THE  PURSUIT OF HOLIYESS.




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THIE PURSUIT OF
HOLINESS:. SEQUEL TO
"THOUGHTS ON PERSONAL RELIGION."
INTENDED
TO CARRY THE READER SOMEWHAT FURTHER
ONWARD IN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE.
BY
EDWARD MEYRICK GOULBURN, D. D.,
DEAN OF NORWICH,
AND FORMERLY ONE OF HER MAJESTY'S CHAPLAINS
IN ORDINARY.
NEW  YORK:
D. APPLETON & COMPANY,
90, 92 & 94 GRAND STREET.
1870.








TO
THE EARL OF DERBY, K.G.,
THE ACCOMPLISHED SCHOLAR,
THE BRILLIANT ORATOR,
THE EMINENT STATESMAN;
WHO HAS THOUGHT IT A TASK NOT UNWORTHY
OF HIS GENIUS
TO INSTRUCT YOUNG CHILDREN
IN THE PARABLES OF THE DIVINE WISDOM;
AND TO WHOM THEREFORE
A PLAIN WORK
OF PRACTICAL " INSTRUCTION IN RIGHTEOUSNESS'
MAY BE NOT INAPPROPRIATELY DEDICATED;
THESE PAGES ARE,
BY HIS KIND PERMISSION,
INSCRIBED WITH THE UTMOST RESPECT AND GRATITUDE.








TO THE READER.
A FEW prefatory words on the object of this little
treatise, and on the spirit and method in which it is
meant to be perused, may, it is hoped, enable the
Reader to profit more by it than he otherwise would
do, while at the same time it may serve to avert certain criticisms, to which the writer cannot but feel
that, as a piece of religious literature, his work is
justly exposed.
ly "Thoughts on Personal Religion" have met
with some success (more, I imagine, because so many
are nowadays craving for help and guidance in the
matter of personal religion, than on account of any
merit or originality in the " Thoughts "); and I have
received assurances from trustworthy quarters that
the book has been made useful (under God's blessing) to many. Between such persons and myself I
feel that a sort of bond has been established, to the
obligations of which I desire to be faithful. Our
paths in life may never have crossed-nay, we may
be very remote from  one another (for the book
has been kindly and warmly received on the other
B




viii             To t/he _Reader.
side of the Atlantic); but they have been pleased to
acknowledge themselves as helped by me in the most
vitally important of all human concerns; and the
acknowledgment has made me almost regard them
as if they were my flock, and I their pastor. So I
am minded to try to lead them on a little farther, and
to rivet the impressions already made upon them,
partly by presenting former topics in new lights,
partly by guiding them to fields of thought a little
less elementary.
It is obvious that this design will lay me open
occasionally to the charge of repeating myself. I
fully admit such a charge, and am prepared to justify
myself under it. Although I have never consciously
quoted from myself, I doubt not that many passages
will be found in this work, bearing a close resemblance (in style as well as sentiment) to others which
occur in its predecessor. Must it not of necessity be
so in in all books whose scope is to inculcate practical
righteousness?  Even inspired Apostles were not
ashamed of reiterating their exhortations-nay, they
regarded their doing so as the security of their disciples: "To write the same things to you,- to me
indeed is not grievous, but for you it is safe."  And
St. Peter, in urging upon the faithful that growth in
grace, that "going on from strength to strength,"
whereby alone an "abundant entrance" should "be
ministered unto them into the everlasting kingdom




To the Reader.                  ix
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,' expressly says
that they needed continual reminding of the necessity
of this progress and growth: "Wherefore Iwill not
be negligent to put you always in remembrance of
these things; though ye know  them, and be established in the present truth.  Yea, I think it meet, as
long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up, by putting you in remembrance."  Within certain limits
nothing new can be said (or ought to be demanded)
in religious exhortations.  All that can be done here
in the matter of originality is, that the old truth
should be presented in a new light, and (which is
of even more importance than newness of aspect)
pressed home upon the conscience of the learner with
a fresh interest in the mind, and a fresh glow in the
heart, of the teacher.
Nor can I think that those readers for whom
chiefly this volume is designed, will resent its occasionally speaking in accents with which they are
more or less familiar.  A man who reads for devotion
is not apt to be scandalized by having old truths
pressed upon him. It is he only who reads for curiosity, or to amuse his mind with speculative questions, who is impatient of what he has heard before.
And this work is designed not so much as a theological treatise (for the composition of which its
writer is by no means furnished, and in which charaeter, therefore, it might be found grievously defec



x                To the rectder.
tive) as to be a help to earnest strivers in the spiritual life. It is true that, in parts of it, I have found
myself led into an analysis of human motives, and an
investigation of human nature, which might seem at
first sight to belong rather to the theory than the
practice of religion; but this is because I perceive
such analysis and investigation really necessary to
the satisfactory adjustment of some practical question
which has arisen, not because I have for a moment
forgotten that I am engaged in endeavoring to direct
souls, and to bring myself and others to an experimental knowledge of God. And let me ask you,
Reader, in this connection, to regard the book as a
book of devotion, and to read it in a method accordant with that view of it. It is offered to you simply
as a help in the spiritual life; accept it as such. Do
with it as you have done with the many better books
of the same character, which from time to time have
fallen into your hands. Read it in order, a little at
a time, and exercise your mind upon the argument,
that you may imbibe whatever may be sound and
spiritual in it, and reject whatsoever may be not in
accordance with Holy Scripture and the mind of the
Universal Church.
And oh! dear soul, created in God's Image, and
ransomed with His Blood, whom it has been my desire to serve and help by these instructions, if they
shall at any times approve themselves to thee as ser



To the Seadcer.                   xi
viceable and helpful, forget not in thy prayers him
who needs such service and help even more than
thyself.  The authors of such books are almost sure
to be thought by strangers far better men than in
truth they are. But a moment's consideration of the
way in which all works of spiritual counsel must be
framed "would dissipate the delusion, as well as (it is
earnestly hoped) justify the writers from  the charge
of hypocrisy. Such counsels are addressed, then, in
the first instance, to the writer's own heart, on the
assumption that his experience will be that of hundreds of others.  They are virtually an attack upon
his own faults, an exposure of his own weak points,
a development of any thought in which he has himself found light, comfort, and encouragement.  So far,
therefore, from  assuming that the writer is himself
strong on the points on which he writes strongly, it
should rather be assumed that these are the points on
which he is really weak,' while his conscience and his
knowledge of the truth tell him  that he ought to be
strong.  To no higher standard of goodness does
such a writer lay claim  than this-that he himself
strives to live up to the arduous requirements of
Christianity; that he is painfully sensible of falling
short of the mark; that, like Gideon's troop, he is
1 To show that I mean what I am saying, I may observe that
chap. xv. is directed against a faulty habit of mind, of which I
myself am only too conscious.




xii               To the,Reader.
often "faint," and "yet pursuing;" and that, in the
exercise of Christian sympathy, as well as from the
desire of making full proof of his ministry, he longs
to help those who are experiencing the same difficulties with himself, and to whisper into their ears
(whether from the pulpit or the press) any words of
light and comfort which may have reached his own
soul from above.  Without this low degree of Christian experience, no one could hope to make a successful appeal to the hearts and consciences of his fellowmen; and whatever his counsels may seem to import
as to his own state, the present writer entreats the
reader to give him  credit for nothing more.  For
awful, indeed, are the responsibilities of making a
high religious profession; and he who by such a profession lifts himself above the crowd, resembles Nelson, when appearing with all his orders at Trafalgar
-he is only too likely to make himself a mark for
the fiery darts of the great enemy.  How shall we
not tremble for the risks which are run by ordinary
teachers of Divine truth, when even St. Paul (after
and notwithstanding all the sacrifices he had made
for Christ) felt that without self-control and mortification of the lower instincts he himself might "become a castaway?"  Reader, pray that such may not
be the doom of him who in these pages addresses you.
E. M. G.
KISSINGEN, August 19, 1869.




CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THAT HOLINESS IS ATTAINABLE.
" Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are."-JAMIES v. 17.
Of whom the world was not worthy." —HEB. xi. 38.
PAGE
Loftiness of Elijah's character as a saint-his weakness as exhibited in the Scriptures-a wrong estimate of saintliness seems
to put it out of our reach-I. The reason of this wrong estimatethe trick of the eye in surveying a distant landscape, however
plain-the trick of the memory in surveying a remote period of
life-why  should not Christians nowadays be as zealous and
devoted as the Apostles and primitive saints?-all the forces
which made the Apostles saints are operative now-II. flow the
Scriptures correct this mistaken estimate-instances of sinful infirmity in New Testament saints-quarrel of St. Paul and St. Barnabas-both parties in the wrong-even Apostles had their trials
of temper-erroneous notions of the moral effects of the Pentecostal effusion-how these are corrected by Scripture in connection
with St. Peter's history-The Holy Spirit in man's soul a growing
and expansive force-the checks and drawbacks which Grace experiences in our nature and circumstances-III. Our undervaluation of saints while they are witbh us, and the causes of it-Death
often opens our eyes for the first time to the saintliness of the
departed-practical inferences from  this —Conclusion. We are not
to think any height of sanctity above our reach-we only need the
faith, hope, and love of primitive saints to achieve spiritual marvels-the reason of our low spiritual standard to be sought only in
lukewarmness, laggardness of will, and want of spiritual energy,.  1




xiv                       Contents.
CHAPTER II.
WHAT HAVE WE TO BEGIN UPON?
"And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the
swine did eat: and no man gave unto him.
" And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants
of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and Iperish with
hunger I
" Iwill arise and go to my father.""-Lvux  xv. 16-18.
PAGE
In the attainment of Holiness, how are we to begin?-the earnest
beginning contains the germ of future success, and is half the
battle-we must begin upon the grace of Baptism-special blessing of Infant Baptism, that it anticipates the dawn of moral lifeI. The relationship contracted by Baptism, independent of the conduct of the baptized-the prodigal son a son still, though unworthy
to be called one-passages of Scripture considered, which seem to
connect Divine sonship with abstinence from sin-the reconciliation of these passages with the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration
-II. The Grace bestowed in Baptisn appears first in the shape of
"good desires "-these desires specified-they are not fruit, but
blossom which gives promise of fruit-the operation of Baptismal
Grace in wilful and deliberate sinners-God accepts those who
return to Him from mere disappointment in the creature-how
this is shown in the Parable of the Prodigal-analysis of the
Prodigal's motives-the filial feeling toward his father mixed up
with the disappointment-St. Philip's profound request to Our
Lord-exhibition of God as a Father awakes a response fiom the
human soul-beautiful image from St. Francois de Sales's treatise
on " The Love of God"-address of the writer to readers who may
have wandered far away from God-God never compels to holiness-we must yield ourselves up willingly to the instigations of
His Grace,..                                               12
CHAPTER III.
THE FIRST PRINCIPLE OF IHOLINESS, AND HOW  TO
ATTAIN IT.
" He entered into the synagogue and taught: and there was a man
whose right hand was wzthered.A...... And looking round
about upon them all, Ife said unto thMe man, Stretch forth thy




Cozntents.                          xv
haCnd, and he did so: and his hand owas restored whole as the
oflher."-Lunws vi. 6, 10.
PAGE
The declaration that faith is the gift of God, is constrnue  by
some as though they could do nothing toward the attainment of
it, but must simply wait till it comes-narrative of the cure of the
withered hand adapted to correct this error-hand the organ of
touch-touch convinces us, more than other senses, of the reality
of matter-faith convinces us of the reality of things unseen-the difference between imagining spiritual truths and believing them-man
has a natural faculty of faith which can grasp things lying within
the horizon of time, but not beyond-how this is emblematized in
the narrative of the withered hand-the healing virtue, whereby the
cure was wrought, was in Our Lord-yet the patient was required
to do something, in order to derive this virtue into his hand-Our
Lord commanded him to do that which he could not do before
he was healed-and the patient understood that he must make an
effort to do it-the hand stretched toward Christ is the emblem of
prayer-there are times when we feel we cannot pray-but our
policy then is to make an effort to stretch forth the hand-principle
is only shown in praying, when the course of prayer does not run
smooth-the realizing grasp of faith upon things eternal, not to be
had without a vigorous effort-the reader counselled to make this
effort, and assured of success,........ 22
CHAPTER IV.
THE POINT  OF DEPARTUIRE  IN  THIE RIGI-T COURSE.
"'For the invisible things of iim from the creation of the world are
clearly seen, being zunderstood by the things that are made, even'7is eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
because that, when they knew  God, they glorified Him  not as
God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.  Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the
uncorruptible Godinto an image made like to corruptible man, and
to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.  Wherefore
God also gave them  tip to uncleanness through the lusts of their
own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves."RoM. i. 20-24.
The moralist, in giving us an insight into the corruption of
human nature, stops short of its origin-but the Apostle lays his




xvi                        Contents..PAGE
finger on the exact point at which our nature diverged from the right
path-man's degradation a retribution for his having degraded God
in his conceptions of Him-Nature might have given him true
conceptions of God, but he could not rise to such conceptionsidolatry the fundamental sin-the quick deterioration of idolatryif the point of departure for vice be an unworthy conception of God,
the -point of departure for virtue must be a worthy conception of
Him-faith the spring of all virtue-how faith in God must flow
out of, and resolve itself into, high conceptions of His characterthe child's faith in its parents analyzed-the Syrophcenician's faith
in Christ analyzed-she had gained her conceptions of God from a
devout observation of His dealings in Nature and Providencehow the Lord's Prayer teaches that lofty notions of God are the
chief ingredient in forming the character to righteousness-the
Psalmist's reference to the lessons taught by Nature-the reference
to them in the Book of Job-error of Christians in despising the
revelation made in Nature-on similar principles, they might despise
the Old Testament, and make light of Our Lord's Parables-study
the Gentiles' Bible, as well as that of the Jews, and that of the
Christians,......                 31
CHAPTER V.
THE EXPERIMENTAL KNOWLEDGE OF GOD THE END
OF ALL CH[RISTIAN0  ENDEA~VOR.
Increasing in the knowledge of God." —COL. i. 10.
Time and energy saved by apprehending clearly, before we start,
the end of religious endeavor-the end is such an appreciation of the
beauty of God's character as satisfies the soul, in the absence of all
earthly sources of happiness-St. Philip's petition to Christ, and its
unconscious depth-unsatisfactoriness of created good-but there
must be a good, which is capable of contenting the soul, because
God creates no strong instinct without something corresponding to
it-even the Atonement is only a means to communion with Godthe question raised and answered, "Does not the Decalogue give us
two ends of religious endeavor? "-how the love of our neighbor resolves itself into the love of God-practical use of the subject, as
showing what religious exercises are likely to yield the largest return
-I. How the knowledge of God may be gained by continually referring to Him in ejaculatory prayer-II. Also by constant meditation
on Holy Scripture-III. Also by the discipline of life, and God's providential dealings with us-our knowledge of God is to be thought of
as progressive on the other side of the grave as well as on this,. 43




Contents.                        xvii
CHAPTER VI.
THE END OF  THE  COMM3IANDM3ENT, AND  THE  IMIPORTANCE  OF KEEPING  IT IN  VIEW.
" Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart,
and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned: from which
some having swerved, have turned aside unto vain jangling."
1 TII. i. 5, 6.
PAGE
The metaphor used by St. Paul in speaking of the " end of the
commandment " —corroborations of the sentiment from other parts of
Holy Scripture-in order to a student's proficiency in any art, his
object must be clearly defined-example drawn from oratory, and its
special appropriateness-example drawn from painting-question
raised, "What is the painter's true end? "-the end in religion is
supreme love to God, and the same love to our neighbor which we
bear to ourselves-the relation of ordinances to the end-the relation
of good works to the end —energy saved by bestowing it in the right
quarter-the spirit which our actions evince of much greater importance than the thing done-how the perception that God's great requirement is a loving confidence in Himself simplifies our work in
returning to Him after a fall-loving confidence, the only source of
true repentance —as for Atonement, it must be wholly left to Christ, 53
CHAPTER VII.
OF THE VARIOUS SENTIMENTS EMBRACED IN THE LOVE
OF GOD.
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all
thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind."LUKE x. 27.
The love of God being our end in religion, it is proposed to investigate it somewhat fully-different kinds of love exemplified in
human life-I. The love of natural affection-its distinction from the
love of gratitude, and from that of moral esteem —it is of the nature
of an instinct-is seen even in the lower animals-God being our
Father, this love should fasten upon Him, as its supreme object-the
tender love of God for all His crecttures —the still tenderer bond of
Fatherhood, which binds Him to His offspring-this love will spring




xviii                       Contents.
PAGE
up in the heart, if we listen to Our Lord's announcement of God's
Fatherhood-II. The love of gratitude-it is not the benefit conferred
which gives rise to it, but the kind sentiment of the benefactor-how
this is apparent in children —the love of gratitude the great moral
engine which the Gospel employs-God's love, as evinced by the gift
of Christ for us, begets love-III. The love of moral esteem-in it we
love God, not for what He is to us, but for what He is in Himselfthe moral excellence of God's character compared to the beauty of
light-light, a compound of sombre and bright rays-holiness and
love tempered together in God's character-the exhibition of both
attributes in Christ's Cross-the exhibition of both attributes in
Christ's person-should we have admired the sterner, as well as the
softer, side of Christ's character? —IV. The love of benevolence —benevolence, the feeling which prompts to beneficence-shown to be
quite distinct from esteem-this sentiment will lead us to further
God's cause to the utmost of our power-the petitioner in the Lord's
Prayer is supposed to be animated by this spirit-to grow in grace is
to be conformed to the spirit of the Lord's Prayer,..     65
CHAPTER VIII.
OF THE AFFINITY BETWEEN GOD ANLD MAN, IN REGARD OF MAN S WANTS AND GOD'S FULNESS.
" In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried,
saying, If any man thirst, let him  come unto Me, and drink.
He that believeth on lMe, as the Scripture hath said, out of his
belly shall flow rivers of living water......  lcany of the
people therefore, when they heard this saying, said, Of a truth,
this is the Prophet.  Others said, This is the Christ." —JoN vii
37, 38, 40, 41.
The words of Christ satisfied a certain yearning in the souls of
His hearers-the secret affinity between parties in friendship, in virtue of which one supplies what the other needs-friendship results
from the attraction of related dissimilars-affinities in Nature between totally distinct objects-affinity between God and man, by
which they are reciprocally necessary to one another-I. Man's need
of God-need which all the creatures have of God, in order to their
being and well-being-man's intellectual craving after the Infinite —
man reaching forth after truth, but unsatisfied with every truth he
reaches-God is Light, and He alone therefore can satisfy this craving-man's moral craving after the Infinite Good-how the hunger of




Contentzts.                        xix
PAGE
man's spirit after good is shown in the excesses of intemperance, into
which the lower animals do not fall-the purer and more refined forms
of created good, and how they disappoint us-how our thirst after joy,
after esteem, after sympathy, is satisfied by communion with God, and
by that alone-II. God's need of man, as a field of display for His perfections-evil seems to have been permitted, that God may have scope
for the exhibition of His mercy-the " deep " of man's misery calls to
the " deep " of God's mercy-illustration from human life-the bountiful man needing an object of bounty-how Christ's invitation to the
people to come to Him and drink shows him to be God-go to Him,
if you feel the hunger and thirst of the soul,...8
CHAPTER IX.
OF THE FILIAL RELATION OF I3AN TO GOD, UPON
WHICH THE LOVE OF GOD IS FOUNDED.
" God said, Let us mnake man in our image, after our likeness." —
GEN. i. 26.
Man, alone of all creatures, made in God's Image-from the consideration of the affinity, resulting fiom the correspondence between
man's needs and God's fulness, we pass to the affinity involved in
man's filial relationship to God-man's likeness to God-I. In the
constitution of his nature-human nature presents an image of the
Trinity in Unity-" body, soul, and spirit," their distinctness, and
yet their unity in each man-the mystery of the Divine Nature hardly
greater than that of the human-II. In his natural powers-(a) intellectual-t-an a creator in art, in poetry, in music, in civilization generally-the lower animals only producers-(b) in his moral powersfree-will, with the rational counsel involved in it-how a firm assurance of the self-determining power of the will may be of service to
us in the moment of temptation-how the fact that all men are made
in God's Image, and thus bear marks of sonship to Him, is compatible with the Scriptural ascription of sonship only to the believing
and baptized-man, originally God's child, and still bearing traces of
being so, has been disinherited by the Fall-the human family reconstituted in the Second Adam-admission to membership in this
new-constituted family by belief and Baptism-how the Gospel call
to communion with God implies a fundamental affinity to God-the
reader exhorted to meditate on God's Fatherhood, and especially on
the way in which lHe has condescended to show His fatherly'love, by
seeking man in all the degradation of his sin,..91




xx                         Coantents.
CHAPTER X.
OF THE WAY IN WHICH GOD HAS MADE THE PREECEPT OF DIVINE LOVE PRACTICABLE TO US BY THE
INCARNATION.
" Ie that hath se   e  see   e htseen the Father."- JOIN xiv. 9.
PAGE
Incompetency of sentiments, as distinct from principles, to work
a change of character-the difficulty of loving God without a definite
conception of Him, and the difficulty of definitely conceiving Hlimwhat are affection and sympathy, as they exist in the Divine Nature?
-but the Nature of God is made by the Incarnation level to our conceptions-illustration from the sunlight, which can only be intelligently studied by looking at it through the medium of the prism or
the raindrops —God made level to our apprehensions in the Person of
Christ-the stern elements in Our Lord's character, and their adjustment with the tender elements-God made level to our synpathies in
the Person of Christ-the emotions of Our Lord's heart are a translation into the language of humanity of the (to us incomprehensible)
affections of the Divine Mind-yet, as we have never seen Christ,
how is His Incarnation such an advantage to us, as supplying us
with definite conceptions of God?-admitted difficulty of believing
and loving without seeing-we must remember that acquaintance
with Christ upon earth was attended with compensating disadvantages, from which our view of Him is free-also we must bear in
mind the exact portraiture of Him by the Evangelists, and the four
different points of view from which those portraits are taken —do we
love the whole character which they portray, its sterner as well as
its milder elements?-or are we loving an ideal Christ instead of the
true one-or is it a doctrine we love, and not a person?-the great
difference between being justified by faith, and believing in the doctrine of justification by faith-the love of Christ conforms us to His
image,.......103
CHAPTER XI.
OF THE LOVE  OF GRATITUDE.
" We love Hiim, because He first loved  es." —l JOHN iv. 19.
The love of gratitude defined to be a sense of God's love-distinction between this and a feeling awakened by God's love —illustration
from Nature-the quickening of the seed by the sun's warmth is an




Contents.                           xxi
PAGE
effect produced by the sun; but the lustre of the moon is only sunlight reflected from the moon-so our love to God is actually God's
love to us, shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost-I. If this be
so, the more fully we expose our hearts to the love of God, the more
we shall love Him-groundless apprehensions of sinners feeling free
to sin, if the love of God is too fully and freely exhibited to themthe jewel cannot sparkle without light which it may reflect; nor the
heart without love which it may reflect-II. There can be no merit in
merely giving back that which God sheds on us-no merit therefore
in loving Him-and therefore no merit in any form of human virtue
-III. What hinders us from so realizing God's love as to love Him
in return-the spiritual state of the heathen compared to that part of
the earth's surface which is turned away from the sun-the spiritual
state of the unbelieving Christian compared to that of a man who
hides himself in a hovel from the surrounding light of day-two great
truths which must be kept in sight, in seeking a realizing faithfrom which truths flow these counsels-I. Seek for faith in prayerearnestness in prayer is itself an answer to such prayers, because we
cannot pray earnestly without a certain measure of faith-II. Make the
love of God in the free gift of His Son for sinners a subject of meditation-think what love the sacrifice of a Son must import —III. Act
as if you had the faith and love to which you aspire, and in feebly
practising, the Divine Power shall come to you,... 116
CHAPTER XII.
OF THE LOVE OF GOD AS I NVOLVING ANTIPA:THY TO
EVIL.
"Ye tlat love the Lord, hate evil."-Ps. xcvii. 10.
Reasons why we are specially prone to deceive ourselves as
to our love toward God-a practical test of this love desirableour perfect acquaintance with, and therefore definite conception of,
moral evil-evil the opposite of God, as darkness is of light-to
hate evil is, therefore, to love God-difference between the mere
avoidance of sin, and the hatred of it-cases where we avoid without hating-sin often treated with levity by those not personally
implicated in it-the sensibility of man to physical evil-a perfect
moral state would involve the same sensibility to moral evil-Our
Lord exemplified this moral sensibility-probable nature of His
sufferings in the agony-He had lived from all eternity in a sphere
where sin and sorrow were unknown-the sensitive purity of His
Huanln Nature-supposed case, by which we may in some measure




xxii                       Content..
PAGE
realize the distress which sin caused ILim-the form  in which
Christ's hatred of sin showed itself-Iis stern fulminations against
hypocrisy, and against those who would dissuade men from receiving the antidote He brought-sameness of principle in the denunciations uttered by St. Paul, St. John, St. Stephen-the strength
of character inherent in'true love-its intolerance of vital errorare we affected with antipathy toward the evil in ourselves? —do
we treat sin, when seen in others, with levity?-how far have we
escaped the latitudinarianism of our age? —exhortation to begin
with the negative side of the love of God, and work up to the
positive,....12
CHAPTER XIII.
0F  PURITY  OF  MAEOTIVE.
"  The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thinzee e   e single, thy
whole body shall be full of light.  But if thine eye be evil, thy
whole body shall be full of darknzess.  If therefore the light that
is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! "-MATT. vi.
22, 23.
The light thrown upon the passage at the head of the Chapter by
the context in which it occurs-two extreme moral states described
by Our Lord-the intermediate state of a double intention implied
-rational intention the eye, or characteristic feature of our actions
-no such intention apparent in the actions of animals-the heroism
of heroic actions due to the motive which prompts them-multiplicity of intention possible to man from the constitution of his
nature-man, the most complex of the creatures, and therefore
liable to the operation of more than one motive-four distinct
views with which a man may take food-absolute singleness of
motive very rare-the relations of man to society a source of complexity of motive-how human respect is apt to interfere with
religious purity of motive-how it is made evident that Churchgoing among the poor often flows from human respect-how the
same thing is often made evident among the rich-how we may
cultivate simplicity of motive-first, by probing our motives in
self-examination-secondly, by practising virtues which are hidden
from the eyes of men-the value of private devotions-the spirit
which may be infused into the most commonplace duties and
courtesies of life —utter shortcoming of our best righteousness, in
view of the truth that the motive determines the moral character
of our actions-connection of this subject with the argument of the




Contents.                        xxiii
rAGE
work-the intention may be right without any self-consciousness;
and such an intention will grow upon us, as we pray and strive to
perfect our motives,........  140
CHAPTER XIV.
PEACE OF CONSCIENCE AND OF HEART THE ELEMENT
OF HOLINESS.
"Now the Lord of peace Himself give you peace always by all
means."-2 THESS. iii. 16.
The strong emphasis with which St. Paul wishes "peace" to his
converts-force of the words "always," " by all means," "give,"
"hearts and minds "-how the importance of the blessing of peace
and its connection with holiness is recognized in the daily Morning
and Evening Office of the Church-I. Peace of conscience-the first
admission of this peace by simple faith in Christ-its subsequent
detention by self-discipline and renewed acts of faith-periodical
self-examination and confession to God-confession to a spiritual
counsellor not essential, but recommended in certain cases-II.
Peace of heart-(1) under anxieties-refer the case to God, and
leave it with Him, not suffering the mind to revert to it-prejudice
done by fruitless anxiety to the spiritual life-(2) same rule to be
observed under trials of temper-the tranquillizing power of the
thought of God's Presence-irritating topics must be dropped-the
opening given to the devil by cherished anger-God's Spirit can
make no communications to a turbid, ag itated soul,..   154
CHAPTER XV.
PEACE BY LIVING IN THE PRESENT RATHER THAkN
IN  THE PAST.
" And He said unto another, Follow Yle.  But he said, Lord, suffer
me first to go and bury my father.  Jesus said unto him, Let the
dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of
God." —LuKE ix. 59, 60.
In order to live in peace, we must live in the present-difference
between this and living for the present-all our energy needed for
present duties-the following of Christ cannot be taken up as a




xxiv                       Conentcs.
rAGE
bywork-tendency of the natural mind to live either in the past or
the future-how Our Lord's words, "Let the dead bury their
dead," must be understood-all things die when their time has
expired-transitory character of childhood-of human opinionsof human institutions-monastic institutions a case in pointyearning of the natural mind after the past-monastic system has
done its work, and expired, and cannot be revived-new forms of
thought neither to be admitted without examination, nor to be
discarded hastily-the past of our own life must not be too fondly
dwelt upon-passages in which the Law and the Prophets, as well
as the Gospel, teach this-sentiment, in order to be sound, must be
in accordance with truth-the days of childhood had their troubles,
as well as later days-the trick of memory, which makes us believe
that former days were better than these-Christ has for those who
work in His Kingdom a reward better than any they have yet
experienced,.                        163
CHAPTER XVI.
PEACE BY  LIVING  IN  THE PRESENT RATHER THAN IN
THE FUTURE.
"Be content with such thingss as ye have." —HEB. xiii. 5.
The connection traced between this and the preceding Chapterour proneness to live in the future rather than in the presentespecially developed in youth-the tendency of the present age to
foster a restless desire for a better position-the Scriptural precepts
to abide in, and be content with, our present position-touching
example of the Shunammite-the principle of rest, and the principle
of progress, in our nature, and how they each operate upon that
which is the end of the other-we must restore these principles to
their right functions-importance of redeeming present opportunities, and enjoying present privileges-St. Paul's advice to the
slave not to push for liberty, and the emphatic lesson of contentment which it teaches-his advice justified by the consideration of
the " shortness of the time " which remains to us-the unspeakable
importance of eternity throws into the shade our earthly circumstances-the restless discontent which is now abroad, with the
Church of our Baptism-our Church offers us more opportunities
than we avail ourselves of, of serving God, and benefiting man-a
perfect communion not to be found upon earth —duty of acquiescing
thankfully in our ecclesiastical position,.. 173




Contents.                         -xxv
CHAPTER XVII.
THE CENTRIPETAL AND CENTRIFUGAL FORCES OF THE
SOUL.
ObXi 7ravreg ezai 2eaTrovpyt~CKa rvevruara, e,' 6iaKcoviav a'roTe2L6/leva
6ia TrobVg  a22ovrag O2Vpovo/eZv oT2rplav; " Are they not all
ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them  who shall be
heirs of salvation? "-HEB. i. 14.
PAG E
Case of a devout man who craves after a renglar pursuitquestion raised whether such a craving is part of the mind's constitution, or part of its disease-practical importance of tle question
-advantage of studying this question in the case of the Angels,
rather than in that of men-the Angels proposed to us by Our
Lord as a model of human duty-failure of the English Translation
to represent the point of Heb. i. 14-twofold function of the Angels
as officiating priests in the Heavenly Temple, and as employed on
ministries of mercy to the heirs of salvation-discrimination of
these functions in the Collect for St. Michael-the Angels exhibited
to us in Holy Scripture in both characters-two tendencies in the
constitution of every rational being, a desire for external work, and
an attraction toward God as its source and centre-a pursuit the
condition of happiness-but we may not be absorbed in any pursuit
-weariness resulting from mere external activity-the soul's need
of God —the recognition of God must be, not kept apart from our
business, but interlaced with it-edifying extract from  "Hele's
Devotions "-the New  Testament prayer-precept enjoins unintermitting prayer-are we making an effort to keep it?-the necessity
of collecting the mind as often as we find it has wandered from
God,........18
CHAPTER XVIII.
OF THE NECESSITY OF AN OCCUPATION, AND OF THE
RIGHT WAY OF PURSUING IT.
"Because he was of the same crcft, he abode with them, and wrought:
for by their occupation they were tent-makers."'-AcTS xviii. 3.
Reasons why St. Paul would not stand upon his right to receive
support from his converts-how he found his advantage in laboring with his hands for his own support-many Scriptural instances
of Divine calls being addressed to men in the way of their ordinary




xxvi                        Conenets.
PAGE
business-necessity to holiness of an outward occupation-an occupation made ready for the majority of men-let it be settled in the
mind that this business is the task set us by God's Providencelet us work under the eye of our Heavenly Master, and look up
into His face, and ask His help-never regard work as a hinderance
to, but as a furtherance of, piety-think how often God has met
men in the way of their calling-aim rather at doing well what you do,
than at getting through much-hurry and impulsiveness prejudicial
-how a man may be slothful while he is busy-the spirit in which
the Angels work-how our leisure moments may be employed in
some gratuitous work for Christ-St. Paul's work, though large
and anxious, yet left him  time for a manufacture, which was a
gratuitous toil-advices for those who are under no necessity of
working for their bread-why reading is not for such persons a
sufficient occupation-many posts of Christian usefulness and
Church work open to such people-let them  choose and addict
themselves to one province of such work-the intellectual inferiority of a handicraft more than compensated by its spiritual
advantages,......190
CHAPTER XIX.
SELF-SACERIFICE  A  TEST  OF  THE  LOVE  OF  GOD.
"And when lHe was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to Him, and asked Him, Good lifaster, what
shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?  And Jesus said unto
him, Why callest thou  re good? there is none good but One,
that is, God.  Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit
adultery, Do not kill, -Do not steal, Do not bear false witness,
Defraud not, Honor thy father and mother.  And he answered
and said unto Him, Mlaster, all these have I observed fromn  m5
youth.  Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him,
One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell wuhatsoever thou hast,
and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and
come, take usp the cross, and follow Mle."-   ARK x. 17-21.
The love of God the spring of holiness-our aptness to deceive
ourselves as to our possession of this love-stringent practical tests
of the love of God furnished by Scripture-the lessons of the interview of the rich young man with Our Lord, frequently misapprehended —his desire to be made acquainted with some arduous attain



Contets.                       xxvii
PAGE
ment of virtue, which might secure for him eternal life-how Our
Lord, having examined him on the duties of the Second Table, afterward brings the First Table to bear, in apractical form, on his conscience-why Our Lord does not explicitly refer him to the First Table-a glow of gratitude to God for prosperity sometimes mistaken
for the love of God-failure of the young man to stand the test-what
is meant by a trust in riches-true love delights in making sacrifices
to win the favor and approval of its object-the young man required
to forsake all things and follow Christ, as the Apostles had done —
and this, not as a work of merit, but that he may be free to embrace
God-the requirements made of us; first, that we should actually
drop something of created good, in almsgiving and self-denial, as a
proof of our comparative indifference to the whole; second, that we
should absolutely renounce all trust in created good, which cannot be
without actual mortification-what has to be mortified is our affection
to created good in all itsformns —fasting and almsgiving, the two specially recognized forms of it-their principle-how the tasting of the
powers of the world to come loosens this world's power over the
heart-mortification to be regarded as the negative form of the love
of God-and as only a means to an end,.           209
CHAPTER. XX.
LOVE FOR THE BRETHRENi A TEST OF OUR LOVE FOR
GOD.
" If a man say, I love God, and hatlth his brother, he is a liar: for
he that loveth not his brother whom  he hath seen, how can he love
God whom he hath not seen? "-1 JOHN iv. 20.
A second practical test of the love of God proposed —any pretence
to the love of God, in the absence of the love of our neighbor, a delusion-the love of our neighbor easier than the love of our God, inasmuch as it is easier to walk by sight than by faith-reason why the
love of God might seem to be the easier of the two —our neighbor full
of imperfections, while the idea of God is attractive-but to be attracted toward the idea of God is not to love God-we must realize
God's existence before we can love Him-and this realization can
only be by faith-I. How the love of our neighbor is wrapped up in
the love of God-what we are required to love in our neighbor is
God's image in him-every human soul has a fragment of this image
-a man's true self to be distinguished from his failings-this distinction generally recognized, when it is said that God loves the sinner, while He hates the sin-II. The love of our neighbor must be




xxviii                     Contents.
PAGE
brought to practical tests —1. What are we doing for Himn?-jealousy
shown by St. John and St. James of professions of benevolencequick evaporation of benevolent sentiment, if it is not immediately
acted upon —2. Do we pray for others?-intercession recognized as
an essential element of Prayer in the Lord's Prayer —if we do not
pray in a spirit of love to others, our prayer is out of harmony with
God's mind-and such a prayer cannot reach God's heart-seek to
make your prayers for others specific by considering their wants
and trials and placing yourself in their circumstances,... 221
CHAPTER XXI.
THE LOVE OF GOD A PRINCIPLE RATHER THAN A
SENTIMENT.
"If ye love lMe, keep IMy commandnents." —JonN xiv. 15.
Pathos of Our Lord's last discourses with His disciples-the entire absence of sentimentality from these discourses-Christ acknowledges no love but such as takes the form of obedience-His reiteration of this, in the parting discourses, and the public warning to the
same effect in the Sermon on the Mount-practical use of the distinction between sentiment and principle-for the detection of insincere
professions —for the consolation of true Christians who do not find
emotion enough in their religion-ordinary life furnishes great scope
for the affections, comparatively little for the emotions-rare appearance of the emotions in modern civilized life-the affections run still
and deep, and only attract observation when a crisis occurs-the
same holds good in religious life-the crises of religious life, but not
its normal course, distinguished by emotion-the safe tests of our
loving Christ are such a confidence in Him, as leads us to pour out
our hearts before Him, and an earnest endeavor to please Him —this
endeavor involves a sense of His living Personality-illustration
drawn from natural life and physical emotion-the love of Christ an
affection of the will-distinction between the spiritual and emotional
part of our nature recognized by St. Paul-South's description of the
joy of the reason-the name of love sometimes given to a fancy or a
feeling —but the love of Christ is something deeper than this —why
the first disciples probably needed this warning even more than ourselves —Our Lord's sole condescension to the love of sentiment-examine into the genuineness of your love, and how far it is founded in
the will,.?..     2 33




Contents.                           xxix
CHAPTER XXII.
WHAT SHUTS OUT CHRIST FROM OUR HEARTS?
" There was no room for them in the inn." —LUKE ii. 7.
PAGE
Usefulness of investigating the reasons of the backwardness of
religious people in the pursuit of holiness —the cause not in God, who
neither stints His Grace, nor is partial in the distribution of it —we
are straitened in ourselves-images drawn from Nature-Christ can
find no room in the heart, because other guests exclnude Him-the
crowded inn, a just emblem of the heart-what is it which occupies
the room which He needs for His gracious operations?-1. Self-will
-the attempt to exempt certain districts of our life from God's jurisdiction-want of a delicate sensibility to God's inspirations —how
the will sets itself in some one quarter, and does not hang quite loose
-how God illuminates the conscience as to His will in particular
cases-the guidance of the eye-this guidance seldom experienced
where people are not disposed to follow it unreservedly —2. Confidence in the creature for happiness-difficulty of ascertaining, while
we are in possession of earthly blessings, how far our affections are
entangled with them —God therefore removes them occasionally as a
trial how far we can do without them-His mercy and considerateness in inflicting this discipline-so long as a single earthly blessing
is left, there is a risk of its being too fondly clung to-the lesson of
the history of Job-why the Scriptures ascribe to him the grace of
patience-enjoyment of created good (as distinct from confidence in
it) quite permissible —strong Scriptural repudiation of asceticism —
we must learn the art of tasting blessings without being taken up
with them-quotations from Cecil and George Herbert —exhortation
to investigate the reason of our slow advance in grace,... 249








CHAPTER  I.
THAT HOLINESS IS ATTAINABLE.
"Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are." —JAMES v. 17.
" Of whom the world was not worthy." —HEB. xi. 38.
~T needed an Apostle to give us this assurance. If
any saint ever seemed to rise above the infirmities
of human nature, it was the Prophet Elijah. Elijah
was a sort of anchorite, or hermit, who dwelt apart
from the haunts of men, except when some errand, on
which God sent him, drew him for a time into their
neighborhood. He lived, as a rule, not by firesides,
but in wildernesses and caverns; his costume was uncouth, his diet simple and austere. Then the power
which he exerted over the elements clothes him in
our eyes with a supernatural character. He shut up
the windows of the sky by his prayers, and by his
prayers reopened them. And as he could call down
the gracious rain, so could he bid the vengeful fire fall
from heaven, and consume those who set themselves
against him. And at the close of his career, as if to
place a still greater gulf between him and ourselves,
his lot was not the common lot of all men. " It is
appointed unto men once to die;' but Elijah did not
die. He was carried up to heaven by a whirlwind, a
chariot of fire and horses of fire appearing as his
1




2          That Hfoliness is Attainable.    [CHAP.
escort. His was throughout a magnificent and superhuman career.
Yet what is given us of Elijah's history amply
bears out the Apostle's assertion that he " was a man
of like passions as we are." We read of his being
weary of life, and requesting for himself that he
might die; of his flying, in a sudden access of terror,
from the wrath of Jezebel, though he had bravely
confronted Ahab; and of his magnifying himself in
prayer as being the only remaining witness for God
in Israel, when there were seven thousand men who
had not bowed the knee, nor given the kiss of homage,
to the image of Baal.
But though the Apostle James instances only in
Elias, the truth which he announces, like all truths of
Holy Scripture, is one of broad and general import.
We are apt to form mistaken notions of God's saints.
We are apt to think of them as if they were beings
of a different order from ourselves, raised above the
level of human infirmity. And from this mistaken
notion flows great practical mischief. Not to speak
of the manifold evils of saint-worship, which may be
supposed to have passed away at the Reformation
(though the tendency to it is always alive in the
human heart), a wrong estimate of saintliness discourages us for the pursuit of it, as seeming to put it
entirely out of our reach.
I. It will be profitable to inquire, first, whence this
wrong estimate comes.
It comes chiefly, I suppose, of our looking at the
saints from a distance-of our considering them as
creatures of the past, not mixed up with the affairs and




I.]        That loliness is Attcinable.          3
troubles of life. Whatever we look at from a distance
is beautified by the perspective. It is so in bodily
sight.  A  country which was dull, tame, or harsh,
when it lay immediately around us, borrows soft and
mellow tints from the atmosphere as we recede from
it; the blue distance conceals its plain features. It is
so with the mental retrospect, which we call memory.
Memory has a notorious trick of dropping or smoothing
over disagreeables. The days of our childhood, which
had their rubs, and their tears, and their faults, like
all other days, seem to us always beautiful and innocent in virtue of this trick of memory. The same law
of the mind operates to throw round the saints a false
and an imaginary lustre. We imagine that no man is
or can be a saint who is mixed up in the daily intercourse of society, who is fighting hand to hand with us
in the battle of life. Why not? What one sound
reason can be assigned why there should not be nowadays men as zealous, as devoted, as simple-minded, as
the Apostles and saints of the primitive Church? It
might perhaps be imagined that Christianity, when it
came as a fresh force into human nature, when it presented itself with all the interest of a new revelation,
wrought moral wonders which, since the mind of man
has become familiar with its truths, it is powerless to
work. But this is to suppose that Christianity depends
for its success on the ordinary constitution of the
human mind, and to overlook the fact that it employs
in its service supernatural forces and agencies. "Is the
Lord's arm shortened that it cannot save? " Are men's
hearts, in the nineteenth century, beyond the reach of
His grace? Is the moral paralysis of the Church in
these latter days such, that even the Spirit cannot put




4           ThZat  lolm6zess is Attacinable.    [CHAP.
life into the withered hand?  Has the blood of the
Lord Jesus lost its cleansing and sanctifying power?
Is it not rather true, as the Christian poet sings, that
" Fresh as when it first was shed
Springs forth the Saviour's Blood?"
Or was the promise of grace limited to the first believers, and not rather expressly extended " to you
and to your children, and to all that are afar off"
(" afar off" in every sense of the words, in religious
position, in space, in time), "even as many as the
Lord our God shall call? "
II. Let us see now how the Scriptures counteract
this mistaken notion of sanctity. It has been already
pointed out how Elijah is exhibited to us as showing
moral weakness in two great features of it-weariness
of life, and want of patience.  But the saints of the
New Testament, in whom we naturally expect to find
a higher standard, are also exhibited to us-we cannot
doubt with a deep purpose-as exempt neither from
infirmity nor error. I will not instance in such points
as St. Peter's fall, because this took place before the
disciples had been endued with power from on high by
the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost;
but I take the quarrel between St. Paul and St. Barnabas, as recorded in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts,
which led to a dissolution of the partnership between
them. How very like it is to those differences among
good men nowadays, which so often issue-so much
to the Church's loss-in divided operations! On one
side is the partiality of natural affection. John Mark,
whom St. Barnabas has fixed upon as the companion
of the Apostolic tour, was the sister's son of that




.]        That Holiness is Attainable.         5
Apostle, who was ready therefore to condone his
nephew's past misconduct. On the other side, Paul,
with his burning zeal, had been justly offended by
the half-heartedness of John Mark, when he had accompanied them on their previous journey. Disliking,
no doubt, the inconveniences and hardships to which
their companionship subjected him, Mark had " departed from them from Pamphylia, and went not with them
to the work."  St. Paul took strongly the view that
this conduct was a disqualification for a second trial
of the young man. Had not the Lord Jesus Himself said, "No man, having put his hand to the
plough, and looling back, is fit for the kingdom  of
God? " Doubtless St. Paul was not wholly and utterly in the right. He would have been cooler in. the
dispute that followed had he been so. Doubtless, he
was for showing too little' indulgence to one who,
though he had been overtaken in a fault, yet now, by
his willingness to accompany them on their second
voyage, showed himself sensible of it. In short, St.
Paul hardly acted in this case on his own inspired
counsel to " restore such an one in the spirit of meekness."  So the collision of natural affection in Barnabas with the somewhat unchastened, untempered
zeal of Paul produced a sharp contention-in the
original it is "a paroxysm "-between them. Sharp
words passed, and mutual recriminations, and the
feelings of both parties were exasperated-alas! so
much so, that they found it impossible to work together; they must henceforth choose different spheres
of duty. How!  Are these Apostles?  Are these
two of God's most eminent saints? Are these two
eminent pillars of the Church of Christ? Yes, reader;




6          That Joliness is Attainable.    [CHAP.
Apostles, and saints, and pillars, not as our fancy portrays them, nor as they are now, in the calm and deep
repose of Paradise, but as they were in the struggles
and collisions of daily life-" men of like passions as
we are "-not always subduing those passions, and
only subduing them  at all by that grace which is
offered to us as freely as to them.
But let us now fasten our thoughts on another point
in the history of the New Testament Saints, which
often seems to be strangely overlooked. We are apt to
form most erroneous notions of what the descent of the
Holy Ghost did for the Disciples of Christ. We are
apt to think that it endued them in an instant of time
with fulness of knowledge, and fulness of sanctity-that
it dispelled from their mind all prejudice and error, and
raised the curtain at once upon the full panorama of
Divine Truth. But what are the facts of history? The
facts are that eight years after the descent of the Holy
Spirit, it required a vision, and a providential indication, and withal a direct injunction of the Holy Ghost,
to induce St. Peter to accept and act upon the truth,
that the Gentiles were to be no more regarded as
strangers and foreigners, but to become fellow-citizens
with the saints and of the household of God. And
though these circumstances must have impressed the
truth of the Gentiles' fellow-heirship ineffaceably upon
his heart and mind, we find him afterward guilty of
moral cowardice in hiding his convictions on the subject. Though now of some standing in the Apostleship, and confirmed (one would think) in his views of
Christian Truth, he appears to have forgotten his
Master's warnings against putting the light under a
bushel, and not allowing it to shine before men.




