pa-37 
 
 PAM, 
 
 SEAM, 
 
 
 
[No. 1. — Third Series.] 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 Preached in the Cathedral Church ok St. Peter’s, Maritzbcuo, 
 On Sunday Morning, June 3, 1806, 
 
 BY THE 
 
 RIGHT REVEREND T1IE LORD BISIIOr OF NATAL. 
 
 1 John iv. 0,10. — la this was manifested the Love of God 
 toward us, because that God sent Ills only -begotten Son 
 into the world, that we might lire through him. Herein 
 is Love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us, 
 and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 
 
 This is one of those five passages of which I spoke last 
 Sunday where the phrase “ only-begotten ” is applied to 
 Christ by the writer of the Gospel and the First Epistle of 
 St. John. Who that writer was we cannot say: but the 
 results of Modern Criticism tend to show conclusively that 
 he certainly was not the Apostle St. John, — that the Fourth 
 Gospel was not written till about the middle of the Second 
 Century, and therefore long after the death of the last of 
 the apostles. And, indeed, a very little consideration will 
 satisfy anyone, that, if the first three Gospels contain a true 
 representation of the teaching of Jesus, in the different 
 parables and discourses which are there recorded, — as most 
 probably they do, though mixed up with much legendary 
 matter, the product of a later age, — then the Gospel of 
 St. John cannot truly represent it, because the whole 
 character and contents of this Gospel differ essentially from 
 those of the others. The difference is so marked that no 
 one, who has once had his attention called to it, can help 
 being struck with it, or, if he be a thoughtful person, 
 brought up in the usual traditionary school, can help, I 
 should suppose, being seriously perplexed with it. The first 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 three Gospels, as you know, abound with instances of 
 teaching by parables. It would almost seem as if it was 
 literally true which we find written in Matthew xiii. 34, 35 — 
 
 “ All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables, and without a 
 parable spake he not unto them, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by 
 the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things 
 which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world,” — 
 
 and again in Mark iv.33,34 — 
 
 “ And with many such parables spake he the word unto them as they were 
 able to hear it: but without a parable spake he not unto them. And, when they 
 were alone, he expounded all things to his disciples.” 
 
 But in the whole of the Fourth Gospel we have only a few 
 instances of any such teaching by parables, as where our 
 Lord spoke of himself as the good shepherd and as the door 
 of the sheepfold, or where he said, ‘ I am the vine and ye 
 the branches,’ or where he compares his teaching to ‘ bread 
 from heaven,’ ‘ the bread of life,’ or speaks of it as ‘ his flesh 
 which he would give for the life of the world,’ and of the 
 spiritual feeding upon it as ‘ eating his flesh and drinking 
 his blood.’ In all these cases, however, the style of the 
 parable is very different from that which we find in the first 
 three Gospels. The Fourth Gospel contains rather instances 
 of ‘ parabolic teaching ’ than ‘ teaching by parables.’ 
 
 Still more remarkable, however, is the difference which is 
 observable in the discourses themselves, which are attributed 
 to Jesus in the first three Gospels and in the fourth. In 
 those he is almost wholly employed in teaching the people 
 about matters of practice, about their duty to God and to 
 one another. Whereas in this, the Gospel of St. John, we 
 find chiefly matters of doctrine insisted upon throughout in 
 our Lord’s teaching, as if from the very first he had revealed 
 — not only to his disciples, but to Nicodemus who came to 
 him in private, to the Pharisees who attacked him in public, 
 and even to the multitude, — the deepest mysteries of the 
 Divine Nature, of which scarcely any thing appears in the 
 other Gospels. Nay, it is well known that in this Gospel 
 three whole years of our Lord’s ministerial life arc described, 
 whereas only one is mentioned in the others ; and in the very 
 first of these three years the same language is ascribed to 
 him as in the last, unfolding mysterious Divine truths, of 
 which, it may be truly said, hardly a trace appears in the 
 other histories. 
 
 And yet another fact must be mentioned. The language, 
 in which these doctrines are taught, is substantially the 
 
same, whether put into the mouth of Jesus himself, or into 
 that of John the Baptist, or into that of the writer of the 
 Gospel and the Epistle. The same spirit breathes through 
 the whole. It is evident that it is the language primarily 
 of the writer himself, whoever he may have been, conveying 
 thus to us in various ways the views which he himself 
 entertained of the essential truths of Christianity, and 
 coloured by the philosophical teaching of the School of 
 Alexandria, which at that time was spreading largely through 
 the Christian World. 
 
 I have shown you, on a former occasion, by quotations 
 from the writings of Philo, as well as from the more recent 
 statements of Dean Alford, Prof. Jowett, and others, how 
 largely the language of the Alexandrian School has pene- 
 trated the first words of this Gospel, and, I may say, has 
 more or less affected the whole of it, — how Philo speaks of 
 the “ Son of God,” the “ Second God,” the “ Word,” the 
 “ Image of God,” the “ Light of the World,” the “ Fountain 
 of Wisdom,” the “ First-begotten of God,” with a multitude 
 of other similar phrases, which indicate the sources from 
 which mauy of the expressions of this Gospel, and the 
 Epistles of St. Paul, and especially the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, by whomsoever written, have manifestly been 
 derived. Accordingly, the only other passage in the New 
 Testament, in which the phrase “ only-begotten ” of the 
 Father is applied to Christ, occurs in this very Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, which abounds with language of the Alexandrian 
 School ; and a thoroughly orthodox writer upon the Articles 
 (Dr. Macbride) has said, p.101 : — 
 
 Probably the introduction to this Gospel of St. John would never have been 
 written, if the author had not written in an age and place infected with that 
 philosophical system. 
 
 It is well to bear these facts in mind in considering such 
 expressions as those in the text, and endeavouring to apply 
 the truth which they embody to the circumstances of the 
 present day. 
 
 “ In this was manifested the Love of God toward us because that God sent 
 His only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him ” 
 
 In Jesus the Living Word was manifested; in him, in his 
 pure and holy, meek and loving life, men saw the bright- 
 ness of the Father’s glory. Our greatest comfort — our life 
 and hope — in reading the record of the savings and doings 
 of Christ, consists in this, that in him the Father “ dwelt ” 
 
4 
 
 continually, — that the words of grace which he spoke to the 
 sons of men, the works of tender pity which he wrought, 
 were done in the Father’s Name, were the Father’s words, 
 the Father’s works, the manifestation of the Father. In 
 seeing him, as we heard last Sunday, men saw the Father’s 
 Love welling out towards them : in seeing, as we do, the 
 mere reflection of that glorious life, as it is set before us, 
 however imperfectly, in the Gospels, we see the bright rays 
 which beam from our Father’s Face, the tokens of his 
 Gracious Presence in the midst of us, the presence of Him 
 whose Name is Light, whose Name is Love. * In this was 
 manifested the Love of God towards us’ that this Son of 
 God has come, and “ has given us an understanding that 
 we may know Him that is True, and we are in Him that is 
 True, even in His Son, Jesus Christ.” It is thus that, as 
 the text says, “ we live through him for, as the same 
 writer puts it elsewhere, in words ascribed to Jesus himself, — 
 
 “ This is Eternal Life, that we should know the Only True God, and Jesus 
 Christ whom He has sent.” 
 
 Let us fix our thoughts awhile on this Divine Source of 
 Consolation, this proof of the Love of God towards us, 
 this manifestation of His Goodness. In the first age of 
 Christianity, they saw the gleams of that Divine Light, 
 which is the Light of Life Eternal, in the person of the Son 
 of Man himself, and then, after that first age had past away, 
 in the reflection of that Light in the Gospel. We see it, too, 
 in this way: but we see it also in the light which sliines 
 within us, and enables each of us to behold the beauty of 
 truth and love and holiness, — yes, to admire and reverence it, 
 even when we feel ourselves unfit to gaze upon it, and 
 shrink away into the darkness, because we know our deeds 
 are evil. And so, too, we see it manifested daily in the holy 
 loving lives of Christian men. For that Light, we are 
 plainly told by the same inspired writer, “ lighteneth every 
 man that cometh into the world.” If Christ is the Head 
 of his body the Church, yet we are the members; and in 
 each one of us, in our measure, the same Spirit lives and 
 moves that lived in him. You remember what words are 
 put by this writer in the mouth of our Lord in answer to 
 Philip, who said, “ Lord, show us the Father, and it sufliceth 
 us,” — and Jesus answered — 
 
 “ llelievest thou not that lam in the Father , and the Father in me ? The 
 words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself; but the Father , that 
 
dwelleth in me , He doetli the works. Believe me that I am in I tie Father anil 
 the Father in me 
 
 Bat so, too, the very same language is used of us, as mem- 
 bers of Christ and children of God : — 
 
 “ He, that keepeth His commandments, dwelleth in Him and He in him ; ” 
 
 “ He, that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God and God in him ; " 
 
 “ Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, 
 and he in God." 
 
 It is plain that this was a favourite phrase with the writer, 
 so that he not only uses it thus repeatedly in his epistle, but 
 puts it very frequently in the mouth ol Jesus himself in the 
 Gospel, whereas in the other three Gospels no instance of 
 the kind occurs. But what, in the language of this writer, 
 is meant by the expression “ dwelling in Christ,” or “ dwel- 
 ling in God”? He himself shall tell us. In one place of 
 this Gospel we read that Jesus said, “ Abide (dwell) in me 
 and I in you,” and again just afterwards we read, “ He that 
 abideth (dwelleth) in me and I iu him, the same bringeth 
 forth much fruit.” But, in the very same context, the 
 phraseology is modified into this, “ If ye dwell in me and 
 my words dwell in you.” It is plain, therefore, that when 
 the writer of this Gospel speaks of Christ “dwelling in us,” 
 of God “ dwelling in us,” he means that the words of Christ, 
 or the word of God, will be dwelling in us. Accordingly, 
 in the epistle the same writer says : — • 
 
 “ I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word 
 of God dwelleth in you ; ” 
 
 “ Let that, therefore, dwell in you, which ye have heard from the beginning. 
 If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall dwell in you, ye also shall 
 dwell in the Son and in the Father." 
 
 Aud here we see also what he means by the converse phrase 
 of our ‘ dwelling in God ’ — of our ‘ dwelling in the Son and 
 in the Father.’ It is when the Word of God — the Truth — 
 dwells in us, and we feed in thought upon it, as living 
 bread, — when our spirits drink out of that living stream,— 
 when that Divine Food, the Truth which Christ taught, 
 the Truth which the Father sent him to teach, becomes 
 incorporate with our own spiritual system, the strength and 
 support of our daily life, — it is then that, in the language of 
 this writer, we are said to “ dwell in the Son and iu the 
 Father,” to “ have fellowship with the Father and with his 
 Son Jesus Christ.” 
 
 “ Whoso keepeth His U'ord, in him verily is the love of God perfected; 
 hereby know we that we are in Him. He that saith he dwelleth in Him, [that 
 is, in God,] ought himself also so to walk even as he (Jesus Christ) walked." 
 
6 
 
 Yes, brethren, we confess that Jesus is the ‘ only-begotten,’ 
 the dearly-beloved, Son of God, — that he speaks to us as one 
 who lies in the bosom of God, as one who has sweet communion 
 with his Heavenly Father, his Father and our Father, his 
 God and our God. We feel that in him — in his life and 
 death, his teaching and suffering — the Father speaks to us, 
 the Mind of God is manifested plainly to us, — and that 
 Mind, we see, is Love. Every word of Jesus, every act of 
 Jesus, breathes forth the Father’s Love to us. His whole 
 ministration was a Ministry of the Father’s Love, — and that 
 not a weakly Love of mere compassionate kindliness, but 
 the strong Love of a Holy Father, that wills our truest wel- 
 fare, our lasting eternal happiness, our conformity to His 
 own blessed image, or, as the Bible says, our Sanctification, 
 which is identical with our Salvation. And now let us 
 remember for our comfort that the life of every true Chris- 
 tian, in its due measure, does the same, — that our acts of 
 love to one another, our charity, and honesty, and truth- 
 fulness, our patience in suffering, our faithfulness in duty, 
 our perseverance in the path of righteousness in the face of 
 all discouragements and difficulties, — the lives and labours 
 of all good men and true, the Saviours of mankind, in all 
 ages, under all circumstances, in all ranks and classes, in all 
 countries, under all religions, — are daily “ manifesting the 
 Love of God towards us,” — are daily witnessing that we are 
 “ born of God,” — that the Living Word is dwelling within 
 us, is lightening the heart of each of us. And as we read in 
 the text that the perfect obedience of Christ in life and in 
 death was “ the propitiation for our sins,” — was pleasing in 
 God’s sight, an “ offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet- 
 smelling savour,” — as that great example of self-sacrificing 
 love, of childlike trust in his Father’s Wisdom and Goodness, 
 of faithful witnessing for the truth even unto death, made 
 the whole world sweet, — so are we also, each in our measure, 
 to “ present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable 
 unto God,” — and the incense of such offerings, in the daily 
 lives of men, of things “ true and honest, just and pure, lovely 
 and of good report, virtuous and praiseworthy,” rising up at 
 all times, under various circumstances, from the whole 
 Family of Man, is " more than all whole burnt-offerings 
 and sacrifices.” It is as if, to use the language of one of 
 the ancient writers of the Pentateuch, — 
 
 “ The I.onr) smelled a sweet savour, and the Lord said in llis heart, I will 
 not again curse the ground any more for man's sake : while the earth remaineth, 
 
7 
 
 seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day 
 and night, shall not cease." 
 
