tihvavy of Che l:heolo0ical ^tmimxy 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
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(Xy'dmuci I mUm 
 
SERMONS 
 
 PREACHED IN THE \*^ >^ 
 
 .^^5^ '"'^ 
 
 CHURCH OF OUR SAVIOUR, 
 
 JENKINTOWN, PA. 
 
 BY THE LATE EECTOR, 
 
 Key. R. FRANCIS COLTON, 
 
 PBOFESSOB OF HEBREW IN THE PROT. EPISCOPAL DIVINITY SCHOOL, WEST PHILADELPHIA 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 EPISCOPAL BOOK STORE. 
 
 1224 CHESTNUT STREET. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 NO. PAGE. 
 
 I. INSPIEATION OF SCRIPTUEE, 1 
 
 Gal. vi. 11. 
 
 II. THE CHEISTIAN STANDARD, J5 
 
 Rom. xii. 3. 
 
 III. THE BURNING BUSH, 27 
 
 Ex. iii. 3. 
 
 IV. MOSES AND HIS MISSION, 39 
 
 DEVOTION. TO DUTY THAT DOES NOT LOOK TO THE EEWAED. 
 
 Ex. iii. 12. 
 
 V. THE POWER THAT WORKETH IN US, 53 
 
 Eph. iii. 20. 
 
 VI. HEARING AND DOING, 66 
 
 St. James i. 22. 
 
 VII. ISRAEL S DEMAND FOR A KING, 79 
 
 1 Sam. xii. 12. 13. 
 
 VIII. SUNDAY AND ITS OBSERVANCE, 92 
 
 iii 
 
IV CONTENTS. 
 
 NO. PAGE. 
 
 IX. all-saints', 104 
 
 Heb. xi. 40. 
 
 X. ST. MATTHEW, 117 
 
 THE VALUE OF THE OBSERVANCE OF SAINTS* DAYS. 
 
 XI. THE CENTURION AT CAPERNAUM, 291 
 
 HOW CAN I DO god's WORK ? 
 
 St. Matt. viii. 8. 
 
 XII. STRENGTH IN THE LORD, 142 
 
 Eph. vi. 10. 
 
 XIII. CHRIST FOUND IN THE PATH OF DAILY DUTY, 154 
 St. John xxi. 3. 
 
 XIV. CONFIRMATION, 167 
 
 XV. CHARITY AND ITS ABUSES, 179 
 
 XVI. THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE, 192 
 
 Heb. vii. 16. 
 
 XVII. CERTAINTY, 206 
 
 1 St. John iv. 12, 13. 
 
INTEODUOTION. 
 
 The proper disposal of the M8S. which constitute these sermons, has 
 been a subject of anxious thought. They were written, and preached 
 for the most part in Jenkmtown, Pa., where, nearly twelve years ago, 
 the Rev. Richaed Feancis Colton, then in the first ardor of youth, 
 came to minister as Rector in the Church of Our Saviour. 
 
 Combining with his parish duties the Professorship of Hebrew in the 
 Divinity School at West Philadelphia, he lived his quiet student life 
 away from the city, adding day by day to the vast intellectual store that 
 made him emphatically "a scholar, and a ripe and good one." 
 
 He had been ordained to the Diaconate in the Church of the Atone- 
 ment in Philadelphia, on the 21st of February, 1866, and officiated in 
 that church until June, 1867, as Assistant to the Rev. Benjamin Wat- 
 son, D. D. 
 
 When, after a few hours' illness, on the 28th of July, 1880, it was 
 known that he had been taken away, all in his parish felt it to be a 
 personal loss. It seemed impossible to associate the idea of death with 
 that bright, genial nature that carried an atmosphere of health wherever 
 he went. 
 
 To those of his congregation who knew him best, these pages will 
 need no explanation. They will reiterate with new force, as of a voice 
 from the dead, their message of earnest appeal to duty, and their keen 
 appreciation of the sorrows and the struggles that he had so often shared 
 in sympathy. 
 
VI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 That he shrank from the publication of any of his sermons during his 
 life is well known ; but now that he can speak only through them, they 
 are felt to be too sacred, too important a trust to be withheld. 
 
 They are printed as he left them, without revision, even when it 
 seems obvious that his own hand would have made changes. They are 
 the best memorial of a noble, manly nature, that was child-like in ten- 
 derness for suffering, and stern to severity in hatred of folly and shams. 
 
 M. E. S. 
 Philadelphia, Feb. 1, 1882. 
 
SERMOJ^S. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 " Ye see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own 
 hand." — Gal. vi. 11. 
 
 The literal meaning of St. Paul's words in this passage 
 is : " Ye see in what large letters I have written unto 
 you with mine own hand." The passage has received 
 several different interpretations. It has been supposed by 
 Chrysostom and others that the words " point to the rude 
 and ill-formed characters in which the letter to the Gala- 
 tians was written, as though he gloried in his imperfect 
 knowledge of Greek." But the word used means ''how 
 large," and "how large" only. According to others, we 
 have here an allusion to that thorn in the flesh to which 
 he elsewhere refers, and which was, apparently, in part, at 
 least, -an infirmity of vision. The explanation of the way 
 in which he came thus to speak then, will harmonize per- ■ 
 fectly with the tone that prevails throughout this Epistle 
 — the deep personal affection which leads St. Paul with 
 almost passionate yearning, to plead with his spiritual 
 children to give up the delusions into which false Jewish 
 teachers were leading them; — which finds vent again and 
 again, in words the most exquisitely tender and pathetic. 
 
 1 
 
2 THE INSriRATION OF SCHirTURK. 
 
 The expression here employed summons up the picture ot" 
 the care-worn Apostle, mourning over his converts in 
 their abandonment of the great spiritual truths he had so 
 patiently preached to them, and their too-ready relapse 
 into bondage to the weak and beggarly elements of the 
 world, to work unrighteozisness. Unwilling to lose any 
 possible advantage in his earnest and sorrowful pleadings 
 with them — unwilling to forego the influence which 
 might perhaps be exerted upon them by a more vivid 
 recollection of his personal sacrifices for them, or of the 
 love which had once made them willing to pluck out their 
 own eyes if they might only relieve his, and so lighten a 
 little the burden resting on his overladen shoulders, — he 
 rejects the aid of the scribe, who, as we learn from the 
 ending of other letters, ordinarily wrote at his dictation, 
 and, painfully struggling with his dimmed eyesight, writes 
 out himself in full, in such large letters as alone he could 
 plainly discern, the utterance of his grieved and wounded 
 heart, of his holy indignation at those who had dared to 
 undermine by false teaching the foundations he had so 
 toilsomely laid, of his burning logic, consuming the hay 
 and stubble which they had tried to put in the place of 
 that one foundation, Jesus Christ the Lord. 
 
 Does not that simple word bring before you with mar- 
 vellous clearness, not only the personal character of the 
 great Apostle, but the spirit in which he labored — the 
 passionate self-devotion with which he gave himself up to 
 his work ? Do you not feel as though the eighteen cen- 
 turies that part us were done away, and you stood face to 
 face with that sublime hero of the faith? Do not the 
 burning words take on a fresh fire and meaning, as though 
 from some old mosaic the dustof ages were cleared away. 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF SCKIPTURE. 3 
 
 and its tints shone out as clear as when Pompeii was 
 buried in the ashes of Vesuvius. 
 
 I am led by the occurrence in the Epistle for the day of 
 these words of St. Paul, to think of the general subject 
 which they suggest — I mean the preservation in the 
 Scriptures of the personal characteristics of the holy men 
 of old whom the Holy Ghost moved from time to time to 
 write them, and so of Inspiration in general. The whole 
 question of the Inspiration of the Bible* is one regarding 
 which there prevail mistakes which are dangerous in both 
 directions. On the one hand you find ardent believers 
 who feel that the Bible is nothing worth unless they can 
 hold that every word of it is the absolute and immediate 
 utterance of the Holy Ghost ; and this in such a sense that 
 the inspired writer was no more than the passive instru- 
 ment in the hand of the Spirit — no more than a pen 
 moved and guided by God. Seeing how much in Scrip- 
 ture is impossible to reconcile with this, many, on the 
 other hand, attach to the variations of style, — to the large 
 class of passages like the text, — an importance so exces- 
 sive, that they can nowhere discern anything more 
 than the utterances of men who enjoyed, indeed, a 
 peculiarly close connection with God, but who never- 
 theless, spoke in a manner, and delivered truths that 
 need no explanation further than their possession of large 
 spiritual experience and deep spiritual insight. 
 
 Either view, pushed to such an extreme, is guilty of 
 overlooking facts which lie, as it were, upon the surface of 
 the subject. And, inasmuch as none should be so eager 
 to have and to hold the exact truth on this matter as 
 those who wish to reverence God's Eevelation as it de- 
 serves, none should be readier to examine the facts before 
 
4 THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 US carefully and with an unbiased mind. Let us remem- 
 ber how the truth of Christ's incarnation has been over- 
 looked by the same spirit which would be wise beyond 
 what is written ; let us recall the lamentable consequences 
 of that superstitious spirit which is not content with the 
 simplicity that marks God's works, but which runs to 
 seed in the invention of miracles and visions. And wise 
 in the knowledge that God is, above all, reasonable in his 
 demands upon ofir faith, and gives us the why and the 
 wherefore for even the mysteriousness of the mysteries he 
 displays, let us approach this subject with the honest de- 
 sire to see what the record itself should reasonably lead 
 us to believe. 
 
 And in the first place, does any portion of any of the 
 numerous books, the collection of which forms what we call 
 the Bible — the Book — does any part of it profess to be an 
 immediate revelation from God ? In the book of Esther 
 the name of God does not occur. The historical books, as 
 to their historical portion, make no such claim. The Gos- 
 pels do not pretend to the character of immediate revela- 
 tions. What are we to conclude from this? That they 
 are only compilations, written by men with no greater 
 claims upon our belief than any ordinary annalist, or eye 
 witness of the facts related ? If such were the necessary 
 conclusion — if there were no reasons to lead us to any be- 
 lief, what then ? It would be a great shock to our ordi- 
 nary beliefs certainly ; it would shatter at a blow much of 
 what is endeared to us by a thousand hallowed associa- 
 tions ; it would make needful a great change in the man- 
 ner in which we ordinarily make use of the Bible ; but 
 still, supposing the Scriptures to make no claims of this 
 kind,— supposing that by carefully searching we could find 
 
THE INSPIEATION OF SCRIPTUEE. 6 
 
 no ground for our customary belief except the tradition of 
 a few thousands of years, how could we dare to father 
 upon God immediate responsibility for that which we 
 should have no reason for attributing directly to Him? 
 Would it be honoring or dishonoring to God ? Would it 
 be pious or impious ? Ask yourself that question, and 
 you will have prepared yourself to go on by honestly 
 answering : " No. If this belief is only a vain human 
 tradition — if it has no real ground, I must give it up — 
 I have no right to ascribe the Bible to God." 
 
 I have put this so strongly because I am sure it is the 
 only way in which we can make firm the foundation of our 
 faith. St. Paul himself will be the first to bid you be 
 ready to give a reason for the faith that is in you. So 
 only can you stand firm. 
 
 I have said that certain books and certain parts of books 
 make no express claim to being inspired. Do we find any- 
 where a claim of this kind ? Unquestionably we do, and 
 a claim quite unmistakable; Constantly is this the case 
 throughout the four later books of Moses, and in the Pro- 
 phets, so far as the Old Testament is concerned. " Thus 
 saith the Lord" is the perpetually recurring introduction 
 to the sublime messages of the Hebrew seers. Even grant- 
 ing that the Gospels do not profess to be inspired, they still 
 remain, on the lowest view, narratives of the life and death 
 of Christ, written at all events by men who were eye-wit- 
 nesses (as St. Matthew and St. John), or men having ac- 
 cess to all sources of knowledge of the facts they relate. 
 And what do they say of Christ's way of speaking about 
 the Old Testament? We know that He spoke of all the 
 three divisions into which the Jews distributed their sacred 
 books — the Law, the Psalms and the Prophets ; that the 
 
6 THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Jews had the same books which we have now, and that 
 Christ quotes and refers to them as being the Word of God. 
 There is no more hesitation in His manner of using them — 
 no more doubt that He was employing the words of infalli- 
 ble truth — than we have to-day. Their prophecies concern- 
 ing himself He makes use of as being Divine revelations, 
 which He had left the bosom of the Father to fulfil. Mere- 
 ly casual expressions, as we might think, such as Jehovah's 
 calling himself the Grod of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, 
 Christ uses to prove the (then) dimly revealed doctrine of 
 immortality, as though every word of the Old Testament 
 were pregnant with spiritual truth. He exhorts those who 
 were cautiously hesitating about the acknowledgment of 
 His claims, to search the Scriptures, approves their belief 
 that in them they had eternal life, and asserts in a way 
 which can only mean that they spoke the truth, that they 
 are they which testified of Him. 
 
 I address, of course, only those who believe in the 
 divinity of Christ, which would stand firm were the inspi- 
 ration of the Gospels denied. Once grant the Gospels are 
 honest accounts of Christ, and you have a character which 
 is its own sufficient evidence; you regard His words as 
 strong enough evidence of the statements He makes. 
 Standing on this impregnable foundation, look behind you 
 and before you — upon the Old Testament, and upon the 
 Apostolic writings of the New Testament. You find Him 
 distinctly promising that his Apostles should have the 
 Holy Ghost to guide them into all truth, bidding them not 
 to think beforehand what they should say when summoned 
 before their enemies, because the Holy Ghost should teach 
 them what to say, ** For it is not ye that speak, but the 
 spirit of your Father that speaketh in you." A more un- 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE. 7 
 
 limited promise, so far as the fulness of inspiration is 
 concerned, it would be hard to conceive. I ask nothing 
 further than the acknowledgment of the honesty of the 
 report given of His words by St. John, His most intimate 
 and beloved companion; and we must look upon the 
 Apostles as men to whom it was promised that the Holy 
 Ghost should take of the things of Christ and show them 
 unto them. But in the last hours of our Saviour's life, He 
 prayed not for them only who then slumbered near Him, 
 but for those as well who should afterwards believe on 
 Him. If we believe as Christians in the divinity of Christ, 
 which I here make no attempt to prove, such thoughts 
 must continually have been present to His mind ; and in- 
 deed His words afford frequent glimpses of both His antici- 
 pations for the future of His Church, and His immovable 
 confidence that those anticipations would be fulfilled. Does 
 not the supposition amount to a certainty, then, that the 
 Holy G-host, which was promised to teach the Apostles 
 what to say and how to say it before courts and syna- 
 gogues, would not desert them when they came to set 
 down in writing, for various exigencies, the truths of 
 Christ's kingdom — that this divine illumination would not 
 be confined to fleeting words uttered by the lips, but would 
 extend likewise, and particularly, to the writings which 
 were to hand down those truths in permanent shape to 
 generations yet unborn? And if, as Christ always as- 
 sumes, the Holy Ghost spake of old by Prophet and 
 Psalmist, so that their words could be unhesitatingly ap- 
 plied to the proof and illustration of divine truth, if the 
 human mind could serve as the mouthpiece of the divine 
 mind in days of partial light, much more, if possible, was 
 it to be expected that under the dispensation of the Spirit 
 
8 THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 that mysterious influence should be permanent and dis- 
 tinct. But turn from suppositions and probabilities : ask 
 the Apostles of what they were conscious in the depths of 
 their own souls. Does St. Paul impress you as a weak- 
 minded, visionary character, easily led astray by flattering 
 fancies, or as a clear-minded, hard-headed, thoroughly 
 honest man, who never feared to do or say anything which 
 he believed to be right, and yet who could speak when he 
 was persuaded he was wrong, even to the length of sacri- 
 ficing his life to the propagation of the Gospel which at 
 first he had persecuted? What did he think of the way 
 in which he had acquired the truth he so fearlessly pro- 
 claimed? In this very epistle, wrung from his very 
 heart's blood, and whose words were, as I have said, pain- 
 fully traced in those great letters by one whose bodily 
 eyes were dim, but whose spiritual vision was certainly 
 not overcast — in this same epistle to the Galatians he says, 
 '' I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it but 
 by the revelation of Jesus Christ." Again : " The 
 things that are freely given unto us of God"; "We 
 speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but 
 which the Holy Ghost teacheth." Again and again in St. 
 Paul's epistles, in those of St. Peter and of St. John, 
 particularly in the Kevelation, is this inspiration referred 
 to, as something not so much claimed as universally ac- 
 knowledged. 
 
 At last the canon of Scripture is closed. For a time 
 the books of the New Testament are not collected into a 
 single volume. Do we find those who knew, or those who 
 immediately followed the Apostles, ignorant of their 
 writings, or of the Gospels of St. Luke or St. Mark, or 
 quoting as New Testament Scripture anything now lost, 
 
THE INSPIEATION OF SCRIPTURE. \) 
 
 or acknowledged as uninspired by the Churcli of after 
 ages? Not at all. The very same writings which now 
 make up the New Testament, though, as I have said, not 
 yet collected into one volume, are their New Testament as 
 they are ours. Though peculiar circumstances seem to have 
 hindered the spread of St. James and St. Peter's second 
 Epistles, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Apocalypse, 
 yet we find them early quoted as Scripture ; and at the 
 very time when what are called the books of the Apocry- 
 pha, or forged New Testament, were universally rejected, 
 these are only doubted in some quarters and are finally 
 received with entire unanimity. The church was very 
 cautious in admitting books to the canon ; but the exist- 
 ence of doubts, followed by investigation and consequent 
 abandonment of those doubts, constitutes only a stronger 
 proof of genuineness. 
 
 Such may be offered as a rapid summary of the light 
 in which we are taught by Scripture itself to regard the 
 various books composing the Bible. Christ sets His seal 
 to each of the Jewish divisions of the Old Testament, and 
 promises to His Apostles full illumination by the Holy 
 Ghost in discharging their duties. The Church, begin- 
 ning from the Apostles' time, carefully sifts the evidences 
 for the genuineness of inspired writings, rejects a con- 
 siderable number, and, after investigating the claims of 
 some which were not so generally known, and hence were 
 doubted, makes use henceforth of our New Testament 
 books, and the Old Testament, as the only works laying 
 rightful claim to full inspiration. 
 
 So far I have left untouched the question : '' What is 
 inspiration? " To answer it let us look again at the facts. 
 What seems the object of these books? What is their 
 
 1* 
 
10 THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 general character ? Are the historical books full in their 
 narrative ? By no means. Beginning with the creation, 
 they confine themselves almost at once to the history of 
 one comparatively small portion of the human race. The 
 circle narrows and narrows, with only an occasional 
 glimpse of what is going on outside it. The history of 
 only one family is carried down to the Deluge. When 
 the world begins again, the same process strikes us ; until 
 at last and definitely, we find Abraham's family occupying 
 the entire canvass. Thenceforward, till the division of 
 the Jewish monarchy, and beyond it, only the chosen 
 people engross our attention. But we have by no means 
 a consecutive account even of them. Great gaps occur, 
 embracing many years, for which we are referred to the 
 chronicles of the kingdoms. Important wars are only 
 incidentally mentioned. What is fully related, and rela- 
 ted too, in two separate works, is the religious history of 
 the people, and what has any, even remote, bearing upon 
 it. The worldly wisdom or unwisdom of this policy or 
 that, though plain to a child, is not commented upon; 
 while the religious element, as the cause of prosperity or 
 of reverses, is everywhere predominant. It is plain that 
 this, and only this, is the prime object of the history, 
 whether compiled from public or private documents or, so 
 to speak, original. The same thing is apparent in the 
 poetical books. Whether they are filled, like the Book of 
 Proverbs, with the application of God-fearing common 
 sense to the duties and the difficulties of every-day life, 
 or embody, like Job, the profound questionings of a great 
 soul struggling in the abyss of doubt, and emerging 
 triumphantly and humbly at last into the mountain air of 
 faith ; whether as in the Song of Solomon, the strength 
 
THE INSPIEATION OF SCRIPTURE. 11 
 
 and purity and constancy of wifely love be the subject, or 
 as in Ecclesiastes, the hollowness of sensuality, ambition 
 or mere culture, — the impotence of aught, save the fear of 
 God and obedience to His commandments, to satisfy the 
 most gifted soul ; — or again, as in the Psalms, the whole 
 range of spiritual truths and emotions, public and private, 
 past, present and future, individual and national ; — what- 
 ever be the theme, it always is one that finds its place 
 within the generous limits of divine truth, in its direct 
 application to the immortal spirit of man. The Prophets 
 and the Books of the New Testament are hardly more 
 truly, though they are more distinctly, directed to this 
 one end. General history, military history, national his- 
 tory as such, is not aimed at : the royal archives exist only 
 in extracts in books that have another object; the book 
 of the wars of the Lord has been allowed to perish. 
 Scientific truth is not the object : Solomon's book of 
 botany has been lost. The preservation of national bal- 
 lads, or even Teligious poems, is not sought : of the book 
 of Jasher we have only a few fragments. Nothing then, 
 which is distinctly appropriate to such objects need be 
 looked for in the Bible ; you are not to demand treatises 
 merely historical, ethical, scientific, or literary ; you are 
 not. to wonder at its being said that the sun rises and sets, 
 or stands still. According to the current conceptions of 
 men, not according to scientific demands, will the language 
 be shaped ; and however the miracle of Joshua may have 
 been performed, it was a miracle, and is told in the most 
 natural way. You are not to expect that the Greek of 
 the New Testament should be the purest Athenian Greek ; 
 it is in the dialect used by those for whom it was 
 written. The Bible claims only to be the voice of God 
 
12 THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 speaking infallibly to the soul of man ; and, while we may- 
 expect that it shall be truthful always, in reason, we are 
 not to demand that it shall reveal the true theory of the 
 solar system, or anything of the kind. It speaks honestly, 
 although it speaks according to men's common notions of 
 what we call science. Keligious truth alone being its 
 object, it speaks authoritatively and finally on that. It 
 does not profess to give you, in that respect, a certain 
 amount of truth, mixed with an indefinite quantity of 
 error. The way in which Christ and His Apostles treat 
 the Old Testament is the way in which we are to treat 
 both the Old and the New Testament. Infallible moral 
 and religious truth is revealed in them by God. 
 
 But the question with which I began recurs here. How 
 are we to explain the difference of style in different parts ? 
 How can styles so different be all the direct inspiration of 
 the Holy Ghost? St. Peter's words are the fullest answer 
 to this, and the fullest proof of the way in which, as I 
 have just said, the words of the Scripture at large are to 
 be regarded. " Prophecy came not in old time by the will 
 of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved 
 by the Holy Ghost." The supposition of a mere general 
 impulse to write or speak what is in the main truthful, 
 will not allow us to treat the Bible as Christ treated it, 
 with reverence for its very words. And yet the manifest 
 working of individual minds, character, education, shows 
 that the Holy Ghost made use of these, and did not treat 
 Isaiah, or St. Paul, or St. John as mere instruments, having 
 nothing to do with the message delivered by them. Here, 
 then, we have two sets of facts : on the one hand, judging 
 by Christ's treatment of the Old Testament, the verbal 
 inspiration of the Bible ; on the other, the free working 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE. 13 
 
 of individual peculiarities. I do not pretend to say how 
 these two facts co-exist ; I only say they do co-exist, and 
 that he who overlooks either is cutting away the founda- 
 tion on which the other reposes. To quote the words of a 
 theologian of whom our diocese and the Chiirch at large 
 may well be proud, '' The nature of inspiration is this — 
 a miraculous impulse from the Holy Ghost to write certain 
 things, reaching on in its controlling influence to the ac- 
 complishment of the writing of Scripture itself, bringing 
 into exercise and using all the powers, acquirements and 
 activities of the human writer, leaving his individual 
 characteristics, both intellectual and moral, in full play ; 
 yet always so as to secure that the result shall be infal- 
 lible truth; that the Word written shall be properly 
 ' the Word of God.' " 
 
 How to understand so peculiar an operation, I do not 
 pretend to tell. Prophecy is but another form of the same 
 mysterious activity of the Holy Ghost. Admitting it, we 
 admit the principle of verbal inspiration. But we are not, 
 I hope, to learn to-day that Revelation is a mystery, nor 
 to see why it must of necessity be a mystery. We should 
 only ask to know what the record itself tells of its source, 
 of its character, and of the respect we owe to it. Let me 
 say in closing that it assures us by its general tenor, as 
 well 'as by specific declarations, that all Scripture is given 
 by inspiration of God. Our Saviour showed us how we 
 are to revere its very words. We see in it the revelation 
 which it purports to give of the past and the future. We 
 find it '' quick and powerful, and sharper than any two- 
 edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of 
 soul and spirit, and a discerner of the thoughts and 
 intents of the heart." And yet in this complex message 
 
J 
 
 14 THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 we discern no less clearly the voice of Paul, of John, of 
 Job. We are concerned not so much to have a clear un- 
 derstanding of how all this comes to be, but only how we 
 may at the same time reverently hearken to Him whose 
 Almighty Word chaos and darkness heard and took their 
 flight, and also may hear speaking with us face to face the 
 holy men of old whose tones come to us unmingled 
 through all, like two opposite currents of electricity 
 through the one invisible cable, sunk into caverns of the 
 mysterious ocean. 
 
II. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN STANDARD. 
 
 " I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among 
 you, not to think more highly of himself than he oiight to think ; but 
 to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure 
 of faith." — RoM. xii. 3. 
 
 The direction things are taking in tlie world has many 
 consequences, not at first, nor to every man, clearly dis- 
 cernible. Look where we may, we find that governments 
 are beginning to give to all classes of people a larger and 
 more direct share in the management of public affairs. 
 Even where the course of history for hundreds of years 
 has been towards oppression, we find that more humane 
 and enlightened principles begin to be acted upon. Russia 
 frees her millions of serfs hardly better off than were our 
 own negro slaves ten years since, and admits them to .the 
 class of citizens (for the present condition of things can 
 hardly be more than temporary). As the result of a long 
 and terrible civil war, our slaves take their place as 
 American citizens, and whether capable of discharging 
 their' new duties or not, have those duties allotted to them^ 
 Prussia, England, Spain, all are moving in the same direc- 
 tion — that which removes from human beings the old 
 fetters by which they were bound, whether the chains be 
 simply deprivation of political rights and privileges, or 
 actual servitude. And we ourselves, whether wisely or 
 unwisely, time will show, have opened all offices to public 
 competition, have left everything that could possibly be 
 
 15 
 
16 THE CHRISTIAN STANDARD. 
 
 left, to the decision of the people at the polls, making the 
 most ignorant and incapable man of just as much import- 
 ance there, as we make him who is most fully qualified to 
 judge the questions of the day with calmness and imparti- 
 ality. 
 
 Such, no doubt, is the direction in which things are 
 drifting throughout the civilized world : what is to be the 
 end of it God only knows. But in the meantime there 
 are certain consequences resulting from this state of affairs 
 which are unquestionably good, while there are certain 
 others which are as unquestionably bad. Among the 
 former one must be aware of an increasing self-respect on 
 the part of him who is thus made, politically, the equal of 
 others, provided he has the elements of a manly character 
 within him. Air and sunlight are not more wholesome 
 for a tree than are liberty and equality for an honest, en- 
 ergetic and capable man. Then again, in rural districts 
 at least, sharing in political rights and duties, enlarges a 
 man's life. It gives him other and larger things to think 
 and act about, than are to be found among his scattered 
 neighbors, or among the affairs of his own narrow com- 
 munity. As we find it in this country more particularly, 
 where newspapers are so plentiful and so widely read, no 
 unprejudiced person need doubt that the possession of a 
 vote tends to elevate and enlarge many a mind that would 
 under other circumstances have lived its allotted years 
 hardly on a higher level than that of the brute. The 
 peasantry of some European countries as compared with 
 the nearest corresponding class among us, may be taken 
 as sufficient proof of this. 
 
 So much for one side of the matter. But on striking 
 the balance, we find that we must take into account a 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STANDARD. 17 
 
 great many other things, ordinarily lost sight of in our 
 more enthusiastic moments of pride in the institutions of 
 America — things calculated to lessen very greatly our 
 contempt for other countries and their systems. We find 
 for instance, that a terrible deal of corruption is caused 
 by making a vote so common as to give its possessor little 
 or no pride in it. The utter ignorance of a large propor- 
 tion of voters, again, is the reason why impostors and 
 scoundrels make them so easy a prey, while really honest 
 and competent men, unless they devote their lives to poli- 
 tics, must, as a general thing, stand in the background, 
 because they cannot, without losing their self-respect, con- 
 descend to practice the crafty, sneaking acts of the profes- 
 sional politician. All these things, and many more of the 
 same general kind, need to be always remembered by 
 every American citizen, lest he should be overmuch pufied 
 up by what is really fitted to arouse patriotic pride, and 
 especially, lest he should think that politics can do without 
 his own informed, honest interest and activity. 
 
 There is, however, one other consequence of which I 
 must speak, because it connects what I have said with 
 what I have to say. It has a certain influence, no doubt, 
 upon politics ; but only in the sense that what a man is 
 must afiect all his actions. It is this : finding himself the 
 equal at the polls, of every and any one else, however 
 prominent otherwise, many a man thinks himself equal to 
 all others in every way. If the question be one of large 
 and general interest, the man who has not an idea, or a 
 principle, counts for as much as another who is intelligent 
 and cultivated, and hence arises very often, a brutal desire 
 to exercise his power simply in order to annoy a neighbor 
 who is envied on account of superior wealth. Even where 
 
18 THE CHRISTIAN STANDARD. 
 
 this low and coarse jealousy does not exist, there is 
 a great temptation to undervalue those things which really 
 make one man another's better. I do not feel called upon 
 — no man is called upon — to respect another for his money 
 alone. That is one of the most contemptible and debas- 
 ing things in the world. But the qualities which com- 
 monly result in the acquisition of money, these, if honesty 
 be among them, are worthy of all honor, in their proper 
 place. In a word, character, goodness, honor, enterprise, 
 truthfulness are worthy of respect ; and he wholly misun- 
 derstands the meaning of our boasted American equality 
 who thinks, as so many of us seem to think, that because 
 one vote goes for as much as another, therefore one man 
 must be the equal, in other things, of all others. Especi- 
 ally is this ridiculous and short-sighted disposition notice- 
 able in regard to other qualities, which are not even so 
 readily tested in their practical effects as those of which I 
 have been speaking. Industry, thrift, and so on, generally 
 make so plain a mark, and bring in so rich results, that 
 no man can help acknowledging their value to a certain 
 point. But there are other qualities which are even more 
 worthy of respect than these, inasmuch as they have still 
 more to do with making a finished and complete character. 
 Education, refinement, courtesy, are among these; and, 
 for myself, I must say that these arouse far higher respect 
 in my mind than those f^iculties which simply enable one 
 to make money. Sometimes even these are recognized as 
 they should be; but as a general thing, I think every 
 thoughtful person must admit that among the coarsest, the 
 most ignorant, the most narrow-minded of our people 
 there is a disposition to think and talk as though they 
 were fully equal to any of their fellow-citizens — to pro- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STANDARD. 19 
 
 nounce opinions on things they know nothing about — to 
 take even a pride and satisfaction in showing to every one 
 that they do not admit any living man to be their superior. 
 Wherever this temper is called out by airs of superiority 
 not justified by facts, it may be excused ; there are few 
 things more foolish or more ridiculous than such preten- 
 sions when not grounded on real goodness and merit, 
 which is precisely the case in which you never see 
 them. 
 
 What I have been aiming at all along is to show that 
 our political system gives strength to a disposition which 
 human nature has already quite strongly enough — the 
 disposition to think more highly of one's self than one 
 ought to think — to undervalue those things which really 
 give a claim upon our respect and admiration. But that 
 which is the immediate cause of it all is the want of a 
 proper standard by which to judge of what makes a lofty 
 and noble man. Without this, no discipline can make us 
 noble. With this, we shall be doubly elevated in our 
 characters ; for there is nothing better fitted to ennoble a 
 man than genuine respect for what is good ; while this re- 
 quires as its condition, a correct notion of what good is. 
 
 Now in the text, the Apostle Paul gives us a very clear 
 notion of what this standard is. The Koman Christians 
 to whom he was writing, appear to have become involved 
 in a very childish dispute about the prominence to which 
 each was entitled. It was childish; and yet it was just 
 such a matter as men often get involved in, for want of 
 that true standard of goodness and merit without which 
 very absurd things monopolize a deal of the world's regard. 
 You remember that in that early age of the Church, when 
 multitudes could recollect the day of Pentecost, and the 
 
20 THE CHRISTIAN STANDARD. 
 
 descent of the Holy Ghost in flame upon the Apostles, 
 there was a class of divine gifts or " charisms " as they 
 were called, very frequently bestowed by the Spirit of God 
 upon members of the Church — gifts which gradually 
 ceased after the Apostles* death. Some of these, though 
 not all of the most remarkable of them, are mentioned in 
 the chapter from which the text is taken. Among them 
 were prophecy, gifts of healing, and performing other 
 miracles, and the power of speaking languages they had 
 never learned (though the person who spoke them did not, 
 ordinarily, understand what he said, but it had to be 
 translated for the edification of the people by some one 
 else, who, like the other, did not understand the language 
 except when under the immediate influence of the Spii^it). 
 Now the persons thus honored began, it would seem, to 
 take undue pride in these gifts, and to think, each one, 
 that he was superior to the rest. Forgetting that these 
 powers, just like the grace which had regenerated his 
 soul, were the free and undeserved gift of God, they 
 became puffed up, and no longer thought soberly of them- 
 selves as they ought to think. Therefore St. Paul found 
 it necessary quietly to rebuke them, and show them where 
 they were making a grievous mistake. He pointed out 
 that great Christian truth, of which we, too, need often to 
 be reminded, that the Church was like a body, which must 
 have a great many different parts in order to do its work 
 effectually, and that, instead of contending for superiority, 
 they should rather feel that each was closely connected 
 with every other. In harmony and love, not in wrangling 
 and disputing about position, they were to do God's work 
 and save their own souls. But if (or since) they must 
 have a standard, let them remember that he was the 
 
. THE CHRISTIAN STANDARD. 21 
 
 greatest among them who had m.ost faith. Not the man 
 who spoke most strange languages when under the special 
 influence of the Holy Ghost, not the man who could most 
 eloquently expound his neighbor's unknown message from 
 on high, not he who could heal most diseases, or who 
 could see most clearly what was going to happen to the 
 Church — none of these was entitled to the highest place 
 of honor; but he who believed most heartily in God, and 
 clung to his Divine Father with the most sincerity and 
 consistency. ITe was the best Christian, and as such, was 
 the man to honor. In proportion as a man had this gift 
 of faith, he might make himself easy about precedence 
 and place. He would find in God all the comfort and 
 pride that it was good for him to have. 
 
 What was sound advice for the Eoman Christians in the 
 first century, I suppose will fit us quite as well in the 
 nineteenth. If we are inclined to make much of ourselves 
 — to think that we amount to a good deal more than any 
 body else — if we find in ourselves a disposition to criticize 
 and pull to pieces what everybody is doing because we are 
 so very, very wise — if we undertake to pass our solemn 
 judgments on religious, or Church, or political matters 
 that we have never studied and know nothing particular 
 about, when people who have devoted much time and at- 
 tention to them give opinions difiering from what we hap- 
 pen to fancy — under all these various circumstances it may 
 easily be that we are not simply making fools of ourselves, 
 but likewise, are encouraging in our souls something that 
 will make it much harder for us to enter the Kingdom of 
 Heaven. It is not only because Christ said so that we feel 
 that undue pride stands terribly in the way of true spirit- 
 uality. Our every-day experience shows that it has a 
 
22 THE CHRISTIAN STANDARD. 
 
 similiar influence in hindering us from getting any good 
 qualities we may have into working order. We do not 
 work patiently to find out the truth of something; we 
 jump hastily at an opinion ; and whatever we first think, 
 hit or miss, must be right because we have thought it, or 
 caught it. We can never grow any wiser, because we 
 think we already know everything that is worth knowing. 
 We cannot join in anything where we have not the first 
 place ; and so we join in nothing at all. Hold a pin's head 
 close enough to your eye, and you will find that it hides 
 from you a great number of things a good deal larger than 
 you are. So this foolish pride and self-esteem kills your 
 spiritual life by making everything else seem small, and by 
 giving birth to the feeling that if you cannot be at the 
 head you will do nothing. 
 
 See how finely St. Paul's advice meets this danger. We 
 are to measure ourselves and our importance by our faith. 
 Now no man can have true faith who has not at the same 
 time a deep feeling of his own weakness and sinfulness. 
 Ask yourself what times have been fullest of spiritual joy 
 and trust. Were they not precisely those periods when 
 you felt most humble — most capable of throwing your 
 whole self into the arms of God, and asking him to do 
 with you as he thought best ? Does not your soul get 
 heavier — do you not find prayer and meditation harder, 
 when you are satisfied with yourself, and have lost that 
 deep feeling of the absolute necessity of being continually 
 bathed in the atoning blood of Christ ? No answer but 
 one can be given to these questions by any man who 
 knows from his own experience what rcHgion is. We can 
 lay it down as a universal rule, that when a Christian is 
 humble, then he is growing ; when ho is puffed up, then 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STANDARD. 23 
 
 his growth toward God is very feeble or utterly at a 
 standstill. 
 
 There is, of course, such a thing as understanding what 
 you know, and what you can do, and taking an honest 
 pride in the capacity which God has given you, and which 
 you have patiently cultivated, to the best of your ability. 
 There is likewise such a thing as independence, and a de- 
 termination to hold your own against people who would 
 (as we say) " impose upon " you. They are both things 
 which are important to true manliness and worthy of all 
 respect. But they are also very easy to push too far. And 
 the best means of avoiding that mistake, is to cultivate 
 Christian /a-it A which rounds and completes the character, 
 because it brings us more into the likeness of Him who is 
 the model on which our lives are to be shaped. With a 
 deep feeling of our dependence upon God we can run but 
 little risk of thinking too highly of ourselves on account 
 of what He has given us. With true love for Christ, there 
 will arise of itself a love towards our fellow-creatures, 
 which will instruct us, better than any formal rules ever 
 can, what are our rights, and above all, what are our duties 
 towards them. We shall solve many a difficulty, and 
 avoid many a snare, by fixing our attention not so much 
 on what is due to us, as on what is due to others, and 
 especially to Christ. 
 
 I have spoken of the effects upon ourselves of cultivating 
 humility and faith in our own souls. But there is another 
 matter directly connected with the subject, which may 
 fairly enough have been in St. Paul's mind when he wrote 
 the words of the text. And that is the matter of our 
 standard of judgment, not only for our own lives but for 
 human life in general. The two are, indeed, very closely 
 
24 THE CHRISTIAN STANDARD. 
 
 connected. He who makes the attainment of spirituality 
 the great aim of his own life will not be apt to lay too 
 much stress upon the extent to which others have won 
 prizes inferior to that. But still, it is of sufficient im- 
 portance to be dwelt upon for a few minutes, — the effect 
 of making this the rule by which he shall estimate what 
 people are so busy about in the world. 
 
 It is enormously difficult : that is the first thing that 
 strikes us. The prizes of life are so often won by men that 
 have faith in very little which we can call wholly good, 
 and their success is so brilliant and dazzling, that it needs, 
 in many a case, a decided struggle before a man can de- 
 liberately put the two together and decide which is seri- 
 ously the more desirable, worldly success and no faith, or 
 faith and little or no worldly success. But there is not 
 much genuineness about anyone's Christianity who finds it 
 too much for him to do. In its difficulty, to tell the truth, 
 lies a great deal of its importance. To succeed in making 
 the choice in the depth of your own heart, and not for the 
 purpose of saying so, is itself to have won a pretty com- 
 plete victory over one of the strongest positions the Devil 
 holds in your heart. By any one who has deliberately 
 made the choice, an immense advantage is gained. In the 
 first place, he is no longer exposed to a vast number of the 
 most subtle and dangerous forms of temptation, which, if 
 yielded to, very surely eat out all the nobleness and puri- 
 ty of his Christian character. He will be free from 
 envy, — that basest and most harmful sin ; he will be free 
 from worldliness in its various forms, dragging down the 
 soul from the heights to which the divine love has lifted it, 
 and besmirching its pureness with the mire and filth of 
 greed and covetousness, and every hateful meanness. And 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STANDARD. 25 
 
 on the other hand, he will have set before him an ideal 
 which will be forever shedding down its kindly influence 
 upon his endeavors after better things. One or two such 
 people many of you know, and you know likewise, that to 
 sit and talk with them for half an hour gives you strength 
 to quell your lower nature, and sends a flush of health and 
 vigor through the best part of you such as a plunge into 
 a cold bath sends tingling through every nerve of your 
 body. If such be the eflPect of a simple determination to 
 estimate things by their religious, or true side, when you 
 meet with it in another man, what must not its force be 
 when generally adopted as your own standard ! Any one 
 who has ever tried it may answer. It so marvellously 
 strips away their attractions from the objects that tempt 
 us, but which in our inmost hearts we know to be beneath 
 the notice of our immortal souls — it so stimulates us in the 
 pursuit of holiness and God — it so firmly and yet so kindly 
 rebukes us when we are inclined to go astray, that we 
 know it to be an inspiration from Heaven, sent to make 
 the upward path easier for our sluggish feet. 
 
 To have such a standard by which to measure the 
 thousand pursuits that are constantly pressing themselves, 
 uncalled, upon our attention, is a great help towards form- 
 ing a judgment about them which will cleanse and raise 
 our souls. As such, dear friends and fellow-Christians, I 
 present it to you. Throughout our busy lives we all need 
 something that may humble us, and cause us to hunger 
 after the spiritual food that is to be gotten from God alone. 
 We shall be tempted to think of ourselves and our doings 
 with undue pride — to forget the hole and the rock whence we 
 are digged — to think of what we are as the result of our own 
 exertions. On the other hand, from the tone of the world 
 2 
 
26 THE CHRISTIAN STANDARD. 
 
 around us will come only too many allurements to set up 
 the success which is measured by money and influence as 
 the great end of human life. From both dangers we may, 
 through God's help, be freed by adopting as our Christian 
 motto this admonition of St. Paul : " Think of yourselves 
 soberly, according as God hath dealt "to every man the 
 measure of faith." Let us carry it away with us then 
 to moderate our foolish self-sufficiency, to give us a worthy 
 and Christian standard of action, and to inspire us with 
 the strength that comes from living as men should do 
 who stand in the constant presence of " Him who is in- 
 visible." 
 
