A Spiritual bAiTH ^ONN HAMILTON THOM in 6.^.'^.lJt. Jffrnnt tl|r Ctbrarg of Prof^aaor Sp«;amttt Mvttkmvili^t Wntfitih Mti\aent\:^th by Ijtm tn tljp Htbrary of JPrtnrrton (Ehrnlogtral S>pmtttar^ BX 9815 .T48 1895 Thorn, John Hamilton, 1808- j 1894. I A spiritual faith A SPIRITUAL FAITH A SPIRITUAL FAITH SERMONS JOHN HAMILTON THOM WITH A MEMORIAL PREFACE BY JAMES MARTINEAU HON. LL.D. HARV., S.T.D. LUGD. BAT., D.D. EDIN. D.C.L. OXON., LITT. D. DUEL. WITH PORTRAIT LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. AND NEW YORK 189s All rights reserved MEMORIAL PREFACE A LITERARY executor, surrounded by the manu- scripts committed to his charge, has to meet a question admitting of no off-hand reply : " Which of these should I publish, and which suppress ? Must I simply personate the author, as his deputy for carrying out his known intentions and re- ticences ? Or does his departure bequeath to me a duty different from his own ? Surely my moral position as survivor differs from that of the author alone, by including the relation in which I stand to him. The living teacher has only to tell the truth possessing him here and now : and should it afterwards cease to possess him, being replaced by something truer, he will not repeat it, but amend it ; he will cast his blunders into the dark behind him, and follow the track of light alone. But now that his course is run, he leaves behind not only his latest vision of the true and good, but his whole biography through its stages of moral and spiritual growth ; and as the significance of each step depends on the connection of them all, the lesson committed vi Memo7'ial Preface. to my charge can be read only as a history. The most quickening influence which a choice soul can leave is an autobiography of the mingled failures and victories by which its insight has been deepened and its experience enlarged. To estimate the summit- level, we must measure the ascent." From such reflections it has been deemed admis- sible to place, side by side with Mr. Thorn's maturest sermons, some expressive of an earlier state of mind, though obviously working towards the same result of refined and lofty piety. Their distinctive features would be more instructive, could their dates be accurately determined. But under the eye of the experienced reader they will easily, if I mistake not, fall approximately into their place ; leading up, by various gradations, to the culminating ex- cellence of the " Laws of Life after the Mind of Christ." That Mr. Thorn, of Scotch descent and Irish birth and training, brought his gifts and gave his life to England, was in happy accord with a nature singularly free from anything provincial. By a small section of experience in the inverse order, I — English-born and taught — was placed, during the first four years of ministerial duty, in sympathetic contact with the scene of his early home and school at Newry and his collegiate studies at Belfast, and personally learned to appreciate the guides and Memorial Preface. vii teachers whom he most revered — John Mitchell, the wise and gentle pastor of his boyhood, from whom you would as little expect a revolutionary son as you would look for a Carlstadt in Melancthon's home; the scholarly Dr. Hincks, whose sons were so curiously divided — two, eminent in the orders of the Episcopal Church in Ireland, and other two, ministers among English Unitarians (the younger as Mr. Thom's imme- diate predecessor in Renshaw Street, Liverpool) ; the dignified Dr. Bruce, and his son, of the first Belfast congregation ; Dr. Montgomery, the brilliant leader of the Remonstrant exodus from the Egyptian bondage of the Ulster Synod. Introduced by Presbyterian ordination into communion with this memorable society in the years 1 828-1 832, while the scenes of its Drama of Exile were still upon the stage, I caught, ere yet I saw the face of my future friend, something of the fire of his enthusiasms and veneration. We had but to be brought a little nearer, and the electric spark would pass. Mr. Thom had already been three years in Liver- pool, when I removed thither in 1832 ; two years as minister of the Ancient Chapel, Toxteth Park, and one as successor to the pulpit of Renshaw Street, vacated by the recent death of Rev. John Hincks. In the Churches with which he had previously been in communion, whether in the Antrim Presbytery or among the Remonstrants, the departure from the viii Memorial Preface. orthodox Confession of Faith went no further than Arianism ; and so resolute was the aversion to any further step, that, on letting fall an expression imply- ing the simple humanity of Christ, I had lost in Dublin the most attached friend I had among my hearers, who took his household away from me with lamentation and tears. It is natural to ask, "If the English Unitarian, on crossing the channel, un- consciously stumbled on this rock of offence, must not the young Irish divine, moulded under Arian pressures, have found himself similarly out of place in Liverpool ? " Often as I have wondered that, even in his earliest published utterances, no trace appeared of the doctrine respecting the person of Christ which prevailed all around him in his youth, and seemed accordant with his habitual tone of feeling, it is satisfactory to an irresistible presentiment to find, in a sermon written while at College, in January, 1828, and preached in Renshaw Street, July, 1829, the words, "If we reflect on the dignity of Christ, and the glory which he possessed before he sojourned upon eartJi, if we compare this with his actual state in the world, what an amazing sense of humility rises to view ! " and again, " When the time of his sacred ministry drew nigh, he emerged from his retirement, and engaged in the generous and benevolent undertaking for which he assumed the human formr These last italicized words were afterwards replaced by " which Memorial P^^eface. ix his Father had given him to do ; " and the prior passage, though left standing in the text, is enclosed in brackets, as if for discretionary omission : but, for zvJiich of the two repetitions of the sermon in Liver- pool these suggestions are made cannot be determined. And it is evidently in the Arian sense, oi pre-existence, that he still appeals to Christ's supreme example of humility, in that, " being in the form of God, he did not grasp at any equal position with Him, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, and, being found in fashion as a man, humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross ; " and that he speaks of the Divine " ray of light which Christ brought from heaven " — an expression which occurs in the opening sermon of his ministry in Renshaw Street, August 7, 1831. The rapid disappearance of this conception derived from his " masters in Israel " is probably due, not so much to his English environment, as to the freshening breeze of free religious thought which had already set in from New England. Channing's " Vindication of Unitarian Christianity as a True Theology," in his Baltimore Ordination Sermon of May 5, 18 19, and as an " Inspirer of Devotion " at the dedication of a Church in New York, December 7, 1826, had reached the young divinity student at Belfast before 1828, and opened for him "a new religious life." X MemoHal Preface. "Others," he says, "had taught me much; no one before had unsealed the fountain in myself. He was the first to touch the spring of living water, and make me independent even of himself" This quick sus- ceptibility of Ulster Presbyterianism to the new influence is not surprising ; for Channing's inspiration comes thither but as the reflux of a power derived thence and returning home. Does he not himself tell us the story of his new birth into spiritual life ; how, in reading the proofs of human disinterestedness and Divine benevolence in the treatises of the Ulster philosopher, Hutcheson, he was carried out of himself into touch with an eternal peace ? The glow of that doctrine had permeated the moral atmosphere of both the Irish and the Scottish schools, which had felt the charm of its author's personality, and rendered it unsusceptible of the Priestleyan interpretation of the world. And when the same thoughts were flung back upon Channing's richer voice, they struck upon a sympathetic chord in their first home, while still repelled with disaffection in England. In Mr. Thom's preaching they were reborn at once into new life. Mr. Thom could the more easily let go the Arian conception of a superhuman Christ, as his deepening religious consciousness assured him of the immediate living intercommunion between the human spirit and the Divine ; so that for the knowledge of God the conditions were ever present in our own minds — their Memorial Preface. xi actual or possible experiences ; and there was no need of an intermediate being, different in natural rank and sphere of existence, to come and tell us what else was out of our reach. What is spiritually- discerned has not to travel through space and be carried by messengers, but is either intuitively given, or passed direct from mind to mind in immediate relation. When once we have realized that "all minds are of one family," we know that what one " reveals " to another flows from its deeper experience, its fuller life, its higher perfection. God is His own Revealer, in so far as " He is for ever presenting Him- self in personal acts to the souls of men," so that " Conscience will not suffer us to doubt that He is there in person," and that " He holds direct inter- course with us through reason and conscience." And Christ is "the Revealer," by completely realizing God's idea of Humanity as related to Himself. " He taiigJit a religion by being a Religion. He is himself the glorious gospel of the blessed God. This is My Son, God said, and says, to all the sons of men." ^ To fulfill in the Christian " God's law of eternal pro- gress," " the perfection of Jesus must be the goal of * Even after the disappearance of the Prc-existence of Christ, his Sonship is presented as something more than the supreme example of ours. We find attached to it a special Mediatorial function ; in our sacramental remembrance of him " we desire that he may be with us in our prayers, to hallow the sacred duty and carry our devotions to his Father' s throne" (Renshaw Street, August 14, 1831). xii Memorial Preface. his desire." Perhaps we must own that something is detracted from this ideal "perfection," when it is assumed to be cultivated as means to an end, and we hear that all that "the dear and honoured Saviour was he was for ojir sake ; " and that he instituted the ordinance of the Lord's Supper " to impress the memory of his virtues and the power of his character upon the souls of his disciples." This secondary idea is plainly not motive, but after-thought: not prospective in the Agent, but retrospective in the later celebrant ; and is one of the many thoughts thrown back out of the grateful reverence of the next generation upon the sacred life to which they referred. The time, however, had not yet come, sixty years ago, for admitting tests of historical probability into the interior of the Christian Scriptures. Once satisfied about their authorship and dates, and the competency and veracity of their writers, we all alike took them as trustworthy in regard to the ministry of Jesus and the subsequent diffusion of his gospel. Even critical questions which had been for some years already under discussion, ^.^. about the interrelation of the Synoptic Gospels, and about the origin of the Fourth Gospel, brought into doubt by Bretschneider, had left undisturbed the authority of the Received Text, when rightly interpreted. In the profession required from me at my Dublin ordination in 1828, I had unconditionally accepted the word and character Memorial Preface. xiii of Christ as the authoritative rule of faith and life. And in the Liverpool controversy eleven years after, both parties appealed to the Four Gospels as the record of this standard, and to the remaining contents of the Greek Testament as both historical commen- tary and apostolic enlargement on it. Of the three Unitarian defendants, Mr. Thorn was in the position most favourable for conciliating and persuading our opponents. All of us declined their appeal to the wJiole Bible as "the Word of God." We all drew our religious faith from the Word of Christ. But while Mr. Thorn found that Word in every saying which any Evangelist ascribed to him, I could not refer the Johannine discourses to the speaker of the Sermon on the Mount ; or help feeling, in the very differences of the Synoptic reports, limits to their authenticity, not without traces of later thought. Through this inability on my part to accept the littera scripta of the Gospels as infallible history throughout, a negotiation for a discussion, on the neutral ground of a platform or a newspaper, week by week, was broken off by our opponents, as in- determinable without an inspired oracle. Mr. Thorn would not have brought down this rebuff ; for though he did not share, neither had he occasion to disturb, this dependence on verbal inspiration, accepting as he did, and habitually quoting as equally historical, the text of all the Evangelists, with a vast preponderance xiv Memorial Preface. of appeal to the Fourth Gospel. Between him, there- fore, and Dr. Byrth or any other clerical antagonist no question could arise but one of interpretation of what was authoritative with both. From that issue I was sometimes precluded by disqualifying doubt respecting the originality or accuracy of the report. Only by giving play to this doubt, and by charging upon self-colouring tradition many uncharacteristic things in the eschatological and other alleged sayings of Jesus, could I see him in his real transfiguration above the level mists of his age, and hear the voice, *' This is My beloved Son ; hear him." Strip away the Messianic attributes with which his first disciples invested him, and the later-woven Logos veil sub- stituted by Alexandrine speculation, and there stands before mc a Son of Man, perfecting in all grace and truth his felt relation to the " Father in heaven," and revealing the sublime claims of surrender to that consciousness. But the self-conformity to this one transcendent relation, being universally obligatory, is, therefore, possible in every stage and condition of responsible human life ; and does not wait for any corresponding maturity of intellectual power and grace : so that a stainless heart and sinless character may coexist with limited knowledge and positive error. Hence I could not, without some qualification, adopt my friend's conception of the historic Christ as the absolute measure of what, in the Divine idea, Man Memorial Pre/ace. xv is meant to be ; exhibiting the very goal of manhood in its final glory. This overstatement, if such it be, was probably an unconscious survival of his superhuman pre-existent Christ. To this scarcely noticeable difference had our Christological concep- tions been reduced, when we were called upon publicly to define them. Prior events had brought us into even closer sympathy. In the spring of 1834 two New England visitors landed in Liverpool, whose stay amongst us left a lasting impression — Jonathan Phillips, the in- timate friend of Dr. Channing; and Rev. Dr. Tucker- man, the founder and first devoted apostle in Boston of the Domestic Mission, or separate mission to the poor. I know not whether the warm welcome they received, especially at Mr. Rathbone's, of Green- bank — that house of refuge for all the saints — set their hearts aglow ; but certain it is that their benevolent and devout enthusiasm came upon us like the Angel descending to stir the sleeping waters ; and their recital of what was being done to uplift and evangelize the neglected classes in Boston fell as a convicting and converting word, and yet a word of hope and zeal, upon our conscience, and not least on that of Mr. Thom. On Christmas Day, the following year, 1835, he preached in Renshaw Street a most im- pressive sermon, pleading for the energetic prosecution of similar labours among our city populations ; a xvi MemojHal Preface. sermon which I begged him to repeat from the Paradise Street pulpit, in order to identify the two congregations and their ministers with the Liverpool Domestic Mission already contemplated, set on foot the following Good Friday, and now operative on a much larger scale. This I was the better able and the more bound to do, because the recent retire- ment through ill-health of my respected predecessor and co-pastor. Rev. John Grundy, left the respon- sible initiative of congregational action with me alone. Mr. Thom's prompt zeal on behalf of these institutions for home visitation was no mere flash of response to Dr. Tuckerman's benign personality and persuasive enthusiasm, but a lifelong Christ-like conviction, again and again expressed with a fervour and freshness which mark him off as a Heaven- appointed messenger of hope to the wanderers that have lost their way. Never are his words more solemn, penetrating, and tender, than when they urge the extension or celebrate the persistency of this work. The steady growth of power in Mr. Thom's character in no degree lessened his susceptibility to new influences. This same year, 1835, brought very near to him an unexpected friend, whose presence was soon largely to affect his life. It was startling to con- temporaries of Southey's generation, that a Spanish priest could become the author of " Doblado's Letters ; " not less was the marvel now, that the resident Memorial Preface. xvii companion and virtual chaplain of Archbishop Whately should tear himself away from his brilliant and kindly Dublin home, and go into banishment, rather than compromise his friends by heresies they did not share. It was to Liverpool that Joseph Blanco White withdrew, knowing not whither he went, but trusting in the angels that have charge of the righteous lest they dash their foot against a stone. He soon found an unexpected fellowship among those who, if they could not replace to him the intellectual converse of the Oriel Common Room or the Archiepiscopal table, could at least honour his sacrifice of it, delight in his sympathy, and bring receptive hearts to his counsels and correction. For me, the memory of his sensitive features, grave expression, and deliberate speech, is inseparably associated with a Dedication Service at home, in November, 1835, in which he consecrated our infant boy, Herbert, — a consecration perfected in death eleven years after. Mr. Thom, with the freer movement of bachelor life, came into yet more intimate relations with him, resulting, if I mistake not, in a happy reciprocity of influence ; the learned and scholarly ecclesiastic restraining the young disciple's ideal interpretations of Scripture and history, and the spiritual seer arresting the tendency, in the mind of his ever-questioning friend, to resolve the living God into a pantheistic cloud. " The Life of Rev. Joseph Blanco White, written by himself, with portions b xviii Memorial Preface. of his correspondence," edited by Mr. Thorn as his literary executor, appeared in three volumes, in 1845, i.e. four years after his death in the delightful retreat and amid the tender cares of the Greenbank home. Three years before, Mr. Thorn had married the second daughter of that family, Hannah Mary. The day, January 2nd, would in any case have been unforgotten by me, but is the more memorable from its having engaged me in the first celebration of matrimony under the new Dissenters' Marriage Act. The large family connexion of the bride, the fact that her father was then Mayor of Liverpool, the public eminence of the bridegroom, and the novelty of the scene in a chapel, brought together a consider- able congregation. After his marriage began a literary activity by which, for thirty-eight years, Mr. Thorn enriched, with some of their best articles, the periodicals successively in circulation among our Churches — beginning with the Christiajt Teacher (New Series), which for six years he edited himself, and ending with the TJieological Review, which obtained from him nine or ten papers during its twenty-two years. Intervening between these two was a period of ten years, 1845-185 5, which is rendered memorable to me by an editorial copartnership with him and two friends most dear to us both, the late J. J. Tayler and Charles Wicksteed, in managing the Prospective Memorial Preface. xix Review. People laughed at the apparently self- contradictory title ; for which, however, we offered the quoted motto, " Respice, Aspice, Prospice," as sufficient apology and answer. Mr. Thorn, having his hands most free, was executive editor; but the contents of the successive numbers were blocked out at cabinet councils held at one of our Liverpool or Manchester houses. We dined and spent the evening together, often remaining till next day. And in the wide landscape of the past that lies before me in this evening of my life, there are few spots picked out by brighter glow than those hours of loving and animated converse. We were different enough, in modes and material of thought, to stimulate each other, yet so congenial as to be drawn nearer by the polarity. To see Mr. Tayler's richly stored, reverent, and delicate mind set free as a child at play, was in itself an object-lesson in wisdom and beauty. Mr. Thom's habitual inner life among high ideals, and consequent quick detection of imposture and inanity in the actual, could find its grave expression, from the pulpit or the platform, in severe rebuke ; but, when only friends were present and offenders away, in a vein of picturesque humour, so refreshing that, even if the victim were there, he would feel like a patient under treatment who, with bitter expectations, found him- self let off with a pleasant effervescent draught. The other two partners had the delightful privilege of XX Memorial Preface. enjoying the feast of soul, bringing to it only a homely contribution of common sense and some knowledge of affairs. The Study of St. Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians, published in 185 1, reproduces a series of sermons written and delivered in 1842, It is so well known, and commends itself so irresistibly by its deep spiritual wisdom, as to speak for itself, and to claim from me only a mention of its date.^ But I will take occasion from it to make one remark on a pervading characteristic of Mr. Thom's expositions of Scripture. They are ideal, not historical. The nature of this difference will be apparent, if we look at the origin of this book. Did it arise from an attempt to catch the exact thought in St. Paul's mind as he wrote sentence by sentence ; in short, to repro- duce the situation as he saw it and spoke of it ? If so, it presupposes an insight into a crowded mass of personal, social, geographical, historical, and religious particulars, from the combined operation of which the meaning of the apostle is the resultant. To put his reader in possession of these, and make him at home in the scene of them, is therefore the business of the expositor. So little appropriate to the pulpit is this task, that no genuine preacher will undertake it there. It belongs to the prolegomena of a commentary, ' Three of these sermons arc re-printed in the present volume, Nos. 10-12. Memorial Preface, xxi where the meaning of phrases, the contents of con- ceptions, and connexion of clauses are set forth, and made to yield the author's thought. This didactic process is in the province of the philologist and grammarian, and must be looked for in their books, and cannot be carried thence to be retailed in church. The preacher's function, on the other hand, is to take out of Scripture some thought so little entangled with conditions of time and place as already to speak for itself, and thence to transfer it unchanged to his hearer's experience and duties in their different time and place. In doing this, he will be detained within the drama of their life, will go with them into their temptations, carry light into their sorrows, and throw himself into their aspirations and their prayers. This application of a text already understood is quite a different act from the discussion and elucidation of its meaning as it came into its context from the author's mind ; so different that I deem it impossible to satisfy, in one composition, the requirements of a good exposition and of a good sermon. The sermons combined in Mr. Thom's " Corinthians " can hardly fail to make the reader a better and more spiritual Christian : I am not so sure of their making him a better Pauline interpreter. I find it the same with many of the incidental citations from other canonical books, especially the Fourth Gospel, which occur in his writings. I am xxii Memorial Preface. startled and delighted sometimes by a happy turn given to some Scripture phrase, or a charming sym- bolic meaning found for a personal or ritual act. The interest of both is deepened at once. Have I, then, so long been familiar with these passages and missed these lovely allusions .'* I look up the words in their place ; and, alas ! I am flung down again upon the old level prose. The sweet light upon the page is from my friend's own eye, and is gone when only I am there. He reads into many a phrase some high spiritual significance transcending the historical con- ditions, and possible only to the developed Christian consciousness of a far later time. As in these cases the ideal meaning improves upon the real, and nothing drops out except what belongs to a time long past, the temporal mistake is a spiritual gain, — precarious, however, till it is lifted from its illusory base and realized as true in itself. This discovery of a deeper sense secreted yet suggested to the sympathetic soul, does but repeat the process by which the Fourth Gospel was itself evolved out of the simply narrative material of the earlier tradition ; each wondrous act setting forth some more wondrous truth, — e.g. the cure of the man born blind signified that Jesus was the Light of the world ; the raising of Lazarus, that he was its Life ; the feeding of the multitudes, that he was the Bread of heaven ; the water and the blood of his pierced side, that from him came the Memorial Preface. xxiii initial Baptismal sacrament of Grace, and the final of Sacrificial Redemption. The great truths and spiritual lessons, which in the godly soul go gleaning in the field of concrete fact and spoken words for something that looks like themselves, are none the worse for picking up only the semblance of similitude. It is the supposed symbol that suffers by imputation of an affinity which it cannot make good. To an extent far larger than had yet been realized by my friend in his years of greatest literary productiveness, the New Testament Scriptures are the fruit rather than the seed of the Christian consciousness. From 1854 to 1857 there was a suspension of Mr. Thom's ministry, his place in Renshaw Street being taken by Rev. William Henry Channing. That he needed an interval to recruit a strength which he never spared, will be readily understood by those who appreciate the character of his work. But the reason which impelled him to ask for a period of change and silence may well excite a smile. He was afraid of falling into a lifeless monotony and routine ! — he, the most sensitive, quick-thoughted, wide-awake, of at least clerical men. The longing for a pause, and the wisdom of it, explain themselves from the opposite side ; the exhausting expenditure of power in a life that drew everything from its deeps, that depended on intensity and could do nothing by routine. His function was to realize and interpret the relation and xxiv Memorial Preface. intercommunion between the human spirit and the Divine, and from his own inward experience bring it home to the consciousness of others. But a perpetual vigil is possible only to the Infinite : to the finite soul it is an overstrain till it consents to inter- mittence, as the wearied body sinks in sleep. Such sermons as Mr. Thom's are no mere products of literary industry, producible at will ; but, like the true prophet's word, which can be spoken only when '' the Spirit of the Lord is upon him." The years' silence were accepted by him, lest he should begin to talk of Divine things without insight and with no commission. His present spiritual vision, carried into unvisited scenes, would open new lights, and itself grow clearer and richer by enlarging its boundaries. With what freshened power and elevated faith he resumed his work, is evidenced by his opening sermon, "The Preacher and the Church." In countless ways his long absence had afifecte'd me with a desolate feeling, and prepared me to accept the invitation to a colleagucship with my friend. Principal J. J. Tayler, in Manchester New College, recently removed to London. If it confirmed my severance from one loved associate, it brought me closer to another, and threw the stress of my remaining life upon the philosophical studies which had enlisted me in a good deal of work, needing retirement and concentration for its completion. Memorial Preface. xxv The London Session had already engaged me in the duties of my Chair before Mr. Thorn's return to Liverpool ; so that thenceforth our virtual co-pastor- ship was reduced to an invisible and almost silent fellowship of spirit, and, our paths of movement being not in view of each other, my personal memories become almost a blank, and leave me little more to attest respecting him than what any reader and lover of his later published writings can better learn for himself. Our intercourse by correspondence never ceased to the last year of his life. But though at every critical moment in the experience of either, we flew to one another for counsel and support, the pressure of immediate local duties left no room for letter-writing on its own account. Within a year or so of his return to the Renshaw Street pulpit, I had been recalled to the ministry in London, at first in conjunction with my College Principal, Mr. J. J. Tayler ; and when Mr. Thom took leave of ministerial life in 1 866, 1 was in sole charge of the Little Portland Street congregation, and remained so till final retire- ment from the pulpit in 1872. We were passing, not indeed hand and hand together, but within sight of each other into the shadowed valley. Failing voice had silenced him ; shaken health had warned me to be still ; and now the wife who had been the light of his home for thirty-four years, sank away with December's last setting sun, to brighten a world that XXV I Memorial Preface. yet waited for him. His occasional letters through all these vicissitudes are full of interest, both dramatic and reflective, and, if I could freely quote from them, they would present his characteristics far more vividly than any description given by another. But having been elicited by transient emergencies or conflicts of opinion, they touch upon sensitive matters, and com- ment upon personal action and judgments, in a way which, though absolutely irreproachable, has a claim to be regarded as confidential. I can only say that, break in upon him where you may, and listen to his report of what he thinks and feels and does, and you will recognize in every tone the ring of the same ideal "Psalm of Life,", which was for ever reaching him from the voice of " the perfect Son of God." Though the later years of Mr. Thom's life were not exempt from the infirmities of age, and the agile figure became bent, and the bright eye faded some- what, both in vision and in look, and the step was slow, and lumbago kept him seated, yet he was spared any suffering more disabling than rheumatic pains ; and under these maintained his habits of cheerful and dignified independence. Even when through failing sight he could no longer read the largest print, he wrote to me the last of his long letters in his small running hand, scarcely less legible than before, conferring with me on the future of his beloved Renshaw Street flock, again left shepherdless Memorial Preface. xxvii by the removal of Mr. Jacks to Birmingham. The alternatives are presented, if in straggling lines, yet with straightest thought and most earnest affection. And those who had the privilege of access to him as the shadows of his evening deepened, were always impressed by the inward sunlight of his mind and his unwithered freshness of heart and hope. He passed away on September 2, 1894. His grave, to which he had already committed the mortal remains of his mother and his wife, may be seen in the burial-ground of his first sacred charge, the Ancient Chapel of Toxteth Park. The contents of this volume will speak for them- selves ; and it would be disrespectful to the reader if, in prefacing them, I were to prejudge them. I have only to supply a few personal memories, which may bring him to them under conditions favourable to a just estimate of the preacher. But he was also a speaker of e'Veo Trrepoevra that have been wafted irre- coverably away. Were there but a phonograph enabling us to listen to them in their living tones, I venture to say that the impression on any stranger to them would be profound. The occasions for his unwritten public addresses were not, indeed, of the grand kind familiar to the statesman who expounds a policy, or the advocate in a ca?/S(.' celebre ; they were on the homely scale of a city meeting, or a college commemoration, or the anniversary of a xxviii Memorial Preface. mission. But of speeches on this modest level, often involving conflicts of opinion, historical narrative, and personal sketches, it has never been my lot to hear any comparable with Mr. Thom's. The quiet com- posure of his figure as he rose, the conversational neatness of his first words, obviously springing out of something that had just been said, the smooth gliding into his subject without either pause or haste, set the hearer at ease from the first, and delivered him " all ear" to what was to follow. And whatever that might be, it would gleam with intellectual light — a flash of happy insight, or the explosion of a dangerous fallacy ; or burn with moral fervour — of compassion for un- heeded sorrows, or indignation at shameful wrongs. His unpremeditated addresses brought out many a latent contrast that may have surprised himself: a play of humour, for instance, at which a Puritan might look grave, but which is but the obverse side of the pathetic soul ; and a power of rebuke startling in a nature so gentle and refined, yet irrepressible in its revulsion from whatever is mean and gross. The slow and calm deliberation with which the intenscst feelings and most touching allusions came forth, was more affecting than any rapid torrent of vehement passion, and left on the hearer an ineffaceable image of dignified self-possession. That impression was instantaneous, entering with the tones of the living voice. More slowly, but not less surely — it is my Memorial Preface. xxix profound belief — will it be reproduced and multiplied in the readers of these sermons. He who ministers here is no priest of any altar made with hands, but a prophet of Him who is a Spirit, and communes with those whose worship is in spirit and in truth. And if they are yet but a scattered host, it will not be always so. It needs but voices of the Spirit, like that which bears its witness here, to wake response from every side, and wider and wider spread the spiritual family of God. Wisely and truly did William Caldwell Roscoe predict the future of his friend in his Sonnet, written in 1852 — "TO THE REV. JOHN HAMILTON THOM. " Nature's least worthy growths have quickest spring, And soonest-answering service readiest meed, And undiscerning glory's shining wing Lights earUest on an ill-deserving head. Winter o'er autumn-scattered wheat doth fling A white oblivion that keeps warm the seed ; And wisest thought needs deepest burying, Before its ripe effect begins to breed. Therefore, O spiritual seedsman, cast With unregretful hand thy rich grain forth. Nor think thy word's regenerating birth Dead, that so long lies locked in human breast. Time, slow to foster things of lesser worth. Broods o'er thy work, and God permits no waste." NOTE This volume of sermons is published in compliance with the wish of many of Mr. Thorn's old friends. His executors, after consultation with Dr. Martineau, entrusted his manuscripts to the Rev. V. D. Davis, of Liscard, who in the selection and editing of the sermons, has, it will be felt, chosen those which well represent the spirit of Mr. Thom's teaching, and those, in Dr. Martineau's words, " leading up to the culminating excellence of the Laws of Life after the Mind of Christ,'' to which they are intended to be a supplement. Dr. Martineau's preface, for which Mr. Thom's family are very grateful, adds much to the value of the work, and will be read with deep interest by the friends of both, as a beautiful record of a life-long friendship, as warm and considerate as it was abiding — one proof more that our venerated religious leader has himself given us an example of the truth he always taught, that a warm heart and vigorous mind enable a man to combine with the wisdom of old age the faith, hope, and affections of youth. The portrait is reproduced by the kind permission of Messrs. Robinson & Thompson, from an enlarge- ment of a photograph taken by them early in the sixties. W. RATHBONE. LlVERl'OOL, October, 1895. CONTENTS PAGE Memorial Preface by Dr. Martineau ... v I. God is a Spirit . i II. Spiritual Likeness to God i8 III. The Contents of a Living Soul 35 IV. Sons and Heirs of God 50 V. Children of the Father in Heaven .... 67 VI. Prayer the Communion of the Holy Spirit . 83 VII. The Perfect Love of God 99 VIII. Honour all Men 115 IX. "Oh that I had Wings like a Dove!" ... 131 X. The Greatest is Love 148 XI. An Unselfish Servant of the Truth . . . 167 XII. A True Man Uncorrupting and Incorruptible 1S3 XIII. As A Little Child 199 XI V". The Character of Jacob 214 XV. The World's Need of Christ 231 XVI. John the Baptist 245 XVII. The Witness of the Spirit 261 XVIII. The Permanent Function of the Son of God IN quickening Spiritual Life .... 2S4 XIX. The Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus .... 302 XX. The Perpetual Symbolism of the Last Supper 316 XXI. The Church of the Living God 335 XXII. Spiritual Oneness with the Father and with the Son 353 A SPIRITUAL FAITH. I. GOD IS A SPIRIT. "God is a Spirit." — ^John iv. 24. The great truth that God is a Spirit, purely held, would be the best corrective of false doctrines in religion, the richest spring of peace, the most con- stant inspiration of duty. Examine a narrow creed, and it will not be difficult to point out where it forgets that God is a Spirit. A heart not at rest is a heart that does not know the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter. A dishonoured con- science, a violated sentiment, a rebellious will, are only other names for a broken fellowship with the Father of our spirits. A soul cleansed from 7m- spiritual thoughts of God, and in daily communion with Him, however far it might be from the fulness of objective Truth, would have in it no springs of error, of trouble, or of sin. So important is it that we should be constantly purifying our idea of God, for so we bring Him near to us, and come to feel ^1 2 God is a Spirit. Him a very present Help in trouble, an instant Cover from the storm, an immediate Refuge of Light when we are darkly tempted. The motive that acts for ever, the piety that has an instinctive remembrance of a pure ordaining Will, and inwardly hears the whisper, " Be still, and know that I am God," can issue only out of the living faith that God is a Spirit, and that His worship is in spirit and in truth. It is true, indeed, that no intellect, or heart, can deliberately do without that amount of faith in Providence which, when it is examined, will be found to involve spiritual views of the Almighty. What intellect would not grow dizzy at the thought of a universe rushing on its course without a present God — without a Ruler imposing the laws of His mighty Will upon all its possibilities of derangement ! What heart would not sink under the burden of existence, sick and faint, if deprived of the belief that in its seeming confusion, or irony, omniscient Love is mingling for each soul the elements of discipline, preserving for it the power, if it will unite itself to Him, of carrying unlost, uninjured, an ever purer stream of conscious being into the peaceful eternity ! So necessary to the composure of the intellect when it looks abroad, to the calm of the heart tried to its depths, is faith in a spiritual God who is ever ivitJi His creation and zvith His creatures. And yet this faith is to most of us rather an God is a Spirit. 3 ultimate conviction than the immediate h'ght through which the soul looks on life ; rather a last resting- place, when we are driven back step by step from difficulty to difficulty, than the eye that reads every way of God towards us. For this faith is more than acquiescence that God is right ; it is that sight of God by the soul's eye, in all His various action with us, that inclines us to meet, by some corresponding life in ourselves, the movements of His Spirit. There is no class of truths more unused than what are called first truths. Those who admit a first truth — a truth that it seems impossible to our nature to reject, as that God is a Spirit, in that He is present to the universe, and speaks to each soul — will yet be unaware of its consequences, and incapable of making special application of it where such application is most needed. Perhaps every man who takes any real thought upon such matters, is in all social ques- tions a Christian at heart, desiring for all liberty and brotherhood, under no limitations whatever, except that the largest practicable amount of true liberty and brotherhood shall really be enjoyed ; yet how many at every step of righteous progress have a passing terror, a moment of infidelity, lest an appli- cation of God's Truth should bring ruin on God's world ! Such are the men who profess belief in Providence, as one of the beliefs which are included under things of course, but who never watch for the 4 God is a Spirit. footsteps of that Presence in whom they live and move and have their being ; or who, when He sends an inexplicable lot, scatters their calculations at a stroke, administers an unlooked-for experience, awful, piercinjT, and bitter, instead of then applying this truth begin to doubt it, turning their faith into an open question in the only moment that it was needed for use — as though, after all, something like Chance might be sporting with us, something like Fatalism rolling over us an unguided car. In the whole circle of beliefs there is none less applied to practice — held when it is not wanted, dropped when it is — than belief in Providence. Few deny it, and few use it. It is nearly universally admitted, and nearly universally dishonoured. For there are temptations for our faith as well as tempta- tions for our virtue, and it is under the pressure of suffering, of something arduous to be done, of some- thing terrible to be borne, or of something piteous and awful to be left without, that God tests the loyalty of our spirit, as the purity of our life. There is in every kind of belief that is apt to fail us at our utmost need, a remarkable peculiarity of bur spiritual states. There is in us towards them a double consciousness, a professed belief and a real unbelief, an exterior assent and an interior life within which its light does not come, constructed of elements altogether different ; and these two states, through ■ God is a Spirit. 5 that want of clear spiritual energy which is the habit of our being, actually coexisting, dwelling in the same mind at the same time. He who cleansed his spirit from inconsistencies, who really believed what every one professes to believe, would be a godlike man, and peace and duty would come to him as naturally as the breath he draws, though sometimes he might breathe in pain. Is it not true that every specific doctrine of Christianity is held in coexistence with a contrasted mass of unchristianized sentiment which virtually neutralizes it, so that though the Article of Faith is not formally displaced, it is seen, when seen at all, through an impure medium, through vapours of uncongenial feeling.'' Is not the great belief of the essential alliance of all pure goodness with peace and blessedness, held in coexistence with thoughts of happiness in connection with other things, which, having no such spiritual affinity, can have no such inward retribution ? Is not the doctrine of our bodily mortality, of our spiritual immortality, held in coexistence with estimates of the interests of life which mortality shall interrupt, and immortality repudiate? Is not the doctrine of Providence, of a Father who frames all things with a view to the education of each child of His care, held in coexistence with wills that consult only themselves, with schemes not studious of how they may be woven into God's designs, with hearts that use their moral liberty not 6 God is a Spirit. that they may give to Him a free and a loving obedience, but that they may take their own way ? Now, wherever a belief is thus formally held amid a host of stronger views and habits which are its practical antagonists, the professed belief having the same relation to our actual beliefs as the pictures of men and women on the walls of a chamber to the moving beings who fill it with eager life, it will be found that the source of such doctrines is in calm personal experiences ; that the soul must retire within itself and be still, before it feels them, or in order to recover them again, if it has lost them. In simply intellectual matters we may know when we are inconsistent with any truth that is clearly established in our minds, but in spiritual matters the boundaries are not so marked, the rightful dominion of a truth is not so obvious; and besides, such is the nature of spiritual evidence, to know a truth at one time does not secure that we shall feel it at another. We cannot have the comfort of a vivid belief in God's Providence except in the moments when we are in that kind of personal intercourse with God which makes the belief a self-evident truth. Sensible impressions will not suggest it, often they will seem to contradict it ; and general convictions will give us no part in the living Comforter. Within the region of religion we cannot do what we may do in the region of science — rest serenely on established God is a Spirit. 7 principles and work confidently from these, whether we remember their demonstrations or not. The belief in personal form must spring fresh from the living evidence, or spiritually we do not know its healing power. There are times, indeed, of coldness, or barrenness, or of those changes in life which are like the sudden stopping of the heart, when we must rest on our spiritual convictions, for we have no present feeling of God ; but those are not the moments in which we should choose to speak religiously to others — they are moments in which we are waiting to renew our life. If God is really a Spirit — by which I mean Goodness, Wisdom, and Power without limitation — if He is here now, in the worship of each heart, whilst Saints and Angels cast their crowns before the Throne, and adore in Heaven ; if this earth, with its freight of spiritual life, is gliding in serenest safety through its appointed courses, whilst other worlds and other systems, dwarfed by distance into stars, keep the ordinations of His Will because He is present to them also ; — that is a truth the comfort of which will fail us when we most need it, except in the moments that God is a living presence to our own souls. I am not speaking of the moral perfections of God as He might be supposed to be in Himself, and external to jcs, if He governed us only by exertions 8 God is a Spirit. of law and power as He governs the rest of Nature ; but of His living action within ourselves, by which alone we gain a conception of Him spiritual enough to admit within it the insertion of a faith in His universal Providence towards all creatures like our- selves. There is nothing so powerful to carry the irresistible conviction that He is with every soul that He has made, as the knowledge that He is with our souls. Without that personal knowledge, there is nothing to which such a faith can adhere ; with that knowledge, it is impossible to believe Him to be partial. When we are familiar with His spiritual presence in ourselves, our feeling of His Omnipotence will not need to be strengthened, and will seem but imperfectly symboled in the imagery of the prophet, as " measuring the waters in the hollow of His hand, and meting out heaven with a span, and compre- hending the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighing the mountains in scales, and taking up the isles as a very little thing," Of course we cannot believe in the universality of God's action without attributing to Him modes of existence which make that action possible. But it is not intellectually or metaphysically we reach that belief: it is His presence in ourselves, to conscious parts of us where unintelligent power could not come, and in personal intercourses it could not hold, that makes it easy God is a Spirit. 9 to us to believe that with God all such things are possible. But God, having given us the ground of so great a faith, requires that we hold it in a form that is worthy of His perfections. We shall not so hold it if we hold it as a.favoiired child might hold it, or as a Jew may have held it in relation to the other nations of the world. How can we realize it either in its cleansing, or in its consoling, or in its uniting power, if we do not know and worship a spiritual God in whom fitly it may inhere .? This is a case in which the proper toil and effort of the soul cannot be spared us ; in which by meditation we must enlarge private experience into universal faith, if we would be personally worthy of the grace shown to us. We cannot speak to God in the faith of prayer, nor on behalf of those for whom we would sanctify our love, and whom it is solemn joy to commit to His keeping and to contemplate as ever in His hands, unless from His private word to ourselves we dis- cern and worship the Father of all spirits. And thus it is that a sense of the Infinite God, the God who is a Spirit, is necessary for the repose of a nature like ours, and becomes the means of its elevation ; that a man's soul cannot find true rest for itself without finding a rest for all, and passing the bounds of space and time. The spirituality of God by which Providence is lo God is a Spirit. brought near to us, and a truth so vast becomes conceivable, opens our most direct approach to the moral perfections which render Providence another name for instrumental love and final blessedness through the all-pervading wisdom and goodness of an Almighty Father. We know that everything evil in us is against the law of our own spirit — is unspiritual ; that everything vindictive, unmerciful, careless of the well-being of others, is a contradiction to our own souls — a stain upon our inmost life. How utterly, therefore, must it be removed from the Spirit of God ! Let a man think of God as an Infinite Spirit, and he will hold of Him no un- generous, no distrustful, no unrighteous doctrines. Let a man refuse to believe of God whatever the Spirit of God does not commend to his own soul, and the weary burdens Fear or Theology has laid upon religion will fall away from faith, and leave God Himself to act upon us, as Spirit on spirit. It is neglect of tlie inward Teacher that has arrested spiritual progress, obstructed the natural develop- ments of Christianity, prevented the highest truths upon these subjects flowing freely through the world, made religion a tradition, and the soul that should be taught of God a vassal to the Church. Religion is the feeling of God Himself acting on the soul ; theology is man's thought of God in a symbolized form : it is, therefore, unavoidable that it God is a Spirit. ii should present God in the intellectual image of Man. Theology is not God, but man's philosophy of God ; and as a substitute for the teaching of the Holy Spirit, it is fatal to religion : it is to interpose the formulas of our own minds between us and the living Spirit. I suppose the only meaning of religious life, if you define it by its essential difference from all other life, is a sense of being moved by God ; and a sense of God is a sense of intercourse with an Infinite Spirit in any of the directions in which a pure spirit may reveal the perfections of His Being. As often as we are religious, the infinite Lord of Life is in communion with something in us that is kindred to Himself. We cannot enter those regions of life unless the Father draw us. Now, what are the elements of the Infinite in its'? Everything that gives a sense of intercourse with a Spirit we know is not our spirit — for it is above us, and rebukes us, and prompts us, and invites us onwards, and some- times speaks in peace that passeth understanding, and sometimes in judgment that we cannot disown, though it disowns us ; and these divine openings in our nature are in love, desire for purity, thirst for righteousness, for truth and beauty. Conscious- ness of a heavenly Presence in the visible universe, the awe of conscience, the feeling of a holy Being whose eye is upon us, the sentiment of an immortal 12 God is a Spirit. life, — in all these only the Infinite Spirit can nourish us ; and Revelation has its end not in giving us God's teachings in human forms or words, but in helping us to place and keep our spirits in personal com- munion with Him, their inexhaustible Fountain, This, according to himself, is the truth that Christ came to give the world — truth not as a form of thought, but as the reality of spiritual life, which is intercourse with God : " That all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee." We attempt no proof that God is a Spirit — this is our soul's intuition ; we know that as Spirit He comes to us, that as Spirit He moves and searches our spirit ; we know that the Creator of this earth and of that sun, who fainteth not, neither is weary, who breathes upon some spring clime and it blooms, who communes with some lone heart and it again adores and is glad, is the universal Spirit, limitless in all His Being. If the simplest statement of things that are does not carry this conviction with it, nothing can give it to us. We know that fatalism explains nothing ; we know that laws are not forces, and that the order of One living Will r?iles everywhere in the realm of things created to obey, and speaks every- where to souls that are spiritually invited to obey, but whose obedience is not forced. It is of no importance to creatures like us to understand how God is a Spirit, but it is all-im»portant to feel His God is a Spirit. 13 presence. There are facts of God which we receive because they come to us as facts ; and since we have soulsy organs, that apprehend them, the objects of faith are as real as the objects of sight, though, in either case, into their origin no thought may- penetrate. The fact that " God is a Spirit " may be known to every one who has a spirit, and the clear consequences of that knowledge are of the last moment to us, because faith in Providence will necessarily fall away if God is unworthily conceived, and many views most unworthy of His perfections have escaped exposure, and hold imprisoned some of the finest springs of eternal life in the soul, because we have not disposed all our thoughts of Him in consistency with that thought ; because we do not know and worship the Father of spirits in spirit and in truth. That God is a Spirit comes nearer to the business and the bosoms of men, to our real interests, to our belief in progress, the mark of immortality upon us, to our feeling of God's Fatherhood, to our sense of man's brotherhood, than any or than every other truth. Is there a Church laying down dogmatic terms of salvation ? This rebukes it : God is a Spirit, and the spirits that desire Him He makes His own. Is there a conventional worship, an authoritative religion, a ceremonial, ecclesiastical way of approach- ing God ? This disowns it : only those who are in 14 God is a Spirit » personal communion with Him know Him at all, and they may know Him to their full content. To a soul that has any understanding of Christ's words, that they who worship must worship in spirit, for these the Father seeks, — creeds, or sacerdotalism, as means of safety, seem too shocking, too incongruous, to be named. Is there an upright man, a devout heart, misunderstood or forsaken by the world? This sustains him : God is a Spirit, and brings all things to light. Is there a conscience that would hide itself from the light ? This disables it : " Whither shall we go from Thy presence t Whither shall we flee from Thy Spirit? The darkness and the light are both alike to Thee." Is there a superstitious reliance on mediators ? This puts such unfilial dis- trust far away from us as the saddest mark of a soul's ingratitude and ungenerous dealings, for God Himself is the Spirit of grace in us ; and though it helps us immeasurably to see His image in the one Mediator, in that he shows us the Father, he himself has told us that we need no mediator to plead with God for iis. Is there a troubled mind, a spirit that cannot find peace? What will quiet it ? Nothing but some sense of the Infinite as very near to us ; it may be from a glance at the unfathomable depths of Nature, with awe and shame at the contrast between our fretful selfishness and the silent realities of God in which we feel we have a part. To gaze God is a Spirit 15 upon the face of Nature is sometimes to be brought under the power of a calm and cleansing spirit then present to us ; and what is religion but a quickening of the soul under the sense that a Spirit of Purity and Love is acting and looking upon us? And if even the solemnity and beauty which man's work- manship can produce does in its highest examples, in a cathedral, or in the Angel of the Resurrection from the great sculptor's hand, contribute something to religious emotion, how much more may the sense of the Infinite come upon us from the spiritual aspects of the Temple not made with hands ; still more if with understanding hearts we could gaze into the majestic face of Christ ; still more if, led by Christ up to the Throne — into the real Presence — we could bring ourselves to look intently, with a full trust, into the fatherly face of God ! Christ never took lower ground than this ; never justified anything he did from a lower ground than that fellowship with the Infinite Spirit required it from him. When he was charged with profaning the Sabbath, he answered that he was only doing what God was doing : " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work ; " so that to work in God's Spirit was not the desecration but the consecration of every hour. When he would put an end for ever to the claims of holy places, he said, " The hour cometh, yea, now is, when the Father will be worshipped ; 1 6 God is a Spirit. and then not on this mountain nor yet in Jerusalem : for God is a Spirit, and all worship Him who worship in spirit and in truth." Is it necessary to say a word as to worshipping in truth ? — that with Christ Truth means spiritual reality — partaking of the Life of God, giving to God the things of God, loving mercy, doing justly, walking humbly with God, worshipping by aspiring to be like ? And in this state our very prayers are given to us : it is the Spirit of God in us that makes us sigh after Himself! Then, if we would acquaint ourselves with God, this is our central thought. Think nothing of Him that cannot be harmonized with the truth that God is a Spirit, without limitation of Love, of Holiness, of Wisdom, of Power, of Grace and Beauty — of desire in all these to communicate Himself to His children. Our greatest danger, our greatest impediment, in religion, is that we will not believe in the infinite Love of God ; and if we are constrained in our trust and joy, we are constrained not in Him but in ourselves ! Alas, how is it that the whole heart of man has not yet received that truth of Christ which St. Paul, appealing directly to their souls, strove to teach even to idolatrous Athenians "i — " God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that He is the Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands ; neither is worshipped with men's hands, God is a Spirit. ij as though He needed anything, seeing He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things ; and hath made of one blood all nations of men, that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him, though He be not far from any one of us, for in Him we live and move and have our being ; as indeed your own poets have said, For we are His offspring." His offspring, His children, having His Spirit, made to grow in His image ; and if children, then heirs — heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ himself ! II. SPIRITUAL LIKENESS TO GOD. "These things hast thou done, and I kept silence ; thou thoitghlest that I was altogether such an one as thyself : but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes." — Psalm 1. 21. It arises out of the necessary laws of spiritual life that the inward sources of health and growth are liable to become themselves retarding or impeding powers, ineffectual or obstructive organs. We have to see God with a spiritual eye that can cease to be sensitive to Him. He has to mirror Himself in a soul that can be ruffled with small cares, dimmed and sullied by the breath of impure desires, dis- tem.pered by uncharitable judgments, or so disturbed by alien interests that He is never permitted to have entire possession of it. Only a more vivid communion with the Spirit of God can give new health to diseased spiritual organs ; to a defective moral sensibility ; to a slow, excusing, unsuggestive conscience ; to a feeble, sluggish love : yet we know Him who is to heal us only through the organs that are diseased. God who renovates has to act upon us through the very powers that need the renovation. spiritual Likeness to God. 19 and that, if left to themselves, would never see Him as He is. This is the great spiritual mystery of God in us. It is the debilitated soul, that is no longer a true exponent of God, that has to grow pure by seeing Him more purely. It is clear that it cannot do this for itself; that whatever it once loses of spiritual sensibility could never be recovered, if it did not receive fresh vital shocks from God Himself; and that when we are sinning, suffering ourselves to fall out of a divine fellowship, living without God in the world, we are not merely wasting existence, we are consuming the organs of reproduction. Take the power of habit, for example — friend or foe, as the case may be. It can keep us fast-bound in a customary self-satisfaction ; or it can keep us fast-locked to the bosom of duty, moving where she moves, finding rest only where she is. It can pass alike through ordinary trials, or through sudden, un- anticipated dangers, with the same steady, onward, practised tread, and come out regular and true ; and yet virtue may tarry with it too long, and forget that, though good habits are true ways of life, the habit of daily repeating the same good things may stop growth and lay the soul to sleep. Habit is a useful servant, but a dangerous master : a power of retention — keeping the feet to one path, whether the slopes are upwards or downwards — equally ready to register you as a dweller in the house of bondage. 20 Spiritual Likeness to God. or to secure to you the glorious liberty of the children of God, with the wide range of your Father's house. In the same way, our greatest spiritual distinction, that we are self-determined — that we must fan for ourselves the fire the Almighty Spirit kindles, that our own toil of thought must give us possession of some truth, our own co-operation with God posses- sion of some goodness — originates the most serious difficulties in the way of the reform and recovery of a careless or stained spirit. No one, not even God, can do spiritual work for another ; and the sin- clouded, rebellious, or debilitated soul is not in a state to do it for itself. This it is which makes religious revivals, real conversions, so difficult, and yet so thoroughly made when at last they are made. The diseased body knows its state to be evil, and through the suffering incident to its malady is dis- posed to take the way of recovery. Not so the diseased soul. The weakness that is incident to its malady, or the wild fever of delirious action that precedes the weakness, inclines it to remain as it is. Bodily disease may not destroy, rather may it render more acute, bodily sensibility — alarming all the vital forces, so that they cry out for every avail- able help : but sin, spiritual disease, being a state in which we have chosen to be, cannot but impair the sensibility of the soul ; and there can be no more striking instance of the proximity of our greatest spiritual Likeness to God. 21 privileges to our greatest dangers, or more emphatic in its warning to keep pure the organs through which the divine life is communicated to us. To recur to the example of this proximity, which is also our specific subject. Our primary revelation of God is in and to our own spirit. There is nothing known to us that is like God except the spirit of man. " Let us make man in our image, after our likeness," is a witness from the earliest records of a conscious meeting between Man and God, whose sure word of inspiration no argument or discovery can ever disturb. Outward Nature only suggests Him by emblems and symbols, and suggests Him to wJiat ? To the soul which, so far as it partakes of Him, has the key of interpretation within itself And this is not of any man's private interpretation ; it is the testimony of all the Prophets. "Partakers," says the Apostle, " of the Divine Nature," let us add daily to ourselves the graces that are in God. And neither the universe nor the Bible could give us any ac- quaintance with God, if they did not speak to a nature in some respects kindred to that from which the Bible and the universe proceeded. For what can understand thought but thought ? or goodness but goodness? or spirit but spirit? "Who knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him ? Even so the things of God knoweth no one, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received the 2 2 Spiritual Likeness to God. Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God." And yet here, in the personal source of our piety, is to be found the explanation of the fact that God, as a spiritual Power, does not move us in a measure commensurate with the purity of His Spirit and the fulness of His Will, but only in a measure commensurate with the purity and co-operation of ours. Say not that God is in the Bible, plainly declared as He was known by Prophets, Saints, and Christ, and that we can find Him there ! Yes ; but have we received, or have we prepared our nature to receive, the image of God that the Son of God possessed and would convey ? It is not every eye that takes a true impression even of what it sees. It is not every eye that turned upon Nature will see what the artist sees, that turned upon the heavens will see what the astronomer sees, or that turned upon Christ will see what God sees. Alas ! how far is it still true that no one knows the Father but the Son, and that no one knows the Son but the Father! Re- member that we can find out God unto perfection only through a perfect Man ; that if we had no power of seeing how all the mingling spiritual elements may be reconciled in a human soul, we should have no image from which to rise to the absolute harmony in God, and in our best estate should be subject to the rebuke, "Thou thoughtest spiritual Likeness to God. 23 that I was such a one as thyself." That the Son knew the Father will not help us unless we know the Son ; and how difficult it is to know him, to understand his union with his Father, to understand himself as a Man, is felt by each of us, and is attested by all Christian literature, by every failure even to conceive a Life of Christ which the world will consent to accept. For, short of Christ, we all know how difficult it is to receive the impress of another's thought, the delicacy and sacredness of another's feeling, the ruling and guiding power of another's life, if the order of his thought, the law of his life, is much beyond the range and level of our own. In- capable as we know ourselves to be to sound the pure depths of sentiment and thought in other men, to understand the magic of their presence, of their look, of their tone of feeling — to make our own the simplicity of purpose and of action by which they compass ends so great — it can be no mystery to us that God may have revealed Himself in Man, shown us in a human spirit the image of His own, and yet that our spiritual understanding and apprehension may be inadequate to use, still more inadequate to exhaust, this means of knowledge — to appropriate all that is involved in the Saviour's words, " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." As we can understand Man or God only through spiritual affinities, the Bible will not enable us to understand 24 spiritual Likeness to God. a prophet of God except through our attainment of a prophetic soul, nor a son of God except through our attainment of a filial heart. And the thoughts and the life of a man, though the man is the image of God, will be nothing to us so long as we do not apprehend them. What, then, if the organ of spiritual apprehension has been neglected ; if the mirror is soiled ; if the eye of the soul no longer sees truly, because we have not been true to what it saw ! The difficulty of transforming the impure of heart thus gradually ceases to be in their active resistance to God, and gradually comes to be that they do not know Him, and have no intercourse with Him as He is. I do not mean that it is only our thought of God, not God Himself, that acts upon our souls. God Himself is ever there, but we have the power of veiling the soul against Him in a thousand ways — by refusing the sustained attention and watch of the soul, which is prayer ; by reserving no quiet times in which He may speak to us and be heard ; by striving against what He suggests and dictates to us, first in little things, and then in greater ; by fully occupying ourselves with other things until we lose the quickness of our sensibility, — just as we can make ourselves impervious to the loftier intelligence or finer solicitude of other men, who might have been in intercourse with us had we so chosen, and can evade even in our own homes the purer eyes that would look, Spirihial Likeness to God. 25 and the gentler spirits that would search into our own. Since, then, it depends so largely on the care we take of the soul whether we can feel within us and around us the stainless Omnipresence of the Holy- Spirit ; since God respects our liberty as the con- dition of all true love of Him, and will not take away our power of resisting or turning from Him, that He may stamp Himself upon us as a super- scription ; since the Kingdom of Heaven is heart- recognition and heart-obedience to a Father's Spirit living and ruling within our own ; — it becomes the most solemn of our religious duties to trace, that we may correct, the imperfections that interfere with a true perception of the Invisible God, and cloud our knowledge of Him whom to know is our eternal life — the misapprehensions that arise from the imperfect image of Him that is presented by our own nature, which lead to the idolatry of making God like our- selves, instead of to the daily sacrifice and worship of making ourselves like God. We misapprehend God in two ways : first, through our natural limitations ; and secondly, through our voluntary sins and imperfections. I. God as a Spirit, with no limitation on His presence, we do not naturally comprehend. Yet we must live in that faith, if we would live in peace and in purity. For it is because He is a Spirit that He 26 Spirittial Likeness to God. fills the fields of space, yet tabernacles with men ; directs every gale of happiness and every trying wind which, it might seem, bloweth where it listeth, but in truth bloweth where He listeth. It is because He is a Spirit, that He sustains the beatings of every conscious heart and speaks to it, whilst renewing the energies of a Creation that obeys Him, but does not know Him — regulating the economy by which all influences, all agencies, all cross-lights transmitted from matter to mind, from mind to matter, work together for good, because He knows how the threads mingle. And though this universal presence of God, as a Spirit, is very difficult to our natural understanding, yet we may familiarize ourselves with it as a spiritual fact within our own consciousness, by every fresh instance in which it strikes suddenly or powerfully upon us, or in which we are led to search it out and find that it is true ; as often as we come upon the traces of His steps when we were not thinking of Him ; as often as we are made to stand in awe of a Presence that we were not seeking — when we come upon Him in retired and silent places where He was lying in wait for us, though it seemed to us only an accident that our eyes should ever sec what there they saw ; when some very simple and very common thing, a flower, a stream, the effect of light and shade, is perceived to have a divine beauty, a divine Spiritttal Likeness to God. 27 mystery in it, addressing itself to something in us that is deeper than the senses ; when we awake in the night to find that He is still with us — the thought of Him which we could not have been inviting coming to our first conscious moment ; when we would evade Him, or think He has forgotten us, only to discern all at once that He has beset us behind and before and laid His hand upon us ; — as often as we are surprised to find His Spirit giving out peace, and health, and joy, and germs of goodness, where we feared that no purity or joy could dwell ; or as often as our sin finds us out, when in our wanderings we are made to cry out with Jacob, " Lo ! God is here, and we knew it not ! " or when we go where, even in thought, we ought not to go, and, like Ahab on Naboth's field, have to start at some unlooked-for apparition of God, and exclaim in trembling awe, "What, hast Thou found me even here, O mine enemy ! " until we know that He comes only as our Friend. All such instances, within our own spiritual experience, help us to know the Infinite Presence which yet we cannot understand or explain. Why is the doctrine of Providence, even when we admit it, so often without power .^ Because we are so little in the habit of recognizing, of really meeting any kind of existence but our own, that the Spirit of God is too unfamiliar to sustain us thoroughly. What damps all hope, confuses all faith, when we 28 spiritual Likeness to God. look to the wars and fightings among men, grow perplexed and dark about that great problem which God is working out, — the cleansing of a long un- righteousness, the progression of Humanity, the peace and good will that are to make one family of all the families of the earth ? What, in some of our own states, makes us fear for ourselves, that we are only included within His general laws, not individual objects of His providence, when we think of the countless multitudes of nobler beings that claim His regards, or travel in thought to the outskirts of Creation, and ponder the millions, not of persons but of worlds, that require His presence and His care ? What is it, when our guesses into the future are nullified, our calculations not adopted by Him, our feet turned away from some path our hopes had opened, makes us feel for a time as if all existence was a wreck, because our schemes have turned out vain, our judgments wrong or premature? Is not this to clothe Providence with our weakness, and to make God like ourselves? We are over- whelmed by the difficulties that embarrass the pro- blem of " peace on earth," of man's perfectibility, and we despair as though God felt the difficulty as we do, and worked within the limits of our fleeting days. There is a difficulty, but it lies solely in the human will, and He to whom a thousand years are as one day, and one day as a thousand years, will wait. spiritual Likeness to God. 29 using meanwhile all the resources of instruction and persuasion, till that voluntarily rights itself, rather than violate the first law of spiritual existence, and create obedience by power. Ever, as of old, the Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent would take it by force. We, in our impatience, think God is slow, and would have Him to extinguish misused liberty, and by a command to cause all dis- obedience to vanish from before His face. " Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself" II. We make God like ourselves through any excess, or defect, one-sidedness, or want of balance that may be in us. Our own moral judgments we are sure to attribute to God, though they are often ignorant, often lax, often unmerciful. It is on the side of severity that we disfigure God most ; for these are the judgments in which we are most blind, pre- sumptuous, and self-righteous. This, indeed, is the respect in which we are warned in the Psalm not to make God like ourselves : " Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother : . . . thou thoughtest that I was such a one as thyself" There are two ways of regarding God, according as we incline to what is tender and benignant, or to what is holy and inviolable in Him. As we lean to either of these real elements, a contrasted religion, a contrasted theology, will appear ; and as far as our 30 Spiritual Likeness to God. thoughts of God can modify His action upon us, it will be so modified. Under either limitation we fall into grievous error. It is possible to have an utterly unspiritual reliance on God's goodness, to misconceive what goodness is. Wc deem it goodness to forgive, goodness to be indulgent, to withhold suffering, to remember our frailty, to consider our temptations and difficulties, and under this view we may readily glide into the assurance that God will not take us to any very severe account. This may be no article of our faith, and yet it may colour all our religious life. We can all think too lightly of a disobeyed conscience, of a stain upon the soul, of an imagination that acquaints us with evil, of an offence against charity, and if we come to connect this feeble appre- hension of the sinfulness of sin with the government of a God whom we picture to be all goodness, and whose goodness we degrade into a simple compas- sionateness, it will be easy to say, " Peace ! peace ! " where there is no peace. God's goodness, whatever we may think of it, is a goodness that will never be disunited from His holiness. He never acts, as we do, from a part of Himself, suffering another part to fall into disuse or abeyance. It is a goodness that can punish to the uttermost, not more in righteousness than in mercy, if it be punishment to learn to know our own evil in eating the fruits of our own doings. Sooner shall spiritual Likeness to God. 31 heaven and earth pass away than one tittle of the Spirit's Law shall fail to be fulfilled. How poorly they must think of the soul and of God, who deem that He has only to remit punishments — the punish- ments, as they say, that we most justly have deserved — and all will be well ! Can the remission of punish- ments purify a soiled spirit, give energy and generous desires to a selfish and sensual nature, lift the earth- bound to the Mount of Meditation, and make a man at home in heaven? It is goodness in God so to treat us as to exterminate the evil in us, and give us the knowledge and fruition of Himself. It is easy, however, to have very stern views of God along with very lax views of the evil that is in ourselves. It is, I suppose, impossible for the human heart to think of God as incapable of forgiving until the uttermost farthing is paid, without devising some unspiritual means for shifting the penalty. When human laws are broken, the annexed penalty must be inflicted — partly because the action of human law does not regard the offender alone, and partly because it is impossible for man to know the real state of the offender's heart, whether he is penitent or not. Penitence, therefore, cannot be made a ground for the remission of punishments in our jurisprudence. Human Law, if it is worthy to be Law, ought not to be violated with an external impunity. But men think God to be such a one as themselves, and 32 Spi7'ittial Likeness to God. heavenly Law to be no better than earthly Law, when they speak thus of Hi])i. His Law needs no external vindication. He comes into direct intercourse with the penitent spirit, and can remit all punishments but the sorrow that penitence will not forego. I need not pursue this farther, to show how thus an unspiritual theology has arisen, distorting all the relations of the Father and the Son. " God is a Spirit : and they who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth." When, then, we think to worship Him with cold words and colder hearts, giving Him no more than that outward acknowledgment which in common courtesy or gratitude we would not withhold from a fellow-being who does us the lightest kindness, why do we not remember that He is a Spirit, and that all this is vanity? When we preface the day with prayer, then plunge into the world and forget Him in the throng ; then return ere the night closes just enough to redeem our life from external atheism, why do we not remember that He is a Spirit — that He has never left us ; that the worship He desires is a heart concurrent with His Heart in the consecration of all our being ? When we judge our fellow-men severely, when we are ready to think evil of those who are differently constituted from ourselves — to condemn, as though everything that is offensive to us is an offence to Him — why do we not remember that He is a Spirit2ial Likeness to God. '^'^ Spirit ; that He is of an infinite forbearance and long-suffering ; that He is large enough to hold in harmony much that we are too small to embrace ; that many things that seem incompatible to us are not incompatible to Him ; that He looks upon the heart and judges righteous judgment ; that He forgives us though He knows us — nay, let us some- times humbly hope, forgives us because He knows us ? There is an action and reaction continually going on between our souls and our lives. God in our hearts, the Spirit of God in our judgments of other men, the Spirit of God in our deeds of mercy — so we pass from light to life and from life to better light again. Only by having our own thoughts and acts, our judgments of men and our deeds towards them in the Spirit of our Father, do we really know God, and come to fashion ourselves after His image instead of fashioning Him after ours. Only as light becomes life — as the Light of God assimilates us to the Life of God, and so more of life qualifies us for more of light in an eternal succession — do we put off what belongs to our own weakness and limitations, and put on what belongs to our Father. Otherwise, even at our best estate, in the moments that follow prayer, we are only, to use the figure of St. James, like men beholding their natural face in a glass, who go their way, and straightway forget what manner of men they were. D 34 Spiritual Likeness to God. And wc have all the needful helps. A Son of God in Man enables us perfectly to correct the tendency of all imperfect men to make God like themselves. Inwardly v/e have the Father's Spirit ; outwardly the Father's Image. We have God Himself working in us, and in the Son a divine knowledge of the end towards which we work — a divine corrective of the defects and excesses to which we are naturally liable in our apprehensions of God. What lack we yet? Nothing that God can supply. Nothing but that we should becon^e fellow-workers with Him, who hath called us into the fellowship of His own glory. III. THE CONTENTS OF A LIVING SOUL. " Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand ; seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive." — Matt. xiii. 14. The ear hears, but only the mind understands ; the eye sees, but only the soul perceives. It is the difference between outward impressions and spiritual discernment, between the senses and the soul. A man's soul may be substantively dead, as his con- science may be dead, or his heart dead, or any of his senses extinguished ; and then he is quite shut out from those spheres of feeling and experience to which these organs are the inlets. The soul is that part of our nature which brings us into communication with spiritual feelings, expectations, and beliefs, and with such experience of Kis existence as places us under the personal sway of One who is infinitely good and holy. It is not independent of the other faculties — it could not live without them ; and when it is alive itself, it grows with their life. But it depends on them only as intellect depends upon memory, or as memory depends upon sensation — as 36 The Contents of a Living Sonl. all the higher depend upon all the lower ; it carries them all up into its sphere, but its sphere is its own. And the other parts of our nature may be in high activity, and the spiritual part blind, deaf, and dumb. It would be very difficult to determine how far a serene and profound reason, imagination, cultivated taste, and even moral goodness, might exist, without the soul, as a spiritual organ, whose object and sphere is God, being ever exercised at all. It is the office of the soul to be a discerner of the hidden meanings of all that is addressed to the other senses, as well as the organ to which God speaks directly : a de- cipherer of the great realities that stand behind their signs ; the true sense of the man, the perfect eye and ear, to which the other faculties are ministers and inlets of an inward life, quite personal and individual, known only to itself and to the All- knowing. Some men ask, " What is the soul to do for us, beyond what good sense, and good feeling, and honourable principle may do as well ? " Now, we here count for nothing the doubt whether good sense, and generous feeling, and honourable principle may exist and continue to exist without religion. God, who is the Author of our nature, whether it knows Him or not, has made all the lower parts in harmony with all the higher, each in its turn to serve as feeder The Contents of a Living Soul. 37 and inlet to that which is above — sensation to feed memory, memory to feed intellect, intellect to feed imagination, and all together to feed the soul ; and what we maintain is, that all the lower fail to accomplish that whereunto they were sent until they enter into the sphere of the highest — that however great and good they may be, the nobler they are and the higher they soar, all the stronger are the signs of an unfulfilled intention until they know their God, for their limit is but our visible humanity and our visible mortality, so long as they touch no exhaustless Source of their own life. Short of this, a man may be good to an indefinite extent, but he never reaches the thought that an infinite Goodness is for ever to be the feeder of his own. Short of this, a man may enter into the tenderest relations with the tenderest hearts, but he can attach to those relations no undying, no infinite value or significance. We give the largest sphere to all that is in a man's nature short of his soul ; and the larger it is, the more utterly is it mockery and vanity, if it does not tend to God. In the ratio of the strength and joy of a feeling is its demand for exercise, nourish- ment, and security of life. In proportion to his sensibility to natural beauty does a man appreciate what may be called siipernatural beauty, the ideal productions of creative art ; in proportion to his sensibility to natural goodness docs a man require 2,S The Contents of a Living Soid. a supernatural goodness, feeling that such goodness as he has is not his own, and must have, as being in its nature limitless, an infinite Source out of himself Take good feeling, and honourable principle, and natural conscience, as intimations and breathings of God in us, coming from and pointing to Him, and we understand their priceless value ; but take them as substitutes for God, as the be-all and the end-all of goodness, and then in what condition are we, and what have we to sustain us ? Who can rely upon his own goodness, if it is the sign of nothing beyond itself — if it is not the voice and the instigation of the All-Good ? Who can rely upon his own purity, if it is all he knows of purity — if there is no Holy Spirit that speaks in it? And if it be that the pure in heart see God — that the highest function of purity is to become a revealer, a spiritual eye — then what of those who are pure, in their measure, without seeing God ? Has not their purity lost its highest joy and the way of its con- summation? is it not a ray of light cut off from the Fountain of Light ? If any man, then, on the strength of what he calls the natural laws of his being, and of the sufficiency of their guidance, turns with indifference from religion and the peculiar offices of the soul, we only ask him, Has his nature no Source, and has it no vital interest in touching that Source ? Is all that he is The Contejits of a Living Soul. 39 self-centred ? In the material infinitude in which we float, have we a moral nature unlimited too in its pointings, and yet with no fixed hold upon any Being who is adequate to meet and feed the wants which that nature inevitably generates? If we look upon our own goodness not as a breathing of God in us, but as the Absolute of goodness, knowing nothing beyond it, then it becomes necessary that we should have no higher aim for our moral love than ourselves can satisfy, and that we drop out of all connection with the thought of perfection and of immortality ; but we cannot, if we would, drop out of these connections — Nature will not permit it. What remains but that we consciously take refuge with Him, the Fountain and Inspirer of life, whose pressure is thus felt upon our souls ? What, then, is the special operation of religion, if we admit that our nature must enter into its sphere, or else be maimed and truncated ? Supposing all the other parts of our nature to address themselves fitly to the soul, and the soul to use them in the service of her proper life, what should be the results ; what peculiar acquirements and discernments should we be gaining ? The essential constituents of re- ligion, the contents of a living soul, would appear to be these — First, constant communion with God in the rela- tion of a Fountain Spirit, who has given us spirits 40 The Contents of a Living Soitt. in His own image, and will for ever nourish them out of His own fulness. Secondly, the contemplation of all mankind as naturally holding the same spiritual relations, and the obvious relations to tis of all who arc so related to our God. And, lastly, the inward life, the meekness of wisdom, the secret of peace, the preparation for all possible contingencies, the quietness, contentment, and free- dom from rebellion which these relations, truly sus- tained, could not but impart. Let them stand now as a summary of the contents of a living soul. Conscious approach to God as to a Father ; conscious relations of spiritual brother- hood with all mankind ; conscious power from God to meet the casualties of man's life, without destruc- tion of the peace that lies in childlike faith. This is the threefold cord of religion, that holds us in harmony with our God, our brother, and our destiny. And it would surely be well that we had always before us some such succinct view of what is essen- tially contained in the life of the soul, in the perceiving of the spiritual eye, in the understanding of the spiritual ear, that we might be able to test ourselves by it, to measure our state, to know our progress or declension ; to apply some ready touchstone, which is greatly needed, to all that presents itself, authori- tatively or conventionally, in the name and character The Contents of a Living Soul. 41 of religious influences, instruction, or guidance. It is surely from the want of some such succinct summary of the " contents of a living soul " that spiritual things realize themselves with such acknowledged dimness ; that we are at the mercy of pretentious teachers, and carried about with every wind of doctrine. How little do any of us live, I do not say with the loftiness and purity, but with the sobriety and steadiness, the clearness of discernment, the freedom from uncer- tainty in religion, which ought to belong to those who had ever entered into the great thought that we have God for our Father, and Christ as the natural elevation, the earthly limit of human goodness, with all the blessedness that is involved in the willingness of God to nourish and sustain us, secured to us as the birthright of our spirits ! Herein is the test, both of our own personal religion, and of all that is offered to us as religious influence. If it has the powder to induce in us these living frames of soul, and their veritable fruit — for what bears no fruit is substan- tively dead — it is to us the savour of life unto life ; if not, whether through its default or ours, it is less th?an nothing to us. Is God known as a Father — not as a Law, not as a Creator, not as an external King and Governor, but as the living God in personal communication zvitJi yo2i, the Fountain by v;hose constant flowings your spirit is renewed ? Is man felt as a brother, naturally related to that personal 4-2 The Contents of a Living Soul. God as yo7i- are related, the child of the Almighty, \{ yoii are His child, and no more losing that natural relationship through sin or degradation, than your child ceases to be yours because of waywardness or folly ? I do not mean that we stand in the same relations of duty to every man ; such an interpreta- tion of our brotherhood would speedily release us from all duties, by rendering the discharge of them impossible : but so far as we have personal relations with him at all, is it through this estimation of him ? Are his life, his sins, his possibilities, his future, scanned, interpreted, and augured through his natural, though it may be for a time his lost, affini- ties ? Remember, unless we read a man through the sympathies of the soul, that seeing we shall see and not perceive, and hearing we shall hear and not understand. Here, indeed, in the incalculable force of spiritual life, is the mystery and the difficulty, but also the ground for unfailing hope ; that if only the sense of God is touched, all things become possible, though, until then, reason, and argument, and natural right, and prudence, and interest may all have pleaded in vain. The miracles of faith and love which are impossible to man, ie. to man alone, become possible the moment the sense of God is with him. If we fully entered into its significance, there could be no more powerful summary of the natural fruits of religion in a soul that has living relations with God, The Contents of a Living Soul. 43 than the Lord's Prayer. In every word and thought it flows out of the heart of that relationship. It opens by appealing to a Father ; it acknowledges that only holiness can know Him ; it sees the incom- patibility of appealing to Him as our Father unless man is by us regarded as our brother ; the selfish hypocrisy of seeking for a pardon which we will not give ; of the unmerciful asking for mercy ; and it adopts as natural to the soul the filial privilege of being God's fellow-worker in hastening the coming of that kingdom into whose peace we seek to be received. The difficulty which all must feel in holding personal relations with God ought not to discourage us, nor attach the smallest suspicion of a visionary character to the intercourses with Him that are possible to pure and earnest natures ; for, in fact, we have analogous difficulties in defining and securing our own thoughts, whenever we are brought into the presence of any of His grander or lovelier works. That the impressions we receive from the personal God are not easily held, is no more than is true of all our highest impressions from the actual universe ; we know them to be most real, but we cannot always define them, nor prolong our inter- course with them. And why, unless we have in vain tried the way of inward purification, and something of our Lord's constancy of prayer, should we be 44 The Contents of a Living Soul. discouraged by the difficulty of seeing God face to face, since we cannot even see His greatest works face to face, and hold or realize the thoughts that are rising in our minds ? For truly our impressions of the invisible God are hardly more shadowy than are some of the impressions we derive from those visible works which seem to be the fullest of Him. Before our eyes they stand out palpable, but before our soul there is a floating haze of glory, so that we are made aware we are but very feebly catching the signifi- cance of what we see ; seeing we see, but do not perceive. There are times when we are conscious of a Presence which we cannot discern, of a Beauty which we cannot unveil, of a broken Music faintly heard, whose links we cannot unite and weave into a chain. We know ourselves to be walking on enchanted ground, and the power of the enchantment to be escaping us : as when one gazes on glorious scenes that are wondrous revelations of God, and feels that he not only indistinctly catches their meaning, but dimly sees their shapes, for that both sense and soul are overpowered ; or walks amid the mighty miracles of Art, entranced and dreaming — for when he closes his eyes to think and realize, he finds the visions all vanished, and nothing left but the bewildering consciousness of seeing mighty things that he did not understand, spiritual embodiments he could not hold, of having had most real impressions The Contents of a Living Soitl. 45 which have melted away like vapours. But it is not necessary that this indistinctness should remain for ever ; it is possible that, through culture and love, these things should render up their full meanings to us. Of the same nature are our impressions of the personal God. We see and hear and feel enough to know that He is within us and around us, that we may perceive Him, that He is on the right hand and on the left, that we may find Him. And how can we recoil at the difficulty of beholding Him with the inward eye, when we recollect the difficulty of seeing our better selves, of fixing our own best thoughts, of defining our own best feelings — of putting them into clear form so as to render them intelligible to others, or distinct to ourselves ? The difficulty, indeed, is not to be denied ; but its greatness is the greatness of our place and heritage. For there is nothing more certain than the strength that a man gains — that he inwardly grows — when he labours to decipher these dim outlines of thought. There is great meaning in the Gospel representation, that the moment our Lord became conscious of his inspiration he went into the wilderness to be alone, to work out into clear light his intimations of a mission, and to know distinctly whereunto he was called. For the Almighty Father aims not to make us the workmanship of His hand : that He could do at once, v;ithout our co-operation or against our 46 The Contends of a Living Soul. resistance, and then all this world of moral misery could have been avoided ; but He aims to make us what His children must be, if they are the children of His Spirit and not the machines of His hand — voluntary fellow-workers with Him, sharers in His purposes ; and this can be done, not whether we will or not, but only ivitJi our zvill, through our love and loyalty, as those who have the power to rebel if we have the will, and who have lost the will, not through fear or compulsion, but because He has become the entire Lord of our affections, the God in whom we trust. And this is an end for which, to speak it reverently, God is willing to incur the contingency of any amount of suffering, and for which all who have spiritual appreciation of it will deem that this world of terminable misery is not too vast a price. We cannot have the privileges that belong to moral liberty, without being liable to the evils that are incidental to moral liberty. We cannot combine inconsistent things. We cannot be constrained to obey, or mechanically fashioned to obey, and yet have the joy of a free service. And all this is a direct consequence from the spiritual truth, the one great spiritual fact with which we have to do, that the Almighty is not our Creator only, but our Father ; that in our souls we are the children of His Spirit, and not merely in our organization, mental as well as material, the workmanship of His hands. The artists The Contents of a Living Soul. 47 of earth, when they become creators of beautiful and glorious things, impress their own thought upon their workmanship, and make it what they please : if they fail, the failure is theirs, and not in the rebellion or disobedience of the materials with which they work ; but when they become, not creators, but fathers, their children may turn against them. And it is even so with the Supreme Creator, and the Supreme Father. His works must obey Him ; His children may rebel. Otherwise He must cease to be a Father, and be to us only what He is to material Nature, the Almighty Artist of our souls. And there are some men who have so little perception of what it is to love God with a spiritual love, that they are ready to condemn His providence for not making man upon this principle, for not fashioning him to a course of obedience as He fashioned the stars. Such men overlook the infinite distance that separates a Creator from a Father. They have not mastered the first syllables of the Lord's Prayer. There are many whom this world of moral misery revolts from God ; they do not estimate at their infinite value the spiritual results ; they do not see, in all that men suffer through sin, the mighty price that God is willing to pay that He may have children of His Spirit. Until we see this we have no Father; seeing we perceive not, and hearing we do not understand. 48 The Contents of a Living Soul. And however great may be the difficulty of realiz- ing God, of maintaining personal relations with Him, it can be overcome through efforts that lie within the power of us all, for they are spiritual efforts, and arc subject to the direction of the will ; not through genius, not through imagination, not through philo- sophic depths, but through childlike reverence for all holy impulses, through hearkening to what we all spiritually hear, and trying to discern what we all spiritually feel. True, it is but an invitation, and may be refused : the voice is still and small, and neglect will overpower it ; but he who hearkens will understand ; he who asks will receive ; he who seeks will find ; to him that knocks it will be opened. The pure in heart see God ; but they are not pure who stifle the highest promptings of their nature, and will not listen to the whispers of God's Spirit within their own. Thus only, by the higher communicating to the lower, is spirit known of spirit. All other means of access are at fault. As well scale the heavens by material ladders, or try to make another universe by power of intellect, as find another way to the dis- cernment of God. We know Him when we love Him ; and we love Him truly only as we cherish the holiest instigations that He gives. Knowledge will give us power to serve Him more efficiently, or to rebel against Him more injuriously ; but it will not make us love Him, it will not make us obey Him. The Contents of a Living Soul. 49 There is nothing in the mightiest intellect, as intellect alone, to keep men from being atheists ; it is the spirit that witnesses to Him, a soul that hungers and thirsts for goodness and holiness : all the other faculties can see and not perceive, can hear and not understand. There is nothing in the largest know- ledge, in the farthest reach of the philosophic mind, to keep men from the commonest sins ; it is only the presence of God that casts out evil. It is through the love of a soul made holy by the constant indwelling of Christ's image that we keep the heart of childhood, retain our birthright, grow in the knowledge of God, and remain for ever, as we were born, members of the Kingdom of Heaven. IV. SONS AND HEIRS OF GOD. "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life." — John iii. 36. In all the great utterances of Christ, which more or less embody our religion, the words employed relate not to abstract views, but to states of character and life. The key for their understanding comes not through power of thought, but through inward personal experience. This, indeed, is true of every utterance which touches the life of the soul ; the words have no meaning but that which consciousness supplies. The language of affection, of passion, of human relations, is understood only by those who have felt the passions and have stood in the relations. Without such experience, no intellectual capacity or intellectual teaching could make a man understand what was meant by love or by jealousy ; they would be as colours to a blind man's eye. And the v/ords which Christ employed to convey facts of spiritual life were of the most elementary kind ; they cling so close to the experience, that if you have had the experience, it shines at once through the expression ; if you have not had the experience, the Soiis and Hch's of God. 51 expression is unintelligible to you. In this simplicity, this close clinging of the word to the thing, we have the nearest approach that mere language supplies to what Scripture, speaking of natural symbols, calls "garments of light." These elementary words of Christ, which stand not for thoughts, but for con- ditions of soul, are principally these — Spirit, Life, Truth, Freedom, Son, and Sonship — all of them ex- pressive of the communion of God with man, and more or less intelligible according as that communion is, or is not, with any of us an inward y^^z^ of life. If we could use these words, as Christ used them, for things personally and inwardly known to us, for spiritual experiences that we have had, we should then be aware that Christ was speaking of no theories, but simply of facts ; that by TRUTH he meant no system of doctrine, but the great religious reality, the living God in the living spirit ; that by LiFE he meant not existence in time, nor anything that can be measured by time, but participation in the pulsing affections of Him who is the Life indeed ; that by Freedom he meant not liberty to do what you will, but the earnest will to do what is right, and to be what is true — deliverance from what is false, but absolute subjection to reality and God ; and that all that is contained in Truth, Life, and Freedom is gathered up by our Lord into one single expression, one spiritual relation — the condition of being a Son 52 Sons and Heii's of God. of God, prayerfully and consciously drawing our higher life out of our Father's Spirit. Whoso believeth on the Son — whoso hath God as a Father, and yet knows that not himself but Christ is the true image of a Son — he hath Eternal Life. Yes, to know Christ as the Son of God whom the Father is looking for wherever there is a human being ; to be one of those whom the Apostle describes thus as belonging to Christ — " to as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God ; " — this is to be a Christian in the only sense that is of any real significance, in the sense of partaking of Christ's being, to have the Spirit witnessing to our spirit, to have life flowing into us from the Fountain of life, for ever giving as we can receive. Nothing is more strange than that such concen- trated expressions as these should be suffered to remain uninterpreted by us — that words which con- tain the whole Christian peculiarity should convey to us nothing but some vague and general meaning. " He that hath the Son hath everlasting life." The essence and the fruits of the Christian religion must be comprised in those words. Nothing is more strange, with the profession which the world has so long made that its spiritual life depends on the religion of Jesus Christ, than the want which we all feel of some simple test, whether Christ is, or is not, Sons and Heifs of God. 53 to us personally what God designed him to be — than the difficulty which we should all find in rendering to ourselves a clear account of the sense in which Christ is, or ought to be, to our individual soul, the salvation of God. And no extent of just and appreciating remark that we may be able to make upon Christianity as one of the religions of the world, containing views of God and rules of life, will enable us to answer the question whether Christ is, or is not, to us in any living personal relation, or what the relation is through which Christ becomes to us, what the Apostle says he is. Wisdom, and Righteousness, and Sanctification, and perfect Redemption. Indeed, our favourite habit of dilating upon Christianity as a system, or what we call a religion, may be only a sign of the absence of living relations with Christ as a person. In all that concerns our souls, the fatal mistake is when we suffer anything to become a substitute for, or to conceal from us, our own personal relations with personal beings. What a man thinks is no test, and is often no sign, of what he spiritually is ; what he is in the living affections and relations of his heart towards the living God, towards the personal Christ, towards every man with whom he has personal inter- course, — that is his religion. Religion in view of God is perpetual prayer, perpetual intercourse of spirit. 54 Sons and Heirs of God. Religion in view of Christ is perpetual fellowship of life. And just as to speak of Nature is often only a way to forget God, to place Him out of sight — ^just as theology is not religion, and to speak of theology is often to come into no contact with God, but only with our own views and speculations about God — so Christianity is not Christ, and often the more we are in the habit of dilating upon Christianity, the more we are in danger of losing the power of the personal Saviour and Friend. We can say much of Christianity, but we should find it a different thing to meet the living eye of Christ, to spend this day in his presence, to observe his way of looking upon human life, to sec how he filled up the hours as they followed one upon another, what kind of intercourse he held with those around him ; to open our hearts to him, or to know that they tvere open through the insight which would tell him by the simple natural signs what is in each of us ; to go through our duties as we do, or to evade them as we do, knowing that he was looking at us, and that face to face we must presently discuss the facts zuith /dm. Of what significance are any general views of Christian doctrine, to one who would be conscious of a sudden chill upon his heart if he was told that he was about to be ushered into the presence of Christ himself ; not the chill of self-distrust and shame which even a St. John would not escape, but the So7is and Heirs of God. 55 chill of unwillingness and estrangement as of those who dwell apart from Christian life, and do not wish to meet exposure ! Nothing, indeed, is more melancholy than the facility with which spiritual life passes into mere symbols when we begin in any way to deal artificially with it, or to make a show of it to our fellow-men. First the Thing passes into a Thought, then the Thought passes into a Word, and then all fresh experience ceases, all new inspiration of God. I am not pointing out this danger as exclusively attaching to those who think they can exhibit the substance of Christianity in creeds and systems, or convey its power through propositions ; it is a practical tendency of all of us to glide off the living facts, which are intense in their purpose, sometimes awful to meet and always imperative in their instant demand, to disengage ourselves from them through their mere semblances, their intellectual shapes and shadows, which can employ our thoughts and leave our conscience and our souls untouched — a tendency which in one form of it is well illustrated by the difference in personal influence between what the philosopher means by Nature and the saint means by God ; by the difference between what science means by a law, and worship means by the presence of the living power of God. Religion — the preacher never can repeat it too 56 Sons and Heirs of God. much, because preaching itself draws us away from the living realities to intellectual discussions and abstractions — religion deals only with personal rela- tions ; with what the living God is to us, what we are to the living God ; with what the personal Christ is to us, what fellowship we have with the personal Christ. And, to use again nearly the same words, if we understood how spiritual life communicates itself, we should feel that personal relations -n-ith Christ were the only ones that were of essential importance to us ; that to be brought within his personal attraction would be more than all know- ledge and all mysteries ; that to meet his eye, to see the expression in his face, to catch a tone of his voice, to know how, he spoke to his brethren, to his mother, to a Pharisee, to a sinner, to a penitent, to a sufferer — to behold one hour of his daily relations with life, to hear or overhear one wdiispcr of his prayer, of his intercourse with the Father ; — might be more to us, might be more to the new birth and renewal of our souls, more for our apprehension of that life in God to which we are called, than the study of all that was ever written upon Christianity as a scheme of doctrine or a rule of life. Nor must we answer to this, that we have now no means of entering into such personal intercourse with Christ — that Christ is now absent, not present — for though that is true, it is not true in a sense that Sons and Heirs of God. 57 prevents Christ being a living influence with us ; for God has given us the materials, if we will use them, to make him a reality, and to rehabilitate his power, and He has done no more than this in regard to any other spiritual influence that acts upon us, even to His own ; they are all virtually absent from us until, by our own acts of thought, we appropriate them and make them present to us. Nay, I will say more : that every man once awakened to spiritual life is sensible that God has traced upon his soul the outlines of a perfect Man ; that there is for ever hovering over him, in imperfect apprehension, the image in which he was made, and that Christ, as the fulfilment of what is in his nature, once seen and known, can never again be a stranger to his spirit, except by his own neglect. That by our own acts of seeking we have to give Christ the opportunity of becoming a personal influence with us, is no more than is true of God, and no more than is true of the outward universe, though they are constantly present to us. For all effectual purposes they do not come to us until we go to them. That we lose the personal power of the absent Christ, unless we will build up his presence in our own souls by purposely bringing him, as we have the means of knowing him, within the circle of our natural spiritual sympathies, is no more than is true of the way in which we habitually lose the influence and power of the living God who 58 So7ts and Heirs of God. is for ever present with us, and of the works of God which are for ever before our eyes. You will lose the personal power of the absent Christ only as you may lose the personal power of any present man, by not giving him an opportunity to enter into your souls. There are two conditions which Christ fulfils in order to represent the religion of human nature. He is natural, and he is supernatural. He is according to Nature, and yet he is beyond Nature in its present developments. He is natural — for it is our own con- science that accepts him, and accepts him not as a foreign Master, but as the Desire of our eyes, the fulfilment of the law that is in our nature, of the prophets that are in our souls ; and yet he is super- natural — for though we recognize him for what he is wJieti we behold him, we could not have created him even in imagination. Neither any individual man, nor collective Humanity, would have afforded us the materials for building up in our souls that image of a man one with God ; nor, if we had had the general outlines of the image, could we have exhibited it in the details of life. What a perfect man was, or how a perfect man would move and act amid mortal cares and worldly incidents and divine solicitations, no human thought had approached. This, then, is the originality of Christ : the human soul, conscience, and heart find in him their perfect satisfaction — there is nothing in him that does not Sons and Heirs of God. 59 supply some want of their own, and enlarge the want whilst supplying it — yet the human soul and con- science and heart never could have produced him, and never have repeated him, and never will repeat him, if rightly we understand his relation to the world, until human nature shall have reached its last earthly development, under the educating hand of God. He is the anticipation and foreshowing of the final spiritual results of all God's earthly providence. This is the peculiarity that separates Christ from every other representative of human religion. All the mere rules of life had before been given — no rule was wanting — but yet no man knew what the life itself was. No eye had seen the salvation of God. But in him " the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, as being the glory of a Son of God unveiled to mortal sight." On both sides, therefore — on the side of the natural, and on the side of the supernatural — the specialty of Christianity, the special power of Christ, resides in the Incarnation. The heart of Christendom has always instinctively felt this fact, though, with our natural tendency to distort simple truth by idolizing exaggeration, it has permitted it to escape by raising it to unreal dimensions, lost it by unduly magnifying it, buried it in mythology through the low feeling that it was too good for us ; lost it through the want of simple yh:///^ in it ; lost it from that most fatal of all 6o Sons and Heirs of God. unbelief, that God cannot perfect His own Will in human nature — that a perfect man is not man, but God in a human form. Surely the Christian world has touched the central truth by taking the incarna- tion for the distinctive power of Christ, in being Spirit as distinguished from letter, in being Life as dis- tinguished from law ; and surely it has lost that truth when, instead of accepting it with a holy simplicity — accepting it as God's standard for a man, God's idea of man fulfilled /;/ a man — it has volatilized it into a mystery of the Divine Nature. An illustration may make this clear, though in itself an altogether unworthy way of speaking of God. When we speak of God having designs, of working with design, we are conceiving of Him under our own intellectual limitations ; nevertheless, on that path we are approaching Him in the best way we can. Every creature of God may be perfect in its kind. We know what we mean by a perfect flower; we know what we mean by a perfect gem. For every creature of God we must suppose that there was an archetype in the Divine Mind, and as the existing creation approaches to that archetype we deem it to be perfect. The archetype we have never seen, and no existing creature may have reached it ; yet we know what we mean by an imperfect flower, as we know what we mean by an imperfect crystal. For man, as for His other creatures, there was an archetype in Sojzs and Heirs of God. 6i God's Mind. That He breathed into him of His own life, that the Spirit of the Lord gave him under- standing, that He made him in His own image, did not the less define what he was designed to be. God designed in man to have a spiritual child who should know Him, and be in intercourse with Him, and consciously draw the inward movements of life from communion with Him, and yet should outwardly and inwardly be placed under all the limiting conditions that belong to human creatures. There are difficulties material and mechanical in the way of producing a perfect flower ; yet no one doubts that God could overcome them and produce a perfect flower. There are difficulties material and mechanical in the way of producing a perfect man, and in addition there are spiritual difficulties — difficulties arising out of the free will and affections of the human creature ; yet surely God could overcome these too, and educate a perfect man. He could bring human nature to its perfection ; and the perfect man would be a man and no more than man, though more than any other man, as the perfect flower would still be a flower and no more than a flower, though more than any other flower. To allege that perfection is impossible to human nature, that to call Christ perfect and call him man is a contradiction in terms, — this is the great scepticism, the great heresy against God and man that more or less clings to us all, for it has many 62 Sons and Heirs of God. forms. On the ground, more or less consistently maintained, that a perfect man is impossible, some turn away altogether from a Son of God in human nature, and some lose his personal power by confusing his nature and volatilizing him into the Deity ; and those who keep nearest to the spiritual fact do not enrich themselves with it as they might, do not apply it to their own souls as simply and severely as they ought. If a perfect man is impossible, then, indeed, it follows that religion can have no human representa- tion, that a man cannot be its adequate manifestation, that the letter cannot become Spirit and that the law cannot become Life. But then it would also follow that God has no holy Will in man, that He made him for unholiness, that He made him to be a sinner, if a holy and obedient man cannot be. Only remember, when we speak of anything under God being perfect, we mean perfect of its kind ; that a perfect man would be the man that was in God's contemplation when He created human nature ; not perfect in the sense that God is perfect, not perfect in the sense of having reached any finality of being, but in the sense of not sinning, in the sense of obey- ing God's Will and enjoying His presence, so far as it was possible for him to know God in the conditions at each moment given to him. If in this sense it is impossible for God to have His Will done by a man, and His peace in a man, then for ever have we lost Sons and Heirs of God. 63 the power of the Son of God, for ever have we lost the prayer, " Our Father who art in Heaven, Thy Will be done ; " for God has no holy Will for us, if it cannot be done. This is the fatallest unbelief, not in the rejection of Christ, but in rejecting the faith that we can on earth be God's children. Our faith is that the Word, the Mind of God for man, became flesh and dwelt among us, and we may behold his glory as the glory of a Son ; that in this sense our life, all that can truly be called our life, is hidden for us with Christ in God ; that we live, that we are in the Truth, that we have the natural freedom of God's children, only as that life becomes our life ; and for this faith there is no simpler, no directer expression, none that keeps closer to the spiritual facts, than that which Christ gave it : " He that hath the Son hath everlasting life." And as in this consists the originality of Christ, in having the light of the glory of God shining in his face, in permitting the Spirit of God to pass into his life, and have there the expression of communion with the Father which rightfully belongs to each human condition — of holiness always, though its forms varied with the trials, with the occasions of obedience ; of love always, though its forms varied with the persons and their characters ; of joy sometimes, as often as the natural fruit of the Spirit could appear, and the human sympathy permit the divine trust to 64 Sons and Heirs of God. flow out unmingled with sad compassion for the sin and sorrow of the time ; of peace and hope for ever ; — so the originality of Christianity in the world, its inexhaustible development and variety, comes through each branch in the Vine, each member of his body, opening itself to the same spirit, and according to its place, according to the expressions of it which its place permits, having the same life in God. No intellect, no philosophy, no learning, can now give any freshness, any novelty, to Christianity. No man can give a new view of Christian truth ; but any man who will devote himself to it, may give a new manifestation of Christian life : an honest desire on the part of any one of us to have our life like his, the fruit of the Spirit of God in us according to the circumstances in which we are, will at once for each of us raise Christ to his place as the fulfilment of Humanity, the Bright and Morning Star ; in relation to the ages, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. If Christianity had been a theory of God, it must have been exhausted long ago ; and if any of us are now keeping alive an interest in it only through new views and speculations, we are feeding upon affectations, and the Truth, the Reality, is not in us. Coleridge, in his " Aids to Reflection," a very precious book to those who will give time to it, has this remark : " The way to give new freshness to So7is and Heirs of God. 65 familiar truth is to begin to live it." Wonderful is it, that what still strikes us as most original, as often as we see it, as having most of a new power over us, is something of the moral features of Jesus Christ in a living person ! What unfailing freshness seems to dwell with those who are simply devoted to kindly- human sympathies, to patient dealing with suffering, in communion with God ! A divine lamp seems kindled behind the homeliest features ; their peace is drawn from afar ; with them daily life seems to be passed near the fountains of living waters. How original a real Christian would appear to a world that has so long called itself Christian ! There is no con- ceivable book that would illustrate Christ, as would a man who was daily making his life an expression of the goodness of God, and who yet sought for it no other sphere of expression than what God provides in the ordinary opportunities of each man's place. It is in pursuing this living Way, in having and in revealing the human feeling of Christ, baptized ever into the Spirit of God, that new disclosures, new illustrations of Christ, await us ; it is in simple human sentiment, with its springs in the Father, that the unknown greatness of Christie n character, the in- exhaustible riches of Christ, are yet to be manifested. On this path God opens to each individual an original career : infinitely diversified are the forms, according to the conditions of gifts, service, and obedience, in F 66 So?is and Heirs of God. which sons of God may appear, and whoever will confide in the grace that is given to him, and have no ambition but to do the Father's Will where the Father placed him, will come forth a new creation of God. In this career, a poor man is as privileged as a prince ; he has as much opportunity of letting God's Spirit enter into his life, of revealing the form of the Son of God, according to the human conditions. " He that hath the Son hath everlasting life." The great future of Christianity, the great future of Humanity, consists simply in men partaking with Christ of the power to become sons of God. " In him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men." V. CHILDREN OF THE FATHER IN HEAVEN. "Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings and offering for sin Thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein : . . . then said he, Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second." — Hebrews x. 8, 9. He taketh away sacrifices — burnt offerings, offerings for sin — that he may substitute the doing of the Will of God. It was no peculiarity of Christ to perceive the worthlessness of an ascetic religion — that outward offerings or sufferings can only represent the true sacrifices of righteousness, the surrender of whatever in the inward life is out of harmony with the holy Will of God. The text is a passage from the Psalms, and it is the burden of all the Prophets, But it was the peculiarity of Christ that in his own person he fulfilled these conditions of perfection. He who is now regarded by so many as a vicarious sacrifice has it for his supreme distinction that he withdrew vicarious sacrifice from the list of things acceptable to God, and substituted personal love, service, and obedience. Since that manifestation of 68 CJiildren of the Father in Heaven. self-sacrifice, Atonement with God is to be in the spirit of our Father, and in so far as it is given to man to be like to God, to do the works of our Father ; and in so far as it is not given to man to be like to God, to be sensitive, responsive to His touch, filial and confiding, patient and pliant under His moulding and merciful hand. " Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not : I come to do Thy Will, O God. He took away the first, to establish the second." He took away outward sacrifice, and established self- sacrifice as the way of life. The change was unspeakably great on the side of spiritual reality, of personal holiness, simplicity, and truth, but not so great a deliverance as at first might appear, if viewed on the side of ease. To be ascetic, to be self-torturing, to lay this world's wealth on the altar of vicarious sacrifice, is possible to many who yet cannot through a holy will attain to a heart at peace with God. And, indeed, to save any human heart from being oppressed by the awfulness of the new service, it is necessary to interpret it through the filial mind of Christ ; to see the Will of God so far as we are called upon to do it, not in the glory of the self-subsistent Father, but in the meek face of the Son, who has no glory but to stand in filial relations to God, and yet has all glory, because he is willing to receive all that the Father is willing to impart. For outward sacrifice being withdrawn, self-sacrifice Children of the Father in Heaven. 69 occupies its place, and the Christian motto and profession stand thus : " Lo, I come to do Thy Will, O God." And when we contemplate that, under the new law, the oblation required of us is nothing less than to do the Will of One who is all-righteous, we may readily seem to have passed from easier to severer terms in passing from the Law to the Gospel ; m passing from an ascetic to a spiritual religion, from the positive and limited righteousness of express enactment to the inexhaustible demands of love and faith — when we are required to say, " Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not ; we come to be in Thy^ Spirit and to do Thy works, O God." But this sense of difficulty is relieved, so far as it ought to be relieved, when in Christ we discern aright the spiritual relations of man, as a receptive and a dependent being, to the absolute goodness of the Father. For Man and God are in some respects distinct in the type of perfectness that are proper to each. We look to God for absolute goodness ; we look to Christ for the pattern of goodness that is proper and possible to man. And in Christ we see lines of character which are, indeed, the glories of a derived being, and the springs of ever-fresh glory, which yet can have no place in One who has none above Himself; and these lines of character, which constitute the religious attitudes of human nature, separate the type of perfectness that is proper to man from the 70 Children, of the Fathc}" 211 Heaven. type of perfectness that is proper to God. When required thus to do the Will of God, to relieve the sense of an impossible demand, we call to mind that the perfection of a man is not to be what God is, but according to the measure of our nature to be in fellowship with God, to respond rightly to the action of His Spirit in us, as a harp responds not to the hand only, but to the inward purpose of him who touches it ; though the analogy is essentially defective, inasmuch as no dead or material thing can represent the conscious response of sympathetic life. There are, indeed, some great respects in which the essence of our righteousness is not merely fitly to respond to God, but according to the measure of our nature to be even as God is, in which the difference is simply that of less and more — and to these, so weighty are they, I shall afterwards refer — but in our personal relations with the Father of our spirits, in all that we are as religious beings, the perfections that are proper to us are not the same ; rather are they in contrast with the perfections that are proper to Him. A single phrase may both convey and illustrate my meaning, if I say that man is a religious being, but that God is not and cannot be, having none above Him, being Himself the Fountain Life of all. In this is all the difference. It is the perfection of a religious man to be consciously dependent, to be receptive, to be for ever taking in Children of the Father in Heave^i. 71 draughts of fresh life from the Fountain of Life : but dependence — waiting upon another — receptivcness, are not for God ; they are relations that He cannot hold. It is the perfection of a religious man to be ti'ustfuly living by that in which we believe yet have not seen, living in and for that which we knov/ by conviction but not yet by experience, laying our hand in the hand of the Invisible to lead us whithersoever He will : but trust is not for God ; His Life is not fed upon hope, He does not walk by faith. It is the perfection of a religious man to be not self-directed but self-surrendering, to be filial and obedient, to acknowledge a Will higher than his own, to have his highest individuality in permitting the grace of God to make of him that peculiar being which the grace of God would have him to be, to find in God's service his perfect freedom, in doing with his might as he is divinely prompted, in going of his own will where he is divinely led : but self- surrender is not for God, the yielding of self to One who is wiser and better than self, to draw guidance and fulness of being from the life of Another, are not the attitudes of His glory ; these, the relations of a filial nature, which to us are the summits of goodness and of blessedness, God does not hold. And so to respond to God, to be ever in harmony with His Spirit, is the glory of our place ; whilst to be what God is, to be gods to ourselves, to aim to act 'J 2 Child^'en of the Father in Heaven. independently of God, to have a life without God, or out of God, is just the one sin by which man and angels fall. To be in the Spirit of our Father and to do His Will is, therefore, not so much something that wc have to achieve for ourselves, as something that we have to recognize and to accept — a working together with God. We have not even, like Moses, to strike the hard rock. We have only to have open spiritual eyes, souls conscious to the Fountain of Life that is for ever springing in us. Of course, I do not mean that the Gate of Life is not strait and its way narrow, for to be in fellow- ship with God's Will is to abjure self-will, and to bind our feet to a path from which there is no lawful divergence ; but I mean, with Christ, that to any one who will freely take it upon him, the yoke is made easy and the burden light : for the yoke and the burden are fitted to our nature, and our nature is dishonoured and uneasy except when under that yoke and bearing that burden. I mean that religious life does not consist in any condition that is not natural to us, or in any relation that we have to fashion for ourselves, but in a soul and a heart to recognize the real relations in which the Father Himself has placed us, so that our individual will becomes the willing captive of His holy Love. Surely it makes every difference, as affecting both our humility and our hope, whether we regard the glory to which we are Children of the Father in Heaven. 