I.]         That holiness is Attainable.              7
"When Peter was come to Antioch," says St. Paul,
"I withstood him to the face, because he was to be
blamed.  For before that certain came from  James,
he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were
come, he withdrew, and separated himself, fearing
them which were of the circumcision.  And the other
Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that
Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation."  And who is this, who (if the Word of God be
true) thus exhibited narrowness and moral cowardice
on a critical occasion, and drew others away after him
into compliance with his mischievous example?  This
is thy Rockman,1 on whom  the Lord said that He
would build His Church, and to whom  He solemnly
intrusted the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven; this
is a saint specially dear to Christ, and specially honored of Him; a saint who was enabled to perform
many mighty and wonderful works, and whose very
shadow was healing, an emblem this of the wholesome
spiritual influences which the holy life and conversation of St. Peter diffused around him.  Verily " Elias
was a man subject to like passions as we are."
The truth is (and it is a truth most apposite to the
whole argument of the present work) that the Holy
Spirit, as given to the Church, and to each member of
1 I call him " Rockman," as the most suitable word I can
coin to express the etymology of the name which Our Lord gave
him (IeirpoS = II'rpa-oS = Rock, with a masculine termination).
An able note on the interpretation of Matt. xvi. 18, 19, repudiating both errors-that of the Papists, which regards St. Peter as
the rock, independently of his confession, and that of the Protestants, which regards the confession (and not the Apostle) as the
rock, will be found in " Schaff's History of the Apostolic Church"
(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1854), vol. ii., pp. 5, 6.




8          CThat loliness is Attainable.    [CHAP.
the Church, is not an illumination once for all, or a
confirmation once for all, but a germ of light and
strength capable of indefinite development.  It is
potentially, but only potentially, a revelation of all
truth to the intellect, and a communication of all power
to the will. It is a growing and expansive force, not a
force which exhausts itself in one impulse. In short, it
is a seed, not a full-formed flower; and, like all seeds,
ifs growth is liable to checks and drawbacks. It is
planted in the poor, barren soil of the human heart,
which by nature engenders weeds only. It shoots up
into the climate of a wicked world. And just as, in
the world of nature, plants are exposed to blight, which
is said to be composed of hosts of minute insects, so in
the moral world Grace is apt to be thwarted by the
legions of fallen angels, whom the Scriptures speak of
as swarming around us on every side, " principalities
and powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this
world."  What wonder if the spiritual development
of saints be often thrown back, and if their best graces
be sadly marred by infirmities?
III. We have been endeavoring to correct the popular notion of saints as men exempt from our infirmities
and altogether exalted above our sphere. But this notion has another tendency, besides that which has been
already discussed. It leads not only to what we may
call an overvaluation of those saints who have long
since passed away, but to an undervaluation of those
who may now be (if we had eyes to see them) fighting
the battle of life by our side. And against this error
also the Word of God protests, teaching us, in another
passage, that " the world is not worthy " of God's saints.




I.]         That Tloliness is Attainable.            9
Every man and woman who lives by Christian principle (that is, by faith), who sustains the life of his
immortal spirit by prayer, and sacraments, and the
Word of God, and resists evil watchfully and steadfastly, is a saint.  He may have his infirmities, his
backslidings, his periods of lukewarmness, his failings
of temper, his moral cowardice; so had the Scriptural
saints.  And our close commerce with him  in life,
forcing upon us, as it does, his weaknesses and prejudices, while his communion with God, transacted
in the depths of his own spirit, is of course screened
from us, hinders, for the present, our fully appreciating
him.  We see very clearly that he is "a man subject
to like passions as we are; " but we fail to see that he
is Elijah. Perchance we shall see this too by-and-by,
when he is taken from us. Sanctity in our friends and
neighbors is like a star.  We take no notice of the
star while the sun is pouring his rays over the firmament, and the full stir of life is around us. But let
the night draw her curtain over the sky; and the star
in all its beauty steals out to view. So while our
friends are mixed up with us in the hurry and commerce
of life, we seem unable to disentangle from their infirmities the saintliness which is in them. But they die;
and something comes to light about their inward life
which hitherto had escaped every eye but God's, and
we begin to discover that the commonest things they
did were governed by Christian principle, and referred
to God in prayer, and perhaps that we have been for
years walking side by side with angels unawares.
Death has now thrown his pall over them; they are no
longer in the hubbub of life or the strife of tongues;
and the star of their sanctity begins to twinkle bright



10         That Holiness is Attainable.    [CHAP.
]y to our eyes. Oh! lest remorse for having appreciated God's saints so little should strike a chill to our
hearts, when they are taken from us, let us now be on
the watch for any tokens of good in one another, and
hail such tokens with affectionate reverence. Let not
infirmities, however patent, blind our eyes to the grace
which there may be in a brother. Let us hope for
good in him, promptly believe in it, joyfully welcome
it. And let us not fail to bless God for every example
of faith and love given by His people, whether still in
a state of warfare, or departed to their rest, " beseeching Him to give us grace so to follow their good examples, that with them we may be partakers of His
heavenly kingdom."
To revert again, in conclusion, to the great lesson
of this Chapter. The greatest saints who ever lived,
whether under the Old or New Dispensations, are on
a level which is quite within our reach. The same
forces of the spiritual world which were at their command, and the exertion of which made them  such
spiritual heroes, are open to us also. If we had the
same faith, the same hope, the same love which they
exhibited, we could achieve marvels as great as those
which they achieved-not indeed in marvels which
change the outward face of Nature, but those higher
marvels, whose field is the heart and soul of man. A
word of prayer in our mouths would be as potent to
call down the gracious dews and the melting fires of
God's Spirit, as it was in Elijah's mouth to call down
literal rain and fire, if we could only speak the word
with that full assurance of faith wherewith he said it.
Let us no more say querulously, as an excuse to our




T.]        That fHoliness is Attainable.      11
consciences for not prosecuting the high end to which
we are called, " God has put the great standards of
holiness out of my reach." IT IS NOT SO. As if with
the design of meeting such an objection, He exhibits
to us in His Word the occasional failures and feebleness of His most illustrious servants, and gives us a
glimpse of them, not only in the triumphs of Grace,
but in the infirmities of Nature. Seen in plain truth,
and not through the distorting medium of distance,
they were " men of like passions with ourselves,"
though under the empire of principles which brought
God into immediate relation with them, and thus lifted
them above self and the world. Why should we not
follow them, even as they followed God and Christ?
Plainly the reason is not to be sought in any disadvantages under which we labor, in comparison of them.
It is not that holiness was originally more congenial
to their nature than to ours. It is not that privileges
accorded to them are denied to us. It can be nothing
but that laggardness of will, that indifference to high
moral aims, that want of spiritual energy, that cheerful acquiescence in the popular standard of religion,
which has caused many a soul, when " weighed in the
balances," to be " found wanting," to be counted unworthy of the calling and the Kingdom of God.




12         What have we to begin tpon?  LCHAP.
CHAPTER II.
WHAT HAVE WE TO BEGIN UPON?
"A:nd he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the
swine did eat: and no man gave unto him.
"' And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants
of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with
hunger!
" Iwill arise and go to my father." —LUKE xv. 16-18.
Tr HE scope of our observations in the last Chapter
was to show that saintliness is not something
unattainable, or beyond our reach, inasmuch as the
most eminent saints, both of the Old and New Testaments, are clearly proved to have been "men of like
passions as we are." The next question will be, How
are we to proceed in attaining it? and, first, How are
we to begin?  The answer to this first question is
specially important.  For the principles which must
guide us in the prosecution of this great work are the
very same which must guide us at its commencement.
So that the beginning is not a beginning merely, but
a beginning which has a development wrapped up in
it; it is a seed which has only to burst and shoot up,
in order to become a blade, and then consecutively an
ear, and the full corn in the ear.  "As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in




II.]     W/hat have toe to begin uplon?        13
Him," says the Apostle to the Colossians, showing
clearly that Christian progress proceeds in the very
same method as the commencement of Christian life.
And therefore in this work, more, perhaps, than in any
other, it is true (and the thought is most encouraging
to those who are disposed to begin), that "Dimidium
facti qui coepit habet," "he who has begun has advanced half-way toward the end."
Upon what are we to begin, then, if we desire to
follow after Holiness? I answer, upon the grace of
our Baptism: this is the grand starting-point of all
Christian effort. And the special blessing of Infant
Baptism is this, that God in it " prevents " us (in the
old sense of the word "prevents"), anticipates us
with His Grace, anticipates consciousness, anticipates
temptation, anticipates sin, so that, when the powers
of evil throw up their approaches to the soul, they
find the Holy Spirit in possession of the fortress before them. And thus, before one who is baptized in
infancy can be soiled by evil, he is tinctured with
good.
In order to the development of this thought, it will
be necessary to say something of the relationship
which is contracted by Baptism, and next of the grace
which is bestowed in it.
I. First, the relationship contracted by Baptism.
"Baptism, wherein I was made a child of God." There
is a strange confusion of thought on the subject of this
relationship, a confusion which has the mischievous
result of dividing good men, who, were it not for this,
would all "speak the same thing."  By Baptism a
relationship with God is contracted, the baptized per



14         What have we to begin upon?   [CHAP.
son being admitted into His family. It is strange
that persons cannot see that a relationship stands
clear altogether of the moral conduct of the person
holding it, and cannot be in any way affected or
shaken by that moral conduct. The prodigal son in
the Parable was a son still, all his profligate and ungrateful conduct notwithstanding.  His leaving the
home of his childhood, his taking up his abode in a
far country, his squandering his fortune, his connection with vile, outlandish women, his abject poverty,
his ultimate degradation to the office of swineherd,
all these things did not alter his lineage, nor drain his
father's blood out of his veins. He said, and he felt,
that he was not worthy to be called a son; but in the
same breath he called his father "Father," showing
that the relationship was not annihilated, however
unworthy of it he had proved. It is so with God's
children, who are adopted into His family by Baptism. Nothing which occurs in after-life can raze the
seal off the bond of their Baptism.  However they
may dishonor and cast a stain upon their divine lineage, it still exists. And hence it was that Luther
called upon sinners, as the first effort in the direction
of Repentance, to go back to their Baptism, and to
stand upon that before God. He felt that the baptismal relationship must be for a christened man the
very ground and foundation of all his subsequent dealings with God.
There are, it is true, passages of Holy Scripture
(let us not blink one of them) which seem expressly
to connect Divine Sonship with abstinence from sin
and correspondence to grace, and which at first sight
forbid us to predicate that sonship where these fea



II.]     What have we to begin zupon?         1
tures of character do not exist. The strongest passages of this sort I can think of are, "As many as
are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of
God;" and, "Whosoever is born of God doth not
commit sin; for His seed remaineth in him, and he
cannot sin, because he is born of God."  But these
and the like words are capable of an easy explanation, which renders them consistent not only with the
doctrine of baptismal Regeneration, but also with the
analogy of natural sonship. Might not a father say
of a very vile son, who had brought a stain upon the
honor of his family, "He is no son of mine; I can
trace in him nothing of my character and disposition; I disown him altogether, and recognize only
those of my children who maintain the credit of my
name?"  In saying this, no one would understand
him to deny the natural relationship of the bad son
to him, but only to repudiate in the strongest terms
he could find any moral affinity. In God's family
too there is a sonship of moral affinity, as well as a
far wider sonship of Sacramental relation, and of
course it is only those who exhibit the sonship of
moral affinity who will be recognized as sons at the
Great Day; all else will be repudiated and solemnly
disowned by our Heavenly Father.
II. Having thus explained the baptismal relationship, we will now point out the grace which it carries
along with it, and which may be defined as the first
force —the earliest motive-power —of the Christian
life. Did I say I would point it out?  But it lies
under our hands, though, like other things which lie
under our hands, we are apt to miss it, because we




16        WTVhat have we to begin uzpon 2    [CHAP.
search for it too far afield.  The shape which the
baptismal grace takes in all men in general is good
desires.  You have these good desires attributed to
grace, and to "special grace" in the Easter Collect:
-"As, by Thy special grace preventing us, Thou
dost put into our minds good desires."  Our esteem
for devout and religious people, the wish to be good
and to lead a devout and religious life, the wish to
amend and shake off bad habits, and conquer faults
of character-these at the lower end of the scale;
and at the higher, the restlessness and  emptiness
engendered in the heart by a day without prayer,
the calm which earnest prayer is felt to induce, and
the desire after prayer which results from  these experiences; the longing, too, after Holy Communion
combined, as it often is, with a fear of approaching
the ordinance unworthily-these are some of the impulses, more or less fluctuating, more or less allowed
to color the life, more or less strong, according to the
occasions which call them forth and the characters of
the persons harboring them, which spring up continually in the heart of the baptized, and which represent
the action of the Holy Spirit upon the soul, in virtue
of Baptism.'   They are not the fruit which  God
It will no doubt be said that persons merely educated in
Christian Truth, and submitted freely to the influences of Christian civilization-children, for instance, of a Baptist or a Quaker
-would probably have all the sentiments here described, even
without the administration of the Sacrament of Baptism. No
doubt Christian education, which Our Lord ordained in close and
vital connection with the Sacrament of Baptism (" baptizing them in
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost;
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded
you," Matt. xxviii. 19, 20), has of itself a great effect in instilling




II.]   -   What have we to begin   pon?                 17
will require in its season from  those who have been
planted in His vineyard; but they are the blossom
on the fruit-tree, an efflorescence, which shows the
tree's vitality, and gives hope that, with proper culture, it will bear fruit hereafter.
But in those who have fallen into wilful and deliberate sin, and, it may be, have long persisted in that evil
course, the grace of Baptism, unless, indeed, it has become altogether extinct, operates in another manner.
The parable of the Prodigal Son beautifully illustrates
this working of the grace in question. The son had
tried to live on unsatisfying food, and had found by
experience that it could not fill or nourish him. The
craving of natural appetite brought him to himself, and
it was then that he began to bethink him of the abundant diet provided even for menials in his father's
house:  "How  many hired servants of my father's
have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with
hunger!"  It is very observable that his earliest instigation to return arises from nothing nobler than a
sense that he was famishing.  It is not, in the first
instance, love for his father; it is not a touching memory of earlier and purer days sweeping across his
heart, which  moves him  to  retrace his steps; but
merely the gnawing of hunger.  Oh, great and grathese "good desires." But the fact that God is good and gracious, even to those who have never formally been brought into
the bond of His Covenant, and is pleased sometimes to attach
grace to that which is only half a Sacrament, cannot disprove the
normal connection between Baptism and those drawings of the
heart which are here said to be its effects. The warmth of incubation is the usual and regular means of quickening the germ of
life in an egg: that chickens may be hatched by artificial warmth
does not really make against this truth.




18        What have we to begin upon?   [CHAP.
cious encouragement to a sinner who has wandered
far from  God, and seems quite to have estranged
himself from his heavenly home! The mere dissatisfaction with the creature, arising from  making trial
of it and finding it to fail, the mere void which is
created in the heart by constant disappointment, when
all worldly sources of happiness have been proved
one after another, and turned out broken cisterns
which can hold no water-even this motive, interested and selfish as it is, is accepted, if it lead to an
effective penitence, or rather to a hearty effort in that
direction.  And why?  Because this intense dissatisfaction of the soul with the creature, this refusal to
acquiesce in any thing which does not fully content
the heart, is instigated by the Holy Spirit, is an impulse of baptismal grace, still struggling with the reluctant will.  It may be grace in its earliest stage,
but grace it is, inasmuch as it leads the heart of man
to realize a great truth which it is naturally averse to
accept,-the truth of the creature's emptiness.  And
God cannot turn His back on His own grace, when
He sees one of His children led by it, and yielding to
its impulse.
I said it was not primarily love for his father, nor
memory of his home, which instigated the prodigal's
return. But we cannot exclude these feelings from a
share in determining his conduct. Scarcely ever do
men, and least of all penitents, act from pure and unmixed motives.  What sentiment, then, do we find
kneaded up with that emptiness and sense of want
which appears to have been his primary motive? The
sentiment finds an utterance in that word " Father."
He had been very hard for a long time as regarded




II.]      What have we to begin upon?           19
home ties; but the old affection was not quite dead, it
still smouldered under the cinders of youthful passions,
which now had burned themselves out and formed a
charred crust over his heart. And now it reasserted
itself very significantly; " I will arise," says he, " and
go to my father." I believe that when God is truly
and evangelically set forth as the Father of the human
spirit, really related to it by a bond of which earthly
fatherhood is only a poor, thin, unsubstantial shadow,
there is hardly any soul so lost in sin that it will not
make a response, and cry out of the depths of its ruin,
" Verily, Thou art my Father." St. Philip said a much
profounder thing than he meant, when he made that
request to his Master, " Lord, show us the Father, and
it sufficeth us."  That is just the utterance of the
human soul under the earlier promptings of grace,
when it wakes up to the experience that nothing
earthly does suffice, and yet feels that there must be
somewhere something which corresponds to its boundless cravings after good. Hearing in the Gospel of a
Father who is all Wisdom and all Love, as well as
boundless in power, the soul recognizes the manifestation of this Father as its one true want. "Show me
the Father," it cries, "and it sufficeth me." I borrow
from an eminent devotional writer a quaint but beautiful illustration of this truth. He says that there are
birds which hatch the eggs of other birds of the same
species, and rear a brood which is not their own; but
that when a bird thus reared happens to hear the cry
of its own real mother, by a marvellous operation of
instinct it flies toward her, and takes its place under
her wings. " Even so," he says, " our heart, though
reared and nourished under the wings of Nature,




20        W7/at have we to begin tupon?   [CHAP.
amidst the material and transitory objects of the
earth, yet no sooner hears a true representation of
the Heavenly Father, than it feels drawn toward
Him by a spiritual instinct, the operation of which
shows that it was made for God originally, and that
in God only can it find rest."
My dear readers, is there any one of you, however
hard and indifferent to true religion he may at present
seem to be, who does not feel an interest in these observations? Is there any one of you, however worldly and careless, nay, bad and vicious, he may be, whose
stagnant heart is not from time to time stirred by an
earnest wish that he were better? Well, even that
wish is a pure breath from heaven, wafted to you (as
it were) across the waters of your Baptism. Is there
any one, however sunk into spiritual insensibility, who
does not feel somewhat attracted by the testimony of
a Heavenly Father, and in whose heart there does not
spring up, on such a testimony being made, an irrepressible desire to know something of this Father?
Is there any one, however happy his lot, whose lot altogether contents him, so that he can say, " I have
enough? " Then, if these and the like aspirations rom
time to time find place in your hearts, why do you not
follow in the direction in which they lead? Why do
you not cast off sin, or make such a resolute effort to
cast it off, and take such a stride in that direction as
God may meet half-way? Remember, that the penitent son had not completed his return-he was yet c a
great way off" from his home-had only his face set
and his steps bent homeward, when " his father saw
him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck,
and kissed him."  If the thought of God is so at



II.]     lWhact have we to begin'pon?          21
tractive, why not suffer yourself to be drawn by it?
Why not seek God in prayer, through the name of His
Son? Is He so overabundantly "loving unto every
man," and will He be able to restrain His bowels of
compassion, if He sees a soul struggling toward Him
as best it may? Remember, at all events, that you are
responsible for the use you make of the good instigations which from time to time visit your heart. They
are given you for a purpose, to begin the spiritual life
upon, to be the starting-point of holy effort and prayer.
You are not the better man for having them, for they
come of free grace, not [of nature; but you are the
better for surrendering yourself to them, and following
their lead. I say following their lead; for what the
Holy Spirit does is to lead-and to move, in order that
He may lead. Do not imagine that He does more.
Do not imagine that he drives or compels. To do so
would be to destroy the moral nature of the creature,
instead of renewing it. The Holy Spirit extends His
hand to us, entices, allures, invites, remonstrates, but
never forces. Let us place our hand in His, and make
ourselves over to His guidance. The way may be occasionally thorny and rough, but it ends in such a
vision of God's perfections as will fully content the
soul; yea, it ends in that knowledge of Him, " wherein standeth our eternal life."




22         The First Principle of Hloliness,   [CHAP.
CHAPTER III.1
THE FIRST PRINCIPLE OF HOLINESS, AND HOW  TO
ATTAIN IT.
" He entered into the synagogue and taught: and there was a man
whose right hand was withered....... And looking round
about upon them all, He said unto the man, Stretch forth thy
hand, and he did so: and his hand was restored whole as the
other."-LUKrE vi. 6, 10.
T is probable that many persons are deterred from
beginning a religious course in right earnest by a
feeling that the very beginning is out of their own
reach. Faith, they know, is the great principle of the
spiritual life; the just man lives by his faith. But
then faith is declared to be the gift of God, not the
product of human effort. And therefore their notion is,
that faith drops upon people from Heaven quite arbitrarily, according to no known laws, and that there is
no regular and prescribed method for the attainment
of it. Though surely the mere consideration of God's
infinite goodness might teach these people that He
cannot possibly lay upon us a command which He
The substance of this Chapter appeared many years ago in
a volume of Parochial Sermons, preached by me in my (then)
Church of Holywell, in Oxford. But I have rewritten the whole
argument for the purpose of the present work.




III.]         and how to attain it.            23
will not give us power to obey, and that, therefore,
since He bids us believe the Gospel, or (in other words)
exercise faith in Christ, it must be within our power,
aided by His gracious Spirit, to do so.
I believe we shall nowhere better see the true relation between God's gift of faith, and the part which
human effort has to play in the attainment of it, than
in the narrative of the cure wrought by Our Lord upon
a man that had a withered hand.
A withered hand; of what spiritual defect is this
bodily defect a type or figure? The hand is the organ
of touch. He, therefore, whose hand is withered, has
lost the sense of touch in that which is the chief organ
of the sense. Now consider what impressions we gain
from the sense of touch. It is touch which, more than
any other sense, convinces us of the reality of matter.
What you see might be merely a phantom, an optical
illusion, a picture painted on the retina of the eye, and
nothing more; but if you go up to the thing you see,
and touch it, and handle it, you become assured of its
existence, you know that it is substantial. Now what
is faith? It may be defined as the faculty by which
we realize unseen things-such as the Being and
Presence of God, the work which Our Lord did for us,
the future judgment, the future recompense of the
righteous, and the like unseen things.
I say the faculty (not by which we conceive, but)
by which we realize these things, feel them to have a
body and a substance. To imagine the truths of
Religion is not to believe them. We may from time
to time imagine God as He is in Heaven, surrounded
by myriads of glorious angels-we may imagine Christ
looking down upon us from God's right hand, inter



24       The First Principle of Holiness,  [CHAP.
ceding for us, calling us to account at the last day, and
awarding to us our final doom; but the mere picturing
these things to ourselves is not the same thing as believing them; the believing them is the having such a
conviction of their reality, as to live under their influence, and to be in some measure at least governed
by them. In short, to imagine the truths of religion
is like surveying things by the eye; to believe in the
truths of religion is like grasping the same things
with the hand, and thus proving them to have substance and consistency. I need say no more to show
that a withered hand, being a hand without the sense
of touch, is a very just and suitable emblem of the
soul of the natural man, which has lost the power of
faith. For faith is nothing more nor less than the
faculty of spiritual touch.
The patient, however, on whose story we are founding these remarks, had not lost the sense of touch
altogether. It was only his right hand which was
withered; he could handle things with his left. And
this may usefully remind us of what has often been
pointed out, that man by nature is not a stranger to
faith or to its power-that he does exercise it, though
within a very limited horizon. Yes, surely. Every
victory which man has achieved over Nature has been
achieved in the power of faith. The husbandman
ploughs and sows in full persuasion of a harvestthat persuasion is faith. The man in full health and
full work lays by a part of his earnings against a
time when he shall be able to work no longer: that act
of saving is an act of faith; for why does he save but
that he believes a time of decrepitude and infirmity
will surely come to him, though at present there are no




III.]         and how to attain it.             25
symptoms of it? All the many precautions, which we
take against evil contingencies-precautions which
follow everywhere in the train of civilization-are all
instances of faith, and of its power in man's natural
life. For the future, against which these precautions
are taken, is unseen, and faith is the only faculty which
grasps the unseen, which brings it home to us, and
gives it a living power. The strange and melancholy
thing is, that our faith has no power of grasping such
things as lie beyond the horizon of time and experience. Ask it to realize judgment to come, or a
future state of existence, or the Presence of God, or
the intercession of Christ, or any of the unseen things
of which with no uncertain voice the Word of God
assures us,-and it drops paralyzed by our sides: the
hand-the right or better hand, that which might
enable us, if it retained the sense of touch, to realize
things nobler than any which enter into human experience-is withered.
Now let us learn from the narrative the method of
restoration.  It is plain, in the first place, that the
restorative power was in Christ, and dependent absolutely and entirely upon His will. When Our Lord
willed it-neither sooner nor later-the healing virtue
with which His Sacred Person was charged flew into
the withered hand, and made it in an instant of time
whole as the other. The patient's will, the patient's
effort, could have done nothing whatever for him, independently of Christ. No exercise, prescribed to him
by human skill, could have done aught to help him,
had. not the gracious Source of all health, natural and
spiritual, been present as a fountain from which he
might draw. I say, a fountain from which he might
2




26       The First Principle of Holiness,  [CHAP.
draw; for you observe, in the second place, that, being
in the presence of the fountain, he was required to
draw. Our Lord did not by a mere act of His own
will restore his hand-He bade the man to do something. And what He bade him to do sounded impossible in the present circumstances of the patient. He
told him to stretch forth his hand,-a hand which was
probably cramped together and curved by the complaint,-a hand in which there was no muscular power,
and over which the brain had no control. And yet
there was a meaning in the command, and a meaning
which the patient understood. The meaning was that
he should try to act as if the withered hand had been
sound,-try to unclinch those fast-set fingers, to unroll that long-closed palm. Very probably the thought
flashed like lightning across the poor creature's mind:
" He has healed hundreds who simply did as He bade
them. He bids me to do this; and therefore I must
be equal to doing this, or at least He will make me
equal." " And he stretched it forth,"-he made the
effort which he had been bidden to make,-his will
roused itself,-his brain issued once more the order
which hitherto, as regarded that member, had produced
no effect; and he finds with delight that the order is
now obeyed, the hand unrolls itself, stretches itself
toward the Saviour, casts off its old incapacity, is restored whole as the other.
One more observation we will draw from the narrative, before we part company with it.  A hand
stretched forth toward Christ is the emblem of prayer.
Now as faith is the one great principle of the Spiritual
Life, so is prayer its one great exercise. And though
prayer is a very simple thing, and it is perfectly easy




III.]          and how to attainz it.            27
to grasp the idea of going to God for what we want,
and telling out before Him the desires of our hearts;
all experience teaches that prayerL-at all events,
stated and continuous prayer-is very difficult to practise. Those who are not much in the habit of collecting their thoughts, and are brought for the first time
to see the necessity of real earnest prayer proceeding
from the heart's core, find that the distractions which
beset every attempt so to pray are "Legion;" the
mind is always flying off at a tangent to the concerns
or amusements of this life; it seems to be the sport
of every trifling impulse; teased and rebuffed, it finds
its half-hour of devotion turned into a half-hour of
bitter mortification.  And even the best Christians,
and those who have made some progress in the discipline of the mind, ever and anon find their prayers a
grievous disappointment; they had looked to find a
comfort and a sedative in prayer, looked that it might
lift them a little out of the atmosphere of this world;
but they are crossed, and checked, and thwarted at
every turn, being made in this way practically to feel
their dependence upon God for the Spirit of grace and
supplications. In this condition of mind it is natural
to turn away from the faldstool in disgust, and postpone devotion to a more convenient season. We are
apt to say peevishly, " I cannot pray just now; I will
put it off till circumstances are more favorable, till the
mind is less anxious and less volatile, till the animal
spirits flow more readily."  Ah! this is not the true
policy. The true policy is to persist in spite of the
annoyances and the rebuffs. The true policy in spiritual things always is to endeavor, and to go on endeavoring, after that which we feel quite unequal to do.




28      hie First Principle of Holiness,  [cHAP.
The motto of this policy is, " Stretch forth thy hand; "
if the needful help does not seem to come immediately,
it will come as soon as God sees that your faith and
patience are sufficiently approved. Where you cannot
pray as you wish, pray at all events as you can; do
not allow yourself to be teased away from your post
of duty; make a more vigorous endeavor. Great was
the reward which people of old carried away, who,
like the Syrophoenician woman, or the bearers of the
paralytic patient, hung on to the Lord in spite of discouragement, and would take no denial. Remember
that no principle is shown by praying when the course
of prayer runs smooth, when the mind is in order and
composed, and the exercise acts as a sedative to the
soul. To glide into harbor in a smooth sea, and with
wind and tide both favoring, is no trial of a vessel at
all. But to persist in making for the harbor with an
adverse wind and tide, courageously to tack and tack
again in hopes of making a little headway, and coming a little nearer to the mark, and so to wait on,
striving against all odds, till wind and tide come round
-this tries both the ribs of the ship and the patience
of the mariners.  And God must surely find that
prayer most acceptable, in which He sees the greatest
trial of principle.
We have now arrived at the point at which we
can see distinctly how a beginning of the Christian
life may be made by any one who is willing to make
it. In our last chapter we spoke of the grace which
accompanies the baptismal relationship, and which
exhibits itself in " good desires,' those relentings as
to a sinful or a thoughtless and careless career, those
dissatisfactions with the world and with self, those at



III.]          andC how to attain it.             29
tractions of the mind toward God, when scripturally exhibited as the Father of the human spirit, which spring
up ever and anon in men's hearts-to be summarily
suppressed by some, to be cherished and brought to
good effect by others.  To surrender one's self in earnest to these good desires, to follow whither they
lead, is the first thing to be done; and God will not
lead us forward, until we have really mastered the
first step. We shall not have followed far in the direction of these impulses, before it will begin to dawn
upon us that what we really need in order to victory
over sin and the world is a true faith, a realizing
grasp of unseen things, such a grasp as gives a body
and a substance to the truths respecting Heaven and
Hell, God, and Christ, and the Devil, taking them out
of the category of chimeras (or notions) and placing
them in that of realities.  Well, such a faith is to be
had.  It may be derived from  Christ into our souls,
as it has been derived into thousands of souls before
ours. But think not that the Lord gives so priceless a
blessing to those who do not show themselves worthy
of it. Think not that He gives it to listless or languid
seekers.  Even human knowledge cannot be won
without strenuous effort.  Pearls cannot be picked
up without the risk and trouble of diving for them.
Ask of God the restoration of the lost sense of spiritual touch. If you are troubled and rebuffed by distractions in your prayer, pray on; " stretch forth thy
hand " at the gate of Mercy, till something is put into
it from above. And strive too; or how else shall you
yourself be assured of the sincerity of your prayer?
Act up to present light. Rouse yourself to shake off
every thing in your present course, which an enlight



30    The First Principle of Itoliness, etc. [CHAP.
ened conscience condemns. Set about amending faults
of character and conduct.  Act as faith would lead
you to act, even when your faith is feeble, or rather
seems to you to be none. And the faithful endeavor
shall assuredly in God's good time be crowned with
success. The virtue that is in Christ shall pass into
the withered hand; and then the eternal things, that
are not seen, shall have for thee the same reality, and
exert upon thee the same influence, as the'things that
are seen and temporal.




iv.]   Point of -Departure in the Right Course.   31
CHAPTER IV.
THE POINT OF DEPARTURE IN THE RIGHT COURSE.
" For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are
clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even
His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as
God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the image of the
uncorruoptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and
to birds, andfour-footed beasts, and creeping things.  Wherefore
God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their
own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves."RoM. i. 20-24.
T HE passage which stands at the head of this chapter is a profound piece of Christian philosophy.
And from the study of it we may gain a great insight
into the secret and source of Holiness, in the pursuit
of which we are engaged.  It teaches us that large
and exalted conceptions of God are the spring of all
virtue.
The Apostle is speaking of the deep degradation
into which man has fallen by his vices-vices, many
of them, which it is a shame to speak of-vices against
which Nature herself protests, and to which the lower
animals are strangers. In the passage quoted above




32           The Point of Departure        [CHAP.
he gives an account of this degradation-traces it up
to its true source. Now observe how different is the
Apostle's account of man's degradation from that
which a mere moralist gives. The moralist tells us
that conscience is a sovereign faculty, bearing upon
its brow the stamp of authority, and evidently intended to sway and control the appetites and affections. This faculty, however, has been dethroned;
the unruly passions (in themselves mere brute impulses) have usurped its seat, and domineer over the
will, which becomes their slave and does their bidding. This, no doubt, is true as far as it goes, but it
goes only a very short way. It simply points us to
the machinery of our nature as being in a disorganized
state, and shows us in what the disorganization consists; but it does not trace up the disorganization to
its primary cause.
And yet it is a practical, as well as a curious and
interesting question, what may have been the point of
starting, from  which man ultimately reached that
lowest depth of moral degradation, to which he has
so often sunk. In the frightful, hideous vices which
abound in great cities, we see at once that there is an
enormous divergence from  the rule of right. But
where exactly did the divergence begin? Two lines
which parted company at a certain point, are now
running on at a distance of many miles from each
other in wholly opposite directions; but when first
they parted company, there was only a hair's-breadth
of space between them. Wthat was the exact point
of divergence, at which man parted company from
right, and commenced his downward course? Perhaps, as in the case of the lines, the deviation will not




Iv.]          in the Right Course,             33
seem very serious at the outset, though its ultimate
result is so frightful. It is this question which the
Apostle answers in the passage before us. Man's
moral degradation, he says, is a retribution-and a retribution in kind (pray observe how, in the moralist's
account of the matter, the personality of God was
altogether left out of the question; whereas in that
of the Apostle, God is brought on the stage at once,
and the whole degradation is said to be a judicial
infliction by Him). Man had degraded God, says the
Apostle, and God degraded man. But how had man
degraded God? How could he do so? Man can only
degrade God in his conceptions of Him. He may think
meanly and poorly of God, instead of investing Him
in his ideas with every perfection. And this is just
what really took place. Man might have learned from
Nature (for Nature is a revelation of God to a rational
creature) the lesson of God's eternal power and Godhead, had he been so minded; His magnificence, His
wisdom, His benevolence, are written in no obscure
characters on the whole frame of the universe: " For
the invisible things of Him from the creation of the
world are clearly seen, being understood by the things
that are made."  But man could not, or rather he
would not, rise to those lofty conceptions of God's
character which Nature, studied with a simple and
docile heart, furnishes. It is clear to common-sense
that the watchmaker must be a far more wonderful
being than the watch; yet man would not think of God
as a Being infinitely raised above even the noblest
works of His hands; he confounded Him with the
creatures that were derived from Him, and allowed
the religious instinct-the instinct of worship-to




34           The Point of Departure        [CHAP.
fasten upon them instead of the Creator. In a word,
Idolatry (or the surrounding the creature with the
attributes of the Creator) is the original, fundamental
sin of man-the point of departure from which man
started on his downward course until he reached the
lowest depths of wickedness. And pray observe how,
in the verses before us, the rapid deterioration of
Idolatry (clearly showing the radical viciousness of its
principle) is indicated " They changed the glory of
the uncorruptible God into an image made like to
corruptible man "-well, man is at all events the
image and glory of God; and some forms of human
character have been so lofty, so commanding, so generous, so attractive, that if any of the creatures might
excusably be made a representative of the Most High
in our minds, man might. But what shall we say of
clothing with the attributes of God things lower than
man in the scale of Creation? What shall we say of
attributing some magical virtue, some mystical control
over human affairs, to the ox, the hawk, the beetle?
Yet to this point of utter debasement did Idolatry
proceed: "They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to... birds,
and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.'"  And
mark the awful result,-in which the Apostle recognizes, not the mere operation of a natural law, but
a righteous retribution inflicted by a personal God:
" Wherefore God gave them up to uncleanness." " For
this cause God gave them up unto vile affections."
Man had debased God in his conceptions of Him.
And God, as the meet recompense of such dishonor
done Him, really and actually debased man by abandoning him to the dominion of vices, the very mention




Iv.]          in the Right Course.             35
of which freezes the blood of an upright man, and
makes his hair stand on end.
And now to turn to account, for the purpose of
our argument, this grand piece of Christian Philosophy. Man's point of departure for vice and a downward moral course is an unworthy and degrading
conception of God. What is his point of departure
for an upward moral course?  What is the salient
point, the spring, of all virtue? The Holy Scriptures
make answer in no equivocal terms, "Faith,"-Faith
in Christ, since it has pleased God to reveal His Son
to us, but Faith ultimately in God, as the basis upon
which every subsequent development of faith must be
built. "Ye believe in God," said Our Lord to His
disciples, ye have the foundation of true faith; now
then go on to rear the superstructure: " Believe also
in Me."
What then is faith in God?  Let us seek to analyze it, and to see what processes of mind it involves.
When directed toward God or Christ, faith takes the
form of trust.  (Luther said, somewhat too boldly and
without qualification, that all faith was trust.) But
how can we trust a person without a high conception
of his character? The child trusts implicitly in its
father-why? Because it thinks of its father as of a
friend who loves it, who is able to help, and wise to
counsel it. Specially, perhaps, because it thinks its
father able to help. There is nothing which young
children more readily give their parents credit for than
power. The parent, however limited his resources
may really be, is able, in their view of him, to extend
protection to them under all circumstances, to extricate them from every difficulty, to make. any arrange



36           The Point of Departure        [CHAP.
ments for their comfort. Similarly, in all trust in God,
there must be the inward apprehension that God is
the Father of our spirits, that He cares for us tenderly,
consults for us wisely, is able to help to the uttermost
in every difficulty which can entangle us,-nay, has a
reach of love, and wisdom, and power, to which it is
impossible to set bounds. Once upon a time there
was a poor heathen woman who remarkably exemplified this trust in God, and into the workings of whose
mind, in the exercise of trust, a glimpse is given us.
She had looked abroad upon Nature with a thoughtful
eye. She had marked there that the wants of the
meanest creatures are provided for; that He who rolls
the planet on its course of fire, and streaks the western sky with glorious sunsets, stoops to paint the
harebell that trembles on the heath, to feed the young
raven, to cater even for the dogs. A Personage, of
Whom she probably knew no more than that He
claimed to be in immediate communication with God,
and that He wrought every sort of cure in attestation
of His claims, came into her neighborhood at a time
when she was in great trouble from the seizure of her
daughter by an evil spirit, who harassed his victim
with fits and frenzies, very sad for any one to see, but
most of all a mother. She came to this Personage,
and implored Him to heal her daughter.  But He
was a great Jewish Prophet, and she a poor benighted
heathen; and it pleased Him to intimate as much,
first by turning a deaf ear to her, and then, when her
clamor extorted from Him some words, by the repelling answer that God's mercies were for His chosen
people, for the children of His household, not for
heathen dogs. But from the study of His works she




iv.]          in the Iight CYourse.            3'
had learned God too well to be discouraged by this
chilling response.  "Dogs" —be it so; but did not
the great Father of all make provision even for dogs?
was not even good food, the remnants of the children's
bread, often thrown to the dogs in the households of
the rich? a proof this that God could never spurn
from Him even the lowest creatures of His hand. Her
faith, as well it might, received a solemn commendation and recompense from the Saviour of the world.
But what was her faith? It was simply a high idea
of God's tender care for all His creatures, drawn from
a devout observation of His ways in Nature and Providence, and engendering a deep trust in His goodness,
a trust which was proof against all discouragementwhich held its ground in her heart, when very severely
tried. Admirable woman! she cherished those great
notions of our Heavenly Father, and that unswerving
trust in Hiim, which is the point of departure for all
virtue, just as a lack of these great notions, and of
the trust which they engender, is the point of departure for all vice.
The Lesson which we have thus arrived at is
taught us very emphatically by the Lord's Prayer. I
assume that one grand object of that Prayer is to form
the character of the petitioner to that Holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. Now what is
the first petition? It is a prayer that God's character
and attributes may be by us worthily conceived of;
that His Name (by which is meant His character and
attributes) may be hallowed, regarded with profoundest reverence, thought of as most excellent in power,
wisdom, and love. The man who is bent upon the
pursuit of righteousness will pray for this before other




38           The Point of Departure        [CHAP.
things, because this worthy conception of God must
be the source of faith, and the foundation of all virtue
and goodness, in the heart of a rational creature.
Seek, then, my reader-this is the great lesson of
the present chapter-seek to feed and nourish in your
mind great conceptions of Him, with Whom you have
to do. Expand and exalt your notions of Him by
every means in your power.
" What are these means?" you will naturally ask.
And for an answer I refer you to those passages of
Scripture, which have just been passed under review.
The Apostle says that the invisible things of God,
even His eternal power and Godhead, "are clearly
seen from the creation of the world " (i. e., God's creation of the world is the source from which true information respecting His lofty attributes may be
gained), " so that they" (the Gentiles) " are without
excuse," because the lessons which they might have
learned of God from Nature are quite sufficient to
have condemned their idolatries. And the Psalmist
only throws the same truth into another form, when
he says, " The heavens declare the glory of God, and
the firmament showeth His handiwork."  And to. the
same effect are many of the addresses of the Almighty
to Job, who was certainly not one of the chosen people, and who is reasoned with therefore from God's
mighty works in Nature, not from the Old Testament
Revelation. And as an example of a Gentile's actually learning precious truth respecting God's character
and attributes from His dealings in Providence, if not
in Nature, we have the Syrophcenician in the Gospel.
Jews and Christians too often seem to think that they
put honor upon the particular revelations which God




rv.]          in the Right Course.             39
has made to them, by disparaging and neglecting the
revelation which He has made to the Gentiles in common with them. But why, because superior edification and clearer light are to be had from our own Bible,
are we to look down upon the edification and light
which are to be derived from the Bible of the Gentiles? Might we not on the same principle neglect
the Old Testament, because the New is of superior importance?  But what is the case as regards the Old
and New Testament-the Bible of the Jews, as it
might be called, and the Bible of the Christians? I
appeal to any devout and well-read student of Holy
Scripture-is not the Old Testament, when read in
the light of the New, full of interest and edification,
so that Leah is hardly surpassed by Rachel-the elder
sister is nearly as lovely and as attractive as the
younger? Nay, is it not the Old Testament, of which
the Apostle says that it is able to make us wise unto
salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus? Now
why may not the same reasoning be applied to the
Gentiles' Bible-the Revelation of God which existed
long before the Law and the Prophets?  Why may
we not, under the combined light of the Old and New
Testaments, learn grand and glorious lessons, lessons
soul-elevating and soul-edifying, from the Book of
Nature and the Book of Providence? What are our
Blessed Lord's Parables (the highest form, I suppose,
of all religious teaching), but sermons preached, not
from texts of the Old Testament, but from texts in
Nature and Providence? Christ's texts do not run in
this style, "In the fifteenth chapter of the Book of
Deuteronomy, and the third verse;" but in this, " A
sower went out to sow his seed;" "A  certain man




40              The Point of Departure              [CHAP.
had two sons;  " Consider the lilies of the field. how
they grow;" "Behold the fowls of the air.  your
Heavenly Father feedeth them" (it really seems as
if the poor Syrophoenician woman had heard that sermon upon the fowls of the air-at all events she laid
to  heart its teaching).   And remember how  much
more largely Nature has been expounded, how much
better she is understood now, than in the days when
that poor heathen woman drew such precious lessons
from her.  Then I say, if you would nourish in your
heart high notions of God, consider the lilies of the
field, which His hand paints with such beautiful colors that Solomon's robe of state is a coarse garment in
comparison of them.  Consider the fowls of the air, for
whose wants this Almighty Householder makes provision, and whose death-warrant He must sign before
one of them can fall to the ground. Consider the trees,
and their marvellous resuscitation in the spring from
the bleakness and deadness of winter, a spectacle of
which it is on record that the very thought of such a
process going on all over the world was made the instrument' of converting a soul.  Consider the stars,
with which the vast reaches of the midnight sky are
everywhere spangled-many of them, it is supposed,
the suns of other systems, ministering to those sys1 See " The Conversations and Letters of Brother Lawrence."
[Masters.]  " He told me.... that in the winter, seeing a tree
stripped of its leaves, and considering that within a little time the
leaves would be renewed, and after that the flowers and fruit appear, he received a high view of the Providence and power of
God, which has never since been effaced from his soul. That this
had perfectly set him loose from the world, and kindled in him
such a love for God, that he could not tell whether it had increased in above forty years that he had lived since."




iv.]             in the Right Course.                    41
tems light and warmth, as our sun does to our system.
Consider the wonderful architecture of the universe,
and the admirable skill with which the Creator has
furnished and decorated His great mansion. Occupy
your thoughts with the wonderful instances of wise
and beneficent design which have been so admirably
pointed out by Paley' and others, and to which the
modern advancement of science is continually contributing fresh stores. And then consider, the work being
so skilful, so magnificent, and adjusted to so many
beneficent purposes, how  infinitely  more wise and
grand and beneficent the Maker of it must be.-Perhaps you say disdainfully, " This is a mere truth of
Natural Religion."  So it is; but it is a truth by
which, if they would make more use of it, and lay
it more to heart, the disciples of Revealed Religion
might be wonderfully edified.  For what they most
need, what lies at the very foundation of their faith,
is an exalted conception of God.  And whence shall
they draw this conception in all its purity and strength
but from the book in which God is not described only,
but visibly illustrated to the observing eye, and the
understanding  heart-the book  of Nature?   Only,
when you walk abroad along the hedgerows, or by
the side of the stream, or over the heath-clad moor,
1 For I cannot at all sympathize with that depreciation of
Paley's line of argument, which is so much in vogue nowadays,
and to which I regret to see that that most brilliant and profound
of orators, the Bishop of Peterborough, has condescended (Sermon
before the British Association izn Norwich Cathedral, 1868). Because we have (or think we have) found out " a more excellent
way" of defending Revealed Religion, this is no reason why we
should abolish the lines of defence reared by our ancestors.




