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THE 
 
 FITNESS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE 
 
 FOR 
 
 UNFOLDING THE SPIRITUAL LIFE OF MEN. 
 
 II. 
 
 CHRIST THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS, 
 
 OR, THE 
 
 UNCONSCIOUS PROPHECIES OF HEATHENDOM. 
 
 BEING 
 
 THE HULSEAN LECTURES 
 
 FOR MDCCCXLV. AND MDCCCXLVI. 
 
 BY RICHARD CHENEVIX TREKCH, M.A., 
 
 VICAR OP ITCHEN-STOKE, HANTS; PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY, KING'S COL- 
 LEGE, LONDON; EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE LORD BISHOP 
 OF LONDON: AND LATE HULSEAN LECTURER. 
 
 jfrom tf)t JStcairir 3Untom 
 
 PHILADELP] 
 H. HOOKER.— S. W. COR. EIGHTH AND CHESTNUT STS. 
 185 4. 
 

ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 I have not felt myself at liberty to make 
 more than a few verbal alterations, or here 
 and there to recast a sentence, or add a 
 clause, in these Lectures, on the occasion of 
 their second appearance. I have inserted 
 indeed a few brief passages, which, originally 
 belonging to the Discourses, had been omitted 
 in the delivery, and have to the Second Series 
 appended a considerable number of Notes, in 
 confirmation or illustration of statements made 
 in the text. These having been asked for 
 in more quarters than one, I trust may not 
 be found unacceptable to some readers. 
 
 Itohen-stoke, Nov. 19, 1847- 
 
CONTENTS, FOE THE YEAE 1845. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 
 
 Psalm CXIX. 18. 
 Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out 
 
 of thy law, 9 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 
 Ephesians I. 9, 10. 
 Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according 
 to his good pleasure, which he hath purposed in himself; 
 that in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might 
 gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are 
 in heaven and which are on earth ; even in him, . . 24 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Matthew XIV. 20. 
 
 They did all eat and were filled, 39 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 Hebrews I. 1, 2. 
 God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in time 
 past unto the fathers, by the prophets, hath in these last 
 days spoken unto us by his Son, . . . 57 
 
 1* (5) 
 
6 CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 
 John XII. 16. 
 These things understood not his disciples at the first ; but when 
 Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these 
 things were written of him, 72 
 
 LECTURE YI. 
 
 THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OP SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Isaiah XII. 3. 
 
 With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation, . 86 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 THE FRUITFULNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Ezekiel XL VII. 9. 
 And it shall come to pass, that every thing that liveth, which 
 
 moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live, . 101 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Revelations VI. 2. 
 
 Conquering and to conquer, 115 
 
CONTENTS, FOE THE YEAR 1846. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 
 
 Haggai II. 7 
 
 The Desire of all nations shall come, 131 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 
 Mark XVI. 3. 
 Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the 
 
 sepulchre ? . . 148 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 THE SON OF GOD. 
 
 Acts XIV. 11. 
 And when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up 
 their voices, saying, in the speech of Lycaonia, The gods 
 are come down to us in the likeness of men, . . . 163 
 
 LECTURE IY. 
 
 THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 
 Micah VI. 6, 7. 
 Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself 
 before the high God ? shall I come before him with burnt 
 offerings ; with calves of a year old ? Will the Lord be 
 pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of 
 rivers of oil ? shall I give my first-born for my transgres- 
 sion, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ? . .177 
 
 (J) 
 
8 CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 THE RESTORER OF PARADISE. 
 Genesis V. 29 
 And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort 
 us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of 
 the ground which the Lord hath cursed, . . . .192 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 
 Romans VII. 21-23. 
 I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present 
 with me. For I delight in the law of God after the in- 
 ward man : but I see another law in my members, warring 
 against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity 
 to the law of sin which is in my members, . . . 205 
 
 LECTURE YII. 
 
 THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 
 Hebrews XL 10. 
 A city which hath foundations, whose builder and- maker is 
 
 God, . .222 
 
 LECTURE YIIL 
 
 CONCLUDING LECTUEE. 
 
 1 Thess. V. 21. 
 
 Prove all things ; hold fast that which is good, . . . 238 
 
THE FITNESS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE 
 
 FOR 
 
 UNFOLDING THE SPIRITUAL LIFE OF MEN. 
 
 Psalm CXIX. 18. 
 
 Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. 
 
 It was with a true insight into the sad yet needful con- 
 ditions of the Truth militant in a world of error, that he 
 who has of such just title given his name to these Lectures, 
 which I am now permitted to deliver in this place, devoted 
 so largely of his temporal means to the securing among us 
 a succession of discourses, having more or less nearly to do 
 with the establishing and vindicating of that Truth against 
 all gainsayers and opposers. For such apologies of our 
 holy Faith as he desired by this and other kindred founda- 
 tions of which he was the author, to promote and set for- 
 ward, are deeply grounded in the very nature of the Faith 
 itself — and this, whether they be defensive or aggressive, 
 whether they be of the Truth clearing itself from unjust 
 aspersions, or carrying the war, as it must 'often do, into the 
 quarters of error, and proving itself not merely to be true, 
 but to be Truth absolute, to the exclusion of all rival claims. 
 We know, as a matter of history, that Christian literature 
 did begin, as far back as we can trace it, with works of this 
 character ; they are among the earliest which have reached 
 us; probably among the earliest which existed. Nor do 
 
 (9) 
 
10 LECTURE I. 
 
 they belong merely to the first ages of the Church's being, 
 however in them they may naturally have had a special im- 
 portance. The Truth, like Him who gave it, will always 
 be a sign which shall be spoken against. The forms of the 
 enmity may change ; the coarser and more brutal accusa- 
 tions of one age may give place to subtler charges of another; 
 but so long as an ungodly world exists, the enmity itself 
 will remain, and will find utterance. The Truth, therefore, 
 must ever be succinct, and prompt to give an answer for 
 itself; and this it does the more readily, as knowing that 
 not man's glory, but God's glory is at hazard, when it is 
 assailed ; as being infinitely removed from that pride which 
 might tempt to the keeping silence, because it knows that 
 the accusations made against it are unjust; being rather full 
 of that humility and love, which make it willingly conde- 
 scend to the most wayward, if haply it may win them to 
 the service of its King. 
 
 And this is not all : the Truth cannot pause when it 
 has thus refuted and thrown back the things that it knew 
 not, which yet were laid to its charge. In its very nature 
 it is aggressive also. How should it not be so ? how should 
 it not make war on the strongholds of falsehood and error, 
 when its very task in the world is to deliver them that were 
 prisoners there ? how should it not seek to gather men 
 under its banner, — being moved, as it ever is, with an in- 
 ward bleeding compassion for all them that are aliens from 
 the faith of Christ, as knowing that every man, till he has 
 found himself in Him, is estranged from the true home of 
 his spirit, the right centre of his being ? How should it 
 not press its treasures upon each, commend its medicines to 
 all, when they are medicines for every man's hurt, treasures 
 which would make every man rich ? when it knows that it 
 has the reality, of which every lie is the counterfeit; that 
 when men are the fiercest set against it, then are they the 
 most madly at strife with their own blessedness?* 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 11 
 
 But this, it might be said, would sufficiently explain the 
 uses of Christian apology before a world which resists, or 
 puts by, the Faith ; it would explain why the Truth should 
 count itself happy to stand, as it did once in the person of 
 Paul, before Festus and Agrippa, and in presence of Gentile 
 and Jew, to make answer for itself. But allowing this, 
 what means it when before a congregation of faithful men, 
 when at one of the great centres of Christian light and 
 knowledge in our own land, a preacher undertakes, and 
 that at large and from year to year, the handling some 
 point of the evidences of our Religion? Might not this 
 seem at first as superfluous a form, as when, upon a day of 
 coronation, a champion rides forth, and with none but loyal 
 hearts beating in unison with the multitudinous voices 
 which have hailed his king and theirs, flings down his 
 glove, and challenges any that will gainsay the monarch's 
 right to the crown which has just been set upon his brows? 
 Our task might indeed be superfluous as this, were its only 
 purpose to convince opposers. There is blessed be God, a 
 foregone conclusion in the minds of the faithful, drawn from 
 all which they have known themselves of the life and 
 power of the Truth, which suffers them not for an instant to 
 regard it as something yet in debate, and still to be proved ; 
 since it has already approved itself in power and blessing 
 unto them. 
 
 And yet even for them a work of Christian apology may 
 be so constructed as to have its worth and meaning. If it 
 widen the basis on which their Faith reposes, if it help 
 them to take count of and use treasures, which before they 
 had, but which they knew not before save in part ; if it 
 cause them to pass from belief to insight ; if it bring out 
 for them the perfect proportions of the Truth, its singular 
 adaptations to the pre-established harmonies of the world, 
 as they had not perceived these before \ if it furnish them 
 with a clue for guiding some perplexed and wandering 
 
12 LECTURE I. 
 
 brother from his dreary labyrinth of doubt and error — if in 
 any of these ways it effectually serve, surely it has not been 
 in vain. Such uses we acknowledge in Evidences of our 
 Faith, when we constitute them a part of our discipline in 
 this University ; which assuredly we do, not as presuming 
 that we have to deal with any who are yet aliens from that 
 Faith, who have yet need to be brought to the acknowledg- 
 ing of the truth as it is in Jesus ; but rather as desiring to 
 put them who already have drawn in their faith, and that 
 from better sources, from the lips of their mothers, from the 
 catechisms of their childhood, from among the sanctities of 
 their home, in possession of the scientific grounds of that 
 belief, which already, by a better and more immediate 
 tenure, is theirs. 
 
 Nor may we leave wholly out of sight that in a time like 
 our own, of great spiritual agitation, at a place like this, of 
 signal intellectual activity, where oftentimes the low mutter- 
 ings of distant controversies, scarcely heard elsewhere, are 
 distinctly audible — there can hardly fail to be some per- 
 plexed with difficulties, harassed, it may be, with doubts 
 which they do not welcome, but would give worlds to be 
 rid of for ever — doubts which, perhaps, the very precious- 
 ness of the Truth in their sight alone magnifies into import- 
 ance ; for they feel that they are going to hang upon that 
 Truth all that is dear to them for life and for eternity ; that it 
 must be to them as their spirit's bride; and therefore they 
 cannot endure upon it the faintest breath of suspicion. I 
 say, brethren, that we may not leave wholly out of mind 
 that one and another in such perplexity of spirit may be 
 among us here. Happy above measure he who has " a mouth 
 and wisdom" given him to meet the necessities of such an 
 one among his brethren ; who shall help to bring him into 
 the secure haven of belief, into the confession that in Christ 
 Jesus are indeed laid up " all," and those infinite " treasures 
 of wisdom and knowledge." 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 13 
 
 But if discourses of the kind which I am commencing 
 to-day, are indeed to be profit to any, there appear to be one 
 or two preliminary conditions in the choice of a subject, 
 most needful to be observed ,• which failing to observe, we 
 shall, of sure' consequence, fall wholly short of those ends 
 of usefulness which we desire. 
 
 And first, a work of Christian defence will be marred, if 
 the subject which we select be one upon which none of the 
 great and decisive issues of the mighty conflict between 
 Truth and error depend; as when in jousts and tournaments 
 a knight touches the shield of some feeble adversary, passing 
 by and leaving the stronger and more accomplished unchal- 
 lenged. For thus it is with us, when we go off upon some 
 minor point, which even were it plainly won, would leave 
 us in no essential degree the better, nor an adversary the 
 worse ; which he might yield without being dislodged from 
 his strongholds of unbelief, without even feeling them less 
 tenable than before. 
 
 Or again, it will be to little profit that we deal with hin- 
 derances to men's belief, which once indeed were real and 
 urgent, but of which the urgency and reality have long 
 since departed; if we take our stand in some part of the 
 battle-field from which the great turmoil of the conflict has 
 now ebbed and shifted away; or conjure up phantom forms 
 of opposition, which once indeed were living and strong, 
 but now survive only in the tradition of books, and at this 
 day practically weaken no man's faith, disturb no man's 
 inner peace. This, too, were a fatal error, to have failed to 
 take note of that great stream of tendency, which has 
 borne us amid other shoals, and near other rocks, from those 
 among which our forefathers steered with manful hearts the 
 bark of their faith, and of God's great mercy made not 
 shipwreck of that faith amidst them all. 
 
 Or, once more, Christian apology fails in its loftiest aim, 
 when it addresses, not the whole man, but the man only 
 
 2 
 
14 LECTURE I. 
 
 upon one side, and that not the highest, of his being; when 
 it addresses, not the conscience, the affections, the will, but 
 the understanding faculties alone. How often do we meet 
 in books of Christian evidence the attempt made to substi- 
 tute a logical or mathematical proof of our most holy Faith 
 for a moral one ; to ascend to that proof by steps which can 
 no more be denied than the successive steps in a problem in 
 geometry, and so to drive an adversary into a corner from 
 whence there shall be no escape. But there is always an 
 escape for those that in heart and will are alienated from 
 the truth. At some stage or other of the process they will 
 successfully break away, or even if they are brought to the 
 end, they remain not with us long. And we may thank 
 God that it is so ; for it is part of the glory of the Truth 
 that it leads in procession no chained, no unwilling captives 
 — none that do not rejoice in their captivity, and share in the 
 triumph which they adorn. It is not therefore that arguments 
 which address themselves to lower parts of man's being than 
 the highest, are to be rejected — but only their insufficiency 
 acknowledged ; that they of themselves will never introduce 
 any to the inner sanctuary of the Faith ; but can only lead 
 him up to the doors. Most needful are they in their place ; 
 most needful that Christianity should approve itself to have 
 a true historic foundation ; that as a fact in history it should 
 stand as rigid a criticism as any other fact; that the books 
 which profess to tell its story should vindicate for them- 
 selves an authentic character; that the men who wrote 
 those books should be shown capable and credible witnesses 
 of the things which they deliver; that the outworks of our 
 Faith should be seen to be no less defensible than its citadel. 
 But, after all, the heart of the matter is not there ; when all 
 is done, men will feel in the deepest centre of their being 
 that it is the moral which must prove the historic, and not 
 the historic which can ever prove the moral ; that evidences 
 drawn from without may be accepted as the welcome but- 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 15 
 
 tresses, but that we can know no other foundations, of our 
 Faith than those which itself supplies. Revelation, like the 
 sun, must be seen by its own light ; being itself the highest, 
 the ultimate appeal with regard to it cannot lie with any- 
 lower than itself. There was indeed a sense in which Christ 
 received the witness of John, but there was another in 
 which He received not witness of any man, only his own 
 witness and his Father's. Even so is it with his Word and 
 his doctrine. There is a witness which they can receive of 
 men ; there is also a witness which no other can yield them 
 than themselves. 
 
 I trust, then, that taking for my argument The fitness of 
 Holy Scripture for unfolding the spiritual life of men, and 
 finding in its adaptations for this a proof of its divine 
 origin, I shall not fail in these primary conditions, how- 
 ever immeasurably I shall of necessity fall below the great- 
 ness and grandeur of my theme. 
 
 For first, this question, Whether Scripture be not a book 
 capable of doing, and appointed to do, an higher work than 
 every other book, cannot be regarded as one which is not 
 vital. It is felt to be vital by all those whose aim and pur- 
 pose is to prove that it is but a book as other books, and 
 therefore underlying the same weakness and incompletenesses 
 as every other work of men's hands. And these are many ; 
 since for one direct assault on Christianity as a delivered 
 fact, there are twenty on the records of Christianity, or the 
 manner of its delivery. Many a one who would not ven- 
 ture boldly to enter on the central question, whether the 
 Christ whom the Church believes, whom not any one pas- 
 sage alone, but the collective sum of the Scriptures has 
 delivered to us, be not the highest conceivable revelation 
 of the Invisible God, and his Incarnation the necessary out- 
 coming of the perfections of the Godhead, will yet hover on 
 the outskirts of the conflict, and set himself to the detecting,, 
 
16 LECTURE I. 
 
 as he hopes, a flaw in this narration, or to the proving the 
 historic evidence for that book insufficient. They who pass 
 by the consideration as one which never rose up before their 
 minds, whether there has not been a great education of our 
 race, reaching through all ages, going forward from the day 
 that God called Abraham from among his fathers' idols; 
 and whether this great idea be not as a golden thread, run- 
 ning through the whole woof and tissue of Scripture — they 
 who shun altogether considerations such as these, will yet 
 set themselves diligently to look for petty discrepancies 
 between one historic book and another, or for proofs which 
 shall not be put by, of some later hand than that of Moses 
 in some notice in the book of G-enesis. And however paltry 
 and petty this warfare may be, it is no doubt a true instinct 
 of hate which makes them hope to discover vulnerable points 
 in Scripture, as knowing that could they really find such, 
 through them they might effectually wound Him, of whom 
 the Scripture is the outcoming and the Word. 
 
 Nor, again, can it be said that this is a matter, which 
 though once brought into earnest debate, is now so no more ; 
 or that the earnestness of the struggle has been now trans- 
 ferred to other parts of the great controversy between the 
 kingdoms of light and of darkness. It is not so : the 
 Porphyrys, the Celsuses, and the Julians of an earlier age, 
 have never wanted their apt scholars, their worthy successors. 
 The mantle of the false prophet is as surely dropped and 
 bequeathed, as the mantle of the true. Who that knows 
 aught of what is going forward among a people, who not in 
 blood only, but in much besides, are most akin to us of all 
 the nations of Europe, will deny that even now God's Word 
 is tried to the uttermost; that it still has need to make 
 good its claims ; or knowing this, will presume to say how 
 soon we may not find ourselves in the midst of controversies, 
 which assuredly have not yet run themselves out, nor by 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 17 
 
 the complete victory of the Truth brought themselves to a 
 quiet end ? 
 
 Nor shall we with this theme be lingering about the outer 
 precincts of our Faith. Not the external authority with 
 which these books come to us, but the inner seal with which 
 they are sealed, the way in which, like Him of whom they 
 testify, they receive not witness of men, but by all which 
 they are, by all which they have wrought, bear witness of 
 themselves that they are of God, even the witness of power, 
 this is our high argument. 
 
 And to it perhaps there will be no fitter introduction than 
 a few general remarks on the connexion in which a book 
 may stand to the intellectual and spiritual life of men. 
 And would we appreciate the importance of a book received 
 as absolute law, for the mental and moral culture of those 
 who in such wise receive it, the influences which it will exert 
 in moulding them, if only that book contain any elements 
 of truth ', let us consider for an instant what the Koran has 
 been and is to the whole Mohammedan world ; how it is 
 practically the great bond and band of the nations profess- 
 ing that spurious faith, holding fast in a community, which 
 is a counterpart, however feeble, of a Christendom, nations 
 whom every thing else would have tended to separate ; how 
 it has stamped on them the features of a common life, and 
 set them however immeasurably below the Christian 
 nations, yet well nigh as greatly above all other nations 
 of the world ; — let us consider this, and then what the book 
 is that has wrought the mighty effects — the many elements 
 of fraud and folly which are mixed up with, and which 
 weaken, the truth which it possesses ; and then let us ask 
 ourselves what by comparison must be a Bible, or Scripture 
 of absolute truth, to the Christian world ! 
 
 Or to estimate the shaping moulding power which may 
 lie in books, even when they come not as revelations, real 
 or pretended, of the will of God, let us attempt to measure 
 
 2* 
 
18 LECTURE I. 
 
 the influence which a few Greek and Latin books, (for the 
 real effective books are but few,) exert and have exerted on 
 the minds of men, since the time they have been familiarly 
 known and studied; the manner in which they have modi- 
 fied the habits of thought, coloured the language, and affected 
 the whole institutions of the world in which we live ; how 
 they have given to those who have sedulously occupied them- 
 selves isa their study and drunk in their spirit, a culture and 
 tone of mind recognisably different from that of any other 
 men; and this, although they come with the seal of no 
 absolute authority; although, on the contrary, we feel that 
 on many points (and some of these the very chiefest) we 
 stand greatly above them. Let us take this into account, 
 and we shall allow that it is scarcely possible to overrate 
 the influence of a book which does come with highest sanc- 
 tion, to which men bow as containing the express image of 
 the Truth, and which is, as those are, only for a longer 
 period and in a higher region of the spiritual life, the ap- 
 pointed instrument for calling out the true humanity in 
 every man. 
 
 At first, indeed, it seems hard to understand how any 
 written word should possess such influence as that which we 
 attribute to this ; diflicult to set a dispensation of the Truth 
 in that form at all upon a level in force and influence with 
 the same Truth, when it is the living utterance of living 
 men, or to ascribe to it powers at all equal to theirs. But 
 when we consider more closely, the wonder disappears ; we 
 soon perceive how, by the Providence of God, a written 
 word, be it of man's truth or of God's Truth, should have 
 been charged with such important functions to fulfil. For 
 first, it is plain that the existence of a written word is the 
 necessary condition of any historic life or progress whatso- 
 ever in the world. If succeeding generations are to inherit 
 aught from those that went before, and not each to begin 
 anew from first rudiments, — if all is not to be always childhood 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 19 
 
 — if there is to be any manhood of our race, — it is plain that 
 only thus, only through such an instrument could this be 
 brought about. 
 
 And most of all it is evident that through a Scripture 
 alone, that is, through a written record, could any great epoch, 
 and least of all an epoch in which great spiritual truths were re- 
 vealed or reasserted, transmit itself unimpaired to the after 
 world. For every new has for a long while an old to contend 
 with, every higher a lower, which is continually seeking to draw 
 it down to itself. The most earnest oral tradition will in a little 
 while lose its distinctness, undergo essential though insen- 
 sible modifications. Apart from all desire to vitiate the 
 committed word, yet, little by little, the subjective condi- 
 tion of those to whom it is intrusted, through whom it 
 passes, will infallibly make itself felt ; and in such treache- 
 rous keeping is all which remains merely in the memories 
 of men, that after a very little while, rival schools of disci- 
 ples begin to contend not merely how their master's words 
 were to be accepted, but what those very words were them- 
 selves. 
 
 Moreover it is only by recurrence to such witnesses as 
 are thus secured for the form in which the Truth was at the 
 first delivered, that any great restoration or reformation can 
 proceed; only so can that which is grown old renew its 
 youth, and cast off the slough of age. Without this, all 
 that is once let go would be irrecoverably gone — all once 
 lost would be lost forever. Without this, all that did not 
 interest at the moment, all which was laid deep for the 
 uses of a remote posterity, of which they were first to dis- 
 cover the price and value, would long before it reached 
 them have inevitably perished. And when the Church of 
 the Apostolic age, with that directly following, is pointed to 
 as an exception to this general rule, — as a Church existing 
 without a Scripture, — even as no doubt for some while the 
 Church did exist with a canOn not full formed, but forming, 
 
20 LECTURE I. 
 
 and for a little while without any Scriptures peculiarly its 
 own, is left out of sight that the question is not, whether a 
 Church could so exist, "but whether it could subsist — not 
 whether it could be, but whether it could continue to be. 
 That for a while, under rare combinations of favourable 
 circumstances, with living witnesses and fresh memories of 
 the Lord's life and death in the midst of it, a Christian 
 Church without any actual writings of its new Covenant 
 could have existed, is one thing ; and another, whether it 
 could so have survived through long ages 3 whether without 
 them it could have kept ever before its eyes any clear and 
 distinct image of Him that was its founder, or stamped any 
 lively impress of Him on the hearts of its children. No ; 
 it is assuredly no happy accident of the Church that it 
 possesses a Scripture ; but if the wonders of the Church's 
 first becoming were not to repeat themselves continually, 
 if it was at all to know a natural evolution in the world ; 
 then, as far as we can see, this was a necessary condition of 
 its very subsistence. 
 
 This, then, brethren, will be the aim of these Lectures 
 which I am about to deliver in your hearing. I shall 
 desire reverently, and with God's grace assisting, to discover 
 what I may, of the inner structure of this Book which is so 
 essential a factor in the spiritual life of men — humbly to 
 trace where I can, the wisdom with which it is laid out to 
 be the nourisher and teacher of all men, and of all men in 
 all ages and in all parts of their complex being ; also to 
 show, where I am able, how it has effectually approved 
 itself as such. 
 
 And yet, brethren, such considerations may not be entered 
 on without one or two needful cautions, which I should wish to 
 keep ever before myself, which I should wish to commend also 
 to you. And first, let us beware lest contemplating this 
 goodly fabric, we be contemplators only; as though we 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 21 
 
 were to stand without Scripture and admire it, and not to 
 stand within it and obey it. That were a mournful self- 
 deceit — to see and marvel at its fitness for every man, and 
 never to have made proof of that fitness for the needs of one 
 heart, for the healing the deep wound of one spirit, even of 
 our own. And, indeed, only in this way of love and of 
 obedience shall we enter truly into any of the hidden 
 riches which it contains ; for that only which we love, we 
 know. No book, much less the highest, yields its secrets, 
 reveals its wonders, to any but the reverent, the loving, and 
 the humble. To other than these, the door of higher under- 
 standing is ever closed. We must pass into and unite our- 
 selves with that which we would know, ere we can know it 
 more than in name. 
 
 And then, brethren, again, when we propose to consider 
 the structure of Scripture, it is not as though this were 
 needed before men could enter into its fullest and freest 
 enjoyment. It is far from being thus ; for as a man may 
 live in an house without being an architect, so may we 
 habitually live and move in Holy Scripture, without con- 
 sciously, by any reflex act, being aware of any one of the 
 wonders of its construction, the secret sources of its strength 
 and power. To know simply that it is the Word of Grod 
 has sufficed thousands and tens of thousands of our brethren ; 
 even as, no doubt, in this one affirmation is gathered up and 
 anticipated all that the most earnest and devout search may 
 unfold. We may say this, that it is Grod's Word, in other 
 language, we may say this more at large, yet more than 
 this we cannot say ; after the widest range we shall only 
 return to this at the last. 
 
 But while this is true, it remains true also that " the 
 works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that 
 have pleasure therein," if only leisure and opportunities are 
 theirs — that if love is the way of knowledge, knowledge also 
 is the food of love, the appointed fuel of the sacred fire; 
 
22 LECTURE I. 
 
 that, if the affections are to be kept lastingly true to an 
 object, the reasonable faculties, supposing them to have 
 been actively called out, must find also in that object their 
 satisfying employment. Many among us here have, or will 
 have, not merely to live on G-od's Word ourselves, but, as 
 our peculiar task, to unfold its secrets and bring forth its 
 treasures for others. We therefore cannot draw from it 
 that unconscious nutriment which do many. Whatever 
 may be the danger of losing the simplicity of our love for it, 
 and coming to set that love up on other grounds than those on 
 which the love of the humblest and simplest of our brethren 
 reposes, and so of separating themselves in spirit from him ; 
 this, like any other danger of our spiritual life, must not be 
 shrunk from, by shrinking from the duty to which, like its 
 dark shadow, it cleaves; but in other and more manful 
 ways must be met and overcome. We all of us have need, 
 if not all from our peculiar functions, yet all from our posi- 
 tion as the highest educated of our age and nation, as there- 
 fore the appointed leaders of its thoughts and feelings, not 
 merely to prize and honour this Book, but to justify the 
 price and honour, in which we hold it ourselves, in which 
 we bid others to hold it. 
 
 May some of us be led by what shall be here spoken 
 to a fuller recognition of those treasures of wisdom and 
 knowledge which are or may be, day by day, in our hands. 
 May we be reminded of the high privilege which it is to 
 have a book which is also, as its name declares, the Book ; 
 which stands up in the midst of its brethren, the kingly 
 sheaf, to which all the others do obeisance (Gren. xxxvii. 7 ;) 
 — not casting a slight upon them, but lending to them 
 some of its own dignity and honour. May we in a troubled 
 time be helped to feel something of the grandeur of the 
 Scripture, and so of the manifold wisdom of that Eternal 
 Spirit by whom it came — and then petty objections 
 and isolated difficulties, though they were multiplied 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 23 
 
 as the sands of the sea, will not harass us. For what 
 are they all to the fact, (I am here using and concluding 
 with words far better than my own,) that " for more than a 
 thousand years the Bible collectively taken has gone hand 
 in hand with civilization, science, law, — in short with the 
 moral and intellectual cultivation of the species, always 
 supporting, and often leading the way ? Its very presence 
 as a believed book has rendered the nations emphatically a 
 chosen race, and this too in exact proportion as it is more or 
 less generally studied. Of those nations which in the 
 highest degree enjoy its influences, it is not too much to 
 affirm that the differences, public and private, physical, 
 moral and intellectual, are only less than what might be 
 expected from a diversity in species. Good and holy men, 
 and the best and wisest of mankind, the kingly spirits of 
 history enthroned in the hearts of mighty nations, have 
 borne witness to its influences, have declared it to be beyond 
 compare the most perfect instrument, the only adequate 
 organ, of humanity ) the organ and instrument of all the 
 gifts, powers, and tendencies, by which the individual is 
 privileged to rise above himself, to leave behind and lose his 
 dividual phantom self, in order to find his true self in that 
 distinctness where no division can be, — in the Eternal I AM, 
 the ever-living Word, of whom all the elect, from the 
 archangel before the throne to the poor wrestler with the 
 Spirit until the breaking of day, are but the fainter and 
 still fainter echoes." 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Ephesians I. 9, 10. 
 
 Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his 
 good pleasure, which he hath purposed in himself; that in the dispen- 
 sation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things 
 in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth; even 
 in him. 
 
 It is the necessary condition of a book which shall exert 
 any great and effectual influence, which shall stamp itself with 
 a deep impression upon the minds and hearts of men, that 
 it must have a unity of purpose : one great idea must run 
 through it all. There must be some single point in which 
 all its different rays converge and meet. The common eye 
 may fail to detect the unity, even while it unconsciously owns 
 its power ; yet this is necessary still ; this growing out of a 
 single root, this subordination of all the parts to a single 
 aim, this returning of the end upon the beginning. We 
 feel this in a lower sphere ; nothing pleases much or long, 
 nothing takes greatly hold, no work of human genius or 
 art, which is not at one with itself, which has not form, in 
 the highest sense of that word ; which does not exclude and 
 include. And it is hardly necessary to add, that if the 
 effects are to be deep and strong, this idea must be a great 
 one : it must not be one which shall play lightly upon the 
 surface of their mind3 that apprehend it, but rather one 
 which shall reach far down to the dark foundations out of 
 sight upon which reposes this awful being of ours. 
 
 Now what I should desire to make the subject of my lec- 
 ture to-day is exactly this, that there is one idea in Holy 
 (24) 
 
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 25 
 
 Scripture, and tbis idea the very highest; that all in it 
 is referable to this ; that it has the unity of which I spake ; 
 that a guiding hand and spirit is traceable throughout, in- 
 cluding in it all which bears upon one mighty purpose, ex- 
 cluding all which has no connexion with that, — however, 
 from faulty or insufficient views, we might have expected it 
 there ; however certainly it would have intruded itself there, 
 had this been a work of no higher than human skill. I 
 would desire to show that it fulfils this condition, the neces- 
 sary condition of a book which shall be mighty in operation ; 
 that it is this organic whole, informed by this one idea ; — 
 how this one explains what it has and what it has not ; much 
 in its form, and yet more in its substance ; why it should 
 be brief here, and large there ; why it omits wholly this, 
 and only touches slightly upon that ; why vast gaps, as at 
 first sight might seem to us, occur in some portions of it; 
 infinite minuteness of detail in others; how things which 
 at first we looked to find in it, we do not find, and others, 
 which we were not prepared for are there. 
 
 And this unity if it can be shown to exist, none can 
 reply that it was involved and implied in the external acci- 
 dents of the Book, and that we have mistaken the outward 
 aggregation of things similar for the inward coherence of 
 an organic body : since these accidents, if the word may be 
 permitted, are all such as would have created a sense of di- 
 versity ; and it is only by penetrating through them, and 
 not suffering them to mislead us, that we do attain to the 
 deeper and pervading unity of Scripture. Its unity is not, 
 for instance, that apparent one which might be produced by 
 a language common to all its parts. For it is scarcely pos- 
 sible, I suppose, for a deeper gulf to divide two languages 
 than divides the two in which severally the Old and the 
 New Testament are written. Nor can it be likeness of 
 form which has deceived us into believing that unity of 
 spirit exists; for the forms are various and diverse as can be 
 
 3 
 
26 LECTURE II. 
 
 conceived; it is now song, now history; now dialogue, now 
 narration ; now familiar letter, now prophetic vision. There 
 is scarcely a form of composition in which men have clothed 
 their thoughts and embodied their emotions which does not 
 find its archetype here. Nor yet is the unity of this volume 
 brought about through all the parts of its being the up- 
 growth of a single age, and so all breathing alike the spirit 
 of that age; for no single age beheld the birth of this 
 Book, which was well nigh two thousand years ere it was 
 fully formed and had reached its final completion. Nor can 
 its unity, if it exists, be accounted for from its having had 
 but one class of men for its human authors ; since men not 
 of one class alone, but of many, and those the widest apart, 
 kings and herdsmen, warriors and fishermen, wise men and 
 simple, have alike brought their one stone or more, and been 
 permitted to build them in to this august dome and temple 
 which God through so many ages was rearing to its glorious 
 height. Deeper than all its outward circumstances, sin3e 
 these all would have tended to an opposite result, this unity 
 must lie — in the all-enfolding seed out of which the whole 
 book is evolved. 
 
 But this unity of Scripture, where is it ? from what point 
 shall we behold and recognise it? Surely from that in 
 which those verses which I have taken from the Epistle to 
 the Ephesians will place us ; when we regard it as the story 
 of the knitting anew the broken relations between the Lord 
 God and the race of man ; of the bringing the First-begotten 
 into the world, for the gathering together all the scattered 
 and the sundered in Him; when we regard it. as the true 
 paradise Regained — the true De Civitate Dei, — even by a 
 better title than those noble books which bear these names 
 — the record of that mystery of God's will which was work- 
 ing from the first, to the end " that in the dispensation of 
 the fulness of times He might gather together in one all 
 things in Christ." 
 
THE. UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 27 
 
 And all nearer examination will show how true it is to this 
 idea, which we affirm to lie at its ground. It is the story 
 of the divine relations of men, of the divine life which, in 
 consequence of those still subsisting relations, was strug- 
 gling to the birth with more or less successful issues in 
 every faithful man ; which came perfectly to the birth in 
 the One, even in Him in whom those relations were consti- 
 tuted at the first, and perfectly sealed ah the last. It is the 
 story of this, and of nothing else ; the record of the men 
 who were conscious of a bond between earth and heaven? 
 and not only dimly conscious, for that all people who have 
 not sunk into savage hordes have been, but who recognized 
 these relations, this fellowship, as the great undoubted fact 
 with which God had underlaid their life — the support not 
 merely of their personal being, but as that which must sus- 
 tain the whole society of earth — whether the narrower so- 
 ciety of the Family, or the wider of the State, or the all- 
 embracing one of the Church. 
 
 How many temptations there were to wander out of and 
 beyond this region, which yet every one of us must recog- 
 nise at once to be the true region in which only an Holy 
 Scripture should move \ how many other regions in which 
 had it been other than what it is, it might have lost itself? 
 For instance, other so called sacred books almost invariably 
 miss the distinction between ethics and physics, lose them- 
 selves in theories of creation, endless cosmogonies, subtle 
 speculations about the origin of the material universe. Such 
 a deep ground has this error, so willing are men to substi- 
 tute the speculative for the practical, and to lose the last in 
 the first, that we find even after the Christian Faith had 
 been given, a vast attempt to turn even that into a philo- 
 sophy of nature. What, for example, was Manicheism, 
 but the attempt to array a philosophy of nature in a Chris- 
 tian language, to empty Christian truths of all their ethical 
 worth, and then to use them as a gorgeous symbolic garb for 
 
28 LECTURE II. 
 
 clothing a system different to its very core ? But Scripture 
 is no story of the material universe.* A single chapter is 
 sufficient to tell us that " God made the heavens and the 
 earth." Man is the central figure there, or to speak more 
 truly, the only figure ; all which is there besides serves but 
 as a background for him ; he is not one part of the furni- 
 ture of this planet, not the highest merely in the scale of 
 its creatures, but the lord of all — sun and moon and stars, 
 and all the visible creation, borrowing all their worth and 
 their significance from the relations wherein they stand to 
 him. Such he appears there in the ideal worth of his 
 unfallen condition; and even now, when only a broken 
 fragment of the sceptre with which once he ruled the 
 world, remains in his hand, such he is commanded to regard 
 himself still. 
 
 It is one of Spinoza's charges against Scripture, that it 
 does erect and recognise this lordship of man, that it does 
 lift him out of his subordinate place, and ever speak in a 
 language which takes for granted that nature is to serve 
 him, and not he to acquiesce in nature, that the Bible 
 every where speaks rather of a God of men than a Creator 
 of the universe. We accept willingly the reproach; we 
 acknowledge and we glory in its entire truth, — that the 
 eighth Psalm is but a single distinct utterance of that which 
 all Scripture proclaim ; for that every where sets forth man 
 as the crown of things, the last and the highest, the king to 
 rule over the world, the priest to offer up its praises — and 
 
 * Compare the remarkable words of Felix the Manichgean, and the 
 fault which he finds with it on this very ground (Augustine Acta c. 
 Felice Manichceo, 1. 1, c. 9:) Et quia venit Manicheeus et per suam 
 prsedicationem docuit nos initium medium et finem ; docuit nos de 
 fabrica mundi, quare facta est et unde facta et qui fecerunt ; 
 docuit nos quare dies et quare nox ; doouit nos de cursu solis et 
 lunse ; quia hoc in Paulo non audivimus, nee in coeterorum apos- 
 tolorum scripturis, hoc credimus, quia ipse est Paraclitus. 
 
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 29 
 
 deals with nature not as co-ordinated with him, much less 
 as superior ; but in entire subordination ; " Thou makest 
 him to have dominion of the works of thy hands, and thou 
 hast put all things in subjection under his feet." And 
 herein Holy Scripture is one, that it is throughout the his- 
 tory of man as distinct from nature, as immeasurably above 
 nature — that it is throughout ethical, and does never, as so 
 many of the mythic accounts of heathen religions, resolve 
 itself on nearer inspection into the mere setting forth of 
 physical appearances. 
 
 It is then the history of man ; yet not of all men, only 
 of a chosen portion of our race ; and such, if we have 
 rightly seized the purpose and meaning of a Scripture and 
 what it is intended to tell, it must needs be. It is true 
 that this is too often brought against it as a short-coming. 
 It is a frequent sneer on the part of the master-mocker of 
 France, that the Bible dedicates its largest spaces, by far 
 the greatest number of its pages, to the annals of a little 
 tribe, which occupied, to use his very words, a narrow strip 
 of mountainous territory, scarcely broader than Wales, leav- 
 ing almost unnoticed the mighty empire of Egypt and 
 Assyria; and he goes on to observe, that from a book which 
 professes to go back, as this does, to the very beginning, 
 and to be in possession of all authentic history from the 
 first, to have in its keeping the archives of our race, we 
 should gladly have received, even as we might have reason- 
 ably expected, a few notices of these vast empires ; which 
 had been cheaply purchased by the omission or abridgement 
 of lives and incidents now written with such a special 
 minuteness. 
 
 Now it is no doubt remarkable, and a fact to awaken our 
 earnest attention, that in a Book, wherein, if in any, all 
 waste of room would have been spared, the lives of an Abra- 
 ham, a Joseph, a David, fill singly spaces so large ; while 
 huge empires rise and fall, and all their multitudes pass to 
 
 3* 
 
30 LECTURE II. 
 
 their graves, almost without a word. These vast empires 
 are left in their utter darkness, or if a glimpse of light fall 
 upon them for a moment, it is only because of the relations 
 in which they are brought to this little tribe ; since no 
 sooner do these relations cease, than they fall back into the 
 obscurity out of which they emerged for a moment. 
 
 But strange as it may at first sight appear, it belongs to 
 the very essence of Scripture that it should be thus and no 
 otherwise. For that is not a world-history, but a history 
 of the kingdom of Glod j and He who ever chooses " the 
 weak things of the earth to confound the things which are 
 mighty," had willed that in the line of this family, this 
 tribe, this little people, the restoration of the true humanity 
 should be effected : and each man who at all realized the 
 coming Restorer, each in whom that image of God, which 
 was one day to be perfectly revealed in his Son, appeared 
 with a more than usual distinctness, however indistinctly still, 
 — every such man was singly a greater link in the world's 
 history than all those blind millions of whom these records 
 have refused to take knowledge. Those mountains of Israel, 
 that little corner of the world, so often despised, so often 
 wholly past over, was yet the citadel of the world's hope, the 
 hearth on which the sparks that were yet to kindle the 
 earth were kept alive. There the great reaction which was 
 one day to find place against the world's sin was preparing ; 
 and just as, were we tracing the course of a stream, not the 
 huge morasses, not the vast stagnant pools on either side, 
 would delay us; we should not, because of their extent, 
 count them the river ; but that we should recognise as the 
 stream, though it were the slenderest thread, in which an 
 onward movement and current might be discerned ; so it is 
 here. Egypt and Assyria and Babylon were but the vast 
 stagnant morasses on either side; the man in whose seed 
 the whole earth should be blest, he and his family were the 
 
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 31 
 
 little stream in which the life and onward motion of the 
 world were to be traced. 
 
 For indeed, properly speaking, where there are no work- 
 ings, conscious or unconscious, to the great end of the 
 manifestation of the Son of God in the flesh, — conscious, as 
 in Israel, unconscious, as in Greece, — where neither those 
 nor these are found, there history does not and cannot exist. 
 For history, if it be not the merest toy, the idlest pastime 
 of our vacant hours, is the record of the onward march of 
 humanity towards an end. Where there is no belief in 
 such an end, and therefore no advance toward it, no stir- 
 rings of a divine Word in a people's bosom, where not as 
 yet the beast's heart has been taken away, and a man's heart 
 given, there history cannot be said to be. They belong not 
 therefore to history, least of all to sacred history, those 
 Babels, those cities of confusion, those huge pens, into which 
 by force and fraud the early hunters of men, the Nimrods 
 and Sesostrises, drave and compelled their fellows; and 
 Scripture is only most true to its idea, while it passes them 
 almost or wholly in silence by, while it lingers rather on the 
 plains of Mamre, with the man that " believed God, and it was 
 counted to him for righteousness," than by " populous No," 
 or great Babylon, where no faith existed but in the blind 
 powers of nature, and the brute forces of the natural man. 
 
 And yet, that there were stirrings of a divine life, long- 
 ings after and hopes of a Deliverer, at work in Israel, had 
 not been, of itself, sufficient to exalt and consecrate its his- 
 tory into a Scripture. These such a history must contain, 
 but also something more and deeper than these ; else all in 
 Greece and elsewhere that was struggling after moral free- 
 dom, that was craving after light, all that bore witness to 
 man's higher origin and nobler destinies, might have claimed 
 by an equal right to be there. But Holy Scripture, accord- 
 ing to the idea from which we started, is the history of men 
 in a constitution — of men, not seeking relations with God, 
 
32 LECTURE II. 
 
 but having them, and whose task is now to believe in them, 
 and to maintain them. Its mournful reminiscences of a 
 broken communion with heaven are evermore swallowed up 
 in the firm and glorious assurances of a restored. The 
 noblest efforts of heathenism were seekings after these rela- 
 tions with God, if haply man might connect himself anew 
 with a higher world, from which he had cut himself loose. 
 But here man does not appear as seeking God, and therefore 
 at best only dimly and uncertainly apprehending him ; but 
 rather God appears as seeking man, therefore not seeking in 
 vain, but ever finding — man only as seeking God, on the 
 ground that God has already sought and found him, and has 
 said to him, "Seek my face/' and in that saying has pledged 
 Himself that the seeking shall not be in vain. With this, 
 Scripture excludes all mere feelings after God, not as count- 
 ing them worthless, — for precious and significant in the 
 eyes of a Paul was the altar " To the unknown God/' 
 reared at Athens, — but excludes them in that they belong 
 to a lower stage of religious life than that to which it minis- 
 ters, and in which it moves. It has no mythology ; no ideal 
 which is not also real ; no dreams and anticipations of higher 
 things than it is itself destined to record as actually brought 
 to pass. These may be deep out-speakings of the spiritual 
 needs of man, precious recollections of a state which once 
 was his, but which now he has forfeited; yet being only 
 utterances of his want, cries of his need, confessions of his 
 loss, sharing, too, as they must ever, in the imperfections 
 of which they testify, therefore they can find no place in a 
 Bible. For that is in no way a record of man's various 
 attempts to cure himself of the deep wound of his soul; it 
 is no history of the experiments which he makes, as he 
 looks round him to see if he may find on earth medicinal 
 herbs that will meet his need ; but it presents him already 
 in an hospital of souls, and under a divine treatment. Hea- 
 then philosophy might indeed be a preparation for Christi- 
 
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 33 
 
 anity — heathen mythology, upon its better side, an uncon- 
 scious prophecy of Christ ; yet were they only the negative 
 preparation and witness ; Jewish religion was the positive ; 
 and it is with the positive alone that a Scripture can have 
 to do. 
 
 Thus we have seen what, under some aspects, such a book 
 must be : we have seen why it is not that, which men super- 
 ficially looking at it, or in whom the speculative tendencies 
 are stronger than the moral needs, might have desired to be. 
 In the first place, that it is not the history of nature, but 
 of man ; nor yet of all men, but only of those who are 
 more or less conscious of their divine original, and have 
 not, amid all their sins, forgotten that great word, " We are 
 God's offspring j" — nor yet even of all these, but of those 
 alone who had been brought by the word of the promise 
 into immediate covenant relations with the Father of their 
 spirits. We have seen it the history of an election, — of 
 men under the direct and immediate education of God — not 
 indeed for their own sakes only, as too. many among them 
 thought, turning their election into a selfish thing, but that 
 through them he might educate and bless the world. That 
 it does not tell the story of other men — that it does not 
 give a philosophy of nature, is not a deficiency, but is rather 
 its strength and glory ; witnessing for the Spirit which has 
 presided over its growth and formation, and never suffered 
 aught which was alien to its great plan and purpose to find 
 admission into it — any foreign elements to weaken its 
 strength or trouble its clearness. 
 
 Nor less does Holy Scripture give testimony for a perva- 
 ding unity, an inner law according to which it unfolds itself 
 as a perfect and organic whole, in the epoch at which growth 
 in it ceases, and it appears henceforth as a finished book. 
 So long as humanity was growing, it grew. But when the 
 manhood of our race was reached, when man had attained 
 his highest point, even union with God in his Son, then it 
 
34 LECTURE II. 
 
 comes to a close. It carries hlin up to this, to his glorious 
 goal, to the perfect knitting again of those broken rela- 
 tions, through the life and death and resurrection of Him in 
 whom God- and man were perfectly atoned. So long as 
 there was any thing more to tell, any new revelation of the 
 Name of God, any new relations of grace and nearness into 
 which he was bringing his creatures, — so long the Bible was 
 a growing, expanding book. But when all is given, when 
 God, who at divers times spake to the world by his servants, 
 had now spoken his last and fullest word by his Son, then 
 to this Book, the record of that Word of his, there is added 
 no more, even while there is nothing more to add ; — though 
 it cannot end till it has shown in prophetic vision how this 
 latest and highest which now has been given to man, shall 
 unfold itself into the glory and blessedness of a perfected 
 kingdom of heaven. 
 
 For thus, too, it will mark itself as one, by returning 
 visibly in its end upon its beginning. Vast as the course 
 which it has traced, it has been a circle still, and in that 
 most perfect form comes back to the point from whence it 
 started. The heaven, which had disappeared from the 
 earth since the third chapter of Genesis, reappears again in 
 visible manifestation, in the latest chapters of the Revela- 
 tion. The tree of life, whereof there were but faint remi- 
 niscences in all the intermediate time, again stands by the 
 river of the water of life, and again there is no more curse. 
 Even the very differences of the forms under which the , 
 heavenly kingdom reappears are deeply characteristic, mark- 
 ing as they do, not merely that all is won back, but won 
 back in a more glori ous shape than that in which it was 
 lost, because won back in the Son. It is no longer Para- 
 dise, but the New Jerusalem — no longer the garden, but 
 now the city, of God, which is on earth. The change is 
 full of meaning; no longer the garden, free, spontaneous,* 
 and unlaboured, even as man's blessedness in the state of 
 
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 35 
 
 a first innocence would have been ; but the city, costlier 
 indeed, more stately, more glorious, but at the same time, 
 the result of toil, of labour, of pains — reared into a nobler 
 and more abiding habitation, yet with stones which, after 
 the pattern, of the " elect corner-stone," were each in its 
 time laboriously hewn and painfully squared for the places 
 which they fill. 
 
 And surely we may be permitted to observe by the way, 
 that this idea, which we plainly trace and recognise, of 
 Scripture as a whole, this its architectonic character, cannot 
 be without its weight in helping to determine the Canonical 
 place and worth of the Apocalypse, which, as is familiar to 
 many among us, has been sometimes called in question. 
 Apart from all outward evidences in its favour, do we not 
 feel that this wondrous book is needed where it is ? — that it 
 is the key-stone of the arch, the capital of the pillar — that 
 Holy Scripture had seemed maimed and imperfect without it, 
 — that a winding up with the Epistles would have been no 
 true winding up \ for in them the Church appears as still 
 warring and struggling, still compassed about with the 
 weaknesses and infirmities of its mortal existence — not 
 triumphing yet, nor yet have entered into its glory. Such 
 a termination had b.een as abrupt, as little satisfying as if, 
 in the lower sphere of the Pentateuch, we had accompanied 
 the children of Israel to the moment when they were just 
 entering on the wars of Canaan ; and no book of Joshua 
 had followed to record their battles and their victories, and 
 how these did not cease till they rode on the high places of 
 the earth, and rested each man quietly in the lot of his con- 
 quered inheritance. 
 
 And again, this oneness of Holy Scripture, when we feel 
 it, is a sufficient, even as it is a complete, answer to a very 
 favourite topic of Romish Controversialists. They are fond 
 of bringing out how much there is of accident in the struc- 
 ture, nay, even in the existence of Scripture, — that we have 
 
36 LECTURE IT. 
 
 Gospel (the third) written at a private man's request, — 
 another, (the fourth) because heresies had risen up which 
 needed to be checked — epistles owing their origin to causes 
 equally fortuitous — one, because temporary disorders had 
 manifested themselves at - " 1 Corinth, — another, because an 
 Apostle, having promised to visit a city, from some unex- 
 pected cause was hindered — a third, to secure the favourable 
 reception of a fugitive slave by his master — that of the 
 New Testament at least, the chiefest part is thus made up 
 of occasional documents called forth by emergent needs. 
 And the purpose of this slight on Scripture is evident, the 
 conclusion near at hand — which is this, how little likely it is 
 that a book so formed, so growing, should contain an abso- 
 lute and sufficient guide of life and rule of doctrine — how 
 needful some supplementary teaching. 
 
 But when once this unity of God's Word has been re- 
 vealed to us, when our eye has learned to recognise not 
 merely the marks and signs of a higher wisdom, guiding 
 and inspiring each several part, but also the relation of each 
 several part to the whole ; when it has risen up before us, 
 not as aggregated from without, but as unfolded from within, 
 and in obedience to an inner law, then we shall feel that, 
 however accidental may appear the circumstances of its 
 growth, yet this aecident which seemed to accompany its 
 production, and to preside in the calling out of the espe- 
 cial books which we possess, and no other, was no more 
 than the accident which God is ever weaving into the woof 
 of his providence, and not merely weaving into it, but 
 which is the staple out of which its whole web is woven. 
 
 Thus brethren, we have been led to contemplate these 
 oracles of God in their deep inner unity ; we have seen not 
 merely how they possess, but how we can reverently trace 
 them in the possession of, that oneness of plan and purpose, 
 which should make them effectual for the unfolding the spi- 
 ritual life of men. We have seen how men's expectations 
 
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 37 
 
 of finding something there which they did not .find, with 
 their disappointments at its absence, have ever grown out 
 of a mistaken apprehension of what a Scripture ought to 
 be ; how the presence of that which they miss would indeed 
 have marred it, would have contradicted its fundamental 
 idea, would have been a discord amid its deep harmonies, 
 even as the discords which men find in it come oftentimes 
 as its highest harmonies to the purged ear. 
 
 Nor is it without its warning to ourselves, that these 
 murmurings and complaints do most often evidently grow out 
 of a moral fault in them that make them. Men have lost 
 the key of knowledge — the master-key which would have 
 opened to them every door; and then they wander with 
 perplexed hearts up and down this stately palace which the 
 Eternal Wisdom has builded, but of which every goodlier 
 room is closed against them, till, in the end, they complain 
 that it is no such peerless palace after all, but only as other 
 works which man's art has reared. Nor is this conclusion 
 strange ; for unless they bring to it a moral need, unless 
 that moral need be to them the interpreter of every part, 
 and gather all that is apparently abnormal in it under a 
 higher and reconciling law the Book, in its deepest meaning 
 and worth, will remain a riddle to them still. 
 
 But this moral need, what is it ? It is the sense that we 
 are sundered and scattered each 'from God, each from his 
 fellow-man, each from himself — with a belief deep as the 
 foundations of our life, that it is the will of God to gather 
 all these scattered and these sundered together anew — this, 
 with the conviction which will rise out of this, that all which 
 bears on the circumstances of this recovering and regathering 
 is precious ; that nothing is of highest worth which does not 
 bear upon this. Then we shall see in this Word that it is 
 the very history which we require — that altogether, nothing 
 but that — the history of the restoring the defaced image of 
 God, the re-constitution of a ruined but Godlike race, in 
 
 4 
 
38 LECTURE II. 
 
 the image of G-od's own Son — the deliverance of all in that 
 race, who were willing to be delivered, from the idols of 
 sense, from the false gods who would hold them in bondage, 
 and would fain make them their drudges and slaves. 
 
 And, brethren, what is it that shall give unity to our 
 lives, but the recognition of the same great idea which gives 
 unity to this Book? Those lives, they seem often broken 
 into parts, with no visible connexion between one part and 
 another ; our boyhood, we know not how to connect it with 
 our youth, our youth with our manhood : the different tasks 
 of our life, we want to bind them up in a single sheaf, to feel 
 that, however manifold and apparently disconnected they 
 are, there is yet a bond that binds them into one. Our 
 hearts, we want a central point for them, as it were a heart 
 within the heart, and we oftentimes seek this in vain. Oh, 
 what a cry has gone up from thousands and ten thousands 
 of souls ! and this the burden of the cry, I desire to be one 
 in the deep centre of my being, to be one and not many — to 
 be able to reduce my life to one law — to be able to explain 
 it to myself in the master-light of one idea, to be no longer 
 rent, torn, and distracted, as I am now. 
 
 And whence shall this oneness come ? where shall we 
 find, amid all the chances and changes of the world, this 
 law of our life, this centre of our being, this key-note to 
 which setting our lives, their seeming discords shall reveal 
 themselves as their deepest harmonies ? Only in God, only 
 in the Son of God — only in the faith that what Scripture 
 makes the end and purpose of God's dealing with our race, 
 is also the end and purpose of his dealing with each one of 
 . us, namely, that his Son may be manifested in us — that we, 
 with all things which are in heaven and all things which are 
 in earth, may be gathered together in Christ, even in Him. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Matthew XIV. 20. 
 They did all eat, and were filled. 
 
 It was the aim of my preceding Lecture to trace the 
 unity which reigns in Scripture, that it has a law to which 
 each part of it may be referred, a root out of which it all 
 grows. It will be my purpose in the present, to bring out 
 before you how this Book, which is one, is also manifold ) a 
 fact which we may not be so ready to recognize the instant 
 that it is presented to us, as the other. For the truth which 
 occupied us last Sunday, of the Bible as one Book, not 
 merely one because bound together in the covers of a single 
 volume, but as being truly one, while it testifies in every 
 part of one and the same Lord, while it is every where the 
 utterance of one Spirit; this, whether consciously or un- 
 consciously, has strong possession of men's minds in this our 
 land. We feel, and rightly, that every attempt to consider 
 any of its parts in absolute isolation from the other, rent 
 away from the connexion in which it stands is false, and can 
 lead to no profitable result ; and it is hardly possible to esti- 
 mate too highly the blessing of this, that the band which 
 binds for us the parts of this volume together is unbroken 
 even in thought ; that we still feel ourselves to have, not a 
 number of sacred books, but one sacred Book, which, not 
 merely for convenience sake, but out of a far deeper feeling, 
 we comprehend under one name. 
 
