down our eyelids is for a single moment withdrawn ; one hurried glimpse ■ — and the vision is past. But still He has made His goodness to pass before vi.] S1JLW ME THY GLORY. 99 us. Still He has proclaimed His Name to us. Still He has been gracious to whom He would be gracious, and He has shewn mercy on whom He would shew mercy. This is the transcendent bounty, for which we are invited to render thanksgiving to Almighty God on this day above all days. Do not suppose that this doctrine of our faith appeals only to the learned theologian. It has its lesson for the very humblest Christian. For what is the meaning of the fact which we commemorate to-day — the fact that the Divine Being is Father and Son and Holy Spirit ? It means that our God is not like the God of a deistic philosophy ' unknown and unknowable.' It is just because He is a Triune Being, that He can reveal Himself to us. There is not the Infinite, Absolute, Invisible, Intangible only ; but with the Father there is the Son also, the Eternal Word, the Mediator between God and Man — between God and nature : through Whom the Infinite has held communication with the finite, through Whom the Father has wrought in the Creation, in the government of the world, in the redemption of mankind ; and there is the Holy Ghost, the Universal Teacher, Who takes of all those things which the Father has wrought through the Son, and shews them to us, Who exhibits, interprets, brings home to us, the external workings of the Son, translating them, as it were, from the world of the 7—2 IOO SHEW ME THY GLORY. [VI. senses to the world of the understanding, speaking as Spirit to spirits. If there were no Son, there would be no lessons to learn, no glory to behold. If there were no Holy Spirit, there would be none to teach us, none to shew us the glory. ' I beseech Thee, shew me Thy glory.' What do we mean, when we utter this prayer? Do we think only of the emerald rainbow and the crystal sea and the thunders and lightnings about the throne ? Mere images these to deepen our awe by appealing to our imagination. They are to us what the strong man wrestling was to Jacob, or the burning bush was to Moses, or the figure seated on the chariot-throne was to Ezekiel — symbols of the Divine Glory, and not the very Glory itself. But the Glory itself ? It is nothing which may be felt and handled, nothing which may be seen or heard, nothing which has colour or shape. It is perfect power; it is perfect truth; it is perfect purity, perfect love, perfect wisdom, perfect righteous- ness. It is not here nor there : it is everywhere. ' Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory' And is not the reality infinitely greater than the image ? Is not perfect power more awe-inspiring far than the thunder-clap and the lightning flash? Is not perfect truth more transparent than the crystal ? Is not perfect love more sparkling than the emerald ? This then is our prayer. 'Teach us to understand Thy vi.] SHEW ME THY GLORY. lOI wisdom ; teach us to realise Thy power ; teach us to know Thy righteousness ; teach us to feel Thy love.' And yet wc cannot know now, as we shall know hereafter ; we cannot know now, as we ourselves are known. We cannot with our feeble organs of vision face the meridian splendour of the Sun. A single glance would blind us by the intensity of the light. We need to have it tempered for our eyes by an atmo- sphere charged with an haze of moisture, or we must content ourselves with gazing on its image mirrored in some pool, not daring to look up to the blazing orb itself. Is it not so, must it not be so, with the contemplation of the Divine Glory ? Are our moral organs of vision so much more fully developed than our physical, that we can with impunity gaze on Infinite Perfection ? Imagine for a moment, if you can imagine, what it would be to stand face to face with Infinite Power. You have shuddered and stood aghast, as you have witnessed some unwonted out- burst of the forces of nature — a volcano, an avalanche, a land-slip, a torrent bursting its banks. But what idea do any or all of these together convey of the Power which wields the universe — these infinitcsimally small fractions of the giant Force, which pervades all the countless orbs of all the countless systems which are scattered through measureless space ? Would not the shock be instantaneous death to you ? And, if 102 SHEW ME THY GLORY. [VI. this be so with Infinite Power, will it not be equally so with Infinite Righteousness or Infinite Goodness? Does four righteousness,^^ goodness, or that which you call your goodness, approach any nearer to God's Righteousness, God's Goodness, than your power to God's Power ? And yet, Lord, we beseech Thee, shew us Thy Glory. This must be our first and last petition. Open our eyes, that we may see : purge our senses, that we may apprehend. Teach us ever more and more to know Thee as Thou art, to see Thy Right- eousness, Thy Love, Thy Holiness, Thy Truth. Widen the clift of the rock in which we stand ; withhold Thine hand from our eyelids yet longer ; let Thy passing Form rest, if it be only for a moment, on the field of our vision here : so that at length, if it cannot be in this life, yet in the life to come Thou mayest turn Thy face full upon us, and we may gaze with unaverted eye. It will not be death to us then, but life, eternal, inexhaustible life. 'We know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall sec Him as He is. And every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself even as He is pure.' Holy, Holy, Holy, though the darkness hide Thee, Though the eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see ; Only Thou art Holy, there is none beside Thee, Perfect in power, in love, and purity. VII. LENGTHEN THY CORDS AND STRENGTHEN THY STAKES. Spare not, lengthen tliy cords, and strengthen thy stakes ; for thou slialt break forth on the right hand and on the left. Isaiah liv. 2, 3. S Martin's-in-the-Fields, Nov. 3, 1879, a ' ' ne Opening of the New House of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. A LIVING writer, describing the career of the prophet Samuel, dwells with great force on the mission assigned in God's providence to those among His servants, whose lives have flowed on equably from infancy to youth, from youth to manhood, from manhood to old age, in one ever-broadening stream of piety and godliness, who have known no abrupt transition from sin to righteousness, and with whom io4 LENGTHEN THY CORDS [VII. therefore in the truest sense 'the child' has been ' father to the man,' for ' their days ' are bound each to each by natural piety. These men may often seem deficient in that fiery energy which sweeps away all obstructions before it in its impetuous course. They may lack that con- centration of purpose, with which a sudden conversion has endowed an Augustine or a Francis of Assisi or a Loyola, gathering all the forces and aptitudes of their character into one deep channel. They may fail — they most frequently will fail — to excite in the same degree the enthusiastic devotion of their fellow- men. ' They are attacked from both sides ; they are charged with not going far enough or with going too far ; they are charged with saying too much or with saying too little.' 'They have but little praise or reward from the partisans who are loud in indis- criminate censure and applause.' But nevertheless they have a work, a vocation, a power vouchsafed to them, which is impossible on any other terms. Theirs is the sobriety of judgment, theirs is the capacity of mediation, theirs is the force of example, theirs is the quiet, steady, progressive influence undisturbed by passion and undiminished by time. Great societies, great institutions, have their dis- tinctive features, like individual great men. Here also there is the same broad division into two marked vii.] AND STRENGTHEN THY STAKES. IO5 classes. The one is characterised by abrupt and sudden growths, rapid alternations, splendid successes followed by disastrous failures. Everything — the evil as well as the good — is on a heroic scale. With the other steady, continuous, unobtrusive progress is the law of their being. Their annals are not emphasized by any dashing achievements. No sudden flashes of genius or of zeal dazzle the eyes of the bystanders. In the language of science, they are not catastrophic, but uniformitarian. Nevertheless the work is done, and the end is achieved. The strength of the one is their fervour, their impetus, their concentration. The strength of the other is their soberness, their equa- bility, their breadth and comprehensiveness. A fit type of the one class is the Franciscan order — starting at once full-grown and full-armed from the brain of its founder, rich in intellectual energy, but richer still in works of devotion and love, teeming with poetry and with life, but containing within itself from the first in its very exuberance the seeds of a premature cor- ruption — magnificent in its earliest triumphs, but sad, unspeakably sad, by the greatness of the contrast, in its rapid degeneracy and decay. A fit type of the other is more staid, more sober, more respectable, but for this very reason more prosaic institution, whose enlargement we are met together this day to com- memorate. 106 LENGTHEN THY CORDS [vn. For this Society has been from the first essentially sober. Sobriety was stamped upon it from its birth. Sobriety was its patrimony. The nation out of which it arose, the Church which called it into being, the age in which it first saw the light, all combined to impress upon it that steady, unsensational character which it retains to this day. For herein it is the true child of England ; of England whose typical captain is Wellington, and whose typical philosopher is Bacon — of England whose boast it is that her liberty has broadened slowly and steadily down — where each political leader accepts frankly the measures bequeathed to him by his rival, and each great revolution has sought its justification in some constitutional precedent — where continuity, unbroken and undisturbed, is the law of her corporate existence. Strangers are de- ceived by this equability of our national temperament, of our national life. They interpret it as indifference; they presume upon it as weakness ; and they find too late that beneath this apathetic demeanour is a husbanded strength and a stedfast determination, all the more potent, because it wastes nothing on out- ward display. The true child also of the Church to which it owed its being — a Church whose representative divines are a Hooker and a Butler, a Pearson and vii.] AND STRENGTHEN THY STAKES. IO7 a Waterland ; a Church whose ideal of the saintly life is embodied not in the fiery enthusiasm of a Dominic or the ecstatic trances of a Theresa, but in the quiet, decorous, homely devotion of a Herbert and a Ken and a Wilson ; a Church whose enemies fling it in her teeth that she is neither Catholic nor Protestant, neither Calvinistic nor Arminian, but all things by turns ; who nevertheless holds firmly to the middle path, content for a time to bear the reproach, if so be she may be called hereafter to mediate be- tween extreme doctrines and antagonistic Churches. And the child, not only of the people and Church of England, but also of the special age which wit- nessed her birth — an age which above all things delighted to address itself to reason and common sense, eschewing with a too punctilious dread any appeal to the sentiments and emotions, and accounting enthusiasm a scandal and a byword ; an age which has impressed its character on an imperishable litera- ture ; whose chief prose writer was Addison, and whose chief thinker was Locke ; whose very architec- ture and decorative art are stamped with a staidness and formality peculiar to itself — an age which was essentially sensible, moderate, equable, sober with an excess of sobriety. Such was the parentage and such is the character of the Society in whose name we are gathered io8 LENGTHEN THY CORDS together to-day. In quietness and confidence has been her strength hitherto. In quietness and confi- dence is her hope for the time to come. Other institutions have placed reliance on the zeal of par- tisanship. They have had their reward in more im- mediate and dazzling successes. Other societies have unduly emphasized some one aspect of Christian truth, or some one development of Christian life. By so doing they have gathered around them more en- thusiastic admirers. Their exaggeration has been at once their strength and their weakness. This Society has chosen the better part. By a steady, patient, persistent career of usefulness it early won the confi- dence of the mass of English Churchmen, and this confidence has never been withdrawn from it. In the beautiful valley of the Wear in my own northern diocese at the rectory-house of Stanhope — a sacred spot with all English Churchmen and all English Christians, for there the greatest work of English theology, the 'Analogy,' was penned — there still survives a quaint Latin inscription recording that the parsonage (the same in which Butler afterwards spent the prime of his life) was built ' in the year 1697 of the peace of the Gospel and in the first year of the peace of Ryswick.' The Peace of Ryswick is now a historical landmark and nothing more ; but to contemporary Englishmen it appeared as the very vii.] AND STRENGTHEN THY STAKES. IO9 inauguration of a new and blessed era. 'There was peace,' writes Macaulay, 'abroad and at home. The kingdom after many years of ignominious vassalage, had resumed its ancient place in the first rank of European powers . . . Trade had revived. The ex- chequer was overflowing. There was a sense of relief everywhere from the Royal Exchange to the most secluded hamlets among the mountains of Wales and the fens of Lincolnshire. The ploughmen, the shepherds, the miners of the Northumbrian coalpits, the artisans who toiled at the looms of Norwich and the anvils of Birmingham, felt the change without understanding it ; and the cheerful bustle in every sea- port and every market-town indicated not obscurely the commencement of a happier age.' No wonder then if in this remote parsonage the Peace of Ryswick seemed to be the foreshadowing and the dawn of that prophetic era, when men should ' beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning-hooks,' the very complement and counterpart to the peace of the Gospel itself. It was just at this time while the treaty of Ryswick was fresh in men's minds, and the national legislature voted the disbanding of the national army, as if the sword were sheathed in its scabbard, there to rust for ever, that this Society first saw the light. The treaty of Ryswick was soon torn to shreds, as many a treaty before and after has been I IO LENGTHEN THY CORDS [VII. torn. The hopes of a lasting peace were disappointed as in our own day the like expectations founded on the exigencies of Free Trade or on the influence of International Exhibitions have been disappointed, as all such hopes built upon human compacts and human conveniences are doomed to disappointment. The war with the Great Monarch broke out anew, to be followed by a succession of conflicts in the years to come between the nations that line either side of the Channel. Among the earliest records of this Society, when it was some two years old, is a notice of books supplied at the instance of the great Marlborough to the soldiers under his command. A hundred and eighty years have rolled away since that time. The peace of Ryswick has faded out of sight in the mists of a remote past. But the peace of the Gospel is living and effectual still ; and still this Society, as its faithful ambassador, is spreading its treaties far and wide. With these associations surrounding its cradle, this Society first came into being. Shocked by the profanity and vice which everywhere met their eyes, its founders sought the remedy, where alone the remedy could be found. They saw that ignorance was the parent of crime. They felt that to know was to do. Therefore Christian Knowledge was their one, sole aim. But though the aim was single, the agencies vn.] AND STRENGTHEN THY STAKES. I I I and the operations must be manifold and comprehen- sive. I have said much already about the sober character of this Society. The correlative to sobriety is com- prehensiveness. They act and react, the one upon the other. Narrowness is at once the parent and the child of fanaticism. On the other hand a certain breadth of association and of aim is essential for fostering sobriety of character. This Society has been comprehensive from the beginning — comprehen- sive in its constitution, comprehensive in its sphere of work, comprehensive in its agencies. It shews its comprehensiveness, first of all, in its constituent members. A society which in its earliest years won the allegiance of High Churchmen like Nelson, and Low Churchmen like Kidder and Burnet, and Broad Churchmen like Francis Hare, declared at once with no uncertain voice that within the pale of the Church it knew no parties and owned no preferences. And this largeness of sympathy it has maintained throughout, as the list of its supporters to this day will shew. The English Churchman, who- ever he be, will find not a place only, but a welcome in its fellowship and in its counsels, if only he value aright ' the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.' It is comprehensive too in its area of action. 112 LENGTHEN THY CORDS [TIL Quae rcgio in tcrris nostri non plena laboris ? What parish is there throughout the length and breadth of England, which has not felt the touch of its beneficent hand ? What region is there on the face of the whole earth — what zone so parched with heat or so numbed with frost — what ancient kingdom so encrusted with the successive layers of immemorial civilisation or what newly-discovered waste so rude with the gross- ness of its aboriginal savagery, that this Society has not found thereon a hold for its foot ? From the Rocky Mountains to the Wall of China, beneath the Northern pole-star, and beneath the Southern Cross, in the central plains of the African Continent, and in the scattered islands of far-off Melanesia, its voice is heard proclaiming in diverse tones the one glad message that the middle walls of partition are broken down, and that henceforth there is no more Greek or barbarian, but all are one in Christ Jesus. And, lastly, it is manifold and comprehensive in its agencies. Here it busies itself with the translation of the Scriptures, and there with the publication of educational works. Here it aids in building schools, and there it is active in training teachers, and there it contributes gifts to libraries, and there again it offers prizes for proficiency in scholars. In one place it assists in the endowment of a Colonial bishopric, and in another in the foundation of a Missionary VII.] AND STRENGTHEN THY STAKES. 113 College. At one time it provides passage-money for some evangelist emigrant, and at another it watches over the interests of some Zenana Mission. No work is too great, and no work is too little for its manifold activity, provided only it be directed to the one end which is kept ever in view — the spread of the know- ledge of Christ Jesus our Lord. For this Society I ask your sympathies and your prayers and your almsgiving to-day. I ask them confidently, because I believe that no institution did more than this to keep alive in England the spirit of Christian faith and love during a long period of apathy and deadness. I ask them with still greater boldness because I am sure that at this moment with its quiet, undemonstrative spirit and its manifold activities it is doing a work of incalculable value for the Church of Christ. And its capacities are only limited by its means. Therefore we appeal on its behalf to the increased generosity of Christian men. Therefore the prophetic words which, announcing the restoration of Israel, foreshadowed at the same time the glories of the Messianic Kingdom, may well be adopted by us to-day, as guiding our aspirations and dictating our prayers ; 'Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habita- tions. Spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes; for thou shalt break forth on the right S. S. 8 114 LENGTHEN THY CORDS [vn. hand and on the left ; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.' ' Lengthen thy cords.' ' Enlarge the place of thy tent.' One fulfilment of this aspiration — a literal fulfilment — we are met to consummate to-day. A building is nothing in itself. Walls and towers do not make a city, but the courage and the spirit that dwells therein. Yet from another point of view a new mansion, such as that which we are about to inaugurate, has the highest value. It is at once a witness of the past, and a pledge for the future. Only four days ago it was my privilege to take part in the consecration of the new Cathedral at Edin- burgh. The occasion was one of touching interest. To the members of the Scottish Episcopal Church this Cathedral was far more than a magnificent architectural pile worthy of the purpose for which it is destined. They saw in it the fit expression at once of their thanksgiving and of their hopes. It reminded them of sufferings undergone and obstacles surmounted in the past, and it pointed forward to a larger and brighter career in the years to come. So may it be with the building which we inaugurate to-day. In the latest broad thoroughfare of this metropolis, the new home of our Society will hence- forward stand out to proclaim to all passers by a great work done and doing in the Name of Christ. vii.] AND STRENGTHEN THY STAKES. I I 5 ' Lengthen thy cords.' Do not confine within the limits of a too rigid definition the knowledge which you desire to spread. With a wise courage this Society has of late enlarged the field of its literary activity. As all truth comes of God, so all knowledge should converge in Christ. With this conviction it has rightly judged that there was a just sphere of work for it in the production of sound literature in the province of general education, believing that no branch of study is profane or secular, if only it be 'sanctified by the Word of God.' ' Lengthen thy cords.' New ideas and modes of thought, new branches of learning, new developments of life demand a new treatment of old truths. Jesus Christ is ' the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever ; ' but the way of presenting Jesus Christ for the accept- ance of men will vary with the varying ages. The Bible is God's word now as in the centuries past ; but light is thrown on the manner in which God speaks through the Bible by the revelations of history and the acquisitions ol" science. Therefore ' spare not ;' 'enlarge the place of thy tent' Find a shelter under thy outspread canvas for every new achieve- ment of science and every fresh fact of history, unrecognised and unsuspected though they may have been by God's chiefest saints of old. ' Be thou strong and very courageous.' Friends may desert, and foes 8—2 1 16 LENGTHEN THY CORDS [VII. may chide. Yet shrink not from this manifest respon- sibility. Be courageous ; but be loving withal, be tender, be forbearing, be infinitely careful not to wound the religious conscience or the devout aspira- tions of any, even the least, of Christ's little ones. ' Lengthen thy cords,' ah yes, but ' strengthen thy stakes ' also. To occupy more ground, to spread out more canvas, what is it but to offer a greater surface to the storms? Just in proportion as the cords are lengthened is there need for strengthening the stakes also. Otherwise the shelter overhead will be swept away, and you yourself will be exposed to the remorseless blasts. Adventure yourself, if you will, on the wide ocean of modern thought and life ; but grasp firmly your chart and your compass. Hold fast the one cardinal truth of the Incarnation. Preach Christ and Him crucified by day and by night, directly and indirectly, in season and out of season. The Son of God made Man to redeem men, the Life and Passion and Resurrection of Christ as the con- demnation of your sinfulness and the manifestation of your Father's love — this is the central fact of all history; this is the converging point of all knowledge; this is your hope, your comfort, your strength, your joy, your peace; this is the light of the individual soul, and this is the life of the universal Church. Justification by faith, sacramental grace — what mean- vii. 1 AND STRENGTHEN THY STAKES. I I 7 ing have these, except as interpreted by this doctrine, as explained by this fact ? Hold fast this truth, and spare not. Launch out boldly, while this your guiding star shines brightly overhead. Be daunted by nothing, neither by new social problems nor by new scientific researches. There is a place for all, there is a function for all, in the domain of Christian Knowledge. And the same lessons, which have thus been applied to the oldest Society, may fitly be extended to the Church of England herself. If there be any guiding hand in the progress of history, if there be any supreme providence in the control of events, if there be any divine prescience and any divine call — then the position of England as the mother of so many colonies and dependencies, the heart and centre of the world's commerce and manufacture, and the position of the English Church standing midway between extremes in theological teaching and ecclesi- astical order, point to the Church of this nation with the very finger of God Himself as called by Him to the lofty task of reconciling a distracted Christendom and healing the wounds of the nations. Would she listen to the voice of this call? Would she rise to the level of these opportunities? Then let her spare not, but enlarge the place of her tent, neither length- ening the cords alone nor strengthening the stakes I I 8 LENGTHEN THY CORDS. [VII. alone. So only will the promise be fulfilled to her; ' Thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left ; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.' Therefore, as we kneel at the Holy Feast to-day, let the prayer rise up to heaven for this our venerable Society, for this our beloved Church, that they may win the prophet's blessing by obedience to the prophet's command ; may unite an ever-widening sympathy with an ever-deepening faith ; may Join head, heart, and hand Active and firm, to fight the bloodless fight Of Science, Freedom, and the Truth in Christ. VIII. WITNESSING TO FACT. We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. Acts iv. 20. S. Peter's, Monkwearmouth, Advent Sunday, 1879, i" °f tne fund for constituting the district Church of S. Cuthbert. Let us ask ourselves for a moment, what would have been the result, if these two brave men had been overawed by the threats of the Jewish rulers. We will imagine them to have argued with them- selves thus: that it was wise to bow their heads before the storm; that they would do well to wait for a more favourable opportunity; that their opponents were the lawfully appointed rulers of their country ; that therefore they owed them allegiance and respect; that, though they might silence their voices, they 1 20 WITNESSING TO FACT. [VIII. could not silence their convictions ; that, this being so, they would retire within themselves, they would cherish their own beliefs, they would save their own souls, no longer troubling themselves to convince others against their will. It is vain to speculate what other instruments God might have raised up, if these — His appointed instruments — had failed Him. But, judging this in- cident as men commonly judge in such matters, it could hardly be an exaggeration to say that on the courage, the firmness, the outspoken conviction of these two obscure, unlettered fishermen in this remote corner of the Roman Empire depended the whole future of the world — the thoughts which should mould the heart, and the principles which should guide the life, of the human race, to the end of time. There were no Gospels, there was no organised Church, then. There would have been neither the one nor the other, in all human probability, if this Peter and this John had thought fit to hearken to men more than to God. Does this sound startling ? Aye, we muffle our convictions ; we play fast and loose with the truth ; we do not realise the potency of the instrument which God has placed in our hands. True we are not Apostles ; this is not the inauguration of the Church of Christ. But who knows whether at any casual moment plain- ness of speech, where we have dissembled, might not VIII.] WITNESSING TO FACT. 1 2 I have fired a train, which would have shivered some ancient fortress of ignorance and sin into fragments ? Who knows whether the outspoken truth, which we strangled before utterance, might not have lodged in some keenly susceptible heart, might not at a critical moment have given a new direction to a life potent for good or for evil, and thus have changed some reckless profligate into a preacher of righteousness, a hero of humanity? And it did require no little boldness in these two men to play the part they did. View the matter from whichever side you might, the situation was not encouraging. Their great teacher had been put to an ignominious death. He had forewarned them that the disciple could not expect a happier lot than the Master. They had already seen quite enough to convince them that the warning was not idle. And what was the use of facing this terrible danger ? What hope was there that they should change the religion of their countrymen, of the Roman Empire, of the whole world ? Here were they — two Galilean fishermen with their rough garb and their uncouth dialect, without money, without education, without power or position or friend, mere 'people of the earth,' as they were styled in the contemptuous phrase of the rabbis — confronted with all the learning of the scribes, and all the power of the hierarchy and all the personal 122 WITNESSING TO FACT. [via influence and prestige of the dominant Pharisees. Only suppose for a moment that they should escape from this first fiery ordeal. What was there beyond ? Why, they would find themselves face to face with that gigantic power, most mysterious and yet most terribly real, that later Babylon of the Caesars, whose throne was planted on the city of the seven hills, but whose grip was fastened on the throat of all mankind. It was indeed a prospect before which the loftiest spirit might quail. But there is a courage which tramples on proba- bilities. There is a stedfastness of will which defies human calculation. Do we ask what was the secret of this bravery ? The Apostles' language itself fur- nishes the answer. It was not any heroism of their own, not any innate physical courage such as they might have shared with the lion or the dog. Peter could be the most timid of all men, on occasions. But it was the proverbial stubbornness of facts — facts which they could not deny, facts which they dared not suppress. They had seen with their eyes; they had heard with their ears. Henceforth an iron hand was laid upon them. They must cry aloud on the house-tops, come what might. It was not a question of prudence ; it was not a calculation of chances. A dominant, irresistible necessity overruled all such con- siderations and compelled them to utterance. 