8fc«f 1 W?J * V? BIVIBQTON, PRIHTBBS, rOHN'8 8QXT4.EB. SERMON, (&c. Acts i. 8. " Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you." It is very difficult for us to enter into the bewildering sense of desolation which the Apostles must have felt on the eve of the Ascension. Even before His Passion, our Lord had spoken of His going to the Father, and now that the event was imminent the Apostles were gradually facing the situation in which they would be placed by His departure. They had received a com- mission to make disciples of all the nations. But, looking to the actual circumstances of the world, they still seemed to lack wellnigh all the conditions of success. Before them were vast political bodies with the prestige of antiquity and the prestige of possession, and committed to the support of popular false- hoods. Before them were intellectual systems, elabo- rated by generations of thinkers, and commanding, if not the belief, yet certainly the respect of the educated classes. Before them were all the ambitions, all the lusts, all the luxuries, all the vested interests of a large and corrupt society. It may be that as yet they realized a 2 4 THE BECBET little in detail of their future work, of their coming sufferings. Yet a vague apprehension of unmeasured difficulties, of unsuspected obstacles, they must have had : they must have hoped that, ere He left them, our Lord would bring help and strength that might in some sense redress the balance, even if it should not atone for His dreaded departure. Surely, they thought, it is for some such purpose that He has risen from His grave, and tarried among us. He is meditating some gnat blow, some striking deliverance ; He has delayed it so long that He may the more conspicuously show strength with His arm and scatter the proud in the imagination of their hearts. Will He not now break the yoke of Roman oppression ? Will He not now re- store to Juda?a a self-governing theocracy, an earthly Kingdom of Heaven, in which His first followers will sit visibly on His right hand and on His left? "Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel 1 ?" In His reply, our Lord does not, as we might have expected, rebuke the outward, political; materialized conceptions of His work which His Apostles still entertained. He does not show how the Jewish commonwealth, which had forfeited its national existence for ever, was related to the Realm of the Incarnation only as shadow to substance. He glances in a few words of censure at the unspiritual curiosity which would, if it might, drag forth God's own secrets from beneath the veils of His providence : "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power 2 ." But He at once passes from censure to promise and blessing. He graciously nwrlooks the form of their question; He addresses Himself to its motive, to the timid apprehensions which had prompted it. They were indeed to be ' Acta i. G. 2 Acts i. 7 \ U ' UC / OF CLERICAL POWER. 5 strengthened for all that was before them : " Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you." What, then, was this power thus promised to the Apostles ? Power is a comprehensive term, and the specific form of power which was mainly intended can only be determined by reference to the actual history of the earliest Church of Christ. What was this power which the Apostles were to receive ? As a matter of fact, what " power" did they receive ? a. Was it, as they anticipated, political power ? Cer- tainly, my brethren, in the course of years the Church of Christ did acquire something very like the power of the sceptre. The prophecies of Isaiah seemed to inti- mate that this would be so : in the Evangelical prophet the Church is already represented as a spiritual empire, surrounded with the circumstances of temporal great- ness 3 . But when did this form of power present itself? Not in her first years of missionary enterprise and of abundant martyrdom. Not when she first worshipped in the catacombs and bled in the amphitheatres. Not when her leaders and princes, like the first Apostles, were still and universally reckoned the ' ' filth of the world, an offscouring of all things 4 ;" a spectacle of scorn and shame "to the world, to angels, and to men 5 ." But when she was no longer composed of a despised minority, when by a long catalogue of labours and sufferings she had won her way to the understandings and to the hearts of multitudes ; she forthwith acquired power in the State. Found in all the walks of life, in all the provinces of the great world-empire, and in regions beyond its frontiers ; an intellectual force, when other thought was languishing or dying ; a focus of 3 Isa. lx. 5, 0, 7. 13, li. * 1 Cor. iv. 13. * 1 Cor. iv. 0. 