 And all this is because the Living Word of God, that was 
 manifested in him, is dwelling within us, — because we have 
 all received, each in our measure, the gift of Eternal Light and 
 Life, as children of God. It is right that, in attacking the 
 idols of the day, we should never cease to clear ourselves 
 from the charge, which is constantly levelled against us, of 
 banishing the Creator from His own world, and deifying man 
 and human nature, ascribing everything to man, to human 
 intellect, to human virtue, — as if man could find out, could 
 invent for himself, a Divinity, — as if his every yearning for 
 some sure token of the Presence with him of the Father of 
 spirits, were not itself an effect of a ray from that Presence 
 penetrating his inner being ! No ! we believe that man has 
 no goodness, nor any spiritual wisdom, of his own, that he 
 has, indeed, nothing of his own, — that it is “ the inspiration 
 of the Almighty which giveth him understanding,” the 
 Spirit of God within his heart, which enables him truly to 
 love either God or Man, — and that the Presence of this 
 Spirit in our hearts, this Spirit of purity and truth and love, 
 helping us to be pure, truth-speaking, truth-loving, to be 
 ‘ followers of God as dear children, 5 — to ‘ walk in love as 
 Christ also hath loved us, 5 — is at once the sign, the only 
 sign, that our souls are living unto God, and the pledge, 
 the sure pledge, that our Father loves us, — that we are 
 even now dwelling in God and God in us ; even as the same 
 Scripture writer says, in the words which precede and follow 
 the text, — 
 
 “ Hereby we know that He dwelleth in us, by the Spirit which He hath 
 given us 
 
 “ Hereby know we that we dwell in Him and He in us, because He hath given 
 us of His Spirit;" 
 
 “ God is Love: and he, that dwelleth is love, dwelleth in God, and God in 
 him.” 
 
 “ Not that tee loved God, but that God loved us !” Indeed, 
 we have not loved Him. Alas ! with His glorious universe 
 before us, with our own wonderful framework of sense and 
 intellect attuned to it, with our instinctive affections witnes- 
 sing to the Truth of His Gospel, with our natural ties, as 
 parents and children, as brothers and sisters, teaching us 
 the meaning of our relations to God and to each other, 
 what a small portion of our lives, of our thoughts, of our 
 energies, has been given to any larger circle than that which 
 
8 
 
 includes ourselves, and those whose comfort and welfare is 
 involved in our own ? What do we care, really and earnestly, 
 for the cause of God in the world, which is the cause of 
 Truth, of Goodness, of Humanity? Yet I trust that there 
 are some among us who do care for these things. But they 
 will he the first to hide their faces with shame at the little, 
 — the scant measure of service, of devotion, of worship, — 
 that they have given through all their past lives to “ their 
 Lord, their God, their Holy One.” 
 
 “ Not that we loved God, but that God loved us!” Yes, 
 we have proof enough of this. And many, I doubt not, 
 are those amongst us, who, amidst much weakness and 
 ignorance, doubtless, but yet with that faith in God which 
 is “ the evidence of things unseen,” are able to trace 
 through their own personal history the guidance of a 
 Father’s Hand, trying them, instructing them, lifting them 
 up or casting them down, chastening them that they may 
 be partakers of His Holiness, disciplining and training them 
 for His Kingdom. Such have the witness in themselves 
 of God’s Love to them, though written often on the dark 
 back-ground of their own shortcomings, even of their own 
 transgressions. But in the history of the world also the 
 same features are traceable on a larger scale, though more 
 dimly and more confusedly, in proportion to our own short- 
 sightedness. The history of the world has been a series of 
 revelations of God, — of effluences from the Divine Glory 
 passing, as it were, into the mists and fogs of this lower 
 region, until they were darkened almost utterly, and a fresh 
 dayspring from on high was needed, to “ give light to them 
 that sat in darkness and in the shadow of death.” Yet, on 
 the whole, it has been a history of progress, as, in the 
 advancing tide, though each wave runs back again, yet the 
 ocean gains upon the land. For the thoughtful mind there 
 are evidences here also that a Faithful Creator is caring for 
 man, — is providing for the highest wants of Ilis intelligent 
 creatures, made in the image of Himself, and ever feeling 
 after and seeking to find Him, who is the Source of all our 
 Life and Being. 
 
 But, if God loves man, it may be said, why did He not 
 make Him perfect in wisdom and goodness ? why leave 
 him in ignorance and weakness, exposed to pain and sick- 
 ness, sin and death? Such questions come from a very 
 unworthy conception of what goodness is, or even wisdom. 
 
9 
 
 With reverence be it said, even God’s Omnipotence cannot 
 make a creature perfectly good, perfectly wise. For mere 
 innocence is not goodness; and there can be no wisdom for 
 us without experience. The subject is deep indeed. But we 
 may venture at least to say that the goodness, the wisdom, 
 which is really such, which is worthy of the “ offspring of 
 God,” is not something that can be imported ready-made 
 into the soul. It is of its nature to grow up there as a 
 living thing, though from a divine seed, yet amongst 
 obstacles as well as ministering agencies. “ My son,” says 
 the Lord of all, “ give me thy heart.” It must be the 
 free act of him who gives, and not a mere forcible taking 
 possession by a resistless power, that can constitute that 
 heart-surrender, — that can make that heart worth any- 
 thing to him that claims it. No motive of interest must 
 intervene ; no fear of hell or even hope of heaven can make 
 a real and genuine love for God or Man spring up in the 
 soul. For this purpose it may be necessary — doubtless, it is 
 necessary — that we should be placed in a world like this, — 
 that we should be mixed with our fellowmen in all their 
 different relations and circumstances, — that we should be 
 tried with temptation, and made perfect by suffering, — that 
 in this way we should learn to — 
 
 “ glory in our tribulations also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and 
 patience experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed, 
 because the Love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which 
 is given unto us,” — 
 
 that so we may learn to " glory in God through our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the recon- 
 ciliation, the at-one-ment.” 
 
 “ Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us ! ” 
 
 But when Jesus came and taught among his fellow- 
 countrymen, was his doctrine concerning the Father so new 
 and strange — so heterodox — that they wished to stone him 
 for it? No! it was not f?r this : it was because he said 
 that God was his Father, and bis enemies added, “ making 
 himself equal with God.” It was not so much the novelty 
 of his teaching that aroused and angered them. That was 
 but an expansion of many things said already in the old 
 writings of the Prophets, and repeated, doubtless, by the 
 lips of their later Scribes. It was his own faith and con- 
 fidence in God, — his assertion that he was one in spirit with 
 the Father, — his speaking of God continually as his own 
 
 c 
 
10 
 
 Father, — his using' such language about the Living God, the 
 Eternal Being whom they worshipped, as became only a 
 dearly-beloved, ‘ only-begotten/ Son, dwelling in God and 
 God in him, lying continually, as it were, in II is Bosom, 
 resting peacefully in His Truth and Love, when all the 
 powers of darkness — their own religious fanaticism, among 
 the rest— were raging against him, — it was this which 
 really maddened them, joined with the fact that he claimed 
 the Great God as our Father also, the Father of the weakest 
 and most ignorant and most degraded, of the publican and 
 the sinner, as well as the Scribe and the Pharisee. Yes ! it 
 was his own recognition of his fellowship and brotherhood 
 with men as sons of God, — his fearlessly pursuing the doc- 
 trine, that God is the Father and Friend of all mankind, 
 into all its consequences, — it was this which offended the 
 Scribes and Pharisees, his hearers. They had not so read 
 the Law and the Prophets : they had not so understood 
 their own sacred writings: they had limited the Messiah, 
 whom they looked for, the good tidings of his coming and 
 his kingdom, to their own people, at least to the elect 
 among them, that is, to themselves. 
 
 But by this all-embracing faith, the Son of Man, as he 
 said, drew men into fellowship with the Father through 
 him. In communion with him, drinking into his spirit, if 
 we dwell in him and he in us, if his words dwell in our 
 hearts and the spirit of his life Hows over into our own, 
 we all may draw near to God, and feel ourselves “ accepted 
 in the Beloved.” Walking thus in the light, as He is in 
 the light, as God our Father is Light, we shall have fellow- 
 ship one with another, — God dwelling in us, and we in 
 God, — “ and the blood of Jesus Christ llis Son,” sprinkled 
 upon our consciences, “ will cleanse us from all sin.” In 
 other words, the assurance which we feel that the Love of 
 God towards us was manifested in the death of Christ as 
 well as in his life, — that in him, as the Great Exemplar of 
 all true servants of God, who have taken up his cross and 
 borne, each in his age, the burden of their time, patiently 
 labouring in different spheres of duty, meekly suffering, dying, 
 if need be, in the spirit of Christ, that so their brethren, 
 though often condemning and crucifying them, might have 
 life more abundantly, — the assurance, I say, that in him, 
 and in all those who have followed in his train, the saviours 
 and helpers of mankind in every age, the Spirit of God is 
 
working, the Will of God is being wrought, by them the words 
 of God are spoken, the works of God are done, — the belief 
 that the lives and deaths of such as these, their labours of 
 selfsacrificing love in the midst of us, are witnesses of that 
 Love from which, as a source, each separate rill of human 
 love is flowing, — all this brings comfort to the soul, and 
 enables us to cry, as the watchword of our daily life, — 
 “Immanuel! God is with us! Who or what shall be 
 against us? What shall separate ns from the Love of God, 
 which is in Christ Jesus our Lord?” 
 
[No. 2. — Third Series.] 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 Preached in tiie Cathedral Church of St. Peter’s, Maritzburg, 
 Oh Sunday Evening, June 3, 1866, 
 
 BY THE 
 
 RIGHT REVEREND THE LORD BISHOP OF NATAL. 
 
 St. Luke xvi.31. — And he said unto them , If they hear not 
 Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded 
 though one rose from the dead. 
 
 I have chosen these words as my text this evening, partly 
 because they occur in the Gospel of the day, and the subject, 
 therefore, to which they refer is more particularly com- 
 mended to our attention at this time, but chiefly because, 
 as you are no doubt aware, this passage is one which has 
 been very frequently quoted of late, and very strongly 
 urged, in reference to the question of the Mosaic authorship 
 of the Pentateuch. I myself entered on one occasion acci- 
 dentally a church in our great metropolis, in which a learned 
 Bishop was announced to preach, and took for his text these 
 words. lie delivered a discourse worthy of him, — if not as 
 a man and a scholar, for he had not attempted to sound, for 
 the strengthening and comforting of his hearers, the deep 
 questions which are raised by this statement and by the 
 whole narrative of which it forms a part, — yet worthy of 
 him at least as a Christian and a gentleman. He did not, 
 while maintaining his own views, launch out into unchari- 
 table invectives against those who differed from him : he did 
 not accuse them of infidelity and heresy: he preached in 
 plain terms what he himself maintained to be the truth, and 
 then left his statements to produce their just effect upon the 
 minds of his hearers. The tendency of his discourse, how- 
 ever, was towards the support of the argument, which some 
 
13 
 
 have deduced from this verse, as proving by irresistible 
 evidence, from the lips of our Lord, the Mosaic authorship 
 of the Pentateuch. 
 
 Another modern writer of considerable reputation (Canon 
 Wordsworth) has expressed himself very strongly as follows 
 ( Gr . Test., p.183) : — 
 
 Here is a remarkable testimony from Christ himself, speaking by the father 
 of the faithful in the world of departed spirits, that the Jews have “ Moses 
 and the Prophets,” i.e., that the “ Canon of the Old Testament ” is what it 
 was believed by the Jews to be, viz., the Word of God, speaking by Moses and 
 the Prophets, — and that it has been preserved by the Jewish Church to our 
 Lord's age (whence it has come down to our own) in purity and integrity, — 
 that it is genuine, authentic, and divine, and not as some, contradicting Christ, 
 would now have us believe, a mere farrago of fragments, put together by writers 
 more recent than “ Moses and the Prophets,” — and that its testimony is so 
 cogent, that they who will not receive it as such, are in so hardened and 
 desperate a state, that they, would not be persuaded though one rose from the 
 dead. Our Lord intimates also that men come into the torments of hell, as 
 Dives did, because they will not hear the Holy Scripture, delivered to them by 
 God, and guarded by the Church. 
 
 I need hardly point out the fallacy of this reasoning. I 
 admit at once that by the expression “ Moses and the 
 Prophets ” our Lord did most probably mean the whole 
 Jewish Scriptures of the O.T., as we have them now in our 
 Canonical Books, or perhaps with some variations such as 
 we find must have existed in the Hebrew originals, consulted 
 by the Greek translators, who made the Septuagint Version. 
 I admit also that the fact, that these words are here placed 
 in the mouth of Abraham, does not prevent our treating 
 them as actually expressing our Lord’s own view upon the 
 point in cpiestion. But what does the text really say? — 
 that all shall “ come into the torments of hell,” who will 
 not believe that every line of the Scripture is Divinely and 
 Infallibly true? — that all its narratives are to be received, 
 with unquestioning faith, as passages of real authentic his- 
 tory? — that all the laws recorded in the Pentateuch, all 
 the utterances of the Prophets, are stamped with Divine 
 authority, as coming direct from the Mouth of the Most 
 High ? It says nothing of the kind. It says only that he, 
 who will not hear God’s Truth, as spoken by Moses and the 
 Prophets, — he who will not hearken to the Living Word, 
 which throughout the Bible speaks to his heart and con- 
 science, — would not receive it, though that Word were 
 evidenced as authoritative and Divine by any number of 
 miracles, — would “ not be persuaded though one rose from 
 the dead.” 
 