 Yet, on the other hand, there are other truths which, 
 if we mean to enter into full possession of our treasures, we 
 need also to make thoroughly our own. This idea of the 
 
 (39) 
 
40 LECTURE III. 
 
 oneness of Holy Scripture is incomplete and imperfect, till it 
 pass into the higher idea of its unity ; till we acknowledge 
 that it is not sameness which reigns there; that, besides 
 being one, it is also many; that as in the human body we, 
 having many members, are one body, and the perfection of 
 the body is not the repetition of the same member over and 
 over again, but the harmonious tempering of different 
 members, all being instinct with one life — not otherwise is 
 it with Scripture. For in that, whether we look at the Old 
 or New Testament, the same richness and variety of form 
 reveal themselves, so that it may truly be said, that out of 
 the ground of this Paradise, the Lord God has made " to 
 grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for 
 food;" all that the earth has fairest appearing here in fairer 
 and more perfect form — the fable, only here transformed 
 into the parable — the ode transfigured into the psalm — 
 oracles into prophecies — histories of the world into histories 
 of the kingdom of heaven. Nor is tragedy wanting, though 
 for CEdipus, we have the man of Uz; nor epos, though for 
 " the tale of Troy divine," ours is the story of the New 
 Jerusalem, " coming down out of heaven as a bride adorned 
 for her husband." And it will be my desire to show how 
 this also was needful, if it was to be the Book which should 
 indeed leaven the world, which should offer nutriment, not 
 merely for some men, but for all men ; which should not 
 tyrannically lop men till they were all of one length, but 
 should encourage in every man the free developement of all 
 which God had given him. Thus it must needs have been, 
 if the Spirit by this Word was to sanctify all in every man 
 which was capable of being sanctified; which, coming 
 originally from God, could be redeemed from the defilements 
 of this world, and in purer shape be again restored unto 
 Him. 
 
 It will be my task then to consider to-day the relations 
 of likeness and difference in which various parts of Scrip- 
 
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 41 
 
 ture stand to one another ; to show how the differences are 
 not accidental, but do plainly correspond to certain fixed 
 differences in the mental and moral constitutions of men ; 
 how there is evidently a gracious purpose of attracting all 
 men by the attractions which shall be most potent upon 
 them ; of spreading a table at which all may sit down and 
 find that wherein their soul delights, till those words of our 
 text, " They did all eat and were filled/' shall not be less 
 true in regard of all the faithful now, — true rather in a 
 higher sense, — than they were in regard of those compara- 
 tively few, whom the Lord nourished with that bread of 
 wonder in the wilderness. And truly this Book, in the 
 plainness and simplicity of many, and those most important, 
 parts of it, might be likened well to the five barley- loaves 
 of the Lord's miracle. Seeing them about to set before the 
 great spiritual hunger of the world, seeing the multitudes 
 waiting to be fed, even disciples might have been tempted 
 to exclaim, " What are they among so many ?" But the 
 great Giver of the feast confidently replies, " Make the men 
 sit down /' and they have sat down — wise men and simple, 
 philosophers and peasants, " besides women and children/' 
 — and there has been enough and to spare ; all have been 
 nourished, all have been quickened ; none have been sent 
 empty away. 
 
 And first, let us take those books which must ever be 
 regarded as the central books, relating as they do to the 
 central fact, to the life of our blessed Lord, and which will 
 afford the fullest illustration of my meaning. It is a fact 
 which would at once excite every man's most thoughtful 
 attention, were it not that familiarity had blunted us to its 
 significance, that we should have, not one history only, but 
 four parallel histories, of the life of Christ — a fact which 
 indeed finds a slight anticipation in the parallel records 
 which the Old Testament has preserved of some portions of 
 Jewish history. None will call this an accident, or count 
 
 4* 
 
42 LECTURE III. 
 
 that the Providence which watches over the fall of a spar- 
 row, or any slightest incident of the world, was not itself 
 the bringer about of a circumstance which should have so 
 mighty an influence on all the future unfolding of the 
 Church. It is part, no doubt, of this spreading of a table 
 for the spiritual needs of all, that we have thus not one 
 Gospel, but four ; which yet in their higher unity, may be 
 styled, according to that word of Origen's, rather a four- 
 sided Gospel* than four Gospels, even as out of the same 
 instinctive sense of its unity, the whole Instrument, which 
 contained the four, was entitled Evangelium in the early 
 Church. 
 
 And if we follow this more closely up, we can trace, I 
 think, a peculiar vocation in each of the Evangelists for 
 catching some distinct rays of the glory of Christ, which 
 the others would not catch, and for reflecting them to the 
 world — so that the terms, Gospel according to St. Matthew, 
 according to St. Mark, and so on, are singularly happy, and 
 imply much more than we, for whom the words are little 
 more than a technical designation of the different gospels, 
 are wont to find in them. The first is the Gospel according 
 to St. Matthew — the Gospel as it appeared to him. This 
 which he has portrayed is his Christ ; under this aspect the 
 Deliverer of men appeared to him, and in this he has pre- 
 sented Him to the world ; and so also with the others. For 
 Christ, ever one and the same, does yet appear with differ- 
 ent sides of his glory reflected by the different Evangelists. 
 They were themselves men of various temperaments ; they 
 had each the special need of some different classes of men 
 in their eye when they wrote their Gospels ; and as these 
 classes, though under altered names, still subsist, they have 
 in this respect also, as ministering to these various needs, an 
 everlasting value. 
 
 * F;vayy s"kiov -r'sT'paycovoj/. Thus too Augustine (In Ev. Joh., 
 Tract. 26:) QuatuorEvangelia, velpotiusquatuorlibriuniusEvangelii. 
 
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 43 
 
 Thus the first Gospel, that of St. Matthew, was evidently 
 a Gospel designed for the pious Israelite, for him who was 
 waiting the theocratic King, the Son of Abraham, the Son 
 of David; who desired to find in the New Testament the 
 fulfilment of the prophecies of the Old, and in Christianity 
 the perfect flower, of which Judaism was the root and stem. 
 And as among the Epistles that of St. James, so among the 
 Gospels, this of St. Matthew was to serve as the gentle and 
 almost imperceptible transition for so many as clung to the 
 forms of Old Testament piety; and desired to hold fast the 
 historic connexion of all God's dealings from the first. 
 
 But the second Gospel, written, as all Church tradition 
 testifies, under the influence of St. Peter, and at Rome, 
 bears marks of an evident fitness for the practical Roman 
 world — for the men who, while others talked had done ; 
 and who would not at first crave to hear what Christ had 
 spoken, but what He had wrought. It is eminently the 
 Gospel of action. It is brief; it records comparatively few 
 of our Lord's sayings, almost none of his longer discourses ; 
 it occupies itself mainly with his works, with the mighty 
 power of his ministry, into which ministry it rushes almost 
 without a preparatory note. Some deeper things it has not, 
 but presents a soul-stirring picture of the conquering might 
 and energy of Christ and of his Word. 
 
 But the third Gospel, that of St. Luke, composed by the 
 trusted companion of St. Paul, and itself the correlative of 
 his Epistles, while it sets forth one and the same Christ as 
 the two which went before, yet in some respects sets Him 
 forth in another light. Not so much with St. Matthew, 
 " Jesus Christ, a minister of the circumcision for the truth 
 of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers'' — 
 not so much, with St. Mark, Jesus Christ, " the Lion of 
 the tribe of Judah," rushing as with lion-springs from 
 victory to victory ; but Jesus Christ, the Saviour of all men, 
 is the object of his portraiture. This is what he loves to 
 
44 lecture in. 
 
 dwell on, — the manner in which not Israel alone, but the 
 whole heathen world, was destined to glorify God for his 
 mercy in Christ Jesus ; he describes Him as the loving phy- 
 sician, the gracious healer of all, the Good Samaritan that 
 bound up the wounds of every stricken heart; in whom all 
 the small, and despised, and crushed, and down-trodden of 
 the earth should find a gracious and ready helper. There- 
 fore, and in accordance with this, his plan, has he gathered 
 up for us much which no other has done; he sets the 
 seventy disciples for the world over against St. Matthew's 
 twelve Apostles for Israel; he breaks through narrow 
 national distinctions — tells of that Samaritan that alone 
 showed kindness — of that other, who, of ten, alone remem- 
 bered to be thankful ; and his, too, and his only, the para- 
 ble of the Prodigal Son, itself a gospel within the Gospel. 
 
 But to hasten on from the characteristics of the earlier 
 three, which might well detain us much longer, something 
 was yet wanting; — a Gospel in which the higher speculative 
 tendencies, which were given to men not to be crushed or 
 crippled, should find their adequate satisfaction— a Gospel 
 which should link itself on with whatever had occupied the 
 philosophic mind of heathen or of Jew — the correction of 
 all which in this was false — the complement of all which 
 was deficient. And such he gave us, for whom the Church 
 has ever found the soaring eagle as the fittest emblem* — he 
 who begins by declaring that the Word of God, whereof 
 men had already learned to speak so much, was also the 
 Son of God, and had been made flesh, and had dwelt among 
 
 * Thus the Christian poet: 
 
 Ccelum transit, veri rotani 
 Solis ibi vidit, totam 
 Mentis figens aciem : 
 Speculator spiritalis 
 Quasi Seraphim sub alis 
 Dei videt faciem. 
 
 Volat avis sine rneta 
 
 Quo nee vates, nee propheta 
 
 Evolavit altius ; 
 
 Tarn implenda quam impleta 
 
 Nunquam vidit tot secreta 
 
 Purus homo puriua. 
 
THE MANIFOLDNESS OP SCRIPTURE. 45 
 
 us, full of grace and truth, — who, too, has brought out the 
 inner, and so to speak, the mystical relations of the faithful 
 with their Lord, as none other before him had done.* 
 
 It is true that this fulness under which the life of our 
 Lord has been set forth to us, being, as it is, one of the 
 gracious designs of God for our good, has been laid hold of 
 by adversaries of the Faith, who would fain wrest it to their 
 ends. Taking the difference where it is the most striking, 
 they have bidden us to note how unlike the Christ of the 
 first three Gospels and of the fourth ) and what a different 
 colouring is spread over this Gospel and over those j and 
 they would draw their conclusion, that either here or there 
 historic accuracy must be wanting, that both portraits cannot 
 be faithful. 'We allow the charge, so far as the difference, 
 and only reject it when it assumes a diversity, of setting 
 forth. There are features of our Lord which we should 
 have missed, but for his portraiture who lay upon the Lord's 
 bosom ; deep words which he has caught up, for which no 
 other words that any other has recorded would have been 
 adequate substitutes. But what then ? This is not a weak 
 point with us, but a strong. We rejoice and glory in this, 
 rather than seek to gloss it over or conceal it. So far 
 from being first detected by a hostile criticism, an early 
 Father of the Church had expressed this very distinction in 
 words which in sound perhaps are almost over-bold, styling 
 the first three Gospels, £vayy£%va cafiaiftxa, and the fourth an 
 svayye'kiov 7tvsvfxa'ti,xov. Yet it is needless to observe, that 
 herein he meant not to cast the faintest slight on those by 
 
 * See Origen's interesting discussion (Comm.. in Joan., Tom. i.) 
 on the relation of the Gospels to the other Scriptures, and their 
 relation, within themselves, one to another. On this latter subject 
 he expresses himself thus : Tofyt^Wov ioivvv siittXv a7tapx~'} v ^- £v 
 7i(X6^v ypa$wv elvcu to* svayys'Kia, tZ>v bi fvayyeTitwy cwtap^j/ to 
 xata loidvvqv. 
 
46 LECTURE III. 
 
 comparison with this, but would only imply that those set 
 forth more the outer, and this the inner, life of Christ. 
 
 And for the fact itself, do we not find analogies to it, 
 however weak ones they may be, in lower regions of the 
 spiritual life ? To take an example which must be familiar 
 to every scholar, — how different the Socrates of Xenophon, 
 and the Socrates of Plato. Yet shall we therefore leap to 
 the conclusion, that if the one has painted the master truly, 
 then the other has portrayed him falsely ? Such a conclu- 
 sion may lie upon the surface; it might appear to us an 
 easy solution of the difficulty ; yet were it a very different 
 solution from that to which all the profoundest inquirers 
 into the matter have arrived. Were it not wiser to sup- 
 pose, with them, that each of the great scholars of the Sage 
 appropriated and carried away, as from a rich and varied 
 treasure-house, that which he prized the most, that which 
 was most akin to himself and his own genius, that which by 
 the natural process of assimilation he had made most truly 
 and entirely his own; — the practical soldier, the man of 
 strong common sense, appropriating and carrying away his 
 world-wisdom, his popular philosophy ; the more meditative 
 disciple taking as his portion the deeper speculations of 
 their common Master concerning the Good and the True ? 
 And if thus it prove with eminent servants of the Truth — ■ 
 if they are so rich and manifold that they present them- 
 selves under divers aspects to divers men, it being appointed 
 them in their lower sphere to feed many, — if, like some 
 rich composite Corinthian metal, they yield iron for this 
 man's spade, and gold for the other's crown, how much 
 more was this to be looked for from Him, who was the 
 King of Truth, who has to feed and enrich, not some, but 
 all ; and this, not in some small and scanty measure, but 
 who was to satisfy all in all ages with goodness and truth ? 
 How inevitable was it that He, the Sun of the spiritual 
 
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 47 
 
 heaven, should find no single mirror large enough to take 
 in all his beams — should only be adequately presented to 
 the world, when many from many sides did, under the 
 direct teachings of God's Spirit, undertake to set him forth. 
 Doubtless the pregnant symbol of the early Church, ac- 
 cording to which the four Gospels found their type and pro- 
 phecy in the four rivers of Paradise, that together watered 
 the whole earth, going each a different way, and yet 
 issuing all from a single head ; — a symbol, which we find 
 evermore repeated in the works of early Christian art, 
 wherein from a single cross-surmounted hill, four streams 
 are seen welling out ; this symbol was so great and general 
 a favorite, because it did embody under a beautiful image, 
 this fact, namely, how the Gospels were indeed four, and 
 yet in their higher unity but one.* And so not less, when 
 the Evangelists, were found, as they often were, in the four 
 living creatures of Ezekiel's vision, of whom each with a 
 different countenance looked a different way, and yet all of 
 them together upheld the throne and chariot of God, and ever 
 moved as being informed by one and the self-same Spirit; this 
 too was something more and better than a mere fanciful 
 
 * Allusions to it are frequent in the early hymnologists. 
 one of them in a hymn, De SS. Evangelistis : 
 
 Thus, in 
 
 Horum rivo ebretatis 
 Sitis crescat cantatas, 
 Ut de fonte Deitatis 
 Satiemur plenius. 
 Horum trahat nos doctrina 
 Vitiorum de sentina, 
 Sicque ducat ad divina 
 Ab imo superius. 
 
 Another, too, in a hymn, De S. Joanne Evangelista : 
 
 Paradisus his rigatur, 
 Viret, floret, fecunclatur, 
 His ahundat, his letatur, 
 Quatuor fluminibus. 
 Fons est Christus, hi sunt rivi, 
 Fons est altus, hi proclivi, 
 Ut saporem fontis vivi 
 Ministrent fidelibus. 
 
 Inter ilios primitivos 
 Veros veri fontis rivos 
 Joannes exiliit, 
 
 Toti mundo propinare 
 Nectar illud salutare 
 Quod de throno prodiit. 
 
48 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 playing with Scripture ; there was a deep truth lying at the 
 root of this application, and absolutely justifying its use.* 
 
 And as we have a Gospel which stands thus four-square, 
 with a side facing each side of the spiritual world, so have 
 we a two-fold development of the more dogmatic element of 
 the New Testament. For, like as the seed, one in itself, 
 yet falls into halves in the process of its fructifying, or as 
 
 * The first that we know of who connected these with the four 
 Evangelists was Ireneus. He says [Con. Hazr., i. 3, c. 2, $ 8,) 
 Tstpd/xop^a yap ta £"wa, tetpafioptyov xal to fuayyi^tov, and 
 draws out at length the fitness of each to represent each ; on which 
 see Suicer's Thes. s. v. £vayye%i6tr,$. It was taken up by many 
 after him ; thus by Jerome, Comm. in Ezek. c. i. ; Prol. in Comm. 
 super. Matth. ; and Ep. 50 : Matthseus, Marcus, Lucas, et Johannes, 
 quadriga Domini, et verum Cherubim, per totum corpus oculati 
 sunt, scintillas emicant, discurrunt, fulgura, pedes habent rectos et 
 in sublime tendentes, terga pennata et ubique volitantia. Tenent 
 se mutu6, sibique perplexi sunt, et quasi rota in rota volvuntur, et 
 purgunt quoquumque eos flatus Sancti Spiritus perduxerit. Cf. 
 Augustine, De Cons. Evang. 1. 1, c. 6, and the Christian poet sings 
 thus: 
 
 Civea thronum majestatis 
 Cum spiritibus beatis 
 Quatuor diversitatis 
 Astant animalia. 
 Formam prioium aquilinam, 
 Et secundum leoninam ; 
 Sed humanam et bovinam 
 Duo gerunt alia. 
 And another: 
 Cur am agens sui gregis 
 Pastor bonus, auetor legis 
 Quatuor iiistituit : 
 Quadri orbis ad medelam, 
 Formam juris et cautelam 
 Per quos scribi voluit. 
 
 Circa thema generale 
 Habet quisque speciale 
 Sibi privilegium ; 
 
 Forma3 formant figurarum 
 Formas Evangelistarum 
 Quorum iniber doctrinarum. 
 Stillat in Ecclesia. 
 Hi sunt Marcus, et Matthasus, 
 Lucas, et quern Zebedaeus 
 Pater misit tibi, Deus, 
 Dum laxaret retia. 
 
 Quos designat in propheta 
 Forma pictus sub discreta 
 Vultus animalium. 
 
 His quadrigus deportatur 
 Mundo Deos, sublimatur 
 Ista area vectibus : 
 Paradisi hsec fluenta 
 Nova fluunt sacramenta, 
 Quaa irrorant gentibus. 
 
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 49 
 
 the one force of the magnet manifests itself at two opposing 
 poles, exactly according to the same law, reappearing in the 
 spiritual world, we have two developments of the same 
 Christian Theology, which make themselves felt from the 
 very first, whereof St. Paul may be taken as chief represen- 
 tative of the one, and St. John of the other. We cannot 
 do more than trace the distinction in some of its broadest 
 features. We see then St. Paul making man the starting 
 point of his theology. The divine image in man, that 
 image lost, the impossibility of its restoration by any 
 powers of his own ; the ever deeper errors of the sin-dark- 
 ened intellect ; the ever vainer struggles of the sin-enslaved 
 will ; — it is from this human" side of the truth that he starts ; 
 these are the grounds which he first lays, — as eminently in 
 his great dogmatic Epistle to the Romans. And only when 
 he has brought out this confession of a fall, of an infinite 
 short-coming from the true ideal of humanity, and from the 
 glory of God, only when the cry, " Oh, wretched man that 
 I am, who shall deliver me V has been wrung out from the 
 bond-slaves of evil, does he bring in the mighty Redeemer, 
 and the hymn of praise, 'the "I thank God through 
 Jesus Christ" of the redeemed. But St. John, upon the 
 other hand, starts from the opposite point, from the theology 
 in the more restricted seuse of the word ; in this justifying 
 the title 6 ©fo?io<yd?, which he bears. His centre and 
 starting point is the Divine Love, and out of that he unfolds 
 all; not delineating, as his brother Apostle, any mighty 
 birth-pangs, in which the new creature is born; since 
 rather in that passing from death unto life, and in that 
 abiding in the Father and in the Son which follows there- 
 from, the discovery of sin does not run long before, but 
 rather goes hand in hand with, the discovery of the grace 
 of God for forgiving, and the power of God for overcoming, 
 that sin which by the Spirit of Christ is gradually revealed. 
 Thus we have man delivered in St. Paul, God delivering in 
 
 5 
 
50 LECTURE ITT, 
 
 St. John ; man rising in the one, God stooping in the other ; 
 and thus each travels over a hemisphere in the great orb of 
 Christian Truth and they, not each singly, but between 
 them, embrace and encircle it all. 
 
 For this is a part of the glory of Christ as compared with 
 his servants, as compared with the chiefest of his ser- 
 vants, that He alone stands at the absolute centre of 
 humanity, the one completely harmonious man, unfold- 
 ing all which was in that humanity equally upon all 
 sides, fully upon all sides — the only one in whom the 
 real and ideal met, and were absolutely at one. Every 
 other man has idiosyncrasies, characteristics — some fea- 
 tures, that is, of his character, marked more strongly than 
 others, fitnesses for one task rather than for another, more 
 genial powers in one direction than in others. Nor even 
 are the greatest, a St. Paul or a St. John, exempted from 
 this law ; but, according to this law, are made to serve for 
 the kingdom of God; and the regeneration, even that 
 mighty transformation itself, does not dissolve these charac- 
 teristics, but rather hallows and glorifies them, using them 
 for the work of God. And thus, in the power of these 
 special gifts, that which lay as a fruitful germ in the doc~ 
 trine, or more truly, in the facts of our Lord's life, was 
 by his two Apostles developed upon this side and upon that. 
 
 And as it was meant that the Gospel of Christ should 
 embrace all lands, should fix, at its first entrance into the 
 world, a firm foot upon either of its two great cultivated 
 portions, so in these two, in St. Paul and in St. John, we 
 recognise wondrous preparations in the Providence of God 
 for the winning to the obedience of the cross both the 
 western and the eastern world. "Who can fail to see in the 
 great Apostle of Tarsus, in his discursive intellect, in his 
 keen dialectics, in his philosophic training, the man armed to 
 dispute with Stoic and Epicurean at Athens ; who should 
 teach the Church how she should take the West for her inheri- 
 
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 51 
 
 tance ? — nor less was he the man who by the past struggles 
 of his inner life and the consequent fulness and power with 
 which he brought out the scheme of our justification should 
 become the spiritual forefather of the Augustines and 
 Luthers, of all them who have brought out for us, with the 
 sense of personal guilt, the sense also of personal deliver- 
 ance, the consciousness of a personal standing of each one 
 of us before God. And in St. John, the full significance 
 of whose writings for the Church is probably yet to be re- 
 vealed, and it may be, will not appear till the coming in of 
 the nations of the east into the fold, we have the progenitor 
 of every mystic, in the nobler sense of that word — of every 
 contemplative spirit that has delighted to sink and to lose 
 itself, and the sense of its own littleness, in the brightness 
 and in the glory of God. Shall we not thank God, shall 
 we not recognise as part of his loving wisdom, that thus 
 none are left out ; that while there are evidently among men 
 two leading types of mind, he has made provision for them 
 both — for the discursive and the intuitive, — for the school- 
 man and the mystic, — for them who trust through knowing 
 to see, and for them also who believe that only through 
 seeing they can know ; — that, whatever in their intellectual 
 condition men may be, the net is laid out to catch them ? 
 For then, when once they are taken, all that might have 
 been in them of overbalance in one direction, all of 
 faulty excess, is gradually done away and redressed, till 
 they and those that have been brought in by an opposite 
 method, are more and more led to a mutual recognition and 
 honouring of the gifts of each other, and to the unity of a 
 perfect man in Jesus Christ. 
 
 Nor is it only that there is a different nourishment 
 for different souls, but the same nourishment is also so 
 curiously mixed and tempered, that it is felt to be for 
 all. As, perhaps, the most signal example of this, let 
 us only seek to realize to ourselves what the Book of 
 
ssion of 
 
 >m— 
 
 -how 
 
 are 
 
 met, 
 
 and 
 
 gra- 
 
 o it, 
 
 and 
 
 52 LECTURE III. 
 
 Psalms, itself, according to that beautiful exj 
 Luther's, a Bible in little/ has been, and for v 
 men of all conditions, all habits of thought, hav 
 vying with one another in expressions of affect! 
 titude to this book, in telling what they owed 
 what it had proved to them. Men seemingly the most un- 
 likely to express enthusiasm about any such matter — lawyers 
 and statists immersed deeply in the world's business, clas- 
 sical scholars familiar with other models of beauty, other 
 tandards of art — these have been forward as the forwardest 
 to set their seal to this book, have left their confession that 
 it was the voice of their inmost heart, that the spirit of it past 
 into their spirits as did the spirit of no other book, that it 
 found them more often and at greater depths of their being, 
 lifted them to higher heights than did any other — or, as 
 one greatly suffering man, telling, of the solace which he 
 found from this book of Psalms in the hours of a long im- 
 prisonment, has expressed it, — that it bore him up, as a 
 lark perched between an eagle's wings is borne up into the 
 everlasting sunlight, till he saw the world and all its trouble 
 for ever underneath him. I can imagine no fairer volume 
 than one of such thankful acknowledgments as I have de- 
 scribed, and it is a volume which might easily be gathered, 
 for such on all sides abound ; not a few of them as large, 
 as free, as rapturous as that of our own Hooker, which 
 must be present to the minds of many of us here. Nor is 
 it wonderful that there should be such ; for, to quote but 
 one noble utterance* in relation to this book, " the conflict 
 of naked power with righteousness, of the visible with the 
 invisible, of confusion with order, of the devilish with the 
 divine, of death with life, this is its subject. And because 
 this is the subject of all human anxieties, this book has 
 been that in which living and suffering men in all ages 
 
 * Maurice's Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy in the Encyclop. 
 Metrqpoliiana. 
 
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 53 
 
 have found a language, which they have felt to be a myste- 
 rious anticipation of, and provision for, their own especial 
 wants, and in which they have gradually understood that 
 the Divine voice is never so truly and distinctly heard, 
 as when it speaks through human experience and sym- 
 pathies."* 
 
 * The reader may be well pleased to see a few more of these 
 brought at a single glance under his eye. St. Basil may fitly lead. 
 In a passage Horn. I. Psalmos, quoted at much greater length in 
 Suicer's Thess. s. v. $a%/AO$ 3?a%{i6s Saifiovcov tyvyahtvtrfiiov t'jjjt'wv 
 dyyeXwv fiorfizlo.c, artouycoy^' OTi%ov ev $6j3ot$ vvxtsptvoi,$ dfartaucRj 
 xortcov yj/xepivuv' viqTiioi^ 6\o$6.%zia' axfid^ovoiv yxoXku)7tiGy.a' rtps- 
 cfivtipois 7tapryopca' yvvcu^i x6g(ao$ ap/xoScJotato^' tfdj ap^/uas olx- 
 t^ffc' T'dj dyopdj autypovi^si,' siaayofievoc^ 6 i toi%zLu>6i$, rtpoxojttovtcov 
 arf^cas, -tsKaiovixevcov atr-pty/xa, sxx^a^ag ^covrj. ovto$ tag loprdj 
 tyai8pvvei ovtos trjv xatd ®sov hiirtyv Sypiovpysi. 3>atyt6$ yap 
 xao kx Xtdivris xapbias ddxpvov ixxaXeitao 3?»fyi6j to twv ay 
 yshiov tpyov, to ovpdvtov rtohitsv/xa, to jtvsv/.iatLxbv dvjxlafia. 
 x. t. %. St. Ambrose, as it was often his manner to reproduce 
 what he found in the Greek Fathers to his purpose, would seem to 
 have had this passage of his great eastern contemporary in his 
 mind when he composed his not less beautiful land of the Psalms. 
 Enarr. in Ps. i. Here too it is but a fragment which can be quoted : 
 Historia instruit, Lex docet, prophetia annunciat, correptio castigat, 
 moralitas suadet, in libro Psalmorum profectus est omnium, et me- 
 dicina qusedani salutis humanas. Quicunque legerit, habet quo 
 propriae vulnera passionis speciali possit cura remedio... Quantum 
 laboratur in Ecclesia ut fiat silentium, cum lectiones leguntur ! Si 
 unus loquatur, obstrepunt universi : cum psalmus legitur, ipse sibi 
 est effector silentii. Omnes loquuntur, et nullus obstrepit. Psalmum 
 reges sine potestatis supercilio resultant. In hoc se ministerio Da- 
 vid gaudebat videri. Psalmus cantatur ab imperatoriabus, jubilatur 
 a populis. Certant clamare singuli quod omnibus proficit. Domi 
 psalmus canitur, foris recensetur. Sine labore percipitur, cum 
 voluptate servatur : psalmus dissidentes copulat, discordes sociat, 
 offensos reconciliat...Certat in Psalmo doctrina cum gratia simul. 
 Cantatur ad delectationem, discitur ad eruditionem. Nam violen- 
 tiora precepta non permanent ; quod autem cum suavitate percepe- 
 ris, id infusum semel praecordiis, non consuevit elabi. And Augus- 
 
 5* 
 
54 LECTURE III 
 
 Indeed, in the fact of such a book as the Psalter forming 
 part of our sacred Instrument, we trace a most gracious 
 
 tine (Confess., 1. 9, c. 4,) speaks of the manner in -which he exulted 
 in the Psalms at the time of his first conversion : Quas tibi, Deus 
 meus, voces dedi cum legerem psalmos David... acri dolor indignabar 
 Manichjeis et quomodo in te inflammabar ex eis, et accendebar 
 eos recitar si possem toto orbe terrarum adversum typhum hu- 
 man! generis... Quam vehementi et miserebar eos rursus, quod ilia 
 sacramenta, ilia medicamenta nesicrent, et insani essent adversus 
 antidotum quo sani esse potuissent. 
 
 Jeremy Taylor, in his Preface to the Psalter of David speaking 
 of the manner in which, by the trouble of the civil wai : e was de- 
 prived of his books and his retirements, and how in h:' .privation 
 he found comfort here, thus goes on: "Indeed, when I . ne to look 
 upon the Psalter with a nearer observation, and an ey -ligent to 
 espy any advantage and remedies there deposited. , found so 
 many admirable promises, so rare variety of the expr : ons of the 
 mercies of God, so many consolatory hymns, the coram moration of 
 so many deliverances from dangers and deaths and enemies, so 
 many miracles of mercy and salvation, that I began to be so confi- 
 dent as to believe there could come no affliction great enough to 
 spend so great a stock of comfort as was laid up in the treasure 
 of the Psalter ; the saying of St. Paul was here verified, ' If 
 sin' and misery ' did abound, then did grace superabound ;' 
 and as we believe of the passion of Christ, it was so great as 
 to be able to satisfy a thousand worlds ; so is it of the comforts 
 of David's Psalms, they are more than sufficient to repair all the 
 breaches of mankind." And Donne (Sermon 66,) taking his text 
 from Ps. lxiii. 8, proceeds : " The Psalms are the manna of the 
 Church. As manna tasted to every man like that that he liked best, 
 so do the Psalms minister instruction and satisfaction to every man 
 in every emergency and occasion. David was not only a clear pro- 
 phet of Christ himself, but a prophet of every particular Christian ; 
 he foretells what I, what any, shall do and suffer and say. And as 
 the whole book of Psaims is oleum effusum, an ointment poured out 
 upon all sorts of sores, a searcloth that supples all bruises, a 
 balm that searches all wounds, so are there some certain psalms 
 that are. imperial psalms, that command over all affections, and 
 spread themselves over all occasions; catholic universal psalms 
 that apply themselves to all necessities." 
 
THE MANIFOLDNESS OP SCRIPTURE. 55 
 
 purpose of God. For in the very idea of a Revelation is 
 implied rather a speaking of God to men than of men to 
 God ; and such a speaking from heaven predominantly finds 
 place in all other books of Holy Scripture. Yet how greatly 
 had we been losers, had there been no corresponding record of 
 the answering voices that go up from earth unto heaven. 
 How earnestly should we have craved a standard by which 
 to try the feelings, the utterances of our spirits, — a rule 
 whereby to know whether they were healthy and true, 
 the same voices, the same cries, as those of each other 
 regenerate man. Such a rule, such a standard we have 
 here ; man is speaking unto God j that which came from 
 heaven is returning to heaven once more. Here we have 
 insight into the mystery of prayer; streams of life are rising 
 up as high as the heights from which first they came down ; 
 the mountain-tops of man's spirit are smoking, but smoking 
 because God has descended upon and touched them. 
 
 These are but a few examples, brethren, — time will 
 allow us to adduce no more, — of that which all Scripture 
 will abundantly supply, — the evidences, namely, of its 
 own adaptation for the needs of all, for all the needs 
 of each. And these things being so, let us for our- 
 selves gladly enter into this many-chambered palace of the 
 Truth, whereof the doors stand open to us evermore. Let 
 us thankfully sit down at this feast of many spiritual dain- 
 ties, which is spread for us and for all. And if not every 
 one of them at once delight us; if of some we have rather 
 to take the word of others that they are good than as yet 
 proved it so ourselves, let us believe that the cause of this 
 lies rather in the sickness of our palate, than in the faulty 
 preparation of that which the great Master of the feast has 
 set before us ; — and let us ask, not that these be removed, 
 but that our true taste be restored ; and this the more, see- 
 ing that unnumbered guests, who in time past have sat 
 down, or are now sitting down, at this heavenly banquet, 
 
56 LECTURE III. 
 
 have borne witness that these meats which may be dull and 
 tasteless to us, were life and strength to them, "yea, sweeter 
 than honey and the honeycomb." We are sick, and these 
 are medicines no less than food ; and for us that word must 
 stand fast, Non corrigat ceger medicamenta sua. Let us 
 thus bear ourselves towards Holy Scripture, and then pre- 
 sently, in that which seemed a stranger face we shall recog- 
 nize the countenance of a gracious, a familiar friend. We 
 shall more and more see how this Scripture was laid 
 out by One who knew what was in man, One who desired 
 also to unfold us on all sides of our moral and spiritual 
 being; who, too, in the largeness of his love, would send 
 none empty away ; but who does herein open his hand, that 
 He may fill all things living with his plenteousness. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Hebrews I. 1, 2. 
 
 God, tvho at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto 
 the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by 
 his Son. 
 
 We have seen how in Holy Scripture one idea is domi- 
 nant, the idea of a lost, defaced, and yet not wholly effaced, 
 image of Grod in man, with G-od's scheme for its restoration 
 and renewal : we have seen how that, which is one in having 
 this for a subject, and in knowing no other subject, has yet 
 a manifold development, marvellously corresponding to the 
 manifold necessities of his nature to whom it is addressed, 
 and who by its help should be renewed. But the progres- 
 sive unfolding of God's plan in Scripture, may well afford 
 matter for another discourse, and will supply our theme for 
 this day. 
 
 Nor shall I herein be wandering from my argument, since 
 this progressiveness of Scripture is an important element 
 in its fitness for the education of man. For this we claim 
 of a teacher to whom we yield ourselves with an entire confi- 
 dence, that there be advance and progress in his teaching j 
 not indeed that this should be at every moment distinctly 
 perceptible, but that it should be so when long periods and 
 courses of his teaching are contemplated together. The 
 advance may sometimes be rather in a spiral than in a 
 straight line, yet still on the whole there must be ad- 
 vance ; he must not eddy round in ceaseless circles, leaving 
 off where he began, but evidently have a scheme before 
 him, according to which he is seeking to lead on unto per- 
 
 (57) 
 
58 LECTURE IV. 
 
 fection those that have committed themselves to his teach- 
 ing. It is of the essence of a true teacher, be that teacher 
 book or person, thus to carry forward. If it be a book 
 claiming to educate, it must be itself the history of an 
 education, the record of an intensive, as well as extensive 
 development. We look for this, and we rest our expecta- 
 tion on a yet deeper feeling. We feel that as each indi- 
 vidual man was meant to go on from lower to higher, and 
 in the end to have Christ fully formed in him, so the 
 Church as a living body could not have been intended to be 
 a stationary thing, always conning over the same lessons, 
 but rather advancing in a like manner to perfection ; — not 
 in this advance leaving aught behind which God has taught 
 it ; but ever carrying with it into its higher state, as part 
 of its realized possession, all which it has gotten in a lower. 
 And if so, that Book which was to be the record and inter- 
 preter of these dealings of God, ever running parallel with 
 them, growing with their growth, explaining them as they 
 unfolded themselves, that must bear the stamp and impress 
 of the same progress. 
 
 Does a nearer examination of the Holy Scriptures bear 
 out this our expectation ? Does it speak of itself as a pro- 
 gressive revelation of the Name of God ? And if so, can we 
 discern it to be such, to be the gradual unfolding of the 
 ideas of the kingdom, and of men's relations to it, to be a 
 continual calling out in them the sense of new relations 
 and new faculties and powers ? I think, both. And, first, 
 Revelation speaks of itself in such language. "I have 
 many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them 
 now;" surely this was what God had been saying to his 
 elect from the first, till that crowning day of Pentecost, 
 when they were made capable of all mysteries and had the 
 unction of the Holy One, and knew all things ; — and with 
 much before us, it needs not to tarry with the proofs of 
 this. 
 
THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 59 
 
 And as regards ourselves, we can trace, I think, the 
 Scripture to be this which it affirms itself to be. Who, for 
 instance, can help feeling that in the three memorable epochs 
 by which it marks the greatest unfoldings of the kingdom 
 of God, — I mean, in the calling of Abraham, the giving 
 of the Law by Moses, the Incarnation of the Son of G-od, 
 — we have the childhood, the youth, the manhood of our 
 race, of that elect portion of it, at least, which God had 
 gathered into a Church and constituted for the while the 
 representative of all ; and that we have this with marvel- 
 lous correspondencies of these epochs to similar periods in 
 the lives which we ourselves are living ? 
 
 In Abraham and the Church of the patriarchal age, we 
 have that which exactly answers to childhood. Their rela- 
 tions to G-od were as a child's to a father, — the same un- 
 doubting, unquestioning affiance ; with as yet no fixed code 
 of law ; the deeper evils of the heart not as yet stirring, the 
 awful consciousness of those evils as yet unawakened. So 
 Abraham and the patriarchs walked before G-od, in the 
 beauty and the simplicity of a childlike faith — love seeming 
 as yet the only law, and no other law being needed, since 
 not yet the whole might of the rebellious will had been 
 aroused, since a sheltering Providence had hitherto kept 
 aloof many temptations which should afterwards arrive. 
 
 But a very different stage of man's history begins with 
 Moses. The father is thrown for awhile into the background 
 by the lawgiver; God appears the giver of a "fiery law." 
 and the race having outgrown its childlike estate, with all 
 the blessed privileges of that time, appears now as the youth, 
 aware of this terrible law, and struggling against it ; and in 
 this struggle brought to a consciousness of that which before 
 was hidden from it, namely, the deep alienation of its will 
 from the perfect will of God. This seems, at first sight, as 
 though it were a retrograde step in man's progress, and 
 regarded apart from the final issues it were ; as the Apostle 
 
60 LECTURE IV. 
 
 himself confesses, when he says, " I was alive without the 
 law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived, 
 and I died." Yet not he, nor any, could have done without 
 this coming in of the law. The opposition of his will to 
 God's will being in man, most needful was it that it should 
 not remain latent, but be brought out, yea brought out in 
 all its strength, as a holy law could alone bring it out ; for 
 thus only was it in the way of being subdued. God having 
 made himself known as a God of love, most needful was it 
 that men should know Him also the God of an absolute 
 righteousness ; since without this that love itself had shown 
 in men's eyes as a poor thing, as a weak toleration of their 
 evil, instead of being, as it is, that which more than all else 
 makes Him a consuming fire for all impurity and evil. 
 
 But with the entering of the Son of God into our nature, 
 the manhood of the race begins — that which it was meant in 
 its final perfection to be — that, for the sake of which it 
 passed through those lower stages. The consciousness of 
 the filial relation has again revived in all its full strength, 
 and the suspended privileges are restored. "Abba, Father !" 
 is once more on the lips of the Church, only with deeper 
 accents and a fuller sense than at that earlier day of all 
 which in these words is included. The sense of God's love 
 which belonged to its childhood, of God's righteousness 
 which predominated in its youth, are reconciled ; they have 
 met and kissed each other. His love is seen to be right- 
 eous and his righteousness to be loving. His law is no 
 longer struggled against, for it is written in the heart, 
 and it reveals itself as that which to keep is the truest 
 blessedness. 
 
 And how mysteriously, brethren, does this teaching of 
 our race, which was thus written large, and acted out upon 
 a great scale in the history of God's chosen people, repeat 
 itself evermore in the smaller world, in the microcosm of 
 elect souls, which are under the same divine education. Is 
 
THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 61 
 
 there not many a one who can trace in himself the same 
 process and progress we have been following here ? First 
 was our childhood, corresponding to Abraham's state — the 
 undeveloped, yet true affiance on a heavenly Father, — when 
 we needed no more than this ; when as yet we had not 
 looked down into the abysmal deeps of evil in our hearts, 
 when we too were alive without the law, and dreamt not of 
 the rebel, who was ready, when occasion came, to take arms 
 against his Lord, though that rebel was no other than our- 
 selves. 
 
 But the years went on, with all which they brought, 
 with their good and with their evil : and childhood was 
 left behind ; and to us, too, the time arrived for the giving 
 of the law; and then us, too, God led apart into the 
 wilderness, separated us from every other living soul, made 
 us feel the mystery of our awful personality, and spoke 
 to us as He had never spoken before, even face to face, 
 — revealing Himself to us no longer merely as the God 
 of our fathers, but with a higher revelation, as the I AM, 
 the Holy One. For us, too, was that terrible giving of the 
 law in the deep of our souls, which he who has known 
 will say boldly, that Sinai with its blunders and lightnings, 
 its blackness and its darkness, its unendurable voice which he 
 who heard craved that he might hear no more, was not more 
 terrible ; — and sin is no longer a word but a reality, is no 
 longer felt as the transient grieving of a parent's heart, but 
 as the violation of an eternal order, a violation which cannot 
 remain unrevenged or unredressed. But dreadful as this 
 law is, terrible and threatening shape as it rises over the 
 soul, does not each man make the same experience as did 
 Israel of old, and find out its helplessness for the true ends 
 of his life ? It can kill the sinner, but it cannot kill the 
 sin; that only shrinks deeper into its hiding-places in the 
 soul, and needs another charmer to lure it out. This is our 
 state of condemnation, which is yet most needful for a right 
 
 6 
 
62 LECTURE IV. 
 
 entering into the state of life and freedom : this is the law 
 preparing for, and handing over unto, Christ. 
 
 And as there was the manhood of the race, as the Church 
 which God had been training and disciplining so long, was 
 introduced into the fullness of its inheritance, when Christ, 
 who had upheld it always, came visibly into the midst of it; 
 so is it in like manner when God brings his First-begotten 
 into the inner world of any single heart. Then that heart 
 understands all the way by which it had been led, and sees 
 how all things have worked for the bringing it into that 
 grace in which now it stands. Then the child's faith re- 
 turns ; only is it now a mightier faith, a more heroic act of 
 affiance, for it is a faith in God despite of and in full know- 
 ledge of our evil, instead of a faith in God in ignorance of 
 our evil. 
 
 Marvellously does He thus run oftentimes the lives of his 
 children parallel with the life of the Church at large, as 
 that life is unfolded in Sacred Writ, bringing each in par- 
 ticular under the same teaching as the whole. Yet this is 
 not all: we have not merely in Scripture God carrying 
 Israel his Son through successive stages, which may serve to 
 explain to us the stages *)f our own innermost spiritual life; 
 but we may trace there another sequence, another progress 
 — that by which He is training his people into a sense of 
 ever-widening relationships, and this also making answer 
 to the sequence in which He trains each one in particular of 
 his children into the same, and serving as a pattern thereto. 
 For what are the great fellowships of men, which rest not 
 upon man's choice, but upon God's will, which are not self- 
 willed associations into which men gather of themselves, but 
 societies wherein they are set by the act of God? Each 
 will at once reply, The Family, The State, The Church. 
 And this too is their order ; The Family must go before the 
 State, being itself the corner stone on which the State is 
 built; and the State, which is the fellowship of certain men 
 
THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 63 
 
 to the exclusion of others, waits to be taken up into the 
 Church, which is the fellowship of all men who believe in 
 the risen head of their race. 
 
 And this sequence is that maintained in the Bible ; for 
 what is the early history of the Bible, but predominantly the 
 history of the Family ? of the blessing which awaits rever- 
 ence for the family order, of the sure curse which avenges 
 its violation. On the one side, we have the men who were 
 true to this divine institute ; who, amid many weaknesses, 
 recognized and honored it — the Seths and Enochs before the 
 flood, the Abrahams and Isaacs, the Jacobs and Josephs 
 after. On the other side we have the Lamechs and Tubal 
 Cains, and at a later day, the builders of Babel, the men 
 who thought to associate themselves, to say, a confederacy, 
 where God had not said it, to knit themselves into a body 
 by bands of their own, instead of owning that God had knit 
 them already — skilled masters, as we learn, in the arts of 
 life, starting up, as we are told, into a premature civiliza- 
 tion; yet having in themselves, through violations, which 
 we can plainly trace, of that family order, of the primal 
 institutes of humanity, the seeds of a sure and swift decay : 
 so that presently they are lost to our sight altogether ; while 
 the Patriarchs, the honourers and sanctifiers of these rela- 
 tions, walk before us heads of a nation, of that kingly and 
 priestly nation in which all other nations should be blest. 
 
 But Holy Scripture does not linger here. It passes on, 
 and its middle history is the history of this nation, of national 
 life ; showing us, by liveliest example, all that can exalt, all 
 that can degrade, a people : how Israel, so long as it believed 
 in its invisible Lord and King, its righteous Lawgiver, was 
 great and prosperous— how, when it lost that faith and bowed 
 to idols of sense, it became of a surety inwardly distracted, 
 externally enslaved — forfeiting those very outward gifts for 
 the sake of which it had turned its back upon the Giver — • 
 righteousness and truth and justice perishing between man 
 
64 LECTURE IV. 
 
 and man, while He in whom alone these have any sub- 
 stantial existence was no longer held fast to and believed. 
 
 And then in the New Testament, not the conditions under 
 which the Family can exist, not the conditions under which 
 the State, but the idea of the Church, of that fellowship, 
 which, including all, may itself be included by none, is 
 unfolded to us. There we behold the laws of the universal 
 kingdom, and Christ, not the King of a single nation, but 
 the Head of humanity, the Saviour of all. 
 
 And this order of Sacred Scripture, is also the order of 
 our lives. I mean not that we first become members of a 
 family and then of a State, and lastly of a Church • but this 
 is the order in which we become conscious of relations. For 
 what is it that a child first discovers ? that it is the member 
 of a family — that it has kindred. What are its earliest 
 duties ? a faithful entering into these relations ; its earliest 
 sins ? a refusal to enter into them. And what next ? that 
 there is a wider fellowship than this of home-love and home- 
 affections, to which it belongs ; that there are other men to 
 whom it owes other duties; that it is the member of a 
 State no less than a family, that it must be just as well as 
 loving. And last of all is perceived that there is yet another 
 fellowship at the root of both these fellowships, which gives 
 them their meaning, which alone upholds and sustains them 
 against all the sin and selfishness which are continually 
 threatening their dissolution — a fellowship with the Lord of 
 men, and in Him with every man of that race which He has 
 redeemed, of that nature which He has taken. And so the 
 cycle of God's teaching is complete, and that cycle in which 
 the Scripture shows that He taught the world, is found here 
 also again to be the cycle in which he teaches the individual 
 soul. 
 
 But to pass to quite another province of our subject : — 
 we must not leave unobserved the manner in which prophecy 
 
'THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 65 
 
 bears witness to this progressive unfolding of God's purpose 
 with our race. Often we dishonour prophecy, when the 
 chief value which it has in our eyes is the use to which it 
 may be turned as evidence ; when we regard it as serving 
 no nobler ends, as having no deeper root in the economy 
 of God than in this are presumed ; when it is for us merely a 
 miraculum scientice, which, with the miracles properly so 
 called, the miracula potential, may do duty in proving 
 against cavillers the divine origin of our Faith; when all 
 that we can find is that the doers of the works and the 
 utterers of the words did and said what was beyond the 
 reach and scope of common men. But the fact that pro- 
 phecy should constitute so large an element in scripture 
 finds its explanation rather in that law which we have been 
 tracing throughout all Scripture — the law, I mean, of an 
 orderly development, according to which there is nothing 
 sudden, nothing abrupt or unprepared in his counsels, all 
 whose works are known to him from the beginning. It is 
 part of this law that there should ever be prefigurations of 
 the coming, that truths so vast and so mighty as those of 
 the New Covenant, so difficult for man's heart to conceive, 
 should have their way prepared, should, ere they arrive in 
 their highest shape, give pledge and promise of themselves, 
 in lower forms and in weaker rudiments. 
 
 Thus was it good that before the appearance of the Son 
 of God in the flesh, there should be, in the language of 
 Bishop Bull, "preludings of the Incarnation," transient 
 apparitions of Him in a human form, though not in the 
 verity of our human nature. Thus was it ordered that 
 each one of the mighty acts of our Lord's life should not 
 stand wholly apart, and without analogy in any thing which 
 had gone before, but ever find in something earlier its linea- 
 ments and its outlines. Weak and faint these lineaments 
 may have been, weak and faint they must have been, when 
 compared with the glory that excellcth ; yet sketches and 
 
 6* 
 
66 LECTURE IV. 
 
 outlines and foreshadowings still of the glory to be revealed. 
 Thus, more than one was wonderfully born, with many cir- 
 cumstances of a strange solemnity, with heavenly announce- 
 ments, with much that went beyond human expectation, ere 
 He was born, by the annunciation of an Angel, through the 
 overshadowing of the Holy Ghost, whose name should be 
 called Wonderful, The Mighty God. So we may say that 
 in the shining of Moses' face, as he came down from the 
 mount of God, we have already a weaker Transfiguration, a 
 feeble fore-announcement of that brightness which, not from 
 without, but breaking forth from within, should clothe with 
 a light which no words could adequately utter, not the face 
 only, but the whole person, of the Son of God. So again, 
 in the translation of Elijah, the lineaments of his Ascen- 
 sion appear, who, not rapt in a chariot of fire, not needing 
 the cleansing of that fiery baptism, nor requiring that com- 
 missioned chariot to bear him up, did in the far sublimer 
 calmness of his own indwelling power arise from the earth, 
 and with his human body pass into the heavenly places.* 
 And once more, in the dividing of the Spirit which Moses 
 had, upon the seventy elders of Israel, so that they all did 
 prophesy, we recognize an earlier though a weaker Pentecost ; 
 in which, however, the later was surely implied : for if from 
 the servant could be imparted of his spirit, how much more 
 and in what larger measure from the Son ? All these should 
 be contemplated as preparatory workings in a lower sphere 
 of the same Spirit, which afterwards wrought more gloriously 
 
 * Gregory the Great {Horn, in Evang. :) Elias in curru legitur 
 ascendisse, ut videlicet aperte, demonstraretur, quia homo purus 
 adjutorio indigebat alieno. Per angelos quippe facta et ostensa sunt 
 adjumenta; quia nee in coelum quidem aerium per se ascendere 
 poterat quern naturae suae infirmitas gravabat. Hederntor auteni 
 noster non curru, non angelis sublevatus legitur quia is qui fecerat 
 omnia, nimirum super omnia sua virtute ferebatur. 
 
THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 67 
 
 in the later and crowning acts ; as knit to those later by an 
 inner law, as sharers of the same organic life with them. 
 
 The rending away of isolated passages, and then saying, 
 This Psalm, or That chapter of Isaiah, is prophetic, and has 
 to do with Christ and his kingdom, — and this without ex- 
 plaining how it comes that these have to do, and those 
 nearest them have not, can never truly satisfy ; men's minds 
 resist this fragmentary capricious exposition. The portions 
 of Scripture thus adduced very likely are those in which 
 prophecy concentrates itself more than in any other : they 
 may be the strongest expressions of that Spirit which 
 quickens the whole mass ; but it has not forsaken the other 
 portions to gather itself up exclusively in these. 
 
 Rather the subtle threads of prophecy are woven through 
 every part of the woof and texture, not separable from thence 
 without rending and destroying the whole. All the Old 
 Testament, as the record of a divine constitution pointing to 
 - something higher than itself, administered by men who 
 were ever looking beyond themselves to a Greater that 
 should come, who were uttering, as the Spirit stirred them, 
 the deepest longings of their souls after his appearing, is 
 prophetic ; and this, not by an arbitrary appointment, which 
 meant thus to supply evidences ready to hand for the truth of 
 Revelation, in the curious tallying of the Old with the New, 
 the remarkable fulfilments of the foretold, but prophetic 
 according to the inmost necessities of the case, which would 
 not suffer it to be otherwise. 
 
 For how could God, bringing to pass what was good and 
 true, do other than make it resemble what was best and truest, 
 which he should one day bring to pass ? Raising up holy 
 men, how could he avoid giving them features of likeness to 
 the Holiest of all ? appointing them functions and offices in 
 which to bless their brethren, how could these otherwise 
 than anticipate his functions and his office, who should come 
 in the fulness of blessing to his people ? Inspiring them to 
 
68 LECTURE IV. 
 
 speak, stirring by the breath of his Spirit the deepest chords 
 of their hearts how could He bring forth from them any 
 other notes but those which made the deepest music of their 
 lives ; their longings, namely, after the promised Redeemer, 
 their yearnings after the kingdom of his righteousness, — 
 mere longings and yearnings no longer now, since the Spirit 
 that inspired such utterances, being the very Spirit of Truth, 
 gave pledge, in sanctioning and working the desire, that the 
 fulfilment of that desire in due time should not be wanting ? 
 If the poet had right when he spake of 
 
 " the prophetic soul 
 Of the great world, dreaming of things to come ;" 
 
 by how much higher reason must a prophetic soul have 
 dwelt in Israel, by which it not vaguely dreamed, but 
 in some sort felt itself already in possession, of the great 
 things to come, whereof it knew that the seeds and germs 
 were laid so deeply in its own bosom ? We may say of 
 Judiasm, that it bore in its womb the Messiah, as the 
 man-child whom it should one day give birth to, and only 
 in the forming and bearing of whom it found its true 
 meaning. This was its function, and according to the counsel 
 of Gfod it should have been saved through this child-bearing ; 
 though by its own sin it did itself expire in giving birth 
 to Him who was intended to have been not its death but 
 its life. 
 
 This, then, is another remarkable aspect under which 
 the progressiveness of God's dealings, and of that Book 
 which is their record, presents itself to us — this long 
 and patient training of his people through many a prece- 
 ding word and institution and person into the capacity 
 of recognising his glory, of whom all that went before 
 was but the shadow and the s} r mbol. In all this was a 
 preclude to prepare the spiritual ear for the full burst 
 of a later, and but for that, an overwhelming harmony; 
 
THE ADVANCE OE SCRIPTURE. '69 
 
 — a purpling of the east, which might tell in what quarter 
 the Sun of Righteousness would appear, and whither the 
 straining eyes must turn, that would catch the first brightness 
 of his rising. 
 
 Nor is it unworthy of observation, that prophecy did 
 never run before that actual development, which alone would 
 enable it to speak a language which men should understand. 
 It did not paint upon air.; but ever claimed forms of the 
 present in which to array its promises of the future. Thus 
 we have no mention of Christ the Prophet till a great 
 Prophet had actually arisen, till Moses could say, "The 
 Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet like unto 
 me." We hear nothing of Christ the King, till there were 
 kings in Israel — theocratic kings — who should give the pro- 
 phecy a substance and a meaning; who should make men 
 know, though with many imperfections, what a sceptre of 
 righteousness was, and a king ruling in judgment. And 
 thus (did time allow) we might trace in much more detail 
 how not only in the idea of type and prophecy there is 
 obedience to that law of advance and progress, which we 
 have every where been finding, but in the very order and 
 sequence of the prophecies themselves. Yet this matter we 
 must leave. Sufficient for us to have seen how prophecy are 
 the outlines and lineaments which shall indicate, and fit men 
 to know the very body of the Truth, when that at length 
 shall come; — to have considered under another aspect to- 
 day, how Scripture is its own witness, gives proof that it is 
 what it affirms itself to be, a Book for the education of men, 
 — in that it plainly contains the gradual unfolding of a great 
 idea, such a thought as only could have entered into the 
 mind of God to conceive, such a thought as He only who is 
 the King of ages could have carried out. 
 