42          The Point of Departure, etc.    [cnAP.
do so in a devout spirit, a spirit turned toward God
for the purpose of communion with Him, and your
mind shall expand as you contemplate His wonders;
as a poet of our own hath said, you shall
"Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing."




v.]  Thle Experimental Jfnowlecge of God, etc. 43
CHAPTER V.
THE EXPERIMENTAL KNOWLEDGE OF GOD THE END
OF ALL CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR.
" Increasing in the kcnowleldge of God." —CoL. i. 10.
IN the last chapter we considered what is the point
of departure in the attainment of Holiness, the
direction in which our faces should be set, if we would
reach that goal. The next point with which we shall
deal is the end which is to be kept in view in all
Christian endeavor. It is for want of keeping this
end steadily before them that many well-meaning persons waste so much time and energy, and make so
little progress. The fact is, their efforts are misdirected. They are strongly impressed with the necessity of religion, and with the desire of being religious,
without perceiving clearly in what religion consists.
They confound the means of being religious, or the
effects of true religion, with its life and soul, and rest
satisfied if their conduct exhibits these means and
some of these effects. Much the same confusion of
thought as if in agriculture a man should take digging,
manuring, and pruning, or blossoming and fruit-bearing, to be the life of a tree, whereas the one are means
to keep the tree alive, and the other evidences of its




44    The Experimental anzowledge of God [cHAP.
being alive. What, then, is the life and soul of true
religion? What the one point, at which all religious
efforts are to be directed? When once we perceive
this distinctly, all the circumstantials of the spiritual
life, the means of cultivating it, the fruits to be looked
for from it, will fall into their right place in our minds.
This and the following chapter will be devoted to giving an answer to this question.
The life of true Religion, then, is an experimental
knowledge (I do not like hard words, still less the
technical language of theological parties, let us say
rather, a heart-knowledge) of God-such a thorough
appreciation of the excellence and beauty of His character as really contents and satisfies the soul, even
when earthly sources of happiness fail. I say, which
satisfies the soul; understand that well; for this satisfaction is the test of the knowledge being of the right
sort. St. Philip on a certain occasion said (not knowing what he said, probably as ignorant of the depth
and reach of his words as was Caiaphas in his unconscious prophecy), " Lord, show us the Father, and it
sufficeth us."  No earthly source of happiness does
suffice. The objects of human desire and ambition
are very fair, and at a distance promise very well to
him who can come up with them. But the pursuit
of them (and the whole natural life of man is one long
pursuit) is like the countryman's chase after the rainbow. He thought that one limb of the bright arch
rested in the field close to him, but when he had
cleared the hedge, and come up to the spot on which
it seemed to rest, the rainbow had adjourned into
another field. Even so these various earthly objects
of desire or ambition, one after another, disappoint




v.]   the Enzd of all Christian Endearvor'.    45
those who attain them; their prismatic colors all
vanish when we come up close to them, they are found
to have their anxieties and their troubles (not the least
of which is the precarious tenure of them), and some
new rainbow is seen ahead, two or three fields off, to
lure us into a pursuit which turns out to be as fruitless
as the former. Must it ever be so? Is there no really
satisfactory object in which the soul of man may find
a full and perfect contentment? Assuredly there is.
Our Creator does not mock and baffle us by implanting
strong instincts in our Nature, and great yearnings
after happiness, which have nothing corresponding to
them. In the knowledge of God, in the appreciation
of God, in the enjoyment of God, in communion with
God, but in nothing short of this, man can find rest.
All ordinances, even the Holy Eucharist, which is the
highest of all, are only means to this Communion.
And all good works, in any high sense of the word,
are only the fruits of this Communion.
Observe now that this knowledge of God is, indeed, the end of ends, to which every other part of
the religious system, even those which in themselves
are most essential, is subordinated. It is the end of
the atoning and interceding work of our dear Lord
and Master, the aim of His whole priestly function.
For what did Christ die, but to reconcile sinners unto
God?  For what does He intercede, but to introduce
sinners to God, to bring them into living communion
with His Father? The precious Death and the glorious Intercession were only the removal of barriers,
which, had they been allowed to remain in the way,
must have precluded communion with God forever.
Our Blessed Lord's Death and His Intercession are




4~    The Experimentzal Knowledge of God [CHIAP.
both parts of His Mediation. And what is meant by
His Mediation?  Is it not this, that, in our present
state, the sin that is in us prevents our coming to God,
and enjoying communion with Him, except through
our great Representative, Who endured for us all the
curse, and fulfilled for us all the righteousness, of the
Law?  Any true knowledge of God, independently
of Christ, must frighten us from Him, instead of drawing us toward Him. For God is infinitely holy, and
in His holiness is a consuming fire to sinners approaching Him otherwise than through a Mediator. But all
this implies that the Mediation of Christ is itself, as,
indeed, the word denotes, a means to an end, which
end is communion with God, such a knowledge of
Him as involves love of Him and delight in Him.
It may be asked, indeed, by a thoughtful listener,
whether Our Lord, in indicating the great commandment of the Law, and whether the structure of the
Decalogue, on which He founds what He says, does
not give us two ends of religious endeavor rather than
one, the love of our neighbor as well as the love of
God, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." But
the answer to this is very obvious. Man is so slow
at perceiving what is wrapped up in the principles he
admits, so backward in carrying those principles into
effect, that the practices which flow from the principles
need pressing no less than the principles themselves.
Thus faith, if genuine, will as certainly produce good
works, as a tree, if alive, will certainly produce fruit.
And hence it might be thought that, as faith will carry
with it good works, it is sufficient to press faith, and
leave the works to follow in natural course. But the
Scriptures everywhere show us (if, indeed, our own




v.]   the End of all Christian Endeavor.    47
knowledge of the human heart does not show us sufficiently without the Scriptures) that this omission
cannot safely be made. Duty must be pressed distinctly and explicitly, not left to be implied in the
motives from which it is to proceed. And so in the
case before us.'Our Lord, when asked about the relative importance of the Commandments, could not
safely make answer without some explicit reference
to the Second Table of the Law. Yet He does not
hereby deny that the love of God, if genuine, includes
and embraces that of our neighbor. In fact, though
each needs to be explicitly mentioned, they are not
two independent commandments. We are to love our
neighbor for God and in God, because God has created and redeemed him (no less than ourselves); we
are to see in him God's handiwork, and a soul redeemed by God, and to love him as such. And this
only, and no lower regard, constitutes Christian
Love.
Now, if we are bent upon becoming holy, it is of
the greatest moment to us to perceive that the life of
true Religion consists in the experimental knowledge
and love of God. Unity of aim is a great point in
the Christian Life. We make no advance, we can
make none, while we are occupied in a variety of endeavors which have no common principle or end;
while we are busied about many things, doing here a
little and there a little in the way of Religion, without seeking, in all that we do, "the one thing" supremely needful. Moreover, the keeping before us
steadily of the true end will show us what religious
exercises are most worth cultivating, and upon what
our time and labor will be always well bestowed.




48    The Experimental Knowledge of God [cnAP.
These will be the exercises which go most directly,
and with least circuitousness, to the great end.
As thus(1) The knowledge of God is gained, as the knowledge of man is gained, by living much with Him. If
we only come across a man occasionally, and in public,
and see nothing of him in his private and domestic
life, we cannot be said to know him. All the knowledge of God which many professing Christians have is
derived from a formal salute which they make to Him
in their prayers, when they rise up in the morning
and lie down at night. While this state of things
lasts, no great progress in the Christian Life can possibly be made. No progress would be made, even if
they were to offer stated prayer seven times a day,
instead of twice. But try to draw down God into
your daily work; consult Him about it; offer it to
Him as a contribution to His Service; ask Him to
help you in it; ask Him to bless it; do it as to the
Lord and not unto men; refer to Him in your temptations; seek a refuge under the shadow of His wings
until the tyranny of temptation be overpast; go back
at once to His bosom, when you are conscious of a
departure from Him, not waiting till night to confess
it, lest meanwhile the night of death should overtake
you, or at best you should lose time in your spiritual
course; in short, walk hand in hand with God through
life (as a little child walks hand in hand with its father
over some dangerous and thorny road), dreading above
all things to quit His side, and assured that, as soon
as you do so, you will fall into mischief and trouble;
seek not so much to pray as to live in an atmosphere
of prayer, lifting up your heart momentarily to Him




v.]   the End of all Christian _Endeavor.    49
in varied expressions of devotion as the various occasions of life may prompt, adoring Him, thanking Him,
resigning your will to Him many times a day, and
more or less all day; and you shall thus, as you advance in this practice, as it becomes more and more
habitual to you, increase in that knowledge of God
which fully contents and satisfies the soul.
(2) Again; it is obvious that the knowledge of God
of which we speak may be obtained from studying His
mind as it is given us in the Holy Scriptures. We
may be said to know an author, when we have so carefully and constantly read his works as to imbibe his
spirit. A direct step, therefore, to the knowledge we
are in search of, may be made by what our Ordinal
calls " daily reading and weighing of the Scriptures'not " reading " merely, but " weighing," thinking over
them, applying them to our own case, judging ourselves
by the standard they set up, seeking to hear God's
voice in them, treasuring them up in our hearts against
the hour of need as infallible oracles. It is through
His Word that God speaks to us, as it is through
Prayer that we speak to God; for which reason he
who would cultivate acquaintance with God must
cultivate a taste for the Holy Scriptures —I do not
mean, of course, a literary or antiquarian taste (though
as a mere piece of ancient literature the Bible is the
most wonderful book in the world), but a devotional
taste; he must aim at being able to say with the
Psalmist, "Oh, how sweet are Thy words unto my
taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Oh,
how I love Thy law! all the day long is my study in
it."  Observe, "all the day long."  My mind, in
which it is stored up, is always recurring to it in the
3




50    The Experimental Knowledge of God [CHAP.
intervals of business, turning it over with fresh inquiry into its significance, finding new illustrations of
its truth in Nature, in human life, in my own experience. There is a study of Scripture which is analogous to ejaculatory prayer —not a stated study (though
of course the stated study of it may not be neglected),
but a study which inweaves the Word into the daily
life of the Christian, a rumination which can be carried on without book, and which is more or less continual.
(3) Again; if sanctity stands in the knowledge of
God, surely the discipline of life will very much contribute, under God's blessing, toward sanctity. If a
man has had no dealings with us personally, though
we may have heard of him, and he may be no stranger
to us by reputation, we cannot be said to lkow  him.
But if transactions of many different sorts pass between us, his character then transpires, and his ways
reveal themselves to us. Now our Heavenly Father
comes up close to us, if He sees that we are resolutely
bent on giving our hearts to Him, and deals with us,
"in all the changing scenes of life, in trouble and in
joy."  So long as people desire to hold Him at arn's
length, He only sweeps round the circumference of
their existence; but when they desire to have Him
in their hearts, He advances into the centre of their
life. He trains them for glory by what is called their
fortunes, by reverses, by tears, by trials, by manifold
temptations, by touching them in their sensitive part,
sometimes by a sunshine of prosperity, which makes
their heart expand in gratitude to Him. Those, then,
who desire to have a practical and experimental, as
distinct from a speculative knowledge of Him, will




v.]    the  zcnd of all Christica  Encdeavor.    51
study Him in these His dealings; they will try to
discern the lesson of every part of their own experience, if haply it may teach them  something of Him
with Whom they have to do, and will thus have His
wisdom, power, and love, impressed upon them in a
way, in which nothing short of experience can impress.
We will conclude this chapter by observing that
increase in the knowledge of God, as it characterizes
the true Christian's present course, so will it be his
business throughout eternity.  For we are not to conceive of a glorified saint as if he were stereotyped in
a certain measure of Light and Love, and could advance no farther than to a certain point in the knowledge of God. Our nature seems to be so constituted as
not to acquiesce in a particular measure of knowledge
on any subject; we are not made to be stationary;
progress toward a goal, which yet we never can reach,
seems to be one essential condition of our happiness.
And why, as God is infinite, and His resources of wisdom, power, and love, are inexhaustible, may not a
blessed eternity be spent in fresh discoveries of His
glory, each of which will throw preceding discoveries
into the shade, and serve as a new theme of adoration and praise?  O great soul of man, made for the
Infinite, made for the apprehension of the Heavenly
Father in all the beauty of His holiness and in all the
sweetness of His love, what a wrong doest thou to
thyself and to thine own capacities, by grovelling
among low and unclean desires, as among the swine,
and feeding upon the husks of mere momentary enjoyments! Reader, thou hast one of these treasures,
an immortal spirit, intrusted to thy charge.  The




52 The Experimental Knowledge of God, etc. [CHAP.
Eternal Son of God prized it so highly that He stooped
to earth to gather it up, shed His Blood to ransom it,
offers His Spirit to sanctify it, designs to place it as a
jewel in His Redemption Crown.  Will you, through
love of sin, or mere carelessness and frivolity, forfeit
it again?  Will you unfold its great capacities under
the guidance of His Spirit; or will you allow it to run
to waste, like those many seeds in Nature, which are
never quickened into life?  And what is to repay thee
for the loss of it?  Iear and weigh the solemn words,
" What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole
world, and lose his own soul?"




vI.]   The End of the Commanndent, etc.    53
CHAPTER VI.
THE END OF TIlE COMMANDMENT, AND THE IMPORTANCE OF KEEPING IT IN VIEW.
" Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart,
and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned: from which
some having swerved, have turned aside unto vain jangling." —
1 TIMI. i. 5, 6.
T HERE is a metaphor in these words (more apparent in the original than in the translation),
drawn from the subject of archery. The word rendered " swerving " denotes the missing or going wide
of the point at which an arrow is aimed. By " the
commandment " is probably meant the whole code of
God's Precepts, whether under the Law or the Gospel. These precepts are very numerous; but many
as they are, they may all be reduced under two great
heads-nay, they may all be summarized under one
head, Charity or Love. The aim of every commandment, of the whole code of Precepts, is love to God
and man, love flowing out of a heart purified by faith
in Christ's Blood, and sanctified by Christ's Spirit, and
out of a conscience which makes echo that the heart
is indeed thus purified and sanctified. Those religious
teachers who do not place this before them as the aim
of all Divine Precept, are apt to go very wide of the




54       The pEnd of the Commandment,  [CHAP.
mark, and to engage their listeners with unprofitable
controversial questions.  The same idea as to the
main bearing of Divine Precept is given us by Our
Lord in His answer to the lawyer's question, " Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and
with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."  (The
imagery here is taken from the custom of fixing in the
brickwork of Oriental houses large nails, upon which
to suspend various domestic utensils.) And St. Paul
in his Epistle to the Romans has the same idea in yet
another form: " Owe no man any thing, but to love
one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the Law.... Love worketh no ill to his neighbor; therefore Love is the fulfilling of the Law." Thus
Love is represented in Holy Scripture, sometimes as
the contents or filling up of God's precepts, sometimes
as the mark or butt to which every precept is directed,
sometimes again, as the stay and support upon which
every precept is suspended. It is a great testimony
to the importance of the doctrine thus announced,
that it is thrice solemnly reiterated in different parts
of Holy Scripture, and under different forms of expression.
It is obvious that in order to solid proficiency in
any kind of art, the student must first be furnished
with a clear answer to the question, What is the object-the end to be reached? Take the art of oratory
for instance. What (in brief) is the thing to be done




vi.] cadc the Izmpnortance of Kieeping it in View.  55
by the orator, the end at which he must aim? Let us
say that it is to persuade the audience to adopt or refrain from a certain course of action. If he can persuade them to do what he advises, he hits the mark, he
reaches the end of the art-in a word, he succeeds.
But if, after having heard him, they act in a way opposite to that which he recommends, he goes wide of
the mark —his speech is a failure. And this is a good
subject to draw the instance from, because as a fact
both speakers and hearers often do make much the
same mistake as to oratory, which, as I shall presently
show, is universally made as to Religion.  Too often,
for example, is a fine sermon thought to be, not that
which gives a spur to the wills of the hearers, not that
which induces them to set about reforming their lives,
and becoming good people, but that which merely explains a difficult text of the Bible, or which goes toward settling a controversial question, or which, not
even possessing merits as high as these, has merely
fine language and flowers of rhetoric to recommend it.
Now it is clear that the perception of the true end is
the first step toward setting the practice right. I have
done something toward rectifying my preaching, if I
have settled it in my own mind that, on the one hand,
I shall fail utterly, unless I send the audience away
with a desire for, and an impulse toward, spiritual improvement, and that, on the other, I shall succeed perfectly, if I do send them away with such a desire and
impulse, even if my sermon should settle no controversy, should explain no merely speculative difficulty,
and should be absolutely wanting in fine words and in
all the graces of style.  St. John was a true orator in
his old age, when from his infirmities he was unable to




56       The Ehzd of the Commcancment,  [CHAP.
say no more than this, " Little children, love one another," because the antecedents of that holy and venerable Bishop, and the deep and living sympathy with
which he uttered the words, really moved the hearers
to comply with the precept, and their feuds sank to
rest at the sound of his voice.
Let us take an instance from another art, where
there may perhaps be some doubt as to what should
be the artist's object.  What is the end of painting,
the aim which the painter must set before him?  Is
it to deceive the spectator, to give him  a false impression, to make him imagine that the painted object is a real one?  It would seem that the ancients
thought so from the story current among them of the
trial of skill between Zeuxis and Parrhasius, in which
one of them painted a bunch of grapes so like nature,
that the birds came and pecked at them, and the other
a curtain so like real drapery, that his brother artist
called on him  to draw  tle curtain and exhibit his
picture. Or is the end of painting not to deceive,
but to please the spectator by a faithful imitation of
Nature-an end which is incompatible with deception; for if the spectator is to be affected with pleasure by the fidelity of an imitation, he must, of course,
be aware that it is an imitation, and not the reality?
And, again, how  is Nature to be imitated by the
painter? Servilely, and in a matter-of-fact way, line
upon line, feature by feature? Or shall we say rather
that there is a soul in Nature, a soul in every countenance, ay, and a soul in every landscape, which struggles for a fuller development, and to which it is the
painter's business to  give  expression?  In other
words, is a photograph the very highest style of imi



vi.] and the nmportance of Keeping it in View. 57
tative art, because it is true in the letter? or is a
portrait of Raffaelle's or Murillo's infinitely higher
than any photograph can be, because it is true not so
much in the letter as in the spirit? It is not to my
point to answer these questions, but only to call attention to the fact that they may be asked, and answered differently.  And an artist who intends to
paint successfully must have a clear answer to them
in his mind before he begins.  He must resolve himself on the question, " What is the true object of my
art?  Is it to produce deception?  Is it to please
persons by a faithful imitation of Nature?  And if
so, what is a faithful imitation? Is it a servile copy,
like the Chinese imitation of pottery, which reproduces the flaws and the cracks; or is it the development of a feature which in the original seems to yearn
for expression? "  If this point be not settled at the
beginning, he is certain to go astray in the execution.
The above illustrations will not be thrown away,
if they tend in any mind to clear up the position
which we are endeavoring to establish.  As in the
arts, so also in the pursuit of Holiness, or in other
words, in the spiritual life, there is ctn end; and it is
all-important that they who would be proficients in
the spiritual life should discern clearly what this end
is, and hold it steadily before them  in their every
endeavor.  The end is love-supreme love, with all
the powers of the soul, to God-and such love to our
brethren as we bear to ourselves-this love to be engendered by a living faith in what God has done for
us, a faith which sets free the heart both from a sense
of guilt and from a love of sin, and which thus sets
the conscience at ease. If this love is in some meas



58       Thie  Tied of the. Conmmandcment,  [CHA-IP.
ure yielded both to God and man, the object of true
religion is attained.  If this love is not produced and
maintained in the soul, we fail altogether in true
Religion, and that, though we may have been very
ousy about Religion, may have put up many prayers,
heard many sermons, attended many sacraments, assisted in many philanthropic enterprises.
Some, perhaps, will ask, and not without surprise,
"Are not Prayers, and Scripture Readings, and Sermons, are not even Sacraments and good works, true
Religion?"  No; not if you will think accurately
on the subject, without confusing the relations of the
various parts of the Religious system.  Prayer and
Scripture Reading, and Sermons, and Sacraments, are
means to true Religion; and as they are means of
Divine appointment, they are sure, if faithfully and
devoutly used, to conduce to the end. But for all
that, they are not the end; and to regard them  as
such is a mischievous confusion of thought, which
may very possibly disturb our spiritual aim, and make
us shoot very wide of the mark. It is true, no doubt,
that the religious exercises we have specified are absolutely essential (in all cases where they may be had)
to the spiritual life. But even this fact does not take
them out of the category of means, and make them
ends. A scaffolding is the means of building a house;
nay, more, it is an essential means; for how could the
upper stories ever be raised without a scaffolding?
But in material things of this kind, no one ever mistakes the means for the end. No one ever confounds
the house with the scaffolding, or imagines that the
object of a builder is achieved, if nothing should ever
be exhibited to the eye but scaffolding, if there be no




VI.] ancd the Hnportance of Keeping it in View.  59
foundation dug, and no layers of bricks begin to rise
above the earth.  But in matters spiritual there are
hundreds who are satisfied with themselves, if they
exhibit day by day nothing but a religious apparatus,
if they have literally nothing to show but prayers
duly and attentively said, Church duly attended, Sacraments periodically and solemnly received.  And
others there are, who confound the fruits of Religion
with Religion itself-who, because they bear a part in
good works, help good objects, devote some time and
money to the relief of the poor, are perfectly satisfied
with these external symptoms of spirituality, and
never stop to inquire whether they are in deed and in
truth spiritual. But alas! it is too possible to be useful in many ways, without being actuated in what we
do by love to God or love to man, without a sincere
desire to please and glorify our Creator, or to serve
and benefit those who were made in His image, and
redeemed by His Son's Blood.
See now how the keeping the end of the religious
life steadily before us gives a right direction to effort,
and simplifies our work.
1. And, first, how  it gives a right direction to
effort.  Energy is so valuable a thing that it is melancholy to think of any of it being thrown away, and
running to waste. In religious and moral life, more
especially, we all manifest so little energy, that it is
necessary to make every effort as telling as possible,
so as to husband what energy we have.  And no effort can be telling, unless it be bestowed in the right
quarter.  Now, if the great end of all Religion be
the love of God, and of man for God's sake, this
shows in what quarter our efforts should be directed.




60       The End of the Cozmmcanclment,  [cHAP.
It is not so much the thing clone, as the spirit in
which it is done, which is of such great moment.
For love is an affection of the heart and will, and we
know that very small tokens, the merest trifles, will
evince it; and that, when it is evinced, it has a peculiar power of winning its way both with God and
man. Suppose a great fortune laid out in building
churches, or relieving the poor, under the pressure of
servile fear, and with the design of expiating sin, or
a great philanthropic enterprise inaugurated and
maintained from ambitious motives; can it be supposed that such acts, however it may please Him to
bless the effects of them, go for any thing with God
as regards the doer of them?  And, on the other
hand, suppose some very simple, commonplace action,
something not going at all beyond the circle of routine and daily duty, done with a grateful, affectionate
feeling toward God, and from a simple desire to please
Him, and to win His approval-can it be supposed
that such an action, however trifling in itself, does
not go for something, nay, for much, with God? The
love of Him with all the heart, and mind, and soul,
and strength, is " the first and great commandment."
One movement of that love gives to the commonest
action the fragrance of a sacrifice; while, without one
movement of it, the costliest offering must of necessity be rejected. " If a man should give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned."
And does not love win its way also with man, who
is made in the Image of God? A wealthy person, who
only condescends to relieve the poor out of his abundance, without feeling or expressing sympathy with




vI.] and the Inmportaznce of Keeping it in View. 61
them, finds thereby no door of access to their hearts,
though they may be glad enough to avail themselves
of his munificence. While, on the other hand, one who
has little or nothing to give the poor, but visits them
with evident interest in their condition, and words
and looks expressive of that interest, is sure to insinuate himself into their confidence and affection. The
moral of all which is, that if we would bestow our
efforts in the spiritual life well and wisely, we need
not so much seek to do something religious, as to do
orcdinary things in a religious manner, cultivating
high and loving thoughts of God while we do our
work, and seeking to do it well, where no eyes are
upon us, from the view of pleasing Him; and in
all services to our fellow-men thinking of the Image
of God, which lies hidden and overlaid with rubbish
in their souls, as in ours, and of the enormous price
of Christ's Blood, which was paid down for all, showing how high must have been God's estimation of
each of them. I believe we shall never regret any
amount of pains taken in doing common things as
unto the Lord, and in striving to evince love to Him
by means of them.
2. Finally; the keeping before us steadily the love
of God and man as our great end wonderfully simplifies our work; abbreviates it, if I may so express myself, and saves us the toil of many a circuitous route.
Say that I have sinned to-day, come miserably short
of my good resolutions, gone back from grace. What
is to be done now? Nature prompts me to delay my
return to my Heavenly Father, under the plea that it
is a very arduous and elaborate business, which cannot
be achieved in a short time. Nature says that ap



62       Thie End of the Commandmnent,  [CHAP.
proaches must be thrown up by prayers, and fastings,
and ordinances, before we can come at the footstool
of an offended God; that, moreover, we must draw
near to Him after the established and methodized
system, humbling ourselves first, and dreading His
vengeance, then lifting up our heads in hope, and
finally, after such due preparation, offering our prayer
for mercy. Now is not all this going round, when we
might go direct to the point at once? And if this
policy is made a plea for delay in returning, is it not
most hazardous, inasmuch as only the present moment
of life is ours for certain? What saith the Scripture?
" Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she
loved cmuch."  A loving confidence in the God we
have offended, though not of course in any shape
meritorious, is the key to his heart, the key which unlocks the treasury of His grace. What is the object
in all religion?  WVhat is the thing to be done, the
end to be arrived at? " Love out of a pure heart,
and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned."
Then would it not be wiser, shorter, better, to make
straight for this end at once? Nature whispers that,
having been unfaithful to Him, I ought to go to God
in tears. So I ought; but if the tears were not shed
by love, they would not be acceptable. Then, with a
perfect confidence in the power of the Blood of Christ
to wash away this (as every other) stain from the conscience, let me walk straight up to my Heavenly
Father with the utmost amount of filial affection,
filial confidence, filial yearning, which I can muster.
My filial relationship to Him  cannot be ruptured by
my sin.  And God's fatherly compassion, founded
upon that relationship, cannot be expunged from His




vi.] cand the _Importance of Keepings it in View.  63
heart, even should His holiness and justice oblige Him
to banish me.  Then let me take my stand upon that
compassion. which prompted the gift of Christ for me,
and plead it with Hin, and tell Him  that I want a
free forgiveness, in order that I may return again to
His guidance with as little delay as may be.  Tears
will be in the way to flow  when I think upon His
much-abused love, and try my best to return it.  For
great are His gifts to the slightest exercise of confidence on the part of His children. Rich is His answer
to the prayer, in which He hears even a single note
of filial sentiment.  When the prodigal is yet a great
way off, the father sees him, and runs, and falls on his
neck and kisses him.  Verily we do Him wrong to
think that He, Who hath given up His Son for us all,
requires laborious preparations before we can approach
Him, or can be pleased with any thing short of love.
Balak's three times seven altars and seven rams were
quite beside the mark, as a means of winning the
Divine acceptance.  He asked  (and it is the question which Nature always asks), " 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
1 I have taken Bishop Butler's view of the meaning of this
passage in. Micah (vi. 5, 6), without, however, being ignorant of
what is to be said against it. According to this view, there is no
break between v. 5 and 6; but vv. 6, 7 give Balak's " consultatation," and v. 8, "what Balaam, the son of Beer, answered him."
It makes no difference to my argument, whether this, or the contrary view, be adopted. Either way, the lesson of vv. 6, ), 8, is
just the same.




64    The End of the Commancdent, etc. [CHAP.
of rivers of oil? "  And how was he answered by the
Prophet?-that love to man, and an humble affectionate trust in God, is the only available sacrifice. " He
hath showed thee, 0 man, what is good; and what
doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to
love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? "




viI.]      Of the various Sentiments, etc.          65
CHAPTER VIL.
OF THE VARIOUS SENTIMENTS EMBRACED IN THE LOVE
OF GOD.
" Thou shal love the Lord tihy God with all thy heat, and with all
thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind."LUKE x. 27.
A    N over-subtle scrutiny of the words of a sentence
sometimes impairs our perception of its force.
Nor are the inspired sentences of Holy Scripture exceptions to this rule. As by dissecting a dead body
in an anatomy-school you could gain no notion of the
contour, general bearing, and power of the living
body; as by bringing a microscope to bear upon the
vein of an insect's wing you could form  no just conception of that insect, as it disports itself in the summer sun; so by entering with too great minuteness
into the language of Holy Scripture, it is possible to
miss (or at least to apprehend but feebly) its great
purport.  Accordingly, I do not propose to draw any
fanciful distinctibns between the several faculties here
specified as " the heart,"   the soul," " the strength,"
and "the mind."  The great scope of the precept
obviously is that we should love God with all our
powers.  Whatever fibres there are in our nature, by




66          Of tlhe various Sentimentws      [ClAP.
which we cling and cleave to those around us, these
fibres must all throw themselves out toward Him, and
embrace Him as their first object.
Yet without appropriating any distinct force to
each of the words of which our text is made up, we
may remark generally in illustration of it that there
are several senses in which the word " love " is used,
or rather several kinds of love, between which we
need not hesitate to draw a distinction, because such a
distinction rests upon a real and palpable difference.
We saw in our last Chapter that the love of God
is the sum and substance of all true Religion, and that
in the pursuit of Holiness this love and the exercise
of it must be kept steadily before us as our end. The
love of God, then, in its different varieties, demands
some amount of study from all who would follow after
Holiness, and it will not be giving it too prominent
a place in our argument if we devote to it several
Chapters. In the present Chapter we will trace only
the divisions of the subject, taking up afterward more
fully any of those divisions which it seems most necessary to enlarge upon.
1. The first idea which starts into the mind at the
mention of the word " love," the earliest form in which
love presents itself to us, is that of natural affection.
The little child loves its parents, clings to its mother,
runs to welcome its father on his return home-this
is with us all the earliest exercise of love. This exercise of love is without deliberation, without reason;
it wells up spontaneously from the hidden depths of
Nature. It has no moral esteem  in it; it would be
felt as much toward a bad parent as a good (supposing him, that is, not to be altogether bad as a parent,




vii.]     embraced in the Love of God.          67
which even the worst men seldom are). It has no
gratitude in it; for it is experienced by children too
young to appreciate the enormous debt which is due
to a parent. And it has no benevolence in it; there
is no desire in the child's mind of succoring the parents or rendering them assistance; nay, the idea that
a parent can need any assistance is as far as possible
from the minds of very young children, who usually
conceive their parents to be omnipotent. In short,
this love is an instinct, seated in Nature, and arising
in some mysterious way (of which we can give no
account) from the relationship between parent and
child. The same instinct is found in an incipient and
crude state among animals. In virtue of it the chickens seek the shelter and warmth of their mother's
outspread wings. But in man this instinct, being
kneaded up with the spirit or reason, becomes developed and spiritualized, and endures long after the
age of childhood has passed away.
Now the question is, whether this love of natural
affection is capable of being exercised toward Almighty God-is one of the forms in which we are
exhorted to love Him?  And the answer is, that it
plainly is so. The Apostle to the Hebrews calls God
" the Father of our spirits."  And it was the peculiar
mission of Our Blessed Lord to reveal and declare
that most comfortable truth, the Paternity of God.
Observe how  the terms "your Father which is in
heaven," "your Father," "thy Father which is -in
secret, which seeth in secret," "your heavenly Father," interpenetrate the Sermon on the Mount; how
they are continually reappearing, as if they were the
wiarp of the divine discourse.




68          Of the variaus Sentiments       [CHAP.
Now this relationship to God is altogether peculiar
to man, or at all events, if shared by him with other
creatures, shared only with the Angels. The lower
animals are God's creatures. And it cannot be denied
that there is a tie of tenderness which, in virtue of
this lower relationship, binds even them to their Creator, and gives them a place in His heart. Witness
passages like these, which testify to such a tie:" God remembered Noah and every living thing, and
all the cattle which was with him  in the ar7k;'
"Should not I spare Nineveh, that great city wherein
are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot
discern between their right hand and their left hand,
and also nmuch cattle? " " He giveth to the beast his
food, and to the young ravens which cry;"  "Are
not five sparrows sold for two farthings? and not one
of them  is forgotten before Gocd."  We find some
echo of this sentiment of the Divine Mind in the
tenderness of the artist or artisan to his own productions? Could a poet endure to burn the poem, or a
sculptor to shiver the statue, or a mechanic to break
the machinery, on which he had bestowed much skill,
labor, and time? But the sentiment toward a production is of a lower grade and less tender than that
toward offspring; and, "we," says St. Paul to the
Athenians, quoting and adopting the words of a
heathen poet, " are His offspring."  He is " the
Father of our spirits; " the Father especially of that
faculty in us which is capable of responding to His
appeals and holding intercourse with Him-the reason
or spirit. The power of moral choice, the conscience,
the capacity of conversing with God in prayer, these
are all scintillations from God's own uncreated essence.




VII.]    embraced in the Love of God.         69
Now the first love which God requires from us
must flow from the recognition of this relationship
between us and Himself, which, obscured as it had
been by idolatry and the manifold corruptions of the
human heart, it was one great object of the Gospel to
bring to light and announce in the most explicit manner. Love indeed, the warmest love, is due to God
from us on other grounds, on the ground of His mercy
and loving-kindness, and on the ground of the intrinsic
excellence and perfection of His character. But none
of the more rational and deliberate exercises of affection can dispense us from the instinct which arises
from the simple relationship subsisting between Him
and us. What would be thought of a son, whose entire feeling to his father was expressed thus: " I love
you because you have been so kind to me, and because you are so excellent a man." These are most
rational grounds of love, but the parent would probably wish to hear alleged as well as these: " I love
you because you are my father."  The love which
flows directly out of the connection is the most spontaneous, the most natural, and the most fresh of all.
And who is there among us who may not this
moment yield this love to Almighty God, if with
simple, unsophisticated mind, like those listeners who
clustered round the feet of Our Lord on the verdant
lily-clad hill where He delivered His great Sermon, he
will but open the ears of his heart to those great
and glorious illustrations of God's Fatherhood, which
Heaven's great Ambassador proposes: " Behold the
fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they
reap, nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father
feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? "




70          Of the various Sentiments       [CHAP...  Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall
we eat? or, WVhat shall we drink? or, Wherewithal
shall we be clothed? (for after all these things do the
Gentiles seek: ) for your Heavenly Father knoweth
that ye nee4d all these things."...  What man is
there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give
him  a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he give him a
serpent?  If ye then, being evil, know how to give
good gifts unto your children, how much more shall
your Father which is in heaven give good things to
them that ask fiim? "
2. The next form of love which is developed in the
life of the individual man is the love of gratitude.
This, too, is felt, in the first instance, toward parents.
The infant becomes a child, and, together with natural
affection for its parents, the child soon begins to feel
a sense of their kindness to him. He feels that no
one wishes him well with the same heartiness and devotion as they; and because it is in our nature to be
won by kindness, he responds to their love; and this
is his earliest exercise of gratitude.  It is important
to observe, that what he is attracted by-what stirs
in him  the love of gratitude —is not so much the
benefits received from the parent, as the mind of kindness which those benefits evince. For conceive the
case (yet it wants no conceiving, it is often realized)
of a stranger, cold in his manners and patronizing in
his deportment, approaching a child with presents.
The presents may be acceptable-just what the child
would wish to possess-they may glitter with those
bawbles which are so attractive to the childish mind,
and the recipient may enter upon the possession and
enjoyment of them; but in vain does the stranger at



vII.]     embraced in the Love of God.            71
tempt to conciliate good-will in this manner.  The
child is shy of him, does not trust him-a sure sign
that it does not love him.  On the other hand, the
parents of the child may be poor, and unable to make
presents; but it matters not, as far as the gratitude
felt for them is concerned.  The child has such assurances of their deep and living interest in him, those
assurances have been given so naturally, so unceasingly, so spontaneously, that it has a thorough confidence in their affection, and loves them again for their
kindness, not for the manifestations of it.
Now, that this love of gratitude may be, is to be,
ought to be, felt toward God, it needs not many
words to prove.  "We love Him," says St. John,
"because He first loved us."  Gratitude toward God
is the one great moral engine which the Gospel makes
use of in subduing the will and sanctifying the heart
of man.  What is the Gospel but a most astounding
display of the Divine Mercy, by which God proposes
to carry the fortress of the human heart, which stands
out against all the artillery of His threatenings?  It
is a Revelation of Love to all mankind  Love of such
fervor and intensity, that it moved God to make the
only sacrifice He was capable of making, to give His
Only-Begotten Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
It is announced, that in the death of that Son all have
died, have paid the penalty and endured the curse of
sin, and that henceforth the curse is abolished for all
who simply hold to Him  by faith; that all such are
not only justified by the righteousness of Christ, but
secured and shielded by His living intercession. Now
the response of the sinner's heart to this Love of God
is the one great secret of sanctification. To open




72          Of the various Sentiments        [CHAP.
wide the windows of our hearts, and to allow the
light of this Love to flood every dark chink and cranny
of' the soul, this it is to be sanctified.  For as the
moon shines, not by its own light, but by giving back
the radiance which the sun sheds upon it, so our
hearts can no otherwise shine in holiness than by giving back, in the exercise of adoring gratitude, the
light of the Divine Love, as manifested to us in Jesus
Christ; as it is written, "We love Him" (and the
love of God is the sum and substance of holiness)
"because He first loved us."  Observe the accuracy
of the expression: " We love Him "-not because He
ransomed our souls, forgave us, gave us His Son, or
conferred any other benefit upon us; but "because
He first loved us."  We must not represent gratitude
as a sordid affection, responding only to what we get
from God. It responds to the sentiment of the giver,
not to the gift. What attracts us is the astonishing
Love of our Heavenly Father, in the face of-all our
indesert, guilt, rebellion, vileness.  What God gives,
He gives because His Fatherly heart is set upon us.
It is His parental tenderness, of which the Gospel is
so illustrious a display, which conciliates our confidence, makes us trust Him, and deposit our cares and
troubles in His ear.
3. The third form of love to which we rise in the
order of Nature is the love of moral esteem. Arrived
at years of discretion, the child yields to its parents a
less instinctive and more deliberate affection than it
has yet been capable of. It observes in them uprightness of purpose, consistency of their conduct with their
professions, sincerity, kindness, and all the other elements of character which go to make up goodness.




vii.]     enmbracced in the iLove of Good.        73
He esteems and venerates them for the possession of
these qualities.  Other people seem  to him  shallow
and  insincere in  comparison; his parents have a
weight of character, which commands his respect.
Now this love of moral esteem is one of the chief
and one of the highest forms which the love of God
takes.  And if we were required to draw any distinction between the words of our text, we should call
the love of natural affection "love with the soul," the
love of gratitude " love with the heart," and the love
of moral esteem " love with the mind."  Wre are to
love God, not only because He is good to zts, but because He is so lovable. And the amiability of God
consists in His moral perfections, and in the harmony
of these perfections, and their exact adjustment and
relations. The beauty of light consists in such an
adjustment of the various rays composing it (such a
happy mixture between the sombre rays and the
brighter rays) that light is a perfectly pure and transparent medium, enables us thoroughly to explore any
object which is submitted to us, while, at the same
time, it does not dazzle or pain the eye. If the dark
rays too much preponderated, we could not see clearly;
if there were an undue preponderance of the bright
rays, we should be dazzled and blinded.  Now God
is said to be Light in Holy Scripture, and the great
thought brought out by this image is, that two classes
of moral perfections, Holiness on the one hand, and
Love on the other, are in His character harmoniously
blended together. In virtue of God's holiness, or abhorrence of evil, there is an awfulness about H-is
character which banishes from Him the wilful sinner,
whlile in the reconciled sinner it stirs an emotion not
4




r4       C~Of the various Sentiments     [CAlP.
of slavish fear, but of profound abasement. While in
virtue of God's boundless Love (including under that
term  His Mercy and Compassion, as well as His
Bounty and Benevolence) there is an attractiveness
about His character which is calculated to win the
heart of man even in the-state of deepest moral degradation. We know that these opposite perfections
are harmonized in the work of Christ; that in the
Cross of His Son God is most illustriously seen, expressing at once the deepest abhorrence of sin and the
most intense love for the sinner. But it is more to
our present purpose to remark how the various attributes of God are reflected in the Humanity of Christ,
who is, as St. Paul tells us, the express Image of
God's Person. Moral esteem for Christ's character is
in truth moral esteem for God's character. Should
we then, let us ask ourselves, by way of ascertaining
our love for God, have been really attracted by a
character such as Christ's is represented to have been?
Should we have been drawn insensibly into the circle
of His influence, as the disciples were, by the words
of grace which hung upon His lips, by the felt unearthliness which His Presence and demeanor shed
around Him?  Should we have admired the sterner
as well as the softer side of His character-His fulminations against hypocrisy as well as His tender
solicitude for, and sympathy with, the fallen? This
love of moral esteem toward Christ was the salient
feature in the religious character of the late Dr. Arnold, the one thought which colored all his sentiments
of devotion. It requires some stamina of character to
feel this moral esteem for any one. The love which
arises from  natural affection, from  gratitude, from




VII.]    embraced in the Love of Gocd.          75
sympathy in trouble, from a mere fancy which can
give no account of itself, is much more common in the
world than the love of moral esteem. In order to
esteem worth, there must be worth in him who is to
show the esteem. And it asks more than mere worth,
it asks a large measure of grace, to appreciate the
extraordinary beauty and excellence of Our Blessed
Lord's character, and to respond to it (as the devout
man above alluded to responded) with profound, adoring veneration.
4. There is yet another kind of love which I must
mention, because it is a clearly distinct sentiment from
any of those which we have hitherto reviewed. It is
the love of benevolence-the feeling which prompts
us to wish good to others, and, as far as in us lies, to
do it. A moment's consideration will serve to show
that this is altogether distinct from the love of moral
esteem. God loves the sinner, even when lying in his
sins, with the love of benevolence. This Love of
Benevolence on God's part is the source whence flowed
to a guilty world the blessings of Redemption.  " God
commendeth His Love toward us," we are told, "in
that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
But it cannot be supposed that God has for sinners any
love of moral esteem. He who is of purer eyes than
to behold iniquity cannot regard iniquity with complacency. God's moral estimate of a world lost in sin,
even while He had it at heart to save them by the
Sacrifice of His Son, is thus painted by the Psalmist:
" God looked down from Heaven upon the children of
men, to see if there were any that would understand,
and seek after God. But they are all gone out of the
way, they are altogether become abominable; there




76           Of the various Sentigzmets       [CUAP.
is also none that doeth good, no not one."  And it
is clear that among men also a feeling of benevolence toward miserable and degraded fellow-creatures
may find place, even where there is (and can be) no
feeling at all of moral esteem.  A  good man may
strive with great earnestness to restore one wvho has
lost his character, and to reinstate him in the position
from which he has fallen, while the very fact of the
object of this kindness having lost character precludes
all esteem for the present.  Then the question arises,
whiether tfhis love of benevolence can be exercised
towarard God?  Surely it may.  It has been defined as
the love vwhich prompts good wishes and endeavors
on behalf of another.  Now ought not our hearts to
be fondly set upon, and our endeavors directed toward, God's glory?  Should we not long to further
the interests of Christ by every means in our power?
Should we not eagerly push in, lwherever there is an
opening, to promote His cause?  Alas! it is not a
question; there can be no doubt that this spirit should
animate us all; there can be no doubt that by this
spirit we all profess to be animated, as often as we
pray, " Hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom comle.
Thy will be done in earth, as it is in Heaven."  Blut
putting aside our professions, what is the real state
of the case as regards our hearts?  How many of us
can honestly say that our most fervent wishes are embarked in the cause of Christ?  There is plenty of
room, G-od lnows, for the advancementl of that cause.
There are souls steeped in misery, ignorance, and sin,
all around us.  There are good enterprises on foot by
the hundred, which may be furthered by our money,
or, if we:have not money to spend, by an expenditiure




vii.]     enbraced in the -Love of God.             7
of time and labor. There are heathens abroad, waiting
to be converted; and there are baptized heathens at
home, waiting to be instructed in their privileges, and
taught their high vocation.  Now, are we occupying to
the best of our ability any single corner of this vast
field of usefulness?  Have we ever seriously said to
ourselves, " I wish to do something for my Lord and
in His interests before I die-I wish to push His
cause forward in my generation with all the energy I
can muster? "  To say this seriously is to exercise
toward God, and Christ who is God, the love of benevolence.  And, until we can in some measure say it
seriously, we cannot say our Lord's Prayer quite sincerely; for this prayer assuredly implies that God's
interests are nearer to the petitioner's heart than the
supply of his own wants.  Oh, this Lord's Prayer,
what a canon does it supply for testing and correcting our spiritual state! How  surely and infallibly
does conformity to the spirit of it imply growth in
grace! Therefore, Lord, conform  us more and more
to its spirit, and
"Teach us this, and every lday,
To live more nearly as we pray."




