Univ.of 111. Library 
 9-388 
 

 
 
 
 
THE 
 
 GOSPEL OF CHRIST 
 
 BY 
 
 ANTHONY W. THOROLD, D.D. 
 
 Lord Bishop of Rochester 
 
 AUTHOR OF “the PRESENCE OF CHRIST* * 
 
 author’s EDITION. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & CO. 
 
 gOO BROADWAY, COR. 20th ST 
 
“ What we want to make us right is only Faith— a 
 true, veritable, actual belief that God does all things ; 
 and that the thing He does is that good thing. 
 Then all is right. What perplexes you is that 
 Christ is speaking, and you are thinking wrongly. 
 Is it not evident that we want altering, and nothing 
 else ? ” 
 
 3-4 
 
 rs 
 
 

 M 
 
TO THE READER. 
 
 Be sure on taking up this book to ask God to 
 bless it to thy heart. When thou findest something 
 beyond thee or strange to thy experience, do not 
 hastily condemn it. Rather pray the Blessed Spirit 
 to show thee if it is agreeable to Holy Scripture, 
 and welcome anything that stirs thee to think stead- 
 ily over the only realities. On laying it down turn 
 what has helped thee into a new motive for good- 
 ness and action, remembering that truth is both a 
 power and a trust. 
 
 A. w. T. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. Life, 13 
 
 II. Grace, 
 
 0 
 
 " 3 - 
 
 ■ 
 
 • 
 
 1 
 1 
 • 
 
 ■ 
 
 III. Forgiveness, 
 
 74 
 
 IV. Discipline, 
 
 112 
 
 V. Sacrifice, 
 
 148 
 
 VI. Glory, 
 
 0 
 
 00 
 
 w 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 To facilitate the reading of this book in small portions , the 
 subjects , as they occur , are noted in the side notes , and 
 the first word of the different sections is marked 
 by an initial letter . 
 
 7 
 
Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldest believe , 
 thou shouldest see the glory of God ? ” 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 MODERN critic of exquisite wit and 
 culture, with a taste for theology, 
 ^ which tempts him to make excur- 
 sions into it, occasionally with more vivacity 
 than success, has defined “ Salvation ” to be 
 “ a harmonious perfection only to be won by 
 unreservedly cultivating many sides in us.” 
 
 St. Paul on the other hand tells us that the 
 Saviour's work was “to redeem us from all 
 iniquity ” ; and when we reflect on the moral 
 condition of the world, and observe that for 
 the countless millions the absorbing struggle 
 is to get bread, it becomes clear, that at least 
 some of the sides in us, which, from an artist's 
 point of view, need cultivation, may have a 
 long time to wait for it. 
 
 Conscience claims precedence of taste. 
 Nevertheless the irony that sparkles in this 
 
 ( 9 ) 
 
10 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 sentence should not blind us to the truth that 
 it contains. 
 
 Gospel is a large word ; and if it really is 
 what it calls itself, it should be able to tell us, 
 not only how to escape penalties, but how to 
 win righteousness ; how to live, as well as how 
 to die ; what we may enjoy, as well as what 
 we must surrender. Surely it is a morose 
 religionism that fears knowledge, or distrusts 
 science, or condemns music, or despises art. 
 All these things have been, are, ought to be, 
 and will be used, and perhaps increasingly, as 
 handmaids of the Church's ministry, and for 
 the innocent delight of the intelligent. Only, 
 they do not make Heaven, or reveal God. 
 
 We are bound, according to our opportu- 
 nities, to make the best of ourselves, and to be 
 complete. To suppose that faculties have 
 been given us, which we are not meant to 
 employ, or tastes which it is unsuitable to 
 cultivate, is to accuse our Maker of injustice 
 and folly. The Gospel nowhere discourages 
 our being complete ; but it would have our 
 perfection in due equipoise and order. Each 
 man’s own spirit ought to be a well-furnished 
 kingdom, in which, with a dignity that will 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 1 1 
 
 ever he in exact proportion to his self-culture, 
 he will bear the burden of his own being, and 
 lend a helping hand for his neighbour’s. 
 
 Life too, the patient and universal teacher, 
 has its various zones of experience, and in 
 each of them we are at school with our 
 Father. Sometimes we feel to be dwelling 
 in a sluggish lagoon oozing through sunny 
 flats of marsh and osier beds. Then the scene 
 changes, and it is an alpine valley, where jag- 
 ged peaks lose themselves in frozen vapour, 
 and gloomy ravines, never rosy with the dawn, 
 depress us with their indescribable solitude. 
 
 Let us be sure that our Heavenly Father 
 speaks to us all in turn, as and when we need 
 Him. We will listen to His voice and humbly 
 cherish it, for His messages are not to be kept 
 secret, but to be passed on. Single souls, 
 who have to work out our own salvation, we 
 are also incorporated into the Communion of 
 Saints. By truth as well as by conduct we 
 are to be “ members one of another ” ; and 
 what it is a joy to possess, it may be a sin to 
 conceal. 
 
 Selsdon Park, Croydon, 
 
 December 30, 1881. 
 
I. 
 
 LIFE. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 “this is the record, that god hath given unto us eternal 
 
 LIFE ; AND THIS LIFE IS IN HIS SON.” 
 
 “ When I speak of Eternal Life , I mean nothing 
 else than that life which is in God , which makes 
 God to be infinitely blessed. To say that God 
 gives man Eternal Life , is to say that God gives 
 man to partake of that which is His own blessed- 
 ness y 
 
 HO understands these , y . 
 
 , , , . , Introduction . 
 
 words, or believes them, 
 or much more, uses them? Under- 
 stands them in their inexhaustible profound- 
 ness, pursues them into their final issues, be- 
 lieves them in their ineffable gladness, uses 
 them for their supernatural grace ? They are 
 so deep, that no one has ever plumbed them ; 
 so full, that theology, which is simply the 
 Church’s growth in the apprehension of the 
 
14 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 Divine mind and will, is virtually anticipated 
 in them ; so wonderful, that most men pass 
 them by as too good to be true; so potent 
 with life and grace, that the Christian has 
 often to ask himself if they are really meant 
 for him. Plainly, if they are true, they are 
 the entire Gospel ; containing all we need to 
 know about God, and Christ, and ourselves ; 
 not what may be ours to-morrow, but what is 
 given to us to-day — whether we know or care. 
 
 D HAT is this life? Not of 
 
 course physical. Though ature ° 
 all life is essentially one in its source, because 
 ultimately derived from the creative force of 
 God and continually sustained by His will. 
 An oyster spat, and a Bengal tiger, Shake- 
 speare conceiving “ Othello/’ and the angel of 
 the Apocalypse, whose face was as the sun, 
 and his feet as pillars of fire, severally repre- 
 sent life, as He creates and manifests it in the 
 organs where He wills it to be. The life of 
 the intellect and the senses had already de- 
 veloped and exhausted itself before Christ 
 was born. No one has ever surpassed Plato 
 for serene and profound speculation. No one 
 
LIFE. 
 
 15 
 
 has tried harder than Tiberius to drain the 
 possibilities of wicked enjoyment, or better 
 succeeded in finding it to be Hell. St. John 
 is speaking of the life of the Spirit ; which, of 
 course, existed among men before the Incar- 
 nation, though imperfectly, and with limita- 
 tions. “ I am come,” said Christ, “ that they 
 might have life, and that they might have it 
 more abundantly ” [johnx.ioj. 
 
 HIS life is spiritual, having The uf e 
 its scope and residence in spiritual. 
 man's spirit. Its birth-time is regeneration, 
 its condition faith, its evidence holiness, its 
 outcome the invisible Church, the pattern of 
 its conduct Christ's human life on earth. In 
 essential accordance with individual faculty 
 and character, it finds — ordained for it by the 
 wisdom of the Divine Sovereignty — its mani- 
 fold types of existence, modes of expression, 
 occasions of growth, measures of grace. Like 
 all other kinds of life, it has its eras and crises 
 and transitions. Yet its youth is not of ne- 
 cessity immature or hysterical, and its riper 
 years must expect no immunity from surprises 
 or decay. Its law is progress, its liberty obe- 
 
1 6 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 dience, its strength the joy of God, its wine 
 hope, its beauty meekness. It is at its best 
 when it hungers for God Himself above and 
 beyond His ordinances or His gifts, His un- 
 veiled face or His felt presence. Severe with 
 itself, it is gentle and tender with others ; 
 most healthy when least self-conscious ; ef- 
 fecting most when it feels that but little is 
 done. 
 
 ■ T is also eternal. There is 
 
 a great deal about eternal Eternal ' 
 life in the Bible. St. John tells us that “it 
 was with the Father, and was manifested unto 
 us” [i John i. 2]. He had seen it. Christ Him- 
 self says about it, that it consists in the 
 knowledge of the Father, and of Himself as 
 sent by the Father, and revealing Him. In- 
 deed, it is the life which God Himself lives, 
 in which He has willed, created, and loved 
 from all Eternity, whose thought is truth, and 
 its effect light and its nature love. As truth 
 it contains, declares, is the expression and 
 idea of all things. As light it is the manifest- 
 ing power, which doth and must make mani- 
 fest by the very force and acting of its nature. 
 
LIFE. 
 
 17 
 
 As love, it is that which cannot be content 
 with its own separate existence and felicity, 
 but which finds its joy and satisfaction even 
 at the cost of unspeakable sacrifice, in going 
 out of itself to do, give, or suffer for others. 
 As it relates to God, it is His very own life, 
 and light, and blessedness, the formal though 
 inadequate expression of His energy and per- 
 fections. As it refers to man, it is Divine 
 truth for his understanding, to quicken and 
 penetrate it ; Divine righteousness for his 
 conscience, bringing God to deal with him, 
 and speak face to face with him there ; Di- 
 vine power for his will to subdue and trans- 
 form it ; Divine love to his heart, showing 
 him how he is loved, and enabling him to love 
 in return. A life, moreover, about which it 
 has been said by One, who knows, that we 
 cannot dispense with it. “ Except a man be 
 born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of 
 
 God [1 John iii. 3]. 
 
 pISHIS eternal life is the gift TheGiftof 
 ct.ctI of God. Here is the Gos- G °d- 
 pel in a single sentence. We can earn death 
 if we will — “ The wages of sin is death ” — 
 
 2 
 
j 8 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 [Rom. vi. 23 ]. But the apostle adds that life, if 
 had at all, must be had through giving. It is 
 given, and no impracticable conditions modify 
 its freeness, diminish its fulness, or dilute its 
 joy. It is given by God, who knows what 
 He is doing, and those for whom He is doing 
 it ; Who does not give away either what does 
 not exist, or what does not belong to Him ; 
 Who, though He never forces His gifts on 
 any one, will do His best to persuade and help 
 us to receive them ; Who waits, and hopes, 
 and continually watches over us, lest we re- 
 ceive them in vain. What is even more to 
 the purpose, the gift is not something that 
 may be given, or shall be : it has been given . 
 While we are right to expect for its growing 
 development, and entire fruition, the gift is 
 ours now, so far as the giving it can make it 
 so, and it is for us to decide, when we choose 
 to possess it, by claim and use. 
 
 T is a gift for the race, a gift for the 
 
 “ God so loved the world,” race - 
 
 said Jesus to the Pharisee [John m. iq. St. John 
 elsewhere explains, “ He is the propitiation 
 for our sins, and not for ours only, but also 
 
LIFE. 
 
 19 
 
 for the sins of the whole world ” [Uotmii. i]. A 
 gospel indeed ! This is a wonderful truth 
 seldom and imperfectly comprehended, stir- 
 ring questions which we need not fear to dis- 
 please God by reverently wishing to get an- 
 swered, though, indeed, He is not bound to 
 answer them, if we cannot comprehend the 
 answer ; involving also the tremendous re- 
 sponsibility of the Church as her Lord’s 
 spouse and witness for a world, which He was 
 crucified to save. There is an odd confusion 
 in many minds between the entirely distinct 
 acts of giving and receiving, and the notion 
 prevails that unless a gift is accepted, it has 
 not actually been bestowed. But the giver’s 
 purpose and act are one thing ; his, to whom 
 he gives, another. While it is true that a gift 
 cannot actually become ours till we have per- 
 sonally appropriated it, the fact that it has 
 been placed at our disposal, means a responsi- 
 bility about it which we can neither modify 
 nor escape. The title deeds of our eternal 
 inheritance are placed at any rate before those 
 who hear the Gospel. While God willeth all 
 men to be saved, He forces Himself on none. 
 
20 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 a IM| HIS We is in His Son.” This life is in 
 Ira.iill Now, do you wonder that Christ. 
 the Church declares so resolutely, and holds 
 so tenaciously, the Godhead of Christ ? “ As 
 
 the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He 
 given to the Son to have life in Himself ” 
 [John v. 26> Surely we may ask, how could Eter- 
 nal life be said to be in Him, were He only 
 man ? This life resides in His Incarnate Per- 
 son, and while it comes to us through our 
 spiritual union with Him, it is maintained and 
 nourished, and enlarged, and matured in us, 
 in exact proportion to the vitality and close- 
 ness of our fellowship. Personal, vital, con- 
 scious fellowship with Christ means, and im- 
 parts everything, both of the life we enjoy, 
 the grace we receive, the communion we par- 
 take, and the security we possess. To those 
 out of Christ nothing is promised. In Him 
 we have the fulness of God. 
 
 pSjjUT how is this life impart- Howitisim- 
 1 .S 1 ed, and how does the soul parted. 
 assimilate it, and how is the Church to pass it 
 on the world ? 
 
 God, who has made body, soul, and spirit, 
 
LIFE. 
 
 21 
 
 recognizes what He has made, in His methods 
 of visiting us ; neither ignores the senses in 
 educating the spirit ; nor the material in ap- 
 proaching the invisible. There is the WORD 
 by which He conveys the ideas, and principles, 
 and promises, and precepts of the Gospel to 
 the understanding. The SACRAMENTS have 
 been ordained to be the objective, effective, 
 and continuous signs and seals of His grace 
 to faithful souls. In the COMMUNION OF 
 Saints, by contact of ideas, interchange of 
 experience, and the holy beatitude of common 
 worship the faithful mutually edify each other 
 into the One Body of Christ. 
 
 What Holy Scripture was to the human 
 soul of our Lord* the Gospels indicate ; but 
 few of us, judging from our conduct, ade- 
 quately appreciate it. Evidently it was His 
 habitual solace and delight, the invisible and 
 delectable food of His vexed and weary spirit, 
 the sword and shield of His continual resist- 
 ance to the Tempter, the shadow of a great 
 rock in the weary land of His life. In noth- 
 ing is the example of Christ more notable or 
 
 * See “ Gospel of the Nineteenth Century,” chapter iii. 
 
22 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 important, than the way in which He quoted 
 Scripture and appealed to it, whether to re- 
 fute or confirm. “ Ye do err, not knowing the 
 Scriptures '' [Mutt. xxii. 29] was (to the Jews) His 
 touchstone of error [Matt. iv.<r “It is written ” 
 (in His Temptation), was the foundation that 
 made Him sure. “ Being born again, by the 
 Word of God,” here is St. Peters account of 
 the regenerating power of the Word of Inspi- 
 ration [ipet. i: 233. “Faith cometh by hearing, 
 and hearing by the Word of God,” is St* 
 Paul’s account of it to the mixed Church at 
 Rome [Rom. x. i7]. But the Sacraments are the 
 solemn ordinances of Christ for the Church of 
 which He is the head. Nothing is more in 
 telligible than the controversy which for so 
 many generations has raged with more or less 
 intenseness over their right value and use. 
 No religious system that fails to combine a 
 reverent appreciation of the Sacraments, as 
 Divinely ordered means of grace, with a clear 
 and unyielding demand for a personal faith 
 rightly and dutifully to receive them, will ever 
 adequately reconcile the plain statements of 
 Scripture, or satisfy the religious instincts of 
 mankind. 
 
LIFE . 
 
 23 
 
 N Baptism God admits us 
 
 Baptism. 
 
 into visible fellowship with 
 Himself, seals to us our adoption to be sons, 
 welcomes us into the vast household of faith, 
 embraces us with the arms of His mercy, 
 pledges to us all the favour, help, and protec- 
 tion we can ever need, incorporates us into 
 the Body mystical of His Son. It is as if He 
 spake as follows : “ My redeemed children, at 
 the earliest possible moment, I invite you to 
 be at home in my heart. I will care for you, 
 and watch over you, speak to you as soon as 
 you can understand me, and gradually instruct 
 you as you are able to receive my truth. It 
 is a big house into which I admit you, with 
 many rooms in it, and those whom you will 
 meet are of all sorts, ages, and degrees. That 
 you are here at all is both a mark of my love, 
 which you will do well to remember, and a 
 pledge of my grace, which some day you may 
 be glad to plead. I am your Father to begin 
 with, through my love, not your worthiness. 
 Let my name soothe, and guide, and convince, 
 and sustain you in dark hours to come. Prove 
 yourselves my children by your dutiful and 
 ready obedience ; and you will find that your 
 
24 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST . 
 
 baptismal privilege covers and implies all your 
 life can need.” 
 
 Holy Commun- The Lord s Supper is a per- 
 ion - petual memorial of His Atoning 
 
 Sacrifice, a feast of praise and thanksgiving, 
 a special means of uniting with His Glorified 
 Person, through the food of His body slain 
 upon the Cross, for all who humbly cleave to 
 Him, the dear promise of His glorious return 
 Here we receive our Saviour into our hearts, 
 once more to hear the Gospel of our pardon, 
 to get our will stirred, our conscience cleansed, 
 our hunger fed, our will invigorated for duty 
 and conflict, our hearts consoled with the as- 
 surance of His most precious love. If about 
 this Sacrament there is a superstitious faith, 
 which we must repudiate, there may be also a 
 feeble and limp faith, which may not be far 
 from sin. If only our will is towards Him, 
 and we hold fast by His Word, our dulness or 
 chilliness, at the moment of approaching His 
 table, shall not discredit His everlasting 
 promise : “ My flesh is meat indeed, and my 
 blood is drink indeed” [John vi. 553. 
 
LIFE . 
 
 25 
 
 ilHEN there is the Com- 
 
 Communion of 
 
 munion of Saints, where- Saints. 
 by through the atmosphere, ideal, and activity 
 of the corporate life of the Church, the per- 
 sonal life of each separate member is quick- 
 ened, edified, and matured. We Christians 
 of this modern time* cannot even guess how 
 we grieve Christ, surprise the angels, defraud 
 our brethren, and impoverish ourselves by 
 reserve and unsociableness and mental slug- 
 gishness about our most holy faith. Had the 
 Apostolic age had to steer the Church through 
 ice-fields, as we have, her influence might never 
 have penetrated beyond the basin of the Med- 
 iterranean. If converts in our mission fields 
 to-day were to be chilled by our apathy, or 
 paralyzed by our reserve, one of the Church's 
 greatest motive forces would be lost. It is 
 not indeed religious gossipping that we want, 
 nor facile chattering at all times and places over 
 the mysteries of God, nor unbecoming self- 
 revelations, nor egotistic confessions — so often 
 but sly traps for praise — but, if we would be 
 Christians of the Pauline type, we need more 
 
 * See, for a further development of this subject, cap. 
 iii., p. 93. 
 
26 . THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 of a direct personal Christianity in our individ- 
 ual friendships, more readiness for the reading 
 of God’s Word with intimate friends and neigh- 
 bours, more seeking and using of opportuni- 
 ties of taking and giving help and comfort in 
 the discipline of goodness, in imparting — as 
 the best treasures we possess, and therefore 
 cannot but share — what God Himself has 
 taught us, and experience has confirmed, how 
 to enjoy His presence and His Word. Then 
 heart fires heart, and two disciples find a third 
 to join them whose form is like the Son of 
 God. 
 
 MONG the chief helps to 
 
 . Helps to life. 
 
 the enjoyment and expan- 
 sion of this life first comes knowledge, all 
 knowledge indeed that is solid, innocent, and 
 suitable. For all knowledge being more or 
 less a revelation of God, whether in His attri- 
 butes or character, just so far as it is appre- 
 hended exactly and imparted intelligently, is 
 not only of Him, but for Him. When only 
 secular, as we say, still its use in the spiritual 
 life is evident, since it helps us to equipoise 
 its forces, and to develop them, and to put 
 
LIFE. 
 
 2 7 
 
 them to the best use, thereby protecting us 
 from a sour intellectual narrowness on the 
 one hand, and a too supple emotionalism on 
 the other. In Divine things, it helps us to 
 bear witness to men outside of what God is, 
 and is doing, as living in and speaking through 
 His children. It might also save some among 
 us from a mournful and even bitter depression, 
 through widening for them into something of 
 its glorious vastness, the true horizon of the 
 mind of God, and showing them how He is 
 higher than our thoughts, broader than our 
 creeds, vaster than our plans, and older than 
 our years. Then there is work, on which I 
 would say only a brief word here. God is 
 energy, incessant, unwearied, and beneficent. 
 “ My Father worketh hitherto ” [John v. 17 i ; and 
 if we would be in fellowship with His life, we 
 must be at work too. What exercise is to 
 the body, duty is to the spirit, all duty ; 
 whether of this life, or the next. Ours is but 
 a single personality ; and in whatever He lays 
 upon us to do, God has but one motive, and 
 one method. Duty keeps the conscience 
 awake, goads the sluggish will, shames us 
 out of selfishness, shakes us out of laziness, 
 
28 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST . 
 
 best of all compels us to the discipline of 
 self. 
 
 Once more, God is love ; and 
 
 Devotion . . . . . . . t 
 
 towards the tuller possession and 
 
 fruition of this life, there is but one straight 
 road, devotion. Other things are good and 
 useful ; one is vital. Heart-communion with 
 God. We may well fear that not only the 
 world, but the Church also, is growing too 
 busy to pray. O let us not tumble into that 
 snare, or our spiritual life may not be worth 
 a year’s purchase. What we want we ask for ; 
 and what we ask for, we get ; no more. Our 
 Saviour’s company may be worth much or 
 little ; this is certain, and it covers the entire 
 area of our life, that it is not won in a day ; 
 nor can even a year’s prayers help us to reach 
 the summit of our spiritual Pisgah to survey 
 Canaan at our feet. The spiritual life of 
 which we speak is like some vast and elevated 
 table land, which we do not reach by admir- 
 ing it from afar, nor win at a bound, nor ap- 
 prehend by a week’s sorrow. Natures differ, 
 and some fruits ripen faster than others, ac- 
 cording to soil and sunshine and air. Eternal 
 life also has its laws of expansion in the regen- 
 
LIFE . 
 
 2 9 
 
 erate spirit ; and it can grow only through 
 prayer. 
 
 jl^MONG the hindrances to Hindrances to 
 life, I will name religious li f e - 
 egotism first. In personal religion both the 
 objective and subjective elements claim recog- 
 nition : and a characteristic preponderance of 
 one over the other must, within due limits, be 
 expected and allowed. But we should guard 
 against a want of symmetry and proportion 
 between one feature and another. Of course 
 conscious union with God lies at the root of 
 it ; yet if there is too much introspection in 
 it, too frequent a comparing of yesterday's 
 feelings with to-day’s, too keen a sensitiveness 
 about tiny faults, or incomplete duties, what 
 will happen ? Our own goodness will insen- 
 sibly take the place of Christ’s righteousness 
 as our ground of peace. His precious blood 
 will insensibly lose its power of healing the 
 wounds of sin. Our whole moral nature will 
 become flabby and nerveless. We shall lose 
 our tight grip of those grand central facts and 
 verities, which, like a grand mountain range 
 shutting in a shadeless and dusty plain, are 
 
30 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 guides to the pilgrim, and shadows from the 
 storm, and cisterns of living waters to make 
 glad the City of God. Not what I think of 
 God, but what God is in Himself is what 
 touches my salvation. Not what I feel to 
 Him, but what He means for me is the living 
 charter of my hope. To know and believe 
 the love God hath to us, and in the strength 
 of it to go on day by day till we see Him — 
 here is the faith of men. 
 
 tinctly warn. Gently, for the peril -has a 
 blessed side to it, which some of us may 
 envy ; distinctly, for just through its blessed- 
 ness it may fail to be seen. Ours are emi- 
 nently devotional times of weekly, even daily 
 communions, frequent spiritual retirements, 
 personal intercourse with religious advisers of 
 the most unreserved character, in a word (I 
 hope not a harsh one), of incessant spiritual 
 luxuries, of which neither our fathers, nor 
 their fathers, ever dreamed, but without which 
 they still contrived both to do and to suffer a 
 good deal for Christ. 
 
 Unwise use of 
 
 Christian 
 
 ordinances. 
 
 But in close connection with 
 this is yet another peril against 
 which I would gently but dis- 
 
LIFE . 
 
 31 
 
 Let us judge no man. Let us not presume 
 to thrust our own standard of what is good for 
 us on the consciences of our brethren. We 
 are free. Let us be free. 
 
 Still I caution. Let us be jealously on our 
 guard against whatever may tend to put the 
 ordinances of Christ in the place of Christ, as 
 if they were the indispensable ducts of His 
 grace, not to be had without them. Christ 
 and Christ alone is the food of man. “ I am 
 the bread of life ” [John vi. 35]. It is quite true 
 that He has been pleased to appoint certain 
 ordinances, as channels of Himself, but He is 
 neither bound to them nor confined by them. 
 Sometimes, therefore, He has to vindicate His 
 own honour, by leaving His people in the 
 wilderness, and souls pampered with unwise 
 provision have a sad though needful famine, 
 when their accustomed ministries fail. Some 
 stand the test, but you can count them on the 
 fingers of two hands. Others, who have over- 
 stimulated their life by the use of strong cor- 
 dials, find it a weary journey back to Jacob's 
 well, where the Saviour with His own hands 
 once more dispenses to them the water of 
 life. 
 
32 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 Spiritual pride. 
 
 Of one other hindrance, spirit- 
 ual pride, I would speak, in its 
 two common forms, of isolation and self-con- 
 ceit. Isolation, the deliberate undervaluing 
 of the fellowship of Christ's mystical body, 
 either in a chilly unsociableness, or a morbid 
 dread of infection, will tell, and more seriously 
 than we suspect, on the vigour and fruitful- 
 ness of the soul. Some sorts of avrapxeia 
 are fatal. They mean the loss of that vital 
 spiritual heat which is generated by the public 
 assemblies of the faithful ; of that wide and 
 instructive interchange of thought and expe- 
 rience (see p. 99) whereby prejudice is cor- 
 rected, ignorance remedied, duty suggested, 
 sympathy stirred ; of that opportunity of 
 passing on to others what we humbly believe 
 our Master has entrusted to us — not to be 
 kept hid ; of that wholesome regimen, of nat- 
 ural but perilous self-love, which whether in 
 the idolatry of our own opinions, or in our 
 sturdy, almost contemptuous dislike of other 
 men’s, works like dry rot in the Church. “ Yet 
 none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth 
 to himself” [Rom.xiv.7]. It was said of rpan in 
 Paradise, “ It is not good for man to be 
 
LIFE. 
 
 33 
 
 alone” [Gen.n. is]. If we will be alone, we must 
 take the consequences, which are serious. 
 From spiritual pride in some form or other, 
 who is quite free ? All of us are tempted in 
 turn to be intolerant of other men’s methods, 
 over -critical of eccentric types of goodness, 
 doubtful about unfamiliar formulas, hasty to 
 look askance at liberty we deny ourselves, 
 merely because it would hurt us, and almost 
 to refuse credence to a spiritual life that 
 seems to live in another zone. Yet let us be 
 humble and full of charity. God fulfils Him- 
 self in many ways, and what satisfies Him may 
 be enough for His servants. Nay, were any- 
 one to say that certain minds are so consti- 
 tuted as to be incapable of a high type of 
 spiritual vitality, I for one should not care to 
 contradict him. Outward circumstances, diffi- 
 cult functions of life, pressure of secular cares, 
 which we do not create, and yet must not 
 evade, inevitably modify the outward features 
 of personal religion, and make it harder than 
 most of us suspect. No doubt, as the apostle 
 says, “ He that is spiritual judgeth all things, 
 and He Himself is judged of no man” [i cor. 
 iii. i5j, nevertheless we must be careful to judge 
 3 
 
34 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 as those who will themselves be judged. 
 Above everything, never let us suffer our 
 spiritual religion, either in the language that 
 professes it, or in the features that indicate it, 
 to outstrip our moral life. For more swiftly 
 and surely than the deadly dews of the Pana- 
 ma swamps on the European traveller, will 
 the faintest mildew of insincerity poison the 
 springs of the soul. As for society it does 
 not forbid, or altogether dislike spiritual re- 
 ligion in its proper place. It expects and in 
 a way admires it. But it is very uncompro- 
 mising in its demand for consistency. It will 
 have reality, and it is right. 
 
 If, with our lofty profession and high aims, 
 and multiplied exercises, there be found small 
 infirmities, hard resentments, insufficient self- 
 control, palpable self-indulgence, a household 
 not ordered for God, and a daily life without 
 the true mint-mark on it, the sermons, in which 
 the preacher bids his hearers be holy, will 
 sound like the turgid phrases of a professional 
 sanctity. The Christian who bids his neigh- 
 bour carry his cross, while shirking his own, 
 has no quarter from the world. 
 
LIFE. 
 
 35 
 
 H 51 W 0 questions shall end this 
 
 S . ^ in Two questions. 
 