'We VIII.] WITNESSING TO FACT. 123 cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.' We are reminded often, and reminded rightly, that the facts of science must be victorious. It is a truism. We may attempt to stifle them ourselves; we may wrest a denial of them from others. What then ? Not a thousand recantations can impede their triumphant progress. Those men who compelled the famous astronomer to retract his theory of the earth's motion no doubt thought they had achieved a great result. They had silenced the very author of the heresy. But the theory was more than a theory; it was a fact. Galileo might declare as loudly as they wished that the earth was fixed firm as a rock ; but he must mutter between his teeth, ' And yet it moves.' This ' yet' was the protest of fact against repression. Fact is indestructible. When we know that a thing is, it becomes at once our master, our tyrant. And, if this is the case with facts in science, it is much more so with facts in religion. They come to us in a different way it is true ; but, if we once acknow- ledge them, if we once believe them, they are far more potent than the others. A scientific fact may not directly suggest a practical duty. A man may not think it worth his while to face martyrdom for a law in chemistry or electricity. If the world will not have his discovery, he will be content to wait till 124 WITNESSING TO FACT. [VIII. the world is of a better mind. But a moral fact, a theological fact, touches the heart, touches the con- science, touches the life. If a man knows that there is a righteous and all-seeing God while others are ignorant of it, if a man knows that there is a life and a judgment beyond the grave and others deny it, he is bound to declare it, and take the worst that may come. This was the case with the two Apostles. They had come face to face with facts — the most stupen- dous facts which the world has even seen. The facts were none other than the life, the person, the death, the resurrection of Christ. These facts rose up before them, whichever way they turned. If they put out a hand, it was arrested by them. If they advanced a foot, it stumbled against them. The facts would not be put down. The facts dragged them spell- bound into the most terrible disasters, despite indo- lence, despite timidity, despite prudence, despite all the natural shrinking of man. This is what the two Apostles themselves declare severally. Question them both one by one. Ask S. Peter. He demands a hearing in his Epistles as ' a witness of the sufferings of Christ' He declares again that he has ' not followed cunningly devised fables when he made known to them the power and coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, but was an eye- witness of His majesty.' Ask S. John again. He viii.] WITNESSING TO FACT. I 25 is still more explicit. ' That which we have heard' he writes, 'which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of Life — for the Life was manifested and we have seen it, and shew unto you that Eternal Life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us. That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you.' What a reiteration of words here — a needless reiteration, we are tempted to think. Yes, superflu- ous and cumbersome indeed for mere purposes of rhetoric, but not superfluous, not cumbersome, not even adequate to express the intense and vivid reality of the facts with which this now aged Apostle had in his youth more than half a century before come in contact. Not only 'seen' and 'heard,' but 'our hands have handled,' of the Word of Life. We shrink from the boldness of the expression. Is not this profanity, to handle the Most Holy, as if He were a common thing ; and not profanity only, but absurdity also, to grasp the Incomprehensible, to finger the Eternal ? And yet nothing short of this suffices to express his mean- ing. He had in some sense done that which a brother Apostle in a moment of scepticism had desired to do literally, he had thrust his hand into the side of the Word of Life, the Word made flesh ; and he could not but believe. These were the momentous facts which he must proclaim ; the facts, or rather the one fact, 126 WITNESSING TO FACT. [VIII. the Person of the Incarnate Word, a fact not to be disregarded with impunity, a fact stubborn and irre- sistible, hard as the nether millstone, a fact such that 'whosoever should fall on it should be broken, but on whomsoever it should fall, it would grind him to powder.' Pagan legend was full of incidents in which the gods were fabled to have descended from Olympus and appeared on this lower earth. What were all these legends, but passionate cries of the human heart, vague yearnings after a divine humanity? What were all these but dreams, foreshadowings, presages, of the one great and true manifestation of Deity, of which this Advent Season reminds us, when the Son of God took our flesh and dw elt among us ? For this was no momentary apparition, like a meteoric light, darting suddenly across the heaven of human life, and as suddenly melting into darkness. It is a permanent indwelling of the divine with the human, nay, of God with man. It was an absolute indefectible union between heaven and earth. The celestial tabernacle, of which the Mosaic was only a type, had descended among men. The true Shechinah, the divine glory, of which the light overshadowing the mercy-seat was only a dim suggestion, had taken up its abode on earth. 'And we beheld ' — beheld with these mortal eyes — ' His glory, as of the only-begotten VIII.] WITNESSING TO FACT. 127 of the Father' — full, aye, 'full of grace and truth.' No, it was no ' cunningly devised fable,' no myth or parable, however beautiful, however instructive, however moral, however elevating : but a fact which they had seen and heard. The great instrument in the spread of the Gospel is personal testimony. The special facts indeed, to which the Apostles bore witness, occurred once for all. The miracles, the preaching, the passion, the resurrection, of Christ, are past. But the duty of witnessing did not cease with the death of these personal disciples. There are other facts — spiritual miracles, moral resurrections, wrought by the power of the ever-living Christ, which are matters just as much of personal testimony, as the transfiguration on the Mount or the death on Calvary or the Ascen- sion from Olivet. And just so far as you or I have been permitted to see and hear — yea, to handle — these facts, it is our duty at all hazards to speak what we have seen and heard. They supply the data of religious conviction, just as much as the experiments of the laboratory or the dissecting-room furnish the data in chemistry or physiology. You have conversed with the Saviour by the well of life ; and must you not then, while your heart is full, go forth among the people of your city and invite them ; * Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever 128 WITNESSING TO FACT. [VIII. I did : is not this the Christ ?' There will be no artificial constraint, no repulsive mannerism, in your appeal ; but out of the very overflow of the heart the mouth will speak. How has the revelation of God come to you ? Have you received it through kindly acts of mercy done to the poor, the outcast, the sorrow-stricken, the stranger? Have you devoted yourself to the relief of the needy, to the teaching of the ignorant, to the reformation of the sinful ; and through your heightened sympathy has the vision of God flashed on your eyes, and the touch of God pierced home to your heart ? ' Lord, when saw we Thee an hungred, and we fed Thee? or thirsty, and we gave Thee drink? When saw we Thee a stranger, and we took Thee in ? When and where saw we TJtee?' Aye, it is a glorious surprise. Through the grateful tears of that mourner whom you have comforted, the visage of the Man of Sorrows is seen. In the rescued life of that sinful one whom you have reformed, the voice of Him Who died to redeem from sin is heard. You thought only to relieve the weary and footsore travellers ; and lo, you have entertained angels unawares. The scene in the patriarch's tent at Mamre is renewed once more. The homely offices have melted into the glory of a celestial presence and an eternal promise. ' The men,' we read, 'turned their faces from thence' — the men VIII. j WITNESSING TO FACT. vanished as mysteriously as they had appeared ; but Abraham stood before the Lord. Or again : the type of the revelation vouchsafed to you is no longer Abraham at Mamre, but Jacob at Peniel. Some terrible crisis of your life has overtaken you. There is darkness overhead ; there is solitude around : you are alone — alone, it may be, in the midst of thousands, alone with your trouble, alone with your temptation. Then you gather up all your strength for the great effort. Through the long night you wrestle with the strong man — wrestle for life, determined to wring a blessing from the conflict. The blessing is won ; the darkness retires before the returning dawn. But, though the day-beam of joy has thus broken on your trouble, the agony of that night has stamped on your soul a seriousness, an awe, a resolve, a thanksgiving, which shall never depart. ' I have seen God face to face ; and my life is preserved.' Or again : God reveals Himself not now in the activities of a beneficent work, not now in the agonies of a moral conflict, but in a piercing consciousness of sin, and like Isaiah, you find yourself, you know not how, in the inmost sanctuary. The veil is torn aside. There you stand face to face with the Divine Presence — you the guilty, loathsome thing. The glory, the power, the beauty, the holiness, blazes full upon you s. s. 9 I30 WITNESSING TO FACT. [vm. from the mercy-seat. The hymn of the six-winged seraphim rings in your ears. The portals quiver before your eyes, and the ground throbs and heaves beneath your feet. And in the depth of your self- abasement, in the agony of your contrition, you cry out, ' Woe is me, I am undone ; for mine eyes have seen the Lord of Hosts.' Or once more : it is not now in the heightened consciousness of sin, but in the patient endurance of wrong, as with Stephen, that the revelation of God flashes upon your soul. The calumny, the ingratitude, the injustice, the outraged feelings, the spurned affec- tions have been meekly borne ; and in the hour of your deepest distress, when your soul is mangled and crushed by cruelty, you breathe a prayer for your wrong-doer, ' Lord, lay not this to his charge.' Then the heaven is riven overhead, and the glory streams forth ; and framed in the celestial light is seen the form of the Son of Man, standing at the right hand of God. Rare and precious moments these, when you have thus felt the touch of God thrill through you — vivid realities of your being, far more real (you well know) than the shifting scenes of your every-day life. You have stood face to face with the Eternal. You have had the witness in yourself. Can you do otherwise than speak the things which you have seen and heard? IX. BOTH ONE. He is our peace, Who hath made both one. Ephesians ii. 14. Westminster Abbey, June 21, 1SS1, at the Jubilee of King's College, London. Sanctc ct Sapicntcr, holiness and wisdom, a religion enlarged and strengthened by knowledge, a knowledge purified and sanctified by religion ; this harmonious union which the College, whose Jubilee we commemor- ate to-day, has ever striven to realise ; this vaster, fuller, more glorious music, which is the highest aspiration and augury of the poet for the future ; this wedlock of mind and soul, of the intellect and the heart — where else shall it be found if not in Him, the Eternal Word Incarnate, in Him Who is at once the Lord of creation, 9—2 132 BOTH ONE. [IX. the Arbiter of history, and the Author of our sanctifi- cation, the Centre of our faith — in Him, the great Reconciler, 'Who hath made both one'? 'Who hath made both one.' In the Temple at Jerusalem, separating the holy area, the court of the Israelites, from the outer precincts, was a stone fence or balustrade, beyond which no Gentile was allowed to pass. At intervals along this fence were tablets, some in Greek, some in Hebrew, warning the alien not to trespass on pain of death. Only a few years ago one of these inscriptions was exhumed from the grave where it had lain for long centuries. Their Roman masters, we are told, respected and sanctioned this fierce ordinance of the Jews. The Jews were allowed to inflict the penalty of death even on a Roman citizen, if he passed within the barrier. To S. Paul these things were an allegory. This stern prohibition, this relentless barrier, this rigid line of demarcation, this reservation of the inner sanctuary for the Jew, this extrusion of the Gentile into the outer court — was it not a type, an exemplification of that rancour of Jewish exclusiveness which imperilled the infancy of the Christian Church ? Yes, they would have imported into this later and nobler sanctuary, this second temple, this spiritual edifice, the arrange- ment of the material building. They would have drawn a hard line between the sons of Abraham and BOTH ONE. 133 the dogs of Greeks; they would have erected a middle wall of partition ; they would have thrust out the Gentiles into the outer court, whence with yearning eyes they might peer over the intervening fence into the inner sanctuary, their exclusion being rendered all the more galling by the proximity of the view. This distinction, this exclusiveness, on which Jewish Christians insisted, was, in the Apostle's eyes, the direct negation of the Gospel of Christ. Jesus Christ had broken down the middle wall of partition. On the area thus cleared, He had erected a larger, loftier, nobler temple, a universal brotherhood which acknowledged no preferences and knew no distinctions. In Jesus Christ was neither Jew nor Greek, but Christ was all, and in all. These things, I say, were an allegory to S. Paul ; and are they not so likewise to ourselves ? The distinction of Jew and Gentile indeed no longer troubles the peace of the Christian Church. The spiritual fence of partition, like the material wall which symbolised it, has long crumbled into dust and disappeared beneath the ruins of the older temple. Jesus Christ, the great Solvent, has disintegrated and destroyed the barrier. Jesus Christ, the great Recon- ciler, has made both one. But is there not another distinction, another line of demarcation rigidly drawn, another barrier only too faithfully typified by this 134 BOTH ONE. [IX. fence in the temple area, this wall between the inner and the outer court, this separation of Jew and Gentile? And if it be so, where else can we look for a recon- ciliation save in Jesus Christ, Who once again shall be our peace, Who once again shall make both one in Himself? On this side of the fence is the Church ; on the other side the world, as we call the world. Here is religion, is faith ; there is nature, is history. Here is theology; there is science. All the pious yearnings of the human soul on the one side, all the intellectual struggles and all the fair humanities of life on the other ; sancte in the inner court, sapicnter in the outer. But there must be no trespassing, no crossing of the fatal barrier, on pain of death. Here is the spiritual ; there is the secular. Here is God ; there is Caesar. Ah, have we not here in this false interpretation of a crucial passage only too faithful an index of the frame of mind which encourages, if it does not create, this fatal severance of faith and knowledge, of religion and life, this cruel divorce of those whom God has joined together in a holy wedlock and forbidden to any man to put asunder ? As if, forsooth, we could have any duty to C;esar, which was not also a duty to God ; as if all that belonged to Caesar did not also belong to God ! It is the old severance reappearing with a new IX.] BOTH ONE. '35 face. Jew and Gentile — what more appropriate types of these two elements of human interest ? On the one hand the old religion with its time-honoured teachings, its ancient traditions, the church of the fathers, the guardian of revelation, the depositary of the faith, the staunchness which tends to degenerate into bigotry — here is the Jew. On the other, the intellectual search- ings and the political aspirations and the mechanical contrivings, science, art, literature, commerce, soci- ology, the liberty which threatens to luxuriate into licence — here is the Gentile. Ever and again the old feud breaks out Ever*and again there is a crack and a rent. The gulf widens, and a disruption is threatened. How shall we avert the disaster? I do not say that the fault is all on one side. The Gentile may exasperate and shock the Jew by his recklessness. The man of science may transgress by a licence of speculation which goes far beyond his inductions, and by an antagonism of language which is not warranted even by his speculations. But I am not now addressing the man of science. My business to-day is with the man of religion. The practical question for us is, what can we do — we who represent theology, we who are arrayed on the side of reve- lation — to prevent this fatal severance ? I have already indicated the answer to this ques- tion. Jesus Christ will again be our peace. Jesus i 3 6 BOTH ONE. [IX. Christ will make both one in these last days, as He did in those earliest. This He will do, because He unites both in Himself. Christ is the Incarnate Saviour, yes, but Christ is also the Eternal Word. Christ left the glories of heaven, took our flesh upon Him, lived our life, died on the Cross for our redemp- tion, pleads our cause before the Eternal Throne. This we acknowledge ; this is ever present to our minds ; this is the life of our lives. But here we stop. We do not commonly connect Christ with the marvels of creation, with the laws of nature, with the progress and development of history. We repeat time after time the familiar words of the creed, ' By Whom all things were made.' But the repetition produces no effect on our minds. Perhaps we thoughtlessly assume that the clause refers to the Father Himself, Who has been mentioned just before. Would not the average orthodox Christian be startled, if he were told that the laws of gravitation, of chemical affinity, of magnet- ism, were expressions of the mind of Christ ? Would he not hesitate to admit that it was Christ Who hurled the planets into space, Christ Who through long ages stored up in the bowels of the earth fuel and building- materials for the use of man, Christ Who wove the wing of the dragon-fly and pencilled the glories of the lily ? And so again with history, with mechanical invention, with social progress in all its developments. IX.] BOTH ONE. 137 Yet this is the direct and immediate inference from the teaching of S. Paul and S. John. The Father manifests Himself through the Only Begotten, the Eternal Word, not in revelation only, but in nature ; not in redemption only, but in history. What else is the meaning of such passages as these ? 'All things were made by Him, and without Him was not any- thing made that was made. He was in the world and the world was made by Him.' 'One Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom are all things.' 'By Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible.... All things were created by Him and for Him. And He is, He exists absolutely, before all things ; and by Him all things consist, are held together.' 'His Son, Whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by Whom also He made the worlds.' Can any language more explicit, more comprehensive, more importunate in its reiteration, be conceived than this? His creative agency, His directive power, is coextensive with the Universe. He, the Eternal Son, He, Christ Jesus our Lord, is plenipotentiary, is omni- present in the kingdom of nature as in the kingdom of grace. But we abandon this truer and larger theo- logy — the theology alike of S. Paul and S. John and of the Greek fathers in the best ages. We inclose ourselves within the barriers of later and narrower ideas. We erect once again a middle wall of partition. 138 BOTH ONE. [IX. We confine the mediation of Christ, which the Apostles extended to the whole universe of created things, within the limits of the Bible, of the Gospel, of the Church. Is it easy to exaggerate the loss to ourselves by the erection of such a barrier ? How much healthier, larger, freer, in the best sense of freedom, would our theology be by its removal ! With what different eyes should we look on each fresh revelation of science, if we learned to regard it as likewise a fresh revelation of the Eternal Word, our Saviour and Redeemer ! There would then be no jealousy, no suspicion of the aggressiveness of science. Every new triumph of scientific discovery would be wel- comed as another jewel in the diadem of our Eternal King. Every new announcement of mechanical adaptation would add a fresh voice to the chorus of universal nature, singing ' Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts ; the whole earth is full of His glory.' Could it be otherwise if we truly recognised that all the threads of scientific laws are gathered up in the hands of Him, Who is the centre of our faith and the foundation of our hopes? Has He not made both one ? On this principle the College, whose fiftieth anni- versary we celebrate to-day, is built. Coeval with this College, and subsequent to it, many institutions IX.] BOTH ONE. 139 have been founded for the higher education of stu- dents. We can have no desire to depreciate them. They have done excellent work in their several ways. But these for the most part have halved the motto of your foundation. They have appropriated to them- selves the Sancte alone or the Sapienter alone. There have been theological colleges on the one hand, which undertook to give a special training for the clerical office ; there have been universities and academic institutions on the other, which aimed at the pro- motion of science and learning, to the exclusion (practical, even when not avowed) of religious and theological training. It is the special glory of King's College that neither element is forgotten. Without any thought of my text or of the applications which I have made of it, the great prelate who preached its inauguration sermon half a century ago, nevertheless used the same image. 'Our desire,' said Bishop Blom- field, 'is to erect the shrine of science and literature within the precincts of the sanctuary.' On this prin- ciple the College was founded ; and during the fifty years of its existence it has remained true to the idea of its foundation, striving always, and striving not unsuccessfully, to strengthen the religious element, while at the same time enlarging its borders and taking in fresh domains of learning, or science, or practical study, with each successive demand of the 140 BOTH ONE. [IX. age — its engineering department, its medical school, its Oriental section. Fifty years of existence ! Fifty years — only a little more than half a long lifetime in the individual man ; a scarcely appreciable fragment in the lifetime of the human race. And yet how full of incident, of progress, of life, this half century has been ! Like the half century or more of Athenian ascendency, which transferred the centre of gravity of the intel- lectual and political world from Asia to Europe, and flooded mankind with new ideas — the golden age of philosophy and literature and art; like the half century or more of the Reformation epoch, which bearing in its right hand the discovery of printing, and in its left the discovery of a new world, liberated the intellect and the aspirations of mankind from the trammels of ages, and sped it forth on its way, running and leaping and praising God — like these, the Victorian era, we must believe, will ever stand forth in the history of our race, as one of those exceptional periods of intensified human life, when the work of centuries is compressed into decades. The birth of this College was coeval with the birth of the new epoch. The beginning of the fourth decade of this century was the inauguration of an era of political reform, of scientific progress, of me- chanical invention, of development in the arts and tx.] BOTH ONE. industries, in all the external appliances of life, of which \vc have witnessed marvellous and unforeseen results already, but which even now does not appear to have exhausted half its conquests. It was the inauguration of great political and legislative changes. The stubborn reaction provoked by the wild excesses of the first French Revolution had spent its force. Whatever of reason or of truth had been smothered under those extravagances, now made its voice heard. I need hardly remind you that the birth-throes of this College were coincident in England with the birth-throes of the great Reform Act. I need only ask you to remember how at this epoch in Eastern Europe the power of Turkey was effectually broken in the enforced recognition of Greek independence, while in Western Europe Belgium be- came an independent state, and France, by a second revolution, asserted her right to a constitutional government. These facts alone will show that not in this country only, but throughout the Continent, politics had taken a fresh start ; so that the dawn of a new era shed its light over the cradle of this College. But, if this was true in the world of politics, it was still more emphatically true of scientific inventions, as affecting the appliances of life. One fact alone need be mentioned. The Liverpool and Manchester Rail- way was in the course of construction when the project 142 BOTH ONE. [IX. of this institution was framed. It was opened scarcely a twelvemonth before your College. Here was the formal inauguration of a brilliant and ceaseless train of scientific triumphs, which has entirely transformed the conditions of human life, has annihilated space, has drawn the whole world together, and has stimu- lated and intensified the energies of mankind far beyond the wildest imagination of any previous age. And yet it would seem that even now science has kept her crowning feats of magic still in reserve, and that in the coming triumphs of electricity 1 a brilliant present will be eclipsed by a more brilliant future. But meanwhile what was the position of religion ? What were the relations of the Church of England to the political and scientific movements and aspirations of the age ? Never, since the day when she fell with the fall of the monarchy at the Great Revolution, had her pros- 1 It may be interesting to note in this connection that King's College was itself in some sense the birthplace of the electric telegraph. Sir C. Wheatstone performed there the experiments which led to his great invention, and the practical working of it was actually shown to the late Prince Consort (on occasion of his opening the Museum of Natural Philosophy in 1843), when messages were sent in his presence to a station on the other side of the river, and a rocket exploded from the Shot Tower by a current of electricity sent from the College laboratory. The most constant of voltaic batteries, the ' Daniell's battery,' was also the invention of the first professor of Chemistry and Physics in King's College. BOTH ONE. H3 pects been darker. Never did the final severance, the fatal divorce, appear more imminent. Her chief re- presentatives were mobbed and hooted in London ; they were burnt in effigy at their very gates in the provinces. The Prime Minister warned the Bishops to set their house in order. ' The Church of England as it now stands,' wrote Dr Arnold on the one side, ' no human power can save.' ' She must be dealt with strongly,' thought Mr Newman on the other, 'or she would be lost.' This was no new alarm. Nearly a century earlier an eminent Bishop 1 had declined the primacy on the ground that his shoulders were unequal to sustain the burden of a falling Church. The Church did not fall at this latter epoch, as she had not fallen at that earlier. On the contrary, she has manifested a zeal, an energy, a capacity of growth, a sense of spiritual power, far beyond the experience of the preceding ages. England does not yet exhibit the painful spectacle, which is too common elsewhere — two hostile camps confronting each other in a deadly antagonism — the Church on the one side, the intelli- gence, and knowledge, and culture, the scientific progress and the political aspirations of the age, on the other ; narrowness and superstition on this hand, barren deism, if not blank atheism, on that. From this sad catastrophe, by God's grace, we have been 1 Bishop Butler ; see Bartlett's Memoirs, p. 96. 