 And without question, for ourselves, brethren, the lessons 
 which the Scripture contemplated as this Book of an ever- 
 advancing education may suggest, are not very far to seek. 
 
70 LECTURE TV. 
 
 And this first. God has taken our whole race by the hand 
 that He may lead it on together ; even so will he lead every 
 single soul that will trust itself to Him. He will speak to 
 us first as "little children/' then as "young men," and 
 then as " fathers." His Word in our hearts shall be as the 
 blade and the ear, and the full corn in the ear. He will 
 give us, as we are faithful, an ever larger horizon, a widen- 
 ing horizon of duty, with an increasing consciousness of 
 powers and faculties for fulfilling that duty. 
 
 And our second lesson lies also at the door, — that^seeing, 
 as we do in Scripture, what the school has been in which 
 all God's saints have been trained, we be well content to 
 learn in the same, nor count that we can learn better in any 
 other. The study of this Scripture shows us how, through 
 the everlasting ordinances of the Family, the State, the 
 Church, God trains into nobleness and freedom the souls 
 and spirits of men ; how he calls out in their strength, first 
 the affections, then the conscience, and last of all, the reason 
 and the will of men. It teaches us that, not in self-willed 
 separation from common duties, but in a lowly and earnest 
 fulfilling of them, men have grown up to their full stature 
 as men. Often in that evil pride which makes us rather to 
 follow after that which will divide us from our brethren, 
 that which will unite us to them, we have counted, it may 
 be, that we could discipline ourselves better, that we could 
 train ourselves higher, than by those common ways in which 
 all our fellows are being trained, — better than through the 
 ordinances of the family, better than through the duties 
 which devolve on us as citizens, better than by the teach- 
 ing and Sacraments of Christ's Church. It has seemed to 
 us a poor thing to walk in those trite and common paths 
 wherein all are walking. Yet these common paths are the 
 paths in which blessing travels, are the ways in which God 
 is met. Welcoming and fulfilling the lowliest duties which 
 meet us there, we shall often be surprised to find that we 
 
THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 71 
 
 have unawares been welcoming and entertaining Angels; 
 and nurturing ourselves upon these, it shall be with us in 
 our souls and spirits as it was with Daniel and his young 
 companions, when they showed fairer and better liking, and 
 had more evidently thriven upon their common food, their 
 ordinary pulse, than had all their compeers upon their 
 royal dainties, their profane meat3 ; brought from the table 
 of the Babylonian king. 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OE SCRIPTURE. 
 
 John XII. 16. 
 
 These things understood not his disciples at the first ; but when Jesus was 
 glorified, then remembered they that these things were written of him. 
 
 The subject of the Lectures which I am now permitted 
 to resume, is the fitness of Holy Scripture unfolding the 
 spiritual life of men, and the arguments which we may from 
 this fitness derive for its being the gift of God to his rea- 
 sonable creatures, whom He has called to a spiritual fellow- 
 ship with Himself. So many who are now present cannot 
 have heard the earlier discourses, so little have I a right to 
 expect that those who did, should vividly retain them in 
 their memories, that I shall just mention at this resump- 
 tion of the course the point at which I have arrived, not 
 attempting to retrace even with hastiest steps, but indicating 
 merely by lightest hints, the way by which we hitherto have 
 gone. Passing by, then, the external arguments, not as 
 comparatively unimportant, but as not belonging to the 
 domain of my peculiar subject, I have sought, after some 
 preliminary observations which filled the chief part of my 
 first Lecture, in the second to trace the oneness of Scripture ; 
 how there runs through it one idea, that of the kingdom of 
 God, and how by that one are knit into unity its most 
 diverse parts and elements ; in the third, how this Scripture, 
 which is one, is also manifold, so laid out that it shall 
 nourish all souls, and make wonderful answer to the moral 
 and intellectual needs of all men ; and then in the fourth, 
 the latest of that series, I endeavoured to show how Scrip- 
 ture is fitted to be the Book of our education, the furtherer 
 (72) 
 
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 73 
 
 of our spiritual growth, through itself being the history of 
 the progressive education of our race into the fulness of the 
 knowledge of God. 
 
 An ample task remains for us still : this day's portion of 
 that task will consist in an attempt, it must be indeed a 
 most imperfect one, to show how this treasure of divine 
 Truth, once given, has only gradually revealed itself; how 
 the history of the Church, the difficulties, the trials, the 
 struggles, the temptations in which it has been involved, 
 have interpreted it to its own records, brought out their 
 latent significance, and caused it to discover all which in 
 them it had ; how there was much written for it there as in 
 sympathetic ink, invisible for a season, yet ready to flash 
 out in lines and characters of light, whenever the appointed 
 day and hour had arrived. So that in this way the Scrip- 
 ture has been to the Church as their garments to the chil- 
 dren of Israel, which during all the years of their pilgrimage 
 in the desert waxed not old, yea, according to rabbinnical 
 tradition, kept pace and measure with their bodies, growing 
 with their growth, fitting the man as they had fitted the 
 child, and this, until the forty years of their sojourn in the 
 wilderness, had expired. Or, to use another comparison 
 which may help to illustrate our meaning, Holy Scripture 
 thus progressively unfolding what it contains, might be 
 likened fitly to some magnificent landscape on which the 
 sun is gradually rising, and ever as it rises is bringing out 
 one headland into light and prominence, and then another \ 
 anon kindling the glory-smitten summit of some far moun- 
 tain, and presently lighting up the recesses of some near 
 valley which had hitherto abided in gloom, and so travel- 
 ling on till nothing remains in shadow, no nook nor corner 
 hid from the light and heat of it, but the whole prospect 
 stands out in the clearness and splendour of the brightest 
 noon. 
 
 And we can discern, I think, in some measure, causes 
 
74 LECTURE V. 
 
 which in the wisdom and providence of Glod worked together 
 to constitute Scripture as this glorious landscape which 
 should ever reveal new features of wonder and beauty, this 
 boundless treasure with riches laid up for all future times 
 and all future needs. The apostolic Church — that of which 
 the sacred writings of the New Covenant are a living tran- 
 script — was not merely one age and one aspect of the 
 Church, but we have in it the picture and prophecy of the 
 Church's history in every future age. All which in those 
 after ages should only slowly declare itself, is there pre- 
 sented in one great image, — the most amazing contrasts, the 
 best and the worst, the highest and the lowest, the noblest 
 assertions, and the deadliest perversions, of the Truth. It 
 is, if we may so speak, a rapid rehearsal of the great drama 
 of God's providence with His Church, which should after- 
 wards be played out at leisure on the world's stage. Noth- 
 ing, which was after to be, was not there; although, by the 
 necessities of the case, all compressed and brought into 
 narrowest compass, and, so to speak, all fore-shortened, and, 
 as a picture of the future, wanting in perspective and in 
 distance. But this glimpse once vouchsafed to us all, the 
 wondrous picture dislimns and dissolves again ; that era in 
 which were all other eras wrapped up, close, and the period 
 of gradual development begins; but yet not this, before 
 every error and the antidote of every error had been set 
 down, every heresy which should afterwards display itself 
 full-blown, had budded, and the witness against it had been 
 clearly borne ; not till it had been seen how Jewish legality 
 and heathen false liberty would equally seek to corrupt the 
 Truth, and with what weapons both were to be encountered ; 
 not till missions to the Jew and missions to the heathen 
 had alike been founded, and the manner of conducting them 
 been shown ; not till many Antichrists had rehearsed and 
 prefigured the final one, and tried the faith of G-od's elect. 
 And thus it was ordained that the canonical Scriptures, 
 
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 75 
 
 which seem to belong only to one age, should indeed belong 
 to all ages; inasmuch as that age, that fruitful time, that 
 middle point of the world's history, in which an old world 
 died and a new world sprang to life, had the germs and 
 rudiments of all other times within its bosom. 
 
 It is this fact, — that the Holy Scripture contains within 
 itself all treasures of wisdom and knowledge, but only 
 renders up those treasures little by little, and as they are 
 needed or asked for, — which justifies us in speaking of a 
 development of doctrine in the Church, and explains much 
 in her inner history that might else startle or perplex. But 
 about this matter so much has lately been spoken, and 
 another theory of the manner in which the Church unfolds 
 her doctrine, looking at first sight the same as this, but at 
 heart entirely different, has so diligently been put forth, — 
 and that with purposes hostile to that sound form of faith 
 and doctrine, which it is given us to maintain and defend, — 
 that it might be worth our while to linger here for a little, 
 and consider wherein the essential difference between the 
 false theory and the true is to be found, and in what sense, 
 and in what only, the Church may be said to develope her 
 doctrine. It is familiar to many who have watched with 
 interest the course of the controversies of our day, that 
 those who have given up as hopeless the endeavour to find 
 in Scripture, or in the practices or creeds of the early 
 Church, evidence for the accretions with which they have 
 overlaid the Truth, have shifted their ground, and taken up 
 a position entirely new. True, they, have said, these addi- 
 tions are not there, but they are the unfolding of the Truth 
 which is there; they are but the producing of the line of 
 Truth, the later numbers of a series, whereof the earlier in 
 Scripture are given; they are necessary developments of 
 doctrine, such as the Church has ever allowed to herself, 
 and which will alone explain many of the appearances which 
 she presents. 
 
76 LECTURE V. 
 
 Now doubtless there is a true idea of Scriptural develop- 
 ments, which has always been recognized, to which the great 
 Fathers of the Church have set their seal ;* and it is this, 
 that the Church, informed and quickened by the Spirit of 
 God, more and more discovers what in Holy Scripture is 
 given her ; but it is not this, that she unfolds by an inde- 
 pendent power any thing farther therefrom. She has always 
 possessed what she now possesses of doctrine and truth, only 
 not always with the same distinctness of consciousness 
 She has not added to her wealth, but she has become more 
 and more aware of that wealth; her dowry has remained 
 always the same, but that dowry was so rich and rare, that 
 only little by little she has counted over and taken stock and 
 inventory of her jewels. She has consolidated her doctrine, 
 compelled thereto by the provocation of enemies, or induced 
 to it by the growing sense of her own needs. She has 
 bronght together utterances in Holy "Writ, and those which 
 apart were comparatively barren, when thus married, when 
 each had thus found its complement in the other, have been 
 fruitful to her. Those which apart meant little to her, have 
 been seen to mean much, when thus brought together and 
 read each by the light of the other. In these senses she 
 has enlarged her dominion, her dominion having become 
 larger to her. 
 
 And yet all this which she has laboriously won, she possessed 
 
 * Thus Augustine {Enarr. in Ps. liv. 22:) Multa enim latebant 
 in Scrip turis et quum prsecisi essent liEeretici, quasstionibus agita- 
 verunt Ecclesiam Dei ; aperta sunt quae latebant, et intellecta, est 
 voluntas Dei.... Num quid enim perfecte de Trinitate tractatum est 
 antequarn oblatrarent, Ariani? numquid perfecte de poenitentibus 
 tractatum est antequarn obsisterent Novatiani ? Sic non perfecte de 
 baptismate tractatum est antequarn contradicerent foi'is positi 
 rebaptizatores. Cf. Enarr. in Ps. lxvii. 31 ; and Confess., 1. 7, c. 
 19. Improbatio hasreticorum facit eminere quid Ecclesia sentiat, et 
 quid habeat sana doctrina. 
 
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 77 
 
 before implicitly though not explicitly , — even as the shut hand 
 is as perfect a hand as the open ; or as our dominion in that 
 huge island of the Pacific is as truly ours, and that region 
 as vast in extent now, as it will be when every mountain 
 and valley, every rivulet and bay, have been explored and 
 laid down in our maps, and the flag of England has waved 
 over them all. AH, for example, which the later Church 
 slowly and through centuries defined upon this side and 
 that, of the person of the Son of G-od — of the relation of his 
 natures and the communication of their properties — of his 
 divine will and his human, — all this the earliest had, yea 
 and enjoyed, not having arrived at it by analytic process, 
 not able, perhaps, as not needing, to lay it out with dialectic 
 accuracy, but in total impression, in synthetic unity. She 
 possessed it all, she lived in the might and in the glory of 
 it j as is notably witnessed by the prophetic tact, if one may 
 venture so to call that divine instinct, by which she rejected 
 all which was alien to and would have disturbed the true 
 evolution of her doctrine, even before she had fully elaborated 
 that doctrine ; by which she refused to shut the door against 
 herself; and even in matters which had not yet come before 
 her for decision and definition, preserved the ground clear 
 and open from all that would have embarrassed and ob- 
 structed in the future. 
 
 We do not object to, rather we fully acknowledge, the 
 theory of the development of religious Truth so stated. 
 •We no more object, than we do to a Nicene Creed follow- 
 ing up and enlarging an Apostolic, which rather we gladly 
 and thankfully receive as a rich addition to our heritage. 
 But that Nieene creed in the same manner contains no new 
 truths which the Church has added to her stock since the 
 earlier was composed, though it may be some which she has 
 brought out with more distinctness to herself and to her 
 children, — as it contains broader and more accurately 
 guarded statements of the old. But the essential in this 
 
78 LECTURE V. 
 
 progress of Truth is, that the later is always as truly found 
 in Scripture as the earlier — not as easy to discover, but 
 when discovered, as much carrying with it its own evidence ; 
 — and there, not in some obscure hint and germ, putting 
 one in mind of an inverted pyramid, so small the foundation, 
 so vast and overshadowing the superstructure — as for in- 
 stance, the whole Papal system, which rests, as far as Scrip- 
 ture is adduced in proof, on a single text — nor yet there in 
 some passage which is equally capable of a thousand other 
 turns as that given ; as, for example, when the worship of 
 the Blessed Virgin is found prophesied and authorized in 
 the Lord's answer to her at the marriage in Cana of Galilee. 
 
 But with these limitations the scheme is altogether 
 different from that which some of late have put forward, 
 — different not in degree only, but in kind ; and it is that 
 mere confusion of unlike things under like terms, which is 
 so fruitful a source of errors in the world, to call by this 
 same name that theory which, refusing the Scriptures as, 
 first and last, authoritative in and limitary of the Truth, 
 assumes that in the conrse of ages there was intended to be, 
 not only the discovery of the Truth which is there, but also, 
 by independent accretion and addition, the further growth 
 of doctrine, besides what is there; which recognises such 
 accretions, when they fall in with its own notions, for its 
 legitimate outgrowths, and not, as indeed they are, for 
 noxious misgrowths, of doctrine ; and which thus makes the 
 Church from time to time the creator of new Truth, and not 
 merely the guardian and definer and drawer out of the old. 
 This is all that she assumes to be j whatever she proclaims, 
 she has ever the consciousness that she is proclaiming it as 
 the ancient Truth, as that which she has always borne in 
 her bosom, however she may not have distinctly outspoken 
 it till now; as part of the Truth once delivered to her, 
 though, it may be ; not all at once apprehended by her. 
 
 Thus was it felt in the ages long past of the Church ; 
 
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. <9 
 
 thus also was it at the Reformation ; for that too was an 
 entering of the Church on a portion of the fulness of her 
 heritage, on which she had not adequately entered before. 
 It is hardly too much to say, that the Reformation called 
 out from their hiding-places the Epistle to the Romans, the 
 Epistle to the G-alatians, and generally the Epistles of St. 
 Paul, which then became to the faithful all which they were 
 intended to be. It is not, of course, implied that these were 
 not read and studied and commented on before, or that much 
 and varied profit was not drawn from them in every age, or 
 that they had not been full of blessing for unnumbered 
 souls. But with all this, men's eyes were holden, and had 
 been for long, so that the innermost heart of them, the 
 deepest significance, was not seen. For they were the needs 
 of souls, the mighty anguish of men's spirits, which were 
 the true interpreters of these portions of God's Word. 
 When that vast and gorgeous fabric, the Papal Christendom 
 of the middle ages, dissolved and went to pieces, — that 
 which, as one contemplates it on its bright side or its dark, 
 one is inclined to regard as a glorious realization, or an im- 
 pious caricature, of the promised kingdom of Christ upon 
 the earth ; — when the time arrived that men could no longer 
 live by faith, that they were members of that great spiritual 
 fellowship, (for it was felt now to be only the mockery of 
 such ;) when each man said, " I too am a man, myself and 
 no other, one by myself, with my own burden, my own sin, 
 the inalienable mystery of my own being, which I cannot 
 put off on another, and, as such, I must stand or fall; it 
 helps me nothing to tell me that I belong to a glorious com- 
 munity, in which saints have lived and doctors taught, 
 wherein I am bound in closest fellowship with all the ages 
 that are past ; this helps me nothing, unless I too, by my- 
 self, am a healed man, with the deep wound of my own 
 spirit healed, unless you show me how my own personal 
 relations to Grod, which sin has utterly disturbed, may be 
 
80 LECTURE V. 
 
 made firm and strong again ; — then, when men thus felt, 
 where should they so naturally turn as to those portions of 
 Scripture especially designed to furnish a response to this 
 deep cry of the human heart, and which are occupied with 
 setting forth a personal Deliverer from this personal sense 
 of guilt and condemnation ? And not any thing else but 
 this mighty agony of souls would have supplied the key of 
 knowledge to the Epistles of St. Paul, which had remained 
 otherwise to the faithful as written in a strange language, to 
 be admired at a distance, but dealing with matters in which 
 they had no very close concern. But with this preparation, 
 and thus initiated by suffering, men came to them with inef- 
 fable joy, as to springs in the desert, and found in them all 
 after which their inmost spirits had yearned and thirsted the 
 most. 
 
 Thus at the Reformation the relations of every man to 
 God, consequent on the Incarnation and death and resurrec- 
 tion of the Son of God, were those for which the Church 
 mainly contended ; — that those relations were perfect, — that 
 by one oblation Christ had perfected for ever them that were 
 sanctified, that nothing might come between God and the 
 cleansed conscience of his children, to bring them nearer 
 than they were brought already, — no pope, no work, no 
 penance, — that all which pretended to intrude and come be- 
 tween was a lie. And by consequence those records of 
 Scripture which were occupied with declaring the perfectness 
 of these relations, were those most sedulously and most 
 earnestly handled; bright beams of light flashed out from 
 them, at once enlightening and gladdening and kindling, as 
 they had never done until now. 
 
 But in our own day, as we see in that country where alone 
 a speculative philosophy, with which theology has to put 
 itself in relation, exists, the controversy has drawn, as was 
 to be looked for, even nearer yet to the very heart of the 
 matter. For now it is not, What is the meaning for us of 
 
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 81 
 
 this constitution in the Son ? but whether there is such a 
 constitution at all ? it is not what follows on the relations 
 which the Incarnate Word established between God and 
 men, but whether there have been any such relations at all 
 established — any meeting of heaven and earth in the person 
 of Jesus of Nazareth, — whether all which has been spoken 
 of such has not been merely dreams of men, and not, as the 
 Church affirms, facts of God ? And therefore the Gospels, 
 as we see, come mainly into consideration now; round them 
 the combatants gather, the battle rages : they are felt to be 
 the key of the position, which as it is won or lost, will carry 
 with it the issues of the day. Every one that would strike 
 a blow at Christianity, strikes at them ; criticizes the record 
 or the fact recorded; — the record, that it is a loose and 
 accidental aggregation of floating materials, of insecure tra- 
 ditions, which crumbles to pieces at any accurate handling 
 — or the fact recorded, that a man who was God, and God 
 who was man, is inconceivable, and carries its own contra- 
 diction on its front. 
 
 And as the Gospels are the point mainly assailed, so are 
 they the citadel in which they must make themselves strong, 
 from which they must issue, who would win in our day any 
 signal victory for the Truth. First, the record itself must 
 be vindicated, the glory and perfectness of its form, the 
 mystery of those four Gospels in their subtle harmonies, in 
 the manner wherein they complete one another, handing us 
 on, the first to the second, and the second to the third, and 
 the third to the last : — the wondrous laws of selection, and 
 laws of rejection, which evidently presided at their construc- 
 tion, and do continually reveal themselves to the deeper in- 
 quirer, however the shallow may miss or deny them. And 
 then, secondly, the facts, or, to speak more truly, the fact 
 must be justified, which in those Gospels is recorded, — that 
 it is the highest wisdom, — that a Son of God, who is also 
 the Son of man, is the one, the divine fact, which alone ex- 
 
82 LECTURE V. 
 
 plains either God or man, — is that which philosophy must 
 end by accepting at the hands of Theology as the crowning 
 Truth, and only in accepting which it will find its own com- 
 pletion, and the long and weary strife between the two 
 obtain an end. 
 
 And as it was at the Reformation with the Pauline Epis- 
 tles, — as it is now with the Gospels, — so, I cannot doubt, a 
 day will come when all the significance of the Apocalypse 
 for the church of God will be apparent, which hitherto it 
 can scarcely be said to have been ; that a time will arrive 
 when it will be plainly shown how costly a gift, yea rather, 
 how necessary an armour was this for the Church of the 
 redeemed. Then, when the last things are about to be, and 
 the trumpet of the last Angel to sound, when the great 
 drama is hastening with ever briefer pauses to its catastrophe, 
 — then, in one unlooked for way or another, the veil will be 
 lifted up from this wondrous Book, and it will be to the 
 Church collectively, what, even partially understood, it has 
 been already to tens of thousands of her children — strength 
 in the fires, giving her "songs in the night,"- songs of joy 
 and deliverance in that darkest night of her trial, which 
 shall precede the break of her everlasting day ; and enabling 
 her, even when the triumph of Antichrist is at the highest, 
 to look securely on to his near doom and her own perfect 
 victory. 
 
 But we are dealing to-day with the past development of 
 Scripture, not with the future — with what it has already 
 unfolded, not with what it may have still in reserve. That 
 may well occupy us hereafter ; for the present, let us ask 
 ourselves what is the great lesson which we should draw 
 from this aspect of the subject which we have been this day 
 contemplating. A lesson surely of the very deepest signifi- 
 cance. For if other generations before us have had their 
 especial task and work, so also must we ; a work which none 
 other have done for us, even as none other could; for just 
 
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 83 
 
 as each individual has some task which none other can fulfil 
 so well as he, for it is his task, so every generation has its 
 own appointed labour, and only can be at harmony with 
 itself, when it has faithfully girded itself to that. Let us 
 not then, under show of humility, flatter our indolence, and 
 say that in this matter of the treasures of the knowledge of 
 God all is searched out; that for us it remains only to live 
 on the handed down, on that which others have already won 
 from his Word. Let us not, in this manner, turn that into 
 a standing pool or reservoir, which might be a spring of 
 water springing up as freshly and newly to our lips as to the 
 lips of any who have gone before us. 
 
 Shall we determine, for instance, to know no other Theo- 
 logy, no other results of Scripture, save those of the Church 
 of the first ages ? Are we thus honouring Christ's promise 
 to His Church, when we imply, as so we do, that the Spirit 
 of wisdom and understanding was given to her once, but is 
 not given to her always ? Shall all history, as an interpreter 
 of God's Word, go for nothing with us — be assumed to stand 
 in no relation to that Book, of which surely the very idea 
 is, that as it casts light upon all, so it receives light from 
 all ? Or do we presume too far in believing that there are 
 portions of its vast and goodly field, which we can cultivate 
 with larger success than those who preceded us, to which we 
 shall bring experience which they did not and could not 
 bring, which will yield therefore to us ampler returns than 
 they yielded to them ? 
 
 Or, again, were it not as great a mistake, as partial a view 
 upon another side, to require that the Theology of the Ee- 
 formation should be the ultimate term and law to us, — to 
 say that we would know nothing further, and to look, 
 respectfully it may be, but still coldly, on any truths which 
 were not at that day counted vital ? Surely our loss were 
 most real, refusing to take our part in cultivating this field 
 which the Lord has blest, and which he has now delivered 
 
84 LECTURE V. 
 
 to us, that we in our turn might dress and keep, and enrich 
 ourselves from it ;— a loss we know not how great ! for we 
 too, had we been faithful and earnest, might have found hid 
 in that field some treasure, for joy whereof we should have 
 been ready to renounce all that we had, all our barren theo- 
 ries, and hungry speculations, and mutual suspicions, if only 
 we might have made that treasure our own ; so reconciling, 
 so evidently fitted would it have shown itself for all our 
 actual needs. 
 
 We may purpose indeed to live on what others have done, 
 the mighty men of the days which are past, the fathers or 
 revivers of our faith ; and we may count that their gains 
 will as much enrich us as they enriched them. But this 
 will not prove so indeed ; for it is a just law of our being, 
 one of the righteous compensations of toil, that what a man 
 wins by his labour, be it inward truth, or only some outward 
 suppliance of his need, is ever far more really his own, makes 
 him far more truly rich, than aught which he receives or 
 inherits ready made at the hands and from the toils of others. 
 And they of whom we speak earned their truths, by toil and 
 by struggle, by mighty wrestlings till the day broke ; water- 
 ing with the sweat of their brow, oftentimes with tears as of 
 blood — yea, with the life-blood of their own hearts, the soil 
 which yielded them in return a harvest so large. So was it, 
 and so only, that they came again with joy, bearing their 
 sheaves with them. And would we do the same, let us first 
 indeed see that we let nothing go — that we forfeit no part 
 of that which we inherit at their hands. But also with a 
 just confidence in that blessed Spirit, who is ever with His 
 Church, who is ever leading it into the Truth which it 
 needs, — let us labour, that through prayer and through 
 study, through earnest knocking, through holy living, that 
 inexhausted and inexhaustible Word may render up unto 
 us our truth, — the truth by which we must live, — the truth, 
 whatsoever that be, which, more than any other, will deliver 
 
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OP SCRIPTURE. 85 
 
 its from the lies with which we in our time are beset, which 
 will make us strong where we are weak, and heal us where 
 we are divided, and enable us most effectually to do that- 
 work which our God would have done by us in this the day 
 of our toil. 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Isaiah XII. 3. 
 
 With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation. 
 
 It was my endeavour in my last Lecture to bring before 
 you the progressive unfolding of the Scripture for the 
 Church — the manner in which for the company of faithful 
 men in all ages, considered as one great organic body with 
 one common life, there has been such a lifting up of veil 
 after veil from the "Word of Grod ; they only gradually 
 coming into the knowledge of all the riches which in that 
 Word were their own. It were a worthy task for us to-day 
 to consider, what no doubt all of us must often have felt, 
 the way in which it has been ordained that the treasures of 
 Holy Scripture should for the individual believer be inex- 
 haustible also, — should be quarries in which he may always 
 dig, yet which he can never dig out, — a world of wisdom 
 in which the most zealous and successful searcher shall ever 
 be the readiest to acknowledge that what remains to know 
 is far more than what yet he has known. 
 
 For this is a most important need for a Book such as we 
 affirm the Bible to be, a Book for the cultivating of huma- 
 nity, for the developing, by the ministry of the Church, 
 through the teaching of the Spirit, the higher life of every 
 man in the world. It belongs to the very primal necessities 
 of a Scripture which is ordained for such ends as these, that 
 it should be thus inexhaustible ; — that no man should ever 
 come to its end, himself containing it, instead of being con- 
 tained bv it, as by something far larger than himself. The 
 (86) 
 
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OP SCRIPTURE. 87 
 
 very idea of such a Book, which is for all men and for all 
 the life of every man, is that it should have treasures which 
 it does not give up at once, secrets which it yields slowly 
 and only to those that are its intimates ; with rich waving 
 harvests on its surface, but with precious veins of metal hid- 
 den far below, and to be reached only by search and by labour. 
 Nothing were so fatal to its lasting influence, to the high 
 purposes which it is meant to serve, as for any with justice 
 to feel that he had used it up, that he had worked it through, 
 that henceforward it had no "fresh fields/' nor " pastures 
 new," in which to invite him for to-morrow. Even where 
 this did not utterly repel him, where he maintained the 
 study of this Book as a commanded duty, his chiefest delight 
 and satisfaction in the handling of it would have departed ; 
 he no longer would draw water with joy from these wells of 
 salvation, for they would be to him fresh springing wells no 
 more. 
 
 It will be my purpose on the present occasion to trace, as 
 far as I may, what there is^in the structure and conforma- 
 tion of Scripture to constitute it this Book of unsearchable 
 riches for each ; and in so doing I shall Dot, as might per- 
 haps at first sight appear, be going over again the subject 
 which was treated last; for that was the organic unfolding 
 of the Word for the Church considered as a whole ; this the 
 wealth which .there is stored for each one of the faithful in 
 particular, and which all, given to him in his Baptism, he 
 yet only little by little can make his own, appropriating and 
 transmuting it into the substance of his own life. 
 
 Now the first provision made for this by the grace and 
 wisdom of Grod, — the first at least which I would note, — is 
 one which by shallow or malignant objectors has been often 
 turned into a charge against it, I mean the absence of a sys- 
 tematic arrangement; for such is the shape which the com- 
 plaint generally assumes. But this complaint of the want 
 of method in Scripture, what is it in fact but this, that it is 
 
88 LECTURE VI. 
 
 not dead, but living ? that it is no lierharium, no hortus sic- 
 cus, but a garden ? a wilderness, if men choose to call it so, 
 but a wilderness of sweets, with its flowers upon their stalks 
 — its plants freshly growing, the dew upon their leaves, the 
 mould about their roots — with its lowly hyssops and its cedars 
 of God. And when men say that there is a want of method 
 in it, they would speak more accurately if they said that 
 there was a want of system ; for the highest method, even 
 the method of the Spirit, may reign where system there is 
 none. Method is divine, is inseparable from the ideas of 
 God and of order; but system is of man, is a help to the 
 weakness of his faculties, - is the artificial arrangement by 
 which he brings within his limited ken that which in no 
 other way he would be able to grasp as a whole. That there 
 should be books of systematic Theology — books with their 
 plan and scheme thus lying on their very surface, and meet- 
 ing us at once — this is most needful ; but most needful also 
 that Scripture should not be such a book. The dearest in- 
 terests of all, of wise men equally as of women and children, 
 demand this. 
 
 It is true that one of the latest assaults on Scripture by a 
 living adversary of the faith, by one who, at first attacking 
 only the historical accuracy of the Gospels, has since gone 
 rapidly the downward way, till he has sunk at last, as his 
 latest writings testify, into the bottomless pit of sheerest 
 atheism,* — it is true that his assault is mainly directed 
 against this very point. He demands of a book, which 
 claims to be the appointed book for the guidance and teach- 
 ing of humanity, that he should be able to lay his finger 
 there upon a precept or a doctrine for each occurring need, 
 — that he should be able to find in one place and under one 
 head all which relates to one matter ; and because he cannot 
 
 * Strauss. Compare his Leben Jesu with his Christliche Glauben- 
 slehre. 
 
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 89 
 
 find this in the Bible, he opens his mouth against it, and 
 proclaims it insufficient for the ends which it professes to 
 fulfill. But Holy Scripture is not this book for the slothful 
 — is not this book which can be interpreted without, and 
 apart from, and by the deniers of, that Holy Spirit by whom 
 it came. Bather is it a field, upon the surface of which if 
 sometimes we gather manna, easily and without labor, and 
 given, as it were, freely to our hands, yet of which also many 
 portions are to be cultivated with pains and toil, ere they 
 will yield food for the use of man. This bread of life also 
 is to be often eaten in the wholesome sweat of our brow. 
 
 It is not a defect in Scripture, it is not something which 
 is to be excused and explained away, but rather a glory and 
 a prerogative, that there reigns in it the freedom and fulness 
 of nature, and not the narrowness and strictness of art; — as 
 one said of old who adorned this University, and is yet 
 numbered among the honored band of the Cambridge Pla- 
 tonists, when speaking of the delightful exercise of the 
 highest faculties of the soul, which is thus secured : " All 
 which gratulations of the soul in her successful pursuits of 
 divine Truth would be utterly lost or prevented, if the Holy 
 Scripture set down all things so fully and methodically that 
 our reading and understanding would every where keep pace 
 together. Wherefore, that the mind of man may be worthily 
 employed, and taken up with a kind of spiritual husbandry, 
 God has not made the Scriptures like an artificial garden, 
 wherein the walks are plain and regular, the plants sorted 
 and set in order, the fruits ripe and the flowers blown, and 
 all things fully exposed to our view ; but rather like an un- 
 cultivated field, where indeed we have the ground and hidden 
 seeds of all precious things, but nothing can be brought to 
 any great beauty, order, fulness, or maturity, without our 
 industry, — nor indeed with it, unless the dew of his grace 
 descend upon it, without whose blessing this spiritual culture 
 
90 LECTURE VI. 
 
 will thrive as little as the labour of the husbandman without 
 showers of rain."* 
 
 But to pass to another branch of the subject ; — it is part 
 of this absence of system, with the presence in its stead of a 
 higher method, of this constitution of Scripture as a Book which 
 no man should ever search to the end, and then be tempted 
 to lay aside as known and finished, that so much of it should 
 be occupied with the history of lives. That which is to 
 teach us to live, is itself life — not precepts, not rules alone, 
 but these clothing themselves in the flesh and blood of action 
 and of suffering. A system of faith and duty, however in- 
 tricate, one might come to the end of at last. One might 
 possess thoroughly a Summa Theologioe, however massive 
 and piled up ; for after all, however vast, it yet has its de- 
 fined bounds and limits. But life stretches out on every side, 
 and on every side loses itself in the infinite. An Abraham, 
 a David, a Paul — there is always something incomplete in 
 the way in which we have hitherto realized their characters ; 
 they always abide greater than our conception of them, and 
 at the same time always ready to reveal themselves in some 
 new features to the loving and studious eye. Beheld in some 
 new combination, in some new grouping with those by whom 
 they are surrounded, they will yield some lesson of instruc- 
 tion which they have never yielded before. And if they, 
 how much more He, whom we are bidden above all to con- 
 sider, looking unto whom we are to run our course, and 
 whose every turn and gesture and tone and word are signifi- 
 cant for us. We might study out a system ; but how can 
 
 * Henry More, in his Mystery of Godliness, B. I., c. 2. Another 
 in our own day has expressed himself in a like manner: " Scripture 
 cannot, as it were, be mapped, or its contents catalogued ; but after 
 all our diligence to the end of our lives and to the end of the Church, 
 it must be an unexplored and unsubdued land, with heights and 
 valleys, forests and streams, on the right and left of our path, and 
 close about us, full of concealed wonders and choice treasures." 
 
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 91 
 
 we ever study out a person? And our blessedness is, that 
 Christ does not declare to us a system, and say, " This is 
 the truth ;" so doing he might have established a school : 
 but he points to a person, even to himself, and says, " I am 
 the Truth," and thus he founded, not a school, but a Church, 
 a fellowship which stands in its faith upon a person, not in 
 its tenure of a doctrine, or, at least, only mediately and in a 
 secondary sense upon this. 
 
 But another reason why the Word of God should be for 
 us this mine which shall never be worked out, is, no doubt, 
 the following : — that our own life brings out in it such new 
 and undreamt of treasures. What an interpreter of Scrip- 
 ture is affliction ! how many stars in its heaven shine out 
 brightly in the night of sorrow or of pain, which were un- 
 perceived or overlooked in the garish days of our prosperity. 
 What an enlarger of Scripture is any other outer or inner 
 event, which stirs the deeps of our hearts, which touches us 
 near to the core and centre of our lives. Trouble of spirit, 
 condemnation of conscience, pain of body, sudden danger, 
 stroug temptation — when any of these overtake us, what 
 veils do they take away, that we may see what hitherto we 
 saw not; what new domains of G-od's word do they bring 
 within our spritual ken ! How do promises, which once fell 
 flat upon our ears, become precious now; psalms become our 
 own, our heritage for ever, which before were aloof from us ! 
 How do we see things now with the eye, which, before, we 
 knew only by the hearing of the ear : which, before, men 
 had told us, but now we ourselves have found ! How much, 
 again, do we see in our riper age, which in- youth we missed 
 or passed over ! And thus, on these accounts also, the Scrip- 
 ture is well fitted to be our companion, and do us good, all 
 the years of our life.* 
 
 * Fuller. "The same man at several times may in his apprehen- 
 sion prefer several Scriptures as best, formerly most affected with 
 one place, for the present more delighted with another; and after- 
 
92 LECTURE VI. 
 
 Another provision which in it is made for awakening 
 attention, and for summoning men to penetrate more deeply 
 into its meaning, is to be found in its apparent, I need not 
 say only apparent, contradictions. But it is not at pains to 
 avoid the semblance of these. It is not careful to remove 
 every handle or objection which any might take hold of. 
 On the contrary, that saying, " Blessed is he whosoever 
 shall not be offended in me," finds as true an application to 
 Christ's Word as to his person. For that Word goes on its 
 way, not obviating every possible misconception, not giving 
 anxious pains to show how this statement which it makes 
 and that agree. It is satisfied that they do agree, and lets 
 those that are watching for an offence take it. They whose 
 hearts were already alienated from the Truth are suffered to 
 stumble at this stone, which was set for this very fall and 
 rise of many, that the thoughts of many hearts might be 
 revealed, and that they who were longing for an excuse for 
 unbelief might find one. 
 
 And with the same challenge to the false-hearted, the 
 same fruitful supply of suggestive thought for the devout 
 inquirer, these matters claiming reconciliation will meet us, 
 not in the history only, but also in the doctrine. For it is 
 ever the manner of that Word with which we have to do, 
 now boldly to declare its truth upon this side, and then pre- 
 sently to declare it as boldly and fearlessly on the other — 
 not painfully and nicely balancing, limiting, qualifying, till 
 the whole strength of its statements had evaporated, not 
 caring even though its truths should seem to jostle one 
 another. Enough that they do not do so indeed. It is con- 
 
 wards conceiving comfort therein not so clear, choose other places as 
 more pregnant and pertinent to his purpose. Thus God orders it 
 that divers men, (and perhaps the same man at divers time) make 
 use of all his gifts, gleaning and gathering comfort, as it is scattered 
 through the whole field of Scripture." 
 
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 93 
 
 tent to leave them to the Spirit to adjust and reconcile, and 
 to show how the rights of each are compatible with the 
 rights of the other — and not compatible only, but how most 
 often the one requires that the other have its rights, before 
 it can have truly its own. Thus how profitable for us that 
 we have the divers statements of St. Paul and St. James — 
 divers, but not diverse — each, in the words of St. Chrysos- 
 tom, declaring the same truth, Sta^opcoj, but not tvavtiu>$ — 
 how do they summon us to a deeper entering into the doc- 
 trine than might otherwise have been ours, bidding us not 
 to be satisfied till we reach that central point where we can 
 evidently see how the two are at one, and do but present, 
 from different points of view, the same truth. How useful 
 to find in one place that God tempted Abraham, and in 
 another, that God tempteth not any.* Should we have 
 learned so well the significance of temptation, should we have 
 been set to think about it so effectually by any other pro- 
 cess ? Or when the Lord sets before the pure-hearted, that 
 they shall see God, that God whom his Apostle declares that 
 no man hath seen nor can see,f how does this set us to me- 
 ditate on that awful yet blessed vision of God, which in 
 some sense shall be vouchsafed to his servants, even as in 
 some it shall remain incommunicable even unto them. 
 
 If indeed these difficulties had been artificially contrived, 
 if they had been puzzles and perplexities with which the 
 Bible had been sown, that it might last us the longer, that 
 in the explaining and reconciling of them we might find 
 pleasant exercise for our faculties, they would be but of 
 slightest value. But they grow out of a far deeper root 
 than this ; they have nothing thus forced and unnatural 
 about them. Bather is it here as in the kingdom of nature. 
 How often does nature seem to contradict herself, so beck- 
 
 * Compare Gen. xxii. 1, with Jam. i. 13. 
 f Compare Matt v. 8, with 1 Tim. vi. 16. 
 
94 LECTURE VI. 
 
 oning us onward to deeper investigations, till we shall have 
 reached some higher and more comprehensive law, in which 
 her seeming contradictions, those which lie upon her surface, 
 are atoned. And this because she is infinite ; for it is of the 
 essence of manifold and endless life that it should at times 
 thus present itself as at variance with its own self. It is the 
 glory of Scripture that its harmonies lie deep, so deep, that 
 to the careless or perverse ear they may be sometimes mis- 
 taken for discords. There might have been a consistency 
 of its different parts — a poor and shallow thing — lying on 
 the outside, traced easily and at once, which none could 
 miss ; but such had been of no value, had been charged 
 with no deeper instruction for us. 
 
 To look, on another side, at the manner in which Holy 
 Scripture presents itself as this inexhaustible treasure, — 
 what riches are contained in its minutest portions ! As it 
 can bear to be looked at in its largest aspect, so it challenges 
 the contemplation of its smallest details — in this again like 
 nature, which shows more wonderful, the more microscopic 
 the investigation to which it is submitted. Here truly are 
 maxima in minimis — the sun reflecting itself as faithfully 
 in the tiny dewdrop, as in the great mirror of the ocean. 
 The most eminent illustrations of this widest wealth laid up 
 in narrowest compass must naturally be found in single say- 
 ings of our Lord's. How do they shine, like finely polished 
 diamonds, upon every face ! how simple and yet how deep ! 
 apparent paradoxes, and yet profoundest truths ! Every one 
 can get something from them, and no one can get all. He 
 that gathers little has enough, and he that gathers much has 
 nothing over : every one gathers there according to his eat- 
 ing.* For example, " Whosoever will save his life shall 
 
 * Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. ciii.) making spiritual application of 
 the words, " All beasts of the field drink thereof," (Ps. civ. 11,) to 
 the streams of Holy Scripture, beautifully says : Inde bibit lepus, 
 
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 95 
 
 lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall 
 find it ;" — who sees not that in these words the keys of 
 heaven and of hell are put into his hands ? and yet who will 
 venture to affirm that he has come to their end ? that he has 
 dived down into all their deeps, or that he ever expects to 
 do so ? that he has made altogether his own the mysteries 
 of life and of death which are here ? Or again, " Every 
 one that exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that hum- 
 bleth himself shall be exalted ?' — what is all the history of 
 the world, if read aright, but a comment on, and a confirma- 
 tion of, these words ? In the light of them what vast pages 
 of men's destinies, of our own lives, become clear ! Even 
 the sceptic Bayle was compelled to call them an abridgement 
 of all human history ; and such they are, setting us as they 
 do at the very centre of the moral oscillation of the world. 
 These examples of that, whereof hundreds might be ad- 
 duced, must suffice. 
 
 Nor is it only what Scripture says, but its very silence, 
 which is instructive for us. It was said by one wise man 
 of another, that more might be learned from his questions 
 than from another man's answers. With yet higher truth 
 might it be said that the silence of Scripture is oftentimes 
 more instructive than the speech of other books ; so that it 
 
 in de onager: lepus parvus et onager magnus ; lepus timidus, et 
 onager ferus, uterque inde bibit, sed quisque in sitim mam. Non 
 dicit aqua, Lepori sufficio et repellit onagrum: neque hoc dicit, 
 Onager accedat, lepus si accesserit, rapietur. Tarn fideliter et tem- 
 perate fluit, ut sic onagrum satiet ne leporem terreat. Sonat stre- 
 pitus vocis Tulliange, Cicero legitur, aliquis liber est, dialogus ejus 
 est, sive ipsius sive Platonis, seu cujuscumque talium : audiunt im- 
 periti, infirmi minoris cordis, quis audet illuc aspirare ? Strepitus 
 aquae et forte turbatse, certe tamen tarn rapaciterfluentis, ut animal 
 timidum non audeat accedere et bibere. Cui sonuit, In principio 
 fecit Deus ccelum et terram, et non ausus est bibere ? Cui sonat 
 Psalmus, et dicat, Multum est ad me ? 
 
96 LECTURE VI. 
 
 has been likened to "a dial in which the shadow as well as 
 the light informs us."* For example of this, how full of 
 meaning to us that we have nothing told us of the life of 
 our blessed Lord between the twelfth and the thirtieth years 
 — how significant the absolute silence which the Gospels 
 maintain concerning all that period ; that those years in fact 
 have no history, nothing for the sacred writers to record. 
 How much is implied herein ! the calm ripening of his hu- 
 man powers, — the contentedness to wait, — the long prepara- 
 tion in secret, before he began his open ministry. What a 
 testimony is here, if we will note it aright, against all our 
 striving and snatching at hasty results, our impatience, our 
 desire to glitter before the world; against all which tempts 
 so many to pluck the unripe fruits of their minds, and to 
 turn that into the season of a stunted and premature harvest, 
 which should have been the season of patient sowing, of an 
 earnest culture and a silent ripening of their powers. 
 
 How pregnant with meaning may that be which appears 
 at first sight only an accidental omission ! Such an acci- 
 dental omission it might at first sight appear that the Prodi 
 gal, who while yet in a far country had determined, among 
 other things* which he would say to his father, to say, "Make 
 me as one of thy hired servants/' when he reaches his fath- 
 er's feet, when he hangs on his father's neck, says all the 
 rest which he had determined, but says not this.f We 
 might take this, at first, for a fortuitous omission ; but in- 
 deed what deep things are taught us here ! This desire to 
 be made as a hired servant, this wish to be kept at a certain 
 distance, this refusal to reclaim the fulness of a child's 
 
 * Boyle (Style of Holy Scripture :) "There is such fulness in that 
 book, that oftentimes it says much by saying nothing ; and not only 
 its expressions, but its silences are teaching, like a dial in which 
 the shadow as well as the light informs us." 
 
 f Compare in Luke xv. ver. 19 and 21. 
 
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 97 
 
 privileges, was the one turbid and troubled element in his 
 repentance. How instructive then its omission ; — that, say- 
 ing all else which he had meditated, he yet says not this. 
 What a lesson for every penitent, — in other words, for every 
 man. We may learn from this wherein the true growth in 
 faith and in humility consists — how he that has grown in 
 these can endure to be fully and freely blest — to accept all, 
 even when he most strongly feels that he has forfeited all; 
 that only pride and the surviving workings of self-righteous 
 ness and evil stand in the way of a reclaiming of every 
 blessing, which the sinner had lost, but which God is waiting 
 and willing to restore. 
 
 Many other of the apparent accidents of Scripture, on 
 what deep grounds do they rest ! Thus, for example, in the 
 history of Pharaoh's trial, that God should ten times be 
 said to have hardened his heart, and he ten times to have 
 hardened his own, or to have had it hardened, without any 
 reference to other than himself. The least attentive reader 
 will scarcely have failed to observe this hardening attributed 
 sometimes to God, and, sometimes, more or less directly, 
 traced to the king's own willfulness and pride. But in the 
 history of that great strife between the will of God and the 
 will of his creature, in this the pattern history of that strug- 
 gle, such exactly equal distribution of the language which 
 assumes the freedom of man's will, and that which assumes 
 the ultimate lordship of God over the course of the world — 
 a lordship which even the resistance of the wicked does not 
 derange or impugn — this exactly equal distribution of either 
 language is surely most remarkable. The great, however 
 mysterious, fact of the freedom of man's will going hand in 
 hand with the sovereignty of God is not put in question by 
 an exclusive use of a language resting on or assuming one 
 of these truths or the other — nay rather, exactly equal rights 
 are given to them both; for both are true, both of para- 
 mount importance to be affirmed. The sinner does harden 
 
 9 
 
98 LECTURE VI. 
 
 his own heart; his resistance to God is most real; and yet 
 there is a sense, a most true sense also, in which God har- 
 dens it ; for, to use the old distinction, He who is not the 
 auctor is yet the dispositor malorum — determines that the 
 evil of the sinner shall break out in this form or in that, 
 works even the dark threads of that resistance into the woof 
 of providence which He is weaving; and as Solomon, in 
 Jewish legend, compelled the wicked spirits to assist in the 
 temple which he was building, so does God compel even his 
 enemies, and them, when they are striving most fiercely 
 against Him, to do his work, though they mean not so, and 
 to contribute their stones to that heavenly temple of which 
 He is the builder and the maker. 
 
 Neither let us leave out of sight, when we are taking into 
 account the provision which Scripture makes for nourishing 
 the faithful in all the stages of their spiritual life and growth, 
 that infinite condescension, according to which, like the 
 prophet who made himself small, that he might stretch him- 
 self, limb for limb, upon the dead child, it, in some sort, 
 contracts itself to our littleness,* that we, in return, may be- 
 come able to expand ourselves to its greatness. We see 
 this gracious condescension in nothing more strongly than 
 in that teaching by parables and similitudes, which there 
 occupies so prominent a place. No one ttirns away from 
 them in pride, as too childish ; none retreat from them in 
 despair, as too high. In the parable the truth of God is 
 not sought to be transplanted, as a full-grown tree, into our 
 minds ; for, as such, it would never take root and flourish ; 
 we never could find room for it there. But it comes first as 
 a seed, a germ — small to the small, but with capacities of 
 indefinite expansion ; it grows with our growth, enlarging 
 
 * Or as one said in the middle ages ; Tota sacra Scriptura loqui- 
 tur nobis tanquam balbutiendo, sicut mater balbutiens cum filio suo 
 parvulo, qui, aliter non potest intelligere verba ejus. 
 
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 99 
 
 the mind which receives it to something of its own dimen- 
 sions. Little by little the image reveals itself more fully ) 
 gome of its fitnesses are perceived at once, and more and 
 more, as spiritual insight advances; all of them perhaps 
 never, lying as they do so deep, and having their roots in 
 the mind of God, who has constituted this outward world 
 to be an exponent of the inner, a garment of mysterious 
 texture which his creative thoughts have woven for them- 
 selves. But for this very reason, we come back again and 
 again to these divinely chosen similitudes with fresh interest, 
 with new delight, being continually rewarded with glimpses, 
 unperceived before, of the strange and manifold relations, 
 in which the visible and the invisible stand to>x)ne another. 
 
 Thus, brethren, have I endeavoured to present to you this 
 day a few of the aspects under which this Word of the Scrip- 
 ture may be contemplated as one fitted evermore to provoke, 
 and evermore to reward, our inquiries. As one said of old, 
 Habet Scrvptura Sacra haustus jprimos, habet secundos, habet 
 tertios. There is, indeed, a tone and temper of spirit, in 
 which if we allow ourselves, all its wells will seem dry, and 
 all its fields barren. The superficial dealer with this Word, 
 he who reads, formally fulfilling an unwelcome task, he who 
 feels in no living relation with the things which he reads, 
 who consults the oracle, but expects no living answer from 
 its lips, who has never known himself a pilgrim of eternity, 
 to whom life has never, like that fabled Sphinx, presented 
 riddles which either he must solve, or, not solving, must 
 perish, — such a one may say, as in his heart he will say, 
 What is this Word more than another ? It may bring to 
 him no other feelings but those of tedious monotony and 
 inexpressible weariness. But with the loving and earnest 
 seeker it will prove far otherwise : he will ever be making 
 new discoveries in these spiritual heavens ; ever to him will 
 what seemed at first but a light vaporous cloud, upon closer 
 
100 LECTURE VI. 
 
 gaze, to his armed eye, resolve itself into a world of stars. 
 The faxther he advances, the more will he be aware that 
 what lies before him is far more than what lies behind — the 
 readier will he be to take up his hymn of praise and thanks- 
 giving, and to wonder with the Apostle at "the depths 
 of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God" 
 which are displayed at once in his works and in his 
 Word. 
 
LECTURE VII. 
 
 THE FRUITEULNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 EZEKIEL XL VII. 9. 
 
 And it shall come, to pass, that every thing that liveth, which moveth, 
 whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live. 
 
 The aspect of my subject, which I desire this day to 
 bring under your notice is this, namely, the fruitfulness of 
 Holy Scripture ; in other words the manner in which it has 
 shown itself a germ of life in all the noblest regions of 
 man's activity ; has with its productive energy impregnated 
 the world; and how, to use the image suggested by my 
 text, every thing has lived where these healing waters 
 have come ; so that in this way, too, this Word has attested 
 itself that which in my preceding lectures I have endea- 
 voured to prove that it was fitted for being, that which we 
 might beforehand presume it would be, namely, the unfolder 
 of all the nobler and higher life of the world. And these 
 are considerations which will suit as well at a period of these 
 discourses, when they are drawing nigh to their conclusion. 
 For it were to little profit to have shown how the Scripture 
 ought to have been all this, how it was fitted for being all 
 this, unless it could be shown also that it had been ; unless 
 we could point to the world's history in evidence that it 
 had done that, which we say it was adapted for doing. 
 "The blind see, the lepers are cleansed, the dead are 
 raised;" — it was to these mighty works that Christ appealed 
 in answer to the question, " Art thou He that should come, 
 or look we for another ?" And this is the true answer to 
 every misgiving question of a like kind. The real evidence 
 for aught which comes claiming to be from God, is its 
 
 9* (101) 
 
102 LECTURE VII. 
 
 power — the power which it is able to put forth for blessing 
 and for healing. If the Scriptures manifested no such 
 power, all other evidence for their divine origin, howevor 
 convincing we might think it ought to be, yet practically it 
 would fail to convince. Men will not live on the report 
 that aught is great or true, unless they so see it and so find 
 it themselves. But if they do, no assertion on the part of 
 others that it is small, will prevail to make them count 
 light of it. For a moment the confident assertions of gain- 
 sayers may perplex, or even seriously injure, their faith : 
 but presently it will resume its hold and its empire again. 
 
 Thus it has been well and memorably said, that the great 
 and standing evidence for Christianity is Christendom \ and 
 it was with good reason, and out of a true feeling of this, 
 that Origen and other early apologists of the Faith, albeit 
 they had not such a full-formed Christendom as we have to 
 appeal to, did yet, when the adversaries boasted of their 
 Apollonius and other such shadowy personages, and sought to 
 set them up as rivals and competitors of the Lord of glory, 
 make answer by demanding, " "What became of these men ? 
 what significance had they for the world's after develop- 
 ment ? what have they bequeathed to show that they and 
 their appearance lay deep in the mind and counsel of G-od ? 
 what society did they found ? where is there a fellowship of 
 living men gathered in their name ? or where any mighty 
 footmarks left upon the earth to witness that greater than 
 mortals have trodden it Y' And the same answer is good, 
 when it is transferred to the books which at any time have 
 made ungrounded claim to be divine records, and as such, 
 to stand upon a level with the Canonical Scriptures ; and 
 which sometimes even in our day are brought forward in 
 the hope of confounding the Canonical in a common dis- 
 credit with them. We in the same way make answer, Is 
 there not a difference ? besides all other condemnation 
 under which they lie, besides the absence of historic attest- 
 
THE TRUITFULNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 103 
 
 ation, and the want of inward religious meaning and aim, 
 are they not self-condemned, in their utter insignificance — 
 in their barrenness — in the entire oblivion into which they 
 have fallen — in. the fact, in short, that nothing has come of 
 them ? What men have they moulded ? what stamp or 
 impress have they left of themselves upon the world ? 
 Where is there a society, or even a man, that appeals to 
 them or lives by them ? 
 
