PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 % 
 
 Presented by 
 
 BX 5133 .H6 C7 1892 
 Holland, Henry Scott, 1847 
 
 1918. ^ ^ 
 
 Creed and character 
 
, (Am I. /^/« 
 
 CREED AND CHARACTER 
 
 ^ f rmong: 
 
 ^^^BY THE REV. 
 
 H. S. HOLLAND. M.A. 
 
 CANON AND PRECRNTOR OF ST. PAUL's 
 
 " In Thy Light shall we see Light " 
 
 NEW EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK : 15 EAST i6>h STREET 
 1892 
 
 AH rights reserved 
 
Digitized by tine Internet Arcliive 
 in 2015 
 
 littps://arcliive.org/details/creedcliaracterseOOIioll 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Seemons that are brought together in a volume 
 embody a new motive, over and above the direct 
 aim with which each was separately preached. They 
 profess that they are united together by more than 
 the mere cover of the book. They claim to suggest 
 a single and paramount idea; to convey a single 
 impression ; to communicate a single impulse ; to 
 verify a single supposition; to witness to a single 
 source; to promote a single interest; to work under 
 a single direction ; to tend towards a single conclusion. 
 They trust that their partial and piecemeal treat- 
 ment of their subject will correct itself by help of 
 juxtaposition; so that they may lose their unhappy 
 appearance, as loose and sketchy fragments, and may 
 visibly be seen to cohere into a valid and substantial 
 consistency. 
 
 What is this inner and masterful Unity which, it 
 is professed, binds all into a whole ? 
 
 The answer is presumptuous ; but it is presumptuous 
 only with that presumption which alone entitles a 
 
 I 2 
 
vi 
 
 Preface. 
 
 man to preach. Every Christian preacher, of necessity, 
 undertakes the responsibility of representing "the 
 Mind of Christ." Such a responsibility, if he were, 
 indeed, loyal to it, would, of course, be the secret, 
 not of his pride, but of his abject humiliation. 
 
 " The Mind of Clirist." That is what ought to be 
 felt, and recognised, as the Beginning and End of 
 all sermons : and this, not as a vague commonplace, 
 but as a Presence, that, growingly, with ever more 
 masterful pressure, with ever intenser force, pervades, 
 utilises, covers, vitalises, absorbs the entire and undi- 
 vided attention. Ever it ought to be felt emerging 
 out of the background of silence, which lies behind 
 the word and voice of the preacher — felt as an Energy, 
 of which the preacher is but a tool ; felt as a living 
 Cry, of which his voice is but an echo. 
 
 "The Mind of Christ." This is no formal rule of 
 thought, no text-book to be expounded. It is the 
 expression of a single personal Self, conveyed into us 
 by a vital and personal Spirit. It must exhibit itself 
 as personal — that is, as a living individual Being, 
 self- consistent and self- identical. Nothing that 
 results from it can be casual, accidental, detached. 
 Everything will tell of a certain, fixed, and entire 
 Personality, pervading, encompassing, animating all. 
 " The Mind of Christ " must, if it be shown at all, 
 make it manifest that it is a substantial and organic 
 Thing, which has a character of its own, which acts 
 
Preface. 
 
 vii 
 
 and speaks in a manner of its own ; and all its outward 
 expressions must, necessarily, illustrate this single and 
 identical mode of handling life. 
 
 Now, this is what we are so strangely given to ignore. 
 We discuss Christianity as a set of theological ideas, 
 which have more or less value ; or we examine into 
 its facts and records, by which it subjects itself to 
 historical criticism. But we seem to forget that what 
 it claims to be is a living Kingdom of Christ ; by 
 which it means that it attempts to assimilate to itself 
 tbe entire body of human affairs, whether internal 
 or external, whether private or social, so that they 
 shall obviously and visibly display the dominion of 
 a single Master-Mind, "the Mind of Christ." The 
 validity, indeed, of this dominion, its potency, its 
 authority — these depend on the literal reality of 
 certain historical facts. If Christ did not rise again 
 the third day, no such dominion can exist. But, if 
 the dominion exists at all, then it exists in the form 
 of what I have spoken : and, if so, then it is, through- 
 out its length and breadth, the manifestation of a 
 Personal Will in action upon the alfairs of earth. 
 
 Now, how does a will show itself in action ? 
 
 It shows itself in two forms, which we call mind, 
 and character. 
 
 Every act that it does exhibits its inner " mind " 
 — that is, its normal and original set of intentions, 
 motives, aims, ends, presuppositions, instincts, imagi- 
 
viii 
 
 Preface. 
 
 nations. And, then, it exhibits its " character " — that 
 is, its own peculiar mode of combining, selecting, fur- 
 thering, co-ordinating this set of intentions. A will 
 is individual and personal in that its peculiar mode of 
 combining these motives is absolutely unique: the 
 act that results bears the stamp of an unique character. 
 
 The Kingdom of Christ is the manifestation of 
 Christ's sole Will : and it must embody these two 
 forms. It is the display, on earth, of a certain body 
 of motives and intentions, peculiar to Christ, co-ordi- 
 nated into a certain characteristic combination, peculiar 
 to Christ. Where do we find the first of these two 
 forms? In the Creed of the Church. Where the 
 second ? In the ethical ideal of the Church ; in the 
 Christian character. 
 
 We are accustomed to abstract these two from each, 
 other for logical and temporary purposes; and this 
 abstraction has had disastrous results. We all 
 know them. They make the sickness of the hour. 
 For men are sick, and miserable, and weak as 
 soon as their thought has no definite relation to 
 their moral practice ; and yet the absurd and ignorant 
 commonplace, that Christianity is a separate matter 
 from its Dogmatic Belief, persuades men to accept 
 a false division, which attempts to break up the 
 undivided unity of the man, to sever the inseverable. 
 No wonder they find themselves enfeebled, and dis- 
 turbed, by such an impossible divorce. 
 
Preface. 
 
 IX 
 
 Christianity, if it is anything at all, is the Will of 
 its King ; and, as a Will, it necessarily appears in its 
 double form, as a Mind that thinks, and as a Force 
 that acts: but it is one and the same Will in both, 
 whether it thinks, or whether it acts; and if there 
 is one thing that is absolutely certain, it is that its 
 acts will be totally unintelligible unless they are 
 seen in combination with its Mind. Its intentions, 
 aims, ends, presuppositions — these, most assuredly, 
 enter into the decision by which it combines them, 
 and inserts them into the field of action. And the 
 Creed of Christianity is, simply, a summary of its 
 presuppositions and motives ; its moral action, its 
 character, is the sheer and necessary outcome of the 
 Will that selects, and relates, and co-ordinates that 
 particular set of presuppositions and ends. Chris- 
 tianity is a certain spiritual temper, which thinks 
 and acts in a definite manner ; and that temper is 
 the outward expression of a self-identical Will, that 
 creates and vivifies it, which is " the Word of God." 
 
 Now, surely, if this be true, it is high time to clear 
 out, once and for ever, our wasteful and fatal con- 
 fusions on this matter. Surely, it is the first duty 
 of all, who presume to teach and preach, to help 
 in the clearance. And it is in an attempt, however 
 weak, to discharge this duty, that I have ventured 
 to call this little book by the title given it. 
 
 I desire to ofier, by that title, a challenge to all 
 
X 
 
 Preface. 
 
 who may happen to read these sermons, to say whether 
 they can possibly contrive to conceive a separation 
 between the Creed herein pleaded, and the Character 
 herein portrayed. They may freely criticise the work 
 offered them; or they may discuss the practical 
 possibility of a moral character other and higher 
 than the Christian. But can they ever unravel the 
 threads which knit the Character which we know, in 
 its developed form, as Christian, from the Belief which 
 appears, at every single point of the character, as 
 its inherent and vital groundwork ? Can they detect, 
 as they read this book, the transitions by which the 
 Creed passes over into the Character ? Can they mark 
 the point at which it ceases to be Creed, and becomes 
 Character ? "I live ; yet not I ; Christ liveth in me." 
 There is the law, which accounts for every jot and tittle 
 of Christian Ethics. And the question which I want to 
 put home is. By what process are you going to drop 
 out of that law its theological and retain its ethical 
 value ? The Character built on belief in that law 
 combines the uttermost of self-abnegation with the 
 uttermost assertion of vigour and vitality. That is 
 a subtle combination to affect : yet, on its possibility 
 all Christian Character depends. How are you going 
 to attain that moral combination, without giving it 
 its dogmatic background ; or without the effective 
 use of those motives which belong to the theological 
 doctrine of Grace? Yet, unless that peculiar com- 
 
Preface. 
 
 xi 
 
 bination is possible, the Christian Character is impos- 
 sible ; it must cease out of the earth. 
 
 I am not asking how much would remain if Christ 
 were withdrawn. There are other moral ideals, by 
 which men have built up fair and seemly lives : and 
 they would do so again. But, at any rate, those ideals 
 would never produce that particular mind and habit 
 which we call Christian. It would be a different 
 combinatioa of motives, with a different resultant 
 temper. The vision of the Christian citizen, as St. 
 Paul and St. John knew him, and described him — 
 thod would have gone for ever. It goes when the 
 Creed goes. Nothing can help that. 
 
 " The Thing committed to us " is the whole " Mind 
 of Christ; " and Christ cannot be divided. We might 
 be persuaded, if we laid hold of this truth, to guard 
 the Deposit more faithfully and more consistently. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 APOSTOLIC WITNESS. 
 I. 
 
 Wqt Storg of an apostlt's JFaitFj.— I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 We 6(/ie/d I/is ^/ory.— John i. 14 3 
 
 II. 
 
 5C^e Storg of an Apostle's Jaitl).— II. 
 
 TAfn 7vent in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepul- 
 chre, and he saw, and believed. — John XX. 8 . . . .19 
 
 THE CHURCH IN THE GOSPELS. 
 III. 
 
 tJJjE Ifilock of tfje Cfjurcfr. 
 
 Upon this rock T will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall 
 not prevail against it. — Matt. xvi. i8 , . • . • 37 
 
 IV. 
 
 C^fje Secrrt of tfje eTfjurcfr. 
 
 / have mrtnifested Thy Name unto the men whom Thou gavest me 
 out 0/ the world. — John xvii. 6 53 
 
XIV 
 
 Contents, 
 
 V. 
 
 tifje ir£lIo&s!)ip of ti^e CTfiurcfr. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 /, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk 
 ■worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness 
 and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love ; 
 endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. — 
 Eph. iv. 1-3 69 
 
 VI. 
 
 Wcit aSEitncss of tfje dfjurcfj. 
 
 This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses ; there- 
 fore beittg by the right Hand of God exalted, and having received of 
 the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath shed forth this, 
 which ye now see and hear. — Acts ii. 32, 33 , , . .84 
 
 VII. 
 
 Wc^t KtsourcEs of tf)e (JTIjurrfr. 
 
 When Jesus then lifted up His eyes, and saw a great company come 
 unto Him, He saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that 
 these may eat ? And this He said to prove him ; for He Himself 
 knew what He would do. — John vi. 5, 6 • . , . .97 
 
 VIII. 
 
 tifje MirCa of tjjE Cfjurtfr. 
 
 And Jesus took the loaves ; and when He had given thanks. He dis- 
 tributed to the Disciples, and the Disciples to them that were set 
 down ; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would. When 
 they were filled, He said unto the Disciples, Gather up the frag- 
 ments that remain, that nothing be lost. — John vi. II, 12 . .111 
 
Contents. 
 
 XV 
 
 IX. 
 
 tifje iHinistrg of tfje ffifjurc^. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 /V/^r saith unto Him, Lord, luhy cannot I follow Thee now ? I 
 will lay down my life for Thy sake. Jesus answered him. Wilt 
 thou lay down thy life for My sake? Verily, verily, I say unto 
 thee. The cock shall not crow till thou hast denied Me thrice. — 
 John xiii. 37, 38 123 
 
 CONVERSION. 
 X. 
 
 Wsit SoItIiartt2 of .Salijattort; 
 
 As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But 
 every man in his own order. — I Cor. xv. 22, 23 , , . 143 
 
 XI. 
 
 STfje Jhetiom of Salijatioit. 
 Sir, we would see Jesus. — ^JOHN xii. 21 • • • • • 162 
 
 XII. 
 Wijt ffiift of ©race. 
 Address on Efistle to Ephesians ,,%»%%% 177 
 
 XIII. 
 
 CTfje Hafa of JFotgtbencss. — T. 
 
 We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingMock, and 
 unto the Greeks foolishness ; but unto them which are called, both 
 Jews and Greeks, Christ, the Power of God, and the Wisdom of 
 God. — I Cor. i. 23, 24 , 191 
 
XVI 
 
 Contents. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 SEfjE Eai0 of jForgibmcss.— II. 
 
 FACE 
 
 And, behold, they brought to Him a man sick of the pahy, lying on 
 a bed: and Jesus, seeing their faith, said uttto the sick of the 
 palsy. Son, be of good cheer ; thy sins be forgiven thee. — Matt. 
 ix. 2. .......... 205 
 
 XV. 
 
 tZCjjE ILato of jrorgt'ijrnEss.— III. 
 Thy faith hath saved thee. — Luke vii. 50 219 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Srijc doming of tlje Spirit. 
 
 And hath made us able ministers of the Ne^v Testament ; not of the 
 letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth 
 life. For if the ministration of death, written and engraven in 
 stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not sted- 
 fastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance, 
 which glory was to be done away ; hotv shall not the tninistration 
 of the spirit be rather glorious? — 2 COR. iii. 6, 7 . , . 233 
 
 NEWNESS OF LIFE. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 STfje Bcautg of J^olintss. 
 
 Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, 
 that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the 
 commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of 
 promise, having no hope, and without God in the world. — Eph. 
 
Contents. 
 
 xvii 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 CFje ffiiurgg of ©nselfisfjness. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil 
 speaking, be put away from you, with all malice : and be ye kind 
 one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as Cod 
 for Chrisfs sake hcUh forgiven you. — Eph. iv. 31, 32 . . 265 
 
 XIX. 
 
 SCfje Jtuit of tije Spirit. 
 
 The works of the flesh are manifest, which art these: hatred, 
 variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, 
 murders. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, kindness, 
 goodness, temperance. — Gal. v. 19-22 » • • • . 280 
 
 XX. 
 
 Cfjanksgibing. 
 
 And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed. And 
 one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and 
 with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at His 
 feet, giving Him thanks ; and he was a Samaritan. — LuKE xvii. 
 14-16 296 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE HERE ON EARTH. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Wciz 9cttfaitg of Strbtcf. 
 
 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of 
 Man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were 
 eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until 
 the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not teniil the 
 flood came, and took them all away ; so shall also the coming of 
 the Son of Man be. — Matt. xxiv. 37-39 . . . . 313 
 
xviii 
 
 Contents. 
 
 XXIL 
 
 Cljaractct anlj Cirramstance. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I iell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed ; the one 
 shall he taken, and the other shall be left. Two women shall be 
 grinding together ; the one shall be taken, and the other left. 
 Two men shall be in the field ; the one shall be taken, and the 
 other left. — Luke xvii. 34-36 328 
 
THE STORY OF AN APOSTLE'S FAITH. 
 
 c 
 
SERMON I. 
 
 THE STORY OF AN APOSTLE'S FAITH.- 1. 
 
 " W.t iffjclJ l^is glorp."— John i. 14. 
 
 Far away down the years, at the close of the firs! 
 century, an old man sits brooding over the things that 
 he had seen and heard in the cities of Judah and in the 
 fields of Galilee. Forty, fifty, sixty years, and more 
 perhaps, lie now between him and the scenes which 
 he records. Sixty years — and such years ! — years of 
 revolution — years of judgment — years in which the 
 old order perished in doom, and the New World rose 
 into victory under the breath of the Spirit of God. 
 He had himself, long ago, it may be, laid up in the 
 Book of the Revelation the visions in which the 
 tremendous drama of those momentous years moved 
 toward its final and critical act. Yet, now, his look 
 is not forward into the silences that delay the trumpet- 
 blasts of Divine action. His eyes turn ever back, 
 overleaping the crowded interval, — back to those 
 wonderful days when he walked behind the feet of 
 the Master — the days when he saw, and heard, and 
 handled. Still his whole being hangs upon those 
 sealed memorie?. Still he ponders, and weighs, and 
 
4 
 
 Apostolic Witness. 
 
 wonders, and broods. For we are listening, in these 
 first verses of St. John, to an old man's broodings. No 
 one can mistake their tone, or be insensible to their 
 atmosphere, as the verses fall on the ear with their 
 solemn weight of measured monotony, serious as a 
 winter's eve, in which the stars silently offer them- 
 selves to our eyes, one by one, in seemly order and 
 in noiseless ease. So the great words detach them- 
 selves from his lips, single, slow, deliberate, unhasting. 
 Bound and round the story his spirit has searched 
 and laboured, and waited, until word could set itself 
 to word, and phrase to phrase. No time could be 
 too long in which to collect into one brief passage 
 the sum and substance of all that revelation which 
 was made known to him in the Name of Jesus Christ. 
 
 So he sits, and slowly speaks, and round him are 
 clustering close a crowd of anxious listeners. How 
 strange that crowd would once have been to the 
 fisherman of Bethsaida ! It was a crowd gathered out 
 of all those who are scattered abroad upon the face 
 of the earth — keen Greeks, and fervent Syrians, and 
 cultivated Africans, with perhaps a Koman magistrate, 
 or a Gaulish slave. Every kind of alien blood is there, 
 but none, or almost none, of his brethren, the children 
 of Abraham. The Church in which he rules is wholly 
 Greek in tone, in temper, in habit. He has had to 
 forget his own country and his father's house; and 
 that house is now shattered, and that country wrecked, 
 and all the old scenes of his far home are darkened 
 and desolate ; and never will he walk at all in those 
 dear, familiar places, where first he looked up from his 
 
The Story of an Apostles Faith. 5 
 
 nets and saw the Master, and heard the call, and left 
 all, and followed Him. Ah ! how long ago ! though 
 it be to him but as yesterday. And now he sits alone, 
 perhaps, in all the world of those who saw the Lord ! 
 Alone and very old, and the question is daily pressing, 
 Can it be that he, too, is to die, as all the rest have 
 died — James, his brother, fifty years back, and Peter, 
 whom he loved — can it be thirty years since Peter 
 died ? — and Andrew and Philip, so long His com- 
 panions on the coasts of Asia? And will there be 
 no one left on earth of those who were His friends, 
 who M'ill be there to greet the Lord when He comes 
 again, as they had seen Him go ? 
 
 Yet what was it the Lord promised, when Peter 
 pressed Him by the lake-side, on that awful dawn, 
 when they whispered, " It is the Lord " ? Was it not 
 that he, John, should be there alive, tarrying long 
 until the glad day when He should come again, and 
 their joy should be full ? 
 
 So he had half thought, so many had asserted, and 
 yet it was not quite that. No ; but only that perhaps 
 it might be so, if Christ willed that he should so tarry. 
 
 And would He will it? Often he had prayed for 
 this to be, and cried, "Even so, come. Lord Jesus." 
 Yet now it seemed otherwise. Now it seemed as if, 
 after all, he would die without seeing it. So it felt to 
 him ; so it looked ; it must now be very near. And 
 much as he and they had longed for the other to be 
 true, yet still he keeps reminding them that his dear 
 Master had never said, "He should never die," but 
 only, " If I will that he tarry." 
 
6 Apostolic Witness. 
 
 Surely, we are let in, as we read these last words of 
 St. John's Gospel, to the very heart of the thoughts 
 that were moving about the circle who sit round the 
 feet of the dying Apostle ! Will he die or will he not 
 die ? That is their incessant anxiety. For they had 
 hoped so much; it is the close of all that burning 
 longing for the coming of the Lord which St. Paul 
 could hardly curb, nor St. Peter quiet, in their new 
 converts. And now, the last argument for the quick 
 coming is being withdrawn — the last hope to which they 
 had clung is fading. " Surely," they had said, " surely 
 John, at least, will live to see it. Surely, the Lord 
 cannot fail His word — the word that He pledged to 
 the brother who lay upon His Bosom ! " And the 
 old man stills and soothes their passionate assertions. 
 Nay, the Master never said that. All He said was, 
 " If I wull that he tarry till I come ; " but He never 
 said, " He should not die." 
 
 So they sit, and cluster, and watch— his dear 
 children — his children not after the flesh, but after 
 the Spirit. Their anxiety is daily increasing. Many 
 questions are abroad. Never since those first few 
 months at Jerusalem had there been any rest from 
 questionings and doubts. But now, at the closing 
 days of the century — now, more than ever, they swarm 
 and thicken. It was an age like our own — restless, 
 ardent, disturbed, speculative, revolutionary. Brains 
 were alert, and imaginations kindled. Meteor-hopes 
 were flas'iing and vanishing; strange voices shook the 
 people and passed. All was seething, agitated, alive. 
 And the little flock of Christ stood in the very thick 
 
The Story of an Apostle s Faith. 7 
 
 of tlie flood ; the rains beat down and the winds roared 
 against the house that their faith had built. The 
 Eock was under them, and the house must stand ; but, 
 for all that, it is an anxious hour within tlie frail and 
 trembling shelter, as they listen to the rush of the 
 storm. The Eock was under them ; but could they 
 touch it, and be sure? The faith is theirs, their joy 
 and their possession. Yes ! but oh ! that they could 
 be quite, quite certain that they had a firm hold on it 
 in its uttermost and invincible verity ! And lo ! just 
 in the very crisis of their sorest distress, they feel that 
 he is dying — he, John, the last of all who could say, 
 "I saw, I heard, I handled." And they gaze and 
 gaze — and cling wistfully to him, as once more he 
 goes over the old, old words which he had said a 
 thousand times before, but which they ever and ever 
 yearned to hear again. We can almost feel them 
 pressing him to tell them yet more, to tell them all, 
 as he tenderly puts them by — "Nay, my children, if 
 I were to tell you all that Jesus said and did, why, the 
 world itself would not contain all the books that would 
 be written." 
 
 " Oh ! then, tell us just how you learned to believe," 
 they seem to say. "How was it? What was it? 
 It is no easy matter, as we find it. It is no brief and 
 ready affair. AVe believe, but we are sore pressed by 
 difficulties that beset our belief. We believe, but we 
 cannot say surely and clearly what it is that we believe. 
 Men ask us ; puzzle us ; distress us. And we see so 
 many fall away in perplexity. How can we be sure 
 that we hold the faith in a way that will never fail 
 
8 Apostolic Witness. 
 
 us ? that we hold it as Jesus meant us to hold it ? " 
 Such is the mood to which the fourth Gospel addresses 
 itself. Not written against opponents, nor to confute 
 heresies; it never argues, never reasons. It assumes 
 a circle, an atmosphere of faith ; it addresses believers. 
 But the faith is troubled ; believers are anxious. The 
 Gospel concentrates itself on the effort to reassure and 
 enhearten a belief that cannot afford to be childlike 
 and simple any more, but must test its foundations 
 and make proof of its security. " Beloved," the 
 Apostle has had to say to them, "believe not every 
 spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God : 
 because many false prophets are gone out into the 
 world." And so now, "These things have I written 
 unto you that believe on the Name of the Son of God " 
 — why ? — " that ye may know that ye have eternal 
 life, and that ye may, in this fuller and more certified 
 knowledge, believe on the Name of the Son of God." 
 
 So they sat and looked up into his face — that 
 harassed, yet loyal, band of faithful disciples. " Once 
 more let us hear it — once more before he dies. Let 
 him tell us yet again, let it sink into our souls ; for 
 very, very soon there will be no voice in all the earth 
 that can speak of Bethsaida, and of Capernaum, and 
 of the sorrowful hour in the upper chamber, and of 
 the Agony upon Calvary, and of the wonder of the 
 Kesurrection morning ! " 
 
 So they clustered and clung ; and we — we know 
 too well their sad anxieties, their miserable sense of 
 orphanage, their eagerness to make quite sure. We, 
 too, would join our voices with theirs. " Oh ! speak 
 
The Story of an Apostles Faith. 9 
 
 to us too, yet once again, dear master, our father, 
 blessed John ; we are sore harassed ; we are troubled 
 with many thoughts ! Thou hast seen ; thou hast 
 lain upon His Breast. Make us sure with thy own 
 sureness. Speak once more, and tell us. What was 
 it that thou didst touch so nearly and love so dearly ? 
 Tell us wholly ; tell us plainly. We would have thy 
 experience : we would possess thy perfect witness ! " 
 
 "We beheld His glory." That is the Apostle's 
 deliberate answer; that is his description of the 
 process which gained him conviction. 
 
 "We beheld." They used the help of both eyes 
 and mind ; for the word suggests that they saw as 
 men see when they let their minds follow their eyes 
 — when they watch and think and learn as they look. 
 The Apostles had had no brief and unsteady sight of 
 the Master. Nay ! They had had time given them 
 to rest their gaze upon Him, and to continue looking, 
 as He moved, as He spoke, as He went up and down 
 with them. In many moods and varied scenes, in 
 hope and in fear, in exaltation and in depression, by 
 day and by night, alone and in a crowd, as a Prophet 
 in the glare of the public sun, as a Friend in the 
 secrecy of confidence — in a thousand incidents unfore- 
 seen and surprising — in all they had been close, very 
 close, to Him, and had looked with all their eyes, 
 and had hung upon Him with all their souls, and 
 had meditated over all that they saw, and had pon- 
 dered and had brooded, and had done this slowly, by 
 degrees, habitually, moving forward step by step to 
 this great conclusion. So they had seen; in this 
 
10 
 
 Apostolic Witness. 
 
 sure and tested study of Him, they had lived and 
 walked ; and what was it they found by so looking ? 
 
 They found a most wonderful thing. Within His 
 flesh, deep down in the heart of His Being, there was 
 a secret — a secret that lay hidden, and yet that could 
 be seen and known by those who had the eyes of 
 habitual and patient faith. It was like a Presence 
 within a Temple — like a vision of God within the 
 Holy of Holies — like that glory behind the veil, of 
 the sanctuary, girdled by the intervening courts, yet 
 felt to be true by all, seen at sacred moments by 
 privileged priests, who could bring report of it. So, 
 within the Body of the Master those friends of His 
 discovered His secret. His verity. It was there, as 
 a hidden flame, which at intervals leaped out and 
 reddened all the sky. And the secret, the verity, was 
 unlike all that they had ever heard of in men. And 
 yet they were not without experience of the highest 
 human excellence. For they had been under the 
 sway of that greatest of all earth's great ones — John 
 the Baptist. He was not only a prophet, but more 
 than a prophet ; it was he whom the Lord Himself 
 placed highest of those born of women. They had 
 known the full splendour of that heroic spirit, who 
 moved all Jerusalem and Judsea, until men mused 
 in their hearts whether it were not the Christ Him- 
 self. Yet the secret of Jesus was totally divided, by 
 irresistible and unhesitating distinctions, from every- 
 thing, however high and pure, that could be found 
 in him or any other. When once they had known 
 it, it was simply impossible to confuse it again with 
 
The Story of a7i Apostles Faith. 1 1 
 
 any of those gifts wliich grace and ennoble human 
 character. 
 
 No ! of one thing they were convinced. That which 
 they found in Him was something that had not been 
 in the world at all before Jesus came. It was not 
 merely a higher form of that which had been already in 
 others, even in the highest — in the Baptist, or in Moses. 
 As they had known all that the Baptist could do, so, too, 
 they had felt all that Moses could bring them. He 
 had brought them a great gift. He had given them 
 a law from God. But this peculiar grace and life 
 which they now had received came into the world in 
 Jesus Christ, and Him only. So strange, so new, so 
 marvellous, so incomparable was this deep secret on 
 which they had found themselves gazing. 
 
 And what was it, then, this secret? How could 
 it be told, this discovery? "Well," the Apostle says, "it 
 was nothing short of the supreme vision of all visions. 
 It was (and we, as we waited and watched, became 
 more and more certain of it) — it was the disclosure, 
 the unveiling of God Himself. It was in character, 
 in substance, in reality, God's own glory. Whatever 
 men have found God to be, — whatever our fathers of 
 old time felt God to be, as He shone in upon their 
 hearts through the splendour of the Shekinah in the 
 Tabernacle of Moses, — that same thing Jesus showed 
 Himself to be and mean to us who so closely studied 
 and loved Him. We saw Him, saw Him long, saw 
 Him very near, saw Him very carefully ; and what 
 we saw in Him was the glory of God — the glory as 
 of the Only Begotten Son of the Almighty Father." 
 
12 Apostolic Witness. 
 
 " Ah ! but how could you be sure of that ? What 
 proofs have you? What experience? Could you 
 have been mistaken ? " 
 
 " We had both outward proofs aud inward experi- 
 ences," the Apostle answers. " Outwardly, there was 
 John. He asserted what we assert. He came for the 
 very purpose of declaring it, and he made his declara- 
 tion with unfaltering courage, and with unconquerable 
 force. John stood and cried, and said, *Lo! there 
 standeth One among you Whom ye know not, the 
 latchet of Whose shoe I am unworthy to loose! ' He, 
 the highest of prophetic seers ; he, who saw furthest 
 of all yet born of women into the ways and the mind ot 
 God — he gave us the first witness. He first made it 
 possible to believe it. 
 
 " And, then, we had our experiences ; and of these 
 we cannot conceivably be mistaken. For, indeed, 
 we received within our own selves this secret of Christ ; 
 we had it given us ; and we took of it ; we shared 
 in His life, in His substance. Of that very power 
 with which He was filled, of that we ourselves partook, 
 through faith. ' Of His fulness we all received.' It 
 was in us, and at work, and alive. How could we 
 mistake it ? It made itself manifest in us in its 
 double form — in grace, which is the new energy ; and 
 in truth, which is the new reality. We became what 
 we had not been before. We found ourselves vitalised 
 with the sonship of God ; authorised and enabled to 
 become new creatures. We looked at our old selves, 
 and we knew this without a doubt, that not of them, 
 not out of their impotence, had these strange and 
 
The Story of an Apostles Faith. 1 3 
 
 novel capacities sprung. No ! Not of anything that 
 could be found in us — not of blood, nor -will of flesh, 
 nor will of man. These could not account for it. 
 The power that was within us was the Name of God. 
 The light that shone out from us was the glory of 
 God. We had it ; we held it ; we felt it ; we were 
 quickened, renewed, endowed by it. We moved in 
 it, we fed on it. We could not hesitate, or doubt. 
 To doubt ? How was it possible ? ' As many as 
 received Him, to them He gave power to become 
 the sons of God.' The power was there in them, 
 and they knew it — they were born of God." 
 
 Dearly beloved in the Lord, we, too, to-day, sit 
 clustering in Christ's Church, and still we keep our 
 faith ; but our hearts are anxious and troubled, as were 
 the hearts of those who clustered around St. John at 
 Ephesus. We are harassed by loud and importunate 
 inquirers ; we^ are harried by sharp attacks, and great 
 gusts of doubt sweep over us and through us ; and 
 we shake as dry and shivering leaves whirled under 
 naked skies by wintry winds. 
 
 Oh, if only we could but have once heard him 
 speak ! if but once we could have listened to that 
 voice, that tarried so long behind its Lord ! So we 
 pray, so we think ; and yet we have the words it 
 spake, certified to us by those who sat round him long 
 ago. "This is the disciple that testifieth of these 
 things, and wrote these things: and we, we who sit 
 listening round him, we know that his testimony is 
 true." So those dead voices still speak to us, reas- 
 suring our trembling belief ; and he, too, the old man 
 
14 
 
 Apostolic Witness. 
 
 now so soon to die, he positively assures to us, before 
 he goes, the clearness and the certainty of his testi- 
 mony. "He who saw it, he, and no other, bare 
 record ; and his record is true, and he knoweth that 
 he saith true." And from that hour to this the 
 continuous Church of Christ, One and Apostolic, out- 
 living all times and changes, hands down from genera- 
 tion to generation that certified and sworn testimony, 
 and declares, with unbroken and unhesitating voice, 
 to all who will take or read, " This is the disciple, 
 John, who testifieth of these things, and wrote these 
 things ; we know that his testimony is true." 
 
 We doubt the book; we cry for the living man. 
 Yes. But these same suspicious fears would haunt 
 us still, even if we were listening to the living voice. 
 Is it not an old and dying man, we should be saying, 
 talking of days very long ago? Can we trust his 
 memory ? Can we commit ourselves to his assertions ? 
 How can we tell, how can he himself tell, what changes 
 he may have brought into his story through fifty 
 years of brooding imagination ? 
 
 We can never get back behind all perplexities, and 
 scruples, and doubtings. No living voice would save 
 us from them. For the living voice asks for faith just 
 as much as the dead book. And faith must be faith. 
 It cannot escape from its conditions. It must always, 
 to the last, remain an act of confidence, of confidence 
 in two things — of confidence (1) in human honesty, 
 (2) and in Divine truthfulness. If we are not prepared 
 to give God and man this confidence we can never 
 push through our difficulties into the peace of belief. 
 
The Story of an Apostles Faith. 15 
 
 Argue and discuss as we ■will, finally Me must find 
 ourselves facing a simple assertion, " God said," over 
 against which, can always be heard the lurking 
 whisper of the serpent, " Hath God indeed said ? " 
 And the assertion that we face is the assertion always 
 of a man. God's Word reaches us through the human 
 minister. The act of faith in God's Word, therefore, 
 aslvS of us always an act of trust in a man — in his 
 loyalty, in his capacity, in his sincerity. Always we 
 must have in co-operation with the " God spake " the 
 human witness who asserts, " I that saw it do now bear 
 record ; and I know that my testimony is true." And, 
 therefore, whether through book or through voice, it 
 does not matter. We are bound to arrive, at last, at 
 some point where, with much still unanswered, we shall 
 be challenged with the direct appeal — Will you trust 
 John, who lay on the breast of his Lord ? Will you 
 trust the disciple whom Jesus loved ? Will you trust 
 the corroborating Church which declares to yon " This 
 is the disciple John, who wrote these things : we know 
 that he saith true " ? Yes ; and if he, John, tells you 
 things which amaze and stagger, will you still trust, 
 oh doubting and bewildered souls — will you trust an 
 old man of ninety years, who has put his witness 
 to all those violent and terrible tests which had for 
 sixty years assaulted the infant Church of the first 
 century ? Who could know if not he who had 
 seen and heard and handled? Who could know 
 the worth and the certainty of faith like him to 
 whom it had been a living and life-long experience, 
 approved by persecution, attested by his joy, made 
 
i6 
 
 Apostolic Witness. 
 
 evident in the perfect beauty and grace of his Christ- 
 like love ? 
 
 Such a one as John the aged, the beloved, it is who 
 says to you, on the very verge of the grave — " I saw 
 it ; I saw His glory ; and I tell you, it was the glory 
 of the very Son of God. 
 
 " We beheld it." The belief, personal and proved, 
 of individual believers is the final proof and testimony 
 of the truth as it is in Jesus. 
 
 This is the fruit of our faith' towards our fellow- 
 men, to be able to say to them, " I have seen ; I can 
 speak ; and I know that I say true." 
 
 And this is the crown and honour of a Christian old 
 age, that it should be able to ofter before all men the 
 flower of all conviction, the witness of a prolonged 
 and approved experience. And such a flower of blame- 
 less and beautiful witness he certainly bore who has 
 passed so swiftly from ruling this great Church of 
 London into the sleep of Christ.^ 
 
 My brethren, it is no light task to make old age 
 a gracious and beautiful sight. But he had so made 
 it. In him it was most tender, and lovely, and benign. 
 In him it was no time of pitiful decay ; but rather 
 it came carrying with it a yet sweeter goodness, a yet 
 gentler dignity, a fatherliness that was always fair, 
 and yet now seemed to win a yet fairer gift of kindly 
 sanctity. To the very end he grew in grace ; and 
 round his last years, which are (in so many) such sad 
 shadows of brighter days, there gathered yet more 
 peace, and love, and goodwill, and gladness than ever 
 * Dr. Jackson, Bishop of London. 
 
The Story of an Apostles Faith. 1 7 
 
 even in the days before. No one could look upon 
 that life, or on that face, and not be absolutely certain 
 that here before him was one who had gained firm and 
 serious hold on spiritual things, one who could draw 
 on some deep wells of piety, and thankfulness, and 
 peace. 
 
 So he stood here, last Sunday^ — he, whose body is 
 already committed to the dust, and whose soul is now 
 wrapped in silence. So he stood in this pulpit, full 
 of the gracious tenderness of age ; and all that tender- 
 ness and all that grace he offered as a witness to the 
 faithfulness of that Master to Whom he had for so 
 long, with unshaken loyalty, surrendered himself. 
 
 Could he have been mistaken in his surrender, in 
 his belief? Only if you could be mistaken in the 
 kindly beauty of temper which was its fruit. If the 
 fruit was so sound, can the root have been corrupt ? 
 If the issue be so fair, can the belief be false ? Do 
 men gather figs from thorns or grapes from thistles? 
 Nay, indeed ! Up through the long seventy years 
 he had served a Master Who had never failed him, 
 and now old, and on the very edge of death. He was 
 there to deliver the unwavering witness. He had seen 
 — had seen the inner secret of Jesus ; and lo ! it was 
 the glory, the glory of the only Son of God! This 
 was his record, and he knew that he said true, and 
 that record which he delivered here alive among you 
 last Sunday he now utters out of the homes of the 
 silent dead. Death has sealed the record, death that 
 tries all. In the vivid hour of death we see what 
 ^ January 4, 1885. 
 
i8 
 
 Apostolic Witness. 
 
 it is that endures wben God shaketli terribly the 
 earth. Oh, my brothers! you, too, are dying. But, 
 verily, you may yet, while you stand here, before you 
 taste of death, see the kingdom come among you of 
 eternal life. For Christ is still with us; Christ is 
 still strong ; Christ may yet be seen in glory. And 
 those whose lives are enriched by prayer and ennobled 
 by grace shine before us as stars to confirm His glad 
 Epiphany. 
 
SERMON II. 
 
 THE STORY OF AN APOSTLE'S FAITH.— II. 
 
 "Wesm $D£nt itt also tfjat ot^cr Stsciplc, iiljiclj canw first to tlje 
 scpulcj^re, anl jje sato, anii iiElicfacli."— John xx. 8. 
 
 John, the beloved, disciple, has given his witness, has 
 made his confession. What he once saw and heard 
 and handled, that he has declared unto us. It was 
 the shining, the epiphany of God the Father which 
 he and the Twelve had discovered, tabernacled close at 
 their side in the body of Christ. " We saw His glory, 
 the glory as of God Himself." So he pronounces. 
 Yet still his listeners sit on about his feet. They 
 hear great words, but these words are the end of a 
 long and anxious meditation. The Apostle in these 
 leading verses is giving them his completed conclu- 
 sions; and they have accepted the conclusions, they 
 hold them fast. But it is not enough to know what 
 they ought to believe, though that is much — they 
 must also know the process by which the conclusion is 
 to be reached. They must reproduce in themselves the 
 living story of its formation. They must be conscious 
 of its stages, its degrees, and its growth. They cannot 
 afford to be as reapers entering into the labours of 
 others who went forth weeping with good seed. They 
 must feel their own faith grow, first the blade, then 
 
20 
 
 Apostolic Witness. 
 
 the ear, and so at last, in ample richness, the full 
 corn in the ear; and therefore they went on won- 
 dering. "Let us hear it all," they say: "tell us of 
 that day when first it came to you that something 
 wonderful was there. Tell us how you slowly learned 
 the great mystery; and then tell us when and how 
 it was that the full truth broke from your heart and 
 from your lips. Tell us this, that so we too may say 
 with you and with ten thousand times ten thousand : 
 ' Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.' " 
 
 Here is the question that St. John sets himself 
 to answer ; and you can see that it is so by this — that 
 he begins his Gospel, not with our Lord's own begin- 
 ning, the Baptism by John, but with the day on which 
 the disciples began to believe on Him ; and he ends 
 it, not with our Lord's own ending. His Ascension, 
 but with the first completed confession of Jesus by an 
 Apostle, — the confession of Thomas. This achieved, 
 bis Gospel is done ; he has nothing to add but one 
 scene that to him was full of tender personal interest. 
 
 The fourth Gospel tells how the Apostolic faith was 
 built and established. Let us carefully turn to it, for 
 it is a revelation of the Apostle's own heart. The 
 old man himself is bidding us draw near and taste 
 of his own experiences. He unlocks his soul to us 
 that he may help us to mount up into his assured 
 peace, so calm, so strong. He sits there murmuring 
 always his " Come, Lord Jesus, even come ! " and 
 round about him, enthroned in the majesty of age, 
 is that mysterious silence in which the voices of the 
 Spirit and the Bride say, " Come." And yet he can 
 
The Story of an Apostles Faith. 21 
 
 turn from that upward vision and bend his eyes back 
 on us — on us so perplexed, and troubled, and hesitat- 
 ing, and fearful, and bewildered. He can yearn to 
 make us have fellowship in his joy. " Little children, 
 it is the last hour. Even now are there many anti- 
 christs. And now, my little children, abide in Him. 
 My little children, let no man lead you astray, for 
 this is the true God and eternal life ; and therefore, 0 
 my children, keep yourselves from idols." So tender, 
 so beseeching, is his fatherly love ! 
 
 And in the name of that love he sets himself to 
 tell the story of his own conversion ; how he had 
 begun. He can recall every tiny detail of that first 
 critical hour. It began on the day when John the 
 Baptist cast off the hopes that were so eagerly bent 
 upon him. For he it was, the Baptist, and not the Lord 
 Jesus, who first woke in their hearts that spiritual 
 movement which became Christianity. He it was 
 who first evoked the cry of faith, and passionately they 
 had given him their souls, — they, and all who, seeing 
 John, mused in their hearts whether He were the 
 Christ. Even the Pharisees of Jerusalem felt the 
 excitement and shared the hope ; and it was to their 
 deputation that the Baptist made his great repudia- 
 tion : "No ; I am not the Christ; no, nor Elias, nor the 
 prophet. I am nought but a flying cry in the wilder- 
 ness, a cry that floats by on the wind and perishes. 
 Not I, but Another— Another Who comes after me ; 
 yea, Who is now standing among you, even though you 
 know it not." So he confessed. He denied not, but 
 confessed ; so brave a soul he had ! All those hearts 
 
22 
 
 Apostolic Witness. 
 
 were at his service, a world of devotion all lying there 
 at his feet; but he would not be tempted. He knew 
 his own limits ; he would have none of it. He con- 
 fessed, and denied not : " I am not the Christ." 
 
 And then came the great moment. It was the very 
 next day after the great confession — so exact is the 
 Apostle's memory. The very day after, John saw 
 Jesus coming towards him, and a wonderful word 
 broke from him : " Behold the Lamb of God, Which 
 taketh away the sin of the world." Taketh away the 
 sin ! Oh, the peace of such a promise to those who 
 had been washed in Jordan, and had repented, and 
 had confessed, and yet found their burden of sin as 
 miserable, as intolerable as ever ! The words haunted 
 them; and when, the day following, John uttered 
 them again, two of them at least could not rest. 
 Their hearts burned to know more. Who is this 
 strange visitant — so quiet, so silent, so unobserved? 
 He makes no sign. He says no word. He invites no 
 attention. He does not even stop to look. He just 
 passes by ; and, lo. He is already passed — in another 
 moment He will have gone. They must act for them- 
 selves then. They must force Him to stop and tell 
 them the secret. So two of them that heard John 
 speak followed Him — two of them, and John the be- 
 loved who now tells us the story was one of the two. 
 And now that they followed. He, the stranger, must 
 turn and speak. Then, for the first time. He looked 
 upon them with that look which again and again had 
 power to draw a soul, by one glance, out of the night 
 of sin into the life of eternal light. He turned and 
 
The Story of an Apostles Faith. 23 
 
 saw them following, and it was then they heard His 
 voice first speak, — that voice which by its cry could 
 raise the dead. "Whom seek ye?" That was all. 
 And they, — they hardly knew what to say, — only they 
 must see Him, must go with Him ; and they stam- 
 mered out, " Eabbi, where dwellest Thou ? " And He 
 said, " Come and see." 
 
 Come and see ! It was all as quiet and natural and 
 easy as any ordinary interview. No one could have 
 seen anything unusual. Just a few words of saluta- 
 tion, — just three short sentences that could be said 
 in half a minute. And yet that sealed their lot for 
 eternity. Tliat was the moment of decision. " Come 
 and see." They went and saw. So intense is the 
 Apostle's memory of that blessed hour that he can 
 never forget the very hour of the day. It was just 
 ten o'clock when he got to the house. They stopped 
 there with Him that night ; and in the morning they 
 were sure of what they had found, — so sure that 
 neither of them could rest until he had hurried off 
 with the good news to find and bring his brother. 
 Andrew found his brother before John could find 
 James ; or else it was that both went at once to seek 
 for Peter, and Andrew found him first. Anyhow, when 
 Peter was found, both were prepared to assert, " We 
 have found the Christ." And so they brought the 
 great chief to his Master; and in a moment the 
 Master knew what He had won in that loyal, loving 
 soul, and He turned those deep eyes upon him, and 
 named him by his new name. " Thou art Simon, the 
 son of Jonas ; thou shalt be called Cephas." 
 
24 
 
 Apostolic Witness. 
 
 So it all began. The very next day after that, the 
 Master Himself added one other to the number — Philip, 
 a friend of Peter's and Andrew's — and Philip brought 
 Nathanael ; and these were that little band whom the 
 Master took with Him from Jordan to Cana — the seed 
 of that great Church which was already reigning from 
 Babylon to Eome. 
 
 " And what next," so the listeners ask, " what was 
 the next step made ? " Three days later, at Cana, for 
 the first time, came that strange secret of which the 
 Apostle had spoken. The glory shone out with a sudden 
 flash from the deeps within Him ; a word of power 
 leaped out. Very few felt or knew it. But as the few 
 saw there the white water redden into wine, they knew 
 and felt the wonder of that change which had passed 
 over their own being. That word of power was at its 
 work within them, transforming them from out of 
 sickly impotence into splendid energy. They saw now 
 the full range of the Lord's authority, that it would 
 be the same to Him whether He spoke to matter or 
 spirit, to body or soul ; whether He said, " Thy sins 
 be forgiven thee," or " Eise up and walk." As water 
 into wine, so the old passed into new. 
 
 Thus the light flashed ; thus the secret made its 
 first disclosure. It vanished again, for His hour had 
 not yet come ; but they had seen it, and this is John's 
 enduring record, remembered by us this day,^ that 
 there first, at Cana, Jesus manifested His glory, and 
 there His disciples first believed in Him. 
 
 And what next did they learn? It was at Jeru- 
 1 Second Sunday after Epiphany. 
 
The Story of an Apostles Faith. 25 
 
 salem, the Passover feast. The Master made His first 
 entry and startled them — for, He Who was so quiet and 
 reserved, burned with a sudden fury as he looked upon 
 the Temple of Jehovah. Very, very rarely did He 
 show Himself excited or disturbed — but then He was 
 terrible. He bound together a scourge of small cords : 
 He drove the cattle in front of Him : He dashed over 
 the money-changers' tables. And John can recall still 
 the look of the coins as they poured down upon the 
 pavement. And they, the disciples, wondered at the 
 violence of the emotion, until a word from an old 
 Psalm came into their minds, and they remembered 
 how it was written that the zeal of the Lord's House 
 should be in a prophet's heart like a devouring fire. 
 
 At that time too,, the Lord Himself gave a sign and 
 spoke a word, which the disciples could make nothing 
 of. It was about the Temple being destroyed and 
 raised again in three days. They forgot it ; but after- 
 wards, " when He had risen from the dead," the old 
 words came back to them, " In three days I will raise 
 it up," and they remembered then how He had spoken 
 them two years before His Death, and, as they remem- 
 bered, they believed. 
 
 It was also at Jerusalem, on that first visit, that they 
 began to understand the Master's marvellous insight 
 into the depths of human character. For at that 
 feast there was a great show of belief in Him in many, 
 and that belief looked to the disciples very strong and 
 genuine, and everything seemed promising and con- 
 fident. They longed for the Lord to go forward, and 
 to seize the opportunity, and to trust Himself to the 
 
26 
 
 Apostolic Witness. 
 
 larger movement. But He surprised and disappointed 
 them. He held strangely back. He would not trust 
 that which was brought Him. He had no faith in its 
 strength : and, as they watched, they saw that He was 
 right. They saw that He could penetrate deep beneath 
 outward show, and could estimate, and weigh, and 
 judge, by some flawless balances of His own. Nothing 
 could disguise itself from Him. He knew exactly 
 where He was, what He could rely on, what would fail 
 Him ; and this He did without the helps that other 
 men have to use. He did not have to wait and see 
 how men would act or behave. He knew all about 
 them before they acted. Nor did He need information 
 about them from others. He could read out their 
 secret somehow from within Himself. And this power 
 of searching the heart — what was it but a privilege 
 of God only, of Jehovah Whose " eyes are in every 
 place " ? So at Jerusalem, at that first feast, they 
 found it to be with Jesus, Who "knew all men, and 
 needed not that any should testify of man, for He knew 
 what was in man." 
 
 How can we stop to follow the Apostle through 
 all the wonderful story? Yet just one thing we 
 cannot pass over — the awful hour of crisis in Galilee. 
 It came just when all looked brightest, when the 
 people were rushing round Him and would have made 
 Him a king. They would have gone with Him to 
 the death. But He — He threw it all away to the 
 winds. He hurried off the Twelve in a body across 
 the lake, for they had caught the crowd's enthusiasm 
 and could not be calmed. He scattered the crowd; 
 
The Story of an Apostles Faith. 27 
 
 He fled back Himself alone into the dark hills; and 
 on the morrow, at Capernaum, He broke it all down 
 by a word which staggered the rising belief. It was 
 a saying about His Body and His Blood, — a very hard 
 saying. Not only were the Pharisees furious, but His 
 own followers were dumbfounded. They could not 
 bear it, could not believe. They fell away, and walked 
 no more with Jesus. 
 
 " And you, 0 disciple dearly loved, what of you and 
 your brethren?" "Most terrible, most bitter that 
 hour, my children," the old man answers. "We 
 walked trembling, quaking, behind Him. We were 
 cowed and disheartened, until He, the Master, felt 
 Himself the chill of our dismay, and He turned to 
 us and challenged our failing faith. ' Will ye also go 
 away ? ' Oh, the shame of being open to a charge of 
 such meanness ! The very tenderness of the question 
 and of the reproach recalled and recovered us. We 
 knew nothing. We could explain nothing. Every 
 clue was lost. The darkness was thickening over our 
 heads, our hearts were failing for fear, our souls were 
 sinking in the great waterfloods, earth was falling 
 from us, struggle and anguish and doubt shook us with 
 wild alarm ; and yet, even so, as He turned His eyes 
 upon us, the old unconquerable faith woke and stirred 
 and quickened ; and with a rush, as of a mighty wind, 
 it lifted us ; and out from Peter's lips broke the words 
 which saved us — the words which sealed us to Him for 
 ever : ' Will we go away ? Nay, Lord, to whom shall 
 we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life ! ' So 
 we spoke with burning hearts, and yet through and 
 
28 
 
 Apostolic Witness. 
 
 through us still those strange eyes of His pierced. 
 Deep below all our emotion He penetrated. Quite 
 calmly He weighed its worth ; and in one of us even 
 then He detected a rift which would widen and worsen. 
 One of us, He knew, hung back from echoing Peter's 
 confession. One spirit there was there that could not 
 throw off its dismay, one dark spirit in whom the hard 
 saying was the seed of bitter and poisonous fruit. 
 'Have I not chosen you Twelve, and one of you is 
 a devil ?' He spoke of Judas Iscariot who should betray 
 Him." 
 
 So they followed and clung, the trembling band; 
 clung through all the harrowing days in which the 
 Jewish enmity hardened itself into the hate of hates ; 
 clung, even though their souls fell away from the 
 rapture of Peter, to the desperate wail of Thomas: 
 " Let us go with Him that we may die with Him ; " 
 clung, even through the terrors of that last evening, 
 when they sat shaking with the very shudder of death, 
 and the Soul of the Master Himself was trouble- 
 tossed, and there was the scent of treachery in the 
 air, and the end was very near, and He spake dim, 
 dark words that they could not follow, — only they 
 knew one thing, that He was to be taken from them, 
 and they sat shrouded in a mighty sorrow such as 
 no assurances even of His could lessen or lift. One 
 moment there was indeed, even then, in which they 
 seemed suddenly to lay hold of His meaning. " Now 
 we believe," they cried, " Now we are sure that Thou 
 camest forth from God." So they cried, and yet He 
 met their professions with a sorrowful hesitation. 
 
The Story of an Apostles Faith. 29 
 
 " Do ye now believe ? Yea ; the hour is all but come 
 when ye will all flee and leave Me alone." How sad 
 and cowed they felt at the rebuff! Were they, then, 
 never to rise into the joy of clear and entire belief ? 
 Yes ; it came at last — the blessed joy of perfect assur- 
 ance ! Let John tell how it was reached by him. 
 
 Two points he singles out for himself as marking 
 epochs of his own conviction, and in them both we are 
 let inside the workings of his innermost mind. And 
 how curious, yet how natural, is the working ! For in 
 every hour of agony the mind becomes strangely and 
 fearfully alert to very little things. It is sensitive 
 to sudden and ineffaceable impressions. It is startled 
 into the swiftest and subtlest activity by the tiniest 
 touches of detail. Often in the supreme moment of 
 a dark tragedy, the fibres of the imagination seem to 
 close round some minute incident, such as the ticking 
 of a clock in the hush of a death-chamber ; and never 
 throughout the long years that follow can it detach 
 that tiny incident from its memory of the black hour. 
 And so with St. John. 
 
 He stood below the bitter Cross, and he saw the 
 nails beaten through the hands and feet, and he heard 
 the last loud cry, and yet still his despair hung heavy 
 as death upon his soul; until, just at the touch of the 
 soldier's spear, there broke from the dead side a little 
 jet of blood and water. What was it that he saw and 
 felt ? What was it that so startled him ? Why could 
 that little jet of blood and water never pass out 
 of his sight ? Why should it haunt him sixty years 
 after, as still his heart wonders over the mysterious 
 
30 
 
 Apostolic Witness. 
 
 witness of the water and the blood ? We cannot tell. 
 Perhaps he could never tell. Only, his spirit woke 
 with a start. Only, a strange tremor shook him, and 
 somehow just then, just at that little pivot moment, 
 he must break off all his story, to declare with abrupt 
 and quivering emphasis: "This is the disciple that 
 wrote these things. He it is who saw the water and 
 the blood, and he knows that his record is true." 
 
 And once again, in the haste of the Eesurreotion 
 morning, what was the moment and what was the 
 scene which turned his despair into belief? It was 
 the moment at which he stooped down and saw within 
 the empty tomb the folded napkin and the linen 
 clothes. What did he notice ? why, that the napkin 
 that had been round the Master's head was not lying 
 with the linen clothes, but was rolled up in a place by 
 itself. A tiny, tiny thing ! Yet somehow it was that 
 which he saw and never forgot. It was that which he 
 could never omit from his story of the Resurrection— 
 the rolled-up napkin lying apart from the linen 
 clothes. W^as it the sudden sense that struck him of 
 order and seemliness, as of a thing premeditated, in- 
 tended? Was it the reaction of detecting the quiet 
 tokens of deliberate purpose there, where all had 
 seemed to him a very chaos of confusion ? Who can 
 say ? Only just then a key was somehow turned and 
 a bolt shot back somewhere within his breast, and a 
 secret flashed in upon him, and a thrill of insight 
 rushed over him, and his blindness fell off as it had 
 been scales, and a quiver of hope shot up like a flame, 
 and a new light broke over him, and he passed at one 
 
The Story of an Apostles Faith. 31 
 
 bound out of death into life. " Then entered in, there- 
 fore, that other disciple which came first to the tomb, 
 and he saw and believed." 
 
 My brethren, where do you stand ? How far have 
 you come in this pathway of faith ? Are you yet at 
 the beginning, looking wistfully with hungry eyes, 
 after a hundred gallant human heroes who point you 
 this way and that ? Are you musing in your heart 
 which of them may be your guide and master, which 
 is the Christ ? Good, and fair, and high they may be ; 
 but they must all confess it, they cannot deny it, — 
 they are not the Christ. And all of them who are 
 honest will earnestly assure you, " It is not I, but 
 Another." Oh, and that Other even now standeth among 
 you, though you know Him not yet ; and there is a 
 voice gone out upon Him which has gone out upon 
 none other ever born of woman, with this witness, 
 " Behold the Lamb of God Which taketh away the sin 
 of the world ! " 
 
 Consider it. What an assurance ! Who is there 
 that has ever been brave enough to accept such a 
 salutation without a whisper of protest, without a 
 shadow of a scruple ? Who is this that dares to stand 
 up before the entire mass of his fellows and say, " Come 
 all who are weary and heavy lad en — come all who are bur- 
 dened sorely with sin — come all to Me — I will give you 
 rest." Who is He ? Look at Him. He is passing even 
 now before you. Follow Him. He is very quiet, and 
 still, and silent — but follow Him. He will turn at last, 
 and speak, and invite you — invite you a little further. 
 " Master, where dwellest Thou ? " " Come and see." 
 
32 
 
 Apostolic Witness. 
 
 0 Jesus, Lord and lover of souls, there are many of 
 us laden with sickness and sin, so many that are sad 
 with doubt and fear, that are asking, " Master, where 
 dwellest Thou ? " Oh, let them even come home with 
 Thee and see. 
 
 Go and see. Abide with Him, talk with Him. 
 Wait upon Him. Learn His words. Take up His 
 Gospels. Eead them with care, with silence to your- 
 self, with thought and prayer. Abide with Him 
 one night at least, that you may in the morning be 
 able to tell your fellows, " I have found the Christ." 
 And after that, suddenly, now and again, a light 
 will flash, and a glory be made manifest to you. 
 Some touch of divine benediction will break out of the 
 secret silence, some sudden joy, some gift of power. 
 It will be with you as at Cana when the water ran into 
 wine. Yet this, when it comes, remembei", is not the end. 
 It is but a pledge. You may not cling to the bless- 
 ings and the gifts of faith. They flash and disappear, 
 and you will not be surprised to find that you have 
 yet a long road to travel — a road of disappointment, 
 of increasing failure, of gathering pain, of enlarging 
 doubt : — doubt, why not ? Doubt of the ways and the 
 methods of God, doubt of the path as the darkness 
 encompasses, doubt of Christ's meaning, of His wisdom, 
 of His readiness, of His care, of His guidance. The 
 obscurity may even deepen as you advance along the 
 road of faith. The storm may grow blacker and fiercer) 
 — for the higher your faith in God, the darker will be 
 your despair at His failure to make His Name good. 
 And you will find Him strange. He will seem to make 
 
The Story of an Apostles Faith. 33 
 
 so little way in the world, He will seem to miss oppor- 
 tunities. It is very hard to believe in One in Whom 
 others believe less and less every day. And then it is, 
 when all are falling away, and the hard sayings of 
 theology begin to harass and repel, then it is that 
 you must call with all your might upon the inner 
 faith, that you may have the heart of fire which will 
 feel but one thing — will feel that though the world fall 
 into ruins and though the power of God Himself be 
 hidden, yet there stands the Christ still facing you with 
 the question, "Will you go away? Will you fail as others 
 fail Me ? " Then it is that you must be bold to send 
 out your faith in the one passionate cry, " Lord, Thou 
 art here, and that is enough ! Thou hast the words 
 of eternal life. To whom can I go ? Though all 
 men forsake Thee, yet will not I ; and in spite of all, 
 I believe, and am sure that Thou art the Christ, the 
 Holy One of God." That is the faith which is felt 
 indeed as a rock under the feet, and to such faith the 
 love of God will make itself more and more manifest. 
 You who will so trust Him in the black night, you 
 who can walk on, knowing nothing but that Christ 
 goes before you, you who immutably cling with the 
 violence of an ineradicable love to Him Who has en- 
 thralled you, — you will find yourselves carried on day 
 after day, you know not how, until at last you find 
 yourselves enclosed in some upper chamber with the 
 Master. Yes, and there the secrets of His love will be 
 disclosed, and the mysteries of His counsels and the 
 hidden wonder of His victory and the strange glory of 
 I His consolation. You will not know or understand all; 
 
34 
 
 Apostolic Witness. 
 
 you will feel yourselves held in the grasp of a wisdom 
 that reaches far and away beyond your little day. You 
 will inquire with stammering lips as Philip and Judas 
 (not Iscariot) and Thomas stammered in the upper 
 chamber before you, and the answer that He gives will 
 be but dim ; and yet you will know enough to make 
 you absolutely sure that the truth as you hold it in 
 Jesus is the truth that holds the world in one in God, 
 and you will be able to cry, in glimpses of peculiar 
 manifestation, " Lord, now speakest Thou plainly and 
 speakest no parable. Now, I believe and have known 
 and am sure that Thou earnest forth from God." 
 
 And yet, even that faith, the faith of roused feelings, 
 may lapse again ; even that moment of blessing may 
 lose its power over you. Yes, for only when you 
 become convinced, not only of your possession of a 
 Teacher AVho once came on earth from God, but more, 
 of a Lord living on the far side of death, living in the 
 might of a Eesurrection life, able to stand by you in 
 that life-giving might as you abide here with the 
 faithful in the upper chamber, able to feed you with 
 His life now from that home of His beyond the grave 
 — only then, when you so receive Him, and take of 
 Him, and taste Him, and know yourselves quickened 
 in Him — only so will your last doubt pass away Irom 
 you — only so will the close of the crown of your faith 
 be obtained, and you will end — as the story of St. John 
 ends — with the cry of doubting Thomas when his last 
 doubt scattered, the cry in which the perfected 
 Apostolic faith at last saluted its risen Master, " Jesus 
 Christ, my Lord and, my God." 
 
€i)xmij in tijt (gijspels 
 
 THE ROCK— THE SECRET— THE FELLOWSHIP 
 —THE WITNESS — THE RESOURCES — THE 
 MIND— THE MINISTRY— OF THE CHURCH. 
 
SERMON in. 
 
 THE EOCK OF THE CHUECH. 
 
 " (Kjjort tl^is rocit I ioill builK fHg (JCIjurcfj, anJ tfjc jjatcs of f)cll 
 sfjall not prctiail against it." — Matt. xvi. iS. 
 
 We are Churchmen. We believe in the Catliolic 
 Church. What is it so to believe ? and why do we 
 believe it? We are apt to be content with partial 
 aud arbitrary answers to such a question. We are 
 Churchmen by historical accident perhaps : we found 
 ourselves born so, and we see no reason to regret it. 
 Or we are Churchmen by preference, because it suits 
 us. Or we are Churchmen because some organisation 
 of Christians is expedient and useful, and history has 
 shown the Church system and rule to be the most 
 practical, and the most enduring. Or, again, we have 
 a higher reason, — we are Churchmen because we 
 believe that the technical validity of the Sacraments 
 is assured to us most clearly by an Apostolic Ministry. 
 And yet none of these answers, not even the last, goes 
 back to the very root of the question : " What is it 
 to believe in the Catholic Church ? " For belief is 
 nothing if it is not practical ; it must of necessity 
 penetrate the life and colour our character; it must 
 lay hold of heart and soul ; it must touch home on 
 the central core of our spiritual being. How is our 
 
38 
 
 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 life, then, made different by believing in the Churcli ? 
 What is the mind which such a belief prompts and 
 builds and directs? What is the will which it ani- 
 mates and the desire which it enkindles ? What is 
 the character, the tone, the activity which issue 
 instinctively out of so believing ? 
 
 And in answering such primary questions we need 
 not concern ourselves at all, as yet, with the dis- 
 cussion and justification of a particular Church system 
 and ministry. We go back behind any such inquiry ; 
 and, believe me, this is a vital matter, for, unless we 
 do so, any such discussion is bound to be inconclu- 
 sive. For there is a background on which all argu- 
 ments for a particular system rest, a background of 
 assumptions, anticipations, expectancies, to which all 
 such arguments make their appeal. 
 
 What is it, then, this background ? Before we ask 
 why we should trust a special Church system of orders, 
 we must be sure that we expect already to find some 
 system and some organisation. Now, where do we 
 get that preliminary expectation ? How is it that 
 we Churchmen find in the very act by which we 
 believe in Christ Jesus, a reason for expecting a 
 Church? Why should our individual and personal 
 union with Him feel marred and stunted and meagre 
 unless it can realise itself in some organisation ? 
 This is the expectation, the anticipation, which forms 
 the mind of the Churchman ; it is this mind which 
 he brings to the discussion of a threefold Ministry. " I 
 believe in Christ Jesus" seems to him to open out of 
 itselfj without effort or strain or change, into " I believe 
 
The Rock of the Church. 
 
 39 
 
 in the Holy Catholic Church." And this belief affects, 
 or ought to affect, not his head only, but his heart, 
 his life, his character ; and, more than that, it ought 
 to affect, indeed it must affect, his conception of our 
 Lord Himself. 
 
 Let us take this last point to-day — belief in a 
 Church affects our belief in Christ Jesus ; it involves, 
 that is, a particular reading of His Life-work, a par- 
 ticular conception of His purpose, of His mind, of His 
 desires, of His plan while He was here with us on 
 earth. If we include the Church in the Creed, we must 
 mean that the story of our Lord's Life includes and 
 involves the story of the Church, and that we could 
 not read the Gospels themselves without seeing there 
 the origin and the necessity of Christ's Church. 
 Now, do the Gospels, as we ordinarily read them, 
 convey that to us ? Let us consider them. 
 
 There is a familiar picture which the Gospel story 
 leaves at first sight upon nearly every mind, a picture 
 so easy, so natural, so satisfactory, that it is but too 
 apt to arrest the imagination and entangle the under- 
 standing. " Jesus of Nazareth went about doing 
 good." That is a story we can lay hold of. He is 
 in Galilee among the hills and the fishermen, far from 
 the heartless and harsh city, far from the disputing 
 schools and the narrow priestcraft of Jerusalem. He 
 lives among the villages, and simple country folk 
 are flocking after His Feet; all the long evening- 
 He stands at some quiet door, and they bring the 
 sick and the maimed to the blessing of His touch, 
 and all are made whole. He sits on some hill, and 
 
40 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 wcrds fall from His lips that enthral and pierce and 
 quicken. And He forbids none to come near ; if they 
 be but weary and heavy laden, all may come unto 
 Him ; let them be but children, they shall not be 
 forbidden ; let them be but suffering or diseased, and, 
 and even though He have not so much as time to eat 
 bread, He yet will heal them all : so gracious, so 
 tender is the Son of Man — so He calls Himself, — the 
 name of compassion, of sympathy, of human-hearted- 
 ness, and brotherly kindness. The Son of Man ! — 
 yes, and Son of God, we cannot but name Him, for 
 some Divine, unearthly presence is there within Him. 
 " Never man spake like this Man." " Never before 
 have we seen it in this fashion." " With power com- 
 mandeth He the unclean spirits, and they obey Him." 
 " He speaks with authority, and not like a scribe." 
 " What manner of Man is this, Whom even the winds 
 and the sea obey ? " " No man could do such miracles 
 unless God were with Him." " Son of Man," so He 
 names Himself : " Son of God," so we may gladly 
 name Him, we who are drawn after Him as those 
 crowds of old were drawn, we who carry to Him still 
 our sicknesses and our sores, and listen as of old to 
 the voice with which He speaks as never man spake. 
 Son of Man and Son of God, so our hearts salute Him ; 
 for indeed they cannot help it. But do not press us 
 (so we cry) with inquiries what our words may mean. 
 It needs no commentaries, no definitions, no theologies 
 to know the sway of Jesus. We cannot tell what He 
 is ; we only know that we were blind and now we see, we 
 were deaf and now we hear ; or at least we follow with 
 
The Rock of the Church. 
 
 41 
 
 the crowd behind Him and know that He has a 
 fascination such as we find in no other. 
 
 That seems to us the Gospel story in its main import. 
 The sower scatters the seed, and is careless where it 
 falls. Jesus defines nothing, organises nothing, asks 
 nothing of the believer, — nothing at least, we say, but 
 a blind emotion of the heart towards Him — faith. He 
 says little of Himself and almost nothing of a Church ; 
 it is to the loose multitudes that He devotes Himself. 
 There is His home, we think ; His work, His happi- 
 ness. He is slain as soon as He leaves the simple 
 folk in Galilee, and ventures to approach the city 
 and its misguided priests. So He lived and so He 
 died, and the work of the Lord is still continued in 
 this ancient and patient fashion by the written records 
 of that life on earth ; and still, wherever they are 
 scattered abroad, men's hearts are stirred, and their 
 souls shake, and their spirits rise and follow, as again 
 the old words fall with comfort on their ears. 
 