144 BOTH ONE. [IX. saved hitherto, saved through an infusion of that larger spirit of which this College is the most emphatic expression. And now — on the occasion of its jubilee — a further extension of its work is projected. The higher education of women is one of the great ques- tions of the day. Like all great and important questions, it runs much risk of being discredited by- extravagances. From such extravagances the friends of this College will, it may be confidently anticipated, keep themselves clear. They will not desire the woman to usurp the functions of the man. They will not be carried away by the pedantry of pre- scribing particular studies, simply because they are men's studies, irrespective of their adaptation to the capacities of the woman's mind, or to the exigencies of the woman's future in life. But they do acknowledge the claim of the woman to this higher education ; they see that the woman will have this higher education, whether they give it or not. And acknowledging and seeing all this, they desire before all things, in Bishop Blomfield's phrase, 'to erect its shrine within the sanctuary.' ' Within the sanctuary.' I am recalled by this language to the image of the text from which I started. The stone fence in the temple area, of which I spoke, marked off the court of the Gentiles ; but a second inner barrier separated the court of the IX j BOTH ONE. H5 women also from the court of the Israelites. The women were excluded, as the Gentiles were excluded. The woman occupied an inferior religious position in rabbinical teaching. It was a shock to public feeling to see a rabbi talking with a female. Even the disciples were surprised that their Master should be found conversing with a woman on the brink of the Samaritan well. Jesus Christ broke down this middle wall of partition as He had broken down the other. Here again He made both one. If in Jesus Christ there is no distinction of Jew and Gentile, neither is there of male or female. Women were His faithful and constant attendants ; women were the favoured witnesses of His resurrection ; women were among the most helpful fellow-workers of the Apostles. There was an organized ministry of women deaconesses and widows in the Apostolic Church. I ask you therefore to occupy and consecrate the ground which is thrown open by the removal of the barrier. I invite you to extend once again the sphere of your operations as you have so often extended it before. I entreat you not to let slip the golden opportunity, which once lost can never be regained. I appeal to you to provide that the sons and the daughters of the next generation shall be educated by mothers who themselves have been trained within the sanctuary of God. S. S. IO X. THE RIVER OF GOD. Thou visitest the earth and waterest it; Thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God. Psalm lxv. 9. Westminster Abbey, June 23, i88r, at the Anniversary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. A STREAM whose sources are hidden in the bosom of the eternal hills ; which is fed with the pure snows of heaven ; a simple mountain rill first ; then an impetuous torrent, gathering- volume as it descends, foaming and eddying, sweeping trees and rocks down in its course ; then a broad river, rolling now through wide meadow lands or sandy deserts, now forced into a narrow and deep channel by jutting rocks, and leaping down in cataracts seaward ; holding its course now straight towards its destined goal, and now meandering and returning upon itself, seeming X.] THE RIVER OF GOD. 147 even to retrograde to the unobservant eye ; receiving ever and again on the right hand and on the left fresh tributaries which drain the far-off hills on either side; fertilising pastures and corn lands, purifying and watering countless towns and villages, bearing down on its bosom the precious merchandise of many peoples, giving life and vigour and joy to men ; but with all this, whether by crowded cities or through desolate wastes, whether spreading in shallow marshes or imprisoned between barriers of rocks, whether winding its sluggish way over level plains or rushing impetuously onward and forcing a direct channel through all interposing obstacles — still pressing for- ward, ever forward, with its growing volume of waters, with its increasing freight of treasures and of men, to the far distant boundless ocean, there to lose itself and be absorbed in its kindred element. In this description I have used no word which might not apply to one of the great rivers of the earth, fed from the Alps or the Andes or the Himalayas. Yet throughout I have had before my mind — and perhaps have suggested to your minds — a heaven-descended river far mightier than these, issuing from beneath the throne of God, flowing down, not without many vicissitudes but still in one triumphant progress and with ever-increasing volume through the ages, till at last it shall lose itself in the 10 — 2 THE RIVER OF GOD. [x. ocean of eternity, and the knowledge of God shall cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea. Such a stream is the Church of God — the Church of the patriarchs, the Church in Egypt, the Church of the Wilderness, the Church of the promised land, the Church in Babylon, the Church of the Restoration, the Church of the Dispersion, and lastly of all, when the fulness of time had come, the Church of Christ. The prophets delighted to portray the spread of God's truth through the instrumentality of His chosen people, as a stream issuing from the sacred rock, a ' fountain coming forth from the House of the Lord,' ' living waters going out from Jerusalem,' a perennial stream, flowing downward and onward, irrigating the earth on either side, healing and refreshing, so that, in Ezekiel's words, ' Everything shall live, whither the river cometh.' A similar metaphor seems to underlie the words of the Psalmist in the text. The image at all events is a very obvious one ; and it is fertile in suggestive lessons. One might dwell for instance on the sources from which the stream issues, or on its fructifying and cleansing qualities, or the like. But, omitting these more obvious applications, I purpose confining myself to-day to three points in which this image represents the Church of Christ, and which have a bearing on missionary work. I. There is first of all, the continuity of the stream. X.] THE RIVER OF GOD. 149 The missionary spirit indeed, like everything that is godlike in man, presses forward, acts for the future, hopes for the future, lives in the future. But it draws strength and refreshment from the experience, the examples, the accumulated power and wisdom of the past. Nay, just in proportion as we are animated by this reverence for the past, as we acknowledge our obligations to it, as we feel our connexion with it ; in short as we realise this idea of continuity in the Church of Christ, in the same degree will be the truest missionary spirit — wise, zealous, humble, self- denying, enlightened, enterprising, innovating in the best sense, because conservative in the best sense. The Church of Christ is a tree soaring upwards to heaven, spreading its branches far and wide ; but its roots are buried deep below the surface in a dark antiquity. Christian men — above all, Christian mis- sionaries — are the heirs of all the ages. At the moment when first the voice of God is heard ringing in the ears of the Syrian Shepherd- Chief in Ur of Chaldees, ' Get thee out of thy country,' the history of our spiritual race begins. Abraham, the father of the faithful, is the human founder of the divine society which we call the Church of God — may I not say, the Church of Christ — Christ antici- pated, if not Christ realised ; for to Abraham first was given the promise of a chosen seed ; he first 150 THE RIVER OF GOD. [x. rejoiced to see Messiah's day; 'and he saw it' — how- ever dimly — ' saw it and was glad.' He too was the first missionary, for he went forth in the same spirit in which all brave and true missionaries have gone forth ever since — went forth 1 having none inheritance, not so much as to set his foot on' — went forth, 'not knowing whither he went' This idea of continuity in the Church, this sense of an inheritance in the past, with all its priceless lessons — its warnings, its en- couragements, its endowments of strength and its provocations to zeal — is set vividly before our eyes in the image of a mighty river, the Nile or the Euphrates, the Ganges or the Amazon, growing from a little rill or cascade — the same and not the same, at its source and at its mingling with the limitless ocean. 2. But secondly; the course of the river, in its vicissitudes, has also its lesson for us. The present time is confessedly a crisis fraught with manifold anxieties. If there are many bright gleams (and are there not many ?) it is no less true that dark clouds overhang the horizon, threatening at any moment to deluge the Church of Christ. At such a crisis what lessons does the image of the river, interpreted by the history of the past, suggest ? Do they tend to dismay or to encouragement, to despair or to hope ? To this question there is one clear and decisive answer. The river has its eddies and its back- X.] THE RIVER OF GOD. currents ; it has its retrograde movements and its meandering channels, when it seems even to recede from its goal ; it buries itself perhaps underground, or it loses itself in marshy swamps ; it is hemmed in between some rocky heights, some iron gates, which threaten to close in upon it, and scatter its waters and obstruct its course for ever. If we saw only one short reach of its course, we should prophesy its failure in reaching its destination. But we know that despite all obstructions, despite all treacherous appearances, it must flow onward and downward, must empty itself into the ocean. Whatever partial aberrations there may be, its general course is one and the same. This is the law of its being. And so also with the Church of God. Do you seek a parallel to the stagnant marshes of the mighty river [whose course I have been tracing] ? Take the period of the Judges, when every man did what was right in his own eyes, when the law of God is almost lost to view for many generations, when there seemed to be no continuous stream of living water, but only patches of swamp thinly covering the surface of the ground here and there. Do you ask again for a counterpart to the narrow rock-bound channel — the intrusive barriers on the right hand and on the left ? Look at the closing period of the Jewish monarchy. Here is Israel well-nigh crushed between two mighty heathen THE RIVER OF GOD. [X. empires — Egypt and Babylon — the two greatest powers which the world had then seen. Again and again they appear clashing together, like those fabled rocks of Greek story. And Israel, one would suppose, must perish. The Church of God must be crushed and annihilated, or at least so dispersed that it never can unite again. The truth of God must evaporate, because there is no channel left for its transmission to after ages. Well, we know the result, as a matter of history. We ought to know, and we ought to feel, independently of history, that the truth cannot perish, that the Church of God cannot fail. This is a spiritual law, as the other was a physical law. It must survive. It must flow ever onward and onward, till it reaches the ocean of the Eternal Truth. I have taken my instances from remote ages ; but does not the image apply equally well to more recent times ? Look at the Church of England during a great part of the last century. Have we not here the very state of things symbolized by the river lost in marshy ground — its purity, its vigour, its swiftness, its very life apparently gone ; and the waters which should have quickened and refreshed, lying stagnant and corrupt. Yet all the while across these marshy flats a keen spiritual eye might have observed here and there trickling runnels, and here and there more copious streams, which had not lost their life, had not lost their fresh- X.] THE RIVER OE GOD. *53 ness and their savour, which were all tending in the same direction and would at length unite and give to the river its proper volume and force. They did at length unite. The river of the English Church flowed a mighty river again. We have witnessed during the last sixty years an outburst of religious zeal, whether manifested in missionary enterprise abroad or in Church extension at home, to which it would be difficult to find a parallel for many centuries past in Western Christendom. Is not this full of encourage- ment and hope — this sudden transition from almost utter stagnation to keen and vigorous life ? Who shall despair, when he witnesses these things? But times change rapidly ; peoples and churches live fast ; a new crisis has come. The Church is now hemmed in between two mountain barriers, which approach ever nearer and nearer and threaten to close in upon her course. This is true to a certain extent of the Church of England ; it is still more true of the Churches on the Continent. On the one hand there is a superstitious regard for the forms rather than the spirit of the past, a retrograde yearning after doctrines and practices which a larger knowledge and a wider experience had discarded, a reluctance to accept the results for which science or learning claims a recogni- tion. On the other there is a sceptical dislike of all received truth, because it is received, a growing 154 THE RIVER OF GOD. [x. materialism which is indifferent to spiritual things, which shuts out the thought of the life beyond the grave, which is impatient of any theological state- ment, careless of any religious belief, which is without God in the world. Materialism on the one hand, formalism on the other — these are the rocks which hem in the river of God. Does not past experience suggest the hope, that though for the time the channel is straitened and the navigation is perilous, yet the waters may flow deeper for this temporary restraint ; so that, when the river emerges once more, it may be found healthier, purer, swifter, for the discipline. Nay, are there not signs that this will be so ? Are not men led on all sides by the anxieties of the times to ask themselves searching questions as to the mean- ing, the reality, of their Christian profession — questions which only the perplexity of such a crisis could have called forth ? 3. I have spoken of the continuity of the stream, as reflected in the history of the Church. I have dwelt on its diversified course, as suggesting lessons of patience and of hope. Let me ask your attention to yet a third point suggested by the analogy of a great river and intimately connected with this day's anniversary. How is this stream fed ? What acces- sions does it receive ? What are its tributaries ? From all quarters of the heavens these streams X.] THE RIVER OF GOD. '55 pour in to the main channel. Falling direct from lofty mountain heights here, draining broad table lands there, flowing through barren rocks and rich meadows and sandy plains, from the right hand and from the left they issue to swell the bulk of the rolling tide. At first, as they join the main stream, they betray their separate sources. They have their own colour, their own swiftness ; and they seem almost to keep their own channel. At length the fusion is complete. They have mingled their waters with the main stream ; they are lost in it. But meanwhile — and this is what I ask you especially to mark — they have communicated to it their own characteristics, their purifying or fertilizing qualities. And thus, strengthening and strengthened, giving something and receiving much more, they roll down in one broad, irresistible, ever-flowing stream, bearing on their breast the natives of divers climes and the produce of many soils, sweeping their rich argosies of men and treasures onward towards the one far-off ocean which is their common goal. The tributaries of the mighty river. Are we not reminded by this word of another image under which the same truth is prefigured by Psalmist and Prophet — the nations of the earth gathered together from the four winds of heaven to the Holy City, and pouring in each its special products, its choicest gifts, as a THE RIVER OF GOD. [x. tribute, to the treasury of the God of Israel. One offers its finely woven fabrics ; another its elaborately chased vessels and intricate carvings ; another its costly perfumes ; another its ivory, its rare woods, its precious metals. Do we ask what is the counterpart to all this in the history of the Christian Church ? Has not each great nation in succession, as it was gathered into the fold of Christ, given some fresh accession of strength to the Church ; emphasized some doctrinal truth or developed some practical capacity or fostered some religious sentiment ; and thus in some way or other contributed to the more complete understanding or the more effective working of the faith once delivered to the saints ? Look at the earliest of these great tributaries to the stream of Christian History. Reflect how much the Church owes to the special capacities and opportunities of the Greek people. A language wider in its range and more subtle in its distinctions than any which the world has ever heard — a language moreover which was already the medium of communi- cation throughout the civilised world — becomes the vehicle for spreading the Gospel. A race gifted with a special capacity of philosophic thought is exercised upon the writings of the Apostles and Evangelists, and draws up those creeds and formularies which are the heritage of the Church to this day. This is X.] THE RIVER OF GOD. 157 the tribute of the Greek to the sanctuary of God. And next the Latin race also offers its choicest products at the same altar. Here is a marvellous capacity of practical organization, a genius for making and administering laws such as no other nation has possessed. No common tribute this to pay into the sacred treasury. Observe too that in the Divine Providence the tributaries flowed into the main stream in due order. The Church wanted the syste- matic statement of the doctrines first as the basis, and then the practical organization for giving them effect. I have spoken of the two great nations of the ancient world. But let us come nearer home, and ask what special offerings were poured into the Divine treasury by the two great races which to this day make up the population of the united kingdom— the Celtic race in Ireland, Wales, and the Highlands — the Teutonic race which is the staple of the people of England. No ignoble gift was the offering either of Teuton or of Celt. The Teuton, besides his innate reverence for the obligations of family life, laid on the altar of God, as his choicest offering, a fearless love of truth and a manly determination to abide by it, which emboldened the heroes of the refor- mation to think for themselves, to throw off the fetters of medievalism and to breathe the pure air of the Gospel again. Not less costly, though different THE RIVER OF GOD. [x. in kind, has been the offering of the Celtic peoples to the service of the temple — a passionate enthusiasm, a restless and adventurous spirit of self-sacrifice, for Christ's sake. I cannot forget to-day, that the great missionary movement of the sixth and seventh cen- turies of our era — a movement almost, if not quite, without a parallel since the days of the Apostles and their immediate successors in magnitude and import- ance — had its origin in the Celtic preachers from these islands. The flame spread ; other nations caught the enthusiasm. Rome sent Augustine to evangelize England, and England sent Boniface to evangelize Germany; but the spark was first struck in Ireland, the divine passion was first kindled in Celtic hearts. A succession of heroic missionaries went forth from Celtic Christendom ; men like Columban who, overflowing with zeal and love, heard the words of Christ ever ringing in his ears, ' Whoso- ever will be My disciple, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me ;' and hearing, could not choose but obey, who let slip no opportunities, neglected no aids within his reach, but went forth on his mission, bearing in his right hand the best learning and in his left the highest civilisation of his day, that so he might the better win a way for the Gospel of Christ. And can we suppose that this mighty stream — X.] THE RIVER OF GOD. 159 this river of God — has no more great tributaries to receive; that all the lateral streams, which might swell and purify and fertilise its waters, have been dried up ? Has the Hindoo with his calm resignation and quiet endurance, with his quick and subtle intel- lect ; has the Chinese with his stubborn pertinacity and his utter fearlessness of death — no rich offering to present at the altar, no new contribution to the fulness of the wealth of the Gospel of Christ ? On behalf of the great missionary work therefore I appeal to you in the name of this ancient society to-day. The responsibility of a hereditary cause is yours. The nobility, which obliges, is yours. You are the heirs of Columban and Aidan, of Augustine and Boniface. Need I add the mention of more recent names ? Need I remind you of the life of a Selwyn, and the death of a Patteson ? By this your spiritual ancestry, by this your noble lineage with all its bright examples and all its lofty incentives, I appeal to you ; if you cannot give your labour, cannot give your life to the cause, at least give your thoughts, your sympathies, your prayers : at least give your wealth — your wealth, nay, it is not yours. 'The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine, saith the Lord of Hosts.' XI. ANDREW, SIMON PETER'S BROTHER. Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. S. John, i. 4 o. The Parish Church of S. Andrew Auckland, 1881, at the re-opening of the Church. THE first little rill, which trickles down the mountain brow, moving onward and onward, gather- ing strength and volume as it advances, now forcing its way over obtruding rocks in cataracts of foam, now flowing stealthily and silently across broad meadow lands, but amidst all changes of circumstance ever widening and deepening in its course, sweeping down in one majestic, rolling tide, till it loses itself in the boundless ocean. The first little cloud, appearing above the horizon no bigger than a man's hand, growing and spreading XI.] ANDREW, SIMON PETER'S BROTHER. l6l till it darkens the whole heaven, then opening its flood-gates and refreshing the thirsty ground with copious rain, while herb and flower, cattle and men, revive under its bountiful dispensation, and the languid earth is filled once more with joy and thanksgiving. The first faint star, timid and uncertain, scarcely discernible in the twilight of the evening sky, gradually growing in brilliancy — a solitary star for a time, but soon another peers out from the darkness, and then another, till the whole heaven is studded with light, and simple men and profound philosophers alike are filled with reverential awe as they contemplate its glories. The earliest chirp of the awakened bird, heralding the return of day ; drowsy and intermittent at first, but growing in frequency and clearness, calling forth a response now on this side and now on that, summon- ing together the manifold minstrelsy of the woods, till the whole air is vocal with the chorus of song. Andrew the first called Apostle, Andrew the earliest disciple — what thoughts does not the mention of his name suggest, what feelings of reverence, what ■ sense of thanksgiving, what confession of responsi- bility ! The first called Apostle, the earliest disciple. I have endeavoured to illustrate this unique position S. S. II 1 62 ANDREW, SIMON PETER'S BROTHER. pp. by several images from external nature, where from small beginnings a mighty result has been developed, and the little one has become a thousand. But what are all these compared with that transcendent power, of which Andrew was the earliest manifestation — the Gospel of God, the Church of Christ ? A rill swollen into a broad and flowing river ! But what stream on earth — Nile or Danube or Mississippi — is comparable to that vast, expansive tide, that majestic, rolling body of waters, which washes the shores of all the nations, and presses forward through all the ages, till it loses itself in the Ocean of Eternity ? This river is the Church of Christ ; these waters are the waters of life. ' He shewed me a pure river of water clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.' ' Thou visitest the earth and waterest it ; thou greatly cnrichest it with the River of God.' A speck on the horizon spreading till the whole heavens are darkened, and the weary weeks and months of drought are ended, and the earth heaves and breathes and lives once more under the copious showers ! But what drought is so terrible as the drought of the soul — the thirst not of water, ' but of hearing the words of the Lord?' What rain-cloud is so beneficent, what showers are so refreshing, as the outpouring of God's Spirit ? ' My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the XI.] ANDREW, SIMON PETER'S BROTHER. 1 63 small rain upon the tender herb and as the showers upon the grass.' 'They waited for me as for the rain; they opened their mouth wide as for the latter rain.' The first star which preludes the glories of the midnight heaven! But what sky so bright with its spangled myriads, as the heaven of the redeemed ? What stars so pure and lustrous, as the souls of the just refined by the power of God and purified by the blood of the Lamb ? ' They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.' The first note which at daybreak ushers in the minstrelsy of the woods ! But what dawn of day can compare with that awakening morn when the Sun of Righteousness ariseth with healing on His wings? What chorus of birds shall challenge with its melody the hymn of universal creation, which rises before the Eternal Throne : ' I heard the voice of many angels. ...The number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands.... And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, "Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.'" This first rill, this small cloud-speck, this faint 1 1 — 2 164 ANDREW, SIMON PETER'S BROTHER. [xi. star, this preluding note of song, was Andrew's courage, Andrew's ardour, Andrew's faith, which leaped forward and clutched the great gift of God when it was placed within his reach. Of Andrew's life and doings next to nothing is known. Only here and there his name is mentioned in the Gospels. After the day of the Ascension we read no more of him — no more at least, which is handed down on trustworthy authority ; for legend is busy with his name. Yet, though our information is so scanty, we seem to discern in the few notices which are vouchsafed three points in his character, which deserve study ; the courage which initiates, the sympathy which com- municates with others, the humility which obliterates self. Courage, sympathy, humility — three chief ele- ments in the saintly character. Let us consider each in turn, as it is manifested in the career of S. Andrew. 1. There is first of all then the courage of the man, the boldness which takes the first step, the spirit which comes bravely forward, while all others are hanging back, timid or irresolute. We have many phrases which bear testimony to the value and the rarity of this courage. We speak of breaking the ice, of shooting Niagara. It is a plunge into an unknown future, where none have gone before, of which none can foretell the consequences. We xi.] ANDREW, SIMON PETER'S BROTHER. 1 65 say that it is the first step which costs. We are lost in admiration of the soldier who steps forward to lead the forlorn hope, to storm the breach, though almost certain death is his destiny. The forlorn hope — does not the very phrase tell its own tale ? Yes, it is the first step which costs. Where one — though only one — has gone before, it does not cost half — not a twentieth part — of the bravery, the resolution, for a second to follow. And for a third and a fourth the degree of courage required lessens in a rapidly decreasing scale. The first step was taken by Andrew. He was the leader of the forlorn hope of Christendom, the first to storm the citadel of the kingdom of heaven, taking it as alone it can be taken — taking it by force. Be not deceived. Only the violent enter therein — only the brave, resolute, unflinching soldiers, who will brook no opposition, who make straight for truth and right- eousness and love, come what may, who are ready to lose their lives that they may save them. This unique glory is Andrew's. Peter may have held a more commanding position in the Church of Christ ; Paul may have travelled over a larger area and gathered greater numbers into the fold ; but Andrew's crown has a freshness and a brightness of its own which shall never fade — a glory of which no man can rob it. However great and however numerous may 1 66 ANDREW, SIMON PETER'S BROTHER. [xi. be the triumphs of later saints and heroes of Christ, he can never be dispossessed of this preeminence. He was the leader, the foremost man in the foremost rank of the mighty army of God. And who are they that in their several stations follow Andrew's example and win Andrew's crown ? The first member of a family, who is brave enough to shew his religion, where all around in the household is indifference and worldliness ; the first little boy in the school dormitory, who— like Arthur in the story — dares to kneel down and say his prayers by his bed- side, as he had knelt in his nursery at home ; the first soldier in the barracks who has the courage to rebuke the profanity and impurity which prevails around him ; the first pitman who raises his voice against the gambling and the intemperance of his companions — these, and such as these, are the true heroes of God, of whom Andrew was the forerunner. Is the oppor- tunity offered to you or to you ? Will you not win this glory? Will you not claim this crown? Believe it. There is much hidden sympathy with the good ; there is much secret yearning after a truer life, in those around. If you will only begin, others will soon follow. It is the first step which costs. Be brave. Say the word ; do the deed ; make the plunge — in the power of God, and in the name of Christ. Do you ask what it was, which inspired Andrew XI.] ANDREW, SIMON PETEr's BROTHER. 