 Thus, let any one acquainted with the apocryphal gospels, 
 compare them for an instant with the sacred Four which we 
 recognise and receive. It is not merely that there is an 
 inward difference between these and those, which would be 
 characterized not too strongly as a difference like that which 
 finds place between stately forest-trees and the low tangled 
 brushwood which springs up under their shadow ; it is not 
 merely that those spurious gospels are evermore revolting 
 to the religious sense, abandoning earth without soaring to 
 heaven j robbing the person of Christ of its human features, 
 without lending to it any truly divine; ever mistaking size 
 for greatness, and the monstrous for the miraculous. It is 
 not this only, but the contrast is at least as remarkable in 
 this respect, that while the Canonical Gospels have been so 
 fruitful, from those other nothing has sprung : while the 
 Canonical have been as germs unfolding themselves end- 
 lessly; winged seeds endued with a vital energy, which, 
 where they have lighted, have taken root downward and 
 sprung upward; those other might be likened to the chaff 
 borne about by the winds of chance, having no reproductive 
 powers; owing their origin to obscure heretical sects, never 
 extricating themselves from those narrow circles in which 
 they first were born; and, save only as literary curiosities, 
 with the perishing of those sects themselves perishing for 
 ever. They have remained as dry sticks, as the barren rods 
 which refused to blossom, — and as such not to abide in the 
 sanctuary. (Numb, xvii.) -But the Canonical Gospels have 
 
104 LECTURE VII. 
 
 witnessed for themselves, as did Aaron's rod, when it 
 budded and clothed itself with leaves and blossoms and 
 almonds. They too, blossomiDg and budding, have borne 
 witness to themselves, and to their right to be laid up in 
 the very Ark of the Testimony for ever. For it is not the 
 authority and decision of the Church which has made the 
 Canonical Gospels potent, and the apocryphal impotent, 
 those fruitful and these sterile ; rather that decision is the 
 formal acknowledgment of a fact, which was a fact before ; 
 a submission to authority, to the authority of the Spirit 
 witnessing to and discerning that Word which is the Lord's ; 
 this, rather than any exercising of authority. That decision 
 was the spiritual instinct of the Church recognizing and 
 setting her seal to a fact which was a fact before — namely, 
 that these were false and those true ; she distinguished thus 
 the chaff from the corn, but it was not her decision which 
 had any thing to do with making these to be chaff and 
 those wheat. 
 
 It is the task which I propose to myself to-day, to con- 
 sider a few aspects under which the Scriptures have thus 
 shown themselves strong; have approved themselves quick- 
 eners of the spiritual and intellectual life of men ; although 
 here, in treating such a subject as this, one is tempted, as 
 more than once has been my lot, to start back at the great- 
 ness of the theme, the vastness of knowledge of all kinds 
 which to handle it worthily would require the fragmentary 
 nature of aught which, even were the knowledge possessed? 
 one could hope within the limits of a single discourse to 
 present. As the matter, however, may not be passed by, I 
 will seek to present to you one or two reflections, in the hope 
 that they may be only as the first thoughts of a more fruit- 
 ful series which your own minds will suggest. 
 
 And, perhaps one of the first which suggests itself, is 
 this, namely, how productive the Holy Scriptures have 
 been, even in regions of inward life and activity, where, at 
 
THE FRUITFULNESS OP SCRIPTURE. 105 
 
 first sight, one would least have expected it, where we 
 should have been tempted, for many reasons, to anticipate 
 exactly opposite effects. How many things Christianity 
 might, at first sight, have threatened to leave out, to take 
 no note of, or indeed utterly to suppress, which, so far from 
 really warring against, it has raised to higher perfection 
 than ever in the old world they had attained. With what 
 despair, for example, a lover of art, one who at Athens or 
 at Rome fondly had dwelt among the beautiful creations of 
 poet and of painter, would have contemplated the rise of 
 the new religion, and the authority which its doctrines were 
 acquiring over the hearts and spirits of men. What a 
 death-knell must he have heard in this to all in which his 
 soul so greatly delighted. He might have been ready, 
 perhaps, to acknowledge that our human life under this 
 new teaching, would be more rigorously earnest, more 
 severe, more pure : but all its grace and its beauty, all 
 which it borrowed of these from the outer world, he would 
 have concluded, had been laid under a ban, and must now 
 vanish for ever. This was evidently, in great part, the 
 cause of the unhappy Julian's mislike of the rising faith — 
 of his alienation from it, as of that of many other heathens, 
 like-minded with him. It is true, their hostility lay much 
 deeper than this, that it grew out of a far bitterer root. 
 But this was evidently one of their griefs against the doc- 
 trine of the Nazarene. They could not consent to lose the 
 grace and beauty of the Hellenistic worship : all art seemed 
 inextricably linked and bound up with the forms of the 
 old religion, and, if that perished, inevitably doomed to 
 perish with it : and so they resisted while they could ; and 
 when they could resist no longer, they sat down and made 
 passionate lamentation at the grave of the old world, which 
 all their lamentations could not call back to life ; instead 
 of rejoicing at the birth and by the cradle of the new, with 
 which indeed all the hopes of the future were bound up. 
 
106 LECTURE VII. 
 
 And the Christian himself of those earliest ages might 
 almost have consented to take the same views — even as we 
 do find a Tertullian, and others of his temper, actually 
 doing : nor in this was he at all to be wondered at, least of 
 all did he deserve the sneers with which the infidel historian 
 of the later empire has, on this account, visited him. His 
 exaggerations were only those into which a man of strong 
 moral earnestness might most naturally have fallen. So had 
 all skill and device of poet and of painter engaged then in 
 the service of the flesh, so did they do exclusive homage to 
 the old idolatries, so deeply polluted, for the most part, were 
 they, so far sunken with a sunken moral world, that the 
 Christian neophyte, when he renounced, in his baptismal vow, 
 all pomps of the devil, might easily have deemed that these 
 were certainly included ; and that to forego them wholly and 
 for ever, was his one duty, his only safety. 
 
 How little, at any rate, could one or the other, could friend 
 or foe of the nascent faith, have forecast that out of it, — that, 
 nourished by the Christian books, by the great thoughts 
 which Christ set stirring in humanity, and of which these 
 books kept a lasting record, there should unfold itself a 
 poetry infinitely greater, an art infinitely higher, than any 
 which the old world had seen; — that this faith, which looked 
 so rigid, so austere, even so forbidding, should clothe itself in 
 forms of grace and loveliness, such as men had never dreamt 
 of before f that poetry should not be henceforward the play 
 of the spirit, but its holiest earnest; and those skilless 
 Christian hymns, those hymns " to Christ as to God," of 
 which Pliny speaks, so rude probably in regard of form, 
 should yet be the preludes of strains higher than the world 
 had listened to yet. Or, who would have supposed that those 
 artless paintings of the catacombs had the prophecy in them 
 of more wondrous compositions than men's eyes had ever seen 
 — or that a day should arrive when, above many a dark vault 
 and narrow crypt, where now the Christian worshippers 
 
THE FRUITFULNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 107 
 
 gathered in secret, should arise domes and cathedrals, 
 embodying loftier ideas, because ideas relating to the eternal 
 and the infinite, than all those Grecian temples, which now 
 stood so fair and so strong, but which yet aimed not to lift 
 men's minds from the earth which they adorned. 
 
 How little would the one or other, would Christian or 
 heathen have presaged such a future as this — that art was 
 not to perish, but only to be purified and redeemed from the 
 service of the flesh, and from whatever was clinging to and 
 hindering it from realizing its true glory, — and that this 
 book, which does not talk about such matters, which does not 
 make beauty, but holiness, its end and aim — should yet be 
 the truest nourisher of all out of which any genuine art ever 
 has proceeded ; the truest fosterer of beauty, in that it is the 
 nourisher of the affections, the sustainer of the relations 
 between God and men; which affections and which relations 
 are indeed the only root out of which any poetry or art 
 worthy of the name, ever have sprung. For these affections 
 being laid waste, those relations being broken, art is first 
 stricken with barrenness, and then, in a little while, withers 
 and pines and dies — as that ancient art, which had been so 
 fertile while faith survived, was, when the church was born, 
 already withering and dying under the influence of the skep- 
 ticism, the profligacy, the decay of family and national life, 
 the extinction of religious faith, which so eminently marked 
 the time : only having a name to live, resting merely on the 
 traditions of an earlier age, and on the eve of utter dissolu- 
 tion. Such was its condition when Christ came, and cast 
 in his Word, as that which should make all things new, into 
 the midst of an old and decrepit and worn-out world. 
 
 Yet here it may be as well to observe that when I use this 
 language, it is not as assuming that the Bible, merely as a 
 book apart had done, or could have done, this, or aught else 
 whereof presently there may be occasion to speak — not as 
 though the book had been cast into the world and had leavened 
 
108 LECTURE VII. 
 
 it, itself the sole and all-sufficient gift which Christ had 
 bequeathed unto men. Rather, the Spirit, the Word, and 
 the church are the three mighty factors which have wrought 
 together for the great and glorious issue of a Christendom 
 such as that in the midst of which we now stand. The 
 church, taught and enlightened by the Spirit, unfolds and 
 lays out the Word, and only as it is informed and quickened 
 by that blessed Spirit of God, can lay it out for the healing 
 of the nations. We cannot think of this book by itself 
 doing the work, any more than we can think of the church 
 doing it without this book, or of the two doing it together 
 without the ever-present breath of an Almighty Spirit. 
 
 But while this work is thus the result of a three-fold 
 energy; while we can never, so long as we think correctly, 
 separate one of its factors, save for distinction's sake, from 
 the others; while therefore speaking of the Scripture and 
 what it has wrought, we must ever conceive of it as in the 
 possession of a living body of interpreters, the company of 
 the faithful, and of them as enlightened by the Holy Spirit 
 to use it aright ; yet not the less may I ask you to contem- 
 plate the mighty work of the world's regeneration in those 
 features upon which the influences of a Scripture are mainly 
 traceable, to note the part which this scripture has borne in 
 bringing about that new creation, wherein the old things of 
 the world have passed away, and all things have become 
 new. 
 
 For, without running into the tempting error of painting 
 the old world black, for the purpose of bringing out, as by 
 a dark back-ground, the brightness and glory of the new ; 
 without denying to that old world what it had of noble and 
 true, or calling, as some have done, its virtues merely showy 
 and splendid sins ; yet it is not easy to estimate how much was 
 to be done, how much to be undone, ere a Christendom, even 
 such as we behold it now, could emerge out of that world 
 which alone yielded the materials out of which the new 
 
THE FRUITFULNESS OP SCRIPTURE 7 . 109 
 
 creation should be composed. The word of the Cross had 
 need, as a mighty leaven, to penetrate through every inter- 
 stice of society, leavening language, and laws, and literature, 
 and institutions, and manners. For it was not merely that 
 at that change the world changed its religion, but in that 
 change was implied the transformation, little by little, of 
 every thing besides; every thing else had need to reconstruct 
 itself afresh. And in this Word there resided a power equal 
 to this need. The pattern of Christ, kept in the record of 
 Scripture, ever clear in all its distinctness of outline before 
 men's eyes, his work thus ever repeating itself for them over 
 again, has given, as we ourselves see and feel, a new, inas- 
 much as it is infinitely higher, standard of ideal goodness 
 to the world — has cast down usurping pretenders to the 
 name of virtues from their seats, has lifted up despised 
 graces in their room. That Word has every where given to 
 us graces for virtues, and martyrs for heroes; it has so 
 reversed men's estimate of greatness, that a wreath of thorns 
 is felt to be a far worthier ornament for a brow than a 
 diadem of jewels — a Christ upon his cross to be a spectacle 
 more glorious far than a Csesar on his throne. 
 
 From that Word, too, we have derived such a sense of 
 the duties of relation, of the debt of love which every man 
 owes to every other, as was altogether strange to the heathen 
 world. For when, in that well known story, the poet awoke 
 shouts of a tumultuous applause by declaring nothing 
 human alien from himself who was a man, deep as was the 
 feeling in men's hearts which was here appealed to, yet in 
 those very shouts of applause, it was declared to be as new 
 as it was deep. In those was the joyful recognition of a 
 truth which lay deep in every man's bosom, but which had 
 not taken form or shape or found utterance until then. Yet, 
 with all our practical shortcomings in love to our brethren, 
 how different is the condition marked by this little incident 
 from ours, in which this noble utterance of the Roman poet 
 
 10 
 
110 LECTURE VII. 
 
 is felt to be so true as hardly to escape from being a truism ; 
 and the love which men owe to one another on the score of 
 their common stock, is so taken for granted, and the idea of 
 it has so penetrated even into our common speech, that kind 
 and kinned, human and humane, are, with us, but different 
 pronunciations of the same words. 
 
 And, at least as wonderful, at least as fruitful, is the 
 incoming of the Word of Christ, not into the midst of an 
 old and corrupt civilization, but when it kindles for the first 
 time a savage people into life. How does it seem to brood 
 with a creative warmth and energy over all the rudiments 
 of a higher life, which lays in that people's bosom, and yet 
 but for this never could have come to the birth, rather were 
 in danger of utterly dying out. How does it arrest at once 
 that centrifugal progress of sin, which is ever drawing the 
 men or the nations that have wandered out of the sphere of 
 the divine attraction, farther and farther from God, the true 
 centre of their being. Tribes which were in danger of 
 letting go the last remnant of their spiritual heritage, nay, 
 of utterly and literally perishing from the face of the earth, 
 victims of their own vices, and of that uttermost degradation 
 which had caused them at length to let go even those lowest 
 arts by which animal existence is sustained, even these, that 
 Word finds, even in these nurses up the dying embers of 
 life; till the savage re-awakens to the consciousness of a 
 man, and the horde begins, however feebly at first, to knit 
 itself into the promise of a nation. 
 
 There may be spectacles which attract us more, there may 
 be tidings to which we listen with a keener interest, but 
 surely there can be no tidings worthier to be listened to, no 
 spectacle upon which angels look down with a livelier sym- 
 pathy, than those which such a land and time will often 
 present; when, it may be, some grey -beard chief, stained in 
 times past with a thousand crimes, but now having washed 
 away them all in the waters of baptism, hangs upon the words 
 
THE FRUITFULNESS OP SCRIPTURE. Ill 
 
 of life, makes himself, perhaps, the humble willing scholar 
 of some little child, that he may learn to read with his own 
 eyes of that Saviour who has pardoned even him. And ever, 
 as he reads of " the gentleness of Christ/' of his prayers for 
 his crucifiers, of Him who, being first, made himself the 
 last, who, being Lord of all, became servant of all, there 
 dawns upon him more and more the glory of meekness, of 
 over coming evil with good, of serving others in love, 
 instead of being himself served in fear : and he understands 
 that this only is truly to live, and all which he has lived 
 contrary to this, has been not life, but a hideous denial of 
 life. Such sights other days have seen ; such are to be seen 
 in our own : for, blessed be Grod, it is not our fathers only 
 who have told us of such things done in their times of old, 
 but our own report the same. We too, " see our tokens." 
 In New Zealand, in the far islands of the Pacific, we have 
 proof that this Word is yet mighty, through Grod, for cast- 
 ing down the strong holds of Satan and of sin. 
 
 Nor needs it to look thus far abroad to be reminded of 
 what this Word has done. The Scripture itself is full of 
 remembrances of its own power. He who, tolerably ac- 
 quainted with the past history of the Church, with the 
 struggles which accompanied the unfolding, fixing, and 
 vindicating of her dogma, — he who, furnished with this 
 knowledge, passes over Scripture, may in some moods of 
 his mind pass over it as over a succession of battle fields. 
 He may be likened to a traveller journeying through some 
 land, which, by the importance of its position, or the great- 
 ness of its attractions, has drawn contending hosts to its 
 soil, and been a battle ground for innumerable generations. 
 Besides in all those pages which speak more directly to 
 himself, they are eloquent to him with a thousand stirring 
 recollections. For at every step which he advances, he 
 recognises that which has been the motive of some mighty 
 and long-drawn conflict, in which the keenest and brightest 
 
112 LECTURE Vn. 
 
 intellects, the kingliest spirits, the Bernards and the Abelards 
 of their day, were engaged. Here, there, and every where, 
 be it that he wanders among the extinguished volcanoes of 
 controversies which have now burned themselves out, or among 
 those which are naming still, he meets with that, to main- 
 tain their conviction about which, men have been content to 
 spend their lives, to make shipwreck of their worldly hopes, 
 have dwelt in deserts, in caves, and in dungeons, yea, gladly 
 have encountered all from which nature most, and most natu- 
 rally shrinks. And whatever there may have been of earthly 
 and of carnal mingling in the motives of the combatants, 
 however in some of them he can recognise only the cham- 
 pions of error, yet in these mighty and passionate strivings, 
 in these conflicts which generation has bequeathed to gene- 
 ration, he reads the confession which all past ages have 
 borne, that this Word was worth contending for, — being 
 felt by those worthiest to judge, dearer than life itself, and 
 such that things else were cheap by comparison with it. 
 
 Strange, too, that even where there have not been these 
 stirring excitements, where there has been no trumpet-peal 
 sounding in men's ears, and summoning them to do battle 
 for some perilled truth, that even here, too, multitudes of 
 men should have been well pleased to employ their lives 
 in learning themselves better to understand, in seeking to 
 make others understand better, this one Book — should have 
 counted those lives worthily spent, and all other wisdom 
 and knowledge then only to have found their true meaning 
 and destination, when doing service as of handmaids unto 
 it. For vast as is the apparatus of helps of all kinds which 
 have accumulated round such other books as are signal 
 monuments of human intellect and power ; many as we find 
 well satisfied to be nothing as independent laborers in the 
 fields of knowledge, content to be only ministrant to the 
 better understanding of this author or that book ; yet are 
 these taken altogether few and insignificant beside those 
 
THE FRUITFULNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 113 
 
 that have thus felt in regard of the one Book with which 
 we have to do. Surely the spectacle of any great library, 
 and of the volumes there which stand in immediate relation 
 to this one, with the certainty, that so long as the world 
 stands, they will go on accumulating and multiplying, must 
 to a thoughtful mind suggest many meditations of what 
 the meaning and significance of that one must be, and the 
 manner in which it must set in motion the minds of men. 
 Nor will he, in estimating this, fail to call to mind that, 
 those which stand in direct relation to that Volume, which 
 bear upon the front that they are thus connected with it, 
 multitudinous past all count as they seem, are yet but a 
 small fraction of those which owe to this one all which is 
 most characteristic in them — their impulse, their motive, 
 their form, their spirit ; that all modern European literature 
 is there as in its germ ; that even the works which seem to 
 stand remotest from it, least to own a fealty to it, do yet 
 pay to it the unconscious, it may be the unwilling homage 
 of being wholly different from what they would have been, 
 — had they indeed at all existed, — without it. 
 
 Such, brethren, are a few aspects under which I would 
 ask you to consider how the Holy Scriptures have justified 
 themselves by the effects which they have brought about, 
 by the mighty deeds which they have done j showing them- 
 selves seeds of life, leaven of power in the world. And I 
 should be untrue to my position here, did I conclude with- 
 out asking you to make personal application of the things 
 which you have heard to yourselves. This Word which has 
 thus been fruitful every where, which has supplied what was 
 lacking and healed what was sick, and revived what was 
 ready to die, will it be less effectual in us, if only we receive 
 it aright ? This, which has made so much else, like the dry 
 rod of Aaron, to blossom and to bud, will it not be as potent 
 in our hearts, till they too are clothed with foliage and fruits 
 
 10* 
 
114 LECTURE VII 
 
 and flowers which are not naturally their own ? Shall we 
 say, "lama dry tree," when we might be as trees planted 
 by rivers of water, which should not fear the drought of the 
 desert, nor see when the heat cometh ? All things have 
 lived whithersoever these waters which issue from the sanc- 
 tuary have come. Shall not our hearts live also, until we 
 too have like reason with the Psalmist for prizing these tes- 
 timonies of God, even because with them He has quickened 
 -us? 
 
LECTURE VIII. 
 
 THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Revelation VI. 2. 
 
 Conquering and to Conquer. 
 
 An earlier lecture in this present course was dedicated to 
 the manner in which Holy Scripture had, little by little, laid 
 bare its treasures to the Church ; and in my very latest I 
 had occasion to speak of the victories which the Truth had won 
 and was winning still — the way in which the word of the 
 Scripture was vindicating itself to be all that it claimed to be, 
 showing itself mighty, through God, for doing its appointed 
 work ; how, like the personal Word, it had ridden forth and was 
 riding yet, a victorious conqueror over the earth. It remains 
 to consider, and with this consideration we shall fitly con- 
 clude our subject, in what way it is likely to approve itself 
 a conqueror to the end ; what preparations we can trace in 
 it for meeting the future evils of the world, the future needs 
 of the Church; how far we may suppose that this Book, 
 which has revealed so much, may yet have much more to 
 reveal. 
 
 And this is our confidence, that as the Scripture has suf- 
 ficed for the past, so also it will suffice for the time to come ; 
 that it has resources adequate to meet all demands which 
 may be made on it; that it has in reserve whatsoever any 
 new conditions of the world, — any new shapes of evil, any 
 new, if they be righteous, cravings of the spirits of men, — ■ 
 may require. We believe that as the Scripture is an armory 
 in which the Church has found weapons for all past conflicts, 
 so will it find them there for all which are yet to come — 
 
 (115) 
 
118 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 conflicts, which, it may he, we as little forecast or dream of 
 now, as we do of the weapons which are ready wrought in 
 this armory for bringing them to a glorious termination; 
 and the weapons, too, themselves being oftentimes such, that 
 they who were by God employed to forge them, while they 
 knew that they would serve present needs, yet hardly 
 knew, perhaps knew not at all, what remote purposes they 
 should also serve, to what great ulterior purposes they should 
 one day be turned. Yet thus, no doubt, it shall be : for 
 just as in works of man's mind, talent knows all which it 
 means, but genius, which is nearer akin to inspiration, 
 means much more than it consciously knows; even so wise 
 men and prophets and evangelists, who were used for the 
 uttering of this Word, knowiDg much of that which they 
 spake and recorded, yet meant still more than they knew — 
 the Holy Ghost guiding and shaping their utterances, and 
 causing them oftentimes to declare deeper things, and things 
 of wider reach and of more manifold utility, than even they 
 themselves, enlarged and enlightened by that Spirit as they 
 were, were conscious of the while. That which they spake 
 being central Truth, presented a front, not merely to the 
 lies of their day, not merely to the falsehood which they dis- 
 tinctly had in their minds to encounter, but presents a front 
 to every later lie as well ; and so we have entire confidence 
 that the Truth being ever, in the language of Bacon, "a hill 
 not to be commanded," the same those Scriptures, which 
 are Scriptures of very truth, shall show themselves — a hill 
 which shall never be commanded, bnt which rather shall 
 itself command all other heights and eminences of the spiri- 
 tual and intellectual world. However high these tower, this 
 Word will always have heights which tower above them all; 
 judging all things, it will be judged of none; itself the 
 measure of all, no other thing will bring a measure unto it. 
 
 We can indeed guess but uncertainly what may be the 
 future unrolling of the world's history — what anti-christian 
 
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 117 
 
 forms of society may rise up for the moment seeming to 
 keep their promise, consecrating the flesh, breaking down 
 the walls of separation between the holy and profane, mak- 
 ing all profane while they pretend to make all holy — what 
 master-works of Satan, his latest and crowning forms of 
 opposition to the Truth. Or, again, we can only uncertainly 
 apprehend what heresies may appear, subtler and more 
 attractive even than any which the world has yet beheld — 
 coming with greater semblance of holiness, and well-nigh 
 causing even the elect to fail. But our reliance in this 
 "Word and the revelation of the Name of God which is there, 
 is this, that out of it the Church will be able to refute those 
 heresies — by the help of its warnings and intimations to 
 detect and to defy the attractions of Antichrist, even when 
 he comes with all the lying wonders, and in all the false 
 glory of his kingdom. 
 
 For while it is hard for us to say what may be the exact 
 forms of those future evils, while we cannot discern accu- 
 rately beforehand the lineaments and proportions of these 
 latest monstrous shapes which shall ascend from the pit, — 
 as neither would this foreknowledge profit us much ; — yet 
 the hints which in God's prophetic word we have, the course 
 of the mystery of iniquity as it is already working, seem 
 alike to point to this, that as there has been an aping of the 
 monarchy of the Father, in the absolute despotisms of the 
 world, an aping of the economy of the Son, as though he 
 already sat visibly on his throne, in its spiritual despotisms, 
 and eminently in that of Rome; so there remains yet for the 
 world, as the crowning delusion, a lying imitation of the 
 kingdom and dispensation of the Spirit — such as in the law- 
 less Communist sects of the middle ages, in the Familists of 
 a later day, in the St. Simonians of our own, has attempted 
 to come to the birth, though in each case the world was not 
 ripe for it yet, and the thing was withdrawn for a time. 
 Yet doubtless only for a time j to reappear in an after hour 
 
118 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 — full of false freedom, full of the promise of bringing all 
 things into one ; making war on the family, as something 
 which separates between man and man, breaking down and 
 obliterating all distinctions, the distinctions between nation 
 and nation, between the man and the woman, between the 
 flesh and the spirit, between the Church and the world. So 
 seems it ; and when we translate St. Paul's words, with 
 which he characterizes the final Antichrist, as though he had 
 simply called him " that wicked one,"* we lose a confirma- 
 tion of this view which his words more accurately rendered 
 would have given us. He is not simply the wicked one, but 
 oavo/xoi the lawless one; and the mystery is not merely a 
 mystery of iniquity but of lawlessness (avo/ua*.) Law, in 
 all its manifestations, is that which he shall rage against, 
 making hideous misapplications of that great truth, that 
 where the Spirit is, there is liberty. 
 
 Then, when this shall have come to pass, then a,t length 
 the great anti-trinity of hell, the dragon, the beast, and the 
 false prophet, will have been fully revealed in all deceivable- 
 ness of unrighteousness ; — and yet not so mighty to deceive, 
 but that the Church of the redeemed, armed and forewarned 
 by this "Word of God, shall see in all this, only what it 
 looked to see, only what it had been taught to expect; and 
 in the might of the counter truth, in the confession of the 
 Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, shall be saved even 
 in its weakest and simplest member, from that strong delu- 
 sion which shall be too much for every one besides. 
 
 And in thus speaking of Holy Scripture, I am but express- 
 ing a confidence which those who have searched the deepest 
 into it have oftentimes expressed. Thus to take but one 
 name and another out of the noble catalogue of English 
 worthies, Robert Boyle expresses himself thus : "I consider 
 here that as the Bible was not written for any one particular 
 
 * 2 Thess. ii. 8. 
 
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 119 
 
 time or people, but for the whole church militant diffused 
 through all nations and ages, so that there are many passages 
 very useful, which will not be found so these many ages ; 
 being possibly reserved by the prophetic Spirit that indited 
 them, (and whose omniscience comprises and unites in one 
 prospect all times and all events,) to quell some future fore- 
 seen heresy, which will not, perhaps, be born till we be dead, 
 or resolve some yet unformed doubts, or confound some error 
 that hath not yet a name." And Bishop Butler uses lan- 
 guage well nigh the same : " Nor is it," he says, " at all 
 incredible that a Book which has been so long in the posses- 
 sion of mankind should yet contain many truths as yet 
 undiscovered. For all the same phenomena and the same 
 faculties of investigation from which such great discoveries in 
 natural knowledge have been made in the present and last age, 
 were equally in the possession of mankind several thousand 
 years before. And possibly it might be intended that events 
 as they came to pass should open and ascertain the meaning 
 of several parts of Scripture." 
 
 But, besides these mighty mischiefs which may hereafter 
 arise, of which we can at most discern now only the dim 
 beginnings, the obscure foreshadowings, there are also others 
 which have already taken form and shape — some of them 
 such as have stood strong and in the main unshaken for 
 thousands of years ) which yet we believe, which indeed yet 
 we know, shall one day be overthrown by the greater power 
 and prevalence of the Truth. For we are sure that the 
 religion of Christ is as the rod of Moses, which did in the 
 end swallow up every rod of the magicians — that the Church 
 shall possess the earth — that "the field" in which the Son of 
 Man sows his seed is not this land or that land, but " the 
 world." And anticipating, or to speak more truly, being 
 sure of this, it may not be unbecoming to see if we can at 
 all discern in Scripture the preparations which have been 
 there made, and the might which is there slumbering, against 
 
 
120 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 each of those closer conflicts, which the Church, by its help, 
 must one day wage with those forms of untruth and error. 
 Such inquiry will, at any rate, not be foreign to our subject; 
 for that subject being the fitness of Holy Scripture for 
 unfolding the spiritual life of men, a great part of that fit- 
 ness must lie in its capacity to meet and overcome each 
 deadlier form of superstition and error, which, under one 
 name or another, cramps and confines, or wholly hinders, the 
 true development of the spirits of men. 
 
 How profitable were it, in regard of the more effectual 
 conducting of Christian missions, to be more conscious than 
 generally we seek to be, of what is our peculiar strength, 
 and what the peculiar weakness of each of those systems of 
 error, which we seek, in love to the souls which were made 
 prisoners by it, to overthrow ; — so that we should not blindly 
 run a tilt against it, with no other preparation save a con- 
 fidence in the goodness of our cause, but wisdom and insight 
 assail it there, where there were best hope of assailing with 
 success. For every one of these, while their strength is in 
 that fragment of Truth, which, however maimed and marred, 
 with whatever contradictions and under whatever disguises, 
 they hold, have also eminently their weak side, that on which 
 they signally deny some great Truth which the spirit of man 
 craves, which the Scriptures of God affirm — a side, therefore, 
 on which, if assailed, they must sooner or later perish, or 
 rather will not always continue at strife with their own 
 blessedness. To know this, and to know, also, what engines 
 out of the divine armory ought to be especially advanced 
 against each of these strong-holds of confusion, to know not 
 merely that we are strong and they weak, but where and 
 why strong in regard of each, and where and why they are 
 weak ; this is surely a needful, as it is a much neglected, 
 discipline; this is a duty not indolently to be foregone by a 
 Church like our own, a Church which God's providence and 
 
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 121 
 
 leading has so clearly marked out to do the work of an Evan- 
 gelist on vast continents and in far islands of the sea. 
 
 To give such a training as this, was no doubt the meaning 
 and purpose of the catechetical schools of Alexandria, so 
 famous through all Christian antiquity ; they were instituted 
 to afford the highest culture to the evangelist, to give him 
 the fullest understanding of what he was to oppose, and how 
 he was to do it. And such an insight as this, could we 
 have it clear, into Scripture and its adaptation for overcoming 
 each shape of falsehood, how would it make us workmen 
 that did not need to be ashamed. How would it enable us 
 at once, and without beating the air, to address ourselves to 
 the points really at issue between us on one side, and Jews, 
 Mohammedans, and infidels, on the other. For the Truth 
 which is still the same, which might not give up one jot or 
 tittle of itself, though it had with this the certainty of win- 
 ning a world, may yet of infinite love continually change its 
 voice, and present itself ever differently, according to the 
 different necessities of those whom it would fain make its 
 own. 
 
 And on the other hand, we address ourselves but in a 
 slight and inefficient manner to our work, when, without dis- 
 crimination, without acquaintance with those systems which 
 hold souls in bondage, which hinder them from coming to 
 the light of life, we have but one method with them all — 
 one language in which to describe them all — one common 
 charge of belonging to the devil on which to arraign them ; 
 instead of recognising, as we ought, that each province of 
 the dark kingdom of error is different from every other ; 
 instead of seeing that it is not a lie which can ever make 
 any thing strong — that it is not certainly their lie which has 
 ever made them strong, and enabled them to stand their 
 ground so long, and some of them, saddest of all ! to win 
 ground for awhile from Christendom itself; but the truth 
 which that lie perverts and denies. Handling them in that 
 
 11 
 
122 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 other way, we turn but to little advantage that manifold 
 Word of wisdom with which God has enriched his Church, 
 and which containing as it does its own special antidote for 
 every error, would allow, and indeed demands, a much more 
 special dealing with each, and one which would get much 
 more nearly to the heart of the matter. 
 
 Thus the Mohammedan is strong in that he affirms God 
 to be distinct from the creature, so that he may not without 
 blasphemy be confused with it — a jealous God, who will not 
 give his glory to another. In the might of this faith, in the 
 conviction that God had raised him up to assert this truth in 
 the face of all who were forgetting it, he overran half a 
 world. But he is weak, and the moon of Islam, as it has 
 waxed, so will it wane before the Sun of Righteousness, in- 
 asmuch as he makes the gulf which divides God and man to 
 be a gulf which can never be bridged over, an impassable 
 chasm, fixed for eternity ; he is weak, because he knows not, 
 and will not know, of one, the Son of Mary, the Son of God, 
 in whom the human and divine were not confounded, nor lost 
 one in the other, but united. He does not satisfy the long- 
 ings of the human race, which was made for this union as 
 its highest end and crowning perfection, which will be satis- 
 fied with nothing short of this; and therefore we are sure 
 that the day will come, however little we may as yet discern 
 its signs, when the fiery sword of Mohammed will grow pale 
 before the ever brightening lustre of the cross of the Son 
 of Man ; when the Scriptures will show themselves over all 
 the dark places of the earth mightier than the Koran. We 
 are sure of this, because those Scriptures maintain all which 
 is there of truth — are as jealous and more jealous of the 
 incommunicable name of God, — say, and say far more 
 clearly, Our God is one God; but in addition to this, 
 amrm that which is there denied, but which the spirit of 
 man will never rest until it has found and known, a Son of 
 God, and him also the Son of Man. 
 
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 123 
 
 The Indian religions, — they, too, are not without their 
 elements of an obscured truth — and in this mainly, that they 
 declare it to be most worthy of God to reveal Himself as man 
 — that this is the only true revelation of Him, that an incar- 
 nation is the fittest outcoming of the glory of God. But, not 
 to urge that what they have to tell of such matters are only 
 dreams of men, and not facts of God — besides this, they are 
 comparatively worthless, in that they do not concentrate and 
 gather up this revelation of God in one incarnation, but lose 
 and scatter it through unnumbered. For while one incar- 
 nation is precious, a thousand are worth nothing; they 
 become mere transient points of contact between God and 
 man, momentary docetic apparitions of the divine under 
 human forms. And the books which are the records of 
 these, and the religion which rests on those books, must 
 give way before that Book, which can say in holiest, yet sober- 
 est earnest, " The Word was made flesh " — and which knows 
 not merely of an incarnation, but of a Resurrection and 
 an Ascension, in which the Son of God made manifest that 
 he had wedded the humanity for ever, that he had not come 
 merely into transient relation with it, but had made it his 
 own for eternity ; sitting down in it on the right hand of 
 the Majesty on high. 
 
 And that other later birth of Hindooism, that other vast 
 system of further Asia, which we are continually perplexed 
 whether to call it a pantheism, or a gigantic atheism, that 
 which in the end loses every thing in God, and makes ab- 
 sorption in Him the ultimate end of being, that, too, begins 
 with fairer promises. For it starts with that which is so 
 deeply true, that in God we live and move and have our 
 being — that as man came from God, so he must return to 
 God — that there is but one Spirit which moves through all 
 things. But then, refusing to know aught but the Spirit, re- 
 fusing to know the Father and the Son from whom that Spirit 
 proceeds, so neither can it save its votaries from that gulf 
 
124 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 wherein all things, and man the first, are annihilated in an 
 abysmal deep, which is not the less dreadful, because it calls 
 itself God ; that gulf which is ever yawning for every nobler 
 and deeper speculator in theology, who has not the mystery 
 of the ever-blessed Trinity, three Persons and one God, for 
 his safeguard and his stay, — an ever-abiding witness to him 
 for the distinctness of personal being. And we are sure that 
 neither will this system stand before that Word which affirms, 
 and only with far higher clearness, that " God is a Spirit/' 
 but affirms also, that "there are three that bear record in 
 heaven, the Father, the "Word, and the Holy Ghost/' with- 
 out which that other truth is only as a noble river presently 
 to lose itself among the sands. 
 
 These, brethren, are the great rival religions to Christianity, 
 which yet contend with it for the possession of the world — 
 each of them, as you see, presenting points of contact for 
 the absolute Truth ; and at the same time all presenting 
 points of weakness — sides upon which they dumbly crave to 
 be fulfilled by this Truth, even while they are striving the 
 most fiercely against it; the Truth in Holy Scripture being 
 at once the antagonist and the complement of, them all. 
 
 Nor may I not observe that any other dealing with them 
 than this, which, even while it wars against them, welcomes 
 and honours the wreck and fragment of Truth which they 
 may still retain — any ruder and less discriminating assault 
 on that which men have hitherto believed, and which, how- 
 ever mixed up with falsehood and fraud, has yet been all 
 whereby they have holden on to a higher world, — any such 
 attack, even when it seems most successful, may be full of 
 the utmost peril for them whom we thus coarsely seek to 
 benefit, and with these unskilful hands to deliver. For, indeed, 
 there is no office more delicate, no task needing greater wisdom 
 and patience and love, than to set men free from their supersti- 
 tions, and yet, with this, not to lay waste in their hearts the 
 very soil in which the Truth should strike its roots — to disen- 
 
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 125 
 
 tangle the tree from the ivy which was strangling it, without, 
 in the process and together with the strangling ivy, destroy- 
 ing also the very life of the tree itself, which we designed 
 to save. Where this process of men's extrication from error 
 has been rudely or unwisely carried out, either by their own 
 fault or that of others, where they have been urged to rise 
 up in scorn, and to trample upon their past selves, and all 
 that in time past they have held in honour, how mournful 
 frequently the final issue ! Thus, how unable do we often 
 prove to retain the converts from Eomanism which we have 
 won. They do not return to that which they have left, but 
 they pass on, they pass through the Truth into error on the 
 other side. They pass from darkness into the sunlight, and 
 that sunlight scarcely gilds and brightens them for an in- 
 stant, ere they glide into another and thicker darkness again ; 
 scarcely are they in the secure haven a moment, ere they put 
 forth, as though incapable of enjoying its repose, among the 
 shoals and eddies once more. 
 
 And so, too, the Hindoo children in our Indian schools, 
 when we have gathered them there, and shown them in the 
 light of modern philosophy, the utter absurdity and incohe- 
 rence of their sacred books, and provoked them to throw 
 uttermost scorn on these, we yet may not have brought them 
 even into the vestibule of the Faith, rather may have set them 
 at a greater distance than ever; for to have taught them to 
 pour contempt on all with which hitherto they have linked 
 feelings of sacredness and awe, is but a questionable prepara- 
 tion for making them humble and reverent scholars of 
 Christ. Wiser surely was St. Paul's method, who ever 
 sought a ground common to himself and him whom he would 
 persuade, though it were but a handbreadth, upon which to 
 take his stand — who taught men reverently to handle their 
 past selves and their past beliefs, — who to the Athenians 
 said, " Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I 
 unto you," and spake of the Cretan poet as " a prophet of 
 
 11* 
 
126 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 their own j" who re-adopted into the family of the Truth its 
 lost and wandering children, however they might have forgot- 
 ten their true descent, in whatever far land, under whatever 
 unlikely disguises, he found them. Thus, and because he 
 thus dealt, he became, in the language of a Greek father, 
 which contains scarcely an exaggeration, the w^aycoyoj tys 
 oLxovfWETtf, he who led up the world as a bride unto Christ. 
 
 But I must draw my subject to an end, and with a few 
 general remarks on the aim and scope of what here 1 have 
 been permitted to deliver, will conclude. My purpose has 
 been, as I trust even they may have gathered who have heard 
 but a part, and that the latest, of these discourses, to bring 
 out an inner witness for Scripture from that which, to an 
 earnest and devout examination, it shows itself as fitted for 
 doing — from that which it has already done — from that 
 which we may believe it will accomplish yet. And this 
 subject I have chosen out of those which were before me, 
 because truly there is great strength and comfort and assu- 
 rance for us in these evidences for the things that we have 
 believed, which are drawn, not from without, but from with- 
 in — from their inner glory, their manifest fitness. Thus, 
 for example, if gainsayers at any time should adduce appa- 
 rent disagreements between one Gospel and one book of 
 history and another, as between Matthew and Luke, Chroni- 
 cles and Kings, and seek to trouble and perplex us with 
 these, surely the true way to meet them were to bring first 
 the whole question into a higher court. Let us put rather 
 the question to be resolved as this, in what traceable con- 
 nexion do these books, each by itself, each in relation to the 
 whole of the other books, stand to the great purpose of God 
 with humanity? Can they be shown evidently to form 
 integral parts of a mightier whole ? Do they reveal the 
 Name of God ? Do they yield their nourishment for the 
 divine life of man ? Have they yielded such for our own ? 
 
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCULPTURE. 12 7 
 
 And then — not indeed to refuse entering into those lower 
 and merely critical questions of detail ; but if it has been 
 found that the book satisfies higher needs, fulfils loftier 
 requirements — claiming for it on the score of this, the entire, 
 the trustful confidence of faith, that it will justify itself in 
 all lesser matters, that it will come out as clear, and clean in 
 theni) as in its greater purpose and aim. Here too that 
 word will hold good, " He that believeth shall not make 
 haste." He will be content to wait. For what weakness 
 does it manifest, what inner mistrust of the things which we 
 have believed, how feebly must we hold them, how little can 
 they have blest us, when we raise a cry of fear at any new 
 and startling results to which science or criticism may have, 
 or may seem to have, arrived. These too, will presently be 
 shown what they are ; if true, they will fall into their place, 
 and that place a place of 'subjection to revealed Truth: if 
 false, however noisy now, however threatening to carry the 
 whole world before them, will vanish away in a little while. 
 But to dread any thing, to wish that any thing which has been 
 patiently sought or honestly won, should be ignored or kept 
 back, betrays an extreme weakness ; Christ has not laid his 
 hand on us with power, or we should not be so easily 
 persuaded to believe his cause tottering, or his Truth endan- 
 gered. 
 
 And, indeed, as regards aught which may be brought for- 
 ward with purposes hostile to the Faith, may not the past 
 well give us confidence for the future ? One and another 
 adversary has risen up ) for what has not the world beheld 
 in this kind ? Essays on the Miracles, Ages of Reason, 
 Lives of Jesus, Theories of Creation. And then, in the 
 first deceitful flush of a momentary success, oftentimes the 
 cry has gone forth, It is finished ; and the fortress of the 
 Faith is held to be so fatally breached, as henceforward to 
 be untenable, and its defenders to have nothing more to do 
 than to lay down their arms, and surrender at discretion. And 
 
128 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 already those that dwell upon the earth begin to make merry 
 over the slain witnesses ) and already the new Diocletians rear 
 their trophies and stamp their medals, the memorials of an 
 extinguished Faith — they themselves being about to perish 
 for ever, and that Faith to go forward to new victories. For 
 anon the floods retreat ; and temple and tower of God, round 
 whose bases those waters raged and foamed and fretted for 
 an instant, stand calmly and strongly as ever they did before. 
 We, too, some of us have heard, and probably we shall hear 
 again, such premature hymns of an imaginary triumph. 
 And when such are confidently raised, the unstable are per- 
 plexed, and the waverers fall off, and seeds of doubt, to be 
 reaped in a harvest of weakness, are sown in many minds. 
 But let us, brethren, have a sanctuary to retreat to, till each 
 such tyranny is overpast, as overpass it surely and shortly 
 will. Let us have that immediate syllogism of the heart, 
 against which no argument is good. Let us be able to say, 
 These words, we have found them words of healing, words 
 of eternal life. This is our sole security — to have tasted 
 the good Word, to have known the powers of the world to 
 come. And what if Theology may not be able, on the 
 instant, to solve every difficulty, yet Faith will not therefore 
 abandon one jot or tittle of that which she holds, for she has 
 it on another and a surer tenure, she holds it directly from 
 her God. 
 
 THE END OF THE LECTURES FOR 1845. 
 
CHE1ST THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS; 
 
 • OR, 
 
 THE UNCONSCIOUS PROPHECIES OF HEATHENDOM. 
 
 BEING 
 
 THE HULSEAN LECTURES 
 
 FOR THE YEAR MDCCCXLVI. 
 
CHRIST THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS, OR THE UNCON^ 
 SCIOUS PROPHECIES OF HEATHENDOM. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 
 
 HAGGAI II. 7. 
 
 The Desire of all nations shall come. 
 
 Although the Founder of these Lectures, which it is 
 permitted me a second time to deliver in this place, did by 
 no means offer a narrow range of subjects, from which the 
 preacher should make his choice, but on the contrary, so 
 expressed himself, that it would be quite possible to adhere 
 to the letter of his injunctions, and still, at the same time, 
 altogether to quit the region of Christian apology ; yet I 
 cannot but believe that in so doing I should be forsaking 
 the spirit of these injunctions, and hardly fulfilling the inten- 
 tions with which these Lectures were founded by him. Those 
 who have gone before me in this honourable office, arguing, 
 probably, from the subjects which he has placed in the fore- 
 most rank ; from the purpose which kindred foundations, by 
 him established among uSj were evidently meant to serve; from 
 the especial importance attached by good men in the age 
 wherein he lived, to such defences of our holy faith, have gene- 
 rally concluded that they should best be fulfilling his inten- 
 tion, to which they felt a pious reverence was due, if they 
 undertook the maintenance of some portions of the truth, 
 which had been especially assailed or gainsayed. Nor do I 
 purpose, on the present occasion, to depart from the practice 
 which the example of my predecessors has sanctioned; having 
 
 (131) 
 
132 LECTURE I. 
 
 rather chosen for my argument a subject recommending 
 itself to me, first, by a certain suitableness, as I trust will 
 appear, to our present needs, and to controversies of our day, 
 such as are approaching, if we were not actually in the midst 
 of them as yet ; and secondly, by an evident bearing which 
 it has upon one of the two great branches of study cultivated 
 among us in this University. Christ the Desire of all Nations, 
 or, The Unconscious Prophecies of Heathendom — such appears 
 to me the title which will best gather up and present at a 
 single glance to you the subject, which it will be my aim in 
 the following discourses, if God will, under successive aspects 
 to unfold. 
 
 Leaving aside, as not belonging to my argument, what 
 there was of positive divinely constituted preparation for the 
 coming of Christ in the Jewish economy, I shall make it 
 my task to trace what in my narrow limits I may, of the 
 implicit expectations which there were in the heathen world 
 — to contemplate, at least under a few leading aspects, the 
 yearnings of the nations for a redeemer, and for all which 
 the true Redeemer only could give, — for the great facts of 
 his life, for the great truths of his teaching. Nor may this 
 be all : for this, however interesting in itself, would yet 
 scarcely come under the title of Christian apology; of which 
 the idea is, that it is not merely the truth, but the truth 
 asserting itself in the face of error. It will therefore be my 
 elWeavour further to rescue these dim prophetic anticipations 
 of the heathen world from the abuse which has sometimes 
 been made of them, to show that these dreams of the world, 
 so far from helping to persuade us that all which we hold is a 
 dream likewise, are rather exactly that which ought to have 
 preceded the world's awaking : that these parhelions do not 
 proclaim every thing else to be an optical illusion, but 
 announce, and witness for, a sun that is travelling into sight; 
 that these false ancilia of man's forging, tell of a true which 
 has indeed come down from heaven. I would fain show 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 133 
 
 that there ought to have been these ; the transcending worth 
 and dignity of the Christian revelation not being diminished 
 by their existence, but rather enhanced; for its glory lies, 
 not in its having relation to nothing which went before itself, 
 but rather in its having relation to every thing, in its being 
 the middle point to which all lines, some consciously, more 
 unconsciously, were tending, and in which all centred at 
 the last. 
 
 And this it is worth our while to show : for we do not 
 here, as the charge has sometimes been made against us, first 
 set up the opponent, — whom we afterwards easily overthrow, 
 for he was but the phantom of our own brain. On the con- 
 trary, it has been at divers times from the very first, and 
 is in our own day, a part, and a favourite part, of their 
 tactics who would resist the Faith, to endeavour to rob it • 
 of its significance as the great epoch in the world's history, 
 by the production of anterior parallels to it. 
 
 These may be parallels to its doctrines and ethical pre- 
 cepts ; and they are brought forward for the purpose of 
 showing that it is therefore no such wisdom of God, no such 
 mystery that had been kept secret from the beginning of the 
 world j that what it professed to give as a revelation from heaven, 
 men had attained before by the light of reason, by the un- 
 assisted efforts of their own minds. The attempts to rob 
 Christianity in this way of its significance are, as I observed, 
 not new. If such objections have been zealously urged in 
 modern times, they belong also to the very earliest. To 
 take two examples, one old, one new. Celsus, in the second 
 century, quoting words of our blessed Lord's, in which he 
 exhorts to the forgiveness of enemies, remarks that he has 
 found the identical precept in Plato, — with only the differ- 
 ence, as he dares to add, that it is by the Grecian sage better 
 and more elegantly spoken.* And Gibbon, having occasion 
 
 * Origen, Con. Cels., 1. 7, c. 58. In like manner Celsus affirmed 
 that our Lord's words, Matt. xix. 23, were transferred from 
 
 12 
 
|34 LECTURE I. 
 
 to speak of one of Christ's most memorable moral precepts, 
 "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye 
 even so to them," cannot resist the temptation of adding— 
 "a rule which I read in a moral treatise of Isocrates four 
 hundred years before the publication of the Gospel." And 
 in like manner we all probably remember, if not the con- 
 tents yet the title which the book of an English deist bore, 
 one of the ablest of that unhappy band, « Christianity as 
 old as the Creation f a book which by that title at once 
 indicated the quarter from which its author advanced to the 
 assault of revealed religion. 
 
 And not seldom this charge appears in an aggravated 
 form j and it has been sought to be proved, not merely that 
 others had said the same before the Gospel, but that it had 
 covertly borrowed from them-that so far from being more 
 and higher than another birth of the human mind, it pos- 
 sessed °so little vital and independent energy, as to have been 
 " compelled to go back to prior sources, and to build with the 
 materials of others, and to adorn itself with their spoils. 
 Uro-ed by their desire to prove this, hoping to convict it thus 
 of being in possession of things not its own, the adversaries 
 of the Christian faith have gone far to seek for the anticipa- 
 tions and sources of its dpctrine. Thus, with Voltaire, India, 
 
 Plato, De Leffff., L 5. 742. (Con. Cels., 1. 6., c. 16.) Augustine 
 too (De Docir. Christ, 1. 2, c. 28) makes mention of some m his own 
 time readers and lovers of Plato -qui dicere ausi sunt omnes 
 Domini nostri Jesu Christ! sententias, quas mirari et prsedicare 
 coguntur, de Platonis libris eum didicisse. St. Ambrose also, as we 
 learn from Augustine, (Ep. 31,) had found it necessary to write 
 against such ; which he did in a work that now has perished. How 
 excellent is Augustine's own answer (Enarr. in Ps. cxl. 6 :] Dixit 
 hoc Pythagoras, dixit hoc Plato.... Propterea si inventus fuerit aliquis 
 eorum hoc dixisse quod dixit et Christus, gratulamur iUi, non 
 sequimur ilium. Sed prior fuit ille quam Christus. Si quis vera 
 loquitur, prior est quam ipsa Veritas? homo, attende Christum 
 non quando ad te venerit, sed quando te fecerit. 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 135 
 
 and still more, China, were the favourite quarters from which 
 he laboured to show that its wisdom had been drawn; 
 although his almost incredible ignorance exposed him to the 
 most ridiculous errors, and made him the dupe of poorest 
 forgeries, palmed on him as works of the ancient wisdom of 
 the East, and which by him were again confidently produced 
 as such.* Somewhat later the Zend-Avesta and the religion 
 of Zoroaster were triumphantly appealed to, as having been 
 the true sun from which the borrowed light of Judaism and 
 Christianity had proceeded. Then again, men said that our 
 blessed Lord had been educated and initiated in the secret 
 lore of the Essenes, and that he, the Wisdom of God, had 
 first learned wisdom in these schools of men. Or by others, 
 Rabbinical parallels to various sayings in the New Testament, 
 to evangelical parables and doctrines, have been solemnly 
 adduced, as solving the riddle of Christianity, as enough to 
 dissipate that nimbus of glory with which it had been hither- 
 to surrounded, to refute its loftier claims, and prove its 
 origin of earth, and not of heaven. So has falsehood 
 travelled round the world, as inconsistent with itself as it 
 is remote from the truth, each later birth of it devouring 
 the preceding. 
 
 * There is a curious account of a fraud which was played off on 
 him, in Von Bohlen's Das Alte Indien, v. 1, p. 136, connecting itself 
 with a singular piece of literary forgery. A Jesuit missionary, 
 whose zeal led him to assume the appearance of an Indian Fakir, in 
 the beginning of last century forged a Veda, of which the purpose 
 was, secretly to undermine the religion which it professed to sup- 
 port, and so to facilitate the introduction of Christianity — to advance, 
 that is, the kingdom of truth with a lie. This forged Veda is full 
 of every kind of error or ignorance in regard to the Indian religions. 
 After lying, however, long in a Romanist missionary college at 
 Pondicherry, it found its way to Europe, and a transcript of it came 
 into the hands of Voltaire, who eagerly used it for the purpose of 
 depreciating the Christian Books, and showing how many of their 
 doctrines had been anticipated by the wisdom of the East. The book 
 had thus an end worthy of its beginning. 
 
136 LECTURE I. 
 
 And they have wrought in the same spirit, and in reality 
 •with the same weapons to the same ends, who yet, somewhat 
 shifting their ground, have not so much sought to turn our 
 Christian faith into a doctrine which had been often taught 
 before, as into a dream which has been often dreamed before ; 
 who have not therefore laboured to produce parallels to its 
 isolated sayings or doctrines — to rob it here and there of a 
 jewel in its crown; but have aspired to a completer victory, 
 striking at the very person and acts of Him on whom it rests, 
 and out of whom it has unfolded itself. And in this way ; 
 — they have ransacked all records of ancient religions for 
 such parallels, nearer or more remote, as they could in 
 them find, not now any more to the sayings, but rather to 
 the doings, of this life ; and having mustered and marshalled 
 in threatening order as many of these as they could draw 
 together, they have turned round and said to us — " In all 
 times, and all the world through, men have been imagining 
 for themselves, as you see,_sons of Cod, expiations by sacri- 
 fice, direct communications with a higher world, oracles and 
 prophecies, wielders of a power mightier than nature's, re- 
 storers of a lost Paradise, conquerors of Hades, ascensions 
 into heaven. They have imagined them, and nothing more; 
 for the things which they thus in spirit grasped at, never 
 found an historic realization, however men may have enriched 
 themselves, and we do not deny that they did so, with the 
 thought that such things had been, or one day should be." 
 And then it has been further asked us, What right had we to 
 difference our hope from the hope of all others? They 
 longed so earnestly, that at last their longing wove a garment, 
 made even a body, for itself; what right have any to affirm 
 that it is otherwise with the things which they believe ? 
 
 And thus, because men have hoped for, and reached after, 
 that which in Christ is given, and hoped so intensely, that 
 they have sometimes imagined it to be actually theirs, so pro- 
 jecting their hope, as to give it at last an objective reality, 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 137 
 
 we are bidden to believe that ours is but such an ardent 
 desire, fashioning at length a body for itself. Parading a 
 long line of shadows, these adversaries require us to acknow- 
 ledge the substance we have embraced to be a shadow also; 
 showing how much false money is in the world, and has at 
 different times passed current, they demand of us, how we 
 dare to assume that which we have accepted to be true ; — 
 when they should see that the shadows imply a substance 
 somewhere, that the false money passes only under shelter 
 of a true. Proving, as it is not hard to prove, those parallels 
 to be groundless and mythical, to rest on no true historic 
 basis, they hope that the great facts of the Christian's belief 
 will be concluded to be as weak — that they will be involved 
 in a common discredit* — and the faiths of which those other 
 formed a part having come to nothing, or evidently hasten- 
 ing to decay, that this may be assumed to underlie the same 
 judgment, and to be hastening to the same inevitable dis- 
 solution, however the signs of it as yet may not appear. 
 
 This scheme of attack has been so long and so vigorously 
 plied, so much success has been expected from it, that in 
 the works of the latter assailants of revelation from this 
 quarter, there speaks out a certain indignation, mingled with 
 astonishment, at the resistance which it is still presuming to 
 offer ; as though it were not to be endured, that every other 
 religion should have confessed itself a mythology, and that 
 this should deny it still — that each other, like a startled 
 ghost, should have vanished at the first cock-crowing of an 
 
 * Tertullian (Apol. 47,) speaks of the way in which these paral- 
 lels were played oif against the Christian verities — Elysium not only 
 having forfeited belief in itself, but having helped to destroy a 
 belief in heaven — Minos and tlhadamanthus having rendered the 
 judgment-seat of Christ a mockery ; — though in his narrow fashion 
 he sees in them nothing but the adulteria veritatis — the work of 
 the jealous envy of evil spirits, quae de similitudine fidem infirma- 
 rent veritatis. But if the truth was hard to receive with these, 
 might it not have been impossible to receive without them ? 
 