14 
 
 Let us now consider thoughtfully the passage before us, 
 and see what its real bearing is upon the circumstances of 
 our own times. For this is the true office of the Modern 
 Theologian, — not to set aside the Bible, as some would 
 insinuate, as an old worn-out piece of useless lumber, which 
 might have been “ profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for 
 correction, for instruction in righteousness,” in former ages, 
 comparatively dark and ignorant and superstitious, but can 
 no longer be supposed to contain any very important lessons 
 for an a<re so enlightened as our own. No ! we shall not do 
 this, “ seeking,” as one has said, “ to destroy the authority of 
 the O.T., and to assail with reckless eagerness both the autho- 
 rity and teaching of the New.” But we shall seek to draw 
 forth the eternal Truths, which the Bible contains for all ages 
 and for all circumstances, — to show that one and the same 
 Divine Spirit was stirring and quickening, instructing and 
 enlightening, the hearts of men, in the days of old, when the 
 Scriptures were written, that is teaching our own hearts 
 now, — to separate that which is essential from that which is 
 merely accidental in the Scriptures, depending on the par- 
 ticular circumstances and relations of the times in which 
 they were written. We shall take the facts of the present day, 
 revealed to us by the Light ol Modern Science, God’s pre- 
 cious gift as truly as the Light which shines upon us from the 
 Bible. And, instead of ignoring their existence, aud blindly 
 and obstinately refusing to see^what stands before our very 
 faces, we shall try to show how the new truths may be wel- 
 comed without abandoning what is precious in the old, how 
 God’s newest Revelations of llimself may be blended in just 
 proportion with the older, and cleared from the mass of mere 
 traditionary teaching which has usurped the place of Divine 
 Truth ; so that both the Old and the New may be preserved 
 together, and the Living God, the God of our lathers, may 
 be our own God still, and the God of our children. 
 
 It is easy, brethren, for those to “ jest at scars who never 
 felt a wound.” It is easy for those to treat lightly such 
 efforts as these, — rather, to disparage, to defame and blacken, 
 both them and those who make them, — who have done 
 nothing whatever to touch so much as with the tip ol their 
 finger the burden which is pressing upon the hearts and 
 minds of very many of their brethren. For there are mul- 
 titudes, we know, in t his day, who arc painfully conscious that 
 there is a hollowness in the old traditionary teaching, which 
 
15 
 
 will not satisfy the demands of the present age for that 
 which is substantial, solid, and permanent, — yet who dread 
 lest with old forms they may lose also that precious thing 
 which has been enshrined in them, and which they have 
 felt to be the solace and support of the soul amidst the trials 
 of this life and the thoughts of a life to come, and without 
 which it seems as if their path would he bewildered, their 
 whole life dreary and dark. And I say the work of censure, 
 reproach, and defamation, is easy for those, who have done 
 nothing whatever to relieve the anxious fears of devout and 
 intelligent persons, such as have kept pace in some measure 
 with the progress of the age, and have not been able to 
 regard it as a part of true piety to shut their eyes to the 
 grand discoveries of the day, and live on in contented 
 ignorance of the truths which God has made known to us, 
 by the labours of our fellowmen in all departments of science 
 — in Biblical Criticism, as well as the rest. If they had 
 done anything themselves to show that they were ready to 
 bear, in their measure, the burden and heat of the day, — to 
 show that they were even conscious of its difficulties, of its 
 longing desire to find some way of reconciling the teaching 
 of the Scriptures with the teaching of Modern Science, so 
 as to preserve due reverence for both, so as to keep alive the 
 faith that it is one and the same gracious Being, who reveals 
 Himself in the works of Grace and in the works of Nature, 
 — we might then bear with them, even when they judge 
 severely our own feeble endeavours to accomplish that for 
 which our powers were unequal, — for which their greater 
 learning, their greater acquaintance with the history of the 
 past, their greater knowledge of men’s hearts, were needed. 
 
 But it is notorious that those who in these days cen- 
 sure us, — those who apply to us in unmeasured terms the 
 epithets of unbeliever, infidel, and heretic, — those who 
 scoff at us for thinking it right that the clergy of a 
 National Church should be required not to fall far behind 
 the intelligence of the age, — should be required not to be 
 totally ignorant of Hebrew and Greek, not to be beneath an 
 ordinary layman in matters of Science, — have simply stood 
 aloof from all great discussions, — have not written a line to 
 clear up a difficulty, to disprove an assertion, to correct 
 an argument, — have contented themselves with reiterating 
 the long-exploded cry , — “ What the Church held and taught 
 in the first thousand years of her history, that and that only 
 
1G 
 
 is the true faith : more than that we may not — less than 
 that we must not — regard as essential to be believed on pain 
 of damnation. 5 ’ What is this but to make an idol of the 
 Church, as well as the Bible, — instead of worshipping the 
 Living God, who speaks to us by the lips and writings of 
 our fellowmen both in the Church and in the Bible. To 
 what extent this is carried by some who still profess to 
 belong to our Protestant Church, the very basis of which, 
 as the Bishop of London has said, is “ Free Enquiry 55 after 
 Truth, may be gathered from the fact that in the Church 
 Times of March 17 of this very year, which has just reached 
 us, I find the following note upon a passage which occurs in 
 a book recently published by a clergyman of its own school 
 upon the subject of the Confessional. In this book the writer 
 condemns the practice of compulsory Confession, though 
 he allows it as “ exceptional 55 : he says it is “ permitted 55 
 by our Church, not “ commanded. 55 And the reviewer tells 
 him that his book “ would have been less mischievous had 
 it emanated from a professed Protestant, 55 — that — 
 
 a friend, a country rector, had received sixty penitents in one day, and another 
 was ten hours in the Confessional with only one short break. 
 
 But, when the writer further says, with the deepest truth 
 and most beautiful simplicity, — 
 
 perfect love would throw itself, in the person of everyone of God’s children, 
 immediately upon the bosom of his Fathe,r — 
 
 for which one would think he had a sufficient warrant in 
 the Gospels, if only in the story of the Prodigal Son, — the 
 “ accuser of the brethren 55 flings in at once the charge — 
 
 This is a denial pure and simple of the Church as a system of mediation 
 between God and Man. 
 
 But with reference to those who cast so readily at others, 
 that cannot adopt their shibboleths, the charges of heresy, 
 blasphemy, infidelity, I will quote some admirable words 
 from a work lately published in England, whose hearty 
 reception by a multitude of readers of various theological 
 views, is but another “ sign 55 of the present times. 
 
 If the way to Christian action is beset by corrupt habits and misleading 
 opinions, the path to Christian truth is overgrown with prejudices, and strewn 
 with fallen theories and rotting systems, which hide it from our view. It is 
 quite as hard to think rightly as to act rightly or even to feci rightly. And as 
 all allow that an error is a less culpable thing than a vice or a vicious passion, 
 it is monstrous that it should be more severely punished ; it is monstrous that 
 Christ, who is called the friend of publicans and sinners, should be represented 
 as the pitiless enemy of bewildered seekers of truth. How could men have 
 
17 
 
 been guilty of such an inconsistency .’ By speaking of what they do not 
 understand. Men, in general, do not understand or appreciate the ditliculty of 
 finding truth. All men must act, and therefore all men learn in some degree 
 how difficult it is to act rightly. The consequence is that all men can make 
 excuse for those who fail to act rightly. But all men are not compelled to 
 make an independent search for truth, and those who voluntarily undertake to 
 do so are always few. They ought, indeed, to find pity and charity when they 
 fail ; for their undertaking is full of hazard, and in the course of it they are 
 too apt to leave friends and companions behind them, and, when they succeed, 
 they bring back glorious spoils for those who remained at home criticising 
 them. But they cannot expect such charity, for the hazards and difficulties of 
 the undertaking are known to themselves alone. For the world at large it 
 seems quite easy to find truth, and inexcusable to miss it. And no wonder ! 
 For by finding truth they mean only learning by rote the maxims current 
 around them. Ecce Homo, p. 72, 73. 
 
 The text, as you know, is the closing portion of the 
 parable of the rich man and Lazarus, which was read, as I 
 have said, as the Gospel of the day. I call it a parable, for 
 such it undoubtedly is, one of those many imaginary stories 
 with which, as I observed this morning, the account of our 
 Lord’s teaching is filled in the first three Gospels, though 
 scarcely any trace of them appears in the fourth. We notice 
 how thoroughly our Lord adopted the language and modes 
 of thought of the Jews of his age. We have here the notice 
 of “ hell ” or hades, as the place of disembodied spirits, in 
 which were two different regions, separated from each other 
 by a great gulf fixed between them, one, the place of punish- 
 ment where the wicked were tormented, the other, the place 
 of blessedness, where the happy guests sat down at a joyous 
 feast, reclining upon couches (as the custom was in those 
 days at meals), so that the head of one lay in front of the 
 breast of another, and he was said to lie in his bosom, — as 
 the beloved apostle, we are told, lay in the bosom of Christ, 
 and Christ himself lay in his Father’s bosom. Here Abra- 
 ham, as the great forefather of the Jews, is represented as 
 seated at the head of the feast, and his child Lazarus, pious 
 though very poor, and in this world sorely afflicted, is car- 
 ried after death by the angels, and placed so as to recline in 
 the chief place of welcome at his table. The rich man also 
 died and was buried; and “ in hell” — that is, in Hades — 
 
 “ he lift up his eyes being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus 
 in his bosom.” 
 
 It is obvious that we have here throughout a mixture of 
 ideas, the properties of the body being applied to the soul. 
 The body of the rich man is buried : yet he himself, his 
 soul, being in Hades, is scorched with flames: he “ lifts up 
 
 D 
 
18 
 
 his eyes” and asks that Lazarus, himself also disembodied, 
 should be sent to “ dip the tip of Ins finger in water,” and 
 “ cool his tongue” In short, vve cannot doubt that our Lord 
 has merely used in this parable the ordinary language, 
 current among the people of his time, of which we find so 
 many striking instances in the apocryphal book of Enoch, 
 written about half a century before the birth of Christ. In 
 my work on the Pentateuch I have given some important 
 extracts from this book, which will show what ideas were 
 generally current among the Jews in the days of our Lord 
 and his apostles. Among these I may quote, in connection 
 with the subject now before us, the following from the 
 English version of Archbishop Lawrence : — 
 
 To Michael also the Lord said, Go and announce his crime to Samyaza and 
 to the others who are with him. . . . Bind them for seventy generations 
 underneath the earth, even to the day of judgment and of consummation, until 
 the judgment, which will last for ever, be completed. Then shall they be 
 taken away into the lowest depths of the fire in torments, and in confinement 
 shall they be shut up for ever. 
 
 Where will the habitation of sinners be, and where the place of rest for those 
 who have rejected the Lord of spirits? It would have been better for them if 
 they had never been born. 
 
 Then I looked and turned myself to another part of the earth, where T beheld 
 
 a deep valley burning with fire And there my eyes beheld the 
 
 instruments which they were making — fetters of iron without weight. Then I 
 enquired of the angel of peace who proceeded with me saying, For whom are 
 these fetters and instruments prepared ? He replied, These are prepared for 
 the host of Azazel, that they may be delivered over and adjudged to the lowest 
 condemnation, and that their angels may be overwhelmed with hurled stones, 
 as the Lord of spirits has commanded.- Michael and Gabriel, Raphael and 
 Phanuel, shall be strengthened in that day, and shall then cast them into a 
 furnace of blazing fire, that the Lord of spirits may be avenged of them for 
 their crimes ; because they became ministers of Satan, and seduced those who 
 dwell upon the earth. I beheld that valley in which there was a great pertur- 
 bation, and where the waters were troubled. . . . There arose a strong smell of 
 sulphur, which became mixed with the waters ; and the valley of the angels, 
 who had been guilty of seduction, burned underneath its soil. Through that 
 valley also rivers of fire were flowing, to which those angels shall be condemned, 
 who seduced the inhabitants of the earth. 
 
 In these words, we sec the source, most probably, of much 
 of the figurative language used in some parts of the N.T., 
 more especially in the 2nd Epistle of Peter, the Epistle of 
 Jude, and the Book of the Revelations. 
 
 It is not necessary for us to follow out all the separate 
 expressions of the narrative into their minutest details, and 
 to endeavour, as some have done, to derive some salutary 
 lesson from each, as intended by the Great Teacher to be 
 conveyed to us. The parables of Christ were never meant to 
 be treated in this way. It is sufficient if we can discern the 
 
19 
 
 leading idea in them, — the essential eternal truths, which 
 underlie the mere drapery of the imaginary story. And 
 these, in the present instance, seem to me to be chiefly four. 
 
 (i) We are here reminded that there is ever an instinctive 
 dread in man of what may happen to him beyond the grave. 
 
 It is one voucher for man’s inheritance of immortality, 
 that he cannot be tranquil or indiiferent on the subject of 
 what may — what shall — happen to himself, when his body 
 shall be laid in the grave. The nations of antiquity had 
 their Tartarus, or place of torment, their Elysian Fields of 
 blessed rest, their Judges of the unseen world. So natural 
 and so deep is the conviction that every good and every evil 
 deed must have its appropriate consequence of reward or 
 punishment ! So little does the course of this world satisfy 
 the requirements of that conviction ! IIow often does the 
 Hebrew Psalmist lament over the seeming prosperity of the 
 wicked ! How despairing is the tone in which the Hebrew 
 Philosopher, in the book of Ecclesiastes, announces that 
 “ one event happeneth to all, to him that serveth God, and 
 to him that serveth Him not ” ! 
 