 " Jesus of Nazareth went about doing good." That 
 is a true, a gracious, and a blessed memory. But why 
 stop at the beginning of the story ? Why not touch 
 the rest ? If we only read on, we shall find what will 
 surprise us, as it surprised St. Peter and the rest. 
 " He went about doing good ; " but why is it, then, 
 that the Lord flies from this good work of His ? — for 
 He certainly does. The very first day of it He escapes 
 alone to the hills, and His disciples have to go and 
 find Him. All men are searching for Him ; why is 
 He not to be found ? And more and more, as the daj'^s 
 go on, He withdraws, He escapes. He hides Himself 
 
42 The Chiu'ch in the Gospels. 
 
 beyond the lake iu heathen hills. He does not seem 
 to want these crowds any more. It is only because He 
 cannot be hid that they find Him, and when they find 
 Him He scatters them ; He goes further and further 
 afield away from them ; away among heathen Greeks, 
 away to the borders of Tyre and Sidon, among those 
 to whom He is not sent, and for whom He cannot do 
 good works. He enters there into the houses, and will 
 not have His presence known. He does all He can to 
 avoid publishing His works. He takes the sick aside, 
 He charges them to tell no one ; yes, and He rebukes 
 them, we are told, with real passion, for their eagerness 
 to make Him known. And this strange avoidance of 
 what we suppose to be His main aim and work steadily 
 increases and sharpens. He seems at last to feel the 
 work of healing to be almost an interruption, an 
 obstruction. It obscures His true meaning, it hides 
 Him from the people. They eat of the loaves, and in 
 their wonder at the miracle see no sign, attain no 
 understanding of Him Who stands in their midst. And 
 then, what is that startling cry at the foot of the hill 
 of Transfiguration, when the father pleads for his boy ? 
 — " 0 faithless and perverse generation, how long 
 shall I be with you, how long shall I suffer you ? " So 
 He speaks, as if weary of their dulness, who come to 
 Him only under the stress of some blind hunger, and 
 only want Him to cure their ills. While, indeed. He 
 is there, their cries cannot but enter into His ears and 
 His compassion must be at work. But how long, how 
 long, is He to be with them, and they to see no more 
 in Him than this ? 
 
The Rock of the Chttrch. 
 
 43 
 
 Aud then tliere come tliose fearful words about 
 the parables, — what do they convey ? " Lord, why 
 speakest Thou to them, the crowd, in parables?" — 
 "That seeing they may not see, and hearing they 
 may not hear." These stories, so easy and taking, 
 these are a hedge, then, a barrier between Him and 
 the loose crowd. He uses them because He is 
 forced to refrain from too open speech. He must 
 probe and examine his hearers. He needs a sieve 
 through which to sift those only who can hear with 
 ears. Blessed the ears of those who press in behind 
 and listen, who have their appetite wlietted by the 
 beauty of those tales. But there are those who, until 
 they obtain ears to hear with, must of necessity remain 
 without. Because they are without He speaks to them 
 in parables. What is all this? — and there is more. 
 As the days go on He sets Himself to throw off the 
 crowds that dog His steps; He shakes them back with 
 hard sayings, until they fall away, as He seems to 
 expect. He turns round upon them with hard and 
 repellent commands : " If any man will come after Me, 
 let him take up his cross; let him hate father and 
 mother and sister and brother, yea, himself also, or he 
 is not worthy." And He puts sharp tests to those that 
 offer to come with Him ; He will have no follower Avho 
 cannot live as He does, in a worse case than the foxes 
 or the birds. He cannot let His disciples even go back 
 to say " Good-bye " to father and mother, or perform 
 the last rites of the grave : that is to look back from 
 the plough — that is to go back from life to death. And 
 He bids the crowd, all of them, to count the cost before 
 
44 The Church in the Gospds. 
 
 they join Him ; for it is a large Avork, and it will be 
 ridiculous to begin and then fail to finish ; it will be 
 a bitter war, and it will be pitiful to yield at the mere 
 sight of the foe in his array : so to start and fail is 
 more demoralising than never to have started at all. 
 
 What is all this? We may wonder even as His 
 brethren wondered in faithlessness. "Why," they said, 
 " this secrecy ? No man can do such things as these 
 and not desire to have them published." We may 
 wonder, out of our very faith, as St. John wondered in 
 the early days in Jerusalem, when men flocked about 
 the Lord and were ready to believe and follow. They 
 looked so sincere and so hearty in their faith ; and 
 yet, to the Apostle's surprise, Jesus gave them no 
 encouragement, would not rely upon them, would not 
 open out to them. No, He did not commit Himself 
 unto them, so John noted ; and he perceived that the 
 Lord read deep, that He knew by a strong in- 
 tuition what was in men, and saw reason to distrust 
 them. 
 
 So those close to Him wondered ; and, as they 
 watched Him, they saw a new and marvellous thing : 
 His inner Heart, His deeper Mind, they saw, was con- 
 cerned with something far away from those Galilean 
 crowds. For them His love and tenderness do indeed 
 stream out in help and consolation, but He holds 
 a secret, and He walks with some hidden motive, 
 some purpose, some plan, some work not here, not 
 amid those hills. His eyes are set elsewhere. His 
 being is bent upon another goal. This Galilean 
 time is but a delay, a pause in the great work set 
 
The Rock of the Chui'ch. 
 
 45 
 
 before Him, and His very success almost interrupts 
 Him. He takes pains, therefore, to avoid it, to break 
 it, to liide Himself from it, because He is bracing 
 Himself to some strange, bard task. What is it, and 
 wbere? Look how it sometimes possesses Him! Now 
 and again the disciples catch sight of that secret intent, 
 and feel its tremendous pressure, as the Lord strained, 
 as it were, under the awful responsibility. "I have 
 a baptism to be baptised with ; how am I straitened 
 until it be accomplished ? " He has a cup to drink, 
 so harsh and so bitter, who can drink it with Him? 
 He who would follow whither He is set on going must 
 be ready for a cross, and not for a throne. And we 
 know what that secret of His is. It is the exodus, 
 the Decease that He should accomplish at Jerusalem — 
 that secret of His Transfiguration. It is on this, that 
 He is always pondering; it is for this He is ever prepar- 
 ing. He is but in Galilee through compulsion, because 
 He can walk no more in Judaea for fear of the Jews, 
 because He has no honour in His own Judsean country. 
 St. John asserts this plainly, but the other Gospels 
 tell us as plainly that He is in Galilee only that He 
 may return to face that death already decreed of God, 
 and determined of the Jews; He is in Galilee to be 
 withdrawn from His foes for a time ; and, ever as those 
 foes from Jerusalem dog His steps, He retreats and He 
 hides, for as yet His time has not come. " I go not 
 up to this feast." He goes not up ; but His thoughts 
 are ever in Jerusalem, and everything is being steadily 
 shaped for that great day of His which draws on apace, 
 when once more He will tread the streets of the Holy 
 
46 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 City, and the deed commanded of the Father will be 
 done, and the cup of the Father will be drunk, and the 
 work will be finished, and the Son of Man will attain 
 the end of His coming, and will be glorified. "Behold, 
 we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written 
 concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished " — 
 so He spoke to them incessantly and insistently. 
 " From that time He began to say unto them, Behold, 
 we go up to Jerusalem ; " and when at last, all things 
 being ready. He moves forward in this intent so lono- 
 repressed, towards His baptism wherewith he has been 
 so terribly straitened, He is so possessed with tlie 
 exultation of achievement that His disciples can but 
 creep behind Him, cowed and alarmed ; for lo ! He 
 seems transfigured, and there is something terrible 
 in His Face ; He moves even as He who should come 
 from Edom with dyed garments from Bozra, He that 
 travelleth in His strength, mighty to save ; for " they 
 were on the way going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus 
 went before them and they were amazed, and as they 
 followed Him they were afraid." 
 
 " Behold, we go up to Jerusalem." Here was His 
 great secret, here His burden ; this is the command- 
 ment He received from His Father, that He should 
 lay down His Life for His sheep. On this He brooded. 
 This was the Will of the Father which was to 
 Him His meat and His drink ; this was the baptism 
 wherewith He should be baptised, and how was He 
 straitened unto the day of its accomplishment ! This 
 was His secret ; but not one word, not one whisper of 
 all this to the Galilean crowds ; not one syllable stole 
 
The Rock of the Church. 
 
 47 
 
 out to tell the secret that worked within — not one 
 word. He moved among them tenderly and piti- 
 fully ; He helped, He healed, He forgave ; the mere 
 sight of those unshepherded multitudes was enough 
 to stir His compassion: but His Heart was hidden 
 from them, and they knew and guessed nothing of 
 His Mind. They knew nothing; and therefore He 
 could only give them according to the measure that 
 they had. Pity, infinite pity, He gave them — but 
 Himself He never gave ; He could not commit Himself 
 imto them. His work, His mission. His purpose on 
 earth, — how could they receive it? how could they 
 understand it ? They were far too occupied with 
 their own needs, and hunger, and pains. They had 
 children cast by devils into fires, they had boys lying 
 sick of fevers, they had wants and sorrows and miseries 
 of their own, and that is what occupies them. How 
 can they take time and trouble to consider exactly 
 "Who He was Who stood there in their midst? And 
 what could it matter by what Name He should be 
 called? How could they decide whether He be the 
 Messias or not ? Why ! He Himself is content with 
 the vague title " Son of Man," and never calls Himself 
 Messias. Why should they press questions which He 
 never asks ? Surely they may take Him as He stands, 
 and as He offers Himself. Call Him by what name 
 you will, call Him John the Baptist, Elias, one of the 
 prophets, — that is enough — He is ready to save. Send 
 out some passionate cry, — "Lord, come down to my 
 child ere he die " — send it out and He is sure to come. 
 Follow Him and He will fill you with strange bread 
 
48 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 on the hills ; follow Him and listen, and feed, and be 
 content. So the crowd followed, careless of what name 
 they named Him, and therefore the crowd was un- 
 serviceable to Him. He would not use it, but held 
 it off; He got Himself hidden from it, He never com- 
 mitted Himself to it. 
 
 For, indeed. He has work to do, urgent, vast, and 
 awful, before the night draws on. Why is He here ? 
 He is come, not to heal a few sick folk only, but in 
 the mind of those eternal counsels which reach from 
 the beginning to the end. He is come to cast the 
 stone from Heaven which shall break all the kingdoms 
 of the earth and grind them to powder. He is come 
 to gather into one act the entire story of the world, 
 to fulfil all things that are written in Moses, and 
 the Law, and the Prophets. He is come, laying His 
 Hands on the courses of the stars, on the motions of 
 the earth, on the empires of men, on the wars of 
 the flesh, on the tyrannies of sin. He is here, as 
 Samson, lifting the gates of death from the house of 
 evil; He is here wrestling with principalities and 
 powers ; He is here to beget the new race of men ; He 
 is here to build the new House of God, the Temple 
 of His Body. To build ! How can He build on that 
 loose and shifting rubble, on that blind movement of 
 the crowd, so vague and so undetermined ? To build 
 on this is to build on the sand ; and He is to build for 
 eternity, and in the face of Hell. He is looking far 
 ahead to the days of tribulation, when the strong winds 
 will blow, and the great floods sweep down upon His 
 House. There must be no sand under His Eternal 
 
The Rock of the Chtirch. 
 
 49 
 
 Temple. He must Lave rock, sure and steadfast, and 
 that Eock is His own Name, the Name of the Christ 
 made known and made alive in the heart of man. His 
 Name, — confessed by men's lips, sealed upon men's 
 souls, embodied in men's being, apprehended by man's 
 spirit, His Name eaten as a food and drunk as a drink, so 
 that men may become what He is, and may carry on 
 His work, and may fulfil His life, and may bear His 
 message, and may fill up His sufferings and drink of 
 His cup, — His Name, so taken, is the One Foundation 
 that may endure unto the end. And this Name is 
 just what the crowd are most indifferent to. This is 
 just that which they neglect, and confuse, and ignore. 
 John the Baptist, Elias, J eremiah, one of the Prophets 
 — any name will do : what use in precision ? 
 
 Where, then, can He find building ground ? Not in 
 them who bring Him but sand ; only in those Twelve, 
 selected, prepared, set apart from the crowd, led off 
 with Him in lonely places, men who could be trained 
 at last to penetrate His secret, to apprehend His life- 
 work, to name His Name. " Whom say ye that I am ? " 
 "Thou art the Christ." Oh, the great opening, the 
 relief of the soul ! The Spirit of the Lord, so hidden, 
 so repressed, leaps forward out of its secret place, out 
 of its loneliness, out of its silence. At last, at last, He 
 is through the sand ; He has touched ground ; He can 
 begin. " Blessed art thou, Simon Barjonas ; and I say 
 unto thee, thou art Peter, and upon this Eock of My 
 Name, now first apprehended, I will build My Church ; 
 and so build that the gates of death shall not prevail 
 against it." 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 The CImrch in the Gospels. 
 
 We said, dear brethren, that the question whether 
 Christ organised and founded the Church would tell 
 right home upon our own conduct, and indeed it is so ; 
 for it sets before us that searching question — " Are we 
 among the crowds that follow, or with the Twelve who 
 apprehend ? " If we stand among the crowd, we are 
 as loose and rotten sand on which the Lord builds no 
 Church, for the rock on which He builds is the clear 
 confession of His Name. To stand among the crowd 
 — is it not so at this hour with hundreds of us ? We 
 stand among the crowd, swept along by the Christian 
 movement, carried to church and back by habit, by 
 inclination, by instinct, listening, wondering, blessed, 
 comforted ; and the old familiar words of Heaven and 
 Faith hang pleasantly about our cars : but never once 
 does Faith get hold upon us, never once do we feel 
 its decisive grip. All life long we may be in that 
 dream. We are as those who listened to parable after 
 parable by the quiet waters, as the Lord taught them 
 from a boat. Like them, we sit impressed, charmed, 
 even enthralled ; but like them, too, we have never 
 once broken through our dream, never once pressed 
 our way in with the Twelve there in the house, with 
 them who are pushing their eager questions : " Why, 
 why dost Thou speak to them in parable ? Tell us 
 what that parable means." To how many in this 
 church to-day is Christ still speaking in parables ? 
 To how manv is His whole Life and Death and 
 Kesurrection no more than parable ? 
 
 " But He will be merciful," we say ; " surely He will 
 not be hard upon us, because we cannot name His 
 
The Rock of the Church. 51 
 
 Name with precise certainty ; He will be good and 
 tender to those who have lollowed Him hither and 
 thither." Yes, He is very good, and His compassions 
 fail not, but are new every morning. Very good He 
 will be to you, very tenderly He will feed you, and if 
 you call upon Him in trouble He will hear you, and if 
 you bring Him your sores in faith He will heal you ; 
 but one thing He will never do — He will never " com- 
 mit Himself unto you," He will never tell you His 
 secret, never unburden to you His heart, never reveal 
 to you His Name and mission, never ask you to share 
 in His baptism and drink of His cup. All this will be 
 hidden from your eyes, and you will never know or 
 understand the eternal counsels, nor the secret of the 
 select friends, nor the mystery of the Church, nor the 
 joy of His service, nor the splendour of His glory, nor 
 the hidden life with the ascended Lord in Heaven. 
 He will bear you. He will save you : but He cannot 
 do more ; He must pass you over in pathetic silence ; 
 and you will never know what He wanted of you, never 
 know His disappointment in you, never suspect your 
 own failure. You are without ; you have never found 
 your way in, and seeing Him you will see not, and 
 hearing Him you will hear not. 
 
 And yet you may find the way to Him, you may 
 hear, and understand, if only you will get through the 
 shifting sand, if only you will dig down to the rock. 
 Search yourselves through; ask, examine, probe, — 
 " What do I think of Christ ? Whom do I say that 
 He the Son of Man is ? What does He mean ? 
 What is His mission ? What is His task ? What is 
 
52 
 
 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 there behind the charm, the goodness, the patience? 
 What is it He darkly hints — this death at Jerusalem, 
 and this call of me to Himself? What does it involve ? 
 How far will it go ? How much does it require of me ? 
 What use may I be to Him ? " So examine yourselves, 
 so press down to the deep of your being, so probe home, 
 and you will find the rock at last, the rock of a clear 
 confession, the rock of revelation from the Father, 
 when faith is no longer an instinct of flesh and blood, 
 but a spiritual apprehension. You will see with clear 
 eyes, you will hold with firm hands, you will confess 
 His Name, " Thou art the Christ ; " and the blessing 
 of Peter will fall upon you : " Blessed art thou. My 
 son, blessed art thou ! Here is the rock on which I 
 uan build ; here is a stone laid for My Eternal Church." 
 
SERMON IV. 
 
 THE SECliET OF THE CHUKCH. 
 
 " C fjabe manfffstcu STfjg iflame tmto tf)e mm 'is}\}tim Wjm gaijcst tne 
 out of tlje iijorlli."— John xvii, 6, 
 
 We are asking, What is it that the Gospels have to 
 tell us of a Church ? And this, not in a few rare 
 texts, open, as all isolated texts must be, to discussion 
 and hesitation, — but in their inherent and vital teach- 
 ing, as expressed throughout the length and breadth 
 of their consentient record. And we put this question 
 in its most crucial form if we ask it thus — Do the 
 four Gospels imply that our Lord Jesus was content to 
 throw the truth down upon the open area of the 
 world, and to leave it to make its own way, to shape 
 its own course, among the listening crowds, undirected 
 and unorganised? Did He discharge His message 
 without taking securities who should hear it? Was 
 He as a sower who sowed His seed without asking 
 where it fell ? 
 
 Here is the salient question, and the answer is 
 absolutely certain and precise. Some seed there was 
 He cast out loose among the multitudes, to fall where 
 it would ; some general offer of Himself He made to 
 all who passed by, to all who drew near : but such 
 offer, such message, was only experimental, suggestive 
 
54 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 parabolic. It acted as a test, as a probe, as a sieve. 
 It operated as a judgment between man and man, 
 between tliose that had ears to hear, and tliose who 
 hearing heard not. His full significance was never 
 told the crowd. No, not even though the pathetic 
 appeal came up from the bewildered Jews, "Tell us 
 plainly, art Thou the Christ ? " It could never be 
 told plainly. It could never utter itself in words 
 that would be plain to those who were not in the 
 moral condition of His sheep, and who could not, 
 therefore, know His voice. His Name, which is Him- 
 self, could never be committed to the floating crowd. 
 Nor was His inner secret ever once cast down loose to 
 take its chance. On the contrary, the Gospel story 
 is the record of the pains and anxiety with which the 
 Lord sifted, selected, prepared those few to whom this. 
 His vital and essential message, should be committed. 
 Where else but in this lies the terrible interest of the 
 Gospels ? We are spectators at a living drama. We 
 watch the Lord passing through the multitudes, as 
 they sway beneath and about Him, like great tides 
 that roll, and swing, and lapse, and roll again, under 
 the quiet eye of the moving moon. We know the 
 silent secret that He holds deep buried — His Death at 
 Jerusalem — on which His entire Will is unerringly 
 bent. We know ; but those crowds l?now nothing, 
 suspect nothing. Who is there that will ever believe 
 the report? Who will be found to understand, and 
 share the tremendous news? To whom will the arm 
 of the Lord be revealed ? We wait, and watch, as one 
 by one they are detected, detached, elected. Two there 
 
The Secret of tJic Church. 55 
 
 are, first, who followed that silent Teacher home, and 
 abode with Him in His own house. And each of these 
 has a brother to bring on the morrow. Strange things 
 they learned, alone there in the house with Him ; and 
 they could tell what they had learned : " We have 
 found the Christ." Andrew findeth Peter. And, then, 
 there is one on whom our Lord's eye has already fallen : 
 "Jesus findeth Philip;" and Philip, once brought, can 
 bring another, the Jew without guile. The work is 
 beginning, but a whole year will pass before four of 
 these, who so heard and learned, will be summoned 
 to the intimacy of discipleship, and will be shaped for 
 the great work. And not yet, even to them, is a word 
 said of the inner secret. Much is first to be done: 
 fierce trial; bitter experience; sharp agonies of judg- 
 ment. These four are called, and, after the long 
 night's prayer among the hills alone. He adds eight 
 others ; and with these He walks. Keenly He watches 
 them, searches them, prepares them. Even now, do 
 they know Him ? Dare He trust them ? Have they 
 discovered His meaning. His Name? Who can say? 
 Tar apart He leads them, out from among the troubling 
 noises of the town, far from the perplexing dishonours 
 of the home-country. Will they stand? It is a 
 terrible, a searching hour! All men have misunder- 
 stood, the most faithful are falling away ; and bad as 
 the case looks to them now, in Galilee, He has worse 
 to tell them, of the desperate things that must be done 
 in Jerusalem. How will they endure it ? Are they 
 not already touched, tainted ? Not only are all 
 baffled, saddened, cast down, but one of them, nor 
 
56 The CImrch in the Gospels. 
 
 lie the least, bas even now lost heart, doubted, dis- 
 believed : " Have I not chosen you Twelve, and one 
 of you is a devil ? " One of them is gone, is lapsed, 
 is weighed, and found wanting. The Lord feels it, 
 knows it. What of the rest ? " Will ye also go 
 away ? " It is the crisis of the drama ; and now that, 
 through the great confession of Peter, eleven at least 
 are found worthy to receive, and hold the unburdened 
 secret, the care of the Lord intensifies. With ever- 
 increasing anxiety He devotes Himself to the single 
 task of preparing those few for the ultimate revela- 
 tion. The Gospel now becomes little else but a story 
 of their slow and reluctant training. With growing 
 emphasis He unburdens His secret, and for long they 
 cannot accept it. "They understood none of these 
 things, and this saying was hidden from them, neither 
 knew they the things that were spoken." Very slowly 
 they are made ready, chastened, purged ; until that 
 last awful hour was reached when, with feet washed 
 clean, with hearts made pure by the word implanted 
 ■ — alone with Him in the upper chamber, apart, hidden 
 from the world, they receive the uttermost secret, no 
 longer in parable, but in plain speech; and share in 
 the New Covenant, and take of His Body, and drink 
 of His Blood. 
 
 That is the story. There can be no doubt about it. 
 It is perfectly simple, plain, familiar.^ How is it, then, 
 
 ' Cf., for instance, article by Dr. Edwin Hatch in Contemporary 
 ■jReview, June, 18S5 [on " Canon Liddon's Theory of the Episcopate"]: 
 "We believe that if organisation had had the importance -which many 
 attach to it, that importance would have been marked in the Sacred 
 Record. Tlie main facts of tliat Record are clear enough for those who 
 in any sense accept it." 
 
The Secret of the Church. 57 
 
 that we allow people still to assert and believe that our 
 Lord cast His word loose among mankind — that His 
 message was independent of all embodiment, of all 
 organisation? Yet the exact contrary holds. His 
 message, His secret of Eedemption, is never given 
 except in an organised form. He occupies Himself 
 with little else but the framing and perfecting of its 
 Tabernacle. This Sower is very far from being care- 
 less where His seed falls. There is a seed He keeps 
 in hand until He is quite sure of the ground ; only to 
 a certain plot will He commit it — a plot deliberately 
 selected, painfully prepared, by shrewd and wise 
 husbandry, dug, weeded, harrowed, watered. His 
 spiritual force has to be held back, until it can effect 
 a lodgment, until it can secure for itself an organised 
 home, until it can house itself within a body. And 
 that body, that home, can only be built of living 
 men, who can apprehend His true Name. To discover 
 such men, to choose, call, stablish them, this is the 
 life-task of Jesus Christ, as recorded in the Gospels. 
 Give Him but twelve men, so found, chosen, and 
 secured, and He is ready to go up to Jerusalem, and 
 die, and be seen no more. N"ay, though even of those 
 twelve there be but three who can be shown the 
 vision of the King, — though there be one, the son of 
 perdition, who is hopelessly lost, — yet eleven have 
 been won — eleven men who have received the deposit. 
 This is what has been given Him of His Father, and 
 this is enough. Give Him but these, who are to Him 
 not as servants, but as friends, who can understand 
 Him, feel with Him, live and die in Him, and His 
 
58 The CImrch in the Gospels. 
 
 Church is based on a rock. He can leave the world, 
 and go unto the Father. He can lift up His eyes, 
 and say, " Now, 0 Father, glorify Thy Son. I have 
 manifested Thy Name unto the men whom Thou 
 gavest Me out of the world: Thine they were, and 
 Thou gavest them Me ; and I have given unto them 
 the words which Thou gavest Me; and they have 
 received them, and have known that I came out from 
 Thee. I pray for them ; I pray not for the world, but for 
 them whom Thou hast given Me. 0 righteous Father, 
 the world hath not known Thee ; I have known Thee, 
 and these have known that Thou hast sent Me." 
 
 There it is ! there is the rock on M'hich all is built 
 — these two strong facts, " I have known Thee," and 
 " These have known that Thou hast sent Me." 
 
 A knot of men, selected, set apart, elect, precious, 
 on whom alone the final attention of the Lord is con- 
 centrated, to whom alone His inner heart commits its 
 secret, — here is the seed-plot of the living Word. 
 Here is the issue of the Gospel story, the fruit of the 
 Lord's earthly mission. This is what He left behind 
 Him on earth when He died. 
 
 But, then, the objection starts at once. Is not this to 
 curtail God's mercy ? Is not this to circumscribe His 
 love ? Will He but save and bless the few — the 
 elect? Does He spend Himself only for those who 
 can be found within the formal limits of a narrow 
 body ? Are they to be the sole recipients of grace ? 
 Are they to look out from the peace of privilege upon 
 a perishing world ? 
 
 What a strange and unhappy blunder does such 
 
The Secret of the Church. 59 
 
 an objection embody ! Yet it is a blunder into which, 
 the Church itself has been terribly prone to fall. 
 Let us recall ourselves. First, how did we arrive 
 at our present position? Was it by curtailing or 
 confining Christ's pity and compassion — His work 
 of love? Did we say that these only were to be 
 found at work within the limits of the Church fold ? 
 Far, far from it! His mercy, His pity, were poured 
 out freely upon all who could be persuaded to call 
 for them. Everywhere they flowed out. He could 
 not refuse the call of faith, even though it broke 
 through the limitations under which He was at work. 
 Even though He was, during His days on earth, " not 
 sent but unto the lost sheep of Israel," yet tlie Syro- 
 phcenician woman cried and was heard. Far and wide, 
 open and free, His love pours out its abundance. Only 
 let men believe, and all things are possible. His pity 
 cannot but respond to their faith. And His love is 
 unstinted, because His commission from the Father is 
 absolutely unconfined; it is wide and broad as the human 
 race. Not one man can be left outside its range, or 
 untouched by its hope. He would, if He might, " draw 
 all men unto Him," This is the Will of Him that sent 
 Him — that " every one which seeth the Son, and be- 
 lieveth, may have everlasting life." God sent His Son 
 with one only purpose — to save the world the whole 
 world. God so loved the world, the fallen world, the 
 entire world, "that He gave His ouly begotten Son, 
 that whosoever would believe in Him should have 
 everlasting life." We are not limiting God's love to 
 His Church. No! Yet God's love in Christ found 
 
6o The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 itself limited, found itself cribliecl, and cabined, and 
 confined. How ? Not by the Cliurcb, but by the 
 crowd ; by the block of blind and heedless ignorance. 
 Here was the terrible barrier set to love. The com- 
 passion of God, so abundant, so mighty, cannot get 
 forward among those crowds. For God's love is limited 
 and measured out by man's desires. Human faith, 
 a human cry, — this is its only door, its one chance of 
 entry. But what then does this crowd desire ? What 
 is the measure of its faith? It only wants a relief 
 from some temporary burden, a burden of the flesh! 
 That is as far as it gets. That is as much as it under- 
 stands or craves. If only it could be healed of its 
 fever ! If only it might be given back its health ! If 
 only it might be spared the loss of some dying child ! 
 Give it that, and that is all it asks. And the mercy 
 of the Lord cannot go further than men ask it, invite 
 it. Yet that Mercy is come on earth to achieve so 
 much more than this momentary relief of a few sick, 
 this short lull in the wild storm of passion and pain. 
 This too, the love of God will give, if prayed for ; but 
 not only this. It is burning, there, with consuming 
 zeal, to do a work which the "Father worketh hitherto," 
 from the creation of the world, — a work of which these 
 kind healings are but the omens and symbols, — a work 
 far greater than these, at which they might indeed 
 marvel, — the work of a world-wide and age-long resur- 
 rection, by which the hosts of the dead, the very bodies 
 of those multitudes that lie in the graves shall all hear 
 the voice of the Sou of Man, and shall rise, and live ! 
 But all this is hidden from the heedless, hungry 
 
The Secret of the Church. 6 1 
 
 crowds. Feed them, and they are satisfied. They see 
 no sign. They are delighted just to eat of the loaves 
 and be filled. And His love is shut up therefore. 
 His compassion is restrained by this meagre belief. 
 His pity can find but scanty outlet. The barriers of 
 man's blindness hem it in. It is there within Him ; 
 but it can find no way out. Every door is closed. 
 What is asked for, it will always give ; but these 
 people ask for so little. Oh that they would but 
 open their mouths wide, that He might fill tliem ! 
 But their eyes are shut, their ears are closed, they will 
 not ask ; though He cries to them, " Ask — only ask — 
 and it shall be given. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock 
 and it shall be opened." No ; they can read the signs 
 of the weather, but not the signs of the Son of Man : 
 though He had done so many miracles before them, 
 yet they believed not. They could not see Who it 
 was stood among them, nor guess at the greatness of 
 the gift, and therefore " the men of Nineveh shall rise 
 in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn 
 it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonas ; 
 and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here. The Queen 
 of the South shall rise up in the judgment with this 
 generation, and shall condemn it ; for she came from 
 the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom 
 of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is 
 here." 
 
 Dear brethren, it is not the Church, but the crowd, 
 which restrains and narrows God's work of mercy. It 
 is the crowd which cannot admit God's mercy ; the 
 crowd which offers it no room, no free play, no home, no 
 
62 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 wide and magnificent range. Christ might have walked 
 up and down that crowd for ever, and still the blessed 
 secret of Redemption would have been held back and 
 forced into silence, unsuspected, unasked, imprisoned. 
 Ah, and worse than that ! not only might Christ have 
 stood in their midst unnamed and unconsidered, but 
 He might have died on their behalf and no one would 
 have known it. That love of Christ, which poured 
 out its blood for His sheep, that love unutterable, un- 
 measured, in height and depth and length and breadth, 
 ■ — that love which surpasseth all knowledge, into the 
 abyss of which Angels gaze and tremble — that love 
 might have displayed itself before the very eyes of 
 that loose multitude, and not one eye have seen any- 
 thing there but a malefactor, or a thief, hung between 
 two thieves, — blasted under the curse of him that 
 hangeth on a tree — that, and no more ! A few poor 
 women might, perhaps, have beaten their breasts ; one 
 soldier, in a spasm of pity, would possibly have put a 
 sponge and moistened His dying lips ; a centurion 
 might have suddenly cried, " Surely, this is a Son of 
 God ! " but the Crucified would have been to men but 
 as " a man of sorrows, rejected and despised ; a man 
 smitten of God, and afflicted; from whom they hid 
 their faces." The crowd would have seen and known 
 nothing, even " though it was for their transgressions 
 He was being wounded, for their peace that He was 
 being chastened." 
 
 How can this love of God get abroad ? How can it 
 fi^nd its opportunity ? How can it break througli its 
 restraints? Only, if it can deepen and enlarge the 
 
The Secret of the Chiwch. 63 
 
 desires of men ; only, if it can persuade them to call 
 upon its treasures; only, if it can endow them with, 
 an organ sensitive to God's offer — a channel through 
 which its pity may pass in. Those crowds, so dull 
 and unsteady, cannot admit, for they cannot recognise, 
 the light. They must be given an eye to see with. 
 
 The light of the body is the eye. If the eye is but 
 lightened, then the whole body becomes full of light." 
 Here is the law. If this dark body of mankind 
 could but be given an eye that could take in the 
 light, then the entire bulk, thick and gross as it is, 
 would become full of light. And therefore Christ 
 prepares His Church to become the eye of the body. 
 He raises into sensitive life an organ through which 
 He may act upon the whole. If but a knot of men 
 could be sifted out, disciplined, lifted, purged, they 
 might be the organ of distribution by which the gifts, 
 hidden from the mass, might yet reach and penetrate 
 the mass. This is the meaning — the purpose of the 
 Church. The loose thinking, the vague feeling of the 
 crowd, these bar and control the free action of love. 
 The clear and high creed of a compact and organised 
 discipleship, this is what permits the recognition and 
 admits the inflow of the finer and the richer grace. 
 The Church, with its distinct and definite confession, 
 "Thou art the Christ," — with its disciplined feeling, 
 "Now, we have learned and believed," — widens, deepens, 
 enlarges the possibilities open to God's love for the 
 entire race. Gifts, otherwise shut off from unregenerate 
 hearts ; gifts, waiting for us to take, yet unseen, un- 
 guessed, undesired, and, therefore, unused— these gifts 
 
64 The CImrch in the Gospels. 
 
 are laid open to man, by means of a Church that, 
 holding fast the Name of Christ, can put that Name to 
 its full use and exercise, can measure their human 
 needs by its measureless significance, can enlarge their 
 desires by its magnificent hope, can drink of its 
 spirit, and know its mind, and see with its eyes. So 
 seeing, so knowing, the Church is enabled through the 
 Spirit of disciplined advocacy to raise and expand 
 its intercessions to something nearer the level of God's 
 offers. And, as an organ of such intercessions, wielding 
 the Name of Christ, it can win, for all men, gifts 
 otherwise unattainable — can evoke blessings that, 
 without its availing cry, must remain unopened and 
 unexercised. 
 
 Christ's Church, dear brethren, exists in order to 
 make possible, to make known, to make active, the 
 work which Christ, by His Incarnation, Death, and 
 Kesurrection, achieved once for all. It was done, it 
 was finished, the task given Him to do. But only 
 through man could it be laid open to man. He needs 
 men to be His instruments. His organ, by which His 
 own activity, supreme and unique, may find channels 
 of entry— may be solicited, evoked, distributed. In 
 securing men who know His true Name, He is securing 
 a seat, a home, into which He can throw His own 
 spiritual forces. They become, through so believing, 
 the means by which His special and personal powers 
 can liberate and discharge themselves. As He is the 
 Light of the world, so they become, in Him, the eye 
 through which the light illuminates the body : " Ye 
 are the light of the world." As He is the sole purify- 
 
The Secret of the Church. 65 
 
 ing Sacrifice, so they become, organised into His Name, 
 the seed of all purification — the salt through which the 
 bulk of men are saved from corrupting : " Ye are the 
 salt of the world." In becoming cleaa in Him, they 
 become the instruments of furtlier cleansing: " If I have 
 washed your feet, ye ought also to wash the feet of 
 others." In confessing His Name, in becoming stones 
 built into His Temple, they become necessarily the 
 seat and sanctuary whence issue the motives, powers, 
 operations, activities of His authoritative Name. They 
 hold the mighty keys of the Kingdom of Heaven ; 
 through their hands the living forces of the Spirit leap 
 out, and find free way over the world. Whatsoever 
 they bind on earth, shall be bound in Heaven. What- 
 soever they loose on earth, shall be loosed in Heaven. 
 
 Eead, I pray you, the last prayer in St. John : and 
 see whether every word does not obtaiu its meaning, 
 in the light of this oflSce of the Church to the world. 
 What He Himself has been in the world, that is what 
 they will now become. They are His organ of com- 
 munication with the world, the material of His mani- 
 festation. 
 
 Dearly beloved, the study of the Church drives 
 questions home, indeed, upon our personal life. We 
 are of the Church, called, elect, precious, not that we 
 may receive more, but that we may give more. 
 Blessed, indeed, to receive ! but more blessed still to 
 give; and that is our blessing, the blessing of the 
 Church ; we are in it for this supreme purpose, that 
 we may be used by Christ ; to be vehicles of His 
 message ; to be instruments of His purification. We 
 
 F 
 
66 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 are there, in order that His energies may discharge 
 themselves through us ; and, to-day,^ His Spirit leaps 
 out, as of old, to lay hold of us for His service and 
 •work. That Spirit is essentially a quickening Spirit, 
 quickening the dead ; a purifying Spirit, purifying 
 the unclean ; and " so is every one who is born of the 
 Spirit;" to be born of the Spirit necessitates our being 
 what the Spirit is. We, too, if we are His begotten, 
 must quicken dead things, must purge corrupt things. 
 
 What is it you are doing, then ? Here is a practical 
 question for Whitsuntide. Being of His Church, " ye 
 are the light of the world." Wliat light is going out 
 from you, now and every day, to those who have not 
 the joy of your secret? What radiance can they see 
 about you ? What good cheer do you bring ? Is 
 there any one dark soul, that brightens at your 
 coming — and brightens, not with your own light, but 
 with that light wliich you hold in you from Him Who 
 alone is the Light of the world ? His light it must be. 
 Is there any one to whom that light passes, through 
 your ministry ? 
 
 " Ye are the salt of the world." You are the purify- 
 ing elements lodged in a world that without you would 
 fall away into corruption. That is your office, your 
 function, your purpose, as members of Christ's Church. 
 Can you recognise that purpose, that office, in your 
 daily life ? Can you see that that is why you are alive, 
 why you are baptised and redeemed ? that that is your 
 use, your justification ? Ask yourself — Is there any 
 society into which Christ's purity finds its way opened 
 
 » Whit-Sundaj. 
 
The Secret of the Church. 67 
 
 through you — a society, which, without your presence, 
 would begin to stink and putrefy ? Is there any corner 
 of the earth, however tiny and obscure, which you serve 
 to keep clean for Christ ? You cannot escape this 
 question, for you are salt : that, you were made by 
 Baptism ; that is your nature in Christ — to be the salt 
 by which mankind is kept sweet, and clean, and fresh. 
 You are this salt. Christ counts on you for this. 
 This is your high calling : very high it is ! Salt is 
 good ; but what if the salt be unserviceable — if it lose 
 its savour — if it cease to purify? What a desperate 
 case ! It is good, then, for nothing ; it has to be cast 
 out, and to be trodden under foot ! You are salt. Oh, 
 be very sure, that your savour is fulfilling its service ! 
 
 My brethren, the burden of this world's vast woes 
 is laid upon us. By being of the Church, we are the 
 materials tliroiigh which Christ has to act upon it. 
 On us He counts, to give Him His opportunities, to 
 carry His succours. No doubt His compassion will 
 struggle to make way without us. But, believe me, 
 there are treasures — and they are His richest — which 
 He cannot unseal but through the compact fabric of 
 an ordered Church. There are secrets — and they are 
 His deepest and His sweetest^ — which He can only 
 unveil through the channels of a disciplined and 
 organised Faith. 
 
 Every one of us, by being in Christ's Church, then, 
 is under strict obligations, undertakes responsibilities, 
 towards the ignorance, the suffering, and the sin of 
 a world that cannot see the Form of God, as we see 
 it, nor hear the Voice to which our ears have been 
 
68 The Clmrch in the Gospels. 
 
 opened. Each of us, lay and cleric alike, is constituted 
 by Baptism a light-bearer to those who sit in dark- 
 ness, a Christ-bearer to those who lie in the shadows of 
 death. We dare not delegate this, our true priesthood, 
 to the Clergy, nor leave it all to be done by our 
 sisters. If Christ has washed our feet, then we are 
 bound to be found washing the feet of our fellows. 
 Surely, those who need us are not diflScult to dis- 
 cover ; any one who wills can find them. Very near 
 to every one of us are so many who are plodding 
 so wearily along dry and forlorn paths, without a 
 hope and without a home ; and it is we who might 
 so easily lead them in, and make them sit down, while 
 we gird ourselves with the linen towel, and put water 
 in a basin, and lay cool kindly hands about their sore 
 and tired feet. Very near to every one of you they 
 can be found ; and you are charged with their succour. 
 For we have an unction from the Holy Ghost. We 
 are the hands and feet on earth of Christ in Heaven 
 As the Father sent Him, so He sends His Church 
 " into the world." And to each of us, the voice of 
 Pentecost is, to-day, uttering its eternal commission ; 
 the Spirit of the Lord is upon iliee; and thou art 
 anointed to preach the Gospel to the poor. Thou art 
 sent '"to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance 
 unto the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, 
 to set at liberty them that are bruised." 
 
SERMON F. 
 
 THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE CHUECH. 
 
 " J, tijcrcforc, tfjE prisoner of tfjc Eorli, brscfcij gou tijat gc Jualft 
 foottfjj) of tijc bocation toljrrrfoitJ) ge arc rallrti, tottJ) all lotoltnrss anU 
 ntEtfencss, fajitf) longsuffrring, forbearing one anotijer in lobe; enUeafaouring 
 to fJEcp t|)E unitg of tj)E Spirit in tijc boni) of peace." — Eph. iv. 1-3. 
 
 There is a ghost that haunts our economic and political 
 thinking, which has again and again to be laid ; and, 
 once more, in our day, men are engaged, both in thought 
 and action, in the task of shaking themselves free from 
 its unhappy influence. 
 
 We had slid into supposing, as many before us have 
 supposed, that each individual man is, in his inner life, 
 a solitary and separable being. The long story of 
 social growth may, indeed, have sown about him many 
 subtle intimacies with his fellows ; but at least (so we 
 thought), in the secret recesses of self, in his germinal 
 instincts, in his primary impulses, in his root desires, 
 it is himself that he must regard, and not another. 
 And this being so, each individual will be at his best, 
 it was argued, and at his strongest, when he is set free 
 to build his own life, to consider his own interests, to 
 shape his own career, to secure his own happiness. In 
 all this his course will be straightforward and vigorous, 
 
yo The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 his development will be sound and solid and healthy ; 
 for he will be obeying and freeing the promptings of 
 his truest nature, and, in following the line of his own 
 richest efficiency, he will be also making himself most 
 beneficial to the general good. 
 
 Consideration of his neighbours, of their works and 
 needs, this, it was allowed, there must, indeed, be; 
 otherwise, no combination would be possible, and he 
 and all gain by combination ; but still this considera- 
 tion of his neighbour, however expedient and necessary, 
 cannot but hamper, delay, disturb, traverse his own 
 power and energy of action. He would be going for- 
 ward with higher freedom, with less obstruction, if this 
 consideration had not to take place. 
 
 Yet neighbours are very numerous, and their con- 
 sideration grows ever more complicated a matter as 
 civilisation advances, and there is ever slowly rising a 
 huge and rigid system of law, which enforces and 
 determines this consideration of the neighbour. This 
 is the object of law — to compel the individual man, 
 driven forward by his inherent self-regard, to remem- 
 ber his fellows, to allow them their chance, to suffer 
 their intrusion in return for the room they leave to 
 him. Law, then, is expedient, is essential to general 
 well-being ; but, nevertheless, its office is to limit, 
 curtail, traverse, in the interests of others, the free 
 motions of individual activity. Law is a necessary 
 evil ; so far as the man by himself goes it obstructs, 
 forbids, confines him. It weakens his independence, it 
 fetters his natural bent and play. 
 
 But if this is so, in what a dilemma do we find 
 
The Fellowship of the Church, 71 
 
 ourselves! For law increases its range as civilisation 
 advances ; and must civilisation, then, be ever weaken- 
 ing, more and more, the natural man, ruining his 
 independence, imprisoning his best forces? 
 
 Yes ! the logical Frenchman said. Cities are but 
 hospitals. Civilisation is a sickness. It distorts and 
 hampers and clogs the free nature of the man. To 
 know him in his vigour, in his beauty, in his truth, 
 you must carry him far from the fettering crowds, and 
 plant him down in some wide homes where his noble 
 savagery will display itself unshackled. 
 
 No ! said the thoughtful, practical English. Each 
 of us gains more than he loses by submitting to the 
 limitation imposed on each by co-operation with his 
 fellows; nevertheless, the less there is of law the 
 better. Law is the necessary negative, forbidding a 
 man to disturb his neighbours ; but in so forbidding it 
 does hamper him, and the aim of the law must be to 
 hamper him as little as possible — to turn loose, where- 
 ever it is practicable, the real man, and leave his native 
 energies to work their way out unchecked. 
 
 So we learned to think ; and so thinking we naturally 
 looked askance at any attempt to push forward the 
 realm of law. Our political task, we said, is to dis- 
 courage and diminish the activity of law, — until we all 
 suddenly began to discover that our premisses were so 
 partial as to be false to facts. How have we discovered 
 this? Chiefly, I think, by the violent irruption of a 
 radical force, of which this system of thought liad made 
 no account — the force of nationality. It was as if his- 
 tory had made a plot to undermine our theories. For 
 
72 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 as fast as we forgot to consider the influence of nation- 
 alities in binding men together, the spirit of nationality- 
 began to stir itself with vigour, \\ith insistence, with 
 violence. We have been forced to see ancient and 
 orderly systems of society shattered into fragments 
 by this upspringing force. It has under our eyes re- 
 fashioned Europe and recreated history. And, in spite 
 of our philosophy, it has won, again and again, our 
 enthusiastic sympathy. Yet this spirit of nationality 
 — what is it? How can our theory account for it? 
 It is a sense of fellowship that lies deeper in a man 
 than all calculations of self-interest ; it runs in his 
 blood, it is bred into his bones ; it will carry him 
 whither he would not ; in its name, on its behalf, he 
 throws to the winds his own obvious gain, his own 
 private career, his own personal happiness. Down 
 within his individual self is a self, it appears, that is 
 not solitary, but social ; under the impulse of a com- 
 mon brotherhood, powers are evoked in him, energies 
 discharged, far, far beyond the narrow efforts which he 
 will set moving on his own behalf; he will do and 
 dare far more for his fellows than ever he did for him- 
 self. We did not know what was in him until this 
 breath of patriotism passed over him — this passion of 
 community awoke within him. A dull and vacant 
 slu2:sard in his own interest, he is set aflame with 
 heroic ardour, now that it is the interests of others that 
 he serves. Lo ! now he is alive ; the man in him is 
 freed, and set in motion. What can hold him down ? 
 He lifts the iron gates of selfishness on his shoulders, 
 and bears them away as a very little thing ; he snaps 
 
The Fellowship of the Church. 73 
 
 the strong cords of self-regard like withes. Here is a 
 passion that, indeed, moves mountains; and it is a social 
 passion, a passionate sense of fellowship, of blood, of 
 community, which, far from finding itself fettered by- 
 law, is only then made free when it has won its way 
 to legal and social recognition. We are driven out of 
 our old position. Law, a social fabric, a State system 
 — these cannot be treated as uncongenial and obstruc- 
 tive burdens. Nay; these are the natural outcome of 
 what is in a man ; for the desire for national existence 
 is certainly in a man, and it is this desire that builds 
 States and creates laws. 
 
 Here is a force, then, which has insisted on being 
 heard and considered. And we who are here gathered 
 to-day ^ know well its meaning and its power. I will 
 not speak of the bitter and baffling experience through 
 which we are learning the passion with which the 
 national sentiment of Ireland is set on building its own 
 house and its own habits. Eather I would appeal to 
 its victorious efficacy in ourselves. "We English know, 
 if any know, the tingle in the blood, the springing 
 tears, the light and the lift in the heart, which speak 
 from within our very souls of the bonds that bind us 
 to our own people and our father's house. We know, 
 if any know, what it is to "kindle as a fire new stirred" 
 at the sight of English eyes, at the grip of an English 
 hand, at the comfortable sound of English voices and an 
 English tongue. Even if we, of the old country, have 
 now and again lost sense or touch of that which was too 
 
 ' Preached on anniversary of Queen's Accession before members 
 oi Colonial and Indian Exhibition. 
 
74 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 familiar to us to make itself felt, you who have gone out 
 to build far homes under other skies, you have roused 
 us from our slumber ere the jewel that we held so 
 sleepily had slipped out of our idle and careless hands. 
 You knew better than we what it would be to lose 
 that, which was to us hidden only because it was so 
 very near and so common. You, standing outside our 
 dream, you knew, you retaught us the full honour of 
 the English name — the high passion that belongs to 
 the possession of national memories and a national 
 story — of a common blood and a common home. 
 Home ! Ah, it is far away over the sounding seas 
 that we first learn the music of that name! To be 
 home in England, amid the old folks at home ! Your 
 hearts know well what those simple words carry in 
 them. Home ! what is ever like home ? We cannot 
 say why ; no words will ever tell to others what we 
 mean by home. It is an air in which we breathe as 
 we never breathe elsewhere; it holds us as in a charm; 
 it lays kind hands about us ; it enfolds us ; and every- 
 thing within us wakes and springs and grows at this 
 sweet and tender touch. At home, we are our- 
 selves ; we move in freedom ; we are alive ; we open 
 upward as a flower. And then — an English home — 
 the very thought of it is a benediction. Nothing 
 else can ever win from us the look that comes up into 
 our eyes as we stand in strange lands and drink in 
 news from home — as we stand and think of quiet 
 farms that grow old amid the English uplands — of 
 new-mown hay that lies sweet in river-meadows — of 
 the piping of the blackbird and the thrush over dewy 
 
The Fellowship of the Church. 
 
 75 
 
 English lawns — of primroses and cowslips that are 
 growing as of old in the fields and lanes, where our 
 child-hands have plucked them in days that are long 
 gone : — 
 
 " Green fields of England I wheresoe'er 
 Across this watery waste we fare. 
 Your image in our hearts we bear. 
 Green fields of England, everywhere t 
 
 Fes, wherever we English scatter we carry the same 
 associations with us ; a life is in us, which is one and 
 the same in all. The same call stirs us all ; the same 
 past embraces us ; the same names are to us as house- 
 hold words ; the same heart beats in us. And whence 
 is it, I would ask, that our hereditary Throne wins the 
 secret of its strength, but out of its inherence within 
 the very core of our familiar traditions ? Its story is 
 inwoven into the very texture of our memories ; it 
 gives substance to our national imagination. This 
 Throne of ours is rooted in English soil ; it belongs to 
 England as naturally as her hazel hedgerows and her 
 willowed brooks ; and, by overshadowing Providence, 
 at the very moment at which we are learning to prize 
 its ancient interests, and its wide significance, it has 
 been dignified and endeared to the hearts of the people 
 by her whom we remember before God to-day, by her 
 who was already a Queen before many of your new 
 homes were even named ; and who, through all these 
 long years — years of shock and change, of tumult and 
 wreck — has lifted high a name unblemished by any 
 suspicion and untouched by any reproach. 
 
 Here, then, is a great tradition, embodied in the 
 name of England — a tradition which dividing seas 
 
yS The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 cannot quench, nor any floods drown. It endures as 
 a force at work within us, which no calculations of 
 self-interest can prohibit or deter. It forces its way 
 forward, in spite of all that can be done to frighten, 
 or chill, or numb, or paralyse it. And in so doing it 
 is the everlasting and invariable assertion, that the 
 passion for brotherhood lies deeper in us all than the 
 passion for self; that a man's individuality must have 
 its roots in some wide fellowship ; that he is never 
 fully free or alive unless he can feel himself embodied 
 in a corporate union with his brothers. For their civic 
 companionship is to him no obstruction, but the ex- 
 pansion of that old sense of home. Through their 
 presence there becomes possible that growth of custom 
 and habit, of law and of order, which is as essential to 
 him as the air he breathes. In company with them 
 he builds again, wherever he and they may find them- 
 selves, the old social system which is familiar as the 
 very tongue they use in common. His political fabric 
 is an English affair: it springs from him, it belongs to 
 him with perfect spontaneity ; for it is an expression 
 of his English heart, of his English temper, of his 
 English training: without it he would be but half an 
 Englisliman ; he would feel homeless and unhoused, 
 as an exile on an alien earth. 
 
 Here, then, in nationality we have the surest 
 evidence that the deepest, tlie most radical elements 
 in man are not individual, but corporate ; not solitary, 
 but social. And faith, dear brethren, man's faith in 
 God, is much deeper and more radical than all else. 
 Down in the innermost heart of hearts lies the source 
 
The Fellowship of the Church. 77 
 
 and root of faith ; we cannot be surprised, tberefore, 
 to find that faith, too, bears this social and corporate 
 character. This is true of all faith in God ; its earliest 
 and strongest forms are all of them national. And when 
 it attains the fulness of the Christian faith it retains 
 its inherent social character. Christian faith cannot 
 be a solitary affair of the isolated individual man ; 
 it cannot, by the necessary and essential law of its 
 being. 
 
 For, first, its object, God Himself, is no self-con- 
 tained Being, living to Himself alone. He, according 
 to the Creed which Trinity Sunday commemorates, finds 
 His life in an eternal intercourse. He is not a soli- 
 tary God, Who chooses to enter into relations with 
 other creatures created for that purpose. His Godhead 
 itself consists, from all eternity, in personal relations, 
 such as express themselves in the family and the 
 home — it consists in the communion of Person with 
 Person, in the interpretation of Person by Person, in 
 the identification, through the vital bond of love, 
 of Person with Person. 
 
 The God on Whom faith fixes itself, then, is social ; 
 the Absolute Life is in its very essence a life of com- 
 munity, of combination, of co-operation. And the 
 faith which is fed from such a source, which is 
 inbreathed by the Spirit of Divine union, that Spirit 
 of love Whose being is knit up into the Being of the 
 Father and the Son — that Spirit which proceedeth 
 out of that blessed home in heaven to build a new 
 home on earth for God the Father among His 
 children, for God the Brother in the midst of His 
 
78 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 brethren — such a faith cannot but be social and 
 corporate to its very core. It must hunger after 
 community; it must pine for brotherhood. And, 
 therefore, Christ our Master never imagined a faith 
 ■which should not include and involve a Church. 
 Therefore it was that in His eye the direct personal, 
 individual confession of one single man — the one and 
 only man who as yet had apprehended His full Name 
 — carried with it the principle of fraternity, the germ 
 of a community. Peter cried, " Thou art the Christ ; " 
 and our Lord saw in that confession the structure, 
 the foundation, of a whole society. " Thou art Peter : 
 on this Rock," of My Name so confessed, " I will build 
 a Church." 
 
 The objt^ct of faith is social — a Triune God ; and 
 the inward motives of faith are social also. Yet it has 
 been so easy to blunder here ! J ust as politically 
 we have so often slid into supposing that each indi- 
 vidual man is by nature alone, and has then, for 
 practical purposes, to unite himself to his neighbours 
 in a State, so we have again and again imagined that 
 each in iividual man in his faith, in his religious 
 character, stands and acts alone, and has afterwards, 
 for reasons of expediency, to unite himself with other 
 believers into a Church. 
 
 And just as, in tlie first case, we dreaded the State, 
 as hindering and obscuring the natural man, so, in the 
 second case, we fear the Chnrch, lest it should dim 
 or fetter the vital faith of the solitary spirit. 
 
 But if man himself is inherently social, then, we 
 found, his being frees itself, delights itself, enlarges 
 
The Fellowship of the Church. 79 
 
 itself, in a State. The problem of "Man versm the 
 State " has ceased if man is the State. 
 
 And if man's faith is inlierently social, then it must 
 need a Church in which to grow, expand, bloom, flower, 
 ripen. It is obstructed and cramped, not by being 
 incorporated in a Church, but by being left alone 
 without a Church. 
 
 My brethren, I am not discus'iing at all to-day what 
 particular form the Church ought to take. I am but 
 pleading that some form of Christian Church there 
 is boun(i to be. I am but pleading that our personal 
 faith in Chiist hungers for some brotherhood. How 
 can it do otherwise? Its roots are dug deep into the 
 soil of fraternity. It starts from the profound com- 
 munity of being, which knits the believing soul into 
 the race-sin, the one age-long sin, which is one and the 
 same in all, the sin of its brother Adam. And, again, 
 its hold on salvation stands in the same racial com- 
 munity, which knits its own tiny life up into the one 
 act, one and the same for all, of its Blessed Brother, 
 Christ Jesus, in Whose crucified Flesh the entire race 
 died, in Whose risen Body the entire body of mankind 
 is raised to justification. Through its complete identi- 
 fication of its own lot with that of its fellows each 
 individual soul is both lost and saved — lost in Adam, 
 saved in Christ. 
 
 Here are, indeed, the springs and seeds of an in- 
 eradicable brotherhood ; and it is this root-brotherliood 
 ■which ought to find its voice, its life, its freedom, its 
 joy in the Church of the faithful. The law of its 
 salvation necessitates its finding itself knit into a 
 
8o The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 fellowship — the fellowship of the new hum in society, 
 which is the Body of Christ. Its innermost instincts 
 make for corporate life. It is become a member of 
 Christ's Body. Where is this Body? It must find 
 it, feel it, or it will wither and spoil. 
 
 Listen to the great invitation : " Beloved, ye are 
 come by faith in Christ unto a city, the heavenly 
 Jerusalem, into an innumerable company of angels, 
 to the general assembly and Church of the First-born 
 — to the spirits of just men made perfect." 
 
 Ah! there is what our souls yearn to behold ! There 
 is the companionship for which they sicken! We 
 want, by the very fact of believing, to find ourselves 
 embraced in a great society, incorporated in a united 
 mass. 
 
 The Church of God may be shivered in fragments, 
 and we may find ourselves thrown by history into 
 some strong group of believers, cut off from the main 
 body ; and we must be true to our histori -al position, 
 and long history cannot be undone in a moment. 
 
 But, at least, we may be sure, and we may recall 
 with penitence and sorrow, what it was that Clir'st our 
 Master intended and founded. Faith was not to be 
 solitary and homeless. Nay ! it was just a country, a 
 home which Christ promised it ; a home on earth ; 
 a home for the redeemed spirit, with all the delightful 
 rest and security of an ordered household, where each 
 man had his post and office, and the porter watched at 
 the door, and the steward brought out meat in due 
 season. It was a home in which all was arranged, 
 allowed for, remembered ; and round about the soul 
 
The Fellowship of the Church. 
 
 8i 
 
 would be kiudliness and brotherliness and goodness 
 and peace — for in this sweet home all would conspire 
 to help all, and the foot would not complain of the 
 bead, nor the head despise the hand ; and the air 
 would be charged with tenderness and sympathy, and 
 any one who was in pain would know that all were 
 suffering with him, and any one who was made glad 
 by good would be sure of neighbours to whom he 
 could run ever and cry, " Rejoice with me, I have 
 found that which I had lost ; " and every prodigal, 
 creeping back in shame, would feel the whole house 
 ringing with music and cries about him, as they say 
 one to another, " Bring forth the robe and the ring ; 
 for lo ! this our brother was dead and is alive again ; 
 was lost and is found." 
 
 It was a home into which they were brought, those 
 Ephesians and Colossians — so the Apostles promised 
 their converts, — a home, wide, manifold, crowded. It 
 was a nation into which they were admitted — holy, 
 elect, precious ; a nation, one throughout, gathered out 
 of all nations and kindreds and peoples and tongues; 
 a nation in which all divisions had ceased, all separa- 
 tions, all solitariness. In it there was neither Jew nor 
 Greek, bond or free, male or female; for all, who 
 were made originally of one blood over all the face of 
 the earth, had now recovered their broken unity in the 
 one Blood of the one Man, Christ Jt sas. 
 
 How blessed, how untiring, the joy of this great 
 companionship! Those who once had known all the 
 loneliness of aliens, the misery of strangers and exiles, 
 without any holy commonwealth, without any hope, 
 
 G 
 
82 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 are now no more strangers and foreigners, but are 
 "fellow-citizens with the Saints and of the household of 
 God ; are built into a holy temple, fitly framed 
 together," laid upon the strong foundations of the 
 Apostles and the prophets. They have a city in 
 Heaven, which is their dear motherland ; " Jerusalem 
 on high, which is the mother of us all." There their 
 citizenship lies ; and on earth they walk ia all the 
 virtues of the holy citizenship, in the habits of de- 
 lightful intercourse, in the beauty of fellowship ; 
 " with all lowliness and meekness, forbearing one 
 another in love, endeavouring to keep the unity of 
 the Spirit in the bond of peace." 
 
 Ah ! why is it that this great Bible language sleeps 
 in our ears ? Why are we content to let it die down 
 into the mist of poetry — into the hollo wness of meta- 
 phor ? 
 
 It was no dead metaphor — no vague allegory — to 
 those who heard the Lord and the Apostles tell of 
 a family of God — of a household of Christ — of a 
 country, a kingdom, a holy nation — of a temple fitly 
 framed — of a body compacted and entire. Yet what 
 meaning, what reality can our broken Christianity give 
 to words like these ? 
 
 And are we content that they should have no mean- 
 ing? Are we content to shut ourselves up in the 
 narrow question, " Am I saved ? " Shall we fasten our 
 eyes on nothing but our own private interest in Christ 
 — our own personal receipt for getting to Heaven, as if 
 that were something that concerned no one but our- 
 selves ? 
 
The Fellowship of the Chtirch. 83 
 
 Surely, now that the great unities which underlie 
 human life are pressing forward so vigorously, we shall 
 discover again those yet stronger and wider unities 
 which underlie the Christian faith — unities wide and 
 full as humankind. We shall hunger again for the 
 joy of Christian fellowship — shall pine for the spaces 
 and the fulness, for the heights and the depths of the 
 Kingdom of Christ — shall send up to Christ His own 
 last prayer that we all may be one, even as He and 
 the Father are One ; that yet again the day may be 
 given when we shall all be one Body, as well as one 
 Spirit ; one baptism, as well as one Lord 1 
 
 And, until that blessed day be shown us — alas ! so 
 far off — what can we do but strain to exercise among 
 ourselves those virtues of the city and the home, which 
 should blossom out of the unity of faith, — the virtues 
 of those vv^ho walk as neighbours in a heavenly country, 
 as children in a holy home, — the virtues of love, peace, 
 goodness, loving-kindness, charity — " with all lowliness 
 and meekness, forbearing one another, honouring one 
 another, endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit 
 in the bond of peace " ? 
 
SERMON VI, 
 
 THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 " Fiji's Scsus f)aHj ffioJ raisrt up, inbemf iac all art faitncssES ; ti)Evc= 
 fott bring bg tijc vigljt fjairt of ffioli cialtclj, mts fjabing KccibclJ of tf)c 
 jFatfjrr tIjc promise of Hjc ?t?oIg ffiljost, Jtje Jjati) sjjcti forti; djis, totjtcfj 
 ge noto see anti ijrat." — Acts ii. 32, 33. 
 
 "Follow Me and I will make you fishers of men." 
 Christ, we have seen, Who so promised, was Himself the 
 ^reat Fisherman Who threw His net over the multi- 
 tude, and drew to Himself out of those crowded waters 
 those who had been given Him of the Father. They 
 were but eleven. This was all that was left Him in 
 His basket when He had sat down on the beach and 
 had sorted the good from the bad. Only eleven who 
 could be trusted to understand Him as friends, only 
 eleven to whom He could commit His secret and tell 
 His Name. Eleven, but they were enough. Now let 
 Him die. " Arise, let us go hence ; now is the Son of 
 Man glorified and God is glorified in Him." 
 
 So much we have seen, and yet is this all ? Has our 
 Lord, then, founded His Church? Has He set His 
 faith in motion ? Far from it. Nothing that our Lord 
 did during His life on earth was enough to establish 
 a faith in Himself which should survive His Death. 
 
The Witness of the Church. 
 
 85 
 
 People who have taken but slight measure of human 
 sin, talk as if His faultless Life and His heroic Martyr- 
 dom were sufficient to account for the existence of 
 Christianity ; but the answer to this is final. Our 
 Lord's glorious Life, His heroic Death, did, as a fact, 
 fail to effect that belief in Him which starts a religion. 
 At the end of His career, not even the Twelve retained 
 their conviction ; they all forsook Him and fled, and 
 Peter, the chief confessor, is chief in denial. He who 
 had said, " Thou art Christ," now protests with oaths, 
 " I know not the Man." Here indeed was no rock on 
 which Christ could build His Church. The mere Life 
 on earth ended with nothing yet achieved, with no 
 body of believers established. The few to whom the 
 secret was intrusted were secure of nothing, they were 
 still loose and incoherent as the dust of the ground, 
 for the word of the Lord was not yet spoken which 
 should take of that loose dust and fashion it into 
 a living and consistent body. 
 
 And we know why this must have been so. Our 
 Lord lived His Life as a Jew born under the law, 
 within the limits of the old dispensation. He had 
 not yet done the deed which should end the ancient 
 story, and constitute Him the King and Priest of the 
 new Covenant for all mankind. Not yet is He lifted 
 up so that He could draw all men unto Him. Not till 
 the Jews had destroyed their own Temple can He be 
 set free to raise the temple again, the temple of His 
 body, to be a house of prayer and praise for all nations. 
 His secret is shut away within Him ; His spiritual 
 forces lie hidden, repressed; His Hands are bound, 
 
86 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 and He may not spread them wide until tliey have 
 been opened and freed by the extended Cross. 
 
 Now, this condition of our Lord's Life on earth lies 
 at the very root of that belief in the Church which we 
 have been considering in these sermons. Christ, we 
 see, cannot reveal Himself in His full significance, or 
 royalty, or power, until after He has been perfected 
 through suffering, until after He has carried the blood 
 as our Great High Priest in within the Holy of Holies, 
 and won our remission of sins. Of all this kingship, 
 this priesthood. His actual Life among us vi'as but 
 a prophecy and a symptom. Christianity lies hid 
 within the womb of Judaism. We can feel something 
 is near, we become conscious of a new presence, omi- 
 nous, awful, mysterious : there is more to come, we 
 can be sure ; yet we know not what ; for all still sleeps 
 in silence; only from the silence reaches us the promise 
 of strange things. The prohibition stands : " If I go 
 not away, the Comforter will not come unto you," and 
 until He comes, the Church is not endowed with her 
 power from on high. If the Lord had only left us the 
 Sermon on the Mount, and the memory of a martyrdom, 
 there would never have been a Church of Christ at all. 
 The risen and ascended Christ — here is the only in- 
 telligible account that can be given of the existence 
 of our faith. From beyond the grave the living 
 Master works ; from thence He discharges His office. 
 He liberates the Divine energies ; it is from thence He 
 issues to act, to comfort, to redeem, to hallow, to 
 perfect. 
 
 And how is it to be done ? By a Spirit ; and that 
 
The Witness of the Church. 87 
 
 Spirit will, indeed, in its work for Christ, "move whither- 
 soever it listeth,"so that we shall "hear the sound thereof 
 and yet not be able to tell whence it comes or whither it 
 goes." But does that mean that this free Spirit will fly 
 and flit hither and thither as an unembodied influence, 
 touching souls here and there among mankind in that 
 confused mass? Was that a method by which our 
 Lord could expect to reverse the current of human 
 history, to uproot ancient societies, to shatter vast 
 empires and immemorial religions ? Was that casual 
 and accidental process one by which the kingdoms of 
 the earth would ever become the kingdoms of Christ ? 
 Have we not seen how profoundly our Lord while on 
 earth distrusted such loose methods of action ? We 
 have watched what He did ; how it had been the work 
 of His Life, to prepare a nest for that Bird of God ; to 
 build a house in which the Spirit should abide. For 
 that Spirit, if it is ever to act firmly, steadily, con- 
 sistently, enduringly, must be given an instrument, an 
 organic body. So alone could its influence be effectual; 
 and effectual, you will observe, not in the secret re- 
 cesses only of the believing soul, but in the plain face 
 of the unbelieving world. For the Spirit when it 
 came was to convince the world that Christ, Who had 
 gone to the Father, was nevertheless alive ; He was to 
 convince the world through the Twelve that Christ 
 bad indeed been sent from the Father: "I in them 
 and thou in Me"— so He prays — "that they may be 
 perfect in one, and that the world may know that Thou 
 hast sent Me." " When He, the Spirit, is come, He 
 will convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of 
 
88 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 judgment." It is an organ by which to act upon the dark 
 and faithless world, a world which has no eye to see Him, 
 and can only see and know Him through those whom 
 He has glorified by His name, — it is such an organ 
 that Christ needs. And such action to be effectively 
 done through this organ, must of necessity, therefore, 
 be visible. It must push and press and force its way 
 in among the affairs of men; it must be vigorous 
 and obvious and undeniable ; for it has got to convict 
 the world of its sin in slaying Christ, of its true 
 righteousness now hid from it in the ascended Christ, 
 of its own inevitable jiidgment in warring against 
 Christ, in whose undoubted victories, worked through 
 the Church before its very eyes, the world itself cannot 
 help seeing the proof that its own master, the Prince 
 of this World, has been indeed judged and defeated. 
 Christ hid in Heaven needs a body as well as a spirit by 
 which to manifest His living rule. He needs a body 
 through which He may make Himself intelligible to 
 men, and even to unbelieving men ; make Himself 
 I'elt, certified, effective, enduring. This body He must 
 have, and that body He has with pain secured Him- 
 self. And now into that prepared body His Spirit 
 issues from Him, to gather it up into organised life, 
 to inhabit it, to unify its capacities, to regulate its 
 aims, to quicken its impulses, to fix its offices, to direct 
 its gifts, to correlate its functions, to shape and dis- 
 tribute its parts, to feed and govern its entire frame. 
 