 II chapter. One you shall put 
 
 to me, Christian reader : the other I will put 
 to you. If God so freely gives this eternal 
 life to men, with a holy purpose for them that 
 they should accept it, why is it that so few 
 enjoy its blessedness, or make the gift actually 
 their own ? This is a question, another side 
 of which will demand consideration further 
 on, but I will glance at it now. Our Lord 
 says, “Ye will not come unto me that ye 
 might have life [johnr. 40 ], and again, “How 
 can ye believe which seek honour one of an- 
 other, and seek not the honour that cometh 
 from God only” [John v. 44 ], while St. Paul ob- 
 serves, “ If o"ur Gospel be hid, it is hid to 
 them that are lost : in whom the God of this 
 world hath blinded the minds of them that 
 believe not, lest the light of the glorious Gos- 
 pel of Christ, who is the image of God, should 
 shine unto them” [2 cor. iv. 3, 4]. Men have to 
 choose between two lives, and two worlds 
 and two masters. Some, like Balaam, tem- 
 porise, and lose both, certainly miss eternal 
 life. Others fail in seeing that the very act 
 of accepting, or if you like to call it so, be- 
 
36 the gospel of christ. 
 
 lieving, implies a critical effort of will, a su- 
 preme choice, a victory, which in every real 
 soul, means a pitched battle, an exertion of 
 the spiritual being, which a lazy or undecided 
 soul puts off. As the Lord Himself said to 
 the Jews who inquired of Him, “ This is the 
 work of God, that ye believe on Him whom 
 He hath sent” [John vl 29]. They who are lovers 
 of pleasure more than of God, will ever lack 
 seriousness of purpose, moral and intellectual, 
 to make them close with Christ. Others fail 
 through not turning knowledge into practice, 
 or translating emotion into conduct ; others 
 are fickle, capricious, and shallow, “ ever learn- 
 ing, and never able to come to the knowledge 
 of the truth” [2 Tim. m. rj. Then liow many of 
 us refuse the task of bravely encountering in- 
 tellectual difficulties, and disentangling truth 
 from error ! But mental laziness has its pen- 
 alties as well as bodily ; and if men will not 
 take trouble about the truth, doubts will work 
 into them like rankling thorns, and through a 
 feeble vacillation in making up their mind, 
 when the hour of their departure comes, in- 
 stead of having their feet on a rock they are 
 on the quicksands. 
 
LIFE. 
 
 37 
 
 Among Christians in whom this life beats 
 with thin and intermittent pulses, what loss 
 accrues to them, both of joy and power, 
 through doubting God’s sufficiency, or slight- 
 ing His love. Indeed, have any of us any 
 notion of what this eternal life might mean 
 for us, if we gave it full play, and suffered it 
 dominion over our hearts ? The joy God has 
 for those who suffer for Him, and the peace 
 for those who trust Him, and the light for 
 those who consult Him, and the fellowship for 
 those who walk with Him, and the holiness 
 for those who love Him, and the happiness 
 for those who shall serve Him, who shall say? 
 “How excellent is thy loving -kindness, O 
 God ! therefore the children of men put their 
 trust under the shadow of thy wings. They 
 shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness 
 of thy house ; and thou shalt make them drink 
 of the river of thy pleasures ” [Psaim xxx vi. 7, 8], 
 Now for my question, which I pray you not 
 to shirk, but honestly to answer as in the pres- 
 ence of God. “ How shall we escape if we 
 neglect so great salvation ? ” Ask this on 
 your knees. It is given you, do you recognize 
 it? It is given you, do you care about it? 
 
38 the gospel of Christ. 
 
 It is given you, do you 'mean to receive it ? It 
 is given you, do you mean to have of it as 
 much as you can? Eternal life — God's own 
 life — in its moral beauty, Divine perfections, 
 illimitable future, unspeakable gladness ; love 
 and hope, truth and righteousness, power that 
 heals, and will that saves. Eternal life — so 
 far as creature can share it, and grace bestow 
 it, in its length, and breadth, and depth, and 
 height, passing knowledge, as the love that 
 gives it does. This is all for you, yours this 
 day, laid at your feet and pressed on your 
 heart by One who, to prove His sincerity, died 
 to procure it for you, lives to persuade and 
 enable you to make it quite your own. If 
 only you will take it, and let it grow within 
 you, according to its own hidden law, and 
 proportion, you shall presently discover, even 
 before you die, what Heaven means. For 
 you will know what God is, through what He 
 gives; and Heaven is the fruition of God. 
 Neglect it, put it aside, let it slip by for a 
 more convenient season ; and your Eternity 
 may be one sad remorse for what was once 
 yours, but which, with a carelessness it will 
 be then impossible to understand, you let fall 
 from your sluggish hand. 
 
LIFE. 
 
 39 
 
 To be in Christ is the secret of our life ; to 
 be for Christ the meaning of our activity ; to 
 be with Christ is the hope of our glory ; to be 
 all this together the invincible link of our 
 blessed concord. In a little while this eternal 
 life will be manifested ; and sooner than we 
 think of, the curtain will lift, and we shall go 
 in to see the King. Then, but not till then, 
 will our robes of whiteness have no soil on 
 them ; then, assuredly, we shall be like Him, 
 and what now is a hidden life, will shine with 
 the brightness of the sun. 
 
II. 
 
 GRACE. 
 
 “ASK WHAT I SHALL GIVE THEE.” 
 
 u Si tu veux croire en Dieu , vis de telle maniere que 
 tu ais toujours besoin qu,e Dieu existed 
 
 KING’S word to a king. Also, a 
 master’s to a servant, and a parent’s 
 to a child. Of course, it might 
 have been the other way, and sometimes is, 
 reasonably and suitably. Not a few hearts 
 reading these words, and penetrated to the 
 core with a sense of God’s faithfulness and 
 goodness to them, wonder what they can give 
 Him that He would care for; love Him so 
 gratefully and trustfully, that they know, did 
 He take them at their word, and ask of them 
 their most cherished treasure, He would make 
 the act of surrendering it a great reward. But 
 it is not so here. It is God who asks and of- 
 (40) 
 
GRACE. 
 
 41 
 
 fers : man who thinks and replies. Because 
 He loves us, He offers to help us. In propor- 
 tion as we believe His love and value it, shall 
 we be at pains to open our hearts to His 
 grace. 
 
 “ Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking, 
 
 ’Tis Heaven alone that is given away. 
 
 ’Tis only God may be had for the asking, 
 
 No price is set on the lavish summer : 
 
 June may be had by the poorest comer.” 
 
 —Lowell. 
 
 For what He was to Solomon, He is to us ; 
 and what He said to Solomon, He says to us. 
 Do we care? Some care so little for God, 
 and have Him so little in their thoughts, that 
 He is felt and recognized in the plan of their 
 daily life less than the winter’s sun at the 
 Pole. Many who think they care, still do not 
 see the use of waiting on Him, simply because 
 they never learn it through doing it. Faith, 
 like most things, comes by believing; just as 
 love by loving, and power by acting. To be 
 possessed by a holy consciousness of God will 
 not come to us merely through a fervent wish 
 to be near Him. Though wishing helps, the 
 
42 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 felt-nearness of God is slowly wrought in us 
 by the effort of years. 
 
 And first, let us observe in the application 
 of this sentence to our own circumstances, 
 that since God first uttered them, His su- 
 preme gift has been bestowed on the world 
 in the Person of His Son, pledge and measure 
 of the rest. It should, therefore, be pondered 
 in connection with that eternal life, which re- 
 sides in Him for mankind ; and can only be 
 interpreted and used in the full acceptance of 
 it. What He most and first desires for us is, 
 that we should take this eternal life and live 
 in the power and beauty of it, and thereby to 
 learn what to ask for as most suitable for it 
 and consistent with it ; thereby also be able 
 to receive out of His fulness into capacities 
 widening by use. Yet, so patient is He and 
 bountiful, that, though we do not all at once 
 receive His best gifts, He will not on that ac- 
 count refuse us His lesser ones. He wants to 
 be known as a Giver always of good things ; 
 and, when Christ taught His disciples, “ It is 
 more blessed to give than to receive ” [Acts 35], 
 His own blessed nature taught it Him. 
 
 There are some things we ought to ask of 
 
GRACE. 
 
 43 
 
 God ; some we may ; some we can if we 
 please, but we had better not. About some 
 let us be absolutely silent. If they are to 
 come, they will come ; but let us have no 
 share in their coming. 
 
 And here, on the very threshold of the sub- 
 ject, and in the logic of all solid thinking 
 about it, comes in the critical question, What 
 is the value of Prayer? To those, indeed, 
 who read this book, the preliminary inquiry 
 is hardly likely to be needful. Is there a God 
 to hear it? That we assume. But this ad- 
 mitted, there are still vital points to be set- 
 tled about it, if we would neither mock Him 
 through unreality, nor rob ourselves through 
 unbelief. Therefore, using the word in its 
 limited meaning of petition, whether for our- 
 selves or for others, let us frankly consider 
 three distinct propositions (not new, nor only 
 of Christian times) which together go a long 
 way towards reducing prayer to an absurdity, 
 nay, supposing them to be true , even a dishon- 
 esty. Then, meeting them with an answer 
 which, to those who accept Revelation and 
 worship a living God, shall give light and 
 strength, we shall have a Gospel indeed. 
 
44 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIS T . 
 
 God cannot answer prayer ; for this would 
 mean the capricious disturbance of a compli- 
 cated and permanent system, which goes on 
 from age to age without change or check, and 
 on the unchangeableness of which human so- 
 ciety depends. 
 
 God does not answer prayer ; and the proof 
 of it is that things go on just as they would 
 if there was no prayer. When the experiment 
 is proposed of testing the value of prayer in a 
 hospital for the sick, the challenge is declined, 
 on the ground that faith being the condition 
 of answers to prayer, the proposed test would 
 virtually destroy it. The believer may be 
 consistent, but Science remains unsatisfied. 
 
 God will not answer prayer. Why should 
 He? His love will bless us of its own accord, 
 and does not need our pressing it. His wis- 
 dom can choose better for us than we can for 
 ourselves, and a proper humility would be 
 content to trust it. Nevertheless, God per- 
 mits, sanctions, commands prayer, for the 
 peace, and courage, and submission that the 
 very act of praying brings with it to the 
 troubled spirit. We tell Him our burden, 
 and then leave it, absolutely assured that He 
 
GRACE. 
 
 45 
 
 will do the best for us. Our ignorance of 
 what is best, while it justifies our approach, 
 condemns our importunity. Only the actual 
 event can indicate the predestined order; but 
 it is much to have the spirit braced for it 
 when it is ripe. 
 
 To these three statements there are very 
 simple replies. The Almightiness of God. 
 The teaching of Holy Scripture. The Exam- 
 ple of Christ. The Experience of Mankind. 
 “ I believe in God the Father Almighty.” 
 He ordains laws, indicates them, observes 
 them ; but we have yet to learn that He is 
 either imprisoned in them or limited by them. 
 Does any one ask, * Are we to understand, 
 then, that God will work a miracle for you in 
 answering your prayers? We thought mira- 
 cles were over.” The answer is: Nothing in 
 Scripture tells us that miracles are over. But 
 I want to know what a miracle is ; and if what 
 is usually understood by the word is really in- 
 volved in God hearing and answering prayer. 
 There are many laws in the universe, and 
 many of them are continually in a condition 
 of suspension, and even suppression, through 
 the operation of others, which for the time in- 
 
46 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 terfere with them. My will in moving my 
 arm to throw a stone into the air for the mo- 
 ment interferes with the law of gravitation. 
 “ Donellan Yet no one calls that a miracle. 
 
 Jellett,p. 57 . v j ne w jjj ? operating within the 
 immense and unknown economy of the uni- 
 verse, produce the same result, without any 
 violent disturbance of the established order 
 either apparent to the senses or injurious to 
 the world ? I can faintly conceive an Al- 
 mighty God, but I cannot conceive a God 
 who is not Almighty. If He is Almighty, and 
 this wonderful universe, with its hundreds of 
 millions of worlds, is the expression of the 
 Thought of His will — for one of us tiny creat- 
 ures, a sort of dust-atom, to lift up our little 
 voice to Him and say, Thou canst not do this 
 or that, is to some minds a far more ludicrous 
 dilemma than to confess God, and then to 
 make Him abdicate His omnipotence. 
 
 “What saith the Scripture ?” From first 
 to last, it not only sanctions, but commands 
 prayer. This is beyond dispute. But what 
 comes from it ? Either that these sanctions 
 
 Lectures on 
 Prayer by 
 Professor 
 
 May not the occasional and ar- 
 bitrary interposition of the Di- 
 
GRACE. 
 
 47 
 
 and commands are the superstitious and prim- 
 itive expressions of an unscientific and illiter- 
 ate religion: full of historic interest, but in 
 no sense binding on the disciples of an intel- 
 lectual Christianity. In very plain language — 
 the Bible deceives us. Or it is literally, de- 
 liberately, continually enjoined on us to pray. 
 Prayer is at once our duty and privilege ; but 
 only, because it cannot be in vain. 
 
 And our Saviour prayed. Thereby leaving 
 us an example, which He further impressed 
 and fortified by very distinct and emphatic 
 words. Oh, I think the heart grows hot, with 
 a not unshameful heat, when it ponders His 
 words about prayer, and is invited to interpret 
 them in the light of the dilemma — either He 
 did not know what He was saying; or, know- 
 ing it, He said it, because it was a useful de- 
 ceit ! His prayer before the choosing of the 
 twelve — His prayer before the raising of Laz- 
 arus — His prayer about the repentance of 
 Peter — His prayer about the passing of the 
 bitter cup : these were as real, and human, 
 and direct prayers, as any lips of man have 
 breathed : and to say that they were but an 
 acted drama is more of a folly than a bias- 
 
THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 48 
 
 phemy. But in His directions to His apostles 
 — did not He bid them ask, and seek, and 
 knock? Did not He tell them that whatso- 
 ever they should ask the Father in His name, 
 He would give it? Did not He bid them, as 
 the final agony of their people came on, to 
 pray that their flight might not be in the 
 winter? Did not He promise them that 
 where two of them should agree concerning 
 anything that they should ask, their Father 
 in Heaven would do it for them? 
 
 Once more, what is the experience of man- 
 kind? That God does hear prayer, and al- 
 ways answers it. Not, indeed, of necessity, 
 or invariably, in our way, or time. Sometimes 
 He does, and we have our own answer. Per- 
 haps more frequently He does not. But if 
 we trust, and wait, and watch, some answer 
 will come, and the best : far better, as we shall 
 in the end see, than that we had asked our- 
 selves. The end is that, with hardly an ex- 
 ception, the entire human race always has 
 prayed ; may we not say, always will pray : 
 while over this groaning earth the human soul 
 feels a canopy of Divine Love to be graciously 
 resting, and the heart of a Father to be open 
 to His sorrowing children’s cry. 
 
GRACE . 
 
 49 
 
 On the features of prayer that make it ac- 
 ceptable to God, I would add these words. 
 They are, more or less, these four: — Intense - 
 ness . Oh, to be in earnest, really in earnest. 
 Our prayers are apt to be tepid, dull, insipid, 
 feeble languors, that neither give us peace 
 nor God honour. Let our hearts plead, burn, 
 wrestle, and conquer. “ I will not let thee go 
 unless thou bless me ” [Gen. xxxii. 26]. This vehe- 
 mence honours God’s Continuousness . What 
 we want to cultivate is more of a spirit of 
 prayer, in which, by a kind of habit, the soul, 
 without set phrases, or postures, or even 
 words at all, lives, and thinks, and acts in the 
 immediate presence of God, humbly waiting 
 for His will. In the name of Christ, which 
 does not so much mean the formal mention 
 of His name, as the act of approaching the 
 Father in and by Him, our spiritual represent- 
 ative and head ; and in that spirit of perfect 
 filial trust in which in the days of His flesh 
 all His supplications were uttered. Also in 
 that habit of docile obedie?it faith , which comes 
 through the cumulative force of daily duty, 
 whereby through sympathy with His purpose 
 we come to ask for what pleases Him, and 
 
THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 SO 
 
 therefore for what He is both willing and able 
 to grant. 
 
 “ More things are wrought by prayer 
 Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice 
 Rise like a fountain for me night and day. 
 
 For what are men better than sheep or goats, 
 
 That nourish a blind life within the brain, 
 
 If knowing God they lift not hands of peayer, 
 
 Both for themselves and those who call them friend ? 
 For so the whole round earth is every way 
 Bound by gold chains around the feet of God.” 
 
 — Tennyson. 
 
 PraiND surely the first thing Temporal 
 llfg&Bl (for the gift of eternal life blessings. 
 has already been supposed) that we may suit- 
 ably ask of God, in that naturalness and sin- 
 cerity, which He expects to see in us, as we 
 in each other, is temporal blessing, measured 
 and chosen by Himself. I know it is a homely 
 gift, but we are human ; it is earthly, but we 
 are still in this world. When the Saviour 
 taught His disciples to say, “ Give us this day 
 our daily bread ” [Matt.vi. 2], He plainly and de- 
 liberately justified the principles of such a 
 prayer, while He limited it ; and by an illus- 
 tration borrowed from the natural compas- 
 sionateness of a father, He yet further en- 
 
GRACE. 
 
 51 
 
 couraged its use. When we ask God for bread, 
 and in this complicated system of things, 
 bread for many of us means a great deal, we 
 ask Him for what we want, because He has 
 so made us that we cannot do without it ; and 
 because He has made Himself responsible for 
 it, by bringing us here, without any act or 
 choice of ours. He will not give us a stone, 
 or He would be worse than one of His own 
 creatures; but it shall be bread: though not 
 bread rained from Heaven, but coming to us 
 through our own exertions, for which the op- 
 portunities occur through Him. Surely it is 
 an insincere and mawkish spirituality that com 
 ceives prayer to be marred or stained by its 
 temporal elements, if suitable after their kind 
 and while it wrongs God by its ignorance of 
 His Fatherly justice, it robs man of his right- 
 ful access to the Throne of Grace in every time 
 of need. What, however, do I mean by tem- 
 poral blessings? Not for the world’s prizes, 
 nor sudden turns in the wheel of fortune, nor 
 slippery heights of power, nor constant im- 
 munity from trouble, nor to be spared the 
 blessed and wholesome necessity of exerting 
 himself, will a good or wise man ever be care- 
 
THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST . 
 
 52 
 
 ful to ask. But for precious health, without 
 which duty is a fatigue, life a struggle, oppor- 
 tunity a disappointment ; and for that reason- 
 able and suitable occupation, in which we may 
 exercise our gifts, rear our children, win our 
 bread, and deserve our friends : for a filled 
 home, where children are light and music, and 
 man and wife make life complete by sym- 
 pathy, and the tender associations of multi- 
 plying years : not least that useful lives may 
 be spared, so that the full task be done before 
 the shadows fall, and the evening stillness 
 comes. Our Heavenly Father knoweth, that 
 more or less we have need of these things, 
 and because He knows it, He expects and in- 
 vites us to ask Him. Yet, while asking, we 
 must cheerfully leave the issues with Him, cer- 
 tain that He will do the very best for us, and 
 that sooner or later we shall see it to be so. 
 
 ERHAPS the next thing of Simple trust in 
 importance is the habit of God • 
 a simple, manly, uncomplaining trustfulness, 
 which appreciates God’s promises, rests on 
 His character, accepts His providence, and 
 absorbs His love. Let us frankly confess that 
 
GRACE . 
 
 53 
 
 things do not always go, even with the best 
 of Christians, as either they or their friends 
 could wish. Their door has sometimes to 
 open to the Angel of Death, mildew spoils 
 their harvest, and disease smites their cattle. 
 Their wealth makes wings and flees away. On 
 sick-beds they toss uneasily, or with hearts 
 dumb and stunned they gaze into an open 
 grave, seeing but little for the tears. Yet 
 these men and women prayed with all their 
 heart to One who bade them pray, heard and 
 loved them in their praying. Though their 
 hearts fainted within them, through hope de- 
 ferred, still they prayed on, for not to have 
 prayed would have been to lose God ; and to 
 lose God is to perish. One other thing let 
 me insert here. Small do you call it ? That 
 is why I put it in. For it is small things that, 
 just because of their smallness, distress and 
 overset us. They do not seem to require our 
 strength, and so they make our weakness to 
 be seen. I mean the weight of daily care 
 which in their small details of personal ex- 
 penditure, and in the careful routine of a 
 household, and in the rearing of children, and 
 in the society of friends, and in the outside 
 
54 the gospel of Christ . 
 
 duty, and in private affairs, singly and sepa- 
 rately is sufficiently burdensome ; but alto- 
 gether, and on one set of shoulders, is some- 
 times felt to be more than the strength can 
 bear. Those anxious lives, tempted to be 
 fretful, and hasty, and self-important, and 
 fussed with their incessant activities, may, if 
 rightly interpreted, and manfully grasped, set- 
 tle down into round and sunny centres of 
 regular, and peaceful, and fruitful activities. 
 “ Smooth endless days,” as Mrs. Browning 
 calls them, only not “ notched here and there 
 with knives,” shall be the rule and not the 
 exception ; no one shall be neglected, and 
 nothing missed. For where there is prayer, 
 there is peace ; and God, who makes every 
 duty possible, knows, helps, and cares. Then, 
 there may be a very weight of calamity. Yet 
 where does the Gospel tell us that the Church 
 is to be spared trouble ? Oh, never let us 
 judge of God’s love to us, or purpose about 
 us, by the outward features of our life ; only 
 by His personal dealing with our spirits. Do 
 not fear circumstances. They cannot hurt us, 
 if we hold fast by God and use them as the 
 voices and ministries of His will. Our good- 
 
GRACE. 
 
 55 
 
 ness and our greatness do not consist in what 
 we have, but in what we are. If God be for 
 us, it matters not who or what is against us, 
 for all things shall work together for our good. 
 Manifold as may be the changes in front of 
 us, sad the partings, sharp the disappoint- 
 ments, fiery the trials, if only we cling to God, 
 life shall be our schooling for immortality, and 
 death our summons home. Trust Him, trust 
 Him. Trust Him about every one and every- 
 thing, for all times and all needs ; earth and 
 heaven, friends and children, the conquest of 
 sin, the growth of holiness, the cross that 
 chafes, the grace that stirs. To trust God 
 honours and glorifies Him. The true child of 
 a reconciled Father revealed, seen, and adored 
 in Jesus Christ, moment by moment, lives, 
 learns, conquers, and rejoices through faith. 
 
 Then may we not ask for a Patience with 
 bright, calm, manly patience with worries. 
 the small vexations, the crass blunders, the 
 petulant resentments, the wilful misrepresen- 
 tations, the insolent criticisms, and even the 
 savage attacks, which for many of us, perhaps 
 for most of us, are sometimes a trial even of 
 fire. Was it not Antoninus Pius who said 
 
THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 56 
 
 that “ it is royal to do good and be abused ” ? 
 Some men can claim a good deal of this kind of 
 royalty. It is easy for persons outside to say, 
 “ Do not care.” The friends who are such 
 philosophers about their neighbours’ troubles 
 are sometimes the loudest to complain of 
 their own. Still, when these things come, 
 either blistering us (and knat-bites fester on 
 men as well as on dogs), possibly bruising us 
 (and a blow on the face must make it swell, 
 though it be the face of Aristides), let us try 
 for a calm self-control. We will be slow in our 
 explanations to those who might be incapable 
 of understanding them. Let a dignified si- 
 lence be our meek protection, to go on in our 
 duty our present reply, the first chance of a 
 kindness eagerly seized our happy revenge. 
 He who permits these things knows why He 
 permits them. We who suffer them may be 
 sure that there is a discipline behind. If it 
 is a reproach not to have friends, it may be 
 even a greater not to have enemies. “ Woe 
 unto you, when all men shall speak well of 
 you, for so did their fathers to the false proph- 
 ets” [Luke vi. 26]. Nay, let us fear not to say, 
 that if they come to us for doing our duty, 
 
GRACE. 
 
 57 
 
 even though with some imperfection, they are 
 truly honourable. Also let us not be too much 
 afraid of occasional mistakes. The man who 
 in the way of his duty has ceased to be capa- 
 ble of them has probably lost the courage 
 to be useful. There is an ignoble prudence, 
 that earns the reproach of God, and the con- 
 tempt of men. A good conscience as to mo- 
 tive, the glory of God for our settled purpose, 
 a brave habit of meeting criticisms, however 
 sour or abrupt, because God understands us, 
 if men do not, will keep us quiet and strong. 
 While mistakes sometimes earn for men al- 
 most a more severe punishment than crimes, 
 it is only for a moment, and then comes the 
 reaction. When the curtain rises that now 
 shuts out both the divine secrets, and the 
 completed story of our career, our mis- 
 takes, as we call them, may at least in some 
 degree be found to have had a larger share in 
 our usefulness, perhaps a larger part in our 
 education for immorality. 
 
 Further let us ask (of course 
 
 . . r r i N . Individuality . 
 
 only it we feel to need it) for a 
 
 sense of individuality , with the responsibility 
 
 and sense of independence that will be its 
 
58 the gospel oe Christ. 
 
 companion and result. “ Every man shall 
 bear his own burden” cm. vi. We observe 
 some men who are so sensitive to criticism, 
 so helpless and crushed in the face of public 
 opinion, so gelatinous in the texture of their 
 moral nature, so morbid and vain in their de- 
 preciation of their own gifts, that they do not 
 fill their place, nor use their talent, nor leave 
 their mark, nor make their confession. How 
 shall this best be remedied ? Only through 
 their distinctly apprehending the grand truths 
 of the Divine Sovereignty and Providence, 
 and by stirring a suitable self-respect in one 
 who is both a son and heir of God. It is 
 nothing to the purpose that in some persons 
 we observe an offensive preponderance of in- 
 dividualism. The world is usually at pains to 
 correct this self-esteem with quite sufficient 
 sharpness ; and is also the gainer in the end. 
 Each redeemed and baptised soul should re- 
 member that God has sent it into the world with 
 gifts, duties, and opportunities, which He who 
 has ordained thgm, will help it to cultivate, 
 and expects it to improve. All God’s ways 
 are consistent with each other, and complete 
 each other. Every one has been sent into 
 
GRACE . 
 
 59 
 
 the world with a work to do, and with the 
 means for doing it. He who does not see his 
 work, probably has not taken the pains to dis- 
 cover it. He who morosely complains of his 
 scanty opportunities might be surprised to 
 hear that his own negligence has made them 
 scantier. We can’t see with our eyes shut. 
 There is a humility among some of us, which, 
 called by its proper name, is but a subtle and 
 obstinate pride, that will not fit itself for great 
 duties by accepting and discharging smaller 
 ones first. So occasions slip away, never 
 coming back ; and the years of what might 
 have been a noble life, become the tedious 
 vacuities of a listless one, and the poor jelly- 
 fish, despising itself to begin with, becomes 
 more and more torn by contact with every- 
 thing that encounters it. There is no moral 
 courage to make a fresh start and redeem what 
 is behind. 
 
 To all of us the Gospel says in Christ’s 
 name, “ Follow me, and I will make you fish- 
 ers of men ” [Matt.iv. 19]. Only dare to believe in 
 Him, and that will help you to believe in 
 yourself. Walk with Him, and then you will 
 forget your solitariness. Listen to Him, and 
 
6o 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 the murmur of the voices outside will have 
 no more power to disturb you than the mut- 
 terings of the winter storm across the bar can 
 startle him who, from the safety of his home, 
 looks out on the foam of the dancing waters. 
 Cling to Him, and the sense of what He is to 
 you, and of what you have in Him, will give 
 you the dignity of a king. 
 
 Be thyself, says Christ to us, and stand up 
 on thy feet that I may speak to thee, and 
 give thee thy errand. Be thyself what I have 
 made thee, and meant for thee, and do not 
 complain that thou art not some other man. 
 No one else can do thy work, or fill thy place, 
 or declare thy message, or use thy opportuni- 
 ties as well as thou canst, or indeed at all. 
 For no man can do another’s work for him. 
 If it is not done by each one for himself, it is 
 not done at all. God is thy Father ! Go forth 
 Bravely and strongly to witness for Him as 
 His child in thine own way. Christ is in thy 
 heart. Is not that enough, both for thy food 
 and protection, light and gladness ? 
 
 If our solitariness is an awful truth, it is a 
 great responsibility ; and, for the burden shall 
 be the crown. The crown our King Himself 
 shall choose. 
 
GRACE. 
 
 61 
 
 “ True dignity abides in him alone 
 Who in the silent hour of inward thought 
 Can still suspect and still revere himself, 
 
 In lowliness of heart.” — Lowell. 
 
 Shall we ask for a filled life, yy>/ . 
 
 ... A filled life. 
 
 opulent in its duties, free in its 
 recreations, wide in its culture, generous in 
 its friendships ? Do if thou wilt. Who 
 shall say, “ Thou hast sinned ” ? Yet, God 
 must choose. Most wise parents, I suppose, 
 would prefer for a child on the threshold of 
 responsible life a real accomplishment to a 
 cheque even of four figures. Art and music, 
 the wealth of literature, and the joy of song 
 are both friends and companions, which 
 neither waste nor corrupt, neither vex nor 
 weary. All things, no doubt, have their pro- 
 portions of use and goodness ; and each ac- 
 cording to his circumstances must decide for 
 himself what his recreation shall be. To cheer 
 and interest others is an incidental advantage 
 of personal accomplishment. If knowledge 
 is the secret of eloquence, it is the charm of 
 talk ; and to converse well is a talent that 
 must be earned through being cultivated. 
 The more that the Christian knows, the bet- 
 
62 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 ter it will be for his influence and usefulness, 
 if he is careful to use it wisely. If only we 
 remember that edification in the widest sense 
 of the word is what we owe each other ; and 
 that we were sent into the world not only to 
 enjoy ourselves, but to do our best to make 
 those under our influence good and wise, and 
 strong and happy, then Raphael and Milton, 
 Faraday and Handel, shall be our compan- 
 ions, though also our leaders ; and by aiming 
 throughout all our life to serve God, through 
 helping our brethren, conscience will be satis- 
 fied, and who shall make us afraid about our 
 innocent joy? 
 