1 67 with this courage ? I think I can tell you. The inspiration was twofold — it was the sense of the sinfulness of sin, and the sense of the power of redeeming love. The sense of the sinfulness of sin first. Andrew was a disciple of the Baptist. The Baptist was the preacher of repentance. His warning 'Repent ye' must have been ringing in Andrew's ears day and night. The horror, the loathsomeness, the exceeding sinfulness, of sin — of his sin — this had been burnt into his soul. The sense of the power of redeeming love — God's love in Christ — next. John the Baptist's work with Andrew did not end with this conviction of sin. If he proved the disease, he pointed out the remedy also. ' Behold, the Lamb of God.' Yes, here is the manifestation of God's mercy, of God's pardon, of God's love — here in this His beloved Son, Whom He gave to die for us. Jesus turned, looked upon him, riveted him by that gaze, drew him by those words ' What seek ye ? ' So they went, he and his com- panion, and abode with Jesus that day, and in the sacred, secret converse of those few mysterious hours his discipleship was confirmed. Yes, here was pardon, here was purification of heart and life, here was rest and peace of soul — here in the communion with Christ Jesus his Lord. 1 68 ANDREW, SIMON PETER'S BROTHER. [xi. 2. This courage then — the courage which takes the first step, the boldness which ventures alone — is the first characteristic which we note in Andrew. The second is wholly different. It is the sympathy, which mediates ; the temper and character which draws others together ; the conductivity of the man, if I may so speak. It is a remarkable fact that, after this first meeting with Christ, every subsequent notice of Andrew specially brings out this feature in his character. It is not that he does any great thing himself; but that he is the means of getting great things done for or by others. What was his first impulse, what was his first act, after his call ? Not the establishment of his own position with Christ, not the proclamation of his discovery on the housetops, nothing of self or self-seeking in any, even in its highest, form ; but ' he first findeth his own brother Simon'; 'and he brought him to Jesus' — brought him who was henceforward to be the leader of the Apostles — the foremost after the Ascension to pro- claim his risen Lord to a hostile world, the earliest to gather the firstfruits of the Gentiles into the garner of Christ. The second notice of Andrew is akin to the first. He it is, who confers with Jesus on the feeding of the hungry multitude, lays before Him the apparently slender means which were at hand to supply this want, procures for them meat in abun- xi.] ANDREW, SIMON TETER's BROTHER. 1 69 dance from the Master's hidden stores — a fit type and parable this of his spiritual function in the Church at large. The third and last notice is of the same kind. Again he is the medium of communication with Jesus. He introduces to him those Greeks, who, having come up to the feast, desired to see the famous teacher — the earnest of that great harvest which the Apostles and preachers of the Gospel should reap from all the nations of the earth. This is the second bright jewel in Andrew's saintly crown — this conductivity, this sympathy which mediates and leads to Christ. For- asmuch as he turned many to righteousness, he shall shine as a star for ever and ever. 3. The third feature in his character is intimately connected with the second. To Andrew was given the humility which obliterates self. He, who brought others forward, was content himself to retire. Just as at a later date Barnabas, the primitive disciple, took Saul by the hand, introduced him to the elder Apostles, and started him on his career as an Evangelist, con- tent that his own light should wane in the greater glory of this new and more able missionary of Christ, so was it now. Andrew was the first called Apostle. Andrew brought Simon Peter to Christ. Yet Andrew is known only as Simon Peter's brother. Need I remind you in what school he had learnt this lesson ? Andrew was the Baptist's disciple, and was not this I 70 ANDREW, SIMON PETER'S BROTHER. [xi. the lesson of the Baptist's life? 'He must increase, but I must decrease ' — obscuration, eclipse, oblitera- tion of self. The personality of Andrew is lost in the personality of Simon. So it is truly said that the world knows nothing of its greatest benefactors. They are lost in their work, or are lost in others. The watchful mother who trains up the saint and hero of God, the affectionate wife who sustains the courage and stimulates the ardour of the patriot, the careful schoolmaster who forms the youthful mind of the future philosopher or scholar or historian, even the faithful servant whose never-failing care is indispensa- ble to his master's efficiency — all these die and their names are forgotten ; they are only dimly seen, if seen at all, in the reflected light of another more famous personage ;. yet who knows but that when the dawn of the great day shall come, and the mists of ignorance shall be dispelled, their visages shall shine with a transcendent glory — a glory all the purer and brighter that it has been untainted by this world's fame ? Unknown, they shall be well-known. Is it not ordered so in the kingdom of heaven ? ' The first shall be last, and the last first.' Believe it, this effacement of self is the crown of the Christian spirit. You the inhabitants of this parish, you the wor- shippers in this church — you are the heirs of Andrew's xi.] ANDREW, SIMON PETER'S BROTHER. I J I name and example. Lay these lessons to heart. To-day the worship and the work of this parish takes a fresh start. Let us strive that it be also a fresh starting-point in the spiritual life of every one of us. A spacious and imposing structure has been be- queathed to us by the munificence of our ancestors. This church of S. Andrew is the just pride of this parish and neighbourhood. It is not the only dis- tinction of this fabric that it is the largest parish church in the county of Durham. It speaks to us, as few parish churches speak, of the long and continuous history of Christianity in England. There is that Latin inscription, imbedded in its pavement, testify- ing to that earlier Roman civilisation on which, as on a basement, the superstructure of the Gospel was raised. There are those Saxon crosses disinterred from its walls, proclaiming the evangelisation of the great race of which the population of England is mainly composed. And, when from these reliques of older monuments and structures, which long ago were demolished to clear an area or to furnish building materials for the existing fabric, we turn to this fabric itself, we meet with a series of architectural styles, beginning with the Norman basement of the tower and descending through subsequent ages — a series which not inadequately represents the successive epochs in the career of the English Church. In its 172 ANDREW, SIMON PETERS BROTHER. [XL internal arrangements too it recalls the most striking epochs in the history of this see. It is especially connected with the names of Beck the Patriarch and of Langley the Cardinal — the two most splendid (if indeed outward splendour alone be accounted) in the roll of the Durham Episcopate, during the early centuries. This Church, thus bequeathed to us by ancient munificence, we could not without shame have left any longer in a state of neglect and decay. At great cost it has been restored to a condition more worthy of the munificence which erected it, and less unworthy of the service to which it is consecrated. To-day we re-open it with solemn prayer that God may look favourably on this our work, and that it may be per- mitted to redound to the honour of His Name. But the fabric and the furniture exist only for the sake of the worship. It has been felt therefore that this restoration and adornment should be the signal for an improvement in the services. The building itself has exceptional merits as a Parish Church. Should we not strive, so far as our opportunities go, to make our services also the models of parochial services ? Art and music have made rapid strides in our own time. Art has forced its way into our dwellings ; we cannot bar the door of the sanctuary against it. Music xi.] ANDREW, SIMON PETER'S BROTHER. I 73 is heard in our homes ; we may not silence its voice in the temple of God. The higher cultivation of the age requires a fuller recognition of these good endow- ments of God in His own House. We do right to give back to God of the best which He has given to us — to our age more especially. But art and music must be the handmaids, not the mistresses, of divine worship. Art and music, as mere gratifications of the senses, are nowhere more out of place than in the Church of God. They clog the soul. Therefore these accompaniments of divine wor- ship must be duly subordinated to the higher spiritual ends. Above all the music must be congregational. The choir must not supersede, it must only direct, the service of the congregation. So shall this restored fabric of S. Andrew be a fit type of that greater temple which is built up of the souls of men, an habitation of God in the Spirit, a sanctuary eternal in the heavens. So shall our worship here be a parable and a foretaste of that heavenly minstrelsy which 'rests not day and night, saying "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.'" XII. MANY MEMBERS AND ONE BODY. As the body is one, and Jiatli many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. i Corinthians xii. 12. S. Mary's Church, Glasgow, October 10, 1882, before the Repre- sentative Council of the Scottish Episcopal Church. STAGNATION was not the fault of the early Church of Corinth. S. Paul had no cause to reproach his converts with lack of zeal. There was interest, there was activity, there was life enough. If anything, there was a superabundance of zeal. But the life was a feverish, restless, turbulent life. The zeal displayed itself in contention, in self-assertion, in the war of parties. xii.] MANY MEMBERS AND ONE BODY. I 75 Stagnation was a physical impossibility at Corinth. Picture to yourself a busy commercial city lying between two seas, which commanded the East and the West; the centre of the Roman Government, which attracted crowds of courtiers and officials and hangers-on ; the home of a worship in which the grossest profligacy was consecrated as a religion, and whither the dissolute were drawn from all parts of the world to steep themselves in their shame ; the seat of the great games, which once in two years gathered throngs of visitors to the isthmus — athletes, sightseers, traders, pleasure-seekers, loungers of all classes. Life, or that which men call life, in all its forms was exhibited here in its highest activity. In no other ancient city probably was the tension of human existence greater than at Corinth. Here was the material prepared for the Gospel of Christ. The spark fell from heaven, and the fuel was ablaze at once. The restlessness of heathen Corinth communicated itself to Christian Corinth. The Gospel had suddenly flashed in upon them, bringing with it new interests, new ideas, new hopes. And upon these the old turbulent spirit fastened at once. The eagerness, the bustle and strife, the com- petition, the high pressure of life, were not less mani- fest in the Christian Church than in the heathen city. It was not a very edifying spectacle. The Church of I76 MANY MEMBERS AND ONE BODY. [xn. Corinth was now only five or six years old, and yet it had developed a spirit of partisanship and a rancour of contention which, as we might have supposed, two or three generations would be insufficient to create. And this spirit had intruded itself into the very holy of holies. There was nothing so sacred as to escape its debasing influence. If anything should have been spared from its profane touch, surely those special gifts and graces, which were the miraculous endowment of the infant Church, ought to have been safe. What place was there for the strife of parties where the grace of prophesying was concerned ? What standing-room was there for jealousy where the gift of healing or of speaking with tongues occupied the ground ? Surely here, in the immediate and visible presence of the Holy Spirit Himself, all clamour must be hushed, all self-assertion overawed, all competition laid aside. And yet it was far otherwise in the Church of Corinth. Men were not content with party watch- words, party preferences, party organisations. It was not enough that one should range himself under Peter, and another under Paul, and another under Apollos, though Peter and Paul and Apollos were all one in Christ. Even the gatherings for solemn worship became the scenes of discord and strife. The Eucha- ristic feast itself, the very bond of peace and love, xii.] MANY MEMBERS AND ONE BODY. 177 was profaned by shameful scrambling and selfish greed. Last of all, they began to fight over the gifts of the Spirit. One was proud because he possessed some striking endowment ; another was envious and discontented because his gift was less imposing than his neighbour's. In the Church itself there was an unseemly rivalry in the parade of their respective advantages. Thus the very gifts which were bestowed for edification tended to distraction and disorder by their abuse. This was the crying evil in the Church of Corinth with which S. Paul found himself confronted. There was zeal enough, and zeal for religion too, but it was not a zeal after God. How must it be corrected ? He could not say, as the wily modern politician is reported to have said, 'Before all things no zeal' Zeal is the raw material of true religion. It is neither good nor bad in itself. It may be worked up into the highest goodness, as it may also be worked up into the worst form of vice. To correct, to guide, to mould, to purify it, this was the task which the apostle set to himself. In executing this task he might have had recourse to threatenings. He might have denounced the heavy wrath of God on such shameful abuse of His best gifts. He might have pictured the horrible retri- bution which the offenders were storing up for S. S. 12 I78 MANY MEMBERS AND ONE BODY. [xn. themselves in the world to come. There are occa- sions when it is necessary to appeal to men's fears. But with S. Paul such appeals are very rare indeed. He prefers addressing himself to higher motives. He would rather speak to his hearers as sons than as slaves. So he appeals not to their terrors, but to their sense of right, to their sense of shame, to their affection, to their gratitude, to their aspirations after higher things, to the Godlike within them. It is not the terror of hell, but the love of Christ which constrains him. It is because Christ died for him, for all men — sinners, blasphemers, rebels, as they were — that he cannot choose but cling to the skirts of Christ. The dread of punishment can do very little after all as a motive. It may deter from evil, but it cannot prompt to good. It cannot instruct, cannot purify, cannot ennoble, cannot elevate. Yes, you know it, parents and teachers. If you can only secure the child's affections, if you can only reach the child's heart, if you can only inspire it with admiration for a noble ideal, if you can only lead it to feel the transcendent beauty and loveliness of goodness, if you can only make it loathe the ugliness, the vileness of sin, then you may spare the rod, for the battle is won. This was the course adopted by S. Paul here. There was strife, there was selfishness, there was indecorous rivalry and competition in the Church of Corinth. xii.] MANY MEMBERS AND ONE BODY. I 79 And what does he do ? Why, he shows it its own ugliness. He sets before it a more excellent way. By way of contrast he draws a picture — a portrait of Divine love — so beautiful, so gracious, so winning, that all the centuries have stood entranced before it. Not all the menaces of all the sternest preachers have been half so powerful to win souls to God as this one episode on charity. What were all these endowments which excited so much dispute, even the fullest, even the highest — the gift of prophecy, the gift of healing, the gift of tongues ? Partial, transitory, vanishing, valueless all, in comparison with that transcendent gift of love which they insulted, which they despised, which they trampled under foot — love most lovely, love immortal, love eternal in the heavens. And so again with the image in the text from which these reflections started. The Corinthians were acting as if they had been isolated and independent units. Their motto was, ' Each man for himself Hence there was jealousy, dissension, discontent, mutual thwarting, where there should have been mutual sympathy and helpfulness. He sets before them the ideal of the Church under an expressive image. Their conduct was as unreasonable, as foolish, as fatal, as if the limbs of the human body were in a state of sedition — the eye quarrelling with the ear, the 12 — 2 l8o MANY MEMBERS AND ONE BODY. [xn. foot envying and impeding the hand. 'Now ye are the body of Christ, and members severally.' The image was not new. The Corinthians doubt- less had been reminded often of the body politic, they had been told of their corporate duties as citizens. They had heard, or they might have heard, of the famous apologue by which the Roman orator had quelled a dangerous sedition among his fellow-citizens, comparing it to a mutiny in the members of the body. The image itself was not new. The newness was in the application. This body of which they were the limbs — the eye and ear, the hand and foot — what was it ? The answer is startling. This body is Christ, nothing less than Christ Himself. I ask your atten- tion to this point. Elsewhere S. Paul speaks of the Church as the body, whereof Christ is the Head. In such an application of the image the Church is regarded as different from, though vitally connected with, and directed by Christ. But not so here. It is not connexion, not dependence, not subordination, not any affinity, however close, which the language suggests, but absolute entire identity. ' As the body is one, and hath many members, ... so also is,' not the Church, not the body whereof Christ is the Head, but 'so also is Christ.' Yes, you Corinthians, with all your jealousies and self-seeking, with all your JOT.] MANY MEMBERS AND ONE BODY. 1 8 1 party strife, with all your indecorum, with all your shameful profanation of sacred things, aye, and (most terrible thought of all) with all your moral profligacy, you are not only of Christ, but you are Christ. Christ is the blood that flows in your veins ; Christ is the nerve that stimulates your activities ; Christ is the sinew and the muscle that knits your frame. This you are collectively. And each one singly — you are His members ; thou art the eye, and thou the hand, and thou the foot of Christ. And thus when you make parties among yourselves, thus when each man uses his gifts to gratify his self-satisfaction or vainglory, when each man isolates himself, what is this but to divide Christ, yes, to divide Him, to dismember Him, to mutilate, to tear asunder, to hack to pieces His limbs to His infinite anguish — a renewal of the anguish of the Cross ? Members of the Scottish Episcopal Church, as a brother to brothers I speak to you to-day. I trace back my ancestry to the same stock with you. The cradle of my spiritual race was the cradle of yours also — the storm-lashed, lonely island of Iona. May I not therefore claim at your hands the forbearance, the sympathy, the licence of speech, the generosity of interpretation, which brothers accord to brothers ? How can I forget this night the deep debt of grati- tude in things spiritual which Northumbria owes to 1 82 MANY MEMBERS AND ONE BODY. [xn. Scotland ? The first evangelist of my diocese — the wise, simple-hearted, saintly Aidan — received his commission from you. One after another his succes- sors were sped from your shores to continue his work. Even when Celtic influences gave way before Teutonic, our obligations to Scotland did not cease. The one man whose memories are more closely interwoven with the fame of my own see than any other was born and educated north of the Tweed. Cuthbert, the 'shepherd-youth of Lammermuir,' the prior of Melrose, became bishop of Lindisfarne and patron saint of Durham. Happy indeed should I be, if I might entertain the hope that by any counsels of mine I might repay, in however slight a degree, the debt of gratitude under which you have laid us in the past. At all events, whether availing or not, the words shall not be unspoken. They will be a recogni- tion of the debt, if they cannot be a repayment. Of this at least I am persuaded, that whatever may be their effect, they will not be resented. When I spoke of unity as S. Paul's charge to the Church of Corinth, the thoughts of all present must, I imagine, have fastened on one application of the apostolic rule which closely concerns yourselves. Episcopal communities in Scotland outside the orga- nization of the Scottish Episcopal Church— this is a spectacle which no one, I imagine, would view with xii.] MANY MEMBERS AND ONE BODY. 1 83 satisfaction in itself, and which only a very urgent necessity could justify. Can such a necessity be pleaded? 'One body,' as well as 'one spirit,' this is the apostolic rule. No natural interpretation can be put on these words which does not recognise the obligation of external, corporate union. Circum- stances may prevent the realisation of the apostle's conception, but the ideal must be ever present to our aspirations and our prayers. I have reason to believe that this matter lies very near to the hearts of all Scottish Episcopalians. May God grant you a speedy accomplishment of your desire. You have the same doctrinal formularies ; you acknowledge the same episcopal polity ; you respect the same liturgical forms. ' Sirs, ye are brethren.' Do not strain the conditions of reunion too tightly. I cannot say, for I do not know, what faults or what misunderstandings there may have been on either side in the past. If there have been any faults, forget them. If there exist any misunderstandings, clear them up. ' Let the dead past bury its dead.' The darkest chapters in the history of the Church are the records of schisms — hopeless schisms which centuries have done nothing to heal — arising out of the over-scrupulous accentua- tion of minute differences on the one hand, and the over-rigorous enforcement of an absolute uniformity on the other — sad tragedies of spiritual frailty and 184 MANY MEMBERS AND ONE BODY. [xn. disorder, over which angels have wept as they beheld the Son of God crucified afresh. God forbid that another such painful chapter should be added to these dark records of the past. Learn to bear and to for- bear. Meet one another in a spirit of mutual trustful- ness and brotherly love. Rest not day or night till this union be effected. Do this, and the crown of crowns shall rest upon your brows : ' Blessed are the peacemakers : for they shall be called the children of God.' And while you strive and pray for union among yourselves, let your hearts overflow in sympathy with those who arc not of this fold. After all, the division in the Episcopalian ranks is only a faint shadow of the deeper rent in those great Presbyterian Churches which comprise the bulk of the people of this land. We in England have our divisions, our sects, our disorders. We dare not indulge in any self-com- placency. Yet not seldom a truer idea of the relative proportions of things is obtained from a more distant point of view; and we Englishmen, regarding the ecclesiastical disputes of Scotland, are struck before all things with the disproportion between the insigni- ficance of the motive causes and the magnitude of the severances occasioned thereby. Magnificent in- deed have been the displays of self-sacrifice called forth at such crises. But no zeal, no self-denial, no XII.] MANY MEMBERS AND ONE BODY. 1 85 marvel of rapid re-organization, no splendour of open-handed munificence, can obliterate or condone the fact that one more terrible rent is made in the seamless robe of Christ. Therefore, while you seek unity among yourselves, you will pray likewise that unity may be restored to your Presbyterian brothers. Not insensible to the special blessings which you yourselves enjoy, clinging tenaciously to the threefold ministry as the completeness of the apostolic ordi- nance and the historical backbone of the Church, valuing highly all those sanctities of liturgical office and ecclesiastical season which, modified from age to age, you have inherited from an almost immemorial past, thanking God, but not thanking Him in any Pharisaic spirit, that these so many and great privi- leges are continued to you which others have" lost, you will nevertheless shrink, as from the venom of a serpent's fang, from any mean desire that their divisions may be perpetuated, in the hope of profiting by their troubles. Divide et impera may be a shrewd worldly motto; but coming in contact with spiritual things, it defiles them like pitch. Pacifica et impera is the true watchword of the Christian and the Churchman. While you seek peace your- selves, you will promote peace among others. You will not dare, for any immediate party gain, to indulge motives or feelings which are alien to the 1 86 MANY MEMBERS AND ONE BODY. [XII. law of Christ. You will hold fast to the conviction that, however long God's purposes may be deferred, the blessing of Christ must rest in the end with those who cling most closely to the Spirit of Christ. Party- seeking is placed by the apostle in the same category with self-seeking. M^Sev Kara ipiOeiav firjBe Kara Kevoho^iav. The spirit of partisanship, not less than the spirit of personal vanity, is a denial of the Spirit of Christ. Party-seeking is the 'last infirmity' of Christian zeal, whether in individuals or in Churches. But you have not so learned Christ. You know that ' the kingdom of God is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost;' and knowing this, you will above all follow after the things that make for peace. Of all the sentiments which impel to great and heroic action, there is none more potent or more effective than the stimulus which arises from a sense of corporate duty and honour. One man is descended from an illustrious family which has won for itself a name in the annals of his country. The championship of liberty or the devotion of loyalty is hereditary with it. He holds it a shame to degenerate from the character which he has received as a heirloom. Another is a member of a great college or university, the fertile mother of men famous in literature or in science. It is a point of honour with him to prove no xil.] MANY MEMBERS AND ONE BODY. 1 87 unworthy son of such parentage. Another serves in a brave regiment which has stormed the breaches of Badajoz, or climbed the heights of Alma, or flung itself against the walls of Delhi. To such a man it is almost difficult to be a coward. Such a sentiment is patriotism. A man belongs to a great nation — a power which claims to rule the seas, a soil on which whatever slave sets foot by that very act becomes free, an empire on which the sun never sets; and if he is at all worthy the name of an Englishman, he will before all things be careful that England shall suffer no dishonour in his person. He can trace to his nationality a certain breadth of soul, a certain magnanimity, which is not his own ; he is conscious, if I may so say, of a communicated virtue which he owes to it. We cannot suppose that S. Paul was indifferent to such sentiments. When he asks, ' Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman ?' when he cries out, 'But I was free-born,' we cannot mistake the honest pride of citizenship which speaks through these words. When again he enumerates the special privileges of the Jewish race, or when he declares himself to be of the faithful tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, we detect the natural feeling of a true son of Abraham, albeit he counts all this as refuse, as nothing, as less than nothing, as sheer loss, 1 88 MANY MEMBERS AND ONE BODY. [xn. compared with the gain of the unspeakable riches of Christ. To be an Israelite, and to be a Roman, these were not privileges which the great apostle could disdain. But now he speaks of a higher nationality and a larger citizenship — higher, for it stretches through the heavens to the eternal throne ; larger, for it comprises Roman and Jew, Greek and Scythian, all the peoples and nations of the earth. Higher and larger, but yet withal closer. This is the point to which I would ask your attention in the moments that remain — a closer, more intimate, more sympathetic union than any nationality. ' Whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it : or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.' Even the material world is so constituted that not one particle, however small, can change its place without affecting the whole. I cannot stir a hand without setting in motion pulses which vibrate to the faintest star that glimmers in the midnight sky. I cannot stretch out a foot without a disturb- ance which makes the boundaries of the universe to quiver. And so it is in the moral world ; and so it is above all things with the Church of Christ, which is an intensification of the moral world, where the sympathy is more sympathetic, where all the impulses are quicker and keener than elsew here. There is in the Church of Christ a force akin to the force of xii.] MANY MEMBERS AND ONE BODY. 1 89 gravitation in the material world. Each moral atom acts upon each other moral atom, and is itself acted upon in turn. Here is the solidarity in the Church of Christ of which the text speaks. I have used the image of the material universe bound together, as it were, by the force of gravitation ; but the image in the text — the image of the human body — is far more expressive. The sympathy of the different parts of the body is a matter of common observation. One eye receives an injury, and the sight of the other is endangered. A leg is lamed, and the proper exercise is stopped, and the general health is affected. An abscess is formed in some remote part, and the strength of the whole is drained. So with the body of Christ. Our contentiousness, our self-will, our inconsistency, our superstition, our carelessness, our hypocrisy, our vice — yes, ours, insignificant units as we are — propagates itself by a thousand unseen channels, in a thousand unsuspected ways, quietly, subtlely, relentlessly, like the single drop of poison, bearing no relation in itself to the bulk of the whole body, which nevertheless it taints with the taint of death. It is the tiny pebble dropped in the pool which stirs the waters in ever-widening circles to the extreme verge. Here then is our grave responsibility as members of the Church of Christ ; but here also is our unspeak- I90 MANY MEMBERS AND ONE BODY. [xn. able privilege, our glory, our strength, our health, our life. We are sons of a family, students of a school, soldiers of an army, citizens of a kingdom, such as never has been and never will be besides. This family, this school, this army, this country, is the Church of Christ, is the body of Christ, is Christ — He in us, and we in Him. XIII. KINGS AND PRIESTS. Kings and priests. Revelation i. 6 ; v. ro. S. Paul's Cathedral, May 7, 1883, at the Anniversary Service of the Church of England Sunday School Institute. WHAT does this mean — this absolute, comprehen- sive, paramount authority, implied in this combination of titles ? The king and the priest together cover the whole domain of human life. The king is supreme over the lives and property of men ; the priest holds sway over the hearts and consciences. If the legal and the sacerdotal power be combined in one person, nothing can escape from its domination. The thoughts, the feelings, the conduct — all the inward springs of action, and all the external accompaniments of human existence, wealth and poverty, freedom and slavery, I9 2 KINGS AND PRIESTS. [xm life and death, every hope and every fear of which man is capable — all are subject to his sway. He who possesses this twofold authority stands on the loftiest pinnacle of human power, of human pride, of human glory. But again, not only is this power absolute in itself, but the offer is universal. It is made not to this or that individual, not to one family, to one tribe, to one caste, to one nation. Its special characteristic is its universality. It makes no distinctions ; it imposes no limitations. It welcomes all comers, irrespective of kindred or race, of education or descent or lan- guage. Once more. See how it is emphasized by reitera- tion. It is declared by the apostle himself, writing to the militant churches in the first chapter ; it is proclaimed again before the eternal throne by the myriad voices of the Church triumphant, in the fifth. Heaven and earth are the strophe and antistrophe of this magnificent chorus, chanting this glorious theme. Nor is it confined to the visions of the apocalyptic seer, whose language therefore might seem to require some limitations as applied to the matter-of-fact life of ordinary men. S. Peter likewise, writing as a pilgrim to pilgrims, writing in the midst of cruel persecutions, writing to a harassed, maltreated, down- trodden Christian brotherhood, can still address them KINGS AND PRIESTS. 