 12* 
 
138 LECTURE I. 
 
 intellectual morn, but that this should continue to affront, as 
 boldly and as confidently as ever, even the light of the 
 world's middle day — that each other should have crumbled 
 into nothing at the first touch of the wand of a critical 
 philosophy, but that this should entirely refuse to obey its 
 dissolving spell. 
 
 Now all charges against the truth, however destitute of 
 any solid foundation, out of whatever perversity of heart or 
 mind they may have sprung, yet, when continually re-appear- 
 ing, when repeating themselves in different ages, and by the 
 mouths of different objectors, and those independent of one 
 another, have yet, we may be sure, something which has ren- 
 dered them not merely possible, but plausible ; which sug- 
 gested them first, and, with the frivolous and thoughtless, 
 with those that have been eager to believe them, and to be 
 quit of the restraints of a positive faith, has given them cur- 
 rency and favour. Let me seek, then, as an important ele- 
 ment of my subject, to consider what that something is, 
 which has served to suggest, and afterwards to give a point 
 to these charges ; and, not pausing here, to show that the 
 truth, which, however distorted, is at the bottom of these 
 charges, is one which we may cheerfully and without any 
 misgiving, recognise. 
 
 And this is not all : for I would fain also show that it 
 would be a grievous deficiency, if that were absent from our 
 Christian faith, which has been the motive and hint to these 
 accusations — if that faith, as far as regards the whole ante- 
 rior world except the Jewish, stood in relation to nothing 
 which men had thought, or felt, or hoped, or believed; 
 with no other coefficient but the Jewish, and resting on no 
 broader historic basis than that would supply. It will be my 
 purpose to inquire whether we may not contemplate the rela- 
 tions of the absolute truth to the anterior religions of the 
 world, in an aspect in which we shall cease altogether from 
 regarding with suspicion these apparent anticipations of good 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 139 
 
 things given us in Christ, in which, instead of being secretly 
 embarrassed by them, and hardly knowing exactly how to 
 deal with, or where to range them, we shall joyfully accept 
 these presentiments of the truth, so far as they are satis- 
 factorily made out, as enhancing the greatness and glory of 
 the truth itself ; and as being, so far as they are allowed to 
 have any weight, confirmations of it. 
 
 Nor will it be a small satisfaction, — if this be possible, as 
 I believe it easy, — to make our adversaries do drudging 
 work for us; to plough with their oxen; to enter, as we 
 shall do then, upon their labours; and all that they have 
 painfully gathered up with purposes hostile to the faith — to 
 appropriate and make defensive of it; not so much anx- 
 iously defending our own position, as confidently turning 
 theirs ; wresting from them their own weapons, and then 
 wielding them against themselves. 
 
 And first, in regard to the ethical anticipations of what 
 is given to us in the gospel, — the goodly maxims, the strik- 
 ing precepts, the memorable sayings, which are gathered 
 from the fields of heathen philosophy, and then sometimes 
 used to depress the original worth of the teaching of Christ 
 and his apostles, — I will not urge here, and I have no object 
 in urging, though I may, in passing, remark, how many that 
 are sometimes adduced of these are wholly deceptive, as paral- 
 lels to Christian truths. How often in their organic con- 
 nexion they would be very far from containing that echo or 
 presentiment of truth which we deem we catch in them; 
 how often they have indeed a very different significance from 
 that which we first put in them, and only afterwards educe 
 from them. Nor yet will I press how the goodliest maxim 
 is indeed nothing, save in its coherence to a body of truth; 
 how a world of such maxims, were they gotten -together, 
 would be only as ten thousand artificial lamps, failing alto- 
 gether to constitute a day, and not in the remotest degree 
 
140 LECTURE I. 
 
 doing the work, or supplying to the world the place of a 
 single sun. 
 
 Not to press this, and accepting fully and freely what has 
 been said wisely and well before the gospel and apart from 
 the gospel, and allowing to the full that it has many times 
 touched the heart of the matter, yet still is there nothing 
 here which we need wish we could deny, which we should not 
 rather desire to find. Indeed, so far from there having been, 
 in time past, a shunning or ignoring of these heathen paral- 
 lels, the early apologists perhaps only admitted them too' 
 freely : yet thus at any rate they testified that to acknowledge 
 them they felt to be no confession of a weakness in their 
 position. Thus more than one has likened the faithful de- 
 livered from an evil world to the children of Israel brought 
 out of Egypt, who borrowed and carried forth from thence 
 vessels of gold and vessels of silver, the same which proba- 
 bly afterwards furnished the precious metals which they dedi- 
 cated to the holier uses of the sanctuary. In like manner, 
 they said, there was much which the faithful, delivered out 
 of the spiritual Egypt, would leave behind him, as all its 
 abominable idolatries ; but something also which he would 
 carry forth, and which he had a right to carry forth, for it 
 was not truly the riches of that land. This silver and this 
 gold had been originally dug from mines of divine truth, 
 and bearing it with him, he only reclaimed to its noblest pur- 
 poses that which had been more or less alienated and per- 
 verted from them.* 
 
 * Thus Augustine (De Doctr. Christ, 1. 2, c. 40:) Philosophi au- 
 tern qui vocantur, si qua forte vera et fidei nostras accommodata dix- 
 erunt maxime Platonici, non solum formidanda non sunt, sed ab eis 
 etiam tanquam injustis possessoribus in usum nostrum vindicanda. 
 Sicut enim iEgyptii non solum idola habebant et onera gravia, quae 
 populus Israel detestaretur et fugaret, sed etiam vasa atque ornamen- 
 ta de auro et argento, et vestem, quae ille populus exiensde iEgyptQ 
 sibi potius tanquam ad usum meliorem clanculo vindicavit, nonauc- 
 toritate propria, sed praecepto Dei, ipsis iEgyptiis nescienter com- 
 
 i 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 141 
 
 Nor need we deal more timidly with these parallels than 
 they did. So long, indeed, as we regard God's revelation 
 of Himself in Christ, as a revelation merely of certain mor- 
 al truths, it may be startling to find aught that is therein 
 anticipated in any other quarter. But when we more right- 
 ly contemplate it as the manifesting of life, that the Life was 
 manifested, and dwelt among us, then we feel that they who 
 gave, and could give, precepts and maxims only, however 
 precious these were, whatever witness they bore to a light 
 shining in the darkness, to a divine spark not trodden out in 
 man, to a God nurturing the hea,then, with all this yet gave 
 not that, which, for man, is the gift of gifts and blessing of 
 blessings. And this is the true way in which to contemplate 
 it. That which differences Christianity from all other religions, 
 is not its theory of morals; this is a most real, yet at the 
 same time only a relative difference, for there were ethics be- 
 fore there were Christian ethics.* But its difference is, that 
 
 modantibus ea, quibus non bene utebantur, sic doctrinee omnes Gen- 
 tilium non solum simulata et superstitiosa figmenta gravesque sax*- 
 cinas supervacui laboris habent, .... sed etiam liberales disciplinas 
 usuiveritatisaptiores, . . . quodeorum, tanquam aurum etargentum, 
 quod non ipsi instituerunt, sed de quibusdam quasi metallis divinse 
 providentise, quse ubique infusa sunt, eruerunt, .... debet ab eis au- 
 ferre Christianus ad usum justum prEedicandi Evangeiii. Origen 
 (Ep. ad Gregor., t. 1, p. 30,) uses the same illustration, observing, 
 however, that, according to his experience, the gold that is brought 
 out of Egypt is oftener used for the fashioning of an idol, a golden 
 calf, the work of men's own hands, which they worship, than for 
 the adorning of the tabernacle of God. 
 
 * Grotius, indeed, says, (J)e Verit. Ret. Christ., 1. 4, c. 12 :) Ejus 
 [scil. religionis Christianas] partes singular tantee sunt honestatis, 
 ut suapte luce animos quasi convincant, ita ut inter paganos non de- 
 fuerint qui dixerint singula, qua nostras religio habet universa. Lac- 
 tantius expresses himself more cautiously, and is careful to add how 
 none but a teacher sent from God could have knit these scattered 
 limbs into a body. He says, Inst. Div.,l. 7, c. 7: Nullam sectam 
 fuisse tarn deviam, nee philosophorum quendam tarn inanem qui non 
 
142 LECTURE I, 
 
 it is life and power, that it transforms, that it transfigures, 
 that it makes new creatures, that it does for all what others 
 only promised to do for a few. Herein the essential differ- 
 ence resides. Men, for instance, before it came, could speak 
 worthy things, and could really feel them, about the duty 
 of overcoming their desires, of forgiving their enemies, of 
 repaying injuries with kindness, of coming to G-od with clean 
 hands and a clean heart. Such sayings abound in every code of 
 morals :* but the unhappiness was, that they who uttered these 
 sayings and they who admired them, did little more than this. 
 It was not that there was any falseness in their admiration: they 
 delighted in them after the inner man, but in the actual strug- 
 gle with evil, they were ever weak to bring them to effect. 
 There was a great gulf between the saying and the doing, which 
 never till in Christ was effectually bridged over; so that the 
 Christian speaker in that beautiful dialogue, the Octavius of 
 Minucius Felix, exactly hit the mark, when, to characterize 
 the practical of Christian life as distinguished from the spec- 
 ulative of heathen philosophy, he exclaimed of that sect ev- 
 erywhere spoken against, to which he belonged, Non eloqui- 
 mur magna, sed vivimus. 
 
 And yet, brethren, when we thus trace the miserable contra- 
 diction that ever existed in a world out of Christ, between 
 the good seen and the evil done, the vast chasm between the 
 two, let this be with no purpose of laying bare their sores, 
 with no thought of glorying in their infirmities, to whom in 
 a less favored time the only fountain of effectual strength 
 
 videret aliquid e vero. Quodsi extitisset aliquis, qui veritatem, 
 sparsam per singulos, per sectasque diffusam, colligeret in unum, 
 et redigeret in corpus, is profectd non dissentiret a nobis. Sed hoc 
 nemo facere, nisi veri peritus ac sciens, potest ; verum autem non 
 nisi ejus scire est, qui sit doctus a Deo. 
 
 * See, for instance, in Von Bohlen, (Das Alte Indien, v. 1, p. 364,) 
 a beautiful collection of Indian sayings of this kind, on the love of 
 our neighbour, and the forgiveness of injuries. 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 143 
 
 and healing had not yet been opened. For indeed, breth- 
 ren, may there not be many a one among ourselves to whom, 
 with far less excuse, all this explains itself, alas ! only too 
 easily ? many a one, it may be, who remembers times of his 
 own life, before his moral convictions had been gathered up 
 and. found their middle point in Christ — and in those times 
 repeated falls under temptation, which explain to him only 
 too vividly the condition in which this ever-recurring infidel- 
 ity of men to their moral convictions found place — in which 
 they were thus able to trace the outlines of a righteousness, 
 but impotent to fill them up, and so ever leaving it in out- 
 line still — well-skilled to draw a ground-plan, but weak to 
 build any superstructure thereon — the virtue loved till the op- 
 portunity came for practising it; the sin hated, till the mo- 
 ment for testifying that hatred had arrived. 
 
 But to pass on to the other charge, to the resemblances to 
 the great facts on which our faith reposes, to the great events 
 of our Lord's life, which are adduced from other quarters, 
 with the requirement, because those have proved weak to 
 stand, that we should acknowledge these to be weak also )— 
 they only will consent to such a conclusion, who have failed 
 to perceive that according to the very highest idea of Chris- 
 tianity, such there needs must have been. For what do we 
 affirm of Christ ? when do we conceive worthily of Him ? 
 When we conceive of Him, in the prophet's words, as "the 
 Desire of all nations" — the fulfiller of the world's hopes — 
 the stiller of creation's groans — the great birth of time, unto 
 which all the unspeakable throes of a suffering humanity had 
 been tending from the first. These resemblances disturb us 
 not at all, — they are rather most welcome ; for we do not be- 
 lieve the peculiar glory of what in Christ we possess to con- 
 sist in this, that it is unlike everything else, " the cold deni- 
 al and contradiction of all that men have been dreaming of 
 through the different ages of the world, but rather the sweet 
 reconciliation and exquisite harmony of all past thoughts, an- 
 
144 LECTURE T. 
 
 ticipations, revelations." Its prerogative is, that all whereof 
 men had a troubled dream before, did in him become a waking 
 reality ; that what men were devising, and most inadequately, 
 for themselves, Grod has perfectly given us in his Son j that 
 in the room of shifting cloud-palaces, with their mockery of 
 temple and tower, stands for us a city, which hath come down 
 from Heaven, but whose foundations rest upon this earth of 
 ours ;— that we have divine facts — facts no doubt which are 
 ideal, in that they are the vehicle of everlasting truths; his- 
 tory indeed which is far more than history, for it embodies 
 the largest and most continually recurring thoughts which 
 have stirred the bosom of humanity from the beginning. We 
 say that the divine ideas which had wandered up and down 
 the world till oftentimes they had well-nigh forgotten them- 
 selves and their own origin, did at length clothe themselves 
 in flesh and blood ; they became incarnate with the Incar- 
 nation of the Son of God. In his life and person the idea 
 and the fact at length kissed each other, and were hencefor- 
 ward wedded for evermore. 
 
 If these things be so, and it will be my desire in this place, 
 and in these lectures, to trace how they are, one or two con- 
 siderations will lie very near to us ; and with the pressing of 
 these on your thoughts and hearts I will this day conclude. 
 And first, the general consideration, that what there may 
 have been in the world obscurely struggling to be Christian 
 before Christ and his Church, so far from suggesting to 
 us poorer thoughts of what in him we possess, under how 
 far more glorious aspect does it present that to us ! All 
 which men before could conceive, but could not realize, could 
 feel after, but could not grasp, could dream of, but ever when 
 they awoke found nothing in their hands, it is here ; " the 
 body is of Christ." And the Church which he has founded, 
 we behold it as sitting upon many waters, upon the great 
 ocean of truth, from whence every stream that has at all, or 
 at any time refreshed the earth was originally drawn, and to 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 145 
 
 which it duteously brings its waters again.* We may con- 
 template that Church as having in that it has the Word and 
 Spirit of its Lord, the measure of all partial truth in itself; 
 receiving the homage of all human systems, meekly, and yet, 
 lkie a queen, as her right ; understanding them far better 
 than they ever understood themselves ; disallowing their false, 
 and what of true they have, setting her seal upon that true, 
 and issuing it with a brighter image, and a sharper outline, 
 and a more paramount authority, from her own mint. 
 
 Again, if the more excellent glory of that which we pos- 
 sess in Christ is, that it is not shadow but substance, not 
 anticipation but possession — not the idea, but the fact, or 
 rather the fact and the idea in one, — how are we letting go our 
 most precious gains, when we at all let go, or when we even 
 slight, our historic faith, resting on and finding its object in 
 the person of the Saviour ! What a miserable exchange, to 
 give up this, and to accept the largest, the most vaunted 
 theories concerning the godlike and the true in its room and 
 as its adequate substitute, the most magnificent ideas in the 
 place of the humblest affiance on the Son of God — soon to 
 find that we have gotten pebbles for jewels, words for things, 
 that we are in a world peopled only with ghosts and phan- 
 toms ! Oh, loss unutterable, if we allow any to strip off for 
 us the historic realization of the truth in the person of Jesus 
 of Nazareth, as though it were not of the essence of the 
 matter, as though it were a thing indifferent, useful perhaps 
 for the simpler members of the Church, but for others hinder- 
 ing rather than helping the contemplation of the pure idea, 
 which they would persuade us it is alone needful to retain. 
 They promise, it is true, who invite to this sacrifice, that if 
 only we will destroy this temple of our historic faith, in three 
 
 * Clement of Alexandria on this very matter (Strom., 1. 1, c. 5 :) 
 Mux [A.sv ovv Tfijs aX^foiaj 686$' aXX zls actriv xaOdrtsp £tj atvvaov 
 rtotafxov, ixpiovGc to, ptldpo. ofcka. a.7Jko9sv. 
 
 13 
 
146 LECTURE I. 
 
 days, yea, in an instant, as by a magic wand, they will raise 
 up for us a goodlier and more gorgeous fabric in its room. 
 Let it be our wisdom to give no credence to their words ; 
 knowing this, that it was the very blessedness which .the 
 coming of the Son of Grod in the flesh brought us, that it 
 brought us that, which these would fain persuade us to re- 
 linquish and renounce, that it lifted men out of and above 
 •that condition into which these deceivers would willingly 
 persuade them to return. 
 
 No doubt there is a temptation to give in to this, a temp- 
 tation working in each one of us — to take up, that is, with 
 a religion which shall consist in the contemplating of great 
 and ennoblin gideas, instead of in the serving with a straight- 
 forward and downright obedience a personal God. Those 
 ideas we feel that we can deal with them as we like ) they 
 exert no constraining power upon us ; we are their masters, 
 and not they ours : or if we have allowed them any rule over 
 us, when the stress comes, we can withdraw it again ; allow- 
 ing them just as much authority as is convenient to us. 
 There is no " Be thou holy, for I am holy," in them — no 
 pointing to the rugged way of the Cross, with a Forerunner 
 walking there, and a command that we follow him in it. 
 Let us watch earnestly against so subtle a temptation, show- 
 ing as it does so fair, and finding so much in our slothful and 
 sinful hearts that makes them only too ready to embrace it. 
 
 And surely, brethren, at this season the Church suggests 
 and presents to us mighty helps against all this. What help 
 so effectual as to enter truly and deeply into the Passion of 
 our Lord — to carry at no cold and careless distance from that 
 cross to which each day of this lenten season is now bring- 
 ing us nigher ? but to seek to draw forth the riches of grace 
 which are laid up for us in it, and in the considering of him 
 that hanged thereon. Let us determine, brethren, that in 
 this coming week, the beginning it may be of a more holy 
 life, we will bring ourselves continually within the sphere of 
 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 147 
 
 those mighty, those transforming influences, which are ever 
 going forth from thence. Let us make proof how it can open 
 for us the fountain of purifying tears, sealed it may be 
 for long — how a burden can be laid down at its foot which 
 is crushing us to the earth, and from which nowhere' else is 
 deliverance. Let us seek to enter into nearer fellowship 
 with the Man of sorrows, with our crucified God. And then, 
 when we have proved how this fellowship can bless us, how 
 it can cleanse us from our impurities, how it can strengthen 
 us for our tasks, can enable us to tread under foot our ene- 
 mies, we shall not readily exchange such a fellowship as this 
 with a living Lord, so full fraught with blessings, for that of 
 mere notions and phantoms; which, however much they 
 may promise, will desert us iD the hour of need, and prove 
 utterly helpless, whensoever the real stress of life's trial 
 comes. 
 
LECTUKE II. 
 
 THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 
 (Preached on Easter Sunday.) 
 
 Mark XVI. 3. 
 
 Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre ? 
 
 The heathen expectations of a deliverer I ventured in my 
 preceding lecture to characterize as " the unconscious proph- 
 ecies of heathendom ;" — prophecies indeed which knew not 
 at what they pointed, of which the lines were most wavering 
 and indistinct when set beside the clear outlines of Jewish 
 hope — yet in a wider and laxer sense prophecies still; or, if 
 we will not make that word common, but reserve it for the 
 highest of all, we may call them the world's divination at the 
 least. For in these expectations of a world, which, though 
 deeply fallen, remained God's world still, it was divining 
 what it needed, and obscurely feeling after it. And this div- 
 ination, these guesses at and Teachings out after, the truth, so 
 far from shunning and keeping out of sight, we may use, I 
 said, not of course putting them in the forefront of our ar- 
 ray, yet we may use them still, as arguments for that Faith, 
 to which all has thus tended from the first, which the world 
 was craving for before it received, and short of which it 
 never found its perfect satisfaction or rest- 
 It is the same' argument, applied in a different region, of 
 Christianity as evidently the complement of all that went 
 before, which the early apologists were wont to use in their 
 conflict with Gnostic and Manichasan. They urged the man- 
 ner in which the Christian revelation as the Church received 
 (148) 
 
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 149 
 
 it, rooted itself deeply in an anterior constitution, was evi- 
 dently not a sudden improvisation, but the culminating fact 
 of an idea which had been realizing itself through all the sa- 
 cred history of the past, was as the perfect flower, of which 
 all genuine Judaism had been the stalk and stem. And they 
 founded on this traceable connexion the superiority of its 
 claims to those of all rival systems, which could produce no 
 such accordance of their new with pre-existing and pre-es- 
 tablished harmonies in the spiritual world ; but had rather 
 abruptly and violently to force a place for themselves, than 
 to fit into one already prepared for their reception, which rested 
 on an undoing and denying of the past, rather than a sanction- 
 ing and perfecting of it.* And as there was, no doubt, a 
 most real force in their argument, exactly so has it for the 
 thoughtful mind a deep significance, that Christ should have 
 met and satisfied all nobler longings of the heathen world — 
 that all deeper and better impulses which were anywhere at 
 work, should have been tending toward Sim. The worth of 
 the unspeakable gift which in Christ is ours, is wonderfully 
 testified by the fact that all should have been in one way or 
 another either asking for that gift or fancying that they had 
 gotten it, or mourning its departure, or providing substitutes 
 for it. For, however in the one elect people, as the bearers 
 of the divine promises, — the beating heart of the spiritual 
 world, — the appointed interpreters to the rest of their blind 
 desires, this longing after a Redeemer came out in greater 
 clearness and in greater strength, and with no troubling distur- 
 bing elements, — their education being far more directly from 
 God, and being expressly aimed at the quickening of these 
 longings to the highest, — yet were those longings themselves 
 
 * See especially Tertullian, Adv. Marcion., 1. 3 and 4, passim, in 
 which this is his ever-recurring thought, re-appearing in an infinite 
 variety of forms. Oh Christum et in novis veterem ! he exclaims, 
 having shown how the rudiments of almost all Christ's miracles are 
 to be found in the Old Testament. 
 
150 LECTURE II. 
 
 not exclusively theirs. They, indeed, yearned, and knew what 
 they yearned for : the nations yearned, and knew not for 
 what. But still they yearned : for as the earth in its long 
 polar night seeks to supply the absence of the day by the 
 generation of the northern lights, so does each people in the 
 long night of its heathen darkness bring forth in its yearn- 
 ing after the life of Christ, a faint and glimmering substitute 
 for the same. From these dreamy longings after the break 
 of day have proceeded oracles, priests, sacrifices, lawgivers 
 and the like. Men have nowhere given up hoping ; nor ac- 
 quiesced in the world's evil as the world's law. Everywhere 
 they have had a tradition of a time when they were nearer 
 to God than now, a confident hope of a time when they 
 should be brought nearer again. 
 
 No thoughtful student of the past records of mankind can 
 refuse to acknowledge that through all its history there has 
 run the hope of a redemption from the evil which oppresses 
 it ; nor of this only, but that this hope has continually linked 
 itself on to some single man. The help that is coming to 
 the world, it has ever seen incorporated in a person. The 
 generations of men, weak and helpless in themselves, have 
 evermore been looking after one in whom they may find all 
 which they seek vainly in themselves and in those around 
 them — redressers of the world's wrong, deliverers from the 
 world's yoke, vindicators of the honour of the race, souls of 
 heroic stature, in which all the features of greatness that are 
 imparted with niggard hand unto others shall be found glori- 
 ously and prodigally combined.. Such in almost every reli- 
 gion men have learned to look back to, as having already 
 come : such we find that they are every where expecting as 
 yet to appear. 
 
 As little can one deny that there is that in men, which 
 prepares them to welcome these at their appearing. There 
 is a natural gravitation of souls, which attracts them to 
 mighty personalities; an instinct in man, which tells him 
 
 
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 151 
 
 that he is never so great as when looking up to one greater 
 than himself — that he is made for this looking upward — to find, 
 and, finding to rejoice and to be ennobled in, a nobler than 
 himself. And doubtless this instinct in itself is divine. It 
 is the natural basis on which the devotion of mankind to 
 Christ is by the Spirit to be built ; it is an instinct which, 
 being perfectly purified of each baser admixture, is intended 
 to find its entire satisfaction in Him. True it may stop short 
 of Him ; true, it may turn utterly away from Him. It may 
 stop short of Him, resting in human heroes, in men glorious 
 for their gifts, eminent for their services to their kind; and 
 wo have then the worship of genius instead of the worship 
 of God. Or it may turn utterly away from Christ, and then, 
 being in itself inextinguishable, and therefore surviving 
 even in those who have wholly forsaken Him, it will, thus 
 perverted and depraved, lay them open to all the delusions of 
 false prophets and of antichrists. 
 
 For it is this, this attraction of men to a mightier than 
 themselves, which, being thus perverted, has filled the world 
 with deceivers and deceived ; which has gathered round the 
 hunters of men the ready instruments which have executed 
 their will. It is this which has drawn souls, as moths to the 
 candle, to rush into and to be scorched and to be consumed 
 in the flame, which some wielder of heavenly gifts for hellish 
 aims has kindled. It is this which swells the train round 
 some conqueror's car, as he urges his destructive course 
 through the world. What, for instance, to take a near 
 illustration, was the devotedness of the French soldiery to 
 their great leader but this ? Who does , not feel that this 
 de.votedness, out of which thousands and tens of thousands 
 were ready to meet, and did joyfully meet, dangers and fa- 
 tigues and agonies and deaths, only for the hope of one word 
 of approbation, one smile from him, counting all more than 
 repaid by this — who does not feel that this was the inverted 
 side of something in itself most true and most noble, to 
 
152 LECTURE II. 
 
 which even in its degeneracy it bore witness ; and only had 
 now run wild and lost its appointed destination ? It is this, 
 this craving of men passionately to devote themselves to some 
 one, which makes an Antichrist possible, which will make 
 him so terrible when he appears — men by a just judgment 
 of God being permitted to dedicate all which they ought 
 to have dedicated to Christ, to his opposite, to him who 
 comes in his own name, — because they refused to give it, be- 
 cause they refused to give themselves, to Him who came in 
 the name of his Father. It will then be fearfully seen that 
 there can be an enthisiasm of hell, no less than an enthusiasm 
 of heaven. 
 
 And as on the one side there is a preparedness to acknow- 
 ledge these kings of men, these spiritual and intellectual chiefs 
 of our race, so soon as they show themselves ; thus too, 
 upon the other hand, such have never been wanting to 
 claim the reverence and the homage of their fellows, to seat 
 themselves on the prepared thrones of the world. Certainly 
 there is nothing in the study of the past which fills one with 
 more awe and wonder than the infinite significance of single 
 men in the development of the world's history. That his- 
 tory lies out before our eyes no Tartarian steppe, no Indian 
 savannah, stretching out at one vast level, or with only slight 
 elevations or depressions ; but with marvellous inequalities, 
 and here and there with ravines deep almost as hell itself, 
 and again with mountain summits towering well-nigh unto 
 heaven. Every where we encounter those that bring to 
 their brethren a new blessing or a new curse, that gather as 
 at a centre the world's light or the world's darkness; from 
 whom that light, or that darkness diffuses itself anew and with 
 a new energy — beneficent lords or baleful tyrants in the spi- 
 ritual kingdom of men's thoughts and feelings — each one for 
 weal or for woe, in narrower and wider circles, for longer or 
 shorter spaces, wielding his scepter over the hearts and spirits 
 of his fellows; helping to make them slaves or to make 
 
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 153 
 
 them free, to exalt or to cast them down. On the one 
 side august lawgivers, founders of stable polities, bringers 
 in of some new element of civilization, restorers, even 
 amid heathen darkness, of some purer knowledge of God ; 
 on the other side, destroyers that have known how to 
 knit to them as with magic bands multitudes of their breth- 
 ren, and to make them the passionate servants of their evil 
 will ; proclaimers of sensual philosophies, that have assisted 
 to make our life cheaper than beasts', to empty it of its loftier 
 hopes and its faith in a higher destination ; seducers after 
 whom the world has wondered ; stars whose name has been 
 Wormwood, .that, falling from heaven, have made the waters 
 of earth bitter, so that the men died who drank of them. 
 
 Thus has it been, brethren, that the world has been ever 
 opening wide its arms to welcome its redeemers, — oftentimes 
 cruelly deceived, counting oftentimes, like Eve, that it had 
 gotten a man from the Lord, even him who should comfort 
 it under the curse, when indeed it was thus welcoming only 
 the deepener of the curse, and it may be the author of some 
 new mischief; yet hoping ever, with hopes that even at the 
 best were only most imperfectly and inadequately fulfilled. 
 Thus have the multitudes of men still gathered and grouped 
 themselves round central figures in history, giving testimony 
 even by an oftentimes fatal readiness for this, that mankind 
 was made for a Christ, for a divine leader in whom it should be 
 set free, by the mightier and holier magic of his will, by the 
 prevalence of a divine attraction which he should exercise 
 upon them, from all the potent spells of seducing spirits and 
 seducing men — that humanity was made for one to whom it 
 should be able to deliver itself perfectly and without reserve, 
 and to be blest in so delivering itself. For he being identi- 
 cal with righteousness, and wisdom and love, they who lose 
 themselves in Him, only lose to find themselves again for 
 ever. 
 
 So much, brethren, we may say generally concerning the 
 
154 . LECTURE II. 
 
 hope which the world has cherished of redeemers and sa- 
 viours — a hope which at length was fulfilled so perfectly in 
 Him, and only in Him, who bears both these titles, that we 
 well nigh feel as if the titles themselves, to say nothing of 
 any deeper homage or devotion, cannot, without wrong to 
 him, and encroachment upon his due honour, be lent to any 
 other. And upon this day, brethren, upon this resurrection 
 morn, it will fall in well with the joyful solemnities of the 
 time, with the current in which our thoughts must needs be 
 running, and from which it would only be a loss if the dis- 
 course you heard in this place should awhile divert them, to 
 address ourselves to. a part of the subject, which, had not 
 this high day come upon us, might perhaps have been more 
 conveniently reserved to a later occasion ; but which if now, 
 moved by the fitness of the season, I a little anticipate, you 
 will pardon me this wrong. The aspect of the subject which 
 I mean is this, — the world's hope of its deliverers as con- 
 querors of death, its expectation of one who should lead cap- 
 tivity captive, in whom mortality should be swallowed up in 
 life, who should be a vanquisher of hell, a bringer back of 
 souls, and first and chiefly of his own, from the prison-house 
 of the grave. 
 
 Such expectations in abundance there were ; for nowhere 
 have men sat down content under the heavy laws of death 
 which bound them. They have ever been imagining the re- 
 versal of the curse, a breach or a repeal of those inexorable 
 laws. The old world was ever feeling after "Jesus and the 
 Resurrection." And being full of this thought, it traced it 
 everywhere. Thus, in the cycle of the natural seasons, when 
 the earth in spring starts up from its long winter sleep, men 
 saw a symbol and a never-failing prophecy of life rising out 
 of death : that winter was as the world's death, this spring 
 as the world's resurrection. The enthusiasm which the 
 spring woke up, the rapture with which the outbursting of 
 bud and blossom, the signs of the reviving year were hailed 
 
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 155 
 
 — the way in which the chiefest and joyfulest feasts of al- 
 most all religions were coincident with, and evidently cele- 
 brated, this time, being full of this spring gladness, — all 
 this was not an evidence, as some would have us to believe, 
 that those religions were merely physical, did merely com- 
 memorate the revolutions of the natural year. But this 
 rapture and delight with which the outer tokens of renovation 
 and revival were hailed, had their root in a profound and in- 
 stinctive sense of the connexion between man and nature, in 
 a most true feeling that the symbols of renovation in nature 
 could not be aimless and unmeaning, symbols of nothing, 
 but must needs point to deeper realities in the life of man.* 
 
 * I may quote, though long, the sublime passage in Tertullian on 
 the vestiges of a resurrection which we may trace everywhere in 
 nature (De Resurr. Carnis, c. 12 :) Dies moritur in noctem, et tene- 
 bris usquequaque sepelitur. Funestatur mundi honor ; omnis 
 substantia denigratur. Sordent, silent, stupent cuncta : ubiquejus- 
 titium est. Ita lux amissa lugetur : et tamen rursus cum suo cultu, 
 cum dote, cum sole, eadem et integra et tota universo orbi revivis- 
 cit ; interficiens mortem suam, noctem ; rescindens sepulturam suam 
 tenebras ; heres sibimet existens, donee et nox reviviscat, cum sua 
 et ilia suggestu. Redaccenduntur enim et stellarum radii, quos 
 matutina succensio extinexerat : reducuntur et siderum absentia?, 
 quos temporalis distinctio exemerat : redornantur et specula lunoe, 
 quae menstruus numerus attriverat : revolvuntur hyemes et testa- 
 tes, verna et autumna, cum suis viribus, moribus, fructibus. Quip- 
 pe etiam terra? de ccelo disciplina est arbores vestire post spolia, 
 flores denuo colorare, herbas rursus imponere, exhibere eadem qua? 
 absumpta sunt semina ; nee prius exhibere, quam absumpta. Mira 
 ratio ! de fraudatrice servatrix : ut reddat intercipit ; ut custodiat, 
 perdit ; ut integret, vitiat ; ut etiam ampliat, prius decoquit... Nihil 
 deperit, nisi ; n salutem. Totus igitur hie ordo revolubilis rernm, 
 testatio est resurrectionis mortuorum. Operibus earn praescripsit 
 Deus antequam Uteris ; viribus prsedicavit antequam vocibus. Prse- 
 misit tibi naturam magistram, submissurus et prophetiam, quo fa- 
 cilius credas prophetiae, discipulus naturoe ; quo statim admittas, 
 cum audieris quod ubique jam videris, nee dubites Deum carnis 
 etiam resuscitatorem, quern omniiim noris restitutorem. 
 
156 LECTURE IT. 
 
 The spring time suggested such joyful solemnities, because 
 it was felt to be in some sort the Easter of nature, and ob- 
 scurely to give pledge, or at least intimation, of a higher 
 Easter in store for man. 
 
 And if it may be permitted me to take a little wider range, 
 and to gather proofs and confirmations of what I am affirm- 
 ing, of the manner in which human nature- has claimed a 
 resurrection as its own, not from the heathen world on- 
 ly, but wherever in popular faith or tradition I can find 
 them, I would then adduce, as a remarkable illustration of 
 this, the exceeding difficulty with which the world has ever 
 persuaded itself of the death of any who have mightily blest 
 it, or with whom it has confidently garnered up its dearest 
 hopes — the eagerness with which it snatches at the thought, 
 that such a one has not truly died, making much of the 
 slightest hint that seems to give a colour to this hope ; so 
 congenial is it to the heart of man. It was said of Moses, 
 "No man knoweth his sepulchre unto this day/' (Deut. 
 xxxiv. 6,) and these words, despite the plain declaration 
 that went before, were sufficient provocation for a whole fam- 
 ily of Jewish legends, to the effect that he had not really 
 paid the debt appointed to every man living. In like man- 
 ner we know how that word of the Lord concerning the be- 
 loved apostle, " If I will that he tarry till I come, what is 
 that to thee V this was enough to cause the report to go 
 forth that he should not die ; and not the express denial by 
 St. John himself of any such significance in the words, was 
 able to extinguish this belief, which continued to propagate 
 itself from age to age.* 
 
 In like manner we sometimes see a whole nation which 
 has found it impossible to believe that he on whom its 
 hopes were fondly built, whom it had trusted should at length 
 
 * See Augustine, In Ev. Joh., Tract. 124: Tertullian, De Animd, 
 c. 50 ; Hilary, De Trinit. 1. 6, c. 39 ; Jerome, Adv. Jovin., 1. 1, c. 
 26 ; Neander's Kirch. Gcsch., v. 5, p. 1117. 
 
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 157 
 
 have delivered it, and witb whose death those hopes have all 
 fallen to the ground, — that he indeed has come, like other 
 men, under the law of mortality, — has passed away, and left 
 his work, as it seems, unconcluded. How long Britain was 
 waiting for her Arthur J how long did the legends that told 
 of him as surviving yet in the far valley of Avalon live on 
 the lips and in the hearts of a people. And exactly in the 
 same manner, in a later and more historic age, Portugal 
 waited for her youthful king, looking fondly and with aching 
 expectation for his return — and this, for many a weary year 
 after he had perished, not obscurely, but in open fight, 
 among the sands of Africa.* 
 
 And may not some of us have known, brethren, in our 
 own experience, something that quite explains to us this dif- 
 ficulty of believing in death ? Have we not found this diffi- 
 culty ourselves ? and how, when the loved are gone, when 
 they have left their places empty, it is only by repeated ef- 
 forts that we can realize to ourselves that it indeed is so — 
 how we have to say again and again to hearts half incredu- 
 lous still, that it will never again in this world be otherwise 
 — that so much truth and faith' and love have indeed been 
 withdrawn from hence and forever. Thus earnestly does 
 the spirit of man protest even against that semblance of an- 
 nihilation, which death seems to wear. 
 
 * Thus Michelet (Hist, de France, 1. 17,) having told the death of 
 the last Duke of Burgundy: "Iln'etait pas facile de persuader au 
 peuple que celui dont on avait tant parle etait bien vraiment mort. 
 II etait cache, disait on, il etait tenu enferme, il s'etait fait moine ; 
 des pelerins l'avaient vu, en Allemagne, a Rome, a Jerusalem ; il 
 devait reparaitre tot ou tard ; comme le roi Arthur ou Frederic Bar- 
 berousse, on etait sur qu'il reviendrait. II se trouvait des mar- 
 chands, qui vendraient a credit pour etre payes au double, alors que 
 reviendrait ce grand due De Bourgogne." It is well known how 
 many obscure rumours have in like manner found favour with the 
 common people in different parts of Europe, that Napoleon is yet 
 alive. * 
 
 14 
 
158 LECTURE IT. 
 
 Nor need it of necessity be the loved or hoped in, those 
 in whom the expectations of others have been intensely cen- 
 tered : let it be only some terrible man, one that has curdled 
 the life-blood of the world with fear; and even such a one 
 as this, having once been so much to men, though only so 
 much to their fears, they will hardly be persuaded to have 
 indeed passed away from the earth which so quaked and shud- 
 dered at his tread. How long after the death of Nero did the 
 firm persuasion survive, that he was only hidden for a sea- 
 son and that the earth should once more be cursed with his 
 presence — the Christians of the Roman Empire giving this 
 expectation a coloring natural to them, and conceiving of 
 him as the personal Antichrist, who should make presently 
 his terrible re-appearance from the East, to carry forward 
 against them the work of blood which he had commenced.* 
 
 But to return to the sphere more directly marked out for 
 me by my subject, and to look there for the evidences of the 
 manner in which the spirit of man is incredulous of death, 
 witnesses, protests against it, as by a second sight sees what 
 shall be in the fulness of time, and prematurely grasps at it, 
 — what frequent mention in the Greek fable we meet of visit- 
 ers of Hades, of those that have descended and held inter- 
 course with the spirits there, those who have in a sense 
 " preached to the spirits in prison," and then returned from 
 the kingdom of night — or it may be burst for others, as well 
 as for themselves, the gates and barriers of the grave, rescu- 
 ing and bringing back from that dark region to the glad 
 light of life some delivered soul. I may spare any great 
 details in proof of this; time would not allow them; such 
 might scarcely seem in place ; and to a congregation like 
 that which I address they would be evidently superfluous. 
 By one example only I would indicate that which I mean, 
 but that example the most illustrious which ancient fable 
 
 * T<icitus, Hist, 1. 2, c. 8 ; Suetonius, Nero, c. 57 ; Augustine, De 
 Civ. Dei, 1. 20, c. 19; Lactantius, De Mori. Pers., 2. 
 
 
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 159 
 
 supplies. It is familiar to us all how the great cycle of the 
 labours of Hercules was not finished till he had done battle 
 with Death. Earthly exploits, even the mightiest and most 
 marvellous of these were not sufficient. It was felt, and most 
 truly, that to complete even the idea of the hero-champion 
 of men, something more was needed, a greater victory was 
 demanded at his hands : he must wrestle with, and in per- 
 sonal conflict overcome, foes mightier than those of flesh and 
 blood — even the last enemy, death and the grave. Nor even 
 then had his own life attained its perfect consummation; 
 since for this it was needed that all which was of earth in 
 himself should be burned out, that the dregs of mortality 
 should be cleansed away in the purifying flames of a funeral 
 pyre, willingly ascended — and this being done, that he him- 
 self, in sign that he could not die any more, that he was in- 
 deed made partaker of immortality, that death could have 
 no more dominion over him, should be wedded to eternal 
 Youth amid the blissful mansions of the immortal gods.* 
 
 Such no doubt, is the interpretation of this pregnant sym- 
 bol ; and thus, brethren, by a thousand voices, in a thousand 
 ways, the world has been declaring that it was not made for 
 death, for that dread and alien thing, which, notwithstanding, 
 it found in the midst of it. Thus has it looked round for 
 
 * In Buttman's Myihologus, v. 1, p. 252 seq., the higher signifi- 
 cance of the whole mythus of Herakles is unfolded with an exquisite 
 tact and beauty. Without entering into the merits or demerits of 
 other parts of the book, it may yet be as well to say that it is only 
 this single treatise which I wish to speak of in this language of ad- 
 miration. If K. Muller is right in his conjecture that Afyoy-z'oj- 
 Add/jLaatos {H- 9, 158,) the indomitable, a name belonging to Hades, 
 and that Apollo's service of Admetus is his passing down to the in- 
 fernal world in consequence of having slain the earth-born Python ; 
 if this be true, and he brings much that is curious in confirmation 
 of this view, we may then add one more, and that not the least re- 
 markable, to the Greek mythic narrations of this description. (See 
 his Scientific Mythology, p. 243 — 246 Engl. Transl.) 
 
160 LECTURE II. 
 
 one who should roll away the stone fronr the door of that 
 sepulchre, to which it had seen its sons one after another 
 unreturniDglj descend ; and eking out the weakness of its 
 arguments for immortality by the strength of its desires, it 
 has been forward to believe that for this one and that the 
 stone had been actually rolled away. But yet presently again, 
 it has felt only too surely that it had but the shadow, and not 
 the very substance, of the things hoped for : and in doubt and 
 perplexity, in despondency and fear, has made the words of 
 the Psalmist its own : " Dost thou show wonders among the 
 dead? Shall the dead rise up and praise thee?" but, unlike 
 him, it has not known what answer to give to its own ques- 
 tion. 
 
 And so it went on, until at length, after many a false dawn, 
 the world's Easter morning indeed broke, and from beside an 
 empty tomb they went forth, the witnesses of Jesus, preach- 
 ing Him and the resurrection ; men able to declare things 
 which they had seen, — that there was indeed a risen Head 
 of our race, one who had tasted death for every man, who, 
 not in poet's dreams, or in legend of olden time, but in very 
 - truth, had burst its bands, because it was impossible He 
 should be holden by them ; that there was one for whom 
 death was what men had so often, and so fondly and signifi- 
 cantly called it — even a sleep ; for He had laid Him down 
 and slept, and after his three days' rest in the grave, risen 
 up again, because the Lord had sustained Him, The day 
 at length arrived, when men were able v to go forth, preaching 
 Him who had shown himself alive by many infallible proofs ; 
 in whom too, being risen, mortality was swallowed up in life ; 
 and who was now seated at the right hand of the Majesty 
 on high, angels and principalities and powers being made 
 subject unto Him. 
 
 Such was the word of their message — that the stone was 
 rolled away, that the riddle of death was solved ; and hearts 
 unnumbered welcomed the tidings, and expander tntmselves 
 
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES 161 
 
 to it, as flowers, shut through some long dreary night, unfold 
 themselves to the warmth and the light of the returning day. 
 And shall not we, brethren, bear our part in the great jubilee 
 which that message of theirs has summoned the world to 
 keep, in the glory and gladness of this day and of this day's 
 mystery, before which all phantoms and shadows of the night 
 flee away, before which all sadness and despair are weak to 
 stand 1 Truly, with a deep insight into the mystery of this 
 Easter morn, did the great poet of our modern world make 
 the Easter hymn — the glad voices which said Christ is risen, 
 these, caught by accident, of potency suflicient to wrest the 
 poison-cup untasted from the han-d of the despairing one, 
 who had already raised it to his lips.* 
 
 And how, brethren, fares it with ourselves ? Is that word 
 for us a scatterer of sadnesses, a quickener of joys ? Does it 
 enable us to put off the sackloth of our spirits, and to gird our- 
 selves with gladness ? Let us earnestly ask ourselves this ques- 
 tion; for surely it is a sign that all is not right with us, when 
 other things make us glad, but not this — when the natural 
 spring fills our hearts with natural joy, but this with no spirit- 
 ual — when we stand aloof, cold and unsympathiziug, as the 
 wondrous cycle of the Christian year goes round, as the great 
 events of our Lord's life and death and resurrection and 
 glory succeed one another in a marvellous order; not hum- 
 bling ourselves in the humiliations of that life, and therefore 
 not exulting in its triumph ; never having stood beside the 
 cross of Jesus, and therefore having no right and no desire 
 to stand beside that open tomb, where he reared his first, his 
 everlasting trophy over death. If we feel not this gladness, 
 let us take shame to our dull hearts, and claim it as a gift 
 from our God, which he will not deny us. Let us ask that 
 we too may be borne upward and borne onward on the great 
 stream of the Church's exultation. Let us ask this ear- 
 
 * See Goethe's Faust, Scene 1. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 Destly; let us ask it as something wh;< , h W(j h( . ^ 
 without For of this let us be- sure, that now, after eighteen 
 hundred years, that announcement of the angel, "He is not 
 here, but risen," should be as fresh and new, as full of an un- 
 utterable joy to us, as it was to those weeping women, who 
 came to pay the last sad honours to their dead Lord, but 
 found only his empty and forsaken grave. 
 

 LECTURE III. 
 
 THE SON OF GOD. 
 
 Acts XIV. 11. 
 
 And when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, 
 saying, in the speech of Lycaonia, The gods are come down to us in 
 the likeness of men. 
 
 It was my endeavour when we last met, to trace out the 
 manner in which humanity has ever been looking in one 
 quarter or another for its redeemers and saviours — for deliver- 
 ers from physical, deliverers from moral evil. Carrying for- 
 ward my subject a step, it will be now my aim to show how 
 it has not merely been heroic men, men who triumphed over 
 all, even death itself, but divine men, for whom the world 
 has been craving; in whom it has felt deeply that its help 
 must lie — a most true voice of man's spirit ever telling him 
 that only from heaven the true deliverance of the earth could 
 proceed. We shall see how men have been ever cherishing 
 the conviction of a real fellowship between earth and heaven^ 
 and that not merely an outward one, but an inward ) a con- 
 viction that the two worlds truly met, not by external contact 
 only, but in the deeps of personal life, in persons that most 
 really belonged and held on to both worlds. We shall see 
 how the world, with all its discords, has had also its preludes 
 to the great harmonies of redemption ; has had its incarna- 
 tions — sons of God, that have come down to live a human 
 life, to undertake human toils, to die a human death : its 
 ascensions — sons of men, that have been lifted up to heaven, 
 and made partakers of divine attributes : we shall see how men 
 have never conceived of this world around us as totally dis- 
 
 (163) ' 
 
164 LECTURE III. 
 
 severed from that world above us, with an impassible gulf 
 between them, but always as in living intercommunion the 
 one with the other. 
 
 And to this subject the words of my text will form a fitting 
 introduction, yielding, as they do, a signal testimony to a 
 wide-spread faith through the heathen world in these living 
 relations between heaven and earth; for no sooner did those 
 men of L} T stra see in Paul and Barnabas, beneficent heal- 
 ing presences, with power to chase away the sicknesses of 
 men, than at once they leaped at the conclusion, "The gods 
 are come down to us in the likeness of men," and could 
 hardly be restrained from offering them divine honours. 
 The words themselves are a noticeable evidence of the world's 
 preparedness, even in that day, when so much of an earlier 
 and more childlike faith had perished, to welcome its delive- 
 rer from heaven. Nor are we without a parallel evidence to 
 the same in that exclamation of the awe-struck heathen cen- 
 turion, who, at sight of nature suffering with her suffering 
 Lord and setting her seal to the awful meaning of his death, 
 could come to no other than a like conclusion, and exclaimed, 
 " Truly this was the Son of God." 
 
 For indeed this, which is peculiar to our Christian faith, 
 namely, that in it at length, and in it only, a real meeting- 
 place between heaven and earth has been established in the 
 person of Jesus of Nazareth — that the divine was born into 
 the human, and so not by transient and external contact, but 
 in very deed, heaven came down to earth, and the earth was 
 lifted up into heaven, God became a man, and man God — 
 this, which is the peculiar prerogative and glory of our Chris- 
 tian faith, is yet not so peculiarly ours, but that every reli- 
 gion has, in some shape or other, made pretensions to the 
 same. It was claimed of all, though fulfilled only in one. 
 " The tabernacle of God is with men, and he will be their 
 God, and dwell among them" — this in positive fulfilment 
 did only in the Only-begotten come true ; yet, as far as the 
 
THE SON OF GOD. 165 
 
 idea reaches, is the essence and centre, not of one religion, 
 but of all. Men may conceive it under different aspects, 
 may imagine it to be brought about in various ways ; some 
 of these ways will approach nearer to the heart of the mat- 
 ter than others ; but this idea, in one shape or another, must 
 constitute the central one of every religion. 
 
 I will endeavour to trace a few proofs of this, as in the 
 heathen religions of antiquity they meet us every where, — 
 to hold up before you a few forms which, with more or less 
 distinctness, men expressed their desire after, or embodied 
 their belief in, this fellowship, — and more than fellowship, 
 this union between God and man j and then to show how 
 far short, even in idea, not to speak of the realization of 
 that idea, all which men ever conceived of in this way fell 
 of the actual fact upon which the Church is founded. 
 
 And first, would we trace what is nearest to a nation's 
 heart, we should turn to its poetry ; there we shall find not 
 what it has, but what it is reaching after — not its actual 
 work-day world, but that ideal world after which it is long- 
 ing. If, then, we turn to the oldest, the epic, poetry of 
 Greece, we behold heroes and gods and men mingling famil- 
 iarly together. In this free intercourse, in this beaten and 
 well-trodden way between earth and heaven, we have what 
 we might venture to call the heathen counterpart to the heav- 
 enly ladder seen by Jacob in dream, on which angels were 
 ascending and descending, with the Lord himself at the sum- 
 mit; even as that was but the weak intimation of a closer 
 union between earth and heaven to be effected in the person 
 of the Son of Man — a union wherein God should no longer 
 appear at the summit of the ladder, but at its foot — no longer 
 a God far off, but near ; — men now at last beholding the 
 " heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descend- 
 ing upon the Son of Man." 
 
 We may select one instance more which Greek art will 
 supply, of the sense of so intimate relations between God 
 
166 LECTURE III. 
 
 and man, as only the Incarnation could at length adequately 
 express. We oftentimes take it as a matter of course, one 
 which therefore excites in us no reflection or surprise, that 
 the statues of the Grecian gods should be in human forms, 
 in the perfection of human grace and beauty, the highest which 
 the skill of the artist could attain. And yet what a wonderful 
 thing was this, — to have arrived at the conviction that the 
 human was the most adequate expression for the divine — 
 that if God did reveal himself, it would be as man — that the 
 nearest approximation to the ideal of humanity was the wor- 
 thiest type of the Godhead. These too in their kind we 
 must regard as prophecies of the Incarnation ; not indeed, 
 of the deeps of that mystery, but weak prophecies of it still. 
 Not, however in the ideal world of art only did this faith 
 find utterance, but in the actual world as well. The whole 
 scheme of an Oriental court, and eminently that of the great 
 King, was laid out on the idea that it was the visible rep- 
 resentation of the court of heaven, and the king himself a 
 visible incarnation of the highest God. The sense of this 
 speaks out in every arrangement, in the least as in the great- 
 est, and is the key to them all. Thus, the laws of that king- 
 dom, when once uttered, could not be reversed or changed, 
 (Dan. vi. 8,) because the king who gave them was the incar- 
 nation of God, and God cannot repent, or alter the thing 
 which has gone out from his lips.* 
 
 * God is afpfrti'oj, his counsels a/jiston&rjT'a, and he not a man 
 that he should repent ; and even such his visible representative on 
 earth must be. It was on this unchangeableness of what had once 
 gone forth from the lips of the king, which itself was thus no capri- 
 cious state rule, but grew out of the very idea on which the Per- 
 sian monarchy rested, that the enemies of Daniel founded their con- 
 fident expectations of success in their conspiracy against him. (Dan. 
 vi. 8, 15.) So, too, when then the purposes of Ahasuerus the king 
 were altered concerning the Jews, he yet could not reverse the edict 
 which permitted them to be attacked by their enemies : he could 
 only give another edict, allowing them to stand upon their defence. 
 (Esth. viii. 10, 11.) 
 
THE SON OF GOD. 1G7 
 
 None, as again we learn from the book of Esther (iv. 11,) 
 might come into the king's presence unbidden and live, save 
 by a distinct act of grace. They must die, unless the golden 
 sceptre, in token of this grace, was held out to them ; because 
 none but the pardoned can behold the countenance of God, 
 and not perish at its intolerable brightness. So, as that 
 same book teaches us, it was forbidden to one clothed in 
 sackcloth to enter within the palace ; (iv. 2 ;) and this, be- 
 cause heaven, of which that palace was the image, is the re- 
 gion of life and gladness, not of sorrow or of death ) which, 
 therefore, as they might not enter there, so neither might 
 these things, which are their visible signs and symbols, en- 
 ter into the palace of the king. The seven princes that 
 stood nearest to the throne and saw the king's face, (i. 14,) 
 correspond to the seven highest angels that were supposed to 
 stand before, and nearest to the throne of God. Nor was 
 the adoration offered to the Persian king a mere act of ho- 
 mage or sign of fealty, but was most truly, and in the high- 
 est sense, a worshipping ; and exactly because felt as such, 
 was so earnestly resisted, though from different motives, by . 
 the Greek alike, and the Jew — by the Greek, as dishonouring 
 to himself, by the Jew, as dishonouring to his God. It was 
 a worshipping of the king's person for the presence of God, 
 which was supposed to dwell singularly in him. 
 
 Again, when the foremost place in all the earth had passed 
 into the possession of another, what was the apotheosis of a 
 Homan Caesar, in life or after death," but a troubled speaking 
 out of men's sense, that he who stood in the forefront of hu- 
 manity, the chiefest of the sons of men, should also be more 
 than man ? This, in itself most true, did only become the 
 fearful blasphemy it was, when the worship was misapplied, 
 and the object to which it was due had been mistaken. It 
 was indeed an irony of the heathen world, and of its magnifi- 
 cent pretensions, worthy of the great author of mischief, 
 when the honour that it owed to Christ the Lord, being diver- 
 
 
168 LECTURE III. 
 
 ted on the way, was rendered to a Nero or a Tiberius. The 
 prince of this world was herein mocking his votaries, exactly 
 as he mocked the Jews, when they too were led to incor- 
 porate their rejection of all that was best, and their choice 
 of all which was worst, in an outward fact, in that cry of 
 theirs — "Not this man, but Barabbas." 
 
 And I may perhaps be permitted to observe as not alien 
 to our present argument, but as another striking proof of 
 this craving of men for that which is given them in Christ 
 and in his incarnation, for such a bridal of two worlds as 
 was celebrated therein, that whenever, even in Christendom, 
 men have lost their faith in this gift, or have suffered that 
 faith to grow weak, then they have not rested till they have 
 created for themselves a substitute for that truth which thus 
 they have let go. Thus, no sooner had men's faith in a 
 present, though invisible, Head of his Church waxed feeble 
 — no sooner did the God-man, because he could not be seen, 
 or touched, or handled, appear far off to carnal and sense- 
 bound generations, than they began to yearn for a substitute, 
 who should give them in palpable form all which they no 
 longer felt that they possessed in Him. And thus men be- 
 gan to lend questionable honours and ambiguous titles to a 
 pope ; and ever as they more let go their sense of the reality 
 of Christ' s-headship, they lent more of his glories, of his names, 
 his honours, his divine attributes, to the man who had placed 
 himself in his seat, and offered them in a gross and visible 
 way that connexion between earth and heaven, which they 
 were intended to have found in him of whom it is written, 
 " The Head of overy man is Christ." 
 