III. 
 
 THE BURNING BUSH. 
 
 SIXTH SUNDAY AFTEE TKIFITY — FIEST LESSON. 
 
 " And Moses said : I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why 
 the bush is not burnt." — Ex. iii. 3. 
 
 Whatever differences there may be in other respects 
 as to our view of human life, no one who has had any large 
 experience of it has failed to learn that one of its many 
 needs is the power to endure the ills (as we call them) 
 with which it is rife. This has been the aim of all the 
 philosophies that have swayed the world. Men have at- 
 tempted, like the Stoics of old, to attain this power by 
 persuading themselves that ills were not ills, but only dis- 
 guised blessings; a principle whose truth it is possible 
 fully to make our own only by connecting with it the 
 beliefs which Christianity affords. Another method of 
 reaching the same end has been tried in the distant East 
 by Buddhism, with its teaching that human suffering is 
 but the punishment for sins committed in a previous state 
 of existence, and that the goal to which we shall finally 
 arrive is an unconsciousness so deep that all our earthly 
 sufferings will be forgotten in that painless slumber to 
 which the good may look forward. 
 
 Or, still again, we find the deep tendency to fatalism 
 which lies at the bottom of many a man's belief, erected 
 into a system like that of a great German writer of 
 recent times, calling upon the power of resistance which is 
 
 27 
 
28 THE BURNING BUSH. 
 
 SO valuable a part of our nature, and exhorting men to 
 bear simply because all these purposeless ills of life are 
 unavoidable, and that it is base to sink under them in 
 weak dejection and despair. 
 
 Fortunately for the ongoing of the world, we do not 
 think much of this dark question, save when it is ^forced 
 upon us by the evils of our private lot. It is really one 
 of the most wonderful things about our strange human 
 nature that we should be able so largely to throw off the 
 weight which, if it incessantly bore upon us, would make 
 existence an unendurable burden. Look out over the 
 world, and see what an appalling amount of misery, degra- 
 dation, pain of body and of mind, meets your gaze on 
 every hand ; and you are almost ready to despise yourself 
 for being able to draw a happy breath. In certain moods, 
 to one at least who has had his power of sympathy culti- 
 vated by exercise, the burden does seem one which is 
 capable of darkening every life. And although the wise 
 providence of God has made it possible to throw off this 
 weight when we are not immediately engaged in the work 
 of relieving misery, every life has in it calls amply suffi- 
 cient to make us feel the need of some comprehensive 
 view of the matter which may guide us aright in meeting, 
 and what is more, in preparing for the calamities which 
 are always springing up unexpectedly, and from the most 
 unlocked for quarters. Each one of those ways of recon- 
 ciling ourselves with the ordinary lot of man, to which I 
 have referred, was not the idle dream of an abstruse 
 thinker, busying himself with airy problems which could 
 never have any bearing upon life, but the attempt to 
 meet, and satisfactorily to deal with a question of supreme 
 practical importance. It is a question too, which, while 
 
THE BURNING BUSH. 29 
 
 pressing upon humanity in all ages with greater or less 
 power, becomes more and more in need of an answer ac- 
 cording as increasing intelligence and education enlarge 
 the horizon of men's lives. All through the literature of 
 the past we find the sad under-current of wonder and 
 perplexity over the prevailing misery of human life. 
 From the book of Job to the serious utterances of our own 
 day it stands out clearly or dimly, as the subject to which 
 more thoughtful minds are drawn by an inexplicable fasci- 
 nation. And the necessity of settling it is more widely 
 felt as, in various ways, men come to feel nearer than they 
 used, to distant quarters of our globe. The Indian famine, 
 whose terrors were so nobly mitigated by the exertions of 
 the English authorities, came before us with appalling 
 force, and entered, as two centuries ago it could not have 
 entered, into the great total of facts which must be ex- 
 plained. The s] ave-trade in Africa, with all its desolating 
 horrors, instead of looming up dimly in the distance, 
 almost, of another world, is revealed by such men as 
 Livingstone and Baker, and every reflecting mind, as well 
 as every civilized government, is called upon to deal with 
 it as a question of either practical or speculative moment. 
 So far as the practical treatment of such matters is con- 
 cerned, we may be convinced that the world is alive to its 
 necessity now, perhaps, more fully than ever before. It 
 has come to be admitted on all sides that governments 
 have a duty in dealing with such questions, and one whose 
 limits are not determined by the amount of harm that is 
 done to their own citizens. In the private treatment, if I 
 may so express myself, of misery and want, there probably 
 was never so much intelligent and active exertion as we 
 see around us every day. But the way to meet trouble 
 
30 
 
 THE BURNING BUSH. 
 
 in our own case is a problem ever new, and ever demand- 
 ing a solution. To me, the solution which is afforded by 
 the Christian revelation is one that seems to meet the dif- 
 ficulty, so far as it presents itself as a matter of specula- 
 tion. The cause of suffering — sin ; the purpose of suffering 
 — purification; the distributer of suffering — an all-wise 
 Father; the reward, or rather the fruit, of patient suffering 
 — an eternity of spiritual growth and progress; these 
 answers, many of them grasped by the human mind long 
 before their full revelation in Christ Jesus, now have been 
 stamped as true by the seal of God Himself; and we have 
 to deal with only the details of the question. And let us 
 not fancy that, because these details are hard to under- 
 stand, therefore nothing has been gained by having these 
 pi'evious questions and principles settled. It is hard for 
 us to put ourselves, as Christian men, into the state of mind 
 to which it is an open question whether there be a divine 
 Father. It is difficult for us to imagine the blackness of 
 mental darkness which would be produced by absolute 
 uncertainty whether there be a conscious life hereafter. 
 Compared with the hopeless character that would be im- 
 parted to the question by total ignorance on points like 
 these, what we have to deal with is of very minor difficulty. 
 And indeed, to a true Christian soul, the only real difficulty 
 is that of demeaning himself under his own trials as his 
 behefs demand that he should. What I mean, of course, 
 is not that sympathy and pain are not the feelings with 
 which he views the misery of others, nor that the influence 
 of the religion of love is not directly to deepen his sym- 
 pathy with sorrow, and increase his desire to lessen it. 
 All that I mean is that the speculative difficulty — the 
 blank perplexity with which human suffering would be 
 
THE BURNING BUSH. 31 
 
 viewed by one who did not believe in an all-wise and 
 fatherly Providence of God, — has no place in the mind of 
 one who does so believe. Such a belief, like the major 
 premise of a syllogism, necessarily involves the conclusion 
 that human suffering has a purpose, and one that not only 
 justifies its existence, but would actually convince us, were 
 our vision strong enough to perceive it, that God's father- 
 liness is shown in that very arrangement of affairs which 
 now appears to cast doubt upon it. This, I suppose, is 
 what every thinking Christian falls back upon. And the 
 apparent superiority in reasonableness of those who object 
 to such a way of solving the difficulty lies, after all, only 
 in this, that they decline to fall back on any thing, or in 
 other words, have no explanation at all that can satisfy 
 the moral sense. 
 
 But still, there remains the difficulty of settling it for one's 
 self, which is a task for the character rather than for the 
 mind. I may have no trouble in mentally referring my 
 own suffering, or the suffering of others, to God's wise 
 and loving discipline. But it is a question in which are 
 summed up most of the perplexities of living a Christian life, 
 how to learn this lesson so thoroughly that we may act 
 upon it, and make it the habitual temper of our mind and 
 soul io feel that God doeth all things well. 
 
 In saying that in this problem most of our other reli- 
 gious difficulties are summed up, I necessarily decline any 
 attempt to deal all at once, with them and with their 
 remedies. T propose to speak to-day of only one of these : it 
 is the one that appears to be suggested by the story which 
 was read as the first lesson for the morning. After the 
 failure of his first attempt to free his brethren from the 
 yoke of Egyptian slavery, Moses retired, in bitter disap- 
 
32 THE BUENING BUSH. 
 
 pointment we may be sure, to the lonely desert lying 
 around Mt. Sinai, seeking in a herdsman's duties at once 
 the relief of action, and leisure to meditate upon his failure 
 and its cause. Whatever balm to his wounded spirit may 
 have been possible from tender earthly ties, he seems to 
 have found in his family life, which now began ; and if we 
 may infer from her name anything as to his wife's charac- 
 ter, and capacity to lighten the burden of disappointment, 
 we may imagine that he found in her, in far greater 
 degree, the strange relief from care, the deep remedy 
 for bitterness which other great minds have found in the 
 touching innocence and affection of a pet bird; for such is 
 the beautiful significance of the name by which she is 
 known to us. But the history does not allow us to sup- 
 pose that he was diverted from his grand purpose by this, 
 or by any other alleviation which he may have found upon 
 his path ; although the influence is incalculable that may 
 have come to him, as to so many others of the world's 
 greatest characters, from the softening and ennobling of the 
 nature which God seems to have connected, for so large a 
 portion of our race, with the family relation. Softened and 
 ennobled he certainly was, by this or some other influence; 
 for when he is again brought before us, he is fitted for the 
 work which he had previously failed to achieve. The story 
 of the burning bush is too well known to need that I 
 should repeat it, even had it not just been read. The use 
 to which I mean to put it, is not that for which it was 
 first meant, but one for which it has always seemed to 
 me particularly fitted. The truth to which it was meant 
 to draw Moses' attention was that of Jehovah's endless 
 and unchanging being, and the lesson to be derived by 
 him was faith in the promises long before made to Abra- 
 
THE BURNING BUSH. 33 
 
 ham, that his descendants should come up out of Egypt 
 into the land in which he was then a sojourner. The pur- 
 pose to which I would reverently apply it is to illustrate 
 the moral uses of the Christian endurance of trial. 
 
 For, as I have said before, our difficulty as Christians, 
 is not the framing of a theory by which we may still the 
 mental unrest aroused by the spectacle of human suffering, 
 our own or that of others, and reconcile its existence with 
 the fatherliness of God. The mind is too well convinced, 
 by looking back upon its own history and watching the 
 beneficial result of trial patiently endured, that the purpose 
 of suffering, and its natural effect are good, and worthy 
 of such a God as ours. What we want is the moral 
 power to take patiently now, once more, the chastisement 
 that comes to us. We want the ability, now that sickness, 
 or bereavement, or poverty, or neglect is buffeting us, to 
 turn the cheek to the smiter in resignation — nay, in thank- 
 fulness. We want in short, to translate our creed into the 
 language of action and endurance. 
 
 More than this, too, we want, if our horizon be not ter- 
 ribly narrowed by selfishness. We desire that not in our 
 words alone, not alone in our demeanor when prosperous 
 and healthy and honored, but likewise in that speech 
 which is the most eloquent, as well as the hardest to learn, 
 in the endurance of adversity, to utter our testimony to 
 the power of Christ in changing the soul from what it is 
 by nature into the fulness of His hoHness. This must form 
 a part of every Christian's ideal. If one member of the 
 Lord's body, the Church, suffer, without being benefited, by 
 the discipline to which it is subjected, all the members 
 suffer, if not by positively being harmed, yet at least, by 
 being deprived of that most salutary of lessons, the 
 
 2* 
 
34 THE BURNING BUSH. 
 
 spectacle of faithful endurance. Our responsibilities under 
 this head, toward each other, are second only to those we 
 have toward God Himself. For how shall men hear unless 
 they are addressed ? And what form of communicating 
 truths like these can for a moment be compared in 
 effectiveness with the mute eloquence of a soul crushed by 
 trial yet crying : '' Though he slay me, yet will I trust in 
 him ? " 
 
 The influence on Moses of the sight that he witnessed 
 is only an example of the truth that what is addressed to 
 the eye in outward deed far surpasses in its influence that 
 which is addressed only to the mind. One would have 
 thought that the long story of God's dealings with His 
 chosen would already have branded upon Moses' mind the 
 lesson of His unchanging faithfulness. To what, if not to 
 this, was testimony borne by His choosing Abraham, and 
 His slow working out in his descendants, thus far, of the 
 purposes announced to the Father of the faithful ? The 
 very captivity in Egypt was not left out in the clear un- 
 veiling of Israel's destiny that was made to Abraham, 
 under the starry Chaldean skies, when the horror of great 
 darkness fell upon him, and he was assured that God 
 would be his shield and his exceeding great reward. Yet, 
 for all this, it was needful to impress upon Moses, as 
 though he had never learned it before, the lesson that 
 amidst appearances the most contradictory, God's slow- 
 rolling purposes were accomplishing themselves. The 
 sight of the bush, burning with fire, yet unconsumed, 
 must bring back the faith which the history of long gen- 
 erations had failed to make strong enough for the test 
 which it must bear. 
 
 Who of us can say that his faith would be competent to 
 
THE BURNING BUSH. 35 
 
 grapple with trial were lie alone, of all men, singled out to 
 bear it ? Would the glorious history of the Church's past 
 suffice to nerve us for the conflict? Would even the 
 spectacle of the God-man, spurning the aid of eager legions 
 of angels, and coping with temptation in that strength 
 which you and I may have for the asking — would even 
 this ensure our victory ? I trow not. Therefore it is 
 that by such spectacles as we may behold every day of 
 our lives, the rust is cleared away which perpetually 
 threatens to fill up in every heart the divine inscription 
 that tells us that " Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, 
 and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth." Who can 
 reckon the worth of these silent utterances of the voice 
 of God ? I think upon my life, with its monotony, its 
 lack of great outlooks, its petty cares, its stunting and 
 distracting worriments, perhaps its sickness, or its poverty, 
 or its contempt, and I think, it may be, that I have ground 
 for an impugning of the justice and the love of God. How 
 can I, — such is the instinctive utterance of the unsubmis- 
 sive heart, — how can I look for any ripening in religious 
 life, for any fresh understanding of the ways of God, for 
 any realization in my own case, of the calm serenity which 
 breathes through the Gospel of Christ, when mean and 
 paltry irritations are perpetually diverting my attention, 
 when grandeur or sublimity of purpose is constantly in- 
 terrupted by having to apply myself to providing bread 
 for those dependent upon me, — when, in a word, I live a 
 life which is lit up by no rays of greatness, but is of ne- 
 cessity spent in commonplace duties which no enthusiasm 
 can possibly turn into anything but narrowing influences ? 
 This feeling of hopelessness of doing aught of much con- 
 sequence is a very common one ; and it particularly arises 
 
36 THE BURNING BUSH. 
 
 in those cases where there really is the capacity of doing 
 what is of great consequence. But it is not done, because 
 men do not rise high enough to take in the importance of 
 every man's duties, whatever they may be, provided they 
 are his own, which Christ revealed to all who have ears to 
 hear or eyes to see, when He made immortal the poor widow 
 casting in all her living into the treasury, or the weeping 
 harlot who bathed His feet with her tears and wiped them 
 with the hairs of her head. And because men persist in 
 applying an earthly and false standard to measure the 
 moral importance of acts and duties. He shames us with 
 spectacles that reveal to us the emptiness of our lamenta- 
 tions in as speaking a fashion as that wherein the burning 
 bush disclosed to Moses the truth he had forgotten. Turn 
 your eyes away for a moment from your private griefs, 
 and look about you. There is a woman sick unto death, 
 suffering agony by day and by night, without support, and 
 trusting to the Providence of God for the bare necessaries 
 of life, so far as her own feeble but courageous exertions 
 are unable to procure them, alone in the w^orld, yet with a 
 meekness and saintliness of spirit which rise superior to 
 the most commonplace and, as you would think, degrading 
 environment, bearing agony of body and utter destitution 
 of all that makes life attractive. What do you think of 
 it, and its meaning for you ? You think you are shut out 
 from doing anything great or imposing. Is her life great 
 and imposing in the highest sense? And if so, how? 
 How, but by its being an utterly unpretending and almost 
 unconscious exhibition in everyday life, of the triumph of 
 the soul over difficulties which none but a heroic soul could 
 overcome ? You think your obstacles really hinder you from 
 being contented ; they are nothing compared with hers. 
 
THE BURNING BUSH. 37 
 
 There is nothing in your life to inspire you with enthusi- 
 asm. Is there anything in hers ? You find it hard to 
 submit, and harder still to look forward with submission. 
 She has absolutely no outlook present or future, from her 
 disease, or from her destitution. Yet she is bright, almost 
 happy, in the intervals of her acuter spasms of agony. 
 
 Is this a lesson to shame you out of your unworthy 
 estimates, and nerve you to set about something better 
 than unmanly puling ? Then thank God for it. " Put off 
 thy shoes from off thy feet for the place whereon thou 
 standest " is ground made holy by the presence of God Him- 
 self. Go down in dust and ashes. Abase thyself before 
 Him for having dared to doubt that He has given thee a 
 chance of glorifying Him. Pray Him that the thought 
 of thine heart may be forgiven thee ; and learn that there 
 are lives compared with whose trials thine are as nothing, 
 yet that even there the might of Christ's influence suffices 
 to make of them fields of loftiest spiritual victory. 
 
 Add to this the harm to others which results from seeing 
 a man weakly lamenting over the burden appointed for 
 him, instead of quietly taking it up and carrying it in re- 
 liance upon Him who ordained it — add the loss to others 
 of the example which, when we fairly look at it, is felt to 
 be so humbling and at the same time so elevating, and it 
 can hardly escape any one, that among the most powerful 
 of the means which God has prepared for our awakening is 
 this of stationing all over our weary world these bushes, 
 burning but not consumed by the fires of divine discipline. 
 It can scarcely be too hard a lesson for any one to learn 
 that in every life there are opportunities in profusion for 
 magnifying the Lord who has bought us with His own 
 precious blood. 
 
38 THE BURNING BUSH. 
 
 Do I need to draw for the arousing and encouraging of 
 fainting hearts, upon the store of strength which may be 
 found in the truth of our immortal being hereafter? "We 
 all know how the turmoil of our earthly life tends to drown 
 the voice that speaks to us of the recompense of reward 
 awaiting those who by patient continuance in well-doing 
 seek for glory and honor and immortality. The collect for 
 the day brings beautifully before us that vision of true 
 beauty which should correct our tendency to measure the 
 meaning of our lives by standards which have no value 
 beyond the present. Let me repeat its hallowed words, 
 that in our endeavor to make our own lives at once worthy 
 of God and inspiriting to our fellows, we may not fail to 
 remember that they are truly great, not according to their 
 apparent importance now, but according to the extent to 
 which they manifest the qualities that are to make up our 
 being hereafter. 
 
 " God, who hast prepared for those who love Thee such 
 good things as pass man's understanding ; pour into our 
 hearts such love toward Thee, that we, loving Thee above 
 all things, may obtain Thy promises, which exceed all that 
 we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord." 
 
IV. 
 
 MOSES AND HIS MISSION. 
 
 DEVOTION TO DUTY THAT DOES NOT LOOK TO THE EEWAED. 
 
 " And he said, Certainly I will be with thee, and this shall be a token 
 unto thee that I have sent thee : When thou hast brought forth the 
 people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.'' — Exodus 
 iii. 12. 
 
 Not inappropriately is the spiritual life called a life of 
 faith. In the sign given to Moses we have a striking in- 
 stance of the way in which a man is often called upon to 
 do and to suffer in trust, uncomforted through his first 
 stage of action and endurance by outward and visible 
 marks of the Divine Presence, but resting all his hopes on 
 something to come, his assurance of which is itself based 
 upon inner communings with God and proof not plain to 
 others. 
 
 We all know something of this. All who have wrought 
 in the divine vineyard have had to draw support and 
 cheer under the burden and heat of the day, from the 
 thought of the reward to be given when its task was done. 
 And yet, in spite of experience — in spite of the oft-repeat- 
 ed lesson that thus faith is most largely developed — it is 
 perhaps one of the commonest sources of discouragement 
 that again and again this treatment is adopted, and we 
 are reminded that the harvest must be sown in tears, 
 before it can be reaped in joy. From this portion of the 
 eventful life of Moses I would fain draw this morning 
 
 39 
 
40 MOSES AND HIS MISSION. 
 
 something to abate the evil, and point out the good which 
 flows from the discipline in question. 
 
 Observe then, the exact nature of Moses* treatment. A 
 mighty task, one which he had before bootlessly under- 
 taken, was imposed upon him anew. His previous attempt 
 had failed because it was made of his own motion. 
 Throughout the whole of the narrative, whether as given 
 in the .preceding chapter or in the address of St. Stephen 
 in the Book of the Acts, we find no trace of God's having 
 at that time charged Moses distinctly with it. He sup- 
 posed indeed, that his brethren would have understood 
 that God by his hand would deliver them, and there may 
 have been, even so early, some divine intimation that such 
 was in the end to be his destiny. But there is nothing 
 to show that, either for his own good, or for any other 
 reason, the attempt then made was by the bidding of God ; 
 whether or not, he was now distinctly charged to renew 
 it. The gloominess of the prospect was not disguised. 
 Pharaoh's refusal was certain, though success was guaran- 
 tied as well. But the task was one before which, apart 
 from the previous failure, one bolder than Moses might 
 well have shrunk back. To deliver, by peaceable means, 
 a subject population of millions from the tight grip of an 
 absolute and powerful tyrant, with nothing to rely upon 
 but promised wonders, was indeed a behest calculated to 
 try his faith. Surely, it seemed, there might be some- 
 thing given now upon which to found a rational hope — 
 something unmistakable in its character, to which in after 
 years of struggle he might look back in confident assur- 
 ance that he was not the dupe of an ocular illusion. 
 Learned as he was in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, 
 familiar doubtless, from his own experience, with the ease 
 
MOSES AND HIS MISSION. 41 
 
 with which signs like those which were given him during 
 this interview might be the creation of fancy ; to such a 
 man the rod turned into a serpent, and the leprous hand, 
 strange as for the moment they appeared, were hardly the 
 things to revive faith when mocked by doubt, or to stand 
 out in time to come as unmistakable signs that this 
 wondrous scene had really taken place. And, such as 
 they were, the same prominence is not given to them as to 
 the other sign whose promise is our text ; and they were 
 expressly intended to persuade others, not him. Some- 
 thing hereafter to come is the main thing for him to go 
 upon; and that something is the promise that the now 
 enslaved Israelites should worship on the mountain where 
 he stood. 
 
 So God is wont to deal with His children in every age. 
 So He dealt with Abraham in Charran — so He dealt with 
 Jacob, and so, to-day with you and me. When we hear 
 His voice bidding us follow Him, we cannot know what is 
 coming to us. That our defeats hitherto have been owing 
 to undue trust in our own fancied strength we guess 
 indeed ; but it is a leap in the dark to pledge ourselves to 
 renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil. They have 
 worsted us many times ; and our sages t counsellors warn 
 , us against being over confident that they will not get the 
 better of us again. The feelings that we have to-day are 
 more like the signs granted to Moses for the present weak- 
 ness of his faith, than any thing which may hereafter 
 stand out in the retrospect clear beyond cavil. The sign 
 on which God lays, and would have us lay the greatest 
 stress, is His promise of some better thing to come — His 
 pledge that the mission He lays upon us is destined to be 
 brought to a triumphant ending. 
 
42 MOSES AND HIS MISSION. 
 
 Now there is about all this something very different 
 from the way in which we should expect to be treated. It 
 would seem natural and best if we had granted to us, at 
 once, a grace unmistakably divine as were the miraculous 
 gifts vouchsafed for a while to the believers of the early 
 Church — the power, that is, to pray without ever being 
 haunted by wandering thoughts, the gift of banishing and 
 permanently keeping out of the mind the old associations 
 with sin and vanity. Then, whenever difficulty appeared, 
 when doubts arose, as rise they will, about our having 
 really met with God, and talked to Him face to face, we 
 should only have to fall back upon this palpable change in 
 us, and there could be no further question that we had 
 not obeyed a voice which our own ears had feigned. This, 
 I say, or something like this is what we might look for. 
 And instead, we get the promise of a triumph at last of 
 which to-day's failures do not speak in any very raptur- 
 ous tones of confidence. 
 
 Let us try to see why this is. With Moses, the grant- 
 ing of even these subordinate signs, the changing rod, the 
 leprous hand, was only after he had, as we may suppose, 
 accepted his mission. True, his doubts are not yet entirely 
 cleared away, but they concern themselves now with the 
 difficulties in the way of executing the behest which he feels 
 to be his own work — the people's unbelief — his own lack 
 of eloquence. And even after these have been done away, 
 his great heart quails yet once more, and he angers the 
 Lord by shrinking from his post of duty. But after all, 
 the victory is won, and won too, in the main, I think the 
 narrative gives us reason to believe, before the miracles 
 were wrought, — won on the strength of the promise of the 
 text. 
 
MOSES AND HIS MISSION. 43 
 
 Now let us see whether, after all, it was for his own 
 good wholly — whether, in fact, it did not turn out rather 
 to his hurt, that he was entrusted with these miraculous 
 powers. As means to do that which they were meant to 
 do, to persuade the people, to confound the magicians, to 
 leave Pharaoh without excuse, to bring down upon the 
 doomed land the threatened plagues — for ends, in short, 
 which concerned others, they were important, perhaps 
 necessary, for his stupendous and peculiar task. But in 
 those respects where our task is like his — in regard to his 
 spiritual growth — it was far otherwise. What was the 
 great error of his life, that for which he was destined not 
 to witness the complete triumph of his work ? Was it not 
 in consequence of his having been entrusted with the won- 
 der-working rod, and having come to look upon himself as 
 entitled to use it for his own ends,' and not at the bidding 
 of God ? He seems to have slowly assumed to himself a 
 part of the miraculous power of which it was but the em- 
 blem, instead of remembering his own utter insignificance 
 when thought of as more than the obedient wielder, under 
 special commandment always, of the strange might of God. 
 Otherwise, it is inconceivable that his fatal error could have 
 been committed ; and it seems likely that the disregarded 
 bidding to call forth water from the rock by speech, not as 
 before by striking it with the rod, and that with Aaron to 
 share in the miracle (Num. xx. 8 — 12), was dictated by 
 the knowledge that such was the tendency of the leader's 
 thoughts. 
 
 And if all this be so, it is a stern rebuke to us for trying 
 to be wiser than God in the ordering of our souls. It 
 sheds light on the dangers to which we should inevitably 
 be exposed by .being entrusted with privileges such as I 
 
44 MOSES AND HIS MISSION. 
 
 have suggested, and such as we think would so greatly help 
 US in fighting the fight of faith. It is as great a mistake 
 as to suppose that large doses of alcohol really, and per- 
 manently, give greater powers of endurance. On the con- 
 trary, as the reaction in the physical system is greater than 
 the temporary energy aroused, so too, we may be sure that 
 the apparent increase of faith from having such powers, 
 would be followed by a decrease of the faculty whose very 
 definition is that it is the substance of things not possessed, 
 but hoped for, — the evidence of things not seen. Suppose 
 that whenever you were upon your knees you could con- 
 centrate your thoughts wholly upon intercourse with God, 
 and that with absolutely no effort. Leave out of sight the 
 certainty that such a power would pre-suppose the attain- 
 ment already of a state of perfection, and that even other- 
 wise, devotion so rapturous would absorb all your time and 
 thoughts, leaving none for action or for self-conquest in 
 other ways ; is it not plain that while the feeling of God's 
 presence would, by the very supposition, be utterly un- 
 clouded, still Faith, in the sense of trusting God — of, so to 
 speak, willingness to risk any thing for Him — would be 
 wholly destroyed ? And Faith is the most important part 
 of the Christian character. If one may venture to say so, 
 the attainment of this is the very end and aim of our exist- 
 ence. While in itself not strictly a merit in God's sight, 
 this ability to trust Him, so slowly won, and so hard to 
 win, must be that on which His eye rests with more favor 
 than on any other grace, during our probation here. 
 Charity, Love, is indeed said to be a greater. But that is 
 only when we take into account the entire existence of the 
 soul. A stage of being shall come when faith shall lose its 
 office in the present vision of glory. But here, fighting 
 
MOSES AND HIS MISSION. 45 
 
 with difficulties, struggling with doubt, not in the calm, 
 serene composure with which old painters have limned for 
 us the features of St. George in his encounter with the dra- 
 gon, but pinning his very life on successful resistance to 
 doubt's dreadful, grisly onset — so fighting, and so wiping 
 the dust of battle from his at last triumphant brow, I think 
 of no spectacle grander to human eyes or more satisfying 
 to those of God than that of a man of faith. 
 
 And this, I say, is what the constant, unearned posses- 
 sion of such gifts would but impair and finally destroy. 
 
 And again, with us, as with Moses in his unconscious 
 appropriation of the miraculous powers to himself, — his 
 use of them to accomplish his own will, — would the ten- 
 dency be strong and disastrous. Why, as it is, we have to 
 be always watching against this danger. Who does not 
 know how the exercise of his special gifts breeds, or tends 
 to breed, a vile self-sufficiency which many a mortification 
 is required to crush. Executive ability, when applied to 
 religious enterprises, the power of persuasion, or eloquence, 
 all of these gifts, when they are exceptionally great, de- 
 mand this caution, and in the absence of it, breed a conceit 
 which often positively neutralizes, if it does not largely 
 overbalance, all the good which the gift would help a man 
 or woman to accomplish. Even in the private life of the 
 soul, so to speak, an unusual ease and comfort in prayer 
 may beget at last, not thankfulness, but pride. Christian 
 generosity may be the mother of vanity. And let any one 
 of these, from being the fruit of toil, become 'permanent, 
 and require no effi)rt, and you may be sure that to you 
 likewise there will present itself some rock of duty or of 
 perplexity from which you will be sorely moved to try to 
 draw the water of comfort for yourself and others, not in 
 
46 MOSES AND HIS MISSION. 
 
 the gentle, quiet way enjoined by God, but by the rude, 
 self-willed means that pride suggests. Over the mind 
 would slowly creep the notion that what you always found 
 yourself able to do, you had in yourself the power to do ; 
 and the self-assertion would bring down upon you, not in- 
 deed, if truly bewailed, a total exclusion from the Promised 
 Land, but much weary waiting among the bleak mountain- 
 tops, gazing wistfully towards the far-off abodes of rest. 
 
 I think then, we may be assured that it was for Moses' 
 highest behoof that he was left to give in his allegiance on 
 the strength of a promise which, in itself, made a severe 
 demand on his powers of faith ; and that the great error 
 of his life lay in the wilful misuse of the gifts which were 
 bestowed, not for his own benefit, but for that of others. 
 And if any good is to come to us from reflecting on this 
 momentous event in the life of one of the world's greatest 
 characters, it must lie, mainly, in making us more con- 
 tented in our acquiescence in the way which the Lord has 
 appointed for our growth in grace — the winning, by slow 
 and toilsome effort, the power to feel deeply, to pi^ay de- 
 votedly and to act successfully. 
 
 But rebuke to foolish and inordinate cravings, here, as 
 always, is not the only outcome of God's dealings with His 
 chosen. Cheer, as well as reproof, flows from them. 
 Rather, as the bitter waters of Marah were made sweet 
 by casting into them the branch that the Lord showed to 
 Moses, so is the apparent neglect of His children sweetened 
 by what God has appointed for those who, like Moses, 
 accept the task assigned them to do. 
 
 There was no promise of outward manifestation for him- 
 self even in the words of our text. All that was assured 
 was that God would be with him. This might be only in 
 
MOSES AND HIS MISSION. 47 
 
 the general way of favoring his measures, supporting them, 
 and granting them final success. Jehovah's purpose seemed 
 to be, so far as any recorded words go, to leave him entirely 
 to himself. Eor the removal of the people's unbelief he 
 might repeat the miracle of the rod. He might do many 
 wonders by means of it. But for anything beyond this 
 sort of appearance, or companionship, he had no assurance. 
 On that understanding he undertook the task. Surrend- 
 ering all claim upon the perpetual visible presence and 
 guidance of the Almighty — relying only on the promise 
 that in a general way he might count upon Divine assist- 
 ance, his sorely-burdened spirit took up the load, which 
 doubts as to his own abilities, only, had ever tempted him 
 to decline. But what was indeed the result ? Did God 
 leave him alone to decide upon any measure, or to execute 
 those needed to bring to good effect the mission on which 
 he was despatched ? Far otherwise. On none of the Old 
 Testament worthies has the continual dew of God's bless- 
 ing been so bestowed as upon him who, under the influence 
 of these dark forebodings, so sturdily assumed the allotted 
 burden. Eevealing Himself in every emergency — talking 
 with him face to face, as a man talketh with his friend, ad- 
 mitting him on the holy mount to a nearer view of Himself 
 than has ever been vouchsafed to mortal man, — thus did 
 God show Himself better than His word, to one who 
 could undertake to do His bidding on no more solid 
 guarantee than was to be found in the bare promise that 
 in time to come he should see of the travail of his soul and 
 be satisfied. And such revelation, was it an arbitrary 
 reward that might have been withheld or not ? Did it not 
 rather link itself with the special faith thus developed ? I 
 am sure it must have been the latter and not the former. 
 
48 MOSES AND HIS MISSION. 
 
 From among all the heroes of the faith commemorated in 
 the famous 11th chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 Moses is singled out as being pre-eminently the one who by 
 faith endured as seeing Him who is invisible. That is the 
 special property, or prerogative, or office of faith — to have 
 vision of things not seen as yet by man. And accordingly, 
 it was the undertaking of this mission which so strength- 
 ened the faith which it tested, that of all the sons of man 
 none has been so close to God, as none has undertaken a 
 work of such critical and tremendous responsibility so 
 purely in a spirit of faith. 
 
 What need we then any further witnesses to the deep 
 knowledge of human wants displayed in the treatment of 
 which we are often tempted to complain, the absence of 
 such unmistakable outward approval and guidance as may 
 assure us that each successive step is accompanied by the 
 benison of the Almighty? It is just because we are 
 always so tremulously and faint-heartedly looking about 
 for it, that it does not come. Accept in an honest and 
 good heart the commission with which God has honored 
 every Christian as an agent in enfranchising human souls 
 from the land of Satan and from the house of bondage — 
 steadfastly believe that He who hath promised abideth 
 ever faithful — and the manifestation of the Divine Pre- 
 sence which you crave before you have earned it, in prayer, 
 in enlightenment, in cheer will be sure to come. Your 
 eye is bedimmed because you insist on shutting yourself 
 up in the dark chamber of timidity and distrust. Remem- 
 ber the promise of final triumph already vouchsafed in 
 your being made a member of Christy a child of God, and 
 an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven : pin your faith 
 upon that, and manfully do whatsoever your hand findeth 
 
MOSES AND HIS MISSION. 4^ 
 
 to do. Then this hypochondria of the soul will disappear. 
 The exercise of faith will strengthen it. The sober, quiet 
 discharge of daily duty, within your soul and without, will 
 be rewarded by such clear vision of God as He cannot give 
 you now only because you hang back from taking the 
 means that are appointed for acquiring it. 
 
 And what, after all, was the promise that so powerfully 
 affected the destined leader of Israel ? No personal 
 reward — no promise that in the slightest degree appealed 
 to vanity or ambition — no prospect of popularity or satis- 
 faction for himself. Simply the assurance that the mission 
 he was called upon to undertake should be fulfilled— God's 
 chosen freed from painful and degrading bondage.- In the 
 influence of that promise we see distinctly the nature of 
 the soul that could be so strongly swayed by it — its unsel- 
 fishness, its readiness to immolate itself if so the designs 
 of God might be furthered. His previous ill-starred effort 
 had been balked, we have reason to suppose, because the 
 sad experience of life had not as yet sufficiently impressed 
 upon him the need of single-hearted devotion to a cause 
 which might bring to him no outward reward. Now he 
 is under no delusion on that score. He has tried the 
 people and found them wanting. No human appeals to 
 their generosity, no attempts to revive in their bosoms the 
 love of liberty which they should have inherited from 
 their fathers, the wild shepherds of the desert — none of 
 these things could be counted upon. They would be mur- 
 muring, stiff-necked, rebellious, unthankful. And in clear 
 prevision of all this, simply and solely that God's plan 
 might be fulfilled, and that His chosen people might enter 
 upon the first stage of their religious education, he shook 
 off his doubts and girded himself to the work. All he 
 3 
 
50 MOSES AND HIS MISSION. 
 
 wanted was that, whether in spite of themselves or not, 
 whether at the cost of winning their hatred or not, he 
 might free them, and might have the assurance of their 
 future as the people of God in seeing them worship 
 Jehovah on the mountain where he then received his 
 commission as their leader. 
 
 What floods of light does this shed upon the temper 
 with which our own endeavors should be made. True, our 
 own spiritual growth and education are inseparably bound 
 up with our efforts to set forward the salvation of all men. 
 You cannot work faithfully in any sphere, for others, 
 without having in larger and larger measure the reward 
 of devoted action. But the motives, the prospects, incit- 
 ing you to undertake any Christian work may be of very 
 various descriptions. It happens, not seldom, that the 
 mere emptiness of one's life — its lack of absorbing inter- 
 ests, leads one to begin a course of activity simply in order 
 to have something to do. There is in most characters of 
 the better sort, a capacity for taking pleasure in the exer- 
 cise of natural gifts, which may be the controlling interest 
 to a much greater degree than is readily felt to be the case. 
 And wherever such is the prompting and prevailing 
 motive, instead of a pure desire for God's glory and the 
 welfare of men, there you have something which may 
 more fitly be compared to Moses' first undertaking, with 
 its inevitable failure, than with this second beginning on 
 which our thoughts have dwelt this morning. Such 
 natural gratification* is inevitable and proper. Moses, 
 doubtless, in his forty years' guidance of the people, must 
 have had an innocent and hearty sense of pleasure in ex- 
 ercising the gifts as a leader of men with which he was so 
 preeminently endowed. But with him, on more than one 
 
MOSES AND HIS MISSION. 51 
 
 occasion, this very pleasure, or the bitterness when it was 
 disappointed, led him astray ; and he was most truly ful- 
 filling his duty when leaping into the breach between the 
 self-willed people and their offended God, and imploring that 
 his name might be blotted out of the Book of Life, 
 rather than that the people should be destroyed for 
 their iniquities. And this, despite occasional relapses 
 into a less noble mood, must, I think, have been the habi- 
 tual attitude of his mind — pure, unselfish devotion to the 
 great work of delivering and educating the people, and 
 bringing them in safety to the land of promise, notwith- 
 standing their rebellion, and thanklessness, and pusillanim- 
 ity. Such, certainly, is the mood in which alone we can work 
 successfully. As the task must be undertaken originally, 
 not on the ground of visible and unmistakable signs, but 
 in the faith of a promise hereafter to be fulfilled — as that 
 promise itself is not one tempting to our natural selfishness, 
 so too, the daily cheer and the daily reward that are 
 vouchsafed, will be neither reward nor cheer to us, unless 
 we supremely long for them to come in a spiritual way. 
 Take, for instance, the laborer in the field of education. 
 If his aim, however unconsciously to himself, be to have 
 many pupils, a smoothly-working machinery, a triumphant 
 outward success, and if he really find himself prizing his 
 results of this kind niore than the growing spirituality and 
 quiet earnestness of those who are under his influence ; 
 then this latter harvest is gravely endangered : he will 
 gain results only of the kind which he lays himself out to 
 gain. 
 
 The man whose work is in the sphere of what is com- 
 monly called benevolence, must not look for more than 
 Moses got of trust, or thanks, or success in elevating the 
 
52 MOSES AND HIS MISSION. 
 
 objects of his bounty and his labor. Personal satisfaction 
 is rarely won to a very great extent in these, or any simi- 
 lar undertakings ; and where it comes in large measure it 
 has a strong tendency to interfere with the acquisition of 
 that which we were meant to earn first of all. 
 
 That is faith. To gain it is the main reason why we 
 are called upon at all to work. In order that we may gain 
 it, we are not bribed at the outset with the visible rewards 
 which, if we had them, would hinder the growth of trust 
 in God by teaching us to look for support down at them, 
 not up to Him. For its sake all that is noble in us, our 
 belief in an eternal love and an eternal right, is appealed 
 to by the promise that at last, far off, there shall come as 
 the guerdon of our faithful labor, the everlasting triumph 
 of love and right. It is only when, with the full under- 
 standing of the task it undertakes, and of the obstacles in 
 the way of its performance, the soul has weighed and 
 chosen, that the general promise of aid widens out into far 
 more than was plainly intimated at first. The soul that 
 has deliberately made such a choice is the one to which 
 the fullest disclosure of the Godhead is vouchsafed. Its 
 victory is already won by virtue of this single, true-hearted 
 act of faith. Over and above the pillar of cloud by day 
 and of light by night which guides and shields all men 
 who are in earnest, Heaven grants to such that intimate 
 unveiling, that diviner companionship, in view of which the 
 promise of a coming Messiah took the form that He was 
 to be One who should be like unto Moses. And all this 
 came to him, as it must come to us, in virtue of the faith 
 which took the glorious promise of God alone, as the 
 sufficient support for action, the all-satisfying object of 
 desire, the self-evidencing proof of final mastery. 
 
V. 
 
 THE POWER THAT WORKETH IN US. 
 
 " He ■'^ * * is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask 
 or think, according to the power that worketh in us." — Eph. iii. 20. 
 
 This is certainly a very great and precious promise. 
 The power of God, we are told, is such as to do exceeding 
 abundantly above all that we ask or think. Not, indeed, 
 that our ordinary asking, or our common thinking is such 
 as befits the calling wherewith we are called. Among 
 ourselves, gathered here to-day in the House of God, the 
 ardor of spiritual aspiration is probably not what we our- 
 selves feel it should be. The things in God's gift do not 
 impress our imaginations as the matchless splendor of the 
 new Jerusalem smote the mind of St. John the Divine ; 
 nor do our longings find vent in such wrestlings of the 
 soul as were witnessed by the silent olives of Gethsemane. 
 But such as they are — such as the experiences of life 
 have made us, sometimes divinely guided to chisel out a 
 noble image, and sometimes acting only as hard usage 
 afiects the coin, — such as our prayers and thoughts are, 
 God is able to do far more than we eitber ask or think. 
 This promise should be to us what the loan of unlimited 
 credit is to one who is hard pushed in his affairs. He is 
 hampered in every business enterprise by the inability to 
 practise that truest economy (in the old sense) — that wise 
 and thorough adaptation of means to ends — that sage 
 provision against loss and accident which requires large 
 
 53 
 
54 THE POWER THAT WORKETH IN US. 
 
 outlay at the start. Undertakings in which a keen eye 
 beholds the promise of abundant gain are closed to him, 
 because the necessary risks are beyond his reach. But 
 the generous loan of a millionaire's unlimited credit places 
 him, at a bound, far beyond the reach of hindrances which 
 have hitherto impeded him in his path to success. The 
 golden key opens portals at which sagacity, unaided, 
 would have knocked in vain. 
 