193 in this language of self-exultation and triumph : ' Ye,' says the Apostle, ' are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood,' a regal, a kingly priesthood. Aye, these despised slaves and freedom, these proselytes and outcasts, these miserable lower classes of Rome, living from hand to mouth, hunted down by their persecutors, not having where to lay their head — these too are kings and priests. But pause for a moment. When I gave out my text I read the words as they stand in the Authorised Version. In both passages it is there stated that Christ made us 'kings and priests.' But turn to the Revised Version, and you will find a notable difference. Perhaps at first sight you may be disappointed. A very simple, forcible, and intelligible expression has disappeared ; and in its place you have words which seem somewhat awkward and stand in need of expla- nation. I do not doubt that these passages will seem to many readers to justify the charges brought against the Revised Version of harshness and obscurity. But, in fact, the Revisers had no choice. They were con- strained to translate the words as they found them in the best-supported Greek text. How then do the passages run in the Revised Version ? In the first passage we are told that Jesus Christ, the ruler of the kings of the earth, ' made us/ not ' kings and priests,' but 'made us to be a kingdom, to be priests, unto S.S. 13 • 94 KINGS AND PRIESTS. [xm. His God and Father.' In the second passage the Lamb is glorified by the heavenly minstrelsy, because He 'purchased unto God with His blood men of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and made them to be unto our God' — again not, as in the Authorised Version, 'kings and priests,' but 'a king- dom and priests ; and they reign upon the earth.' In both passages alike the change is the same. The word 'kingdom' is substituted for 'kings.' Here, as elsewhere, the Revisers did not adopt the reading which would give the smoothest and simplest English, but the reading which had the highest support. Here, as elsewhere, readers of the Revised Version would do well to ask, not whether they are glad or sorry to lose the familiar cadences, but whether the altered reading is or is not more significant and more forcible than the text which it has displaced. If they will only ask this question, they will not be disappointed in the answer. For, first of all, this substitution of 'a kingdom' for ' kings' places the promises of the new dispensation in direct connexion with the facts of the old. The language of S. Peter and S. John was no novel coinage. It was merely an adaptation to the Israel after the spirit of the titles and distinctions accorded of old to the 'Israel after the flesh'. There was a holy nation, a peculiar people, a regal priesthood, before XIII.] KINGS AND PRIESTS. 195 Christianity. It was only enlarged, developed, spi- ritualised, under the Gospel. The foundation passage in the Old Testament on which the language of both Christian apostles alike was moulded is the promise made to the Israelites through Moses on Sinai, ' If yc will obey My voice and keep My covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all people ...ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.' Thus the mention of the kingdom links Sinai with Sion — the old with the new. But, secondly, if we lose the idea of the kingdom we lose with it the most valuable lesson of the passage. A kingdom denotes an organised, united whole. It implies consolidation and harmony. It is not enough that we should realise the individual Christian as a king; we must think of him as a member of a kingdom. The kings of this world are constantly at war one with another. Self-aggrandisement and self- assertion seem natural to their position. Solitariness, isolation, independence, these are ideas inseparable from the kingly throne. But this is not the conception of the true disciple of Christ. He is before all things a member of a body. In the kingdom of Christ indeed all the citizens are kings, because all arc associated in the kingliness of Christ. But they are citizens still. They have the duties, the responsi- bilities, the manifold and complex relationships of 13—2 i 9 6 KINGS AND PRIESTS. [XIII. citizens. This kingdom of God, this Church of Christ, exists for a definite end. Its citizen-kings have each their proper functions; perform each their several tasks ; contribute each their special gifts to the fulfil- ment of this purpose. How then shall we define this purpose ? Will you tell me that the Church was planted for the saving of individual souls — your soul and mine ? Will you say that its design was the amelioration of human society ? These are only intermediate and secondary objects in its establishment. Its final end and aim is far higher than this. It is nothing less than the praise and glory of God. So this kingdom is a priesthood. Its citizen-kings are citizen-priests also. Under the old dispensation one nation was selected from all the nations. It was consecrated a holy people. It was chosen to be a witness of Jehovah to all the tribes of the earth. It was charged to glorify Him by perpetual prayer and sacrifice and thanksgiving — to serve Him in- stantly day and night. We — we clergy and you laity alike — are the heirs of their privileges, their functions, their ministrations. A nobler service indeed is ours. The theme of our praise and thanksgiving — the human birth, the human life, the passion, the resurrection of the Incarnate Son of God — the theme of all themes, far transcends the conceptions which XIII.] KINGS AND PRIESTS. 197 inspired the worship of the old dispensation. But so far as regards this idea of a kingdom which is also a priesthood, the Church of Christ now is the direct continuance, is the immediate development, of the Church of the Israelites. And may we not say that it is the direct call, the special duty of our own age, to grasp, to foster, to energize, to develop in all its manifold bearings, this idea of a royal priesthood, co-extensive with the Church of Christ ? This conception of the priesthood of Christ's people has never yet had its fair chance. In the ages before the Reformation it was eclipsed by the exaggerated claims of the ordained ministry, the special representative priesthood. In the ages since the Reformation it has been marred and dis- credited by being made a plea for individualism and self-assertion and lawlessness. Men have forgotten that the Church of Christ is a kingdom, howbeit a priestly kingdom. They have done every man that which is right in his own eyes. This, I say, is the main problem of our own day. From all sides voices are clamouring for its solution. What else is this rapid aggregation of our masses in populous centres, but a passionate appeal, a piercing cry ? When only yesterday the wants of this densely populated diocese were pleaded in all your churches, and you were reminded that this metropolis is growing . I98 KINGS AND PRIESTS. [xjh. at the rate of some forty thousand human beings annually, did it occur to you to inquire how little would be effected even by the most liberal response to the appeal ? A church would be planted here and there ; a clergyman would be given to this or that district. But what then ? What are one or two clergy to ten or twelve or fifteen thousand men and women, vast numbers of them practical heathens, living not only without Christ, but without God in the world ? What have you done after all for the relief of these myriads of dying souls ? What can you do, unless the laity are prepared to step forward and recognise their responsibilities as a royal priesthood, to under- take the work of evangelists and teachers, to visit the sick and poor, to enrol themselves in the definite organisation of the Church, to devote some portion, not only of their wealth, but of their time and their thoughts, to Christ's service ? Of this lay ministry, which it is the special duty of our Church to organise and develop, the assem- blage gathered together under this dome to-night is no mean illustration. Yes, I ask you to magnify your office. I ask you to do so, because, while you exalt it, you will humble yourselves, you will contrast the meanness of the instruments with the greatness of the work, and you will throw yourselves on your faces before the throne of the Eternal Grace, pouring KINGS AND PRIESTS. 199 out your souls to Him and entreating that your weakness may be made strong through His strength. Are you not evangelists ? Are you not pastors and teachers ? Has not Christ committed His little ones specially to you ? Has He not charged you, as dis- tinctly as He charged S. Peter of old by the shores of the Galilean lake, to feed His lambs? And if so, will you not 'have ever in remembrance into how high a dignity and to how weighty an office and charge you are called'? Will you not recognise the seal of the royal priesthood which is set upon you ? But what is implied by this priesthood of the laity ? We shall clear the way for an answer to this question if we inquire first what is not implied. When then we speak of the universal priesthood, we do not supersede an authorised apostolic ministry. We do not allow the proper functions of this inner representative priesthood to be usurped. We do not encourage self-will and self-assertion. We lend no countenance to unruliness and disorder. God is not a God of confusion, but of peace. Above all, there is no standing-ground for those who could claim the privileges, while they repudiate the obligations, of the sacerdotal office. This is the fountain-head of all the error and con- fusion. Men have begun at the wrong end. They have clutched eagerly at the privileges of the univer- 200 KINGS AND PRIESTS. [xm. sal priesthood — its independence, its dignity, its right of direct access to the eternal presence-chamber ; but they have ignored at the same time its obligations — the consecration of self, the duty of active ministra- tion, the continual service of the sanctuary. On the other hand, the true ideal of the office is summed up in the two designations which the text sets forth. Re- member first that you are a kingdom, and remember next that you are priests. I. You are a kingdom; you are not isolated units, but members of an organised whole. You must not only realise this in yourselves, but you must lead your scholars also to realise it. Train them up, not only as responsible beings who must give an account of themselves individually to God, as immortal souls which have each severally limitless capacities of good or evil, of weal or woe ; but teach them also to regard themselves as members of Christ's body; show them what this means; point out the duties which it involves, not only to Christ the Head, but to each other as the limbs ; lead them to consider their responsibilities and their duties, as Churchmen. You will not lack the opportunities of dwelling on these points. Your scholars will be looking forward to Confirmation. This subject may with advantage enter more largely into your teaching. The rite of Confirmation is a moral and spiritual lever in the KINGS AND PRIESTS. 20 1 education of the young, of which we are yet, I am convinced, very far from realising the full capacity. And your instructions will react most beneficially upon yourselves. You will apprehend more fully what is conferred upon you and what is required of you, as baptized, confirmed, communicant members of Christ's body. This idea of the kingdom thus realised will lead you to act together ; to associate yourselves for con- ference and devotion; to subordinate your individual preferences to the common work ; to seek strength from combination. Thus doing, you will reap a hundred-fold from the seed which you have sown. You will not only be nerved and purified by the discipline, but you will feel that you have at your back the power of numbers, the power of a mighty kingdom. Indeed it is no slight service rendered by an institution like this — a Church within a Church — that in addition to its more direct aims it fosters this principle of association for religious ends, and thus it educates you to a truer appreciation of your position as members of Christ's body. 2. But the kingdom to which you belong is no secular kingdom, like the kingdoms of this world. It is in its essential character a kingdom of priests. Lead your scholars to master this lesson ; but first master it yourselves. The lesson is twofold. Realise 202 KINGS AND PRIESTS. [XIII. your consecration as priests first, and then learn to exercise your priestly functions. Realise your consecration. Wherein does it con- sist ? In your baptism you were admitted as members of the kingdom, you were accepted as children of God. The consecrating act of Christ was thus indi- vidualised to you ; but in itself it was something different. In both passages of the Revelation it is described : ' He loved us and washed us,' or (according to another reading) 'loosed us from our sins by His own blood, and He made us to be a kingdom, yea, priests.' So we read in the one passage ; and the language of the other closely resembles it : ' Thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with Thy blood men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation, and madest them to be unto our God a king- dom and priests.' This is the consecration — this transcendent manifestation of God's mercy, this re- deeming act of Christ's love — the blood which was shed on Calvary. So then you were baptized into Christ's death; you were consecrated by the sign of the cross. Why need I say more ? Shall you not, living and dying, bear ever fresh in your hearts this seal of your consecration — {he sanctity, the awe, the strength, the glory, of the blood of the covenant, wherewith you were sprinkled ? And as was your consecration, so also shall be KINGS AND FRIESTS. 203 your priestly functions. It is yours to minister at the altar ; yours to offer sacrifice continually day and night, the sacrifice of your lips, the sacrifice of your hearts, the sacrifice of your lives ; yours to enter with your great High Priest into the inmost sanctuary, and there to plead the blood of the atonement before the Eternal Throne ; yours, as you are reminded at this season, to ascend in heart and mind into the heavenly places with your ascended Lord, and there continually to dwell ; yours as a royal priesthood to ' show forth the praises of Him Who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light' ; yours to echo back from earth the thanksgiving of the myriad voices of the redeemed in heaven, ' Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.' XIV. HE HATH NOT DEALT SO WITH ANY NATION. He hath not dealt so with any nation. Psalm cxlvii. 20. Wells Cathedral, May 29, 1884, at the Sixth Triennial Festival of Wells Theological College. JUDGED by any standard of human foresight and calculation, the history of the Israelite people is an insoluble enigma. This thought must have forced itself again and again on our minds, as we listened to those remarkable chapters of Deuteronomy which have been read as the Sunday lessons during the few weeks past. The career of the Jews is a paradox from beginning to end. What was there in this paltry, insignificant, down-trodden people, that it should surmount a series of disasters unparalleled in xiv.] HE IIATII NOT DEALT SO. 205 history ; that it should outlive all the mighty empires of the ancient world ; that it should dictate its laws and institutions to the nations far and wide ; that to this latest hour its thoughts, its literature, its history, nay, even its topography, should enthral the hearts and consciences of mankind with a fascination un- approached by any other race? Where else can we find so great a disproportion between the apparent cause and the manifest effect ? Here is a people few in numbers, circumscribed in territory, without any exceptional literary or artistic genius like the Greeks, without any extraordinary political capacity like the Romans. It is stiff-necked, disobedient, rebellious always. It is even disunited in itself, torn asunder by intestine feuds — Ephraim envying Judah, and Judah vexing Ephraim. It is essentially wanting in those qualities which attract the regard and win the hearts of men. It is stubborn, self-contained, unconciliatory in its demeanour, vexa- tious and exacting in its requirements. The Jews were stigmatised as the enemies of the human race. They were believed to hate all men alike, and them- selves were hated by all in return. How then ? Did the Israelite people owe its strength and its vitality to the favourable conditions of its environments ? Strong is a comparative term. Was it strong only because the surrounding nations 206 HE HATH NOT DEALT SO |xiv. were weak ? Was its continuous life due only to the fact that external circumstances put no strain upon its vital force ? History tells us a very different tale. It was hemmed in from first to last by the most powerful empires of the ancient world — Egypt, Baby- lonia, Assyria, Persia, Syria, Rome — empires of long and ancient prestige, with vast military organisations, with extensive and exceptionally fertile territories, with highly centralised and powerful governments, great in arts, great in arms, great in wealth. The conflict between the empire on its one side and the empire on its other was fierce and continuous. This poor, insignificant people — must it not inevitably be battered, crushed, ground into powder, in the clash of these mighty combatants ? This anticipation, founded on a view of its com- parative strength, is certainly not disappointed by the records of its actual history. Pharaoh, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus Epiphanes, Pompeius, Titus — what an overwhelming catalogue of disasters does this list of foreign conquerors suggest ! Two wholesale deportations, when the entire nation was swept away into bondage, in its infancy to Egypt, in its manhood to Assyria and Babylonia, are only the more prominent points in a long series of national disasters. Again and again the land was devastated — swept clean, according to the homely image of the xiv.] WITH ANY NATION. 20J prophets, ' as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it, and turning it upside down.' Again and again the life of the nation was stamped out. Yet again and again the prophet's vision in the valley of death was fulfilled. There was a stir, a rattling, a movement of bone to bone ; the skeletons were strung with sinews and clothed with flesh; the nation breathed, lived, was active as ever. What was the secret of this recuperative force ? What was the source of this vitality ? Somewhere or other there must have been an unquenchable spark of fire, a continuous principle of national life, which no defeat could crush and no disaster could impair. This secret is revealed in the words of the text ; ' He hath not dealt so with any nation.' It stands out still more plainly in those chapters of Deuteronomy of which I have already spoken. 'What nation is there so great who hath God so nigh unto them?' « Ask from the one side of the heaven unto the other, whether there hath been any such thing as this great thing is.' 'The Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto Himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.' ' They are Thy people and Thine inheritance, which Thou broughtest out by Thy mighty power and by Thy stretched out arm.' 'Ye are the children of the Lord your God.' ' He is thy praise, and He is thy God.' It was this 208 HE HATH NOT DEALT SO [xiv. sense of a direct, personal relationship to God which was the marrow of the national life and the sinew of the national strength. God had chosen them out from all the peoples of the earth ; God had adopted them; God was with them ; God was in them. Even when the national life was at its lowest ebb, this sense was never wholly obliterated. Even then it was cherished and preserved from extinction by a faithful remnant. Even then, or (I ought rather to say) especially then, it was fanned into fresh flame by the breath of prophetic inspiration. It was a centre of unity and a fountain of strength to the nation, when all external organisations failed. It taught them a deep self-respect, and it inspired them with a bound- less hope. They could not misread their own eventful history. The future was revealed to them through the past. A signal destiny must await them. They had a great world-wide mission to accomplish. They looked forward confidently to a time when a king should rise up from their royal line ; when a standard should be erected in Zion, as a rallying point for the nations of the world ; when all peoples and kindreds and tongues should pour in their tribute to the sanc- tuary of Jehovah. Ever and again, when disasters crowded upon them, and their doom seemed inevitable, this triumphant note was sounded from the abyss of a nation's despair. Ever and again they awakened XIV.] WITH ANY NATION. 209 to the consciousness of their magnificent destiny. They knew themselves to be the possessors of mighty truths which others did not possess — truths which by their very nature must triumph, and which the Gen- tiles could not choose but seek at their hands. ' Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.' ' Behold thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee, because of the Lord thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel' The powerful kingdoms of the earth might possess all things besides— artistic and literary treasures, political institutions, military organizations, overflowing wealth, material appliances of all kinds. But these could not satisfy them for ever. They must come to Israel for that which Israel alone could give. There was a fierce, gnawing hunger still un- allayed, a hot, craving thirst still unslaked, ' not a famine of bread, nor a thirst of water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.' I need not speak at length on the strange ful- filment of this national expectation. Its evidential value it would be impossible to overrate. But this is not my purpose now. I have only dwelt thus far on the subject, because I desire to draw a parallel and to make the application to ourselves as members of this Church of England. Is there not a very real sense in which we ought to feel this consciousness of S. S. 14 2 IO HE HATH NOT DEALT SO [xiv. a destiny marked out for us by God ? Do not the past records and the present position of the English Church alike conspire to teach us this lesson ? What other Church has had a history so significant as ours? What other Church can point to opportunities, ad- vantages, privileges, capacities for doing Christ's work as great and signal as ours ? May we not in all sincerity adopt the Psalmist's words, and from an overflowing heart confess, ' He hath not dealt so with any nation ? ' Assuredly we dare not entertain the thought in any self-righteous, Pharisaic spirit. The warning voice will remind us, as it reminded the Israelites of old ; ' Speak not thou in thine heart, saying, for my righteousness the Lord hath brought me in to possess this land : understand that the Lord thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess it for thy righteousness ; for thou art a stiff-necked people.' Very different is the spirit in which I would ask you to approach this subject. ' Remember and forget not how thou provokedst the Lord thy God to wrath' — this is the emphatic caution with which the law- giver accompanies his declaration of Israel's peculiar privileges and Israel's unique destiny. ' Ye have been rebellious from the day that I knew you ! ' So say I now ; remember and forget not the sins and shortcomings of this our Church — the worldliness, the greed, the shameful time-serving, the apathy and xiv.] WITH ANY NATION. 2 I I torpor, which have disgraced it in ages past — the feuds which rend it and the trivialities which mar and deface it in our own generation. Remember and forget them not ; for are they not after all our own individual sins written large, sins deep-rooted in our hearts, sins too often manifested in our lives, sins demanding our penitential sorrow and self-abasement ? Remember and forget them not ; for only by so dwell- ing on the unworthiness of the recipient can you measure the goodness of the Giver and the splendour of the gift. My brothers, the occasion of our meeting to-day is one of great joy and thankfulness for all. You have come to revisit this college, your spiritual nurse, if not your spiritual mother ; to revive old memories ; to renew old companionships ; to interchange ideas and experiences ; to pour out your united thanks- giving to God for His many mercies; and thus to stimulate and quicken your spiritual faculties for the work which lies before you. But do not arrest your thoughts and feelings at this point. I ask you to regard yourselves not as fellow-students of the same college only, not as shepherds of your several flocks only. Over and above all these things, consider the exceptional privilege and the tremendous responsi- bility which attach to you as clergy of the English Church at a highly critical moment in her history. 14—2 212 HE HATH NOT DEALT SO [xiv. Reflect on her signal and unique advantages, her splendid opportunities, her glorious possibilities — her divine mission and her unique destiny ; if only we, the clergy, rise to a sense of God's providential purpose. May we not from the beginning trace the finger of God in her earliest history ? It is surely an im- portant fact — not without a lasting influence on the tone and temper of our Church — that very large portions of this island, far larger than men commonly suppose, were evangelised not from Rome but from Iona ? A spirit of greater freedom was thus breathed into her in her very infancy. This spirit, sheltered by her insular position, and sustained by a succession of strong and vigorous sovereigns, saved her from the worst consequences of a spiritual despotism, even in the darkest hours of Roman domination. The Church of England was throughout comparatively free. By a series of legal enactments the protest against foreign domination was maintained from age to age, until the day of liberty dawned. Hence this emancipation, when it came, was the act of the English Church and the English people. It might be stimulated, while it was discredited, by the profligacy of the sovereign or by the greed of the courtiers, but the heart and soul of the Reformation — the breath of its life, the motive power without which it would have been abortive— was the free WITH ANY NATION. 