73 called as something that God offers us, and for which He has adapted us, if we will accept it, or, on the other hand, as a state beyond nature and above nature toward which we have to struggle only in our own strength. Surely the great summons, " Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling," would bring despair rather than hope, an obstinate feeling of utter inability, if the remaining part of the ex- hortation did not supply us v/ith God's part in man's salvation, with His arrangement of the conditions, and His co-operation in the work. " Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." Why with fear and trembling ? Because the work is unnatural, or preternaturally severe ? No ; but for precisely the opposite reason — because you are without excuse if you strive against Nature and against the Holy Spirit ; " for God Himself is working in you what you are to will and what you are to do." The human side of our calling, if contemplated apart from the Divine side of it — what man has to be and do, if contemplated apart from what God is and does and offers — can work only hardness and presumption, or absolute dejection. But to accept a filial relationship with the Father of spirits, who is offering it to us, and indeed forcing it upon us with all the urgency His Spirit can employ towards free beings, is clearly a condition to which our souls are competent and may be brought ; whilst to have to make a filial 74 Children of the Father in Heaven. relationship for ourselves — not to accept but to con- stitute such conditions — is an impossible problem with which religion can have no connection, which could not present itself to the thoughts of a man who understood the filial dependence of our nature, and what is meant by the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. If all that we are, and all that we are called to be, comes from the grace of God ; if He first establishes the fitnesses, and pours in the living spirit, and marks the channels of action and affection through which it is to flow, so that there needs no more from us than to accept the truth as it is, to feel the workings and purpose of God's gracious Spirit, and to yield our %vills to His design ; — then only can human aspiration cease to be proud and stoical, and become purely trustful and religious, and our state of highest endeavour become the state in which we have least of j^^-assurance ; for the grace of God that gives life, if we will accept it, gives it through the faith that does not rest upon ourselves, and the humility that feels strong only in the Lord and in the power of His might. And again I say, this is not to lessen or to lower the greatness of our filial works ; it is not reducing the sacrifice of self-will to the Will of God to show that the only heart that can be equal to this work, the only spirit that will consent to make this sacri- fice, are a heart and a spirit freed from all sense of Children of the FatJier in Heaven. 75 presumption and from all despair of success, because all that is asked of us is that we will suffer God to accomplish His purpose, and yield ourselves as instruments of righteousness to the Power that is working in us. It is a totally different thing to be asked to do God's Will through the strength of our own will and ideality, and to be asked to yield ourselves to One who, of His own accord, works in us that which is good, to accept what He is willing to give us, to believe what He will show us, to do what He will prompt us, to go where He will lead us, to walk in the paths that He makes for our feet, to lay hold on the good works that He brings under our hands, and by no voluntary act or purpose to weaken or destroy the response to His Spirit that He strives to awaken in our souls. Under this view of our calling our way will not be less strict, our cross less absolute ; but the feeling that we have a calling, and that God is the Caller, will give us a strength not our own, and deliver us from ourselves. We will lay our hands in the hand of God without fear and without pride ; our confidence and peace will have no roots of self-righteousness, nor waver with our constitutional moods of self-reliance, but will follow the measures of our filial humility and trust. A lofty ideal of our own creating, of our own imagining, which we are to work up to from our own level and by our own strength, is not a religious conception. If the hand 76 Children of the Father in Heaven. of God is not held out to us, we never can raise ourselves ; we stand then on the unchanging level of the rest of His creatures, who remain the same from age to age. The spirit of Christ is the spirit of a son who enters upon and uses an inheritance from his Father's hands ; it is not the spirit of an adventurer who has to make for himself a station to which he was not born. And, accordingly, there is at least one respect in which our filial relationship to God implies not merely the dependent attitudes of a derived towards an underived Being, but actual sameness of spiritual feeling ; not the fitting responses only of our souls to God, but a participation of nature, a share of His spiritual essence implanted in us by Himself. St. Peter, who is by no means the most spiritual of the Apostles in the forms of religious expression he employs, speaks of us as ^'partakers of the Divine Nature." And there is one central point in which the very essence of our souls is not due corre- spondence with, but actual participation of God ; not merely to be in right relations with Him, but, accord- ing to our measure, to be even as He is. " Now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three ; but the greatest of these is charity." The greatest of these is charity, for it is the only one of the three that belongs to God ; it is the only one of the three in which we are partakers of the Divine Nature. In Child7''cii of the Father in Heaven. "jj faith and in hope we are only in harmonious contrast with God ; in love we are, according to our measure, even as God is. Faith and hope are the conditions of a dependent being, who has his life within the life of Another ; the self-existent God cannot know them. His faith cannot be tried ; He does not hope, for He dwells in serene omniscience, and with Him there is no mystery and no uncertainty and no delay. But though God neither hopes, nor lives on trust, He loves; and He communicates to the souls of His children the love that is in Himself This is the one common principle, in which the Fatherly tie con- sists. We are children of God, not because we de- pend on Him, for all creatures depend on Him, but because, through a love kindred to His own, we consciously trust Him and hope in Him, and find in our own souls a ground for that trust and hope, — for we could not trust in a God, we could not hope in a God, who does not love as we love, of whose desires our desires were no image and reflection, if oitr deepest affections were in a direction from which His are turned away. Love what God loves, love as God loves, and then, and only then, measureless faith and measureless hope are divinely permitted to you ; and if you have any true faith at all, if you have any true hope at all, to that extent you must have some true love, to that extent your heart is as the Heart of God. This is the one spiritual yS Children of the Father in Heaven. essence that is common to us and Him ; the one respect in which, to use a theological term much misunderstood and much abused, we are of the same siihstance with the Father, in which He has put His own being into us, made us capable of feeling as He feels. And so long as this kind of love is in a man's soul, so long as he is conscious that it is the truest thing that is in him, he knows that his bond with God remains unbroken. He may make in- numerable mistakes, he may be vanquished by infirmity, he may suffer passion and temptation to disturb for a time the relations of his spirit ; yet so long as in his inmost heart he loves what God loves, and desires what God desires, he knows that he has not lost the spring of life, nor parted with the clue of reconciliation ; he can still approach God in the kindred spirit of a son, and aspire to a service that is perfect freedom. " Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldcst not ; I come to do Thy Will, O God." All deep moralists have seen that there must be an explanation in our own souls of why we are bound to obey the Will of God ; and the explanation is simply what the Gospel declares it to be, that we are God's children, that we are partakers of His spiritual nature, that He commends Himself to our con- science and our heart. We begin with some fellow- ship of love, and we then legitimately end with measureless faith and hope. Nothing could make Children of the Father in Heaven. 79 it right for us to obey the will of a Being to whom we had not the witness of our nature that His Will was holy. Nothing could make it right for us to worship a Being to whom we had not the witness of our heart and conscience that He was good ; to whom our compliance was reluctant burnt offering and sacrifice, and our service was from fear, not from sympathy. But if once some fire of God's holy love in us unites us to Himself, after that there may be difficulties, there may be trials, there may be in- firmities ; but, if only love remains, there can be no permanent discouragement, no deep-seated distrust, for there cannot be an ultimate doubt that it is the Will of God to fulfil in us that which is the essence of His being and of ours. We have only to deepen our love for what God loves, and faith and hope become equal to any emergency ; for how can God, though His ways may be secrets to us, ever really fail to prosper that which He loves Himself.'' It is love, then, that feeds faith and hope ; it is the purity of that one part of our souls in which we are as God, that sustains us in all those other relations — the relations of dependence, of confidingness, of glad anticipation, of self-surrender, of assured peace resting on Another ; in which we are not as God, but rather are in filial contrast with Him. And it is manifest that the character of Christ is framed, not on the type of perfectness that is proper So Children of the Father in Heaven. to God, but on the type of perfectness that is proper to man. The glory of Christ is universally conceived as the glory of a Son, as the perfection of the de- pendent attitudes of spiritual being ; of a life not self-sustained, but living upon and within the life of Another. " Why callest thou me good ? there is none good but one, that is, God." Now, there are two results of great moment : first, that it is the type of perfectness which belongs to Christ, not that which belongs to God, that is held up before us when we are required to do the Will of our Father ; and secondly, that it. is the office of Christ, as the prophet and high priest of our nature, to impart to each one of lis, by the methods he used himself, his own relations to the Father of spirits — that we become Christians as we become related to God as Christ was related to Him, as our souls become moved by the Holy Spirit as the soul of Christ was moved. All Christianity is contained in this : " Be ye children of your Father who is in heaven." If we are to be filial in the way that Christ v/as filial, then our spirit must respond to God's Spirit in the way and with the answering graces that Christ responded to Him. Christ, indeed, is our great pattern, our great example, our way to God ; but we follow that example, we are conformed to that pattern, we walk- in that way, only when he leads us to the Father, and God's Spirit acts directly upon ours. Great as Children of the Father in Heaven, 8 1 is the service which Christ has rendered to the soul, it is destruction to that service to make him a sub- stitute for God. We owe it to the Son that we know the Father as we do ; but the Son cannot fill for us the Father's place. It would not he Jiliat Uk at all, if we v/ere simply to take the stamp of Christ's good- ness, as like from like ; if God did not, in our measure, directly draw from our spirits, in their immediate communion with Himself, the same kind of responses that He drew from the soul of the perfect Son. Without Christ we might never have known the personal relations of our souls to God — in that, in showing us the Father, he is our Saviour — but no relations that we hold to Christ can adequately represent the relations that we hold to God ; no relations we can hold to one who is himself a Son can be the same, either in essence or in attitude, with the relations we hold to Him who is altogether a Father, and who is both our Father, and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here, then, are the two fundamental facts of Christian life. God of Himself is for ever pouring His Spirit into ours, seeking to make us conscious of the Fatherly relations which He is sustaining towards us ; and Christ is the one Son, the one filial spirit that was ever open to receive what the Father is seeking to give ; the one being who lived on earth the life of a holy child, in whom God was well G 82 Children of the Father in Heaven. pleased. Only in their response to the Father can our spirits be filial ; but when we are required to do the Will of God, then the image that rises before us is not the inaccessible holiness of the Self- Existent, but the dependent graces, the recipro- cated love, the conscious weakness, the waiting for strength from on high, the meek reliant goodness, the prayerful sanctity of the Son. In loving good, in loving to promote good, wc are in the image of God ; and, as the image deepens, the dependent attitudes of faith, of hope, of long-suffering, of serene confidence in the final triumphs of goodness, become easy and natural to us. Christ was equal to all self- sacrifice, to all trials of faith and hope, because he loved what God loves, and so knew in whom his trust was laid. To refresh this love by a new and, when the need was, by a more earnest act of intercourse, as by the agony of prayer in the Garden, was the means by which our Lord chased the shadows from his spirit and fed the springs of strength. "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength." Only make the fellowship of Divine love intense and conscious by acts of prayer, by habits of Divine communion, by simplicity and sincerity of life, and then the things that are impossible to men, when men are alone with themselves, become possible to men when God is in them and with them. VI. PRAYER THE COMMUNION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. "The communion of the Holy Spirit." — 2 COR. xiii. 14. There are certain unspiritual conceptions of the doctrine of Providence which, in the language of the Book of Job, serve to restrain prayer before God. If the Almighty Spirit worketh in all things, and worketh for good, the necessity for supplication is thought to be superseded ; for, by the supposition, the Infinite Tenderness is already wakeful over us, the Infinite Wisdom arranging the influences that mould us, a Power Almighty executing the purposes of a Will all-wise. And there is a physical and external sense, in relation to things not affected by the volitions of human spirits, in which it may be admitted that supplication is superseded ; but we may have the most intense desire to enter into comimmion with the Holy Spirit when we ask nothing, but to know Him, and there is no region of God's action, external or internal, in which fellowship with Him is superseded, in which personal intercourse, and the conscious 84 Prayer the Commzmion 0/ ike Holy Spirit. presence, not of His gifts, but of Himself, ceases to be the life and the nutriment of our souls. The argument, reduced to its simplest form, amounts to this : Since God, of His own infinite power and goodness, is willing to do everything that is right for us, there is no reason why we should personally know Him. It is the argument of men who seek God not for the fellowship with Himself to which He admits us, the communion of His own Nature, but for what He has to give ; who regard religion only as a means to certain desired ends, and who forget, or know not, that religion and the frame of prayer are not means only, but themselves the highest ends of our being ; that a spirit in permanent personal intercourse with God is the perfection and the blessedness of our nature. To reason against the necessity of continual personal approach to God on the grounds that God needs no urging, and is for ever acting for us, is simply to obliterate our souls — that one part of us which only a knowledge of God can fill ; in the wide circle of His blessings to discern and enjoy everything but the living Fountain of it all, and to be content to be atheists if only God would give us all we could desire without asking. Imap-ine any one reasoning in a like way in regard to that first of human blessings — a pure, high, strong, clear, and noble nature with which to hold intercourse, and have it daily penetrating deeper and deeper into Prayer the Communion of the Holy Spirit. 85 us. Suppose that we had access to one in converse with whom we invariably experienced that our horizon insensibly v/idened ; that all minor disturb- ances, all the troubled atmosphere of our circum- stantial life fell away from us, as absolutely as if we had suddenly been lifted to mountain heights where nothing acts on soul or sense that is not fresh from God ? Would any one say of such friend, " I know his capacity, and I know his willingness ; I know the true eye with which he looks into the heart of things — that the touch of his nature removes my infirmities, restores strength and clearness to my spirit ; therefore I need not seek his sympathy, for I am already assured of it ; I need not bring my feeble heart into the presence of his strong nature — he cannot be more my friend than he is " ? And the case is not altered when God is the Spirit with whom men tell us that they need seek no personal communion, because His love and power are always theirs. Nay, all the reasons for seeking Him are indefinitely increased, because it is only a spirit that lies in wait for God that obtains a lengthened audience. All souls does He move and touch, seeking entrance, but only with the soul that solicits Him does He abide. The soul that would consciously know the full presence of the Holy Spirit must wait long in contemplation before God can come to His temple and find there nothing to exclude Him. 86 Prayer the Comimmion of the Holy Spirit. Again, the doctrine of Providence is confounded with Destiny, and it is reasoned. Why pray, except so far as work and toil are prayer, since everything is in God's hands, and we cannot alter the course of things ? But we do alter the course of things : work and toil are daily fashioning anew the conditions and relations of our life ; and abstinence from work and toil is altering them still more, and always for the worse. The aspect, the meaning, the value, the power of everything, is altered for us as zve alter ; and ive alter for the better mainly as God unfolds within us, and gives the direction to our aims. Toil and labour do change everything to which man stands related, internal or external ; and what guides that labour to true ends, what sustains it in dark seasons, but our spirits' intercourse with the Revealer, the Suggester, the Inspirer of all good, — and who, if we will be fellow-workers with Him, will accomplish for us all the good His Spirit counsels } Destiny, in the heathen conception of it, may be considered as holding an unalterable course, regardless of the human tools whom it uses for its purpose and then casts aside ; but Providence, in the Christian conception of it, is considered as having no purposes but for the sake of the human agents, each individual of whom is made only that he might knov/ God and grow m His image, and therefore is it that God works so slowly on this earth, as men count slowness, because Prayer the Conniiitnion of the Holy Spirit, 87 He has to work through the wilHng souls of free beings. And, in truth^ every man has more evidence of God's connections with his own individual heart than he can have of what is called His general Providence. The one is a matter of argument and influence, the other of direct experience. No man can grasp the question of a universal Providence, or speak with express knowledge about it ; it is a doctrine of faith ; but every man may know how God has been dealing with his own heart and with his own life, what promptings He has given us, what lessons He has been teaching us, how closely a retributive Spirit of Love and Righteousness has kept to us ; what blessed consequences have flowed from simple truthfulness of mind, from simple faith- fulness of act, and what various and intricate miseries have followed the forfeiture of any pure light which God had opened to the inward eye, and commended as a guide to our way. That the whole universe is held within God's Providence, we believe; but that our own hearts are in His keeping, we kiiow — we know it in every breathing of aspiration, we know it in every sting of conscience, and we believe the first mainly because we know the last. And if prayer, in the essence of it, is a waiting upon God that Pie may manifest Himself to us, and a taking advantage of all those moments of more vivid spiritual consciousness when we feel Him near 88 Prayer the Commiinion of the Holy Spirit. to us, that we may present our souls to His action, then we may understand how " to pray without ceasing," or " the communion of the Holy Spirit " becomes possible to man. If it is the tendency of all philosophy to ascend higher and higher towards a simple Unity of Being until it reaches one First Cause, it is equally the tendency of piety to witness no movement of the universe without coming into conscious relations with its God. And he who attains to the discernment of that Unity of Cause which is the ultimate step in philosophy, should of all men be the least capable of neglecting that Communion of Spirit v/hich is prayer. Other men reason about God from His works. He does more : he meets Him in His works ; for he knows that laws are not poivers, but only modes of the action of God. Other men stand on the earth, and look wistfully into heaven, and say, " Lord, how long ? " To him God is on the earth, and he finds Him there ; or, if he finds Him not, he knows that it is through a blindness in himself. Other men acknowledge the interference of His hand in signal judgments, in sudden, unlooked- for blessings ; he in every seasonal movement of faithful Nature. Other men are awake to God in the irregularities and exceptional experiences ; he in the regularities and constant ways of life. His piety is not of that half-superstitious, half-irreligious, and wholly self-seeking kind which looks for particular Prayer the Cotnmttnion of the Holy Spirit. 89 providences, referring the ordinary course of things to profaner powers and reserving only the extra- ordinary for God, for to him everything is particular and everything is providence ; and fanaticism would assail him in vain with a sign from heaven, for to him everything is a sign from heaven, and he seeks but to read it rightly — to read it, that is, through communion of spirit with the God who is in it. They who believe in occasional interferences of God have burning moments of self-regarding excitement out of all just proportion to their habitual feeling, and destructive of the healthy tone of natural piety ; whilst they to whom every place is holy ground, and all events full of God, are fanatical nowhere, are devotional everywhere. The error of those who rest on particular providences is not that they perceive God in the special circumstances which to them seem so marked and exceptional, but that they perceive Him there ottly ; as if, absent or latent at other seasons, there specially He has come forth into relief for the unusual purpose of speaking to them. It is true that there God has found them out, and spoken a searching word to them ; it is not true that He has not been seeking them everywhere else, and with words for them as deep and rich, though haply with a dififerent lesson. " The communion of the Holy Spirit " implies an experience of God's personal influences ; and, 90 Prayer the Comvmnion of the Holy Spirit. to a discerning heart, what is there in all the experiences even of our external life that is not a divine influence, an action and a lesson of God upon the soul of man, a seeking of us that He may find us ? Whither can we go from His pre- sence ? Whither can we flee from His Spirit ? And what is communion of spirit, but the heart ever conscious to Him, and the longing desire of prayer through personal fellowship so to enter into His purposes and understand the ways of His Love, that with the trust and insight of children we may yield ourselves to every whisper of His Will ? I am speaking now not of that action of God's Spirit upon us which is for ever going on, however we may have made ourselves insensible to it, but of what we may do to give a mutual character to that action, to make it the conscious mingling and communion of God's Spirit with ours. And will any one say that a heart approaching God with this earnest desire to remove whatever separates His Spirit from ours, is not likely to have new intuitions of His Will, new experiences of His personal rela- tions to us, as well as new impressions of the sacred- ness that pervades existence ? In those rare moments of the purer happiness of this life which certainly show God's power to bless, and His will to bless so far, could we turn to Him and say, " This is from Prayer the Communion of the Holy Spirit. 9 1 Thy love ; it is the sign and the expression of Thine infinite good will," without feeling more religiously the holiness of these prophetic affections, and guard- ing more sacredly these fore-gleamings of eternal relations ; or in severe discipline could we cast ourselves upon Him with the intreaty, that since He has His own great purposes in this crisis of life, not to let them pass from us through a closed heart or an unteachable spirit, without strength and in- sight coming as the Angels to our Lord ; or in humiliation and disaj^pointment, in the weary re- membrance of presumptuous rashness and v/cakness, could we lay ourselves at His feet, with the cr}^, " O God, chasten my spirit," without the conscious- ness of a renewal of life breathed forth from " Him who dwelleth with the humble, and reviveth the spirits of the contrite ones " ? The Holy Spirit of God is for ever striving to speak to us, and prayer is but the direct act of the soul by which we hold it to Him as a mirror to the light, that we may be taken up into communion with Him, and receive His mind into our own. The light is not more ready to fall upon the uplifted eye than God's love and grace upon the soul that looks to Him ; but there is one respect in which divine intercourse does not differ from human intercourse — no spirit long obtrudes itself upon another. God cannot bless the soul with the influences that proceed from sustained 92 Prayer the ComniiLiiion of the Holy Spirit. intercourse with His Spirit, unless the soul consents to that intercourse. You can refuse to enter into His presence : He will not compel you to do so. He may, indeed, and does, often against our will, startle us for a moment by some holy solicitation. He comes at times as with the purpose to make Himself felt, and will not suffer us to take no heed : these arc His awakening calls that we turn not from Him and die ; but for any long-continued communion, the abiding of His Spirit with us, He is found only of those who seek Him. And to all who do seek Him, He not only comes in immediate acts of supernatural grace — and by supernatural grace I simply mean all those spiritual suggestions that do not belong to our circumstances, that transcend our earthly experience, that are not of our own origina- tion, and can be referred only to the Fountain Spirit who feeds us from Himself, such as a strange feeling of strength in our utmost weakness, of a peace that passeth understanding in our utmost sorrow, of a confidence in immortality reaching its height in the moments when we are looking on the face of our dead, of a divine trust felt most strongly when it is most in contradiction to all that appears — not only thus supernaturally is God present to those who seek Him, but even through the experiences that wc understand best, that seem most to fall Prayer the Communion of the Holy Spirit. 93 within the ordinary laws of our own being, does He personally manifest Himself, and reveal the workings of a living Spirit. Suppose that for a season He came forth in person from the laws, the customary methods, by which His bounty feeds us, and that we saw His own hand spreading our table and filling our cup, we are as absolutely assured now as if we witnessed such a miracle, that our daily bread comes from Him ; but the vivid con- sciousness of it which would then belong to such an experience is just that which, in our actual ex- perience, is given by the communion of the Holy Spirit to those who have it. And this alone is the significance of wonderful acts of grace. The divine Hand comes forth once that we may know it is for ever there, working invisibly beneath Nature's mantle. The divine Voice speaks once that we may for ever recognize the unspoken Word. And the vivid faith that might be excited by the excep- tional experience, is just the habitual faith of those who are in daily fellowship with God. Was our Lord's own faith strengthened by miracles ? No ; such strengthening was only for those who were not yet in communion with the Father: "This Voice came not on my account, but for your sakes." In the peace of the true and the pure, in the troubles and the goadings of conscience, in the afflictions and temptations which are the battle-fields of the 94 Prayer the Coinnitmiofi of the Holy Spirit. spirit, in the stranfre trusts and thoughts of Heaven that are borne in upon us from the quietness of Nature, in the prophetic power that belongs to the relations of the affections, in the forecastings of the soul, — in these familiar experiences the communion of spirit finds the living God. If prayer was regarded as what it is, " the com- munion of the Holy Spirit," and the natural act by which we sustain that communion, it would no longer be possible to treat it with such uncongenial mis- understanding, as, " Why pour forth the language of the heart to Him whose eye is on the heart, and who needs no language ? " or, " Why solicit with words that immutable Will which is ever loving and ever right, and with whom is no variableness or shadow of turning ? " These arc the suggestions of minds that cast a glance at spiritual questions from an outside position. For what is this but to say, " God knows me absolutely, and therefore / need not know Him ; He is willing to enrich me from Himself, and therefore I need not turn to Him and give Him the opportunity ; He is ever ready to reveal to me the meanings of all His dealings with me, and therefore I need not hold my soul to Him that He may teach me " ? One would have thought that the argument lay all the other way : " He is willing to enter into communion with me, therefore I will bring my soul to Him." The question is not what Prayer the Communion of the Holy Spirit. 95 God is in Himself, but what ive are in our relations to Him, and what we spiritually permit Him to be in His relations to us. Or how can the holy constancy of God's Will serve as a reason for not seeking personal intercourse with Him? Surely, God re- maining the same in blessed purpose and in love, all the relations between us may be changed by a growth of pure love in its ; and personal communion with Him may so exalt our nature, that the light and help of His Spirit may now have access to a soul that was closed to Plim before. We must think that all such objections are taken upon a ground that is quite upon the outside of spiritual experience ; but still the unexamined sus- picion that the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is all subjective, that we are conversing only with ourselves and not with God at all, may check the freshness of feeling, and dim the prayer it is not able to restrain. The philosophy of religion — in more humble language, the truest and deepest thought we can bring to our relations with God — is never so beneficently employed as when, leaving untouched some natural instinct, it sheds upon its exercise a justifying light, and vindicates to reason what an earlier authority had already made sacred to feeling. Is it, then, because of the very perfections of God that we are to be silent and prayerless before Him ? Does His goodness remove us from Him ? And does His knowled^je of 96 Pray a' the Coinnnuiion of tJic Holy Spirit. lis render it unnecessary for its to know Him ? For what avails it that the most quickening Friend awaits us, if we will not enter into His presence ; that God could look us into purity, if we will not meet His eye, nor give Him an opportunity of exerting a transforming action in our souls? Does any parent say to his child, " Let not that full heart speak, for I know it all : I see that it is bursting with con- fession, penitence, and the unutterable throbs of wounded love ; it is but wasted time to tell me what I discern at a glance " ? Does the communion of spirits recognize such reasoning, or would the healing of the mind follow on such treatment ? We bring our souls to God that He may exalt and bless us, not that we may change Him; that His Light may pass into our darkness, and His Spirit- find no obstruction in alien hearts to such intimations as He may give, such service as He may appoint, such co-operation and sacrifice as He may ask. We speak of our inward experiences to those whose hearts are like our own, and who have nothing but their insight and sympathy to give. How much more natural to speak of them to Him who is in those experiences, who seeks to impart through them some gift of His own love and wisdom, and fellowship with whose holy and merciful Spirit is the only true interpreter to the mysteries of His ways ! And what do men mean by those words which sound so sternly — the immutability of God ? Prayer the Communion of the Holy Spirit. 97 Why, nothing more than that we have not to deal with a fickle God ; nothing more than the fidelity with which, in tenderness to men, He here never swerves from benignant ways on which He has once taught us to rely, and whose action He has adapted to our nature and our wants. Grant it that the Heavenly Will is well ordered and sure : it is there- fore that we seek Him, and we should not seek Him if it was otherwise, we should not seek a God on whose steadfastness to His acts and purposes we could not depend. Now we lay our hearts before Him, because we know that one Light and one Love are looking into us and through us, and that we re- quire only the veil of our own evil to be withdrawn, to be conscious of their living power, and have the joy of their presence. To be in communion with the Holy Spirit is to stand prepared for all God's ways. We need it amidst our daily blessings, else we may lose their joy and sweetness, our own meetness for them, through an unholy heart ; we need it in our dis- appointments, for the cause may be in ourselves, and one of the works of the Spirit, of the Light of God shining in us, is to convince us of sin ; we need it in all great trials and duties, for nothing but the power of God Himself can enable us to bear signal witness to Him ; we need it in every impulse of our souls after a pure and blessed life, that we enter H 98 Prayer the Communion of the Holy Spirit. into God's full meanincr, and receive not His grace in vain. And the only condition of this communion is, that the sincere heart, listening to God within, and reading the mind of the Spirit for us in Christ His image, remove from itself every known evil, be true to the light that is given it, and lie in wait for more. Wherever they are found, whatever be their creed, upon such souls the Spirit of our Father " listeth to blow." VI r. THE PERFECT LOVE OF GOD. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength." — Mark xii, 30. These distinctions are not nominal ; they are not the urgent reiterations which seek to press upon the mind an all-important interest ; they do not mark different degrees, but different kinds of love, each of which is needed to make our piety complete, to pre- serve devotion from being partial in its directions or morbid in its fruits, to bring our wJiole nature into the fulness of its relations with Him who is both the Object and the Nourisher of all our faculties. With his heart man appreciates God's mercies ; with his soul he appreciates God's holiness, the living impulses of His Spirit ; with his mind he appreciates the majesty and order of God's thought ; with his strength he adores and imitates the constancy of God's Will, the righteousness of His rule ; but it is very possible for one of these principles or affections to be in a state of high vitality, whilst others are torpid and unused, not exerting the energy that is lOO The Perfect Love of God. in them to make us like to God. For this is the end of every faculty and affection we possess, to draw us towards Him in whom it perfectly exists, and from whom it receives inexhaustible supplies. There is, indeed, one quality which is at the foun- dation of all love that is of the nature of a moral affection — it is the quality of goodness. Without goodness no Being can attract our moral love, what- ever may be his other attributes. Power, wisdom, beauty, intellectual might, however they may enhance our delight in goodness when they are associated with it, cannot of themselves inspire love, in which trust, confidence, reliance, is a necessary element. A powerful Being without goodness is a Being to be dreaded and resisted. An intelligent Being without goodness is the character that is ascribed to Satan. A beautiful Being without goodness is one of those conceptions in which preternatural fiction abounds, where the form of an angel with the heart of a demon makes the fatallest of fiends. If these qualities were united to goodness they would, each and all, exalt the intensity of the love which goodness naturally inspires — they would all burn and glow together to a mightier heat — but without goodness they can be objects only of aversion and fear, or of a terrible and evil fascination. It is true that God's love for us is not called into existence by our goodness, though it would be a The Perfect Love of God. loi great and unspiritual error to suppose that it is not qualified by our characters. In the same way we are conscious of a love towards many beings of which their goodness is not the exciting cause. The love of a parent for his child is at first irrespective of goodness, and for the same child when an adult often survives the extinction of goodness. There is a love of which not goodness but helplessness is the mover, which is kindled by any need or dependence that appeals for protection or compassion ; nor is there any stronger nurse of love, of a certain kind, than the habit of standing in the relation of a benefactor and a guardian towards another. This is a love that is not created by the moral qualities of its objects, but, having its fountain in ourselves, is directed towards them by their wants and their circumstances. This, of course, can be no part of the love we have for God, though it may be the test of our love for God being perfect, that through love we have grown into His likeness ; that we are the children of our Father who is in heaven, who maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. " Our goodness," saith the Scripture, '* extends not to Thee, but only to those that be upon the earth." We cannot love God with our compassion ; we cannot endear Him to us because we do Him good. We can, indeed, make sacrifices for God. We are not denied the feeling and the I02 The Perfect Love of God. motive that we have it in our power to do something for Him, to spend and to be spent in His service. We may work together with His providence at great cost of toil and pain to all our lower strength. We are not denied the blessedness of co-operation with His Spirit, of aiding the purposes on which His own love is fixed. Through our love for Him we may be moved to efforts that nothing else could prompt, that nothing else could bring to the birth. In that He is our God and our Father, He takes us into union with Himself, into alliance with His Spirit and His providence, and invites our fellowship and help in working out the dearest interests of His holy love. If He was our King and Ruler only, He could effect His ends without us or against us ; but in that He is our Father, He has holy ends that cannot be accom- plished unless we are the children of His Spirit : for this is His end, that we should become partakers of His own Nature, and be filled more and more with the fulness of God our Father. Any Being has power over our love in proportion as we have affections, desires, and wants which find in that Being their gratification, their end, their object, and their rest ; and the love which such a Being draws to Himself would virtually be infinite if He had the power of raising the affections that He gratifies into ever fuller measures, and of meeting the hunger and thirst of their enlarged capacity. To The Perfect Love of God. 103 satisfy existing affections, to kindle them continually into intenser life, to provide inexhaustible supplies for their growing wants, — whoever can hold this rela- tion to us is manifestly the End of all our being, the Sum of the infinite series. And there are desires of the heart, desires of the soul, desires of the mind, desires of the will, desires for strong realities corresponding to our longings for pure holiness and joy ; and He who could both meet and feed all these desires, stimulate their capacity and fill them as they grow, would be the object of supreme and consummate love. Now let us see how God builds up this height of love by living appeals from Himself to us, and so becomes the End of all our being, the infinite rest and glory towards which we may approach for ever. The first claim God makes upon us is simply that of His goodness, of His pure bountifulness and good will, of His power and willingness to give joy to sentient creatures, of His manifest purpose to make existence dear to us, dear to us for the brightness that is in it, and for the mysterious hopes that naturally, and by no effort of ours, are ever born of that brightness ; the first affection He appeals to is that of gratitude for mercies ; the first love He awakens is the love of a thankful heart. The joy of a child that can give no account of the sources of its joy, that never thinks of being happy, nor reflects I04 The Perfect Love of God. upon its happiness, but simply takes its life for the natural course of things, like the carol of a bird, is absolute proof of the intention and of the loving- kindness of God. Now, understanding a man's heart, and the measure of his heart, to consist in his sensibility to goodness, in his appreciation of kind- ness, in his thankfulness for good will, is it possible to have a heart, and to recognize the divine facts of our life, and not give that heart to God ? To love God with our heart is to love Him for the goodness that has conferred life, and the opportunities of life, actual and potential, on a spiritual creature brought face to face, in clear understanding recognition, with the Spirit who made him, that He might bless him. Take simply what is given to us — what our nature, what God in our nature, offers to us all without requiring efforts upon our parts or anything more than a sensibility to the facts ; take the mighty inheritance that is in our folded powers, our conscious being, our faculty of thought, our faculty of love, our faculty of understanding God as He manifests Himself in the universe and in the soul ; take this inheritance as it lies before every man, whether he has the virtue or not to enter upon it, to cultivate it, to enjoy and to possess it — and the question of God's claim to be loved for His goodness is for ever settled. Whatever you may not understand, this you understand, that the Everlasting Spirit has looked into your spirit and The Perfect Love of God. 105 obtained a recognition, has impressed Himself on your conscience and your hopes, and mingled your life with His. If after that we can distrust His purpose, can cease to feel His hand in any dark and clouded way, we become unspiritual creatures, to whom God might say what Christ said to the twelve, "How is it that you have no faith?" I am still speaking of what He offers to us all, and not yet of the higher forms that our co-operation with Him can impress upon His gifts. For the vast wealth of our present affections, whether or not they have found their objects ; for the natural springs of desire and joy, whether or not their thirst is slaked, for the thirst itself is diviner than any comfort ; for the mercy that has followed us all the days of our life ; for the belief we have, and have reason to have, in human goodness ; for the representatives of God who meet us in the world, mementoes of heaven on the high- ways of earth ; for the radiance that projects itself, by God's will, not by ours, out of the bosom of the present, showing Eternity to our souls as a con- ceivable existence, where serene spirits breathe in love and walk in light ; — for all this that we should not give our hearts to Him who from Himself has shed it upon us, would argue an insensibility that is not in nature if the facts were seen, though it is an insensibility that will be the necessary attendant of any spiritual forgetfulness in which we consent to io6 The Perfect Love of God. live. Accordingly, in the Scriptures, God never complains that men do not love Him : He complains that we will not remember, nor look at the truth of things ; that we put away from us reflection on the facts, and that collectedness of heart from which piety would freely spring and could not be suppressed. " Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth ! . . . I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib : but Israel doth not know, My people doth not consider ! " Nor let it be thought that in this affection of gratitude, the first and perhaps the lowest element in the vast sum of our love to God, there is any mixture of selfish expectation ; for it is goodness that the heart of a spiritual creature loves, and the know- ledge of one who is good that it regards as the supremest blessing. No doubt it is possible to love the gift and have no love for the Giver, to enjoy some lower part of the blessing and have no joy in the Benefactor. No doubt it is possible to give what we call love to the Giver whilst the gifts are continued, and to cease from love, having no depth of heart to sustain it, when the stream of blessing seems stopped at its source. This does not prove that gratitude is selfish, but rather that true gratitude has never existed ; that, in the language of the great illustrative parable, it had no roots in the soil ; that though the sentient The Perfect Love of God. 107 nature touched by felt gladness moved and stirred towards love, the spiritual affection never came to the birth. It is a common case : there are many- righteous instincts in un tempted men which, when trial comes, are unseconded by the clearness of a spiritual insight and the steadfastness of a holy will, and so never become possessio7is of their souls. The love of God that is simply gratitude for mercies is manifestly an incomplete form of piety, for at the best it is only to love Him with the heart ; and, in addition, we have to love Him with the soul, and to love Him with the mind, and to love Him with that desire for reality, and intense delight in it, that comes out of the strength of the will. Gratitude alone is clearly unfitted to do the whole work of spiritual life, for it may respond to only one part of the character of God, and be unsupported by any knowledge of the holier purposes of His providence, of the holier seekings of His Spirit ; but, though incomplete, it may yet be pure, and it is the natural foundation in the good heart upon which to build up the love of all perfection. But if we were to love God only for His goodness — understanding by goodness lovingkindness, the desire to give us joy and to save us from pain — we should have very imperfect sympathies with our heavenly Father, very imperfect communion with the Holy Spirit ; we should lose Him in every cloud io8 The Perfect Love of God. of His providence ; our love would be stripped of the fellowship of those affections that belong to the highest part of our nature ; and our piety, however it might breathe in thanksgiving, could never carry the Master's Cross, and, out of the deepest shrinkings of heart and flesh, take up the great prayer of aspiration — " Father, glorify Thine own Name ! " It is possible to love God with the heart and not to love Him with the soul. It is possible to have a most tender sense of mercies and to have no craving for holiness. It is possible to bless God for His goodness and to have no fellowship with His per- fections, no desires that find their rest in the rectitude of His will, in the truth and order of His ways, in His purpose for every one of us, even our sanctifica- tion — nay, to find in these the inaccessible heights, the incommunicable properties, that remove Him from us, that make our God an awful Being, whom we know not as a Father. I do not say that in God's view goodness and holiness are inseparable in their nature, but that with men it is a possible thing to love with the heart Him who renews our mercies day by day, and yet with the soul to have no longings after the Holy One, no affections hungering and thirsting after spiritual perfection, to see no beauty in Him that wc should desire Him. And this it is which explains many of those anomalies in piety which rash men, spirits of judgment, without the The Perfect Love of God. 109 charity of wisdom, set down at once to hypocrisy and pretence. It is possible to have some of the elements of devotion in a state of quick sensibility, and to be nearly destitute of other and higher ones. It is possible to be in ready sympathy with one aspect of God's character, and to feel no attraction towards the the rest. It is possible to be tenderly alive to good- ness, promptly moved by kindness and undeserved mercies, and to have a very defective sense of moral obligation and very feeble desires for spotlessness of soul. It is very possible to fall down every day in gratitude at God's feet as the creatures of His love, and yet never to raise ourselves to look into His face as the children of His Spirit. This, no doubt, is as incomplete as Christ, in his delineation of the four- fold form of perfect love, implies it to be ; not a love of God at all, but only of the goodness that is in God as one aspect of His Being. Still it would show a great ignorance of human nature, and an uncharitable haste, to call it false ; to find no explanation but hypocrisy for the gratitude of the heart, unless it be accompanied by the aspiration of the soul and the righteous struggles of the will. And the love of the soul, which is delight in God's holiness, adds to the love of the heart, which is delight in His goodness, the glow of a stronger spirit than its own, and sustains it in existence at times when, if left to itself, it could only feed upon no The Perfect Love of God. its memories, which then would look inconsistent and perplexing, the present appearing to be all unblessed and dark. Without desires that find their end and rest in God's holiness — that is, unless we love Him with our souls — it is impossible to discern God's goodness in constant presence with us, or any interpretation of His providence that will be con- sistent with lovingkindness. For, benign and merci- ful as He is, it is impossible not to perceive that the production and administration of present happiness is not the first object of his providence ; that our holiness of aim, our inward purity, the strength of a righteous will, our power to rise above temptation and find our life in the freedom of our higher nature, the disposition in us to subordinate everything to truth and goodness, and to restrain, if necessary, the desire for happiness by the desire for right ; — that these are His chief desires for us, and that, though He seeks our blessedness as the end of all, it is a blessedness that comes to us through oneness of spirit with Himself; not a blessedness that He may shed down upon us like manna on the desert, but a blessedness with which He seeks inwardly to endow us by making us partakers of His own life. Thus to love God with the soul explains and endears in His providence what the Apostle calls His goodness and His severity, which might remain a perplexity to the heart alone ; and when heart and soul unite their The Perfect Love of God. 1 1 1 love, not only do the two flames meet, but they are no longer precarious, being then fed from fires that never die. In the same way we have, in addition, to love God with our mind, with the love that delights in truth and in intellectual beauty ; and also to love Him with our strength, with the love that finds its sphere in action, before our piety is complete, and our nature has its share in the fulness of Him in whose image we were made. There is a love of God with the mind, there is a love of truth, a thirst for knowledge, a craving for light, an intense and genuine desire, which in some high natures is a deep passion, to see things as God sees them ; there is a realm of order and of intellectual glory, a starry world which men enter with a feeling of worship, knowing it is alike boundless and in- violable ; there is a childlike adoration for the god- like power that rules by reason, and makes all gross and outward things move in obedience to the law of the Eternal thought. The faculties that find their exercise in this sphere are among the mightiest we possess, unwearied by toil, insatiable in appetite ; and God opens to them Himself, invites to the contempla- tion of His wisdom, provides for them worlds of science more ideal than art, more real than matter ; and so, in addition to the gratitude of the heart and to the devotion of the soul, draws upon Himself 112 The Perfect Love of God. the calm delight, or the rapt transport, of the intel- lectual being-. We must not strip piety of the love of truth and of light ; we must not separate the devout heart from the devout mind — to do so is to deprive intellect of its upward look, and devotion of its alliance with the Eternal Reason. Yet heart and soul and mind will fail to accomplish that whereunto they were sent unless with our life we love Him too ; unless the faculties whose realm is action, find their blessedness in working out His Will, in bringing forth into expression and reality the goodness He prompts, the truth He teaches, the beauty He unveils, the holiness He inspires. We have to love God with our strength, with the might of our will ; we have to turn our spiritual sentiments into substance, to worship Him with our energies, with the obedience that subdues all things unto Him — for this it is that brings out the life of heart and soul and mind, the reality in which they culminate. The sensibilities of gratitude are wasted ; the dream of sanctity dies in the cell, or floats on the air, or corrupts by empty words our truthfulness of soul ; the studies and contemplations of the reason move through cold space, serving neither earth nor heaven, until the desire of the zvill takes them up, and loves the living God with such strength of purpose as to strive without ceasing to mould the things that con- cern us after the patterns in the Divine Mind. The Perfect Love of God. 1 1 3 The tendency to excess which is sometimes charged on piety results only from its incompleteness ; it is extravagant only through defect — through want of balance, which is want of fulness ; it has a diseased action in one direction only because it has not action in all directions, only because it is made up of grati- tude only, or of holy musings only, or of reason only, or of incessant practical strivings without the balancing quiet of prayer and meditation, and the inward refreshings of sentiment and thought. In this, as in all things else, the Son of God is our model. He lived with God as a son lives with a father. He prayed to Him, walked with Him, spoke to Him, relied on Him, sought His help and counsel, as a God very nigh to him, and not afar off. This we must look to in our religion — that we do not discourse of Divine qualities, and lose the Divine Being ; that we do not put a Power, an Attribute or a Law, in the place of the living God ; that our God be to us a present Father, renewing the springs of our life ; whom, if we will, we may feel to draw near to us, as He drew near to the soul of Christ. We ought to be aware of a subtle danger — the danger of allowing much discussion and even real interest on matters of Religion to draw us away from God. Every one will admit that there is at present much interest in Religion, much eager inquiry as to Revelation, much anxiety and even pains to know I 114 ^-^^ Perfect Love of God. the truth ; but that is altogether a different thing from living in personal communion with God, from the constant habit of referring ourselves to His Spirit in all that we think and do, from the feeling that we meet Him face to face, and that our life is in Him. There is always this danger when Religion becomes a literature — when it is the study of records, instead of intercourse with a Person. The Mahometans called the Jews the people of the Book ; and, in fact, by being too exclusively the people of a Book, the scribes and Pharisees ceased to be the people of God. We are all in danger of being so occupied with the external history and records of Revelation, and the many interests and inquiries growing out of these, and with the external forms and machinery of Religion, that the means detain us, and do not con- duct us to the end which is to be in our own souls, by contact as of person with person, the friends of Jesus and the children of God ; not as only hearing of Him by the hearing of the ear, but as meeting Him eye to eye, and spirit to spirit. VIII. HONOUR ALL MEN. " Honour all men." — i Peter ii. 17. There will always be a correspondence between the views entertained of human nature, and the quality of the religion, the kind of spiritual influences, supposed to be adapted to it. Those who take low views of man, who regard him as a being to be ruled by terror and force, that his selfish and animal passions, for ever rising into ascendency, are not the accidents but the essence of his nature, will adopt a theology external and coercive : having no confidence in the natural spiritual sympathies of the being to be addressed, it will with- hold the finer and give effect to the more stringent influences ; its motives will be rewards and menaces, its ideas of God material and broadly humanized, its visions of futurity picturesque rather than spiritual, addressed to the senses rather than to the soul. It is the same theology that speaks of constitutional corruptness, of carnal reason, of natural incapacity for goodness ; which speaks also of vicarious sacri- fice, of imputed righteousness, of a God delivered 1 1 6 Honour all Men. from an inability to forgive, of a futurity that only in words affirms our immortality, for it cuts off the uses of immortality — makes earth the limit of op- portunity, and fixes here the everlasting hereafter. In such a theology there is an entire correspondence between the parts. Regarding our nature as consti- tutionally bad, that we are not the children of God, but the children of the Evil One, it is consistently a system of exorcism. Its views of the nature of man and of the action of God are well-adjusted counter- parts. But let us view this necessary correspondence between our theology and our estimate of man from the other side, beginning with the religion addressed to us by God in Christ, and thence arriving at our estimate, as God's estimate, of human nature, and we shall be drawn into closer sympathy with the spirit of our text : " Honour all men." If a coarse estimate of humanity implies a terrible and coercive theology, then, by parallel reasoning, a refitted theology, full of generous appeals, of spiritual persuasions, with its highest divine power in the perfect goodness of a heavenly Father, and its highest human power in the answering goodness of a perfect Son, implies a corresponding nature in the being it addresses, who must be constituted of a sympathetic temper to be penetrated and moved by so fine an instrument. Certainly the religion which God provides for the Honour all Men, 117 human soul shows God's estimate of the nature of that soul; and this is the unspeakable value of Revelation, for it teaches us not only what man should think of God, but what is yet more important to us, what God thinks of man. He is not likely to make choice of too fine a shaft when He selects a spiritual influence : and if God in Christ speaks to us through a religion which expects to do us good only as it engages our deepest sympathies, and by their attraction to heaven carries us over the resistances of earth ; which appeals to inward, spiritual, inde- structible principles ; which aims to hold us by the invisible convictions that our inward connection with God ought to be enough to prevail against the temptations of all outward things, and Jesus Christ be recognized by our souls as the Law and Pattern of our nature ; — such a religion is surely God's testimony to the natural calling of a being for whom such a religion is not too spiritual. Christianity, if Christianity is generous, spiritual, affectionate, speak- ing to the heart of man, and expecting its response, is clearly God's affirmation of the natural affinities of the human soul. The aims of the Gospel — to strengthen the inward principle until it is one with God, and in that life with God knows no temptation — to fit for the blessedness of heaven by cultivating its affections and breathing its atmosphere here, so that in heaven itself we shall be no strangers to its spirit 1 1 8 Honour all Men. and its life ; the methods of the Gospel, a sense of the Spirit of God dwelling and speaking in men, and of the need of perpetual communion with Him to maintain the pure heart, the simplicity of love, out of which are the issues of our acted being ; — these are high aims and delicate instruments, and a religion which offers such ends and employs such methods must be founded on an estimate of the nature it appeals to, in consistency with which we find it not proving, but as requiring no proof, taking for granted our felt connections with God and the invisible world, and enrolling among its precepts to " honour all men." And reverence for our nature, as made to receive and to reflect God, is the very spirit that guards the inner sanctuary and keeps pure the vessels of our peace. He who knows not what it is to stand in awe — not of himself, far from it — but of his nature, of God in him, has fallen from his place. Christ could no more say of Jiini, " of such is the Kingdom of God." He dare do that which a pure being dare not do. Who is so unhappy as not to remember the conscience of his childhood ? With what absolute authority it asserted its supremacy ; how the tempted heart took instant and audible alarm, and beat and trembled in the startled bosom, and in very terror of himself, though no eye was on him, he dare not do the wrong, he dare not carry about with him a guilt Honour all Men. 119 which, though but some childish folly, was an insup- portable agony to his haunted thoughts, and seemed to have dropped a sudden darkness on the sunniest day. We knew nothing then of an evil nature, of an alien heart, but we were better theologians than those who do. We heard God in our conscience, and we trembled to disobey. And whosoever receiveth not as a little child this law of the Spirit of God in the conscience ; whoever trembles no longer when he is about to violate it, has passed out from the Kingdom of Heaven ; and until he be converted, and become in this respect as a little child again, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. It is not from distrusting our nature, but from honouring it, that we make it a temple where we stand in awe and sin not. Condemn yourselves as much as you will, as much as you know to be just and deserved — for what ? for acting against the law of the Spirit of God in you — and seldom, indeed, will you condemn yourselves enough ; but do not condemn your nature, for that is to excuse your- selves, to excuse your own will, to take the burden of it from off yourselves and cast it upon God. Diminish a man's confidence in the nature that God has given him, and you diminish all his motives for self- culture and self- watchfulness. The less we have within of holy treasure, the less carefully we guard it. Every step lost of inward elevation makes us more reckless about what remains. If you wish to degrade I20 Ho7iour all Men. a man, show him that you hold him in h'ght esteem. If you wish to benumb his faculties, depreciate every- thing he does. If you wish to turn his heart to stone, let him know that you hold him unworthy of your kindness or your hopes. Never can a man feel the constraining obligation of what he oiight to be, until he has felt the assurance of what he might he, and exulted in his calling; rejoiced in it, though he rejoiced, as he ought to do, with trembling. Before he feels that he has duties, he must know that he has powers ; and if you deny him the one, it is a mockery to talk to him about the other. To urge a man to the race of immortality, to point him towards Jesus Christ, to tell him that it is his calling to be a follower of God even as dear children, whilst in the same breath you insult the nature from which you expect so much, — this is one of those face-to-face contradictions which no clear mind could tolerate in anything but theology. And the great demands of Christianity make it necessary that we should " honour all men," if we are to love them as we ought. How are we to be in Christian relations towards those whom we do not honour ? Surely philanthropy must have something worth toiling for, before it is asked to labour and to die. Is there not a correspondence between the interest we feel in others and the services we render them } Could there be a more effectual way to Honour all Men. 121 quicken our benevolence than to give us a new sense of the worth of a human being ? Should we not do more for others if we vahted them more ? Without supposing any overweening appreciation of ourselves, could we turn away from any fellow-man, if we reflected that our own nature, with all its sensibilities, was throbbing in the bosom we were coldly denying, or coldly wounding? The religion which requires from its disciples the benevolence of the Cross, fitly enjoins us to reverence the beings it calls on us to bless ; and that our love may have a deep spring of principle and sentiment, it tells us, not without cause, to "honour all men." We " honour all men," because all are partakers of a nature which is capable of receiving God. Every man has within himself the original revelation. Nothing acquaints him with God so truly as his own spirit. All other revelations act by purifying and brightening this living mirror, whereon God gives us the image of Himself It is not materialisvi that brings God to our apprehension, but spiritualism. God is a Spirit, and our only experience of spirit is within that human soul which, in all its essential cha- racteristics, every human being owns. It is to that that God speaks. If there be, as doubtless there are, other and seraphic natures along the line of being that stretches upwards from man to God, we know not of them, we borrow nothing from them ; 122 Honour all Men. they enter not into our realm of consciousness ; they make for us no ladder of ascent to climb the thought of Deity ; we pass at once from human to Divine. You conceive of God as purely God ; but how came you to understand what goodness is but from the Spirit of God in your own hearts ? The outward world could not impart it, for it is a spiritual feeling ; and if Christ makes it fuller and clearer than ever it was before, you understand him because by God's grace its germ is in yourselves. Take away from this our universe the spirit in man that is the candle of the Lord, and then, so far as we know, these heavens would no longer declare His glory, nor this firmament show forth His handywork. What would avail