 Such is the promise — the declaration of the text. 
 Whatever spiritual enterprise we may have thought of — 
 whatever of self-conquest experience may have made us 
 feel to be necessary — whatever religious heights we may, 
 aroused by another's success, have dreamed of scaling — 
 here is the warrant of success. No obstacle can impede 
 him who is backed by Almighty power. Every Satanic 
 wile must be foiled, every fiery dart of the wicked one 
 must fall blunted against the armor of God with which, if 
 we please, we may be clothed. We have asked but little, 
 it may be, and that timidly, and hardly looking to receive 
 a tithe of what we requested. But here is the warrant 
 for unlimited asking — for requests such as no saintliest 
 soul that ever lived has more than realized in its earthly 
 career. And yet we do not rise, or hardly rise to the 
 level of our Prayer-Book supplications, — scarce able to 
 believe that prayers expressly meant for ordinary, daily 
 use, do not soar into realms that it were impious for us to 
 dream of invading. 
 
 Whence comes this strange contrast between what is 
 offered and what is accepted ? Is it that we really believe 
 God to be uttering untruths, when He so frankly offers us 
 His boundless might in working out our salvation, and 
 urges us to avail ourselves of it in the unending conflict 
 
THE POWER THAT WORKETH IN US. 55 
 
 we have to maintain against the world, the flesh, and the 
 devil ? Or is it that we do not care to conquer more than 
 we are conquering now, — that our paltry victories fully 
 content us, and we feel as little desire to soar above our 
 ordinary level, as to abandon the solid earth and poise 
 unrestingly above the storm-tossed ocean with the alba- 
 tross's tireless pinions ? 
 
 Some answer there surely must be, and I do not think 
 it is the former. Sad experience may have convinced us 
 that, as a matter of fact, we shall never attain to complete 
 mastery over our inner weaknesses, or our external foes. 
 But we do not doubt, I hope, that God has the power He 
 so unhesitatingly offers to confer upon us. Nor can we 
 be sure that the second answer is exhaustive for all. 
 Whatever may be the case with many, even of those who 
 have tasted of the heavenly gift and the power of the 
 world to come, it is not true that all find in indiff'erence 
 the secret of their comparative failure to gain that which 
 is declared in the text to be within their grasp. With 
 intervals of discouragement and despondency, with mo- 
 ments when they are cast down by the ill success of some 
 real effort, there are many, we cannot but think, who 
 really want to be better and purer and stronger than they 
 are — whose lives are darkened by nothing so much as by 
 the disappointment they meet with in the endeavor to 
 become so. Where then lies the explanation ? Why is 
 it, that with boundless power at our command, and even 
 with no deeply-grounded unwillingness to use it, so large 
 a portion of it should be left unused as the ordinary ex- 
 perience of Christians would seem to imply ? 
 
 The answer, so far as it is not contained in disbelief or 
 indifference, is to be found in the concluding words of the 
 
56 THE POWER THAT WORKETH IN US. 
 
 text. God is indeed, so far as His power and His willing- 
 ness are concerned, able to do exceeding abundantly above 
 all that we do or can ask, or think. There is no difficulty 
 for Him when temptation confronts us, in showing us, side 
 byside with the allurement, the infinitely sweeter reward 
 to be found in the sense of victory. For Him it is not 
 hard, when we are minded to slumber beside our dying 
 lamps, to make us alert like the wise virgins, "whose 
 lamps are always trimmed, and whose pure hearts keep 
 modest watch." So far as readiness or power goes, on His 
 part, there is no reason why there should not always 
 gleam before our eyes the vision of the Celestial City, in 
 the flood of whose clear light the noisome glare of sin's 
 gaudiest revels should show like the loathsome thing it is. 
 It is for no lack of power or will in Him that harm comes 
 to us. But that power and will are, in conformity to His 
 plans for us, exerted only ^^ according to His poioer that 
 worketh in us.'" To display it, no matter how we meet 
 it — to flash upon us the true light when we do not steadily 
 care whether we have it or not — to spare us all the exer- 
 tion, and so to deprive us of all the good, that by the 
 laws of our nature we must earn if it is really to he good 
 for us — this were for Him to stultify Himself — to elaborate 
 a world for the purpose of educating us, and then put 
 into our lazy hands a key where, without understanding 
 or profiting by a single lesson, we should find mechanically, 
 the answer to every problem, and the solution of every 
 doubt. Under such a futile, self-contradictory treatment, 
 
 " — to our smooth-rubbed soul would cling 
 Nor form nor feeling, great or small : " 
 
 our natures would remain at last, undeveloped as at the 
 
THE POWER THAT WORKETH IN US. 57 
 
 beginning. The potent tonic, temptation, which we dimly 
 see far back in the cycles of eternity invading Heaven 
 and testing the fidelity of Seraphim and Cherubim, which 
 was needful to perfect the human nature of Christ him- 
 self, would have been without fruit, because without real- 
 ity, to ourselves ; and glory and blessedness, a taste for 
 which seems capable of being awakened only thus, would 
 glow before us without awakening a single responsive 
 yearning. 
 
 To those who, without at all reflecting upon these deeper 
 necessities of their nature, have grasped the promises of 
 God, such considerations come with very sore disappoint- 
 ment. Before experience showed them their mistake, and 
 while they were still under the impulse by which their 
 Christian course was begun, it seemed that only wilful 
 blindness could account for any one's being other than 
 triumphant. Now, under the light of trial they find that 
 victory is no such easy thing as they fancied ; and careless 
 whether this very difficulty be, or be not, necessary to give 
 worth to any victory, they throw up the apparently hope- 
 less conflict. They, like those in Christ's parable, receive 
 the word with joy, and having no root, for awhile believe, 
 and in time of temptation fall away ; or going thoughtless- 
 ly forth, are choked with the cares that, for its own good, 
 beset every spiritual life. 
 
 Let us not be so foolish. Let us endeavor to learn 
 thoroughly a secret whose value is great enough for God 
 to think it worth such a price as the death of His own 
 Son, and the unending struggles, from youth to the grave, 
 of those saints whose blood is dear in His sight. 
 
 Let us take an illustration familiar to us all. Your 
 nervous system, suppose, is weakened and deranged by any 
 
 3* 
 
58 THE POWER THAT WORKETH IN US. 
 
 one of those numerous influences which so swarm in this 
 hot, eager, yet self-indulgent life of the second half of the 
 nineteenth century — by excessive mental toil, by anxiety, 
 by sorrow, by over- taxing the powers of enjoyment. Your 
 physician orders you a powerful tonic, and tells you just 
 how you have been trangressing the laws of health. You 
 look at the little phial that contains the prescription, and 
 think exultingly : Here is the remedy for my ailments. No 
 more sleepless nights — no more wretched days, overspread 
 by a nameless and indefinable apprehension of evil — no more 
 shrinking from the common task, once willingly and eagerly 
 performed, but of late so unutterably wearisome a-nd dis- 
 gusting. In that little space is contained the cure for all 
 that has made my life a burden. Yes, and so it is, only 
 under certain conditions. You cannot derive from it what 
 you say, truly enough, it has to give you, if you go on 
 draining your life out by the very practices which have 
 brought you into your present condition. Above all, 
 great as is the curative value gf the medicine, you can 
 gain from it no benefit whatever, unless you take it as 
 you are ordered, so that its subtle virtues may creep in 
 salutary currents through your system, driving out the 
 morbid humors that hinder Nature's processes, lending 
 strength to the over-tasked nerves, and restoring the bal- 
 ance of body and soul. 
 
 All this we know very well, often as we choose to forget 
 it. And still more forgetful are we in general, of the par- 
 allel obtaining between such a medicine, and the medicine 
 which God, the physician of the soul, bids us use. In 
 exact proportion as we allow His power to work within us, 
 shall we find lying ready to our hand the power without, 
 by which we may be more than conquerors in every spirit- 
 
THE POWER THAT WORKETH IN US. 59 
 
 Tial conflict. And the reason for this arrangement, un- 
 pleasing as it sometimes appears, lies upon the surface, 
 and is illustrated by our experience in other departments 
 of life. Almost always, accompanying success, is the 
 temptation to make too much of one's own agency in 
 bringing it about. Fortunes or reputations, made in 
 reality by a lucky hit, or an unforeseen combination of cir- 
 cumstances, rather than by any special ability, — how 
 familiar are we with the sight of pride and self-shfficiency 
 based upon this sandy foundation ! It is like Louis XIV. 
 blandly accepting as his due the fulsome adulation of 
 court preachers and poets, when his military exploits were 
 mainly confined to appearing when victory was already 
 assured by the genius of Turenne or Cond^. Nor is 
 there any less disposition, but rather more to indulge in 
 a similar illusion regarding our religious advance. Who 
 does not remember how, when a temptation often yielded 
 to before, has upon two or three occasions been overcome, 
 the trivial victories, whose only chance of becoming the 
 rule lay in unceasing watchfulness, have been immediately 
 laid hold of and assumed to be the beginning of an un- 
 broken succession of triumphs ? Viewed in the light of 
 such displays of our disposition to over-estimate our -moral 
 power, it grows quite plain how the working of divine 
 power within us must of necessity be the measure of the 
 help given us, — of the fulfilment of God's promises to us. 
 Picture to yourself the result, were this state of things 
 broken up. Temptations the most subtle, trials apparently 
 the most decisive as to our union with God, would be 
 resisted or endured triumphantly, and all this without 
 even remotely testing the one, or giving evidence of moral 
 power. Some inexplicable strength would be felt to flow 
 
60 THE POWER THAT WOEKETH IN US. 
 
 into US without a moment of that which is, indeed, one of 
 the highest manifestations of the soul's true vitality, — 
 the pause before temptation, — the consciousness of weak- 
 ness, — the deep sense of sin's hatefulness, — the passionate 
 appeal to celestial aid, followed by the spurning of evil, 
 and the close feeling of God's nearness and love which He 
 means should be the consequence and reward of all this. 
 Under such circumstances as I have supposed, however, 
 all this, or as much of it as would still remain possible, 
 would be almost as mechanical, — almost as completely 
 devoid of moral character and consequence as the move- 
 ment of a locomotive piston on the admission of steam. 
 He who imagines the mere resistance to wrong, preceded 
 and followed by nothing, to be the whole of religion, is 
 wide of the mark, and sorely needs to have his ways of 
 looking at spiritual matters overhauled. He is living 
 far down upon a level lower than that of the barest, 
 baldest unreligious morality. He overlooks completely 
 the nature of the problem, and the relation man sustains 
 towards God. Such a view is a reproduction in another, 
 and even less worthy form, of that materialism which, 
 when dealing with the body and what we call mind, so 
 revolts our highest instincts. And more than this, it 
 leads almost directly and necessarily to a pride that is of 
 itself the most destructive of all defects to a genuinely 
 spiritual life. For however much at sea we may some- 
 times find ourselves regarding other uses of temptation, 
 we are all, I suppose, agreed as to one point, viz., that 
 whether it be resisted victoriously, or surrender be hon- 
 estly repented of, it does bring us into closer relations 
 with God. Once separate victory over it from the work- 
 ing within us of the divine Spirit, — in other words, allow 
 
THE POWER THAT WORKETH IN US. 61 
 
 me to feel that I am sure of conquering, no matter how 
 little joy I find in God's presence, no matter how little 
 value I set on the Saviour's love or the Spirit's pleading, 
 and then God is practically wiped out of existence so far 
 as my spiritual dependence on Him is concerned. To all 
 intents and purposes, human nature being what it is, every 
 religious history would be a repetition of that which some 
 one has called a "perfect life," but which, despite its 
 relative nobleness, cares not to claim from Jesus Christ 
 any atonement, any mediatorship, anything, in short, save 
 the example that success and experience have furnished 
 for even the most self-sufficing strength, before trial has 
 taught it to distrust itself. 
 
 And again, as to even the joy of religious life, let us 
 see what would be the effect of disjoining the gift of divine 
 power in the soul from any cultivation on its own part of 
 the affections and dependence which the natural working 
 within us of the divine Spirit would bring about. 
 
 St. Paul will seem, to most of us, a very noble speci- 
 men of the way in which religion affects character. Any 
 trait which we find prominent in him, as the result of his 
 illumination on the one hand, and of his endurance and 
 experience on the other, it would require very clear and 
 convincing reasons to make us think other than the proper 
 working of religion. Now what do we find to be St. 
 Paul's habitual attitude of mind regarding this matter, 
 of which he has given us in the text a striking exposi- 
 tion ? Self-reproach, repentance for sin, deep conscious- 
 ness of natural frailty, of all these we find traces on every 
 page of his Epistles. We find no less marked also, in the 
 mingled mass of his experiences, a noble triumph and 
 confidence in the power of the redeemed soul to master 
 
62 THE POWER THAT WORKETH IN US. 
 
 the sin wliicb. doth so easily beset us. '' Thanks be to 
 God which giveth us the victory." " In all things we are 
 more than conquerors." Such outbursts are met with 
 continually. But how do they aifect him ? Is this jubi- 
 lant confidence a confidence of which he is himself the 
 center ? Does he impress us as a man who, having 
 laboriously gained the power of quelling sin, now rests 
 serenely upon his hard-won strength, acknowledging in- 
 deed his debt to divine grace, yet now feeling but dimly 
 his obligations to it, as we, when we dash ofi" a letter, are 
 but distantly alive to what we owe to our writing-master 
 in childhood ? 
 
 Utterly different is his tone. Keen as must be the joy 
 to every self-respecting creature at having spurned the 
 wrong and done the right, we are never allov/ed by the 
 great Apostle to think that this was what gave him the 
 truest, deepest joy. Always the delight is based upon its 
 intimate connection with the in working Spirit, with the 
 ceaseless interchange of love between himself, the strug- 
 gling Christian, and the benign Author and Finisher of 
 his faith, looking down well-pleased upon his achieve- 
 ments, and holding forth to his eager sight the crown 
 which was reserved for him. Strike out this element 
 from his exultation and you annihilate it for him. The 
 contrast for him between victory won for and by himself, 
 without this blessed consciousness of Christ's share and 
 interest in it, and victory gained under his eyes, would 
 be the contrast between an endless Arctic summer's day, 
 dazzling the sight with pitiless gleam from unbroken 
 fields of ice, and snow, beautiful but hard, cheerless, in- 
 tolerable, — between this and the green, placid, peace- 
 breathing spring of our own more favored latitudes, 
 
THE POWER THAT WORKETH IN US. 63 
 
 where, as you gaze upon the fertile landscape, light and 
 warmth seem visibly translating themselves into verdure 
 and perfume. ''We are more than conquerors:" yes, 
 but all is naught unless you add : " through Him who 
 loved us and gave Himself for us." " God giveth 
 us the victory : " but how ? — " through our Lord Jesus 
 Christ?" 
 
 For a two-fold reason then, unless here the great Apos- 
 tle's experience is to be regarded as misleading, is our 
 success in using the unlimited grace vouchsafed to us 
 conditioned by the response it meets within us. Without 
 such a response — without seeing in *our inner life the 
 main thing, of which outer success is but the indispensable 
 symbol and result, the fullest outpouring of power would 
 make our souls barren, fill us with pride, and so destroy 
 the very thing for which, so far as we can see, trial and 
 temptation are assigned us at all. And in like manner 
 the delight with which a properly conducted religious life 
 should reward us would disappear, leaving us to the not 
 only fruitless, but joyless, prosecution of an enterprise in 
 which the most essential condition of success is that the 
 affections, not the will alone, should be profoundly inter- 
 ested. 
 
 Am I mistaken in supposing that the truth conveyed in 
 the text is much needed by us all ? Do I err when I 
 think that with many of us the temptation is strong to 
 measure religious growth by outward things which are by 
 no means always connected with it, leaving too much out 
 of view that inner life upon which, in reality, the worth of 
 all external actions depends ? We have been, I trust, in 
 conformity with the solemn words we heard last Sunday, 
 " so trying and examining ourselves, (and that not lightly 
 
64 THE POWER THAT WORKETH IN US. 
 
 and after the manner of dissemblers with God, but so) that 
 we might come holy and clean to such a heavenly feast, in 
 the marriage garment required by God in Holy Scripture, 
 and be received as worthy partakers of that Holy Table." 
 How have we conducted this examination? I fear it has 
 too often been in a spirit that overlooked the truth an- 
 nounced by St. Paul — in a spirit that thought to measure 
 religious progress as we measure miles on a turnpike, by 
 external marks ; and not as restoration to health is deter- 
 mined, by the condition within. The former have their 
 value, and one whose neglect is indicative of an utter loss 
 of spiritual life : you can never dispense with them, and 
 say : though I yield to lust and passion and worldliness 
 without sorrow, yet I am in a cheering condition, and need 
 not bestir myself to amend my ways. Such self-deception 
 is horrible and disastrous ; but I believe it to be rarer than 
 the others, and on the whole not so dangerous, because 
 more certain to be speedily scattered to the winds. But 
 the other may go on long without an awakening ; and it is 
 against this that I would to-day especially warn you. 
 Mere habit, shame, a feeling of responsibility, as we daily 
 behold in lives which make no pretense of being religious, 
 may produce an outward demeanor on the strength of 
 which, if that were all, a man utterly irreligious might 
 present himself at the holy feast to which you are called. 
 But, over and above, though unquestionably embracing 
 this, there must be the consideration of that which Scrip- 
 ture calls " the hidden man of the heart." Ask yourselves 
 then, not merely how many times you have prayed, but 
 also and mainly, how you have approached the throne of 
 grace. Inquire not only whether you have kept yourself 
 from open transgression, but also why, — whether because 
 
THE POWER THAT WORKETH IN US. 65 
 
 you had learned from old, sad experience that you should 
 suffer more in the end from yielding than from resisting, 
 or from the only true Christian reason, that it was hate- 
 ful to God, ungrateful to Christ, disastrous to your reli- 
 gious condition. In short, let the investigation be not so 
 much how divine power has been used (though this, I 
 again repeat, is also vitally important), as whether corres- 
 sponding to apparent gains in the breaking up of evil 
 habits and the forming of better ones, there has manifested 
 itself a heartier, more pervasive, more thorough working 
 of God's Spirit within you. If the previous self-inspection 
 has been at all as searching as it should have been, then 
 even though sufficient attention may not have been 
 directed especially to this one point, a little thought may 
 now avail to convince you of your oversight, awaken your 
 feeling of its importance, and arouse within you the spirit 
 in which alone you are rightly prepared to receive the 
 body and blood of the Eedeemer. And as you join with 
 me in the solemn confession, you will be prepared to re- 
 ceive with advantage that declaration of the remission of 
 sins which the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, hath given 
 his ministers power and commandment to make. As I 
 utter those mysterious words I know not with whom they 
 are to take effect. I only know that they can be of use 
 to none but those who, by hearty repentance and true 
 faith are learning more and more deeply that God's power 
 to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or 
 think, is ours only according to the power that we welcome 
 and try to have work ceaselessly within us. 
 
VI. 
 
 HEARING AND DOING. 
 
 " But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your 
 own selves."- -St. James i. 22. 
 
 In this first chapter of St. James' epistle there is a 
 close connection of thought, in spite of the surface ap- 
 pearance to the contrary. Referring, it would seem, to 
 some peculiar stress of temptation which had befallen 
 those whom he addressed, or to some doctrine gaining 
 influence among them as to the source of temptation, and 
 the irresistible fatality attaching to it, he points out in the 
 first two divisions of his exhortation, that trial, so closely 
 connected with inward sinfulness, is yet distinctly or- 
 dained by God with the most loving of purposes, and 
 then, that grace to improve it is to be sought from Him 
 who is the bestower of every good and perfect gift. 
 
 The Christian understanding of the meaning and object 
 of life is the only one which at all meets the difficulties of 
 the subject. This native sinfulness, whence temptation 
 derives its potency, is to be eradicated in only one way. 
 " Of His own will," says the apostle, " begat He us by the 
 word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of 
 His creatures." By the new birth, always assumed as the 
 starting-point of a life of true moral progress, we were 
 endued with the excellent gift of resistance to sin, and 
 final triumph over it. Yet this same gift, he proceeds, is 
 not to be looked upon as a power working by itself. Quite 
 66 
 
HEAEING AND DOING. 67 
 
 the contrary. Its very nature, as a regenerating force for 
 the moral being, demands not merely the passive acqui- 
 escence of the will, but active exertion in improving to 
 the uttermost the opportunities it affords. We are begot- 
 ten anew, indeed, by the word of truth and for the high- 
 est conceivable end, — with the purpose of exalting us to 
 the position of chief among the creatures of God. " But 
 be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving 
 your own selves. For if any man be a hearer of the . 
 word and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his 
 natural face in a glass ; for he beholdeth himself and goeth 
 his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man 
 he was." 
 
 It is this noble exposition of one of the most profound 
 of spiritual truths on which I propose to dwell for a while 
 to-day. Nor is it simply as a part of the divine philosophy 
 of the human soul that I propose to consider it, — rather 
 as one to which it behooves us urgently to take heed lest 
 at any time we should let it slip. 
 
 There are various appearances at the passing moment 
 which combine to give peculiar cogency to the need of 
 pointing out the evils of a vague acceptance or toleration 
 of Christianity, with no attempt to be more than merely 
 hearers of the Word. It is hard to know in what spirit 
 to regard much of what is currently written and said on 
 the subject of Christ and Christianity. The coarse and 
 vulgar ranting of a century ago was more repulsive, cer- 
 tainly, than the cool and dignified manner of discussing 
 the Saviour's nature and history at present in vogue 
 among those who totally reject His claims to human ado- 
 ration as verily and indeed God. But whether it were not 
 better for the moral interests of the world that men should 
 
68 HEARING AND DOING. 
 
 distinctly understand what must be their choice, is quite 
 another question. As a matter of mere taste, one would 
 certainly prefer to study the hostile system of thought 
 when couched in the glowing and poetical language of 
 Lecky or Huxley, or in the cool judicial pages of Herbert 
 Spencer, than in the coarse blasphemies of Tom Paine, or 
 in the shallow, though earnest, caricatures of Voltaire. 
 But the point I am insisting upon is this : Christianity 
 must be true or false, — Christ must be truly God, or a 
 shallow enthusiast, if not a conscious impostor. Either 
 He was miraculously born; and miraculously rose from the 
 dead, or else He was guilty of advancing claims both 
 blasphemous and foolish. Either He should be adored, or, 
 with whatever pitying regret over his fanatical self-decep- 
 tion, He should be placed with Mohammed, Joe ^ Smith, 
 and Joanna Southcote. For, unless we are to pick and 
 choose according to no principle, but only by mere whim, 
 among the statements of the New Testament, He certainly 
 did put forth claims which no merely human being, in his 
 right mind, could honestly have advanced. He who said : 
 " I and my Father are one," and '' He that hath seen me 
 hath seen the Father," — who made no attempt to explain 
 away what the Jews understood to be the claim to make 
 Himself equal with God, — this person can properly be 
 made the object of no regard midway between adoration 
 and contempt. 
 
 Now it is in its tendency to obscure this issue that I 
 find so much to object to in the decent and popular talk 
 and writing of the day among unbelievers. Starting, so 
 far as can be seen, with no critical principle but a disbe- 
 lief in miracle, they reject the entire Gospel of St. John, 
 as written too long after Christ's death to give us any 
 
HEARINi; AND DOING. 69 
 
 trustworthy account of His character. They reject, as 
 additions for which the Evangelists and tradition alone 
 are responsible, every thing in the other Gospels which 
 . implies Christ's Grodhead : and all this only, for the most 
 part, because it strikes them so, — because they feel sure 
 that so and so must be a later addition ; and in the teeth 
 of all possible evidence from Christian writers, in quota- 
 tion and reference, reaching down, at the very least, to 
 some years before the death of the Apostle John. And 
 then, having attempted thus to deprive Christianity of 
 any historical foundation, they pick and choose among 
 the fragments that are left, to manufacture an ideal pic- 
 ture of Christ which shall present no features but such as 
 a singularly good man may have presented, and patronize 
 Him as a very noble and admirable type of human charac- 
 ter. In this way it is that by vague assertions, and de- 
 nials quite as dogmatic as have ever proceeded from the 
 pulpit, they contrive to blind men's eyes to that issue of 
 which I have been speaking. People who have been im- 
 pressed with the Gospel account of our Lord, and have 
 had strong impulses to give themselves up heartily to His 
 service as the Redeemer of Mankind, — people who would 
 shrink back disgusted from the ribaldry once current — 
 are bewildered by finding what looks so like fairness and 
 judicial impartiality united with open or thinly-veiled 
 rejection of every thing most prominent in the ordinary 
 conception of Him. They think they see a way by which 
 they may still the long-felt craving of their hearts for a 
 Saviour. And as men are never over eager to make the 
 sacrifices involved in a true profession of the Christian 
 faith, this new Gospel finds numerous adherents among 
 those who, if they had had to choose between the two 
 
70 HEARING AND DOING. 
 
 things which really are presented to them, the entire ac- 
 ceptance or total rejection of the Christ of the Gospels, 
 would unquestionably have become Christians. As they 
 fancy they are following the independent conclusions of 
 their mind and conscience, they adopt this middle course, 
 though the amount of credulity involved in such a plan 
 is certainly considerably greater than that involved in the 
 other. They must take their arguments ready-made from 
 some one else. They are utterly unable to read the Bible 
 in its original tongues. They have neither the time, the 
 culture, nor the disposition to make a profound examina- 
 tion for themselves ; and I think I am rather understating 
 than overstating the truth when I assert that the blind 
 deference paid to the utterances of leading writers on the 
 side of unbelief is greater than that paid by the typical 
 old woman of the Christian Church to her favorite 
 preacher, at which they are never weary of directing the 
 shafts of their raillery. 
 
 I have spoken so much at large on this point because I 
 observe that many regard the commendation now so 
 generally paid to our blessed Lord, even by those to whom 
 He is only a good man, as something in all respects a 
 matter for congratulation. I cannot think so. In some 
 ways it is ; and I have never doubted that it is a step to- 
 ward true faith in Christ in some cases. But in the ma- 
 jority of instances, I am firmly persuaded that it is not 
 so. The excuse it affords to one not much in earnest is 
 very attractive. It frees him from the need of coming to 
 a solemn resolve as to devoting his life to God or refusing 
 to do so. Ignorant and blindly led as in the vast majority 
 of cases such action most unquestionably is, it has never- 
 theless, what is to many minds a powerful fascination — 
 
HEAKING AND DOING. 71 
 
 that, namely, of taking one's position apart from that of 
 men ordinarily — 
 
 " Holding no form of creed, 
 But contemplating all.'' 
 
 And it is a growing tendency. I am as thankful to God 
 as any man for the increasing earnestness which animates 
 the Church, as well as other Christian bodies, in this 
 country and in England particularly, but also throughout 
 many parts of the world. I am not saying, observe, that 
 the Church is not growing, and with unexampled rapidity, 
 both in numbers and in zeal. What seems to me an un- 
 mistakable fact is that the influence of this powerful 
 movement is diminished by the new attitude taken by the 
 enemy — that many who would pass into the fold of Christ 
 are stopped on their way, and many hindered even from 
 setting out, by swallowing an opiate of the kind I have 
 been describing. It does not necessarily produce the 
 effects which some heated Christian writers would ascribe 
 to it — that of ruining the moral character and leading on 
 to immorality. Such assertions are as foolish as they are 
 unjust. But so far as concerns what history shows to be 
 the mightiest known agency in making men better and 
 purer — so far as concerns their admission of Christ to the 
 occupancy of their souls and the guidance of their lives, 
 its influence is very wide-spread. 
 
 Now St. James is discussing a question so closely allied 
 to this of which I speak, that I may appropriately 
 enough apply what he says to the modern form of error. 
 He is speaking to men who had passed through that stage 
 in the religious career which consists in gaining a clearer 
 view of a man's position towards God, and receiving the 
 
72 HEARING AND DOING. 
 
 first impulse toward living a Christian life — what we or- 
 dinarily term conversion. It is plain enough from the re- 
 buke addressed to them, that they had not followed this 
 up to its natural consequences, but had so far relaxed 
 their efiforts as to frame an utterly false notion of what 
 was tlieir duty. They rested in that first stage or tried 
 to do so, forgetful of the truth that, like the water of bap- 
 tism, grace, of which it is the outward and visible sign, is 
 corrupted by stagnation. He puts it to them then most 
 forcibly, that the influence of the divine impulse which had 
 been vouchsafed them was transitory in its nature unless 
 accompanied by earnest effort. That which must precede 
 any true Christian life — an understanding of their sinful- 
 ness, the hatefulness of sin, and the means appointed by 
 God for its forgiveness — all this was like a man's sight 
 of himself in a mirror. Unless repeated — unless made 
 habitual — it would fade away from the memory ; and all 
 the repentance, all the abhorrence of sin, all the self-surren- 
 der to the divine will and guidance, all the devotion to 
 the soul's true welfare, would die out, and give place to 
 that self-deception to which we so easily allow ourselves 
 to become subject. 
 
 He addressed himself to men who had distinct con- 
 sciousness of their having been begotten anew by the word 
 of truth, — who had definitely taken the perfect law of 
 liberty as the rule of their life. But the grades of divine 
 influence are as manifold as the moral and intellectual en- 
 dowments of men. One frequent device of our ghostly 
 enemy for keeping souls out of the reach of Christ's elevat- 
 ing, and purifying; and strengthening influence is, to per- 
 suade them that they must wait to profess themselves Chris- 
 tians until they have experienced some earthquake of tho 
 
HEARING AND DOING. 73 
 
 soul that shall be as unmistakable as that which levels a 
 city to the ground. And it is only when we feel and 
 acknowledge that truth which St. James so beautifully 
 makes his own from some Greek poet* — only when we 
 gratefully accept the blessed teaching that every good gift 
 and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down 
 from the Father of " heavenly and spiritual " luminaries, 
 with whom is no irregularity, or shadow, or change, or 
 eclipse — it is only then that we understand how benign 
 are His fatherly mercies, and how much more impartial is 
 the illumination vouchsafed the souls of mankind, than 
 the fickle and oft-eclipsed light of sun and moon by which 
 our earthly needs are supplied. No : wherever a holy 
 impulse is felt the Apostle teaches us to see the influence 
 of the divine Spirit. No matter how produced or how 
 resisted, it is His work. Whether immediately, as in those 
 very rare cases when men have been suddenly arrested by 
 resistless power, like St. Paul, or Gardiner, or Bunyan, or 
 in the far commoner way of teaching or private personal ap- 
 peal, or yet again through the means of Christianity in its 
 softening and moulding influence on surrounding society 
 every where, we are taught that human nature, itself in- 
 capable of holy impulses, that is, impulses towards God's 
 personal service, is the conscious or unconscious subject of 
 mysterious and divine action. 
 
 If then, a truth so revealed, and so approving itself to 
 our humbler and more reverent self-inspection, be a truth 
 meant for application, the bidding of St. James remains ap- 
 plicable to all cases where one's religious nature is in any 
 way touched and attracted toward holiness, or personal 
 
 * naaa doatg ayad'fj kol ndv dcjpTjfta T£2.eiov. 
 
74 HEARING AND DOING. 
 
 devotion to a personal God. In this wide conception of 
 the Holy Spirit's activity who can flatter himself on being 
 free from the solemn responsibility of hearing the direct 
 appeal from God: " Give me thine heart?" For, in one 
 way or in another, every one must have memories more or 
 less recent — more or less distinct — of times when the 
 serene joy of a life hid with Christ in God presented itself 
 to him as the one thing on which his heart might be se- 
 curely fixed among all the changes and chances of this 
 mortal world. You may habitually drown that still, 
 small voice, but the memory of having once heard it — that 
 is something you cannot drown. The bulwark of argu- 
 ments against Christianity derived from knowledge or 
 from ignorance — from the lamentable defects of Christians 
 on the one hand, or on the other from the lofty demands 
 of Christianity, (or by a strange unreasonableness, from 
 both at the same time,) — all this defence on which you or- 
 dinarily rely so confidently, once proved no more substan- 
 tial a barrier than the closed door where the Apostles were 
 assembled : Christ once passed silently and irresistibly 
 through them all, and found you behind your fancied de- 
 fences. He met you face to face, and claimed you as His 
 own child by virtue of His death to ransom you. It may 
 have been for only a moment : it may have been during 
 weeks and months. You may go your way, but you can- 
 not wholly forget in heart, however it may be in your 
 life, what manner of meeting that was. And therefore I 
 claim you — Christ claims you — as one who knows what the 
 word is, of which, if you would not die, you must be a 
 doer, and not a hearer only. 
 
 Observe what the inspired apostle suggests as the 
 only explanation of this latter course on the part of 
 
HEARING AND DOING. 75 
 
 one who has thus heard the word of life. Commend- 
 ing itself, as where faithfully uttered it does, to man's 
 conscience in the sight of God, the only way of get- 
 ting any rest from its importunities, is to fancy one's 
 self out of God's sight. I do not hesitate for one moment 
 to admit that, in some cases, or, indeed, at some periods of 
 Christian history, as a general rule, the religion of Jesus 
 has been so presented as not to commend itself to any 
 man's enlightened conscience, in the sight of God or out 
 of it. When, for personal attachment to Christ, men sub- 
 stitute a mere set of barren dogmas about Him, — when 
 the deepest yearnings and instincts of human nature are 
 outraged by depicting Christ as justly suffering the real 
 wrath of God the Father directed against His own sinless 
 and obedient Son, — when Christianity is mixed up and 
 adulterated with teaching that sin and its punishment 
 may be bought off by fastings and vigils and hair-shirts 
 and stripes, — under all these perversions there is pre- 
 sented something that revolts the manly reason ; and no 
 wonder that this protest should find vent in rebellion and 
 hostility. 
 
 Very much of the unbelief of a century ago in Europe 
 was the direct and natural fruit of the disgust entertained 
 by such courageous men as Voltaire for the organized 
 corruption and tyranny that presented itself to him as the 
 ^'^ Holy " Church. Much of what we find in our own day 
 is to be laid at the Church's own door. In halting, worldly 
 living — in narrow and fanatical bigotry — in unreasonable 
 claims — in unfair argument — in blustering attempts to 
 drown the voice of honest and sincere inquiry among 
 God-fearing men really competent to make inquiry — in 
 these and many other ways some have done an injury to 
 
76 HEA^RING AND DOINa. 
 
 the cause of Christianity which can be repaired in no way 
 so well as by frank and sorrowful admission of all mis- 
 takes that have been made. But while making such ad- 
 mission, I by no means admit that there is any excuse for 
 a man's adopting such an estimate of Christians generally. 
 It would be an admission which the facts do not justify to 
 say that any one need go far without finding plenty of 
 noble Christians, illustrating daily the doctrine of God 
 their Saviour in all things, — without finding good store of 
 men and books in whom ''the sweet reasonableness" so 
 loudly urged by a most acrid and unreasonS,ble writer of 
 the day is united with a deep and tender faith in all the 
 essential teaching of the Bible. And it is because no fair 
 mind can dare for an instant to deny this that I hold the 
 apostle's words as true to-day as they were in the early 
 glow of Christian heroism : a man does " deceive himself" 
 if he pretends to be unable to see Christianity incarnated 
 in lives and in books of to-day. He can hear the noblest 
 Christianity — he can see the noblest Christianity — he can 
 feel the noblest Christianity, by St. James' own definition 
 of pure religion and undefiled, if only he will look for it. 
 It is an influence which has produced our civilization. 
 
 The darkest periods of modern history are those in 
 which it has lost its hold on men ; and therefore it is no 
 unreasoning prejudice to say that in all its true form it is 
 the world's hope and main-stay. And so we come back to 
 the solemn charge of St. James : " Be ye doers of the 
 word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves." 
 There are many kinds of doing : belief is that which 
 must underlie all the rest. Whatever may be your posi- 
 tion then, whether nobly or feebly doing your duty within 
 the Church, or else sadly or with scorn refusing to do it 
 
HEARING AND DOING. 77 
 
 outside her pale, there comes this one command. We all 
 need to heed it more. But the one thing which can 
 make it what we need is to settle first of all our condition 
 toward God. The sense of our human dependence upon 
 Him— of our carnal frailty — of our unutterable obliga- 
 tions to Him who at such cost has redeemed us — this is 
 what Christ only can tell us so that we can understand it. 
 In that grand sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel we 
 have His way of communicating to men that priceless 
 truth. He was asked what men should do that they 
 might work the works of God. That is what every most 
 earnest soul is asking now, as ever. And Christ's answer 
 is plain : ^* This is the work of God, that ye believe on 
 Him whom He hath sent." That, so far as one man can 
 judge for others, is the answer which is most full of 
 meaning, and which covers most ground for all who are 
 eager in asking the first question. '^ Believe on Him 
 whom He hath sent." All the divine nature, all the need 
 of man for a Saviour, all that can change our life from a 
 meaningless struggle for passing objects, seems to me to 
 be contained in that reply. He whom God has sent is 
 sent, rely upon it, on no needless mission. You need 
 Him so mightily — so cravingly — so terribly, that that 
 mighty need has brought Him down to meet it. Here 
 you have Him — the incarnate love and tenderness and 
 pitifulness of God's great mercy. He speaks to you — He 
 pleads with you — He appeals to you not to deceive your- 
 self with words that cannot profit. You have heard the 
 word : do it. You have had Christ ofiered you : reject 
 Him not. "This is the Father's will which hath sent 
 me, that every one which seeth the Son and believeth on 
 Him may have everlasting life ; and I will raise him up 
 
78 HEARING AND DOING. 
 
 at the last day." " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of 
 Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you." 
 There, from the lips of Christ, are the promise and the 
 warning. To you, and to you alone, is left the choice. 
 Will you be a doer of the Word, or a hearer only, deceiv- 
 ing your own self? 
 
VII. 
 
 ISRAEL'S DEMAND FOR A KING. 
 
 COMMUNION. 
 
 " And when ye saw that Nahash, the King of the children of Ammon, 
 came against you, ye said unto me Nay, but a King shall reign over us •. 
 when the Lord your God was your King. Now therefore behold the 
 King whom ye have chosen and whom ye have desired, and behold the 
 Lord hath set a King over you." — 1 Sam. xii. 12-13. 
 
 I THINK I am hardly mistaken when I suppose that for 
 practical and devotional uses, a large part of the Old Tes- 
 tament has, in the minds of many excellent readers of the 
 Bible, lost very much of its importance. With the excep- 
 tion of the Psalms, and certain portions of Isaiah, probably 
 the instinctive feeling is that for one who has, or thinks 
 he has, but little time for Scripture reading, the Old Tes- 
 tament is not to be compared in value with the New. 
 And in a certain sense this general view has its measure 
 of correctness ; though even this is grossly exaggerated 
 by our tendency to lose sight of one important fact. No 
 doubt, supposing that we had to choose, which of the two 
 constituent parts of our Bible we should retain, the choice 
 involving the destruction of the other portion, there could 
 be no hesitation in the mind of any one who had drunk in 
 the meaning of the Saviour's life, who had experienced the 
 salutary and invigorating effects of contemplating Christ's 
 wondrous character, and who had found the central truth 
 of his spiritual being to be conformity and intercourse with 
 
 79 
 
80 Israel's demand. for a king. 
 
 the atoning Son of God. But no such choice lies neces- 
 sarily before us, while still, with the exceptions just made, 
 the records of the secular dispensations have largely lost 
 their importance in our eyes. I will not attempt to in- 
 vestigate how much of this may be due to re-action from 
 the contrary mistake committed during, and before the 
 Commonwealth in England in the seventeenth century, 
 and by the Puritans in New England. 
 
 These two phases of religion, from which the rest of 
 Christendom, as well as the descendants of the Eound- 
 heads, have always gotten away as fast and as far as 
 possible, either on account of the bareness and uncompro- 
 mising simplicity of their theory of things, or on account 
 perhaps of the literalness at first of their conception of 
 moral duty. However much there may lie in this sugges- 
 tion to explain the fact, a good deal must be laid at the 
 door of the misconception at which I have hinted. That 
 misconception is, shortly, this, — an unconscious belief that 
 in other respects as well as in regard to our attitude to- 
 wards the Old Testament, we stand in the same position as 
 the first generation of Christians immediately after their 
 conversion. On them no doubt, whether converts from 
 the Jews, or proselytes from heathenism, the New Testa- 
 ment possessed claims of so peculiar a character as almost 
 to call for exclusive devotion to the treasure of knowledge 
 for the first time disclosed in its records. The mind of 
 the Jew was already familiar with the story, and saturated 
 with the inferences drawn by many generations of com- 
 mentators from the text of the Old Testament. The pagan 
 convert was but freshly awakened to the existence of a 
 body of teaching whose simplicity of general outline, in 
 spite of some difficulty in detail, afforded a joyous con- 
 
iseael's demand for a king. 81 
 
 trast to the conflicting doubts and speculations of the 
 philosophical schools, and whose transcendent purity 
 shamed the gross polytheism of heathendom : hence, he 
 must naturally have sprung to its study with an ardor 
 which for a time could find room for no other pursuit. He 
 had in the Grospels and Epistles, the truth to which the 
 Old Testament had been mainly occupied in conducting, 
 and he needed first to invigorate himself by assimilating 
 the principles and facts of the New, before he could be in 
 a position to understand the Old. For both Jews and 
 heathens, however, this did not involve the abandonment 
 of the revelation that had preceded. 
 