 A Spirit-bearing body — that is the agency which the 
 ascended Lord has organised for His Spirit's service 
 on earth, and its office, therefore, is clearly determined 
 
The Witness of the Chitrch. 89 
 
 for it by the conditions of its existence, and that office 
 is summed up in the one word, " witness." " The 
 Spirit of truth proceeding from the Father shall bear 
 witness of Me, and ye also shall bear witness," — and 
 so the Apostles say, " we are witnesses of these things." 
 The Church is the witnessing body ; it proves Christ's 
 case, it testifies to His victory, and this it does, first, 
 before God the Father. It manifests His glory by 
 justifying His method of Eedemption ; it bears witness 
 before God that He has not sent His Son in vain. 
 And, secondly, it has to witness in the face of men, 
 to prove, to convict, to convince, so that even an 
 unbelieving world may believe that the Father did 
 send the Son, 
 
 And in accomplishing this conversion of the world, 
 the Church has two points to prove and testify, — first, 
 that Christ is alive and at work now to-day on earth, 
 and that He can be found of them that believe, 
 and manifest Himself to those that love Him ; and, 
 secondly, that He is so by virtue of the deed done 
 once for all at Calvary, — by which the Prince of this 
 World was judged, and the world was overcome, and 
 man given access to God. 
 
 What proofs can the Church offer for these two 
 points? It has three proofs to give. First, its own 
 actual life. This is its primary witness that Christ is 
 now alive at the right Hand of God the t'ather. Its 
 one prevailing and unanswerable proof is, " I live, yet 
 not I, but Christ liveth in me." " I know, and I can 
 testify, that the life I now live in the flesh is only 
 possible to me by the faith in the Son of God, Who 
 
90 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 loved me and gave Himself for me." This is the 
 cardinal testimony. " Christ is alive, otherwise I 
 should not be alive as yon see me this day." 
 
 And then this personal life of Christ in His Church 
 verifies and certifies to the world the reality of that 
 old life on earth, of that Death on Calvary, of that 
 Resurrection on Olivet. The fact that the man at the 
 Beautiful Gate has this perfect soundness in the pre- 
 sence of all, the very man whom they knew and saw 
 so lame, — this makes it certain that God did send His 
 Son Christ Jesus to be a Prince of life. And, there- 
 fore, the living Church bears a book about with it, 
 the Gospel book, the Apostolic witness, the witness of 
 those who so beheld, tasted, handled, the Word of Life, 
 of those who were actually there all the time in which 
 "the Lord Jesus went in and out amongst us, from the 
 Baptism of John to the day on which He was taken up." 
 This book the body of Christ carries ever before it, 
 declaring to all, " This record is true, and we know that 
 these Apostles spoke true ; we are here to prove it, in 
 that we have tasted and touched the present power of 
 that Word whose story they saw and recorded." 
 
 And again, the body carries with it a third witness ; 
 not only the Apostolic record, but the Apostolic Rite, 
 the act commanded by the dying Christ to be done for 
 ever as a memorial and a witness until His coming 
 again. Ever that society rehearses this deed of the 
 new covenant, that deed which is the seal and pledge 
 to men for all time, of the one covenant sealed with 
 Christ's Blood once for all, even on the night of His 
 Betrayal. Ever this rehearsal continues until Chi'ist 
 
The Witness of the Chtirch. 
 
 91 
 
 comes again, and every sucli rehearsal verifies, to all 
 who take and eat the bread, that great Sacrifice wliich 
 the Lord offered when in the upper chamber among 
 the Twelve, " He took bread, and lifted up His Eyes 
 to Heaven, and blessed and brake." 
 
 Here are the three prevailing witnesses by which 
 the body testifies to the Eesurrection of the Lord. The 
 present life — " I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in 
 me." The unshaken record — " This is the disciple 
 that testifieth of these things, and wrote these things, 
 and we know that his testimony is true." And the 
 memorial act — " As often as we break the bread we 
 show forth the Lord's Death," we witness to it, we 
 offer the one unfailing and unflagging proof of it 
 until His coming again. And this witness never 
 grows old ; it is renewed from generation to genera- 
 tion. We are witnesses of these things, you and I ; 
 every one of us discharges the offices of this Church ; 
 every one of us, who claims membership in that 
 Church, is required by that membership to become 
 a standing proof on earth of God's truth in Heaven, a 
 living and undeniable evidence of His love in Christ, 
 a sacrament, a visible sign and pledge of the present 
 energy of an unseen fact ; and this proof, this evidence, 
 this pledge, we are to give the world, so that the world 
 may be able to see and know that God certainly did 
 send His Son to be its Saviour. 
 
 My brethren, by believing in a body, in a Church, 
 we find, once again, that our faith lays upon us 
 responsibilities. It gives us a call, a vocation; it 
 sets us each a task. And is not this just what our 
 
92 
 
 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 religion most lacks ? There is so little sense of 
 purpose within us, no purpose in our religious life. 
 Religion comforts us in dark hours ; it is a pleasant 
 refuge from the cares and worries of life ; it is a 
 comfortable habit ; it is a refreshment in weariness ; 
 it is a solace and security in the face of death. Yes, 
 but is it the one thing that gives us a living reason 
 for being alive? Is it that which sets us on an aim 
 worthy and enkindling, for which it is well worth 
 while to live ? Does it come to us as something 
 which lays upon us a service — a service of delightful 
 freedom under the eye of a Master Who waits ever 
 to say, " Well done, well done, thou faithful servant? " 
 Is not this exactly what we lack ? Is it not the 
 absence of all sense of responsibility that keeps our 
 religion so low, so poor, so dreamy, and so unreal ? 
 A religion that is merely personal is bound to be 
 cloudy and dull and meagre. We never can fix our 
 attention or interest on ourselves for long without 
 finding it a strangely wearisome occupation. Nothing 
 comes of it ; nothing grows or springs or quickens. 
 Whether in religion or in other matters, we are never 
 alive or alert unless we serve another's purpose, 
 another whom we love and honour. We are never 
 happy or strong until we are given some task to 
 achieve, a task to which we can gladly devote every 
 power that is within us. And if Christ established 
 and built a Church, this means that He has a work 
 for it to do ; it means that every member of that 
 body has, by believing, a definite, an urgent, a glad 
 and proud task set before him. 
 
The Witness of the Chicrch. 
 
 93 
 
 Have you found this task, then ? Have you found 
 lhat your faith sets you to work ? Does it endow you 
 with a public responsibility ? and, if not, do you wonder 
 that believing seems to you a sleepy and a cloudy affair, 
 not very real, nor very important, nor very interesting? 
 And that task is to witness; and do you doubt whether 
 you have any call to witness for Christ? Can there 
 be any single believer in this church wlio is not 
 urgently called to give this witness of which we 
 speak ? For what is this witness ? It is the evidence 
 you can give by active personal union with your 
 Lord, now alive at God's right hand, of the authority 
 of the Gospel record and of the Gospel Eucharist. 
 You give your witness by your capacity to say, " I 
 know that that record is true ; Christ did rise from 
 the dead, for it is He Who lives in me to-day. I 
 know that the blood of the new covenant has been 
 taken within the holy place to work reconciliation, 
 for I have tasted and have drunk of it, and lo ! I am 
 reconciled to God." 
 
 And is there no one, then, who needs that evidence 
 from you ? Can you find no one near you who is 
 struggling with doubt and perplexity as he reads that 
 Gospel story, and cannot dismiss the memory of all the 
 sharp and searching criticisms that necessarily encircle 
 books that are now eighteen hundred years old ? How 
 can he be sure who wrote them, and when ? And then 
 the strange things they tell of — how can he take 
 so much on such slender authority, the authority of 
 those brief fragmentary pages, nameless, uncertified ? 
 How can a book ever convey certainty ? How can 
 
94 
 
 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 a dead writing speak ? How can he trust his soul 
 to it ? How can he answer and dismiss the hideous 
 crowd of perplexities that encumber these books and 
 their authorship and their authenticity ? So he 
 ponders, bewihlered and unsettled, and the story of 
 Jesus fades from him into an intangible and ghostly 
 vision ; and it is your witness and your evidence that 
 alone can recover him his footing. He might break 
 through his dream, he might grasp again the realities 
 of his faith, if you were but ready to speak up to him 
 and cry, " Christ did rise, believe it ; those trembling 
 women did find His grave empty, those eleven scared 
 disciples did behold Him among them breathing 
 peac e ; for not only is it written in the Book, but I, 
 too, have seen, and have felt, and have heard. I know 
 Christ dwelleth in me, and the life that I live is the 
 life of that risen Christ : I can testify that that 
 testimony is true." 
 
 Or is there no one who looks out upon the scenery 
 of this bewildered earth as upon a dark and melan- 
 choly plain where "ignorant armies clash by night;" one 
 who can see nothing there but confused suffering and 
 unjust penalties, and an immense and terrible woe; 
 and no light breaks through to him, and no voice 
 speaks, and he can but cry out his bitter protest : 
 " Is God indeed to be found there ? Is there a 
 Divine Judge of all the eartli ? Where are the signs 
 of His love ? There is no God ; or, if there be. He 
 is a God of cruelty and hate?" And what if your 
 witness were ready at hand ? — if you could but 
 whisper, "I know that God is love, I know that in 
 
The Witness of the Church. 95 
 
 Him is no darkness at all, for I have drunk of that 
 love, I have known and believed the love that God 
 hath for us, and amid all the darkness and the pain 
 I know for certain — as you, too, may know if you will 
 — that the love of God has been manifested to all who 
 believe that Christ Jesus is the Christ born of God ; 
 every one that so believeth hath the witness in him " ? 
 
 Or you may find yourself standing by one whom some 
 strong sin has fast bound in misery and iron. It is 
 a habit inevitable and masterful, and he loathes it ; 
 and yet he returns to it. He is caught in cruel bonds, 
 the soul is secured; and though he hate himself and 
 weep tears of shame, he cannot break loose; and he 
 can find no peace, and he gives himself over to the 
 horrid thing. Now is your time to speak, to cry to 
 him, to deliver your testimony — " My brother, you 
 may be free, for Christ is not dead — He is ri.-en ; He 
 holds the keys of death and of hell ; there is no prison 
 gate He cannot open; He is here in our midst; He, 
 the great breaker of bonds, He is strong as of old to 
 set free the captives; He can thrust in His hand amid 
 all that tangled net, and snatch the bird out of the 
 snare of the fowler." 
 
 My brethren, it is for us to be sure that we know, by 
 blessed experience, that Christ was manifested to take 
 away our sins ; to know that He hears us what- 
 soever we ask; to know that whatsoever is born of 
 God need never sin, for God keepeth him, and the 
 wicked man toucheth him not. " We know, we know," 
 — so St. John keeps declaring in his old age — "we 
 know," — and that is the message that you have to 
 
g6 The C/mrch in the Gospels, 
 
 carry on your lips ; tliat is your needed witness — " We 
 know that it is true." It would be a miserable thing 
 to find yourself standing over some brother, with your 
 human heart indeed yearning to help him, and yet 
 to find yourself speechless and impotent \\\>X because 
 you had never taken the trouble to learn, when you 
 had time, the happy lesson which would enable you 
 to say to him the one word that can now save him : 
 " I know it. I know that what I say is true. I have 
 never found it fail me." God grant us, brethren, grace 
 to learn how to give this evidence on His behalf: that 
 we may fulfil the purpose of our Regeneration by 
 offering proof to the world that " this Jesus hath God 
 raised up, Who now sheddeth forth this Holy Spirit, 
 as all can see and hear." 
 
SERMON VII. 
 
 THE EESOURCES OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 " rafjen 3fsus tfjen Hftcli l^ts fjrs, anlj sa&j a great tompanj conic 
 unto ?§im, |t?c snttij unto ^jJljilip, ffiSlfjcncc sljalt toe bun brcalJ, tijnt 
 tf)csc mag cat? Snl) tt)i3 |l?c saiti to probt f)im; for Jl^t ?£;imsclf kncto 
 tof)at |§e tooullj Jo."— St. John vi. 5, 6. 
 
 What is it to which we pledge ourselves by the Feast 
 of Whitsuntide ? To this at'ove all — that the Church, 
 in which we profess our belief, was brought into actual 
 existence, not by any one while living in our midst on 
 earth, but by some One already gone out of our sight 
 beyond the cloud of death. Whitsun Day reminds us 
 that the Church of Christ was not created until after 
 our Lord had been hidden in the glory at the right 
 hand of God. 
 
 Our Church first dates from Pentecost. 
 
 But what had our Lord done on behalf of His Church 
 before He died ? He had, as it were, cut or squared 
 the stones out of the quarry, and shaped them for the 
 building. They lay there, marked and numberei), 
 twelve, with Peter in the midst— ston- s, indeed, but 
 not yet living stones, fitly framed together by the 
 Spirit Builder; the stones were shaped, but not yet 
 made alive. The faith in the Name of Jesus, which 
 
 H 
 
98 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 should become as a rock against which the gates of 
 hell should never prevail, was as yet totally unfit to 
 bear the slightest storm, and was splintered into frag- 
 ments on the night of the threefold denial. Nothing 
 of our Lord's work upon the Twelve stood the 
 shock of Calvary. " They all forsook Him and fled." 
 Nothing had been achieved when our Lord died on the 
 Bitter Tree. If His mission had ended there, there 
 would have been no such thing as Christianity in the 
 world. 
 
 Yet, though nothing was achieved, all had been 
 prepared ; and as the Church of the Resurrection looked 
 back, out of the light and glory of the Spirit, upon 
 those old days in Galilee, the Will and the Intention 
 of their Hidden Master started out into intelligible 
 clearness, now that the clouds of their former ignorance 
 had been dispelled : and in His words now so tenderly 
 treasured, in His acts now so vividly recalled, they 
 caught sight of the Will with which He was even now 
 looking down from out of the heaven of heavens, and 
 directing and governing His Kingdom. With their 
 eyes on the Gospel story, they could read out the mind 
 and the heart of Him Who now moved, as a living 
 flame, amid the seven golden candlesticks. And so 
 St. John reads deepest into the secret of those early 
 sayings of the Master, as he sits, widowed and alone, 
 drawing near to his end, in solitary awe, far down the 
 years, amid a wondering Church, — St. John, now be- 
 come the fisher of men, as his Master had promised 
 him, a fisher in such strange seas, amid those Isles 
 of Greece, where every leaping wave spoke of Pagan 
 
The Resources of the Church. 99 
 
 stories and of Pagan dreams — St. John, now guiding, 
 chronicling, completing with a master hand, that secure 
 and marvellous organisation of the Episcopate, which 
 should become the one Net, which should never break, 
 whatever the multitude of fishes that should be drawn 
 into its meshes, so delicate, yet so strong, — St. John 
 himself, now shepherding, as his Master had bade 
 Peter tend and feed, these swarming thousands, 
 and thousands upon thousands, who had poured out of 
 those terrible Pagan cities to follow the wonderful teach- 
 ings of Christ, drawn after His feet, as the Galileans of- 
 old, bearing their wounds and their sores, that He might 
 still touch and heal, — drawn after Him, they know not 
 whither, to find themselves exiles or strangers, driven out 
 of the homes of men, hungry and astray and homeless 
 and forlorn on windy hills of fear, but forgetting all, 
 risking all, heedless of the morrow, if only they might 
 move on after Him, rapt and possessed, and might feel 
 His healing hands upon their heads, or might sit and 
 wait and hear and wonder; happy though they had 
 lost lands and wives and children and friends ; happy 
 though they had lost the whole world, yea, and their 
 own lives also, if only they might sit at their Master's 
 feet, and listen and listen ibr ever and for ever ! There 
 they sit, hearing from John all that he can tell of the 
 loving Lord in Heaven — and he, the Apostle, is re- 
 sponsible for them all. He must see that they are fed ; 
 he must make them sit down in the pastures, that the 
 food of the Lord may not pass over any, but reach to all, 
 men and women, young or old, rich or poor. And as 
 he sits there, old and venerable, uttering authoritative 
 
lOO The Church in the Gospels, 
 
 doctrine, or orjranising and ruling the beginnings of the 
 Church, he sends liis hearers back to the old days with 
 the Lord, the days when he was, iu his blindness, being 
 so sweetly disciplined for the latter times of vision and 
 judgment, rich with the manifold experience of fifty 
 miraculous years. 
 
 And, as He looks back to single out the emphatic 
 acts and words, one day there is, in the Galilean 
 ministry, and one day only, which he cannot bring 
 himself to omit. That Galilean time had been care- 
 fully recorded by the other Evangelists: as a whole, 
 he could safely leave it untold ; but this one day is too 
 prominent, too decisive, too vivid, to be passed over. 
 Though all have told it, he will tell it too. It was 
 that wonderful day, the day of the feeding of the 
 five thousands on the wild upland country beyond 
 the Lake. 
 
 And why must he repeat the familiar story ? 
 Because it was that day on which, for once, and 
 once only, the Lord let the secret of His Chiirch 
 disclose itself in public, and anticipated the happy 
 hours of Pentecost, and set in action His chosen 
 Twelve. The people were gathered and seated on the 
 grass, and the command had gone forth, " Give ye them 
 to eat." How could the disciples do so ? What had 
 they to give ? How could they buy bread there, in the 
 wilderness? They — poor, ignorant fishermen — who 
 were they to be charged with this tremendous task ? 
 Nay ! they had but one thought — how to get rid of 
 these hungry multitudes. Their advice was so plain, 
 and so prudent : " Send them away lest tliey starve 
 
The Resources of the Chitrch. loi 
 
 in this desert, send them to find food for themselves 
 in the villages." 
 
 " Send them away." That was their contribution to 
 the problem — a very rational and practical bit of 
 counsel. Yet the command stood, "'Give ye them 
 to eat ! ' You are My chosen ones. You share with 
 Me this burthen. You Twelve and I, we must see 
 to it together that these poor wanderers go not 
 away starving. It will be on your heads, as on Mine, 
 if they faint by the way ; you may not send them 
 away at your peril. Rather ' give ye them to eat ! ' " 
 So He spake, and lo ! it had to be done ; and, what 
 was more sur[.)ri.siiig, it was their own private stock 
 that was required for the task. It must be bread of 
 their finding, be it but five barley loaves. Yet, as 
 long as it is theirs, it will be sufficient. Our Lord 
 waits for this. He acts only through their own 
 meagre supply. And then, through them, the miracu- 
 lous food must travel, through their hands, borne by 
 their feet, under their twelvefold ministration. The 
 bread that was eaten passes down through this specified 
 channel to the expectant people; "He distributed to 
 the disciples, and the disciples to them who were 
 sat down : " and so to the last, even the cleaning 
 of the tables as it were, is all theirs. They must 
 see to it that all is fitly ended or thoughtfully stored. 
 " Gather ye up the fragments," and back each of 
 the Twelve returns, with his own basket, from the 
 division to which he had ministered. " They filled 
 twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley 
 loaves." 
 
I02 TJie Church in the Gospels, 
 
 No wonder that no one of our Evangelists could 
 forbear from telling of that first Eucharist of the 
 ministering Church. And to St. John above all, 
 looking back over the years, it must seem that every 
 gathering experience had but served to manifest what 
 was the Mind of Jesus under which he had unwittingly 
 moved on that memorable day. 
 
 I. That old perplexity of the Twelve as they faced 
 those hungry multitudes — had it not been, for many 
 a long day since then, their one doubting question ? 
 What swarms of unknown people had poured out 
 behind them as they told of Jesus! From place to 
 place, from tribe to tribe, they had travelled ; the 
 cities had emptied for them, and temples had grown 
 desolate. And what new and strange people they 
 were, of unknown tongue, of alien blood ! Wild heathen 
 from the Uplands of Derbe and Lystra, passionate 
 Gauls, dreaming Asiatics, hot Africans, quick Greeks, 
 and serious Romans, and rough runaway slaves, sober 
 philosophers and Syrian enthusiasts, and those of 
 Caesar's household, and rich ladies about the palace, 
 and all the poor and helpless out of a hundred different 
 towns — out they had come, leaving the customs of 
 their forefathers and the sanctities of their immemorial 
 faiths, out they had come, through strife and scorn, 
 through sword and flame, to follow the Lamb 
 whithersoever He goeth ! And amid them all stood 
 the Twelve ; and, at the heart of the Twelve, stood 
 Peter, and John, and James : and ever they watched 
 the swarms that gathered about them from the East 
 and from the West, from the North and from the 
 
The Resources of the Church. 103 
 
 South. And still the Master from the hidden home 
 within spake, with His old familiar tones, the un- 
 daunted command, " Give ye them to eat ! " And 
 their food — this Gospel message, their stock of the 
 Bread of Life, their little story of the old scene in 
 Jewry, their service of bread and wine which they 
 broke and poured and gave with the same simple 
 words as of old, " This is My Body, this is My 
 Blood" — would it then really suffice for all these 
 strange new-comers ? Would it never fail them ? 
 Would it feed all ? the cultured as well as the 
 ignorant? the slave as well as the philosopher? 
 Would it strengthen all who were timid ? Would it 
 lessen all the savagery of life? And again, this 
 Church of the Twelve — so small, so slender, and 
 gathered into one single upper room in Jerusalem — 
 would it widen to their immense opportunities? Would 
 their own might, their own wisdom, hold out always 
 under the pressure of their tremendous burdens ? 
 Would they find some whom they could not include or 
 satisfy ? So they must have wondered, and yet year 
 after year found them still advancing — and still that 
 wondrous food held out. They arrived at no heart to 
 whom it could not bring the same peace as to their 
 own. And it could never fail ; always it was there 
 still in the basket, enough and to spare ; always at 
 each hour of storm, when all seemed hopeless, and 
 resources had all vanished, they looked, and lo ! some 
 unexpected supply showed itself ; some little lad there 
 was, just at the right moment, found standing, no one 
 knew how, or whence, with his five barley loaves and 
 
I04 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 two small fishes. So it had been always; they had 
 liad to begin with whatever was at hand : always they 
 had, in the faith of their mission, acted as if all would 
 be well, and had " bade the men sit down " wherever 
 grass could be found ; always they had expected the 
 food to be found them to give : and never had they 
 been deceived. They looked into the basket, and 
 still there was bread ; nor did they ever come to 
 the end of the store. At the close of each evening, 
 they had something yet to spare ; they had frag- 
 ments to gather up into their baskets — enough for 
 the morrow over and above that which had been 
 eaten. " 0 that men would therefore praise the 
 Lord for His goodness, and declare the works that 
 He doeth for the children of men ! For He satis- 
 fieth the empty soul, and filleth the hungry soul with 
 goodness." 
 
 II. My brethren, the story of the Church as St. John 
 saw it at the close of the first century has been its 
 story always. It is its story at this day. Now, if 
 ever, surely, the old scene repeats itself. There lie the 
 multitudes, spread out before the eyes of the Church ; 
 there they lie, scattered and astray over windy hills, 
 homeless and hungry. And they have nowhere at all, 
 in this dreary desert, where they can buy bread. 
 Bread, for tlie body, first ; that is hard enough to win. 
 God knows how many will faint by the way ; many 
 who have come from far, and have had nothing. 
 Bread, literal bread for the body ; this is their first, 
 their vital need ! Wherever can we buy that bread 
 for them? Yet here, too, the message touches us 
 
The Resources of the Church. 1 05 
 
 sharply, " Give ye tliem to eat!" That miracle was 
 no allegory. It saved these worn bodies from starTing, 
 and it lays everlastingly the burden of its literal mes- 
 sage upon a Christiau Church : " Give ye tliem to eat." 
 You are the Church of the Fatlier, Who feedeth the 
 hungry. See to it that these little ones are not 
 starved. See to it that they " do not faint by the 
 way ; " that life is not made impossible or relentless to 
 them ; that at least they know among theiu the pre- 
 sence of a Cliurch that is pledged to discover a means 
 of allaying this their terrible hunger, in the Name of 
 Him who made it responsible for their needs by His 
 charge, " Give ye them to eat." 
 
 And hread for the soul — bread from Heaven, the 
 blessed Bread of God. Ah ! wlience can they buy that 
 here in the wilderness ? Whence can they ever win it 
 but from us ? Look ! how their spirits faint witliin 
 them by the way ! How they sicken, and fail, and die, 
 spiritually starved ! Such a miserable death ! so 
 sickly, so weak, so white, so nerveless do their poor 
 souls become ; their spii itual life sinks almost without 
 an effort, as they wander lunely, beggared, unhoused ; 
 and ever the long bleak path stretches on and on, 
 through the stony wilderness, through which their 
 worn spirits travel, and never once will it bring them 
 within sight of a spiritual homestead, where tiieir 
 weary souls will lie at rest, and be sweetly nourished 
 and refreshed ! Thei-e they are, round and round us, 
 on all sides, round us at home, in cities that terrify us 
 by their monstrous growtii — abroad in colonies, that 
 are filled before we have discovered the'i very names. 
 
io6 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 There they are, and they are starving. And still the 
 voice within the Church, the voice of the Unseen 
 Master, cries on and on, " Give ye them to eat ! Give 
 ye them to eat ! " 
 
 How can it be done? Dear people, we have this 
 comfort that we cannot feel more powerless or more 
 perplexed than the Apostles on the hills of Decapolis. 
 " Whence can we buy bread at all here in the wilder- 
 ness ? Why, two hundred pennyworth of bread would 
 not suffice, that every one should have a little." We 
 know that perplexity. We know the ring of that 
 excuse. And yet there is one solution absolutely 
 forbidden us — " Send them away into the villages to 
 buy bread for themselves." How obvious the advice 
 sounds ! It is so sensible, so rational. It commends 
 itself so easily to us. Are they not responsible, these 
 multitudes, for being found in their distress? Why 
 did they come without forethought, without pro- 
 vision, so foolish, so reckless? We never brought 
 them here. They must look to it for themselves. 
 We are very sorry. Why should they not have re- 
 membered that there would be no food for them 
 here ? Why is all this burden thrown upon us ? 
 Why do these crowds still swarm and swarm about us, 
 as if there was no limit to our charity and our powers ? 
 We cannot help them. We have not the means; it is 
 a human impossibility. Nay, we are ourselves in a bad 
 way ; we, too, are in the wilderness. We must do 
 what we can to feed ourselves. It will cost us all our 
 time to secure to ourselves our spiritual food, to pay 
 for our Church and clergymen. How can we manage 
 
The Resources of the Church. 107 
 
 the greater task, if we can hardly struggle along 
 with the small one ? 
 
 Yes, it is perfectly sensible and intelligent and 
 plain, and yet the Master brushes away every syllable 
 of it aside, as a man brushes a mote out of his 
 eye; His ears do not hear this apologetic pleading, 
 as unswervingly His Will bends itself to the other 
 task set before it. They must be fed. " How many 
 loaves have we ? Is there really nothing ? Cannot 
 some bread be found ? Is there no one with five 
 loaves and a fish or two ? That will do to begin with. 
 Make the men sit down." 
 
 Two points, two rules, are here given us ; two rules, 
 in which we catch sight of the means wherewith the 
 Lord governs His household : — First, He cannot begin 
 until we men bring Him something. His material 
 comes from us. The law of the Church is the law of 
 the Incarnation. As He saved us by stooping to use 
 human means, by confining Himself to our resources, 
 so it is still : something of ours He must have where- 
 on to work : He will use no more than we ourselves 
 possess. What can we bring Him ? What help is in 
 our hands ? It matters not how small ; it matters 
 not how casual or incidental. It may be a mere 
 chance that a lad is there who happens to have in 
 his basket five loaves and two fishes. But it must 
 be our bread. Give the Lord this, and He is ready ; 
 He is free to act : " Make the men sit down." 
 
 Our second rule is this : However little we can start 
 with, at any rate the Church accepts the entire task 
 set before her. All these people have got to be fed ; 
 
io8 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 and they were intended to be fed by her. Not one item 
 of the responsibility may be declined. Not one of 
 those hungry millions ought to be sent away to find 
 food for himself. Yet how impossible it all looks ! 
 How can we feed them all ? It is not only the poor 
 in their numbers that alarm us, but the few, the 
 learned, the cultured. How are we going, with our 
 simple Gospel story of sin and its cure, to satisfy 
 them all ? Whole worlds of new knowledge, new 
 interest, new skill are opening, yet even out of these 
 men come to our spiritual hills, drawn to the voice 
 of our Christ, hungry and faint for His living and 
 undying bread. How can we in our poverty, in our 
 inexperience, hope to embrace their aspirations, or 
 crown their discoveries, and find for tliem food more 
 spiritual, more enduring, more alive, than all the 
 delights of art, all the splendours of the service which 
 they have left behind in the pursuit of the better 
 thing which is theirs in Christ? 
 
 " Make the men sit down ! " That is the answer. 
 Believe that you have a message, an office, to them, as 
 to all. Decline nothing, offer to fulfil every human 
 hope. Pledge your own souls that though you know 
 not how, yet that He will prove Himself sufficient for 
 all. Give the Lord your loaves, and make the men sit 
 down. Give what you have, however tiny. Believe in 
 the power of the Gospel, however immense the task, 
 and then — oh ! we know what happens. The Spirit 
 that rushed down at Pentecost, as a wind, and as a 
 fire — He comes down as of old, to fill with motion, 
 to quicken with heat ; He fulfils ; He achieves ; He 
 
The Resources of the Church. 109 
 
 enlarges; He multiplies ; He spreads Himself abroad; 
 He rushes mightily ; He flashes as the lightuing from 
 one end of heaven unto the other. He takes of Christ ; 
 He discloses new wonders ; He opens out strange 
 secrets. He brings us the strength of God. What is 
 there He cannot perform ? He brings us the Wisdom 
 of God. What is there He cannot conquer ? 
 
 One word for members of the Church. Let them, 
 each one of them, do just one thing and that thing only. 
 What is that which is close at hand to you ? What 
 is that which you can begin doing to-day for Christ ? 
 Some one little thing, quite definite, near, practical, 
 direct, and immediate. Some help you now hold in 
 your hands. What is it ? Look now ! How many 
 loaves have you that you can give up at once before 
 you leave this church? Some home duty, already 
 yours, but never yet taken and offered; or some 
 chance help that opportunity throws in your way. 
 Is there not som<-thing ; some lad with his basket — 
 unexpected, suddenly disclosed? A very little thing, 
 after all, — five barley loaves and two fishes ! Yes, con- 
 temptible ! What are they for so high a task? Plain 
 common bread, just what everybody has ; and a tiny 
 fish or two, to season it. But that is enough for the 
 Lord? He will begin with that. Ofi'er him that. 
 He will take it, contemptible as it may look, and 
 in His hands it will miraculously increase ; and He 
 will give thanks ; and give it you ba'-k. Tlie change 
 will begin ; the spirit will be at work. The leaven 
 will stir within the lump. Out from this little spot in 
 your life, that you have given to Christ, for His sake 
 
no The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 only, out from it the leaven will spread. Dedicate it 
 to Him, and the entire self will become quickened, 
 revisited, illumined ; for the thanksgiving of Jesus will 
 work like light, like heat, from the sacred hearth in the 
 centre ; and the whole man will be subdued into the 
 mighty working. 
 
SERMON VIII. 
 
 THE MIND OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 " '3[nti Scsus took tfje babes ; an5 infjcn |l?e f)at gtfaen tf}anJts, f^e li:'s= 
 trtbutcO to tf)E Qisciples, anli tfje SisctplEs to tljcnt tfjat torre sft tiofen ; 
 anil lifeEioisE of tf}E fisfjrs as murij as tfjcg faoulU. SSSfjcn tf)fg Suere 
 fillclj, Sje saiS unto tfje iBiscipIcs, ©atijtr up tije fragmeiits tfjat remain, 
 tijat notfjing k lost."— St. John vi. ii, 12. 
 
 The mind with which our risen Master for ever 
 influences the living Church from His throne through 
 Heaven is to be detected in glimpses and flashes through 
 the records of His deeds while still living as a Jew 
 among Jews. And this because the acts and the 
 words which then He did, make known to us a single, 
 and definite Person, possessed of a certain final cha- 
 racter, type, mind, will, purpose. Just as a man is 
 always the same whatever he does and wherever he is, 
 changing his time without changing himself, so with 
 the Lord. His personality reveals in one set of cir- 
 cumstances what He for ever is ; and this is why we 
 are justified in considering actions done on earth as 
 typical of His eternal activity in the Church. What 
 He was then that He still is ; and we therefore read 
 the gospel story, not merely as a record of past facts, 
 but also, that so reading, we may look up to high 
 Heaven, like birds that sip at pools and lift their 
 
1 1 2 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 heads, — may look up and say, " Lord Jesus, I know 
 Thee now, as Thou art before God in glory." And 
 here, in the miracle of the loaves, He seems to have 
 let His secret, repivssed till then, break out for a 
 moment — the secret of His Church. He allows Him- 
 self to exhibit for one short hour the plan and purpose 
 wherewith He looked to use after Ri-surreetion those 
 Twelve whom He had chosen. Here, then, we can 
 look close into His mind ; here, then, we can see, 
 indeed, the mystery of that anticipated Kingdom. 
 We can watch the Master as He founds, and builds, 
 and orders. Let us look at Him closely. 
 
 First, what is the motive from out of which He sets 
 Himself to ordain a Church ? It is compassion for 
 crowds. It had been compassion for crowds that had 
 first bent Him to call and send out those Twelve. 
 " When He saw the multitudes, He was moved with 
 compassion, because they fainted, and were scattered 
 abroad as sheep having no shepherd," and He called 
 unto Him His Twelve, and gave the-m power to heal 
 and to preach. So it had been; and now it is the 
 starving of the crowds that impels Him to set those 
 shepherds in motion. Compassion for himgry crowds — 
 this, then, is the everlasting secret behind the Church 
 of Christ ; this is the motive which puts all in action ; 
 this is its primary spring and source ; this is the form 
 and fashion in which God makes Himself known 
 through the Church. The Church is the steady 
 witness and abiding proof of the compus-sion of God 
 — of God, the great God and Father of all. Whose 
 eternal character displays itself in helping them to 
 
The Mind of the Church. 113 
 
 rifjht who suffer wrong, and in feeding the hungry ; 
 Who never, at any time, left His compassion without 
 witness, in that He always sent upon all rain from 
 Heaven ; and now that same Go l sends from Heaven 
 His Son that He may build for the poor and needy 
 a city in the wilderness and gather Hims(df houses 
 like a floi-k of sheep. So wide, so universal, is the 
 compassion of that One Father, Who made all to be of 
 one blood, sending His rain upon the just and upon 
 the unjust, and making His sun to shine on the 
 thankful and the evil. 
 
 Let us consider this in its depth,^ and width, and 
 height. It is the compassion of the entire Godhead 
 that builds the Church — the compassion of God, the 
 great Father, made known to us through the tender- 
 ness and tears of a human heart, iu flesh and blood, in 
 Jesus Clirist, His Son, our Brothei*. That compassion, 
 as it is iu Christ Jesus, offers itself in a shape that 
 enthrals and subdues with a touch of human kinship ; 
 but, nevertheless, it is, still, in Him but a revelation 
 of that supreme compassion wliich moves the Father 
 to send His Son into the world. The compassionate 
 mercy of the Father sends His Son ; and it is made 
 manifest and sealed to us in that hidden, yet felt 
 Spirit, whose very Name is given Him for His pity, 
 the Advocate, tlie Spirit of Con-solalion, the Comforter. 
 
 The Ministry of the Church, then, issues out of the 
 deep compassions of the Triune Godhead. And what 
 is the active force which animates, aud sustains, and 
 fills, and advances it? Thanksgiving. Jesus, taking 
 the bread, lifted up His eyes, and blessed and brake — 
 
 I 
 
114 
 
 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 all whicli St. John snms up in the words, "Jesus gave 
 thanks : " He made His Eucharist. The thanksgiving 
 of Jesus was the power that was infused into the 
 bread, by which it swelled and grew and multiplied 
 and sufficed. The thanksgiving of Jesus is the breath 
 of the Church. Just as His compassion is the form in 
 which His Godhead looks out upon us through the 
 Church ; so, in thanksgiving, Jesus makes known to 
 us the perfection of the Creature, the crown and glory 
 of His Manhood. As God He comes down in pity ; 
 in the name of mankind He looks up and gives thanks. 
 
 And consider how solemn is the act. For the entire 
 creation grew together to reflect and repeat the glory 
 of God; and yet the echo of God slumbered in the 
 hollow bowels of the dumb earth until there was one 
 who could wake up the shout by a living voice. Man 
 is the first among the creatures to deliver back from 
 the rolling world this conscious and delicious response, 
 the recognition of the Father Who begat him. He, 
 and he alone, is Nature's priest, her spokesman, her 
 mediator. It is his part, in the midst of her silence, 
 to lift up in her name the voice of thanksgiving. The 
 life that passes into him from its far home in God 
 is redelivered out from his lips back agam in the 
 sound of thanks. Through thanks it completes its 
 circle, moving from God to God. In that thanks- 
 giving man makes the discovery, the full disclosure 
 of his sacred origin. Always he is in God and exists 
 by God, but in thanksgiving he sets his own seal to 
 the work of God within him ; he gives back love for 
 love ; and there is no other end to which man ever 
 
The Mind of the Church. 1 1 5 
 
 ultimately sets himself but this of thanksgiving. It 
 embraces all his possibilities, and satisfies all his 
 aspirations. Man lives for this and this only — that 
 by word and by deed he may give thanks unto God. 
 
 And Jesus Christ is the Crown and Sum of humanity, 
 and this one thing, therefore, He does. He gives 
 thanks for ever and for ever ; He takes all our loaves, 
 takes all the poor, scant, pitiful offerings we can bring 
 out of our niggardly baskets, and over all He lifts 
 up His eyes to Heaven and blesses the Name of the 
 Lord. And the thanksgiving is mighty ; it works and 
 stirs in the heart of the Church ; it warms, quickens 
 expands, and lo ! the strange, unceasing change begins. 
 Under its working dead things live, and dumb things 
 speak, and blind things see, and dry things soften, and 
 every stone becomes bread, and frozen things yield, 
 and run, and sing, like rivers among the hills, and 
 all silent things shake themselves loose and break 
 into vigorous life. The breath of the Lord fills 
 His Church as He spreads His Hands abroad and 
 offers His great Eucharist. And we, too, stand with 
 Him. We are empowered by His intercession, we 
 are authorised by His brotherhood ; we, in Him, com- 
 plete the perfect office of a redeemed mankind, and 
 all our growth and all our force come to us out of the 
 heart of those hours, those blessed hours, when with 
 Angels and Archangels, and all the company of Heaven, 
 we, too, take our place and mingle our voices in 
 amongst the thousand times ten thousand who, as 
 the sound of many waters, sing the new and eternal 
 8ong of the Lamb, and cry to one another and say 
 
1 1 6 The CImrch in the Gospels. 
 
 "Holy, holy, holy! we praise Thee; we bless Thee; 
 we give thanks to Thee for Thy great glory ! " 
 
 Compassion is the motive with which the Church 
 is built, and thanksgiving is the force by which it is 
 made alive ; and what is the nature and character of 
 its activity ? Order, organised order, is the stamp of 
 Christ upon His Church. " Make the men sit down ; " 
 arrange them, distribute them ; they are very hungry, 
 and they are in crowds, there will be confusion if 
 care be not taken ; there will be a rush and scramble, 
 and some will get too much and the weaker will 
 get nothing ; see to it that every one — woman and 
 child — has a bit ; " make them sit down," — sit down in 
 squares like flower-beds (in twelve squares probably, 
 one for each of the Twelve), and keep the men apart 
 from the women and children ; and find them grass, 
 and set them in rows, like plants in their beds, so that 
 the ministers can pass in and out among them. And 
 when that is done, and all is ready, in quiet and 
 care He divides the bread to the disciples, and they 
 divide to the people ; and, at the end, He bids them 
 clear up everything, store it away for the morrow, 
 that nothing be lost. How seemly, and orderly, and 
 measured, and steady, and wise ! Do we sufficiently 
 remember how incessantly our Lord loved to talk to 
 those twelve whom He had so methodically sifted and 
 selected, of order, place, and regularity, of servants in 
 households, each in his separate lot, — one the porter, 
 and another the steward, so that in that regulated 
 life the food should all be brought out in due season ? 
 How He loved to tell them of the monotonous steady 
 
The Mind of the Chttrch. 
 
 117 
 
 forethought of the banks and warehouses ! " Yes, be 
 ye, too, good bankers," was the word He is reported 
 to have said to the Twelve. " Be as he who, for many 
 a long day, while his lord is far away, works out the 
 dull work of turning five talents into ten, and two into 
 five." How he loved the soldier-faith of the centurion 
 who saw that the spiritual kingdom was directed and 
 ordered by graduated authority from end to end, just 
 as he himself had learned under the formal discipline 
 of the army, where each stood above the other in 
 regular sequence, and all action was easy and thorough 
 so long as each in his place took the commands from 
 those that stood higher and passed them to those 
 beneath, who came and went at his bidding ! How 
 He loved to parallel His Kingdom to the laws of 
 natural growth of seeds, of corn, and leaven, — growth 
 which is the triumph of organic and compacted and 
 constructed life ! Our Lord loved order, loved method, 
 loved system. He loved to use harmonious means. 
 He loved the precision that is involved in all creative 
 artistic action. He loved the graduated scale of 
 ministers that constitute the perfection of a household, 
 of a city, of a kingdom. 
 
 And how, indeed, should we ever believe that He did 
 come from God, it He had left His spiritual work to the 
 confusion of chance, unformed, unformulated, and dis- 
 ordered, while every fragment of God's natural world 
 speaks in another language altogether, speaks of 
 methods and modes of arrangement, of forethought, 
 of combination, of organisation, precision, direction, 
 co-ordination? In nature everything is systematic, 
 
ii8 
 
 The Chitrch in the Gospels. 
 
 and everything is definite ; everything must be done 
 in one way, and in that way only, or it cannot be done 
 at all ; there are lines and channels, all laid down 
 and fixed. And as we pass up and out of the natural 
 world, we are bound to expect no breach between the 
 manifestation of God in nature and His revelation 
 in Christ, Here, too, in this new region, we shall in- 
 stinctively look for the same Mind to be at work, 
 with its peculiar joy in the beauty of order. And 
 so it certainly proves. The type, the ideal, that 
 we were familiar with in the lower level, prevails 
 also in the higher. As we pass out of the natural 
 kingdom we find ourselves moving through a spiritual 
 country which is governed and controlled, where words 
 have a fixed meaning and offices have fixed rules, 
 and there are roads and paths, and the broad highway, 
 and mutual services, and ordered ministries ; and, ever 
 as we walk, we see descending out of Heaven in all the 
 comeliness of bridal grace the Holy City, set four 
 square, with three gates on the east, three on the west, 
 three on the north, and three on the south, and the 
 length and the breadth and the height of it are equal, 
 and the walls are measured with a golden reed, according 
 to the measurement of an angel, one hundred and forty- 
 four cubits, and there are twelve foundations, and 
 twelve gates, and every foundation is a separate jewel, 
 and every gate a single pearl. That is our vision, 
 towards which our pilgrim steps are set ; a vision in 
 which law and rule are no temporary necessity, but 
 the eternal glory of God's holy Name. Yea, and even 
 to us, even in the earthly courts of that great Kingdom, 
 
The Mind of the Church. 1 1 9 
 
 the sweet strength of Divine order reaches, and we, 
 by faith in that vision, can joyfully recognise the 
 echoes of the Heavenly Kingdom in those distributed 
 ministries, and regulated offices, by which the Church 
 admits, and encompasses, and feeds us, allotting to 
 each member its separate part, under the sanction of 
 that law, " which has its seat in the bosom of the Lord, 
 Whose voice is the harmony of the world, to Whom 
 all things in Heaven and earth do homage, and all 
 with uniform consent admiring her as the mother of 
 their peace and joy." 
 
 That is the Church, and each soul within the Church 
 must reflect and embody the spirit of the Bride. Each 
 one of us is set to display these three graces of the 
 Church — compassion, tlianksgiving, and order. This 
 is our high calling, and no one may decline or fall 
 short of it wilfully. We are called to careful and 
 trained activity ; and we may not hang back at 
 the doorway through which we enter. We cannot 
 arrest our spiritual life at the forgiveness of sins. 
 Never, indeed, will the penitential under-current 
 cease to flow ; for ever we sin, though " we walk 
 in the light," and the sprinkling of the Blood of 
 Jesus must ever renew the blessing of our first 
 pardon. But, beyond our pardon, there is a new life 
 wherein we walk in the glory of the faith of Jesus 
 Christ. And this redeemed life must be the life of 
 citizens who can move with clear eyes and steady steps 
 through the measured streets and by the appointed 
 gates of this clean and comely City, the new Jerusalena. 
 Discipline, thanksgiving, compassion, — these are our 
 
I20 TJie Chirch in the Gospels. 
 
 three notes ; and we must reverse the order in which 
 they show themselves in our Lord and Master. For 
 we come fiom below upwards, while He descends down- 
 wards from above ; and, therefore, for us there must 
 be, first, the discipline of rule before our thanksgiving 
 can be possible. There must be rule, — rule in the 
 entire man : rule in the affections and appetites, that 
 they may yield themselves servants unto righteousness. 
 And together with rule in the affections, rule also in 
 the mind, that our faith may disentangle itself and 
 become articulate where before it dumbly felt, and see 
 where it blindly touched, — rule in tlie mind until 
 slowly the whole being is mastered, and the heart can 
 move freely in the novel terras, and glow in a rich and 
 outspoken creed. And, again, rule and discipline in 
 the will, that it may bring captive every thouglit into 
 the blessed bondage of Jesus. Eule in the affections, 
 mind, and will ; this there must be ; — and the rule will 
 seem long and the discipline strict, and it may all look 
 at first to us dry and severe. Then begins the wonder : 
 we thought it bondage, and, lo, it becomes freedom ; 
 we seemed to be crippled, and, lo, we expand and 
 grow. It is the new man iu us that strengthens and 
 makes increase, and moves and warms; and within us 
 at last there springs up, as the sound of living waters, 
 as the outburst of a bird's clear song, a strange and 
 transfiguring joy such as we knew not before ; and we 
 feel as if our spirits leapt, and danced, and sang ; and 
 we wake as a garden of spices wakes at the breath of 
 the wind from the south ; and tliere rises the rushing 
 sound of our new praise, and we find we can give 
 
The Mind of the Church. 121 
 
 thanks to God! We glorify God, we give thauks for 
 His great glory, and give Him worship, and lionour, 
 and dominion, and power. So begins our thanksgiving ; 
 and, then, out of thanksgiving, we win compassion. 
 As we turn our eyes, full of blessed tears, from the great 
 White Throne, upim brethren and sisters who starve, 
 how we love them, and yearn over them with a new 
 yearning, and our own happiness in God drives us out 
 of ourselves ! We cannot bear it alone ; why are they 
 not as we are? Oh, that we could tell them what we 
 know ! how shall we rest till they have tasted and 
 drunk ? And we begin to understand what St. Paul 
 was saying when he cried, "Oh, ye Corinthians, our 
 mouth is open unto you, our heart is enlarged. Ye are 
 not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own 
 bowels." So our thanksgiving beconaes compassion. 
 Out of our human devotion in giving ourselves to God, 
 we gain a touch of the Godhead to which we give our- 
 selves. We gain this Divine power of pi'y. We look 
 out upon our fellows with the yearning of the Father — 
 "Oh, that my people would hearken unto Me! " — and 
 our eyes begin to moisten with the tears of Him who 
 wept over the city, and said, " Oh ! Jerusalem, 
 Jerusalem." That, when it is gained, is Christian 
 charity,-^no light emotion of passing pity, no acci- 
 dent of temperament, but a habit, a nature, a cha- 
 racter of liie, settled, rigid, and eternal. '1 his is 
 charity as it is in Christ ; no fruit of earthly seed 
 which the light winds have sown, but the perfect fruit 
 of that trained and cultivated growth whose root is 
 faith, whose flower is hope, — a fruit which the effort 
 
122 
 
 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 of Divine husbandry has built up into Divine 
 growth. 
 
 "Ye are God's husbandry." He would spend His 
 skill upon you, for He desires your fruit. But there 
 is no skill without schooling. We omit and forget 
 the schooling, and because we forget it we see so little 
 necessity for careful scientific training, and our faith 
 remains vague and unstable, instead of a noble 
 spiritual building. The Church, on the Feast of Trinity, 
 asks of us the harder and rarer task, asks us to sur- 
 render our unsteady emotion to the rule of Christ's 
 creed, to the discipline of Christ's law, that at the end 
 of the long line of Trinity Sundays, Advent may find 
 us at least one or two steps further on the road that 
 leadeth to perfection. 
 
SERMON IX. 
 
 THE MINISTRY OF THE CHUECH.^ 
 
 "^3etEt sattfj unt0 Itjtm, Eorli, fof)g cannot K folloto Efjcc nofa? 
 E fajill lag lioiijn mg life for SEfjg sake. Sesus ansineTtli i}im, 21Elilt 
 tf)Ou lag ioton tijg life for Pg sake? Ftrilg, facrilg, fi sag unto tf)tt, 
 ^Cfje rock sljall not noto till tfjou ijast Ijcnieli iiile tijricc."— St. John 
 xiii. 37, 38. 
 
 The pathos of the last scenes in the Upper Chamber 
 gathers itself for us into a living picture, as we read 
 of that ardent offer, and of its serious, far-sighted 
 response. 
 
 All that is beautiful, all that is inspiring in human 
 loyalty, in human affection, in human hope, in human 
 courage, is working in the heart and in the eyes of 
 the eager Apostle, as he looks up into the Face that 
 he loves so dearly ; that Face which he would follow 
 though all fall away, because It had in It the look 
 of eternal life ; that Face which had drawn him under 
 Its searching gaze down there by Jordan, where first 
 he received his new name, when Jesus turned and 
 
 1 This Sermon needs some apology. Preached at the Annual 
 Festival of Cuddesdon College, it may well be thought too private 
 and personal in character to appear formally in a book. Yet I have 
 ventured to insert it, because it attempts to exhibit, in the region 
 of the ministry, the working of that very same principle which has 
 been shown to lie at the root of the Church. 
 
124 T^^^ Church in the Gospels. 
 
 looked upon him, and sealed him His for ever ; that 
 Face which had sought him out to call him from the 
 nets and the boats, so that he rose and followed ; that 
 Face which had bent over him in full blessing as he 
 made his great confession, and for which he had left 
 all — father, and mother, and wife, and home ; that 
 Face which is now clouded over with some dark 
 boding, foreshadowing awful doom, a doom of which 
 He, the Lord, speaks in tones that dishearten, in 
 words that bewilder — speaks of loneliness, of deser- 
 tion, of failure, of unresisted death, of sad departure, 
 of mysterious end. What is it all ? What does it 
 mean ? Why should He Who, full surely, has the 
 secret of eternal life, Who has such strange power 
 over winds and sea, over sickness and sorrow, why 
 should He despair of help, despair of deliverance ? 
 Whither can it be that He will withdraw ? What 
 road is it that He will take alone and undefended? 
 Why should they, the followers, fail to follow ? What 
 can ever separate them. Master and disciple — Lord 
 and slave ? " Lord, whither goest Thou ? and why 
 cannot I follow Thee now ? " He has love and he has 
 courage ; and he has ccmfidence, and he has faithful- 
 ness. Why cannot he follow wherever it be that He 
 goes ? " Yea, I will lay down my life for Thy pake." 
 So he looks, so he offers, so he b'-lieves, the loyal, 
 eatrer-hearted man! Who could offer with more con- 
 fidence than he? He had given himself with a whole 
 heart to the service of a Master loved as no other 
 was ever loved. He had held fast at that critical hour 
 when all seemed forsaking; he had followed Him to 
 
The Ministry of the Church. 
 
 125 
 
 Jerusa^m, into the very centre of peril, whither they 
 went that they might die with Him ; even now he 
 clutched one of those two swords wherewith he would 
 be ready to strike one blow for Jesus, even amid the 
 hopeless terror of a midniglit surprise : surely he, if 
 any, might trust his own faithfulness, might dare to 
 gallantly offer his very life for his Master's honour. 
 What is there that he would not and could not do 
 for Him? Why cannot he follow Him now? He 
 would lay down his life for Jesus' sake. 
 
 Ah yes, it is a brave and beautiful offer — the 
 Master does not deny that. He does not refuse or 
 despise it. He cannot but look tenderly down upon 
 the brimming affei'tion, the ardent gaze of him who 
 lays at His feet all that he has to give. And yet His 
 wonderful insight is seeing out and away beyond the 
 impulse that for the moment is so deeply stirred, 
 beyond all that the Apostle himself knew of his own 
 warm feelings and fervent will. He does not despise ; 
 no, — but neither does He at all mistake the value of 
 the gift that has been brought Him. He has strange 
 measures by which He gauges it, strange balances in 
 which He puts it to proof. Without any touch of 
 remote anger, without a note of disappointment, in 
 pity rather tlian in reproof, He is looking away from 
 the warmth of that upper chamber, still haunted and 
 possessed by the wonder of the first Eucharist ; He 
 sees another scene, the tumult and disorder of a bois- 
 terous coui't-yard, the sickness of a sudden despair, the 
 chill of the sleepless night, the rough insolence of the 
 guard-room, the loud laugh of the servants, the light 
 
126 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 sneer of a maid. What would survive ilien of that 
 ardour which was now so resolute and so daring? 
 That impressionable heart, would it not be as sensitive 
 to the chilling touch of scorn as it was to the glow 
 of hopeful love ? That power of affectionate response, 
 which was so precious to the Lord that He rated it 
 above all cool and deliberate resolution of a steadied 
 will, and named it blessed of Heaven, as the best 
 medium through which the revelations from the 
 Father could pass and work, — that very power had its 
 peculiar and perilous collapses ; it would be susceptible 
 to adverse influences with the same intensity as to 
 higher calls and finer inspirations. It would flutter 
 down when wounded and hurt, with the same rapid and 
 violent movement as that by which it had shot up, 
 like a lark's song into the height of a sunny sky. So 
 the Lord foresaw ; so He pityingly, unangrily pro- 
 nounced. Beautiful, most beautiful to Him the human 
 devotion, the proffered life, the passionate generosity, 
 the loyalty so ignorant of its own weakness, the con- 
 fidence so childlike in its simple self-belief. Tenderly 
 He watches it; tenderly He treats it and handles it. 
 " Wilt thou indeed lay down thy life for My sake ? " 
 Blessed for that, at least, art thou Simon Barjona ! It 
 is the same fervour now speaking that spoke then, by 
 the coasts of Ciesarea Philippi, the words which no 
 flesh and blood, no blind human impulse had made 
 known to him, but the Father Which is in Heaven. 
 
 Yes, blessed indeed. But yet there is an austerer 
 lesson to learn, the lesson that would curb and quell 
 that boyish self-confidence which had before now 
 
The Ministry of the Church. 127 
 
 allowed him to become the tool of Satan in the very 
 moment which followed that in which he had been the 
 instrument of the Father Which is in Heaven. He 
 must yet learn why Jesus had taken him aside to 
 speak of going up to Jerusalem, and of suffering 
 many things, and of the shame, and the spitting, 
 and the Cross. He must yet be sifted by that Satan 
 of whom his confident loyalty still savoured. He must 
 learn to know himself, and his own pitiful, shallow 
 weakness ; learn for Christ's sake, not only to leave 
 father, and mother, and home, and land, but to hate 
 his own self also, if he is ever to sit chief among 
 Twelve, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. He 
 would learn it in the porch, weeping bitterly, as 
 the cock crew, and the Lord, denied and disowned, 
 turned and looked upon him, with the look that would 
 recall to him this rash vow which now was breaking 
 from his lips in the upper chamber. Yes ! though 
 now indeed he feels as if he could lay down his life 
 for Jesus' sake, yet "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, 
 the cock shall not crow until thou hast denied Me 
 thrice." 
 
 Why should I speak to-day of a theme so serious 
 and so saddening ? Because, on this day, when those 
 flock back to Cuddesdon ^ who here have made their 
 offering of themselves to the Ministry of Jesus, it 
 is good and reassuring to recall the laws that alone 
 can make that self-oblation effective for the Church, 
 and acceptable to God. We have here shown to us in 
 this pathetic scene the relation between the man's own 
 ^ Annual FestivaL 
 
128 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 olfer of himself to Christ, and his true call land 
 election by the Master. St. Peter's ardour, St. Pejter's 
 love, St. Peter's passionate professions, — these aro no 
 insignificant elements of his Apostleship, of his cliief- 
 taiucy. His quick, responsive sensitiveness, his gal lant 
 audacity, these bring him near to Christ ; these ^lay 
 their part; these draw, and stir, and impel him; these 
 answer to that attractive power put out by Christ ripon 
 him ; these break out in brave utterances that are 
 pronounced blessed by Jesus Himself ; these push him 
 forward; these work within: by them he becomes 
 adequate for fuller use, enabled to follow up into the 
 light of the Mount of Transfiguration — to follow in 
 under the black shadows of the Garden of the Igony ; 
 by these lie presses home his inquiries, his searctiings, 
 his appeals, "What shall we have ? " " How often shall 
 my brother offend and I forgive ? " " Why cannot I 
 follow Thee now ? " by these he is urged to this last 
 offer of his very life for his Master's sake. They have 
 done well, then; they have been no contemptible 
 matter at all ; and surely, it is they, too, that have 
 won for Peter the love of Christ. Without his rash 
 impulsiveness, without his forward affections, without 
 his boyish self-trust, he would not have been the man 
 beloved, who should be named by his Master, Cephas — 
 the man in whose sample of faith He found the first stone 
 for His Church. Nay ! all this is lovely to Him, and 
 dear, and acceptable. All this is the needful material 
 out of which the Apostles are made— out of wliich 
 Churches are built. But yet, for all that, it is not this 
 human response, this human desire, this human offer, 
 
The Ministry of the Church. 129 
 
 that admits to Apostleship or that can bear the strain 
 of the ministry. " Ye have not chosen Me, but I liave 
 chosen you." All that Christ could win of affection 
 and faith from the chosen Twelve during His Life on 
 earth, genuine and loyal as it was, was impotent to 
 form the stuff of a ministry, until it had been taken 
 under the Cross, and touched with the blood of sprink- 
 ling, and had died to itself, shattered by the first blow 
 that struck it, and had risen again, a new thing, of 
 a higher type, remade, transfigured, under the strong 
 Hand of Him Who, by His own deliberate act, chose, 
 and called, and established, and sanctified, and anointed, 
 and fashioned it, — by Him Who, in His Resurrection- 
 strength, breathed upon those dead bones that lay dry 
 and broken in the arid desert of despair — breathed 
 into them the Power of the Holy Ghost, and they were 
 lifted, as by a rushing mighty wind, and were lit with 
 tongues of fire, and went whither the Spirit carried 
 them, and spake as the Spirit that was in them moved. 
 Till then — roused, heightened, outpoured though this 
 affection might be — it was but a faithless and fallible 
 thing, with which nothing redemptive could be worked. 
 It might be loved, but it was not trusted by the Lord. 
 His very choice was not in full energy over the Twelve 
 until He had risen from the dead ; until the Spirit had 
 come upon them in the might of the Resurrection. 
 
 Here, therefore, on this sad evening in the upper 
 chamber. He is but waking a Faith which the very 
 night in which He speaks would shatter into frag- 
 ments. " Now we believe ; " so they all cry, moved by 
 His majestic love. " Now we believe ; " so they fancy, 
 
 e: 
 
130 The Chmxh in the Gospels. 
 
 caught up by the same brave assurance as St. Peter. 
 Yes, now, under the pressure of the moment ; under 
 the movement of roused emotion ; in the presence of 
 the Lord, in the hush of the still evening, in the peace 
 of the upper chamber, in the glow of the last farewell, 
 in the fervour of fellowship — now, as our hearts burn 
 within us ; now, as we forget the cold, hard, hostile 
 world outside — the taunts, the hatred, the indifference, 
 the jeers, the tumult, the rougliness, the violence, the 
 bitterness — " now, we believe." Yea, now ; but an hour 
 hence — when the torches flash in, and the swords and 
 the staves menace, and cruel eyes glint round, and 
 there is no time to think, and tiie darkness dismays, 
 and the Master is snared, betrayed, lost ; and the flood 
 of evil breaks over them, and the blast of the terrible 
 ones is as a storm against the wall, — how will it be 
 then? "Do ye now believe? Behold the hour 
 Cometh, yea, is now come, when ye shall be scattered 
 every one to his own, and shall leave Me alone." 
 Now, indeed, they believe, but then — before even one 
 cock shall crow, that very night — "they all forsook 
 Him, and fled." 
 
 There lies, in dreadful accuracy, the story of a 
 human offer — of a human ministry. The emotion, 
 that feels so strong at the good hour, needs but a bad 
 quarter of an hour to collapse and to vanish, to forsake 
 and to flee. No stuff here, on which to rely. No stuff 
 here, which will stand the strain of Christ's work. No, 
 not even if it be tender as St. John's, and brave as St. 
 Peter's. This is well worth our bearing in mind ; for 
 we come to the thought of the Priesthood often 
 
The Ministry of the Church. 131 
 
 through so much of our own — through our inclination, 
 our good desire, our high intention. We have been 
 turned to it, perhaps, not merely by blind habit or a 
 parent's wish, but by eager movements of our own 
 spirit, by the force of our compassion for the poor, of 
 our devotion to Jesus, of our proud will to do what we 
 can for the good of mankind, drawn to the Ministry as 
 to a noble and inspiring task, full of ardour, full of 
 zeal; and as we kneel in glad mornings before Christ's 
 Altar waiting for the Hallowed Food, or in solemn 
 eventides, in still rooms, by the bedside, alone, devout, 
 earnest, we are sure that Christ is with us, speaking to 
 us no longer in parable, no longer in dark hints hard 
 to seize, and in strange sayings half understood, but 
 speaking plainly, with clear, downright deci>ion, 
 making sure to us His meaning, making present to us 
 His love. Then we are all aflame, we could do any- 
 thing for Jesus, we pledge Him our souls, our lives. 
 " Yea ! Now I believe ! What is there that I may 
 not do for Thee, Lord ? Whither goest Thou ? Only 
 tell me and I will follow : why cannot I lollow Thee ? 
 I will lay down my life for Thy sake." 
 
 Ah ! how quickly such ardour passes ! Amid the 
 stress of toil, in disappointment, in the disfigurement 
 of fatigue, fretted by mistakes, jostled by hate, 
 baffled by stupidity, bruised with scoffs, cheerless, 
 lonely, amazed, confounded, our first love, in the heat 
 of which we had trusted, flickers miseraUy low, it 
 wavers, and shivers, and dwindles. Our own belief, 
 that seemed to us so confident, somehow fails to sweep 
 everything before it. It is staggered by finding itself 
 
132 
 
 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 so impotent to persuade. We thought that its very- 
 fervour would break through all obstacles, that no 
 hard heart would hold out against our eager pleading 
 for Christ, Yet we are thrown back, beaten, despised. 
 Sin holds its own against us, it hardly seems touched 
 at all, or its grip loosened on the world. We preach, 
 and preach, and no one seems one whit the better. 
 The heart of us sickens, the spirit in us is chilled. 
 
 Yes, and rightly ; for we are learning St. Peter's 
 lesson, learning the cold shudder that crept over 
 him in the loud hall of the High Priest. Well 
 for us, if by the mercy of God we do not learn the 
 bitterness of his tears in the desolate shame of the 
 porch. 
 
 Dear brothers, it is not we who choose the service of 
 Christ. " Ye have not chosen Me." This is no light 
 lesson to follow. Not in our own choice, not in our 
 own earnestness, not in our own resolution, not through 
 our own offer of ourselves, not through our own willing- 
 ness to die, not in this do we fight. Not through 
 this do we serve. Nay! This is the loyalty that 
 forsakes. This is the love that flees. This is the 
 courage that denies. This is the faith that is scattered. 
 This is the service that leaves Christ alone amid Hia 
 foes. When we are young, we may gird ourselves and 
 walk whither we will ; but this is the girding of youth, 
 not the girding of an Apostle. It is a far other gird- 
 ing that we must learn — the girding girt round us by 
 the strong Hand, by the imperial Will of Jesus our 
 Master, in whose hold we shall stand, patient and 
 unresisting as a blind tool, yet alive and quivering as 
 
The Ministry of the Chtirch. 133 
 
 a quickening flame. That Will, steady and invincible, 
 may lift us and bind us to a naked cross, may cany us 
 whither we would not, may bear us against the beating 
 hail of this world's scorn, may thrust us against its 
 merciless spears. Yet, so that we be in Him, we shall 
 not quail or shrink. For the old self-trust will be 
 wholly purged away, and our service will be not our 
 own but the Spirit's service, our courage will be not 
 our own but the Spirit's courage, our loyalty will be 
 the unshaken strength of Christ Himself alive in us. 
 As the moving wheels seen by Ezekiel by the waters 
 of Chebar, we shall turn neither to the right nor to the 
 left, but whithersoever the Sjurit moves, thither we 
 sliall go. So held, so possessed, we can afford to lie 
 still in God's Hand, to wait, to fail ; can bear to learn 
 that our bravest service for Christ may lie, not in busy 
 activity, but in being snatched away from all our 
 works and all our hopes, and lashed to some life-long 
 cross, powerless and dumb. We can endure to learn, 
 it may be, that it will be better than when we were 
 young and walked whithersoever we desired, that when 
 we are old another should gird us and carry us whither 
 we would not ! 
 
 And yet, though indeed it be not we that have 
 chosen Clirist, but Christ that liath chosen us, yet that 
 first human offer, that first pledge of service, is not an 
 idle or ineffectual thing. Nay ! it i& the very material 
 out of which Jesus fashions that true Faith which is 
 His own creation. God took of the dust of the ground : 
 and out of that dust He moulded the body of man, 
 into which He breathed a living soul. And Jesus 
 
134 T^i-^ Church in the Gospels. 
 
 takes of this, that is ours, this matter that we bring 
 Him, this earthly material, this human love, this eager- 
 ness, this impulse, this affection, this bravery, this 
 emotion — He takes of this, dust that it is, dust without 
 coherence, without solidity, blown hither and thither 
 by every changing gust, whirled on high for one 
 moment, in a pillar, on the wings of some strong 
 storm, and then scattered, loose and ruinous, into a 
 thousand flying fragments, vanishing as a clond at 
 morn, — this shifting dust, so restless, so impotent, this 
 it is that He takes into His Hands, and uses and 
 shapes, until it grows into a steady and enduring sub- 
 stance, until it coheres, bound and knit into a solid, 
 massive body, which the Spirit of God holds fast 
 together, and possesses, and carries along, and keeps 
 whole and entire. That belief of the Eleven, which 
 the night of the Betrayal so terribly shattered, was 
 itself the condition of that firm belief which would 
 spring up, a new creation, under the breath of Him 
 Who should stand in the U[)per Chamber, saying, 
 " Peace be unto you." " Receive ye the Holy 
 Ghost." 
 
 As the dust of the earth is drawn upward into the 
 man, so from out of the man's heart is drawn upward 
 that which becomes superhuman. The gallant pledge 
 of the night, the brave promises, all went to naught, 
 lay shivered and broken upon the ground that niglit. 
 But not in vain; not without fruitful purpose. Un- 
 less they had been given, there would have been no 
 stuff upon which the Spirit of the Eesurrection could 
 do its work or set its hand. The human passion could 
 
The Ministry of the Church. 135 
 
 not endure the strain of the Apostolate ; but it did 
 make it possible tliat Apostles should be, that the new 
 man should be created. It did open the door to the 
 Spirit's entry. It was because St. Peter offered his 
 life with such impetuous rashness, that he could be 
 raised again out of the misery of the denial into the 
 Apostle that we know in the Acts. He, St. Peter, could 
 not follow Christ now, no! not now; but that very 
 eagerness of his impossible offer made it possible that 
 he, in the power of the Spirit, should follow Him here- 
 after. Yes ! it was the old human love, once so 
 impetuous and now chastened and changed, that our 
 Lord raised, transfigured unto a new thing, as, by the 
 waters of Gennesaret, He called the man once more by 
 the familiar name, and appealed to him by the tender 
 appeal, " Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me ?" 
 