78  Of the Affinity between God and Ican-  [CHAP.
CHAPTER VIII.
OF THE  AFFINITY  BETWEEN  GOD AND  IAN, IN REGARD OF MA NS WANTS AND GOD'S FULNESS.
In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried,
saying, If any man thirst, let himn come unto Me, and drink.
He that believeth on Mlfe, as the Scripture hath said, out of his
belly shall flow rivers of living water.".... "  any of the
people therefore, when they heard this saying, said, Of a truth
this is the Prophet.  Others said, This is the Christ."-JOHN vii.
37, 38, 40, 41.
rT HE  above weighty saying of Our Blessed Lord
produced among some of His hearers an immediate conviction that He was the Prophet whom the
Jews looked for-that he was the Christ. We gather
from hence that these words meet some instinct of the
human heart; that Our Lord, when uttering them,
struck a note which vibrated in the inmost souls of
His hearers.  Now, what shall we suppose to have
been the secret of their effect?
It was no doubt this, that many of the audience
(all those of them, probably, in whom there was any
seriousness or thoughtfulness of character) felt that
they themselves were in a spiritual sense athirst, that
there was a craving in the inner man after light, and
truth, and love, which nothing upon earth met. When,




vII.]  lMan's TWants and God's.ulness.         79
therefore, the very remarkable Personage, who had
recently appeared in their midst, stood forth and said,
" If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink,"
they felt that He was making an offer, of which they
had need to avail themselves, that His word interpreted the longing of their souls, and held out a hope
of satisfying it. They are convinced of His claims,
by His offering them exactly what they had felt the
want of.
We have been led, in the course of the argument
of this work, to the subject of the love of God; and
we begin by observing that, in order to the existence
of love between two parties, there must be a secret
affinity between them, in virtue of which one supplies
what the other needs. This is visible in all the forms
of human friendship. Friendship by no means seems
to take root most deeply between persons of similar
characters and sentiments. Rather the contrary as a
general rule. Friendship is not a monotony, in which
each of the characters sounds forth the same note;
but a harmony, in which two notes are combined,
which have some relation immediately recognized by
the ear. Thus it is, to take the most obvious instance,
in the case of friendship between the sexes, to which
the name of love is commonly appropriated.  The
general foundation of that affection is just this, that
one sex supplies those elements of character and feeling which the other lacks, the man being formed for
activity, enterprise, labor, and to meet the brunt of
life; the woman for endurance, tenderness, and domestic duties.  It is not, of course, dissimilarity alone
which constitutes the tie (dissimilarity, if the dissimilars be not related to one another, is only another




80  Of the Afznity between Cod and   an~ — [CHIAP.
name for discord), but dissimilarity of such a kind as
to make one sex the complement and helpmate of the
other.  The man needs sympathy and confidential
friendship, which the woman supplies; the woman in
her turn needs support, protection, counsel, which it
is the man's part to furnish. And thus, to accommodate to our purpose the words of the Apostle on a different subject, the abundance of the one is a supply
for the want of the other, that the other's abundance
also may be a supply for his want. In short, the
principle which brings persons together in human
friendship resembles the principle which lies at the
foundation of commercial intercourse.  A. produces
what B. wants; and B. in his turn produces what A.
wants. This mutual want of one another's productions draws together A. and B., and inclines them to
exchange commodities, and to live near one another
in mutual interdependence. Well; it is the same
with character as with commodities.  The characters
of all want some element which the character of some
other might supply.  When we find that other, and
are drawn toward him by an instinct which assures us
that his disposition and qualities are the complement
of our own-the attraction is called friendship or love,
according as it subsists between persons of the same
or of different sexes. In either case the secret of the
attraction is precisely the same.
We do not speak of friendship among material objects; but affinities are observable among these, which
rest upon the same principle of mutual interdependence.  We will take one of these analogies in the
lower world, to illustrate our subject further. Trees,
then, are fed by the air and light of heaven, much in




vIIM.]   ian9s TWcnts anC4d G-od'Is Fulness.   81
the same way as our bodies are kept alive by appropriate sustenance. Exclude all light and air from a
tree, shut it up in a close and dark chamber, and it
will speedily wither. Bring it forth again into the
fiesh air and sunlight, and the pores of its leaves will
drink in the nourishment congenial to them, and seem
to revive. No two objects can be more dissimilar
than the tree and the air-the one a solid trunk of wood,
never shifting from its place, the other a most subtle
and imperceptible fluid which every wind sets in motion. Yet there is a secret affinity between them,
which makes them necessary to one another, by which
the two hang together in the marvellous system of
Nature.  The air is charged with its gases, by which
it stimulates and quickens vegetation. The plants,
on the other hand, need the circulation of this fluid
through their veins. The air bestows itself upon the
plants for their nourishment. The plants, on the other
hand, make a return to the air, in the shape of the
perfumes which some of them exhale. This is one out
of many instances of an affinity in Nature, by which
things mutually supplement one another. It is on a
similar affinity, higher up in the scale of creation, that
what we call friendship or love is founded.
This being premised, we now observe that the
fact of man's being required in the Holy Scriptures
to love God, indicates an affinity between man and
God, by which man stands in urgent need of God,
and God, too, has need of man, for the manifestation
of His infinite perfections.
1. First, man, though a poor child of earth, fast
rooted in this low and filthy soil, has an urgent need
of God in His nature, just as the tree has a need of




82  Of the Affinity between God and can-  [CHAP.
light and air. When this need makes itselffelt in a
man's consciousness, he then realizes the experience
of the Psalmist: " My soul is athirst for God, yea,
even for the living God."  And he is then arrested
by, and disposed to listen to, the offer made by the
Son of God: " If any man thirst, let him come unto
Me, and drink."
But let us trace man's need of God more particularly, and seek to understand in what it consists.
In a certain sense, of course, all things have need
of God, in order to their continuance in being and
in well-being. He is the Preserver as well as the
Creator of all things, and upholds them (in the Person of the Son) by the word of His power. If the
Heavenly Father ceased to work even for a moment,
if His energy and the support of His arm were for a
moment withdrawn, the colors would fade from the
robe of Nature, and the lights of the firmament would
be extinguished, and the waters of the earth would
fail and dry up in their channels, and the whole fabric
of the universe would collapse, as an arch falls to
pieces when the keystone is withdrawn. God is not
only the ground, but the momentary support, of all
existence.
It is clear, however, that the need which man, as
man, has of God must be something which distinguishes him from the inferior creation. Inanimate
and irrational creatures never are, never could be,
exhorted to love God; and those who, like men, are
so exhorted, must have some special affinity to God,
some special need of Him, in virtue of which the love
of God becomes for them at once a possibility and
duty.




vIII.]    AL~an's Wants and God's Fulness.      83
In what, then, does this special affinity stand? Consider the craving of man after the Infinite, so that his
understanding is never satisfied with the truth which
it discovers, nor his appetite with the good that it
finds in created existence.
(1) First his understanding is never satisfied with
the truth which it contrives to reach. The present is
an age of discovery. The secrets of Nature are more
and more explored, and yield themselves up, one
after another, to the scrutiny of man. Now, the point
to which we call attention at present is the thirst of
man after knowledge, to which this ceaseless scrutiny
bears witness. It is true, indeed, that Arts are founded
upon the Sciences, and that most of the important discoveries which are made have some bearing upon our
condition-tend to furnish human life with conveniences, comforts, and luxuries. But it is not only the
desire of a more comfortable existence, of a betterfurnished life, which stimulates the discovery. There
is a nobler stimulus than this behind; the thirst for
knowledge which is inbred in the human mind. There
is nothing more deeply interesting to an intelligent
man than discovery. It is as if God had proposed
to us in Nature, in life, in our own hearts, certain
enigmas, and had challenged human ingenuity to the
solution of them, according to that word of King Solomon's: "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing:
but the honor of kings is to search out a matter."
But observe how, immediately upon a discovery being
made, it loses its interest, and the vivid colors fade in
which it was dressed while our minds were making
it. Truth once established palls upon us; and we
immediately go in quest of some fresh truth.  It




84  Of the Affinity between God and Mtfan-  [CHAP.
would seem that just as the pleasure of hunting is
not derived from the game which is caught, but from
the exercise and excitement of the pursuit, so it is
not truth which interests man, or at all events not
the truth which he contrives to reach by his natural
faculties, but only the quest of it. You see the restlessness of this quest in the pursuit of religious as
well as of scientific truth.  The inbred curiosity of
the mind, which desires above all things to know,
even where it is effectually precluded from knowledge, has ever been the fruitful source of heresies
and fantastic speculations.  Men eschew the plain
preceptive parts of the Bible, and its more prominent
doctrines, which have been sounded in their ears
from childhood, and have now become to them like a
popular air, which has had a long run, and has been
sung at every concert, and hackneyed upon every
street-organ, till it now haunts the hearer in his
solitude; the mind seeks something new, original,
lively; and works are written or theories broached
to meet the demand-new views of unfulfilled Prophecy (which offers a vast field to the curious), speculations on the last times and our nearness to them,
unhallowed attempts to divest religion of its mysteries, and to make it all plain and level to the
understanding. All this is the natural instinct of
the human mind to seek truth, running wild, and
getting out of the groove which God has marked out
for it to move in.
But shall we suppose that there is nothing corresponding to this restless thirst after knowledge in
the human mind? Is the mind to fret itself forever
in the pursuit of truth, and never reach the goal of




vIIi.]  ~Man's IVanzts and God's Fulness.         85
its desires?  Is there no highest truth, in which the
understanding may at length acquiesce?  Not so.
The Holy Scriptures say that God is Light; and
again that He is the Father of lights.  Again, they
say that Christ is the Wisdom  of God, and that in
Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.  When, therefore, man displays an insatiable
desire to know, to read the riddle of Nature, the
riddle of his own life, the riddle of his hereafter,
he should remind himself that God Himself is the
only satisfaction of this desire, that he has an intellect formed to receive the Light of God, a Light
which one day will clear up all mysteries, whether
of Nature, or of life, or of the future.
And this Light of God, my reader, you shall enjoy
in a measure here below, not by any painful straining.
of the reason after truth, but by the entire submission
of thy will to God's Will, and by the diligent purification of thy heart from all unruly passions. Desires
and passions cloud the judgment, and shut out the
clear, dry light of Truth.
(2) But, secondly, man craves after the Infinite
Good, as well as after the Infinite Truth, and never
finds it here below.
This craving after good is attested by the mischievous excesses of intemperance.  What is the instinct which prompts man to intemperance in its
various forms, which prompts him to invent new delicacies, new luxuries, and to stimulate the bodily appetite by all sorts of artificial means?  That it is an
instinct peculiar to him as man is clear.  We find no
intemperance among the lower creatures; they simply
satisfy the natural appetite with the food which hap



86  Of the Affinity between God and 3ican- [CHAP.
pens to be thrown in their way, but do not injure
health by overfeeding, much less aim at increasing
the deliciousness of the animal gratification by wellmixed bowls or highly-flavored condiments. The real
account of intemperance is this, that man has not only
an animal but a rational appetite to satisfy; by the
constitution of his mind he thirsts after a good which
he finds in no created object. The instinct, misdirected by the Fall, goes astray. Having a hungry
spirit, he makes a desperate effort to extract from
bodily enjoyments that which may appease its cravings. He imposes upon the body a double tax, to
meet the demands of the spirit, if possible, as well as
its own demands. But the body resembles a people
in this respect; it is impoverished and enfeebled by
undue and excessive taxation. It will meet the demands of its own animal appetites readily enough,
and be none the worse for the payment; but the additional demands of the spirit's hunger it cannot bear.
Accordingly, it breaks down under them. Premature
decay is the almost certain consequence of intemperate
excesses.
But there are more refined ways in which men endeavor to satisfy the craving of their immortal spirits
after good. They seek admiration. The esteem of a
little narrow circle in their immediate neighborhood;
preeminence of whatever sort, whether of ability, or
position, or of mere worldly wealth; the flattering
speeches which are a sort of homage to superiorityhow dear are these things to the soul! Not that the
soul rests in them; having tasted them, it immediately
craves for new enjoyments; it is after a wider reputation, a higher preeminence, a more refined and less




YII.]   Macn's Wants and God's fulness.         87
palpable flattery.  The best form of earthly good, with
which the spirit seeks to satisfy its hunger, is that of
human sympathy. It makes idols of the natural affections-plants for itself, as far as it can, a domestic and
a social Paradise. The unfortunate point here is, that
the trees of the Paradise, like Jonah's gourd, are apt
to be smitten by the earthworm of death. And, independently of their being so smitten, we may certainly say that no mere natural affection can satisfy
the craving of the human heart after love. Nothing
is found on earth commensurate to that craving; no
fellow-creature can fill the void. But the Creator can.
Do we long after a joyous exhilaration of the spirit,
which, as an exuberant mounting flood, shall tide us
over the difficulties of our career?  The Holy Spirit
is the source of this inward joy, as it is written, "Be
not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled
with the Spirit."  Do we thirst after esteem and admiration?  Human esteem is but a taper: the real
sunlight of the soul is the smile of God's approbation,
making itself felt there. Is preeminence our aim? He
is the Fountain of Honor; and the dignities of His
Kingdom  are bestowed on those who are least and
lowest in their own esteem. Do we long, with an unquenchable longing, for sympathy? He is Love; and,
in virtue of the Incarnation, He can be touched with
the feeling of our infirmities; and death, so far from
breaking off our intercourse with Him, admits us into
His more immediate Presence, and cements that communion, which it is the joy and delight of renewed
hearts to hold with Him here below.
Such, then, are man's two great wants, viewed as
an immortal spirit-a want of the Infinite Truth, and




88  Of the Affinity bcftwee GCod aCnd i3an   [CHAP.
the want of the Infinite Good, a want of Light and a
want of Love. These wants are forever making' themselves felt in the human consciousness in various forms.
Man is like a noble tree planted in the earth, which
can live only by drinking in the air and sunlight of
Heaven. The Fall has walled him up in a dark enclosure of selfishness and sensuality; but, as he cannot
live without light and warmth, he tries to expand his
branches toward certain wretched tapers, which are
burning in the interior. But they are never enough
for him. Without the sun he cannot thrive.  "His
soul is athirst for God."
2. But we said that the ground of all love is the
mutual dependence of the parties, between whom it
subsists, on one another. Does God, then, in any sense
depend upon man? Is man in any sense necessary
to God?  Necessary in this sense, only, as a field of
display for the Divine Perfections. We are to conceive of God as an exuberant, full-charged Ocean of
Truth, and Goodness, and Mercy, ready to pour itself
over into the creatures, as receptacles of its fulness.
God longs and loves to give, to communicate, to bless
-it is the great feature of His perfection. He longs
to surround Himself with intelligent, happy, joyous
creatures, and to lavish upon them all the resources
of His Infinite Goodness. And here we may catch a
glimpse of the reason why evil was permitted. In the
heart of God was a fund of mercy and tenderness,
which, by the very perfection of His Nature, He
longed to expend, but could find no scope for the exercise of it, except by the admission of evil into His
universe. To be bounteous to creatures still retaining
their integrity-oh! this is a very inadequate effect




VIII.1]  ain's T',nms c anc God's Fulness.       89
of God's goodness.  HIe can be bounteous, fatherly,
infinitely loving, even to the unthankful. and the evil
-to the vile, the degraded, the abominable; this is
the great glory of His character, which the Gospel
has unveiled and exposed to the gaze of poor fallen
man.  But mercy never could have poured itself
forth, had there not been vessels of mercy to receive
it.  And vessels of mercy could never have existed,
had there been no transgression-for righteous creatures need no mercy.  We may certainly, therefore,
recognize between God and man a natural reciprocity,
which makes man necessary to God in something of
the same sense as an object of charity is necessary
to a liberal and large-hearted donor, deeply touched
with the distresses of his fellow-men.  Such a one
cannot sit at home and lap himself in luxury; there
is a sentiment of compassion in his heart, which drives
him into the courts and alleys to seek out objects of
relief. In like manner, God's fulness of compassion
and bounty drives Him to the supply of man's necessities. He is the only Being who cacm satisfy those
deep wants of the soul.  And from His intrinsic goodness He longs to satisfy them.
My readers, have you been ever brought, by reflection upon your own experience, to the conclusion that
your immortal spirit cannot be satisfied by any contentment which earth has to offer?  Then, when God
is announced to you as Light and Love, you cannot
but see a suitability in the message, which commends
it to your reason; your heart cannot but give back an
echo, when this view of God first dawns on your apprehension, as the chords of  Memnon's statue gave
forthl a musical sound, when it was smitten with the




90 Of the Affinity between God and a2an, etc. [CHAP.
early sunbeam. It was no doubt an experience of this
kind which many of the people went through, when
Our Lord uttered in their hearing that sublime invitation: "If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and
drink."  They were conscious of a thirst in the depths
of their spirit; and He who offered thus solemnly to
quench it must be God's Ambassador, charged with
a message for them-must be the Prophet and the
Christ indeed.-But an ambassador only! Surely He
claims a prerogative beyond this. Let us hear Him
again. " If any man thirst, let him come " (not unto
My Father, but) " unto M/e, and drink."  He Himself
it is, who undertakes to quench the soul's deep thirst
for Light and Love. Can he be less than the Infinite?
If we could suppose Him"for a moment to be less,
would not His words be an arrogant blasphemy?
Most clear it is that He who speaks thus is God over
all blessed forever. And if you will come to Him,
my reader, laying aside utterly all self-righteousness
and all self-will, you shall know by experiment that
the large pretensions which He here makes are no vain
boasts. He shall give you the water whereof whosoever drinketh shall never thirst; and it shall be in you
" a well of water, springing up into everlasting life."




ix.] Of the Filial ]Relation of  lfan to God, etc. 91
CHAPTER IX.
OF THE FILIAL RELATION  OF MAN TO GOD, UPON
WHICH THE LOVE OF GOD IS FOUNDED.
" God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness."GEN. i. 26.
T was man's prerogative, alone of all the creatures,
to be made "in God's image, after God's likeness." This image and likeness man possesses in virtue of his being a son of God-a name which is never
given to the lower creatures. There is always a likeness (either in feature, or in mind, or in both) between
parents and children, which is the result of the child's
being drawn out of the parents, and, being, in fact, a
part of them. And what is the cause of the likeness
of all men one to another-their likeness in the leading sentiments and affections of their nature, which
the wise man touches upon, when he says, "As in
water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to
man? "  Is it not this, that we had all " one father "
originally; are all drawn out of Adam by natural generation?  Hence it is that heart beats responsive to
heart in every clime, and that such poets as Shakespeare and Burns, who portray human passions in the
fresh, simple colors of Nature, are appreciated not only




92   Of the Filial Relation of  an to God, [CHIAP.
in this country, but wherever their language is understood.  The likeness follows il the train of a brotherhood, or, which is the same thing, of a common fatherhood.
We traced in our last Chapter the correspondence
between God and man, in regard to man's cravings
after the Infinite Truth and the Infinite Good, and
God's fulness.  We saw that God, being both Light
and Love, is the only object suited to man's needs
and desires.  We now trace an affinity of a different
character subsisting between these two parties, in regard of man's special likeness to God, which is the result of his filial relation. It is because man is a son
of God, although a lost and a prodigal son, that he is
capable of loving Him, and is exhorted to do so. Let
us notice the resemblances to God which still linger
in fallen Human Nature, and prove this sonship.
Man, then, resembles God in the constitution of
his nature and in his natural powers.
1. IA th e constitution of his nature.-It is well
known that the word us in the fiat for the creation of
man (" Let us make man in ore image, after our likeness ") refers to the plurality of Persons in the Godhead. Man is to be made, therefore, according to the
words of this fiat, in the Image of the Trinity in Unity.
If you look into the constitution of his nature, you
may expect to find there a three in one, and a one in
three. And this is what you do find. Holy Scripture
teaches us that there are three (not two) elements in
Human Nature, "body, soul, and spirit."  St. Paul
recognizes the three in that prayer of his for his Thessalonian converts: " Now the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit




ix.]  upon wohic  the Loe V  of God is foudced.   93
cand soul and body be preserved blameless unto the
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."  The distinction
between these three elements of our nature is very
clear, and generally admitted.  By " the body 9" is to
be understood the mass of matter which we carry
about with us, with all the various animal properties
that belong to it.  u-lnger and thirst are appetites
of the body; nourishment and growth are processes
which take place in it.  Observe, too, that the body
is the organ of the will, and the exponent of the character.  When a man acts or speaks, his will sets his
body in motion.  And it is usually thought that, in
his physiognomy  and general appearance, there is
something which betokens his disposition.  By " the
soul " we understand what, in our modern phrase, is
more commonly called " the mind."'  It is the mind
which  draws lessons from  experience or from  the
senses, which reasons, thinks, forms conclusions from
facts submitted to it.  He who works a mathematical
or geometrical problem works it with his mind, with
the purely intellectual element of his nature; it must
be quite clear that neither the body nor the religious
faculty has any share whatsoever in the operation.
By " the spirit," in Scripture phraseology, is to be understood that faculty by which man holds communion
1 It is quite possible that I have not drawn correctly the distinction between " soul " and " spirit." But suffice it that my distinction is a palpable one. Even if incorrect, it does not invalidate
the argument. -. an's nature is, according to the Apostle, tripartite, however you explain the threefold division; and in other
passages a very sharp distinction is drawn between " the soul"
and " the spirit."  This tripartite nature is a vestige in him of
the Image of God, in Whose Natutre there is a Trinity in Unity.




94   Of the Filial Relation of JMan to God, [CHAP.
with God. The religious instinct, which prompts him
in the blindness of his natural heart, to worship any
thing which presents itself as beneficial or wonderful
-sun, moon, and stars, or even the cunningly-wrought
works of his own hands-and which, under the guidance of Revelation, drives him to the throne of grace,
and makes him pant after God as the hart after the
water-brooks; this is that faculty which goes under
the name of " the spirit."  When a man prays (really
and sincerely), he prays with the spirit, according to
those words of the Apostle: "I will pray with the
spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also."
Now, the distinction of these three processes, hungering, reasoning, praying, must be obvious to all. Yet
it is one and the same man who embraces them all in
the unity of his own consciousness, who may say of
himself at different periods, I hungered, I reasoned,
I prayed. And it is true. The same being who receives food at one time, at another lifts up his soul to
God, at another works the problem. Here, then, you
find in the nature of man, the son of God, a constitution which shadows forth, so far as earthly things can
shadow forth heavenly, the nature of the Most High.
We are told that we may not confound the Persons in
the Blessed Trinity; that the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit, are distinct-as distinct as the spirit
is from the soul, and the soul from the body. Moreover, we read in Holy Scripture that God created
all things by Jesus Christ, using the Son as His instrument in the creation of the world; and that His
Son is " the effulgence of His glory, and the express
image of His Person."  Similarly the body, as we
have seen, is the organ by which the will of man acts,




ix.]  upon which the Love of God is founded.   95
and the exponent of his character. Moreover, in the
Holy Trinity " we acknowledge each Person by Himself to be God and Lord," even as, in the human trinity, we call the spirit the man, the soul the man, the
body the man, indifferently.  Yet, notwithstanding
their distinction, they are not three Gods, but one
God; just as it is not a different, but the same man,
who is conscious now of hungering, now of reasoning,
now of praying. There is indeed a great and unfathomable mystery in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity,
or (in other words) in the constitution of the Divine
Nature, which we must receive without for a moment
attempting to fathom it. But while we find in the
constitution of our own nature a mystery equally insoluble, who shall cavil at this requirement? While
I find in myself an intellectual being, a religious being, and a being the subject of animal appetites, and
yet know that each of these beings is my own true
self, and that all are bound up in the unity of one consciousness, shall I not put my hand upon my mouth,
and lay my mouth in the dust, when God requires me
to believe something of the same ldnd (at all events
not more mysterious) respecting His Infinite Nature?
And shall I not recognize in man, made in the image
and after the likeness of God, the signature of the
Triune Jehovah, and bless the condescension and grace
of Him, who hath made us sons, to shadow forth His
lineaments upon earth, and to love Him as only those
who are sons can be required to love?
2. But, secondly, man resembles God in his natural powers, both intellectual and moral.
a. As regards his intellectual powers, consider
that man is, like God, a creator.  Works of Art,




96   Of thke GFilial  edv'Ltion of Mda to GCod  [CHlAP.
whether useful or ornamental, are, and are often called,
creations.   iowv manifold are the new  discoveries,
the new inventions, which man draws forth, year after
year, from  his creative genius-the time-piece, the
microscope, the steamship, the steam-carriage, the
sun-picture, the electric telegraph! All these things
originally lay wrapped up in the human brain, and
are its offspring.  Look at the whole fabric of civilization, which is built up by the several arts.  W~hat a
creation is it, how  curious, howr varied, how wonderful in all its districts! Just as God has His Universe,
in which are mirrored the eternal, archetypal Ideas of
the Divine Mind, so this civilization is Man's universe,
the aggregate product of his intelligence and activity.
It may possibly suggest itself here that some of the
lower animals are producers no less than man.  And
so they are, in virtue of the instinct with which the
Almighty has endowed them.  The bird is the artisan
of her nest, the bee of his cell, the beaver of his hut.
But they are artisans only, working by a rule furnished
to them, not architects, designing out of their own
mental resources.  They are producers only, not creators; they never make a variation, in the way of improvement, on foregone productions; and we argue
conclusively that because they do never make it, they
can never make it.  Instinct dictates to them, as they
work,'"line upon line, precept upon precept;" but
there is no single instance of their rising above this
level-of their speculating upon an original design,
and contriving the means whereby it may be carried
into effect.  But the creative faculty of man is still
more evident in the ornamental arts, because here,
more obviously than in the useful,  an n works accord



ix.]  upon which the Love of God is founded.   97
ing to no preconceived method or imposed condition,
but throws out of his brain that which is new and
original. A  new melody, a new drama, a new picture, a new poem, are they not all (some more, some
less, in proportion to the originality of the conception
which is in them) creations?  Is not this the very
meaning of the word "poem," in the language from
which it is drawn-a thing made, a piece of workmanship? So that, in respect of the rich and varied
developments of the human mind in the different forms
of Art, we need not hesitate to call man a creator.
And this is the first aspect under which God is presented to us in Holy Scripture: " In the beginning
God CREATED the heaven and the earth."
b. Then as to moral powers. The free-will of
man, involving, as it does, a reason which is capable
of balancing the grounds of a moral choice, a reason
which can look into the future, and set an eternal
recompense over against present pain-this will,
which nothing can compel into obedience without
destroying its nature; this will, which is capable of
an intelligent, a princely, and a generous obedience,
the grounds of which it understands, and the reasons of which it inwardly affirms; this will, which not
only is capable of moving in accordance with the
Law, but which, while it does so, echoes from its
inmost depths that " the Law is holy, and just, and
good " — this free-will is unquestionably a strong
feature of the mind of our Heavenly Father, communicated to us His rational children. For He, too,
directs all His actions " according to the counsel of
His own will "-with a perfect and wise foresight of
results. His will, indeed, most unlike ours, is ever in
5




98   Of the Filial -Relation of can to God, [CHAP.
harmony with the eternal Rule of Right and Truth.
Yet he is laid under no constraint, He is impelled by
no necessity; but His will is ceaselessly influenced
by the spontaneous, generous emotions of an Infinite
Love.
And here a word may be usefully said, bearing
upon our mode of acquitting ourselves in the hour of
temptation. Some divines, by way of exalting the
grace of God, are apt to throw into the shade the
free-will of man; and, so long as the case of the obedient is alone contemplated, the teaching of such
divines has, at all events, a specious appearance, and
may defend itself by alleging a righteous horror of
attributing too much to the efforts of man. But,
when we come to the case of the disobedient, what is
the tendency of views which detract from the freedom of the human will? Is it not to make the sin
excusable? to represent the force of passion as having been equivalent to compulsion, and our own unwillingness to make a stand as having been inability?
And has no thought of this kind ever crossed us at
the very moment when it most behooved such thoughts
to be absent-in the balancings of the mind, before
we have consciously yielded to a temptation? Have
we never, at. that time, gladly entertained the suspicion, "Well, I am hardly a free agent; for this
strong current of corrupt desire virtually lays a necessity upon me?"  And would it not have been
better, and might it not have been blessed to our deliverance in that hour, if we had considered the original nobleness of our own nature, in virtue of the free,
independent, self-determining will with which the
Creator has endowed us? Let us be assured that, in




Ix.]  upon which the Love of God isfoundecl.  99
asserting the supremacy of this will against present
enjoyment or immediate advantage, lies our true
dignity, and that the Image of God cannot otherwise
be restored in us fallen creatures than by the will's
recognizing its own perfect freedom, and spurning
away irom it the allurements of sense and of the
world.
Thus we have traced the resemblance of man to
God in respect both of the constitution of his nature
and of his natural faculties. This resemblance, as I
have before remarked, is the effect of the filial relation in which man, as man, stands to God. I say
man, as man, because it is quite obvious that the
resemblances we have traced are to be found equally
in every mednber of the human family, whether Christian or heathen, whether engrafted into the Church
or beyond her pale. All have the threefold element
-body, soul, and spirit-in their nature; all have a
mind which is potentially (if not actually) creative;
all alike are endowed with free-will, and the power
of moral choice. And here a difficulty may arise in
some minds, which seems to lie in the way of what
has been said, Are we not told, it may be asked,
that " we are the children of God by faith in Christ
Jesus?"  Do we not instruct our children that in
Baptism " they are made members of Christ, children
of God, and inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven?"
And how is this consistent with our being children
originally, before the reception of Baptism, before the
exercise of faith? The answer is very simple. Man,
though a son of God in virtue of the original platform
of his nature, has by sin turned his back upon his




100  Of the Filial Relation of Mcan to God, [CHAP.
home, and, thus moving His Father's holy indignation, has become "a child of wrath."  This fall and
forfeiture of all domestic privilege having taken
place, God in mercy proposes to reconstitute His
family, alienated from Him by sin, on a new basis.
His own Son takes flesh, that He may be the Head
of this family, makes ample atonement for the sins of
every man, and merits by a life of perfect righteousness the acceptance of all. Then it is announced to
the world that all have, by the admission of evil into
their nature, forfeited their original position in the
family of God, but that this position through grace is
now again thrown open to all. The children of men
are exhorted by belief and by Baptism to unite themselves to Him, in whom the family is reconstituted,
and united to Him to become sons and heirs of God
-the destiny for which man had been created, but to
which he proved untrue. But the very call implies,
if you consider it closely, an affinity with God on the
part of the persons called-an affinity overlaid (it may
be) with sin, and ignorance, and error, but still subsisting in the groundwork of their nature. They are
called to the fruition and enjoyment of God-as the
Scriptures express it, "to His kingdom and glory."
Can any one be called to this enjoyment who has no
capacity for it? Could a stone, or a vegetable, or an
animal, be called to share God's kingdom? Then
man must have a capacity for this high enjoyment.
And what gives him this capacity? His having been
made originally for the kingdom; his having been
created for sonship. His nature, it is true, has become by the Fall a ruin, an unsightly heap of rubbish,
in which venomous reptiles lodge, and which is foul




ix.]  upon which the Love of God is founded. 101
with the greenness of decay; but it is no less true
that, when the rubbish is swept away, you may find
in that nature the ground-plan of the Divine Image.
We are not now speaking of the moral or spiritual
attainments of our Nature, but of its constitution and
capabilities.'Reader, one of the earliest steps toward the love
of God is to meditate often and deeply on His Fatherhood, and on the filial relation in which we stand to
Him. This of itself is sufficient to stir in the heart an
emotion of love toward Him, and a desire (oh, if we
had but strength to bring it to good effect!) to return
from our wanderings, and to find a home and a rest in
His Bosom. But if such be the effect of thinking of
the bare relationship which subsists between God and
us, how powerfully must such an effect be seconded
by taking into account the manner in which God has
proved His strong paternal feeling for us! If He is
simply announced to us as the Father of our spirits,
our hearts respond. But when He is presented to us
as the Gospel presents Him-when we are assured
that his Love was so true, so clinging, that even when
we were in the depths of our degradation and ruin,
fighting against Him with all the force of our will, He
gave His only begotten Son to be the propitiation for
our sins, parted with Him for a time, that He might
undergo for us a death of most cruel pain and shame;
then indeed the sentiment of love to Him becomes
something more than a sentiment, begins to claim for
itself a supremacy over the will, and to establish itself
as a principle of action. God grant it may be so
with you and me! It is a poor and cheap thing to




102 The Filial Relation of Man to Gocl, etc. [cHAP.
hear of the Love of God (and a poorer and cheaper
to speak of it) without a heart in some measure
kindled, or at least longing to be kindled thereby.
Pray we, therefore, with our Church: "0 God, who
hast prepared for them that love Thee such good
things as pass man's understanding; pour into our
hearts such love toward Thee, that we, loving Thee
above all things, may obtain Thy promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our
Lord. Amen."




x.]  Of the Way in which God has made, etc. 103
CHAPTER X.
OF THE WAY IN WHICH GOD HAS MADE THE PRECEPT OF DIVINE LOVE PRACTICABLE TO US BY THE
INCARNATION.;" Ie that hath seen Me hath seen the Fatlter." —JoHN xiv. 9.
T  has been shown in the preceding Chapters that
God's infinite fulness corresponds to man's deep
wants, and that man stands to God in the relationship
of a son to a father. Whenever God is truly represented to man, this correspondence, this relationship,
subsisting still in the groundwork of human nature,
though covered and hidden by the rubbish of sinful
and worldly lusts, wakens up an echo from the heart
-an echo which says, however confusedly and indistinctly, " Verily, Thou art my Father."
It must be admitted, however, that this echo, the
result of the correspondence and relationship aforesaid,
is of itself and by itself more of a sentiment than of a
principle. Let us understand the difference. A sentiment is a right and pure feeling on a moral or religious subject, which does not (or rather need not) go
beyond feeling, which need not determine the will,
or exert any decided influence over the character.
Right sentiments make a man more amiable, without




104 Of the TWay in which God has made the [cHAP.
necessarily making him a better man. They render
him an object of complacency, and perhaps of compassion, while they do not necessarily reform him. A
principle, on the other hand, if it have something less
of tenderness and of poetry, has more hardness of resolve than a sentiment, has a stronger element of the
will in it. Now, it is quite clear that, if the love of
God is to exert over us a practical influence (and, unless it does this, it certainly can be of no avail in the
matter of our salvation), it must become a settled
principle of character within us. A fine and generous emotion, if it be nothing more than emotion, how
will it ever struggle with the manifold corruptions of
a heart " deceitful above all things, and desperately
wicked? 9" how will it ever renew a nature which, in
its first germ and rudiment, is depraved, a nature
"shapen in wickedness and conceived in sin? " Such
emotion would be as if a little tongue of earthly flame
had been applied to Elijah's sacrifice, after it had been
steeped in water three times. The flame might have
played for a moment on the victim and the wood, but,
finding every material soaked, upon which it could
naturally kindle, would have collapsed; would never
have prevailed, as did God's lightning from heaven,
against " the wood, and the stones, and the dust," or
have " licked up the water that was in the trench."
The powerlessness of the love of God, considered
as a mere sentiment, consists very mainly in the indefiniteness of the Object of love. "No man hath
seen God at any time."  It is not merely that we
have not seen Him with our bodily eyes, it is not
merely that an image of Jehovah was never painted
upon mortal retina; but no finite mind has (apart from




x.]  Precept of D)ivine Love practicable to us. 105
Christ) a definite conception of the Divine character.
" God is Light," and "God is Love "-these are blessed
and precious truths; but if these assurances stood
alone, if no other exhibition of God had been made to
us than what is conveyed in descriptions of this sort,
there would have been room for the remark that Light
and Love are mere abstractions, and abstractions are
powerless over the character and will of man. Were
it not for the exhibition which He has made of Himself in Christ, we could only conceive of God as of an
aggregate of abstractions; that is to say, we draw a
notion of goodness, mercy, justice, love, truth, holiness,
from our own little sphere and our own limited experience, and to the sum total of these notions we give
the name of God. Add to this that the idea, when
we have formed it, however captivating it may be, is
not free from contradictions, perplexities, and mysteries insoluble. To state one of these perplexities. If
God is to become an object of attraction to the human
heart, we must think of Him as endowed with affections and sympathies. But what does affection, what
does sympathy mean, as it exists in the Divine Nature? We know not, nor in our present state can we
know. On the one hand, we cannot imagine God to
be the subject of those turbulent, restless, and disquieting emotions which we call passions; for this would
be to represent Him to ourselves as imperfect, and to
detract from His infinite blessedness. Yet we have
no notion of passions and affections but such as is
drawn from our own nature and experience; and thus
we must either be content to think of God as moved
by these (which we see clearly to be wrong), or must
think of Him as passionless (which perhaps would be




106 Of the Way in which God has nmade the [cHAP.
worse practically, even if more correct theoretically).
For, according to the constitution of our nature, it
would be impossible to fix our affections on a wooden
God, touched by no sympathy, and susceptible of no
emotion.-Again, in thinking of God, we are forming
an idea of the Infinite; and the Infinite transcends all
thought and baffles all conception. If we indulge in
speculations on such a subject, we shall soon be dazzled and blinded, and forced to confess that " clouds
and darkness are round about" the great Object which
we investigate. In short, the perfections and nature
of God are to the human understanding what the sun
in his full meridian splendor is to the human eye. No
eye can look upon the sun in his strength without
being blinded. Excess of light would superinduce
darkness. And the reason of man, as infirm in the
world of ideas as the eye is in the world of matter,
cannot gaze steadily upon God's perfections without
being confounded; can only catch some rays of His
light, as they come to us refracted through the earthly
atmosphere which surrounds us. " No man hath seen
God at any time."  So that if God had never been
made flesh, and dwelt among us, the sentiment of Divine love must have been the most uncertain, indefinite, and confused of sentiments, utterly unable to
render an account of itself, and much more to establish
a permanent empire in the soul.
But (blessed be His Name for having thus facilitated His love to us!) the Word of God-He who
had already revealed the Infinite in the works of Creation-did take flesh, appeared upon earth in our
nature, and was found in fashion as a man. And now
observe the relation in which our nature stands to the




x.]  Precept of Dvivine Love practicable to us. 107
Divine in the mystery of the Holy Incarnation. It
becomes a medium through which men may look upon
God-look upon Him with their bodily eyes (the holy
Apostles did so), look upon Him also with their understandings, and with the eyes of their affections.
We should effectually defeat our own object, if, by
way of gaining more knowledge on the subject of
light, we should gaze on the sun in his strength. But
we may gain a knowledge of sunlight indirectly. We
may interpose a medium between the sun's rays and
our eyes.  The optical instrument called the prism
explains to us the properties and constitution of light.
So does the natural object called the rainbow. In the
prism and in the rainbow we see light analyzed, broken
up into its component elements; and we then understand and see (without any injury or straining to the
eye) that light consists of several rays, some of a bright
and some of a sombre hue, which rays are the source
of all the fair colors wherewith the robe of Nature is
decked. Now, the humanity of Our blessed Lord, a
holy, harmless, undefiled humanity, conceived of the
Holy Ghost, and born of the Virgin Mary, is to the
perfections of the Divine Nature exactly what the transparent prism, and the pure raindrops, are to the suna medium of exhibition. In the humanity of our Lord
we can study the character and perfections of the
Most High, without presumption,. and at the same
time without mistake.  He represents God to us.
puts God before us, with a vividness and a definiteness.
which we could never gain from any description, however graphic and however just. God is made in Christ:
if I may so speak with reverence, level to our apprehensions and our sympathies. Level to our apprehen



108  Of the Way iqn which God has made the [CHAP.
sions. The Infinite has taken a finite nature like our
own, and a finite nature like our own we can easily
conceive of. Here is no abstract idea of perfection, but
an actual, breathing embodiment of it, One who lived,
and toiled, and suffered, a real man among men, who
encountered all sorts of characters and incidents, and
in every such encounter demeaned Himself with an
admirable wisdom, sanctity, and love. We are not
left to hypothesis as to God's sentiments upon human
life, its scenes, and the personages who act in them;
we see God Himself an actor in these scenes, coming
athwart these personages, and delivering Himself on
each occasion in sentiments the very tones of which
are unearthly. Here, too, you find (in the humanity
of Our Lord) the reconciliation of the apparent contradictions between mercy and righteous wrath. On
the one hand, no amount or measure of moral degradation shuts out a sinner from His sympathy, or
checks for an instant the outflow of His Divine compassion.  The robber, the outlaw, the harlot, the
adulteress-He has no word of severity for them as
such, so long as they take shame to themselves for
the evil that is in them, and welcome the glad tidings
which He brings to them of a Father's love and pity.
But there is another and a severe side to His character, whenever He comes across a want of truth, a dissembling of convictions, a hypocritical make-believe
of religion, an outward homage without the submission of the will. The hollowness of Pharisaism always draws forth from His lips. one loud, reiterated,
sustained "VWoe!"  Whence we gather the sentiments of God toward sin, and learn to adjust Divine
severity with Divine goodness.  The love of God




x.]  Precept of Divine Love practicable to ts. 109
freely embraces all, however low they have fallen, who
willingly take up their position as sinners, caring little or nothing for the outpointed finger of human
scorn. But want of truth in all its forms, insincerity,
hypocrisy, parade and demonstration of religious feeling, in short, any sacrifice which men do to the opinion
of their fellow-creatures, is offensive to Him in the
highest degree, and incompatible with His friendship.
Such are God's sentiments toward sin, as our Lord
Jesus has expounded them.-And again, God is in
Christ level to our sympathies. There were emotions
in Our Lord's human heart sundry and manifold, emotions of compassion, warm friendship, patriotism, zeal,
righteous indignation, which are to be regarded by us,
in virtue of the union subsisting between His humanity and the Godhead, not merely as affections incidental to our nature, but as conveying andrepresenting
to us what there is in the heart of God. Divine affections must ever (as I have remarked) be an insoluble
mystery to us; but this is certain, that there is in the
Divine Nature something which corresponds to, and
is represented by, passion and affection in ourselvessomething which, looked at through the medium of
humanity, is passion and affection.  We need not
fear to conceive of God as stirred by the same pure
and holy emotions which stirred the heart of Our
Lord. It is the nearest approach our finite minds can
make to the absolute truth.
Thus, then, by means of the Incarnation, God has
reduced Himself to the level of human apprehensions
and human sympathies. He gives us in Christ a
definite object, upon which all our sentiments of
love, loyalty, veneration, affection, may fasten; yet




110 Of the Way in which God has made the [cHAP.
without fear of idolatry, inasmuch as this object is
Divine. To conceive of Christ is to conceive of God;
and to love Christ is to love God; for he that hath
seen Christ hath seen the Father. Oh, let us adore
His infinite condescension, who not only lays down
this as the first and great commandment of His law,
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind," and
thus seeks to persuade the will into compliance not by
menaces of authority, but by the amiable attractions
of love; but who also, knowing Himself to be (in the
perfection of His absolute Nature) above the reach of
our capacities, has smoothed the way for the fulfilment
of this commandment, and removed all difficulties out
of our path, by presenting Himself to us in fashion as
a man, and allowing us to love Him through the medium of One, who was a partaker at once of His nature and of ours.
It is true, indeed, that we individually have never
looked upon Our Lord Jesus Christ, and cannot therefore form as lively a conception of Him as those first
disciples, who companied with Him all the time that
He went in and out among men. And it seems to be
intimated in Holy Scripture that the difficulty (and
therefore the praise) of believing in Him and loving
Him is, under these circumstances, enhanced; that
our position is one of some disadvantage compared
with that of the earliest believers. In this direction
look the words of Our Lord to St. Thomas: " Thomas,
because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed: blessed
are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."
And St. Peter speaks to those whom he is addressing,
of Jesus Christ, "whom having not seen, ye love;"




x.]  Precept of -Divine Love practicable to us. 111
the thought in the mind of the Apostle being probably this, " Your faith is stronger, and your love more
commendable than mine, who have seen Him." And
yet the advantages are surely not all on one side.
There can be no doubt that the mere association with
Our Lord, in the days when He was compassed with
natural (though not with sinful) infirmity, though it
might have furnished a more exact impression of Him,
would not have been nearly so conducive to reverence
of feeling as our present view of Him down the vista
of the past. The hunger and the thirst, and the
weariness, and the buffetings, and the slights, and the
mockeries, and the cruel injuries, are to our faith no
drawbacks; rather the glory which now enfolds His
Sacred Person has absorbed into itself these traits of
human infirmity, and made them glow with its own
lustre. But when the disciples looked upon them, as
they were actually passing, these things would be
hinderances rather than helps to their forming a right
estimate of His holy dignity.-Consider, moreover, to
how great an extent the inestimable possession of the
Holy Gospels compensates us for the loss of all actual
intercourse with Our Lord; how, by furnishing to us
these four pictures, Our Merciful Father has again
smoothed the way for us to love His Son, and through
His Son to love Him. Consider that we have in
these Gospels the very image of Christ (Himself the
Image of God) as it was projected upon the mind of
the Jew, reared in Old Testament associations; upon
the mind of the Roman', the prompt and energetic
1 This is Dr. Da Costa's idea. I have not his book (on "the
Four Gospels ") at hand; but it is he who, in adverting to the
resemblance of style, often observed upon, between St. Mark's




112 Of the TWay in which God has made the [CHAP.
conqueror of the world; upon the mind of the Greek,
who represented the world's literature and intelligence; and finally, upon the mind of one who, for his
profound insight into the deep things of God, and
specially into the relations of the Son to the Father,
has been called by way of eminence St. John the
Divine. Here, therefore, you have four photographs
of Our Lord in different postures, and with the minor
incidents of the picture differently grouped. Photographs I may well call them, much more truly than
pictures; because in the photograph the sun is the
great designer, and the work of the artist is simply to
arrange the position of the subject, and to prepare
and expose the materials to the light.  Similarly, the
holy Evangelists, in providing likenesses of Our Lord
for His Church, arranged the great Subject each of
them from his own point of view, and according to
the impression which Christ left upon his own mind;
but they did little else than this; the light from
Heaven, the brilliant light of inspiration, streamed in
upon the dark chamber of their apprehensions, and
secured the accuracy of the portrait in every minute
particular.
Then, since our Merciful God has made the love of
Himself thus easy, first bygiving us an express Image
of Himself in the sinless humanity of Jesus, and
secondly, by portraying this Image in the narratives
of the four Evangelists, our part is to ask ourselves
very seriously whether our hearts are drawn toward
the likeness, which has thus been furnished to us. Do
Gospel and Caesar's Commentaries, insinuates that Marcus may
have been " the devout soldier of them which waited on" Cornelius " continually."




x.]  Precept of Divine Love practicable to us.  113
we love with an adoring love, with a love which more
and more establishes its empire within us, the character of Christ as it is presented to us by the Evangelists?  I say, as it is presented to us by the Evangelists, because I am persuaded that the object of homage
with many Christians is a Christ of their own fancy,
not the Christ of Scripture, that is, of history.. They
copy into their fancy picture all the mild, and gentle,
and merciful features of the original; but the indignant repudiation of hypocrisy, the keen-edged censure
of religious formalism, the stern exposure of all stickling for the letter while the spirit is disregarded, the
distinct repudiation of the world's estimate of all subjects-blessedness, misery, sin, piety, God-the positive severity to characters wanting in truth and
wanting in tenderness-in short, that whole side of
the Lord's mind which armed against Him Pharisaic
prejudice and exclusiveness, and aroused a malignant
hatred against His Person, without parallel in the
annals of our race, all this scarcely enters at all into
the estimate of Christ's character which many of His
professing followers form.  But to love Christ must
surely imply (as I shall insist upon more at large in
another Chapter) a sympathy with His antipathies.
If we in no measure detest falsehood and formalism as
He did, if we in no measure repudiate, as He did, the
world's estimate of spiritual subjects, surely there is
every reason to doubt whether, instead of Him, we
are not worshipping a creation of our own brain. Oh,
it is easy to love God (or to imagine that we love
Him) when He comes preaching peace to all who will
receive it, and scattering blessings with lavish hand
upon the sufferers of the human race; but when He




114 Of the Way in which God has made the [coAP.
beats down with His fulminations the old idols of
prejudice, which have grown green in our hearts, unmasks our hypocrisies, and gives the lie to every
single maxim and principle of worldly policy-how
then?  Search your heart, my reader; are you worshipping a fictitious Christ, or the true one?
Perhaps you may find that- you are worshipping,
not a Person at all, but a doctrine, or a little group
of doctrines, selected from the mass according to your
own prepossessions, or the bias of your own theological school. Christianity, according to your view, does
not consist in the simple, trustful love of Jesus, moulding the character into conformity with His image;
but in a resolute (and, it must be confessed, an occasionally bitter) adherence to certain blessed and precious doctrines announced by the Apostle Paul, for
the comfort and edification of the people of God.. Justification of free grace and by faith only, sanctification
of God's elect through the Spirit, and their preservation through faith unto salvation-allegiance to these
formularies of doctrine and denunciations of all who
do not give them an equally prominent place with
yourself, is what you are substituting for the first and
great commandment, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and
with all thy mind."  Oh! beware. We are justified,
doubtless, by faith. But the Scripture never says
that we are justified by believing in the doctrine oy
justiflcation by faith. We are justified, doubtless, by
faith. But it is simply because faith is the heart's
first approach to Christ, who by His own merit heals
all who apply to Him. The faith, if genuine, fastens
not on any doctrine, but on the Person of the Saviour,




x.]  Precept of Divine Love practicable to us.  115
and works the renovation of the character through
the love of Him which it engenders. Have you the
faith which makes you an adherent of Himself? and
is it working by love? Do you study His character,
as it is portrayed by the Evangelists, looking often
and lovingly upon His picture, as we do upon the
portraits of those we love? Is it your delight to be
continually reminded of His Presence, and do you
instinctively seek that Presence in the intervals of
business and amusement, and among the trials of the
day? And do you delight to feel that you are especially in His Presence, when two or three are gathered
together to commemorate His dying Love in the holy
mysteries of His own appointment?  And is your
constant gaze upon Him in His Providence, in His
Word, and in His Sacraments, secretly working in you
a resemblance to His purity, as it is said that the wild
animals who live in very high latitudes become white
by constantly looking on the waste of snow which
lies around them? These are the questions by which
to determine our love of the Saviour, and therefore
our love of God, whose image He is. And this love
is the very criterion of Christian character. For, as
on the one hand it is said, " Grace be with all those
who love Our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity;" so on
the other are we warned that the lack of this love entails a curse on the disciple who lacks it: "If any
man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha."




116         Of the Love of Gratitude.       [CHAP.
CHAPTER  XI.
OF THE LOVE OF GRATITUDE.
" We love Him, because He first loved us."-1 JO0IN iv. 19.
TT was pointed out in a former Chapter that one
main form which the love of God assumes is the
form of gratitude. The love of gratitude (or, as it
might be termed, of reciprocity) will form the subject
of the present Chapter.
The love of gratitude is a sense (poured forth into
the heart, and filling every corner of it) of God's Love
to us. Observe the terms of the definition.  A sense
of God's Love-not a feeling awakened by God's
Love. The two expressions may seem to signify the
same thing; but, when we come to examine them, we
shall find that the first goes far beyond the second.
Gratitude, as it is felt by man toward man, is generally no more than a feeling (or sentiment) awakened
by kindness. If a man does me a kindness at a considerable sacrifice to himself, this kindness produces
in my mind a movement toward him, a disposition to
think well of him, to like him, and (if I can) to requite
him. If I have been heretofore cold toward him, his
kindness makes me thaw; if I have hitherto taken no
interest in him, his kindness quickens in me such an




xI.]       Of the Love of Gratitude.          117
interest. So the sun, by its action upon the face of
Nature, thaws the crust of ice which had formed over
the water, and quickens the seed which lay dead and
dormant in the bowels of the earth.
But gratitude, as felt toward God, consists merely
in a sense of His Love. The sense of His Love is not
only the cause, but the essence, of ours. It does not
resemble the thawing of the ice and the quickening
of the seed by the sun's rays, so much as the reflection of his light by the moon and planets. Consider
the two images, and you will see the difference of the
things illustrated. The thawing of the ice, and the
quickening of the seed, are effects in Nature produced
by the sun's rays-influences of the sun felt in Nature, and showing themselves in certain changes there.
But what is moonlight?  Moonlight is something
more than an operation produced by the sun-it is
actually sunlight reflected by the moon. It is called
moonlight, not because it proceeds from the moon
(which is an opaque body, having no light in itself),
but because the moon (as also the planets do) intercepts it and gives it back. Similarly, the love of man
toward God is not merely a sentiment engendered in
the human heart by the Love of God toward man. It
is actually " God's " own " love " (to use the Apostle's
expression), "shed forth in our hearts by the Holy
Ghost which is given unto us;" it is not man's love
at all, if you trace it up to its source; but God's Love,
intercepted and returned upon Him from a heart which
has the capacity of reciprocating it. It does not take
its rise in our own bosoms; we have no other property in it than that of simply reflecting and giving it
back.