 The former, as we know from history, very soon came 
 back to the position of ascribing an even unwarrantable 
 authority to the law of Moses. And the writings of the 
 earliest converts from heathenism show that they at once 
 learned to look on the more ancient records as standing 
 on a level with them ; not, indeed, as possessing just the 
 same value, but at least, as proved by the innumerable 
 citations and constant use in the illustration and enforce- 
 ment of Christian duty, in the light of an exhaustless 
 storehouse of lessons in piety and practice. 
 
 With us, likewise, whom many generations of Christian 
 
 forerunners have enriched with the inheritance of a firm 
 
 belief in the New Testament, and a thorough sympathy 
 
 with it, it is time that there should arise a juster estimate 
 
 of the value of its hoary predecessor. We are too much 
 
 inclined — I say this in spite of the wearisomely -iterated 
 
 complaints to the contrary of many popular historians and 
 
 essayists of to-day — we are too much inclined, in the 
 
 Church at least, whatever may be the case with other 
 
 religious bodies around us, to lose sight of the theological, 
 
 4* 
 
82 Israel's demand for a king. 
 
 i. e. the scientific and dogmatic part of our religion. We 
 are too much disposed to think religion something which 
 may be wholly resolved into feeling, although the class of 
 writers to whom I refer are partly right in reproaching 
 Christians with so little doing, that feeling sometimes 
 grows sickly. That men in general, even when truly 
 religious, are top-heavy with an excessive knowledge of 
 theology, or absorbed by a too intense devotion to dogma, 
 to the history of the Church, or even to what is plainly 
 recorded between the covers of the Bible, appears to me 
 the most ridiculously groundless accusation ever urged. 
 Certain conceptions of particular spiritual processes have 
 unquestionably, in some cases, outgrown their proper 
 relative importance, — e. g. that of the office of faith, or 
 the Atonement even ; yet I am not sure but that 
 the crying want of our times, quite as much as more out- 
 ward activity, is a deeper study of the Bible, of Church 
 history, and a more intelligent faith in the doctrines 
 which necessarily shape themselves out of the statements 
 of Scripture. Why, the ignorance of the Bible is posi- 
 tively astonishing ! The best educated of us are generally 
 far more familiar with the chronicles of Europe than with 
 those of Israel. Instead of studying sacred history, and 
 its divine principles, as we study the annals of England, 
 a large number of cultivated persons content themselves 
 with listening to the selected chapters which the Church 
 provides for Sunday morning, and have a painfully vague 
 and unconnected notion of the succession of events by 
 which our forerunners were educated as the champions of 
 monotheism. While, as for doctrine, depend upon it, one 
 whose profession has rendered necessary a study of it, is 
 often astounded at the ignorance displayed by men of cul- 
 
Israel's demand for a king. 83 
 
 ture, who venture flippantly to assail articles of faith, 
 without the faintest glimmering of knowledge as to the 
 severely logical processes by which (slowly and carefully 
 aided by the labors of many councils and many genera- 
 tions), the instructed minds of the Church have been led 
 to adopt them as the only secure standing-ground, against 
 many plausible theories which would inevitably have de- 
 veloped errors tending to sap the very foundations of 
 Christianity. 
 
 You think there is very little connection between all 
 this and the text. I am brought to say it by my oft- 
 repeated experience of the profound value of the Old Tes- 
 tament. To a mind which has drunk in the principles of 
 the New, I think the Old presents, not only a great deal 
 of light on the most important points in the relations of 
 God to man, — that is what we call theology, — but an as- 
 tonishing number of illustrations which serve as guides in 
 daily life. Open it where you may, in the historic por- 
 tions more particularly, you discover so close and singular 
 a parallelism between the events there recorded and the 
 spiritual history of the individual believer in Christ, that 
 the feeblest imagination cannot fail to be impressed with 
 the coincidence ; and one understands how men should, in 
 old times, have made use of it to solve their doubts by 
 simply opening it at a venture, and taking the first verse 
 on which the eye fell as an oracular utterance for guiding 
 them out of their perplexity. Take, for example, the trans- 
 action recorded in this morning's first lesson. Listen to 
 the hoary-headed Judge as he recounts the previous his- 
 tory of Israel, as he points out, through all their change- 
 ful past, the visible guidance of their invisible King, as 
 he recalls to the minds of the assembled multitude their 
 
84 ISRAEL'S DEMAND FOR A KINO. 
 
 insane desire to sacrifice all the priceless advantages 
 accruing to them from God's rulership, in order that they 
 might have some human leader for the armies which once 
 conquered all foes, in the simple might inspired by the 
 conviction that it was the Lord who fought for them. 
 
 Listen to him, I say, and does there not rise up in your 
 memory some vision of the counterpart to all this which 
 you yourself have enacted ? Do you not recall more than 
 one crisis in which you abandoned the spiritual leadership 
 which was educating you by its demand for a pure un- 
 faltering faith that the things which are seen are temporal, 
 and the things that are not seen are alone eternal ? Look 
 at those new rulers that you set up to rule over your- 
 self, — that a guide belonging to earth might direct you in 
 your earthly warfare, '' when the Lord was " already 
 "your King;" and even though the new ruler might 
 tower over other men's motives, as Saul "was higher than 
 any of the people from the shoulders and upward," see 
 whether you have gained by the substitution. ''Now 
 therefore behold the king whom ye have chosen, and 
 whom ye have desired, and behold, the Lord hath set a 
 king over you." 
 
 I am not speaking now o'f those cases in which you may 
 for a time have actually abandoned the great animating 
 purpose of making your life a service to God. That 
 would be a false parallel, and would resemble rather those 
 cases where Israel gave itself up to idolatry, only to suffer 
 from incursions of pitiless enemies, in ghastly likeness to 
 caitiff souls who have deserted to the army of the devil. 
 The resemblance in the present instance is rather to those 
 periods, when, while acknowledging in general God's right 
 to your fealty and obedience, you have grown dissatisfied 
 
Israel's demand for a king. 85 
 
 with the pure spirituality of his rule, and demanded as 
 the object for your closer and more immediate homage^ 
 something else, some high standard of duty, some definite 
 and distinct mission, some special rule of life, which, by 
 its iron enactments should obviate the dangers which, as 
 you imagined, made the pure Theocracy unfit for a work- 
 ing plan. In order to be quite parallel with the period of 
 Jewish history here dealt with, this desire on your part 
 must have been one to which, in spite of its unfaithfulness 
 to Himself, God could accede, one inspired by a sincere, 
 though mistaken belief, in the greater efficacy of your 
 own plan toward enabling you to do His will. This was 
 partly the nature of the longing of Israel after a human 
 monarchy. The longing was satisfied accordingly, not 
 simply as a punishment, but as a means of educating 
 them by the painful discipline of experience for a more 
 hearty acceptance of the Theocracy as the best govern- 
 ment for them. Have there been no such desires in our 
 own lives, followed by a deeper conviction that the im- 
 mediate rule of God was our safest and healthiest con- 
 dition ? 
 
 Take, for example, what is probably the experience of 
 a large number of the highest and purest souls whom 
 God takes into His great training school. The general 
 view of the Christian life presented by the Bible, seems, 
 to such souls brimming over with large and noble aspira- 
 tions, a thing too vague for reduction to practice without 
 some attempt at making it more precise in its character. 
 Obedience toward God, yes surely, such a man will say to 
 himself, that is a virtue which is the very foundation of 
 all spirituality, and it alone causes the polar distance be- 
 tween such a life as is pleasing to Him, and the other life 
 
86 Israel's demand for a king. 
 
 that is full of nobleness and earnestness, only deficient in 
 that one transforming element. I can never commit the 
 gross error of supposing two things such as those, so 
 radically diverse, to be equally good. But why is this 
 duty left so much to men's private judgment, weak, and 
 deformed, and sinful as that so often is ? Why are men 
 not everywhere furnished with a more precise conception 
 of what this great God is, whom we must love and adore ? 
 And so of the thousand other branches and varieties of 
 human duty. Why are they left so indistinct and fluctu- 
 ating that what to one generation is fit and proper, to 
 another seems in violation of the fundamentals, not only 
 of religion, but of morality ? 
 
 If I have read off at all accurately the ponderings of 
 many a God-fearing soul, then it is easy to see how pre- 
 cisely parallel they are with this phase of Israelitish story 
 and its result. The oversight in both cases was the 
 same. The chosen people of God evinced their distrust 
 of Him and of His direct personal government of them, by 
 insisting upon looking beyond the present into some dis- 
 tant future. They were chained down, like all human 
 beings, to dealing in fact, with that which lay immediate- 
 ly before them. But this was not enough. The solemn 
 oracles which, as occasion demanded, gave them the truth 
 of God, the human instruments which, as it seemed to 
 them chance, (in reality their divine Ruler) raised up, to 
 free them from the oppressors, these were insufficient. 
 They must have a human, visible King, like their neigh- 
 burs, to lead them forth to battle. 
 
 Such precisely in kind, are the mistakes committed by 
 souls of the class to which I am referring. First there is 
 that assumption to which we are all so prone, that ad- 
 
Israel's demand for a zing. 87 
 
 mitting all our past oversights now at last we are come 
 to a point from whicli we may look onward, and form a re- 
 liable plan for future activity. We cannot trust the slow 
 wisdom of God, which would enable us to act with sure 
 conviction to-day, and leave to the growing insight begot- 
 ten of the faithful discharge of to-day's task, the under- 
 standing of to-morrow's behest. 
 
 We look anxiously in our Bibles and are sorely disap- 
 pointed at not finding there a clear definite scheme of duty 
 regarding the new questions which our generation has to 
 face, and to solve. We cannot believe that the divine Spirit 
 who has directed us through the past, will suffice for the 
 problem of to-day. Just so the Israelites were all split 
 into warring, or indifferent factions when a new Gideon, or 
 Samson, or Barak arose to the help of the Lord against 
 the mighty, and demanded that this God-governed state of 
 theirs, this yet fluid and molten mass out of which Jeho- 
 vah was purposing to create a model for all the kingdoms 
 of earth, should stiffen and harden into something just 
 like what the nations around them were contented with. 
 But is it not plain that we, in imitating them, are false to 
 the divine purposes for us ? We look around us, and are 
 shamed very often by seeing in how trim and orderly a 
 way some human lives are led who profess nothing but a 
 stern sense of duty. Our shame is a very proper feeling, 
 and can hardly be too deep. But surely it is too hasty an 
 inference to draw, that all our uncertainties can be an- 
 swered by abandoning the high hopes which make possi- 
 ble for us a grander future. This constant possession of 
 a perfectly defined, clearly-seen object and a never doubt- 
 ful method for reaching it, is shaped to meet the exigen- 
 cies and the wants of earthly life, and them alone. It is 
 
88 Israel's demand for a king. 
 
 not necessarily suited to all the aspirations of a life wliich 
 is moved and swayed by eternal forces toward a goal eter- 
 nally advancing. More shame for us indeed if with God's 
 lio-ht to guide us, we do not distinctly make out just what 
 our duty is for the present, and if with His arm to strengthen 
 us we do not perform it. For these purposes we have, if we 
 would only believe it, all we want. 
 
 But as the government of a great state, with its thou- 
 sand points of contact with other nations, and its strong 
 sense of a glorious future, is more embarrassing than that 
 of some country village, so is it better to belong to one 
 than to the other. You lead, I am supposing, a life that 
 is genuinely pure and Christian, and your doubts and 
 troubles arise from the lack of that placidity and evenness 
 of tenor which you envy so in men that make no profes- 
 sion of being Christians. They experience none of the 
 tumultuous swayings and tossings of soul with which you 
 are familiar. Is not the reason simply this, that in all 
 charity towards them, and with all condemnation of your- 
 self, you must assume from their general demeanor that 
 they do not aspire after God and His service, as you know 
 men can do, but are content to live on a lower plane? 
 The bare " duty" for which they are ready and able some- 
 times to make so noble sacrifices, is it, after all, worth 
 your while to buy it at the cost of the Living God's domin- 
 ion over you ? 
 
 Magnificent and stern as is the symmetry of such a 
 life, self-concentred, having reached the last point to which 
 it can aspire, can you surrender, for its acquisition, those 
 mysterious yearnings after rest in the bosom of God, 
 those thrills of revelation from the unseen depths of eter- 
 nity, those momentary glimpses of a Hfe to which this is 
 
Israel's demand for a king. 89 
 
 but the vestibule ? Can you, I ask, surrender these, and 
 admit to yourself that you have stopped at a point from 
 which you shall never pass to climb the golden stairway 
 that leads nearer and nearer to God forever ? 
 
 You feel painfully that the Bible does not contain pre- 
 cise answers to the world's questions of to-day. Is it not 
 clear that He could not, without destroying the Bible's im- 
 mediate influence, have made plain to mankind at any one 
 stage of their history all that one day He shall look for 
 from them ? The only thing that can be granted to all 
 generations alike is the readiness to follow Him as he leads 
 them upward along a path of which only a part can be 
 disclosed distinctly to any single age, leaving its further 
 windings up the mount of God to grow dimmer and fainter, 
 until, at last, from our present standing-point, it fades away 
 wholly amid the flaming glories of the throne. 
 
 Some vindication, I think, is becoming very necessary 
 of the ways of God to man; some protest against the 
 teaching which is growing very common that we may 
 safely abandon theology, i. e. all that can be deduced from 
 the Bible as to the relation in which we stand to Him, 
 and content ourselves with putting on our soul's throne 
 some regal form of duty apart from the direct personal 
 rule of God. 
 
 The disputes to which theology has given rise have 
 been many and bitter. The extent to which men have 
 substituted a mental conception of divine truth, for an 
 appropriation by the heart, has been lamentable ; and in 
 our day more dangerous, because presenting a more de- 
 ceiving counterfeit of ti-ue Christianity. The cultivation 
 of the religious tastes and feelings by all means, external 
 and internal, has given too much cause for the summoning 
 
90 Israel's demand for a king. 
 
 back of humanity to the mere unaided sense of duty. We 
 have this subtle poison on every side. In all forms of 
 literature from the most artistically perfect novel, or 
 essay, or sober history, to the popular ballad, or the 
 magazine sketch which decks out the revolting reckless- 
 ness of life of frontier savages in the attire of a daring and 
 superb self-sacrifice, — in all directions, we are presented 
 with the thought that, provided only a man here and 
 there does a noble thing he is serving God as acceptably 
 as though the other three hundred and sixty-four days of 
 the year were not besmirched with blasphemy and drunk- 
 enness and lewdness. Are we prepared in the remotest 
 sense, to adopt such a standard for ourselves, or to allow 
 our charity for other men to pass into this extreme of 
 laxity ? Are we ready to admit that the mere fitful sense 
 of duty is the last form of spiritual cultivation ? Are we 
 to forget, like the Israelites, all the triumphs that the 
 Church has achieved with God at her head, because when 
 she has lost her faith in Him she has been worsted ? Are 
 we like them, to demand a king that belongs to this 
 earth, when the Lord our God is our King ? 
 
 If we do, He will grant our prayer. We shall be made 
 over to the dominion of just the ordinary motives which 
 sway humanity, with only the doubly obscured conscious- 
 ness that, from some far-off corner of the Heavens, He is 
 watching us. I am much mistaken if the parallel will 
 not carry itself out further than we dream, till after find- 
 ing, like the Israelites, that our chosen protector cannot 
 give us victory in the battle, we are brought back through 
 some dreary Babylonish captivity to our old allegiance to 
 God as the only ruler under whom our souls can grow. But 
 I should not have said that in all things there is a parallel 
 
Israel's demand foe, a king. 91 
 
 between God's ancient people and those of us who are 
 tempted to put in the place of His guiding Spirit the 
 earthly fidelity to mere duty apart from Him.. They 
 were more excusable than we. For as we assemble round 
 the hallowed table to receive the elements which convey 
 spiritual strength to the believing soul, are we not thrilled 
 with a sense of shame at having even in thought wished 
 to dethrone the man Christ Jesus in our hearts, and sacri- 
 fice to rules and principles, however pure and noble, His 
 personal guidance ? While Moses headed them, the Isra- 
 elites never demanded any king but God. Here is Moses' 
 antetype, He who may become the inmate of our hearts, 
 stilling our impatient grasp after impossibilities, nerving 
 the soul to achieve, in the sphere of present activity, ever 
 braver feats of spiritual prowess. This the divine King 
 can do, because, while He is very God, He is no cold, stern 
 principle, stunting us into immobility in this our moral 
 childhood, but a living, breathing, sympathizing man, full 
 of loving tenderness, strengthening such as do stand, 
 comforting and helping the weak-hearted, raising up those 
 who fall, and animating us with the prospect of becoming 
 daily purer, outgrowing all that we can now conceive of 
 spiritual perfection, and so finally beating down Satan 
 under our feet. 
 
VIII. 
 
 SUNDAY AND ITS OBSERVANCE. 
 
 As the American, like the English and the Scotch 
 Sunday is one of the most remarkable features of the 
 national system, so Church-going in the countries named 
 is a habit followed in a manner quite distinctive. I do 
 not mean to say that as to both these matters there is 
 not a good deal that is similar in certain parts of Ger- 
 many and of Switzerland. But the general truth of what 
 has been asserted can hardly be denied, namely, that 
 Sunday is observed, and Church-going practised very dif- 
 ferently here and on the Continent of Europe. A change 
 however in respect to both, is beginning to force itself 
 upon the attention. This is particularly the case in the 
 great cities, where the infusion of a large mass of for- 
 eigners has tended to affect the native-born population, 
 notably as to the opening on Sunday of places of innocent 
 popular recreation, nowhere so much needed, perhaps, as 
 by the laboring classes of our great sweltering cities in 
 summer-time. The Sunday question has, in many locali- 
 ties, come to be a political question ; and to those who 
 know little of the results where the foreign population is 
 large and united, — to those, for instance, who are familiar 
 with the Sunday aspect of no great city but our own, it 
 may seem that undue alarm has been conceived, and un- 
 duly harsh measures proposed or adopted, with the view of 
 enforcing on all classes and nationalities, the Sabbath 
 92 
 
SUNDAY AND ITS OBSERVANCE. 93 
 
 views and practices hitherto prevailing among our respect- 
 able people. It is a very large question, and one hardly- 
 fit for treatment here, inasmuch as we have almost none 
 of the complications to deal with on which I have touched. 
 I believe, however, that we may find benefit from consid- 
 ering it so far as relates to ourselves. If the question be 
 asked : What is Sunday, and how should we employ it, 
 as decent members of society, and especially as Chris- 
 tians ? the answer may tend to show that we are to some 
 extent abusing our Christian liberty, and in some direc- 
 tions, perhaps, unduly restricting it. In what I shall say 
 I do not doubt that I shall shock some who have most 
 sternly held by the old Evangelical view, as well as seem 
 narrow and Pharisaic to those who have most completely 
 abandoned that view in both theory and practice. I should 
 very much prefer to do neither, — to avoid the reputation 
 of being lax, and the imputation of being narrow. And 
 so, while I deplore the consequences that may result, I 
 will ask you to listen patiently and fairly so far as you 
 may. 
 
 Names are much more important as sign-posts indicat- 
 ing the course of thought and feeling than is generally 
 supposed. And in the two common names applied to the 
 first day of the week, we may find help in distinguishing 
 more clearly the two diff'ering sets of convictions prevail- 
 ing in regard to the matter proposed for our considera- 
 tion. The names by which that day is called are Sunday 
 (prevailing generally in the Church), and Sabbath, whose 
 use prevails so widely in the outside community, that 
 when you write a notice for a paper, calling the day Sun- 
 day, you have to give special directions to adhere to copy, 
 or you find yourself appearing to prefer the name Sab- 
 
94 SUNDAY AND ITS OBSERVANCE. 
 
 batli. The two words, as I have said, indicate the differ- 
 ing opinions held. Let us consider them, beginning with 
 the latter. 
 
 As the name implies, those who use it regard the day as 
 being essentially what the fourth commandment tells us 
 the Sabbath was to be among the Jews, — a day in which 
 no work should be done but that which is absolutely 
 necessary to keep society from falling to pieces, or life 
 from being lost. To this, however, has been added the 
 duty of not doing anything but what has a distinctly 
 religious character. This is the result of feeling that, as 
 some occupation must be had, religious duties are those 
 that the spirit of Christianity suggests as the only proper 
 ones. This is the view that was general forty years ago 
 among the classes that gave most outward evidence of 
 being at all in earnest with their spiritual lives; and, 
 though slowly changing with those who once held it most 
 pertinaciously, it is still widely retained. Its ground is 
 the truly noble and Christian one that the soul's interests 
 are paramount in their claims to any others. Inasmuch 
 as with a large proportion of mankind the week-days, as 
 we call them, are filled with toil which can be made reli- 
 gious only by bringing into its discharge the sense of son- 
 ship and duty to God, this is almost the only time left for 
 gaining religious knowledge, attending public service, and 
 toning up our souls that they may the better resist the 
 insidious assaults of the Evil One, to which they are aure 
 to be exposed during the days that follow. I say that this 
 temper of mind, this way of regarding the matter, is very 
 pure, very high, very clearly revealing an earnest desire 
 for spiritual growth. And as a matter of fact, the best 
 Christians we know, whatever views they may hold about 
 
SUNDAY AND ITS OBSERVANCE. 95 
 
 others and their duties, are in the habit of thus spending 
 their Sundays, that is, in distinctly religious ways. One 
 reveres this spirit instinctively, even when one cannot 
 agree with the arguments by which the practice- is some- 
 times supported. One of these arguments is the strict 
 and unmistakable language of the fourth commandment. 
 But in the first place, no attempt is made, that I am 
 aware of, except in one insignificant Christian body, to 
 observe the day there specified. No one tries to keep 
 Saturday in this manner ; and it is urged that the same 
 authority that has changed the day may equally change 
 the method of its observance. 
 
 Again, so far as the Jewish Sabbath was concerned, our 
 Saviour Himself in deeds, and St. Paul in so many words, 
 condemns the observance of the old Sabbath in the way 
 which was then common, especially when it was looked 
 upon as holy in itself — saying, that it was for each man 
 to follow his own judgment, that is, in all probability, 
 whether (as the Christian Church had not as yet regulated 
 the matter) he should hold the seventh day, or any other 
 day to be specially proper for religious observance. As 
 to the manner of keeping the day; again, while the 
 strictest obedience is never thought of, there is wide dif- 
 ference of view as to the extent to which it should or may 
 be enforced on those under our authority as parents or 
 employers. Some most conscientious and excellent people 
 so change the day from one in which its character can be 
 said to be that of rejoicing and being glad to any but the 
 devoutest people, that a strong distaste for anything like 
 religion is bred in the minds of children and servants. 
 The attempt is sometimes made to shut out all but re- 
 ligious subjects from conversation, with results that are, 
 
96 SUNDAY AND ITS OBSERVANCE. 
 
 now and then, ludicrous enough. In short, as I have 
 said, occupations that, carried to this degree, are pleasing 
 to none but those who are far advanced in holiness are 
 enforced upon those whose natural restlessness, or whose 
 backward growth in religious things makes them regard 
 such control with bitter dislike, while other innocent oc- 
 cupations are sternly forbidden. The result in many and 
 many a case which has come under my own observation 
 is, that all that connects itself with religion is looked upon 
 so wrongly that with the first free step in life its re- 
 straints are cast ofi", and the reaction against enforced 
 piety brings about a melancholy plunge even into vice. 
 
 I do not pretend to have presented fully the arguments 
 that may be urged in defense of the Sabbatarian view ; 
 nor is it meant, for an instant, that all households where 
 it is held present the extreme results spoken of. In many 
 cases where such abandonment of all moral constraint is 
 attributed to undue Sabbath strictness in childhood, this 
 may be fully matched by the disorders of one who has 
 been raised under a generous and wisely liberal system. 
 But as the reasons urged required consideration, mention 
 of practical results was unavoidable. Let me now turn 
 to a brief presentment of the other side. 
 
 According to this, the Jewish Sabbath, both in name 
 and nature has been abolished. To Christ's treatment of 
 the matter and St. Paul's I have already directed atten- 
 tion. As a duty to be enforced upon the members of the 
 Christian Church, we find absolutely no mention of it. 
 Instead, the first day of the week, both in the New Testa- 
 ment and in the earliest Christian writings which follow, 
 is spoken of as one of religious observance indeed, but of 
 a very different kind. It was a day for common worship, 
 
SUNDAY AND ITS OBSERVANCE. 97 
 
 but this was in weekly commemoration of Christ's rising 
 again from the dead. It was as distinctly a new creation 
 in its nature, as any of the other Church festivals, like its 
 yearly analogue, Easter, or as Whitsunday; although, 
 unlike them, dating back to the Apostles, and therefore 
 having that superior obligation on us. It was a day of 
 happy Christian enjoyment — that is of enjoyment primarily 
 religious. And such, observe, it continued to be until 
 after the Reformation. The great continental Reformers, 
 Luther even, and Calvin, had no more notion of enforcing 
 the Puritanic Sabbath than of rebuilding the Temple at 
 Jerusalem. As we find it referred to in the New Testa- 
 ment as the first day of the week, as the Lord's Day, so 
 its character there is that of a stated time for religious 
 meeting, for worship, for alms-giving, for celebrating the 
 Holy Communion, for exhortation and instruction. As 
 such for fifteen hundred years it was observed, and not 
 until the times of the English and Scotch fanatics was it 
 ever regarded as a day when all that was not directly re- 
 ligious should be forbidden to all, of every age, of every 
 condition, of every degree of mental and spiritual ad- 
 vance. We are in accord, not in disagreement, with the 
 whole of the Church's previous history, when we deny 
 that this last view of Sunday's proper enjoyment is bind- 
 ing upon us. 
 
 But what follows from all this, incontestably true though 
 it be ? Does it follow that, either as members of a Christian 
 community, or as living members ourselves of the body of 
 Christ, we are at liberty to follow our own devices on the 
 Lord's day, and to amuse ourselves just as we should on 
 the fourth of July, to spend its hours in the lax ways so 
 common ? In general, certainly few of us are prepared 
 5 
 
98 SUNDAY AND ITS OBSERVANCE. 
 
 to assume so much as that. In drawing the line lies the 
 difficulty ; and it is just here that I want you to take what 
 I say only as a hint toward the proper solution of the 
 problem, not as meant to point out as wrong-doers and 
 profaners of the day all who do not agree with it. 
 
 As the first principle to guide us, we must remember 
 the needs of our souls, and the difficulties most of us have, 
 or make, about satisfying them. In regard to public 
 worship in general, it would be cruelly unjust to set down 
 the business man or the laborer as indifferent, because he 
 did not see his way clear to leave his daily caUing to 
 attend service on all the holy days when it is offered him. 
 So in regard to spiritual exercises generally; the man 
 who must be at his plough, or his desk, early every morn- 
 ing, is, of necessity, debarred from devoting as much time 
 to prayer or to reading as others may give. But, unless 
 the position is taken that these things are needless, it 
 would certainly seem to follow that, where any earnest- 
 ness is found, there would be a duty and also a disposition 
 to use some of these quiet hours in training himself to 
 better knowledge and deeper thought. It is not that this 
 one day should present an utterly different aspect from all 
 the rest of his life, but that in proportion as all the rest 
 of his life is genuinely swayed by spiritual motives, the 
 day when he is at liberty to gratify his deepest desires 
 would be increasingly devoted to such pursuits. But, 
 you will say, suppose him not to be in just the mood you 
 speak of, — suppose him to be on the level of the great body 
 of even Christians, and not so ardent about these things, 
 how shall he pass this day, which comes round weekly, 
 and which he must pass in some way, and which leaves 
 him tired and in anything but a charitable or happy frame 
 
SUNDAY AND ITS OBSERVANCE. 99 
 
 of mind, when he does nothing but what is sometimes 
 recommended? That is just the difficult question to 
 answer, because the reply, however guarded, is sure to 
 be wrested by some, and used in justification of what they 
 themselves know to be wrong. I would rather give it in 
 private than in public ; but as almost no one will ask it 
 but those who are a little oz^er-scrupulous already, some 
 attempt must be made in public. It is the question of 
 one who practically refuses to do what would remove the 
 difficulty, and asks how far he may allow his unfitness to 
 act as a plea for not doing all his duty. I propose to give 
 only a few suggestions, which will approve themselves to 
 your judgment only in so far as you may agree with what 
 I have already said. But I am often struck with the fact 
 that persons by no means remarkable for strictness in their 
 general demeanor, have a decided feeling about the observ- 
 ance of Sunday, and need only a reminder to arouse them 
 to" a more proper manner of keeping the day. To speak 
 first of what should not be done. If the day is to have 
 anything of a religious character, the reading one does 
 should certainly be to a large extent of that kind. This 
 may seem a very gloomy piece of advice, even to many 
 who call themselves Christians. And nothing surprises 
 one more than the extent to which the reading of religious 
 books is neglected, even by those who have some consider- 
 able degree of culture. The number of books of really 
 fascinating interest upon such subjects is very great; 
 with all the charms of deep scholarship, of glowing fancy, 
 of keen logic, of limpid style they come to us, especially 
 from England, with attractions far greater than are pre- 
 sented by a large proportion of the works on secular sub- 
 jects, which are devoured so eagerly. Yet they are not 
 
100 SUNDAY AND ITS OBSERVANCE. 
 
 read to anything approaching the extent one would expect, 
 even among persons who profess an interest in the subjects 
 of which they treat. At all events this is the case among 
 the upper classes so far as position and refinement go, 
 while those immediately below them in these respects 
 difier very markedly. If you want to know more about 
 sacred subjects, however, you certainly cannot complain 
 of a dearth of literature, and very charming literature, to 
 meet your wants. 
 
 Another thing which certainly is hardly in keeping 
 with the sacred character of the day is following the same 
 amusements as serve for relaxation during the remainder 
 of the week. Very few of those who amuse themselves 
 with cards would think of spending Sunday afternoon at 
 such games, and yet the day is sometimes spent in amuse- 
 ments which, while innocent enough in themselves, are 
 certainly quite foreign to the mood which sees in Sunday 
 a day primarily intended to elevate and dignify our na- 
 ture, and fit us for a closer walk with God. To one who 
 deliberately denies this position, of course there is nothing 
 to be said on that point. But another argument remains 
 which has sometimes proved of weight with those who 
 had some regard for their fellow-men. The day, as I 
 have said, is a national institution. We know what it is 
 on the Continent of Europe ; and few of us, I imagine, 
 desire to see the day degenerate here into what it is, for 
 instance, in France or in Spain, where great public dis- 
 plays, horse-races, elections and the like are habitually 
 held upon it. But the change to such a view is vastly 
 helped by observing that men of leisure and influence in 
 the community pay little or no attention to its sacred 
 character. The refined enjoyments in which you choose 
 
SUNDAY AND ITS OBSERVANCE. 101 
 
 to pass your Sunday are out of the reach of most of those 
 around you. If they learn from your example to desecrate 
 it, as learn they surely will, sooner or later, it will be 
 done in a very different manner ; in brutal sports such as 
 must debase the national character. You may not enjoy 
 the day so keenly if you place some restraints on your 
 liberty in the matter ; but the knowledge that you are 
 harming others as well as yourself by treating it with 
 such scant respect, — the feeling that you are contributing 
 powerfully to destroy the institution which has been so 
 useful to our race, — to break, down one more bulwark 
 erected against the inroads of irreligion, — these reflections, 
 one would think, would have great weight with one who 
 honestly loves his country. 
 
 I have made one or two suggestions — I meant to do 
 nothing more — which if attended to would, I am sure, re- 
 dound to the benefit of all. Let me now say a few words 
 about church-going and certain obvious duties connected 
 with it. The uses of church-going are plain. One mighty 
 it is true, learn as much, so far as facts go, by staying at 
 home and reading the service and a sermon ; but he would 
 miss the very thing for whose sake we are bidden not to 
 forsake the assembling of ourselves together, — I mean the 
 curiously different way in which one is impressed, when 
 one of a number, from that in which one feels when alone. 
 Eeason about it as we may, and extol as we may the ad- 
 vantages of reading over hearing, it remains true that 
 worship in common supplies us with something that would 
 not be afforded by reading at home, even were that prac- 
 tised, as it seldom is, by those who willingly absent them- 
 selves from the House of God. The prayers are fuller of 
 devotion, the Bible more replete with meaning, the teach- 
 
102 SUNDAY AND ITS OBSERVANCE. 
 
 ing impresses more deeply, on just the same principle as 
 that which draws people to listen to a famous lecturer, 
 even though his delivery be mediocre, in preference to 
 reading one of his essays at home. But over and above 
 this, we come, or should come to church, with a feeling 
 that it is, in a very true and deep sense, the House of God. 
 We come to confess our sins, to be assured of forgiveness, 
 to pray for the divine blessing. We expect a benefit from 
 the observance. Such is the state of mind which alone 
 befits those who attend church. What is one to think of 
 the frames of mind of such as choose habitually to come 
 so late as to disturb the devotions of others, or who are 
 perpetually whispering or gazing around, when there, as 
 they would in a play-house ? Where lateness is actually 
 unavoidable, and not due to Sunday-morning laziness, it 
 is another thing. But those who will reflect how excess- 
 ively disturbing it is to people who want to attend to their 
 religious duties, to have the constant interruptions, and the 
 still more annoying whispers, — such persons will see the 
 propriety of making an effort to be punctual at church, 
 and of behaving themselves with decorum when there. 
 
 Many churches, at the present day, are free, — hence, 
 having no pew-rents, they depend altogether upon volun- 
 tary contributions. Let those who attend such a church 
 come with the intention of contributing to its support as 
 liberally as their means will allow, and not of putting into 
 the plate some insignificant coin which they are half- 
 ashamed to have seen. Giving is as much, and as neces- 
 sary a part of worship, as prayer. 
 
 I have used considerable plainness of speech. Where 
 a thing has to be said perhaps it is as well to say it so 
 that it may be understood, and on that principle I have 
 
SUNDAY AND ITS OBSERVANCE. 103 
 
 spoken. For the matter is one of no mean importance. 
 Upon the proper observance of Sunday and its duties, 
 hinges to a very large degree the spiritual life of most of 
 us. That is to say, where Sunday is habitually spent in 
 a careless and non-religious way, there you may certainly 
 look to see the family growing up in anything but the way 
 a Christian parent could wish. It is of the highest im- 
 portance to ourselves, to the community, nay to the nation 
 and the world at large which we must increasingly in- 
 fluence, that this time-honored, this sacred institution 
 shall retain the share it has hitherto had in moulding the 
 American character. 
 
 It becomes growingly clear, even to those who make no 
 profession themselves, that in Christianity lies the main- 
 stay of a nation's^ existence. The wild visionaries who 
 dream of putting into execution the crazy plant of com- 
 munism, show us with perfect distinctness the point 
 whither natural greed, uncurbed by morals or religion, 
 must always tend. And, whatever may be our private 
 theories or practice, nothing can blind an unprejudiced 
 eye to these two facts : the first is that every man's dese- 
 cration of the day leads to its violation by others : the 
 second is that where Sunday is decently observed, there 
 you find peaceable, law-abiding, and respectable people. I 
 look then upon the institution as one of the utmost im- 
 portance ; and I urge you for the sake of your souls, for 
 the sake of family and country, to observe it piously, rev- 
 erently, as becomes a day which is set apart from all others 
 with the distinctive title of the Lord's Day. In so far as 
 this is done will our homes be more and more the abodes 
 of earnest, manly piety, and such serene peace as ever falls 
 to his lot who putteth his trust in the Lord and doeth good. 
 
IX. 
 
 ALL SAINTS. 
 " That they without us should not be made perfect." — Heb. xi. 40. 
 
 In all ages of humanity, it is likely, the craving has 
 been felt to hold communion with the dead. It is hard 
 to feel that he who was yesterday among us, sharing our 
 joys and sorrows, limited by our imperfections, and as 
 unable as we to penetrate the mystery of being, should 
 have suddenly shot ahead by all the distance separating 
 life on earth from life in Paradise. Not that at first we 
 envy him the flood of light which, we are sure, illumi- 
 nates for him the whole range of spiritual truth ; so far 
 as that is concerned, we are tempted, in spite of our con- 
 viction that with the Lord he is far better, to feel about 
 him as though he were still in the condition of weakness 
 in which he took his departure. But when we rid our- 
 selves of this feeling and learn to think of him as among 
 the joys of Paradise, drinking in the unending stream of 
 knowledge and love, we are penetrated by the cruel pang 
 of feeling that we are left so far behind that we must be 
 forgotten, — that all memories of earthly communion must 
 be swallowed up in the new emotions aroused by a change 
 so total of environment and association. This, to a truly 
 loving heart, must be one of the keenest pangs in losing a 
 life-long companion ; and it is not every one who can, like 
 Tennyson, wrestle with his doubts, and work out the con- 
 104 
 
ALL SAINTS. 105 
 
 viction that Love is Lord of all — Lord even of a change 
 like this. 
 
 Then again, we want to know more of what actually 
 lies beyond the tomb — what the departed are experiencing 
 now, and what is in store for ourselves when our summons 
 shall have come. And once more, in those many cases 
 where, while on earth, the divine life has manifested itself 
 imperfectly and fitfully, — where, but for our faith in God's 
 promise of certainly granting whatever is unitedly asked 
 by two or three of His faithful servants, we might doubt 
 as to the reality of a friend's salvation,— in those cases 
 where our faith is unwavering that prayer has been an- 
 swered, but where we know that our dead must have entered 
 Paradise very imperfectly developed by earthly discipline, 
 and needing just those graces which, were they on earth, 
 we should implore for them — in cases like these, the dispo- 
 sition to accompany them, even in their ransomed state 
 sublime, with our tender solicitude and prayers, is one 
 which is inexpressibly powerful. 
 
 These, and such as these, are feelings that spring from 
 the lowest depths of our mysterious nature. And it is 
 not to be wondered at that under their influence, beliefs 
 should slowly have grown up, and practices have been 
 gradually introduced, intended to satisfy these inextin- 
 guishable yearnings. The feeling, for instance, that our 
 prayers may, without presumption, be put up for those who 
 are departed in the com.m union of the Catholic Church, 
 and, as we believe, in the confidence, however feeble, of a 
 reasonable, religious, and holy hope, — this very early took 
 shape ; and in the age imniediately following the Apostles, 
 I find in the strange book known as the Shepherd of 
 Hermas, traces of such a practice. In the Eoman branch 
 
 5* 
 
106 ALL SAINTS. 
 
 of the Church, as every one knows, this doctrine has con- 
 nected itself with the equally unschptural doctrine of 
 Purgatory; and prayers for the dead are as commonly 
 offered as prayers for the living. Our own branch of the 
 Church, however, has not admitted either of these views 
 since the Reformation, and no one can plead for belief in 
 them, anything contained in her formularies. The doc- 
 trine of Purgatory, at least, is distinctly condemned. 
 
 Compared with what has arisen from the other sources* 
 I have named, the practice of praying for the dead is, to 
 say the least, much less harmful. That is wholly unwar- 
 ranted either by the Bible or our Church, and its prac- 
 tical consequences show it to be very full of danger. But 
 those systems of belief which spring from a determination 
 to know more than has been revealed of the condition of 
 the soul after death, such as Spiritualism and Swedenbor- 
 gianism, are degrading and materializing in the highest 
 degree. All that to a spiritual mind is purest and most 
 elevating in what we are told concerning our future life is, 
 in these systems, dragged down and bemired in such a 
 way as to make one feel that, if this is all that is in store 
 for us, annihilation would be far preferable to such disap- 
 pointment of our loftiest aspirations. 
 
 But the Church of God has not contented itself with 
 condemning the doctrine of Purgatory, and omitting from 
 her system the practice of prayers for the dead, as well as 
 all rash attempts that have been made to penetrate the 
 veil hanging between our present and our future state. 
 Such a merely negative position would ill accord with her 
 duty as the teacher, through human agencies, of all that 
 God has intrusted to her. Pondering over the glimpses 
 afforded in the Bible into our future destiny, she has gath- 
 
ALL SAINTS. 107 
 
 ered thence all that sound criticism permits us to infer on 
 this subject, and has formulated it partly in her creed, and 
 partly in certain of her prayers. She has, moreover, ac- 
 cording to her wont, not allowed these truths to run the 
 risk of the neglect to which mere words are liable. She 
 has given them shape by admitting among the festivals 
 of the Church year, the memory of certain of the primi- 
 tive heroes of the faith of whom we have clear knowledge 
 from the Bible; excluding, in the American branch at 
 least, all those about whose history hangs the thick veil of 
 mere tradition. And in the festival which we celebrate 
 to-day, she yearly summons us to commemorate all those, 
 known by name or unknown, who, having finished their 
 course in faith, do now rest from their labors. 
 
 An article of the Apostles' Creed teaches us to believe 
 in the Holy Catholic Church as being not confined to 
 those who at any period of the world's history are fight- 
 ing the Lord's battle on earth, but as being composed of 
 all Saints, both those living, and those who are now at 
 rest in Paradise. Nor is this all. The expression used 
 to convey this grand conception of the Church suggests, 
 or rather, most distinctly declares, not only that all these 
 are one, but that there exists among all, irrespectively of 
 any separation caused by death, a Communion ; so that 
 we do not in the Creed make two articles out of these two 
 thoughts, but profess a belief in the Holy Catholic Church 
 as itself being the Communion of Saints. The Church is, 
 under one most true aspect, such a communion. 
 
 But you may say, is this all ? This craving to know 
 more of the mysteries of the future state — future to us 
 but present to the faithful departed — this yearning by 
 our prayers to help them on as we used to help them 
 
108 ALL SAINTS. 
 
 when they were with us — this desire that we should not 
 be deprived of their intercession now that they have 
 passed beyond the stage of discipline and are so much 
 better able to pray for us than when earthly hinderances 
 made their supplications less fervent and, so, less effica- 
 cious — is there nothing to answer all these deep-seated 
 longings more than the assurance that there exists a 
 vague communion between us and them ? 
 
 I feel in all its force the yearning that gives birth to 
 questions like these even though they are not often dis- 
 tinctly asked. And because I appreciate it, and am, at 
 the same time, convinced, that there is danger and pre- 
 sumption in pressing beyond what the Bible tells and the 
 Church proclaims on this matter, I propose to-day to point 
 out how much there is in this article of the Communion 
 of Saints, as our Church teaches it, to meet every legiti- 
 mate demand. 
 