 " Ye have not chosen Me ! " No, not at our desire, 
 not in the insecurity of our intention, are we Priests. 
 This first; but then the yet deeper truth — He does 
 choose us, — chooses us, one by one, name by name, 
 Peter, John, Matthew, Thomas, — chooses us each for 
 what he is, each with his own peculiar gift, each for 
 his own separate usefulness. So tender He is with us 
 in our boyish forwardness ! We hurry with our prof- 
 fered aid. We press upon Him our service, and how 
 graciously, how pityingly, how lovingly, how sweetly 
 He checks, and trains, and warns, and chastens us ! 
 " Wilt thou lay down thy life, My son ? Dost thou 
 indeed now believe and know, My child, that I am 
 come forth from God ? Alas, the cock shall crow for 
 thee too, as for Peter ! Alas, the night will find Me 
 
136 The Chtirch in the Gospels, 
 
 forsaken by tbee, as by them of old ! " So He knows 
 us only too well ! Yet, on the morrow, when we have 
 been broken, when we have smarted, when we have 
 tasted the bitterness of our failures, and have sadly 
 learned the sharp lesson of self-mistrust, of self-despair, 
 after we have known the shame and tears of Peter's 
 porch, have known that in us dwelleth no good 
 thing — ah! then it is by name that He greets us, 
 "Simon, son of Jonas." It is the man that He 
 needs — the man, warm and living, the man, with his 
 separate, individual stamp : a Peter, with his hot im- 
 pulses ; a John, with his strong, patient, clinging 
 attachment ; a Thomas, with his loyalty still more 
 passionate than his doubt. We, and all that we are, 
 are worth something to Jesus — are wanted with all our 
 gifts, our love, our favour, our faith,^ our courage ; He 
 values them all. They are needed for ministerial use. 
 They are to be laid out, as talents with the bankers, 
 that He may win from them His profits. 
 
 Only, they have passed from us to Him — they are 
 committed to His Hands — transmitted across out of our 
 choice, into His. His choice, His strong choice, is now 
 under them, is in them. In Him they are transfigured, 
 yielded up to Him, to become instruments of righteous- 
 ness, tools by which God Himself achieves His purpose. 
 He knows what He wants of us. We need not trouble 
 about the result, if only we cling to Him, live in Him, 
 abide in Him. If only we abide in Him ! Then, He 
 does what He will with us. He gets what He wants 
 from us, He establishes us, that we may bring forth 
 fruit : and that this our fruit may remain — fruit that 
 
The Ministry of the Church. 
 
 137 
 
 we dreamed not of, fruit that surprises us by its ful- 
 ness, fruit tliat is not of us, though it be ours. 
 
 My brethren, Cuddesdon is a recognition of this law 
 — that though we may begin by choosing Christ, we 
 must end in Christ choosing us. The man's heart, the 
 man's offer, must first be won from us, drawn out of us, 
 by all that is winning, and gracious, and Idndly, and 
 lovely, and tender, in the ministry of Jesus. This is 
 the beginning ; and ah ! which of us does not know by 
 what sweet entanglement Cuddesdon threw its net 
 about our willing feet? Some summer Sunday, per- 
 haps, we wandered here, in undergraduate days, to 
 see a friend ; and from that hour the charm was at 
 work. How joyous, how enticing the welcome, the glad 
 brotherhood ! So warm and loving it all seemed, as 
 we thought of the sharp skirmishing of our talk in 
 college ; so buoyant and rich, as we recalled the thin- 
 ness of our Oxford interests. The little rooms like 
 college-rooms just shrinking into cells, the long talk on 
 the summer lawn, the old church with its quiet country 
 look of patient peace, the glow of th^ evening chapel, 
 the run down the bill, under the stars, with the sound 
 of Compline Psalms still ringing in our hearts — ah ! 
 happy, happy day ! It was enough. The resolve that 
 lay half slumbering in our souls took shape, it leapt 
 out. We would come to Cuddesdun when the time of 
 preparation should draw on ! 
 
 So up this hill men come, with a swarm of eager 
 desires all pushing, all compelling — drawn by the cords 
 of a man, burning with the eager offer, " Here am I, send 
 me I " And then, up here, those in office know what is 
 
138 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 to be done. The man's heart is takf^n, but that is not 
 all: the man's offer accepted, but not trusted. Slowly, 
 in the year of discipline, the secret of the Lord makes 
 itself known. Down upon the man must come the 
 power of the living Word — the Apostolic choice of the 
 Master. Duwn it must come, displacing, thrusting 
 aside, pushing through as a hand, that presses through 
 thorny branches, through sheltering leaves to reach, 
 and grasp, and pluck some wild rosebud that flutters 
 lightly upon a hedge, — so round the heart of the man 
 closes the strong Hand of Christ : His fingers are felt 
 about the soul, and they bend it this way and that, and 
 they sever it from its environing, and they break it 
 sharp off, like a flower ; they wrench it away, they 
 bear it apart, bruised sometimes, torn, mangled, un- 
 willingly yielding, alarmed, protesting, di^appointed, 
 angry, sad, despairing : and yet, through all this, 
 grafted anew into the stock of Grace, not to wither in 
 the spring hedge with some morning frost, not to be 
 shattered by the loud winds nor slain by the fierce sun, 
 nor washed into ruin by drenching rains, — no wild 
 rose-bud now, but solidly ingrown into the stem of 
 Christ Himself, with the full energy of His new Grace 
 ■working through it, remaking it into a new and 
 glorious flower, abundant, splendid, enduring, a rose of 
 God's own garden. Yes — and yet the old natural self 
 is there still : nothing is lost — neither the tint, nor 
 the scent, nor the shaping of the wild hedge-flower; 
 all are there ; yet who would have believed the change 
 that has come over them, the fulness of the crowded 
 folds of petals all glowing and all enriched, wealth 
 
The Ministry of the Church. 
 
 139 
 
 within wealth of colour, gift upon gift of odorous 
 breath. Ah ! this indeed can only be for those whom 
 not only the graciousness of Cuddesdon has drawn up 
 the hill, but who have found there, within, in the 
 hidden places, the sharp knife that cuts and prunes, 
 — have felt the keenness of that sword, which pierces 
 to the very dividing asunder of bones and marrow : 
 it can only be for those whom here Jesus — Jesus 
 Whose compassion and tenderness drew them to His 
 service — has taken aside with St. Peter, apart from the 
 multitude, and told them the inner secret, "Behold, 
 we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man must suffer 
 so many things, and be scourged, and slain : and let 
 him that would come after Me, take up his cross and 
 follow Me." 
 
 Alas tliat even now, after all, we most of us have 
 learned the austerer lesson so little ! Alas to look 
 back on our ministry, and to recall the baffied self- 
 confidence, the failure, ever and ever, that has dogged 
 our unslain self-love ! Still we go on, pledging our- 
 selves, in our old human audacity — " I will lay down 
 my life " — and still, night after night, the cock crows 
 over our rapid denials, over our desperate collapses. 
 Shall we ever learn to walk, not in our own choice, 
 however good, and brave, and high, but in the choice 
 of Him by Whose choice alone it is that we serve at 
 all ? A pitiful, pitiful, story it has been to too many 
 of us, as we look back on our tangled ministry ! Yet 
 here, at Cuddesdon, back on the old hill, in the dear 
 company of tliose who love us and are loved by us so 
 tenderly, so unfailingly, — here, where every stone of 
 
140 
 
 The Church in the Gospels. 
 
 the church, every yoice in our ear, every memory in 
 the soul, speak of the mercy and goodness of a Master 
 Whose compassions fail not, but are new every morn- 
 ing, — here, within this happy garden-ground of God's 
 earth, where everything seems most loving and most 
 holy, and all that is best in us wakes up, renewed like 
 a bird's song in spring : here, to-day, our sorrowful 
 recollections will not be in vain if, like the penitent 
 Apostle of the denial by the old waters of Genuesaret, 
 we hear the persuading voice of the risen Lord once 
 again, with the question that blots out all past shame, 
 and renews us ever again into the blessed renewal of 
 our first love, unspoilt, unstained, and unclouded, — 
 " Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me ? " 
 
 Name by name. He is speaking now to each of us 
 to-day, " Child of My choice, lovest thou Me ? " We 
 have denied Him, denied Him three times, denied Him 
 with an oath ; yet still, for every separate denial He 
 has a separate forgiveness, as ever and ever He repeats 
 to us His " Lovest thou Me ? " Oh that we may go 
 back from Cuddesdon hill, every one of us, to-day, 
 strong in the renewed communion of which our very 
 denials have taught us to measure the true strength ; 
 go back with the voice of the Lord in our souls, re- 
 enacting its choice, reasserting its desire that in Him 
 alone, and by Him alone, we should set ourselves to 
 tend His flock and feed His sheep ! 
 
SOLIDARITY OF SALVATION — FREEDOM OF 
 SALVATION — THE GIFT OF GRACE — THE 
 LAW OF FORGIVENESS— THE COMING OF 
 THE SPIRIT. 
 
SERMON X. 
 
 THE SOLIDARITY OF SALVATION. 
 
 " as m 'atiam all 5tr, ebm so in Cfjrist sfjall all ht maliE altbe. 33ut 
 tbcrg man in l)is oton orJer." — i Cor. xv. 22, 23. 
 
 A MAN whom we know, a friend whom we love, — how 
 distinct, and separate, and individual seems to us all 
 tliat he says and all that he does! Each word issues 
 from some fount of free spontaneity ; each act, each 
 movement is charged with peculiar chnracter. No one 
 but he could have said just that — could have made 
 exactly that motion of the hand or of the head. And 
 it is the incessant discovery of this uniqueness, of this 
 subtle yet inexhaustible difference between him and 
 all other beings in the world, that makes the delight 
 and the charm of a friendship. His most marked 
 peculiarities become dear to us simply because they 
 are his and his only. His character stands out to us, 
 cut off, as by a knife, from all else. He is himself and 
 himself alone, solitary as a star. There is not a move- 
 ment of his eyes, or a sound in his voice, however 
 minute, however momentary, which we should not dis- 
 tinguish at once, with unhesitating and inevitable 
 decision, as a movement, as a sound of which no other 
 
144 
 
 Cojtversion. 
 
 human being could ever, in all the ages, be conceivably 
 the author or the owner. 
 
 And yet, if we go to his home with our friend, 
 counter-discoveries greet us on every side. There 
 is his father; and we see, at once, whence came 
 to the son that look in the eyes that we know so 
 well. There is his mother; and who can mistake 
 that turn of the mouth, that shade of colour in 
 the hair, which we have delighted to watch in him ? 
 And was it not his voice that startled us just now in 
 that young brother? And we almost laugh as we 
 catch sight of little tricks long familiar to us, and that 
 to us were marks and tokens which isolated him from 
 all we had ever known, but which are detected now 
 to be the common heritage of sister and brother alike. 
 And the more we watch, the more we can trace an 
 identity, close, intimate, secret, penetrative, pervading 
 the entire household ; until, at last, there is nothing 
 that our own friend can do or say, in which we could 
 not track and note the signs of his parentage, the 
 flavour of his birth, the breath of his home. 
 
 Yet is he any the less to us what he was before — a 
 character, a living being, as distinct as a star ? Is he 
 any the less free, spontaneous, unique ? Nay, his own 
 peculiar distinctness is as real and unwavering and 
 delightful to us as ever. We have not even the shadow 
 of a perplexity about it. Yet how deep our searching 
 might go, how far it might reach, if we pressed home 
 our inquiries into the hidden ground of our friend's 
 life. The county whence he came — the interminglings 
 of Saxon and of Dane, that crossed and fused in the 
 
The Solidarity of Salvation. 145 
 
 dales that lie about his home — these have shaped and 
 moulded his figure and his face, by the inward pressure 
 of hereditary instincts that are inwoven into the very 
 tissue and texture of his body. Nobody who knew 
 that countryside could doubt for a moment whence had 
 been born and bred the tones in which he speaks, the 
 phrases that he finds congenial. 
 
 And Science could take up the very touches which 
 we most love to associate with his presence and his 
 manner, and could show us their exact parallel in un- 
 known populations still living in the ancient homes of 
 the English, on the sandy shores of the Baltic, or by 
 the green waters of far Norwegian seas. Nor is it his 
 body only into which these multitudinous influences 
 have entered; his character, his imagination, his mind 
 • — these all have roots that dig deep into the common 
 soil. They are unmistakably English, and English of 
 a peculiar type : nobody but an Englishman could 
 ever dream of thinking after his fashion ; nobody but 
 an Englishman would come to those decisions at which 
 he voluntarily and naturally arrives ; in contact with 
 a foreigner, every fragment of his being is seen to 
 have received the impress of his national bent. 
 
 Now, let us stop again and ask. These decisions of 
 his, are they at all less valid or less genuine because 
 they are the issue of a will that cannot, whatever it 
 decides, escape from the clutch of an English impress, 
 from the fetters of a national type? Far, far from it. 
 It is wholly the contrary. Just as he would have been 
 pleased to have heard it said of some utterance, that 
 issued directly out of his instinctive feelings, "There 
 
 L 
 
146 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 spoke your father's son," just as lie would have been 
 delighted if you had cried at some quick turn of his 
 head, "Ah, how like your mother," so now, his inner 
 freedom, his self-possession, his spontaneity, these 
 all are braced, heightened, intensified, encouraged by 
 the recognition, in them, of an inevitable type ; he is 
 not the least alarmed lest his individuality should 
 therefore be weakened, or his identity suffer loss ; he is 
 delighted to discover that he is swayed by secret and 
 inevitable forces of which he knew nothing as they 
 moved him, and as they made him. The discovered 
 necessity vivifies his freedom, instead of destroying it ; 
 he feels all the more free, in discovering that he is 
 inevitably, and of sheer necessity an Englishman. 
 
 Nor does this discovery stop there. Science passes 
 with swift foot from shore to shore, from century to 
 century, and in every land, and amidst every soil, and 
 at every period, she enters upon traces of yet deeper 
 communications that pass, from out of the entire human 
 race and the entire human story, into the brain and 
 into the heart of every separate man and woman in this 
 church to-niglit. In every motion of our limbs, we are 
 using the stored experiences of bygone generations ; 
 we are built up out of their patience ; we are the out- 
 come of their toil ; the very passions, the very instincts 
 of those dead forgotten peoples are alive in us all to- 
 day, and make us what we are ; and, do what we will, 
 we caimot throw off the domination of their hidilen 
 forces, for they lie at the most secret places of our 
 souls ; we cannot dig down in our life to a spot lower 
 than their influence buries itself; we cannot climb up 
 
The Solidarity of Salvation. 147 
 
 to any height whither their sway does not follow and 
 possess us ; we are dyed through and through with 
 their tints ; we are inmeshed in their intricacies ; we 
 are wrapped round by their encompassing atmosphere. 
 As we act, as we move, each deed, each motion does 
 but ofifer a new evidence of that inbred and imbued 
 necessity with which the long past has stored our heart 
 of hearts. And we are not depressed by the discovery. 
 Most beautiful, most cheering, it seems to us, this 
 bonded brotherhood which works in us beyond the 
 seeing, beyond all imagining. Most cheering, to learn 
 the full significance of the words of God, " Thine eyes 
 did see my substance yet being imperfect, and in Thy 
 book were all my members written, which, day by day 
 were fashioned, when as yet there were none of them ; " 
 Most wonderful far-reaching words ! Freely, indeed, 
 we walk, and freely move ; yet each free motion is a 
 disclosure of the power of the past that is upon us. 
 Far, far back, beyond all sifting, lies the secret of each 
 tiny gesture, of each passing mood, of each incidental 
 trick and turn. Strange symptoms from our fathers' 
 fathers show themselves, now and again, on the surface 
 of our lives, like eddies that tell of deep-running cur- 
 rents ; a whole world of silent force is astir within us, 
 old lives long over, old manners once familiar and dear. 
 Old faces, long buried, look out of our eyes ; voices from 
 out of forgotten and unknown graves speak through 
 our lips ; ghostly memories shake us like dumb sounds ; 
 echoes of ancient stories prick and press within the 
 blood; shadows from far clouds cast sudden glooms 
 over our souls, shadows of old wrongs once fierce and 
 
148 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 sour ; or the gleams of buried joys, the loves and the 
 laughter of long ago, quicken the heart to-day as with 
 an after-glow from some lost and hidden sun. Yet 
 nothing of all this burdens us, nothing perplexes. We 
 are ourselves ; we miss nothing of our free manhood. 
 We can lift up our heads, and rejoice to know how the 
 Lord has understood our thoughts long before; how 
 He " has fashioned us behind and before, and laid His 
 hand upon us ; how there is not a word on our tongues 
 but He knew it altogether ; how our bones were not hid 
 from Him; how He covered us in our mother's womb." 
 Far, far more He sees of our implicated heredity than 
 we can ever follow ; " such knowledge is too wonderful 
 and excellent for us, we cannot attain unto it." Yet it 
 cannot distress or imprison us, however minute its 
 intricacies, however voluminous its range ; for all of it 
 does, as we know well, by the infallible test of daily 
 experience, but feed self-mastery, but enrich our free- 
 dom. *' How dear, therefore, are Thy counsels unto me, 
 0 God ! Oh, how great is the sum of them ! " 
 
 We all of us live one life. Human nature has a 
 continuous being and a continuous history, within 
 which, not outside which, each separate personality 
 plays its spontaneous part. Out of the same earth 
 we grow, like plants out of a common soil, and each 
 of us puts out our own colour, and shape, and scent ; 
 but every separate flower, every separate leaf, distinct 
 and individual though it be, is yet fed out of the same 
 juices as the rest, and built out of the same earth. 
 This is the law that governs every fragment of our 
 being : there is no atom of it out of which we can 
 
The Solidarity of Salvation. 149 
 
 purge away all foreign elements, all natal influences 
 And it is by this unity of race that we effect a com- 
 bined advance; civilisation is only possible, because 
 the genius of each generation can be retained and 
 transmitted. 
 
 But, then, we cannot accept the gains of heredity 
 and refuse the losses. We are glad and uplifted to 
 recall the uoble heritage which is our delighted 
 possession, we are proud to accept all that has been 
 won to our credit, and bred into our blood, by the 
 splendid record of our English ancestry. And why, 
 then, are we surprised, or perplexed, or indignant, 
 if, by this same familiar and habitual law, we all, 
 in Adam, die ? How can it be otherwise ? What 
 alternative is open ? We men form one body ; and 
 the generations, as they pass, build up one body : and 
 to prohibit poison, once introduced, from spreading 
 over the whole would be done only at the cost of 
 forbidding that body to perform its functions, at the 
 cost of wrecking its structural life. Let Adam once 
 have sinned, and we, who are in Adam, have the seeds 
 of sin within us. We start with an inherited loss. 
 The laws by which this is necessitated are the laws 
 by which we are men ; if they failed, we should be 
 no longer human. They are the laws, again, by which 
 alone we advance, we grow, we win our way to 
 civilised blessing: and how can we suddenly turn 
 round and repudiate them, because they must, if our 
 jathers fail or fall, carry down also the sad working, 
 the bitter story of their shame? "In Adam we 
 all die ; " die by cur own free act, just as we who 
 
Conversion. 
 
 are English through the necessity of birth, yet, by 
 our own free actions, exhibit our inherited character. 
 Our freedom is all the more free when it acts under 
 the uplifting pressure of a splendid inheritance ; nor 
 is it at all sensible of any diminution because the sin, 
 that it willingly and spontaneously loves to commit, 
 bears witness to the miserable story of a guilty stock. 
 
 " In Adam all die ! " yet each, it may be, in his own 
 order. Not one, indeed, can escape the losses of his 
 parentage, because to do so would be at the cost of 
 losing all the gains — of curtailing and cancelling his 
 humanity. Not one can win that life which only 
 uncorrupted conscience can ever know. All must die. 
 But each may, perhaps, within that night of loss, have 
 his place according to the gallantry of his protest, 
 or the gladness of his consent — according to the degree 
 with which he either strove to mitigate its gloom, or 
 else revelled in the uncleanness which its darkness 
 served to cover. 
 
 " In Adam all die." Yes ! but the blessed Eyes 
 of God, as they moved over the mass of multitudinous 
 distress, as they noted the inevitable working of this 
 mysterious inheritance, — still beheld, hidden in this 
 very mystery, the possibility of a redemption. The 
 laws, the conditions of social unity, which spread so far 
 and so widely the poison of a father's sin, carry just as 
 far and as widely the light of a father's honour, the 
 force of a father's purity. A renewal, a reinvigoration 
 of the lost Fatherhood might yet defeat the pi-essure 
 of the old and sinister disgrace. The blood, once 
 purged, might transmit itself from man to man, from 
 
The Solidarity of Salvation. 151 
 
 heart to heart, from life to life ; and might reach and 
 penetrate, and quicken, and absorb, and renew. Though 
 by one man sin has entered, and through sin, death, 
 yet by Another, Who is the Man in Whom all are 
 made, grace may re-enter and recover the dying race. 
 The ti'ansmission that makes for the corruption of 
 all, can be turned to the needs and uses of the regene- 
 ration. This is the method of God, to convert the 
 conditions of the curse into the very instruments of 
 the blessing. In Adam, it is true, all would die ; but, 
 if that is so, then, in Christ, all may be made alive. 
 If sin has by these methods abounded, grace shall 
 by tlie same methods much more abound. 
 
 So, in the Beloved Son, man becomes new-begotten 
 of God. And now let us measure His task. His 
 virtue must lay hold of the entire sum of man's 
 being. It must imbed itself by roots as deep, and 
 strong, and clinging as those by which sin has 
 dug its dire fangs into the inherited flesh. It must 
 pervade and embrace the entire bulk of fallen and 
 human nature. This it must do ; and all Holy Week 
 we have been watching, with the awe of shuddering 
 sorrow, how serious and how thorough was the reality 
 with wliich this assumption of our flesh was completed. 
 Not only must He empty Himself of His Godhead, 
 and abhor not the Virgin's womb, and be found in 
 fashion as a man, a babe, in a manger at Bethlehem ; 
 but everything that is ours He must make His. And 
 ours, now, was a life bound down under a curse, 
 stamped with the brand of shame, smitten with the 
 blight of sorrow, tossed by the anguish of miserable 
 
152 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 pains, dismayed, beclouded, tormented, stricken 
 throiigli and through with the panic and tyranny of 
 death. And all this He will partake, that He 
 may be verily part and parcel of that solid bulk 
 of our humanity. He read it all over, those sad 
 experiences of a hundred suffering generations, in the 
 record of Scripture. He read there the roll of human 
 sorrows, of human fears, of human bitterness, of 
 human desolation, and not one jot or one tittle of that 
 long human agony would He I'ail to fulfil, not one 
 throb of pain would He spare Himself, not one tear, 
 not one touch of forlorn despair. All that man had 
 ever felt, He too would feel ; He, too, would endure. 
 No legions of Angels should sweep from Heaven to 
 save Him from tasting the last drop of that cup of 
 our terror; no stones of our wilderness shall be made 
 bread for His hunger, lest the Scriptures should not 
 be fulfilled — lest the burden of our iniquity, lest the 
 weight of our inheritance should, in any degree, fail 
 to fall upon Him. So He became ours — our very 
 own. We stamped Him ours by every nail which 
 we thrust through His Hands and His Feet, by every 
 scoff wherewith His Soul was pierced upon the tree 
 of scorn. He is ours by every band, and joint, and 
 ligament ; wholly human, wholly knit into our common 
 fate, implicated with us in all our woe ; ours by fibre 
 and sinew, by bone and marrow, by tissue and nerve, 
 by the bonds of birth, by the ties of familiar and 
 ineradicable experiences, by the netted meshes of 
 unwoven sympathies, by touch, and taste, and hand- 
 ling, by tears and groans, by agony and bloody sweat, 
 
The Solidarity of Salvation. 153 
 
 by passion and death, by the bonds of love, by the 
 cords of a man. He is ours. He has imbedded, 
 implanted, ingrafted, insown His own Life into ours ; 
 and everywhere, into all corners of our common cor- 
 porate beinfj. His Presence reaches and is astir. He 
 is ours, wholly ours ; and yet, lo ! He has brought with 
 Him into our burdened days the new vitality, the 
 freshening splendour of a white-hearted purity, and 
 of a flawless will. 
 
 " All are made alive." Ah ! we murmur our com- 
 plaints against the death that is ours through Adam, 
 as if death were all that our corporate unity with 
 mankind had brought us. Yet if God is to be judged, 
 let the Death incurred under original sin be set 
 parallel with the Life involved and inherited under 
 the Covenant of Jesus. For this is our Gospel — this 
 our Easter-news : that as by one man came Death, 
 by one Man also came the Eesurrection from the dead. 
 " Christ is risen from the dead," and in Him and with 
 Him the whole race into whose history He has in- 
 woven His Presence and His Name, is lifted, through 
 the Body of His exaltation, to the right hand of 
 God. The entire movement in which we had found 
 ourselves held is reversed. That downward drag, 
 which was upon us all like a weight, that burden of 
 suffocating sin, ponderous, masterful, relentless — this 
 is gone. The set of the strong tide is changed ; the 
 dull, withdrawing currents, muddy and depressed, are 
 now running up on the flood, with rush and bubble 
 and press, with gurgling triumph — cheerftal, brimming, 
 and immense. The curse of certain failure, that lay, 
 
154 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 heavy and fast, upon man's wintry world, is become 
 the promise of a victorious hope, vital and young as 
 the Spring. 
 
 And all feel it ; all mankind, who knew the withering 
 touch of the ancient evil, know, in their degree, the 
 power of the Risen Man. Upward and upward we 
 all are drawn ; we are sucked up after the movement 
 of that glory : we all live within the range of the 
 Resurrection ; we all quiver under its strong pressure, 
 grasped as we all are by the lordship of the New 
 Humanity, Which covers and consummates the entire 
 sum of human existence. 
 
 " All are made alive ! " for now is Christ risen from 
 the dead, " the first-fruits of them that slept." He, 
 Who was already the Image in Which all were made, is 
 become also, for all, the First-born fr^m the dead. And 
 as that old sin spread out its banel'ul influence, ring 
 upon ring, circle upon circle, so this new life issues out 
 over the whole, in circle after circle, in ring upon ring 
 
 There is the outermost ring of that dim heatlien world 
 which has been brought nigh, in the Risen Christ, to 
 the Father Which is in Heaven, and is ever beloved 
 for His sake Who has made Himself theirs ; and 
 thither, amid the thick of those dark swarms, the 
 Blessed Love of God, that must otherwise despair, 
 moves under the drawing of the Brotherhood in 
 Christ; and still it whispers hope among those with- 
 out hope ; and still urges, and still beseeches ; and 
 still it lets a face be seen as of God, and a voice still 
 be heard among the trees of the garden. And they, 
 even they, amid ugly and foul confusions, are not insen- 
 
The Solidarity of Salvation. 155 
 
 sible to that strange stirring which is the movement 
 within thera of the Resurrection — a movement blind, 
 yet prophetic — prompting them to deeds which Christ 
 will yet own as His at the Last Day, though they 
 be done by those who will ask in ignorant surprise, 
 " Lord, when saw we Thee hungered, we who on earth 
 never knew Thy Name ? " 
 
 And within that ring of outer Heathendom there 
 is the ring of a Christian Civilisation, a civilisation 
 that, for all its miserable stains, for all its dark and 
 bitter shames, has yet this mark of Christ upon it — 
 that, amid all its disasters, it can never lose its hope — 
 a hope, that vitalises; a hope that has in it always 
 the power of a recovery ; a hope that can lay its 
 very mouth ia the dust of its penitence, and yet can 
 retain its hope. A Christian civilisation is a civilisa- 
 tion that can hope against hope. A civilisation ouce 
 Christianised can face the utmost reality of the 
 grimmest and direst facts, can face the lies that hold 
 their own, and win ; the oppressions that stand rooted 
 in age-long wrongs ; the prison doors that the centuries 
 have laboured to bolt and to bar; the graves of all 
 who have died in vain, done to their death under the 
 heels of the ungodly ; it can face all this, and live, 
 and hope, in the memory of that day when the eyes 
 of all in a Synagogue at Nazareth were fastened on 
 One Who read of a good time when the eyes of all 
 blind should be opened, and the ears of all deaf should 
 be unstopped, and pronounced that " This day is this 
 Scripture fulfilled in your ears." Therefore it is that 
 we cannot despair, though the Lord delayeth His 
 
Conversion. 
 
 coming, though the wheels of His chariot tarry, 
 though all things continue as at the first. " How 
 long," we still cry in hope, " 0 God ! how long ? How 
 long before we feed our flocks in Carmel and Bashan, 
 as in the days of old ? " 
 
 And within the ring of a Christian Civilisation is 
 the ring of those over all of whom the Name of Christ 
 acts as a living spell, the ring of all those who cling 
 to Him, and cry to Him, and send up heart and voice 
 to Him, and in His Name cast out devils, and do 
 many mighty works. They call upon Him, and the 
 Lord knows them that are His, and He showers down 
 favour upon them as they look up to Him ; multitudes 
 upon multitudes, who are swayed, as the tides of the 
 immeasurable sea, by the magic of His love, as it 
 moves moonlike above them and carries them hither 
 and thither, like mighty waters that shake, and roll, and 
 swing, and murmur, and ebb and flow, and ebb again. 
 
 And within this ring, again, its very heart and 
 its very core, is, we believe, Christ's living Church, 
 visible, historic, catholic, at all times and in all places, 
 giving glory to God — a corporate unity, which desires, 
 not only to believe in Him, but to complete its belief 
 by partaking of His very Substance, by transfiguration 
 into His Name, by sharing in His new and quickened 
 Humanity, by receiving of the seed of this new Adam 
 into itself; so that it may be fed with His Resurrec- 
 tion, and be impregnated through and through with 
 His transforming grace, and be knit into His Body 
 by the Presence of His abiding Spirit, and be re- 
 generate by the waters of His Baptism, and may take 
 
The Solidarity of Salvation. 157 
 
 and eat of His Flesh and of His Blood, so that all 
 who so eat may become one thing, one compact and 
 enduring mass, one loaf, one Lody, one new man ; 
 built up by one force, as living stones into a living 
 temple ; a single body wed to Him as the new Bride 
 of the Lamb ; growing up into one Head, " from Whom, 
 the whole Body, fitly joined together and compacted 
 by that which every joint supplietb, maketh increase 
 of the Body uuto the edifying of itself in love " — so 
 that it becomes "the fulness of Bam That filleth all 
 in all." 
 
 Christ's love beats like a great heart, pulse upon 
 pulse, combating, defeating, expelliug that slow death 
 which has crept over the body of humanity. And, 
 thus, " in Christ, all are made alive." All : the whole 
 human race is swept forward, is borne upward, by the 
 power of the risen Lord. Where, before, there was 
 degeneration, there is now regeneration. All are 
 made alive : and, if all, then we, too, stand to-night, 
 every one of us, and each one of us, within this new 
 motion. We stand within it ; yet, for all that, we lose 
 nothing of our distinct and personal freedom. You 
 and I, we are none the less free to-night, because in 
 Adam, in some old sin, we all died ; and then in Christ, 
 in some strange recovery, achieved for and by God, we 
 all were made alive. For our freedom is rooted in 
 those deep, underlying necessities ; it drains from them 
 its juices ; it sucks out of them its strength ; it breaks 
 open out of the powers wherewith these endow it. Just 
 as we won the free exercise of our English name out of 
 the very necessities which had made us English ; so. 
 
158 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 out of our very bond to Christ, we win the energy to 
 become free friends of Christ. Our freedom is born 
 out of what God in Christ does for us, and His action 
 does not, therefore, take the place of ours, nor do 
 instead of ours. Nay, His action on our behalf shows 
 itself in us in the shape of our own free activity on 
 our own behalf. Out of His action we are made free, 
 and the more He does for us, the more we are enabled 
 to do for ourselves. 
 
 But every one, therefore, in his own order. The 
 freedom that we derive out of Christ, that is given 
 us of Christ, is ours to exercise, and by its exercise 
 we determine our lot. We determine it, whetlier we 
 will or no ; for we cannot help using the freedom given 
 us in Christ. We have been made free; we have 
 been caught up into the motion of Christ ; we iiave 
 been set loose from the tyranny of sin ; we have been 
 reborn into Christ's energy. He draws us, holds us, 
 drags at us, impels us ; the cords of His human love 
 are knitted close about our being ; and, as He rises, 
 we rise with Him ; we feel the pull and the strain, the 
 pressure, the impulse, the rigour of His Eesurrection. 
 
 Who here in this Cliurch, to-night, is not feeling it, 
 at this very hour ? That stir, that throb, that sighing 
 of the soul, that blind leap of the dumb heart — that 
 is Christ, the risen Lord ; that is the touch of His 
 Hands laid about your soul — He is at work there. 
 Those are His signs. And they are signs that you 
 are free ; that you can act for Him ; that you can 
 rise and walk. You can rise — rise from out of all 
 your choking sins ; out of all your miserable 
 
The Solidarity of Salvation. 
 
 159 
 
 memories; out of all your dismal forebodings; out 
 of all your horrid patst; out of all your ancient tempta- 
 tions that clutch and throttle you. You can rise, 
 you can move, you are free. Christ has risen, and 
 broken your bonds, and you are feeling the pricking 
 and the stirring of His victory alive within your life 
 this Easter Day. 
 
 Oh, rise! Else, as with Him. Lift yourself up; 
 be not afraid. Do not doubt ; do not hesitate. The 
 strength is in you — that strength for which you have 
 prayed and have despaired. You are free this very 
 minute to rise and follow Christ for ever and for ever. 
 For in Him all have been long ago made alive. 
 According as you act at hours when the voice calls, 
 and the freedom is given you, will be your lot in 
 the world to come. 
 
 For, alas ! you must beware ; such high freedom 
 cannot but be perilous. It is not yours to choose 
 whether you will rise with Christ or no. All rise with 
 Him ; all through Him are dragged through the dark- 
 ness of the grave, and will stand before the judgment of 
 God. At His vcice all must rise again from the tomb. 
 As we must have died in Adam, so we must rise in Christ. 
 
 And what is it, then, that strikes chill as fear 
 upon our hearts ? Can it, indeed, be that the freedom 
 regained in Christ — that freedom which is itself 
 the Breath of Christ within us — can itself be turned 
 against the Name of Him Who inspires it ; that 
 Christ can be put to use by us against Himself; 
 that we can receive into ourselves from Jesus the 
 power to defile the Body of Jesus ; that we can, 
 
i6o 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 by the strength that God Himself supplies, take the 
 members of Christ and devote them to shame ? Oh, 
 the dread ! Oh, the terror ! Oh, the awful shame ! 
 Oh, the bitterness of the gall ! Oh, the grief of the 
 Holy Spirit! Yet this can be. Dark utterances 
 shake us. " Every one in his own order : " we shall 
 rise ; but where will that order be, in which we shall 
 have placed ourselves ? True, we are all drawn up- 
 ward iuto God's light by tlie necessities of our union 
 with a risen Christ ; but what if our approach to God 
 be as the nearing of a great heat, that scorches, and 
 shrivels, and kills? Holiness is as a fire to sin. We 
 cannot safely draw near to God with sin upon our 
 souls. Yet we must draw near, for Christ, our Brother, 
 is sat down at the right Hand of God, and in Him 
 we all are brought nigh. To be brought nigh to God 
 is necessarily to be judged. And in this lies the 
 secret of that terrible possibility, which cannot be 
 excluded by any love of God for us — that we may find 
 ourselves standing hereafter face to face with God, 
 carried thither by the power of that Christ Whom 
 we have to the last misused, and grieved, and 
 disgraced ! 
 
 But God grant it, this Easter night shall not have 
 been given us in vain. What that order for each 
 shall be — that, each has it in him to make sure, here 
 and now. We can make sure of it, just because 
 Christ, Who is exalted in strength over all thrones, 
 dominations, and powers, is in each of us, feeding us 
 with His own triumphant Life. 
 
 Blessed, ah blessed indeed, if, penitent and forgiven. 
 
The Solidarity of Salvation. 16 1 
 
 then, when the end is come, and death and hell give 
 up their dead, we be found with our names written in 
 the Book of Life ! 
 
 But blessed, thrice blessed, beyond all desires, 
 beyond all dreams, if we could but be found among 
 the one hundred and forty-four thousand who have 
 part in the first Resurrection, and follow the Lamb 
 whithersoever He goeth; because in them is found 
 no blemish, nor any lie. Blessed are the dead that 
 so die in the Lord. Blessed are they that are called 
 to the Marriage of the Lamb. Into which blessing 
 we, too, even we, may pass. Thanks be to God I 
 
 M 
 
SERMON XT. 
 
 THE FEEEDOM OF SALVATION. 
 
 "Sir, fee faoulU sec Ktsus." — St. John xii. 21. 
 
 Our Lord spent His days upon earth on that narrow 
 edge of broken hill that stood strangely separate and 
 aloof from the vast and teeming empires which divided 
 off from it to the east and to the west. From His 
 hills round the home at Nazareth He could look to 
 the great ridge of Moab, behind which lay the memories 
 of Nineveh and Babylon. Far, far away, beyond that 
 barrier of cliffs, the highways ran through that wilder- 
 ness, to the old scenes and cities of the mighty river, 
 with its immense populations, and its strange wisdom. 
 And then, with one turn of the head. He would catch the 
 flashing glory of the Greek Mediterranean waters, in 
 the far bosom of which lay all the isles of the Gentiles, 
 the crowded homes of seafaring folk. And right across 
 his own village lands the caravans trooped past, of 
 alien faces, and unknown tongues, bearing through the 
 markets of Damascus the wealth both of the Eastern 
 Indies and of the Western seas. 
 
 So He stood, cut off from the east by the roaring 
 cleft of Jordan, and from the west by the foam of a 
 harbourless and untravelled sea. So He stood, Who 
 
The Freedom of Salvation. 163 
 
 was the Desire of all nations ; and on either side of 
 Him lay the millions, who wandered astray, bewildered 
 and forlorn, wearied and unclean — the dim sad prisoners 
 of the powers of the air, fast bound in trespasses and 
 sin — scattered loose and astray, without hope, and 
 without God. The very winds that walked under the 
 stars on those green hills where the Lord prayed alone 
 all night, would come to Him ever laden and thick 
 with sighs out of the heart of that tired multitude, 
 who sought and found not, who hungered and were not 
 filled. They had sent to Him out of the East, asking, 
 at His Birth, " Where is He ? We have seen His stai*. 
 Where is He that is born King of the Jews ? " They 
 had come from the West with pressing plaintive plea, 
 " Sir, we would see Jesus." 
 
 So they craved, and He — had He no strong and 
 masterful desire to answer their cravings ? Surely we 
 know how His Eyes looked out far and away beyond 
 the narrow Jewish pastures, and saw, already, those 
 who were far off, those other sheep, not of this small 
 fold, whom also He yearned to bring home, that they 
 all might be one flock under one Shepherd. Yes; and 
 we know how, for a moment, at Samaria, His Heart was 
 saddened with the sorrow of the weeping Sower, as He 
 looked out upon fields already, to His Heart's eye, white 
 with the glory of harvest, which others would be then 
 reaping so gladly. Oh ! let them remember on that 
 day, in the glow and splendour of that autumn reaping, 
 let them remember the joyless Sower, Who crept along 
 the dark furrows, in the dim and cloudy spring. For 
 that joy of the Keaper, He was never to knew on earth. 
 
164 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 That joy of the mighty mystery, which burned like a 
 furnace in the soul of St. Paul, — that joy which over- 
 mastered the Apostle's utterance as he stammered and 
 staggered under its weight and wealth of glory — the 
 joy of knowing that God regarded not the person of 
 any ; that God had broken down all walls of partition, 
 so that there is no longer Jew divided from Greek, nor 
 free from slave, nor male from female, — that joy, that 
 enkindling mystery of joy, might never, on earth, be 
 His, Who was Himself its Spring and its Giver. It 
 was there, within Him, the great secret of a world's 
 gladness, the secret which has ever since made the 
 wilderness to blossom as a rose, and has brought 
 springing waters again in all waste places, and has 
 crowned with joy and gladness the heads of those 
 once so sick and so weary, from whom their sorrow 
 and their sighing have now all fled away. This was 
 all within Him, but repressed, cabined, cribbed, con- 
 fined. He must hold it down under bolt and bar; 
 He must never taste of its blessed savour. 
 
 Nay ; for He Himself has given the law, " Except 
 a corn of wheat die, it abideth alone." Alone ! Its 
 forces all there, yet shut up to themselves, unused, 
 unexercised, unfreed. Alone ! the Heart of the Lord, 
 charged with love that could redeem and feed and 
 satisfy the whole world, must abide alone. Its sym- 
 pathies, its gifts, its desires, its tenderness, its fount of 
 tears, all this must be held under, curbed, fettered. And 
 how hard was the strain to keep it under ! For they 
 were so ready for Him, those far Gentiles ; and He knew 
 it. Now and again, by their very violence of faith. 
 
The Freedom of Salvation. 165 
 
 they forced themselves under His Eye and into His 
 pity. Though He drove them from Him — though He 
 fled on before them, as they cried after Him — though 
 He built up against them the barrier of His mission to 
 none but the lost sheep of the House of Israel, yet still 
 a poor woman here and there would continue urging 
 with a persistence that outwearied the patience of the 
 Twelve, and He was compelled to turn and bless with 
 the wonderful sanction, " 0 woman, great is thy faith ! " 
 or, perhaps, some centurion made even the Lord to 
 wonder at a faith which He could not find in Israel. 
 In these He foresaw the day which was forbidden 
 Him : " Yea ! many should come from the East and 
 from the West " in that day. Many should come ; but 
 not now — not for Him on earth. Till death He is 
 cut off from all this royalty of love, from all this wide 
 range of compassion, from all this gladness of welcome, 
 this rapture of loyalty. All His days on earth He 
 abideth alone. 
 
 And why? Because our Lord took our flesh, not 
 in pity, not in any fanciful licence, but in all sober 
 earnest. He did not take it up as a dress, to do what 
 He chose with. Nay, He took it, took it as it stood, 
 as it really was ; as St. John says, " the Word became 
 flesh." He became that which His Birth from His 
 Mother's womb made necessary and essential. That 
 Mother was a Jewess, of a certain lineage, with a certain 
 fixed body of natural and historic conditions about 
 her; and all these are His; all this He undertakes. 
 He pushes nothing of it aside ; He uses no freedom of 
 peculiar privileges ; He will not pick out and choose. 
 
Conversion. 
 
 What His flesh is, that He assumes. He is, therefore, 
 a Jew ; circumcised the eighth day, He is made subject 
 to the Covenant of the Law. " Born of a woman, born 
 under the Law," He fulfils all the righteoub'ness which 
 such a parentage makes human and obligatory. He 
 is a Jew ; and the Law still binds ; none of its obligation 
 is yet cancelled. Its Temple is still undestroyed; 
 every jot and tittle of the old Law holds good, and 
 demands fulfilment. To the day of His Death He is 
 a Jew; He is cut off from broad human intercourse; 
 He is circumscribed by the rigid demands of the 
 Mosaic Covenant. He keeps the feasts, He defends 
 His actions on the Sabbath days by examples drawn 
 from cases of compassion permitted to every Jew, or 
 by instances of special emergency that allowed freedom 
 from rule to David or to the Temple priests. " I am 
 not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." 
 No ! not till the last appeal has been made to those 
 who had beaten and stoned the servants of the King ; 
 not till they had killed and cast out the only Son and 
 Heir, — not till then will the vineyard be taken from 
 those murderers, and given unto others, who will bring 
 forth the fruits. So the Lord bound Himself down by 
 taking our flesh. So He bowed His neck to the yoke 
 ■ — to the patient, hindering, humbling burden — to the 
 drear and bitter rejection by those who were His own, 
 and yet who would not, for all that, receive Him. 
 
 He lived a Jew. The Law did not end at our Lord's 
 Birth, but only at His Death. The New Covenant was 
 not established until it was branded by His Blood. It 
 was death which freed Him, death which liberated His 
 
The Freedom of Salvation. 
 
 167 
 
 fulness of activity. He became Lord of all flesh on 
 the day that He rose from the dead and ascended to 
 the right hand of God. And hence a difficulty en- 
 compassed the Twelve Apostles, which the Apostle 
 of the Gentiles, whose conversion opened so mighty a 
 door of faith, wholly escaped. It was difficult for those 
 faithful friends, who had walked behind the Feet of the 
 Lord, to face the fact that the Resurrection involved a 
 complete reconsideration, an entirely novel estimate of 
 His Life during His days on earth. That Life could 
 not be taken just as it stood for a model, or a rule, 
 by which to guide the Eesurrection Church. For all 
 the conditions had suffered reversal. The obligations 
 which bound the Lord are now broken ; a new interpre- 
 tation of life and its duties must be brought into play. 
 That which Christ after the flesh might do was no 
 rule to determine what the risen Lord, in His own 
 fulness of freedom, might now require of His Church. 
 That repressed secret, which abode alone, unused, in- 
 operative, breaking upward only in rare flashes of 
 Epiphany glory — that has now burst all its tangling 
 enwrapments and is imprisoned no longer, and works 
 its will out in power ; and therefore very, very difficult 
 it becomes to foresee to what lengths it may carry its 
 spontaneity. Amid the terrible stress of this un- 
 certainty, the companionship with Jesus, so dear to 
 the Twelve — oh ! so tenderly, so unutterably dear, — 
 becomes almost a temptation, almost a snare. It was 
 so possible, so easy for the Eesurrection to appear only 
 as a splendid ratification of the Life so sweetly lived 
 among them. That Life had ended in a horror of 
 
i68 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 shame ; and now God's own Hand had blotted out the 
 shame, and raised Him from the disgrace of death ; 
 and lo ! all the old beautiful days rose again with Him, 
 in dear familiar beauty. All that tliey had believed of 
 Him was now sanctioned and sealed ; He was declared 
 to be what they had thought: and they might live 
 out their days in the clinging memories of all He had 
 said and done ; in the unending delight of repeating 
 to ever-eager converts, " So He spoke, so He looked, 
 so He commanded, when we were with Him." So 
 they might wait until, some day, they too should 
 rejoin Him, and renew their old companionship in the 
 places which He is preparing for them in the house of 
 many mansions. So it must have been so natural, so 
 tempting to think. And, so thinking, they would cling 
 to the habits learned under Him : they would haunt the 
 Temple services ; they would have all things in common, 
 as He and they had had, when Judas bore the purse ; 
 they would sit round one table in the old upper 
 chamber, where they had sat with Him. 
 
 Yes ! all this would inevitably work upon them : 
 they would be instinctively satisfied with recording the 
 old days. And, yet, there was this terrible fact to 
 face, that, on the one vital question in front of that 
 Church of Jerusalem, the Lord's practical Life afforded 
 no help, and gave no direction. For the mystery now 
 revealed was His lordship over the Gentiles ; and this 
 lordship lay dormant and inoperative all the days of 
 the flesh. Its urgencies, its issues, its necessities, its 
 width, its demands could not become visible until He 
 had ascended up into Heaven. It was the Spirit that 
 
The Freedom of Salvation. 
 
 169 
 
 alone could make them felt, and not any tender imita- 
 tion of the customs and manners of the Lord, as they 
 had known and loved Him. 
 
 The Twelve were faithful to the new vision as it 
 slowly made itself known ; but oh ! with what search- 
 ings of heart, with what bitter uprootings, with what 
 violent shocks, with what agony of abandonment ! 
 To them it was a rending, not only of the most deep- 
 seated traditions of infancy, but also of the tenderest 
 associations that knit them to their Master. 
 
 And here was the power of St. Paul. Nothing of 
 this pathetic attachment hindered or entangled his 
 direct apprehension of the majestic event. Once con- 
 vinced of the reality of the Eesurrection, he knows 
 all that it involves. Nothing holds him back. The 
 very rapidity of his own conversion lays open to him 
 the secret of the convulsion which has shattered the 
 old into fragments, and made all things new. The 
 Resurrection, as he sees in a flash, is no mere act of 
 justification by which God sets His seal to the mission 
 of His Son to Israel. Nay ; that mission had failed — 
 "His own received Him not." They crucified Him, 
 and by that Crucifixion wrecked their own reformation, 
 and destroyed their own Temple. The Eesurrection 
 is no glorious end sealing a work done ; it is itself the 
 beginning, not the end. The full work had not really 
 begun until Jesus rose from the dead. He is no dead 
 hero, who has passed into his last rest; but a Lord 
 of life, Who has by this inaugurating act begun to 
 frame for Himself a Kingdom here on earth. It 
 is by His risen Body that He sets to work to build a 
 
1 70 Conversion. 
 
 New Temple, raised in three days out of the ruins of 
 the old. 
 
 And, if so, then, St. Paul argues out the full and 
 magnificent conclusion. 'If Christ be, indeed, risen, 
 not to depart, but to live and work ; if He can show 
 Himself alive and at work on earth after He has risen 
 from the dead ; then, that work must bo of a wholly- 
 new order to all that exists on this side of the tomb. 
 Work done from beyond death cannot fuse or inter- 
 mingle itself with anything that belongs to the present 
 condition of things. It cannot be merely a new patch 
 to an old garment. It is new wine that no old bottles 
 can hold in. 
 
 And here a fresh question starts : what of the Mosaic 
 covenant? To which side of the grave does it belong? 
 It stands altogether on this side of death. It deals 
 with this life that we now live ; it teaches us how, as 
 creatures of earth, we can serve God ; it has nothing 
 but dim dreams of the possibilities beyond. Death 
 ends its regulation, its system, its circle of duties, as a 
 blind wall. But the Resurrection of Christ carries us 
 over the dividing line of death ; it plants us down 
 altogether amid the vital energies of the region beyond. 
 We have left death, and the life which closes in death, 
 behind us. And, therefore, most assuredly, in making 
 that passage, we dropped behind us all the obligations 
 of Judaism. Judaism ! Why, its primal principle 
 turns on fleshly distinctions between Jew and Gentile, 
 a distinction of blood, local, earthly, temporal. We 
 can only conceive such distinctions holding among 
 those born after the flesh ; among those who are shaped 
 
The Freedom of Salvation. 171 
 
 and directed by the narrow restrictions stamped upon 
 them by their earthly origin and story. But, in Christ, 
 we have escaped all that, if He be risen from the dead; 
 our earthly birth and story have been left behind ; 
 yes ! left behind, with all its age-long shame, with all 
 its imprisoning curse, with all its ancient heritage 
 of overmastering wrong. 
 
 And, now, we can understand, perhaps, the strong 
 and fervent passion of St. Paul against all that even 
 minutely obscured this cardinal principle. To St. 
 Paul, as he casts his eye back out of his new security, 
 out of his refuge in Jesus — to St. Paul, that Cross of 
 Christ stauds as a great stake set up between the 
 things that lie on this side death, and the world that 
 lies beyond it. Up to that dark Cross the grim earthly 
 past, the old fleshly life, crowded with its memories 
 of sin and weariness, presses and beats ; but at that 
 stake it all ends — ends as it all must end in the 
 dissolution of death. And it cannot touch him, 
 cannot reach him now, — those old hungers, those old 
 infamies, those old miseries, those old heart-burnings. 
 Look at them there ! He sees them, as a soul would see 
 them from out of the high towers of Heaven. Look 
 at them, far far back! Ah, thank God, he knows 
 them now no more ! 
 
 And among those beggarly rudiments of the fleshly 
 world stands, as he sees, the Mosaic Covenant. For all 
 the honour of its Law, it remained over on that side of 
 death. It clung to the things that go down into the 
 grave ; it dealt with man as a thing of earth, as of a 
 particular seed, as he was through his birth in the flesh. 
 
172 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 No ; there was no mistaking it. It had no more direct 
 dealings with the new life of the Resurrection, in which 
 St. Paul now stood, than had the heathen rituals them- 
 selves. To fall back to it, was to fall back under " the 
 rudiments of the world." Christ has died in vain. So 
 to fall back, is to suppose ourselves still living that old 
 life, which was ours through the flesh ; and that life 
 must be conditioned by the long human history of 
 Adam's generation: and we therefore lie still under 
 the bondage of that bad old past that had begotten us ; 
 we have never been delivered out of that bitter body of 
 death. This is the conviction under which he burned : 
 and it was because the sundering line between Judaism 
 and Christianity was to him as absolute and as un- 
 yielding as the line drawn by death between life here 
 and life hereafter, that he flamed out against the 
 compromises that tended to blur and confuse the 
 absoluteness of the distinction. Any such compromise 
 that tended to represent our Lord as merely a Reformer 
 and Purifier of Judaism, was to him the deadly denial 
 of Christ. It was to commit the blunder of omitting 
 the Resurrection. If Christ has died and risen, then 
 that old life has perished for those who are in Christ ; 
 and, with it, have wholly perished the conditions 
 which build up Judaism. They are gone ; they are 
 dead. Christianity cannot go hand in hand with 
 them. It is not one system among others ; it has 
 no competitor. It is the only religion which starts 
 with a vital and operative hold on the life beyond 
 de-ith. It affers us now and here, the life that 
 shall be ours after the final resurrection. No other 
 
The Freedom of Salvation. 173 
 
 religion, not even the Law, ever dreams of making 
 such a claim, of taking such a position. If this claim 
 of Christianity be verified, the promises of the Law, 
 and of all other systems, fall to the ground and cease, 
 " I am dead to the Law," so he cries ; " I took the 
 Law at its own word : it killed me : so I died to it." 
 And now he is free, for the Law had dominion over 
 a man only so long as he liveth. He is free — as free 
 as a wife from a dead husband. He has wholly ceased 
 out of those conditions to which the Law applies; and 
 now the life that he lives is no life of his own as he 
 was, — Saul, of the tribe of Benjamin, a man ready to 
 perish, — but the risen Christ lives in him ; and he 
 lives in Christ the resurrection life. His one prayer 
 now is to know the power of Christ's Resurrection, and 
 to become conformable to His Death ; and so clear is 
 this to him, and so decisive, that it is wholly separable 
 and distinct in kind even from that companionship 
 with Jesus when on earth, which had been enjoyed by 
 the other Apostles, and which had been denied him. 
 " Yea ! even if I had known Christ after the flesh, yet 
 now henceforth I know him so no more." 
 
 My brothers, " ye are dead. Your life is hid with 
 Christ in God." This was " conversion " as St. Paul 
 knew it, and meant it ; and that conversion must be 
 yours. " Ye are dead." "What is it to be dead ? We 
 all know what it is to turn away from the grave-side, 
 in which we have laid to its last rest the cold body of 
 a friend. All is done and over now. Something has 
 been in the world which will never be again. A story, 
 a presence with its good and its evil, with its joys and 
 
174 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 sorrows, is wiped out. Everything is ended. The 
 great silence closes over it, as the waters close over a 
 sunken ship, and leave no sign. It is all dead and 
 over ! We have said the last word ; we have taken the 
 last look. Now, let it go ! Come away ! Leave it to 
 lie hidden ! For you must go your way without it. 
 
 That is death : and we are dead, if we are in Christ. 
 We have buried our old manhood. That old natural 
 self of ours — the man in us that is born, and lives its 
 little day, and dies — the self, as it is by human laws, 
 as a creature of this earth, — that is with us no longer. 
 It has had its day. It has done its business. We have 
 wrapped it in its white shroud. We have carried it 
 out to its burial ; down in the dark grave we have 
 laid it : it is buried with Christ's Burial. All that old 
 past, so onerous, so tangled, so burdened, so sick, — it 
 is all gone and over, as completely as a life that is dead. 
 Never, never can it be again. The blood of Christ's 
 Death lies between us and it ; and it cannot touch us. 
 Its sorrows, its sins are remote and alien, as the voice 
 of a torrent, that we have crossed in the night, whose 
 dull and smothered roar comes to our ears only in 
 faint gusts of wind. The old is dead and buried. 
 Was it dear to us? Had it its goodness and its 
 gladness ? Yes ; and so St. Paul had everything that 
 could have made life glad and good to him. A 
 Hebrew of the Hebrews, cultivated, zealous, honoured, 
 religious, blameless in moral excellence ; yet all this 
 he counted as well worth losing, as dung, as fit for 
 burial, for the worms, if only he could lose himself, 
 and his own pride, and his own impotence, and his 
 
The Freedom of Salvation. 
 
 175 
 
 own narrowness, and his own self-content, — lose all 
 that made him only Saul of Benjamin, and gain that 
 which would make him Christ's and God's. 
 
 Sirs, would you see Jesus ? Then you must die with 
 Him. For He, Who is as a corn of wheat, has died 
 that He may bring forth the fruit of eternal life in 
 you. Jesus, Whom you would find, stands risen on 
 the far side of death, and thither you must pass to see 
 Him! To gain that sight let all go; strip it off! 
 All that you seek for yourself only ; all that finds 
 its end in you, in your pleasure, in your gain ; all 
 that ministers to your own ease, and vanity, and happi- 
 ness, and success ; all that merely feeds .your own 
 passions at others' cost ; all that urges you to push 
 yourself, to think about yourself, to caress yourself; 
 all that will end with you here, and will be given over 
 to corruption when you cease, and has no issue, and 
 no hope beyond the grave ; — oh ! strip all that off ! 
 Drag yourself out of it ; cast it off. In spite of all 
 its fairness (and it may have much), it is yet weighted 
 with a curse that will smite, and sicken, and sadden 
 all its fairest promise. To fall back under its fascina- 
 tion is to fall back to the beggarly rudiments of this 
 world, to fall back under the old miserable bondage, 
 to build up again the shame which Christ died to 
 destroy. Do not be afraid lest you lose the use of 
 anything good and beautiful here. The materials 
 which belonged to you, the gifts which you possessed, 
 in body, soul, or spirit, will not, indeed, be lost. 
 Christ will lay hold of them all, and build them up 
 into His own new Temple. But the spirit that 
 
176 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 animated them, the self that used and worked them — 
 leave that behind in its quiet grave. Do not wake it. 
 It is buried and done with. Its weariness cannot 
 overtake you. Its disease cannot reach or hurt you 
 any more. For between it and you stands the great 
 stake of the Cross: and you, with all your new life, 
 are hid with Him Who was dead and is alive again, 
 and is risen to the right hand of God. 
 
 " Look, Father, look on His anointed Face, 
 
 And only look on us as found in Him ; 
 Look not on our misusings of Thy grace. 
 
 Our prayer so languid, and our faith so dim ; 
 For lo I between our sins and their reward 
 We set the Passion of Thy Son, our Lord." 
 
SERMON XII. 
 
 THE GIFT OF GRACE. 
 (address on epistle to ephesians.) 
 
 The soul of the believer, as it works its way with 
 prayer and meditation along the sequence of the Holy 
 Books, has already, before it reaches the Epistle to the 
 Ephesians, laid hold, with all the power of its faithful 
 memory, on the fourfold image of its Eedeemer, there 
 to abide and work continually, the heart and force and 
 life of all its spiritual effort ; and then it has passed 
 on to watch and re-enact the momentous movement 
 by which that redemptive action embodied itself in an 
 historic Church of world-wide and catholic capacities ; 
 and it has entered with fear and trembling into that 
 tremendous strife, waged from within and from without, 
 by which, and through which, the personal soul of 
 the great Apostle forced its victorious way out of 
 the prison-house of sin, out of the black dungeons 
 of separate death, in spite of lies, and malice, and 
 ignorance, and offence, into the clear and glorious 
 light of that sufficing pardon which had been sealed 
 to him by God in the Atoning Blood of His dear Son. 
 There, in that long struggle against the fierce fetters 
 of inward lusts, and the barriers built to bar the way 
 
 K 
 
178 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 by the blind ignorance of foes who had zeal without 
 knowledge, the soul reads out, in letters of flaming 
 fire, the inner history of that Judaic Dispensation 
 which, once for all enacted and recorded in the order 
 of facts, yet again and again, within the secret world 
 that lies shut up in each man's separate self, repeats 
 its ancient story, renews its awful issues, rehearses its 
 eternal paradox, travels along its old paths, sends up 
 once more its cry of bewilderment, " 0 wretched man 
 that I am ! " breaks out yet again into its shout of 
 recovered joy, " I thank God, through Jesus Christ our 
 Lord." 
 
 This dispensation of the Jew reveals to our medi- 
 tations that way of salvation along which God leads 
 the soul which hungers after righteousness. That 
 hunger, roused by especial stirrings which the hope 
 and promise of God's peculiar favour have set in 
 motion, is the starting-point of this road to life. The 
 Jew in us — that obstinate and irresistible sense of 
 a summons to intimate familiarity with an Eternal and 
 All-Holy God — rouses within us the imperishable need 
 of attaining the satisfaction, of winning the promise 
 which such a summons holds out as our acceptable 
 prize. We push forward, we reach out, we press and 
 strain towards our impossible goal ; and ever the 
 formal necessities of such a prize grow sharper and 
 more distinct, ever the difficulties increase, ever the 
 demands rise sterner and more unrelenting, ever our 
 failure deepens, ever our helplessness grows more 
 manifest, more incurable, more radical, more deep- 
 seated. Beaten, baffled, bruised, and shattered, our 
 
The Gift of Grace. 
 
 179 
 
 knees fail, our hearts sink, our soul sickens, our spirit 
 despairs : until, over our fallen and prostrate weakness, 
 God Himself uplifts the Cross of His Christ, and pours 
 out the Holy Blood of perfect pardon, and drives the 
 nails home into the flesh that sin had claimed to 
 master and possess, until the very seat of sin's dominion 
 is torn asunder and destroyed, and the peace of Christ's 
 own eternal and living righteousness moves down for 
 our acceptance, from the arms of that prevailing Tree. 
 
 Such is Eedemption brought home to our aspiring 
 self by the way of Judaism — such is the Cross of Jesus 
 as the key and clue to all our righteousness, as the 
 vindication of God's everlasting promise. 
 
 But there is another dispensation, another road by 
 which our souls travel to the City of Salvation — the 
 way of Gentilism : and it is this other way which offers 
 itself to our contemplation, as we turn from the warring 
 strife of the Epistle to the Galatians to the splendid 
 peace of the Epistle to the holy, the beloved Ephe- 
 sians. St. Paul, the prisoner of Kome, the captive of 
 Christ, bound in chains at the very heart and centre 
 of the vast Gentile Dominion, has turned away his 
 eyes from the perils and problems that had encum- 
 bered the progress of God's chosen seed from law 
 to grace, and gazes now, with the awe of an over- 
 whelming admiration, upon the means which God had 
 found to recall His banished — upon the work which 
 God, by Paul's own mouth and hand, had achieved for 
 the recovery unto holiness of those huge millions of 
 lost and seemingly forgotten Gentiles. Here, as he 
 looked back along the centuries, his eyes fell on no 
 
i8o 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 sign of God's favouring presence, no sign of the Great 
 Shepherd making Himself a household ; of the Good 
 Husbandman shaping out His vineyard, digging 
 Himself a wine-press, planting His vine ; of the King 
 fashioning for Himself a peculiar people ; of the God 
 Who makes for Himself a tabernacle, and Who chooses 
 a dwelling-place, and has a delight in holy habitations. 
 No ; here rises up no household of Saints ; no call stirs, 
 no promise excites, no hope impassions ; no sense 
 of Almighty favour and help gather together com- 
 panies of faithful and obedient spirits. Nothing moves 
 in that grim and enshrouding night which has settled 
 down, fold upon fold, upon those sightless and forlorn 
 populations ; no quiver of light shakes that black 
 solitude, no stir of spiritual emotion shoots through 
 that numbed and powerless mass. It is Death, the 
 very kingdom of dumb Death : such life as seemed to 
 stir in those heathen peoples was indeed no life at all ; 
 it was not their own life, but the senseless impulses of 
 lust that dragged them along by chains and fetters. 
 Such lights as broke the impenetrable darkness only- 
 deepened its black gioom ; lurid flashes from the eyes 
 of prowling fiends, sparks set on fire in hell. 
 
 Yes; this is no imagination, no far-off" fancy, no 
 unreal picture : they themselves, his converts in dear 
 Ephesus, had known and felt and endured its terrors. 
 " Ah ! remember it, my people ! " he cries to them. 
 " Remember it ! recall all that horrible past from which 
 you have so marvellously escaped ! Do not forget its 
 fearful reality, its dire and dreadful oppression. ' Ee- 
 member that ye, being in times past Gentiles in the 
 
The Gift of Grace. 
 
 i8i 
 
 flesh, were at that time without Christ, aliens from the 
 commonwealth of Israel, strangers from all covenant of 
 promise, having no hope, without God in the world ; 
 walking as other Gentiles walk, in the emptiness of their 
 mind, having the understanding darkened, alienated 
 from the life of God through ignorance, through blind- 
 ness of heart ; past feeling, giving themselves up unto 
 lasciviousness to work all uncleanness, corrupt accord- 
 ing to the deceitful lusts, partakers of those things 
 whereby the wrath of God cometh upon the children 
 of disobedience, dead in trespasses and sin, fulfilling 
 the desires of the flesh, by nature the children of wrath, 
 dead in sin according to the course of this world, ac- 
 cording to the prince of the power of the air: yes, 
 remember it, ye too were afar off, ye were strangers 
 and aliens, ye were sometimes darkness, ye were in 
 bondage to that evil spirit that even now worketh in 
 the children of disobedience ! " 
 
 Such have they been : let them never forget it ! 
 For only according to the measure of their recognition 
 of this, their old doom of death, will they know and 
 approve that immeasurable joy, which pours, like a 
 strong flood, out of the heart of the Apostle, as he 
 recalls, with boundless fervour, with rolling abundance 
 of word and phrase, the surprise of the mighty change. 
 
 God has done it, He and no other. All along that 
 dark night of dismay. He had been hidden, but His 
 Mind had formed its counsel : He had a secret which 
 only waited to be revealed. That Gentile world was 
 indeed not forgotten or abandoned, though to the eye 
 of the onlooker its fate appeared so desperate. God 
 
l82 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 had from eternity schemed its redemption. He was 
 only biding His time, He was but waiting for the hour 
 of destined action ; and now, behold ! God's passionate 
 desire can restrain itself no longer ; His abundant 
 mercy can no more withhold its secret ; the mystery, 
 the hidden counsel, so long delayed, has leapt out from 
 its secret place into discovered life. He, St. Paul, has 
 himself been cauglit up by its sudden energy, and has 
 found himself turned to be its tool. And, if the long 
 hiding of God, if His prolonged and unbroken repres- 
 sion of Himself, had amazed by its utter desolation, by 
 its impenetrable severity, all the more astounding is 
 the overflowing splendour, the surjDassing fulness, the 
 glorious outburst of strength, with which God throws 
 His whole Heart into the work of this disclosure. The 
 blaze of light dazzles as completely as the profoundness 
 of the dark abandonment had blinded. If before, God 
 had been utterly absent, utterly withdrawn, utterly 
 inactive, now He is Himself become wholly and entirely 
 present, wholly and entirely revealed, wholly and en- 
 tirely active. Before He did nothing ; now He does 
 everything. He Himself has entered on the scene in 
 the fuller reality of His Being ; He has Himself taken 
 the entire work into His own Hands : God is the actor, 
 and we have no eyes or ears but for Him ; God is Him- 
 self the agent, and, lo ! there is no one who can stand 
 beside Him. " See now that I, even I, am He : there 
 is none other ; I kill or I make alive ; I wound and 
 I heal." 
 
 Our spirits watch with solemn awe as St. Paul lifts 
 the veil and discloses the uncovered and naked activity 
 
The Gift of Grace. 
 
 183 
 
 of the Most High. There it is, behind the screening 
 glamour of history; there it is, the mighty life, the 
 manifest energy of the Very God ; we see it at its 
 awful and tremendous work. There is a breach opened 
 in that profound night of death; and that breach is 
 filled by what St. Paul calls "the wealth of God's 
 personal glory." If, before, God seemed niggard of 
 His presence, now there is no limit to the wealth of 
 His self-manifestation ; ttAowto?, again and again St. 
 Paul calls it : all His treasures are brought out, all 
 His riches are outspread, outpoured, without stint, or 
 scruple, or jealousy, or fear — the riches of His grace 
 wherewith " God, Who is rich in mercy, hath abounded 
 towards us, for His great love wherewith He loved 
 us, that He might show the exceeding riches of His 
 grace" — riches which no present happiness can exhaust, 
 but which it will occupy all the coming ages to con- 
 sider, and admire, and enjoy — riches which have no 
 limit, since they are to continue their outpouring until 
 we are filled with that fulness which belongs to the 
 inexhaustible God Himself. 
 