 Exactly in the same manner, a thoughtful observer of the 
 progress of Unitarianism in our own day, will not have failed 
 to note that a system which shrinks from saying " Christ is 
 God," yet finds it impossible to rest in that denial, and is 
 rapidly and inevitably hastening to say, even as it has already 
 said plainly enough by the lips of its most forward votaries, 
 
THE SON OF OOD. 169 
 
 " Man is God," giving in the end, to every man, that which 
 it started with affirming it was blasphemy to give to any, 
 even to the Son himself. And were that, or any other yet 
 barrener form of unbelief, to succeed for a time in emptying 
 the throne in men's hearts wherein the Son of God is sitting, 
 on the instant we should behold impious and frantic enthu- 
 siasts springing up on every side, claiming the vacant seat, 
 and obtaining, too, the homage which was withholden from 
 Him. For truly our deliverance from superstition lies not 
 in unbelief but in faith. In holding fast the truth, and only 
 in that, are we delivered from its distorted counterfeit. 
 Thus the holy Eucharist, satisfying, as it does, the solemn 
 and mysterious cravings of the human soul, delivers the 
 Christian world from hateful mysteries and dark orgies. 
 Thus, again, faith in the sacrifice once offered upon Calvary 
 hinders and cuts off those hideous attempts at expiation, 
 which, but for that, the sin-laden heart of man would inevi- 
 tably devise for itself. And thus, too an exalted Saviour 
 preserves us from blasphemous usurpers of divine honours, 
 the truth of God from the lie of the devil. 
 
 But let us see, brethren, what nearer to the heart of the 
 matter the old world had, of incarnations and. ascensions; let 
 us see the highest form in which it presented these truths to 
 itself. And, contemplating that highest, let us still take 
 note how the Christian truth of the word made flesh, even 
 as a doctrine, was original — not to say that alone in Christ 
 it passed from a speculation, and became a fact. It will be 
 instructive to mark how all other systems not merely did 
 not give what they professed to give, (for that of course,) 
 how even what they professed to give, fell short of, 
 and was only an approximation to, the actual needs of 
 humanity. 
 
 Thus the Greek mind could conceive of a much suffering 
 man lifted up for his toils' and virtues' sake into the highest 
 
 15 
 
170 LECTURE ITT. 
 
 heaven. Their pantheon is full of such, — of heroes after the 
 toils and conflicts of a life worthily spent for their fellow-men, 
 made free of heaven, and admitted even into the circle of 
 the immortal gods ; and so far they had in their popular belief 
 anticipations of Him, the man Christ Jesus, whom, because 
 He humbled Himself, and for our sakes became obedient to 
 the death of the cross, therefore God greatly exalted Him, 
 setting him at his own right hand. 
 
 But yet how little was there here any true blending of 
 the human and divine, and how truly men felt this ; as is 
 wonderfully testified by the fact that this exalted and glori- 
 fied man, however many divine attributes were added to him, 
 yet did not get the name of God ; he was but a 8aifxu>v after 
 all j he was not, to use language which has been well used 
 of the Son, Deus ex radice. They felt with a right instinct 
 that a deified man did not thereby, and that indeed he could 
 not, become God — that no accumulation of divine honours 
 could make one truly God, who was not such already ; even 
 as the church, in a later day, was not to be deceived into ac- 
 cepting the Arian theory concerning the Son of God as an* 
 adequate substitute for her own, by the utmost prodigality 
 of divine names, and titles, and honours which were proposed 
 to be lavished upon Him. She felt rightly that all these 
 would not in the least fill up the chasm that divided, and 
 must divide for ever, God from that which was not God. So 
 was it with the apotheosis of heroic men : the divine glory 
 did but gild and play upon the surface of their being ; if a 
 man was to be also God, if there was to be any perfect union 
 of the two, it must be by other means, by a process which 
 must reach deeper and much farther back than this. 
 
 But, moreover, the other half, the other factor, even of 
 the idea of such a person as this, was altogether strange to 
 the Greek mind. A God coming down from heaven, emp- 
 tying himself of his glory, and in a noble suffering underta- 
 king a human life, and, that he might be the helper and de- 
 
THE SON OF GOD. 171 
 
 Jiverer of mm, enduring all, even the hardest, for them, 
 tasting death itself, — all this, a God thus stooping, and suffer- 
 ing, and dying, was wholly alien to every conception of 
 theirs. The very idea of the gods with them was of beings 
 free from all care, untouched by any sorrow, living ever joyful, 
 and ever at ease : or, if they sojourned for awhile in this 
 toilsome and tearful world, yet sojourning as visiters only — 
 not touching the burden of its wo with the tip of their fin- 
 ger — undertaking it might be human tasks, yet undertaking 
 them in sport, not really coming under, or feeling their 
 weight. True, indeed, that this conception of a suffering 
 God, which was so strange to all western habits of thought, 
 was familiar to the mythologies of the East. They have 
 their Osiris, — and not him alone, though in him these suf- 
 ferings of a divine nature come the most prominently and glo- 
 riously out — who, in the fulness of his beneficent purposes for 
 the race of men, and in mighty and earnest conflict with the 
 prince of evil, endures all things, going down even to the 
 deeps of death : and thus, no doubt, the Eastern religions 
 were not without their anticipations of Him, who, though he 
 was rich, yet made Himself poor, even the poorest, for us, 
 that we through his poverty might be rich. 
 
 And yet how imperfect, even as regards the idea, was this 
 too. Humanity, however it craved a God for its deliverer, 
 yet craved just as earnestly a man ; it wanted a redeemer 
 out of its own bosom, one in whose every triumph over moral 
 or physical evil it could rejoice that "God had given such 
 power unto men." It felt, and truly, that no other would 
 serve its turn- — that, forasmuch as the children are parta- 
 kers of flesh and blood, he also, if he would be every man's 
 brother, and thus able to be every man's redeemer, must be 
 partaker of the same; "fairer than the children of men/' 
 and yet himself a child of man — that from the midst of itself, 
 from the depths of its own life, its redeemer must proceed. 
 A God who was only God, might conquer for himself, but 
 
172 LECTURE III. 
 
 there was no pledge or proof in his conquest, that man could 
 eonquer; a God who overcame death and rose from the dead, 
 gave no assurance thereby of a resurrection for the race of man. 
 
 And thus each of the great divisions of the Gentile world 
 had but a fragment, even in thought and desire, of the truth ; 
 the Greek world, the exaltation of manhood — the Oriental, 
 the glorious humiliations of Godhead ; and thus it came to 
 pass that each of these, even as a speculation, was maimed 
 and imperfect. These systems, so far from providing what 
 man needed, had not satisfactorily and on every side even 
 contemplated what he needed ; much less had they given it. 
 
 And how indeed could it be given ? This was the riddle 
 which He alone whose counsels were from everlasting, who 
 knew all the true needs of man, and meant to satisfy them 
 all, could solve. It seemed indeed that the world, craving 
 one who should be man no less than God for its deliverer, 
 put its demands in irreconcilable contradiction with them- 
 selves ; and, again, that demanding for its redeemer one in 
 whom the human and divine should not slightly and tran- 
 siently touch one another, but should be brought into inner- 
 most union, it here too required that which it was impossible 
 that it ever should receive. And yet the same wonder-stroke 
 of God solved both these problems. 
 
 The first difficulty was this, if the world needed a man, 
 yet where should it find the man that.it needed? It had 
 often put forth its champions, but there was ever found an 
 attainder of blood in every man's descent, a blot on every 
 man's escutcheon, a flaw in every man's armour. If no help- 
 er of humanity but one born out of its bosom would do, and 
 yet every one born from thence partook in its sin, was one 
 needing to be healed, and who could not therefore be him- 
 self the healer, was a sharer in the diseased organism, and 
 could not therefore expel its poison from others, whence was 
 such a one to come ? The answer was at length given in 
 the Virgin-born. Men had long before had an obscure ap- 
 
THE SON OF GOD. 173 
 
 prehension that only so could the mystery be solved. The 
 birth from a pure virgin had been attributed to many.* For 
 there was that in men's hearts which told them that for one 
 to be an effectual Saviour he must be a new beginning, a 
 new head of the race ; not a mere link in the chain of sinful 
 humanity, since of the sinful the sinless could never come; 
 but by such marvellous means as that miraculous conception 
 he must be exempted from the corruption transmitted from 
 generation to generation of the children of men. 
 
 But this was not all j this Virgin-born was also Imman- 
 uel, was that which men had asked for, " God with us." He 
 had, indeed, a Father, but that Father was God ; and thus 
 in the deepest deep, in the innermost core and centre of 
 his life, this man was also God. In the cradle of Bethle- 
 hem, when a pure Virgin had been touched with fire from 
 heaven, and had borne a Son, in Him, at length, the world 
 found all its longings fulfilled, its seemingly irreconcilable 
 desires all satisfied and atoned. 
 
 Thus, brethren, I have sought to trace out before you, to- 
 day, that which was perhaps the worthiest element in the 
 religions of the heathen world — that which, indeed, entitled 
 them to the character of religions at all — their recognition, 
 with all shortcomings and deficiencies, of a real bond be- 
 tween earth and heaven, their sense that the divine could 
 reveal itself in no way so fitly as in the forms of the human, 
 that the human could be lifted up to, and made to bear 
 the weight of, the Divine — that man was God's offspring, 
 of the blood royal of creation. The pervading sense of this 
 was indeed what mainly constituted them, in God's provi- 
 dence, preparations and predispositions for the absolute 
 truth which should in fulness of time be revealed. For that 
 there were upon these points certain predispositions for the 
 reception of the truth in heathendom, which did not exist 
 among the Jews, no one, I think, can deny. None can 
 
 * Especially to founders of religions, as Buddha, Zoroaster. 
 15* 
 
174 LECTURE III. 
 
 thoughtfully read the early history of the church, and mark 
 how hard the Jewish Christians found it to make their own 
 the true idea of the Son of God, as indeed is witnessed by 
 the whole epistle to the Hebrews — how comparatively easy 
 the Gentile converts; how the Hebrew Christians were con- 
 tinually in danger of sinking back into Ebionite heresies, 
 making Christ but a man as other men, refusing to go on 
 unto perfection, or to realize the truth of his higher nature ; 
 — no one can mark this, and contrast it with the genial 
 promptness of the Gentile church to embrace the offered 
 truth, " God manifest in the flesh," without feeling that there 
 must have been effectual preparations in the latter which 
 wrought its greater readiness for receiving and heartily em- 
 bracing this truth when it arrived. And what other prepa- 
 rations could they have been, but these which we have been 
 tracing ?* 
 
 It is true that there was with this, infinitely too feeble a 
 sense, too feeble even in the best, of the manner in which 
 sin had cast them down from the high places of their birth 
 — a confession far too weak and wavering, (for only the Holy 
 Ghost could have wrought a right confession,) of that attain- 
 der that was in their blood, the utter forfeiture of their in- 
 heritance which their sin had brought about. It was not 
 seen how man had ceased to be a son of God, could never, 
 but by a new adoption, a regeneration, become such again. 
 But man's divine original, his first creation in the image of 
 God, was so firmly held fast to by all nobler spirits, that St. 
 Paul, upon the hill of Mars, could at once take his stand 
 
 * The Christian apologists often find help here. Thus Arnobius, 
 (Adv. Gen., 1. 1, c. 37:) Natum hominem colimus. Quid enim, vos 
 hominem nullum colitis natum ? Non unum et alium, non innume- 
 ros alios, quinimmo non omnes quos jam templis habetis vestris, 
 mortalium. sustulistis ex numero, et coelo sideribusque donastis ? 
 He could appeal to such passages as that of Cicero, (Tusc. Qucest., 1. 
 1,0. 13 '•) Totum prope coelum nonne humano genere completum 
 est? 
 
THE SON OF GOD. 175 
 
 on this as a great meeting point between himself and his 
 Athenian hearers — as the ground which was common to them 
 and him : "Certain also of your own poets have said, For we 
 are also his offspring." (Acts xvii. 28.) Here at least, 
 they were at one. 
 
 And brethren, it is possible that we may learn a lesson 
 which we need, or at least remind ourselves of truths which 
 we are in danger of suffering to fall too far back in our 
 minds, by the contemplation of those, who, amid all their 
 errors and darkness and confusion and evil, had yet a sense 
 so deeply imprinted, a faith so lively, that man was from 
 God, as well as to God ; capable of the divine, only because 
 himself of a divine race. Oftentimes it would seem as if our 
 theology of the present day had almost lost sight of this, or 
 at least held it with only too feeble a grasp ; beginning, as 
 it so often does, from the fall, from the corruption of human 
 nature, instead of beginning a step higher up — beginning 
 with man a liar, when it ought to have begun with man the 
 true image and the glory of God. 
 
 And then, as a consequence, the dignity of Christ's Incar- 
 nation, of his taking of humanity, is only imperfectly appre- 
 hended. That is considered in the main as a make-shift for 
 bringing God in contact with man ; and not to have been 
 grounded on the perfect fitness of man, as the image of 
 God, of man's organs, his affections, his life, to be the 
 utterers and exponents of all the life, yea, of all the heart of 
 God. It is oftentimes considered the chief purpose of Christ's 
 Incarnation, that it made his death possible, that it provided 
 him a body in which to do that which merely as God he could 
 not do, namely to suffer and to die \ while some of the pro- 
 foundest teachers of the past, so far from contemplating the 
 Incarnation in this light, have rather affirmed that the Son of 
 God would equally have taken man's nature, though of course 
 under very different conditions, even if he had not fallen — 
 that it lay in the everlasting purposes of God, quite irre- 
 
176 LECTURE III. 
 
 spective of the fall, that the stem and stalk of humanity 
 should at length bear its perfect flower in Him, who should 
 thus at once be its root and its crown. But the Incarnation 
 being thus slighted, it follows of necessity, that man as man 
 is thought meanly of, though indeed it is only man as fallen 
 man, as separated by a wilful act of his own from God, to 
 whom this shame and dishonour belong. In his first per- 
 fection, in the truth of his nature, he is the glory of God, 
 the image of his Son, as the Son is the image of the Father, 
 declaring the Son as the Son declared the Father : — surely 
 a thought, brethren, which if we duly lay to heart, will 
 make us strive that our lives may be holy, that our lives 
 may be noble, worthy of Him who made us after his image, 
 and when we had marred that and defaced it, renewed us 
 after the same in his Son. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 
 
 MlCAH VI. (5, 7. 
 
 Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high 
 God? shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a 
 year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with 
 ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my first-born for my trans- 
 gression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ? 
 
 There are few facts more mysterious, brethren, than the 
 prevalence of the rite of sacrifice through the world. Na- 
 tions which it is impossible could have learned it of one 
 another, nations the most diverse in culture, the highest in 
 the scale, and well nigh the lowest, differing in every thing 
 besides, have yet agreed in this one thing, namely, in the 
 offering of things which have life to God, — or when the idea 
 of the one God has been lost, — to the gods many, of heathen- 
 ism — the essential of that offering in every case being that 
 the life of the victim was rendered up. And they have all 
 agreed in considering that this act of theirs had a value, 
 that it did place upon a new and better footing the relations 
 in which they stood to the heavenly powers ; that by these 
 sacrifices they might more or less re-constitute the relations 
 between themselves and God, which by any cause had been 
 disturbed, bringing themselves nigher to Him, and render- 
 ing Him more favourable to them. 
 
 Now there are few or none in our day who would count 
 that they had explained the prevalence of these convictions, 
 in the conspiracy of the more artful few to hold the simpler 
 many in bondage. These convictions were too wide-spread, 
 
 (177) 
 
1/0 LECTURE IV. 
 
 too universal; moreover, men were too direfully earnest in 
 carrying them out, to allow us to accept any such explanation 
 as this. Sacraments they might be, and often were, of the 
 devil, and not of God, but yet dreadful sacraments still — 
 bonds and bands by which men knit themselves to one 
 another, and knit themselves also to a spiritual world, — if 
 not to heaven, yet to hell. Those who explain them into 
 artful contrivances, may so give witness for their own shal- 
 low insight into the past history of the world, for the absence 
 of any deeper needs at work in their own hearts, since if 
 there had been such, they would have suggested a profounder 
 explanation : but the time is past when they will find any 
 number of persons to accept their explanation as sufficient. 
 
 As little can their theory be historically justified, who 
 trace up the existence of sacrifice to the rude notions about 
 God which belonged to an early age ; for then we should see 
 a people, as it attained worthier views about Him, gradually 
 outliving and renouncing the practice of this rite. But, 
 contrary to this, we find in the most cultivated nations the 
 theory of sacrifice only the more elaborately worked out, the 
 sacrifices themselves only multiplied the more. Here and 
 there there might be found in some obscure corner of the 
 earth, a savage tribe or horde, which had sunk below the idea 
 and practice of sacrifice ; though one in which, in one form 
 or another, it did not survive, it would be difficult to point 
 out; but nowhere a people that had risen above it. Here 
 and there a philosopher may have set himself against the 
 popular belief, but nowhere has he been able to change it; 
 he has ever stood single and alone, and has as little carried 
 with him the more thoughtful and deeper spirits of his time 
 as the common multitude. He may have eloquently de- 
 claimed on the absurdity of supposing the gods would be 
 pleased with the death-struggles of animals, with the blood 
 of bulls and of goats ; but there was ever something in men, 
 though they might not be able to explain it to themselves, 
 
THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 179 
 
 which told them that sacrifice had a significance and a mean- 
 ing, which a few plausible words could not get rid of or 
 destroy. 
 
 Such, brethren, I think you will admit are the facts, for I 
 speak to those capable of judging. Whether we turn to 
 those pages of Greek and Roman literature, brought by our 
 studies in this place especially before us, or whether we take 
 a wider range within our ken, every where alike we encounter 
 a consciousness upon man's part, that the relations between 
 him and the powers in whose hand he is, have been inter- 
 rupted and disturbed. The fact might be sometimes over- 
 looked and forgotten by him in times of prosperity, but we 
 see it evermore mightily emerging from the deep of his heart, 
 when the judgments of offended heaven were evidently abroad. 
 Every where, too, we encounter the effort by certain specific 
 and definite acts of expiation and atonement to restore those 
 disturbed relations again. " Without blood is no remission 
 of sin," was a truth as deeply graven on the heart and con- 
 science of heathen as of Jew. 
 
 For vast and complex as is the Jewish system of offering, 
 yet it is not a greater body of sacrifice than we meet almost 
 everywhere else, when we turn to the ritual of heathenism. 
 That Levitical system is of course in every way more com- 
 plete : it is an organic whole; excluding all individual ca- 
 price, all too into which the true idea of sacrifice, when es- 
 caping from God's control, would inevitably degenerate. 
 Moreover it was no will-worship, but the appointed way in 
 which God was to be sought, and not that in which men out 
 of their own hearts imagined that they would seek Him. 
 But with all this, it does not, I think, run into greater de- 
 tail, nor take more entire possession of the whole life of 
 man, nor demand a more continual recognition of a distance 
 and separation from God which has need to be removed, 
 than did the heathen systems of sacrifice with which it was 
 surrounded, when we take them in their sum total ; when we 
 
180 LECTURE IV. 
 
 count up all their infinite forms and varieties. For doubt- 
 less it was meant that they too, by this their multitude and 
 repetition, should give testimony against themselves, should 
 witness as plainly as did the Jewish in the same way, for 
 their own weakness and unprofitableness ; since of them, too, 
 we may say, that had they been effectual to do what they 
 professed to do, " would they not have ceased to be offered, 
 because the worshippers once purged would have had no 
 more conscience of sin ?" But thus, by their endless multi- 
 plication, and by the confession of weakness contained there- 
 in, they pointed, though not with prophetic explicitness, yet 
 still in their degree, away from themselves, and to that one 
 all-sufficient sacrifice once offered upon Calvary. 
 
 Nor need we, when we look a little deeper into the mat- 
 ter, when we come to comprehend what was the central idea 
 of sacrifice, be so much surprised, as at first we are, to find 
 it this rite of an almost universal character. For then we 
 perceive that it was no arbitrary invention, for which a thou- 
 sand others might have been substituted as well ; but rather 
 that the essence of all religion lies in that of which sacrifice 
 was the symbol — namely, in the offering up of self, in the 
 rendering up of our will to the will of Grod, the yielding of 
 our life to him as something which had been rebellious 
 in time past, and therefore worthy to die, but of which 
 we desire that the rebellion may cease, that so we may of his 
 mercy receive it back a life pardoned and forgiven. The 
 blood is the seat of the life, the seat therefore of the smevfita, 
 the desire, which in fallen man is a desire at variance with 
 the will of God. In sacrifice, in the pouring out of the blood, 
 is the symbolic rendering up of this rebellious principle ; a 
 confession that it is only worthy to die : that as the thing 
 offered died, so the offerer might justly die — the act having 
 of course only its true significance when the offerer did real- 
 ize to himself what he did — rested not in the outward work, 
 but said to himself and to God, " I stand in living commu- 
 
THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 181 
 
 nion with this which I offer ; even as this blood, so I offer 
 myself; dying that I may live ; giving myself to Thee, that 
 I may receive my true life back again at thy hands; losing 
 my life that I may find it." Of course, it is not to be sup- 
 posed that each worshipper so distinctly gave to himself an 
 account of what he was doing ; but this lay more or less ob- 
 scurely in the background of his mind, and gave a meaning 
 to his act. Our ordinary use of the word sacrifice, shows 
 how truly we have gotten to the innermost heart of its mean- 
 ing; for it is ever used to signify the giving up of some- 
 thing dear. And what so dear as our self-will ? The giv- 
 ing up of that is indeed the giving up of all. 
 
 But when we speak of the idea of sacrifice as being this 
 giving up of the self-will, there may seem a difficulty in ap- 
 plying this, when we come to the great and only perfect sac- 
 rifice offered by Christ on the cross. Of course it was not 
 there — no one would dare to suppose it was — the offering up 
 of a rebellious will ; we hardly dare speak of such a thing, 
 though it be but to deny it. But it was the giving up of 
 his own will* — that will which had the liberty of choosing 
 for itself what the Father had not chosen for it, but in the 
 entire rendering up of which he realized the very central 
 idea of all sacrifice, which all that had gone before had only 
 pointed at weakly : " Sacrifice and burnt offering Thou 
 wouldst not ; then said I, Lo ! I come to do thy will, 
 God/' In other words, sacrifice and burnt-offering God was 
 weary of — those shadows of the true; and Christ came to 
 give the substance ; and his actual pouring out of his soul to 
 death was the outer embodiment of the inward truth, that, 
 this yielding of his will to his Father's reached to the utter- 
 
 * And therefore the controversy of the Church with the Monoth- 
 elites in the seventh century, a conflict in which commonly so little 
 interest is taken even by students of Church History, was one 
 for life and death. The denial of a human will in Christ was in fact 
 a denial of his sacrifice. 
 

 182 LECTURE IV. 
 
 most, did not shrink from, or stop short of, the last and most 
 searching proof to which it was put. 
 
 In sacrifice, then, was the confession of a life forfeited, and 
 this confession incorporating itself in an act, wherein the for- 
 feiture was actually carried out. This, however, is but half 
 the idea of sacrifice ; for it is ever this confession made in 
 another. If a man had given himself to death, because he 
 felt that he was worthy to die, he would but have involved 
 his already confused relations to God in deeper confusion. 
 He might be unworthy to live, but was not, therefore, at his 
 own choice to die. If, as a sinner, he owed God a death, 
 yet as God's creature, made to serve Him, he equally owed 
 Him a life. The premises are right that man's life is for- 
 feited ; but the conclusion fearfully wrong, when he carries 
 out himself, and in his own person, the forfeiture. Such 
 false conclusions from right premises they draw, the misera- 
 ble victims that in our day fling their bodies to be crushed 
 benenth the wheels of some idol car — the same they have 
 drawn, who, in despair at the greatness of their sins, have 
 lifted up their hands against their own life ; for even self- 
 murder, that most hideous perversion of the idea of sacrifice, 
 yet grounds itself on a sense of life being the only worthy 
 offering. Thus a Judas goes and hangs himself, because he 
 feels his sin so great that it cannot be left without an atone- 
 ment, and in the darkness and unbelief of his heart he has 
 put back the one atonement which would have been sufficient 
 even for a sin so great as his ; and this, too, is the thought 
 of each other, who, by a like fearful act of self-violence, has 
 denied the love, though he cannot deny the righteousness of 
 God. 
 
 N.ever, then, in himself — never, by means of his own life, 
 could man's acknowledgment that that life was forfeited 
 rightly be carried out. It must needs be in another. And 
 the same reason exists against making that other some fel- 
 low-man. His life, too, is a sacred thing — is itself an end. 
 
THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 183 
 
 It could not, therefore, be used as this means to some other 
 end. In human sacrifices, in the offering of other men's 
 lives, there appear the same false consequences from right 
 grounds as in men offering of their own. It remained that, 
 if sacrifice was to be, the sphere of animal life must be that 
 of which it should take possession, and in which it must 
 move ] the life of animals being the nearest akin to, and the 
 noblest after man, and therefore fitter than any meaner for 
 the setting forth his oblation of himself. And man thus 
 taking possession of this, either at God's express command, 
 or moved by his own religious instincts, was indeed taking 
 possession of that over which he had entire right — of that, 
 which having been given him for the use of the body, was 
 much more given him for the spiritual needs of his soul. 
 
 Such, I think, we may venture to say was the normal un- 
 folding of the idea of sacrifice; the abnormal appears in 
 those revolting caricatures of the true idea, on which we 
 have lightly touched — in human sacrifices — in dreadful self- 
 oblations — in Baal priests' cutting themselves with knives, 
 and so pouring out, if not all, yet a part of their life — in the 
 self-inflicted tortures and living death of Indian Fakirs — in 
 the blind despair of mighty sinners, who, with profane hand, 
 have broken in upon, and laid waste the awful temple of 
 their own lives. 
 
 Wonderful indeed, brethren, is the manner in which, 
 armed with the truth, we may look upon past pages of the 
 religious history of man — some of the most soiled and blot- 
 ted — and decypher there an original writing of God, which 
 all those stains and blots have not been able to render illegi- 
 ble altogether.* If we have only a ear to hear, marvelous 
 voices will reach us, and from quarters most unexpected, 
 which shall speak to us of Calvary and of the Cross, though 
 
 * Tertullian (Dc Anima, c. 41) ; Quod enim a Deo est non tarn 
 extinguitur quam obumbratur. Potest enim obumbrari, quia non 
 est Deus ; extingui non potest, quia a. Deo est. 
 
184 LECTURE IV. 
 
 hough they little mean it themselves : such voices, for in- 
 stance, as his, who accounting for the human sacrifices of 
 the G-auls observed, that they were deeply persuaded that 
 only the life of man was a fit redemption for man.* What 
 was this conviction of theirs but the dark side of that truth 
 which the apostle to the Hebrews proclaimed, when he said 
 that the blood of bulls and of goats could not take away 
 sin, but that it must be purged away by better sacrifices than 
 these.")" Nor do I think it will otherwise than repay us well 
 to follow a little into detail the convictions of the world con- 
 cerning that which constituted a sacrifice of worth, and trace 
 how everything here pointed — whether it meant it, or not; 
 yea, when it seemed most to point away from him — to the 
 central figure in the world's spiritual history, to the immacu- 
 late Lamb, which taketh away the sins of the world. 
 
 * Caesar (De B. G., i. 6, c, 16): Pro vita hominis nisi hominis 
 vita reddatur non posse aliter deorum immortalium numen placari 
 arbitrantur. Cf. Muller's Darians, b. ii., c. 8, \ 2. Out of a sense 
 of this arose the extreme difficulty of eradicating human sacrifices 
 in the Roman empire, and the long survival of some of them. Thus 
 Tertullian [Apol. 9) : Infantes penes Africam Saturno immolabantur 
 palam usque ad proconsulatum Tiberii. Cf. Scrop., c. 7; Minucius 
 Felix, p. 199, Ouzel's edit.; Pliny, H. N., 1. 30, c. 3, 4; Eusebius, 
 Prcep. Evang., 1. 4, c. 17. 
 
 f Thus there was an obscured truth in those abject and crouching 
 superstitions, which Plutarch paints with such a masterly hand in 
 his exquisite little treatise, Ilspt AstcaSai^owaj — a truth which he 
 misses ; a recognition, that is, of sin, of a great gulf fixed between 
 the sinner and the offended power of heaven, which the Ssiaidai/jicov, 
 however vainly, was seeking to bridge over. His terror and his 
 trouble had a true ground, and one which would hinder him from 
 accepting as sufficient such attempts to pacify his fears as those 
 which Plutarch offers him — namely, that the gods were kind 
 (/u,s(,%l%i,oi). There was something else besides this which he was 
 craving to know, before he could dare to believe that they were 
 other than enemies to him. 
 
THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 185 
 
 Thus it is hardly needful to observe, that it lay ever iu 
 the deepest convictions of men that an offering to be accep- 
 table, must be an offering of value, not something which 
 cost the bringer nothing — that, while all was poor by com- 
 parison with Him to whom it was offered, or considered in 
 relation to that for which it was offered, yet must it be the 
 best which the offerer had — not the lame and the blind, not 
 the scanty gifts of a niggard hand — he thus giving token, 
 that if he had aught worthier he would bring it. Therefore 
 must the selected victim be pure of fault and of blemish, or, 
 having such, was unfit for the altar — the sense of this re- 
 quired perfection being as lively in heathen sacrifice as in 
 Jewish. Therefore was the bullock brought which had 
 never yet submitted its neck to the yoke, the horse which 
 had known no rider, or, in Hindoo ritual, no touch even of 
 man ; in other words, that was brought which had not been 
 already used and in part worn out in the service of the world, 
 but which was thus wholly and from the first consecrated to 
 heaven. Hence, too, as the offering must not be a niggard 
 one, the prodigality in sacrifice which startles us at times : 
 the hecatombs of victims, the rivers of oil, the cattle from a 
 thousand hills. 
 
 Herein, too, lay the explanation of yet direr sacrifice — 
 as of their sons and daughters in the Moloch-worship of the 
 Phoenicians — the fruit of their body for the sin of their soul ; 
 — such offering, for instance, as we read of at Carthage, when, 
 instead of the cheaper substitutes with which they had satis- 
 fied themselves for long, they sought out, in the mighty peril 
 of the city the dearest things which they had, the choicest 
 children of the noblest houses, and cast them into the glow- 
 ing arms of that merciless idol, which their sin-darkened 
 hearts had devised for their god.* Out of this same sense 
 that an offering grew in worth with the worth of that which 
 
 * Diodorus Siculus, 1. xx., c. 14. Cf. 2 Kin. iii., 27; Eusebius, 
 Prcep. Evang., 1. iv., c. 16. 
 
 14* 
 
186 LECTURE IV. 
 
 was offered, sprang the rejoicing among the worshippers of 
 Odin, when the lot of the yearly sacrifice fell upon no meaner 
 man than the king — the pledge of a future felicity to the 
 nation which was esteemed herein to lie.* To what did all this 
 reaching out after the worthiest, the purest, the choicest, the 
 "best, point, even in its dreadfulest perversions, but to Him 
 who was the fairest of the children of men, the choicest which 
 the earth had born, the one among ten thousand, who yet, 
 being such, did by the eternal Spirit offer Himself without 
 spot to God — who being the anointed king of the world was 
 thus in a condition to make acceptable atonement for all 
 men? 
 
 Nor less significant was the sense of a more prevailing 
 atonement, of an added value which was imparted to an offer- 
 ing, when one, not thrust on by necessity, not compelled to 
 die, but willingly, offered himself; the feeling of which was 
 so strong, that if not the reality, yet at least the appearance 
 of this willingness, was often by singular devices sought to 
 be obtained. f When, for example, the foremost man of a 
 nation gathered upon his sole devoted head all the curses 
 which impended on his people, all the anger of the immortal 
 powers,J and with that upon him gave himself to a willing 
 
 * Witsius (De Theol. Gent, p. 633,): De Septentrionalibus populis 
 refert Dithmarus primo anni mense nonaginta novem sortito eligi 
 solitos qui diis immolarentur, idque durasse usque ad Henrici L, 
 Germanise regis, tempora. Faustissimum veto id regno litamen 
 existimatum, si sors regem tetigisset; quam victimam totius populi 
 multitudo sunima cum gratulatione et applausu prosecuta sit. 
 
 j- Thus Tertullian, of the parents that offered their children to 
 the Phoenician Moloch: (Apol. 9:) Libentes respondebant, et infan- 
 tibus blandiebantur, ne lacrimantes immolarentur. Cf. Plutarch, 
 Ilapt A£i6i8cu[A.ovLas, c. 13. 
 
 J Thus Livy, of Decius: (Hist., 1. 9:) Omnes minas periculaque 
 ab Deis superis inferisque in se unum vertit. On this whole subject 
 of men as tyap/xaxoi, xaOap/.iata } Ttfpc^^uai'a, artot pdrtatot, see 
 Lomeier, De Lustrat. Vet. Gent., c. 22. 
 
THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 187 
 
 death for all, so turning, it might be, into victory the tide of 
 disastrous battle, what have we here but in its kind a reach- 
 ing out after Him, the chief and champion of the race of men, 
 whose life no man took from him, for He might have asked 
 of his Father more than twelve legions of angels against his 
 enemies — but who sanctified Himself, freely pouring out his 
 soul unto death — and who, not that He might deliver some 
 single people, but all the world, became the piacular expiation 
 of that world, drew upon his own head the penalties which 
 would else have alighted upon all, became a curse for man ; 
 and, when all was at the worst, when all seemed for ever lost, 
 changed by his accepted death the certain defeat into the 
 glorious victory of our race ? 
 
 We may not refuse, brethren, to recognise these references 
 to the cross of Christ : we shall read the history and mytho- 
 logy of the old world with little profit if we do. Nor need 
 we fear the recognition ; for it is the marvelous, and at the 
 same time most natural prerogative of Christianity, that, be- 
 ing the absolute truth, it has, or rather itself is, the touch- 
 stone to discover all true and all false, detects the truth which 
 is hidden in every lie, finds witness for itself in that which 
 oftentimes seems, and indeed is, most opposed to itself, is 
 able to recognise in the tares of earth the degenerate wheat 
 of heaven — in the world's harshest discords, the wreck and 
 ruin of God's fairest harmonies — and, in Satan himself, the 
 lineaments of the fallen angel of God. 
 
 But besides the witness for the great coming sacrifice, 
 which was contained in the sacrifices of heathenism, how 
 mighty a sense Of the cross of Christ, and of its significance, 
 do we meet in other regions of ancient life. What a boding 
 of it, for instance, forms the background of the Greek 
 tragedy. How mysterious is the manner there in which, from 
 some far back transgression, some rtpwr'ap^oj a**?,* the curse 
 
 * iEschylus, Agamemnon, 1163. 
 
188 LECTURE IV. 
 
 clings to a family, passes on from generation to generation, 
 an ever-increasing load of transgression ; until at length the 
 great calamity, the headed-up guilt of all, lights not on the 
 most, but on the least guilty head, on the head of one that 
 by comparison is innocent. What an unconscious symbol, 
 this, of the curse cleaving to the Adamic race ! For as in 
 each lesser circle of that race we most often see the burden 
 of the cross resting with the heaviest weight on the truest 
 heart in that circle, so in the great circle of humanity we be- 
 hold Him of the truest heart of all, the only unguilty One, 
 bearing on the accursed tree the accumulated curse of the 
 whole Adamic family, which had come down through long 
 ages ; and not bearing only, but bearing it away. For as in 
 those solemn and stately works of ancient art to which I 
 alluded, mild breaths of reconciliation seem to make them- 
 selves felt, when once the curse has alighted, the expiation 
 has been made — not otherwise, and only far more gloriously, 
 does the deep inner connexion between the judgment of the 
 world and the forgiveness of the world appear in that death 
 of Christ, which was at once judgment and forgiveness in 
 which the world was condemned, and in which, being con- 
 demned, the world was also forgiven. 
 
 But another evidence of the sacrifice of Christ, as that to 
 which the world had been tending, lay in the endeavor of 
 those who, after that sacrifice had been finished, would not 
 accept it, to substitute something else of the same kind in 
 its room. They felt that only so could they stand their 
 ground, could they recover or maintain any hold upon the 
 hearts of men. With what monstrous exaggerations the idea 
 and practice of sacrifice re-appeared in the final struggle of 
 Paganism with the Christian faith, is abundantly known to 
 every student of Church history. The apostate Julian, for 
 instance, of whose life the revival of Paganism was the ruling 
 passion, ran here into extremes which earned him the ridicule 
 of the more lukewarm adherents of the old superstition them- 
 
THE PERFECT SACRIEICE. 189 
 
 selves ;* and he, the same who had trod under foot the cross 
 of Christ, and counted the blood with which he was sanctified 
 a common thing, did yet submit himself to loathsome rites,f 
 seeking in the blood of bulls profusely poured on him, as in 
 a cleansing bath, that purifying which he had refused to 
 find in the precious blood-sprinkling of the Lamb of God, 
 slain from the foundation of the world. 
 
 Again, the inner neccesity of having somewhere a sacrifice 
 to rest on, the certainty that if men have not the true, they 
 will generate a substitute in its room, was signally proved 
 by the manner in which the doctrine concerning the mass 
 grew up in the Christian Church itself. No sooner did men's 
 faith in a finished sacrifice, one lying at the ground of every 
 prayer, every act of self-oblation, every acceptable work, grow 
 weak, than the feeling that they must have a sacrifice some- 
 where, produced, or, so to speak, by instinct developed, a doc- 
 trine to answer their needs — turning that Holy Eucharist, 
 which is the ever-present witness in the Church of a sacrifice 
 once completed on the cross, and continually pleaded in hea- 
 ven — turning that itself into the sacrifice, and seeking to 
 supply by these poor but continual repetitions, the weakness 
 of their faith in the one priceless offering, upon the accep- 
 tance of which, as upon an unchangeable basis, the Church 
 everlastingly reposes. 
 
 And now, brethren, by way of practical conclusion from 
 all this on which we have been entering to-day — what a wit- 
 ness is there here against that shallow view of the truth 
 which should bless us, that would leave it a bare doctrine, a 
 system of morals, lopping away as superfluous and mystical, 
 
 * See the manner in which the heathen Ammianus Marcellinus 
 (1. xxiii., c. 12) speaks of the prodigality of his sacrifices. Victim- 
 arins was the title given him at Antioch, not apparently by the Chris- 
 tians alone. 
 
 -j- Those of the tauroboliad. Prudentius (Peristeph. x., 1006 — 1050,) 
 gives a description at large of this revolting rite. 
 
190 LECTURE IV. 
 
 as a remnant of Judaism, all which speaks of atonement, of 
 propitiation, of blood-sprinkling, of sacrifice. The contem- 
 plation of the benefits of Christ's death under aspects sug- 
 gested by these words, so far from being this shred of Juda- 
 ism, which a more perfect knowledge must strip off, finds on 
 the contrary as many anticipations everywhere besides as 
 there. They are as busy about sacrifice in the outer court 
 of the Gentiles as in the holier place of the Jews ; and as 
 little there as here is it a separable accident, the garniture 
 and fringe of something else, but in either case itself consti- 
 tuting the core and middle point of worship, recognised in a 
 thousand ways as that which must lie at the ground of all 
 approaches unto God. 
 
 And these things being so, how can we escape from own- 
 ing that some of the deepest, the most universal needs of 
 the human heart have not yet been awakened in us, if we have 
 never yet desired to stand under the cross, nor ever claimed 
 our part in the great oblation which was made thereon, as 
 on the holiest altar ever reared upon the earth — needs which 
 that transcendent offering on Calvary was meant for ever and 
 perfectly to satisfy 'i It is plain, brethren, that we are lead- 
 ing an outside life, playing but with the surfaces of things, 
 never having brought ourselves in contact with inmost reali- 
 ties, that there never yet has risen upon our souls the awful 
 vision of a holy God, thafr we have wholly shrunk from look- 
 ing down into the abysmal deeps of our own corruption, if 
 as yet we have never cried, u Purge me with hyssop, and I 
 shall be clean ; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." 
 For when once we have learned aught of this, we then surely 
 feel that not amendment of life, that not tears of sorrow, 
 that not the most perfect baptism of repentance, that not all 
 these together, would of themselves reach our needs, or re- 
 move our stains, or give peace for the past, or confidence for 
 the future; that only in the Lamb slain is there purity, or 
 pardon, or peace. 
 
THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 191 
 
 Oh then, brethren, let us hasten there, where we may 
 make that precious blood-sprinkling our own ; let us hasten 
 there, lest they rise up against us in the last day — those hea- 
 thens, who set such a price on their sacrifices, which were at 
 best but shadows of the true ; who made by them such con- 
 tinual acknowledgement of guilt which they had contracted, 
 of punishment which they deserved, of reconciliation which 
 they desired ; lest they rise up, condemning us, who shall 
 have counted the blood with which we were sanctified a com- 
 mon thing, and brought into the awful presence of the Judge 
 a conscience stained and defiled, which yet might have been 
 purged and forever perfected by far better sacrifices than 
 theirs. 
 
LECTURE Y. 
 
 THE RESTORER OF PARADISE. 
 
 Genesis V. 29. 
 
 And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us con- 
 cerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which 
 the Lord hath cursed. 
 
 A word or two may be needful on commencing again 
 these lectures, which, after the lapse of some months, I am 
 permitted to resume j I may thus hope to remind such among 
 my present hearers as have heard the earlier discourses, and 
 inform such as have not, what has been their course, and 
 what the road we hitherto have traveled over. I have under- 
 taken, then, to trace in a few leading lines the yearnings of 
 the world which was before Christ, or which, though subse- 
 quent to Him, has yet lain without the limits of Christen- 
 dom, and beyond the mighty influences of His word and Spirit 
 — a world to which He was still therefore a Saviour to come 
 — to trace, I say, the yearnings of this world after its Re- 
 deemer, and the presentiments of Him which it cherished. 
 I have sought to show that if there was much in the world, 
 as in a fallen world there needs must have been, ready to re- 
 sist and oppose the coming in of the Truth, prompt to take up 
 arms against it at its appearing, so also, on the other hand, 
 in that it was a world which came first from Grod, and which 
 had never been abandoned by Him, but which all along He 
 had been in highest wisdom and highest love preparing for 
 and leading to this glorious consummation, there were in it 
 certain predispositions for the Truth — there was that which 
 
 (192) 
 
THE RESTORER OF PARADISE. 193 
 
 was ready to range itself under the banners of that Truth, so 
 soon as once they were openly set up. I have endeavoured, 
 too, to prove that the existence of unconscious prophecies of 
 the truth, resemblances in lower spheres of the spiritual life 
 to all which at last was perfectly manifested in the highest, 
 is one which we should have expected : so that it -is not the 
 presence of these resemblances which need perplex us, but 
 rather their absence which would have been justly surprising, 
 which would have been indeed most difficult to account for. 
 
 I take up my subject at this point, and go forward to ano- 
 ther branch of it, seeking to show that in another aspect be- 
 side those already contemplated by us, we have in Christ our 
 Lord " the Desire of all nations," inasmuch, that is, as we 
 have in Him one who was at perfect understanding with na- 
 ture, wielded it at his will, declared that He was come to 
 restore it, to bring back the lost Paradise; and did not merely 
 declare this in word, but by first fruits of power exercised 
 upon it, by the mighty works that He did, gave manifest 
 tokens that He was come, at once to set it free from the bon- 
 dage of corruption, and to set free the race of which He ap- 
 peared as the Head from the blind tyranny which it exercised 
 upon them — to give to his people something more than the 
 Stoic freedom of opposing an intrepid and obdurate heart to 
 the assaults of fortune, or the accidents of nature. For 
 though that in its place was well, which should enable a man 
 to say, amid a falling world, Impavidum ferient ruince, yet 
 better still his work, who should so bear up and strengthen 
 and establish the shaken pillars of the universe, that wreck 
 and ruin should find place in it no more. 
 
 But why, it may be asked, should this deliverance of na- 
 ture have been, upon one side, part of the world's expecta- 
 tion ? or why, which is in fact the same question on its other 
 side, should the giving of this deliverance cohere so inti. 
 mately, as we shall see it does, with Christ's redemptive 
 work, as to be in fact one aspect of that work itself? For 
 17 
 
194 LECTURE V. 
 
 this reason — because of the closest connection in which the 
 disorder from which the redemption was expected, stood re- 
 lated to the sin of man. That disorder was felt truly to be 
 the echo in nature of the deeper discords in man's spiritual 
 being. When man sinned, then in the profound and not 
 exaggerated language of our great poet, " All nature felt the 
 wound." Man was as the highest note in the scale of crea- 
 tion, and, when he descended, through all nature there fol- 
 lowed a corresponding reduction. It became subject to 
 vanity, not willingly, not by an act of its will, but by reason 
 of another, by reason of him who subjected the same, by rea- 
 son of man. (Rom. viii. 20.) We behold the fact itself on 
 all sides ackowledged — the fact, I mean, of a primal perfec- 
 tion, of a present disorder. Of the sense of primal perfection we 
 have singular witness in the language (and there is no such 
 witness as the unconscious one which language supplies) of 
 two of the most highly cultivated nations of the ancient world, 
 whom all the present confusions of nature could not hinder 
 from using words signifying order and elegance* to designate 
 the world which they beheld around them — for so to them 
 did this grace and beauty gleam through its present disorders, 
 so instinctively did they feel these to belong to the true idea 
 of the universe, grievously as that was now defaced and mar- 
 red.f While with all this, on the other hand, its present 
 disorders appeared so great, its discords so harsh, that the 
 Epicurean poet found, as he thonght, warrant and ground 
 enough in these for his athiest conclusions, that no hand of 
 Eternal Wisdom presided at its planning, that no final causes 
 
 * Kog/jlos and mundus. Pliny (iZ". N.,1. ii, c. 3): Quem xog/xov 
 Grasci, nomine ornamenti appellaverunt, eum nos a perfecta absoluta- 
 que elegantia mundum. Pythagoras is said to have been the first 
 who applied the word x6o/ao$ to the material universe — a word which 
 was in its way almost as great an acquisition for natural philosophy, 
 as was Plato's ISea for intellectual and spiritual. 
 
 f Compare the Be Natura Deorum, b. ii. 
 
THE RESTORER OF PARADISE. 195 
 
 could be traced throughout it, but that all was the work of a 
 blind chance.* That conclusion of his was indeed most false, 
 yet this much was true, that Paradise had disappeared from 
 the earth ; and man, the appointed prince of creation, did 
 stand among the rebel powers of nature ; which had cast off 
 his yoke, at the moment when he cast off the yoke of his 
 superior Lord, practising upon him, by a just judgment, the 
 disobedience and contumacy which it had learned from him ; 
 and which did now, with its thorns and its briers, its wastes 
 and its wildernesses, its earthquakes and its storms, present 
 him too faithful a reflex of the sin and evil, the desolation 
 and barrenness of his own heart. 
 
 Yet, nevertheless, though Paradise was gone, he kept in 
 his soul the memory of that which once had been, and with 
 the memory the hope and the confidence that it yet would be 
 again — that perhaps, though his eyes could see it nowhere, 
 it yet had not wholly vanished from the earth. If there 
 bloomed no paradise in the present, at least there lay one 
 before him and behind. If it lay not near him, yet in 
 the distance — in the happy Iran — among the remote Hyper- 
 boreansf — in the far land of the blameless Ethiopians. He 
 felt, indeed, that he was himself weak to win it back, but he 
 could not resign the trust that a champion would raise, and 
 accomplish for him that which he was unequal to accomplish 
 for himself. Nor was it only when the son of Lamech was 
 born that men said in joyful expectation, " This same shall 
 comfort us because of the ground the Lord hath cursed." 
 Of many more the same hope was fondly conceived. The 
 world could hardly picture to itself any one of its leading 
 spirits, of the great benefactors of the past, the mighty 
 deliverers in the future, without thinking of the curse upon 
 
 - * Lucretius : \" 
 
 Nequicquani nobis divinitus esse paratam 
 Naturum rerum, tanid stat prcedita culpa. 
 f See Muller's Dorians, b. 2, c. 4. 
 
196 LECTURE V. 
 
 the earth as more or less lightened in his time and by his aid. 
 For it truly understood that however the resistance which we 
 find in nature, a resistance so stubborn that only with long 
 labour and toil we make it subject to our will, may be part 
 of the needful discipline of the present time — may be, though 
 good in itself, yet good for our present condition, and some- 
 thing which we could not be without — still that release from 
 all this, from this resistance and contradiction of the outward 
 world, is a portion of the blessedness in store, not indeed so 
 much for its own sake, as because it will go hand in hand 
 with, and be the outward expression of another and greater 
 healing and deliverance in the inner domain of men's spirits. 
 This yearning after a lost paradise, this belief that it should 
 some day or other be restored, we find existing every where, 
 and, as was to be expected, in the worthier religions the most 
 vividly. Thus it comes out with a remarkable strength and 
 distinctness in that which has so many noble elements in it, 
 which is in many respects so remarkably free from the more 
 debasing admixtures of most other worships of heathendom 
 — I mean the religion of the ancient Persians. Through 
 that all, there runs the liveliest expectation of a time when 
 every poison and poisonous weed should be expelled from 
 the earth, when there should be no more ravening beast, 
 nor fiery simoon, when streams should break forth in every 
 desert, when the bodies of men should cast no shadows, when 
 they should need no food to sustain their life, when there 
 should be no more poverty, nor sickness, nor old age, nor 
 death. 
 
 And, what is most remarkable, makes these expectations 
 to belong to our argument is, that not in Jewish prophecy 
 alone were these hopes, and the fulfillment of these hopes, 
 linked with, and consequent upon, the coming of a righteous 
 king, one of whom, righteousness should be the girdle of his 
 loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins, who should re- 
 prove with equity the meek of the earth, (Isai. xi. 4, 5 ; ) 
 
THE RESTORER OF PARADISE. 197 
 
 but in all the anticipations upon all sides of these blessings 
 to men, they were thus connected with the expectations of a 
 king reigning in righteousness. In his time, and because 
 of his presence, these blessings should accrue : he should 
 be himself the middle point of blessing, from which all 
 should flow out. For there was a just sense in men, which 
 hindered them from ever looking for, or conceiving of, 
 any blessings apart from a person with whom they were 
 linked, and from whom they were diffused. Even in the 
 Pollio of the great Latin poet, however little interpreters are 
 at one concerning the wondrous child, the kindler of such 
 joyful expectations, however unsatisfying the common expla- 
 nation must be confessed to be, yet this much is certain, that 
 the poet could not conceive or dream of a mere natural gol- 
 den age. It must centre in and unfold itself from a living 
 person : it must stand in a real relation to his appearing, be- 
 ing the outcoming and reflection of his righteousness. The 
 world's history can have no sentimental and idyllic, it must 
 needs have an epic and heroic close. 
 
 But, it may be asked, Are we justified in looking at this 
 expectation as the expectation of something which is to be 
 indeed made ours in Him that is true ? All will, I think, 
 allow that the prospect of a restored paradise — in other words, 
 of a world lightened of its curse, does belong to the very 
 essence of our Christian hope — that there was a truth in the 
 ancient Chiliasm, which all its sensual exaggerations should 
 not induce us to slight or to put aside, in so far, that is, as it 
 was a protest against the dishonour which would have been 
 put upon a part of Glod's creation, or rather upon the com- 
 pleteness of the redemption of that part, if it had been re- 
 garded as so utterly and irrecoverably spoiled, that now it 
 could only be destroyed, and not renewed. Assuredly, the 
 hope of this recovery forms part of the anticipations of pro- 
 phets. The waste places of the world, those outward signs 
 
198 LECTURE V. 
 
 of sin impressed visibly on nature, shall disappear; "the 
 wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad/' What 
 glory the world yet keeps shall be enhanced and infinitely 
 multiplied : " The light of the moon shall be as the light of 
 the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the 
 light of seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the 
 breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound."* 
 (Isai. xxx. 26.) All the discords which have followed hard 
 upon the fall shall be hushed to peace : " The wolf also shall 
 dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the 
 kid." (Isai. xi. 10.) And apostles take up the strain : they 
 too declare how " the whole creation groaneth and travaileth 
 in pain together untill now;" how "the earnest expectation 
 of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of 
 God." (Rom. viii. 19.) They see, in ecstatic vision, not 
 merely a new heaven, but a new earth, and One sitting 
 upon his throne who says, "Behold, I make all things new." 
 (Rev. xxi. 5.) 
 
 And we have, not lying thus on the surface of Scripture, 
 other obscurer yet not less significant indications of the inti- 
 mate connexion between the restoration of man and the re- 
 storation of the outward world — as, for instance, in the use 
 of the same word in the New Testament to signify the one 
 and the other. There is a regeneration of man ; but the 
 same word (rtaUyy£i)£cr<V) is most significantly applied to na- 
 ture also, and expresses that great and transcendant change 
 which for it is also in store. (Matt. xix. 28). There is for it 
 also a new birth, for so much this word thus applied tells us, 
 no less than for man — a casting off of its old and wrinkled 
 skin — a resurrection morn, when it, too, shall put on its 
 Easter garments; when, as some foster-nurse, it shall share 
 in the glory of the royal child whom it has reared ; and who, 
 
 * For the way in which the Jewish commentators understood. such 
 passages as these, see Schoottgen, Hor. Heb., v. ii., pp. 62, 171; 
 and Eisenmenger's Entdeckt Judenthum, y. ii., p. 826.. 
 
THE RESTORER OF PARADISE. 199 
 
 at length ascending the throne of his kingdom, is mindful 
 of her in whose lap in time past he has been nurtured.* 
 Man's regeneration is indeed a present one, and nature's, in 
 the main, a future j yet are they but workings, in narrower 
 and wider spheres, of the same almighty power, and so may 
 thus justly be called by the same name. 
 
 Nor by word alone, but also by pregnant symbol it was 
 declared that this redemption was a part of that work which 
 the Son of Man came to effect. For I cannot doubt that 
 there was a symbolic pointing at what had been lost, and 
 what was to be won back, in the fact of the temptation of 
 our blessed Lord taking place in the wilderness. The garden 
 and the wilderness are thus set forth to us as the two oppo- 
 site poles. By sin, the first Adam lost the garden — which 
 henceforward disappeared from the earth, so that the very 
 site of it has since been vainly sought — and from that day 
 forth the wilderness was man's appointed home. Christ, 
 therefore, the second Adam, taking up the conflict exactly 
 at the point where the first Adam had left it, and inheriting, 
 so to speak, all the consequences of his defeat, did, in the 
 wilderness, do battle with the foe, and triumphing in right- 
 eousness, won back the garden for man — which, though we 
 see it not yet, will in due time unfold itself from Him and 
 as one of the fruits of his victory; for the centre being won, 
 the circumference will be won also. We recognize a slight 
 hint of the meaning that lay in making the wilderness the 
 scene of this great conflict, in that which one Evangelist 
 alone records, and which might at first sight seem but as a 
 stroke added to enhance the desolate savageness of his abode : 
 "He was with the wild beasts." (Mark i. 13.) But surely 
 it means that in Him, the ideal man, the paradise preroga- 
 
 * Chrysostom : Kaddrtep yap fiQqvr], rtaiblov tpstyovaa jSatftktxov, 
 f Til tijs apA^Js ixstvov yivo^iivov trj$ rtdtpi,x7j^ xa.1 (wtrj avvartohajveti 
 ■tup dyaOujv, ovtoi xo.1 57 xtlois. 
 
200 LECTURE V. 
 
 tives were given back — the fear of Him, and the dread of 
 Him, were over all the beasts of the field : " He was with 
 them," and they harmed him not, but did rather own Him 
 as their rightful lord. 
 
 Nor may we confine to that single act of our Lord's life 
 the tokens which he gave that he should be this deliverer of 
 nature; nor may we say that the glory of a redeemed nature 
 is a glory which as yet altogether waits to be revealed. 
 Rather is it already and most truly begun. In his miracles 
 we see the germs and beginnings of its liberation. In them, 
 nature is no longer stiff, but fluent — its laws, so stubborn to 
 others, become elastic in his hands; before him, each of its 
 mountains becomes a plain — it listens for, and hears, and 
 obeys the lightest intimation of his will. 
 