 In the first place, as to the state of the faithful departed. 
 A notion prevails among some Christian bodies that the 
 faithful are at once admitted after death to heaven — 
 meaning by that word the full state of perfected bliss. 
 Such a view makes of the Last Judgment, so far as their 
 condition is concerned, a mere formality. It is, moreover, 
 very hard to reconcile with the Biblical words employed 
 in making the few distinct statements vouchsafed on the 
 condition of the soul before the Judgment. Thus, for in- 
 stance, our Saviour said to the penitent robber that he 
 should be with Hivi that day in Paradise. But we know 
 that our Lord did not, either on that day nor for many 
 days afterward, ascend into heaven; for He distinctly 
 told His disciples so. We know likewise, that during the 
 period between His death and His resurrection He went 
 
ALL SAINTS. 109 
 
 and preached unto the spirits in prison — that He descended 
 into the lower parts of the earth, as St. Peter and St. 
 Paul assure us. That state or place then, that is called 
 Paradise, or Hades (that is the invisible), was a place or 
 state in which were the spirits of the dead, and to it, 
 along with Christ, went the soul of the robber. But, 
 though spoken of as a prison, so far as the wicked are 
 concerned, it is nevertheless spoken of at other times 
 when the spirits and souls of the righteous are treated of, 
 as a place or state of bliss, to which such a man as St. 
 Paul looked forward with eager yearning, as one whose 
 delights in the presence of the Lord were so powerfully 
 attractive, that much effort was needful if he would bear 
 contentedly the burden of daily duty and the care of all 
 the Churches. The word used in the original is totally 
 different from those employed concerning the state of final 
 bliss or that of final woe. Its derivation and meaning 
 imply that it is mysterious, but not that it is other than 
 full of joy to faithfu! souls. 
 
 We are, further, led to the same conclusion (viz., that 
 Hades, or the place of departed spirits is different both 
 from hell and from heaven) by reflecting on the very em- 
 phatic way in which we are told, in the first place that 
 the soul will not be rejoined with the body until the final 
 resurrection, in the second, that flesh and blood cannot 
 enter into the kingdom of heaven, and in the third, that 
 the last stage of God's dispensations (that is the entrance 
 of human souls into the kingdom of heaven) will not be- 
 gin until this corruptible shall have put on incorruption — 
 which in St. Paul's grand chapter to the Corinthians, 
 evidently means : until we shall have been reunited with 
 our spiritual body. If entrance to heaven (in the full and 
 
110 ALL SAINTS. 
 
 proper sense of that word) is possible only after the resur- 
 rection, and the resurrection is not to take place until 
 about the time of the Last Judgment, it would seem to 
 need no further proof that, as our Lord said, no man hath 
 ascended up into heaven as yet. 
 
 And yet again, we are established in such a belief by 
 considering the marvellous influence over the mind by the 
 body, and the intimate connection between them. We 
 have no experience of a disembodied state, and therefore 
 are totally without any conception of what such a state 
 may be. But there is certainly reason to suppose that 
 God would not so carefully assure us of the immortal 
 destiny of the body — that Christ would not be distinctly 
 called the Saviour of the body — that the reuniting of the 
 soul to the body would not be made a necessary pre- 
 liminary to entrance upon the state of perfected bliss — it 
 is, I say, reasonable to suppose that God would not have 
 assured us of all these things were there no peculiar fit- 
 ness in the union between soul and body to enhance our 
 highest interests. And if so, however happy may be the 
 intermediate and disembodied state of the righteous, how- 
 ever fully the capacities of such a condition may be satis- 
 fied — still in the words of the text, they cannot be made 
 perfect without us — they have still in anticipation a state 
 of being into which they are not to enter until we, — all 
 the faithful who dwell on earth — shall have joined them, 
 and until, the present dispensation over, the new era shall 
 have been inaugurated by the general resurrection. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say that this view has no con- 
 nection with the unscriptural doctrine of Purgatory. Pur- 
 gatory is the purging or cleansing place. According to 
 the Romish view, the wicked who are hot finally to enter 
 
ALL SAINTS. Ill 
 
 heaven do not go to Purgatory. But all those who have, 
 at death, any remains of sin, go thither to be purged by 
 further suffering of those remains of sin. It is, then, a 
 continuation of pain, though not of probation ; for all 
 those who enter there are sure of ultimate bliss, though it 
 may be long before all their sinfulness is refined away. 
 There may be comfort in the thought to those who believe 
 it, — there may be, and I have no doubt there is, a pro- 
 found satisfaction to pure and loving hearts, in the belief, 
 which of course is closely connected with it (though not 
 with our Church's doctrine of the intermediate state), 
 that by prayers, and alms, and good deeds, they may shorten 
 the time of trial to which their dead are otherwise des- 
 tined. I can see all the beauty and attractiveness of such 
 a belief, which allows room for the intense yearning of the 
 bereaved still to sacrifice for the departed the life-blood 
 that was so willingly poured out for them on earth. But 
 it is to be observed that there is no real advantage in it 
 beyond that of our own scriptural teaching, as regards 
 any greater room for hope concerning the departed. It 
 still leaves the same sharp line of demarcation between 
 those who are to be ultimately saved and those who are 
 finally condemned. Wherever a Komanist has ground for 
 hoping that the fitful manifestations of religious feelj-ng 
 on earth give assurance that a friend has been admitted 
 to purgatory, where he is safe, however long may be his 
 purgation, — in all such cases we have precisely the same 
 ground of hope that the departed soul has been admitted 
 to a state where, in the presence of God, and surrounded by 
 none but elevating influences, he may grow into the meas- 
 ure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. And the ad- 
 vantages being the same, — the opportunities for exercising 
 
112 ALL SAINTS. 
 
 faith and hope being identical — both leave, as they must 
 leave forever undetermined in this life, where the line is 
 drawn which divides hope from despair, — both are com- 
 pelled in the exercise of the highest spiritual self-surrender, 
 to leave the determination of that point to the absolute 
 justice and infinite mercy of our Father in heaven. 
 
 As American churchmen, then — as men who find in 
 mere vague tradition no reasonable ground for belief — we 
 are to think of our departed only as we are warranted by the 
 word of God. They are not in heaven, since that fulness 
 of perfected bliss is reserved until we shall have joined 
 them, and can enter it with them. They are happy in the 
 presence of the Lord, having the same spiritual privileges 
 as we on earth ; only that they are adapted, and probably 
 enlarged, as befits their freedom from temptation, and 
 their confidence in an assured eternity of bliss. If their 
 religious life on earth was weak, no doubt they pass into 
 that state with less power of drinking in the fulness of joy 
 than if their natures had taken kindly to discipline and 
 trial here. The dying robber just opening his new-born 
 eyes to the truth as it is in Jesus, can hardly be supposed 
 to have entered at once upon the spiritual glories to which 
 he was so suddenly admitted, with the same powers and 
 capacities as those which St. Paul and St. John carried 
 with them to Paradise. But all, no doubt, according to 
 the measure of the gift of Ciirist, — new-born children and 
 long-tried heroes of the faith, — experience an ever-increas- 
 ing enlargement of their faculties, and love, believe, and 
 hope more and more perfectly and fully until the last day. 
 
 Some such statement of the Church's reading of Bible- 
 doctrine was needful, partly for itself, and, because all do 
 not possess it in its wholeness, partly as a preparation 
 
ALL SAINTS. 113 
 
 for understanding fully the doctrine of the Church's being 
 the Communion of Saints. In such a condition as, we 
 must suppose fro7n the declarations of the Bible, theirs to 
 be, enjoying the presence of Christ, how can we help be- 
 lieving that we are the objects of their thoughts — that the 
 course of the world, and particularly that of the Church is 
 deeply interesting to them? Even if we do not un- 
 dertake to decide whether they are permitted themselves 
 to watch the ongoing of our lives, still they must receive 
 all that is needful for being fully cognizant of our fortunes 
 from the never-ending stream of messengers whom we are 
 sending from our firesides to join their company. All that 
 most interested them here must take on a new, and more 
 vivid attractiveness when their eyes, from straining to 
 detect the traces of God's ways on earth, and strengthened 
 by the trial, gaze undimmed upon the Lord God of all 
 the heavenly hosts. The growth in every Christian grace 
 which seems inseparable from such a condition, must 
 surely invest all pure, earthly affections with fresh strength. 
 They must long and pray for the speedy accomplishment 
 of God's purposes in general, and in particular for the per- 
 fecting of all whom they have left behind. That we 
 should pray for them, is not only unauthorized by our 
 Church, but apparently superfluous : that we should pray 
 to them is to forget that we have no reason to suppose that 
 they can hear our prayers. But that there is among them 
 real communion in spirit with ourselves, the same spiritual 
 nourishment and support vouchsafed to both parts of the 
 Church, the militant and triumphant — the keenest interest 
 with them, in both the general and particular providence 
 of God, as far as knowledge is communicated to them 
 either by God, or by those who are perpetually added to 
 
114 ALL SAINTS. 
 
 their number from earth ;— of this I cannot doubt without 
 supposing them to be in a state of unconsciousness quite 
 impossible to reconcile with what we are told ; and I no 
 more doubt it than I doubt of the communion existing 
 between the Church in England and the Church in 
 America. 
 
 But communion is between two. Allowing that some 
 such knowledge of and interest in us exists among the 
 saints in Paradise, real communion demands that we too, 
 should feel deeply and constantly that the tie uniting us 
 to them is reaL And I think it can hardly be gainsaid 
 that when the mother Church in England rejected the 
 doctrine of Purgatory, and the practice of Invocation of 
 Saints, many of her children, forgetful of the wise caution 
 with which she preserved the truth, while casting aside the 
 perversion of it, came to feel an unreasonable aversion to 
 the very mention of saints, as though their memory could 
 not be cherished, nor their communion with ourselves 
 maintained, without falling into the practices and the be- 
 liefs of the Church of Rome. If such practices and beliefs 
 were necessarily connected with the doctrine set forth by 
 our Church, that would be the most convincing proof that 
 we ought never to have condemned them. For this doc- 
 trine may, in the words of the Article, be read in Holy 
 Scripture and proved thereby ; and whatever necessarily 
 follows from the true doctrine must itself be true. But 
 the true belief and the innocent practice may be held by 
 individuals, and taught by the Prayer Book, without such 
 consequences. And we deliberately forego much that will 
 tend to the sweetening and enlarging of our religious lives* 
 if we permit this great truth to remain without its proper 
 influence. 
 
ALL SAINTS. 115 
 
 Who does not see and rejoice over the quickening of the 
 interest felt by our own communion in the old Catholics, 
 and the Holy Eastern Church ? In both cases there may be 
 differences which only time can wholly remove : such in the 
 latter case certainly exist. But the longing desire that the 
 unity of the Spirit should take outward shape is beyond 
 question a feeling directly inspired by a larger, more 
 vigorous Christian life. And, if we may anticipate the 
 time when it shall have been realized, — if we may joyfully 
 look forward to a period, however remote, when the mis- 
 understandings of the past shall have been removed — when 
 additions to the faith shall have been pruned away — when 
 all branches of the Church shall be united in deed and in 
 truth, and the whole of Christ's dispersed sheep shall have 
 been gathered into the one fold — why shall we not now, 
 try to realize more habiiually the sublime truth that a 
 host of saints infinitely outnumbering all who now believe 
 on earth, are one with us in feeling, in thought, in aspira- 
 tion, as they tread the happy walks of Paradise ? There 
 is nothing to hinder it but our undue absorption in the 
 present and the visible. The great French statesman who 
 died not long ago, left in his last will the solemn record of 
 his conviction, that in the eternal light which he was 
 about to enter many of the discussions which distract us 
 here would appear to have arisen from our incapacity fully 
 to take in the proportions of divine truth. No doubt 
 they will, and no doubt our perfect union with other 
 branches of the Church militant may long be delayed. 
 But our union with the Church triumphant no man can 
 hinder. That is beyond peradventure. Only strive to take 
 it in, — only try to picture to yourself that multitude that no 
 man can number, chanting ceaselessly the song which we 
 
116 ALL SAINTS. 
 
 on earth are singing — strain your ear to catch the music of 
 that resounding symphony — and the true Church will 
 swell to proportions more majestic and inspiring — your 
 Christian life will recognize the proper sweep of its sym- 
 pathies — the hallowed feast in which we are about to join 
 will become, more particularly on this festival of All 
 Saints, the suhlimest, as well as the deepest expression of 
 the truth that the Holy Catholic Church is the Communion 
 of Saints, no less with each other than with their ascended 
 Master. 
 
ST. MATTHEW. 
 
 THE VALUE OP THE OBSERVANCE OF SAINTS* DAYS. 
 
 The celebration of the Saints' days is a feature of the 
 Church's system which is gradually attracting more at- 
 tention than formerly, but about which a good deal remains 
 to be said. One need not be very old to recall the time 
 when this, and many other practices which are distinctly 
 enjoined in the Prayer Book, were by almost universal 
 consent ignored. In some dioceses and parishes, the 
 observance of them is still held, apparently, to be out of 
 keeping with true Evangelical principles. The observance, 
 by public worship at least, of the Ember seasons, the use 
 of the prayers for those about to be ordained, holding 
 ordinations at those times when they are specially ordered 
 by our Canon, i. e., immediately after the Ember weeks, 
 the keeping of Saints' days, — these, or most of these, are 
 matters which, in this country at least, have become general 
 only within the memory of persons still in middle life. But 
 although such Churchly observances are not, at the present 
 day, likely to attract much thought from their novelty, 
 the number of persons who give much attention to them 
 is still very inconsiderable. Many who would be much 
 annoyed at the thought of having public service given up 
 on days appointed for it — who would, and rightly, consider 
 the Church system neglected by such an omission, — are 
 still by no means inclined themselves, to pay any tribute 
 
 117 
 
118 ST. MATTHEW. 
 
 of personal respect to these same matters. Such being 
 the case, one wonders how deep is the reverence for the 
 Church on the part of persons of this class. The thing is 
 a little strange, (is it not ?) that what is ostensibly held so 
 important for a clergyman to attend to, should be left so 
 largely in his hands alone. It might be thought that 
 when the Church is opened for morning prayers, on days 
 specially apppointed for them, on days which have been 
 observed for many centuries by all branches of the Catholic 
 Church as commemorating the Saints of old, our forerun- 
 ners in the faith, more than a handful of worshippers 
 would assemble in a parish where Church principles are 
 held important, and where there is a considerable number 
 of persons who are not too closely occupied to spare half 
 an hour for showing their principles to be based on con- 
 viction. 
 
 Let us view this matter somewhat carefully, and see 
 whether the Church has not displayed in this particular, 
 that same wisdom which has characterized her in other 
 matters. 
 
 In the great struggle for good against evil, various 
 methods have been tried for the purpose of bringing home 
 to men the great truths of morality and religion. One 
 system, which seems never to lose its charm for a certain 
 class of minds, is that of putting these truths into proverbs 
 and maxims, — a shape so compact and portable that the 
 mind may easily be stored with a large provision of rules 
 ready to be applied in time of need. On all planes of moral 
 and religious truth this system has been applied. You 
 have on the lowest plane, maxims of the worldly and sel- 
 fish kind, which are calculated to keep one on the broad 
 highway of honesty, thrift and economy. In a higher 
 
ST. MATTHEW. 119 
 
 sphere you may find in abundance short, wise sayings of 
 great thinkers, which contain the quintessence of long and 
 patient thought apphed to the loftiest subjects of human 
 reflection. The Bible contains a book which shows that 
 the divine mind has not omitted this in its multiform 
 provisions for the needs of man, and whatever may be 
 done in the way of condensing for practical purposes the 
 lessons God would teach us, may be found, in that wise and 
 witty collection of old Hebrew maxims, with its introduc- 
 tion of sublime and generous eloquence, that robs the 
 proverbs of all the mere worldliness that might otherwise 
 be imputed to them, and shows the temper of religious 
 reverence in which they are to be carried into effect in 
 every-day life. 
 
 Another method of elevating men, and inducing them 
 to lead a purer life, is to be found in the great systems of 
 philosophy and morals which have been constructed in all 
 ages, and in such profusion that our only difficulty is to 
 choose among them. Here the claim is a little more sub- 
 stantial than when mere maxims are credited with much 
 influence over the human mind. A somewhat more accurate 
 view of our real needs prompts this attempt. For here 
 the endeavor is made by giving something like a consistent 
 general view of the moral universe, to supply what the 
 better kind of men crave as the basis of their action. 
 They never can be greatly influenced by mere proverbs, 
 throwing at best only gleams as from a dark-lantern, 
 upon this or that particular deed, or doubt, or desire. 
 They may, perhaps, be roused to strive after a higher life, 
 by having placed before them a system which will show 
 them what are the objects after which they should strive — 
 what are the means of giving efficacy to their strivings — 
 
120 ST. MATTHEW. 
 
 what the support, and what the incentive to sustain and 
 inspirit them, when novelty is gone and the weariness and 
 unprofitableness of human life weigh them down. This is 
 what alone has reaped any measure of success among the 
 numerous efforts of philosophers and philanthropists. Men 
 must have some explanation, true or false, of the source 
 and object of human existence, of its solemn facts of woe 
 and wrong, to uphold them in any continuous efforts to 
 lead a life higher than that of the mere seeker after 
 pleasure, and shield them from the temptation which 
 presents itself so often to us all, to say, in -one shape or 
 another, " Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die." 
 
 And yet here also a mistake lies at the root. Frame your 
 system of philosophy, or of morals, v/ith all the skill of 
 which you are master — infuse into it all the warmth and 
 enthusiasm of which it is capable — present it with what- 
 ever zeal you may — show as clearly as possible that it ex- 
 plains the problems of life ; — and still you have done but 
 little to ensure it any measure of success. For the stu- 
 dent in his library, it may be perfectly consistent with 
 itself, and with the world for which it proposes a solution. 
 But its power stops short when it passes from the study, 
 the abode of thought and meditation, into the world of 
 action and temptation. It has little ability to make men 
 hear the voice which spoke there so clearly and persua- 
 sively, when they are beset behind and before by the cove- 
 tous desires and inordinate love of riches of which we hear 
 in the collect for St. Matthew's day. And more than 
 this. The proportion of mankind with whom even the 
 idea of acting in accordance with it can find an entrance 
 is exceedingly small. Those who have a natural turn for 
 thought and investigation may find time to study and be 
 
ST. MATTHEW. 121 
 
 convinced. But for that immense portion of our race who 
 have neither the time nor the capacity for reflecting over 
 any such system, — who would not shape in words the 
 difficulties, nor the cravings of which they are, neverthe- 
 less, deeply conscious, — for them, any explanation, or any 
 scheme of life of this kind is absolutely ineffectual, even to 
 command their assent. 
 
 The only way of really influencing men at large is by 
 example. It is a power which we see and feel at work 
 every day — every hour of our lives. It is always at work, 
 always busy, even when we are not conscious of what is 
 going on. How good it is in circumstances which give it 
 a beneficent turn, we see in what looks like the magic of 
 every wise and good family circle, community, nation . 
 How destruotive it may be, appears from the almost hope - 
 less character of the attempt to do good to one who is sur- 
 rounded by crime during the years of childhood and 
 youth. Who of us do not know the subtle way in which 
 it works when we get away from the ordinary constraints 
 of home among those whom we see throwing off the bur- 
 den of duty and self-respect? How it steals into the 
 mind, persuasively suggesting the harmlessness and plea- 
 sure of going and doing likewise! We say ^'No," and 
 think we are very firm in our hold upon our common 
 rules. But unless we are on our guard most jealously 
 we find ourselves curiously advancing a little nearer, only 
 to examine for ourselves, of course, and then, suddenly, 
 overpowered. 
 
 This power of example is one of which Christianity 
 
 makes the largest use ; and it is, of all the principles of 
 
 human nature, that which is most wisely and effectually 
 
 employed. Many of the most striking of the words of 
 
 6 
 
122 ST. MATTHEW. 
 
 Christ are only in another form what had been said be- 
 fore Him. He based His teaching largely on the previous 
 revelation. The duty of loving our neighbor as ourself, 
 He advanced, not as a truth hitherto unknown, but as 
 summing up and underlying the Law and the Prophets ; 
 while loving the Lord our God, with all our heart, and 
 mind, and soul, and strength, was continually advanced in 
 the Scriptures of the older dispensation. What was en- 
 tirely new was the personal power with which He clothed 
 those grand and simple truths. The Pharisees had at 
 their finger's end all the minutest prescriptions of the 
 Law, and had developed them into a system of wonderful 
 complexity which regulated every duty of a Hebrew's life, 
 and which hemmed him in from his waking in the morn- 
 ing until he went to sleep at night. And yet, according 
 to Josephus, there never was a nation, as a nation, more 
 completely given over to wickedness of every] kind than 
 this people, so abundantly supplied with moral precepts, 
 and so instructed in the rigorous application of them to 
 the least details of life. 
 
 What was needed was the power of example, to infuse 
 into men a new spirit, a spirit which could dispense with 
 all this cumbrous machinery and, laying hold of the great 
 principles, proceed to apply them in the calm power of 
 personal conviction and loving imitation. This Christ 
 gave. While He does not avoid instruction — nay, while 
 He is perpetually busied in giving it, it is the Son of Man 
 who is made the centre of all. The foundation of the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount, that without which it would have 
 been as powerless to raise men as the many kindred ut- 
 terances to which thought and love had led men before, 
 was the command which takes shape on another occasion : 
 
ST. MATTHEW. 123 
 
 " Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for I am 
 meek and lowly of heart ; and ye shall find rest unto your 
 souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light." 
 
 It is this peculiarity of our Lord's teaching which 
 shapes, indeed which makes, our Christian year. Too 
 deeply imbued with the spirit of Christ's teaching to fore- 
 go an advantage so priceless — knowing that when Christi- 
 anity becomes a mere system of doctrines the life is gone 
 out of it — aware of the tendency of the human mind to- 
 wards reducing moral and religious truths to mere for- 
 mulae — she brings back to our minds with unwearying 
 patience the great outward facts in which truth has found 
 its most eloquent expression. She is not content to leave 
 her children, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, those 
 who can think and those who have never been taught to 
 think, indiscriminately, to the chances of remembering or 
 forgetting the events of Christ's life. Their religious 
 instructor may, if he be so forgetful of his ordination vow, 
 preach only cold morality, or fanaticism, or dark, abstruse 
 doctrines of predestination, or intoxicating dreams of mys- 
 ticism. Not so the common Mother. To all her children, 
 because all must have it or die, she sets forth in order the 
 pure teaching of the Gospel. Nor is she content even with 
 reciting to the ear in the daily lessons, the story of the 
 Saviour's life, or the words of Him who spake as never 
 man spake. To the imagination, that mightiest lever of 
 the moral world, she addresses the silent utterances of 
 her wisely ordered seasons. By festival and fast, by sea- 
 sons of mourning and seasons of rejoicing, she drives home 
 the lessons taught by the various events of the spotless 
 life of her Master, by the descent of the Holy Ghost, and 
 by the manifestation ever and anon of the three Persons 
 
124 ST. MATTHEW. 
 
 of the blessed Trinity. By this perpetual reminder of the 
 events of His earthly life she combats the tendency to lose 
 sight of the historical Man, Christ Jesus. She puts it be- 
 yond the power of any teacher to deprive his flock of what 
 is needful for their spiritual sustenance. In spite of him- 
 self he must preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified. 
 
 But there is another set of influences, which although of 
 inferior importance, is full of value. Had Christ's life 
 passed as unsuccessfully during after time, as to human 
 eyes at least, it did during His actual ministry, it would be 
 hard for any one to begin now the imitation of it. We 
 need to be reminded of the breadth of meaning in those 
 words of the creed which teach us that the Holy Catholic 
 Church is the communion of Saints. We are not to be 
 deprived of the comfort and encouragement that flow from 
 the knowledge that, however fruitless for the time, were 
 His words. His love and His example. His followers awoke 
 when He was ascended into Heaven, to all that He had been 
 to them, and found in that invisible fellowship which ia 
 ours as much as theirs, the courage to build up and conse- 
 crate with their blood, the Church that He had founded. 
 Nor among those alone who enjoyed His earthly compan- 
 ionship, but among all Saints of all ages, yea among all 
 Angels, have we a right to mingle in spiritual communion* 
 for the rousing of our drooping souls and the quickening of 
 our hopes. But if so, how is it to be taught ? By leaving 
 every man to his own devices here ? — by trusting that the 
 power of such influences will be sufficiently valued to dis- 
 pense with reminders, when even our Master's example 
 needs to be perpetually brought before us by fast and festi- 
 val ? Such a course would be strangely inconsistent- 
 Therefore we have, applied to the object of keeping alive 
 
ST. MATTHEW. 125 
 
 this class of influences, the same means wbicli every 
 Churchman finds by experience to be full of profit in pre- 
 serving fresh the memory of the Saviour's life : therefore 
 we have, scattered throughout the year, such festivals as 
 that for whose celebration we are met to-day. 
 
 St. Matthew ! you say, What profit is there for me in 
 specially commemorating the life of St. Matthew? As 
 the author of the first Gospel, as a godly and inspired man, 
 certainly worthy of respect — certainly worthy to be made 
 the subject of thankfulness to God. But as the traditional 
 Evangelist of Ethiopia, Media, or Persia, the figure is too 
 vague and shadowy to invest with much personal interest, 
 Of St. Paul and St. John I know something. To their 
 memories I am ready to devote a tribute of reverence ! 
 But St. Matthew does not stand to my mind as the sym- 
 bol of any thing in particular ; and I do not see the 
 advantage of keeping a festival or going to church in his 
 honor. 
 
 Read the Gospel for St. Matthew's day, I answer, and 
 you will see abundant reason why he should stand to your 
 mind as the symbol of something in particular. " And as 
 Jesus passed forth . . He saw a man named Mat- 
 thew sitting at the receipt of customs : and He saith unto 
 him, 'Follow me.' And he arose and followed Him." 
 What a picture is that ! The despised and degraded tax- 
 gatherer, excluded from the company of decent society by 
 the odium gathering round his detested calling, and con- 
 sorting with publicans and sinners, hears the kind voice 
 that whispers to his mind of purity and a better life, and 
 in simple devotion and gratitude abandons thenceforward 
 his gainful calling to become the sharer of Christ's wander- 
 ing, toilsome, thankless life. That a shadowy ghost, lack- 
 
126 ST. MATTHEW. 
 
 ing the distinctness necessary to call it up before the mind ! 
 Thai a memory which the Church of God can afford to lose 
 from her roll of saintly heroes ! That an example with no 
 value for you in an age like this, when the wisest and the 
 purest find it hard to resist the covetous desires and in- 
 ordinate love of riches which choke the word so often and 
 render it unfruitful ! Why, if there be one lesson more 
 than another which is needful for our day it is this — that 
 we must struggle against the love of ease and wealth, if we 
 would keep ourselves pure, and live the higher life to 
 which Christ calls us. Everywhere the temptation 
 creeps in. The poorest are infected by the poison of souL 
 and sacrifice personal self-respect and decency to flaunt 
 their absurd finery in the House of God, while they pinch 
 themselves of necessaries, and run in debt to purchase 
 them. It is this disposition to worship only money, and 
 what money buys, that brings about the envy and jealousy 
 of class against class, so accursed and unchristian when 
 they exist. It is this inordinate love of riches that makes 
 men begin to toil for them as boys, before they have got- 
 ten any thing which can be called an education ; and so 
 robs their whole life of the refining and ennobling influence 
 of books. It is this that is suffered to drain the body of 
 health, and the soul of its best powers, and so often ends 
 before middle life is reached, by using up brain and nerves, 
 and leaving the man a peevish, useless invalid, with no 
 higher aim than sensual enjoyment, and not health enough 
 to allow him that. Need I follow the subject further into 
 society, and its harmful influence there in making the 
 young of both sexes marry for wealth and position only, in 
 sending them to live in hotels, instead of having homes of 
 their own when they do marry ; — into political life, and its 
 
ST. MATTHEW. 127 
 
 power there to make unworthy men or rulers, and to en- 
 gross us so completely with our private money-getting that 
 we cannot spare time to oust the thieves, and put, and keep 
 honest men in office ? To one who looks at the facts there 
 seems only too much melancholy truth in the Apostle's 
 words, ^' The love of money is the root of all evil." 
 
 If there be any truth then, in what I have said, I need 
 hardly urge, that to celebrate in its true spirit the festival 
 of St. Matthew, is a most timely protest against the per- 
 petual festival of Mammon which we celebrate with such 
 devotion. This day which brings forcibly to our hearts 
 the truth that there are higher things in life than a good 
 income, which tells us that a man has been upon earth 
 who could deliberately abandon wealth and its pursuit 
 when a better thing was put before him, who was clear - 
 sighted enough to prize peace and love and gratitude to 
 Christ above money, and pure-hearted enough to abide by 
 such a decision — what a day ought it to be to all of us, 
 whether poor or rich who keep it ! 
 
 And remember that there are more ways than one of 
 keeping it. Regarding the Holy Communion itself the 
 Church teaches us, in the rubric after the Office for the 
 Communion of the sick that "if a man by reason of 
 extremity of sickness, . . . or by any other just im- 
 pediment, do not receive the Sacrament of Christ's Body 
 and Blood, the Minister shall instruct him that if he do 
 truly repent him of his sins, and steadfastly believe that 
 Jesus Christ hath suffered death upon the Cross for Him, 
 and shed His Blood for his redemption, earnestly remem- 
 bering the benefits he hath thereby, and giving Him hearty 
 thanks therefore, he doth eat and drink the Body and 
 Blood of our Saviour Christ profitably and to his soul's 
 health, although he do not receive the Sacrament with his 
 
128 ST. MATTHEW. 
 
 mouth." This teachiDg, throwing so strong a light as it 
 does upon the Church's spiritual view of the Holy Com- 
 munion, is worthy of constant remembrance just now. 
 But a similar view is applicable to the matter in hand. It 
 would be foolish and unreasonable to demand or expect all 
 to abandon the busiest part of the day, to give up what 
 would be, in many cases, the whole of it, as a work- 
 man or employe must do, to attend public worship. I 
 neither expect it, nor desire it of all. It is for every man 
 to ask himself whether the impediment which keeps him 
 from Church is a just one, though I am sure that if aU 
 came who were not justly and really hindered, the Church 
 would be well attended. But if you cannot come here, 
 that is no reason why you should not take time to read the 
 service appropriate to the day, to offer up its beautiful 
 collect, and above all, earnestly strive from morning till 
 night to keep in your mind, and act upon, the lesson 
 taught by it, and so terribly needed by us all. It will 
 keep you from being wholly absorbed in business. If you 
 lose, it will help you to bear loss, by its teaching of the 
 higher value of self-control and submission. It will en- 
 courage you to struggle against the spirit that grovels in 
 the love of lucre, and overcome it. It will raise you above 
 the present, with its tumult and passion, and bring before 
 you, from the distant past, in its serene and majestic com- 
 pleteness, the rounded life of a man who actually has trod 
 the earth, who actually overcame your temptations, and 
 who now rests from earthly trial among the saints in 
 Paradise. You may be justly hindered from praying in a 
 Church of human building, but if so, in the sanctuary of 
 a chaste breast and quiet mind, you may keep as truly 
 and as profitably, the good old festival of St. Matthew. 
 Take home then the spirit of the day. 
 
XI. 
 
 THE CENTURION AT CAPERNAUM. 
 
 HOW CAN I WORK ? 
 
 " The centurion answered and said : Lord, I am not worthy that thou 
 shouldest come under my roof ; but speak the word only and my ser- 
 vant shall be healed." — St. Matte, viii. 8. 
 
 The centurion at Capernaum is a remarkable figure 
 among the characters brought before us in the Gospels. 
 From the accounts given in the Gospel of St. Matthew, 
 and in that of St. Luke, we piece together a conception of 
 the man something like this. He was a Koman officer who 
 had been long enough stationed in Palestine to have had 
 his attention attracted by the religion of the Jews. Even 
 in that out-of-the-way station on the shores of the sea of 
 Tiberias, among a population too poor to build a synagogue 
 for themselves, mainly composed of fishermen, and probably 
 little calculated to make a Koman soldier lay aside that 
 contempt with which the Jews were commonly regarded 
 by their conquerors, he had had the spiritual insight and 
 liberality of mind to see how vastly superior were the 
 principles of their religion to any thing he had met with 
 elsewhere. Contrasting their creed, and the evidence of 
 a written revelation on which it was based, with the cruel, 
 or superstitious, or revolting religions of pagandom, he 
 had seen the imposing majesty of their belief in one God, 
 the Creator and the Father of the world. Nor had he 
 
 6* 129 
 
130 THE CENTURION AT CAPERNAUM. 
 
 pursued the investigation of the subject merely as one of 
 curious interest. He bad probably connected himself, as 
 a proselyte of the gate, with the Jewish congregation in 
 the village. This appears likely from the report given by 
 the elders of the Jews in St. Luke's version of the story : 
 '' He loveth our nation and hath built us our synagogue " 
 (for the original implies that this was the only place of 
 worship they had). 
 
 Now, for a Eoman soldier to act in this way shows very 
 remarkable qualities — qualities that prepare us for the 
 commendation bestowed by our Saviour on his unexampled 
 faith. The Eomans generally looked upon religions other 
 than their own with contemptuous indifference. In their 
 view religion was important mainly as connected with the 
 state, and with the duties men owed to the state. Hence the 
 endeavor on the part of the Eoman rulers to keep up the 
 outward observances of their religion after they had entirely 
 ceased to believe in it themselves. Hence the frantic 
 efforts made by the best of their emperors to restore it 
 when it had well-nigh died out, thinking that external 
 observance of its forms would satisfy the gods, and impart 
 new vigor to their rapidly decaying institutions. But here 
 was a man who not only was ready to believe that other 
 religions might have deep meaning for a soldier of the 
 mighty empire, but actually had trained himself into a 
 complete and unquestioning faith in the most despised of 
 all religions, that of the hated Jews. 
 
 The circumstances of his life, too, must not be left out 
 of the account. Ordinarily, as we know, the profession of 
 arms does not help to make men religious. Even the 
 constant risk of death to which soldiers are exposed, in- 
 stead of increasing the activity of conscience, and keeping 
 
THE CENTURION AT CAPERNAUM. 131 
 
 before the mind the interests of eternity on whose brink 
 they are continually standing, has, in general, the effect of 
 hardening the moral sense, and banishing serious thoughts. 
 Such a life as that which lay before the centurion, is per- 
 haps, even more unfavorable to religion than actual warfare. 
 The absence of occupation generally inclines men in camp 
 or garrison life to kill time by vicious amusements ; and 
 their associates are rarely such as to stimulate them to 
 any higher occupations. The centurion, however, appears 
 to have resisted and overcome such temptations as his pro- 
 fession exposed him to. He had thoughtfully studied the 
 religion of the inhabitants, had actively employed himself 
 for their improvement, and had given largely to provide 
 them the opportunity of public worship which they were 
 too poor to provide for themselves. Certainly, under the 
 circumstances, a most noteworthy person. No wonder 
 that when his request was made known to Christ He should 
 have marvelled, and said that He had not found so great 
 faith, no, not in Israel. For the centurion does not appear 
 to have drunk in the prejudices of his new religion, but 
 only its good, and to have been led by what he had learned 
 of its promises much further than his teachers. "Whether 
 he fully believed, at this time, in Christ as the Messiah 
 we cannot tell ; but he seems, at all events, to have be- 
 lieved frankly and undoubtingly that Jesus was the mes- 
 senger of God, and able to perform miracles such as only 
 the highest prophets of Israel had ever wrought. The 
 sense of Christ's dignity was high enough to make him 
 feel that his house was unworthy of being honored by the 
 Saviour's presence, and we are induced to suppose that as 
 he certainly had heard of Christ's claims he must have 
 fully accepted them as well-founded. 
 
132 THE CENTURION AT CAPERNAUM. 
 
 I have dwelt at such length upon this man, who after 
 once appearing, is heard of no more in the Gospels, partly 
 because I am persuaded that a great deal of the teaching 
 power of the Bible lies in its giving us in actual narrative 
 — in its vividly-drawn characters — specimens of almost 
 all varieties of spiritual experience. And further, much 
 of this is lost from the unthinking way in which the Bible 
 is too commonly read. I should certainly be far from 
 wishing any one to read the Sacred Volume with less of 
 reverence than he now feels — or with less conviction that 
 all Scripture is given by inspiration of God. But there is 
 a kind of reverence for it which causes those who cherish 
 it to lose a vast deal of its benefit. Such persons seem to 
 think, from the startled air they have w^hen the freshness 
 and naturalness of the Bible are presented freshly and 
 naturally, that to make any particular use of it except to 
 arouse the thought of God's glory and the solemnity of 
 eternity, is almost profane. But surely if Christ was not 
 averse to joining in the innocent occupations of daily and 
 social life — if He was to be found in familiar intercourse 
 with men at weddings and dinner-tables, not lowering 
 Himself by so acting, but teaching men that whatever is 
 not immoral is capable of being used and improved by 
 the healthy, God-fearing soul — if He encouraged the freest 
 and most unconstrained use of His loving wisdom to meet 
 all difficulties for all men — if this be so, as unquestionably 
 it is, then why should any one be afraid to use the Bible 
 in the same way ? And we do not so use it, unless wo 
 learn to look at its narrative part more particularly, as a 
 bright, fresh, animated story of living events, long past 
 indeed, but still living in their value for us. We must 
 consider the men and women who figure in that fascinating 
 
THE CENTURION AT CAPERNAUM. 133 
 
 narrative as persons who actually lived and breathed as we 
 do, who had their own personal history made up, like ours 
 to-day, of joys and sorrows — of doubts and struggles. 
 And we must try to understand those experiences of theirs 
 just as we try to comprehend those of any one now living 
 to whom we are attached. This, I am sure, is the only 
 way to get out of that wonderful, picturesque story of our 
 dear Saviour's life, anything like the impression of His 
 personal character which they got who were His daily 
 companions. Don't be afraid of your Bible. Don't think 
 that the only time to read it is in Church, or at family 
 prayers, or when you feel especially solemn and want to 
 work yourself up to some unnatural condition of soul. 
 Look at it as intended for your soul's use at all times, 
 and as capable of bringing you closer to your Lord than 
 any amount of that spiritual excitement which cannot see 
 that while we live on earth we must live in another way 
 than by shutting our eyes to all the brightness, and beauty, 
 and freshness that God has provided for our delight and 
 cultivation. 
 
 Then your spirituality will be really higher, because it 
 will fit in more naturally and easily with the common duties 
 of life. Your Christianity will be healthier because it will 
 not shut itself ofi" from what belongs to an earnest life here 
 on earth. Christ, Himself will seem nearer and easier to 
 get at, when thought of as associating familiarly with peo- 
 ple whom we feel almost acquainted with, than He ever 
 can be when viewed only as sitting at the right hand of 
 Grod. If He has been the kind, and gentle, and loving com- 
 panion of other persons no wiser and no stronger than your- 
 self, you will find it much less hard to ask Him to be your 
 companion too, and will find yourself naturally thinking of 
 Him when you are weak, or discouraged, or in trouble. 
 
134 THE CENTURION AT CAPERNAUM. 
 
 But it was not merely to introduce some much-needed 
 counsel on reading the Bible that I chose this text, nor 
 that I might make you feel that this Roman centurion, 
 now so long since gone to his reward, once actually lived, 
 not only in a book, but in flesh and blood, with thoughts, 
 and duties, and sicknesses and anxieties. He lived, like the 
 rest of us, to do something and make something out of 
 his life here. In what we have already seen of his doings 
 and thinkings, we may find help for our own discharge 
 of the duty laid upon us. 
 
 And the first lesson is this — that even under the most 
 unfavorable circumstances, one may get help from the sur- 
 roundings of his daily life toward serving and knowing God. 
 It is a piece of spiritual wisdom which comes very late to 
 many of us, — the conviction that we were put into our 
 particular place by God's special design, and that, inasmuch 
 as He had all positions possible to choose among, and did 
 choose just this one, it must be the one where we may best 
 serve Him, and do good to our own souls. The trials and 
 temptations to which our position exposes us may be very 
 numerous. We may find it very hard work to keep up 
 our spirituality under the temptations to impatience or 
 discontent by which we are beset. But let us remember 
 that there is no position in life to which the same, or simi- 
 lar objections do not apply. And the longing to be rid of 
 these difficulties is very generally a longing to be rid of all 
 which troubles us simply because it troubles us, and not 
 because we are yearning after a larger opportunity of pro- 
 moting God's glory. That is, it arises from weariness, 
 and not from the pure spirituality for which we mistake 
 it. 
 
 Look at the position of this Roman centurion. Could 
 
THE CENTURION AT CAPERNAUM. 135 
 
 any situation seem less likely to result in his growing wiser 
 and purer than that in which he was placed ? He had 
 next to nothing to do in that little, out-of-the-way village, 
 and idleness, as we know, is extremely apt to produce a 
 crop of vices. There was no pubhc worship there to at- 
 tract a lazy officer, lounging about the hamlet trying to 
 kill the time. There was only a set of poor people, not over- 
 wise, or over-well-instructed even in their religion; and 
 their religion was, from a number of circumstances, one of 
 the last likely to attract a Eoman officer. Put any ordin- 
 ary man under circumstances like these, and you would say 
 that the likelihood would be that he would grow slothful 
 and inattentive to all but the mechanical duties of provid- 
 ing for the hundred men immediately under his charge — 
 that he would treat the people among whom he was sta- 
 tioned with contemptuous indifference, if not with harsh- 
 ness — that, in a word, he would be ruined, body and soul, 
 by a life so full of temptations to harm, so bare of induce- 
 ments to purity and activity. Certainly, for most men, 
 such would be the probability. Such is generally admit- 
 ted to be a sadly common result among our own army offi- 
 cers when long stationed in small frontier posts, even with 
 a much more close and frequent intercourse, through mails, 
 with civilized life than was possible in those days. But 
 such unpromising surroundings did not produce the result 
 that might reasonably have been looked for. Why not ? 
 For no reason that I can think of but because he would 
 not let them corrupt him ; because he fought against the 
 bad influences that imperilled his character — making du- 
 ties, and learning to take interest in the people around him 
 — learning from them all that he could, and trying to 
 benefit them in return. Was there but little for him to 
 
133 THE CENTURION AT CAPERNAUM. 
 
 do ? He made work for himself. Was it wearisome to 
 have no companionship but that of soldiers, and poor, 
 ignorant villagers ? He set to work, and found that poor, 
 ignorant villagers were men needing help, and that could 
 understand, and be grateful for kindly interest in their 
 welfare. 
 