all external greatness, order, and beauty, if there was no spiritual eye to receive the glory } what the music of the spheres, if there was no understanding ear ? or the spectacle of created things, if there was no spectator mind ? One living soul is more glorious than an untenanted universe, and the meanest man on earth carries within him the spirit which alone can impart significance to the most stupendous works of God. Surely the heavens did not to man show forth the full glory of God until God produced the under- standing mind of Newton ; and if we reverence the nature which is the interpreter of Deity, we must " honour all men " in whom potentially that nature is. When we speak of honouring our nature, and of Honour all Men. 123 honouring " all men " for the sake of their nature, we speak not of those loftier forms of character which only a few have manifested, nor yet of the heroism and self-sacrifice that have witnessed to the power of the Cross from age to age. We know that the world is not wanting even in testimonies such as these ; that there are those who would be willing martyrs to duty, and make no boast of it, deeming it to be no more than simplicity of life, whom nothing conceivable could tempt to sell their souls, whom no suffering and no shame could voluntarily separate from an honest confession, from conscience and God. But we do not ask this from every specimen of our nature before we will admit that there is honour due to it ; in the light of the truest we see what all might be, and though some dishonour themselves, we must still honour the nature through which alone it is possible to save them — which has fallen because they dishonoured it, and which will rise again as soon as they begin to obey it, and to deny themselves. But though the actual goodness of human beings is not the measure for the honour that is due to human nature, we yet believe that the amount of goodness in the world, the witness for God, is under rather than overrated. The outward aspects of society are far from being the most favourable ; the purest forms in which our nature exhibits itself, even in common men, are not those which invite the gaze of 124 Honour all Men. the world, or can have public manifestations. Most men are better than they appear ; they hide from observation the best things that are in them : their weaknesses of character, their sins and follies, they cannot conceal if they would ; their goodness or their inward sorrow of penitence they both can and do. The horrible reports that daily meet our eyes are, and must be, not reports of the average goodness of the many, but of the extraordinary sins of the compara- tively few. They make such a terrible impression upon us of the prevailing evil of the world because they alone are reported ; yet, " what is the chaff to the wheat ? " The selfishness, the tinsel, the vanity, are often all upon the outside, whilst within there is a rich vein of better things which the world does not see, and of which, not seeing, it takes no account. How many instances are there in the recesses of society, some instance of it known to every one of us — of a self-devotion that never wearies ; of restraints patiently endured in the strength of parental, or filial, or sisterly affection ; of a love consecrating itself to the happiness of another, and supporting drags on its tenderness unspeakably worse than death, burning steadily not only in the abjectness of circumstance, but far more terrible trial through the repulsions of sin ; of a meek suffering, an uncomplaining fortitude which survives even when all the colour has faded out of existence, when there is no earthly prospect, Hoiioitr all Men. 125 and hope itself is dead ! Thank God ! such cases are so numerous that they can pass unnoticed. No fame is founded upon them. They excite no wonder. We expect as much from men. Everywhere do we find reason for honouring a nature which is constantly manifesting that it has some portion of the Spirit of God — pure, patient, and forgiving ; and every sacrifice to disinterested duty, every service offered in the spirit of pure kindness, every mild answer of still- enduring though long-provoked gentleness, every hour of privation, of disabled life, serenely borne, every sympathy in joys which the sufferer may not share, brings its contribution, makes us more ready to honour our nature, and therefore to "honour all men " who, in that nature, have the ever possible inheritance of God's Spirit. And there is an essential equality between man and man ; so that if you honour the man for his nature, you must honour all men. There are acci- dental differences which rise into primary impor- tance only when a man does not honour his nature. They may affect a man's starting-point, but never the goal which it is open to him to reach. The only measure of a man's permanent rank is in the truth of his conscience, in the life and force of the relation that unites him to the living God, in the righteous- ness of His will ; and when tried by this, what are the distinctions of Society, and the forms of rotting 126 H 0110117' all Men. clay that separate man from man ? They perish even here ; much more must they perish out of the eternal world. When a man lifts his eyes to immor- tality and God, no matter from what condition, no matter with what intellectual capacities, he is above the level of the common diversities of life. These are struck out of his field of vision. There are no real distinctions but in those things that qualify us to be truer members of God's spiritual family, and happier residents in God's eternal home. Does it never occur to us how the juxtapositions, or the reversed relations, of heaven may light up the re- morseful memory of unbrotherly feelings, of scorn and pride of heart indulged on earth ? How can we escape the apprehension that some one whom we have slighted, or neglected, or stung in this world, shall meet us in the world above, and by their for- giveness and magnanimous forgetfulness heap coals of fire upon our heads "i Surely, if from that antici- pated place we would contemplate our present life, some of our notions of personal or social superiority would appear to be insane, and some of our feelings towards those who seem shut up at present in a dark and blind life, towards those in infirmity and those hi sin, absolutely inhuman, full of the seeds of coming bitterness and shame. To " have the mind of Christ " in these things is, indeed, a work of no small difficulty. To be true in Honour all Men. 127 feeling to the spiritual relations of our human brother- hood is one of the highest states of the soul ; and there is no elevation on earth which would equal that of a man who, in any condition of life, had attained to this spiritual frame — an attainment open to us all. To honour our nature for itself, independently of circumstance or place ; to see beneath any disfiguring meanness a heart beating like our own, when want and coarseness, and worse than these, have deformed the exterior of humanity, when shrinking in the anti- pathy both of our physical and of our moral sensi- bilities ; to look beyond every form of repulsion to the inward living soul ; to see it, not as in itself it then is, but as it is in its nature, in God and in Christ, — this requires not only a deep principle, but a long habit of Christian love, that, through humility and much communion with God, has learned to see that what ive are we largely are by the grace of God, not by any merit of our own, and to separate the essence of our nature from all its earthly accidentals. To honour those who no longer honour themselves, and in the midst of evil not only to keep alive our good will to the sinner, but to preserve our faith in those divine powers which are darkened and degraded, requires a personal knowledge of the inexhaustible springs of spiritual life ; a trust in our nature, and in God, the Author of our nature, to which none can attain except through sacrifice 128 Honour all Men. and effort, and much fellowship with the Father and the Son. And it is a great argument for honouring all men — I do not mean a practical inducement, but a reason — that our nature, even in its lowest states, retains so much of its original instincts of self-respect that it resents the wounding of them by others, is accessible only to tones of fellowship, and opens its confidence only to a generous and hopeful treatment. It was once said as a reproach against Christ — the reproach would still speak the common spirit of the world, too largely even of the Church — " He is gone to be a guest with a man that is a sinner." And perhaps if we saw and heard Christ speaking to a fellow- being, we should at once have a fuller revelation of his spirit than from all that we have either read or thought. " Honour all men," and all forms of humanity. Honour the child. Christ did so ; and even a heathen satirist, whose honest heart was full of very bitter sarcasm against the sins of the world, saw and declared that "the utmost reverence was due to a child " — meaning thereby that it was impiety to open to its observation anything that could acquaint it with sin, or lead it into evil. Respect its nature. Do not, if possible, violate its own sense of right. Do not needlessly constrain it, nor make it afraid to be natural, nor chase back its affections to grow Honour all Men. 129 distempered in its heart, nor lead it into self-conscious- ness by praise or blame, nor ask from it expressions of feeling which it is not disposed to give, lest you commence its education in constraint or falsehood. Honour those who are near to you in daily inter- course. Upon this the happy ordering of life de- pends. It is not to be told what loss of peace, what loss of power, comes from disrespect, from want of confidence. It is not to be told what an impulse is given, even to an ordinary nature, when it feels that it is generously dealt with. Trust something to the true bonds that should hold our life together. These are not force, nor law, nor interest, but rectitude and benevolence and mutual respect. And if the wide world may not yet safely be left to the workings of such principles, if the kingdom of God is not yet so wide, shall we not at least trust them in our own homes ; and if not there, what spiritual difference is there between what we call our home, and where we are most a stranger ? Shall we have no one spot on all this vast earth where the spiritual laws are deemed sufficient, where we distrust no one, and find that we are better served, more faithfully requited, than if we did ? Alas for those who, being generously dealt with, yet in their own case render such trust im- possible ; and if it must needs be that offences come, yet alas for the man through whom that offence cometh ! K ijO Honour all Men. The coarse, the material, the mechanical bonds of society, fit to chain the unprincipled — the bonds of law and force — will be replaced by the true bonds, which are inward principle and inward love, revolting from injustice and prompting service, when by the progress of a personal purity that does not suggest suspicion, and of a personal charity that hopeth all things, we come to believe that others are in their nature at least as noble as ourselves, and, thinking no evil, to " honour all men." IX. «0H THAT I HAD WINGS LIKE A DOVE!" " Fearfulness and trembling came upon me, . . . and I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove ! for then would I fly away, and be at rest." — Psalm Iv. 5, 6. It might discover to us how largely we are under the influence of religious instincts, of a faith and hope which, however misinterpreted, are fundamental forces in us, if we were to attempt to analyze that state of mind which unconsciously connects the future and the distant with thoughts of blessedness, with the passing away of difficulties, with visions of coming peace and beauty. There is in most men an instinctive assumption that TIME will bring relief — an assurance unproductive, if unactive ; for time is no agent, spiritual or otherwise, no living power, and only provides canvas and colours, room and opportunity, for an artist's hand to work upon ; but an assurance that yet points to an original belief, not derived from and not amenable to logic, that there is a Disposer and Ruler who wills us to be blessed — that rest, peace, satisfaction, are the end and the law of our being. Futurity to a pure heart, unless a monotony of 132 ''Oh that I had Wings like a Dove!'' unused sorrow has very deeply dyed it, always appears as partaking of the tints of heaven. That unknown home which lies somewhere in the bosom of coming time connects itself with every distant hour. It would seem a natural belief of the soul that "onwards, onwards" is a movement out of a region of temporary trouble and obstructions towards a region of permanent gladness and light. And if it is objected that this is for the most part a sentiment rather than a conviction, a feeling rather than an experience, an imagination rather than a fact, that does not prove the sentiment unreal, the feeling uninspired, the imagination ille- gitimate, but only that there are pointings of God in our nature which will not conduct us to where they point without the voluntary co-operation of all the forces that are in ourselves. It does not make a feeling unreal, its pointing untrue, that we do not labour to give it its rightful incarnation, or even that God for high purposes retards its completion, and holds it long in trial and suspense. There are men who live all their days under the rebuke of their own conscience, in whom the whole earthly function of the conscience would seem to be to keep them in a state of perpetual punishment ; who are always sinning without being able to act upon Luther's dangerous advice, " Sin boldly," without a pusil- lanimous heart ; whose conscience does not give them ''Oh that I had Wings like a Dove I'' 133 righteousness, but only a sense of being wrong. Not the less for that is conscience the Finger of God ; not the less does it point right, because we only cast uneasy eyes in the direction, and will not rise up and take the way. Nothing exhibits more painfully un- spiritual habits of thinking than the common practice of treating fundamental feelings as if they were not facts — admitting them to be universal, yet denying their value as the premisses of a religious conclusion, as the foundations of real expectations. There are those who will admit the existence of a conscience, of a reproving and exalting conscience, and yet will not admit that fact to be the manifestation of a righteous Ruler, and of a spiritual organ in com- munication with Him. As well might they maintain that the admission of the shadow moving on the dial does not involve the admission of the sun in heaven. Now, what is it that causes us to connect ideas of freedom, of deliverance, of enlarged and liberated life, with all our visions of the future } Is it what we might call a chance effect of the mere act of looking forwards ; that whilst so engaged we are disengaged from present thraldom, thrown out of our shackles into free space ; that, with our thoughts cast thus far beyond us, we simply forget our actual, and for the moment we are musing drop the burden and soar on wings of light .'' I admit that the association 134 ''Oh that I had Wings like a Dove I'' of blessedness with futurity has too often no more foundation than this — that it may be neither moral, spiritual, nor practical, but only metaphysical ; a con- sequence of the direction of thought, depending on attitudes of mind, with no substantive reality. And the very facility with which we transfer ourselves to a happier future tends to defeat the seeming promise. We are apt to believe that the future when it comes will bring all that it promised with it, for it is a sort of original sin in us to read God's pointings wrong ; to discern the invitations in them, but to overlook the conditions — the co-operation to which they call us. We leave it to time, to outward change and providence, simply to convey to us what our own energies must contribute to produce. But God will not be mocked ; He will not suffer us to make His Holy Spirit a minister of weakness. He will be a partner in our spiritual endeavours ; He will not be a partner in our luxurious dreams. " What a man soweth, that shall he also reap." We all of us live too much in that faint light of the soul which just colours the imagination — that all blessedness is of God, and that God is very bountiful ; that He wills to bless us at some time ; that the happiness we paint upon the future will come with the future ; that it actually belongs to the anticipated time to which we refer it as a picture belongs to its canvas, and that they will arrive together. Is there not something of '^ Oh that I had Wings like a Dove!" 135 this indolent anticipation in the common notions of heaven ? Do we not think of it rather as a happy- place to which we are to go, than as a blessed frame of spirit which we are to make ? Do we not think of it as we might think of Eden, or of an isle of the blessed, or, as we say, of some heaven on earth, replenished with all delights, and from which troubles are shut out, so that if we were only therCy if we could but gain admission into it, we should for ever be at peace ? Is not our feeling, that it is a Paradise where no one could be wretched — oh that we had wings, that we might fly away to it, and for evermore be blessed ? And is not this to look to time, to scene, to circumstance, to bring us that which belongs only to the personal relations of the soul with God ? Yet this anticipation of heaven is so natural to the heart of man — the anticipation- of it as a state in which we are blessed, not only because we have become wise and pure, loving and obedient, but also because God is then enabled to free the outward con- ditions of existence from the pains and obstructions that beset us here, and, so to speak, in the climate of the heavenly world to give us more of the continual fruition of Himself, and makes it so easy to us to understand how this might be by certain moments of intense spiritual enjoyment of Nature which He opens to us here, — this, I say, is so natural to man that I should feel it spiritually wrong, a presumptuous offence 136 " Oh that I had Wings like a Dove !'' against a universal tendency, to say anything to dis- courage men's belief in it. Only, however far the future may transcend the present in the conditions of blessedness, as well in what we call natural as in \vhat v/c call spiritual ; however far the neiu heavens and the new earth — for the Scriptures, at least, transfer to the great hereafter all the familiar things that could represent it to us as a real life, a firmament above our heads and solid ground beneath our feet— however " the new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness" may in all the elements of happiness surpass this world, where the firmament is so often harsh and pitiless, and the earth, with a limited power of spiritual expression, often hard in its conditions, to be won only by sore labour to use or beauty — still it remains true that no external arrangements can make blessedness ; that what is pure is ov\y for the pure ; that to the impure all things arc impure ; that the function of heaven cannot be to take the spiritually unqualified into the enjoyment of God, but to open to the spiritually qualified, without let or hindrance, that which is their real life, with large opportunity — for this we cannot separate from any righteous thought of heaven — to win all perverted spirits from that which is not true life to that which is their life indeed. In the absence of any express information about the externals of heaven, our most distinct con- ception must be this — that if the Kingdom of Heaven ^* Oh that I had Wings like a Dove I ^^ 137 is within us, there will be nothing without us to disturb its enjoyment or impede its growth, along with scope and call for all that energy of being, that exercise of high faculties, which enjoyment and growth require. We have spoken of that illusion of the mind which makes heaven a vision of coming blessedness, and then takes it for granted that we are travelling to- wards it as towards a predestined goal. But there need be no illusion : this kind of spiritual imagining, though it is so capable of becoming mere dreaming, is not for nothing. We might make the future as blessed as our dream, and be receiving instalments of it every coming day as the fruit of spiritual faith- fulness and care. Nothing can be more idle than when, on the one hand, dreamers of the imagination complain of the disappointments of life ; and, on the other, men of the world rebuke the spiritual illusions of the imagination. It is on account of this mis- reading of the spiritual signs that we hear so much false morals about the deceptiveness of this world. What can be more irreligious in sentiment than this lyric of a modern poet, which yet has found its way into the hymns of Christian Churches ? — " This world is all a fleeting show, For man's illusion given ; The smiles of joy, the tears of woe, Deceitful shine, deceitful flow — There's nothing: true but heaven ! 138 " Oh that I had Wings like a Dove!'' " And false the light on glory's plume, As fading hues of even ; And love, and hope, and beauty's bloom, Are blossoms gathered for the tomb — There's nothing bright but heaven ! " Poor wanderers of a stormy day, From wave to wave we're driven ; And fancy's flash and reason's ray Serve but to light the troubled way — There's nothing calm but heaven ! " Whoever adopts that view of God's dealings with us will find what he calls heaven as much an illusion as all the rest, for this is that fanciful trifling with sacred things which cannot come into practical connection with any spiritual reality. We dream — project ourselves into the future — and then com- plain that the future, when it comes, does not bring us the fulfilment of our dream. There is a fine saying of Goethe applicable to all such expecta- tions, " That which we are not doing to-day is not done to-morrow." We must weave the web daily ; for there is no power, like the power in the fairy- tales, that will work in the golden threads in the night, and execute for us the fancy designs at which we did not labour. The future even of this world never really deceives, nor can it in anticipation deceive except by our own permission ; for the only foundations on which we have a right to build expec- tations are spiritual ones, with their sequences, and these are as sure as God is true. Only as regards ''Oh that I had Wings like a Dove I'' 139 that part of the future which depends on our own spiritual faithfulness does God covenant with us : all else, though built by us on the surest foundations of science and of law, may escape us at last, be lost to us by an accident ; not so, and only not so, whatever is involved in our personal relations with God, as to which and all that can for ever issue from it, hope, like love, never faileth. We may want discrimination, and knowledge of ourselves, amid the subtle spiritual influences of the present, to determine what our own spiritual future will be — what, at any given time, will come out of so many complex causes ; but we never doubt, in this realm of real being, that we shall reap whatever we have sown. How many libels against earthly life, as deceptive, are uttered every day by men whose simple defect is that they have too little of conscience and of spiritual will ! It is painful, even to other elements in us than the religious element, to hear the commonplaces of a false eloquence that are rung on these sources of disappointment, sometimes from grave places which deeper truth would well befit, and how men will blame everything but themselves, and, by implication, God, for what God leaves entirely in their own hands ! Our blessedness consists in reaching forth to things before — that is the peace of all men who, to use Dante's expression, are alive, and not in that state of living death which is not growth, but the gradual 140 ''Oh that I had Wings like a Dove!" consumption of a definite quantity of being. But so long as the things before are accidental things, not essential to spiritual life, they walk on stairs of sand ; not only every step obliges them to take another step, for that is true of all progress, but they carry with them no permanent addition to their peace. They are working a spiritual problem within unspiritual conditions : a necessary failure. It is the failure of all who yearn and long, but not for inward good. " Oh that I had wings like a dove ! for then would I fly away, and be at rest," is the universal sickness of the human heart that has not found the secret of peace and life in God. Childhood longs for freedom from restraint ; youth is impatient to exchange its un- burdened life for the offices, the responsibilities, the dignity, of manhood. The man finds that he is as far as ever from the sober certainty of waking bliss — that the horizon has shifted and the beckoning vision fled before ; and in such a chase the best thing we can wish for him is that he may die unsatisfied, with eyes that found no rest on earth, but seeing, ere he dies, the radiance that catches the tops of the heavenly hills. It was observed by Dr. Chalmers, a master in the picturesque treatment of spiritual subjects, that there is a certain distance at which objects must be placed to be seen to advantage : approach nearer, and the image is dismembered or disappears. We climb the " Oh that I had Wings like a Dove I'' 141 mountain to lose itself. The scenery that has most power over us is not that which has no foreground. It is far away in the distance that the verdure seems greener, and the sunlight loves to rest. It is the far-off hamlet sleeping in the valley, or cities as on the tops of Umbrian hills, exalted, like Capernaum, unto heaven, that look free from the cark and care of the world in which we live. We set out with eager- ness, and arrive with toil, to find that we have approached too near ; that we have shifted the poetic distance — to look back, perhaps, and see, now resting on the spot that we had left, the colouring that had tempted us away. Nothing that is external will bear all kinds of inspection, or all kinds of light : the noon- day sun takes the spiritual expression out of every landscape ; the most perfect picture has to be rightly placed. With outward objects of desire, with out- ward means of happiness, as with the landscapes of Nature, it is not the ground on which our feet are resting, but a magic land in the distance that makes the vision of the soul. It is this which renders all external appliances so futile for dispelling any deep sorrow, satisfying any deep want, or even for evading in selfish isolation the cares and anxieties of other people that we think do not belong to us. Trouble would take the wing of the dove and fly from its distress — it would roam the world for rest : but the troubled man, if he has only this refuge, must be 142 ''Oh that I had Wings like a Dove \ " for ever moving, away and away, seeking to forget the restlessness of the mind in the restlessness of the body; to return as he went, with a soul unhinged. The heathen moralist has told us that they change their skies, but not their souls, who rush across the seas. Sickness would take the wing of the dove and fly away, expecting to be gently treated by the breath of the South — legitimately, for here it is the body that is diseased, and physical healing that is needed ; yet even here too often sacrificing the quiet of the spirit, the peaceful intercourses, the long sun- set, sacramental hours that send their glow far into the night, in weary seekings for the rest that is not found. Ambition, ox covetousness, greed of any kind, gives its wing no rest : it may make for the ten thou- sandth time the broken resolution that if it can only succeed once more, it will give over and be content But it mistakes the nature it degrades ; even when our desires have an unworthy field, they manifest their alliance with the suppressed partner in the soul. The Eastern prince who would build a tower to the stars spent time and treasure to find at last that the canopy of heaven was as high above him as before. And it is as impossible to make a heaven, as to climb heaven, by the help of externals. Sin would fly away to divert a burdened memory, that it will not cleanse by self-sacrifice. Selfish fear, trembling at a responsibility, giving no one a claim, denying a ''Oh that I had Wings like a Dove I'' 143 sympathy lest it should involve a burden, would fly away even into absolute isolation to escape a task ; but conscience carries the worm — black care sits behind the solitary rider — and who ever fled from a post, leaving duties behind him that he dared not face, and was not flung back whence he would escape, like Jonah from the sea, or did not find the old foes in magnified dimensions waiting for his return ? If inward order is our real good, if heaven is within, if our eternal life is our spiritual life, if every- thing may disappoint except the harvest in the soul, if tJiis is the only success that God guarantees, — then, " Oh that I might fly away, and be at rest ! " is a prayer forbidden to us all. We must make peace where we are, sanctify the ground on which we stand, glorify the Lord our God on earth, and justify His providence where He has placed us. But the thirst for happiness is not for nothing. Restless desires point to a fulfilment. There is one hunger and thirst that God has promised to satisfy ; yet it is a hunger and a thirst that will never end, and will for ever grow. " Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness : for they shall be filled," But great tendencies, if not allowed their right direction, will manifest themselves irregularly, wed themselves to some poor necessity of our nature that cannot bear their illimitable strain, and so 144 ''Oh that I had Wings like a Dovef^' mercifully shatter our false life. And even when we are seeking our true life, we must look for it where we are, not where we are not. To forego the Lord's Prayer — the doing of God's Will, the coming of God's Kingdom now and here ; to be always setting our eyes and hopes on the future and the distant ; — what is this but taking the soft wings of the dove, and flying away from the only real difficulty, the only real work, which is to build up the Kingdom of Heaven within, strengthening all the spiritual elements, affections that know where their true nourishment is and refuse to feed on accidents, delight and con- fidence in truth with adequate search for it, personal intercourse with goodness and trust in its living source, fellowship with all suffering through the charity of a common nature, one brotherhood through one Fatherhood, the desire and effort to make our- selves better men, larger in spirit, in thought, in wisdom, in knowledge, in emotion, in patience, in the power of beneficent action, in faithfulness to the opportunities of doing good which God, who knows where He is leading us, casts in our way ? We shall never know any better heaven so long as we neglect this ; and we shall not escape the necessity of the gradual approaches of faithfulness in present and in little things, by looking to another life on whose coming blessedness we presume, with no roots of its blessedness in us from which we are living and '* Oh that I had Wijtgs like a Dove I" 145 growing now. There is at least a spiritual parable in the poetry of Scripture, that the dove let loose over the wide waste found no place to rest the sole of her foot, and returned and rested in the Ark of God. And even the most aged man whose earthly- ark and tabernacle are most clearly dissolving away, and the abating waters bringing very near to a renovated world, rests any real hope not on change of scene, or of love, or of interest, but in yet more of fellowship with that Qod who was ever with him, and who in goodness and mercy has followed him all the days of his life. Provided we are led to the living Fountain, and do not try to be satisfied at what the Scriptures call the broken cisterns, we need not be afraid of desire. To war with desire would be to war with Nature and with God. We are saved by hope, and hope that is seen is not hope. The Law, says the Apostle, was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ ; it raised the thirst it could not quench, opened the faculties it could not occupy. Their experience of its inaptitude to meet the maturer wants of the soul led men to the Father and the Son. In the same way the world is our schoolmaster to bring us to ourselves and to God, and its discipline, its disappointments, its blocked-up avenues which tempt us a certain way and then turn us back, its promises of a satisfaction which proved not to be in it, have failed to accomplish the thing L 146 " Oh that I had Wings like a Dove I'' whereunto they were sent, if they have not opened the right directions, and pointed the seeking spirit to springs that are never dry. It is right we should desire an ever-growing blessedness, that we may be led to where it may be found. "The depth saith, It is not in me. The sea saith, It is not with me. . . . Destruction and death say, We have heard the fame thereof with our ears. God understandeth the way, and knoweth the place thereof." It is right we should look beyond this world, were it for no other reason than this, that we know that it is not, and cannot be, our home. But this is not to teach dissatisfaction with the world. It is to sanctify the world. For the real happiness of a man at any one moment of time must also be his real happiness at any other moment of time ; it is one and the same nature in both worlds. The mere contemplation of heaven may make a man spiritually sad and spiritually barren, for there is something essentially pensive in a passive meditation on blessedness and beauty ; it excites states of desire, longings of the heart ; and desires that are doing nothing for their own accom- plishment, always weaken and waste. But as soon as desire reaches its rightful end in effort, it is blessed in its deed ; it ceases to be only God's suggestion to us, and becomes our co-operation with God, and so, in a measure, a possession of our own. It is in this way that God rewards all fellow-working with Him. It ^^ Oh that I had Wings like a Dove!'* 147 is this that enables heaven to become on earth a definite object of pursuit. If it was only our Father's house, supplied with all delights, shut in from all troubles, it might be outwards, distant, a blessedness to sigh and wait for — " Oh that we had wings like a dove, that we might fly away to it, and be at rest ! " But it is not hereafter only that God invites men to dwell with Him ; and whilst walking in this world, indifferent to none of its concerns, careless of none of its interests, with all the marks of its citizenship upon us, our spirit need beat against no earthly barrier, nor to find rest need we fly away; and yet all the while be building upon the everlasting foundations, and more and more have our conversation in heaven, whilst only keeping close to the spiritual aspects and opportunities of every mortal day ! X. THE GREATEST IS LOVE.i "Now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of them is love." — i Cor. xiii. 13. The unity of Spirit apparent in Creation is the highest evidence of the presence of a pervading God. One Will must be the Author and Ruler of a Universe, amid whose infinite variety of kingdoms and regions there are no conflicting purposes, and no inconsistencies of law. This is not merely the argument from design, which, from observing the adaptation of means to ends, and organs to functions, and faculties to the media through which they act, infers that there is a great Mechanician in the heavens ; — for all that this argument from design establishes is an intellectual God, with a power and goodness commensurate with what appears in His works. It is good thus far : — " If the world pro- ceeded from an originating Mind, then it affords evidences that it is the work of an Intelligence ' This and the two following expository sermons are reprinted from Mr. Thorn's volume on the Epistles to the Corinthians, published in 1851. The Greatest is Love. 149 possessed of kindred qualities to that which we call design in man. But in this argument, the only theological part of it is taken for granted. If a living God created this world, then the argument from design comes in to prove the commensurate depths of His wisdom and resources of His power ; but it is of no logical force to establish the funda- mental assumption, that wherever there are to us the signs of design, there must have been a prior Creator. For if this argument is valid, then how can we avoid applying it to God Himself? If design necessarily implies a prior Designer, — then what bears such evidences of design as the constitution of a mind ? The Universe itself is not so wonderful for the compass of its harmonies. The world is not so full of the evidences of design, as is the mind of God : — by what valid argument do we infer a previous Designer in the one case, and not in the other ? As a demonsU'ation even of the existe?ice of Deity, this whole argument from design cannot, we think, be regarded as successful ; nor any other of the philosophical reasonings of Natural Theology : — they all proceed upon logical assumptions which cannot be proved. If it be said, that we have but the alternatives of an eternally existing Universe, or of an eternally existing God, and that the latter is the more reasonable, —then it is obvious to reply, 150 The Greatest is Love. that where both are incomprehensible there is no logical choice — no logical probabilities ; — whatever grounds there may be for a moral conviction, a spiriUial belief. In fact, our path to God lies not through the reasoning powers. Intellect proceeds from definite premisses, and ends in definite and measured results. It can argue only from what it comprehends, from fixed points, — and it is a well- known logical principle, that a conclusion cannot contain more than the premisses from which it is drawn. From the comprehensible you cannot logi' cally deduce the Incomprehensible, — nor from the finite the Infinite. It is impossible, then, that the finite premisses of human comprehension and expe- rience should logically involve the infinite and in- comprehensible God. God is revealed to the highest faculties in man : but these are not the logical ones, which are conversant only with definite measure- ments. But the moral God, the Father of spirits, is spiritually discerned. The soul conceiveth Him, — the spirit taketh hold on Him : — through the senti- ment of a divine faith, and not the discovering force of an all-sufficient argument, have we access to and communion with Him. By the spiritual path He admits us into His presence : — when we attempt the intellectual one, we fall back into our own littleness, — for knowledge is human and defined. There is perhaps no real resemblance between the The Greatest is Love. 151 intellect of man and the Mind of God — between the creative Source of truth and power, and the mere observing and receptive mind, that slowly traces out some indefinitely small portion of their mani- festations — that originates nothing, but only deci- phers, and painfully spells out a little of what the mighty Author has written in Nature. But in all moral and spiritual qualities, there is a oneness of kind, even between perfection and imperfection — even between God and man. The affections are of the same character ; — they are touched by the same spirit, — they suggest the same sentiments, — they dictate the same actions, — they are framed and toned alike, and the difference is not of nature but of degree. Even as it was no chain of inferences from the empty tomb, and the shattered seal, and the guards become as dead men, that led to the discernment of the Lord's resurrection ; nor even the presentation and recognition of himself in bodily form, — for the disciples at Emmaus, and elsewhere, knew him not, and even Mary took him for the gardener, — but rather the moral tones of Jesus, which falling on the heart forced the faith that that heavenly voice, which they had believed stilled for ever upon Calvary, was once more a living Power, — so, they are the voices of God's Spirit, toned by infinite tenderness, that awaken the vibrations of our own, and that, recognized by that portion of His 152 The Greatest is Love. Spirit which God has given to each of us, intimate a moral Presence and Power, within the manifesta- tions of whose holiness and love we live, and move, and have our being. It must not for a moment be supposed, however, that the existence of God is less certain to us because He is spiritually discerned — not logically inferred ; — for, in fact, whatever be the instruments and avenues of our knowledge, faith lies at the foundation of them all, — nor have we any security for the reality of their communications except a moral trust Man must have faith in God that his sensations, and physical expectations, do not deceive him, to the full as much as he must have trust that the intimations of conscience, the self- sacrificing sense of right and justice, the spiritual discernment of the perfect, do not lead him wrong : — and if God can betray by the voices and aspirations of the spiritual nature, we cannot conceive what ground of confidence any man can have that the impressions of the senses, or the deductions of the intellect, are infallibly secure. It may be, as philosophers have thought, that this beautiful Uni- verse is all an appearance, — that there is no such thing, — and that, like the murderer's air-drawn dagger, it is but a creation of tJie mind. We know no ground that any man has that his senses are not deceiving him, but moral trust in God. It may be. The Greatest is Love. 153 if God and His goodness are not to be taken upon spiritual trust, that this world of apparent order is itself but a designed fallacy of the senses, a con- trived chimera of the intellect, and that at some time — at death, for example — we may awake from this mocking dream of design in an everlasting chaos ; and certainly it is a gross inconsistency for any man to be free from this fear, who puts no faith in the pure revelations of conscience and the soul. If God can deceive upon one set of subjects, or by one set of mental instruments, where can be the security that our whole mental being is not a dreadful deception ? The most irreligious of men unwittingly ground some of their deepest convictions, such as the constancy of Nature to her laws, upon a religious foundation, even upon the constancy of God to His moral purposes, — upon faith in the truth and holiness of the Author of their being. And when this faith and spiritual sensibility are lively and tender, and trust in the truth of our faculties, in the religious intimations of our nature, is regarded as the highest sign of a devout mind, how numberless are the concurring evidences of the one Spirit and Power of God, and, amid all the diversity of His operations, of one loved design which His Providence pursues ! When the soul has opened to the filial faith that the God who created the human spirit after His own image, is also 154 TJie Greatest is Love. manifesting Himself to it in His outward symbols of Creation, — a harmony of moral design appears to bind together the influences of His Universe, — one divine breath thrills through all things, — as even the smallest leaf has infinite connections, and feels the influence of earth and sky, of light and warmth, of air and moisture, — and the Apostle's vast doctrine becomes one of our own spiritual discernments — " that all things are ours, whether the world, or life, or death, or things present or things to come," — that all are ours — spiritual ties which our God holds with us. And it is the Will of God concerning us, that the same unity of spirit which is apparent in Creation should be apparent in all the influences which we exert, and which are exerted upon us through the minds and characters of our fellow-men. God acts directly through the spiritual influences of the ex- ternal Creation ; — in these He is sole agent : He has chosen His own manner of manifestation, and is undisturbed by the interference of man. Nothing is wanting but the religious sensibility in us — the discerning spirit — to open up all the communications with God which, in infinite ways. His works, as the immediate expressions of His Mind, directly convey. And the same variety of divine manifestation which the outward Universe exhibits, is repeated again in the infinite diversity of the gifts and influences of The Greatest is Love. 155 individual minds : — and nothing is required but the same religious sympathy, the divine power of charity, as an animating sentiment in every heart, to impart a unity of purpose and direction, a convergence to one common end, to all the wonderful variety of mental working, faculty, and form. How gloriously are all the manifestations of its Creator which external Nature sets forth, exhibited afresh in the phenomena of mind ! The sublime of Nature does not equal the sublime of Thought ; a good man is a truer image of spiritual things than the loveliest landscape ; the eye of devout trust is more calm and holy than the watching stars ; the light and the compass of genius is brighter and vaster than sun or ocean ; the sighing of the evening breeze is not so soft as the human whisper, so full of love and mystic meanings ; and the faithfulness of conscience, the inviolable law in the soul, is more worthy to picture the moral constancy of God, than the orderly revolutions of the heavens. God acts with as infinite a variety through the souls of men, as He does through the forms of Nature ; and if the divine grace of charity dwelt in tis, the one spirit and purpose of His Providence would show itself in the convergence of all our individual gifts and powers, to the common centre of the Universal Good. Charity, then, is that sentiment which imparts to whatever distinguishes individuals, the same common aim and tendency that 156 The Greatest is Love. belong to the Providence of God itself. We have not perhaps an unspoiled word in our language, that faithfully represents it ; — and we cannot but think with humiliation, that if the sentiment itself had been more common amongst us, as the prime prin- ciple and method in our spiritual nature — if our popular religion had been more deeply imbued with it, valued it more justly, and sought it more fer- vently, as the essential element of the Kingdom of Heaven within, — the cliarity of Christ would have shone out in our religious language above faith and above hope, as indeed their source, the well-head of all the living waters that spring up into everlasting life. This "charity" is a sentiment, or pervading ten- dency of the character, rather than a particular affec- tion. It is the constant temper of the heart — not the warmth of individual attachments. It acts uni- versally, and before personal affections have time, or opportunity, to be formed. It does not depend on association, or local connections, or the relations of mutual interest, which create so many of the strongest and most faithful bonds of earthly fellowship. It exists independently within the heart, and is not excited into life, as the passions are, by the attrac- tions and solicitations of its objects. It acts at all times, and amid the most novel or the most revolting circumstances — as truly as amid scenes most familiar. The Greatest is Love. 157 and with beings most endeared. It is the sympathy of the spirit with God, with Humanity, and with Nature. It is the quick and living sentiment to which the Divine in Life is never long obscured — which keeps the spiritual ear open to the still small voice, and the heart, undimmed by self-seeking or the soiling breath of sensual desire, as a pure mirror to receive the images of grace and truth, from the Spirit of holiness and love that dwells in all things. It is that spirit which, without effort, and by an unbidden impulse, finds itself in gentle communica- tion with every condition of humanity, — to which no joy of another's heart is unnoticed — no grief of another's heart indifferent ; — which feels an involun- tary thankfulness rising up to God for every scene of human happiness it is permitted to witness — for every evidence that the world is not so wretched as we sometimes deem it to be — for the cheerful voices of labour — for the song that shows the still light and uncrushed heart of tasked poverty, and for the laughter of children in dismal and neglected streets. It is the spirit that feels the bond of a common nature with all sentient things, — and that, in fact, has acknowledged that bond in the most emphatic way, by giving to a sympathy with the animal creation the remarkable name of humanity. It is a spirit which, when not a natural gift from God, it is the last and most perfect result of the discipline of life, 158 The Greatest is Love. and of the religious care of the character, to frame within the heart ; for it is not an affection that can be excited by its objects and nurtured by outward warmth, but the very temper and spirit of the soul itself — the mild and reconciling eye of meekness and sympathy that looks with one love on all things. It is the uniting, reconciling, atoning power of the moral and spiritual Universe. Intellect may give keenness of discernment. Love alone gives largeness to the whole nature, some share in the comprehen- siveness of God. We have attempted to describe a sentiment, which it is impossible to define. Let us, to show its living presence, instance some of the moments in the life of Christ, when this sentiment of "charity," rather than an affection for any particular beings, gave its colour and direction to his thoughts and deeds. — When he understood the Baptist who understood not him, and chose a moment when John had given expression to his distrustful impatience, to do full honour to one so unlike himself in views, methods, temper, and expectations, — "Wisdom is justified of all her children : " — when he passed out of the Temple for the last time, knowing it to be the last — the rejected and despised, — and his eye happened to fall upon the widow and her mite, and his whole soul passed into hers, — and the blessing of the Lord's rejected fell in fullest sympathy upon her : — when . The Greatest is Love. 159 for one short hour he was the accepted Messiah, and with an absent mind stopped distractedly on Olivet, and amidst shouts of triumph, unheard by him, was weeping for woes not his own : — when with sinking frame, and as long as his wasted strength could support it, he bore his cross to Golgotha, — and some hearts wept for him as he passed along, — and the spirit on the freshness of whose love no weariness had fallen seemed to lose the sense of his own position in his intense sensibility to theirs — " Women of Jerusalem, weep not for me ; weep for yourselves and for your children : " — when, upon the cross, the love that never faileth rose above the sense of suffering, and sustained itself by the suggestion of mercy, in the truth of which, since he urged it, let us believe — " Father, forgive them ; they know not what they do:" and, as a last instance, when he returned again to earth, and the possessor of im- mortality, now God's acknowledged and exalted, breathed unchanged the tenderest ''charity" of human brotherhood, and singled out one heart that had been faithless but now was anguished, and which the bitter shame of recent desertion and treachery would have forbidden to approach his Lord, — to drop into that heart, through special words of remembrance, the balm of his reconciliation and forgiveness — "Go tell my disciples, and Peter, that they meet me in Galilee." Such, in living i6o The Greatest is Love. . manifestation, is the charity " which thinketh no evil, and seeketh not its own, — which rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth." Respecting this, the inward sentiment of all large natures, of every peace-making life, the following statements are made in this celebrated chapter. That it is the soul of whatever is great and good, whether in intellectual, or in practical, excellence, — without which they either perish, or by becoming spurious and self-idolatrous lose their power to bless ; that there are certain characteristics, by which its existence in any heart is infallibly made known ; and that it is not only of a more divine and immortal nature than any of the intellectual endowments of our being, but is the highest^ form of the moral element in man, and ranks first among the things of the spirit, above faith and above hope. I. Let us take the outward forms of intellectual, and practical, excellence in the order in which St. Paul states them, and examine for a moment their spiritual dependence upon charity. Suppose an eloquence without disinterestedness, without sim- plicity, without earnest sympathy with the wants, sufferings, happiness, and improvement of mankind. Suppose a Demosthenes without patriotism, with a venal heart. Suppose a Paul preaching the Gospel ' This, of course, is true only of that love which loves all that God loves, and loves nothing that God does not love. The Greatest is Love. i6i without divine love, or Christian affections in him- self. What would then be the sustaining spirit of such eloquence ? Ambition, the love of power, self- seeking, ostentatious vanity. Every noble thought would have a base origin, — and every generous senti- ment be a mean falsehood. Is such the inspiration that gives to gifted speech dominion over the souls of men ? Or, is such the eloquence that refreshes the very heart from which it came, by the burning glow of elevated principles and honest sympathies ? The most effective utterance is ever the most direct, simple, earnest, truthful. Unrivalled is the energy of persuasion, that proceeds from the tones, and looks, and kindling eye of unselfish sincerity. What is rhetoric, to the simplest word of love and truth ! Only that which comes from the heart long continues to go to the heart ; — and the world has not been without examples of the highest eloquence of in- tellectual genius, because suspected to be unsound at heart, losing the faith of men, and becoming as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Next, suppose intellectual eminence, vast know- ledge, without the bond of charity — unconsecrated by beneficent connections with mankind, by co- operation with God. Could the pride of unused, or abused, knowledge sustain, and dignify, and give a sense of satisfaction to that lonely mind ? Or, is any thought more dreary and awful than to pass a M 1 62 The Greatest is Love. life in the study of the truths and laws of that Infinite Mind, with the spirit of whose Providence the heart had no sympathy, — to live in the cold pursuit of Infinite Wisdom and Eternal Order, and have no bonds of the affections with Him, — to know ourselves gifted with such capacities, and gain by them no approving Love, standing out of spiritual harmony with earth and heaven ? Once more, suppose the outward semblance, and actions, of practical excellence, without its inward truth, — almsgiving without charity — prayers without devotion — fastings without humiliation of heart — the martyr's stake without the martyr's trust in truth. Does this do good to any one, or deceive any one ? It cannot imitate even the outward mien of goodness. The false spirit works out through it, and betrays it. The heart is false, and perishing before God. Of such semblance we can only say in the words of St. Paul, — "It is nothings and it profiteth nothing." II. There are unfailing "signs," by which it is manifested whether this sentiment of charity is the spirit of the character. The tree is known by its fruits. The religious and the moral character, though they bear infinite variety of fruit, have but one root ; — this holy love, this divine sympathy with goodness and happiness, and the desire to reproduce them, — this harmony with the merciful tendencies of Pro- vidence carried into all things, — and all the virtues The Greatest is Love. ■ i6 J of the Christian life, active and passive, are the flower, and bloom, of this one spirit. Then, the spirit of love must work the works, and speak the tones of love. It cannot exist and give no sign, or a false sign. It cannot be a spirit of love, and mantle into irritable and selfish impatience. It cannot be a spirit of love, and at the same time make self the prominent object. It cannot rejoice to lend itself to the happiness of others, and at the same time be seeking its own. It cannot be generous, and envious. It cannot be sympathizing, and unseemly ; self-forgetful, and vain-glorious. It cannot delight in the rectitude and purity of other hearts, as the spiritual elements of their peace, and yet unnecessarily suspect them. Love taketh up no malign elements ; — such are not its natural affinities, — its spirit prompteth it to cover in mercy all things that ought not to be exposed — to believe all of good that can be believed — to hope all things that a good God makes possible — and to endure all things, that the hope may be made good. It is not that charity is slower to recognize actual evil than malignity itself, — but that it is quicker to see good. The purest spirit must ever have the finest sensibility to the presence of evil, — but it suggests it not, and it loves not to linger with it, or to dwell upon it; — "whatsoever things are true, holy, just, pure, lovely, — it thinks on these things." III. The intellectual distinctions and graces of our 164 The Greatest is Love. being are relative and temporary.^ It may be that the very faculties by which our present knowledge is attained are only adapted to the present condition of man, and are of a perishable essence ; — but in all ages, and in all worlds, the spirit of sympathy with the pure and good must be of the substance of our peace, our principle of harmony with the will and the works of God. Charity never faileth : love, the very same love that we experience now, can be super- seded in no world where God and blessed beings are. Knowledge may fade, like a star out of the meridian sky, as a light unsuited to that diviner day. What vast stores of knowledge prized on earth, shall find no scope in heaven ! The erudition of the critic, the learning of the biblical student, — a few words of actual converse with the Church of the first-born, with Prophets and Apostles, will sweep it all away, — if there indeed its doubts and questions have any sig- nificance at all. The profound knowledge of law which a lifetime has acquired ; — the science of disease to which only the finest discernment and the most unwearied patience can attain, — the theory and practice of the common arts of life ; — these can have no application to a world spiritual in its framework, ' A distinguished philosopher. Dr. Thomas Brown, has suggested that a greater keenness of sight might make visible the constituent elements of all bodies, and so render unnecessary the analysis of chemistry. TJic Greatest is Love. 165 and not subject to want or death. The powers that have been exercised and trained therein may, indeed, be nobler instruments for eternal progress, — but this knowledge is for the earth, and the immortal faculties may cast its burden off. Our partial knowledge of God, and of divine things, may have to be utterly transformed in that perfect state whose full light is attended by no shadows, nor manifested under the conditions, which possibly a state of discipline may here impose. As the guesses and fancies of a child are to the insight of a man, may be the relation of the earthly to the spiritual mind. Here we see as through a glass, catching reflections and hints. This material universe is often a veil over God's presence — a hiding of His power. In this state, then, our knowledge of divine things has no analogy to God's knowledge : but we love as God loves ; the moral affection is the same in essence. And even of the imperishable directions of the spirit, love is the only one that is common to us with God ; — it is the only element, in which we are par- takers of the Divine Nature. Faith must be for man eternal ; — never can confidence in God be dispensed with, and heaven shall fully establish the childlike trust ; — but God has no part in this sentiment, — the faith of the everlasting Father cannot be tried. Hope can never die out of the deathless soul ; for ever must a noble and blessed being, a child of the Infinite, 1 66 The Greatest is Love. aspire to higher perfection, and reach forth to things before ; — yet hope is not for God, — He knows not the sentiment, — it belongs not to the Perfect One, the Blessed for Ever. But love is God's as ours ; and it is ours only because it is God's ; and out of it spring our hope and faith. Love is the very essence of the Eternal's Blessedness, — the moral Spirit of the Divine Nature. Love is therefore the highest part in man ; — the source of whatever is divine in us ; — our only fellowship with the Father, — our sole salva- tion, and fitness for the inheritance of the saints in light. This is not for a moment to exalt love above holiness, — for we speak not of the love of the heart only, but also of the love of the soul, the mind, the strength, and so love cannot remain inviolate, self cannot be extinguished, except in a holy being. Now abide for ever faith, hope, charity, — these three, — but the greatest of these is charity. XI. AN UNSELFISH SERVANT OF THE TRUTH. " By manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to all con- sciences of men, in the sight of God." — 2 Cor. iv. 2. The love of popularity, a desire for approbation, when made a principle of action, is perhaps the most corrupting and the most disappointing of all the affections of our nature. It is corrupting, because it turns the regards of the mind in a selfish direction, defiles the motives by substituting the love of praise for the love oi praisezvoj't/wiess, — and destroys truth and simplicity of soul by introducing among the inward sources of life temptations of a foreign and worldly character, that either interfere with the pure and natural movements of the mind, or dishonour and deform them by bringing to their aid the alien supports of selfish ends. A man desiring, on any question, to see where right and principle would lead him, can no more bring his own accommodation and indulgence into the foreground of his thoughts without corrupting his moral sight, than a man can introduce the love of commendation into the con- sultations of his soul, without at once insulting and 1 68 An Unselfish Sei'vant of the Triith. silencing the divine oracle of his spirit. The praise of God is the only praise the love of which can influence a pure mind ; for there only the two motives, the love of approbation, and a supreme regard for the highest truth of the conscience, cannot interfere. We do not say that it is the only praise, which when it comes as a reward is pure or sweet, — but that when regarded as a motive, as one of the determining influences of the character, it is, for adults, the only praise that is safe and holy. And the desire for estimation is disappointing, as it is defiling. It is one of the retributions of God, that if the reiuards of virtues are suffered to occupy that place in the affections, which in a genuine and holy mind is given only to the virtues themselves, the self-seeking becomes transparent, and the end is lost. Honour and love must follow us : we must not follow them. If we seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, these are some of the things which are " added unto us." But if these secondary things become principal objects with us, not only will the Kingdom of God and His righteousness never be ours, but the very reputation or estimation to which we made these spiritual things subservient, will flee from us ; — we have lost the charm of grace and truth ; we are no more genuine ; the hollow and selfish motive looks out through the eager and restless eyes ; the uncon- sciousness, the freedom from all self- reference, which An Unselfish Servajtt of the Truth. 169 is the winning power of goodness, is brought into contrast with the determined self-seeking of that artificial mind, — and a character is contemplated with which no emotion of admiration or love can possibly coalesce. Yet no man with Christian affections can be insensible to opinion, or set at defiance the appro- bation of those with whom his life has connections. To live in opposition to those upon whom all the influences of our characters are spent, is the next saddest thing to living in opposition to our own hearts. The worldly vanity that overrates estimation belongs indeed to a weak and low nature ; — but there is something dark and malignant, almost terrible, in the inhuman pride that can stand aloof from sympathy, and find the regard of others not necessary to its peace. The commendation of our fellow-men, it would thus appear, must never enter into our motives of action, and yet is necessaiy both to the happiest states of our hearts, and to the most useful workings of our characters. If we are to do good in the world, there must be a moral sympathy between ourselves and those whom we bless, — and yet if we are to do good in the world, no sympathy but a sympathy with God must be permitted to influence or determine the spirit of our inward mind. These conditions can be reconciled, only as St. Paul reconciled them in his relations towards the Corinthians, by combining 170 An Unselfish Servant of tJie Truth . holiness, or truth of mind, with a perfect disinterested- ness of the affections, — by seeking the good of others, not their love or praise, — by desiring to be to them a source of blessedness for their sakes, not an object of interest for Jiis own ; — having confidence in God, that only by adherence to His truth can any real blessing be communicated to man, and having a generous faith in man, that those who never accom- modate themselves to wrong, nor corrupt a principle, will have their place of acknowledgment among the true benefactors of the world. St. Paul had incurred the danger of losing the affections of the Corinthian Church. Their religious habits, and the make of their minds, demanded that he should permit them some other spiritual supports than the simplicity of the Gospel, — some other approach to God than that communion which spirit holds with spirit, — some other and more ostensible means of salvation than the inward purification of the heart and life, — some outward way of ceremony which the materialist might tread with certainty, and make sure of heaven, — or some lofty and mystic doctrine, conferring a privilege 011 the speculatist to scale its heights by an intellectual path. In the midst of the animosities excited by the simple preach- ing of Jesus Christ the Saviour to the opposite tendencies of Greeks and Jews, — the one diverging from practical religion in the direction of superstition, An Unselfish Servant of the Truth. 