 Indeed, the ancient people of God seem, if anything, 
 rather behind the heathen, in realizing a future state of 
 happiness or woe, which was to compensate the seeming 
 injustice, the seeming inequalities, of this world. Thus, 
 Socrates, in the last discourse which he had with his friends 
 on the day of his death, is reported by Plato to have said 
 among many other things as follows : — 
 
 When the dead arrive at the place to which their demon leads them severally, 
 first of all they are judged, as well those who have lived well and piously, as 
 those who have not. And those who appear to have passed a middle kind of 
 life . . . arrive at the lake, and there dwell ; and when they are purified, and 
 have suffered punishment for the iniquities they may have committed, they are 
 set free, and each receives the reward of his good deeds, according to his 
 deserts. But those who appear to be incurable, through the magnitude of their 
 offences, either from having committed many and great sacrileges, or many 
 unjust and lawless murders, or other similar crimes, these a suitable destiny 
 hurls into Tartarus, [a deep abyss, or bottomless pit,] whence they never come 
 forth. . . . But those who are found to have lived an eminently holy life, 
 these are they who, being freed and set at large from these regions in the earth 
 as from a prison, arrive at the pure abode above, and dwell on the upper parts 
 of the earth. And, among these they who have sufficiently purified themselves 
 by philosophy shall live without bodies throughout all future time, and shall 
 arrive at habitations yet more beautiful than these, which it is neither easy to 
 describe, nor at present is there sufficient time for the purpose. . . . To affirm 
 positively indeed that these things are exactly as I have described them, does 
 not become a man of sense. That, however, either this, or something of the 
 kind, takes place with respect to our souls and their habitations, — since our 
 soul is certainly immortal, — this appears to me most fitting to be believed, and 
 
20 
 
 worthy the hazard for one who trusts in its reality ; for the hazard is noble, 
 and it is right to allure ourselves with such things as with enchantments. 
 
 Thus were men feeling after the truth and to some extent 
 finding it, — and cherishing what they found so strongly, as 
 to live and die in the defence of it, as Socrates did, — four 
 centuries before the birth of him who has brought more 
 clearly for us “ life and immortality to light by the Gospel.” 
 But the Hebrews at this early age had no such distinct con- 
 ceptions of a world beyond the grave. With them Sheol or 
 Hell, as one has written, [Diet, of the Bible , i. p.782,) accord- 
 ing to the notions held by the most pious among them, — 
 
 means the vast hollow subterranean resting-place, which is the common 
 receptacle of the dead. It is deep and dark, in the centre of the earth, having 
 within it depths on depths, and fastened with gates and bars. Some have 
 fancied that the Jews, like the Greeks, believed in infernal rivers: . . . the 
 notion, however, is not found in Scripture. In this cavernous realm are the 
 souls of dead men, the Rephaim [or Giants of old] and ill-spirits. It is all- 
 devouring, insatiable, and remorseless. The shadows, not of men only, but 
 even of trees and kingdoms, are placed in Sheol. 
 
 It is clear that in many passages of the O.T. Sheol can only mean “ the 
 grave,” and is so rendered in the Eng. Version. In other passages, however, 
 it seems to involve a notion of punishment. . . . But in many cases this 
 translation misleads the reader. . . . An attentive examination of all the 
 passages in which the word occurs will show that the Hebrew notions respecting 
 Sheol [or Hell] were of a vague description. The rewards and punishments of 
 tbe Mosaic Law were temporal, and it was only gradually and slowly that 
 God revealed to His chosen people a knowledge of future rewards and punish- 
 ments. Generally speaking, the Hebrews regarded the grave as the final end of 
 all sentient and intelligent existence, “the land where all things are forgotten.” 
 Even the righteous Hezekiah trembled lest, “ when his eyes closed upon the 
 cherubim and the mercy-seat,” he should no longer “ see the Lord, even the 
 Lord, in the land of the living.” 
 
 In the N.T. the [Greek] word Ifades like [the Hebrew] Sheol, sometimes 
 means merely “ the grave,” or in general “ the unseen world.” It is in this 
 sense that the Creeds say ot our Lord that “ he descended into hell,” meaning 
 the state of the dead in general, without any restriction of happiness or misery : 
 [but this expression, by the use of the words “descended,” shows that the 
 Creeds, the history of which l gave last Sunday, were composed by men who 
 still believed in the popular notion of an abyss for the reception of the souls of 
 the dead in the centre of the earth, or rather under the earth, for they did not 
 know that the earth was a globe.] Elsewhere in the N.T. Hades is used as a 
 place of torment — [as in the text before us.] Consequently it has been the 
 prevalent, almost the universal, notion that Hades is an intermediate stale 
 between death and resurrection, divided into two parts, one the abode of the 
 blessed, and the other of the lost. This was the belief of the Jews after the 
 exile, who gave to the place the names of Paradise and Gehenna. 
 
 After the exile, then, — most probably from contact with the 
 religion of Babylon, or that of Egypt, where many of the 
 exiles dwelt after the Captivity, and developed by the pious 
 mnsings of their own hearts, — the Jews appear to have 
 entertained more definite notions as to a future state, as 
 indeed has appeared from the quotations which 1 have made 
 
from the Book of Enoch. Yet how strangely Jewish was 
 the colour of their phrases! To “lie in Abraham’s bosom” 
 was to be blessed. It seemed to imply a state of easy repose, 
 of permanent rest, an oriental phase of bliss, which would 
 hardly have occurred to the restless nations of the West. 
 For the Hebrews, the name used to describe that portion of 
 Hades, which they regarded as the place of woe, was Gehenna 
 or Gehenna of Fire, which appears in our E.V. as hell-fire. 
 But this was only a Jewish notion and mode of speech, 
 which Jesus adopted, without its being therefore necessary 
 to believe in the literal existence of the corresponding reality. 
 Gehenna means merely the valley of Ilinnom, a deep narrow 
 glen to the South of Jerusalem, where the idolatrous Jews 
 — that is, apparently, the great body of the people, till the 
 time of the Captivity, as we learn from Jer.xix, — “ burnt 
 their sons with fire for burnt-offerings unto the Baal,” that 
 is, probably, unto the Sun- God of Canaan. This valley 
 “ well-watered, shaded with trees, and full of enjoyments,” 
 as Jerome says, and he adds “ at this day affording delight- 
 ful gardens,” was in our Lord’s time regarded with a feeling 
 of disgust and abhorrence, in consequence of its connection 
 with those horrible human sacrifices. This beautiful spot 
 was defiled by Josiah, and used afterwards, we are told, as 
 the common sink of all the filth and corruption of the city, 
 so that worms were continually preying on the putrefying 
 remains of animal carcases, and fires were kept continually 
 burning to devour them. However this may be, the “ fire 
 and worm ” seems to have become proverbial among the 
 Jews after the Captivity as a figurative expression for pain 
 and anguish. Thus we read in the later Isaiah, lxiv.2J — 
 
 “ And they shall go forth and look upon the carcases of the men that have 
 transgressed against me ; for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire 
 be quenched ; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.” 
 
 Here, however, the language seems rather to implya process of 
 consumption, by which something loathsome and abominable 
 was continually preyed upon and burnt, without any refer- 
 ence to pain and torment. But in the apocryphal book of 
 Judith,xvi.l7, we read — 
 
 “ Woe to the nations that rise up against my kindred ! The Lord Almighty 
 will take vengeance of them in the day of judgment, in putting fire and worms 
 in their flesh, and they shall feel them, and weep for ever 
 
 and in Ecclesiasticus,vii.l7 — 
 
 “ Humble thy soul greatly ; for the vengeance of the ungodly — [that is, the 
 punishment inflicted on the ungodly] — is fire and worms.” 
 
And in these two passages we have plainly the figures of the 
 fire and the worm used, as they are in the New Testament, 
 as emblems of pain and anguish. 
 
 But we need not, and indeed we must not, while inherit- 
 ing from the Hebrews, our religious forefathers, the ideas of 
 a future judgment and a future life, — ideas, to which our 
 whole inner being responds as eternally true, — receive also 
 their peculiar oriental conceptions on these points. For 
 different nations, as you know, living under different circum- 
 stances, have formed their own notions as to the details of the 
 infernal world. As one has written (Callet, L’ Enfer, p.169) : 
 
 In the plains of India, where there is no winter, and where populations 
 enervated by the heat, corrupted by the prolific liberality of the soil, think only 
 of inventing pleasures and punishments, the brahmins say that certain circles 
 of Naraka are full of mosquitoes, venomous serpents, horrible scorpions, tigers, 
 vultures, and all the pests natural to those hot regions, and that the other circles 
 are the scene of tortures the most refined that ever the malice of a rajah in 
 need of excitement has been able to invent. 
 
 In the mountains of Thibet, where the passage is rapid from the most severe 
 cold to the most stifling heat, the Lamas teach that Hell, situated in some 
 part of Asia, so many leagues beneath the soil, is formed of sixteen circles — 
 eight of scorching heat, eight of freezing cold. 
 
 In the Scandinavian Hell there was no fire. Those old people of the north 
 loved heat too much to make it a punishment. Their Hell was a hell of 
 snow : they knew of nothing there but shiviring, vagrant hunger, irremediable 
 fever, old age helpless and trembling with cold, icy torrents, tempests, howling 
 wolves, teeth chattering with fear, — and few were placed there but cowards. 
 
 Our Lord’s teaching, then, in this parable was in harmony 
 with the all but universal instinct of humanity, which looks 
 to another life to right the seeming wrongs of this, — to 
 crown the labours of the good, — to bring bad men of every 
 degree to a reckoning lor their abuse of the powers com- 
 mitted to their trust by the Master of all. In other parables 
 he teaches that those who love and live for others will be 
 the elect, and that the selfish and hardhearted will be cast 
 out from His Presence who is Love, and the Light of whose 
 Countenance is Everlasting Joy. The parable before us 
 coincides with those, though its principal stress is laid upon 
 the point that to be prosperous is not to be blessed. And 
 this is not wonderful to those who have learned of him ; for 
 lie says in other places ‘ How hardly shall they that have 
 riches enter into the kingdom!’ — alluding to the too common 
 effect of riches and prosperity on the heart of making it 
 callous and indifferent to the wants and sufferings of others. 
 
 But, at all events, this parable docs not teach the hopeless 
 hell of modern orthodoxy. AVe see the rich man in a slate 
 
of punishment indeed, but far fiom reprobate: whatever he 
 may have been before, lie now cares for his brethren, and, 
 even in the midst of personal suffering, he endeavours to 
 promote their welfare. The Romish Church, we know, has 
 responded to that instinct of humanity, which refuses to 
 limit the mercies of God to this life, short, precarious, often 
 seemingly unfavourable to the moral and spiritual culture of 
 the individual. The Romish Church provides a purgatory, 
 wherein to finish the imperfect discipline of the imperfectly 
 good, — to repair the defects of training of those, who have 
 had but little power or opportunity of ripening here in the 
 tempers meet for the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 We cannot accept her teaching on this point, because we 
 conceive that she has no authority for it, — no insight granted 
 to her or to any Church, any body of men, into the secrets 
 of the world beyond the grave. We are content to leave it 
 all to Him, who “ knows our frame and remembers that we 
 are but dust,” — who knows the inmost movements of our 
 hearts, the secrets of our lives, — and who will assuredly order 
 all things wisely and well, in this world and in the next, for 
 us and for all dear to us. And the tenderest love of earthly 
 relatives, of parents, mothers, husbands, friends, let us ever 
 remember, are but faint shadows of that Eternal Love which 
 embraces us all. 
 
 But our Lord speaks in the text of “ Moses and the 
 Prophets.” And no doubt he accepted the current views of 
 the time as to the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch ; he 
 shared, we must believe, the ignorance, as he shared the 
 weakness, the weariness, the hunger, the thirst — as he 
 shared the life, and died the death — of men. But what do 
 these words really represent? Of what Eternal Truth do 
 they remind us ? They tell us of this, — that to confirm the 
 voice of the heart, which speaks to us of judgment which 
 trembles at the approach of that dread crisis, that shall end 
 this life, and remove us from these well-known scenes, the 
 theatre of our struggle, the vineyard in which we have been 
 called to labour, whither, we know not, but God knows, — to 
 confirm, I say, this natural apprehension of the unknown, 
 this misgiving of the troubled conscience, there have always 
 been prophets and heralds of God in every age, who speak 
 out of the fulness of their own hearts, out of the depths of 
 their own convictions, moved as they were by the Spirit of 
 God, “ Prepare to meet thy God ,” — " Repent and return to 
 
21 
 
 Him, who is the Father of Mercies, the Fountain of life and 
 hope to His creatures.” 
 
 In our Lord’s time the writings (so-called) of Moses and 
 the Prophets fulfilled that office for the Jewish people. We 
 have the still clearer, fuller, teaching of Christ himself and 
 his apostles. If the word of Truth, written or spoken by 
 any messenger of God in any age, falls on a deaf ear, awakens 
 no echo in the soul, is not recognised as the voice of God, 
 what saving effect could he expected from a vision ghastly 
 or glorious, supposed to come from the other world ? In our 
 days, we know, such a vision would most probably be dis- 
 missed, (as those in the south of France have lately been,) 
 as a mere delusion, the offspring of disordered nerves, of 
 excited fancy, of vivid imagination. In the days of Christ 
 himself it was only “ an evil and adulterous generation that 
 was seeking after a sign.” And we have the authority of 
 Jesus himself for saying, that for such as these, — for men 
 who do not bear the Word of Truth, when in any way it 
 reaches them, — the greatest miracle, even if believed in, 
 would not work any moral or spiritual change, — would not 
 persuade to repentance, love, or purity of life. And still it 
 is true that the most orthodox belief, in all the wonders of 
 the Old Testament and of the New, may exist where there 
 is very little of the spirit of the Gospel, — little of the meek- 
 ness and gentleness of Christ, — little of that charity, which 
 “ beareth, believeth, hopeth, v endureth, all things.” For 
 “ Moses and the Prophets ” stand to us for the religious 
 literature of every age. Each has its own prophets, as well 
 as the ages preceding it. How great is the responsibility 
 which devolves upon us, “ the heirs of all the ages,” of all 
 their wisdom ! — while their folly has been, as it were, pre- 
 cipitated, like the dregs of generous wine which has stood 
 for years. 
 