 PlERE 1 may suitably inter- About our 
 
 I pose a Gospel for parents ; children. 
 
 and no words I can find express with adequate- 
 ness the blessed claim we have on the prom- 
 ises of God for the training and salvation of 
 our children. The gospels tell us that Jesus 
 took the children into His arms and blessed 
 them — blessed them, I suppose, because He 
 loved them — and oh, what a comfort for us 
 who have children ourselves ! What a solemn 
 trust, what an ever-deepening anxiety, yet 
 
GRACE. 
 
 63 
 
 what a tender and exquisite joy! A trust, of 
 which we shall one day have to give solemn 
 account to God ; an anxiety, which sometimes 
 (though we are ashamed of it afterwards) 
 tempts us to wish that we had never had any ; 
 a joy, which all through the day, with its fever- 
 ish troubles and duties, exhilarates the heart 
 with the hope of the welcome at home. God, 
 who is a Father, has given them to us, and 
 expects us to^ train them for Him. He loves 
 them much more than we can do, has deeper 
 at His heart their salvation and happiness. 
 Will He deny His grace, or refuse His pro- 
 tection, or soon be weary of waiting, or be 
 very slow to forgive? To some of us the need 
 of God in this matter is unspeakable. There 
 may be only one parent left to do the work 
 of two. The mother left alone, sighs as she 
 feels her inability to be a father to the bright 
 eager boys, just on the eve of their plunge 
 into life. The father, overweighted it may be 
 with onerous duties, incapable just because 
 of his manhood of being a mother to his 
 daughters, sometimes feels paralyzed by the 
 sense of his helplessness about them ; silent 
 about his own loss, he is tempted to mourn 
 for his children’s. 
 
64 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 “ Women know 
 
 The way to rear up children, (to be just) 
 
 They know a simple, merry, tender knack 
 
 Of 
 
 .... Stringing pretty words that make no sense 
 And kissing full sense into, empty words, 
 
 Which things are corals to cut life upon, 
 
 Although such trifles ; children learn by such, 
 Love’s holy earnest in a pretty play 
 And yet not over-early solemnized. 
 
 Such good do mothers. Fathers love as well 
 — Mine did, I know — but still with heavier brains, 
 And wills more consciously responsible, 
 
 And not as wisely, since less foolishly ; 
 
 So mothers have God’s license to be missed.” 
 
 — E. B. Browning. 
 
 “ Ask what shall I give thee/’ says God to 
 the bewildered heart ; and this voice is a 
 gospel indeed. Be it the finding of a nurse, 
 or the selection of a governess, or the choos- 
 ing of a school, or the settling on a profession, 
 whatever comes close to us has living interest 
 for Him. Oh, to be children, ourselves with 
 God, in the simplicity of a dutiful faith ! He 
 knows, understands, observes, cares, pities, 
 watches, and, in the end, provides. We have 
 our duty, He His. Our duty is to trust Him, 
 and to train them. His duty is to bless them 
 
GRACE. 
 
 65 
 
 and to help us. If we are not wanting on our 
 side, He never will be on His ; and our dear, 
 happy refuge is in intercession. To tell Him 
 everything about their needs, and our own ; 
 then to leave them, and not to look too much 
 forward. These children, whom some of us 
 love so passionately, and enjoy so delightfully, 
 and watch so anxiously — we long to make 
 them happy, for it seems their right, though 
 with a happiness regulated by self-restraint, 
 both on their side and our own. We long 
 also to see them good, and are humbled to 
 the quick of the heart when we see our own 
 faults peeping out of them ; and must firmly 
 correct them for the imperfections they have 
 inherited. Yet they are His as well as ours ; 
 in a sense, more His than ours; twice His, by 
 creation and grace. Shall not we constantly 
 plead with Him His covenant in baptism ? 
 May we not say to Him, “ Hast not Thou 
 adopted them, to keep them Thine, not easily 
 to cast them off ” ? Can we conceive any 
 prayers, amid the great tumult of human 
 needs and wishes and tears and conflicts, that 
 ever go up from this travailing earth to the 
 heart of God, more congenial to His fatherly 
 5 
 
66 
 
 TILE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 nature, more likely to be victorious with His 
 compassionate heart, more absolutely in sym- 
 pathy with His redeeming purpose, more 
 honourable to the passion of His Son Christ, 
 than a parent’s prayers for His precious, 
 though sinful, children, that they may be kept 
 safe in their voyage over the waves of this 
 troublesome world, and be at home with 
 Christ for ever ! 
 
 For three things more let us ask Him. 
 They are the best, and so I have kept them 
 to the last. But on the measure, both of our 
 appreciating and of our asking them, depends 
 all our Christian life. They are cognate to 
 this offer of Solomon, and are the essence of 
 the gospel. 
 
 ET your entire spiritual 
 , . ... God a Father. 
 
 being simply impreg- 
 nated with the idea of God's fatherliness. 
 This is the one unfailing key to all the prob- 
 lems of life — its denials and its bountifulness, 
 its sunshine and its storm, its voices and its 
 silence. Of course, He is Moral Ruler also — 
 and a very strong one. We have found out 
 this already, most of us. If we forget it, we 
 
GRACE . 
 
 67 
 
 shall be perhaps sternly reminded that love is 
 not a weak connivance at sin. But His gov- 
 ernment is contained in, and is administered 
 by, His Fatherliness. Not to rule, guide, cor- 
 rect, would be not to love. Of His Fatherli- 
 ness, the one result and object is to conform 
 us to the image of His Son. Father though 
 He be, He does not undertake to explain 
 everything to us. When we grieve Him, we 
 must not wonder that His face is turned 
 away. Sometimes He cannot spare us an- 
 guish, sometimes He must keep us in weary 
 suspense. Often, indeed, it may have oc 
 curred to some of us, that among the untold 
 blessings of children, not quite the least is 
 that we are helped to understand God’s deal- 
 ings with us so much more clearly, through 
 viewing them in the light of an earthly par- 
 ent’s conduct to his child. Our pity, and ten- 
 derness, and patience, and yet inexhaustible 
 love, with sometimes real displeasure and a 
 heart sore and torn, may help us to see how 
 our Heavenly Father feels towards ourselves. 
 For human nature is on the lines of the Di- 
 vine. Were it not, how could we understand 
 it — how be capable of partaking of it? To 
 
68 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 trust and wait ; never to fear asking Him, if 
 only we ask dutifully ; never to think that we 
 can disturb Him with all our cares and 
 troubles, if only we leave them behind when 
 we rise from our knees ; to tell Him first and 
 also last about everything that concerns usp 
 to feel it impossible that He can ever be un- 
 just, or unkind, or impatient, or weary. Even 
 when He chastens us, still to love Him 
 through all the anguish ; even when He does 
 not speak to us, to be assured that presently 
 the answer will come, and the right one. 
 This is what we like our children to be and 
 to feel with us ; let this be our mind towards 
 God. Then because He is our Father, and 
 we call Him so, and He delights in our doing 
 it, let us continually, and fervently, and as the 
 rule of our daily life, ask for His Holy Spirit. 
 This is the petition about which we may al- 
 ways be sure that He heareth us ; this is the 
 gift which gives to all temporal blessings 
 their safety and blessing, to all spiritual graces 
 their perfection and concord. It is the prom- 
 ise of the Father, not only for His Church as 
 a body, but for the individual members of it ; 
 nay, it is the one end for which the Risen 
 
GRACE. 
 
 69 
 
 Lord went back to plead. For our tasks and 
 our pleasures, for our sorrows and our joys, 
 for home and for society, for discipline and 
 for culture ; for training our children, enjoy- 
 ing our friends, ruling our households, win- 
 ning and persuading the lost — this is our 
 need and His promise. Oh, if any words of 
 mine could but induce those who read this 
 book to live their daily lives as taught and 
 used and helped and guided by God the Holy 
 Ghost, it would be a changed world both for 
 them and for others. Perhaps we have all of 
 us yet to fathom the meaning of the sentence 
 in the Creed, “ I believe in the Holy Ghost.” 
 I am sure that we have no notion of what 
 God could make us to be, and give us to have, 
 and call us to do, and help us to learn, and en- 
 able us to suffer, and permit us to enjoy, if we 
 would but try to understand our Lord’s own 
 promise. “ If ye therefore being evil know 
 how to give good gifts unto your children, 
 how much more shall your Heavenly Father 
 give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him ” 
 [Luke xi. i3]. Whatever hesitation there may be 
 about our other prayers, there need be none 
 with this. 
 
70 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 0 !NCE more let us ask that 
 
 , 1 Love to Christ . 
 
 U we may love Christ, and 
 
 serve Him, and confess Him, and resemble 
 Him, and be in some faint, yet real, degree 
 representative of Him to men. To have as 
 the one hallowing thought of our mind, 
 “ Christ calls me His friend, how shall I keep 
 and enjoy and deepen that friendship ; Christ 
 is my Master, how shall I best serve and 
 please Him here below ?” To have as the 
 one supreme consolation in our disappoint- 
 ment, “ Who shall separate us from the love 
 of Christ ?” [Rom viii. 35]. This is peace. As the 
 one final hope of our being, when activities 
 diminish, and vigour ebbs, and skies darken, 
 and friends die, to say, “ Whom have I in 
 heaven but Thee, and there is none upon 
 earth whom I desire beside Thee ” cps. ixxm. 257 
 can we say it? It is the highest devotion. 
 Of course, there is a sense in which we must 
 deserve this conscious possession of Christ, 
 with all the calmness and power that go with 
 it, though the fact of our deserving it is itself 
 a miracle of grace. But that we may go on 
 into the dark future with a sense of possessing 
 this friendship, and with the faculty of enjoy- 
 
GRACE. 
 
 7 1 
 
 ing it, and with the power of returning it, is a 
 prayer we should constantly put up to Him, 
 who, not content with loving, asks to be 
 loved, and often has long to wait for an an- 
 swer. 
 
 For as we love Him, we shall grow like 
 Him. “ Be Christ to us” is sometimes the 
 bitter, but not quite unreasonable demand of 
 the world on the Church, and we can be 
 Christ to men only in two ways — by charac- 
 ter and truth. Character implies self-knowl- 
 edge and victory over discovered faults, and 
 then the irresistible and incessant power 
 which a consistent life ever wins over man- 
 kind. I know that self-knowledge is rare, and 
 feeble natures shrink from it, and as we grow 
 older, instead of its augmenting, too often it 
 diminishes through a fatal self-love, which, 
 like a quilt of eider-down, keeps off the brac- 
 ing air of criticism, and lulls us into dreams of 
 our own goodness, from which some day we 
 may be only too rudely aroused. 
 
 But, with a dread of sin we must join a love 
 of truth — that truth which Jesus Himself 
 claims to be — the truth in love, and not with 
 hard blows and rough words. None are so 
 
72 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 capable of usefulness as those who know the 
 truth ; none so ready for it as those who feel 
 responsible for a great inheritance ; none so 
 potent with it as those who can answer their 
 brethren with salt and kindness ; none so 
 fruitful out of it as those who can love and 
 wait, think and pray. 
 
 Seasons of No doubt there are special 
 
 special grace. moments and crises of the soul, 
 
 when God comes near and whispers His very 
 Presence into the heart. There are special as 
 well as ordinary gifts of grace, and it is possi- 
 ble to miss both. They may be to anticipate 
 some great trial that is at hand, or to prepare 
 us for a sudden advancement, or to lift us out 
 of the fog of a blinding perplexity, or to as- 
 sure us of His presence before something takes 
 us into the strife of tongues. God has His 
 times for visiting the souls He loves, and it is 
 our wisdom to seize them, and to take what 
 they offer. Surely it is significant, that it was 
 when Solomon had been offering sacrifice to 
 God, that God came to him with this offer, 
 “ Ask what I shall give thee.” God met His 
 child's gift by giving him another. The more 
 we get, -the more we become able to get. To 
 
GRACE . 
 
 7 3 
 
 be filled is one thing, to have much to be 
 filled is another. A child’s drinking-cup and 
 the depths of the Atlantic may both brim 
 over. But we know which holds most, and 
 even God cannot force on us more than we 
 can receive. 
 
 There is no exhausting the grace of God. 
 What most grieves Him is to doubt Him. 
 He is able to give us all, “ much more than 
 these.” What we really need to learn is, how 
 much God has for us ; and to do is to get it ; 
 and to conquer is our strange dumbness in 
 the presence of the King. There are many 
 lessons we cannot learn. Life is not long 
 enough here. Also about many things it does 
 not so much matter whether we learn them 
 or not. But the Gospel has its length, and 
 breadth, and depth, and height, which we are 
 to consider, if we cannot fathom them ; and 
 the one prayer we ought all of us in the time 
 to come to learn to say more humbly, more 
 sincerely, more gratefully, more trustfully 
 than ever, is, “ Lord, show us the Father” 
 
 [John xiv. 3], 
 
III. 
 
 FORGIVENESS. 
 
 “ CLEAN EVERY WHIT.” 
 
 u The Gospel declares a present love of God to the 
 sinner , which would not only have him back 
 again , but which has given him all things need- 
 ful to enable him to return .” 
 
 OU remember what had Incident in 
 happened. Christ and 7 ohn xiii - 
 the Apostles had come into Jerusalem 
 to keep the Paschal Feast. Through a chance 
 forgetfulness — caused, it seems, by an un- 
 worthy dispute about precedence — the service 
 due to the Lord of washing His feet, before 
 the meal commenced, had been omitted. 
 Partly, it may be, to remind them of this, 
 though gently — also, we may be sure, to 
 teach them the double 'lesson, they would 
 never afterwards forget, of the tender love 
 ( 74 ) 
 
FORGIVENESS. 
 
 75 
 
 He felt to them, and which He desired them 
 to show to each other — He took a towel, and 
 girded Himself. Then, going down on His 
 knees before them, He washed their feet one 
 by one — Peters, who warmly remonstrated; 
 John’s, who must have deeply pondered; 
 Judas’s, who dared not resist, but whose cold 
 hate, as we see from his question after- 
 wards, grew into a sort of bitter insolence. 
 What did it all mean ? Two things, the state- 
 ment and interpretation of which are here 
 before us. The preceptive value of it, as con- 
 tained in the words, “ I have given you an 
 example that ye should do as I have done to 
 you” [johnxiu. 15], there will be time enough to 
 consider presently. The doctrinal meaning of 
 it, so tersely wrapped up in the three words 
 before us, so vitally and historically connected 
 with the Resurrection and Ascension of the 
 Lord, I will examine now. It is the Gospel 
 of the Forgiveness of Sins. 
 
 There are two distinct aspects The aspects of 
 of thought current in our time modem thought. 
 in reference to this subject. Modern unbelief 
 boldly and emphatically maintains that for- 
 giveness of sins is at once impossible with 
 
76 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 God, and destructive for man. Impossible 
 for God ! since, if He is consistent with Him- 
 self in all His operations and dealings with us, 
 the same God (as Bishop Butler presses in 
 his great argument) in the Kingdom of Grace 
 that He is in the World of Nature, He will 
 act in the one as He acts in the other, and be 
 careful not to contradict Himself. But it is 
 certain that He never permits or forgives the 
 slightest violation of physical order. Every 
 breach of Nature’s laws has its inevitable rec- 
 ompense and reward. Equally certain, then, 
 must it be that He never can, never ought to 
 condone any offence against the moral. As 
 for man, it is positively injurious to him, be- 
 cause essentially subversive of all authority 
 without, and of all moral sense within, him, 
 to suffer him to suppose that if he sins, he 
 can be treated in any other way than that of 
 personally suffering all the consequences. Nay, 
 at all times, this notion of a free and gratuit- 
 ous pardon is alleged to have been the fruit- 
 ful source of moral disorder, in encouraging 
 men to suppose that they can sin with im- 
 punity ; and with equal eagerness, is repudi- 
 ated the notion, that even the deepest and 
 
FORGIVENESS. 
 
 77 
 
 truest repentance can be any just claim with 
 God that the law should not take its course. 
 
 At quite the other extremity of religious 
 speculation, we occasionally find a perilous 
 looseness of statement as to the facility of par- 
 don, and, consequently, by no remote infer- 
 ence, of the comparative unimportance of sin. 
 The Divine readiness to forgive may, it is 
 obvious, be pressed in such serious dispropor- 
 tion to other equally true and solemn verities 
 about the guilt of sin, and the true meaning 
 of sincere repentance, that it may come even 
 to represent God as winking at it, through 
 the freeness and gloriousness of the remedy 
 that manifests His redeeming love to sinners. 
 The parable of the Prodigal Son is almost the 
 most precious exposition, in all the Bible, of 
 the heart of the Father towards mankind. 
 But it is possible so to depict the welcome of 
 the penitent, and the eager readiness of his 
 father to forgive and forget his guilt, as to 
 tempt the feeling that no slight injustice was 
 done to the elder brother, who was ever with 
 him sharing his home and his love. 
 
 “ The world will not believe a man repents : 
 
 And this wise world of ours is mainly right. 
 
78 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 Full seldom doth a man repent, or use 
 Both grace and will to pick the vicious quitch 
 Of blood and custom wholly out of him, 
 
 And make all clean, and plant himself afresh.” 
 
 — Tennyson. 
 
 First let us examine the figure 
 by means of which the Lord con- 
 veys the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins ; 
 and then proceed to consider what it means, 
 and what it does not. 
 
 The three words in our English version are 
 represented by only two in the original, both 
 of them adjectives. The exact rendering is, 
 “ clean, all of him.” The illustration is, be- 
 yond doubt, borrowed from the use of the 
 bath. One who has just bathed, and goes 
 straight home, will not, on returning there, 
 need to be bathed again, for his body just 
 cleansed has not yet had time to contract fresh 
 soils. With one exception : The feet, left 
 partially unprotected by the open sandals, 
 from dust or mire on the walk home, may 
 need a fresh cleansing. But this is all. The 
 rest of the body is clean. Thus, by a rapid 
 and easy transition from the material and vis- 
 ible into the spiritual and invisible world, 
 
FORGIVENESS. 
 
 79 
 
 Christ used the figure of the cleansing of the 
 body in the water of the bath, for an illustra- 
 tion of the cleansing of the soul through Di- 
 vine Grace ; a cleansing which, whatever its 
 method, and its conditions, and its instru- 
 ments, has at least two essential features 
 stamped on it by Christ — it is supernatural, 
 and the very work of God Himself. It is also 
 complete. 
 
 O you ask what it is we Figure 
 mean, when we speak of explained. 
 spiritual defilement ? and in what intelligible 
 sense can such defilement be said to be washed 
 from the spirit of man? For it is plain that 
 the spiritual essence we so dimly apprehend 
 and imperfectly describe as the word “ soul,” 
 cannot be reached or affected by material pro- 
 cesses in the application of sensible things. 
 That spirit can be soiled at all, is but the ap- 
 plication to one sort of existence of a fact or 
 condition belonging to another, and widely 
 differing from it. Consequently it is essential 
 that we should penetrate through the shell of 
 the figure to the spiritual truth beneath. 
 
 Holy Scripture uses three distinct figures 
 
8o 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 as illustrations of that Divine process on the 
 soul, which the Apostles’ Creed defines as 
 “ the forgiveness of sins,” and which our Lord 
 describes as being “ clean every whit.” They 
 are the Water, the Blood, and the Word. 
 Water, as we read in the prophet Ezekiel, 
 “ I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and 
 you shall be clean. From all your filthiness, 
 and from all your idols I will cleanse you ” 
 [Ezekiel xxxvi. 25]. Again, in the Acts of the Apos- 
 tles, “ Arise, and be baptized, and wash away 
 thy sins” [Acts xxii. i6]. BLOOD, of the use of 
 which one instance may suffice. “ These are 
 they which came out of great tribulation, ajid 
 have washed their robes, and made them 
 white in the Blood of the Lamb ” [Rer. vn. i4]. 
 The WORD: in our Lord’s own use of it in 
 this same thirteenth chapter, “ Now ye are 
 clean through the Word, which I have spoken 
 unto you ” [johnxv.3]. One instance more, which 
 gives a remarkable combination of two of 
 these figures with reference to the Church, 
 “That He might sanctify and cleanse it with 
 the washing of water by the Word ” [Eph.v.26]. 
 
 Now, of what truths are these figures the 
 symbols? Water is the symbol of the super- 
 
FORGIVENESS. 
 
 8l 
 
 natural operation of God the Holy Ghost in 
 the regeneration and sanctification of the soul, 
 whereby are conveyed and applied the forces 
 of Divine Grace to the soul of man. “ Ac- 
 cording to His mercy He hath saved us, by 
 the washing of regeneration and the renewing 
 of the Holy Ghost ” [Titus m. 53. This is St. Paul’s 
 figure. Blood is the symbol of that atoning 
 sacrifice, whereby is declared unto us, at once, 
 man’s sin, with its consequent ruin and help- 
 lessness, and that unspeakable, unfathomable 
 mystery of grace, wherein God’s holiness and 
 pity came together into one redeeming con- 
 cord, and righteousness and peace kissed each 
 other on the Cross. “ In Whom we have re- 
 demption through His blood, even the for- 
 giveness of sins” [Eph.i.7]. Again St. Paul. 
 Word symbolises the method of communicat- 
 ing this to man’s understanding. For hereby 
 through the conveying of the facts and truths, 
 and ideas, and promises of the Gospel to the 
 heart and conscience through the reason, in 
 words written or spoken, his spirit is seized, 
 touched, stirred, broken, and healed. “ Preach- 
 ing peace by Jesus Christ ” [Acts x. 36 ]. this is St. 
 Peter’s account ; in a word, the Blood is the 
 6 
 
82 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 exhibition and operation of a Divine redemp- 
 tion ; the Word is the vehicle pf that wondrous 
 Gospel and the intelligence of mankind ; the 
 Water is the visible sign and instrument by 
 which that message is applied and assured. 
 The end of it is, that Christ having died and 
 risen again, and the Spirit having been given 
 as the Father's promise to men, accompany- 
 ing and vitalising the Gospel of a full and free, 
 and present salvation to them that are afar 
 off, and also to them that are nigh, they who 
 perceive their own necessity, and know and 
 believe God's great love to them, cast them- 
 selves at the feet of Christ the Redeemer, and 
 are made “ clean every whit." 
 
 , 77 Now let us consider what this 
 
 It means jull 
 
 and present means, for our consolation and 
 
 pardon. encouragement. It means four 
 
 infinitely blessed and life-giving truths for the 
 Church of God. First, the full, free, present, 
 unreserved forgiveness of sins, to every peni- 
 tent and believing soul approaching God by 
 Christ, and, presenting in an act of faith, His 
 merits and sacrifice as the one ground of pro- 
 pitiation and mercy, whereby His holy grief 
 and displeasure are put away, and the plagues 
 
FORGIVENESS . 
 
 83 
 
 and penalties of it remitted, and the veil that 
 shut out His face taken away and constant 
 access opened into His presence.- Loved be- 
 fore, or why should it have been redeemed, 
 now the soul is doubly loved ; and in the 
 grand hyperbole of the Psalmist, “ As far as 
 the East is from the West, so far shall He re- 
 move our transgressions from us ” [Ps.chi.26]. 
 
 And with pardon goes Right- T he gift of 
 eousness. You cannot really righteousness . 
 separate one from the other, either in the pur- 
 pose of God’s mercy or in the method of it. 
 So much so, that when St. Paul writes about 
 it to the Romans, he not only includes the 
 one in the other, but practically identifies 
 them as two halves of one whole. “ Even as 
 David also describeth the blessedness of the 
 man unto whom God imputeth righteousness 
 without works, saying, ‘ Blessed are they 
 whose iniquities are forgiven, whose sins are 
 covered. Blessed is the man to whom the 
 Lord will not impute sin’” [Rom. iv. 6 , 8], which 
 means, only diversely expressed, that to whom 
 He does not impute sin, forgiving him, He 
 does impute righteousness, justifying him. 
 One act does both, and one love bestows 
 
THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST . 
 
 84 
 
 both. To be forgiven is the same thing as to 
 be accounted righteous before God. For, 
 clearly, it is either both or neither. It is 
 either the prodigal crouching in the outside 
 darkness, or the accepted child standing be- 
 fore the Father in Christ, his representative 
 and head. 
 
 Sufficient But with pardon for sin, and 
 
 grace. the divine righteousness going 
 
 with it, is the pledge of continuous grace, as- 
 sured protection, and final victory. God is 
 ever consistent in His purpose, which is to 
 overcome sin in us ; and righteous in His char- 
 acter, which never claims anything that we 
 are not reasonably able to perform. Christ 
 died for our sins that we might die unto it. 
 Therefore, we are told to reckon ourselves 
 “ dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God 
 through Jesus Christ our Lord ” [Rom. vi. 113. Be 
 sure that whatever we need for holiness and 
 victory, God has for us — in Christ : only we 
 are to ask for it. “ The river of God is full of 
 water ” ; we also know that “ the water is the 
 
 gift Of God” LJohniv 10] 
 
 One more, and briefly (for this 
 is a thought which deserves and 
 
 Usefulness . 
 
FORGIVENESS. 
 
 85 
 
 will receive frequent, though terse, repetition), 
 pardon, acceptance, victory, imply and include 
 one thing more : our usefulness. Observe 
 this in the case of St. Peter. Even before he 
 denied his Lord, it was laid on him by an- 
 ticipation. “ When thou art converted, 
 strengthen thy brethren ” [Lukexxii.32]. This is 
 just what happened. After the Resurrection, 
 as they walked together by the Sea of Galilee, 
 Jesus asked him, “ Simon, son of Jonas, lov- 
 est thou me? Feed my lambs; feed my 
 sheep ” [John xxi. is, i 6 ]. He did feed them. Does 
 any reader of this book wish to know if he is 
 forgiven? It is neither a foolish wish nor a 
 presumptuous one. Let him ask himself, not 
 only if God is using him, but also if he is will- 
 ing to be used. The Master of the house is 
 not so rich in faithful witnesses that He can 
 afford to dispense with one of them. If the 
 joy of the divine forgiveness has really 
 touched the quick of our heart, it will be 
 quite impossible for us to be idle. 
 
 OW observe, and with Errors t0 be 
 
 grave attention, what avoided. 
 
 forgiveness does not mean. It does not mean, 
 let me be bold and ask, could it be good for 
 
86 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 us that it should, that the moral and physical 
 consequences of sin, so far as this life is con- 
 cerned, can ever be remitted or repealed. As 
 much in the moral government of God as in 
 the majestic order of nature, there is an inex- 
 orable reign of law. It is as true for a saint 
 as for a reprobate, “ Whatsoever a man sow- 
 eth, that shall he also reap ” [Gai.vi.7j. While 
 it is true that the drunkard may be utterly 
 delivered out of his cups, and the demon of 
 strong drink cast out of him, yet the 
 tissues, both of body and mind, until he 
 drops into his grave, must be marked by 
 the excesses of the past. Fifty years of 
 abstinence in front can only prevent future 
 mischief ; they cannot drain out of his system 
 one drop of what has been already swallowed. 
 That the past is irrevocable is a law for all 
 men in everything and everywhere. We 
 must consent meekly to bow to this absolute 
 rule of righteousness. We must recognize 
 and accept in it the merciful severity which, 
 to prevent sin, deliberately makes its results 
 evident and abiding, which will never try to 
 avert evil and assist goodness by making evil 
 as sweet as goodness. 
 
FORGIVENESS. 
 
 8 7 
 
 Nor again, are we to expect that, because 
 sin has been forgiven and put away, it will 
 never tempt us again. In our regeneration it 
 may have received a deadly wound, but being 
 hard to kill it still lives on, and unless we take 
 care, may soon lift up its head and be too 
 much for us again. Its forms, no doubt, will 
 be varied and modified by our years; for self- 
 love has a thousand developments. The old 
 man’s temptations are not the boy’s. A man 
 in middle life is tempted by trials of his own. 
 But it is the same mischief under a new dress. 
 Till we die, “the motions of sins in our mem- 
 bers ” will ever be tempting us to be false to 
 Christ ; nay, occasionally it almost seems that 
 those who most wish to be like Christ, are those 
 who are most with Him in the severity of His 
 temptations; and that the disciples, whom He 
 most dearly loves, honourably uses, continu- 
 ously sanctifies, are those whom the tempter is 
 permitted (as with Job of old) to harass with 
 the most grievous and poignant temptations. 
 Sometimes, as the Psalmist crying up to God 
 from the revealed depths of a heart which 
 makes them loathe themselves, they call 
 aloud to God, “Hath God forgotten the gra- 
 
88 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 cious; hath He in anger shut up His tender 
 mercies ?” [Ps. lxvii. 9]. 
 