 In the wealth of God's abundant love, then, lies 
 the clue to this disclosed secret ; by it the breach 
 is made in the night's blackness. God discloses His 
 very Heart of love, the springs of all His innermost 
 Being. And out of this abounding, and inbreaking 
 fulness of love, St. Paul sees a Will issue — a Will, 
 strong, active, energetic, alive, that sets to work upon 
 the black or hideous mass of corruption, and makes 
 its operation felt within that womb of night. This 
 Will does not remain a counsel in high Heaven, a 
 
i84 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 plan, an intention, a scheme, formed by God to Him- 
 self, which He waits for others to use and to profit by. 
 No ; that Will is no mere design of God's reason : it is 
 itself impelled by vivid and urgent desire, it leaves its 
 hidden liome within the Mind of the Father ; it comes 
 down, if we may so speak, from out of its silent seclu- 
 sion, it inserts itself into the dark world of man, it 
 presses its way in, it puts forth force, it acts, it moves, 
 it empowers, it quickens, it makes alive. This is the 
 wonderful sight that St. Paul contemplates with such 
 adoring joy. God the Father, He Himself in His own 
 masterful reality, has done the deed, has made known 
 upon us the right hand of His power: He has worked 
 the mighty work Himself: He, in St. Paul's own strong 
 language, has " wrought," He has shown us " the exceed- 
 ing greatness of His power according to the working 
 of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ, 
 when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him with 
 His own right hand in the heavenly places." 
 
 " God wrought." If there is one thought that the 
 Apostle dwells on more delightedly even than on that 
 first thought of the wealth of God's self-disclosure, it 
 is the thought of the power of that disclosure. It is a 
 power, "^vvafiiQ," a living force, exerted, operating, 
 entering in, lifting, carrying, stirring, animating, pene- 
 trating, inhabiting, transforming. It wrought its work 
 within the world of death, first by its action upon, and 
 within, the perfect Son, Whom it begat through the 
 Spirit, Whom it possessed, and bore into the wilderness 
 of temptation, and clothed with transfiguration on the 
 Mount, and upheld under the olives of the Agony, and 
 
The Gift of Grace. 185 
 
 lifted up upon the Cross of shame, and carried into the 
 gates of the Grave, and thence, by its own inherent 
 energy, in its supreme efficacy as the Will of the 
 almighty and creative Father, upbore out of His tomb, 
 breaking asunder the hard and sealed stones, and raised 
 Him by its impulsion from out of the solid and rigid 
 mass of the burdened dead, who lay weighed down, as 
 by bands of iron, into the clogging mire of sin — raised 
 Him, and set Him on high, and surrendered to Him 
 infinite and irresistible supremacy over all principalities, 
 and powers, and might, and dominion, and every name 
 that is named. 
 
 This God did, according to the good pleasure of 
 that Will, according to the mystery of His Will — God 
 Who worketh all things after the counsel of His Will. 
 Nor did He stay His right hand there. On us, too, 
 in and with Christ, that Will has wrought ; on us it 
 lays its hand and puts out its force ; on us it works 
 its living work. The love which drove it, by sweet 
 compulsion, to pour out its strength upon the Son 
 whom it begot, drives it, impels it, to exert the same 
 activity upon us whom it has included within the 
 attraction of the Son ; on us, whom it has made accept- 
 able in the Beloved. In leaping out to enclose, and 
 quicken, and upraise the dying Son, it leapt out too, 
 by one and the same impulse, towards us, whom it saw 
 lying dead in the Death of the Son, and whom it 
 identified with the flesh of that Holy Body with un- 
 divided love, when it lifted It, and endowed It with 
 recovered and eternal life, endowing our dead souls 
 and bodies, at that one fiat, at that masterful stroke, 
 
Conversion. 
 
 by that one rush of power, by that one act of gift, with 
 a right to all the life, and force, and grace with which 
 it filled full the risen Body of the Lord. Dead once 
 with His Death, we are now held tight and fast by the 
 hand of God's encompassing love within the folds of the 
 Son's requickened Life. Like a magnet, that strong 
 love of God for the Son draws us, sucks us within the 
 currents of its uplifting energy ; we are caught up 
 with Christ, we are, under that omnipotent attraction, 
 enfolded within its heat, we quiver with its very life, 
 we feel ourselves taken in within its mastery, within 
 the pressure of its upward force. As the blood rushes 
 homeward under the suction of the central heart, so 
 we are dragged upwards towards that home whence 
 God's efficacious love carries forward its work of 
 regeneration through Christ, the Beloved Son, the 
 Heart and Centre of the Church, which is His Body. 
 Yes, " Blessed be the God and the Father of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, Who hath blessed us with all spiritual 
 blessings in heavenly places in Christ : hath chosen 
 us in Him, that we should be holy and without blame 
 before Him in love : hath predestinated us unto the 
 adoption of children : hath made us accepted in the 
 Beloved : hath abounded towards us in all wisdom, 
 having made known to us His Will, that we should 
 obtain an inheritance in Christ ; and hath made us, 
 yes, us men, sinners, dead in trespasses and sins, to be 
 for the praise of His glory : bath sealed us with His 
 Holy Spirit, unto the praise of His own glory : hath 
 loved us with His great love : hath quickened us with 
 the quickening of Christ : hath raised us up with the 
 
The Gift of Grace. 
 
 187 
 
 raising of Clirist, made us sit with the sitting of Christ 
 Himself in heavenly places, in Christ Jesus." There 
 is no limit, no reserve : that Living Will has laid hold 
 of us to make us all that it desires, all that it sees us 
 capable of being in union with Christ, to remake us 
 into the form and fashion of Christ : " We are God's 
 workmanship, created into Christ Jesus unto good 
 works, which God has ordained for us to walk in." 
 God foresees a good purpose in us, a positive use which 
 we can be to Him, a means of gratification, a source 
 of delight to Him : even this His might can effect in 
 us, the might of Him Who can " suck honey out of 
 the flinty rock, and make water-springs out of the dry 
 ground." " We are brought nigh ; we have access 
 unto the Father with boldness and confidence, we are 
 become fellow-citizens with the Saints; and of the 
 household of God; we are builded together into 
 Christ, fitly framed to be made an habitation of God ; 
 we are, according to the riches of God's own glory, 
 strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner 
 man, so that Christ dwells in our hearts ; we are rooted 
 and grounded in love ; we know the love of Christ ; we 
 may be filled with all the fulness of God, Who can do 
 exceedingly abundantly for us, above all that we ask 
 or think, according to the power that worketh in us ; " 
 so that " we be holy and blameless even now, before 
 the eyes of God in love," and can, even now, " grow 
 up into Christ in all things, grow up into the perfect 
 man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness 
 of Christ, from Whom, as from the Head, the sap and 
 force of the body streams down, to make active the 
 
i88 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 entire and compact mass, so that it be fitly joined and 
 held together by bond of joint and ligament, making 
 increase into the edifying of itself in love." So gathered 
 up into Christ, in the undivided unity of a single organic 
 frame, which is the Church, we are verily preserved 
 in the spirit of our minds ; we possess within ourselves 
 the new manhood of Christ, " created after God in 
 righteousness and true holiness; we can forgive as 
 God forgives ; we follow God as dear children ; we walk 
 in the love wherewith Christ loved us ; we walk in the 
 light, as children of the light ; we prove what is accept- 
 able ; we understand the Will of the Lord : we have no 
 fellowship at all with the unfruitful works of darkness, 
 we do not so much as name them, as becometh saints ; 
 we are filled with the Spirit; we are strong in the 
 Lord, and in the power of His might." 
 
 Where, and how, can we stop ? 0 my soul, how 
 is it that thy faith quails, or thy tongue falters ? How 
 is it that thou canst not understand "the exceeding 
 greatness of God's power towards us, nor what is the 
 riches of the glory of His inheritance in the Saints ? " 
 How is it that such high language sits so ill and so 
 uneasily upon thy lips ? Is it not because thou hast 
 never sounded all the height, and length, and depth, 
 and breadth of that all-sufficing word of the Apostle 
 of Grace; "not of yourselves, not of works, are ye 
 saved, but of grace ; yea, it is the gift of God." 
 
 The gift of God! The whole life and work, from 
 end to end, is His and His only ; who, then, can limit 
 His wealth of overflowing goodness; who can doubt 
 the exceeding value of His mighty power ? Nay, 
 
The Gift of Grace. 189 
 
 rather, "unto Him that is able to do above all we 
 dare ask, or think, be glory in the Church by Christ 
 Jesus throughout all ages, world without end." 
 
 This, then, is the history of Gentilism. 
 
 The soul is bidden to look back, not on the old 
 desperate moral struggles, by which it wrestled and 
 strove all night with the great Angel of God's covenant, 
 and yet never saw God's Face, or knew His Name, nor 
 even was changed in itself from Jacob, the deceiver, 
 into Israel, the Prince of God ; not on its memory 
 of baffled aspirations, and unfed hunger, and deplorable 
 disappointment, as it fell, and strove to rise, and fell 
 again, without advance, without improvement, — not 
 on this is it bid look, but on its natural state of utter 
 and irretrievable ruin. True, God never wholly 
 abandoned the Gentile world, nor ever has wholly 
 abandoned the soul of the believer; but there was 
 enough in Gentilism to reveal what it would become 
 if once it were left to itself, if once God had entirely 
 withdrawn ; there was enough to make clear what 
 it was of itself, in its own tendencies, what it would 
 inevitably sink into being, if the word of God had 
 not ceaselessly worked to check and restrain the 
 collapse. So, too, with the soul : it can see enough of 
 its own wickedness to know what it would have become 
 of its own nature if ever the power of God could be 
 conceived to be withdrawn ; it can contemplate the 
 condition to which it would fall, if God once suffered 
 it to work out tlie sin of Adam to its logical, its con- 
 sistent conclusion. It would be death, complete, un- 
 mitigated death ; not a mixed struggle of good against 
 
Conversion. 
 
 bad, but a sheer loss of hold on the good, absolute 
 revelling in wickedness; the very heart made alien 
 to holiness by a darkened understanding, so that the 
 good ceased to be kuown to be good, and the evil would 
 be loved as evil, without repulsion, without a sense of 
 offence, without the warning of a conscience. We 
 should be children of disobedience, to whom disobe- 
 dience had grown to be the very nature, so that we 
 followed its inspirations blindly, and felt no better 
 stirrings, and looked for no higher aim, without hope 
 and without God. This is the kingdom of that dark- 
 ness, which we are only held back from becoming, 
 because God has never yet left us to ourselves. 
 
 This, then, is the condition out of wliich God saves 
 us, this and nothing less. So far as we ourselves went, 
 we had given ourselves indeed over to this ; and, if so, 
 then from such a domination of utter darkness and 
 death nothing could deliver but the sheer violence 
 of God's Will, which could, without hel p from us within, 
 shatter, by the strong impulse of its inherent love, our 
 horrible imprisonment, and could seize us, and lay fast 
 hold, and force us into new shape, and remake us from 
 head to foot, and change us into another thing, by the 
 mighty working of its own vivifying efficacy; and this 
 it is which was done in Christ, blessed be God 1 
 
SERMON XIIL 
 
 THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS.— I. ^ 
 
 " W^t prtacJj <SL^x\si crucifiett, unto tfje 3cfos a stumblingblock, anli 
 tmto tijc ffirrriks foolisfjnrss ; but unto tJjcm faijicf) arc calkti, botlj 3cbjs 
 anil Grcchs, (Cijrist, tije yobcf of ffioJ, auD tljE ffiHistiom of ffio5."— 
 I Cor. i. 23, 24. 
 
 The Cross of Christ is, at once, tbe close of our sbame, 
 and the beginning of our glory. In one and the same 
 act, the penalty is paid for our sin, and the medicine 
 is applied which heals unto salvation. 
 
 Therefore it is that the Cross is no scene, merely, 
 of a tragedy under the darkness of which we cower; 
 but it is for us the hope that enlightens, the light 
 that saves ; and, far and wide, most lovely are the feet 
 of them that bring us its good tidings, of them who 
 preach Christ Crucified. 
 
 Christ Crucified, is not only a pathetic Atonement 
 for the Fall, not only the Victim of Good Friday ; 
 He reigns from the Tree, with an Easter glory, as 
 " the Wisdom of God, and the Power of God." For the 
 Cross is a remedy as well as an expiation : it is the 
 application of Divine skill to the solution of an ancient 
 wrong : it rectifies, it heals. And this it can only do 
 if it acts by method, and by rule. If the Cross is to be 
 a remedy, which cures, then it cannot be a carnal boon, 
 
 ' It may be noted, to avoid confusion, that these Sermons on For- 
 giveness do not press the analogy between what the physician can 
 succeed in doing for the bodily patient, and what God does for the 
 soul in the Incarnation; butthey urge the analogy that exists between 
 the remedial conditions involved in healing the body, and the remedial 
 conditions involved in the rescue of the soul from sin. This analogy 
 does not the least suffer from the fact that there is nothing the 
 physician can do which is analogous to the Incarnation of Christ. 
 
Conversion. 
 
 dropped as a solace or a compensation out of a rich 
 man's abundance. 
 
 For what is a remedy? It is force scientifically 
 applied ; it is power directed by wisdom. It is that 
 which applies itself to some definite conditions: it 
 places itself in exact and definite relations to that 
 which it would heal. It proposes to heal some par- 
 ticular sickness — that and no other : it meets a distinct 
 case — that and not another. Kemoved out of its con- 
 text, and circumstances, and antecedents, any remedy 
 would become wholly unintelligible, needless, foolish. 
 
 And the Cross is a scientific remedy for sin, directed 
 against a particular and definite set of conditions, 
 according to the purpose and direction of God ; it 
 is the application of His Power and Mind, by careful 
 method, by intelligent discretion, to a disease which 
 He alone could measure and appraise. 
 
 Christ Crucified is the Wisdom and the Power of 
 God, as directed against definite evil. And everything 
 therefore depends on our right estimation of the evil. 
 Isolate the Cross from its conditions — look at it alone, 
 and out of context — and it is bound to appear to you as 
 meaningless and as foolish as would any other remedy 
 which you divided from its definite relations. " Sacri- 
 fice, Atonement, the Sprinkling of Blood, Mediation ! " 
 here is indeed a strange, an unintelligible language 
 to those who have no gauge and no appreciation of 
 the corruption from which these words receive their 
 purpose and their application. 
 
 Ah yes ! no wonder that to the Greeks the Cross 
 should appear foolishness. To the Greeks ! — to the 
 
The Law of Forgiveness. 
 
 193 
 
 young, the buoyant, the cheery-hearted ; to all those, 
 who have not yet tasted the bitterness of death ; to 
 all who have shut their eyes and closed their hearts 
 against the inevitable, and have put oflf the thought 
 of the evil day ; and have covered themselves with 
 flowers, and have hidden themselves behind pleasant 
 screens, and have hugged the sweet gifts of mother 
 earth; — to these, to such as these, what else could 
 it possibly apj)ear — that Bloody Cross, that Broken 
 Body — but a blunder, a disaster, a folly ? 
 To the Greeks — foolishness. 
 
 And to the Jews ; to the respectable and the self- 
 contented ; to the worldly, the unalarmed ; to those 
 fortified in the plump complacencies of middle age ; 
 to the smooth crowd of the successful, swathed in 
 self-impoitance and fed with comfortable flatteries; 
 to those who, from the vantage-ground of assured self- 
 righteousness, can so easily see the failings of others, 
 and are convinced of their own peculiar value, as 
 guides to the blind, as instructors of the foolish, 
 teachers among babes ; to those who cannot but feel 
 themselves too important, too precious, too good, too 
 worthy, for God ever to condemn ; — to those among 
 us who are Jews, that white Body nailed to the bitter 
 Tree, smitten with the curse of the outcast, hung out 
 to infamous shame — to the Jews, no doubt, it is a 
 stumbling-block. 
 
 Yes ; to the whole and to the sound, the Physician 
 seems very needless and absurd; and his elaborate 
 prescriptions look most tiresome and pedantic. 
 
 But to those who are sick. Ah ! they know what it 
 
 o 
 
194 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 means ; they know to whom to look. They understand 
 that serious eye of the doctor, that rigid discipline, 
 that ordered apparatus, those intricate instruments. 
 To them, who have the key, it is a very different matter ; 
 everything is intelligible, everything is expected, everj^- 
 thing is justified. To them, it is just what tliey most 
 urgently need, and most thankfully receive ; " to them 
 it is, indeed, the Wisdom of God and the Power of 
 God." 
 
 It is the sickness that determines the remedy. 
 Out of the conditions of the sickness wliich it cures, 
 the remedy must receive its interpretation. Let us 
 consider, then, the conditions of this our sickness of 
 sin, and the mode in which they would affect the 
 character of the cure. 
 
 Sickness and sin — the words run together. And, yet, 
 there is a most vital distinction that must be drawn. 
 Of the two, it is the sichiess, to which we are most 
 sensitive ; for sickness pains us, and we all can feel 
 this. But in the case of sin, each sin dulls us to the 
 sense of sinning ; the more we sin, the less it pains us 
 to sin ; we grow insensible, undistressed. Tlie sin dis- 
 appears out of our range of sensitive experience ; we 
 lose the capacity to feel, or to perceive it. But, while 
 the misery of sinning vanishes, the misery of the sick- 
 ness remains ; it remains, as sharp and bitter as ever, 
 though its cause is no longer experienced. The sick- 
 ness remains ; and it is the sickness which we so 
 repudiate and abhor. The sin ? That may seem to us 
 a very liglit affair, that could easily be wiped out by a 
 little regret, by a rapid confession. But we are weak. 
 
The Law of Forgiveness. 195 
 
 diseased, impotent : and that is miserable ; and we 
 loathe it; and it seems a violation of our being, an 
 offence against God's creation, a breacli in His inten- 
 tion and laws ; and we cry to Him, in our wretchedness, 
 the one cry to be healed — " Take it away, this misery, 
 
 0 God ! Sickness, impotence, death are hated, surely, 
 of Thee ! Give me back sight ! Heal my boy whom 
 
 1 love — he is very ill ! Oh, bid me rise up and walk ! 
 Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not 
 died." 
 
 Sickness, impotence, death — these appear to us 
 unnatural and abnormal evils, which God is bound 
 to sweep from us, if He is a merciful Father, Who 
 forgives; and, so feeling, it startles us to discover that 
 the Cross of Christ, our sovereign remedy, has taken 
 away so little of our misery ; has left us still, as of 
 old, in a world crowded with ancient wrongs, and woes, 
 and death, — in a world still swept by pestilence and 
 scoured by war. 
 
 But have we not been making a perilous mistake ? 
 Let us be very clear about it. Sickness, as sickness, is 
 not itself a violation of nature, a breach in the normal 
 rules and laws of life. The sin which caused it — this, 
 indeed, violates the order of nature ; but not the sick- 
 ness. Nay ! sickness belongs to the same natural 
 order as health ; it proceeds by the same rules ; it 
 issues out of the same conditions; it manifests the same 
 system. It is not one set of laws that make sickness, 
 and another health ; but the same set of laws which, 
 under one set of circumstances, make health, make 
 disease under another. 
 
196 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 How did the circumstances clmnge? Ah, that is 
 another question. A wrong direction has beeo taken ; 
 the equilibrium of forces has been changed : that, 
 indeed, was unnatural, and wrong, and lawless. But, 
 given the new direction, given the changed conditions, 
 then sickness exhibits the working of law as exquisitely, 
 as flawlessly, as the most beautiful health. 
 
 It is as when a smooth and sliding river meets some 
 sudden shallows down which its deep waters sweep over 
 barring rocks and jagged edges. How all is changed 
 in a moment ! Up above, is the sweet and quiet peace 
 of silent waters, gliding in massive stillness, with only 
 a dreaming eddy here and there to mark the unbroken 
 motion ; and, below, is the wild chaos of the rapids, a 
 mob of waters, shaken into seething foam, tumbling 
 floods that roar and screech as they hurl themselves 
 along to join the fury of the fall. Yes, a change 
 indeed ! And yet every flying drop of those crashing 
 waters is shot hissing into the abyss, by the steady 
 undeviating action of those very laws which held them 
 silent and repressed, as they slid, without a sound, 
 down the grooved channels between the even banks. 
 
 So with sickness : it works by law, by nature ; and if 
 so, then by a law which is God's own — by a nature 
 which still, in its sickness, exhibits Divine workmanship 
 and Divine Will. The advance of a cancer is, in itself, 
 as regular and as perfect as the growth of a plant ; and 
 the outbreak of a fever is, to the eye of the physician, 
 as delicate and as beautiful a process as the blossoming 
 of flowers. 
 
 Nay, more : a great part of sickness is the protest of 
 
The Lazv of Forgiveness. 197 
 
 nature against the wrong, that it has brought about 
 the misdirection. Through these miseries, these 
 struggles of ours, nature is seeking to liberate herself 
 from distorted conditions, to throw out the poison, to 
 break up the thwarting obstractions. The release 
 from the internal wrong is to be won by giving the 
 violence of the disease full play ; and the aim of the 
 ■wise physician is, not to check or repress the sickness, 
 for that would be to shut the door against relief; but 
 to work with the sickness, to co-operate with the pro- 
 test of nature. 
 
 What can he do ? He has three modes by which he 
 can render assistance. 
 
 First, he may devote himself to preventing a re- 
 currence or a continuance of the wrong which has 
 brought about the misdirection of forces. Nature is 
 making her struggle against the wrong already done : 
 that she must be left to do ; the misery incident to 
 that stru^'gle cannot be helped when once the wrong 
 has been done. But if we can count on nature settinjr 
 herself to undo the wrong, nature must count on our 
 seeing to it that the wrong is not incessantly repro- 
 duced. 
 
 This first; and, secondly, tlie physician aims at 
 supporting and succouring the vital forces, that they 
 may not give way under the violence of the fight. 
 In sickness, nature is battling for life ; but the effort 
 at recovery may be too severe, too terrible, for the 
 patient to endure or to survive. The physician can 
 aid in replenishing the inner forces, that they may be 
 enabled to endure the agony of the relieving process. 
 
Conversion. 
 
 And, thirdly, he is bound to detect, within the very 
 heart of the disease, the elements «nd the conditions of 
 a complete renewal. There must be a vitality shut up 
 within the sickness, which is struggling, not merely 
 to survive, but to recover its footing, to renew its 
 dominion over the diseased flesh, to regain its normal 
 action and functions, to purge out all poisonous matter. 
 The physician must assume this power of renewal ; for 
 without it he could do nothing. If it is once there, he 
 can co-operate from without ; he can remove obstruc- 
 tions, he can untwist all the tangles, uproot all that 
 clogs. He works from without to liberate an original 
 principle of vitality and health, that can respond from 
 within to this co-operation ; but the vitality must be 
 there. 
 
 Forgive me if this has seemed long and remote ; for 
 the interpretation of Christ's cure depends on our 
 understanding these, the conditions of all remedy. 
 
 Christ, to our surprise, instead of sweeping away the 
 suffering and the death wliich to us seemed the supreme 
 evils, adopted them for His own portion, and left thera, 
 in their violence and their shame, for us to endure. 
 Well, we now may ask, what else should He do ? A 
 remedy must co-operate with the disease ; it must lay 
 itself alongside of the sickness ; it must make the 
 sickness its ally. For the sickness is, as a mere 
 consequence of certain conditions, perfectly natural, 
 perfectly lawful, perfectly justifiable. Its actual work- 
 ing manifests God's laws, and, therefore, God's Will, 
 as faultlessly as the working of those same laws in 
 health. 
 
The Lazu of Forgiveness. 
 
 199 
 
 If the wrong lias been done, there is bound to be 
 sickness. If the sickness were swept away, without 
 the wrong that produced it being wiped out, or can- 
 celled, God's world would be thrown into confusion ; 
 God would have broken His own creation to pieces. 
 
 But how can the wrong done be cancelled, or blotted 
 out? The sin has been sinned; human life has been 
 misdirected, perverted, obstructed, distorted. That is 
 done. Notliing can gainsay that. Nothing can make 
 it not have been done — nothing except the annihila- 
 tion of creation. 
 
 And if it has been done, then human nature is 
 necessarily sick and suffering. Nothing can save it 
 from that. 
 
 What, then, is possible? One way, and one way 
 only. The way of medicine: the way which the 
 knowledge of sickness, and its cure, interprets and 
 justifies. 
 
 God Himself will co-operate with the sickness : will 
 enter Himself under its miserable conditious. la 
 there an) thing offensive to Him in this — degrading, 
 defaming? Nay! the laws of sickness are His own 
 laws : He does but put Himself under Himself. There 
 is nothing in sickness, or in pain, which is essentially 
 abhorrent, as such, to God, except the misdirection 
 which produced it. There is nothing evil in itself, 
 except an evil will. And this is why Christ, the 
 Blessed Son, in laying Himself down under the black 
 scourge of death, finds no hand laid upon Him but 
 the Hand of His Father. The cup of pain which 
 He drinks comes from no devil. Not even in the 
 
200 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 darkest hour, has the Prince of this World anything 
 ill Him. The cup, the bitter cup, the cup so bitter 
 and so fierce that He Himself shrinks from tasting 
 its terrible wine — that cup is given Him of no one 
 but the Father. Hunor, tlien, on His Cross, He has 
 never fallen one hair's-breadth outside the Father's 
 Will. The laws, that make His afBiction, are them- 
 selves expressive of the Father's purpose: He is still, 
 in His Agony, " One with the Father." 
 
 Christ co-operates with the sickness; He is made 
 one with our sick flesh and blood. How that task is 
 accomplished will be considered in the two following 
 sermons. But, before closing, let me illustrate the 
 distinction that has been drawn between the cause and 
 the effects of sin, in a matter that is just now very 
 near to us. Perhaps one practical instance may make 
 the distinction clear, and real, and living to us. The 
 thrill and the terror of war are shaking the hearts of 
 the people,^ and once again we wake to the strange 
 and perplexing distinction between the faith we hold 
 and the scene in which it displays itself. What does 
 it mean, this our Gospel of peace and of goodwill, with 
 its fearless acce[)tance of the savage horrors of war ? It 
 comes with its sweet. Angel-song, breaking out of 
 Heaven over shepherds 'mid their sleeping flocks ; and 
 lo ! it thrusts and plunges itself down into the thick 
 press of this wild earth, where swords are smiting and 
 the hot blood flies. How is this ? 
 
 And we can answer — It sets itself, first, with all the 
 
 * Preacned at time of excitement against Russia over affairs 
 at Penjdeli, on Afghan frontier 
 
The Law of Forgiveness. 201 
 
 wisdom and the power of tlie Cross, against the motives 
 and the temper that are the causes of war. It cannot 
 tolerate, it h)athes, it uproots, not only the fierce greeds 
 and ambitious, which we all "are so ready to condemn 
 and which we so easily detect in every nation but our- 
 selves; but also that barbarian temper which is now 
 so busy and so loud among us — that bad animal-blood, 
 which rouses itself within us all at the rumour and 
 the touch of a quarrel — that spirit of pugnacity, so 
 clamorous to take offence, so apt and quick with taunt 
 and challenge, as it kindles with the tingling heat of 
 passion until its fingers itch for the fight. Ah ! how 
 we have felt it all about us of late, rising like a steam 
 of vaporous irritation, which is ready, at any touch 
 of provocation, to rush into a flame. How swiftly this 
 temper lays hold of us ! How soon w^e learn to dis- 
 guise it under brave titles! Yet, for all its fine 
 names, it is the beast within us which is stirring, alive 
 still in spite of the discipline and the pressure of 
 Christian centuries, untamed by the wisdom of the 
 Cross, untouched by the meekness and gentleness of 
 Jesus. 
 
 With this evil spirit of pugnacity the faith of 
 Christ can make no terms at all. It bans it utterly ; 
 it purposes, not to moderate, but to expunge it, in the 
 Name of Him Who never flung back taunt against 
 taunt ; Who, " when He was reviled, reviled not 
 again;" Who never sank to the level of those who 
 attacked Him; Who gave Himself over to unpro- 
 testing death rather than permit personal honour. His 
 personal " prestige," to assert itself by one syllable of 
 
202 
 
 Conversion, 
 
 retort ; " Who was led as a lamb to the slaugliter," 
 and Whom no insult and no blow could persuade " to 
 open His mouth." 
 
 This is the Lamb of God ; Who, if we but believe 
 Him, would take away out of the world the sius that 
 make our wars. But then, that is only half the task 
 set before Him. The causes are condemned : there 
 remain the effects, the facts. War is there, the pro- 
 duct of old wrong; war exists, it occurs, it recurs, it is 
 part and parcel of the state of things : and Christianity 
 closes with this world as it finds; it sets itself to 
 possess the facts just as they are; it lays itself to 
 them, face to face, to refashion them from within ; 
 and the courage with which it coalesces with the facts, 
 in all their repugnant horror, is the measure of its 
 spiritual potency, of its prophetic mission. And how 
 freely, with what gallant abandonment, does the Spirit 
 of Christ knit itself to the facts of war ! Down 
 into the very thick, into the very core of its wild 
 tumult, it throws itself, it dives, it burrows, it buries 
 itself. It winds itself in: it pierces into the inner- 
 most soul of this savage passion. It possesses itself of 
 its deepest secrets — the secret of duty, of patriotism, of 
 self-surrender. It seizes on these, it purges them, it 
 refashions, it transfigures them ; and lo, there emerges 
 out of the noise and the agony, out of the blood, and 
 fire, and vapour of smoke, a new and lovely vision — the 
 vision of a Christian hero — of a soldier saint. Faith 
 in the meekness of Jesus wins material for itself out 
 of the heart of war : it finds, amid the mad cruelties 
 of slaughter, new reasons for gentleness, new motives for 
 
The Law of Forgiveness. 
 
 203 
 
 peace ; and slowly it builds up the character of the 
 happy warrior, of him — 
 
 " Wlio doomed to go in company with pain, 
 And fear, and bloodshed, miserable train — 
 Turns tliis necessity to glorious gain: 
 Controls them, and subdues, transmutes, bereaves 
 Of tlieir bad iuflutnce, and their good receives; 
 By objects, which might force the soul abate 
 Her feeling, rendered more compassionate; 
 As more exposed to sulfering and distress, 
 Thence also more alive to tenderness." 
 
 My brethren, courage is not of this fashion in its 
 natural condition. The rough native audacity, which 
 flung the Arabs against our squares at Abu Klea, is a 
 temper which, in its unchastened force, falls as a 
 tyrannous curse upon all the weak — upon the women 
 whom it degrades, and the boys whom it sells and 
 enslaves. But the Cliristian Gordon, with a courage at 
 least as stubborn and at least as reckless as theirs, wrings 
 out of the heart of battle a chivalry for the weak, which 
 is delicate as a woman's, and a pity for the fallen, 
 which is tender as a child's. Yea ! out of the strong 
 our faith sucks sweetness ; out of the eater it can win 
 meat ; even as Samson found, within the grim and 
 horrid carcase of the lion, the happy homely noise of 
 buzzing bees. 
 
 Faith can do it — faith in the Wisdom of God, and the 
 Power of God. And that faith is ours. We may not 
 be asked to learn its wisdom and its power in the hot 
 agonies of war. But the same secret is at work under 
 all clouds of suffering, and misery. Will you believe 
 its wisdom — will you trust its power — when you lie 
 smitten, paralysed, tortured, impotent, battling for 
 
204 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 life with some sore sickness, beaten, bruised, blinded? 
 "Will you then make no wild protest, and send out no 
 complaining cry ? Will you lie still, shut up within 
 the pain, wrapped round with folds of miserable sick- 
 ness ? Will you be content to commit yourself only 
 to the name of Christ crucified ? Will you ask no 
 question at all, but simply let its power work upon 
 you in and through the sickness itself — seeing nothing, 
 knowing nothing — only committed, only resigned to 
 the Lord Jesus, — lying under His Eye, under His Hand, 
 as under a good Physician, Who knows all, and is 
 doing all, though the sickness still tarries, though the 
 fever does not abate ? You may feel no change — bitter 
 the disappointment ! — hour after hour ; but oh ! He 
 knows, with those quiet, strong eyes of His. He bides 
 His time ; He is measuring the emergency ; He is 
 anticipating the crisis ; He is following the sickness 
 step by step ; He is ready, unsurprised, unalarmed. 
 Oh, let Him do what He will ! Doubt Him not. 
 Trouble Him not. Lie there until the change comes — 
 until the new secret begins to work, as work it will ; 
 and. you, at last, will feel its power, and it will be 
 to you as if you heard, within the dead carcase of yuur 
 distress, the soft sweet humming of the bees. 
 
SERMON XIV. 
 
 THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS.— II. 
 
 " ^nti, bEf)oIlJ, tfjcg irouiffjt to p?tm a man sicfe of tljc palsg, Iging on 
 a tirti : anti Scsus, seeing tfjttr faitf), sail unto t\)t sick of tijc palsj, Son, 
 te of gooa rijccr; tijg sins be forgibm ttjcc." — Matt. ix. 2. 
 
 To our uninstructed eyes, when we are brought face 
 to face with a disease, the scene is one of unqualified 
 misery. There lies the sick man, restless, shaken by 
 terrors, his brow wet with the sweat of his agony, his 
 eyes staring, or closed with the weariness of pain. It 
 is a horrible thing to watch : a horrible thing for a 
 father to stand by while the devil shaketh his child, 
 throwing him on the ground and rending him so that 
 he gnasheth his teeth and pineth away ; a miserable 
 and a terrible sight for us to watch, and kneel, while 
 we are helpless, and can bring no relief and can win no 
 succour out of any pitying heaven, and have only 
 to pray and cry, and yet can find no man who can cast 
 out this devil from the child. Who is there that 
 will make it all end? "Lord, come down ere my 
 boy die." 
 
 And no doubt we are right to be terrified, to cry out 
 to God. 
 
 This dismay is the evidence and proof of some 
 tremendous wrong that has been done upon the earth. 
 
2o6 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 It is an evidence that God's order has been broken; 
 God's honour outraged; God's oath violated. Sick- 
 ness brings it all out to the light. It is made visible, 
 in order to convince us of all that which we have so 
 easily passed over. God, Whom we, with a light heart, 
 offend every hour, every minute, without a scruple, 
 witliout a fear, may well bring us to book by this stern 
 discipline. He may well shake us, as men are shaken 
 to save them from sinking to some fatal slumber under 
 numbing snows. Anything to be kept awake ! A 
 wrong has been done to God, and if we cannot see it in 
 one sha[)e, let us, in God's holy Name, have it forced 
 upon us in another. If our sin leaves us unalarmed 
 and unabashed, then let our misery, our unrest, bring 
 us back in penitence to God's breast. We may be 
 driven to seek God through wretcliedness, as those 
 poor ignorant Galileans who followed the Lord, seek- 
 ing, pursuing, never letting Him rest, if only they 
 might drag their sores and their sickness to His 
 blessed and merciful feet. 
 
 And yet this is but the first, rude, ignorant move- 
 ment of the fallen spirit. It cries to God to cancel its 
 wretchedness — that first : but the wretchedness is not 
 itself the wrong that has been done to God ; it is but 
 the proof and the witness of wrong. The wrong lies 
 beyond, far behind, in some perverted motives, in some 
 misdirected life. Sickness, whether it be sickness of 
 body or sickness of soul, only makes it unmistakable 
 that some secret disturbance has taken place, out of 
 which disturbance, by perfect, and orderly, and natural 
 rule, in obedience to the entire harmony of God's 
 
The Laiu of Forgiveness. 
 
 207 
 
 creation, the changed condition follows which causes 
 us so much pain. It is this spiritual wrong that we 
 discover in its horror, through the sharp evidence of 
 God's goad as we kick against the pricks. If we bruise 
 ourselves acrainst the wall in the dark, it is not the 
 bruise that we complain of; the blow itself is but the 
 notice that we have missed our way. And the cry- 
 that we should send up to God in hours when the world's 
 woe smites us heavily is not, " 0 God, I ask Thee 
 this one thing, that Thou shouldest sweep away this 
 sickness," but, " O God, I see, I know, I feel now, the 
 hideous wrong that in the ages have been done against 
 Thy name ; that old recklessness in lust, that old, bad 
 excess wherein the human race, Thy child, has wasted 
 its substance in riotous living ; I know it now, my 
 God, more as it is in Thy Eyes ; nor am I guiltless. 
 I have been a partaker of that guilt ; I, too, have added 
 to the sins of my forefathers ; oh, leave me sick, if it be 
 Thy Will ; but at least have mercy on my sin ! " 
 
 That is what our Lord desired to win from those 
 Galileans who crowded behind Him, like wounded 
 animals, driven to Him only by their blind desire to 
 escape from feeling wretched. This is what He desired, 
 and this is what He could not win, and because He 
 could not win it He made Himself strange to them ; 
 He fled far from them over the lake into the desolate 
 wilderness, to escape their importunity. He hid Him- 
 self, and He cried out against them when they came 
 pursuing Him with their sickness, " Oh, faithless and 
 perverse generation, how long shall I bear with thee ; 
 how long shall I suffer you ? " They were meant to 
 
208 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 learn a nobler lesson — the lesson which was first opened 
 to the paralytic man, let down with so much trouble 
 from the roof, who, in response to his anxious pursuit 
 of deliverance and health, heard, for his reward, not, 
 " Rise and walk," but only, " Son, be of cheer ; thy 
 sins be forgiven thee." For if the Pharisees had never 
 jeered or disputed at the forgiveness of sin, would our 
 Lord have ever added His healing word ? Would not 
 the man have been left there, lying impotent as ever, 
 with no release from that disease until the day of his 
 death ? If so, that would have been his moral proba- 
 tion. Would he, or would he not, have been bravely 
 satisfied to have heard as his reward for all his follow- 
 ing after the Lord. " Son, lie thou on thy bed, and fear 
 not ; let thy four faithful bearers carry thee away by 
 the way whereby they came. Let no sweet and secret 
 change pass over thy withered limbs; but, for all 
 that, be of good cheer, go in peace; great is thy 
 faith, and great is thy reward ; for thy sins are 
 forgiven thee " ? 
 
 Sickness is the witness to us of wrong that has been 
 done. It is the handwriting on the wall, wherewith a 
 man's hand writes the word that tells that we have been 
 weighed in the balances and found wanting. And in 
 this sense it is a judgment ; it makes known the curse 
 of sin. But that is not all. The misery of sickuess 
 witnesses not only to the wrong done, but also to the 
 right that has been lost. Sickness is the protest made 
 by nature against the misdirection of her forces. And 
 in this sense it does not dower as with a curse, but cries 
 out against the sin: "I have sinned, and lo, I am 
 
The Law of Forgiveness. 209 
 
 sick. I have left God's Will, and lo, I am miserable. 
 Yes, blessed be the Name of the Lord for that sickness, 
 for it proclaims that I was never meant to take that 
 road. Thanks to His mercy for this misery, for it 
 burns into me the good news that I was never made 
 for sinning. If by sinning I grow sick, then I must 
 be made for obedience, for purity, for self-control, for 
 God. It is by dropping away from God that 1 have 
 grown disordered and corrupt. Oh, let me lift up my 
 voice in prayer and praise to Him Whom, now first, 
 I know to be my life and my health. T was made 
 good, for evil slays me ; it is alien, horrible, unnatural. 
 Lord, this house of sin is no home for me. I will 
 return to Him from Whom I fled — to my own Father 
 in the house at home, Whose son I still discover myself 
 to be, unworthy as I am to be called by His Name, 
 here among swine in a far country." 
 
 Sickness is to the eyes of the physician the revela- 
 tion of the laws of health. In the violence of the 
 outbreak he recognises the determination with which 
 the organic structure battles against the mischief done 
 to it. He watches it all with a sympathetic care as it 
 writhes and pants under the pressure of hostile forces, 
 and his task is to co-operate with the sickness for the 
 recovery at which it resolutely aims. But, first, before 
 he begins the remedy, he has to cut off the secret 
 sources of wrong. Until these are stopped, all his 
 handling of the sickness can only be an idle palliation. 
 How, then, is our wrong to be cut off by God our Good 
 Physician? This spiritual sickness from which we 
 suffer, this poverty of love, this impotence of will, this 
 
2IO 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 corruption of desire, how is its great source unseen to 
 be stanched ? 
 
 For this is the terror that has fallen upon us. We 
 thought we could sin and repent and be free from 
 our sin ; we turned back from our wrong-doing so 
 Boon as we found its taste was as bitter as gall and 
 its virtue to be dust. We loathe it now we have 
 done it. Would that it were undone. We would 
 hurry back now to our old place in Eden, shut in by 
 the fourfold waters of the quiet garden. But lo ! our 
 sin has made us sick, and our sickness holds us 
 fast bound, bound by our sin. Our knees are weak, 
 we cannot rise and run, our heart fails us with its 
 poverty of blood ; we cannot desire God as we once 
 did, and we have tasted the fruit and we cannot but 
 remember how sweet it felt in the mouth before it 
 turned to dust. That sweetness returns to us again 
 and again; oh that we could forget it! Alas! alas! 
 we remember it too well, and, remembering it, we long 
 to repeat its pleasure. Nor can all the sure experi- 
 ences of its secret bitterness banish the horrid appetite 
 for yet another taste of its terrible juice. We were 
 so confident, at first, that we would never do it again. 
 So we think while repentance bites and while tempta- 
 tion is out of the way. And then — who can believe 
 it even of himself? — somehow that fountain of regret 
 has gone ; its waters run dry ; and we cannot sustain 
 ourselves at the level of our repentance, and our forces 
 flag. We had wrought ourselves up, and now it has 
 all slackened, and we feel stale and flat and demoralised ; 
 and back with a sudden rush the old wrong streams 
 
The Law of Forgiveness. 2 1 1 
 
 in like a flood ; onr footing is shaken. One effort, and 
 then we are gone whither the strong currents carry 
 us ! Our imagination is swept into captivity ; we are 
 borne down the stream, and the banks on which we 
 were ouce securely standing, the banks of a secure 
 and well-ordered life, with the busy cities, the patient 
 fields, where men still plougli, and sow, and gather 
 into barns, tliey all pass us by. Faster and faster we 
 go down the rough currents, unresistingly, knowing 
 only that at last we shall hear the angry moaning 
 of some dark and dreadful sea. 
 
 We know so well, so frightfully well, that the re- 
 covery of our sickness depends upon the stoppage 
 of the secret wrong. And yet we find ourselves again 
 and again doing the wrong that we purpose to stop. 
 In discovering the misery of our sin, we discover also 
 our powerlessness to cease from sinning. It may seem 
 hard, but surely it is natural enough ? The sickness 
 that has come upon us deadens these very powers of 
 desire and will by which alone sin can be resisted and 
 beaten. And with weak will and meagre love, who 
 can hold out against a sin made stronger by the very 
 act which has impoverislied the resistance ? 
 
 The wrong cannot be cut ofi"; this is the terror of 
 the sickness that comes by sinning. And God, the 
 Physician, may lay down for us His rules, His advices, 
 His prescriptions ; by this and by that we are clearly 
 told the evil can be shunned. There they stand in 
 black and white ; all the statutes, commandments, and 
 judgments which are the laws of spiritual health ; and 
 there, too, are recoided all the palliatives, the sacrifices 
 
212 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 and offerings by which we may be made clean and 
 sound again from our defilement — and yet all is use- 
 less ! We remain what we were. We faint under the 
 burden of the Law. We cannot do the things that we 
 would; and the blood of bulls and goats cannot take 
 away our inherent and eradicable will to sin. There 
 is but one hope. If only a new fire could be shot 
 into our chilled and flagging heart; if only a fresh 
 jet of force could infuse itself into our jaded and 
 diminished will ; if only a spring of living waters could 
 be opened within that naked stone which we once called 
 our heart— that, and that only, can save us, for that, 
 and that only, can cut off the supplies of sin which 
 continually reinforce our habitual disease. 
 
 And it can be done — it has been done — by that 
 beautiful law, so natural, so rational, so intelligible, 
 so normal, of vicarious atonement. 
 
 By that law, which is already and always at the very 
 root of our human life ; the secret of all its advance, 
 of all its hope, of all its virtue, of all its honour, of 
 all its pathos, of all its loveliness, of all its fascination, 
 and of all its glory ; — by that law which knits families 
 into the blessedness of home, and friends into the 
 beauty of companionship, and armies into the grace of 
 chivalry, and nations into the splendour of patriotism ; 
 — by that very law, which is always the breath we 
 breathe, the light of all our seeing, the core of all 
 our story — by that law it is possible for God, without 
 disturbing: or traversing one atom of that natural 
 order which He has Himself sanctioned by creating, — 
 possible for Him to intervene, to break off the fearful 
 
The Law of Forgiveness. 2 1 3 
 
 entail, to shatter the chain that our sins have forged, 
 God, the Physician, can defeat disease by Himself 
 becoming the suffering patient. He may lawfully 
 do it; for physically and actually such substitution 
 is the daily and hourly incident of our corporate 
 life. And, if it is physically possible, can it be 
 questioned for a moment whether it be morally justi- 
 fiable ? Not morally justifiable ? How can anything 
 be more morally natural, more morally intelligible, 
 than for the stronger to give his strength to the weak 
 — than for the innocent to surrender his life blood 
 to shield and aid the fallen? Why, this is the very 
 instinct of all passion, the joy of all love ; this is 
 exactly what every hun)au heart understands, and 
 every conscience justifies. There is no imagination 
 so dull that it cannot welcome this, and no spirit so 
 laggard that it will not kindle at it. It is the very 
 seed from which virtue springs. Love would not be 
 moral if it were not vicarious. It is just because we 
 are socially responsible for each other's fate that we 
 are capable of virtue. We begin to be moral as soon 
 as we put ourselves into the place of another ; for this 
 is the starting-point of the very first ethical law, to 
 do unto others as we would have them do unto us. 
 And the growth of etliical force comes with the growth 
 of love — love which fulfils the whole body of the Law 
 out of the one motive of self-sacrifice for 'others; love 
 which crowns itself in that highest act, by which a 
 man will joyfully lay down his life for his friends. 
 Atonement by the innocent for the guilty not morally 
 justifiable? Eather without atonement no morality. 
 
214 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 The spirit of sacrifice is the creator of ethics, and God 
 sanctioned and sealed the entire body of ethical verities 
 by which human society is bonded and fed, when He 
 sent His Son, Who knew no sin, to be made a curse 
 for us, and to bear on His shoulders the iniquities 
 of the world. 
 
 The wrong, then, can be, and has been, undone by 
 the intervention between the sin and the sickness of 
 a stainless Will, of an untainted Desire. A divorce has 
 been effected ; God has driven in His wedge, by which. 
 He shuts off the sickness from the sin. 
 
 And now we can afford to turn and coi.sider the 
 sickness itself. Until the fertile evil could bo stayed 
 it was useless to work a cure. Every remedy would 
 be baffled by a renewal of the wrong, but now hope 
 has become at least possible. The disease smites us 
 no longer with the sense of a curse, for we are no 
 longer identified with corruption, no longer implicated 
 in its meshes. Just as from within the human soul 
 we can look out on our bodily affections as if they 
 were foreign and remote, so now our spirit has been 
 snatched by the spirit of Christ out of its spiritual 
 distress, and lifted up and carried back within the 
 shelter of His endless love ; we are drawn into the 
 vantage - ground behind and beyond our spiritual 
 disease. We have a sure footing in Christ. We can 
 stand in safety, as on the rock, above the roaring tide 
 as it lashes about our feet. We are safe, held in His 
 arms, plucked by Him out of the night. We have 
 a recess, a refuge, from which we can now look out 
 upon our own sickness at its worst period. It is out- 
 
The Law of Forgiveness. 
 
 215 
 
 side our iDiiermost life. This is the peace of the 
 forgiven : the pain may be all there still ; the sickness 
 may burn, and stingj and fight ; the misery may sweep 
 over us unappeased ; we can lie on the bitter bed 
 of our palsy of old ; and yet, miserable as we may feel 
 at our own moral corruption, we are free from its 
 condemnation, free from it in the same sense as our 
 human spirit holds itself free from the physical tortures 
 of its body. The spirit may long for relief, for cure, 
 but it knows itself apart from its bodily pains. It has 
 an existence within which they do not enter. It hears 
 what the doctor may say about them, as if they were 
 some strange matters of which it was hearing the news 
 for the first time ; it still can retain its spiritual 
 fortress which they never occupied, and within which 
 it is in peace and self-possession. 
 
 And so with the forgiven soul. All its deliverance, 
 all its cure, has indeed yet to be achieved. It has not 
 been spared, as yet, any wretchedness, any more than 
 the world in which Christ rose felt any abatement on 
 Easter Day of its wars and cruelties. But within 
 itself, in the hand of the Lord Jesus, tlie soul possesses 
 the secret of peace — peace that no storm can alarm, 
 nor even its own sinfulness can wholly break ; for it is 
 the peace of those who, although in this world they 
 have tribulation, yet are of good cheer, secure in Him, 
 Who has long ago overcome the world — the peace as 
 of those timid and sinning companions of Jesus, who 
 straitened still in the narrow, upper chamber, with 
 night and peril outside, and the doors still closed fast 
 for fear of the Jews — yet can be glad as they see the 
 
2l6 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 Lord ; can be glad as tliey feel yet once again upon 
 them the breath of His salvation, the blessing of peace 
 — peace, wrung out of the very heart of Him Who, 
 rather than pray, " Father, save me out of this hour," 
 cried, " Father, in and by this hour, wherewith my soul 
 is shaken, this hour so bitter and so black — Father, 
 through this hour, though it be unremoved, glorify 
 Thy Son." His peace we have, which He left with us. 
 His own peace which He giveth unto us ; " The peace 
 of God which passeth all understanding." 
 
 There yet remains for us to consider the slow and 
 patient process of our cure, the carrying out of our 
 forgiveness over the surface of our disordered lives. 
 To-day, let it be enough to remember that the cure 
 must begin with forgiveness, with stanching the 
 springs of our wrong-doing. We are forgiven first, in 
 order that cure may now begin, and go forward ; for 
 it is forgiveness that makes our healing possible. For- 
 giveness of God — that must come first ; the heritage 
 of sin must be broken off, the past no longer hold 
 dominion over us. We must be forgiven. And we 
 are forgiven because a stainless Will and an untainted 
 Love have intervened within the lines of our sad story ; 
 have broken us off from the corrupt stem, and have 
 ingrafted us into themselves. This is the first step of 
 our deliverance. Much may yet be before us, but all 
 has become possible now that we have been transplanted 
 into Jesus. We can lie now on our bed, and wait for 
 Him to say, "Eise up and walk." 
 
 My brethren, we all know by a hundred wretched 
 experiences the impotence of an unnerved will, the 
 
The Law of Forgiveness. 2 1 7 
 
 poverty of a corrupt love. Our resolutions are so brave 
 until the moment comes for keeping them ; our 
 intentions are so excellent until the pressure of facts 
 confuses us ; our desires are so eager for purity, if 
 only they would not so strangely languish just as the 
 passions awake in a storm. All would be well if we 
 did not just slip and fall where it was vital to stand. 
 Most miserable this incessant collapse ! How it dis- 
 heartens ; how it disgusts ! VVe are netted as a bird. 
 "We flutter up, but the meshes once again entangle us, 
 and down we come to the ground, and the sky is as far 
 off as ever. And what if, around and about this poor, 
 this impoverished will, there was wrapped the irre- 
 sistible might of a will that had not been broken, 
 a will, new, fresh, undaunted, tough as steel, endurable 
 as stone, firm as adamant ? — what if the warmth of a 
 love were laid about it to which the emotions of impure 
 appetites are impossible ? — what if we were given up to 
 this love, so that it abode within us and possessed us, 
 and held us fast, untroubled by our disasters, unhurt 
 by our sins ? — what if, after all aur sinning, we still 
 could turn back again and again to find this loving 
 will there still, pure and strong as ever within us, still 
 pressing, with unwearied patience, on towards the 
 beauty of holiness, with its unwavering eyes ever fixed 
 on the face of God ? Would not this be enough ? would 
 not this be salvation? would not this be peace? " Ye 
 shall mount on eagles' wings." That is our splendid 
 assurance. No longer that fluttering tumult of the 
 poor captives, tangled in the snare ! Nay ! but " on 
 eagles' wings" — the wings of God under us, kingly 
 
2l8 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 and unconquerable, as they beat tlieir strong way 
 upwards, let the winds blow as they may: "on eagles' 
 wings " — the wings of a holy will, the wings of a clean 
 desire laid under us to bear us upwards. This may be 
 yours, you who are in sickness, infirm, or palsied, or 
 dead. This uplifting power may be made your own, 
 if you will but forsake your own mode of cure, your 
 own meiiicines, your own wisdom, and come and lay 
 yourself at the feet of Him Who alone can make a 
 breach in your sad captivity ; Who, through His very 
 Mfiuhood has, alone, the power here on earth to forgive 
 the sins of His fellows. 
 
SERMON XV 
 
 THE LAW OF FOEGIVENESS.— III. 
 
 " i2r|}S faitf) fjatlj sabcll tIjCE."— St. Luke vii. 50. 
 
 The act of Divine forgiveness is an act of re-creation. 
 We are new-begotten by the Father, tlirough the 
 waters of regeneration. In Christ, Who is our forgive- 
 ness, we are born again ; we receive a new manhood, 
 we are made new creatures. From first to last this is 
 the language in which the New Testament expresses 
 the nature of our pardon ; and all its language is an 
 echo of the words with which the Lord opened His 
 mission in Jerusalem : " Verily, verily, I say unto you, 
 ye must be born again. Unless ye be born of water 
 and of the Spirit, ye cannot enter the Kingdom of 
 Heaven." 
 
 What does this imply ? 
 
 It means, that all our forgiven life dates itself from 
 an act of God — an act originative, antecedent, fertile. 
 God begins the work. The sickness of sin had made 
 us powerless to begin the recovery. This was our 
 confusion, our paralysis, our misery, our despair, that, 
 sorry as we might be, sick as we might feel, neverthe- 
 less not all our sorrow nor all our sickliness could 
 persuade us to love righteousness as once we loved it. 
 
220 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 nor to hate iniquity as only the unfallen spirit can 
 hate it. Do what we would, it remained sadly clear 
 that we were not at our old level ; our standards had 
 sunk, and we could not restore them to their former 
 force ; the influences in us that made after holiness were 
 impoverished ; and we, out of ourselves, had no me^ns 
 of replenishing them. No ; we cannot begin. We 
 cannot beget ourselves. That is the prime and fatal 
 difficulty. It is the new start that has become , so 
 impossible ; and yet it is the new start which is so 
 vital a necessity for us. 
 
 God must begin, if we are ever to be rescued. Here 
 is the very key of Christian theology, and the very 
 core of Ciiristian faith. Until we have laid hold of 
 this interpretation, the language of the Epistles 
 and the fabric of the Church remain hopelessly 
 unintelligible. 
 
 God must begin. This is the secret tliat burns 
 through all the strong appeals of St. Paul and St. 
 John, as they reiterate their conviction that nothing of 
 our own enters into the primary movement of our justifi- 
 cation. No goodness at all of ours drew out a response 
 from the co-operating favour of God. It was our 
 badness, not our goodness, that drew it from Heaven. 
 It was pity for our perishing that moved the Father to 
 send His Son to save the world. While we were yet 
 sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. Not because 
 Ave loved God, but because we could not love Him, 
 did His love for us break out over us in His Son. God 
 first loved us while still we loved sin rather than 
 holiness, in order that, by loving us, He might restore 
 
The Law of Forgiveness. 
 
 22 1 
 
 to us tlie lost power of loving Him. The heat of 
 His love alone it is which wakes up in our cold hearts 
 the forgotten love for Him. 
 
 We cannot be<];in until God has begun. To doubt 
 this is to be " under the Law." It was, in St. Paul's 
 language, "the Law," wliich said, "Keturn ye, My 
 people, and then I will return to you." Tliis is the 
 law of works — the law of work and wages : it said, 
 "If only you will prove our repentance, if only you 
 will turn again into the old ways, God will forgive, 
 God will be merciful!" The despair of tlie law of 
 works lay in the discovery that this preliminary effort 
 on our part was just the last effort that it was possible 
 for us to make. Nay ; if we are to be recovered 
 and recalled, we must wait for a stronger Hand than 
 ours. We have no part in it. God must antici[)ate 
 our beginning. He must take the first step ; He must 
 do something to relieve the dilemma. He must arrive 
 to succour, before we deserve anything; He must 
 forgive, before we have ceased to sin ; He must justify, 
 while still we lie guilty. 
 
 You recognise the language I am using. It recalls 
 a theology which has isolated the particular truth 
 conveyed by these terms until, in its isolation, it has 
 become grotesque, unreal, deceptive, — yes, and morally 
 perilous. But it is here, as in so many other cases, 
 the isolation of the terms, not the terms themselves, 
 which are at fault. Justification by faith, itself a 
 paradoxical expression, which can never hold itself 
 together against the analysis of a solvent and penetra- 
 ting logic, has yet a most valid signification in that 
 
222 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 deep region where the secret of life runs back, behind 
 logic, into paradox. It is the assertion of our absolute 
 exclusion from the creative act by which God acquits 
 us ; in that act we have no more part or lot than in 
 the act of our first begetting. God forgives us without 
 our helping Him. We are justified, we are acquitted 
 for and by nothing at all of our own, not even by our 
 faith. 
 
 But how, then, is it rational ? How is it intelligible ? 
 Forgiveness is liope. How can God have hope of men 
 who have proved themselves hopeless ? Forgiveness 
 is favour. How can holiness show favour to that 
 which has proved itself irredeemably corrupt ? For- 
 giveness is love. How can purity love the impure? 
 Impossible ! Yet that is what forgiveness must mean. 
 If God has forgiven sin, then God's repugnance has 
 been changed into attraction. What can so change 
 Him? 
 
 Not anything, again we say, of ours. We, in our- 
 selves, are as yet unchanged. No ! But the act by 
 which God forgives, carries with it, out of Heaven, 
 the power to work the change in us, which will justify 
 God in forgiving. God's forgiveness goes out from 
 Him in such a form that it makes us, it enables us, 
 it obliges us, to become that which we should be if 
 we deserved to be forgiven. God the Father for- 
 gives us by anticipating that which will follow on 
 His forgiveness. 
 
 How is this done? What is this strange, this 
 miraculous forgiveness ? 
 
 Christ, the Wisdom of God, the Power of God. 
 
The Law of Forgiveness. 223 
 
 God, the Father, forgives us by sending us His Son. 
 And, in saying this, we dispose of a swarm of questions 
 with which people besiege us. How is it, they ask, 
 that the Father requires this bloody scene on Calvary ? 
 Has He no forgiveness for us without shedding of 
 blood? Is He not ready to forgive us of His own 
 Will, of His own mercy ? 
 
 Yes, indeed ! He is ever ready ; He has never 
 ceased to be willing to forgive. How else, but as 
 longing to forgive, does He cry to us, all through the 
 Old Testament, the cries of a Father Whose Heart still 
 yearns over His lost children, *' 0 My people, what 
 have I done unto thee ? " "0 that Israel would have 
 hearkened unto Me ! " " Is not Ephraim a pleasant 
 child ? " " Turn ye, turn ye ; why will ye die, 0 house 
 of Israel?" "Hath the Lord any pleasure in the 
 death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from 
 his ways and live ? " " Why, why will ye die ? " 
 
 The Father has never slackened in His readiness to 
 forgive ; but how is He to forgive ? Forgiveness means 
 restored favour. What is there in us on which His 
 favour can rest ? 
 
 Forgiveness means renewed hope ; what is there in 
 us on which Divine hope can fasten ? 
 
 Forgiveness is a renewal of love ; what is there 
 He finds within us with which His love can fuse its 
 force and its fires ? 
 
 It is not that the Father is unready to forgive ; but 
 that His ready forgiveness is shut up, of melancholy 
 necessity, within Himself. It can discover no way by 
 which to enter, no point of attachment by which to 
 
224 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 lay hold. The love of God wanders round this bitter, 
 inhospitable world, and can find no haven that is not 
 barred. 
 
 And therefore it is that He sends His Son in Whom 
 His forgiveness can find a road into the repellent earth, 
 into this repugnant humanity. God's expelled for- 
 giveness, as all other doors are bolted, will open a way 
 for itself; as no man will admit it, it will itself beeome 
 a man, that it may find admittance. God will forgive 
 man in spite of man. God's forgiveness issues out of 
 Heaven in the shape of a Man, wearing human flesh. 
 Jesus Christ is the Forgiveness of the Father. The 
 Father had already forgiven the world when He sent 
 His Son to be born of the Virgin Mary, to be crucified 
 under Pontius Pilate. He arrives, bringing with Him 
 the pardon of the Father ; and this pardon is effectual. 
 For there is now in man one spot, at least, clean from 
 defilement, on which the eyes of God's purity can 
 afford to rest. There is now, amid the loveless herds 
 of sinners, one Heart, at any rate, upon which the 
 Father can risk the outpouring of His love; one 
 Body, amid the hopeless and the faithless and the 
 diseased, which can admit the rushing power of the 
 transfiguring Spirit. The love, hope, purity, of God — 
 long homeless and unhoused- — have found at last a 
 footing within our flesh, a resting-place, a habitation, 
 a temple. They had looked, and there had been no 
 man — not one that doeth good, no, not one ! — not one 
 that could respond to their appeal — not one that could 
 surrender himself to their intimacy, — no, not one ; 
 and, therefore, not one whom God could forgive. 
 
The Laiv of Forgiveness. 225 
 
 But now there is one Son of man in and tlirongh 
 "Whom God's forgiveness can begin to work. Christ, 
 the Forgiveness, becomes the one forgiven Man ; the 
 one Son, Who has sanctified Himself to do the 
 Father's Will. " Lo ; this is my beloved Son, ia 
 Whom I am well pleased." 
 
 God begins to forgive before we deserve it ; and He 
 does so by and through His Son. This is His forgive- 
 ness, which comes speaking peace to those that are 
 near, and to those that are far off. 
 
 God has forgiven us before we begin to find it out ; 
 and all our reconciliation to God is just our discovery 
 that we have long ago been forgiven in Clirist Jesus. 
 
 Just as a secret act of God's original energy underlies 
 all our natural life — one act, prevenient, enduring, 
 hidden, — so a secret act of forgiveness, original, endur- 
 ing, prevenient, underlies all our regenerate life. God 
 spoke once, " Let Us make man ; " and lo, in the unend- 
 ing force of that fiat, we all are, we have our being. 
 God spoke once in Christ, " Let Us work out man's 
 forgiveness;" and in the everlasting power of that 
 one word, so spoken and done, the new race of the 
 forgiven finds itself existing, the Church of the re- 
 deemed rises, grows, gathers, swarming upward out of 
 some hidden will, as clouds that make and build 
 themselves out of the very vacancy of air under the 
 strong eye of the risen sun. 
 
 This is the secret of Baptism. Baptism is no seal 
 of a life already restored ; it is the act by which 
 restoration is first made possible. The diseased life 
 has to be brought under the regenerating Will, for its 
 
 Q 
 
2 26 Conversion. 
 
 cure to begin. Yes, God must begin. He has origi- 
 nated a way of pardon, of healing — Christ, the 
 Wisdom of God, and the Power of God; and the 
 first thing of all to be done, is for us to be brought 
 under the influence, under the pressure, under the 
 heat, of this regenerative Wisdom. 
 
 Our cure must begin in an act by which, far back 
 in the dim and secret recesses of our life — there, where 
 God's congenial act of creation still works beneath 
 our incumbent corruption — far, far back, in the silent 
 secrecies. Impenetrable, invisible, God reverses the 
 distorted directions of our life-power, God cuts off 
 the supplies of wrong that feed the mischief, dams 
 up the current of our shame, imbeds the germinal 
 seed of our new humanity. This restorative action, 
 first lodged in His Christ, is by Him deposited 
 within the bosom of the Church, His Bride ; there 
 (as we at any rate believe) it works in its fulness, in 
 its freedom, with the least amount of check or 
 hindrance, with the least risk of loss or impoverish- 
 ment. 
 
 And, under this action, we place our babes ; that 
 it may effect its lodgment within them. Once forgiven 
 of God, the redeemed life can begin. It does not 
 start to win its forgiveness — the old, sad, wearisome 
 impossibility ! Nay, it starts forgiven. It begins 
 with forgiveness, with Atonement, and, in the power 
 of that pardon, it works out its own salvation: with 
 fear, indeed, and trembling ; but with a hope that can 
 never fail. 
 
 Never fail ! No ; for the enduring forgiveness 
 
The Laiv of Forgiveness. 227 
 
 is not in doubt ; it is not a prize for which it pain- 
 fully toils, or pitifully and brokenly prays. It abides 
 behind and beneath, a possession, untouched by its 
 own shifting feelings, deeper than its own yet irreso- 
 lute desires and wavering will. The Will of God 
 in Christ, pledged to it, certified to it, by Baptism — 
 — endures on and on through all. I fall, I faint, I 
 fail ? Yes ; but under me lie the Everlasting Arms. 
 Until I myself repudiate my Baptism, and kill out 
 my baptismal grace, I am still a forgiven man. 
 I have not lost my Gift. It is in me still. It 
 is under me. And, again and again, I may have 
 sinned, but under the covering wings of the Church, 
 through the Absolution of God's Priest, I can assure 
 myself of my full renewal, of my perfect pardon. 
 Through Absolution, the enduring efficiency of that 
 baptismal grace, not yet all lost, finds once more its 
 road unhindered, its channels unchoked. As God 
 began by forgiving me, so it is He, not I, Who begins 
 again and again, by Absolution, each stage of my 
 renewal. His grace goes before ; it makes my 
 healing possible. He sends me out forgiven, with 
 a forgiveness that is independent of my mischance ; 
 for it stands, not in my worth, but in Christ's merits. 
 And, therefore, I will not fear ; for the Rock is under 
 my feet. No ! " I will not fear, though the earth be 
 removed, or though the hills be carried into the midst 
 of the sea. Though the waters thereof rage and 
 swell, and the mountains shake at the tempest of the 
 same ; yet still, deep witliin the keep and citadel of 
 Zion, there is a river, whose streams run on untainted. 
 
228 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 making glad the city of God, the holy place of the 
 tabernacle of the Most High." 
 
 Here is the great background of our restoration. 
 God, alone, with His own Arm, brings us salvation. 
 His own force sustains Him. God acts ; we are 
 powerless, God staunches the ancient wrong. God 
 cuts us out of our evil past, running His holy 
 Will, like a knife, through the strong cords of 
 necessity which bound us to our dreadful past. God, 
 out of His sole compassion, introduces His Forgiveness, 
 in Christ Jesus, into the world ; and only by the 
 force of that antecedent forgiveness is our recovery 
 possible. 
 
 And now the scene changes! In ihQ foregrownd we 
 lie, sick, diseased, " the maimed, the halt, the blind, the 
 dumb." There we lie, one by one, each laid out on 
 his lone and miserable bed, and separately, slowly, 
 that world-wide pardon, sealed in Christ, draws 
 near, and reaches each single sufferer. It is our 
 individual recovery that is now in hand. And lo ! 
 now, at this stage, it is God Who holds back. Who 
 waits, Who cannot begin. It is we who must make 
 the start. On us the whole burden of movement 
 lies. If we will but move, God will co-operate ; but 
 we must make the first effort. God waits upon our 
 initiation. 
 
 Eemember the old scenes in Galilee. They 
 repeat themselves in us. Jesus is so withdrawn, 
 repressed, silent. The sick must seek, pursue, catch 
 Him, as He passes ; they must press in, through 
 thronging crowds, as tJie woman with the issue of 
 
The Law of Forgiveness. 229 
 
 blood. They must take up the roof, and be let down 
 by ropes. They must follow, and cry, until the Apostles 
 are weary. They must go on crying their "Jesus, 
 Son of David " with relentless persistence, against the 
 rebuke of the multitudes. 
 
 And, then, when they have reached Him, the effort 
 is still all thrown upon them. " Lord, if Thou canst ? " 
 said the poor father at the foot of the hill. "If I 
 can ? Nay ! Not if I can ; but if thou canst ! It is all 
 a question of thine energy, thy courage, thy faith ! 
 If thou canst believe, all things are possible." 
 
 And when it is done, it is as if our Lord had done 
 nothing, as if the man had done all. "Thy faith hath 
 made thee sound ! " That, and nothing else. From 
 within tl\e man the power came — a spring was opened, 
 a force set free, a key turned, a bolt flew back, and 
 lo ! it is all done in a moment. As if by the mere 
 upward pressure of the human will, strength streams 
 into his palsied limbs, health pours itself through 
 his dried veins. He stretches out his hand, long 
 withered ; he rises from his bed, and lo, he walks ! 
 It is done, and by the man himself, under the eye 
 of the Master. " Yes ; thy faith — that, and nothing 
 else — thy faith hath saved thee, hath made thee sound. 
 All things are possible to him that belie veth." 
 