118         Of the Love of G-rctict'ue.    [CHAP.
Now we shall view the subject for a few moments
under this image, because it conveys many profitable
lessons:
1. If our love to God be only His Love to us reflected from our hearts, it must be quite clear that the
more we expose our hearts to His Love, the more
truly shall we love Him.
It is sometimes apprehended that by a too full and
free exhibition of the Divine Love we may encourage
sinners in their evil courses, and make them careless
and licentious. But what shall we say to such reasoning, if the very essence of man's love to God
stands in the apprehension of God's Love to him?
Can we ever effectually sap sin's power over the heart,
without implanting there sincere love to God? And
if sincere love to God be nothing else than God's
Love shed forth into and reflected by the heart, are
we likely to implant it by hiding God's Love in a
corner, and shutting up the heart of man from the
apprehension of it?  What would be thought of a
man, who, being possessed of some jewel, and desiring to exhibit its beauty, and to make it flash and
sparkle, should carefully enclose it in its casket, and
exclude it from the light of the sun? The light in
which it must flash and sparkle is not its own light;
and therefore such a course would effectually defeat
the end. And if the dull spirit of man is to be made
to burn and shine with love to God, it must be brought
out into the full blaze of God's Love-the fuller the
blaze, the stronger will be the reflected light. And,
for those who possess the love of God, the great
method of making any solid advance in it must be
surely a continual opening of the heart toward God's




xi.]        Of the Love of Gratitude.          119
Love, with a yearning desire to know more of it, to be
profoundly indoctrinated into its freedom and fulness.
If we are conscious of having sinned, it will do nothing for our restoration, rather it will throw us back to
a greater distance than that to which the sin has already removed us, to doubt God's Love in respect of
that particular sin. To regard Him as our tender Father, yearning over us after and notwithstanding our
fall, watching with deep solicitude for the earliest
symptom  of a better mind, nay, as already having
given us forgiveness through the Blood and Righteousness of His Son, this is the only method of restoration.  And the longer we delay the contact of the
heart with the pardoning Love of God, the more time
we waste, and the longer we obstruct our own recovery.
2: It must, I suppose, strike every one that, if our
love to God be nothing more than God's Love to us,
shed forth into our hearts and reflected back thence,
there can be no sort of merit or desert in it.  Of this
grace of love it may be said, as is said by the
Apostle of ministerial gifts, "What hast thou that
thou didst not receive? Now if thou didst receive it,
why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received
it?"  If we are in the first instance recipients of the
Love, which flows from us back into the Bosom of
of God, is not all ground of boasting cut away? And
if there be no merit in the love of God, there is no
merit in any human virtue. For love embraces all the
duties of the first Table, according to that word of
Christ's: " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
mind.  This is the first and great commandment."




120         Of the Love of Gratitude.    [cHAP.
And in regard to the duties of the second Table, they
are implicitly wrapped up in the first; for the love of
our neighbor is prescribed by God, and is part therefore of the love of God. Thus all duties, if traced up
to their original ground, resolve themselves into the
love of God, and are fulfilled by that love. No duties
therefore can lay claim to any merit, since this chief
and summary duty has none.
3. But, thirdly, our illustration suggests this question, What is it which prevents our so realizing God's
Love to us as to love Him in return? And, when
pursued, it answers the question which it suggests.
What is it which might prevent the earth from reflecting the warm and golden rays which the sun throws
upon it? The circumstance of part of its surface being turned away from the sun might of course do this.
And we might compare such part of the earth's surface to the spiritual state of the heathen. They are
plunged in the night of ignorance and error, because
the revelation of God's Love has never been made to
them; they have never had their hearts exposed to
the action of it. But Christians, who have been made
acquainted with God's Love by the revelations of the
Gospel-what can it be which prevents their realizing
it in an effectual manner, so as to give it back? Our
illustration here again stands us in stead. The earth's
surface may be exposed to the sun: nevertheless, if
you build a hovel over a part of it, with no aperture
for the light, you prevent that part from reflecting the
sun's rays. Now, there is a certain hovel built over
the hearts of all of us, screening us from the light
and warmth of Divine Love, and called unbelief. All
the knowledge of God's Love in the world, without




xI.]         Of the Love of Gratituce.           121
faith in it, will avail nothing to make us reciprocate it.
We may feel certain that the Love of God has been
manifested in a marvellous way toward the whole human race; that it has been poured out without stint
upon mankind in general, and yet may not ourselves (by
reason of unbelief) so feel it as to reciprocate it. Just
so a man in a dark hovel might be conscious that the
sun was shining gloriously outside, yet himself might
not either be lightened or warmed thereby.  And
therefore St. John, describing the process which is
necessary in order to our reciprocating the Love of
God, says, " We have known and believed the Love
which God hath to us."  " Known "-this is the first
step; and it distinguishes Christians from the heathen;
the heathen have not " known " the Love of God, except so far as Nature may have served to some of them
as a revelation of it. But the knowing it is not of
itself sufficient; the Love must be "believed'  also,
in order to its being given back; this is the second
stage; and it distinguishes the true from the merely
nominal Christian.  He who not only knows the Love
of God, but believes in it, enters upon the experimental
enjoyment of it, and immediately reciprocates it.
It being now clearly seen that faith is the spring
of the love of gratitude, it remains to inquire how
this faith is to be obtained.
Now, in obtaining it there are two great truths to be
kept in sight and made the foundation and regulating
principle of all our effort's. First, that it is the gift of
God.  " To you it is given," writes St. Paul, "in the
behalf of Christ,.... to believe on Him."  And
again: salvation by faith (and if salvation by faith,
then surely faith itself, which is the instrument of our
6




122         Of the Love of Gratitude.       [CHAP.
appropriating salvation) is said distinctly to be the
gift of God: " By grace are ye saved through faith;
and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God."
Secondly, that the exercise of faith is designed to be
a moral criterion between man and man; and that
those who have heard of Christ are morally responsible for not exercising faith in Him.
From  these two truths flow the following practical advices:
1. The gift of faith is to be sought in earnest and
persevering prayer. " Lord, help Thou mine unbelief,"
" Increase my faith," is to be the ceaseless importunate cry of our hearts. And we must confess ourselves before God, not only destitute of faith, but
incapable of attaining it by our own efforts. And
though we must be very earnest in this prayer, yet
we must be content to abide God's time for answering
it, remembering how often in the stubbornness of our
perverse hearts we have turned a deaf ear to the solicitations of His grace, and have thus merited that He
should turn a deaf ear to our cry.
2. We should observe, for our encouragement,
that our importunity in prayer is itself an answer to
our petitions. There cannot be earnest prayer without some amount of faith, though it may not be a
faith fully formed or developed, nor may as yet fasten
upon those truths which are the leading features of
the Gospel.  " He that cometh to God must believe
that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them  that
diligently seek Him."  Consider how thoroughly unformed a faith those characters in the Gospel must
have had, who yet are commended for their faith, and
carry away their cure (or the cure of their friends) as




xi.]        Of the -Love of Gratitude.         123
the recompense of it. It can have been nothing more,
generally speaking, than a persuasion of Christ's power
and willingness to heal-in the case of the woman with
the issue of blood, it seems to have been nothing more
than the idea that it was worth while making an experiment, as it might be successful. It is well to remember that, as you may infer from smoke that there
is fire somewhere, though it may be smouldering beneath superincumbent fuel, and not even a spark may
be visible, so you may infer from prayer that there is
faith somewhere in the heart, though it may be wellnigh smothered beneath the load of natural corruption
and infirmity. And of Christ it is said, that He will
not quench the smoking flax. Prayer is the smoke
which goes up from a heart, in which the first spark
of faith has been dimly kindled.
3. Together with prayer, other means of bringing
about the desired effect must be diligently used.
The chief of these will be the making God's Love
a definite subject of meditation. This Love is to be
inferred from the great fact of His having given His
Son for us, which must be constantly placed before the
mind with an effort to realize it. Our familiarity with
the fact, or rather with the words which express it,
exceedingly blunts and deadens our apprehensions of
it. We must strive against the influence of this familiarity.  We must endeavor to lift our minds out of
the groove of certain formularies, in which the truth
has been from our childhood conveyed to us; and to
front, not a verbal proposition, but the great reality
itself. The great reality is, that God gave up for man,
out of love to man, and for the salvation of man, the
one thing in the Universe which could to God be a




124         Of thle Love of Gratitude.       [CHAP.
sacrifice.  " God so loved the world, that He gave
His Only-Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in
Him  should not perish, but have everlasting life."
" He gave His Son."  We know the exceeding difficulty with which a parent is induced to tear himself
away from an only child. If the child is to be parted
with to adverse or doubtful fortunes, the struggle
is more dreadful still. If an only son is to be sent
to a war upon the losing side, where daily risks have
to be run, daily hardships to be encountered, and a
violent death is all but certain, some one strong absorbing passion must have got the mastery of the parent's heart, before he could be brought to consent to
such a sacrifice.  Now, this is the aspect under which
God would have us think of His Love. His Son, of
glory equal, of majesty coeternal with His own, had
lain in His Bosom from all eternity, had been bound
to Him in that closest of all unions, the unity of the
Godhead.  But God went forth in the longings of
ardent parental affection to those created children of
His, who had abandoned communion with Him, and
in whom His Image (the image at least of His moral
perfections) was altogether effaced. Not the smallest
signs of a better mind did they give; every cry which
reached Heaven from earth was a cry of defiance and
hostility; but as the undutifulness of a son does not
stifle the father's affection and anxiety to reclaim him,
so the fall of man did not repress the tenderness of
God's Love for him, but on the other hand called forth
the most wonderful exercise of it. Rather than that
His created children should perish eternally, God preferred making over His uncreated Son to hardship,
and toil, and a bloody and shameful death on their bhI        I~~~~~~~~~~;




XT.]        Of the Love of Gratitude.            125
half. That bloody and shameful death was in the
counsels of His wisdom  expiatory of sin; it was a
satisfaction of the Divine justice; and it harmonized
all the Divine perfections with the salvation of man.
This, however, is not the point in it to which attention is now called.  We are not speaking of the efficacy of the Sacrifice, but of the Love of God in providing the Sacrifice.  It is of no small importance, as
we have said in an earlier Chapter, to observe this distinction.  "We love Iim," says the Apostle-not
because He has conferred a particular and high benefit
upon us-not even because He has given His Son for
us-but " because He first loved us."  It is the Love
of God which attracts our gratitude, not the benefit
which, in the exercise of that Love, He hath conferred.
The affections of the human heart cannot be constrained by benefits, independently, of the mind of the
benefactor.  And therefore, if our hearts are to be
given to God, the thing which we need first and before all other things is assurance of His sympathy.
And of this He has vouchsafed to us the strongest
and most irrefragable assurance in the gift of Christ.
This gift we must strive to view, not only in its own
intrinsic preciousness, as being the ransom of our souls,
but in the Love which dictated it.
4. The last point which I shall mention for the obtaining of faith in God's Love, is the actingy as if we
had it. The ten lepers in the Gospel were bidden to
go and show  themselves to the priests, before they
were cleansed.  Now, the purpose of showing themselves to the priests was, that they might receive ceremonial purification, which the priests were directed
not to confer unless they had first ascertained that




126         Of the Love of Gratitude.      [CHAP.
the leper was actually made whole.  These lepers
were instructed, then, to act upon an assumption, which
was not yet realized; and in the acting upon it they
found it realized; " it came to pass," we read, " that
as they went, they were cleansed."  Until, therefore,
you obtain a lively faith and love, act as far as possible on the assumption that you have them. Endeavor, to foment in your heart the poor faith and love
which you at present have. Think much of God's
Love as manifested, not only to mankind at large, but
to yourself in particular. Express yourself toward
Him in prayer as if you loved fHim. Review His
mercies in detail, and thank Him for them specifically. Praise Him with as much fervor as you at present
are master of, in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual
songs. " Aspire to God by brief but ardent ejaculations of your heart; admire His beauty; invoke His
assistance, and cast yourself in spirit at the foot of
His cross; adore His goodness; treat with Him often
on the great concern of your salvation; give your
soul to Him a thousand times a day; make a thousand different sorts of motions in your heart to excite
you to a passionate and tender affection." 1 Stretch
out your hand to Him as a child to a father, that He
may conduct you; and while you are thus musing the
fire shall kindle; your faith shall seem  to burst
through the superincumbent load of your natural corruption; and the Love of God, shed abroad in your
heart by the Holy Ghost which is given you, shall return again into His Bosom, as rivers return into the
great deep, whose full-charged fountains sent them
forth.
1 From the " Vie Devote " of S. Francois de Sales.




xII.]       Of the gove of God, etc.          127
CHAPTER  XII.
OF THE LOVE OF GOD AS INVOLVING ANTIPATHY TO
EVIL.
"Ye that love the Lord, hate evil."-Ps. xcvii. 10.
4 THE first of all the commandments is, Hear, O
Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: and
thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
and with all thy soul, and all thy mind, and with all
thy strength."
Hence it is supremely important to ascertain how
far we fulfil this commandment. And yet perhaps
there is no point respecting our spiritual state which
it is more hard to ascertain. There is no point on
which the naturally deceitful heart is more apt to deceive us. And the reasons of this proneness to selfdeceit upon a question so important are obvious.
First, as the Apostle John says, " No man hath seen
God at any time."  And our ideas of that which we
have never seen are necessarily undefined and vague.
Mere description, however accurate, can never convey
any thing fully. And, therefore, our very notion of
God being vague, our obligation to love Him becomes
somewhat vague also. And it contributes to this indefiniteness of impression that God is really so much




128            Of the Love of God             [CHAP.
above us-that there are in Him  so many things
strange to our experience and understanding, that
"His thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are our
ways His ways."
Now, an admirable practical test of the love of God
is suggested in the passage which stands at the head
of this Chapter, and shall form the subject of it.  If
we know comparatively little about God, if we find it
hard to raise our understandings to the apprehension
of HEis perfections, if, when we try to fix our thoughts
upon Him, " clouds and darkness " are apt to gather
round the mind-there is at least one subject with
which we are thoroughly conversant from  our youth
upward, which presents itself in a thousand definite
shapes, and by our dispositions toward which we may
judge with tolerable certainty of our disposition toward God.  That subject is evil-moral evil-in one
word, sin.  WVho does not know what evil means?
If I were to define it, I should fall into the logical
error of maldng a definition more obscure than the
thing defined.  Evil is with us all day long, in our
hearts-aroucnd us all day long, in our society. Our
moral constitutions take it in continually, just as our
bodies take in the air we breathe.  As says the
Christian poet" Sin is with man at morning break,
And through the livelong day,
Deafens the ear that fain would wake
To Nature's simple lay."
Now, of thus much respecting Almighty God wre may
be absolutely certain, that evil is His opposite. " God
is light; and in Him  is no darkness at all."  We
know what contradictories in reasoning are; they are




xII.]    as involving Antipathy to Evil.         129
two statements, which cannot possibly be both true
or both false at the same tinme; the truth of one of
theml infers necessarily the falsehood of the other.
~We know what contradictories in nature are. Water
destroys fire.  Light expels darkness.  Alkalies neutralize acids. The two cannot subsist together. Now,
God (whatever else He may be) is the contradictory
of evil.  Evil stands in opposition to God. God lays
His ban upon it, condemns it, forbids it, will in time
demolish it utterly. What follows?  That, if we hate
evil, we must love God, even as, if we dread and dislike the darkness, we must welcome and long for the
light. The two things infer one another, and there is
no alternative.  For, though the Psalmist in the exhortation,  0 ye that love the Lord, see that ye hate
the thing which is evil," seems at first sight to imply
that they who love the Lord might possibly be slack
in hating evil, the words are surely to be understood
as a caution addressed to those who profess to love
the Lord, having, indeed, a sense very similar to that
motto upon God's foundation, which is recited by the
Apostle Paul: " Let every one that nameth the name
of Christ depart from iniquity."
By way, then, of testing the affections of our own
hearts toward God, let us ascertain how we are disposed toward His opposite-evil. And, in order that
we may do this the more easily, let us consider what
is involved in the term, a hatred of evil.
It is clear, then, that to hate evil is something far
more than merely to shztn, or avoid it; that it is possible to avoid without hating it; nay, that not only is
it possible, but that this is a phenomenon which not
unfrequently meets us-of which, possibly, we have




130            Of the Love of God            [CHAP.
experience in ourselves. There are certain forms of
sin to which all persons of strong passions and warm
temperaments are naturally propense. Experience, or
dread of the prejudicial effects of indulgence, or fear
of discovery and exposure, may adequately protect us
from the outward act of sin, so that our conduct in
this respect may be blameless. And yet there may be
a positive absence of any thing like hatred, or moral
dislike, in our feeling against such forms of evil. Perhaps we may even toy with the images of sin, when
presented to us by our fancy, or even go so far as to
hanker after the removal of restrictions.  But God is
purity; and, if we do not hate impurity, sicken at the
sight and thought of it, and turn away with disgust,
it is out of the question that we can love Him.
Again: it is quite possible not to be implicated
personally in sin, and yet to treat it, when witnessed
or heard of in others, with levity and indifference.
While far enough removed from it ourselves, we may
speak of it with a smile, and use it to point a jest.
This we surely could not do, unless we were indifferent to it; and indifference to it implies that we do not
hate it; indifference is a standing aloof from either extreme-equally poised between love and hatred.
If we would realize the full force of the term
"hatred of evil," as it ought to exist in all, as it
would exist in a perfectly righteous man, we shall do
well to consider how sensitive we are to natural evil
in its every form-to pain, and suffering, and misfortune.  How delicately is the physical frame of man
constructed, and how keenly is the slightest derangement in any part of it felt! A little mote in the eye,
hardly discernible by the eye of another, the swelling




xIi.]    is involving Antipathy to Evil.      131
of a small gland, the deposit of a small grain of sand,
what agonies may these slight causes inflict! That fine
filament of nerves of feeling spread like a wonderful
net-work of gossamer over the whole surface of the
body, how exquisitely susceptible is it! A trifling
burn, or scald, or incision, how does it cause the member affected to be drawn back suddenly, and the
patient to cry out! Now, there can be no question
that, if man were in a perfect moral state, moral evil
would affect his mind as sensibly, and in as lively a
manner-would, in short, be as much of an affliction to
him, as pain is to his physical frame. He would shrink
and snatch himself away, as sin came near to his consciousness; the first entrance of it into his imagination
would wound and arouse his moral sensibilities, and
make him positively unhappy. You will say, perhaps,
that there never was an instance of such acute moral
sensibilities in any partaker of our nature. Excuse
me; there was. The Holy, Harmless, Undefiled One,
Our Lord Jesus Christ, was an instance, and the only
instance in point. It was not only that He loathed
the grosser forms of evil; but that He flung from Him
with abhorrence every unspiritual suggestion, such as
that once made to Him by the Apostle Peter, to decline the Cross and consult His own ease. Christ
heard the tempter's whisper on that occasion finding
an organ for itself in the mouth of the Apostle; but
immediately, with that moral indignation which formed
one of the grandest elements in His perfect character,
the Seed of the Woman turned upon the Serpent, and
crushed his head: " Get thee behind Me, Satan: thou
art an offence unto me: for thou savorest not the
things that be of God, but those that be of men."




132            Of the Love of God            [CHAr.
And it is this inoral sensitiveness of Christ, owing to
the perfection of His human nature, which made His
sufferings so exquisite and altogether unparalleled, and
which probably formed the stress of the trial in His
mysterious Agony.  As far as the Lord's physical
frame went, His sufferings have probably been more
than paralleled by those of many of His martyrs.  But
over and above the torture of crucifixion, there was
in the nature of the Lord Jesus a mysterious ground
of suffering, which none of us mere sinful men share
in common with Him. In tie first place, He had
lived before His Incarnation from  all eternity in a
world where sin and sorrow are unknown.  Before the
morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God
shouted for joy, on the occasion of the earth's foundation-stone being laid, the Only Begotten had lain in
the bosom of the Father, receiving the incense of the
Seraphir's praise. To us sin and sorrow are our familiar native element; they are the notes which have
sounded in our ear from infancy, and from their constant repetition have ceased to attract notice; to Him
they were a perpetual discord, jarring most offensively
with the harmonies of angelic harps.  But then again,
altogether independently of his Divine extraction,
there was in His human nature an avenue by which
suffering could reach Him, which in us, alas! sin has
closed. This avenue was the moral sensibility of
which we have been speaking, a sensibility which, it
is true, Grace gradually revives in every character of
which it gains the mastery, but which, at the same
time, is obtuse in the holiest among us, when comnpared with the exquisite perfection in which He possessed it. Yet we may reach something of the idea




xII.]    as involving Antipathy to Evil.        133
of it, by imagining the case of a very holy man forced
into very low and vicious company, and obliged to
keep his eyes and his ears open. Imagine an eminent
saint who had hitherto lived in habits of close communion with God, thrust not merely into prison, but
into such vile society as is usually found in prisons,
forced to listen to ribald jests, obscene songs, blasphemous execrations, profane oaths.  To the drunkard
and the debauchee such society would be no trial; to
the saint, even were there no physical discomfort in
the circumstances, the mere contact with such com-pany would be a frightful trial.  What must it have
been, then, to the King of Saints to move amidst
wicked and worldly men for thirty-three years; to go
up and down in a lazar-house.of moral and physical
evil, amidst broken hearts, depraved wills, hollow and
insincere professions?  Fallen man may find such a
pilgrimage tolerable; but on His pure spirit surrounding sin exercised at all times a heavy pressure.  We
can be no judges of His suffering, because we have
not naturally the sensibility which alone can enable
us to appreciate it; just as one of those animals of
simple construction, very low down in the scale of
animal life, and with sensations only half developed,
could form no notion of the sufferings of a man, whose
complex frame is sensitive, and whose mind is exposed
to the burden of many anxieties.
In Christ, then, is not only every other grace in
perfection, but the perfection of the hatred of evil.
And, in conforming the soul to the Image of Christ, the
Holy Spirit will form in us, as on the one hand, the
love of God, so on the other-that which is indeed only
the opposite pole of the love of God-the hatred of evil.




134           Of the Love of God          [CHAP.
It will be interesting to glance at some exemplifications of this hatred of evil, first in Our Lord, Who
is Love, and then in His Apostles.
There can be no question, then, that the first idea
which the character of Christ presents to us is that of
overflowing love and tender compassion. The Gospel
portraiture of Him is that of a gentle lamb, dumb
before its shearers. But, if we look a second time into
the sacred narratives, we shall find the hatred of sin
coming out with no less emphasis than love for the
sinner. Never once did a hard word escape Our Lord's
lips against those who sinned from infirmity or strength
of passion; His hatred of sin in their case was to be
manifested by His going among them, taking them
by the hand, and drawing them out of the mire. But
there were hearts in Judea and Jerusalem, where sin
had resolutely intrenched itself within the fortress
of hypocrisy; people who were not merely ill-livers,
but whose whole life was a lie-people who depraved
God's truth, while they professed to teach it, and who
did their best to dissuade men from accepting the antidote against evil which the Saviour brought. Understand this well. From simple sin Christ came to save
us; and as the way to save us was to win us, and men
are not won by being threatened and frightened, you
do not hear from His mouth fulminations against the
various classes of sinners with which the world abounds,
the intemperate, the unclean, the debauched, the dishonest. Sorely did their sins burden His spirit; they
even wrung great drops of Blood from His Sacred
Person; but He did not say a word, which might be
interpreted into a discouragement of those, whom He
came to win and save. But against the sin of sins,




xii.]    as involving Antipathy to Evil.       135
which impeded and counteracted His saving work,
against the false doctrine and hypocrisy of Pharisees,
He did launch the thunders of His wrath. He did not
spare words of censure; He told them in plain terms
that the doers of such sins were a brood of hell.' Ye
serpents," cried He, " ye generation of vipers, how can
ye escape the damnation of hell? " Before His final
exit from the Temple IHe denounced " Woe," nine
times, on nine different counts, against characters such
as these. Think not that this is derogatory to the
Love, which forms the staple of His character. On the
contrary, rightly understood, it is a part of His Love.
Those who wilfully put obstacles in the way of the
salvation of souls are surely the friends of that sin,
from which the Lord came to save us. He and His,
as they love souls, can have no truce with such persons
continuing such endeavors.
I say that neither He nor His can have any truce
with them. For here His Apostles speak the same
language as their Divine Master. When Elymas the
sorcerer withstood the Gospel, and sought to turn away
Sergius Paulus from the faith, " Saul (who is also called
Paul), filled with the Holy Ghost, set his eyes on him,
and said, O full of all subtilty and all mischief, thou
child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt
thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord? "
In precisely the same spirit, and for precisely the
same reasons, we find St. John, the Apostle of Love, as
if to show us that this grace is entirely consistent with
a hatred of evil, launching against the heretics of the
day, who depraved God's truth by the denial of the
Incarnation, this very pointed sentence of excommunication: " He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he




136            Of the Love of God            [CIAP.
hath both the Father and the Son. If there come any
unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not
into your house, neither bid him God speed. For he
that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil
deeds."  God's truth is his great instrument for saving
souls, and a person who seriously mutilates it in a vital
part, deprives it pro tanto of efficacy, and thereby does
his best to maintain the empire of sin. The Apostle
of Love will have no truce with such a one; will not
even harbor him  under his roof.-Add to this the
grand burst of indignation which prematurely terminated the apology of St. Stephen. Resistance to convictions wrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit is not
merely sin; but sin stubbornly maintaining its empire
in the face of God's attempt to break its power. It is
sin intrenching itself in the fortress of the will, and
saying to Grace, " Thou shalt not reduce me." St.
Stephen, full of holy love, is fired by the thought how
often his countrymen had thus resisted God: " Ye
stiffnecked," exclaims he, "and uncircumcised in heart
and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your
fathers did, so do ye."  To be a sinner is one thing.
Resolutely to maintain sin's empire in ourselves or
others is quite a distinct, and a much more deadly,
form of evil. Christ and His primitive disciples had
only dew and balm for the one. But they had thunder-bolts for the other.
We may here make the general reflection, that
Love, as a Christian grace, is an altogether different
thing from many qualities which usurp its name.  A
different thing, first, from that easy pliability of will,
which is called good-nature, but which in fact resolves
itself into indolence and languor of character.  On




xrI.]     cs involving Antipathy to Evil.        137
the contrary, in all real love there is strength, strength
of will and strength of character.  In all real love
there is wrapped up hatred against that evil which
counteracts  goodness.  Without intending  for a
moment to limit the operations of God's grace, it
may be asserted that, generally speaking, the truest
Christians have in them the greatest-force of character.
" The kingdom  of heaven," says our Lord, " suiereth
violence, and the violent take it by force."  There
must be resoluteness, in order to obtain such a prize.
-And again, He commands that the salt of decision
and energy shall be mixed with the oil of love"Have salt in yourselves;" and as this salt, if it were
allowed too great preponderance, might operate to
make breaches of the peace, He adds, " Have salt in
yourselves, ncnd  ave peace one with another.7"-And
again, Christian love is a very different thing from
that indifference to theological error which, in these
latitudinarian days, too often apes its manners and
mimics its phraseology.  In lesser (or doubtful)
points, not affecting the vitality of God's truth, our
maxim must be tolerance to the very utmost, nay
(more than tolerance), a catholic acknowledgment
of whatever is good and wise in other Christian
Churches.  But where the error mutilates the vital
parts of the truth, there love can only appear in its
form of hatred of evil.  It is a very serious breach of
love to pay compliments to false doctrine.  Our
Blessed Lord and His Apostles never did so.
Now let us review summarily our conclusions, and
see what light they throw on that question, so vitally
affecting our own happiness, Whether or not we love
God?




138            Of the Love of God             [CHAP.
We derive our knowledge of evil from two sources.
We find the instigations of it in our own hearts. We
see the workings of it in the world around us.
First, then, how are we affected toward the evil
which is in ourselves? Do we not merely decline to
carry out its instigations in act; but do we reject
them with loathing and abhorrence, on the first moment of their being presented to us? Is something
more than mere principle enlisted in our resistance to
it? is feeling enlisted also?
Next, how are we affected toward it when it appears in others?  Do we ever talk of it with a smile
or a cynical sneer? Do we, by the sentiments we express, ever encourage the young to imagine that the
excesses and vices of youth are at least venial, and
entail no real mischief, if not carried beyond youth?
Is the society of worldly persons-who estimate all
things by a worldly standard, and seem  never to
breathe a higher element than that which is of the
earth, earthy-more and  more distasteful to us?
How should we favor a counsel, like that given by St.
Peter to his Master, to take our ease in this world,
and, while steering clear of vice, to abandon the toil
and self-sacrifice incidental to God's service and the
work of our salvation?  Last (but not least), how far
have we escaped the latitudinarian tendencies of the
time? is our protest against error in principle equally
stern with that against vice in practice? or are we, in
the true spirit of the age, for a Church where positive
dogmas shall be superseded by amiable sentiments to
all mankind-a Church which, instead of professing
and upholding the mystery of godliness, which is the
Catholic Faith once delivered to the Saints, shall




xii.]    as involving Antipathy to Evil.      139
glory in professing and upholding nothing beyond
those three specious watchwords, which have served
as a pretext for the most hideous crimes, Liberty,
Fraternity, Equality?
Reader, the love of God involves sympathy with
His antipathies. The love of God, as treated of by
many devout and pious authors, in whose lucubrations
there is much which is edifying and deeply attractive,
has worn too much the aspect of a sentiment, or rather
of a sentimentalism. A sentiment it is, but a strong
and masculine sentiment, as repellent of evil as it is
responsive to God's goodness. And it should be a
consolation to those who feel themselves at present
to be poor proficients in the love of God, if they can
at least recognize in themselves a stern resistance to
evil. Is not this the way, under the discipline of the
Holy Spirit, to master this grace of the love of God?
Begin with the negative side, and work up to the
positive. Cultivate a hatred of evil, as being offensive
to God, and forbidden by Him, and you are cultivating Divine love. As for the sweetness of this love,
that is reserved as an encouragement for diligence in
getting over the more rugged ground. To feel the
love of God exercising a sensible attraction within
you, shall be the crown of your efforts, the fragrant
blossom which shall grow out of the hatred of evil.
Look not for the crown without the cross, nor for the
blossom without the thorn.




140             Of Purity of 1ifotive.           [CHAP.
CHAPTER XIII.
OF PURITY  OF MOTIVE.
" The light of the body is the ele: if therefbre thine eye be single, thy
whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy
whole body shall be fall of darkness. If therefore the light that
is in thee be cdarkzess, how great is that darkness! " —MATT. vi.
22, 23.
T H-IS figurative saying of Our Lord's occurs in the
midst of a paragraph in which He is warning
His hearers against the sin of covetousness; and is
immediately followed by those well-known words, " No
man can serve two masters; for either he will hate
the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to
the one, and despise the other.  Ye cannot serve God
and mammon."  This connection settles conclusively
the meaning of the passage.  By " the eye" Our Lord
must mean the ruling aim or intention.  And by " the
body" He must mean the whole moral conduct.  As
the body is habitually governed by the eye-as, when
we walk abroad, we move our limbs in obedience to
the directions of the eye-so the ruling aim determines
our conduct; and often, when we seem to ourselves
to do things mechanically and without thought, they
are really done in obedience to the ruling aim; just




xIII.]        Of Purity of Jfotive.           141
as, when a man walks, he does not think at each step
how he shall plant his feet, but simply uses his eyes,
and thus walks in safety as a matter of course. The
single eye " is doubtless to be interpreted by a reference to what follows, "No man can serve two masters."  A single eye is one which sees all objects
single; as a double eye would be one, the images
presented by which are, in consequence of its derangement, double. If a man had such a deranged eye, the
members of his body would constantly be misled by
its illusions; when he reached forth his hand to an
object, he might grasp a phantom; and in walking
he might make many a false step, if his sight were
confused by two or three images of the road intersecting one another. Now, a person with this bodily complaint is a good image or parable of a man with a
double aim or by-end-one who wishes to serve God
a little, and the world a little too. He is distracted
and misled by a twofold image dancing before his
mental eye. And often, when he congratulates himself with some self-complacency on having done a
righteous and good action, a thorough scrutiny of his
heart and motive would show that he had been only
serving his own interests instead of serving his Heavenly Master-seeking human applause, perhaps, not
the praise that cometh of God only. By an evil eye
in the verse following is meant, I believe, not a double
intention, but something worse than that, an intention
thoroughly vicious and ceprcaved.  Our Lord describes two extreme spiritual states, the highest and
the lowest. The first is characterized by a single eye,
i. e., a pure intention in all things to please God out
of love. If the eye be thus " single," the intention




142           Of Purity of lMotive.        [CHAP.
thus pure, " thy whole body shall be full of light," i. e.,
every action of yours shall be spiritualized, sanctified,
interpenetrated by the luminousness of the intention.
The lowest and worst spiritual state is that not of a
double, which would be intermediate, but of an evil
eye. This is where the soul intends from perverse
motives to do wrong, and was exemplified in the
Pharisees, who, though convinced of the truth of
Christ's mission, bent their whole strength to put
down the truth. Of this latter state He says: " Where
the ruling aim is depraved, how dark must the whole
lower life of action be, which at best has never any
light in itself, but is lit by the ruling aim!"' If the
light that is in thee be darkness, how great is the"
(not "that ") "darkness!"
The words of Our Lord, thus explained, furnish
much material for interesting and edifying thought.
First: as to the relation which the intention or
ruling aim bears to an action prompted by it. This is
defined to be the same relation which the eye bears
to the other members of the body. The other members are dark; not only are they not luminous;
not only are they not transparent; but there is in them
no receptivity for the light; all that they do is to
throw back any light which may be shed upon them,
or (in other words) to reflect it. And consequently
the other members without the eye would be only a
gross, dark mass of animal matter, cumbrous, and with
no power of self-guidance. But the eye is so constructed as to be receptive of light, and of the images
which the light bears on its wings. The images of
objects in our neighborhood being presented to us by
the eye, we can move our limbs among those objects




xiii.]        Of Purity of _Motive.           143
in safety. Now, the intention with which actions are
done is the light, the soul, the eye, the characteristic
feature of actions. Yes; the characteristic feature,
that is the word; for it is the eye which gives character and expression to the countenance; and it is the
intention or aim (and this alone) which gives character or expression to the action. Without any intention, the actions of man become mere dark and confused movements, lit up by no meaning, kindling with
no expression.
Indeed, here we come across that broad line of
demarcation which separates man from the inferior
animals. The inferior animals are agents with a certain freedom of action; but they are not moral agents.
Why? Because there is no intention in their actions;
nothing higher than the drawing of simple propensions and simple instincts.  They are hungry, and
they go in quest of their prey; they are thirsty, and
they seek water to drink; the maternal instinct makes
them shelter their young, and repulse to the best of
their power an assailant. But intention, as far as
appears (or, in other words, reasonable aim), they
have none. It cannot be supposed, for example, that
an animal ever takes food with the view of supporting
life; he takes food to appease the gnawing of hunger;
and there is no reason to imagine that he sees any
connection between the taking food and the maintenance of life. I am making a general statement
of the case, without asserting that nothing which
looks like an exception is anywhere to be found. I
do not mean to deny that in some animals instinct
struggles up occasionally into a semblance of reason,
even as on the borders of the animal and vegetable




144           Of Pu rity of M~otive.        [CHAP.
kingdoms you will find the zoophyte struggling up
into the condition of an animal; but anyhow, these
efforts of instinct, put them as high as you please, are
only temporary, and must be regarded as exceptional.
In mere action, then, apart from the rational aim or
motive which inspires it, there is no character, no
soul, no expression. Take the heroic actions of some
pagan as an illustration of what we are saying.  Separate the action from the motive; and what becomes
of the heroism?  Take away the love of country, the
love of home and hearth, and the desire of shielding
them, take away the love of glory and the thirst for
its acquisition-and the gallant exploits of Leonidas
and Mettus Curtius are no more exploits-they are
merely actions, and actions which brought their perpetrators to a sad and untimely end.
The next point which our passage suggests is,
that duplicity of intention-I might say multiplicity
of intention-is possible to man from the constitution
of his nature.
It seems to be a law running through the whole
of Nature that the highest creatures are also most
complex in their structure.  Vegetables are higher in
the scale than mere unorganized matter, and vegetables are of course constructed on a system-are a
collection of delicate tubes and fibres, connected with
the earth on one hand, and the air on the other. Animals stand on a level above vegetables, and are far
more complex in structure, being in fact, in many of
their properties, vegetables, only with sensibility and
the power of motion superadded. And among animals, the lowest are those whose structure is most
simple, where one organ perhaps serves the creature




xmII.]        Of Purity of hiotive.           145
for heart, stomach, liver, and lungs. Then on a loftier
platform  altogether comes Reason; and reasonable
beings are the most complicated of all  for they are
in their lower nature both animals and vegetables,
only with intelligence, and conscience, and what is
called in Scripture " the spirit," superadded.
Now, it is a necessary result of this complexity, if
I may so call it, of human nature, that man is liable
to the operation of more than one motive in any
action. To take the very simplest instance of this,
by way of making the idea easier. A man may take
food just as an animal does, to appease hunger. But
it is clear that he may also take it with the view of
preserving life and health. Instances frequently occur
where food is taken with this intention only, and
where there is no stimulus of hunger; as when an
invalid, whose appetite has failed, is ordered by a
physician to take nourishment nevertheless. But in
addition to the aim of reason in taking food, there
might be (seen beyond, and as it were through, the
aim of reason) an aim of religion.  The Apostle
writes: "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or
whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." And
again: "Every creature of God is good, and nothing
to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving:
for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer."
A man may take food with the view of tasting, and
thereby bringing home to his heart a more lively
sense of, the bounty of our Heavenly Father, who
daily spreads a table for all His -creatures, and by
each meal that He provides answers the Christian's
Prayer, " Give us this day our daily bread."  He may
also take it with the view of making his body a fitter
7




146            Of Purity of Motive.          [CHAP.
and more efficient instrument of the Divine service, a
view which would effectually preclude all intemperate
use of God's gifts, and make a man's real need the
law of his appetite. This is the simplest instance I
can find of several motives, which might prompt one
and the same action. But this complexity of motives
is seen in almost every action that we do. Those
who knew  most of human life and of their own
hearts, know  that very, very rarely indeed is any
action done from one single motive. If pleasure or
recreation be the main object, there is generally a
thought also (except in the very young or very frivolous) of some usefulness in the action, as (for example)
that it is of use to recruit the mind for serious pursuits. And, conversely, whenever an action is done
as a duty, and mainly out of a sense of duty, there
are scarcely ever wanting additional stimulants to it,
in the shape of the approbation of conscience or the
approbation of other men.
And these last words suggest a thought, which it
will be much to the purpose of our argument slightly
to expand.  There is one fertile source of complexity
of motive in human actions, which must receive a distinct notice. This source is the relations of man to
society-relations these again, by which he is distinguished from the inferior animals. In every thing
that we say or do (that is, in all our outward conduct), we are under some regard to what our little
world will say or think of our actions. Man is made
for society; and one evidence of this is, that there is
in the constitution of his mind such a constant reference to the views and sentiments of his neighbors.
But then this constant reference, though it is an ad



xiii.]         Of PAlrity of Motive.           147
mirable social safeguard, is very apt to confuse and
disturb religious purity of intention.  My susceptibility to human praise and blame, of which I find it so
extremely difficult to rid myself, may be the greatest
of all snares to me in the spiritual life. Grant that I
do a certain action with the view of pleasing God.
But is this view really and truly the only view which
is influencing me? Have I no other spring of energy
but the sole desire of pleasing Christ? Is my eye
single?  Should I do the action, or should I do it
with the same zest and interest, if no eyes were upon
me but God's only? Certain it is that the eyes of my
neighbors do exert a most real influence, do fascinate
me with a real spell, of which it is exceedingly hard
to disenchant myself. And this circumstance should
make me suspicious of myself at best, however much
I may think that I have cleansed my heart of all but
the highest motive. Take the case of attendance upon
the ordinances of God. The society in which we move
exercises in this particular so marked a restraint upon
the conduct of poor and rich, that, from the mere fact
of a man's coming to church, one can conclude nothing
as to his coming from a spiritual motive. In the country you will find many regular church-goers among
the poor, who, when they migrate to London, and
locate themselves in some alley'or mews, never cross
the sacred threshold from year's end to year's end.
What is the account of this inconsistency of conduct?
It is very simple. Eyes were upon them in the country parish, the eye of the magistrate, the eye of the
squire, the eye of the vicar, which are now removed.
They had no single intention of approving themselves
in their church-going to the all-seeing Eye; otherwise,




148            Of Purity of 2otive.           [CHAP.
as that Eye sees them in their garret in the mews, no
less than it saw them in their rustic cottage, they
would come to church still. Nor is the attendance of
the rich upon religious ordinances one whit less apt
to be flawed by duplicity of motive than that of the
poor. In England a man will be regular and punctual
in his attendance.  But what is his regularity and
punctuality worth?  You shall see, when he gets to
a foreign country, where he is quite out of the reach
of his visiting acquaintance, and where observance of
the Sunday is generally disregarded.  He takes his
tone abroad from the foreigners, as he took his tone
at home from  his own countrymen.  He gets lax in
his religious habits, soon rubs off his scruples about
pleasuring on Sunday, thinks it enough to drop into a
church occasionally and tolerate the sermon; and, if
his stay in those parts is prolonged for two or three
years, he comes back to his native land a church-goer
no longer. His service done to the Almighty in His
House formerly was such as the Apostle proscribes in
those pregnant words: " Not with eye-service, as menpleasers."
We have now seen that perfect purity of intention
is the highest spiritual state, a state which probably
the holiest man has never reachec, but to which all
real children of God are in different measures approximating.  Are we striving for this purity of intention,
praying for it, laboring for it, seeking to bring the
whole of our spiritual life up to this standard?  It is
something —nay, it is much-to have a right discernment of the standard in the spiritual life.  Now, the
standard is this, that all things should be done from




III.]         Of Purity of Motive.            149
the love of Christ, and a consequent desire to please
Him, and that we should act singly from this motive.
Real Christians do a large number of things which
are right. But there is still great room for improvement in these right things; for there is much defectiveness of intention in them; and this defectiveness
of intention may be, by self-examination, and careful
attention, and prayer, remedied.
Ist. By self-examination.  Let the motives, as
well as the actions, be scrutinized in self-examination.
Many and many an action of the Christian looks, like
an apple of Sodom, fair and attractive externally, the
heart of which is rotten, and which crumbles into dust
when we press upon its interior. Let us habitually
apply, to actions which are outwardly righteous, the
crucial questions: "Should I have done this, or done
it with equal zeal, had no eye of man been upon me?
Should I have resisted this temptation if there had
been no check upon me from human law or public
opinion? Should I have acted thus faithfully and conscientiously without the stimulus of human praise?'
2dly. By self-discipline and care. Let us cultivate particularly, and strive to acquit ourselves well
in, those actions of the Christian Life which are in
their nature private, and cannot come abroad. For
example, private prayer and private study of the
Scriptures. Exercises such as these are more or less
a satisfactory test of religious character, because they
are incapable of being prompted by human respect.
No eye of man is upon us when we enter into our
closet, and shut our door, and pray to our Father
which is in secret; and therefore here it would seem
no motive but a religious one can well intrude. And




150           Of Parity of Motive.         [CHAP.
we may apply the same remark to all the ordinary
actions and commonplace business of life, which must
be transacted by all in some way, and may be transacted by the Christian with a spiritual intention.
What does growing in grace mean, but that this
spiritual intention should lengthen its reach-should
extend itself more and more to every corner of our
life? Some little business of routine calls my attention at a certain hour, having nothing sublime or extraordinary in it, but the neglect of which would entail discomfort and annoyance a visit, or a letter of
courtesy, or an interview, in which a few necessary
words pass, and then it is over.  Well; even the
most earthly of earthly actions, those which are most
bound up with this transitory state of things, and
which have no intrinsic dignity or sacredness whatever, may be spiritualized by importing into them a
spiritual intention. The little courtesies, for example,
which society requires, may be yielded simply because
they cre social requirements, in which case they will
be often done "grudgingly, and of necessity;" or
they may be regarded as so many opportunities of
compliance with the inspired precept, " Be courteous"
-in which case they will be done cheerfully, " as to
the Lord, and not unto men."  And (generally) the
meeting all calls upon us, however humble, with the
thought that they come to us in the way of God's
Providence, and in the working out of the system of
things which He has appointed, and are indications
of the quarter in which He would have us direct our
energies, is a great means of purifying our intention,
and so of advancing in spirituality. For nobody is
aware what is going on in our hearts, when we meet




xIII.]         Of Purity of Mlotive.           151
these calls in a devout spirit; our friends only see us
doing commonplace things which others do, and give
us no credit. But, in so meeting such calls, we have
praise of God, who, like a good Father, marks with a
smile of approbation the humblest efforts of His children to please Him.
I have traced the bearing of the subject on our
Sanctification. But I must not omit to call attention
to its bearing on our Justification also. It is possible
that a man, who judges himself by his outward conduct exclusively, might think with some complacency
of his devout, regular, reputable life. But no man
can do so who, laying to heart Our Lord's maxim
that the intention determines the character of actions,
brings his heart with all its motives to the touchstone
of God's Word. Then it is, if the Holy Spirit cooperates with his self-examination, that, catching sight
of the miserable shortcomings even of his virtues and
his devotions, he exclaims with the Prophet: "All
our righteousnesses are as filthy rags."  And then it
is that he looks about for a ground of acceptance with
God wholly independent of his own righteousness,
and, finding this assured and stable ground in the
obedience to the Second Adam  unto death, plants
himself upon that ground exclusively, never more to
shift therefrom; and, in his transactions with a holy
and heart-searching God, puts forward no plea of merit
but that which is contained in those precious, pregnant words of another Prophet: " The -Lord our
_ighteousness."
The connection of singleness of aim with the subject of the present work, which is the pursuit and at



152           Of Purity of Motive.          [CHAP.
tainment of Holiness, will I think be apparent. To
live holily is nothing else than, in every thing we do,
to act from a single desire to please God, out of love
to Him, and from no other aim whatever. The more
we can succeed in stripping ourselves bare of every
motive save this highest one, the nearer shall we be
to the standard at the attainment of which we are
aiming. A double-minded man is unstable in all his
ways; a heart divided between two motives, halting
between two opinions, cannot plant its steps firmly in
the way of righteousness. Nor let any one who seeks
after this simplicity of motive, and sincerely endeavors
to do all (even the most trivial) things, "not with
eye-service as a men-pleaser, but as a servant of
Christ, doing the will of God from the heart," be dismayed by finding that only a very partial success attends his early efforts.  By constant watchfulness,
much ejaculatory prayer, and at first a somewhat stern
recalling of the mind from its wanderings to its centre,
progress will be made slowly though surely.  God
never fails to prompt and teach a soul, which is
simply desirous of pleasing Him. He will, if we are
faithful to Him, show us how to escape the snares of
a morbid self-consciousness and scrupulosity, which
seem to the eye of the natural man to beset the path
we are advocating, and which it is too true the Devil
knows how to set. A man with his eyes in a right
condition does not, when he walks, study every step
he takes, nor even make the reflection that he is using
his eyes; but he guides himself instinctively by his
eyes, and with their help enjoys the landscape. And
a man, whose ruling aim is right and single, comes at
last, through all perplexity, to feel that God's service,




xIII.  Of Purity of Motive.                     153
so far from being a bondage of oppressive restraints,
is perfect freedom, and that the only true way (as the
Psalmist indicates) "of walking at liberty" is, "to
seek His commandments."