 It does not again follow that sin forgiven is 
 sin forgotten, either by God, or by man, or by 
 ourselves. You may think it inexact to quote 
 Joseph's brethren as an instance of this, when 
 in the presence of the august ruler they said, 
 one to another, “We are verily guilty con- 
 cerning our brothers ” [Gen. xm. 21]. Certainly, 
 that pathetic history gives us no reason to 
 suppose that they ever truly repented of it 
 till the sin was brought home to their door. 
 But we may be quite sure that David’s sin 
 about Uriah was never forgotten, either by his 
 enemies or by himself, until the rest of the 
 grave had soothed him into forgetfulness. 
 St. Peter never forgot that he had denied his 
 Lord. Had he forgotten it, there would have 
 been many ready to give the seton of memory 
 a pull. This, too, bitter and humbling as it 
 may be, is also wholesome and sobering, op- 
 erating by the force of law through the action 
 of memory, and the power of mental associa- 
 tion, sometimes, too, the cruelty of unrelent- 
 ing hearts. Yet it is no proof whatever that 
 we are neither forgiven nor loved. What it 
 
FORGIVENESS. 
 
 89 
 
 does show is, that there must be some fresh 
 lesson for us to learn of humility or watchful- 
 ness ; more tenderness to acquire in dealing 
 with the infirmities of tempted brethren ; 
 more sympathy to manifest in helping them 
 to bear their burdens up the steep Hill, Diffi- 
 culty, to the house where Evangelist dis- 
 courses on the gospel of grace. Once more, 
 and oh ! that this awful truth could be writ- 
 ten as with the point of a diamond in our 
 hearts, it never can be quite the same thing — 
 no, not even in eternity — to have sinned, as 
 not to have sinned ; however profound the re- 
 pentance, complete the conversion, devoted 
 the service, edifying the life. A blameless 
 past must always be better than a stained one. 
 It is blessed to repent and to be forgiven ; but 
 blesseder, oh ! far blesseder is it never to have 
 left our Father's house at all, and to have 
 kept ourselves in a pure youth and an upright 
 manhood. Every one and everything is worse 
 for sin . For sin goes on scattering its con- 
 tagions and harvesting its results long after it 
 has been confessed, forsaken, and forgiven — 
 nay, long after he who has sinned has joined 
 the white-robed throng. To some this 
 
90 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIS T. 
 
 thought of the terrible, and, in a sense, un- 
 ending vitality of sin would be almost intol- 
 erable, if they could not somehow leave it 
 with Him who, in forgiving, knows what He 
 has forgiven, has other ways, we trust, of pre- 
 venting, and healing, and finally overcoming 
 evil, than He has been pleased to reveal. 
 
 What I would press now is, that not for 
 one moment is the thought to be tolerated, 
 that because Christ has died for us, and God 
 is reconciling us to Himself in Him, therefore 
 a little sin, more or less, is of small conse- 
 quence. If only for five minutes we could 
 contemplate the anguish of a lost soul over 
 unforgiven sin, could feel the gloom of the 
 outer darkness settling down on an unhappy 
 spirit banished from the King's marriage-feast, 
 we should better understand how to loathe 
 and resist it now. 
 
 In conclusion of this part of 
 the subject, let me remark on 
 St. Peter's words to the Church at Jerusalem 
 about the power of faith to purify the heart 
 of man. This faith (about which a subject 
 like the Gospel requires continual exposition) 
 applies, as necessity calls for it, the precious 
 
 Faith purifies . 
 
FORGIVENESS, 
 
 91 
 
 blood of Christ with all it means, and bestows, 
 to the continual frailties of the believer's con- 
 science, resting on the Word of God, claiming 
 His grace, going in and out of His presence, 
 uttering a true Amen to the claims of His 
 righteousness. 
 
 Yet faith does not mean presumption. 
 Rather it implies soberness and vigilance, a 
 burning desire to avoid sin, a quick readiness 
 to acknowledge it, when we have tumbled 
 into its snare; a solemn purpose to renounce 
 it for the future. 
 
 Also, to borrow the figure before us, really 
 in a certain sense it is unavoidable, that in his 
 daily activities, and inevitable mingling with 
 the world, the hands and feet of the cleansed 
 and accepted Christian must contract some 
 defilements, which need neither spoil his con- 
 sistency nor blunt his conscience. Yet the 
 more carefully we pick our steps through the 
 miry places of the world, the better it will be 
 for us. Soils once contracted easily work into 
 the character unless confessed and disowned. 
 The Church needs all the goodness she can 
 get, to help her faithfully to witness to the 
 world. 
 
92 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 SAID there was a precep- 
 tive value in this incident. 
 
 Preceptive 
 value of the 
 
 When Christ rose up from wash- incident - 
 ing the disciples' feet, He asked, “ Know ye 
 what I have done unto you ? If I, your Lord 
 and Master, have washed your feet, ye also 
 ought to wash one another's feet” [John %m. 143. 
 Let us clearly see that the Gospel does not 
 tell us merely what we are to have, but what 
 we are to be. It is not simply a way of escape 
 from pains and penalties, it explains our spirit- 
 ual inheritance in what God desires us to be, 
 through our likeness to Him. 
 
 What does it mean to wash one another's 
 feet, chiefly, if not exclusively, in that region 
 of thought and conduct, which is germane to 
 the subject before us, “ the forgiveness of 
 sins ” ? This is as important in its bearing 
 on the corporate life of the Church, as on the 
 personal edification of its individual members. 
 It has been well observed that “ the effect of 
 
 Fragments of Christianity is to introduce new 
 truth. relationships among men.” Chris- 
 
 tians, as Christians, have a claim on our regard ; 
 and this new relationship has corresponding 
 duties. In the almost total absence of any- 
 
FORGIVENESS. 
 
 93 
 
 thing like Church discipline, normally admin- 
 istered and dutifully accepted, the mutual 
 help and comfort that Christians can give 
 each other in their private religious life, grows 
 into exceptional importance. In nothing, as 
 I have before observed about this, is the gulf 
 so apparent between the primitive (p. 25) 
 times and our own, as in the almost Arctic 
 unsociableness of our modern religious life. 
 It is correlated by the comparative indiffer- 
 ence we feel to the spiritual edification of 
 our brethren, through our being devoid of all 
 sense of responsibility about it. What is the 
 love which I owe to my neighbour, simply as 
 a Christian to a Christian, distinct from, 
 though often it will be in addition to, the 
 love of affinity and friendship : it may be in 
 spite of personal unattractiveness, and a total 
 lack of intellectual or social sympathy — the 
 love, in fact, which I owe to him, because he 
 is dear to Christ, and Christ is real to me. 
 Here, assuredly, was the original, and with 
 many now, the hardly appreciated evidence 
 of the truth of Christianity, to which our 
 Lord appealed, “ Hereby shall all men know 
 that ye are my disciples, 'if ye have love one 
 
94 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 to another ” cjohnxm.35]; also in his general Epis- 
 tle St. John writes, “ We know that we have 
 passed from death unto life, because we love 
 the brethren” [1 John m. i 4 ]. I suppose that the 
 Lord Jesus washing His disciples' feet could 
 hardly have been a greater shock to St. Peter 
 than Philemon mixing in kindly intercourse 
 with Onesimus must have been to the Pagans 
 at Colosse, or a Hebrew of the Hebrews to 
 his own compatriots, eating, drinking, and 
 conversing with the Gentile scum of Rome. 
 Gentle reproof of sin is one way. Not to 
 permit sin in our brother, either by conniving 
 at it, or excusing it, or repeatedly suffering it 
 to pass unnoticed. Who does not instantly 
 recognize the immense need of tact, and deli- 
 cacy, and kindness here ? How those who 
 are ready to observe their brethren's faults, 
 should be quick to detect, and generous to 
 confess, their own. How those wdio find it 
 easy to set their brethren right are usually 
 those whose spiritual self-love tempts them to 
 cultivate their neighbour's vineyard rather 
 than their own. How the tenderest and hum- 
 blest souls, recollecting their Lord's warning, 
 “ Judge not that ye be not judged” [Matt vn. u, 
 
FORGIVENESS, 
 
 95 
 
 are prone to feel it a serious uncharitableness 
 even to observe sin in a brother, a grave pre- 
 sumption to notice it. Yet, surely the greatest 
 service we can do our brother is to help him 
 into goodness; and it is better to risk the 
 resentment of a friend, who will thank us for it 
 afterwards, than to be untrue to Christ. There 
 are opportunities of speaking, and delicacies 
 of expression, and charities of silence, and 
 preparations of prayer, which will occur to us 
 all, and which reflection and practice will make 
 perfect. Faithfulness need not be sharpness. 
 Reproof, studied and prayed about, may be 
 as gentle as the falling dew. This is certain, 
 that again and again we find ourselves reward- 
 ed for having, in this way, inflicted worse pain 
 on ourselves than on our brother, by his grati- 
 tude afterwards. To prevent sin is ever bet- 
 ter than to deliver out of it, a result which 
 a word of caution will often effect, and an act 
 of sacrifice perhaps clinch for ever. It is a 
 blessed feature of this present time, which, 
 indeed, has not so many elements of hopeful- 
 ness about it, that we can afford to forget one 
 of them, that a strenuous and successful effort 
 is being made in an organized and systematic 
 
THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 96 
 
 way to remedy and even to prevent intemper- 
 ance. The force of example is far more 
 telling than we have any notion of, in the 
 mere fact of total abstinence from intoxicat- 
 ing beverages, without apparent loss either of 
 health, briskness, or comfort. But when a 
 man, who has power over his own will, and 
 is perfectly justified, if he thinks proper, in a 
 moderate use of fermented drinks, sees that 
 by his personal surrender of liberty, in what 
 to him is innocent, but for his friend perilous, 
 he can help his friend to abstain from it, and 
 by both the sympathy and companionship in 
 it, keep him true to his purpose — there is as 
 good an instance as can be found whether of 
 St. Paul refusing to eat meat lest he should 
 make his brother stumble, or of. washing a 
 disciple's feet, as the Lord did here. 
 
 Happy is the family where husband, wife, 
 brother, sister, master, and servant dwell to- 
 gether in the godly unity of a common striv- 
 ing after holiness. Blessed is the Church 
 which has learned how to exercise, without 
 fear of misrepresentation from without, or of 
 schism from within, this function of discipline 
 for Christ. 
 
FORGIVENESS. 
 
 97 
 
 Here, to complete this part of the subject, 
 I would indicate another important detail in 
 this ministry of mutual edification which 
 ought not to be passed over in silence, merely 
 because some abuse it, and others misunder- 
 stand it, and others who have never tried it 
 condemn it unheard. “ Confess your faults 
 one to another, and pray one for another, that 
 ye may be healed ” [James v.iej. It is, of course, 
 the case that the precept, as we read it in 
 these homely words of the Apostle, simply 
 inculcates a private Christian duty between 
 individual believers ; and says nothing about a 
 formal absolution by a minister of Christ. 
 That, here, is neither enjoined, nor forbidden ; 
 simply it was not before the writer’s mind. 
 He thinks of a friend’s service, not a priestly 
 office. Now, do we Christians avail ourselves 
 of this help as- we ought — the young espec- 
 ially? for it is both easier and more helpful 
 for them. It is certain that we do not, and 
 we may be great losers thereby. A friend who 
 will not despise us for our weakness, nor dis- 
 own us for our sinfulness, nor tire of us for 
 being troublesome, nor scoff at us for our sen- 
 sibility, but who will patiently hear our tale, 
 7 
 
98 the gospel of christ. 
 
 readily understand our regret, easily recognise 
 our stumbling-blocks ; and be honest enough 
 to tell us the truth, cost us what it may — do 
 not you see what a real help he might be to 
 us; just because he loves us, understanding 
 us so thoroughly, and because he loves Christ, 
 anxious to deliver us out of what puts Him 
 to shame. Then when our tale is told, and 
 the counsel given, if all is ended with tender 
 and fervent prayer, the conscience lightened 
 of its burden hates sin more keenly than ever, 
 the heart with the sunshine of God’s face on 
 it is bright with the Saviour’s presence, and 
 made glad of the sympathy of a friend, whose 
 holy love represents Him to us. 
 
 No one, indeed, will be so foolish as to sup- 
 pose that talking about our faults is the only 
 or even the best way of getting rid of them, 
 or helping our brother to get rid of his. It 
 is quite conceivable that some of us need 
 checking rather than encouraging in this mat- 
 ter. Vanity creeps in everywhere; and can 
 feed itself even on the story of sin. But do 
 we, as we might, avail ourselves of each 
 other’s help in our spiritual difficulties? Here 
 as elsewhere does not God often aid us through 
 the ministry of man ? 
 
FORGIVENESS. 
 
 99 
 
 Of course there are other ways of minister- 
 ing to each other, and of washing the breth- 
 ren's feet. 
 
 Encouraging to good works, storing up 
 grace in the heart by good conversation, in- 
 viting to intercessory prayer, are ways obvious , 
 and familiar to us all. What I chiefly want 
 to urge is, that Christians fail in methodically 
 and continuously and devoutly helping each 
 other in the arduous effort after personal holi- 
 ness. The Church is a society ; and our 
 Christian life ought to have more of the social 
 element in it. When we walk alone, frost 
 more easily gets both into the limbs and heart. 
 Now this would not be, if we had more love. 
 The first thing, and the last we have to do, is to 
 love each other. Until we love each other we 
 shall be at no pains to bring each other nearer 
 to God. When we do, we shall enter into each 
 other’s difficulties, and bear with shortcom- 
 ings, while we see the error and hate the sin. 
 To love — here is at once the difficulty of our 
 life, and yet the nobleness of it. Yet if God 
 so loved us [Uohniv.ii], we ought also to love 
 one another; and if His love was made per- 
 fect in the revelation of His Godhead, our 
 
IOO 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 love to each other must be the continual work 
 of His grace. 
 
 HE words have also a _ v , 
 
 Doctrinal 
 
 doctrinal significance, and value of the 
 in more respects than one. lncident - 
 Thoughtful divines have constantly recog- 
 nized in this incident, and the teaching that 
 goes with it, a close connection not only with 
 Holy Baptism, but with the entire economy 
 of grace in the continual cleansing of the im- 
 perfect but faithful soul. If there is no such 
 thing as spiritual cleansing in baptism, Ana- 
 nias's direction to Saul, already quoted, has no 
 meaning, and it becomes an empty and dis- 
 appointing formalism. Surely, to the faithful 
 recipient of that Divine ordinance a free for- 
 giveness is assured. “ One baptism for the 
 remission of sins ” is the expression of the 
 Catholic faith ; and while the baptism cannot 
 be repeated, that primal forgiveness is pledge 
 and first-fruits of pardon renewed, bestowed 
 as frailty requires and repentance prepares. 
 In Holy Communion, while we ask, “ So to 
 eat the flesh of Jesus Christ and to drink His 
 blood, that our sinful bodies may be made 
 
FORGIVENESS. 
 
 IOI 
 
 clean by His body, and our souls washed 
 through His most precious blood,” we can 
 plead it as our ground of access, make it a 
 sacrifice of thanksgiving, only when it is first 
 a season of penitence. Claiming our privi- 
 lege as children, we will always remember 
 that the possibilities of the prodigal are deep 
 within our souls ; called to be saints, let us ask 
 for the power of the resurrection continually 
 to deliver us from the bondage of indwelling 
 sin. Perhaps we none of us know what we 
 miss through lack of explicit and detailed and 
 honest and sorrowful confession of sin. Yet 
 to the English Churchman the service of Holy 
 Communion, with its ample opportunities for 
 private and close reflection, would bring much 
 more solid and vivid comfort, if there were 
 less desultoriness and more effort for detailed 
 prayer. 
 
 When the Lord was approaching St. Peter 
 to wash his feet, and the apostle resisted 
 Him, it became necessary to vindicate with a 
 kind of sternness the province and duty of 
 faith. “ What I do thou knowest not now, 
 but thou shalt know hereafter” [John xm. 7]. The 
 Lord's meaning is plain. His word, and His 
 
102 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 character behind it, were to be the ground of 
 the apostle’s obedience. 
 
 The incident may explain 
 Assurance . something of the true doctrine 
 
 of assurance* in its blessed reasonableness, its 
 objective basis, its personal verification, and 
 its occasional disturbances. Nothing is in it- 
 self more reasonable than that a Christian 
 man should desire a sense of acceptance with 
 God. It is at once his encouragement to 
 obedience, his stimulus to goodness, and the 
 secret of his testimony to the world. “ Grant, 
 we beseech Thee, merciful Lord, Thy faithful 
 people pardon and peace, that they may be 
 cleansed from all their sins and serve Thee 
 
 with a quiet mind ” [Collect for 21st Sunday after Trinity]. 
 
 But there is an immature peace, which is not 
 generated by a true repentance. There is an 
 insecure peace, which does not spring from 
 the favour of God. The false assurance rests 
 on something within us. The true on some 
 one without and above us. The assurance of 
 my own feeling may be the heated creation of 
 
 * See for another statement on this subject, “ The Pres- 
 ence of Christ,” chap. i. 
 
FORGIVENESS. 
 
 103 
 
 a deluded fancy. The assurance of faith rests 
 as on a rock upon the Person and Word of 
 God. 
 
 Christ has died for me, and risen again. He 
 invites me to come to Him, to rest on Him, 
 to believe His love, to accept His salvation, 
 to receive His grace, to bear His yoke. I will 
 believe His love, on the authority of His 
 word, far above what I can either ask or 
 think. I accept the salvation which the voice 
 of His quickening Spirit has made a supreme 
 necessity to my conscience, and, by methods 
 chosen by Himself, has brought home to my 
 heart. I receive His grace, through the chan- 
 nels He has ordained for it, themselves im- 
 portant witnesses of His life and purpose — 
 the Word and Sacraments — careful not to 
 measure it by my own unaccountable and un- 
 controllable feelings at the moment, but by 
 His own promise to be present with His or- 
 dinances. I accept His yoke, perhaps not too 
 cheerfully at first. Yet the more readily I 
 carry it, the more He blesses me, and the 
 wider the freedom that I feel. As to its veri- 
 fication, what is the tenor of my life, and the 
 main direction of my will ? The play of my 
 
104 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 feelings may vary, as the clouds on the 
 mountain-side, or the hues of the tossing sea, 
 and the fault be none of mine. But if my 
 will be true, that is all that really matters. 
 Disturbance there may be, perhaps there 
 must be. Sometimes as the trial of our faith, 
 sometimes as the recognition of faithful en- 
 durance, sometimes, let it be confessed, from 
 slacked devotion, grave inconsistency, in- 
 dulged infirmity. Then it is God's kind and 
 holy frown. Perhaps the soul that has always 
 the same amount of assurance about God, and 
 of communion with Him, may have reason to 
 doubt the soundness of the one, and even the 
 existence of the other. While the soul, that 
 just because it is conscious of its own change- 
 ableness, rests on God's unchangeableness, 
 shall learn habitually to look away from itself, 
 and all its faults and caprices, simply and un- 
 interruptedly to gaze on the Lord. 
 
 One more thought, an awful one, for it in- 
 volves terrible issues, yet so much in front 
 among the controversies of the time, that one 
 who presumes to write about forgiveness, 
 could hardly pass it over, without, at least, 
 one word to counsel, though not to explain. 
 
FORGl VENESS. 105 
 
 A disciple was present at that Doe y probation 
 Paschal Supper, of whom it was en(ihere ? 
 said by one who knows, “ Good were it for 
 that man if he had never been born ” 
 [Mark xiv. 21]. Truly awful words. Of a certain 
 sin, that against the Holy Ghost, the same 
 gentle holy Saviour warned His hearers that 
 it hath no forgiveness, not in this world, nor 
 in the world to come [Matt. xn. 323. Again the 
 apostle of love, St. John, in his general Epis- 
 tle, carefully distinguishes between sins about 
 which we may pray, and a sin “ unto death ” 
 [1 John v. 16] — I do not say he shall pray for it. 
 
 Of course we know that there are two great 
 lines of thought on this question of the final 
 restoration of the lost ; each nobly jealous for 
 the character of God, and yearning for the 
 salvation of man. One of them feels out- 
 raged by the supposed injustice to His mercy 
 in the prospect of a hopeless exile from His 
 face and service, for those who pass away in 
 impenitence. The other is so profoundly im- 
 pressed by the unspeakable, inconceivable evil 
 and consequences of sin in the universe, and 
 its detestableness before Almighty God, that 
 even to try to open a door of mercy which 
 
106 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 seems closed, may mean to make light of 
 what God abhors. 
 
 Both, however, readily admit the extreme 
 peril of going one hair's breadth beyond the 
 Saviour's own utterances on this matter ; also 
 the unconscious yet real presumptuousness of 
 attempting to protect God's character from 
 His own revelation of it, or to make human 
 mercy and human righteousness more merci- 
 ful and more righteous than His. 
 
 There can be no doubt that Holy Scripture, 
 from the tender lips of the Saviour, contains 
 awful warnings about the final condition of 
 the wicked, which it is a sort of impiety to 
 explain away, and a grave irreverence to sup- 
 pose to have been uttered merely to frighten 
 us. When He who so loved Jerusalem, that 
 He died for it, wept over it because He could 
 not save it, were those dramatic tears ? 
 “Doubtless God has so surprised us by His 
 former acts of grace, by such an inconceivable 
 interposition in the Incarnation and the Cross, 
 that it does not become us to say that any- 
 thing is impossible with Him, except to deny 
 Himself. But still less does it become us, 
 creatures such as we are, who know so little, 
 
FORGIVENESS. 
 
 107 
 
 whose hearts and minds are so feebly under 
 control, whose wills are so treacherous, whose 
 passions are so blinding, either to narrow or 
 enlarge His words. If, indeed, He has told us 
 of more than we supposed His words to mean, 
 in God's name let it be shown. If not, let us 
 take care what we are doing. We may be 
 claiming to be wiser than the wisest, more lov- 
 ing than the most loving, who even on earth 
 partially lifted the veil from the unseen world ; 
 and, in parable and vision, disclosed its awful 
 secrets." * 
 
 Silence for those who dare not add to a 
 book, which, in their judgment, at this page 
 has been deliberately closed, trust from those 
 whose personal experience of God's love and 
 righteousness make them infinitely and im- 
 movably sure, that God will in the end justify 
 Himself as merciful and true before the entire 
 universe, diligence unwearied and tender, from 
 all who love God and hate sin, and wish to 
 make their brethren's risks as little as they 
 can, by doing their best both to bring them 
 unto light and love — here seems to me to be 
 
 * Dean Church’s Oxford Sermon, p. 119. [The entire 
 sermon should be read]. 
 
108 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 the true and humble wisdom of the servants 
 of God. To preach the Gospel of One, who 
 is mighty to save, and who to the last, though 
 in vain, tried to save even Judas, with unfal- 
 tering boldness to proclaim the sinfulness of 
 sin, and its awful unknown reward, here and 
 hereafter, is our twofold and solemn duty. 
 Here, also, to leave it, with Him who is both 
 Saviour and Judge. The Gospel of mercy to 
 tender and gentle hearts will ever be a more 
 congenial theme ; but the Gospel of holiness is 
 at least as needful. Only in the concord of 
 the Divine Perfections, only in the full and 
 unflinching declaration of a full-orbed doctrine, 
 is the secret of a right judgment to be found. 
 
 “ Discourses about the restoration of all 
 things, are about something that we have not 
 the least knowledge of, or any faculties or 
 foundation for such knowledge ; we have 
 nothing certain or plain within ourselves 
 about it, and so have nothing to oppose to 
 anything that is told us. The irrecoverable 
 state of men or angels is a dreadful thought 
 to us ; our sense of misery, tenderness, and 
 compassion for our fellow-creatures makes us 
 wish that no creatures should fall into it, and 
 
FORGIVENESS. 
 
 IO9 
 
 we are unable to show how such a state should 
 result from the infinite wisdom, goodness, and 
 perfection of God. But then we must consider 
 that we are here governed by our passions 
 and weakness, and only form a God according 
 to our own conceptions. For my own part, 
 this one saying, ‘Shall not the Judge of all 
 the earth do right/ is a stronger support to 
 my mind, and a better guard against all anx- 
 iety than the deepest discoveries that the most 
 speculative, inquisitive minds could help me 
 to. With this one assurance of the infinitely 
 infinite goodness of God, I resign up myself, 
 my friends, relatives, men, and angels to the 
 adorable, yet incomprehensible disposal of His 
 wisdom.”* 
 
 Lastly, is any reader of this book sore and 
 wounded by the thought of past unworthi- 
 ness ; whose reason tells him, that even God 
 cannot make it as though it had not been, 
 but that nothing can be done now to repair 
 or diminish what has been written down in 
 the Books that are to be opened? Well, my 
 brother or my sister, I have a Gospel for you. 
 Be humble and gentle, be charitable and for- 
 
 * Rev. W. Law. 
 
no 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 bearing, ever considering, when others fall, 
 your own past need of mercy, and how great 
 a forgiveness God has bestowed on you. 
 
 But also be bright and fearless, manful and 
 strong. If you can humbly look up in your 
 Saviour's face, because on your confession and 
 repentance, He has cast your sins behind His 
 back, surely you may look your neighbour in 
 the face. If God for Christ’s sake has con- 
 sented to forgive you, surely your brother 
 may. If not — “if God be for us, who can 
 be against us?” [R0m.viii.3i]. You are not alone 
 in your sinful history, nor in your past expe- 
 rience. Thousands and thousands share it 
 with you, of whom the Church and the world 
 dream not. In the great multitude which no 
 man can number, plucked as brands from the 
 burning, everlasting monuments of infinite 
 grace, will be David and the Magdalen, the 
 great Augustine, and the author of “ The Pil- 
 grim’s Progress ” ; also a host of purified souls 
 that deeply sinned and passionately repented, 
 whose early transgressions have been equitably 
 and generously forgotten in the grand useful- 
 ness of their after lives and the sweet fra- 
 grance of their sanctity. 
 
FORGIVENESS. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The more you have been forgiven, so much 
 the more thereby you know of God’s patience 
 and compassion ; so much greater the burden 
 laid on you of confessing about it to others. 
 As to your Heaven, be sure of this, that what- 
 ever your present sadness, or still unhealed 
 remorse, when once the welcome flashes on 
 you from the face of the Lamb that was slain, 
 there will be perfect soundness and cleanness 
 in the presence of us all. As you look into 
 your heart and feel no sin there ; as you won- 
 der at the whiteness of your robe, and find no 
 stain there, the sentence will steal unto your 
 heart and heal it for ever, “ Clean every whit.” 
 
IV. 
 
 DISCIPLINE. 
 
 11 SHOW ME WHEREFORE THOU CONTENDEST WITH ME.” 
 
 u The whole wisdom and magnanimity of life consist 
 in a will conformed to what is y with a heart 
 ready for what is not 
 
 O you condemn that 
 prayer ? Why ? To J°^ s question 
 
 me, indeed, it seems 
 the most reasonable and natural and becom- 
 ing and religious thing a sorrowful man could 
 do. Reasonable, because God's contention 
 with him was a plain intimation that he had 
 something to say to him ; and how could he 
 discover what it was unless he asked ? Natu- 
 ral, for is not that just what we desire and 
 expect from our own children when we con- 
 tend with them ? It must happen sometimes 
 with the best children and the kindest par- 
 ents, either that some indulgence has to be 
 (112) 
 
DISCIPLINE . 
 
 113 
 
 withheld, or some task imposed, or some re- 
 serve manifested, or some refusal given. Well, 
 what does a parent wish for under such cir- 
 cumstances ? That the child so dealt with 
 should go on in its daily routine with a cold 
 or flippant indifference, or that it should 
 quickly and earnestly inquire, “ What have I 
 done ? ” Becoming, for this reason. The wis- 
 dom of man is in the knowledge of God ; and 
 the better we know Him the wiser we be- 
 come. But the knowledge of God, just like 
 any other knowledge, will not come to us 
 simply by our sitting before the fire and 
 feebly wishing to be wise. The human soul 
 is not a dead reservoir, but a living organ. 
 Most of all is such a question eminently relig- 
 ious when it has a right motive beneath it, 
 and a true purpose in front. What is the 
 right notion of religion ? Surely the appre- 
 hending of God, that we may serve Him and 
 enjoy Him. Yet what is the way of the great 
 mass of mankind ? Is it not to do their best 
 to forget Him, to use Him for need and sor- 
 row, to ignore Him in health and prosperity — 
 never to take the trouble of asking Him ques- 
 tions of any kind — never to try to creep 
 
1 14 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 nearer to see the glory of His face? But then 
 you may ask, Did Job put this question in 
 quite a proper manner? Well, I am not con- 
 cerned to go into that. I fear that even the 
 nobleman in the Gospel may have been guilty 
 of a little bluntness, when with his child’s life 
 quivering in the balance, he took no notice 
 of the Lord’s remark about signs and won- 
 ders , just blurted out, “ Sir, come down ere 
 my child die.” The Saviour does not appear 
 to have taken offence at it. That troubled 
 majestic soul may possibly have expressed it- 
 self with heat and even anguish. His body 
 was consumed with disease. His spirit was 
 blistered with the cruel provocations of his 
 friends. Everything in life he cared for 
 seemed gone. Even his own wife had given 
 him up, instead of strengthening and consol- 
 ing him. Was he to lose God as well ? His 
 heart said no to that ; “ O God, do not Thou 
 condemn me ; rather show me wherefore Thou 
 contendest with me.” 
 
 Now let us think out together the true 
 answer to this question, suggested to us all 
 in turn by the trials of life. Only the area 
 in which our inquiry shall move must be a lit- 
 
DISCIPLINE. 
 