 In the foreground, it is we that begin. Everything 
 turns on us. Grace is near at hand ; but we must 
 find it for ourselves. And grace, when found, still 
 demands something of us ; it is we who must 
 summon up our energy to use it, to touch it, to 
 discover its secret, to put out its power. Jesus calls 
 
230 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 upon us to act, as if we had ourselves the capacity 
 to obey. 
 
 But how, and why can He ask this ? Only because 
 that which happens in the foreground is the fruit 
 of His own antecedent action, in the secret back- 
 ground. 
 
 We are forgiven, already, in Him. He has already 
 stemmed, for us, the current of our sin. He has 
 already bound the strong man, who held us so fast, 
 and has robbed him of his authority, and has stripped 
 him of his armour-. The victory is won, long ago. 
 The cords are cut. The Power of this world has been 
 judged, mastered, cast out. The Lord has ascended, 
 to take His great power, and reign. He holds already 
 all the keys of Heaven and Hell. He sits at the right 
 Hand of God. All power is given unto Him. All 
 things move under His sway. He opens, and no man 
 shuts : He alone shuts so that no man can open. 
 It is done. It is won. He is exalted far above all 
 principalities and powers. He has stripped naked all 
 the forces of sin, and has triumphed over them oj)enly. 
 He is ascended up on high. And therefore the 
 road of escape for us is open. We are already 
 released, before we know it ; forgiven, before we have 
 begun. The past is fallen away from us. God's 
 mercy looks out upon us. We are already made free. 
 And, therefore, because of this one perfect and 
 sufficient Sacrifice long ago offered and accepted for 
 the sins of the whole world — therefore, because God 
 has lonff ajro begun on our behalf — therefore it is 
 that Christ can expect great things of us ; can look 
 
The Law of Forgiveness. 
 
 231 
 
 to us to obey; can just stand, there, and bid us " stretch 
 out our hand," or *' rise and walk " ! 
 
 In the Name of the ascended Lord — all things are 
 possible to them that believe. All things are possible, 
 just because we have not got to win, or to deserve our 
 pardon, but only to exert the forgiveness already 
 established at the right Hand of God. We have not 
 got to be forgiven ; — we were forgiven eighteen 
 hundred years ago. Now we have got to discover 
 it for ourselves ; to use the promise sealed to us ; to 
 put out the powers that are in us from God. 
 
 You are forgiven. Now, try what it means to be 
 forgiven. " Stretch out your hand ! " Rise from your 
 sick sins ! " Rise, and walk ! " Try it ! Begin ! Believe 
 that it is done, and make a start ! 
 
 " Oh ! but I have so long forgotten," you say, 
 " those ways of spiritual living ! This old world 
 of faith has all become dim, remote, unreal to me. 
 I have lost the taste. My love for holiness is 
 withered. I have no instinct after purity. I have 
 no spiritual organ : it is diseased, palsied. I do 
 not see the things you speak of. I do not hear 
 those voices you promise me. I am weak, thin, 
 paralysed, how can I rise and walk, in this heavenly 
 kingdom of yours ! It is years and years since I 
 really felt at home in it, or moved amid its mysteries, 
 and understood its language, and fed on its sweet 
 secrets, — years and years ago ! Now it is all gone 
 from out of me ; and lusts are strong, and habits are 
 rooted, and all is bent one way. I cannot do it ! " 
 YoxL cannot; but Jesus is gone up on high, above 
 
232 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 every name that is named. He has broken off your 
 cords. The past is dead — He has killed it. The 
 ropes lie still tied round your arms ; but they are 
 cut. You are loose ; for He has redeemed you. 
 You can start afresh, to-day, from the beginning ; 
 for He has bound the strong man. Your organs, 
 your spiritual faculties, were withered and maimed ; 
 but a new creative action is at work within you ; 
 you have been taken into the forgiveness of Christ, 
 and that forgiveness is a force that re-creates. 
 It has all been done for you. 
 
 Try. Believe. Look up at Jesus. Do just what 
 He tells you. With eyes rooted on His, begin. 
 Stretch out that withered hand of yours. You can 
 do it; for He orders it, Who has already Himself 
 made it possible. Leave that weary, weary bed of 
 miserable sinning. Kise ; rise and walk. Forget 
 the long years behind you, the sad dreary sickness, 
 the terrible memories. Look at the Master, and lo! 
 it comes ; it is done. You rise under His magic. 
 You are doing what He bids. You are doing the 
 impossible. Before you know how, the weakness has 
 dropped away from you ; you are carrying your bed. 
 
 God, the Father, of His good mercy, grant that all 
 those who so lie sick, may press, ai;d touch the hem 
 of His garment, that they may know in themselves 
 that they are healed of their plagues I 
 
SERMON XVL 
 
 THE COMING OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 "3nli !}at|j tnaliE us able mtntsters of tfje Ntto STrstamcnt ; not of tfje 
 letter, but of ti)e sjiirit : for tfje letter feillctfj, but tije spirit gifartfj life. 
 JFor if tfje ministration of licatfj, Written ant rngrabrn in stones, bias 
 glorious, so tf)at tije cfjiftren of Israel eoulli not steJfastlg befjolli tt)E 
 face of f-Eloscs for tfje glorg of i)is eountenance, feijicij glorg feas to be 
 5one afaag; f)oSa sfjall not tfje ministration of tf)e spirit be ratfjer 
 glorious ? " — 2 Cor. iii. 6, 7. 
 
 What is this contrast that starts into such sharp out- 
 lines before the eyes of St. Paul — the contrast of the 
 letter and of the spirit ? We may well set ourselves 
 to answer this question, for the words have passed into 
 a proverbial familiarity, which has succeeded, as pro- 
 verbs so often succeed, in bandying them to and fro 
 until the original significance, once emphatically pre- 
 cise, has dissolved into a cloud of vague misunder- 
 standing. It is supposed, perhaps, that St. Paul is 
 contrasting the outer expression of a principle with its 
 inner meaning — the letter of the Law with its spirit, 
 and hence that he is opposing the wrong use of the 
 Law, as illustrated by pharisaic pedantry, with its right 
 spiritual use, as interpreted by the Mind of Christ. 
 Or, again, the letter is taken to represent the cere- 
 monial details of the earlier covenant, while, by the 
 spirit, is supposed to be intended that inner moral law 
 
234 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 of the heart which lay burdened under the wearisome 
 ritual of the Pentateuch until it was set free in Christ. 
 And here, again, it is the unfortunate Pharisee who 
 figures as the representative of externalism, while we 
 are glad to identify ourselves with that inward spiritual 
 service which the prophets of old asserted, and which 
 is independent of exact conformity with all the pre- 
 cision of a narrow ceremonialism. 
 
 And some of all this may possibly be half true ; but 
 yet is it at all what is meant here in this passage of 
 St. Paul ? Let us look at it a little closer. 
 
 " The letter killeth ; the spirit giveth life." It is 
 evident, first, that the phrases do not express any 
 general principle, but have for him a perfectly exact, 
 and definite determination. The contrast he has before 
 him is that between the old and the new covenant, 
 between Moses and Christ ; and to appreciate the 
 vividness of his antithesis we must begin by throwing 
 our imaginations back into the days when as yet the 
 Church of Christ held no Christian book in its hands. 
 Its faith was not as yet rooted in a written word. It 
 was Judaism that was based on a book, and it stood in 
 broad contrast on this very point with Christianity, 
 which held its Gospel in the shape of the spoken word, 
 made present and energetic, though the mouth of a 
 preacher, by the force of the Spirit of God, upon the 
 hearts of a believing body. A living story housed 
 within a living society, vitalized by a present Spirit, 
 witnessing to a present and living Christ : — that is the 
 word of God administered under the new dispensation ; 
 and what need, St. Paul is asking, what need of written 
 
The Coining of the Spirit. 235 
 
 authorities to qualify for such a mission as this ? 
 What need of certificates and testimonials, such as his 
 opponents require him to show, or upon which they 
 rested their own claims ? " Need we, as some others, 
 epistles of commendation ? " Nay : his own people 
 are sealed to him by spiritual evidence ; they are his 
 living certificates. "You are our epistle ministered 
 by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of 
 the living God." And this clinging to documents, so 
 characteristic of his own foes, stamps them, he thinks, 
 with the brand of that older covenant which had always 
 been a matter of letters, of writings, of communications, 
 of things graven with a pen on the face of a stone, 
 rigid, motionless, external, menacing. But the Apostles 
 of Christ carry with them no written message, no mere 
 book of the covenant. They have a more glorious 
 ministry, not of the letter, not of any writing, but of 
 the Spirit. 
 
 The letter is first, then, that revelation of God which 
 had been effected through a writing, through a com- 
 munication, through a fixed and durable proclamation, 
 through a record, through a statute, through a rule — • 
 in a word, through a Law. The letter is the written 
 Law of God. And this Law, which is the letter, is no 
 ceremonial rule. St. Paul has in his mind that moment 
 when Moses bore down from the summit of Sinai the 
 Ten Commandments which are the Law, for it was then 
 that his face shone with the glory that was under the 
 veil, "the glory that was to be done away." The letter, 
 then, of which St. Paul speaks, is definitely those God- 
 given letters graven upon the tables of stone. It is 
 
236 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 essentially the moral, and not the ceremonial, Law ; and 
 the letter is that Law, then, which our Master summed 
 up for the lawyer in the great commandment, " Thou 
 shalt love thy God with all thy heart, and with all 
 thy soul, and with all thy strength, and thy neighbour 
 as thyself." 
 
 By the letter is meant the moral Law ; and we know 
 therefore at once how and why the letter kills. For 
 St. Paul has analysed for us the three stages of death 
 to which the Law dooms. It kills us, first, by its 
 manifestation of that disruption which lay concealed 
 under the happy outflow of young and brimming life. 
 That strong and fearless energy, which is the core of 
 our human nature, is brought up short and sharp by a 
 relentless voice that refuses it its unhindered joy. It 
 clashes against the obstinate resistance, the sudden 
 obstruction which bars its road with its terrible negative, 
 " Thou shalt not covet ; " and, in the recoil from that 
 clashing, it knows itself to be subject to a divided 
 mastery. It knows itself to be capable of violent 
 variance with God. It knows itself to be somehow 
 spoilt, disordered, corrupt. The unity of sound organic 
 health has suffered rupture. It has in it the evidences 
 of a disorganization and a dissolution, which is death. 
 "I was alive without the Law once; but when the 
 commandment came, sin revived, and I died." 
 
 And the Law not only declared sin to be there, but 
 it also, so St. Paul is not afraid to assert, provoked and 
 irritated the sin, which fretted at its checks, into a 
 more abundant and domineering extravagance. " Sin, 
 taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me 
 
The Coming of the Spirit. 
 
 237 
 
 all manner of concupiscence." 3Ian's primary revolt 
 reacted from this first recoil into a fiercer onset. 
 Curiosity, imagination, vanity, impulsiveness — all are 
 set astir to overleap the barrier, to defeat the obstacle 
 that so sharply traverses its instinctive inclinations. 
 " The Law entered that offence might abound," and 
 where offence abounded, death reigned, for the end of 
 sin is death. 
 
 And the letter therefore which provoked sin into 
 extravagance, that letter killed ; and it killed not only 
 by manifesting sin, not only by aggravating evil, but 
 also by convicting. Over against the very men whom 
 it irritated into revolt it stood as a judgment which 
 could not be gainsaid nor denied. It fastened men 
 down under the bolts of a conviction from out of which 
 there was no escape. And they knew it. They knew 
 the sting of its terrible truth. Its wrath unnerved 
 them, and its presence confounded. Every mouth was 
 stopped, for the handwriting was against them. They 
 were shut up within the prison-house of a criminal 
 doom, and that justly. They lay there tormented in 
 that flame, waiting the just judgment of God; for 
 the letter convicted, and therefore it killed. It killed ; 
 and this by God's own intention. It was given that it 
 might kill. It was no written pharisaic literalism 
 that so relentlessly slew out the soul of man ; it was 
 God's own written word, engraven with His Finger on 
 tables of stone. " Yea, sin, that it might appear sin, 
 worked death by that which is good, that sin by the 
 commandment might become exceeding sinful." Better 
 far that the secret poison should be brought out into 
 
238 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 violent action. Its sickness, its pain, its ogony — these 
 are, after all, proofs of capacity to struggle ; these are 
 methods of liberation. The body is releasing itself 
 from disease through these bitter experiences ; and let, 
 then, the letter kill. Let death dig in its fangs. Let 
 the doom deepen and darken. So only shall at the 
 last the spirit of the resurrection quicken ; so only 
 shall those that sleep in the dust at the last awaken. 
 
 Through sin the letter slew, and slew according to 
 the intention of God ; and, what is more, there was 
 no hope of relief or escape through man's spiritual 
 advance, for the higher the Law the sharper its sword 
 of judgment. As man's apprehension grew more spiri- 
 tual, the discovery of his fall became more desperate. 
 Each fresh insight into God was a fresh insight 
 into sin, and the path into fuller life was therefore 
 a pathway of despair. The Law slew because it was 
 just and pure and holy, and the quickened spiritual 
 instincts would but learn the touch of a more biting 
 terror; so that when at the last hour of that old 
 covenant there stood upon the earth a Jew greater 
 than Moses and Abraham, Who accepted the hereditary 
 Law and promulgated it anew, asserting it in all its 
 rigour and width, enlarged in range, intensified in 
 power, interpreted with all the infinite and delicate 
 subtlety which the Mind of One Who was One with the 
 Giver of the Law could convey into its edicts, so that it 
 comprehended the entire man in its grip, and pene- 
 trated his innermost recesses, and carried its searching 
 inquiry into his backmost corners, and made its claims 
 good over the very springs of conduct, and suffered no 
 
The Coining of the Spirit. 239 
 
 minutest motive to escape revision, and demanded of 
 his most secret will a perfection of intention such as 
 belonged to the moral heart of the all-holy Father; — ■ 
 why, such a Gospel, if that Sermon of the Mount had 
 been all, would have struck the very chill of the last 
 death into the despairing soul, who listened and learned 
 that not one jot or tittle of that Law could fail. Alas 
 for men ! The sermon that some lightly affect to be 
 the whole Gospel of Christ would be by itself but 
 a message of doom. This moral Law, so high and pure 
 and holy, this belongs, taken by itself, to the older 
 covenant ; this is the very letter that kills, this is the 
 Law that convicts, — kills, interpreted by Christ, as 
 it had never killed before, dooms more witheringly 
 than of old it ever had doomed; and the cry that 
 would close the message of that sermon, the cry of any 
 honest soul brought face to face with that tremendous 
 manifestation of the Mind of God, would be the cry 
 of the broken and terrified sinner : " 0 miserable man 
 that I am ! who can deliver me from the body of this 
 death?" 
 
 The letter kills, and yet the letter hath a glory 
 to St. Paul, the glory that shone from the face of 
 Moses descending from the mount. The letter has 
 a glory, for it is the manifestation of the very mind 
 and being of God. The moral Law graven on the 
 tables of stone was the primary and absolute establish- 
 ment of these essential relations which determine all 
 possible communion between man and his Maker. 
 Without the Ten Commandments no communications 
 are possible ; for purity, truth and goodness, — these 
 
240 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 are what God is ; these are what God must be in 
 all His actions ; through them He exhibits Himself ; 
 in the form of tliem He communicates Himself. Verily 
 the letter hath a glory. It is the revelation of the 
 Divine Will in action, the revelation of God. For this, 
 men had looked and yearned through weary years ; to 
 discover this they had toiled, and sighed, and prayed. 
 Many kings and many prophets had desired to see 
 these things ; for this they had ransacked nature, 
 searching for that which lay always hidden behind the 
 dumb silence of that breathing earth, that which 
 seemed always suggested yet was never disclosed. 
 " Oh that I knew wliere I might find Him ! " So man 
 cried in the bitterness of his search. And now, listen : 
 there is a revelation ; the dumbness breaks, the silence 
 yields, those flying footsteps of God pause, the air 
 opens, the heavens are sundered. There is a presence : 
 there is a voice; there is an utterance; there is a 
 vision ; there is a glory — and it kills ! 
 
 Consider the surprise and the seriousness of such a 
 situation. God stands over against man in glory, the 
 glory of the proclaimed intention, of the manifested 
 Name, the glory of the letter. God stands thei e in the 
 Law, inviting, appealing : " Come ; ]\Iy oxen and Sly 
 fatlings are killed, and all things are ready ; come to 
 the wedding." God stands there in that Law, plead- 
 ing and beseeching : " Oh that My people would but 
 hearken unto Me ! 0 My people, what have I done 
 to thee ? " God, face to face with man ; God hoping, 
 asking, desiring, loving, calling, electing, promising, 
 tendiog: and man lies there before Him dead — dead 
 
The Coming of the Spirit. 241 
 
 in the face of the glory, killed by the glory — dead, 
 even though within his very deadness he can hear with 
 the ears of some inner manhood, a manhood now dark 
 and imprisoned, yet a manhood that still delights in 
 the Law of God — can hear the blessed salutation, and 
 the thrilling news, and the splendid promise, and the 
 tender pleas. Deep within the deeps of his soul there 
 is the blind stir of some unutterable response, and yet 
 that response cannot come to the surface, and the will 
 of the mind cannot carry itself out to act. It is fast 
 bound in misery and iron ; and he, the man, lies there, 
 therefore, dumb and dark and dead, praying only that 
 the hills might cover him, that the mountains might 
 bury his shame ; praying only that he might be hidden 
 in some deep gulf from out of the burning Eyes of that 
 God Whom, in his earlier confidence, he had so longed 
 that he might find and behold. 
 
 "God showeth His Face and the earth shall melt 
 away." God shows His Face in the Law and the letter 
 kills. Man lies there dead before his God — dead, until 
 — what is it, this sweet and secret change ? What is 
 it, this breaking and stirring within his bones, as when 
 the force of the spring pricks and works within the 
 wintry trunks of dry and naked trees ? To what shall 
 we liken it ? Have we known the first wonderful pause 
 that comes to those who have lain through long dull 
 hours, with closed eyes, with stunned senses, with 
 sightless soul, under some weight of pain that bruises 
 and benumbs and crushes and breaks — have lain there 
 choked under the tyranny of weary hours, upgathered 
 into the mere effort to endure, hardly asking that the 
 
 B 
 
242 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 agony should ever liave an end, and then have sud- 
 denly known that the pain has for a moment paused, 
 has slackened, has ebbed ? The throbs have lost their 
 violence ; there is a softening, a relenting, a touch of 
 peace, and hardly yet they dare to believe it, hardly 
 dare they whisper to themselves that the worst is over, 
 that the pulses of sharp pain have really grown weaker. 
 Yet the sweet peace increases and soothes and con- 
 soles ; and lo, at last they are lying there quiet and 
 calm and happy, possessed with a blessed stillness and 
 a mighty thanksgiving. 
 
 Who can tell the wonder of such hours ? And it is 
 an hour like that which comes to the man whom the 
 letter of God had smitten and slain. As he lies stung 
 and despairing, there is a change, there is an arrival. 
 Far, far within, deeper than his deepest sin, behind the 
 most secret workings of his bad and broken will, there 
 is a breaking and a stir, there is a motion and a quiver 
 and a gleam, there is a check and a pause in his decay, 
 a quickening is felt as of live flame. What is it? 
 He cannot tell ; he cannot measure ; he cannot con- 
 ceive ; only he knows that something is there and at 
 work, strong and fresh and young ; and as it pushes 
 and presses and makes way, a sense of blessing steals 
 into his veins, and peace is upon his harried and hunted 
 soul, and the sweet soundness of health creeps over his 
 bruises and his sores : and he who has faith, just suffers 
 all the strange change to pass over him and to work 
 its good will, as he lies there, feeding on its blessedness, 
 wondering at its goodness, sending up his heart in 
 silent breaths of unutterable thanks. 
 
The Coming of the Spirit. 243 
 
 So it is come ; it has happened. St. Paul felt and 
 watched it, tliis transformation that was begun over 
 the earth. He saw those lame and impotent men rise 
 and leap and sing at the coming of the new force, 
 under the handlings of the new ministry ; and, so seeing, 
 he knew the full meaning of the Lord's promise that 
 the Spirit should come, and that every one born of 
 the Spirit should be even as the Spirit. Its coming 
 heralds a change, absolute and final, from all that had 
 been before until John : and the essence of the change 
 is this — that God, Who in His manifestation of the 
 letter stood there over against man, calling, inviting, 
 appealing, has now passed over on to the side of 
 the men whom His appeal has overwhelmed. He, the 
 good Father, is bending over the sinner, and into his 
 wounds is pouring the oil of pardon and the rich wine 
 of grace, and entering within his human spirit by the 
 power of His own Holy Spirit ; He, God, is lifting him 
 up, is carrying him, is enabling him, is recovering 
 him, is filling him with His own fulness, is inspiring 
 him with His own breath. God is on our side ; God ia 
 with us ; God, Who invited, now undertakes for us who 
 receives the invitation ; God, who calls, draws to Him 
 now those whom He has called. Not only does He 
 send out His messengers to those whom He can gather 
 among the highways and hedges, but Himself also turns 
 the hearts and moves the feet of those whom His mes- 
 sengers discover ; and they who by themselves would 
 fear, and refuse, find themselves strangely stirred to 
 accept, and are lifted by fresh hope, and are gifted 
 with new courage, and are carried wondering along the 
 
244 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 paths that they despaired of travelliug into the halls 
 of light which they had not hoped ever to see. 
 
 God Himself in ns fulfils His own demands on us. 
 God Himself moves over to our side to satisfy the 
 urgency of His own Will and Word. la Him we do 
 what we do, and we are not afraid, though the Son of 
 God has come "not to destroy that Law, but to fulfil 
 it " — yea, even though from us is required a righteous- 
 ness exceeding that of Scribe and Pharisee. We are not 
 afraid, for " the Spirit giveth life " — here is the blessed 
 gospel of eternal glory. If " the ministry of the letter 
 had a glory, how shall not the ministry of the Spirit 
 exceed in glory ? " The Spirit giveth life, but still " the 
 letter kills." God has come over to our side, but He has 
 not ceased to stand over there against us. By His power 
 we can afford to face His Presence, but it is the same 
 God as ever Whom we face. There He still stands as 
 of old, and His demands are the same, and His modes 
 of communication are the same; and still it is true as 
 ever that without holiness no man shall see the Lord ; 
 and His purity is as white and unstained as ever, and 
 His righteousness burns with as hot a flame, — the same 
 Eternal God with Whom is no variableness, neither 
 shadow of turning, and His being is holiness, and in 
 holiness we hold communion. No jot or tittle of that 
 ancient requirement, then, is removed or diminished. 
 The revelation of the letter of the moral Law holds 
 good for us as much as for the Jew ; and it is because 
 that letter inevitably holds good, that God has Himself 
 entered within us, and striven for its fulfilment. 
 
 And therefore I would ask you to-day : Have we that 
 
The Coming of the Spirit. 245 
 
 letter that kills? Do we know its sharp death? Have we 
 at all the sense of an imperious moral Law, obligatory 
 and absolute, which rigorously searches our souls, and 
 sifts our motives, and tests our every act, and pene- 
 trates within the tissue of our will, and pierces like a 
 sword between joint and marrow ? Do we live as if 
 we always had in face of us a demand, a requirement, 
 as urgent, as insistent, as incessant as that voice of a 
 trumpet exceeding loud, which broke out of the terrors 
 of Sinai ? Are earth and sky full of a great voice to 
 us, that thunders out its " Thou shalt," and its " Thou 
 shalt not " ? " Thou shalt love thy God ; " " Thou shalt 
 love thy neighbour : " they are strong and unbending 
 words. Do we with our whole being desire holiness 
 and love God ? Do we know this pressure of a law as 
 of a burden, of a necessity under which we faint or 
 quail ? Have we any rules that hold us like iron, and 
 cut us, when we strain against them, like cords ? Is 
 there any perception within us of a law which it is the 
 misery of death to fail or to d sobey, and which, never- 
 theless, we have obstinately and constantly broken ? 
 For the Law ought still to kill, and we ought to have 
 moral standards, which of ourselves we should despair 
 to satisfy. Have we such moral standards ? We ought 
 now to be feeling a moral light thrown upon our souls 
 such as it would devour us with shame to have to meet 
 alone. Have we tasted that light ? Do we bring these 
 rules of God to bear on our practical lives day by day, 
 and hour by hour ? Do we know the alarms and the 
 anxieties of a severe conscience ? Have we wrestled 
 with that law of duty — which is the !Name of God, — 
 
246 
 
 Conversion. 
 
 wrestled through long nights until the morning broke, 
 — wrestled until even though we won, yet in the morn- 
 ing we halted on our thighs ? Are we at war with any 
 one sin — at war even at the cost of plucking out an 
 eye or cutting off a foot? Have we resisted unto 
 blood ? Some such sin every single soul here to-day 
 holds within him. Have we taken, then, the pains to 
 discover it ? 
 
 Oh, that we might taste of this austere judgment, 
 tbat we might know ourselves, that we might be 
 serious with ourselves, and drag up our life into the 
 light of God's law, — that we might face the full 
 rigour of this letter; for only those whom the letter 
 slays will be quickened by the Spirit of God, Lying 
 dead there — dead before the eternal Eyes, in penitence 
 and in confession, killed by the letter — we may then 
 receive this new gift, this boon of price, and be quick- 
 ened by the Spirit of Him Who raised Jesus our Master 
 from the dead. 
 
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS— THE ENERGY OF 
 UNSELFISHNESS — THE FRUIT OF THE 
 SPIRIT— THANKSGIVING. 
 
SERMON XVIL 
 
 THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS. 
 
 "W^'^tuimt rmcmbcr, tijat gc being in time past ©mtilcs in tijc 
 flcslj, tijat at tijat time gc btrc feitljciut (Cfjrist, being alitns from tije 
 tommontocaltj) of Israel, antJ strangers from tfje cobmants of promise, 
 Ijabing no ijope, an5 hiitijout ffioB in tfje toorlli,— Eph. ii. ii, 12. 
 
 Of one thing, at least, those early Gentile Churches 
 of St. Paul had entire assurance — the abject misery of 
 sinning. The Apostle is never weary of recalling, nor 
 they of remembering, the bitterness of their old 
 experience. It is on them like a nightmare — odious, 
 horrible, and profound ; and the Apostle himself had 
 drawn so near to it in the person of his converts, that 
 he seems to identify himself with their story, and to 
 have tasted of their misery. 
 
 For it had not been his own experience — that 
 was bitter enough, but it was of a wholly different 
 cast and type. His, as we know, had been the 
 agony of a soul that had, from its earliest hours, 
 known the sweet call of righteousness, and the blame- 
 lessness of a clean service of God ; and his sorrow 
 had been the sorrow of a divided self, the sorrow of 
 losing hold of that which he had loved, the sorrow 
 of the man who loves purity, and loves it only to 
 discover his powerlessness to attain it. This had been 
 
250 Newness of Life. 
 
 his discipline, to be perfected by the chastisement 
 that scourges moral pride into the humility of the 
 Saint ; and his conversion had been a conversion from 
 seeking holiness in one way to seeking it in another. 
 
 But, since then, he had thrown himself into the 
 thick of these crowded and burdened commercial cities 
 from Antioch to Rome. He had learned their life; 
 and how vividly he lets us feel what be has found in 
 that old Pagan world which we know only through 
 the partial and remote evidence of its books and its 
 arts ! These — what are they, but as shells strewn on 
 the shore of a great deep, the rare evidence of a life 
 that has gone from them, fragments torn out of some 
 world strange and immense, which lies hidden far 
 within the silence of untrodden and impenetrable seas ? 
 Their books, their art, so lovely and so high — these 
 tell us what a few rare souls had dreamed, what one 
 single tiny people had the wonderful power to produce 
 and to admire during the brief flight of a few genera- 
 tions. 
 
 But here, in St. Paul's Epistles, we go down below 
 the fairy ring of artist and philosopher and poet ; we 
 travel far from the pleasant spaces and still retreats 
 of beautiful Athenian culture. We are taken in the 
 track of one who is pushing his way along in the press 
 and stress of those unheard and disorganised popula- 
 tions that throng the streets of Syrian and Asiatic 
 cities. He is himself part and parcel of this de- 
 nationalised mass, and he gives us touch and trace 
 of their living temper. He rubs shoulders with the 
 crowd. He pushes and jostles with porters and grooms. 
 
The Beauty of Holiness. 251 
 
 He mixes in with the common habits of vulgar and 
 unhistorical people. He knows the ways of shop- 
 keepers, and of tradesmen, and of artisans, and of 
 slaves. He works by their side in the shop ; he sleeps 
 in their lodgings. He comes across aldermen, and 
 justices of the peace, and town clerks. He is 
 acquainted with police and gaolers. He can make us 
 see and feel what a Christian, what one of the same 
 habit and belief as ourselves, would see and feel as 
 he moved up and down that world which lay covered 
 by the wings of imperial Rome. 
 
 And as he contrasts this foreign life that has become 
 to him now so familiar, with the old home life in the 
 midst of Jewish traditions, what he seems to feel most 
 strange and most terrible is the absolute dominance of 
 sin. The Jew writhed under the radiance of a holiness 
 which he passionately pursued, but over the Gentile, 
 as St. Paul knew him, the cloud of sin had so 
 thickly settled that he seemed to have lost the sense 
 of righteousness. There seemed to be no struggle left 
 in him, no impulse to resist. Sin held him ; sin 
 mastered him ; sin possessed him ; sin lorded over 
 him. It had attacked him in every function. It had 
 impregnated his reason, so that its very capacity to 
 distinguish good and evil had been obscured and 
 confounded. It had poisoned his heart, so that no 
 stirrings of conscience any longer might protest or 
 warn. It had unnerved his will, so that he cowered, 
 dragged captive by evil principalities and powers, led 
 dumb and slavish behind dumb and slavish idols. 
 It had befouled and besmirched and besotted his 
 
252 
 
 Newness of Life. 
 
 appetites, until they had ceased to spring out of the 
 purities of nature, and had become twisted and 
 thwarted into monstrous deformities and unnatural 
 horrors. 
 
 Of course it was wholly true that there were Gentiles 
 who were a law unto themselves, who knew the 
 anxieties of moral scruple both accusing and excusing ; 
 but these little exceptions hardly hindered for a 
 moment the sweep of the Apostle's vision. The massive 
 reality, in its most typical and most normal form, was 
 a condition in which all sense of moral distinction 
 was hopelessly blurred, and all touches of remorse or 
 regret or penitence or confession had vanished and 
 been lost ; and there is a positive welcome of sin, a 
 welcome of it, as the Apostle says, even when others 
 do it, and when, therefore, there is no glamour of 
 temptation thrown over it. Their whole tone was 
 polluted ; and their minds so unhinged, and their 
 desires so poisoned, and their tendencies so distorted, 
 that they not only do the foul and extravagant wicked- 
 ness, but, without a scruple and without a sigh, they 
 take pleasure also in them that do it. 
 
 Sin, as the Apostle keeps asserting, sin tyrannised. 
 And then, secondly, he notices the misery of this 
 captivity. They were most miserable, these people, 
 and miserable not through agony of conscience, not 
 with the misery of their own cry, the cry of an im- 
 prisoned and defeated manhood. No sense of a lost 
 ideal tortured them, — of a darkened future, of an 
 insulted God, of an outraged Spirit, of a defiled temple. 
 These were the familiar consequences of sin to the 
 
The Beauty of Holiness. 
 
 253 
 
 Jew who had sinned against the Most High. None 
 of these affected them. They sinned on — so it seemed 
 to the Apostle — without disturbance and without fear, 
 and no sword of God seemed to be uplifted to smite, 
 no conscience pricked or stung. And yet they were 
 miserable — miserable as with the misery of a dull 
 and melancholy disease, miserable with the dejection 
 of disorder, miserable as those are miserable whom 
 some unknown secret in the past has laid under a 
 heritage of woe so that they cannot prosper, but are 
 marked down by sorrow, and are haunted by a dark 
 fate, and fade and mope and fail and weaken, heavy 
 and oppressed as sodden woods that drop their dead 
 leaves slowly, one by one, through the thick darkness 
 of autumn evenings, until all the air is gross with the 
 odours of decay. So sad, so darkened, were the days 
 of these miserable multitudes ; and three or four points 
 the Apostle specially notes that give character to the 
 misery. 
 
 It was, first, the misery of blindness. They saw no 
 road through the world. They followed no tracks. No 
 goal lay before them. Tiiey groped their way along 
 day after day, and made no advance. They were 
 living, as the Apostle said, " in the night." They were 
 children of the night." They belonged to it. They 
 prayed for no dawn. Why should it end ? They had 
 been born into it, they and their fathers before them, 
 and into its gloom they would again beget their 
 children. It was their heritage, their nature, to be in 
 the cloud of that night. " Children of the night," the 
 night was their home. 
 
254 
 
 Newness of Life. 
 
 They were blind, and the blindness was miserable ; 
 and, being in the night, they had the misery, too, of 
 hopelessness. They felt nothing in them that was 
 prophetic. They heard no promise of a better day. 
 They never even listened for news of some deliverance. 
 They were there without hope in the world. Hopeless 
 and also loveless; for they found nothing under the 
 cover of the present dismay that told them of a Father 
 ever caring, and tending, and watching, Wiio Himself 
 behind the night never slumbered nor slept. No hand 
 was felt upon their heads in blessing ; no touches of 
 love covered their troubled hearts ; no Divine friend- 
 liness breathed over them its peace. They were with- 
 out God in the world ; aliens from the covenant. 
 Through life they went untended, unregarded ; and 
 into death they passed "unhouseled, unaneled." No 
 blessing went before them. No voice in the morning 
 and in the evening spake to them of the kindness of 
 the God, who was a sliield, and a refuge, and a home. 
 
 Blind, hopeless, loveless, and also fruitless. " What 
 fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now 
 ashamed, for the end of these things was death ? " 
 What they did came to nothing. They walked after 
 their passions, and found themselves somehow in the 
 pit. They did what they liked, and lo, they found 
 themselves beguiled. They obtained nothing. They 
 achieved nothing. Tliey profited nothing. Their 
 pleasant things were as vanity. If their affections 
 fastened on anything, it perished. If they gave their 
 heart to any joy, it all closed in mockery, and tears, 
 and shame. Everything that they cared for came to 
 
The Beauty of Holiness. 255 
 
 an end, an end dishonourable and degrading as the 
 end of the beasts that perish. All died together. The 
 same end came to all. Joyless, heartless, empty, 
 cruel ; " their vines were the vines of Sodom and the 
 grapes of Gomorrah." They were miserable. 
 
 And again, being miserable, they hated themselves; 
 and hating themselves, they hated also each other. 
 Discontent is always irritable, and nothing so surely 
 or so sharply irritates it as the discontent of others. 
 The look of a depressed face is full of annoyance and 
 provocation, and the companionship of the depressed 
 is always charged with smouldering passions that 
 break out in hate and malice. They lived therefore 
 at enmity one with another, and their social life was 
 ill-humoured, fretful, and angry — the joyless life of 
 disappointed men. Joyless and also powerless. These 
 men whom St. Paul watched had no will of their own, 
 no purpose towards which they pressed, no choice, no 
 deliberation. They seemed to surrender themselves to 
 impulses ; and so surrendered, they were carried hither 
 and thither, as dried leaves in a storm, tossed to and 
 fro, he tells them, by every wind that blew, swayed by 
 every new temptation, dragged at the heel of the bad 
 whims of principalities and powers, the captives of 
 lusts, the slaves of tempestuous and gusty passion, 
 given over in the despair of self-abandonment to the 
 prince of the power of the air, carried about by dumb 
 idols, even as they were led. So they lived and 
 walked, these Gentiles, in " the vanity of their minds, 
 in the lust of concupiscence, fulfilling only the desires 
 Df the flesh, with their understanding darkened, 
 
256 
 
 Newness of Life. 
 
 alienated from the life of God, in the blindness of 
 their heart, in filthy conversation, past feeling, given 
 over to lasciviousness." So they walked, according to 
 the challenge of the Apostle, and his converts con- 
 firmed him by the memory of their experience : For 
 such were some of you, but ye are washed, but ye are 
 sanctified, but ye are justified." 
 
 Sin, as the Apostle knew it, is a depressed and a 
 depressing thing, blind and hopeless, and joyless, and 
 fruitless, and powerless. Why is it, then, that so 
 much of our popular language is at variance with this 
 estimate of the Apostle, and with this experience of his 
 converts ? We have rid ourselves, it is true, of that 
 familiar assumption in old plots and plays, in which 
 Tice wins all the honours, and virtue appears only as 
 imposture. We do not believe now in the scapegrace, 
 popular and kindly, who carries all the applause by 
 some crowning act of reckless generosity. We have 
 learnt too well the shallowness and the insincerity of 
 this thin ideal of old dramas and novels. We know 
 how fatiguing Charles Surface is when we come across 
 him in private life. We look at life more deeply and 
 more earnestly, and a great deal of our higher fiction 
 has spent all its strength in exhibiting the unwithering 
 beauty of goodness. And the very poets, who have 
 adopted the passions as their theme, have thrown all 
 their force with almost Biblical seriousness into de- 
 nunciation of the weariness and the cruelty of unnatural 
 hungers. And yet still, there is so much abroad in our 
 talk that reveals how little we have yet got hold of St. 
 Paul's meaning or measure — so much that lets out our 
 
The Beauty of Holiness. 
 
 257 
 
 secret belief that sin is somehow more interesting tlian 
 holiness, — that it has in it a fuller fund of life, a more 
 varied and vigorous abundance, which attracts tlie 
 imagination and wins the affections more than the 
 poorer, and thinner, and staler round of virtuous and 
 beautiful living. And I would not now refer to the 
 habitual falsity of minds which still struggle to sustain 
 the wicked pretence that drunkenness is amusing, or 
 that a fast life is brilliant and merry. Any one who 
 has got past the ignorance of a mere boy has been 
 astonished to find, I suppose, how ugly and how 
 disgusting is the life of the coarser passions which he 
 has been taught so diligently to fancy comic or fasci- 
 nating. People tell us of the insincerities of preachers 
 in our pulpits who disregard the practical experience 
 to which men of the world are at least faithful. But 
 in the matter of drink, which is faithful, and which is 
 sincere — the man of the world or the preacher, — the 
 man of the world who persists in continuing in story 
 and joke the absurd illusion that drunkenness is 
 amusing, or the preacher who asserts that it is one of 
 the most sickening, and hideous, and stupid things 
 that our eyes can shrink from, or our souls abhor ? It 
 would be at least something if those of us who know 
 the ugliness would set ourselves to break up a super- 
 stition which is as degrading as it is false. 
 
 But I would chiefly think of a subtler falsity than 
 this — the falsity of temper which considers that people 
 who do wrong are more interesting and more attractive 
 than those that do right. We are often prone to think 
 so, even when we do not in the least propose to follow 
 
 S 
 
258 Newness of Life. 
 
 tlieir example, and become more popular by freer 
 sinning. And yet, whenever we think so, we may 
 turn round and ask ourselves, " How is it, tben, that 
 I am so far from the estimate and the experience of 
 St. Paul ? " For to him sin is certainly not a matter 
 that would win popular attention. He finds it a very 
 dull, depressed affair, a poor and miser>ible blunder; 
 and this quite apart, you will remember, from all 
 question about the tortures of conscience or the judg- 
 ment to come ; quite apart from all that makes it not 
 only inexpedient, but wrong. In itself, he says, as 
 plain sin, undisturbed by after thoughts or after 
 reckonings, it is a thing which does not attract but 
 irritates ; does not fascinate but disgusts ; does not 
 charm but horrifies. 
 
 And if we will but be honest and sincere, does not 
 our own experience tally wliolly with his ? Day by 
 day we are more and more struck, surely, with the 
 dulness and deadness of sin, with the fascination of 
 goodness. 
 
 In the first place, what we find is that sin is so stagnant. 
 When we sin we never grow. We decline, or at the 
 best we stop where we were, and our character seems 
 to have no longer any movement in it. It is stuck fast 
 in the deep mire. We know that we are not develop- 
 ing, and so knowing, we grow weary with ourselves. 
 But goodness is full of change, of suddenness, of sur- 
 prise. The more you see and know of a man whose 
 life is bad, the less you find to discover in him, and 
 the less you like him. He is at his best the first time 
 you come across him ; but if you meet him again after 
 
The Beauty of Holiness. 
 
 259 
 
 an interval, obviously he has not got on. He has 
 worsened ; his youthfulness has gone a little out of 
 him; and his badness is more prominent, and he 
 looks a duller and a less agreeable man, and you 
 begin to fear what the advancing years will do with 
 him, as his early animal spirits sicken, and the gaiety 
 which gave him at first a certain charm, dies out, as 
 die it must, and nothing is preparing to take its place 
 but the morose ill-humour of a disappointed life. 
 And how different with the other, who has committed 
 himself to the ways of goodness! He is always 
 growing, advancing; he is full of new discoveries for 
 us. As we watch him, as we know him, as we live 
 with him, we learn more and more of the gifts that 
 spring up in him. His character has ever new lights 
 and shades. His very dulness grows luminous as we 
 keep company with him, for, even where we least look 
 for it, we find in him some kindliness, some sympathy. 
 Again and again we see the most delightful boyish 
 characters darkening down into depressing men under 
 the influence of a bad life ; and, at the same time, 
 quite common and unattractive characters gradually 
 winning a power and a grace and an interest which 
 startle us, as the growing years carry forward in their 
 souls the work of spiritual holiness. Their com- 
 panionship wears so much better ; they so much more 
 repay knowing; and, as the lighter loves and joys 
 of youth die down, and as the stress of stronger and 
 sterner cares begin to press upon us more heavily, and 
 there start out on the edge of the cup of life "scull- 
 things in order grim," ah, how the good man serves 
 
26o 
 
 Nezoness of Life. 
 
 us then ! What lielp, what cheer he brings us ! And 
 how hopeless and how inadequate is the man of loose 
 principle and of carnal life ! He can do nothing for 
 us ; he shrinks away ; he shrivels up. Amidst sorrows, 
 and by beds of sickness and of death, he is profoundly 
 useless; he is utterly out of place. Goodness alone 
 lasts and gains by time, and is brighter and more 
 delightful and more interesting the longer we abide 
 in its company. The bad, as Plato nobly said, may 
 go off at the start of life's race with more promise 
 and hope than the good ; but then they come in so 
 badly, they are so sadly outrun before the close. 
 
 And all this is so obviously true that we cannot but 
 stop to ask how it is sometimes that the opposite 
 belief can hold its ground at all ; and perhaps one 
 or two reasons may be briefly touched. Very often, of 
 course, some person thoroughly attracts and charms us, 
 who is full of faults, and sins ; and, often, tliere is 
 something in the faults which seems to belong to the 
 attraction. But, then, does that mean that we are 
 charmed by his faults ? Surely what we always mean, 
 when we look a little closer, is that the faults issue out 
 of a character which, by its very failings, gives evidence 
 of the excellence of which it is capable. And this 
 we do by virtue of that deep law which Plato first 
 asserted, that the great capacities for crime are the 
 same as the capacities for great virtues ; that the 
 materials of the two characters are identical ; that all 
 magnificent criminals are made of the same stuff as 
 tlie most holy Saints. It is only high natures that 
 are capable of great sins, and great sinners have, 
 
The Beauty of Holiness. 261 
 
 therefore, this wonderful attraction to us, that we feel 
 ourselves in the presence of the qualities that are at 
 once most precious and most perilous. And this lends 
 pathetic interest to sinners of a high type. In them 
 we are conscious of the pathos which belongs to a 
 splendid wreck, a pathos which it delights us to 
 follow in a book or on the stage — the pathos of a 
 tragic failure. But liere, again, in real life, let us 
 say in our own family circle, vice is apt to lose all 
 this dramatic interest, and show itselt' in practical 
 plainness as exceedingly paiuful and unpleasant. 
 
 Or again, gr.int that the primal forces that go to 
 make good and evil are alike, and naturally the story 
 of the process by which such characters determine the 
 anxious and alternating issue is full of incident and 
 attraction. We can watch such a diama with a living 
 interest which we cannot give, it is true, to the tale of 
 an habitual and humdrum goodness; and, moreover, 
 this drama contains the material for such strange 
 surprises, — for the same powers which are now dis- 
 playing themselves in such a doubtful and distorted 
 fashion, since they are tliemselves susceptible of the 
 other alternative, and are as capable of holiness as of 
 sin, may therefore throw themselves out in strange 
 reversals and startling reforms, — conversions we call 
 them ; and it is these surprises that so enchant us. 
 But it is the surprise of the change which makes the 
 former sin interesting. The sin is exciting, because 
 it comes to an end. These publicans and sinners to 
 whom we are drawn iu the Gospels are publicans and 
 sinners no longer when we are drawn to them ; and 
 
262 
 
 Newness of Life. 
 
 the beautiful fame of the Magdalene derives its beauty 
 not from the seven devils, but from their expulsion ; 
 and all this confuses in us our power to say what it 
 is that makes sinners so interesting, for, in following 
 out their fortunes, we are so often tracking the very 
 qualities which will at last throw off their false nature, 
 and show themselves to be virtues. 
 
 And there is yet another point to remember — that 
 it is unfair, in estimating our level of interest, to con- 
 trast splendid sin with the dulness of commonplace 
 virtues. Nay ; with commonplace gooduess compare, 
 if you will, commonplace sinning, and I have little 
 doubt which you will choose ; for if commonplace 
 goodness is dull, commonplace sin is ridiculous and 
 repulsive. But brilliant and exceptional sin can only 
 be measured by comparison with exceptional and bril- 
 liant holiness. If we are charmed, in spite of ourselves, 
 by the bewitchment of this or that enticing vrickedness, 
 let us remember to compare that character as it stands 
 with what it would be, if all those beautiful gifts and 
 exquisite capacities had been given over to the han- 
 dling of the Spirit and to the transfiguration of Grace. 
 If that fine nature, now so strangely disordered and 
 thwarted, had allowed itself to win its perfect stature, 
 it would have lived in the heart and in the memory of 
 grateful generations with the sweetness of a St. Francis, 
 or the glory of a St, John. 
 
 St. Francis and St. John ! How the very names 
 recall us back from our dreams of the fascination of 
 evil to our assurance of the enthronement of good ! 
 Dear names, at the very sound of which our heart- 
 
The Beauty of Holiness. 
 
 263 
 
 strings thrill as with sweet music ! Dear blessed 
 Saints of the Most High, to whom we turn always 
 with such undying interest and with such untroubled 
 love ; who hold our eyes fastened and our souls 
 bound by all that is most fragrant, most persuasive, 
 and most fair ! Ah ! we have forgotten, as we look up 
 at these soldier-saints, we have forgotten the dim and 
 shadowy histories of sin, which now and again so sadly 
 touch us. We know only " how lovely are the mes- 
 sengers and how beautiful the feet of those who bring 
 us good tidings, the sweet news of peace." 
 
 And let us press it home to ourselves : how is it we 
 suffer people to imagine that goodness is not interest- 
 ing, nor holiness attractive ? How is it that we have 
 not moving about us those saints who would so lightly 
 shatter those fond imaginations? Is it that our type 
 of excellence is so meagre and petty and repressed ? 
 Goodness, if it be true goodness, must mean an exhi- 
 bition of heightened energy. Sin is always sickness, 
 and sickness cannot but be depressing, uncomfortable, 
 impotent, and poor, and whenever it is not this it 
 is only because some goodness is at work within it 
 stronger than the sin. It is not, it is true, sin because 
 it is unpleasant— God forbid! — but it cannot but be 
 unpleasant if it be sin. Goodness is always soundness, 
 and we must not endure to be contented with any 
 standard of goodness which does not give proof of its 
 health ; and this it does only when it is cheerful, 
 vigoi'ous, elastic, free, hearty, hopeful, springing, 
 gracious, delightful, beautiful, and strong. 
 
 True, that we are under the discipline of a recovery 
 
264 
 
 Newness of Life. 
 
 from wrong. It may be impossible for our moral efforts 
 to feel or look other than painful or hard. But this 
 must only be true through the penitential stage. Still, 
 the tendency of our life must be towards health, and 
 therefore towards a more energetic and exhilarating 
 existence. Holiness, in the sense of St. Paul, is always 
 a freeing of the soul from impotence, the setting loose 
 of spiritual energies, of vitalised activities. Is that 
 what it means to us ? Have we found it — that is the 
 question — have we found it to be a way of increase, of 
 enrichment, of growth, of vigour, of exultation ? If 
 not, then we have not yet understood it as St. Paul 
 understood it — not yet understood it according to the 
 power of the new Spirit Whose working worked in him 
 so mightily ; and if so, we need not be surprised if it 
 has not in us the same power of charming others which 
 it had in him. 
 
SERMON XVIII. 
 
 THE ENERGY OF UNSELFISHNESS. 
 
 " JLrt all bittcrntss, nnlj faratfj, ant anpr, an! clamour, anlj cbil 
 Bijralunci, be put afoag from gou, toitij all malice : anO be gc kiuli one 
 to anoHjer, tenlicr=l)fartcli, lorgiiiing one anotljcr, cfacn as fflolj for 
 (Hjrist's sake fjatlj forgibcn gou." — Eph. iv. 31, 32. 
 
 What a strange change it Lad been for St. Paul's 
 converts, as they passed out of the old into the new — - 
 the old so rorigli, so angry, so violent and venomous, so 
 loud and so brutal — that life woven out of such bitter 
 threads and melaiiclioly hues — " debates, envyings, 
 wraths, strifes, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, 
 tumults" — that life of the flesh, "hatred, variance, 
 emulations, wrath, strife, envyings, murders." That is 
 what has been banish' d and crucified by those who had 
 found themselves, amid the heat and tumult of that 
 loud quarrelling, suddenly mastered by the vision of 
 Him Who won tliem by His meekness and His gentle- 
 ness — the Man of human kindness, the Priest of com- 
 passion, the King of Peace, the Lamb of God " Who, 
 when He was reviled, reviled not again." This was 
 the message that had reached and held and possessed 
 them, the message of the preacher who besought them 
 " by the meekness and the gentleness of Jesus." Who 
 can measure the sweetness with which such words 
 
266 
 
 Newness of Life. 
 
 would fall upon a world hot with angry feuds and 
 bitter revenges — " the meekness and the gentleness of 
 Jesus ? " As cool water to fevered lips, as wet grasses 
 amid arid sands, as the sound of soft rains falling on 
 barren fields, so the kind words stole in as a blessing 
 and a boon upon hearts worn and heavy laden, upon 
 those who crept out of the tumult to hide their 
 wounds and weariness within the comfortable fold of 
 that Good Shepherd Who led them into such rich 
 pastures, and by such quiet waters. 
 
 And yet we all of us are subject to a suspicion, a 
 criticism that may be silent in church, but which will 
 yet rejoin us at the church door, and before we reach 
 home will have had its say — a suspicion very old and 
 very familiar, but, for all that, one which it may be 
 well worth while to consider again. It suggests that 
 possibly something, after all, may have been lost 
 in the passage from the old state to the new. Very 
 rough, very uncomfortable that old condition of things 
 may have been ; but was there not a vigour in its 
 vivacities and a robustness in its violence that we miss 
 in the kindly new? Is there no loss of manliness in 
 passing to tliis new temper ? and is it fitted for 
 the actual world? For rough work needs rough 
 methods ; and our work here is rough, and cannot be 
 pushed through without a good deal of energetic 
 emphasis. And, again, there is a hearty and muscular 
 naturalness in that boisterous scramble of man against 
 man which we like in books and in plays, even though 
 in real life it is rather oppressive and unpleasant. 
 And this humility, this gentleness, — they disturb us 
 
The Energy of Unselfishness. 267 
 
 as something unuatural, artificial, laboured. Are they 
 quite real ? Are they not apt to be very full of pro- 
 voking mannerisms and insincerities ? So every one, 
 I suppose, has said to himself again and again ; and 
 witli this suspicion at work within him he easily 
 accepts the more formal and public criticism which is 
 familiar in our ears, pronouncing that these Christian 
 graces, beautiful as ideals, charming ns as spiritual 
 excellencies with their choice flavour of exquisite 
 piety, do neverthless represent an unearthly and un- 
 social type of virtue ; that we lose as citizens what 
 we gain as saints ; that by walking in the Spirit we 
 cease to be equally effective forces for economic pur- 
 poses ; that the business of a State would prefer in its 
 factors the old character at the cost of its quarrelsome- 
 ness, to the new at the price of its passivity. 
 
 Now, this suspicion and this criticism are familiar 
 and strong because they have a great deal of plausible 
 evidence behind them. There is much in our religious 
 habit and temper which would tend to confirm what 
 they suggest; and certainly our religious thought has 
 failed to give us any logic which would displace the 
 suspicion or expose the criticism ; and through this we 
 are easily led into three great disasters. 
 
 First, there have been bred up among us a public 
 mind and tone which have so deeply accepted these 
 assumptions of which I speak that it has been found 
 easy for science to persunde us that wherever the 
 root-instincts of men are allowed free play they are 
 necessarily selfish; that from this primal and cal- 
 culable motive all the vigorous and positive qualities of 
 
268 
 
 Newness of Life. 
 
 industrious production issue; that the degree of vigour 
 so displayed will be in proportion to the amount of 
 selfishness la action ; and that, however much this 
 natural impulse may and ought, for ethical reasons, to 
 be checked and limited, yet such checks and limi- 
 tations wiil curtail the normal action of commercial 
 industry according to the degree with which they 
 repress the free play of self-interest. That is a well- 
 known position which we have allowed to pass, and in 
 which we have detected no flaw. Perhaps its careful 
 abstention from the moral region succeeded in putting 
 us off our guard. 
 
 But then there comes the second disaster, that 
 when the parallel position is taken in that region of 
 ethics we seem to have lost our power of protest. Who 
 does not know how naturally, how obviously the argu- 
 ment meets us ? Who can resist its patent evidence, 
 its plain and plausible logic ? Our eyes are taught to 
 range over the turmoil of a swarming and warring life 
 of nature ; and everywhere we learn how all things 
 push forward to self-preservation, towards fuller living 
 — how upwards towards this richer existence every- 
 thing presses, and thrusts, and aspires, and that in that 
 vital vigour lies the secret of all type and growth and 
 transformation. And when we pass from the lower 
 level, without any perceptible break, into the long 
 strife of human progress, surely it is the same law, 
 that we cannot but detect, directing and ruling the 
 advance — the law of preservation, the methods of self- 
 interest. Men struggle to endure and to grow; and 
 the principles which best serve that endurance and 
 
The Energy of Unselfishness. 
 
 269 
 
 that growth they call Ethics; and, if so, then, since 
 the forward movement derives its force from self- 
 interest, ethics have inevitably their justification in 
 a wise and skilful selfishness. This we hear, and 
 religious and serious people, though they do not like 
 the sound of it, practically abstain from denying it, 
 and at last doubt whether it can be denied. 
 
 And there follows a third disaster. They are driven 
 to suppose that heroes and saints, who use very 
 different language, have in reality, unknown to them- 
 selves, this very motive at work which they most 
 violently repudiate. The saints imagine that they 
 are losing their all for Christ, while in reality that 
 is impossible ; no such vigorous action as they put 
 forth could be produced by anything short of stdf- 
 interest ; they, too, must be, in the end, in pursuit 
 of their own happiness. They do not think so, because 
 they ask for no happiness on earth, but that is only 
 because they have caught sight of the richer blessing 
 to be theirs hereafter. It may be true that all ideal 
 ethical systems repudiate this self-interest, but they 
 can only mean to repudiate the lower and lesser in 
 view of the higher and the better; for all ethics must 
 be bound to assume that man, in acting, seeks his own 
 perfection and happiness, and is, therefore, in a hi'^h 
 sense selfish. 
 
 No\v that, you will say, is philosophy, and none of 
 us here may be philosophers ; we cannot therefore 
 travel into the discussion by which such a problem will 
 be finally solved. But one thing we all can do, and 
 it is very urgent that we should do it; and that is, that 
 
270 
 
 Newness of Life. 
 
 we should try to make out what it is we mean by 
 selfishness, and what by unselfishness; for it is this 
 word " selfish " that, after all, is the difficulty. 
 
 Are we at all right or rational, let us ask ourselves, 
 when we assume that all action which vigorously 
 advances the fortunes of the agent is for that reason to 
 be called selfish ? We have made these theories, we 
 have let ourselves assume this ; but why ? Why should 
 we make such an assumption ? What evidence is there 
 that vigorous pursuit of personal good proceeds out 
 of selfish motives? Surely St. Paul, the preacher 
 of meekness and gentleness in Jesus — surely he is 
 rather a hard instance to bring under our assumption. 
 No one, I suppose, pretends to doubt the genuineness 
 of the Apostle's self-surrender. Unselfishness, as we 
 know, was with him a passion — the master-passion 
 of his life. But is there, then, in him none of that 
 vigorous vitality which works ever upward and on- 
 ward ? Is there, then, no assertion of the fullest 
 personal energies? AVere his cravings unliberated ? 
 were his forces unused? was his character typically 
 one of repression, of curtailment, of subdual ? Was his 
 Self — that which lies at the heart of Self — that which 
 is Paul — was that ineffectual and passive ? Was there 
 in him no burning curiosity, no pertinacious aspira- 
 tion, no splendid ambition, no striving after perfection? 
 Had he, then, no purpose, no chosen prize set before 
 him for which he hungered, and in the hope of which 
 he endured ? How his own words leap to our memories 
 to answer our questions ! Always he ranks himself 
 with those who staud as types of strenuous life. He 
 
The Energy of Unselfishness. 271 
 
 was as an athlete beut on a prize ; he was as a runner 
 with his eyes set on a far goal, who, with muscles 
 strung and fibres tried and trained, summons out all 
 that is in him, puts out the gathered forces aud bends 
 all his issuing aud springing energies upon the hope 
 set before him, towards which he ever presses — presses 
 towards the high mark of his calling, not regarding 
 those things which are behind, "counting all as dung" 
 that he may win Chiist, that he may wear the crown 
 laid up in Heaven for him who runs a good course here 
 ou earth. This eager, passionate, burning pursuit of 
 the perfect manhood, of that excellency which is made 
 open to him by Christ Jesus — this, looked at from 
 without, is surely identical in appearance with that 
 impetuous craving which pushes all men forward 
 towards their hight^st interest, and which we have 
 assumed to be selfish, wherever it appears. If, as 
 spectators, we were asked to describe that vigorous 
 assertion of a vital self which is the root-im[)ulse of 
 all natural life, what words should we clioose, what 
 words should w e prefer to those which speak of " for- 
 getting the things which are behind," of " reaching 
 forward to the tilings which are before " us, of pressing 
 towards a high mark — towards some secret perfection ? 
 And yet all this in the Apostle proceeds out of the very 
 heart and heat of his unselfishness. 
 
 Evidently we have been too vague in our generali- 
 sations ; we have classed with selfishness what may 
 very well belong to unselfishness. How have we 
 made the blunder? By assuming that all movement 
 towards the better life has self-gratification for its 
 
272 Newness of Life. 
 
 final motive ; that all vigorous assertion of personal 
 life proceeds out of selfish greed. Christianity chal- 
 lenges that assumption all along the line ; it denies 
 that the pursuit of the higher life need be, in any sense 
 or degree, necessarily selfish. It may be selfish ; but 
 it is just as possible tliat it is wholly the other. And, 
 more than that, in all its most energetic and effectual 
 types it is sure to be unselfish, for selfishness is never, 
 as a practical fact, able to kindle into life the more 
 fervent and daring forms of self-assertion. The selfish 
 man seeks his own good very sluggishly ; it is the 
 unselfish Apostle who pursues it with the zeal of a 
 Martyr and the passion of a Saint. 
 
 Let us attempt to make this clearer. What exactly 
 does it mean, to say that one's own good is selfishly 
 sought? It is selfishly sought only when it is desired 
 for the sake of the gratification it brings, for the sake 
 of the honour and pleasure and gain it may reflect 
 upon its possessor — that is, when it is not sought for 
 its own sake, but only for the sake of what it brings 
 after it. Success is selfish, when it is craved not 
 simply as successful action, successful attainment, but 
 because of the feeling of pleasure, which is not success 
 itself, but is that which accompanies success — that feel- 
 ing tliat we know so well, of gratified importance, which 
 glows and warms within us as we watch over our own 
 success, as we reflect on it, as we recall it, as we retail 
 it to others, as we pride ourselves upon it, as we crow 
 over it. We may often hunger for success in order 
 to feed this feeling, and then success, no doubt, is 
 selfishly desired ; but must it be for this for which we 
 
The Energy of Unselfishness. 273 
 
 desire success ? Have we always this after-feeling ia 
 view ? Is there no such thing as desire for success 
 simply as success, without a single momentary thought 
 of its reflex action which will follow upon ourselves? 
 Why, the whole history of man, the whole sum 
 of experience is loud with the answer. Take any 
 workman, take any artist — what is the secret of their 
 inspiration ? What is the key to all their highest 
 work? Surely nothing but the work, the love of the 
 work, the love of good work as such, the desire to see 
 the effort of labour issue in the finest result. That 
 is their end ; that is their motive. Good work satisfies 
 tliem as good work. It wields a continual fascination 
 that draws them forward at all costs and at all risks to 
 themselves — througli austere discipline, through long 
 hours of weary disappointment, through hunger, and 
 cold, and nakedness ; and they ask no question why ; 
 they would be wounded and stung as with a whip 
 if you hinted that it was because of some after-pleasure 
 to thtmselves. They are happy, no doubt, in their 
 work — this they cannot help being ; but to think 
 much of that happiness is, they know well, to ruin 
 their work, to sap their zeal, to undermine their skill. 
 
 And it cannot be that they are deceived, that 
 they have beguiled themselves into a condition of 
 self-deceit in which they cannot distinguish what is 
 selfish from what is unselfish; for vanity, selfishness, 
 self-love, the sucking of the grapes of gratification — 
 these are all passions still in them which they know 
 quite well by experience, since every day they feel them 
 mingling with all their inspirations. But that which 
 
 T 
 
2 74 Newness of Life. 
 
 they so feel and know they know also to be utterly 
 distinct from the inspiration which makes them artists, 
 and they know also that the further such motives 
 as those extend the less genuine is their artistic work, 
 and that if those motives altogether prevailed they 
 would cease altogether to be artists. No man has ever 
 produced the highest artistic work for the sake of the 
 pleasure it brought him ; such an aim inevitably 
 drains the life-blood out of his heart. 
 
 And in business and in all employments the same 
 impulse tells. He is the best workman wlio works 
 for the sake of the work ; — the merchant, for instance, 
 who has forgotten what he can gain by being richer, 
 but who has the keen zest of a sportsman for following 
 up a scheme, and the fascination of an artist in the 
 handling of his funds. In everything work would 
 be at a standstill if there were not in vigorous action 
 something more than the motive of gain — the delight 
 in the result being produced in the best possible way 
 and on the best possible lines ; and wherever, through- 
 out a country, this artistic motive in work languishes, 
 there the productions deteriorate and the trade must 
 fall. 
 
 That is the verdict of a world-wide experience, and 
 Christianity seizes on it in its primary truth. Did you 
 lightly suppose that there was no motive but self- 
 interest that roused men to the pursuit of their own 
 good ? Christianity frankly, yet firmly, says exactly 
 the opposite. When has selfishness ever spurred men 
 to heroic audacities or lifted them into splendid action ? 
 How often has selfishness won any ardent and eager 
 
The Eiiei'gy of Unselfishness. 275 
 
 disciple ? A great mass of very commoiiplace and 
 ordinary activity can be accounted fur by it. Wlien 
 we have no strong motive working upon us, then it 
 is tliat we fall back on self-interest; when we are 
 indilTerent, undetermined, idle, then it is that we set 
 to work to calculate which course will please us most, 
 or by which path we shall win most gain. Selfishness 
 is the dull drudge that sweeps the house, that does a 
 good deal of plain and obscure and plodding work for 
 us; it has sufficient force to carry us along through 
 commonplace matters where we need no special 
 effort. But whenever we are really roused, or alive, 
 or strenuou*, or enkindled, then we throw the calcula- 
 tions of selfishness to the winds, we laugh at the 
 question of our gains, and forget to ask w hat will come 
 of it all — we feel only the keen craving, that at any 
 cost, our cause should win ; we throw ourselves into it, 
 we give ourselves to it just as runners who yield them- 
 selves up to the passion of a race, and run as if there 
 were nothing in all the wide world to be done but just 
 to run and to win, without ever dreaming of asking 
 the why or the wherefore. 
 
 Nor is it only the joy of the artist that is the seed 
 of vigorous action ; there is another motive, even more 
 powerful, more universal, and more fruitful — the 
 motive of love. A man will do far more for the love 
 of others than he ever will do for himself ; he will 
 display a finer vigour, a nobler patience, a steadier 
 courage, a fuller energy on behalf of mother, and 
 home, and wife, and children, by the side of which 
 the efforts he will make on behalf of his own interests 
 
Newness of Life. 
 
 will look l)ut poor and thin. Nor is it only others 
 that he helps by doing this; it is himself who is 
 vitalised by the new hope ; it is his own being that 
 is enlarged and enriched — his own interest and good 
 and perfection that he attains through this devotion 
 to the other. He is made a better man by loving. 
 We have all seen it. A young man without responsi- 
 bilities, left to himself, with nothing but his own 
 interest to serve, how idle, how profitless he is, bow 
 meagre, how sluggish ! His powers lie all dulled 
 through and through with indifference ; he hangs 
 about life listless, unquickened, bored, fatigued. Even 
 though all his future prospects depend on his industry 
 he cannot be got to put himself under pressure; no 
 calls, no reproaches, no warnings, will induce him to 
 put his energies out in action ; he is selfish, and 
 because he is selfish he is idle. But how he has 
 surprised us when the touch of love has laid his hand 
 upon him. For, lo ! he is a new being, his manhood 
 stirs, his will quickens, his senses are all alert. Night 
 and day he schemes how he may in prosperity ; 
 he toils with perseverance, he endures with a valiant 
 cheerfulness of which no one believed him capable; 
 for the sake of that other he will slave as he never 
 slaved for himself; and all through the long days that 
 follow, as he thinks of her in the house with the 
 children, he will set himself to the grim task of life 
 Avith an ardour that would have died out and been 
 beaten years before, if it had been but his own poor, 
 pitiful self for which he was spending his strength. 
 And do you retort that such love is, after all, but a 
 
The Energy of Unselfishness. 
 
 277 
 
 piece of indirect selfishness, that it is for his own joy 
 that he works when he works on behalf of his wife 
 and his home? Then, if so, why is indirect selfishness 
 so much more vigorous than selfislmess when it is 
 direct? xV motive, if it is the animating motive, must 
 surely be most effective when it is most visible, most 
 distinctly piesent. How is it that selfishness is so far 
 more powerful when it conceals itself ia the love for 
 another and pretends to be unselfish? Surely we are 
 playing with words when we reduce life to such a game 
 of pretence, to a mad charade in which motives only 
 act by dressing themselves up in disguises of their 
 opposites. Love, as a fact, moves by charming a man 
 into self-forgetfulness, by absorbing him in devotion 
 to another ; and through this, and this alone, it obtains 
 its motive power. If a man could persuade himself 
 that in loving another he were really loving liimself, 
 why, his very love would perish at the discovery. 
 
 Self rouses itself, then, into vigorous activity only 
 when it serves an aim other than its own gratification, 
 and, above all, when it loves; and if love could be 
 raised to the highest power, then the vigour and vitality 
 of that personal self would be at the very height of 
 their fulness ; to be given the power of loving would 
 be to be given the power of living. And therefore our 
 creed woke a dying world into new life by bringing 
 to bear upon its stiffening limbs and chilled heart the 
 invocation of a God Whom it could love. It was dying, 
 that old world, and dying of selfishness ; but it woke 
 under the presence of a Lord and Master to Whose 
 graciousuess and to Whose beauty it could offer the 
 
278 Newness of Life. 
 
 honour of an unselfish service and the glory of an 
 unending self-surrender. It was aroused to do for 
 Him wliat it had not the spirit to do for itself. The 
 weariness of self-service, the daily melancholy of self- 
 love — they fled away like a cloud before the hope 
 of an eternal devotion to the Name of Jesus Christ ; 
 and, instead of the tired, dispirited Pharisee, sick to 
 death of self-service under the law of works, you have 
 the great Apostle of the Gentiles, illutnined, radiant, 
 transformed, endowed with power upon power, energy 
 upon energy, gift upon gift, " in labours more abundant, 
 in strifes above measure, in prisons more frequent, 
 in death oft." Active, strong, inexhaustible, he now 
 finds store upon store of treasure within his soul, once 
 so dry and so bare. " AVho is weak, and I am not 
 weak? Who is offended, and I burn not?" 
 