154    Peace of Conscience and of Heart r[HAP.
CHAPTER  XIV.
PEACE OF CONSCIENCE AND OF HEART THE ELEMENT
OF HOLINESS.
"Now the Lord of peace Himself give you peace always by all
means."-2 THESS. iii. 16.
^\A LWAYS."  The Apostle is imploring for his
Thessalonian converts a state of mind which
shall be absolutely permanent, which shall know of no
intermission. The same expression is used where Our
Lord says of the little ones, that their guardian angels
do ALWAYS behold the face of God; and again where
St. Peter represents Christ as saying in the words of
David, "I foresaw the Lord ALWAYS before my face."
The constancy of the Christian's peace, then, is to be
the same constancy wherewith angels wait on the behests of God, wherewith the Lord Jesus Himself perpetually realized God's Presence.
And again: " Give you peace by all means "-literally, " in every manner."  Thus he says of the
preaching of Christ among the Philippians, which in
some instances did not proceed from a pure motive:
"Notwithstanding EVERY WAY, whether in pretence
or in truth, Christ is preached."  There are different
modes in which, different circumstances under which,




xiv.]       the Element of Holiness.         155
the peace that reigns in the Christian's heart will be
manifested; peace will take a somewhat different
form, according as the heart is burdened with anxiety,
or depressed by a sense of sin, or feverish with excitement, or distracted by business; and the Apostle
prays that the Thessalonians may taste it in every
form, according to the special need of the moment.
Once more: " The Lord of Peace " (He who is its
Author, and the Source from which it flows) is here
called upon to bestow it: " The Lord of peace Himself GIVE you peace." Quite consistently with those
words of Our Lord, wherein He communicates peace
as His legacy to His disciples: " Peace I leave with
you, my peace Igive unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you."  And then He immediately
goes on to recognize a certain power in the heart
(with His aid, and by His grace) to quiet itself, a certain self-control which it must exercise in order to
realize the blessing; for He adds: "Let not your
heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."  And the
same power of self-control in the Christian himself is
recognized in the beautifully soothing words of St.
Paul to the Philippians: " Be careful for nothing"
(it lies with us, therefore, to harbor anxieties, or to dismiss them); " but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made
known unto God" (that is, do your part simply and
faithfully by recommending your wants to God);
"and" (then God shall do His, the- Author of peace
and Lover of concord shall confer upon you the blessing, which by your own exertions you could never
have attained) "the peace of God, which passeth all
understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds




156   Peace of Conscience and of Heart  [CHAP.
through Christ Jesus."-" Hearts and minds;" here
is another valuable idea necessary to our conceiving
the subject in its fulness. Peace is needed for heart
and mind both, for the conscience which is apt to be
burdened; for the affections and feelings which are
apt to be harassed, wounded, thwarted; and for the
thoughts, which are apt to stray out of the precinct
of sobriety, to rove to forbidden subjects, to indulge
in vain anticipations, to pursue curious and unprofitable speculations.
The peace of which we have been speaking is a
main essential to Holiness. It is not only the root
out of which Holiness grows, but the strength in
which alone it can be successfully pursued, and the
element in which it moves. Its grand importance is
very emphatically recognized by our Book of Common
Prayer. As a standing part of the daily Morning and
Evening Office we have a Collect for Peace, which in
the Order of Morning Prayer stands before the Collect for Grace. The Evening Collect for Peace came
originally toward the close of the Service, and, together with " Lighten our darkness," formed the Church's
requiem for her children, before they laid them down
to rest. But see how clearly this noble collect recognizes the truth that Peace is essential to Holiness:
" Give unto Thy servants that peace which the world
cannot give; that our hearts may be set to obey Thy
commandments."  The firm  resolution, in  God's
strength, to serve Him, and to abide by His will, whatever may come of it, cannot be maintained, while
heart, conscience, mind, are in a turbid state. In a
violent storm, the needle of the compass is so agitated




xiv.]        the Element of ltoliness.             157
that no direction can be had from it, the vessel's head
cannot be set right. And, when the inner man is agitated by storms of passion, or apprehension, or by a
sense of sin, it is difficult, if not impossible, to rectify
the intention, and to make the mind's needle point
true.  Christ must say to the internal tumult, as of
old to the winds and waves, " Peace, be still; " and,
when He has made a great calm, we may then rectify
our aim  and set forth on our voyage with renewed
effort.
We will speak very briefly in this Chapter of two
forms of peace which are essential to the pursuit of
Holiness, leaving the discussion of other forms for consideration in future Chapters.
I. First: in order to Holiness, it is absolutely
necessary that peace should both be admitted into the
conscience, and maintained there.
To admit it, there must be a genuine act of faith
in the blood and righteousness of Christ-such an act
as shall shed abroad in the heart a sense of God's pardoning love, and dissipate effectually the dread of His
displeasure. This act of faith is simply a cordial acceptance of God's gift of Christ-an opening of the
windows of the soul to the glorious, animating sunlight of Divine Love. Having performed this act, we
place ourselves in the condition described by St. Paul,
when he says, "Therefore being justified by faith, we
have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."
But the admission of peace once for all is by no
means sufficient; it must be detained, after being
once received. Peace is a very sensitive guest, apt to
take flight at the slightest affront.  The conscience,




158    Peace of Conscience and of Heart  [CHAP.
once cleared by'faith, must be kept clear by effort,
and the use of appropriate means, and (crowning all
these) by repeated acts of the faith which once cleared
it.  We must brace our spiritual system by healthy
exercise-the exercise which St. Paul, the apostle of
faith, professes that he never intermitted: " And
herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God and toward men."
But as faults will accrue, notwithstanding all our
efforts, and as, the more we advance in the spiritual
life, the more sharp-eyed we shall become to our
faults, and the more they will distress us, we shall
need, in order to the maintenance of peace, periodical
examinations of the  conscience, and a periodical
opening of the heart to God on the subject of what
we find there.  Under certain circumstances it may
be advantageous to reveal the secrets of the conscience to some spiritual counsellor, partly to humble
ourselves the more thereby, partly to gain advice suitable to our needs, and partly to secure an interest in
his prayers.  In cases where a man is conscious of
grievous secret sins, while he has enjoyed a reputation
for piety, he will often be led to feel that such a confession to man is essential to his peace-that peace can
in no wise consist with the consciousness of hypocrisy; that in no other way can he be at one with God
than by being at one with truth.  And, as regards
cases which have not this feature, let it be remembered that one reason why the sermons of the clergy
are so pointless is, that they are so rarely admitted
into the confidence of their people; and that, if there
were more unreserve in laying bare to them the difficulties which we experience in our spiritual course,




xiv.]       the Element of Holiness.          159
the more would the help which there may be in them,
whether from their study of God's Word, or from the
commission with which they are armed, be turned to
account-however, this discipline of private confession, though under particular circumstances recommended by our own Church, is certainly not made
obligatory, either by the Scriptures or the Book of
Common Prayer. But, fully admitting this, it must
still be said that we can never safely discard a periodical examination of conscience, with an exposure of
its secrets to, and a discharge of its burdens upon, our
great High Priest. This is a part of spiritual discipline, to which they who will not be at the pains to
submit are only too likely to drop into a habit of general unwatchfulness, and laxity, and neglect of devotion-a habit most congenial to our natural love of
ease, and entirely falling in with the smooth, selfindulgent temper of our age.
II. The second form of peace, which must be
maintained in order to Holiness, is peace in the heart
-peace under the vexations and fretting of life.
(1) This fretting may arise first from anxieties.
The right method of dealing with anxieties, and
maintaining peace of heart under them, is clearly and
succinctly laid down by St. Paul in the passage already quoted from the Philippians. Whatever may
be your wishes on the subject which makes you
anxious, refer them to God in prayer (using the simplest and most direct language), not asking Him absolutely to bring them about, which might be productive of any thing but a happy result, but simply letting Him know them, and begging Him to deal in the
matter, not according to your short-sighted views, but




160    Peace  of Conscience and of Heart  [CHAP.
as seems best to His wisdom and love. This exposure
of the heart's wishes to God is a fulfilment of the precept: " Trust in Him at all times, ye people; pour
out your hearts before Him;" it is acting in the spirit
of Hezekiah, when he went up into the temple and
spread Sennacherib's letter before the Lord. Having
made this reference of your wishes to God, leave them
with Him, in confident assurance that He will order
the matter for the best. I say, leave them with Him.
Drop them altogether.  Do not let your mind recur
to them any more; they are off your hands now; they
are in better hands than yours; they are no longer
your business, and therefore they need not-nay, they
must not-be your care. If prudence and caution
dictate that any thing should be done to avert the evil
you anticipate, do it, and then think no more of the
subject. Thinking of it is utterly fruitless: "Which
of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his
stature?   And fruitless thinking is just so much
waste of that mental and spiritual energy, every atom
of which you need for your spiritual progress. But it
is worse than this. It is a positive breach of God's
precept, " Be careful for nothing "-that is, do not
give anxiety a harbor in your heart; let it not find
there a peg to hang its burden on. Deal with a fruitless anxiety just as you would deal with an impure or
a resentful motion of the heart. Shut the door on it
at once, and with one or two short ejaculatory prayers rouse the will, and turn the thoughts in a different
direction.  The spiritual life of the present moment
is the one thing needful; as for the evil in the future,
that may never come; and, if it does, you will probably find that it has been far worse in anticipation than




xIV.]       the Element of Holiness,           161
it is in the reality. The holy women on their road
to Christ's sepulchre anticipated a difficulty which
threatened to baffle entirely their pious design.
" Who shall roll us away the stone," they said among
themselves, "from the door of the sepulchre?"  It
turned out that they were troubled about nothing.
TWhen they marched up close to it, the difficulty had
vanished.  " When they looked," says the Evangelist, " they saw that the stone was rolled away."
Take encouragement from their example. Go forward
in your spiritual course with all the energy of your
soul. Place the foreseen difficulties in the hand of
God, and He shall remove them.
(2) Secondly: fretting and discomposure of heart
may result from things going cross in daily life, from
rubs of temper, offences, irritation, and annoyance with
others. The rule for the maintenance of peace is here
the same. Never let your thoughts dwell on a matter in which another has made you sore. If you do, a
hundred aggravating circumstances will spring up in
your mind, which will make the slightest offence swell
up to the most formidable dimensions. With a brief
prayer for him  who has offended you, keep your
thoughts sedulously away from what he has done.
Try to realize God's Presence; the realizing it ever
so little has a wonderfully soothing and calming influence on the heart. " My Presence shall go with thee,"
said God to Moses; and then immediately adds, as if
that were a necessary consequence of the foregoing,
" and I will give thee rest." But the great point is to
let the mind settle. Turbid liquids will clear themselves, and precipitate their sediment to the bottom
simply by standing. Be still, then. Refrain from




162  Peace of Conscience and of Heart, etc. [CHAP.
every impulsive action and speech.  Make an effort
to turn the mind, till it is perfectly cool and reasonable, to other subjects.  Say secretly, " The Lord is in
His Holy Temple " (His temple of the inner man);
" keep silence, O my heart, before Him."
Those who indulge fretful feelings, either of anxiety, or irritation, know not what an opening they
thereby give to the devil in their hearts.  " Fret not
thyself," says the Psalmist; " else shalt thou be moved
to do evil."  And in entire harmony with this warning of the elder Scriptures is the precept of St. Paul
against undue indulgence of anger: " Let not the sun
go down upon your, wrath, neither give place to the
devil."  Peace is the sentinel of the soul, which keeps
the heart and mind of the Christian through Christ
Jesus. So long as this sentinel is on guard and doing
his duty, the castle of the soul is kept secure. But
let the sentinel be removed, and the way is opened
immediately for an attack upon the fortress. And our
spiritual foes are vigilant, however much we may sleep.
They are quick to observe an opportunity, and prompt
to avail themselves of it. They rush upon the city at
once in the absence of the sentinel, and do great mischief in a short time.
In conclusion: be careful to maintain peace in the
heart, if thou wouldst not only resist the devil, but
also receive tle guidance of God's Spirit. That Spirit
cannot make communications to a soul in a turbulent state, stormy with passion, rocked by anxiety, or
fevered with indignation.  The Lord is neither in the
great and strong wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in
the fire; and not until these have subsided and passed
away, can His still small voice be heard communing
with man in the deuths of his soul.




xv.l      Peace by living in the Present         163
CHAPTER XV.
PEACE BY LIVING IN THE PRESENT RATHER THAN
IN THE PAST.
" And He said unto another, Pbllow AJe. But he said, Lord, suffer
me first to go and bury my father. Jesus said unto him, Let the
dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of
God."-LUKE ix. 59, 60.
E saw in our last Chapter that peace of heart
and mind is essential to Holiness; and we
traced two of the forms in which this peace manifests
itself, reserving for future consideration its other forms.
Peace amid the various distractions of heart and mind,
incidental to our nature and circumstances, will form
the subject of this and the following Chapter.
We shall never know what it is to live in peace,
until we know what it is to live thoroughly in the present. The assertion startles some of my readers. But
let them look at it again; and they will see no reason
for surprise or alarm. A preposition will sometimes
make the whole difference in the meaning of a proposition. I do not say that, in order to the maintenance
of peace, we should live FOR the present-God forbid! (Dives in one parable, and the rich man whose
ground brought forth plentifully in another, did so,




164       Peace by living in the Present   [cHAP.
and tasted not a spiritual, but a carnal peace, which
only deserves the name of ease, a name actually given
to it in the latter case: " Soul, take thine ease, eat,
drink, and be merry.")  My assertion was that we
should live IN the present, and that, until we have
learned to do so, we cannot taste of peace. The present has its duties, which are imperative and pressing.
We need all the energy of our souls (we have never
more energy than we can spare; oh! how do the holy
angels in heaven, whose spirits are always so fervent,
though the debt they owe to God is trifling in comparison of ours, put to shame the sad lack of energy
in the best of us!)-I say, we need all our energy for
the fulfilment of present duties. Christ has said to
each of us at our Baptism, and in our Confirmationis saying still by His warnings, His ministers, and the
inspiration of His Spirit (although in a sense different
from that in which He addressed the words to certain
persons in the days of His earthly pilgrimage): " Follow Me."  Morning by morning He says to us, as we
wake up refreshed, and a new day, full of hope and
promise, dawns upon us by His long-suffering mercy:
"Follow Me."  The task thus imposed is of quite
sufficient magnitude and difficulty to absorb all our
faculties. It cannot possibly be done as a by-work.
It cannot be done in the same way as busy professional
men (and sometimes statesmen) occupy their leisure
moments with the relaxations of literature. The following of Christ cannot be taken up as a relief or
ornamental appendage to our life; it must be our
main business, or it is fruitless to take it up at all.
And observe that, being spiritual, it makes a large
demand upon the mental powers; more mind, more




xv.]         1rather than in the Past.           165
processes of thought and feeling, have to be thrown
into the following of Christ than into any other pursuit in the world. This being so, the Christian's heart
and mind must not suffer from distractions, if he is to
follow Christ successfully.  The whole of the heart
and mind are needed for the present pursuit, which is
always, in one shape or another, under one vocation or
another, the following of the Lord Jesus.  Such must
be the rule therefore for the spiritual man: " Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."
Live Ix the present.
But alas! the habit of the natural man, the tendency of every mind, so far as it is unrenewed by God's
Holy Spirit, is to live either in the past or in the future-to look back with fond and longing regret to
former days and interests which have faded with time;
or else to look forward to some such change of circumstances or position as offers to give a relief and a rest
which we do not experience at present. To the first
of these distractions the old, to the second the young,
are more especially exposed. Both have a tendency
to sap that peace which lies at the root of Holiness,
and which, neither wasting vain regrets over yesterday, nor aspiring to a brighter to-morrow, is content
with the PRESENT, and strives to make it available for
Christ's Service to the utmost.
We will consider only the first of these distractions at present-the distraction of a fond and mournful retrospect. In minds of a certain temperament a
good deal of thinking and feeling runs to waste in
this direction.
Our Lord had observed in one of His disciples (for
St. Matthew expressly calls the person in question " a




166      Peace by living in the Present   [CHAP.
disciple ") a tendency to relax in his attendance upon
Him, and perhaps: to return to the domestic ties and
the worldly pursuit which, at Christ's first summons,
he had quitted. Reading the man's thoughts, His
Divine Master laid upon him the call a second time
more peremptorily: " Follow Me."  This elicited the
feelings which were working in his mind. He pleaded
his father's death, the intelligence of which he had
recently received, and the duty of natural piety arising
therefrom, as a reason, not for ultimately declining
Christ's call, but for postponing immediate compliance with it. But he was needed as God's instrument
to give life to dead souls, not.to consign to the grave
dead bodies; and those members of his family who
had not been, as he had, quickened into new convictions and spiritual life, might suffice to perform the
duties of sepulture: " Let the dead bury their dead;
but go thou and preach the Kingdom of God."
We cannot so understand the Lord of Love, who
rebuked with severity Jewish evasions of the Fifth
Commandment, and who amid the tortures of the
Cross made provision for His own Virgin Mother, as
to suppose that He intended to discourage the plainest
duties of natural affection. He spoke startlingly and
almost paradoxically, as His manner was, in order to
arouse thought; and His words are to be understood,
as they so often are, in their spirit and principle rather
than their letter. And their spirit and principle is
this: "A sentiment of nature, however just, must not
be allowed to interfere with a spiritual call; nor must
a fond, lingering regret, for that which in the order of
God's Providence has passed away, detain us for a
single moment from the duty of the PRESENT."  Let




xv.]         rather than in the Past.           167
us expand the precious thought which Christ thus
gives us, in reference to the subject which we are
pursuing.
I observe, first, that all things (and not men and
women only) have their time; and, their time having
expired, die a natural death. "The fashion of this
world passeth away."   Childhood, with its many
graces, its innocence, its simplicity, its prattle, its ingenuous ways, lasts but a short time; beautiful in its
season, it is as transin as tas the first violet of spring;
the children grow up, and become young men and
women: sophisticated with the ways of the world.Again: opinions and ways of looking at a subject are
in a continual state of flux; old opinions are always
fading out, and new opinions (new lights, as some
call them, new schools of thought, as others) are constantly forming and unfolding themselves, and, after
they have had a certain run, waning again, and losing
their hold upon men's minds. The political and religious controversies of the present day are not those of
our youth; controversy has shifted its ground since we
were children, has left its old questions, as if they were
no more of interest, and now rages, with all its old
rage, round a new set of topics. Institutions, too, are
subject to the common lot of mortality; even those
which in their day exercised the widest influence, and
which men took the greatest pains to root in the earth,
under the impression that they would make them permanent, find themselves, in the progress of thought
and civilization, supplanted by new machineries, not
as picturesque or poetical it may be; but doing the
work which they formerly did, in a way more adapted
to the spirit of the times. To take one of a thousand




168       Peace by living in the Present   [CHAP.
instances which might be referred to: monasteries,
which in dark and semi-barbarous medieval days were,
notwithstanding all the abuses incidental to them,
the great nurseries of Charity, Learning, and Devotion,
have long since done their work, and yielded to the
law of natural decay; and have given place (in respect
of the benefits which they conferred upon mankind) to
agencies of a modern style, Poor-laws, Hospitals,
Religious Societies, Printing-presses, Public Libraries,
and so forth. It is only the principles of Truth, Goodness, and Right, which are to last forever. The forms,
in which these exhibit themselves, will necessarily
vary with the age, and state of society.
But it is quite the habit of the natural mind-and
it is a habit adverse to peace, and to the maintenance
of spirituality-to look back upon the past (whether
our own individual past, or that of society) with a
fond, longing regret. We all have something of Lot's
wife in us; we linger in our course to take one more
retrospect of what has attached itself to us by old
associations, but is now doomed. To begin with the
changes undergone by society. There are some (and
these men of piety and learning, actuated by the best
intentions) who avowedly aim  at bringing back the
monastic system, and try (I cannot say, to resuscitate,
but) to galvanize the conventual life, at all events to
exhibit the outward show of it to the amazed eyes of
men far on in the nineteenth century.  But the monastic system, an excellent instrument for the age in
which it was the one great agency of the Church, is
now effete altogether. Nor can we with any profit or
advantage allow ourselves to regret its many noble
features, much less to create what, after all our efforts,




xv.]         rather than in the Past.         169
will be only a caricature of it. It was natural in its
own age; it is unnatural now. "Let the dead bury
their dead; " and go thou to do thy work for Christ,
in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation,
with the new implements-Churches, Schools, Hospitals, or whatever they be-which God hath put into
thy hand. Then, as to these new forms of thought,
which are fermenting all around us, and to which the
older among us find some difficulty in adjusting our
opinions. No doubt, looking to the awful disclosures
made by Holy Scripture respecting the great Apostasy from the Faith, which shall be a feature of the
latter days, and looking also at the revolutionary and
lawless tendency of the age, as shown in political and
social movements, we are quite right in regarding
with suspicion, and in narrowly questioning and examining, all new-fangled views, whether religious or
social. And yet there should be a readiness in us,
though not to abandon for one moment the old truth,
yet to recognize any new form in which it may be
presented. We have been brought up to regard
truth-religious, and it may be political and social
truth also-in one aspect. But Truth is many-sided,
like a cube; and we should never be so tenacious of
the aspect of it, which is familiar to us, as not to be
ready to come round and view it under another man's
aspect. And as for lamenting that progress of thought,
which is continually presenting the truth in different
aspects, such lamentations are as foolish as they are
fruitless. Must the forms of thought, which satisfied
men in a former generation, necessarily-content us
now?  Before they can be expected to do so, you
must lay a prohibition upon the intellectual growth
8




170      Peace by living in the Present        [CHAP.
of the species, and bid the human mind, as Joshua
bade the sun, stand still.
But to come closer home to the individual Christian.  The past of our own life has a peculiar fascination for us. We think of the days of our childhood,
and the scenes of our home, with a natural tenderness; it seems to us that we were then innocent, pure,
thoroughly happy.  And farther on in life, too, every
old and familiar association has a natural charm for
us; never can we experience again (as we think) so
great happiness as in that little house, in which we
first began domestic life; never can any friendships
be so attractive as those with which we were then
surrounded; never again  can  the children be so
dear, as when they were altogether children; and as
for those whom  we have loved and lost, we linger
over their memories as if they could never have
equals; and thus we muse on in the vein of natural
sentiment, wasting thereby the mental energy which
is needed for the present following of JESUs:
" Oh for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me."
"A day that is dead "-all days, when they have
done their work, die of themselves.  But shall we
hang over the corpse of them in fruitless regret, as if
there were no such good days (a heart-breaking
thought) in store for our hereafter? What saith the
Law?  " Thou shalt not eat that which dieth of




xv.]        rather than in the Past.          171
itself;" there is no wholesome mental food in a
melancholy retrospect of that which has passed away
in the natural order of things. And what say the
Prophets? "I have spread out my hands unto a
rebellious people... a people that provoketh Mie to
anger continually to My face; which remain among
the graves, and lodge in the monuments."  The Loving Lord, Who invites us to His Bosom in penitence
and faith, will not have us linger mournfully among
the graves of the past, or lodge our heart's best affections in the monuments of days departed. And what
saith the Gospel? " Let the dead bury their dead;
but go thou and preach the Kingdom of God." Dead
souls, and only dead souls, can afford time for pathetic
plaints over an age that is dead; as for living souls,
the call to them is instant and urgent to do the work
of God's Kingdom, assured that the full establishment of that Kingdom will gild the future with a
brighter ray, a "tenderer grace," than any which
decks the past.
But to drop figures and use quite plain speech. Sentiment, if it be sound and pure, is an excellent thing;
it elevates and refines the soul. But, in order to be
sound and pure, sentiment must be in accordance with
truth. Now, the sentiment which hangs over the past
with an excessive fondness is not in accordance with
truth. The past seems to us now faultless and bright.
But we know for certain that it was not so. The past
days, whether of society or of the individual, had their
sins and sorrows, like all other days, which grievously
blurred and marred them. The days of our childhood
look innocent and happy in the retrospect; but in real
fact we had faults and troubles then as well as now,




172    Peace by living in the Present, etc. [cHAP.
although on a scale suitable to our age. In old times
men were not better or wiser upon the whole than
they are now; Virtue and Piety have not taken their
flight from the earth; no, nor even Poetry, nor Chivalry, nor Romance; but these things, according to the
law of God's Providence-a law of constant decay and
renascence-exhibit themselves in a shape different
from what they wore yesterday. Our memory has a
trick of deceiving us as to the true state of the case.
While the present is always dull and prosaic, memory
sheds round the past the softening hues of the imagination. There is an optical illusion something similar
to this. A landscape which is very tame and bald
when we are plodding through the midst of the country, looks more interesting in the blue distance, its
plain and hard features being softened away.
Let not any man think so poorly of the Kingdom
of God, as to imagine that it will not over-abundantly
repay all who work for it or in it. At the weddingfestival with which His Ministry opened, the Lord
created toward the close of the entertainment wine,
which exceeded in richness and flavor any that the
guests had hitherto tasted.  And if, dismissing all
vain and enervating regrets, we do but labor now with
singleness of purpose for the coming of His Kingdom
in our own hearts, and (as far as we have opportunity)
in the hearts of others, He, the Heavenly Bridegroom,
will give us even now such foretastes of joy, and will
in the end pour into our souls such an influx of blessedness, that, at every fresh draught of the rivers of
His pleasures, we shall disparage all previous satisfactions in comparison of that which we are at present
tasting, and shall say with the governor of the feast
at Cana: " Thou hast kept the good wine until now."




xvi.]   Peace by living in the Present, etc.    173
CHAPTER XVI.
PEACE BY LIVING IN THE PRESENT IATHER TIHAN IN
THE tFUTUJRE.
" Be content with such things as ye have." —HEB. xiii. 5.
IN the last Chapter we considered one of the great
distractions which hinder peace of mind, and therefore hinder Holiness, in the soul of man-the distraction of a fond and mournful retrospect. We saw how
such a retrospect deludes us-what tricks the memory
plays in making a pleasing and attractive picture of
by-gone days, and how she throws over the past the
softening tints of the imagination. In truth, the various scenes of our life resemble that to which they
have been so often compared, the scenes of a theatre.
In order that the effect of such scenes may be pleasing, they must be viewed from a distance.  Approach
them  closely, and you see that they are coarsely
painted on a large, rude scale, and that the perspective lines, which should carry the eye into the distance,
run up into the air; but fall back a few yards, and
place yourself in the seats of the spectators, and the
coloring loses all its coarseness, and the picture seems
no more flat. So it is with our experiences of life.
"'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view."




174      Peace by living in the Present   [CHAP.
The distraction which we are now to consider is
that which arises from living in the future-from
pressing forward in desire to some better, easier, more
satisfying state than that in which we at present find
ourselves.
This habit of mind is very early developed; and
yet it does not lose its hold upon us, until we are past
middle age, and the winter of life has settled down
upon us. In youth the heart bounds up at the prospect of the future; for life has many pleasures to offer
to the young, of which experience has not yet proved
the hollowness. What boy has not longed to become
a man, to be emancipated from the restraints of education, and to be his own master? What young man,
not yet embarked in any regular pursuit, has not
longed to. enter upon his profession and to settle in
life?  And what man, plunged in life's business and
turmoil, has not sighed for the period when his affairs
will allow him to retire, and to enjoy rest at the close
of his career?
But if this tendency to press forward to some better and more satisfactory future is always seen in
human nature, whatever its circumstances, it is most
especially seen in the present age, which, perhaps beyond any other, develops and foments it. The age
is a most restless one-restless to a morbid and unnatural degree.  The ease and speed with which
we are able to travel, the ease and speed with which
thought can be communicated from one part of the
world to another, the wide spread of education, which
is ever making the lower class tread upon the heels of
the higher, the competition which arises from the fact
of all pursuits and professions being overstocked, and




xvi.]      rather than in the Future.         175
which makes the whole of life a race, in which victory
is to the swift and strong, and the slow and weak are
pushed aside and trampled under foot-all these circumstances create an atmosphere of high pressure and
excitement, which, if we mix with men at all, it is
impossible not to breathe. And the result of breathing
it is, that we come to consider every stage in life only
as a step to a further stage; that each man says to
himself (not avowedly, of course, but in the general
tendency and bias of his mind): " I must rise in life.
I must first and before all things else get on. I must
push, and thrust, and jostle until my neighbor falls
back, and I stand in advance of him. I do not recognize that I have any fixed place assigned to me by
God's Providence, and to which more especially my
natural capacities are adapted; but there is a variety
of places, in all of which God may be served; and the
motto for me is,'The higher the better.' As for settling down in any one position, and saying,'Here I
limit all my desires and aspirations,' that cannot be
until just the close of life."
But let us look at this tendency of mind for a
moment in the light which is lent by Holy Scripture.
" Having food and raiment," says the Apostle Paul,
"let us be therewith content."  And again more
searchingly, because the reference is not to the supply
of mere material wants, but to a general change of
condition: "Let every man abide in the same calling
wherein he was called.... Brethren, let every man,
wherein he is called, therein abide with God." And
again in the passage which stands at the head of this
Chapter: " Be content with such things as ye have;"
an inexact translation, however, not conveying a sense




176       Peace by living in the Present   [CHAP.
by any means so stringent as the original, which is,
"Be content with the things that are present" (that
is, not only with the amount of property which has
fallen to your lot, but generally with your positionits duties, its advantages, its dignity). Nor did St. Paul
preach without practising; for in the Epistle to the
Philippians he avers, " I have learned, in whatsoever
state I am, therewith to be content;" and shortly afterward this expression of contentment with his state at
the time (although he was then in captivity) drops
from his pen: "I have all, and abound; I am  full."
Nor is this great grace of a cheerful acquiescence in
the present, whatever it may be, confined to the saints
of the Christian Dispensation. Soothing to the heart's
natural feverishness is that strain of the Psalmist:
" The lines" (the measuring-lines, by which a certain
portion of ground is marked out) " are fallen unto me
in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage."
And beautiful with a tender beauty is the example of
this grace which is given by the Shunammite, who set
apart a chamber in her house, with a bed, and a table,
and a stool, and a candlestick, for the reception of the
Prophet Elisha. In acknowledgment of her good offices,
he sent her a message, as if she were a child of this
world, desirous of being repaid in this world's coin:
" Behold, thou hast been careful for us with all this
care, what is to be done for thee? wouldest thou be
spoken for to the king, or to the captain of the host? "
No! no! Elisha had mistaken the woman. Neither
the king nor the commander-in-chief had any thing to
offer which was in the smallest degree attractive to
such a mind as hers. Scope for quiet cultivation of
the domestic affections, and for quiet fulfilment of home




xvi.]      rather than in the Future.         177
duties, was all that she coveted. "She answered, I
dwell among mine own people."  She dwelt in far
Issachar, divided by the whole district of Manasseh from
the metropolis of the ten tribes. In that metropolis
she would be a stranger, however lifted to eminence,
moving in a heartless circle of formalities and (so-called)
amusements, for which she had no real taste; experiencing no affection or sympathy from the visitors who
thronged her house, nor even from the dependants who
waited upon her. So she said-and the words indicate
the power which, even under that earlier dispensation,
God's grace had gained in her heart —" I dwell among
mine own people:" words worthy of a Psalmist,
worthy of an Apostle-worthy of him who sung:
" The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea,
I have a goodly heritage," and of him who wrote: " I
have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to
be content."  Oh that in an age, when men run to
and fro in restless quest of something which at present
they have not, when every one, as if by an instinct
pervading all classes of society, " wandereth from his
place, as a bird wandereth from her nest," we could
all reecho her sentiment, and take it up into our
mouths with sincerity: "I dwell among mine own
people"-" In my present home I desire to abide, till
I exchange it for a better and an eternal one! "
It is not, however, as a beautiful sentiment, but as
one of the principles and secrets of a holy life, that we
are now advocating the duty of contentment with present things. It is because a cheerful and thankful
acquiescence in our present condition is so essential to
spiritual progress, that it requires to be pressed so
much. We cannot make spiritual progress amid dis



178      Peace by living in the Present    [CHAP.
tractions of heart, whether those distractions arise from
a melancholy hankering after the past, or from vainly
reaching forward to some better and brighter future.
And at this point a new line of thought opens itself up
in connection with our subject. It is curious and instructive to observe how the Fall has perplexed the
original design of our nature, and set the various
principles of it at work, each upon an end which is not
its own. There is in human nature a principle of rest,
which leads us to acquiesce in the present, and a
principle of activity and progress, instigating us to
further attainments. The principle of rest was meant
to operate upon our earthly condition, and to insure
contentment with present circumstances. The principle
of progress, on the other hand, was meant to operate
upon our moral and spiritual attainments, and to urge
us on to a higher standard of goodness.  But a sad
confusion has come in with the Fall, in virtue of which
each of these principles works upon that which, in the
original design of God, was the end of the other. The
principle of rest leads us to acquiesce in a very ordinary
standard of moral attainment.  We satisfy ourselves
entirely with a reputable life and a decorous and
devout attention to the externals of religion, more
especially if these be united with an accessibility to
religious impressions. How quickly and promptly do
we, after an access of these impressions, gravitate to the
earth again and settle down upon our lees, and develop
that tendency toward self-complacent spiritual stagnation, which is so continually the subject of censure
in the Holy Scriptures: "Woe to them that are at
ease in Zion;" " It shall come to pass at that time,
saith the Lord, that I will search Jerusalem with




xvi.]      rather than in the Future.         179
candles, and punish the men that are settled on their
lees;" "Thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with
goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not
that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and
blind, and naked."-On the other hand, the principle
of progress concerns itself with our circumstances, our
position, and our material welfare. Society in general
most energetically improves its condition; and each
individual member of it exerts himself to the utmost
not to miss his share in the general improvement. In
short, if we desired to find words descriptive of the
restless progress of our age, and of the aspirations of
all, who have imbibed its temper, to be something they
are not at present, we could not find words more suitable than those in which St. Paul-even after having
sacrificed all things for Christ-describes his own
ardent pursuit of the crown and palm-branch, which
are held out to the runner in the Christian course:
" Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended;
but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which
are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which
are before, I press toward the mark for the prize." It
becomes clear, then, that one thing which we have to
do in the pursuit of holiness is to restore (if I may so
express it) to their right places and functions the
acquiescence and the forward impulse, which there are
in our nature; to be easily satisfied as regards our condition, so as not to indulge a wish for the change of it;
to be deeply dissatisfied with the little we know of
God and of ourselves, and the miserably little we do for
Him. Let our whole care be to serve God in the present moment of our lives; to taste the peace of the
present pardon offered to us freely through the Blood




180        Peace by living in the Present    [CHAP.
of Jesus Christ; to meet faithfully the obligations and
responsibilities which the passing hour devolves upon
us; to improve to the utmost present opportunities
either of doing or receiving good. It was said of the
manna: " Let no man leave of it until the morning;"
and, in like terms, of the Passover Lamb: "Ye shall
let nothing remain of it until the morning."  Communion with God and a walk in the sunlight of His
countenance are like the manna and the Passover
Lamb; they are designed for instantaneous enjoyment;
they may not be reserved until to-morrow; these
viands will not keep until another day.
To-morrow! Another day!  -How know we that a
to-morrow is in store for us? that we shall live to see
another day? It is this consideration of the precariousness of life at the best, of its brevity at all events,
which, if we could fully grasp it in idea, would make
our present worldly condition dwindle down in importance to a mere mathematical point.  Very strikingly is this brought out in one of the passages already
quoted from  St. Paul.  He is speaking of the condition of a slave when he writes: "Brethren, let every
man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God."
" Art thou called being a servant? " he says, " care
not for it" (thy earthly position is a matter of no
great moment; do not press or push for a change,
though the change to be pushed for is nothing less
than liberty); " but if thou mayest be made free, use
it rather " (if the option of liberty is given you, you
need have no hesitation in availing yourself of it').
1 Unless indeed the ei icai in el icai 6Svacat keevbOepog yevtaOat
is to be rendered "although" (its usual force). In which case
the meaning will be-" nay, although thou mayest be made free,




xvi.]        rather than in the ]Future.              181
But how can an exhortation not to be solicitous about
a change of position, even when the position is one of
bondage in a heathen family, be justified?  Such a
position would seem at first sight to be fraught with
so many drawbacks and disadvantages, even in a moral
and spiritual point of view, that the exchange of it for
freedom would be worth any exertion, any sacrifice.
Doubtless, if it should last any considerable time. But
at longest it is to endure only a few short years, and
then the Christian slave, who has already been delivered from the servitude of sin, shall be emancipated,
not by the rod of the Pretor, but with the glorious
liberty of the children of God. And so the Apostle,
after bidding Christians " abide with God " in whatsoever condition of life His Providence hath appointed
for them, solemnly sums up his argument thus: " But
this I say, brethren, the time is short" (literally, the
seaso —that remains to us until the coming of the
Lord, whether to the world at the second Advent, or
to the individual soul at death-is contracted into a
very brief span).  We must work while we have the
light.  We must redeem  the opportunity.  As for
secular circumstances and position, we must sit loose
to them, and not allow them to hold us with too fast
a grip.  "It remaineth that they that weep be as
use it " (i. e., slavery) " rather." But I cannot help thinking that,
if this had been St. Paul's meaning, he would have written rather
aUa2a Icai e —" but even if thou mayest be made free."  The force
of iKa is to throw the emphasis on the word immediately succeeding.'AR3' ei ica ffvacac, therefore, may mean, "But if thou
mayest " (with an emphasis on the mayest) "be made free, have
thy freedom." It is hard to suppose that St. Paul would have
exhorted his converts to prefer slavery to freedom, where the
latter might have been had innocently.




182       Peace by living in the Present    [CHAP.
though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as
though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as
though they possessed not; and they that use this
world, as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world
passeth away."  Hence the comparative unimportance
of" our worldly position, which may well soothe away
any feverish anxiety to change it. All differences of
size vanish in the presence of Infinity. All differences
of lot vanish in the presence of that tremendous reality,
which is called Eternity.
"Eternity! Eternity!
How long art thou, Eternity?
A moment lasts all joy below,
Whereby man sinks to endless woe.
A moment lasts all earthly pain,
Whereby an endless joy we gainPonder, 0 Man, Eternity."
Strive not, then, for a change of circumstances.
Work for God in the present day, as if your horizon
were bounded by sunrise and nightfall.  How avails
it to linger in memory over the past, or to long for the
future? The past cannot be recalled or altered. The
future (of Time) may never be yours. You are master
only of the present.
In concluding the Chapter, let us just advert to
another and very different form from that of pressing
after mere temporal advancement, in which the restlessness of the present age is manifested. Among
the many signs of an unhealthy moral atmosphere now
abroad, is a growing discontent with the doctrines and
discipline of the Church of our Baptism, of our forefathers.  Devout men, catching unawares the infectious desire of the times for progress, crave after




xvI.]       rather than in the Future.           183
something more exciting to the devotional instinct
than they conceive the Church of England has to
offer. She has not spirituality enough; she chills our
fervor with her formality; or, her framework is too
stiff, too unaccommodating to emergencies; or, she
does not indulge in striking appeals to the imagination and the senses. But I believe that the really
spiritual mind, which is bent upon the attainment of
Holiness as the one thing needful, while ready, of
course, to welcome and adopt all improvements, will
not overmuch occupy itself with projects of change,
much less will cherish a desire to stray into other
Communions, conceived to offer larger helps, or fewer
hinderances, to the spiritual life.  "Be content with
present things," is an excellent precept for religious
as well as for worldly dissatisfactions. Surely there is
scope enough, material enough, opportunities enough,
helps enough, for serving God and benefiting our fellow-creatures, where we are, and under the conditions
of our present ecclesiastical system. Rather I should
say there is more than enough of all these; for what
member or minister of the English Church will say
that he has fully availed himself of all the opportunities of gaining or doing good, which the existing system (often complained of as so faulty) gives? How
then? Is there something else working at the bottom
of the heart, besides a desire to serve God faithfully,
and to advance our own salvation, and that of others?
Has the mind formed some ideal of a perfect communion here upon the earth, such as never was, never
will be, never can be realized in an imperfect and a
transitory world? Are we dreaming of perfection in
any Church, until the Son of Man sends forth His




184    Peace by living in the Present, etc. [CHAP.
angels to gather out of His kingdom all scandals, and
them that do iniquity? No doubt there is a pleasant
excitement in planning and scheming for a brighter
and better condition of things. But is not this excitement apt somewhat to distract us from the duties of
the present hour, and the one thing needful? The
distinctive features of distinct Communions will be all
swept away at the Lord's Coming, when unity shall
be restored to the Universal Church, and there shall
be one flock and one Shepherd; and possibly, long
before the Lord's Coming, the keen interest which we
personally take in these distinctions shall cease, and
we shall be face to face with the realities of Eternity.
Then, if we would follow after Holiness, let us not
discompose ourselves with any feverish desires for
change. Let us say of our ecclesiastical, as well as
our temporal position: " I am well where I am. God's
Providence has appointed my lot in a Communion, not,
it may be, free from defects and weak points (where
is such a Communion to be found upon earth?), but
certainly Scriptural, and certainly primitive.' The
lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I
have a goodly heritage.''Among my own people,'
in the bosom of the Church which brought me to
Christ in infancy, will I dwell; and there will I die;
and, until I can find a Communion which supplies me
with more touching and solemn words for the occasion, I shall determine that the last words read over
my remains shall be those of the Office for the Burial
of the Dead."




xvii.] Centripetal and Centriftcgal Forces, etc. 185
CHAPTER XVII.
THE CENTRIPETAL AND CENTRIFUGAL FORCES OF THE
SOUL,
Ovx rravref edli 2eltrovpycKC a Yeirveara, e( tSiaicoviav arooareX2F6feva
&6at rovg iei22ovraC tOCSpovo#evZ acTrpiav; "Are they not all
ministering syirits, sent forth to ministerfor them who shall be
heirs of salvation? "-HEB. i. 14.
A    S a starting-point for the argument of this Chapter, I shall ask my readers to imagine a case
which not unfrequently occurs.  Let us suppose a
good and devout person not to have been called in the
order of God's Providence to any regular pursuit-not
to have any occupation made ready to his hand. Let
us suppose that he needs not to earn a livelihood;
that he is born to a position of great affluence, which
affluence, however, does not involve the management
of real property. And let us further suppose that
another equally good man, harassed with overmuch
secular work, congratulates him  on the abundant
leisure for the exercises of devotion, which his circumstances allow. To which the person congratulated
replies thus: "It is true, friend, that I have leisure
enough (and to spare) for private prayer, the study
of the Scriptures, and all other ordinances of Religion;




186      Thie Centripetal and Centrifugal  [CHAP.
and that so far my lot is a happy one.  But I find
myself under a great disadvantage in another respect.
I have no occupation, and that is a great drawback.
Highly as I esteem, and much as I enjoy, Prayer and
the Holy Scriptures, I cannot pray and read the Bible
all day long. My mind recoils from an uninterrupted
exercise of devotion, and craves for active employment
as a necessary ingredient of happiness."
Now, is this recoil of the mind from ceaseless devotion, and its craving after active work, a disease of the
mind, or rather part of the mind's original constitution?  Is it a really natural instinct? or is it a result
of the Fall? Few questions can be more important
in a practical point of view.  For if the desire for
active work be a really natural instinct, then the life
of unintermitted exercises of devotion is a mistake, and
the striving after such a life, as pious anchorites and
monks have often striven, is a cramping of the mind
into an unnatural posture, likely to hinder its free development.  But if, on the other hand, this desire for
active work connects itself with the sin which is in
us, and with the alienation of the human mind from
God, which was brought in by the Fall, then no doubt
we are furthering the great end of our existence, only
when we are engaged in acts of prayer, praise, meditation, or some ordinance of Religion; and any secular
pursuit becomes an impertinence as regards the great
end of our being.
Now, the passage of Scripture, which stands at the
head of the Chapter, seems to answer this question
more conclusively than any other.  It is true, indeed,
that it speaks not of men, but of angels, and therefore seems at first sight to be inapplicable in deter



XVIi.]         Forces of the Soul.             187
mining a question of human duty. But mind in all
rational creatures, whether men or angels, is a thing
of the same quality, governed by the same laws, and
subjected to the same conditions, although no doubt
differing in the clearness of its intuitions, according
to the state of existence in which the creature possessed of mind is placed. And in the present instance
there is a positive advantage in looking at mind as it
exists in Angels, rather than as it exists in men. For
the question before us is, whether a certain instinct
of the mind, which we all find in ourselves, is a part
of the mind's original constitution, or a part of the
corruption'of our nature. Now, if we looked at ourselves alone, it might not be easy to determine this
question.  Sin has insinuated itself into  all our
thoughts and feelings, has given to all of them a certain tinge, so that it might not be easy to say of a
particular sentiment how far it is due to the original
constitution of our nature, and how far to the sin
which has thrown that constitution into disorder.
But into the nature of the holy Angels sin never entered; and in them therefore we see mind (or created
intelligence) in its really original condition, as it came
fresh from the hands of God. And if any man should
still demur to our deducing from the study of angelic
nature any argument bearing upon human duty, let
him consider that Our Lord Himself makes the service
which Angels do to God a model of the service which
men are bound to do to Him. For it is Our Lord,
who has taught us to pray that " God's will may be
done upon earth as it is in heaven;" which words
surely warrant us in looking to the rational intelligences in heaven-to what the Word of God has re



188      The Centripetal and Centrifugal  [CHAP.
vealed, and what the Church of God has received
respecting them-as furnishing an example of our
own obligations and duties.
What is it, then, which God's Word has revealed
to us respecting the pursuits and occupations of Angels? The passage which stands at the head of this
Chapter answers the question briefly but exhaustively;
and it is most unfortunate that the English translation
should here fail (as it fails very seldom indeed) to exhibit the point of the passage. Two radically different Greek words, which call up in the mind associations of an opposite character, are translated by one
and the same English word, "minister."' Are they
not all ministering spirits? "-the word used here is
that from which our word "liturgy" comes. It sets
before us the Angels as priests of the Heavenly Temple, engaged in the service of praise and adoration.
Perhaps the one word, which in English conveys the
sense most accurately, is "officiating;" "Are they
not all officiating spirits? "-"  Sent forth to minister
for them who shall be heirs of salvation." Here the
ministration is not the performance of a devotional
function, but simply the doing of service. The same
word is used where Martha is said to have been cumbered about much serving; where the widows of the
Hellenists are said to have been neglected in the daily
ministration (i. e., in the daily distribution of Church
funds); and again where the disciples of Antioch are
said to have " determined to send relief" (send "for a
ministration " of temporal resources) " unto the brethren which dwelt in Judea."  So that in the life of the
holy Angels there is an element of worship and devotion, directed toward God as its object, and an element