 115 
 
 tie wider than Job’s. A careful study of the 
 patriarch’s history makes it plain that the 
 main object of the Divine purpose in Job’s 
 trials was to show that there is such a thing 
 possible as disinterested love to God. “ Doth 
 Job serve God for nought” [Job i. 9i was the 
 coarse and bitter sneer of the adversary. Try 
 and see, replied Jehovah. The result is before 
 us ; on the whole Job did, and, in God’s never- 
 failing righteousness, a plentiful recompense 
 was requited him for having been made what 
 some might call the victim of an important 
 experiment for the Church at large. For he 
 was even more blessed in the end than in the 
 beginning, and no saint in all the Bible at- 
 tracts more of our sympathy, or deserves 
 more of our imitation, than this grand tried 
 man. 
 
 Already I have said that we are each to try 
 to find the true answer to this question, when- 
 ever it comes home to ourselves. But we shall 
 have no answer unless we do ask for it. Al- 
 ways let us ask, and at once. In that case we 
 may be sure of one ; for Job, you see, got his, 
 though slowly and gradually. Certainly he 
 would not have got it had he been wrong in 
 
THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 1 16 
 
 asking for it. Sooner or later we, too, shall 
 have ours, though should we have to wait 
 longer for it than we like, it may be our Lord 
 saying to us : “ Tarry thou my leisure, be 
 strong, and I will comfort thy heart.” 
 
 How does God contend with us? 
 
 God’s ways of To select five instances out of 
 contending. many: He deals with us in the 
 sphere of the mind through mystery, in the 
 sphere of the affections through bereavement, 
 in the sphere of the body through sickness, 
 in the sphere of the will through disappoint- 
 ment, in the sphere of the conscience through 
 remorse. Not necessarily with any of us in all 
 these ways, though some of us know a little 
 about them all ; seldom by more than one of 
 them at once, perhaps never with many, or 
 we should die. But ever as a wise and kind 
 physician, He deals out to each of us the in- 
 dividual treatment that precisely suits us. As 
 a refiner of silver He waits till He can see His 
 own image reflected in us ; and instantly takes 
 us out when the refining is done. 
 
 In the sphere of the under- 
 standing He contends with us 
 through mystery, which, while it does not 
 
DISCIPLINE . 
 
 ii 7 
 
 make an utter darkness, impresses us with the 
 profoundness of our ignorance, and of our ut- 
 ter incapacity quite to escape it. The vast- 
 ness of nature, the presence of evil, the future 
 of mankind, the fact of conscience, the power 
 of circumstances, the instinct of immortality, 
 apart, and together ; in a word, the incessant 
 and insoluble problems of the universe, some- 
 times fall on man’s spirit, depressing action if 
 not compelling despair. Within the sphere of 
 dogma such lofty and critical truths as the 
 Godhead of Christ, and the nature of the 
 atonement, and the value of the sacraments, 
 to sensitive souls that love the truth, and in 
 consequence of that love, prize it so highly 
 that they dare not be easily sure of having 
 attained it, mean mental conflict — sometimes 
 spiritual — amounting to agony. We honour 
 them for it, and dare not hurry nor judge 
 them, while we would gladly welcome them 
 into our light. To them it is a fiery trial. Or 
 former convictions come suddenly to be in a 
 state of flux. Principles, thought to be set- 
 tled long ago, are painfully disturbed by a 
 doubt that hamstrings our firm hold of them. 
 Nothing seems certain but that nothing can be 
 
n8 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 proved. We were born and we shall die. Of 
 what else can we be sure ? 
 
 In the sphere of the affections 
 Bereavement. _ , , . - 1 . 
 
 God contends with us through 
 
 bereavement . What love in all the world is so 
 God-like, so exquisite, so pure, so unselfish, as 
 the love of an affectionate parent for a pre- 
 cious child ; especially if there is but one 
 parent left, who feels to owe the debt of a 
 doubtful tenderness! 
 
 The infant has our caresses ; but as infancy 
 passes into childhood, and childhood slowly 
 matures into responsible youth, this love is 
 deepened by sympathy, rooted in augmenting 
 experience, cemented by association, beatified 
 by the joy of mutual sacrifice. The child, 
 growing into the companion, presently be- 
 comes the friend. The daughter takes the 
 mother’s place by the side of her father ; the 
 son makes a strong arm on which his widowed 
 mother can lean. Then into this sweet Para- 
 dise creeps the cold shadow of disease ; and 
 the beloved child, like some sweet jasmine, 
 cut by an early frost, pales, sickens, withers, 
 at last dies ; and it is a loss which nothing 
 afterwards fills up or ought to fill up ; a grief 
 
DISCIPLINE. 
 
 1 19 
 
 which gnaws the heart with a corroding sad- 
 ness. “ I will go down into the grave unto 
 my son, mourning” [Gen. xxxvu. 35]. Jacob's com- 
 plaint is the soul's first, and sometimes abid- 
 ing consolation in the loyalty of a passionate 
 sorrow. 
 
 In the sphere of the body, He ^ 
 contends with us through sick- 
 ness. This, in Job's case, was the final calam- 
 ity that crushed him to the earth, about which, 
 the mysterious adversary, malignant in his 
 vast experience of human nature, eagerly said 
 to Jehovah, u Skin for skin, yea, all that a man 
 hath, will he give for his life ” [.iobii.4]. Ob- 
 serve further that this is true, not so much or 
 only because a man's selfishness resents with 
 especial keenness what so intimately touches 
 the vital springs of his being, but because the 
 body, being the material shrine or organ, both 
 of his domestic affections, and his mental en- 
 dowments and his personal enjoyments, and 
 his daily activities, in sickness the wheels of 
 life are for the moment paralyzed, by death 
 finally stayed. In clouding our intellect, in 
 depressing our energies, in interrupting our 
 duties, in suspending our pleasures, sickness 
 
120 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 at once diminishes our dignity and impairs 
 our usefulness. 
 
 Yet it is not so much in what it causes now 
 as in what it threatens presently that its keen- 
 est sting is to be found. Across the distant 
 future the sick man sends the messengers of 
 uneasy and trembling conjectures to ask if a 
 cloud is rising over the sea. It may not come 
 to-day, nor to-morrow ; but there is a morrow 
 when it must come, be our children reared or 
 not reared, be our life's task finished, or only 
 one-third done. The vapour, no bigger than 
 a man's hand, is already on the horizon for 
 some one who reads these words ; when it be- 
 gins to climb the sky, and the rapid scud floats 
 over the azure, we know what it means : we 
 are in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. 
 
 Disappoint- In the sphere of the will He 
 
 ment. contends with us (to take one 
 
 instance only) through disappointment. It 
 may be some coveted promotion, a post we 
 could suitably fill, and perhaps deserve to fill, 
 a distinction which would carry with it the ap- 
 proval of a laborious life. When we are denied 
 it, a sense of injustice wounds us, for in such 
 moments an exaggerated self-consciousness 
 
DISCIPLINE. 
 
 1 2 1 
 
 makes us forget that there are others in the 
 world meritorious like ourselves. It seems a 
 very thankless task, again to begin to roll the 
 stone up a hill which it will never clamber. 
 The heart wraps up itself in its pride, and 
 tries, in vain, to be content. Or the prize, 
 which we thought, could we gain it, would 
 make our life a long midsummer, now that it 
 is ours, turns out no prize at all, and a tie in- 
 dissoluble, and with no place for repentance, 
 is the secret worm of our life's content. Of 
 all fatal errors in this world, and the only 
 wonder is that it is not multiplied ten thou- 
 sandfold, the most fatal and the most sorrow- 
 ful is that of an unhappy marriage. The 
 heart knoweth its own bitterness, and self- 
 respect keeps it a hidden bitterness. Yet bit- 
 ter it is, and with no hope about it, where a 
 gulf separates two natures which never can 
 know sympathy ; still worse, if to scorn is 
 added cruelty, not indeed of hands, but of 
 sharp and poisoned words. 
 
 In the sphere of conscience 
 
 TT , . . . , . Sense of sin. 
 
 He contends with us by the 
 
 sense of sin. This was eminently the case 
 
 with Job. It is always more or less the case, 
 
122 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST . 
 
 even with those who personally know Him as 
 God that pardoneth iniquity ; how much more 
 with those, to whose inmost spirit the fact 
 and guilt and consequences of sin have yet to 
 be brought home ! 
 
 In some respects this is the most awful and 
 intolerable of all — let me add, the most blessed. 
 For a human soul to be brought face to face 
 with the awful holiness of God, and to be 
 made to see the moral chasm between what 
 He is and what they find themselves ; to come 
 to see for the first time what sin deserves, and 
 righteousness demands, and God remembers, 
 and memory recalls, and conscience admits, 
 and perhaps neighbours whisper: to be dumb 
 before Him, since no denial is possible, and 
 be abashed before Him, since there is no ex- 
 cuse to make ! When God contended with 
 Saul, he remained three days, and did neither 
 eat nor drink; from Job the answer was, “I 
 am vile, what shall I answer Thee ; I will lay 
 my hand on my mouth ” [jobxi.u. 
 
 Christian reader, when thou passest through 
 this consuming fire, do not wish to quench it, 
 do not fear its shrivelling thee into dust. The 
 holiness of thy Father is contending with 
 
DISCIPLINE . 
 
 123 
 
 thee, that thou mayest presently partake of 
 it — listen to it, it speaks in love ; let the one 
 name thou namest be that of Jesus; thy one 
 humble pleading, “ Is there not forgiveness 
 with thee, therefore thou mayest be feared.” 
 
 What then — if such thy lot — thou seest thy Judge, 
 The sight of Him will kindle in thy heart 
 All tender, gracious, reverential thoughts. 
 
 Thou wilt be sick with love, and yearn for Him, 
 
 And feel as though thou could’st but pity Him, 
 
 That one so sweet should e’er have placed Himself 
 At disadvantage, such as to be used 
 So vilely by a being so vile as thee, 
 
 And thou wilt hate and loathe thyself ; 
 
 . . . . . and wilt desire 
 
 To slink away, and hide thee from His sight ; 
 
 And yet wilt have a longing eye to dwell 
 Within the beauty of His countenance. 
 
 And these two pains, so counter and so keen, 
 
 The longing for Him, when Thou seest Him not, 
 
 The shame of self at thought of seeing Him — 
 
 Will be thy veriest, sharpest purgatory. 
 
 — Dream of Gerontius. 
 
 For why does God contend? why does God 
 Through mystery He would dis- contend ? 
 cipline faith, yes, and in some of us, character. 
 Surely it is better to think and to be troubled 
 
124 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 by our thinking, than not to think and have the 
 base peace of a brute. Bishop Butler, with 
 that tenderness which sometimes characterizes 
 really great thinkers, has suggested (as many 
 of us will remember) that difficulties of belief 
 may not only be permitted, but intended for 
 the temptation of characters of a certain type, 
 to which coarser temptations would have no 
 attraction. Let us not for a moment suppose 
 that God discourages the use of reason. Why 
 should He disown perhaps the noblest of His 
 own gifts? Nor does He depreciate knowl- 
 edge. The more we have of it, and of all 
 sorts, the better. Nor does it displease Him 
 that we ask questions. Perhaps what He de- 
 sires is that we should ask more, if only they 
 are of the sort that can be answered. For to 
 give us answers that would be beyond us, 
 would be no kindness at all. But He would 
 have us see that our faculties are of necessity 
 limited ; and that it is both our wisdom and 
 our dutifulness to accept the limitation of 
 them. In the sphere of Revelation the laws 
 of physical research do not hold. For the in- 
 dispensable method of educating the spiritual 
 nature of man is faith. 
 
DISCIPLINE. 
 
 125 
 
 To recognize what we cannot explain, and 
 to consent that it should not be explained, is 
 the humility of true wisdom. To accept what 
 we could not otherwise have known, on the 
 authority of God's revealed word, is the obe- 
 dience of Faith. 
 
 Through bereavement God would stir love 
 — love to Himself. It is sometimes said in a 
 loose and shallow — yes, and cruel way — that 
 bereavements are a divine protest against idol- 
 atry. Occasionally this may be true, but very 
 often they are not protests at all. To the 
 soul transplanted into Paradise, it means a 
 gracious welcome into the joy of the Lord. 
 To those left behind it is the silent appeal 
 of an unspeakable tenderness. “ Lovest thou 
 me?" God does not grudge us our human 
 love. I protest against that thought as a 
 libel upon Him. He has made us and com- 
 manded us to love each other. This would 
 be a far better and happier world if there were 
 more love in it instead of less. The more we 
 love each other, the more we fulfil His pur- 
 pose and resemble Himself. But He does 
 claim the first place in our regard, and the 
 only altar in our home ; and it is a question if 
 
126 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST . 
 
 He often gets it, or even can get it, till He 
 comes Himself to ask for it with a voice there 
 is no resisting. While we may safely cherish 
 the memory of those who are taken even with 
 a sad and passionate tenderness, we are also 
 to listen to the voice that whispers to us in 
 our sorrow, “ Thy brother shall rise again — 
 now, be more to me.” 
 
 Through sickness He would compel de- 
 pendence. Here let us be quite honest. Un- 
 less fear startled us, or pain unnerved us, or 
 mortality overshadowed us, what a Godless 
 world this redeemed earth would be ! But 
 for sickness, there would be no mile-stones to 
 tell us of the ever-nearing Eternity. But for 
 sickness, we should never know either God’s 
 power or man’s love. 
 
 Another reason for discipline is to enable 
 us, through a quickened sympathy with those 
 who suffer, and a personal gratefulness for 
 God’s unspeakable tenderness, to “ comfort 
 them which are in any trouble, by the com- 
 fort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of 
 God” [2 C<»r. i. 4]. 
 
 “Are the consolations of God small with 
 thee?” [job xv. ii] is a very searching question 
 
DISCIPLINE . 
 
 127 
 
 sometimes put to us by others, better still by 
 ourselves, and what answer can we give to it? 
 As hinted elsewhere, there is a vicarious ele- 
 ment in all holy sorrow, not indeed to help us 
 to atone, but to understand and heal ; for to 
 know how to comfort is one of the rarest as 
 well as blessedest of the Christian virtues. It 
 is not only saying the right thing, but saying 
 it in the right way, and at the right moment. 
 Nay, sometimes it is not speaking at all — si- 
 lence may be its most expressive channel. 
 The look of the eye, the pressure of the hand, 
 the very feeling that your mere presence cre- 
 ates of intelligent, if helpless, sadness is com- 
 fort. You cannot do it unless you have been 
 through trouble yourself ; nay, it takes years 
 to acquire the subtle tact to feel the moment 
 when you have said enough, and had better 
 go away. Indeed, this art of consolation is a 
 delicate art, only learned in the school of 
 Christ, and its secret is love, built on experi- 
 ence. For when He consoles, we learn and 
 see it all. Who consoles like Him? It is 
 worth a good deal of trouble to learn to feel 
 sin hateful, and to come to measure the world 
 at its true worth, as a weaned child to rest 
 
128 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST . 
 
 softly on the bosom of God, and to feel 
 Heaven so real and so near, that to go there 
 at once would only be like stepping into the 
 next room. To be taught truly to say to 
 God, “ Thou art my portion/’ and thereby to 
 learn how to press it on others, is worth the 
 heaped-up sorrows of a life. No one can 
 comprehend the Divine tenderness but those 
 whose souls have been drenched with it. 
 Christ is so gentle, that He is like a mother 
 hanging over us ; so humble, that He pa- 
 tiently waits our time till we turn and listen ; 
 so compassionate, that He is ready to have us 
 on any terms ; so filled with kindness, that we 
 seem to hear Him say, “ Come as you are, and 
 say what you will, only trust me.” 
 
 Once more, through various disappoint- 
 ments, He would have us search the motives 
 of our conduct, analyse its principles, count 
 up its mercies, and understand its reward. 
 Sometimes they come to test us. Are we 
 serving God for Himself or for His gifts? 
 With all of us, motives are mixed. Still, does 
 self preponderate ? Sometimes they are har- 
 bingers of success ; and a brief chagrin, re- 
 sisted with manliness and effaced by generos- 
 
DISCIPLINE. 
 
 129 
 
 ity, soon is surprised by the final accomplish- 
 ment of its hopes. Sometimes it is to give 
 the soul a great opportunity of surrendering 
 its will to God, and of saying, “only Thyself.” 
 Always it must be to stir prayer, to purify 
 conduct, to make us touch the sceptre of the 
 King, offering better things presently, with 
 the joyous grasp of faith. “ It is better,” 
 says to itself the chastened soul, “ as it is, 
 though I could never have chosen it for my- 
 self, and could not safely be consulted as to 
 its disappearing. God has chosen for me, and 
 the spaces of eternity are before Him, and it 
 is all an education for the real life in front. 
 I am glad that He should choose ; and if in a 
 momentary petulance I fret at His will, He 
 will remember that I am only a child ; and 
 will not hastily confound a transient impa- 
 tience with a deliberate rebelliousness.” 
 
 Lastly, through a sense of sin He would 
 ripen holiness and deepen humility, and pro- 
 mote a stern, watchful self-control. Job, as 
 you will observe, if you read the book care- 
 fully, never denied that he was a sinner. In 
 one of his saddest appeals, he expressly says 
 to God, “ Thou makest me to possess the in- 
 9 
 
1 30 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 iquities of my youth ” [job xni. 26]. Really all 
 that he did say was, that his manhood had 
 been upright and pure. Well, if it had been, 
 it had been ; and for him to have admitted 
 that it had been otherwise would have been 
 weakly consenting to a lie. But his friends, 
 who could not explain his calamities otherwise 
 than as the Divine visitation of some terrible 
 though unknown iniquity, insisted on his con- 
 fessing what had never happened ; and he 
 would have died sooner than do that. “ Till 
 I die I will not remove mine integrity from 
 me” [job -xxvii. 5]. Was he not right ? Glearly he 
 was. What, then, was Job's error and neces- 
 sity ? His error was that he set too much 
 store by his beneficent and upright life, and 
 that he had not learnt enough of the Divine 
 righteousness and of his own vast imperfec- 
 tion to set his personal goodness at its right 
 value. His necessity was to have a deeper 
 sense of the sinfulness of sin, and a more 
 humbling estimate of his own goodness. 
 Therefore God in His great love to him 
 brought back his sin to his remembrance, 
 and made him mourn afresh, not because it 
 had not been already pardoned, rather just 
 
DISCIPLINE. 
 
 131 
 
 because it was ; and in the end, out of a hum- 
 bled and broken heart, the great patriarch, 
 like a sorrowful and chastened child, sobbed 
 out his memorable confession into the ear of 
 his Father : “ I have heard of Thee by the 
 hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth 
 Thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent 
 in dust and ashes” [Job xiii. 5, 6 ]. 
 
 “ Heaven is not mounted to on wings of dreams, 
 
 Nor doth the unthankful happiness of youth 
 Aim thitherward, but floats from bloom to bloom, 
 With earth’s warm patch of sunshine well content. 
 Tis sorrow builds the shining ladder up, 
 
 Whose golden rounds are our calamities, 
 
 Whereon our firm feet planting, nearer God 
 The spirit climbs, and hath its eyes unsealed.” 
 
 — Lowell. 
 
 One other reason for discipline I have kept to 
 the last, for there is a good deal to say about 
 it, and it is a blessed Gospel for us all. 
 
 j]OU remember Christ's ques- slowness in 
 tion to Philip on the night learning Christ. 
 of the betrayal : “ Have I been so long time 
 with you, and yet hast thou not known me ? ” 
 [John xiv. 9]. Evidently the real spirit of that 
 
132 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 question was a pained surprise. Surprise, for 
 in the perfectness of His humanity it simply 
 amazed Him that one who for so long had 
 observed His acts, heard His words, and en- 
 joyed His society, could so feebly have com- 
 prehended the motive and the nature of His 
 work. Pained surprise, for in this strange, 
 dull slowness, there was not altogether lack- 
 ing the element of sin. Once before, indeed, 
 He had asked of them as a body: “ How is it 
 that ye do not understand?” [Markviii.21]. It is 
 fair to observe that those were early days of 
 excusable ignorance. But in the last six 
 months both His discourses and miracles 
 ought to have opened a new window into 
 Heaven. 
 
 Had there been more devotion, there might 
 have been more intelligence ; for though love 
 cannot create ideas, it sets them moving and 
 burning. In truth, it was just one more thorn 
 in that crown of sharpness which had begun 
 to pierce His brow. 
 
 But we must not linger in that upper cham- 
 ber, with all its holy, though mournful mem- 
 ories. Across the silent years that separate 
 us from the Apostles, that question descends 
 
DISCIPLINE . 
 
 133 
 
 to us, and Jesus, though crowned with glory, 
 still sadly asks those who profess to believe 
 on Him, “ Have I been so long with you, and 
 yet you have not known me ? ” 
 
 Now there are two chief thoughts in these 
 words, gleaming with searching light, both 
 on heart and conscience. One is the fact, of 
 vital significance, that it is quite possible for 
 us to be with Christ, and for Christ to be with 
 us, and yet for us not really to know Him. 
 The other, its correlative — the discovery of 
 which is the first beating of our conscious 
 spiritual life, as the going on to master it is 
 the perfection of its strength — is, that the 
 only true way of knowing Christ is to see 
 Him as the Revelation of the Father. Here 
 is the Gospel indeed. 
 
 “ So long time.” Here, of course, is the 
 sting of the reproach. Doubtless He had 
 been with others also, and to no better pur- 
 pose. He had been with the multitudes who 
 thronged and pressed Him, but did not reach 
 Him with the touch of faith. He had drawn 
 to His side a rich young man, who admired 
 Him enough to consent to some sacrifice for 
 Him, yet could not sufficiently trust Him to 
 
134 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 surrender all. A scribe had cordially praised 
 Him, and was told that he was on the edge of 
 the kingdom, though not yet quite inside it. 
 The children sang Hosanna in the Temple ; 
 and the officers sent to seize Him were spell- 
 bound. Yet all went for nothing, when His 
 foes hemmed Him in for His final Passion. 
 The rays of His Divine glory had fallen on 
 those hard hearts as an Arctic sunbeam on 
 icebergs. They flashed and glittered, yet 
 when night came it found them frozen still. 
 But for St. Peter, who had confessed His God- 
 head, and for Thomas, who had proposed to 
 go and die with Him, and for Philip, whom 
 Pie had taken such special pains to choose — 
 for these not yet to have discerned in Him 
 the Word made flesh, full of grace and truth, 
 must have brought to the great Teachers 
 heart one of those pangs of disappointment 
 which those who try to serve Him now find 
 so hard to bear. 
 
 Yet the lesson which this fact discloses, 
 and of which it is the inevitable correlative, 
 is of more moment still. Philip had said, 
 “ Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth 
 us ” [John xiv. 8]. O surely it was a lofty prayer, 
 
DISCIPLINE. 
 
 135 
 
 and we may be thankful to catch something 
 of the nobleness of its spirit. Yet it showed 
 an ignorance of Christ, of which more among 
 us are guilty than we suspect. For there are 
 various ways of knowing Christ, and they are 
 all good in their way, if only they are vital- 
 ized with that spiritual apprehension of Him 
 which is Eternal Life. Without it, they are 
 but as the paper and ink of a mouldy parch- 
 ment. 
 
 We may know Him “ after the flesh,” as 
 Judas Iscariot knew Him, and yet smoothly 
 kissed Him to His Cross. We may know Him 
 sacramentally in the corporate knitting of our 
 redeemed nature to His Incarnate Person, 
 and yet the outward incorporation may never 
 become truly consummated by quickening and 
 perfecting grace. We may know Him dog- 
 matically, and have all the glorious truths of 
 the Catholic Creed in our mind and on our 
 lips ; and yet some day He may be forced to 
 say, “ I never knew you, for you have never 
 known me by love.” Christian reader, do you 
 really care to know how you must know Him 
 if you would escape that reproach? He tells 
 us here, further on, “ He that hath seen me 
 
136 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 hath seen the Father ” [johnxiv.9]. You ask, “ How 
 is He the Revelation of the Father; how you 
 and I and all of us, now as well as then, here- 
 after as well as to-day, can discover in Jesus of 
 Nazareth the mind and character of God?” 
 Let me give two instances now. Several 
 others may occur to us further on. He was a 
 revelation of His Fathers Providence in the 
 government of the world, which did not make 
 things easier or pleasanter for Him, though 
 He was the Son of His Eternal Love, bent 
 on doing His will. It sent Him to poverty 
 and toil and misinterpretation, and that 
 mournful, awful solitariness which is ever the 
 penalty, and reward, and sure mark of lofty, 
 saintly souls, moving on in front of their time. 
 It did not spare Him anything painful, did 
 not recompense Him with outward human de- 
 lights because of His righteousness, did not 
 prevent sorrow nor banish care. The “ all 
 things” were the same for Him, as for any 
 one else, nothing softened, nothing altered. 
 He was also the revelation of Plis Father’s 
 Nature, which, described in a single word, is 
 Love. As in Him we see the ideal for man 
 accomplished, so we see the Perfection of God 
 
DISCIPLINE. 
 
 137 
 
 revealed ; and His human life is the mirror in 
 which perfect man and perfect God are shown. 
 God's love is of course mainly set forth in 
 His bountifulness and compassion, and firm- 
 ness and patience, and wisdom and strength : 
 but most of all (for a moment to anticipate 
 the following chapter) in His spirit of sacri- 
 fice. No one is a true parent who is not 
 capable of sacrifice for his children ; and this 
 must not be merely because he desires thereby 
 to win and enlarge their love, for then it 
 would only be a subtle selfishness. Besides, 
 they will never love their parents as their 
 parents love them ; it is idle, if not unreason- 
 able, to expect it. But because they are ours 
 and God's choicest gift to us, and we desire 
 their highest welfare, we are content to suffer 
 for their sake. This thought is surely con- 
 tained in St. Paul's expression, indicating, in 
 the Father of our spirits giving His Son for 
 us, the unspeakable value and meaning of that 
 sacrifice. “ He that spared not His own Son, 
 but gave Him up for us all, how shall He not 
 with Him also freely give us all things?" 
 [Rom. viii.32]. Here is the Gospel indeed ! The 
 Father's heart towards His Son, when the 
 
1 38 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 sense of His Father's presence was no longer 
 felt by Him, at the time when He most need- 
 ed it, and (if human language on such a mat- 
 ter be not presumptuous) most deserved it ; 
 who shall fathom the tenderness in it, or ex- 
 pound the mystery of that awful loneliness? 
 What we can imagine is, what it would cost 
 any of us to refuse the consolation of our love 
 to a child, at the moment he was dying to 
 serve us ; what we are intended to observe, is 
 the greatness of the love that perfected the 
 redemption of men ! But we shall dwell on 
 this again. 
 
 Christian reader, I dare to hope that if you 
 have been in any sort of way trying to under- 
 stand this question of Christ, and what comes 
 out of it, you will have been set thinking as 
 to its possible relation to you, and what that 
 Voice says to your own spirit. Anyhow, do 
 not say, “ It is not for me." It is indeed. 
 With the great bulk of intelligent Christian 
 people, Christ has been more or less present 
 from their earliest lives. He has incorporated 
 them into the baptismal fellowship, dealt with 
 them by the influences of His Holy Spirit, 
 stirred them with gladness, searched them 
 
DISCIPLINE. 
 
 139 
 
 with sorrow. His Name has been the pre- 
 cious birthright of their Christian heritage ; 
 and His life the sublime ideal of a matchless 
 goodness elevating their daily existence, even 
 in its homeliest features, with a tender and 
 dignified beauty. His words have become 
 part of their mental wealth. When they have 
 wanted Him He has ever been at hand to 
 soothe and heal. When they have not wanted 
 Him He has patiently waited until they call 
 on Him, and the question is, what are they 
 really the better for this divine nearness and 
 love ? 
 
 This knowledge of Christ must iY hat our 
 be a separate and individual knowledge of 
 knowledge. Each must know Christ must 
 Him for himself in the separate region of his 
 own spirit. It must be a knowledge of ex- 
 perience, not of what others have learnt and 
 written, but of what we have known and 
 tasted ; not of what others have had from Him 
 and enjoyed in Him, but as the Samaritans 
 said, “Now we believe not because of Thy 
 saying, for we have heard Him ourselves ” 
 [John iv. 42]. Especially it must be a knowledge 
 that helps us to be like Him . Mere theology 
 
140 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 will not make us like Him. The chief priests 
 of His day were the foremost theologians of 
 their time, and carefully sent the wise men to 
 Bethlehem to find the King of the Jews. Yet 
 their knowing the text of inspired prophecy 
 did not help them spiritually to interpret it. 
 In the end they slew Him, because whether 
 the prophets witnessed to Him or not, He was 
 not the King for them. Theology can indeed 
 touch His raiment, and describe it. It cannot 
 reach His life. Truly to know Him is to know 
 Him as Saviour, Master, and friend. Saviour, 
 because we have suffered Him to have all His 
 blessed way with us; and so He has saved us 
 from our sins, and told us so, and made us 
 free. Master, in appointing to us our proper 
 place in this vast creation, with our own task, 
 and grace, and gift, and wages, and crown. 
 Friend, in all the love that can glow in the 
 nature of God and the heart of Man. Man 
 with us, touched with the feeling of our in- 
 firmities ; God in us, our righteousness, and 
 strength, and shield. 
 
 Are there any who feel that through God's 
 great mercy they do know something of Him, 
 though nothing yet as they ought to know? 
 
DISCIPLINE. 
 
 141 
 
 Sure that they wish to know more, they have 
 been wishing it so long, and with such scanty 
 result that they despair. 
 