6 TIIE SECRET high moral effort, when the world around was a very flood of revolting wickedness ; a bond of the closest union, when all else was tending to social divergence and disruption of interests; she became a political force. Such she was long before Constantine associated the Cross with the Roman purple, nay, even, as it would appear, before the two last great persecutions. For high moral influence among multitudes of men carries with it political weight. Political power came to the Church, at first unbidden, and in many cases unwelcomed. It was a current charge against the primitive Christians that they neglected civil and political duties. But political power came to them from the nature of the case and inevitably : the Gospel was necessarily a popular moral influence, and it could not be this on a great scale without tending to become a power in the State. Thus silently but surely a mighty revo- lution was wrought in the souls of men ; and at last it was proclaimed in the outward forms of life and in the changed hands which administered government. The words of the Magnificat became history, and Christ, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, reigning in and triumph- ing with His Church, " put down the mighty from their seat, and exalted the humble and meek 6 ." Undoubtedly political power was given to the Church by the loving providence of our Lord, as an instrument whereby to promote man's highest good. But if such power was an opportunity often used for the highest purposes and with the happiest effect, it was also a temptation to worldly ambition, and even to worse sins, often yielded to with the most disastrous results. Who can doubt this after studying in the history of the great Western See such lives as, for example, those of ;i Julius II. or of a Leo X.'? Who can doubt Luke i 52. OF CLERICAL POWER. 7 tins, after an impartial consideration of the history of other portions of the Church nearer home, which have purchased a political status at the heavy cost of sa- crificing spiritual energy and freedom ? He who said at the first, "My kingdom is not of this world," is perhaps bringing Christians every where back by the course of His providences to the fuller acknowledgment of this primal truth. On all sides the Church is losing what she once possessed of political influence ; on all sides the spiritual influences of the Gospel, which are indeed indestructible, are jealously warned to keep apart from the secular interests of human life. If political power had been of the essence of our Lord's promise to His Apostles, we might well lose heart ; but there is no cause for despondency, if the power which the Apostles were to receive was of a higher and more enduring character. Political power is after all but a clumsy instrument for achieving spiritual success. It imperils as much as it assists ; it alienates as rapidly as it compels ad- hesion ; and those spiritual institutions which have grasped the sword most tenaciously, illustrate, one after another, the warning of our Lord to St. Peter at the gate of Gethsemane : they perish, sooner or later, by the sword. /3. Was then the power in question intellectual power ? The Gospel has undoubtedly lightened up man's understanding and fertilized his thought. Knowledge is of itself power ; and knowledge on the highest and most interesting of all subjects is a very high form of power. For knowledge is the motive and warrant of action, and they whose eye ranges over two worlds occupy a more commanding position than they who see only one. A certain power of this description w.-is undoubtedly a result of the gift of Pentecost. Our Lord had dwelt on the illuminating office of the Com- 8 THE SECRET forter : "He shall guide you into all truth V And the first Apostles needed such an assistance, since they were utterly uneducated men, with the narrowest of mental horizons. How wonderfully, on the day of Pentecost itself, is the thought of St. Peter fertilized Mini expanded ! The unlettered fisherman is suddenly the profound expositor of ancient prophecy, and within a short period his teaching brings him into collision with the Sadducean leaders of educated sceptical opinion. And in later years how rich and how various are the intellectual gifts of the inspired Apostles of Christ ! St. John speaks at once the language of the simplest devotion and of the profoundest philosophy. St. James teaches moral truth wellnigh in the language of an ancient prophet. Who can read his Epistle without feeling its keen sense of natural beauty, its vigorous and trenchant grasp of the secret tendencies and broad characteristics of human nature and of the practical side of Christianity ? St. Peter, in his First Epistle, harmonizes with marvellous comprehensiveness the practical tendencies of St. James and the dogmatic teaching of St. Paul. St. Paul, who owed something to his earlier education, counted it but loss for Christ 8 ; and the vigorous dialectician of the Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians, the master of warning, of irony, of denunciation, of entreaty, whom we meet in the Epistles to the Corinthians, the entranced observer of sublime mysteries who speaks in the Epistle to the Ephesians, the defender of the faith against a subtle theosophy in the Epistle to the Colossians, the far- sighted administrator who organizes the hierarchy and the religious communities and the discipline of the Church in the Pastoral Epistles, is an intellectual creation of Divine grace. And when we pass down into : John xvi. 13. 8 Phil. iii. 7. OF CLERICAL POWER. 