 When you take into account that this man had not, to 
 begin with, even so much knowledge of God as the Jewish 
 religion in its then condition could convey to him, I 
 think we may readily believe that no one here has so un- 
 promising a situation in life — unpromising, I mean, for 
 advancement in religious knowledge and grace. Yet see 
 what he made out of his position ; even surprising Christ 
 Himself by the purity and depth of his belief; by the 
 humbleness of his character ; by his readiness to accept 
 Him and what He promised. 
 
 Now I do not mean to underrate the actual difficulties 
 of any man's lot. I know what a weary feeling is pro- 
 duced by the burden of uncongenial duty. Poverty is 
 hard to bear; unkindness is hard. Selfishness and ill- 
 temper, folly, and vice, and crime on the part of those with 
 whom we are closely connected by blood or marriage — all 
 these are among the most disheartening things which any 
 one can have to endure. And trying as they are at the 
 time, it is, if possible, worse yet to look forward to the 
 future, and see there no prospect of relief for many a year 
 to come, if ever in this life. What I do mean to say is 
 this : these things did not happen by chance. Your lot, 
 just such as it is, saving so far as you yourself may have 
 made it worse, was carefully arranged by a God whose 
 love and wisdom you dare not say you doubt. If anything 
 in heaven or earth be true, then it is true that this lot was 
 
THE CENTURION AT CAPEENAUM. 137 
 
 allowed, in all its features, both those for which you are, 
 and those for which you are not responsible, in order that 
 you might be purer and holier. If you are not growing 
 purer and holier it must be your own fault. In that 
 earthly lot which you grumble over, there lies all that is 
 needed to make you better. Is it not worth while to give 
 up, once for all, your whinings and lamentations and take 
 God at His word ? Poverty and sickness, sorrow and vex- 
 ation are not likely to become any easier excepting in one 
 way — that of submitting to them and trying to make the 
 best of them as being God's carefully chosen disciphne for 
 your improvement. We all know the cheerful serenity 
 which others have won by this line of conduct. We have 
 all seen people who were not only bright and contented, 
 but positively happy, under circumstances more hard to 
 bear than our own. So that this lesson which I am ex- 
 pounding from the Centurion's story cannot be considered 
 one of those self-satisfied pieces of useless good advice with 
 which the pulpit is often credited by people who imagine 
 that a clergyman is ignorant of the real trials and tempta- 
 tions of life. It forms the burden of much of the Bible's 
 teaching: it is in thorough agreement with the whole 
 tenor of our Saviour's history on earth : it is the only way 
 in which any man can prevent God's ordinary plan of ad- 
 ministering the affairs of this world from seeming a cruel 
 and meaningless mockery. Are these reasons enough for 
 my thinking there must be a deal of truth in it, and for my 
 imploring you to see whether it will not suit your case ? 
 
 But the centurion's words chosen as our text contain 
 an example of the only hopeful way in which the lesson I 
 am trying to enforce can be used. Apart from Christ, one 
 kind of discipline is as little likely to give us God's peace 
 
138 THE CENTURION AT CAPERNAUM. 
 
 as another. There are instances in the world's history of 
 men who just by stern determination, and without any be- 
 lief in a God or a Providence have crushed down the cry 
 of weariness that rises naturally to the lips of one op- 
 pressed with care and hopeless of a brighter future. But 
 such instances are so very rare that I should think it use- 
 less to urge any ordinary person to follow their example. 
 And even if it were possible for us all to repress our 
 misery, so far as any outward exhibition of it is concerned, 
 the inner condition in which we should still remain would 
 be but a very dreary and ghastly one. It is the peace of 
 Godj which passeth understanding that we all need : and 
 that never has been — never can be — attained in such ways 
 as this. For our hearts feel, and were meant to feel. Any- 
 thing that has for its deliberate purpose to freeze them up 
 and hinder their true working, is only another name for 
 suicide — suicide of the best part of our nature. And the 
 number of those who have nerve enough to kill their 
 hearts is, God be thanked, as small as the number of men 
 who can coolly take poison or blow out their brains, when 
 not driven wild by agony or fear. It is a hopeless thing 
 for all but one or two in a million ; and it is as useless in 
 fact as it is hopeless, to tell them to submit and make the 
 best of their lot, without telling them how this is to be 
 done — how it has been done. 
 
 When the centurion asked Christ to help him, he did 
 not make the application in vague hope that now, after all 
 other means^ had failed to cure his servant, it might be 
 worth while to try Christ's power, as something which, if 
 it did no good, could at all events do no harm. If he had 
 come in such a spirit as that, it is not likely that he would 
 have obtained what he wanted. Quite different was his 
 
THE CENTURION AT CAPERNAUM. 139 
 
 course. He was so deeply persuaded of the Saviour's 
 dignity that he would not even ask Him to enter his house : 
 '^ Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldst enter under 
 my roof; but speak the word only and my servant shall 
 be healed." He had no doubt at all on the subject. And 
 so the Lord could say unto him : "As thou hast believed 
 so be it done unto thee." His reward was in exact propor- 
 tion to his faith : as this was boundless so was that. "And 
 his servant was healed in the self-same hour." 
 
 The treatment of those who applied to Christ for help 
 was always like this. His common way of answering such 
 applications was : " Thy faith hath saved thee : go in 
 peace." Now the troubles of which I have been speaking 
 as so sorely demanding self-discipline are, even more than 
 the bodily ills in relieving which Christ spent so much of 
 His time, of just the kind that need faith in Him for their 
 relief. They cannot be cured in an instant. The bitter- 
 ness and the weariness which come of discontent, the sour- 
 ness that springs from impatient bearing of the faults of 
 others, the selfishness which wants all of a sudden to over- 
 leap discipline, and win at once the peace Cod promises — 
 all these have grown in many a case into very deeply 
 rooted diseases, and have established themselves in our na- 
 tures by years of indulgence. It may take a long period 
 of Lenten discipline for them to be thoroughly gotten rid of. 
 But they can be rooted out. The whole purpose of Christ's 
 mission on earth is misunderstood — the whole nature of the 
 Spirit's agency upon human character is overlooked — by one 
 who does not believe that all things are possible with Cod 
 — yes even such wonders as this of which I am speaking. 
 The Holy Spirit puts into our minds good desires, and 
 works with us when we entertain them. From first to last 
 
140 THE CENTURION AT CAPEENAUM. 
 
 we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good 
 works, which God hath before ordained that we should 
 walk in them. If you are shamed by the spectacle of 
 what this true-hearted centurion did under circumstances 
 so very unfavorable — if you have at this moment a feel- 
 ing that it is your duty to conquer the impatience and 
 discontent that make your life so dark and comfortless — 
 why, that is the movement of God's Spirit in your heart, 
 and it is for you not to let it die away. It is thus, com- 
 monly, that He works. He gives a little light, and then, 
 if we use it. He gives us more. He aids us in the most 
 quiet way possible — so quietly that often men do not think 
 of Him as being with them at aU — to make the first at- 
 tempt. Then, after the resolution is made, there comes a 
 trial to test it. If the impulse to overcome the temptation 
 be acted upon, more strength is given for the next occasion 
 of difficulty. But if not — if you give up because you seem 
 to have nothing but yourseK to rely upon, — then you fall 
 back into the same hopeless, heartless state you were in 
 before. God does not mean that you should forget your 
 share in the great work of conquering yourself; and so He 
 generally leaves you to believe in His help, not actually to 
 see it — and He leaves a great deal to your belief. It 
 is a long time before you can eee Him working with 
 you. But it is always given at last to one who can both 
 work and quietly wait for it. And then you find, almost 
 to your surprise, how much has been accomplished while 
 you have been steadily plodding along. The Spirit has 
 been quietly working in you, revealing more of Christ, dis- 
 closing more of His love, and awakening a responsive feel- 
 ing in your heart ; and so, without any violent convulsion 
 or excitement, you have become strong instead of weak, 
 
THE CENTURION AT CAPERNAUM. 141 
 
 believing instead of faithless. The great miracle has been 
 wrought while you have been looking for it. 
 
 Such, dear friends, is the general course of God's Spirit 
 and the influence of Christ. If you have some such task 
 in your own life, I cannot promise you the victory from 
 anything but patient work. First believe that God meant 
 you to be a true Christian, and that the means for becom- 
 ing one lie all around you ; and there can be no doubt that 
 his purpose will finally become a reality. The word has been 
 spoken : it rests with you whether you shall be healed. 
 
XII. 
 
 STRENGTH IN THE LORD. 
 
 " My brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might." 
 — Eph. vi. 10. 
 
 Weakness, real or fancied, is the great bane, tlie great 
 hindrance of our lives. It acts in many ways. The 
 wrongs that we would fain see righted, in the world, in 
 the Church, — wrongs, that we too should combat if we felt 
 ourselves stronger, live on their hateful lives and blast 
 generation after generation. Inner defects whose daily- 
 recurring manifestation begets a fatal torpor and nerveless 
 despair, find their strongest tenure of existence in the 
 notion that after so many fruitless attempts we should be 
 foolish again to pit our feebleness against their might. 
 The noble aspiration after growth in knowledge and holiness 
 is in some moods almost smothered because we permit our- 
 selves so Httle to estimate the spiritual forces at our com- 
 mand. In this way, I verily beUeve, one may be actually 
 harmed by thinking too much about the glories laid up for 
 us in heaven. Looking out from the field of daily life with 
 its pitiful successes and crushing reverses to that state to 
 which we hope to come, one may be enervated rather than 
 stimulated — one may positively turn what is meant to en- 
 courage into an excuse for inactivity, under the false im- 
 pression that what we are sure after all to gain need 
 hardly be striven for now with much intensity. To moods 
 like these St. Paul's words come with strange, arousing 
 142 
 
STEENGTH IN THE LORD. 143 
 
 power. You are strong, lie says, if you would only be- 
 lieve it. Defeat is out of the question if only you will 
 learn to feel that victory is rightfully yours. This state 
 of morbid depression is only a kind of hypochondria of 
 which you will be rid as soon as you resolve upon it. 
 Here lies the strength you want. Take it and use it. Be 
 strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. 
 
 The strength that comes from another character is what 
 the world offers us as the nearest approach to the truth 
 St. Paul would here enforce regarding our soul's lives. 
 No one can be completely ignorant of it in his own ex- 
 perience. It is said that the boldest men confess to fear 
 when they first get under fire ; and that it is only by the 
 sense of comradeship, and above all by the example of their 
 leaders that they come to the condition in which regard 
 for their personal safety gives way to resolute intrepidity. 
 So it certainly is in many of the commoner experiences of 
 life. To see another undertaking and performing tasks 
 for which we have felt ourselves unfit, — this partly shames, 
 but more largely cheers us to do them too. I believe that 
 many Christians who would be seriously embarrassed in 
 their religious lives by the difficulties of believing, are 
 helped to exercise a larger and more salutary faith from 
 seeing that others, whom they know to be not only wise 
 but honest, share the same difficulties, and yet find a prac- 
 tical solution for them in unreserved trust in Grod's truth. 
 Here indeed, lies, for the large number, one of the most 
 important uses of the Church, and particularly of those in 
 it who, known to be honest and capable, grapple fearlessly 
 with great problems, and show that with all their reality 
 they are not fatal to the deepest conviction. Troubled 
 over this doctrine, or that dispensation, you look backward 
 
144 STRENGTH IN THE LORD. 
 
 or around you, and see liow great intellects and pure souls 
 have borne these burdens, and you strengthen yourself 
 with their strength, recognizing indeed, your own feeble- 
 ness, but drawing from the spectacle of their demeanor the 
 power to rise above difficulty^ and from a loftier standing- 
 point to behold the truth, which before, you despaired of 
 gaining. 
 
 These are types only, and very imperfect hints, of the 
 strength which St. Paul tells us we may have in the might 
 of God. They only suggest to us one or two of the ways in 
 which this latter may operate upon ourselves. Let us 
 examine some of them. 
 
 One strengthens himself in Grod's strength in the first 
 place negatively, by getting rid of so much of the dis- 
 couragement arising from his past as comes from failure. 
 That failure, we are all aware, comes from ourselves, not 
 from Him. The temptation you yielded to yesterday you 
 know would not have overcome you had you not either 
 trusted overmuch in your own power to resist it, or failed 
 at the moment of its onset to fall back on Grod. I think 
 we may even detect, as we look into the motions of our 
 minds on some occasions, an almost deliberate and pur- 
 posed shutting out of the warning thought that His eye 
 is upon us, and His presence with us, to give need- 
 ful strength if only we will have it. The doubts or even 
 the convictions we have reached about the wrongfulness 
 of a deed may be deliberately brushed aside, and all the 
 lessons of past experience voluntarily overlooked, to give 
 up ourselves anew to what we are sure is wrong. This is 
 an extreme case ; but something of this kind I think we 
 must all own to in every instance of wrong-doing . We 
 have not tried to strengthen ourselves in the power of Our 
 
STEENGTH IN THE LORD. 145 
 
 Father's might. Now this is discouraging enough from 
 one point of view. What we have so often done we may- 
 do again. But it is cheering too if thus, through the con- 
 viction that our failure is not unavoidable, we reach the 
 resolution to avail ourselves hereafter of what we have 
 hitherto neglected. If we can lay firm hold upon the 
 readiness and the sufficiency of Grod's might for all our needs, 
 we may make a fresh beginning, and start upon a path so 
 much the more hopeful as we are not weighed down by 
 the discouragement of past defeats. In the possibility of 
 this lies the grand, the imperishable cheerfulness of the 
 Christian life. No matter what may have been our want 
 of success, just in so far as we have brought it upon us by 
 neglect of the right means, in that proportion may the 
 dearly-bought knowledge of what are the right means 
 nerve us to fresh and more courageous beginnings. And 
 as every failure is directly traceable to this mistake, there 
 is hardly an end to the new starts we may make, should 
 we still fail from time to time. I know the danger that 
 lies in this way of speaking. I know the possibility for 
 every one of us of so wresting this truth as to yield with 
 less resistance, knowing that we may have another chance ; 
 and that this danger will not be wholly done away by the 
 other certainty, that there is a state to be reached even 
 in this life, where there remaineth no more place for re- 
 pentance though we seek it carefully with tears. But 
 capable though it be of such a wresting, it is a glorious 
 and necessary truth ; one without which the cheerfulness 
 characteristic of all noblest lives would be impossible — 
 without which all hope must be cut off from every purest 
 soul who through the weakness of our mortal nature was 
 still not wholly purged from sin. This then, is the first 
 7 
 
146 STRENGTH IN THE LORD. 
 
 of the ways in which we are to strengthen ourselves in the 
 might of God. We are to remember that His power, not 
 our own as before, is the main-stay, the sole support, of 
 our endeavors. Who does not feel how utterly different a 
 face this puts upon the whole warfare ! Who that lays 
 hold upon it does not feel himself able to step forward 
 with new confidence in the performance of duty, knowing 
 now what lay at the root of old defeat, and conscious of 
 the strength of Grod's right arm in every blow he deals at 
 the enemies of his soul ! 
 
 Then again, such a strengthening is curiously wrought 
 when the truth comes home to us that He is thus made 
 more unmistakably our champion — thus appears more 
 clearly on our side. Let me try to make this plain ; for 
 forgetfulness of it explains much that is strange in the 
 non-realization of the promises vouchsafed us. Even 
 when one has almost wholly outgrown the bitter feeling 
 that calamity is proof of God's being against us — even 
 when one has reached the power to submit to great trials, 
 there still remains a temper very closely akin to it in our 
 way of looking at the Christian life at large — its disci- 
 plinary character and ceaseless struggle, the intermittent 
 peace, the slow advance, which indeed, do not necessarily 
 belong to it so far as God's willingness goes, but which as 
 a matter of fact, are its universal features in a greater or 
 less degree. I do not mean at all that noble discontent 
 with ourselves which, here at least, is inseparable from 
 improvement, and which never lets us rest in our strivings 
 after something better. Nor again, are we to blame that 
 longing for rest in the bosom of God which must flow from 
 our natural weariness as well as from the purest love for 
 Him. None of these is blame-worthy or misleading. But 
 
STRENGTH IN THE LORD. 147 
 
 the question is : " How do you habitually feel toward God 
 in view of all these things ? " Is it your usual way to 
 feel that the furthering of your spiritual life is an end 
 desired in common between yourself and Him, sought by 
 a mutual understanding, so to speak, as the sick man's 
 recovery is by himself and- his physician, each thoroughly 
 understanding the other and working patiently together 
 upon a plan agreed upon in full comprehension of the case 
 and of the only way to treat it ? If this were common, I 
 think we should see more traces of it. I see the opportu- 
 nity of rendering more easy and permanent, its attainment 
 by each soul, in that strengthening in the might of God 
 of which St. Paul speaks. It makes all the difference in 
 the world whether you simply submit to discipline, however 
 resignedly, or take that active share and interest in God's 
 treatment which I have tried to picture by the relation 
 between the willing and understanding patient and his 
 physician. Learn this lesson thoroughly — come to view 
 the common aspect of your spiritual life in the same way 
 as that in which the sick man regards the minute prescrip- 
 tions and troublesome round of treatment at any sanitary 
 establishment, and you will have toward God, the arranger 
 of it, something of that unreserved trust, that affectionate 
 reliance — you will win from Him some of the strength 
 which comes to a sufferer when he thinks of the wise 
 healer who is thus building up a disordered and weakened 
 system. Convinced, as we may be in general, of the need 
 of some such arrangement as we actually find for cleansing 
 our souls, perhaps there are none who do not lose much 
 by the unconscious adoption of the view that this particular 
 trial might have been dispensed with, or that particular 
 blessing granted, if God had really been on our side, 
 
148 STRENQTH IN THE LORD. 
 
 thoroughly and heartily — if our interests were as tenderly 
 cared for as He has said. We do not put such feelings 
 into words ; but there they lie festering at the roots of our 
 common thought about God, hindering us from strength- 
 ening ourselves as we might. But try to root out this 
 unworthy, weakening thought ; learn by prayer and eflfort 
 to get out of the range of this blind, selfish feeling ; strive 
 to make habitual the instinct that you are indeed working 
 along with God, and He with you ; and there will come a 
 strength which is based upon His might, makes use of it, 
 triumphs by means of it, wins sustenance from the en- 
 vironment of trial and sorrow in which every human life 
 has its being. This is what Luther so finely says in the 
 last verse of his famous hymn, although it is utterly absent 
 in its terse vigor from both the common translations, 
 so that I must render it for you: 
 
 " He 's with us on the field of strife, 
 With all His gifts and graces.'' 
 
 I am conscious that this matter of which I am speaking 
 is one so subtle that it is hard to make it quite clear ; but it 
 is a very real matter ; the lack of this feeling of God s 
 being always and wholly on our side, with unerring wisdom 
 and yearning love, is common and harmful to the last 
 degree. And I have no need to show you that if we do 
 win such an habitual way of feehng towards Him, we shall 
 strengthen ourselves in His might in a manner that will 
 put a very different aspect on our lives. The theory, if I 
 may so speak, of the Christian life as put before us in the 
 Bible is, that the regenerated soul, with its higher instincts 
 awakened, and eternal glory laid hold of as its rightful in- 
 heritance, works along with God, feels its intimate union 
 
STRENGTH IN THE LORD. 149 
 
 with Him, trusting with a diviner instinct even where it 
 cannot plainly see, unfaltering in the belief that sin is on 
 the one side, and on the other God and His new-created 
 children. Only on some such conviction can we live suc- 
 cessfully. The ups and downs, the flagging energy, the 
 fading visions of spiritual attainment, that mark most 
 experiences, are traceable always, I think, to practically 
 admitting discord to establish itself between us and the 
 Author of all strength, looking suspiciously at Him, losing, 
 in a word, the feeling I am speaking of, that He is always 
 and unconditionally on our side. " My lot is hard," you 
 say. '^ Life is gloomy and filled to overflowing by weary 
 tasks that never come to an end, and never will until the great 
 task we call life is over. Such weakness as mine can never 
 avail to do more than to keep up the pretence of resistance. 
 I will not actually throw down my arms and surrender ; 
 still less can I desert to the enemy by openly renouncing 
 God's service ; but I know that I shall go on yielding to 
 wrong about as often as I have been doing ; and your fine 
 platitudes on the growth of Christian character have lost 
 all their meaning, if meaning they ever had. God would 
 help me, I suppose, if only I were so much better than I 
 am as to be able to use His help ; but as matters stand I 
 do not see any signs of His caring for me, and it is a very 
 shadowy faith that I have in the doctrine that ' all things 
 work together for good.' " One often finds something like 
 this in one's self or in others, and it shows well the con- 
 sequences that come about when the faith is lost that God 
 is with us. And, hopeless as such a condition seems to 
 be — impossible as it seems to arouse one who has lost, or 
 thinks he has lost, the power even to accept God's help, 
 there is one remedy which often succeeds when hope is 
 
150 STRENGTH IN THE LORD. 
 
 almost gone. God is love, yet He does not disdain to wake 
 men by fear. So again, the distinctive feature of the Gospel 
 is its elevating human character, and redeeming it from 
 the hopelessness of self-loathing by giving it in the incar- 
 nate Christ a chance to respect itself ; yet it does not shut 
 out the sense of shame. Now, what lies at the bottom of 
 all this moaning and whining about our souls — this pre- 
 tence of having gone from Dan to Beersheba and found 
 that all was barren? It comes from selfishness — from 
 keeping our eyes perpetually turned in upon ourselves and 
 our discomforts till we are like that most contemptible of 
 all beings, a fancied invalid, upturning everything to gratify 
 a foolish whim, and then complaining because it does not 
 satisfy. Of what we are looking after, the spiritual life is 
 barren, particularly when we so look. God's promises 
 have no application to him who is mainly anxious, not to 
 serve God, but to be comfortable. If such an one could 
 use the power of the Lord's might to do more successfully 
 that which he comj^lains of having failed in, the result 
 would be hardly commensurate with the means. It would 
 be to foster just the selfishness which must be disappointed, 
 in order that there may be aroused, before it is too late, 
 that noble shame under whose influence the falser self 
 slips from us like a robe, and we stand before God abashed 
 yet strong, with hitherto unknown strength, in the con- 
 sciousness that there is something better to live for. In a 
 mood like this one learns many lessons that before were 
 empty sounds; and none more thoroughly than this, that 
 if God seems not to be on our side it is because we have left 
 Him, and turned from the patient pursuit of holiness to 
 the enervating search after self-pleasing. He will be with 
 you soon- enough, and visibly enough, when you retrace 
 your steps. 
 
STRENGTH IN THE LORD. 151 
 
 ^ But St. Paul bids us be strong in the Lord, as well as 
 in the power of His might. The ways in which, as I have 
 been trying to point out, one may do the latter, are of the 
 kind that come from setting right our views and feelings 
 as to the manner in which life is to be led and duty done 
 — remembering truths half-forgotten, and recognizing as 
 on our side the Lord whom we had hidden from us by our 
 selfishness. Deeply internal as such processes in one sense 
 are, they are almost of an external and mechanical nature 
 as compared with what the apostle means when he bids us 
 be strong first of all in the Lord. The most unimpeded 
 vision of all the truths I have been reminding you of — the 
 fullest grasp of them as sublime and unquestionable facts, 
 would avail nothing to one to whom they came with no 
 union with God such as is meant by the deep phrase being 
 in, or being strong in the Lord. So too, it would be almost 
 useless to try to describe it to those who have had such 
 knowledge and only suffered it to lose its immense import- 
 ance. It is not a description of it then, that I shall try 
 to make, but only a reminder of things we all know, when 
 I speak in conclusion a few words about this matter, put 
 so prominently by St. Paul in his farewell exhortation to 
 the Ephesians. You have never, unless perhaps moment- 
 arily, confounded things so different as being in the Lord 
 and being merely a member of the Church outwardly — 
 professing Christ, and knowing Christ — discharging duty, 
 and making yourself a hving sacrifice to Him who re- 
 deemed you. 
 
 Both are needful, but the higher absorbs and necessarily 
 implies the lower. Whether it came suddenly, or spread 
 itself over a series of ripening years, the consciousness of 
 a strange oneness with God in Christ through the Spirit 
 
152 STRENGTH IN THE LORD. 
 
 makes the crowning glory, the very substance, of the Hfe 
 led by every redeemed soul. In some way you cannot 
 account for, can hardly trace, there grew up a feeling of 
 mysterious connection with Him, which it is the business 
 of all the details of life to make more intense and constant. 
 The Bible speaks of rewards and punishments because hu- 
 man language is powerless to express the thoughts of 
 Christ when He turns from earthly things to speak of 
 heavenly. A punishment no doubt it is when this divine, 
 consoling presence of God in the heart loses its clearness, 
 but when you are yourself you do not think of it as being 
 a punishment, any more than the dying man thinks of 
 death as a punishment for having broken the laws ol 
 health, and worn out his system before its time. You feel 
 it as the dying out of the soul's vitality. With this you 
 can do all things, and when it is at its full those words are 
 no exaggeration. Without it one has the sensation of losing 
 health, losing strength, losing life. Then it is, and only 
 then, that the false moods overcome one of which I spoke 
 before — then, that past failure gives the gloomy foreboding 
 of continued and inevitable disaster — then, that God seems, 
 as with Pharaoh's army, to take the other side — to take off 
 our chariot- wheels, so that we drive them heavily. Here 
 is a mysterious fact accomplished in our life : God has 
 once embraced, adopted, regenerated us. He has given us 
 this great blessing of known, felt union with Himself; and 
 all our experiences, of bitter reproach and discouragement, 
 as well as of grave, serene, solemn joy, unite to teach us 
 that here lies the secret of our lives. Men may call it 
 mysticism, self-deception — all the names by which igno- 
 rance derides the experiences and convictions that it is too 
 low to conceive of; but one thing we know, that whereas 
 
STRENGTH IN THE LORD. 153 
 
 we had been blind once, we saw, and that whether di- 
 minished or augmented, that illumination is "yet the 
 fountain light of all our day, is yet the master light of all 
 our seeing." Increased too, and lessened, we have learned 
 that it may be. The laws by which it grows or wanes are 
 too clearly impressed upon our minds to need learning 
 them again. Neglect of communion with God, self-seeking, 
 whether of the kind just spoken of, or undue immersion in 
 the cares and business and pleasures of this life, — these we 
 have seen spreading gloom over our heavens and turning 
 to brass the earth beneath our feet. What need then — 
 what urgent need, that we should be awakened by the 
 trumpet voice of Paul to be strong in the Lord ! At our 
 imminent peril we forget the essentially miraculous and 
 supernatural character of the life these souls of ours must 
 lead. Subject as it is to the ordinary laws which give the 
 harvest to him who sows, there is in the proportion and 
 the nature of this harvest something transcending all hu- 
 man imagination but that of him who knows it. Seeing 
 then that ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them. 
 Happy in feeling incapacity melt away and courage take its 
 place — happy in regaining what the slow years have stolen 
 of spiritual health and serenity — happy above all, not in 
 your own restored peace alone, but in the knowledge that 
 even the heart of God throbs with a joy that He has put 
 into His creatures the power to bestow upon Him — the joy 
 of seeing another of the souls for whom Christ died, re- 
 turning more and more lovingly to His fatherly embrace. 
 " Therefore my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the 
 power of His might." 
 
XIII. 
 
 CHRIST FOUND IN THE PATH OF DAILY DUTY. 
 
 "Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing. They say unto him, 
 We also go with thee. They went forth, and entered into a ship im- 
 mediately ; and that night they caught nothing." — St. John xxi. 3. 
 
 The lives of few of us pass without being varied by- 
 great crises in which the soul is lifted out of the monotonous 
 daily routine, and transported into a new and untried 
 sphere. And no man who has gone through such an ex- 
 perience but has felt, when the crisis was past, a dull, aching 
 sense of emptiness. In a state like this his eyes open 
 wearily, morning by morning, on the old life, whose hours 
 are to be passed in one unvarying course, made more 
 intolerable by the memory of what has been, and now is 
 no more. It seems, at such times, that we have been 
 awakened to a sense of the vastness of life, only to be 
 plunged again into a dull round of trivialities, which must 
 crush out of us all the high capabilities of which we have 
 but newly become conscious : the glimpse into the world of 
 greatness renders the petty details of ordinary existence 
 unendurable. 
 
 Such crises are of various kinds, and the reaction is dif- 
 ferent according to the character of that from which it 
 arises. 
 
 After long loveless years, in which the dim cloud of in- 
 difference seemed to have settled over our life, we may 
 have suddenly awaked to the sweet consciousness of human 
 X54 
 
CHRIST FOUND IN THE PATH OF DAILY DUTY. 155 
 
 sympathy and affection ; and after basking for awhile in 
 its precious glow, we may have seen the sun from which it 
 came sinking slowly before our eyes behind the dark hills 
 of death. About such an experience as this there is a 
 blank hopelessness which no one can put into words — a 
 despairing apathy to all human interests that reaches down 
 to those deeps in the soul which no plummet of speech can 
 fathom. And when the life that is in us begins to revive 
 and we look out on the world again, how very different it 
 all appears from what it did under that golden radiance ! 
 How tastless are the occupations in which we once engaged , 
 if with no keen enjoyment, at least without the breathless 
 languor that fills us now ! 
 
 Or again, it may be the descent from the heights of glory 
 to which our first communion with Christ has lifted us, 
 that works this effect upon our souls. We have been 
 blessed with an almost superhuman rapture. As we walked 
 along the pathway of life, we were lifted as it were to 
 the seventh heaven and became lost in bliss ; but when He 
 whom we love abandons us for a moment, in order to try 
 our faith, and produce in us that spiritual strength that 
 grows by trust in an unseen Lord, then we stand like the 
 Apostles on the mount of Olives gazing blankly into 
 Heaven after their Master as their eyes lost Him in the 
 clouds. The first feeling here is like that in the former 
 case — a longing to lie down and die. We cannot bend our 
 energies to the execution of our daily duties — we cannot 
 go back as the disciples did, to our commonplace home, 
 and in the hard, unfeeling crowd prepare ourselves for 
 His second coming. 
 
 Now it was after an experience uniting both these pe- 
 culiarities that St. Peter gave utterance to the words of 
 
156 CHRIST FOUND IN THE PATH OF DAILY DUTY. 
 
 the text. Any one who has carefully studied the latter 
 parts of the Gospels which recount the events that took 
 place after the Resurrection, has marked the feelings which 
 filled the hearts of those seemingly deserted men. By 
 ourselves indeed, accustomed as are our eyes to that un- 
 earthly radiance in which are bathed all the occurrences of 
 those forty days, and knowing, as we do, how all was of a 
 piece with what had gone before, the risen Jesus is recog- 
 nized as the same who had led and loved His own sheep 
 during the years of His earthly life. But to the eleven He 
 was as dead. They could not believe that He was again 
 alive after having yielded up His breath on the ignominious 
 cross. Again and again we see this difficulty making its 
 appearance. They thought that it was His ghost and not 
 Himself. Even on the present occasion, we see clearly 
 enough the awe that held them back from asking Him, 
 '' Who art thou ?" The testimony of their senses was that 
 here was their Lord. The testimony of their minds was 
 that it could not be. And it was plainly to end this con- 
 flict that our Saviour once and again exhibited to them the 
 most decisive proofs that it was His veritable self. To the 
 affrighted disciples : " Behold My hands and My feet, 
 that it is I, Myself : handle Me and see, for a spi7nt hath 
 not flesh and bones as ye see Me have." To the doubting 
 Thomas : " Reach hither thy finger and behold My hands, 
 and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into My side." 
 
 The feelings then, of Peter, if like those of his fellows, 
 which we have no reason to doubt, were those of one who 
 mourns for a dead friend; while on the other hand he 
 doubtless felt profoundly the loss of that spiritual guide 
 whom, with all the earnestness of his great, turbulent 
 heart, ho had sincerely adored. It is only when all this 
 
CHRIST FOUND IN THE PATH OF DAILY DUTY. 157 
 
 stands clearly before us that we can apprehend the emotions 
 which filled him, the mingled regrets and loathing with 
 which he was resolutely combating, when he determined to 
 set himself at work once more. To all outward appearance 
 he began life again just where he had left off. Who can 
 tell the sinking of heart with which he sat down to mend 
 those same nets which he was preparing to cast into the 
 sea when the strange, lovely youth after whom his heart 
 now yearned, passed by and bade him leave all and follow 
 Him ! No doubt to his neighbors this seemed but the na- 
 tural result of a course of procedure so at variance with the 
 dictates of worldly prudence. Very likely too, that rough 
 untutored soul was hardly conscious of all that intercourse 
 with Christ had given him — perhaps mourned over the 
 hopes of earthly grandeur which had been so sadly dashed. 
 But a hero he was, and a hero he proved himself, by that 
 one act of determining not to waste his life in idle regrets. 
 He had drunk too deeply at the fountain of the Saviour's 
 wisdom not to have wrought into the very texture of his 
 soul the truth that self-sacrifice— the surrender of darling 
 plans or hopes, may become the foremost duty. " Take up 
 thy cross and follow Me," was ringing in his ears ; and so 
 he went back, sadly we know, but with a stern determina- 
 tion, to his old life-work, feeling that after all, perhaps, the 
 promise that he should become a fisher of men would never 
 be fulfilled, but firm in his resolution to do his duty, come 
 what might. 
 
 Heroism like St. Peter's, my friends, is what we want, 
 every one of us. Heroism that can grapple with the mean, 
 and the paltry, and the trivial, — that can do its duty under 
 all circumstances, without murmuring over the hardness 
 of its lot, or wishing that its fate had been to labor among 
 
158 CHRIST FOUND IN THE PATH OF DAILY DUTY. 
 
 other scenes, less dreary and less monotonous. Heroism 
 that, once seeing where it has to work, sits resolutely- 
 down and mends the torn nets, preparatory to going out 
 in the murky night, and toiling through the long watches, 
 just because God has said, " There lies thy duty; do it." 
 
 Probably not one person here but has moments when 
 feelings like those of Peter arise— moments when he longs, 
 and struggles to free himself from the fetters which bind 
 him to one corner in the great workhouse of the world. Let 
 us then look for light to dispel these phantoms ; let us try 
 to see what are the reasons why the All-wise has allotted 
 to us just our particular spot to toil in, and no other; let 
 us endeavor to trace out some of the causes why so large 
 a part of our lives must be filled up with these little things 
 that so test our patience. 
 
 When we put Christianity side by side with the moral 
 systems which preceded it, we are struck with one grand 
 peculiarity. The most important graces of the soul are 
 those which ought to be exercised in every-day life — all 
 virtues indeed, find here their appropriate sphere. Every 
 day you are called upon to practice that charity which 
 thinketh no evil. Every hour a demand is made upon the 
 faith which brings into close contact with the material 
 world around you, the invisible Father and Euler of all. 
 Your dearest friend, your darling child, claim from you 
 that patience and forbearance without which every man's 
 hand would be against his neighbor. 
 
 On the contrary, the occasion for great deeds that blazon 
 a re{)utation in the book of fame, come very rarely. If every 
 man were a Washington, very few would have an oppor- 
 tunity to act the sublime part that has placed our great 
 patriot's name high above those who might have emulated 
 
CHRIST FOUND IN THE PATH OF DAILY DUTY. 159 
 
 him, had their surroundings been somewhat other than 
 they were. 
 
 Now, it is in the recognition of this fact that the pecu- 
 liarity lies of which I have spoken. Other systems trained 
 men, or tried to train them, for great crises that never 
 came. For the little duties that fill each day to overflow- 
 ing they left them to fit themselves. 
 
 We look back on the majestic panorama of ancient 
 histoiy, and are stirred to the very soul by the grand 
 heroism which animated it, but we forget how different 
 Roman life would appear if we could catch a glimpse of the 
 sternness, and cruelty, and despotism which lie concealed 
 beneath the surface of noble daring and self-devotion. 
 Christianity, on the other hand, seeing how these same 
 virtues can seldom be practised on so lofty a scale, sets 
 itself to work to apply them where they are most wanted, 
 in common, every-day life. It tells you that it is easy 
 enough to summon up the energies to a great work when 
 thousands are ready to applaud you if you succeed, or to hiss 
 you if you fail ; but that the real test of a true soul is to do 
 these things in your own family, or in the society in which 
 you live ; to do them quietly, unobtrusively, without 
 looking around to see if men's eyes are upon you. When 
 you are a world's spectacle, a dozen lower motives may 
 creep in and urge you on. When your left hand knoweth 
 not what your right hand doeth, the eye of One whose sole 
 approbation outweighs the plaudits or the jeers of a 
 universe is upon you, and then your reward is something 
 for which an immortal soul may well strain every nerve. 
 
 This then, dear friends, is one reason why you are called 
 upon to labor in an obscure corner among petty duties ; 
 because they are obscure and petty, and they show that 
 
160 CHRIST FOUND IN THE PATH OF DAILY DUTY. 
 
 the work is done for " the great Task-master's eye/' and 
 not for human praise. It is recorded that in the early- 
 days of art workmen were wont to bestow the most sedu- 
 lous care on those hidden parts of a temple on which no 
 human eye was to rest, '* for the gods see everywhere." 
 Your life is a temple ; and while lofty column and delicate 
 capital should present an aspect that must win the admira- 
 tion of mankind, remember that it is in the slow, careful 
 elaboration of the secret shrine where none can penetrate, 
 that your sincere devotion to Grod is to be most plainly 
 exhibited. If you were to set yourself to work, in that 
 boastful spirit which tempts you to desert your dark, hum- 
 ble sphere, at some such achievement as you are burn- 
 ing to undertake, very likely your strength would fail j ust 
 when it was most wanted. Peter was loud in his promises 
 of what he would do, but contrast his bearing when he 
 said, " Though I should die with Thee yet will I not deny 
 Thee," with the self-loathing with which, when the foul 
 denial had been uttered, he went out and wept bitterly. 
 
 No. The duty which is laid upon you, that you can 
 perform. But do not long for some higher sphere in 
 which you may display your fidelity, unless you desire to 
 have that divine, sorrowful face turned upon you with its 
 speechless depth of rebuke. Then you will long, more 
 earnestly than you now wish to be called up higher, that 
 you were sitting by Peter, mending those nets that now 
 so weary you, and bending yourself with passionate, sor- 
 rowful activity to the performance of what alone you 
 can do. 
 
 Again, suppose that the future Apostle, instead of man- 
 fully doing what his hand found to do, had listlessly sat 
 down to dream of what had taken place during his life 
 
CHEIST FOUND IN THE PATH OF DAILY DUTY. 161 
 
 with Christ. Suppose he had gloomily meditated on the 
 words that had so often fallen from the Saviour's lips — the 
 unfulfilled promises of glory and a kingdom which had 
 seemed so strangely to contrast with the humility and 
 poverty in which his Lord's life had been spent, and to give 
 some color to the royal expectations which were connected 
 with the Messiah. Can we not see how all this would have 
 drained him of the energy which he now so much needed ? 
 Can we not see that it would have sapped the foundations 
 of his faith, and made him a useless dreamer, unfitted for 
 his duties by the very experience that-was intended to foster 
 in him the growth of all true manliness ? Contact with 
 the living truth would thus have made him false, hollow, 
 as unfit for any good end as the salt of the Master's parable, 
 useless for the land or for the dung-hill, to be cast out of 
 men. 
 
 A feature of the reaction already spoken of, and one of 
 its most pernicious features, is the tendency often connected 
 with it, to throw aside all exertion, and let our days slip 
 by in reveries on the past and its possibilities. A host of 
 excuses present themselves readily enough, and favored by 
 our disinclination to rise from our indolence, they hang 
 like a leaden weight on the arm which should be at honest 
 work. True it is that we are enfeebled by the shock to 
 our inner system, true that very little strength is left. But 
 the question is not, " Will you wait till you are stronger, 
 or over-tax your exhausted powers?"; but, ''Will 
 you do what you can, or lose the strength you have by 
 doing nothing? " Nowhere is it of more vital importance 
 so far to forget the things which are behind that you may 
 reach forward to those that are before. Do not, indeed, 
 forget, if you have learned it, that there is such a thing as 
 
162 CHRIST FOUND IN THE PATH OF DAILY DUTY. 
 
 pare, unselfish love on earth. Do not forget, if you have 
 once enjoyed it, what it is to have Christ walking by your 
 side, and filling your soul with holy love and hope. But, 
 on the other hand, do not sufi'er a vision which was accorded 
 you that you might be more loving and more holy, to fill 
 you with misanthropy, or faithlessness. Let the love that 
 you have tasted strengthen you to show to others that love, 
 whose discovery changed your own life from one of sel- 
 fishness to one of all-embracing charity. Instead of hiding 
 in a napkin that talent committed to your care, the un- 
 dying tenderness of Christ, — work out that lesson in each 
 little act of every day. If for awhile the Saviour is lost to 
 your sight, show that you know Him to be very near 
 to you by faith, teach every one around you to believe 
 in the possibility of God's love by displaying that which 
 bears so close a resemblance to it, the love of a man. 
 For there are many in this wide world of ours, who never 
 know what it is to have a gleam of human sympathy 
 shining in on their darkness. All around you there are 
 souls that would welcome a face of wise, kindly, human 
 interest, as you would welcome that of an angel. Hard- 
 ened by the terrible struggle for daily bread, they are not 
 so hardened that tkey cannot understand that it is some- 
 thing sent from heaven to them, when one comes and 
 takes their hand, and utters a few words of gentle, human 
 cheer, and does one little deed to show that those words 
 are not lies, like all the rest they hear. 0, it is base to 
 let your powers rust uselessly, embittering your own life, 
 when they might be so nobly employed in making plain 
 to some dwarfed, stunted soul, that there is something to 
 strive for besides food for the body. Waiting, forsooth, 
 for some great task which shall summon up all your ener- 
 
CHRIST FOUND IN THE PATH OF DAILY DUTY. 163 
 
 gies, and be worthy of them! Well, here is a task which 
 is not a little one surely, nor an ignoble one, since for this 
 very end the Son of God lived and died. Go out and see 
 whether this is not the work you are made for. At all 
 events, better this than nothing. Better this than idly 
 waiting for an opportunity which may never come, while 
 all the time, nearer, nearer, nearer, speeds that great day 
 when you shall give an account of the deeds done in the 
 body. 
 