 Well, there are several ways of meeting this 
 difficulty. It is quite true that Christ Him- 
 self warned the Apostle, “ I have yet many 
 things to say unto you, but you cannot bear 
 them now” [John xvi. 12]. Most assuredly we are 
 all of us dull scholars at best ; and sometimes 
 it takes years to master but one law in God's 
 spiritual kingdom. Truths that are clear to 
 us now, were in thick mist ten years ago, with 
 hardly the outline of their shape visible. 
 What is misty to-day may suddenly clear to- 
 morrow. We cannot learn everything at 
 once ; and the mind will not act as a ma- 
 chine. It has its caprices, or at least what 
 look to be so ; and its eccentric ways of act- 
 ing ; and it will neither be forced nor hurried. 
 Moreover, it is not the only factor in our edu- 
 cation. Time is a teacher; also circum- 
 stances, sorrow. It is also the case that the 
 opportunity and capacity for knowing Christ 
 vary in the individual, yes, and with the same 
 individual. The mind has its fertile moments 
 and its sterile. Some years have their oppor- 
 
142 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 tune sowings and their harvests of plenty. 
 Then there is a change: and to the barns 
 filled with last year's wheat the hungry soul 
 must go. None of these things, however, 
 need make us afraid. God, our Father, who 
 means us to know Him , and takes His time 
 about it, being the wisest as well as the kind- 
 est of teachers ; having also all Eternity in 
 front wherein to teach us, takes note of all 
 these things, and will not suffer them to hurt 
 us, will only judge us by what we haVe been 
 able to learn. The Psalmist gives us the key, 
 “ Delight thyself also in the Lord ” lps. xxxvii. 4 ]. 
 Oh, with what a circumspect love we adore 
 God ! In an earlier chapter (p. 70) I have 
 spoken about the power of loving Christ as a 
 special grace to be asked of God. Let me 
 here dwell on that one aspect of it which af- 
 fects our knowledge of Him as the revelation 
 of the Father. For we come to know Him 
 exactly as we come to know each other by 
 the best and quickest and deepest way of 
 love. You never get thoroughly to under- 
 stand an earthly friend till you really love 
 him. Until you love God, and in measure as 
 you love Him, will He be an abstract and aw- 
 
DISCIPLINE. 
 
 143 
 
 ful idea, or a system of unattainable perfec- 
 tion, or a far-off righteousness, or an inflexible 
 Fate — or a Father who pities, blesses, and 
 saves. 
 
 When you begin really to love Him, the 
 thick cold mists will slowly roll away, and the 
 gulf between heaven and earth be bridged 
 over. Problems will remain, but we shall feel 
 there is a key to them somewhere. Duty 
 will sometimes fatigue, and grief sadden us, 
 and results disappoint, and faults humble. 
 Yet, as the heart becomes enlarged, will God's 
 service become perfect freedom ; duty will be 
 seen to be seed, the gleaning perhaps far 
 hence, when the reapers and the sowers re- 
 joice together before the Lord of the harvest. 
 
 It cannot always be summer-time in the 
 soul, but in the darkest, gloomiest days of its 
 winter, we shall always remember the clear 
 glow of the bright sunlight and the wealth of 
 God's smiles on the earth. These things will 
 still be ours, and they are coming again. 
 Nay, as if to prepare us for what may be 
 coming — (was the Transfiguration, as some 
 tell us, a Divine preparation not only for the 
 Apostles, but for Jesus Himself before the 
 
144 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 great travail came ?) — there are moments, few 
 and far between no doubt, in the religious 
 consciousness of the devout Christian, when 
 he sees Christ so vividly, and understands 
 Him so intimately, and loves Him with so in- 
 tense a love, that it seems caught from the 
 saints in light ; when so real, so near, is the 
 felt tenderness of the Lord, that for the sake 
 of that love, and in the mighty strength of it, 
 he feels (God helping him) he could almost 
 without an effort strip himself of every 
 earthly delight ; and go empty and barefoot, 
 with ashes on his head, but gladness in his 
 heart, until his home is in sight, and his Lord 
 beckons him to His feet. But all this indi- 
 cates, contains, and sets forth a secret and 
 perhaps long discipline of the soul, without 
 which such an experience of the possibilities 
 of the love of Christ could be neither possible 
 nor safe. 
 
 So we come back to the sen- 
 
 f /I'M 
 
 tence with which we began, and 
 from which, let us hope, we have not too far 
 wandered, “ Show me wherefore Thou con- 
 tendest with me.” 
 
 Christian reader, while much is to be said 
 
DISCIPLINE 
 
 145 
 
 about God's general administration of His 
 discipline, the precise object of it must vary 
 with each individual, and it is a shallow, even 
 a cruel rashness that presumes to explain all 
 by one. Sometimes, no doubt, as when Da- 
 vid's child died, it is the visitation of a special 
 sin. Yet not always. To sum up, it may be 
 for a truth that He would teach — or a gift 
 that He would impart — or a duty which He 
 would impose — or a dignity for which He 
 would prepare. Also, let us not forget per- 
 haps the most sublime of all. Parents come 
 to know it, and not only parents. It was the 
 lesson of Jesus and the wisdom of God. 
 “ There is one condition under Mystery of 
 which all know that pain is not $ atn - 
 truly an evil, but a good. This is when pain 
 is willingly borne for another’s sake." 
 
 It is our business, however, to ask Him, and 
 He is sure to tell us, though often in an un- 
 looked-for way. All God's controversies with 
 man have two main ends : one in relation to 
 others, the other in relation to ourselves ; 
 both, of course, converging in Him. To 
 show, us “that the best and greatest gilt He 
 can give us is the privilege He gave His Son, 
 
 io 
 
1 46 the gospel of christ. 
 
 to be used and sacrificed for the best and 
 greatest end.” Also, so to wean and purge 
 and empty us of self and visible things, that 
 our capacity may be deepened for the posses- 
 sion and fruition of Himself. 
 
 Therefore, O disciple of Christ, whatever 
 happens to thee — God far away, life clouded 
 or ebbing, friends misjudging thee, poisoned 
 thoughts harassing thee, bodily weakness rob- 
 bing life of its dignity, quickly passing years 
 stealing away one by one the dear compan- 
 ions of thy youth and prime, doubts that chill, 
 thoughts that defile, recollections that sadden, 
 losses that depress, privileges thou canst no 
 longer enjoy, duties thou canst but imper- 
 fectly perform — only let two thoughts fill thy 
 heart and steady thy mind’s tumult, and all 
 shall be well. 
 
 As to the Church and world outside, now is 
 the trial of thy faith that shall prove if faith is 
 real and God is true. Let men see that thou 
 hast a treasure in Heaven which awaits thee, 
 and a power in faith which sustains thee, and 
 a joy in prayer which exhilarates thee, and a 
 tight grip of God which keeps thy chin high 
 above the deepening waters, and gives thee 
 
DISCIPLINE. 
 
 H7 
 
 the peace which they envy and may learn 
 from thee how to attain. 
 
 As for thine own soul, cleave steadfastly to 
 God. He hath never forsaken thee yet, and 
 He is not likely to forsake thee at the mo- 
 ment when thou most needest Him. Never 
 was a human soul nearer a sorrowful ship- 
 wreck than Job was. 
 
 But a strong hand pulled him out of the 
 deep waters, and set him on a rock and or- 
 dered his goings. What God did for him He 
 will do for thee. He is not changed in His 
 character, nor thou in thy necessity. Only 
 for Job's faith there must be Job's discipline, 
 and for Job's victory there must be Job's 
 prayer. 
 
V. 
 
 SACRIFICE. 
 
 “WHO GAVE HIMSELF FOR US.” 
 
 14 Whatever else viay pass or change, of this we may 
 be sure , that till God cease to love us, we shall 
 stand face to face with sacrifice 
 
 HE Gospel is Christ’s revelation of 
 His Father’s purpose for men. It is 
 doctrine, because it gives us the orig- 
 inal and essential account of God in His Per- 
 sonal relation to us. It is history, because it 
 describes to us from the beginning how God 
 has created, ruled, and redeemed us by His 
 Son. It is law — though, indeed, the perfect 
 law of liberty — because it authoritatively 
 presses His claims on our obedience and 
 gratitude. Let it be also observed that one 
 part of this Gospel is as much good news as 
 (148) 
 
SACRIFICE. 
 
 I49 
 
 another. What can be blesseder for us than 
 the lofty and inspiring ideas that convey to 
 my intelligence the true conception of my 
 Maker? What more consoling or more ex- 
 emplary than the story of that unique life, 
 which is at once the type and ideal of Love 
 exhausting itself in sacrifice ? What more 
 elevating or heart -stirring than the claim 
 which God makes on our spiritual being when 
 approaching us in Christ ? “ Children, I love 
 
 you. Jesus Christ, my Son, is the evidence 
 and measure of it. Come back to me, and 
 love me, and show your love by obedience. ,, 
 
 Now, this Gospel will be best understood, 
 through our first contemplating its completest 
 manifestation in the story of the Passion ; 
 then, by our earnestly and honestly ponder- 
 ing how every regenerate soul is to embrace, 
 assimilate, and reproduce the central idea of 
 the Cross, in the hidden but crucified life of 
 self-denial. “ The utmost we now seem to 
 attain is to love Him gratefully for rescuing 
 us from all need of agony, so that we may 
 pass from easy life here to easier life hereafter. 
 When shall we begin to see that thus we pro- 
 nounce our own sentence of apartness from 
 
I JO THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST . 
 
 Him ; th?t His ideal of blessedness is sacrifice 
 absolute? 
 
 “ Behold the man ” [John xix. 5], said Pilate to 
 the multitude, in a moment of vacillating pity. 
 “ Behold the man,” whispers the Church, that 
 thou mayest comprehend at once God’s love 
 and thine own sin. 
 
 Christ’s sufferings, if pre-emi- Christ's 
 nently the sufferings of His Pas- sufferings. 
 sion, are not, of course, to be confined to 
 them. In a real sense His whole life, though 
 it had its deep under-currents of joy in doing 
 the will and revealing the name of His Father, 
 was, nevertheless, one unbroken trial. The 
 “ Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief” 
 [isa. iiii.3], as the Evangelical Prophet calls Him, 
 in enduring the “ contradiction of sinners 
 against Himself ” [Heb.xii.3j, suffered daily. Nor, 
 again, are they the only sufferings that have 
 the atoning value. Christ’s work must not 
 be halved like that. From the hour of His 
 supernatural conception to the moment of 
 His expiring on the cross, He was in the way 
 of making reconciliation for sin, and bringing 
 in everlasting righteousness. 
 
 * “ Links and Clues. 
 
SA ORIFICE. 
 
 151 
 
 But in view of the fact that man’s sin and 
 Satan’s malice had their awful climax on the 
 cross, the Divine Love made perfect in the 
 offering of His innocent life may not inexactly 
 be said to have had its final consummation 
 and supreme manifestation there. Three 
 times does St. Peter allude to the “ sufferings 
 of Christ ” in his general epistles, as if abso- 
 lutely possessed with their one meaning and 
 value. Twice, moreover, does he remind us 
 that He suffered — “ the just for the unjust,” 
 “ bearing our sins in His own body on the 
 tree,” that “ we being dead unto sins might 
 live unto righteousness.” 
 
 Christian reader, in inviting you to contem- 
 plate these sufferings, a blessed, yet a hum- 
 bling Gospel for us, earnestly let us ask God 
 to help us to remember that it is very holy 
 ground. Any great sorrow for a heart with 
 but a spark of humanity in it is a touching 
 spectacle. But the sorrow of an innocent 
 spirit suffering unjustly, and because of its 
 innocence, is as elevating as it is rare. When 
 it is also the sorrow of one who loves us, 
 and suffers because he loves us, and in order 
 that we may love him, there is no moral force 
 
152 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 like it. But to behold the Incarnate Son of 
 God in pain, suffering on behalf of His sinful 
 creatures, that thereby they may become recon- 
 ciled to His Father, is one of those mysteries 
 which only the Word of God can reveal and 
 the power of God apply. 
 
 Two thoughts on the subject may suffice 
 us for the present. May the “ Spirit of 
 Christ ” hallow them to our inmost souls. 
 
 HE Eastern Church, as The nature of 
 some of us will remem- His sufferings. 
 her, distinguishes the Lord's sufferings as 
 known and unknown. It may be more def- 
 initely edifying for us if we consider them as 
 bodily and spiritual. As to His bodily suffer- 
 ings, those who feel it helpful to do so can 
 study for themselves the most graphic ac- 
 count of the bodily woe of the Saviour that 
 the pen of a scholar, the imagination of a 
 poet, and the sympathy of a disciple has pro- 
 duced in our own time in Farrar's “ Life of 
 Christ." We may add that what Holy Script- 
 ure is so careful to indicate, both in the his- 
 torical narratives of the evangelist and in the 
 inspired anticipations of the prophets, must 
 
SACRIFICE. 
 
 153 
 
 have been deliberately intended for the edifi- 
 cation of the Church. 
 
 Now, in His bodily suffering, Bodily 
 there were at least these three sufferings. 
 elements: shame, exhaustion, and thirst — 
 each and all of them as actual to Him as 
 they could be to us ; nay, intensified, we may 
 conjecture, by that remarkable sensitiveness 
 to pain, which almost invariably accompanies 
 a perfect and finely - strung organization. 
 u They pierced my hands and my feet ” 
 tPs.xxh. 16]. This evidently indicates the nailing 
 of His blessed feet to the cross. “ The song 
 of the drunkards ” [Ps.ixix. 123 is David’s own 
 sentence. Here is the intimation of the pro- 
 found shame and abasement which coarse in- 
 sults inevitably cause to pure and noble souls, 
 and which to Him, in what an inspired writer 
 has called the “ shame ” [Heb.xii.23, apparently, 
 of the infamous cross, must have been a woe 
 indeed. “ They look and stare upon me ” 
 [Ps.xxii. 17 ] (a sentence from a Messianic psalm) 
 is another sad moan from the heart that was 
 breaking when the priests wagged their heads 
 and the crowd spat their scorn. There was 
 the awful exhaustion and the physical depres- 
 
154 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 sion accompanying it, which made Him reel 
 and faint under the load of the cross before 
 He was fastened to it, which afterwards found 
 its mournful expression, once more in the 
 words of the Psalmist, “ Save me, O God, 
 for the waters are come in unto my soul ” 
 tps.ixix.9]. Once more, there was the thirst, 
 the intolerable thirst that ever accompanied 
 crucifixion, made a pretext for tantalizing in- 
 sult. “ They gave me gall also for my meat, 
 and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to 
 
 drink” [Ps.ixix.21] 
 
 The spiritual But what were His spiritual 
 
 suffering. sufferings? The suffering of con- 
 flict and of solitariness, an unspeakable loath- 
 ing and dismay and agony at sin, brought 
 closer to Him, laid more heavily on Him 
 than ever an intense jealousy for the honour 
 of God and sorrow for the guiltiness of man. 
 You remember the conflict in the Garden be- 
 tween the human will, that just because of 
 its humanness shrank instinctively and inevi- 
 tably from the pain and burden in front ; and 
 the Divine will, that from all eternity had 
 foreseen and chosen that hour. Well, that 
 conflict — which had its first travail-pang when 
 
SACRIFICE. 
 
 i5S 
 
 the Greeks came to Him, and the hour of 
 His Passion was striking — followed Him to 
 His cross, and agonized in Him. there. 
 
 Christian reader, have you ever known what 
 it is to be in moral and spiritual conflict, and 
 to be well-nigh torn asunder by it? If not, 
 you have yet to come of age in your spiritual 
 manhood. If you have, then you can form a 
 faint notion of what that struggle must have 
 been to Christ. There was His solitariness, 
 which, all His life through, in the beautiful 
 sociableness of His perfect Humanity, He 
 ever instinctively avoided, which, even in the 
 agony of the Garden, He tried to anticipate, 
 and sorrowfully failed to prevent. It coldly 
 settled on Him as He was dying, in all its 
 chilly, gloomy darkness : men insulting, dis- 
 ciples fleeing, devils tempting, His Father 
 hidden. A “ desire of the life that is in 
 man's favour" belonged to Christ, as a feat- 
 ure of His true Humanity, and that He suf- 
 fered through missing it, seems plain from 
 the words, “ Reproach hath broken my heart" 
 [Ps. lxix. 20]. Oh! I pray you observe that it is 
 not greatness, but littleness, that can easily 
 dispense with human love, and prefers to suf- 
 
156 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 fer alone. The tenderest and noblest souls 
 most desire sympathy, most keenly feel the 
 lack of it when it is denied them. The 
 scourge, the nails, the thirst — these passed 
 like fleeting clouds over a great mountain’s 
 brow ; but to be left alone, utterly alone, 
 without voice from earth or smile from Heav- 
 en, brought from Him that sharp cry of unut- 
 terable desolateness that still rings in the con- 
 science of the world. 
 
 Then there was a righteous jealousy for the 
 honour and faithfulness of His Father, which 
 must have rankled as a thorn in His tender 
 soul. “He trusted in God; let Him deliver 
 Him now if He will have Him, for He said, I 
 am the Son of God” [Matt, xxvii. 43]. Well did 
 the Lord know that His trust had not been 
 misplaced; nay, that never had His Father 
 regarded Him with a deeper and vaster love 
 than at the moment when He was willingly 
 suffering for the revelation of His Name and 
 Holiness; that, as He had not wronged God, 
 God had not wronged Him, and presently all 
 would be made plain. Nevertheless, until all 
 was made plain, there was a cloud of mystery 
 hanging over the character of God, and His 
 
SACRIFICE. 
 
 157 
 
 eternal righteousness was at stake before the 
 universe. The Son of God was suffering for 
 the glory of God ; and, when sinners threw at 
 Him that He was suffering because He was 
 guilty, the Father held His peace. 
 
 But doubtless the deepest and most awful 
 anguish of all — an anguish which it is utterly 
 impossible for us to conceive, fathom, or de- 
 scribe, which, nevertheless, we may reverently 
 approach and contemplate — is that which 
 came to Him through the making fully plain 
 to His spotless soul of the awful sinfulness of 
 sin, with the unspeakable loathing and horror 
 caused to Him thereby. The sin of the race 
 — in all its extremest possibilities, in all its 
 most frightful developments, culminated in 
 the crime of the Cross. There and then the 
 holy soul of Jesus met it, faced it, looked 
 down into its loathsome depths, felt its pol- 
 luted breath on His cheek, tasted to the 
 dregs its unutterable shame and bitterness, 
 bowed down before it, as its crushing burden 
 weighed upon His spirit. To His Father He 
 said, “ Amen, O Lord, to Thy inviolable right- 
 eousness, which can by no means clear the 
 guilty.” Over man — cursing, gambling, mock- 
 
158 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 ing, staring under the Cross — He yearned 
 with infinite love and immense pity for his 
 ruin and death. For was not He his head 
 and kinsman, sharer of his nature, and actual 
 partaker of his life, hating the sin and yet lov- 
 ing the sinner, bent on vindicating God, born 
 for redeeming man? He was as the saint of 
 whom it was written, “ Rivers of waters run 
 down my cheeks because they keep not Thy 
 law ” [Ps.cxix. 36 ]. Also like a parent of old, only 
 with a grief that embraced the race, and with 
 a conscience that confessed no share in it, and 
 in a prayer instantly fulfilling itself in a far 
 loftier sacrifice, His solemn death- cry went up 
 to Heaven ; not as David’s, in his self-accus- 
 ing anguish, “Would to God that I had died 
 for thee!” [i sam. xvin. 33]. He had died ; but in 
 the calmness of a completed purpose and an 
 assured reward, “ It is finished ” [John xix. 303. 
 
 The cause of Here, coming to look into the 
 
 His sufferings. cause G f His sufferings, and to 
 
 learn why His anguish was so great (oh, it is 
 holy ground !), let us at once admit that, ex- 
 cept on one hypothesis, it is a hopeless prob- 
 lem. Bodily pain, longer and even keener 
 than His, thousands of human sufferers, and 
 
SACRIFICE. 
 
 159 
 
 for causes much less sublime, have endured 
 with a triumphant calmness. Death, so far 
 from being to every man the sad ghost of an 
 intolerable farewell, has often been a welcome 
 guest, sometimes an invited deliverer. Pagan 
 history is full of acts of heroic sacrifice, of 
 lives readily surrendered for love of home 
 and country, of martyrdom grandly endured 
 as a true reward for the confession of moral 
 truth. Whence, then, is it that our Pattern 
 and Deliverer faints and reels under a burden 
 which others have borne with a kind of sub- 
 lime gladness ; that, when the hour had come 
 for the accomplishment of a redemption con- 
 ceived in a past eternity, even the thought 
 should have occurred to Him that the load 
 was too heavy to be borne. The key to the 
 difficulty, so far as there is a key to it, is to be 
 found partly in the nature of His purpose, 
 partly in the mystery of His person. 
 
 With all variety of expression, yet each ex- 
 pression a distinct, though consistent aspect 
 of one harmonious and profound verity, the 
 Bible opens to us the purpose of His sorrow. 
 It was to “ redeem us from all iniquity ” by 
 “the blood of His Cross ” [Titus ii.u] to “make 
 
l6o THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST . 
 
 peace” ccoi. i. 20]. He was also declared by the 
 Baptist to be “ the Lamb of God which tak- 
 eth away the sins of the world ” [John i. 29]. Of 
 this also St. Paul wrote, that He was “ made 
 sin for us that we might be made the right- 
 eousness of God in Him ” [2Cor. v. 21]; all which 
 statement (and it is needless to multiply these 
 statements), containing as they do what is 
 commonly understood as the doctrine of the 
 Atonement, marrow and essence of the Gos- 
 pel, practically mean and declare that the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, as our Head and Repre- 
 sentative, did, in our stead and place, for us 
 with God fully recognize and satisfy the Di- 
 vine Righteousness, and made homage to the 
 violated dignity of His immutable and eternal 
 law; and took upon Himself and endured, in 
 all their unspeakable meaning, our sins ; con- 
 fessing (not, indeed, as one who had actually 
 sinned them, but as absolutely identified with 
 the race which had sinned) their guiltiness be-J 
 fore His Father; mourning over them with 
 all the holy and profound sadness which a 
 sinless and true soul could possibly feel for 
 those belonging to it and unspeakably dear. 
 This being so, can you wonder that, when 
 
SACRIFICE. 
 
 161 
 
 “ the iniquity of us all,” in the prophet’s sol- 
 emn language, was actually “laid upon Him ” 
 [isaiah mi. 6], He reeled and shuddered, as if 
 some deadly blow had been aimed at His 
 heart? Had His sorrow been only that of a 
 martyr, we might have expected a glad Jubi- 
 late that He was permitted to suffer. The 
 Sin-bearer, with the world’s sin on His inno- 
 cent spirit, could not but mourn and suffer 
 till the cup was exhausted and the expiation 
 complete. 
 
 UT the greatness of His The mystery of 
 suffering has yet more His Person. 
 light thrown on it by contemplating the mys- 
 tery of His Person. He was God and man in 
 one Person. In Him the Divine and human 
 natures, in their absolute and separate perfec- 
 tion, were united forevermore. Thus it was 
 that, so far as we can presume to put it into 
 words, two currents of feeling flowed through 
 His spirit and two centres of sympathy 
 claimed and engrossed His personal com 
 sciousness. God He was all for and with 
 God. Man He was all for and ydth man. 
 God for man, and yet, when He sinned, 
 
l6 2 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST 
 
 against his sin ; man, made by God, and re- 
 sponsible to Him, and belonging to Him, and 
 rejoicing in Him, yet, in virtue of His man- 
 hood, knitted to a race dead in trespasses and 
 sins. Carefully consider how this twofold nat- 
 ure of His may have compelled and also in- 
 tensified His conflict. As God, whatever 
 God’s righteousness demanded, He too de- 
 manded. Whatever stirred God’s holy dis- 
 pleasure, stirred His displeasure. God’s feel- 
 ing about sin was also His feeling about it. 
 The utter impossibility for God, as a moral 
 governor, to connive at sin as if it did not 
 matter, or to treat sinners as if they had not 
 really grieved Him, for Him was an impossi- 
 bility too. Therefore, when the Lord “ laid 
 on Him the iniquity of us all,” and “ bruised 
 Him” for them (whatever the Prophet’s awful 
 expression may exactly mean), who was to say 
 No to that expression of His Father’s right- 
 eousness? With all His heart and strength 
 His parched lips moaned out a true Amen to 
 each throb of His passion; all through it He 
 was on His Holy Father’s side, in love testify- 
 ing for righteousness. Yet He was on man’s 
 side too, not through indifference to his sin, 
 
SACRIFICE. 
 
 163 
 
 but in spite of it ; not that sin was not sinful, 
 but because its misery was so great. As His 
 infinite love to His Father and His partaking 
 of the Divine nature made Him accept in 
 meek submission all that was involved in a 
 world’s sin-bearing, so His infinite love to men 
 not only made Him long to deliver them, but 
 just because He so tenderly loved them, His 
 pain at their sin was so great. 
 
 Some of you will understand this by your- 
 selves, for it is a law of our nature. The 
 faults and sins of strangers take compara- 
 tively little hold of us, not indeed half the 
 hold they ought. But when a child or a 
 friend sins, in exact proportion to our love 
 will ever be our sorrow. Nay, in a sort of 
 way we almost feel to have done the sin 
 ourselves, when it comes close home to us, 
 through our affinity with the sinner. Thus 
 (to repeat the idea) it was Christ’s sympathy 
 with His righteous Father on the one hand, 
 and His tender love to His brother man on 
 the other, that, through the intenseness of the 
 actings of the twofold nature, made His bur- 
 den so heavy and His anguish so great. As 
 God hates sin, He hated it. As God would 
 
164 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 prevent sin, and in His very love must recog- 
 nize and condemn it, so would He recognize, 
 prevent, and condemn it too. 
 
 But as man can suffer and weep so He 
 suffered and wept, until the stillness came, 
 when the conflict was over and the propitia- 
 tion complete. Then He fell asleep, and it 
 was finished. 
 
 What is that Reader, let me ask you what 
 
 Cross to us ? moral response does your inward 
 conscience make to that great suffering of 
 Christ? He gave Himself for you. Consider 
 what that means. It is not likely that He 
 should have done so, had there not been a 
 cause. What the cause was, in the only ex- 
 planation that will hold good for a moment, 
 is the world's sin. But the world means you 
 and me. Did Christ really suffer for us? To 
 say No, shuts us out from hope and life, for, 
 so far as we know , there is no hope, no life for 
 us, but through that death upon the cross and 
 the Resurrection out of it afterwards. To 
 say Yes, instantly involves the inquiry, to 
 what extent we permit it to affect us, either 
 in repentance for the sin which He bore or 
 in gratitude to Him for having consented to 
 
SACRIFICE. 
 
 165 
 
 bear it ? Oh, what is this Cross to us, who 
 must one day look on Him whom we have 
 pierced ? Have we taken our sins to it, and 
 left them there? Have we sought peace 
 under its shadow, got it, and kept it? Is that 
 sorrow made our sorrow, because we spiritu- 
 ally understand it and personally assent to it, 
 using it to purge our conscience and trans- 
 form our life? In a word, have we accepted 
 from Him this redemption, and given Him 
 in exchange our hearts? For, in a most 
 real sense, He still suffers, though in glory, 
 through the wounds wherewith sinners daily 
 wound Him. Every sin of man has in it a 
 tendency to send Him to a second cross ; and 
 to neglect or despise this salvation is to repeat 
 the shout of the multitude, “ Not this man, 
 but Barabbas.” 
 
 As for those that stand by His cross, and 
 see Him die, and confess that He died for 
 them, and do not care for it, shall I tell you 
 the sentence that will ring in their hearts 
 through the coming time ? “ Suffered first 
 
 under Pontius Pilate, crucified again by me.” 
 
 So, when we approach His Cross, let all 
 who need Him and love Him try to be in 
 
1 66 the gospel of christ . 
 
 sympathy with His sorrow and in fellowship 
 with His death. The contemplation of the 
 Cross should be in a most real way a blessed 
 means of grace. 
 
 It is what St. Paul, quite at the close of his 
 life, felt he had far more fully to learn ; and 
 it is the only road that can lead us on to the 
 power of His Resurrection. 
 
 Jesus suffering for me — let it be translated 
 for each of us into our suffering with Jesus, 
 in the taking of His yoke, and in the appre- 
 hension of His sacrifice. Then all of us, each 
 in our own measure, shall learn from His Cross 
 how to welcome our own, and meekly carry it 
 after Him. Then the Cross shall become not 
 only peace and light, but strength and food. 
 For there, more than anywhere else, can He 
 consent to fulfil His word to us, “ He that 
 eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwell- 
 eth in me, and I in him ” [John vi. 56]. 
 
 This, then, is the first half of the Gospel — 
 what Christ has done and suffered for me. 
 Let us now look at the other half, what we 
 are to do and to suffer for Christ. 
 
 For the love of the Atonement essentially 
 contains in it the true law of the highest life 
 
SACRIFICE . i6y 
 
 of man. St. Peter bears witness to this when 
 he writes, “ Who suffered for us, leaving us an 
 example that we should follow in His steps ” 
 [i peter ii. 2i]. Let us thankfully learn that every 
 act of humble and willing sacrifice, every 
 taunt or jeer meekly borne for righteousness’ 
 sake, in memory of Him, “ Who when He 
 suffered threatened not ” [i Peter ii. 23), every sharp 
 though secret grief endured with cheerful 
 courage, the postponing of personal happiness 
 to public good, a young and buoyant life un- 
 complainingly and continuously given to the 
 monotonous service of a morose kinsman, 
 hope deferred for duty’s sake till the heart is 
 sick with waiting and the bloom of life passed, 
 talents buried through the force of circum- 
 stances till it is too late to use them ; here is 
 the practical reproduction and continuation 
 of the principle of the Atonement in its cen- 
 tral idea of willing sacrifice ; in these we share 
 the death of Christ, “ always bearing about in 
 the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that 
 the life also of Jesus maybe made manifest 
 in our body” [2Cor. iv. 103. 
 