 Selfishness is bound to flag. It brings upon us 
 poverty of blood, loss of brain and heart, a sunken, 
 tired, and burdened life. Is it not at the root of so 
 much in us that is dispirited and disheartened, and 
 fretful, and listless? You meet men and women who 
 drag themselves along, who are dim with sheer indifi'er- 
 ence, who find no light and no joy in all that this 
 world can bring them. My brethren, when this 
 humour creeps over us, let us closely examine and see 
 whether it be not some self-seeking that has brought 
 it upon us. For life will look sordid and meagre and 
 meaningless, after a time, to a man of selfishness. He 
 feels it profoundly stale and unprofitable, lie realises 
 so little, and there is so little that is worth the cost 
 of realising. The aim is mean, and it is impossible 
 
The Energy of Unselfishness. 279 
 
 to be energetic for long in serving its claims ; but love, 
 love for others — this enriches, this enkindles, this 
 evokes in us the desire to be better men ; it sustains 
 us in the effort of self-improvement. " Love fulfils the 
 law." Everything becomes possible to those who love. 
 The commands of the Lord are no longer grievous, for 
 the soul that loves is gifted by that love with fresh 
 energies; it discovers in itself unsuspected possibilities, 
 and is supplied with ever-flowing currents of new 
 vigour. The impossible becomes possible to all who 
 look to another and love — the hard loses its hardness, 
 and the grievous ceases from grieving. Love enlightens, 
 and warms, and cheers, and renews, and again and 
 again the self within us presses forward under its 
 sweet breath toward the hope set before us. 
 
 Unselfishness is the only salt that preserves our 
 soundness ; unselfishness is the only fire that purifies, 
 and refines, and betters, and makes perfect. We shall 
 be enabled to do so much if only we love. We live by 
 loving, and the more we love the more we live ; and 
 therefore, when life feels dull and the spirits are low, 
 turn and love God, love your neighbour, and you will 
 be healed of your wound. Love Christ, the dear 
 Master, look at His Face, listen to His words, and love 
 will waken, and you will do all things through Christ 
 Who strengtheneth you. 
 
SERMON XIX. 
 
 THE FEUIT OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 " 2Cf)E tnorks of tfje flcsfj arc manifest, 5Df)icf) are t?)rse : f)atrcti, 
 ban'ance, emulations, bvatfj, strife, seditions, Ijcresies, cnfagings, murtiers. 
 But tfje fruit of tfje Spirit is lobe, jog, peate, feintmess, goolnrss, 
 temperance." — Gal. v. 19-22. 
 
 As St. Paul looks back at that bad life out of which 
 he had snatched the souls of his Gentile converts, it 
 is its bitter brutality that he most vividly remembers 
 and recalls. It was a jarring life, in which there was 
 no tenderness, no courtesy, no kindliness, no peace. 
 It was full of collisions, of friction, of wounds, of sores. 
 It was a loud and violent life, in which men fought, 
 and hit, and swore. 
 
 As he runs over his list of old habits once familiar 
 to them, his picture is as of some back alley in our 
 crowded towns, in which all is shrill, rough, boisterous, 
 with women screaming, with children shrieking, a 
 nest of noises, a swarm of jangling cries. 
 
 This is what they have left behind, this which had 
 made life one long quarrel, pitiless and brutal. They 
 had left it, mastered and enthralled by the sweet 
 vision of Him, the Man of peace, and meekness, and 
 lowliness, Who had been led, quiet and patient, 
 as a lamb to the slaughter, and, as a sheep before its 
 
The Fruit of the Spirit. 
 
 281 
 
 shearers, had never opened His mouth ; Who, when 
 He was reviled, reviled not again ; and when He was 
 threatened, threatened not ; One Who never gave back 
 railing for railing, but oiily blessing. 
 
 " You all remember it," he keeps crying to them,— 
 " those old days, so merciless, so angry, so cruel ; how 
 you grated on one another, how you rasped one another, 
 how you bit and devoured one another like snarling 
 dogs." It had been one long quarrel, a life of wratli, 
 " full of bitterness, clamour, evil-speaking : " they knew 
 it all bat too well what he meant, for " the works 
 of the flesh " are manifest, " which are these — hatred, 
 variance, emulation, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, 
 envyings, murders." 
 
 *' Works of the flesh," St. Paul calls them. His 
 keen eye sweeps over the whole range of this loud 
 quarrelling ; to him, it is no senseless storm that 
 rages on without riiyme or reason. Nay ! it has, 
 all of it, a story and a cause : it is the witness, on 
 the surface of life, to inner disorder. These rough 
 oaths, these venomous taunts, this bitter tumult — 
 these are the natural issues of the root from whifh 
 they spring. They are " works " — normal, and antici- 
 pated, and legitimate deeds, which appear in obedience 
 to a law of rational production. They are " fruits " — 
 results that grow out of certain creative activities, 
 as accurately and inevitably as grapes from vines and 
 figs from fig-trees. 
 
 And what is this root which so legitimately flowers 
 into these uncomfortable blossoms? "The flesh," St. 
 Paul names it ; the flesh is as much the seat and 
 
282 
 
 Newness of Life. 
 
 home of this passionate violence as it is of those other 
 passions and appetites with which we commonly 
 identify it. This petulance, this savagery, this hail 
 of malice, this outcry of rage, this havoc of revenge, 
 this recklessness of cruelty, — all this finds its principle, 
 its origin, its motive-cause in that same activity of the 
 flesh. Set the law of the flesh in action, and you must 
 have quarrels. Out of the flesh they fly, tliese oaths 
 and screams, just as sparks out of a smitten flint. It 
 would be a miracle if men who lived after the methods 
 of the flesh failed to envy and to hate one another. 
 
 Now, can we see why this is so — why hatred, 
 variance, emulation, strife are manifestly works of that 
 same body of sin which has for its fruits those other 
 vices, uncleanness and drunkenness, which we more 
 easily connect with the motions of the flesh ? To answer 
 this, I will ask you to enter a little more deeply than 
 usual into the solid and broad meaning which St. Paul 
 attaches to this, his favourite term for the root-principle 
 of human sin — " the flfsh." Obviously, it is much 
 more to him than the mere matter of animal passions. 
 It expresses to him the typical nature, the essential 
 form, of all that can be set in antithesis to spirit. 
 "The flesh lusteth against the spirit." It includes 
 the pride and the falsity of intellect. It embraces the 
 disorder and stubbornness of the will. What, then, 
 is this " flesh " ? How can we describe and define it ? 
 
 Let us try, in answer to this question, to conceive 
 the mode in which sin arises. Man, when he begins 
 to think and scheme, discovers himself looking out 
 upon a world in which he has already been instinc- 
 
The Fruit of the Spirit. 283 
 
 lively and spontaneously playing a busy part. He 
 finds himself, before he takes tlie trouble to notice 
 it, or to consider, already netted into a web of living 
 relationships, within which he displays those gifts and 
 energies with which he is endowed, and which he 
 brings into use under the natural pressure of circum- 
 stance, under the dictation of emergencies. His family, 
 his people, have ways and habits of securing their 
 living, of asserting their business ; and into these he 
 falls, and acts under their unfelt direction. There he is 
 — there he lives; he eats and drinks; he Vvakes, and 
 works, and sleeps ; he grows, marries, dies : and all 
 this happens, so to speak, without asking him ; his 
 customs fix it ; his nature prompts ; his inner spon- 
 taneity issues in its normal actions. If this were all, 
 his human life would all spring up as naturally, as 
 obviously, as a forest grows and spreads with unfailing 
 pertinacity ; or as a river runs wherever the earth 
 yields it readiest way. 
 
 Nor need this instinctive life of man stand still; 
 it might be capable of advance, of growth. Its 
 spontaneous reactions, in face of irritant circumstances, 
 might move forward towards surer and more subtle 
 adaptations. It might advance under the discipline 
 of accumulated experiences, even as plants and birds 
 perfect themselves, and yet, still, it would be without 
 any interruption of that even and unsinuing naturalness 
 which belongs to the powers that are God-sown, 
 God-plantfcd, God-watered within him. 
 
 Now, see his temptation — how it arrives. 
 
 He looks up and sees the great arching heavcD, and 
 
284 
 
 Newness of Life. 
 
 the spreading surface of the teeming earth, and the 
 dreamy woods, and the silent pastures, and the 
 breathless hills, and the moving waters, and the hurry- 
 ing swarms of fish, and bird, and beast ; and in amid 
 it all he sees men, his fellows, scattered in buried 
 hamlets, or thick-pressed in gathering towns ; his 
 brothers, his mates, his sisters, his children, his own 
 house and home — narrow, yet so dear. How near, how 
 familiar it all is ! And he can lie there, on the hill- 
 slope, and watch it — watch the thin smoke curling 
 amid the trees ; and the mother, within the shadowed 
 house, with the babes ; and the sister, with her bucket 
 at the well : and can hear the far cry of his father 
 to the ploughing oxen, at the turn of each furrow in 
 the field. There it lies before him — human life as he 
 knows it ; he can watch, and note, and name it all. 
 
 And, then, in amongst it, there is one whom he 
 also can observe and consider with peculiar fascina- 
 tion. He can see him amid the throng : he can 
 follow him in and out ; he can stand by him, and hear 
 him speak ; he can attend on him wherever he moves, 
 can enter into all his occupations, can listen to his 
 laughter, and sadden with his tears. There he goes — 
 look at him ! a man like other men, yet whom he 
 knows as he knows no other. Who is it ? Who is 
 this man on whom his eyes fasten? It is himself. 
 He watches himself, he notes himself. He can observe, 
 and consider, and examine himself, as much as he 
 can all the crowd of strange men who move about him. 
 His own impulses, his thoughts, his feelings, his fears, 
 his hopes, his loves, his hates, his secrets, his fancies, 
 
The Fruit of the Spirit. 285 
 
 his wants, his passions ; he looks upon them all, and 
 learns to know and to name them. He learns ; yes, 
 for they are as wonderful, as surprising to him, as if 
 they belonged to another man. Though they are 
 his own, he cannot make them ; nor tell whence they 
 come, or whither it is they point ; or why they crowd 
 in one moment, and die away and leave him dry and 
 empty at another. He has them, and feels them ; but 
 yet he stands outside them, as a spectator. 
 
 And he may rightly take this observant interest in 
 himself. He has just as much right to wonder and 
 pore over his own intricate and fascinating fabric, as 
 he has to admire and love the symmetries of a flower 
 or the mechanism of a bird. All are miracles of Divine 
 skill, and he as much as any. He may love himself, 
 just as he loves his neighbour. But then, this self- 
 study, this self-ad miiati on, this self-regard, — how 
 crowded it is with moral risks ! 
 
 First, he so quickly loses proportion between him- 
 self and others. This interest in observing himself is 
 singularly fascinating. 
 
 His true interest, indeed, in himself, lies in his 
 being a work of God's Hand ; and all other men are 
 equally God's work, and, by this scale, therefore, 
 ought to be equally interesting. But are they so? 
 Can he keep true to this scale ? Can he resist the 
 inclination to feel that his delight in himself is an 
 altogether different affair from his delight in others ? 
 The moment he has distinctly singled his own per- 
 sonality out from the herd of men, how vividly it 
 poses, how emphatically it asserts itself! Other men 
 
286 
 
 Newness of Life. 
 
 sink back into an obscure background ; the one absorb- 
 ing thought is, " There am I. That, then, is what 
 I am." The divine proportion is already lost; and 
 then, with this rise of self-interest, a wholly novel 
 question inevitably opens. All other things which 
 interest us as works of God, are accepted as they stand ; 
 their place, their fitness for their place, their allotted 
 function — these all belong to the admiration they excite : 
 we never feel inclined, unless in the case of the most 
 violent exceptions, to question or to dispute their 
 nature and situation, any more than we sliould ask 
 why tliis flower was of one hue and kind, and that one 
 of another. The fact is enougli : a rose is a rose ; it 
 would be ridiculous to ask why it was not a lily. But 
 as soon as we clearly conceive ourselves with suflScient 
 interest, we compare ourselves with others, we distin- 
 guish all the differences, and the question starts 
 instinctively to our lips, " Why am I exactly where I 
 am in the world ? Why should I be fixed to that 
 spot, in that rank, with that particular work, office, 
 opportunity ? Oh, if only I had that other person's 
 gifts ! if 1 had only been given his chance ! And 
 why not ? Why should I be cut down to this limited 
 area, these narrow and rigid duties ? Why should I 
 be debarred from eating of the tree of knowledge of 
 good and evil ? " A serious question this, if once it 
 has been started; it holds in it the germ of revolt, the 
 seed of all sin. And the seed will grow and sprout ; 
 for self-study develops rapidly — once started it is 
 ever on the increase; more and more absorbing be- 
 comes the interest. And with each increase of interest, 
 
The Fruit of the Spirit. 
 
 287 
 
 comes an increasing sense of importance ; self begins 
 to fill the sct-nes up to the edge of the horizon ; other 
 men sink back and back into a less and less distin- 
 guishable crowd. And as self-importance swells, so 
 inward greeds grow, and wake, and stir, and prick. 
 
 And now, too, there is yet another danger to be 
 marked. Man observes hims-elf, we say, just as he 
 observes other men; he learns what he is, just as 
 he learns what they are — by watching and noting his 
 own spontaneous acts and words. But there is a differ- 
 ence. With himself, he not only notes his acts, but he 
 notes down, too, how he feels as he acts ; he takes 
 notice of his own pleasures and pains, as they accom- 
 pany and follow his activities. But, with others, he is 
 very little apt to do this. Their actions he sees and 
 hears, and, therefore, notes; but their feelings, with 
 which they act, these are out of sight and hearing. 
 He can calculate them from his own, but that is 
 another matter. In themselves, they do not very 
 obviously appear. He can watch what all men do, with- 
 out necessarily observing what they feel as tliey do it. 
 But, with himself, it is far otherwise. That glow of 
 pleasure that kindles all over him as he does this or 
 that; that sharp throb of pain that struck into him 
 like a wild-beast's claw, — these are to him the most 
 noticeable facts. They stamp themselves very forcibly 
 upon his memory ; they hold fast his imagination. 
 The actions which brought them become interesting to 
 him, not for what they did, not for their true aim, not 
 for themselves, but because of the feelings they 
 quickened in him, because of the taste they left 
 
288 
 
 Newness of Life. 
 
 behind in his mouth. The act that brought the pain 
 had been done for some instinctive purpose ; but, now, 
 lie will set himself to avoid it, not necessarily because 
 the purpose was wrong, but simply because the effort 
 was painful. For good or for evil, that is, he has 
 abandoned his old standard of action ; he is trying life 
 by a wholly new and different scale. 
 
 And pleasure ! Ah, here is a new possibility alto- 
 gether, a new motive, a new end. Certain actions, 
 done, at first, according to rules of natural instinct, in 
 obedience to the upward growth of healthy life, have 
 been discovered to possess this perquisite of pleasure ; 
 and now, the fact of this pleasure is fastened upon 
 witli singular interest. Why not have it repeated ? 
 Why not recdll it ? Why not extend it ? Why not 
 make sure of having it always at hand ? How can it 
 be secured, and how enlarged ? Ah, how easy, how 
 natural are such questions! Yet, by them all the 
 courses of human life are upset, reversed, entangled, 
 disjointed. Before they were ever asked, man would 
 act because the outward occasion demanded it ; he did 
 what circumstances suggested or required. Now, he 
 will do the acts which bring him pleasure, not because 
 they are morally required, but because they bring him 
 pleasure. He will not wait for the fixed occasion ; he 
 will invent and create the occasions in order that he 
 may repeat his sensitive experiences. 
 
 Note the completeness of the fatal change. He is 
 no longer, by wise or advancing skill, adapting himself 
 with richer fulness to the outward demands and methods 
 of existence ; he is, rather, refashioning and rt shaping 
 
The Fridt of the Spirit. 289 
 
 outward existence according to the demands of his own 
 inward, and arbitrary, and wilful desires. He has made 
 his pleasures the canon, and is employed in forcing life 
 unduly to repeat, and unnaturally to reproduce, those 
 occasions which best suit his self-interested rule. 
 Once let him begin to assort his days and his aims by 
 such a measure, and the worst is but a matter of time. 
 Step by step, the organisation of nature is disturbed 
 and disarranged. There can be no correspondence pre- 
 served, according to this rule, between without and 
 within, between his inner appetite and his outer 
 environment : and without such correspondence there 
 is no health ; the whole man sickens into decay, he 
 corrupts, he falls to pieces; only his strong greeds 
 remain, battening on the disorder that they produce. 
 
 We have it at last, St. Paul's typical sinner, his 
 child of wrath. Is this not just what he intends by 
 the mind of flesh ? " The flesh " represents all that 
 a man is, when he is his own aim, his own end. His 
 power of self-observation, that Divine gift, in possess- 
 ing which he is the image of his God, has about its 
 use this terrible risk — that he may cease to observe 
 himself as he is in God, as he is in God's ordered 
 world, set to fulfil an office in combination with his 
 fellows, the member of a vast body, pledged to a 
 peculiar or disciplined service : he may forget all this, 
 and only observe himself, himself just as he stands, 
 with his own private appetites, likes, gifts, feelings. 
 
 And, so observing, he may separate himself off from 
 all else, hold himself up before his own eyes, and 
 fasten upon himself all his interest, and his thought, 
 
 u 
 
290 
 
 Newness of Life. 
 
 and his imagination, and his pains ; and may spend his 
 every effort in scheming how best to serve, in richness 
 of pleasurable experience, this self, who has become his 
 idol, and before which he bows himself to minister as 
 to a god. This he may do ; and that which a man 
 has then in front of him as his aim or end — 
 whether it be low and gross, or whether it be delicate 
 and intellectual — that is " the flesh," And the life 
 that he lives in obeying its behest, that is "the life 
 after the flesh;" that is "minding the things of 
 the flesh ; " that is " walking after the flesh." And 
 the end of that walk is Death. 
 
 And now, dear people, we can easily understand 
 why life in the flesh is a life of jars and quarrels, as 
 much as a life of passion and lust. The man who 
 walks after the flesh is absorbed in self-interests. He 
 has dropped his eyes from their outward gaze at that 
 busy and social world which encompasses him. That 
 world is calling to him with all its voices, but he hears 
 them no longer ; it is appealing to him to act, to hope, 
 to aspire, to give, but he pays no heed to its invoca- 
 tions. He has forgotten its wants and its movements; he 
 is dead to its touch and to its cry. His brothers look 
 to him for help, but they have ceased to interest him ; 
 his sisters turn to him for tenderness, but he is chill as 
 a blind stone. All this crowded scene of our human 
 story has lost for him its charm, its colour, its warmth, 
 its neighbourly friendliness. He has turned his eyes 
 within ; he has bent all his gaze in upon himself: it is 
 his own feelings that alone have an interest to him, his 
 own needs that alone entice. He is busy night and 
 
The Fruit of the Spirit. 
 
 291 
 
 day in considering himself : he is picturing his own 
 success ; he is planning his own pleasures ; he is brood- 
 ing over his own possibilities ; he is filled with his 
 own imaginations. Kound and round himself he is 
 always weaving the everthickening web of his own 
 fancies, and his own schemes ; and fainter and more 
 distant grows the sound of outward things. 
 
 This is the " man after the flesh : " and consider 
 what he must become in his intercourse with men. 
 He walks abroad, brimming with self-interests ; and. 
 he is bent on things fulfilling themselves according 
 to his fostered expectations ; and, so walking, he 
 must of necessity jar at once against a world that he 
 has not taken the pains to study, or understand, or 
 revere. He clashes against it, as against a wall ; he is 
 pushed and squeezed by the crowd of bustling men, 
 who have no time to give to his broodings, and are at 
 variance with his designs, and upset his favourite 
 plans, and traverse his ambitions. He is disappointed, 
 as he must be ; for this earth demands of iis a social 
 temper, and he is hopelessly and helplessly indi- 
 vidual ; it asks us to give, and he is proposing only 
 to take. He is wholly out of tune with a world 
 that exists only through self-sacrifice, and is bonded 
 together by the grace of humility ; he must be repu- 
 diated by it, he must be disregarded, he is bound to 
 be checked at every turn, and he gets cross, angry, 
 bitter. And, then, the evil aggravates itself : for human 
 life does, it must be confessed, turn a very cold 
 slioulder to men of tliis temper ; it becomes very 
 merciless and rough in encountering downright selfish- 
 
292 
 
 Newness of Life. 
 
 ness. For it has duties of its own that press, it has 
 work that hurries, and it cannot afford to deal gently 
 ■with men who are out of harmony with its aims. It 
 ignores them, it laughs at them, it brushes them aside, 
 it bowls them over. And the man so treated grows 
 more and more wounded, hurt, indignant ; perhaps he 
 rails and storms at the world that he finds so hard, at 
 the men whom he thinks so unsympathetic and so 
 cruel. Perliaps he retreats into sulky silence, and 
 shuts himself up in clouds of vaporous passion, and 
 fumes out his angry soul in secret broodings, and hugs 
 himself the closer, and vents his grudge against life 
 in spite, and scorn, and uncomfortable depression. 
 
 Ah ! do we not know him, as he goes about the 
 house like a shadow, like a threat ? He is always out 
 of gear, always difficult, always disappointed, always 
 petulant. As he comes into the room he conveys a 
 sense of chill, of weight, of effort : his temper is so 
 unsteady, so incalculable ; he asks so much of us, 
 he brings us so little ; no sunlight, no light, no fresh- 
 ness go forth from his presence. He is never easy, 
 never willing ; he has to be pleased, to be attended to, 
 to be enticed into good humour. His sisters, his 
 mother, have all to slave for his contentment ; his wife 
 wins peace only by burying all her own confidences, her 
 own fancies, her own longings in the depths of a sacri- 
 ficial silence, and in suffering all to give way to his 
 wilful temper and his tyrannous wants. 
 
 My brethren, is that so very rare a character amongst 
 us ? True, our surface life looks more sweet and more 
 kindly than lhat ancient Pagan world of St. Paul. 
 
TJie Fruit of the Spirit. 
 
 293 
 
 The peace of Christ has breathed over it a touch 
 of tender courtesies. But beneath — when we pierce 
 the outward shell of gentle behaviour — beneath still 
 stirs and seethes that old mob of quarrelsome passions 
 — those " works of the flesh — envy,- malice, wrath, 
 anger, evil-speaking." The fairest Christian home, 
 when once we win our way to its intimacy, is too often 
 such a melancholy revelation ; it turns out, so sadly 
 often, to be a very nest of fretful and angry annoyances. 
 The life, that courtesy covers, is all jars and jangles, 
 like sweet bells out of tune ; it is made sad with 
 grievances, and rubs, and spites, and heats, and moods ; 
 and all is bitter, angry, sour, ill-humoured, cross- 
 grained. 
 
 Such a state of things, once ingrown, is hard to 
 correct or cure. We see and feel the miserable 
 discomfort of it all, and we long to escape out of the 
 whole heritage of wrong which the fretful years have 
 hanged upon us. But we cannot tell where to begin. 
 We make resolutions ; but each day, somehow, renews 
 the old uncomfortable jars. How shall we recover, 
 or escape? Not by struggling to correct it piece- 
 meal ; but by going below the surface : by accepting 
 St. Paul's analysis of its origin. This quarrelsomeness, 
 this friction — this, the surface evil, has its roots much 
 deeper. We often talk as if bad temper, or moodiness, 
 or depression were accidental infirmities, which we 
 catch, like a cold ; or which come and go with the 
 weather : we treat them as the peculiar phenomena 
 that accompany an east wind ; or as unlucky habits 
 which we regret, but accept, and must allow for. 
 
294 
 
 Nezvness of Life. 
 
 St. Paul pronounces them to be no accideijnt at all • 
 he does not regard them as incidental and ui ^ifortunate 
 defects of constitution. Nay ! they beloUj -r to the 
 basal body of evil; they are the normal ancj^ natural 
 products of an inward condition; they have a i^cientific 
 origin, and an evitable cause ; they are works of that 
 same law of the flesh out of which all other .'5in sucks 
 its strength. 
 
 Yes ; they spring out of the flesh, and, t() correct 
 them, you must penetrate down to that flesh, and there 
 cut off their supplies. Self-preoccupation, sel f-brood- 
 ings, self-interest, self-love — these are the reasc^ng ^yhy 
 you go jarring against your fellows. Turn your eyes off 
 yourself: forget your own pet schemes, tbe hopgg 
 are always nursing to yourself, the self-iraportanoe that 
 you hug. Forget them, throw them aside, push thji-o^g]^ 
 them. Look up, and out! There is a larger world 
 outside you, brimming over with far other hopes than 
 yours, illumined by a vaster sun, travelling to souie far 
 historic goal. Look up, and out upon it ! It hag jtg 
 iuterests, its purposes, its ends, which it is your 
 privilege to learn, and, by learning, to obey and fo'iow. 
 Give it your heart, and it will show you its ^^q^ 
 Take its road, and it will, then, take yours. 
 
 Look up, and out ! There are men, your brot'-iei-g^ 
 and women, your sisters ; they have needs tliat you 
 can aid. Listen for their confidences ; keep your l.eart 
 wide open to their calls, and your hands alert for 
 their service. Learn to give, and not to take ; to 
 di-own your own hungry wants in the happine% of 
 lending yourself to fulfil the interests of those nCj^resfc 
 
The Fruit of the Spirit. 295 
 
 or dearest. Break through your own moody musings, 
 and run out abroad, from these closed and darkened, 
 chambers of self-consideration, — out into the wide 
 and teeming earth, where, not your scheme, but God's 
 great hope, is working out its world-wide triumph. 
 
 Look up and out, from this narrow, cabined self of 
 yours, and you wiU jar no longer, you will fret no 
 more, you will provoke no more, you will quarrel 
 no more ; but you will, to your own glad surprise, find 
 the secret of " the meekness and the gentleness of 
 Jesus ; " and " the peace of God, which passetli all 
 understanding," will drop down like dew upon your 
 happy-hearted days; and the fruits of the spirit will 
 all bud and blossom from out of your life — " love, joy, 
 peace, gentleness, meekness, goodness, long-suffering, 
 faith, temperance." 
 
SERMON XX. 
 
 THANKSGIVING. 
 
 " Snli ft came to pass, tijat, as tfjrg fccnt, tijcj iarrc ciranscli. Snt one 
 of Hjcm, fal)cn 1)c sato tijat f)e toas ijcalcfl, turiuli back, anii initfj a louU 
 boicc glorififS (Goti, an5 fell ioton on Ijts face at Itjis feet, gibing |^im 
 tljanJis; anS ijc Suas a Samaritan." — Luke xvii. 14-16. 
 
 Ingratitude ! —there is a fault we all of us easily 
 recognise and heartily condemn. Other sins there may 
 be which we are half inclined to pass over, we know 
 too nearly their fascination ; but ingratitude for kind- 
 ness, for love, this never fails to shock us ; we refuse 
 it all apologies ; we pronounce against it an unfaltering 
 sentence. And this stor}", therefore, commends itself 
 at once to all of us ; our only difficulty lies in 
 believing it possible that nine out of the ten men 
 should have been so graceless. For we may notice 
 that we are always startled by a display of ingratitude. 
 It seems to us a thing incredible, a thing which 
 our ordinary humanity repudiates, and repudiates 
 with indignation ; and yet it is very odd that we 
 should, in the face of experience, retain our surprise ; 
 for surely there is no feeling so rare, so uncertain, so 
 brief as gratitude. In politics it is a proverb that you 
 can never count on a people's gratitude ; and every one 
 who has had any philanthropic experience has learned 
 
Thanksgiving. 
 
 297 
 
 quickly enough the rapidity with which it will vanish 
 under the slightest pressure. And yet kind people, 
 engaged in good works, still creep up to us and pour 
 into our ears their sad tale of disappointment, as if it 
 would be to us a new revelation that those whom they 
 had striven to benefit could actually be unthankful. 
 They talk of it as if they were especially aggrieved ; 
 as if all good work for our fellow-creatures must cease 
 if this were to be its reward ; as if they were staggered 
 by some abnormal display of human wickedness. And 
 yet, why should there be all this melancholy astonish- 
 ment at the unthankf'ulness of others ? Surely we 
 need none of us go very far away to discover how easy 
 constant gifts become assumed rights, nor how difiScult 
 and how rare it is to sustain a heart with thankfulness 
 for mercies which we take for granted just because 
 they renew themselves every morning. Have we ever, 
 then, taken the trouble to examine the quantity and 
 the quality of our own habitual thankfulness to God, 
 for " our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of 
 this life " ? Never, but from under the discipline, it 
 would seem, of some bed of sickness or death, do we 
 ever attempt to sound the abyss of our ingratitude for 
 all that has been done, unnoticed, for our habitual use 
 and comfort, by a God " in Whom we live, and move, 
 and have our being." 
 
 And even in a matter where it would seem almost 
 incredible, even in a matter such as that brought 
 before us by the miracle of the ten lepers, even in the 
 matter of recovered health, there is strange room for 
 ingratitude. Who can believe it, even of himself, who 
 
298 
 
 Newness of Life. 
 
 can believe the quickness with, which the memory of 
 sickness, and of all its prayerful longings, can be wiped 
 out of our hearts when once the tide of returning 
 strength has swept up again into our veins? That 
 pitiful weakness in which we lay moaning and crying, 
 that dark anxiety which sucked us down under the 
 waters of fear, that miserable discomfort in which we 
 wearily tossed from side to side, crying, in the night, 
 " Would God it were morning ! " and, in the morning, 
 " Would God it were night ! " — all this, which seemed 
 to lie upon us heavy and impenetrable as some black 
 cloud, all this flies as a thin dream from off us, and is 
 gone in a moment. And even pain, pain that may 
 almost have maddened us, pain such as digs its claws 
 into spine or brain, pain such as rends and sears the 
 roots of our nerves — pain is wholly forgotten the 
 moment it is withdrawn. Nothing, indeed, can vanish 
 out of rernembrance so rapidly as pain. It slips off as 
 a cloak ; it disappears like a stone thrown into some 
 gulf. We shake ourselves, we pull ourselves together, 
 we look about, we rise, and walk, and talk, and read ; 
 we are back in the eager movement of affairs ; we can 
 hardly credit our own cheerfulness as our spirits return 
 with a rush, and we fiad ourselves released ; we laugh, 
 and hope, and scheme, and look forward just as if no 
 such suffering had ever been or could ever come again. 
 As health creeps over our limbs and renews our wasted 
 flesh, it is as if some sponge had been passed over the 
 sick days. And as health returns, confidence returns. 
 A sense of self-sufficiency is involved in the very 
 conditions of good health ; for to be in health is 
 
Thanksgiving. 
 
 299 
 
 to find ourselves adapted to the purposes and con- 
 ditions of life : we fit again into existence ; we are 
 once more in correspondence with all this living earth ; 
 we give and take freely, we use, we act, we move, 
 we enjoy, and everything comes easy, and everywhere, 
 therefore, there is food for satisfaction ; we come 
 and go lightly and successfully ; motion and action 
 have become so natural as to be again unnoticed 
 efforts. 
 
 It is the natural that so beguiles us. Health is 
 our natural condition, and tliere is a strange sway 
 exercised over our imagination and our mind by all 
 that is natural. The natural satisfies and calms us by 
 its very regularity. Its response to our expectations 
 seems to give it some rational validity. It is right, for 
 it is customary ; and its evenness and sequence 
 smother all need of inquiry. It was this which 
 bewildered us in sickness — that it had wrenched us out 
 of our known and habitual environment ; it had thrown 
 us into uncertainty; we could not tell what the next 
 minute might bring ; we had lost standard, and 
 measure, and cue ; we had no custom on which to 
 rely. And then, in our distress and in our impotence, 
 we learned how our very life hung on the breath of 
 the Most High, in Whose Hands it lay to kill or to 
 make alive; then we knew it, in that awful hour of 
 withdrawal. And as the inner man failed within us, 
 so nature, too, then seemed to fall away from us with- 
 out. How they crumble up — those deep foundations, 
 those high ramparts, those strong walls of our life. 
 To the sick mau, the earth which seems, during health, 
 
300 
 
 Newness of Life. 
 
 so sturdy and so old, fades and faints into a shadow 
 of vapour, a dream, succourless and insecure ; our 
 fingers seem to clutch nothing ; our feet totter and 
 our brain swims ; we go down to the skirts of the 
 grave. But, with health, the normal solidity returns 
 to the fabric of life ; the all-familiar walls range them- 
 selves around us ; the all-familiar ways stretch them- 
 selves out in front of our feet ; we can be sure of 
 to-morrow, and can count and can calculate, not 
 because the usual is the less wonderful, but simply 
 because it is the usual. We move in it unalarmed, 
 unsurprised, and God seems again to fade away. 
 Though we may dimly acknowledge that all this solid 
 earth must finally be dependent on His sustaining 
 Will, yet this acknowledgment only takes place in the 
 remote recesses of our abstract reasoa. It does not 
 tell with any vivid emphasis on our will, on our 
 imaginative desires. We are as those nine lepers who 
 were healed "as they went" — imperceptibly, unaccount- 
 ably. Lo ! it has happened ; it is all done. Somehow 
 the evil thing has dropped away from off them ; they 
 find themselves as other men. No doubt it has all 
 to do with that good word of Him Who bade them go 
 and show themselves to the priests ; and when they 
 were standing before Him, when they waited for His 
 Voice, how their whole souls hung on Him, their sole 
 Helper ! their eyes, their hearts, their passions, all 
 bent themselves on Him. Would He do it ? would He 
 deliver them ? Oh that He would speak ! But now it 
 is so different ; it has happened " as they went ; " they 
 feel it in them, they know not whence, and that strange 
 
Thanksgiving. 
 
 301 
 
 Voice of His melts a little into the dim background. 
 There are other matters which occupy their attention : 
 the wonder of the feeling of new life ; the sense 
 of delicious surprise ; the desire to see whether it is 
 all true, and to experiment, and to test it. And, then, 
 their friends are about them, their friends from whom 
 they have been parted for so many bitter years ; they 
 are being welcomed back into the brotherhood of men, 
 into the warmth and glow of companionship. " Oh, 
 come with us," many voices are crying ; " we are so 
 glad to have you once more among us ! Come, we 
 may hold your hands now, and you may sit with us, 
 and eat with us, as in the old days long ago. Let it 
 all begin again — the sweet ways of human kindliness, 
 in the sunlight, amid the works of men, your brothers, 
 in the tender and pleasant places of home." So the 
 happy earth closes up round them with friendly looks, 
 with warm embraces. Very thankful they may be 
 feeling to that great Healer Whose command had been 
 so blessedly fulfilled. It is not said in the story that 
 they did not feel grateful : grateful, no doubt, with 
 that vague, general gratitude to God the good Father, 
 with which we, too, pass out of the shadows of sickness 
 into the recovered life, under the sun, among our 
 fellows. They may well have felt genial, grateful : 
 only they did nothing with their gratitude, only it laid 
 no burden of duty upon them ; it was not in them as a 
 mastering compulsion which would suffer nothing to 
 arrest its passionate will to get back to the Feet of Him 
 before Whom it had once stood and cried, " Jesu, Master, 
 for Thou alone canst, — do Thou have mercy on me." 
 
302 
 
 Newness of Life. 
 
 " When He smote them they sought Him." It all 
 happens, we know, over and over again with us. We 
 are, most of us, eager to find God when we are sick, 
 A\hen the normal round of life deserts us, and by its 
 desertion frightens and bewilders us ; but so very few 
 of us can retain any hold on God in health, in work, 
 in the daily life of the natural and the constant. 
 
 And by this we bring our faith under some danger- 
 ous taunts. Who does not know them? The taunt 
 of the young and the strong : " I feel the blood running 
 free, and my heart leaps, and my brain is alive with 
 hope ; wliat have you to tell me, you Christians, with 
 your message for the sick and for the dying? I have 
 in me powers, capacities, gifts ; and before me lies an 
 earth God given and God blessed ; and you bring me 
 the religion of the maimed, and the halt, and the 
 blind, a religion of the outcast and the disgraced, a 
 religion of hospitals and gaols ; what is all this to 
 me ? " And the taunt of the worker : " I have will, 
 patience, endurance, vigour ; by this I can win myself 
 bread, can build myself a house, can make my way. 
 This is my task ; here and now lies my work, cut out 
 for me, — a work which must be done before the night 
 falls: and you bid me wait till failure has broken in, 
 until disease has spoilt me, until death threatens me, 
 and then, at last, you pronaise you will step in with 
 your news of some far-off land of harps and white robes 
 and golden cities. Here, on earth, where I stand, my 
 task is set me ; necessity is laid upon me. Woe is me 
 if I cannot hold my own, and feed my wile and child. 
 What have you to bring me here and now of force. 
 
Thanksgiving. 
 
 303 
 
 of courage, and of help ? " And there is the taunt 
 of the scientific mind: "Why," it asks, "do you go 
 creeping about in the dim corners of life, crying after 
 God in all that is unusual, exceptional, unnatural, 
 accidental ? You are of those, surely, who peep and 
 mutter, wandering to seek God in dark haunts, and 
 terror, and disease, and infirmity, and corruption. You 
 find God only in strange deliverances, in miracles, 
 interventions, in magical healings, and abrupt breaches 
 of custom. But order is more Divine than disorder, 
 and uniformity than arbitrary miracles. We seek God 
 in nature, not in the unnatural ; in the sure, and not 
 in the accidental ; in health, and not in the failure 
 of disease ; in the high energies of splendid life, and 
 not in the pains of death." 
 
 Those taunts are very real, and living, and pressing : 
 how shall we face them ? 
 
 First, we will be perfectly clear that for no taunts 
 from the young, the successful, and the strong, and for 
 no demands either from the workers or the wise, can 
 we for one moment forget or forego the memory of 
 Him Who was sent to heal the broken-hearted, and to 
 comfort the weary and the heavy-laden ; and Who laid 
 His blessing upon the poor, and the hungry, and the 
 unhappy ; and Who came as the Good Physician, not 
 to the whole, but to the sick ; and Who would leave 
 ninety and nine sheep in the wilderness to seek for but 
 one that was lost in the cloudy and dark hills, and Who 
 poured out more joy over one penitent sinner than over 
 ninety and nine just men who needed no repentance ; 
 — of HicQ who found praises among babes and sucklings 
 
304 
 
 Newness of Life. 
 
 only, and sat at meat with publicans and harlots. No, 
 nor can we cease to walk as exiles and pilgrims here 
 on earth, looking for a heavenly " city, not made with 
 hands, eternal in the heavens." We dare not lose one 
 scrap of that high promise, we will hold it fast ; for God 
 knows how little we can afford to forego this consola- 
 tion, in a world so tangled with wrong, and so weary 
 with sickness, and so smitten with sorrow, and so 
 soiled with sin. 
 
 No, we will withdraw nothing. But have we no 
 living message for the strong and the young, for 
 the happy and the wise ? In what form, let us ask, 
 ought religion to offer itself to these ? What 
 should be their natural religious attitude towards 
 God? Surely we know it would be in the form of 
 thanksgiving ; they should stand before God holding 
 in their hands the sacrifice of praise, the thank-offering 
 of their entire being. Thanksgiving ! That is the 
 note of faith by which it employs and sanctifies not 
 only the poverty and the penitence of sinners, but also 
 the gladness of work and the glory of wisdom. 
 
 And has our Christian faith, then, no voice of thanks- 
 giving? Nay, our faith is thanksgiving. Thanks- 
 giving is its root, and its heart, and its life ; our faith 
 begins and ends in thanksgiving, and all its scheme of 
 redemption, its message of the Cross and the Passion, 
 the Agony and the Bloody Sweat, is but ministerial to 
 that supreme end of all prayer and of all reconciliation; 
 the ofiSce of thanksgiving, the act of adoration. Our 
 faith begins and continues and ends with thanksgiving, 
 for it has its roots deep laid in that song of thanks- 
 
Tha nksgiving. 
 
 305 
 
 giving which rose on the first dawn, " wlien the 
 morning stars sang together, and all the saints of 
 God shouted for joy ; " and it looks forward for its 
 flower of triumphant honour to the day when, before 
 the great throne set on the crystal sea, there will go 
 up, as the sound of many waters, the voice of the 
 thousand times ten thousands of Angels and Archangels, 
 singing for ever and ever the new song of the Lamb. 
 And, between the gladness of the first creation and the 
 gladness of the final redemption, there still abides with 
 us, unbroken by our own sin, unwearied by our disasters, 
 the secret of restored thanksgiving — that unceasing 
 Eucharist which no despair can blacken or defeat, 
 since the darkest day that the world can ever see, 
 when, with foes about, and treachery within, in bitter 
 loneliness of spirit, under the dreadful shadow of death, 
 Jesus, our Master, held fast the red chord of praise and 
 gladness, and in the very night of the Betrayal, though 
 His Soul grew troubled and His Heart shuddered, 
 " took bread, and lifted up His Eyes to Heaven, and 
 gave thanks." 
 
 Thanksgiving ! — this is our worship, and in the 
 form of thanksgiving our religion embraces everything 
 that life on earth can bring before it. 
 
 Here is the religion of youth, the religion of all the 
 hope that is in us. Let it, in the Name of Christ, 
 give thanks. Union with Christ empowers it to make 
 a thank-offering of itself; to bring into its worship 
 all its force, its hope, its youth, and its vigour. Hope 
 unoffered will soon disappoint; youth unpresented 
 will soon weary and grow stale; and happiness is 
 
 X 
 
3o6 
 
 Newness of Life. 
 
 only kept clean and untainted by the salt of thanks- 
 giving. Youth and hope — they need religion just as 
 much as weakness needs consolation, and as sin needs 
 grace ; they need it to forestall their own defeat, 
 that they may be caught in their beauty and in their 
 strength before they pass and perish, and so be offered 
 as a living thank-offering ; that they may be laid up as 
 treasures, eternal in the Heaven, where " rust can never 
 bite, nor moth corrupt, nor any thieves creep in to 
 steal." How much might have been spared of that 
 withering sadness, which embitters so many as their 
 pulses slacken and their hearts grow cold, if only, 
 while yet their grace was in them, they had laid it all, 
 a happy offering, on the altar of their praise ; or if they 
 had brought to God, not the penitent remains of a 
 wrecked and stained life, but souls still white with the 
 radiancy of hope, and bodies still glad witli the glory 
 of living. 
 
 Thanksgiving! It is the religion for wealth, and 
 for work, and for the present hour. It redeems wealth 
 by ridding it of that terrible complacency which so 
 stiffens and chokes the spiritual channels that, at last, 
 it becomes easier for a camel to get through a needle's 
 eye than for a rich man to find his way into the 
 Kingdom of Heaven. And it redeems work by purging 
 it of pride and of selfishness, and by rescuing it from 
 dulness and harshness. For work, strong and suc- 
 cessful work, has its own perils. Who does not know 
 the hard Pharisaic temper of self-satisfaction, the con- 
 tempt for the weak and thriftless which can come with 
 the thought, "I have done pretty well; I have got 
 
Thanksgiving. 
 
 307 
 
 ahead ; I have stepped steadily up ; by prudence, by 
 skill, by patience, by pains, I am what I am. Thank 
 God, I am not like those thriftless poor, like those who 
 never make an honest penny, nor stick to a steady 
 job, but beg, and drink, and go down to Hell : thank 
 God, I am not like this publican " ? Or, again, to many 
 of us, how flat, and mean, and dull, and monotonous, 
 and inglorious is the daily drudgery which we call our 
 business ! How our spirits shrivel under it ; how our 
 aspirations freeze. 
 
 We can save ourselves from all this, save ourselves 
 from the harshness, and save ourselves from the 
 withering, if we will come and give thanks. Give 
 thanks, you that are strong, for your strength of hand 
 and biain ; give thanks, not to yourself, but to God ; 
 for what have you that you did not yourself receive? 
 Give thanks, and so, by the glad surrender of your 
 own glory to God, learn, through your very success, to 
 widen your sympathies and your pity for the unsuc- 
 cessful and weak. For how was it that you were 
 given the gifts that they lack ? As you learn the 
 preciousness of your own privilege, pity them the more 
 who have it not. And dulness and monotony ! — what 
 is too dull and too monotonous to lift up before God, 
 and to offer in thanksgiving, even though it be the 
 routine of the counting-house? We may lift it up, 
 and lo, the light is on it, and glory embraces it, and 
 there is joy among the Angels of God over the heart 
 that gives thanks. 
 
 Thanksgiving fastens on the present hour. For 
 thanksgiving you need not look, and wait, for some 
 
3o8 
 
 Newness of Life. 
 
 new heaven and some new earth in the great herealter, 
 "Behold, now is the acceptable time ;" now, as you are, 
 in your work and in your play, you can lift up hallowed 
 hands, you can sit in heavenly places, you can stand 
 with Angel and Archangel, and give glory to God for 
 His kindness and His mercy, which endure for ever. 
 
 And, again, it is by tlianksgiving that religion 
 closes with the natural and the normal, and the neces- 
 sary. Thanksgiving asks for no change, it looks for 
 no surprises, it takes the fact just as it stands, as law 
 has fashioned it, and as custom has fixed it. That 
 and no other offering is what it brings. And how- 
 ever fast the necessities of life may grip us, however 
 irrevocable may be the decrees by which the strong 
 years have laid their rough hands upon us, though 
 we be snared with the cords which the sins of our 
 fathers have bound about our limbs, yet by willing 
 praise we bring our own freedom into play within the 
 very web of destiny itself, we intermingle our voice 
 "with the commands of Nature, we insert our own free 
 choice into the very heart of the decrees which fasten 
 us, we identify our will with God's, we possess our- 
 selves of the secret of our fate, and we become master 
 of that which would master us. Are you fast bound 
 in misery and iron ? Give thanks to God and you are 
 free. The very iron of necessity is transfigured by 
 this strange alchemy of thanks into the gold of 
 freedom and gladness. Nothing is impossible to the 
 spirit of praise, notliing is so hard that Christ cannot 
 uplift it for us before God, nothing so common that He 
 will think it unworthy of His Glory. 
 
Thanksgiving. 
 
 309 
 
 Let us " in everything give thanks, wliether we eat 
 or drink, or whatsoever we do." What holy whispers 
 would pass to and fro between the Father and us if, 
 at every heart's beat and at every pulse of breath, we 
 could repeat our untiring hallelujah with them on 
 high, who, again and again, at each pause, at each 
 close of God's unceasing display are ever saying, again 
 and yet again, " Hallelujah." Here is the secret of 
 Christian cheerfulness ; and no power on earth can 
 break it down when once we have discovered that 
 there is absolutely nothing but sin itself which is not 
 fitted to renew and to replenish the delight of giving 
 thanks. Why, then, are any Christian faces clouded 
 and thick ? Why are there any Christian hearts that 
 are sullen and tired ? Call upon your spirits to give 
 thanks unto the Lord God. That door of escape is 
 ever open, that gateway into gladness can never be 
 shut ; and, day after day, you can " magnify the Lord, 
 and worship His Name, ever world without end." 
 " Lift up your hearts unto the Lord," for indeed " it 
 is meet, right, and our bounden duty, that we should 
 at all times, and in all places, give thanks " to God 
 for His gi eat glory. 
 
Cl)e CI)rtstian ^iU Ijtxt on 
 earti) 
 
 THE ACTIVITY OF SERVICE— CHARACTER 
 AND CIRCUMSTANCE. 
 
SERMON XXI. 
 
 THE ACTIVITY OF SERVICE. 
 
 "But as tfjE Uags of floe fccre, so sfjall also tl^e coming of ti^e Son 
 of ftlnn be. JFor as in ttjc Uags Hjat facre before tl)e flooti tf)ro tone 
 eating an5 drinking, marrning anl gibing in marriage, until tfje Sag tf}at 
 iJoe entcrclJ into tfjc ari5, anli fenrfa not until tfje flcoli came, anti took 
 tljem all afeag ; so sijall also tte coming of t}}e Son of fflan be." — 
 Matt. xxiv. 37-39. 
 
 The text speaks of an experience which comes to all 
 of us in our turn, as life gradually builds us round. 
 At first, in our childhood, it is otherwise. This earth 
 seems, then, to have no fixed hardness; the spot on 
 which we stand melts off indefinitely into a dreamlike 
 distance, which is hazy and vague, and peopled with 
 we know not what possibilities, holding within its rays 
 strange fairy worlds which rumours may fill as they 
 will, and everything seems possible, and anything 
 might happen, and no relentless law of undeviating 
 existence has imprisoned our expectations and experi- 
 ence, and the world of our hopes mingles with the 
 world of our senses, and earth and Heaven are not 
 afraid of each other ; their lines cross without a shock. 
 But, as we grow up, we know how solid and how hard 
 the whole thing becomes. The earth takes its stiff 
 limits and its exact rules; it is seen, and known, and 
 measured — a round ball, rolling in space, compact. 
 
314 The Christian Life he^^e on Earth. 
 
 and massive, and blind, and entire, — a round, rolling 
 ball, and we roll round with it. We are things in it, 
 embedded in it ; we belong to it ; we have a fixed 
 spot and lot on its surface. To it we are tied ; we are 
 bound to definite purposes which we never dream of 
 disputing. So we travel with the moving earth ; and 
 our days are settled for us ; occupations and holidays 
 repeat themselves, year after year, with stolid regularity, 
 against which gradually we give up protesting; we 
 make up our minds to live out our own parts; and 
 all the emotions that beat against this even tenour of 
 uneventful days — dreams, impulses, alarms, hopes, 
 aspirations — cease to be more than empty visions. 
 The common day closes in upon us, settled and 
 familiar ; the common world is about us, with interests 
 that ever increase, with work and play, with rule and 
 habit; and the steady block of endless business fills 
 in our allotted space of action, fills it in down to every 
 cranny, thick and solid and unyielding. We are 
 occupied with the routine of waking and sleeping, and 
 the mere necessities of social contact. It takes us all 
 our time to get through what must be done ; pleasures, 
 meetings, professions, these keep us busy ; how can we 
 stop the round world turning ? We eat and drink, 
 marry and are given in marriage, and it is to us as in 
 the days of Noe, as if the world were going to last 
 always. How firm it all is ! how confident of its own 
 solidity! Who can resist its supremacy ? As we look 
 out on the busy scene, at the ordinary movements of 
 a large city, at the men of business as they hurry 
 along with anxious countenances, or stop and talk with 
 
TJie Activity of Service. 3:5 
 
 serious and important faces — at all the toiling carts 
 slowly making for somewhere, and the ships that load 
 and unload, and the turmoil and rush of the streets — 
 everything conspires to build up an unbroken toil, the 
 interruption of which it is impossible to fancy or credit. 
 And it is idle work to consider what would best have 
 to be done if a flood were to come and destroy it all. 
 If we are to do anything here we must leave these 
 things out of account. We must go on as the world 
 asks of us, eating, drinking, marrying and giving in 
 marriage. We must do it, for it is the natural and 
 inevitable way of the flesh. We cannot remain young 
 and romantic; we cannot pretend to be young when 
 we are old. We are not permitted to indulge a 
 pleasant, easy, and irresponsible imagination. Surely, 
 we are intended to settle down, to confine ourselves 
 to a very narrow hope, to a life of prose and work and 
 business, very practical, very occupied, very pressing, 
 very absorbing. To say we do all this, is simply to 
 say we grow older and undertake responsibilities. 
 Middle life is meant to be one of active and incessant 
 occupation, and that cannot be wrong and unnatural. 
 
 But, if so, what are we to say ? Has the faith of 
 Christ no message to those who find themselves in the 
 thick of the M'orld's work ? Is it only adapted for the 
 aspirations of youth ? Is it to fade out of our life like 
 poetry, or are we to wait to pick it up in old age, when 
 the busy world of service is at last done with and the 
 strong years are dropping behind us, and we can at 
 last afford to detach ourselves from the great business 
 of marrying and giving in marriage, and eating and 
 
3i6 The Christian Life here on Earth. 
 
 drinking? Must we wait till then before we can at 
 last begin to heed the warnings of the Lord, Who 
 cried as He left us, " Behold, I come quickly, watch 
 and pray ; let your lamps be ever lighted and your 
 loins ever girt, and yourselves like unto men who wait 
 for the Lord when He shall come back from the 
 wedding." 
 
 Ah ! those high words ! how strangely they stir us, 
 as now and again they speak to us out of some even- 
 ing lesson ! And how bitterly that familiar taunt 
 smites us, " Do you, then, sitting in your churches, 
 listening to those strong words in some brief pause 
 of your swarming interests and pressing enterprises, 
 do you call yourselves disciples of Christ Who spoke 
 them? Why are you not praying with your eyes 
 strained, on the watch for Him Who cometh ? What 
 have you to do with all this eating and drinking, and 
 marrying and giving in marriage? Surely, if you 
 had one jot of sincerity, you would be as those early 
 Christians in Jerusalem who sold all they had, and 
 were content to live waiting for the Lord, gazing into 
 the dark, and crying, ' Even so : come, Lord Jesus ! ' " 
 That taunt hits us hard; but what are we to do? 
 How are we to alter this life of ours ? It is practically 
 impossible. And then some of us come to a conclusion 
 which is sure to demoralise. We let the taunt stand, 
 imagining it is true ; and we suppose we cannot be 
 all Christ meant us to be. We have no time to think 
 it all out ; we must make concessions to necessity ; we 
 must to some degree take the world as we find it ; and 
 so, without ever laying the ghost that has troubled us, 
 
The Activity of Service. 
 
 3^7 
 
 we slide back into the regular round, aud do it with 
 an uncomfortable sense that it is not quite consistent 
 with Christ to be so engaged with affairs, that all our 
 life-work is something that we should not be doing if 
 we were Saints. It is a concession which has never 
 quite been reconciled to our Sunday conscience. 
 
 And yet this hesitating compromise only raises our 
 old feeling in a new shape. For how is it possible to 
 take a sensible part in life if it is done half-heartedly 
 and condescendingly ? The mass of civilisation is very 
 difficult and very exciting, and you cannot enter it 
 without throwing into it the full force of your zeal, and 
 skill, and abilities, and eagerness. You cannot keep 
 pace with the present life, if you would finger it 
 timidly, and engage in it superficially, in a spirit of a 
 compromise. You must believe in it, work in it, rely 
 on it, bend all your powers upon it ; and if Christ 
 disallows that, if He cannot sanction the devotion of 
 your full energies to the work of this life, faith in Him 
 must require you to be but poor and ineffective citizens, 
 who will be left far behind in the race — men afraid 
 to give it their best. 
 
 Here, then, is the question : Did our Lord ignore 
 these necessities of life ? Is there anything in our 
 circumstances to-day which forbids us entering the 
 life to which He called us ? The answer is in several 
 divisions. 
 
 First, we can remember that He distinctly antici- 
 pated that His disciples should find their general 
 existence to be passed under a system of things totally 
 unlike that associated with Him Himself. They were 
 
3r8 The Christian Life here on Earth. 
 
 to live iu the world just as He left it, undissolved, 
 unchanged. In that they would be living, and, to the 
 eyes of the flesh, all outward things Mould continue 
 as they were from the beginning. And He would be 
 gone and they would see Him no more, and the world 
 would be one which would go on, as it were, without 
 Him. They would not see Him in its ways and fields. 
 Very far He would seem from their daily habits, and 
 works, and interests. They would look for Him and 
 not find Him. He would be " as a King gone into a 
 country very far off." They would be wishing that 
 their eyes might behold Him ; they would be wonder- 
 ing whether they heard the rumour of His coming. 
 " Nay, if any say unto you, Lo ! here is Christ, or, lo ! 
 there, believe it not ; or if one say, He is in the desert, 
 go not forth." Many longings, many lookings, many 
 hopes, many prayers would suffer delay, disappoint- 
 ment, despair. The Bridegroom would be withdrawn, 
 and then " they would fast in those days." They will 
 fast long; and there will be no trumpet call in the 
 night, and no call of the Bride's approach, and no 
 sudden shining of lights under the stars. The Bride- 
 groom is taken from them, and the world will look as 
 if it had wholly forgotten He was ever there or would 
 come again. The world and the Bridegroom will seem 
 completely divorced, utterly strange to one another. 
 There will be no sign of Him anywhere ; all will be 
 stolid, silent, unmoved, dull, clouded, and blind, and 
 no whisper from afar will shake the heavy folds of 
 night. The Bridegroom will tarry long : and while 
 He tarries, it is as if He would never come ; and all 
 
The Activity of Service. 319 
 
 those who belong to His Church, whether they be wise 
 or whether they be foolish, will be alike — will appear 
 the same to the outward eye ; all will seem alike to 
 slumber and sleep. All the ecstasy of devotion, all 
 the glory of the marriage scene, will be inert and 
 ineffectual as a dream. Those hidden hopes will fail to 
 appear at all on the surface of life as we look over it ; 
 they will not colour it or transfigure it. The earth 
 will hold on its way, undisturbed, as a system of 
 things, by the existence of the risen Christ. 
 
 Secrets, indeed, there are ; we know them : secrets 
 that are felt and touched and taken beneath this cloud 
 of night, beneath this veil of slumber ; secrets from 
 that far world where the Bridegroom waits for the 
 dawn ; secrets that carry with them His present peace 
 and power, yea. His very Presence itself, in His trans- 
 figured Flesh and Blood. He has not left us comfort- 
 less ; He comes to us. But He comes secretly, 
 stealing silent and noiseless as a thief in the night, 
 and no sound shivers the darkness, and no movement 
 shakes the solid earth. Only the spiritual eye sees 
 Him, and the spiritual ear catches the faithful whisper, 
 " Take, eat, this is My Body ; it is no ghost, it is I 
 Myself, fear not." All this is most real, but it is 
 hidden, and the great fixed order of things feels 
 nothing of it, and still the natural fabric stands, the 
 round earth turns and turns, and it is all as if nothins: 
 had been done. " Look at it," you will say ; " surely, 
 there is no Bridegroom coming. He is very far off ; 
 those who look for Him are much the same as those 
 who have no such expectation." 
 
320 The CJwistian Life here on Earth. 
 
 So our Lord pictured the days in which we live ; 
 and we ought not to be surprised if what He fore- 
 told has come true, and we find ourselves living in a 
 world out of which the light of His Presence seems 
 to have faded — a world that, to the natural eye, seems 
 utterly unmoved by Him ; a world which, except to 
 the eye of faith, is slumbering and asleep. As He 
 foretold us. He is not seen to be visibly managing 
 things; they appear to be managing themselves, 
 just as they have been from the beginning. That 
 sharp division which makes us feel, as youth dies 
 down in us, the difference between Christ Whom we 
 believe in and the world in which we actually live and 
 eat and drink — that division He justifies and antici- 
 pates, and He prepares us to find it very long. He 
 may say, " Behold, I come quickly : " for, to His pro- 
 phetic eye, a thousand years is as one day ; but the 
 servants, what did He tell us of them ? what would 
 they be feeling? "How long, how wearily long it is 
 before our Master cometh ! " So He foresaw, as He 
 pictured that wicked servant who would be tempted 
 to say in his heart, " My Lord delayeth His coming ; 
 my Lord tarrieth long." That it is which will be the 
 temptation, the temptation even of the master servants. 
 So it is that He cries again and again, " Watch ; take 
 heed." Why that anxious, urgent, incessant warning, 
 if not because the danger will be so great, lest they 
 should grow weary, and doubt whether He ever would 
 come, and fall into the snare of thinking that "My Lord 
 delayeth His coming " ? It will, as He well knew, seem 
 to be so very remote and incredible, and the world will 
 
The Activity of Service. 
 
 321 
 
 look so totally unprepared ; and vei ily, as in the days 
 of Noe, they will eat and drink, marry and give in 
 marriage up to the last minute. It will be a thing 
 impossible to credit, it will be felt when it comes like 
 a trap, like a snare upon the face of the whole earth. 
 Therefore, " watch ; " you will need to force yourselves, 
 to do violence lest your eyes should close and you 
 should sleep. " What I say unto you I say unto all, 
 watch." 
 
 WJiat of this long withdrawal of the Bridegroom, 
 how was it to be spent ? In prayer and meditation 
 only ? Has His Church no part to play in the world 
 of busy society, where they eat and drink and are 
 marrying and giving in marriage ? No ; His going is 
 DO reason for His Church's inaction, but the source of 
 her activity. "It is expedient for you that I go away." 
 Expedient. Far from withdrawing His Church's 
 interests from earth by His withdrawal. He endows it 
 with more effective energies, larger capacities for 
 action. She can do more on earth, and not less, now 
 He is gone. He shows this by picture after picture. 
 He tells us that we are to be a society carefully and 
 shrewdly organised, and this organisation is to be 
 formed with a view to work, production, fruit. We 
 are to be organised with a view to our capacities, so 
 to be arranged as to serve best for direct, present, 
 practical usefulness here on earth ; we are to be as a 
 house whicli a householder has left, in which house 
 every one is in his place, each according to his gift ; 
 and in this house there will be careful provision, that 
 each shall have his food in due season — food brought 
 
 Y 
 
32 2 The Christian Life here on Earth. 
 
 liim prepared through the hands of officers appointed 
 for that one service, while at the door will ever sit the 
 porter who will have the office of watching while the 
 others work. How careful, how orderly it all is ! No 
 loose shiftiness to fill up an interval. No indifference 
 as to what may be done in the long waiting time. His 
 going does not destroy or diminish the seriousness or 
 care with which the interval is to be organised. How 
 busy it all is to be. What! did we fancy that the 
 baste and urgency of worldly business would conflict 
 with the solemnity of watching for the Lord ? Why, 
 this Kingdom of His is to be, during all the waiting 
 time, like a house of business. It will be as a 
 merchant house, in which everybody is bent on making 
 all he can out of the money given him. He gives no 
 picture of a Church ever on its knees at some silent 
 shrine, praying for a far-off time. He foresees a body 
 of men basy and intent, absorbed in the practical use 
 of their gifts, bent on turning five talents into ten or 
 two into four. Who are those whom He approves at 
 the Judgment Seat? Those who had sought with 
 deepest zeal to better the state of men here, — to feed 
 the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the 
 prisoners. He blesses an active Church, busy in 
 present benefits, whose members have spent them- 
 selves in the service of human needs. It is such as 
 these whom He will welcome, "Come, ye blessed of 
 your Lord." 
 
 Here, then, is the character of the Christian life, in 
 this lower world ; and, if so, we can boldly face the 
 taunt. The Master is gone, not that we might stand 
 
The Activity of Service. 
 
 323 
 
 and gaze after Him, but that we might turn to our 
 work with doubled interest, because He has gone. 
 It is His absence that intensifies our interest in the 
 present world. 
 
 Let us recall, familiar as it is, how this will be. 
 
 First, earth is dearer for the sake of Him Who is 
 gone, in the same way as the things of the dead are 
 precious to us after they have been taken from us. 
 Every little thing they touched, however mean, is 
 sacred to us now ; every spot that they once loved is 
 the shrine of prayer to us. And Jesus, our Lord, He 
 is gone from our eyes, yet once He was on earth 
 among us, and left it dearer for being here. He has 
 been with us. This sky, these hills, this sea. He saw 
 and loved them ; and everything here speaks to us 
 of Him. The wind that is in our ears. He heard it 
 as it rushed along the streets, and it spoke to Him 
 of the Spirit of God. The flowers in our gardens, the 
 grain in our fields, the birds that sing and fly. His love 
 spoke of all these. And everywhere He went, and all 
 of it is His house. The strength of the young man He 
 looked upon and loved ; for the misery of sin He had 
 compassion and forgiveness. He looked upon a rebel- 
 lious city — rebellious as we see cities still — and as He 
 looked He wept over it, remembering how often He 
 would have gathered its children together. He saw 
 multitudes hungry, as we see them now, and had 
 compassion for them, and gave thanks and broke 
 bread. All was once His, and all still speaks of Him. 
 The Word was made Flesh ; He took compassion upon 
 it, and made it His home. And we who are in the 
 
324 The Christian Life here on Earth. 
 
 flesh, therefore, are invited to recall Him at every turn. 
 AVhat a new fount of love, if we would use it, for this 
 poor forlorn earth of ours ! Before this, we might have 
 loved it because it was ours, but now, because it is 
 His ; and such love is more tender, more lasting, and 
 more gracious; and yet tenderer is it, and yet more 
 irresistible when it all tells of Him Whom the veil 
 of death hides. 
 
 His absence makes us love earth more fervently. 
 
 Then the further reason. He is gone as a King to 
 a far country ; He is King and Master still. He is 
 gone, but His house is still His own, and it is to us, 
 His servants, that it is committed, committed to us 
 because He is gone. Earth is thrown upon our hands 
 and our care, because the Master is withdrawn. Our 
 pleasures, our homes, our interests, our lives, our 
 eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, 
 all these are talents intrusted to us, and our Lord 
 looks for gain to Himself from them. Very urgently 
 He desires that gain, and so urgently that, to any who 
 bold to Him by anything short of eager love, He may 
 seem as a hard man, gathering where He has not 
 strawed, reaping where He has not sown. So eager 
 a Master, He asks for patience, industry, and courage. 
 — " Well done, thou faithful servant," He says to him 
 ■who is ever on the alert to make the most of his time 
 and chances. " Well done, thou hast been faithful in 
 few things, thou shalt be ruler over many things. 
 Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." Here is a fresh- 
 ness of zeal thrown into our earthly occupations because 
 our Lord is far away, and we are left responsible. 
 
The Activity of Service. 325 
 
 As simple a reason remains still. Not only is all 
 His committed to our keeping, but He Who is so far 
 out of our sight has left us in all souls that suffer, in 
 all bodies that are sick, living pledges of Himself, 
 sacraments of His Passion. Such as these are not 
 only tokens of Him, or possessions of His : they are 
 Himself, He makes Himself one with them, He places 
 Himself under our eyes and hands, bidding us handle 
 Him and see that it is He Himself. Earth, with its 
 hunger and sickness, is still a place where we may find 
 Christ, For in all we do to help and brighten, to 
 succour and relieve our fellow-men, we hear His voice 
 of salutation — "Blessed are ye of my Father; inas- 
 much as ye have done it unto the least of one of these, 
 ye have done it unto Me." 
 
 Lastly, earth is made dearer to us because He Who 
 is gone will visit it once more. We are to be as those 
 that hold a house ready for a Master Who at any 
 moment may be heard knocking at the door. How 
 He will love to see it all kept as He would have it 
 kept ! How eagerly we should scheme to please Him, 
 to picture His returning look. His eyes falling on this 
 and on that which we had done for Him! Oh, if 
 everywhere He might but find the signs of some 
 loving forethought, of some tender loyalty to Him ! 
 Is all prepared ? Is everything in its place ? Shall 
 we ever be tired, as it were, of running round the room 
 once more to see if all is in order ? He will look over 
 all to see what we have done to make gain of His 
 goods. He will come to see what fruit is come of the 
 Cross. What have we been doing with the power of 
 
326 The Christian Life here on Earth. 
 
 the Precious Blood ? Will He find faith in the earth ? 
 Ah ! if we so judge and examine what has been done, 
 how pitiful, how meagre all that we have yet achieved 
 will appear! Did He die only to attain so poor a 
 victory ? Did He die that He might find the earth 
 the place that, in our hands, it has become — the sad 
 prison-house which He would fijid, if He came back 
 to it to-day ? These hungry, why are they not fed ? 
 These sick and prisoners, why are they not visited? 
 Had we not the power to do better than this ? He 
 committed to us all power. Why have we not put 
 it to full use ? Oh, my God ! what have we been 
 doing with Thy great work, committed to us ? Let 
 us remember that there is an austere tale told us by 
 the Lord, of a servant who grew idle as his Lord 
 delayed, and who began to neglect his office, and to 
 live carelessly, and to eat and drink with the drunken, 
 and to smite his fellow-servants; and his Lord came 
 in the day that he was not aware of, and cut him 
 asunder, and gave him his portion with the hypocrites; 
 " there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." 
 