9 later ages, we find the promise of intellectual power fulfilled almost continuously in the annals of the Church. TakeOrigen's Treatise against Celsus, or St. Augustine's work on the Trinity or on the City of God, or the writings of Greek Fathers, of Athanasius, of Basil, of Gregory Nazianzen against the Arians and the Euno- mians, or some of the astonishing productions of the scholastic period, such as the Summa of Aquinas, or the original works which attacks upon the faith have called forth among ourselves, such as Bishop Butler's Analogy, or the too-forgotten treatises of Law, and Waterland, and Leslie, and Chandler, and say if this sense of the word has not been realized, — "Ye shall receive power." But was this intellectual power, swaying the thoughts of educated men, the chief, or even a main, element of the promised gift '? Surely not. The Gospel was meant for the whole human family ; and the poor, in consideration of the hardness of their lot, had a first claim upon its preachers. The Church was to be, not as some early Gnostics seemed to desire, not as some contemporary rationalists have dreamed, a literary club, in which rival teachers were to discuss the claims of opposing theories ; but a home, in which a fixed Revealed Truth should be clearly and simply brought home to the hearts and consciences of all 9 . Not many learned were called among the multitudes who first poured into the kingdom ; and mere cultivated intellect is a sorry weapon wherewith to approach those who lack that cultivation which is necessary to understand it. The gift of Pentecost may indeed have included intellectual power ; a living, active soul is a thinking as well as a loving soul ; but the main essential gift itself was something beyond, something higher, something 9 1 Tim. Hi. 15. 10 THE SECRET more universally acceptable, something more adapted to the soul of man, as man, something more capable of advancing the glory and of doing justice to the grace of God. y. Was this power then to be a faculty of working mira- cles ? Our thoughts seem to gravitate naturally towards such a supposition. A certain limited power of this de- scription, varying apparently with the spiritual state of the disciples themselves, had been granted to them during our Lord's ministry. At one time the disciples rejoice that the devils are subject to them ' ; at another they are powerless to relieve the lunatic at the foot of the Mount of Transfiguration 2 . But after the Ascension, and because of it, they were to do works even greater than those of their Divine Master. " Greater works than these shall he [that believeth] do, because I go to My Father V The gift of miracles depended then on the Ascension in the same sense as did the gift of the promised Comforter ; and it was natural to identify the two gifts, or to regard the former as a chief result or fruit of the latter. And immediately after Pentecost the Apostles are in possession of large and varied super- natural powers. It is important to observe the close connexion in which the miracles of the Apostles stand throughout the narrative of the Acts with their mis- sionary progress and success. The school of Paley may have laid a too exclusive rather than a too emphatic stress on the evidential force of miracle ; but we witness at this day an immoderate reaction, which is disposed to ignore the value of miracles altogether. In the Acts of the Apostles, almost every step which is made by the advancing Gospel is preceded or accompanied by mira- culous manifestations. The gift of tongues on the day of Pentecost itself, the healing of the Lame man in Solo- 1 Luke x. 17 J Mark ix. lis. - 1 John xiv. L2. ' Arts ii. 3. 12. OF CLERICAL POWER. 11 mon's porch 3 , the great wonders and miracles which Stephen the Deacon, " full of faith and power," is said to have done among the people 6 , the raising of Dorcas from the dead at Joppa 7 , the supernatural vision which preceded the conversion of Cornelius 8 , St. Peter's de- liverance from prison by the angel 9 , St. Paul's healing the cripple at Lystra 10 , his exorcism of the damsel possessed with the spirit of divination at Philippi ", the handkerchiefs or aprons which were brought from his body, and which healed the sick of their diseases at Ephesus 12 , his raising Eutychus from the dead at Troas 13 , his vision of our Lord at Corinth H , and of an angel during the Mediterranean storm 15 , his cure of the serpent's bite at Malta I6 , were all connected with important results to the spread of the faith. This indeed was not less the case with miracles of judg- ment than with miracles of mercy. The death of Ananias and Sapphira produced a keen sense of the awful presence of the Judge of hearts in His Church I7 ; the blindness of Elymas the Sorcerer was immediately followed by the conversion of the " deputy " Sergius Paulus 18 . The whole narrative of the Acts is penetrated by, encompassed with, the miraculous ; the book be- comes historically worthless, it falls absolutely to pieces, unless the full importance and reality of the Apostolical miracles be freely and truly acknowledged. Nor, whatever may be the lack of evidence for some later alleged miracles, is there any producible proof from Scripture that the miraculous power itself was destined to be withdrawn from the Church at the death of the Apostles, or at the end of the third century, or 5 Acts iii. 7—11. ■ Acts vi. 8. 7 Acts ix. 40—42. 8 Acts x. 9—48. 9 Acts xii. 7— 1G. 10 Acts xiv. S— IS. 11 Acts xvi. 16—40. 12 Acts xix. 11, 12. ,3 Acts xx. 0—12. }* Acts xviii. 9—11. 16 Acts xxvii. 23, 21. " Acts xxviii. 3—10. 17 Acts v. 5. 