171 and the other in the direction of speculation, — St. Paul committed himself and his ministry to two great principles : first, that he used no instrument to open a way to their hearts but a manifestation of the truth ; and secondly, that no personal aim or selfish interest entered into his ministrations. The pure truth of God, and a pure love for those to whom he preached it, made the spiritual trusts, in the strength of which he cast his bread upon the waters. In the first verse of this fourth chapter, the expression of the absolute confidence in which he commits himself to the simplicity of the Gospel, is perhaps obscured by the phrase " the hidden things of dishonesty," which imperfectly conveys the real meaning, namely, " that he had renounced all such concealments of the truth as result from a want of moral courage." The sentiment, and indeed the emphatic word, are the same as occur in the Epistle to the Romans in a similar connection — " I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ." " Seeing, then," says St. Paul, "that we have received such a ministry, as we have obtained mercy, we faint not amid discouragement, — but have renounced the concealments of false shame, — not using artifice and management, nor adulterating the word of God, — but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God." What was this truth, the absolute possession of 1/2 An Unselfish Servant of the Truth. which the Apostle thus confidently claims ? Is St. Paul, after all, to be reckoned among the doctriiial leaders, who hold that some abstract truth is the salvation of mankind, — and that its manifestation to every mind can be obstructed only by the corruption of the individual will ? Not so : — the truth he here speaks of has no connections with the speculative knowledge, or the inferential views, which never can be entirely freed from the uncertainty that belongs to the fallibility of the intellectual faculty by which they are derived. Truth, in relation to Christianity, always means in Scripture spiritual reality, in opposi- tion to the shadows, the symbols, the idols, in Lord Bacon's language, whether of the feelings or of the intellect, which mankind had substituted for divine realities within themselves, — for truth in the inward parts. There are many spiritual emblems in the Universe, many types of God, many shadows of the Infinite, but there is only one thing that really represents Him, and that is, the soul and the life of a good man ; — all the rest are symbols, figures, material veils ; but this is a similitude, a divine reality — a spirit partaking of His own nature — not the emblem, but in some measure the image of God. So also arc there many modes of worship, — the breathing rite, the emblematic ceremony, the temple service, the speculative approach and contemplation ; but there is only one worship that is a reality, and An Unselfish Servant of the Truth. 173 that is, the reverence, and faith, and fih'al love that fill the soul of a good man, — the sense of God's presence, in the power of His personal character, within the spirit of the worshipper. This was the sense which Christ attached to the word triitJi, when he explained to the woman of Samaria, who Vi^as inquiring of the modes of eternal worship, — whether on Zion or Gerizim was the service which God pre- ferred : " God is a Spirit, and not to be worshipped by emblems of any kind, but by realities of the soul, in spirit and in trtith" This was the sense which he attached to tridh, when he said, " I am the Way, the Tnith, and the Life, — no man cometh to the Father but by me," — for he was the Reality of that union between God and man, which is the new spiritual creation, in and for each of us, which religion con- templates as her true, indeed her only work, — and by the realization of which within the individual soul, we can alone have access to our Father. Now, emblematic, or speculative manifestations of God will be significant or not, according to the modes of conception, the habitual associations, or it may be the scholastic training, of the mind to which they are addressed. To the unsusceptible imagination, or untrained intellect, the emblem may be a veil which no light shines through, and the speculative repre- sentation a cloud of words, which convey no living truth, — and this attributable to no moral defects in 1 74 An Unselfish Servant of the Truth. the individual, but arising from the accidents of education. But the peculiarity of that manifestation of God which is here called the truth is, that being not a dim emblem, nor an abstract speculation, but the very reality of divine things, the breathing image of celestial love, blessedness, and purity, it is a direct appeal to the spiritual nature, and cannot be rejected or unrecognized without implying the deadness and insensibility of the moral affections. The worst thing that can be said of the moral state of any heart is, that it does not know the signs of true goodness, when it lives and speaks before it. As face answers to face in water, so does goodness imprint an image on the pure and ready mirror of a good heart ; — and if there is no perception of its presence, there is no possible explanation but the absence of the assimi- lating affections, — that the soiled or worldly heart is not of a nature to seize and reflect the rays of spiritual beauty. If God gave us a revelation of Himself, conveyed, — not in shadowy types, which, as the emblematic forms of the material universe, are only figurative representations, — nor in abstract words, which express only intellectual conceptions, — but by the actual manifestation of His own character before us, — if He would withdraw the awful veil that con- ceals His presence, and take us into personal relations with Himself, — if He would afford us the opportunity of any real communication with His goodness, — if An Unselfish Servant of the Truth. 175 our heavenly Father would but permit us siicJi means of recognizing the tenderness of His regards as make known to us the unfailing love of earthly parents, — if we could know what, in relation to us, were the actual thoughts and counsels of our Father's mind, — if but for once the eye of God would look upon us, that we might see the Love that beams in it, — if but for once we could hear the voice in which Infinite Mercy would speak to us : — then, that would be a revelation, unbelief in which would be an absolute impossibility, except on the supposition that the moral nature was utterly alienated from God, and there was no common spirit between them. Such a manifestation of the infinite and invisible Father is indeed impossible ; — nevertheless the revelation He has actually given us is of this kind. It is a revela- tion not by emblems, but by realities ; the infinite God has given us an image of Himself; He has pro- jected all the spiritual features of His character upon the soul of Christ, so that he could say, " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." We cannot see the Infinite, but we can see that perfect representation of Him on the scale of humanity, which is the most direct outward appeal that the Spirit of God can address to the embodied spirit of man. A spirit reflecting the moral features of God is the nearest approach to God Himself, — and a revelation coming in this form could be rejected only by a heart that 176 All Unselfish Servant of the Truth. had deadened, or destroyed, its natural affinities with the Divine Realities. It is in this way that St. Paul speaks of Christianity, as of a living image of God presented to the higher nature of man, so that if that higher nature has any remaining life, it cannot avoid recognizing the Divine Reality. " If our Gospel is veiled," he says, " it is veiled to them that are destroying themselves, — to those unbelievers whose minds the god of this world hath blinded, so that the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, cannot shine unto them." There are two facts involved in this Apostolic statement : first, that when not abused and defiled by worldliness, the soul of man is naturally fitted to receive divine communications from God, to recognize His goodness, and know itself His child ; and secondly, that Jesus Christ, by his perfect repre- sentation of his Father's spirit, awakens all these higher susceptibilities, and acts as an instrument of divine attraction to draw the soul into spiritual union with God. The fullest and truest conception of Christianity would be obtained by developing the significance of that description of Christ, which represents him as the image of God. An image gives all the proportions of the original, though upon a smaller scale, — as when some boundless expanse of earth and sky is pictured, in every feature, on the smallest tissue of An Unselfish Servant of the Trnth. 177 tender nerves within the eye. Thus when Christ is called the image of God, it is meant that what God is on the scale of Infinity, that Christ is on the scale of humanity. God possesses every moral attribute that characterized Jesus, and in the same relations to each other, — but in an infinitely greater and fuller degree. The moral features are the same, — only, in the one case, on the scale of created being, — in the other, on the scale of the eternal and immeasurable Mind. Thus, Christ's spirit of mercy is the image of God's love ; Christ's holiness, of God's holiness ; Christ's active goodness, of that Beneficence which worketh ever, and interrupts its loving con- stancy by no Sabbath pause ; Christ's union of sinlessness with compassion for sin, the image of that holy yet forgiving Father, whose arms are ever open to the wanderer, though He says to that holier child, who strays and wanders not, " Son, tJioit art ever with Me, and all that I have is thine." The divine light diffused through the Universe, and in all the workings of Providence, was concentrated within the soul, and in the person, of Christ, that he might convey directly a representation of God to the soul of man. " God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined into our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." If, then, we would know the moral character of God, we have only to look on the face of Jesus N 178 An Unselfish Servant of the Truth. Christ, and then lift our thoughts and hearts to the Infinite Original. If Christ was merciful to man, — then God is infinitely merciful. If Christ was forgiv- ing to the penitent, and had no difficulty in reconciling his personal holiness with the throb of mercy, — then God is infinitely compassionate, and his tenderness to the penitent is one form of his moral perfection. If there was no unforgivingness in Christ, there can be no unforgivingness in God, — for the image must be faithful to the Divine Original. Whatever moral feature, then, you find in Christ, ascribe it to God with an infinite fulness ; — and whatever moral feature you do not find in Christ, ascribe it not to God at all. Such was the truth by the manifestation of which, in its simple purity, St. Paul commended himself to the affections and consciences of the Corinthians : it needed only that it should be preached without mixture of personal objects or regard to self, to bless and justify its Apostle. This is the link of transition, that leads him to speak of the sufferings which for their sakes he willingly encountered, in the preaching of this Gospel : " But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us." The same faith in God, and love for man, which had supported the Author and Finisher of this truth himself, must also supply the inward strength of its persecuted Apostles, in the An U^iselfish Servant of the Truth. 179 days of worldly conflicts, and of martyr zeal. Even the Lord Christ had this spiritual treasure in a frail and earthen vessel, so that the excellency of its power was only realized by a sustained, and some- times struggling, faith in the invisible things of God. As Jesus mourned over in dejection, and upbraided the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done because they repented not, as though he must abandon that hard and thankless race, — and then, revived by trust in God, uttered with new and more fervent tenderness the appeal of undrooping love, " Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest ; " as he sunk into trouble of soul under the contemplation of that awful weight of responsibility which was to press upon his bowed and suffering form, and in an hour when he would be alone in the world, only that his P'ather was with him, — and then rose into the light of the divine purpose that had been clouded for a brief moment — "Yet for this cause came I to this hour : Father, glorify Thy name ; " as the words of the remembered Psalm, learned in childhood's hour, fell, perhaps half unconsciously, from the trembling lips which agony had parted — "My God, why hast Thou forsaken me ? " and then, to show that that spirit could not be forsaken, those lips closed for ever in strains of faith — "// is finisJied : Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit ; " so, with all who would i8o An Unselfish Sei'vant of the Truth. lead his life of faith, and amid the outward forms and shows of things live true to the hidden spirit and secret purposes of God, the outward man perishes, and the outward life discourages, and the inner man of faith and spiritual endurance must be renewed from day to day, — and only through looking not to things which are seen but to the things which are unseen, if they are pressed they are yet not in straits, — if they are perplexed, they are yet not in despair, — if they are persecuted, they are yet not forsaken, — if they are cast down, they are yet not destroyed, — and that if they bear about with them the suffering and the dying of the Lord Jesus, it is, that in his strength, and by God's blessing, the life also of the Lord Jesus may in some degree be worthily imitated, and repre- sented in their mortal frame. It is remarkable that in this passage St. Paul, speak- ing of the persecution and sufferings he endured for the sake of his children in the Faith, uses the very same sort of language which, when used by the same Apostle in reference to Christ, a speculative ortho- doxy interprets into the doctrines of atonement and vicarious death. He was "continually delivered up to death, that a divine life might be communicated to them ; " " all his sufferings were for their sakes," — "and death worked in him that life might work in them ; " — he was willing to meet affliction and death, if he could only thereby accomplish his mission, and An Unselfish Servant of the Truth. iSi impregnate them with Christian life, " knowing that He who raised up the Lord Jesus would raise up him also, and present him together with those whom he had begotten in Christ." Then, at least, would his trust in the truth, and the love in which he ad- ministered it, be justified by God. And the source of all this spiritual confidence, and the source, too, of all the strength that any spirit has, not in sufferings alone, but in prosperity's most favoured hour, and amid the bloom and life of the most blessed affections, is derived from that inward eye which "looks through the things that are seen and temporal, to the things that are unseen and eternal." Affliction — mental distress — the pangs of pain and death ; — these indeed may be seen and witnessed — and dread and awful they are ; yet when most lingering, they pass like a dream, and are among the things that are gone for ever ; — but the unseen purpose of God into which the spirit entered abides for ever, a wreath of unfading glory for the now sainted head of meekness and patient trust. And does not prosperity itself require us to enter into the unseen spirit and purpose of God as much as, perhaps even more than, affliction, which brings its own warnings, and spiritual suggestions, with it? What, but this blindness to the unseen purpose of the Spirit of God, turns many a life of outward blessings into the deepest miseries of a burdened existence, 1 82 An Unselfish Servant of the Truth, and takes away that inward peace, that Hfc of the soul with God, without which we cannot drink of the springs of joy that gush up in our own dwellings, and follow us in our daily paths ? And who that looks to the seen, and not to the unseen, would dare to encircle his heart with the wasting affections of a nature crushed before the moth — with the perishable ties of mortal love ? No ; — there is not one sacred hour of the heart's intercourse with others, in which we are not looking to, and living upon, the nnsee?i. The eye that looks on us is but the material organ of an unseen spirit's love ; — the familiar voice that speaks to us draws its tones from an unsearchable heart whose life is hid with God ; — the very hand that is clasped in ours has a pressure of tenderness that belongs not to flesh and blood, and is an impress from the unseen soul. Blessed then be God, that they are the things that are seen that are temporal, and the things that are unseen that are everlastinsr ! XII. A TRUE MAN UNCORRUPTING AND INCORRUPTIBLE. "We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one." — 2 CoR. vii. 2. There are in this chapter some of the inconsistencies of feeling that belong to a generous nature, when its affections are brought into intimate relations with those who are not altogether worthy of its love. It speaks out of the fulness and richness of its own heart ; it takes no grudging measure of what tJiey may be worthy to inspire, but pours out upon them a love and confidence that come from inward springs. Yet as such natures are genuine, as well as generous, the bare and unadorned truth will at times be forced upon them, the barrenness of the hearts on which they have shed their light and warmth will lie exposed in all their bleakness and poverty, — and there will be alternations in the bosom, of gushing affections, and chilling experiences of the unworthiness of their objects. In a strong and noble heart the generous affections, whether deserved or undeserved, will always regain their 184 A True Man sway, and must at last create in others the characters they have presupposed. Such changes are not properly inconsistencies ; they are not shifting and capricious feelings in relation to the same objects, but the just and natural emotions of the same heart according as its own strong trusts, and tender longings, and ardent sympathies, are in sole possession of its thoughts, — or the painful images of barren and unanswering natures are filling the mind, and pressing too dis- tinctly upon fainting hopes. We have here St. Paul, at one moment, pleading with the Corinthians for their confidence and love, — and in the next, rejoicing in his possession of them ; — at one moment asking for his place in their affections, stating his claims in the spirit of one who was doubtful of his position, — and in the next, glorying in their obedience, and express- ing an assurance that they would justify his most confiding hopes. His claim indeed upon their moral love was one which the infirm side of human nature is slow to acknowledge, even where it is maintained with the wisdom of the serpent and the harmless- ness of the dove. He had been simply true in his spiritual treatment of their case ; — he had not helped them to disguise or cover their sins ; he had made no compromise with their pernicious doctrines ; nor hesitated to disturb their habits, and their ease, by clear exposure of the dangerous laxity of their Uncorrtcpting and Incorruptible. 1S5 associations and their friendships. He had even touched the unsound spot, placed his hand upon the sinner among them, and demanded the separation of the diseased member ; — he had singled out the super- stitions, and speculations, that were disturbing the moral power of the Law of Liberty, and he had required their renunciation of the very world in which they lived, since they could not breathe in it safely, — " Come out from among them, and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing," — rather than that evil communications should corrupt good principles, and their yet feeble faith inhale some polluting influences from the surrounding habits of an idolatrous life. He had suffered no evil thing to cleave to them without laying his hand upon it, and now with a clear conscience, as one who had dealt honestly with their souls, he could stand before God, and advance the highest claims which one human being can have upon another, — spiritual faithfulness, — sacredness preserved, and sympathy not violated, — fidelity to all moral interests, as the first duty and the only love : — " Receive us : we have wronged no man, we have corrupted no man, — we have taken advantage of no man." What other benefits, kindnesses, compliances, or unmoral self-sacrifices and reluctant yieldings of a gentle nature, unwilling to give pain and unac- customed to oppose, — will compare their weight of 1 86 A True Man love with a service of tliis kind, witli that noble truth which breathes a higher sentiment through the weakness of the affections, — which has the strength to resist evil, — which holds that it has no life when it ceases to be sacred, and that its highest function towards any other heart is to be a pure, full, and unsuspected witness in whatever relates to the interests or the perils of the moral principle ? For no support, when we are right, can be derived from those who are ready to yield to us even when we are wrong. Those who cover our sins, cannot sustain our virtues. Those who are ready to soothe us with their indulgence and soft flatteries, when we are weak and erring, have lost the privilege to hold us up, when we must stand alone against unmerited reproach, and follow our own conscience against the world. Those who nurse our weakness, abdicate the . power of ministering to our strength. And so, simple compliance yields everything that is worth keeping or living for ; for to have the opinions and the sympathies of another entirely at your command, unable to resist the spell of your influence, is just to lose all the moral uses of that mind, inasmuch as it is impossible to draw from it any independent support. And hence the holy necessity of sympathy being kept in strict subordination to inviolable truth. There is no lack of kindness in the world ; the instincts of humanity are gentle and tender ; what is Uncorrupting and Incorruptible. 187 wanted is that these instincts should become honoured and sacred, — that the heart in its nearest relations should ally itself with the calmest fidelity to con- victions of duty, — that no other part of our nature should have the power of compromising our holiness, our individual sense of right. It is in the closest intercourses of life that temptation to this unfaithful- ness abounds, — sometimes from natural partiality, leading to weakness and blindness ; sometimes for the sake of peace ; sometimes through the fear of giving pain ; and sometimes from the prevailing influence of a stronger mind, ungenerously used ; and then there are two seducers, the tempter and the yielder. For it is treasonable to love, as to duty, when our communion with others is suffered to break our fellowship with God, — when that which the heart permits condemns the conscience, — when the interest that another has with us, or the power of persuasion that another has over us, leads us away from strict union with ourselves, and so dethrones the moral principle which is the light and guide of the affections. These are the unconscientious con- nections and intercourses that " corrupt " the heart of life. When the mere tendency to assimilation, the immediate sympathies, are stronger than the moral principle, the elements of highest influence are all cast away, and the most intimate connections are the most actively engaged in weakening the character. 1 88 A True Man As parental love degrades itself to a mere instinct, except when it manifests its tenderness through the guidance of sentiments of the most unyielding sacred- ness, — -so our moral connection with others becomes low and selfish whenever, either in our inward or our outward life, it interferes with the simplicity and truth of the individual mind. Indeed, only weak or selfish affections could thus consent to live ; the generous and self-devoting ones would never expect either to receive or to confer good, if by any com- promise they quenched or dishonoured the light of God and truth within themselves. Not that it is necessary that we should become censors of one another, — or that there should be even a show of interference with our moral liberty. To deem it a duty to press our notions of right upon all around us is often, even where we are most right, only a mischievous activity that betrays a very super- ficial sense of the deep and individual sources from which moral acts must spring, if they are to have the least value in themselves, — or to be of any genuine efficacy in elevating the character. In the equal intercourses of life, it is no part of our social responsi- bility that the more enlightened conscience should insist upon making a direct conveyance of its superior knowledge to the less instructed, or that the honest and faithful conscience should demand an account from every lapsed and faithless one. It is enough Uncorrupting and Incorruptible. 189 that we are clear, unambiguous, uncompromising', in our own words and lives, — that by manifestation of the truth we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God, — and that if any man sins or tampers with conviction, ive have not made his fall easy to him, or helped to conceal the light that condemns him. Of course there are cases when our duty goes far beyond this, — when more is de- manded of us than open and consistent example, — when every bond of sacredness requires that we should come into direct collision with the evil thing, lay our hand on our brother's shoulder and search his very heart — remonstrate, entreat, persuade, warn, and rebuke, with a manly and a holy freedom : but the general moral action of society is not of this nature, and is mainly carried on by each man being simply true to himself, without any thought of exert- ing an influence on the sentiments of other men's hearts, or the directions of other men's lives. And this is the purest and the most effectual exertion of moral power, because it acts simply through the maintenance of its own sincerity, and without offence to those personal jealousies which resent direct appeals. Rarely indeed would the necessity for direct interference be found to arise, if society and individuals made their convictions respected, by never participating in their violation. Without any public man assuming the position of a censor, or contracting IQO A True Ulan the reputation of a purist, public honour might be maintained inviolate, if public assemblies encountered every exhibition of the corruption of the times with a cold and forbidding sternness, whose severe, though unuttered, repulse dishonour would be forced to understand. If the principled, without any assump- tion, were simply true to themselves, the unprincipled would quickly find their standing. The mere nega- tive action of every man of honour, in his cold with- drawal from dishonour, simply refusing every species of association with it, would preserve at a high standard the purity of public opinion, by far the most important of our earthly tribunals. And it is not the corrupt alone who are the corrupters, but even the personally pure, so long as they withhold at least this negative counteraction, a decided manifes- tation of the absence of all sympathy or co-operation with any public man stained with corruption. Again, in private or domestic life, or in the common inter- courses of society, without any one being required to take upon himself the invidious office of direct reproof, how effectually might social offences be subdued, and graver corruption made to know itself and its place, if the truth and sincerity of every individual heart deliberately refused to lend the slightest cover to the wrong — if the inward sympathies of the con- science were regarded as better guides than the false courtesies of usage — if no man's levity or folly Uncorrupting and Incorruptible. 191 received the patronage of insincere smiles, and no man's coarseness or profligacy could show themselves in intimate communication and friendship with gentle and honourable minds. The law of Christian purity requires no man to be a reprover of his brethren, but it does require every man to make manifest his own conscience, to hold himself apart from every associa- tion with evil ; and if this is not done — not offen- sively, but uneqidvocally — the sounder part of society cannot say that it " has corrupted no man," — for it has borne with corruption, and smiled upon it, and taken it by the hand, and kept its company, and God may charge the guilt upon those who have done nothing to abate the evil, even as He declared that He would require the souls of those who died in their sins at the hands of the prophets who had raised no warning voice ; for now all are commissioned prophets, charged to reveal the holiest light that is in them, that God may be glorified. It is evident, indeed, that when St. Paul says of himself that " he corrupted no man," he was not sup- posing that any one had charged him with the direct introduction of vicious influences : — he was contem- plating that corruption which he might have pro- moted, by withholding the light, which he had the power of directing against it. And in this sense, the real corrupters of society may be, not the corrupt, but those who have held back the righteous leaven, the 192 A True Man salt that has lost its savour, the innocent who have not even the moral courage to show what they think of the efifrontery of impurity, — the serious, who yet timidly succumb before some loud-voiced scoffer, — the heart trembling all over with religious sensi- bilities, that yet suffers itself through false shame to be beaten down into outward and practical ac- quiescence by some rude and worldly nature. Such unmanifested, and acquiescent, consciences must not plead, that they have been "wronged," and "cor- rupted," and " taken advantage of," by the stronger and coarser natures : they are the wrong-doers and corrupters, for they have sinned against light, and refused their mission. And the mind that administers a moral influence, simply because it must be true to itself and show its love in union with its holiness, whilst it sustains the sacred character that belongs to all pure affections, clothes that sacredness with the mightiest powers of persuasion. For moral influence breathes a different spirit, and works totally different effects, when it is felt that it comes necessarily from the truth and consistency of the mind that imparts it, — and when it is suspected that it is an intended lesson, purposely designed to awaken or instruct a defective conscience. These arrows of influence should be stripped of their barbs, and strike without being aimed. They should be seen to come down upon us from calm heights, Uncorrupting a7id Incorruptible. 193 from a fixed sacredness that cannot alter, — and without disturbance of the passions. When the heart preserves all its tenderness, and the conscience all its sacredness, and the moral act is one of simple truth and love, there is hope that the personal influence, because perfectly pure, will be perfectly effective. No sooner does St. Paul find himself placing his claims upon the Corinthians on grounds that might imply something of a moral separation between them, than he adds the assurance that the affections were not disturbed, and that the very freedom with which he had spoken manifested a love towards them that, by betraying no higher interest, might be able to justify itself in the sight of God: " I speak not this to condemn you, — for I have said before, that ye are in our hearts, to die together and to live together." And, like every noble nature, he dealt even with their wrong in that spirit of confidence which exalts rather than depresses, and lifts above the evil in the same moment that it is exposing its existence : " Great is my freedom of speech towards you, — great is my confidence in you : I am filled with comfort, I exceedingly abound in joy under all our tribulation." Again, at the twelfth verse, he affirms with something even of the exaggeration of a right principle, that it was not their wrong-doing, nor any sentiment of his mind in relation to the evil merely, but his love for them, and his desire for such a union O 194 A True Man of the affections with them as God could approve, that had led to his freedom of remonstrance : — " If, therefore, I so wrote unto you, I did it not for his cause that had done the wrong, nor on account of him that had suffered the wrong, — but rather that our earnest affection might be manifested for you, as if God were to be its witness." We have also the picture of his own sufferings, whilst the effects of that remonstrance were yet in doubt, — all the symptoms of a sensitive mind that can consent to give pain even to the guilty only because the highest truth and the highest love require it, — the inward suspense and fear — the outward restlessness and change of scene until the anxiety was removed — the hurried sending of one messenger after another — the deep thankfulness when the assurance came, that he had touched and purified the evil, without wounding or embittering the heart. There is a remarkable expression in the ninth verse, showing the sense that St. Paul enter- tained of the injurious, and even corrupting, effects that might attend moral interferences not conceived in the purest spirit : — " Now I rejoice, not that ye were grieved, but that ye sorrowed to repentance : for ye were grieved after a godly manner, so that ye have received no damage from me in any respect." No wonder that, with that tender respect for humanity, his pure and healing influences excited no hostile and Uncorrupting and Incorrtiptible. 195 counteracting passions, and stirred only that spiritual sorrow which renews the heart : " The sorrow that has relation to God, worketh a renewal of the soul unto salvation, never to be repented of, — but the sorrow that has relations only to the world, worketh death." Here is the whole spiritual philosophy of contri- tion in a few pregnant words ; — its uses and abuses marked with a distinctness in the separating line, of which moral subjects rarely admit, and which only a master's hand can draw. The sorrow that brings the heart into relations with God, is his healing messenger, drawing closer our communion with the Source of our being, and leading to that repentance which is only another name for a new and diviner life ; — whilst the sorrow that does not bring the heart into healing and strengthening relations with God, but settles on the worldly aspects of our grief, calls no angel emotion to unbar our prison doors, but leaves us to ourselves in that hour of woe and weak- ness, — alone with our humiliation, our darkness, our anguish, and our sin. The sorrows which the same affliction awakens, may be so absolutely different in kind, as to have nothing moral in common. It may be the godly sorrow that restores spiritual life : it may be the sorrow whose eye is on the world, that sinks in moral death. The sorrow of conscience : Is it affected most by our altered relations to the world, or by a new view 196 A Trtte Man of our relations to God ? Does it arise from a sense of outward evils entailed upon us, or from a sense of zuhat we are luitJdn ? Is it only the burning shame of exposure — the agony of disgrace — remorse for the forfeiture of reputation — and self-contempt for all the folly that has involved us in this social humilia- tion and loss ; — or is it the deep sense of inward unworthiness, the consciousness of an abused, dis- honoured, injured nature — a grief of the spirit for its own weakness, unfaithfulness, self-abandonment to evil ? In the one case, it is a sorrow that reunites the soul to God ; — in the other, that leaves it with the world. Again, the sorrow of adversity: Does it look to the worldly, or to the spiritual aspects of a changed condition ? Is it for the loss of outward prosperity, honours, influence, position, — or does it regard an abridged power of moral action and spiritual culture ? Does it brood over the external circumstances, as cause and consequence, or does it lift itself up to see the hand and will of God, as its ordaining Source ? In the one case, it is a sorrow that worketh abjectness and prostration of spirit ; in the other, that leads to an experimental knowledge of the divinest truths, — that " a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth," — that " man lives not by bread alone, but by every word that proccedeth out of the mouth of God." Uncorrupting and Incorruptible. 197 Aerain, the sorrow of bereavement : Is it selfish- ness, or tenderness? Is it anguish, or is it love? Does it centre on the outward and worldly change, and the personal loss? Is it the rebellion, or the devotion of the heart? Is it too feeble and earthly to be constant, in all outward change, and to draw living emotions and support from an unseen being? Or, does it contemplate the spiritual facts, and fill the lonely heart with the images of heaven, and breathe its air? In the one case, it is the sorrow of the world that leaves " the dead to bury their dead ; " — in the other, it is a divine affection, drawn from the Source of love and goodness who has given us the earnest of His Spirit, and sanctified by the faith "that there are no dead, for that all live unto God." And the signs of a sorrow derived from a sense of our true relations to God are, that it is a sorrow that has fruits ; it is not remorse but repentance, — not despair and dull death, but new life ; it belongs to a changed heart abjuring its former self, and "working carefulness, fear, struggle, vehement desire, unsparing self-punishment, and retribution." ' And whoever would awaken these saving emotions in a lapsed nature, must treat it with the Apostle's reverence, and approach it with the generous trust that inspires the sense of power. To some of us there may appear a tone of exaggeration in St. Paul's address to these unconfirmed penitents : " I rejoice 19^ A Tr tie Man Uncorrtipting, Incorruptible, that I have now confidence in you in all things : " — but this is the spirit that reaches a heart that has anything noble in it, and produces new effort and watchfulness, rather than unjustifiable self-reliance. And there can be no spiritual healing without some self-reliance ; and the best part of salvation has regard not so much to the height of our attainments as to the soundness of the heart, the trust we can now repose in our honest desire for reformation. And thus, not spiritual healing, but corruption dark and stern, may be occasioned even by the truth, if unaccompanied by the love that awakens some saving emotions in the heart. And thus, a man may sin, most deeply, in uttering even merited rebukes : he may administer moral lessons of unquestionable truth with a poisonous effect ; and by the rudeness and hardness of his touch, turn even the germs of new life in the soul into deadly roots of bitterness. — And thus, in all parts of character, Christianity requires us to act with the presence of all our forces, with a union of contrasted qualities. And to be equal to the divine work of moral healing upon earth, one must be in the spirit of the Master, full of grace as of truth — with something of the blended goodness and severity of God Himself, — so as to speak the truth in love, to yield no principle, yet lose no sym- pathy, — to " corrupt no man," by speech or silence, and yet stir no emotion less sanctifying and gentle than " the godly sorrow that Icadeth to repentance." XIII. AS A LITTLE CHILD. " At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven ? And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." — Matt, xviii. 1-3. There were two occasions on which Christ set forth the spiritual condition of childhood as the natural image of the right permanent relation of our maturer years to God and to the Universe. That relation of dependence, of love, of undoubting reliance on their all-sufficiency, which for a time the little child in- stinctively holds to its visible parents, the parents should for ever consciously and reverently hold towards the invisible God. Some women, led by a natural sentiment, desired that one so holy should bless their children, as if a virtue must proceed from his touch. The disciples would have repelled them, but Christ took them to his arms with the astonishing words, " Of such is the Kingdom of God " — that the freshness, simplicity, receptiveness, unexhausted wonder and trustingness, which are natural to the inexperienced child, must 200 As a Little Child. be preserved by the experienced man as the highest signs of the life of his spirit. Again, the disciples, regarding themselves as special favourites, disputed about the places which they were to hold in the kingdom of their Master. He rebuked this selfish spirit by the declaration that if they were to enter into heaven at all, to know the frame of its spirit, their hearts must be as free from such ambitions as the heart of the little child, who looks upon all people as equal, and has not the smallest understand- ing of class differences, of this world's ranks and distinctions. What, then, are the natural characteristics of children, which, coming to them without effort and without praise, it would yet be the highest goodness and the highest blessedness in a man if he was enabled to retain, in connection with all his wisdom, experience, temptations, daily struggles, knowledge of evil, and the deadening power of custom ? The child, in its first years, is entirely open to impressions from without. Its own individuality, or self-consciousness, does not yet obscure or distort the image of anything that God presents to it. It lives in immediate contact with Nature, and receives direct into the soul, through the senses, the spirit she breathes, the joy she imparts. All the spiritual experiences of a child arc of the nature of sensations. As a Lit lie Child. 201 God, through His Universe, impresses it at once with wonder, delight, trust, love, and ineffable dream- ings and imaginations. A man is apt to lose this immediate communication with the Universe, with the symbols of God in His works. The man has so coloured his mind with his own cares, thoughts, sins, selfishness, and sufferings, that he sees nothing but himself ; his nature is no more a clear unoccupied mirror, on which God can impress spiritual images ; he is too busy or too anxious, too worldly or too care-worn. And as the spiritual life of little children is quite receptive, offering itself freely to God and Nature for whatever they can impress upon it, and not, as at a later age, colouring all the Universe with their own inward world of small thoughts and cares, so is their life of duty quite external, and therefore free and healthful. There is no morbid self-inspection, no waste of the energies of work in barren conflicts with self, in questionings of diseased feelings. Their way is well defined and clear. They live under a distinct rule that troubles them with no uncertainties. They know what they ought to do, they know what they ought not to do, and all the rest is boundless liberty. When their simple duty is discharged, and they are free from the infringement of direct com- mand, their sense of irresponsibleness is complete, and the joy, natural to all who are unburdened, 202 As a Little Child. breaks out in the exuberance of innocence, undis- turbed by any shadow of sin, or fear of an invisible and often incredible Lawgiver. To men duty comes in such questionable forms, with demands at once so indefinite and so innumerable, that seldom can they be so true and faithful, so equal to all difficulties, that conscience, by the natural blessing of God, sets them free from all uneasy reproach ; so that even the best men are apt to live in a morbid fear that God looks upon them as short-comers — a fear which takes the natural joy out of life. And the same externality of life gives not only great vividness, but also an entire unity to the per- sonal affections of childhood. The instinct of a child in regard to those with whom it lives is something totally different from the complex judgment of a man. Children do not qualify or balance their feelings. They take Vv^ith unerring truth the impression of character which the obvious facts express, and adhere to it without abatement, though there may be much that they cannot understand. Hence a child's faith in a parent who deserves the name is absolute ; it has received the impression direct from Nature herself, and it cannot be set aside. In opposition to so much experience it has no doubts and no misgivings ; for as yet it is not a questioning and sceptical, but simply a receptive, being. Its affections are not matters to be reasoned about, but strong personal experiences. As a Little CJiild. 203 It does not believe ; it feels and knows. And this which the child thinks of the parent is just what the parent will not think of God. He will not let his love and faith grow out of his simple experiences of God's goodness. He will not let his heart come into such immediate communication with the heavenly- Father as the heart of the child does with himself; and so, instead of imbibing an ineffable trust through feeling and knowing and experiencing, he drops the personal contact with God, and loses faith simply by ceasing to look into the face of Him on whom we depend. The parent refuses to become a child, and to receive directly into the heart the peace that would come to it from the countenance of the heavenly Father. He deals with life as a hard problem, and receives no light upon the bare facts from personal affection towards God. If a child was to be related in this way to its daily life and discipline, without receiving directly into its heart the love that is in the smile, the eyes, the tones, the daily care and visible presence of the parent, it would speedily have as little of loving faith as we have in God. We have to do with our soids towards God what the child does with its senses towards the earthly parent — receive freshly the experiences of His goodness, and build up an unlimited faith thereon. The same vividness of external impression fosters the moral imagination, so that there is nothing for 204 -^^ ^ Little Child. which childhood is more remarkable than for its ideality. It is as happy on a cottage floor as in marble halls ; happier in the arms of its nurse than in the arms of princes. It has a universal fellowship, and makes friends of everything, animate or inanimate. No incongruities disturb it : wherever it is it exerts its own royalty, and makes all things fall in with its imaginings. The simplest material on which it can exert its own plastic power, and group and fashion for itself, is dearer to it than the most costly toy or the most exquisite workmanship. Nature is then a source of inexhaustible delight. A child is an original observer in the world, to whom every object and every feeling is new. AnywJiere it finds enough to employ and to delight it. Not only, thank God, in scenes of beauty — not only by the seashore, a pebbly beach, a running stream, on the grass beneath the trees, a child is in mysterious communion with God, full of incommunicable feelings. Anywhere, if it is only not made wretched by human interference or neglect, it finds enough for its full exercise and joy. It cannot reason about, or analyze, or communicate, what Nature is teaching, but it is receiving from her priceless lessons. And her lessons are not tasks for the memory, but divine impressions upon the sentient being. She teaches by imparting joy, by awakening love, by kindling fancy, by exciting mysterious curiosity. A child may thus readily learn by direct As a Little Child. 205 knowledge that Nature is love, that God is love, just as it learns that its mother's heart is love. But men lose these direct experiences. They deal with the discipline of life, and look very little into the face of the Parent who has arranged it. They see God through man's world, and they see Him very little through His own. Or, at the best, they read books, which contain only the descriptions of what Nature is. Education itself may come between us and God, by giving us only second-hand impressions, the echoes of echoes. And hence the feebleness which is so often characteristic of learned men. Nature is the original teacher, and there stands the child and drinks at the fountain. Now, it is impossible to bring before us these characteristics of childhood — their fresh openness to all natural impressions without obscuring or distorting them, the mirror of the soul not yet being soiled by wrong, or too much occupied with self ; their clear law of external duty in obedience to known orders, with a freedom from all morbidness, and the full gush of their natural joyousness, when this simple obedience has been paid \ the simplicity of their affections, the unqualified character of their trust and love, derived from actual experiences ; the activity and exuberance of imagination, supplying out of their own stores whatever to duller eyes seems wanting in the reality ; the living out of their 2o6 As a Little CJiild. own feelings without respect of persons or places, and the consequent absorption and penetration of their whole being by whatever has the power to interest them, and the absence of all pretence, which weakens every faculty it touches ; — it is impos- sible to bring these things before us, however im- perfectly, without feeling the extreme difficulty of pre- serving unspoiled our childlike aptitudes and frames. It is far from widening the way that leads to heaven to tell us that children in heart may enter there — all who can carry with them their freshness, their truth, their spirituality, the direct vision of their spiritual senses, their immediate contact with God and Nature, Nor is this all ; for it is not the mere freshness of a child, nor the simplicity of a child, nor the negative innocence of a child, nor the help- less dependence and submission of a child, that a man is to take with him into heaven ; but all these in combination with knowledge, and strength, and long struggle with difficulties, and much experience of temptation, and converse with all alien things. For the child is not a Christian, but only in its instinctive state, before exposure to temptation, the natural image of that spiritual harmony, repose, and trustingness, to which the man, through exposure and conflict, by the force of his inward purpose and obedience to the highest law he knows, must finally attain. As a Little Child. 207 I know how possible it is to point to a class of children who have ceased to be children, who have unlearned everything that Nature taught, and learned everything that early exposure and suffering could teach, and to ask what means in reference to them the Saviour's saying, " of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." But Christ was speaking of the primal type of childhood, and these are not the children whom God made — they are the children whom Society has spoiled ; and it is well for us to recall that scene in Palestine, were it only that we might learn into what an unnatural state we must have fallen before those words of Christ could be so fear- fully falsified, and what remains to be done by our civilization before this dire fruit of its selfishness disappears, and the childhood of this realm is restored to its spiritual birthright. The more we are by artificial evils obliterating the natural types of God, the more necessary is it for us to give prominence in our thoughts to what has justly been called a peculiarity of the Christian religion, that Christ fixed attention upon a little child as an example for the imitation of men ; that the condition of a child in relation to the world around it, and to those on whom it depends, resembles the permanent condition of men in relation to the Universe and God ; and that the loving trusts, the sweet reliances, the unanxious joys, the freedom from all care for the morrow, which 2o8 As a Little Child. in the child arc spontaneous and instinctive, ought to abide with the man as the proper fruits of his experience and his knowledge, the just attitudes towards God of his developed reason and his thoughtful heart. Certainly this is a peculiarity of the Christian religion, for no other religious teacher ever had such religious trust in human nature that he dared to place a child in the midst of men, and tell them that, in its natural character, as it came fresh from the hands of God, was the prophecy and type of the heaven it was made for ; that in the natural play of its being was God's clear indication of the guilelessness, harmony, and unanxious trust which would be the highest virtues in tempted and toil-worn men ; and that the feelings, habits, and trusts which grow out of the weakness and de- pendence of children would be the highest exaltation of human character, if retained in our later years, along with all our knowledge and all our strength, as the natural relations of our feebleness and im- perfections towards our heavenly Father. For this resemblance between the relations and instincts of children and the relations and duties of men is of a two-fold nature, inasmuch as the dependence of children on the care of an earthly parent resembles our dependence upon the providence of God ; and inasmuch as what little children are, when compared with what they arc to become when they grow into As a Little Child. 209 mature men, may well be paralleled with what men are now when compared with what they are to be in a higher life. Let us slightly glance at these two analogies, taking the natural instincts of the child as guides to the spiritual sentiments of the man. " Little children " have no knowledge of personal character except so far as they are themselves affected thereby. A child knows what its mother is to it ; of what she is in herself, or in her relations to any other person, it knows nothing. Of her mind, her thoughts, her cares, her interests, her anxieties, her life, her history, it knows not so much as we know of God. This holds yet more in case of the father. What feelings towards itself he has and exhibits, the child learns experimentally ; but what he is to all the world besides, what his occupa- tion, what his skill, what his station, what his powers, — about all this it has not a thought. He may be one on whose wisdom and character a nation depends, whose life is of importance to mankind, whose fame is world-wide, — of all this the child knows nothing. Men are not so ignorant of the real nature of God, of what He is to other beings besides themselves, as " little children " are of the real life of their parents, of the aims of their existence, and of what they are in their character and offices to the rest of the world. P 2IO As a Little Child. Yet this knowledge of its parents, scanty and imperfect as it is, the child finds enough for all its wants. It is no disturbance to a child that it does not know more. It knows enough for its love, enough for its trust, enough for its guidance and practical direction. Now men, like children, know only the relations which God holds to themselves : they do not know what He is in Himself; they do not know His power or wisdom ; they do not know His other relations to the Universe \ but they know enough for filial confidence, enough for direction and obedience, enough for the practice of duty ; and if this does not satisfy them — if they wish to understand the whole of God's nature and procedure, if they wish to see everything and to answer all objections, if they wish to exalt knowledge above the spiritual affections, or to make it the measure of them — they are infinitely more presumptuous than would be the youngest child if it refused to love, or trust, or obey its earthly parent because it did not understand the whole manner of his life, his knowledge, and occupa- tions, and skill, and all his offices and ministerings in relation to society at large. Like children, we know enough for duty and for trust ; and if we occupy ourselves contentedly with this, and antici- pate nothing that we do not need, we shall open safely into fuller measures of knowledge and of faith, and into higher service. If we could imagine a As a Little Child. 2 1 1 very young child becoming dissatisfied with the knowledge it has of the real nature and life of its parents — its capacities remaining the same — that would express the attitude of many discontented and presumptuous men towards God. Again, look at the mind of a very young child, and carry on your thoughts to the time when that child shall have become a man — a skilful mechanic, a wise merchant, a great statesman, a profound philosopher. Can any change, any new aspect of existence that death and the future world may bring, surpass the greatness of that change which you can trace with your own eyes ? Compare the mind of a very young child with the mind of Newton. Compare the life of a very young child with the life of a man on whose thoughtfulness, knowledge, resources, and powers of action any great interests depend. You see a transformation, a new creature, as signal as immortality itself could produce. Yet this change is from simple obedience to the laws of growth, going on from day to day doing what lay before us, without doubt or disbelief of what the future would bring. And supposing God to have given us an intimation or promise of some yet nobler condition of existence, as the very fact that we raise a question about it shows that He has done, then for men to doubt and disbelieve because of difficulties and the greatness of the change, is much 212 As a Little Child. the same thing as if children were to doubt that in time they were to grow up and fill their fathers' places — which they never do, though their ignorance of what their father's place really is, is at least as great as our ignorance of immortality. Certainly a thoughtful and spiritual man may know more of the state of the soul after death, than a " little child " knows of the thoughts of a great statesman, or of the problems of a great philosopher, or of the life and resources of a great general, or even of the acquire- ments and capabilities of any skilled labourer. And therefore the child's undisturbed life of growth and faith is pointed out by Christ as an example for the man, who, whether on earth or in heaven, or through eternity, can never be anything more than a cJiild of God. And Christ himself is always the perfect example both of what his precepts meant, and of how they are to be carried into practice. We have the Word, and the Word made flesh. For he is the living Son who always preserved towards his Father and his God the simplicity, the trustingness, the obedience, the dependent relations, and the untroubled heart of a little child. May God give to us all, whether young or old, this highest grace of Christ, a heart that never ages, that we may know the beauty of this childlike spirit, and hold it as the root of life ; that we may become As a Little Child. 213 wise without losing our simplicity and freshness, and strong without parting with our meekness, and self- reliant without spoiling our modesty and humility ; that we may know the evil that is in the world without losing our innocence, and guilelessness, and unsuspiciousness, and ready faith in others ; that, in St. Paul's words, though in understanding we are men, we may still be children in our freedom from evil and from evil thoughts, and that our childlike trust in the dear love of our God may go with us through all trials and darkness, until that day when we shall lay down our heads in death, feeling with Christ that we are going to our eternal life, in the bosom of the Father ! XIV. THE CHARACTER OF JACOB. "And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place ; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place ! " — Genesis xxviii. i6, 17. If Abraham is to be considered as the first link in that connected chain of spiritual developments which lengthened itself out on the soil of Palestine until in Christ it reached the point of heavenly junction, uniting man to God, the religious condition of mankind represented by its subjection to the express enactments of an outward law is clearly the second of those gradations. Before Abraham we have nothing but the infancy of mankind, and of infancy there is no history that we can read. No doubt the infant has a spiritual history which God is myste- riously conducting, but our science and observation cannot reach nor record that process. But at the next stage of childhood the movements of the Spirit of God are clearly traceable on the open nature ; for with childhood commences spiritual progress, and with progress comes for the first time the possibility of a history. For history is not a number of The Ckaj^acier of Jacob. 215 scattered, disjointed anecdotes, but a chain of con- nected events. In all mythologies we have anecdotes of the religious infancy of man, obscure, uncertain, difficult of interpretation. History in which the things that come after issue out of the things that went before, cannot possibly be fixed earlier than Abraham. The peculiarity in the spiritual condition of child- hood is this, that it has knowledge of no law having authority over both itself and others ; that so far as it acts independently at all, it acts from the instinct of its feelings, and that in all other respects it is under direct personal guidance. Childhood is the period of direct intercourse with a personal authority, on whom all responsibility rests, the child having none except to follow the guidance given. But when childhood passes, and with it the absolute power of simple instincts and of parental sway ; when passion arises, and temptation appears, and sin is rendered possible, and there is a conflict between the impulses of two completely different natures in us, the carnal and the spiritual, and there is no Being to whom we can go for personal communion and direction, — then commences that long and dreary period in the religious history of man, when he feels himself responsible, but does not feel himself united to the eternal Lord and Father of his nature ; when, cast off from childhood's instincts, and childhood's 2i6 The Character of Jacob. reference to a parent's will, he has not yet learned to look up into the face of the eternal Parent, or to know His Spirit in us as the Ruler of the soul. This is the period that, in the programme of Reve- lation, intervened between Abraham and Christ ; that period of more or less duration with us all, of struggling, conflicting, unharmonized manhood, which intervenes between religion as imaged in the little child of Christ, and religion as imaged again in the childlike soul of Christ himself; of one once more looking directly into the face of a Father and dead to law, free from law because living from the Spirit, because personally swayed by a personal God — guided, loving, and serving freely from within. There are, strictly speaking, only three full stages in the religious growth of man — the spiritual freedom of childhood, when, in its undeveloped state, the child is in inward and outward harmony both with its earthly and its heavenly Parent ; the yoke of the law, when that harmony is broken, and the man is torn by conflicting tendencies, and the shadow of the judg- ment-seat is frowningly upon him ; and the spiritual manhood of a Christian, when that harmony is again restored, and God's service is perfect freedom, because it is the service of a son again in personal com- munion, receiving the Spirit and growing in the image of the Father, But between these full stacres The Character of Jacob. 217 there are transitional periods, some examples of which, as types of the religious man continuing to this day, it is still instructive for us to contemplate. When God has given us the highest type of the religious life, as in Christ, it is very far from following that we are all at that stage of our spiritual growth, and only more or less advanced into it : there is no such consentaneous movement ; all the earlier and lower types will be found in coexistence with the highest. Among religious men there are now those who are mere children, with no kind of self- dependence ; and those who are mere legalists, under a yoke of bondage, striving to keep a law by the hard efforts of the conscience and the will, but with neither God nor His Son living and working in their affections ; and with those who are delivered from the law and serving in the spirit, there are all degrees of freedom ascending upwards towards him who had no will but his Father's. After the obedience of instinctive trust, the next full stage of religious development is the Lawgiver. Moses follows Abraham in the order of God, and if we were to disregard transitional times and shadings, if we were to neglect perspective, we should pass at once from Abraham to Moses ; and when I speak of Moses as representing a stage of growth in the religious history of man, I wish it to be understood that I do not mean the author of the Levitical Books, 2i8 The Character of Jacob. but the representative of a relation between man and God which in its obligation is permanent, as the outward proclaimer and dcfiner of a Law of God which has eternal force, whatever change may- take place in the spirit through which we keep it, or do more than keep it, and which Christ came not to destroy but to fulfil, by carrying out the spirit of it into its last developments. But before express law came into operation, the necessity for it was very clearly manifested in the characters of a race who had lost the innocence of childhood, who in losing that had lost also the unconscious sway of God, and were now under no effective control of any kind. The character of Jacob will well reward any amount of study that any of us may be led to give to it, as the fullest and most instructive type of that period when men were loosened from their inward bond with God, and had not yet passed under any outward one, — as an example, too, of a certain revolting aspect of the spiritual life which is to be met with every day, and is, indeed, the opprobrium of the religious world. It may well appear not a step of development, but a step of retrogression, to pass from Abraham to Jacob. And so far as the pleasure we have in the contemplation of character is con- cerned, this is true ; but as relates to what may be called the natural history of religious growth, it really is a step in advance — not the direct step, nor The Character of Jacob. 2ig the right step, but a step in that circuitous way by which so many reach the goal. A pure child may be the object of a more delighted contemplation than a wily and selfish boy, but the boy has at least developed additional elements of his nature, and so has become the subject of a deeper study. It is hardly necessary for me to say that, with regard to this period, we are not walking in the clear light of history ; that the whole narrative wears a symbolical character ; that wc are not dealing with Jacob, but with a tradition of Jacob. We are in the region of dreams and visions, in which, from the utter and unintelligible dimness of the past, some- thing that is capable of being garbed, if not in words, at least in figures, it is not clearly understood w/iaf, is handed out of the darkness into the twilight of history, and so is preserved in a mystic form among the permanent records of mankind. Jacob was clearly not understood by those from whom this tradition of him was received. They could only shadow him out by vague symbols according to the conception they had got of him. He is a parable, a spiritual riddle, which they could state according to their feeling of it, but could not explain, and which it remains for us to solve as we may. And this is far more valuable to us, and really partaking more of an historical character, than if they had attempted to define him, and give us a view of him in the 2 20 The Character of Jacob. manner of strict history ; for then, no doubt, in essaying a task to which they were not competent, they would have misinterpreted him ; and now we have at least, under the forms of the imagination, a real account of their impressions of him, which we may interpret for ourselves. It is this which makes all imaginative or symbolical records of such immense value, for whilst we are saved from the errors that would certainly be introduced if philosophy or common sense were prematurely applied to what was not understood, we have preserved for us that out- ward projection of itself which the character or the event casts like an image on the spiritual mirror of the times. It is, of course, only a profound know- ledge of those times that could enable us with any certainty to translate that image into the language of our own, and therefore it is always with humility that we must walk amid these shadows of the past, and attempt to turn them into light and substance. And if in this we are liable to all kinds of errors of interpretation, yet these are errors that are subject to correction, from whatever light other interpreters may be able to afford ; so that an account of an event or character that was not understood by the age from which the tradition of it was received, is far more trustworthy, affords better materials for arriving at the truth, when it comes in form of a symbolical representation than in any other form it could The Character of Jacob. 