 In other words, it is the self-life nailed to the 
 Cross of Christ. “ I am crucified with Christ.” 
 
1 68 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 Two points in the exposition of this sen- 
 tence must at the outset be claimed. One 
 that here, as elsewhere, the Apostle writes of 
 himself as the typical Christian man who, in his 
 own condition of privilege and conflict, for- 
 mally represents the family of God. Thus “ I ” 
 means “ we.” The other, of course, springing 
 out of it, that this is no mere Pauline idea of 
 holiness, which one caught up into the third 
 Heaven might in his best moments look up 
 at, and try to live by, for the bulk of Chris- 
 tians higher than the stars; but that most 
 truly it touches us all, in the fact it repre- 
 sents, and the discipline it indicates, and the 
 
 fellowship it ensures. “I,” the 
 The self -life. ir rr 
 
 J y self-life, the ego in every man, 
 the root and soil of all possibilities of sin. 
 “ Am crucified ” — the lingering, painful death 
 of the flesh, the Adam nature, ever in con- 
 tention with, yet never in this life entirely 
 expelled by, the imparted nature of God. 
 “ With Christ ” — that is, in absorbing the vir- 
 tue of His atonement, learning the fellowship 
 of His sufferings, and practising the secret of 
 His life. 
 
 Now, this self-life, in the unavoidableness 
 
SACRIFICE. 
 
 169 
 
 of its existence, in the reasonableness of its 
 liberty, in the persuasiveness of its influence, 
 in the subtlety of its fascination, in the plau- 
 sibleness of its excuses, and in the deadliness 
 of its triumph, is inevitably bound up with 
 the spiritual history of every man, fitting him 
 more closely than the poisoned garment in 
 the Greek fable, and as an angel of light 
 whispering its flatteries into the soul. For, 
 of course, it has plenty to say for itself. If 
 we did not each of us distinctly recognize our 
 personality, and study our own welfare, society 
 would presently fall back into a barbarous 
 communism, in which savagery would feed on 
 helplessness, and the law of general develop- 
 ment now operating through individual effort, 
 in ceasing to be a practical force, would para- 
 lyze the onward movement of the world. 
 Moreover, who shall say that He who has 
 made this earth so fair, and man His highest 
 creature on it still capable of so much pure 
 felicity, really frowns on us when we grate- 
 fully drink the odour of the flowers and bathe 
 our hands in the sparkling sunlight ? Is He 
 likely so to contradict His own creative wis- 
 dom as to justify the cynicism that happiness 
 
170 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST 
 
 is the fountain of sin ? Nature’s analogies, 
 at any rate, point quite the other way. Yet, 
 making the most of this plea, and careful to 
 avoid, with a large and charitable judgment, 
 any sour forbidding of sweet human joy, we 
 cannot help seeing that the ways of God, and 
 the tale of the accumulating ages, and the 
 sombre experience, of a well-examined heart, 
 all say — “You are free; be free. But take 
 care. He that loveth his life shall lose it.” 
 For, indeed, out of this very self-life among 
 the bowers of Paradise came that “ insignifi- 
 cant ” sin that corrupted the race. From that 
 same self-life, whether in the ultimate develop- 
 ment of crimes that shock the conscience of 
 humanity, or in the stealthy habit of a soft 
 self-pleasing that first enervates, and presently 
 benumbs us, springs that nest of reptile sins, 
 which, growing and feeding in the dark, sud- 
 denly raise their hissing crests to startle and 
 shock us, compelling from Him, whose first 
 desire is to make us partakers of His Holiness, 
 the searching discipline of His love. 
 
 In the sweet repose of home, in the steady 
 routine of duty, in the permitted freedom of 
 natural enjoyment, in the dignity of serious 
 
SACRIFICE. 
 
 171 
 
 study, nay, in the very offices of religion, and 
 in the form of worship, whether meagre or 
 stately, self, with its specious blandishments, 
 may creep in, and while expecting indulgence, 
 may stir the jealousy of God. From this self- 
 life, who among us, conscious of God search- 
 ing Him, can dare to pronounce himself free? 
 
 The remedy against it the Apostle proceeds 
 to indicate under the terrible figure of cruci- 
 fixion. “ I am crucified.” Now, without dis- 
 pute, this expression is fairly susceptible of 
 each, at least, three interpretations, each in 
 harmony with, and the complement of, the 
 other. Literally, of course, the words are, 
 “ I have been crucified with Christ.” When 
 Christ my Head and Representative was cru- 
 cified, I, as one of His members, and through 
 the grace of His incarnation and my spiritual 
 union with Him, identified with Him before 
 the Father, was crucified too. His cross was 
 my cross. His death was my death. “ If one 
 died, then all died ” [2 cor. v. w], my fellows, and 
 I among them. But if we have been “ planted 
 together in the likeness of His death,” we 
 shall be planted also “ in the likeness of His 
 resurrection” caom.vi.5]. This is evident, since 
 
172 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIS T. 
 
 the doctrine it declares is that through death 
 comes life. As the Cross to Jesus was the 
 way to triumph and glory, so the Cross to His 
 Church means regeneration and life. “ If we 
 be dead with Christ we shall also live with 
 Him” [Rom. vi. 5]. Strange it is, yet true, that 
 he who is born of God, and in whom God's 
 seed remains, died that he might be born — 
 was born because he had died. “ I am cruci- 
 fied with Christ; nevertheless I live.” Yet 
 this fact and this doctrine are hardly the most 
 direct lessons that the figure seems intended 
 to convey. What St. Paul then was thinking 
 of was the present and the future. So, when 
 he wrote the words, he indicated an inevitable 
 discipline, he imposed a perpetual law. The 
 discipline is the Cross, the law is self-denial. 
 
 Christian reader, do not judge me to be 
 pushing a mere figure into a rhetorical extrav- 
 agance if I dare to suggest that the Chris- 
 tian is being crucified now. Indeed, it is no 
 strained mysticism, but a most solemn verity, 
 which the sooner we face and master, the bet- 
 ter it will be for us. That while in our regen- 
 erate nature we dwell with our Lord from 
 Heaven in the heavenly places, abiding in 
 
SACRIFICE. 
 
 1 73 
 
 His Body, in the flesh — that is, our old cor- 
 rupt nature, we are on the Cross, and must 
 remain there till we die. “ They that are 
 Christ's,” says the same Apostle in the same 
 epistle, “ have crucified the flesh with the 
 affections and lusts” [Gai.v.24]. By all means 
 ask, what does this mean ? Simply this. 
 That so long as the flesh remains, and our 
 corrupt affections war and lust in our mem- 
 bers, for us to come down from the Cross (in 
 other words, to be spared the Divine disci- 
 pline) might be to give up the battle for good- 
 ness, and to go back to our sins. Another 
 way of putting it, perhaps a better way, is 
 that the Cross on which our Lord did hang 
 that He might expiate our sins, is the Cross 
 on which we too must hang, that we may 
 crucify and subdue them. The Cross, with 
 every feature of it. The thorns must press 
 our brow, that we may bring every thought 
 into captivity to Him and to His Purpose. 
 The nails must be in our hands and feet, the 
 organs of our constant activities, that they 
 may be used only according to His will ; nay, 
 if so He chooses, not to be used at all. The 
 spear-thrust may have to pierce our heart. 
 
1 74 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 For sometimes, even in our holiest and dear- 
 est affections, He deliberately, though always 
 with indescribable tenderness, wounds us, that 
 we may flee unto Him to hide us, and adore 
 Him more fervently than ever, with the pure 
 love of greatly chastened souls. Occasionally 
 He visits us with an awful lonliness ; a sense 
 of utter isolation ; a sad and pitiful mourn- 
 fulness creeping over the spirit, like the dole- 
 ful garment of a winter’s night, to compel us 
 to seek Him, who alone in all the world per- 
 fectly understands us, and will cover our head 
 in the day of battle. After all, this is only 
 the reverse side of what the Lord once said 
 Himself : “ If any man will come after me, 
 let him deny himself, and take up his cross 
 and follow me” [Matt. m. 24 ]. It is the same 
 thing. If we are to have the cross in some 
 real fashion, does it much matter whether 
 we are on the Cross or the Cross on us ; it 
 borne on our back or we nailed to it ? God 
 forbid that we should preach a gospel of 
 asceticism. God also forbid that we should 
 shrink from a gospel of holiness. But holi- 
 ness can come to us only through a Divine 
 education of our spirits, conveyed and inter- 
 
SACRIFICE. 175 
 
 preted and blessed to us usually through cir- 
 cumstances, by His own grace. 
 
 ® NCE more, the context Law of 
 
 makes it plain that there personal Life. 
 is a law of the personal life which the Apostle 
 would here impose on the Church to which he 
 was writing, and to which he had been careful 
 to submit himself in his own life. Not only 
 was he, through his condition of spiritual 
 union with Christ, dead unto sin, as to its 
 dominion over him, and his own lusting after 
 it ; he was also dead to the law as his method 
 of being justified before God. Observe this 
 Gospel. In every single feature of God’s 
 scheme of salvation, whether from the guilt 
 of sin or from the power of it, self is to be 
 destroyed, that grace may be pre-eminent ; 
 man is to be nothing, that God may be su- 
 preme. So even to the law was he crucified, 
 whether as a means of acceptance or as a 
 ground of boasting, that he might cleave with 
 his whole being to God, who gave him every- 
 thing that he possessed. Here, again, is the 
 great law of our life laid down by Christ in 
 those tremendous words, “ If any man come 
 
THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST . 
 
 1 76 
 
 to me, and hate not his father, and mother, 
 and wife, and children, and brethren, and sis- 
 ters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be 
 my disciple ” [Luke xiv. 26]. This is the law which 
 is to denominate every sphere of our exist- 
 ence, which claims tribute-money from every 
 talent and possession, which declines to abdi- 
 cate its authority even over the counsels of 
 our perfection, refuses to let go its hold of us 
 even in the house of God. In some things 
 it means a quiet watchfulness, in others a 
 manly self-restraint ; here an equipoise of sur- 
 render — there, even a stern questioning as to 
 the habits of our life. Is thy home filled, 
 happy, and serene ? Sometimes whisper to 
 thyself, not querulously, but thoughtfully, “ It 
 is mine, and it is meant to be mine, God's 
 kind gift to me. Let it be mine so long as it 
 pleases Him. Yet I must not quite forget, 
 here is not my rest." Hast thou wealth? Do 
 not fear it, for God made Abram rich. Do 
 not lean on it, for He made Job poor. In the 
 enjoyment and use of the good things of God, 
 by all means enjoy and expect the favour of 
 Him whose first manifestation of His Father 
 was in multiplying wine at a peasant's bridal. 
 
SACRIFICE. 
 
 1 77 
 
 Yet if His Apostle would not have eaten meat 
 while the world standeth lest he should make 
 his brother to offend and so imperil his soul 
 □ cor. viii. i3], He who died for the world — well, 
 you know what He would wish of you, if by 
 some sacrifice, whether of palate or social 
 exhilaration, you could win back a soul to 
 virtue. “ Every creature of God is good, and 
 nothing to be refused if it be received with 
 thanksgiving.” So writes an apostle. Yet, if 
 liberty is good, charity is better. “ So speak 
 ye and so do, as they that shall be judged by 
 the law of liberty” [James it 123. May God in 
 His mercy give us, when we murmur at the 
 greatness of our petty sacrifices, first to look 
 up at His Son's Cross, and then back at the 
 days when, for His dear sake, gentle women 
 faced the lions, and boys went bravely to die, 
 and the cruel flames licked faces that were 
 radiant with the ecstasy of martyrdom ; and 
 perhaps, worst of all, children suffered before 
 the very eyes of their parents, still constant 
 to Christ. 
 
 The lines that follow will prove a better 
 sermon than mine. They are a poet's gospel : 
 
i 7 8 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 “ I was born sickly, poor, and mean, 
 
 A slave ; no misery could screen 
 The holders of the pearl of price 
 From Caesar’s envy ; therefore twice 
 I fought with beasts, and three times saw 
 My children suffer by his law. 
 
 At last my own release was earned ; 
 
 I was some time in being burned, 
 
 But, at the close, a hand came through 
 The fire above my head, and drew 
 My soul to Christ, whom now I see. 
 
 Sergius, a brother, writes for me 
 This testimony on the wall — 
 
 For me, I have forgot it all.” 
 
 — Robert Browning. 
 
 All this with But all this is “with Christ. ,, 
 
 Christ. Christ, whose blood has pro- 
 
 cured our peace, whose presence can fill our 
 loneliness, whose example is the illumination 
 of our life, whose fellowship is the dignity of 
 our labour, whose image is the end of our 
 faith, whose welcome is the hope of our re- 
 ward. For He on His Cross suffering and dy- 
 ing for us, thereby once and for all made our 
 peace with God ; and this cross of ours is not 
 to make atonement for the sin, which He put 
 away by the sacrifice of Himself, completely 
 and forever. Rather it is to help us to dis- 
 
SACRIFICE. 
 
 179 
 
 cern and abhor and subdue it, just because it 
 has been put away; with His mind and will 
 about it, “resisting unto blood ” [Heb.xii.rj. Oh, 
 let us try to believe that He is with us there, 
 bidding us not to fear, nor to think ourselves 
 forgotten. Tenderly and sadly He watches us 
 in our pain, while far too strong of purpose to 
 take us down from it, till His purpose about 
 us is done. His own example illuminates us, 
 for the restraining and subduing of the inno- 
 cent self-life is wonderfully manifest in Him, 
 from the moment that He went down to 
 Nazareth and was subject unto His parents, 
 until the moment when He commended His 
 spirit into His Heavenly Father’s hands. In 
 the Temptation, He steadily refused the rea- 
 sonable assuagement of His bodily necessities. 
 In His ministry, He put away all commenda- 
 tion from others — “Why callest thou me 
 good?” — ever referring to His Father, His 
 words of truth, His deeds of power, His pur- 
 pose of life. In His agony He murmured, 
 “The cup which my Father hath given me, 
 shall I not drink it?” [John xviu. 11]. He drank 
 it. In His prayer in the supper-chamber it 
 was the repose of His heart that He had 
 
x8o THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 sought His Father's glory, not His own. 
 [John xvii. 4]. And His image is the end of our 
 faith, for what we desire, or at least profess 
 to desire, is to be like Him, and the methods 
 and helps for becoming more like Him, we 
 must each in the light of our own conscience, 
 and the exercise of our own judgment, choose 
 and practise for ourselves. Yet let us be care- 
 ful to remember that honest faith about them 
 as ordained by God and suitable for us, is the 
 only secret of their helping our sanctification ; 
 that not grace inherent in them, but grace 
 conveyed through them, can edify us into 
 God. 
 
 fe^IHREE last thoughts over pi na i 
 |ll.tll a subject of almost inex- reflections. 
 haustible fulness and also of profound humilia- 
 tion, on matters that may help some one who 
 honestly wishes to make sacrifices for Christ 
 to discover the secret. First, let us be sure 
 of this, that no life deserving the name of 
 Christian can ever exist, without the law and 
 habit of sacrifice, in some degree at least, col- 
 ouring and dominating it. Also, that the se- 
 cret of its freedom and progress, its continu- 
 
SACRIFICE. 
 
 1 8 1 
 
 ousness and expansion, its beauty and its in- 
 fluence, will be, must be, in exact proportion 
 to the sincerity of our struggle with self. 
 Whether to help the Church’s triumph, or 
 our own holiness, we must fight selfishness. 
 
 “ It is the profoundest of all moral truths, 
 that a man who would work out his salvation 
 must cast out self, though he rend his heart- 
 strings in doing it. Not love of self-indul- 
 gence only, but self-applause, self-confidence, 
 self-conceit and vanity, desire and expecta- 
 tion of reward ; self in all the subtle ingenui- 
 ties with which it winds about the soul.” * 
 
 Then, the only way to be capable of lofty 
 sacrifices is first to begin with humble ones. 
 The doing of the little duties at our own 
 house-door, the love of our neighbour, per- 
 haps uninteresting and a little stupid, are the 
 first steps in the ladder of goodness, at the 
 top of which sparkles the martyr’s crown. 
 For there are martyrs now who live out their 
 quiet years, die in their beds, wear every-day 
 clothes, enjoy homely worship, yet lay their 
 lives at their Heavenly Master’s feet as fully 
 
 * J. A. Froude. 
 
1 82 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST . 
 
 and as acceptably as either Ignatius or Ridley. 
 It is the habit of making sacrifices in small 
 things that enables us for making them in 
 great, when it is asked of us. Temper, love of 
 pre-eminence, bodily indulgence, the quick re- 
 tort, the sharp irony — in checking these let us 
 find our cross and carry it. Or, when the mo- 
 ment comes for some really great service, the 
 heart will be petrified for it, and the blinded 
 eyes will not see the occasion of love. 
 
 But the hardest question is the last. We 
 admit, of course, the need of sacrifice ; recog- 
 nize its nobleness, bow to its necessity. But 
 we cannot admit its easiness, nor discover its 
 joy. 
 
 Whose fault is this? Not Christ’s. It is 
 our own. If we would only learn to trust 
 Him, dare to yield to Him, ask to love Him, 
 then He would make His service perfect free- 
 dom; then His yoke would be easy and His 
 burden light. 
 
 For we need not wait till we reach the sin- 
 less land, and the perfect liberty of the chil- 
 dren of God, for the joy of a discovered 
 Saviour. 
 
 This pen is not worthy to write it, yet what 
 
SACRIFICE. 183 
 
 it writes is true — He Himself is the substance 
 of our reward to the souls that wait for Him; 
 and do they need a better? Oh, that this 
 heart of mine were but able to explain, to 
 persuade you what Christ has for those who 
 love Him ; how He can flood the soul that is 
 emptied of human delights for His sake with 
 brimming rivers of grace \ Life and liberty, 
 joy and power come in return for this sacrifice 
 of self, for this patient hanging on the cross 
 of self-denial. Life, more and more abun- 
 dantly, and in exact proportion to the death 
 of the will to sin. Liberty, in running the 
 way of His commandments, because He has 
 enlarged our hearts [Ps.cxix.3j. Oh, be sure that 
 Self it is, and nothing but self, that makes 
 His commandments grievous. When once 
 we resist self, really resist it, we find a burden 
 gone. JOY, the joy of God, which He means 
 for us and offers to us, if only we knew it. 
 Why are we so suspicious of joy — looking 
 askance at it as if it were some heated ex- 
 citement or rash presumption, when even an 
 Old Testament prophet could say to the He- 
 brews under the first covenant, “ The joy of 
 the Lord is your strength ” [Neh. vm. ioj ; when 
 
j84 the gospel of Christ. 
 
 an Apostle (full of humility), waiting for his 
 martyrdom, wrote as with his dying pen, and 
 from the place of his dismal captivity, to 
 press it as a duty on the Church ? A dying 
 saint of our own time was heard to exclaim, 
 “Joy, joy, I shall see my Lord to-night ! ” 
 Why should this seem, as to some it cer- 
 tainly would seem, the cry of a hysterical re- 
 ligion ? That such a reproach is possible, only 
 shows us how far we may be from the glad- 
 ness of the primitive times. If Christ were 
 felt to be our dearest Friend, and we ever 
 tried to make Him so, going to depart to be 
 with Him, would be felt to be far better; and 
 simple faith in His gracious promises and fin- 
 ished redemption would rob death of its sting 
 and conscience of its reproaches. Yet we 
 need not be dying, nor wait till we die, to 
 catch the spirit of joy even now. Natures 
 differ, and we must not try to fit ourselves 
 into other moulds, or we shall suffer for our 
 unreality. Yet, for the soul that counts all 
 things but loss for the excellency of the 
 knowledge of Christ, joy should run over. 
 
 Also Power. We can all complain how 
 weak we are ; and complaining of weakness 
 
SACRIFICE . 
 
 185 
 
 which we might prevent and remedy, if we 
 pleased, is a poor kind of humility. No doubt 
 it is better to complain of it than to be con- 
 tent with it. Yet the loftiest saint who ever 
 lived, who called himself the chief of sinners, 
 because he honestly felt he was, scrupled not 
 to say, “ I can do all things through Christ 
 which strengtheneth me” qwiii.iv.13]. 
 
 The more we. surrender for Christ, the more 
 we get back from Him. The emptier the soul 
 is of self, so much the more room for Him to 
 possess and gladden it with His divine fulness. 
 All will at least be stones in the glorified tem- 
 ple ; but some will be pillars. Shall we ? Not 
 for personal ambition, but that the Son of 
 God may be glorified thereby. “ To him that 
 overcometh, will I give to be a pillar in the 
 temple of my God, and I will write upon him 
 my new name ” [Rev. in. 12]. 
 
VI. 
 
 GLORY. 
 
 M I BESEECH THEE, SHOW ME THY GLORY.” 
 
 u Man's chief end is to glorify God , and to enjoy 
 Him for ever." 
 
 HAT glory? For Moses, of course, 
 the glory of the Divine character. 
 The Divine answer to that prayer 
 was, “ I will make all my goodness pass be- 
 fore thee” [Exod. xxxhi. i9]. For us who are in 
 the last time it is the glory of the Word made 
 flesh. A new glory, because the glory of His 
 risen humanity ; an endless glory, never to 
 cease ; nay, let us be bold and say, never even 
 to cease augmenting and growing till the end 
 shall come. You ask why? Remember St. 
 Peter’s words : “ The sufferings of Christ, and 
 the glory that should follow ” [i Pet. i. i]. Clearly 
 (186) 
 
GLOR Y. 
 
 18; 
 
 understand that the glory of the Resurrection 
 was to come, not only after the Passion in 
 order of time, but after it as part of its ex- 
 ceeding great reward. “ Who raised Him 
 from the dead ” [ipet.i.21], and gave Him 
 glory, writes the same Apostle later on in the 
 chapter. And it is plain from Scripture that 
 this glory was not only the misty vision 
 of enraptured prophets, but the sustaining 
 and ever-present anticipation of the suffering 
 Christ. For hope was no stranger to the 
 human heart of Jesus. Of man, in a real 
 sense, it is said, “ We are saved by hope” 
 [Rom. viii. 24 j. But even, in Him, too, may we not 
 say with perfect and holy reverence, it was an 
 anchor of the soul keeping it from drifting 
 before the storm, telling Him that the dark- 
 ness was passing and the dawn at hand ? We 
 observe this in His words both before He suf- 
 fered, and after He suffered ; also in the 
 words of the Holy Ghost, when His glory 
 had become all His own. To the Apostles : 
 “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God 
 is glorified in Him. If God be glorified in 
 Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and 
 shall straightway glorify Him ” [John mi. 31, 32], In 
 
1 88 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 the sacerdotal prayer to His own Holy Fath- 
 er : “And now, O Father, glorify Thou me 
 with Thine own self with the glory which I 
 had with Thee before the world was” u>hn xvii. s\. 
 After He had risen, to His disciples on the 
 way to Emmaus : “ Ought not Christ to have 
 suffered these things, and to enter into His 
 glory?” [Luke xxiv. 26], as something He expected. 
 Once more, we read in the Hebrews : “ Who 
 for the joy that was set before Him endured 
 the Cross, despising the shame, and is set 
 down at the right hand of the Throne of 
 God ” [Heb.xii.2]. I propose that on the nature 
 of this glory we should meditate now ; if the 
 last, almost the most wonderful feature of the 
 Gospel, profoundly conscious that the glory 
 The nature of of Christ, and the glory into 
 tkis glory. which His Church shall one day 
 
 be transfigured, when she sees Him as He is, 
 as much passeth our entire comprehension as 
 His Love doth ; yet that if and because it is 
 to be ours, when we sit with Him on the 
 Throne, He will not be displeased with us, if 
 we try to think about it before we reach it. 
 
 The glory of Christ is the manifestation of 
 His Sonship ; and it is first of all seen in 
 
GLOR Y. 
 
 189 
 
 His accomplished purpose — “The riches of 
 the glory of the mystery ” [Coi.i.273 blessedly 
 conceived in the Divine heart before the 
 worlds were made, and slowly elaborated as 
 the ages went on in the unspeakable patience 
 of God. “ I have a baptism to be baptized 
 with ; and how am I straitened until it be ac- 
 complished ! ” [Luke xii. 50]. This to His disci- 
 ples. Just before He suffered, His word of 
 praise was this : “ I have glorified Thee on 
 the earth : I have finished the work which 
 Thou gavest me to do ” [John xv ii. 4 ]. This to 
 His Father. Immediately before He expired, 
 He said: “It is finished” [John xix. 30]. This 
 ended all. Not till then could He die. That 
 eternal purpose was God and man made one — 
 in Him. “When He had by Himself purged 
 our sins ” [Heb.i.3]; and again, “ having offered 
 one sacrifice for sins” [Heb.x.12]; and again, 
 “ having obtained eternal redemption for us.” 
 These are the several faces or aspects of that 
 atoning work which the Love of the Eternal 
 Three accomplished in the Incarnation. And 
 the glory of this ! One soul saved, what a 
 mystery of pity, and forbearance, and wisdom, 
 and power, which only He who put them forth 
 
THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 I90 
 
 can understand. But a race redeemed, and a 
 Church decked in the life and righteousness 
 of God — we must be in Heaven before we 
 can guess what it means. 
 
 Then there is the glory of the Father’s wel- 
 come : “ Now come I to Thee” [John m. 13]. 
 “ The love wherewith Thou hast loved me ” 
 [John xvii. 26]. Here were the thoughts that made 
 summer in His soul as He met His dying. 
 “ This is my Beloved Son in whom I am well 
 pleased” [Matt. xvn, 5]. Here is the Divine com- 
 placency and joy wherewith from first to last 
 the Father beheld Him. “ I do always such 
 things that please Him” [John viii. 29] was the 
 calm account of His life that smote conviction 
 into the Jews. It were useless, if not pre- 
 sumptuous, for us to inquire which of two 
 motives more constrained Him to His Cross 
 — love to God or love to man. This, how- 
 ever, is plain, that God He infinitely loved, 
 being in indissoluble union and sympathy 
 with Him before the worlds were made; and 
 oh, what a blessed welcome, what an august 
 reception, what a tender recognition (to speak 
 of Divine things in human language) ; what a 
 pomp of principalities and powers must have 
 
GLORY. 
 
 I 9 I 
 
 been marshalled to meet Him, when He 
 passed through the Heavens, and sat down 
 for ever at the right hand of God, “ being 
 made so much better than the angels, as He 
 hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent 
 name than they” [Heb. i. 4]. But this is holy 
 ground, and we must not further tread on it. 
 
 In the third place, it was the glory of a 
 crowned humanity. At His conception act- 
 ually, at His birth visibly, He took the man- 
 hood into union with God. After His Resur- 
 rection He took the manhood so united to be 
 crowned with glory and honour in Heaven. 
 Gratefuily, as we bow before the Cross, 
 humbly and devoutly as we say, was ever sor- 
 row like that sorrow, or love like that love, 
 had there been only a Cross and a grave, with 
 no crowning after the Cross, no rising out of 
 the grave, the world would still be in its sins 
 and Death king. But hear St. Paul's gospel : 
 “ It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is 
 risen again, who is even at the right hand of 
 God, who also maketh intercession for us ” 
 [Rom. viii. 34]. That is a gospel. When Christ 
 died man was redeemed, and when He rose 
 man was justified, and when He ascended man 
 
192 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 was crowned. The last of all God's works, he 
 is immeasurably the noblest. Never despair 
 of him, and never despise him. Made in 
 God's image, and for fellowship with Him, 
 even in his fall and ruin, he is wonderful and 
 lovely. But in his Resurrection how blessed, 
 in his regeneration how sublime ! With the 
 physical symmetry and fairness of his outer 
 form, with his reason and intelligence, his 
 kingly will, his judicial conscience, and his af- 
 fectionate heart, any man or woman you find, 
 even though soiled with the worst soils of 
 moral pollution, is a wonderful work of God. 
 But when perfect instead of fallen, immortal, 
 with the last enemy, Death, behind ; pure 
 with the purity of God, wise with His truth, 
 penetrated by His love, vital with His grace, 
 and inspired with His purpose, what kings 
 and queens will the ransomed of the Lord 
 hereafter become, sitting on their thrones of 
 power in the Kingdom of the Father! Christ 
 then, indeed, will be King of kings and Lord 
 of lords ; and we, if we are worthy of admis- 
 sion there, shall be kings and lords under Him, 
 each with our sphere of power, and our func- 
 tion of duty, and our keys of government, and 
 
GLORY ; 
 
 193 
 
 our raiment of light ; the proportions of our 
 life complete, the symmetry of our duty, char- 
 ity, worship perfect, our length and breadth 
 and height equal. 
 
 As His Resurrection is our resurrection — 
 for “ as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall 
 all be made alive ” cicor.xv. 221— observe the “ all ” 
 — so is His Coronation the pledge of ours. We 
 do not yet comprehend all that we shall be, 
 for we cannot now see what He will be. This 
 we do know, that those whom He has washed 
 from their sins in His blood, He hath made 
 kings and priests unto God and His Father; 
 and the fancy reels before the amazing con- 
 ception of the noble tasks, the continuous tes- 
 timony, the grand vice-royalty, the expanding 
 power, that it may please Him who is at once 
 our Head and our Master, our God and our 
 King, to bestow on the ransomed race in ever- 
 lasting spousal union with Himself, through 
 all the coming ages, perhaps for all the uni- 
 verse of worlds. 
 