 Little indeed do we need visions, apparitions, miracles, if 
 we do but rightly use this our glorious inheritance, and 
 hearken devoutly to the voice of the Divine Spirit speaking 
 through His chosen ones from age to age. Yet have we in 
 these days, in which we live, our miracles, — not infractions 
 and interruptions, but revelations of the Divine Order, — I 
 mean, the miracles and mighty works of God, which Science 
 reveals, and for which let all intelligent creatures cast their 
 crowns before the Throne, and say, — 
 
 “ Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory anil honour and power ; for 
 Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they arc, and were created ! ” 
 
25 
 
 These wonders are, indeed, overwhelming, — entrancing to 
 the discoverers of them, — tilliug them with enthusiasm, 
 which makes them shout and sing like children with del ight, 
 — like Kepler of old, who wrote, when he had discovered 
 the three great laws of the planetary motions, — 
 
 It is now eighteen months since I got the first glimpse of light, three 
 months since the dawn, very few days since the unveiled sun, most admirable 
 to look upon, burst out upon me. Nothing holds me : l will indulge my 
 sacred fury. If you forgive me, I rejoice: if you are angry, 1 can bear it. 
 The deed is done, the book is written, to be read now or by posterity, I care not 
 which. I may well wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand 
 years for an observer. 
 
 These things may excite our intensest admiration : they 
 may force our lips to break out involuntarily into praises of 
 the Wisdom and Goodness and Glory of God. Yet, let us 
 remember, these have no power to cleanse and purify the 
 soul. It needs the Word of God to do this — not the mere 
 letter of the Bible, but the Living Word which reaches the 
 heart. These are our “ miracles yet “ Moses and the 
 Prophets ” — that is, for us the accumulated religious experi- 
 ence of humanity — is beyond them in its power to bring 
 the soul home to its Divine Father. At least those, who 
 will not hear the latter, will hardly be converted by the 
 telescope or the microscope; though these, interpreted by 
 faith, are ministering spirits before the shrine of the Eternal 
 God. 
 
 E 
 
[No. 3. — Third Series.] 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 Preached in the Cathedral Church of St. Peter’s, Maritzburg, 
 On Sunday Morning, June 10, 18G6, 
 
 BY THE 
 
 RIGHT REVEREND THE LORD BISHOP OF NATAL. 
 
 Ps.1.23. — W/oso offereth praise glorifieth me, and to him that 
 ordereth his conversation aright will 1 shew the salvation 
 of God. 
 
 In the Prayer Book Version it stands in this text, “ Whoso 
 offereth me thanks and praise, he honoureth me.” Praise, 
 in the common acceptation of the word, is hardly an offer- 
 ing fit for an inferior to bring to his superior, — fit for a 
 servant however humble, to bring to his lord. We might 
 think it far beneath the Being of beings, the High and 
 Holy One that inhabiteth Eternity, to require or to accept 
 the praises of any of His creatures. It would seem need- 
 less to say this, if some had not., from certain phrases in 
 the Hebrew Scriptures, built up a notion of God’s being 
 jealous of His own honour, — as if man could, by any 
 puny acts of his, by any folly, by any wickedness, by any 
 want of orthodoxy, by any unbelief, defraud the Great 
 Creator, the Glorious Being who fills Heaven and Earth 
 with His Presence, of His due praise, and be exposed to His 
 vengeance in consequence ! Hence the fiery zeal of some 
 against what they consider heresy or blasphemy, — that is, 
 against any teaching different from their own concerning 
 the Divine Nature and Attributes ! Hence their eager readi- 
 ness to proclaim themselves as upon the Lord’s side, and to 
 speak of those, who are opposed to them — not on questions of 
 moral duty, of love and purity and truth and righteousness 
 
— but ou questions of science or criticism, involving neces- 
 sarily' poiuts of doctrine, — as perverted reprobates, outcasts 
 from the faithful company to which they themselves are 
 privileged to belong, enemies at once of God and Man ! As 
 if the Great God were not present with us at every moment, 
 watching our path, observing our ways, guiding and over- 
 ruling our goings, ordering all things wisely and well, 
 according to the good pleasure of llis W ill, throughout 1 1 is 
 boundless Universe! As if we were not all perfectly safe in 
 the shadow of His Protection, with rules such as these for 
 our daily life ! — 
 
 “ Fear God and keep His Commandments ; for that is the whole of man ; " 
 
 “ And what does the Lord thy God require of thee, but to do justly and to 
 love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God ; ” 
 
 “ Love workcth no ill to his neighbour ; therefore love is the fulfilling of the 
 Law ; ” 
 
 “ We love Him, because He first loved us. . . . And this Commandment we 
 have from Him, that he who loveth God love his brother also ” ! 
 
 as if that Great Being were not able to maintain in the 
 world llis own honour, the honour due to His Name and to 
 His Eternal Truth, without our miserable conflicts, wherein 
 too commonly the worst human passions take part, and 
 children of the same God, brothers of the same Lord, are 
 seen tearing and devouring? one another ! 
 
 But how low a view this is of the Great Moral Governor 
 of the Universe, the Fountain of Truth, Equity, and Good- 
 ness, — in one word, of Him, whose Nature and whose Name 
 is Love ! How is it that disciples of Christ can so misunder- 
 stand the teaching of Christ, the lessons of his life and of 
 his death, as thus to blaspheme the Father, — representing 
 Him as a God of wrath, jealous, revengeful, and only 
 appeased and pacified towards His erring creatures by the 
 shedding of blood, — teaching that because we may have 
 thought or spoken unworthily of Him, whose Majesty sur- 
 passes all our thoughts, it is right and according to His 
 Perfect Justice that we should be tormented for ever and 
 ever, before His Presence and that of His Saints ! 
 
 No ! this is not our God ! and we believe in no such 
 Divinity. Our God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ 
 — -our Father. To think worthily of Him — how blessed a 
 gift, the highest we have or can have, for, when all our 
 powers are put forth, they fall short even of what ovyltt to 
 be a Christian’s insight into the nature of Him of whom 
 Jesus spake to us. To think loorlhily of Him according to our 
 
28 
 
 Unite nature, to the utmost measure of which our nature, 
 such as He has made it, is capable, is to have all those 
 powers in the highest state of cultivation, to which by 
 faithful diligence we could have brought them ; and which 
 of us has been thus faithful to the powers committed to 
 him ? 
 
 No ! if our hope hereafter, our faith in God’s Fatherly 
 Love to us now, depended on our having worthy thoughts of 
 Him, in proportion to the powers we have and our oppor- 
 tunities of using and improving them, we should none of us 
 be counted meet to see the Face of our God in His Glory. 
 And to speak worthily of Him, or, as the Old Testament 
 would term it, to speak His Praise, how great a perfection 
 is this, how glorious a work, — while engaged in which the 
 most gifted sons of men, the childreu of eloquence or of song- 
 in their loftiest utterances, fall far short of their own feeling, 
 and are fain to exclaim — 
 
 Come, then expressive silence, muse His praise ! 
 
 Yet the greatness of the subject and the inadequacy of 
 our powers is no reason why they should not be exercised 
 upon it. Indeed, as it is our highest glory and privilege 
 that we are capable of entertaining thoughts of God at all, 
 so it must be our greatest happiness and pride to exercise 
 that power with which He has gifted us. Only when we 
 praise Him, when we try to speak of our Heavenly Father, 
 we must ever remember that we are not adding to Ilis 
 Greatness and Glory ; we are but putting in our claim, as it 
 were, to belong to the Eternal World, to be differenced from 
 the brutes around which perish ; we are exercising faculties, 
 which throughout the endless ages to come must ever remain 
 incommensurate with the Object of them ; we are but enter- 
 ing into our inheritance as Sous of God, taking the first 
 steps of an infinite progress. 
 
 We start, then, with the conviction that He, whom we 
 adore, is infinitely exalted above the praises and above the 
 evil tongues of His creatures. But t lie revelation of Him- 
 self, which He has given us in the Gospel, teaches us, what 
 else we might never have guessed, that the Eternal, Immu- 
 table, God is not — (to speak, as St. Paul says, “ as a man,”) 
 — is not indifferent to what we poor creatures of a day think 
 of Him. If lie is our Father, and His Name is Love, lie 
 cures enough for us “ to seek us” as his worshippers, — for 
 our sakes, mark! not for Ilis own. lie is jealous of our 
 
20 
 
 hearts; He desires, lie requires, the “fruit of our lips, 
 giving thanks to 11 is Name.” 
 
 “ Whoso oflcreth praise, glorifieth me.” 
 
 Here is an incitement to our praises, to our songs. When 
 reason fails, and cannot argue out the question, — cannot 
 prove that praise, any more than prayer, is needful for man, 
 is acceptable to God, — cannot tell why we should praise 
 Him, who is beyond all praise, — the religious instinct of 
 humanity, the voice of the Divine Spirit, speaking in His 
 Saints of every age, calls for the incense of adoration, of 
 praise, and declares that He is glorified when the hearts of 
 His creatures, of His children, are drawn upwards in grati- 
 tude towards Ilis Throne. 
 
 For “ thanks,” at least, we may render, when praise seems 
 beyond us. Who is so base as to be insensible to gratitude? 
 Who, seriously measuring what he has received, against 
 what he has rendered, — what he has received from the Giver 
 of life and all that life involves, the Central Sun from which 
 all Light of every kind proceeds, the Providence which has 
 distributed to each his share of outward blessings, — does not 
 feel himself a debtor? Yes, and whoever, with those powers 
 bestowed upon him, had rendered most largely praise unto 
 God, in labours or in sufferings for his kind, would be most 
 ready to render over again “ thanks and praise” for his 
 share in God’s own bliss. It is the cold heart that mur- 
 murs, the selfish narrow nature that says, “ Why hast Thou 
 made me thus? ” 
 
 My young friends, who are beginning life, and beginning 
 it, let us hope, with a sincere and serious desire to devote 
 yourselves to God in the whole of it, to be true servants of 
 the Most High, true “ sons and daughters of the Lord 
 Almighty,” in St. Paul’s language I would this day say to 
 you— 
 
 “ Remember the words of the Lord Jesus how he said, It is more blessed to 
 give than to receive.” 
 
 It is but another version of another sayiDg of his — 
 
 “ Whosoever will save his life shall lose it ; but whosoever will lose his life for 
 my sake, and the Gospel's, the same shall save it.” 
 
 To go forth as God’s children — to be devoted to the ser- 
 vice of Him, who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 the Father of men, — in other words, to do God’s work, and 
 speak God’s Word, in your daily lives, in striving to advance 
 the cause of truth, the cause of love, the cause of humanity. 
 
30 
 
 — this makes life worth having, full of meaning, full of joy, 
 full of reasons and opportunities for “ offering thanks and 
 praise.” This spirit all who truly love you, will long to 
 breathe into your hearts this day, or to cherish it, if already 
 there. A selfish life, my young friends, a life devoted to 
 your own interest, your own enjoyment, will be a disappoint- 
 ment , it will not satisfy you. The time will come when you 
 will say “ All is vanity and vexation of spirit,” — even if you 
 are most successful, your own praises will then sicken you, 
 even if you could have them from every quarter. 
 
 But, if you live for His praise who made you, and loves 
 you, and has put His Living Word within you to be the 
 Light of your souls, there will be sunshine and brightness 
 over your whole course. “ All things will work together 
 for your good.” All things will have a meaning and a 
 reason. When others rejoice and enjoy themselves, you too 
 will rejoice and enjoy yourselves, and with a background of 
 confidence in God, a conscious feeling that the good things 
 of this life, in such measure as they are really good, — youth, 
 health, strength, happiness, — come to you from a Heavenly 
 Father’s Hand. But you will not repine at their scant 
 measure or their short duration; you will know that you 
 have something better in store, even the sacred cross and 
 crown of thorns ! A life of love, of search after the lost, of 
 pity for the fallen, of help for the suffering, of sympathy for 
 the sorrowing, the children of our Father in Heaven, the 
 brothers and sisters of Jesus our Lord, — a life of faith, of 
 trust in the power of the truth, to carry you safe through 
 all conflicts and difficulties — a life of confidence in the Great 
 Lawgiver of the Universe that nothing shall harm you, if 
 you are followers of that which is good, — a life of hope, 
 that, by God’s help, you shall overcome evil within and 
 without you, and grow daily more and more what children 
 of God should be, and, having done your work on earth, lie 
 down at last in peace, assured of a glorious waking in a 
 yet brighter world than this, — such a life as this will be to 
 you its own exceeding great reward. 
 
 For, as followers of Christ, we have to praise our God 
 not by a mere rehearsal with our lips of His Goodness and 
 Greatness, a mere acknowledgment with our lips of II is 
 favours to us. Jesus, we know, manifested the Father in his 
 teaching, but chiefly in his life, — by “going about doing good,” 
 — by his treatment of publicans and sinners, by his tender- 
 
31 
 
 ness to children, whether children in age or children in mental 
 development, by his forbearance to his own personal enemies, 
 by his patience and meekness under injuries, and yet by his 
 unflinching, unsparing witness against the enemies of human 
 progress, — those who kept hack the people from receiving 
 the truths, the message of the Gospel, which he was com- 
 missioned to declare to them, — who did not enter in them- 
 selves, hut sought to hinder those who would enter in, into 
 the Kingdom of God, — the “ Scribes and Pharisees, hypo- 
 crites ; ” it is only in fact, in speaking of these, — not when 
 speaking of the publican and sinner, the unbelieving heathen 
 or the heretical Samaritan, — that he waxes warm and cries, — 
 
 “ Ye serpents ! ye generation of vipers ! how can ye escape tire damnation ot 
 hell ? ” 
 
 Some of us, at least, may be called to this, in the age in 
 which our lot is cast. But all, and especially the young, 
 who may well be excused from taking any active part in 
 such strife, — all Christians are called to follow Christ, by 
 living to the glory of God the Father, — acknowledging His 
 Gracious and Fatherly Providence, obeying I lis Will, — Ilis 
 Will which is the Guardian of our health and happiness, the 
 salvation both of our body and our soul. 
 