10. 11. u Acts xiii. 10, 11, 12. 12 THE SECRET at the end of the sixth century, or at any subsequent period which may have been suggested by the supposed necessities of later controversy. But was miracle of the essence of that power which the Apostles were to receive at Pentecost ? Surely not. It was rather an evidence, an occasional accompani- ment, an ornament of the central gift, than the gift itself. Miracle is by no means a resistless instrument for propagating a doctrine. Unbelief has many methods for escaping its force. Where it cannot insinuate trickery, it has no scruple about hinting at the agency of Beelzebub 1 . The state of mind which resists the historical and prophetical evidences of Revelation is likely to deal somewhat summarily with a natural wonder, however well attested, in the domain of sense. Our Lord Himself tells us that this is so, "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead 2 ." And the text seems decisively to point, if to miracle, yet also to something else, to something more constantly available, more nearly irresistible, more calculated to reassure the Apostles in that hour of their faintness and desolation of spirit. " Ye shall receive power." 8. Nor did the power consist in the ministerial com- mission itself; in the authorization to preach the Word and to administer the Sacraments. Undoubtedly, in a profound sense of the term, that commission, with its several elementary portions, is a power unlike any other which God has given to His creatures here below. But our Lord had already solemnly and fully commissioned His Apostles. Before speaking the words of our text, He had laid on the chosen eleven the full weight of the ministerial office. Not on a single occasion, and, as in a modern ordination, through 1 Mart iii 22. Luke xi. 15. a Luke xvi. 31. OF CLERICAL POWER. 13 the medium of one very condensed and pregnant form, had He conveyed to them the essential and constitutive powers of the Christian Priesthood. The Apostles were ordained, so to speak, piecemeal. The several powers with which they were entrusted were laid upon them by a series of acts at considerable intervals, as they were gradually strengthened to undertake the accumu- lating burden. The various acts of this gradual ordi- nation of the Apostles were grouped around the Cross, even as now Ordination in the Church is a part of the Eucharistic Service. On the eve of the Passion, in the supper-room, they received the momentous power of consecrating the Redeemer's Body and Blood 3 . Thus provision was made for the worship and growth of Christian souls to the end of time. The power of remitting and retaining sins was given by our Risen Lord in the upper room with closed doors, on the evening of the day of the Resurrection 4 . In this way Jesus provided a remedy for the wounds which sin would leave on the souls of His redeemed 5 . The full commission and command to make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the most Holy Trinity 6 , more immediately preceded the Ascension itself. The perpetual extension of the Gospel, and the self-perpetuating power of the Apostolical ministry, were thus proclaimed by our Divine Saviour. When then He said, "Ye shall receive power," these func- tional powers of the priesthood and apostolate had already been actually given ; and the Holy Ghost had been bestowed in such sense as to convey to the Apostles the ministerial faculty or character. The Apostles were in full possession of all powers neces- sary to feed and teach the Lord's people, but it would 3 Luke xxii. 10. 1 Cor. xi. 24, 25. 4 John xx. 22, 23. 5 1 Cor. v. 3—5. 2 Cor. ii. 7. 6 Matt, xxviii. 19. 14 THE BEOBET seem that until the day of Pentecost these powers were like undeveloped faculties, latent in the souls of the Apostles, hut unexercised. Something else was needed, seine vivifying heavenly force which should quicken and stimulate these hidden energies, and, like the rain or the sunshine upon the dormant vitality of the seed or the shoot, should provoke them into an outburst of energetic life. e. Once more then let it be asked, Wherein did this power which the Apostles were to receive consist ? Creating political ascendancy, yet utterly distinct from it ; fertilizing intellectual power, yet differing in its essence from the activity of mere vigorous unsanctified intellect ; working moral miracles, (it may be) gifted to work physical wonders, yet certainly in itself more persuasive than the miracle it was empowered to pro- duce ; intimately allied with, and the natural accom- paniment of distinct ministerial faculties, yet not necessarily so ; what is this higher, this highest power, this gift of gifts, this transforming influence, which was to countersign as if from heaven what had previously been given by the Incarnate Lord on earth, and was to form out of unlettered and irresolute peasants the evangelists of the world ? My brethren, it was spiritual, it was personal, it was moral power. And spiritual power may be felt rather than described or analyzed. It resides in or it permeates a man's whole circle of activities; it cannot be localized, it cannot be identified exclusively with one of them. It is felt in solemn statements of doctrine, and also in the informal utterances of casual intercourse ; it is felt in action no less than in language, in trivial acts not than in heroic ventures, or in yet more heroic resignation; it is traced perchance in the very expres- sion of the countenance, yet the countenance is too coarse an organ to do it justice ; it just asserts its OF CLERICAL POWER. 