221 assume. And it would show great ignorance of what was really valuable in the records of our race, a habit of mind completely superficial, if we were to be insensible to the deep spiritual significance of narratives that can make no pretensions to an historical character. This would be to exclude us from all the impressions which the age that received them could not interpret — to cut us off from the early poetry and mythology of all people, and to doom us to ignorance of everything in the dawnings of history which could not render an intelligible account of itself to the reason of those times, though it could address itself to the imagination, and so be preserved, in vivid and significant symbols. I presume, too, that it is quite unnecessary for me to say to you that the Bible knows nothing of exemplary biography ; that, with the single exception of him who was set forth in the spirit and in the symmetry of his nature as a perfect man, there is not a character there whose errors, imperfections, or sins would in any way affect for us the value or the bearings of the history, and that we have no more of a religious interest in protecting from moral criticism patriarch, prophet, or apostle, or in main- taining their moral perfectness, than we should have in maintaining the moral perfectness of Socrates or Augustus. With the one exception, we have here not standards of character, but the history of Israel 2 22 The Chai^adcr of Jacob. related without disguise just as it was, or was supposed to be, without the least attempt to defend what to us would appear wrong', with the good and the bad mingling together just as they do in real life ; and nothing but a theory of the Bible for which there is not the shadow of a ground, that not only all the words, but, what is still more monstrous, all the men in it, are ordered and sanctioned by God, could set us to the hollow and corrupting work of varnishing over what the Scriptures themselves freely and honestly expose, and which must appear offensive and disgusting to any man's untainted moral sense. If we set ourselves to such work as this, we shall not only be losing all the instruction the Bible might afford us ; we shall turn it into an instrument to vitiate our natural conscience, and twist our own spirit. For instance, if any one supposes that Jacob was under the guidance of God in a sense that requires us to respect his character, and prefer it to Esau's, as if God was responsible for the characters of those who may enjoy privileges, as if that did not increase their responsibilities for the result, not His — as if He was responsible for anything but the grace that He supplies to them — then every man's un- perverted moral taste must revolt from such a preference, and if we were limited to such a choice, we should have to say, " Then let the generous hunter be my saint, in whom is no guile, who can The Character of Jacob. 223 forget and forgive, rather than that mean supplanter, whose nature is represented in his name." Jacob is the type of spiritual selfishness. That is the form of his sin. He is the earliest of the class who would make a gain of godliness. The religious world — that is, those who profess religion — abounds in Jacobs, who conduct their worldly business in a more sordid spirit than the men who belong ostensibly to the world, and only to the world. Religion is in no way answerable for this : such men are not selfish because they are religious ; their religion is only a phase of their selfishness — one of the directions in which they are looking after their own interests, willing to be safe on all sides, and at the same time to use heaven in the service of the earth. Often this is deeply disguised, and by believing that they despise the world, as not spiritual, men come to deem them- selves exempted from acting in a generous spirit towards it or in it. An enthusiasm for anything whatever is a far nobler influence than a religion that turns upon self; and worldly men, who make no pretence of being spiritual, will often, out of pro- fessional zeal, or natural ardour, show a self-devotion and a love of perfection in their work, for their work's sake, which religious men, who profess to be caring about their own souls, do not even understand. Religion is a fearful element of corruption when it degenerates into the care of one's self ; and a religion 224 The Chaj'acter of Jacob. without an enthusiasm for goodness, for some great interests beyond ourselves, necessarily becomes selfishness — a selfishness the more irreclaimable for the mighty powers it degrades to so mean a service. Hence the ordinary type of the religious man is not an attractive one ; it is calculating and self- regarding. Esau was carried out of himself by an enthusiasm for the free life of Nature ; and if the spiritual man lay dormant in him, it was at least not twisted and abused. He was the natural man of animal, but not of guilty, enjoyment. Jacob had no enthusiasm for anything, and his inner nature, which had far better been dormant, was intensely active in carving and shaping his own interests. He was the natural man of spiritual selfishness. Esau threw away his natural advantages at the bidding of appetite. Jacob acquired advantages that did not properly belong to him by the subtlety of his spirit. Now, how is God repre- sented as dealing with a character that belongs to a base religious type which is constantly recurring? The divine dealing with him is partly comprised in the retributions of his life, and partly in two inward spiritual experiences which are represented to us in symbolical visions and interviews. Let us endeavour to penetrate to the spiritual meaning conveyed in these figures. The story is familiar. Jacob had stolen his brother's birthright by an impious deception practised on the The Character of Jacob. 225 infirmities of an aged parent. Esau may seem to have lost nothing that he cared for, but no man without a pang sees privileges passing away from him, and in the irreparable moment of disappearance some gleam of their possible value, some apprehension of wretched folly in regard to them, breaks in agony on the soul — an agony all the wilder if there is no means of measuring or gauging the loss — and hence every one feels the dramatic truthfulness of the narrative when Esau is represented as uttering " an exceeding bitter cry." Jacob fled before the face of his injured brother to his mother's family in the far East. In his flight he came to a city's gates after sunset, when there was no more ingress for that night. He sleeps under the open sky, and has a dream. He sees " a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven ; and behold, the angels of God ascending and descending on it : and behold, the Lord stood above it." Now, it is asked, was this a man for God to favour ? and was this a time to select for showing him any special grace ? Assuredly not ; but such questions only show the deadness of imagination in which we read what we suppose to be an unnatural Book. Is it not in the revulsion of the soul from some foul deed, in the first moment of reaction when the guilty consequences are stirring, that the Almighty sends a vision of the peace and purity destroyed and passing Q 226 The Character of Jacob. away, as the most terrible of all avengers? To a disordered heart torn by its own passions, is there any punishment so awful as a picture of sweetness and peace stealing into that dark cavern ? Is there anything more natural than that, after any crime whatever, the feelings we have outraged should present these contrasts to ourselves, and constrain us to gaze upon what we have forfeited ? Let a man be surprised into some coarse or cowardly act, and then let him be brought face to face with whatever is noble, gentle, or pure. Will he deem that easy dealing with him, or a covering over of his guilt ? He would rather meet the furies at that moment. Jacob, with a mean terror in his heart, banished for a bootless crime, dreams of all the peaceful blessings that God had offered to his race, and dreams of them as offered to him again. Was that mercy } It may have been so ; but it was no sparing of the guilty man. Jacob starts from his sleep, not soothed, but stung to the soul. No, there was no escaping from his deed by flying from it. God meets him with a vision, not of his guilt, but what is far more terrible, of all that his guilt had profaned and outraged. " And he was afraid, and said, Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not ! How dreadful is this place ! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." But Jacob's selfishness was too deep-seated to yield The Chai'acter of Jacob. 227 to the solicitings of dreams and visions of the night. A more terrible experience must bring him to a state in which God may meet him again, and cast that spirit out of him. The ladder melted away with his dreams ; it broke and vanished in the morning light, and all that remained from it was only another evolution of his natural character, an attempt to turn it to account in the calculations of his heart — perhaps the grossest instance of conscious selfishness bargain- ing with God that ever had a record. " Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God." No doubt God used Jacob as an instrument of His providence ; but that He does with us all, and pursues even the worst men with calls, instigations, stings of conscience, and visions of duty. He did so even to Judas Iscariot. He was receiving the most signal privileges from God, even as the companion of him on whom the angels of God ascended and descended every day, at the very time that he so defiled his soul. What sign is there that Jacob was more favoured than Judas Iscariot? What sign is there that, in proportion to his sin, he was less punished ? He was, indeed, taught of God as we all are, good or evil, just or unjust ; but he was also punished of God 228 The CIia7'acter of Jacob. as we all arc, if we despise and abuse those teach- ings. He never looked again on the face of the mother with whom he conspired ; he fled, knowing that he was a robber and a coward ; he had to take a weary journey over sandy deserts and rocky moun- tains, with shame and terror in his heart, and, as he says, with nothing but his staff in his hand ; he had to appear before his mother's kindred empty and a beggar, and then to have his own acts turned against himself, to be cheated as he had cheated, and deceived as he had deceived ; to be led on into viler frauds, in order that by stratagems he might protect himself against injustice, and thus to have his soul more and more dyed with the deep corruption of the sin to which he originally yielded ; which, even when he was a changed man, pursued him with its curse, turned his domestic life into scenes of dissension, until his sons through jealousy were willing to repeat the old tragedy of Cain and Abel, and at last brought him to end his days in a strange land, and to look back upon what he confessed were but the fleeting days of an evil pilgrimage, with no long and dear blessings placidly enjoyed on which the memory of the soul could rest Once again God met him in a vision of the night : that is the symbol under which we have the record of a very deep spiritual experience. Twenty years had passed since he had left his crime behind him — The Character of Jacob. 229 twenty years of mingled craft and suffering, betraying and betrayed, in which he says of himself, " by day the drought consumed him, and the frost by night, and his sleep departed from his eyes;" and now, a fugitive again, he returns whence he came, to find nothing changed — the pitfall that so long ago he had dug for himself still lying across his path, and the old crime and the old terror biding their time until he comes. To fly from a guilty misery for twenty years, and come back and find it lurking and waiting for you, just where you left it, and as you left it, that escape it you cannot, face it you must, — is it wonderful that such an experience should convulse a man's soul, and make him see at last how ill his subtlety had served him ; all that he had forfeited in turning away from openness and simplicity of heart ; the bitter evil and deadly folly of the wiliness and treachery that had clung to him, and of the webs of falsehood he had been weaving from his youth up? The visioned ladder between earth and heaven would have saved him if he had taken hold of it ; but no, he would eat his sin to its roots, and now he must meet God in another fashion. In that moment of utter wretchedness and convicted folly, fresh from new and humiliating subterfuges for the safety of his family and his flocks, left alone with his own thoughts in the stillness and darkness of a sleepless night, the avenger of the old guilt waiting for him in the 230 The Character of Jacob. morning, he is at last brought to know himself ; but only through a wrestling with God in which he is torn as by fierce agony, and he prevails with God, or God prevails with him only by withering his false strength, which indeed was all the strength he had — the spirit of truth, like the touch of fire, at last shrivelling up the lying nature in him, and leaving him as one snatched from shipwreck after long exhaustion, saved indeed, but with nothing remain- ing to him but his panting life. And for all of us there is the ladder set up between heaven and earth, with an open way of communion, or else a terrible conflict with God's Spirit at the last. The invitations of God to us, the answers of our souls to Him, so move to and fro the angel- messengers ; when God sends a blessing, and we send back a ready thanksgiving ; when God sends an opportunity of mercy, and we take the angel of charity by the hand and do its prompting ; when God sends the angel of affliction, and hope and patience meet it more than half-way on the ascent ; until at last He sends the angel of death, and the angel of immortal life carries us for ever to Him who, through all, has been standing above and looking upon us. XV. THE WORLD'S NEED OF CHRIST.^ Rom. i. 18-32. The most corrupt periods in history are those in which the mind of a people is no longer in harmony with its traditional forms of faith and worship, when the religion of the time can no longer nourish a fresh reverence, and the soul has no God. And sooner or later such a crisis must take place wherever religion is of an external kind, and binds up the idea and the influence of God either, as in Judaism, with definite rites, laws, and institutions, or, as in paganism, with the deified energies of the material universe. No religion except that which grows out of the personal communion of the continually purified heart of man with the living Spirit of God, and in which all external works of Nature and of Providence are regarded but as the symbols of the Almighty to quicken the inner sense of power, goodness, beauty, divine order, originally planted by Himself in the human soul, can abide for ever in its Holy Place, * From a course of Lectures on the Epistle to the Romans. 232 The World's Need of Christ. unapproached by our progressions, holier in our holiness, diviner in our goodness, and remain for ever the inexhaustible inspirer, sanctifier, and exalter of mankind. A religion of this kind, in which ilie soid is regarded as the true image and revealer of the Infinite, and the powers of Nature are used only to quicken this inward consciousness of God, had no existence among the religions of antiquity. Even the Hebrew monotheism connected its God with local rites and statutory institutions whose inevitable fate it was, fixed and dead themselves, and as arbitrary rules, not natural growths of soul, to be outgrown at last, thrown out of harmony with the living spirit of human development, or rendered simply impossible by the altered circumstances of the nation. In the infancy of man, one holy and infinite God communicating His own Spirit to the soul, and employing His works only as revealing signatures of His power and grace addressed to the kindred spirits of His children, could not be received by a being who, with his reflective capacities yet uneducated, was personally lost as it were amidst the bewildering diversity of Nature, unable to perceive its unity, whilst straying with young, sensuous, un- meditative wonder among its boundless variety. Both within and without the bosom of Revelation, with the Jew as with the Gentile, a " local habitation and a name," some outward shrine and embodiment The World's Need of Christ. 233 of spiritual iaower was found necessary to remove the vagueness of dreamy apprehension, to prevent this diffused religious sentiment so wandering over all Nature, as to forget the one holy image within, and lose its hold upon a personal God. But these out- ward religions, which in the simpler ages were full of the presence and power of the Divinity, in after times, when spiritual growth and intellectual cultiva- tion no longer accorded with them, lost their con- nections with the conscience, and became the most active promoters of superstition and unbelief. It was at the moment when this religious crisis, the forcible separation of a progressive civilization from a stationary or a gradually debased worship, was universal over the world, that Christianity ap- peared. The ancient religions had done their best and their worst. They had reared Hebrew devotion, and Grecian art, and Roman rule, but having all failed to solve the spiritual problem of man's restless life, to find a divine unity in the world, or an aim and purpose in existence at once clearly defined, satisfying, and inexhaustible, one after another these nations, oppressed by a civilization that had no longer a future, that had no longer a growing life to ennoble and sustain it, sunk down heartless and hopeless, mere grovellers on the bosom of the earth. They had lived out, and realized already their highest conceptions of existence ; and having no ideal before 234 The World's Need of Christ. them, no filial connection with God to aspire after and maintain, no Kingdom of Heaven to establish here on earth, their very gifts of mind, separated from spiritual ends, became but instruments to bring to a monstrous perfection the gross pursuits of selfishness and sin. As soon as a religion ceases to offer to man a future infinitely nobler than his present, yet recommending itself to him as the natural pro- vision for his highest wants, it begins to let down his ambitions and to corrupt his life. If it be asked. Why did not the advancing civiliza- tions elevate the popular religions ? the answer is, that the very essence of these religions being external worship, an effort to find God in external Nature, as in paganism, or to connect God with external institu- tions, as in Judaism, they had not even their roots in the fountain-head of spiritual truth, in that inner consciousness where God meets the soul, and that so, they could not be elevated without being destroyed. An infinite God is not to be found within the limita- tions of materialism. A spiritual God is not recog- nized in the world of the senses. A harmonizing and reconciling God docs not appear in the conflict of elements, in the confused wrecks of history, in the strifes and sins of nations. The well of living waters had not begun to flow so long as the world looked outward for its God, instead of using the outward to stir our inward consciousness of Him who has no The World's Need of Christ. 235 true and inexhaustible revealer but the spirit that He has made in His own image. All the outward means of finding God, or of satisfying our sense of God, were tried and spent before the Christian era. Philosophy had become pantheism, and superstition had become an unlimited polytheism — nay, a fetichism {i.e. a deification not of energies and attributes, but of objects and of animals) ; but the God of a soul seeking to unite itself through some understanding reverence with the powers that rule us, the God of a spirit stretching towards the infinite with dim long- ings after perfect and immortal life, — the God of a providence benignant, consistent, and one, had no- where appeared. In this hour of spiritual exhaustion, when the true methods had been lost and the false methods tried to the utmost, Christ came to direct the world to the inward sources of religion ; to tell them the great truth that it is the pure heart that sees God ; to teach them to reunite zvithin the soul itself that broken bond with the Eternal which can never be maintained by outward means. The righteousness of God, flowing freely from the inward faith of the heart in a heavenly Father and Inspirer, is the salvation of every spirit, and Christ is the visible instrument of God, the example of His presence with humanity, to awaken that faith in every other human heart, and to show forth in himself its mighty works, the glory of its natural fruits. God is in Christ, i,e. 236 The World's Need of Christ. making the man Christ Jesus a Temple for His own manifestation, and so reconciling the world unto Himself, drawing all men into union with Himself through the power and attraction of that one example. TJiere is the one divinely exhibited pattern of perfect human life ; tJiere realized are the possi- bilities of man ; and there, in the convergence and correspondence of all influences to form that perfect human soul, is the highest proof of the unity that fits and reconciles the providence of God. And only through this faith can zve work out all holy impulses, because we believe they are of God who worketh in us. The righteousness of God by faith is the right- eousness of a child who obeys through his love and participation of his Father's spirit, and who can con- ceive no bounds to his obedience, because he can conceive no bounds to his trust and desire of assimi- lation. Only within a pure heart, quickened by the living power of the Deity in His outward works, and recognizing the goal of our nature in Christ, is a heavenly Father revealed to us, and the union between man and God effected. There was no such union in the world when the Renovator came, and a new " energy " to convey the Spirit of God into the souls of men was the one thing needed. To establish this, and so remove all pre- tensions and rivalries of the existing religions, there was no more direct way than to prove, as a question The World's Need of CIi7'ist. 237 of fact, that heathenism and Judaism had both failed to create spiritual righteousness, and the knowledge of a spiritual God ; and to prove, as a question of fact, that both had shown themselves incompetent to the only true functions of a religion, and must both be superseded. Accordingly the Apostle proceeds to enter upon the proof of this fact, and in the sequel of this first chapter he deals with the religion of the heathen. We must remember that the heathenism now to be described was then the spiritual mistress of the world, with the feeble protest of an effete Judaism. And here we must observe that when St. Paul undertakes to show that the Natural Religion of that day was not right with God, and that a new influence was required to regenerate spiritual Man, he enters upon the discussion as upon a question of facts ; he institutes an inquiry into their actual state ; he makes no use, as he might have done, if his system had supplied him with it, of any previous principle of original sin, and the congenital corruption of human nature, which would have saved him all the labour of a proof He might have declared at once, if such had been his theology, that Jew and Gentile, as alike the inheritor of a ruined, incapable nature, alike required a divine Renovator ; but what he does declare is just the opposite of this, namely, that both had by nature light enough to keep their souls right 238 The World's Need of Christ. with God, and that both, through unfaithfulness to their light, had lost their inward, spiritual connection with their heavenly Father. The ground of his condemnation of the heathen is, as we shall see, that his natural light was enough for his salvation, and that he voluntarily quenched it. The eighteenth verse is a general declaration of divine displeasure against all who have suppressed the light of the soul by moral corruption, that displeasure being shown in the natural consequences of impurity, the effacing of God's image from the mirror which the breath of the passions has defiled, the deadening of God's voice in a conscience that has refused to hearken, that has once heard it and turned away. " The displeasure of God is revealed from on high against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who stifle the truth that is in them by unrighteous- ness." The "truth " here spoken of is the immediate utterance of the Holy Spirit in man ; the direct guidance and illumination of God, which, when obeyed and cherished, open the soul to fuller com- munications from their Source, and, when irreverently disregarded, give over their admonitions, and sink into the silence of spiritual death. The pure in heart see God ; and a dishonoured nature has no revelations. I. To bring the heathen under this condemnation, St. Paul declares that there is in man, by nature, a faculty of spiritual discernment, and that to this The World's Need of Christ. 239 God speaks directly in the conscience, and also through works that are manifestly full of His Spirit to all in whom practical unrighteousness has not deadened the higher perceptions. "All that can be known of God is manifest to men : God hath mani- fested it to them, for from the creation of the world, the invisible things of Him, even His eternal power and all that makes Him God, are so discerned from His works as to become clearly seen, so that there is no excuse." And St. Paul only applies to heathen spiritual blindness a principle of judgment which four hundred years before a heathen had set forth in language equally clear. In the Memoirs of Socrates we have the same sentiment, in words so closely re- sembling the Apostle's, that we conclude that, versed in all Grecian learning, he was familiar with the passage. Possibly, if he had been writing to Greeks, he would have quoted the exact words, as he did quote the same thought from one of their own poets, when speaking to the Athenians from Mars' Hill. " The soul," says Socrates, " partakes of the nature of God in this, that though it manifestly rules within us, it is itself unseen : wherefore it becomes us not to be insensible to the Invisible, but from the things that exist discerning His power, to reverence the Deity." The religion of Socrates is the fullest proof the Gentile world affords that the invisible things of God are clearly seen in the things that are made, and that 240 The World's Need of Christ. out of its own mouth is justified the Apostle's state- ment, that heathen debasement and idolatry resulted from a sinful stifling of that inward light which lighteth every man that comcth into the world. Such, then, is St. Paul's view, and according to its own confession were the possibilities of Natural Re- ligion ; such by constitution the inward relationship of the human spirit to the divine ; such the slumber- ing consciousness of God and of higher conditions of moral being which the revelation of Himself which He has given in His works is fitted to awaken and develop in a pure and obedient heart. 2. But Paul proceeds to argue, from the twenty- first to the twenty-fourth verse, that notwithstanding these natural aptitudes, their moral corruption re- duced mankind to idolatry. The process was this. The spiritual God is revealed only to the spirit ; by yielding to the passions they soiled the spirit ; and by thus clouding the inward mirror the heathen blotted the image of God from off the soul. Having thus lost his inward light, his whole life became earthly and sensible, and outward Nature his God ; and as the worship of Power or the worship of Beauty may remain when the worship of Holiness is gone, he deified the energies of the external Universe. It is ever the tendency of a living spirit of purity to suggest the idea of spiritual perfection, of a living God who is the Source of these thoughts. The World's Need of Christ. 241 and not to be comprehended within the agencies of Nature ; but when impurity suppressed these intima- tions, and left nothing but the material creation to be the suggester of God, men were necessarily led into pantheism or into polytheism, — the philosophic mind into speculative pantheism, the vulgar mind into superstitious, or sentimental, or passionate poly- theism, — this deification of Nature being modified by the refinement of the Greek, or the grossness of the Egyptian, but in all cases the idea of holiness, which was absent from their souls, absent likewise from their gods. Such is the Apostle's account of the origin of polytheism, and we have every reason to believe that it is both psychologically and historically true : " Wherefore they are without excuse, because when they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, neither were they thankful — neither did they keep themselves in His love — but became vain in their imaginations, and their inconsiderate heart was darkened ; professing themselves wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an idol made in the likeness of corruptible man, and of birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creep- ing things." I might, if it was here convenient, give ample proof that Socrates, who at this part of the Apostle's argument is the proper representative of Natural Religion, was fully aware of the sympathy between R 242 The World's Need of Christ. religious knowledge and the rectitude of the heart, and of the effects of sinful passions in darkening the spiritual understanding. A few sentences from a celebrated passage may suffice : " True wisdom under- stands the nature of the soul's dungeon — that it arises from evil desire, and that he who is bound assists in binding himself. One who loves wisdom, therefore, will abstain from evil desires and passions, because pleasure and passion, as with a nail, fasten the soul to the body, and so compel it to kindred inclinations that it cannot pass into immortality in a pure con- dition, but departs full of a corporeal nature, destitute of a divine alliance. And one who loves wisdom, when once freed from such appetites, will not undo his own liberty by submitting again to this bondage, unweaving as it were the web of Penelope, but having obtained peace through the contemplation of what is true and divine, and being inwardly nourished by it, will know that he ought so to live, that when he dies he may depart to a kindred essence, loosened from all human evils." 3. But the process of corruption goes on. Im- purity loses sight of the spiritual God, and leads to idolatry, and then idolatry leads to deeper impurity. And so proceed these births of death, just as do proceed the opposite births of life, where purity leads to the recognition of God, and the recog- nition of God leads to still deeper purity. This is The World's Need of Christ. 243 traced from the twenty-fourth verse to the close. The worshipper is always below the object of his worship. The Gods that were generated of earthly- mindedness could only foster earthly-mindedness. Such is the downward course of polytheistic debase- ment. Man loses first his own purity, and with it the spiritual images that are mirrored only on a pure heart. Then, his life being outward and earthly, he takes his ideas of God from the world of the senses. Then, by worshipping such Gods, he necessarily sinks below these to any depths of degradation. He had no longer any spiritual ideal ; he had no inward Prompter, no holy Judge, no resort to any one perfect Being. Such a religion could communicate to the inward life no unity and no energy. Every separate element of character had its own God, but there was no Father of the soul to combine these in spiritual harmony, and present one image and example to the distracted and dissipated heart. To whom should he pray } He knew not the particular deity that presided over the department to which his hopes or fears were directed, and, like the Athenian in St. Paul's time, he must raise his altar to the "Unknown God." What is left for a being who has no inward bond with a spiritual God, but to lose every elevated feeling, and prostrate himself on the bosom of external Nature in abject indulgence ? And so St. Paul sets forth the terrible fruits of this judicial blindness, 244 ^■^^ World's Need of Christ. when impurity brings forth idolatry, and idolatry brings forth deeper impurity. " Wherefore, since they would have it so, God gave them up to uncleanness, through the lusts of their own hearts ; who exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped the creature more than the Creator. And even as they did not choose to retain God in their thoughts, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do things not worthy of the nature of man ; who, though they know the law of God, that they who commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in those who do them." We have verified by heathen testimony St. Paul's account of the capabilities of Natural Religion. It would be too easy to verify this account of the actual condition of heathen religion and morality in the age of Christ. Those who are acquainted with the literature of the period, know that no account could be too darkly coloured. So far, then, the Apostle has made good his case, that the heathen world lying in wickedness required a Renovator to restore their lost connections with holiness and God. And though polytheism has disappeared from amongst us, it is as true now as it was then, that idolatry is the result of sin ; that whoever loses his purity of heart, loses his inward consciousness of God ; that his life becomes outward, worldly, dependent upon circumstances, perishable in all its aspects, and that in dead things is his trust. XVI. JOHN THE BAPTIST. " In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judcea, and saying, Repent ye : for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." — Matt, iii. i, 2. In the history of man everything is prophetic — nothing is final ; and this law runs through all depart- ments of the life of man. The existing condition even of civil society is never more than a temporary rest, whose limited accommodations we are daily out- growing, and in providing for fresh wants insensibly making all things new around us. By external growth, by internal desire, God is continually prompt- ing man to new efforts to satisfy new needs. Each stage of civilization has in itself an educational energy ; custom makes men weary even of their best, and fresh desire is born ; even the providential law of the increasing ratio of populations to any fixed sub- sistence suffers no condition of social enterprise or industry to be stationary; the imperative demands of natural increase quicken ingenuity, and since retro- gression is nearly impossible to a people once habituated to regard a high class of wants as essential 246 John the Baptist. to the enjoyment and the adornment of life, man would almost seem to be forced by God upon the way of progress. And this would be the normal state of things if neither war from without, nor class interests from within, impeded its develop- ment. The first of these may destroy civilization altogether ; the second so block up its quiet course, that the intercepted waters gather and fret around an obstacle till they whirl it in a torrent from its bed. An exhaustion of the social capabilities of any age, of its provisions for free growth, a dead resistance to physical or intellectual expansiveness, an arrest of development, are always, with a people not enslaved, the precursors of coming revolution. For in the resistance of the outward to the inward, in the attempt of circumstances to command living forces and say, " So far shalt thou go, but no further," the victory, however distant, is never doubtful. Humanity, like a welling fountain, is constantly throwing upwards to the light those who, obscured before, now feel their fitness for life and all its privileges. No dead obstacle can for ever withstand the strain of anything that has life ; the softest fungus having vital energy breaks through the hard crust of the earth. Man lives and grows ; and institutions, to permit his growth, must gradually expand or suddenly perish. Circumstances cannot control spiritual forces : institutions, Church John the Baptist. 247 or State, are but circumstances ; progress is the spiritual law of man. Accordingly, the wisest institutions are those that have a prospective character, which contemplate growth and provide for it, which lead men to look forward and aim at a coming good. Upon this principle God has given us His own successive revelations, His own spiritual institutes for man. The earliest of them had in it the seed of all the rest ; and the last of them, though from age to age bringing a fuller measure of God's kingdom to the earth, has yet its accomplishment not on earth, but in heaven. The)^ all hold out the signals of a coining time : they speak of present things as a temporary veil, separating from an upper sanctuary ; and as they point their ensigns to the future, they call upon man to prepare for a wider life, to repent and reform, that he may be found fit for entrance on a new era of the reign of God, that will come partly as development, partly as judgment, upon the one that is expiring. God wills no man to look back except it be to gather up the lessons of experience, and carry all the wisdom of the past into the richer future. Judaism in all its periods had its face towards a coming time ; with Abraham was the promise of faith ; Moses kept the people looking forward to a more signal theocracy, when they should stand out before the world, the children and subjects of a spiritual King, visibly exhibiting in their 248 John the Baptist. national fortunes a Divine rule and retribution. From Canaan's settlements they stretched their arms over the then civilized world, to the Nile and the Euphrates, saw in their conquests the glory of God's name, and looked for the accomplished prophecy that in them all the nations of the earth should be blessed. Captives in Babylon, afflicted for apostasy, their temple destroyed, their cities in ruins, they hung their harps on the willows, and reserved the songs of Zion till they should sing them again in their own land : they knew they were not forsaken, but only visited with healing judgments, and they lived in the consolations of prophecy. " Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem ; tell her that when her iniquity is pardoned, when her warfare is accomplished, she shall receive at the Lord's hands blessings double of the punish- ment of all her sins." When the Word stood fast, and they returned to their wasted land and fallen temple, still they looked forward ; and as the new sanctuary arose on the sacred hill, poor in external splendour when compared with that which had passed away, their prospective faith enabled them to rejoice in spirit, for they thought of one who was to be the Desire of all nations, and knew that " the glory of this latter house would be greater than that of the former." And when prophecy itself was silent, Judaism well-nigh spent, and the preparatory dispen- sation so often renewed by great spiritual reformers John the Baptist. 249 was at length given over, and left without further renovation to run itself to the dregs, still the indomi- table spirit of their religion accomplished what God intended — it wrought out the patriot age of Israel ; and when this too failed, and through a succession of foreign masters they came under the foot of the Roman, still their face was towards the future, eager for a deliverer, watching through the night for the Day-spring from on high, for the signal of the watchmen to raise the Hosannah of welcome, " Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." Judaism from age to age kept its people looking forwards to Messiah. And Christ from age to age keeps his people looking forwards to a new reign of God on earth, and to an everlasting fellowship with God and His saints in heaven. " All these," says the Apostle, recounting the Old Testament worthies, " having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise ; God having provided some better thing /(?r us, that they without us should not be made perfect." And still the inheritors of the promise have to pray, " Thy kingdom come ; " to look wistfully onwards for the age of righteousness and love predicted long, or, transferring their personal hope to heaven, await death as the coming of the Son of Man. Judaism was worn out ; it became necessary to replace it by bringing to the birth its own promise. It passed away only by fulfilment, as the chrysalis 250 John the Baptist. passes away when it takes wing and soars towards heaven. It died, but only as a corn of wheat falleth into the ground and dies, that it may bring forth much fruit. The last of its prophets, a greater than Elijah, cast in the noblest mould of the olden time, could produce only in some few of its expiring members a momentary and a galvanized life. It was behind the age, and consequently was corrupting the age. Like all systems which have abided their full time and are ripe for change, it had generated two parties, or rather one party, dividing into two branches. The one the worshippers of antiquity, who speak ever of the venerable ivy of Time, forgetting what foul things hide and harbour in it ; who adhere to the letter of existing forms, and believe the only way of safety is to make- no change — that the wisest use of experience is to stand upon the old ways ; the Church party, the Pharisees, who believed that God's whole energy was embalmed in books and traditions and ceremonies, and looked never again for His living action on the souls of men ; official personages, who deem that salvation comes by the authorized use of consecrated signs, by rigid exactness of creed and ritual, formal and unreal as any class of men must come to be which thinks that God can thus be served, for these are matters which may scrupulously be kept whilst the passions arc elsewhere, and the energies of life otherwise engaged. The other the State party, John the Baptist. 251 the Sadducees — men of power and possessions, who cared little for beliefs, but dreaded enthusiasm and what enthusiasm might bring — disturbance, revolu- tion, insecurity ; who, without faith themselves, even in their own spiritual existence, upheld the State religion as a mighty agent of police, and were con- servatives in theology even to persecution, because the existing system seemed connected with the stability of things and the permanence of property. In addition to these, there was a Hermit class, not mentioned in our Gospels, but known in history as the Essenes — men who withdrew in despair from a cor- ruption out of which they could not make new life to spring ; who, finding no satisfaction in existing religion or life, yet, without any constructive genius or power to rebuild, could only retire in protest, and nurse their indignant souls in solitude with an ascetic devotion. Out of this class came the Forerunner — the Baptist — but one who rose above his class and fore- saw new life from God, though he knew not how or in what form it was to come, for none of these were prepared for Jesus or looked for such a Christ. The Pharisee, the Church party, charged him with reviling Moses and the Prophets, and changing the customs of their fathers ; the Sadducee, the State party, charged him with stirring up the people ; and all alike, including the Essene, the Puritan class, charged him with being the friend of publicans and of sinners. 252 John the Baptist. Such was the condition of Judaism at the birth of the Baptist. It had accompHshcd its mission, and its springs were dry. If any one asks what was its mission, it is enough to answer here that, except Judaea, there was not one spot of earth free from idolatry, or where the one God was known. This is enough to prove that men require a Revelation to put the soul upon the track of spiritual discovery. No act of God's providence will keep men pure without their own co-operation, but it can preserve His light among them and His testimony against them. With- out Judaism, Christianity would be not only an unique, but an anomalous fact in the world's history — sudden, insulated, without connection with previous wants or foregoing hints of any kind, coming without the pre- paration even of an expectation. Christianity is the more credible in itself, and has the more readily attracted attention to its claims, because it is not a solitary fact in the providence of God, but the crown- ing of a series, the completion of a long design, the culmination of a spiritual history, because of that broad band of quivering light which pointed for so many ages to the Star in the East. We perceive, then, in Judaism the unfailing historic ' signs of quick decay and coming revolution ; no spiritual life anywhere, h^x\. forms rigorously enforced, by one party through religious fear and superstition, by another through State policy ; whilst the people, John the Baptist, 253 comprehended in none of these classes, oppressed alike by foreign and domestic rulers, are restless for a Deliverer. There were many spiritual reasons why, not the Deliverer himself, but his forerunner, should first appear. So long as they believed that Messiah was behind, they bore with patience and with self- application the severest denunciations of the Baptist, which, mortifying though they were, spoke of the promised kingdom as at hand, and emphasized the needful preparations for a participation in its glory. They endured his rebuke of their sins, and yielded something to his demand for repentance and reforma- tion of life, for they heard that Messiah's reign was near, and were in terror of exclusion. Sadducee, Scribe, Pharisee, publican, and soldier — each took well a pointed admonition against that vice in himself which barred his admission to the Kingdom whose Ruler was coming as a Purifier and Refiner ; because, though he spoke severe and cutting truth, the Baptist yet fixed their chief attention in the direction of their own longings, and men will bear any plainness of speaking if at the same moment their fears are awakened and their hopes are fed. There is a state of character when religion is no longer a reality, and men thereby, because of their external privileges, deem themselves saints and favoured people, in which they have to be startled 2 54 John the Baptist. into self-knowledge by unexpected rebuke from an authorized voice, before they become open to the milder leadings of persuasion. Even Christ had to adopt towards this class the Baptist's, the accuser's functions, and speak in language of unsparing reproof, though it was congenial neither to his nature nor his office. An exposure of abuses must precede their remedy. There is a period of preparation — a period of throwing down before anything is built up, a period of destruction to make way for the edifice of reform. Resistance to evil is the obvious, it is sometimes the only path to good. To show the grandeur of a real life, and in the comparison bring our conventional standards to contempt, the austere reformer must sometimes come into the midst of our soft luxurious ways, with a conscience loathing their blandishments, and in its self-subsistence breathing of the desert air. Such, indeed, is not the divinest Spirit that ministers the things of God to men, but yet one to whom, for his power to unveil our bosom sins, for his truth and directness, for his " unswerving soul and fearless tongue," we might well at times fall down and worship. We are for the most part best taught through the pure tones of a brother's sympathy, by the charity that heals where it wounds ; but yet, if any one will take up the Baptist's mission, and first awe us by his own life of simplicity and sacrifice, subdue us by the loftiness of his own soul, make us John the Baptist. 255 ashamed of our worldly things in presence of his spiritual things, freely should we let him pass the ploughshare through our hearts — else may we doubt whether really we abhor evil and cleave to God, and would gladly receive the good seed and the heavenly dews into our softened bosoms. Such was the Bap- tist, and such was Christ ; the one destructive, the other constructive ; the one accuser and reprover, the other healer and regenerator. And we must re- member that Christ's office, though the higher one, is, according to our measure, open to us all, for all can speak gracious words of sympathy and help ; whilst the Baptist's office, that of austere exposure and reproof, must proceed from lips unstained and a heart that knows no weakness, else must every spoken word return in judgment whence it came. The sense of far-spreading national iniquity had to be excited amongst a people of whose very saints Christ had to say, " Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Phari- sees, you can in no case enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." The reign of God on earth opens with a war against sin, just as to this hour the unveiling of our own evil, the pangs of self-reproach, are the beginnings of peace, the preparations of a pure heart that lives with God. To hold the mirror up to conscience, it was necessary there should be one in the spirit of the olden time — neither Sadducee nor 256 John the Baptist. Pharisee, nor yet Essene watching his own soul and leaving a corrupt world to perish ; a personifier of the Law, but no trifler with its forms — nay, in- troducing into it himself a new form to express his sense of man's pollution, by the severity of his own life laying bare, even to a self-righteous age, their hideous pretensions and their real destitution. " Think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father, and in us must the promise be fulfilled ; I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham." Accordingly, in those days came John the Baptist, in the spirit and power of Elijah, preaching, " Repent ye : for the kingdom of God is at hand ; " " the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight. Every valley shall be exalted, every mountain and hill brought low : the crooked shall be made straight, the rough places smooth : and all flesh shall see the salvation of God." This, it is true, was not originally spoken of the great Deliverance, but to herald the toilsome pro- gress of the redeemed of Israel over the desert wastes that separated Babylon from Palestine. The Jews had no literature but that of their Sacred Books. These were their classics, as well as their records of law and inspiration. Let any one who feels a difficulty respecting the New Testament applications John the Baptist. 257 of prophecy only reflect whether he is not confound- ing natural and apt quotation with authoritative reference, and what an illustrative use would now be made of the Bible, if the Bible was our only book. The man of limited reading is, perhaps, the largest quoter, finding for everything that passes some curious and fitting analogy in his ready stock of literary wealth. There is a tendency in our nature to cluster everything around a dominant thought. A strong interest draws everything into its own current. A man who is possessed by a subject finds it ever}'where. To a Jew the whole of national existence centred in Messiah. For the present they were bondsmen of idolaters, wounded in their liberties and in the pride of their faith, never long able to stifle the cry of their despair for the loss of all that was their characteristic honour, in the degradation of the people of God. The future alone could reverse this ignominy ; and in the future they saw only the great Deliverer. What wonder that they should clothe their thoughts in the consecrated language of their prophetic books ! Can we forget that Christ himself upon the cross felt the power of such sacred impressions, and breathed out the words of a remembered psalm ! And, undoubtedly, if the prophet did not speak personally of the Baptist and of Jesus, he spoke of some coming Reign of God which was to produce the same effects as the spirit S 258 John the Baptist. of the Gospel. It raises the lowly and subdues the proud ; it levels spiritual distinctions by giving all men the same inner mine of hidden wealth to work, the same personal value in the sight of God ; it assuages all distinction of present circumstance by revealing one Father here, removes all distinction of coming destiny by disclosing one Home above. It is very striking that one who was cast in the sharpest mould of the Jewish mind, shaped to do the work of national correction, should from the first have acknowledged his own subordination, and borne his willing testimony to one so anti-Jewish as the Son of Man, the world's Christ and Teacher. John was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, marked by the ex- tremest garb of their strictest sect ; while of Christ it has been said that " he walked forth into univer- sality," belonging to no country and no time. Yet the national prophet says from the beginning, " I must decrease, he must increase ; " and speaks of his own office under a superficial symbol, aiming at such standard cleansing as washing by water might bestow, whilst the " Mightier One " was to work in- wardly, to move them as by the breath of God, and to purify as by fire. That testimony cannot be accounted for on the ordinary principles of character. The diviner power of Christ established its natural supremacy ; yet the Baptist pursues his own inde- pendent way, is drawn into no closer affinities with John the Baptist. 259 Jesus, continues only a Jewish reformer, and mistakes Messiah's mission to the last. Wisdom is justified of all her children ; but it is a special blessing to know that the Spirit without measure was with Jdm who neither cried nor strove, whose voice was not heard in the streets, who would not quench the smoking flax nor break the bruised reed. Yet in one aspect the Baptist's office has still a living relation to the unending ministry of Christ. In each of our hearts repentance and reformation of life are still the conditions of new spiritual insight, of further entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven ; and for ever, in this our world, is there need for the fearless voice of some strong man of God to expose the Pharisee of religion, the Sadducee of politics ; to place at the bar of judg- ment a voluptuous and mercenary age ; to exhort to plain living and high thinking ; to warn warrior and publican of their besetting sins ; to bring to light the secret evil or the open aggression of commerce and ambition ; to turn the hearts of us all from traditions, habitudes, and words, to the living way of the suggesting Spirit and of the refining fire. And if another Baptist was to appear, to prepare the world for a truer reign of God upon the earth, to open a way for the Christ, what could he do but beseech us first to abandon our sins ; to search our thoughts ; to cleanse our passions ; to cast away the world and the flesh ; to make the eye single ; to live up to our 26o John the Baptist. light ; to do our duty in the state of life to which God has called us ; to take the guile out of our hearts, the veils off our souls ; to be content with our place ; to watch against its natural temptations ; to keep the inward temple holy that the Spirit may enter in ! Mankind ought now to have passed through the preparatory eras : this age of Christ ought to be the reign of the Spirit ; but the temple of God is holy, and if any man defile the temple of God, God does not and cannot make His abode with him. XVII. THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT.^ " No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Spirit." — I Cor. xii. 3. What is it that places an individual soul in such relations to Jesus Christ that he becomes to it the way, the truth, and the life ? Jesus may really be all that he claimed to be, he may fill the high place that faith has accorded to him in the counsels of God, and yet spiritually remain a stranger to any one of us : we may either not know him, or not believe in him, or, supposing that we believe in him, not discern him as he was. The truth of Christianity, and the appropriation of Christianity by an individual man, are clearly matters that may stand apart from one another. What, then, is the nexus, the tie, the link, the channel of fellowship, which gives him efficacy in one man above another, which alone makes him efficacious with any of us, in that it enables us to receive the life of God through him ? For not only is every truth independent of our recognition of it ; but in regard to religious truth, our avowed recognition of * Reprinted from the separate edition of 1863. 262 The Witness of the Spirit. it, our unwillingness or inability to question it, the absence of all doubt of it, may not involve spiritual participation in it — the possession of it by our souls, the possession of our souls by it. The reality of historical Christianity may be freely admitted after due historical investigation, or on more implicit grounds of belief, and yet Christ may stand in no real spiritual relation to us, may perform no spiritual office for us, which will enable us to say that Jesus is the Lord by the Holy Spirit, and confer upon him the witness of God within our own souls. The life of Christ might be established, like the outward facts of the life of Mahomet, and yet in the moments of our most real communion with God we might not be able to say that Jesus Christ was to us as the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, the fulfilment in the flesh of the highest thoughts and aspirations that the Spirit was suggest- ing to us, and so stood as complete mediator between Man and God, interpreter and incarnation of the Divine Will, throwing the tender and the awful colours of life and action on the promptings of the Father in us. Let us not misunderstand this great spiritual matter of mediation. Gross, carnal fear vulgarizes everything, and so distorts even the highest truths that spiritual natures begin to shrink from them, and from all the words that express them. The The Witness of the Spirit. 263 Universe is a mediator between God and man : the stars, the mountains, the ocean, trees and flowers, setting suns, pensive twilights, and moonlit waters, are as garments of light with which God clothes Himself, that by visible symbols He may livingly disclose His Mind, in the power, compass, and grace of His Being, to our intellectual apprehension. And so to spiritual apprehension ClIRlST is a mediator, displaying in life the will of the Father, the meaning and end of all God's silent communings with us. Only be it remembered that we use the word me- diator in the sense of one who reveals God to us, and so does away with our ignorance and unwillingness ; not at all in the sense of one who recommends lis to God, or who propitiates God towards us. The Universe is a mediator because it delivers us from intellectual abstractions or blank ignorance, and acquaints us with the living God in His works ; and Jesus Christ is a mediator because he delivers us from spiritual abstractions or misinterpretations, and acquaints us with the living God in His Son, And if intercession enters into this mediation, so far as the Son of man is an intercessor, it is on behalf of God that he appears ; he intercedes not for us with God, but rather for God with us, that led by the hand of Christ into the Heavenly Presence, our estrangement and alienation may come to an end as we look into the face of our Father, — that we may know Him and be 264 The Witness of the Spirit. at peace, and fear give place to love. He mediates for God, he intercedes for God, by taking away the veil which our unspiritual ways and thoughts have spread over Him whose countenance towards us is light, and light only, with no darkness in it at all. And this introduces us to the kind of spiritual facts which are the real evidences of Christianity, and in one who has experienced them would necessarily lead to perfect faith. I say spiritual facts, for the historical facts must first be ascertained and brought within our apprehension simply as facts of history ; they are preliminary, and place us in the mental circumstances under which the spiritual fact begins to come into consciousness, the higher sympathy to awaken, that delight and contentment of soul — the contentment that is the soul's full satisfaction when the soul is on the stretch, which is indeed God's seal upon him who on reasonable grounds, grounds open to any rightly conducted investigation of reason, can afford it to us. Without this power sensibly attach- ing to him, to raise us to a life beyond our own, ever to unfold anew our spiritual aspirations, our concep- tions of life with God, which is life eternal, and to satisfy in himself the aspirations he awakens and unfolds, — no being could fulfil the desires of a single soul, far less represent the ultimate Word of God to all the ages, and be the absolute Religion of mankind. Now, if it was only remembered that faith in Christ The Witness of the Spirit. 265 is a spiritual experience, the relation of a man's soul towards a spiritual Person, it would become clear that, however history may be indispensable to ac- quaint us with the real facts about that Person, history could not produce in us the inner joy of spiritual communion, the sense of having found our Lord and Leader, the awe, delight, and reverence, yet feeling of unbounded fellowship with his goodness and his greatness, which leads us to accept him, or rather is our acceptance of him, as the culmination, beyond which our imaginations do not go, of our life with God on earth. When this is the relation of our souls towards the man Christ Jesus, though history was in God's providence the means of bringing this spiritual blessing to our apprehension, the earthly vessel in which the heavenly treasure is conveyed, and as history must ever remain open to the laws of history, yet the recognition by the spirit that is in us of a Friend and a Master, at once partaker of our nature and great High Priest of our nature, in all things holding it in accord with God, is a condition of soul personal to ourselves, which cannot be attributed to any testimony of history, but, coming from another region of our being, is the testimony of whatever portion of divine life God has given us to the fulness of that life in him who reveals to us what life in God, what life eternal, is. We might as well attribute the science of Newton, not to his living 266 The Witness of the Spirit. mind, not to the genius that God gave him, but to the outward data of the stars, as attribute faith in Christ, not to the Spirit that is in us witnessing to him, but to the outward data of his life. It is in this sense that it will for ever remain true that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Spirit. Nothing but that woeful confusion of mind which betrays how little men deal spiritually with religion, could regard this as a disparagement of history in its relations to faith. It is no disparage- ment to powers to which God has given different provinces, to assign to each its own region. It will for ever remain the province of history to ascertain the real facts, the spoken words, the actual events of the life of Jesus : in view of those facts, it will for ever remain the province of the soul, of the Holy Spirit in the soul, to accept, or not to accept, the historical Jesus as Christ and as Lord, in whom the Divine purpose in our being, the image of God in man, is full. Let us attempt adequately to conceive what the inspiration of God implies. Christ's inspiration was the possession of his spirit by the truth which he declared : that truth was not announced to him in external words as it might be by him to us : it was wrought into his own spirit by the energy of the Father's Spirit, and belonged then to the substance of his nature as part of his insight, experience, and The Witness of the Spirit. 267 spiritual life. Whatever he taught of God, he learned not as we might imperfectly learn it, from a prophet or a book, but from the indwelling of God : all within the human soul by which God is apprehended, to which God speaks, was in intercourse with the great Spirit : spirit was communing with Spirit : the Holy One was present to the conscience : the pure heart was seeing the Father : the eternal life of God was mirrored in the kindred nature : the absolute law of goodness, " Be ye perfect, even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect," came naturally, and relieved of all its difficulties, to the perceptions of one by whom all our being was seen to flow out of the Being of God, — love out of Love,— faith and hope out of the bountifulness of a Father who gives the good things of His fatherly Spirit to those who will receive them, — humility and meekness out of the consciousness of an inward connection with inex- haustible Perfection. It is only some feeling of personal union with God that will make the life of Christ, or the law of Christ, intelligible to any man. Otherwise he will appear only as a hard Master, laying down an impossible law. What is the Sermon on the Mount to one who cannot speak it, as Christ spoke it, out of a filial relation with Heaven, out of the bosom of the All-merciful, out of the sense that our Father's life is our life, and that there is an infinite supply of grace and strength for every child 268 The Witness of the Spirit. who will lean upon Him? Without this, the Sermon on the Mount is a code of impossible morality : with this, it is life from the Source of life, — Goodness prompting goodness, — fatherly Perfection drawing to itself the upward eye of filial lowliness, — eternal Faithfulness and Truth breathing forth out of itself patience, forbearance, and long-suffering peace. No mere moralist will ever persuade human nature that the Sermon on the Mount is a just law, a natural law, or a possible law. Who will be able to love his enemy, to bless them that curse him, to do good to them that hate him, to pray for them that despite- fully use him and persecute him, and to resist not evil ? No one who does not himself share in Christ's relations to the universal Father, will ever feel that that is a life which properly belongs to human nature, and can legitimately be demanded from human beings. Why is it that we tolerate every day in- fractions of that law, and because of our self- knowledge dare not say that a man is utterly un- christian who persistently breaks it t Why is it that v/e have even a certain natural admiration for a life that is the expression of a directly opposite spirit, a life of fiery honour that will not endure a moment's wrong ? Not, I think, that we theoretically disown the law of Christ as a law of perfection, but that we feel it to be a law for spiritual affections and re- lations to which as yet we have not attained, which The Witness of the Spirit. 269 as yet are not ours, — and that on the whole it is better for a man to act according to the highest life that is in him, than to assume a magnanimity and greatness that is entirely outward, and does not accord either with the real emotions of his spirit, or with his personal perceptions of what is right. We tolerate — I will add, we rightly tolerate — what is unchristian, because it is really truer and healthier for a man to act out of the best spirit that is in him, such as it is, up to the holiest word that conscience speaks, — than by mere imitation and acts of will to attempt to clothe himself in the outward garments of Christ's perfection, when those garments are not real expressions of his own conscience and of his own heart. I do not mean that there is excuse if we fail to struggle against the weakness of our own strength or the weakness of our own will in any matter in which the Spirit of God has spoken to our spirit ; but that there is a certain genuineness of life upon a lower range which it is truer, and so far holier, to keep, than by imitative exercises of the will to aim at the expression of affections which we are not feeling, whose legitimate power and authority we do not understand, and which conscience does not commend to us as the law of our life in God. God asks for no more than faithfulness to the highest law of life that is in us ; if we keep this, if we ever strive to keep it. He will raise the law for us, for we shall 270 The Witness of the Spirit. know more of Him out of whom the law for His children comes ; but if we dress ourselves in robes of righteousness that arc too large for our true stature, the heart by which we grow will die out of us, because the virtues that do not fit us will not even quicken us, nor arm our conscience on their side. Suppose a man to be zvithont that sense of the Fatherhood of God which spiritually involves the brotherhood of man, and yet to attempt to act upon the Christian law that all retaliation is sin. That man, in his experience of gross outrage and igno- miny, could not escape self-humiliation ; he would become degraded in his own eyes ; not having Christ's feelings or perceptions, he could not bear an injury or pass through an insult with Christ's dignity ; he would fall in his own self-respect, because there was no higher faith or sentiment present to his soul as the inspiration of God to sustain him in that which he, as well as the world, would then feel to be dishonour. And so, to re- cognize Christ's law of our life, we must first have some share in the personal relations of Christ to Him from whom our life is drawn — from whose Goodness, Holiness, and Fatherly Spirit he saw our natural life to flow. We are not always false when we are unchristian : we have not yet risen to Christ's point of view : we have not surveyed the world, and men, and mortal obstruction, from out of the heart of The Witness of the Spirit. 