 God is indeed glorified by the perfection of His creature. 
 But the perfection of the human creature seems not attain- 
 able without some point out of itself to which its energies 
 may be directed. And this is furnished by that fellowship 
 one with another, that universal brotherhood of men as 
 children of God, which Christianity involves, which the 
 Christian Church is meant to set forth before our eyes con- 
 tinually, in which each is a member of the whole body, 
 bound by love — even the love of God, which embraces us 
 all — to every other, in every age, with Christ as the Head. 
 
 While therefore so many of the children of men are lying 
 in the darkness of ignorance, in the shadow of death, in 
 various ways remote from the cheering rays of the Gospel, 
 the glad tidings of God’s Love, there is abundance of room 
 for the followers of Christ to labour, the followers of him 
 who came to seek and to save that which is lost. And, 
 while the world even, in its ripest aspect, in that state to 
 which the training and civilization of centuries has brought 
 it, is still so unChristian , so selfish, so self-indulgent, so worldly, 
 so alien to noble generous impulses, to great and high aims, 
 — to the aims of the seekers after Truth at all hazards in all 
 
32 
 
 departments, of the lovers of their kind in spite of all difficul- 
 ties and obstructions, — you, young soldiers of Christ, may 
 well gird yourselves for the fight, and bind the cross upon 
 your shields, as in baptism it was set upon your brows, in 
 token that you repudiate and refuse to spend selfish and 
 selfindulgent lives, and resolve in God’s strength to work 
 for Him and your fellows, — in token that you are not 
 ashamed of acknowledging him who was crucified, as your 
 teacher and your leader, but will fight manfully under his 
 banner against the devil, the world, and the flesh. 
 
 But the text adds — 
 
 n And to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I show the salvation of 
 God.” 
 
 Here was a conviction in the Psalmist’s heart, begotten 
 there assuredly by the Spirit of God, which enabled him to 
 make this promise in God’s Name, without a doubt as to 
 the certainty of its accomplishment. It is just in accordance 
 with the words of Jesus — 
 
 “ Whosoever shall do His Will, shall know of the doctrine whether it be of 
 God.” 
 
 The “ salvation of God,” whatever this ancient Psalmist 
 may have intended by it, means, we may be sure, the 
 salvation of man, as wrought by the Power, and Wisdom, 
 and Truth, and Love, of Him who is our “ Faithful Creator.” 
 And the knowledge, the reception, of this is repeatedly 
 connected in the Scriptures with — not deep research, the 
 wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of the prudent, 
 but with — obedience to what is known already of God’s 
 Will. Little, indeed, docs that knowledge, even of Eternal 
 Truth, avail, which does not issue in action. To know, and 
 not to do, brings with it a severe penalty. It is the con- 
 dition described in the Gospel as that of him that hath not, 
 from whom will be taken away what he seemeth to have. 
 
 “ He that ordereth his conversation aright,” then, shall 
 see “ the salvation of God.” The dutiful, loyal, heart will 
 be initiated into the mysteries of the kingdom. Love is an 
 inscrutable mystery to the unloving ; it seems to them that 
 obedience must be compulsory. Such think that, if the 
 torments of hell were no longer believed in, God would have 
 no worshippers, Christ no followers ! Are such motives 
 needful for you, my young friends? Will you not, by giv- 
 ing your early days, the beginning of your life to the service 
 of your God, win for yourselves a clear insight into II is 
 
33 
 
 Will, a firm faith in Him, the confidence of those who have 
 “ tasted and seen that the Lord is Gracious,” and that 
 “ Blessed are those who put their trust in Him!” Now, 
 while habits are yet unformed, obedience is more easy than 
 it may prove hereafter. Now choose life — to live for duty, 
 to live for your fellowmen, to live for God, to live to learn 
 llis Truth and do His Will ; and leave the husks of vicious 
 pleasure, of low indulgence, to the swine. For in your 
 Father’s House there is bread enough and to spare, — food 
 for the intellect, rest for the heart, peace for the conscience, 
 a purifying, not a stupifying, peace. Yes, indeed, — 
 
 “ Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, the 
 things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” 
 
 F 
 
[No. 4. — Third Series.] 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 Preached in the Cathedral CnuRCH of St. Peter’s, Maritzburg, 
 Oh Sunday Evening, June 10, 1866, 
 
 BY THE 
 
 RIGHT REVEREND THE LORD BISHOP OF NATAL. 
 
 Judges v. 31. — So let all Thine enemies perish, 0 Lord! hut 
 let them that love Him he as the Sun when he cjoeth forth 
 in his might. 
 
 These are the closing words of the famous “ Song of 
 Deborah,” which has been read as the first Lesson of this 
 evening. This morning we heard the account of the events 
 which preceded it, and which evidently must have made a 
 great impression upon the national mind of Israel, and formed 
 a great epoch in their history, when they were delivered 
 once for all, by the great victory which Barak gained over 
 Sisera, the captain of his host, from the hand of Jahin king 
 of Canaan, and from the power of the Canaanites. After 
 that time we read of their being harassed by Midianites, 
 Amalekites, Philistines, Ammonites, and in later days, in 
 the time of Saul, lS.xiv.47, by the Moabites, Edomites, and 
 the Syrian kings of Zobah. But we bear no more of the 
 Canaanites, till we are told that David took the stronghold 
 of Zion out of the hand of the Jebusites, one of the Canaanite 
 tribes, 2 S.v.6-9, and thirty years afterwards bought a piece 
 of land, the site of the future temple, from Araunah the 
 Jebusite — perhaps, the chief of the conquered tribe, whose 
 people with himself were living quietly in Jerusalem as 
 David’s subjects ; for we read — 
 
 ‘ All this did Araunah the king give unto the king.’ 2 S.xxiv.23. 
 
 In fact, the plain of Esdraelon, — especially, the widest 
 part of it, the valley of Megiddo, — was at various times a 
 memorable battle-field in the history of Israel. It was the 
 
scene of Barak’s victory over the Canaanites, and of Gideon’s 
 over the Midiauites, — also of Saul’s defeat and death, and 
 in later days of a still more terrible disaster, the death of the 
 good king, Josiah, whom “ the king ot Egypt slew at Megi- 
 ddo.” This last calamity was long and bitterly remembered. 
 We read in the Apocryphal Book of Esdras, 1.32, how — 
 
 “ In all Jewry they mourned for .Tosias, yea, Jeremy the prophet lamented 
 for Josias, and the chief men with the women made lamentation for him unto 
 this day ; and this was given out for an ordinance to be done continually in all 
 the nation of Israel.” 
 
 Thus, also, (Did. of the Bible, 11.311) — 
 
 In the language of the prophets “ the mourning of Iladadrimtuon in the 
 valley of Megiddon,” Zech.xii. 1 1, becomes a poetical expression for the deepest 
 and most despairing grief; as in the Apocalypse, Kev.xvi.16, Armageddon — 
 [that is, the hill [or town] of Megiddo] — is presented as the scene of terrible 
 and final conflict. 
 
 “ The double account, in prose and verse,” which we have 
 of Barak’s victory in these two chapters, “ enables us to lix 
 with unusual precision its several points and circumstances.” 
 
 The Prophetess, Deborah, on the summit of Tabor, gave the signal of the 
 battle, when Barak was to rush down from his secure position, and attack the 
 army of Sisera in the plain. At this critical moment, (so Josephus directly 
 informs us, and so we learn indirectly from the Song of Deborah,) a tremendous 
 storm of sleet and hail gathered from the east, and burst over the plain of 
 Ksdraelon, driving full in the faces of the advancing Canaanites. “ The stars 
 in their courses fought against Sisera “ the rains descended,” “ the winds 
 blew,” and “ the flood came ” — the flood of the torrent — and “ the stream ” 
 rose in its bed, and “ beat vehemently ” against the chariots and horses 
 entangled on its level shores, “ and the ‘ torrent’ of Kishon swept them away, 
 that ancient 1 torrent,’ the ‘ torrent ’ Kishon.” In that wild confusion, when 
 the strength of the Canaanite ” was trodden down,” and “ the horselioofs were 
 broken by the means of their pransings, the pransings of their mighty ones,” 
 the captain of the host sprang down from his war-chariot, and fled away on his 
 feet. He fled into the northern mountains, to a spot which he hoped would be 
 friendly. In the upland basin of Kedesh, far away from their settlements of 
 the south, a tribe of the Bedowin Kenites had pitched their black tents under 
 an ancient oak. It is needless to pursue the story ; all the world knows the 
 sight, which Jael, the chieftainess of the house of Heber, showed to Barak, 
 when she lifted up the curtain of the tent, and showed him his enemy dead, 
 with the tent-nail driven through his temples. Dean Stanley, Sinai and 
 Palestine, pp. 339, 340. 
 
 Such is the graphic account which Dean Stanley gives of 
 that memorable transaction. For his purpose it was “ need- 
 less to pursue the story ” of Jael’s treachery. For us it is 
 needful to do so on the present occasion, though “ all the 
 world knows” the details of her act, and many a Christian 
 heart has shuddered at the painful story, and shrunk with 
 instinctive dislike — I will say, disgust — from it. 
 
 “ Howbeit Sisera fled away on his feet to the tent of Jael the wife of Heber 
 the Kenite : for there was peace between Jabin the king of Ilazor [his master] 
 
36 
 
 arid the house of Heber the Kenite. And Jael went out to meet Sisera, and 
 said unto him, ‘ Turn in, my lord, turn in unto me ; fearnot!’ And when lie had 
 turned in unto her into the tent, she covered him with a mantle. And he said 
 unto her, ‘ Give me, I pray thee, a little water to drink ; for I am thirsty.’ 
 And she opened a bottle of milk, and gave him drink, and covered him. 
 Again he said unto her, ‘ Stand in the door of the tent, and it shall be, when 
 any man doth come and enquire of thee, and say, Is there any man here ? that 
 thou shalt say, No.’ Then Jael, Heber’s wife, took a nail of the tent, and 
 took an hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail 
 into his temples, and fastened it into the ground ; for be was fast asleep and 
 weary. So he died. And, behold, as Barak pursued Sisera, Jael came out to 
 meet him, and said unto him, Come, and I will show thee the man whom thou 
 seekest. And when he came into her tent, behold, Sisera lay dead, and the 
 nail was in temples.” 
 
 And for this act the prophetess exclaims — 
 
 “ Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be ! 
 
 Blessed shall she be above women in the tent ! 
 
 He asked water, and she gave him milk ; 
 
 She brought forth butter in a lordly dish. 
 
 She put her hand to the nail, and her right-hand to the workman’s hammer. 
 
 And with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head, 
 
 When she had pierced and stricken through his temples. 
 
 At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down ; 
 
 At her feet he bowed, he fell ; 
 
 Where he bowed, there he fell down dead.” 
 
 If, indeed, we were required to believe that this was a 
 Divine blessing pronounced upon Jael, upon her act of 
 unexampled perfidy, against which our whole human feelings 
 — our whole heart and spirit, taught, as we trust, by the 
 Spirit of God — instinctively revolt, the heaven cf our souls 
 would indeed be clouded, — the light of our religions life 
 would be dimmed and obscured, — the central Sun of Truth 
 and Righteousness, the character of the ever-Blessed God 
 our Father, would be flecked with black spots that would 
 very sensibly diminish its brightness, nay, rather would 
 throw the lurid gloom of an eclipse upon the whole moral 
 universe. For, consider the circumstances recorded in the 
 story. The Canaanite captain fled for his life, — not to a 
 place where his enemies dwelt, where violence might have 
 been expected, and even stratagem and guile might have 
 been excused, at all events, if not justified. But he fled to 
 his Master’s friend and ally, — “ there was peace between 
 Jabin king of Ilazor, and the house of Heber the Kenite.” 
 lie had reason, therefore, to expect a friendly reception. 
 But he might have been disappointed ; he might have found 
 that his change of fortune had changed the temper of his 
 former friends towards him, — that he would meet now with 
 no friendly greeting at Jael’s tent, — would be received but 
 
coldly, if he entered it, and only not be refused permission 
 to enter into it. But no ! Jael “ went out to meet him, and 
 said unto him, Turn in, my lord, turn in unto me; fear not.” 
 With all tokens of hearty kindness she welcomes him; she 
 covers him with a mantle while he sleeps ; she opens a bottle 
 of milk for him, instead of merely giving the water which 
 he had asked for ; she “ brought forth butter ” — that is, no 
 doubt, curdled milk, such as our natives call “ amasi,” which 
 is commonly eaten in Syria as here — “ in a lordly dish.” 
 She undertakes to keep watch for him, to “ stand in the 
 door of the tent,” and deny him to all passers-by: for, 
 though it is not expressly said that she agreed to do so at his 
 request, we must suppose that her silence gave consent. 
 And then, while her victim sleeps profoundly, wearied with 
 the terrible conflict and worn out with fatigue and anxiety, 
 she takes the nail of the tent and the hammer, — and the 
 rest you know. 
 
 How is it possible not to feel that Jael’s act was base 
 in the extreme, — that the deed which she wrought was 
 a foul and treacherous murder, deserving the execration, 
 instead of the praise and blessing, of all future ages? 
 And how shocking is the attempt, which some pious wri- 
 ters have made, to shift off the responsibility from Jael 
 unto God, — to excuse her acts by the Divine Command, 
 which enjoined her to do these things, aud relieved her of 
 all blame for doing them ! It is true, the story itself says 
 nothing of any such a Divine Commaud : but divines of this 
 school say she was moved in her heart. Thus Bishop Hall 
 writes in his Contemplations, I.p. 203 : — 
 
 If Heber and Jael had not been great persons, there had been no note taken 
 of their tents, there had been no league betwixt Jabin and them ; now, their 
 greatness makes them known, their league maker them trusted. The distress 
 of Sisera might have made him importunate; but Jael begins the courtesy, 
 and exceeds the desire of her guest; he asks water to drink, she gives him 
 milk ; he wishes but shelter, she makes him a bed ; he desires the protection 
 of her tent, she covers him with a mantle And now Sisera pleases himself 
 with his happy change, and thinks how much better it is to be here, than in 
 that whirling of chaiiots, in that horror of flight, amongst those shrieks, those 
 wounds, those carcases. While he is in these thoughts, his weariness and easy 
 reposal hath brought him asleep 
 
 Now, while he was dreaming doubtless of the clashing of armours, rattling 
 of chariots, neighing of horses, the clamour of the conquered, the furious 
 pursuit of Israel, Jael, seeing his temples lie so fair, as if they invited the nail 
 and the hammer, entered into the thought of this noble execution, — certainly 
 not without some checks of doubt and pleas of fear. “ What if I strike him ! 
 And yet who am I, that I should dare to think of such an act? Is not this 
 Sisera, the most famous captain of the world, whose name hath wont to be 
 fearful to whole nations ? What if my hand should swerve in the stroke ? 
 