15 presence, but its presence is too volatile, too immaterial, to admit of being seized, and measured, and brought by art or by language fairly within the compass of our comprehension. It is an unearthly beauty, whose native home is in a higher world, yet which tarries among men from age to age, since the time when the Son of God left us His example, and gave us His Spirit. It is nothing else than His spiritual presence, mantling upon His servants ; they live in Him ; they lose in Him something of their proper personality ; they are absorbed into, they are transfigured by, a Life altogether higher than their own : His Voice blends with theirs, His Eye seems to lighten theirs with its sweetness and its penetration ; His Hand gives gentle- ness and decision to their acts ; His Heart communi- cates a ray of its Divine charity to their life of narrower and more stagnant affection ; His Soul com- mingles with theirs, and their life of thought, and feeling, and resolve is irradiated and braced by His. " If a man love Me, he will keep My words, and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him and make Our abode with him 7 ." "It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of My Father that speaketh in you 8 . ' ' "He that heareth you heareth Me ; and he that despiseth you despiseth Me 9 ." "I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me 1 ." " They glorified God in me 2 . " The ministers of Christ reflected the glory of their invisible but present Lord. The face of Stephen in the moment of his triumph and of his anguish was as the face of an angel 3 . The very shadow of Peter was felt to possess an unearthly virtue 4 . The Galatians would have plucked out their eyes for the great missionary who first called them within the holy fold 5 . The Roman 7 John xiv. 23. s Matt. x. 20. 9 Luke x. 10. 1 Gal. ii. 20. ■ Gal. i. 24. 3 Acts vi. 15. 4 Acts v. 15. Gal. iv 15. 16 THE SECRET Governor trembles, as the prisoner before him makes a simple statement of the elementary laws of truth and righteousness °. This, and much else to the same purpose, dated from the Gift of Pentecost. A power was abroad in the world, and men were instinctively doing homage to its silent influence. Not that it was strictly confined to the ministers of Christ. God forbid. Every Christian who possesses a Divine Presence in his soul is a missionary to the world, and does his Master's work. And, alas ! a man may be ordained, and may possess in their completeness those ministerial functions which are essential to the life of souls and to the organic completeness of the Church, without possessing that personal spiritual influence which raises his ministerial acts, so far as he is himself concerned, abovo the level of a mechanical obedience. Certain it is, that such influence is offered as a distinct element, nay, as the most conspicuous element, of the Grace of Ordination. It is the complement, the very crown and beauty, of the other great gifts which are received from Christ through the laying on of hands ; only, unlike those gifts, it depends for its transmission upon the spiritual condition of the recipient. No question can be more pertinent or more practical than the inquiry, How we may hope to claim and to secure this precious, this indispensable endowment. The grace we know is offered to all. "Ye shall receive power" is an inheritance of all the ages of the Church. But it is conditioned. It presupposes a certain receptivity in the applicant. And that recep- tivity consists in nothing so much as in directness and simplicity of purpose. So it was with the Apostles : they received power, c Acts xxiv. L'o. OF CLERICAL POWER. 17 because they abandoned themselves perfectly to the call of God. Their self-oblation was not retarded or marred by thoughts of self, which lagged in the rear of their profession of a perfect service. God gives Him- self to the soul in a degree proportioned to the com- pleteness with which the soul yields itself to Him. "With the holy Thou shalt be holy; and with a perfect man Thou shalt be perfect ; with the clean Thou shalt be clean ; and ' ' (oh ! marvellous and terrible irony !) " with the fro ward Thou shalt learn frowardness 1 ." It is only when the eye is single that the whole body of the Christian character is full of light, and to be full of moral light is to be full of moral power 2 . It is only when in Holy Orders we " give ourselves wholly to this one thing, and turn all our desires and studies this way 3 ," that in the highest sense of the term we can hope to receive a gift of spiritual power winch shall win souls for Christ. This was the deepest work of the Holy Ghost in the Apostle of Jesus Christ. He did not merely place the Christian Creed before the eye of their understandings. He wrote it upon their hearts, and forthwith each revealed dogma became a germ of moral power. "We love Him," so speaks an Apostle, " because He first loved us 4 ." "He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him that died for them, and rose again 5 ." " Our old man is crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that hence- forth we should not serve sin 6 ." "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us : and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren 7 ." "We ought to obey God rather than men 8 ." Charity, humility, purity, courage, disin- 1 Ps. xviii. 