213 spirit of the English people, which had grown silently with the growth of the centuries. And must we not also recognise the handiwork of God in the character of the Reformation itself? Almost alone of the reformed communions the Church of England preserved the ancient constitution which had been impressed upon the Body of Christ from Apostolic times. There was no sudden dislocation, no abrupt break of continuity with the past; but in the retention of the episcopal order, as in the main- tenance of those other principles and institutions of which episcopacy is the type and the assurance, the reformed Church of England declared herself one with the Church of Anselm, with the Church of Bene- dict Biscop and Bede, with the Church of Columba and Aidan, with the Church built on the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone. And as we follow the stream of history lower down, can we fail to see the good providence of God in her preservation ? As I contemplate the perils and disasters through which she has passed, I am reminded of nothing so much as the tremendous catastrophes, succeeded by the marvellous revivals, of the Jewish people of old. Must it not have seemed to any unbiassed person that the Church of England was altogether annihi- lated in the middle of the seventeenth century — her 2 14 IIE HATH NOT DEALT SO [xiv. liturgy and ritual proscribed, her revenues confiscated, her clergy driven out, her sanctuaries desolated, her- self swept away from the face of the land ? Yet from this apparent extinction she rose again, as Israel had risen, rose suddenly, rose to a new and prolonged life. And if her existence was thus threatened in the seventeenth century by fierce antagonism without and suicidal counsels within, she was exposed to no less danger from worldliness and sloth and scepticism in the eighteenth. Who would not then have pronounced her in the last stage of decrepitude and decay ? Look at the nepotism, the greed, the shameless pluralities, the torpor, the reckless indifference of those dreary decades. Who could have foretold the glorious dawn which should so soon break upon that night of spiritual apathy and practical unbelief? Who could have ventured, as he contemplated this bleak desert strewn with the dry bones, to forecast the awakening or to entertain even the faint shadow of hope under- lying that cry of resignation, ' Lord, Thou knowest' ? Yet this death-like torpor has been succeeded by an outburst of intense and manifold activity to which it would not be easy to find a parallel in the history of any Church. ' Ask from the one side of the heaven to the other, whether there hath been any such thing as this great thing is.' Can we resist the inference ? God has marked xiv.] WITH ANY NATION. 2 I 5 out for some special mission, for some signal destiny, a Church which He has so marvellously preserved. We have read this lesson in the past history of our Church. Is it not further enforced in her present position and opportunities ? Consider first the ramifications and alliances of our Church. The English Church inherits the oppor- tunities of the English nation, of the English language. Never since the world began has there existed an empire so wide, so scattered, so manifold as ours. English colonies, English settlements, English de- pendencies, are everywhere. It seemed probable at one time, that this ascendancy would have been wielded by other hands. When the new world was opened out, the dominion of the seas belonged to Spain. Imagine for a moment how different would have been the fate of the human race, if this dominion had remained in such hands. The destruction of the Armada was a crisis of which every passing year enhances the magnitude. It has changed the whole course of religious history. Thenceforward a reformed Christianity was destined to prevail in the newly dis- covered regions of the world. The Churches of the Anglican Communion have spread over the whole face of the globe. The Pananglican Synods may not have produced many direct tangible results ; but, as a token of the catholicity and expansion of the 2l6 HE HATH NOT DEALT SO [xiv. English Church, it would not be easy to overrate their value. ' Spare not, lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes, for thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left ; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles.' But secondly; are there not in the internal charac- ter of our Church — in her doctrinal and ecclesiastical position — features which seem to designate her as the eventual rallying point of Christendom, the centre of the Churches of the future ? What other Christian community is so fitted to act as mediator between the irregular forces of Nonconformity and the rigid dis- cipline of Rome ? What other Church unites in the same degree an adherence to the lessons and usages of the past with a sympathetic respect for the aspira- tions of the future ? Of her more truly than of any Church it may be said that, like the scribe instructed unto the kingdom of heaven, she brings forth out of her treasure things new and old. She has not re- nounced the ancient Apostolic order or the ancient Catholic creed. Neither, on the other hand, has she spurned the intellectual and social acquisitions of these latest ages. As a national Church, she has lived the varied life and sympathised with the ex- panding thoughts of the nation. She is orthodox, and yet she is liberal. However we regard the matter, we cannot fail to recognise her central posi- XIV.] WITH ANY NATION. 217 tion. And this position is beginning to make itself felt in very unexpected quarters. Already the feebler Christian communities of the far East are turning to her for guidance and support. ' Nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee, because of the Lord thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel.' Lastly ; consider the energetic life of the English Church at this moment ; contemplate her rapid and vigorous progress, since the long winter frost broke up, and she revived under the sunshine of God's Spirit. The current of her awakened activity has not run in any one narrow channel. It has pervaded every region of thought and feeling and action. In the external administration and in the inner life of the Church alike its effects are seen. If we would take its measure, we have only to compare the parochial organisation and the Church services in any average parish with the same as they existed fifty or seventy or a hundred years ago. The build- ing and repair of churches, the erection and main- tenance of schools, the creation of new parishes, the foundation of new sees, the improvement and mul- tiplication of services — these are only the external symbols of an inner change which finds its truest expression in more earnest spiritual teaching and more assiduous parochial visitation and more devoted missionary work. 2l8 HE HATH NOT DEALT SO Lxiv. We have reviewed the past history of our Church. If ever the finger of God can be traced in history, it can be traced in this history. We have contem- plated her present condition — her world-wide oppor- tunities, her mediatorial position, her energetic life. If ever the voice of God speaks to men through actual facts, it surely speaks through these facts. Does it not tell us plainly that He has singled out this Church from all the Churches for a special destiny ? I confess that as I look around, and try to forecast the pros- pects of religion in the years lying before us, I am more and more persuaded that this Church of England is the central hope of Christendom. But I see not less clearly that the crisis is eminently perilous. This is the painful apprehension which fills one with terror. Here is a magnificent destiny reserved for our Church; but we may thwart it, we may obstruct it, we may postpone it, by our precipitancy, by our folly, by our stubbornness, by our inability to read the signs of the times. Not zeal and devotion only are wanted for the crisis ; but there is need likewise of patience, of forbearance, of a large spirit and a large mind. Addressing a numerous and representative body of the English clergy, I say to each one of you ; Try and individualise this idea — the destiny of your Church; take it distinctly to yourself as an object to labour for, to pray for, to live for; strive to work, xiv.J WITH ANY NATION. 219 as fellow-workers of God, in His great purpose. However feeble and faltering may be my words, I shall not have spoken in vain, if by God's grace I shall have sent only one single man home with the awe and the power of this thought more firmly rooted in his heart. It will be a new inspiration to you, as the conviction of Israel's destiny was to the Israelite of old. God matches His gifts to man's believing. This belief will raise you to a higher level ; it will endow you with wisdom, with patience, with zeal, and with strength ; it will be the breath of a new life to you. XV. THE PLACE OF WOMAN IN THE GOSPEL. And He took the damsel by the hand. S. Mark v. 41. S. Paul's Cathedra], Tune 19, 1884, at the Anniversary Service of the Girls' Friendly Society. In selecting this text, I have no intention of saying many words about the actual scene itself. The raising of Jairus' daughter attracts our attention by its vivid narrative and its intense human pathos ; while the two foreign words, summing up the interest of the story, and lingering strangely on our ears, impress it effectually on our memory. Nor, again, do I purpose speaking of its direct theological import, whether as an answer to human faith or as a mani- festation of Divine power. In this latter aspect, as xv.] THE PLACE OF WOMAN IN THE GOSPEL. 22 1 one of three signal miracles — the anticipations of Christ's own Resurrection — it claims, and it has received, the most earnest study, both in itself and in relation to the other incidents of the same class. These more obvious aspects of the text are beside my present aim. I wish to-day to treat it from a wholly different point of view. Christ's miracles have always a higher spiritual significance. They are not miracles only, but parables also. Messiah's kingdom would have achieved comparatively little for mankind, if it had brought deliverance to the captive in a literal sense only. A far heavier and more galling bondage would still remain — the bon- dage under sin. Physical blindness is only the type of moral blindness. Christ's healing power in the one case is the pledge of His healing power in the other. The palsy of the body symbolises the palsy of the soul. If the paralytic is bidden to take up his bed and walk, this is before all things an assurance to us that Christ is able and willing to heal the paralysis of the soul. From this point of view the words of the text are full of meaning for all who are met together to-day. 'He took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise. And straightway the damsel arose, and walked . . . and they were astonished with a great astonish- ment.' 222 THE PLACE OF WOMAN [xv. Need I remind you that this is the earliest miracle of raising the dead recorded in the Gospels ? Two others followed. The widow of Nain and the sisters of Bethany received back their dead. But the one was a growing youth, the other a man of mature age. A young girl was Christ's first care. On her was wrought this first stupendous miracle; for her He won this earliest triumph over death and hell. Is not this a significant fact — significant in itself, but especially significant for you ? For it proclaims the fundamental principles of the Gospel charter. It announces that the weak and helpless, in years, in sex, in social status, are especially Christ's care. It declares emphatically that in Him is neither male nor female. It is His call to you — you women- workers — to do a sister's part to these your sisters. Thus Christ's action in this miracle is a foreshadowing of His action in the Church. The Gospel found the woman lowered and depressed — deposed from her proper social position. The man had suffered not less, but more, than the woman by this humiliation. Jew and Gentile had conspired together in an un- conscious conspiracy to bring about this result. The Hebrew rabbi and the Greek philosopher had alike gone astray. It is a recorded saying of a famous Jewish doctor, that 'The words of the law were better burned than committed to a woman.' It is XV.] IN THE GOSPEL. 223 the opinion ascribed to the most famous Athenian statesman, that a woman then had achieved her highest glory when her name was least heard among men for virtue or for reproach. A moral resurrection was needed for womanhood. It might seem to the looker-on like a social death, from which there was no awakening. But it was only a suspension of her proper faculties and opportunities — a long sleep, from which revival must come soon or late. It was for Him, and Him alone, Who is the vanquisher of Death, Who has the keys of Hades, to open the doors of her sepulchral prison, to resuscitate her dormant life, and to restore her to her rightful place in society. When all hope was gone, He took her by the hand and bade her arise ; and at the sound of His voice and the touch of His hand she arose and walked. And the world was ' astonished with a great astonishment.' We ourselves are so familiar with the results ; the position of woman is so fully recognised among us ; it is bearing such abundant and beneficent fruit everyday and everywhere ; that we overlook the magnitude of the change itself. Only then, when we turn to the harem and the zenana, do we learn to estimate what the Gospel has achieved, and has still to achieve, in the emancipation of the woman, and her restitution to her lawful place in the social order. 224 THE PLACE OF WOMAN [xv. To ourselves, the large place which the woman occupies in the Gospels and in early Apostolic history seems only natural. To contemporaries it must have appeared in the light of a social revolution. The very opening of the Gospel is charged with divine messages communicated to and through women — Mary, Elizabeth, Anna. Women attend our Lord everywhere during His earthly ministry. Women — the sisters Martha and Mary — are set before us as embodying the two contrasted types of character, the practical and the contemplative. To a woman, and a woman alone, is given the promise of an undying fame beyond the glory of the mightiest earthly princes and conquerors; 'Wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her.' To a woman were spoken those words of gracious pardon — most tender and most compassionate — the consolation and stay and hope of the penitent to all time; 'Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much.' Women are the chief attendants at the Crucifixion, and the chief ministrants at the tomb. A woman is the first witness of the Resurrec- tion. And as it was with Christ's personal ministry, so is it also in the Apostolic Church. In the first gathering of the little band after the Ascension women are found assembled with the Apostles. This XV.] IN THE GOSPEL. 225 is a foreshadowing of the part which they are destined to play in the subsequent narrative. Cast your eye down the salutations in the Epistle to the Romans. There is Phcebe, the deaconess of the Church of Ccnchreas, commended as having 'been a succourer of many,' among others, of the Apostle himself. There is Priscilla, who, with her husband (the wife is mentioned first), had laid down her neck for his life, to whom not only he gives thanks but all the Churches of the Gentiles. There is Mary, who ' be- stowed much labour' upon him and upon others. There are Tryphena and Tryphosa, who ' labour in the Lord.' There is Persis, to whom the same testi- mony is borne. There is the mother of Rufus, who had been not less a mother to himself than to her own son. There is Julia ; there is the sister of Nereus. A long catalogue this to appear in the salutations of a single letter. Turn again from the Church of which he knew least, when he wrote, to the Church of which he knew most. Witness his relations to his beloved Philippian Church. Here he addresses himself first to the women who resort to the place of prayer. Among individual women with whom he comes in contact at Philippi we read of Lydia, his earliest hostess in this city ; of the damsel, from whom he cast out the spirit of divina- tion ; of Euodia and Syntyche, who laboured with S. S. 15 226 THE PLACE OF WOMAN [xv. him in the Gospel. Indeed we know more of the women at Philippi than we know of the men. But it was not only these desultory unrecognised services, however frequent and however great, that women rendered to the spread of the Gospel in its earliest days. The Apostolic Church had its orga- nized ministries of women — its order of deaconesses and its order of widows. Women had their definite place in the ecclesiastical system of those primitive times. And in our own age and country again the awakened activity of the Church is once more de- manding the recognition of female ministries. The Church feels herself maimed of one of her hands, so long as she fails to employ, to organize, to consecrate to the service of Christ, the love, the sympathy, the tact, the self-devotion of woman. Hence the revival of the female diaconate ; hence the multiplication of sisterhoods. But these, though the most definite, are not the most extensive developments of this revival. Everywhere institutions are springing up, manifold in form and purpose, for the organization of woman's work. There has been, and there is still, a shameful waste of this latent power, boundless in its capacities if duly fostered and developed. The famous heroines indeed of womanhood will neces- sarily be few. It is rarely a woman's part to save XV.] IN THE GOSPEL. 227 a State or to guide a Church. A Deborah and a Huldah, a Joan of Arc and a Catherine of Siena, will appear only at long intervals on the stage of history. Here and there God raises up an exceptional heroine to do an exceptional work, which a woman alone could do so effectually for her age and country. But generally it is in a quieter, less obtrusive, more homely, more womanly way, that she is called to exert a power, certainly not less real or less bene- ficent, though it may be less striking, than the power of men. She is a mother in her own little Israel — her own household, her own kindred, her own parish, her own neighbourhood ; a guide, a helper, a friend, yes, a priestess and a prophetess, to the young, the sick, the frail and erring, the poor and needy— needy whether of spiritual or of bodily aid. This vast, unutilised, undeveloped power of womanhood, it is the province of the Church, acting by the spirit and in the name of Christ, to take by the hand and raise from its torpor, which seemed a death but was only a sleep. And now, as then, its revived life and its beneficent work will amaze the looker-on ; ' They were astonished with a great astonishment' Among the more recent developments of woman's work in the Church of Christ your Girls' Friendly Society has taken a foremost place. I would say in all sincerity that I read your last report with profound 15—2 2 28 THE PLACE OF WOMAN [xv. joy and thankfulness. I was impressed not less by the completeness of your ideal, than by the variety and expansion of your efforts. I do not say this to commend you. This is not the time or the place for commendation. ' Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give the praise.' You will not be content, if you are true to your ideal, with holding out the hand of loving sympathy in her own home and neighbourhood to a humbler sister needing a sister's care and guidance ; your love will follow her about, that she may never be lost sight of. It is a trite complaint that the old relations between master and servant have vanished, or almost vanished, out of sight. The bond is no longer one of reciprocal loyalty, but of common convenience ; hence it is liable to severance at any moment. In the feverish, restless, ever-fluctuating conditions of modern life, it was impossible that this relation alone should remain unchanged, while all else was changing. The do- mestic servant or the shop girl has no longer a fixed home; she is a wanderer on the earth. Here the catholicity of the Church should step in to counteract the evil. It is your part to realise this catholicity. When a girl once enrolls herself in your numbers, she is yours everywhere, whithersoever she may go. A friendly eye will rest upon her, and a friendly hand will be held out to her, wheresoever she may be. XV.] IN THE GOSPEL. 229 She will find everywhere a home, because she will find everywhere friends. You cannot set this ideal before yourselves too definitely, or strive to realise it too fully. Do you ask how your work may be made truly effective ? I answer you by the words of the text, ' He took the damsel by the hand.' There must be the intensity of human sympathy, and there must be the indwelling of Divine power. The lesson of the miracle which I took as my starting-point involves both these. 1. The current of human sympathy must flow deep and strong and clear. Is not this the typical meaning of Christ's action in the text? The touch of His warm hand restores the circulation and revives the life in those pale, motionless, deathlike limbs. We want sympathy here ; sympathy first and sym- pathy last ; sympathy reflecting, however faintly, Christ's boundless compassion and love. The cold, mechanic formalism of the relieving officer will not suffice. The haughty assertion of superiority, the condescending patronage of the fine lady, will be worse than nothing. You must be a sister to your sisters, treading in the footsteps of your Brother Christ. Is not this also the meaning of those words, which He utters to the girl lying helpless before Him ? He speaks to her not in the Greek, the 23O THE PLACE OF WOMAN [xv. conventional language of outward life, but in the Syriac, the dear, familiar dialect of home, ' Talitha cumil It is the voice of sympathy, and it pierces her ear, notwithstanding hor deathlike slumber. He speaks to her, as He speaks to us all, with the voice of a direct, personal love. This is always the language of Christ's words, of Christ's Gospel, 'How hear we every man in our own tongue wherein we were born?' Such is Christ's speech, and such must be yours. 2. But, over and above all this, animating, in- spiring, sanctifying your human sympathy, there must be the consciousness of a Divine presence, the sense of a Divine energy, in your work. You will apply yourselves to it in a strength not your own. The power of the ever-living Christ will thrill through you. Is not this the interpretation of the symbolic action, 'He took the damsel by the hand?' He Himself, and not another. 'Not I, but Christ in me,' will be the inspiring motive of your work, as it was of S. Paul's. His hand must guide your hand ; nay, His hand must replace your hand, if the touch shall raise the damsel and restore her to a better, happier life. And restore her it will. This intense human sympathy, inspired by this consciousness of a divine indwelling, never has failed, and never can fail, to work miracles of resurrection and of healing. In her weakness, in her helplessness, in her temptations, in XV.] IN THE GOSPEL. 2 3 I all her struggles and perplexities — her bodily wants and her spiritual trials — it will be comfort, and strength, and hope to her. It will throb her with the pulsations of an awakened life. But I have spoken hitherto as if these helpless girls whom you befriend were the sole counterparts of Jairus' daughter. I have regarded them as the only patients whom Christ's awakening hand raises from their deathlike slumber. Is this an adequate representation of the case ? Are there not others even more indebted than they to this beneficent movement ? Are we not taught on the highest autho- rity that 'it is more blessed to give than to receive ?' But, if so, we have a truer antitype of this damsel whom Christ raised in the befriending Associates than in the befriended girls. Yes, Christ has taken them by the hand, has revived them, has awakened them from the heavy, deathlike slumber of a selfish, self-contained being. Christ has shown them the beauty and the power of sympathy, and it has been the throbbing of a new life in them. Assuredly it is not only the daughters of high ancestral lineage and of Norman blood, not only the Clara Vere de Veres, who are 'sickening with a vague disease,' and who need Christ's healing hand. Is there not in the homes of the professional man, of the merchant, of the shop- keeper, many a daughter and many a sister, on whose 232 THE PLACE OF WOMAN IN THE GOSPEL. [xv. hands time hangs heavily, whose life is wasting away, fretted with feverish excitement or sunk in self- indulgent apathy, weary of self and weary of others? How shall they wake up from this barren, monotonous, deathlike existence ? Sympathy, active sympathy for others — this, and this alone, can restore them. Mothers, train your daughters early to think for others, to care for others, to minister to others. Be assured it will be the most valuable part of their education. This heaven-born charity is the sovereign antidote to all the ills of womanhood. Is it some secret sorrow gnawing at your heart — some outraged feeling, or some harrowing bereavement, or some cruel disappointment ? Merge and absorb it in active solicitude for others. Is it some fierce temptation which assails you, and each fresh struggle seems to leave you weaker than before ? There will be no place for it, if you devote yourself to the needs of others. All sin is selfishness in some form or other. Forget self. This is the best safeguard against temp- tation. I appeal confidently to all those who have tried it to say whether this medicine has not healed them, where all others have failed. And why ? It is Christ's own love constraining them. It is Christ's own touch thrilling through their veins. Hence their moral resurrection. 'He took her by the hand ; and straightway she arose and walked.' XVI. THE HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION. Hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. i Peter i. 3. Christ Church, Newgate, Tuesday in Easter Week, 18S6. Spital Sermon. The religion of Jesus Christ presented one great contrast to the heathen religions with which it found itself in conflict. It pointed steadily forward, while they looked wistfully backward. The religions of Greece and Rome placed their golden age in the irrevocable past. Poets and moralists cast back a mournful gaze on this bygone age of bliss, when toil and sorrow were unknown, when the earth brought forth her choicest flowers and fruits unsolicited, and when Justice was everywhere supreme. The glory 234 TIIE HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION. [xvi. had gone and could not be recalled. The present was only the darker by the contrast. On the other hand the golden era of the Gospel lay in the far-off hereafter. The eye of the prophet pierced into the future, and saw there a great restitution, the creation of a new heaven and a new earth — a bright and bliss- ful eternity, when all the inequalities and wrongs of the present should be redressed, when sighing and sorrow should be no more, when the tears should be wiped from every eye — the ineffable glory of a city whose sunlight was the presence of God Himself. The religions of classical heathendom were religions of regret. The Gospel is a gospel of hope. In this respect, as in most others, the temper of the Old Testament was an anticipation of the temper of the New. This forward gaze, of which I have spoken, was eminently characteristic of the Israelite people. Through all the stupendous trials and vicis- situdes of the nation — the subjugations and defeats, the thraldoms and the captivities overwhelming them from without ; the anarchies and dissensions and shameful apostasies rending them within — this beacon light of hope shone ever clear in the heavens. A great future lay before them. Israel was fore-or- dained to be a light to the nations, and to give its laws to mankind. Israel's triumph might be post- poned, but it could not be averted. This consciousness xvi.] THE HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION. 235 of God's purpose was the secret of their marvellous vitality — the recuperative force which sustained a national life unparalleled in the annals of the world. Then came the Resurrection to justify and to interpret this confidence. It was the crowning vic- tory of hope. It shed a glory over all creation and all history — a glory which irradiated even the darkest passages of human life. Death had been hitherto the one obstinate, impregnable barrier, which baffled hope itself ; and death had yielded to the victor's might. All the voices of earth and sky were found now at length to speak of resurrection, of renewal, of life — to proclaim in one grand chorus the triumph of hope for humanity. To the heathen poet and moral- ist they had sung a wholly different strain. He had looked out upon nature, and his heart had been saddened by the sight. The lot of man seemed only the darker by contrast of the brightness without. If the day deepened into night, the night was not final. It was the prelude to a bright and rosy dawn. If the summer waned into autumn and the autumn dark- ened into winter, the winter was not the end. It was the harbinger of the freshness, the delight, the glory, of the opening springtide. For man alone there was no revival, no hope. No morrow ever dawned on the night of the grave; no springtide renewed the winter of decay and death. The very plants seemed to him 236 THE HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION. [m to repeat the same mournful ditty. The flowers of the garden, he sung sadly, will revive with the re- viving year, will put forth fresh leaves and bear bright blossoms again. Man only — man the mighty, the powerful, and the wise — once buried in the hollow earth sleeps the endless, hopeless, irrevocable sleep of death. Not so the Christian Apologist. Inter- preted in the light of the Easter message, these very same voices, in which the heathen poet had heard only a funeral dirge over the littleness of man's greatness, rang out in his ears a jubilant peal of triumph. The passage from night to day, the suc- cession from winter to summer, the decay and revival of plants, were so many analogies of nature, proclaim- ing the hopes of humanity and witnessing to the glories of the Resurrection. We, who have lived all our lives in the sunshine of this hope, can hardly realize the difference it has made to mankind. Who