What if he should awake, while I am lifting up this instrument of death ? 
 What if I should be surprised by some of his followers, while the fact is green 
 and yet bleeding ? Can the murder of so great a leader he hid or unrevenged ? 
 Or if I might hope so, yet can my heart allow me to be secretly treacherous ? 
 Is there not peace betwixt my house and him ? Did I not invite him to my 
 tent? Doth he not trust to my friendship and hospitality? But what do 
 these weak fears, these idle fancies of civility ? If Sisera be in league with us, 
 yet is he not at defiance with God ? Is he not a tyrant to Israel ? Is it for 
 nothing that God hath brought him into my tent? .... Doth not God offer 
 me this day the honour to be the rescuer of His people? Hath God hidden me 
 strike, and shall I hold my hand? ” . . . . lie, that put this instinct into her 
 heart, did put also strength into her hand ; He, that guided Sisera to her tent, 
 guided the nail through his temples. 
 
 And so this Christian Bishop distinctly justifies the vile deed 
 as a “ noble execution,” — speaks of the compunctions of con- 
 science which (he supposes) checked the hand of the assassin, 
 as “ weak fears” and “ idle fancies,” and charges the whole 
 transaction upon the holy and blessed God, — God “ bids 
 her strike,” God “ puts this instinct into her heart” ! In 
 like manner Matthew Henry clears the character of Jael by 
 throwing upon God the responsibility of her proceeding : — 
 
 It may well be questioned whether she had at first any thought of taking 
 away his life ; but rather God afterwards put it into her heart. . . . Probably, 
 the thought was darted into her mind when she saw him lie so fair to receive 
 such a fatal blow ; and, doubtless, the thought brought with it evidence sufficient 
 that it came not from Satan, as a murderer and destroyer, but from God as 
 righteous judge and avenger. .. . It was a divine warrant that justified her 
 in the doing of it ; and therefore, since no such extraordinaiy commissions can 
 now be pretended, it ought not in any case to be imitated. The laws of friend- 
 ship and hospitality must be religiously obseived ; and we must abhor the 
 thought of betraying any whom we have invited and encouraged to put a 
 confidence in us. And, as to this fact of Jael’s, we have reason to think she 
 was conscious of such a divine impulse upon her spirit to do it, as did 
 abundantly satisfy herself (and it ought therefore to satisfy us) that it was well 
 done. God’s judgments are a great deep. 
 
 And so the Rev. Thos. Scott says : 
 
 Probably, Jael really intended kindness to Sisera, when she invited him into 
 the tent, and shewed him all the hospitality which it afforded. But by a 
 divine impulse she was afterwards led to consider him as the determined enemy 
 of the Lord and His people, and to avail herself of that opportunity to destroy 
 him. When Jael saw Sisera fast asleep, and was made sensible, by some 
 intimation from God, that she ought to destroy him, her faith overcame all 
 reluctance and every feminine fear. . . . The divine mandate superseded all 
 other obligations ; but the conduct is not recorded for our imitation in ordinary 
 circumstances. 
 
 Why not? What is there to show that Jael’s circum- 
 stances, as described in the story, had anything extraordinary 
 in them, so as to separate them from all other instances ot 
 assassination, based upon religious fanaticism or fervent 
 patriotism, which stand forth in strong colours on the past 
 history of our race, yet none of them steeped in such black 
 
shades of cowardly treachery as this? When Brutus killed 
 Ciesar in the forum and Charlotte Corday stabbed Marat in 
 his bath, the assassins believed that they were obeying 1 the 
 voice of their country, which they recognised as the voice of 
 God ; they thought that they were liberating Rome and 
 France from tyrants, who in the regular course of events 
 would have still continued to prey upon the lives and liber- 
 ties of their countrymen. And so when the monk Clement 
 assassinated King llenry III of France and Ravaillac mur- 
 dered King Henry IV, they pleaded, no doubt, with them- 
 selves a divine impulse which dismissed all their ‘ weak fears’ 
 and ‘ idle fancies,’ — a * divine mandate,’ which * superseded 
 all other obligations.’ And what was there in their case 
 that differenced it from Jael’s? There was this, — that, 
 what they did, in each case, they did boldly, with their lives 
 in their hands, aud not after the example of Jael’s perfidious 
 cowardice; at least, the French girl, who obtained access, 
 by a feigned story, to the den of the savage revolutionist, 
 made no attempt to escape the consequences of her deed, 
 but laid down her life bravely for his. And there is yet 
 another difference, that these struck at men in the height 
 of their power, from the vengeance of whose friends escape 
 was hardly possible, and the continuance of whose existence 
 might really have been dreaded as an intolerable, and, as far 
 as human eyes could see, insuperable evil. Whereas here in 
 Jael’s case was a poor’, solitary, fugitive general, overwhelmed 
 with disaster, disgraced and ruined, with all his forces routed 
 and scattered, — whose condition might have moved the 
 compassion of his bitterest enemies, much more have com- 
 manded the service of a friend, and whose death was but a 
 pitiful addition to the great triumph which had already been 
 won. 
 
 But, except these points, there is nothing in the story 
 of Jael, as told in the Bible, which takes it out of the 
 category of ordinaiy occurrences of a similar kind. No 
 doubt, what she did, she did under an impulse, which she 
 believed to be good and Divine, as each of these other 
 assassins did. In any such case, we cannot undertake to 
 judge the agent, though we judge the deed, and pronounce it 
 to be unrighteous and wicked, and, in Jael’s case, base and 
 dastardly. But, it seems, her behaviour — merely because 
 she is a Scripture character — is still in some points to be 
 held out for our imitation ; and both the eminent commen- 
 
40 
 
 tutors from whom 1 have just quoted, are careful to point 
 out the singular truthfulness, of which they see signs in her 
 conduct: — 
 
 ‘ Jael is not said to have promised Sisera that she would deny his being 
 there; she would give him shelter and refreshment, but not utter a falsehood 
 to oblige him,’ says Thomas Scott ; — 
 
 ‘ Only when he desired her to tell a lie for him, and to say he was not there, 
 she declined making any such promises,’ — says Matthew Henry. 
 
 And the former delivers a warning thereupon against “ a 
 very criminal deviation from simplicity and godly sincerity,” 
 which is “ become customary among professed Christians,” 
 viz., to order their servants to say “ not at home,” when 
 they do not wish to be disturbed by visitors. It is true, the 
 story plainly implies that she did deceive, as well as assassi- 
 nate, Sisera, — that she did, at least, by silence, confirmed 
 by her other acts, consent to his request, that she would 
 watch, as a friend, over his slumbers ; and a “ Divine 
 impulse,” a “ Divine mandate,” might be easily pleaded in 
 order to justify a lie, as well as acts of treachery and murder. 
 If, however, this part of her conduct is really to be commen- 
 ded, there is no just reason whatever for excepting those 
 other acts, or declaring that “ her conduct in those particulars 
 is not recorded for our imitation in ordinary circumstances,” 
 whenever at the present day the “ impulse ” may be felt, or 
 a “ Divine mandate” be pleaded, as a reason for violating 
 in any way the law of right, of truth, of charity, in our 
 dealings with those, whom we may regard as the enemies 
 of God. But no! such actions cannot be justified, cannot 
 be blessed by God or good men, — not though priests 
 or prophets, like Deborah, pronounce in God’s Name a 
 blessing on them, — not though preachers innumerable, 
 bishops and archbishops, synods and convocations, sanction 
 them by their approval. No royal, short-cut, road to escape 
 from a difficulty, and arrive at a desired result before God’s 
 time, by an act of wrong, though it hill short of Jael’s 
 damnable deed, can in the long run be blessed, because it 
 shows want of faith in the Living God, but above all 
 because it is opposed to the first principles of the Divine 
 Word, — that Word which speaks with its mighty voice to 
 our inner being, — that Law which is written not on the 
 pages of a book, but in the fleshly tables of our hearts. 
 
 And here we see the value of that great work, which 
 Modern Science is doing for us, in clearing the Bible from 
 all these demoralising glosses, dishonouring to God and 
 
•11 
 
 destructive of a true reverence for the Scriptures, and a true 
 faith in the Divine Lessons which they contain for us. For 
 what is the reason of these strange attempts, on the part of 
 devout commentators, to screen the act ot this Kenite 
 woman from the censure, the righteous indignation, which 
 the best human feelings even of a child amongst us would 
 instinctively pour out upon it? It is simply that Jael is a 
 Scripture heroin, e — and that her act is described by the 
 writer of the Hook of Judges not only without one word of 
 condemnation, but with the blessing of a prophetess pro- 
 nounced upon it. If we met with such a narrative in any 
 other book, we should have no difficulty in pronouncing 
 upon its true character. But because it is a Bible story, 
 and Jael’s deed is hailed with words of blessing, our sense 
 of right and wrong must at once be blunted, and we are 
 taught to fall back upon the false and dangerous principle, 
 that “ the Divine Mandate supersedes all other obligations.” 
 Thank God ! I say, that we are relieved in the present 
 age from this demoralising teaching, by the results of 
 modern investigation into the origin and history of our 
 sacred books. This Book of Judges, for instance, by whom 
 was it written? Some, I suppose, who say so confidently 
 that the “ Books of Moses” must have been written by 
 Moses, might proceed to argue that the “ Book of Judges” 
 was written by the Judges, each Judge, perhaps, having 
 recorded the portion which concerns his own life. And I 
 need hardly say that the same reasoning would apply to the 
 “ Books of Samuel ” and the “ Books of Kings ” ; though 
 it would be difficult to reason thus of the “ Books of Chroni- 
 cles,” and Samuel’s death is recorded long before the end of 
 the First Book of Samuel. The fact is, however, beyond 
 any doubt, that these different books are named, not from 
 their authors, but from the subjects principally or pro- 
 minently contained in them. The Books of Samuel are so 
 called, because that prophet is a conspicuous figure in the 
 greater part of the First Book : the Books of Moses are so 
 called, because Moses is the principal actor in the last four 
 of these Books, though not in the Book of Genesis. And 
 so, of course, the Book of J udges is named from the fact of 
 its containing some account of the history of Israel under 
 the “ Judges,” — that is, under the rulers who were raised 
 up among them from time to time before the reign of the 
 first king Saul, and whose influence did not extend, as his 
 
 G 
 
42 
 
 did, ovev the whole community, but only over the tribe or 
 tribes with which each was more immediately connected. 
 
 In former days it was usual to ascribe the composition of 
 this Book to Samuel, as, for instance, do both the commen- 
 tators from whom I have just quoted. But this was done 
 from a merely superficial view of its contents, before those 
 careful and laborious critical investigations were made, which 
 honourably distinguish the Biblical studies of the present 
 day. We now know that this Book contains three or four 
 different portions, betraying marked differences of style, 
 and evidently written at different times and under different 
 circumstances. The story of Barak’s victory and the song of 
 Deborah is one of the very oldest portions of the Book. An 
 eminent critic (Prof. Kuenen) writes as follows on this point : 
 
 It may be assumed with a high degree of probability that Ju.v, [the Song], 
 and perhaps, also, Ju.iv, [the Narrative,] are taken from a collection of Songs, 
 as, for instance, out of the “ Book of the Wars of Jehovah,” which is mentioned 
 in N.xxi.14, or out of the “ Book of Jasher,” [that is, the Book of Jeshurun, 
 the “ righteous-one,” the “ righteous nation,” as Israel was proud to call itself, 
 in distinction from the idolatrous nations round them,] which is named in 
 Jo.x.l3,2S.i.I8. 
 
 I believe myself that this “ Book of Jasher,” as well as 
 that other work, the Book of the Wars of Jehovah,” is 
 among the earliest fruits of that activity in historical wri- 
 ting, which the great Hebrew Reformer, Samuel, would 
 seem to have encouraged in The schools of the Prophets, 
 established by him. Under his direction may have been 
 compiled those two collections of stories, narrating deeds of 
 prowess wrought by their fathers of yore, in an age when to a 
 people without written records the lapse of a century or two 
 would be enough to attach to such events the character of 
 hoar antiquity. Narratives like these would, of course, be 
 liable to be corrupted by legendary additions, such as we find 
 in the story of Samson and elsewhere, and such as, I believe, 
 we find in this Song of Deborah. For it is difficult to 
 conceive how Deborah and Barak sang this song together 
 after the battle. It is not said that Deborah wrote it, 
 which might be imagined, or that she taught the whole 
 host to sing it, which is much more difficult to believe, 
 but that she herself and Barak sang it, — in the hearing, we 
 must suppose, of the ten thousand men of Israel ! But, in 
 truth, the finished composition of the Song speaks of a later 
 age than those rude and barbarous times of the Judges ; and 
 a prophetess, who could indite such a magnificent poem, 
 
43 
 
 might surely be expected to have left behind some other 
 traces of her genius, if not in written records, yet treasured, 
 at least, in the memories of some of the people. This 
 “ Song of Deborah ” could not be the only solitary piece of 
 poetry, which has been handed down from that age. 
 