25, 26. 2 Matt. vi. 22. 3 Ordination of Priests. 4 1 John iv. 10. 6 2 Cor. v. 15. 6 Rom. vi. 6. 7 1 John iii. 10. 8 Acts v. 29. 18 THE SECRET terestedness, patience, calmness, gentleness — these were fche graces which were thus taught in the school of the Holy Ghost. And charity is a power ; humility is ;i power ; purity is a power ; courage is a power ; disinterestedness is a power. These graces are powers by reason of their rarity as well as on account of their intrinsic force. Gihbon has told us that the unbe- lieving world fears the virtues of the clergy, while it at once welcomes and despises their vices. And from the age of the Apostles until now our Lord's work in the world has varied with the personal and spiritual elevation of us His representatives among men, to whom at the first He left, if we will, a legacy of moral power. The presence of this "power" maybe more espe- cially noted by two leading characteristics or symptoms. (1.) The first, Consistency. The whole life is of a piece. Thought, feeling, action, are in harmony. Witliin, there is no waste of strength ; all the faculties move together ; all are directed upon one End of ends ; and this concentration is the economy and the secret of force. Without, there is no distracting instability of action. There may be a change of scene, change of work, change of friends and of intellectual atmosphere ; there may be an ever- widening horizon of soul, and a silent or avowed rejection of some imperfections or misapprehen- sions of earlier years. But throughout the man's life there runs a line of manifest, persistent continuity of purpose. The vessel may be driving before the gale, or she may be for a while becalmed, while her sails hang heavily against the mast, but observe her move- ments when you will, and her prow is ever turned town ids the Eternal Shore. Now consistency is among all men an element of power. It is especially so among Englishmen, because, whatever our national faults, God has given us, as a OF CLERICAL POWER. 19 race, a natural love of honesty. Thus it often hap- pens that men who stand outside truth yet sincerely admire its vivifying power in the lives of others. They " do not agree with -so-and-so, but they like a man to be consistent." There is, of course, a pride of consistency — of consistency in intellectual error or in moral evil ; but every virtue has its counterfeit, and a virtue is not less a virtue because the devil has caricatured or de- graded it. In a clergyman, consistency is of especial value. He theoretically represents intrepid adherence to faith amid feeble and vacillating convictions. He theoretically represents determined homage in practical matters to duty and principle, when other wills are weak, and the presence of temptation or of false public opinion is strong. He theoretically repre- sents a practice of the duties, the sacrifices, the self-denials, the heroic efforts, which are doubtless absurd if religion is only a graceful sentiment ; but which are natural and obvious, if we are indeed living on the brink of another world which is to last for ever. And the more unwaveringly he is true to his ideal, the more complete is his adherence to principle, the more coherent are all the aspects of his life, the more certainly will he be a power. His faith and love can afford to dispense with political or social sanctions ; he needs not high natural gifts of mind, or manifest powers of miracle ; he is a power with or without these. Men who do not believe, or who advocate or affect laxity of life, feel in their secret souls an awe in his presence ; they perceive that there is a majesty and force in the life of a sincere servant of God ; they revere long before they dream of imitation. For, as they know, a really consistent life is not to fallen man, as such, a natural human life : it witnesses to the presence in the soul of a superhuman force. It is a ray of His Beauty Who as the ages pass before Him b 2 20 THE SECRET knows no change ; Who is What He has ever heen, what He ever must be — the Same vest* relay, to-day, and for ever; always Strong, always Wise, always Merciful, always Majestic, always Incomprehensible, always Holy, always Just. Who would dare to say that consistency — strict, absolute consistency — is easy ? Who, indeed, that lias been for some years wearing the livery of Jesus Christ can but look back on accumulated errors, weak- nesses, disloyalties, sins, marring the harmony and therefore impairing the force of his ministerial life? And consistency is not to be achieved by a dramatic at- tempt to practise it. It cannot be compassed by throwing ourselves in imagination outside ourselves, and thinking how T our lives will look in the social landscape and to the popular eye. Consistency is created from within : it is the product of direct, simple homage to truth. The Majesty of God, the Justice of God, the Loving- kindness of God, the Omnipresence of God, the atoning and sacrificial Death