XVII.]        Forces of the Soul.             189
of active service on behalf of God's children, directed
toward man. Excellently are the two discriminated
in the Collect for the Festival of St. Michael, in which
we pray, that " as God's holy Angels always do Him
service in Heaven" (here is the liturgical function of
the Angels-their devotional life), "so, by His appointment, they may succor and defend us upon earth"
(here is their ministration to man, the business on
which God employs them). And with this summary
description of their pursuits agrees most entirely every
notice we have of them in Holy Scripture. Sometimes they are exhibited to us as engaged in worship,
as when, on the birth-night of Christ, they sing the
Christmas Anthem, or as when, in the Book of Revelation, they stand round about the throne and cry:
" Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power,
and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honors and
glory, and blessing." Sometimes, on the other hand,
they visit this lower world upon errands of consolation
and succor, as when one of them shot down into the den
of lions, and shut the lions' mouths, that they should not
hurt Daniel; and another winged his way into St.
Peter's prison, and disencumbered him of his chains,
and led him forth through bar, and bolt, and sleeping
sentinels; and others, more highly favored, ministered
refreshment to Our Blessed Lord after His temptation,
strengthened and supported Him in His agony, attended on Him at His resurrection, and composed the
grave-clothes in so orderly a manner as to refute the
stupid and lying report that His sacred body had been
stolen; and again at His Ascension addressed a spiritstirring word to the sorrowing friends who were following Him with their eyes. It would seem that in




190      The Centripetl and Centrifugal   [CHAP.
Jacob's vision were well symbolized the two functions
of Angels.  On the grand staircase (for such no doubt
it was, and not a ladder with rounds), which the Patriarch saw mounting up with broad steps to Heaven,
there were angels of God ascending and descending;
some with faces turned to God, as in worship, some
with their shining countenances bent downward and
their swift feet hastening to the earth, as if intent on
the relief of man, " officiating spirits, sent forth on service in behalf of the heirs of salvation." I have only
to add that in the single perfect exemplification of the
angelic life upon earth-the life of our sinless Lord
and Master-constant exercises of devotion went hand
in hand with constant relief of man's necessities. He
followed up nights of Prayer by days of toil in the
service of the ignorant and the suffering.
In the light of these observations let us look again
at the case supposed at the beginning of the Chapter.
The question which was raised in connection with that
case is now  solved.  There is no sin in that instinctive desire of external activity, which we find in ourselves-in that necessity for a definite pursuit which
all feel, and which those who are without regular employment feel painfully. This desire is part of the
original constitution of our mind, not part of its acquired depravity. There seem to be two tendencies
in the original constitution of every upright intelligence. I may illustrate them by a reference to those
forces of the material universe, which are called centripetal and centrifugal.  What is it which causes the
rotation of a planet round the sun? First, there must
have been the primary impulse given to it by the hand
of the Creator, when it was first formed and driven




XVII.]          Forces of the Soul.               191
forth into space. But if this were the only impulse
upon the planet, it would simply travel ever farther
and farther from the point whence it started, coming
into collision, perhaps, with other similar bodies on its
erratic course. But another force, continually pressing
upon it, binds it to a centre, and keeps it in an orderly
revolution. Launched into space, it is caught by the
attraction of that enormous body, the sun, which never
ceases for an instant to act upon it. It sweeps through
space still in obedience to its primary impulse, which
indeed alone preserves it from falling into the sun;
but the power of gravitation confines it to its orbit.
Now, in the moral and mental constitution of each one
of us there is something similar to this arrangement
of the material universe.  We are made each one of
us for work, for a certain sphere of service; we are
qualified for this sphere by certain abilities, and sent
into a fallen world, where there are a thousand things
to be done, in retrieving the effects of the Fall, in reestablishing order, in assuaging sorrow, in enlightening ignorance, in removing sin; and where also there
is (at least among all civilized people) an organization
of society, involving a division of labor and a great
variety of pursuits.  Be the work allotted to us by
Providence what it may-be it in itself even dry and
repelling-the mind can create an interest in it, by
simply throwing itself into what has to be done.  But
then this throwing his mind into a pursuit is not the
sole condition of a man's happiness. We feel that it
is not, whenever our pursuit wearies our spirits, whenever we commit ourselves, without an attempt at selfcontrol, to the interest of the hour, whatever that may
be. We soon come to the bottom of any interest,




192      The Centripetal and Centrifugal  [cHaP.
however high and pure it may be, whether it be an
interest in Science, or in Literature, or, better still, in
a philanthropic scheme. Our interests are something
like our horses, very pleasant to ride while they are
fresh, but wearing and wearying to their riders when
they are overridden.  And why is this, but because
there is another condition of man's happiness, over and
above the having a pursuit? The soul, in order to be
holy and happy (they are only two sides of the same
thing), must be continually drawn in toward its centre. Now, God is the centre of the soul, who alone
can satisfy all its aspirations after light, and truth, and
good.  This bias of the soul toward God, this profound gnawing feeling of unrest out of Him, is the
soul's centripetal force, just as the craving after work
is its centrifugal force. And the due operation of
both the forces together, the recognition of God while
we are busily engaged in the work which He has given
us to do, the turning toward Him in heart while our
hands are executing His tasks, or our feet speeding on
His errands, this is the path taken by the mind, when
obedient, not indeed to the law of the Fall, but to the
impulses given it at its Creation. It is an orderly
path, and therefore a peaceful and happy path, the
onily path which can (I do not say gratify, but) satisfy
and content the spirit.
But then observe that, in order fully to realize the
effect, there must be an interlacing of the recognition
of God with our business, not a separation of the two.
There is many a Christian who reaches nothing more
than this (nay, who aims at nothing more), that devotion shall have its little hour in the day, and business
its long hcurs; and great is his complacency, if the




xvII.]         Forces of the Soul.             193
business hours are not allowed to trench upon the
hour of devotion. I am not saying any thing against
stated periods of devotion; they are absolutely essential, and it is only too certain that in the absence of
stated periods the spirit of devotion would evaporate
altogether. But I am saying that the soul will never
taste a full satisfaction, nor travel in its appointed orbit, until it has learned more or less (using ejaculatory
prayer as its instrument) to mix devotion with work.
The planet does not at one time travel in obedience
to the centrifugal, and then again in obedience to
the centripetal force; but at every moment of time
both forces are acting upon it, the one speeding it on
its course, the other drawing it in toward the sun.
The soul must not leave God for an instant, if it is to
be perfectly joyous and contented. Let it take but a
step away from Him, and it is at once in a region of
excitement and unrest, and so far forth of danger.
The condition of the soul, when in its orbit, is well
represented by these words of Hele's Devotions,
which have often struck me as singularly beautiful
and edifying: " Grant that I may walk before Thee in
a constant awe of Thy sacred Presence, and in such
a devout and heavenly frame of mind, as may lead me
to be frequently lifting up my heart to Thee, in acts
of adoration and thanksgiving, of resignation and dependence."   Remember that the New  Testament
Prayer Precept makes unbroken communion with God
obligatory uponus. It names no seasons for prayer,
or rather, it names every season: "Pray without
ceasing."
My reader, I do not ask whether you have completely acquired the habit of interpenetrating your
9




194     TThe 6Centripetal and Centrifugal  [CHAP.
daily employments with the spirit of devotion (that
is the case with none of us, least of all probably with
the present writer); but are you placing this before
you as your standard, and sincerely trying to reach
it? Ejaculatory prayer is the great means of reaching
it. Do you ever use ejaculatory prayer? Do you ever
lift up your heart to God in the midst of your work,
praying Him to shield you from temptation, to bless
you in what you are doing, and, at all events, not to
let you wander very far from His side? Do not say it
is impossible; for to this and no lower standard you
are called, both by the constitution of your nature, and
by the precept, " Pray without ceasing;" and by the
grace of God all things which He commands are possible.  You will say, perhaps, " I try to keep my mind
continually in the right track; but alas! it is thrown
off its balance a thousand times a day, by having to
do things in a hurry and against time; by a warm
conversation; by a piece of interesting news; by domestic worries and cares; by little rubs of the temper."  So it is most truly. The mind wants steadying and setting right many times a day.  It resembles
a compass placed on a rickety table; the least stir
of the table makes the needle swing round and point
untrue. Let it settle, then, till-it points aright.  Be
perfectly silent for a few moments, thinking of JEsus;
there is an almost divine force in silence. Drop.the
thing that worries, that excites, that interests, that
thwarts you; let it fall, like a sediment, to the bottom,
until the soul is no longer turbid; and say secretly:
" Grant, I beseech Thee, merciful Lord, to thy faithful
servant pardon and peace; that I may be cleansed
from all my sins, and serve Thee with a quiet nmind"




xvII.]         -Forces of the Soul.              195
Yes! with a quiet mind.  We cannot serve Him with
a turbid one; it is a mere impossibility.  Thus composing ourselves from time to time, thus praying, and
setting the mind's needle true, we shall little by little
approximate toward that devout frame, which binds
the soul to its true centre, even while it travels
through worldly business, worldly excitements, worldly
cares.




196      Of the Necessity of an Occupation, [CHAP.
CHAPTER XVIII.
OF THE NECESSITY OF AN OCCUPATION, AND OF THE
RIGHT WAY OF PURSUING IT.
"Because he was of the same craft, he abode with them, and wrought:
for by their occupation they were tent-makers."-ACTS xviii. 3.
ST. PAUL, like every other minister of Christ's
Gospel, had a right to receive support from  the
persons to  whom  he ministered.  But there were
good reasons why he did not see fit to avail himself
of this right. In the first place, he wished to make
himself an example of quiet industry to his converts.
Some of them, who wanted mental ballast, had been
unduly excited and thrown out of the groove of their
ordinary pursuits by the revelations of Christianity,
and by the influences which the Gospel brought to
bear upon them; it would calm and sober them, and
help to bring them back to a regular life, if they saw
their Apostle, a man who had been favored with the
most extraordinary revelations, " caught away as far
as the third heaven," "caught away  into Paradise,"
1 Our version " caught up " is in both cases inaccurate. There
is no preposition to represent "up."  The words are apTray~vra....  pT7rdy]. An upward direction may be imnplied in the case
of " the third heaven;" but in that of " Paradise," not so. For




xviii.] and of the Right WGWy of pursuing it.  197
earning his bread by laboring at a common handicraft
in the intervals of his ministry.  Again: he was
pleased to be able to feel that his preaching was
gratuitous, which it could not have been had he
accepted payment for it. It was a satisfaction to
know that, in earning his bread by a trade, rather
than by his ministry, he was doing something more
than he was strictly bound to do, something which he
might have left undone without sin.  Again, the
having a trade gave him scope for the exercise of two
most important Christian  graces, Self-denial and
Almsgiving. The extra work and weariness, which
the trade entailed, was a means of keeping under his
body and bringing it into subjection; while the
money which it brought in to him was employed in
relieving the wants of others as well as his own; for
he says to the elders of Ephesus: "Yea, ye yourselves know, that these hands have ministered unto
my necessities, and to them that were with me. I have
showed you all things, how that so laboring ye ought
to support the weak, and to remember the words of
the Lord Jesus, how He said, It is more blessed to
give than to receive."  So St. Paul, impelled by
these motives, as also, doubtless, by the example of
his Divine Master, who up to the age of thirty had
followed the trade of a carpenter, " making " (as
Justin Martyr informs us) "ploughs and yokes for
oxen "-St. Paul, joining himself in partnership with
Aquila and Priscilla, became a manufacturer of haircloth or leather tents, having learned that trade in
his youth, according to the wise maxim of the Jewish
" Paradise " is the place of departed spirits, conceived of by the
Jews as in the centre (or heart) of the earth.




198    Of the Necessity of ac  Occuzation, [CHAP.
Rabbis, who said that every boy should be taught a
trade, upon which he might fall back for a maintenance, in case of necessity.
The Apostle no doubt found his account in his
trade, though it imposed upon him toils and cares,
which to a spirit less ardent than his might have
seemed superfluous. Independently of the conscious
security which there was in the self-denial of such a
course, independently also of the blessedness of giving for the relief of others, which his trade enabled
him to taste, there must have been a ballast given to
his mind by work, very necessary to steady it when
it was rocked (as it often was) by strong emotions,
or lifted up to high contemplations. And it should
be remarked that the work, being a handicraft, left
his mind comparatively free for prayer and meditation, with which it cannot be doubted that he was
continually feeding it.  One can imagine that God
would often visit him in his work with high and elevating, and even entrancing thoughts, which would
more than compensate for the bodily weariness it
must have entailed. This would have been quite in
accordance with the usual plan on which Divine visions
and Divine calls are vouchsafed. Gideon, threshing
wheat by the wine-press, is greeted by an angel of
the Lord. Elisha's path, as he ploughs with twelve
yoke of oxen, is crossed by Elijah, who throws his
mantle upon him. David is tending the sheep, when
he is fetched out of the field to be anointed and saluted
ling. Matthew, as he pores over his accounts, and
enters in his books the payments made to him at his
office, is called to be an Apostle. Peter, as he draws
his net to shore, has a manifestation made to him of




xvII.] andc of the Right JTay of pM"uruing it.  199
the Divine power, which brings him to the Saviour's
knees.  On the eyes of the wise men, as they gaze
upon the starry heavens, dawns the star of Bethlehem,
which announces the Saviour's birth. And possibly,
as St. Paul was stitching together the goat's-hair,
which was the material of his trade, the slight and
temporary nature of the habitations he was manufacturing may have crossed him, and then there may have
come sweeping across his mind grand thoughts of the
fleeting nature of the body, which is the soul's tent,
and of the durable mansion which God will provide
for the spirit hereafter; thoughts such as he expresses
in that most solemn passage of one of his Epistles:
"For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle" (literally, " of the tent") "were dissolved, we
have a building of God, an house not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens."
In our last Chapter we saw that there are two
forces in the soul of man, standing quite independent
of the sin that is in him, and which we ventured to
call the centrifugal and centripetal forces of the soul,
the one driving him into the outer world, and urging
him to active work in the path of duty, the other
drawing him in, even while he so works, toward God,
who is the soul's true centre of repose. Having paid
some attention in the earlier part of the work to the
latter of these two forces; having spoken at some
length on the contemplation of God, on faith in God,
on the love of God-we will dilate briefly in this
Chapter on the other force, which drives the mind
into things external, and corresponds to the impulse
given to planets at their creation, in virtue of which




200    Of the Necessit. of an Occupation., [CHAP.
they travel on their appointed paths. Consider, then,
the necessity to Holiness, and therefore to happiness,
of an outward occupation: " He abode with them
and wrought: for by their occucpation they were tentmakers."
Let us see what hints, likely to be practically useful in the pursuit of Holiness, can be given on this
subject.
Of course, for the larger class of people there is an
occupation made ready to their hands. Most menall but the few who are born to independence-have
a pursuit (a profession or a trade) by which they earn
their livelihood. Their own leanings, or the destination of their parents, or circumstances over which they
have had no control-anyhow, the Providence of God
by some of its manifold drawings-has assigned to
them this line of life, with the particular duties involved in it. The chief advice, then, that is needed
here is how to draw into spiritual account, and to
make available for the purposes of the spiritual life,
that task which is of daily recurrence and obligation.
And in order to this, let it be firmly settled in the
mind, before we put our hand to our work, and let us
suffer the mind from time to time to revert to the
thought, that what we are about to do is the task
assigned to us in the order of God's Providence, that
it is a task which He will inspect, and that it must be
executed as well as ever we are able, in order that it
may meet His approval.  There are children, who are
too young to be left alone in the preparation of their
lessons. The teacher must sit with them, while they
prepare; they must work under his eye, and have
him by them to apply to and ask help from, when they




XVIII.] and of the BRight Way of pursuing it.  201
come across a difficulty. Now, some of the deepest
lessons of Divine Truth are to be learned from our
management of children; and the way of so doing
work, as that it may be a source of spiritual consolation and strength, is among these lessons. Do the
work under the eye of your Heavenly Master; and
look up in His face from time to time for His help and
blessing: an internal colloquy with Him ever and
anon, so far from being a distraction, will be a furtherance. For no work can in any high sense prosper,
which is not done with a bright, elastic spirit; and
there is no means of keeping the spirit bright and
elastic but by keeping it near to God. Another point
is, never to allow ourselves to think of our work as a
distraction or a hinderance to piety. Regard it in its
true light, morally and spiritually. Think of it as
contributing to healthfulness and cheerfulness of mind,
as a steadying and sobering influence, preventing
those extravagances into which without it the mind
might run.  Remember also how often in the Scriptures God has come across simple men inthe way of
their daily task-come across them miraculously in
the instances cited above-but He is as ready to meet
them now on the field of commonplace occupations, in
the ordinary methods of His Providence and His Grace.
Do but keep as close under His eye, when working,
as you can contrive to do, and open your heart to Him
as often as you can; and you shall doubtless hear His
whispers in your conscience, and experience the instilment of some good and elevating thought into your
mind. But the most important point of advice in an
age like ours, when men in all conditions of life are
overweighted with work, and in a country like ours,




202     Of the Necessity of an Occupation, [CHAP.
whose inhabitants are so little meditative and so constitutionally busy, is to aim rather at doing well what
we do, than at getting through much. Francis of
Sales thought that the great bane of the spiritual life
in most men is that eagerness and undue activity of
the natural mind, which leads to precipitancy and
hurry. He states his case too strongly, as all men are
apt to do, who think they have got hold of an important secret; but there is valuable truth in what he
says. Hurry-the struggle to get through a great
deal in a short time, as every one is naturally prompted to do, who finds his table covered with correspondence as thick as a field in the Polar regions with snow,
and feels that without an extraordinary effort to-morrow's duties will come crowding in on the heels of today's work-is very prejudicial to our moral and spiritual well-being. The eager impulsiveness to wipe
away work, and get well rid of it, is not a temper in
which spiritual progress can be made. It was the
snare into which Martha fell, who allowed herself to
be " cumbered about much serving: " she might have
served, and it was necessary and proper that she should
serve; but it was neither necessary nor proper to "be
cumbered." The Apostle enjoins that we shall " not 
be " slothful in business, but fervent in spirit, serving
the Lord."  "Not slothful in business "-that is, not
lazy, while busy. But is not this a contradiction in
terms?  How can a man be lazy while he is busy?
The experience of every much-occupied  man furnishes a ready answer.  We may be spiritually
lazy while busy, and by being so may let all our
work run to waste, as regards any real fruit of it.
To work with a fidgety, anxious, uneasy mind, not




xviii.] canc of the Right TWay of pursuing it.  203
setting God before us while we work, but thinking
only of the hundred-and-one other calls, which we
have to meet as soon as this is satisfied-this it is
to be lazy while we are busy. Surely a vast number of people in the present day know what this temper of mind is. And what is the remedy? The remedy is to recommend the work to God, and humbly
ask His blessing and His aid, as we may do with the
utmost confidence, if the work be really that which His
Providence has assigned to us; then, resolutely to
refuse to attend to more than one thing at a time,
and to let every thing else drop, till that one thing is
done. Other things must wait. Some of them we
shall be able probably to do by-and-by. Not a few
of them will do themselves. And some of them, maybe, we shall have to leave undone. Let us not be
disquieted. If the spirit of the doer have been right,
all will be well. And the right spirit is not one that
is "careful and troubled about many things," but collected, calm, fervent, angelical. Is not God's will to
be done in earth, as it is in heaven?  And can we
imagine distraction, or precipitancy, or restless impulsiveness among the angels in heaven? The devotional writer already referred to says admirably well:
"Rivers which glide peaceably through the valleys
bear great boats and rich merchandise; and the rain
which falls gently on the fields makes them fruitful in
grass and corn; but torrents and rivers which run
rapidly ruin the bordering country, and are unprofitable for traffic; and vehement and tempestuous rains
furrow the fields. Never was work well done with
too much violence and earnestness." So much for the
method in which we should strive to execute the work




204    Of the lNecessity of an Occzpation, [CHAP.
of our calling.-But, in very many (if not absolutely
in all) pursuits, there are leisure moments and occasional intermissions.  Those who nourish a high
spiritual ambition will endeavor to turn these also to
spiritual account. They will feel that just as a necessity to preach the Gospel was laid upon St. Paul,
a necessity which he could in nowise escape from, so
our ordinary pursuit, whatever it be, is made obligatory upon us by the imperative demand of our daily
wants.  IHowever devoutly we may work, we are
working for ourselves, when we follow our trade or
our profession; for it is by this craft that we have our
wealth. But in our leisure moments it is open to us
to do something gratuitously for the cause of Christ
-either in one form or other to give labor to His
cause, or by extra work to procure the means of furthering it. This is what St. Paul did. Though the
care of all the Churches devolved upon him daily, and
the due discharge of his ministry must have been, one
would think, more than sufficient to engross his every
leisure moment, yet he took up again the trade which
he had learned in his youth, though he was under no
obligation whatever to do so, and thus had the deep
satisfaction of feeling that in his ministry he was
working unpaid for the Master, whose free grace had
done every thing for him. Truly a sublime and heroic generosity; and one which, at however long a
distance, it is possible for modern Christians to imitate. There are many fields of Church work, in all
of which labor and money are sorely needed. Might
not the professional man, might not the tradesman,
give labor (either personal or remunerative) in one of
these fields?  Is there nothing which we might do




xviii.] and of the iRight Way of pursuing it.  205
for the cause of Christ, if so disposed, in leisure hours?
This answer will rise to the lips of many readers:
" My regular work puts such a strain upon me, that I
find myself fit for nothing-more dead than alive at
the end of the day." Doubtless it may be so. And
probably our overwrought modern civilization, habituating generation after generation, as it does, to softness of life, has enfeebled the constitutions of all of
us, and made us less equal to hardships than were
men of old. Still we must not blink the great fact
that a more responsible and more anxious occupation
than St. Paul's never yet fell to any man's lot; and
yet that he found time, by honest industry, to earn
enough to support himself and relieve the wants of
those around him. Probably, if we could do our work
in a brighter and less anxious spirit, it would wear us
less. It is worry, not work, that wears. And then,
in the case of our undertaking, in our leisure moments,
some gratuitous Church work-be it school teaching,
or District visiting, or mere extra labor to earn money
for charities-there would always be the thought of
its being gratuitous to uphold us, and a feeling also
of security, from the circumstance of self-denial, which
we are at all times so prone to evade, being wrought
into the plan and texture of our life.
I have spoken of cases (and these are, at least
among men, the great majority) where persons have
a definite occupation, a line of life marked out for
them in the way of a trade or a profession. But what
shall we say of those who are not called upon to work
for a livelihood, and whose only regular business is
the administration of a property or of a household,
which, while it may be under certain circumstances




206     Of th!e lNecessity of ac  Occupatzion, [CHAP.
heavy, may also be so light as to allow long intervals
of leisure?  Is not reading, it might be said, the suitable occupation for such people?  For reading, if intelligently pursued, is a means of cultivating the mind
and of self-improvement, which doubtless should be
one great object with all thoughtful and earnest persons. But surely mere reading, without any outcome
of the study in the shape of writing or teaching, hardly
constitutes by itself such an occupation as the Christian mind craves after. It is hardly suitable that, in
a world full of ignorance, misery, and sin, and where
the ignorance, misery, and sin, may be greatly relieved
by our faithful and pious endeavors, a man or woman
should wrap themselves up even in the improvement
of their own minds. Let us be quite sure that, in all
such cases, some definite work, with a definite bearing
on the physical, intellectual, or moral good of our fellow-creatures, is an essential to Holiness, and to that
inward joy and peace which is the very element of
Holiness. As I said above, there is no lack nowadays
of posts of usefulness; the lack is of persons to fill
them. There is a large field of Church work open to
us at home and abroad-rough work much of it, disheartening work much of it, and therefore manifesting
only the more principle in those who take it up and
carry it on. Let every unoccupied Christian choose
one of these fields of labor, determining which it shall
be by the little pointings of God's finger in Providence, and by the direction in which his instincts,
powers, and capacities, lead him. We read in the
Scriptures of whole households taking on them some
one department of Church work, giving point to their
efforts by devoting themselves to one, and consistency




xvMII.] and of the Right Wacy of pursuing it.  207
by the combination of the various members of the
family-" Ye know the house of Stephanas, that it is
the first-fruits of Achaia, and that they have addicted
themselves to the ministry of the saints," to some service for the saints-perhaps to the exercise of hospitality.  Why should it not be so now?  Circumstances no doubt are widely different, and must modify the form of the service; but the principle that each
Christian should do what in him lies to further the
great work of the Christian Church can never pass
away, however various its applications may be.
Finally, I must give a rather fuller development to
a thought which has been brought before us in the
prosecution of our argument —the advantage which in
one important respect manual work has over mental.
It is analogous to the advantage which generally, in
spiritual matters, the poor and ignorant have over the
rich and cultivated. It is the spirit, or rational faculty, with which God, who is a Spirit, must be served.
That the outward pursuit, then, should make as little
demand upon the mind as possible, that the inner
man should be left as free as possible to turn toward
God at any moment, is an advantage of which a devout soul may avail itself. St. Paul's thoughts doubtless were often with his Master, while he was making
his tents. And those who covet above all things a
closer communion with God, will assuredly think no
scorn of an occupation which engages the hands rather
than the thinking faculty. Doubtless intellectual pursuits are, in the order of things, nobler than a common
handicraft. But there is " a spirit," as well as a mind,
in man. And if a handicraft gives greater scope for
the action of the spirit-if the husbandman as he digs




208  Of the Necessity of an Occupation, etc. [CHAP.
his field, the lace-woman as she plies her bobbins, the
shepherd as he tends his flock, nay, the boy set to
keep the birds from the crop, are at least free to feed
their spirits the while with the thought of God's
power, wisdom, and goodness, they are more than
compensated for their intellectualloss by their spiritual gain, and they find consolation and refreshment
in place of the weariness of merely mental effort-a
weariness thus commented upon, in accents of bitter
disappointment, by the wisest of men: " Of making
many books there is no end; and much study is a
weariness of the flesh,"




IxI.]  Sel-sacrsifce a Test of the Love of God   209
CHAPTER XIX.
SELl-SACRIFICE A TEST OF THE LOVE OF GOD.
" And when He was gone forth into the way, there came one. running, and kneeled to Himt, and asked Him, Good Iffaster, wh'at
shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?  And Jeswus said unto
him, Why callest thou Me good? there is none good but One,
that is, God. Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit
adultery, Do not ki7, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness,.Defraud not, Honor thy father and mother. And he answere(d
and said unto Him, 3Master, all these have Iobserved from my
youth. Then Jesus be/olding him loved him, and said unto him,
One thing thou lackest: go t7hy way, sell whatsoever thou hast,
and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and
come, take up the cross, and follow Mffe."-MARK x. 17-21.
O UR subject in this little treatise is the pursuit of
Holiness.  Now, the spring and motive of all
Holiness being the love of God, we have enlarged
upon this grand topic in several of the Chapters, and
have spoken much of the beauty and blessedness of
the Divine character, as having a tendency to attract
toward  God the hearts of men.   But the  general
complexion of the subject, and the tenor of our remarks upon it, have made it quite necessary, in bringing our argument to a close, to say one or two words
of solemn warning. It is very easy to delude ourselves into the notion that we have the love of God,




210 Se f-sacrieice a Test of the Love of God. [CHIP.
and are under its influence. It is easy at all times to
mistake a sentiment for a principle, a transient feeling
for a deeply-rooted affection. And therefore the Holy
Scriptures, which aim at implanting and nourishing,
not sentiments but principles, while they supply us in
the Psalms with aspirations after God, which can only
proceed from genuine love, and while they set forth
everywhere the beauty and attractiveness of His
character, are careful to furnish practical tests of a
very stringent kind, whereby we may try our hearts
and ascertain how far they are really under the empire of God's love. One of these tests I shall consider
on the present occasion, reserving another for the following Chapter.
The interview of the rich young man with Our
Lord is one of those many incidents, which derive importance from being recorded three times in the New
Testament.  There are few passages of Scripture the
teaching of which is more apt to be misunderstood.
The key to it is to be found in the circumstances of
the young man, and in what transpires of his character. He was " very rich," " had great possessions;"
his circumstances, therefore, gave him no trouble; he
never knew what it was to be straitened. He was
" young; " and therefore we may assume that he was
in health, and had all that bright sanguineness and
energy which only health can give.  He was "a
ruler," possibly the president of some synagogue, one
therefore for whom his position gave a sort of guarantee that he was a man of virtue and piety.  And to a
great extent he really was so. He had observed, at
least in the letter, the commandments of the second
Table; and that his observance of them was, so far as




xIx.] Self-sacrifice a Test of the Love of Gol. 211
it went, commendable, and had really proceeded from
a principle of duty, we may gather from the circumstance that, when he mentioned it, Our Lord seems to
have smiled on him in approbation: " Then Jesus beholding him loved him."  It was not in a Pharisaic
spirit of pride that he said, " Master, all these have I
observed from my youth." What he desired was, that
this great Teacher of Divine Truth who had appeared
in Israel should point out to him some arduous attainment of virtue, some one great moral effort, more arduous than the commandments of the second Table
(which he does not seem to have understood in their
spiritual import), by which he might secure the prize
which he professed to covet-" eternal life."
Now, here was a man-fair and promising in many
points (may we not call him a man of great spiritual
promise?)-whom Our Lord was about to test by the
application to his conscience of the first and great
commandment in a practical form. For that this is
the true significance of Christ's dealing with him cannot be doubted. It is very observable how the only
commandments, which are specified to this young man
as the pathway to eternal life, are those of the second
Table. Why is this?  It is impossible to suppose
that Our Lord, in bringing the Law to bear upon his
conscience, would omit the commandment which Je
Himself called the first and great commancdent:
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind."
Assuredly He does not omit it; but makes it here, as
He did on other occasions, the most important point
of all. But He begins with the lower and less arduous, before He comes to the higher and more arduous,




212  Self-sccrifice a Test of the Love of God. [CHAP.
requirements of the Law, as if He had said to the rich
young man: " Tell me first how you have loved your
neighbor, whom you have seen, before I proceed to
inquire how you love God, whom you have not seen."
The young man's answer virtually is: " I have from
my earliest youth fulfilled my duty to my neighbor."
" Assuming that you have done so, for argument's
sake," Our Lord continues, " how do you stand disposed toward God? Is your heart right with Him?
Is it whole with Him, as a heart must be, if it is to be
right? " This is the import of Our Lord's words; but
He does not put the question thus explicitly. Doubtless, if He had done so, the young man's conscience
would have evaded it. The pressing of the love of
God in an abstract form gives great room, as I observed at the opening of the Chapter, for self-deception. And especially is this the case, when the persons, on whom it is pressed, are free from trouble in
their circumstances and in their bodily frame. When
the sun of prosperity shines out warm and bright
upon us; when we are in a state of robust health,
and have a flow of animal spirits; when our friends
are around us, our homes happy, our means abundant
for our needs, and there is no call for pinching, or
saving, or straitening; when, moreover, our reputation is good, and we are looked up to in the little
circle in which we move-nothing is easier, under
these circumstances, than to feel an occasional glow
of gratitude to the Giver of all these blessings, and
to mistake that for the love which is the fulfilling of
the first and great commandment. So, without mentioning, or even suggesting, to this young man the
love of God, Our Lord proposes to him a practical




xix.] Self-sacrifJce a Test of the Love of God.  213
test, whereby it shall be made evident how far he is
under the influence of that love. He bids him sell all
that he has, distribute it among the poor, and, embracing the hardship and contempt to which Christ's
earliest followers exposed themselves, attach himself
to the little company of disciples, who went about the
country in attendance upon their Divine Master. Just
as some chemical test thrown into a colorless liquid
immediately turns it blue, and detects the presence
of steel, so this test applied to the young man's heart
and character, in which hitherto there had seemed to
be such brave spiritual promise, clouded it all over,
and detected in it what Our Lord afterward calls a
" trust in riches." By a trust in riches is meant, not
a trust in riches to save the soul, according to the
vulgar conception of salvation (nobody attributes to
riches any such power), but a trust in riches to content
and satisfy the heart. Now, this trust is inconsistent
with the love of God. For just as love among men,
love as it exists between the sexes, involves a longing
for the company of the person loved, a great complacency in that company, a readiness to do any thing
and every thing to win that person's favor, and a contempt of every thing else in comparison of that person's smile; so the love of God involves supreme delight in Him, contemplation of His beauty and His
excellency, enjoyment of communion with Him in that
relation to Himself, into which He has been pleased to
bring us, and a counting of all things but loss, so we
may but win His favor and approval. It is the uniform characteristic of true love to delight in making
sacrifices, when called upon by its object to do so.
Now, God, by the mouth of Christ, called this young




214 Sef-sacerifie a Test of the Love of God. [cHAP.
man to do what the earlier Apostles had done, and
what St. Paul afterward did, " to suffer the loss of all
things, and to count them but dung, so as he might
win" God's favor and acceptance.  The man had
recognized Christ, not indeed as the God-man or the
Saviour of the world, but as a teacher sent from God,
by coming to inquire of Him the way of eternal life.
" The blessedness of eternal life "-this is the scope
of Our Lord's answer to him-" consists in such a
supreme delight in God as makes us disrelish, by
comparison, every pleasure which life and the world
have to offer. Now, therefore, I, as a teacher sent by
God and speaking His words, and as recognized by
you in that capacity, require you to show that you
take this supreme delight in God, in the same way as
Peter here and the rest have done, by just dropping
those earthly possessions which you hold so tightly in
your grip, and, with hands and arms thus liberated,
embracing God as your chief good."
Such is the real significance of the story, which is
very liable, however, to be misread. We shall misread it entirely, if we suppose that Our Lord recommends the renunciation of property as a work of extraordinary merit, which, when once done, will secure
eternal life to the doer of it. Many monks, it is to
be feared, have fallen into this misapprehension of
Christ's meaning, and, after having parted with all
their worldly goods, and assumed the monastic habit,
have not found themselves nearer to " eternal life "
than they were before. They ought to have noticed
and heeded the closing words of the recommendation:
" Take up thy cross, and follow Me."  It is not simply an abandonment, but an, abandonment which is to




xx.] Self-sacrifice a Test of the Love of God. 215
pave the way for a new pursuit and interest, that is
recommended. As I have phrased it above, it is not
a mere dropping of the goods, which Christ requires,
but a dropping of these in order to embrace GodGod's kingdom, God's righteousness, God's will.
He does not require from us an exactly similar
abandonment of all that we. possess. But two demands, of a kindred character, there can be no doubt
He does make upon every soul to whom His Gospel
comes. First: we must actually and literally drop
something, not only of our worldly substance, but of
the comforts and blessings, whatever they be, which
make life enjoyable to us, as a testimony that at His
bidding we are ready to resign the whole. It was to
His disciples for all time, not to an individual, whose
case might require a special treatment, that He said:
" Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves
bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens
that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither
moth corrupteth. For where your treasure is, there
will your heart be also."  Moreover, by the example
of His Apostle, almost more cogently than by any
precept, He enjoins that we shall "keep under our
bodies and bring them into subjection," and that we
shall never use our Christian liberty to the full extent.
-In the second place: we are required to drop absolutely and at once all trust in riches, that is, all such
affection to earthly and created good as leads us to
place in it the contentment and satisfaction of our
souls. " Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven."
"Seek those things which are above, where Christ
sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection
on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye




2516  Self-sacrifice a Test of the Love of God. [CEAP.
are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God."
We must maintain, toward the comforts and blessings
of this life, such an attitude of mind as would make
us quite ready to strip ourselves bare of them, should
God require us to do so. And it is vain to hope that
this can be done without actual mortification and selfdenial. To the precept just quoted, " Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth," is
immediately subjoined, as a necessary condition of
heavenly-mindedness, ".Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth."  Where there is no
endurance of hardness as a good soldier of Jesus
Christ, there the love of God and of Christ is apt to
degenerate into a mere sentiment, exerting no power
over the will, and deluding the heart by a vain show
of piety.  As to the mode, therefore, of exercising
this mortification, and maintaining the spirituality of
it, I will give a few counsels.
First: it should be deeply considered what it is
that has to be mortified in us-that it is the afection
to created good, not in one particular shape, but in all
its forms.  We may not be coveting or striving after
a fortune (that is, after a superfluous amount of this
world's wealth), and yet it is quite possible that our
hearts may be set upon the world, and that we may
be looking to God's creatures, rather than to communion with Himself, to fill and content the soul.
The amiable, estimable, unambitious man, who has no
notion of aspiring to eminence or rising in life, may
yet be warmly attached to created good.  Nor need
it be created good in one only form. The Paradise
of the majority of men has several ingredients in it;
but all the ingredients are of the earth, earthy. The




xIx.]   elf-sacrifee a'eTest of the Love of God.  217
first of these ingredients is a comfortable competence-not more.  The next is good health, or, at all
events, health good enough for the enjoyment of life.
Then comes the being surrounded by relations and
friends-the sympathies and charities of the domestic
hearth. If the man is at all highly cultivated, some
intellectual stimulus, literature in some cases, politics
in others, enters into the idea of a satisfactory life.
With almost all, some definite and useful occupation
during the better part of the day is felt to be an essential constituent of happiness.  Then also respectability-a certain amount of human esteem-is a sine
qud non.  Surely there is many and many a soul,
which secretly whispers to itself: "Give me all these
things, and I shall need nothing more. If these conditions were only made permanent, I could live on
earth forever, and should seek for nothing better."
And it must be added that the larger is the share of
these things which falls to our lot, the greater is the
risk of our becoming dangerously attached to them.
Our hearts are constantly throwing out suckers of affection; and whatsoever support these suckers find
in the neighborhood, they will infallibly twine themselves round it and creep over it.  And, that the
heart's affections should be allowed to cleave to any
earthly object or objects exclusively, so that its
thoughts, desires, hopes, should all be wrapped up in
that object or objects, this is the love of the world or
of the creature, even should the mind be a stranger
to what is called covetousness and ambition.  The
first step, therefore, to be taken by him who would
exercise a wise mortification, is to consider deeply in
what form  or forms of earthly good he is naturally
10




218  Self-sacrifice a Test of the Love of God. [cHAP.
disposed to place his happiness.  What forms yield
him, constituted as he is, most comfort, most gratification? Is it the sympathy of friends and relations?
Is it human esteem? Is it a luxurious ease, a career
free from serious troubles and annoyances-that life
should flow on in an unbroken tenor, without anxiety
and pressure? Is it the gratification of ambition, the
coming successfully out of the struggles of life? Is
it amusement and recreation?  Whatever it be, there
let him exercise a jealous watchfulness over himself;
there let him mortify his will. To mortify the will is
often a far greater cross than to inflict the severest
penance on the body.  There let him lay by force restrictions upon himself, sometimes sharply refusing all
indulgence to the propensity, however in itself innocent, never at any time giving it too free a rein.  In
giving this counsel, I am only exhibiting the principle
upon which all true mortification must proceed, not
disparaging the two specially recognized forms of it,
Fasting and Almsgiving.  These are chosen by the
Word of God with great wisdom, as involving selfdenial in respect of those temptations which offer most
attraction to the mass of mankind-" the lust of the
flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life."  We
are all under the dominion, more or less, of our senses;
and therefore Fasting, if not always in the shape of
total abstinence, yet in that of spare diet at certain
seasons, and of habitual self-control, is for all of us
more or less of a necessary discipline. Again: we
are all apt to cling to and to wrap ourselves in the
comforts of this life; and, therefore, a free flinging
abroad among the distressed of the money which represents these comforts, a liberal parting with our sub



xix.] Self-sacrifice a Test of the Love of God.  219
stance for works of piety or charity, a stripping of
ourselves of all superfluities, lest the mere sight of
abundance should tempt us to that fatal whisper,
" Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years;
take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry"-this also
is a form of self-denial to which all, according to their
means, are bound.  And, if there were but a stronger
conviction upon our minds of the reality and nearness
of unseen things, if the world to come and the revelations of the Gospel were no mere phantoms to us, flitting before the eye of the imagination, but truths
grasped by us with the hand of a living faith, a corresponding disparagement of worldly possessions, exactly proportioned in its strength to the strength of
the conviction, would, as a necessary consequence,
take possession of the soul.  It was so, when man,
by the earliest operations of the Holy Ghost, first
began to experience, with a vividness which has since
been rarely exhibited, " the powers of the world to
come."  Immediately after Pentecost, there was a
bright gleam  of sunshine in the Church's history,
which, for the moment, made the gaunt form of poverty vanish like a ghost at cockcrow: "Neither was
there among them  any that lacked; for as many as
were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and
brought the prices of the things that were sold, and
laid them  down at the Apostles' feet; and distribution was made unto every man according as he had
need."  The result was natural and necessary.  The
more intensely a man realizes unseen and eternal
things, the more he can afford to dispense with the
things that are seen and are temporal.
But, finally, in order to maintain the spirituality




230  Self-saCe',rice at Test of the Love of God. [CHAP.
of acts of mortification, it is necessary to regard them
as standing in the closest connection with the love of
God and with delight in communion with Him, in
short, as being only the zegative form  of this love
and delight.  Mortification which should terminate
upon itself would be of little or no value.  God has
treasure in store for us, even " such good things as
pass man's understanding; " and it is only in order to
our more vivid appreciation and keener relish for this
heavenly treasure that He requires us to disencumber
ourselves of the earthly. It is only in order that we
may bask in His sunlight, may be fanned by His
breezes, may walk abroad among His landscapes, may
lift up our eyes to His stars, that He invites us to
come out of the narrow house of earthly comfort, and
turn our backs upon the false artificial lights which
are kindled there.  _dortiJqcation is zot an end in
itself; it is but a means to an end —that end being
the springing up in our hearts of a fountain of eternal joy. And therefore to cultivate a taste for spiritual enjoyments, and to place one's contentment and
satisfaction more and more exclusively in the contemplation of God and in communion with Him, is the
way to grow in the spirit of Mortification, without
which spirit the bare acts of it have little or no value.




xx.]        Love for the Brethren, etc.           221
CHAPTER XX.
LOVE FOR THE BRETHRENT A TEST OF OUR LOVE FOR
GOD.
" If a man say, I love God, and hictet his brother, he is a liar: for
he that loveth not his brother whom he hathl seen, how can he love
God whom he hath not seen? "-1 JOHN iv. 20.
IT was remarked, at the opening of the last Chapter, that the Holy Scriptures, which aim  everywhere at the inculcation of principles rather than of
sentiments, furnish practical tests for ascertaining how
far we are under the influence of the love of God.
One of these practical tests was considered in that
Chapter.  We saw that Mortification was the negative side of the love of God-that in proportion as a
man really embraces " the things which are above "
with true affection, in that proportion will he " mortify his members which are upon the earth."
A second practical test is furnished to us, in the
passage at the head of this Chapter, by the Apostle
of love himself. Any pretence to the love of God, in
the absence of the love of our neighbor, is a delusion,;
what we think to be the love of God is in that case a
mere sentiment, playing upon the surface of the soul,
not a deeply-rooted principle which has the mastery




222          Love for the Brethren          [CHAP.
of the will. And for this reason: God is an object
of faith. His very existence is not made known to us
by our senses. We have to "believe that He is."
Our brother, on the other hand, is an object of sight.
We come across him; we have dealings with him; we
need not to make any effort of the mind to apprehend
him; for his existence, his qualities, his character,
force themselves upon our attention every moment, as
he walks side by side with us along the path of life.
Now, it is, of course, easier to walk by sight than
by faith. And therefore it must be easier, much
easier, to realize our neighbor's existence than to realize the existence of God. And, unless we thoroughly realize God's existence, it is out of the question
that we can love Him.
Now, just pause here to consider the bearing of
what has been said. At first sight, and before we
weigh the meaning of the terms we employ, it might
seem to be easier to love God than our neighbor. For
the idea of God, which we form (and which we ought
to form) in our minds, embraces every perfection, and
excludes every imperfection.  We think of Him, and
we are right in thinking of Him, as not only infinitely
powerful and wise, but as infinitely loving, gracious,
bountiful, truthful, just, and holy. Our neighbor, on
the other hand, like ourselves, is compassed about
with infirmities, infirmities with which we come day
by day into rude (and sometimes hostile) collision, infirmities forced upon us by the fact that we see him,
and (if I may say so) feel him. He has hard angles,
and we run up against them; awkward tempers, irritating eccentricities, ways which thwart our ways; he
is vain and conceited, or he is cold and reserved, or he




xx.]      a Test of our Love for God.       223
is ungracious, or even sometimes rude. And it often
happens (which is very perverse in him) that the side
which he turns to society is his unlovable side; he
has much good in him which he never shows, and
which nobody would believe to exist, were it not
that character will in the long-run transpire to those
around us, do what we will to throw a veil over it.
Now, this being the case with some, possibly with
many, in whose company we have to travel along the
path of life, we might be disposed to say, on being
told that the love of our neighbor is much easier than
the love of God: "How can this be? A considerable degree of forbearance is necessary in order to love
my neighbor at all; but in God all is lovely, all is
gracious, all is beautiful, all is attractive to the heart;
God has no unamiable side; God (and Christ who is
His Image) is the infinite Amiability, and draws His
children to His Bosom with those allurements which
are naturally engaging to the human heart,'with
cords of a man, with bands of love. "
How shall we maintain the Apostle's position
against an objection of this kind? The answer is plain
and very instructive. It is easier to have a certain sentimental drawing toward an idea of God, than to love
our brother. But then to have a sentimental drawing
toward an idea of God, is not to love God. It is
easy to construct in the mind a pretty imagination, and
to feel charmed and fascinated by it; but this, if we
go not beyond this, is loving an abstraction, not loving
a person. Before loving a person, we must really and
truly apprehend his existence; and, in the case of a
person whom we have not seen and cannot see, this
true and realizing apprehension can only come from




224           Love for the Brethren        [CHAP.
faith. Imagination is not faith, but only the natural
faculty in man's heart which corresponds to faith.
To imagine God is not to believe in Him. Anybody
can imagine God by a mere exercise of his natural
powers. But no man can have faith in God as a living
Person, on whom all things are momentarily dependent, but by the supernatural power of Grace. To
grasp the Personality of God, to apprehend Him, not
as a law, nor as an influence, but as an actually existent,
conscious Being, who stands in certain close relations
to us, and has dealings with us every moment, and so
to apprehend this truth as to be brought under its
power-this, so far from being easy, is an arduous
achievement. Whereas our brother's existence and
character are obvious to the senses; there is no difficulty
in realizing that. With God there are two processes
to be gone through, the apprehending Him first, and
then the loving Him. In our neighbor's case we have
no more to do than to love him. The apprehension of
him comes in the course of nature, and as a matter of
experience.
The love of our neighbor would require for its full
and adequate discussion a separate treatise. In the
present Chapter we can only consider its profound connection with the love of God (which will serve to fence
off certain errors connected with the subject), and the
practical tests to which any profession of this love
must be brought.
1. A word, first, on the intimate connection subsisting between the love of God and that of our neighbor.
The second is wrapped up in the first, and for this
reason: What we are required to love in our neigh



xx.J       a Test of our Love for God.           225
bor is the image of [God in him. Every soul has a
fragment of this image in its lowest depth, though it
may be overlaid by all manner of rubbish-infirmity,
imperfection, frivolity, sin. There is some one point
in which every soul is accessible to compassion and
sympathy, or to an exhibition of truth which condemns
it-some one echo, in short, which it is adapted to
make to some one chord of truth and love-some one
spark (if it have not been quenched by persistence in
wilful sin) of chivalrous, generous, heroic feeling. Just
as in every mind also there is a capacity-not, it may
be, for the usual class of acquirements, nor for those
which yield a return in the way of honor and emolument, but-for something. Every human intelligence
can construct something or imagine something; it has
a power of development in a certain direction, or it
would not be a human intelligence, but merely the
instinct of an animal.  And as the skilful portraitpainter studies to bring out upon his canvas, not the
literal resemblance of the features, as they appear in
the wear and tear of daily life, but the characteristic
expression (or soul), caught only once or twice in
happy moments, and even then requiring an effort
of the imagination to extricate it from the gross lineaments of flesh and blood, so the true Christian studies
the happy art of making the most of every one with
whom he is thrown in contact-of recognizing in each
soul, and of eliciting from it (to recognize is the way
to elicit), that feature of heart and mind in which
stands the relationship of that particular soul to God.
It is this character of the man, disentangled from the
infirmities and imperfections which, in consequence of
the Fall, have gathered over and concealed it-it is, in