 For these, and other reasons, which I have given else- 
 where, I believe that this Song, like many of the most 
 splendid songs of other nations, is not the product of 
 Deborah herself, or of the age to which she belonged, but 
 of the later age of David, the work of one of the prophets 
 and poets of that day, when the habit of writing both prose 
 and poetry was much farther advanced, as we know by 
 certain of the Psalms which appear to have been then 
 written. Like the Lays of Ancient Rome, in composing 
 which a great modern genius has thrown himself as much 
 as possible into the spirit of the ancient time, so here the 
 Hebrew writer has attached to the story of Barak’s victory 
 a poem, which reproduces, to the best of his power, the 
 spirit of the older time, and to some extent of his own. 
 
 I say “ to some extent of his own.” For one point is 
 very noticeable in this Song, namely, that nowhere, through- 
 out the whole of it, is any reference whatever made to the 
 tribe of Levi and its religious position in Israel, — to Priest 
 or Levite, Ark or Tabernacle. And, remember, it is a de- 
 vout person, a prophetess, who is supposed to be speaking ; 
 and she mentions in the course of the poem all the twelve 
 tribes but three ; she mentions Ephraim, Benjamin, (Machir, 
 that is) Manasseh, Zebulun, Issachar, Reuben, Dan, Asher, 
 Naphtali, some for praise, and some for blame, — but says 
 nothing of Judah, Simeon, or Levi. The position of Judah 
 and Simeon, at the very south of Palestine, far removed 
 from the present scene of strife, might account for their 
 not being noticed, as they probably were not present, and 
 took no part in the conHict in that famous battlefield, the 
 plain of Esdraelon, far away to the north, where — 
 
 “ the kings came and fought, the kings of Canaan fought at Taanach, by the 
 waters of Megiddo.” 
 
 But the Levites, according to the traditionary view, were 
 living in their Levitical cities all over the land. Taanach 
 itself, “ by the waters of Megiddo,” just-mentioned, was 
 actually one of the cities allotted for their use; and, if this 
 city was not yet conquered, (for it seems to have formed the 
 headquarters of the Canaanite force,) yet Kedesli in Galilee 
 
was another of these cities, and that is mentioned in this 
 very narrative as the place of abode of Barak, to which he 
 and Deborah assembled the tribes of Zebulon and Issachar 
 before the conflict. Where were the Levites, then, who 
 show themselves so ready for the fight, so full of warlike 
 spirit, in many parts of the Scripture narrative? But how, 
 above all, can we account for it, on the traditionary view, 
 that Deborah, a prophetess, makes no mention whatever of 
 Priest or Levite, Ark or Tabernacle ? 
 
 This singular circumstance, however, is most probably a 
 proof of the age in which this Song was written, — namely, 
 the latter days of Samuel, during the reign of Saul, when 
 Judah had not yet come into any prominence, and the 
 Levites, as I showed in a former sermon, had not yet 
 acquired that distinction, which they first attained in the 
 latter years of David and in the first of Solomon. In the 
 writer’s days the tabernacle of Shiloh was ravaged and 
 ruined, — the Ark had been laid aside for more than half a 
 century, — the Levites, as we gather from the only places in 
 which they are mentioned in the whole Book of Judges, in 
 the last four chapters, were needy vagrants, who had no 
 settled homes nor Levitieal cities. And, whatever may have 
 been the case in Deborah's time, it is easy to believe that 
 the writer of this Song may have written in this respect in 
 the spirit of his own age, and so omitted all reference of 
 any kind to the Levitieal tribe or to its honours and offices. 
 
 But now let us briefly draw from the text before us a few 
 lessons for our practical guidance. 
 
 (i) We see here that a prophet — whether Deborah herself, 
 or a later prophet writing in her name, it matters not which 
 • — could pronounce a blessing on deeds, which we, from our 
 Christian, nay, from our merely human, point of view, 
 should utterly condemn. Not therefore every word spoken 
 or written by a Prophet is to be received by us as the Word 
 of God. We must see whether he speaks according to 
 that Law ol truth and love, which God Himself has wiitten 
 upon our hearts, — which lie wrote also upon the hearts of 
 the men of old, though they had not then that measure of 
 light which we have now, and which enables us to read that 
 Law more clearly than they. This is no new doctrine of 
 Modern Theology : it is the lesson which we are taught 
 again and again in the Bible itself, if we will only heed it. 
 St. Paul tells us that we must “ prove (or examine) all 
 
tilings,” ami “ hold fast that which is good,” — St. John, 
 that we must “ believe not every spirit, but try the spirits 
 whether they are of God.” But the Deuteronomist of old 
 had said that if a prophet came to us, working miracles, 
 “ and the sign or the wonder came to pass,” which he had 
 produced as the voucher ol his Divine Mission, — yet, if his 
 words would lead us astray from the God whom we have 
 known, — the Lord, the Living God, who speaks by His 
 Spirit within us, — we must not hearken to that prophet; — 
 
 “ for the Living God, our God, is proving us, to know whether we love the 
 Living God, our God, with all our heart and with all our soul." 
 
 Does any one suppose that every word which Deborah 
 spoke in her lifetime, or the prophet who wrote her Song, or 
 any other prophet, as Isaiah or Jeremiah, — that every word 
 that St. Paul or St. Peter spoke, amidst the common con- 
 cerns of daily life, which we may be sure they mingled 
 abundantly with religious discourse and spiritual teaching — 
 
 “ whether they ate or drank, or whatever they did, doing all to the glory of God," — 
 
 I say, does any one suppose that every word, which any single 
 one of the Scripture Writers spoke on matters of religion, 
 was Divinely and Infallibly True? Why, then, are we to 
 believe that every single word which they happened to write 
 was invested with such a character, — that the Spirit of God 
 watched over the one, but not over the other? Shall we 
 not rather believe that, whether they spoke or wrote, they 
 were men of God, taught by His Spirit, quickened by His 
 W ord, having received themselves the light of life, but 
 having received it more or less dimmed, or even discoloured, 
 through the moral atmosphere in which they lived, and so 
 but imperfectly reflecting that Divine Light to others ? 
 And shall we not also believe firmly in that great Truth, 
 which is the ground of all our Hope, that our God is 
 Jehovah, the Living God, — who lives and acts now, as He 
 did of old, — whose Power and Grace are not limited to the 
 writings of a few devout men of the Hebrew race, however 
 precious these may be, — whose Revelation of Himself to 
 His children is not confined to the pages of a book, shut up 
 and closed for ever two thousand years ago, — but who is 
 still revealing Himself day by day more clearly to us, and 
 the full Revelation of whose Glory and Goodness will 
 exhaust the ages of Eternity ? 
 
 (ii) Again, the story referred to in the text directs our 
 attention to the fact that, with many in modern as well as 
 ancient days, “ Divine Impulses,” “ Divine Mandates,” are 
 
46 
 
 regarded as imperative, as “superseding all other obligations.” 
 You may hear it said, “ Acts wrought by God’s command 
 must be right, which in themselves, without that Scripture 
 sanction, would be wrong.” But, however plausible this 
 assertion may seem, it is fallacious and it is dangerous. It 
 is fallacious, because it assumes that the command in question 
 is a command of God, which we cannot know unless the 
 law from without answers to the voice of conscience within ; 
 and then it is a command of God for us, whatever it may be 
 for others. So only can we know what our Lord, our 
 Governor, would have us do ; whatever other impulse we 
 may feel, and however strong, we must meet it with the 
 word, “ Get thee behind me, Satan !” For such a notion 
 is dangerous and deadly, as it is false : it attacks the very 
 foundations of morality. We do indeed blaspheme our 
 Heavenly Father, the God of Truth, of Order, of Holiness, 
 by entertaining it, by thinking it possible that He could 
 deal with any of His creatures otherwise than rightly and 
 justly, that He could try them, tempt them, deceive them, 
 by giving them commands, or prompting them with impul- 
 ses, to do acts, which but for those commands or impulses 
 would have been immoral. Divines have too much' slandered 
 the “ Holy One” by reasoning of this kind, with the idea 
 of upholding His Sovereignty, His absolute irresponsible 
 Power. “ I am that I am”: but He is Holiness, and Truth, 
 and Love. What He Will, He doeth in Heaven and Earth : 
 but He will do only what is true and right. An impulse, 
 therefore, or a Divine command, may never be pleaded as a 
 reason for doing what we feel to be wrong. It is the glory 
 of a regenerate man to rule his impulses, as w'ell as his 
 passions, to hold them in as unruly horses, to direct and 
 guide them, not to be carried aw'ay by them. 
 
 (iii) Once more in the text the prophet cries, — “ So let 
 all Thine enemies perish, O Lord!” And these words were, 
 no doubt, sufficiently intelligible to the Israelite of old in 
 the sense in which the writer himself most probably used 
 them : “ the enemies of Israel were the foes of Israel’s God.” 
 But, as Christians, we may not think of any fellow -creature 
 as God’s enemy. We cannot and we may not judge the 
 hearts and motives of our fellowmen — that is, of individuals. 
 Christ himself, indeed, our Great Example, used no soft or 
 tempered language in speaking of bodies of men, whose 
 principles of action were false and bad, and calculated to 
 work evil. He censured unsparingly the Scribes and 
 
47 
 
 Pharisees, the traditionary teachers of the Law, who took 
 away the key of knowledge, neither entering in themselves, 
 nor suffering others to enter in. But it was as bodies of 
 men, not as individuals, that he condemned them. 
 
 But can the Father of all mankind, the God of all the 
 ends of the earth, have any enemies? Yes! whatever is the 
 enemy of the human race is the enemy of God. Pride and 
 luxury, cruelty and oppression, ignorance and superstition, 
 lust and impurity, such things are Ilis enemies. Though 
 overruled by Him to work for good in their final issues, yet 
 they are fighting against Humanity, striving to degrade it ; 
 they are antagonistic to the Spirit of Christ, to the Spirit 
 of God. And all such enemies of God must “ perish 
 even Death itself must be destroyed, and God be all in all, 
 be manifest as Life, and Light, and Purity, and Strength, 
 and Perfection, in every intelligent creature. Such enemies 
 of God we ought to hate, and with a deadly hatred : such 
 hatred is the measure of our love for God and Goodness. A 
 languid tolerance of what is bad, an unwillingness to expose 
 and to punish it, is no part of true Christian Love. There is, 
 however, a snare on the other hand for us frail passionate 
 mortals. It is hard to rebuke what is wrong, without also 
 judging harshly the wrong-doer, to hate the sin without 
 also hating or despising the sinner. It is hard to keep our- 
 selves in perfect charity with all men, while yet we “ rebuke 
 our brother, and in no wise suffer sin in him.” There is but 
 one Law by which we can steer our course aright. It is the 
 same Law still, the Law of Love, — of true Love such as 
 Jesus felt for men, — who loved the sinner, while he con- 
 demned the sin, — who laid down his life in labours of love 
 for all, not only for the good and true, but for those whom 
 he reproved and censured, and prayed upon the cross for his 
 murderers. 
 
 (iv) Lastly, the text says — •“ Let them that love Him be 
 as the sun when he goeth forth in his might !” And here, 
 too, the Hebrew writer, when he speaks of loving God, 
 meant doubtless affiance to the national Deity, Jehovah, the 
 God of Israel ; he meant such an adhesion to Him as would 
 imply hatred of, resistance to, all who did not acknowledge 
 Him, all who did not submit to Israel ; as he says elsewhere — 
 
 “ Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, 
 
 Curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof, 
 
 Because they came not to the help of the Lord, 
 
 To the help of the Lord against the mighty ! ” 
 
48 
 
 The same narrow bitter feeling has been imported into 
 Christendom itself by those who, substituting creeds, forms 
 of belief, for the Hebrew notion of the national covenant with 
 Jehovah, look upon all as not loving God, nay, as God’s 
 enemies, — as haters of God, nay, as hated by God, — who do 
 not affirm concerning Him what they do. Jesus, indeed, 
 taught us to “love our enemies.” Yet some of his followers 
 seem to think that God, the Fountain of Love as of Truth, 
 can hate His creatures for error, — that they may therefore 
 hate those whom they deem to be in error, saying with the 
 Psalmist, “ Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee?” 
 Let us remember that the knowledge of God, which inevit- 
 ably produces love towards Him, and love from one man to 
 another as the child of God, does not consist in a number of 
 propositions receivable by the intellect. It is the knowledge 
 of sympathy which does this : it is to have the heart attuned 
 to holy love, to truth, to righteousness, to tender pity. To 
 have such a heart is to know God as kindred spirits know 
 each other; and only those, who thus know Him, can truly 
 love Him. And truly to love Him, — Him who is our 
 Father, perfectly loving and holy, — is to be ever growing 
 like Him, to be growing towards that perfection, which we 
 are told to aim at because it is His. It is to be rising like 
 the sun from the nether darkness through the mists and 
 clouds of the morning. In tire Light of this Divine Life, 
 radiant with purity and truth and love, Jesus our Lord went 
 forth of old, like the “ sun in his might,” conquering and to 
 conquer. And the true sons of God will do so still, after 
 his example, each in their measure. And, let us remember, in 
 the great conflict of our own day, — that “ Battle of Arma- 
 geddon,” which has even now begun, and will rage yet 
 more violently around us, in which we ourselves, the men of 
 this generation, must take our part, that our children may 
 . be freed from every falsehood, from all superstition, and may 
 learn truly to know and love and serve God, — in this great 
 fight, it is only the armour of light that will in the end pre- 
 vail, — not the sharp slingstones of malice and hatred, not the 
 poisoned arrows of calumny and misrepresentation, not the 
 fiery darts of abuse and invective, — but the “girdle of truth,” 
 the “ breastplate of righteousness,” the “ shield of faith,” 
 the “ helmet of salvation,” and the “ sword of the Spirit, 
 which is the Word of God,” the “ truth spoken in love.”