2 7 1 God. Whenever God is felt to be our Father, Christ will be seen to be our Master : the waters of life will rise towards Him from whom they flow : and the law of the Sermon on the Mount will be acknow- ledged to be the natural law of God's spiritual children, and as such to be righteous, just, and good. We must partake, then, of the inward truth which Christ felt and saw, of the spiritual relations in which he stood, of the communion he had with the Father, before we are in a position fitly to recognize the divine seal that God has put upon him. And though it is Christ's goodness that first quickens us to the Goodness of God, yet our thoughts and hearts must reach the Father before we have any true scale or measure for the glory of the Son. But when the Spirit of our Father in us witnesses to Christ, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," and our own spirits bear witness with the Father's, that he is the image of God, beyond whom our dream of perfection, our thoughts of the Son of Man, do not go, then is our faith not in word but in power, for we can say that Jesus is our Lord by the Holy Spirit. It is thus the power of Christ to satisfy all our spiritual capacities and wants by the image he gives us of God, to fill with his own goodness all the interval that separates the earthly from the heavenly, that constitutes faith in him. Perfect religion to a man must take the concrete form of a perfect child of 272 The Witness of the Spirit. the heavenly Father, of God dwelling with man and man living in God, of God's purpose fulfilled in human nature. No doctrines, therefore or abstract truths, can express it : nothing can express it but God manifest in the flesh. The full want of a religious being is to know what religion would make of one constituted as himself is : and what image of the Father his nature would receive if it was pure and harmonious. As religion is the reign of God in man, our great want is to know what a man would become if God was reigning in him. When we have found such a child and subject of God, verified to us in the outward facts of his existence by all reasonable evidence, authenticated to us in the spiritual order and functions of his being by the supreme Spirit witnessing to him in ourselves, then we have found our spiritual Lord and King in humanity. Concrete spiritual perfection in some one man is necessary before any man can fully know the Father of human nature : for what mirror have we of God but a human soul ? And if there is no human soul free from internal disorder and disturbance, how can the image it receives and gives of God be faultless ? Concrete spiritual perfection in some one man, taking posses- sion of us by a divine right which our nature, God in our nature, compels us to acknowledge, is ne- cessary in order to deliver us by such authenticated reality from mistaken dreams and imaginations about The Witness of the Spirit. 273 spiritual goodness. Without Christ, all the Christian doctrines might come to us in word ; but what substantial reality would they have in our souls ? Without Christ, we might call God our Father ; but what should we know of the goodness of God in being our Father, if we did not know what a man is when he is a true Son of God ? To know our Father worthily, we must know all that is involved in being His holy child. Without Christ, we might believe in immortality ; but what should we know of eternal life, of that life in God which belongs to earth as to heaven, and in which death is only an accident of condition .'* Without Christ, we might have before us many an ideal of humanity ; but of the many, no one that satisfied, no one that was sober enough, no one that was authenticated by its completeness, that was as true to the present as the future, that re- conciled heaven and earth, that showed the spiritual glory of God with a Son of Man within the veils of our mortal state, in the tempted, humiliated and suffering conditions of humanity. We have faith in Christ, we can say by the Holy Spirit that Jesus is our Lord, when we recognize in him the full image of God, and when in the highest moments of our communion with the God whom he has taught us to know, we recognize himself as the End of our being, the fulfilled law of our perfection. If any man thinks that the Spirit of God has T 2 74 T^^'^ Witness of the Spirit. suggested to him a more perfect image of God in man, a more perfect incarnation of the will of God in humanity, than Christ gave on earth, of that man Jesus is not the Lord, Jesus might still remain to him as the most perfect man that has ever lived ; but if he thinks he has an ideal that transcends him, then of course to him Jesus is no longer the image of God, the absolute Religion of man, the ultimate Word of God to us in our mortal state. It is true that Jesus might still be regarded as the greatest of our spiritual benefactors, in having shown us the true method of approach to God ; but if our spiritual imagination could surpass him, he would no longer be to us the very brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of His person. A remarkable Life of Jesus has recently appeared in France.^ Its author is furnished with all requisite learning, and his spiritual sensibilities are at least sufficient to disclose even to Christians new traits of the per- fections of their Master, In some parts of his work he speaks of Jesus in a way that might satisfy the highest faith ; but in others he thinks he discovers not imperfect knowledge only, but a compromising of his own ideal. Consequently that great writer could not say that by the Holy Spirit Jesus was Jiis Lord : he thinks that he has a truer thought in his own soul by which he judges Jesus and finds him to ' Vie de Jesus. Par Ernest Renan {1S63). The Witness of the Spirit. 275 be wanting : and though Jesus may have helped him to that thought, yet if he appears to fall below the perfection he suggests, to those who think so he can no longer seem to fill up the whole human way between Man and God. They to whom Christ stands as Master and Lord, as absolute represen- tative of religion, can have no moral or spiritual conception of their own which they deem to be above him. He must always be capable not only of raising our standard higher, but also of satisfying in himself the standard that he raises. Otherwise we could not say with the Apostle Paul, " We are complete in him." The directions in which we need a revelation, in which we are capable of receiving one, are in the interpretation and fulfilment of the natural whispers and promptings of God to our affections and aspirations. On any matter in which the Spirit of God has spoken nothing to the soul, we can receive no revelation. God creates the spiritual want which Christ supplies, the aspiration which Christ interprets and fulfils. We understand the secret communings of God with the soul, when we see in him fully developed the life of God in man. There is a germ or seed of Christ in every soul, which Christ helps and quickens. We learn to know the prompt- ings of our Father when we have before us the full response of a Son. He reveals the Mind of God 2 ']^ The Witness of the Spirit. to us, because he understood it and fulfilled it himself. And so, as often as Christ spoke of men having faith in him, he referred it to the Spirit of God stirring in their souls the spiritual desires and movements which they saw satisfied in him. He is the goal towards which the Spirit of God draws the spirit of man. When Peter first recognized his great office and power, our Lord said, " It is the Spirit of my Father that revealed it unto you." When the Jews could not receive him, because they saw no beauty in him that they should desire him, our Lord said, in that suspense of faith, " No man can come unto me except the Father who hath sent me draw him." When the disciples seemed to be losing in his death the Messiah of their hopes, our Lord said, " The Father, even the Spirit of Truth, will come to you, and then He shall take of mine and show it unto you." And when Pontius Pilate would not testify before the world what the Spirit of Truth testified to Jiini, that Jesus v/as faultless, and abide by that testimony — when the judge was judged by the words spoken to him before his judgment-seat, " He that is of the truth will bear witness to me " — he cut himself off from the grandest opportunity in connection with revelation that God ever offered to a heathen man. " What is truth ? " said Pontius Pilate, turning from the reality in his conscience, and The Witness of the Spirit. 277 wilfully closing the opening door of faith. What is truth ! What is the Eternal Spirit in our spirit ! Nay, rather, what is anything else ? What is power ? What is Rome? What are the legions? What is the Empire? Had he but gone on in the way that truth was opening to him, he might have stood to all the after ages of men as the noblest witness of the Son of God. And now where does he stand ? " Art thou a king ? " asked Pilate. " Yes," answered Christ, " in so far that every one that is of the truth will hearken to my voice." And now what is Christ? and what is. Pilate ? — Pilate, who is known to the common world at all only by the brand of a few words relating to him whom, untruthfully, he be- trayed : crucified under Pontius Pilate. Pontius Pilate was far from being the worst man with whom our Lord had to do. He was not un- moved by Christ's spiritual greatness ; but, as is so often the case with a man, his sins and entangle- ments in one direction did not leave him free to follow truth in another. The true conviction in his soul of the innocence of Jesus he was not free to pursue, and so he lost the place in history that God offered to him, and made for himself another place. At a critical moment in the life of Christ, the representative there in Jerusalem of the power of the earth asked, " What is truth } " believing it was no kingly power in the world ; and now he has a 278 The Witness of the Spirit. name that is sounded at all in the ears of men only as the unjust judge, the memory of whose injustice cannot be suffered to perish, because it served to manifest him who said, " To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth." "What is truth?" said the judge from the judgment-seat of the world, as the world then was. And now who is on the judgment-seat? And why is Pilate subject to this unique retribution, the like of which has fallen upon no man, that his infamy is printed on the walls, and uttered daily or weekly by the lips of every worshipper, wherever the Creeds go — " suffered wider Pontius Pilate " P He, too, is an offering for mankind ; he, too, teaches by contrast the very lesson that Christ teaches. The unhappy man, false to the reality in his conscience, weighed himself against the one Power that redresses all false balances, reverses all false positions, hides under the rising waters all false signals and landmarks, and brings to the ripeness of life every seed of holy expectation. What is truth ! What strange revenge has truth taken on him who dared to ask ! He washed his hands indeed of the blood of the innocent person before he surrendered him as guilty ; but this is not the confession the Holy Spirit prompts ; and so the righteous blood as long as the world lasts must for ever defile his name. It is an awful and an unparalleled doom. The Witness of the Spirit. 279 Not that we are to speak of God as taking vengeance ; for if Pilate, seeing the testimony that God has made of him, is now willing to be so offered up for mankind in the spirit of him whom he wronged, he has long since purged his sin. [From a second part of this sermon, containing matter of special personal interest, addressed to a particular congregation, the following are passages bearing more directly on its main line of thought.] The two great steps of progress which recently have begun to be taken, the two pregnant lights now rising on the Churches, are these : first, that the written Scriptures, as distinguished from Christ the living Word, must through all ages remain open to historical criticism, to determine what they are, and to competent interpretation, to determine what they mean ; and, secondly, that God is so really what we call Him, our Father of an infinite Good- ness, the Father of creatures made in His own spiritual image, that the sacrifice of the Son in whom He was well pleased was self-sacrifice, not ransom- money, — and that to be in the spirit of his self- sacrifice is to put on the Lord Jesus and to be clothed in the robe of salvation. Open the Scrip- tures as the human records of God's typical dealings with mankind, to a free, devout, and instructed reason : cast away the fear that there is danger anywhere except in positiveness and dogmatism : 2 So The Witness of the Spirit. open the souls of men to the spiritual consciousness that God is at all times seeking to shine into every man's heart with the full light of His holy Love — that with Him there is nothing but unbounded Grace, and no obstruction anywhere but in our own wills and our own fears : get rid of the intellectual monster of infallible writings, and of the spiritual monster of expiatory and propitiatory sacrifice : get rid for ever of the theology of WORDS and of the theology of BLOOD, — and then the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the living face of Jesus Christ will be free to shine into every heart from which the cloud of misleading language, and the veil of unfilial and abhorrent fear, is for ever torn away. Now, these are the two fundamental views that have ever characterized the religion, the Christianity, of this place. That our approach to God is free, personal, immediate, — that our intercourse with Him is not conducted through, nor limited by written documents, but fresh, present, direct, Spirit to spirit, — that the highest result of Christ's influence with us, of the Father imaged in the Son, is to enable each soul to know the living God in itself, and enter into individual communion with Him, — and that God, not for His Love's sake only, but even more because of Righteousness, if Righteousness can be separated from Love, because of the Holiness which The Witness of the Spirit. 281 must ever desire to abolish sin, has ahvays open the whole support and embrace of His Nature to the penitent who flies from it — for "good and upright is the Lord, and therefore will He teach sinners in the way : " — these have ever been to us the Gospel of God our Saviour. If these two things are retained, — a spirit open to the Holy Spirit, not closed by the Bible, but helped by the Bible to immediate light from Him — and a God of all grace and goodness, in whose face of perfect Love towards us there is no darkness at all, — let these be retained, and all else is unessential, and will right itself. It is upon these spiritual grounds, spiritual because they affect our personal intercourse with the personal God, and not upon any matters of intellectual discrimination or of theological philosophy, that we found our Church, because we know, we feel taught by God in Christ to know, and by His Spirit in ourselves, that these are the essentials of any faith that is for ever to draw souls to God as the magnet draws the steel, and gradually to collect on earth the living stones of the Holy Catholic Church. There is no question affecting our personal re- lations with God on which new light may not come to us from fresh souls, new help to interpret and unfold our own experiences ; and the illustrations 2S2 The WU71CSS of the Spirit. of Divine Truth are on all sides inexhaustible. Far be the thought from us that we have drawn from our own great central truths, of an ever open inspiration, and of a reconciling Father whose face is never turned away, whose arms are never closed, — an inspiration and a mercy whose rightful power over us, whose rightful working in us, is divinely and expressly shown to us in a Son of Man, — far be the thought from us that we have drawn from these all the light we might, all the clear spiritual con- sequences that faith working by love long since might have attained. I know that we have much to learn, not merely of Christ himself, whom because of our imperfections we can only partially see, and dimly see where we sec him at all, — but even of our own conception of Christianity, of what is involved in it, and of what follows from it. God forbid that it was otherwise ! God forbid that the Lord's Prayer, which every child utters, had exhausted its meanings for any one of us, — that there was in reserve for the world no nearer sense than ours of a kingdom of God on earth, in souls that live with their Father as Christ lived with God ! The great principle of our Christianity is this, that Christ in all directions expresses the purpose of the Spirit of God speaking and struggling in our souls, — The Witness of the Spirit. 283 and therefore that nothing is Jiis with divine autho- rity to which the Spirit in us bears no witness. Without him we should not know the mind of the Spirit, for it needs a perfect man to interpret aright the whisper of God to human nature ; but the seal of the Father upon him is the witness to him in each of us of the Spirit whom he has enabled us to know : when the Spirit takes of Ids and shows it unto us, then are we in the fellowship of the Father and the Son, and our faith stands not on the testimony of man, but in the power of God. The time will come, and when it comes we shall be joyfully lost in the brightness of its shining, in which no man will say that Jesus is the Christ save by the Holy Spirit, no man will teach anything of Jesus as the Christ save that which can be confirmed in the soul by the witness to it of the Spirit of our Father. Then will all our Churches become comprehended in the Church of the living God — the Son, in whom first the Father's will reigned perfectly, being the pattern of each living stone joyfully filling its place in the spiritual temple and kingdom — in whom, therefore, the whole family in heaven and earth is named. XVIII. THE PERMANENT FUNCTION OF THE SON OF GOD IN QUICKENING SPIRIT- UAL LIFE.i "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." — ^JoHN x. lo. All living beings have received a determinate nature from God, and in the free expansion and enjoyment of that nature their Hfe consists. Life is tlie power of assimilation which makes all fitting aliment con- tribute to the growth of this determinate type which God has planted ; it is natural being developed and enjoyed. The seed has the capability of its last result already in itself, and by its vitality it causes the influences of soil and sun, of air and moisture, to develop the fair proportions of the archetypal form. So with the human soul : it is a seed of God. It too has an undeveloped ideal in itself, a germ of perfect- ness ; and religious life is the power of assimilation by which this type of God converts all experience into nutriment for itself. A child has this divine nature in a rudimental state : the germ is more or * Reprinted from a revised copy of a sermon in the second volume of the Unitarian Pulpit, 1858. Permanent Ftinction of the Son of God. 285 less perfect, ready for indefinite expansion. It is born a member of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is not by accident, or through force of circumstance, that childhood exhibits this determinate form ; and who can doubt that, if not misguided or misused, it would assimilate to itself the influences that God has pro- vided for its state ; — that if no passions were around it, no disorder, neglect, rudeness, cruel or needless thwartings, it would grow in favour with God and with man, as the child Jesus nurtured in the love of parents who watched him as a heavenly thing } The sentiment of Mary for her child represents the true parental treatment in reference to that age, — the reverence that fears to disturb a divine process, that quells our own passions lest we spoil a work that God is doing. In this way the whole of the instinctive period of human growth might pass in unconscious assimilation, the divine seed drawing into itself love, joy, trust, and purity, with fitting measures of truth, — the period before the two natures, the flesh and the spirit, come into open collision and ofifer conflicting solicitations. As it now is, this unconscious growth of childhood is soon disturbed : love, even parental love, is not unselfish love ; care is not wise care, — it thwarts and irritates. The bodily senses are unduly vexed ; the mental passions, even of very young children, are excited by vanity, rudeness, opposition, or injustice ; 286 Permanent Ftmction of the Son of God the holy credulity of childhood is abused for the lowest uses, its guilelessness made the ready inlet for convenient deceptions ; — and so all the silent pro- cesses of assimilation are shaken, or made partial. At a later period, when the animal passions appear, and even reason encounters many difficulties, and we have to shape our life by the force of our will, a conflict would be required in any case ; but then, if we had passed safely through the instinctive stage, the divine nature in us would have acquired a com- pact form that would offer the resistance of its confirmed purity, of its habits and its peace, to any violation of itself. The dark image of struggling and disordered manhood falls upon the child ; our frown and trouble shadow it ; our caprice unsettles its trust, and breaks the constancy of its expectations ; the original image, the tender organization, is all jarred by our distracting inconsistencies, or by our imperious wilfulness. And thus, long exiled by others from the Kingdom of Heaven, it is delivered over to the opening sway of the lower nature. The primal type of life is no longer clear, and other impulses are now strongly reigning. It is in this crisis and its consequences, that a clear, full image of our divine life, not in its rudiments, but in its perfection, is essential to spiritual salvation, and he in whom we see it becomes a Saviour to the soul. Without this, even under the happiest education, the in quickening Spiritual Life. 287 divine ideal within, supposing it capable of taking clear form, would have nothing to sustain it but the inner impulses, and in the fierce struggles of our mixed nature it would often need the confidence that can be inspired only by a sight of the divine Reality in the perfection of its peace and power, or by a faith in it that is equivalent to sight. And now it is provided by the love of God, that at the moment when the great controversy of life begins, when the lower nature is struggling to have us, there may come to the soul the energy of one who had life in himself, of one who never lost the assimilating power of his heavenly being, to support in their severer conflicts with evil those who have preserved the original image, and to awaken it anew in those who have lost it through abuse. This is the function of the Lord Christ ; this is his permanent relation to mankind. He perfected the image in which we all are made. He sustains our faith in the spiritual seed within ourselves, by showing us its ripe glory ; and he manifests the spirit, the principles, and the means by which all experience may yield it growth. Spiritual life, then, is the process of assimilation by which the divine type in us maintains itself in con- stant development. We are dead unto sin when the impulses of sin are powerless ; still more, when there stirs no sinful impulse in us. We are alive unto righteousness when we take all its influences as 288 Permanent Ftmction of the Son of God aliment into our own being. And when the type of Hfe we arc aiming to develop has before it, as its fulness, the stature of the perfect Man in Christ Jesus, and we know ourselves to be dead to all true purposes of life when not stretching towards that, we are in the way, and provided with the divine means, of reaching the ends of our being. Christ came that we might have this life, and that we might have it more and more abundantly. Now, this implies that we can obtain nothing from Chris- tianity, except by way of stimulus. It is our own portion of the divine nature that must be quickened into spiritual activity. No man can give us his life, even though he give his life for us. We must have life in ourselves. Christianity is the action of like on like. If there was no seed of God in us, no power could quicken what did not exist, — and its divine fulness in another would stimulate us no more than it stimulates the brutes. Christ's truth we must find true in ourselves ; it must come from our own foun- tains, stirred by him, before it has vital power. We know only as we are. We cannot be pure in his purity, or holy in Jiis intercourse with God, any more than we can be blessed in Jus blessedness. And, since Christ passed into the heavens, and walks this earth no more, Christianity is now not an agent, but an influence : and not only are we entrusted with our own life, but also with the power of Christianity in in qidckening Spiritual Life. 289 the world ; for, so far as we are concerned, it lives and works only so far as it quickens kindred life in us. Neither is imitation life, however elaborately and zealously pursued ; for imitation is not growth, it is mechanical work ; and only by free development of the seed within, of the spiritual nature in ourselves, can we be formed into the divine image. We grow, as all living beings grow, from an inward type, and are not shaped and carved outwardly after some pattern by an artistic hand. And Christ is the great quickener of spiritual life, because he had it in full measure in himself. It is the touch of a perfect Being on the inborn affinities of kindred natures. Every holy longing and capacity sees the desire of its eyes in him. Only a creative soul gives a shape to its aspirings, and so reaches the end of its own being, and becomes a power to other souls. And this was the divine genius of the Lord Christ. As a strain of music develops the sense of melody ; as a statue gives form and pressure to the dream of beauty ; as a picture turns sensi- bilities into perceptions, and reveals in Nature a presence and a power, — so Christ gives objective reality to all the floating aspirations — the prophetic intimations, the forecasting instincts, of men's souls. Emotions of natural pity pass through us as through him, but he took them up every one and gave them a place in his life. The breath of God did not float U 290 Permanent Fu7iction of the Son of God loosely through him ; it met the assimilating power, the creative energy. The aspirings native to all spirits, the movements of the higher faculties, denied to none, by him were wrought, by the power and majesty of conscience, into the image of the God who gave and moved them. His soul was not a mere sentient instrument on whose chords the air of heaven might awaken divine melodies, to pass away into oblivion. He felt them as implying a participation in the Spirit from which they came ; as a call to himself to become divine, that he might be able to accomplish divine things, and in his own person be the Image of his Father, the interpreter of God's providence, the impersonation of God's will. And this life he sustained by continual communion with its Source. The divine image in our nature is nourished only by intercourse with the divine Original of that image. We have all stirrings of God in us, but we sever them from their Source, as if they were ours and not His ; and so they fail us, like a stream of water cut off from its spring, — such as a rain-cloud drops upon the earth. Now, nothing was more peculiar in Christ, than that he did not regard his inspirations as his own. The gleams of light that entered his soul he received as from the Fountain of light. The heavenly visions came softly down from the Supreme glory. His in qitickciimg Spiritual Life. 291 words were not his own : he spake as he heard, in communion with the living God, and in the silent trances of his spirit. He bore no witness to himself ; but he testified that which he did know, for God had revealed it to him. His works were not his own : the Father who dwelt in him, He did the works. One look into the Almighty's face could dispel the fears that had their roots in his own humility, the despondencies that came from the deadness or the opposition of men : " Even so. Father, since so it seemeth good in Thy sight ! " Communion with God was to him life from the Fountain of life. Constant faithfulness, and constant prayer — these are the conditions of a divine life. Flesh and blood would have counselled him to economize his life even for the sake of the world — to be sparing of himself out of regard for his own usefulness. He had no wisdom in this matter but to do God's will as it came up before him. The world is not to be saved by worldly wisdom. Never from off the level of this world will you collect motive or power for the elevation of the world. To die on a cross after a short, dishonoured life, might seem an unlikely way to the Leadership, the spiritual Lord- ship, of mankind. It was not for him to choose his own way, but to take God's as it lay marked out. And even this it was that bore him to his place in the faith of men. It was impossible not to see 292 Permanent Fttnction of the Son of God whence he came. His trust never could have been so great, unless God was in him, and he in God. And so faithfulness not only strengthens the faithful soul, it clothes it with the power of God over other souls. A divine testimony attends it. So far as a man is true to God, God Himself is with him, and shines through him. He is strong in the Lord : strong through his fellowship with that Power which keeps the stars from wrong, by which all things con- tinue, this day, according to His ordinances. If we will ivork out the inspirations of our God with a holy reverence as He supplies them, He who works in us will ever be ready with new promptings. As we yield ourselves to Him, and suppress whatever in us would kill obedience, a new light thrills through the soul ; the organ of our spiritual discernment becomes finer, stronger, and more certain. We hear a deeper, sweeter voice ; and hear it with a fuller clearness. We see a higher glory ; and we hold it with a calmer constancy. Obedience to the light we have, with thirst and prayer for more, keep the living Fountain flowing into us. This is life : to have ever fresh influxes of the Holy Spirit coming to our souls. And Christ came that we might see the fulness and glory of this life, and have it in ourselves more and more abundantly. And this communion with God may involve a solitary course. Christ had to say to his own mother. in quickening Spiritual Life. 293 "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" Those who would hear God's voice must absolutely commit themselves to its directions : else will they close the door of heaven. Custom and the familiar ways of life make difficult all solitary obedience, the single- ness of an individual course. We act in companion- ship : our friends canvass and doubt what we take for inward monitions : we have outwardly to justify and establish what we have heard only in the deep silence of the heart. We cannot put another in possession of the inward evidence on which we are judging and acting. In the presence of all this questioning, and whilst listening to lower reasonings, lower but clear and strong within their sphere, we are led to doubt whether it v/as a divine voice that we had heard. Suppose, at the present day, amid all the wants and miseries of society, — of poverty, ignorance, and crime, — to which a self-devoted man might minister, — and the frequent revulsions of one's soul against ease, objectless luxury, and un nourishing comfort, as low and contemptible existence, a Voice was to speak to us, like that to Paul from Macedonia, " Come over and help us ! " how readily might the opinions, the wishes, the love, and the fears of our friends impair our freedom, suggest to us that we were throwing away some certain usefulness for an uncertain chimera, and so raise the infidel suspicion that the Voice was but the dictate of presumption. 294 Permanent Function of the Son of God that we had mistaken the prompting of our self- exaggeration for a heavenly counsel ! And this is the broken life of many, — conformed to the world but not satisfied with it, and so nourishing a contempt for themselves, and a bitterness against the earthly companionship which drags them down. And then all is lost together — lost in our spiritual discontent — the world, and friends, and God, and the work given us to do. Therefore, if we would love mankind, and the more we would love them, let us guard our own souls, and suffer no one to put an unholy foot upon our holy ground, and keep the salt of life in ourselves, and beware of sowing the seeds of bitter loathing and scorn in an unblessed conformity. There is some- thing infinitely worse than the loss of love, — the poison of its corruption, when it exacts, or accepts, the sacrifice of self-respect. The saints and servants of God do not consult flesh and blood for the com- mandments and laws of their own souls. What would Christ have been without this reliance, this life from the Source of life .'* His own mother would have narrowed his gifts to the old domestic uses. His townsmen would have arrogated his glory for their own city : " Physician, heal thine own ! " His brothers would have used it for self-dispkiy : " If thou do these things, show thyself to the world." His disciples would have turned it to a vulgar greatness. He was only not alone, because the Father was with in qtdckening Spwitual Life, 295 him. Not that a lonely course was dear to him : to none was it ever less so : none ever so laboured to share, to distribute, his sympathies : none so great was ever satisfied with such sympathy as he was content to seek and lean on : but he had the clear- ness and constancy of soul to discern the Mind of God, and to know that that communion sustains all other. Again, spiritual life manifests itself in spiritual dis- cernment, in just spiritual perceptions, in intuitive insight, in all that sensibility which leads to the appreciation of love, and through love to action and persuasive influence. It is alive to every token of the Divine presence, to every hint of the Divine purposes, even when most concealed in lowly or unlikely forms. A spiritual eye saw at a glance the nobleness that was in so frail a man as Simon Peter ; the guilelessness that v/as in Nathanael ; an unlimited offering in the widow's mite ; and the depths of purity- in the heart of a penitent woman so covered with open shame as to provoke the scoff of the worldlings In no direction do we more prove our spiritual blind- ness, our own dark side, than in our estimates of men, our misjudgments of character. A living soul saw the providence of God in the flower, and an argument for His fatherly care in the grass that withers. When slow, dull natures look around for tasks, and can find nothing for benevolence to do, in comes the living genius of love, and sees at once a thousand wants, 296 Permanent Function of the Son of God and makes a thousand offerings. We are all wonder- ing every day that it never occurred to us before to do what some one else is now doins'. Yet, if we knew it, this is the measure of our life, and it is found wanting. For a living soul is ever suggestive of goodness, suggestive of help, of gentle offerings, and graceful acts, and all-reconciling thoughts. A living soul takes upon itself all that work which no express law commands, but which the Spirit of God suggests to every heart that is in fellowship with Him, — to relieve, to raise, to purify, to comfort, to save. The spirit of life cannot be silent and unworking. It can- not live and make no sign. It must speak and strive : and it speaks a Prophet's words, and does a Saviour's deeds. It heals and strengthens ; and carries the cheerfulness of unfading truth into dark and perish- ing places ; and stands before oppressors with that look which good men wear when their nature is outraged. Christ was not satisfied with the heaven of his own spirit : its heaven would have passed from him if he had left any of the interests of God without his aid. His life would then have perished at its springs, — for he must have dropped out of fellowship with the Spirit of his Father. He had a mission to accomplish, a baptism to be baptized with, a fire to kindle. All his Father's purposes were his ; and his must be the works of his Father. He must place himself on the side of the interests of God ; in quickening Spirihial Life. 297 and make the world a spiritual battle-field to be won over from God's foes, a new province of the Kingdom of Heaven, The Son of God must withstand the enemies of God with spiritual weapons, and take death from their hands. This is the test of life, the conviction that we are taken into the life of God ; that we are God's fellow- workers ; that we are com- missioned from on high ; that God desires us to aid His purposes ; that this is His purpose, even our devotion to His kingdom ; that a task, a place, are assigned us, which none other can fill, for each other has his own ; and that somewhere on the field of the world God's cause will be lost without being fought, li we are faithless. And it is in these endeavours that the heart-secrets of a man come forth from him, the hidden riches of his nature. We know not ourselves, nor what is in us, until we go out of ourselves at some unselfish call. The greatest revealer of human nature is some noble emotion, some act of generosity or heroism to which we find ourselves committed. We all carry to our graves unsuspected genius which no emergency has aroused, — unsuspected powers of action and of love which no enterprise, or rush of generous passion, has awakened. The great problem of life is, how men are to be stimulated to know their own possibilities, to conceive and achieve their best. Difficulties look most formidable to those who never come into any real collision with them. Who ever 298 Permanent Function of the Son of God wrought earnestly against the foes of God and man, and was troubled by any belief in their omnipotence or eternity ? "I [saw Satan like lightning fall from heaven," said the great Worker of God's will. We know not the power of faith in God, until we spend and are spent for Him. We know not what con- fidence to repose in man, until we place ourselves by his side with a brother's heart, — for our want of trust comes from our want of love, else would we hazard the experiment. We know not how worthily to rely upon ourselves, until we feel God's interests as our own, and seek His ends under the shield, and in the armour of the Almighty. These are great truths : though we may not be able to speak them without shame. Life is energy : not light, but light carried into work and being. And as new light is only given to faithfulness to existing light, he who was the Light, was also the Life of the world, the greatest of the Workers of God. He found his work beneath his hands, and performed it on no particular scheme that we can perceive, but simply by placing himself towards all beings and all things in inward harmony with the divine relations he discerned. And life, which is an access of being, is also an access of joy, — a joy not of our seeking, but of God's giving. There can be no grov*'th of the divine nature in us without a new delight in its exercise, a fuller peace from the visions it opens, and the trusts it in quickenmg Spirittial Life. 299 sustains. The first law of the realm of spirits — to love God and man — is a sure provision for blessedness, — to find our happiness in the happiness of others, to lose the sense of our own cares in the sympathies and healing mercies which ever a peace from the great Comforter attends. For just in the proportion that we love and serve widely, do the joys of many become ours ; their prosperity is dear to us as the gifts and graces of those of our own house, — and if their griefs are ours too, and our hearts pierced through theirs, it is yet a sorrow that deepens faith, that carries us away from small cares, and leaves us, we know not how, nearer to heaven than we were. Joy comes from that life of the soul which sees things in their divine relations. How can they grieve who trust, who have spiritual discernment of the purposes of eternal Love, and who keep their own souls quiet by working for the ends that are dear to God ? If Christ v/as a Man of Sorrows, it was because he loved and went among the sorrow- ing : his own soul lay in the beams of heaven, and was full of the serenity of God. He was never dejected but when men would not receive the healing that he brought them, and then one thought of God restored the clear light to his spirit, — " I thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that though Thou hast concealed these things from the wise and prudent, Thou hast revealed them unto babes," He 300 Pe7nnane7it Ftmction of the Son of God was never shaken but in the humility of preparation, when the hour of awful trial was advancing upon him ; when it came, the trembling had departed, and we know what, and how great, was the peace that followed. Finally, we have two scriptural definitions of life. St. Paul says, " To be spiritually minded is life and peace ; " Christ says, " This is eternal life," — that is essential life, the life which a soul Vv'hich has once had it need never lose, — "to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." To have this quick sympathy for the spiritual aspect of things, — to see not the earthly but the divine fact in discipline, in sorrow, in retribution, and in death, — to be drawn towards the higher, though the hidden, meanings of the events of Pro- vidence, — to be alive to the suggestions of the spiritual voice and obedient to the heavenly vision, and through that obedience sharers in the Father's purposes, and calm in His faithfulness, — this was the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, the life which it is given to the sons of God to have in themselves. May we discern it as the interpretation of the living God working in all Nature, and have it within us from the Lord of life Himself! May it come to us as the significance of perishable beauty, the divine stamp on mortal clay, a glory streaming through the veil ! May we see it in the eyes of our friends, and in quickening Spiritual Life. 301 walk with it in daily companionship, and so mould our own spirits after it that it may never deny our fellowship with it, or, in the times of our need, forbid us as having had no share in it, to take the strength and comfort it provides ! May we be so alive to all that is true, real and gladdening, so dead to all that is false, seeming and dispiriting, that out of our own souls may flow living waters, in the faith and knowledge that, though the world passeth away and the lusts thereof, he that doeth the will of God abldeth for ever, — that to love our brethren is to pass from death unto life, to be already within the region of immortal affections, — for that the blessed God, who can never be indifferent to the being He has loved, to any soul He has once taken into per- sonal relations with Himself, has in countless ways revealed His Love to us, and in one representative Son, even the Son of Man, foreshown the Eternal Life of all His children ! XIX. THE SPIRIT OF LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS. " There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus : for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the lawcould not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh : that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." — Rom. viii. 1-4. A PENITENT spirit, looking into the face of God, turning the full eye of awakened conscience on itself, and aspiring to a reconciling life, requires, for its complete emancipation, a new future and an obliterated past. The more intense its present conception of the holiness of God, the deeper are the shadows which conscience casts on former guilt ! The more absolute its conviction of His love, the more poignant is the sense of past ingratitude ! Suppose the cleansing touch of light to have visited the heart, and the affections to be all loosened from evil, yet with what humbling memories is the new- born spirit still attended ; how wide the difference between the salvation of remorse and the salvation The Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus. 303 of holiness ; between the freedom of a love that was never shadowed, and a recent repentance that has yet won no privilege of trust ; between the hymn of worship that springs unbidden from the heart, and the sighings of contrition standing afar off, and not daring even to lift up its eyes unto heaven ! When may a repenting spirit know the natural liberty of God's children, and be utterly redeemed from its own past ? Whenever a new life has become to it not only the direction of its will, the preference of its affections, but also the fountain of its memories, the spring and the suggester of our involuntary thoughts and feelings, of the inner music of our being, which are God's hourly and truest retributions. The chills and shades of still unforgotten evil that hang around a recent repentance must yield to the colours of another atmosphere of life, before the complexion of the soul is so transfigured that we exchange the meek hues of convalescence for the flush of un- conscious health, and become such interior members of the Kingdom of Heaven, that it is not righteous- ness alone, but a righteousness so independent of law, a righteousness so spontaneous and free, that it is also peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Penitence, then, marks a crisis in a soul's history — an inward change so great that a new creation com- mences, and streams of fresh life break forth ; and therefore there can really be only one such penitence 304 TJie Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus. in one man's course, and the perseverance of the saints is a true doctrine. I mean not that after a true repentance there may not be great defects of character, continual shortcomings of life ; but that wherever the true spiritual relation between man and God has once been established, whatever may be our subsequent infirmities and defeats, the heart does not become disloyal again. Take the example of earthly inter- course in its fidelity and love. Is there even a momentary security, if it is known to be subject to fits and breaks and interruptions ? Is restored regard like unbroken trust .-' Do hearts that traverse oft the uncertain bridge of reconciliations, know even for a fleeting instant the hallowed rest of perfect faith, the peace of souls that never were estranged ? And is it possible that there should be no distrust in our approaches to God, when sin is a yet recent ex- perience, and the affections, that alone give a right of access to Him, have been freshly wounded ? We know of but one Being who was in full filial relations with God's Holy Spirit, and we know of him that his peace was not through penitence, — that the intensity of spiritual intercourse owed nothing to the vehemence and passion of disunion and re- union, but was the natural and progressive life of the spiritual affections. Now, it is out of a deep sense of the insufficiency of mere penitence at once to annihilate the past and The Spirit of Life in Christ Jestcs. 305 to create a new future, that have originated some of the profound and daring mysteries of speculative theology. They were the efforts of impatient, despairing spirits to make peace for a nature op- pressed with former evil, faster than it comes in the course of God's spiritual law. Regard for a moment the condition of the penitent, placed on the isthmus that separates the life of righteousness he is to lead, from the past actual of his being. All that can create despondency and self-distrust is as yet an uncancelled reality. Is it possible to know at once the peace of forgetting the things behind, to pass on the instant into the attitudes of spontaneous obedience and transforming reverence ? What a testimony to the burden of past sin upon the con- science is the common doctrine of atonement 1 To make the clearance complete, to give the assurance of a cancelled past, a free way through the un- shadowed redemption of the future, it puts the in- finite Spirit of God into legal relations with His own creatures, and by a transaction in a court of Divine equity redeems us from Himself. God indeed has, and can have, no legal relations of any kind with man. The Being from whom every- thing is a free gift, who in return seeks nothing for Himself, but only for our sakes that we should love Him and be like Him, cannot stand in the relation of a creditor to us. This is to turn metaphors into X 3o6 The Spirit of Life in Christ Jestis. eternal realities, and to build upon the mere symbols of language the spiritual things of God. The one absolute want of the whole Christian world, and of every individual heart in it, is the want of faith in God. We build up securities against Him by awful doctrines, and zve ivill not irjist Him, or rather hecaiLse we will not trust Him. The saving principle in human hearts is that which the Gospel calls the Spirit of life v/orking from within, as con- trasted with the law of commandments working from without. So long as man's relation to God is only in his obedience to a law prescribed by a power- ful authority, he is not yet a Christian, for he is not yet a son. The law, indeed, must be obeyed — there is no relaxation of obedience, for the law is hoi}'', just, and righteous — but how obeyed, in what power obeyed ? Obeyed because God has touched us with the love of Himself; because the well of living water is springing upwards to the heights from whence it came ; because the very affections that are the springs of the righteousness of God have also become springs of righteousness in us. No righteous- ness will avail us but the righteousness of God Himself ; that is, a righteousness that has the same kind of genuine fountain in our hearts that it has in the Holy Spirit, whence all that we have is derived. Therefore, that which no law could do, the Son of God has done — penetrate to living affections, reach The Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus. 307 the springs of life in us, unveil the image of God in human nature, and so, once and for ever, condemn sin in the flesh. Has he done this for us ? For this, and this only, is his Saviour power. " The glory which Thou gavest me I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one." Christ thus effects these two results : first, he gives the spirit of life, the spirit of his own life, by placing us in filial relations with God. He destroys the seeds of sin, for from the roots of a filial love no alien passions, no unbelieving fears, no dishonouring life, could spring. And if we once feel ourselves to be God's children, then we know that it is but natural growth to go on unto perfection. And this Christ effects simply by presenting the Divine Goodness to the spontaneous attraction of our spiritual nature. And, secondly, he sets before this spirit the com- pleteness of its human development. How far men may be the image of God is now a manifested revelation. We have Christ's spirit in Christ's life — the soul with its body of works, the affections and their fruits, the animating heart with the fulness of the stature of its being and its doing. And so he determines for universal man the obligation to fulfil all righteousness. For he who lived in the flesh and knew no sin, condemned sin in the flesh, showed that it need not be, took from us the excuse of its power and of our weakness ; and if we sin and make any 3oS The Spirit of Life in Christ Jesits. such defence for our sin, he will rise in the judgment and condemn us, for we may follow where he has led. Judgment is committed to the Son of Man. For human nature may ho. justly called to take no lower measure of perfection than a man has reached ; nor can the other children of God disown as too lofty for them the standard which a Son of Man, touched with their infirmities and tempted like themselves, has reared. And if the Lord Christ who is the Truth and the Life is also the Way, then from that exemplar of the Father's dealings with our nature we collect one general view of our spiritual life on earth, of the conditions of discipline to which each of us ought to conform his expectations, if the Crucified is the pattern of God's treatment of His spiritual children. If the life that we live, we live by the faith of the Son of God, then we must regard God as pledged to give no peace on earth but the peace of Christ ; then we must be content, as Christ was, to see tendencies to future good — to sow, to prepare, to labour without entering into the fruits, as we ourselves have entered into the labours of others, even of the Son of God himself; to take our place in his ministry; to pass on the smoking torch that is not yet a flame ; to stand between the past and the future ; to faint not in this faith and service, or, if we faint, to faint and still pursue, till God permits us to say, "It is The Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus. 309 finished ; " and to carry, not indeed a perfect life, but a right heart, a heart desiring to be right, to that accordant Home, where, if we have the Kingdom of Heaven within, there shall be no outward foe in all God's Holy Place. Is not this the sense in which the Christian, like Paul, determines to know nothing but Christ crucified ? Is not this the sense in which the Cross is the standard of unity, and we are one in all things, if we are one in this ? The Cross is, indeed, the Christian's sign — sign at once of the two poles of the religious mind ; of trust in the love of God, and notwithstand- ing, or rather because of, that love, the self-sacrifice that must for ever be the expectation of those who desire to live true to the holier light which at every fresh moment is streaming in upon them. For re- member that, run as we may, the race is never shortened. Christian endeavour may place great gains behind us, but it never diminishes those that are still before ; the heights above us rise as we ascend, and every new approach to Christ and God is but another step into the Infinite of Goodness. We talk of evidences of Christianity, and search among dead documents ; but here, still living and remaining with us, is the divinest of facts — that the Cross is our accepted symbol of life and power, able to touch, not with vain self-projected hopes, but with the very colours of heaven the darkest aspects of the 3IO The Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus. earth. Bitter have been the controversies as to what should constitute the unity of the Christian Body ; but are we one in this? — 07ie in bearing the Cross against all evil, each against his own ; in the cruci- fixion of the self-seeking, the envy, anger, resentment, pride, uncharitableness, the weakness, the passion, and the sin, that assuredly tend to destroy the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace? In our many definitions, and much speaking about Christianity, we go into the world and forget that our personal fellowship with Christ is simply commensurate with our meek, brave, generous, merciful, trustful bearing of our own Cross. For if Christ condemns sin in the flesh, it is not permitted to us to plead the weakness of the flesh. He, too, distrusted his own strength. He besought God that the Cross might pass from him. Is all this forgotten, or is it ptirposely that we drop from our view the trembling humanities of the Son of God ? Is it any part of a reverential discipleship to forget the intense preparation of the sufferer? Look at the disciples — bold, confident, eager, presumptuous, prayerless — scattered at temptation's touch, as fire parts flaxen bonds. Look at the Master, troubled in soul — yea, for a time, through the intense sympathy of soul and body, physically restless in the anguish of doubt and supplication : we see the hurried move- ment of agony, that carries him away that he may fall upon his face before God, and the as hurried The Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus. 311 return to the disciples with imploring look, a second and a third time, for any support of human sympathy. And we laud the Cross and forget the Garden ; extol the triumph and neglect the means ; adore the Master and go with the disciples. Suppose that with them it was presumption, so to boast and so to fall — but that with us it is humility not to lift our eyes so high — yet what are we to say of that humility which has never so bowed itself under a sense of its own weakness as to use Christ's means of strength and preparation against coming temptation? If we are weak in comparison with him, then surely also intense in comparison with his ought to be the apparelling of our souls for trial, and our communion with God, that He may take away our feeble spirit and replace it with His own. Has any one of us qualified himself to plead, that inasmuch as Christ was specially helped, sustained, and inspired by God, he did not condemn sin in our flesh, as well as in his own ? Is there any one of us who has made this trial, who has sought how much of His Spirit God will give, and sought on until God has refused to give him more ? And rather let us be guilty of real presumption, like the Apostle, than of false humility ; rather say with Peter, " Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will go with thee to prison and to death," and then deny him in the access of a great temptation, than say, " Lord, we cannot follow 312 The Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus. thee ; for thou art heavenly and we are earthly, thou art the Son of God and we are children of men, thou art mighty and we are weak ; " and then, as if we were strong, neglect the watchfulness, the prayers, the cries to God, the agony, even to drops of blood, in which assuredly we could follow him, and with which even Messiah's strength could not dispense. We must make our choice, as our way of spiritual life, between the repentances of Peter and the daily Cross of his Lord. If Christ condemns sin in the flesh, much more does he con- demn those who will not even watch against sin, and yet will presume to plead, and perhaps make a merit of pleading, their human weakness. For the difference is this, that we suffer ourselves to be weak in the presence of temptation, and Christ had spent all Jiis weakness in the Garden, discharged it into the bosom of God. Not until we go from a Gethsemane to our trials, and there find that the Almighty Father will not help us, may we plead that we stand on a different foundation, and have been refused the strength of Him who perfects His strength in weakness. When that can be said truly, God will listen to the plea. But false alike is the praise of self-sacrifice, and the profession of humility, on the lips of those who do not know the agony of self-distrust, the watchfulness of infirmity, the trembling prayer of preparation. And now, this day, wc lay our hands anew upon The Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus. 6^0 the Cross, and take it upon us. Our presence here says this much. Then shall we not examine our- selves, whether the evil things that crucified the Son of God may not have an unsuspected sway even in our hearts, who cry, "Lord, Lord!" and shout " Hosannah ! " For know we not that the low heart of unbelief, timorous adhesion to duty, an unfaithful betrayal of spiritual conviction, a love of this world veiling and soiling the discernment of the soul, — that these were the weaknesses and passions which, in other circumstances, pursued the Holy One to his death? Are we one with Christ, members of his Body, or seeking to be one, for none attain ; are we at heart partakers of his spirit, if the Cross is a symbol of fellowship? Then is there an enemy unforgiven? Is there an offence remembered? Is there a sense of injury nursed ? Is there one heart here that has not need to subdue itself under the prayer of him who from the Cross suggested excuses to God for those whose hands had placed him there, " They know not what they do " ? Or, is there an impatient beneficence, a love that wearies because it gets no praise, because it works and sees no fruits ; a faith that is ready to die because His ways are dark, His days a thousand years. His chastenings heavy, His best-loved not spared? To what fellowship are we called ? Is it not enough for the disciple that he be as his Lord ? " He saw of 314 The Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus. the travail of his soul, and was satisfied : and by his knowledge shall My righteous servant justify many." Or, is there a heart in v/hich the capacities for earthly blessing are keen and fresh, from which earthly blessing is shut out — to which God has given all the inward springs of sympathy and of action, and denied them the opportunities of outward life and joy, and on that account daily growing cold, having no faith that in the desert springs shall gush out, and the wilderness blossom as the rose ? Is this to bear the Cross of the most lonely heart the world ever witnessed, yet the richest in love, sympathy, and hope ? '* Gales from heaven, if so He will, Sweeter melodies can wake, On the lonely mountain rill, Than the meeting waters make. Who hath the Father and the Son, May be left, but not alone." And let us remember that " the Man of Sorrows " designates one whom, tried by all sorrows, no sorrow mastered ; and that to bear our cross, however meekly, with broken hopes and dejected hearts, is not to walk in the steps of the Prince of Peace and of immortality. " As many as are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God," and His children know nor fear nor bondage. I have had no new doctrine of Christ or of is The Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus. 315 sufferings to offer to you : I have only to say that he walked through every human way on which you are called to place your feet, and if we will strive to bring our nature to God as he brought his, that God will speak to tis as He spoke to him, and touch all the chords of our being with His living breath. We have no doctrine In this matter but the doctrine of the Apostle ; " Forasmuch then as Christ has suffered for us, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind." XX. THE PERPETUAL SYMBOLISM OF THE LAST . SUPPER.1 "And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you : this do in remembrance of me." — LUKE xxii. 19. These words broke suddenly from the full heart of Christ : one of the inspirations by which deeply moved natures seize upon occasions, and connect the intense life of the spirit with outward things. They w'ere the suggestions of impending death conveyed in the images which the scene and the hour supplied. To suppose that there was anything in our Lord's thoughts but to apply the most living energies of his spirit to the great emergencies of the time, to convey something of his own fellowship with God, and of the power of an eternal life, to the feeble men who on the morrow were to be left without their leader, with his Gospel in their keeping, is not only to impair the natural expressiveness of this monumental ' The larger part of this sermon appears as the Preface contributed by Mr. Thorn to the second edition of the " Echoes of Holy Thoughts," published by Messrs. "Williams and Norgate in 1872. Perpetual Symbolism of the Last Stopper. 317 act, but also gravely to mistake the whole genius of Christianity. It is of the essence of the religion of the Son of God that it fills the soul with the Spirit of our Father, and trusts that Spirit to make or find its own occasions. It never prescribes its outward manifestations to an inward feeling, nor defines its expressions. It leaves in each of us the Holy Spirit, the creative heart, free to work out its own embodi- ment, and give such genuine forms to its impulses and faiths as nature and truth suggest. The water of baptism, the bread and wine of the communion, of the sacramental vow of discipleship, are inexhaustible symbols, because, like the spiritual emblems of the natural world, like the mountains or the midnight heavens, they transcend all limita- tions of present feeling, and cannot be reduced to any final form of words. They are for ever new, and suggestive of what is new to kindled souls that are brought within the currents of inspiration. It is, therefore, impossible for a mind not in unison with the emotions of Christ in the moment of the inspired act, to feel the suggestiveness of that wonderful utterance, as a last effort to commit the essence of Ws and our eternal life to undying symbols, naturally presented — symbols which would grow in spiritual meaning as the development of the ages revealed more and more of the Son of God in the souls of men. 3i8 The Pei'petual Symbolism There arc occasions when the significance of a life must be breathed into a few words, it may be dumb signs, else the last opportunity passes, and the message of an existence is unspoken. A dying parent uttering the secret counsels that lie nearest to his heart, yielding out of his hands as a sacred charge great trusts that hitherto had been borne by himself alone, is a faint image of the necessity that pressed upon the dying Christ to give to those unprepared men, tJien or never, words or signs that memory and familiar custom would for ever be re- producing, and that death and a great experience would be for ever more and more interpreting. "With desire have I desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer." He desired to leave one expressed token of himself that would carry its own great meanings with it. He compressed the sum of his life in God — love, holiness, truth, with their inevitable cost — into the emblems the occasion offered ; he made the symbols of spiritual fellowship and deliverance symbols of martyrdom. He who made the Cross divine made also those more genial emblems full of himself. He spoke the words, " This is my body broken for you ; the spiritual bread that nourishes is the devotion of life we give to God and to one another ; the wine of life is faithfulness to God's Spirit flowing in us as martyrs' blood : bear this and me in remembrance ; " and from that hour, to the of the Last S tipper. 