226           Love for the Brethren           [CHAP.
short, the true self of our neighbor-that we are
required to love.
And this observation places our duty in a clearer
light. W7e are not required to love infirmities or imperfections; nay, we could not do so, if required; for
infirmities and imperfections are naturally repelling.
Our brother's true self is the object upon which our
love is to fasten; and as to his infirmities and imperfections, which he shares with us in virtue of our
common deterioration by the Fall, those are to be
borne with and overlooked out of regard to his true
self, and to the filial relation which this true self bears
to God.-Does this distinction between a man's true
self and his failings seem to any of my readers subtle
and overstrained? Let me say that, under another view
of the subject, it is universally accepted. What is the
meaning of saying (as we often do) that God loves the
sinner, while He hates the sin? Nothing can be truer.
I need not say that God not only does, but mnust, hate
sin in its every form; that between Him  and insincerity, untruthfulness, peevishness, petulance, ill-temper-above all, perhaps, between Him and selfishnessthere must be an eternal antipathy. And yet nothing
is more certain than that, while God hates my selfishness and untruthfulness, He deeply and tenderly loves
me with an individualizing love.  I say an individualizing love; for is it not written that Christ " by the
grace of God tasted death for EVERY MAN "-not for
the human race generally, nor (I may say) for the
human race at all, except as made up of individual
souls (Christ did not die for abstractions, but for persons! ), but for each individual of the race singly and
separately, as much as if there had been no other per



xx.]          Test of our Love for God.        227
son in the world to die for? And as for my sins and
infirmities, these (blessed be His Name!) are no hinderance to His love: He loves me through them all
(even the worst of them), that He may love me out
of them, if I will only let Him. Day after day He
bears with them, though they are.eradicated very
slowly, manifesting infinite patience toward me, because He is conscious of an infinite strength. Now,
He would have me love my neighbor exactly as He
loves me, fastening my regard upon his true self, upon
the feature of God's image which is reflected in his
soul, and bearing with his infirmities out of this esteem
for the true self. Must it not be practicable? It is
what He is constantly doing to me.
II. But it is with the love of our neighbor exactly
as it is with the love of God; the pressing it only in
an abstract form may lead to sad delusion. Nothing
is easier than, when we ourselves are in prosperity,
to feel an expansion of the heart toward others, and
a dim  desire to shed happiness around us, and to
mistake this for the charity which the Gospel requires
from us. And therefore our love of our neighbor, no
less than our love of God, must be brought to practical tests.
1. First: are we doing any thing to help our
neighbor? making sacrifices for him, of money, or
time, or pleasures?  The Apostles John and James
the Less seem both to be inspired with a holy jealousy
of mere professions of benevolence. The first goes so
far as to say that the profession is better away; he
does not care for the blossom on the tree; let him see
the fruits: "Hereby perceive we the love of God, be



228           Love for the Brereren          [CHAP.
cause He laid down His life for us: and we ought to
lay down our lives for the brethren."  (Oh, the arduous standard of these Gospel precepts-if our brethren
could be benefited by the sacrifice of our lives, if we
felt that by submitting to death we should light among
men a candle of truth, which should never be put out,
we must not shrink even from that sacrifice!)  " But
whoso hath this world's good" (this world's life' or
maintenance), " and seeth his brother have need, and
shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how
dwelleth the love of God " —not love FOR God, but
God's love, or Christ's love, the love which He showed
by sacrificing Himself for sinners-" in him?  My
little children, let us not love in word, neither in
tongue; but in deed and in truth."  And St. James
to the same effect, though less strongly: " If a brother
or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one
of you say unto them, Depart in peace; be ye warmed
and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those
things which are needful to the body; what doth it
profit? " Thus warned by God's Word, let us eschew
all professions of benevolent sentiment, as connected
with self-deception.  And when such sentiments visit
our hearts, let us set ourselves at once to do something of a practical kind for the succor and relief of
our brethren. I say, at once. It is wonderful how
soon impressions of this kind evaporate. Hearers,
who happen to have little or nothing in their purses,
will retire from a powerful charity sermon with their
minds all in a glow of desire to assist the object advocated.  But they do not strike while the iron is
hot; and they find the glow has gone off when they
1 Oc 6' av X vi- T ov plv ro icOazov, etc., etc., 1 John iii. 17.




xx.]      a Test o ouf   r Love for God.       229
wake on Monday. It is an excellent spiritual precept,
whenever a good desire springs up in our heart, to
stereotype and make it permanent-in other words,
to bring the good desire to good effect by an effort in
that direction. By such an effort the good desire, instead of vanishing like a writing on the sand, and
leaving no trace behind it, passes into the character
(much as digested food passes into the bodily frame),
and contributes toward the formation and the force
of it.
2. Then, secondly, our prayers for others furnish a
good practical test as to the genuineness of the love
we bear them. What approach are we making to
the great model oC the Lord's Prayer, which does not
contain any petition exclusively directed to our own
wants? Do we pray for others at all?  And if we
do, is this exercise considered by us merely as an ornamental appendage to our other prayers, but as in no
wise essential to their acceptability with God? This
is the view which hundreds of orthodox and estimable
Christians secretly take of Intercessory Prayer. We
have done enough, they think, if we have brought our
own wants and sorrows under God's notice; but it is
correct, and in ordinary cases desirable, to add a
sentence or two invoking His blessing upon others.
But surely this is not the standard set up by the
Holy Scriptures on this subject. In the first place,
as I have already said, there is the great Divine
Model of Prayer, which seems to exclude all prayer
for ourselves alone, being so constructed as to make
it impossible for us to pray for ourselves, without at
the same time praying for our brethren. And then
there is the ground in reason for this construction of




230           Love for the Brethren         [CHAP.
the Model Prayer. When Our Blessed Lord would
teach His disciples how words of prayer should become words of power, and take effect in the spiritual
world, instead of falling paralyzed and impotent to
the ground, He dwelt upon two, and only two, great
points-they must be offered in faith: (" Therefore I
say unto you, What things soever ye desire when ye
pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have
them; ") and they must be offered in love: (" And
when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught
against any; that your Father also which is in heaven
may forgive you your trespasses.")  In other words,
the offerer must recognize, while offering them, both
his filial relationship to the Father of spirits, and his
fraternal relationship to other spirits proceeding from
the same Father. In the phenomena of Mesmerism
(I am offering no opinion whatever upon their genuineness, but merely referring to them for an illustration), it is said that there must be some secret affinity
between the operator and the subject, if the effect is
to be produced. The motion of the hands will, in the
absence of this affinity, be a mere beating of the air
without any visible result. In like manner, the uplifted hands of prayer will not draw down an influence
from above-its words, and even cries, will be spoken
into the air-unless first we bring our minds into
affinity with the Infinite Mind of God. And this it
is impossible to do, first, without faith: (" He that
cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He
is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him;")
and, secondly, without love. For God's Nature is
Love-Love to all created spirits-and he must necessarily repel those who come to Him in a spirit not




xx.]       a Test of our Zove for God.         231
His own. And therefore, in building up the structure of His own perfect prayer, Our Lord puts a word
of faith first, and a word of love next: "Father of
us " (such is the order of the words in the original);
"Father," expressive of our relationship to Him; " of
us," expressive of our relationship to the brethren.
And he (and only he) who realizes these relationships,
while he prays, shall pray with power, entering, as it
were, into secret affinity with God, and touching the
chords of God's heart.
Let me suggest, in conclusion, one method of realizing the latter of these relationships, which may,
under God's blessing, prove effectual.  Seek to make
your prayers for others specific, as far as your knowledge of their character and circumstances allows.
Bring before your mind their trials and their needs,
and endeavor to place yourself in their point of view,
from which point you may be sure the trials and needs
will look very different than they do from yours. Remember that to pray for them, without some measure
of sympathy with them, would be a mere formalitythe body of intercession without its animating soul.
Pray for this sympathy, while you endeavor, by careful consideration of their case, to excite it within yourself: "Look not every man on his own things, but
every man also on the things of others." Then offer
for them the petitions which, if the case were yours,
you would offer for yourself. And if the prayer seem
as regards them to be ineffectual, yet it shall be accepted on your own behalf as an act of love. The
dove which Noah sent forth, when she could find no
resting-place outside the ark, came back again fluttering to the window.  And similarly our efforts for




232        Love for the Brethren, etc.     [cHAP.
others, whether of prayer or benevolence, are not lost.
If they are not benefited by them, we are: in increase
of light, and power, and comfort, in whispers of mercy
and peace, they return again into our bosom.




xxI.]   The Love of God a Principle, etc.    233
CHAPTER XXI.
THE LOVE OF GOD A PRINCIPLE RATHER THAN A
SENTIMENT.
" If ye love Mle, keep My commandments."-JOHN xiv. 15.
Tr  HE last discourses of Our Lord with His disciples,
from which these words are taken, are full of
pathos.  The world is shut out; the Everlasting
Father and His little children are taking their last
farewells one of the other in absolute privacy; the
only unfaithful one of the twelve has taken his leave
of the supper-room, and gone out upon the execution
of his dark design; Our Lord is sure of the sincerity
of those who remain, and accordingly He pours out
His heart toward them in accents of most touching
tenderness. But yet there is a certain element in His
conversation, which makes us observe that, while there
is pathos in the interview, there is no sentiment (perhaps I should rather say, no sentimentality) in it.
Sentiment is an emotion of the heart indulged for its
own sake, because the indulgence is pleasurable at the
moment, and will be pleasurable in the retrospect;
but there is nothing of this kind in the last interview
of Christ with His chosen ones. There is here no
luxury of grief indulged for a moment, that it may be




234            The Love of God            [CHAP.
looked back upon afterward with a melancholy satisfaction; the pathos flows out of the position, and out
of the deep earnestness of the work done in the position. The Good Shepherd, about to leave His little
flock, addresses Himself to impress upon their memory
those particular topics of consolation, encouragement,
and warning, of which He knew they'would have most
need in His absence. And He strikes in their ears
from time to time a certain note, which reminds them
that He will repudiate a mere sentimental attachment.
He tells them again, in these last moments, what He
had told them more publicly in the Sermon on the
Mount, that no affection will He acknowledge, but
such as takes the practical form of obedience; that
the love which He expects from them is a principle,
not a sentiment; that it lies in the will and moral
choice, rather than in the emotions. Thus in the passage at the head of the chapter: " If ye love Me, keep
My commandments."  And again in ver. 21, " He
that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he
it is that loveth Me."  And again in ver. 23, "If a
man love Me, he will keep My words."  And again,
in chap. xv., " If ye keep My commandments, ye shall
abide in My love."  And again, " Ye are My friends,
if ye do whatsoever I command you." These are only
reiterations to the innermost circle of the disciples of
the more public warnings given earlier in His Ministry: " Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord,
shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that
doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven;" and
again: " My mother and My brethren are these which
hear the word of God, and do it."
We have touched frequently, in these closing Chap



xxI.]  a Principle rather than a Sentiment.  235
ters, upon the difference between sentiment and principle; and it appears to me desirable, by way of impressing what has been said, that this point should be
argumentatively discussed and thoroughly explored;
for it has more than an incidental importance. The
distinction between the emotions and the affectionsbetween sentiments and principles-is one which it
would be of infinite service to true religion to make
clear.  First, it would serve for the detection of hypocrisy. There are many persons (many in the ranks
of the Church, though perhaps more among the sects)
who mistake lively emotions of compunction, remorse,
joy, triumph, for the graces of the Gospel, repentance,
faith, love, and humble assurance. A life of ecstatic
feeling, crowned by a sort of rapture in death, is their
great idea of saintliness. They have never sufficiently
weighed the truth that the hearers who receive the
word with joy, and in whose hearts it springs up with
the rapidity and luxuriance of a tropical plant, are not
the right sort of hearers; their hearts want depth and
moisture, and so they dure but for awhile, and in time
of temptation fall away.-Again, the distinction we
are going in quest of will serve, when found, to console many a down-hearted Christian.  There are
many who, partly from  constitutional causes, partly
from the natural temperament of their minds, partly
from their having approached Religion rather from the
side of duty than from that of privilege, have by no
means that flow of feeling connected with the subject
which they desire to find in themselves.  They pray
earnestly for a contrite heart, but feel very little sensible grief for their sins.  They look hard, as they
have been advised to do, at the details of our Saviour's




236               ETle Love of  God                  [cHAP.
Passion; but they feel no sympathy with the Divine
Sufferer.   They embrace God's promises, as far as
their intention is concerned; but without unction,
fervor, or sensible delight. They embrace God's will,
when it prescribes either duty or suffering, but without those warm emotions of gratitude and confidence,
of which they could desire to be conscious. They have
been instructed (and most rightly instructed) that the
surrender of the heart is what God requires first and
before all things, else, and that true Religion stands
in certain tempers or affections of the soul, which flow
out of faith-even in "love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, fidelity,' meekness, temperance."  They cannot perceive by sensible emotions
the presence of these fruits of the Spirit within them;
and therefore they altogether question their presence.
And sometimes, when the animal spirits are low, either
from failure of health, or from  some shock received in
the order of God's Providence, the distress resulting
from  the dryness and hardness of their own minds
amounts almost to dismay.
Now by way of establishing the fact of there being
I translate thus Tiarrtc in Gal. v. 22, because I hardly think
that it can here mean the fundamental grace of the Christian
character, out of which all others are developed. Bengel, if I
remember rightly (I am quoting him from memory), interprets
similarly.  His observation is to this general effect: that love
and joy are graces exercised toward God; peace, a grace exercised
reciprocally between neighbors (" Have peace one with another" );
long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, graces exercised toward our neighbor; temperance, a grace exercised toward ourselves. Faith, therefore, is here that quality in another
man, which makes one feel that one can depend upon him-trustworthiness.




xxi.]  a Principle rather tham a Sentiment,.   237
a difference between the affections and the emotions
(and thus clearing the way to see what this difference
is), we may point to ordinary life as furnishing abundant scope for the one, with but little scope for the
other.  Take the life of nine-tenths of the community
in a civilized country.  The ordinary relationships are
contracted; the ordinary pursuits are engaged in;
the ordinary recreations are resorted to as a relief;
the ordinary, and not more than the ordinary, casualties occur; there may be troubles, but they are hardly
calamities; there may be gratifications, but they do
not deserve the name of great successes. Life under
such circumstances moves mechanically in the groove
of routine, and is seldom so disturbed as to be altogether thrown out of the groove. In such a life, because there is in it little or no incident or reverse,
there is but little play for the emotions. Feelings are
seldom strongly excited, because there is nothing to
excite them.  The soul is never harrowed with fear;
for what is theie in modern civilized life, with all the
securities offered by it for the person and property, to
arouse fear?  And as for any of those bright hopes,
which were the sun-gleams of the soul in early youth,
they are fast dying out, and every additional year decks
the future, not with rainbow colors, but with a soberer
gray; and the love of friends and relations, however
much its power is silently felt, is singularly undemonstrative.  Yet who shall say, because of this dearth of
emotion, that, in the heart of the large majority of
men who live this regular and civilized life, the affections are dead?  It is simply untrue to say so.  If you
placed these same men and women amidst incidents,
surprises, and reverses, such as are portrayed in




238             Thae Love of God             [CHAP.
tragedies or romances, the emotions of fear, hope, indignation, love, would show themselves, at the various
crises furnished by such a life, with a vigor which
would reveal a force of character you little suspected.
Something of this kind is often seen, when war breaks
out, and many men, who have been hitherto the frivolous members of a frivolous society, being placed in
positions of trust or danger, surprise the world by
their chivalry or their gallant endurance of hardships.
They had fortitude and generous sentiments in their
hearts at home; but at home the occasion for their
display was lacking. And so with the domestic affections, which bind us together; they run still and deep
(the stiller oftentimes the deeper), and only make a
noise (or, in other words, only show themselves in
emotion) zohen a crisis occurs.  When our friends are
taken from us by death we shed tears, and feel that a
blight has come over our life; but while they are by
our sides, we acquiesce in the consciousness of their
sympathy, without any rapturous expressions of our
feeling for them.  Perhaps the only demonstrations
of affection made in the course of ordinary life are an
unreserved confidence, and a desire to please in little
things.  The affection for our friends is the same,
while they are by our sides, as when they are taken
away: but it does not pass into emotion, except when
we have actually lost, or are in imminent danger of
losing, them.
What has been said holds good of the affections in
their application to Religion; for here too they are
governed by the same laws as in the natural life of
man.  In the spiritual as in the natural man, lively
emotion and deep affection are different things, and the




xxi.]  a Principle rather than a Sentiment.  239
absence of the latter can be never safely inferred from
the nonappearance of the former.  All the sudden
crises and abrupt transitions of the spiritual life will
no doubt be attended with emotion. All conversions
which are more or less sudden in their character (I use
this language advisedly, intending to intimate that
conversion  may be sudden in certain cases, but is
no less genuine when achieved very gradually), all
plunges of the soul from  the darkness of ignorance
and levity into the light of Divine Truth and religious
privilege, must necessarily involve liveliness of feeling. The fear of Hell will sometimes shake the soul
to its centre, and possess it with an earnest horror,
altogether new to it.  A  sense of the Saviour's exceeding great Love will pour itself like a warm beam
of the sun into every cranny of the consciousness, and
the sensation will be full of delight.  And he who has
thus tasted that the Lord is gracious will be minded
as St. Peter was at the Transfiguration.  Ecstasy of
feeling is attractive to all of us; it varies the monotony of existence; it lifts the mind easily and without effort into a frame which the moral sense cannot
but approve; it is a welcome relief from the wear and
tear, the drudgery and responsibility, of little homely
duties. So we plead that it may endure-that we may
be allowed to build a tabernacle upon the mount,
where the Lord appears to us in glory, and the voice
from heaven falls upon our ear. This is the real meaning of all who aim at what are called revivals in the
Church. What they really seek, and what they will
not be contented without seeing, is not so much the
deep silent work of grace, by which men are brought
to give up their hearts to the Lord, as the quickening




240            lTe love of God               [CEAP.
of surface emotions on the subject of Religion, the
stretching the soul on the rack of fear and anxiety,
and then its inundation with all the reliefs and refreshments of Grace. They would fain galvanize the soul
into life by a sudden shock; and sometimes they confound the galvanic action, which at most can only be
the cause, with the life, which is the effect. But the
true life of the soul is in its affections, not in its emotions.  Emotions are impossible (according to the law
of our minds), except at a crisis and moment of convulsion.  And he who seeks for them under ordinary
circumstances will run the risk of making his religion
morbid.  There are two safe signs, in our normal
spiritual life, that we love Christ-the same which indicate the reality of our love to those around us. One
is confidence-a compliance with that invitation of the
Psalmist: " Trust in Him at all times, ye people; pour
out your hearts before Him; for God is our hope."
The habit of exposing the contents of the heart to
Christ, of referring all our actions to His will, of commending all our troubles to His care, and all our difficulties to His direction, the realizing Him  (not perhaps as much as we could wish to do, but in some
measure) as being by our side, always sympathizing,
always inviting our confidence, always ready and willing to help us, the being sincere in all our dealings
with Him, and perfectly single-minded in seeking to
know His will —this is one great test of love for Him,
which, if really found in us in a small degree, is worth
a large amount of high-flown feeling.-And the second
test is, that we seek to please Him. A simple test
enough, as it would seem on hearing the first statement
of it, but yet involving-more than we might at first




xxI.]  a Principle rather than a Sentiment.   241
sight imagine. For an effort to please Christ involves
a sense of Christ's living Personality. We do not talk
of pleasing a law, but simply of satisfying its requirements. We do not talk of pleasing an influence, but
simply of acting in conformity with it. The attempt
to please a person involves a recognition that he
stands to us in a certain relationship, has certain
thoughts about us, is liable to be affected by our conduct, is susceptible of emotions from our way of acting. To attempt to please Christ is not only to act
in compliance with the general indications of His will
which are made to us in His Word, but to be on the
watch for opportunities of doing Him service, and to
embrace those opportunities whenever they arise; it
is to be guided by His Eye, as well as by the express
directions of His Voice, and to find in the sense-of
His favor and approving smile the strongest stimulus
to duty. Whoever feels and acts thus toward Him
must love Him, however little of sensible emotion he
may experience. The love of friends in daily life is
shown by unreserved confidences, and by a study to
please in trifles; and it is the greatest of all mistakes
to suppose that, where these confidences pass, and
these endeavors are made, there is no affection, because there is no passionate flow of feeling, or, in
other words, because there is no strong emotion.
Emotion may be defined as afection quickened by a
crisis. But then it is not at all essential to the existence or genuineness of an affection that it should
be thus quickened.  Take an illustration from  the
animal frame. Physical emotion may be defined as
a quickening of the pulses by a sudden surprise, or
11




242              The Love of God              [CHAP.
danger, or deliverance.  If a man falling over a precipice, and having a momentary apprehension of being
dashed to pieces, lights on a grassy ledge only a few
feet below him, and finds himself safe; or if a man in
a dream, fancying he is about to be executed, wakes
in the agonies of the crisis, and finds himself alive and
in his own chamber, his heart begins to beat very fast;
and this is physical emotion. But he may go on for
days and months without any such experience, his
heart beating and his blood circulating healthily and
regularly, without his being conscious of it. Similarly with the mind. There may be a silent circulation of the affections in their usual channels, without
that quick and morbid action of them  which constitutes emotion.
Let us pause now to view one of the passages
above quoted, in the light of these remarks, and see
what aspect it assumes.  "If ye love Me, keep My
commandments; " that is, "In judging of your dispositions toward Me, I will not allow a mere emotion to
pass current for love; love, or the love which I will
recognize, is an affection, not an emotion; it is founded
in the will or moral choice, and the will is the sphere
in which it displays itself." This last position, "The
will is the sphere in which all genuine love of Christ
displays itself," is, in fact, the same truth which Our
Lord here announces, thrown into a more abstract
form. That we may go to the root of the subject, let
us examine this statement, and seek to understand it
thoroughly.
The love of Christ must show itself in the will; is,
in fact, an affection of the will. The same may be
said of all those holy tempers of the soul, which St.




xxT.]  a Principle rather than a Sentiment.   243
Paul calls fruits of the Spirit; it is true of religious
awe, of religious joy, of inward peace, of the charity
which we should bear toward our fellow-men, of the
hope of glory, that they are all affections of the will;
they stand clear of the emotional and sensational part
of the soul altogether; they belong to a higher part
of our nature.  Bear with me, dear reader, while I
exhibit this briefly; the subject is not really difficult,
though it may be a little abstract; and I believe sound
views upon it to be all-important in the conduct of the
spiritual life.
There are, then, in human nature affections of the
will, which are quite distinct from, and sometimes
show their distinctness by running contrary to, the
emotions of the lower part of the mind.  To show
this more clearly, I will take the case of a virtuous
heathen, animated (as we know many such heathens
to have been) by a strong love of his country.  Such
a heathen had, of course, all the feelings to which
mankind are ordinarily subject. He naturally loved
his ease, shrunk from pain, feared wounds and death,
loved the members of his family.  But he had other
loves and other fears, which urged him in a direction
the very contrary of these lower motives.  He hated
tyranny, and could not bear to see his country oppressed by it; he loved liberty; he loved the happiness of his people; and this hatred and love were so
strong, that he sacrificed to them ease, comfort, domestic happiness-nay, life itself. In doing so, he
undoubtedly found a serene and high satisfaction, as
every one who acts unselfishly is sure to do; but it
was a satisfaction of the higher, and not the lower,
instincts of our nature-of "the spirit," as the Apos



244                The -Love of  God                [cHAP.
tie would have phrased it, not of "the soul." 1  His
soul shrank from death, and feared it; but his spirit
chose death, and carried the day.  And he had his
reward.  Do not think he made such a sacrifice for
nothing, or found nothing in the sacrifice. There is a
high joy in self-abnegation for others, in disinterested
enterprise, in a sense of duty gone through with in
spite of difficulties. But this joy, you will at once
perceive, is not that exuberance of animal spirits, that
ebullition of the sensational nature, which often usurps
the name, but a joy peculiar to the will, or moral faculty-a joy which  conscience approves, and which,
indeed, may be called the result of the smile of conscience on the soul.  To cite the well-known words
of South, in which he describes the passion of joy, as
it existed before the Fall (a somewhat audacious speculation, by-the-way; what he is really describing is
the joy of the  rvetaga, or moral faculty, as distinct
from  the joy of the ~vx, or sensational part-an
affection of which we may all have experience): "Joy
was not the mere crackling of thorns, the exultation
of a tickled fancy, or a pleased appetite. Joy was
I The reference is to 1 Thes. v. 23, where " soul" and " spirit "
are carefully distinguished; also to Heb. iv. 12, where their close
union is implied. Also to I Cor. ii. 14; 1 Cor. xv. 44, 46; where
the man of the soul," "the body which is of the soul " (o ivXzicb, rb udia tbvXtcov), is contradistinguished from "the man of
the spirit " — " the body which is of the spirit " (o xrveav/larlKf, rb
aG),ua Tveuv/arTlKov). Also observe how in St. Jude (v. 19), those
who are characterized as lbvxtKco' (" men of the soul "), are said'not to have the Spirit "-meaning, doubtless, the Holy Spirit;
but the phraseology seems to intimate that the ideas presented to
the writer's mind by the words  vilX and rvevia were moreor less
incompatible.




xxI.]  a Principle rather than a Sentiment.   245
then a masculine and a severe thing; the recreation
of the judgment, the jubilee of reason. It commenced
upon the solidities of truth, and the substance of fruition. It did not run out in voice or indecent eruptions, but filled the soul, as God does the universe,
silently, and without noise."
Now, the remark which holds good of joy holds
good also of love, and of all the other affections.
There is a love of the soul, or emotional part of our
nature; and there is a love of the spirit, or the will,
or the moral faculty. In ordinary parlance, the merest
fancy for another person-a fancy able to give no account of itself, and therefore confessedly a whim-a
fancy light as air, which has not the ballast of a single
grain of esteem, commonly usurps the sacred name of
love, and passes current for that affection. There is
nothing of the judgment in it; and often it would not
stand the test of the least self-denial for the sake of
its object, if that test were applied. " Now," says
Our Blessed Saviour in the passage we are commenting upon, " this is not the kind of love which I require, or which I can be satisfied with. Your love for
Me must be an affection of the will; it must be a
moral choice of Me, in preference to sin and the
world; and must show itself in embracing My will,
both by active obedience and passive submission. It
must be grounded upon a perception of My excellence,
and of the benefits received from Me, and must enable
you to find in the single-minded effort to please Me a
satisfaction purer, higher, and of a different order,
than is to be found in any earthly gratifications."
It is quite conceivable that the first disciples of
Christ may have needed this warning, even more than




246            The Love of God            [CHAP.
we ourselves. "Though we have known Christ after
the flesh" (says St. Paul, identifying himself for the
moment with the original Apostles, and throwing
himself into their position), "yet now henceforth
know we Him no more."  Quite natural must it have
been for St. Peter and St. John to know Christ " after
the flesh," and to love Him after the flesh. The winning suavity of His demeanor; His condescending
gentleness to the weak, the fallen, the suffering,
mingled with His heroic defiance of hypocrisy, and
His stern love of Truth; His patient submissiveness
to the Father's will; and the entrancing radiations
of the Godhead, which must have sometimes struggled forth from His voice, features, and gesturesmust, one would think, have surrounded Him in their
minds with (what I must call) a sentimental beauty,
and must have conciliated to Him a sentimental affection. But He here makes known to them that this
affection would not suffice. Their love was not to be
manifested by tender regrets, fond lingering on the
old bygone days when He companied with them in
the flesh, fond associations of places connected with
Him, fond reminiscences of His manner and words.
They were to know Him and to love Him " after the
spirit "-not as their human friend, but as their everpresent God, " the strength of their heart and their
portion forever." He gave them, indeed, a precious
token in the Eucharist, by which to call to mind His
sojourn with them; but this single condescension to
the love of sentiment He crowned with the dignity
of a Sacrament, and made it for His Church generally
not so much the means of commemorating an absent,
as of communicating with a present Saviour. And in




xxI.]  a Principle rather than a Sentiment.  24:7
my judgment, it is a great evidence of the inspiration
which held the minds of the Apostles in check, while
they wrote, that the mere love of sentiment toward
Christ is never heard in their writings; St. Peter and
St. John may be mentioned historically in the Gospels
as manifesting feeling of this kind on one or two occasions; but in their Epistles you find no trace of
such love; the human friend seems to have vanished
from their memory; and Jesus, viewed under the light
of Pentecost, is simply the Redeeming God, the One
Mediator, the only Name given among men whereby
we must be saved.
Reader, are you looking at Him in the point of
view in which they present Him?  Is your love for
the Saviour something more and deeper than a mere
sentimental appreciation of the beauty of His character? How far does it reside in the will —this love?
how far in the judgment and moral sense? I am sure
that there may be, even in ourselves, a picturesqueness of impression about Christ without the least real
appreciation of Him. Do you live much with Him,
and love to live with Him, in thought and in prayer?
Do you honor Him by drawing Him into use in all
His offices of Grace?  Can you yield up your will
into His hands, to choose for yourself nothing else
than He chooses for you?  Does the satisfaction of
trying to please Him-an effort which is never made
in vain-excel every other in a certain high and pure
flavor? These are the questions which must determine the genuineness of our love for Him.  And
genuine love is the only safe evidence of genuine
faith in Him. And on faith in Him is suspended our
salvation. On them only who love Cri st rests the




248          The Love of God, etc.         [CHAP.
Apostolic benediction: " Grace be with all them that
love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity."  And, lest
any suppose that, though the love of Him be laudable, indifference to Him  is excusable, the same
Apostle sounds in our ears the extremest malediction
on those who love Him not: " If any man love not
the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha."




xxii.] What shuts out Christ from our Hearts? 249
CHAPTER XXII.
WHAT SHUTS OUT CHRIST FROMI OUR HEARTS?
" Tlere was no room for them in the inn." —LoKE ii. 7.
T^HOSE who have followed along our course of
argument in the present treatise will probably
come to the conclusion, that, if Holiness be what we
have described it to be, the great majority of persons
who pass for religious with themselves and others?
nay, to whom the credit of being in a greater or less
degree religious cannot be denied, are very backward
in the pursuit of it. It may be profitable in this concluding Chapter to explore the causes of this backwardness. In doing so we shall see how to remedy
what is amiss in us. And this accidental advantage
also will accrue, that we shall be furnished with tests
of spiritual progress, which we may apply to our own
hearts.
Now, first, it is evident that our backwardness in
true religion (or, in other words, in the knowledge and
love of God) cannot in any measure be attributed to
God Himself. God is a full-charged fountain of grace,
who seeks to inundate every human intelligence and
every human heart with His knowledge and His love.
And we are told emphatically that He "is no re



250 TWlat shuts out Christ from our Hearts? [CIHAP.
specter of persons; " He is not partial in the gifts and
influences which He distributes. Human parents have
often favorites among their children, whom they indulge with the coat of many colors, and the Benjamin's mess. But God has no such weak fondness
in the treatment of His children; if He loves one
better than another, it is because that one is worthier
of His love. God in grace is like the sun in Nature,
whose property it is to diffuse itself into every cranny,
where it is not absolutely shut out; or like the precious dew of heaven, which drops indifferently on the
salt places of the wilderness and on the rich and fruitful soil. God may say to His people, as the Apostle
said to the Corinthians: " 0 my people, my mouth is
opened unto you, my heart is enlarged. Ye are not
straitened in me, but ye are straitened in your own
bowels."  These (though they are not so applied
by the inspired writer) are exactly the accents in
which God addresses every human soul. He is impatient of being perfectly loved by every soul; longing and desirous to pour out upon every soul the
riches of His mercy and grace. He laments our narrowness; He beseeches us to be enlarged in our own
hearts, and to make a worthy response to His
affection.
And this reference leads us on a step further in our
argument. It is in ourselves that we are straitened,
and not in God. The sun may shed his light and
warmth around, so that there is nothing hid from the
heat thereof; but if a man constructs a hovel of boards,
and stops the chinks between the boards with thick
clay, the sun's rays cannot reach him. The dew may
drop on the wilderness; but the salt places and the




xxii.] What shuts out Christfrom our Hearts? 251
heath have no capacity of bringing forth a crop. The
water of the river may be free to all comers, but without a vessel to contain it, it cannot be drunk, and with
only a small vessel it cannot be drunk in large measure. Christ may come to the door of the inn, desiring
to take up His abode there; but if there is no room
for Him, He must be cradled in the manger outside.
An inn-what an appropriate figure of the soul of
man as it is by nature! What a multiplicity and
what a prodigious variety of thoughts are always coming and going in the soul-the passengers these which
throng the inn, and some of whom are so fugitive, that
they do not even take up their abode there for the
night!  And what distraction, discomposure, and
noise, do these outgoing and incoming thoughts produce, so that perhaps scarcely ever in the day is our
mind collected and calm, except just for the few moments spent in private prayer before we lie down and
when we rise-the hurry and confusion this, produced
by the constant arrivals at, and departures from, an
inn! And then some of these thoughts leave traces
of defilement upon the soul, as they pass away, much
as the careless and slovenly wayfarer leaves a soil or a
rent upon the furniture. And, by way of completing
the figure, Christ offers Himself at the door of the soul,
as the passenger offers himself at the door of an inn.
He seeks and longs to pass into the soul, that He may
take up His abode there, and dwell in the heart by
faith. "Behold," cries He," I stand at the door, and
knock: if any man hear My voice, and open the door,
I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he
with Me."  Oh! it is because we do not give Him
room to work within us, that He works so faintly and




252 What shuts out Christ from our Hearts? [CHAP.
feebly in our souls. It is because we bring such poor
narrow hearts to Him, that we receive so little of His
fulness. It is because we close ourselves up in the
chamber of our selfishness, that we inhale so seldom
the free, fresh atmosphere of His Spirit.
" There was no room for them in the inn."  Now
in what does the obstacle to Christ's entrance into our
hearts consist?  What is it which occupies the room
which he seeks and condescendingly asks to occupy?
Two things principally, under which all others will
fall: first self-will, and then confidence in the creature
for happiness.
1. First, self-will. The least trace of self-will excludes pro tanto God and His working from the soul.
Absolute surrender to His Will and Word in every
thing is the only condition on which the Lord will take
up His abode in the depth of the soul, and give to the
heart that calm and repose, which only His Presence
can give. There are many Christians who, in seeking
counsel and help from God, are not perfectly sincere, do
not absolutely resign their will into His hand. They
"keep back part of the price" in their dealings with
Him, make reserves, and except certain districts of
their life from His jurisdiction.  They make the vain
attempt to serve two masters, seeking to please God
much, and themselves a little, in what, they do. They
are quite willing to pray, and read the Holy Scriptures,
and attend Public Worship, and receive Holy Communion; but they have a great dislike to be pressed
upon such points as systematic almsgiving, fasting,
restraint of the tongue, self-denial in recreations, and
mortification of the will, although they have a growing conviction in their minds that God requires from




xxii.] What shuts out Christ from our Hearts? 253
them some measure of these things. They have not
that delicate sensibility to God's inspirations which
He loves to find in a soul, and which, when He does
find it, enables Him to do many mighty works therein.
You know how delicately a wind-vane is poised on the
top of a building, so that with the slightest breath of
wind (hardly sufficient on a hot day to fan the cheek
agreeably) it veers round at once. It is so in Nature;
but alas! in the moral world there is many a will which
does not sit loose upon its pivot, but is fixed in the
quarter to which its natural inclinations point, and which
moves not, therefore, when the breath of God's Spirit
seeks to turn it. And observe that we are not now
speaking so much of cases in which there is a positive
and well-defined right and wrong, and where the right
and wrong might be determined by the Ten Commandments, or the Nine Beatitudes, or some other outward
law. The principles of all right conduct and of all
right sentiment are no doubt laid down with perfect
clearness in the Holy Scripture; but we need for the
conduct of daily life something more than this-it is
necessary that we should see the right application of
these principles to the ever-new and unforeseen openings for moral conduct which are continually presented
to us. And this cannot be done by any outward rule,
writtene and printed on paper, however perfect. It
can only be done by submission to the will to what is
called " the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus,"
that is, by compliance with the instigations which on
such occasions the Spirit of God makes in the heart of
those who are sincerely and singly desirous of pleasing Iim. "We do not cease to pray for you," says
St. Paul, " and to desire that ye might be filled with




254 What shuts out Christfrom our Hearts? [CHAP.
the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual
understanding."  Is it to be supposed that the Colossians were ignorant of the literal rule of duty, as
given in the Law and expounded by Christ? No;
what the Apostle supplicated for them was their
direction by God's Holy Spirit as to His Will in particular cases. And again: "This I pray, that your
love may abound yet more and more in knowledge
and in all judgment; that ye may approve things that
are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without
offence in the day of Christ." As a man increases in
earnest love to Christ, a delicate tact grows up within
him, a spiritual instinct, which teaches him (without
any book) what he ought to say and do, and what he
had better avoid on each particular occasion. True
love, even human and earthly love, is full of sensibilities; every one is aware how a person, whom he
loves and seeks to please, will take a thing; without
being wrong or coarsely offensive, it would be simply
out of taste to say or do such and such things before
such a person; they would jar upon him. There is
something of the same kind in Divine love, the true
lover of Christ being made sensitive by the Holy
Spirit as to the line of conduct which pleases or displeases Him. " I will instruct thee and teach thee in
the way which thou shalt go; " this is God's gracious
promise by the Psalmist: " and I will guide thee with
mine eye. Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule,
which have no understanding; whose mouth must be
held in with bit and bridle."  Everybody knows
what the guidance of a mother's eye is, while the children are around her. She need not speak. A glance
and the expression of her countenance convey her




xxII.] What shuts out Christ from our Hearts? 255
wishes sufficiently. She looks up in alarm, and her eye
warns the little ones away from danger; they are industrious, and her eye betokens approval; or they are
too frolicsome, and a look of displeasure checks them.
God's children, too, know the meaning of His eye.
They know, by the glance He gives them, what path
He would have them pursue, and what avoid. He
never leaves them without an interior indication of
His will, if they have but one desire, that of pleasing
Him. And why these indications are so rarely made
is, that God sees people are not quite disposed to accept them, not prepared in all things to move in the
direction indicated.  The soul must be empty of selfwill, before God can work in it. We fulfil the desires
of the flesh and of the mind-that is, we live according to the inclinations of Nature (not necessarily
coarse or vicious inclinations), and the thoughts which
she prompts. And while this is the case, Christ is
shut out. " There is no room for Him in the inn."
2. The second thing which takes up room in the
soul that Christ ought to occupy, is confidence in the
creature for happiness. When I speak of the creature,
I do not intend any other source of enjoyment but
such as in itself is innocent. I merely mean worldly
and created good in any of its forms-money, and the
comforts money will buy; the sympathies of relations
and friends, which no money can buy; and, in short
the whole circle of blessings (commonly so called),
which yet are not communion with God, and the
knowledge and enjoyment of His perfections. Who
shall say (without very special grace, and an extraornary measure of Divine illumination) how far his
affection is set upon the earthly blessings with which




256 What shuts out Christ fromr our Hearts? [cHAP.
his cup is crowned; how far he is seeking in them a
satisfaction which they can never give; how far, if they
were removed, he could still console himself in that
communion with the Father of spirits, which alone
does satisfy? It is but too easy to deceive ourselves
in this matter, while the earthly blessings remain with
us. A man who swims upon bladders is apt to conceive that he could easily dispense with the support,
and still keep his head above the water; nor is it easy
to ascertain what resources he has in himself for swimming, until the artificial support is withdrawn. Let
me say that by way of making trial of his children,
of ascertaining, or rather of certifying to themselves (for
He must know, without being certified) how far they
have their treasure in heaven, and set their affection
on things above, God sometimes removes our earthly
treasures, and withdraws one or more of the swimming
bladders. He strikes perhaps with death's dart some
friend or relation, who was dear to us as our own soul,
and to whom our affections were beginning to cleave
idolatrously. Be warned, all you who have earthly
treasures, and are conscious of prizing them exceedingly, that God is certain to act thus with all those
who are (at the ground of their hearts) His true children, if le sees the caections of trust and love twining
too closely around the creature. In very faithfulness
to us He must then tear them away, and cause a painful bleeding of the heart. The only way to keep our
earthly treasures, on the assumption that we are God's
true people, is, while we thankfully hold them of God,
to mortify all undue attachment to them, and sternly
to refuse to idolize them. But this by the way.-Our
most merciful Father, in the discipline to which we




xxII.] W'hcat shuts out Christ from our Hearts? 257
have referred, seldom (if ever) strips us quite bare of
earthly blessings, and, even when He is obliged to use
the pruning-knife most sternly, always leaves some
green spray of comfort and some blossom  of hope.
And with the blessing (or blessings) left some of the
risks are left also-in the sad tendency of the human
heart to cleave to what is seen, there can be no blessing
without a risk. The risk is, that the heart, shut out
from one avenue of earthly comfort, may, instead of
growing wiser by this discipline, intrench itself in the
comforts that remain, may build other tabernacles for
its indwelling (as Peter was desirous of doing on the
mount), which shall stand it in no better stead than
the first. Oh, how long it is before a soul can perfectly
unlearn trust in the creatures! Does it ever completely unlearn this trust, while life lasts, and while
the body of sin and death clogs it? I suppose not.
And this I know for certain, without any supposition,
that God is very patient and gentle with us in this
matter, never laying upon us more than He sees we
can well bear, never removing a blessing without a
good reason, viewing with indulgence our every effort
to struggle into independence of His creatures, and
always restoring comfort to the mourner after the
object has been achieved. This is the lesson of the
history of Job. Job was subjected to a most frightful
ordeal. He was stripped bare of every thing which
makes life (I do not say enjoyable, but) tolerableproperty, esteem, health, relations.  " Ye have heard
of the patience of Job," says St. James, " and have
seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful,
and of tender mercy." Now, unless we take fully into
account the indulgence shown by God to His children




258 What shuts out Christfrom our Hearts? [CHAP.
amidst their trials, and the graciousness with which
He accepts their every effort to maintain, under such
circumstances, a right frame of mind, we might be surprised at the Scripture's attributing patience to Job.
He certainly bemoaned himself very grievously, wished
he had never been born, requested for himself that he
might die, and so on. But, under all his groaning,
God saw the germ of a true resignation in those early
words of his: "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath
taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord".. 
" What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and
shall we not receive evil?" God, considering the
excessive burdensomeness of Job's trials, and the
dimness with which the compensatory life beyond
the grave had been revealed before the Incarnation,
accounted this true germ of patience for patience;
and, when He had taught Job the spiritual lessons
which he needed to learn, returned to him with a prosperity in every respect double of that which he had
originally enjoyed.
But it may be pertinently asked whether all appreciation and enjoyment of created good (in any
shape, however innocent) takes up the room in the
heart which God ought to occupy-whether (to put
the question in other words) all pleasures, except such
as are of a religious character, are denied to a Christian?  2ost assuredly not. The attempt to crush
in ourselves our appreciation of earthly blessings
would, as unnatural, recoil upon us. And such an attempt would be as unscriptural as it is unnatural. Of
the asceticism which in the latter days should lay its
ban upon marriage and upon meats, and which should
usurp in the minds of some the place of Christian mor



xxII.] What shuts out Christfrom our Hearts? 259
tification, St. Paul says  (what stronger thing could
he say?) that it is a departure from the faith, a doctrine inculcated by devils and seducing spirits. And
we may say of the whole compass of earthly blessings
what there he says of food: " Every creature of God
is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received
with thanksgiving." It is not mere enjoyment of the
creature, but trust in the creature to satisfy, all the
deep cravings of the soul, which excludes God and
Christ from the heart.  Nay; a moderate and chastened enjoyment of the creature actually contributes
to our sanctification, inasmuch as it acts as a stimulant to gratitude.  We must learn the art of tasting
the various blessings with which God crowns our cup,
without being engrossed or taken up with them, without suffering them to quench the high aspirations of
our soul after Communion with God. This is a lesson
which it takes long practice, much self-control, and
great discipline of God's Providence, and Spirit, to
teach.  Hear the language of experience: "I have
never leaned toward my comforts," says Mr. Cecil,
" without finding them  give way.  A  sharp warning
has met me that these are aliens; and as an alien live
thou among them.  We may take up the pitcher to
drink, but, the moment we begin to admire, God in
love to us will dash it to pieces."  Perhaps the quaint
and yet graceful imagery of good George Herbert
may assist us in understanding what is required of us
in this matter:
"All creatures have their joy:
Yet, if we rightly measure,
Man's joy and pleasure
Rather hereafter than at present is.
i 1 Tim. iv. 1, 3, 4.




260 What shuts out Christ from our Hdearts? [CHAP.
Not that he may not here
Taste of the cheer;
But, as birds drink and straight lift up their head,
So he must sip, and think
Of better drink
He may attain to after he is dead."
But, alas! men will not sip; for they find temperance
very hard-much harder than total abstinence. They
will either drink to intoxication, or not taste a drop.
The one party are led by their lusts; the other are
perverse in declining what Heaven gives as a sweet
relief.  Both are true children of mother Eve, who
ate greedily the forbidden fruit; while at the same
time she peevishly aggravated the Divine requirements.  Whereas God had said only, "Ye shall not
eat of the fruit," she added to His word a restriction
out of her own naughty heart: " God hath said," she
murmured, "ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye
touch it, lest ye die." The whole doctrine of asceticism, branded by St. Paul as a " doctrine of devils," is
wrapped up in that clause, "neither shall ye touch it."
Eve had admitted the insinuations of the seducing
spirit, before she so misrepresented the precept of the
Blessed God.
In conclusion: let every reader apply to himself
what has been said, by asking whether the reason of
his slow advance in grace may not be that, either by
self-will, or by trust in creatures, he gives Christ no
room to work in his heart. Are you heartily willing
to be all, and to do all, that God requires? And doth
your soul pant after Him, " as the hart desireth the
water-brooks;" or, on the other hand, would you be
well contented with  ltis blessings, in the absence of




xxll.] What shuts out Christfrom our Hearts? 261
ffimself?  This earthly contentment will, must exclude Him from the soul. There is no room for Him
in the inn, so long as there is no desire but for His
gifts-none for Himself. In that case, repulsed from
the door of the heart, which He has in vain wooed
and sought to win, He must lie without, His head
filled with dew, and His locks with the drops of the
night. Good reader, pray that it may be neither your
own case, nor that of him who now bids you ADIEU.
TIlE END.








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