 That all this had need so to be in the presence of one 
 claiming to be all which he claimed, that it all stood in vital 
 and intimate connection with his work, was most truly felt 
 by a world which evermore adorned its champions with like 
 powers, which evermore conceived of them as workers of 
 wonders, as bringers back in like manner, of the lost har- 
 monies of creation, and conceived of nature as plastic in their 
 hands and obedient to their will. It was a true instinct, 
 however mistaken in the person to whom the wondrous works 
 were ascribed, out of which the world concluded that he who 
 professed to deliver his fellows must not be bound upon any 
 side with the same heavy yoke as they were — that the very 
 idea of a champion of mankind, was that of one in whom 
 should be found again all the lost prerogatives of every 
 man. 
 
 And when we thus say that the miracles which Christ 
 wrought were these signs and tokens of redemption, let us 
 not pause here, nor contemplate them as insulated facts — 
 once, and once only, having been — but rather as facts preg- 
 nant with ulterior consequences ; as the earliest steps of a se- 
 ries; as first fruits of a gracious power which did not stop 
 
THE RESTORER OF PARAEISE. 201 
 
 with them, but has ever since continued to unfold itself more 
 and more. What Christ once, and in them, wrought in in- 
 tensive power, he works evermore in extensive. Once or 
 twice he multiplied the bread j but evermore in Christian 
 lands famine is become a stranger — a more startling, because 
 a more unusual thing — the culture of the earth proceeding 
 with surer success and with a larger return. A few times 
 he healed the sick; but, in the reverence for man's body 
 which his gospel teaches, in the sympathy for all forms of 
 suffering which flows out of it, in the sure advance of all 
 worthier science which it implies and ensures, in and by aid 
 of all this, these miraculous cures unfold themselves into the 
 whole art of Christian medicine, into all the alleviations and 
 removements of pain and disease, which are so rare in other 
 (and so frequent in Christian) lands. Once he quelled the 
 storm ; but, in the clear dominion of man's spirit over the 
 material universe, which Christianity gives in the calm cour- 
 age which it inspires, a lordship over the winds and waves, 
 and over all the blind uproar of nature, is secured, which 
 only can again be lost with the loss of all the spiritual gifts 
 with which he has indued his people. Already Paul was 
 de facto admiral in that great tempest upon the Adrian sea. 
 Thus, then, brethren, we see that the world's expectation 
 upon this side also has an answering fact. There is One who 
 does truly give what the hearts of men have desired. Their 
 longing after a redeemed creation was no delusive dream, 
 however the ways in which they realized that longing, and 
 gave it an outward shape, were premature and vain. And 
 here you will bear with me, even though I repeat an admo- 
 nition once made already, but the importance of which will 
 abundantly justify its repetition. Let us then for ourselves 
 take care that we view aright these askings after the true, 
 and understand what they mean : let us see that they be not, 
 by the fraud of men, used against us, to undermine, or, at 
 least, to embarrass, the faith which they ought to help to es- 
 
LECTURE V. 202 
 
 tablish. We have spoken already of the way in which they 
 might be so used. The slight upon the miracle of Scripture, 
 and all other God's mighty gifts to the world by his Son, 
 through the adducing of other works seemingly of a like 
 kind, other similar pretensions made by, or on behalf of, 
 others — the mingling, and so losing sight of the divine facts 
 amid a multitude of phenomena apparently similar — this op- 
 position to the truth has been often attempted, but is proba- 
 bly now working itself out into a more consistent theory, 
 and one more conscious of itself, and what it means, and 
 what advantages it posseses, than ever in times past it has 
 done. 
 
 The evading of the stress of Christ's works by the reply, 
 that such have been the accompaniment of every heroic per- 
 sonage, glories and ornaments which the imagination of his 
 fellows has inevitably lent him, the halo with which it has 
 clothed him — for instance, that it has evermore been pre- 
 sumed that the outer world will obey him, no reluctant slave 
 to his material force, but a ready servant to his spiritual will ; 
 — this manner of dealing with the marvelous works of 
 Christ, is likely to find great favour in our time. Nor is it 
 hard to see the reason. It falls in remarkably with the ten- 
 dency of our age. It retains, and is consistent with a cer- 
 tain measure of respect towards the records of revelation. For 
 it does not presume those parts of them which affirm super- 
 natural facts to be a fraud or forgery, nor yet to be the re- 
 cord of deceptions and sleights of hand, but only that the 
 men to whom we owe these accounts lay under the same 
 laws, were subject to the same optical illusions in the spirit- 
 ual world as all their fellows, as belong to the very essence 
 of man's nature, it fared with them but as with others, that 
 the mighty desire became father to the belief. This theory 
 offers a way of dealing with a great multitude of statements 
 presented as historic, which men are unwilling to brand out- 
 right as falshoods, and yet as little willing to accept as truths. 
 
THE RESTORER OF PARADISE. 203 
 
 It offers a middle course, decently respectful to Christianity, 
 and at the same time effectually escaping from its authority, 
 and presenting, as it -seems to do, a calm and philosophical 
 explanation, both for its more perplexing phenomena, and 
 also for very much beyond it, it will be strange if, in our age, 
 which rejoices so much in large and inclusive points of view, 
 it does not find a ready and a wide acceptance. 
 
 But in truth, brethren, this universal imagination, these 
 consenting expectations upon all sides, in so many thousands 
 and thousands of hearts, these, if we believe in a divine 
 origin and destination of man, if we believe that this man or 
 that may be deceived, but that all men cannot — since what- 
 ever there may be of false at the surface, the foundations of 
 his being are laid in the truth, being laid in G-od — if we be- 
 lieve that this or that generation may be dreaming fantastic 
 and feverish dreams, which have no counterparts whatever 
 in the actual world of realities, but not all generations — if 
 there is that in us which, prior to all argument, solemnly 
 binds us to believe that no such cruel falsehood would be 
 played off upon man as a great longing laid deep in his heart, 
 without a corresponding object — then to us believing so, 
 these wide spread, or say rather these universal expectations, 
 will themselves give testimony to a truth corresponding to 
 them. We shall not indeed look for a truth answering to them 
 in all their accidents, for of these many will be local, tempo- 
 rary, varying, and the truth, when it comes to pass, must more 
 or less depart and differ from that form in which it clothed 
 itself to them who waited for it. So of neccesity it must be ; 
 for that form perforce was more or less injuriously affected, 
 distorted, and obscured by that sinful element, which in the 
 mind of each would mingle with, and in part debase and de- 
 grade it. But there will be a testimony in these consenting 
 expectations for that which lies at the root of, and after the 
 merely accidental is stripped off, remains common to, and so 
 constitutes the essence of them all. 
 
204 LECTURE V. 
 
 And when we are deeply convinced of this, then in all 
 those in whom the world has greatly hoped — workers, as it 
 has been thought, of wondrous works — bringers back of a 
 golden age — utterers, as has been fondly deemed, of the for- 
 gotten spell of power — graspers anew of the scepter over 
 nature which had fallen from the hand of every one beside 
 — readers backward of the primal curse — in the mighty acts 
 attributed to each one of these, we shall trace proofs of the 
 exceeding fitness which there was, that He who indeed came 
 in the fullness of the time, should come furnished with signs 
 and wonders and mighty works, so that even the winds and 
 the sea obeyed Him, and the bread multiplied in his hands, 
 and the wild beasts knew him for their lord, and in the 
 desert, Paradise bloomed anew at his presence. In legend 
 and in tale utterly worthless as history we shall yet read pro- 
 phetic intimations, which indeed understood not themselves, 
 of Him who, in the days of his flesh, by first fruits of power, 
 declared Himself the promised Seed of the woman who 
 should comfort us for the earth which God had cursed, and 
 at length bring about its perfect redemption from that curse, 
 making it, thus redeemed, a fit dwelling-place for his re- 
 deemed people. 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 
 
 Romans VII. 21, 23. 
 
 I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. 
 For I delight in the law of God after the inward man ; hut 1 see ano- 
 ther law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and 
 bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 
 
 We were occupied, -when last we met together, with the 
 world's expectation of one who should deliver all outward na- 
 ture from its curse, of one in whom the Adamic prerogatives 
 should re-appear. To-day I shall be led, as by a natural 
 transition, to speak of a yet nearer deliverance, and one 
 which it imported to man yet more that he should win, or 
 -that another should win for him — a harmony which he de- 
 manded with a yet more earnest longing than this harmony 
 of nature with itself, or of nature with him — an inner har- 
 mony, a deliverance from his own evil, from that in himself 
 which was threatening his true being with destruction, from 
 lusts which embraced his soul, but while they embraced, 
 strangled and destroyed. For sin has never reigned so un- 
 disputed a lord in his heart, but that there were voices there 
 protesting against its lordship. His will was enslaved ; but 
 he knew that it was enslaved, that freedom was its birth- 
 right, and that bondage, however it might be its miserable 
 necessity now, yet was not its true condition from the first. 
 
 It was the sense of this, of such an inner contradiction in 
 his life, which made one to exclaim that he felt as if two 
 
 18 (205) 
 
 - 
 
206 LECTURE VI. 
 
 souls were lodged within him 5* and another to set forth the 
 soul of man as a chariot, which two horses, one white and 
 one black, were drawing - )* — so did the wondrous fact present 
 itself to him, of the flesh lusting against the spirit, and the 
 spirit against the flesh, so had he learned that if there is 
 that in every man which is drawing him up to God and to the 
 finding his true freedom in God, there is also that which would 
 fain draw him downward, till he utterly lose himself and his 
 own true life in the mire of sensual and worldly lusts, till 
 the divine in him be wholly obscured, and the bestial pre- 
 dominant altogether. J It was the sense of this, which made 
 the image of the two ways, a downward and an upward — 
 one easy and strewn with flowers, but a way of death ; one 
 hard and steep and sharp set with thorns, but a Way of life, 
 as familiar to heathen moralists§ as to us who hear of the 
 broad and narrow way, the wide and the straight gate, from 
 the lips of the Lord himself. 
 
 And thus the problem which each nobler system proposed 
 
 * Xenophon, Cyropced., 1. 6, c. 1, §41. Cf. Seneca (Up. 52) : 
 Quid est hoc, Lucili, quod nos alio tendentes alio trahit et ed unde 
 recedere cupimus, impellit 1 quid colluctatur cum animo nostro, nee 
 permittit nobis quidquam semel velle ? 
 
 f Plato, Phosdrus, c. 25. 
 
 J This sense of the latent beast, or the more latent beasts than 
 one, in every man, which may be fed and pampered, and roused to 
 fiercest activity, -while the true man in him perishes with hunger, 
 supplies the groundwork of that famous and often imitated passage 
 in Plato. Rep., 1. 9, c. 12. 
 
 § Hesiod, Op. 289—292; cebes, Tab., c. 12; Xenophon, Memorab., 
 1. 2, c. 1, $ 21 seq.; in regard to which last passage there is a very 
 interesting discussion in Buttman's admirable elucidation of the 
 myths of Herakles. (Mytool., v. 1, p. 252.) He there shows that, 
 according to all likelihood, the " temptation " of Herakles belonged 
 to the original legend, and was not the mere poetical invention of 
 Prodicus. Lactantius (Inst. Div., 1. 6, c. 3.) notes how heathen poet 
 and philosopher had already used this image of the two ways. . 
 
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 207 
 
 to itself was the delivering from this evil, the bringing of a 
 harmony into the inner life — its end to make man a king, so 
 that he should have dominion over himself, and over all of 
 his nature which was not truly himself — that which was ap- 
 pointed to rule in him, ruling, and that which was appointed 
 to serve, serving — the charioteer charioting, and not drag- 
 ged in the dust at the heels of his horses. The promise 
 which it held out of giving this, was that which to every 
 more earnest spirit each system had of attractive, and only 
 as it promised this, had it an attraction to them. They only 
 felt drawn to it, as it undertook to give them this liberty, 
 and harmoniously to re-adjust the disturbed relations of their 
 inward life. 
 
 I know that when we undertake to speak of these things, 
 and would fain show in how wonderful a degree the ancient 
 world was engaged with the same moral and spiritual prob- 
 lems as are engaging ourselves, there is a caution which we 
 must take home to ourselves, if we would not trace entirely 
 delusive resemblances, and be led away by merely accidental 
 likenesses in expression, which yet point to no real likeness 
 at the root ) this caution, I mean — that since there are points 
 of apparent contact in almost all systems, it follows that be- 
 fore we can find any significance in these, or conclude one 
 because of them to stand in any real affinity to another, we 
 must strictly ask ourselves, how deep these resemblances go, 
 whether they lie merely on the surface, or reach down to the 
 central heart of the matter, to that which determines the 
 nature of each ; whether we have been caught by words and 
 phrases which have a similar sound, but which, looked into 
 more nearly, will be found to conceal under language which 
 sounds nearly the same, statements which are really and es- 
 sentially most diverse. This mistake no doubt has often 
 been made ; phrases have been snatched at and claimed as 
 ours, as anticipating and bearing witness to Christian truths, 
 without waiting to inquire what place they really hold in the 
 
208 LECTURE VI. 
 
 complex of the system from which they are taken. Thus a 
 Latin Father* has spoken of Seneca as " one of us" on the 
 score of certain showy maxims which sound, at first hearing, 
 and till they are adjusted in their place, like great Christian 
 truths ; and this, though perhaps there could not have been 
 two schemes more opposite at the heart to one another than 
 that Stoic, which in its pride would teach us to seek all in 
 ourselves, and the Christian, which bids us with an hum- 
 bler yet truer wisdom to seek all out of ourselves and in 
 God. 
 
 But at the same time, and owning our liability to be thus 
 deceived, we must yet keep far from that other course, which, 
 shunning the faults and exaggerations of this, refuses to see 
 stirring at all in the heathen world the same riddles of life 
 and of death which are perplexing ourselves. Into this ex- 
 treme they run, who will give any explanation rather than a 
 moral one, and the more trivial the better, to the legend and 
 the tale of antiquity, obstinately refusing to hear in the most 
 earnest voices which reach them from the past cries after the 
 same deliverence for which we yearn. The tendency to this 
 is in truth at its root antichristian ; for it grows, whether it 
 owns it or not, out of a conviction that all with which Christian- 
 ity deals is in fact accidental, and does not belong to the essen- 
 tial stuff of humanity — that this revelation of which we 
 boast, has no claim to be considered as an answer to the 
 deepest and most universal needs of men — that echoes of it 
 therefore are nowhere to be listened for, or being caught, are 
 in no wise to be accounted more than accidental reverbera- 
 tions of the air. 
 
 Keeping then that caution in view, but as a caution only, 
 and resistiDg, as we are bound to do, the endeavour to rob 
 the whole heathen world, its philosophy and mythology alike, 
 of all moral significance for us, on the score that significance 
 
 * Jerome (Adv. Jovin., 1. 1, in fine) : Noster Seneca. 
 
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 
 
 209 
 
 has sometimes been found where truly there was none, we 
 may boldly say that the highest philosophy of the old world 
 did concern itself with a redemption — not of course with a 
 Redeemer, for of such it knew not ; but it did avowedly set 
 before itself as its aim and purpose the helping of souls to a 
 birth out of a world of shows and appearances into the world 
 of realities, out of a world of falsehood into one of truth, 
 turning them from darkness to light, from the contemplation 
 of shadows to the contemplation of substance.* That favour- 
 ite saying of Socrates that he exercised still the craft of his 
 mother, that his task and work, his mission in the world, 
 was such a helping of souls to the birth, by the helping to 
 a birth the conceptions which were struggling there,f this 
 rested on no other thought — was in its kind, and however 
 remotely a prelude to far mightier truth, the earthly antici- 
 pation of a heavenly word, of his word who said, " Ye must 
 be born again." It pointed, though at an infinite distance, 
 to the possibility of a birth into a kingdom, not merely of 
 reality as opposed to semblance, but of holiness as opposed 
 to sin. J 
 
 What again is " Know thyself," that great saying of the 
 heathen philosophy, in which, when it. turned from being 
 merely physical, and a speculation about natural appearances, 
 the sun, the moon, and the stars, to the making of man and 
 
 * The great passage in the Republic of Plato. 1. 7, c. 1, 2, will 
 at once suggest itself to many. 
 
 f Plato's Thecetetus, c. 6. Stallbaum's edit. p. 63. See Van 
 Heusde's Initio, Philosophies Platonicce, v. 2, p. 52 seq. 
 
 J And so, too, there are counterparts, weak and pale ones they 
 must needs be, of the Christian idea of conversion, which find place 
 in the same philosophy. How remarkable are the very terms, 
 /xstati'tpotyri a,7ib twv oxvmv irti "to <£wj {Pep. 1. 7, C. 13,) rtfpctfT'pofiw, 
 •\v$yi$ Tteptoyoy^, [Rep. 7, c C,) with which we may compare the 
 irticttpsfyeoQai, of the New Testament, 2 Cor. iii. 16; 1 Thess. i. 9; 
 Acts xviii. 18. 
 
 18* 
 
210 LECTURE VI. 
 
 man's being the region in which it moved, the riddles of hu- 
 manity, the riddles which it sought to solve* — what was that 
 " Know thyself," that great word in which it embodied and 
 expressed so well its own character and aim, and all that it 
 proposed to effect, but a preparation afar off for a higher 
 word, the "Repent ye," of the Gospel? Since let that 
 precept only be faithfully carried out, and in what else could 
 it issue but repentance ? or at least in what else but in an 
 earnest longing after this great change of heart and life ? 
 For out of this self-knowledge nothing else but self-loathing 
 could grow — so that men being once come, as they presently 
 must, to a consciousness of their error and their departure 
 from goodness and truth, should hate themselves, and flee 
 from themselves to whatever higher guide was offered them; 
 to the end that they might become different men, and not 
 remain the same which before they were.f What could any 
 man behold himself, if only he beheld himself aright, but, 
 to use the wonderful comparison of Plato,J as that sea-god, 
 
 * Cicero, Tusc. Qucest., 1. 5, c. 4. 
 
 -j- See the affecting words, which Plato (Synops., c. 32,) puts into 
 the mouth of Alcibiades, concerning the mysterious and magical 
 power of the truth, even as partially embodied in the words and 
 person of Socrates, to conceive of sin ; until, as the young man own- 
 ed, it seemed to him that it were far better not to live than to live 
 the man he was. (juGTfs pot, 86%ao /a-tj jStcotfor slvai £%ovti, wj ez^O 
 
 J De Rep., 1. 10, c. 11 : 'Oorjtsp ol ibv Oaxdtifcov Vkavxov opwv- 
 *£$, ovx dv stt padlios avtov Z8ol£v tTjv dp%aiav tyvcitv, V7tb toy id 
 Ts rtaXata toy au>/Mxtos ^pvj td filv sxxsxhaGQai,, td 8s awtftpify- 
 6at xai rtdvtus hsKidfirjodai, vtCo tu>v xvp-dtiov, aTiTta 8a Ttpoprtstyv- 
 %,'svai ocffpfa ts xai tyvxoa xai TtsVpas, £>a?£ rtavti (xaVkov $?jpi,co ioc- 
 xhai r\ oloj %v tyvtiec. ovti* xai trjv ^v%r]v J^ust? 9s^/xe9a StaxsL/xsv^v 
 vrib {ivpiu>v xaxtov. This Glaucus, as the Socialist tells us, discovered 
 the fountain of immortality, of which he drank ; but not being able 
 to show it to others, was by them hurled into the deeps of the sea. 
 From time to time the fishermen catch sight of him, or hear him 
 
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 211 
 
 in whom that pristine form was now scarcely to be recognized, 
 so were some limbs of his body broken off, and some mar- 
 red and battered by the violence of the waves, while to the 
 rest shells and stones and sea-weed had clung and overgrown 
 them, till he bore a resemblance rather to some monster 
 than to that which by nature he was ? What was man but 
 such a wreck of his nobler self, what but such a monster 
 could he show in his own eyes, if only he could be prevailed 
 to fix those eyes steadfastly upon himself. 
 
 And when men, thus learning their fall, and how great it 
 -was, learned also to long for their restoration, very interest- 
 ing and instructive is it to observe how Christ realized for 
 yearning souls not only the very thing which they asked for, 
 but that in the very forms under which they had asked it; 
 most instructive to observe how the very language of Scrip- 
 ture, in which it sets forth the gifts which a Saviour brings, 
 was a language which more or less had been used already to 
 set forth the blessings which men wanted, or which from 
 others they had most imperfectly obtained — the Gospel of 
 Christ falling in not only with the wants of souls, but with 
 the very language in which those wants had found utterance. 
 
 Thus there had continually spoken out in men, a sense of 
 that which they needed to be done for them, as a heali7ig, as a 
 binding up of hurts, a staunching of wounds. The art of 
 the physician did but image forth a higher cure and care, 
 which should concern itself not with the bodies, but with the 
 souls, of men. They were but the branches of one and the 
 same discipline, so much so, that the same god who was con- 
 ceived master in one, the soother of passions, was master also 
 in the other, the healer of diseases. It was conceived of sins 
 as of stripes and wounds, which would leave their livid marks, 
 
 bewailing his immortality. The way in which this mythus is used 
 "by Plato, is a testimony for the profound meaning which he found 
 in it. 
 
212 LECTURE VI. 
 
 their enduring scars, on the miserable souls which had com- 
 mitted them, and which carried these evidences of their 
 guilt, visibly impressed on them for ever, into that dark 
 world, and before those awful judgment-seats, whither after 
 death they were bound.* 
 
 How deep the corresponding image of Christ T s work as 
 a work of healing, reaches in Scripture, I need not remind 
 you. His ministry of grace had been set forth in language 
 borrowed from this art, by prophets who went before ; He 
 should be anointed to heal the broken-hearted, to bind up 
 the bruised; and when he began that ministry, He claimed 
 these prophecies for Himself, laying his finger on the most 
 signal among them, and saying, " This day is this Scripture 
 fulfilled in your ears." (Luke iv. 21.) Aod then, too, we 
 shall all remember how in another place He spake of sin- 
 ners as being sick, and Himself as their physician, (Matt. 
 ix. 12.) and by the good Samaritan it has been often thought 
 more than likely, that He shadowed forth Himself, the de- 
 spised of his own people, and yet the true binder up of the 
 bleeding hurts of humanity. But what need of more proof, 
 when we use the very word healtk\ as equivalent for salva- 
 tion. That fearful saying of the heathen sage remains most 
 true, that every sin is a wound, that it leaves behind it its 
 scar, invisible now, — for it is a scar not on the body, but 
 the soul, — which will yet be only too plainly visible in the 
 day of the revelation of all things. Yet He so heals them 
 whom He takes in hand, He makes so perfect a cure, that 
 not even the scars of their hurts shall remain; "by whose 
 stripes ye are healed." He only waited till there was an 
 earnest desire awakened in men that they might find them- 
 
 * Plato, Gorgias, c. 80, Stallbaum's edit. p. 314. Tacitus [Annal. 
 6) has a fierce delight in applying these words to Tiberius. 
 
 f Thus Plato {Be Rep., 1. 4, c. 18, Stallbaum's edit. p. 324 ;\ 
 Apetirj fiev apa wj eooxev, vyleia tie t?l$ oa> smj xai xoXkos xai eve^ia 
 "kvxijsi xaxia 8e ocfoj tie xo.i alo%6s xai aadeveia 
 
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 213 
 
 selves in an hospital of souls — till these desires came to a 
 head, — till it was felt that all which was offered elsewhere 
 reached not to an effectual binding up of hurts, was but a 
 healing of them slightly, presently to break out anew, or a 
 covering of them over with purple and with gold, leaving 
 them the while to fester unhindered beneath. He only 
 waited till it was owned that a divine Physician, and none 
 other, could take the great sufferer in hand, and then 
 straightway He stood by the sufferer's side, and proffered him 
 all that he had asked for, but had now despaired of finding, 
 even help and healing, and these in the very forms under 
 which he had asked them.* 
 
 Nor was it otherwise with the idea of freedom, — an idea 
 which lies so close to the very heart and centre of the 
 Gospel, that its benefits and blessings are perhaps oftener 
 set forth by a word borrowed from this circle of images 
 than by any other, oftener described as a redemption or a 
 purchase out of slavery, and Christ as a Redeemer or pur- 
 chaser, and thus a setter free, than by any other language. 
 It is true that we have come to use these words with so 
 little earnestness, have taken them so much in vain, we have 
 so lightly passed them backward and forward from hand to 
 hand, that the sharpness and distinctness of their first out- 
 line has been for us almost lost and worn away, so that they 
 scarcely, or only now and then, with any vividness, bring to 
 our minds the truths which they affirm — the awful truth of 
 that slavery out of which we were delivered, the glorious 
 truth of that liberty into which we have been brought. But 
 still these words, though we may forget it, do evermore 
 proclaim this ; and they are words by which, oftener per- 
 haps than by any other, the Holy Spirit in the Scripture 
 
 * Augustine (Serm. 87, c. 10:) Jacet toto orbe terrarum ab oriente 
 usque in occidentem grandis segrotus. Ad sanandum grandem 
 aegrotum descendit omnipotens medicus. Humiliavit se usque ad 
 xnortalem carnem, tamquam usque ad lectum Eegrotantis. 
 
214 LECTURE VI. 
 
 declares the benefits whereof Christ has made us partakers. 
 And being this Redeemer or setter free, He was in this 
 regard also "the Desire of all nations." For He, when 
 He said " Whosoever committeth sin, is the servant of 
 sin," (John viii. 34.) when his apostle characterized him- 
 self in his natural state as a slave " sold under sin," (Rom. 
 vii. 14.) when another of His apostles spoke of evil men as 
 "servants of corruption," (2 Pet. ii. 19.) He and they, 
 using this language, were but affirming the same which had 
 been found out and felt by every sinner that ever lived, of 
 which the confession had been wrung out, too, from the 
 lips of thousands. When, too, he offered freedom, a vic- 
 tory over all which was bringing into bondage, an over- 
 coming of the world, as the issue of obedience unto Him, 
 He was but offering that, which in one shape or another, 
 each guide and teacher of his fellows had offered before, — 
 with indeed the mighty difference, that He could make good 
 his offer, and they not. I need not remind you with what fre- 
 quency we meet, sometimes almost to satiety, declarations of 
 this kind, — of wisdom being the only freedom, — the wise 
 man, the only free man, the only king, — of the soul of the 
 sinner as a tyrant-ridden city,* — of lusts as evil mistresses 
 which enslave the soul and bring it into bondage ; how the 
 promise of liberty is on the lips of each who would gather 
 disciples around him. All this is strewn too thickly over 
 the pages of heathen literature to need any proof in particular. 
 And meeting these statements thus frequently and thus 
 earnestly expressed as we often do meet them there, we must 
 see how they bear testimony that men continually envisaged 
 the highest benefits which their souls could attain, under the 
 aspect of freedom, of redemption — that the attaining of 
 this freedom was the object of their lives and hopes, how- 
 ever little they could make it their own, however they dis- 
 
 * Plato, Rep., 1. 9, c. 5. 
 
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 215 
 
 covered and were meant to discover, through their fruitless 
 struggles and toils, that only when the Son made them free, 
 they could be free indeed. 
 
 Again, a pointing at the crowning gift which was at 
 length given unto the world in Him, may be traced in the 
 idea of music which was so frequently and so fondly used 
 as the best outward expression of inner life-harmony. This 
 indeed was felt to have so singular and profound a fitness, 
 that a term borrowed from this art, was, we may say, for- 
 mally adopted as the aptest for setting forth that whole 
 discipline which occupied itself with the right composure 
 of the higher powers, with the bringing into one concent 
 the three-fold nature of man : — he in whom this language 
 comes most prominently forward, finding no worthier terms 
 in which to describe that wisdom with which he was en- 
 amoured, than as the fairest and mightiest of the harmonies j* 
 while sin, on the contrary, presented itself to him and to 
 many more, as a deep inner disharmony, as a discord which 
 had forced itself into the innermost centre of man's life, and 
 only through the expulsion of which he could again make it 
 what it ought to be, rhythmic, numerous, and harmonious. 
 All these thoughts, which, though first expressed by one or 
 two, yet found echoes in the bosoms of all, how did they in 
 their weakness to realize themselves, in the fact that dis- 
 cords ever made themselves too plainly felt in the lives, not 
 of the taught only, but of the teachers as well — how did 
 they ask for One, the mighty master of all spiritual melo- 
 dies : whose own life, free from one jarring note, should 
 make perfect music in the ears of Grod ; and not this alone, 
 but who should attune once more that marvellous instru- 
 ment which had lain silent so long, or from which discords 
 only had proceeded, even the soul of man, and draw from it 
 
 * Plato (Z>e Legg.,\. 3:) KaUiW^ xai (AsyiGt^v tZ>v avfi^wtuv. 
 
216 LECTURE VT. 
 
 again sounds which should be sweet even in the ears accus- 
 tomed to the symphonies of heaven. 
 
 Surely all their language, though they knew it not, 
 pointed to such a mighty master of heavenly harmonies as 
 this. For if it be true of Him, that as He emptied the 
 golden seats of Olympus, and swept their long line of 
 heroes and demi-gods and gods into the darkness and cor- 
 ruption of the tomb, He gathered from each idol as it fell 
 its pretended majesty and dominion and power, claiming all 
 rightfully for his own, and weaving all the scattered rays of 
 light into one crown of glory for his own head ; then of 
 none of these could this be more truly spoken than of Him 
 whom men feigned to be the god of harmony, to have po- 
 tency thereby over the spirits of men, with power to exalt, 
 to purify, and to soothe, whose music acted as a charm to 
 tranquilize the passions and attune the spirit to a peace 
 with itself, and with all which was around it.* For Chris- 
 tian peace, the peace which Christ gives, the peace which 
 He sheds abroad in the heart, is it aught else than such a 
 glorified harmony — the expelling from man's life of all that 
 was causing disturbance there, all that was hindering him 
 from chiming in with the music of heaven, all that would 
 have made him a jarring and a dissonant note, left out from 
 the great dance and minstrelsy of the spheres, in which 
 mingle the consenting songs of redeemed men and elect 
 angels, f 
 
 * Miiller's Dorians, b. 2, c. 8, \ 11. 
 
 f It is remarkable enough that although Christian art shrunk, 
 and, so long as there was a heathenism rampant round it, rightly 
 shrunk, from any large use of symbols borrowed from heathen my- 
 thology, yet pictures of Christ as Orpheus taming the wild beasts 
 with his lyre, are probably as old as the third century. (Chri&tl. 
 Kunst-Symbolik, p. 134, and Piper's Mythologie der Christl. Kunst, p. 
 121.) Compare the opening of the latter Clement's Cohort, ad 
 Gentes, and Eusebius, De Laud. Constantini, c. 14, p. 760, ed. 
 Reading. 
 
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 217 
 
 Thus did the Son of God at his coming in the flesh, take 
 up the unfulfilled promises of all human systems. For they 
 were unfulfilled ; those systems had wrought no deliverance 
 worthy of the name in the earth. How scanty was the 
 number of those whom they would even undertake to save, 
 — a few highly favored or greatly gifted spirits of the world 
 — not the poor, the ignorant, the weak; in this how dif- 
 ferent from that Gospel which is preached to the poor, and 
 whose tidings are good because they are these, — that the 
 Lord hath founded Zion, and the poor of his people shall put 
 their trust therein ! But theirs was essentially an aristo- 
 cratic salvation,* which should help a few, setting them 
 apart from their fellows, on pinnacles from whence they 
 were in danger of looking down far more with gratulation 
 at their own deliverance, than with any inward and bleed- 
 ing compassion for the multitudes which were toiling and 
 vainly seeking for a path below. And indeed often it was 
 not a salvation at all, even in the very lowest sense of that 
 word ; how often was it Satan casting out Satan — one form 
 of evil expelling another, men finding food for pride and 
 vain-glory in the very advances in wisdom and self-restraint 
 which they had madef — and thus those very victories which 
 they had won over fleshly sins, helping to make them slaves 
 
 * See Origen's admirable words in his reply to Celsus (Con. Cels , 
 1. 7, c. 59, 60,) showing how at the best the philosophers were 
 latpoo o^tycov, but Christ the tarpoj rtoTiJW. 
 
 ■f The well-known passage of Cicero (De Nat. Deor. 1. 3, c. 36) 
 has been often quoted. Men justly thank the Gods for the external 
 commodities which they enjoy ; but, he proceeds, Virtutern nemo 
 unquam acceptam Deo retulit. Nimirum recte, propter yirtutem 
 enim jure laudamur, et in virtute recte gloriamur. Quod non con- 
 tiDgeret, si id donum a Deo, non a nobis haberemus.-.iVaTO quis, quod 
 vir bonus esset, gratias Diis egit unquam ? At quod dives, quod hono- 
 ratus, quod incolumis. Jovemque Optimum Maximum ob eas res 
 appellant, non quod nos justos, temperantes, sapientes efficiat, sed 
 quod salvos, incolumes, opulentos, copiosos. 
 
 19 
 
218 LECTURE VI. 
 
 of spiritual wickednesses — of the seven worse spirits which 
 take possession of the house, empty and swept and gar- 
 nished ; from which the one spirit of sensual lust has gone 
 out, but which has not been occupied by any nobler guest. 
 
 And if, brethren, even our struggles, after an inward con- 
 formity to a higher rule, are what they are — if with all the 
 helps at our command, we yet win no step without an effort, 
 if oftentimes our premature hymns of victory over this sin 
 or that are changed into confessions of a shameful defeat, 
 and we, who went forth with victorious garlands too early 
 wreathed about our brows, have to come home and put ashes 
 upon our heads, how must it have been with them ? how 
 continually must it have been a seeing of the better only 
 with a greater guilt to choose the worse ! Surely the con- 
 fession of the Jewish Pharisee that was zealous for the law 
 and for righteousness must have been the confession of un- 
 numbered souls in all the world, wrung out from a deep 
 heart-agony, from the sense of defeats repeating themselves 
 with a sad uniformity, of ever deeper entanglement in the 
 defilements of the flesh and of the world — " That which I 
 do, I allow not; for what I would, that do I not; but what 
 I hate, that do I....I delight in the law of God after the in- 
 ward man ; but I see another law in my members, warring 
 against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity 
 to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched 
 man that I am ! who shall deliver me from the body of this 
 death V: 
 
 Such voices no doubt, did make themselves heard. For 
 indeed we shall not err, if contemplating the times which 
 went before the Incarnation, we affirm thart there had 
 been two cries which had long been going up into the ears of 
 the Lord of Hosts — two cries, although one was far more 
 distinct and articulate than the other. There was the voice 
 of appointed prophets and seers, watchers on the moun- 
 tains of Israel, waiting for a Sun of Righteousness, who 
 
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 219 
 
 as they surely knew, should in his time scatter the world's 
 gloom and shed healing from his wings. There was 
 their voice who knowing this, would yet ; out of a mighty 
 sense of the present evil around them and within them, 
 have fain hastened the time, — psalmist and prophet who ex- 
 claimed, " Oh that the salvation were given unto Israel out 
 of Zion I" " Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens and 
 come down 1" But there was another, a more confused cry 
 of multitudinous tones : it oftentimes knew not what its 
 own accents meant; it was often rather a groan within the 
 bosom of huumanity, which asked not, and thought not of a 
 listener, than a voice sent up unto heaven. It was a cry 
 which only infinite wisdom and infinite love would have inter- 
 preted into that cry for heavenly help, which indeed at the 
 heart it was ; a cry needing infinite love to pardon all in it 
 which made it rather a cry against God than to him. But that 
 love it found. He who said long before, "I have seen, I have 
 seen the affliction of my people/' saw also the affliction of a 
 world hopelessly out of the way, translated its confused voices 
 into an appeal unto Himself, and sent forth his Son to be 
 Saviour of the lost. 
 
 And then, what not alone the Law could not do, in that it 
 was weak through the flesh, but what all wisdom had been 
 equally impotent to effect, for it underlay the same weakness, 
 He did; what they could not give, he gave. For here we come 
 back again to a point which I have pressed already, 
 but which yet is so important, that I shall make no apology, 
 for pressing it once more, which is this, — that the prero- 
 gative of our Christian faith, the secret of its strength, is that 
 all which it has, and all which it offers, is laid up in a person. 
 This is what has made it strong, while so much else has 
 proved weak, that it has a Christ at its middle point — that 
 it is not a circumference without a centre, — that it has not 
 merely a deliverance, but a Deliverer, — not a redemption 
 only, but a Redeemer as well. This is what makes it fit for 
 
220 LECTURE VI. 
 
 wayfaring men; this is what makes it sun-light, and all else 
 compared with if but as moon-light, — fair it may be, but 
 cold and ineffectual; while here the light and the life 
 are one; the Light is also the Life of men. Oh how great 
 the difference between submitting ourselves to a complex of 
 rules and casting ourselves upon a beating heart; between 
 accepting a system and cleaving to a person. And how 
 tenfold blessed the advantages of the last, if that person is 
 such a One that there shall be nothing servile in the entire 
 resignation of ourselves to be taught of Him, for He is the 
 absolute Truth — nothing unmanly in the yielding of our 
 whole being to be wholly moulded by Him, for that is not 
 merely the highest which humanity has reached, but the 
 highest which it can reach — its intended and ideal perfection, 
 at once its perfect image and superior Lord. 
 
 They felt this, that help must lie in a person, that only 
 round a person souls would cluster, — those who when they 
 would fain make a final stand for the old beliefs of the world 
 and pyove if these could not even now be quickened to dis- 
 pute the world with the youthful Christian Church; — they 
 felt, I say, this, who set about marshaling, not merely 
 rival doctrines to the Christian, but rival benefactors to 
 Christ. If He went about Judaea doing good, they also 
 would point to sages of their own, who traveled on like 
 errands to the furthest East. This is, no doubt the meaning 
 of that half-fabulous life of Appollonius, which just as 
 Christianity was rising into notice and evident significance, 
 made its appearance ; — this the explanation of that revived 
 interest in Pythagoras, which then found place. The vo- 
 taries of the old religions felt that in this respect they must 
 not come short of that which they would oppose; and 
 rightly — however weak and flitting and unreal the phantoms 
 which they conjured up to their help. 
 
 For, brethren, had we a system only, it would leave us 
 just as weak as other systems have left their votaries. We 
 
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 221 
 
 should have to confess that we found in ours, as they found in 
 theirs, no adequate strength — that not merely now and then, 
 and at ever rarer intervals, we were worsted in our conflict 
 with the sin of our own hearts, but evermore. Our blessed- 
 ness, and let us not miss that blessedness, is, that our trea- 
 sures are treasured in a person, and are therefore inex- 
 haustible — in one who requires nothing but what first He 
 gives — who is not for one generation a present teacher and 
 a living Lord, and then for all succeeding a past and a dead 
 one, but who is present and living for all — as truly for us 
 in this latter day, as for them who went up and down with 
 him in the days of his flesh. Our strength and our bless- 
 edness is, that what we have to know is " the truth as it is 
 in Jesus j" that what we have to learn, is to u learn Christ; 77 
 that what we have to put on, is to "put on the Lord Jesus 
 Christ/ 7 and the righteousness which is by Him. 
 
 19* 
 
LECTURE VII. 
 
 THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 
 
 Hebrews xi. 10. 
 
 A city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. 
 
 We have seen the manner in which He who was " the 
 Desire of all nations/' met and satisfied the yearnings of men 
 for an inward peacemaker, for one who, by the mighty magic 
 of his word and Spirit, should change the tumult of man's soul 
 into a great calm; who should heal the hurts which each man 
 was conscious that he had inflicted upon himself; who should 
 set each man free from the bondage to those lords many, 
 his own lusts and inordinate affections, under whose cruel 
 tyranny he had come. But besides these longings for har- 
 mony and health and freedom in the region of his own*inner 
 life, there are other longings and other desires which crave 
 satisfaction. For each, besides being simply a man, is also 
 a man among men : besides the sinful element which so per- 
 plexes bis own inner life, in the relation of one part of it to 
 the other, of the higher to the lower, which so threatens his 
 true life with destruction, not from foreign, but from intestine, 
 enemies — the same sinful element acting outwardly in him- 
 self, and in every other man, disturbs and perplexes his rela- 
 tion to them, and theirs to him. That which remains in 
 himself, unsubdued, of evil, that which exists of the same in 
 every other man, brings about a collision between two self- 
 ishnesses. " From whence" — in the wonderfully simple, 
 yet profound language of Scripture, language applicable to 
 the pettiest village brawl, and to the mightiest conflict that 
 has ranged one half of the world against the other — " from 
 (222) 
 
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 223 
 
 whence come wars and fightings among you ? come they 
 not hence, even of the lusts that war in your members V 1 
 (Jam. iv. 1.) 
 
 At once the question has presented itself to every thought- 
 ful man — it eminently did so to the great spirits of anti- 
 quity, — Is the warfare of these encountering selfishnesses 
 the necessary, the only condition of society? Is it our 
 wisdom to acquiesce in it, satisfied if this evil will allow 
 itself to be kept within certain bounds — to be so far re- 
 strained, that a society, a living together of men for 
 social conveniences unattainable in their isolated state, be- 
 comes possible ? And is society such a fellowship of men 
 that have holden back, by mutual consent, so much of their 
 selfishness and evil, as would render habitation within the 
 same walls or in the same neighbourhood impossible, and 
 would thus defeat them of the gains which they desired by 
 this combination to attain ? 
 
 There have never been wanting, — there were not wanting 
 of old, — those who dared to avow this wolfish theory of 
 society for their own — that is, as a theory : for no commu- 
 nity of men has ever subsisted .upon it; no sooner have they 
 attempted to put it in practice, than, biting and devouring, 
 they have presently been utterly consumed one of another. 
 And they who even avowed it as a theory were few — a pro- 
 fligate sophist of the old or the new world, a Thrasymachus* 
 or a Mandeville;f the exceptions and not the rule. For 
 rather it was truly seen that the fellowship of man with man, 
 so far from being an artificial product of his wants, something 
 added on to his true humanity, that lay circular and complete 
 in himself already; something therefore which he might have 
 forgone without any necessary imperfection, — is that rather 
 which constitutes the very humanity itself — animals herding, 
 men only living, together. It was seen that this fellowship 
 is the sphere in which alone his true life, that which belongs 
 
 * Plato's Republic. f Fable of the Bees. 
 
224 LECTURE VII. 
 
 to him as man, can unfold itself — *in which alone he can 
 reach, it is little to say, the perfection of his being, but 
 without which he cannot be conceived otherwise than as a 
 monster, such a monster as the world never saw. It was 
 truly perceived of that other condition of absolute isolation, 
 that so far from being the state of nature, it is rather a state 
 so unnatural that no man has ever perfectly reached it — the 
 most absolute savage not having become an isolated unit, 
 not having been able to strip himself bare of all moral rela- 
 tions — being at most able to act as though he had not, but 
 never able to cease from having these. And they under- 
 stood therefore that not this tamed selfishness was the idea in 
 which the state consisted, and on which it reposed, but that 
 there was another to which every state and fellowship of 
 men, as it deserved the name, as it would be any thing bet- 
 ter than a pirate's deck or a robber's den, must be a nearer 
 or more remote approximation : a condition in which men 
 were holden together by invisible ties, — by sanctions which 
 not the flesh, but the spirit owned to be binding — by com- 
 mon rites, — by sanctities which men dared not neglect, — 
 fby a god Terminus keeping the boundaries of fields, — by a 
 dread of vengeance, not as the mere human recoil of out- 
 rage on the wrong-doer, but as being itself divine, — a condi- 
 tion in which men have felt that they were one people, not 
 so much in their common interests and common aims, or 
 even in their common history and descent and language, as 
 in the one tutelar deity that overlooked their city, and to 
 whom they had confided its keeping. 
 
 If it was so — if there was this sense existing in the hearts, 
 showing itself in the acts, of men, that the relations between 
 man and man rest on something out of sight, are spiritual 
 
 * As is remarkably witnessed in the words, civilized, civilization. 
 The civilized man, as contradistinguished from the savage or utterly 
 degenerate man, is essentially the civis, belongs to a civitas. 
 
 f Sophocles, Antigone, 450 — 400. 
 
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 225 
 
 relations, not those of force, or fraud, or convenience — that 
 men do not huddle together as cattle, to keep themselves 
 warm, nor band together as wild beasts, that they may hunt 
 in company • that law is not a result of so much self-will 
 which each man might have kept, yet for certain advan- 
 tageous considerations throws into a common stock, but that 
 rather there is a law of laws, anterior to, and constituting 
 the ground of, each positive enactment — if men had any 
 sense of this divine order, which they did not themselves 
 constitute, but into which they entered; which to accept 
 was good, which to deny and fight against was evil, — if they 
 did thus believe in a kingdom of righteousness and truth, 
 and that we were ordained for that, (in the words of the 
 father of Roman philosophy, Nos ad justitiam esse natos,) — 
 if there was any true feeling that those lusts and desires, so 
 far from being the ground of the state, the cement which 
 held it together, were rather the element of decay which was 
 ever threatening its dissolution, and were to be denied as the 
 violations of the humanity, not recognized as its essentials ; 
 then we have implicitly here the acknowledgment of, and 
 the yearning after, the kingdom of God.* They who be- 
 
 * Thus Cicero (JDe Legg.,) 1. 1, c. 7 :) Universus hie mundus una 
 ci vitas communis Deorum atque hominum existimanda. Cf. Be Fin. 
 1. 5, c. 23, and the glorious passage in Juvenal, (Sat. 15, 131 — 158,) 
 one of the noblest in antiquity on the fellowship of men with one 
 another, as resting on their divine original. I may be excused for 
 quoting a few lines : 
 
 Separat hoc nos 
 A grege mutorum, atque ideo venerabile soli 
 Sortiti ingenium, divinorumque capaces, 
 Atque exercendis capiendisque artibus apti 
 Sensum a ccelesti demissum traximus arce, 
 Cujus egent prona et terrain spectantia. Mundi 
 Principio indulsit communis conditor illis 
 Tantum animas, nobis animum quoque ; mutuus ut nos 
 Affectus petere auxilium, et prsestare juberet, 
 * Dispersos trahere in populum, migrare vetusto 
 
226 LECTURE VII. 
 
 lieved this, believed in " the city which hath foundations." 
 in that only one which can have everlasting foundations, for 
 it is the only one whose foundations are laid in perfect, 
 righteousness and perfect truth — the city " whose builder 
 and maker is God/' which Abraham looked for, and because 
 he looked for, would take no portion in the cities of confu- 
 sion round him, but dwelling in tents witnessed against 
 them, and declared plainly that he sought a country — the city 
 of which we already are made free, and which it was given 
 to the latest seer of the New Covenant, ere the book was 
 sealed, to behold in the spirit coming down from heaven in 
 its final glory. (Rev. xxi. 2.) 
 
 And can we say that there were not such thoughts and 
 expectations stirring in the hearts of men — that the idea of 
 a perfect state, as well as of a perfect man, had not risen up 
 before the eyes of them, the men of desire, the souls to 
 which any spirit of higher divination was imparted ? Were 
 not the latest speculations of the wisest sage, those to which 
 he fitly came after he had accomplished each other task, 
 concerning this very thing? Nor needs it to press that 
 derivation of religion which would make it the band and 
 bond, which binding men to Grod, binds them also to one 
 another; for it is a derivation at the least questionable j* 
 
 De nemore, et proavis habitatas linquere silvas ; 
 
 JEdificare domos, laribus conjungere nostris 
 
 Tectum aliud, tutos vicino limine somnos 
 
 TJt collata daret fiducia ; protegere armis 
 
 Lapsum, aut ingenti nutantem vulnere civem ; 
 
 Communi dare signa tuba, defendier iisdem 
 
 Turribus, atque una. portarum clave teneri. 
 * Nitzsch (Theol. Stud. u. Krit. v. 1, p. 532) seeks elaborately to 
 prove that, according to the genius of the Latin language, the only 
 possible derivation of religio is Cicero's (Be Nat. Deor., 1. 2, c. 28:) 
 Qui omnia, quae ad cultum Deorum pertinerent, diligenter retracta- 
 rent et tanguam relegerent, sunt dicti religiosi ex relegendo. It will 
 thus have for its first meaning, the conscientious anxiety and ?.ecu- 
 
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 227 
 
 and the fact, to which such an etymology would give only 
 an additional proof, is unquestionable without it — I mean, 
 that the invisible ties were those in which every state was 
 acknowledged to consist, so that with their weakening it must 
 grow weak, with their perishing it must perish j while to 
 strengthen and to multiply these, was justly regarded as the 
 noblest mission of its noblest sons. What if here too hea- 
 thendom had but the negative preparation, and Judaism the 
 positive? what if the Jew could point to a state which did 
 realize, though through his own sin most inadequately, this 
 kingdom in its unripe and early beginnings, and if he was 
 upheld by the sure word of prophecy, that one day the King 
 of this kingdom should be revealed, and should reign in 
 righteousness; while for the heathen they were for the most 
 part dreams to which he could impart no reality, realities 
 which tarried infinitely farther behind the idea which they 
 professed to embody — this was only according to the distri- 
 bution, in God's manifold wisdom, of their several parts to 
 
 racy in the performances of the divine offices. The passage which 
 best explains how the the word obtains a wider meaning is this 
 from Arnobius, (Adv.. Gen. 1. 4, c. 30 :) Non enim qui solicite religii 
 et immaculatas hostias credit . . . numina consentiendus est colere, 
 aut officia solus religionis implere. This etymology was called in 
 question by Lactantius, who derives the word not from relegere, but 
 religare, to which derivation allusion is made in the text. He says 
 (Inst. Div., 1. 4, c. 24:) Hoc vinculo pietatis obstricti Deo et religati 
 sumus, unde ipsa religio nomen accepit ; et non ut Cicero interpre- 
 tatus est, a relegenclo. He has Lucretius on his side, to whose 
 words he alludes : 
 
 arctis 
 Religionum animos nodis exsolvere pergo. 
 Augustine, too, who at first had consented to Cicero's etymology, 
 inclines at a later period (Retract., 1. 1, c. 13) in favour of the other. 
 Freund (Lat. Wortarbuch, s. v.) without expressing himself at all 
 so strongly as Nitzsch has done in regard of the absolute inadmissi- 
 bility of the other derivation, yet accepts as certainly preferable 
 the Ciceronian. 
 
228 LECTURE VII. 
 
 Jew and Gentile, in the preparation for Christ's coming; to 
 the one being already given the stamina and rudiments of 
 that which afterwards should unfold itself more fully, to the 
 other being given little more than the expectation and the 
 want — yet both so conspiring to prepare the way for his 
 appearing. 
 
 This want and this expectation Christ came to satisfy ; for 
 He came not merely to awaken a religious sentiment in the 
 minds and hearts of his disciples, or to declare to them cer- 
 tain doctrines of which before they were ignorant; but to 
 found a kingdom, as He himself declared from the first ; as 
 St. John, the herald of his coming, had declared before 
 Him; "'The kingdom of God is at hand;" "The kingdom 
 of God is among you." For this term, " kingdom of 
 God," we must not impoverish as though it were merely 
 a convenient abstraction to express the sum total of the reli- 
 gious sentiments, opinions, feelings, actions of his disci- 
 ples. But this kingdom, as it is a kingdom, points to a 
 visible fellowship, and the embodiment therein of a number 
 of persons, constituting an organic whole, owning a single 
 head. And as it is a kingdom of God, it declares God to 
 be its author and its founder ; it declares itself to be lifted 
 above the caprice of men, neither having been made, nor yet 
 being to be marred, by them; which they indeed may 
 deny, but which cannot deny itself, nor by their denial be 
 annulled. 
 
 The practical Roman saw as much as the natural man 
 could see of this in a moment — that the question at issue 
 between Christ and the world was not a question of one 
 notion and another, but of one kingdom and another; and 
 seeing, he came at once to the point, " Art Thou a king, 
 then ?" And that empire which tolerated all other religions, 
 would have tolerated the Christian, instead of engaging in a 
 death-struggle with it, to strangle or be strangled by it, but 
 that it instinctively felt that this, however its first seat and 
 
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 229 
 
 home might seem to be in the hearts of men, yet could not 
 remain there, but would demand an outward expression for 
 itself — must go forth into the world, and conquer a domin- 
 ion of its own — a dominion which would leave no room in 
 the world for another fabric of force and fraud ! for it was 
 his dominion who, sitting on his throne, should scatter away 
 all evil with his eyes; who had said in a thousand ways, 
 " All the horns of the ungodly will I break, but the horns 
 of the righteous shall be exalted. " 
 
 It is quite true that this kingdom, in the men who at any 
 time compose it, may misunderstand and mistake itself, even 
 as it has often done. There are times when it caricatures 
 itself into a popedom, when knowing rightly that it ought to 
 have a real and outward existence, yet it will not believe 
 that it has this, or is a kingdom at all, unless it can outdo 
 the kingdoms of the world on their own ground, and in their 
 own fashion ; unless it can be a kingdom like unto them, 
 and greater than they in their kind of power and mag- 
 nificence and glory. It is quite true that times arrive 
 when it cannot believe in its own oneness unless it can 
 see that oneness represented to it in a visible Head. Yet 
 this only proves that times may arrive, when, through 
 the sin of its members, its consciousness of itself as God's 
 Church grows weak, when it has only too much lost hold 
 of the great truths on which it was founded, and which it 
 was intended to proclaim ; and having done so, does, by 
 an inevitable necessity, act over again the unfaithful re- 
 quest of the children of Israel, when they desired a king 
 to go forth with their armies, as one went forth with 
 the armies of the nations, and would not believe, unless 
 they could thus see him there, that "the shout of a king 
 was among them." (1 Sam. viii.) And the reaction from 
 this error must not make us to count that this kingdom can 
 only be spiritual when it ceases to be real, when retiring 
 into the hearts of men, and dwelling there apart, it claims 
 
 20 
 
230 LECTURE VII. 
 
 no more the world for its possession, and each region and 
 province of man's actual life for its own. 
 
 But to return. This kingdom, as it was a consummation 
 of all that men had ever hoped in the way of a kingdom of 
 righteousness, as it was a protest and witness against the 
 evil into which each kingdom of the world, each fairest 
 polity of man's founding, was ever presently degenerating, 
 was not all. Christ came to give more than this ; to give 
 not merely a kingdom of truth for some men, but for every 
 man ; to found a fellowship which should be for men as men, 
 which should leave out none, which should call no man 
 common or unclean. This indeed was new, not merely in fact, 
 but even in theory ; for it had hardly risen over the horizon 
 of their minds who stood in wisdom and in goodness upon 
 the mountain-summits of the world. The Greek ever left 
 out the barbarian; the freeman, the slave; the philosopher, 
 the simple. The highest culture of some was ever built 
 upon the sacrifice of others ; they were pitilessly used up in 
 the process. So far from men themselves producing the 
 thought of a universal spiritual fellowship, even after it was 
 given, they were long in making it their own. Thus Celsus 
 mocks at the madness of the Gospel, (for so to him it 
 showed,) — adduces as enough to convince its author of a 
 shallow impracticable enthusiasm, that he should have pro- 
 posed such a dream as this, that Greeks, and Barbarians, 
 and Lybians, and all men to the ends of the earth, should 
 be united in the reception of one and the same doctrine. 
 