shall deny that there were among the great nations of the civilised world anxious yearnings, eager foreshadowings, doubtful surmises, more or less faint, pointing to man's immortality? But to surmise is one thing and to know is another. When we read how the most devout philosopher of antiquity on the solemn eve of his departure discussed with his favoured pupils whether the soul was or was not immortal, when we remember that even among xvi.] THE HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION. 237 the Jews themselves, the two chief sects were divided on this point — the Pharisees maintaining and the Sadducees denying a resurrection — we see how much we owe to the unseen hand, which on that first Easter dawn rolled away the stone from the tomb and transformed a vague hope into an assured fact. Can we wonder that the Apostles placed the Resurrection in the forefront as the central doctrine, because the central fact of the Gospel ; or that S. Peter in the words which I took as my text, speaks of the believer as ' begotten again into a living hope,' born, as it were, into a new world, endowed with a fresh and perennial spring of life — by reason of Christ's Resur- rection from the Dead ? Two great ideas are involved in the fact of the Resurrection — ideas influencing human thought and action at every turn — ideas coextensive in their ap- plication with human life itself. First: By opening out the vista of an endless future, it has wholly changed the proportions of things. The capacity of looking forward is the mea- sure of progress in the individual and in the race. Pro- vidence is God's attribute. In proportion as a man appropriates this attribute of God, in proportion as his faculty of foresight is educated, in the same degree is he raised in the moral scale. The civilised man is distinguished from the barbarian by the 238 THE HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION. [xvi. development of this faculty. The barbarian lives only for the day ; if he has food and shelter for the moment, he thinks of nothing more. The civilised man forecasts the needs of the future ; lays up stores for the future; makes plans for the future. The Christian again is an advance upon the civilised man, as the civilised man was an advance upon the barbarian. His vista of knowledge and interest is not terminated abruptly by the barrier of the grave. The Resurrection has stimulated the faculty and educated the habit of foresight indefinitely, by open- ing out to it an endless field of vision, over which its sympathies range. But secondly ; the Resurrection involves another principle, not less extensive or less potent in its influence on human life. The Resurrection does not merely proclaim immortality. There would have been no need of Christ's death for that. It declares likewise that death leads to life. It assures us that death is the portal to eternity. Thus it glorifies death ; it crowns and consecrates the grave. What is the message of the Risen Christ — the Alpha and Omega — to His Churches? Not merely 'I am He that liveth.' This was a great fact, but this was not all. Read on. T am He that liveth, and I was dead.' Death issuing in life — death the seed, and life the plant and blossom and fruit — this is the great lesson of the xvi.] THE HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION. 239 Gospel. ' I was dead ; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen ; and have the keys of hell and of death.' See how far-reaching are the applications of this lesson to human life. Death had been hitherto the chief foe of humanity — the one paramount, intoler- able, ultimate evil, with which man must wrestle, though only with the absolute certainty of defeat. But now death himself was conquered. He was not only conquered, but he was turned into an ally. There was a beneficence, a joy, a glory, in death itself, when death meant entrance into an endless life. Moreover the principle which applied to death, applied a fortiori to all the other evils of life. Through darkness to light, through sorrow to joy, through suffering to bliss, through evil to good — this is the law of our Heavenly Father's government, where- by He would educate His family — His sons and His daughters — into the likeness of His own perfec- tions. Accordingly we find this same principle ex- tending throughout the Gospel teaching. Everywhere it speaks of renewal, of redemption, of restitution — yes, of resurrection. So to the true Christian all the ills of life have an inherent glory in them. Not only do they deserve our pity, deserve our respect, deserve our allevia- tion. There is a great potentiality of future good in 24O THE HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION. [xvi. them. No degradation of human character, no abase- ment of human life, no depth of human vice is so great, as to forfeit its claim to the consideration of the Christian. How can it forfeit this claim, when hope is shut out to none, restitution is denied to none ? It was the common taunt of the heathen against the Christians in the early ages, that they gathered about them the lowest of the people, the outcasts of society, the scum of mankind. They proudly accepted the reproach ; they avowed that their shame was their glory. Had not their Master been taunted with the companionship of publicans and sinners ? Was it not their special mission, as it had been His before them, to call not righteous men, but sinners? Is it not a nobler, more Christ-like, work to rescue one degraded life from the gutter, to heal one demon- possessed soul and seat it clothed and in its right mind at the Master's feet, than to address scores of respectable Churchgoing people decently seated in their pews with their Bible in their hand ? These thoughts are not inappropriate to the oc- casion, if I have rightly apprehended its meaning. Of all the honours and privileges which attach to the chief magistracy of this ancient city, none can compare with the prerogative — now confirmed by long usage — of providing relief for the sufferers from fire or flood, from famine or plague or sword, from xvi.] THE HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION. 2 IT any unwonted calamity which may have befallen any section of their fellow-men. The almoners, not of this great metropolis alone, not of the people of England only, but the almoners of the world — this surely is a proud badge of distinction which the greatest of earthly princes might well envy. Do I not then rightly interpret the service of to-day, as an acknowledgment that Christ lays upon you — severally and corporately — this special charge of pro- viding for the needy, of helping the helpless, and of raising the fallen ; as a pledge that you gratefully accept this honorable office of Christ's almoners at His hands; and as a consecration of this your work through the hopes and the glories of the Easter Season ? For what is God's message to you at this season ? Does it not declare that life— human life — is an unspeakably sacred thing? Does it not pro- claim aloud that there is no human body so racked with disease and pain, no human mind so shattered and dislocated, no human soul so stained with crime and sin, no human career so marred and spoilt, which does not contain in itself a potentiality of a blissful and glorious future, thus demanding your aid to roll away the stone from the sepulchre which holds this potentiality entombed ? Does it not tell you that feebleness, incapacity, trouble, want, helplessness of whatever kind, are Christ's opportunity and therefore S. s. 16 242 THE HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION. [xvi. your opportunity ? It was this Easter hope (was it not ?) which more than three centuries ago prompted the discovery that Christ had lain 'too too long abroad without lodging in the streets of London, both hungry and naked and cold,' and moved the chief magistrate of the day to plead the cause of Christ's 'poor silly members' before his fellow-citizens, thus procuring the establishment of the free Hospitals whose beneficent work we this day commemorate — surely the brightest chapter in the long and illus- trious annals of this ancient civic magistracy. It is this same glad Easter hope that leads his successors year after year to reconsecrate their work by a solemn service over the unsealed grave of the risen Christ, acknowledging that they are, in Bishop Ridley's words to the Lord Mayor of that day, ' Christ's high honorable officers,' and that the work of Christ must be quickened and animated by the Spirit of Christ. The city which you represent is said to be the most ancient city north of the Alps. It was cer- tainly a considerable place eighteen centuries ago. It is the metropolis of a kingdom which itself is only a few centuries younger. Yet neither this state nor this capital betrays any signs of senescence or decay. If indeed outward growth and prosperity is a true indication of health, neither the one nor the other ever exhibited more vital power than in the present xvi.] THE HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION. 243 age. Have we ever asked ourselves how it comes that, as a rule, modern nationalities and states are more long lived than ancient? Compare the long history of England or of France, for instance, with the brief, though brilliant, career of Athens or of Carthage. May we not ascribe this difference in no slight measure to the forward, hopeful gaze of Christi- anity, the optimism of the Gospel, which has been as a new inspiration to them, trampling obstacles under foot and fulfilling its own predictions ? But whatever account we may give of the vitality of the kingdom and nation, no other explanation is possible of the vitality of the Church. The Resurrec- tion hope is the very breath of life to her. The Church of England has had a longer existence by some centuries than the State of England. Yet again and again her existence has been menaced by the most cruel trials and disasters. The ruthless inva- sions of the Danes threatening to strangle her infant life, the foreign aggressions and the gathering cor- ruptions of the Middle Ages, the catastrophic period of the Reformation, the apparent annihilation during the Commonwealth, the deadly lethargy of the eighteenth century — all these perils by God's grace she has outlived. But at what period of her long and chequered life has she manifested healthier and more varied energies than now ? 16—2 244 TI1E HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION. [xvi. So much for this lesson of the Resurrection — this temper of hope — as a vivifying influence in the past history of the English nation and the English Church. But what part shall it play in the future ? This is a serious question which we should do well to answer for ourselves, that each in our several stations and with our several opportunities we may strive to work out this answer. The future of the English race — what an untold possibility is here, if only Englishmen will rise to the occasion, will strive to grasp the idea of their mission and to fulfil the destiny towards which the finger of God seems to be pointing ! The easy and wide diffusion of the English language, the erratic genius and the practical versatility of the English temper, the exceptional fecundity and increase of the English race, have conspired with the geographical features and the geological advantages of their island home to give to the English people an expansion to which the history of the human race has not fur- nished hitherto any parallel, and of which the future promises to far outstrip the present. Yet with all this, there is a deep-seated sentiment of unity — a strong home feeling — which no severance of time or space has enfeebled and no neglect or indifference has chilled. Surely this marvellous union of centri- fugal and centripetal forces is a great fact which xvi.] THE HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION. 245 must fire the ardour of the patriot and inspire the genius of the statesman. A great fact should suggest a great ideal. But, if the opportunity is magnificent, the danger is critical also. A single false step may compromise the future. The most splendid potentiality which the world has ever seen may be marred in a moment. The ultimate arbiters of the fate of the English race are the electors of England. Has this body — newly enfranchised for the most part — sufficient grasp of the conditions and range of the problem ? Has it the knowledge and experience necessary to realise and work out the idea ? May not its vision of the great hereafter be obscured and eclipsed by smaller aims in the more immediate present ? But, if our hopes and fears for the destiny of the English people are so great, the future of the English Church will inspire us with not less serious thoughts. Never during the thirteen centuries, through which we can distinctly trace her eventful history, did the beacon-fire of hope burn more brightly. Her varied and ever-increasing activities at home and her rapid extension abroad may well inspire her sons with brilliant anticipations. Yet there are threatening signs in the heavens which we cannot overlook. Happily the English Church has been spared hither- to the painful conflict with rank, political atheism in 246 THE HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION. [xvi. high places which is raging in a neighbouring country, a conflict in which no errors of doctrine or practice should blunt our sympathy with a Church nobly struggling in the cause of religion and philanthropy against an antagonism which is altogether 'of the earth earthy,' and which soon or late must surely, if only at the call of humanity, produce a violent recoil. But, though no such black thunder-clouds veil our English sky, there is enough, and more than enough, to justify a watchful anxiety. What better safeguard at such a time than to grasp firmly the lesson of the Resurrection — to strive and realise the destiny which lies before our English Church — to advance with no wavering step towards the goal whither God's hand is beckoning us, facing boldly the obstacles which lie athwart our path; and so to roll back the stone at the sepulchre's mouth and force our way through the grave and gate of death to a joyful resurrection. A story is told of the rebuilding of the great Cathedral under whose shadow we are gathered to- day which may well serve as a parable. After the fire, while the church still lay in ruins, the great architect, visiting the spot and laying out the plan of the new fabric ordered a workman to bring him a stone to mark some prominent site. A stone was brought from the accumulated rubbish. It happened xv!.] THE HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION. 247 to be a fragment of an old grave-stone, and on it was inscribed the simple legend, Resurgent, ' I shall rise again.' A happy omen it seemed at the time; and the good augury was more than fulfilled, as the new Cathedral expanded into those noble aisles and transepts, and rose and swelled into that majestic dome, towering into the heavens and bearing on its summit glittering in gold the symbol of Christ's passion ; till men were fain to confess that the glories of this second temple were greater than the glories of the first Have we not here a fit type for our aspirations in Church and in State? No diffi- culties and dangers, no failures shall quench or obscure our hopes. From the charred and crumbled ruins, the shattered schemes and the accumulated waste, of the past, we will draw forth a memento of the Resurrection — an augury of a future fabric reared in nobler lines and more solid masonry by the hands of the heavenly Artificer, a building fitly framed together, a holy temple in the Lord. XVII. AN ENSIGN FOR THE NATIONS. He slia 11 set up an ensign for the nations. Isaiah xi. 12. S. Peter's, Wolverhampton, October 3, 1887, before the Church Congress. A YEAR memorable in the annals of England is fast waning. The 'golden wedding' of sovereign and people — symbolised by the coronation ring — has been celebrated with due pomp. While the splendour of the pageant was still floating before our eyes, we gathered up the lessons which the event has be- queathed to us as Englishmen. In this valuable legacy, among much that we have learnt besides, the one prominent idea which impressed all thoughtful minds was the imperial xvn.] AN ENSIGN FOR THE NATIONS. 249 destiny of England — her world-wide interests and responsibilities. This lesson has done something, let us hope, to counteract our insular narrowness. It has rescued our patriotism from degenerating into a disguised selfishness. Our watchword hereafter must be Humani uiJiil alienum, not only as men, but as Englishmen. No statesman henceforth will deserve the name who does not give to this idea a prominent place in shaping his policy. The history of the present reign is an emphatic enunciation of this idea. It is not only that the English race and the English language have spread far and wide, penetrating into every continent and sweeping every sea ; but that, so spreading, our colonists and fellow-countrymen never forget their English origin. There is dispersion, and yet there is unity. The centripetal force acts simultaneously with the centrifugal, and regular, energetic motion is the result. The limited extent and the insular posi- tion of the mother country, the spirit of adventure and the exceptional fecundity of the race — these are the elements which make up the centrifugal force. The stubborn tenacity and the home fondness of the English heart, the conservatism (in the best sense) of the English character — here is the regulating centri- petal attraction. This lesson has been pressed upon us from many 250 AN ENSIGN FOR THE NATIONS. [xvn. quarters. One writer has set before us the Expansion of England as the great factor in the recent history of the world ; another has taught us to regard our empire as the translation into fact of the old poetic fable of Atlantis, the counterpart to the ideal common- wealth of Oceana beyond the seas 1 . It has not only been dinned into our ears ; it has been brought vividly before our eyes by many impressive displays. The wealth of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition was followed by the representative pageant of the Jubilee. The lesson of the Jubilee is perpetuated in the foundation of the Imperial Institute. But must we not look for some great spiritual counterpart to all this ? Every great temporal epoch suggests corresponding religious opportunities. Two worlds are ours, as citizens of a heavenly polity. Let us ask ourselves then what dominant thought this crisis suggests to us as members of the Anglican Church. What is the great idea in the spiritual world which corresponds to this imperial conception of the destinies of Eng- land ? In the extravagance of the mediaeval imagi- nation the Holy Roman Empire was the counterpart to the Holy Roman Church. May we not from a more sober point of view arrive at a truer result ? 1 Professor Seeley and Mr J. A. Froude are the writers referred to. xvil.] AN ENSIGN FOR THE NATIONS. 25 I Shall we not say then, that our spiritual counter- part is the catholicity of the English Church, with all the responsibilities which it involves — the world-wide opportunities — the unique destiny which in God's providence seems to be reserved for the Anglican community in shaping the future of Christendom ? I referred just now to the 'Expansion of England,' and I do not know how I could better introduce the subject for which I claim your attention than by quoting the language of this writer, though his point of view is quite different from my own : — The same nation (he says) which reaches one hand towards the future of the globe, and assumes the position of mediator between Europe and the New World, stretches the other hand to the remotest past, becomes an Asiatic conqueror, and usurps the succession of the Great Mogul . . . Never certainly did any nation, since the world began, assume anything like so much responsibility. Never did so many vast questions in all parts of the globe, questions calling for all sorts of special knowledge and special training, depend upon the decision of a single public. It must be confessed that this public bears its responsibility lightly ! It does not even study Colonial and Indian questions. It does not consider them interesting, except in those rare cases when they come to the foreground of politics. When the fate of a Ministry is concerned, they are found intensely interesting, but the public does not consider them interesting so long as only the population of India, the destiny of a vast section of the planet, and the future of the English State itself, are concerned 1 .' Make a few verbal changes in this paragraph ; 1 Seeley, The Expansion of England (Macmillans, 18S3), p. 17650. 252 AN ENSIGN FOR THE NATIONS. [xvn. substitute the English Church for the English nation; and you have the lesson which I wish to enforce this afternoon. I am the more emboldened to make these substitutions, and to appropriate this lesson to English Churchmen, because I do not think I should be doing great violence to the author's conceptions by this change. He himself is not indifferent — as indeed no true historian could be indifferent — to the correlations between the political and the religious. ' The Church,' he writes, 'so at least I hold, is the soul of the State ; where there is a Church a State grows up in time; but if you find a State which is not also in some sense a Church, you find a State which is not long for this world V This mediatorial position which our author assigns to the English people, this close contact alike with the traditions of the past and the hopes of the future, this great storehouse containing treasures new and old, as in the Gospel parable, above all, this world- wide interest in the welfare of divers nations and races — is it not eminently characteristic of the English Church ? And if the description of character is ap- propriate, can we say that the sting of the reproach is undeserved ? It must be confessed that these English Churchmen bear their responsibility lightly. Nay, I do not doubt that I shall be reproached by 1 Seeley, The Expansion of England, p. 154, xvii.] AN ENSIGN FOR THE NATIONS. 253 many for losing a golden opportunity and wasting valuable time on an unprofitable theme. Would it not have been better to deal with some urgent prac- tical question ? There are these many thousands of practical heathen in our midst, untouched by the message of the Gospel. How shall we reach them ? There is this 'Artisan Atheism,' of which we have read so much. What methods can we devise for checking this ? There is the 'chaotic' state of dis- cipline in the Church. Why not try to reduce this chaos to order? With scores of such perplexing practical problems crying for solution, is it not mad- ness to chase a mere vision of a dream ? My answer is two-fold. I do not allow that this subject has a merely sentimental interest. I believe that very tangible consequences will result from the proper handling of it. It is a narrow type of states- manship — though the average man is slow to see this — which would have us confine our attention to developing our material resources at home, and leave imperial and international questions to take care of themselves. Experience shews that not only our political relations to our colonies and dependencies, but our position in the community of nations, have an almost immediate effect on commerce and manufac- ture, and so on the material prosperity of the country. But the wider view is of much higher importance in 254 AN ENSIGN FOR THE NATIONS. [xvn. things spiritual. The spiritual nerves are far more sensitive than the political and the commercial. The image of the sympathy between the different members of the body has here its highest realisation. The parish cannot afford to disregard its duties to the diocese, or the diocese to the Church of the nation, without suffering a partial paralysis. In like manner the Church of the nation impoverishes its inward resources, and stunts its spiritual growth, unless it interests itself in the struggles, the hopes and fears, of the Churches without. Sympathy, like mercy, bears a two-fold blessing, and the larger share falls to the giver. Sympathy repays itself a thousand-fold to a Church, as to an individual, in the capacities enlarged and the energies quickened, in the sense of a keener and fuller life. But, secondly, a great idea, kept stedfastly in view and guiding its actions, is a source of untold strength to a Church, as to a nation. Who can doubt that the presence of such an inspiration was the secret of the tough vitality of the Jewish people, the life- blood throbbing and thrilling through the veins of the nation? Listen to such passages as these: 'Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee, because of the Lord thy God and for the Holy One of Israel.' 'Behold, I will shake all nations, and the xvii.] AN ENSIGN FOR THE NATIONS. 255 desirable things of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with glory.' ' In that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people ; to it shall the Gentiles seek ; and his resting place shall be glorious.' How could they grow faint, how could they de- spair, how could they lie down and die, with this hope before them ? Had not the Lord Jehovah Himself chosen them out from all the peoples of the earth, and reserved them for a signal destiny ? Not Mem- phis or Thebes, not Nineveh or Babylon or Susa or Persepolis, not Athens or Alexandria or Rome, but Jerusalem, was the true spiritual capital of the world, the centre of the hopes and interests of mankind. Here should be the rallying-point of the nations of the earth. Hither should flow in the tribute from all quarters of the heavens, the richest treasures of every land and every clime. I need not stop to consider how this inspiring vision was fulfilled — fulfilled far beyond their most splendid hopes, but fulfilled in a way unforeseen or but vaguely discerned even by the prophets them- selves. I need not remind you how nations whom they knew not — peoples like the Greeks and Romans, then only dimly descried on the horizon of history ; peoples like the Gauls and Britons and Teutons and Sclaves, of whose very names they were ignorant — 256 AN ENSIGN FOR THE NATIONS. [xvii. did rally round this ensign of the Lord, did gather at the call of the Divine voice, did contribute their choicest gifts and endowments to the building and adorning of the spiritual Sion. No study is more instructive than this ; but it is beside my purpose now. I desire only to ask your attention to this dominant idea, as a quickening, sustaining, energizing force in the life of the Jewish people. No nation since the beginning of time has survived so many and such terrible disasters. Crushed, enslaved, trampled under foot, battered between contending foes, bandied to and fro by rival empires, carried away into cap- tivity, they have started up again and again into vigorous life. Not once only was the prophet's vision of the dry bones realised in the resurrection of this people. Not once only was the apostle's paradox of language translated into fact in their strange, eventful history, 'As dying, and behold we live' — live to hand down the priceless treasure to generations unborn, live in the hopes and fears of the human family, live in the thoughts which shall mould the hearts of men to the end of time. And may we not say without presumption that a somewhat analogous destiny seems to be reserved for the English Church ? The one great fact indeed, which is the pivot of all history, cannot be repeated. The Incarnation of the Son of God, enshrined in the xvii.] AN ENSIGN FOR THE NATIONS. 257 records of a people, must remain unique. But is there not a sense in which it may be said that God sets up His standard in this English Church ; that it seems to be marked out by His hand as a rallying- point of the nations ; and that here is the most hope- ful centre for the unity of Christendom, if such unity has any place in His counsels ? History is our prophet. God's voice speaks with no uncertain sound in the records of our nation and Church. Have we ears to hear ? He throws down the gage. Have we faith and courage to take it up and to translate His offer into fact ? This is the one thought which I desire to leave on your minds to-day. You are met together here, a large representative gathering of the English Church. You will discuss many practical questions of im- mediate interest for the efficiency of parochial and diocesan work. It is well that you should do so. But let this larger idea dominate your minds — the great destiny which lies before the English Church, if the English Church is true to herself. It will not distract or impede these practical discussions. It will permeate them, and endow them with a higher inspi- ration. At this time, and in this place, such an appeal has a special propriety. Twenty years have elapsed since the Church Congress met together in this building to s. s. 17 258 AN ENSIGN FOR THE NATIONS. [xvn. inaugurate its session with a solemn service. It was the year of the first Lambeth Conference. Your President was surrounded on that occasion by bishops representing the Anglican communion far and wide, from the British islands, from the colonies and depen- dencies, from the mission field, from the United States. This was the first visible presentation of the catholicity of the English Church. It is eminently fit then, that we should take up this theme in this same place to-day. Seventy years ago a famous French writer 1 , yearning for the unity of the Church and conceiving the Papacy to be the only possible centre of union, appealed to Anglican Churchmen to take the initia- tive. Himself holding Ultramontane views, and speaking in no measured terms of the position and character of the English Church, he yet recognised in her a prerogative character which might make her a leader in the great movement of the future. Many things have happened in these seventy years. On the one hand, the Romish Church has taken a step which, unless it be revoked, will render union under her banner an impossibility. The doctrine of Papal Infallibility will appear to English Churchmen a denial of history and a stultification of reason. Whatever visions of union on these terms may have 1 De Maistre in his book Dtt Pape published in 1819. xvn.] AN ENSIGN FOR THE NATIONS. 