3 1 9 disciples of every age those elements have spoken of fellowship with the Lord in the spirit of his life and in the spirit of his death ; of faith in God equal to any test, to any hiding of our Father's face ; of truth and righteousness as the substance and the sustenance of being ; of that eternal life which thinks only of love and duty, and makes no account of sacrifice. "To this end was I born, for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth." The exalted spirit of Christ, in the ecstasy of his inspiration, poured this v/hole meaning into a symbol which he knew for the Twelve would for ever be recurring ; and the heart of mankind, with more or less of simplicity and fidelity, has ever since adopted the emblem and its meaning. This is the whole spiritual significance of the Last Supper. Nor was the symbolism of the Lord's Supper a solitary act of its kind. There were other acts of his, in those last days, in harmony with this monumental utterance, which show how impending death presented pregnant images through which he sought to leave indelible expressions of himself: He marked the barren fig tree, and spoke those words which would render it impossible for any follower of his to pass along that familiar way without thinking of an unfruitful life, of abused privileges, and of coming judgment. He knelt and washed the disciples' feet — he, Master and Lord — and so for ever sculptured 320 The Perpetual Symbolism the new lesson of love, — that he is the greatest who is most the servant of all, and that spiritual love counts no service mean. When the woman poured the costly ointment on his feet, he pro- nounced it no waste, for it had the odour of death, and served for his embalming. It was a gracious deed done to him who was all grace, and the due offerings of our hearts must go up as well to God who has everything, as towards the poor who have nothing ; and this, too, by his wonderful word, he took within those monumental acts which were to remain to all ages inexhaustible symbols of his spirit. " Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached vn the whole world, there shall also this that this woman hath done be told for a memorial of her." And so the Last Supper is the intensest of a series of kindred utterances, the sum of all. To his eye, so rapt, yet so clear, the only real bread of life to any of us, our only real meat and drink, is to do the will of our Father, — the love that will give itself to be broken in a pure self-sacrifice, the body of our works, — the only wine that nourishes is the Spirit of our Father, the Spirit flowing as life-blood in us, which in God Himself towards sinful and ungrateful men takes the form of long-suffering mercy ; and through these symbols, clothed with this meaning, the secret of the life of the Son of God is lodged for ever within the conscience of the Last Sitpper. 321 of mankind. Truly never man spake like this man : his words become things, and do not pass away. And when the death of Jesus struck down all present Messianic hopes, whilst yet his reappearance, and life in heaven, clothed him with a higher cha- racter, and kindled in tJiem a divine faith in part fulfilment of his prophetic words, that it was neces- sary for them that he should go away, in order that the great Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, might come unto them and open their eyes, the disciples felt that the spirit of the life of Christ, breathing from those emblems, was their only bond of union in God, for and against the world. Thenceforwards, as God had sent him into the world, so had he sent them into the world ; and as the world had hated him, so would it hate tJiem. And there was but one way of faithfulness in the work given them to do — to keep near to the heart of Christ ; to be as branches in that Vine ; to have the sap of life from the same Fountain of life flowing in them ; in the Scripture imagery too warm for the colder senses of Western nations, to eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man ; to have Christ formed within them, that the same life-spirit might energize in them as in him, and the same body of mighty works stand forth. So only could they have strength to fulfil the Master's last commission : " Be wit- nesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, Y 32 2 The Perpetual Sy7Jibolis7n and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." Called to be witnesses themselves, they kept before them the great witness to truth and God. They broke the bread and shared it — communion of life, communion in the service it might exact ; they passed the pledge of an eternal fellowship from hand to hand, and the bread was as the Master's martyred body, and the wine was as the martyr's blood. Call to mind what these men were up to the hour of our Lord's death — weak, worldly, self-seeking, unspiritual, ambitious ; call to mind their first awakening, and gradual birth into higher views of the glory of their Leader and the nature of his Kingdom — views from which all thoughts of self- advancement steadily disappeared, whilst peril and persecution stood in the vacant place ; and say, does the history of the world afford a spectacle to com- pare with their first communion ivithout their Lord, when they touched the symbols and said to one another, " This is our calling, and this may be our end " ? It was the first image of Christ's Kingdom and Church upon earth ; the first covenant among men to live and die as brethren, in union with their Father after the likeness of His Son, cost what it might. And so mightily significant was the me- morial office, so full did they find it of the power of Christ and of the peace of God, that they made it a daily act ; they renewed its inspiration as often of the Last Slipper. 323 as they met together, the witnesses in that great cause, the earthen vessels of the heavenly treasure, with nothing to sustain them but the light of the knowledge of the glory of God shining in the face of Christ. For of what realities did those emblems speak to them ! — of the victory of faith ; of the spiritual power and knowledge that come through sorrow ; of the authority of meekness ; of the great- ness of service ; of the eternal life of love, the only life that men share with God ; of the divine spirit of forgiveness that can compel the confession, "This was the Son of God." Their only security was never to fall away from those great remembrances, from that vital nourishment, lest, alone and unsup- ported, they should wither like branches that abide not in the Vine. Gradually their isolation ceased, the fold enlarged ; the world caught the flame and was aglow ; their meetings were no more v/ith closed doors in upper chambers, with a watch without. The synagogue of the Jew became a temple of Christian prayer ; the law-court of the Roman, the august Basilica where peace on earth was proclaimed, contention and strife forbidden to brethren living by a spiritual law ; the hurried worship of the catacomb, broken by counsel and communion on matters affecting life and death, gave place to splendid churches and imperial patron- age. But still the spirit of persecution was not 324 The Perpetual Symbolism dead : a sudden revolution, the next succession in a Diocletian or a Julian, might show the Cross again in its true character, not as the standard of victory, but as the sign of faith through despised sufferings ; and so, still, the emblems of a Son of Man, who had never failed to be a Son of God, were held aloft at the weekly worship, and the sacramental pledge of loyalty, the vow of constancy, renewed. Finally, all sufferance disappears ; the once dis- honoured Cross becomes to the nations, in war and in peace, the emblem of all that is sacred or is dear, worn reverently on the banner and the breast. But though the kings of the earth withdraw their opposition, the powers of spiritual wickedness remain. The shadows of discipline are terrible as before to impatient worldliness ; clouds and darkness are still beneath God's feet ; the path of constancy is through weakness, seduction, detraction, sins luringly disguised, pleasant and profitable wrong. Temptation is close at hand, the Kingdom of Heaven afar off; piety is of faith, not of sight ; earthly love has ever to rejoice in trembling, knowing that death walks by its side ; mercy makes its rounds with bleeding feet, seeing the face of hope and of God only in undying charity, which yet cannot close the flood of evil against which it strives ; so that to the blind earth the pity seems to be all supplied of the Last Stipper. 325 by man, the trial and the agony by God ; and therefore these great symbols of faithfulness unto death, of light in darkness, of love laying down its life because it will not break the fellowship which alone is life, have never lost their mean- ing and cannot be outgrown. They interpret the struggle of every man's life like the paintings of a Divine hand ; and never since that night in which the power of evil was ascendant, and darkness had its hour, has there been an age of the Church in which these signs were not living symbols of our divine communion, of our everlasting fellowship with one another and with God, through the significance of the perfect life of the self-sacrificing Son of Man. Except that inward truth, nothing can endure the baptism of fire through which every man's soul must pass, and stand before God's face; and so, in presence of these symbols, all the ages have said, " There is the image of the life of faith ; there is the fore- showing of the Cross which every man must bear ; and thus beforehand, like Christ praying and pre- paring in Gethsemane, do we break its power." Here, at least, is Christian antiquity, a tradition from the primitive times, a succession which goes back to the Apostles, from the multitudes which no man can number to the guest-chamber at Jerusalem, where Christ sat with the Twelve, and one of them was a traitor. Why should we break that living 326 The Perpetual Symbolism line— drop one of the signs that has h"nked together the generations of faith ? I take now solely the human view of this question ; that is, I do not presume to speak, or that any one can speak, in the name of an authoritative com- mandment, which all men are bound on their allegiance implicitly to obey ; such divine commands are reserved for those great matters which carry with them their own authority, which no soul can refuse and not deny itself. I only ask, for what spiritual reason must we loosen any link of simple and natural feeling that connects us with the Church of the Crucified, with the past generations of those who have lived and died in the faith of the Son of God? I speak not of ordinances, nor of the efficacy of sacraments, of positive institutions as the channels of grace — God forbid ; we are Christ's free men, children of the same Father, and spirit to spirit is the law of life : but of expressive acts that are still instinct with life ; that have not lost, and never can lose, their first significance ; that were employed by Christ because in no other way could he adequately represent his great meaning ; and that represent it still — that fastened on the heart as the full symbol of an unspeakable reality, and therefore still hold their place. If it is argued that Christ did not lay this observance, or any observance, on the conscience of tJie Last Supper. 327 of all after-ages, as a part of this inward life and fellowship with God, or as a necessary means to these, the fact is freely admitted ; but it is of no practical application, for they that say this would say also, and I with them, that neither did Christ lay any Sabbath or Sunday, Temple or Temple service, priest or preacher, weekly psalm, litany, or sermon on the conscience of all after-ages. If any man conscientiously holds that his life in God, his love for man, burns purer and clearer without these, there is no law or command of Christ that touches his liberty in such things ; to his own Master he standeth or falleth, if only he has a Master, and is not obeying himself. It will not do, therefore, for a spiritual Christian to argue this matter on the ground of authority, for there are other acts and instruments of spiritual fellowship for which there is no authority, which yet he observes, because they serve a great purpose, express a great sentiment, symbolize a great faith, and correspond more or less perfectly to universal wants and feelings. It would be especially unworthy of those who claim to be especially spiritual, to plead that they are not ordered to employ these symbols as the nourishing expressions of a great faith, for they are not ordered to do anything but to love God and man, and if they stand upon orders, they cease to be spiritual. We must disown, therefore, altogether the ground of 328 The Perpetual Symbolism express command in such matters — but not more for Sacraments than for Sundays — and leave one another free to adopt such signs, such utterances, such representative symbols of the life which is itself invisible, infinite, unspeakable, as the inspira- tion of God in the greatest of His children, and the consenting spiritual genius of mankind, have marked for universal currency. And we shall all be the better, drawn more closely to one another in respect and sympathy, for at least rightly interpreting the feelings of those who do find these symbols still instinct with life which words cannot exhaust. I know it may be said that if no words are of the same power, then it is impossible by words to interpret these symbols. That is so ; but it is no more than may be said of any natural symbol ; it is no more than may be said of any parable of Nature, or of the everlasting hills. No words will ever be a substitute for these ; yet those who feel it can never cease to speak of the unspoken word on earth and sea and sky, of day unto day uttering speech, of night unto night delivering messages, and of the morning spread upon the mountains. This, then, is our interpretation. I. We lose ourselves in sentiments ; we tacitly accept responsibilities that take no shape ; we glide from day to day with no definite view of that which alone in the spiritual world is capable of absolute of the Last Supper. 329 definiteness — the e7id for which we live, the model in the soul, the life which alone is life, the character which is God's clear will concerning us. There is a throng of good feelings in our hearts, but they have neither form nor pressure, and we mould ourselves after no image of perfection. The natural lineaments in us all of a Son of God we do not work and chasten and temper into a nearer likeness to the Son of God : this, the one work in this world of a spiritual creature, is yet the one work that the general inspirations of God will not enable us to do ; the one work that, without an effort of Christian discernment and concentration, is never fully apprehended, never deliberately set before the soul at all. We are, perhaps, never without a sense of divine obligations ; but we make no covenant ; there is no Christ formed within us, by whom we measure what yet is wanting to us ; we live without the feeling that we are daily striving to add something more of fulness to the image in which • we were made, and that, when we die, we shall go to have that image made perfect. Here is our danger, not that we are irreligious, but that life is accomplishing no definite work in us, proposing no appointed aim to us ; that our filial powers and properties are not, by consent of mind, heart, soul, and will, becoming moulded into the spiritual like- ness of the Son of God — a likeness that we could 330 The Perpetual Symbolism not have supplied from ourselves, but that we can recognize and own as the calling and the con- summation of our being now that God has given it to us. Religion, Christ, our conversation in heaven, are as streams of sentiment vaguely flowing through us, but no more condensing into shapes of spiritual life, than the holy breath of Nature, though oft it thrills them through, makes new men, purifying them to the core, of those who yet feel something of this communion with Nature, on the mountain and the moor, by the river and the glen. The Holy Spirit, like the wind of heaven, His messenger, passes over us and through us, but we detain it not to be for us as a finely cutting chisel in a sculptor's hand, to refine away the disfiguring parts, and make the lines of God more true. Now, is it possible for a man to lay his hands on the symbols of our divine communion, discerning the Lord's body, the reality, the substance of the Lord's life — " Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not, but a body hast Thou prepared — a body of perfect work : I come to do Thy will, O God " — without for the time escaping from this indcfinite- ness which is our weakness and our bane, without discerning what it is that he means, what is in his vow, when he avows the purpose of becoming one with Christ in God ? Is it possible for a man to continue in that confusion between real spiritual of the Last Supper. 331 life and mere sentiments and opinions about religion, which is the veil that is upon all our eyes, if he came so close to Christ, to that in him which made him the Son of God, that, to use an Apostle's word, he as it were ''handled'' the things that alone have the substance of life in them ? Is it possible to touch the symbols of Christ's self-sacrifice without perceiving for the time what as Christians we have to do and have to be, without vain and vague reliances dying out of us, whilst all faith and all hope take the shape of that divine charity which is our coniinnnion with God, and so will abide when hope is possession and when faith is sight ; the charity which, being of the Spirit of the Father, would not only give our bodies to be burned, and our goods to feed the poor, but that " suffereth long, and is kind, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, and never faileth " ? Is it possible that we can " do this in remembrance of him," and not perceive that we must crucify in ourselves the selfish evil, the worldliness and proud affections that crucified the Lord, and that would reject him again, if he appeared again on earth as the carpenter's son, claiming to be the Son of God ? Is it possible thus to bear about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, without feeling that the end of all this is 2) 3 2 The Perpetual Symbolism that the life of the Lord Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal flesh ? Are we not to accept those words as spoken to all humanity, though Pilate, urgently pleading in his mockery, knew not to what end God was using him — " Behold the Man I " — " Be- hold the Man that is the Son of God ; " forgiving, rendering blessing for cursing ; not seeking death, but accepting death if he could not escape it without leaving the path of godly life ; surrendering every- thing but truth, for holy love and fellowship could not surrender that ; meek and lowly, as knowing what alone is great ; with marks of God upon him that struck with strange fears and stronger sym- pathies, even to the judge who consented to his death, and the centurion who saw him die ? 2. And the strength of the communion is, that in this image of spiritual life we see the manner of our Father's dealings with every child He has. The providence of God can still be encountered only by the spirit of Christ. In every life there is temptation, a darkness in the present that would hide the face of God, the best things in us not permitted to come easily to the birth — a waiting for what is to be until death raises the veil ; and meanwhile, in proportion as our life is high and true, ways that must be travelled alone. We are all called into the fellowship of Christ's sufferings, and by " this remembrance " of him we may come of the Last Supper. 2>ZZ to see them with his eyes. God treats all His other children as He treated him who was made perfect through obedience. Is it nothing, in such a life as ours, thus to remember that when we are most true to God our feet fall into the lonely or difficult steps of His Son — to know whither we go, and the way ? 3. And so in this communion is symboled the essential unity of God's family. "We all," says the Apostle, " eat of the same bread ; we all drink of the same cup." All differences cease with those whose souls are nurtured alike. The inward life is the same to all. We are socially separated for the purposes of our spiritual education, but we are all the household of one Father. " The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the co^mmcnion of the blood of Christ ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ 1 For we being many are one body." Our spiritual fellowship, indeed, in no way depends upon the symbols that express it to us. Whatever may be the power of natural sacraments in conveying vivid impressions to us, they do not make the truths of which they are signs. The truths may be deeply felt by those who never learned in their youth the intense significance of this language ; for there was a time when the test of the Lord's Supper was an instrument of the State's intolerance, and all such 334 ^-^^^ Perpetual Symbolism. spiritual symbolism, because it was easy as an outward profession, became hateful to the truest men. But all this is gone for ever ; and though a new spiritual language may not readily be learned by those who have passed their youth, why should not the Lord of life still speak to the young in the same language by which he sought to infuse a great strength into hearts that were in a like case, only beginning to be spiritually born, weak, passionate, and tempted ? Dangers are around them ; powers of evil are working in their nature ; one occasion of temptation might place the great gulf of sin between them and the unstained time that then never could return. And is it not well to use definite safeguards against transgression ; to watch and pray, as in Gethsemane, for one hour with the Son of man, apparelling himself against the evil hour ; to exact solemn pledges from their own hearts ; to enter into covenant with God ; to take the great vow of a man's youth, the vow of purity ; to resist the passions and the world ; to see in the dear symbols of communion the dread symbols of trial, the cost of conflict, and, with their hands on the Cross, to place the image of their Lord, and the vow of a consecrated life, between them and their dan^rer ? XXI. THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD. " The Church of the living God."— i Tim. iii. 15. As no aggregation of dead particles will make a living body, so only members in each of whom God's Spirit stirs will make a living Church. We speak, indeed — for such, unhappily, is the general theory of Christendom — as if the soul of man had by nature no life in itself, and our religious institu- tions were designed to create it ; but as well might we say that it is the arrangements of domestic life, and not the mighty and solemn power of nature, that forms and sustains the relations of families. We look upon a Church as a necessary product of the religious sentiment in our nature, as we look upon a home as an inevitable result of natural affections ; and just as an ill-constituted family, instead of fulfilling its ofiEice of educating the heart to all gentleness, patience, and true Christian heroism, may wither every dear hope, and utterly extinguish domestic peace and love, so an ill-constituted Church may enfeeble the spirit that gave it birth, dry up 33^ The Church of the Living God. the springs of religion, make us drink at cisterns and reservoirs instead of at the well-heads of truth, quench the individual life, substitute natural things for personal faithfulness to God, and give us what is called CJinrcJi fellowship, sectarian clanship, for the charity of the Gospel, for the heart of Christ. Now, what we want is a Church of the living God ; that is, a Church in zvliicJi God is a living God to eveiy member of it, in which God is a Fountain Spirit com- municating Himself directly to each individual heart. And for our conception of the perfect elements of such a Church, we must re-ascend to Christ, be placed by him in his own position of immediate communion with the Father, from communion with the Father receive the spirit of a son, and if a son, then of a brother toward all God's family, and so build our Church upon his foundation ; in the language of the Apostle, become each one of us a " living stone" in that spiritual temple which is the body of Christ, — the fellowship of all those who share his relations to our God. The aim of each Christian man is to form himself after the image of the perfect Son. The aim of each Christian Church or Community is to form a brother- hood, every member of which shall be animated by a spirit of cordial co-operation, and, as the soul rules the body, the same God work all in all. A com- munity of men professing to realize the Christian The CImrch of the Living God. 337 idea of a spiritual brotherhood, with the Son of Man for their image of the Father, for their picture of true life, their promise and pattern of eternal destiny, the Man in whom God's idea of humanity was fully manifested — and striving to maintain with heaven and earth the relations that he sustained — associating together to lend one another mutual encouragement and sympathy in these aspirations and endeavours ; — this would constitute a Church of the living God. Christ contemplated the gradual growth of a Church universal as the characteristic and peculiar creation of his spirit, the reign of God in each man's soul producing a kingdom of heaven on earth ; within each separate heart kindling the same solemn ideas, and opening the same living springs, and in their countless homes uniting every form and variety of mind around the throne of Him whose presence is the temple wherein all are gathered, and whose Spirit, speaking inwardly to each, contributes the common impulse of love and worship. Such was Christ's vision of his Church : dispersed on earth, removed to heaven, unknown to one another, they are yet of one communion. They kneel with the same image in their souls. They strive, within their several conditions, to embody the same ideal. They know, though in absolute solitude, that the thoughts which are the most sacred and sustaining to them- selves make also the inward pulse of every brother's z 338 The Church of the Living God. strength. They are fellow-workers when together, and of one heart when separate. This is the Church for which Christ prayed, extending his prayer to us : " I pray for them also that shall believe on me through their word, that they also may be one, as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee ; that they all may be one in us." And what is necessary to the coming of this reign of God on earth ? Only that each one of us should participate in Christ's feeling of a filial re- lation to his Father, and should desire to embrace his brother-man within the fellowship of his spiritual life. The Church Universal is, for all practical pur- poses, represented by our separate congregations of worshippers, just as human society itself is repre- sented by individual families. Each single Church, at least in its idea and profession, is an organization, first for cherishing faith and the religious life within its own members, and secondly, for acting as an agency of God on the sin and the sorrow of the world, presenting within limited numbers and practicable conditions an image of a spiritual com- munity, to be realized at last in the completion of Christ's vision by the whole family of Man. To feel Christ's spirit within themselves, and to do Christ's work in the world ; when they arc converted themselves, to convert their brethren ; when they are fed themselves, to feed the flock of God ; — this is The Church of the Living God. 339 what every Church sets before it as its aim and end. It has thus two aspects, one towards the spiritual health of its own members, and their brotherly- co-operation in all things pertaining to true life and well-being ; and one towards the world at large, as an instrument for reclaiming the wastes, and drawing some portion of the unconverted into the fellow- ship of Christ. Each visible Church is a well-defined body, interchanging between its members spiritual sympathies and Christian acts, with Christ for its leader and God for its limit. The invisible Church is made up of all those who, without knowing one another in the flesh, yet breathe one desire, offer one prayer, unite in one endeavour. It is the aim, then, of each visible Church, and each congregation of faithful men, first to have life in itself, and then to kindle life where it is not ; to make continual inroads upon outlying unrighteousness until the Church and the World become one and the same. Looking first to its interior functions, close per- sonal communion with God in each of its members is the primary element ; for they only that have can give. If we have not ourselves personal fellowship with God, we cannot kindle it in another. And regarded in this light, our worship in the Church be- comes one of the highest expressions of our spiritual brotherhood, our acknowledgment before God and before one another of the deepest sentiments of our 340 The CJm^'ch of the Living God. nature, of our own conviction of their reality, and of the reality of the divine ends and objects towards which they point, and all this with the view of cherishing, by such open testimony of what God says privately to each, that living faith in the whispers of the soul, in the promptings of the Divine Spirit, whose natural fruit is peace of heart and nobleness of life. It must be very evident, in this respect, that whatever peculiar good proceeds from the institution of the Church, is simply a product from the mighty power of human sympathy — is derived from men consciously breathing and acting in fellowship with one another. In the Church it is clearly spiritual fellowship we seek, and therefore, if we approach it without sympathy in ourselves, without seriousness, without fervid desires, without that musing heart in which the latent fire is ready to burst out in flame, we spoil our own object, and we violate our compact with our fellow-worshippers. And thus every individual has a share of responsi- bility for the warmth of the spiritual atmosphere he breathes. To whatever visible Church a man belongs, he is bound to make it a true Church, a Church of the living God, a community of living and of life-breathing men ; and as he is an organic part of it, he cannot be warm without warming it, or cold without chilling it, or careless without pro- faning it : and what he receives, will largely depend The Church of the Living God. 341 upon what he gives ; what he finds, upon what he brings. The chill of custom has, indeed, broken down the significance of this weekly attestation of the Church, and stripped it of its meaning : but if we could suppose public prayer taking place for the first time ; if childhood had never grown familiar with sacred services before having any deep feeling of their power ; if, amid the struggling vicissi- tudes of life, and all the mortal yet divine relations of our human affections, we suppose a sudden sense coming for the first time to the hearts of men that it was right to bring together these common interests into the presence of Almighty God ; to stop the wheel of labour ; to close for a day the accounts of the world, that, face to face in the sight of heaven, they might acknowledge to one another that that toil was not their life, and that that world was not their heritage ; to take upon themselves the obli- gations of brethren equally dear to God, and whose mortal lot is arranged by Him, with a view chiefly to test and strengthen this spiritual bond, this fraternal sentiment ; — suppose that, for the first time, we had come, from worldly thoughts or only secret meditation, to confess these things, to overhear one another's private prayers, to avow before earth and heaven that we are bound to live together in the spirit of these acknowledgments, is there any man so hollow that he could dare, by a new and fresh 342 The ChtLrch of the Living God. act, thus to commit himself before God and his fellow-men, without feeling that the pledge was real, and must be kept ? But we lose this mighty power through that spiritual inertness which strips of its significance every accustomed act ; an inertness that clings to us by no necessity, and is only the mark and the retribution of a defective thoughtfulness. Nor must it be forgotten that it is the want of individual freshness and vitality that opens a way for ecclesiastical encroachments, and almost gives a sanction to sacerdotal forms. It cannot be doubted that some of the religious reactions of these times towards Roman Catholicism grew out of an honest desire to restore their significance to forms that were utterly dead ; that men, earnest in purpose but narrow in spirit, were shamed and shocked at the emptiness they witnessed, but knew no other way to sanctify and reanimate the forms than to make the forms themselves essential. And whoever withdraws the living spirit from a religious obser- vance, is not only aiding the tendency to a formal devotion, but is preparing the way for a sacerdotal rule. If you will not fill the form with life, and yet will use it, there is nothing for it but to make the form itself essential. Men will not be satisfied with neither spirit nor forni ; and if the spirit is not there, they will consecrate the form. Deadness in religion always prepares the way for the revival The CImixh of the Living God. 343 of sacramental claims ; and the indifferentist opens the door to the priest, as at least in earnest. With all human institutions, to prevent an in- sensible loss of their vitality, it is necessary from time to time to recur to the idea that lies at their foundation. No institutions can create life — that is the work of God within the soul — but they can save it from waste ; they can collect together its scattered sparks ; they can make one glowing fire out of dispersed embers that could not long maintain their separate heat ; they can control its action, and regulate its fitfulness, and concentrate its power ; and, above all, they can raise it to enthusiasm, through the joy that thrills it when it passes into fitting works, when light passes into life, and sees of the travail of its soul and is satisfied. Take the institution of the family. It originates not in the design to create human affections, but out of their mighty force. Yet we know how true and rare a heart that man must have who, within his family, never loses the inward sentiment of a customary act ; who never in his home speaks his words of daily kindness in a lifeless way, nor discharges the relations, even of his closest affections, otherwise than in spirit and in truth. And so with the Church : it organizes and fosters and concentrates life, but does not create it ; and if we come to it looking for life, but bringing none with us, we find 344 ^he Church of the Living God. it dead and we leave it dead. For it is not a fountain of life — God alone is that — but rather the channel through which the life of many flows into one fulness of expression. It would seem a clear thing, then, that we must bring its spirit with us, if we would aid its growth. Descend to particulars. Take its several offices. There is no certainty that any words of prayer will kindle our devotion unless we pray ourselves, and make even the feeblest aspiration, in its poorest utterance, fuel for our own fire. There is no certainty that any preaching will touch our conscience, will awaken our higher con- sciousness, or convey to us more than the most meagre truisms, the intellectual skeleton of reli- gion, unless we bring a living apprehension to body forth their fulness ; and then the very simplest and most familiar lessons of Christianity will be found to open views of vast, and indeed inexhaustible significance, and in the freshness of their power seem to be felt as if for the first time. Such great lessons as that " God is love, and whoso dwelleth in love dwelleth in God;" "Be children of Him who maketh His sun to rise upon the evil and the good, and sendeth His rain on the just and on the unjust ; " " Be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect ; " for " if children of God, then heirs ; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ ; " *'The Kingdom of Heaven is righteousness, and peace:, The Church of the Living God. 345 and joy in the Holy Spirit ; " "A man's life consisteth not in the things that he possesseth ; " " Whosoever liveth and believeth shall never die," for life is fellowship with God, and death is separation from Him ; — these are instructions that can never be deprived of the infinite nourishment that is in them by any feebleness of utterance, unless there is no spiritual action of our own nature upon them ; and therefore the efficiency of social worship can be lost only through our failing to bring with us the idea it expresses, the desire it breathes, which is not like that of an institution for science or philosophy, but of a brotherhood of believers recog- nizing within themselves a mutual connection with God and eternal life, and avowing and pledging it to each other, " that the whole body fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love." That becomes more certain to each of us which another attests as his experience also, and that which might be timid or false if kept secret and alone, is raised to its full energy when felt to break forth from the common heart of man. In this lies the wonderful power that often attends the earnest utterance of a vital truth. We delight to hear our own inward consciousness, the divinest secrets of 346 The CJmjxh of the Living God. our nature, openly attested by the full general voice. We meet in the Christian Church mainly to give one another these testimonies. We each contribute our own spark of faith and inward consciousness to raise the fire of the religious life, and to be warmed at it ourselves. And he who withholds this is no true member of a Church ; no life flows to him, or flows from him. Indeed, the very nature of religion requires that we should discharge for one another these strengthening ofiices : for religion is faith, not knowledge ; it is trust, not certainty : it springs from inward, not outward evidence ; and its law is not interest or selfish gain, but duty and sacrifice. Its original source must ever be the whisper of God to the individual heart ; and when each humble spirit learns that God has made the same whisper to others also, it becomes assured in trust, and spiritual measures of hope, of endeavour, and consolation become the standards of our life. There is thus the highest charity, the dearest grace of the heart, a tender and a sacred humanity, in that living avowal of a common spiritual experience which our social prayer implies, and he who contributes this, preserves the Christian Church for its highest uses as the salt of the earth. And therefore we have lost the very idea of a Church, if we hold that the pulpit or the preacher is mainly responsible for the life or The Church of the Living God. 347 the death that prevails around it ; if we do not feel that the most real and touching of all incitements, the true ministrations of God, come from the presence and the testimony of our fellow-men, drawn together from amidst their various conditions, struggles, and experiences, moved by a common sentiment, avowing a common hope, and in the strength of the inward witness of the Spirit accrediting and confessing the Lord Christ as the manifest end and perfection of their nature. It is said to be a common experience that books of devotion, books of prayer, are found to be dead and uninteresting. But why is this ? Mainly because there is no action of a devout spirit upon them. We read them instead of praying them. We must remember that no fuel kindles itself. You must apply some living flame before any warmth can be got out of the materials of fire. If we took up devotional books in a spiritual frame, their words might appear solemn, affecting, adequate expressions of divine things ; or, if we earnestly awakened our own nature to call up the images and ideas they expressed, our souls might glow beneath their power. And so in the Church : to listen is not to pray ; to give a passive ear is not to receive a divine truth, and let it settle down into the heart. Only our own spiritual activity can reach the depths of the simplest utterance of 348 The Church of the Living God. Christian sentiment, or so incorporate it with our being as to reproduce it in our life. St. John had good reason for thinking that the Church of Ephesus ought not to have wearied of the oft-repeated words, " Little children, love one another," for surely mankind has not received the sentiment nor ex- hausted the spirit of the lesson yet. And a Christian Church lives according to its prayers, is faithful to its idea, when its members co-operate with one another to breathe this spirit into life — to do the good to which they aspire, and to root from each other's souls the evils which they mourn ; and this they accomplish best not by direct action upon one another, but by common action, by widening their sympathies and seeking to extend Christ's kingdom in the world. For it is not to search out our brother's heart that we meet him in the Church. His heart may, indeed, be searched then — an unaimed arrow may have reached it — but God alone sees into its depths, when some word of truth has found them out. We do not combine with men in societies in order to learn the secrets of their spiritual states, and apply special counsels to their temptations and their perils. That is the peculiar office of private friendship, the rare privilege of those to whom it is given. But though not a treatment for special cases, perhaps the best regimen for general spiritual health is just that which a Christian Church, The Church of the Living God. 349 properly constituted, might be able to offer to its members — an elevation of thought and sympathy, together with an organized system of good works, wherein it would invite them to walk and bear their part. Without knowing anything of the special trouble of a man's lot, or of the inward discords of his nature, by engaging him in some lofty medita- tion, in some good work, in some unselfish partner- ship, by breathing some large interest through him, we may do more to sweeten his temper, to raise him to holy peace, to expel his tortures, than if we under- took to pry into his bosom, to offer him specifics for his maladies, or, one by one, to draw out and strangle the serpents that consume his life. To bless a man's lot and transfigure his nature, often all that is need- ful is some high fellowship to make it radiant, some high task to give it dignity. Presupposing, as their common bond, a desire to conform themselves and the world to the spirit of Christ, to form a child of God within them and a brotherhood around them, and that they make pro- vision for the rightful demand for speculative truth by acknowledging the safety of all opinions that can unite in that desire, surely our Churches might be constituted in a way that would bring them into more living connections with the work given them to do. Most Christian Churches have a constitution founded on things to be believed : we desire a constitution 350 The Church of the LiviJig God. founded on things that 02tght to be done, on hopes and anticipations of a heavenly kingdom that ought at once to have upon earth their adequate symbols and expressions. What ought a Christian Church to do for those that lie beyond its own borders ? It ought, according to its measure of the gifts of God, to en- lighten their darkness, to heal their sorrows, to root out their sins, to regenerate their life. It ought to let its light shine before men, to bear open witness unto the truth, to unfold those views of human nature and of God's character, without which it deems that a perplexed, weary, and sinning world cannot find holiness, harmony, or rest. It ought to instruct the ignorant, and help the weak, and endeavour to breathe into some poor and sorrowing a holy faith that would beat down the power of circumstance, and arm with the power of God the affections and the will. This is what we should mean by Church fellowship — practical co-operation in these good works. In this way should we aim to satisfy the desire for more of religious intercourse between the various members of the same worshipping society without factitious occasions, or unnatural efforts for that purpose. The legitimate occasions for such familiar intercourse among fellow-worshippers are to be found in the communion of good works, accord- ing to the measure of their powers ; with different gifts, but with one spirit ; with different operations, The Chnrch of the Living God. 351 but with one love ; — combining their efforts, their sympathies, their peculiar talents, their wisdom, and their wealth in the promotion of such religious offices as express our relations and responsibilities to our fellow-men, and carry out into fitting actions our brotherhood with the weak and the ignorant. There is one part of the interior functions of a Church, of its offices towards it^ own members, which we mention now, because, requiring close knowledge of individuals, it is yet part of the general regimen of spiritual health — the duty of upholding those who, in the struggle of life, sink down into any of its mani- fold forms of difficulty. A Church, within its limited circle, should surely represent a family in which no member is suffered to be cast away, whether through misfortune, infirmity, or sin, without support, ex- postulation, counsel, succour, and the opportunity, repeatedly furnished, of redeeming the past and opening a new future. Such an office would demand a much more practical organization than any that now exists amongst us, and would require in the Church that recognized it as part of its functions great wisdom and energy to deal skilfully with diffi- cult evils and to guard against abuse. But if it would require these qualities, it would also do something to train them. It, of course, must not be open to any unprincipled man to feed his sloth or his vices on the charities of others by claiming membership in a 352 The CJmrch of the Living God. Christian Church. The Society of Friends knew how to overcome that difficulty, and if the spirit of the best days of that once noble body was with us, we should find it no more impossible than they found it, so to organize and rule our Churches, that no hap- less man should be left without needful help, and yet that no worthless man be corruptingly pampered in his weakness and his sins. A Church that proposed to itself these objects and sought to consummate these ends, might entitle itself to the name of Christian — a Church of the Saviour, a Church of the Redeemer, a Church of the living God ; and in these varied services, and the life that sus- tained them, find its own strength and fulness, and receive the blessing from above. No feebleness, nor deadness, nor suspicion of death, and above all, no dependence for its life upon the mere zuords spoken to it, could attach to a Church that worked so many ministries for good, and received the warmth of all these interests back again into its own bosom ; for God Himself would be its Teacher, Christ its Pattern, and some new glimpses of Christ's vision of his Church, some ever-fresh joy from faith passing into works, its exceeding great reward. XXII. SPIRITUAL ONENESS WITH THE FATHER AND WITH THE SON. ' ' The glory which Thou gavest me, I have given them ; that they may be one, even as we are one." — John xvii. 22. The glory given to Christ, and which he gave to the disciples and to us, was the power to become sons of God — one in desire, in love, in purpose, and in will. And if we have this oneness, and are members one of another, working in one spirit and for a common end, then it is clear that, as a community, as a brother- hood, as a Church, the more we differ in our several accomplishments, faculties, and graces, the more varied our abilities, the more numerous the directions in which our individual skill and genius are applied, the more sublime the resulting unity, the grander the harmony, the more magnificent the work. No perfect building could be reared by artificers of one class, by hands that work in one material. In the spiritual temple built of living stones, as in the vastest cathedral, the glory of the whole depends on the variety of the resources, from the simplest workman 2 A 354 Spiritual Oneness with the Father to the finest artist, at the disposal of the creative mind that uses and comprehends them all. This is the unity of the Church of God, that of a living body in which each member has his own function according to the gift that is in him ; but all through one love, one desire, one subordination to Him who employs them and assigns them their place, con- spiring to complete the spiritual temple, in which one is as a foundation-stone, another as a polished shaft, another as the medium through which streams the rich light that shows the glory of the whole. When Christ perceived seeds of disunion in the passions of the disciples, he took a little child, and set him in the midst of them, and said, " Except ye receive the Kingdom of God as a little child, yc shall not enter therein." And in no respect is a little child more worthily an image of God's Kingdom than in its tendency to find a unity in all things. No incongruities affect it ; no varieties oppress it ; no want of keeping disturbs it. It has no disrespect for persons, no contempt for places. It has no unsocial perception of class-differences. It can make all things fall in with its imaginations, and serve its purpose. Anything, however common, which it can shape to its own fancy and humour, is more delight- ful to it than the most perfect toy which develops no activity in itself. It exerts its own royalty every- where, and reigns over a plastic world. On the and with the Son. 355 cottage floor and the marble hall, it combines and groups with an equal joy, and betrays no surprise at contrasts. And what the child does from instinct, the Christian does from insight. He is a child in this, that he is more delighted by the unity than he is disturbed by the diversity in God's world. In his fellow-men he can see the workings of a common spirit, with whatever variety of operation proper to gifts and place, and instead of lamenting the difference, he blesses God for the greater fulness. He looks for unity, not for uniformity — for uniformity is found only in unorganized matter, in things that are dead. As imagination unites all things by bonds of feeling, and daily celebrates anew the bridal of the earth and skies, — as science unites all things by bonds of force and law, — as philosophy pervades them with a causal power and purpose, — so the spiritual under- standing, the eye and heart of Christ, sees in all beings true to their own nature more and more of the boundless unity of God's Kingdom, new measures from the fulness of Him who fiUeth all things. The seeds of the widest constitutional and complexional differences appear in the nursery of every home. How should they not appear in the family of God, or why should the unity of His purpose be obscured by that which ought to reveal its richness, — the innumerable contrasts and co-operations of mankind ! The variety of men's works : are they not necessary 35 6 Spiritual Oneness tvith the Father to the fulness and symmetry of life, when each contributes a different, yet a needful part ? The variety of their places : do they not lead us to the estimates of God, filling the lofty with meekness, the lowly with dignity, and elevating for all the one spirit of sonship above the countless accidents of condition ? The variety of their powers : does it not keep men from self-idolatry, for unless all were complete with the fulness of God, that all should be the same would be a sure provision for monotony of existence, the death of aspiration ? The variety of their thoughts : does not each well-defined phase of mind, or even shading of sentiment, contain some one aspect of that many-sided truth which as yet is too vast for any one of us to grasp ? And even the variety of their goodness : is not the peculiar gift in each man's spirit, the peculiar light on each man's life, a contribution towards the revelation of Him of whom said the perfect Son, " There is none good but One — that is God " ? Nay, do not the purest know that there is that in them from which only God can save them ; and the guiltiest penitents feel that there is that in them on which God may breathe again ? The heart of Christ could unite them all in mutual dependence, and employ for the glory of God the special grace of each. Diversity, then, of place, of knowledge, of function, of faculty, of character, furnishes the instrui)ie7its of and ivith the Son. 357 unity; the Spirit of unity is furnished by the fellowship of God's love. Uniformity among men means the barrenness of sameness ; unity among men means the fulness of conspiring differences. As we ascend in the scale of Creation, we find the type of uniformity departed from, that a larger variety and a richer unity may be introduced. And as with the individual, so with society. All society is made up of co-operating diversities, and the more perfect the society the more widely do those who compose it bring together con- trasted elements, and vary in the direction of their gifts, graces, and accomplishments. Take the com- merce of the world : the tiller of the earth, the maker of the machine, the manufacturer of the produce, the carriers that convey, the merchants that exchange, the consumers who demand, are all diverse, and all necessary to the unity of our civilized life. Go back to a primitive barbarism, where every man is like his fellow, and does the work of his fellow, and you will find uniformity, but no society. True individuality begins only where man has a variety of elements to exert his power upon, and is free to choose according to his nature; and where there is no individuality, life has no richness. Where all are the same, intercourse is dead. The savage is solitary. His fellow has nothing to impart to him. Their ideas, their ex- perience, their employments, are the same. If they were more different, they would have more 358 Spiritual Oneness with the Father intercourse. Their uniformity destroys their unity. The same principle applies to the most strongly marked differences that exist in humankind. Make man more effeminate, and woman more masculine, and you repel them from one another. As uniformity is neared, unity recedes. The gifts proper to each seek not themselves, but their complements. The diverse elements make the richer concord. So is it in the commonwealth of goodness and of knowledge. No man is able to satisfy himself from himself. In every true nature, the high qualities that a man has not are those that make him humble and aspiring ; the virtues he does not possess are those that he approaches with the most longing reverence ; the knowledge he is without is that which he craves most for. His nature puts forth desires which he must go out of himself to have satisfied. One in all respects like ourselves would be the least instructive and the least quickening of friends. Men with the same experience, the same ideas, the same habits, act feebly or perniciously upon one another. It is a union among free minds not endowed alike, nor of a like culture, that stimulates interest, enlarges experi- ence, completes our knowledge of man. And how can a different rule prevail in the vast interests of religion, in the knowledge and the manifold worship of God, in the building up of His Church and Kingdom } Here, at least, no man, and and zvith Ihe Son. 359 no class of men, is complete and thoroughly fur- nished. Shall we confine ourselves within any narrow uniformity, if we seek to know the riches and the mysteries of God's Spirit ? Nay, have we not to go for this knowledge to those most unlike ourselves ? Is it not from those who are removed from our own restricted type that we hope to learn most, to be admitted to heights and depths that our own natures or circumstances do not disclose? Could mature years, touched with the sadness of failure, show forth the full grace of God if we had forgotten the heart of childhood, and never saw in the primal mirror the slumbering image of purity and trust, the love and sweetness that gush up from the Fountain Nature ? Has not humble labour worthier thoughts of eternal Providence when educated knowledge unfolds to it new truths, and speaks reverently of the wonders of His works ; and is not trained knowledge more than repaid by the new revelations of native dignity and strength disclosed to itself, when it looks into the unambitious quiet that lies at the robust heart of humble life, and gives to it its healthy powers of endurance and of hope ? It needs all directions of thought, all tones of feeling, all gleaming lights of sentiment, all aspects of goodness, in connection with all variety of experience, to collect for us even a part of the infinite perfections of God as they are distributed through men, and we need only, as a 360 spiritual Oneness zvith the Father common possession, the charity and receptive heart of Christ, to be freely taught by one another. How many ages, nations, and conditions of life, all most dissimilar, have contributed to the treasures of devo- tion, to the breathings of penitence, the praises and adorations, which are now at the command of the common heart of the world ! What age could afford to establish an uniformity in its devotion, and to stereotype its prayers ? Limit us to men of the same spiritual emotions, range, and utterance with our- selves, and we become self-idolaters. Give us free access to some new manifestation of God in another's consciousness, and we partake of the inexhaustible riches of the Creator's nature. Have not the prayers of Christ changed our whole conception of man's relations to God ? And has not the reality with which these prayers have wrought in some spirits brought forth new revelations of Christ from age to age ? And as with devotion, so with doctrine, with spiritual truth : we instruct and kindle one another, and see by reflected light. No one man, no one Church, as Churches nov/ arc, can represent to us the whole mind of God. The very excesses to which sects are liable only show their strong appreciation of some important sides of truth that other sects have neglected. What more common than for men to establish as the very centre of a new system, some principle that others have perhaps accidentally and with the S072. 361 excluded ? New temples arise whose corner-stones are those that other temple-builders have perhaps unwittingly rejected. The exclusive sympathy of one sect calls into existence the equally exclusive sympathy of another, in the opposite or neglected direction. Instead of collecting the inexhaustible truth of God, with eye and spirit ever open, sects rally around a standard of their own, and chain themselves to given positions. And so it is not any one of them, but, if that were possible, a catholic heart open to them all, that could collect for us either the Mind of God or the spiritual wants of Man. One Church sets forth more worthily the Fatherly character of the Almighty ; another depicts more vividly the inward malady of sin, and the terrible nature of Man's struggle with it ; another has a clearer intuition into the penetrative and formative principle of faith, the cleansing and healing power of personal affections ; whilst another invades the soul through the border-land of physical im- pression, and offers the external helps on which the weak may lean, and find guidance and peace. And the unity of the Church Universal will not reveal itself to him who is imprisoned in any one of these, but rather to those who have a reverent sense of the vastness of what they seek, and a humble loving reliance on the aids that man affords to man, knowing that humanity, and no individual man, is o 62 spiritual Oneness ivith the Fathei" as the Body of Christ and the Mirror of the Almighty. With regard both to devotion and to truth of doctrine, that Christ knew that the unity of all that is enfolded within them was quite inconsistent with any prescribed uniformity, is apparent from this, — that he left no form of prayer, and no digest of truth. He gave, indeed, a model of prayer, but, as has been well observed, so little is it of a form, that, short as it is, the two reports of it do not agree ; and when he spoke of spiritual truth, he spoke of it only as the reality of life in communion with God. In the realm of spiritual things, where no one man can supply all that is true, or all that is lovely, if we despise our brother's gifts and knowledge because they are different from ours, then our brother's gifts and discernments will not co-operate with ours in a result to which none of us is competent alone. A worker in stone may make his house all of stone, and despise the worker in wood, and the worker in metal, and the worker in glass, and his house will suffer accordingly. " There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit ; differences of administration, but the same Lord ; diversities of operation, but it is the same God that worketh all in all ; and his own manifestation of the Spirit is given to each for the profit of alt'' "that by the effectual working in the measure of each part the whole may be made perfect." and iviih the Son. 363 " The glory Thou hast given me I have given them ; that they may be one, as we are." If we were all one with God, in the sense that Christ was, drawing our individual life from Him, whilst none of us pretend to exhaust Him, then the manifestation of His Spirit, given to each, might be for the profit of all. The glory that God gave Christ, and that Christ showed us, is the filial spirit drawing all that it has from the Fountain Life, and the brotherly heart sharing what it draws. If the eye and the hand, the head and the foot, will only not presume to be each of them the body, the whole body of humanity may yet be made perfect. And whoever has this unity of spirit with God and with His Christ is in fellowship with every man who has anything to impart, or who is willing to receive ; and of this fellowship with them he cannot be deprived, though they, by adopting some false centre of unity, may deprive themselves of their fellowship with him. And this is the blessing of a catholic heart, that it can include in the unity of Christ's spirit those who by clinging to some false centre are forced to exclude it. The moment men centre around anything less than the inexhaustible Truth and Life of God, as received through the filial soul of Christ, diversities cease to be regarded as enriching varieties, and become centres of repulsion. Wherever this central bond is weakly felt, the accidental differences 364 spiritual Oneness ivitk the Father instead of the branches make themselves the root, and become the centres, not of unity, which then is lost, but of rival uniformities. This is the reproach of Churches. They lose sight of the one Church that revolves around no secondary interpretations of God and Christ, but around God and Christ themselves, and so they break up into small circles with false centres. They no longer say in Christ's name, " He that is not against me is for me ; " they say in their own names, " He that is not for ns is against ////«." But let no one fall into the serious and very shallow error of confounding this catholic unity with indifference to his own convictions of truth. It is precisely because God is so manifold and man is so limited ; it is precisely because no one of us is more than a member of the great body of humanity, an eye or a hand — and all eyes are not the same eyes, all hands are not the same hands — that we are bound for our own, and for the body's sake, 7iot to part with our individuality ; to take our own place, to bear our own testimony ; not destroy the very purpose of our individual being by merging it in the life of a fellow-member with a different function or range of vision, and, by suppressing ourselves, deprive hiin also of what we might impart. It is because God is so infinite, and spiritual experience of such infinite variety, that it is of vital interest that each should draw in his own vessel from the living Fountain; and with the Son. 365 that he is a traitor alike to God and to his brother who withdraws the witness of his own spirit, the manifestation given to him. Indifference to indi- vidual conviction is not more destructive of individual simplicity and sincerity than it is destructive of the full revelation of God in humanity, of the full unity of the Church Universal. And it would not be difficult to find the impulses in human nature which establish centres of disunion, and instead of including all who have the essential spirit, exclude all who do not belong to some accidental variety. There is the carnal tendency against unity, that elevates the outward above the inward, that can see whether a man walks in our company, but has no eye to penetrate to the hidden springs of his life. There is the dogmatic tendency against unity, which, as from the glimpses of an infant, hastens to a final theory or system, and instead of daily, with fresh love and labour, buying and working the whole field of God, makes our own field of vision the measure of the Kingdom of Heaven. And there is the worldly tendency against unity, that through the various isolations of reputation, custom, fashion, opinion, conformity to expectation, corrupts spiritual truthful- ness, shrinks from martyrdom, withholds individual testimony, and so builds up a Church that, aiming at uniformity instead of unity, becomes the Mother of all the sects. o 66 Spiritual Oneness with the Father. One thing let us lay to heart, that we must keep the glory that Christ showed us, the filial soul in communion with the Father, drawing direct from the living Fount, else is it impossible for us to serve either truth or unity. Otherwise we have lost our own central place in God, and ceased to be tributaries from Him to the sum of spiritual being ; we have turned faithless, wandering eyes upon some other centre, and abandoned the one spring of life and the fellovt^ship of life. But if the essence of our Christianity is life in God ; if it consists not in what we think, nor yet in what we do, but rather in what we are, in what spirit we are of ; if it is best expressed in the prayer of Christ, that we may be one with our Father, even as he was ; — then are we at one with all who, having some desire, can do nothing against the truth, but only for the truth. We are at war with nothing in all God's world but with sin and with ungodliness, and we are at war with these out of a holy love for God and Man, that no creature may strive with its Creator, and nothing hurt in all His Holy Place. PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. Laws of Life after the First and Second Series. Price js. 6d. each. London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., Ltd. CONTENTS OF THE FIRST SERIES. 1SS3. God's Love impersonated, the Substance and Definition of Chris- tianity — The Universality of Christianity — Aptitudes for Disciple- ship — Grounds of Trust in God — The Goodness and the Severity of God — Ours to work out what God works in us — Knowing and Doing^The Spirit Willing, the Flesh Weak — Circumstance, "the Unspiritual God " — Heart Secrets of Joy and Bitterness — Morali- ties without the Spirit of Life — No Supererogation in Spiritual Service — Brotherhood towards the Unattractive and the Repellant — The Judging Spirit — The Morality of Temper — Self-denial — A Perfect Man, who offends not in Word — Strengthen what remains — Not of the World, as Christ was not of the World — Our Lord's " Trouble of Soul " — Spiritual Counterparts to Temptation and Despondency — Loving God with our Strength — Disquiet of Spirit — Quiet from God — From the Seen to the Unseen. CONTENTS OF THE SECOND SERIES. 1886. The Peace that passeth Understanding — Earth the Seed-plot of Heaven — Christian Dynamics — The Faith that overcometh the World The Fatherhood of God — The Kingdom of God without Observa- tion — The Sin of Omission — Conversion — Love, the fulfillin"- of the Law — The Peace of Trust in God— The Conditions of Re- ceiving Christ's Bequest of Peace — Wilful Sin against one Law of the Spirit, entire Disloyalty — The Moral Limits of Accident — Use and Abuse of Religious Sensibility — Worse than an Infidel Diversities of Gifts Co-operating by One Spirit — " By their Fruits shall ye know them " — Religion and the Child — Casual Diversions of Spirit, and the Ever-present Comforter — The Resurrection World — Christ's Law of Love to our Neighbour — The Lordship of Service — Living and Dying unto the Lord of Life — Spiritual Gains of Bereavement — Unspiritual Objections to Spiritual Christianity — The Transfiguration of Souls.