of Jesus Christ, the power of the Eternal Spirit, the power and grace of the Christian Sacraments, — these truths really dwelt on, one by one, really mastered, really received into the secret soul, might work in the practical life the triumph of con- sistency. If they fail to do so, it is because we do not simply, heartily receive them, or because we allow our- selves, as we say, with an affectation of engaging frank- ness, to act from mixed motives, that is to say, to neutralize the influences of Divine truth by the influences of its antagonists in human society. Especially observe that rationalism forfeits, by the very law of its life, this power which arises from moral consistency. Holding, as it does, all truth more or less in solution, it never can submit itself to any, so as to translate the power of a received truth into actual life, and it is therefore condemned by the Wisdom and by the Love of God to a OF CLERICAL POWER. 21 moral impotence. But faith has only to detach herself from the earthly influences around her, and she will forthwith remove mountains. Mountains of ignorance, mountains of prejudice, mountains of sin, mountains of self-sufficiency, mountains of unbelief ; they would be removed, easily and speedily, if this grace of consistency — so freely granted to us by the Divine Spirit of our indulgent Master, so easily forfeited by disloyalty to His voice and to His truth — were but more earnestly cherished by us His ministers. (2.) The presence of this power is moreover evidenced by Sympathy. By sympathy I do not merely mean fellow-feeling with those who suffer acute pain or who experience extraordinary pleasure. Sympathy is the power of entering with intelligence and tenderness into the inner life and circumstances of others, although they are removed from us by distance, by station, by occu- pations, by blood. Sympathy is in this sense a very great gift. Most men live — " each in his hidden sphere of joy or woe " — with only a partial interest in those who are similarly circumstanced, and with no interest at all in those who are otherwise. The young do not enter into the life of old age ; and the old cannot com- prehend the youthful spirits which they once enjoyed. Thinkers do not understand practical men, nor practical men the ways and motives of thinkers. Englishmen do not comprehend Frenchmen, nor Frenchmen English- men. The different classes of society are enigmas to each other. Nay, often the different members of the same family are mutually incapable of understanding the tastes and pursuits which they severally have. Men who meet each other daily, and who hold regular intercourse with each other, yet live in different worlds of thought and feeling, and each is often content to remain in tranquil ignorance of any other world than his own. Sympathy, then, generally requires the 22 THE SECRET stimulus of a powerful motive to develope it. "We are apt to assume that it is a matter of character and disposition. This is not often the case : mere nature haves man a self-seeking, self-contemplating animal, with little or no interest in his brother man. Nature at best yields in some favoured cases the raw material of sympathy, but education is not alone sufficient to perfect it. Education may make men large-minded ; but a cold intelligence directed like the ray of a polar sun upon a human life is a very different thing from sym- pathy. Genuine sympathy is beyond all else the crea- tion of a religious conviction. When man's life is seen in the light of eternity and in the light of the Cross ; when the unmeasured capacities of every human soul for happiness and for woe are realized, each human life is invested forthwith with genuine and extra- ordinary interest. All that is not evil in man's in- telligence and his heart is interesting because it is human ; it is interesting to the Christian who feels the awfulness and the blessedness of human life per se. This sympathy resided in its perfection in our Incar- nate Lord. Of His earlier servants perhaps St. Paul is the most conspicuous example of its complete develop- ment ; read his Epistles, and you will note that sym- pathy is his characteristic gift ; mark the circumstances of his ministerial and missionary action, and you will be convinced that sympathy is a leading element of his spiritual power. Without sympathy, religious influence is scarcely possible. " If you wish me to weep," said the heathen poet, "you must first grieve yourself." We may not deal with men as units composing a mass, or as machines, or as any thing else or less than separate centres of life. Each human being is worth the most careful study and attention, and to get at his real nature is impossible unless you will note and consult OF CLERICAL POWER. 