 Nor can we greatly wonder : the sense of diversity was 
 so strong, that which was differencing men was so mighty, 
 the intellectual superiority of the Greek over the Barbarian 
 was so immense, that we cannot be so much surprised to 
 find one thus mockiug at the scheme for bringing all men 
 into one, as the shallow dream of an enthusiast's brain. 
 Such it must have seemed to him, who had not insight 
 enough to perceive that the real ground of separation be- 
 
TIIE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 231 
 
 tween men lay, not in natural distinctions of race, of cus- 
 toms, of language, but in different objects of worship, in the 
 gods many of polytheism. These were what kept men apart, 
 and rendered their union and communion impossible. They 
 were not at one in the highest matter of their lives : how 
 should they be in the lower ? And if this was the ground 
 of division, then the walls of partition might yet be thrown 
 down, would indeed fall away of their own selves, when 
 once there was revealed to faith one God and Father of all, 
 — one Christ, a common object of love and adoration for all, 
 in whom the affections of all might centre, — one Spirit 
 effectually working in all. Then indeed the Babel mis- 
 chief, the confusion of spirits, whereof the confusion of 
 tongues was only the outward sign, would cease ; even as 
 for one prophetic moment on the day of Pentecost, in the gift 
 of tongues, it had ceased,* in sign that the Church which 
 that day was founded was for all nations and tongues and 
 tribes. The distinctions between men were indeed infinite, 
 reaching far down into the deeps of their being, yet not to 
 that being's centre ; and in the regeneration, in that mighty 
 act of God's which does not obliterate distinctions, but 
 reconciles them in a higher unity, they might all, so far as 
 they were elements of separation, be annulled. When to 
 all alike it was permitted to say, " We are Christ's, and 
 Christ is God's," then the secret of a fellowship was im- 
 parted, which should include all nations, in which there 
 should be neither wise nor simple, Greek nor Barbarian, 
 bond nor free, but Christ should be all in all. 
 
 Of all this the world had, beforehand, scarcely,the faintest 
 intimations — the poorest parodies. Yet parodies perchance 
 
 * Grotius; Poeno linguarum dispersit homines (Gen. xi.,) donuni 
 linguarum dispersos in unum populum recollegit. In the Persian 
 religion there was the expectation of a day coming when, with the 
 abolition of all evil, eva j3t'ov xai fitav rto'Kvtevav avOpurtav fiaxapiav 
 xal ofioyXuHjaoiv artdvtcoi' yfvsaOcu. (Plutarch, Dels, et Osir., c. 47.) 
 
232 LECTURE VII. 
 
 there were; and we may be allowed to trace dim indistinct 
 yearnings even for this, for the breaking down of the middle 
 wall of partition, for the making of twain one new man. 
 Thus there were already in the centuries anterior to our Lord 
 meeting-places for the Greek and Jew. Remarkable in this 
 respect was the existence of such a city as Alexandria, where 
 the Jew and Greek met, and sought to exchange to mutual 
 profit the most precious commodities each of his own intel- 
 lectual and spiritual land, the Jew making himself acquainted 
 with Greek culture, the Old Testament Scriptures becoming 
 accessible to Greek readers. Yet still these meetings were 
 intellectual only : no true blending did or could have fol- 
 lowed from them. It is the fire of charity which must melt, 
 ere there can be any real moulding into one. In vain had 
 the whole East and West jostled violently together; they 
 had hardly mingled any more for this. A certain surface 
 civilization had ensued, which was common to both ; but 
 hearts waited for more prevailing bands than those which 
 even an Alexander could weave, ere they would knit them- 
 selves together in one. And as far as any practical realiza- 
 tion of the hopes which at any time the world cherished 
 from this it now was further off than ever. The iron king- 
 dom, the fourth beast, dreadful and terrible and strong 
 exceedingly, had broken all other, and was stamping the 
 residue under its feet; until it seemed now as if brutal force 
 was all that remained, or that had a meaning any more, and as 
 if the world only could be prevented from falling into pieces 
 by those links and bands of iron, which were forged 
 around it. 
 
 But how hateful such a world was to live in, how intense 
 a loathing it inspired in each nobler spirit, the works of 
 Tacitus seemed preserved to us especially to tell. For 
 surely this is the key-note of them, the predominant 
 thought, — this indignation and scorn, which all words, 
 even his own, seem weak to him to utter, at the sight of the 
 
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 233 
 
 high places of the earth, the seats of blessing, the thrones 
 of beneficent power, occupied by the meanest and basest of 
 their kind, — till we feel, as we read, this conviction to have 
 been branded as with burning iron on his soul, that it were 
 better ten thousand times not to be, than to witness the 
 things which he has witnessed, and to bear the things which 
 he has borne.* Nor on his soul only was the conviction 
 branded, but on those, we cannot doubt, of multitudes be- 
 side, whose more dumb agony found only its adequate 
 expression in his words. 
 
 But these failures, these shipwrecks of the world's hopes, 
 these issues of things so different from the promise with 
 which they started, this agony, this despair, they were not 
 for nothing. They were part of that severe discipline of 
 love to which the world was being submitted : they helped 
 to constitute that fulness of time in which the Son of God 
 should come, and coming, find acceptance. Not till the 
 world's pride and self-confidence were thoroughly broken, 
 would it have been prepared to bumble itself under his cross, 
 would it have accepted that cross for the standard round 
 which it rallied. For the breaking of this pride two great 
 experiments had been going forward at the same time, had 
 run through, as they gave a moral meaning to, all the ante- 
 rior history of the world — experiments which needed both 
 to be thoroughly and fairly tried. Of the Jewish it con- 
 cerns us not here to speak at large : it was this, if righteous- 
 ness could come by the law ; if there was a law which could 
 give life — an external rule of conduct, even though of divine 
 appointment, which could sanctify and save — if there was 
 not a weakness and falseness in man, which would defeat 
 and frustrate it all. This was most needful, and only 
 through the process of this could a Saul ever have been 
 transformed into a Paul. 
 
 * Agricola, c. 2, 3, 45. 
 20* 
 
234 LECTURE VI. 
 
 But the other, which may not seem to us so directly of 
 God's ordaining, yet was so indeed : for it was of its very 
 essence that He should not mingle in it so far, should seem 
 to have less to do with it ; — that those to whom it was given 
 to try it out should walk in their own ways, and be left to 
 their own resources. The experiment was this, whether man 
 could unfold his own well-being out of himself — whether 
 art or philosophy or institutions could give it to him ; whe- 
 ther in any of these he could truly find himself and the good 
 for which he was made. And of this experiment we cannot 
 say that it was unfairly tried, or imperfectly worked out. 
 All which was required for its success was there, and had 
 been given in largest measure. God had raised up men of 
 the most glorious gifts, of the mightiest strength of will ; 
 and surely had deliverance lain in aught which man could 
 unfold, by his own strength, out of his own being, the world 
 had been indeed redeemed, and had found the fountain of 
 salvation in itself. 
 
 But fair and flattering, full of the promise of success, as 
 the results showed oftentimes for a while, there was ever a 
 worm at the root of this glory of the world. The moment 
 of highest perfection was evermore the moment of commenc- 
 ing decay. How deeply tragic, though in different ways, 
 the histories of the Greek and Roman world ! how had the 
 paths of glory led one and the other, though by diverse 
 ways, to the grave of all their moral and spiritual independ- 
 ence ; the intellectual conquests of the one and the worldly 
 triumphs of the other, however diverse, yet having agreed 
 in this, that they alike left the victors enslaved, degraded, 
 and debased — the Greek a scorn to the Roman,* and the 
 Roman to himself. And now the fresh creative energy of 
 an earlier time had all departed and disappeared ; and that 
 springing hope, which contemplated its objects, if not as 
 
 * See such passages as Cicero Pro Flacco, c. 4; Juvenal, Sat. 3, 
 58—113: 10, 174. 
 
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 235 
 
 attained, yet at least as attainable, was no more. The world 
 had outlived itself and its attractions — *saddest of all, had 
 outlived even its hopes; the very springs of those hopes 
 seemed to be dried up for ever. Yet was not this all with- 
 out its purpose and its blessing. It was something to be 
 shut into the one remedy, all other devices having failed, — 
 to have come thus to the husks; for this alone would have 
 sent back the prodigal of heathenism to claim anew his share 
 in the rich provision of his father's house. This was the 
 emptiness, of which Christ's coming should be the answer- 
 ing fulness. In all this agony, this mighty yearning of 
 souls, the gates of the world were being made high and lifted 
 up, that the King of Grlory might come in. Only in such 
 an utter despair, in such a sense of decrepitude, of death 
 already begun, would the world have welcomed aright the 
 Prince of Life, who came to make all things young, and out 
 of the wreck and fragments of an old and decaying world, 
 to build up a fairer and a new. 
 
 And such he built up indeed. " They went astray in the 
 wilderness out of the way, and found no city to dwell in : 
 hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. So they 
 cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them 
 from their distress. He led them forth by the right way, 
 that they might go to a city of habitation." And this city 
 of habitation, this kingdom, was all which they had asked 
 for, or could ask. It was a/ree fellowship, the constraining 
 bands of it being bands of love and not of force ; and He 
 that founded it fulfilling the idea of the true spiritual con- 
 queror of men, who should subdue all hearts, not by force or 
 by flattery, but by the mighty magic of love — as some of old 
 had been reaching out after this, when they dreamed of 
 Osiris, that he went forth to conquer the world, not with 
 chariots and with horses, but with music } for so had they 
 
 * Augustine : Mundus tanta rerum labe contritus, ut etiam spe- 
 ciem seductionis amiserit. 
 
236 LECTURE VII. 
 
 felt that the power which truly wins must be a spiritual one, 
 an appeal to the latent harmonies in every man — that in a 
 kingdom of heaven law must be swallowed up in love, — not 
 repealed, but glorified and transfigured, , its hard outline 
 scarcely visible any more in the blaze of light with which it 
 is surrounded. 
 
 It was a large fellowship — larger than the largest which 
 the heart of man had conceived; for it should leave out 
 none, it should trample upon none : He that was its Head 
 should " be favourable to the simple and needy, and preserve 
 the souls of the poor." Nay, it should be larger than this, 
 for it should embrace heaven and earth. That whereof the 
 great Italian sage had caught a glimpse, that $ata* that 
 amity or reconciliation of all things, whether they be things 
 in heaven or things on earth, had found its fulfilment. 
 Henceforward heaven and earth, angels and men, consti- 
 tuted one kingdom, " his body, the fulness of Him that fill- 
 eth all in all." 
 
 It was a righteous fellowship. If aught of unrighteous- 
 ness was within it, it was there only as a contradiction to 
 the law of that kingdom, and presently to be separated off; 
 even as all of unrighteous that was against it was in due 
 time to be taken out of the way ; for it in its weakness was 
 yet stronger than the strongest. It was only weak as the 
 staff of Moses was weak ; which being one, and an instru- 
 ment of peace, did yet break in shivers all weapons of war, 
 the ten thousand spears of Pharaoh and his armies. 
 
 And being this righteous kingdom it was also an eternal 
 kingdom, having in it no seeds of decay, a kingdom not to 
 be moved, which should endure as long as the sun and moon 
 endureth, of the increase of which there should be no end. 
 
 *Porphyrius (De Vita Pythag.:) q> L %l av (xaWSstfs) rtdvtiov rfpo? 
 artcwraj, srte ®euv Ttpoj aA/dpu>7tov$ — sits doy/xdtuv rtpoj aXX^Xa 
 — sits 6w9pt->7ti»v rfpos oXkYfkovs. See Baur's Apollonius von Tyana 
 und Christus, p. 194. 
 
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 237 
 
 To this city, brethren, ye are come — the city of which 
 such glorious things are spoken, the city of our God. Not 
 only prophet and king of Israel, but sage and seer of every 
 land, have desired to see the things which we see, and have 
 not seen them — so truly are they the best things which man 
 can conceive, or God can give. And what do they require 
 of us but a walk corresponding ? Citizens of no mean city, 
 whose citizenship is in heaven, we must not show ourselves 
 unworthy of so high an honour. It is the very aggravation 
 of the sinner's sin that he deals frowardly in the land of 
 uprightness ; and because he does so it is declared that he 
 shall not see the majesty of the Lord. (Isai. xxvi. 10.) We 
 baptized men are in this "land of uprightness," in this 
 kingdom of the trnth. For it is not that we shall come, but 
 in the sure word of Scripture, we are come to Mount Zion, 
 the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to 
 all the glorious company which is there. 
 
 And surely the apostle's argument which he drew from 
 this ought to stand strong for us, his exhortation to find 
 place in our hearts ; " Wherefore we receiving a kingdom 
 which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may 
 serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear." 
 (Heb. xii. 28.) 
 
LECTURE VIIL 
 
 CONCLUDING LECTURE. 
 
 1 Thessalonians V. 21 
 
 Prove all things ; holdfast that which is good. 
 
 It needs not, I trust, to remind you, brethren, that in 
 these lectures which are now concluding, we have been en- 
 gaged in the seeking to discern the prophecy of Christianity, 
 which has run through all history. I have traced in them, 
 so far as under the conditions and limitations of such dis- 
 courses I might, the manner in which the old world was in 
 many ways blindly struggling to be that better thing which 
 yet it never could truly be, except by the free grace and 
 gift of God, — to come to that new birth, which yet it could 
 not reach, until power for this mighty change was given it 
 from on high. We have asked ourselves whether we could 
 not discern an evident tending of men's thoughts and feel- 
 ings and desires in one direction, and that direction the cross 
 of Christ, a great spiritual under-current, which has been 
 strongly and constantly setting that way ; so that his bring- 
 ing forth of his kingdom into open manifestation, if in one 
 sense a beginning, was in another, and in as true a sense, a 
 crowning end. 
 
 And it has cohered intimately with the purpose of these 
 lectures, which, according to the purpose of their founder, 
 should assume more or less of a defensive character, to urge 
 the apology for our Christian faith which is here. It has 
 been to me an argument for the truth and dignity of his 
 mission who was its author, to find that in Him all fulness 
 238 
 
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 239 
 
 dwelt, all lines concentrated, all hopes of the world were ac- 
 complished. For surely the King of Glory shows to us 
 more glorious yet, when we are able to contemplate Him not 
 merely as the Prophet and Priest and King of the Cove- 
 nant but as the satisfier of vaguer, though not less real, 
 aspirations, of more undefined longings, of more wide-spread 
 hopes — when looking at Him, we take note with the inspired 
 seer, that on his head are many crowns, — and looking at 
 his doctrine, that not Israel only, but the isles also had waited 
 for his law. 
 
 This my subject I have now brought to a close; or at 
 least I dare not, at this latest moment, open it upon another 
 side. I may perhaps more profitably dedicate the present 
 opportunity to the considering of some ways in which our 
 recognition of the intimate relation between all that has gone 
 before and all that now is between the hopes of the past and 
 the fulfilments of the present, may practically and usefully 
 influence our study of antiquity. For indeed a Christian 
 view of the ancient world, which shall neither despise it, be- 
 cause it is not what it could not be, itself Christian, because its 
 grains of finer gold, of purer ore, are mixed with so much 
 impure and debasing; nor yet on the other hand to glorify 
 it, as though its imperfect anticipations of the truth were as 
 good as or rendered superfluous, the manifestation of the 
 perfect image of God in his Son, or its faint streaks of light 
 were as truly an illumination as the day-spring from on 
 high ; this true, it is most profitable for us that we should 
 win. It may preserve us from extremes and exaggerations 
 on either hand, into which we are in danger of running. 
 It may preserve us, too, from a listless, careless, unfruit- 
 ful study of that which, unless we neglect the plain duties 
 that lie before us, must form one of the chief occupations of 
 several, the most precious and least recoverable years of our 
 lives, — years in which our minds are to be built up, if built 
 up at all ; in which, more than in any other, our characters 
 
240 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 are being moulded, and are receiving that impress which 
 they shall bear to the end. 
 
 The exaggerations to which I allude are twofold. There 
 is that, first, against which one is almost unwilling to say 
 a word, springing as it so often does, out of a state of mind in 
 which there is so much that is admirable, — ■ giving witness 
 for a moral earnestness, without which men would have been 
 scarcely tempted to it; I mean the exggeration of those, 
 who in a deep devotion to the truth, as it is a truth in Christ 
 Jesus, count themselves bound by their alleigance to Him 
 by his Name which they bear, his doctrine which they have 
 learned, his Spirit which they have received, to take up a 
 hostile attitude to every thing, not distinctly and avowedly 
 Christian, as though any other bearing were a treason to his 
 cause — a betrayal of his exclusive right to the authorship of 
 all the good which is in the world. In this temper we may 
 dwell only on the guilt and misery and defilements, the 
 wounds and bruises and hurts, of the heathen world; or if 
 aught better is brought under our eye, we may look askant 
 and suspiciously upon it, as though all recognition of it were 
 disparagement of something better. And so we may come to 
 regard the fairest deeds of unbaptized men as only more 
 showy sins. We may have a short but decisive formula with 
 which to dismiss them : we may say, These deeds were not 
 of faith, and therefore they could not please God. The men 
 that wrought them knew not Christ, and therefore their work 
 was worthless — hay, 'straw and stubble, to be utterly burned 
 up in the day of trial of every man's work. 
 
 Yet is it in truth a violation of the law of conscience, to 
 use so sweeping a language as this. Our alleigance to Christ 
 as the one fountain of light and life, demands that we affirm 
 none to be good but Him — no goodness but that which has 
 proceeded from Him : but it does not demand that we deny 
 goodness, because of the place where we find it — because we 
 find it a garden-tree in the wilderness ; but rather that 
 
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 241 
 
 we claim it for Hiin, who was its true source and author, and 
 whom it would itself have gladly owned as such, if, belonging 
 to a happier time, it could have known Him. We do not 
 make much of a light of nature, when we allow a righteous- 
 ness in those, to whom in the days of their flesh the Gospel 
 had not come ; we only affirm that the Word, though He had 
 not yet dwelt among, yet being the light which lighteth every 
 man that cometh into the world, had lighted them. Some 
 glimpses of his beams, gilded their countenances, and gave 
 to them whatever brightness they wore; and in recognizing 
 this brightness, whatsoever it was, we are giving honour to 
 Him, and not to them, glorifying the grace of God, and not 
 the powers of man. 
 
 I can well understand how, in the earnestness and exclu- 
 siveness of a first love to Christ, and to that word of Holy 
 Scripture which directly testifies of Him, all teaching of all 
 other books, in which is no explicit mention of his name, 
 should appear valueless to us; and all else taste flat and 
 dull, because we taste not there the sweetness of that One 
 Name which is sweeter than all. Yet were it good for us to 
 see that, without going back one jot from this entire devot- 
 edness to the Lord of our life, which everywhere looks for 
 Him, and finds everything savourless without him — a 
 devotedness too precious to be foregone, and for which no 
 other gains would compensate — that without, I say, going 
 back from this, we might yet enlarge the sphere of our Chris- 
 tian sympathies, and take a wider range of objects v within 
 it. To this end let us learn to cultivate a finer spiritual ear, 
 and one which shall be more quick to catch the fainter echoes 
 and whispers of his name, which are borne to us from other 
 fields than those of Scripture ; let us learn to look for Him 
 even where they thought not and could not have thought 
 directly of Him, whose pages we may hold in our hand. 
 Let us aim to take keener note of the manner in which all 
 things pointed to Him, all things were asking for Him — the 
 21 
 
242 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 world passing judgment on itself,* and out of its own lips at 
 once condemning itself and demanding its Redeemer, f de- 
 manding him in frequent acknowledgments of the vanity of 
 all things, in confessions of its own incurable evils,J in 
 voices of deepest sadness and despair, — as theirs who by 
 word or solemn rite declared plainly that it was better 
 for man never to have been born than to live ; or, if he lived, 
 that then the gods had no better boon for him than an early 
 death — §and this not in the Christian sense of death as a 
 passage into life, but only as the harbour from the world's 
 wo, the anodyne of the world's pains. 
 
 Let us take note, too, of the manner in which the language 
 of philosopher and of poet seems often marvellously over- 
 
 * Cicero (Tusc. Qucest., 1. 2, c. 22:) In quo viro erit perfecta 
 sapientia, {quern adhuc nos quidem videmus neminem: sed philosopho- 
 rum sententiis, qualis futuris sit, si modo aliquando fuerit, exponi- 
 tur,) is igitur, &c. Compare Theogonis, 615, OvSiva 7ia.(x.7irfiriv 
 ayaSov xal fistptov avdpa tov vvv av9pd>7tuv r t i%io$ xaSopa. — Even 
 supposing a man were to reach the highest goodness, this could only 
 be, as was confessed, through a long process of anterior mistake 
 and error: he must be as a diamond which is polished in its own 
 dust. Seneca (Be Clement, 1. 1, c. 6 :) Etiam si quis tarn bene pur- 
 gavit animum, ut nihil obturbare eum amplius possit aut fall ere, 
 ad innocentiam tamen peccando pervenit. 
 
 f Seneca (Ep. 52.) Nemo per se satis valet ut emergat: oportet 
 manum aliquis p or rig at; aliquis educat. 
 
 % Thucjdides, 1. 3, c. 45 ; Seneca, De Ira, 1. 2, c. 8. 
 
 \ Compare the remarkable fragment of Euripides, quoted in the 
 original by Clemens of Alexandria (Strom., 1. 3, c. 3,) and in a Latin 
 translation by Cicero, (Tusc. Bisp., 1. 1, c. 48.) 
 
 E8so ydp ^uttj, avJJMyov Tioiov/Jihovs, 
 Tov fyvvta dpqvslv, ft? oa' sp%s?ai xaxd' 
 Tov 6 av Oavovta xai 7tbva>v 7t£7ia.vfi£vov 
 Xaipoj'T'aj, £vq>r]/j.ovv-tcis$ ixTtiurtzLV bojxtiv. 
 
 Compare Herodotus, 1. 5, c. 4; Pliny, H. N., 1. 7, c. 1 and c. 41. 
 Si verum facere judicium volumus, ac repudiate omni fortunae am- 
 bitione decernere, mortalium nemo est felix ; Pindar, Pyth., 8, 131. 
 
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 243 
 
 ruled to have a deeper significance, to bear the burden of a 
 larger and completer thought, than it is possible that they 
 who uttered it could have had in their mind, or could have 
 attached to their words. As for instance, when it is said* 
 that the highest righteousness must be approved in ex- 
 tremest trial, that if we would know certainly whether one be 
 indeed a lover of the good, he must be set in those condi- 
 tions, in which to abide by the good shall bring upon him 
 every outward calamity, shame and loss and scorn and tor- 
 ture and death, all which he might have avoided would he 
 ever so little have gone back from that good ; the righteous- 
 ness which he chooses must be stripped utterly bare of every 
 ornament, yea, must seem to the world as the extremest 
 unrighteousness, and then only it will be seen whether he 
 loves it for its own sake — to us Christians shall not this pos- 
 sible case at once present itself as an actual one ? Shall we 
 not catch here, as many indeed have caught, - ]" a prophetic 
 word about the cross, and about Him who even in this way 
 was proved, by ignominy and scorn and suffering and death, 
 whether he would love the good and hate the evil; and who. 
 did, by a distinct act of his will, choose for his portion that 
 righteousness to which all these were linked, and which 
 could only lead Him by roughest paths to the shamefullest 
 and bitterest end ? Or when another expresses his convic- 
 tion that a sacred Spirit dwells with man, yea, not with him 
 
 * By Plato (De Repub. 1. 2, c. 4, 5.) I have not seen it noted 
 how the reverse of the picture, the perfectly unrighteous man, 
 whom Plato draws, is almost as remarkable a prophecy in its kind, 
 of Antichrist, and of the deceitful glory which will surround him. 
 
 f Grotius (De Verii. Eel. Christ., 1. 4, c. 12:) Etvero lsetius esse 
 honestum, quoties magno sibi constat sapientissimi ipsorum dixere. 
 Plato, De Republica 11 quasi prcescius, ait, ut vere Justus exhibeatur, 
 opus esse ut virtus ejus omnibus ornamentis spolieter, ita ut ille 
 habeatur ab aliis pro scelesto, illudatur, suspendatur denique, Et 
 certe summae patientige exemplum ut exstaret, aliter obtineri non 
 poterat. 
 
244 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 only, but in him, a Spirit which is not his own, however 
 freely it converses with him, a Spirit which treats him as he 
 treats it.* shall we refuse to acknowledge here a word which 
 was reaching out after that Spirit, the Spirit of the Father 
 and the Son, which, dwelling in Grod, does also dwell in 
 sanctified souls ; which, if we grieve, will grieve us, which, 
 if we continue to provoke, will utterly forsake us ? And in 
 many such ways as these we may disentangle the golden 
 threads of a finer woof than its own, which were running 
 through the whole tissue which the ancient world was weav- 
 ing for itself; we may delightedly observe how the cross of 
 Christ was as an invisible magnet, drawing hearts to itself 
 by a mighty, though secret, attraction, in ages long before 
 it was openly lifted up, an ensign for the nations. 
 
 Let us remember too how little the world could have 
 done without these preparations which sometimes we are 
 tempted to despise. Difficult as was the world's reception 
 of the word, and its transition to the faith, of Christ, how 
 much more difficult would it have been if the way had not 
 been thus prepared. What another thing would it have 
 been, if the word about the Son of Grod, where it first was 
 delivered, besides strengthening and purifying and enlarg- 
 ing, had needed also to create, the very foundations of reli- 
 gious belief and ethical science on which it rested; if it had 
 been needful for it to be not merely the seed, but the soil, — 
 having first to form the very ground in which it should 
 itself afterwards find room and depth to germinate. If 
 instead of finding a language ready at hand which it could 
 appropriate, and needed only thus to rescue for itself, f if, 
 
 * Seneca (Epist. 41 :) Sacer intra nos spiritus sedet, malorum bono- 
 rumque nostrorum observator et custos ; hie prout a nobis tractatus 
 est, itanos ipse tractat...Quernadmodum radii solis contingunt qui- 
 dem terrain, sed ibi sunt unde mittuntur, sic animus magnus et 
 sacer, et in hoc demissus ut propius divina nossemus, conversatur 
 quidem nobiscum, sed hseret origini suae. 
 
 -j- Thus not merely the more obvious, bat the more recondite rites 
 
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 24 
 
 instead of this, all nobler words and signs, all which spoke 
 of worship, of religion, of sanctity, of initiation, of atone- 
 ment, of piety, had been absent from it, how different the 
 case would have been. And with the absence of the things, 
 there would also have been inevitably the absence of the 
 words which are their correlatives j since language is no more 
 than thought and feeling permanently fixing and embodying 
 themselves \ it is but as the- pillars of Hercules, to mark 
 how far the conquests of spirit have advanced. 
 
 No one can have thoughtfully perused the modern records 
 of missionary labour among savage tribes, and the almost 
 insurmountable hindrances opposed to the reception of the 
 G-ospel by languages, if they deserve the name, stripped of 
 each nobler and deeper element, — languages in which is no 
 speculation, no distinction, no hoarded thought, no embo- 
 died morality, no unconscious wisdom, — no terms, in short, 
 but for the barest needs or the vilest doings* of the animal 
 
 of heathenism, have been made to set forth far better things than 
 themselves. For example, the mysteries yield the substratum of lan- 
 guage and imagery and allusion to each word of the following noble 
 passage, in which Clement {Cohort, ad Gent., c. 12,) is exhorting the 
 Gentiles to become pWac- of Christ : 'Q. t?iov aynov <1>j ahyjdus 
 lAvGTliqpiW cj <J>wt , oj ax^pa-tov. 8q8ovxov/*cu, tov$ ovpavov$ xao tov 
 ®sov srtortifev 4 as aytoj ywo/xai, fivovfxsvo^ Izpoyavm 8e 6 Kuptoj, 
 jcac 1ov /xvcU'rjv Cff^ayt^Wat, tyio toy coy cov' xac rtapxT? lQs tai t'co Ha^pc 
 ifov 7i£7ti6i?£vxo'ta, aiuxSt typovfieiov. Taxi^a tcov sficov (ivtilripiov 
 tiafiaxxsviAaTfa' el fiovhst, xao ov [xvov, xcu zopsvaeis pet' ayysXcov 
 a/AtyL tov ayswqtov xai avooKsOpov xav fiovov ovttos ©eoy, csvvvu- 
 vovvtos TJfJUV T?OV ®£OV Atfyou. 
 
 * Languages like one of the North American Indian, which pos- 
 sesses a word for a tomahawk, but none for God; or that of a tribe 
 -in Australia, which with the same deficiency, has yet a word 
 to describe the process by which an unborn child may be destroyed 
 in its mother's womb. On all this subject of language rising and 
 falling with the rise and fall of people's moral and spiritual life, and 
 on the speech of savages as not being the primal rudiments, but 
 21* 
 
246 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 man, without feeling that a miserable necessity is imposed 
 on the Truth when it must weave for itself the very gar- 
 ments in which it shall array itself, and is in danger of los- 
 ing its treasures in the very attempt to communicate them, 
 — so wretched are the only channels through which it can 
 convey them. And considering this, he will esteem it to 
 have been an infinite mercy, yea a very primal necessity, 
 that the Truth, where it uttered itself in that which should 
 be its normal utterance for all future ages of the Church, 
 where it first took body and shape, should have found, as 
 regarded language, vessels ready prepared for its new wine, 
 and only waiting for a higher consecration, — an inheritance 
 which it had but to make its own, entering upon it, as the 
 children of Israel entered upon vineyards which they had 
 not planted, and wells which they had not digged, and 
 houses which they had not built, of which yet they became 
 the rightful possessors from henceforth. 
 
 Nor can we doubt that by that, which we with our fuller 
 knowledge, our larger grace, are inclined to slight, many 
 were preserved from defilements, in which otherwise they 
 had been inevitably entangled. This salt may have been 
 powerless to give the savor of life to that with which it came 
 in contact ; but that progress of corruption, that dissolution 
 of social and personal life, which it was unable ultimately to 
 arrest, it yet retarded for a time.* It preserved many a 
 
 the ultimate wreck, of a language, there is much of deep interest in 
 De Maistre's Soirees de St. Petersbourg, Deux. Entret. 
 
 * The consideration of the Greek Philosophy as a 7tpo7tai8soa 
 for the reception of the absolute Christian truth, is a more recur- 
 ring one, and takes a more prominent plage, in the writing of the 
 later Clement, than perhaps in those of any other teacher of the 
 early Church. Thus he speaks of it in one place as a step to some- 
 thing higher : (yTCofiaQpav oi>aav tf^j xata XpccTT'ov (Ju^offotjuas, 
 Strom., 1. 6, c. 8.) Again, as a preparatory discipline, and ordained 
 to be such by the providence of God: Qx tr^ deias rtpovoia^ Szdoa- 
 Oai, 7tpo7taihtvovGo,v si; t^v 5ta ~Kptotov 't&ciuaiv, Strom., 1. 6, 
 
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 247 
 
 man for something better than itself, and in not a few cases 
 of which we have distinct record, handed over in due time 
 
 c. 17;) and so again as an anterior culture of the soil of man's 
 heart for receiving the seed of life: TtpoxaOcupfi xao rtposO^et tqv 
 ■\v%r\v dc, 7tapa8oxirjv rtiGtscos, (Strom., 1. 7, c. 3.) It would seem 
 from more passages than one in his writings, that he felt it needful 
 to defend himself for the so high appreciation in which he held the 
 philosophy of Greece ; vjv tvvss Siafisfi'h'yixa'tLv, aXyjOt Las ovaav elxova 
 ivapyrj 9eiav 8copsa v 'E?a.^ca bsho^svrjv. There were those who 
 warned against its attractions, as being those of the "strange 
 woman" of Prov. v. 3 — 8, " whose lips drop as a honeycomb, and 
 her mouth is smoother than oil." (Strom., 1. 1, c. 5.) The heathen 
 philosophers were according to them the "thieves and robbers" 
 which " came before" Him who was the true Shepherd of men 
 (Strom., 1. 1, c. 17.) Tertullian may be taken as a representative 
 of the more intolerant view, (Apol., c. 46 :) Quid simite Philosophus 
 et Christianus ? Grsecise discipulus et coeli ? famse negotiator et 
 salutis? verb'orum, et factorum operator... interpolator erroris, et 
 integrator veritatis ? furator ejus et custos? Whatever exaggera- 
 tion there is in the language of Clement, yet this I think is certain, 
 that his strong expressions have their rise in a deep and solemn 
 feeling, that nothing anywhere which is good, by which men have 
 been kept back from any evil, or prepared to any good, but must be 
 traced up to God. He dared not trace it to any other; thus speak- 
 ing of this very thing his words are, rtavtav fxsv yap attftoj tfcov 
 xa%oov 6 ©so?. (Strom., 1. 1. c. 5.) And that he did not make the 
 difference between the two a mere question of degree is plain from 
 such expressions as these : Xcopt^tfat'^ ^VkiqvixTi aTi^tff ta t^s xad" 
 7)[A,a$ si xal 'tov ow-tov jA-sts^^sv 6Vo i u.aT'oj, xal fisyiQsL yvditisas, 
 xai drfoSftlet jcuptcoT'lpa, xal deiq* bvva^n, ' OsodiSax-tOL yap r\[m<^ 
 (Strom., 1. 1, c. 20.) That other was the wild olive which had 
 need, ere it bore any nobler fruit, of insertion upon the good 
 (Strom., 1. 6, c. 15;) words which may suggest a comparison with 
 that most eloquent passage at the end of the first book of Theodo- 
 ret, Be Grcec. Affect. Curat. And those remarkable words have 
 been often quoted in which Clement likens heretics and founders of 
 human systems to the rabble rout that tore the body of Pentheus 
 limb from limb : so they tore the truth, and then each boasted of 
 
248 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 its votaries to the school of Christ. To mention but a sin- 
 gle example. Few who have once read, will forget the man- 
 ner in which the falling in with the ITortensius* of Cicero 
 kindled the young Augustine, and inflamed him with a pas- 
 sionate love of wisdom. What a moment it was in his life 
 when he lighted on that treatise, how greatly did it serve to 
 arrest him in that downward career which he was then too 
 rapidly treading, to hinder him from utterly laying waste 
 his moral life. How did it set him to the seeking for 
 goodly pearls, though the goodliest of all, the pearl of great 
 price, he was not yet to find ! He himself in after years 
 describes all this, with thankful ascriptions of praise to the 
 guiding hand of his G-od, and telling how that book, though 
 it did not and could not bring him into the inmost sanc- 
 tuary of the faith, yet was to him in the truest sense a 
 porch to that auguster temple not made with hands, into 
 which at a later day he should be privileged to enter ; and 
 did at once hand him over to the searching of the Scrip- 
 tures, though as yet his eyes were holden, and he found not 
 in them till a later day their hid treasures of wisdom and 
 of knowledge.f 
 
 the fragment in his hands as though it were the whole (ixdotri 
 brtsp £^a#£j/, wj rtucsav an>%ti <tv\v dtoyfoiav.) 
 
 * Otherwise called De Philosophia. It has been lost, all but a 
 few unimportant fragments. The subject was the superiority of 
 philosophy to eloquence. 
 
 •j- Con/., 1. 3, c. 4: Usitato jam descendi ordine perveneram in 
 librum quemdam cujusdam Ciceronis, cujus linguam fere omnes 
 mirantur, pectus non ita. Sed liber ille ipsius exhortationem conti- 
 net ad philosophiam, et vocatur Hortensius. Ille vero liber mutavit 
 affectum meum,...et vota ac desideria mea fecit alia. Viluit mihi 
 repente omnis vana spes, et immortalitatem sapientse concupisce- 
 bam 9estu cordis incredibili. 
 
 He has very interesting acknowledgments (Cow/., 1. 7, c. 9, 20, 
 21) of the effect which the Platonist books exerted upon him at the 
 great crisis of his life that went before his conversion, — what he 
 
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 249 
 
 But I spake of exaggerations on either side into which we 
 were liable to fall. To take the very opposite extreme to 
 this of painting the old world to ourselves in lines and 
 colours of unredeemed blackness, we may dwell exclusively 
 on the fairer side which it presents, shutting wilfully our 
 eyes to each darker and more revolting spectacle which it 
 displays. We may find in its art and its literature that 
 which gratifies our taste, and out of a lack of any deeper 
 moral wants, we may come to say with the poet, " Beauty 
 is Truth, Truth Beauty," and where we find beauty and 
 proportion and harmony, may be ready to pardon the ab- 
 sence of every thing beside; just as those Italian literati at 
 the revival of learning, who preferred calling themselves 
 brethren in Plato to brethren in Christ, to whom the groves 
 of Academus were far more than the waters of Siloam, and 
 the cultivation of taste than the promotion of holiness — men 
 who so moutned over the vacant thrones of Olympus, that 
 to them a heaven opened, with angels ascending and descend- 
 ing upon the Son of man, seemed but an insufficient com- 
 pensation. 
 
 But such a nearer acquaintance with the world which was 
 
 found in them, and what he did not find, — where they helped, and 
 where rather they hindered him: concluding with this declaration 
 of the things which he had looked for there in vain: Hoc illse lit- 
 terae non habent, Lacrymas Confessionis, Sacrificium tuum, Spiri- 
 tum contribulatum, Cor. contritum et humiliatum, Populi salutem, 
 Sponsam, Civitatem, Arrham Spiritus Sancti, Poculum pretii nostri. 
 Nemo ibi contat: Nonne Deo subdita erit anima mea ? ab ipso enim 
 salutaro meum: etenim ipse Deusmeus, et salutaris meus, susceptor 
 meus, non movebor amplius. Nemo ibi audit vocantem: Venite ad 
 me qui laboratis...Et aliud est de silvestri cacumine videre patriam 
 pacis, et iter ad earn non invenire, et frustra conari per invia, circum 
 obsidentibus et indsidiantibus fugitivis desertoribus cum principe 
 suo leone et dracone: et aliud tenere viam illuc ducentem, cura 
 ccelestis imperatoris munitam, ubi non latrocinantur qui coelestem 
 militiam deseruerunt ; vitant enim earn sicut supplicium. 
 
250 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 before and out of Christ, as these studies faithfully pursued 
 must give us, will teach us that if there are sides on which 
 heathen mythology stands related to, and has the recollec- 
 tion and intimation of something higher than itself, there 
 are also other sides upon which it lies under the influence of 
 man's corruption, is itself the outgrowth of his foolish sin- 
 darkened heart, with the impurities of its origin cleaving to 
 it, — does itself help distinctly to mark his downward pro- 
 gress toward idolatry, and toward the losing of the Creator 
 in the creature, — is often only the strangely distorted resem- 
 blance, never more than the faint prophecy, of the coming 
 truth. And if so, we shall feel that to linger with that is 
 ridiculous, whose only worth is that it hands on to some- 
 thing better then itself, and is capable of being translated 
 into a nobler language than its own. So too we shall feel 
 that if the ancient philosophy had glorious ethical precepts, 
 yet were they but adumbrations of the truth, since they 
 wanted, for the most part, that body and substance which 
 action alone could give them ; as is plain from unnumbered 
 confessions and complaints on all sides heard, that the world's 
 physicians had not healed themselves, much less their patients ; 
 as is plainer still in the collossal character which sin had as- 
 sumed,* till, at the time of Christ's appearing, it sat as it 
 were incarnate, in the person of a Tiberius, on the throne of 
 the world, f In all this we shall behold how feeble all the 
 
 * In its two great aspects of lust and cruelty; the passages in 
 proof of the first may remain unquoted; but what a picture of the 
 last, this account of the gladiatorial games and of the manner in 
 which they had grown ever bloodier, presents ! (Seneca, Ep. 7 :) 
 Quidquid ante pugnatum est. misericordia fuit: nunc omissis nugis, 
 niera homicidia sunt...Plagis aguntur in vulnera, et mutuos ictus 
 nudis et obviis pectoribus excipiunt. Intermissum est spectaculum ? 
 interim jugulantur homines, ne nihil agatur. 
 
 | With only slight exaggeration Seneca compares the aspect of 
 the world in which he was living to that of a city taken by storm 
 (De Bene/., 1. 7, c. 27:) Si tibi vitee nostrae vera imago succurret. 
 
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 251 
 
 barriers which the world's wisdom could raise up, to stay 
 the overflowings of the world's ungodliness and evil.* 
 
 But to imagine yet a third position ; we may read these 
 hooks, not indeed setting them up in our affections against the 
 truths which ought to be dearest to us, nor on the other 
 hand slighting them, because not themselves Christian; but 
 failing altogether to trace in them any relation at all to the 
 great facts of the spiritual life of man. We may read them, 
 forgetting that the meaning of books is to make us under- 
 stand something else besides books, that we miss their sig- 
 nificance to us, when they have their end in themselves, 
 when they do not hand us on to life and to action; when 
 
 videberis tibi videre captse cummaxime civitatis faciem, in qua 
 omisso pudoris rectique respectu vires in consilio sunt, velut sigtio 
 ad permiscenda omnia dato. Non igni non ferro abstinetur: soluta 
 legibus scelera sunt, nee religio quidem, quae inter arma hostilia 
 suppjices texit, ullum impedimentum est ruentiuminpraedam. Hie 
 ex privato, hie ex publico, hie ex profano, hie sacro rapit: hie 
 effringit, hie transilit : hie non contentus angusto itinere, ipsa qui- 
 bus arcetur evertit, et in lucrum ruina venit. Hie sine csede popu- 
 latur: Me spolia cruenta manu gestat: nemo non fert aliquid ex 
 altero. Compare his 95th Epistle. 
 
 * Thus the atrocity of the gladiatorial shows was by heathen 
 moralists abundantly felt and understood. Cicero indeed makes 
 but a feeble protest against them (Tusc. Qucest., 1. 2, c. 17 :) Cru- 
 dele gladiatorum spectaculum et inhumanum non nullis viderisolet; 
 et haud scio an ita sit, ut nunc fit. But Seneca more distinctly 
 (Ep. 95:) Homo, sacra res, homo jam per lusum et jocum occiditur, 
 et quem erudiri ad inferenda accipendaque vulnera nefas erat, is 
 jam nudus inermisque producitur; satisque spectaculi in homine, 
 mors est. Cf. Ep. 7. And Lucian, in a collection of the notable 
 sayings of Demonax, a cynic philosopher of the second century, 
 tells of him, that once when the Athenians were planning a specta- 
 cle of the kind, he told them that they must overthrow the altar of 
 Pity, before they proceeded further in this matter. Yet with all 
 this it remained for an unlettered Christian monk to put a stop to 
 these bloody shows. 
 
252 lecture virr. 
 
 they explain to us no mysteries of our being, help us in no 
 struggles of our souls, make clear to us no dealings of 
 our God. 
 
 There was a time in our lives, — yet a time which we who 
 are here present should now have left behind us, — when 
 tbis might have been natural enough, when it would have 
 been premature to begin to meditate on the moral problems 
 which these works present, or to do more than first to mas- 
 ter their difficulties, and those overcome, to walk up and 
 down admiring and enjoying the strange and wondrous world 
 into which they had helped to introduce us. But the time 
 is gone by, when that alone was our task. Further duties 
 are ours — to study that classical antiquity in the light which 
 our Christian faith and experience throw back upon it, with 
 an open eye for its moral good and for its moral evil, with 
 an entire confidence that in Christ and in his Gospel is 
 given to us the touchstone which shall enable us to recog- 
 nize — the sharp and dividing sword which shall enable us 
 unerringly to separate between — the evil and the good, the 
 false and the true. 
 
 Let us feel that not by some strange inconsistency, some 
 traditional usage which we will not abandon, but cannot 
 defend, it has come to pass that a literature and philosophy, 
 not Christian but heathen, hold the place which they do 
 among us, members of the Church of Christ — are at this 
 day contemplated, as they have been contemplated in time 
 past, by each wiser and more thoughtful man, as an indis- 
 pensable organ for all higher education, necessary instru- 
 ments for the cultivating of the complete humanity.* Let 
 
 * The intimate connexion between the Reformation and the revival 
 of classical learning, with the zeal and success of the Reformers in 
 promoting this last, all will remember — Melancthon's especially, to 
 whom, beside other titles of honour, this of Prseceptor Germanise 
 was added. There is a very interesting letter of Luther's in which 
 thanking a friend, who had sent him a Latin Poem which he had 
 
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 253 
 
 us feel that this only could have been, inasmuch as they 
 stand in some real and intimate relation to the innermost 
 fact of our lives, to our Christian hope — a relation of defect 
 it will often be, yet a relation not the less, which should not 
 be overlooked or denied. And these things being so, let us 
 understand that we fall below our position, we fall short of 
 the purpose with which these books were placed in our 
 hands, when we fail to regard them in such a light as this. 
 And in this light to look at them will not mar nor hinder 
 that free spontaneous joy in them which in earlier times 
 may have been ours. We may keep that earlier delight, 
 and yet, keeping it, may pass on to a deeper and more medi- 
 tative emotion. For indeed with what livelier interest shall 
 we occupy onrselves with this classical antiquity, when we 
 feel that it is not disconnected with the highest things of 
 our life, the most solemn questions which can employ us as 
 as baptized men. 
 
 How many will be the thoughts and emotions, and all of 
 them purifying and ennobling, which these studies in this 
 spirit pursued, will awaken and cherish within us ! Thus 
 
 composed, and had at the same time expressed his fears that the 
 cause of classical literature would suffer from men's zeal about 
 theology, Luther replies that it should not so with his consent: 
 Ego persuasus sum, sine literarum peritia prorsus stare non posse 
 sinceram theologiam, sicut hactenus ruentibus et jacentibus Uteris 
 miserrime et cecidit et jacuit. Quin video nunquam fuisse insignem 
 factam verbi Dei revelationem, nisi primd, velut prsecursoribus bap- 
 tistis, viam pararit surgentibus et florentibus Unguis et Uteris. 
 Plane nihil minus vellem fieri aut committi in juventute, quam ut 
 poe'sin et rhetoricen omittant. In ca certe vota sum ut quam plu- 
 rimi sint et poetse et rhetores, quod his studiis videam, sicut nee 
 aliis modis fieri potest, mire aptos fieri homines ad sacra tarn capes- 
 senda, quam dextre et feliciter tractanda...Quare et te oro ut etmeo 
 (si quid valet) precatu agas apud vestram juventutem, ut strenueet 
 poetentur et rhetoricentur. (Luther's Briefe, v. 2, p. 313. De 
 Wette's edit.) 
 
 22 
 
254 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 surely a divine compassion will oftentimes stir in our hearts, 
 as with an ear made open by love, we drink in the voices of 
 the world's deep disquietude, its confessions of an intoler- 
 able burden,* its acknowledgments that if there be nothing 
 prouder, so also there is nothing more miserable, than man."}* 
 And these we shall not go far without meeting : for how- 
 ever the prevailing tone of that heathen world may be light- 
 some and gay, a summons to enjoy the present to pluck the 
 
 * In none perhaps so frequent and distinct as in Lucretius. There 
 is a very interesting lecture in Keble's Prcelectiones, on the witness 
 for and craving after that which Christianity only can give, that is 
 to be found by those who know how to look for it, in the reputedly 
 atheistic work of the great Roman poet. He dwells on the many 
 passages in which he expresses his deep dissatisfaction with life, 
 and with all which life could offer — a dissatisfaction which yet was 
 not, like that of so many, on the score of the fleeting nature of life's 
 pleasures and the little of them which a man in his brief space could 
 enjoy — but had its rise rather in a sense that these very pleasures, 
 even in fullest measure, did never truly fill the soul (Prcelect. 35:) 
 Campus hie ferme nobilium est poetarum, ut neenias canat ac queri- 
 nionias de vitse flore fragili ac caduco. Habet autem Lucretius nos- 
 ter illud, ni fallor, proprium ac modo non singulare, quod non tarn 
 breves et augustus incuset sevi in terris agendi limites, quam ipsum 
 vitae hujus statuoi, vel optimse actae : significet, rem earn unicuique 
 hominum et fuisse, et fore semper, molestissimo omnium oneri. 
 This is but one of the many memorable passages of the kind, 3. 
 1016: 
 
 Deinde animi ingratam naturam pascere semper, 
 Atque explere bonis rebus, satiareque nunquam, 
 Quod faciunt nobis annorum tempora, circum 
 Cum redeunt, foetusque ferunt, variosque labores, 
 Nee tamen explemur vital fructibus unquam; 
 Hoc, ut opinor, id est sevo florento puellas 
 Quod memorant, laticem pertusum congrere in vas, 
 Quod tamen expleri nulla ratione potestur. 
 Compare 3. 1066—1097. 
 
 f Pliny (H. N, 1. 2, c. 5:) Nee miserius quid quam homine, nee 
 superbius. 
 
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 255 
 
 roses of life ere they wither, yet if only we listen aright, we 
 may detect that in its laughter there is heaviness ; and often- 
 times that laughter is followed by a sigh drawn from deeps 
 of the heart far deeper than those where its smiles were 
 born.* Surely we shall find in these cries of a constant 
 unrest, a thousand confirmations of his word, who, heathen 
 as he was, yet likened man in his separation from Glod, to a 
 child torn from its mother's arms, and which nowhere could 
 be well, till it was given back to those arms once more."(" 
 
 Again, as we acquaint ourselves with the lamentations of 
 mourners for their dead, lamentations so deep and so despair- 
 ing, as to explain to us all the meaning of that sorrowing 
 without hope, which by the apostle is attributed to the 
 heathen ;J as we hear too the wretched consolations of mise- 
 rable comforters, the slight palliations of sharpest sorrows, 
 
 * Compare Herodotus, 1. 7, c. 46 ; Iliad, 17. 446 ; Odyss., 18. 129 ; 
 Lucretius, 5. 222; Moschus, Idyll., 3. 106; Sophocles, (Edipus Col., 
 1225; Virgil, Georg., 3. 66. There is a striking collection of pas- 
 sages in which the vanity, the sorrow, the burden of life, are 
 acknowledged, in Plutarch's Consol. ad Apollon. 
 
 f Dio Chrysostoni, Orat. 12, p. 405, ed. Reiske. 
 
 | How affecting a picture does Augustine give of what his feel- 
 ings were, when, in the time during which he was still moving in 
 the element of heathen life, the friend of his soul was taken from 
 him (Con/., 1. 4, c. 4:) Quo dolore contenebratum est cor meum; et 
 quidquid aspiciebam, mors erat. Et erat mihi patria supplicium, et 
 paterna domus mira infelicitas : et quidquid cum illo communica- 
 veram, sine illo in cruciatum immanen verterat. Expetebant eum 
 undique oculi mei, et non dabatur mihi; et oderam omnia, quia non 
 haberent eum, nee mihi jam dicere poterant: Ecce veniet, sicut 
 cum viverit quando absens erat. Factus eram ipse mihi magna 
 quaestio, et interrogabam animam meam, quare tristis esset, et 
 quare conturbaret me valde ; et nihil noverat respondere mihi. Et 
 si dicebam: Spera in Deum, juste non obtemperabat; quia verior 
 erat et melior homo quern carrissimum amiserat, quam phantasma 
 in quod separare jubebatur. Solus fietus erat dulcis mihi, et suc- 
 cesserat amico meo in deliciis animi mei. 
 
256 lecture vin. 
 
 which were all that, with all their kindness, they could sug- 
 gest, we shall know how to prize the oil and wine, the strong 
 consolations which are stored in the Gospel for each bruised 
 and smitten heart. 
 
 Or a compassion profounder yet will stir within us, as the 
 voices reach us, which proclaim that the very citadel of hope 
 was lost, voices of an utter uncertainty about all things, and 
 these coming from some of the earth's noblest spirits, who 
 asked of themselves, and could give no satisfying answer to 
 their own question, whether there was indeed a God govern- 
 ing in righteousness,* or whether all was not given over to 
 the blindest chance — whether they who did his will were a 
 care to Him y whether they survived the grave, and if there 
 were indeed any future and happy seats reserved for the 
 names of the just. 
 
 And even that of impure which we shall encounter, as we 
 must encounter it, there, proving, as it often has done, fuel 
 of dark fires in unholy hearts, setting them as with sparks 
 of hell in a blaze, it shall not be us, who go not to seek it, who 
 unwillingly encounter it, this incentive and provocative to 
 evil. Rather shall this impure itself conspire to the same 
 ends with all else which there we meet. It shall make us 
 feel, in its light we shall more plainly see, what hideous sores 
 there were to be healed, how deep a corruption to be sub- 
 dued, when men could thus glory in their shame, and some 
 comparatively pure in their lives, felt that in their works it 
 was not merely so permitted, but so expected that they 
 
 * The reader -will remember the way in -which the De NaturA 
 Deorum concludes, and the entire indecision in which all is left. 
 Pliny (H. N., 1. 2, c. 5) is more explicit yet in his open confession 
 of an utter skepticism in any moral government of the world: Irri- 
 dendum vero agere curam rerum humanarum illud quidquid est 
 summum. Anne tarn tristii multiplicique ministerio non pollui cre- 
 damus dubitemusve? Cf. Lucian's Jupiter Tragceedus, c. 17. 
 
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 257 
 
 should write.* And intruding, as often that uuholy does, 
 among the fairest creatures of genius, rising up like a plague- 
 spot upon their foreheads, who were among the most gifted 
 of their age and nation, it shall teach us a solemn lesson, 
 even this — how much of moral insensibility may coexist with 
 highest capacities of intellect — how little the sense of beauty 
 by itself avails to preserve purity of heart, — how needful it 
 is that hearts should be in better guardianship than this — 
 how the highest of this earth's yields us no security against 
 the lowest ; it shall teach us that if there are pinnacles of 
 heaven above every man, and that in him which prompts 
 him to ascend them, so also are there abysses of sensuality 
 yawning beneath his feet, and that in him which tempts him 
 to engulf himself in these. f 
 
 * See the elder Pliny, Epist., 1. 4, ep. 14; 1. 5, ep. 3. 
 
 f I borrow these remarkable words from the answer of one, whose 
 position gave him full right to speak, to the proposal for publishing 
 an expurgated edition of the classics for the use of schools. Rather, 
 he says, he would have the works as the authors wrote them ; and 
 encountering with his pupils any of those passages which, in such 
 an edition, would have been omitted, he would make them the occa- 
 sion of some such comment as the following: "This lesson they 
 teach you, that refinement of intellect will not purify the heart ; 
 that great mental endowments may co-exist with great moral insen- 
 sibility : that vigour of understanding and delicacy of taste will 
 not reform the world. You see that these have been tried and 
 found wanting. Something more is needed. You may conclude 
 also that the depravity of an age and country was great, in which 
 those who were the most distinguished by their intellectual endow- 
 ments and literary culture, thought themselves not only licensed, but 
 expected thus to write. It follows that you have in these passages 
 an evidence of the divine power and purity of that influence which 
 did what all the wisdom of the world could never do. It is Chris- 
 tianity, and it alone, which has really expurgated the literature, not 
 only of Greece and Rome, but of the civilized world. These pas- 
 sages are the trophies of the triumphs of Christianity. They show 
 us, as in triumphal procession, what fearful enemies it has con- 
 
 22* 
 
258 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 Nor will this be all ; there will mingle in these studies 
 thoughts and feelings of a liveliest thankfulness to God, as 
 amid the great shipwreck of the Gentile world, we recognise 
 the planks by which one and another attained, as we trust 
 safely, and through the mercy of a Saviour whom as yet he 
 did not know, to the shore of everlasting life — thankfulness 
 mingled, it may oftentimes be, with something of a whole- 
 some shame to ourselves, as we contemplate the faithfulness 
 and fealty to the good and true, which even in the world's 
 darkest hour have been shown by them, whose knowledge 
 was so little, and whose advantages so few, as compared with 
 our own. And perhaps it shall seem to us then, as if that 
 Star in the natural heavens which guided those Eastern 
 Sages from their distant home, was but the symbol of many 
 a star which twinkled in the world's mystical night — but 
 which yet, being faithfully followed, availed to lead humble 
 and devout hearts from far off regions of superstition and 
 error, till they knelt beside the cradle of the Babe of Bethle- 
 hem, and saw all their weary wanderings repaid in a mo- 
 ment, and all their desires finding a perfect fulfilment in 
 Him. 
 
 quered. Without them you might have asked what social good has 
 the Gospel done ? "What moral blessings have we derived from it ? 
 These passages forbid, they answer, those questions. They remind 
 you from what, and into what you have been delivered, and by 
 Whom. Therefore, had we expunged them, we should have dimin- 
 ished the strength and glory of that very cause which we desire to 
 serve. Being what they are, I fear not that you should pervert 
 them to an improper use. God forbid that you should dwell on 
 them with any other feelings than those of sorrow mingled with 
 thankfulness. Horace, had he lived when you do, would have been 
 a Christian, and had he been a Christian, he would not have writ- 
 ten thus : but if you who are Christians, love to read, what he, had 
 he been one, would have loathed to write, you, who ought to Chris- 
 tianize him, heathenize yourselves." 
 
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