259 been entertained by any Anglican in the past, they have been dissipated by this one act. On the other hand, the Anglican communion has grown with a growth which has far outstripped human prescience. Her intensive and extensive energies alike have been manifested on a scale which has few parallels in the history of Christendom since the Apostolic age. In the treatise, 'On the Pope,' to which I referred just now, much scorn is poured upon the English Church ; and statements are hazarded, which even then only an imperfect knowledge could palliate, and which have been strangely falsified by subsequent history. Two main charges brought against her are her sterility and her isolation. Her sterility ? I am not careful to answer this. The history of the past fifty years shall answer it. The evidence of eyes and ears shall answer it. The testimony of those who are not members of our own communion, even of those who in some instances have been her overt enemies, shall answer it. But if this charge fails, what shall we say of her isolation ? Is not this isolation, so far as it is true, much more her misfortune than her fault ? Is she to be blamed because she retained a form of Church government which had been handed down in un- broken continuity from the Apostolic times, and thus a line was drawn between her and the reformed 17—2 260 AN ENSIGN FOR THE NATIONS. [xvn. Churches of other countries ? Is it a reproach to her that she asserted her liberty to cast off the accretions which had gathered about the Apostolic doctrine and practice through long ages, and for this act was repudiated by the Roman Church ? But this very position— call it isolation if you will — which was her reproach in the past, is her hope for the future. She was isolated because she could not consort with either extreme. She was isolated because she stood midway between the two. This central position is her vantage ground, which fits her to be a mediator, wheresoever an occasion of mediation may arise. But this charge of isolation, if it had any appear- ance of truth seventy years ago, has lost its force now. The English Church is no longer insular, as the English people is no longer insular. The English sovereign rules over more than one-fifth of the whole human race, and one-sixth of the habitable globe. Of what monarch or what power since the world began can the same be said ? The great American Republic too — the most rapid development on a grand scale in the history of the world — is bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh. Nor is it only within the limits of English and American dominions that the influence of the English race is felt. British vessels alone absorb more than half the carrying traffic of the world, and America claims its fair share xvii.] AN ENSIGN FOR THE NATIONS. 26 1 of the remainder. Every continent, almost every sea and island, swarms with English and American tourists and travellers. Everywhere, for business or for pleasure, English-speaking people are found. Corresponding to this progress of the English race is the spread of the English Church. Next year, if it please God, will witness another meeting of the Lambeth Conference. The number of the Anglican episcopate from which its members are drawn is fast mounting up to two hundred. This year is the centenary of the first colonial bishopric. We have seized the occasion to take an audit of the progress during this period. I need not trouble you with the statistics of the increase. It is sufficient to say that during the present reign alone the number of our colonial and missionary sees has been multiplied nine or ten fold, and that the rate of increase has been greater in the later decades of this period than in the earlier. The Anglican communion now com- prises within her embrace Churches established, un- established, and disestablished. She has flourishing branches in every continent of the globe. She acknowledges as her sons converts from the highly developed and immemorial religions of the East, and converts from the rude idol-worship of Africa and the Pacific Islands. The successor of S. Augustine is coming to be regarded as the Patriarch in substance, 262 AN ENSIGN FOR THE NATIONS. [xvn. if not in name, of the Anglican Churches throughout the world. The proud title, papa alterius orbis, has a far more real meaning now than when it was con- ferred many centuries ago 1 . Nor is this all. With the ancient Churches of the East our relations are becoming every day more intimate. With the greater and more flourishing communities we are exchanging friendly intercourse ; while the feebler Churches, in Assyria, in Egypt, and elsewhere, are looking to us for instruction and for help. The premature movement of Archbishop Wake early in the last century is taking effect under his suc- cessors to-day. Archbishop Tait, in his later charges, gave a prominent place to the duties attaching to his office through these wider relations of the English Church, and they have been largely developed under his successor. What then shall we say? Her catholicity has been restored to the English Church in a surprising way. Catholic indeed she was potentially before in her doctrine and polity ; but now she is catholic in fact, catholic in her interests and sympathies, catholic in her responsibilities and duties. Yet these world-wide relations are almost wholly the growth of the present reign, the growth of our own life-time. What may we not hope in the future, if we respond to God's call? 1 On S. Anselm by Pope Urban II. xvii.] AN ENSIGN FOR THE NATIONS. 263 If we respond. The appeal lies not to the clergy alone, though to them chiefly, but to every loyal son of our Church. Here is my reason for selecting this theme at such a gathering as the present. Let this vision of a glorious future be to every devout Anglican Churchman to-day an inspiration, as a similar vision was to every devout Israelite of old. What then shall be our attitude towards this great work which lies before us ? How shall we consecrate ourselves for the task ? We shall certainly not relax our efforts for the evangelisation of the masses at home. We shall feel that any weakness at the heart must impede the circulation and endanger the whole mechanism of the body. We shall not forget that we have special duties towards other Christian communities living side by side with us. We shall cultivate friendly relations where no principle is sacrificed. We shall avoid irritating language, for we shall remember with shame how largely their defection has been due to our fault. We shall be prompt to amend defects in our organisation, and to establish effective tribunals of discipline. We shall approach the settlement of these questions in the spirit of concession, knowing that this spirit of concession — this iineUeia — is Christ's own attribute. We shall, before all things, beware of exalting methods into principles. We shall 264 AN ENSIGN FOR THE NATIONS. [xvn. redouble our efforts to evangelise the heathen world. We shall recognise the duty of the Church as a Church to take a direct part in missionary work, while yet we shall respect the voluntary agencies which have borne the burden and heat of the day. We shall not fasten the yoke of a rigid uniformity on the necks of our converts. We shall lay down for ourselves as an aim, not the multiplication of English Churches on a foreign soil, but the creation of native Churches. We shall allow great latitude of develop- ment in non-essentials, such as the forms of worship. We shall not impose our Articles, or even our Prayer- book, as a necessity on native peoples. We shall act throughout in the faith that they too, like the races converted to Christ in the ages past, have some treasure of their own, some special gift or endowment, to contribute to the House of God. We shall draw closer our intercourse with the enfeebled Churches of the East, not too carefully scanning their faults whether in doctrine or in practice, but striving by education and by sympathy to raise them to a higher level. Thus will the catholicity of our Church be at length realised — a true inspiration to ourselves, and an untold blessing to mankind : ' All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see ye, when He lifteth up an ensign on the mountains.' XVIII. THE RESTORATION OF ASSYRIA. The great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perisli in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship the Lord in t/ie holy mount at ferusalem. Isaiah xxvii. 13. S. Margaret's, Westminster, Sixth Sunday after Trinity, 1SS8, on behalf of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Mission to the Assyrian Christians. ASSYRIA and Egypt — the two world-powers in the dawn of history, the two chief sources of ancient civilisation, the twin giant empires which bound the Israelite people on the right hand and on the left — these are familiar names to us in Hebrew history and prophecy alike. Cruel neighbours they are, between whom this ill-fated nation is tossed to and fro in 266 THE RESTORATION OF ASSYRIA. [xvm. wanton sport like a shuttlecock, cruel friends before whom it must cringe in turns, praying sometimes for help, suing sometimes for very life — alternate scourges in the hand of the Divine wrath. Now it is the fly of Egypt, and now it is the bee of Assyria, whose ruthless swarms issue forth at the word of Jehovah, settling ' in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns and upon all bushes,' with deadly sting fatal to man and beast, devastating the land far and wide. Holding the poor Israelite in their relentless em- brace, they threatened ever and again to crush him by their grip. Like the fabled rocks which frowned over the narrow straits of Bosphorus, they would clash together and annihilate the helpless craft which the storms of a cruel destiny had placed at their mercy. Nor is it a mere empty threat. Israel reels under the successive blows of one or other of these powerful neighbours. As was the beginning, so was the end. As the captivity of Egypt had been the cradle of the nation, so was the captivity of Assyria to be its tomb. And just as they appear side by side as the instruments of the Divine chastisement on Israel, so also are they coupled together as the objects of the Divine vengeance themselves. One in the pride and insolence of power, they are one also in their humiliation and downfall. Assyria falls first, and Egypt must follow after. The fall of the first is a win.] THE RESTORATION OF ASSYRIA. 267 type and a foreshadowing of the fall of the second. This is the lesson of those magnificent chapters in the prophecy of Ezekiel, ' Son of man, speak unto Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his multitude ; Whom art thou like in thy greatness?' Then follows the parable of no doubtful meaning ; 'Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of an high stature. His height was exalted above all the trees of the field ; the fowls made their nests in his boughs, and the beasts of the field brought forth their young beneath his branches.' The secret of Assyria's prosperity was the secret of Egypt's prosperity likewise. The rivers of Assyria had their counterpart in the river of Egypt. Thus was he ' fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches ; for his root was by great waters.' ' All the trees of Eden, that were in the garden of God, envied him.' The nations shook ' at the sound of his fall, when I cast him down... they also went down into hell with him.' There he lies in the bottomless pit, awaiting the arrival of his companion. 'Asshur is there and all her company ; his graves are about him ; all of them slain, fallen by the sword.' But he shall not wait long. Already the axe is laid at the root. The Divine fiat has gone forth. ' To whom art thou— thou Egypt — thus like in glory and in great- ness among the trees of Eden ? ' ' Son of man, wail 268 THE RESTORATION OF ASSYRIA. (xviii. for the multitude of Egypt, and cast them down' — down to the uttermost pit. Truly of Assyria and Egypt it might be said in a sterner sense than of the Israelite princes of old, that 'in their death they were not divided ' — not divided in their downfall, as they had not been divided in their exaltation. Nay, not divided in their later, as they were not divided in their earlier humiliation. For the humilia- tion of these great world-powers was not ended by these conquests to which the prophet immediately refers. Blow has succeeded blow. Centuries have rolled away and the decree is not yet reversed. Assyria and Egypt — the realm of the great con- querors, Shalmaneser and Sargon and Sennacherib ; the realm of the mighty pyramid-builders, of the powerful Pharaohs, the Thothmes and the Rameses — nations of ancient and wide renown when Greece was scarcely a name and Rome was not yet a name — empires of which the younger reckoned a con- tinuous life of not less than twelve hundred years, lie prostrate, both trampled under foot by the same ruthless conqueror, ground down by centuries of oppression and misrule. Truly we seem to read once more the fulfilment of Ezekiel's denunciations, when we contemplate these twin-powers of the ancient world with the heel of the Turk on their neck — crying for help and protection to the people of a far-distant mill.] THE RESTORATION OF ASSYRIA. 269 island in the west, whose name in the day of their prosperity their forefathers knew not, but of whose existence haply some Phoenician traders might have told, as a race of fierce barbarians who dwelt beyond the setting sun. How are the mighty fallen ! But again ; as we have found them coupled to- gether in Hebrew prophecy, first in their wealth and power, and then in their downfall and humiliation, so also the seer's imagination pictures them united once more in a glorious resurrection. Intimately connected with the destiny of Israel have they been in the past ; not less intimately connected shall they be in the future. They have been the great oppres- sors of God's chosen race ; they have enslaved the sons and daughters of His people; they have held them captive in a foreign land. A time shall come when all shall be changed. The great trumpet shall be blown ; the exiles shall issue forth at the summons from the land of their captivity. The caravans shall troop homeward across the deserts from Assyria in the North-west and from Egypt in the South- east. The streams of outcasts shall gather in the long-lost land, and 'shall worship the Lord in the holy mount at Jerusalem.' And not only so. Their masters and gaolers shall be their fellow-disciples and their fellow-travellers. A supreme attraction shall draw them in one. All shall join hand in hand 270 THE RESTORATION OF ASSYRIA. [xvm. in one common faith; 'In that day shall Israel be third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing, in the midst of the land : whom the Lord of Hosts shall bless saying, Blessed be Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel Mine inheritance.' This glorious consummation, what does it mean ? How shall it be fulfilled ? Hebrew prophecy is a gospel before the Gospel, a message of glad tidings, a presage of joy and hope. Above the deepest wail of despair the paean of triumph is ever heard. The note which lingers latest is a note of hope, of restora- tion, of renewal, a promise of a new heaven and a new earth. Are Assyria and Egypt then mere types and figures of a glorious future, when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea — as truly types and figures as the lion and the ox, the asp and the cockatrice, in the mountain of the Lord ? Or ought we to expect a literal fulfilment ? In some sense this prophecy has already been fulfilled. The Church of Assyria and the Church of Egypt were both conspicuous in the early ages of Christianity. Each did a notable work in the spread of the Gospel. But is the prophecy exhausted by these earlier achievements ? Who shall say ? Of the Coptic Christians, the modern representa- tives of the once-powerful and learned Church of xvni.] THE RESTORATION OF ASSYRIA. 271 Egypt — the Church of Clement and Origen, of Atha- nasius and Cyril — I have no commission to speak this morning. It is for the remnant of the Assyrian Church— the Church of the East— that I ask your sympathy and support. Shall not their place in ancient prophecy plead for them, that they appeal not in vain ? Or, if the aspirations of prophecy fall dead on our ears, will not the facts of history enforce attention for this appeal ? Need I remind you how large a place this nation has occupied in the records of the human race since that day, of which we read in the earliest pages of our Bibles, when 'Asshur went forth and builded Nineveh?' Need I tell you how much the education of mankind owes to the ancient civilisation of Assyria transmitted through other races — a civili- sation attested by those monuments disentombed by your own Layard, deciphered by your own Rawlinson, stored up among your treasures in your own National Museum ? Need I further call to your remembrance how this Syriac-speaking people is intimately con- nected with your most sacred inheritance ? A Syrian was the father not only of the family of Israel, but of the people of Christ. The language which Abraham heard in Ur of the Chaldees, which probably was his mother tongue, which certainly his Syrian kinsmen two generations later still continued to speak, was 272 THE RESTORATION OF ASSYRIA. [xna, the same which is heard to this day in the services of the humble Nestorian sanctuaries near the shores of the salt lakes of Van and Urmi. Thus their liturgy is a Jegar-Sahadutha — a pillar of witness between us and them, like that cairn erected by Jacob and Laban long centuries ago, a pledge however not of separation but of unity. And, if this speech min- istered at the cradle of the old Dispensation, so did it herald in the birth of the new. It is a tradition — not an improbable tradition — of the Nestorian Chris- tians, that those wise men on whom the light of that first Epiphany shone, summoning them by the guid- ance of a star to the cradle of the Incarnate Word, came from these very regions. At all events the Syriac-speaking races were the earliest to receive the Gospel of Christ. The first Christian sovereign was Abgar, the ruler of Edessa. This at least is a fair inference from the fable of the letters interchanged between him and our Lord. Hence in very remote times the Christian communities in these parts were numerous and flourishing. They had their schools of learning at Edessa, at Amida, at Nisibis. They took an active part in the great Councils of the Church. Then, towards the middle of the fifth cen- tury, came the Nestorian schism, which severed the great bulk of Eastern Christianity from the Catholic Church. Whether this rent in the seamless coat of xviii.] THE RESTORATION OF ASSYRIA. 273 Christ might not have been averted by patience and explanation, whether the difference was not one largely of expression rather than of doctrine I shall not stop to enquire. In the modern descendants of the ancient Nestorian Church, at all events, divines have failed to find any distinct traces of heretical doctrine beyond the name and the tradition. However this may be, the fatal severance was made. The head-quarters of these Nestorians thus parted from the main body were Assyria and Persia. Breaking loose from the great patriarchate of Antioch, they organized them- selves under a patriarch of their own, whose see was Babylon and whose proud title was ' Patriarch of the East' Then commenced a splendid career of evangelistic zeal which it would be difficult to match in any Church at any age. If missionary achieve- ment be the safest test of a living Church, then no Church has ever manifested a fuller life than this. 'Christianity was preached,' writes Gibbon, 'to the Bactrians, the Huns, the Persians, the Indians, the Persarmenians, the Medes and the Elamites ; the barbaric Churches from the Gulf of Persia to the Caspian Sea were almost infinite.... The pepper coast of Malabar, and the isles of the Ocean, Socotora and Ceylon, were peopled with an increasing multitude of Christians.... The zeal of the Nestorians,' he con- tinues, ' overleaped the limits which had confined the S. S. 18 274 THE RESTORATION OF ASSYRIA. [xvm. ambition and curiosity both of the Greeks and Persians. The missionaries of Balch and Samarcand pursued without fear the footsteps of the roving Tartar, and insinuated themselves into the camps of the valleys of Imaus and the banks of the Selinga.' Even in farthest China the marks of their footprints have been found. The patriarch of Babylon — the patriarch of the East — was once the head of a vast ecclesiastical organization which comprised not less than twenty-five provinces, each under its own arch- bishop or metropolitan. This splendid record of a mighty past the enfeebled remnant of Assyrian Christendom lays at the feet of you English Churchmen to-day. Oppressed through long centuries by alien races of an alien religion, despised and trampled under foot, harried and devas- tated by barbarian hordes, they have nevertheless retained their ancient faith, and they cry to you to help them. They want not your silver and gold ; but they crave your sympathy; they ask for education at your hands ; they cry to you to lift them up from their depressed condition, and to reinstate them intellectually, morally, and spiritually. Can you resist this appeal ? It is not the aimless, passionate cry of children, restless and seeking they know not what. It is sustained, and it is definite. The first appeal was made to Archbishop Howley xviil.] THE RESTORATION OF ASSYRIA. 275 half-a- century ago. It has been repeated twice and thrice. Listen to the language of their earlier petition : ' The prophecy of Jeremiah has been fulfilled in us. My people have fallen into the hands of the enemy, and there was none to help us. ..Mine eyes,' continues the patriarch, ' are dimmed with tears, my heart is troubled, my glory is poured out upon the earth for the destruction of my people... Our spiritual enemies mock us for having placed our dependence after God upon our English brethren, and taunt us, saying, "The English only laugh at you, nor can they give you any assistance, nor do they keep their promises." I entreat you for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ that you do not reject our petition.' Or listen to these words again, addressed by the Assyrian bishops and clergy to Archbishop Tait : 'We implore the Lord Jesus Christ, and cast our- selves at your feet who are His disciples, beseeching you to compassionate the condition of our people, who are wandering over our mountains like sheep without a shepherd, and send us some of your mission- aries and preachers to guide us into the way of life : for verily all are gone astray, each following his own device through our utter lack of pastors, instructors, and counsellors. We are in the condition of father- less and motherless orphans. We are persecuted and have cried aloud for help, but no one has come to 276 THE RESTORATION OF ASSYRIA. [xvm. comfort us. Woe unto us, for we have erred and are benighted. Therefore we beseech you, O Fathers, to save us from the all-devouring sea which surrounds us ; deliver us from its overwhelming billows, and rescue us from the fierce storms which threaten our destruction.' Last of all comes a letter from the present patriarch to the present archbishop, thank- ing him for sending them missionaries, and concluding with the quaint old-world address, ' Given in the cell of Kochanes, in the mountains of Assyria, on the bank of Pishon, the river of Eden.' Can you resist the pathos, the directness, the fervour of such appeals? If you turn a deaf ear, others, though uninvited, are ready enough to re- spond. At this very moment the danger to this ancient Assyrian Church which has shown such zeal for Christ in the past, is that it may be absorbed and swallowed up between two rivals who are awaiting its decease and claim to be its residuary legatees. On the one hand there is the Church of Rome. True to her tradition, she has striven to fasten her yoke on this venerable Church of the far-East. She succeeded a long time ago in detaching a portion of these Assyrian Christians, and gathering them into a Uniat Church under herself. But they are restless under this foreign yoke. A distant colony of this Assyrian Church — the Christians of S. Thomas xviii.] THE RESTORATION OF ASSYRIA. 277 at Malabar — broke loose from Rome and re-asserted its independence, as soon as external force was re- moved. In Assyria itself the Romanised Church has been divided by a schism since the Vatican Council. Papal infallibility was a burden too heavy for its tolerance. Is it too much to hope that the child thus estranged for a time will return to its mother's arms ? This depends largely on the help and encouragement that the Assyrian Church receives from you. On the other hand, the American Presbyterians by the offer of education and other kindly services have drawn away considerable numbers from their ancient Church with its Apostolic ministry, and thus a new schism has been introduced. Who shall blame either the one or the other ? Certainly not I. They both maintain large and effective establishments. They both spend large sums annually. They both make great sacrifices to their convictions and their sense of duty. They may well put us to shame. Put the rulers of the old Assyrian Church want neither. They have no wish to subject themselves to the yoke of a foreign domination. They have no desire to surrender their ancient three- fold ministry inherited from Apostolic times. They are an independent National Church like ourselves, and they wish to remain so. They will not have as their teachers — I am using their language, not my 278 THE RESTORATION OF ASSYRIA. [xvm. own — ' men leavened with the leaven of the Popes or with the leaven of the American Presbyterians.' The aim of the Archbishop's Mission is to main- tain, to educate, to strengthen, to reunite this ancient Assyrian Church. Its last intent is to proselytize or to form an Anglican Communion. It therefore deserves the best support of all English Churchmen — nay, of all Churchmen belonging to the Anglican Communion in England or America or elsewhere. It demands the sympathy of those who are loyal to the principles of the English Reformation, for the leading principle of that Reformation was the in- dependence of National Churches. It claims the support of all who respect the tradition of Apostolic order and primitive rules in the government and relation of Churches, for its aim is to strengthen and support this rule. Let mc speak freely on this point. In other questions affecting the relation of the Anglican Communion to other branches of the Church, there is often a conflict between the claims of truth and of order. It is difficult to reconcile these claims. No such difficulty bars the way here. Here we interpose in defence of order. Here we intervene not as intruders from without, but as friends invited by the authoritative rulers themselves. Is not this then the very invitation to which we should give a prompt, an unhesitating, an eager re- xviii.] THE RESTORATION OF ASSYRIA. 279 sponse ? Surely at this moment we can ill afford to shut our eyes to the grave responsibilities which God has laid upon us as members of this Anglican Com- munion — at this moment when representatives of our Church are gathered together from all parts of the world, from the great American Republic, from our Indian Empire, from our Canadian dominion, from our colonies in three Continents, from Australia, from the islands of the Ocean. What lesson does this fact read to us ? Does it not tell us that we English Churchmen of all Christian communities can least afford to limit our sympathies to merely parochial, merely diocesan, merely insular interests — that we before all men have solemn duties towards the Churches of Christendom far and wide. Is not this so ? And, if it be so, what will be said of us, if the first time, the very first time, when we are asked to fulfil any such obligation, when the call of duty is clear and the question is free from complications, when a poor, down-trodden Church, with an ancient lineage of which we might well be proud, comes to us on bended knee, we spurn them from us ; if we in our ecclesiastical self-complacency, we with our bones unbroken and our purse intact, pass the robbed and wounded wayfarer by on the other side, just deigning to throw a look at him and thus piercing him with a fresh pang by our heartlessness. I cannot pretend that there are no flaws in these 2 So THE RESTORATION OF ASSYRIA. [xvnt Assyrian Christians. If it were so, they would not need your aid. Of heresy indeed — beyond the name and the tradition which clings to them — they have been acquitted by competent judges."" But they are weighed down by not a few oppressive traditions inherited from the past. You must help them to throw these off. They are very ignorant. Here is the root of the evil. You must step in and instruct their ignorance. They want to be instructed, but not at the price of their independence. The Archbishop's Mission, for which I plead, has been working for some time with excellent effect. English Clergy have been found to resign positions of competency at home, and to work there without stipend, receiving board and lodging and nothing more. But the Mission needs greatly strengthening, if it is to fulfil its purpose. More men are wanted ; buildings must be erected ; the Clergy School, the High Schools, the numerous Village Schools cannot be conducted without considerable expense. Hence the call upon your liberality. Let the response be generous as the cause demands, as your position demands, as Christ Himself demands. 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