23 its individualizing peculiarities. He has forms of thought, under-currents and streams of affection, warps and weaknesses of will ; he is a creature of habit, and habit has crystallized around him in forms which you can observe and count upon. You can attract him by a sympathy of which he will ac- knowledge the delicacy and the force, but unless you do so you will not touch his real self. Unless you do so, you and he may have public official relations with each other, but you will live in two different worlds. You might as well at once speak two different languages and pass your lives in different hemispheres. Yet to sympathize perfectly even with one man is no easy matter, especially when sympathy is a moral effort and not a thoughtless impulse, when it has a purpose, when it draws a line between good and evil, and holds its impetuosity well in check. And to sympathize with a class, with a parish, with men and women, of many ages and stations, and degrees of culture and degrees of goodness, to rejoice with them that do rejoice, and to weep with them that weep, to have in the eye and on the lip the ever-ready shade of expression which marks the keen perception of the soul within ; this is a great, a most precious gift ; it is a work of the Holy Spirit ; it is a power supernaturally communicated from the world -embracing Heart of Jesus to the heart of the servant who reflects His charity while he carries His commission. " Ye shall receive power." Dear brethren, at this momentous hour fold to your inmost hearts this pro- mise of our gracious Master. See in these His words a ground of confidence. Who are we men that, left to ourselves, we should dare to speak of Him and for Him to our fellow- sinners ? How unpardonable were the impertinence of my daring to address this congregation 24 THE SECRET this morning from this pulpit, unless I were supported by the conviction that I have my Master's authority for doing so, and that He is pledged to strengthen those who bear His message ! Ay, brethren, we need not scruple to be bold in His strength. No clerical duty would be tolerable to a man of modesty and sense who supposed himself to be acting in his own strength, and putting forth his own ideas ; no clerical duty can give any anxiety to those who know that they are sent by Jesus Christ Himself, and who are sure that He will make good His word for all who in simple sincerity place themselves at His disposal. " Ye shall receive power." See here a stimulus to continuous effort. You believe that you receive a gift from heaven ; you dare not bury it, however gracefully and decently, out of sight ; you are a trustee, and you are bound to make the most of the fund which you administer in the interest of others. There is a mighty motive to con- scientious work in the belief that you are entrusted with a delegated endowment, and you do well often to recur to it. The time will surely come when you will fall back upon the sense of possessing this gift of power as a source of refreshment and of life. It may often be your duty to engage iu the holiest services when your heart is cold ; to expound the Word of God when it says nothing to you, and you fear that your words, if they are to have force at all, must be an insincere transcript of your languid thought ; to visit the poor, the sorrow- stricken, the dying, when within you there is no voice to utter more than the chilling formalities, which mean, and which pass for, worse than nothing ; to hold to faith, to duty, to principle, when the tide of popular feeling around you, and your own feeble will within, points to surrender and to betrayal even of very sacred interests. At these times it will help you to remember OF CLERICAL POWER. 25 that you have received power. Be sure that it is really there. Stir up the dormant gift that is in you through the laying on of hands. Kekindle, hy faith in the reality of your Orders, the fervour with which you received His Blessing from the Pierced Hands of Jesus. Once more, see in these words a preservative against the snare of spiritual self-conceit. It may be God's good pleasure to pour a special blessing on your work, to give you an access to the intelligence and to the conscience of men which He denies to others. And you may be tempted for a moment to forget that you have nothing that you have not received, and that you did not create the instrument with which you consciously wield empire over the hearts of your brethren. You may be tempted to convert the gifts of grace into some paltry equivalent of financial or social capital ; to seek, on the strength of heavenly capacities, mere professional advancement, or, while avoiding this coarser temptation, to revel secretly in the perilous sense of a spiritual ascendancy. What is this but to rob the Fountain of all Grace of His rights and of His honour, and to dim the very finest gold of His kingdom with the soil and baseness of an earthly instinct ? Believe simply that the Gift is His, and you will be saved from claiming or treating it as your own. How encourag- ing, how stimulating, how chastening is this gracious promise! "Ye shall receive power." merciful and Almighty Kedeemer, ever present in Thy Chmch beneath, as on Thy Throne in heaven ; make good Thy word in this our hour of expectation and of weak- ness : that each one of Thy servants here gathered may be in spirit and power a prophet of Thee the Highest, to go before Thy Face to prepare Thy ways, to give knowledge of salvation unto Thy people for the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of c 2G THE SECRET OF CLERICAL POWER. our God ; whereby Thou, the Dayspring from ou high, hast visited us, to give light to them that sit iu dark- ness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace 9 . 9 Luke i. 7G — 79. THE END. QILBEBT LBS BIVIXUTON, l'UINTEKS, ST. JOUN'3 8QCAUE, LONDON.