 And after all, where do we get the right to call these 
 deeds little and paltry and insignificant ? What gives its 
 character and complexion to an act ? We assume, in thus 
 speaking that it is the way in which men look at it, and 
 admire it, — that it is the number of eyes bent upon him 
 who performs it, the number of voices that unite in singing 
 his praises. But will such a standard do ? How many 
 eyes looked on the poor widow who cast her mites into 
 the treasury of God ? One. But that one was worth all. 
 That one was looking not at the amount of the gift, but at 
 the wealth of self denial and trust in God, of which the out- 
 ward deed was the symbol and exponent. How many 
 think you would have heard of the tender love of that 
 nameless woman, who in her tender solicitude of Christ, 
 brought the box of ointment to anoint Him beforehand to 
 the burial — how many would have heard of her had not 
 the quick eye of the Lord seen what was in her heart, and 
 recorded it in words that shall never lose their lustre while 
 the world shall stand ? Those were great deeds, we think, 
 and one whose moral sight is undimmed will not hesitate 
 to rank them with the loftiest achivements of the world's 
 loftiest heroes. But it is not that we praise them. That 
 gives them no additional glory. They were great when 
 
164 CHRIST FOUND IN THE PATH OF DAILY DUTY. 
 
 they were performed ; great when they were conceived, and 
 the heart where they arose swelled with powers as great as 
 any which are now rusting idly for want of some noble task. 
 
 It was that inner character that led the Saviour to set 
 on them His royal signet. And on every such act — on 
 every quiet deed of love or self-denial — on every word of 
 kindliness or cheer — on each and all of these rests just the 
 same halo of the Master's approval. Would you win His 
 favor— would you have the consciousness that His eye rests 
 on you with the same glance as that which cheered the 
 bearer of the alabaster box ? Go thou and do likewise. 
 Men may not know of it. Better so. You will be saved 
 fi^om the temptation of doing it to gain their applause. 
 
 But the universe of God is a whispering-gallery through 
 which no lowest word from the lips of pitying love, but re- 
 sounds in thunder-tones through heaven's hosts, far, far 
 up to the great white throne. The loud plaudits of men 
 you can dispense with : can you do without the still bene- 
 diction of the Father ? Can you endure to have your life 
 laid bare and not find in it one gentle or kindly deed to 
 one of these least of the brethren of the Judge ? Can you 
 go on without listening to the voice within urging you on 
 to light up these little acts with the ready will and devo- 
 tion to God which makes of them the only deeds that will 
 stand at that day when the fan shall winnow out from 
 history the victories of warrior and statesman, and shrivel 
 them into dust ? If you can, you have a strong heart. • 
 
 Lastly, mark the result. Peter bent himself to the duty 
 which lay before him, and at whatever cost he finished it. 
 All night he toiled, and unsuccessfully : His faith and his 
 devotion were to be sorely tried. " And that night they 
 caught nothing," 
 
CHRIST FOUND IN THE PATH OF DAILY DUTY. 165 
 
 But with early morn a figure was seen on the shore. 
 Ghostly, glimmering through the dawn it stood there, as 
 though to mock at the fishers' bootless toil. The wearied 
 disciples looked at it, but their eyes were holden that they 
 should not see. At last a well-known voice addresses 
 them — " Children." Still they are not sure. But the voice 
 of love suggests, '^ It is the Lord." Then mindful of the 
 respect due to the Master, Peter girds on him his fisher's 
 coat, and heedless now of the dangers of the sea which had 
 once shaken his faith, casts himself into the waters. At 
 last the Saviour is here. Here, no longer to be doubted, 
 appearing in the path of duty. Here, as the gentle 
 Master who had long since rejected all harsher titles and 
 adopted that of " Friends," and now calling them to a yet 
 nearer relation as " Children." No wonder that at that 
 endearing word Peter forgot his doubts and cast himself 
 headlong into the sea. No wonder that he could not 
 wait to clasp that loved one whom he had denied, and of 
 whose forgiveness he yearned to be convinced, 
 
 So is it with every one who tries to find the Saviour in 
 those scenes which He most loved to haunt — the uninviting 
 round of duty. In vain will you seek him in the loftier 
 sphere of longing ambition. Down, down amid those 
 humble duties which you have forced upon you every day 
 — there must you seek, if you would have your search 
 crowned with success. 
 
 My hearer, has your life been shaken to its foundation 
 by the loss of what seemed your life itself, and do you sit 
 desolate among the ruins ? Or has no touch from Heaven 
 ever kindled a fire on the altar of your heart, and do you 
 wait for your task to be forced upon you ? 
 
 Go forth like Peter, and do what lies before you. Be- 
 
166 CHRIST FOUND IN THE PATH OF DAILY DUTY. 
 
 lieve that when you have obeyed the voice which bids you 
 do what you are unwilling to do— to enter on the discharge 
 of duty which now is so distasteful, you will have taken 
 the step that will make all other steps easy. Your toil 
 will become light to you, for there is a wondrous power in 
 the consciousness of doing our duty to make the rough 
 places smooth. 
 
 And, as all good is linked together by adamantine 
 chains, through the darkness of your soul will grow 
 clearer and clearer the form of the Son of God. He 
 seemed to leave you to yourself that He might try your 
 faith : when it has come out of the ordeal unscathed. He 
 will return to you, dearer than before, a thousand times 
 dearer, because you will know that He looks lovingly upon 
 you as a soldier who has fought well, as a servant who has 
 done his duty, as a friend who has kept his friendship pure, 
 as a child who may henceforth repose with fearless trust 
 in His Father's bosom. 
 
XIV. 
 
 CONFIRMATION. 
 
 SECOND SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 
 
 " Lord who never failest to help and govern those whom Thou dost 
 bring up in thy steadfast fear and love, keep us, we beseech Thee, 
 under the protection of Thy good providence, and make us to have a 
 perpetual fear and love of Thy holy name, through Jesus Christ our 
 Lord." 
 
 The Collect for the Second Sunday after Trinity will 
 give the key-note of what I have to say. It seems to sum 
 up the duties, and the support of all Christian lives so 
 perfectly that it may with fitness guide our thoughts on 
 an occasion like this. For to-day we have with us our 
 Father in God, the Bishop, to whom, according to un- 
 broken usage since the Apostles' days in the Catholic 
 Church, it belongs regularly to admit to the highest privi- 
 lege of Christians those who have determined to profess 
 the faith of Christ crucified. About every occasion of 
 this kind there is something which strongly impresses the 
 imagination. The religious life, as I devoutly believe, 
 has truly begun in the case of those whom we are to-day 
 to welcome to a full participation in the privileges of mem- 
 bers of the Christian Church. We do not reckon the 
 ancient rite of confirmation as occupying in any sense the 
 position of a sacrament. Grace, we hold, is not communi- 
 cated in it in the same way as in baptism, and the Lord's 
 Supper. It is not like 4hem the outward and visible sign 
 
 167 
 
168 CONFIRMATION . 
 
 of an inward and spiritual grace appointed by Christ 
 Himself, but by His Apo'^^tles. But who can doubt that' 
 on such an occasion grace is divinely conveyed to all those 
 who come forward with hearts full of repentance, of faith, 
 of resolution henceforward to live such a life as is pictured 
 to us in the words of the baptismal office? The very 
 business, or one of the chief duties of the Christian Church 
 is to save us from the vagueness and indecision which are 
 found to infect the lives of those who presume to forsake 
 the assembling of themselves together. We cannot live 
 healthy, religious lives unless we give utterance to our 
 religious hopes and desires, any more than a ship-wrecked 
 man, who in his solitude never uses the divine gift of 
 speech, can, when long years are passed, retain his power 
 to utter the words of his mother tongue. Such a means 
 of expressing before others, and to Grod, the deep-seated 
 feelings connected with all true religion, the Church sup- 
 plies. In the baptism of infants in public, how deeply is 
 our belief strengthened in the undeserved and mysterious 
 grace of God ! In our devout reception of the Holy Com- 
 munion, how do we gain year by year in our reliance upon 
 the never-failing treasury of divine strength ! In our 
 ordinary gatherings for public worship is it not plain to us 
 that the dew of God's blessing falls far more largely upon 
 our weary hearts than it could were we presumptuously to 
 shut ourselves off from the benefits of public, as dis- 
 tinguished from solitary, private prayer ? So, too, in the 
 solemn ceremony for which we are assembled. In the 
 spectacle of immortal souls who have by God's grace been 
 brought to feel the need of buckUng on the Christian 
 armor, in the sight of those to whom the promises of the 
 Christian warfare are about to become the watchword of 
 
CONFIRMA.TIOJT. 169 
 
 life, you will see the exhibition of the triumph of hurnm 
 strength aided by Grod, over the temptations of the World, 
 the FJesh, and the Devil. Than that spectacle, earth has 
 nothing which ought to be more inspiring. It is the ex- 
 pression iji its noblest form of that which makes us ditFer 
 from the brute. It is the well-weisihed utterance of faith 
 
 o 
 
 in the truth that Holiness is strons^er than sin, and must 
 be the final conqueror. It is the proclamation, not before 
 those alone who gather in our little Church, but before the 
 Church militant and the Church triumphant, before an 
 innumerable company of angels, before God, the Judge of 
 all, that these souls are ready, Grod being their helpar, to 
 defy the powers of darkness, and to make themselves an 
 offering to Him. Compared with this, what other scene 
 of life is so solemn, so absorbing in its interest ? I know 
 of none. Even that last scene of all, when our feet lose 
 their hold on the familiar ground of earthly life, and we 
 silently pass into ihe great unknown sea of being, even 
 this derives, to Christian eyes, all its character from know- 
 ing whether or not the promise to be made to-day has 
 been kept. As we accompany along their path of life these 
 new soldiers of Christ, sorrow and joy, trial and recom- 
 pense, health and sickness, all the manifold triumphs and 
 reverses of human life, present themselves to the mind as 
 full of terror, or full of peace, according as they are, or 
 are not, in the spirit of obedience to the profession which 
 shall be made before us to-day. 
 
 Taking then as our guide the beautiful collect I have 
 read, let us try to gain some more clear notion of what the 
 Christian life may be and ought to be. Let us not do this 
 in a spirit of sentimental reverie, but as a very grave 
 thing; not as though the most experienced Christian 
 8 
 
170 CONFIRMATION. 
 
 among us had outgrown the need of having his aspirations 
 raised, and his aims made more clear, but with the deep 
 conviction that to old and young alike the great truths 
 which make up our Christian life are ever in want of being 
 quickened into fiesh vigor, and made more strongly 
 operative upon our daily existence. 
 
 Beginning with the first part of our Collect, can any ot 
 us say that 'his experience has not persuaded him of the 
 necessity of learning over and over again the truth that 
 God never fails to help and govern those whom He brings 
 up in His steadfast fear and love ? That combination of 
 fear and love— how hard is it to maintain! How pecu- 
 liarly apt is the one of those feelings to encroach on the 
 other ! Especially in this loose-thinking, sentimental age 
 when men are given to fastening on some one portion of 
 divine truth, and holding it to the exclusion of every other, 
 we imperatively demand for our soul's health that humble 
 reverence in our demeanor to God which is the soul of re- 
 ligion. On every side, I seem to see the working of this 
 irreverent spirit. In every body of Christians, signs are 
 not wanting that the rounded body of revealed truth in 
 its unflinching utterance of the terrible along with the 
 winning, in its unhesitating way of coupling the punish- 
 ment of the unbeliever with the blessedness of the faithful, 
 is looked upon, not as the august and severely beautiful 
 temple built by God for the indwelling of the human soul, 
 but rather as savages regard the ruins of ancient temples — 
 a quarry whence men, unable to understand what they are 
 destroying, may plunder materials for their own rude 
 hovels. This I am sure is one of the crying evils of our 
 times. There is indeed no lack of interest in matters re- 
 ligious, either at home or aboaid. Half a century ago 
 
CONFIRMATION. 171 
 
 men would have laughed incredulously had the prophecy 
 been ventured that the various subjects connected with 
 religion would become a theme of interest so profound as 
 that w^hich to-day attends the host of books, pamphlets, 
 and reviews which deal with them. It would then have 
 seemed one of the wildest vagaries of the mind of man to 
 suppose that religion, and the connection between Church 
 and State, would so soon become the most critical of the 
 questions agitating Europe. But all the more is it need- 
 ful that Christians should be on their guard against the 
 dangers with wdiich such a period is rife. Much of what 
 we see and hear, however closely it may be connected with 
 Christianity is pervaded by a deeply unchristian spirit. 
 It resembles the attempts which were made when Chris- 
 tianity first took before the Roman Empire the position 
 which belongs to it — I mean the attempts to rob it of its 
 foundation, to get the spirit of it apart from the re- 
 vealed truths which beget the spirit, and try to be 
 Christians without believing in Christ as the Son of God, 
 and the Saviour of the world. So now, every one of us 
 who reads or talks much on religious matters is sure to 
 find the disposition to believe as much of Christianity as 
 suits the taste, and to reject the rest. What is Unitarian- 
 ism but this, under whatever name it disguises itself ? We 
 have around us far too much warning, to allow us any ex- 
 cuse if we venture thus to trifle with revealed truths. And 
 since there are many specious kinds of this disbelief, and 
 many bewildering varieties in the expression of it, we 
 should strive to make it our principle in living Christian 
 lives, to keep ourselves in such steadfast fear and love of 
 the great Teacher of our souls, as may fill us with an awful 
 dread of casting away any part of the lesson He has set 
 
172 CONFIRMATION. 
 
 for US to learn. We should ask Him to teach us so per- 
 fectly to trust His love that we may be content to leave 
 for Him to settle all the dark questions that some- 
 times tempt us to press in with our puny fancies upon 
 the mysterious ground where God alone can safely tread. 
 You think that this is too hard a thing to do ? You say 
 to yourself that when you think on such solemn subjects 
 as conversion, and predestination, and eternal death, you 
 must trust to your own conclusions no matter what may 
 be the consequences ? True as this is in one sense, in an- 
 other it betrays just the lack of fear and love which I have 
 warned you against. Those questions have been discussed 
 in many centuries, and the results have always been disas- 
 trous just in proportion to the irreverent self-reliance 
 which has been "displayed. Take, for instance, that pro- 
 foundly mysterious subject of predestination. One of the 
 most powerful minds of the Eeformation undertook to 
 settle it, to map out with distinctness the whole subject ; 
 and what was the consequence ? Look at New England, 
 and you can answer. The terrible consequences of this 
 system of belief are apparent in the total rejection of 
 Christianity, by men to whom Christianity meant distinctly 
 that from all eternity God had predestinated souls to eter- 
 nal death, and that Christ died only for a limited number 
 of the elect. Far be it from me to say how much truth, 
 and how much untruth there may be in the system of Cal- 
 vin. Far be it from me to say that there is not a vast 
 number of noble Christians among those who believe, or 
 think they believe, it all. I only say that it is one of those 
 subjects about which we should be most reverent in our 
 thinking, —that we need in regard to it peculiarly to ex- 
 ercise together the fear and love which belong to the wise 
 
CONFIRMATION. 173 
 
 Christian, that our speculations concerning it are specially 
 apt to land us in a state where our fear will be supplanted 
 by irreverence, and our love by a feeling which makes it 
 impossible for us heartily to cry, Abba Father ! 
 
 But still you ask how am I to avoid thinking on subjects 
 like these, and how am I to know when I have thought 
 enough ? Is it not asking me to do that which we so much 
 object to in the Eomish system, to submit myself to the 
 decisions of an infallible Church, and believe what, not a 
 Priest indeed, but a book of articles bids me believe ? I fully 
 admit the difficulty of this question. It is one to which no 
 universally applicable reply can be made. But it is one 
 which in religious matters answers itself, just as similar 
 questions answer themselves in common life. Is it likely 
 that you will ever come to regard suicide as a praiseworthy 
 act ? If not, why not ? You may, if you choose, reflect 
 on the matter — you may look upon it in all its lights —you 
 may contemplate all the advantages likely to flow from a 
 man's ridding himself of the pains of incurable disease, or 
 the anguish of irremediable disgrace. Men do, or pretend 
 that they do, see that, on the whole, suicide is sometimes 
 a very noble and admirable way of terminating one's career. 
 Do you feel any apprehension that your reflections will 
 ever lead you to cut your throat ? We have all, I suppose, 
 had the notion flit across our minds in seasons of acute, 
 bodily, or mental anguish. But do you feel the slight- 
 est danger that in your own case you will ever be 
 led to the crime ? The reason is a very simple one. 
 The natural, instinctive love of life has been so fortified by 
 our training, that we do not allow our thoughts on the 
 subject to go beyond a certain, curious speculation. We 
 are not conscious of peremptorily cutting short our 
 
174 CONFIRMATION. 
 
 thoughts about it, but the result is just the same as tliough 
 we did. In that respect, we Americans, in general, at 
 least, are in no danger so long as our minds remain in 
 their proper balance. And yet, from causes opposed to 
 this, among foreigners of some nationalities it is not un- 
 common. 
 
 Apply this, which I do not select at random, to the re- 
 ligious life. No man who has at all understood what 
 Christianity and Christ are, can deliberately discuss with 
 himself the question whether he shall or shall not continue 
 to believe in God. There may be moments when one whom 
 duty forces to consider the attacks of unbelief, or more 
 often in the case of one who has dallied with infidelity out 
 of mere idle curiosity, when such an one feels himself 
 tempted to doubt of everything. But the question must 
 have been pretty well settled already, when one allows 
 one's self to discuss the matter deliberately and coolly. 
 For to give up one's faith in Cod means to commit 
 suicide of the soul, so far as that is within our power. In 
 the great number of Christians, even among those who 
 think much about these deep matters, the danger of such 
 an act depends upon the closeness or slackness of the union 
 and intercourse which is kept up with God — in the words 
 of our Collect, upon our steadfast or our wavering fear and 
 love. Only when we have grown cold in devotion, only 
 when we have suffered the cloud of indifference to gather 
 between us and God are we in any peril. That which is 
 true of total abandonment of faith is true likewise reojard- 
 ing those partial desertions of the truth of Christianity 
 of which I have spoken. 
 
 God never fails to help and govern those who allow Ilim 
 to bring them up in steadfast fear and love. Trace back 
 
CONFIRMATION. 175 
 
 any one dark period of your religious life to its origin, and 
 yuu will find that it is due to the wilful abandonment of 
 His governance over you — to your letting lower motives 
 sway you, such as cowardice or indolence, or what is called 
 in Scripture the spirit of the world. Here it is— here, and 
 not in any forcible choking down of our liberty of think- 
 ing, that we find the safeguard against letting go the faith. 
 The daily growth of the soul in grace lets in gleam after 
 gleam of light upon the questions which otherwise are so 
 apt to puzzle us. You do not consciously say, I will not 
 think upon this or that dark question ; you are penetrated 
 more and more deeply with the feeling that there are 
 heights and deeps of spiritual truth which can be disclosed 
 to your strengthening eyesight only little by little. You 
 cannot put into definite words your growing feeling about 
 predestination, or the atonement, or the workings of divine 
 grace. But you are less and less tempted, and why ? be- 
 cause with the increasing sense of His help and govern- 
 ance, there comes the feeling that sublime mysteries like 
 these are not capable of being put into the meagre forms 
 of human speech. They become, not dry, colorless beliefs, 
 but convictions — as little expressible in the fullness of 
 their heavenly light and meaning, as is your affection to 
 your child when he asks you how much you love him, as 
 though the multiplication table were amply sufficient 
 to tell it all. 
 
 I seem perhaps to have made as far too much of our 
 Christian beliefs as I have said the disposition is to make 
 too little. But the truth is, belief and life are only 
 two expressions, inward and outward, of one and the same 
 thing. Belief is impossible in its only valuable meanings 
 without a corresponding life : life needs belief to shape and 
 
176 CONFIRMATION. 
 
 guide it. I do not say merely that one is worthless in the 
 total absence of the other. It cannot he. 
 
 When you feel that your Christian life is at its best, 
 you may, if you choose, feel its intimate connection with 
 the belief, as the highest state of bodily health does not do 
 away with the functions of the heart and lungs, but de- 
 pends on their proper discharge. Unless you put your 
 hand upon your heart you may forget that you have one 
 but if it be disordered, a very slight amount of exertion 
 tells you unmistakably of its diseased state. From the simi- 
 lar relation of belief to spiritual life it comes, that in all ages 
 that have been distinguished by active religious vitality, 
 so much stress has been laid upon correctness of faith, or 
 to use a word which seems just now to be in rather bad 
 odor, upon orthodoxy. And it needs but very little in- 
 spection to see that where orthodoxy is most decried, there 
 is generally to be found a corresponding indifference to the 
 sublimest privileges of religion. Personal piety, charity, 
 genuine delight in prayer, in personal efforts for the in- 
 struction and bodily comfort of the destitute, faith, humble 
 submission to God's dispensations, and the general and 
 evident moulding of the life by heavenly motives, — I ask 
 any one whether these are found most among those who 
 reverently believe in all the doctrines of the Church, or 
 among those who are in the habit of talking as though 
 orthodoxy were rather another word for narrow-minded- 
 ness. If such a connection were really to be between the 
 welcoming of all that God has revealed and a working out 
 of all that He has commanded, I need no further grounds 
 for my urging both on those who arc Churchmen already, 
 and on those who are to-day to be admitted to the Church's 
 highest privileges, the solemn duty of so fearing God as to 
 
CONFIRMATION. 177 
 
 receive with devout awe His disclosures of Himself, and so 
 loving Him, as to trust in His hands the wise and merci- 
 ful deciding of questions too hard for us to settle. The 
 Collect closes with a petition that we may be kept under 
 the protection of His good Providence. For twelve hun- 
 dred years at least, this prayer has gone up from mouths 
 of Christians. During the darkest periods of the Church's 
 history — amid persecution and warfare, in private doubt, 
 in trial, in anxiety, it has resounded under the arches of 
 old Cathedrals as it resounds now in the huts which serve 
 to shelter God's people in the western wilds, Can we not 
 picture to ourselves the peace which for all these centuries 
 has been imparted by the view of life given us in that one 
 word, protection ? Surely the holy man who penned it 
 first, must have been one who after toil and storm at 
 length had reached a purer air. Who can estimate the 
 experience of him whose instinctive way of thinking about 
 Providence, was not of a succession of trials and discipline, 
 sorely taxing strength and faith, but rather a divinely 
 wrought shield, sheltering God's chosen, and only nourish- 
 ing to fuller life the love and fear of His holy name? 
 
 The finest bloom and fragrance of the human soul went, 
 one cannot doubt, to the composition of this exquisite 
 prayer. How can one ever sufficiently thank the Church's 
 Head and Master, for inspiring and preserving these 
 choicest utterances of His saints throughout centuries ! 
 And yet amidst the thanksgivings which we raise to Him 
 for our Liturgy, let us never forget our own higher obliga- 
 tions to preserve and show forth as the result of His deal- 
 ings with the Church, a piety which shall be worthy of such 
 prayers. That alone is worthy of him who has learned by 
 heart the difficult lesson set before us in the use of the 
 
 8* 
 
178 CONFIRMATION. 
 
 words to which I have just called your attention. It is 
 the most appropriate lesson with which to end an address 
 to persons beginning the professed Christian life — that of 
 so ordering our lives that we may have this as the un- 
 shakable foundation for them, — that God's Providence is 
 one of protection. So will it always manifest itself to 
 him, who will make the fear and love of Grod's holy name 
 his constant companions. 
 
 All the changes and chances of this mortal life are to 
 him, but manifestations of God's abounding love. All the 
 calamities which human life brings with it, are changed by 
 that habitual temper into loving discipline. He learns to 
 sun himself in the light of that eternal judgment which in 
 Scripture is so nobly displayed to us as but the unchang- 
 ing manifestation of God's truthfulness. And thus strength- 
 ened, and purified, and protected by His good Providence, 
 he so passes through things temporal that he finally loses 
 not the things eternal. May this day be such a beginning 
 of endless life to those who are to join us in fighting the 
 good fight of faith. 
 
XV. 
 
 CHARITY AND ITS ABUSES. 
 
 I SUPPOSE that no reflecting person can doubt, that we 
 are in this part of the country doing all we can to create 
 a real class of paupers — of professional beggars, unwilling 
 to work, spending the pleasanter part of the year in prowl- 
 ing through the land, and in winter leading lives of crime 
 at large or of indolence in the poor-houses. Those who 
 regard the matter with attention proportioned to the mag- 
 nitude of the evil, are beginning to feel that some organ- 
 ized means must be adopted for the purpose of destroying a 
 disease shown by the experience of other countries to be 
 full of danger to society at large, and of incalculable in- 
 jury to the persons who are continually tempted to enroll 
 themselves for life in this ragged army of criminals. At- 
 tempts have been made here and there, to deal with the 
 evil by law, and to authorize the arrest and confinement 
 at hard labor, of persons found wandering through the 
 country, with no better means of livelihood than beggary. 
 Such interference with liberty, running, as it does, the 
 risk of unjustly confining persons travelling on foot for the 
 most worthy purposes, cannot, of course, be defended in this 
 shape. Perhaps no legal measures can be expected ever 
 adequately to deal with the evil. And it certainly is not 
 with the object of suggesting any thing of that description 
 that I introduce the subject now ; but rather that we may 
 consider together some of its aspects as they concern our- 
 
 179 
 
180 CHARITY AKB ITS ABUSES. 
 
 selves as individuals and as Christians, the duty incumbent 
 upon us in that capacity, the discouragements perpetually 
 arising in connection with its discharge, and what we have, 
 and have not, the right to look for, in due compliance 
 with Christ's commands regarding the relief of human 
 want. 
 
 It must be apparent that in a country like our own, un- 
 der ordinary circumstances, there can be no good reason 
 why a class of beggars should exist. Exceptional cases, 
 of course, there will always be — cases where temporary 
 sickness, or the death of the father of a family may justify 
 an appeal for relief until the first stress of want is passed, 
 or, even permanently, where health is hopelessly gone, 
 and the only alternative is starvation or the poor-house. 
 But these are exceptions. The evil I speak of is of much 
 larger proportions — proportions with which we are every 
 day made familiar. It offers itself, perhaps more striking- 
 ly during a period of business depression, but not so very 
 much more than in the years of unhealthy prosperity, un- 
 der the form of numbers of strong men presenting them- 
 selves for relief, and relief in the shape of money. Those 
 who have paid personal attention to such appeals are 
 aware that year after year the same individuals in groups 
 easily recognizable, present themselves at certain seasons, 
 always with much the same piteous tale. These persons 
 become professional vagabonds during the warmer months, 
 encamping in the woods and levying tribute upon the de- 
 cent classes of society by begging and steaUng, or in colder 
 weather, by burglary. Now such a state of things may 
 seem to one nothing worse than annoying, and hardly 
 worth bestowing upon it more than a passing regret. But 
 it is by neglecting the rise of such a social phenomenon, 
 
CHARITY AND ITS ABUSES. 181 
 
 and by treating the evil improperly, that in European 
 countries has been formed a pauper class, handing down 
 from father to son those habits of depredation and depend- 
 ence, with the principle of self-respect utterly killed out of 
 them, and, in the course of generations, becoming almost 
 incapable of being raised from their condition of hostility 
 to all the restraints necessary to make up human society. 
 It is such a class which, when congregated in a city, al- 
 ways furnishes by far the largest portion of the mobs that 
 destroy life and property, and jeopard the best interests of 
 the community. It is such outcasts who made up, largely, 
 the insurgents of Paris in the first Revolution, and during 
 the late reign of the Commune. And, as I began by re- 
 marking, instead of wisely-concerted measures for check- 
 ing its growth, we are weakly fostering it as far as negli- 
 gence, and culpable laxity in giving can do so. 
 
 Looking at the matter from this point of view, can any 
 one say that the subject is not of the gravest practical 
 moment, whether regarded with the eyes of a statesman, 
 a philanthropist, or a lover of his country. And no less 
 grave than the evil is the responsibility of those who un- 
 thinkingly aggravate it. If we are so acting as to stimu- 
 late the growth of such a social disease, we surely need 
 only to become aware of it in order to feel that we are 
 bound to reconsider our course, and to adopt one that 
 shall benefit the objects of our charity, but at the same 
 time be a true carrying out of our Lord's loving com- 
 mands. 
 
 For after all, this last consideration, in this place, and 
 to those who come here for sincerely religious purposes, 
 must be the most important of all to settle. Incalculable 
 as is the importance of other objects aff'ectod by this ques- 
 
182 CHARITY AND ITS ABUSES. 
 
 tion —valuable as are the interests of society— we should 
 feel that the true following out of Christ's bidding must be 
 in itself more so still. We might be led by looking Tnere- 
 ly at the social side of the matter to the conclusion, so 
 heartlessly avowed by some, that the interests of society 
 on the whole are best served by refusing all relief, under 
 all circumstances, and leaving the world to be freed by 
 death from persons whose condition shows them to be use- 
 less to advance its welfare ; and yet, however swayed his 
 mind might be by presentation of such a doctrine, every 
 Christian would feel that there must be some fatal mistake 
 in a course of reasoning so completely opposed to the ut- 
 terances of the Son of God. 
 
 Let us then, having begun by thinking of its worst form, 
 seek for the fountain-head of this alarming evil, and try 
 to shape to ourselves a consistent notion of what our 
 course should be. For harm may be done, not simply when 
 dealing with that peculiarly dangerous, and one might 
 almost say, organized body of mendicants of whom I began 
 by speaking, but also when ministeriug to the needs of others, 
 so far much superior to them. We may, by rightly gradu- 
 ating and adapting our charities, make a means of religious 
 influence of a high order, or by thoughtlessness, impair 
 the spirit of self-dependence, without which, it is hardly 
 too much to say, no fine, or Christian character can exist ; 
 and thus even prepare those whom we mean to benefit for 
 enrolling themselves in that very host of professional 
 beggars whose dangers I have pointed out. 
 
 The main point for us to settle is whether private, indi- 
 vidual alms-giving is a permissible form for our charity 
 to take; and if so, what shape it should assume. By per- 
 missible, of course, I mean, calculated to do lasting nnd real 
 
CHARITY AND ITS ABUSES. 183 
 
 good. And much is here to be said on both sides. Un- 
 questionably such action is exposed to considerable danger 
 of the kind just referred to. No one much acquainted with 
 such matters need be told of the vast amount of imposture 
 that finds in private charity a soil in which it thrives 
 luxuriantly. Appeals to various individuals at the same 
 time, and the receipt of aid from each, frequently make 
 pretended poverty the means of getting a comfortable 
 livelihood. When again, the giver's feelings are not con- 
 trolled by judgment, the motive to exertion on the part of 
 the person relieved is often weakened and at last completely 
 killed. Both of these are instances from which it might 
 seem proper to conclude that the best way of giving would 
 be to put one's alms into the hands of some person or per- 
 sons whose special business it should be to investigate each 
 case as it arises, and who from occupying this position would 
 be guarded by a feeling of responsibility from excessive 
 giving. And in the city, I doubt not, ver^ largely, and to a 
 considerable degree in the country, this is a proper course 
 to pursue. But to resort to it wholly is a plan open to very 
 serious objections. One of the greatest uses of charity is 
 that it creates, when properly conducted, a bond of true 
 sympathy between the giver and the person relieved which 
 is admirable in its effects on both. One who visits and 
 relieves the fatherless and the widow in their affliction is 
 greatly helped thereby in obedience to the injunction 
 that follows — to keep himself unspotted from the world. 
 The sight of human suffering, looked at with a Christian 
 eye, helps one better to estimate the difficulties with which 
 a large proportion of mankind, in one form or another, have 
 to struggle. It deepens one's sense of un worthiness ; it 
 can hardly fail to check selfishness, and abate the disposi- 
 
184 CHARITY AND ITS ABUSES. 
 
 tioii to personal indulgence which is one of the most dis- 
 quieting symptoms of our times. When suffering is 
 patiently and manfully borne, it supplies us with examples 
 the most eloquent to help us in conquering discontent 
 and cultivating a deep and cheerful spirit of piety. And 
 for the benefit of the sufferer it is of untold value. The 
 official almoner or dispenser of other's charities, however 
 sympathizing he may be, or however generous in quietly 
 giving of his own means, will lose with many, at least 
 something of his due influence from being in that position. 
 The most valuable means of improving both yourself 
 and those whom you would benefit is to see and know 
 them yourself ; to have, and to manifest a personal interest 
 in their welfare. This will give you the opening for ad- 
 vice, for consolation, for enlightening ignorance, and im- 
 parting those large and elevated views of Christianity 
 which do not come in general under such circumstances, 
 save from the outside — from persons whose superior know- 
 ledge has enabled them to divine the truth about many 
 matters which to ignorance are dark and burdensome. 
 
 There is another reason too, which makes of this form 
 of charity a peculiarly valuable means of furthering our 
 own spiritual growth. You remember, how after his ship- 
 wreck on the island of Melita, while the shivering crew 
 and the inhabitants of the isle were kindling a fire, St. 
 Paul while working with them was bitten by a viper and 
 was expected to fall dead. Some similar recompense of 
 our Christian activity we often meet with, and in it lies 
 one of the chief advantages of this course of discipline 
 which I have called private charity. When one has 
 practised it, it often becomes so attractive that we are in 
 danger of forgetting the lofty end which is its chief rea- 
 
CHARITY AND ITS ABUSES. 185 
 
 son, and sometimes even lose sight of other duties in 
 the pleasure afforded by the discharge of this. Some 
 of the most telling, and yet most truthful of the pictures 
 of a famous novelist are those which delineate the spiritual 
 pride or the utter neglect of the most sacred duties some- 
 times resulting from excessive abandonment to philan- 
 thropic or charitable work. Every one is familiar with the 
 feeding produced by meeting with ingratitude and selfish- 
 ness^ or worse, among those who have been carefully and 
 kindly treated — the feeling almost of personal affliction 
 engendered by the discovery of one's titter deception in a 
 character hitherto held in affectionate esteem. Painful as 
 this is when one's efforts have been distinctly and really 
 made from a feeling of duty, and when pleasure has not 
 been aimed at by itself, the shock is greater yet when the 
 latter has unconsciously thrust itself forward, and we have 
 been blindly following our own impulses. It is under 
 these circumstances that most harm is done. The gratifi- 
 cation of a generous nature is so great when suffering is 
 relieved, that unless checked by a very stern sense of 
 responsibility, it is very apt indeed to lead to such a liber- 
 ality as produces the consequences before adverted to as 
 harmful in a high degree. And not merely material gifts 
 are liable to do this evil. The unregulated feelings are, 
 if possible, still more liable to mislead, when, not food and 
 clothing, and the outward necessaries of life, but comfort 
 and sympathy are given to those who really need, for their 
 own good, wholesome rebuke, or warning against discon- 
 tent, or lessons of frugality from neglect of which their 
 trouble comes. In this way, instead of doing good, we 
 may be encouraging the grossest forms of spiritual 
 disease, — pride, ingratitude, a disposition to grumble at 
 
186 CHARITY AND ITS ABUSES. 
 
 not being as well-to-do as is wished, and particularly, the 
 fatal vice of hypocrisy, pretending to high spiritual at- 
 tainments when, in reality, there is not even common 
 moralit}^ to be found. Every one, I say, is more or less 
 familiar with this experience ; and, as matters stand with 
 us, painful as it is, perhaps it is needed from time to time 
 in order to remind us of the real nature and ground of the 
 duty in whose discharge we encounter it, and particularly, 
 to enforce the need of that rigid insp3ction of our methods 
 without which we are so likely to do more harm than 
 good. As to the former point, certainly, here as elsewhere, 
 pleasure very pure and great is conjoined with the proper 
 discharge of duty. But when pleasure, consciously or 
 unconsciously, assumes too much importance, it is apt 
 to prevent, and finally to destroy, the usefulness of 
 our efforts thus tainted by selfishness. This displays 
 itself in quarters the most unlooked for. Self-denial, 
 that is in its severer forms, yields high and serene 
 pleasure; but do we not know how often it leads to 
 spiritual pride — how even religious exercises, practised to 
 the nejD;lect of less delightsome duties, make us uncharitable, 
 and inclined to underrate the godliness of others ? So here. 
 Instances are not unknown where utter devotion to a 
 charitable work, accompanied by an undue pride in it, has 
 rendered an active philanthropist blind not only to Chris- 
 tian kindness but even to the ordinary proprieties of life. 
 Such cases, of course, are rare, but probably, rare only 
 because the pleasure derived from such activities has not 
 been suff'ered to grow too important an object. Wherever 
 though, this does take place, to even a slight degree, there 
 is the need of disappointments to disturb our self-satisfac- 
 tion and bend our attention once more to the true object 
 and plan of the duty. 
 
CHARITY AND ITS ABUSES. 187 
 
 "When thus violently and painfully aroused to the mis- 
 takes we have made, we naturally turn to the task of pro- 
 vidino: aa-ainst them for the future. We remember that 
 the great purpose should be, not merely, and for itself, 
 making people happy and comfortable, for the time being, 
 but so relieving them as to work lasting good to their 
 characters. That great army of idle vagabonds which we 
 considered at the outset, are seen, under the light of such 
 experiences as these, to be but the natural and inevitable 
 outgrowth of unthinking and ill-regulated private charity. 
 If we try only to relieve temporary want we lay the foun- 
 dation of that superstructure of delusions which finds its 
 logical result in Communism — the belief that, indepen- 
 dently of his own qualifications, his character, his industry, 
 his thrift, every man has a right to be supported in com- 
 fort : — to sum up in a word, that in the phrase of Proud- 
 hon, '' private property is itself robbery." As a mat- 
 ter of fact, I have little or no doubt that our professional 
 vagrants have reached their present numbers from finding 
 it easier to beg or steal than to work, and for them vastly 
 more comfortable ; and that they are the offspring, largely, 
 of persons whose self-respect has been destroyed in the 
 same way. Whether this be so or not, however, it is 
 manifest that instead of diminishing, this dangerous and 
 wretched class will increase, if the causes producing it go 
 on unchecked. Let us look to our methods and see if they 
 cannot be mended. 
 
 As regards the vagrant class our duty is pretty clear. 
 On the whole perhaps, we do much harm by supplying even 
 with food a class which is led to spend half the year in 
 vagrancy by knowing that it can obtain regular nourish- 
 ment. And yet there is the risk of perhaps denying 
 
188 CHAPJTY AKD ITS ABUSES. 
 
 to a really needy person food that is necessary for the sup- 
 port of life; and with proper vigilance that our bounty is 
 not thrown away, we may feel safe in obeying this instinct 
 of the heart. As ior any money assistance it is, under al- 
 most all circumstances, likely to do harm to persons of this 
 class. Money so procured is used in most cases for the 
 worst purposes, and to give it is a direct encouragement to 
 indolence and to vice. Now and then, of course, a case 
 will present itself where you may venture to believe the 
 piteous story told you, and act accordingly ; but in general, 
 every one should feel that by giving money to unknown 
 beggars, he is not merely wasting it but committing a 
 crime against society, and fostering the growth of a class 
 of persons whose existence is a standing menace against it. 
 Ask yourself for an instant what means may be looked to 
 for the conversion into decent members of society of these 
 stalwart beggars, for their learning habits of industry and 
 thrift, for their becoming amenable to any elevating influ- 
 ences. It is plain tliat regular settled habitations are al- 
 most the first necessary thing in the process, then, enforced 
 self-support. Enforce it we cannot directly, but we may 
 indirectly, by rendering it impossible, so far as we are con- 
 cerned, to obtain a living by merely asking for it. When 
 once it shall be plain to this wretched and at present, 
 hopelessly degraded class, that their present means of 
 existence will no longer suffice, they will do one of two 
 things: — they will plunder openly or they will work. And 
 observe this : always it has turned out that if they were 
 not thus forced to support themselves when comparatively 
 few in numbers, they have proved impossible to control 
 after growing stronger. We have dealt too loosely with a 
 serious social danger. It is our bounden duty to dally 
 
CHARITY AND ITS ABUSES. 189 
 
 with it no longer, but to treat it on principle, system- 
 atically, because we thereby best follow the spirit of Christ's 
 own bidding. And when we have thus convinced ourselves 
 of the seriousness of the evil, we shall be prepared to un- 
 derstand, and intelligently to support, whatever public 
 measures may be proposed. First of all however, must be 
 private conviction, and loyalty to it. 
 
 As for the methods according to which we are to con- 
 duct our ordinary charities towards persons whom we 
 know, the pointing out of the evils flowing from the wrong 
 course will naturally suggest them. The first thing to be 
 settled, I presume, must be a strong desire for the lasting 
 good of the person relieved. Now trouble, we know, is 
 nothing but one form of divine discipline, and it is always to 
 be remembered in the discharge of this duty that we are 
 doing wrong and harm, not good, by encouraging in any 
 way the spirit of discontent to which such discipline com- 
 monly gives rise. A provision of the necessaries of life, 
 and yet the most careful training of whatever desire for 
 self-support may exist ; a most jealous and watchful care 
 that that back-bone of character, self-respect, be not weak- 
 ened ; eagerness rather to see habits and faculties of mind 
 and body acquired for future use, than simply to relieve 
 passing wants of the body ; — these should be the general 
 type according to which we should do our part as stew- 
 ards of the manifold blessings of God. 
 
 On account of both giver and receiver, there must be 
 watchfulness on the benefactor's part that his feelings do 
 not carry him into a misunderstanding of the facts of the 
 case. In many of the instauces, especially in a great city, 
 where relief is needed, the character has already sunk 
 under some of the manifold evil influences of the situation. 
 
190 ' CHARITY AND ITS ABUSES. 
 