 “To him that overcometh will I give to sit 
 with me in my throne ; even as I overcame, 
 and am set down with my Father on His 
 throne ” [Rev. hi. 21]. This is a great mystery, 
 and with a profound meaning. 
 
 14 
 
i 9 4 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 ' Again, it is the glory of His mediatorial of- 
 fice. He died that salvation might be possi- 
 ble. He rose that it might be actual. What 
 His Cross procured, His Resurrection con- 
 firms. It is still true of Him-—“The Son of 
 Man is come to seek and to save that which 
 is lost ” [Luke xix. io]. He is still Saviour. He is 
 still Son of Man. Never will He lose or deny 
 that name by which on earth He seems to 
 have loved best to call Himself — that name 
 which is our true link with Him, now that He 
 is reigning in Heaven. He is still seeking, 
 still saving the lost ; and if it seems that more 
 are lost than ever there were, for the earth 
 must be fuller through this eighteen hundred 
 years, may we not still more truly say, there 
 are more found? Jesus lives, and we know 
 it, when He lives in our heart. Jesus saves, 
 and we know it, not only because it may have 
 pleased Him to save us, but when it pleases 
 Him to use us for saving others. Jesus 
 pleads, and we know it, for the Comforter is 
 come to us from the Father, making the Gos- 
 pel potent, and conscience restless, and sin a 
 bondage, and pity keen, and prayer mighty, 
 and the Bible precious, and the world startled, 
 
GLORY. 
 
 195 
 
 and the Church awake. If it was glory foi 
 Jesus to die, it was glory for Him to rise. If 
 it pleased Him to suffer, it was that He might 
 be mighty to save ; and as every ransomed 
 soul passes up out of its conflicts and sor- 
 rows into the presence of the Incarnate King, 
 He sees of “the travail of His soul and is sat- 
 isfied ” [isaiahiiii.ii]. Yet it is the manifested 
 glory of one who is the Light of the World. 
 This He claimed for Himself when on earth; 
 and we can hardly wonder that so lofty an 
 assertion should have provoked an indignant 
 surprise. Yet it is what St. Paul also claimed 
 for Him, when He stood before Festus, “that 
 Christ should suffer, and that He should be 
 the first that should rise from the dead, and 
 should show light unto the people and to the 
 Gentiles ” [Actsxxvi.23]. And has He not since 
 justified that assertion by the matchless influ- 
 ence of His Name? False prophet or true, 
 Son of God, or only son of Mary, a blas- 
 phemer or speaking the words of truth and 
 soberness ; now reigning King in Heaven, or 
 but a handful of dust in a Syrian grave ; by 
 the confession of His enemies, to whom in 
 spite of themselves He is an object of absorb- 
 
THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 I96 
 
 in g interest ; with the acclamation of the dis- 
 ciples to whom the instant and entire recogni- 
 tion of all His claims is the only explanation 
 of His life that satisfies their reason : the only 
 outcome of His death that stills their heart, 
 Christ is any way pre-eminent. Wisely or 
 foolishly, rightly or wrongly, He is the centre 
 of human attraction ; the fountain of perfect 
 morality ; the character which, in itself com- 
 plete, meets all possible demands of the 
 human conscience; the Friend who attracts 
 the secret sympathies of rich and poor, 
 young and old ; the Prophet who has raised 
 the world, bad as it is, to a higher level than 
 it had ever dreamed of without Him ; the 
 Saviour, who from some that read these lines 
 has earned a gratitude that no eternity can 
 exhaust. But it is His Resurrection and As- 
 cension that have made Him this. He is 
 light to the angels in Heaven, to mankind on 
 earth, to the spirits in Hades, to the devils in 
 hell. To the angels in Heaven, who through 
 the Church, now discern in Him, as they could 
 not before discern, the manifold wisdom of 
 God. To mankind upon earth, which in be- 
 holding Him behold the Father in righteous- 
 
GLORY. 
 
 197 
 
 ness, mercy, and truth. To the spirits in 
 Hades, to some of whom once, when He 
 tasted death for all men, He Himself 
 preached His own Gospel, be sure not in 
 vain. To devils in hell, to whom the Res- 
 urrection was the utter foiling and baffling 
 of the mystery of evil, when most it ex- 
 pected to triumph by forcing on the Death 
 of the Cross. “ Having spoiled principalities 
 and powers He made a show of them openly ? 
 triumphing over them in it ” [Coi.n.i 5 ]. 
 
 But about this glory the Lord besought His 
 Father, on behalf of His Apostles, that they 
 might behold it [joim xvii. 243, even then; having 
 said just before, that He had already given it 
 to them : “And the glory which Thou gavest 
 me I have given them ; that they may be one, 
 even as we are one ” [John xvii. 22]. 
 
 This glory for us is our manifested Sonship ; 
 partly visible now, to be perfectly revealed in 
 the life to come. 
 
 There are four degrees or steps in Sonship. 
 here is the Sonship of original creation, and 
 baptismal privilege, and of conscious union,, 
 id of glorified life. Of the first, the prophet/ 
 
 alachi writes : “ Have we not all one Father 
 
THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 198 
 
 hath not one God created us?” [Mai. a. 10:. We 
 read — Of the second, “ Baptizing them in (into) 
 the name of the Father, and of the Son, and 
 of the Holy Ghost” [Matt. xxvm. 19]. The children 
 have the Father's name. Of the third St. 
 John writes: “To as many as received Him, 
 to them gave He power to become the sons 
 of God, even unto them that believe on His 
 name” [John i. 12]. Sonship realized. Of the 
 fourth, we read in the Revelation : “ He that 
 overcometh shall inherit all things ; and I 
 will be his God, and he shall be my son ” 
 
 [nev. xxi. 8]. 
 
 This Sonship, or Glory, is simply Christ's 
 image, and relationship to God, and work for 
 man, so far as the possibilities of things per- 
 mit, reproduced in and continued by us, 
 through our union with Him, and by the 
 grace of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 We, too, as the sons of God, have to finish 
 the work given us to do, and by the power of 
 our continual intercession to do for men what 
 they will not do for themselves, plead on their 
 behalf with God. We, too, have to fill up 
 that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ 
 in the flesh for His body's sake, the Church ; 
 
GLOR V. 
 
 I99 
 
 wc, too, by our goodness, are to be salt and 
 light to the world. 
 
 In an earlier chapter (ii.) the thought was 
 pressed of the need of individuality, both as 
 a help to us to discover the work given us to 
 do, and also to enable us to do it. It has not 
 only to be discovered and commenced, but to 
 be finished, with as little incompleteness as 
 may be, though I suppose no one, except 
 One, has ever yet done all the good works 
 which God before ordained that he should 
 walk in, with as few mistakes as may be, 
 though the art of avoiding blunders is usually 
 learned only when the opportunity of making 
 them is over, with as little reluctance as may 
 be. 
 
 For who of us does not know the humbling 
 necessity of having almost to flog his will into 
 even a tolerable diligence, with self postponed 
 to the one supreme object of glorifying God. 
 
 Not to waste time, and also to learn, with- 
 out making life fretful to ourselves, and in- 
 tolerable to others, how to husband and use 
 its tiniest fragments ; to appreciate opportu- 
 nities, which are really the critical moments of 
 usefulness, and which float the labouring ship 
 
200 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 on the crest of the wave ; to have a deep, and 
 growing, and wonderful appreciation of the 
 vast results of the quickly passing moments 
 on the coming eternity, as if each act and 
 word was a seed-germ of incalculable impor- 
 tance for the great spaces in front ; to learn 
 the way of constantly appreciating the value 
 of our individual conduct on those with whom 
 
 I we are thrown : in a word, to have tenacity 
 without obstinateness, concentration without 
 deformity, elasticity without suppleness, self- 
 Iknowledge without egotism ; here is the secret 
 |of getting done before we go part at least of 
 the task we started with, when our serious 
 life began ; here, too, the keeping hold of that 
 continuity of life and plan, which makes even 
 the humblest life a kind of epic with the 
 angels in Heaven. Oh, how much is wasted 
 and poorly done, and therefore unrewarded, 
 through desultoriness of nature, and levity of 
 purpose, and a sort of slipshod way of shuf- 
 fling through life, with shoes down at the heels 
 and the nerve-strings of our mind and will 
 loose and dangling. Not so may Christians 
 fill their niche in the temple of glorified souls 
 and leave their mark on men. Let each of us 
 
GLOR Y. 
 
 201 
 
 ask ourselves, What can I do best ; what is 
 it that I am attempting to do ; is it being 
 done; how? We have, each of us, stages in 
 our life, with duties, trials, opportunities, les- 
 sons peculiar to it. We cannot go back to 
 pick up anything dropped in the stage be- 
 hind ; each period has its own task and its 
 own discipline, and we have nothing to spare 
 either for the past or the future. We live 
 only in the present ; let us fill it with grave, 
 diligent, thoughtful activities. The past is 
 out of our reach ; the future is unknown. 
 Let us remember, further, that it is not only 
 in the discharge of external activities with 
 others that our given task is to be done ; 
 there is an inward task upon ourselves. I 
 mean the task of self-discipline. We read of 
 .holiness by faith, and truly there is no holi- 
 ness without faith. Yet this is only one-half 
 of the truth. Holiness must come also by 
 effort, and watchfulness, and contemplation, 
 and deep desire, and self-restraint, and the use 
 of those divinely appointed channels through 
 which grace flows into the soul. The older I 
 grow the more convinced I become, that much 
 of the imperfect, and inconsistent, and ill-de- 
 
202 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 veloped, and one-sided goodness we observe 
 in modern types of the religious life, springs 
 from our not sufficiently remembering that 
 we are at the best sick men, who need careful 
 regimen, prudent restraints, sometimes crutch- 
 es, often medicine. It is possible that rules 
 may fret us as inconsistent both with the 
 theory and enjoyment of our Christian freer 
 dom ; yet they are often needful to educate 
 us for liberty, as well as to help us in it ; and 
 that more soberness mingled with our joyous* 
 sense of pardon, more regulating power in 
 the grateful acceptance of God’s bountiful 
 goodness, would at once steady our action, 
 and mature as well as stimulate our growth. 
 Many and many a gray-headed Christian is 
 but a child after all in spiritual life and cult- 
 ure, and has no right to the privileges of 
 manhood, if ripeness is not in years, but in 
 character. If he chooses to take them no 
 one can prevent him, but he suffers from it, 
 and the Church too. Mr. Phillips Brooks, in 
 one of the most suggestive of his sermons, 
 has explained the value of Lenten observance, 
 in one of its features — fasting — to be twofold : 
 that it expresses repentance, and uncovers the 
 
GLORY. 
 
 203 
 
 life to God. Some of us are startled even at 
 the word, as if it was a Roman austerity, which 
 the spirit of the Gospel has exiled from the 
 culture of the soul. It is certain that a great 
 many really Christian people would be far 
 happier and holier if they were more circum- 
 spect and intelligent than they are in regulat- 
 ing their habits of speech and food, their 
 hours of retirement and devotion. Cannot 
 you divine, by a sort of instinct, those who 
 steadily aim at bringing all their common life 
 into regular captivity to the law of Christ, 
 often at the expense of their personal gratifi- 
 cation, but ever with the result of grace for 
 themselves and influence for others ? On no 
 souls does so much precious fragrance hang 
 like the glistening dew; from no characters 
 does so much hidden virtue go forth to heal, 
 as from those who walk closely with God in a 
 hidden life of secret devotion and self-govern- 
 ment ; who really, longing after His likeness, 
 are at the pains to strive after it, as well as to 
 wish for it. So let us not be content with a 
 low standard, with the faults of twenty years 
 ago still corroding the soul, with the feeble, 
 and also insincere, wish for goodness, in re- 
 
204 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST . 
 
 fusing to put our wish into action, or to 
 translate our prayers into the carrying of the 
 daily cross. St. Paul was the apostle of justi- 
 fication by faith, yet just before his death he 
 counted not himself to have apprehended. 
 Of his Philippian converts he could highly and 
 hopefully write, that He who had begun the 
 good work in them would perform it unto the 
 day of Jesus Christ. Yet of himself (and was 
 it solely with respect to the fruits of his apos- 
 tolate?) he wrote to the Corinthians, “ I keep 
 under my body and bring it into subjection, 
 lest that by any means after I have preached 
 to others, I myself should be a castaway ” 
 [i cor. ix. 27]. Who looked forward to the wel- 
 come of his Lord more ardently than he — 
 “For me to depart and to be with Christ is 
 far better ”? [Phii.i.23]. Yet in this same epistle, 
 he prays that he may “ know Christ, and the 
 power of His Resurrection, and the fellowship 
 of His sufferings, being made conformable to 
 His death ” [Piai. m. 10]. 
 
 Let us not fear then to use the language, to 
 share the misgivings, to accept the discipline, 
 and to breathe the prayer of St. Paul. The 
 Church needs saints. Let us all aim at more 
 
GLOR Y. 
 
 205 
 
 personal sanctity. While salvation is instant 
 deliverance from the consequences of sin, it is 
 only a potential and gradual enfranchisement 
 from its power. Conformity to Christ is the 
 aim of every true heart that really loves Him ; 
 and conformity is not reached in a day. 
 
 mjN another way, already intercessory 
 BJB! touched on in an espe- prayer. 
 cial feature of it, we may, each of us, though 
 some may have more opportunity for it than 
 others, glorify the Father, follow Christ, and 
 help our brethren by continuous, secret, fer- 
 vent, intercessory prayer. What a spring of 
 power this is that all can touch ; for prevail- 
 ing with One, only too willing to be entreated 
 about it, for the illumination and conversion 
 of the world. We all remember the man with 
 one talent, and we seem often to come across 
 him. Occasionally we recognize him in our- 
 selves. Of course we dread even the idea of 
 using prayer mechanically. We have heard 
 that people in Thibet use prayer-mills, and 
 the grotesque impiety has a possible side in it 
 for us. Moreover, we must not forget that 
 the desire to pray is a gift from God Himself, 
 
206 the GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 usually anticipating His own purposed fulfil- 
 ment. Still, what might be done in this way 
 of intercessory prayer for the Church and the 
 world, for the preaching of the Gospel, and 
 the comforting of sorrowful hearts, and for 
 the keeping of the innocent in their purity, 
 and for the strengthening of the diligent in 
 their useful lives ; by the poor, who have no 
 money to give ; and the ignorant, who have 
 no culture ; and the insignificant, who have 
 no influence ; and the sick, who have no 
 health ; and the leisurely, who have no ab- 
 sorbing occupation ; by the old, who will soon 
 change prayer for praise, but who cannot 
 finish their life-work better than by fulfilling 
 their priestly office of prayer before the Lord 
 for men. Oh ! what a strange, new force and 
 baptism of the Spirit would come down upon 
 us all, giving preachers a tongue of fire ; par- 
 ents a holy wisdom with their children ; the 
 Church a sort of spiritual resurrection ; the 
 world an attentive and awakened ear. And 
 it is ever open to us, always possible. The 
 resource that never fails, the secret of all we 
 need and desire — God waits to listen — we 
 pause to use ! 
 
GLORY. 
 
 20 7 
 
 Then there is the fellowship of His suffer- 
 ings, in which we, for His body’s sake, the 
 Church, may suffer, not only for our own 
 blessedness, but for her edification, through 
 the sight of the patience and faith so evi- 
 dently imparted from Him. The faculty or 
 capacity of mental pain is, I suppose, an 
 essential and inalienable feature in a perfect 
 moral being. It is inseparably bound up with 
 that horror and grief at evil, when seen and 
 felt, which is a very part of God’s own nature, 
 and of which, just in proportion to our indi- 
 vidual share of it, we grieve to observe so 
 little in ourselves. It is also indissoluble 
 from that quality of sympathy in a loving 
 and tender nature, which is the noble penalty 
 of lovingness, and which, through making the 
 sorrows of another our very own, thereby 
 shares their anguish. In the glorified state 
 this potential capacity of pain will, of course, 
 be still an element in our nature, but dormant, 
 since there will be nothing to call it into life. 
 Now, there is this ennobling feature in the 
 pain of a holy soul, that it can accept it, and 
 even rejoice in it, both as the will of God, 
 therefore beautiful and desirable ; and as a 
 
2 o 8 the GOSPEL OF CHRIST . 
 
 means of testifying to His faithfulness and 
 tenderness in sustaining His saints as they 
 walk in the furnace of trial, so that no smell 
 of fire passes on them : and His nearness is 
 even seen. One watching by the side of a 
 suffering and now departed saint, whose sim- 
 plicity and humility of nature made her quite 
 unconscious of the lovely moral transfigura- 
 tion that a long illness had produced in a 
 character naturally beautiful, observed of her, 
 after a long night’s tedious pain borne with 
 cheerful patience, “ Now I know what the 
 verse means, 4 out of weakness were made 
 strong ’ ” [Heb xi. 34]. That sick-bed was a pulpit. 
 This is but one instance out of myriads. So long 
 as we can serve God by activity, let us do so. 
 When the time comes for manifesting Him 
 in weakness and pain by the life of cheerful, 
 dutiful, uncomplaining sonship, let us do so. 
 It will be easier to do it if, in some measure, 
 we can look back on not quiet a useless or un- 
 fruitful past. Patience is harder than dili- 
 gence ; to sit still than to be moving. Yet 
 the sick-room is often more powerful in its 
 testimony of a faithful God, than a pulpit 
 that sounds forth in sonorous eloquence the 
 
GLOR V. 
 
 209 
 
 message of the Gospel. How to use life we 
 can all understand and do. How to meet 
 death calmly and meekly is a lesson only to 
 be learnt in one way. 
 
 ■ E, too, are to be the salt Persona i 
 and the light of the world ; influence. 
 and we can be this only by our personal in- 
 fluence. We must not object to Christ’s 
 words to His disciples in the Sermon on the 
 Mount, that they were ideal. Of course they 
 are. How could they be anything else, com- 
 ing from Him ? How could anything less be 
 suitable for us, who need lifting up in our 
 low personal standard to the perfection of 
 God? 
 
 To follow out the figure a little may help 
 us to understand what Christian influence 
 means. The use of salt is to preserve and 
 flavour food ; and so it is the blessed and 
 noiseless function of our holy religion to show 
 that goodness is at once possible and beauti- 
 ful by the steady effort to exemplify it in our 
 own lives. 
 
 The Church, no doubt, does this in her 
 corporate existence ; but the body cannot be 
 
 14 
 
210 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 stronger or wiser than the members of which 
 it is composed. While there is a charm, and 
 a dignity, and a sense of oneness and sym- 
 pathy in corporate action and fellowship, there 
 is a snare in it and a peril with it. If ever we 
 are tempted to think our brother’s zeal, and 
 charity, and wisdom sufficient to compensate 
 for our own lack of them, we may discover to 
 our cost, that while it is good for him to be 
 rich, it is not safe for us to be poor. Also, it 
 may be far better for us never even to look 
 at work for Christ, much less to begin seri- 
 ously to grapple with it, if we intend to re- 
 gard our share in it simply as the amiable 
 diversion of a vacant hour, not a distinct call 
 from Him to help Him with the salvation of 
 souls. 
 
 Christians are the salt of the earth in two 
 ways ; and the second does not always com- 
 plete the first. By the fact of their privilege, 
 and the use of their grace. Our privilege, 
 coming to us through the proffered adoption 
 in baptism, is this, “ Know ye not that ye are 
 the Temple of God, and that the Spirit of 
 God dwelleth in you” [2 cor. m. lq. Springing 
 from this our duty is the eager, steady, and 
 
GLORY. 
 
 21 I 
 
 faithful use of that grace which comes to us 
 through our spiritual incorporation into Christ, 
 and our close fellowship with Him. “ Whoso- 
 ever drinketh of the water that I shall give 
 him shall never thirst ; but the water that I 
 shall give him shall be in him a well of water 
 springing up into everlasting life ” [John*. m. 
 In this figure of a well, with a constant sup- 
 ply from which others may drink for refresh- 
 ment and life, is the mystery of the reproduc- 
 tive principle in a devout Christian soul — not 
 only the indwelling, but the outgoing force 
 of the Divine presence, the witness of regen- 
 eration and its result ; indicating the duty, in- 
 spiring the motive, and supplying the power. 
 
 Are we the salt of the earth ? In other 
 words, do we care enough for this grace 
 (blessed Gospel that this is) constantly to 
 ask for it, gratefully to receive it, diligently 
 to employ it. cheerfully to share it ? Is our 
 baptismal fellowship quickened and growing 
 into a conscious and fruitful life? 
 
 I SAY, let us be salt, and strength of 
 
 I in these ways. First, let conviction . 
 
 us act out our belief strenuously, inces- 
 
212 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 \ 
 
 santly, fearlessly, and as in the presence of 
 God. What hamstrings every man in his 
 Christian life is feebleness and limpness of 
 conviction ; and what weakens conviction is 
 the spirit of the world. The one secret of 
 enjoying everything worth having, and doing 
 anything worth doing, is habitual communion 
 with Christ. Live with Him, as well as for 
 Him, and your love shall never wax cold. 
 Then aim at individual work, individual 
 and should your heart slacken 
 about it, suspect your position with God. 
 Each should pray and try to be personally 
 useful to some one. That one helped and 
 saved will be moved, just as you have been, 
 to help and save others ; and so the work 
 grows by perpetually reproducing itself until 
 the day dawns and the King of Saints comes 
 back. 
 
 Then recollect the power of 
 sympathy with others, both 
 what it means and how it soothes the lonely 
 and vexed spirit for the burdens and fatigues 
 of life (see p. 126). It was the peculiar glory 
 of Christ. Let it be yours for Him. It is 
 not pity, nor bland condescension, nor sim- 
 
 Sympathy. 
 
GLORY ; 
 
 213 
 
 Inconsistency . 
 
 pering patronage. It is tender and delicate 
 love. No doubt jt comes to some much more 
 easily than to others ; yet we may pity the 
 Christian who is quite devoid of it, and even 
 more his friends. Christ’s gifts are manifold, 
 and each has his own. Yet with this no one 
 can dispense. Ask for it, and it shall come. 
 
 Lastly, bear in mind that 
 nothing in all the world will 
 mar your work or dim your glory like incon- 
 sistency. It is not, indeed, exactly to be 
 called sin. Often it means the mere doing 
 of things which are lawful, but not expedient, 
 in a spirit of mere self-pleasing, saying, “ Am 
 I not free? ” and then using our freedom, not 
 as the servant of Christ. But the whiter the 
 robe, the more darkly each spot shows on it. 
 The constant reward of a holy and devoted 
 life is the blessed atmosphere (a real spiritual 
 glory) that constantly, though unconsciously, 
 exhales from it. Much to be in communion 
 with Christ means our taking Him, without 
 knowing it, into every company we enter. 
 The usefulness that never ceases, never irri- 
 tates, is the irresistible charm of a holy exam- 
 ple. Only a few can be clever, but all can be 
 
214 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 good ; for God gives His Holy Spirit to them 
 that ask Him. To be the salt of the earth 
 and the light of the world, is the glory of 
 Sonship. 
 
 „ . Finally, and as I would write 
 
 Conclusion. 1 
 
 these words on my knees, under 
 a profound sense of their importance, so do 
 you, Christian reader, ponder them on yours, 
 that God may indeed show you if they are 
 possible and true. 
 
 Christ is coming back: and as His life in 
 Heaven is the pattern and representation of 
 our glory, so is His life in us the measure of 
 it. As He revealed the Father, and was His 
 Father’s glory, to the world in the accomplish- 
 ment of His purpose, and in the function of 
 His priesthood, we too are to reveal Him, as 
 light shining in the dark places of the world, 
 small, feeble, intermitting it may be, but still 
 shining with the light of pure obedience and 
 sweet charity. God wants us all, and we are 
 to shine at our best. The salvation and illu- 
 mination of the race does not depend so much 
 on a little company of gifted saints flashing 
 like light-houses at distant intervals over a 
 gloomy ocean, as on millions and millions of 
 
GLORY. 
 
 215 
 
 humble souls, of whom the world is both ig- 
 norant and unworthy, shedding their meek 
 radiance, like the stars in the clear sky on the 
 busy earth below. To be good, to be kind : 
 this is to reveal the Father, and to confess the 
 Son. Glorified humanity will chiefly be made 
 up of a mass of insignificant people who have 
 had humble duties, small resources, moderate 
 gifts, slender opportunities, homely presence 
 and limited scope, but who were dear to God, 
 humbly followed Christ, and were faithful 
 unto death. Let us not, then, think that 
 there is nothing we can do wherewith to 
 glorify God or help men's salvation. The 
 life which has most of the future in it, as sus- 
 taining hope and motive, will best be able to 
 meet the Master, when He comes to take ac- 
 count of His servants, will have the best mul- 
 tiplied talent to give Him as the usury of His 
 grace. “ Good and faithful servant ” ; oh, 
 what a Gospel this will be to hear from Him ! 
 Now is the time to earn it; let us use the 
 time well. Christ is coming back : and 
 “ Every one that hath this hope in him, puri- 
 fieth himself even as He is pure ” [i johniv.2]. Are 
 we so purifying ourselves? We talk, some of 
 
2l6 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 
 
 us a little glibly, of the joy of seeing Him. 
 Let us ponder that joy with an unspeakable 
 faith in His tender welcome, yet with a rever- 
 ent and humble appreciation of our unspeak- 
 able unworthiness : and of how utterly inade- 
 quate our present conceptions must be, either 
 of His awful holiness or our littleness in His 
 sight. Oh, I know how good, how gracious, 
 how gentle, how tender He is ; but when I 
 think of Him as the brightness of the Father’s 
 glory, and the express image of His Person, 
 and that one day these sinful eyes shall see 
 Him, it is a Gospel of infinite gladness, tem- 
 pered with an unspeakable and not unsuitable 
 awe. 
 
 “ I drew near to Him, 
 
 And He to me. O beatific sight ! 
 
 O vision with which nothing can compare ! 
 The Angel ministrant, who brought me hither, 
 Was exquisite in beauty, and my heart 
 
 Clave to his heart 
 
 But this was diverse from all other sights ; 
 
 Not living only, it infused new life ; 
 
 Not beautiful only, it beautified ; 
 
 Not only glorious, for it glorified. 
 
 For a brief space methought I looked on Him, 
 And He on me. O blessed look ! how brief 
 
GLOR Y. 
 
 21 7 
 
 I know not, but Eternity itself 
 
 Will never from my soul erase the lines 
 
 Of that serene transfiguring aspect. 
 
 For a brief space I stood ; by Him upheld, 
 
 Gazing, and then in adoration fell, 
 
 And clasped His sacred feet. While holy tears, 
 
 Such tears as disembodied spirits may weep, 
 
 Flow’d from my eyes.”* 
 
 We can, indeed, trust Him in that hour to 
 be all that we need, more than ever we can 
 ask or think, as He fills us with the rapture of 
 His love, and looks us through and through 
 with His countenance of holy searching ten- 
 derness. Yet it will be a marvellous moment 
 when the sinner first meets and sees the Sav- 
 iour who died for him. Doubtless the sense 
 of sin will be swallowed up in the joy of re- 
 demption ; still the first gaze will surely be of 
 penitence mingled with love. 
 
 Christ is coming back, and all the saints with 
 Him. Who of us has not dear souls over 
 there, who, in the dim distance of the past, 
 went out into the invisible ? They are with 
 Him, and they will return with Him ; they 
 are with Him, and are also with us. 
 
 * “Yesterday, To-day, and Forever.” 
 
218 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST . 
 
 It is a characteristically delicate thought of 
 a living theologian, that in our Father’s house 
 there are many resting-places ; and that as 
 here one vast roof over the common home 
 covers, in its various and separated chambers, 
 the diverse families of the household of faith, 
 so as the ages go on, and our spiritual life pro- 
 gresses, both in the knowledge and service of 
 God, we may move on and up from one man- 
 sion to another, from light to light, love to 
 love, kingdom to kingdom, power to power. 
 
 This at least is certain. We are not really 
 severed from those who sleep in Jesus. They 
 are in one chamber, we in another ; God vis- 
 its us both. We cannot meet; that is all. 
 We look to meet presently. If we want to 
 make them happier, supposing that possible, 
 the way to it is more and more to get our 
 hearts like theirs, saturated with the love of 
 Jesus. If we would make Heaven as blessed 
 as possible for ourselves, let us do what we 
 can by our usefulness now to fill it with 
 thankful guests. Of all kinds of gratitude a 
 human soul can know — and it cannot be fully 
 known till Heaven is reached and Jesus seen — 
 the deepest is the gratitude of a soul saved to 
 the soul that saved it. 
 
GLORY. 
 
 219 
 
 Reader, and this is my last question, Will 
 that reward be yours ? 
 
 Dante, in his “ Paradise/' describes the 
 court of the blessed as a “ great white rose, 
 with innumerable leaves in innumerable ranks, 
 one line of spotless spirits breaking upon one 
 another," and the angels fluttering among 
 them radiant with joy. 
 
 But we have a more sure word of prophecy : 
 the Gospel of One who had seen that Holy 
 Place, and left His record for the Church. 
 
 With this Gospel let us end : 
 
 “ After this I beheld, and lo ! a great mul- 
 titude, which no man could number, of all 
 nations and kindreds and people and tongues, 
 stood before the Throne and before the Lamb, 
 clothed with white robes ; and with palms in 
 their hands, and cried with a loud voice, say- 
 ing, Salvation unto our God, which sitteth 
 upon the Throne, and unto the Lamb ” 
 
 [Rev. vii. 9, 10].