 "Behold, I come quickly." We had thought that 
 that news might paralyse our interest in things here, 
 might drag us out of active service into passive 
 watching for Christ. Surely, it is just the message 
 which sends us back into the world, and sends us back 
 with ever anxious zeal. He is coming, and coming so 
 quickly, and nothing is done and no room is ready. 
 There is no time to be lost. Work at once ; work 
 -while it is day; work that His goods may not be found 
 so utterly wasted ; work that He may not say, " Oh, 
 
The Activity of Service. 327 
 
 thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest I was 
 a hard master." Work, for the sin that is so fatal 
 at the last is the sin of sloth and carelessness. Work, 
 for by your works ye shall be judged. Work as those 
 who, with loins girded and ready feet, are ever listening 
 for a knock at the door, and are ever asking one 
 another, " Is He coming ? Is it the Lord ? " That 
 is our watching ; no idle aspiration : ours is the 
 religion of practical action in among the hard, busy, 
 urgent pressures of daily life. We watch for the 
 Master, but His going does not impoverish, it endears 
 the earth to us. It adds dignity, worth, and beauty 
 to our daily life, to all our hands find to do, to all 
 whom we can touch and love. For, in everything, 
 we say, " He once did what I do to-day ; and He gives 
 it to me to do to-day in trust for Him ; and one day He 
 will come again and look around and see whether I 
 have done it for Him." We watch, indeed, for Him, 
 proving by our care and interest for earth our loyalty 
 for the Master. We watch, but watch in our service 
 as we give out the meat in due season ; as we stand 
 each in our place ; as we work for the hungry and 
 sick ; as we lay out the talents. So the busiest man 
 may be the most ready for the Lord, and he who is 
 most useful watch best. " Blessed is that servant 
 whom his Lord when He cometh shall find so 
 watching." 
 
SERMON XXII. 
 CHARACTER AND CIRCUMSTANCE. 
 
 " J tell sou, in tfjat nigl^t i^ere sJ;aII be t&io men in one bcti ; tf)e oni 
 sfjall be taken, anlj tfjc otijtr sfjall be left. 2Ctoo toomcn sijall be gvinlimg 
 logctfjer; tlje one sljall be taken, an& tije otijcr left. CSjao men sljall 
 be in tfje ficlli; tije one sijall be taken, anlj tije otljet left."— Luke xvii. 
 34, 36. 
 
 The Christian life, as we have been seeing, has two 
 aspects which stand in the sharpest contrast one to the 
 other. On the one hand, it has its seat and source far 
 hence in the hidden Heaven, " ^vhere Christ sits at the 
 right Hand of God." There lies our citizensliip "in 
 Jerusalem, the free, the mother of us all." Thither we 
 are to send our hearts travelling — where our treasure is 
 laid up, unstolen and incorruptible. In this Heavenly 
 place, in all hours of blessing and thanksgiving, we sit 
 with Christ our Master; we take a Heavenly Food; we 
 lay our lives in His Hand, to hold fast for us against 
 that day : and, for the hope so set before us, and in 
 loyalty to that high calling, we struggle here on earth 
 to take up our cross ; to be crucified in the affections 
 and lusts, mortifying the body ; to die with Christ, to 
 be already dead, that our life may be even now hid in 
 Him ; to hate father, mother, sisters, and brothers ; to 
 leave home, and land, and wife ; to seek that city not 
 made with hands, to enter the rest, the rest which 
 
Character and Circumstance. 329 
 
 remaineth. We are children of the Resurrection, for 
 whom to die is gain, because it will restore us to the 
 Bridegroom, now taken from us, and so shall we be 
 with Christ, which is far better. So we wait groaning 
 in this earthly tabernacle. So the heart of faith in 
 Apostle and Saint beats its wings against withhold- 
 ing bars. So, as an exile by strange waters, it makes 
 melody to itself in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual 
 songs. But nevertheless, on the other side, not in 
 spite of the homeward yearning, but by virtue of it ; 
 not in forgetfulness of the hidden Lord, but in very 
 faithfulness to His honour ; that same heart, fed with 
 bread from Heaven, turns, with a warmer love and a 
 fresher zeal, and a more tender patience, to the scene 
 of its dying Master's toils. It pours out its devotions, 
 its pains, its tears, its strength, upon all that hungers 
 and suffers here. It lends itself to the world's pursuits, 
 closes with the world's interests, and labours at the 
 world's business with all the fervour of men who have 
 the possessions committed to them of their Master to 
 be used on His behalf. With a sharp reckoning ahead, 
 and a short time in which to prepare for it, their faith 
 in a risen and remote Lord intensifies the pleasure of 
 the work to be got througli on earth before He returns; 
 and so we have already been considering those 
 familiar motives which make the very absence of the 
 Master beyond the grave the reason fpr quickening 
 interest in the things to be done on this side of death. 
 
 And yet the picture may seem, to some, fantastic and 
 fanciful. It may look very unlike human nature to be 
 dragged in two directions at once. Men may say, " I 
 
330 The Christian Life here on Earth. 
 
 can understand one line or the other. I can under- 
 stand a Saint, a Hermit, an Apostle, possessed with the 
 one longing to be with Christ ; but to such an one this 
 earthly tabernacle must remain as a prison house, — 
 mean, contemptible, and unkind. Or I can imagine the 
 man to whom the active business of this life and the 
 development of his present energies is an absorbing 
 occupation, to which he willingly gives his utmost skill ; 
 but then, to him Heaven must seem a far-off and 
 strange dream, which he finds it very difficult to people 
 or to conceive, and which he cannot bring to bear 
 upon his daily business with any force or decision. He 
 finds himself compelled to leave off imagining it, and 
 to hope for the best. He prays for entry there here- 
 after, but in no practical sense can he manage to intro- 
 duce its hope into the thick of actual and occupied 
 days." " These two worlds," it may be said, " cannot 
 well be pictured to belong to one another — Earth 
 here and Heaven hereafter ; they cannot be imagined 
 intermingling or interlacing. They cannot cross each 
 other's lines ; they are too violently alien in type and 
 features to be brouo:ht together in the intimate fashion 
 which this account of the Christian faith requires. 
 How can a fitness to sit in Heavenly places with 
 Christ of itself adapt us to act among our fellows on 
 earth ? If our treasure is in Heaven, then our hearts 
 cannot be here. True, you can give us some romantic 
 reasons why we should value this earth out of love for 
 a Master Who has left it in our charge, but it remains 
 that we are to be dead to this life, and to live in the 
 belief that it will all be put away from us at the last ; 
 
Character and Circumstance. 331 
 
 and no romantic loyalty to a lost Master's memory will 
 finally sustain our interest in earth in face of that, its 
 utter worthlessness. Surely, it is an unnatural pre- 
 tence to profess that you love father, and mother, and 
 sisters, and brothers, and house, and land, all the more 
 because for Christ's sake you have learned to despise, 
 hate, and forsake them." 
 
 Now, that is the criticism of common sense on the 
 mysticism of the Christian position. It divides itself 
 into two great heads. 
 
 First, it declares that there is not sufiBcient unity 
 of kind between our life here and life hereafter to 
 allow of this identity of interest ; and then it supposes 
 that this strange doctrine by which we are called upon 
 to live in two worlds at once is in collision with human 
 nature as we find it. Let us ask. Is it true that there 
 is no unity of kind between our life here and life here- 
 after ? Let us consider what is it that will certainly 
 be the same with us here and hereafter. What is 
 there that we shall carry away with us when we die, 
 when everything else falls away from us ? What is it 
 which we shall still be — that which no conditions can 
 change or efface ; which will abide there under the 
 awful Eyes, before the Throne, in the s'ght of Heaven ? 
 We know that it is our character. That must stand. 
 Strip it as you will of all that encumbers it here, there 
 it will still be all the more sure and visible for this 
 nakedness. Our character — a certain moral structure 
 which has come together with the growth of years, a 
 certain combination of ruling motives, a certain bend 
 of will, a peculiar set of emotional currents, a peculiar 
 
332 TJie Christian Life here on Earth. 
 
 Bentiment, taste, judgment, cast of feeling, movements, 
 and desires, — all that which grows more and more fixed 
 and distinct in ns as the days pass, and which our 
 friends mark and note, and discuss and classify, and 
 criticise and estimate, — our personal character, that is 
 what will and must abide. We can be quite sure of it. 
 No change can cancel it except one that would annihi- 
 late us. So long as we exist we remain of the same 
 character as now ; it may be improved or worsened, 
 but it is impossible that it should continue to exist 
 without retaining its unbroken identity with itself. 
 
 Now, here is a very distinct bit of information about 
 the other world. We may be utterly unable to shape 
 a picture of it ; yet this we know, — we shall be, on the 
 day we enter it, in character and moral type exactly 
 what we are to-day. We shall judge in the same kind 
 of fashion, have the same likes and dislikes, the same 
 standards of approval and disapproval, the same senti- 
 ments, the same tone, the same tendencies, the same 
 movements of feeling, the same peculiarities, charac- 
 teristics, mannerisms. Our friends, if they were watch- 
 ing us before the Judgment Bar, would be able to say 
 at once, " There is the man I always knew. How 
 like himself!" If so, you see we need not trouble 
 ourselves because our imagination can shape for us no 
 Heavenly scene, no Heavenly city, for neither can our 
 imagination now shape for us our personal character. 
 It has no form with which we can identify it, but that 
 does not hinder at all the distinctness with which we 
 know it. There is nothing that is more real, or near, 
 or definite to us ; and, if so, if our character is most real, 
 
Character and Circumstance. 
 
 333 
 
 and near, and definite, and known, then that which we 
 shall be in Heaven liereafter, shapeless and liidden 
 though it may be, is perfectly real, and near, and known 
 to us now. 
 
 Our character, that we shall most assuredly carry 
 away with us when we die. Here, then, is a real 
 ground of unity between the lite here and the life 
 hereafter. 
 
 And what is character? What are its essential 
 features ? 
 
 The core of all character lies in individuality. 
 Character is a moral fact : and, until life is individual, 
 it is not moral. And by individual we mean some- 
 thing single, separate, and alone, that cannot be 
 accounted for from outside, cannot be grouped under 
 any general laws, cannot be extracted out of outside 
 conditions. Its actions must spring from out of itself, 
 it makes them happen ; and you have to enter into its 
 inner life and secrets if you would know why it does 
 anything. However alike the circumstances may be, 
 no other being would do exactly what this character 
 does, or say what it says. It is this seal of individu- 
 ality which it sets on everything that comes out from 
 it, which makes it a character. Sometimes it stamps 
 it weakly, and then we say a person has little or 
 no character ; or sometimes it stamps it forcibly, and 
 then we say, " That is a man of character." At all 
 costs, character must show itself to be free and 
 above its circumstances. If a man is the creatjare of 
 circumstances we call him a man without character ; 
 changing with all the changing hours, he has no 
 
334 ^-^^ Christian Life here on Earth. 
 
 self-identity ; and character is that with which we 
 identify a man. Character is vital and vigorous so far 
 only as it insists on making itself free room for action 
 amid the thronging events, and it dies down as soon as 
 it fails to hold itself aloof and separate from circum- 
 stances. Character is the reaction from circumstances. 
 It is the inner movement which encounters and with- 
 stands the shock of change and outward things. And 
 it must, therefore, issue from a life that directs itself. 
 Character, that is, must be personal. If men were 
 machines moved from without, they could have no cha- 
 racter. If the soul were a function of the body, it could 
 have no character. Whenever we impute character to 
 material things we do it by a metaphor. Individuality, 
 self-identity, these are the secrets which constitute and 
 create character; and character, therefore, supposes 
 always a central core of individual life which is cut 
 off from all its surroundings, a stranger that this out- 
 ward world cannot own nor any web of circumstances 
 explain ; a mysterious, uneartlily presence, which 
 is intended to creep forward, out of its dim wrap- 
 ping of flesh and feelings, and slowly to emerge like a 
 plant, disclosing itself petal after petal like a flower, 
 detaching itself from all that encircles it, from country, 
 home, father, mother, and sister and brother, asserting 
 itself day by day with evergrowing distinctness as a 
 separate and unique fact upon the earth ; different 
 from every other being that ever was born ; something 
 utterly and profoundly alone, a person with a 
 character. 
 
 Character and circumstances — these, then, are at 
 
Character and Circumstance. 335 
 
 deadly war with one another. And, now, how does this 
 character show itself? By what methods does it grow ? 
 It grows by one way only — by acts, by choice, by 
 judgments. Its decisions show what it is ; each de- 
 cision that it makes strengthens a bent, deepens a 
 groove, determines a current, builds up a sentiment. 
 Each decision that it forms creates the character. And 
 what is it, then, that demands of it its decisions, its 
 acts, its judgments ? Its old foe — circumstance. Cir- 
 cumstances press upon it, they hustle and throng all 
 round it, amid the throng it must judge and choose and 
 decide. Circumstances are, therefore, essential to its 
 growth, to its history. Without the necessity to act it 
 could never come to a decision, and without coming to 
 a decision character would be utterly unshapen, asleep. 
 Circumstances must be there to evoke it, to force upon 
 it alternatives, to wait upon its direction, to elicit its 
 judgments. 
 
 This, then, is the situation ; a situation of con- 
 trast. There is within each one of us a strange 
 presence which sits alone, unfathered by any earthly 
 parentage, a ghostly visitant which exists by defying 
 circumstance, by holding itself aloof, a form obviously 
 designed, in its fit measure, to become organic and free, 
 self-directing, self-identical, a hidden spring of original 
 life ; that first. But then its career, its formation, its 
 waking existence depends on its intimate contact with 
 earthly circumstances ; and the more changing and 
 rapid the movement of circumstances the more alert 
 must be the judgment, and the quicker and more vital 
 the formation of character. 
 
33'5 The Christian Life here on Earth. 
 
 That is our situation. 
 
 And then, I would ask you, is not this is a situation 
 to which our Christian faith exactly applies itself? 
 Our Faith lays hold of these very points. It finds first 
 a dim presence within man struggling to free itself 
 fiom the fold and wraps of its earthly birth, struggling 
 to get alone with itself, to lift itself out of the blind 
 currents which swing it hither and thither. So Faith 
 finds us, and passes the knife of the clean-cutting Spirit 
 round that prisoner, and lifts it up, by the Kesurrection, 
 clear above all earthly circumstances, and separates it 
 into its proper loneliness. It plucks it out of the soil, 
 and puts it into the new body of Christ, and lo ! now it 
 is free, distinct ; it is alive, it is alone. God gives His 
 Blessed Son for it alone, and endows it with its own 
 special and separate unction, and whispers in its ear 
 its secret name which is known to God and to itself 
 only. There, apart, separate, is a new seat from which 
 character may spring ; its withdrawal into Christ is 
 the key to all its power of after-growth. Its root is 
 hidden, but it is the seat of all its vitality. 
 
 Then there is the other side. The seed of character 
 is there, but its growth is all to come. It must be 
 buried deep again in circumstance, and be thrown into 
 the very thick of actions ; only so can it improve and 
 reveal itself, and witness to its new secret. And it loves 
 circumstance ; it loves it, for it is alive now and eager 
 to begin. Every touch of its renewal in Jesus has 
 quickened its desire to improve itself. Oh that it 
 may test its loyalty, may show what the Cross of God 
 has in it, may witness to its hidden name ! Oh that it 
 
Character and Circumstance. 337 
 
 may so bear witness to that Master that men may 
 " see its good works, and glorify the Father Which is 
 in Heaven ! " How blest the command which sends it 
 back from its withdrawn Master, and its hidden feast 
 with Him, to the swarming herds of men, to the 
 crowded earth, with the talents in its hands, and the 
 sweet words in its ear, " Occupy till I come. Bear 
 witness of Me." 
 
 What is its occupation, but to prove and develop 
 character ? Character is the gift committed. How is 
 that to be proved and developed ? By acts of choice. 
 What does it signify, therefore, that the circumstances 
 end and perish, that the earth does but offer occasions 
 which disappear in blind death ? Each, before it went, 
 evoked a decision, and allowed time for a judgment ; 
 and, by that judgment, a work has gone forward, and a 
 result remains. The character has grown; the gift 
 has been improved ; the five talents are on the way to 
 become ten. We look up as each moment dies, and 
 thank the Master that the choice made in it was one 
 that would tend to restore Him His own with usury. 
 What peace and freedom is ours! Circumstances, 
 before we were released from our fetters, used to be so 
 irritating and so uncertain ; but now they have become 
 doubly dear and precious, because now we live no 
 longer inside them — wretched if they were wretched, 
 yet more wretched at their rapid perishing if they 
 were happy, — but live tlirough them, and by means of 
 them ; and all of them are serviceable, and all can be 
 turned to good account, and when they have served 
 their purpose we can gladly afford to see them fly. 
 
 z 
 
338 TJie Christian Life hei^e on Ear/h. 
 
 There is no circumstance, however mean and poor, 
 however dry and dreary, which does not involve some 
 judgment, some act of will, and it is impossible to 
 make any such judgment or do any such act without 
 its entering into and fashioning our characters. Every 
 single judgment we come to must emphasise some 
 tendency, must check some counter-motion ; must 
 repress one thing, impress and elicit another; must 
 favour a certain bent, must fix a certain stamp. And 
 every hour and every minute of our waking life is 
 thick with these quick judgments. We are being 
 made every minute, and we cannot help it, — you and 
 I, as we walk and talk, eat and drink, marry and are 
 given in marriage, work and play, go out and come in — 
 we are being made and fashioned into that in which 
 we shall pass out into the night of darkness and into 
 the glory of God. 
 
 This is surely why our business hours, our social 
 habits, are all included within our work for the hidden 
 Master at God's right Hand. For it is just in the 
 constant, habitual, hurried, routine acts of common life 
 that that swarm of little judgments is made such as 
 form the character. It is a literal and necessary fact 
 and no romance, that it is these daily routine acts 
 which finally settle what we shall be carrying in our 
 hands wben our Lord comes to make up the reckoning. 
 
 Let us recall, in our Lord's own vivid image, both 
 the impotence and the potency of circumstance. 
 " Two women shall be grinding at the mill ; one shall 
 be taken, and the other left." How powerless and 
 immaterial is circumstances for those two ! Every 
 
Character and Circumstance. 339 
 
 single circumstance of life is identical ; together they 
 lise at the same hour ; together they begin the day's 
 long labour; right through the day they grind to- 
 gether ; at the same hour they go to the evening meal, 
 and at the same hour they sleep. Everything, year 
 after year, repeats itself. They dress alike, they were 
 paid alike ; life passed for both on the same level of 
 low, unchanging poverty. To any one looking on they 
 would be wholly alike, two poor women, of the same 
 class, occupation, education, wage, interest, dress. 
 Nothing from end to end of these earthly circum- 
 stances could be found to distinguish the one from the 
 other. At the same mill they had turned and turned, 
 to both the eartli had been equally harsh and unkind, 
 and no lights shone in upon them, and no changes ever 
 surprised them. On and on together, hand in hand, 
 and face to face, tbey had ground at the same mill up 
 to the last; and, lo! one is for Heaven and one for Hell. 
 Within they are as different as black from white, as 
 good from evil ; so dominant, so imperial is human 
 character, so free it is from the control of circum- 
 stances. 
 
 Oh ! what wide comfort. What can it matter what 
 our conditions may be ? Two grinding at the mill ; 
 one taken, and the other left. Is there any one who 
 sinks under the sodden monotony of daily routine, who 
 withers under the pressure of every-day sameness; 
 who finds himself chained into that mean, petty, 
 narrow block of circumstances which he knows to be 
 killing out all spiritual emotions in those about him, 
 and yet he cannot break from it, and he dreads to feel 
 
340 The Christian Life here on Earth. 
 
 creeping over his soul the same melancholy dryness 
 he sees in others ? That which kills another may be 
 life to him, if he will use it. He alone is the master. 
 Nothing from without can hurt or soil it, — for "not 
 that which goeth in at the mouth defileth a man." 
 Though others die at the mill, yet any one who 
 chooses, may find, as he turns at the same wheel, a 
 Heaven or a Hell, — may be saved or lost. 
 
 Two women at the mill. So powerless is circum- 
 stance, and yet, on the other hand, so powerful is it ! 
 It is at the mill, at the grinding, there and nowhere 
 else, that the thing has got to be done, the difference 
 is to be created. There, as they ground and ground 
 together, these two poor women built up bit by bit the 
 wall of their separation. It was out of the doing of 
 the same things that one grew daily readier for the 
 Lord and the other darkened down to the slothful 
 servant. At the mill, still grinding, the Lord finds 
 them. No one, then, need leave his mill. In the field 
 where men work — there our drama works itself out. 
 Circumstances are nothing, but they are also every- 
 thing ; and we shall discover our weakness if we 
 attempt to ignore them. Is there any one who has 
 more zeal than he finds room for in his narrow circle, 
 who is waiting always for some fair day to dawn wheu 
 the faith in him will be given more chance and wider 
 field ? Nay ! our field must be the present, and our 
 circumstances as they stand are wide enough. Turn 
 to them and begin. There are no circumstances so 
 poor, but that character may display itself and make 
 itself therein. Strength of character lies not in 
 
Character and Circumstance. 341 
 
 demanding special circumstances, but in mastering and 
 using any that may be given. Our work and daily 
 contact with our fellows form our scene of action, 
 and God blesses with a peculiar blessing the efforts to 
 put to profit, not some self-selected occasion, but the 
 actual conditions in which we find ourselves. 
 
 " Two men shall be lying in one bed." Each in our 
 bed ; there is our discipline. Working in the field 
 where we are set, there is our best growth. Blessed is 
 that servant whom the Lord shall find in the bed made 
 for him ; blessed is that servant whom the Master may 
 take straight to Himself from the field where he was 
 set. 
 
 The one enduring interest of human life is character; 
 and our faith brightens our lives by unearthing 
 character, and it vitalises it under both those aspects 
 of which we have been speaking. First, it proclaims 
 that our " life is hid with Christ ; " we are wholly free, 
 nothing can hold us down ; gifted with a refuge far 
 above all accidents and risks, we have an inde- 
 feasible advantage over all earthly circumstances. 
 " Hid with Christ ; free with the freedom of the Son," 
 nothing can thwart or terrify us ; safe hid from the 
 provoking of all men, no man can snatch us out of His 
 Hand. We sit hidden with the Lord above the water- 
 flioods. Here is the primary force faith insures to us 
 all ; and why is it, let each ask, that with this advan- 
 tage secured to me, this indefeasible refuge, why is it 
 my character has no more force than solidity ? Hid 
 with Christ ; why, then, am I so afraid of men— why so 
 afraid lest they think badly of me ? why so nervous 
 
342 The Christian Life here on Earth. 
 
 of my reputation, so anxious to keep in the run ? " Hid 
 with Christ ; " why is it, then, 1 move up and down with 
 the swing of popular opinions ? why so unsteady in 
 judgment ? why do I say what all men say, and think 
 what every body about me is thinking ? Why have I 
 so little sense of responsibility for my thoughts, words, 
 and desires ? How is it that I vary so strangely from 
 day to day ; that my temper is a mere index to my 
 bodily health ; why so moody ? " Hid with Christ ; " yet 
 every tiny little disappointment upsets me. " Hid with 
 Christ ; " yet I succumb to every flattery, I am so easily 
 beguiled with praise, I hunger for applause, I am 
 miserable if people are not noticing me. Where is 
 the unconquerable force, the high peace of those whose 
 secret life is hid with the hidden Christ ? 
 
 And then, our faith is not only the secret of self- 
 reliance, but it ought to endue us with a new zeal with 
 which to face and conquer our earthly circumstances. 
 Fed with that hidden and inner force, we ought to be 
 as those who burn to put it into action. We, my 
 brethren, by our very security, should be made 
 eager to display abroad, under the pressure of circum- 
 stances, the character with which we have been endued 
 by Christ. We are sent down to be a spectacle to 
 men and to Angels, and the eyes of the Heavenly 
 hosts are upon us. They are saying over us, as 
 they watch, " What will this man do ? What is that 
 hidden virtue now in his soul? What will he do, 
 what will he prove himself, what excellences of 
 character will come from him, as he meets the 
 shock of circumstance?" That is our drama. Do 
 
Character and Circumstance. 343 
 
 we, then, shrink bade from the test ? do we decline the 
 troubles and anxieties from which our character is to 
 disclose itself, by which that which is told us of the 
 Spirit in the secret chamber is to be made manifest on 
 the housetops ? Long, weary, plodding labour, this is 
 the condition for which we have been gifted, these are 
 the hours that tell our tale ; it is thus we bear our wit- 
 ness. Life, this dull, working life, may become to us 
 so favoured, so interesting, so precious if we take it all 
 as the theatre on which we display before the eyes of 
 God the glory of that hidden name which we have 
 received from Him. That which we are in God's 
 thought and intention, that is what we are discovering 
 to ourselves and others at each passing hour. Let us 
 ask ourselves, What is my name ? what is the peculiar 
 combination of moral qualities which is in me and 
 no others ? The seed oast into me of God — oh that I 
 knew what mystery was hidden in its silent history ! 
 Let the rains of God come, and the winds and the 
 clouds pass over me, if only this name may break out 
 and open into shape of flower and fulness of fruit, and 
 so my name may be written broad and clear on my 
 forehead, and all men may see it, and say, " He is not 
 his own, he is God's. Behold the seal is on him. He 
 is in the image of his Father. He is of the family of 
 Christ." 
 
 THE END. 
 
A Catalogue of Works, 
 
 IN 
 
 THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 Messrs. LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 
 
 39 Paternoster Row, London, E.C. 
 
 Abbey and Overton.— THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. By Charles J. Abbky, M.A., Rector 
 of Checkendon, Reading, and John H. Overton, M.A., Rector of 
 Epworth, Doncaster, Rural Dean of Isle of Axholme. Ciown Svo. 
 
 Adams.— SACRED ALLEGORIES. The Shadow of the Cross 
 — The Distant Hills — The Old Man's Home— The King's Messengers. 
 By the Rev. William Adams, M.A. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 The Four Allegories may be had separately, with Illustrations. 
 \6mo. \s. each. Also the Miniature Edition. Four Vols. ^zmo. 
 IS. each ; in a hox, 51. 
 
 Aids to the Inner Life. 
 
 Edited by the Rev. W. H. HurCHlNGS, M.A., Rector of Kirkby 
 Misperton, Yorkshire. Five Vols. 32/no, cloth lirnp, 6d. each ; or cloth 
 extra, is. each. Sold separately. 
 
 Also an Edition with red borders, 2s. each. 
 
 OF THE IMITATION OF CHRIST. By Thomas a Kempis. In 
 Four Books. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 
 
 THE DEVOUT LIFE. By St. Francis de Sales. 
 
 THE HIDDEN LIFE OF THE SOUL. From the French of Jean 
 Nicolas Grou. 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL COMBAT. By Lawrence Scupoli. 
 Bathe.— Works by the Rev. Anthony Bathe, M.A. 
 
 A LENT WITH JESUS. A Plain Guide for Churchmen. Containing 
 Readings for Lent and Easter Week, and on the Holy Eucharist. 
 ■yt,mo, IS.; or in paper cover, 6d. 
 
 WHAT I SHOULD BELIEVE. A Simple Manual of Self-Instruction 
 for Church People. Crown Bva. y. 6d. 
 
2 
 
 A CATALOGUE OF WORKS 
 
 Bickersteth. — Works by Edward Henry Bickersteth, D.D., 
 Bishop of Exeter. 
 
 THE LORD'S TABLE ; or, Meditations on the Holy Communion 
 Office in the Book of Common Prayer, \67no. is. ; or cloth extra, 2S. 
 
 YESTERDAY, TO-DAY, AND FOR EVER : a Poem in Twelve Books. 
 One S/iilling Edition, i8mo. With red borders, idmo, 2S. 6d. 
 The Crown &vo Edition (5^.) tiiay still be had. 
 
 Blunt.— Works by the Rev. John Henry Blunt, D.D. 
 
 THE ANNOTATED BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER: Being an 
 Historical, Ritual, and Theological Commentary on the Devotional 
 System of the Church of England. Edited by the Rev. John Henry 
 Blunt, D.D. 4/0. 21J. 
 
 THE COMPENDIOUS EDITION OF THE ANNOTATED BOOK 
 OF COMMON PRAYER : Forming a concise Commentary on the 
 Devotional System of the Church of England. Edited by the Rev. 
 John Henry Blunt, D.D. Crown ?,vo. los. 6d. 
 
 DICTIONARY OF DOCTRINAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. 
 By various Writers. Edited by the Rev. John Henry Blunt, D.D. 
 Imperial 8z'<7. ■zis. 
 
 DICTIONARY OF SECTS, HERESIES, ECCLESIASTICAL PAR- 
 TIES AND SCHOOLS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. By various 
 Writers. Edited by the Rev. John Henry Blunt, D.D. hnperial 
 
 ZVO. 215. 
 
 THE BOOK OF CHURCH LAW. Being an Exposition of the Legal 
 Rights and Duties of the Parochial Clergy and the Laity of the Church 
 of England. Revised by Sir Walter' G. F. Phillimore, Bart., 
 D.C.L. Crown livo. js. 6d. 
 
 A COMPANION TO THE BIBLE : Being a Plain Commentary on 
 Scripture History, to the end of the Apostolic Age. Two vols, small 
 Svo. Sold separately. 
 
 The Old Testament, y. 6d. The New Testament, y. 6d. 
 
 HOUSEHOLD THEOLOGY : a Handbook of Religious Information 
 respecting the Holy Bible, the Prayer Book, the Church, the Ministry, 
 Divine Worship, the Creeds, etc. etc. Paper cover, xdmo. \s. Also 
 the Larger Edition, y. 6d. 
 
 Body. — Works by the Rev. George Body, D.D., Canon of 
 Durham. 
 
 THE SCHOOL OF C.A.LVARY ; or, Laws of Christian Life revealed 
 from the Cross. A Course of Lectures delivered in substance at All 
 Saints', Margaret Street. Small Zvo. y. 6d. 
 
 THE LIFE OF JUSTIFIC.'^TION : a Series of Lectures dehvered in 
 substance at All Saints', Margaret Street. i6mo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 THE LIFE OF TEMPT.A.TION : a Course of Lectures delivered in 
 substance at St. Peter's, Eaton Square ; also at All Saint.?', Margaret 
 Street. if<mo, 2s. 6d, 
 
IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 
 
 3 
 
 Boultbee.— A COMMENTARY ON THE THIRTY-NINE 
 ARTICLES OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. By the Rev. 
 T. P. Boultbee, formerly Principal of the London College of Divinity, 
 St, John's Hall, Highbury. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 Bright.— Works by William Bright, D.D., Canon of Christ 
 Church. 
 
 LESSONS FROM THE LIVES OF THREE GREAT FATHERS: 
 St. Athanasius, St. Chrysostom, and St. Augustine. Ovwn 8vo. 6s. 
 
 FAITH AND LIFE: Readings for the greater Holy Days, and the 
 Sundays from Advent to Trinity. Compiled from Ancient Writers. 
 Small 8vo. $s. 
 
 THE INCARNATION AS A MOTIVE POWER. Crozvn Svo. 65. 
 lONA AND OTHER VERSES. SmaH Svo. 4s. 6(f. 
 HYMNS AND OTHER VERSES. Small Zvo. 
 
 Bright and Medd.— LIBER PRECUM PUBLICARUM EC- 
 CLESL« ANGLICANyE. A Gulielmo Bright, S.T.P., et Petro 
 Goldsmith Medd, A.M., Latine redditus. [In hac Editione con- 
 tinentur Versiones LatinjE — i. Libri Precum Publicarum Ecclesias 
 Anghcanae ; 2. Liturgiag Primas Reformatie ; 3. Liturgiae Scoticanae ; 
 4. Liturgiae Americanse.] Small Svo. js. 6d. 
 
 Browne.— AN EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE 
 ARTICLES, Historical and Doctrinal. By E. H. Browne, D.D., 
 formerly Bishop of Winchester. Zvo. 16s. 
 
 Campion and Beamont.— THE PRAYER BOOK INTER- 
 LEAVED. With Historical Illustrations and Explanatory Notes 
 arranged parallel to the Text. By W. M. Cami'ION, D.D. , and W. J. 
 Beamont, M. A. Small&vo. js. 6ci. 
 
 Carter.— Works edited by the Rev. T. T. Carter, M.A., Hon. 
 Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. 
 
 THE TREASURY OF DEVOTION : a Manual of Prayer for General 
 and Daily Use. Compiled by a Priest. i8;«o. 2s. 6d. ; cloih limp, 
 2s. ; or bound with the Book of Common Prayer, 6d. Large-Type 
 Edition. Crown Svo. 5^. 
 
 THE WAY OF LIFE : A Book of Prayers and Instruction for the Young 
 at School, with a Preparation for Confirmation. Compiled by a Priest. 
 iSmo. IS. 6d. 
 
 THE PATH OF HOLINESS : a First Book of Prayers, with the 
 Service of the Holy Communion, for the Young. Compiled by a 
 Priest. With Illustrations. x6mo. is. 6d. ; cloth limp, is. 
 
 THE GUIDE TO HEAVEN : a Book of Prayers for every Want. (For 
 the Working Classes.) Compiled by a Priest. iSmo. zs. 6d. ; 
 cloth limp, IS, Lars^e-Type f.dition. Crown Svo. is. 6d. ; cloth 
 limp, IS. 
 
4 
 
 A CATALOGUE OF WORKS 
 
 Carter— Works edited by the Rev. T. T. Carter, M.A., Hon. 
 Canon of Christ Church, Oxford — continued. 
 
 SELF-RENUNCIATION. \6mo. 2S. 6d. Also the Larger Edition. 
 Stnall ivo. y. 6d. 
 
 THE STAR OF CHILDHOOD ; a First Book of Prayers and Instruc- 
 tion for Children. Compiled by a Priest. With ILustrations. T.6tno. 
 2s. 6d. 
 
 Carter.— MAXIMS AND GLEANINGS FROM THE 
 WRITINGS OF T. T. CARTER, M.A. Selected and arranged for 
 Daily Use. Cro7vn i6mo. js. 
 
 Chandler.— THE SPIRIT OF MAN : An Essay in Christian 
 Philosophy. By the Rev, A. Chandler, M.A., Rector of Poplar, E. 
 Crown 8vo. 
 
 Conybeare and Howson.— THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF 
 ST. PAUL. By tiie Rev. W. J. Conybeare, M.A., and the Very 
 Rev. J. S. Howson, D.D. With numerous Maps and Illustrations. 
 Library Edition. Two Vols. 8vo. 21s. 
 Student's Edition. One Vol. Crown Bvo. 6s. 
 
 Crake.— HISTORY OF THE CHURCH UNDER THE 
 ROMAN EMPIRE, a.d. 30-476. By the Rev. A. D. Crake, B.A. 
 Crown 8vo. ■^s. 6d. 
 
 Devotional Series, ISmo, Red Borders. Eac/i 2s. 6d. 
 
 BICKERSTETH S YESTERD.^Y, TO-DAY, AND FOR EVER. 
 
 CHILCOT'S TREATISE ON EVIL THOUGHTS. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 
 
 DEVOTIONAL BIRTHD.^Y BOOK. 
 
 HERBERT S -POE.MS AND PROVERBS. 
 
 KEMPIS' (A) OF THE IMITATION OF CHRIST. 
 
 ST. FRANCIS DE SALES' THE DEVOUT LIFE. 
 
 WILSON S THE LORD S SUPPER. Lar^e type. 
 
 *TAYLOR S (JEREMY) HOLY LIVING. 
 
 * HOLY DYING. 
 
 * These two in one Volume, ^s. 
 
 Devotional Series, ISmo, without Red Borders. £ac/i is. 
 
 BICKERSTETH S YESTERD.\Y, TO-DAY, AND FOR EVER. 
 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 
 
 KEMPIS' (A) OF THE IMIT.ATION OF CHRIST. 
 WILSON'S THE LORD'S SUPPER. Large type. 
 ♦TAYLOR'S (JEREMY) HOLY LIVING. 
 
 ^ . HOLY DYING. 
 
 *Tlu)i livo in Qne Volime. 2s. 6d, 
 
IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 
 
 5 
 
 Edersheim.— Works by Alfred Edersheim, M.A., D.D., Ph.D., 
 
 sometime Grinfield Lecturer on the Septuagint, Oxford. 
 
 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JESUS THE MESSIAH. Two Vols. 
 8vo. 24s. 
 
 JESUS THE MESSIAH: being an Abridged Edition of ' The Life and 
 Times of Jesus the Messiah.' Crown 9.vo. js. 6d. 
 
 PROPHECY AND HISTORY IN RELATION TO THE MESSIAH : 
 The Warburton Lectures, 1880-1884. Sva. 12s. 
 
 TOHU-VA-VOHU ('Without Form and Void'): being a collection ol 
 Fragmentary Thoughts and Criticism. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 EUicott.— Works by C. J. Ellicott, D.D., Bishop of Gloucester 
 and Bristol. 
 
 A CRITICAL AND GRAMMATICAL COMMENTARY ON ST. 
 PAUL'S EPISTLES. Greek Text, with a Critical and Grammatical 
 Commentary, and a Revised Englisii Translation. 8vo. 
 
 I Corinthians. i6s. Philippians, Colossians, and 
 
 Galatians. Ss. 6ii. Philemon, ios. 6d. 
 
 Ephesians. Ss. 6ti. Thessalonians. 7s. 6d. 
 
 Pastoral Epistles, los. 6d. 
 
 HISTORICAL LECTURES ON THE LIFE OF OUR LORD 
 JESUS CHRIST. 8vo. 12s. 
 
 Epochs of Church History. Edited by Mandell Creighton, 
 D.D., LL.D., Bishop of Peterborough. Fcap.Zvo. is. bd. each. 
 
 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN 
 other LANDS. By the Rev. H. W. 
 Tucker, M.A. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE RE- 
 FORMATION IN ENGLAND. By 
 the Rev. Geo. G. Perry, M.A. 
 
 THE CHURCH OF THE EARLY 
 FATHERS. By the Rev. Alfred 
 Plummer, D.D. 
 
 THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL IN 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 By the Rev. J. H. Overton, M.A. 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 
 By the Hon. G. C. Brourick, D.C.L. 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CAM- 
 BRIDGE. By J. Bass Mullingek, 
 M.A. 
 
 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE 
 MIDDLE AGES. By the Rev. W. 
 Hunt, M.A. 
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE 
 EA.STERN EMPIRE. By the Rev. 
 H. F. TozER, M.A. 
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE ROMAN 
 EMPIRE. By the Rev. A. Carr. 
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE PURI- 
 T.\NS, 1570-1660. By Henry Offley 
 Wake.man, M.A. 
 
 HILDEBRAND AND HIS TIMES. 
 By the Rev. W. R. W. Stephens, M.A. 
 
 THE POPES AND THE HOHEN- 
 STAUFEN. By Ugo Balzani. 
 
 THE COUNTER-REFORMATION. 
 By Adolphus William Ward, Litt. D. 
 
 WYCLIFFE AND MOVEMENTS 
 FOR REFORM. By Reginald L. 
 Poole, M.A. 
 
 THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY. By 
 H. M. Gwatkin, M.A. 
 
6 
 
 A CATALOGUE OF WORKS 
 
 Fosbery. — Works edited by the Rev. Thomas Vincent Fosbery, 
 M.A., sometime Vicar of St. Giles's, Reading. 
 VOICES OF COMFORT. Cheap Edition. Small Zvd. y. 6d. 
 The Larger Edition {js. 6d.) may still be had. 
 
 HYMNS AND POEMS FOR THE SICK AND SUFFERING. In 
 connection with the Service for the Visitation of the Sick. Selected 
 from Various Authors. Small Zvo. y. 6d. 
 
 Garland.— THE PRACTICAL TEACHING OF THE APO- 
 CALYPSE. By the Rev. G. V Garland, M.A. Svo. i6s. 
 
 Gore. — Works by the Rev. Charles Gore, M. A., Principal of the 
 Pusey House ; Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. 
 THE MINISTRY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Svo. los. 6d. 
 ROMAN CATHOLIC CLAIMS. Crown Svo. s'- 6d. 
 
 Goulburn. — Works by Edward Meyrick Goulburn, D.D., 
 D.C.L., sometime Dean of Norwich. 
 
 THOUGHTS ON PERSONAL RELIGION. Small Svo, 6s. 6d. ; 
 Cheap Edition, y. dd. ; Presentation Edition, 2 vols, small Svo, 10s. 6d. 
 
 THE PURSUIT OF HOLINESS : a Sequel to 'Thoughts on Personal 
 Religion.' Small Svo. 5J. Cheap Edition, y. 6d. 
 
 THE CHILD SAMUEL : a Practical and Devotional Commentary on 
 the Birth and Childhood of the Prophet Samuel, as recorded in 
 1 Sam. i., ii. 1-27, iii. Small Svo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF THE CHILDHOOD : a Practical and Devotional 
 Commentary on the Single Incident of our Blessed Lord's Childhood 
 (St. Luke ii. 41 to the end). Crown Svo. 2S. 6d. 
 
 THE COLLECTS OF THE DAY : an Exposition, Critical and Devo- 
 tional, of the Collects appointed at the Commimion. With Preliminary 
 Essays on their Structure, Sources, etc. 2 vols. Crown Svo. Ss. each. 
 
 THOUGHTS UPON THE LITURGICAL GOSPELS for the Sundays, 
 one for each day in the year. With an Introduction on their Origm, 
 History, the Modifications made in them by the Reformers and by the 
 Revisers of the Prayer Book. 2 vols. Crown Svo. 16s. 
 
 MEDITATIONS UPON THE LITURGICAL GOSPELS for the 
 Minor Festivals of Christ, the two first Week-days of the Easter and 
 Whitsun Festivals, and the Red-letter Saints' Days. Crown Svo. Ss. 6d. 
 
 FAMILY PRAYERS compiled from various sources (chiefly from Bishop 
 Hamilton's Manual), and arranged on the Liturgical Principle. Crown 
 Svo. y. 6d. Cheap Edition. i6mo. xs. 
 
 Harrison.— PROBLEMS OF CHRISTIANITY AND SCEPTI- 
 CISM ; Lessons from Twenty Years' Experience in the Field of Christian 
 Evidence. By the Rev. Alexander J. Harrison, B.D., Lecturer 
 of the Christian Evidence Society. Crown Svo. ys. 6d. 
 
IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 
 
 7 
 
 Hernaman— LYRA CONSOLATIONIS. From the Poets of 
 the Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Centuries. Selected and 
 arranged by Claudia Frances Hernaman. Small 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Holland. — Works by the Rev. HENRY ScoTT HOLLAND, M.A., 
 Canon and Precentor of St. Paul's. 
 CREED AND CHARACTER : Sermons. Crow/i Szv. 7s. 6d. 
 
 ON BEHALF OF BELIEF. Sermons preached in St. Paul's Cathedral. 
 Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 CHRIST OR ECCLESIASTE5. Sermons preached in St. Pauls 
 Cathedral. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 GOOD FRIDAY. Being Addresses on the Seven Last Words, delivered 
 at St. Paul's Cathedral on Good Friday. Small 8vo. 2s. 
 
 LOGIC AND LIFE, with other Sermons. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. 
 
 Hopkins.— CHRIST THE CONSOLER. A Book of Comfort 
 for the Sick. By Ellice Hopkins. Small 8vo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 Ingram.— HAPPINESS : In the Spiritual Life; or, 'The Secret 
 of the Lord.' A Series of Practical Considerations. By the Rev. W. 
 Clavell Ingram, M.A., Vicar of St. Matthew's, Leicester. Crown 
 Zvo. 7s. 6d: 
 
 INHERITANCE, THE, OF THE SAINTS ; or, Thoughts on 
 the Communion of Saints and the Life of the World to come. Col- 
 lected chiefly from English Writers by L. P. With a Preface by the 
 Rev. Henry Scott Holland, M.A. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. 
 
 Jameson. — Works by Mrs. Jameson. 
 
 SACRED AND LEGENDARY ART, containing Legends of the Angels 
 and Archangels, the Evangelists, the Apostles. With 19 etchings and 
 187 Woodcuts. Two Vols. Cloth, "ill top, zos. net. 
 
 LEGENDS OF THE MONASTIC ORDERS, as represented in the 
 Fine Arts. With 11 etchings and 83 Woodcuts. One Vol. Cloth, 
 gilt top, \QS. 7iet. 
 
 LEGENDS OF THE MADONNA, OR BLESSED VIRGIN MARY. 
 With 27 Etchings and 165 Woodcuts. One Vol. Cloth, gilt top, \os. net. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD, as exemplified in Works of Art. 
 Commenced by the late Mrs. Jameson ; continued and completed by 
 Lady Eastlake. With 31 etchmgs and 281 Woodcuts. Two Vols. 
 8vo. 20s. net. 
 
 Jennings.— ECCLESIA ANGLICANA. A History of the 
 Church of Christ in England from the Earliest to the Present Times. 
 By the Rev. Arthur Charles Jennings, M.A. Crowti 8vo. 7s. 6d. 
 
8 
 
 A CATALOGUE OF WORKS 
 
 Jukes.— Works by ANDREW Jukes. 
 
 ■ THE NEW MAN AND THE ETERNAL LIFE. Notes on the 
 Reiterated Amens of the Son of God. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 THE NAMES OF GOD IN HOLY SCRIPTURE: a Revelation of 
 
 His Nature and Relationships. Crown 8vo. 45. 6d. 
 THE TYPES OF GENESIS. Crown Svo. ys. 6d. 
 
 THE SECOND DEATH AND THE RESTITUTION OF ALL 
 THINGS. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF THE KINGDOM. Crown Svo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 Keble.— MAXIMS AND GLEANINGS FROM THE WRIT- 
 INGS OF JOHN KEBLE, M.A. Selected and Arranged for Daily 
 Use. By C. M. S. Crown i6mo. is. 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF JOHN KEBLE, M.A. 
 Crown Svo. y. 6d. 
 
 Kennaway.-CONSOLATIO ; OR, COMFORT FOR THE 
 AFFLICTED. Edited by the late Rev. C. E. Kennaway. j6mo. 
 2s. 6d. 
 
 King.— DR. LIDDON'S TOUR IN EGYPT AND PALES- 
 TINE IN 1886. Being Letters descriptive of the Tour, written by his 
 Sister, Mrs. KING. Croxun Svo. 5^. 
 
 Knox Little.— Works by W. J. Knox Little, M.A., Canon 
 Residentiary of Worcester, and Vicar of Hoar Cross. 
 THE CHRISTIAN HOME. Crown Svo. 6s. 6d. 
 
 THE HOPES AND DECISIONS OF THE PASSION OF OUR 
 MOST HOLY REDEEMER. Crown Svo. 3J. 6d. 
 
 THE THREE HOURS' AGONY OF OUR BLESSED REDEEMER. 
 Being Addresses in the form of Meditations delivered in St. Albaii's 
 Church, Manchester, on Good Friday. Small Svo. 2s. ; or in Paper 
 Cover., \s. 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS AND MOTIVES OF THE CHRISTIAN 
 LIFE. Ten Sermons preached in Manchester Cathedral, in Lent 
 and Advent 1877. C}-own Svo. y. 6d. 
 
 SERMONS PREACHED FOR THE MOST PART IN MANCHES- 
 TER. Crown Svo. js. 6d. 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF THE PASSION OF OUR MOST HOLY 
 
 REDEEMER. Crown Svo. y. 6d. 
 
 THE WITNESS OF THE PASSION OF OUR MOST HOLY 
 
 REDEEMER. Crown Svo. y. 6d. 
 
 THE LIGHT OF LIFE. Sermons preached on Various Occasions. 
 Crown Svo. js. 6d. 
 
 SUNLIGHT AND SHADOW IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 Sermons preached for the most part in America. Crown Svo. ys. 6d. 
 
IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 
 
 9 
 
 Lear.— Works by, and Edited by, H. L. Sidney Lear. 
 
 FOR DAYS AND YEARS. A Book containing a Text, Short Reading, 
 and Hymn for Every Day ill the Church's Year. i6mo. 2s.6d. Alsoa 
 Cheap Editioti, y.mo. \s. \ or cloth gilt, is. 6d. 
 
 FIVE MINUTES. Daily Readings of Poetry i6wzo. y. 6d. Also a 
 Cheap Edition, ■^zmo. is. ; or cloth gilt, is. 6d. 
 
 WEARINESS. A Book for the Languid and Lonely. Large Type. 
 Small 8vo. 5J. 
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE CONSCIENCE. i6;«o. 2^. M. 
 
 CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHIES. Nitte Vols. Croivn 8vo. 3s. 6d. each. 
 
 Madame Louise de France, 
 Daughter of Louis xv. , known 
 aho as the Mother Terese de 
 St. Augustin. 
 
 A Dominican Artist: aSketchof 
 the Life of the Rev. Pere Besson, 
 of the Order of St. Dominic. 
 
 Henri Perreyve. By A. Gratry. 
 
 St. Fr.ancis de Sales, Bishop and 
 Prince of Geneva. 
 
 The Revival of Priestly Life 
 IN THE Seventeenth Century 
 IN France. 
 
 A Christian Painter of the 
 Nineteenth Century. 
 
 bossuet and his contempora- 
 RIES. 
 
 Fenelon, Archbishop of Cam- 
 
 BRAI. 
 
 Henri Dominique Lacordaire. 
 
 DEVOTIONAL WORKS. Edit^ 
 Uniform. Editions. Nine Vols. 
 
 F^nelon's Spiritual Letters 
 TO Men. 
 
 Fenelon's Spiritual Letters 
 TO Women. 
 
 A Selection from the Spiri- 
 tual Letters of St. Francis 
 DE Sales. 
 
 The Spirit of St. Francis de 
 Sales. 
 
 d by H. L. SIDNEY Lear. New and 
 i6«2o. 2J. dd. each. 
 
 The Hidden Life of the Soul. 
 
 The Light of the Conscience. 
 
 Self-Renunciation. From the 
 French. 
 
 St. Francis de Sales' Of the 
 Love of God. 
 
 Selections from Pascal's 
 Thoughts. 
 
 Library of Spiritual Works for English Catholics. Original 
 
 Edition. With Red Borders. Small Svo. c^s.each. New and Cheaper 
 Editions. i6mo. 2s. 6d. each. 
 
 OF THE IMITATION OF 
 CHRIST. 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL COMBAT. 
 By Laurence Scupoli. 
 
 THE DEVOUT LIFE. By St. 
 Francis de Sales. 
 
 OF THE LOVE OF GOD. By 
 St. Francis de Sales. 
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. 
 AUGUSTINE. In Ten Books. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 5J. 
 Edition only. 
 
lO 
 
 A CATALOGUE OF WORKS 
 
 Liddon. — Works by Henry Parry Liddon, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D., 
 late Canon Residentiary and Chancellor of St. Paul's. 
 
 SERMONS ON OLD TESTAMENT SUBJECTS. Crown Svo. 55. 
 
 THE DIVINITY OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST. 
 Being the Bampton Lectures for 1866. Crown &vo. y. 
 
 ADVENT IN ST. PAUL'S. Sermons bearing chiefly on the Two 
 Comings of our Lord. Two Vols. Crown Svo. 3J. 6ii. each. Cheap 
 Edition in one Volume. Crown Svo. ^s. 
 
 CHRISTMASTIDE IN ST. PAUL'S. Sermons bearing chiefly on the 
 Birth of our Lord and the End of the Year. Crown Svo. ^s. 
 
 PASSIONTIDE SERMONS. Crown Svo. 5^. 
 
 EASTER IN ST. PAUL'S. Sermons bearing chiefly on the Resurrec- 
 tion of our Lord. Two Vols. Crown Svo. 35. (yd. each. Cheap 
 Edition in one Volume. Crown Svo. 51. 
 
 SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF 
 OXFORD. Two Vols. Crown Svo. 3s. 611?. each. Cheap Edition in 
 one Volume. Crown Svo. ^s. 
 
 THE MAGNIFICAT. Sermons in St. Paul's. Crown Svo. zs. 6d. 
 
 SOME ELEMENTS OF RELIGION. Lent Lectures. Small Svo. 
 2s. 6d. ; or in Paper Cover, \s. 6d. 
 
 Tlu Crown Zvo Edition (5s.) juay still be had. 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF H. P. LIDDON, D.D. 
 Crown Svo. 3^. dd. 
 
 MAXIMS AND GLEANINGS FROM THE WRITINGS OF H. P. 
 LIDDON, D.D. Selected and arranged by C. M. S. Crown xdmo. is. 
 
 DR. LIDDON'S TOUR IN EGYPT AND PALESTINE IN 1886. 
 Being Letters descriptive of the Tour, written by his Sister, Mrs. King. 
 Crown Svo. ^s. 
 
 Luckock.— Works by Herbert Mortimer Luckock, D.D., 
 Canon of Ely. 
 
 .\FTER DEATH. An Examination of the Testimony of Primitive 
 Times respecting the State of the Faithful Dead, and their Relationship 
 to the Living. Crown Svo. ts. 
 
 THE INTERMEDIATE STATE BETWEEN DEATH AND 
 JUDGMENT. Being a Sequel to 4/?er Difa//2. CroxunSvo. ds. 
 
 FOOTPRINTS OF THE SON OF MAN, as traced by St. Mark. Being 
 Eighty Portions for Private Study, Family Reading, and Instruc- 
 tions in Church. T'a.'0 Vols. Crown Svo, \2s. Cheap Edition in one 
 Vol. Crown Svo. ^s. 
 
 [co/i/imted. 
 
IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 
 
 Luckock.— Works by HERBERT Mortimer Luckock, DD., 
 Canon of Ely — continued. 
 
 THE DIVINE LITURGY. Being the Order for Holy Communion, 
 Historically, Doctrinally, and Devotionally set forth, in Fifty Portions. 
 Crown Zvo. 6s. 
 
 STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK OF COMMON 
 PRAYER. The Anglican Reform— The Puritan Innovations— The 
 Elizabethan Reaction— The Caroline Settlement, With Appendices. 
 Crown 8vo. 6s, 
 
 THE BISHOPS IN THE TOWER. A Record of Stii;in- Kve ts 
 affecting the Church and Nonconformists from the Restoration lo the 
 Revolution. Crmun 8w. 6s. 
 
 LYRA APOSTOLICA. Poems by J. W. BowDEN, R. H. 
 Froude, J. Keble, J. H. Newman, R. I. Wilberforce, and 
 I. Williams ; and a New Preface by Cardinal Newman. i6mo. 
 With Red Borders. 2S. 6d. 
 
 LYRA GERMAN I CA. Hymns translated from the German by 
 Catherine Winkworth. Small Zvo. y. 
 
 MacColL— CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO SCIENCE 
 AND MORALS. By the Rev. Malcolm MacColl, M.A., Canon 
 Residentiary of Ripon. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 Mason. — Works by A. J. Mason, D.D., formerly Fellow of Trinity 
 College, Cambridge. 
 
 THE FAITH OF THE GOSPEL. A Manual of Christian Doctrine. 
 Crown Svo. ys. 6d. Also a Large-Paper Edition for Marginal Notes, 
 ^to. 12S. 6d. 
 
 THE RELATION OF CONFIRMATION TO BAPTISM. As taught 
 in Holy Scripture and the Fathers. Crown Zvo. 
 
 Mercier.— OUR MOTHER CHURCH : Being Simple Talk 
 on High Topics. By Mrs. Jerome Mercier. Small Svo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 Moberly.— Works by George Moberly, D.C.L., late Bishop of 
 Salisbury. 
 
 PLAIN SERMONS. Preached at Brighstone. Crown Svo. ^s. 
 
 THE SAYINGS OF THE GREAT FORTY DAYS, between the 
 Resurrection and Ascension, regarded as the Outlines of the Kingdom 
 of God. In Five Discourses. Crown Svo. ^s. 
 
 PAROCHIAL SERMONS. Mostly preached at Brighstone. CrownSvo. 
 ys. 6d. 
 
 SERMONS PREACHED AT WINCHESTER COLLEGE. Two Vols. 
 Small Svo. 6s. 6d. each. Sold separately. 
 
12 
 
 A CATALOGUE OF WORKS 
 
 Mozley. — Works by J. B. Mozley, D.D., late Canon of Christ 
 Church, and Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. 
 
 ESSAYS, HISTORICAL AND THEOLOGICAL. Two Vols. Zvo. 24s. 
 
 EIGHT LECTURES ON MIRACLES. Being the Bampton Lectures 
 for 1865. Crown 8vo. ys. 6d. 
 
 RULING IDEAS IN EARLY AGES AND THEIR RELATION TO 
 OLD TESTAMENT FAITH. Lectures delivered to Graduates of 
 the University of Oxford. Zvo. 10s. 6d. 
 
 SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF 
 OXFORD, and on Various Occasions. Crown 8w. ys. 6d. 
 
 SERMONS, PAROCHIAL AND OCCASIONAL. Crown 8vo. ys. 6d. 
 
 Mozley. — Works by the Rev. T. Mozley, M.A., Author 
 of ' Reminiscences of Oriel College and the Oxford 
 Movement.' 
 
 THE WORD. Crown 8vo. ys. 6d. 
 
 LETTERS FROM ROME ON THE OCCASION OF THE 
 CECUMENICAL COUNCIL 1869-1870. Two Vols. Cr. 8vo. i8s. 
 
 Newtolt. — Works by the Rev. W. C. E. Newbolt, M.A., Canon 
 Residentiary of St. Paul's. 
 
 THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT. Being Ten Addresses bearing on 
 the Spiritual Life. Crown 8vo. zs. 6d. 
 
 THE MAN OF GOD. Being Six Addresses delivered during Lent 
 1886, at the Primary Ordination of the Right Rev. the Lord Alwyne 
 Compton, D.D., Bishop of Ely. SmaU 8vo, js. 6d. 
 
 COUNSELS OF FAITH AND PRACTICE. Being Sermons preached 
 on Various Occasions. 8vo. ys. 6d. 
 
 THE VOICE OF THE PRAYER BOOK. Being Spiritual Addresses 
 bearing on the Book of Common Prayer. Crown 8vo. zs. 6d. 
 
 Newnham. — THE ALL-FATPIER : Sermons preached in a 
 Village Cliurcb. By the Rev. H. P. Newnham. With Preface by 
 Edna Lyall. Crown 8zv. 4^. 6d. 
 
 Newnham.— ALRESFORD ESSAYS FOR THE TIMES. By 
 
 Rev. W. O. Newnham, M.A. ,late Rector of Alresford. Contents :— 
 Bible Story of Creation — Bible Story of Eden — Bible Story of the 
 Deluge — After Death — Miracles : A Conversation — Eternal Punishment 
 — The Resurrection of the Body. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 
 
 13 
 
 Newman.— Works by John Henry Newman, B.D. (Cardinal 
 Newman), formerly Vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford. 
 
 PAROCHIAL AND PLAIN SERMONS. Eight Vols. Cabinet Editwt. 
 Crown Svo. ^s. each. Popular Edition. Eight Vols. Crown Zvo. 
 y. 6d. each. 
 
 SELECTION, ADAPTED TO THE SEASONS OF THE ECCLE- 
 SIASTICAL YEAR, from the ' Parochial and Plain Sermons.' 
 Cabinet Edition. Crown 8'jo. y. Popular Edition. Crown Svo. 
 3s. 6d. 
 
 FIFTEEN SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF OXFORD, between a.d. 1826 and 1843. Crown Svo. 5^. 
 
 SERMONS BEARING UPON SUBJECTS OF THE DAY. Cabi?iet 
 Edition. Crozun Svo. $s. Popular Edition. Crown Svo. 3^. (>d. 
 
 LECTURES ON THE DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION. Crown 
 Svo. SJ. 
 
 THE LETTERS AND CORRESPONDENCE OF JOHN HENRY 
 NEWMAN DURING HIS LIFE IN THE ENGLISH CHURCH. 
 With a Brief Autobiographical Memoir. Arranged and Edited by 
 Anne Mozley. Two Vols. Svo. 30?. net. 
 *,* For other Works by Cardinal Newman, see Messrs. Longmans & Co.'s Catalogue 
 of Works in General Literature. 
 
 Osborne. — Works by Edward Osborne, Mission Priest of the 
 Society of St. John the Evangehst, Cowley, Oxford. 
 
 THE CHILDREN'S SAVIOUR. Instructions to Children on the Life 
 of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Illustrated. i6mo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 THE SAVIOUR-KING. Instructions to Children on Old Testament 
 Types and Illustrations of the Life of Christ. Illustrated. \6mo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 THE CHILDREN'S FAITH. Instructions to Children on the Apostles' 
 Creed. Illustrated. 167110. 2s. 6d. 
 
 Oxenden.— Works by the Right Rev. ASHTON OXENDEN, for- 
 merly Bishop of Montreal. 
 THE HISTORY OF MY LIFE : An Autobiography. Crown Svo. 5^. 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF SAFETY ; or, Counsel to the Awakened. Ecap 
 Svo, large type. zs. 6d. Cheap Edition. Small type, limp. is. 
 
 THE EARNEST COMMUNICANT. New Red Rubric Edition, ■^'zmo, 
 cloth, zs. Common Edition, ^zmo. is. 
 
 OUR CHURCH AND HER SERVICES. Fcap. Svo, 2s. 6d. 
 
14 
 
 A CATALOGUE OF WORKS 
 
 Ozenden. — Works by the Right Rev. Ashton Oxenden, 
 formerly Bishop of Montreal — coniittued. 
 
 FAMILY PRAYERS FOR FOUR WEEKS. First Series. Fcap. Svo. 
 
 2s. 6d. Second Series. Fcap. Svo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 Large Type Edition. Two Series in one Volume. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 COTTAGE SERMONS ; or, Plain Words to the Poor. fcap. Svo. 2s. Sd. 
 THOUGHTS FOR HOLY WEEK. i6mo, clotk. li. (>d. 
 DECISION. \Smo. \s. 6d. 
 
 THE HOME BEYOND ; or. A Happy Old Age. Fcap. Svo. is. 6d. 
 THE LABOURING MAN'S BOOK. iSmo, large type, cloth, is. 6d. 
 
 Paget.— Works by the Rev. FRANCIS PAGET, D.D., Dean of 
 Christ Church, Oxford. 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF DISCIPLINE : Sermons. Crown Svo. 6s. 6d. 
 
 FACULTIES AND DIFFICULTIES FOR BELIEF AND DIS- 
 BELIEF. Crown Svo. 6s. 6d. 
 
 THE HALLOWING OF WORK. Addresses given at Eton, January 
 16-18, 1888. Small Svo. 2s. 
 
 PRACTICAL REFLECTIONS. By a Clergyman. With 
 Prefaces by H. P. Liddon, D.D., D.C.L. Croivn Svo. 
 
 Vol. I. — The Holy Gospels. 4^. 6d. 
 Vol. 11. — Acts to Revelation. 6s. 
 The Psalms. 5j. 
 
 PRIEST (THE) TO THE ALTAR ; Or, Aids to the Devout 
 
 Celebration of Holy Communion, chiefly after the Ancient English 
 Use of Sarum. Royal Svo. 12s. 
 
 Pusey.— Works by the late Rev. E. B. PUSEV, D.D. 
 
 PRIVATE PRAYERS. With Preface by H. P. Liddon, D.D. ^zmo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 PRAYERS FOR A YOUNG SCHOOLBOY. With a Preface by 
 H. P. Liddon, D.D. 2\mo. is. 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF EDWARD BOUVERIE 
 PUSEY, D.D. Crown Svo. 3^. 6d. 
 
 MAXIMS AND GLEANINGS FROM THE WRITINGS OF 
 EDWARD BOUVERIE PUSEY, D.D. Selected and Arrangec} for 
 Daily Use, Py C. M. S. Crown x6mo, js. 
 
IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 
 
 15 
 
 Richmond.— C H RI STIAN ECONOMICS. By the Rev. 
 Wilfrid Richmond, M.A., sometime Warden of Trinity College, 
 Glenalmond. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Sanday.— THE ORACLES OF GOD : Nine Lectures on the 
 
 Nature and Extent of Biblical Inspiration and the Special Significance 
 of the Old Testament Scriptures at the Present Time. By W. 
 Sanday, M.A., D.D., LL.D., Dean Ireland's Professor of Exegesis 
 and Fellow of Exeter College. Crown 8vo. 4s. 
 
 Seebohm.— THE OXFORD REFORMERS— JOHN COLET, 
 ERASMUS, AND THOMAS MORE : A History of their Fellow- 
 Work. By Frederic Seebohm. 8vo. 14s. 
 
 Stephen.— ESSAYS IN ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 By the Right Hon. Sir J. STEPHEN. Crown 8-jo. 7s. 6d. 
 
 Swayne.— THE BLESSED DEAD IN PARADISE. Four 
 All Saints' Day Sermons, preached in Salisbury Cathedral. By Robert 
 G. Swayne, M.A., Chancellor and Canon Residentiary. Crown 8vo. 
 y. 6d. 
 
 Tweddell.— THE SOUL IN CONFLICT. A Practical Exami- 
 nation of some Difficulties and Duties of the Spiritual Life. By 
 Marshall Tweddell, M.A., Vicar of St. Saviour, Paddington. 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Twells.— COLLOQUIES ON PREACHING. By Henry 
 Twells, M.A., Honorary Canon of Peterborough. Crown Zvo. y. 
 
 Wakeman.— THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN ENGLAND. 
 By Henry Offley Wakeman, M.A. Small 8vo. \s. 6d. 
 
 Welldon. — THE FUTURE AND THE PAST. Sermons 
 preached to Harrow Boys. (First Series.) By the Rev. J. E. C. 
 Welldon, M.A. , Head Master of Harrow School. Crown Zvo. ys. td. 
 
 Williams. — Works by the Rev. Isaac Williams, B.D., formerly 
 Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. 
 
 A DEVOTIONAL COMMENTARY ON THE GOSPEL NARRA- 
 TIVE. Eight Vols. Crown 8vo. ^s. each. Sold separately. 
 
 Thoughts on the Study of the Our Lord's Ministry (Third Year). 
 
 Holy Gospels. 
 A Harmony of the Four Gospels. 
 Our Lord s Nativity. 
 Our Lord's MiNisTRY(Second Year). 
 
 The Holy Week. 
 
 Our Lord's Passion. 
 
 Our Lord's Resurrection. 
 
 FEMALE CHARACTERS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. A Series of 
 Sermons, Crown 8vo, 51, 
 
i6 A CATALOGUE OF THEOLOGICAL WORKS. 
 
 Williams.— Works by the Rev. Isaac Williams, B.D., formerly 
 
 Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford — contiitiied. 
 
 THE CHARACTERS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. A Series of 
 Sermons. Crown &vo. 
 
 THE APOCALYPSE. With Notes and Reflections. Crown 8w. 55. 
 
 SERMONS ON THE EPLSTLES AND GOSPELS FOR THE SUN- 
 DAYS AND HOLY DAYS THROUGHOUT THE YEAR. Two 
 Vols. Crown 8vo. ^s. each. 
 
 PLAIN SERMONS ON THE CATECHISM. Two Vols. Croivn 8vo. 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF ISAAC WILLIAMS, 
 B.D. Crown 8vo. y. 6d. 
 
 Woodford. — Works by James Russell Woodford, D.D., 
 sometime Lord Bishop of Ely. 
 
 THE GREAT COMMISSION. Twelve Addresses on the Ordinal. 
 Edited, with an Introduction on the Ordinations of his Episcopate, by 
 Herbert Mortimer Luckock, D. D. Crown 8vo. s,s. 
 
 SERMONS ON OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT SUBJECTS. 
 Edited by HERBERT MORTIMER LuCKOCK, D.D. Crown 8vo. ■ 5^. 
 
 Woodruff. — THE CHILDREN'S YEAR. Verses for the 
 Sundays and Holy Days throughout the Year. By C. H. Woodruff, 
 B.C. L. With an Introduction by the Lord Bishop of Southwell. 
 Fcap. 8vo. 35. bd, 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 For List of Works by the late Christopher Wordsworth, D.D,, Bishop of 
 Lincoln, see Messrs. Longmans & Co.'s Catalogue of Theological Works, 
 32 pp. Sent post free on application. 
 
 Wordsworth.— Works by Elizabeth Wordsworth, Principal 
 of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. 
 ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE CREED. Crovju 8vo. 5* 
 CHRISTOPHER AND OTHER POEMS. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Younghusband.— Works by Frances Young husband. 
 
 THE STORY OF OUR LORD, told in Simple Language for Children. 
 With 25 Illustrations on Wood from Pictures by the Old Masters, and 
 numerous Ornamental Borders, Initial Letters, etc., from Longmans' 
 New Testament. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 THE STORY OF GENESIS, told in Simple Language for Children. 
 Crown 8vo. 2S. 6d. 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty, 
 lit the Edinbwsli Lhiive'sity Press. 
 
 jo,ooo/ii/9i.