 Very often indeed, faults of the meanest kind have flour- 
 ished under the fostering influence of continuous de- 
 pendence on others for support. We are guilty, then, ol 
 the most short-sighted folly when we allow ourselves to 
 look among such for the return it would be reasonable to 
 anticipate from others. As a general rule, to which, how- 
 ever, I am glad to remember some exceptions, you are ut- 
 terly to abandon the thought of gratitude for what you do, 
 as a physician never expects a child to understand how 
 much has been done for it. This is an important thing to 
 bear in mind. Otherwise we are so sickened and dis- 
 heartened by the discovery of baseness and thanklessness, 
 that we are almost inclined to give up a duty, which how- 
 ever little return it may have in outward gratification, is 
 still a duty imposed upon us by God, and as impossible to 
 deny as that which demands obedience from child to par- 
 ent. And moreover, too lofty an estimate will seriously 
 impede us in the use of those moral means which the posi- 
 tion of benefactor usually puts at one's disposal. Gen- 
 erally speaking, continuous want springs from thriftlessness, 
 extravagance, foolish pride, and a false notion of the degra- 
 dation caused by any honest labor. These are grave faults, 
 and it is every benefactor's bounden duty to discourage and 
 check them. Every thing likely to bUnd us to the exist- 
 ence of such faults then, is so much in the way of our 
 rightly using the means of doing good. We must see 
 clearly in order to act wisely. 
 
 I have treated this subject because I believe it to be of 
 vast importance from whatever point of view regarded. 
 I have attempted to arouse no specially poetical or roman- 
 tic notions regarding it, but rather to suggest the need of 
 turning the immense amounts which annually go to sup- 
 
CHARITY AND ITS ABUSES. 191 
 
 port these public pests and enemies into the channel indi- 
 cated by reflection and true philanthropy. The relief of 
 want is not a duty which can be successfully discharged 
 without grave thought and a feeling of responsibility. It is 
 never so imperfectly done as when we look to it merely for 
 pleasurable excitement. 
 
 " God will not let love's work impart 
 Full solace, lest it steal the heart." 
 
 The true spirit in which to perforiri it is that in which 
 we come to the Holy Communion — the sense of unworthi- 
 ness, of weakness, of the need of spiritual help, of gratitude 
 to God for the gift of His dear Son, and the feeling that, 
 being redeemed by Him, all men are our brothers. Thus 
 feeling, we shall not be overmuch cast down by disappoint- 
 ments that are inevitable. And thus strong in our faith, 
 we shall look to Him unceasingly for help in carrying on 
 the work to which His earthly life was devoted, that 
 through our patience and long-suffering, the weary and 
 heavy-laden may come unto Him and find rest. 
 
XVI. 
 
 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 " The power of an endless life." — Heb. vii. 16. 
 
 Who can survey the broadest expanse of principle, and 
 from that vantage-ground discern the most accurately the 
 far-reaching results of the agencies around them ? Are 
 they not those who are in other respects the noblest — 
 whose lives are animated by the truest principles — whose 
 souls are ever straining after the best ends ? 
 
 So, on the other hand, if we begin with the latter con- 
 sideration, we shall find that this nobility of soul — the as- 
 piration after such ends, is joined with the power of sur- 
 veying the most extensive fields of inquiry or of action. 
 
 This invariable connection of greatness of soul with the 
 entertainment of broad views, cannot be accidental. 
 What is the reason ? Is it true that these men are horn 
 to such a heritage, and that no others can gain it? Or is 
 it not rather that the constant contemplation of high des- 
 tinies, itself exerts an ennobling influence upon the mind ? 
 
 Whatever amount of truth there may be in the former 
 supposition — however it may be that some men enter by 
 right of birth upon the enjoyment of this grand heritage, 
 the truth of the latter statement is more unquestionable 
 still. Men can be raised by the habitual contemplation 
 of great truths and high destinies to a pitch of greatness 
 never dreamed of before. 
 
 Look at the world around you and see why the majori- 
 192 
 
THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 193 
 
 ty of those who compose it lead such hves. It is because 
 they have no appreciation of anything beyond the lowest 
 motives. To amass money and to acquire thereby con- 
 sideration in society — to gratify their tastes and enjoy 
 themselves, — are not these the aims of the great propor- 
 tion of mankind ? They live only from day to day : or if 
 the future exerts any influence over them, it is a very 
 limited future that they look forward to, and the vista 
 that stretches before them is not one that reveals ends of a 
 lofty character. Practically, the power of an endless life 
 has no place among the influences which sway them. 
 
 Suppose society at large, however, aroused from this 
 condition. Suppose the truth that we are immortal be- 
 ings to become an ever-present thought, — pervading every 
 department of life, — influencing every branch of activity. 
 Let the thought that we are pursuing a career which is 
 never to end, and each of whose successive stages is 
 moulded by that which went before, be an hourly com- 
 panion. Can you help seeing how elevating it would be ? 
 Beneath the over-shadowing majesty of a conviction like 
 this, the paltry cares and ambitions that fill our day 
 would cower into nothingness, awed out of existence. 
 Drawn onward with irresistible force along the ever- 
 widening avenue of an endless life, men would grow, not 
 simply able to resist, but incapable of bestowing engross- 
 ing thought upon those things that now exert so disturb- 
 ing an influence. So mighty a belief must expand the soul 
 in which it abides. It must crowd out the mean and 
 paltry, and assimilate to itself the whole man. But this 
 is only the general statement of a felt immortality. Let 
 us see more exactly how it will operate. 
 
 Nothing great can be done by little men, or by men 
 9 
 
194 THE rOWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 who feel themselves little. However grieved by his short- 
 comings, or humiliated by his sins, the man who does 
 great deeds must know that he has in himself something 
 that links him to their grandeur. Nay, even this repen- 
 tance, this humiliation, are they not themselves the proof 
 that he does not deem himself wholly base? It is just 
 because he feels sin to be a surrender of his high destiny 
 — a practical dishonoring of himself — a falling short of 
 the lofty part which God gave him to enact, that his re- 
 morse is so bitter. It is because he knows that by ad- 
 mitting him to communion with Himself, by breathing the 
 Holy Spirit into his heart, God gave him the assurance of 
 a holy and hence a noble life. This feeling, which, for 
 want of a better name, must be called pride, is essential to 
 the achievement of lofty deeds. Only let it be remembered 
 that it is a feeling as far removed from vanity or self- 
 glorification as Heaven is from earth. It is ever joined 
 with the truest humility. Its possessor reverently bows 
 before God as the source of all his endowments. He as- 
 pires after greatness, not as a means of gaining applause, 
 but as the only thing possible for a soul which comes from 
 God, and which was created to love and glorify and serve 
 its Maker. 
 
 Now that which the Epistle to the Hebrews calls the 
 power of an endless life, nourishes a feeling of this descrip- 
 tion — it must give rise to the sentiijient of moral dignity 
 that we see to be so essential to any nobility of action. 
 
 So long as men live practically as though their life 
 were as brief as that of the beasts that perish — so long as 
 their desires are bounded by the satisfying of wants that 
 belong only to earth, their endless life puts forth none of 
 its power. For any influence it has upon them, what 
 
THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 195 
 
 they act upon might as well be true — they might as well 
 have had no higher destiny than the insect which flutters 
 from morn to eve amid the glories of a summer's day. 
 Thinking themselves little, they become so in reality. 
 Alive to none of their capacities, they lose those capacities. 
 As they become more and more wrapt up in unworthy 
 pursuits, their souls shrink to the measure of the thoughts 
 and principles that govern them. 
 
 But upon a soul thus doing dishonor to its capabilities, 
 imagine the effect, when into its narrow work-house breaks 
 the consciousness of that life and immortality which Christ 
 brought to light by the Gospel ! We saw before, in gen- 
 eral, how ennobling will be the effect of such a discovery. 
 Now, guided by the thought of the necessity of a sense of 
 greatness to the performance of great deeds, we can see 
 more exactly how this change will be effected. The mist 
 of uncertainty, or darkness, which once rested a few steps 
 before the man, rendering him incapable of planning for 
 more than a few days, or months, or years, suddenly lifts, 
 and he beholds, stretching far on into infinity the path 
 which seemed so short. He feels that all along that road, 
 he will be accompanied by the influences of each deed 
 that he is performing to-day ; the good actions supporting 
 him and cheering him to renewed exertions, the bad 
 changing themselves into phantoms of malignant power to 
 drag him aside. Can he, think you, — can he be again the 
 little, pitiable thing he was before ? Can he remain con- 
 tent with the trifles which were suited to the creature 
 whose life was a span, when all his eternity opens before 
 him ? The stupendous part he is called to perform — the 
 mighty sphere he is destined to fill — these arouse all the 
 slumbering good in him, shame the pettiness into its pro- 
 
196 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 per insignificance, and spur him on to make himself worthy 
 of God who admitted him to such privileges, of the Saviour 
 who died to free him from his sins, of the Holy Ghost 
 whose aid he must claim with each step toward the reali- 
 zation of those mighty hopes that have made him once 
 more a man. 
 
 The reflections arising from such a discovery are so inti- 
 mately linked together that they seem rather parts of one 
 great whole than separate influences. But each of them 
 exerts its own proper force. Thus as he feels day by day 
 more keenly the magnitude of the future life, his yearning 
 to fill it in a manner worthy of his high calling will be 
 strengthened by finding that it is not a distinct, separate 
 thing — this future existence — not one which is marked off 
 by a clear line from the life he is living now, but simply a 
 continuation of it. The boy looks forward wistfully to his 
 manhood, and can hardly believe but that when he enters 
 on what seem its unmingled delights, he shall undergo 
 some instantaneous, radical change from his present self. 
 The child, he thinks, busy with his ball and his marbles 
 must disappear suddenly, or else he never can become like 
 these men whom he hopes one day to resemble. But as 
 the man looks back on the slow stages which have brought 
 him on his way to maturity he sees no such sudden trans- 
 formation. In their due time, the childish fancies and 
 tastes which once occupied him melted away without his 
 knowing it until they were gone, and in their stead, silently, 
 mysteriously, arose others, of whose growth he was almost 
 as unconscious, until one day he found himself to his sur- 
 prise, what he had perhaps a year before been looking for- 
 ward to as a far-off thing — a man. The gentle undula- 
 tions in the path from infancy to maturity which to a 
 
THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 197 
 
 little child, straining himself to look down into their depths, 
 seemed mysterious abysses through which he could never 
 pass without a sudden change, from the higher ground of 
 manhood can hardly be distinguished in the unbroken 
 highway which has led him on to his present standing- 
 point. 
 
 Thus of earthly life and eternity. A change — a mighty 
 change no doubt there is, between being a dweller on earth 
 occupied exclusively with its concerns, and being fit for 
 Heaven. But the mere passage across the dark river is not 
 always the occasion of that change. Indeed it is very 
 seldom so. The transformation must, almost always, take 
 place long before. 
 
 For we must get rid of the almost materialistic thought 
 that Heaven is something radically different from what it 
 is possible to experience here. Since the soul is not to 
 become infinite it must, after it enters upon the enjoyment 
 of Heaven, be in some place ; though the Bible has wisely 
 refrained from dwelling too minutely upon such points as 
 this. But the crowning bliss of that condition will un- 
 doubtedly be the communion with God that we shall enjoy. 
 Now this is just what may be gained with increasing cer- 
 tainty and fulness on this side the tomb. Who does not 
 know of Christians whose connection with this world is but 
 as some gossamer thread, hardly felt, except as hindering 
 them from actually quitting it, but whose souls are in 
 constant intercourse with Him in whom they delight ? 
 
 No, believe me, Heaven may begin on earth. It is a 
 mighty revelation when we 
 
 " In one rapt moment know, 
 'Tia Heaven must come, not we must go." 
 
 The leaving of the scene of mortal pilgrimage is a thing 
 
198 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 of but small moment to one, all of whose treasure has long 
 since been laid up where neither moth nor rust doth 
 corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. 
 To be quit of the dangers of earth — of its cares and its 
 toils — this no doubt, is a thing to be desired ; but to such 
 souls it grows plain, long before the summons comes, that 
 that which makes Heaven is not denied even here, to him 
 who by patient continuance in well-doing seeks for it. 
 Let this become clear to any one, even though he be not 
 fully up to so lofty a level, and see how it must affect 
 him to think that earthly life is only the beginning of a 
 pathway which even death overshadows but for a moment. 
 It will be much as when some little, turbulent, ill- 
 governed province is made a part of a neighboring empire, 
 vast in extent, moving harmoniously on to its destiny, 
 under influences of law and order. The denizen of such a 
 little province was, before, incapable of any thing grander • 
 than some partizan fanaticism, because his mind was 
 cramped by the petty limits within which alone he could 
 call himself a citizen. The broils that agitated his neigh- 
 borhood — the insignificant questions of its finance and 
 trade occupied him exclusively. His province could not 
 by any possibility gain a commanding position among the 
 nations of the earth, and so its citizen, like its govern- 
 ment, was denied the privilege of moving on a lofty course. 
 But when to his rights as a dweller in that little section 
 are superadded those of a member of a spreading empire, 
 his thoughts and aspirations are correspondingly enlarged. 
 The paltry cares and disputes and agitations of his com- 
 munity are stilled by the transition to a broader political 
 life. The drop of water cast into the ocean is no longer 
 conscious of its separate individual existence ; it rises and 
 
THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 199 
 
 falls with the wider and freer heaving of the tide that 
 swells the grander body of which it has become a part. 
 
 And so with this earthly life of ours. How can I, with 
 a sense of the magnitude of eternity upon me — flooded 
 with the influence of its grandeur — how can I longer be 
 willing to make this world the limit of my exertions? 
 Engrafted into the commonwealth of Heaven, how can I 
 think exclusively of my bodily cares and wants, content to 
 fit myself to be forever an inhabitant of earth's narrow 
 boundaries when those boundaries have disappeared, when 
 it is merged into a domain as broad as infinity, and as 
 imperial in its sway as the Grod who rules it ? No, truly ! 
 As the anarchy and confusion around me sicken my heart, 
 I will take to myself wings as a dove, I will flee away and 
 be at rest in the longing anticipation of Heaven. And as 
 the knowledge that I need not wait for Heaven to come to 
 me at the hour of death becomes plain, the coarse prison- 
 house around me will fade away, and in the discharge of 
 its duties I shall feel that I am no more a bondsman 
 chained to his task, but a cunning craftsman, fashioning to 
 myself out of the materials around me, — the temptations 
 and trials of the world, — a heaven that no tempest can 
 overthrow. From the eternity of which I now feel that 
 each day forms a part, will flow powers of law and order, 
 stilling the turmoil which rages where eternity is lost 
 from sight. Firm in my allegiance to the ruler of that 
 august monarchy of which I am now a citizen, the dis- 
 tracting claims of inclination and unbridled license will 
 be absorbed : inclination will incline to God, and license 
 will be merged into the glorious liberty of His dear child. 
 I have tasted- of the powers of the world to come, and 
 my lower appetites are dead. 
 
200 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 No truth which is worth much to us but can be trans- 
 lated into the language of our daily life. Let it be as 
 grand as it may when looked upon from a distance, it must 
 be capable of being brought to bear upon the spiritual 
 life. It is no argument against the value of a doctrine 
 that you find a difficulty in so making use of it, for it may 
 be on account of your own deficiencies ; but what is in 
 itself incapable of use is not a doctrine of very much im- 
 portance. 
 
 I see, for example, how full of daily value are the funda- 
 mental truths of our religion. The Incarnation, teaching 
 us that if Christ was willing to become man, our salvation 
 is of untold moment in His eyes, and should be so in ours. 
 The Atonement, giving us daily proof that through Him 
 we have the way of access to God without which we are 
 lost. The doctrine of the Spirit's power and operations, 
 affording us in our loneliest hours, and in our deepest sor- 
 rows, the consolation that though deserted by human 
 friends, a dearer friend than they shelters us under the 
 shadow of His wing. Even the mysterious doctrine of the 
 Trinity, at first sight so barren of use in our daily walk, 
 but in whose absence our Saviour would be but a mere 
 creature, not God — the Holy Ghost, only an influence — 
 not the ever-present and all-powerful Person that we know 
 Him to be. 
 
 So, too, if there be such a thing as an endless life, it 
 will have a fower belonging to it, and one which may be 
 exerted not simply at some moment of respite from toil, 
 when we are free to meditate on heavenly things, but even 
 amid the smaller duties of civil or domestic life. 
 
 See how it will fare with you. The comparatively low 
 motives which must influence one who has no ever-present 
 
THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 201 
 
 sense of the power of an endless life, die of inanition in 
 the atmosphere of eternity. As such a man goes to his 
 daily toil, he is conscious that what he is toiling for is 
 something which is not to be estimated in earthly rewards 
 (which are the money of the worldling, but only the coun- 
 ters of the wise). He cannot content himself at the year's 
 end by thinking that he has gained the dross after which 
 others strive. There must have been acquisitions of a 
 nobler kind to satisfy him. His soul must have won new 
 powers — he must have become wiser, better, more keen- 
 sighted to pierce the mists of time and see with increasing 
 certainty the rewards which this world can neither give 
 nor take away, but for which it is the appointed place in 
 which to strive. Of what satisfying power to him are the 
 meeds from social consideration, unless along with these 
 he knows that he has increased in favor with his God. To 
 what purpose is it that he has much goods laid up for 
 many years if he have bought them by starving the soul 
 from its due — if its powers have been bartered for things 
 which are in themselves powerless to minister to its needs ? 
 Happy indeed is he, if he may gain both these ends, but 
 if only one of them can be his, the power of an endless 
 life, moulding all his aspirations cannot leave him in doubt 
 which he shall choose. 
 
 So far as to the effect which the power will produce ii^ 
 modifying his conception of what is truly desirable. 1% 
 does not make him a hermit, it does not rob him of the 
 wise man's appreciation of the true worth and use of 
 money, or power, or position, but it enlightens him, and 
 teaches him that these things are worthy of his striving 
 only in so far as they are capable of being assimilated and 
 employed by the immortal part of his nature, for ends 
 
 9* 
 
202 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 which stretch far beyond this earth, and are as endless as 
 the eternity towards which he is a wayfarer. But the 
 moment they begin to impede him on his pilgrimage — 
 the moment they become a drag upon his soul, he feels 
 that they are not simply useless, but as necessary to be 
 abandoned as its baggage by a flying army whose only 
 hope of escape lies in speed. 
 
 But not merely as influencing the objects of his activity 
 will the power of an endless life display itself. Equally 
 mighty will it be in determining what principles are to 
 guide him in gaining what he knows is to be striven for. 
 It is simply the operation in another sphere of the same 
 agency. Nor are we to regard it as a principle working 
 from without. It is not that when a course of action pre- 
 sents itself to him he is obliged to weigh, and ponder, and 
 compare, in order to find out toilsomely whether it is in 
 accordance with certain maxims which have been given him 
 to work by, but which are not in sympathy with his 
 nature. It is rather to be compared — this consciousness 
 of immortality — with the unerring instinct with which 
 the plant selects and absorbs into itself all that it needs 
 from the air and earth around, so as to mount up surely 
 and beautifully in accordance with the type to which it 
 belongs. Put a rose in your garden and it makes no mis- 
 take in the elements which it must appropriate — it does 
 not degenerate into a thistle. 
 
 So put your heir of immortality into the world, full of 
 the power of an endless life, and he selects with God-given 
 instinct, what his germ of immortality wants ; hardly con- 
 scious, perhaps, of what he is doing — hardly conscious of 
 all the injurious influences about him striving to poison his 
 soul. The plant is a rose ; it cannot change into a thistle. 
 
THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 203 
 
 The man is immortal, and knows it ; therefore he can feed 
 only on the food of immortality. Thus, whatever object 
 claims his attention, whether domestic, or social, or politi- 
 cal, his instinct rejects all low or earth-born means of 
 gaining it. The gross atmosphere of mere success in 
 attainment stifles him. He must feel, — it is the peremp- 
 tory law of his existence to feel — that in gaining the tem- 
 poral and transitory end, he is not compromising truth 
 eternal. He cannot barter the gold of an endless life, for 
 any glittering dross of temporary success. Expediency to 
 him assumes another and a higher meaning than it gene- 
 rally bears. That only is expedient, which is in harmony 
 with the view that makes him no butterfly which shall 
 drop into nothingness when his little day is over, but a 
 child of God, with destinies too mighty to let him entangle 
 himself with low and unworthy motives. He is to live 
 forever, he will not consent to bemire himself. He is to 
 live forever, he cannot stain one day of his eternal 
 existence by forgetting that grand truth. 
 
 So too with his more strictly religious life. This is seen 
 to be no separate thing, claiming a little part of his day, 
 to be set aside when he leaves his closet, but an animating 
 principle which leavens his whole existence. 
 
 Still, though his entire being be permeated with this 
 thought, tliere are parts of it on which rests a peculiarly 
 calm and holy light. Even amid the turmoil of activity 
 he can feel that God is near, and He knows that it is best 
 for him to toil. Yet there is a yearning for more immedi- 
 ate intercourse with his Father, which can be satisfied 
 only when these things may be laid aside, and he may 
 surrender himself wholly to communion with his Lord. 
 It is strange that even here, men may forget their immor- 
 
204 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 
 
 tality. Even when communing with Grod, the same principle 
 may assert itself, by force of which men may lose sight of 
 their heritage of immortality, and one may rest satisfied 
 with just keeping alive the spark of divine life. But for 
 him who is indeed under the influence of the principle of 
 which we speak no such thing is possible. That which is 
 to live forever must grow, and he cannot grovel on a plane, 
 but one remove from his who lives as though Heaven were 
 not. Conscious of the worth of spirituality, he cannot let 
 anything else overgrow and stifle it. Those will be the 
 sweet, precious moments of the day, when his soul, com- 
 muning face to face with Him who is invisible, gathers 
 fresh strength to resist the lowering influences of earthly 
 life, and by vanquishing them, converts their noxious 
 fumes into food, which will nourish the flame of immortal 
 life within. To him the word of God that speaks to him 
 of his heritage beyond the grave, will be immeasurably 
 precious, and the truth which is so dear to him will assert 
 its natural difi'usive power, and impel him to acquaint 
 those around him with its worth, by preaching the .Gospel 
 as far as in him lies to every creature. 
 
 Thus does every department of the Gospel necessarily 
 imply all the rest. From whatever point you set out, you 
 find ere long that every one of God's truths must embrace 
 all the others as it is developed, and the power of an end- 
 less life once fairly implanted stretches its influence over 
 the whole man. 
 
 These things of which I have been speaking, my friends, 
 are no mystical and impracticable speculations. The state 
 which I have described is not only possible for you to 
 reach, but will be your sin if you do not. 
 
 The power of an endless life is the property of every 
 
THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 205 
 
 Christian. Nothing but a melancholy declension in faith 
 and zeal, can permit you to ignore this fact. As you are 
 even dimly aware of the high destiny which belongs to you 
 as an immortal being, I charge you to remember thi=i, 
 and to strive that it be an ever-present thought, that 
 you are disgracing your soul, despising God, trampling 
 under foot His blessed Son, just in proportion as this 
 truth drops out of your horizon, and you contentedly 
 grovel on a lower plane than befits the child of the King 
 eternal, immortal, and invisible. 
 
XVII. 
 
 CERTAINTY. 
 
 " If we love one another, God dwelleth in ns, and His love is perfected 
 in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in Him and He in us because He 
 hath given us of His Spirit." — 1 St. John iv. 12, 13. 
 
 One of the latest acquirements of the Christian soul is 
 the perpetual maintenance of that certainty of which St. 
 John here speaks. It does not seem indeed, as though 
 God designed us to have it in just the way in which we 
 have it regarding many matters of our daily life. 
 
 If this be so — if, on the one hand, the certainty attain- 
 able here is of a different kind from that of common ex- 
 perience, and if, on the other, its evidence is of a different 
 sort, it may well be that mistaken hopes and expectations 
 stand in the way of gaining even that which is put within 
 our reach : we may be anxiously looking out for the ap- 
 pearance of something unlike what we shall ever see, and 
 looking too in the wrong direction. That we do crave 
 sure knowledge about our present condition and our spir- 
 itual destinies is undeniable, at least where any intensity of 
 Christian feeling exists. That most of us have from time 
 to time, in this department of being, a dim, shadowy pre- 
 sentiment, I think very probable. Nor is such a feeling of 
 the impossibility of forecasting the future at all an un- 
 mingled evil. If we were beyond the reach of tempta- 
 tion — if our earthly probation were over, and we had en- 
 tered on the enjoyment of Paradise — then such a lack of 
 absolute certainty would constitute a sinful doubt of the 
 206 
 
CERTAINTY. 207 
 
 unconditional promise of God. But the awful possibili- 
 ties of our sinful nature are so often disclosed to us by the 
 unlooked-for manifestations that evil tendencies which we 
 thought killed are still alive — the passions that seemed 
 well gotten under, raise their hateful heads again so de- 
 fiantly — the lusts of the flesh, or the murderous instincts 
 are so plainly not altogether quelled — that any such cer- 
 tainty as would absolutely put us at rest, and enable us 
 to think no more about our final destiny would be perni- 
 cious to the last degree. All this is evident. And the 
 craving for such a kind of certainty has been felt in every 
 age. For a long period it found satisfaction and excuse 
 in the doctrine of Predestination and Election. The re- 
 ferences made in Scripture to God's plans and His fore- 
 knowledge, in this matter of men's eternal salvation, were 
 eagerly laid hold of, systematized, and promulgated with 
 strange disregard to the plain way in which salvation is 
 spoken of as open to all ; and in its later form of Calvinism, 
 as embraced by the sternest, sturdiest, gloomiest races of 
 Europe, it had an influence over the human mind, and the 
 tenor of common life, which we can but dimly conceive. 
 Of course, and by the confession of all saner minds, it was 
 utterly impossible for any man to arrive at certainty on 
 the most important point of all, namely whether he, him- 
 self were among the number predestinated to eternal bliss. 
 But this does not seem to have seriously hindered the 
 sway of the doctrine in Scotland, in New England, or 
 among Cromwell's Roundheads. And, maligned as it has 
 been from Hudibras down to Theodore Parker, or Froude, 
 its general efibct for a long period was not inconsistent 
 with a condition of private morals and public purity of 
 motive, hardly to be matched by any contemporary sys- 
 tem. 
 
208 CERTAINTY. 
 
 These tenets may now to a very large extent, be said 
 to have lost their vitality, or at least their prominence. 
 Most men who think upon the subject feel that God must 
 at least have foreknown the destiny of each soul that was 
 to be brought into the world ; and so it may be, as our 
 seventeenth Article nobly phrases it, that " Godly consider- 
 ation of Predestination, and our Election in Christ, is full 
 of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly per- 
 sons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the 
 Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh, and 
 their earthly members, and drawing up their minds to high 
 and heavenly things." But this is only as a part of their 
 common Christian life, and not at all as furnishing that 
 absolute and unconditional certainty to which it once so 
 largely gave birth. Where it once begot a hard, self- 
 satisfied assurance among those who seemed least entitled 
 to it, the same class of men now-a-days have come to cheer 
 themselves with an easy confidence quite as harmful, and 
 much less logical. But with neither of these attitudes of 
 mind do I now propose to deal. I wish to speak rather 
 upon a point of high importance for those whose religious 
 lives are real, and deep, and reverent, but who have never 
 made clear to themselves just how, or how far, they may 
 and should be confident in regard to the genuineness and 
 hopefulness of their experience. To many, no doubt, this 
 class will seem both too small in number, and too weak in 
 character, to deserve much attention. In both respects 
 such an estimate would be wrong. Even where this is 
 not the habitual mood, most of us have occasional experi- 
 ence of it ; and every minister's intercourse with his peo- 
 ple, in ordinary life, and still more as death draws near, 
 reveals to him the existence of this state of mind among 
 
CERTAINTY. 209 
 
 those whom he has come to love and reverence. And if 
 any class has a claim upon our sympathy more than an- 
 other, it is surely the quiet, uncomplaining company of 
 the world's unseen martyrs, who cannot take it as a place 
 of happiness, but bear their cross with silent steps and 
 downcast head along the byways of earth. Such char- 
 acters as these in the master-pieces of literature, win from 
 the reader his readiest, deepest, reverence. And those to 
 whom experience reveals them in actual life, are not less 
 ready certainly with their sympathy and respect. 
 
 A certainty like that of the multiplication-table is not to 
 be expected in regard to our eternal destiny : but as to our 
 being the children of God, here spoken of as dwelling in 
 Him, and having Him to dwell in us, of this, St. John as- 
 sures us we may be certain. Let us look at some of our 
 uncertainties and their causes. 
 
 With modest, humble, souls the most common subject of 
 doubt is the reality of their own spiritual lives — the genuine- 
 ness of their love to God. At times, they have no doubt. 
 At times, the man is so full of devotion and thankfulness, 
 Christ seems personally so near, that even the sorest bur- 
 dens of life are borne with ease, and more than submission. 
 And by the burdens he is thus enabled to bear, I do not 
 mean those alone which concern him individually, and 
 those near to him, but rather the sight of the weary, 
 blind, sinful world about him, that goes on so recklessly 
 spending its swiftly-fleeting time for winning eternal life, so 
 little recking of the things that are for its deepest bliss. 
 Even this he can bear ; not in the sense of shutting his 
 eyes to it, and forgetting it — not by thinking that, after 
 all, wrong may be nearer akin to right, sin to holiness — 
 but by the inflow of a deeper faith, that helps him to know 
 
210 CERTAINTY. 
 
 with happy assurance, that through it all God is working 
 out a plan such as becomes His infinite wisdom and His 
 tender, all-embracing love. 
 
 But then there are other moods in which to-day's weak- 
 ness, or actual sin, sets him thinking whether such un- 
 worthy returns for Grod's mercy could be if he were really 
 His child. That impatient word, could it have come from 
 one whose body is indeed the temple of the Holy Ghost ? 
 That vile thought that thrust itself into the mind, and 
 which he suffered to linger there for a time with pleasure, 
 if he were truly a new man, dead unto sin and alive unto 
 righteousness, would not its known sinfulness have caused 
 it at once to be rejected with loathing? The dulness and 
 feebleness — the almost lack of desire for their being granted 
 — with which this morning's prayers were uttered, how 
 could such things be in a soul indeed regenerated ? And 
 all these have the other side : they must bear equally sad 
 testimony to God's not having so truly adopted him — not 
 taking that fatherly oversight of his welfare which at other 
 times seems so clear. How is he to strike the balance be- 
 tween these two alternating states? In his brightest, 
 freest moments of rejoicing, there is much more of sinful- 
 ness present, than there is of holiness in the other sinful 
 mood. Does not this mean, after all, that holiness has not 
 even the upper hand ? still less is supreme ruler ? 
 
 I go into these details because they occur so often, and be- 
 cause I always feel myself more satisfied when I have rea- 
 son to think that my spiritual physician knows what is the 
 matter with me. When one recognizes in Robertson's ser- 
 mons the graphic picture of one's own experience of weari- 
 ness and misgiving, one feels the better able to draw from 
 his brave words the cheer for which, in such moods one 
 
CERTAINTY. 211 
 
 thirsts, and the inimitable charm of language is not alone 
 what renders those few volumes of discourses so lastingly 
 dear to men's hearts. It is because of another quality, I 
 think, that we love them so : because they create in us the 
 feeling that the words are not mere words, but the outcome 
 of personal knowledge. He has created, almost, a new 
 style in these matters, and he who would speak helpfully 
 to men must try at least to make them see that, whatever 
 his deficiencies otherwise, he does not lack the sympathy 
 that springs from a common experience. 
 
 For those then who are familiar with this lack of cer- 
 tainty, and who so long for it, the grave question is ever 
 coming back : How may I gain the assurance of which. 
 St. John here speaks so unhesitatingly ? Knowing as I 
 do, that there are states of mind in which holiness is less 
 winning than the passing gratification that I know to be 
 wrong, is it not gross presumption to trust that these 
 holier aspirations are trustworthy signs of my being the 
 child of God ? The evidence on which St, John here rests 
 — the possession of the Spirit — is one that needs amplifi- 
 cation before the fulness of its answer is apparent. Let us 
 go back a little further and see why he lays such stress 
 upon it. 
 
 Which is the natural tendency, of these two of which 
 you are conscious? Which is the one you were born 
 with — the one which is most akin to the spirit that char- 
 acterizes mankind so far as it is left to itself? Books and 
 thoughts belonging to the purely worldly sphere, which 
 side of your nature do they appeal to? There can be no 
 question here. The natural state — that which would be 
 your permanent condition, if you simply allowed things to 
 take their own course within, and made no conscientious 
 
212 CERTAINTY. 
 
 eflfort — this state is the original one. It may and will 
 grow worse — it may and will be accompanied by remon- 
 strance, more or less feeble from the higher part of your 
 nature ; but it is that in which you were born, — it is sinful, 
 and left to yourself, you would have continued wholly in it. 
 It might not have burst out into crime, or overt wicked- 
 ness of any kind ; but the distinctive mark of it is that 
 holiness is not its aim, nor the presence of a holy God the 
 place in which it delights. Now with this part of your 
 nature you are familiar enough — only too painfully fami- 
 liar with it, and it is its persistent opposition to improve- 
 ment that makes you often doubt as to your being indeed 
 a child of God. 
 
 But if, as has been already said so often, this be the 
 natural state, what are you to say about this other disposi- 
 tion that maintains such a struggle against it ? Weak as it 
 often is, it never yields to worse impulses without your 
 knowing that if you had chosen to exert your power, the 
 victory would have been on the other side. You feel that 
 on the whole it is gaining on the other and original dis- 
 position towards wrong. Here is a most remarkable set 
 of facts. An inclination toward what we may at least call 
 non-holiness was born with you-i-forms part of human 
 nature as it has displayed itself through history for thou- 
 sands of years. You find it strong within you. And yet 
 here is another disposition, fighting against it continually, 
 and slowly gaining ground upon it. Whence came this 
 latter ? Can it, in the sense of being a real potent factor 
 in your life, be natural too ? Your inmost consciousness 
 denies this, and instinctively attributes to it a higher, nay 
 a divine origin. God hath given you His Spirit. 
 
 If I were speaking for the purpose of logically convincing 
 
CERTAINTY. 213 
 
 gainsay ers, another course would perhaps be preferable. 
 But I am addressing myself to men and women who share 
 with me the knowledge of these internal facts, and between 
 whom and me there is only the question how to arrange 
 them, and to which set of facts the greater importance 
 should be given. And to them I am trying to show that 
 where a higher, holier state is replacing, or to any con- 
 siderable degree has replaced, the natural, sinful one, there 
 they have a right to that triumphant conviction of which 
 St. John speaks, because the wrong would not be conquered 
 by the right unless the right were stronger; or as the 
 same Apostle phrases it "Grreater is He that is in us, than he 
 that is in the world. Hereby know we that we dwell in Him 
 and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit." 
 Eightly viewed, the question as to the genuineness of your 
 soul's life is not one as to whether you have become holy 
 enough to satisfy yourself, but whether you are growing 
 holier at all, or indeed, not even so much as that, because 
 that is a test at times very hard to apply. It is just this : 
 do you know and feel that you are in earnest to become 
 holy. If you know that, you have the assurance of which 
 St. John here speaks. If you know that, the genuineness 
 of your religious life is sufficiently proved ; and seriously to 
 doubt that God is working in you is sinful disbelief of the 
 best evidence He could give you. 
 
 But we may go further and find valuable truth in the 
 words here chosen, to convey to the faithful heart a much- 
 needed lesson. His Spirit which He hath given us. 
 
 The Christian who longs to see, and where he cannot see, 
 at least to believe, that in the men about him there is more 
 good than appears on the surface, often brings confusion 
 into his own ways of regarding things by making this 
 
214 CERTAINTY. 
 
 eflfort amiss. Let me explain myself. You look out into 
 the world around you, and see many men who exert them- 
 selves nobly and vigorously for the good of their fellow- 
 creatures. With the pen, by laborious, patient thought, 
 by devising new social schemes that may make the good 
 things of life more accessible to all, and raise the tone of 
 thinking and acting, — in all these fields of activity work 
 is done more and more largely as the world grows older. 
 You are glad of it ; you rejoice over it, not only with the 
 joy of feeling that after-generations will find the world a 
 brighter place than their forefathers have done, but also 
 for the conviction that the higher the aims which men have, 
 and the greater the opportunities furnished them, the 
 arger the likelihood that they will be Christians. You 
 use that word in your thoughts and anticipations because 
 to you it means most in the way of happiness and good- 
 ness. All such feelings are right, are natural to him who 
 in the love of God for men sees a larger ground for hope. 
 And to the men too, who are thus laboring to better the 
 world's condition, you must reach out a cordial hand so 
 far as their self-sacrifice extends. But when you find that 
 they distinctly disavow any religious motive or object — 
 when, as in the case of a certain school in England, or on 
 the continent, the thought of God, or of conscience, or of 
 a future life is rejected and scofied at — when the schemes 
 for reconstructing society aim at abolishing all that is best 
 and fairest now, from the family down, it is in but a very 
 modified sense that you believe the Spirit of God to be 
 working among them. How shall you regard such? This 
 is a question full of difficulty to the Christian thinker. 
 Without the grossest lack of charity he cannot deny them 
 great sincerity in their endeavors. But if he is to recognize 
 
CERTAINTY. 215 
 
 here any further influence of God than using these men as 
 instruments for the furtherance of his ends, he feels that he 
 must give up all that has grown clear to him as to God's 
 working. He stands face to face with this alternative : 
 shall I abandon all that my deepest experience has proved 
 to me ; or shall I deny that the spirit which leads to such 
 results as these is God's Spirit ? The denial may be made 
 with all charity ; but one of these two courses must, I think, 
 be taken. And the harm that comes from trying to follow 
 neither to the full is what has led me to speak of it in 
 this connection. If you take a position mid-way between 
 the two, you so confuse youi' religious beliefs and princi- 
 ples, that the state of doubt as to your own position be- 
 comes, of necessity, almost habitual. Unless (for your 
 own private use) you define one of these spirits to be, and 
 the other not to be, the Spirit of God, everything between 
 these two extremes may slowly become laudable and 
 proper. You may think I am raising a very unsubstantial 
 spectre ; and in some minds, no doubt, the danger is less 
 here than elsewhere. But I am greatly mistaken if those 
 who have carefully watched the effect of these modern 
 influences on the minds of the younger generation of read- 
 ing men, will not agree that a loosely held religious belief 
 is very often destroyed in just this way. Where the essen- 
 tially supernatural character of religion is not maintained, 
 it has little power of resistance. And therefore I would 
 urge the importance of this phrase of St. John — urge the 
 necessity in all our thinking and doing, of regarding our 
 religious life as being the work of God^s Spirit which He 
 hath given us. 
 
 I am fully alive to the charge that may be brought 
 against the advice I have given, as being peculiarly full of 
 
216 CERTAINTY. 
 
 what Harriet Martineau calls the disgusting selfishness of 
 Christians. To urge men, for their own peace of mind, to 
 set down other laborers for human good, as inspired by a 
 low spirit, — this caricature of my advice is certainly loath- 
 some enough. But after all, which is best? — to have 
 definite views to live by, or to find a new Gospel every 
 day ? And I would urge definiteness, not only on the 
 ground that without it our highest aims as Christians are 
 terribly jeoparded, but especially for the good of others 
 — from the deepest, tenderest regard for them. If in any 
 degree we believe the spirit of Christianity to be the 
 highest manifestation of the Spirit of God, the duty flows 
 inevitably from this of maintaining it in word and deed. 
 What would you think of the teacher of a school who 
 taught that the sun moves round the earth, or who left it an 
 open question ? What of a teacher of moral philosophy 
 who left undecided the propriety of lying and stealing ? 
 And every one of us is a teacher, whose instructions, as I 
 am impelled again and again to repeat, are heeded. You 
 are doing your fellow-men the highest good when you im- 
 press upon them most distinctly the truth that there is a 
 God, and that the Christ of the New Testament and of 
 the Church is His Son. Amidst the jarring systems of 
 opinion that have their day and cease to be (not however, 
 without profoundly influencing a generation for good or 
 for evil), Christianity still rears its august form. Its 
 authority has been vastly weakened by internal divisions ; 
 but hitherto those divisions have not been about denials of 
 absolutely essential truth. Those who most love their 
 race, and would most readily work for its good, are they 
 who contemplate with deepest anxiety the threatened 
 approach of the day, when its adherents shall deliberately 
 
CERTAINTY. 217 
 
 forego the power, and lose the desire, to distinguish be- 
 tween the Spirit of God and the spirit of Belial. 
 
 And that, not from selfishness, but from love for men. 
 If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love 
 is perfected in us. The love that Christ bore to His fol- 
 lowers. He, Himself proposes, as the model for our love 
 toward one another. The life of the individual believer, 
 like that of the Church on earth, is full of changes and 
 chances such as befall every thing here and now. But I 
 have tried to tell you how God gives us richly to enjoy 
 the certainty that He dwells within us. These very con- 
 flicts that so disturb us are the proof; for the lessening 
 power of evil which still struggles against good within us is 
 manifestly due to the Spirit which helpeth our infirmities, 
 — can be due to nothing else But we shall work along 
 with Him best as we learn more exactly what are the good 
 works He hath prepared for us to walk in ; as we hold fast 
 by the truth He teaches us evermore firmly and clearly. 
 And our work as promulgators and heralds of His truth 
 will likewise be fruitful in direct proportion as we remem- 
 ber the solemn responsibility of accepting and spreading 
 nothing but what our deepest experience confirms as true ; 
 as agreeable to the wholesome words of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, and the doctrine which is according to godliness. 
 
 Such is the truest love to God and man, and the brave, 
 manly, reverential mood in which we deal the hardest 
 blows at sin and falsehood without and within, because we 
 glory in our God and in the calling wherewith He hath 
 called us. Of such a spiritual warrior in his conflicts it 
 is said, as of Sir Galahad in his earthly combat, 
 10 
 
218 CERTAINTY. 
 
 His good blade carves the casques of men, 
 His tough lance thrusteth sure, 
 
 His strength is as the strength of ten, 
 Because his heart is pure. 
 
 So keeps he fair through faith and prayer, 
 A virgin heart in work and will.